Nicholas Hunt/Getty Images for TIDALMeek Mill, CNN host Van Jones, and Kim Kardashian will be among the participants at the first Criminal Justice Reform Summit presented by Rolling Stone and Variety. Jones will be the keynote speaker for the November 14 event at the Jeremy Hotel in Los Angeles, which will explore the failings of the American criminal justice system. Not only do we face a mass incarceration problem in the United States, but almost 60 percent of inmates currently in prison or jail are racial and ethnic minorities, Jones says, Uncovering the roots of this national issue and creating a diverse advocacy community is a huge step toward generating legitimate policy change. Mill is now free on bail and fighting for a new trial to prove that his 2008 conviction on gun and drug charges should be overturned. The rapper initially served an eight-month sentence followed by probation. In November 2017, he was sentenced to two to four years in prison for parole violations, resulting in a wide public outcry. In April of this year, the Pennsylvania Supreme Court granted his release on bail. On Tuesday, Meek performed at JAY-Zs TIDAL X: Brooklyn concert at Barclays Center in New York City, which raised money to support non-profits working for criminal justice. Kardashian was invited to the summit because she met with President Donald Trump at the White House in September to discuss prison reform, and aided in the early release of Alice Marie Johnson, who spent 21 years in prison for a first-time drug offense. Hip-hop pioneer Fab 5 Freddy, who was the first host of MTVs Yo! MTV Raps in 1988, will also serve as a panelist for the event. Copyright 2018, ABC Radio. All rights reserved. Death of Lello Di Segni comes 75 years after 1943 raid in Rome's Jewish Ghetto. Lello Di Segni, the last survivor of the 1943 raid on Rome's Jewish Ghetto district to deport Jews to Nazi extermination camps, has died in Rome aged 92. Di Segni's death comes nine days after the 75th anniversary of the raid which occurred at dawn on 16 October 1943 and resulted in the deportation to Auschwitz of 1,023 Roman Jews, including 200 children. Ruth Dureghello, president of Rome's Jewish Community, said that "with the loss of Di Segni we have lost the historical memory of those who endured the raid of 16 October and then returned to tell us about it." Di Segni was one of just 16 were to make it back to Rome alive. On one side, they are in the position where they really have to be thinking about protecting the public interest. And on the other side, they dont want to tick off huge constituencies, said Dipayan Ghosh, a former policy adviser at Facebook and in the Obama White House who is now a fellow at the Shorenstein Center on Media, Politics and Public Policy. The leading social media platforms are far more hesitant to do anything because theyre afraid, theyre very afraid of the backlash they could get from conservatives in this country. But consider a carved stone Khachkar, a distinctive religious stella depicting the cross, and one of several exquisite examples of this particularly Armenian form on view. It was made in the old city of Julfa in 1586, and near the end of the period covered in this exhibition (roughly the 17th century), there were some 10,000 of them preserved in Julfa. Many were lost during the construction of a railroad in 1903-1904, though about 3,000 remained near the end of 1990s. Only about 30 survive today, after the army of Azerbaijan destroyed them between 1998 and 2005, one of several infamous assaults on Armenian culture, including the Turkish genocide near the end of World War I. This selection includes examples of such series as Ice Melt, sparked by the planets melting polar areas, and Tides, inspired by Hokusais Great Wave and featuring lines from naturalist Rachel Carsons writings. Two sets, Shorelines and Nouka, evoke the Bay of Bengal, the first with maps and the second by emulating the shape of the regions rowboats. Having spent her entire adult life outside India, Sircar contemplates her childhood home. But these pieces look less to the past than to an ominous future. As sea levels rise, the low-lying Ganges delta will be one of the first areas to drown. Todays Headlines The most important news stories of the day, curated by Post editors and delivered every morning. Email address By signing up you agree to our Terms of Use and Privacy Policy In some corners, Fox News insiders were enjoying a certain schadenfreude in Kellys NBC failure. Darla Shine, the wife of White House deputy chief of staff Bill Shine a former Fox News executive, gleefully noted Kellys troubles by tweeting a story that noted Kelly was not appearing on her show for the rest of the week, along with the comment that: This is what happens when you tilt the universe with lies @Megynkelly. . . . You helped perpetuate lies against those who helped you. Only the truth will set you free! At the bar, Ryan and Kelly developed an easy rapport and, eventually, a friendship. I always thought, Man, hes so cute and nice. Why doesnt he have a girlfriend? says Kelly, who owns Carnes & Co., an event planning, PR and yoga company. I even tried to set him up with my best friend, but there were no sparks. The university announcement of the no-trespass orders followed a year-long investigation by the U-Va. Police Department in coordination with state and federal law enforcement agencies that identified the 10 individuals as either committing or conspiring with others to carry out acts of violence or other conduct that directly threatened the health and safety of members of the community and other people on Grounds, Assistant Vice President and Chief of Police Tommye S. Sutton said in a statement. We have drawn a distinction between free speech and conduct that is aimed to intimidate others and promote violence. Such conduct and intimidation will not be tolerated. There has been a spate of pedestrian deaths in such incidents across the D.C. region. They often occur in dark or low light. Thirty-five pedestrians were hit and killed by cars in Fairfax last year, according to a state survey, and 6,418 pedestrians were injured. At a time when bombs are being mailed to political opponents, its critically important for leaders to be mindful of their words and rhetoric and speak out when clear lines of decency have been crossed, Jealous said in a statement. The Maryland Republican Partys mailers, which appear to depict women who marched following Trumps inauguration as radicals, cross a clear line of decency. They asked if we could help with their mailer, and of course that mailer is pursuing the same objective we are: getting Marc Elrich elected, Renne said. So we simply cut the check and sent it to them. Another newcomer, independent Mark Shiffer, 46, who moved to the city in 2017, wants to work full time on the traditionally part-time council. A former technology executive, hes largely self-funding his campaign and has not been able to afford to mail campaign literature. So he has been going door to door, pitching himself as a practical progressive who wants to address major construction needs in schools and sewers, recognizing that the council probably will have to do that by cutting costs, borrowing more and probably raising taxes. Expending GMs resources on such a clear nationwide goal would be more efficient than having to follow todays numerous and complex standards, said Mark Reuss, a GM executive vice president and president of its Global Product Group, adding the company is working to get beyond the administrations proposed freeze. We know we can do better than that, Reuss said. We know the industry can do better than that. Questo comunicato e stato pubblicato piu di 1 anno fa. Le informazioni su questa pagina potrebbero non essere attendibili. Industry News British Petroleum Plc. is planning to get into a swap deal with ConocoPhillips. BP Plc. is in considerations of undertaking Conocos 24 percent interest in the Clair field. In exchange, ConocoPhillips is likely to take BP Plc.s assets based in Alaska. This will help both the companies focus on the projects that yield higher outputs. Russia based Lukoil, owner of Neftochim Burgas refinery in Bulgaria, is planning to construct a petrochemical complex at the site of the refinery. It is intended to be an upgrade compared to the old production unit. The company has undertaken this expansion to increase the access to cheap raw materials and to quench the demand for polypropylene complex in the markets of Bulgaria. This would be profitable for the company and in turn, will increase the value added. Strategically, competing companies have economically invested heavily in R&D activities to develop advanced products to cater to the demands of the market. Various strategies are adopted to retain and expand their market share. The main approach of most companies within the global automotive lubricant market is that of expansion and entering into merger & acquisition as well as swap deals which allows two parties to exchange financial instruments. These strategies are widely adopted to achieve operational efficiencies and also spread their geographical presence in the global market. The market demands regular product innovation for product diversification and hence help secure a strategic market position. Receive a Sample Report for more Detailed Information @ https://www.marketresearchfuture.com/sample_request/1225 Market Segmentation The Automotive Lubricants Market is segmented by type into gear oil, engine oil, grease, engine coolant, transmission fluids, and other fluids. Gear oil is a type of lubricant which is made specifically for transfer cases, transmissions, and differentials in trucks, automobiles, and various types of machinery. Basic properties include high viscosity and usually contains organosulfur compounds. On the other hand, engine coolant is a water-based liquid that tends to absorb the heat from the engine; then the coolant turns hot itself which is then transferred to a radiator located at the front of the car. Engine coolant is the best option rather than using water in the cars, as water is corrosive and destroys the inside of the engine and the water pump. By Vehicle, the market has been segmented into light, commercial, and heavy. High-performance lubricants are used to ensure that the vehicle works on optimized fuel consumption, increased torque, and reduced carbon emission. Regional Analysis of Automotive Lubricants Market Asia-Pacific is one of the dominant regions for the Automotive Lubricants Market. Increasing demand due to increasing population in the Asia-Pacific region is one of the key factors for the high growth in this region. North America and Europe being one of the saturated markets are showing steady growth in the Automotive Lubricants market. North America U.S. Canada Mexico South America Brazil Argentina Venezuela Rest of South America Europe U.K Netherlands France Italy Rest of Europe Asia Pacific China India Indonesia Malaysia Rest of Asia Pacific Middle East Saudi UAE Kuwait Qatar Rest of Middle East Africa Nigeria Egypt Rest of Africa Get Research Report Overview @ https://www.marketresearchfuture.com/reports/automotive-lubricants-market-1225 About Market Research Future: At Market Research Future (MRFR), we enable our customers to unravel the complexity of various industries through our Cooked Research Report (CRR), Half-Cooked Research Reports (HCRR), Raw Research Reports (3R), Continuous-Feed Research (CFR), and Market Research & Consulting Services. MRFR team have supreme objective to provide the optimum quality market research and intelligence services to our clients. Our market research studies by Components, Application, Logistics and market players for global, regional, and country level market segments, enable our clients to see more, know more, and do more, which help to answer all their most important questions. Contact: Market Research Future +1 646 845 9312 Email: sales@marketresearchfuture.com The rights in the Bill of Rights are not absolute. Speech that is a clear and present danger can be suppressed. Ergo, hate speech can be suppressed. One way to do this is to make hate speech a crime just as we make speech that advocates the violent overthrow of the government a crime. Another way to do this is to posit that the First Amendment does not protect hate speech. The First Amendment does not protect falsely shouting fire in a crowded theater, for instance. Under Chen, Xinjiang province has become a police state where people can be detained simply for buying a tent, abstaining from alcohol or giving up cigarettes supposed telltale signs of a faithful Muslim. Formal written permission from authorities is required simply to travel from one village to another. Vast detention facilities have spread like chokeweed. An examination of satellite images by the BBC found that one camp, about an hour from the provincial capital of Urumqi, roughly quadrupled in size between April and October of this year. The U.S. Congressional-Executive Committee on China has called Chens escalating repression the largest mass incarceration of a minority population in the world today. It should be no surprise that what once looked like a Democratic landslide now appears, as my friend Dan Rather might say, as tight as a tick. Anyone who has been paying attention knows that the country is divided along regional, cultural and demographic fault lines. Republicans were bound to find or manufacture some issue, some reason to claim victimhood, that would incite the partys base. A bedraggled group of men, women and children, nearly 2,000 miles away in southern Mexico, is apparently the best they could come up with. Questo comunicato e stato pubblicato piu di 1 anno fa. Le informazioni su questa pagina potrebbero non essere attendibili. HTF MI recently introduced Used Car Market in the US Market study with in-depth overview, describing about the Product / Industry Scope and elaborates market outlook and status to 2023. The market Study is segmented by key regions which is accelerating the marketization. At present, the market is developing its presence and some of the key players from the complete study are AutoNation.com, CarMax Business Services, Carvana, Holman Automotive Group, Penske Automotive Group, Sonic Automotive, etc. HTFs analysts forecast that the Used Car Market in the US 2018-2022 to grow at a CAGR of 1.96% during the period 2018-2022. Request Sample of Used Car Market in the US 2018-2022 @: https://www.htfmarketreport.com/sample-report/982467-used-car-market-in-the-us-2018-2022 This report studies the Used Car Market in the US market size, industry status and forecast, competition landscape and growth opportunity. This research report categorizes the Used Car Market in the US market by companies, region, type and end-use industry. Browse 100+ market data Tables and Figures spread through Pages and in-depth TOC on " Used Car Market in the US Market by Type, by End-Users/Application, Organization Size, Industry, and Region - Forecast to 2023". Early buyers will receive 10% customization on comprehensive study. In order to get a deeper view of Market Size, competitive landscape is provided i.e. Revenue (Million USD) by Players (2013-2018), Revenue Market Share (%) by Players (2013-2018) and further a qualitative analysis is made towards market concentration rate, product/service differences, new entrants and the technological trends in future. Enquire for customization in Report @ https://www.htfmarketreport.com/enquiry-before-buy/982467-used-car-market-in-the-us-2018-2022 Competitive Analysis: The key players are highly focusing innovation in production technologies to improve efficiency and shelf life. The best long-term growth opportunities for this sector can be captured by ensuring ongoing process improvements and financial flexibility to invest in the optimal strategies. Company profile section of players such as AutoNation.com, CarMax Business Services, Carvana, Holman Automotive Group, Penske Automotive Group, Sonic Automotive etc. Market Segments: The Used Car Market in the US Market has been divided into type, application, and region. On The Basis Of Region, this report is segmented into following key geographies, with production, consumption, revenue (million USD), and market share, growth rate of Used Car Market in the US in these regions, from 2013 to 2023 (forecast), covering North America (U.S. & Canada) {Market Revenue (USD Billion), Growth Analysis (%) and Opportunity Analysis} Latin America (Brazil, Mexico & Rest of Latin America) {Market Revenue (USD Billion), Growth Share (%) and Opportunity Analysis} Europe (The U.K., Germany, France, Italy, Spain, Poland, Sweden & RoE) {Market Revenue (USD Billion), Growth Share (%) and Opportunity Analysis} Asia-Pacific (China, India, Japan, Singapore, South Korea, Australia, New Zealand, Rest of Asia) {Market Revenue (USD Billion), Growth Share (%) and Opportunity Analysis} Middle East & Africa (GCC, South Africa, North Africa, RoMEA) {Market Revenue (USD Billion), Growth Share (%) and Opportunity Analysis} Rest of World {Market Revenue (USD Billion), Growth Analysis (%) and Opportunity Analysis} Buy Single User License of Used Car Market in the US 2018-2022 @ https://www.htfmarketreport.com/buy-now?format=1&report=982467 Have a look at some extracts from Table of Content Introduction about Used Car Market in the US Used Car Market in the US Market Size (Sales) Market Share by Type (Product Category) in 2017 Used Car Market in the US Market by Application/End Users Used Car Market in the US Sales (Volume) and Market Share Comparison by Applications (2013-2023) table defined for each application/end-users Used Car Market in the US Sales and Growth Rate (2013-2023) Used Car Market in the US Competition by Players/Suppliers, Region, Type and Application Used Car Market in the US (Volume, Value and Sales Price) table defined for each geographic region defined. Used Car Market in the US Players/Suppliers Profiles and Sales Data Additionally Company Basic Information, Manufacturing Base and Competitors list is being provided for each listed manufacturers Market Sales, Revenue, Price and Gross Margin (2013-2018) table for each product type Used Car Market in the US Manufacturing Cost Analysis Used Car Market in the US Key Raw Materials Analysis Used Car Market in the US Chain, Sourcing Strategy and Downstream Buyers, Industrial Chain Analysis Market Forecast (2018-2023) ........and more in complete table of Contents Browse for Full Report at: https://www.htfmarketreport.com/reports/982467-used-car-market-in-the-us-2018-2022 Source URL:https://www.openpr.com/news/1328898/Used-Car-Market-is-Booming-Worldwide-Sonic-Automotive-CarMax-Business-Services-Carvana-AutoNation.html Thanks for reading this article; you can also get individual chapter wise section or region wise report version like North America, Europe or Asia. About Author: HTF Market Report is a wholly owned brand of HTF market Intelligence Consulting Private Limited. HTF Market Report global research and market intelligence consulting organization is uniquely positioned to not only identify growth opportunities but to also empower and inspire you to create visionary growth strategies for futures, enabled by our extraordinary depth and breadth of thought leadership, research, tools, events and experience that assist you for making goals into a reality. Our understanding of the interplay between industry convergence, Mega Trends, technologies and market trends provides our clients with new business models and expansion opportunities. We are focused on identifying the Accurate Forecast in every industry we cover so our clients can reap the benefits of being early market entrants and can accomplish their Goals & Objectives. Contact US : Craig Francis (PR & Marketing Manager) HTF Market Intelligence Consulting Private Limited Unit No. 429, Parsonage Road Edison, NJ New Jersey USA 08837 Phone: +1 (206) 317 1218 sales@htfmarketreport.com Well still be left with that question after the Saudi and Turkish investigations are done and the designated culprits are convicted. What was the threat that had to be silenced? My guess is that Khashoggi was seen as dangerous for the simple reason that he couldnt be intimidated or controlled. He was an uncensored mind. He didnt observe the kingdoms red lines. He was an insistent, defiant journalist. In recent weeks, white supremacist fliers were found at Vassar and Marist colleges and Dutchess County Community College in Poughkeepsie, N.Y.; and on the Berkeley and Davis campuses of the University of California. The fliers accused Jews of being behind the sexual-assault allegations that nearly derailed Justice Brett M. Kavanaughs Supreme Court confirmation. The fliers, bearing the web address of the Daily Stormer neo-Nazi group, included images of Sens. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.) and Charles E. Schumer (D-N.Y.) and financier George Soros with the Star of David drawn on their foreheads. School administrators strongly condemned the propaganda. A more honest defense and one occasionally revealed via accidentally-told-the-truth Kinsley gaffes might have been something like: We want to let rich people keep more of their money, regardless of the cost to Uncle Sam. We want this both because we (unlike most of the public) think thats fair, and also because our donors are demanding a return on their investment in us. Plus, maybe its a good thing to reduce government revenue; that gives us motivation to starve the beast and cut the safety net, which we think is a drag on the economy that protects people from the consequences of their poor life choices. Here is the reason that Trumps deception is so destructive: He is asking for voters to ignore consistency, rationality and morality in the midst of a midterm campaign that he has infected with bigotry. Having started his presidential campaign with the false charge that Mexico was sending rapists to America, Trump is returning to a similar theme in the last days before the midterm election. A migrant caravan headed for the southern border in Trumps depiction, and against all evidence is infiltrated by unknown Middle Easterners and may be organized by Democrats. Democratic policies, according to Trump, would invite the MS-13 gang members and terrorists into the country on competing murder sprees. And Californians are so enraged by sanctuary cities that there are riots in the streets. The fate of the wetlands now appears to rest with the Army Corps of Engineers and the Virginia Department of Environmental Quality, which must approve the filling-in of the wetlands. The good news is that residents have just been informed that they have until Monday to submit comments to the state regarding the wetlands permit, which may result in a public hearing on the issue. Third, theres a better way out of the INF Treaty dilemma. Why not try to turn it into an opportunity, as former U.S. senator Sam Nunn has suggested? Use the six-month withdrawal notice the treaty provides to follow through on the Strategic Stability talks that Trump and Russian President Vladimir Putin promised at their summit. In those, look for ways to resolve differences on this through inspections, information exchange and other measures of transparency. If that is impossible, at least try to renew momentum on arms reductions more broadly, recalling that our major nuclear agreement with Russia, New START, is set to expire in 16 months. But his reforms were too little, too late, and they had been extracted from him like teeth by a dentist. Nicholas grimaced with regret whenever he contemplated how he had agreed to make concessions to political critics that limited his autocratic powers. He dubbed elections a senseless dream. Worst of all, he was an incorrigible anti-Semite, blaming Jewish people for all the woes that preceded and followed his abdication: One thing is clear: it is that as long as the Yids are in charge everything will get worse, he wrote to his mother in 1917. In captivity, he read aloud to his family the book that in the West we know as The Protocols of the Elders of Zion. His belief in a world Jewish conspiracy, combined with his contempt for democracy, made him a fascist before the word was coined. Questo comunicato e stato pubblicato piu di 1 anno fa. Le informazioni su questa pagina potrebbero non essere attendibili. Market Drivers and Restraints: Diabetes is a global epidemic affecting an estimated 382 million people worldwide. The WHO projects that diabetes will be the 7th leading cause of death by 2030. An estimated 4 million people die annually from the complications associated with diabetes. Therefore, if the current trend associated with the prevalence of diabetes continues over the coming years, the number of diabetic patients across the globe would be tremendous after a decade. Increasing prevalence of diabetes will result in the rising demand for devices and products to monitor and control diabetes, eventually leading to increased consumption of lancets. Thus, the demand for lancets is expected to be enormous in the coming future. Lancets are one of the widely used alternative device to obtain the blood samples. These devices are receiving global recognition and acceptance due to its several convenient characteristics which gives them an edge over the traditional methods for vein puncture. Some of the important features of the safety lancets are painless vein puncture, easy handling, and safety while using. The major applications of the lancets are HIV screening test, capillary blood micro sampling and cholesterol test, blood group test, coagulation tests, haemoglobin, allergy tests, and many other blood based tests. According to the International Diabetes Federation (IDF), approximately 29.2 million people in the US are estimated suffer from diabetes in 2015. Japan had approximately 7.2 million. in 2015. Rising prevalence of diabetic population, increasing awareness for blood glucose monitoring device and increased awareness of safety measures in order to avoid the infectious diseases are some of the significant factors of the increased awareness and use of lancets. However, the price erosion is a major issue that is negatively impacting the diabetes management devices. Moreover, significant changes in reimbursement policies in the US for blood glucose monitors, particularly the ongoing impact to the private insurance sector are some of the factors restraining the growth of diabetic lancing device market. Get Exclusive Sample Copy of Report At: https://www.marketresearchfuture.com/sample_request/5507 Diabetic Lancing Device Market Key Companies Analyzed In Report Are: Some of the key players in the global diabetic lancing devices market are B. Braun Melsungen AG, Terumo Corporation, Becton Dickinson, Sanofi, F. Hoffmann-La Roche AG, Bayer AG, Novo Nordisk A S, Eli Lilly and Company, Owen Mumford Ltd, Medtronic, Ypsomed Holding AG, Sarstedt AG & Co, Greiner Bio One, Abbott Laboratories, HTL-STREFA S.A, Improve Medical, UltiMed, Inc., Allison Medical, Inc., Artsana S.p.a., VOGT MEDICAL, Perrigo Diabetes Care, MedExel Co., Ltd, ARKRAY Inc., Simple Diagnostics, Stat Medical, Terumo, Trividia Health, and others. Market Segmentation: The global diabetic lancing devices market is segmented on the basis of type, gauge, penetration depth, and end user. On the basis of type, the market for diabetic lancing devices it is segmented into safety lancets and standard lancets. The safety lancets are further categorized into push-button safety lancets, pressure activated safety lancets, and side button safety lancets. The pen needles is further categorized into standard pen needles and safety pen needles. On the basis of gauge, the market for diabetic lancing devices it is segmented into 17/18g, 21g, 23g, 25g, 28g, 30g, and others. On the basis of penetration depth, the market for diabetic lancing devices it is segmented into 0.8 mm to 1.0 mm, 1.1 mm to 1.5 mm, 1.6 mm to 2.0 mm, 2.1 mm to 2.5 mm, 2.5 mm to 3.0 mm, and others. On the basis of the end users, it is segmented into hospitals & clinics, diagnostic centers & medical institutions, home care & home diagnostics, research & academic laboratories, and others. Get Exclusive Discount @ https://www.marketresearchfuture.com/check-discount/5507 Detailed Regional Analysis: The global diabetic lancing device market consists of countries namely America, Europe, Asia Pacific, and the Middle East and Africa. Europe is projected to hold the largest share of the global diabetic lancing device market attributed to change in lifestyle, increase in R&D activities for the development of new drugs. According to the International Diabetes Federation (IDF), in 2015 approximately 59.8 million people had diabetes in Europe. HTL Strefa and Sarstedt are two European companies which have marked their presence on the global level as a major manufacturer of lancets and safety lancets in the world. The Americas holds a key share in diabetic lancing device treatment market. Moreover, North America dominated the overall market in terms of revenue in 2016. In the U.S., ongoing uncertainty as to the future of the Affordable Care Act and the Trump Administrations repeal and replace initiative may further impact the market. Asia Pacific is estimated to be the fastest region to grow at a high CAGR during the forecast period, led by an increase in government spending on healthcare services in India and China. A large number of lancet manufacturers are from developing Asian countries such as China, India, Japan and Republic of Korea mainly because of the low labour cost and low R&D cost. China being one of the highly populated and technologically advanced developing countries, has a major number of lancets manufacturers. Some of the renowned Chinese Safety Lancet manufacturers are Guangzhou Improve Medical Instruments Co, Huang and KDL China. The Middle East & Africa is projected to expand during the forecast period, owing to the rise in investments by market players and increase in prevalence of diabetic lancing devices. Browse more on Diabetic Lancing Device Research Report- Forecast 2023 at: https://www.marketresearchfuture.com/reports/diabetic-lancing-device-market-5507 Table of Content Report Prologue Market Introduction 2.1 Definition 2.2 Scope Of The Study 2.2.1 Research Objective 2.2.2 Assumptions 2.2.3 Limitations Research Methodology 3.1 Introduction 3.2 Primary Research 3.3 Secondary Research 3.4 Market Size Estimation Market Dynamics 4.1 Drivers 4.2 Restrains 4.3 Opportunities 4.4 Challenges 4.5 Macroeconomic Indicators 4.6 Technology Trends & Assessment 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 Future Office No. 528, Amanora Chambers Magarpatta Road, Hadapsar, Pune - 411028 Maharashtra, India Phone: +1 646 845 9312 Email: sales@marketresearchfuture.com Standing in the White Houses ornate East Wing, the president expressed annoyance that numerous bombs sent to Democrats and a news organization that Trump had long demonized had taken the spotlight from his Medicare drug prices announcement the day before. He told the audience of young black leaders he was addressing that the Democratic Party has betrayed them. He laughed along as some in the crowd chanted Fake News! And he echoed a chant of Lock him up! about liberal philanthropist George Soros, one of this weeks bomb targets. I think the Republicans made a mistake by not focusing on the economy, frankly, Luntz said. It may not be as hot an issue but it has a greater impact on peoples day-to-day lives. I think that any distraction of the economic success of the last two years is not good for Republicans. And that includes immigration and that includes the caravan. Mike Bloomberg has always believed we all have a responsibility to do what we can to help the country. . . . We need a change of direction in Washington, and we need to elect leaders who will reach across the aisle to start solving problems and start uniting our country instead of dividing it, a Bloomberg spokesman said in a statement. I think the president of the United States has been dog-whistling to his constituency, making them believe that their problems are caused by those people over there, Waters said. And I think that they are acting out what they believe the president wants them to do. The former attorney general and possible 2020 Democratic presidential candidate has not been a regular target of Trump on Twitter, but his name was included in a tweet last month that was intended as criticism of current Attorney General Jeff Sessions. Trump quoted Fox Business host Lou Dobbs suggesting the Justice Department was as biased against Republicans under Sessions as it was under Holder. It is important to know whether mold is caused by an insurance-covered peril, such as a burst pipe. But in every associations master policy, there is a deductible that the association has to pay. Typically, this ranges from $5,000 to $20,000. This obviously can be expensive, especially for older buildings. However, laws in states and the District offer guidance on who is obligated to pay this deductible. This was their first official meeting in seven years and was a sharp departure from their last encounter, which took place in Beijing on the sidelines of a multilateral forum in 2014. On that occasion, neither Abe nor Xi could muster the faintest hint of a smile, and they could hardly wait to finish their handshake for the photographers. 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. Khashoggi was visiting the Saudi Consulate in Istanbul to obtain documentation that would allow him to marry his Turkish fiancee, Hatice Cengiz. He was a royal court insider who had become critical of the Saudi government, and he was living in exile in Virginia, in part because of the nations diminished speech freedoms and its crackdown on dissent. Khashoggi and Cengiz had recently furnished an apartment for themselves in Istanbul. In an interview with Turkish channel Haberturk TV that aired Friday, Cengiz said Khashoggi was treated well during an earlier trip to the consulate on Sept. 28. The Essex plays an important role in the U.S. naval presence in the Middle East at a moment when the Pentagon has no aircraft carriers in the region, raising questions about how the U.S. posture will be affected by the administrations shift toward military competition with China and Russia. Votel and other officials said the U.S. footprint remains strong across maritime air and naval forces, especially when considered in combination with allied militaries. The caravan that has seized Trumps attention remains more than 900 miles from the U.S.-Mexico border. After peaking at more than 7,000 migrants, according to U.N. estimates, its numbers have dwindled and dissipated over the past several days. Some of those trekking north along the highways of southern Mexico have dropped out, turned back or given up, as the physical strains of the journey take a steep toll, especially on families with small children. Gregory Johnsen, who previously served as a member of the United Nationss Yemen Panel of Experts, said the inspectors in addition to examining the weapons probably would ask for documents that were found on the boat, information about communications its crew might have had with shore, and might also ask for information including maps to determine the vessels trajectory. Establishing origin will be more difficult since they are small, commonly available arms rather than larger weaponry. Who is financing the caravan? There is no sign here of George Soros or the Russians. Instead, the responsibility of feeding, clothing and sheltering several thousand migrants has been embraced by the small Mexican towns along the route, with residents jumping into charity mode as if they are responding to a natural disaster. It was hard to walk a block in this town without seeing crates of free bottled water, tables packed with ham and cheese tortas or relief stations filled with medical supplies donated by the community to help the people on this grueling march. As always, Mercurio knits a fiendishly tight plot, and Hawes is clearly a fan - having signed up for this after working across two seasons of Line of Duty (all four of which are currently on Netflix and Stan). Mercurio has written her another fine role here, and she delivers another fine performance. Julia is one tough nut. Not only does she defy the chief whip (who happens to be her ex-husband) and the prime minister she's out to usurp; she's also busy establishing herself a troubling extra-parliamentary power base by empowering MI5 creeps at the expense of Scotland Yard. Bodyguard is available to watch on Netflix. Hawes makes clear that Julia doesn't need anyone to like her - nor does she need to put on any pretense of vulnerability. What makes her intriguing is the ambiguity about the extent to which she's manipulating David. David, for his part, is beaten, bloodied, misdirected and abused from one end of the series to the other - but without ever losing his own glowering potential to change everything in a heartbeat. One nagging plot hole doesn't detract from the momentum, and it's almost uncanny how deftly the series shifts the weight of the viewer's suspicions without coming off too tricksy. Good stuff. Christine McConnell. The Curious Creations of Christine McConnell Netflix Just in time for Halloween comes this delightfully bonkers cooking-and-crafts series in which Christine McConnell - a baker, model and actor with a steep inclination towards the macabre - makes some astonishingly intricate edibles and decorations. And she does it all while dealing with puppet co-stars who include a hungry talking raccoon that she resurrected after it was crushed to death in a garbage truck, and a snarky, mummified cat that had previously spent several thousand years in an Egyptian tomb. Seeing is believing. Nicola Walker and Sanjeev Bhaskar star in Unforgotten. Unforgotten Stan There's an appealing ordinariness in the way that London detectives Cassie Stuart (Nicola Walker) and Sunny Khan (Sanjeev Bhaskar) go about their business. There are no outsized personalities, no lightning leaps of deduction or intuition - just dogged, unspectacular police work that begins tugging on threads that lead to all points of the compass. This first season begins with the reopening of a 39-year-old cold case. Many lives will be thrown into turmoil, but it's not immediately clear how everyone is connected. Ritchie Blackmore, second from left, when he was part of the band Deep Purple. Rainbow: Total Rock Review Amazon Prime Video Ritchie Blackmore's Rainbow had one of the most bizarre trajectories of any rock band. After leaving Deep Purple the eccentric English guitar maestro started out with albums full of fantasy rock epics with Ronnie James Dio singing about wizards and whatnot. Then Blackmore put the band through a series of sudden convulsions and reinventions - the first involving the incongruously yuppie-looking Graham Bonnet - and began chasing American radio success. This doco has plenty of rare footage to play as admiring musos drill deep. Kiernan Shipka stars as Sabrina. Chilling Adventures of Sabrina Netflix, from Friday, October 26 Most of the time, folks making a new teen-driven drama - be it supernatural or mundane - need to take a pretty big punt on a relatively untried kid. Once in a while they have the luxury of casting an out-and-out star like Kiernan Shipka. Shipka, who has grown through Mad Men and Feud: Bette and Joan via the unsettling 2014 adaptation of Flowers in the Attic, arrives in Netflix's unlikely Archie-verse at the top of her game and proceeds to smash things out of the park. There are no big pyrotechnics, just a wonderfully engaged and sure-footed performance that combines perfect measures of nous and innocence, strength and vulnerability. Shipka is, of course, teenage witch Sabrina, who ought to be focusing on her forthcoming "dark baptism", at which she will pledge herself to Satan and become hugely powerful. Instead, she's preoccupied with her boyfriend and with changing the misogynistic culture of her high school. Her deliciously loopy and occasionally cannibalistic aunts (Miranda Otto and The Office's Lucy Davis) have their work cut out for them. Horror is judiciously delivered. Liv Tyler stars in season two of Harlots. Harlots SBS On Demand Save Log in , register or subscribe to save articles for later. Normal text size Larger text size Very large text size An experienced prison nurse, Marcia Maynard tended to others for four decades. A strict Catholic, she abhorred euthanasia. And her death, which came days after she clung to life in intensive care following an insulin overdose, was officially ruled a suicide. But closure hasn't come for Mrs Maynard's grief-stricken relatives, who said the coroners inquest raised more questions than answers. Mrs Maynard was said to have injected herself with the hormone on September 30, 2015, after becoming anxious at the prospect of testifying before a coronial inquiry after the death of prisoner Garnet Mickelo at Woodford Correctional Centre in 2012. Loading Her shattered family insist she would never have taken her own life by overdosing on insulin, no matter how stressed she was. Her family told Fairfax Media her phone was wiped clean of its contents, the hotel room was cleaned and the bed stripped before the police officer in charge of investigating was on the scene. Husband Micheal Maynard says there were several anomalies around her death, including the fact the 63-year-old clinical nurse would have known insulin was not an effective method of suicide. Advertisement She had access to the prison medicine cabinet, Mr Maynard said. Theres things out there that would have been 100 per cent successful in what she wanted to achieve. Why would she choose that method? You can end up with a coma, brain injury and not death - it would not guarantee success and she would have known that. 'Who deleted all the stuff? We don't know' During the Maynard inquest, the coroner heard evidence that the nurse believed someone was gunning for her. Mrs Maynard survived three days in the intensive care unit of the Princess Alexandra Hospital, and at one stage, doctors told relatives if she survived, it would be with a brain injury. But tragically, the nurse who spent over four decades caring for others, passed away three days later with her husband and her daughter, Catherine Richards, at her bedside. Advertisement Owing to her spiritual beliefs, her family say they find it hard to believe she would have wanted to take her own life, and in the manner suggested. Her daughter, Catherine Richards, believes there were other things that were off around her mothers supposed intentions. Theres a lot of things that were very odd that we took to the police and the investigator of Workplace Health and Safety at the time, she said. While Mum was in ICU, the police returned her phone and laptop to us. She was not computer savvy, she was very old-school. Yet, her phone had her photos and all her history cleared from it, which she wouldnt know how to do. My husband even put apps on her phone because she didnt know how to do it. Uphill battle: Marcia Maynards daughter Catherine and husband Micheal claim they fought Metro North HHS for three months to obtain her unpaid wages and entitlements, and received no condolence card or support in the aftermath of her death. Credit:Staff reporter Advertisement The family claims Mrs Maynards phone call log was wiped of incoming and outgoing calls, her text messages were deleted and all bar a handful of contacts were removed. It was the same with her laptop, Mrs Richards said. Even the trash bin was empty and all her internet browsing cleared - all the cookies, everything. All it had was one folder which was called her amended statement but when you clicked on the folder, it was empty. Mrs Richards told Fairfax Media she recalled the police telling her how peculiar it was when they handed the phone to her in the hospital. When asked who could have wiped the devices, Mr Maynard said it was a mystery. Who deleted all the stuff? We dont know," he said. Advertisement Whether there was anything [untoward] from anyone who wanted to stop her giving evidence at the inquest, we just dont know. Whether there was any threat made against her, or a threat against us and thats why she didnt want to give evidence at the inquest, we can only guess. Its a maximum-security prison, you dont know what goes on in there. Its not a nice place. Coroner concedes police should have searched bins The coronial inquest into Mrs Maynards death heard that despite apparently checking into the Mon Komo Hotel in Redcliffe to take her own life, no drugs or drug paraphernalia were found either by paramedics who attended the scene, or by police who secured the hotel room. The room was also cleaned and the bed stripped before the police officer in charge arrived. Seeking answers: Marcia Maynard's family say they don't know if she was threatened prior to giving evidence at inmate Garnet Mickelo's inquest. Credit:Greg Henderson Advertisement One nice touch is that you can access your smart home controls via the touchscreen without making a sound. This is more practical late at night than asking Google Assistant to turn off the lights and having her shout "Okay, turning off your lights". While you can curb the volume in the evenings, Google Assistant really needs a family-friendly "don't talk back" mode at bed time. Should something go bump in the night, another use for that screen is that you can ask to see the live view from your Nest security cameras, although chances are your smartphone is probably within reach. Entertain me The Home Hub can access the same streaming audio services as any Home speaker, but it doesn't stack up well as a music player in the living area and is even outgunned by the cheaper $199 Google Home which is louder and packs more bass. To be fair, the Home Hub actually offers more balanced sound, as the standard Home speaker can sound a little flat. The Home Hub is fine for background music or listening to spoken word content like podcasts and internet radio. Alternatively you can connect it to a better speaker via Bluetooth. The smart screen doesn't have built-in subscription video or catch up services. You can access YouTube by voice but the results are hit and miss. Sometimes it favours YouTube Premium videos and partner content like news, when you clearly asked for something else (like your own tech news podcast). Loading Thankfully you can stream Chromecast audio and video from your handheld devices, drawing on a wide range of services, with disappointing exceptions of Netflix and Amazon Prime Video. There's probably a much more versatile video player in your pocket. The biggest omission is the lack of a front camera for making video calls, although you can still make voice calls to handheld gadgets via Google Duo, and see the video feed from the other end if there is one. Once again, sitting on the couch to make video calls from your phone is perhaps more convenient than standing around in the kitchen. Cooking up a storm Of course you're unlikely to stand around in the kitchen making video calls or watching movies. Perhaps the best use in the kitchen is taking you through recipes step by step, then keeping you entertained while you wait for your cake to rise. Simply say "Okay Google, show me chocolate cake recipes" and choose from the options. It certainly helps to have the instructions on the screen rather than trying to keep up with each spoken step. Your music keeps playing, although flicking between the recipe and streaming video is cumbersome. A bigger frustration is that you need to preface every little request with "Okay Google", so even simple things like moving to the next step of a recipe quickly become tedious. Amazon's Alexa feels much more natural to interact with for long exchanges, such as working through recipes, as you don't need to keep saying her name. Another frustration when cooking with any smart screen is that you need to place it so you can see it while standing at the stove, which means you probably can't see it elsewhere in the room, limiting the screen's usefulness depending on the layout of your kitchen. One of the problems with smart screens is they are still trying to be a music-friendly smart speaker. This means they require a base to house the speaker and thus need to sit on a flat surface like a benchtop. Google Home Hub can display YouTube videos and step-by-step recipes. It will be interesting to see whether smart screen makers eventually embrace a flat, tablet-style design which can be mounted on a wall or the front of the fridge where you'd have a better view of it from around the room. Picture perfect When you leave your Home Hub to its own devices for a few minutes you can choose to have it switch off the screen, display a clock face, show artwork from Google or begin scrolling through your Google Photos library. For some homes, the Home Hub will be worth the money as a photo frame alone, intelligently plucking images from your photo library using live albums and facial recognition. You can even ask to see your photos of certain people, places and times, which takes the photo frame concept to a whole new level. As a photo frame it offers a bright, vibrant image and fantastic horizontal and vertical viewing angles, plus it does a decent job of dealing with screen glare except in the most garish of lighting conditions. The slideshow relies on simple cross-fades between photos, rather than more elaborate effects which can be distracting when you catch the movement out of the corner of your eye. Home Hub pulls images automatically from the user's online collection when it's not in use. That said, some people might find 7 inches is a bit small for viewing your photos from across the room. By default it's not quite bright enough, so you'll want to adjust the Ambient EQ auto-brightness settings in the Google Home smartphone app. While you're there, consider killing the Colour Matching option which adjusts the colour temperature to suit the lighting conditions and makes your photos look terrible by tainting the whites. The idea is to make it look more like a photograph printed on paper, but it won't be to everyone's liking. Keep an eye on the time In photo frame mode, the Home Hub automatically shuts off the screen when the room goes dark to save power at night. Alternatively you can set it to switch to a dim clock face, meaning the Home Hub could find a place on your bedside table. Loading The alarm clock is quite flexible, with the ability to create multiple one-off or recurring alarms for every day, weekdays, weekends or specific days. There's a big onscreen Snooze button accompanied by a small Stop button, for those days when you need a few more minutes in bed. Thankfully you can set the alarm/timer volume separately to the music volume, but you're missing out on the ability to be woken with music (a feature that only works in the US). Frustratingly, there's no way to toggle the alarms on/off like on smartphone, so on your rostered day off you need to cancel your weekday alarm completely. Surprisingly, the Home Hub also lacks the option to wake you gently by becoming slower brighter, as a Google Pixel smartphone can do with the new Pixel Stand. So what's the verdict? If you already have a home full of smart speakers then you'll need to find a good use for a smart screen, considering that a cheaper Google Home can answer all your questions while doing a better job of filling the room with music. The kitchen bench and bedside tables seem the most practical places for a Google Home Hub, plus it makes for a pretty good photo frame; assuming you can see if from around the room. Rather than try to carve out a space within a tech-savvy home, the Home Hub is perhaps better suited as a starter smart device for older friends and relatives. WSU Invites Award Winning Author to Discuss Conspiracy, Impact of Osage Murders October 10, 2018 OGDEN, Utah New York Times Bestselling author David Grann will delve into the little-known history of the murders of Osage Indians as he speaks at Weber State University Nov. 7 at 11:30 a.m. in Elizabeth Hall Room 229. Grann is the author of the National Book Award finalist Killers of the Flower Moon: The Osage Murders and the Birth of the FBI. The book tells the story of the murders of more than two dozen members of the Osage Nation. Uncovering the conspiracy to steal the wealth of the Osage became the FBIs first successful high-profile investigation. Granns new book, The White Darkness, a true story about Henry Worsley who in 2015 walked across Antarctica alone, is set for release Oct. 30. Grann also wrote the story of 78-year-old bank robber Forrest Tucker, which ran in The New Yorker magazine, and is the basis for Robert Redfords latest movie The Old Man and the Gun. WSUs Center for the Study of Poverty & Inequality invited Grann to speak as part of this years Engaged Learning Series. Granns book examines the ways in which racial prejudices are manifest through the economy, said Mike Vaughan, center director. The book illustrates the extent to which egregious actions have shaped the distribution of wealth in the United States. Granns work takes the reader back to 1920s Oklahoma where the Osage had become the richest people per capita in the world thanks to the discovery of oil on their land. As the Osages wealth increased, the federal government required all full-blooded Osage to have white guardians that controlled their money. More white settlers soon moved to the area, many of whom married into Osage families. Before long, many Osage were murdered. Appeals to local authorities to investigate the murders were in vain due to corruption of law enforcement, politicians and judges. To find justice, the Osage appealed to the federal government to investigate the murders. The investigation was turned over to an obscure and untested branch of the justice department: the FBI. Under the leadership of newly-appointed director J. Edgar Hoover, the FBI was able to infiltrate the Osage community with a team of undercover agents. It was not long before the FBI had uncovered a complex conspiracy by white settlers in the area to kill members of the Osage Nation and steal their wealth. Many of the perpetrators were those who had married into Osage families. These were deeply intimate crimes, and thats what makes it so barbaric, Grann said in an April 2017 interview with NPR. These were crimes committed by people who the victims trusted, and in many cases thought they loved. It involved a level of betrayal, an almost Shakespearean level of dishonesty of hiding your face, to hide the conspiracy. The speech is free and open to the campus community. Center for the Study of Poverty & Inequality Weber State Universitys Center for the Study of Poverty & Inequality is an interdisciplinary educational center that seeks to further the understanding of the extent, causes and consequences of poverty and inequality in Utah and the United States. The center offers courses, lectures and programs relevant to those issues of poverty and inequality. For more information, visit weber.edu/poverty Engaged Learning Series Sponsored by the Center for Community Engaged Learning, the Engaged Learning Series is a university-wide series of events designed to engage students, faculty, staff and community in discussion, debate, dialogue, learning and action around an issue of public concern. For 2018-19, the series aims to raise awareness, impact personal behavior and increase public engagement around the theme Matter of Fact? For more information, visit weber.edu/ccel/els. Visit weber.edu/wsutoday for more news about Weber State University. A Wolcott man shot at a bear after he found it inside his pen of goats. It happened shortly around 1 a.m. Friday at the mans property on Catering Road, officials said. The homeowner called police to say he shot at the black bear that was attacking his goats inside the pen. His wife had woken him after hearing a commotion in the goat pen. The homeowner ran outside, heard the goat screaming and saw the bear attacking the goat, police posted on Facebook. The homeowner, in an effort to protect his livestock, shot his shotgun in the direction of the bear, causing the bear to run into the woods. The homeowner was not sure if he did strike the bear or not. The goat sustained severe injuries, and needed veterinary care. As a reminder, never let your domesticated pets outside all alone, police said. So far, there have been 66 bear sightings in Wolcott, according to the state Department of Energy and Environmental Protection. DEEP says bears do occasionally attack livestock like goats and chickens. It suggests protecting livestock with electric fencing and move livestock into barns at night, if possible. In November 2017, a small female black bear was killed after it attacked two miniature horses on a Southbury farm. The bear killed one of the horses before environmental police were able to euthanize the animal, which weighed around 150 pounds. In June 2017, a male black bear weighing more than 500 pounds was killed by the caretaker of a Kent farm three weeks after one of the farms pet donkeys was killed and several others injured by a bear. In the past year, 7,674 bear sightings have been reported to the Connecticut DEEP, the agency said on its website. Each year, bear sightings are reported from about 140 of Connecticuts 169 towns. The increase in the states bear population has led to calls for legal hunting of bears in the state, Connecticut Magazine reports. WESTPORT A fixture of Connecticut politics for the past 30 years, State Senator Toni Boucher faces the most aggressive challenge of her career in 22-year-old Democrat Will Haskell, but argues her experience in government and business is whats needed to return the state to its supposed former economic glory. After speaking up at a Board of Education meeting in Wilton, where Boucher lives and raised her three children, she was asked to fill a Republican position on the board and only then registered with the party that launched her political career. From the education board, Boucher served as a Wilton Selectwoman. In the mid 90s, Boucher was elected to represent the 143rd house district, where she served for 12 years until 2008, when she won the position to represent the 26th district, which includes parts of Bethel, New Canaan, Redding, Ridgefield, Weston, Westport, and Wilton. A formidable incumbent, Boucher often wins by wide margins and in the 2016 election defeated her Democratic opponent by nearly 12,000 votes. In this season of rising anti-Trump sentiment in the district, however, Boucher doesnt expect the same numbers and is pleading with voters to lean on her experience and return her to office. Right now you need someone with experience thats proven they can get things done, work across the aisle and delve into the problems of the state. Im a businesswoman and I know what businesses need. I know local and state government very deeply, and I think its going to take all of those skill sets to solve Connecticuts problems, Boucher said. Central to Bouchers agenda is the desire to restore Connecticut to a mecca of suburban bliss. It was the envy of the country. Now it is not, it is on hard times and we want to return it. Thats my vision: to return it to a low-cost state with the best education in America and the best quality of life, Boucher said of the state. A traditional fiscal conservative, Boucher currently works for an institutional investment firm and was formerly employed by large companies, such as General Electric, and also founded a mainframe software maintenance company. To entice business and manage the states fiscal crisis, Boucher says the state must craft a reduced budget with cuts coming primarily from government departments and the high-fixed-cost of state employees. Stronger oversight of government departments will improve management and reduce waste and duplication and result in cost-savings, Boucher says. Boucher hopes to renegotiate state employee contracts to benchmark their health care plan to that of municipal teachers or firefighters who pay higher co-pays and pension plan contributions than state employees. She wants to phase out the income tax and many business taxes and bemoans the alleged anti-business attitude of many state politicians. Ive had to debate that profit is a good thing for business, that theyre not awful profiteers...that negative business attitude has got to change for us to move forward and give faith and confidence to businesses that this is a place they can thrive, Boucher said. In the style of old-school Connecticut Republicans, Boucher says she is socially progressive on social issues. She supports a womens right to choose and refers to her upbringing in the Naugatuck Valley as the child of poor Italian immigrants when describing her support for quality public education in the state. Before entering the statehouse Boucher served on the State Board of Education and currently Co-Chairs the Senate Education Committee. Boucher has bucked her party in her support of climate change legislation and the Citizens Election Program, which provides public financing to qualified candidates. Despite her opponents attempt to make her appear soft on guns, Boucher voted for the post-Sandy Hook comprehensive gun control bill and the ban on bump stocks and says she would vote for stricter gun regulation. Boucher makes no pains to hide that she keeps a distance from gun legislation, however. This is not my issue. I dont plan to be spearheading this because my area of expertise and interest is in education and transportation and tax policy, Boucher said. She opposes the legalization of recreational marijuana and tolls and has been called out by her opponent for voting against civil unions over a decade ago, though she argues her gay constituents asked her not to support the bill because civil unions are not equal to marriage. Unlike her opponent, Boucher speaks frequently about how she views lawmaking as only one part of the job and cites backroom deals shes made to help residents and organizations in her district gain government funds, such as the time she convinced the state Department of Energy & Environmental Protection (DEP) to give the New Canaan Nature Center funding for a renovation project. I made a home-cooked Italian meal, fed the entire staff at the DEP in that division, and they unlocked the funds the next day, Boucher said. While Boucher views her work as distinctly local, the shadow of President Trump and his leadership of her party has dogged her throughout the election though shes condemned Trumps handling of Charlottesville, immigrant family separations, and the Helsinki conferences. Im deeply disappointed in the language thats being used. I think you have this great opportunity as the leader of one of the strongest countries in the world to use your words to unite people, not divide people, to bring people up, not bring them down, and Ive tried to do that, Boucher said. svaughan@hearstmediact.com; 203-842-2638; @SophieCVaughan1 WESTPORT Democratic wunderkind Will Haskell has taken Fairfield County by storm over the past six months energizing young people and old-school party leaders around progressive politics and the hope that a Democrat may take the 26th senate district seat for the first time since 1973. But the odds are against Haskell. His opponent, incumbent Republican Toni Boucher, has maintained a stronghold over the 26th district since she first took the office in 2008. In the 2016 election, Boucher, 68, beat Democrat Carolanne Curry by 11,729 votes, including in Westport, Currys liberal-leaning hometown, where Boucher won by nearly 500 votes. Before taking the helm of the 26th district seat, Boucher represented her residence of Wilton and nearby New Canaan in the 143rd house district. Boucher has been a state legislature for 22 years, as long as Haskell has been alive, a point he frequently points out, casting Bouchers tenure as part in parcel of the dysfunction in Hartford. Not unlike other Democrats hoping to ride a blue wave to office on Nov. 6, Haskells political origin story began with the election of President Donald J. Trump. I came to realize the fight against Donald Trump starts at the state and local level, Haskell said, noting his research of Bouchers record solidified his decision to challenge her. I found somebody who, despite the fact that we as a community are just around the corner from Sandy Hook, believes that we went too far in regulating guns after that tragedy, Haskell said, citing a comment from Boucher tied to her support for a proposal to allow the Weston Gun Club to store ammunition for gun users to practice with at the facility. At the end of the day, Haskell and Boucher share many of the same views on gun control. Both were named gun sense candidates by the Moms Demand Action for Gun Sense group and, like Haskell, Boucher says she supports stricter gun regulation, including a ban on ghost guns that will likely come before the Senate in the upcoming session. The difference between the two lay in their prioritization of the issue. From the moment I enter office as State Senator, my top priority will be reducing access to weapons and strengthening our states gun laws, Haskells website reads. Boucher, on the other hand, says guns are not an area concentration for her and noted she doesnt plan to spearhead any new gun laws. Haskell speaks energetically of his vision for a millennial-friendly state with modernized infrastructure and progressive social policies, namely paid family leave legislation, which Haskell says will entice young people to the state who dont want to choose between their family and career. I was raised by a single working mom who had to go back to work just two weeks after I was born, Haskell says in advocating for paid family leave, which Boucher does not support. An outspoken proponent of tolls to fund investments in public transportation, Haskell often notes that Connecticut is the only state between Maine and North Carolina without tolls. My opponents say tolls are a tax, but I believe theyre a user fee, Haskell said, adding Connecticut cant afford to leave money on the table. Bucking the trend of many Fairfield County representatives, Haskell supports a regional approach to economic development. Westport is no better off with Bridgeport crumbling, Haskell often says. Its time we move away from the corporate office park model because my generation largely doesnt want to drive to work and instead we need to start investing in our cities and public transportation, he added. Haskell endorses the legalization of recreational marijuana and says a Democrat must to take the 26th district seat in order to break the 18-18 tie of Republicans to Democrats in the state senate. A majority Democrat Senate can enact the needed firewall against Trump administration efforts to roll back LGBTQ rights, environmental regulations, and womens reproductive health and freedom, Haskell says. Do not confuse Haskell for the insurgent breed of democratic socialist candidates like Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, however. Haskell self-identifies as an economic moderate and often touts he is not endorsed by the labor unions. Haskell disagrees with the union contracts three percent annual cost of living adjustment and prevailing wage laws that he says make the cost of infrastructure improvements cripplingly high. I dont think this community is well-served by somebody who votes with her party 97 percent of the time. This isnt Bernie Sanders territory and its not Donald Trump territory either, Haskell says. Boucher has moved too far to the right for the average, level-headed, 26th district resident, Haskell says, adding he understands district voters from knocking on over 4,000 doors. Haskell proposes the formation of a bipartisan Fairfield County caucus to advocate for more state money for the region and like a fellow Georgetown University alumni, President Bill Clinton, he seeks to forge a new, more moderate, path for Democrats in unlikely territory. Its up to voters whether Haskells new way will lead him to victory. svaughan@hearstmediact.com; 203-842-2638; @SophieCVaughan1 WESTPORT In the race for the 136th House seat its easy to get caught up in the fray of personal attacks flying between incumbent Democrat Jonathan Steinberg and Republican challenger Greg Kraut. Both candidates have depicted the other as animals. In a recent mailer, Steinberg included a picture of a wolf in sheeps clothing next to the heading Greg Kraut isnt who he appears to be. Over the summer, Kraut posted an Instagram photo of what appears to be a mole swimming in Southampton, New York with the caption I am pretty sure my opponent was not here...just kidding! The Westport News talked with both Steinberg, 63, a lifelong Westporter first elected to the seat in 2010, and Kraut, 42, a recent transplant to town who joined the Representative Town Meeting last year, to cut through the noise and get at the issues. Pension liabilities Both Kraut and Steinberg have plans to decrease the states ballooning unfunded pension liabilities through monetization of state real-estate assets, but thats as far as the similarities between their plans go. As Chairman of the Pension Sustainability Commission, Steinberg has introduced a plan to donate state real estate assets as an in-kind contribution to an independent trust that would monetize the assets and donate all of the assets profits to the pension funds. This is neither government nor is it the pension funds themselves. Its an independent trust whose responsibility is to optimize the value of those assets, Steinberg said of the trust. Never before tried in the United States, Steinbergs plan, known as the legacy obligation trust model, has been tried in several European countries and Steinberg says will enable the state to not only optimize the assets value but also the advantage of getting the current value in the market as opposed to the assets government listed book value. Meanwhile, Kraut proposes a plan to sell and leaseback state-owned and underutilized office buildings. The privately owned buildings would contribute to the tax rolls and could potentially provide the state $1 billion in new revenue, Kraut said, adding sale-leasebacks have been used for over 30 years in states like California, Massachusetts, and Virginia as well as in many private sector corporations. Sale-leaseback provides upfront cash proceeds in as little as 90 days. It would maximize the value of non-earning real-estate assets and youd actually get top-dollar for those assets because youd have the full rate and credit of the state government backing it, Kraut said. Taxes Lowering the state income tax for high earners is central to Krauts campaign. A 6 to 7 percent income tax for high earners as is currently present in the state is pushing wealthy residents to leave the state and take their spending power and tax revenues with them, Kraut said, arguing the income tax should instead decrease to the four percent range for high earners. Since Connecticut instituted an income tax in 1991 the number of high paying jobs in the state has dropped from 158,000 to 124,000, Kraut writes in his state economic plan, available on gregkraut.com. It (CT) is the only state in the region that has not recovered jobs from the 2008 recession, with more residents lost to Florida (0% income tax) than any other state. Most studies show that besides corporate tax cuts, lowering state tax burdens is the top economic driver of growth, Kraut writes, adding that he also supports the elimination of the gift, social security, and pension taxes. Steinberg, likewise, is firmly opposed to Krauts plan to reduce the state income tax by 25 percent and says the plan will more than double the states deficit to $10 billion. That means things the state does, it will cease to do and that will push things back on the municipalities. Westport doesn't get much from the state, but when it comes to things like paving the roads and taking care of the bridges, if the DOT (Department of Transportation) is out of money, thats going to fall back on the municipalities and municipalities would have to raise local property taxes to make up the difference, Steinberg said. Nuisance taxes should go, however, Steinberg said, adding he wants to explore reforming the business entity tax and pegging the estate tax to other states and not the federal government. Tolls Steinberg is in favor of congestion pricing tolls with a lock box so toll profits go directly to infrastructure investments. On the other hand, Kraut says hed vote against tolls and argues the state should cut wasteful spending and modernize its current revenue streams before imposing another tax on residents. Guns Steinberg voted for all the post-Sandyhook gun regulation reforms and said he plans to vote to ban ghost guns if re-elected. I also want to look at ways we can make homes more gun safe to reduce the number of accidents and suicides that occur in the home, which are a huge number of gun deaths on an annual basis, Steinberg said. Kraut said he also supports stronger gun regulations in the state but declined to elaborate further on the issue. Recreational marijuana If he was elected and a bill came before the house for the legalization of recreational marijuana, Kraut said he would vote No. The lack of a breath test for marijuana is concerning, Kraut said, adding his research into other states where recreational marijuana has been legalized doesnt show the endeavor is very profitable and the state should look to raise revenue in other ways. Steinberg gave a qualified Yes, to the question of whether hed support the legalization of recreational marijuana, saying hed want the program to be strictly regulated like Connecticuts medical marijuana program. I remain concerned about the impact of marijuana smoking on the developing brain and particularly teenagers, Steinberg said, adding he is also worried about the lack of a method for officers to determine marijuana impairment because THC stays in the system much longer than alcohol. The last thing I want to see is Connecticut adopt recreational marijuana simply because were desperate for money, Steinberg said. To the editor : Albert Einstein once said the definition of insanity is repeating the same thing over and over expecting a different result. I agree; and thats why I support Will Haskell for state Senator this year instead of sending his opponent back to Hartford for yet another term. Our district deserves a senator whose policies are in line with those of his constituents. Will Haskell wants stronger gun regulation while his opponent says that we have already gone too far. Haskell supports pragmatically funded paid family leave which his opponent opposes. Haskell supports an Education Cost Sharing program which benefits all students while his opponent voted for a massive cut to the UConn budget. And Haskell supports a protected transportation investment fund while his opponent voted against a transportation fund lockbox. On a personal note, I have known Will and his family for over 20 years and they are smart, wonderful people with exceptional interpersonal skills in dealing with citizens of all ages and their challenges. I have come to appreciate the unique talents needed to solve problems by working with people during my over 20 years on the nonpartisan Westport RTM and Will Haskell has those talents. John G . Klinge Westport Vote Greg Kraut for change in Hartford To the editor : I urge my fellow Westporters to vote for Greg Kraut for state representative because we need change in Harford. When our current representative, Jonathan Steinberg, was first elected in 2010, Connecticuts fiscal health was worrisome; now after eight years, it is catastrophic. Jonathan has refused to support those difficult steps necessary to bring State spending in line with what taxpayers can afford. In fact, Jonathan once complained that Gov. Malloy hadnt raised taxes enough (see Westport-news.com, Oct. 12, 2012). Of course, the reality is that as we drive high income taxpayers out of Connecticut by refusing to control spending, the spending cuts that ultimately will be required because of our reduced tax base will be even more severe. After eight years, Jonathan is part of the problem, and we dont have much time left to fix our fiscal mess. Vote for Greg Kraut. Tom Lasersohn Westport Vacancy in RTM District 6 To the editor : The resignation of Monique Lions-Greenspan has created a vacancy in RTM District 6. We will miss her and appreciate her work as an RTM member. In accordance with the Town Charter, (Section C5-8C3), the vacancy must be filled by a registered voter living in RTM District 6. No party affiliation is required since Westports RTM is nonpartisan. The term expires in November 2019. Residents of RTM District 6 interested in being considered to fill the vacancy are encouraged to remit their resume to the Town Clerk, Patricia Strauss by Friday, Nov. 2, 2018, by email: pstrauss@westportct.gov or by mail, 110 Myrtle Ave., Westport, CT 06880. A meeting to conduct interviews will be scheduled at a future date. Any questions can be directed to the remaining district members. Contact information and a district boundary map are available on the towns website at www.westportct.gov/Modules/ShowDocument.aspx?documentid=16037 Cathy Talmadge, Seth Braunstein and Jessica Bram RTM District 6 members In support of Michelle McCabe To the editor : I just had a really meaningful conversation with Michelle McCabe and its clear to me that she is not your average politician! Few politicians take the time to talk to us (as Michelle did with me). They seem to prefer meaningless political promises. However, I got the clear sense that Michelle will follow through on her intention to find the best, most workable solutions for the many problems that currently plague Connecticut. I am impressed by her ability to parse complex issues, and I appreciate her clarity of thought on potential solutions. She has the intelligence and the determination needed to make a positive change in the current downhill spin we find ourselves in. My vote will certainly go to her, rather than to Tony Hwang, who has not impressed me as being very creative or resourceful. In this time of financial turmoil, we desperately need a candidate who is willing to first acknowledge the problems and then really wrestle them towards a viable solution. I am confident that Michelle McCabe has what it takes to lead our State out of chaos and onto a path of sustained growth and prosperity! Wendy Epstein Westport Lavielle will ensure vibrant future in Wilton To the editor: Gail Lavielle is a tireless advocate for Wiltons interests, and deserves re-election. As a former Board of Finance member, she has tremendous insight into our towns finances and economy. She understands Wiltons future depends on a strong state economy, which will drive growth by incentivizing new business and strengthening our housing market. Gail has helped defeat unfair attempts to reduce our education cost sharing allocation. She has been a proponent of Metro-North, including her successful efforts to restore early morning service on the Danbury Branch. Gail is a true partner in ensuring a vibrant future for Wilton, and will have my vote. Lori Bufano Wilton Im for Team Ned To the editor : Connecticut has led the nation in passing some of the strongest gun safety laws in the wake of the tragedy at Sandy Hook Elementary School. We have seen too many families lose their loved ones to senseless gun violence. I say, Not one more! As many Republicans seek to pacify the extremist leaders of the NRA, the number of untraceable firearms on our streets grows, jeopardizing the safety of our residents. For instance, the Stefanowski-Markley ticket, endorsed by the Connecticut Citizens Defense League and Bobs been awarded an AQ rating by the NRA (equivalent to an A, Markey receives A+). Bob has posed smiling in front of a wall of assault rifles, apparently his happy place, and has sat idly by and remained silent on reforming the states gun laws to increase residents safety. Ned Lamont is the candidate in this race who is committed to introducing a bill that would ban all ghost guns, including 3D-printed guns and other undetectable, untraceable firearms. That someone could produce an assault-style weapon, from their own home, shows that we need to do more against 3D-printed firearms and ghost guns. We must be a state that stands for smart gun violence prevention even if the federal government will not. This starts with electing someone who will stand up and fight to protect our residents. Ned is committed to working to ensure Connecticut remains a national leader in the fight to keep illegal guns off the streets. Thats why Im for Team Ned. I hope this demonstrates one important difference in these two gubernatorial candidates and compels our neighbors to get out and vote Nov. 6. Rachel Dreyfus Fairfield Kraut has fresh ideas for Connecticut To the editor : It seems apparent that Westports representative Jonathan Steinberg is unable to tolerate people who question his point of view, on any issue, whatsoever. Steinberg likes to present his own point of view, and believes it to be unquestionably correct. Anybody who has the audacity to question him, or offer an opinion different from his own, he has been disdainful to. He has acted as if he knows everything on any given issue, and the person who has simply questioned his position, he has dismissed as being ignorant, and lacking in knowledge. Steinberg is running his re-election campaign with the same arrogance, disdain and scorn toward his opponent Greg Kraut. His opponent, Greg Kraut, has courageously questioned Steinbergs lackluster status quo voting record, which prevents Connecticut from pulling itself out of the budgetary crisis it is in. Steinberg has claimed that the states problems occurred before he was even elected to the legislature. What has Steinberg done as a state legislator to help pull Connecticut out of the fiscal crisis? Gregs relentless questioning of Steinbergs abysmal voting record has been especially intolerable to him, because Greg has threatened to derail his reelection campaign, and defeat him at the polls. When Steinberg realized his reelection campaign was in trouble, he resorted to a premeditated, vicious, and scurrilous attack on Gregs character by calling Greg a predatory developer, a totally false charge. Steinbergs predatory developer smear strategy, to sully Gregs reputation, is a slick attempt to change the subject, and distract the voters from his own poor voting record, and lack of action in the legislature. However, the majority of voters who are burdened with punishing taxes and a mismanaged state government can see through Steinbergs attempt to evade defeat at the polls. The voters have a golden opportunity to elect Greg Kraut, who has fresh new ideas that can rebuild Connecticut. Please give Connecticut a chance to gain strength again, and vote for Greg Kraut as Westports new state representative in the 136th district. Michael Treadwell Westport Listening is leading To the editor : Im not going to explain Jonathan Steinbergs policies, or extoll his vast list of accomplishments. You can find all that on his website or in the latest issue of Forbes Magazine. Instead, Id like to invite you to inspect his character. A couple of years ago, my son Theo (then a high school junior) learned of an exhibit in Hartford which allowed visitors to experience a solitary confinement prison cell. Unbeknownst to me, he emailed Rep. Steinberg asking him to go check it out. When Theo told me he sent this email, I complimented him on his determination and his compassion. I didnt know Steinberg too well, but I said something like, Just remember, the guy works hard and has a family, and a long drive back and forth to Hartford. He may not answer your email, much less go to the exhibit. A few days later, Theo received a personal note from Jonathan Steinberg. He still has it. It began, Thanks to you, I visited the cell this afternoon. It was a harrowing experience. Then he recounted what affected him about it, and finished with, I agree with you that the laws need to change to protect ALL our citizens, no matter their status. That day, thanks to Jonathan Steinberg, Theo felt like he mattered, and that he could make a difference. As for me, I learned who we really had representing us: a listener. The job of our state reps is to fight for all of their constituents. In order to do that, they need to spend the time they have in their home towns, humbly listening to all of us, regardless of our age, income, or affiliation. When in Hartford, that same skill builds strong relationships upon which change is possible. Once these liaisons are in place, a representative is in a position to fight tooth and nail for us. Jonathan Steinbergs eight years in Hartford have been spent building productive relationships with people on both sides of the aisle. And, he has spent 43 years in Westport as a son, a student, a father, and a leader listening to what we need. This is not a time to get distracted by slick campaigning, or by cleaned up campaign pages achieved by by blocking Democrats, as his opponent has done. The real fixing is going to get done by the person with character, and a comprehensive, inclusive knowledge of who we are. These are serious times. Please vote on Nov. 6 for Jonathan Steinberg. Darcy Hicks Westport Michelle McCabe supports net neutrality for state To the editor : Having a free and open internet is important for Connecticut. For individual citizens, students, and businesses alike. The cost, content, speed, and quality of our internet connections should not be determined by the whims of a few powerful, profit-seeking telecomm giants. However, thats exactly what we may get here in Connecticut after state Sen. Tony Hwang almost singlehandedly killed net neutrality protections for our state back in April. When I go to the polls Nov. 6, Ill be voting for the candidates I know will stand up for Connecticut. For the candidates who will work to keep Connecticut a desirable place to live, work, and do business. This is one of the many reasons Ill be voting for Michelle McCabe and not Sen. Hwang, the man who turned his back on Connecticuts businesses, students, and consumers. The only thing Tony Hwang stands up for are photo ops! Ive listened to what Michelle McCabe has to say about the issue of net neutrality, and Im impressed. She understands how vital it is to attract businesses to our state. She knows that for Connecticut to be competitive, we need to show we believe in net neutrality, and we must embrace the innovation that the tech community can bring. There are many issues facing our great state, and at the core of turning things around is the imperative that we not deter people from coming here to live, learn, work, and set up businesses. Its not even a partisan issue. Net neutrality has passed multiple other state legislatures on a bipartisan basis by wide margins. But here in Connecticut, powerful, moneyed lobbyists are more important to Sen. Hwang than the little guys like consumers and small business. I hope youll join me in voting to keep Connecticut competitive by voting for Michelle McCabe for state Senate District 28 on Nov. 6. Nicole Klein Westport Michelle is best for change To the editor : Folks in Connecticuts 28th Senate District (which includes Fairfield, Newtown, Easton, and parts of Weston and Westport) may have had a chance to meet Michelle Lapine McCabe whos running to be our state senator. Michelle has been out knocking doors throughout the district, getting to know voters and the issues they care about. Michelle is an innovator, an advocate, and a policy advisor who has spent most of her career in public service. Shes the director of the Center for Food Equity and Economic Development with the Council of Churches of Greater Bridgeport, where she creates opportunities for improved health and economic growth. She knows that Connecticut needs to work for everyone, not just for the few. Ive come to know Michelle while volunteering with her campaign and Im so impressed by her knowledge, her passion, and her commitment to community. Its clear to me that Michelle truly listens to people when they share their concerns. This trait has been sorely lacking in our current state senator, Tony Hwang, who voted to allow guns in state parks, to allow lifetime ammunition renewals without permits, voted against a free and open internet for Connecticut, and voted to block the confirmation of a highly-qualified gay Supreme Court justice. Michelle understands that representing constituents is not about posing for photos with them, but about voting to represent their wishes and values. Michelle will be a fresh, progressive voice in Hartford who will bring new ideas to the table. And her votes will reflect the shared values of the constituents shell represent. Im proud to vote for her at the polls on Nov. 6 and I hope you will vote for her, too. We deserve to have a strong advocate like Michelle fighting for us up in Hartford. Valerie Wilke Fairfield Lavielle fights for seniors, people with disabilities To the editor : Im struggling with Nov. 6. As a woman and the mother of two girls, I firmly believe that in many respects this country is headed in the wrong direction and in order to change it we need to send a strong signal to Washington by voting party lines. But heres where I have the problem. While Im extremely concerned about womens rights at a national level, Im equally concerned about the rights of seniors and people with disabilities here in my state. Not only do I have two teenage girls, but I also am the mom to a 20-year-old son with Intellectual and Developmental Disabilities, the wife of a man with primary progressive multiple sclerosis and the caregiver for my mother and aunt. What I hope for is a candidate who does not fall lock-step into his or her political partys agenda but truly talks to the people and looks at the issues effecting her constituency. I believe its still possible to stand up for the people he or she represents and advocate for their rights. And so, thats why Ill be casting a vote for Gail Lavielle on Nov. 6. Ive known Gail for many years personally and have witnessed her passion for the people in her district. She fights for seniors, she fights for people with disabilities who oftentimes are forgotten or dismissed. Am I Republican? No. But am I for Gail Lavielle unequivocally yes. Alison Jacobson Wilton Connecticut needs fresh, progressive voices To the editor : Michelle McCabe is running for state Senate in Connecticuts 28 district. For the past eight years I have worked with Michelle first as colleagues at the Rudd Center for Food Policy and Obesity while at Yale University, and then as collaborators in her role as Director of the Center for Food Equity and Economic Development with the Council of Churches of Greater Bridgeport. I have worked with Michelle McCabe on numerous food policy projects, such as improving school meals in Connecticut schools and increasing healthy food access within the emergency food system. I have seen first-hand how Michelle is a passionate and devoted advocate who works tirelessly to try to find the best solutions for the many problems our communities face. She is driven, an innovator, and a doer. Connecticut needs more fresh, progressive voices in Hartford that will bring new ideas to the table. Michelle McCabe is exactly the kind of state senator Connecticut needs. Vote for Michelle McCabe on Nov. 6. Margaret Read Milford Vote for safety Vote Michelle McCabe To the editor : The horrific mass shooting that happened here in Connecticut at Sandy Hook Elementary School in 2012 was my enough moment. Seeing the lack of national progress on common sense gun legislation horrified me. This years high school shooting in Parkland solidified for me that gun legislation is critical. As a clinical social worker, I am acutely aware of the impact of gun violence on entire communities. Ninety-six Americans die from gun violence every day in our country, with hundreds more injured. Most of these deaths no longer make the headlines, and theres no way to measure how many more lives are impacted by the ripple effects. First responders, clergy and extended families all feel the impact. For U.S. children, the first week of school isnt just new backpacks and school supplies, but discussions about lockdown drills and what they mean. This is a uniquely American problem that no child should have to endure. The biggest concern to me personally is the link between guns in homes and death by gun suicide. Having a gun in the home makes it far more likely that a suicide attempt, which is often impulsive, will be successful. Its actually access to a firearm and not mental illness that puts someone at highest risk of death by suicide. I now ask every client in my practice whether they have a firearm in their home. Connecticut has some of the strongest gun laws in the country and we must keep it that way. Common sense measures such as closing deadly loopholes, promoting gun safety, and supporting reasonable limits on how and where loaded guns are carried are all top priorities for me in November. For this reason, I am supporting Michelle McCabe for state Senate in the 28th district. It is time to hold all of our elected officials accountable. They cant just tell us they support strong gun safety laws; they need to show us with their votes. Michelle is endorsed by Everytown for Gun Safety and is a Moms Demand Action Candidate of Distinction. I have no doubt that shes the right person to fight to keep our communities safe. This is more than an election; its a fight for the safety and well-being of our children. This Nov. 6, vote for safety! Vote for Michelle McCabe. Amy Cawman Fairfield Lavielle has earned my vote To the editor : Gail Lavielle has again earned my vote to represent me, Wilton and the 143rd District in Hartford. Gail is the person best equipped to help Wilton/143rd regain fiscal health and increased property values. Gail has deep experience, intelligence, drive and tenacity, transcending party politics to achieve critical constituent priorities. Gail pushed through transportation initiatives vastly improving the quality of life for myriad Wilton/143rd commuters. Gail doesnt miss a vote in Hartford and is the last one to leave the floor. I am happy and proud to count Gail my champion, my representative and my dear friend. Please vote for Gail. AP Duffy Wilton Proud to vote for Tony Hwang To the editor : My wife and I moved our family to Fairfield from Washington, D.C., almost four years ago because we thought it was such a wonderful place to raise our children. We were very excited to become members of the community and wanted to ensure that we were able to send our twin 4-year-old girls to the top public schools so that they have the best opportunity to succeed. As a combat veteran, small business owner, and volunteer firefighter of many years, I have been active in the communities in which Ive lived. I want to ensure that my children grow up with a similar sense of community in a safe, nurturing environment where they can excel and succeed. I know Im not unique in that regard and its why I believe that its so important that our representatives in Hartford are committed to maintaining the kind of community that we have all come to know and love. Over the past few years, our family has had a chance to get to know our state senator, Tony Hwang. We first met Tony at an event on the town green and see him regularly at community events. Tony has made an effort to ensure the we were welcomed as part of his effort to spread a message of kindness and inclusion. The genuine connection he has with people is refreshing because he cares. Ive also come to recognize that Tony has dedicated his time in Hartford to those who need his support most. It is evidenced by his voting record and commitment to the community. He has worked tirelessly to advocate for teachers, firemen, police officers, veterans, seniors, and the middle class the bedrock of our community. Thats why I am proud to be voting for state Sen. Tony Hwang on Nov. 6. Alex J Plitsas Fairfield Steinberg is honest, hard working To the editor : I urge you to vote for Jonathan Steinberg for state representative. Jonathan Steinberg cares deeply about Westport and has worked tirelessly for the town over the past eight years. He has reached across party lines to find solutions in Hartford to benefit our town. Jonathan Steinberg has supported the seniors in town by advocating for the Center for Senior Activities before town boards and by requesting funding from the Connecticut State Bond Commission for the enhancement project for the Center . Hes shown leadership in tackling transportation issues that face us. Hes an environmentalist supporter with a solar roof who has won the endorsement of statewide organizations, as well as a staunch supporter for small business. He knows the problems that the state is facing and is working hard to resolve them. Please return Jonathan Steinberg to Hartford as your representative. Hes smart, honest and hard working, which is what we need! Lynn Goldberg Westport Haskell will bring fresh air to Senate seat To the editor : We are excited to vote for Will Haskell for state Senate. He will bring fresh air to the seat with a fresh pair of eyes and deep commitment to our community. Will already has experience beyond his years working with legislators. We need young people in government and we especially need individuals who will work for all citizens equally and believe that access to government and voting rights are imperative for a functioning democracy. Connecticut desperately needs the younger generation to stay here and work for our future, and we believe Will has the vision and energy to make a difference. Luisa Francoeur and Jim Goodrich Westport WESTPORT A Bridgeport man stole a TV from a Westport home under construction, police said. On Aug. 28, officers were dispatched on report of a residential burglary in which a 65-inch mounted television and Samsung sound bar were stolen from a wall in the home. The television cost about $1,200 and there was about $1,000 in damage to the wall, police said. Detectives responded to the scene and processed the home for fingerprints and DNA evidence, which identified the suspect as Daniel Cabrera-Otero, 35. Police submitted a warrant for Cabrera-Oteros arrest and on Oct. 19, he was located by Westport detectives on Soundview Avenue in Brdigeport. Cabrera-Otero was taken into custody and brought to Westport headquarters, where he was charged with third-degree burglary, second-degree criminal mischief, and fourth-degree larceny. He was held in lieu of $50,000 bond and is scheduled to appear in state Superior Court in Norwalk on Oct. 28. svaughan@hearstmediact.com; 203-842-2638; @SophieCVaughan1 WESTPORT Three years after her bestselling memoir, Its What I Do, became a New York Times bestseller, Westport native and renowned conflict photographer Lynsey Addario has released a book of photos featuring her work from around the world. Of Love and War, Addarios photo book, is out this month and traces her journey from photographing life under the Taliban before Sept. 11, 2001 to Addarios more recent work depicting maternal mortality in Sierra Leone and victims of the global refugee crisis travelling from Syria to Europe. I decided to start with Afghanistan under the Taliban because that was sort of the precursor to 9/11 that ended up being what launched me into a career in conflict photography and humanitarian and social issues like womens rights and women's issues, Addario, 44, said. Addario, who now lives in London credits her success to her parents for telling her to follow her passions. My parents never instilled any doubt in me. Anything I wanted to do, they encouraged me to do it and I think that helped me when I became interested in other countries and travelling around the world, Addario said. A semester studying abroad in Europe while at the University of Wisconsin opened Addario to a worldview broader than the one she had while growing up in Westport, Addario said. When I started to travel, I realized how sheltered Westport was and how it represented such a small portion of what the rest of the world is like, whether thats economic diversity or racial diversity. Its pretty homogenous. I didnt realize that as a young woman until I started travelling around the world, and that only inspired me to travel more because I felt I was missing so much, there was so much I hadnt been exposed to, Addario said. Putting together a photo book allowed her to unearth photos she previously overlooked in the fray of deadlines after reporting trips, Addario said, adding that while she often chides herself for not doing enough, looking at the book and how much shes done in her career thus far is humbling. Ive worked a lot in my life and in many different countries. People have really let me into their lives in some of the most intimate moments. None of this work would have been possible without the generosity of people and the trust theyve instilled in me to properly tell their stories, Addario said. svaughan@hearstmediact.com; 203-842-2638; @SophieCVaughan1 During a tour of Winnipegs Bison Transport on Thursday, Canadas foreign affairs minister, Chrystia Freeland, did a good job handling a big rig on Bisons truck-driving simulator and even when the operators simulated a blowout, she got it over to the shoulder pretty smoothly. Hey there, time traveller! This article was published 25/10/2018 (1120 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current. During a tour of Winnipegs Bison Transport on Thursday, Canadas foreign affairs minister, Chrystia Freeland, did a good job handling a big rig on Bisons truck-driving simulator and even when the operators simulated a blowout, she got it over to the shoulder pretty smoothly. It was a good analogy to the way she helped steer Canadian negotiations through the dangerous obstacles toward a beneficial outcome for Canada in the recently completed renegotiation of NAFTA with the U.S. In conversation with the Free Press, she said that notwithstanding the drama along the way, she was always confident that she and her team would be able to negotiate a good deal for Canada. Simply put, she said, because it makes so much sense to both countries. Freeland said its natural that the U.S. should be our largest trading partner because of geography, made even more logical because its the largest economy in the world. And since Canada is also the Americans largest trading partner larger than the U.S. trade with China, Japan and the U.K. combined it is to both countries benefit to have free trade. "Because of those economic facts, we are really important to each other, and because of the further economic fact that the trade between Canada and the U.S. is remarkably balanced and remarkably mutually beneficial," she said she knew a good deal for Canada would get done. "In some ways, the negotiation was almost a solution in search of a problem," she said. In spite of what must have been a gruelling personal experience, Freeland is very upbeat about Canadas achievement in the negotiations. And also in spite of a recent Angus Reid Institute survey that found that 45 per cent of Canadians are disappointed or very disappointed with the results and 50 per cent think Canada was too soft and gave up too much, Freeland believes Canadians will come around. "I am absolutely confident that this is a good deal for Canada," she said. "I have tremendous trust in the Canadian people and they will know it is a good deal." While an agreement in principle has been achieved on free trade between Canada, the U.S. and Mexico, profit-busting tariffs and countervailing tariffs still exist on steel and aluminum. And Canadian manufacturers are suffering. Freeland said she has been clear for some time that the U.S. imposition of those tariffs, which the U.S. said were for national security reasons, have been "both illegal and also, frankly, absurd." "That is why we are challenging the U.S. action at (World Trade Organization) and NAFTA panels," she said. She also said that while she sympathizes with Canadian manufacturers, she has become even more convinced that announcing dollar-for-dollar reciprocal tariffs against imported U.S. steel and aluminum was the right thing to do. "It was important to demonstrate to the U.S. that Canada was prepared to take tough action," she said. "The prime minister said in a cabinet meeting we had around that time that Canadas position needs to be that we do not escalate and we do not back down. I think that is a good characterization of our approach." And even though the issue of those tariffs were separate from the NAFTA negotiations, she said Canadas actions were very helpful in NAFTA negotiations. But asked when folks can expect them to be dropped, she said its her opinion they should be dropped immediately and she pointed out there is increasing public pressure in the U.S. to do so. "It doesnt make sense to have them in place for the U.S. or Canada," she said. "It is hurting everyone." Freeland said she and the prime minister are confident that common sense will eventually prevail. "That is what we believe and we hope it will happen sooner or later," she said. The recent disruption of more than 30 years of a free and open market with the U.S. has rekindled more discussion about the need for Canada to diversify its trading patterns. Freeland noted that when it comes to trade "to a meaningful extent, geography is destiny." But she also pointed out that its never a wise strategy to be too dependent on one customer, no matter how good that customer is. "We need to be honest with ourselves as Canadians that this is a U.S. administration that is openly and proudly protectionist and it may be that public opinion in the U.S. more broadly is shifting into a more protectionist mood," she said. "We as Canadians, given the very great amount of trade we do with the U.S., need to be realistic about that fact." martin.cash@freepress.mb.ca Poor relations between Canada and Saudi Arabia arent slowing down Saudi-owned G3 Canada Ltd. The grain-handling company announced Friday it is building another grain elevator, this one near Carmangay in southern Alberta. Hey there, time traveller! This article was published 26/10/2018 (1119 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current. THE CANADIAN PRESS/HO Construction crews work on building a new G3 Canada grain terminal in Vancouver in this undated handout photo. The grain-handling company announced Friday it is building another grain elevator, this one near Carmangay in southern Alberta and is estimated to cost $30 million. Poor relations between Canada and Saudi Arabia arent slowing down Saudi-owned G3 Canada Ltd. The grain-handling company announced Friday it is building another grain elevator, this one near Carmangay in southern Alberta. G3 wouldnt release the cost of the new, 42,000-tonne elevator, but industry estimates put it in the $30-million range. "We have been on a fairly steep growth trajectory building out assets across the Prairies," said Brett Malkoske, G3s vice-president of business development and communications. G3 boasts its elevators are state-of-the-art. They can empty a super-B grain truck in less than five minutes and load 134-car trains in a matter of hours using a loop track. That will allow G3 to cut the average 13-day cycle from the time a train picks up grain, drops it off in Vancouver, and returns by 40 per cent, Malkoske said. "They are very fast, theyre very efficient, they save farmers time, they save railroads time," Malkoske said. "Theyre a model that breaks the mould, and people are starting to take notice." Last August, Saudi Arabia suspended all business and trade with Canada in retaliation to criticism from Canada over the arrest of a womens-rights activist. The geopolitical spat doesnt seem to be hindering G3, however. G3 refused to comment. G3 bought the Canadian Wheat Board in 2012, an entity with few assets. G3 is building up its grain-handling network in preparation for the opening of its grain terminal in Vancouver. Thats made it the most aggressive builder of grain-handling facilities in Western Canada, but its not alone. The amount companies have invested or announced plans to invest totals $739 million so far in 2018. "Its very competitive," said Wade Sobkowich, executive director of the Western Grain Elevator Association. Newcomers like G3 and GrainsConnect are building most of the new facilities, but existing companies are also upgrading, Sobkowich said. When one company builds or upgrades in efforts to expand its footprint, it puts pressure on others to do the same to protect market share, Sobkowich said. The size of the Canadian crop also demands it. On average, the crop is growing by two to three per cent every year and is now at about 79 million tonnes, said Mark Hemmes, president of Quorum Corp. Quorum is a privately held consulting company retained by the federal government since 2001 to model and report on the grain-handling and transportation system. To expand storage capacity, grain elevators have added a million tonnes of space since the 2013-14 crop year, Hemmes said. Thats a significant amount, he said. The 2013-14 crop year was pivotal because it taught grain companies they couldnt rely on the railways to move a bumper crop. Grain became backlogged. "A lot of elevators were full to the rafters, and grain companies couldnt buy grain because they couldnt move it out. "One of the fixes to that is building more storage," Hemmes said. G3 assets include grain terminals on the St. Lawrence River, Trois-Rivieres and Hamilton, two terminals in Thunder Bay, two primary grain elevators in Manitoba, seven in Saskatchewan with one under construction and now two facilities under construction in Alberta. G3 is preparing for the opening of its grain terminal in Vancouver, the first grain elevator built there since the 1960s. The last elevator built on the West Coast was in Prince Rupert in the mid-1980s. Malkoske said the Vancouver terminal is 60 per cent completed. "Well be loading into that facility at the end of 2019 and loading ships out of the facility early in 2020," he said. Malkoske said G3s market share has increased steadily since its inception, but it is not on a level with the big-three grain companies Richardson, Viterra and Cargill. It is more in the second tier of grain companies that includes Parrish & Heimbecker, Paterson, and Louis Dreyfus. bill.redekop@freepress.mb.ca Winnipeg's resounding no on the election plebiscite question about reopening Portage and Main to pedestrians has left the civic administration in a quandary on how to improve accessibility and appearances for both the at-grade crossing and underground concourse. Hey there, time traveller! This article was published 25/10/2018 (1120 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current. Winnipeg's resounding "no" on the election plebiscite question about reopening Portage and Main to pedestrians has left the civic administration in a quandary on how to improve accessibility and appearances for both the at-grade crossing and underground concourse. John Kiernan, the City of Winnipeg's director of planning, property and development, said changes are coming for the intersection, but what those changes are is still unknown. "We still have to do something with Portage and Main," Kiernan told reporters Thursday. "I think that was commonly acknowledged during the last several months." Officially, councils last formal position on the intersection was to study how it can be upgraded, with the objective of removing the barriers. When council ordered the plebiscite at its meeting in July, that direction wasnt reversed, but the administration did put the matter on hold pending the outcome of Wednesday's vote. Kiernan said the administration expects to proceed with upgrading the intersection while keeping some form of barriers in place, but added council has to give that direction, likely at its meeting in November. He said with the decision made on maintaining the barriers, officials will be looking at improving accessibility between the underground and the street. One option under consideration, Kiernan said, is closing the bunker-like concrete stairwells and working with the adjacent property owners for a better link between the levels through their buildings. Kiernan said the barriers will remain but not necessarily the same concrete ones that are there now, suggesting they could be replaced with bollards or railing or something "more permeable," that removes the sense of the barriers without removing them physically. While building owners are concerned about the deterioration of the membrane that covers the underground level, Kiernan said the city has no idea what condition its in. The membrane over the entire underground, he said, is buried one metre under the road surface. "We have very limited information right now," Kiernan said. "What we know is theres a membrane thats been in place for 40 years. Were concerned as we uncover it we know its at the end of its life cycle." Kiernan said city administration is not in favour of a partial reopening -- perhaps during evenings or weekends -- explaining the direction from the plebiscite was clear to everyone. He said the discussion prompted by the plebiscite was good for the city, as a whole. "I think its really good we talk as a community about our downtown and city building and whats important for urban development. This is one of those conversations people had over the dinner table, on their vacations, they had conversations with their friends about Portage and Main," Kiernan said. "This is a conversation about what kind of city do you want to have, what do you want it to look like --being able to study and go forward." aldo.santin@freepress.mb.ca It's not often 911 calls for help, but that's what happened after a fire broke out this week at an east Winnipeg asphalt plant. Hey there, time traveller! This article was published 25/10/2018 (1120 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current. It's not often 911 calls for help, but that's what happened after a fire broke out this week at an east Winnipeg asphalt plant. Master Warrant Officer Benoit Laroche, chief of 17 Wing Fire Hall on the west side of Richardson International Airport, quickly deployed the military base's specialized fire truck armed with foam, after receiving what he called an "out-of-norm" call for help Monday from the city's 911 dispatch. "As the fire service of 17 Wing Winnipeg, our operations certainly prepare us for situations like this," Laroche said at a news conference Thursday. Laroche said the air force personnel are trained to put out large fires on aircraft and the huge fuel storage area at the airport. "We were equipped, prepared, trained, and more than willing to assist," he said. "It was an honour to work with the city and all the other jurisdictions involved. "Winnipeg is our city as well. We may be in the military, but it is our city. We do live in the city so when it comes to protecting the citizens, the infrastructure of the city, it is close to home. It is part of what we do as well." On Thursday, the city released video images of the fire from a drone operated by the Winnipeg Fire Paramedic Service and the Winnipeg Police Service's Air-1 helicopter. The asphalt plant, located on Day Street, had on-site six tanks filled with 100,000 litres of liquid asphalt, two tanks with a half-million litres of liquid asphalt, and two tanks with a million litres each. Liquid asphalt from the smaller tanks was burning until the foam from specialized trucks snuffed out the blaze. The blaze is still under investigation. Winnipeg Fire Paramedic Service supplied drone photos of the Transcona fire on October 22, 2018. Laroche said the 17 Wing truck, joined by another sent by the Winnipeg Airports Authority, is manned by one person, who didn't just rush in to put out the blaze. "Lots have to happen before we run in and be the heroes," he said. "We want to ensure everything is safe. That we minimize the risk as much as possible. That we utilize the training we have to ensure that... we're not added casualties. "It's the nature of the business. We certainly would not have gone in if our lives were at risk... We wouldn't have sent our guys in if their life was in danger." WFPS Chief John Lane credited the efforts of 17 Wing, the WAA, his department, RM of Springfield fire department, CN Rail, RCMP, Manitoba Hydro, and the provincial government. "The hard work and the sustained efforts of our community responders under extreme conditions ensured this emergency was controlled with minimal public danger," he said. Lane said the city department was also able to utilize the lessons learned from the explosion and fire at Speedway International in St. Boniface in 2012. The plant manufactured specialized methanol racing fuel, and the massive fire forced the evacuation of about 100 homes and left $15 million in damage. He also called the video feed the drone was able to provide, as well as images sent by the Air-1, "invaluable." "Our incident commander had instant and ongoing access to their vantage points, which assisted greatly, allowing him to direct crews where to apply foam and water for the best efficiency. The command post was 800 metres away from the incident, so there was no way the incident commander could actually see what was happening at the actual location," Lane said. "It's hard to imagine how we would have done this without the aerial perspective." Lane said the City of Winnipeg doesn't own a specialized foam truck, as they are expensive and would be rarely used. "I cannot over-emphasize the successful outcome of this event came as the result of collaboration, co-operation, and having highly skilled and trained personnel." kevin.rollason@freepress.mb.ca The morning after landed like a hangover, glazed by the hazy yellow light of an overcast sky. One of those mornings where you lie awake for a few moments, blinking, piecing together fragments of memory: what happened last night? Hey there, time traveller! This article was published 26/10/2018 (1119 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current. Opinion The morning after landed like a hangover, glazed by the hazy yellow light of an overcast sky. One of those mornings where you lie awake for a few moments, blinking, piecing together fragments of memory: what happened last night? Oh yeah, thats right. We had an election. Strange, how quickly it feels like it didnt happen. The best thing that can be said about the 2018 civic election is that like most Canadian elections it ran smoothly, thanks to the dedication of poll workers. So many people in the world face so many barriers to vote; we are so lucky. The second-best thing that can be said about this election is that its over. This election was not the citys finest hour. On Twitter, observers from across Canada poked fun at the basis of our plebiscite, nearly unthinkable elsewhere. One journalist, writing in a purely factual manner, called it a "national joke." Another highlight, from Twitter: "Wait. Hold on. Did Winnipeg srsly have a plebiscite on crossing the street?" Yeah, we did. Dont worry, Canada: Winnipeggers for the most part werent too enthused about it either. It was an election of staying put, status quo, risking little. Local journalist James Wilt, writing for Vice, called it "one of Canadas sadder municipal elections." The low bar we cleared was not having a white supremacist running for mayor. And voter turnout, just 42 per cent and with nearly 20,000 fewer votes cast than 2014, reflects that. Those figures arent an indictment of people who chose not to vote. Its an indictment of a cycle that failed to light voter imagination. Voters arent so unpredictable. They want something to vote for, not only against. They want to choose a vision that gives them hope, not only give their consent to maintain a status quo. Where was that momentum in this election? Maybe, if we look inward, we conclude that we get the elections we deserve. Or, maybe, this city deserved better. Every incumbent was re-elected, save for the battle of St. James, where ward boundary changes pitted two incumbents against each other. There will be five new faces on council, all of them from wide-open races. Even the fact that voters in the new Waverley West ward didnt get a choice seems a disservice. Coun. Janice Lukes, who previously represented the old South Winnipeg-St. Norbert ward, was acclaimed to the job, the first unopposed race since 2002. At least Winnipeg, in this regard, fared better than Brandon, where Mayor Rick Chrest and two councillors were acclaimed to their positions. Just 17 per cent of Brandons voters bothered to cast ballots in the other eight city council races or to elect four new school trustees on the nine-member board. Meanwhile, Winnipeg remains a city steeped in potential. We have some good things going for us. Relative stability. Affordability, for some. A downtown and an Exchange District that are coming to life bit by bit with new investment. The contrast between the ideas Brian Bowman articulated in his first election campaign compared to the recently completed one was striking. (Phil Hossack / Free Press files) We also have one of the highest child-poverty rates in Canada. A slew of historic neighbourhoods in desperate need of revitalization. Gaps in recreation infrastructure. Transit service that lags behind comparable cities in nearly every measurable way. All of these issues, and more, could make Winnipeg fertile ground for fresh thinking. It could make us a place where candidates jostle to advance innovative, practical ideas that would serve as a model for other cities. We could have had substantive, insightful dialogue on issues that affect everyone living here, directly or indirectly: housing, poverty, visions for vital neighbourhoods, urban-suburban relationships, transit and growing industry. Instead, this is what we got: an election where the most impassioned debates regarded a plebiscite nobody truly wanted, and the matter of whether a person feels like theyll get stabbed when walking downtown. Gripping stuff. And if it hadnt been for the plebiscite which tripped Winnipegs most crackling switches maybe more energy would have been spared for other issues. That it went to a plebiscite was a political move; it fulfilled its purpose. When it was tossed to a ballot question, the Portage and Main debate sucked the air out of the room. It was, rightly or wrongly, one of the citys most divisive issues. Opinions were calcified from the start; it was never going to be yes. In that light, supporters of opening the intersection to pedestrians myself included, I guess were given a futile choice: they could lie down and give up on an idea they cared about. Or, they could at least stand up behind it. The public debate was often brittle and fracturing. As the numbers showed, advocates passion moved few Winnipeggers. But hey, at least they tried, giving of their own time and money to promote a distinctly new vision. They didnt get the "yes" vote they wanted. Yet it was not a wasted endeavour. Advocates succeeded at bringing accessibility issues to the forefront of the discussion and many councillors have voiced their support for improvement. Not every dream ventured will come to fruition. But in exploring them on the citys most public stage, in advancing civic imagination, there is always the chance for other voices and ideas to rise up. That alone is worth the striving. We would be blessed to have more of that dreaming in Winnipeg. It cannot come only from everyday citizens. Now, in the hazy light of the morning after, awash in frustration at an election that took so much out of us and yet ventured so little, I return to one, simple wish next time around, we can revel in campaigns that ignite us. Its not such a tall order. In fact, we already have a recent template for that kind of thing. Four years ago, a little-known lawyer named Brian Bowman entered the mayoral race. He had no political experience, but he assembled a slate of appealing ideas and rode a wave of momentum to the citys top office. Many of the pledges he made then remain unfulfilled. And the reality of politics is that few politicians can achieve all they promise. Still, the contrast between the ideas Bowman articulated then and now is striking. This time around it was mostly broad brushstrokes, soft on the details, impressionist dabs promising more of the same. This election, with no other candidate offering a vision that was more exciting, that was enough to get him re-elected. So now, the city returns to its slow simmer. Waiting for leadership to light a flame. Waiting for 2022, and the hope of campaigns that revel in the contours of what a city can be, and for champions ready to take a leap on new wings. melissa.martin@freepress.mb.ca A poll-by-poll breakdown of the mayoral election results shows that Brian Bowman is well liked in south and southwest Winnipeg, and thats no fluke. Hey there, time traveller! This article was published 25/10/2018 (1120 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current. A poll-by-poll breakdown of the mayoral election results shows that Brian Bowman is well liked in south and southwest Winnipeg, and thats no fluke. Kelly McCrae, who managed Bowmans campaign, said the team was uncertain about the depth of his support north of downtown and concentrated its efforts where it knew Bowmans support was strongest. "We did concentrate on areas where we knew we were strongest, to solidify that," McCrae said. Jenny Motkaluk registered her campaign May 1, the first day she was eligible, formally launched her campaign shortly after that, and then campaigned strongly throughout the summer. While she fell short, results show she stole away areas of the city that went Bowmans way in the 2014 election: large sections of Transcona, North Kildonan, East Kildonan and parts of St. Boniface. Motkaluk had 18,000 more votes than Judy Wasylycia-Leis a well-known candidate and experienced politician did four years ago. But like Wasylycia-Leis, Motkaluk was unable to win in south Winnipeg. Click or tap buttons to toggle between results Maps shows winners at the polling subdivision level, according to unofficial results provided by the City of Winnipeg Can't see the map? Click or tap here Aaron Moore, a political science professor at the University of Winnipeg who watched this campaign closely, said how the voting went was not a surprise. Moore said Motkaluk benefitted from the endorsements of incumbent councillors Jeff Browaty (North Kildonan) and Jason Schreyer (Elmwood-East Kildonan). "The city seems pretty divided, with the north and east against Bowman, and the remainder for him," Moore said. "I get a sense that voters in the north of the city and Transcona feel the mayor has been favouring other parts of the city, particularly when it comes to infrastructure spending." Motkaluks promise to make two projects replacing the Louise Bridge and extending Chief Peguis Trail to Route 90 her infrastructure priorities likely resonated with residents in those areas, Moore said. McCrae said he believes that Motkaluks commitments on the Louise Bridge and Chief Peguis Trail helped seal those areas for her. But McCrae said the Bowman team was fairly confident that it would pick up large parts of central Winnipeg that traditionally favour an NDP/labour-endorsed candidate, which there wasnt in this campaign, and the results bore that out. Large areas of the inner city that went to Wasylycia-Leis in 2014 went to Bowman Wednesday night. GRAEME BRUCE / WINNIPEG FREE PRESS, SOURCE: CITY OF WINNIPEG Bowman didnt start actively campaigning until Sept. 13, leaving his team to decide where best to spend their time on, what was for them, a 42-day campaign. "We didnt spent a ton of time in the northeast," McCrae said. "With more time and resources, we probably would have gone there." On the Portage and Main plebiscite, Moore said the poll-by-poll breakdown revealed a straightforward explanation for the 65 per cent opposition to the proposal. "People living in or near downtown were supportive. People in the suburbs were not," Moore said. Support for reopening the intersection was strongest in many of those neighbourhoods closest to Portage and Main: the Exchange District, West Alexander, South Point Douglas, Norwood Flats, parts of old St. Boniface, Wolseley, River Heights, Wellington Crescent, Riverview, Kingston Crescent, Crescentwood, large parts of River Heights. Brent Bellamy, a vocal advocate for reopening the intersection to pedestrians, said the results revealed to him that the most influential factor in the debate was traffic, not safety, accessibility or even cost. "My feeling is it was not about living close to downtown or in downtown because, really, not many people live downtown," Bellamy, creative director and senior design architect with Number Ten Architectural Group, said. "The whole debate was about traffic the whole time." Bellamy said the breakdown shows that traffic issues are not a concern for people who have a short commute. MIKE DEAL / WINNIPEG FREE PRESS Jonathan Hildebrand, a campaign volunteer, tears down the office for Brian Bowman's mayoral campaign the morning after the election. "Their lives aren't centred around really long commutes. They don't talk about it, they don't complain about it. But for people who commute 40, 45 minutes, a commute is a major part of their life and they can react more sensitively to even a one-minute delay," Bellamy said. "When you spend 90 minutes of your day in traffic, you react to that." Bellamy said if there had been no effect on traffic, or if traffic flow could have been improved, it wouldn't have been an issue and there would not have been a plebiscite. Coun. Jeff Browaty, who successfully manoeuvred council into holding the plebiscite, said the majority who voted against reopening the intersection are not opposed to improving downtown. "I don't think Winnipeggers who voted no, were saying no to a better downtown, they weren't saying no to a walkable downtown," Browaty said. "They were just saying no to this particular plan that was going to quite dramatically impact traffic movements at key times." aldo.santin@freepress.mb.ca The son of an internationally recognized Winnipeg pediatrician testified in court Thursday he came forward to police with allegations of sexual abuse from the 1970s, after he found out his father was molesting other children. Hey there, time traveller! This article was published 25/10/2018 (1120 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current. The son of an internationally recognized Winnipeg pediatrician testified in court Thursday he came forward to police with allegations of sexual abuse from the 1970s, after he found out his father was molesting other children. Victor Chernick, 82, is accused of committing three counts of sexual offences against his son, Richard, between 1975 and 1979. Dr. Victor Chernick. Now 56, Richard Chernick testified his father molested him about 100 times. The abuse started when he was 12, he said, and ended when he was 17, after he finally told his father "this has to stop." "He told me had tried more things with me than with the girls," Richard Chernick said as the Court of Queen's Bench trial continued in Winnipeg before Justice Joan McKelvey. Victor Chernick pleaded not guilty to the charges, which relate only to his son. During his testimony, Richard Chernick also referenced allegations his father had abused other family members. He and his older sister, Sharon Chernick, launched a civil suit in 2014 seeking damages for their father's alleged sexual abuse and their mother's failure to protect them from it. The civil claim is on hold while the criminal trial continues, and it hasn't been proven. Richard and Sharon Chernick took the unusual step of asking the court to lift publication bans that would normally shield the identities of sexual-abuse complainants in a criminal case. Their requests were granted. Richard Chernick testified he grew up scared of his father, who he described as "unpredictable." But he didn't come forward for many years staying quiet even when sister Sharon reported her allegations to police out of protectiveness and love for his parents. He recalled one conversation he had as an adult in which he and his father talked "about the abuse that went down" and he told his father he still loved him. "I specifically recall my father telling me I was a better man than he was," Richard Chernick testified. Richard Chernick said he decided to pursue a civil suit as a way to get his mother to acknowledge her alleged role in allowing the abuse to continue. He said he spoke to three civil lawyers before he eventually reported the allegations to the police in 2013, because he didn't want his father to go to jail. He ultimately went to the police five years ago, "after hearing he was still molesting kids." Defence lawyers Roberta Campbell and Sarah Inness are representing Victor Chernick. Campbell cross-examined Richard Chernick about his memory, his mental-health issues -- he was diagnosed with clinical depression he attributes to the abuse and his upbringing -- a family history of mental illness, his separation from his wife, his finances, and the timing of the civil suit and his disclosure to police. When Campbell suggested the abuse never happened, Richard Chernick replied: "False." He testified he has no memory of ever having a family meeting about the allegations nor discussing them with his father's sister, Arlene Chernick (aka Robin Tyler). Tyler testified Monday she called a family meeting in Winnipeg in the early 1980s, right after two of Richard Chernick's sisters told her their father was abusing the three of them. The trial continues Friday. katie.may@freepress.mb.ca Twitter: @thatkatiemay OTTAWA The federal government might pull the rug out from under Manitoba by withholding the $67 million it promised for carbon retrofits, the Free Press has learned. Hey there, time traveller! This article was published 25/10/2018 (1120 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current. OTTAWA The federal government might pull the rug out from under Manitoba by withholding the $67 million it promised for carbon retrofits, the Free Press has learned. Multiple sources said Environment Minister Catherine McKenna's staff may review whether Manitoba will get its share of the Low Carbon Economy Fund, after weeks of insisting the province would get its share. ADRIAN WYLD / THE CANADIAN PRESS FILES Federal Environment Minister Catherine McKenna would not dismiss claims she may review whether Manitoba will get its share of the Low Carbon Economy Fund, after weeks of insisting the province would get its share. McKenna would not dismiss those claims on Thursday when she was asked to confirm whether shed ordered a review of Manitobas funding. "We're committed to working with Manitobans, businesses, schools, cities, hospitals, to tackle climate change and support more energy efficient projects," she told the Free Press. Premier Brian Pallisters office said he would feel betrayed if Manitoba doesnt receive that cash, which officials are in the course of planning to give to various groups. "We are not aware of any conversations regarding the federal government reconsidering our (LCEF) participation," wrote a spokesman. "We would regard withdrawal of Manitobas LCEF allocation as an act of bad faith against Manitobans." In February, the Pallister government ended a 14-month standoff with Ottawa over the fund, which provides cash for carbon-reducing projects. Manitoba had demanded clarity that collecting its $67 million share wasnt contingent on raising its carbon tax. To access its cash, the province had to endorse the Pan-Canadian Framework on climate change (PCF), a document that outlines principles such as the need for carbon pricing but doesnt prescribe the carbon-tax benchmarks. In June, when Doug Ford was elected Ontario premier and his government scrapped virtually all environmental policies, McKenna put Ontarios share of the fund under review. At that time, her office assured the Free Press that Manitobas funding was not in jeopardy, in spite of a flat-tax carbon levy that would eventually fall short of federal benchmarks. McKennas spokeswoman said she was reviewing Ontarios cash because that province reneged on the PCF whereas Manitoba had "shown real leadership" in "commitments to cleaner fuels, more sustainable agriculture (and) support for energy efficiency," Caroline Theriault wrote on Aug. 30. Feds dare Pallister to return to his carbon plan OTTAWA The federal Liberals are pushing back on Premier Brian Pallister's claims that the federal carbon levy set to be imposed in April isn't as smartly crafted as his original Manitoba plan. click to read more OTTAWA The federal Liberals are pushing back on Premier Brian Pallister's claims that the federal carbon levy set to be imposed in April isn't as smartly crafted as his original Manitoba plan. On Wednesday, Pallister derided a "two-tier carbon tax" that had Ottawa recognize existing environmental policies in provinces like Newfoundland and Labrador, without what he considered similar leeway for Manitoba's massive hydroelectricity output. Pallisters original plan included agriculture exemptions for space heating for livestock, and on fuel used to dry out grain, as well as heavy-industry targets designed to avoid closing six Manitoba industrial sites, whose companies would otherwise likely move abroad. On Thursday, Intergovernmental Minister Dominic LeBlanc dared Pallister to reinstate his own plan. If the Premier would like to reconsider rescinding Manitobas proposal, we would give that due consideration, and take another serious look at what Manitoba has proposed, LeBlanc wrote in an email to the Free Press. Ottawa was still reviewing the provinces' plans when Pallister decided on Oct. 3 to pull the plug, citing Prime Minister Justin Trudeau's reluctance during a Sept. 11 visit to Winnipeg to even consider allowing Pallister to keep a flat plan after 2019. Dylan Robertson Close This month, Pallister scrapped his flat-tax plan and dared the federal Liberals to impose their tax. A day later, Theriault said the LCEF cash was safe. "No, it is not currently under review," she wrote on Oct. 4. Senior sources say McKenna changed course during the past three weeks, and is considering a review. On Thursday, Theriault confirmed that Ottawa had still had not signed a contribution agreement with Manitoba eight months after the province ratified the PCF. Ottawa signed such an agreement with New Brunswick last December, four months after it endorsed the PCF. This week, McKenna unveiled her plans to impose the federal carbon tax on both provinces, raising questions as to why Ottawa is singling out Manitoba. The Liberals have put immense political capital in getting Manitoba its LCEF money. Last December, the party had St. Boniface MP Dan Vandal raise concerns about Manitoba losing that funding. In the same month, the Free Press revealed that McKenna had sent a letter to the Manitoba government in which she said the Tories had to endorse the PCF by the end of February to secure the $67 million. At the time, Manitoba lambasted McKennas choice to "play games with intergovernmental correspondence." Manitoba Tory MP Robert Sopuck, a former marine biologist who has studied both governments plans, said hes worried that "slippery Liberals" will end the funding, and thus undermine Pallisters ability to implement parts of his green plan. "It was an act of courage in the face of serious budgetary considerations," Sopuck said of the Pallister plan. The MP said it would be "tragic" if Ottawa retaliated against Pallister for scrapping his government's plan and accusing the Liberals of using him as "a prop" to berate Tory premiers who shunned carbon taxes. "My guess is they want to be vindictive about this," Sopuck said. dylan.robertson@freepress.mb.ca Sustainable Development Minister Rochelle Squires is accusing Ottawa of failing to make fighting climate change a top priority in Manitoba, after the Free Press reported the feds may withhold a promised $67 million to the province for carbon retrofits. Hey there, time traveller! This article was published 26/10/2018 (1119 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current. Sustainable Development Minister Rochelle Squires is accusing Ottawa of failing to make fighting climate change a top priority in Manitoba, after the Free Press reported the feds may withhold a promised $67 million to the province for carbon retrofits. The two levels of government have continually locked horns on the climate change file, but matters came to a head on Oct. 3, when Premier Brian Pallister said the province would abandon plans to collect a $25-a-tonne levy on carbon beginning Dec. 1. Now, the future of $67 million in project funding Manitobas share of the federal Low Carbon Economy Fund is in doubt. Squires said when Manitoba endorsed Ottawas Pan-Canadian Framework in February, a precondition for receiving the funding, the two governments had agreed to disagree over carbon pricing. "Nothing has changed since then," she said Friday. On Tuesday, the federal government announced it would impose a $20-a-tonne carbon levy in Manitoba, beginning in April. The tax would increase to $50 per tonne by 2022. Squires said she learned about the decision when the rest of the public did. She said Friday there has been no contact between her office and that of her federal counterpart, Catherine McKenna, since Manitoba decided to abandon its carbon tax plan earlier this month. Squires said she could not say whether the premiers office has been in negotiations with Ottawa on carbon pricing. "We would rather be fighting climate change than fighting Ottawa on taxes," the Manitoba minister told reporters, while accusing the federal Liberals of "talking out of both sides of their mouth" on the issue. Squires said the two levels of government had agreed to a joint list of funding priorities for the $67 million, including electrification of transportation, diverting organic waste from landfills, and displacing propane as a heating source in the northern town of Churchill. "We have reason to believe that Ottawa is threatening to pull very, very significant projects away from Manitoba," she said. Manitoba Opposition Leader Wab Kinew said it is time for both sides to "notch down the rhetoric." The NDP said it would be a rash move for the feds to withdraw the green projects funding. At the same time, Pallister should try to negotiate a new deal with Ottawa that includes a price on carbon, Kinew said. "Theres still an opportunity to have a deal," the NDP leader said. "Lets make a deal. Lets have the premier get back to the negotiating table. "Lets have the federal government maybe provide reassurances that this money is still on the table, and lets do right by the environment here in Manitoba." Manitoba Metis Federation president David Chartrand couldnt resist taking a shot at Pallister over the potential federal withdrawal of the carbon retrofit funding. He noted Friday the $67-million figure is exactly the amount the federation was to receive in a 50-year compensation agreement with Manitoba Hydro that was nixed by the premier earlier this year. "Karma can be inconvenient," Chartrand said. larry.kusch@freepress.mb.ca For a second consecutive day, Premier Brian Pallister blasted the federal government over its carbon-tax policies, leading the Opposition NDP to surmise he is laying the groundwork for a lawsuit against Ottawa. Hey there, time traveller! This article was published 25/10/2018 (1120 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current. For a second consecutive day, Premier Brian Pallister blasted the federal government over its carbon-tax policies, leading the Opposition NDP to surmise he is laying the groundwork for a lawsuit against Ottawa. Pallister again claimed Quebec and Newfoundland are receiving concessions that are being denied to Manitoba. He accused the feds of creating a "two-tier carbon levy that is higher west of the Ottawa River and lower east of the Ottawa River." Pallister said this is not how the federal government should deal with climate change. "They're dividing the country up. They're trying to pit provinces against provinces. It's wrong... it's divisive," the Manitoba premier told reporters after question period Thursday. Pallister cited several examples where he considered Newfoundland had received a better deal, including the fact the Atlantic province is receiving an exemption from the carbon tax on offshore oil exploration, while industrial operations are not exempt in Manitoba. He said Quebec's cap-and-trade emissions program effectively limits levies paid there to $17 per tonne, while citizens in other provinces will be required to pay $20 per tonne. "I wait with great anticipation to hear when the federal government is going to impose a backstop (carbon tax) on the province of Quebec," he said. Manitoba abruptly abandoned its carbon tax Oct. 3, after Pallister said he was unable to convince Prime Minister Justin Trudeau to allow the province to maintain its proposed levy at $25 per tonne through 2022. NDP Leader Wab Kinew said Thursday it appears Pallister is laying the groundwork for a lawsuit against the federal government on the tax issue. "He seems to be picking another political fight with Ottawa, and then accusing them of playing politics," Kinew said. "Is he going to launch this lawsuit he's talking about? Why is he raising this?" Asked Thursday whether he was leaning towards legal action against Ottawa, the premier replied: "I'll give you more on that next week, probably." Manitoba received a legal opinion last year Ottawa is well within its rights to levy a carbon tax -- although if a province produced a plan that proved to be just as effective at reducing greenhouse gases, its effort may pass a court test. Manitoba Liberal Leader Dougald Lamont said the premier's stance is divisive. "He's the one that's trying to play one half of the country against the other." If other provinces are getting a better deal, it reflects more "on the premier's abilities as a negotiator" than anything else, Lamont said. "There are other jurisdictions that had better deals. And maybe if they had better deals they pressed (Ottawa) harder or were willing to have more give and take with the federal government. That certainly wasn't happening with the premier," he said. larry.kusch@freepress.mb.ca While the number of nurses working in Winnipeg decreased between the last two fiscal years, the Manitoba government insists hiring is on the upswing. Hey there, time traveller! This article was published 25/10/2018 (1120 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current. While the number of nurses working in Winnipeg decreased between the last two fiscal years, the Manitoba government insists hiring is on the upswing. The provincial NDP produced freedom-of-information request results Thursday that showed there were 5,284 nurses employed by the Winnipeg Regional Health Authority as of April 1 95 fewer than on the same date in 2017. About an hour later, the Manitoba government produced its own data, showing there were 5,332 nurses working in the region as of Oct. 1, marking 48 nurses hired since April. That still means a net loss of 47 nurses since April 2017, critics said. "We know that these numbers bounce around on a month-to-month basis, but what I just produced is evidence over a six-month period. Were looking at longer trend lines," Health Minister Cameron Friesen told reporters. "It can be opportunistic to take advantage of small changes on a monthly basis. These numbers do bounce around, but when I see a longer-term improvement, I believe its appropriate to flag that for Manitobans and say, Look, were heading in the right direction." Friesen said the WRHA has opted to eliminate a number of smaller, part-time nursing positions and replace them with larger roles that have more work hours, at the request of nurses. He noted there were 134 open nursing positions listed on the WRHA website as of Thursday, and said the organization is actively seeking out more hires. Manitoba NDP Leader Wab Kinew emphasized the number of working nurses is trending down. "Now they may have some HR process thats ongoing, but theres nobody in those positions that hes referring to actually at the bedside, caring for patients in Winnipeg. So the bottom line, if you square all the arithmetic there, the bottom line is that there are fewer nurses working in the City of Winnipeg because this government is cutting health care," Kinew said. Manitoba Nurses Union president Darlene Jackson said she wasn't surprised by the numbers, as they reflected anecdotes shes heard from members about increasing workloads. "Manitoba has a chronic nursing shortage, and the reality is that the Pallister governments cuts and changes are only making the situation worse," Jackson said by email. "Were concerned that further changes and disruption will create recruitment and retention issues throughout the system. As nurses are forced into new work environments with heavier workload and no consultation, they will consider leaving through retirement or relocating elsewhere for work." jessica.botelho@freepress.mb.ca Twitter: @_jessbu A non-binding referendum on an intersection and a mayoral race some saw as foregone conclusions, along with a council field littered with incumbents, combined to create a perfect storm of voter apathy this municipal election. Hey there, time traveller! This article was published 25/10/2018 (1120 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current. A non-binding referendum on an intersection and a mayoral race some saw as foregone conclusions, along with a council field littered with incumbents, combined to create a perfect storm of voter apathy this municipal election. Turnout for the 2018 Winnipeg civic election came in at 42 per cent, a decrease of eight percentage points or 20,000 fewer votes from 2014. Its the lowest turnout the city has seen since 2006, when only 38 per cent of Winnipeggers hit a polling station. MIKE DEAL / WINNIPEG FREE PRESS Jonathan Hildebrand (left) and Tricia Chestnut, campaign volunteers, tear down the office for Brian Bowman's mayoral campaign the morning after the election. "It was at the mark that I would have expected, given that an incumbent mayor was in place. Most people expected Brian Bowman would be re-elected. In a lot of ways that doesnt really motivate people to turn up to vote," said Shannon Sampert, a political science professor at the University of Winnipeg. "Thats unfortunate, because there were some interesting races at the ward level. There were new councillors being voted in. It would have been nice to see the turnout go up for that." While engagement fell from 2014, the turnout was fairly consistent with other recent elections in large Canadian cities. Toronto and Ottawa, whose citizens went to the polls Oct. 22, had turnout rates of 41 and 42 per cent, respectively. Vancouvers election on Oct. 20, meanwhile, had a turnout of 39 per cent. Political engagement at the city level is traditionally tough to come by. Turnout rates come in lower for municipal elections than for their provincial and federal counterparts. Paul Thomas, a professor emeritus at the University of Manitoba, thinks the lack of political parties at the municipal level plays a part in that. He also thinks some people just dont consider municipal governments all that important. "Some people are fairly dismissive of city governments. A lot of people take it for granted and then only get up on their feet and howl when something goes wrong," Thomas said. "In some sense theres not much more we can do, except convince people that city government is important and that who leads city government is important." Sampert echoed Thomass comments, suggesting there are various ways the lack of formal party politics at the local level can play into voter disengagement. "Parties also sometimes drive up voter turnout because people can say, 'I dont necessarily know who to vote for, but I always vote for this party.' So, in a way, its easier to vote," Sampert said. When compared to Brandon, Winnipegs engagement was sky-high this election. Less than 17 per cent of residents in the Wheat City chose to participate in the democratic process. One silver lining in Winnipeg, according to Sampert, is that advance voting was up this year, coming in at 39,500. Thats an increase of roughly 9,000 votes from 2014. "Thats a really good sign. Its a sign of success for the people who are organizing elections in the City of Winnipeg. Weve seen a continuation of efforts to make access easier for those voters, by offering it shopping centres, grocery stores," Sampert said. In the lead up to the election, many thought the referendum on Portage and Main might motivate more votes. There are two reasons why Sampert thinks the exact opposite may have been the case. Polling prior to the election seemed to show the vote on Portage and Main was a foregone conclusion, with a significant number of respondents suggesting they had no intention to vote in favour of re-opening it to foot traffic. The issue was also discussed endlessly, leaving many with "Portage and Main fatigue" by Oct. 24. "Specific issues can lead to spikes in voting, but Portage and Main didnt become that issue. I know some people felt that it took debates in the civic election away from some of the larger issues, it overshadowed them," Sampert said. "The polling that had come out also revealed that it was a lost cause. That can lead people to think, Whats the point? Its obvious what the outcome is going to be. I want to stay at home and watch the Jets." ryan.thorpe@freepress.mb.ca Twitter: @rk_thorpe WINNIPEG police were occupied for hours Thursday night after a man with a knife barricaded himself inside a Fort Garry business. Hey there, time traveller! This article was published 25/10/2018 (1120 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current. WINNIPEG police were occupied for hours Thursday night after a man with a knife barricaded himself inside a Fort Garry business. The Winnipeg Police Service received a report of a man in distress and armed with a knife at the Bottle Stop on Plaza Drive, near Pembina Highway, around 3:40 p.m. Several police cruisers were dispatched to the scene, including the tactical support unit and a crisis negotiation team. The area surrounding the business was cordoned off by police. A blue truck could be seen abandoned near the store with one of its doors ajar. Around 100 people gathered outside to watch as the standoff continued. Officers could be heard asking the man to drop the knife and leave the store. The man could reportedly be seen pacing around inside the beer vendor, smoking and drinking. "We dont have a timeline right now. We will take as long as we need to bring this to a safe conclusion," WPS Const. Jay Murray told the Free Press around 7 p.m. By 7:30 p.m., the incident came to a close after a man was taken into custody following an altercation. He attempted to run from the scene and police appeared to discharge non-lethal ammunition, according to reports. When asked if the incident was sparked by methamphetamine use, the WPS said it wasnt clear. "While we have been communicating with him, its just too early to say if this was drug-induced," Murray said. Additional details about the incident are expected to be released at a news conference today. For the first time in nearly 20 years, the Manitoba government has released provincial Grade 12 test results, broken down by school division. Hey there, time traveller! This article was published 26/10/2018 (1120 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current. For the first time in nearly 20 years, the Manitoba government has released provincial Grade 12 test results, broken down by school division. The last time such a data release occurred was in 1999 when the PCs were last in power. Kelvin Goertzen, education minister, said hes pushing for greater transparency and accountability by publicizing the test results. "There might be different reasons in different areas why there are challenges, and theyre probably very legitimate reasons, and we can work through that," he said. "But, if you dont at least reveal those challenges, how do you ever really make advancements forward?" Goertzen added. The minister noted many other provinces release such statistics, breaking down the test results by school. Thats a step Goertzen will consider after the K-12 education review scheduled for 2019 is completed. NDP critic Matt Wiebe disagreed with the governments decision to publicize the test results widely. "Test results help school divisions, boards and teachers improve the education system. They are not meant to divide school divisions and ultimately, Manitoba families," Wiebe said in a statement. "The day after Manitobans elected a new wave of school trustees, the Pallister government has set the stage for education cuts by threatening and intimidating school divisions." Goertzen said he isnt releasing the data for the purpose of comparing divisions, but to try to push all parties to achieve better results. The test results are available at edu.gov.mb.ca. Jessica Botelho-Urbanski Its a gut-check moment when were walking on a city street and see someone beating another person. Do we get involved or walk on by? Hey there, time traveller! This article was published 26/10/2018 (1120 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current. Opinion Its a gut-check moment when were walking on a city street and see someone beating another person. Do we get involved or walk on by? The traditional choices are usually described as fight or flee. The "fight" option has us physically intervene, risking injury to ourselves and possible legal action if we hurt someone. The "flee" option has us ignore the violence and mind our business, a decision that would never make us a hero but would keep us personally safe. TREVOR HAGAN / WINNIPEG FREE PRESS FILES Doug Thomas was injured after he intervened when two people attacked a homeless person at a bus stop. Winnipeg news stories have chronicled two recent incidents that illustrate these two common reactions. The fight option was chosen on Oct. 13 by Doug Thomas, 48. He was at an A&W restaurant when he saw two men harassing a man in a bus shelter on Portage Avenue, across from the Polo Park mall. He raced over to intervene physically and was badly beaten by two attackers, who kicked him repeatedly and ripped open his eyelid with fingernails. The flee option was chosen by people on Oct. 16 when a Red River College instructor was jumped from behind and attacked around 9:30 p.m. in the area of William Avenue and King Street. The instructor tried to flag down passing vehicles, but no one stopped to help. There is a third option. A growing movement called Third Party Non-Violent Intervention goes beyond fighting or fleeing, offering ways to intervene peacefully in violent conflicts. Worthy of high regard are the radical pacifists at Christian Peacemaker Teams, which has included more than 30 alumni and faculty from Canadian Mennonite University in Winnipeg. Theyre "committed to reducing violence by getting in the way." They typically get in the way in battle-type conflicts in world hotspots such as Iraq, the West Bank, Colombia and Mexico, where their strategies include staying unarmed as they approach armed combatants. While much of their work is international, perhaps their training and experience in non-violent intervention could also be applied to the streets of Winnipeg. So, without fighting or fleeing, how might a Christian Peacemaker react? 1) Peacemakers might try to distract the attacker in creative ways. A Mennonite pastor, Kathy Neufeld Dunn, offers a personal example of interrupting violence: "As we walked up to the restaurant, I heard someone yelling, a tall man venting at his wife or girlfriend. I walked in between the man and the woman. I looked him in the eye and I said, Could you tell me what time it is? Im supposed to meet some friends here. He quit shouting and looked at his watch. He politely told me the time. The friend caught my eye and mouthed, Thank you." 2) Peacemakers might try to connect with the victim, perhaps standing a safe distance away while asking, "Are you all right? Would you like me to phone for help?" Another strategy is to pretend to know the victim, perhaps ad-libbing something like "Trevor, buddy, looks like youre in trouble. How can I help?" That fib changes the dynamics by letting the attacker believe the victim is not alone. 3) Peacemakers might document the violence, perhaps using cellphone cameras to record information that may later be desired by the victim to involve police. 4) Peacemakers may intervene physically, but without resorting to violence. As reported on the website Enemy Love: "Aaron and his friend were walking down the streets of Vancouvers Downtown Eastside when they encountered a young homeless man violently beating a helpless elderly man. Aarons friend quickly wedged his way between the two men and refused to move. Just walk away, Aarons friend calmly yet firmly informed the perpetrator. Im not going to hurt you, but Im also not going to let you hurt this man. Im not moving. Just walk away. Taken aback, the perpetrator began to walk off, but he turned around and shouted at Aarons friend, Man, who made you Gandhi?!" Its important for Winnipeggers who happen upon street violence to realize there are choices beyond fighting or fleeing. For example, in the case of the college instructor who said passing motorists ignored his waves for help, perhaps drivers could have stopped and, remaining safe in their vehicles, distracted the attacker by honking their horn, flashing their high beams and emergency lights, and rolling down the window to offer non-confrontational comments to the attacker, such as "Hey guy, not cool. Leave him alone." Distract the attacker. Connect with the victim. Chronicle the violence. Those are choices we can all make. If we want Winnipeg to be a city where people dont walk on by, its on us. POSTSCRIPT: Doug Thomas, the fellow injured when he left the A&W to help the victim in a bus shelter, was given tickets to a John Mellencamp concert thanks to Pay it Forward Winnipeg, a local Facebook page that spreads random acts of kindness. Thats the way to do it, Winnipeg. People who try to interrupt violence should be regarded as heroes, not chumps. Carl DeGurse is a member of the Free Press editorial board. Former President Mahinda Rajapaksa was sworn in as the Prime Minister before President Maithripala Sirisena a short while ago. President Maithripala Sirisena has informed Prime Minister Ranil Wickremesinghe in writing that he has been removed as the Prime Minister with immediate effect according to clause (42) 4 of the Constitution. Video by Damith American Consumer News, LLC dba MarketBeat 2010-2021. 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Amana Bank CEO Mohamed Azmeer and Senior Manager Azam Ameer handing over the token towards the betterment of the Paediatric Ward of the Kandy General Hospital In line with its overall CSR focus towards initiatives that support children, primarily paying attention to their health, education and general well-being amongst other key needs, Amana Bank recently contributed towards the betterment of the Paediatric Ward of the Kandy General Hospital. As part of its contribution, the Bank provided new mattresses to be used exclusively for the benefit of the ward patients. Commenting on the project which was initiated by the Banks Kandy Branch, Amana Bank Chief Executive Officer Mohamed Azmeer said Over the years we have sincerely supported initiatives that improve the health care received by children at hospitals. This contribution will go a long way in ensuring the patients at the ward receive utmost care towards a speedy recovery for which we feel very much gratified and honouredin extending a helping hand. Apart from this contribution to the Paediatric Ward of the Kandy General Hospital, towards the betterment of childrens healthcare Amana Bank has been maintaining the Childrens Ward (Ward 15B) of the Colombo South Teaching Hospital since 2006 and also recently contributed towards the surgery and recovery expenses of 14 year old Thalassemia patient Hasini Rajapaksha. Amana Bank PLC is a stand-alone institution licensed by the Central Bank of Sri Lanka and listed on the Colombo Stock Exchange with Jeddah based IDB Group being the principal shareholder having a 29.97% stake of the Bank. The IDB Group is a AAA rated multilateral development financial institution with an authorized capital base of over USD 150 Billion which has a membership of 57 countries. 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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. Aetna Inc. operates as a health care benefits company in the United States. It operates through three segments: Health Care, Group Insurance, and Large Case Pensions. The Health Care segment offers medical, pharmacy benefit management service, dental, behavioral health, and vision plans on an insured and employer-funded basis. It also provides point-of-service, preferred provider organization, health maintenance organization, and indemnity benefit plans, as well as health savings accounts and consumer-directed health plans. In addition, this segment offers Medicare and Medicaid products and services, as well as other medical products, such as medical management and data analytics services, medical stop loss insurance, workers' compensation administrative services, and products that provide access to its provider networks in select geographies. The Group Insurance segment offers life insurance products, including group term life insurance, voluntary spouse and dependent term life insurance, group universal life insurance, and accidental death and dismemberment insurance; disability insurance products; and long-term care insurance products, which provide the benefits to cover the cost of care in private home settings, adult day care, assisted living, or nursing facilities. The Large Case Pensions segment manages various retirement products comprising pension and annuity products primarily for tax-qualified pension plans. The company provides its products and services to employer groups, individuals, college students, part-time and hourly workers, health plans, health care providers, governmental units, government-sponsored plans, labor groups, and expatriates. Aetna Inc. was founded in 1853 and is based in Hartford, Connecticut. Read More President Maithripala Sirisena should immediately dissolve the Cabinet and establish a caretaker government with the support of all political parties, Parliamentarian Ven. Athuraliye Rathana Thera yesterday said. He said the country was going through a rough patch and there were agitations taking place, mainly in response to the alleged plot to assassinate President Maithripala Sirisena and former Defence Secretary Gotabaya Rajapaksa. No one is taking this issue seriously. But I think everyone should. Even though I have my reservations about the President, at a moment like this we should all come together to protect him. If a foreign country or government is trying to assassinate him, it is the responsibility of the authorities to conduct a proper probe, he told a news conference. Commenting on the reports of Cabinet Ministers having affiliations with RAW and the roles played by former TID DIG Nalaka Silva and the IGP in the alleged assassination plot, the thera said these issues raise many questions. Why is India trying to kill the President? Once he is no more, who will become the President. According to the Constitution, the Premier will become the President. Does India want to make the Prime Minister the President or want to kill him as well? These are serious issues. It doesnt matter if its India or China. If any faction wants to harm our sovereignty, everyone should join together to prevent it from happening, the thera said. The thera said Sri Lanka is on the verge of becoming an unstable country with assassination plots and alienation of national assets in order to satisfy world powerhouses. Just because we leased out Hambantota Port to China, it doesnt mean we should give India another asset. We should try to get back the Hambantota Port. I think all ministers and officials of this government should resign and go for an interim caretaker government until the next election is held. The President has the power to call for one according to the Constitution, he said. The thera said he would meet all political leaders including the President, the Premier, former President Mahinda Rajapaksa and the JVP to discuss the formation of an interim government in the next few days. (Lahiru Pothmulla) Video by Buddhi iShares MSCI United Kingdom ETF's stock was trading at $25.60 on March 11th, 2020 when COVID-19 reached pandemic status according to the World Health Organization. Since then, EWU stock has increased by 30.3% and is now trading at $33.35. View which stocks have been most impacted by COVID-19. The following companies are subsidiares of BorgWarner: B80 Italia S.r.l., BERU AG, BW El Salto S.A. De C.V., BWA Receivables Corporation, BWA Turbo Systems Holding LLC, Borg Warner Europe Holdings (PDS) B. V., BorgWarner (China) Investment Co. Ltd., BorgWarner (Reman) Holdings L.L.C., BorgWarner (Thailand) Limited, BorgWarner Aftermarket Europe GmbH, BorgWarner Alternators Inc., BorgWarner Arden LLC, BorgWarner Arnstadt RE GmbH & Co. KG, BorgWarner Asia Inc., BorgWarner Automotive Asia Limited, BorgWarner Automotive Components (Beijing) Co. Ltd., BorgWarner Automotive Components (Jiangsu) Co. Ltd., BorgWarner Automotive Components (Ningbo) Co. Ltd., BorgWarner Automotive Components (Tianjin) Co. Ltd., BorgWarner Automotive Components (Wuhan) Co. Ltd., BorgWarner Brasil Ltda., BorgWarner Chungju Co. LLC, BorgWarner Comercial e Distribuidora de Pecas para Veiculos Automotores Ltda., BorgWarner Comercializadora PDS S. de R.L. de C.V., BorgWarner Componentes PDS S. de R.L. de C.V., BorgWarner Cooling Systems (India) Private Limited, BorgWarner Cooling Systems GmbH, BorgWarner Diversified Transmission Products Services Inc., BorgWarner Drivetrain Engineering GmbH, BorgWarner Drivetrain Management Services de Mexico S.A. de C.V., BorgWarner Drivetrain de Mexico S.A. de C.V., BorgWarner Electric Motors L.L.C., BorgWarner Emissions Systems (Ningbo) Co. Ltd., BorgWarner Emissions Systems (Ningbo) Co. Ltd., BorgWarner Emissions Systems Holding LLC, BorgWarner Emissions Systems India Private Limited, BorgWarner Emissions Systems LLC, BorgWarner Emissions Systems Portugal Unipessoal LDA, BorgWarner Emissions Systems Spain S.L.U., BorgWarner Emissions Systems of Michigan Inc., BorgWarner Emissions Talegaon Private Limited, BorgWarner Engineering Ketsch RE GmbH & Co. KG, BorgWarner Engineering Kibo RE GmbH & Co. KG, BorgWarner Esslingen GmbH, BorgWarner Europe GmbH, BorgWarner Europe Holding S.a. r. l., BorgWarner Gateshead Limited, BorgWarner Germany Holding GmbH, BorgWarner Germany Holding Services GmbH, BorgWarner Germany REH GmbH, BorgWarner Germany REM GmbH, BorgWarner Germany Verwaltungs GmbH, BorgWarner Global Holding S.a. r. l., BorgWarner Heidelberg I RE GmbH & Co. KG, BorgWarner Heidelberg II RE GmbH & Co. KG, BorgWarner Heidelberg REH GmbH, BorgWarner Heidelberg REM GmbH, BorgWarner Holding Inc., BorgWarner Holdings Limited, BorgWarner Hungary Kft., BorgWarner IT Services Europe GmbH, BorgWarner India Holdings Inc., BorgWarner Investment Holding Inc., BorgWarner Ithaca LLC, BorgWarner Ketsch Plant RE GmbH & Co. KG, BorgWarner Ketsch REH GmbH, BorgWarner Ketsch REM GmbH, BorgWarner Kft., BorgWarner Kibo RE GmbH & Co. KG, BorgWarner Korea Holdings (PDS) B.V., BorgWarner Korea Holdings LLC, BorgWarner Korea LLC, BorgWarner Limited, BorgWarner Ludwigsburg GmbH, BorgWarner Ludwigsburg RE GmbH & Co. KG, BorgWarner Markdorf Plant RE GmbH & Co. KG, BorgWarner Markdorf REH GmbH, BorgWarner Markdorf REM GmbH, BorgWarner Massachusetts Inc., BorgWarner Mauritius Holdings Ltd., BorgWarner Mexico Holding BV, BorgWarner Mexico Holdings II LLC, BorgWarner Mexico Holdings LLC, BorgWarner Morse Systems India Private Limited, BorgWarner Morse Systems Italy S.r.l., BorgWarner Morse Systems Japan K.K., BorgWarner Morse Systems Mexico S.A. de C.V., BorgWarner Muggendorf RE GmbH & Co. KG, BorgWarner NW Inc., BorgWarner Netherlands Holdings (PDS) B.V., BorgWarner Oroszlany Kft., BorgWarner PDS (Anderson) L.L.C., BorgWarner PDS (Changnyeong) LLC, BorgWarner PDS (Indiana) Inc., BorgWarner PDS (Livonia) Inc., BorgWarner PDS (Ochang) LLC, BorgWarner PDS (Thailand) Limited, BorgWarner PDS (USA) Inc., BorgWarner PDS Brasil Produtos Automotivos Ltda., BorgWarner PDS Irapuato S. de R.L. de C.V., BorgWarner PDS Mexico Holdings S. de R.L. de C.V., BorgWarner PDS Technologies L.L.C., BorgWarner Poland Sp. z o.o., BorgWarner Pyongtaek LLC, BorgWarner Romeo Power LLC, BorgWarner Rzeszow Sp. z o.o., BorgWarner Shenglong (Ningbo) Co. Ltd., BorgWarner South Asia LLC, BorgWarner Southborough Inc., BorgWarner Spain Holding S.L.U, BorgWarner Sweden AB, BorgWarner Systems Lugo S.r.l., BorgWarner Thermal Systems Inc., BorgWarner Thermal Systems of Michigan Inc., BorgWarner TorqTransfer Systems Beijing Co. Ltd., BorgWarner Tralee Ltd., BorgWarner Transmission Products LLC, BorgWarner Transmission Systems Arnstadt GmbH, BorgWarner Transmission Systems GmbH, BorgWarner Transmission Systems Korea LLC, BorgWarner Transmission Systems Tulle S.A.S., BorgWarner Trustees Limited, BorgWarner Turbo & Emissions Systems France S.A.S., BorgWarner Turbo Systems Engineering GmbH, BorgWarner Turbo Systems GmbH, BorgWarner Turbo Systems LLC, BorgWarner Turbo Systems Worldwide Headquarters GmbH, BorgWarner Turbo Systems of Michigan Inc., BorgWarner Turbo and Emissions Systems de Mexico S.A. de C.V., BorgWarner UK Financing Ltd., BorgWarner UK Holding and Services Ltd., BorgWarner US Holding LLC, BorgWarner USA Industries L.L.C., BorgWarner United Transmission Systems Co. Ltd., BorgWarner Waterloo Inc., BorgWarner Wrexham Limited, Cascadia Motion LLC, Creon Insurance Agency Limited, Delphi Technologies, Dytech ENSA, Gustav Wahler GmbH u. Co. KG, Haldex, Kuhlman LLC, Kysor Europe Limited, M. & M. Knopf Auto Parts L.L.C., NSK-Warner (Shanghai) Co. Ltd., NSK-Warner K.K., NSK-Warner Mexico S.A. de C.V, NSK-Warner U.S.A. Inc., New PDS Corp., Old Remco Holdings L.L.C., Old Remco International Holdings L.L.C., Remy International, SeohanWarner Turbo Systems LLC, Sevcon, Sevcon New Energy Technology (Hubei) Company Limited, and Transmission Systems AutoForm LLC. The following companies are subsidiares of AON: 6824625 Canada Ltd., 7193599 Canada Inc., A.B. Insurances Limited, ADIS A/S, AIB Services Limited, AIS Affinity Insurance Agency Inc., AIS Insurance Agency Inc., AMXH LLC, ARM International Corp., ARM International Insurance Agency Corp., ARMRISK CORP., AS Holdings Inc., ASPN Insurance Agency LLC, Access Plans USA Inc., Acumen Credit Insurance Brokers Limited, Adm Administradora de Beneficios Ltda., Administradora Aon C.A., Admiseg SA, Admix, Admix - Administracao Consultoria Participacoes e Corretora de Seguros de Vida Ltda., Aeropeople Limited, Affinity Group Insurance Services Limited, Affinity Insurance Services Inc., Affinity Risk Partners (Brokers) Pty Ltd, Agenion N.V./SA, Agility Credit Insurance Brokers Limited, Alexander & Alexander Holding B.V., Alexander Clay, Alexander Insurance Managers (Netherlands Antilles) N.V., Alexander Reinsurance Intermediaries Inc., Allen Insurance Associates Inc., Alliance HealthCard Inc., Alliance HealthCard of Florida Inc., American Insurance Services Corp., American Special Risk Insurance Company, Aon (Bermuda) Ltd., Aon (CR) Insurance Agencies Company Limited, Aon (DIFC) Gulf Limited, Aon (Fiji) Ltd., Aon (Isle of Man) Limited, Aon (Thailand) Limited, Aon 180412 Limited (in liquidation), Aon ANZ Holdings Limited, Aon APAC Holdings B.V., Aon Acore Sarl, Aon Adjudication Services Limited, Aon Affinity Administradora de Beneficios Ltda., Aon Affinity Argentina S.A., Aon Affinity Chile Ltda., Aon Affinity Colombia Ltda. Agencia de Seguros, Aon Affinity Mexico Agente de Seguros y de Fianzas S.A. de C.V., Aon Affinity Mexico S.A. de C.V., Aon Affinity Servicos e Participacoes Ltda., Aon Affinity do Brasil Servicos e Corretora de Seguros Ltda., Aon Agencies Hong Kong Limited, Aon Americas Holdings BV, Aon Angola Corretores de Seguros Limitada, Aon Antillen N.V., Aon Aruba N.V., Aon Assurance Agencies Hong Kong Limited, Aon Australia Group Pty Ltd, Aon Australian Holdco 1 Pty Ltd, Aon Australian Holdco 2 Pty Ltd, Aon Australian Holdco 3 Pty Ltd, Aon Austria GmbH, Aon Bahrain W.L.L., Aon Belgium B.V.B.A., Aon Benefit Solutions Inc., Aon Benfield (Chile) Corredores de Reaseguros Ltda., Aon Benfield Argentina S.A., Aon Benfield Australia Limited, Aon Benfield Brasil Corretora de Resseguros Ltda., Aon Benfield Canada ULC, Aon Benfield China Limited, Aon Benfield Colombia Limitada Corredores de Reaseguros, Aon Benfield Fac Inc., Aon Benfield Global Inc., Aon Benfield Group Limited, Aon Benfield Inc., Aon Benfield Israel Limited, Aon Benfield Italia S.p.A., Aon Benfield Japan Ltd, Aon Benfield Latin America SA, Aon Benfield Limited, Aon Benfield Malaysia Limited, Aon Benfield Mexico Intermediario de Reaseguro SA de CV, Aon Benfield Middle East Limited, Aon Benfield New Zealand Limited, Aon Benfield Panama S.A., Aon Benfield Peru Corredores de Reaseguros SA, Aon Benfield Puerto Rico Inc., Aon Bermuda Holding Company Limited, Aon Bermuda QI Holdings Ltd., Aon Beteiligungsmanagement Deutschland GmbH & Co. KG, Aon Bolivia S.A. Corredores de Seguros, Aon Botswana (Pty) Ltd., Aon Brazil Holdings LLC, Aon Broking Services SA, Aon Broking Technology Limited, Aon CANZ Holdings B.V., Aon CANZ Holdings N.S. ULC, Aon Canada Holdings N.S. ULC, Aon Canada Inc., Aon Canada Intermediaries GP, Aon Captive Services Antilles N.V., Aon Captive Services Aruba N.V., Aon Cash Management B.V., Aon Central and Eastern Europe a.s., Aon Centre for Innovation and Analytics Ltd, Aon Charitable Foundation Pty Ltd, Aon Chile Holdings LLC, Aon Commercial Insurance Agencies Hong Kong Limited, Aon Commercial Services Ireland Limited, Aon Commercial Services and Operations Ireland Limited, Aon Consolidation Group Pty Ltd, Aon Consulting & Insurance Services, Aon Consulting (Chile) Limitada, Aon Consulting (Thailand) Limited, Aon Consulting Bolivia S.R.L., Aon Consulting Ecuador S.A., Aon Consulting Financial Services Limited, Aon Consulting Inc., Aon Consulting Kazakhstan LLP, Aon Consulting Limited, Aon Consulting Private Limited, Aon Consulting Romania SRL, Aon Corporate Services (Isle of Man) Limited, Aon Corporate Services Limited, Aon Corporation, Aon Corporation Australia Limited, Aon Corporation EMEA B.V., Aon Credit International Insurance Broker GmbH, Aon Cyprus Insurance Broker Company Limited, Aon DC Trustee Limited, Aon Danismanlik Hizmetleri AS, Aon Delta Bermuda Ltd., Aon Delta UK Limited, Aon Denmark A/S, Aon Deutschland Beteiligungs GmbH, Aon Direct Group Inc., Aon Edge Insurance Agency Inc., Aon Energy Caribbean Limited, Aon Enterprise Insurance Agencies Hong Kong Limited, Aon Finance Bermuda 1 Ltd., Aon Finance Bermuda 2 Ltd., Aon Finance Canada 1 Corp., Aon Finance Canada 2 Corp., Aon Finance International N.S. ULC, Aon Finance Luxembourg S.a.r.l., Aon Finance N.S. 1 ULC, Aon Finance N.S. 5 ULC, Aon Finance N.S. 8 ULC, Aon Finance US 1 LLC, Aon Finance US 2 LLC, Aon Financial & Insurance Solutions Inc., Aon Finland Oy, Aon France, Aon Global Holdings 1 Limited, Aon Global Holdings 2 Limited, Aon Global Holdings 3 Limited [In strike-off], Aon Global Holdings Limited, Aon Global Operations plc, Aon Global Risk Consulting B.V., Aon Global Risk Consulting Luxembourg S.a.r.l., Aon Global Risk Research Limited, Aon Grana Peru Corredores de Seguros SA, Aon Greece S.A., Aon Groep Nederland B.V., Aon Group (Bermuda) Ltd., Aon Group (Thailand) Limited, Aon Group Holdings International 1 B.V., Aon Group Holdings International 2 B.V., Aon Group Inc., Aon Group International N.V., Aon Group Pty Ltd, Aon Group Venezuela Corretaje de Reaseguros C.A., Aon Hewitt (Bermuda) Ltd., Aon Hewitt (Ireland) Limited, Aon Hewitt (PNG) Ltd., Aon Hewitt (Thailand) Ltd., Aon Hewitt Consulting (Shanghai) Co. Ltd., Aon Hewitt Consulting Korea Inc., Aon Hewitt Financial Advice Limited, Aon Hewitt GmbH, Aon Hewitt Health Market Insurance Solutions Inc., Aon Hewitt Hong Kong Limited, Aon Hewitt Inc., Aon Hewitt Investment Consulting Inc., Aon Hewitt Investment Management Inc., Aon Hewitt Japan Ltd., Aon Hewitt Limited, Aon Hewitt Ltd., Aon Hewitt Malaysia Sdn Bhd, Aon Hewitt Management Company Limited, Aon Hewitt Middle East Limited, Aon Hewitt Risk & Consulting S.r.l., Aon Hewitt Risk & Financial Management B.V., Aon Hewitt Trust Solutions GmbH, Aon Hewitt US Holdings Limited, Aon Holding Deutschland GmbH, Aon Holdings (Isle of Man) Limited, Aon Holdings Antillen N.V., Aon Holdings Australia Pty Limited, Aon Holdings Austria GmbH, Aon Holdings B.V., Aon Holdings Botswana (Pty) Ltd, Aon Holdings Corretores de Seguros Ltda., Aon Holdings France SNC, Aon Holdings Hong Kong Limited, Aon Holdings International B.V., Aon Holdings Israel Ltd., Aon Holdings Japan Ltd, Aon Holdings Limited, Aon Holdings Luxembourg S.a.r.l., Aon Holdings Mid Europe B.V., Aon Holdings New Zealand, Aon Hong Kong Limited, Aon Hungary Insurance Brokers Risk and Human Consulting LLC, Aon Insurance Agencies (HK) Limited, Aon Insurance Agencies (Macau) Limited, Aon Insurance Brokers (Malaysia) Sdn Bhd, Aon Insurance Brokers (Pvt) Ltd., Aon Insurance Management Agencies (HK) Limited, Aon Insurance Managers (Antilles) N.V., Aon Insurance Managers (Barbados) Ltd., Aon Insurance Managers (Bermuda) Ltd, Aon Insurance Managers (Cayman) Ltd., Aon Insurance Managers (Dublin) Ltd., Aon Insurance Managers (Guernsey) Ltd., Aon Insurance Managers (Holdings) Ltd., Aon Insurance Managers (Isle of Man) Ltd., Aon Insurance Managers (Liechtenstein) AG, Aon Insurance Managers (Luxembourg) S.A., Aon Insurance Managers (Malta) PCC Limited, Aon Insurance Managers (Puerto Rico) Inc., Aon Insurance Managers (Shannon) Limited, Aon Insurance Managers (USA) Inc., Aon Insurance Managers (USVI) Inc., Aon Insurance Managers Gibraltar Ltd., Aon Insurance Micronesia (Guam) Inc, Aon Insurance Underwriting Agencies Hong Kong Limited, Aon Insurance and Reinsurance Brokers Philippines Inc., Aon International Cooperatief U.A., Aon International Energy Inc., Aon International Holdings Inc., Aon Investment Holdings Ireland Limited, Aon Israel Insurance Brokerage Ltd., Aon Italia S.r.l., Aon Japan Ltd, Aon Jauch & Hubener Gesellschaft m.b.H., Aon Korea Inc., Aon Latam Holdings N.V., Aon Lead QI B.V., Aon Life Agency of Texas Inc., Aon Life Agente de Seguros S.A. de C.V., Aon Life Insurance Company, Aon MacDonagh Boland Group Ltd, Aon Majan LLC, Aon Management Consulting Taiwan Ltd., Aon Mauritius Holdings, Aon Meeus Assurantien B.V., Aon Mexico Business Support SA de CV, Aon Mexico Holdings LLC, Aon Mexico Holdings S. de R.L. de C.V., Aon Middle East Co LLC, Aon Nederland C.V., Aon Netherlands Operations B.V., Aon Neudorf Finance S.a.r.l., Aon New Zealand, Aon New Zealand Group ULC, Aon Norway AS, Aon Overseas Holdings Limited, Aon PHI Acquisition Corporation of California, Aon PMI International Limited, Aon Parizeau Inc., Aon Pension Trustees Limited, Aon Pensions Insurance Brokers GmbH, Aon Polska Services Sp. z o.o., Aon Polska Sp. z o.o., Aon Portugal - Consultores Unipessoal Lda., Aon Portugal - Corretores de Seguros S.A., Aon Premium Finance LLC, Aon Private Risk Management Insurance Agency Inc., Aon Private Risk Management of California Insurance Agency Inc., Aon Product Design & Development Australia Pty Limited, Aon Product Design and Development New Zealand Limited, Aon Product Risk Services Hong Kong Limited, Aon Property Risk Consulting Inc., Aon Qatar LLC, Aon Re (Thailand) Limited, Aon Re Bertoldi - Corretagem de Resseguros S.A., Aon Re Bolivia S.A. 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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 By D.B.S. Jeyaraj Gratitude is a virtue that is greatly valued in Tamil society and culture Discussions at the TNA office in Bambalapitiya established a clear demarcation of battle lines Provincial Councils enjoy a certain quantum of devolution Blow, blow, thou winter wind, Thou art not so unkind, As mans ingratitude - William Shakespeare As You Like It. Its official now! Canagasabapathy Visuvalingam Wigneswaran has announced the launch of a new political formation known as the Thamizh Makkal Koottani meaning Tamil Peoples Alliance (TPA). The retired Supreme Court judge who was until a few days ago the Northern Province Chief Minister has split from the Thamizh Thesiya Koottamaippu or the Tamil National Alliance (TNA) and declared his intent to form the TPA which is expected to electorally-target the TNA. Some may even argue that the raison detre for the new TPA is the objective of politically undermining the old TNA. The Tamil National Alliance is the premier political configuration of Sri Lankan Tamils. The chief constituent of the TNA is the Ilankai Thamil Arasu Katchi (ITAK) referred to in English as the Federal Party (FP). The TNA contests under the House symbol of the ITAK in elections. C.V. Wigneswaran contested the Northern Provincial Council elections in September 2013 as the chief ministerial candidate of the TNA. He contested as the ITAK candidate in the Jaffna District with the backing of other TNA constituents at that time, namely the TELO, PLOTE, TULF and EPRLF. Current leader of the opposition and veteran Tamil politician Rajavarothayam Sampanthan was the President of ITAK and Parliamentary group leader of the TNA in 2013. It was Sampanthan who was primarily responsible for selecting Wigneswaran as the TNA chief ministerial candidate. This he did against much opposition within party folds. Sampanthan was aided in this exercise by MP M.A. Sumanthiran. Sampanthan was at one point even prepared to quit his position if Wigneswaran were not nominated. The NPC election on September 21, 2013 resulted in a massive victory for the TNA which romped home the winners with 30 of 38 seats. Wigneswaran garnered over 132,000 preference votes. The TNA victory was a joint success of Sampanthan and Wigneswaran. Both were crowned with flowers at victory celebrations. Much was expected of C.V. Wigneswaran when he was first elected chief minister of the Northern Province. Sadly those hopes turned into dupes very soon. Wigneswaran adopted a confrontational political approach that left much to be desired. Projecting himself as a Tamil hardliner, the ex-chief minister engaged in all types of disruptive politics while the Northern Provincial administration deteriorated. The Northern Provincial Council (NPC) became the worst-run provincial administration in the country. The provincial councils of Sri Lanka do enjoy a certain quantum of devolution. They may not have maximum devolution but the powers available are adequate to plan and implement a reasonable amount of development projects. The provincial council representing the war-afflicted people of the war-ravaged North had an extra responsibility and duty to harness all available resources for the betterment of the province. But this was not what happened. Instead of passing necessary statutes, the NPC busied itself with passing hundreds of useless, irrelevant resolutions. Finances allocated by the Treasury for development work in the province were under-utilised resulting in the remainder being returned to the Treasury. When major projects with international aid for the benefit of the North were initiated by the government in Colombo, the NPC did not cooperate and instead obstructed them. When concerned Sri Lankan expatriates came up with blueprints to establish employment-oriented, income-generating schemes, they were rebuffed and rejected. The credo adopted by Wigneswaran and his cohorts was Abilaashaigalae Mukkiam, Abhiviruthiyalla (Aspirations are only important not development). TAMIL PEOPLES COUNCIL Moreover in a classic exhibition of political backstabbing, C.V. Wigneswaran began working -- covertly and at times overtly -- against the TNA in general and the ITAK in particular. He floated a rival outfit called the Tamil Peoples Council (TPC) in association with a motley group of political elements and said the TPC would not contest elections. Now after the end of his chief minister tenure, Wigneswaran has announced the formation of the TPA to contest elections. It has now become blatantly clear that the arch-disciple of Swami Premananda has kicked away the TNA ladder on which he climbed to reach the top. Wigneswaran delivered a lengthy address in Nallur the erstwhile capital of the Jaffna Kingdom ruled by the Arya Chakkaravarthy dynasty many centuries ago. The ex-chief minister read out the speech drafted by him personally. The political significance of the speech was not in what was said but in what was left unsaid. One would have expected a retired Supreme Court judge to have the elementary courtesy of acknowledging the TNA/ITAK which elevated him to great heights in politics. One would have expected the former chief minister to have the basic grace of at least thanking Sampanthan for having selected and nominated him as the TNA chief ministerial candidate. Nothing at all was mentioned. It was as if Canagasabapathy Visuvalingam Wigneswaran had entered politics and become chief minister without any aid or assistance of Rajavarothayam Sampanthan . It is against this backdrop therefore that this column will focus on how and why C.V. Wigneswaran was picked and backed by R. Sampanthan to be the TNA chief ministerial candidate in 2013. When it became known that elections to the Northern Provincial Council would be held in 2013, it became clear that the Tamil National Alliance would fare best at the polls. The immediate questions were how many seats would the TNA win and who would be the first Northern chief minister. Initially the latter question had many contenders vying to be the answer. Among the names being bandied or talked about as potential chief ministerial candidates were retired Jaffna University ProfessorS.K. Sittambalam, ex-Jaffna Municipal Commissioner C.V.K. Sivagnanam, Colombo University Law Professor V.T. Thamilmaran, retired Jaffna High Court Judge E.T. Vicknarajah and newspaper Editor N. Vithiyatharan. If these were spoken of as contenders outside active politics, there were aspirants from within political parties too. Somasuntharam Senathirajah alias Maavai of ITAK, Kandiah Premachandran alias Suresh of EPRLF, MK Sivajilingam of TELO also evinced interest in the chief ministerial stakes at one point of time. Other possibilities for the chief ministerial post were veteran politician Veerasingham Aanandasangaree of the TULF and Dharmalingam Siddharthan of the PLOTE. Two other names spoken about were former Mannar MP Philip Soosaithasan (who has since passed away) and S.C. Chandrahasan, the son of respected Tamil leader S.J.V. Chelvanayagam or Thanthai Selva. CHIEF MINISTERIAL CANDIDATE It appeared that the prevalent fragile unity of the TNA might shatter over the huge competition to be chief minister. It was in this situation that TNA leader Rajavarothayam Sampanthan thought of bringing in a complete outsider with exemplary qualifications and unimpeachable credentials as chief ministerial candidate. His choice was retired Supreme Court Judge C.V. Wigneswaran whose name had been proposed to the TNA leadership by members of the Tamil elite in Sri Lanka and abroad. Justice Wigneswaran though of Jaffna origin had grown up in Colombo studying at Royal College. He had a distinguished record at the bar before mounting the bench. Essentially a cosmopolitan, Wigneswaran also retained strong Hindu links. Sampanthan felt that Wigneswaran was the ideal choice for a number of reasons. Given his qualifications and experience and his track record while on the bench and afterwards, Wigneswaran was sure to attract votes immensely in the North. It was also felt it was necessary to have a man of eminence like Wigneswaran as Northern chief minister at that historic juncture. The new chief minister would have to meet with the Colombo Government on a number of matters. He needed to negotiate with the government for more powers, resources and functions for the council. He should have the ability to interact on equal terms with the governor and military hierarchy in the North. He must also be able to deal with international leaders, diplomats and media personnel. These required extraordinary attributes and ideally, Wigneswaran seemed to fit the bill. Besides, Wigneswaran possessed legal acumen and expertise that could be of crucial importance. More importantly, Sampanthan also felt that the quibbling over chief ministerial stakes in the TNA would end once Wigneswaran was picked. He expected the other contenders to bow out gracefully when a man of Wigneswarans mercurial stature became available. Thus, internal dissension on this account could be avoided. When approached Wigneswaran himself was reluctant to get into active politics. He preferred to be in the background and be an adviser rather than face hustings. Also he was fully aware of the internal differences in the TNA and did not want to get enmeshed in a political web. He wanted a united invitation from all five TNA constituents. Wigneswaran also entertained the notion that he could lead an independent united list of Tamils rather than that of a political party. With such options being ruled out, Wigneswaran respectfully declined the offer. AN UNCONTROLLABLE PERSONALITY Other currents too were flowing across the Elephant Pass isthmus even as Sampanthan was wooing Wigneswaran. While the Jaffna elite was delighted with the choice of Wigneswaran, other political elements in the ITAK were not greatly enamoured of the ex-Supreme Court judge. The party machinery was doubtful whether the independent Wigneswaran would fit into the Jaffna political scene and abide by the decisions of the TNA. He was seen as an uncontrollable personality (ultimately these fears were proved true). Sampanthan however did not give up on Wigneswaran. Sampanthan apparently believed in not taking no for an answer. The octogenarian Tamil leader aided by TNA National List MP M.A. Sumanthiran persistently wooed C.V. Wigneswaran and finally the Hulftsdorp born Wigneswaran whose parents hail from Maanipaai in Jaffna said Om (yes). The interlude between Wigneswarans refusal and acceptance had been utilised to mount a campaign promoting the then ITAK General-Secretary and senior Jaffna District MP Somasundaram Senathirajah known as Maavai Senathirajah as chief ministerial candidate. He is now the ITAK President. Senathirajah who maintained silence as the campaign gathered momentum announced after a while that he was prepared to contest to serve the people if the people wanted it. However, he qualified his willingness by saying it depended on approval from the party. After Wigneswaran consented to contest, Sampanthan expected Senathirajah to bow out from the race gracefully and wind up his candidacy campaign. Senathirajah kept a discreet silence on this without committing himself either way. While not asserting his claim to Sampanthan, Maavai also did not announce a withdrawal. Sampanthan felt Wigneswaran was the ideal choice for a number of reasons TNA victory a joint success of Sampanthan and Wigneswaran The major difference of opinion that emerged between Sampanthan and Senathirajah over the Northern chief ministerial post was one that could have been averted. Had both leaders met in private beforehand and engaged in an honest discussion the potential crisis may have been resolved through a mutually acceptable compromise. This did not happen. So here was Sampanthan expecting Senathirajah to bow out from a race that had not begun and also convince his backers to back out and there was Senathirajah determined to stake what he regarded as his rightful claim to be the first chief minister of the Northern Provincial Council. However, the differences between Sampanthan and Senathirajah were not serious enough to be described as a rift. It was against this backdrop that the TNA Coordinating Committee first met on July 11, 2013 at the ITAK office in Bambalapitiya to select the chief ministerial candidate. Representatives of the five parties in TNA began discussing. Sampanthan chairing the meeting let others talk first. In a complicated reversal of roles the non -- ITAK parties, namely the EPRLF, TELO, PLOTE and TULF -- proposed the name of the ITAKs Mavai Senathirajah and spoke in support of his candidacy. SOMASUNTHARAM MAAVAI SENATHIRAJAH In a further twist, the ITAK to which Senathirajah belonged proposed Wigneswarans name instead of their Secretary-General. While MP Shritharan was in Canada, the others, Selvarajah (ex-Batticaloa MP) and Sumanthiran spoke in favour of Wigneswaran. Somasuntharam Maavai Senathirajah adopted a conspicuous silence letting his nonITAK colleagues of the TNA do all the talking in his favour. Sampanthan as chair remained silent throughout the proceedings until his turn came at the last. Thereafter, Sampanthan waxed eloquent in support of Wigneswaran. Instead of being critical of Senathirajah explicitly, Sampanthan chose to espouse the merits of Wigneswaran and how the ex-judge would prove ideal to meet the challenge of being chief minister of the North at this critical juncture (how wrong Sampanthan was). Sampanthan also stated unambiguously that Wigneswaran himself had not wanted to be Northern chief minister and that it was he (Sampanthan) who wanted Wigneswaran to be chief minister. The meeting ended inconclusively as Sampanthan wound up his address. Thereafter, it was arranged to reconvene the following day and finalise the issue. Heated discussions continued on the second day too without any visible shift in previous positions. At one point of time, the ITAKs Sumanthiran appealed to Senathirajah directly and appraised the senior MP of the problems likely to be faced by the new chief minister. Sumanthiran explained in detail as to why Wigneswaran was better equipped than Senathirajah to face such challenges in the present context (again how wrong Sumanthiran was). The discussions at the TNA office in Bambalapitiya established a clear demarcation of battle lines. The EPRLF, TELO, TULF and PLOTE were on one side espousing the name of Senathirajah. While Senathirajah remained silent, his colleagues from ITAK were supportive of Justice Wigneswaran. Despite Sampanthan and Sumanthiran making powerful, intellectually convincing arguments in favour of Wigneswaran, the supporters of Senathirajah would not budge. They were adamant that Senathirajah should be the choice regardless of merit. The essence of their argument however was that Wigneswaran though of Jaffna origin was now a Tamil resident in Colombo who was born and bred there. Senathirajah on the other hand was a son of the Jaffna soil. Furthermore, Wigneswaran was not a member of the ITAK and had no political experience. Senathirajah however was involved from his youthful days in the Tamil political struggle. He was also a founding member of the TNA. In a nutshell the argument was that the insider Senathirajah should be preferred over the outsider Wigneswaran regardless of the individual merits of both. Parachutists from outside were to be debarred. These points were well articulated by former TELO Parliamentarian N. Srikantha who is also a lawyer. While arguing that the Northern chief minister should be a member of the TNA and not an outsider, Srikantha deftly promoted himself also as a potential contender. Srikantha said if Senathirajah was deemed inappropriate because he was not a lawyer then the TNA should turn to those in the alliance before resorting to outside nominations. EVOKED A STRONG RESPONSE Srikantha evoked a strong response from Sampanthan who posed the question whether the TNA was to remain stagnant without any infusion of fresh new talent for ever and ever if the policy was to be no outsiders? This meant that the party could not even register any ordinary new members. Sampanthan also pointed out that Srikantha and Senathirajah from Jaffna had at one time parachuted into Trincomalee and Ampara Districts as candidates. Sampanthan made it crystal clear that his choice was Wigneswaran only. Although he did not express it openly, it appeared that the veteran politician was even ready to quit the TNA leadership if his choice was rebuffed. It was then that Senathirajah broke his silence and spoke out aloud. In a bid to show that he was not a seeker of office for the sake of power the man from Maaviddapuram reiterated that he was seeking nomination only because many people within and outside Sri Lanka were pressing him to contest. Not even one person who spoke to me said I should not contest, said Senathirajah. He then said that he valued Wigneswaran very highly and suggested that it was possible for both of them to work together in the future. The second day meeting ended on this positive note by Senathirajah. It was decided that the discussions should continue in the afternoon of Saturday, July 13, 2013. The concluding remarks of Senathirajah gave room for optimism that a satisfactory compromise could be worked out. Quiet unofficial discussions among individuals and groups within the alliance began at different levels. TNA national list MP Sumanthiran began working out a scheme where Wigneswaran could be chief minister for the first half of the term and Senathirajah for the second. Sampanthan however was not in favour of such an adjustment saying it would convey contrary impressions to the voter and could be counterproductive. Senathirajah too was not very receptive to the idea saying it would be practically difficult to implement such an arrangement. Senathirajah being a Parliamentarian was not comfortable with the idea of going into the Provincial Council and waiting patiently till Wigneswarans tenure was over. Unofficial discussions continued. Sampanthan and Sumanthiran continued with their efforts in promoting the candidature of Wigneswaran. Sampanthan spoke to Suresh Premachandran of EPRLF and Adaikalanathan of TELO. Both agreed in principle to Wigneswaran being the chief ministerial candidate but wanted Senathirajahs concurrence. Sumanthiran began engaging Senathirajah in talks over the subject. As a result of these unpublicised discussions a new move was initiated. A meeting was arranged where Sampanthan, Senathirajah, Sumanthiran, Suresh Premachandran and Selvam Adaikalanathan were to visit Justice Wigneswaran at his residence and discuss pertinent issues concerning the nomination. It is noteworthy that the former Supreme Court judge had not in anyway participated in the TNA discussions tasked with selecting a chief ministerial candidate. Although he had agreed to be the candidate if the TNA chose him, Wigneswaran had not tried in any way to press his claim. When people spoke to him about the protracted discussions within the TNA the ex-judge had simply laughed it off saying let them give it to anybody. TNA CANDIDATE UNDER ITAK SYMBOL Selvam Adaikalanathan was not able to attend the meeting on Saturday morning with Wigneswaran but the other four did so as planned. The meeting with Wigneswaran went off very well with some doubts being cleared. Wigneswaran stated clearly that he was prepared to contest as the TNA candidate under the ITAK symbol and not as head of an independent list of candidates. He also said that his only request was for all TNA constituent parties to agree to his candidacy. The third round of talks scheduled for July 13 evening was put off for the morning of Monday, July 15. When the meeting began the representatives from the EPRLF, TELO, TULF and PLOTE spoke in favour of Wigneswaran as being the most suitable candidate at this juncture. Yet they did not ask Senathirajah to withdraw from the contest. Each one who spoke added a rider after praising Wigneswaran as the more suitable choice. The rider was that Wigneswaran could be the choice provided Senathirajah was amenable. Senathirajah himself resolved the dilemma by speaking out formally. Explaining the reasons behind his intent to contest, Senathirajah emphasised that he had done so only because of requests by the people. He then thanked his TNA colleagues for their support and announced that he was standing down in favour of Wigneswaran because he did not want to disrupt the unity and strength of the party. Senathirajah also praised Wigneswaran and said he was endorsing the ex-judges candidature. With Senathirajahs magnanimous withdrawal the problem ended. Wigneswaran became the unanimous choice. Thereafter representatives from all five parties of the TNA led by Senathirajah went to Wigneswarans residence and conveyed the glad tidings of great joy to him. Wigneswaran was happy that the choice had been approved by all five parties who had come together to formally inform him of it. He was particularly thankful to Senathirajah for his magnanimous conduct and stated that he was expecting his cooperation and support in the future. And then they all smilingly posed for the camera! Canagasabapathy Visuvalingam Wigneswaran was named by the Tamil National Alliance (TNA) on the ides of July as its chief ministerial candidate for the forthcoming Northern Provincial Council election. The TNA issued a terse press release announcing the selection of Wigneswaran. It was unanimously resolved that the candidate for the post of chief minister at the forthcoming Provincial Council elections for the Northern Province would be C.V. Wigneswaran, a retired judge of the Supreme Court of Sri Lanka. Other nominations will be finalised in due course by the TNA, the communique stated. It further said C. V. Wigneswaran is a much respected public personality and we appeal to the voters in the Northern Province to wholeheartedly support C. V. Wigneswaran, the chief ministerial candidate of the TNA and all other candidates who will be nominated for election. ILANKAI THAMIL ARASU KATCHI However there was another minor theatre of conflict within Ilankai Thamil Arasu Katchi(ITAK) ranks over Wigneswaran being selected as chief ministerial candidate. The selection of Wigneswaran was done by the coordinating committee of the TNA where all four non-ITAK constituents had been in favour of Senathirajah. But parliamentarians from the ITAK - Sampanthan, Sumanthiran and Selvarajah had been supportive of Wigneswaran. This was rather ironic with Senathirajah being supported by other parties but not his own the ITAK. Thus the stage seemed to be set for an internal clash within the ITAK over the chief ministerial selection issue. It appeared that a showdown was on the cards when the working committee of the ITAK met in Vavuniya. So it was expected that the sparks would fly in Vavuniya. Some felt that the chief ministerial candidacy issue would be reopened and that the ITAK would demand that Wigneswaran be jettisoned and Senathirajah crowned. This however did not happen but the sparks did fly! While Senathirajah maintained poignant silence the big gun that boomed against Sampanthan was Emeritus Professor S.K. Sittampalam. Sittampalam harshly disapproved of the decision to designate Wigneswaran as chief candidate. He was followed on the same lines but with more restraint by C.V.K. Sivagnanam. Others too followed suit but were not too critical of Sampanthan. Some tried to balance their views and a few spoke in support of Sampanthan. It was however apparent that the party disapproved of the TNAs unanimous choice (how right the ITAK was). The essence of the anti-Sampanthan viewpoint was that party loyalists were being ignored or overlooked and that outsiders and other party members were being given prominence at the expense of ITAK. If this trend continued the ITAK would cease to exist was the widespread lament. Sampanthan listened to all these views and then responded. It was a masterly exhibition of powerful oratory by the legal eagle turned politico. Sampanthan demolished the arguments outlined against him. He explained very clearly the reasons for Wigneswaran being chosen. He also pointed out that Senathirajah had stood down in favour of Wigneswaran thus compelling Senathirajah to openly acknowledge the fact that Wigneswaran was the better candidate in the current context. Finally Sampanthan quelled critical opinion by a meaningful statement. He said in Tamil that the Tamil people in Sri Lanka were in dire straits facing extinction but the gathering here was not talking of that. I did not hear even one person talking of the Tamil people. All I heard was talk about party, party and nothing else, Sampanthan said. Speaking further, he pointed out that the party was for the people and that the future of the people mattered more than the party. If the people diminish can the party flourish, he queried rhetorically. TWO RESOLUTIONS PASSED Having transformed the mood in his favour, Sampanthan went on to suggest that two resolutions be passed. The first was to approve the selection of C.V. Wigneswaran as the chief ministerial candidate for the Northern Provincial Council and extend full support. The second was to commend the magnanimity of Senathirajah in withdrawing from contesting for the chief ministerial candidacy. Both resolutions were passed unanimously. Sampanthan had not only weathered another inner-party crisis but also enlisted unanimous party support for Wigneswaran his choice and confined Senathirajah firmly to non-contestant status. This then is the tale of how C.V. Wigneswaran got nomination as the chief ministerial candidate of the TNA. Contesting under the ITAK house symbol, the ex-judge won handsomely and became chief minister. After enjoying the perks and privileges of the powerful chief minister post for five years, Wigneswaran has now ditched the TNA and opted to launch the TPA. In the unkindest cut of all, he has let down his one time political benefactor Sampanthan badly. Gratitude is a virtue that is greatly valued in Tamil society and culture. The Thirukkural written by Thiruvalluvar is regarded as a great Tamil literary work on ethics and morality. The Thirukkural emphasizes the importance of gratitude and warns in a couplet that there is no redemption for those who display ingratitude. The political fate of Wigneswaran and the TPA remains to be seen. D.B.S. Jeyaraj can be reached at dbsjeyaraj@yahoo.com The following companies are subsidiares of BlackRock: Acero Cooperatief U.A., Acero Holdings I B.V., Amethyst Merger Sub LLC, AnalytX Hosting LLC, AnalytX LLC, AnalytX Software LLC, Aperio, Aperio, Aquila Heywood, Asia-Pacific Private Credit Opportunities Fund I (GenPar) Ltd., BAA Holdings LLC, BFM Holdco LLC, BLK (Gallatin) Holdings LLC, BLK SMI LLC, BR Acquisition Mexico S.A. de C.V., BR Jersey International Holdings L.P., Beijing eFront Software Company Limited, BlackRock (Barbados) Finco 1 SRL, BlackRock (Channel Islands) Limited, BlackRock (Luxembourg) S.A., BlackRock (Netherlands) B.V., BlackRock (Shanghai) Co. Ltd., BlackRock (Singapore) Holdco II Pte. Ltd., BlackRock (Singapore) Holdco Pte. Limited, BlackRock (Singapore) Limited, BlackRock AP Investment Holdco LLC, BlackRock Advisors (UK) Limited, BlackRock Advisors LLC, BlackRock Advisors Singapore Pte. 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The company's EE segment offers 2G, 3G, and 4G mobile network services; broadband, fixed-voice, and TV services; and postpaid and prepaid plans, and emergency services network. This segment also sells 4G mobile phones, tablets, connected devices, and mobile broadband devices from various manufacturers. Its Business and Public Sector segment provides fixed voice, mobility, fiber and connectivity, and networked IT services to retailers, utilities, public sector, healthcare, sports, construction, finance, and educational sectors. The company's Global Services segment offers business communications and ICT services comprising BT Connect, BT Security, BT One, BT Contact, BT Compute, BT Advise, and BT for financial markets. This segment serves approximately 5,500 customers in 180 countries. Its Wholesale and Ventures segment enables communications providers and other organizations to provide fixed or mobile phone services. Its ventures provide mass-market services, such as directory enquiries and payphones; and enterprise services comprising BT Fleet and BT Redcare. This segment also provides broadband and Ethernet, voice, hosted communication, mobile virtual network operator, managed solutions, machine-to-machine, roaming, and media services. The company's Openreach segment engages in the provision of services over the local access network; and installation and maintenance of fiber and copper communications networks that connect homes and businesses. The company was formerly known as Newgate Telecommunications Limited and changed its name to BT Group plc in September 2001. BT Group plc was incorporated in 2001 and is headquartered in London, the United Kingdom. Read More If there was a place where creative expression in a variety of forms found inclusivity, it was indeed at the A&K Lit Fest held recently at the Mount Lavinia Hotel. Hosted for the 4th consecutive year, this years festival created a platform for local creative talent in the true Annasi & Kadalagotu style. The warm up sessions were stages for the budding writers, with the launch of the book The School Detective Gang by young Abdul Azeez, and creative writing workshops running parallel for adults and children. However, the entire attention of those present was directed at the next session Literature in Governance the Politics of Writing with eminent politicians present not in their usual roles, but as those who have contributed to literature in their own accord. The discussion led by Malinda Seneviratne had Prof. Rajiva Wijesinhe, Dr. Wijeyadasa Rajapakshe and Imthiaz Bakeer Markar speaking about creativity and the effects of regulatory on it. The diversity of creative expression continued throughout the day withGihan De Chickera speaking about The inherent Sri Lankan ability to see humour in everything and Anoja Rajapathirana presenting a heartwarming session on Writing with Disabilities. Two panels, which have owned a permanent space in the AK Lit Fest programme The Story behind the Story and The Virgin Authors hosted Sunela Jayawardene speaking of The Line of Lanka in the former, and debut writers Megan Dhakshini, Sarah Kabir, Nathalie Fernando and Chiranthie Rajapakshe in the latter discussing their inspirations, motivations and getting a book out for the first time. The latest addition to the line-up was the short film screening showcasing 4 films by talented young film makers, focusing on current social issues, which generated much positive feedback from the audience since opportunities to watch such local films are very limited. Continuing with visual creativity, the most awaited session with the makers of Koombiyo generated a lively and in-depth discussion about the tele-drama industry in Sri Lanka and the expression of realistic social issues. The late afternoon was dedicated to three distinct panels; Women in Writing, Science Fiction and Poetry Corner: from Bard to Verse, the latter featuring modern Sinhala poets. Each gained a significant audience, reconfirming an objective of the AK Lit Fest from inception celebrating the diversity of literature in Sri Lanka. Following Cornerstone Speeches a panel, which was as diverse as it could be, demonstrating tips on comedy, publishing, writing and diplomacy, the closing session was a tribute to the venue of the AK Lit Fest, the Mount Lavinia Hotel. Mohan Raj Madawala, whose novel Lovina brought to life the legacy of the hotel presented the historical background to his book. The curtains drew down to the festival with an amazing performance by up and coming Sri Lankan folk rock band Bambaroo, who also had a song specially titled Lovina. The only but distinct drawback of the festival was the limited representation of Tamil literature, which would perhaps be resolved next year, at the 5thAnnasi&Kadalagotu Literary Festival. Despite this, the event stood up for what it promised to give all literary lovers, an affordable opportunity to be a part of what was Simply Literature, Simply Local. The following companies are subsidiares of Caterpillar: Advanced Tri-Gen Power Systems LLC, Anchor Coupling Inc., Asia Power Systems (Tianjin) Ltd., AsiaTrak (Tianjin) Ltd., Banco Caterpillar S.A., Berg Propulsion International Pte Ltd., Bucyrus, Bucyrus Australia Surface Pty. Ltd., Bucyrus Europe Holdings Ltd., Bucyrus Europe Limited, Bucyrus International (Chile) Limitada, Bucyrus International (Peru) S.A., Bucyrus Mining Australia Pty. 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Ltd., Caterpillar Financial Services Belgium S.P.R.L., Caterpillar Financial Services CR s.r.o., Caterpillar Financial Services Corporation, Caterpillar Financial Services GmbH, Caterpillar Financial Services India Private Limited, Caterpillar Financial Services Leasing ULC, Caterpillar Financial Services Limited Les Services Financiers Caterpillar Limitee, Caterpillar Financial Services Malaysia Sdn Bhd, Caterpillar Financial Services Netherlands B.V., Caterpillar Financial Services Norway AS, Caterpillar Financial Services Philippines Inc., Caterpillar Financial Services Poland Sp. z o.o., Caterpillar Financial Services South Africa (Pty) Limited, Caterpillar Financial UK Acquisition Funding Partners, Caterpillar Financial Ukraine LLC, Caterpillar Fluid Systems S.r.l., Caterpillar Fomento Comercial Ltda., Caterpillar Forest Products Inc., Caterpillar France S.A.S., Caterpillar GB L.L.C., Caterpillar Global Investments S.a r.l., Caterpillar Global Mining America LLC, Caterpillar Global Mining Equipamentos De Mineracao do Brasil Ltda., Caterpillar Global Mining Equipment LLC, Caterpillar Global Mining Europe GmbH, Caterpillar Global Mining Expanded Products Pty Ltd, Caterpillar Global Mining Germany Holdings GmbH, Caterpillar Global Mining HMS GmbH, Caterpillar Global Mining Holdings GmbH, Caterpillar Global Mining Hong Kong AFC Manufacturing Holding Co. Limited, Caterpillar Global Mining Hong Kong Limited, Caterpillar Global Mining LLC, Caterpillar Global Mining Mexico LLC, Caterpillar Global Mining Pty. Ltd., Caterpillar Global Mining SARL, Caterpillar Global Mining U.S. Parts LLC, Caterpillar Global Services LLC, Caterpillar Group Services S.A., Caterpillar Holding (France) S.A.S., Caterpillar Holding Germany GmbH, Caterpillar Holdings Australia Pty. Ltd., Caterpillar Hungary Components Manufacturing Ltd., Caterpillar Hydraulics Italia S.r.l., Caterpillar IPX LLC, Caterpillar IRB LLC, Caterpillar Impact Products Limited, Caterpillar India Private Limited, Caterpillar Industrial Inc., Caterpillar Industrias Mexico S. de R.L. de C.V., Caterpillar Industries (Pty) Ltd, Caterpillar Insurance Co. Ltd., Caterpillar Insurance Company, Caterpillar Insurance Holdings Inc., Caterpillar Insurance Services Corporation, Caterpillar International Finance Designated Activity Company, Caterpillar International Finance Luxembourg Holding S. a r.l., Caterpillar International Finance Luxembourg S. a r.l., Caterpillar International Holding S. a r.l., Caterpillar International Luxembourg I S. a r.l., Caterpillar International Luxembourg II S. a r.l., Caterpillar International Product SARL, Caterpillar International Services Corporation, Caterpillar International Services del Peru S.A., Caterpillar Investment Limited, Caterpillar Investment One SARL, Caterpillar Investment Two SARL, Caterpillar Investments, Caterpillar Japan LLC, Caterpillar Latin America Services S.R.L., Caterpillar Latin America Services de Mexico S. de R.L. de C.V., Caterpillar Latin America Services de Panama S. de R.L., Caterpillar Latin America Servicios de Chile Limitada, Caterpillar Latin America Support Services S. DE R.L., Caterpillar Leasing (Thailand) Limited, Caterpillar Leasing Chile S.A., Caterpillar Leasing GmbH (Leipzig), Caterpillar Leasing Operativo Limitada, Caterpillar Life Insurance Company, Caterpillar Logistics (Shanghai) Co. Ltd., Caterpillar Logistics (UK) Limited, Caterpillar Logistics Inc., Caterpillar Logistics ML Services France S.A.S., Caterpillar Logistics Services China Limited, Caterpillar Luxembourg Group S.ar.l., Caterpillar Luxembourg LLC, Caterpillar Luxembourg S.a r.l., Caterpillar Machinery Nantong Co. Ltd., Caterpillar Marine Asia Pacific Pte. Ltd., Caterpillar Marine Asset Intelligence, Caterpillar Marine Power UK Limited, Caterpillar Marine Trading (Shanghai) Co. Ltd., Caterpillar Maroc SARL, Caterpillar Materiels Routiers SAS, Caterpillar Mexico LLC, Caterpillar Mexico S.A. de C.V., Caterpillar Mining Canada ULC, Caterpillar Mining Chile Servicios Limitada, Caterpillar Motoren (Guangdong) Co. Ltd., Caterpillar Motoren GmbH & Co. KG, Caterpillar Motoren Henstedt-Ulzburg GmbH, Caterpillar Motoren Rostock GmbH, Caterpillar Motoren Verwaltungs-GmbH, Caterpillar Netherlands Holding B.V., Caterpillar North America C.V., Caterpillar Operator Training Ltd., Caterpillar Overseas Credit Corporation SARL, Caterpillar Overseas Investment Holding SARL, Caterpillar Overseas Limited, Caterpillar Overseas SARL, Caterpillar Panama Services S.A., Caterpillar Paving Products Inc., Caterpillar Paving Products Xuzhou Ltd., Caterpillar Pension Trust Limited, Caterpillar Poland Sp. z o.o., Caterpillar Power Generation Systems (Bangladesh) Limited, Caterpillar Power Generation Systems L.L.C., Caterpillar Power Systems Inc., Caterpillar Power Ventures International Ltd., Caterpillar Precision Seals Korea, Caterpillar Prodotti Stradali S.r.l., Caterpillar Product Services Corporation, Caterpillar Propulsion AB, Caterpillar Propulsion International Trading (Shanghai) Co. Ltd., Caterpillar Propulsion Italy S.R.L., Caterpillar Propulsion Namibia (Proprietary) Limited, Caterpillar Propulsion Production AB, Caterpillar Propulsion Pte. Ltd., Caterpillar Propulsion Singapore Pte. Ltd., Caterpillar R&D Center (China) Co. Ltd., Caterpillar Ramos Arizpe LLC, Caterpillar Ramos Arizpe S. de R.L. de C.V., Caterpillar Ramos Arizpe Servicios S.A. de C.V., Caterpillar Reman Powertrain Indiana LLC, Caterpillar Remanufacturing Drivetrain LLC, Caterpillar Remanufacturing Services (Shanghai) Co. Ltd., Caterpillar Renting France S.A.S., Caterpillar Reynosa S.A. de C.V., Caterpillar SARL, Caterpillar Services Germany GmbH, Caterpillar Servicios Limitada, Caterpillar Servicios Mexico S. de R.L. de C.V., Caterpillar Servizi Italia Srl, Caterpillar Shrewsbury Limited, Caterpillar Skinningrove Limited, Caterpillar Southern Africa (Pty) Ltd., Caterpillar Special Services Belgium S.P.R.L., Caterpillar Switchgear Americas LLC, Caterpillar Switchgear Holding Inc., Caterpillar Tianjin Ltd., Caterpillar Torreon S. de R.L. de C.V., Caterpillar Tosno L.L.C., Caterpillar Transmissions France S.A.R.L., Caterpillar Tunneling Canada Holdings Ltd., Caterpillar Tunnelling Canada Corporation, Caterpillar Tunnelling Europe Limited, Caterpillar UK Employee Trust Limited, Caterpillar UK Engines Company Limited, Caterpillar UK Group Limited, Caterpillar UK Holdings Limited, Caterpillar Undercarriage (Xuzhou) Co. Ltd., Caterpillar Underground Mining Pty. Ltd., Caterpillar Used Equipment Services Inc., Caterpillar Venture Capital Inc., Caterpillar Work Tools B.V., Caterpillar Work Tools Inc., Caterpillar World Trading Corporation, Caterpillar Xuzhou, Caterpillar of Australia Pty. Ltd., Caterpillar of Canada Corporation, Caterpillar of Delaware Inc., Centre de Distribution de Wallonie SPRL, CleanAir Systems, Downer Freight Rail, ECM Railway Evolution Romania s.r.l., ECM S.p.A., EDC European Excavator Design Center GmbH, EMC Holding Corp., EMD International Holdings Inc., ERA Information & Entertainment (BVI) Limited, ERA Mining Machinery Limited, Electro-Motive Diesel Limited, Electro-Motive Locomotive Technologies LLC, Electro-Motive Technical Consulting Co. (Beijing) Ltd., Energy Services International Limited, Equipos de Acuna S.A. de C.V., Eurenov S.A.S., F. G. Wilson (Proprietary) Limited, F. Perkins Limited, FG Wilson (Engineering) Limited, GB Holdco (China) Inc., GFCM Comercial Mexico S.A. de C.V. SOFOM E.N.R., GFCM Servicios S.A. de C.V., Gremada Industries - Assets, Hong Kong Siwei Holdings Limited, Inmobiliaria Conek S.A. de C.V., JCS Co., Kemper Valve & Fittings Corp., Leo Inc., Locomotive Demand Power Pty Ltd., Locomotoras Progress Mexico S. de R.L. de C.V., Lovat, M2M Data Corporation, MGE Equipamentos & Servicos Ferroviarios, MWM, MWM Austria GmbH, MWM Benelux B.V., MWM Energy Australia Pty Ltd, MWM France S.A.S, MWM Real Estate GmbH, MaK Americas Inc., MaK Americas Inc. (Canada), Magnum Power Products LLC, Marble, Maschinenbau Kiel GmbH, Mec-Track S.r.l., Metalmark Financial Services Limited, Motoren Steffens GmbH, Nippon Caterpillar LLC, P. T. Solar Services Indonesia, PT Caterpillar Finance Indonesia, PT. Bucyrus Indonesia, PT. Caterpillar Indonesia, PT. Caterpillar Indonesia Batam, PT. Caterpillar Remanufacturing Indonesia, Perkins Engines, Perkins Engines (Asia Pacific) Pte Ltd, Perkins Engines Group Limited, Perkins Engines Inc., Perkins Group Limited, Perkins Holdings Limited LLC, Perkins India Private Limited, Perkins International Inc., Perkins Japan LLC, Perkins Limited, Perkins Machinery (Changshu) Co. Ltd., Perkins Motores do Brasil Ltda., Perkins Power Systems Technology (Wuxi) Co. Ltd., Perkins Small Engines (Wuxi) Co. Ltd., Perkins Small Engines LLC, Perkins Small Engines Limited, Perkins Technology Inc., Progress Metal Reclamation Company, Progress Rail Arabia Limited Company, Progress Rail Australia Pty Ltd, Progress Rail Canada Corporation, Progress Rail Equipamentos e Servicos Ferroviarios do Brasil Ltda., Progress Rail Equipment Leasing Corporation, Progress Rail Holdings Inc., Progress Rail Innovations Private Limited, Progress Rail Inspection & Information Systems GmbH, Progress Rail Inspection & Information Systems S.r.l., Progress Rail International Corp., Progress Rail Leasing Canada Corporation, Progress Rail Leasing Corporation, Progress Rail Leasing de Mexico S. de R.L. de C.V., Progress Rail Locomotivas (do Brasil) Ltda., Progress Rail Locomotive Canada Co., Progress Rail Locomotive Chile SpA, Progress Rail Locomotive Inc., Progress Rail Maintenance de Mexico S.A. de C.V., Progress Rail Manufacturing Corporation, Progress Rail Raceland Corporation, Progress Rail Rocklin Corporation, Progress Rail SA Proprietary Limited, Progress Rail Services Corporation, Progress Rail Services Holdings Corp., Progress Rail Services LLC, Progress Rail Services UK Limited, Progress Rail Switching Services LLC, Progress Rail Transcanada Corporation, Progress Rail Welding Corporation, Progress Rail Wildwood LLC, Progress Rail de Mexico S.A. de C.V., Pyroban Group, Pyroban Group, Pyrrha Investments B.V., Pyrrha Investments Limited, S&L Railroad LLC, SCM Singapore Holdings Pte. Ltd., SPL Software Alliance LLC, Sabre Engines, Servicios de Turbinas Solar S. de R.L. de C.V., Shandong SEM Machinery Co. Ltd., Solar Turbines, Solar Turbines, Solar Turbines (Beijing) Trading Services Co. Ltd., Solar Turbines (Thailand) Ltd., Solar Turbines CIS Limited Liability Company, Solar Turbines Canada Ltd./Ltee., Solar Turbines Central Asia Limited Liability Partnership, Solar Turbines EAME s.r.o., Solar Turbines Egypt Limited Liability Company, Solar Turbines Europe S.A., Solar Turbines India Private Limited, Solar Turbines International Company, Solar Turbines Italy S.R.L., Solar Turbines Malaysia Sdn Bhd, Solar Turbines Middle East Limited, Solar Turbines New Zealand Limited, Solar Turbines Saudi Arabia Limited, Solar Turbines Services Company, Solar Turbines Services Nigeria Limited, Solar Turbines Services of Argentina S.R.L., Solar Turbines Switzerland Sagl, Solar Turbines Trinidad & Tobago Limited, Solar Turbines West-Africa SARL, Tangshan DBT Machinery Co. Ltd., Tecnologia Modificada S.A. de C.V., Towmotor Corporation, Traction & Mining Motor Repairs Pty Ltd, Turbinas Solar S.A. de C.V., Turbinas Solar de Colombia S.A., Turbinas Solar de Venezuela C.A., Turbo Tecnologia de Reparaciones S.A. de C.V., Turbomach, Turbomach Endustriyel Gaz Turbinleri Sanayi Ve Ticaret Limited, Turbomach France SARL, Turbomach GmbH, Turbomach Netherlands B.V., Turbomach Pakistan (Private) Limited, Turbomach S.A. Unipersonal, Turbomach Sp. Z o.o., Turner Powertrain Systems Limited, UK Hose Assembly Limited, Underground Imaging Technologies Inc, United Industries LLC, VALA Inc., Vasky Energy Ltd., Wealdstone Engineering, Weir - Oil & Gas Division, West Virginia Auto Shredding Inc., Western Gear Machinery LLC, Wetland Sustainability Fund I LLC, Williams Technologies, Yard Club, Zhengzhou Siwei Mechanical and Electrical Equipment Sales Co. Ltd., and okyo Rental Ltd.. CEMEX SAB de CV engages in the production, distribution, marketing, and sale of cement, ready-mix concrete, and aggregates. It operates though the following geographical segments: Mexico; United States; Europe; South, Central America and the Caribbean (SCA&C); Asia, Middle East and Africa (AMEA); and Others. The Europe segment covers United Kingdom, Germany, France, Spain, and Czech Republic, Poland and Latvia, as well as trading activities in Scandinavia, and Finland. The SCA&C segment includes Colombia, Panama, Costa Rica, Caribbean TCL, the Dominican Republic, Puerto Rico, Nicaragua, Jamaica, the Caribbean, El Salvador, and Guatemala. The EMEA segment comprises of Egypt, Israel, the Philippines, and the United Arab Emirates. The Others segment refers to the cement trade maritime operations, information technology solutions business, and other corporate entities as well as other minor subsidiaries with different lines of business. The company was founded by Lorenzo Zambrano Gutierrez in 1906 and is headquartered in San Pedro Garza Garcia, Mexico. Read More 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 Vermilion Energy Inc., together with its subsidiaries, engages in the acquisition, exploration, development, and production of petroleum and natural gas in North America, Europe, and Australia. It owns 81% working interest in 642,300 net acres of developed land and 87% working interest in 376,700 net acres of undeveloped land, and 613 net producing natural gas wells and 3,034 net producing oil wells in Canada; and 96% working interest in 248,900 net acres of developed land and 91% working interest in 222,100 net acres of undeveloped land in the Aquitaine and Paris Basins, and 325 net producing oil wells and 3.0 net producing gas wells in France. The company also owns 49% working interest in 930,000 net acres of land and 51 net producing natural gas wells in the Netherlands; and 36,900 net developed acres and 965,900 net undeveloped acres of land, and 61 net producing oil wells and 8 net producing natural gas wells in Germany. In addition, it owns offshore Corrib natural gas field located to the northwest coast of Ireland; and 100% working interest in the Wandoo offshore oil field and related production assets that covers 59,600 acres located on Western Australia's northwest shelf. Further, the company holds 138,000 net acres of land in the Powder River basin, and 136.6 net producing oil wells in the United States; and 951,200 net acres of land in Hungary, 244,900 net acres of land in Slovakia, and 2.4 million net acres of land in Croatia. Vermilion Energy Inc. was founded in 1994 and is headquartered in Calgary, Canada. Read More American Consumer News, LLC dba MarketBeat 2010-2021. All rights reserved. 326 E 8th St #105, Sioux Falls, SD 57103 | U.S. Based Support Team at contact@marketbeat.com | (844) 978-6257 MarketBeat does not provide personalized financial advice and does not issue recommendations or offers to buy stock or sell any security. Our Accessibility Statement | Terms of Service | Do Not Sell My Information 2021 Market data provided is at least 10-minutes delayed and hosted by Barchart Solutions. Information is provided 'as-is' and solely for informational purposes, not for trading purposes or advice, and is delayed. To see all exchange delays and terms of use please see disclaimer. Fundamental company data provided by Zacks Investment Research. Authorities found suspicious packages addressed to former vice president Joe Biden and the actor Robert De Niro, officials said Thursday, setting off a new wave of alarm amid a sprawling investigation into pipe bombs mailed to prominent political figures and critics of President Donald Trump. The new packages, which resemble those sent to figures including former president Barack Obama and former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, were located in Delaware and New York. Like the others, they were intercepted before reaching their intended targets. The devices found so far, which officials have described as pipe bombs, have put many in the country on edge, and authorities have begun an intensive effort to find other explosives that may still be out there. Investigators found a package addressed to Biden in a Delaware mail facility that was like the other pipe bombs found this week, according to a law enforcement official. The package was apparently not delivered to Bidens home the official said. A similar package was also found addressed to De Niro, who has publicly clashed with Trump, at his production offices in Manhattan, according to law enforcement officials. A police spokesman said the parcel was similar to explosive packages that had been publicized. By Devlin Barrett, Mark Berman, Cleve R. Wootson Jr. (c) 2018, The Washington Post Oct 25, 2018 - CoreLogic, Inc., together with its subsidiaries, provides property information, insight, analytics, and data-enabled solutions in North America, Western Europe, and the Asia Pacific. The company operates in two segments, Property Intelligence & Risk Management Solutions (PIRM) and Underwriting & Workflow Solutions (UWS). The PIRM segment combines property information, mortgage information, and consumer information to deliver housing market and property-level insights, predictive analytics, and risk management capabilities. It also offers proprietary technology and software platforms to access, automate, or track the information and assist its clients with decision-making and compliance tools in the real estate and insurance industries. This segment primarily serves commercial banks, mortgage lenders and brokers, investment banks, fixed-income investors, real estate agents, MLS companies, property and casualty insurance companies, title insurance companies, government agencies, and government-sponsored enterprises. The UWS segment combines property, mortgage, and consumer information to provide comprehensive mortgage origination and monitoring solutions, including underwriting-related solutions, and data-enabled valuations and appraisals. This segment also provides proprietary technology and software platforms to access, automate, or track the information and assist its clients with vetting and onboarding prospects, and meeting compliance regulations, as well as understanding, evaluating, monitoring property values. It primarily serves mortgage lenders and servicers, mortgage brokers, credit unions, commercial banks, fixed-income investors, government agencies, and property and casualty insurance companies. The company was formerly known as The First American Corporation and changed its name to CoreLogic, Inc. in June 2010. CoreLogic, Inc. was incorporated in 1894 and is headquartered in Irvine, California. Read More Deutsche BArse AG operates as an exchange organization in Europe, the United States, and the Asia-Pacific. The company operates through seven segments: Eurex (Financial Derivatives), EEX (Commodities), 360T (Foreign Exchange), Xetra (Cash Equities), Clearstream (Post-Trading), IFS (Investment Fund Services), and Qontigo (index and analytics business). The company engages in the electronic trading of derivatives, electricity and gas products, emission rights, and foreign exchange; operating of Eurex Repo over the counter (OTC) trading platform and electronic clearing architecture; and operating as a central counterparty for on-and-off exchange derivatives, repo transactions, and OTC and exchange-traded derivatives. It also operates in the cash market through Xetra, BArse Frankfurt, and Tradegate trading venues; operates as a central counterparty for equities and bonds; and provides listing services. In addition, the company offers custody and settlement services for securities; investment fund services; global securities financing services; and global securities finance and collateral management, as well as secured money, market transaction, and repos and securities lending transaction services. Further, it develops and markets indices, as well as portfolio management and risk analysis software; markets licenses for trading and market signals; provides technology and reporting solutions for external customers; and offers link-up of trading participants. Deutsche BArse AG was founded in 1585 and is headquartered in Eschborn, Germany. Read More The following companies are subsidiares of Dover: Accelerated Production Systems, Acme Elevator, Advansor A/S, Advansor Dover International (Poland) sp. z o.o, Advansor Germany GmbH, Alfred Fueling Systems Holdco Ltd., Alfred Fueling Systems Inc., Alfred Fueling Systems Intermediate Holdco Ltd., All-Flo Pump Company, Anman LLC, Anthony Equity Holdings Inc., Anthony Holdings Inc., Anthony Inc., Anthony International, Anthony International Foreign Sales Corp., Anthony International Holding Company, Anthony Mexico Holdings LLC, Anthony North Holdco Inc., Anthony Specialty Glass LLC, Anthony TemperBent GP LLC, Auto Glanz Solutions LLC, Automatik Grundstucksverwaltungs GmbH & Co. KG, Automatik Plastics Machinery (Taiwan) Ltd., BSC Filters Limited, Background2 Limited, Belanger, Belanger Inc., Belvac Middle East FZE, Belvac Production Machinery Inc., Blackmer, BlitzRotary GmbH, Butler Engineering and Marketing S.P.A., CDS Visual, CEP Liquidation LLC, CP Formation LLC, CPC Europe Inc., CPI Products Inc., Caldera, Canada Organization & Development LLC, Chief Automotive Technologies (Shanghai) Trading Company Ltd., Chippewa Square Captive Insurance Company, Colder Products Company, Colder Products Company GmbH, Colder Products Company LTD, Cook Compression BV, Cook Compression LLC, Cook Compression Limited, Cook-MFS Inc., DD1 Inc., DDI Properties Inc., DE-STA-CO Benelux B.V., DE-STA-CO FRANCE, DE-STA-CO Shanghai Co. Ltd., DESTACO UK Limited, DFH Corporation, DFS Netherlands B.V., DSR BZ Holdings LLC, Datamax International Corp, De Sta Co (Asia) Company Limited, De-Sta-Co Cylinders Inc., DeStaCo Europe GmbH, Delaware Capital Formation Inc., Delaware Capital Holdings Inc., Dover (China) Investment Co. Ltd., Dover (Schweiz) Holding GmbH, Dover (Shanghai) Industrial Co. Ltd., Dover (Shenzhen) Industrial Equipment Manufacturing Co. Ltd., Dover (Suzhou) Industrial Equipment Manufacturing Co. Ltd., Dover Asia Trading Private Ltd., Dover Australia Holdings Pty Limited, Dover Business Services EMEA Limited, Dover Business Services LLC, Dover Business Services Philippines Corporation, Dover CLP Formation Limited Partnership, Dover CR spol s r.o., Dover Canada Holdings ULC, Dover Canada Operations ULC, Dover Corporation Regional Headquarters, Dover DEI Services Inc., Dover Denmark Holdings ApS, Dover EMEA FZCO, Dover Energy UK Ltd, Dover Engineered Products Segment Inc., Dover Europe Inc., Dover Europe Sarl, Dover Fluids UK Ltd, Dover France Holdings, Dover France Participations, Dover France Technologies, Dover Fueling Solutions Segment Inc., Dover Fueling Solutions UK Limited, Dover Germany GmbH, Dover Global Holdings LLC, Dover Holdings de Mexico S.A. de C.V., Dover Imaging & Identification Segment Inc., Dover India Pvt. Ltd., Dover Intercompany Services UK Limited, Dover International B.V., Dover International Operations Inc., Dover International Ventures Inc., Dover International Ventures Tunisia S.a.r.l., Dover International ithalat ihracat ve Pazarlama Limited Sirketi, Dover Italy Holdings S.r.l., Dover Luxembourg Finance Sarl, Dover Luxembourg Participations Sarl, Dover Luxembourg S.a.r.l., Dover Luxembourg Services Sarl, Dover Operations South Africa (Pty) Ltd, Dover Overseas Ventures Inc., Dover Pumps & Process Solutions Segment Inc., Dover Refrigeration & Food Equipment Segment Inc., Dover Refrigeration & Food Equipment UK Ltd, Dover Resources International de Mexico S. de R.L. C.V., Dover Solutions Colombia SAS, Dover Southeast Asia (Thailand) Ltd., Dover Spain Holdings S.L., Dover UK Pensions Limited, Dover WSCR Holding LLC, Dover WSCR LLC, Dover do Brasil Ltda., Dow-Key Microwave Corporation, Dresser Wayne Data Technology (Shanghai) Co. Ltd., Dresser Wayne Fuel Equipment (Shanghai) Co. Ltd., EOA Systems Inc., Ebs-Ray Holdings Pty Ltd, Ebs-Ray Industries Pty. Ltd., Ebs-Ray Pumps Pty. Ltd., Em-tec, Espy, Ettlinger, Ettlinger Kunststoffmaschinen GmbH, Fairbanks Environmental Limited, Fibrelite Composites Limited, Fibresec Holdings Limited, Fibresec Limited, Finder, GAL LLC, GIIER LLC, Gala Industries, Gala Kunststoff-und Kautschukmaschinen GmbH, Guangdong Tokheim LIYUAN Oil Industry Technology Limited Company, Highland Park Insurance Company, Hill PHOENIX Inc., Hill PHOENIX WIC LLC, Hill Phoenix Costa Rica Sociedad De Responsabilidad Limitada, Hill Phoenix El Salvador Limitada de Capital Variable, Hill Phoenix Guatemala Sociedad Anonima, Hill Phoenix Honduras Sociedad Anonima, Hill Phoenix Nicaragua Sociedad Anonima, Hill Phoenix de Mexico S.A. de C.V., Hiltap Fittings Ltd., Hydro Systems Company, Hydro Systems Europe Ltd., Hydronova Australia-NZ Pty Ltd, Industrial Motion Control LLC, Innovative Control Systems, Innovative Control Systems Inc., Inpro/Seal LLC, JK Group, JK Group S.P.A., JK Group USA Inc., K S Boca Inc., K&L Microwave DR Inc., K&L Microwave Inc., KPS (Beijing) Petroleum Equipment Trading Co Ltd., KPS Fueling Solutions Sdn. Bhd., KPS Hong Kong Holding Limited, KPS UK Limited, KS Formation Inc., KS Liquidation Inc., KSLP Liquidation L.P., Kiian Digital (Shanghai) Co. Ltd., Knappco LLC, Knowles Electronics, LIQAL, Liquip, Liquip International Pty Limited, MAAG, MARKEM FZ SA, MARKEM-IMAJE Corporation, MIP Holdings Inc., MS Printing Solutions, MS Printing Solutions S.R.L., Maag Automatik GmbH, Maag Automatik Plastics Machinery (Shanghai) Co. Ltd., Maag Gala Inc., Maag Italy S.R.L., Maag Pump Systems, Maag Pump Systems (US) Inc., Maag Pump Systems AG, Maag Reduction Inc., Maag Service (Malaysia) Sdn. Bdn., Maag Systems (Thailand) Limited, Marathon Equipment Company (Delaware), Markem Imaje Center of Competencies Spain S.L.U., Markem-Imaje, Markem-Imaje (China) Co. Limited, Markem-Imaje - Unipessoal Lda, Markem-Imaje A/S, Markem-Imaje AB, Markem-Imaje AG, Markem-Imaje AS, Markem-Imaje B.V., Markem-Imaje CSAT GmbH, Markem-Imaje Co. Ltd., Markem-Imaje GmbH, Markem-Imaje Holding, Markem-Imaje Identificacao de Produtos Ltda., Markem-Imaje Inc., Markem-Imaje India Private Limited, Markem-Imaje Industries, Markem-Imaje Industries Limited, Markem-Imaje KK, Markem-Imaje LLC, Markem-Imaje Limited, Markem-Imaje Limited, Markem-Imaje Ltd., Markem-Imaje N.V., Markem-Imaje Oy, Markem-Imaje Philippines Corporation, Markem-Imaje Pty Ltd, Markem-Imaje S.A., Markem-Imaje S.A. de C.V., Markem-Imaje S.r.l., Markem-Imaje SAS, Markem-Imaje Sdn Bhd, Markem-Imaje Singapore Pte. Ltd., Markem-Imaje Spain S.A.U, Markpoint Holding AB, Midland Manufacturing LLC, Mouvex, Northern Lights (Nevada) Inc., Northern Lights Funding LP, Northern Lights Investments LLC, Nova Controls Inc., OK International, OK International (UK) Ltd., OK International Holdings Inc., OK International Inc., OPW Engineered Systems Inc., OPW Fluid Transfer Group Europe B.V., OPW Fluid Transfer Solutions (Jiang Su) Co. Ltd., OPW Fluids Group Inc., OPW France, OPW Fuel Management Systems Inc., OPW Fueling Components (SuZhou) Co. Ltd., OPW Fueling Components LLC, OPW Iberia Sociedad Limitada, OPW Malaysia Sdn. Bhd., OPW Slovakia s.r.o., OPW Sweden AB, Officine Meccaniche Sirio S.R.L., PDQ Manufacturing, PDQ Manufacturing Inc., PISCES by OPW Inc., PSD Codax Holdings Limited, PSD Codax Limited, PSG (Shanghai) Co. Ltd, PSG (Tianjin) Co. Ltd., PSG California LLC, PSG Germany GmbH, Petro Vend Sp. z o.o., Pike Machine Products Inc., Pole/Zero Acquisition Inc., Precision Brasil Equipamentos E Servicos Para Postos De Combustiveis Ltda., Precision Service - Servicos De Manutencao E Instalacao De Postos De Abastecimento De Combustivel Ltda., Production Control Services, Pump Management Services Co. LLC, RAV Equipos Espana S.L., RAV France, Ravaglioli Deutschland GmbH, Ravaglioli S.P.A., Reduction Engineering GmbH, Revod Corporation, Revod Luxembourg S.a.r.l., Revod SAS, Revod Singapore Holdings Pte. Ltd, Revod Sweden AB, Robohand Inc., Rosario, Rosario Handel B.V., Rotary Lift Consolidated (Haimen) Co. Ltd, SE Liquidation LLC, SWEP Germany GmbH, SWEP Malaysia Sdn. Bhd., SWEP North America Inc., SWEP Slovakia s.r.o., SWEP Technology (Suzhou) Co. Ltd., Seabiscuit Motorsports Inc., Simmons Sirvey Corporation, So. Cal. Soft-Pak, So. Cal. Soft-Pak Incorporated, Solaris Laser, Solaris Laser S.A., Somero Enterprises, Sound Solutions, Space S.R.L., Spirit, Start Italiana Petrol Cihazlari Sanayi Ticaret Anonim Sirketi, Start Italiana S.R.L., Swep Energy Oy, Swep International A.B., Swep Japan K.K., Sys-Tech Solutions, Sys-Tech Solutions Inc., Systech GB Limited, Systech Shanghai Consulting Company Limited, TQC Quantium Quality S.A. de C.V., TTSI III Inc., TWG Canada Consolidated Inc., TXHI LLC, Tartan Textile Services Inc., The Heil Co., Tokheim Belgium, Tokheim China Company Limited, Tokheim GmbH, Tokheim Group, Tokheim Hengshan Technologies (Guangzhou) Co. Ltd., Tokheim Holding B.V., Tokheim India Private Limited, Tokheim Sofitam Applications, Trans - Logistic Group S.R.L., Triton Systems, Tulsa Winch Inc., UPCO Inc., US Synthetic, Unattended Payment Solutions LLC, Unified Brands, Unified Brands Inc., Val TemperBent Glass L.P., Vectron Frequency Devices (Shanghai) Co. Ltd, Vehicle Service Group LLC, Vehicle Service Group UK Limited, Vos Food Store Equipment Ltd., WSCR Corp., Warn Automotive LLC, Warn Industries, Waukesha Bearings, Waukesha Bearings Corporation, Waukesha Bearings Limited, Waukesha Bearings Russia LLC, Wayne Fuel Management UK Ltd., Wayne Fueling Systems, Wayne Fueling Systems (Rus) Limited Liability Company, Wayne Fueling Systems Australia Pty Ltd, Wayne Fueling Systems Canada ULC, Wayne Fueling Systems Deutschland GmbH, Wayne Fueling Systems Italia S.R.L., Wayne Fueling Systems LLC, Wayne Fueling Systems Ltd., Wayne Fueling Systems Sweden AB, Wayne Fueling Systems UK Holdco Ltd., Wayne Industria e Comercio Ltda., WellMark, XanTec Steuerungs- und EDV-Technik GmbH, and em-tec GmbH. BlackRock Ultra Short-Term Bond ETF's stock was trading at $50.40 on March 11th, 2020 when Coronavirus reached pandemic status according to the World Health Organization (WHO). Since then, ICSH shares have increased by 0.1% and is now trading at $50.43. View which stocks have been most impacted by COVID-19. BEIJING (AFP) - Japan and China signed US$2.6 billion in business deals and touted their warmer ties yesterday during a rare visit to Beijing by Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe as both face trade challenges from US President Donald Trump. Premier Li Keqiang greeted Abe as Japans flag flew outside the opulent Great Hall of the People across from Tiananmen Square, and they reviewed an honour guard before going inside for talks. Relations between Asias two biggest economies have improved in recent years after they sunk to new lows in 2012 when Tokyo nationalised disputed islands claimed by Beijing. Addressing a joint press conference, Abe said that the two leaders had agreed to play a constructive role for the sake of this regions peace and prosperity. I believe active trade will deepen ties between Japanese and Chinese peoples further, he said. Now, international conditions are unstable, and uncertainties have increased, Li said, adding that the countries economic cooperation would benefit the development of global free trade. The relationship has rapidly warmed up as Trump has slapped massive tariffs on China while also targeting Japanese exports in his effort to cut US trade deficits, despite touting his personal bonds with Abe and Chinese President Xi Jinping. But behind the feel-good vibes, Abe also delivered a sterner messages, a Japanese spokesman said, warning China that without stability in the East China Sea, there will not be a true improvement in the relationship. He also told Li that the international community, including Japan, is watching carefully the human rights situation in China. Abe also met with Xi and details of their talks were expected later in the evening. Abe travelled with nearly 1,000 delegates from Japanese companies who struck 500 deals worth a total of US$2.6 billion, Li said, without providing details. The companies are eager for increased access to Chinas massive market, while Beijing is interested in Japanese technology and corporate know-how. The two leaders also oversaw the signing of several political agreements, including a currency swap deal and a mechanism to avoid accidental clashes between their militaries which often come in contact in the disputed East China Sea. Hu Lingyuan, director of the Center for Japanese Studies at Chinas Fudan University, said Trumps trade policy had contributed to closer Sino-Japanese ties. The uncertainty in Trump policy made Abe feel that he could not bet only on the United States, Hu told AFP. If he adjusts his relationship with China, he will have more initiative and space in the future when he is negotiating with the United States. Chinas nationalistic Global Times said in an editorial that though the US is quite an influential factor in China-Japan ties, the effect is limited. If Beijing and Tokyo intend to plan their future bilateral relationship based on Washingtons attitude, they will only get lost, the state-run daily said. The last official visit to Beijing by a Japanese prime minister was in 2011. Since an awkward 2014 encounter between Abe and Xi on the sidelines of a summit, there have been ministerial visits by both sides and a softening of rhetoric. Li visited Tokyo in May. Abes three-day trip, which began Thursday, sets up the possibility that Xi will visit Japan next year. Abe and Li already met on Thursday during a reception to celebrate the signing of the treaty that put Japanese and Chinese relations back on track after World War II. But territorial disputes continue to cause frictions. 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. Synonymous with supreme quality housing solutions, Kelsey Homes is a pioneering property developer that has been at the forefront of Sri Lankas real estate industry, for the past 35 years. Working with a cohesive unit of top industry professionals and experts to create world-class homes and neighbourhoods, Kelsey Homes has over the years garnered the trust of more than 2,000 home-owners across the nation. With proven excellence in the industry, the trendsetting property developer has successfully completed an array of high-end housing and real estate projects in various strategic locations across the island. Kelsey Homes inherits its vision for building holistic homes and creating harmonious neighbourhoods from its parent company Kelsey Development PLC that is committed to transforming and elevating Sri Lankas residential landscape, since its inception in 1983. Working towards the sole aim of developing better living environments, Kelsey Development PLC offers a comprehensive range of services that cover every aspect of building a property from scratch. The company offers solutions for every stage of the building process - from conceptualizing designs to developing blueprints, obtaining a construction loan, turning of the first shovel of soil and finally to the construction of the house itself. Commenting on Kelsey Homes milestone of pioneering in Sri Lankas real estate industry for 35 years, Eardley Perera - Group Chairman, Kelsey Development PLC stated: We are truly proud to be embarking on our 35th year at the helm of Sri Lankas real estate industry and we are excited about the promising journey ahead. Over the years, Kelsey Homes has delivered consistent quality, good workmanship and value for money to our home-owners, which in turn has given us a reputation of trust and reliability that is recognized and respected across the nation. We look forward to continuing our efforts to enrich Sri Lankas residential landscape by creating more spaces, neighbourhoods and environments that Sri Lankans can proudly call home. Some of Kelsey Homes popular completed projects include Templers Square, an exclusive gated community of 100 houses set on six acres of prime land in the suburb of Mount Lavinia; Ayu Residencies, an apartment complex in Colombo 08 and Monte Vista, an elegant housing estate located in the serene outskirts of Nugegoda. Kelsey Homes is also working on several ongoing land and housing projects such as Riverside - Bollegala, a high-end gated property within minutes of Kelaniya and Biyagama towns and Verdant Villas, a serene gated community in the heart of Negombo, all of which are designed to epitomize luxury living. Kelsey Homes is a premier property developer in Sri Lanka, with a portfolio of over 200 real estate and housing projects. It has delivered an array of luxury gated living solutions and exclusive developments. The company is dedicated to providing its customers with high quality, beautifully designed homes that ensure a valuable return on investment. As a reflection of the companys confidence and commitment, all homes include a 12-month defects liability period and a 10-year warranty on their structure. 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 HSBC Holdings plc provides banking and financial products and services worldwide. The company operates through Wealth and Personal Banking, Commercial Banking, and Global Banking and Markets segments. The Wealth and Personal Banking segment offers retail banking products and services, such as current and savings accounts, mortgages and personal loans, credit and debit cards, and local and international payment services for ultra high net worth individuals; and wealth management services, including insurance and investment products, global asset management services, investment management, and private wealth solutions. The Commercial Banking segment provides credit and lending, treasury management, payment, cash management, commercial insurance, and investment services, as well as commercial cards, and international trade and receivables finance services; and foreign exchange products, and capital raising and advisory services to small and medium sized enterprises, mid-market enterprises, and corporates. The Global Banking and Markets segment is involved in the provision of financing, advisory, and transaction services, including credit, rates, foreign exchange, equities, money markets, and securities services, as well as principal investment activities to government, corporate and institutional clients, and private investors. The Global Private Banking segment provides a range of services to high net worth individuals and families with complex and international needs. HSBC Holdings plc was founded in 1865 and is headquartered in London, the United Kingdom. Read More By Tamer El-Ghobashy (c) 2018, The Washington Post Oct 25, 2018 - -ISTANBUL - Saudi Arabias public prosecutor said on Thursday that Jamal Khashoggi was killed in a planned operation, based on information it received from Turkish investigators in Istanbul, according to a statement from the kingdoms Foreign Ministry. The Foreign Ministry did not say what led the prosecutor to draw that conclusion, only that it was based on information shared by Turkish investigators working with Saudi officials in Turkey. According to the statement, a joint Saudi-Turkish investigative team in Istanbul indicates that the suspects in the incident had committed their act with a premeditated intention. Still, neither Trump nor Saudi Arabia have been willing to implicate Saudi leadership in the journalists killing. American intelligence officials and lawmakers have said that an operation targeting a critic of the royal court in a foreign country is unlikely to have been ordered without the knowledge of senior Saudi officials. Last week Saudi Arabia said it had arrested 18 people and dismissed five officials. 11 Wall Street equities research analysts have issued "buy," "hold," and "sell" ratings for Hugo Boss in the last year. There are currently 6 hold ratings and 5 buy ratings for the stock. The consensus among Wall Street equities research analysts is that investors should "hold" Hugo Boss stock. A hold rating indicates that analysts believe investors should maintain any existing positions they have in BOSS, but not buy additional shares or sell existing shares. View analyst ratings for Hugo Boss or view top-rated stocks. The following companies are subsidiares of Hyatt Hotels: CHANCELLOR STREET CONDOMINIUM ASSOCIATION INC., GLENDALE HOTEL PROPERTIES L.L.C., HT-SEATTLE HOLDINGS LLC, 1379919 ALBERTA INC., 319168 ONTARIO LIMITED, 3385434 CANADA INC., ADMINISTRACION DE PERSONAL ANDARES S. DE R.L. DE C.V., AIC HOLDING CO., AIRPORT PLAZA ASSOCIATES LIMITED PARTNERSHIP, AIRPORT PLAZA HOTEL LLC, AIRPORT PLAZA OFFICE BUILDING LIMITED PARTNERSHIP, AMERISUITES FRANCHISING L.L.C., ARANCIA LIMITED, ARUBA BEACHFRONT RESORTS LIMITED PARTNERSHIP, ARUBA BEACHFRONT RESORTS N.V., ASIA HOSPITALITY INC., ASIA HOSPITALITY INVESTORS B.V., ASIAN HOTEL N.V., ATRIUM HOTEL L.L.C., AUSTIN RESORT BEVERAGE LLC, AmeriSuites Hotel, BAKU HOTEL COMPANY - AZERI, BAKU HOTEL COMPANY - CAYMAN, BASTROP MARKETING L.L.C., BAY II INVESTOR INC., BELLEVUE ASSOCIATES, BH PLAZA LLC, BRE/AMERISUITES PROPERTIES L.L.C., BRE/AMERISUITES TXNC GP L.L.C., BRE/AMERISUITES TXNC PROPERTIES L.P., BURVAN HOTEL ASSOCIATES, CAL-HARBOR SO. PIER URBAN RENEWAL ASSOCIATES L.P., CELAYA RESORTS S. DE R.L. DE C.V., CHESAPEAKE COMMUNITIES LLC, CHESAPEAKE RESORT LLC, CIUDAD DEL CARMEN DIAMANTE RESORT S. DE R.L. DE C.V, COAST BEACH L.L.C., COMPAGNIE HOTELIERE DE LAGON BLEU, CPM SEATTLE HOTELS L.L.C., CRW INVESTMENT LLC, CTR INTEREST HOLDCO INC., DALLAS REGENCY LLC, DENVER DOWNTOWN HOTEL PARTNERS LLC, DESARROLLADORA HOTELERA ACUEDUCTO S. DE R.L. DE C.V., DH BEVERAGE LLC, DIAMANTE RESORT LA PAZ S. DE R.L. DE C.V., DISTRICT HOTEL PARTNERS LLC, EXHALE ENTERPRISES GIFT SERVICES COMPANY, EXHALE ENTERPRISES II L.L.C., EXHALE ENTERPRISES III INC., EXHALE ENTERPRISES IV L.L.C., EXHALE ENTERPRISES L.L.C., EXHALE ENTERPRISES V L.L.C., EXHALE ENTERPRISES VIII INC., EXHALE ENTERPRISES X INC., EXHALE ENTERPRISES XII L.L.C., EXHALE ENTERPRISES XIV L.L.C., EXHALE ENTERPRISES XIX L.L.C., EXHALE ENTERPRISES XV L.L.C., EXHALE ENTERPRISES XV TCI LTD., EXHALE ENTERPRISES XVI L.L.C., EXHALE ENTERPRISES XVII L.L.C., EXHALE ENTERPRISES XVIII L.L.C., EXHALE ENTERPRISES XX L.L.C., EXHALE ENTERPRISES XXI INC., EXHALE ENTERPRISES XXIV L.L.C., EXHALE ENTERPRISES XXV L.L.C., EXHALE ENTERPRISES XXVI L.L.C., EXHALE ENTERPRISES XXVII L.L.C., EXHALE ENTERPRISES XXVIII L.L.C., EXHALE ENTERPRISES XXXI L.L.C., EXHALE ENTERPRISES XXXII L.L.C., EXHALE ENTERPRISES XXXIII INC., FAN PIER L.L.C., FAR EAST HOTELS INC., G.E.H. PROPERTIES LIMITED, GAINEY DRIVE ASSOCIATES, GALAXY AEROSPACE COMPANY LLC, GHE HOLDINGS LIMITED, GRAND HYATT BERLIN GMBH, GRAND HYATT DFW BEVERAGE LLC, GRAND HYATT SAN ANTONIO L.L.C., GRAND HYATT SF L.L.C., GRAND RIVERWALK BEVERAGE LLC, GRAND TORONTO CORP., GRAND TORONTO VENTURE L.P., GREENWICH HOTEL LIMITED PARTNERSHIP, H.E. ATLANTA CENTENNIAL PARK HOLDINGS L.L.C., H.E. AUSTIN L.L.C., H.E. BERMUDA L.L.C., H.E. CAP CANA L.L.C., H.E. DRISKILL LLC, H.E. GRAND CYPRESS L.L.C., H.E. IRVINE L.L.C., H.E. KANSAS CITY L.L.C., H.E. LENOX L.L.C., H.E. NASHVILLE L.L.C., H.E. NEWPORT L.L.C., H.E. ORLANDO L.L.C., H.E. PHILADELPHIA HC HOLDINGS L.L.C., H.E. PHILADELPHIA HC HOTEL L.L.C., H.E. PHILADELPHIA HC PARKING L.L.C., H.E. PHILADELPHIA HC RETAIL L.L.C., H.E. PHILADELPHIA SANSOM L.L.C., H.E. PORTLAND HC L.L.C., H.E. PORTLAND L.L.C., H.E. PROPERTIES HOLDING L.L.C., H.E. PROPERTIES L.L.C., H.E. SAN ANTONIO I L.L.C., H.E. SAN ANTONIO L.L.C., H.E. TUCSON HOLDINGS L.L.C., H.E. TUCSON JV HOLDINGS L.L.C., H.E. TUCSON JV L.L.C., H.E. TUCSON OWNER L.L.C., HAPP INVESTOR LTD., HARBORSIDE HOTEL LLC, HARBORSIDE LAND LLC, HC PORTLAND JV HOLDINGS L.L.C., HC ROYAL PALMS L.L.C., HCV CINCINNATI HOTEL L.L.C., HE ORLANDO HOTEL LLC, HGP (TRAVEL) LIMITED, HH NASHVILLE HOLDINGS L.L.C., HH NASHVILLE JV HOLDINGS L.L.C., HH PORTLAND L.L.C., HHMA BURLINGTON BEVERAGE L.L.C., HI HOLDINGS (SWITZERLAND) GMBH, HI HOLDINGS BAJA B.V., HI HOLDINGS BRAZIL S.A.R.L., HI HOLDINGS CELAYA B.V., HI HOLDINGS CIUDAD DEL CARMEN B.V., HI HOLDINGS CYPRUS LIMITED, HI HOLDINGS CYPRUS-INDIA LIMITED, HI HOLDINGS GUADALAJARA B.V., HI HOLDINGS HP CABO B.V., HI HOLDINGS HP TIJUANA HOTEL B.V., HI HOLDINGS KYOTO CO., HI HOLDINGS LA PAZ B.V., HI HOLDINGS LATIN AMERICA B.V., HI HOLDINGS NETHERLANDS B.V., HI HOLDINGS PLAYA B.V., HI HOLDINGS RIO S.A.R.L., HI HOLDINGS RIVIERA MAYA B.V., HI HOLDINGS VIENNA S.A.R.L., HI HOLDINGS ZURICH S.A.R.L., HI HOTEL ADVISORY SERVICES GMBH, HI HOTEL INVESTORS CYPRUS LIMITED, HIHCL AMSTERDAM B.V., HIHCL HP AMSTERDAM AIRPORT B.V., HIHCL HR AMSTERDAM B.V., HILP HOTEL SERVICE PROVIDER LLC, HOTEL AM BELVEDERE HOLDING GMBH, HOTEL AM BELVEDERE HOLDING GMBH & CO KG, HOTEL INVESTMENTS HOLDING CO LLC, HOTEL INVESTMENTS L.L.C., HOTEL INVESTORS I INC., HOTEL INVESTORS II INC., HOTEL PROJECT SYSTEMS PTE LTD, HOTEL SERVICES CIUDAD DEL CARMEN S. DE R.L. DE C.V., HOTELS CS CELAYA S. DE R.L. DE C.V., HP ATLANTA CENTENNIAL PARK JV LLC, HP AUSTIN L.L.C., HP BEVERAGE DALLAS DFW AIRPORT LLC, HP BEVERAGE SUGAR LAND LLC, HP BOSTON HOLDINGS L.L.C., HP GLENDALE JV HOLDINGS L.L.C., HP GLENDALE L.L.C., HP INDIA HOLDINGS LIMITED, HP LAS VEGAS BEVERAGE L.L.C., HP M STREET L.L.C., HP ROUTE 46 TEXAS LLC, HP SAN FRANCISCO L.L.C., HP SAN JUAN L.L.C., HP TEN TEXAS LLC, HPHH ATLANTA L.L.C., HPHH DENVER L.L.C., HPHH SAN JOSE JV HOLDINGS L.L.C., HPHH SAN JOSE L.L.C., HQ CHESAPEAKE LLC, HR LOST PINES RESORT LLC, HR MC HOTEL COMPANY S. DE R.L. DE C.V., HR MC SERVICES II S. DE R.L. DE C.V., HR MC SERVICES S. DE R.L. DE C.V., HRHC LLC, HT- WAILEA LLC, HT-AVENDRA GROUP HOLDINGS L.L.C., HT-AVENDRA L.L.C., HT-CHESAPEAKE COMMUNITIES INC., HT-CHESAPEAKE RESORT INC., HT-HOTEL EQUITIES INC., HT-HUNTINGTON BEACH INC., HT-JERSEY PIER INC., HT-JERSEY PIER L.P., HT-JERSEY PIER LLC, HT-LONG BEACH L.L.C., HT-MIAMI BEACH L.L.C., HT-PARK 57 INC., HT-SEATTLE LLC, HT-SIERRA L.L.C., HT-VANCOUVER INC., HTLB L.L.C., HTS - NS L.L.C., HTS - NY L.L.C., HTS-ASPEN L.L.C., HTS-BC INC., HTS-INVESTMENT L L.C., HTSF L.L.C., HTW BEVERAGE LLC, HY LONG BEACH HOTEL LLC, HYATT (BARBADOS) CORPORATION, HYATT (JAPAN) CO. LTD., HYATT (THAILAND) LIMITED, HYATT ARUBA N.V., HYATT ASIA PACIFIC HOLDINGS LIMITED, HYATT AUSTRALIA HOTEL MANAGEMENT PTY LIMITED, HYATT AUSTRIA GMBH, HYATT BEACH FRONT N.V., HYATT BORNEO MANAGEMENT SERVICES LIMITED, HYATT BRITANNIA CORPORATION LTD., HYATT CC OFFICE CORP., HYATT CHAIN SERVICES LIMITED, HYATT CRYSTAL CITY LLC., HYATT CURACAO N.V., HYATT DISASTER RELIEF FUND, HYATT DO BRASIL PARTICIPACOES LTDA, HYATT EQUITIES L.L.C., HYATT FOREIGN EMPLOYMENT SERVICES INC., HYATT FRANCHISING CANADA CORP., HYATT FRANCHISING L.L.C., HYATT FRANCHISING LATIN AMERICA L.L.C., HYATT FULFILLMENT OF MARYLAND INC., HYATT GLOBAL SERVICES INC., HYATT GTLD L.L.C., HYATT HOC INC., HYATT HOLDINGS (UK) LIMITED, HYATT HOSPITALITY SERVICES L.L.C., HYATT HOTEL MANAGEMENT LIMITED, HYATT HOTELS CONSULTANCY SERVICES ASIA PACIFIC LIMITED, HYATT HOTELS CORPORATION OF KANSAS, HYATT HOTELS CORPORATION OF MARYLAND, HYATT HOTELS FOUNDATION, HYATT HOTELS MANAGEMENT CORPORATION, HYATT HOTELS OF CANADA INC., HYATT HOTELS OF FLORIDA INC., HYATT HOTELS OF PUERTO RICO INC., HYATT HOUSE CANADA INC., HYATT HOUSE FRANCHISING L.L.C., HYATT HOUSE HOTEL HOLDING COMPANY L.L.C., HYATT INDIA CONSULTANCY PRIVATE LIMITED, HYATT INTERNATIONAL (ASIA) LIMITED, HYATT INTERNATIONAL (EUROPE AFRICA MIDDLE EAST) LLC, HYATT INTERNATIONAL - JAPAN LIMITED, HYATT INTERNATIONAL - SOUTHWEST ASIA LIMITED, HYATT INTERNATIONAL -ASIA PACIFIC LIMITED, HYATT INTERNATIONAL -SEA (PTE) LIMITED, HYATT INTERNATIONAL CORPORATION, HYATT INTERNATIONAL HOLDINGS CO., HYATT INTERNATIONAL HOTEL MANAGEMENT (BEIJING) CO. LTD., HYATT INTERNATIONAL MILAN L.L.C., HYATT INTERNATIONAL PROPERTY MANAGEMENT (BEIJING) CO. LTD., HYATT INTERNATIONAL TECHNICAL SERVICES INC., HYATT JV HOLDINGS L.L.C., HYATT LACSA SERVICES INC., HYATT LOUISIANA L.L.C., HYATT MAINZ GMBH, HYATT MARKETING SERVICES INC., HYATT MARKETING SERVICES NIGERIA COMPANY LIMITED, HYATT MINNEAPOLIS LLC, HYATT MINORITY INVESTMENTS INC., HYATT MSS L.L.C., HYATT NORTH AMERICA MANAGEMENT SERVICES INC., HYATT OF AUSTRALIA LIMITED, HYATT OF BAJA S. DE R.L. DE C.V., HYATT OF CHINA LIMITED, HYATT OF FRANCE S.A.R.L., HYATT OF GUAM LIMITED, HYATT OF ITALY S.R.L., HYATT OF LATIN AMERICA AND CARIBBEAN L.L.C., HYATT OF LATIN AMERICA S.A. DE C.V., HYATT OF MACAU LIMITED, HYATT OF MEXICO S.A. DE C.V., HYATT OF PHILIPPINES LIMITED, HYATT PARTNERSHIP INTERESTS L.L.C., HYATT PLACE ANNE ARUNDEL BEVERAGE INC., HYATT PLACE CANADA CORPORATION, HYATT PLACE FRANCHISING L.L.C., HYATT PLACE OF MARYLAND INC., HYATT REGENCY COLOGNE GMBH, HYATT REGENCY CORPORATION PTY. LIMITED, HYATT SERVICES AUSTRALIA PTY LIMITED, HYATT SERVICES CANADA INC., HYATT SERVICES CARIBBEAN L.L.C., HYATT SERVICES GMBH, HYATT SERVICES INDIA PRIVATE LIMITED, HYATT SHARED SERVICE CENTER L.L.C., HYATT TRINIDAD LIMITED, HYCANADA INC., HYCARD INC., HYSTAR L.L.C., Hyatt Corporation, INFORMATION SERVICES LIMITED, INTERNATIONAL RESERVATIONS LIMITED, JOINT VENTURE ITALKYR CLOSED JOINT STOCK COMPANY, JUNIPER HOTELS PRIVATE LIMITED, KSA MANAGEMENT INC., KYOTO HOLDING CO., LHR-PARTNERS LTD., LORING PARK ASSOCIATES LIMITED PARTNERSHIP, LOST PINES BEVERAGE LLC, MACAE PARTNERS S.A.R.L., MAHIMA HOLDINGS PRIVATE LIMITED, MARION RESERVATION CENTER L.L.C., MEXICO CITY HOTEL INVESTMENTS B.V., MILAN HOTEL INVESTMENTS B.V., MIRAVAL ARIZONA GUARANTOR LLC, MIRAVAL GROUP LLC, MIRAVAL RESORT ARIZONA HOLDINGS LLC, MIRAVAL RESORT ARIZONA LLC, MIRAVAL RESORT ARIZONA OPERATING CO. INC., MIRAVAL RESORT TUCSON LLC, MONROE MR HOLDINGS I LLC, MONROE MR HOLDINGS II LLC, MONROE MR HOLDINGS III LLC, MONROE MR HOLDINGS LLC, MONROE MR HOLDINGS TRUST, MRG ATX BEVERAGE HOLDINGS LLC, MRG ATX HOLDINGS II LLC, MRG ATX HOLDINGS LLC, MRG ATX INVESTMENT LLC, MRG ATX MANAGEMENT I LLC, MRG ATX MANAGEMENT II LLC, MRG ATX OPERATIONS LLC, MRG CRW HOLDINGS LLC, MRG CRW MANAGEMENT I LLC, MRG CRW MANAGEMENT II LLC, MRG CRW OPERATIONS LLC, MUNICH OPCO GMBH, Miraval Resort, OASIS LUXURY RENTALS INCORPORATED, PARIS HOTEL COMPANY B.V., PARK HYATT HAMBURG GMBH, PARK HYATT HOTEL GMBH, PARK HYATT WATER TOWER ASSOCIATES L.L.C., PH NEW YORK L.L.C., PHMC RESIDENCIAS S. DE R.L. DE C.V., POLK SMITH REGENCY LLC, PT HYATT INDONESIA, PVD INVESTMENT COMPANY S.A.R.L., Peabody Hotels & Resort, RCG PROPERTIES LLC, REGENCY BEVERAGE COMPANY LLC, REGENCY RIVERWALK BEVERAGE LLC, RESERVATIONS CENTER L.L.C., RIO JV PARTNERS PARTICIPACOES LTDA., RIO PRETO PARTNERS HOTEIS LTDA., RIO PRETO PARTNERS S.A.R.L., ROSEMONT PROJECT MANAGEMENT L.L.C., ROUTE 46 MANAGEMENT ASSOCIATES CORP., RUNWAY HOLDING L.L.C., RUNWAY L.L.C., SAO PAULO INVESTMENT COMPANY INC., SAO PAULO INVESTORS LIMITED, SASIH, SDI EQUITIES INVESTOR L.L.C., SDI INC., SDI SECURITIES 11 LLC, SDI SECURITIES 6 LLC, SELECT HOTELS GROUP L.L.C., SELECT JV HOLDINGS L.L.C., SEOUL MIRAMAR CORPORATION, SERVICIOS DE HOTELERIA SAN JOSE S. DE R.L. DE C.V., SERVICIOS HOTELEROS LA PAZ S. DE R.L. DE C.V., SETTLEMENT INVESTORS INC., SHG PUERTO RICO INC., SIERRA HEALTHSTYLES LLC, SJC DESARROLLOS S. DE R.L. DE C.V., SKS CORP. N.V., SMC HOTELS B.V., SOROCABA PARTNERS HOTEIS LTDA, SOROCABA PARTNERS S.A.R.L., STANHOPE L.L.C., STARHILL LORING PARK L.L.C., SUGAR LAND/HP LLC, THE GREAT EASTERN HOTEL COMPANY LIMITED, THE GREAT EASTERN HOTEL HOLDING COMPANY LIMITED, TIJUANA PARTNERS S. DE R.L. DE C.V., TR MANAGEMENT INVESTMENT LLC, TUCSON VILLAS HOLDINGS LLC, TUCSON VILLAS LLC, TWO SEAS HOLDINGS LIMITED, Two Roads Hospitality, WAILEA HOTEL & BEACH RESORT L.L.C., WAILEA HOTEL HOLDINGS L.L.C., WAILEA MANAGEMENT ASSOCIATION L.L.C., WAILEA RESORT VILLAS HOLDINGS L.L.C., WAILEA RESORT VILLAS L.L.C., WEST END RESIDENCES L.L.C., XENIA ASSURANCE COMPANY INC., XENIA ASSURANCE COMPANY OF ILLINOIS, ZURICH ESCHERWIESE HOTEL GMBH, and ZURICH HOTEL INVESTMENTS B.V.. There is not enough analysis data for Centaur Media. 5.0 Community Rank Outperform Votes Centaur Media has received 441 outperform votes. (Add your outperform vote.) Underperform Votes Centaur Media has received 135 underperform votes. (Add your underperform vote.) Community Sentiment Centaur Media has received 76.56% outperform votes from our community. MarketBeat's community ratings are surveys of what our community members think about Centaur Media and other stocks. Vote Outperform if you believe CAU will outperform the S&P 500 over the long term. Vote Underperform if you believe CAU will underperform the S&P 500 over the long term. You may vote once every thirty days. Previous Next iShares MSCI EAFE Value ETF's stock was trading at $38.50 on March 11th, 2020 when COVID-19 reached pandemic status according to the World Health Organization (WHO). Since then, EFV stock has increased by 34.3% and is now trading at $51.71. View which stocks have been most impacted by COVID-19. Aali Shafi - Country General Manager of MCB Bank, Nimal Geeganage - Chairman of Comaran Group of Hotels, Mohamed Nizam - Chairman of Trust Gems Holdings, Dushantha Kumara - Managing Director of Dilshara Exports officially opening new MCB Galle branch With the objective of providing an enhancedbanking experience to its valued customers, MCB Bankrecently relocated and declared open its newly upgraded Galle branch. The branch was initially opened in 2013 as the second outstation branch of MCB Sri Lanka operations. Opening its doors on 22nd October 2018, the ceremony was graced by Aali Shafi - Country General Manager and other senior officials of the bank. Nimal Geeganage - Chairman of Comaran Group of Hotels, Mohamed Nizam - Chairman of Trust Gems Holdings,Dushantha Kumara - Managing Director of Dilshara Exports and many other prominent businessmen, customers and well-wishers also participated at the opening. MCB Galle branch now located at the heart of the town enjoysa greater visibility and is designed with the concept of modern branch banking and follows a corporate branding theme across all MCB overseas branches. Over a period of 5 years, the branch has expanded its customer base and achieved a moderate growth in business. During the recent years we have significantly invested in our branch network, technology and people. The newly upgraded Galle branch is yet another example of our commitment towards our customers and to contribute to the enhancement of the banking industry in the country, said AaliShafi. Highlighting the overall performance of MCB Sri Lanka, Aali said despite the fact that 2018 being a challenging year for the entire banking industry in the country, MCB has been able to achieve a considerable growth in its balance sheet and profitability. Today, MCB Sri Lanka operates with a network of 8 strategically located branches and provides access to over 4000 ATMs island-wide. The bank caters to a very strong and loyal customer base. MCB Bank Limited commenced its operations in Sri Lanka in 1994 and brings a rich and diverseinternational and regional experience to the country. The bank continues to hold the rating [SL] A+ (stable)awarded by ICRA Lanka Limited.The branches are conveniently located at Colombo Fort, Pettah, Maradana, Kollupitiya,Wellawatte,Kandy, Galle and Batticaloa. JPMorgan Chase & Co. is a financial holding company. It provides financial and investment banking services. The firm offers a range of investment banking products and services in all capital markets, including advising on corporate strategy and structure, capital raising in equity and debt markets, risk management, market making in cash securities and derivative instruments, and brokerage and research. It operates through the following segments: Consumer and Community Banking, Corporate and Investment Bank, Commercial Banking, and Asset and Wealth Management. The Consumer and Community Banking segment serves consumers and businesses through personal service at bank branches and through automated teller machine, online, mobile, and telephone banking. The Corporate and Investment Bank segment offers a suite of investment banking, market-making, prime brokerage, and treasury and securities products and services to a global client base of corporations, investors, financial institutions, government and municipal entities. The Commercial Banking segment delivers services to U.S. and its multinational clients, including corporations, municipalities, financial institutions, and non profit Read More Kering SA develops, designs, manufactures, markets, and sells apparel and accessories. The company offers shoes; leather goods, including handbags and wallets, purses, and other leather products; eyewear, textile accessories, etc.; and jewelry and watches, as well as ready-to-wear products for men and women. It also provides perfumes and cosmetics. The company provides Gucci, Saint Laurent, Bottega Veneta, Alexander McQueen, Balenciaga, Brioni, Boucheron, Pomellato, DoDo, Qeelin, Girard-Perregaux, Ulysse Nardin, and Kering Eyewear branded products. It sells its products through department stores, multi-brand stores, and franchise stores, as well as e-commerce sites. As of December 31, 2020, it operated 1,433 stores. Kering SA sells its products in the Asia-Pacific, Western Europe, North America, Japan, and internationally. The company was formerly known as PPR SA and changed its name to Kering SA in June 2013. Kering SA was founded in 1963 and is based in Paris, France. Read More Nuveen Pennsylvania Quality Municipal Income Fund is a closed ended fixed income mutual fund launched by Nuveen Investments, Inc. The fund is co-managed by Nuveen Fund Advisors LLC and Nuveen Asset Management, LLC. It invests in the fixed income markets of Pennsylvania. The fund invests in tax exempt municipal bonds, with a rating of Baa/BBB or higher. It employs fundamental analysis, with bottom-up stock picking approach, to create its portfolio. The fund benchmarks the performance of its portfolio against the Standard & Poor's Pennsylvania Municipal Bond Index and Standard & Poor's National Municipal Bond Index. The fund was formerly known a Nuveen Pennsylvania Investment Quality Municipal Fund. Nuveen Pennsylvania Quality Municipal Income Fund was formed on December 20, 1990 and is domiciled in the United States. Read More iShares MSCI Hong Kong ETF's stock was trading at $21.67 on March 11th, 2020 when Coronavirus (COVID-19) reached pandemic status according to the World Health Organization (WHO). Since then, EWH stock has increased by 12.6% and is now trading at $24.41. View which stocks have been most impacted by COVID-19. There is not enough analysis data for Anglo African Oil & Gas. 3.9 Community Rank Outperform Votes Anglo African Oil & Gas has received 44 outperform votes. (Add your outperform vote.) Underperform Votes Anglo African Oil & Gas has received 32 underperform votes. (Add your underperform vote.) Community Sentiment Anglo African Oil & Gas has received 57.89% outperform votes from our community. MarketBeat's community ratings are surveys of what our community members think about Anglo African Oil & Gas and other stocks. Vote Outperform if you believe AAOG will outperform the S&P 500 over the long term. Vote Underperform if you believe AAOG will underperform the S&P 500 over the long term. You may vote once every thirty days. Previous Next Baker Hughes, a GE company provides integrated oilfield products, services, and digital solutions worldwide. Its Oilfield Services segment offers drilling, wireline, evaluation, completion, production, and intervention services; and drilling and completions fluids, completions tools and systems, wellbore intervention tools and services, artificial lift systems, pressure pumping systems, and oilfield and industrial chemicals for integrated oil and natural gas, and oilfield service companies. The company's Oilfield Equipment segment designs and manufactures products and services, including pressure control equipment and services, subsea production systems and services, drilling equipment, and flexible pipeline systems; and onshore and offshore drilling and production systems, and equipment for floating production platforms, as well as provides a range of services related to onshore and offshore drilling activities. Its Turbomachinery & Process Solutions segment provides equipment and related services for mechanical-drive, compression, and power-generation applications across the oil and gas industry, as well as products and services to serve the downstream segments of industry. Its product portfolio includes drivers, compressors, and turnkey solutions; and pumps, valves, and compressed natural gas and small-scale liquefied natural gas solutions. This segment serves upstream, midstream, onshore and offshore, industrial, engineering, procurement, and construction companies. The company's Digital Solutions segment provides sensor-based measurement, non-destructive testing and inspection, turbine, generator and plant controls, and condition monitoring, as well as pipeline integrity solutions for a range of industries, including oil and gas, power generation, aerospace, metals, and transportation. It serves through direct and indirect channels. The company is based in Houston, Texas. Baker Hughes, a GE company is a subsidiary of General Electric Company. Read More The World Health Organisation (WHO) marked the World Mental Health Day this month with the theme being young people and mental health in a changing world. The aim is to raise global awareness of mental health issues and to stimulate advocacy. According to the WHO, this theme is of vital concern because about 1 in 5 adolescents experience mental and behavioural problems in any given year. Moreover, half of all mental health problems in adulthood have their onset during or before adolescence. Dr. Bente Mikkelsen, WHOs/Europe Director of the Division of Noncommunicable Diseases and Promoting Health through the Life-course states, It is important to protect the younger generations as they are the future leaders. We need youth at every table. We need their voices to shape their future in the right way, using their creativity and energy to make change. With the recent release of 2 WHO/Europe reports, Situation of child and adolescent health in Europe and Adolescent alcohol-related behaviours: trends and inequalities in the WHO European Region, 20022014, the health and well-being of young people is high on the regional agenda. Dr Mikkelsen notes that the area of mental health is still misunderstood, but now there is momentum and the highest possible recognition of mental health. At the third United Nations General Assembly high-level meeting on noncommunicable diseases (NCDs), held last month in New York, mental ill-health was endorsed as the fifth NCD alongside cardiovascular diseases, cancer, diabetes and respiratory diseases. According to the WHO, half of all mental illnesses begin by the age of 14, but most cases go undetected and untreated. In terms of the burden of the disease among adolescents, depression is the third leading cause. Suicide is the second leading cause of death among 15-29 year-olds. Harmful use of alcohol and illicit drugs among adolescents is a major issue in many countries and can lead to risky behaviours such as unsafe sex or dangerous driving. Eating disorders are also of concern. In Sri Lanka, till recently, there was an imbalance in our thinking with those with known mental disorders being marginalised or even condemned as Mulleriyawa cases. In a derogatory manner, many also would often say someone should be sent to Angoda referring to the area where the public mental hospital is situated. But thinking patterns now are generally more enlightened because most of us are aware that almost all people have some form of mental disorder. This is natural because we suffer far more mental injuries than physical injuries. Each time we are hurt, sidelined or otherwise ill-treated, we suffer mental injuries. On Tuesday, the government took an important step to curb the possibility of mental problems among children by making non-compulsory the highly competitive Grade 5 Scholarship examination. During the past few decades especially with subtle forms of selfishness and self-centredness growing in a competitive globalised capitalist market economic system -- many parents perhaps unknowingly pushed their children too much to get high marks in the Grade five scholarship exams. In Grades four and five, tens of thousands of children are known to have been forced to study till late and go for tuition class after class with little or no time for play or recreation. As a result many children are known to have suffered mental health problems which later manifested in more deadly forms like heroin addiction or suicidal tendencies. According to research done by social science lecturers M.A.S. Irfana and K. Kanesarajah, physical, mental, social and spiritual related problems have been identified among the students sitting the grade five scholarship exam. The researchers say though more students suffer from phobias like anxiety, grief, tension, stress and personality disorders, they are still forced to sit for this exam. Although they have been some positives such as outstation students getting higher marks than those in prestigious Colombo schools, the negatives are many and it would be a plus point for the society if the government totally scrap the Grade 5 Scholarship competition. 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 Boston Scientific: 34 Biomedical Merger Corp., 9357-1867 Quebec Inc., Acurate Industria e Comercio Ltda., Advanced Bionics, Advanced Stent Technologies, American Medical Systems, American Medical Systems Europe B.V., Apama Medical, Apama Medical Inc., Asthmatx, Atritech, Augmenix, Augmenix Inc., Augmenix K.K., BSC International Medical Trading (Shanghai) Co. Ltd., BSC Medical Device Technology (Shanghai) Co. Ltd., BTG, BTG Australasia Pty Ltd, BTG Europe B.V., BTG IM Holdings Ltd., BTG International (Holdings) Limited, BTG International Asia Limited, BTG International Canada Inc., BTG International Germany GmbH, BTG International Healthcare Inc., BTG International Healthcare LLC, BTG International Healthcare Limited, BTG International Inc., BTG International Limited, BTG Limited, BTG Management Services Limited, BTG Medikal Limited Sirketi, Bard Electrophysiology, Barosense, Biocompatibles Inc., Biocompatibles International Limited, Biocompatibles UK Limited, Boston Scientific (Malaysia) Sdn. Bhd., Boston Scientific (South Africa) Proprietary Limited, Boston Scientific (Thailand) Ltd., Boston Scientific (UK) Limited, Boston Scientific AG, Boston Scientific Argentina S.A., Boston Scientific Asia Pacific Pte. Ltd., Boston Scientific Benelux NV, Boston Scientific Canada Limited, Boston Scientific Ceska republika s.r.o., Boston Scientific Chile SpA, Boston Scientific Colombia Limitada, Boston Scientific Comercial de Costa Rica BSCR S.R.L., Boston Scientific Far East B.V., Boston Scientific Gesellschaft m.b.H., Boston Scientific Group plc, Boston Scientific Hellas S.A., Boston Scientific Hong Kong Limited, Boston Scientific Iberica S.A., Boston Scientific India Private Limited, Boston Scientific International B.V., Boston Scientific International Finance Limited, Boston Scientific International S.A., Boston Scientific Israel Ltd., Boston Scientific Japan K.K., Boston Scientific Korea Co. Ltd., Boston Scientific Lebanon SAL, Boston Scientific Limited, Boston Scientific Ltd., Boston Scientific Medical Device, Boston Scientific Medical Device Limited, Boston Scientific Medizintechnik GmbH, Boston Scientific Middle East FZ-LLC, Boston Scientific Middle East SAL, Boston Scientific Nederland B.V., Boston Scientific Neuromodulation Corporation, Boston Scientific New Zealand Limited, Boston Scientific Nordic AB, Boston Scientific Peru S.A.C., Boston Scientific Philippines Inc., Boston Scientific Polska Sp. z o.o., Boston Scientific Portugal - Dispositivos Medicos Lda, Boston Scientific Pty Ltd, Boston Scientific Romania S.R.L., Boston Scientific S.A.S., Boston Scientific S.p.A., Boston Scientific Scimed, Boston Scientific Scimed Inc., Boston Scientific Services Private Limited, Boston Scientific TIP Gerecleri Limited Sirketi, Boston Scientific Technology & Engineering Services Private Limited, Boston Scientific Uruguay S.A., Boston Scientific Vietnam Company Limited, Boston Scientific de Costa Rica S.R.L., Boston Scientific de Mexico S.A. de C.V., Boston Scientific del Caribe Inc., Boston Scientific do Brasil Ltda., Bravo Bidco Limited, BridgePoint Medical, Cameron Health, Cardiac Pacemakers Inc., Cardiac Pathways Corp, Catheter Innovations, Claret Medical, Claret Medical Inc., Cosman Medical, Cosman Medical LLC, CryoCor, Cryterion Medical, Cryterion Medical Inc., Cryterion Medical Ireland Limited, EKOS LLC, EMcision, EMcision International Inc., EP Technologies, EP Technologies Inc., Electron Acquisition Corporation, EndoChoice, EndoChoice Holdings Inc., EndoChoice Inc., EndoChoice Innovation Center Ltd., EndoChoice Israel Ltd., Endotex, Enteric Medical Technologies, Galil Medical Inc., Galil Medical Ltd., Galil Medical UK Limited, Guidant, Guidant Delaware Holding Corporation, Guidant Europe NV, Guidant Puerto Rico B.V., Hong Kong Medtech Trading Limited, Intelect Medical, Millipede, Millipede Inc., NXT Merger Corp., Notebook Merger Sub Ltd., Novate Medical Limited, NxThera, NxThera Inc., PT Boston Scientific Indonesia, PneumRx GmbH, PneumRx LLC, PneumRx Liimited, Protherics Medicines Development B.V., Protherics Medicines Development Limited, Protherics UK Limited, Provensis Limited, RMI Acquisition Corp., Remon Medical Technologies, Rhythmia Medical, Robert S. Smith M.D. Inc., Roxwood Medical Inc., SNS Merger Corp, Sadra Medical, Sadra Medical Inc., Securus Medical Group, Securus Medical Group Inc., Special K Merger Corp., StarMedTec, Stream Enterprises LLC, Symetis, Symetis SA, Target Therapeutics, Target Therapeutics Inc., The LumenR Tissue Retractor System, Veniti, Veniti Inc., VertiFlex, Vertiflex Inc., Vessix Vascular, Xlumena, Zuma Investment Pty Ltd, iogyn, nVision Medical, and nVision Medical Corporation. The following companies are subsidiares of 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). Miss Charlotte Wanigasekera came from a Baptist family from Mugunuwatawana, a small village of Madampe in North Western Province. She had two sisters and four brothers. When I met her in 1971 she was the principal of a school in Nawalapitiya. She saw to it that the brothers got their education. She encouraged them to get on with their jobs and do well in life. She was a selfless lady and opted to remain a spinster. She did a lot for the family. I met her, because one of her brothers was married to my husbands sister. She had encouraged this brother to join the education service after his secondary education at Carey College, Colombo. After his training he ended up as an Asst. Zonal Director of Education. She loved the Lord and wanted to serve him. She was a of member of the YWCA and I remember the members of the National YWCA telling me, that they loved the trips to Madampe, where meetings were held. Miss Charlotte was an affectionate woman and loved to be hospitable. If we visited her she would never send us off without giving us a meal. We remember her sumptuous meals, not forgetting a super duper cashew curry, prepared by Miss Charlotte and her team. It was a real shock when we got the news of her demise just three months ago. Two days before she passed away she spoke to me on the phone to inquire about my husband who was in hospital. She told me do not worry. She had many nieces and nephews and she was Mamma to them and sister to us. She was a disciplined lady and this is what she imparted to the next generation. She was much loved and respected by not only by the family, but by all who knew her. She was an active member of the Baptist womens League and nurtured a young group of women. Her dream was to have a little Baptist Church in her Village, Mugunuwatawana. God permitted it to lake place before she was called to a better home. There is a small Baptist church at Mugunuwatawana, looked after by a very active young worker. To God be the glory for the great things He has done. She was 96 years of age when she left us. May her soul rest in peace. Lakshmie Mawala Hendala The following companies are subsidiares of SAP: Abakus, Abakus Europe Limited, Abakus Ukraine Limited Liability Company, Adatfeldolgozasban Informatikai Kft., Altiscale, Ambin Properties Proprietary Limited, AppGyver, Ariba, Ariba Czech s.r.o., Ariba Inc. Palo Alto, Ariba India Private Limited, Ariba International, Ariba International Holdings, Ariba International Singapore Pte Ltd, Ariba Slovak Republic s.r.o., Ariba Software Technology Services (Shanghai) Co., Ariba Technologies India Private Limited, Ariba Technologies Netherlands B.V., Beijing Zhang Zhong Hu Dong Information Technology, Business Objects, Business Objects Holding B.V., Business Objects Option LLC, Business Objects Software Limited, CNQR Operations Mexico S. de. R.L. de. C.V., Callidus Software, CallidusCloud, Christie Partners Holding C.V., Clear Standards, ClearTrip Inc., ClearTrip Inc. (Mauritius), Cleartrip MEA FZ LLC, Cleartrip Private Limited, Coghead, ConTgo Consulting Limited, ConTgo Pty. Ltd., Concur (Austria) GmbH, Concur (Canada), Concur (France) SAS, Concur (Germany) GmbH, Concur (Japan) Ltd., Concur (New Zealand) Limited, Concur (Philippines) Inc., Concur (Switzerland) GmbH, Concur Czech (s.r.o.), Concur Holdings (France) SAS, Concur Holdings (Netherlands) B.V., Concur Technologies (Australia) Pty. Limited, Concur Technologies (Hong Kong) Limited, Concur Technologies (India) Private Limited, Concur Technologies (Singapore) Pte Ltd, Concur Technologies (UK) Limited, Concur Technologies Inc. Bellevue, Contextor, Coresystems, Crystal Decisions (Ireland) Limited, Crystal Decisions Holdings Limited, Crystal Decisions UK Limited, Emarsys, EssCubed Procurement Pty. Ltd., Extended Systems, Factory Logic, Fedem Technology AS, Fieldglass Europe Limited, Financial Fusion, FreeMarkets Ltda., Frictionless Commerce, Gigya, Gigya Australia Pty Ltd, Gigya Ltd., Gigya UK Ltd, GlobalExpense Limited, Highdeal, Hipmunk, Hybris (US) Corp., Hybris GmbH, Inxight Federal Systems Group, KXEN, Khimetrics, LLC "SAP Labs", LLC "SAP Ukraine", LLC SAP CIS, MaXware, Merlin Systems Oy, Multiposting Sp.z o.o., Nihon Ariba K.K., OpTier, OutlookSoft, OutlookSoft Deutschland GmbH, PLAT.ONE, PT SAP Indonesia, PT Sybase 365 Indonesia, Pilot Software Inc., Plat.One Inc., Plat.One Lab Srl, Plateau Systems LLC, Quadrem Africa Pty. Ltd., Quadrem Brazil Ltda., Quadrem Chile Ltda., Quadrem Colombia SAS, Quadrem International Ltd., Quadrem Netherlands B.V., Quadrem Overseas Cooperatief U.A., Quadrem Peru S.A.C., Qualtrics, Recast.AI, Right Hemisphere, Roambi, Ruan Lian Technologies (Beijing) Co., SAF, SAP (Beijing) Software System Co., SAP (Schweiz) AG, SAP (Schweiz) AG Biel, SAP (UK) Limited, SAP (UK) Limited Feltham, SAP AZ LLC, SAP America, SAP America Inc. Newtown Square, SAP Andina y del Caribe, SAP Argentina S.A., SAP Asia (Vietnam) Co., SAP Asia Pte Ltd, SAP Australia Pty Ltd, SAP Australia Pty Ltd. Sydney, SAP Belgium NV/SA, SAP Beteiligungs GmbH, SAP Brasil Ltda, SAP Brasil Ltda Sao Paulo, SAP Bulgaria EOOD, SAP Business Compliance Services GmbH, SAP Business Services Center Nederland B.V., SAP CR, SAP Canada, SAP Chile Limitada, SAP China Co., SAP China Co. Ltd. Shanghai, SAP China Holding Co., SAP Colombia S.A.S., SAP Commercial Services Ltd., SAP Concur, SAP Costa Rica, SAP Customer Experience, SAP Cyprus Limited, SAP Danmark A/S, SAP Deutschland SE & Co. KG, SAP Deutschland SE & Co. KG Walldorf, SAP Dritte Beteiligungs- und Vermogensverwaltungs GmbH, SAP EMEA Inside Sales S.L., SAP East Africa Limited, SAP Egypt LLC, SAP Erste Beteiligungs- und Vermogensverwaltungs GmbH, SAP Espana - Sistemas Informatica, SAP Estonia OU, SAP Fieldglass, SAP Financial, SAP Finland Oy, SAP Foreign Holdings GmbH, SAP France, SAP France Holding, SAP France Levallois Perret, SAP Global Marketing, SAP Hellas S.A., SAP Holdings (UK) Limited, SAP Hong Kong Co., SAP Hosting Beteiligungs GmbH, SAP Hungary Rendszerek, SAP India (Holding) Pte Ltd, SAP India Private Limited, SAP India Private Limited Bangalore, SAP Industries, SAP Industries Inc. Newtown Square, SAP International, SAP International Panama, SAP Investments, SAP Ireland Limited, SAP Ireland US - Financial Services Designated Activity Company, SAP Israel Ltd., SAP Italia Sistemi Applicazioni Prodotti in Data Processing S.p.A., SAP Italia Sistemi Applicazioni Prodotti in Data Processing S.p.A. Vimercate, SAP Japan Co., SAP Japan Co. Ltd. Tokyo, SAP Kazakhstan LLP, SAP Korea Ltd., SAP Labs, SAP Labs Bulgaria EOOD, SAP Labs Finland Oy, SAP Labs France SAS, SAP Labs India Private Limited, SAP Labs Israel Ltd., SAP Labs Korea, SAP Latvia SIA, SAP MENA FZ L.L.C., SAP Malaysia Sdn. Bhd., SAP Malta Investments Ltd., SAP Mxico S.A. de C.V., SAP National Security Services PA, SAP Nederland B.V., SAP Nederland B.V. s-Hertogenbosch, SAP Service and Support Centre (Ireland) Limited, SAP SuccessFactors, SAP d.o.o., SeeWhy, Signavio, SuccessFactors, SuccessFactors Inc. South San Francisco, Sybase, Syclo, TopTier Software, Triversity, Vimercate, Virsa Systems, Visiprise, Wicom Communications, and conTgo limited. Mobitel, Sri Lankas National Mobile Service Provider once again led Sri Lankas Technological and Digital advancements at Techno 2018. Sri Lankas premier Technology Exhibition showcased the countrys Engineering and Technology prowess, was energized and inspired by Mobitels dazzling demonstration of cutting-edge Communication Services made available for the betterment of all Sri Lankans. Technology enthusiasts flocked to Mobitels attractive Stall which featured a range of its latest unique products, technologies, initiatives and innovations under the theme Connecting the green future which was aligned to Techno 2018s green engineering ethos. Mobitel and Sri Lanka Telecom stepped forward as Main Sponsors for Techno 2018, which was held from 12th to 14th October 2018 at the BMICH. Mobitels stall was unique on many fronts. Taking its Connecting the green future theme to heart, the state-of-the-art stall was designed using recyclable material to the greatest extent possible. Moreover, the stall was highly interactive and engaging for visitors because Mobitel held demonstrations of its latest technologies, initiatives and innovations. Leading the way in 5G in Sri Lanka, Mobitel publicly demonstrated Sri Lankas first 5G deployment over 3.5GHz, globally recognized as the primary frequency band for 5G, showcasing the exponential growth in broadband speeds which Mobitel will provide to its customers in the near future. This 5G Massive MIMO (Multiple Input Multiple Output) technology demonstration utilized 64x64 MIMO configuration with commercially available user devices and commercially available network equipment, dispelling doubts over its short term viability, and thereby leading Sri Lankas progress ahead of many technology advanced nations worldwide. Mobitel is grateful for the support and encouragement given by the Director General of Telecommunications Regulatory Authority of Sri Lanka (TRCSL) and his officers to industry players in their efforts in making advancements in the industry. Sri Lankas national mobile service provider, Mobitel, occupies the foremost position in cutting-edge mobile telecommunication technology in Sri Lanka. Its revolutionary path to the forefront of the industry is peppered with many pioneering technologies that have paved the way for other mobile operators to follow in its wake. In fact, the rest of the industry takes its cue from products and services introduced by Mobitel. Trail-blazing 5G in Sri Lanka having demonstrated 5G with commercial infrastructure at Techno 2018, Mobitel is poised to be the first mobile operator in Sri Lanka to introduce 5G commercially for its customers for faster connectivity and an improved experience. Despite being the first off the starting blocks with every mobile technology in the recent past, Mobitel, never loses sight of offering sustainable green technology offerings that nurture the nation. While Mobitel has the capability to roll out the very latest mobile technologies, at the same time, it lends a nurturing hand to its customer base in rural areas for whom 2G and 3G technologies are a lifeline. Mobitel understands the needs of its customer segments and caters to them with unfailing precision, while ensuring its investments in the latest technologies continue to enhance the reputation of Sri Lanka as being highly advanced in the region for technological adoption. Mobitel also publicly demonstrated Voice-over-WiFi (VoWiFi) for the first time in Sri Lanka, the ability to make traditional cellular voice calls over any WiFi hotspot. This is a significant step forward in Sri Lanka, as typical voice calls will be possible in areas of extremely poor Mobile coverage or Not Spots (where owing to environmental conditions or the inability for Mobile signals to penetrate very large buildings), calls can be routed over any available WiFi hotspot. Having showcased services geared towards the masses, Mobitel also demonstrated communication services suitable for public/administrative services and large scale industries such as Police and Emergency services, Shipping, Railway communications etc. The technology was based on converting traditional analog Walkie-Talkie services over Mobitels island-wide digital LTE network, thereby ensuring enhanced coverage, superior call quality, and also the ability to broadcast video images over push-to-talk (PTT) functions. Following the recent natural disasters in Sri Lanka, Mobitel also trialed an early warning detection system for landslides, thereby encompassing communication from early warning systems to emergency response units. Furthermore, to cater the growth of Internet of Things (IoT) deployment, Mobitel also demonstrated several NB-IoT (Narrowband IoT) products such as Smart Water Meters. Finally, in keeping with the Green Technology theme, an app based on the widely popular Blockchain technology was commercially launched, whereby anyone could plant a tree and track its growth over its lifetime, thereby earning carbon credits which could be traded for free data bundles on Mobitels network. Mobitel CEO, Mr. Nalin Perera highlighted Mobitels 3-pronged initiative which improved the lifestyle and digital empowerment of 1) its retail customers, 2) the public services/ large scale industries and finally 3) pioneering Sri Lankas Sustainable and Green initiatives based on its technology service offerings and acknowledged the support extended by the Telecommunications Regulatory Authority of Sri Lanka for the creating the right environment for the growth and sustainability of the industry. Mobitel had once again delivered real-life solutions with tangible benefits to every Sri Lankan and also for advancing Sri Lankas Digital initiatives, in keeping with Sri Lankas Digital Vision for the country. Mobitel, as the National Mobile Service Provider, has taken on the mantle of spearheading Sri Lankas ICT Transformation. It has positioned itself to offer services far beyond just mobile telephony. The mobile services category has evolved over time into the mobile ICT category and Mobitel is now leading the path in transforming it further in the digital service provision category. The X Station has become a symbol of how Mobitel is leading the countrys digital revolution. The first hi-tech Internet of Things (IoT) concept store of its kind in the country, X Station is the expert hub for futuristic technology products and services. Mobitels innovative services today are enhancing communication, technology, health, and IT literacy opportunities for citizens. The following companies are subsidiares of Sonic Automotive: AM GA LLC, AM Realty GA LLC, AnTrev LLC, Arngar Inc., Autobahn Inc., Avalon Ford Inc., Car Cash of North Carolina Inc., Cornerstone Acceptance Corporation, ECHOPARK: AM GA LLC, ECHOPARK: AM Realty GA LLC, ECHOPARK: EP Realty NC LLC, ECHOPARK: EP Realty SC LLC, ECHOPARK: EchoPark AZ LLC, ECHOPARK: EchoPark CA LLC, ECHOPARK: EchoPark Driver Education LLC, ECHOPARK: EchoPark FL LLC, ECHOPARK: EchoPark NC LLC, ECHOPARK: EchoPark Realty TX LLC, ECHOPARK: EchoPark SC LLC, ECHOPARK: EchoPark TX LLC, ECHOPARK: Echopark Automotive Inc., ECHOPARK: SAI DS LLC, ECHOPARK: SAI DS Realty TX LLC, ECHOPARK: SAI Vehicle Subscription Inc., ECHOPARK: TT Denver LLC, ECHOPARK: TTRE CO 1 LLC, FAA Beverly Hills Inc., FAA Capitol N Inc., FAA Concord H Inc., FAA Concord T Inc., FAA Dublin N Inc., FAA Dublin VWD Inc., FAA Holding Corp., FAA Las Vegas H Inc., FAA Poway H Inc., FAA Poway T Inc., FAA San Bruno Inc., FAA Santa Monica V Inc., FAA Serramonte H Inc., FAA Serramonte Inc., FAA Serramonte L Inc., FAA Stevens Creek Inc., FAA Torrance CPJ Inc., FirstAmerica Automotive Inc., Fort Mill Ford Inc., Franciscan Motors Inc., Frontier Oldsmobile-Cadillac Inc., Kramer Motors Incorporated, L Dealership Group Inc., Marcus David Corporation, Massey Cadillac Inc. (TN-MI), Mountain States Motors Co. Inc., North Point Imports LLC, Ontario L LLC, Philpott Motors Ltd., SAI AL HC1 Inc., SAI AL HC2 Inc., SAI Ann Arbor Imports LLC, SAI Atlanta B LLC, SAI Broken Arrow C LLC, SAI Calabasas A LLC, SAI Chamblee V LLC, SAI Charlotte M LLC, SAI Chattanooga N LLC, SAI Clearwater T LLC, SAI Cleveland N LLC, SAI Columbus Motors LLC, SAI Columbus T LLC, SAI Columbus VWK LLC, SAI Conroe N LLC, SAI Denver B Inc., SAI Denver C Inc., SAI Denver M Inc., SAI FL HC1 Inc., SAI FL HC2 Inc., SAI FL HC3 Inc., SAI FL HC4 Inc., SAI FL HC7 Inc., SAI Fairfax B LLC, SAI Fort Myers B LLC, SAI Fort Myers H LLC, SAI Fort Myers M LLC, SAI Fort Myers VW LLC, SAI GA HC1 LLC, SAI Irondale Imports LLC, SAI Irondale L LLC, SAI Long Beach B Inc., SAI MD HC1 Inc., SAI McKinney M LLC, SAI Monrovia B Inc., SAI Montgomery B LLC, SAI Montgomery BCH LLC, SAI Montgomery CH LLC, SAI Nashville CSH LLC, SAI Nashville H LLC, SAI Nashville M LLC, SAI Nashville Motors LLC, SAI OK HC1 Inc., SAI Oklahoma City C LLC, SAI Oklahoma City H LLC, SAI Oklahoma City T LLC, SAI Orlando CS LLC, SAI Peachtree LLC, SAI Pensacola A LLC, SAI Philpott T LLC, SAI Riverside C LLC, SAI Roaring Fork LR Inc., SAI Rockville Imports LLC, SAI Rockville L LLC, SAI S. Atlanta JLR LLC, SAI SIC Inc., SAI Santa Clara K Inc., SAI Stone Mountain T LLC, SAI TN HC1 LLC, SAI TN HC2 LLC, SAI TN HC3 LLC, SAI Tulsa N LLC, SAI Tulsa T LLC, SAI Tysons Corner H LLC, SAI Tysons Corner I LLC, SAI VA HC1 Inc., SAI VS GA LLC, SAI VS TX LLC, SAI Vehicle Subscription Inc., SAI West Houston B LLC, SRE Alabama 2 LLC, SRE Alabama 5 LLC, SRE Alabama 6 LLC, SRE California 10 LBB LLC, SRE California 11 PH LLC, SRE California 1 LLC, SRE California 2 LLC, SRE California 3 LLC, SRE California 4 LLC, SRE California 5 LLC, SRE California 6 LLC, SRE California 7 SCB LLC, SRE California 8 SCH LLC, SRE California 9 BHB LLC, SRE Colorado 1 LLC, SRE Colorado 2 LLC, SRE Colorado 3 LLC, SRE Colorado 4 RF LLC, SRE Colorado 5 CC LLC, SRE Florida 1 LLC, SRE Florida 2 LLC, SRE Georgia 4 LLC, SRE Georgia 5 LLC, SRE Georgia 6 LLC, SRE Holding LLC, SRE Maryland 1 LLC, SRE Nevada 2 LLC, SRE North Carolina 2 LLC, SRE North Carolina 3 LLC, SRE Ohio 1 LLC, SRE Ohio 2 LLC, SRE Oklahoma 1 LLC, SRE Oklahoma 2 LLC, SRE Oklahoma 5 LLC, SRE South Carolina 2 LLC, SRE South Carolina 3 LLC, SRE South Carolina 4 LLC, SRE Tennessee 6 LLC, SRE Tennessee 7 LLC, SRE Tennessee 1 LLC, SRE Tennessee 2 LLC, SRE Tennessee 3 LLC, SRE Tennessee 4 LLC, SRE Tennessee 5 LLC, SRE Texas 10 LLC, SRE Texas 11 LLC, SRE Texas 12 LLC, SRE Texas 13 LLC, SRE Texas 14 LLC, SRE Texas 15 LLC, SRE Texas 16 LLC, SRE Texas 9 LLC, SRE Texas 1 LP, SRE Texas 2 LP, SRE Texas 3 LP, SRE Texas 4 LP, SRE Texas 5 LP, SRE Texas 6 LP, SRE Texas 7 LP, SRE Texas 8 LP, SRE Virginia - 1 LLC, SRE Virginia 2 LLC, SRM Assurance Ltd., Santa Clara Imported Cars Inc., Sonic 2185 Chapman Rd. Chattanooga LLC, Sonic Advantage PA LP, Sonic Automotive - 1720 Mason Ave. DB LLC, Sonic Automotive 2424 Laurens Rd. Greenville Inc., Sonic Automotive 2752 Laurens Rd. Greenville Inc., Sonic Automotive Aviation LLC, Sonic Automotive F&I LLC, Sonic Automotive Support LLC, Sonic Automotive West LLC, Sonic Automotive of Chattanooga LLC, Sonic Automotive of Nashville LLC, Sonic Automotive of Nevada Inc., Sonic Automotive of Texas LP, Sonic Automotive 1495 Automall Drive Columbus Inc., Sonic Automotive 1720 Mason Ave. DB Inc., Sonic Automotive 2490 South Lee Highway LLC, Sonic Automotive 3401 N. Main TX LP, Sonic Automotive 4701 I-10 East TX LP, Sonic Automotive 6008 N. Dale Mabry FL Inc., Sonic Automotive 9103 E. Independence NC LLC, Sonic Calabasas M Inc., Sonic Development LLC, Sonic Divisional Operations LLC, Sonic FFC 1 Inc., Sonic FFC 2 Inc., Sonic FFC 3 Inc., Sonic Fremont Inc., Sonic Houston JLR LP, Sonic Houston LR LP, Sonic Momentum B LP, Sonic Momentum JVP LP, Sonic Momentum VWA LP, Sonic Resources Inc., Sonic Santa Monica M Inc., Sonic Santa Monica S Inc., Sonic Walnut Creek M Inc., Sonic Wilshire Cadillac Inc., Sonic eStore Inc., Sonic of Texas Inc., Sonic Buena Park H Inc., Sonic Cadillac D LP, Sonic Calabasas A Inc., Sonic Calabasas V Inc., Sonic Camp Ford LP, Sonic Capitol Cadillac Inc., Sonic Capitol Imports Inc., Sonic Carrollton V LP, Sonic Carson F Inc., Sonic Carson LM Inc., Sonic Clear Lake N LP, Sonic Clear Lake Volkswagen LP, Sonic Denver T Inc., Sonic Downey Cadillac Inc., Sonic Fort Mill Chrysler Jeep Inc., Sonic Fort Mill Dodge Inc., Sonic Fort Worth T LP, Sonic Frank Parra Autoplex LP, Sonic Harbor City H Inc., Sonic Houston V LP, Sonic Integrity Dodge LV LLC, Sonic Jersey Village Volkswagen LP, Sonic LS Chevrolet LP, Sonic LS LLC, Sonic Lake Norman Chrysler Jeep LLC, Sonic Las Vegas C West LLC, Sonic Lloyd Nissan Inc., Sonic Lloyd Pontiac Cadillac Inc., Sonic Lone Tree Cadillac Inc., Sonic Lute Riley LP, Sonic Massey Cadillac LP, Sonic Massey Chevrolet Inc., Sonic Mesquite Hyundai LP, Sonic Newsome Chevrolet World Inc., Sonic Newsome of Florence Inc., Sonic North Charleston Dodge Inc., Sonic North Charleston Inc., Sonic Plymouth Cadillac Inc., Sonic Richardson F LP, Sonic Sanford Cadillac Inc., Sonic Shottenkirk Inc., Sonic Stevens Creek B Inc., Sonic Volvo LV LLC, Sonic West Covina T Inc., Sonic Williams Cadillac Inc., Stevens Creek Cadillac Inc., The Sonic Automotive Family Emergency Fund (SAFE), Town and Country Ford Incorporated, and Windward Inc.. Stage Stores, Inc. operates specialty department stores primarily in small and mid-sized towns and communities in the United States. Its merchandise portfolio comprises moderately priced and brand name apparel, accessories, cosmetics, footwear, and home goods. The company also offers merchandise direct-to-consumer through its e-commerce Website, and private label credit card and loyalty programs. As of August 23, 2018, it operated 764 department stores in 42 states under the BEALLS, GOODY'S, PALAIS ROYAL, PEEBLES, and STAGE names; 63 GORDMANS off-price stores; and stage.com, an e-commerce Website. The company was founded in 1988 and is based in Houston, Texas. Read More Cambrex Corporation, a life sciences company, provides various products and services for the development and commercialization of new and generic therapeutics worldwide. Its products comprise active pharmaceutical ingredients and pharmaceutical intermediates that are used in the production of prescription and over-the-counter drug products, as well as finished dosage forms. The company serves generic drug companies; and companies that discover and commercialize small molecule human therapeutics. The company sells its products directly, as well as through independent agents. Cambrex Corporation was founded in 1981 and is headquartered in East Rutherford, New Jersey. Read More The following companies are subsidiares of Centene: APS Parent Inc., AWC of Syracuse Inc., Absolute Total Care Inc., AcariaHealth Inc., AcariaHealth Pharmacy #11 Inc., AcariaHealth Pharmacy #12 Inc., AcariaHealth Pharmacy #13 Inc., AcariaHealth Pharmacy #14 Inc., AcariaHealth Pharmacy Inc., AcariaHealth Solutions Inc., Access Medical Acquisition LLC, Access Medical Group of Florida City LLC, Access Medical Group of Hialeah LLC, Access Medical Group of Lakeland LLC, Access Medical Group of Miami LLC, Access Medical Group of North Miami Beach LLC, Access Medical Group of Opa-Locka LLC, Access Medical Group of Perrine LLC, Access Medical Group of Tampa II LLC, Access Medical Group of Tampa III LLC, Access Medical Group of Tampa LLC, Access Medical Group of Westchester LLC, Accountable Care Coalition Direct Contracting LLC, Accountable Care Coalition of Chesapeake LLC, Accountable Care Coalition of Community Health Centers II LLC, Accountable Care Coalition of Community Health Centers LLC, Accountable Care Coalition of Elite Providers II LLC, Accountable Care Coalition of Elite Providers III LLC, Accountable Care Coalition of Elite Providers IV LLC, Accountable Care Coalition of Elite Providers LLC, Accountable Care Coalition of Elite Providers V LLC, Accountable Care Coalition of Elite Providers VI LLC, Accountable Care Coalition of Elite Providers VII LLC, Accountable Care Coalition of Florida Partners LLC, Accountable Care Coalition of Georgia LLC, Accountable Care Coalition of Maryland LLC, Accountable Care Coalition of Maryland Primary Care LLC, Accountable Care Coalition of Mississippi LLC, Accountable Care Coalition of New Jersey Inc., Accountable Care Coalition of North Texas LLC, Accountable Care Coalition of Northeast Georgia LLC, Accountable Care Coalition of Northeast Partners LLC, Accountable Care Coalition of Northwest Florida LLC, Accountable Care Coalition of Prime Health LLC, Accountable Care Coalition of Quality Health II LLC, Accountable Care Coalition of Quality Health III LLC, Accountable Care Coalition of Quality Health LLC, Accountable Care Coalition of Southeast Partners LLC, Accountable Care Coalition of Southeast Physician Partners LLC, Accountable Care Coalition of Southeast Texas Inc., Accountable Care Coalition of Southeast Wisconsin LLC, Accountable Care Coalition of Tennessee LLC, Accountable Care Coalition of Texas Inc., Agate Resources Inc., AirLogix, Ambetter of Magnolia Inc., Ambetter of North Carolina Inc., Ambetter of Peach State Inc., America's 1st Choice California Holdings LLC, American Progressive Life and Health Insurance Company of New York, Apixio, Apixio Inc, Arch Personalized Medicine Initiative LLC, Arkansas Health & Wellness Health Plan Inc., Arkansas Total Care Holding Company LLC, Arkansas Total Care Inc., B2B Gestion Integra S.L.U., B2B Salud S.L.U., Bankers Reserve Life Insurance Company of Wisconsin, Blackcrow Asistencia Medica S.L, Bridgeway Health Solutions LLC, Bridgeway Health Solutions of Arizona Inc., Buckeye Community Health Plan Inc., Buckeye Health Plan Community Solutions Inc., CCTX Holdings LLC, CMC Real Estate Company LLC, CT Poprad s.r.o., CT Presov s.r.o., Calibrate Acquisition Company, California Health and Wellness Plan, Cantina Laredo Clayton LP, Cardium Health Services, Care 1st Health Plan of Arizona Inc., Care1st Health Plan Administrative Services Inc., Carolina Complete Health Holding Company Partnership, Carolina Complete Health Inc., Casenet LLC, Casenet S.R.O., CeltiCare Health Plan Holdings LLC, CeltiCare Health Plan of Massachusetts Inc., Celtic Group Inc., Celtic Insurance Company, Cenpatico Behavioral Health LLC, Cenpatico Behavioral Health of Arizona LLC, Cenpatico of Arizona Inc., Centene Center I LLC, Centene Center II LLC, Centene Center LLC, Centene Company of Texas LP, Centene Europe Finance Company Limited, Centene Health Plan Holdings Inc., Centene Institute for Advanced Health Education LLC, Centene International Ventures LLC, Centene Investments LLC, Centene Management Company LLC, Centene Venture Company Alabama Health Plan Inc., Centene Venture Company Florida Inc., Centene Venture Company Illinois Inc., Centene Venture Company Indiana Inc., Centene Venture Company Kansas Inc., Centene Venture Company Michigan Inc., Centene Venture Company Tennessee Inc., Centro Inmunologocia De La Comunidad Valenciana S.L., Centurion Correctional Healthcare of New Mexico LLC, Centurion Detention Health Services LLC, Centurion LLC, Centurion of Arizona LLC, Centurion of Delaware LLC, Centurion of Florida LLC, Centurion of Kansas LLC, Centurion of Minnesota LLC, Centurion of Mississippi LLC, Centurion of New Hampshire LLC, Centurion of Pennsylvania LLC, Centurion of Tennessee LLC, Centurion of Vermont LLC, Centurion of West Virginia LLC, Centurion of Wyoming LLC, Chrysalis Medical Services LLC, Clinica Santo Domingo De Lugo S.L., Collaborative Health Systems IPA LLC, Collaborative Health Systems LLC, Collaborative Health Systems of Maryland LLC, Collaborative Health Systems of Virginia LLC, Comfort Hospice of Missouri LLC, Comfort Hospice of Texas LLC, ComfortBrook Hospice LLC, Community Medical Group, Community Medical Holdings Corporation, Comprehensive Health Management Inc., Comprehensive Reinsurance Ltd., Coordinated Care Corporation, Coordinated Care of Washington Inc., Country Style Health Care LLC, Discare CZ a.s., District Community Care Inc., Dr Magnet s.r.o., Elche-Crevillente Salud, Envolve Benefits Options Inc., Envolve Captive Insurance Company Inc., Envolve Dental IPA of New York Inc., Envolve Dental Inc., Envolve Dental of Florida Inc., Envolve Dental of Texas Inc., Envolve Health, Envolve Holdings Inc., Envolve Inc., Envolve Optical Inc., Envolve PeopleCare Inc., Envolve Pharmacy IPA LLC, Envolve Pharmacy Solutions Inc., Envolve Total Vision Inc., Envolve Vision Benefits Inc., Envolve Vision IPA of New York Inc., Envolve Vision Inc., Envolve Vision of Florida Inc., Envolve Vision of Texas Inc., Essential Care Partners LLC, Exactus Pharmacy Solutions Inc., Family Nurse Care II LLC, Family Nurse Care LLC, Family Nurse Care of Ohio LLC, Fidelis Care, Forensic Health Services LLC, Foundation Care LLC, Godgrace Asistencia Medica S.L., Golden Triangle Physician Alliance, Grace Hospice of Austin LLC, Grace Hospice of Grand Rapids LLC, Grace Hospice of Illinois LLC, Grace Hospice of Indiana LLC, Grace Hospice of San Antonio LLC, Grace Hospice of Virginia LLC, Grace Hospice of Wisconsin LLC, Granite State Health Plan Inc., Growly Asistencia Sanitaria S.L., HHS Texas Management Inc., HHS Texas Management LP, Hallmark Life Insurance Company, Harmony Behavioral Health IPA Inc., Harmony Behavioral Health Inc., Harmony Health Management Inc., Harmony Health Plan Inc., Harmony Health Systems Inc., Health Care Enterprises LLC, Health Net Access Inc., Health Net Community Solutions Inc., Health Net Community Solutions of Arizona Inc., Health Net Federal Services LLC, Health Net Health Plan of Oregon Inc., Health Net LLC, Health Net Life Insurance Company, Health Net Life Reinsurance Company, Health Net Pharmaceutical Services, Health Net of Arizona Inc., Health Net of California Inc., Health Plan Real Estate Holdings Inc., HealthSmart Benefit Solutions Inc., HealthSmart Benefits Management LLC, HealthSmart Care Management Solutions LP, HealthSmart Information Systems Inc., HealthSmart Preferred Care II LP, HealthSmart Preferred Network II Inc., HealthSmart Primary Care Clinics LP, HealthSmart Rx Solutions Inc., Healthy Louisiana Holdings LLC, Healthy Missouri Holdings Inc., Healthy Washington Holdings Inc., Heritage Health Systems Inc., Heritage Health Systems of Texas Inc., Heritage Home Hospice LLC, Heritage Physician Networks, Home State Health Plan Inc., HomeScripts.com LLC, Hospice DME Company LLC, Hospinet S.L., Hospital Polusa S.A., Hospital Povisa S.A., Hudson Accountable Care LLC, IAH of Florida LLC, Illinois Health Practice Alliance LLC, Infraestructuras y Servicios de Alzira S. L., Integrated Care Network of Florida LLC, Integrated Mental Health Management LLC, Integrated Mental Health Services, Interpreta Holdings Inc., Interpreta Inc., Iowa Total Care Inc., Kentucky Spirit Health Plan Inc., LBB Industries Inc., LifeShare Management Group LLC, LiveHealthier Inc., Louisiana Healthcare Connections Inc., MH Services International Holdings (UK) Limited, MHM, MHM Correctional Services LLC, MHM Health Professionals LLC, MHM Services Inc., MHM Services of California LLC, MHM Solutions LLC, MHN Government Services LLC, MHN Services LLC, MHS Consulting International Inc., MHS Travel & Charter Inc., MR Centrum Melnick s.r.o., MR Poprad s.r.o., MR Zilina s.r.o., Magnolia Health Plan Inc., Managed Health Network, Managed Health Network LLC, Managed Health Services Insurance Corporation, Maryland Collaborative Care LLC, Maryland Collaborative Care Transformation Organization Inc., Mauli Ola Health and Wellness Inc., Medicina NZ spol s.r.o., Meridian Health Plan of Illinois Inc., Meridian Health Plan of Michigan Inc., Meridian Management Company LLC, Meridian Network Services LLC, MeridianRx IPA LLC, MeridianRx LLC, MeridianRx of Indiana LLC, Michigan Complete Health, Mid-Atlantic Collaborative Care LLC, Nebraska Total Care Inc., Network Providers LLC, New York Quality Healthcare Corporation, Next Door Neighbors Inc., Next Door Neighbors LLC., North Florida Health Services Inc., Northern Maryland Collaborative Care LLC, Novasys Health Inc., OB Care, OB Klinika, Ohana Health Plan Inc., Oklahoma Complete Health Inc., One Care by Care 1st Health Plans of Arizona Inc, Operose Health (Group) Ltd., Operose Health (Group) UK Ltd., Operose Health Ltd., OptiCare Health Systems - Managed Vision Business, PANTHERx Rare Pharmacy, Panther Pass Co LLC, Panther Specialty Holding Co LLC, Pantherx Access Services LLC, Pantherx Specialty LLC, Parker LP LLC, Peach State Health Plan Inc., Penn Marketing America LLC, Pennsylvania Health and Wellness Inc., Phoenix Home Health Care LLC, Pinnacle Home Care LLC, Pinnacle Senior Care of Illinois LLC, Pinnacle Senior Care of Indiana LLC, Pinnacle Senior Care of Kalamazoo LLC, Pinnacle Senior Care of Missouri LLC, Pinnacle Senior Care of Wisconsin LLC, Premier Marketing Group LLC, PrimeroSalud S.L., Pro Diagnostic Group A.S., Pro Magnet CZ s.r.o., Pro Magnet s.r.o, Pro RTG s.r.o, Progress Medical A.S., Prowl Holdings LLC, QCA Healthplan Inc., Qualchoice Life and Health Insurance Company, Quincy Coverage Corporation, R&C Healthcare LLC, RMED LLC, RX Direct Inc., Rapid Respiratory Services LLC, Ribera Lab S.L.U., Ribera Salud II, Ribera Salud Proyectos S.L., Ribera Salud S.A., Ribera Salud Tecnologias S.L.U., Ribera Slaud Infraestructuras S.L.U., Ribera-Quilpro UTE, Salus Administrative Services Inc., Salus IPA LLC, Secure Capital Solutions 2000 S.L.U., SelectCare Health Plans Inc., SelectCare of Texas Inc., Seniorcorps Peninsula LLC, Servicios De Mantenimiento Prevencor S.L.U., SilverSummit Healthplan Inc., Social Health Bridge LLC, Social Health Bridge Trust, Specialty Therapeutic Care GP LLC, Specialty Therapeutic Care Holdings, Specialty Therapeutic Care Holdings LLC, Specialty Therapeutic Care LP, Sunflower State Health Plan Inc., Sunshine Health Community Solutions Inc., Sunshine Health Holding LLC, Sunshine State Health Plan Inc., Superior HealthPlan Community Solutions Inc., Superior HealthPlan Inc., The Practice Properties Limited, The WellCare Management Group Inc., Torrejon Salud S.A., Torrevieja Salud S.L.U., Torrevieja Salud UTE, Traditional Home Health Services LLC, Trillium Community Health Plan Inc., U.S. Medical Management Holdings Inc., U.S. Medical Management LLC, UAM Agent Services Corp., US Script, USMM Accountable Care Partners LLC, Universal American Corp., Universal American Financial Services Inc., Universal American Holdings LLC, WCG Health Management Inc., WellCare Health Insurance Company of America, WellCare Health Insurance Company of Kentucky Inc., WellCare Health Insurance Company of Louisiana Inc., WellCare Health Insurance Company of Nevada Inc., WellCare Health Insurance Company of New Hampshire Inc., WellCare Health Insurance Company of New Jersey Inc., WellCare Health Insurance Company of Oklahoma Inc., WellCare Health Insurance Company of Washington Inc., WellCare Health Insurance Company of Wisconsin Inc., WellCare Health Insurance of Arizona Inc., WellCare Health Insurance of Connecticut Inc., WellCare Health Insurance of Hawaii Inc., WellCare Health Insurance of New York Inc., WellCare Health Insurance of North Carolina Inc., WellCare Health Insurance of Southwest Inc., WellCare Health Insurance of Tennessee Inc., WellCare Health Plans, WellCare Health Plans of Arizona Inc., WellCare Health Plans of California Inc., WellCare Health Plans of Kentucky Inc., WellCare Health Plans of Massachusetts Inc., WellCare Health Plans of Missouri Inc., WellCare Health Plans of New Jersey Inc., WellCare Health Plans of Rhode Island Inc., WellCare Health Plans of Tennessee Inc., WellCare Health Plans of Vermont Inc., WellCare Health Plans of Wisconsin Inc., WellCare National Health Insurance Company, WellCare Pharmacy Benefits Management Inc., WellCare Prescription Insurance Inc., WellCare of Alabama Inc., WellCare of Arkansas Inc., WellCare of California Inc., WellCare of Connecticut Inc., WellCare of Florida Inc., WellCare of Georgia Inc., WellCare of Illinois Inc., WellCare of Indiana Inc., WellCare of Kansas Inc., WellCare of Maine Inc., WellCare of Michigan Holding Company, WellCare of Mississippi Inc., WellCare of Missouri Health Insurance Company Inc., WellCare of New Hampshire Inc., WellCare of New York Inc., WellCare of North Carolina Inc., WellCare of Ohio Inc., WellCare of Oklahoma Inc., WellCare of Pennsylvania Inc., WellCare of Puerto Rico Inc., WellCare of South Carolina Inc., WellCare of Texas Inc., WellCare of Virginia Inc., WellCare of Washington Inc., Wellcare Health Plans Inc., Western Sky Community Care Inc., Windsor Health Group Inc., Winning Security S.L., Worlco Management Services, and nirvanaHealth LLC. 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. Former President Mahinda Rajapaksas security can be stepped up if threats to his life had increased, Prime Minister Ranil Wickremesinghe said. Responding to concerns raised by JO MP Dinesh Gunawardane, the premier went on to say that Mr.Rajapaksa was already provided with special security for his residences in Wijerama, Medamulana and Carlton House. As he is engaged in active politics he has been provided with STF personnel for back up as well, he said. Raising the issue of the former presidents security, MP Gunawardane said that the head of VIP security had informed Mr.Rajapaksas team that security needed to be tightened as threats had increased. Meanwhile, Minister of Law and Order Ranjith Maddumabandara promised to discuss the matter with the IGP and the head of Mr.Rajapaksas security team. (Ajith Siriwardane) The Toronto-Dominion Bank, together with its subsidiaries, provides various personal and commercial banking products and services in Canada and the United States. It operates through three segments: Canadian Retail, U.S. Retail, and Wholesale Banking. The company offers personal deposits, such as chequing, savings, and investment products; financing, investment, cash management, international trade, and day-to-day banking services to businesses; and financing options to customers at point of sale for automotive and recreational vehicle purchases through auto dealer network. It also provides credit cards; real estate secured lending; auto finance; consumer lending; point-of-sale payment solutions for large and small businesses; wealth and asset management products, private banking, investment advisory, and trust services to retail and institutional clients; and property and casualty insurance, as well as life and health insurance products. The company also provides capital markets, and corporate and investment banking services, including underwriting and distribution of new debt and equity issues; advice on strategic acquisitions and divestitures; and trading, funding, and investment services to companies, governments, and institutions. It offers its products and services under the TD Bank and America's Most Convenient Bank brand names. The company operates through a network of 1,085 branches, 3,440 automated teller machines, and 1,223 stores, as well as offers telephone, digital, and mobile banking services. The Toronto-Dominion Bank was founded in 1855 and is headquartered in Toronto, Canada. Read More TOTAL SE operates as an integrated oil and gas company worldwide. The company operates through four segments: Exploration & Production; Integrated Gas, Renewables & Power; Refining & Chemicals; and Marketing & Services. The company's Exploration & Production segment is involved in oil and natural gas exploration and production activities in approximately 50 countries. Its Integrated Gas, Renewables & Power segment engages in the liquefied natural gas (LNG) production, shipping, trading, and regasification activities; trading of liquefied petroleum gas (LPG), petcoke and sulfur, natural gas, and electricity; transportation of natural gas; electricity production from natural gas, wind, solar, hydroelectric, and biogas sources; energy storage activities; and development and operation of biomethane production units, as well as provides energy efficiency services. The company's Refining & Chemicals segment is involved in refining petrochemicals, including olefins and aromatics; and polymer derivatives, such as polyethylene, polypropylene, polystyrene, and hydrocarbon resins, as well as biomass conversion and elastomer processing. This segment also engages in trading and shipping crude oil and petroleum products. Its Marketing & Services segment produces and sells lubricants; supplies and markets petroleum products, including bulk fuel, aviation and marine fuel, special fluids, compressed natural gas, LPG, and bitumen; and provides fuel payment solutions. It operates approximately 15,500 service stations. As of December 31, 2020, the company had 12,328 Mboe of combined proved reserves of oil and gas. TOTAL SE has a strategic partnership with PureCycle Technologies in the area of plastic recycling. The company was incorporated in 1924 and is headquartered in Paris, France. Read More iShares MSCI Emerging Markets ETF's stock was trading at $37.46 on March 11th, 2020 when COVID-19 (Coronavirus) reached pandemic status according to the World Health Organization (WHO). Since then, EEM stock has increased by 36.1% and is now trading at $51.00. View which stocks have been most impacted by COVID-19. United Technologies Corporation provides technology products and services to building systems and aerospace industries worldwide. Its Otis segment designs, manufactures, sells, and installs passenger and freight elevators, escalators, and moving walkways; and offers modernization products to upgrade elevators and escalators, as well as maintenance and repair services. The company's Carrier segment provides heating, ventilating, air conditioning, refrigeration, fire, security, and building automation products, solutions, and services for commercial, government, infrastructure, residential, and refrigeration and transportation applications. This segment also offers building services, including audit, design, installation, system integration, repair, maintenance, and monitoring. Its Pratt & Whitney segment supplies aircraft engines for commercial, military, business jet, and general aviation markets; and provides aftermarket maintenance, repair, and overhaul, as well as fleet management services. The company's Collins Aerospace Systems segment provides electric power generation, power management, and distribution systems; air data and aircraft sensing systems; engine control, intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance systems; engine components; environmental control systems; fire and ice detection, and protection systems; propeller systems; engine nacelle systems; aircraft lighting, seating, and cargo systems; actuation and landing systems; space products and subsystems; avionics systems; flight controls, communications, navigation, oxygen, and training systems; food and beverage preparation, and storage and galley systems; and lavatory and wastewater management systems. The company offers its services through manufacturers' representatives, distributors, wholesalers, dealers, retail outlets, and sales representatives, as well as directly to customers. United Technologies Corporation was founded in 1934 and is headquartered in Farmington, Connecticut. Read More Unum Group is engaged in providing financial protection benefits. It operates through the following segments: Unum US, Unum International, Colonial Life, Closed Block and Corporate. The Unum US segment comprises of group long-term and short-term disability insurance, group life and accidental death and dismemberment products, and supplemental and voluntary lines of business. The Unum International segment engages in the operations of UK business, which includes insurance for group long-term disability, group life, and supplemental lines of business that include dental, individual disability, and critical illness products; Poland business primarily includes insurance for individual and group life with accident and health riders. The Colonial Life segment includes insurance for accident, sickness, disability products, life products, and cancer and critical illness products. The Closed Block segment consists of individual disability, group and individual long-term care, and other insurance products no longer actively marketed. The Corporate segment refers to investment income on corporate assets and other corporate income and expenses not allocated to a line of business; and interest Read More The following companies are subsidiares of V.F.: 1994 Inc. Ltd., 530 Park Ave 10-F LLC, 530 Park Ave 14-H LLC, ALL'CROWN SA, Administradora Mexicana de Servicios S de RL de CV, Administradora de Servicios Honduras S.A., Altra Footwear, Altra LLC, C.C.R.L. LLC, Chapter 4 Corp, Cherry SAS, Ciliegia Srl, Corporacion Distribiduidora de Dickies S de RL de CV, Cutler de Mexico SA, Czech Distribution Services s.r.o., DSI Enterprises LLC, Dickies de Honduras SA de CV, Dickies de Parras S de RL de CV, EAGLE CREEK EUROPE LIMITED, Eagle Creek, Eagle Creek Inc., GFYS LLC, GREENSPORT MONTE BIANCO, Horace Small, INVERSIONES INMOBILIARIES AUSTRALES SA, INVERSIONES VF CHILE DOS LTDA, INVERSIONES VF CHILE LTDA, IW Apparel LLC, IW Holdings LLC, IW Panama Trading S. de R.L., IceBreaker, Icebreaker Apparel LLC, Icebreaker Australia Pty, Icebreaker Australia Retail Pty, Icebreaker Europe Limited, Icebreaker Holdings Limited, Icebreaker Licensing LLC, Icebreaker Limited, Icebreaker Merino Clothing Europe Ltd., Icebreaker New Zealand Limited, Icebreaker Pure Merino GmbH, Imagewear Apparel Corp., Industrial Laundry Services LLC, Industrias Coahuila de Zaragosa S de RL de CV, JanSport Apparel Corp., Kipling Apparel Corp., Kipling Belgium, Kipling Holdings LLC, Kirsche GmbH, Kodiak Group Holdings CO., Lee Bell Inc., Lucy, Lucy Apparel LLC, Majestic Athletic Official Store, Mo Industries Holdings, NII Sales - Texas LLC, Napapijri, North East Rig-Out Limited, North Elm Properties LLC, RED KAP DE MEXICO S DE RL DE CV, RKI HONDURAS S de RL, Reef Holdings Corporation, Rock & Republic, SERVICIOS Y PROMOCIONES TEXTILES LTDA, South Cone, South Cone Inc, Supreme, Supreme Holdings Inc., Supreme Intermediate Holdings Inc., T.I. Venture Group Inc, TBL INVESTMENTS HOLDING GMBH, TBL Licensing LLC, THE NORTH FACE ITALY SRL, THE NORTH FACE SAGL, THE RECREATIONAL FOOTWEAR CO., TIMBERLAND EUROPE BV, TIMBERLAND HK TRADING LTD., TIMBERLAND LUXEMBOURG HOLDING ASIA S.A.R.L., TIMBERLAND UK LTD., The North Face, The North Face Apparel Corp, Timberland, Timberland Asia LLC, Timberland IDC Ltd., Timberland International LLC, VANS MADEIRA LDA, VANS SPAIN SL, VF (J) FRANCE SAS, VF (J) NEDERLAND BV, VF (J) NETHERLANDS SERVICES BV, VF APPAREL PORTUGAL LDA, VF ASIA LTD, VF Apollo Investments Limited, VF Apollo Singapore Pte. Ltd., VF Asia Sourcing Ltd, VF Austria GMBH, VF BRANDS MALAYSIA SDN BHD, VF BRANDS TAIWAN LTD., VF Belgium BV, VF Brands Pte. Ltd., VF CH Apollo Sagl, VF CH Holdings GmbH, VF CH Imagewear Canada GmbH, VF CH MEXICO INVESTMENTS SAGL, VF CH-MEX Holdings LLC, VF CHINA LTD., VF CIS LLC, VF COMERCIALIZADORA LTDA, VF CZECH SERVICES SRO, VF CZECH SRO, VF Corporation, VF DE ARGENTINA SA, VF DO BRAZIL LTDA, VF EGE GIYIM SANAYI VE TICARET LIMITED SIRKETI, VF EUROPE BV, VF GERMANY TEXTILE-HANDELS GMBH, VF Germany Services GMBH, VF HELLAS EPE, VF HOLDING SAGL, VF HOLDINGS MEXICO LLC, VF Hong Kong Limited, VF IB Holdings LLC, VF IMAGEWEAR DE MEXICO S DE RL DE CV, VF IMAGEWEAR MAJESTIC (UK) LTD, VF INTERNATIONAL SAGL, VF INVESTIMENTOS DO BRAZIL LTDA, VF IP Holdings LLC, VF ISRAEL (APPAREL) LTD, VF ITALIA SRL, VF ITALY SERVICES SRL, VF Imagewear Canada Co., VF Imagewear Inc, VF Intellectual Property Services Inc, VF International Holding GmbH, VF Investments Holding GmbH, VF Investments Netherlands BV, VF JEANSWEAR ARGENTINA SRL, VF JEANSWEAR ESPANA SL, VF Japan KK, VF KOREA LIMITED LIABILITY COMPANY, VF LUXEMBOURG SARL, VF Management Service Italy S.r.l., VF NL Holdings CV, VF NL Imagewear B.V., VF NORTHERN EUROPE LIMITED, VF NORTHERN EUROPE SERVICES LIMITED, VF Norway AS, VF OUTDOOR (CANADA) CO, VF OUTDOOR MEXICO S DE RL DE CV, VF OUTDOOR SERVICES S DE RL DE CV, VF Outdoor LLC, VF PANAMA SOURCING SERVICES S. DE R.L., VF PARTICIPACOES DO BRASIL LTDA, VF PERU SA, VF POLSKA DISTRIBUTION SP ZO O, VF Playwear Dominicana SA, VF Playwear LLC, VF Receivables LP, VF Receivables Services LLC, VF SAGEBRUSH ENTERPRISES LLC, VF SALES SAGL, VF SERVICIOS DE HONDURAS SA, VF SERVICIOS EL SALVADOR LTDA. DE CV, VF SHANGHAI SOURCING LIMITED, VF SOURCING THAILAND LTD, VF Scandinavia ApS, VF Services LLC, VF Servicios de Guatemala Srl, VF Servicios de Nicaragua Srl., VF Shanghai Enterprise Company, VF Shanghai Limited, VF Singapore Overseas Services Pte Ltd, VF Solutions LLC, VF Sourcing India Private Limited, VF Sweden AB, VF Switzerland Enterprises GmbH, VF Taiwan Limited, VF Transglobal GmbH, VF Treasury Services LLC, VFSE Investments LLC, VFSLA Commercial Services LLC, VFSLA Servicios S. de R.L. de C.V., Vans, Vans Inc, W-D APPAREL COMPANY LLC, W-D Licensing LLC, WD Europe SAS, WD Supply Holding Limited (HK), Walls Cayman Limited, Walls Holding Company LLC, Walls Industries LLC, Williamson Industries Ltd., Williamson-Dickie APAC Holding Company Ltd., Williamson-Dickie Apparel Trading (Shanghai) Ltd., Williamson-Dickie Canada Co., Williamson-Dickie Europe GmbH, Williamson-Dickie Europe Holdings Ltd., Williamson-Dickie Europe Ltd., Williamson-Dickie HK Holding Company Ltd., Williamson-Dickie Holding Co-Mexico S de RL de CV, Williamson-Dickie Manufacturing Company LLC, Williamson-Dickie Middle East FZE, Wooster GK, Workwear Sourcing S. de R.L., World Jeans VF Asia Ltd, Worldwide Workwear Ltd., and Ying Tao Trading (Shanghai) Co. Ltd.. Former President Mahinda Rajapaksa has sworn in as the Prime Minister before President Maithripala Sirisena a short while ago. An Oregon man tracks down owner of dog tags he discovered in an old vanity he was about to refinish and gets a priceless reward. Posted: Oct 2, 2018 10:07 AM Former Vice President Joe Biden is on the campaign trail with the Democratic candidate in the 19th Congressional District race. Biden is stumping for Antonio Delgado, who is running against Republican Rep. John Faso, who was elected to the position in 2016. The 19th Congressional District encompasses Otsego County and stretches east to the border of New York State. Much like the 22nd Congressional District race, the 19th Congressional District race is one that the whole country is interested in. The polls show Delgado and Faso are neck-and-neck. Delgado supporters hope that Bidens visit to Kingston on Friday is enough to secure the votes they need to win. Ive never seen as many new, quality candidates as Ive seen in this last year, Biden said. But certain people and you can feel it, you can taste it, you can see it are genuine exceptions. Who are really centered, who understand who they are. The Faso campaign welcomed Biden to the district and said its not a surprise that the prominent Democrat is supporting Delgado. Faso released the following statement Friday afternoon: "I'm pleased to welcome former Vice President Biden to the district. I appreciate his contributions to American political life over the past 40 years, and his role in searching for a cure to cancer. It is not a surprise that a prominent Democrat is endorsing my opponent. However, most people in our district dont support higher taxes and the government run healthcare scheme promoted by my opponent." At the Islamic Finance Forum of South Asia (IFFSA) Awards held recently, Amana Takaful PLC (ATL) struck Gold for the Takaful Entity of the Year category, while its off-shore subsidiary in the Maldives, Amana Takaful Maldives won Silver. At this gala ceremony held in Colombo, the dynamic insurer won yet another Gold for its novel insurance scheme Kiri Govi Sathkara - in the Product of the Year category. Kiri Govi aims to up lift the livelihood of the local dairy farmer. ATL also walked away with a Silver Award for Entity of the Year category. The event recognized the contributions made by individuals and organizations to the Islamic Banking & Finance industry within the Asian Region. The IFFSA Awards recognize excellence in the industry and give special consideration to institutions demonstrating outstanding performance, innovation, use of technology and contribution to society. The awards ceremony was held at the close of the 3rd IFFSA forum with the participation of delegates from India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Maldives and Sri Lanka. Accolades were awarded in multiple categories which were keenly contested. The nominees were selected after a thorough audit and evaluation process conducted by an eminent panel of judges. Commenting on these prestigious accolades, Fazal Ghaffoor, CEO, Amana Takaful PLC, stated, It is a great honour for ATL being adjudged as the Takaful Entity of the Year & equally, winning the Silver for Entity of the Year in the South Asian Region. We are also delighted to bag the Gold Award award for KIRI GOVI SATHKARA in the Product of the Year category. At ATL we strive to provide the best services and products to our customers & stakeholders, profitably and productively. Id like to dedicate these achievements to our customers who have steadfastly reposed their confidence in ATL. As the pioneer and the only fully fledged Takaful operator in Sri Lanka, these accolades are a true testament to the stability, growth and acceptance of the Takaful way of risk management that we bring to the financial services industry in the country. The KIRI GOVI SATHKARA, takaful cover is designed with a list of benefits that seeks to provide relief to critical issues faced by our dairy farmers. As a responsible corporate, we fully acknowledge the enduring contribution by the nations dairy farmers towards the Sri Lankan society. The cover embraces a life-insurance component for the farmer, while providing the necessary relief in the case of accidental or natural death of their precious cattle. For 20 years ATL has been the flag bearer of the Takaful way of insurance in Sri Lanka, catering to all segments. The Takaful way of insurance operates on the concept of bringing people together ina spirit of solidarity and mutual trust. Since its inception in 1999, ATL has been successful in establishing a strong position for the concept of Takaful amidst competition from established conventional players. As the pioneer Takaful provider, ATL operates 38 branches and is set to expand further to better serve customers across the country. ATL continuously reaches out to customers from all segments of society and offers innovative and state-of-the-art insurance products that are convenient, affordable and reliable. As part of its commitment to remain Open to all, ATL reaches out to all communities through a multi-ethnic team across its network. It's time to meet the newest members of our Morning Mug Club...brought to you by Holland Farms Bakery and Deli. Rome Memorial Hospital is honoring and memorializing loved ones again this year with their Tree of Lights! For $5 you can get a name on the tree and help the hospital buy equipment as well! Donations need to be received by November 16th in order for the names of the donors and the honorees to be included on the scroll. The tree will be displayed in the hospital lobby and the lighting ceremony will take place on Sunday, December 2nd at 6:30pm. Please make checks payable to "Rome Twigs" Send to: Rome Twigs c/o Rome Memorial Hospital 1500 N. James St. Rome, NY 13440 NEW HARTFORD The New Hartford Police Department is asking for the publics help identifying a larceny suspect. Police say the man pictured in the surveillance photos allegedly switched price tags on items at Walmart and then used the self-checkout to avoid paying full price for the items that he scanned. If you recognize the man, youre asked to call New Hartford police at 315-724-7111 or 315-733-6666. All calls can remain confidential. The campaign, sponsored by Kristens fund is designed to educate students and the local community on the topic of domestic violence. As well as the warning signs to look out for. Students also took part in various activities including hand painting as well as a wheel spin. There was also a banner that participants could sign, pledging to say something if they see one of those red flags in a friend's relationship. Guest speaker Brandi Bolton from the YWCA, hopes that students will leave with one message in mind. "I'm hoping that people will get a better understanding of what a healthy relationship is, and understanding that something that's happening in a relationship may not be unhealthy and that there are people here that can help like us at the YWCA." Said Brandi Bolton of the YWCA. The flags that were created at todays event will be put on display for next years event. LAFAYETTE, Ind. (WLFI) Students, alumni and board members celebrated the 50th anniversary of Ivy Tech Community College in Lafayette. The school was originally named Tippewa Technical Institute. Seventeen kids were first enrolled when the school opened. Last year 4,000 students enrolled. A current student and member of student government says this school was her perfect fit. She says Ivy Tech built the road for her future. "Education is a pathway to just be able to earn a living for myself and to be able to support my family and at the same time it adds a great benefit to the community because I become an asset to the community," said Wendy Ndichu. Ndichu will graduate next spring. She says she will end up only spending 25 dollars out of pocket for her education. Data, development, and bonding with a community Gathering info From left: Matt Crittenden '21, Gustavo Marsillac '20 and Yemi Zewdu Yimer '18 pause during their time in the Dominican Republic's Esfuerz, where the SOMOS students gathered data designed to improve the community. Courtesy Global Research Institute Mapping communication Each red dot represents a person within the community of Esfuerzo, specifically those involved with the neighborhood association. The lines between represent conversations they have had with one another. The graphic shows how some people communicate with nearly everyone, while others communicate only with one or two people. Courtesy Global Research Institute A constructive meeting Members of Esfuerzo's JdV and SOMOS met with Santo Domingo Norte Mayor Rene Polanco Vidal (center, pink shirt) and his staff last January to discuss plans for building a main road in Esfuerzo. Courtesy Global Research Institute Photo - of - Hide Caption William & Mary undergraduate students in SOMOS, formerly known as the Student Organization for Medical Outreach and Sustainability project, are performing what Sue Peterson, co-director of the universitys Global Research Institute, calls novel research. Theyre applying a range of data-driven tools to quantify project impact on a Dominican Republic communitys needs. SOMOS is a faculty-mentored and student-led undergraduate research project. As faculty advisor Carrie Dolan explained, SOMOS work is grounded in theory from the growing field of community-based participatory research. Through partnering with the community of Esfuerzo in the Dominican Republic, students examine how the collective capacity and self-efficacy of a community translates into health outcomes. More than good intentions SOMOS runs three annual trips in which student researchers and local leaders partner to advance health initiatives. At the core of the project is community buy-in, with W&M students working with local community leaders to develop project ideas. Yemi Zewdu Yimer 18 traveled to Esfuerzo with two other SOMOS researchers this past summer. We know that good intentions alone are not enough, she said. Implementing initiatives in partnership with the community is the root of truly sustainable improvements in health. When SOMOS asked the people of Esfuerzo what their community needed, they identified four areas for improvement. Those were a paved road to facilitate transportation and reduce sanitation hazards, expanded access to basic healthcare, electrification and greater community self-sufficiency. They wanted to have a voice within the community but also the ability to handle their challenges more on their own. They also wanted to be heard on the government level. Each SOMOS trip addresses these areas, and this past summer Zewdu Yimer, Gustavo Marsillac 20 and Matt Crittenden 21 brought data to bear on the communitys needs. Upon arriving in Esfuerzo, the students found capacity and morale had dwindled low, within the JdV, the neighborhood association which advocates for community at the government level. The SOMOS team employed interviews and social network analysis to open a discussion on communication and inclusivity among members. By mapping out who talks to who about project tasks, we could illustrate the strengths and weaknesses of the JdVs communication network, Marsillac said. Mapping effective communication To address the weakened neighborhood association, the SOMOS team partnered with active members to organize the first meeting in months, an example of what Crittenden described as undergraduates doing international development through partnership. At the meeting, the students shared an SNA map of member communication from a year ago, when collective capacity was strong. Then the researchers displayed maps theyd created demonstrating how the network would be affected if one, two, or three key members left. Following the presentation, the association members and the SOMOS team discussed how they could be more inclusive and equitable with communication and delegating tasks. The association created a WhatsApp group chat among members to facilitate future communication. On the next trip, students may be able to measure communication using hard data from the associations chat to supplement interviews about conversations among members. Maintaining collective wisdom through data After each trip, the body of information about the effects of the partnership expands. SOMOS has worked in the region since 2005, and material such as survey data, protocols and GIS maps of the community enhance the ability of researchers to discern patterns and navigate the community, as well as pass on knowledge. The data also measures the effects of SOMOS work, helping students perceive how good work might be done. Regardless of the outcomes, the research project is ready to accompany Esfuerzos next step. Marsillac said the way SOMOS approaches international development is both difficult and fulfilling. He added that this past summers research represented potential strides forward for Esfuerzos healthcare access and collective capacity with the revitalized neighborhood association. There are no silver bullets, and as Zewdu Yimer said, Good intentions are not enough. Some of our readers, at least those who happened to read the Part 1 of this article that appeared in the Jyotisha page last week may know now that Mars occupying the 1st, 2nd, 4th, 7th, 8th or the 12th House in a Natal Chart of an individual causes Kuja Dosha which is also widely known as Mangalik Dosha and Bhauma Dosha. Rashi misinterretation It is a matter for regret that there appear to be many astrologers in this country who would quickly pronounce the presence of Kuja Dosha the moment they notice that Mars is placed either in the 1st House or the 7th House without analyzing the horoscope in its entirety to ascertain whether there are planetary combinations that nullify or dilute the effect of Kuja Dosha in each case. Is half the world population Mangalik? In this context, this writer would like to recall a very valid point that an eminent astrologer has made to demonstrate the fallacy of attributing Kuja Dosha to every case where Mars is positioned in the 1st, 2nd, 4th, 7th, 8th or the 12th House in a horoscope. It goes without saying that Mars being one of the planets in Astrology should occupy one of the 12 Houses in a horoscope. This eminent astrologer says that his calculation is that Mars by being in one of those Houses affects five persons out of every 12 which means Dosha afflicts about 42 percent of the world population at a given moment. He adds that if the Houses to be affected are reckoned from the Moon sign as well, the figure supposed to be liable to get affected will rise to 52 percent which works out to more than half the world population. He asks whether it is rational to believe that the Kuja Dosha ruins the marriage of more than half the world population! Kuja Dosha not a myth either The astrologer says that he would not dare make a sweeping statement that there is no affliction called Kuja Dosha. He adds that though there is a malefic yoga called Kuja Dosha, there are many planetary combinations capable of nullifying or diluting this Dosha. In fact, the sages in ancient India such as Parasara and Jaimini have explained those combinations in their celebrated works. What Mars represents A negative Mars or a malefic Mars causes anger, intolerance, harsh speech, aggressiveness and tendency to destroy things. However, a positive Mars gives courage, boldness, drive, energy, leadership qualities and executive skills among other things. What the Houses represent The 7th House in a horoscope represents marriage, spouse, sex drive and partnerships and the 8th House life after marriage and the longevity of the spouse. The 2nd House which is called Kutumbhasthana denotes the married life of a couple, the 4th House which is called Gruhasthana the family life settled in a permanent residence. The 12th House denotes the status of physical love. Rationale for Kuja Dosha Mars commands full aspect over the 4th, 7th and the 8th Houses from its own position. Therefore, a malefic Mars can spoil these three Houses in addition to the House it occupies. Success of marriage depends on mutual love, tolerance and sacrifice and a malefic Mars could destroy all these attributes with its bad temperament, intolerance and aggressiveness leading to constant quarrels, clashes and unhappiness. This is Mars blemish or Kuja Dosha! There are numerous planetary combinations that nullify or dilute Kuja Dosha. Therefore, one should not hasten to pronounce the presence of this Dosha just going by the basic definition.However, one may ascertain the dignity of the 7th House and the 8th House and their lords and the Moon and Venus for making a gainful snapshot judgment about the existence of Kuja Dosha. The Latest on pipe bombs sent to prominent critics of President Donald Trump (all times local): 10 p.m. Federal authorities have captured a Florida man with a criminal history and a fervor for President Donald Trump and accused him of sending at least 13 mail bombs to prominent Democrats. Justice Department officials have announced five federal charges against Cesar Sayoc, 56, of Aventura, Florida, and revealed that DNA and a fingerprint found on an envelope helped them identify the suspect after a five-day, coast-to-coast investigation. Even as he was arrested and charged, investigators scrutinized new suspicious packages believed to be tied to his plot. FBI officials have not disclosed a motive, although Attorney General Jeff Sessions suggested politics may have played a role, noting Sayoc appeared to be a "partisan." Sayoc's white van was plastered with Trump's image and political stickers. __ 6 p.m. Former Vice President Joe Biden says the United States has to come together, voicing concern with the partisan division and hatred he sees. A target of the mail-bomb scare, Biden took a moment during a Democratic political rally in Hartford, Connecticut, Friday to speak about "all the pipe bombs, the sense of hate and terror that seems to be gripping us." Biden quoted passages from the W.B. Yeats poem "The Second Coming," including the line, "Things fall apart; the center cannot hold." Biden says, "I hope and pray that our leaders are prepared to lower the temperature of our public dialogue," suggesting, "We just have to remember who we are and what we stand for as a nation." __ 5:50 p.m. Mail bombing suspect Cesar Sayoc was apparently a fan of Donald Trump, or at least his clothing line, even before Trump announced his candidacy for president. Documents released Friday by the Broward County, Florida, Sheriff's Office show Sayoc reported in May 2015 that more than $40,000 in goods were stolen from his van and an attached trailer, including 11 pieces of Donald Trump-brand clothing valued at $7,150. Specifics are not included, but Trump has a line of suits, shirts, ties and accessories. The report shows detectives were never able to confirm whether the theft actually happened and no arrests were made. Trump announced his candidacy in June 2015. __ 5:15 p.m. President Donald Trump says he knows the pipe bomb suspect was a supporter, but says he bears "no blame" for the suspect's actions. Speaking with reporters on the South Lawn Friday before he left for a political rally in North Carolina, Trump said, "There is no blame." He compared the series of threatening packages sent to prominent Democrats, former officials and CNN to how a Democratic supporter of Sen. Bernie Sanders shot up a GOP baseball field last year, seriously injuring Rep. Steve Scalise of Louisiana. Trump is also praising law enforcement efforts. He says the pipe bomb incidents have hampered Republicans' momentum moving into the midterm elections. And he is taking a jab at the media, saying journalists have been unfair to Republicans. __ 5:10 p.m. FBI spokesman Prentice Danner says a suspicious package seized near San Francisco and addressed to billionaire political activist Tom Steyer has several similarities to 13 explosive devices that were addressed to prominent Democrats across the country. When asked if authorities believe the package found Friday is related to the others, Danner said the "timing and addressee would tell us yes." But he says investigators can't make a definitive connection until the item is examined in the FBI's forensics lab in Quantico, Virginia. The item was discovered in a U.S. Postal Service sorting facility in Burlingame, about 20 miles (32 kilometers) south of San Francisco. Steyer on Friday called on the Republican Party to denounce the attacks. __ 3:50 p.m. The bank that foreclosed on the home of Cesar Sayoc, the suspect in the pipe bomb mailings, was formerly owned by Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin (mih-NOO'-shin). Sayoc lost his home in 2009 when IndyMac moved to foreclose on his south Florida home, according to Florida property and court records. IndyMac was a California-based bank that failed during the recession and was later purchased by a group of investors that included Mnuchin. IndyMac was renamed OneWest Bank. Further, there are signs that Sayoc may have been a victim of a controversial industry practice during the recession. The lawyer who signed Sayoc's foreclosure paperwork was Erica Johnson-Seck, a lawyer for OneWest. Johnson-Seck was an official at the center of OneWest's so-called "robo-signing" scandal. Robo-signing is where banks signed off on thousands of legal documents automatically without checking their accuracy, causing thousands of people to lose their homes without proper procedures. Johnson-Seck, in a court deposition in 2009, testified she would sign more than 750 legal documents for One West a week. __ 3:45 p.m. A man who operates a property management office near the Florida auto parts store where the mail bomb suspect parked his van says the suspect didn't resist when armed police officers swarmed and arrested him. Thomas Fiori is a former federal law enforcement officer. He says he saw an undercover police officer in a nearby SUV looking at the AutoZone store with binoculars Friday. Fiori says within minutes he heard a small explosion, probably a device police use to distract people. He says 50 officers swarmed the suspect's van with their firearms drawn. Fiori says the arrested man did not resist and "had that look of, 'I'm done, I surrender.'" Attorney General Jeff Sessions says he doesn't know why pipe bombs were sent to prominent Democrats but the arrested man "appears to be a partisan." The man is a registered Republican and ardent supporter of President Donald Trump. ___ 3:25 p.m. Attorney General Jeff Sessions says he doesn't know why pipe bombs were sent to prominent Democrats and CNN but says a Florida man charged in the case "appears to be a partisan." Sessions and other law enforcement officials are declining to speculate on whether the current divided political climate in America and President Donald Trump's rhetoric emboldened the man. FBI Director Christopher Wray says it's too early to discuss a motive behind the pipe bombs. Federal authorities have charged 56-year-old Cesar Altieri Sayoc with five crimes including mailing explosives and threatening former U.S. presidents. Sayoc is a registered Republican and ardent Trump supporter who pushed far-right conspiracy theories online. Some of Sayoc's social media posts singled out the targets of the bombs. Trump has called for unity but also has blamed the press for the divisive political climate. ___ 3:10 p.m. The head of the FBI says the suspect arrested in the mail bombs sent to prominent Democrats was found in part using fingerprint evidence and possible DNA. FBI Director Christopher Wray said Friday investigators had fingerprints of Florida resident Cesar Sayoc and had possible DNA collected from two explosive devices. Wray says they matched a fingerprint found on one of the packages that had been sent to U.S. Rep. Maxine Waters of California. Sayoc was arrested Friday at an auto shop in Plantation, Florida. He has been charged with five crimes and faces 58 years in prison. He will be prosecuted in New York, where five of the 12 devices were found. The mail bombs have been sent in recent days to political opponents of President Donald Trump. ___ 3:05 p.m. FBI Director Christopher Wray says more than a dozen pipe bombs sent to prominent Democrats and CNN were "not hoax devices." Wray says each of the pipe bombs contained materials that could react and cause a potential explosion. Wray made the comments Friday as federal authorities announced the charging of 56-year-old Cesar Altieri Sayoc, of Florida, with five federal crimes including mailing explosives and threatening former U.S. presidents. Wray says federal authorities have located 13 improvised explosive devices that were assembled in a similar manner. None of the devices has exploded and no one has been injured. ___ 2:55 p.m. Attorney General Jeff Sessions says federal authorities are charging a 56-year-old Florida man with five federal crimes including the mailing of explosives. Sessions says the charges carry a maximum of 58 years in prison. Sessions announced the charges Friday just hours after federal authorities arrested Cesar Sayoc. Sayoc is accused of sending more than a dozen pipe bombs through the mail to prominent Democrats including former President Barack Obama and to CNN. Sayoc is an amateur bodybuilder and ardent supporter of President Donald Trump who pushed far-right conspiracy theories online. None of the devices exploded, and no one has been injured. ___ 2:40 p.m. Sen. Kamala Harris' office says authorities in Sacramento, California are investigating a suspicious package mailed to her. Harris' office says the package was similar to those that have been sent to other prominent Democrats. The senator's office says it was informed that the package was identified at a Sacramento mail facility. The FBI responded to the facility in a South Sacramento neighborhood that's been blocked off by caution tape. News of the package comes as authorities arrested a Florida man suspected of sending more than 10 mail bombs in recent days. Harris is a Democrat serving her first term in the U.S. Senate. __ 2:15 p.m. A law enforcement official says that the man detained in Florida in connection with the pipe bomb scare will be prosecuted in New York City. The official said Friday that Cesar Sayoc will face charges in federal court in Manhattan after an initial court appearance in Florida. Five of the 12 improvised devices involved in the case were recovered in the Southern District of New York. The official wasn't authorized to discuss the prosecution because a complaint was still being drafted and spoke on condition of anonymity. The mail bombs have been sent in recent days to political opponents of President Donald Trump. __ 1:35 p.m. A Twitter account that appears to belong to the suspect in the mail-bomb scare includes repeated attacks on billionaire George Soros and praise for President Donald Trump and other Republicans. The man was identified by law enforcement officials as Cesar Sayoc, 56, of Aventura, Florida. In linking him to the Twitter account, The Associated Press noted that it contains imagery that mirrored what appeared on the side of the van that authorities seized, in tweets that had been sent long before the explosive devices began to appear. Authorities have not said whether the van seized in Florida was linked to Sayoc. The tweets accuse Soros of paying off a victim from the Parkland mass shooting and accusing Florida gubernatorial candidate Andrew Gillum, a Democrat, of being a Soros puppet. The account also praises Trump and other Republicans. The account includes anti-Gillum memes, with one including the caption "$500,000 SOROS PUPPET." The Oct. 24 posting includes a photo of Soros doctored to look like he's holding a puppet meant to resemble Gillum. __ 12:55 p.m. According to court and other public records, Cesar Sayoc, 56, has a lengthy criminal and court record in Florida. He has been convicted on theft, stolen property and traffic charges and in 2002 on a threat to "throw, place, project or discharge any destructive device." Sayoc is in custody in Florida in the mail bombs sent to prominent Democrats. He was born in New York. Sayoc was sentenced in August 2002 for threatening to throw a bomb in a conversation with a Florida utility representative, according to Ronald Lowy, a Miami attorney who represented him. Dade County court records showed Sayoc served a year's probation after a judge signed a discharge certificate in November 2002. Lowy told The Associated Press that Sayoc "made a verbal threat when he was frustrated at a lack of service." Lowy said Sayoc showed no ability at the time to back up his threat with bomb-making expertise. The lawyer said Sayoc was a bodybuilder then, and displayed no political leanings except for plastering a vehicle he owned with Native American signs. Court records also show that Sayoc was convicted in the 1990s in Broward County on grand theft and stolen property charges and in 2004 on a felony charge of fraudulent refunds and misdemeanor of tampering with physical evidence. __ 12:44 p.m. President Donald Trump is confirming that a suspect in the mail bomb scare is in custody and says he will be prosecuted "to the fullest extent of the law." Trump, in his first remarks since Cesar Sayoc, 56, was apprehended in Florida, declared that "we must never allow political violence take root in America." More than 10 mail bombs have been sent in recent days to political opponents of the president. Trump declared that "these terrorizing acts are despicable" and said Americans "must unify." But his remarks came just hours after Trump tweeted a complaint that the media's focus on bombs was distracting from Republican efforts in the upcoming midterm elections. He also put the word "bomb" in quotes, a seeming nod to those who believed the scare was a hoax. __ 12:30 p.m. The name of the man detained in connection with the pipe bomb scare is Cesar Sayoc, 56, of Aventura, Florida, according to law enforcement officials. Four officials familiar with the investigation identified the man to The Associated Press. They spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to discuss the matter on the record. It was not clear whether Sayoc had been formally charged in the rash of devices addressed in recent days to Democratic figures including former President Barack Obama, former Vice President Joe Biden and Hillary Clinton. __ 11:59 a.m. Law enforcement officers were seen on television Friday examining a white van, its windows covered with an assortment of stickers, in the city of Plantation, Florida. The stickers included images of American flags, and what appeared to be logos of the Republican National Committee and CNN, though the writing surrounding those images was unclear. Officials covered the vehicle with a blue tarp before removing it from the Florida neighborhood where it was found. Law enforcement officials have not said whether the van in question was connected to the person taken into custody in Florida in connection with the mail bombs sent to prominent critics of President Donald Trump. __ 11:50 a.m. President Donald Trump says he will "address the investigation into the bomb packages" shortly. Trump is scheduled to speak Friday at the Young Black Leadership Summit at the White House. He tweeted that he will speak about the investigation at the event. Trump's tweet came after the Justice Department said federal authorities arrested a man in Florida on Friday in connection with the mail-bomb scare that widened to 12 suspicious packages. The development came amid a coast-to-coast manhunt for the person responsible for a series of explosive devices addressed to Democrats including former President Barack Obama, former Vice President Joe Biden and Hillary Clinton. Earlier in the day, Trump referenced "this "Bomb" stuff" on Twitter, saying the scare was distracting from Republican efforts in the midterm elections. __ 11:42 a.m. A law enforcement official says the person in custody in connection with package bombs sent to prominent Democrats is a man in his 50s. Two other law enforcement officials said the man was taken into custody in Florida. The person's name was not immediately released. The officials weren't authorized to discuss an ongoing investigation and spoke to The Associated Press on condition of anonymity. Authorities have located 12 devices addressed in recent days to Democratic figures including former President Barack Obama, former Vice President Joe Biden and Hillary Clinton. The targets have all been high-profile critics of the president. The Justice Department has scheduled a Friday afternoon news conference to discuss the investigation. -By Colleen Long and Michael Balsamo __ 11:26 a.m. Two law enforcement officials say a person was taken into custody in Florida in connection with package bombs that were sent to high-profile critics of the president. The officials weren't authorized to discuss an ongoing investigation and spoke Friday to The Associated Press on condition of anonymity. The person's name was not immediately released. Video from television news helicopters showed federal agents and police officers examining a white van in the parking lot of a business in Plantation, Florida. The van had several stickers on the windows, including American flags. Officials located 12 devices addressed in recent days to Democratic figures including former President Barack Obama, former Vice President Joe Biden and Hillary Clinton. - By Michael Balsamo __ 11:10 a.m. The Justice Department says a person has been taken into custody in connection with a series of package bombs sent to prominent Democrats. Spokeswoman Sarah Flores says a news conference is scheduled for later Friday. The person's name was not immediately released. Officials have located 12 devices addressed in recent days to Democratic figures including former President Barack Obama, former Vice President Joe Biden and Hillary Clinton. The FBI said Friday that a package addressed to Sen. Cory Booker, of New Jersey, was intercepted in Florida. Another was discovered at a Manhattan postal facility and was addressed to former national intelligence director James Clapper at CNN's address. The targets have all been high-profile critics of President Donald Trump. ___ 11 a.m. President Donald Trump is arguing that a mail bomb scare targeting Democratic politicians and CNN is distracting from his midterm election efforts, dismissing it as "this 'Bomb' stuff." Trump tweets Friday morning: "Republicans are doing so well in early voting, and at the polls, and now this 'Bomb' stuff happens and the momentum greatly slows - news not talking politics. Very unfortunate, what is going on. Republicans, go out and vote!" The president's comments came as two more suspicious packages were discovered Friday. They were addressed to New Jersey Sen. Cory Booker and former National Intelligence Director James Clapper. That brings the total number of devices to 12 in recent days. The targets have all been high-profile critics of the president. Trump initially called for unity, but quickly turned to blaming the press for the divisive political climate. ___ 10:10 a.m. A law enforcement official has confirmed to The Associated Press that the suspicious package addressed to New Jersey Democratic Sen. Cory Booker was found during an overnight search of the Opa-locka, Florida, mail facility that lasted until 4 a.m. Friday. The official said the package was similar to the others sent to targets of right-wing anger, with the return address listed as the Sunrise, Florida, office of Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz. The official did not know if the package was outgoing or a return-to-sender mailing. The official spoke on condition of anonymity because the official was not authorized to speak to reporters on the ongoing investigation. - By Curt Anderson in Miami ___ 9:50 a.m. Former Director of National Intelligence James Clapper says he is not surprised he has been targeted with a suspicious package. Clapper told CNN Friday morning that the devices sent to prominent critics of President Donald Trump in recent days were "definitely domestic terrorism." Two officials told the AP that a package was discovered at a postal facility in Midtown Manhattan. One official said it was addressed to Clapper. The officials weren't authorized to discuss the investigation and spoke on condition of anonymity. Clapper described the situation as "serious," but said it is "not going to silence the administration's critics." Clapper stressed that he did not want to suggest any direct link between Trump's past rhetoric and the packages. But he said Trump should bear responsibility for the "coarseness and uncivility of the dialogue in this country." - By Michael R. Sisak in New York and Michael Balsamo in Washington ___ 9:40 a.m. Robert De Niro is calling on people to vote in light of the series of bombs mailed to targets of right-wing anger. In a statement released by his publicist on Friday, the actor says "There's something more powerful than bombs, and that's your vote. People must vote!" A suspicious package containing what authorities described as a crude pipe bomb was discovered at De Niro's New York City office on Thursday. De Niro says he is thankful no one was hurt. He also thanked "the brave and resourceful security and law enforcement people for protecting us." ___ 9:25 a.m. Two law enforcement officials say a package closely resembling parcels sent to critics of President Donald Trump has been found at a postal facility in New York City. A police bomb squad was responding to a post office in Midtown Manhattan to check out the item, which was discovered by postal workers. One official says it was addressed to former Director of National Intelligence James Clapper. The officials weren't authorized to discuss the investigation and spoke on condition of anonymity. Police were advising pedestrians and motorists to avoid the area while they investigate. The post office is near several Broadway theaters - By Michael R. Sisak in New York and Michael Balsamo in Washington ___ 8:55 a.m. The FBI says a suspicious package addressed to New Jersey Democratic Sen. Cory Booker has been recovered in Florida and is similar in appearance to the other ones received in the last few days. That's the 11th package this week. The targets of packages containing pipe bombs have been prominent critics of President Donald Trump. Other packages have been intended for people including former President Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton, former Attorney General Eric Holder, philanthropist George Soros, former Vice President Joe Biden and Rep. Maxine Waters. The FBI is doing a nationwide manhunt for whoever is sending the pipe bomb packages. Officials are trying to determine if the sender or senders was trying to sow fear or actually cause physical destruction. ___ 5:55 a.m. President Donald Trump claims he's being blamed for the mail bombs addressed to some of his most prominent critics. Trump says in a tweet sent before dawn Friday, "Funny how lowly rated CNN, and others, can criticize me at will, even blaming me for the current spate of Bombs and ridiculously comparing this to September 11th and the Oklahoma City bombing, yet when I criticize them they go wild and scream, 'it's just not Presidential!'" Pipe bombs were sent to Trump critics including Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton and to ex-CIA director John Brennan at CNN but didn't explode. Trump tweeted Thursday much of the anger in society is caused by the "Mainstream Media." Brennan replied Trump should stop blaming others and should "Look in the mirror." Brennan advises Trump to "try to act Presidential." CNN hasn't responded to messages seeking comment before business hours. ___ 1:30 a.m. Investigators have been searching coast-to-coast for the culprit and motives behind the bizarre mail-bomb plot aimed at critics of the president, analyzing the innards of the crude devices to reveal whether they were intended to detonate or simply sow fear two weeks before Election Day. Three more devices were linked to the plot Thursday - two addressed to former Vice President Joe Biden and one to actor Robert De Niro - bringing the total to 10 in an outbreak of politically loaded menace with little if any precedent. Law enforcement officials told The Associated Press that the devices, containing timers and batteries, were not rigged like booby-trapped package bombs that would explode upon opening. A search of a postal database suggested at least some may have been mailed from Florida. ___ For the AP's complete coverage of the mail-bomb scare: https://apnews.com/PipeBombAttacks (Copyright 2018 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.) 10/26/2018 10:07:24 PM (GMT -4:00) Ex-TID DIG Nalaka de Silva was arrested in connection with the alleged plot to kill ASP Prasanna Alwis and not in connection with the alleged plot to assassinate President Maithripala Sirisena and Gotabaya Rajapaksa, Police Spokesman Ruwan Gunasekara said. The CID arrested Nalaka de Silva on Thursday and he was remanded till November 7 by Colombo Fort Magistrate Lanka Jayaratne in connection with the alleged plot to assassinate several VIPs. SP Gunasekara told a news briefing today that the former DIG was arrested under the provisions of the Penal Code and the Prevention of Terrorism Act. Although the statements made by Namal Kumara to the CID included an alleged plot to assassinate President Maithripala Sirisena and Gotabaya Rajapaksa, the six voice cuts obtained by the CID were in no way connected to the plot to assassinate them, he said. It is only through the investigations carried out by the CID that the plot to kill ASP Prasanna Alwis was revealed and no evidence found in any of the voice cuts." SP Gunasekera said they would continue to investigate whether there was any plot to assassinate the President and Mr. Rajapaksa. The CID launched investigations into the assassination plot on September 14. The CID has recorded statements from 89 people including two SSPs and 47 police personnel, he said and added that the CID would seek the assistance from overseas to recover the voice recordings which were reportedly deleted by Namal Kumara. (Sheain Fernandopulle) Leading academic, researcher and consultant, Professor Terrence Perera, recently visited Sri Lanka at the invitation of the Sir John Kothalawela Defense University (KDU) to be the keynote speaker at the universitys International Research Conference. Professor Perera also conducted a new technology introduction workshop at MAS Holding, and a research workshop at the University of Sri Jayawardenapura. Professor Perera of Sheffield Hallam University, UK, boasts a wealth of knowledge and experience in Logistics and Supply Chain Management, Manufacturing Systems Engineering, and Modelling and Simulation. As an active researcher, he has been successful in delivering high-profile research programmes in collaboration with industry. His research work focuses on addressing challenges in the deployment of simulation technologies and exploring novel applications for simulation. His current research work includes; developing a simulation enabled framework to enhance the performance of supply chains, developing a simulation based strategy to improve pharmaceutical supply chains and the deployment of simulation in the healthcare sector. Professor Perera is also currently exploring the use of Industry 4.0 beyond the manufacturing sector. The Professor conducted a total of four sessions that were all centered around Industry 4.0. A concept developed by the German Government, Industry 4.0 is now seen as the answer to the challenge faced by many companies to be more agile and responsive in their functioning, especially where customers are concerned. The concept advocates the use of state-of-the-art digital technologies to create highly flexible systems. Industry 4.0 is considered to be the fourth industrial revolution. At the core, it presents several interconnected digital technologies. Some technologies are already fairly known, for example Big Data Analytics and Cyber Security. Some are fairly new; Internet of Things (IoT), as an example. These technologies together are expected to make radical changes in industry. The purpose of Industry 4.0 is not to get rid of people, but to develop smart systems where machines and people can work in harmony. Does Sri Lanka need Industry 4.0? The short answer is yes, if its industries wish to remain competitive in global markets. Naturally, high-tech solutions require significant up-front investment, hence the most sensible approach would be to craft an individual Industry 4.0 journey. Businesses need to identify the most beneficial digital technologies for them first and then have a roadmap to facilitate the gradual introduction of technologies. A national strategy on the use of digital technologies wouldextremely beneficial and it will enable businesses to achieve high levels of connectivity. The two-day conference at KDU saw Professor Perera conduct a highly informative session. Although the keynote was focused on the use of Big Data analytics, the professor argued that Industry 4.0 could take current digital transformation projects further forward with many exciting outcomes, for example, smart cities. A visit to the Institute of Technology, University of Moratuwa (ITUM) in Diyagama, provided an opportunity to interact with future technologists who were very keen to learn how Industry 4.0 could be used in engineering applications. At the University of Sri Jayawardenapura there was an opportunity to network with the industry. At an industry research workshop, the use of digital technologies within the supply chain was discussed. The lecture introduced Industry 4.0 and presented the means by which the concept can be used in supply chain management in order to achieve radical transformations. It was clear that there is a genuine interest to deploy digital technologies, but lack of awareness was seen as a major drawback. A special workshop at MAS Holding, the largest garment manufacturer in Sri Lanka, focused on the use of simulation technologies and other digital technologies. Success! An email has been sent to with a link to confirm list signup. Turkish and Germany energy ministers on Friday signed a letter of intent to develop energy projects. The document was signed at the Turkish-German Energy Forum held in Turkish capital Ankara. Speaking at the signing ceremony, Turkey's Energy and Natural Resources Minister Fatih Donmez said: "I believe wholeheartedly that we will further develop our bilateral cooperation, which has already reached a certain level, by continuing our works in a speedy and result-oriented manner in the areas that this letter of intent covers." Donmez added that over the last 15 years, German companies had invested approximately 25 billion in the Turkish energy sector, and created over 15,000 jobs. "The high investment amount demonstrates the confidence of German companies and investors in both the sector and the Turkish economy at large," he said, adding the German businesses had made significant contributions especially in the renewables sector. German Economy and Energy Minister Peter Altmaier is on a two-day visit to Ankara. On Thursday, he attended the Joint Economic and Trade Committee (JETCO) meeting along with Turkey's Trade Minister Ruhsar Pekcan. Later on Friday, he will meet Turkey's Industry and Technology Minister Mustafa Varank. It is interesting to note that the Minister of Education has decided to reduce the number of subjects for G.C.E (Ordinary Level) students. The philosophy behind this decision has been aimed at reducing the stress levels of the students. In my humble opinion this is only seeing the tip of the iceberg. Teachers should highlight the importance of investing on time wisely. Students must be taught how to use of time efficiently and avoid time wasting. This will make the students find time to engage in studies We need to dwell upon finding solutions to the other hidden key factors as well, which would provide a comprehensive solution to reduce stress besides aiding the progress of the students, so that they can reach higher echelons. Everything is in the hands of the teachers. Hence, the Ministry of Education should also provide relief to teachers in order to reduce their stress levels. The teachers salaries need to be revised, as they struggle to survive at present with the mediocre remuneration they receive. Due to this they are depressed. How can we expect them to function normally and provide a better service. Hence, this problem has to be ironed out immediately. If these changes are done teachers will fully focus on their duties and produce valuable students to this nation. Unfortunately, at present, in most cases, the role of a teacher is limited to inculcating knowledge only. They teach keeping with the syllabus and managing the time table and assume that they have done their job. They should change with the changing times. The teachers are responsible for moulding the characters of their students. They should also inspect the other values mentioned under personal life such as discipline.These are the needs of the hour to turn the people of this country into well-balanced individuals. Stress The ultimate objective of the Teaching Profession has to Produce multi talented students to supersede them. Let us now look at the hidden factors which are contributing to the stress in students. They are personal Life, work Life. (Studies), family Life, social Life, religious and Spiritual Life. Personal life comprises of Personality, Leadership, Attitude, Self-discipline, Behaviour, Punctuality, Regular Attendance, Compassion, Honesty, Hard Work, Self-motivation,Time Management, Communication Skills and Character. We hear from those who represent the younger generation that they do not have adequate time to attend to things. Teachers should guide them to find time. Generally, time is divided into 3 components: Time Investment ( ex: Studying and working productively), Time Spent (ex: Travelling) and Time Wastage (ex: gossiping and idling). Teachers should highlight the importance of investing on time wisely. Students must be taught how to use of time efficiently and avoid time wasting. This will make the students find time to engage in studies. Imparting knowledge is only a part of the service rendered by teachers. The other three areas of interests should be developing skills, inculcating values and attitude and making these as habits. The teachers are responsible for moulding the characters of their students. They should also inspect the other values mentioned under personal life such as discipline. These are the needs of the hour to turn the people of this country into well-balanced individuals. The second area under discussion is Work Life. i.e : Studies Teachers should make the students possess the following values while studying and provide direction. Emphasis must be on dedication, determination, discipline and meeting deadlines. They should reiterate the values of hard work and preach to them that there is no substitute for hard work. These values if properly inculcated will definitely make the students live a stress-free life at school and at home. The third area I would like to emphasise on is Family Life. Teachers should teach their students how to be obedient to their parents and elders, how to behave within the family and with their siblings and about the need to uphold family values. If they are brought up in this manner it will improve their quality of living besides making this country a better place to live in. The fourth area in my focus is Social Life. values The teachers should help find good friends at school. They should also teach the values of true friendship. The Teachers should foster Team Work among students. They should encourage the students to join in voluntary service associations and clubs, such as Scouting and Literary Associations. By learning the values from being in these associations the students will have service oriented minds even when they become adults. We need them to serve our motherland in the future. The Teachers should teach them how to behave in the neighbourhood and society. They should educate their students on the dangers of smoking, alcoholism and drug addiction, So that when they grow up in the society they will have only good habits. These lessons are vital as we are witnessing a disgraceful youth society at present. The fifth area of my interest is the Religious or Spiritual Life. The relationship with our Almighty God through prayers should be taught to students. To do this you need not be the religion teacher. The power of prayers should be preached to the students effectively. When praying students should not focus on material gain as this is the number one stress builder. Rather, they should pray for knowledge, wisdom, peace, harmony and tranquillity. Further, the teachers should teach their students that Prayers can move mountains. Having read the above contents of my article, I am sure that you would have gathered a fair idea on what needs to be done to reduce stress among students. The above suggestions and recommendations will not only lead to a stress-free life, but make us live a whole and prosperous life. The need of the hour is a holistic approach to your noble profession. By fulfilling the duties outlined in the article, I am confident that you would produce students superseding you. Make them future leaders. Hence, I call upon the teachers to play a pivotal role in the lives of our future generations. Their future is in your hands! I urge the Ministry of Education to consider the recommendations and create a platform for teachers and also allocate a budget for programmes on the recommendations expressed in the article besides revising their salaries. We have been brought up by Teachers of high calibre and we are grateful to our teachers and Alma-Mater for moulding us to reach the current status. (The writer is the Former Chairman and Editor-in- Chief of the Old boys Union, St.Josephs College, Colombo10 and is a Personality Development Consultant. He is also the General Manager of Surgi Vision). By Susil Premalal reporting from Matara Promising athlete Tharindu Dasun from the Galle District established the first meet record on the second day of the 30th National Youth Games which continued at the Kotawila Stadium in Matara yesterday (26). Dasun produced a splendid performance of 2.123 metres in the Boys Under-20 High Jump final to erase the previous mark of 2.11 metres set by R. A. T. O. Karunaratne from Urban Youth. Meanwhile, Kalutara District clinched the netball title while overcoming Kandy District in the final encounter. In addition, Kegalle District defeated Monaragala District in the Mens Netball Tournament final. Pix by Pradeep Pathirana Minister Mano Ganesan said in a twitter message that the Tamil Progressive Alliance (TPA) was in a crisis meeting with their Six MPs. Niles Niemuth is the Socialist Equality Partys candidate for Congress in Michigans 12th Congressional District. Visit Niles2018.com to donate and get involved in the campaign. Former President Barack Obama is stumping at Cass Tech High School in downtown Detroit today for the Democratic slate of candidates running for state and federal office. Among those joining Obama on the platform are gubernatorial candidate Gretchen Whitmer, US Senator Debbie Stabenow and congressional candidates Elissa Slotkin and Haley Stevens. The purpose of Obamas appearance is to try to convince workers and youth in one of the poorest large cities in America once again that the Democratic Party, a right-wing pro-capitalist and pro-war party, represents their interests. Ten years ago, when Obama was first running for president, it was said that the election of an African American president would mark a fundamental progressive shift in American politics. However, Obama and the Democrats have left behind a legacy of social devastation for the working class in Detroit and across the country, paving the way for the election of the fascistic President Donald Trump. Obama oversaw the forced bankruptcies of GM and Ford, resulting in the closure of factories across southeastern Michigan and the elimination of tens of thousands of jobs in the US. New hires in the auto industry had their wages cut in half. The United Auto Workers (UAW) union collaborated with the companies to eliminate the eight-hour day, implement a multiple-tier pay scale and create new low wage temporary part time (TPT) positions. The horrific conditions that prevail in the factories as the result of the collaboration between the UAW, the Obama administration and the auto companies have contributed to the deaths and injuries of countless workers. Jacoby Hennings, a 21-year-old TPT at Fiat-Chrysler and Ford, died at the Ford Woodhaven Stamping plant last year after an hour-long meeting with UAW officials over still undisclosed issues. Police say he committed suicide. Obama last visited Detroit in 2016 to rub shoulders with union executives and auto bosses at the North American International Auto Show. His visit was meant to mark the return of Detroit after the restructuring of the auto industry and the citys 2013 bankruptcy, backed by Obama, which resulted in the looting of city workers retirement pensions and a restructuring of the entire city in the interests of billionaires like Dan Gilbert. As the president hailed Detroits supposed renaissance, he was silent on sickouts being carried out by Detroit teachers to protest deplorable school conditions and to demand the return of wages and benefits given away by the Detroit Federation of Teachers. Behind the scenes, Obama worked with his cronies in the unions, including AFT President Randi Weingarten, to smother the protests. Two years later, the same problems confront teachers and students, with all drinking fountains shut off at the beginning of the school year due to the discovery of high levels of lead and other contaminants in the water, including at Cass Tech. That same year Obama travelled to Flint, Michigan where he told residents poisoned by the lead contamination of their drinking water that they should stop complaining and just drink the water. Obama facetiously dismissed the concerns of thousands of residents by taking a sip of Flint water. Perhaps for this trip Obama will take a drink from a water fountain at Cass Tech and declare that everything is fine The legacy of the Obama administration in Detroit is one expression of the class policy that Obama and the Democrats oversaw for eight years. This included a massive bailout of the banks, an unprecedented transfer of wealth to the ruling elite, an attack on health care packaged as a reform, and the expansion of war abroad. Former US Attorney General Eric Holder, who is joining Obama today, is most notorious for his argument that the president has the right to assassinate anyone, including US citizens, without due process. Who are the candidates that Obama has come to Detroit to promote? Gubernatorial candidate Gretchen Whitmer is the former minority leader of the Michigan Senate and interim prosecutor for Ingham County. She comes from privilege as the daughter of Richard Whitmer, the former president and CEO of Blue Cross Blue Shield of Michigan. With the backing of the health insurance industry, Whitmer has come out against universal health care. Senator Debbie Stabenow, a career politician, has represented Michigan in the Senate since 2001. While Stabenow voted against the launching of the war against Iraq in 2002 she routinely voted to fund the illegal military occupation. She voted in 2001 in favor of war against Afghanistan, a war which continues to this day. Elissa Slotkin, running to represent Michigans 8th congressional district, is a former CIA agent who boasts of her work in the Bush and Obama administrations, which included three tours in Iraq and overseeing drone warfare, homeland defense and cyber warfare during a stint at the Pentagon. She has been endorsed by leading warmongers, such as John Negroponte and Stephen Hadley. Haley Stevens, running to represent Michigans 11th congressional district, was chief of staff for the Obama auto industry task force which enforced major concessions on auto workers as a condition of the bailouts of GM and Chrysler. This line up exemplifies the Democratic Party as a party of wealth and war. Hailed by the rich executives and union bureaucrats in Detroit who have done very well since the bankruptcy, the Democrats offer nothing to the working class. They are no less a party of the ruling class than the Republicans. As the Socialist Equality Partys candidate for Michigans 12th congressional district, I am fighting for a genuine socialist alternative for the working class to put an end to social inequality, poverty and war. I am fighting to build a mass movement to transform the banks and large corporations, such as the auto companies, into public utilities run democratically by the working class. The problems that workers in southeastern Michigan and through the US and internationally confront can only be resolved through a break with the politics of the Democratic Party and the trade unions. Workers and young people need their own party, the Socialist Equality Party, to take political power into their own hand and reorganize the economy to meet human need not private profit. New Zealands opposition National Party remains in crisis over allegations that its leader Simon Bridges concealed a $100,000 donation from Chinese businessman Zhang Yikun. By law, political parties must publicly declare donations over $15,000. MP Jami-Lee Ross was expelled from the National Party after making the allegation on October 16. He then released a recorded phone conversation showing Bridges was aware of the donation. The party has denied receiving $100,000 from Zhang. Ross vowed to stay in parliament and release more evidence of Bridges corrupt behaviour. Police are investigating whether the party filed a false donations return with the Electoral Commission. The dispute has lifted the lid on sharp divisions within the political establishment over business links with China, NZs largest trading partner. As the Trump administration escalates the US trade war and military threats against China and Russia, US allies like New Zealand are coming under immense pressure to fall into line and prepare for war. The Labour Party-NZ First-Greens coalition government has strengthened ties with the US and officially labelled China and Russia the main threats to the global order. The 2008-2017 National Party government, while fully supporting the US alliance, also developed close ties with Chinese business, which it is seeking to maintain. Bridges and other National politicians have tried to shut down the donations scandal by painting Ross as unstable and abusive. Four unnamed women, including a National Party MP, have accused Ross of inappropriate conduct and misogyny. In an extraordinary development, on October 21 police took Ross to a mental health unit in Auckland, where he remained for three days before being discharged. According to the New Zealand Herald, Ross was issued a compulsory treatment order, also known as being sectioned, after members of the National Party apparently contacted medical personnel and triggered a police hunt on the night of October 20. People can be sectioned only if medical authorities believe someone is a danger to themselves or others. Far-right blogger Cameron Slater, a friend of Ross, wrote on October 25 that Nationals MeToo-style accusations had made Ross suicidal. Ross may have been suicidal, but questions remain about what the National Party said to police and medical personnel. If sectioning was considered as a means to silence or discredit Ross, this would set a dangerous precedent for further attacks on democratic rights. The fact that Ross is supported by Slater and his collaborator, far-right political advisor Simon Lusk, suggests that the allegations against Bridges are part of an attempt to shift the National Party further to the right. Lusk and Slater have previously promoted National MPs Judith Collins and Mark Mitchell, who both contested the party leadership in February against Bridges. Collins is a hard-line ex-police minister, while Mitchell is a former defence minister who, before entering parliament, worked as a private security contractor in Iraq after the 2003 US-led invasion. The xenophobic NZ First Party, which plays a major role in the government, has continued to attack Chinese influence in the National Party. On October 23, NZ First leader, Deputy Prime Minister Winston Peters told RadioLIVE he sympathised with Ross. Zhangs donation, he said, showed some politicians were not acting in this countrys national interest. Peters, who previously attacked long-standing National MP Jian Yang, accusing him of being a Chinese Communist Party (CCP) agent, has denounced the National Party for considering installing a second Chinese MP based on Zhangs recommendation. The media has given extensive coverage to Anne-Marie Brady, a University of Canterbury professor, who is playing a key part in the anti-China campaign. Brady is presented as an impartial expert, but her research, including policy advice to the Labour-led government, has been funded by the NATO military alliance and the US government-backed Wilson Center. Speaking to TVNZs Q and A program on October 21, Brady declared that Zhangs donations were part of a CCP plot to influence New Zealand politics. She called on the Ardern government to investigate Chinas political interference activities as the Australian government did, as the United States government is now doing. In the US, Vice President Mike Pence made an inflammatory speech in early October promising to intensify the US military build-up and take other steps to counter China, including monitoring Chinese students in the US. Since Pences speech, the Trump administration has pulled out of the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty, enabling the US to develop mid-range nuclear missiles to attack China and Russia. Echoing Pence, Brady told TVNZ the CCP was seeking to manipulate and control the New Zealand-Chinese community. Brady has repeatedly called for the Security Intelligence Service to investigate Chinas influence throughout NZ. This means students, journalists and activists opposing US military threats against China could be deemed to be under the CCPs control. Brady praised the US-led Five Eyes intelligence sharing network, which includes New Zealand, for holding discussions in September on measures to specifically counter Chinese influence operations. Without any evidence, Brady has also accused National MP Jian Yang and Labour MP Raymond Huo of being CCP agents in parliament and called for them to be investigated. In a statement in November, Brady said one aim of Chinas influence campaign was getting New Zealand to agree to stop spying on China for the Five Eyes. Whistleblower Edward Snowden revealed in 2015 that the US National Security Agency highly values the intelligence provided by NZs Government Communications Security Bureau. Significantly, numerous commentators who falsely present themselves as lefts have hailed Bradyan enthusiastic supporter of New Zealands military-intelligence alliance with US imperialism. These include the trade union-funded Daily Blog, liberals such as Bryce Edwards and Chris Trotter, and pseudo-left commentator Branko Marcetic. Marcetic is a New Zealand-based staff writer for Jacobin magazine, which is affiliated with the Democratic Socialists of America, a faction of the Democratic Party. In an article on the Spinoff website on October 19, Marcetic called for New Zealand to start taking [Chinas] influence campaigns seriously, citing Bradys allegations. Marcetic also noted that members of the US Congress and the Canadian intelligence service had expressed concerns about Chinese activities in New Zealand. The article made no mention of Washingtons war preparations against China. The aim of such articles and Bradys statements is to cement NZs alliance with Washington and other Five Eyes partners as the US prepare s for military conflict against China. JEFFERSONTOWN, Ky. (AP) A gunman fatally shot a man in the back of the head inside a Kroger and then killed a woman in the grocery stores parking lot before exchanging gunfire with a bystander, police said. Officers then captured the suspect as he tried to flee. Gregory Alan Bush, 51, was booked early Thursday on two counts of murder and 10 counts of felony wanton endangerment, according to Louisville Metro Department of Corrections records. His arrest report says Bush walked to the back of the Kroger store, pulled a gun from his waist and shot the first victim in the back of the head, then kept shooting him multiple times as he was down on the floor. Jeffersontown Police Chief Sam Rogers said in an initial news conference at the scene that we have no idea what motivated the shootings. The FBI later announced that it is evaluating the evidence to determine if there were any violations of federal law. Rogers said the suspect then shot a woman multiple times out in the parking lot at about 3 p.m. on Wednesday. Both victims died at the scene. A citizen armed with a gun engaged the suspect, trading gunfire in the parking lot, but no one was hit, Rogers said. Police say two people have died in a shooting at a Kroger grocery store on the outskirts of Louisville, Kentucky.(Oct. 24) Bystander video shows a white man in a distinctive neon-yellow shirt trying to get away. Hes recorded driving out of the lot while an officer chases after him on foot. Other videos show police making the arrest. Eric Deacon, who identified himself as an emergency medical technician, told The Associated Press that he was in the stores self-checkout lane when he heard the first shot, in the pharmacy area. He said a man came around the corner and the look on his face, he looked like he just didnt care. Deacon said he saw another man in the store with a gun who appeared to be shooting at the suspect. Deacon went outside and saw a woman in her mid-50s or early 60s who had been hit, and tried to resuscitate her. She was gone, theres nothing I could do, Deacon said. I think she just got caught in the crossfire. As police officers swarmed the scene and blocked off the area with yellow crime tape, a man identified by the Louisville Courier Journal as Tim King stood in the parking lot waiting for his wife to come out. He said he drove to the store after she called him, sobbing to tell him what had happened. I said, Whats wrong? King said in a video posted on the newspapers website. And she said, Theres someone shooting up here. King said his wife said she heard popping noises, then someone ran around a corner and said, Oh my God, hes killed her. Customers were moved to the back of the store, she said. Its just a very, very scary situation, King said. The Kroger Co. issued a statement saying that company officials were shocked and saddened by the shooting. Thanks to the quick response of the local police department, the suspect was apprehended, and our store is secure. The store was closed and will not reopen until the investigation is complete, the release said. 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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 Two Pakistan nationals, a man and a woman, were arrested by the Police Narcotics Bureau at the BIA while arriving in Sri Lanka from Lahore after swallowing heroin capsules yesterday afternoon, Police Spokesman SP Ruwan Gunasekara said. He said the suspects were admitted to the Negombo General Hospital. So far, 35 heroin capsules have been found from the stomach of the woman and none from the male suspect. The weight of recovered heroin so far is around 350 g which valued at around Rs. 4.2 million, he said. The woman suspect had arrived in Sri Lanka six times during last year and this year. The male suspect had arrived in Sri Lanka for the first time, the spokesman said. The suspects would be produced before the Negombo Magistrate today, he said. (Darshana Sanjeewa) CASPER Wyomings revenues greatly exceeded earlier projections made by the states Consensus Revenue Estimating Group, according to new numbers released Wednesday morning. Though the new infusion of funds to the states general fund was still not enough to cover the states annual budget on its own, Wyomings revenues were boosted by strong years both in the oil industry and the stock market which, in turn, helped spur spending on Main Street. The biannual CREG report showed 2018s general fund revenues exceeded the groups optimistic report from January, passing start-of-the-year projections by approximately $385 million. This was largely thanks to sales and use tax collections ($91.3 million over projections), severance tax collections, mineral royalties ($43 million) and investment income ($82.9 million) largely exceeding projections across the board. These numbers are in line with expectations announced in an update on the states revenues made to legislators back in July. According to the report, a significant driver for the states economic performance this year comes from a predictable source: drilling. Resurgent economic activity associated primarily with oil and gas extraction was the main reason for the increase in sales and use tax collections in FY 2018, the report reads. Of the 12 primary industry sectors, mining accounted for 41.7 percent of the total increase in a year-over-year comparison, followed by the retail trade sector, which contributed 22.1 percent. These numbers are reflected largely by the geography of where the increases were felt: According to the report, 19 counties in Wyoming realized gains in sales tax collections, with just four oil and gas extraction counties Converse, Campbell, Sublette and Sweetwater accounting for two-thirds of the increase. Those positive numbers are expected to contribute to increasing revenues in the next few years, with overall revenues expected to rise nearly 11 percent in 2021-2022, mostly due to sales and use tax projections. Stronger retail returns, particularly due to recent legislation around collecting online sales tax revenues, are also expected to bolster returns on the retail side. In Converse County, Republican legislator Brian Boner said that the numbers exhibited in the report reflect whats been seen on the ground there. The additional funds should lessen some of the tough decisions to be made during the upcoming session. But not all of them. Its additional cause for celebration, but were not out of the woods yet, Boner said. It certainly makes our jobs a little bit easier in January. It does help us in our task, but were still dealing with a billion dollar structural deficit, he added. Were going to need to address that in January. People are going to be jockeying for limited resources: that never changes. An improving oil sector in Wyoming and positive investment returns offered an improved outlook for the states revenue picture in the long-term, though projections still fell well short of the industrys 2008 peak, or even the highs it experienced prior to the bust. Though the forecast noted the highlight of the report was clearly with increased tax collections from and projected outlook for the states oil sector, its other industries particularly coal and natural gas have fallen short of expectations. Oil prices according to CREGs more conservative reading of oil futures are expected to see increases of 8 percent through 2020 before stabilizing, exceeding projections for natural gas, which is expected to see a modest 4 percent increase in 2019 and 2020 combined. This, the report notes, is a modest projection written with caution to the uncertainty of future demand. Though coal rebounded somewhat last year after two years of drastic decline, the first six months of 2018 saw coal production 7.8 million tons (5.2 percent) lower than last year, dampened by the lower market demand and regulatory uncertainties. Natural gas and coal prices are not as strong as previously forecasted and have been revised downward, the report reads. The outlook for coal production has been revised downward. This, Democrats in the Legislature hope, might be the impetus for serious talks on ever elusive fiscal reforms as they hope to avoid further budget cuts. It was positive, clearly, said Senate Minority Leader Chris Rothfuss. It was not unexpected. The recent development in the oil sector and activity statewide has been something weve been tracking for the past year, so we knew that with increased oil prices and production wed see gains made in our state revenue. This profile reflects that. At the same time, it reinforces other realities, including continued declines in revenue from natural gas and coal. The most important thing is with this CREG forecast, we shouldnt be spending time in this session talking about how to cut education spending or other essential state programs, he added. I hope well be able to pause, catch our breath and start realistically addressing economic diversification and revenue diversification, recognizing were certainly not out of the woods. He added that other sources of income for the state, particularly around its investments, also fail to offer long-term sustainability, particularly as the report was released in the midst of Wednesdays stock market tumble that saw the Dow erase all the gains it had made in the past year. Our future solvency as a state relies on positive capital gains in the long run from the stock market, said Rothfuss. We switched from relying heavily on a volatile industry to now, simultaneously, relying on that and the stock market to pay the bills. And we really just increased that reliance on the market which made sense. We needed to pay the bills it was the right thing to do, but we cant become complacent when we expect the stock market to improve every day. Especially when you look at what happened today. The leadership to make those changes will largely come from the attitude of the upcoming administration. Republican candidate for governor and Wyoming Treasurer Mark Gordon has, on the campaign trail, advocated for more local financial independence, particularly around allowing municipalities to invest more of their funds in the stock market. (Gordon could not be reached by press time to comment on the report.) To stabilize the state budget, Gordon has also advocated for spending guidelines around the states rainy day funds, which have long sat relatively dormant. His opponent, Mary Throne, has advocated spending some of these funds as well, but with a different objective: stabilizing the economy. The fundamental problem in Wyoming is we dont take steps to get out of the boom-and-bust cycle, she said in an interview. Just because theres an uptick in oil doesnt mean we ignore that issue. We still need to make sure we deal with the fundamentals, she added. I dont want Wyomings future dependent on the whims of the crown prince of Saudi Arabia. The Seminole Tribe of Florida, owners of the Hard Rock Cafe franchise, have distanced themselves from Cesar Sayoc, the 56-year-old suspect believed to be behind at least 13 pipe bombs sent to prominent government officials and Democratic donors in recent days. On Twitter, Sayoc described himself as the Current Booking Agent/ Sales/ Marketing/Promotions/Project Mgr Live Events at Seminole Hard Rock Live, a well-known concert venue on Seminole tribal land in Hollywood, Florida. Alice in Chains and Marilyn Manson both have concerts scheduled at the venue in the upcoming days. In numerous Twitter posts, written under the handle Hardrock2016, Sayoc appears to identify as a member of the Unconquered Seminole Tribe. But a spokesperson for the tribe, which bought the Hard Rock Cafe Inc. for $965 million dollars in 2006, tells Rolling Stone that no Cesar Sayoc nor anyone who went by any of the other aliases Sayoc was known to use is either a member of the tribe or an employee of the company. We can find no evidence that Cesar Altieri, Caesar Altieri, Caesar Altieri Sayoc, Ceasar Altieri Randazzo (Facebook) or Julus Cesar Milan (Twitter) is or was a member or employee of the Seminole Tribe of Florida, or is or was an employee of Seminole Gaming or Hard Rock International, Gary Bitner, spokesperson for the Seminole Tribe of Florida, said. He added that the tribe was unable to verify whether Sayoc may have worked for a Hard Rock vendor at this time. Sayocs van, towed by federal authorities from the AutoZone parking lot in Plantation, Florida where he was arrested, was covered in Pro-Trump stickers, including one Native Americans for Trump decal featuring the The Seminole Tribe of Florida flag. A window of the van bears the same message Sayoc appears to have worn on a T-shirt to Trumps inauguration: My president no path to 270 Landslide It Was A 306-Tsunami Unconquered Seminole Tribe Native Americans Made in America For President Trump 2016-2024 A MAN OF HIS WORD FOR OVER 40 YEARS THE TRUTH SNOWFLAKES HIS CHECK LIST. On Friday afternoon, Sayoc was officially charged in connection with mailing the 13 bombs, sent to Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton, Joe Biden and others. Attorney General Jeff Sessions said Sayoc would be charged with interstate transportation of an explosive, illegal mailing of explosives, threats against former presidents and certain other persons, threatening interstate communications and assaulting current and former federal officers. He faces up to 48 years in prison if convicted. A Utah man originally charged with murder for helping a 16-year-old girl hang herself and filming the suicide pleaded guilty to lesser charges this week, but still could be sent to prison for life, PEOPLE confirms. Tyerell Przybycien, 19, appeared before a judge Tuesday, pleading guilty to first-degree felony child abuse homicide. A courts spokesman tells PEOPLE Przybycien also pleaded guilty to an additional child pornography charge. Detectives found the incriminating files on his cellphone as part of their investigation into the May 2017 hanging death of 16-year-old Jchandra Brown. Przybyciens sentencing is scheduled for Dec. 7. According to state mandates, he faces a minimum sentence of five years but the judge has the discretion to send Przybycien away for the rest of his life. Prosecutors said that Przybycien purchased the rope that Brown used to kill herself. They also said he tied the noose for her, attached it to a tree and provided a stool for her to stand on. The criminal complaint against Przybycien said he was fascinated with death and expressed excitement about aiding in the girls suicide, sending a text to a friend exclaiming: [Its] like getting away with murder! RELATED: Utah Teen Charged with Murder After Helping Friend Hang Herself Even Filming the Suicide Under the terms of Przybyciens plea deal, prosecutors dropped tampering charges as well as a single count of failure to report a dead body. Prosecutors say Brown would not have ended her own life on May 5, 2017, without Przybyciens assistance. Brown was found dead by a turkey hunter on May 6 near Maple Lake in Spanish Fork Canyon. She was hanging from a noose tied to a tree. Tyerell Przybycien Next to Browns body were two grocery bags, containing receipts for the rope and aerosol air duster, as well as her phone and a handwritten note saying to watch the video on her phone for answers as to what happened. Przybycien was found on a nearby trail crying. Story continues Want to keep up with the latest crime coverage? Click here to get breaking crime news, ongoing trial coverage and details of intriguing unsolved cases in the True Crime Newsletter. In the video recovered by police, recorded by Przybycien, Brown could be seen standing on a rock and a piece of wood, defense attorney Neil Skousen said in a previous interview with PEOPLE. Przybyciens voice can be heard from behind the camera and then, moments later, Brown inhales the aerosol air duster while wearing the noose. Video: Utah Teen Helped Friend Commit Suicide (2017) The video shows Brown giggling and then losing consciousness because of the aerosol. Brown then appears to fall and, as her body hangs, Przybycien continues to film while speaking to her, including saying, Thumbs up if youre okay. RELATED: Utah Teen Accused of Assisting and Filming Friends Suicide Will Stand Trial for Murder The video ends with Przybycien saying, I guess Ill just leave this here now. Police said Przybycien told them Brown confided in him months earlier about wanting to kill herself and in the hours before her death, Przybycien said he picked Brown up from work and drove her to two different stores to purchase the air duster and rope used to tie the noose. PEOPLE was unable to reach Przybyciens lawyer for comment. Suicide Prevention: What to Know Experts say some common warning signs of suicide include discussing a desire to die or feeling anxious or hopeless, like a burden, or trapped or in pain; withdrawing from others; extreme mood swings, including anger and recklessness; and abnormal sleep patterns (sleeping too much or too little). Many suicides have multiple causes and are not triggered by one event, according to experts, who underline that suicidal crises can be overcome with help. Where mental illness is a factor, it can be treated. Reaching out to those in need is a simple and effective preventative measure, experts say. If you or someone you know is showing warning signs of suicide, consider contacting the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline at 800-273-TALK, texting the Crisis Text Line at 741741 or seeking help from a professional. Republican calls for Kavanaugh accuser, lawyer to face criminal investigation originally appeared on abcnews.go.com The battle over the handling of Brett Kavanaugh's confirmation hearing isn't over as Sen. Chuck Grassley is calling on the Justice Department to criminally investigate one of the justice's accusers and her attorney. Grassley, who is the chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, sent a letter to the Justice Department calling for Julie Swetnick and her attorney Michael Avenatti to be subject to a criminal investigation. The probe will focus on what Grassley's office calls "a potential conspiracy to provide materially false statements to Congress and obstruct a congressional committee investigation." Grassley questioned the veracity of Swetnick's claims of allegedly being aware of sexual assaults that Kavanaugh may have participated in during his time in high school. Kavanaugh denied all of the claims. (MORE: Kavanaugh accuser has been 're-victimized' since coming forward with story, she says) When a well-meaning citizen comes forward with information relevant to the committees work, I take it seriously. It takes courage to come forward, especially with allegations of sexual misconduct or personal trauma. Im grateful for those who find that courage, Grassley said in a statement. "But in the heat of partisan moments, some do try to knowingly mislead the committee. Thats unfair to my colleagues, the nominees and others providing information who are seeking the truth," Grassley said. "It stifles our ability to work on legitimate lines of inquiry. It also wastes time and resources for destructive reasons. Thankfully, the law prohibits such false statements to Congress and obstruction of congressional committee investigations. For the law to work, we cant just brush aside potential violations. I dont take lightly making a referral of this nature, but ignoring this behavior will just invite more of it in the future," Grassley said. Story continues Avenatti, who first came to national attention for representing adult film star Stormy Daniels, tweeted his response to Grassley's call for an investigation. "It is ironic that Senator Grassley now is interested in investigations. He didnt care when it came to putting a man on the SCOTUS for life. We welcome the investigation as now we can finally get to the bottom of Judge Kavanaughs lies and conduct. Let the truth be known," Avenatti wrote on Twitter. It is ironic that Senator Grassley now is interested in investigations. He didnt care when it came to putting a man on the SCOTUS for life. We welcome the investigation as now we can finally get to the bottom of Judge Kavanaughs lies and conduct. Let the truth be known. Michael Avenatti (@MichaelAvenatti) October 25, 2018 Swetnick was the third woman to publicly accuse Kavanaugh of alleged sexual misconduct during his confirmation hearings in September. PHOTO: A photo posted to Twitter by lawyer Michael Avenatti that he identified as his client, Julie Swetnick, who has new allegations against Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh. (Credit: Michael Avenatti via Twitter) The other two women who accused Kavanaugh were Christine Blasey Ford, who publicly testified before the Judiciary Committee about her alleged assault by the judge, and Deborah Ramirez, who accused him of sexual misconduct when they were both students at Yale University. Kavanaugh denied all of the claims. Swetnick shared her allegations after releasing a sworn declaration that Avenatti provided to the Senate Judiciary Committee. Swetnick claimed she observed Kavanaugh at more than 10 house parties in the early 1980s. She said at numerous parties Kavanaugh was drunk and engaging in what she called highly inappropriate conduct, including fondling and grabbing of girls without their consent. (MORE: Third woman makes sexual misconduct allegation against Brett Kavanaugh) I observed Brett Kavanaugh drink excessively at many of these parties and engage in abusive and highly physically aggressive behavior toward girls, Swetnick wrote in the declaration, including pressing girls against him without their consent, grinding against girls, and attempting to remove or shift girls clothing to expose private body parts. In a statement at the time, Kavanaugh called the allegations by Swetnick ridiculous and from the Twilight Zone. I dont know who this is and this never happened, Kavanaugh said in a statement. After a contentious confirmation, Kavanaugh was ultimately sworn in as a Supreme Court Justice earlier this month. ABC News' James Hill contributed to this report. LONDON The billionaire Topshop owner Sir Philip Green has found himself mired in controversy, once again. Green, one of Britains richest individuals, is the subject of an eight-month investigation by The Daily Telegraph, which has accused him of sexual and racial harassment and bullying. Green managed to get an injunction against The Telegraph earlier this week, preventing the newspaper from revealing his identity, but Lord Peter Hain, the former Leader of the House of Commons, used his parliamentary privilege to reveal Greens name. Having been contacted by someone intimately involved in the case of a powerful businessman using non-disclosure agreements and substantial payments to conceal the truth about serious and repeated sexual harassment, racist abuse and bullying, which is compulsively continuing, I feel its my duty under parliamentary privilege to name Philip Green as the individual in question, Hain told the House of Lords on Thursday. According to the Telegraph allegations, there are five cases where Green paid substantial amounts to his victims and had them sign confidentiality agreements to prevent them from speaking up. He is also said to have spent up to 500,000 pounds in legal fees, fighting The Telegraph in the U.K. Court of Appeals. The allegations have reignited the #MeToo conversation in the U.K. and have also begun a debate on the use of confidentiality agreements or NDAs. Prime Minister Theresa May saying that she will be reviewing around the use of these agreements, as it is clear that some employers have been using them for unethical reasons. This is the second scandal to hit Green over the past two years. In 2016, he faced five investigations into the collapse of his former retailer BHS, and its pension fund deficit. In February 2017, Green put an end to months of drama, bad press and damage to his reputation by filling the pension fund hole at BHS with a voluntary contribution of up to 363 million pounds. Story continues Related stories Sales, Profits at Philip Green's Taveta Investments Fall in Fiscal 2017 Kylie Cosmetics, Topshop Ink First Off-line Partnership Arcadia Reaches a Deal With BHS Creditors NEW YORK (Reuters) - Federal agents were piecing together on Tuesday how a small bomb ended up in a mailbox outside a New York home owned by billionaire financier George Soros. Soros, one of the world's biggest donors to liberal groups and causes, was not there at the time on Monday. Investigators have not named any suspects or disclosed a possible motive, but Soros has become a hated figure among some right-wing activists in the United States and Eastern Europe, and the target of a hostile media campaign by the nationalist government in his native Hungary. An employee at the home in Katonah, an upscale hamlet about 41 miles (66 km) north of New York City, opened a package at around 3:45 p.m. ET (1945 GMT) on Monday and found what appeared to be an explosive device, the Bedford Police Department said. Bomb squad technicians detonated it in a nearby wooded area, police said. There was no warning of a possible threat to Soros, and there was no continuing threat to Soros or the public, a law enforcement official said. The FBI's New York field office did not respond to a request for comment. Soros has donated billions of dollars to his Open Society Foundations, a grant-making organization that funds civil society groups around the world. It has clashed with Hungary's government over its restrictions on immigration and asylum seekers. "In this climate of fear, falsehoods and rising authoritarianism, just voicing your views can draw death threats," Open Society Foundations said in a statement. "George Soros deplores violence of any kind, and urges politicians across the political spectrum to tone down their rhetoric." U.S. President Donald Trump, a Republican, said earlier this month, without citing evidence, that Soros had paid protesters who confronted senators at hearings for Trump's Supreme Court nominee, Brett Kavanaugh. Open Society Foundations has denied the claim. Agents described it as a small pipe bomb made from about 6 inches (15 cm) of pipe filled with explosive powder, and said the package appeared to have been hand-delivered rather than sent through the mail, the New York Times reported, citing unnamed law enforcement officials. Story continues Images of the address published by Google Maps show a mailbox on the side of the road in front of a gated driveway. A Jew who survived the Nazi occupation of Hungary, Soros is a frequent target of anti-Semitic conspiracy theories that circulate in right-wing forums online. In July 2010, a convicted bank robber named Byron Williams told police in California that he was planning to attack the San Francisco offices of the Tides Foundation because of the donations it had received from Soros. According to media reports, Williams was sent to prison for 401 years. (Reporting by Brendan O'Brien in Milwaukee Additional reporting by Mark Hosenball in Washington and Jonathan Allen, Jennifer Ablan and Peter Szekely in New York Editing by Bernadette Baum and Jeffrey Benkoe) UPDATED with details from the earnings call Google parent Alphabet beat Wall Streets earnings expectations in its third quarter, but fell short on revenue. That miss caused the companys stock to drop more than 5% in after-hours trading. Alphabet reported per-share earnings of $13.06, well above analysts consensus estimates of $10.40 per share. That compares to per-share earnings of $9.57 a year earlier. Revenue for the third quarter reached $33.7 billion, up 21% from a year ago, but s shy of Wall Streets forecasts of $34.05 billion. This the first time Google Chief Executive Sundar Pichai has spoken with investors since reports that the company was developing a search engine, codenamed Dragonfly, that would comply with Chinas strict censorship laws. Pichai has defended the controversial decision in an appearance this month at the Wired 25 Summit, saying Google would open up more information to Chinese citizens. He said the decision weighed heavily on the company, as it balanced providing access to information with freedom of expression. But we also follow the rule of law in every country, Pichai said. Asked about the China market, Pichai said the worlds most populous country is a place Google cares deeply about, and has been investing in for years. It reintroduced its Translate mobile apps to China a couple of years ago, and Android phones are sold in the market (absent a majority of Google apps and services). But the executive avoided any mention of bringing search to the countrys 1.4 billion people. We are constantly looking for ways by which we can better serve Chinese uses, Pichai said. Thats where we are today. This quarters earnings also will reflect Googles change in its licensing policies in Europe. The company now charges a license fee to phone manufacturers to pre-install Gmail, YouTube, Google Maps and Chrome on their devices. Up until now, Google offered its software free though that ran afoul of European Union regulators, who hit the company with a $5 billion fine for anticompetitive behavior. Its Android operating system powers more than 80% of the worlds smartphones. Story continues Google is appealing the decision. Investors likely be watching to see if that translates into fewer device-makers installing Googles chrome and search apps. Pichai told investors that Google is working to make the transition as easy as possible for both device-makers and users. And the effects of the new licensing policy would be felt as consumers replace their older devices. Our products are very popular with users across platforms, Pichai said. Were focused on doing the right thing there. Related stories Google CEO Sundar Pichai Says Company Fired 48 People For Sexual Harassment Twitter's Shares Pop After Strong Earnings Beat Netflix Adds 7 Million Subscribers, Beats Estimates, Sends Stock Soaring 12% After reportedly asking him to resign due to sexual misconduct claims, Google paid Android founder Andy Rubin a $90 million exit package, The New York Times reports. The company also made his departure look amicable, invested in his next venture, and delayed repayment of a loan that it had made, the report says. A spokeperson told CNBC Rubin left "on his own accord," has never been told of any misconduct at Google, and that "any relationship that Mr. Rubin had while at Google was consensual." Google GOOGL paid Android founder Andy Rubin a $90 million exit package despite finding sexual misconduct claims against him credible, according to a New York Times report . When Rubin left Google in 2014, the circumstances of his departure were not widely known. Internally, however, Google had asked for his resignation after investigating claims by another employee that he had coerced her into performing oral sex in a hotel room the year before, sources told The New York Times. Despite these claims, Google reportedly agreed to pay him between $1.25 million and $2.5 million a month for four years when he left. Rubin agreed not to work for rivals or disparage Google publicly, the Times reports, and Google made his departure look amicable by issuing a public statement from founder Larry Page. A spokesperson for Rubin told CNBC that said the executive left "on his own accord," has never been told of any misconduct at Google, and that "any relationship that Mr. Rubin had while at Google was consensual." Google also invested in Rubin's next venture, Playground Global, and reportedly delayed the repayment of a $14 million personal loan it gave him to buy real estate in Japan. Aside from the allegations that led to his resignation, Rubin had previously had his bonus docked for keeping sexual bondage videos on his work computer, the report says. When The Information first reported details last November about Google's investigation into Rubin's inappropriate relationship with a coworker, he took a leave of absence from Essential. He has since returned to work. Story continues Google did not immediately responded to CNBC's request for comment. A spokesperson for Rubin told CNBC: "Mr. Rubin left Google in on his own accord in 2014 to found Playground, venture capital firm and technology incubator. He did not engage, nor has he ever been told of any misconduct at Google or anywhere else. "Any relationship that Mr. Rubin had while at Google was consensual and did not involve any person who reported directly to him. He did have a consensual relationship that occurred in 2012. To his knowledge, at that time there were no policies in place that prohibited relationships between employees. "Mr. Rubin is known to be transparent and forthcoming with his feedback and in rare situations doesn't mince words when debating the work of troubled efforts. In that context commentary such as "well that won't work" or "that's dumb, how about this" is in character for Mr. Rubin during these product reviews. At no time did Mr. Rubin ever direct these comments towards an individual or a group, and at no time did Mr. Rubin call anyone incompetent." Read the full New York Times report here . More From CNBC Vienna (AFP) - Austrian Foreign Minister Karin Kneissl called in an interview with a German newspaper Friday for an EU embargo on weapons deliveries to Saudi Arabia. "Above all the awful war in Yemen and the Qatar crisis should lead us to finally act in a united fashion as the European Union towards Saudi Arabia," Kneissl told Die Welt. "If we as the whole EU stopped weapons deliveries to Saudi Arabia, that could be a contribution towards ending this conflict," she said. She added that Austria had not sent any military equipment to Saudi Arabia since the beginning of the war in Yemen in March 2015. She condemned the murder of journalist Jamal Khashoggi as "deeply shocking" and an "unprecedented crime" but said it was only "the worst example of the "horrors" committed by the Saudi government. The Austrian opposition accused the government of confusion in its policy after government MPs failed to support a motion in parliament on Thursday to ban weapons sales to Saudi Arabia. However, this was because the wording of that motion could have included small arms, whereas the government's position is to ban only exports of heavy weaponry for military use, foreign ministry spokesman Peter Guschelbauer told AFP. Kneissl told Die Welt that in her opinion the past two years had seen a "massive deterioration in the human rights situation in Saudi Arabia", pointing to a large rise in the number of political prisoners. She has cancelled a visit she was due to make to Saudi Arabia in December. Responding to opposition calls to close down a Saudi-backed centre for inter-religious dialogue in Vienna, Kneissl said on Thursday that she had shown the centre a "dark yellow card". She said that the KAICIID centre would have to implement reforms including decreasing its financial dependence on Riyadh. The new bill aims to protect tenants (PA) MPs have backed a plan to give tenants the right to sue rogue landlords. The new rights bill, requiring homes in the private and social rented sector to be fit for human habitation, was passed by the House of Commons. Housing minister Heather Wheeler said the legislation would put bad landlords on notice to clean up their act. They should improve their properties or leave the business, she said. The legislation was introduced as a private members bill by Labours Karen Buck. She said the bill was designed to protect the most vulnerable, living in the worst conditions. Living in a cold, damp, or unsafe home is hell. It damages peoples physical and mental well-being, she said. The bill was brought by Labour MP Karen Buck (PA) It erodes the income of the poorest households. It impacts on childrens education. The most vulnerable tenants are those most at risk of being trapped in sub-standard accommodation and they are often least able to withstand the damage such conditions do. On Friday, it passed its third reading stage in the Commons. Some MPs had expressed concerns that by raising minimum standards it could reduce the number of houses which become available for rent. However, Conservative MP Kevin Foster said this was not the case. What I would say is that if you are renting out a property which is unfit for human habitation, then really you shouldnt be in the business of being a landlord, he said. Earlier this year, MPs said the worst landlords should have their properties confiscated if they made their tenants lives hell by unfairly increasing rent or threatening eviction. It has also been claimed that up to a third of all millennials will rent for their entire life because the housing market was so expensive and out of reach for thousands. Bratislava (AFP) - French President Emmanuel Macron on Friday criticised Belgium's decision to buy US-made F-35 fighter jets instead of European planes, saying that "strategically it goes against European interests". The Belgian government announced Thursday that it would replace a fleet of ageing F-16 jets with the F-35 made by Lockheed Martin, rejecting rival offers to buy Eurofighter Typhoons or Rafales from the French group Dassault. "The decision was linked to a Belgian procedure and the country's political constraints, but strategically it goes against European interests," Macron told journalists during a visit to Bratislava. "Europe won't be strong unless it is truly sovereign and knows how to protect itself," he said, citing a need to develop "a genuine European defence capacity". "I will do everything possible to promote European offers in future contracts," Macron added. Critics said the choice of Lockheed would leave Belgium dependent on maintenance and operational systems firmly in US control, while also assailing a blow to Europe's efforts to unify its defence capacities. Belgium justified the decision by saying the F-35s offered better value for money while best allowing it to meet its NATO commitments. Prime Minister Charles Michel said his country would be purchasing equipment from both US and European suppliers as it bolstered defence spending. On Friday, the French defence ministry announced that Belgium had confirmed an order for 442 Griffon and Jaguar armoured vehicles for around 1.5 billion euros ($1.7 billion). The deal had been expected, but the announcement appeared timed to allay tensions between the two NATO allies. - 'Lost opportunity' - Last year the European Union launched its "permanent structured cooperation on defence", or PESCO, aimed at unifying defence strategies across the bloc and rationalising a fragmented approach to buying and developing military equipment. Story continues The EU itself is planning to vastly expand its defence budget starting in 2021, allocating some 13 billion euros over seven years to research and develop new equipment -- up from less than 600 million euros in the current budget. Most countries see no problem allowing non-EU firms to compete for contracts under the PESCO cooperation, but France is leading a handful which want to restrict their participation. But Washington has warned that excluding US companies could undermine NATO at a time when tensions are running high with Russia and new threats such as cyber attacks are emerging. On Friday the European aerospace consortium Airbus also said it took note of Belgium's decision not to choose the Eurofighter Typhoon with "sincere regret". "It is a lost opportunity to strengthen European industrial cooperation in times when the EU is called upon to increase its joint defence efforts," the company said. It added that in buying Typhoons, Belgium could have eventually joined the French-German Future Combat Air System, aimed at developing next-generation jets to start replacing current Eurofighter and Rafale jets starting in 2035. Airbus is one of the partners in the Eurofighter consortium, which also includes companies from Britain, Germany, Italy and Spain. Macron, speaking at the start of a two-day visit to Slovakia and the Czech Republic, also called on people to reject leaders who seek to "divide Europe". "I will fight wherever they are trying to roll back justice, the ability of journalists to work freely, the role of universities, all which makes us European," he said. Macron is hoping to counter a surge in support for populist parties and leaders in many European countries ahead of European Parliament elections next May. Brussels (AFP) - Belgium will buy US-made F-35 stealth fighter jets to replace its ageing fleet of F-16s, Prime Minister Charles Michel announced Thursday, discounting the Eurofighter Typhoon. In March 2017, Belgium launched a bidding process for 34 fighter jets to replace its F-16s for an estimated 3.6 billion euros ($4.1 billion). The F-35 decision comes as Belgium also buys drones, frigates, minesweepers and armoured vehicles "within the framework of NATO and European defence," Michel told a press confernce. "The planes and drones are American, the other equipment is European and Belgium will enjoy the economic benefits," Michel added. According to Pentagon figures earlier this month, 320 F-35s have been delivered globally, mainly to the US but also to Israel and Britain, as well as other partner countries. The F-35 ran against a bid from the Eurofighter, developed by a European consortium that also comprises Italy's Finmeccanica and Airbus. Jean-Dominique Giuliani, who heads the Robert Schuman Foundation, a European think tank, lamented the decision. "It's not a European choice. It's worse than a slap, it is dreadful for European defence," Giuliani told AFP. The F-35 requires a whole maintenance and operational system that depends "on the control of the United States," he added. The government said the F-35 will enter service from 2023. By Robin Emmott BRUSSELS (Reuters) - Belgium said on Thursday it had chosen Lockheed Martin's F-35 stealth jets over the Eurofighter Typhoon to replace its aging F-16s in a 4 billion euro ($4.55 billion) deal, saying the decision came down to price. After months of deliberation, the decision to buy 34 of the planes was announced at a government news conference. Belgium joins a list of other European NATO allies, including Britain, the Netherlands, Italy and Turkey, to take the American-made plane, which is also set to be the U.S. military's main fighter aircraft for decades to come. "We have landed! This government is investing heavily in defense. With the purchase of F-35A fighter planes ... we ensure your safety and that of our military," Belgian Defence Minister Steven Vandeput said on Twitter during the news conference. "The offer from the Americans was the best in all our seven evaluation criteria," he later told reporters. The jets, which can avoid detection and tracking by enemy radars or heat sensors, aim to offer NATO allies technological superiority with additional capabilities such as the ability to disrupt enemy communications networks and navigation signals. The pick makes Belgium the 12th country to choose the F-35, which comes in three variants - the F-35A conventional take-off and landing model, the F-35B, a short take-off or vertical landing version, and the F-35C, used aboard aircraft carriers. Belgium has chosen the conventional version of the plane, with the first deliveries scheduled for 2023. Vice Admiral Mat Winter, U.S. F-35 program chief, said the decision would further strengthen ties between the United States and Belgium and make it easier for the two countries' air forces to work together on future missions. The decision is a setback for Britain, Germany, Italy and Spain, who are behind the Eurofighter program, and also means the rejection of an informal French offer to sell Belgium the Rafale fighter built by Dassault Aviation . Story continues However, Britain's BAE Systems is also a partner on the F-35 project. Belgium's decision raises the stakes for Eurofighter in Germany, Switzerland and Finland, which also plan to buy new warplanes, industry executives said. Eurofighter also sees good prospects in Canada, which was part of the initial F-35 partnership, but has not made a decision to buy the U.S. aircraft. Exact terms of the Canadian competition are due to be released next year. CHEAPER THAN PROJECTED Prime Minister Charles Michel's government said despite a strong desire to support European allies, the F-35 was cheaper for Belgium over the long term, coming in 600 million euros ($684 million) under what the government budgeted for. The total price of the deal, including the jets, pilot training, hangars and upkeep until 2030 was worth 4 billion euros, Vandeput said, compared with the original budget of 4.6 billion euros. Over the 40-year life of the aircraft, the deal will cost Belgium 12.4 billion euros, rather than the 15 billion euros first projected, he said. Belgium looks to have benefited from Lockheed Martin's strategy to reduce the cost of the jets as production has increased. U.S. President Donald Trump and other U.S. officials have criticized the F-35 program for delays and cost overruns. Each plane is likely to cost Belgium around 76 million euros, slightly less than the amount paid by the Netherlands and Italy, according to Belgian newspaper Le Soir, citing a closed-door briefing by Belgian air force personnel to lawmakers on Wednesday, when the final decision was taken. Michel also defended the decision to choose a U.S. company over European neighbors as a way to balance loyalties to the American-led NATO alliance and defense spending in Europe. "We are choosing cooperation with NATO and for European defense," Michel told the news conference. He said money saved on the F-35 would be used for other defense projects. With defense spending just under 0.9 percent of economic output on defense in 2017, Belgium is one of the worst performers in trying to meet a NATO target of 2 percent by 2024, which Trump says is already too low and should be at least 3 percent. Deputy Prime Minister Kris Peeters said 30 percent of the components for the F-35 will also come from Europe. ($1 = 0.8765 euros) (Additional reporting by Alastair Macdonald and Philip Blenkinsop in Brussels, and Andrea Shalal in Berlin; Editing by Adrian Croft and Alexandra Hudson) Sydney (AFP) - Australia is setting up a billion-dollar fund to "future proof" the country against droughts, Prime Minister Scott Morrison said Friday, as farmers struggle with a "big dry" forecast to continue for months. Eastern Australia has been hit by a crippling drought -- in some areas for several years -- that has forced graziers to hand-feed their stock, sell them or even shoot them dead to stay afloat. The severe conditions are expected to continue, with more areas further south drying out as the country heads into the southern hemisphere summer season, according to Bureau of Meteorology forecasts. The unfolding crisis has sparked a raft of support measures from the government, including Aus$1.8 billion (US$1.3 billion) in financial aid for farmers and local communities launched in August. Morrison said a new fund with a kitty of Aus$3.9 billion would be established to pay for drought resilience and water projects in the coming decade. "(It) means we better future-proof against drought over the next 10 years and beyond," Morrison told commercial broadcaster Channel Nine ahead of a summit with agricultural leaders to discuss the drought. "We are doing a lot to back the farmers in the rural communities. Focusing on relief, but also on recovery, build resilience into the future." The government's Australian Bureau of Agricultural and Resource Economics (ABARES) said at the summit that the drought, while severe, covered a smaller area compared to a previous extreme dry in 2002-03. But the bureau added that in the east, home to important areas for livestock and crops, rainfall was 40 percent lower than the 20-year average. Even so, farm incomes were less likely to plunge as significantly as in previous drought periods amid "more favourable economic circumstances and other factors" such as improved productivity, ABARES said. - Dry extending further south - The drought, coupled with damaging frost in some areas, is set to produce the smallest winter grain crop in 10 years, according to a forecast from Rabobank, a specialist agribusiness bank. Story continues "The 2018/19 winter crop will go down as one of the worst in eastern Australia's history," it said in a report this week. The weather bureau meanwhile forecast that the next three months would be drier and warmer than average, meaning "a low chance of recovery for drought-affected areas of eastern Australia". Farmers have received some rain relief over the past month, but experts say the wet spell is not enough to break the drought after the extended dry period, and the heaviest downpours mostly fell in less affected areas. The weather bureau's long-range forecasts chief Andrew Watkins told AFP more areas are drying out, such as in Victoria, southeast South Australia and the southern coast of Western Australia states. The worst-hit areas have so far been in the eastern interior -- western New South Wales and southwestern Queensland. Queensland is currently experiencing a heatwave, with the inland outback town of Birdsville reaching a sizzling 44.7 degrees Celsius (112.5 degrees Fahrenheit) on Thursday -- very high temperatures for this time of the year. Watkins said there were two major climate drivers set to keep conditions drier and warmer in the near-term -- the warming El Nino weather phenomenon in the Pacific Ocean which has a 70 percent chance of forming this year, and the Indian Ocean Dipole. By Rodrigo Viga Gaier RIO DE JANEIRO (Reuters) - Brazil's presidential front-runner said on Thursday he was not set on leaving the Paris climate accord if elected, going back on a prior pledge to follow the pullout by U.S. President Donald Trump, a role model for his anti-establishment run. Right-wing Congressman Jair Bolsonaro's decision marks a surprising about-face for a candidate who enjoys strong support from Brazil's powerful agribusiness lobby and has called conservation efforts a threat to Brazilian sovereignty. Speaking at a news conference in Rio de Janeiro, Bolsonaro also said he that he wanted to work with the United Nations to deal with a large influx of Venezuelan refugees in Brazil's north. He said he did not want conflict with the neighboring country, whose socialist government he has repeatedly criticized. Brazil's most polarized election in a generation has stirred political violence and threats against journalists, while Bolsonaro's policy pledges have raised alarm among many, including environmentalists. But Bolsonaro has been adopting a more moderate tone as he nears an increasingly likely victory in Sunday's run-off election against leftist rival Fernando Haddad. Bolsonaro's lead narrowed slightly in a Datafolha opinion poll released late on Thursday, but he still has a commanding 56 percent of the vote to Haddad's 44 percent. A week ago, the same poll had Bolsonaro with 59 percent and Haddad with 41 percent. Bolsonaro previously said that, if elected, he would pull Brazil out of the Paris climate accord due to disagreements over how the Amazon rainforest should be protected. Trump pulled the United States out of the accord in June 2017. On Thursday, however, Bolsonaro said he would respect the accord as long as he got assurances that Brazil would not cede sovereignty to native tribes or international jurisdiction over the Andes mountains, Amazon rainforest and Atlantic Ocean the so-called Triple A region. "Let's put on paper that the Triple A isn't in play and neither is the independence of any indigenous land, and I'll uphold the Paris Agreement," Bolsonaro told journalists. This month, a group of non-governmental organizations including Greenpeace and WWF-Brasil signed an open letter saying that Bolsonaro's proposals present a serious threat to Brazil's environment that could lead deforestation "to explode." Brazil is home to about 60 percent of the Amazon, one of nature's best defenses against global warming. NO DETAIL ON THREAT Earlier on Thursday, one of Bolsonaro's senior advisers said in a video, without presenting evidence, that the candidate would not attend debates with his rival due to a threat against him from an unnamed "criminal organization." The video was posted on the Twitter feed of Bolsonaro's vice presidential pick, retired General Hamilton Mourao. In it, retired General Augusto Heleno, a senior adviser to Bolsonaro and earmarked as his defense minister, denied the candidate was avoiding debates for fear of facing his leftist rival. Instead, Heleno said, there were credible threats against Bolsonaro from a criminal group. "He's really threatened," Heleno said. "Not just a sniper, it's a terrorist attack where there's a criminal organization - I'm not going to name it for obvious reasons - involved, proven by messages, wiretapping, so it's absolutely true." Reuters was not immediately able to reach Mourao or Heleno for comment. Bolsonaro and his team have given various reasons for why he refuses to take part in the debates. In the past, his poll numbers have suffered after debating, as he faltered under tough questioning. A seven-term congressman, Bolsonaro, 63, has successfully pitched himself as the anti-establishment candidate, appealing to voters fed up with political graft and violent crime. But he remains a divisive figure and the election has seen reports of violence, stoked by a febrile atmosphere and fake news reports on social media. Various press advocacy groups said on Thursday they were concerned by a rise in threats against journalists, urging presidential candidates to denounce the attacks. "Scores of reporters have been harassed, threatened, and in some cases physically attacked," said a statement signed by groups including Article 19, the Committee to Protect Journalists, Human Rights Watch and Reporters without Borders. TROOPS ON PATROL Bolsonaro said last weekend that he would seek congressional approval so that troops could patrol the streets of Brazil, which suffered a record 64,000 murders last year. In an interview on Thursday, Defense Minister Joaquim Silva e Luna said he was against such a move. "It needs to be a case-by-case basis," he told Reuters. "Beyond that, I'm not in favor of using the armed forces all the time." Silva e Luna said he supported Bolsonaro's proposals to give soldiers and police greater legal protection during dangerous missions, as long as it did not cause more deaths. "I don't want to give carte blanche for the armed forces or public security forces to kill," he said. (Writing by Anthony Boadle and Gabriel Stargardter; Editing by Richard Chang, Rosalba O'Brien and Leslie Adler) By Robin Emmott, John Irish and Andrea Shalal BRUSSELS/PARIS/BERLIN (Reuters) - Pressure is growing for the European Union to consider an arms embargo on Saudi Arabia after Germany, Austria and the European Parliament called for an end to weapons sales over the killing of Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi. In the space of a few hours that highlighted tensions over the matter, Germany's Angela Merkel on Friday reaffirmed that her country would not deliver any arms to Saudi Arabia until Khashoggi's death was explained, while French President Emmanuel Macron said such moves smacked of populist "demagoguery". EU ambassadors may formally discuss the issue after a rare request to do so by governments, two diplomats said on Friday, and the Netherlands is lobbying for a new EU regime to sanction human rights abuses, regardless of where they happen. But the debate in Brussels and in EU capitals is also reviving familiar splits in the bloc's foreign policy, with Europe's main powers following their own economic and political interests that tend to undermine any forceful EU foreign policy that aims to be guided by democracy and human rights. The murder of Khashoggi, a Washington Post columnist, inside the Saudi consulate in Istanbul on Oct. 2 has sparked global outrage, become a crisis for the world's top oil exporting state and underscored how Western powers are allied to an Arab kingdom that enforces floggings and the death penalty for dissent. The Belgian region of Wallonia, which owns firearms manufacturer FN Herstal, has said it will examine future requests for arms export licences to its top weapons client with "the greatest circumspection" following Khashoggi's murder. While Austria, which holds the EU's six-month presidency, wants a halt to arms sales and Germany will stop approving weapons exports until Khashoggi's murder is cleared up, France had ignored such calls. Macron went further on Friday, saying there was no link between arms sales and the killing of Khashoggi, a prominent critic of de facto Saudi ruler Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman. "That's pure demagoguery to say 'we must stop arms sales'. It's got nothing to do with Mr Khashoggi," he told reporters during a trip in Slovakia, while not ruling out other coordinated sanctions against those held responsible. British Prime Minister Theresa May said on Wednesday that Britain's weapons exports to Saudi Arabia met national and EU arms export licensing rules. Spain, meanwhile, is trying to go ahead with the sale of 400 bombs in order to protect a Saudi contract with a shipyard in the Andalusia region that would create 5,000 jobs. "If Austria is proposing this ban, then ask how many weapons Austria sells to Saudi Arabia," said a senior EU diplomat. BILLIONS AT STAKE Though Austria has a substantial arms industry, it sold a meager 1.4 million euros ($1.59 million) of arms and ammunition to Saudi Arabia in 2017, according to EU data. Germany approved around 400 million euros worth of arms supplies to Saudi Arabia in the first nine months of 2018. Last year, Germany sold 351 million euros worth of aircraft, including helicopters and planes, to Saudi Arabia, though EU data does not specify how much of that is military. German weapons account for under 2 percent of Saudi Arabia's arms purchases. Britain exported military goods to Saudi Arabia worth 1.1 billion pounds ($1.41 billion) in 2017, according to UK parliamentary papers, while tiny Belgium and Luxembourg combined for 184 million euros in arms sales to the Saudis last year. France sold Saudi Arabia 1.8 billion euros in planes, helicopters and other aerospace equipment in 2017, an amount that has climbed over the past decade, EU data shows, though again it does not say what part of that is military. "The sale of weapons is something very political and part of a long-term vision," said Camille Lons, a researcher at the European Council on Foreign Relations think-tank. Lons cited Libya, Syria and even the Sahel region, where France, which has thousands of troops on the ground, has sought Saudi help to finance local African forces. At the heart of Macron's strategy is Mohammed bin Salman, often referred to as MbS, the 33-year-old Saudi de facto leader who has painted himself as a reformer but is under scrutiny over his potential involvement in Khashoggi's seizure and death. "It's easy for (German Chancellor Angela) Merkel to come out with this when she sells weapons everywhere except Saudi Arabia," a senior French diplomat told Reuters. "When you see global weapons sales, Germany is one of the largest in the world over the last couple of years, but Saudi isn't much." A German government spokeswoman on Friday welcomed Austria's initiative, but declined to comment when asked if German and Austria were isolated on their position within the EU. Merkel vowed again on Friday to halt all German arms exports to Saudi Arabia until Khashoggi's killing was explained. One face-saving move for the European Union could be to sanction Saudi individuals accused of the Khashoggi murder and separate the issue from its close ties with the Saudi state. EU governments recently agreed a mechanism to punish chemical weapons attacks by targeting people regardless of their nationality. They could set up a similar system for human rights abuses. The United States has its Magnitsky human rights act that covers abusers in any country, named after Sergei Magnitsky, a 37-year-old Russian whistleblower who died in prison. "France and Germany have to deal with the big issue of arms exports. Something EU governments could do is to establish a Magnitsky-type act to react," said Rebecca Harms, a Green member of the European Parliament. She helped spearhead the assembly's resolution calling for an arms embargo and sanctions this week. (Additional reporting by Elizabeth Piper and Kate Holton in London, Alastair Macdonald in Brussels, Michel Rose in Paris and Julien Toyer in Madrid; Editing by Mark Heinrich) Yonsi Marilu had not heard about the threat from Donald Trump to shut the US border, but the news made little difference to her plans. When you have lived in a San Salvador neighbourhood where you can be killed by a gang simply for crossing into a rivals turf, or where a gang will execute someone in front of family members to increase the pain, the rumoured clampdown from the US president is just another problem to overcome. We left because in El Salvador there is too much violence and no work, she said, walking along the main highway between the cities of Pijijiapan and Arriaga. More migrants are dropping out every day, but up to 5,000 people from Central America are still making their way northwards, hoping to enter the US and find a new life. On Friday, it was reported that Mexican immigration authorities had raided a camp in Arriaga and several migrants were hurt. But for those who have been walking for 15 days or more, such incidents, along with Mr Trumps proposal on the eve of the US midterm elections, add to the already present challenges of heat, exhaustion and poverty. Jonathan Perales, from Honduras, works in construction in the city of San Pedro Sula. He said he earned the equivalent of $8.30 a day. It was not sufficient to take care of his wife and two young daughters, Emily, two, and four-year-old Monserrat, so he was pushing his youngsters along the road, hoping against the odds, they all could cross. We are going to keep going, and see what happens, he said. Its the only option we have. If we get to the US, it will be better for the kids. Reports say Mr Trump is considering signing an executive order to shut the border even to asylum seekers, a notching-up of his anti-immigration rhetoric less than 14 days before the election. He has already told defence secretary Jim Mattis to send 1,000 additional members of the national guard to the border, amid what he termed an emergency situation. Whether Mr Trump intends to push ahead with the order, or if he believes the simple airing of the proposal will provide political gain, is unclear. Story continues Yonsi Marilu, here in yellow baseball cap, hopes to start a new life in the US (Andrew Buncombe) The administration is considering a wide range of administrative, legal and legislative options to address the Democrat-created crisis of mass illegal immigration, a White House official told Fox News. No decisions have been made at this time. Nor will we forecast to smugglers or caravans what precise strategies will or will not be deployed. On Friday, UNICEF said an estimated 2,300 children travelling with the migrant caravan were ill or suffering from dehydration. It called for children to be given special protection and said it was working with the Mexican authorities to provide drinking water and hygiene products. But Ireneo Mujica, president of the group Pueblos Sin Fronteras, which has organised previous marches for migrants but not the current one, claimed the Mexican authorities were becoming frustrated with the migrants and trying to pressure them to leave. Mr Mujica, who was detained by officials 10 days ago while leading a demonstration in support of the Honduran migrants about to arrive in Mexico, told The Independent that members of the countrys immigration enforcement body carried out two raids in Arriaga. They beat up [the migrants] as people were fighting back, he said. They are doing this to break up the caravan and claim people are giving up. Aurora Vega, of the National Institute of Migration, said she was not aware of the raids. She added. The institute does carry out operations every day. What we do know is that people have been abandoning the caravan because it is not safe and it leads nowhere. Ms Marilu, the young woman from San Salvadors Ahuachapan neighbourhood, said she just wanted to work. She added: We are going to keep going until God tells us no. He will provide. Police tape cordons off a post office in Delaware following a series of bomb threats . (AP Photo/Matt Rourke) One person has been arrested in Miami in connection with the pipe bombs sent to prominent critics of Donald Trump. Explosive devices were sent to high-profile figures, including Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton and Robert de Niro this week. No one has yet claimed responsibility for posting the bombs, in an act denounced by US authorities as terrorism. Two takeaway bosses have been found guilty of manslaughter by gross negligence after a teenager died when she ate food containing nuts at their restaurant. Nut allergy sufferer Megan Lee, 15, died after eating food from the Royal Spice Takeaway in Oswaldtwistle, Lancashire, on December 30 2016. Her meal was found to have the widespread presence of peanut protein. A 45-year-old man has been arrested on suspicion of trying to steal a Magna Carta from Salisbury Cathedral. An attempt was made yesterday to smash the glass box housing the document, police said. The Magna Carta was not damaged and no one was injured during the incident Male gentoo penguins Sphen and Magic have successfully incubated a baby chick Two male penguins who are in a same-sex relationship have become parents after adopting an egg and successfully incubating it. Sphen and Magic are doting on their newborn chick, their Australian aquarium said. Cesar Sayoc, the suspect arrested Friday in connection with more than a dozen potential explosive devices mailed to critics of President Donald Trump, had a long history of promoting right-wing conspiracy theories and attacking Democrats on Twitter, including some of his alleged targets. The two Twitter accounts that purportedly belong to Sayoc read like a compendium of right-wing conspiracy theories, featuring a profusion of disturbing images attacking common right-wing boogeymen. One of the accounts, @hardrock2016, was cited in a Friday court filing from the Department of Justice. Another, much older account, @hardrockintlent, mirrors the first one and features much of the same imagery and language, as well as images that appear to be Sayoc. Twitter suspended both accounts Friday afternoon. Many tweets feature prominent Democratic donor George Soros, long a target of right-wing, anti-Semitic attacks. On Monday, the first package later allegedly linked to Sayoc appeared at Soros home in Westchester County, New York. (Photo: Twitter) (Photo: Twitter) A frequent target of the tweets was Parkland, Florida, school shooting survivor and activist David Hogg, perpetuating the far-right conspiracy theory that Hogg and other students were actors paid by Soros. (Photo: Twitter) Other tweets accused Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz (D-Fla.), a former chair of the Democratic National Committee, of shady dealings. Sayoc allegedly listed Wasserman Schultzs office as the return address on the packages sent this week. (Photo: Twitter) Some of the apparent Sayoc tweets also referred to former President Barack Obamas Muslim background, accused Obama of treason, and falsely suggested that he did not graduate from Columbia University. In addition to the ubiquitous birther theory, right-wing opponents of Obama called his education into question. Among those was Trump himself, who in 2012 demanded that the president release his college transcripts. Love HuffPost? Become a founding member of HuffPost Plus today. Story continues (Photo: Twitter) (Photo: ) Related Coverage Cesar Sayoc Identified As Mail Bomb Suspect Bomb Mailing Suspect Cesar Sayoc Was A Big Trump Fan With A Criminal History Pipe Bomb Suspect's Van Covered With Pro-Trump Messages This article originally appeared on HuffPost. By Norihiko Shirouzu and Philip Wen BEIJING (Reuters) - China and Japan on Friday pledged to forge closer ties as both countries stood together at an "historic turning point", signing a broad range of agreements including a $30 billion currency swap pact, amid rising trade tensions with Washington. Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe and Chinese Premier Li Keqiang also agreed the two countries would work together to achieve denuclearization on the Korean Peninsula. The pacts were reached on Abe's three-day visit to Beijing as the two neighbors looked to carve out new areas of cooperation and seek ways to promote trust, which has been fragile at times since diplomatic relations resumed in 1972. Chinese Premier Li Keqiang said 500 business deals worth $18 billion had been signed between Chinese and Japanese companies during the visit, a reflection of the "bright prospects" for cooperation between the two countries. "From competition to co-existence, Japan and China bilateral relations have entered a new phase. Hand in hand with Premier Li, I would like to advance our ties forward," Abe told reporters after the pair met on Friday morning. Both countries are neighbors and partners, and will not become a threat to each other, Abe said after meeting with President Xi Jinping on Friday in the first full-scale Sino-Japanese summit since 2011. "With President Xi Jinping, I would like to carve out a new era for China and Japan," Abe said. Xi said bilateral ties had returned to the right track and China would ensure the positive momentum continues, according to state media. "That is worth cherishing by both sides," Xi said. Both sides should undertake more in-depth strategic dialogue, Xi said, adding that exchanges between ordinary Japanese and Chinese people should also be stepped up to foster deeper mutual understanding. "Both sides should accurately grasp each other's strategic intent, and implement what was agreed - that both sides will become partners, both sides will pose no threats to each other," Xi said. Abe invited Xi to visit Japan next year. Xi said he would "seriously consider" a visit, a Japanese government spokesman told reporters in Beijing. "My impression is that President Xi responded positively. We need to nail down a date now," he said. TERRITORIAL DISPUTE Abe returned to power in 2012 when Sino-Japanese ties were in tatters due to a feud over East China Sea islands, and the territorial dispute remains a key source of friction between the two countries. Nishimura said Abe told Premier Li during their meeting that there would be "no genuine improvement" in bilateral ties unless there was "stability in the East China Sea". Japanese firms including big auto companies like Toyota <7203.T> hope to see normalized ties with China so they can compete with U.S. and European rivals, while Beijing expects Tokyo's endorsement of its ambitious Belt and Road program, an initiative that Xi hopes will further boost trade and transport links with other countries. Abe also said Tokyo was "determined" to normalize diplomatic relations with Pyongyang, but only if preconditions were met, including denuclearization and the release of kidnapped Japanese citizens. "Our two countries bear large responsibility in achieving peace and stability in this region," Abe said. Efforts in advancing China-Japan ties should "persevere unremittingly to prevent the appearance of new twists and turns" so that previous efforts did not go to waste, said Li at a joint briefing with Abe on Friday. "The Chinese side is willing to work with the Japanese side to return to a normal track, and maintain the stable, sustained and healthy development of bilateral relations," he said, adding that he had held candid discussions with Abe since his arrival on matters of mutual concerns. They reached consensus, Li said, that safeguarding long-term healthy and stable China-Japan ties was in accordance with the interests of both countries and the region and the world. The move to boost economic ties came as China and the United States slap tit-for-tat tariffs on each other in recent months. Japan is at risk as it exports to China manufacturing equipment and electronic parts, which are used to make finished goods for the United States and other markets. While Japan, worried about China's growing naval power, is keen for closer economic ties with its biggest trading partner, it must manage that rapprochement without upsetting its key security ally, the United States, with which it has trade problems of its own. Ahead of the briefing, China and Japan signed an agreement to boost cooperation in the securities markets including the listing of exchange-trade funds (ETFs), and facilitate smoother customs clearance. The two sides also signed a currency swap agreement of up to 3.4 trillion yen ($30.29 billion), effective until 2021. A deal toward establishing a yuan clearing bank was also inked. Li said both sides had agreed that as major countries, China and Japan should uphold free trade and accelerate talks on the Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership (RCEP) and on a China-Japan-Korea trade zone. RCEP is a free trade agreement proposed by China with Southeast Asia and various countries on the Pacific Rim including Japan. (Reporting by Philip Wen and Norihiko Shirouzu; Additional reporting by Zhang Min; Writing by Ryan Woo; Editing by Clarence Fernandez and Michael Perry) Leading the way: Alibaba chairman Jack Ma at a conference in Yunqi Cloud Town in Hangzhou, China. Photo: VCG/Getty China is set to overtake the US as the global hub for billionaires, according to a new report from UBS and PwC. China now has the highest concentration of billionaires outside the US, according to the Billionaires insight report released on Friday. There are 475 billionaires in Greater China, which includes Hong Kong and Taiwan, and 373 within mainland China. That compares to 631 in the US. UBS and PwCs report, New visionaries and the Chinese century, highlights the speed with which new billionaires are emerging in China. In 2006, there were just 16 billionaires in China. Last year, 106 new billionaires were created equivalent to over two new billionaires each week. Josef Stadler, head of ultra high-net-worth at UBS Global Wealth Management, called the growth astonishing at a launch event in London on Friday. The report is the fifth edition of Billionaire Insights. Stadler said when the report first started, they had to happily accept that the US was driving growth globally, and all the other time zones were just tagging along. Now, Asia, China dominate. The capitalist train that left the station now seems unstoppable, he said. UBS and PwC forecast that Asia will overtake the US as a hotspot for global billionaires within three years. The number of billionaires in Asia is growing at a rate of 14% year-on-year, compared with just 5% in the US. Addressing the speed at which China is gaining on the US when it comes to wealth creation. Stadler said: What we have seen in the past is Silicon Valley invents, China copies. Now what we see is China develops and exports. They do this by leapfrogging. To give you an example, in payment systems China is far ahead of the US. Credit cards are stone age. Paying with mobile is now de rigeur. Now youve got payment by face recognition. About 97% of Chinas billionaires are self-made, with the majority working in tech or retail. Famous Chinese billionaires include Alibaba founder Jack Ma, who is worth nearly $34bn, according to Forbes. Story continues Stadler said in a statement accompanying the report: Chinas vast population, technology innovation and productivity growth combined with government support, are providing unprecedented opportunities for individuals not only to build businesses but also to change peoples lives for the better. Asian billionaires are the youngest globally, with an average age of 61.43. The average age is 55.75 in Greater China. Ravi Raju, head of Asia Pacific ultra high-net-worth at UBS Global Wealth Management, said: Asias billionaires are young and relentless. This cohort is overwhelmingly self-made and determined to capitalise on one of historys greatest moments for new enterprise. The report quotes an unnamed Chinese billionaire as saying: Nowhere else in the world can you find better conditions for growth than in China. However, UBS and PwC also highlight the risks of doing business in China, as well as the opportunities. While 106 people became new billionaires last year, there were just 55 net new billionaires in China as 51 peoples net worth dropped below a billion. UBS and PwCs report found there are 2,158 billionaires globally. Collectively, their wealth increased by $1.4bn last year to $8.9bn the largest absolute increase in billionaire wealth in history. By Ben Blanchard BEIJING (Reuters) - China has not asked for military access to Pakistan's Chinese-funded, deepwater port of Gwadar, a senior Pakistani rear admiral said on Friday, amid persistent speculation in India and the United States it could become a Chinese naval base. Gwadar, in the southwestern province of Baluchistan, is the crown jewel of China's $60 billion investment in Belt and Road Initiative projects in Pakistan. The plan is to turn Gwadar into a trans-shipment hub and megaport to be built alongside special economic zones from which export-focused industries will ship goods worldwide. A web of energy pipelines, roads and rail links will connect Gwadar to China's western regions. Last year the Pentagon singled out Pakistan as a possible location for a future Chinese military base, though China has said that is pure speculation. Diplomatic and security sources see Gwadar as the likely location. Speaking at the Xiangshan Forum in Beijing, which China styles as its answer to the annual Shangri-La Dialogue security forum in Singapore, Rear Admiral Javaid Iqbal, Navy Secretary of the Pakistan Navy, said Gwadar is a "significant addition to the regional maritime landscape". "Let me emphasize that the Gwadar port is purely a commercial venture and has no military overtones," he told the forum. "Suitably located outside the potentially risky and confined waters of the Gulf, Gwadar has the potential to act not only as a transit port for China and Central Asia but also a trans shipment port impacting the prosperity of the entire region," Iqbal added. Speaking later to Reuters, he said he was very specific about the non-military nature of the port. "The Gwadar port has no military dimension. It will be just a commercial port," Iqbal said. "The Pakistan navy will maintain a presence to ensure maritime security, to ensure the security of the port." "The geopolitical debate that somehow goes on in the media about Gwadar being used as a foreign military base is not correct at all." Asked whether China had specifically asked for military access, he answered: "No, not at all". China opened its first overseas military base, which it formally calls a logistics facility, in the Horn of Africa country Djibouti last year. Djibouti's position on the northwestern edge of the Indian Ocean has fueled worries in India that it would become another of China's "string of pearls" of military alliances and assets ringing India, including Pakistan, Bangladesh, Myanmar and Sri Lanka. China has repeatedly downplayed expectations it could be about to embark on a plan to build military bases around the world, even as it ramps up an impressive military modernization program. (Reporting by Ben Blanchard; Editing by Michael Perry) BEIJING (Reuters) - China is willing to advance its relations with Japan and return to healthy and normalized two-way ties, Chinese Premier Li Keqiang said on Friday. China also supports talks between Japan and North Korea to resolves issues, Li said at a joint briefing with Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe in Beijing. Both nations recognize that free trade should be safeguarded, Li said, adding that China had no wish to pursue a competitive devaluation of its yuan. (Reporting by Philip Wen and Norihiko Shirouzu; Writing by Ryan Woo; Editing by Clarence Fernandez) Beijing (AFP) - When a Chinese garlic farmer's dream of flying an airplane didn't pan out, he decided to build one instead. The full-scale replica of the Airbus A320 built by farmer Zhu Yue is now nearly finished, permanently taxied on a short piece of tarmac surrounded by wheat fields in northeast China. Zhu didn't finish middle school, and started out farming onions and garlic before moving on to welding work in a factory in the small city of Kaiyuan. Last year he realised he may never be able to fly a plane. "I hit midlife and realised I couldn't buy one, but I could build one," he told AFP. He has invested his savings of more than 2.6 million yuan ($374,000) into the project that began with a toy model of an Airbus 320 shrunken to one-eightieth its original size. With that he measured dimensions, studied online photos, and with a heap of mistakes, crafted the fuselage, wings, cockpit, engines and tail. He used 60 tonnes of steel. Five fellow aircraft enthusiasts-cum-labourers have helped speed the project along. "On the one hand they're earning money, on the other they're fulfilling dreams, accomplishing things," Zhu said. The homemade Airbus will not be flying any time soon. Zhu has decided to turn it into a diner. The plane's latest additions are a self-made cockpit outfitted with replica flight instruments and a stair car for getting aboard. "We will put down a red carpet so every person who comes to eat will feel like a head of state," Zhu said. On board the A320's customary 156 seats have been turned into 36 first class chairs for customers, Zhu said. He is not yet sure if he will serve hamburgers and French fries or regular Chinese food that the locals may prefer. Parked not far from the interstate, Zhu is hopeful the plane will soon fill up with hungry passengers. Senate Judiciary Chairman Chuck Grassley has referred attorney Michael Avenatti and his client Julie Swetnick to the Department of Justice for a criminal probe into whether they gave materially false statements to Congress during the confirmation of Justice Brett Kavanaugh and intentionally attempted to obstruct the process. I dont take lightly making a referral of this nature, Grassley said in a statement. But ignoring this behavior will just invite more of it in the future. Avenatti released a sworn deposition from Swetnick on Twitter Sept. 26, alleging that Kavanaugh was present at a party in high school in which she was gang raped, and that she had witnessed Kavanaugh spiking drinks with alcohol during parties. Swetnick was the third woman to come forward accusing Kavanaugh of sexual misconduct, but Swetnicks account was the only one of the three that did not emerge through a journalistic report. Kavanaugh denied the allegation and said he did not know her. Grassley argues in the letter of referral, addressed to Attorney General Jeff Sessions and FBI Director Christopher Wray, that the evidence from the false statements in the deposition came from Swetnick herself, in an interview with NBC News. In sum, the sworn statement Mr. Avenatti submitted to the committee on behalf of Ms. Swetnick claimed she had personal knowledge that Judge Kavanaugh spiked punch with drugs and alcohol at house parties in 1981-83 in order to cause girls to become incapacitated so that lines of boys would sexually assault them. She later contradicted each of those claims in her interview with NBC, the letter reads. Avenatti responded in a tweet early Thursday evening, saying he and his client were prepared for an investigation. Lets start the investigation tonight. I will make my client available for a sworn interview and you can make Judge Kavanaugh available for a sworn interview. We also have 9 other witnesses we want interviewed and specific documents we want requested, he said. Lets go. Story continues .@ChuckGrassley - lets start the investigation tonight. I will make my client available for a sworn interview and you can make Judge Kavanaugh available for a sworn interview. We also have 9 other witnesses we want interviewed and specific documents we want requested. Lets go. Michael Avenatti (@MichaelAvenatti) October 25, 2018 Grassley also alleged in the letter that both Swetnick and Avenatti have substantial credibility issues, citing reporting that Swetnick had previously made a false claim in a personal injury lawsuit, and highlighting Avenattis legal disputes with former partners at his law firm and his business venture, Tullys coffee, (Avenatti purchased Tullys through a company called Global Baristas, which he created in 2012. He told TIME this week that he sold the company for $27 million a long time ago, although he doesnt remember when, and had nothing to do with the companys recent issues.) Kavanaugh, was confirmed to the court earlier this month, following a contentious process that concluded with an FBI probe into allegations of sexual assault from two women: Christine Blasey Ford and Deborah Ramirez. Ford alleged that he sexually assaulted her when they were in high school, and Ramirez that he exposed himself to her in college. Swetnicks allegations followed shortly afterwards, but were not part of the FBI investigation. Avenatti repeatedly claimed during the investigation that they should have been. Read More: Michael Avenattis Past Wont Stop Him From Running in 2020 When a well-meaning citizen comes forward with information relevant to the committees work, I take it seriously. It takes courage to come forward, especially with allegations of sexual misconduct or personal trauma. Im grateful for those who find that courage, Grassley said in the statement accompanying the release of the letter. But in the heat of partisan moments, some do try to knowingly mislead the committee. The Department of Justice did not immediately respond to request for comment. In a pair of tweets Thursday afternoon, Avenatti called Grassleys referral ironic, arguing that it was a total contrast from his reluctance to investigate Kavanaugh. We welcome the investigation as now we can finally get to the bottom of Judge Kavanaughs lies and conduct. Let the truth be known, he wrote. Maybe if Grassley was actually a lawyer that knew something about the law, he would realize what he has done. He just opened up Pandoras box as it relates to Justice Kavanaughs conduct. It is Christmas in October! He did not immediately respond to request for a follow up comment from TIME. (Reuters) - The U.S. Coast Guard searched through the night for a civilian aircraft that went down in the Atlantic off the coast of South Carolina on Thursday en route to the Bahamas, the agency said. The Piper PA-31 aircraft went off the radar at about 11.30 a.m. EDT about 110 miles (177 km) east of Charleston after reporting an emergency to air traffic controllers, the Coast Guard said in a statement. "@USCG Cutter Hamilton crew will continue to search throughout the night," it said on social network Twitter. "Air assets will conduct a first-light search." The twin-engine aircraft departed from Robert F. Swinnie Airport in Georgetown County, South Carolina, Fox affiliate WHNS-TV said. There was no word of how many were on board the plane, which is designed for up to eight passengers with two crew. (Reporting by Andrew Hay in New Mexico; Editing by Peter Cooney and Clarence Fernandez) Here are some of the companies the Yahoo Finance team is watching for you today. Tough times for Colgate-Palmolive. Earnings met estimates, but sales fell short of what the street was expecting. The CEO says theyre in a difficult environment right now, due to pressure from the trade war and competition. Snapchat is running into more bumps on its road to recovery. The latest earnings report beat expectations with a 43% spike in revenue. But its shedding users, with more than 2M ditching the app last quarter. Aerospace giant Lockheed Martin has won a $4.5B contract to replace Belgiums aging fighter jet fleet. The country picked Lockheeds F-35s over the Eurofighter Typhoon. That jet is made by Airbus and others. Belgian officials say the decision came down to price. The fight between Campbell Soup and activist investor Daniel Loeb is getting uglier. Loeb has now sued the company, alleging it distributed misleading information, as it tries to win a proxy vote for control of the board. Loebs been trying to oust the board and replace them with his own picks, who would support a sale of the company. Upworks stock is staying volatile, ahead of its first earnings report in early November and just weeks after its IPO. Analysts say no particular news is behind the stocks movement, but many investors are bullish on the companys prospects for connecting freelancers with jobs. In the New York real estate industry, only the strongest survive. Ryan Serhant, author of Sell It Like Serhant and star of the Bravo TV series Million Dollar Listing New York, is no stranger to the cutthroat pace of the business. In a career spanning over 10 years, hes proven his grit by rising to the top of the earnings list among New York brokers, and more recently his team, The Serhant Team of Nest Seekers International, has made its mark across other parts of the U.S., such as Miami and Los Angeles. The fierce competition, Serhant says, is driven by the limited amount of listings on the market up for grabs by a substantially higher number of brokers. Theres not enough for everybody, he says. In New York this year, there will be roughly 12,000 listings and there are about 80,000 brokers. Serhant admits there are good and bad parts of his job. Im a salesperson, I eat what I kill, he says. I have no boss. I dont answer to anybody. Theres no ceiling, theres also no floor. But everything I do is up to me. He says the worst part of his job is that he has no security theres no salary, theres no benefits. He also points out that one of the first things he learned when entering the real estate world was that people, not just clients, not just brokers, but people, are liars, and a grandmother will lie to your face to save $5 if thats what it takes. Serhant says this reality is unfortunate, but that it makes him stronger. Serhant shares his experience and advice when buying or selling property. Listen for the noise in a prospective new home One thing Serhant always makes potential buyers do is sit in each room and listen for noise. When walking through an open house, there can be lots of talking going on, so he stresses that when viewing a potential new home, everyone should make sure they go see it on their own before making any final decisions. This will help prevent a situation where you move in and find out that a particular room or the entire space has a noise problem. Story continues Be prepared for closing costs Closing costs can creep up on you, and Serhant advises that everyone look into these costs before you actually get to closing. He suggests inquiring about what transfer taxes might exist in your town or neighborhood, as well as what escrows might be needed for this particular transaction. He also suggests looking into what the monthly maintenance costs of the home might be after youve moved in. These are all costs associated with closing on a property that dont necessarily come out in initial negotiations. On the selling side, he mentions that a change in taxes unfavorable for the buyer could be coming into play, which might be why that particular seller is selling. Look at what your closing costs are, he says, well in advance of actually closing on a property. Consider that renting is temporary Renting is always temporary, Serhant says. He says that in the United States, it is a special privilege having freedom of credit, freedom to take out a loan, and the ability to take out a mortgage, buy a house, and own a deed to your own property. He says people can generally make money when they sell a home, but at the very least they will usually break even. Why not try to at least get your money back, at the end, instead of paying all that money on rent and making somebody else a lot of money, he says. For anyone getting into the real estate business, Serhant warns that you have to be prepared. not to make any money for at least the first one to two years. He says his work is a constant battle especially to reach the level hes at now. You have to be hungry, he says. You have to fight every day like your back is still up against a wall like it was the first day we all got into this business with no money. This story was originally published on October 26, 2018. WATCH MORE: Confessions of a former college admissions officer: 5 ways to ace your college application Confessions of a former hacker: 5 techniques to make you more secure online Advice for working mothers who dont want to work anymore Coronation Street is not for the faint of heart. (ITV Pictures) It may just be a street of terraced houses, a pub and a few more local businesses but this hasnt stopped Coronation Street being ranked as the most dangerous street in the world. New research illustrates just how deadly Corrie is, and its residents are a whopping 500 times more likely to be killed than any town or city in Greater Manchester. Since the soap opera began in 1960 the Street has had 181 deaths making it Britains most dangerous soap ever. An incredible 32 characters have been murdered, 38 have died of heart attacks, 18 lost their lives to accidents and eight went up in flames. However, the majority of the deaths were from natural causes, which given the thousands of characters weve seen come and go from the ITV soap, makes for a fairly realistic depiction of Manchester life. Pat Phelans serial killer character boosted Corries murder list to the top. (ITV Pictures) The murder count has had a boost by murderous Pat Phelan, whose death toll reached four this year before his shocking exit storyline that saw him stabbed to death by Anna Windass. The death toll data was gathered by Buzz Bingo. Its spokesperson said: Los Cabos (Mexico) has the highest murder rate, yet looking at murders per 1,000 people, you are four times more likely to be assassinated in Weatherfield. We also found that compared with other top British soaps, Weatherfield is where youre most likely to meet a grizzly end as a result of an unfortunate accident. Corrie reigns supreme in its murder count as well with, to date, Emmerdale having had 27 and EastEnders 28. Read more Corrie spoilers: Roy Cropper accused of dogging Kym Marsh doesnt care paid less than Jack P Shepherd Corrie fans spot touching Anne Kirkbride tribute A creepy-looking painting of a fictitious man in a dark frockcoat just left the auction block at Christie's for a whopping $432,500 today (Oct. 25) in New York City. While that price tag is high nearly 45 times its high estimate that's not what makes the sale so compelling: The artwork was created, not by human, but by computer. The "Portrait of Edmond Belamy" is the first painting created by an artificial intelligence (AI) to be auctioned in the art world. The man with a blurry face, painted in the "Old Master" style of artists like Rembrandt van Rijn in the 17th century, is the product of the Paris art collective Obvious. It's part of a set of paintings showing the fictional Belamy family, according to Christie's. [Can Machines Be Creative? Meet 9 AI 'Artists'] The collective, which includes Hugo Caselles-Dupre, Pierre Fautrel and Gauthier Vernier, uses an AI method called generative adversarial network (GAN) for its creations. The GAN algorithm involves a so-called Generator (that makes the art) and a Discriminator (that tries to spot the difference between human-created and AI-created images). "We fed the system with a data set of 15,000 portraits painted between the 14th century to the 20th," Caselles-Dupre told Christie's. "The Generator makes a new image based on the set, then the Discriminator tries to spot the difference between a human-made image and one created by the Generator. The aim is to fool the Discriminator into thinking that the new images are real-life portraits. Then we have a result." The Discriminator, however, is more easily fooled than the human eye, according to Christie's. As such, the portrait of Belamy looks distorted, or as Christie's describes it, sort of like one of Glenn Brown's art-historical appropriations. Having AI take on a portrait was a bold move to be sure. "It must also surely be the case that portraiture is an extremely tough genre for AI to take on, since humans are highly attuned to the curves and complexities of a face in a way that a machine cannot be," Christie's said. Story continues The collective also did some work with nudes and landscapes using their algorithm. "But we found that portraits provided the best way to illustrate our point, which is that algorithms are able to emulate creativity," Caselles-Dupre told Christie's. As for "who" is the artist behind the painting, is it the algorithm which forms the artist signature on the painting itself or the creators of the algorithm? "If the artist is the one that creates the image, then that would be the machine," Caselles-Dupre said. "If the artist is the one that holds the vision and wants to share the message, then that would be us." Regardless of artwork authorship, the sale signals "the arrival of AI art on the world auction stage," according to Christie's. Originally published on Live Science. Five people have been rescued this afternoon from the Cavalry School of la Maestranza of Ronda where they had been trapped by the intense flooding that are being registered in the municipality. As reported by Efe from the town Hall of the locality, the effective Fire department and the Local Police have been able to rescue these people after intense tasks, since the water had flooded the facilities that are found in the vicinity of Arab Baths, one of the areas most affected by these floods. Temporary Round. Cut the step for the Old Bridge after the collapse of a retaining wall. The security forces come to the rescue of two other people in rural area. pic.twitter.com/hAxYCaVBpO ? AyuntamientoRonda (@AytoRonda) October 21, 2018 The Arab Baths of Ronda, thermal enclosure of the muslim era dating back to the XIII-XIV centuries d.C, have also suffered extensive damage still have not been rated. The tasks are now focused on trying to save the horses that are in this School of Chivalry and that you are also being affected by the situation. The second lieutenant of mayor of Ronda, Alvaro Carreno, has indicated that in the municipality have already picked up more than 200 litres of water per square meter, which has caused more than 100 incidents this morning, mainly in rural areas. The District of San Francisco and the Father, Jesus, are the areas most affected by this situation that has caused major flooding, overflows of streams, and falls of walls. In particular, one of the walls of the Colegio Fernando de los Rios has fallen off in the early hours of this morning causing major destruction, that the workers are trying to repair. The municipality has adhered to the Municipal Plan for Emergencies and are virtually incommunicado, all the roads are cut off with the exception of the connecting Seville and Marbella, where it is recommended to take precautions and avoid the traffic as much as possible. The floods have also left that were cut off to many people in rural areas, but according to the deputy mayor, their lives aren't in danger. All the members of the city Council are currently working to try to restore normalcy in the town and recommend to the neighbors to use extreme precautions and avoid the exits in car. Updated Date: 26 October 2018, 19:29 Daily Digit is the story behind the numbers that make our world work. Today were looking at the midterm elections. According to a new study, 55 percent of Americans are enthusiastic about the midterm elections, with both Democrats and Republicans expressing more enthusiasm than in 2014. Of these voters, a majority are planning to send a message to President Trump. The past three midterms have shown similar support patterns. Historically the presidents party usually suffers in midterm elections. The country will be watching to see if Republicans will face that fate this time. Are you voting on November 6? SheKnows While the Cambridges and the Sussexes have been going about their royal duties and philanthropic endeavors like business as usual, there still seems to be some lingering tension between the two royal couples. But with Prince William and Kate Middletons upcoming 2022 trip to America for the continuation of the Duke of Cambridges Earthshot Prize, [] President Donald Trump on Thursday resumed his attack on what he called the fake news media after suspicious packages containing potential explosives were sent to CNN and several high-profile Democrats. A very big part of the Anger we see today in our society is caused by the purposely false and inaccurate reporting of the Mainstream Media that I refer to as Fake News, Trump tweeted. It has gotten so bad and hateful that it is beyond description. Mainstream Media must clean up its act, FAST! A very big part of the Anger we see today in our society is caused by the purposely false and inaccurate reporting of the Mainstream Media that I refer to as Fake News. It has gotten so bad and hateful that it is beyond description. Mainstream Media must clean up its act, FAST! Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) October 25, 2018 Minutes earlier, Trump railed against a New York Times report that Russian and Chinese spies are tapping into calls on his personal cellphone, despite repeated warnings to him about the potential infiltration. I only use Government Phones, and have only one seldom used government cell phone, the president tweeted. Story is soooo wrong! The Times said in a tweet later that it stood by the accuracy of our reporting. The so-called experts on Trump over at the New York Times wrote a long and boring article on my cellphone usage that is so incorrect I do not have time here to correct it. I only use Government Phones, and have only one seldom used government cell phone. Story is soooo wrong! Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) October 25, 2018 Trumps latest attacks on the press came a day after what appeared to be pipe bombs were sent to several major Democratic players, including Hillary and Bill Clinton, former President Barack Obama and Rep. Maxine Waters (D-Calif.). Story continues On Thursday morning, police removed a similar suspicious package from the Manhattan offices of actor Robert DeNiro, who has traded insults with Trump. The packages look similar, and appear to have been sent by the same individual or individuals, authorities said. The motive was unclear, and no one has claimed responsibility. The recipients have at least one thing in common: They have often been the subject of Trumps ire. At a rally in Wisconsin on Wednesday night, Trump called for civility from all sides before partially blaming the media for the bomb scares. As part of a larger national effort to bridge our divides and bring people together, the media also has a responsibility to set a civil tone and to stop the endless hostility and constant negative and oftentimes false attacks and stories, Trump told the crowd. Theyve got to stop, bring people together. Trump has attacked the media since the first days of his presidency, when he and his press secretary assailed reports about the size of his inauguration crowd. Related... Joe Biden Also Was Sent Suspicious Package After Obama, Clintons Targeted With Bombs All The Targets In This Week's Mail Attacks Have Been Trump's Worst Enemies New York Police Investigating Suspicious Package At Address Linked To Robert De Niro Also on HuffPost Love HuffPost? Become a founding member of HuffPost Plus today. This article originally appeared on HuffPost. Ontario Premier Doug Ford speaks to supporters at an anti-carbon tax rally in Calgary on Oct. 5, 2018. Ontario Premier Doug Ford is continuing his attack on Bill 148, saying the previous governments Fair Workplaces, Better Jobs Act killed tens of thousands of jobs. The legislation was met with pushback from business owners, who argued increases to minimum wage and more robust protections for workers would cause layoffs and higher prices. Fords government announced plans on Tuesday to repeal chunks of the Liberal legislation. The changes include freezing the minimum wage at $14 until at least 2020, and repealing equal pay for equal work on the basis of employment status. No legislation in Ontarios history has killed more jobs than Bill 148, Ford said in a speech at the Ontario Economic Summit in Niagara-on-the-Lake, Ont., on Friday. The days of job-killing policies written by people who have never run a business, who have never had to meet a payroll, are over. Employment increased in Ontario and British Columbia while it was little changed in the remaining provinces, Statistics Canada wrote in an Oct. 5 release. Employment in the province increased by 36,000, the third increase in four months. In July, six months after the initial minimum wage increase and labour reforms kicked in, unemployment fell to the lowest level since 2000. Ford also took aim at Ottawas carbon tax plan, suggesting the rebates recently announced by Prime Minister Justin Trudeau will disappear after the next federal election. Trudeau said a family of four would receive $307 back through rebates this spring, with that figure doubling by 2022. Its the old Ill give you $300 back, but I will take a $1,000, Ford said. Its just another Trudeau Liberal tax grab. His speech to the largely pro-business audience outlined a five-pronged suite of commitments, including cleaning up the Liberals hydro mess, and ending hallway healthcare. Ford also previewed road signs set to be placed on highways near the provinces borders in the coming weeks. English and French versions of the blue and white design feature the slogan Welcome to Ontario. OPEN FOR BUSINESS. Fords legislation to replace the the Liberals Fair Workplaces, Better Jobs Act is called the Making Ontario Open for Business Act. Download the Yahoo Finance app, available for Apple and Android. Tesla's (TSLA) Model 3 sedans will be available in Britain and Australia by around mid-2019, Chief Executive Elon Musk said on Thursday. Musk made the announcement on Twitter, in response to queries from other users about when the cars would be rolled out. The Model 3 is Tesla's most affordable car to date, with the firm planning on selling a mass-market $35,000 version before tax incentives next year. The firm unexpectedly launched a new $45,000 version of the Model 3 with a mid-range battery last week. Several days later, the firm hiked the price of that new model by $1,000. Tesla's chief frequently uses Twitter to communicate Tesla's strategy, a tactic that has sometimes been more damaging than beneficial for both Musk and his car company. The billionaire recently found himself in hot water with the Securities and Exchange Commission over a tweet he posted earlier this year stating that he was mulling a deal to take Tesla private at $420 a share. "Am considering taking Tesla private at $420. Funding secured," his August tweet read. Just weeks later, Musk backtracked on that proposal, and said the company would remain publicly traded. After being sued last month by the SEC for fraud, Musk reached a settlement with the U.S. securities regulator, and was forced to pay out $20 million and Tesla another $20 million in fines. Musk is also to step down as the company's chairman but remain as its chief executive as a result of the settlement, which was approved by a judge last week. Tesla defied the odds on Wednesday when it posted a $311.5 million net profit its first in two years and $881 million in free cash flow . The electric car manufacturer had been battling with production hurdles and burning through cash at a rate of almost $1 billion per quarter. Shares are up 10 percent in premarket trade on the back of the firm's earnings beat . WATCH: Three experts on the future of Tesla after Elon Musk settled with SEC Hatice Cengiz said she felt Mr Trump's invitation was aimed at influencing US public opinion - HaberTurk TV The fiancee of Jamal Khashoggi, the murdered journalist, said she would not accept Donald Trump's invitation to the White House because she did not believe the US president was sincere in getting to the truth about his death. In her first television interview since Mr Khashoggi's disappearance, Hatice Cengiz said she felt Mr Trump's invitation was aimed at influencing US public opinion. "Trump invited me to the United States but I perceived it as a statement to win public favour," she told Haberturk, a pro-government Turkish television station, breaking down several times in tears. She said Mr Khashoggi had been concerned about going into the Saudi consulate in Istanbul but that he felt Turkey was a powerful country and that Saudi Arabia would not dare to do anything against him on Turkish soil. We thought we would set the date of the wedding after dinner, she said. This was part of the dream. Mr Khashoggi left Ms Cegniz outside the consulate with his mobile phones on October 2 when he went inside to get a divorce certificate to prove that his previous marriage was over. Jamal Khashoggi's death has put Saudi Arabia under an intense international spotlight Credit: AP Photo/Hasan Jamali, File She raised the alarm after he failed to emerge. Recep Tayyip Erdogan, Turkeys president, slammed Saudi Arabias childish explanations for Mr Khashoggis death on Friday as he demanded to know where the journalists body was hidden. In his second speech on the killing this week, Mr Erdogan continued to put pressure on the kingdom over its shifting story of how Mr Khashoggi died on October 2. Saudi Arabia initially said he walked out of the consulate safely, then said he was killed accidentally in a fist fight, before announcing that Saudi operatives had a premeditated plan to kill him. These childish explanations are not compatible with the seriousness of a state, Mr Erdogan said. Turkey's justice ministry said on Friday it had prepared a formal extradition request for the 18 Saudis arrested in connection with Mr Khashoggi's death. Story continues Saudi Arabia has said they will be tried in Saudi courts. Mr Erdogan also said that the Saudi chief prosecutor will come to Turkey on Sunday to meet with Turkish officials about the investigation. Emmanuel Macron, the French president, dismissed calls for an arms embargo on Saudi Arabia as "demagoguery". "What's the link between arms sales and Mr Khashoggi's murder?" he asked. France, like Britain, is a major supplier of weapons to Saudi Arabia. Claudia Kim as Nagini (Credit: Warner Bros) Claudia Kim, the actress who plays Nagini in the forthcoming Fantastic Beasts: The Crimes of Grindelwald, has said that the recent backlash over her playing the role was unexpected. The internet lit up after it emerged in the most recent trailer for the movie that Nagini, a cursed woman who is transformed into a snake and is enslaved by Voldemort, was being played by an Asian actress. Fans called the casting choice problematic that an Asian woman should become the pet of a white man, and thus deemed by many as racially insensitive. It was unexpected, she said during an on-stage interview in Seoul, South Korea (via AllKPop). When I found out that Im playing Nagini, I thought it was meaningful because its an important character in the Harry Potter series. Harry Potter is a franchise film with many caucasian actors, so I thought many Korean viewers would be happy. She went on to say that she believes all is not as it seems, and that fans should wait until the movie arrives before casting judgement. Im looking forward to viewers being satisfied and the controversy fading away once the film premieres, she added. I dont perceive such controversy solely in a negative way. I believe changes can be made by giving attention to an Asians promotions (like this) and through the people that look into such issues. Johnny Depp in Fantastic Beasts: The Crimes of Grindelwald (Credit: Warner Bros) I think Nagini shouldve been played by an Asian. J.K. Rowling probably searched for an Asian actress because she researched the origin of Nagini. Im not sure if its just my pride, but I think I was able to bring out a different vibe as a Korean in Hollywood where there are many Korean Americans. The scriptwriter is good at giving a twist to a story. Shes able to bring out a new side through an unexpected character. Also, this film was directed by director David Yates who has taken charge of the Harry Potter series multiple times. Hes knowledgeable about the original series as much as the writer so I followed him with trust. Story continues Rowling addressed the controversy at the time. The Naga are snake-like mythical creatures of Indonesian mythology, hence the name Nagini, she tweeted. They are sometimes depicted as winged, sometimes as half-human, half-snake. Indonesia comprises a few hundred ethnic groups, including Javanese, Chinese and Betawi. The movie is due for release on November 16. Read more Pierce Brosnan in reunion with Mrs Doubtfire child stars Halloween remake sequel already in the works Joseph Gordon-Levitt pays tribute to Heath Ledger By Zachary Fagenson and Bernie Woodall PLANTATION, Fla. (Reuters) - A man suspected of sending at least 14 bombs to prominent critics of U.S. President Donald Trump in the run-up to elections next month was arrested on Friday in Florida and charged with five federal felonies. Cesar Sayoc, 56, a former stripper and professional wrestler once charged with threatening to bomb an electric company for trying to shut off his lights, was taken into custody outside an auto parts store in Plantation, Florida, near Miami. Authorities also seized a white van belonging to Sayoc, the windows of which were plastered with pro-Trump stickers, the slogan "CNN SUCKS" and images of Democratic politicians with red cross-hairs over their faces. Fingerprint and DNA evidence was used to identify the suspect, but Federal Bureau of Investigation Director Christopher Wray cautioned that the arrest did not necessarily end the threat. "There may be other packages in transit now and other packages on the way," Wray said. One federal law enforcement source told Reuters that authorities were investigating whether other individuals were involved and did not rule out more arrests. Sayoc's arrest followed an intense four-day manhunt sparked by bombs addressed to high-profile Democrats and critics of Trump including former U.S. President Barack Obama and former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, whom Trump defeated in the 2016 presidential race. The first of the bombs surfaced on Monday at the Westchester County, New York, home of billionaire Democratic donor George Soros. Four packages turned up on Friday, the 14th addressed to another wealthy contributor to the Democratic Party and liberal causes, Tom Steyer. That parcel was found at a post office outside San Francisco. Each consisted of explosive material packed in a plastic pipe and wired to a small clock and a battery, Wray said. He said investigators had yet to determine whether the bombs were actually "functional," but the devices could be dangerous "if subjected to the right combination of heat or shock or friction." Story continues All were sent through the U.S. Postal Service system and intercepted before reaching their intended targets without exploding. No one has been hurt. Bomb experts have said that based on the rudimentary construction of the devices, they appeared more likely designed to sow fear than to kill. According to CNN, Sayoc told investigators the bombs would have done no injury and that he would not have wanted anyone hurt. Wray declined to say whether the suspect was cooperating with authorities after his arrest. He told the news conference that fingerprints on one of two packages sent to U.S. Representative Maxine Waters, a Los Angeles Democrat, belonged to Sayoc. The bombs have heightened tensions during what was already a highly contentious campaign season ahead of the Nov. 6 elections in which Democrats are battling to seize control of Congress now held by Trump's Republican Party. 'POLITICAL VIOLENCE' A criminal complaint filed in federal court in Manhattan charged Sayoc with five felony counts, including interstate transportation and illegal mailing of explosives, threatening a former president, making threatening interstate communications and assaulting federal officers. If convicted on all charges, Sayoc would face up to 48 years in prison, officials said. "We will not tolerate such lawlessness, especially political violence," Attorney General Jeff Sessions said at a press conference announcing the charges. Announcing the arrest to a cheering audience at the White House, Trump said such "terrorizing acts" were despicable and had no place in the United States. "We must never allow political violence to take root in America - cannot let it happen," Trump said. "And I'm committed to doing everything in my power as president to stop it and to stop it now." A native of New York City's Brooklyn borough and a registered Republican, Sayoc's home address was listed in public records as an upscale, gated apartment complex in the seaside town of Aventura, Florida. Apart from the right-wing imagery pasted on his van, Sayoc's political leanings were evident on social media. His Facebook and Twitter accounts were filled with posts railing against Democrats and liberals, including one anti-Soros tweet published two days before a bomb showed up at the financier's home. Public records show numerous arrests over the years for domestic violence, theft and other charges, including the alleged bomb threat against a utility company. Sayoc was initially held at an FBI processing center in Miramar, Florida. He was expected to be taken to the Federal Detention Center in downtown Miami and will likely make his first appearance before a judge on Monday, according to former Assistant U.S. Attorney David Weinstein. In addition to Steyer, the intended recipients of packages discovered on Friday included Democratic U.S. Senator Cory Booker of New Jersey, former U.S. Director of National Intelligence James Clapper and Democratic U.S. Senator Kamala Harris of California. 'STOP THE RANCOR' Hours after a federal law enforcement official said the investigation's focus on Florida had intensified, police closed roads around the parking lot of an AutoZone store in Plantation where Sayoc was arrested and helicopters flew overhead. Investigators covered Sayoc's van with a blue tarp before removing it on a truck. All the people targeted by the suspicious packages have been maligned by right-wing critics. In addition to Obama, Clinton, Soros and Waters, packages that surfaced earlier in the week were addressed to former Vice President Joe Biden, former Attorney General Eric Holder, actor Robert De Niro and former CIA director John Brennan. His package was delivered to the Manhattan bureau of CNN, where he had served as an on-air analyst. The episode has sparked an outcry from Trump's critics charging that his inflammatory rhetoric against perceived enemies among Democrats and the press has fostered a climate ripe for politically motivated violence. Trump's supporters have accused Democrats in turn of unfairly suggesting that the president was to blame for the bomb scares. "If we don't stop this political mania, this fervor, rancor, hatred, you'll see this again and again and again," New York Governor Andrew Cuomo told MSNBC. "We have to get to the genesis, and the genesis is an overheated, vitriolic political division in this country and it starts with the leaders, and it starts with the president." After first calling for unity at the White House event, Trump lamented partisan attacks against him and again pointed at the media. "I get attacked all the time ... I can do the greatest thing for our country, and on the networks and on different things it will show bad," he told the crowd, acknowledging an attendee who shouted "fake news." (Reporting by Zachary Fagenson and Bernie Woodall; Additional reporting by Gina Cherelus, Gabriella Borter and Peter Szekely in New York, Mark Hosenball, Makini Brice, Susan Heavey, Sarah N. Lynch and Lisa Lambert in Washington, and Brendan O'Brien in Milwaukee; Writing by Daniel Wallis and Bill Tarrant; Editing by Lisa Shumaker, Toni Reinhold and Cynthia Osterman) emergency Landing of the Soyuz for an engine failure after take off "the Problem of pitchers, two minutes 45 seconds," he announced, keeping calm the astronaut Alexei Ovichinin, commander on board the rocket Soyuz. The capsule, which carried two crew members, was separated from the rocket failed after 123 seconds in the air. What followed next was an emergency landing branded 'terrifying' by the Russian sources, but that ultimately saved their lives. the malfunction in The throttle of the spacecraft Soyuz MS-10 shortly after its liftoff to the International Space Station meant that the ship had to make a descent at high speed that subjected the astronauts to an acceleration of 6G on the sky of Kazakhstan. The pictures from inside the spacecraft showed that the crew was experiencing shaking at the time of the occurrence of the mechanical failure. The capsule in which they were the crew of two was eyectada automatically by the safety system. The images broadcast live showed that something strange was happening. NASA tweeted: "The crew is returning to Earth in the mode of descent ballistic". This means that he was falling without propulsion of any kind, and that its course is determined only by the momentum of the ship, which was then slowed by a landing with a parachute. The angle of descent is much more acute than recommended in the manual, and there is a high risk of overheating of the ship. a temporary Suspension of flights "there Was a problem with the engine a few seconds after the separation of the first phase" of the ship, and told the commentators of the NASA. "At the time of the liftoff of the Soyuz MS-10, it happened something unusual. The emergency systems have been activated," explained for his part, Roskosmos said in a statement. All the Russian airspace was closed after the incident. The Russian vice prime minister, Yuri Borisov, announced that the manned space flights would be suspended until an investigation is completed, which launched yesterday. Like in the movies, the initial frustration gave way to euphoria when it was confirmed that the crew had not died scorched or dashed to pieces against the ground. The parachute not failed: it opened at an altitude of 7,500 or 8,000 feet. Four helicopters Mi-8 took off to find the two astronauts, according to media Russian military. In Moscow president Vladimir Putin were available at that time to receive a group of new ambassadors, among them the Spanish, Fernando Valderrama, who presented his credentials. Dimitri Peskov, the spokesman of the Kremlin, told journalists: "Thanks be to God, the cosmonauts are still alive. And that's the main thing". The Russian Aleksei Ovchinin and the american Nick Hague, after being taken out of the capsule (which landed in the middle of the steppe in kazakhstan) were transferred to a hospital for further medical examinations. The Soyuz-FG had taken off at 10.40 (gmt) from the Baikonur cosmodrome, in Kazakhstan, and was scheduled to reach the ISS six hours after launch. For Hague, who joined the astronaut corps of the u.s. space agency in 2013, it was the first space mission, while for Ovchinin was the second flight after that was in 2016, where he remained for 172 days. The Soyuz carrying the two men for a mission of six months on the orbital outpost. The head of NASA Jim Bridenstine said that it will conduct a "thorough investigation into the cause of the incident". enough Supplies on the ISS What happens now with the International Space Station? With only three people in the station, the reserves of food, water, and air are sufficient. But its crew will have to remain focused on managing the space station instead of being able to devote themselves to scientific experiments. Several space walks scheduled, and repairs have been postponed. The aerospace industry russia has suffered several setbacks recent within the program, Soyuz. September 11, 2013, the Soyuz TMA-08M suffered a failure in its sensor height, which led to the cosmonauts, to "flying blind" during its descent. With the help of the rescue teams, who communicate by radio with the crew, the cosmonauts landed with something of softness, and no one was injured. On the 27th of may 2009, the Soyuz TMA-15 suffered a problem with the control of the temperature within the vessel after the launch. But the problem was solved by adjusting the thermal control system internal. Outside of the program, the Soyuz, but always on unmanned flights, there have been accidents more serious. In December 2016, the Progress, which was carrying 2.6 tonnes of food, fuel and supplies to the ISS failed to achieve orbit and burned up in the atmosphere. The Soyuz rockets, in their different versions, have been the protagonists of the space programs of soviet and Russian since the decade of the sixties. The Soyuz spacecraft, Russian-made, is currently the only vehicle transporting crews to the ISS after NASA 'retired' its fleet of space shuttles. The Soyuz have always carried the astronauts into space without fatalities. From 2014 the relations between Moscow and Washington have been degraded to the lowest point since the end of the Cold War because of the conflicts in Ukraine and Syria, and accusations of interference with Russian in the Us elections of 2016. In spite of everything, Moscow and Washington have maintained cooperation in space. Updated Date: 26 October 2018, 03:28 By Zachary Fagenson and Bernie Woodall PLANTATION, Fla. (Reuters) - A man suspected of sending at least 14 bombs to prominent critics of U.S. President Donald Trump in the run-up to elections next month was arrested on Friday in Florida and charged with five federal felonies. Cesar Sayoc, 56, a former stripper and professional wrestler once charged with threatening to bomb an electric company for trying to shut off his lights, was taken into custody outside an auto parts store in Plantation, Florida, near Miami. Authorities also seized a white van belonging to Sayoc, the windows of which were plastered with pro-Trump stickers, the slogan "CNN SUCKS" and images of Democratic politicians with red cross-hairs over their faces. Fingerprint and DNA evidence was used to identify the suspect, but Federal Bureau of Investigation Director Christopher Wray cautioned that the arrest did not necessarily end the threat. "There may be other packages in transit now and other packages on the way," Wray said. One federal law enforcement source told Reuters that authorities were investigating whether other individuals were involved and did not rule out more arrests. Sayoc's arrest followed an intense four-day manhunt sparked by bombs addressed to high-profile Democrats and critics of Trump including former U.S. President Barack Obama and former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, whom Trump defeated in the 2016 presidential race. The first of the bombs surfaced on Monday at the Westchester County, New York, home of billionaire Democratic donor George Soros. Four packages turned up on Friday, the 14th addressed to another wealthy contributor to the Democratic Party and liberal causes, Tom Steyer. That parcel was found at a post office outside San Francisco. Each consisted of explosive material packed in a plastic pipe and wired to a small clock and a battery, Wray said. He said investigators had yet to determine whether the bombs were actually "functional," but the devices could be dangerous "if subjected to the right combination of heat or shock or friction." All were sent through the U.S. Postal Service system and intercepted before reaching their intended targets without exploding. No one has been hurt. Bomb experts have said that based on the rudimentary construction of the devices, they appeared more likely designed to sow fear than to kill. According to CNN, Sayoc told investigators the bombs would have done no injury and that he would not have wanted anyone hurt. Wray declined to say whether the suspect was cooperating with authorities after his arrest. He told the news conference that fingerprints on one of two packages sent to U.S. Representative Maxine Waters, a Los Angeles Democrat, belonged to Sayoc. The bombs have heightened tensions during what was already a highly contentious campaign season ahead of the Nov. 6 elections in which Democrats are battling to seize control of Congress now held by Trump's Republican Party. 'POLITICAL VIOLENCE' A criminal complaint filed in federal court in Manhattan charged Sayoc with five felony counts, including interstate transportation and illegal mailing of explosives, threatening a former president, making threatening interstate communications and assaulting federal officers. If convicted on all charges, Sayoc would face up to 48 years in prison, officials said. "We will not tolerate such lawlessness, especially political violence," Attorney General Jeff Sessions said at a press conference announcing the charges. Announcing the arrest to a cheering audience at the White House, Trump said such "terrorizing acts" were despicable and had no place in the United States. "We must never allow political violence to take root in America - cannot let it happen," Trump said. "And I'm committed to doing everything in my power as president to stop it and to stop it now." A native of New York City's Brooklyn borough and a registered Republican, Sayoc's home address was listed in public records as an upscale, gated apartment complex in the seaside town of Aventura, Florida. Apart from the right-wing imagery pasted on his van, Sayoc's political leanings were evident on social media. His Facebook and Twitter accounts were filled with posts railing against Democrats and liberals, including one anti-Soros tweet published two days before a bomb showed up at the financier's home. Public records show numerous arrests over the years for domestic violence, theft and other charges, including the alleged bomb threat against a utility company. Sayoc was initially held at an FBI processing center in Miramar, Florida. He was expected to be taken to the Federal Detention Center in downtown Miami and will likely make his first appearance before a judge on Monday, according to former Assistant U.S. Attorney David Weinstein. In addition to Steyer, the intended recipients of packages discovered on Friday included Democratic U.S. Senator Cory Booker of New Jersey, former U.S. Director of National Intelligence James Clapper and Democratic U.S. Senator Kamala Harris of California. 'STOP THE RANCOR' Hours after a federal law enforcement official said the investigation's focus on Florida had intensified, police closed roads around the parking lot of an AutoZone store in Plantation where Sayoc was arrested and helicopters flew overhead. Investigators covered Sayoc's van with a blue tarp before removing it on a truck. All the people targeted by the suspicious packages have been maligned by right-wing critics. In addition to Obama, Clinton, Soros and Waters, packages that surfaced earlier in the week were addressed to former Vice President Joe Biden, former Attorney General Eric Holder, actor Robert De Niro and former CIA director John Brennan. His package was delivered to the Manhattan bureau of CNN, where he had served as an on-air analyst. The episode has sparked an outcry from Trump's critics charging that his inflammatory rhetoric against perceived enemies among Democrats and the press has fostered a climate ripe for politically motivated violence. Trump's supporters have accused Democrats in turn of unfairly suggesting that the president was to blame for the bomb scares. "If we don't stop this political mania, this fervor, rancor, hatred, you'll see this again and again and again," New York Governor Andrew Cuomo told MSNBC. "We have to get to the genesis, and the genesis is an overheated, vitriolic political division in this country and it starts with the leaders, and it starts with the president." After first calling for unity at the White House event, Trump lamented partisan attacks against him and again pointed at the media. "I get attacked all the time ... I can do the greatest thing for our country, and on the networks and on different things it will show bad," he told the crowd, acknowledging an attendee who shouted "fake news." (Reporting by Zachary Fagenson and Bernie Woodall; Additional reporting by Gina Cherelus, Gabriella Borter and Peter Szekely in New York, Mark Hosenball, Makini Brice, Susan Heavey, Sarah N. Lynch and Lisa Lambert in Washington, and Brendan O'Brien in Milwaukee; Writing by Daniel Wallis and Bill Tarrant; Editing by Lisa Shumaker, Toni Reinhold and Cynthia Osterman) TOKYO (Reuters) - During 40 months of captivity at the hands of Syrian militants, Japanese journalist Jumpei Yasuda was forbidden from moving or making any noise, even while sleeping. Guards told him daily he'd be released, or gave him canned food but no opener. Yasuda, who arrived home in Japan on Thursday from more than three years of what he called physical and psychological "hell", told the Asahi Shimbun daily that his captors accused him of being a spy. Confined for eight months to a space just 1.5 meters high and 1 meter wide, he was not allowed to bathe, wash his clothes, or make any kind of noise or movement. "Because I couldn't wash my hair, my head itched - but when I scratched, that made noise," he told the Asahi during his flight back to Japan. "Breathing through my nose, cracking my knuckles, moving while I slept - everything was forbidden." The rigid control of his daily life got even tighter after he was accused of "eavesdropping" while making a noise as he relieved himself. At one point, he didn't eat for 20 days in an effort to avoid any movement. "I was skin and bones, horribly nauseated. If it had gone on much longer, I would probably have died, but I was finally moved to a different place," he said. "They would not bring me food, or if they did give me canned food, they would not bring a can opener," he said. A week before his release, he was moved back to the narrow space of his worst days, then to a cell in what appeared to be an ordinary house. The following day, he was put in a car and driven to the Turkish border. Gaunt and bearded, wearing a black T-shirt and dark trousers, Yasuda gave reporters a strained smile upon his arrival in Japan but said nothing. His wife told a news conference that any further comments would have to wait until he had rested and undergone medical checks. "I'm happy that I can return to Japan. At the same time, I dont know what will happen from here or what I should do, Yasuda told Reuters on a Turkish domestic flight, before he flew home from Istanbul. The Japanese government has thanked Qatar and Turkey for their cooperation in freeing Yasuda, but has denied paying a ransom for his release. (Reporting by Elaine Lies; Editing by Robert Birsel) Gaza City (Palestinian Territories) (AFP) - Five Palestinians died during fresh clashes on the Gaza border Friday, the health ministry in the Hamas-run enclave said. The men, aged between 22 and 27, died in separate incidents along the border fence, the ministry said. Three were shot dead east of Khan Yunis in southern Gaza, while one was killed east of Jabalia in northern Gaza, the ministry said. A fifth man died east of Bureij in central Gaza when a hand grenade he was holding exploded accidentally, eyewitnesses said. The Israeli army did not comment on the deaths but said approximately 10,000 "demonstrators and rioters" were gathered along the border, with some setting tyres alight and hurling grenades. Troops were responding with "riot dispersal means," the spokesman added. Palestinians have gathered for protests along the Gaza border at least weekly since late March. At least 213 Palestinians have been killed by Israeli fire in Gaza since the protests began on March 30, according to figures collated by AFP. The majority have died during protests, though smaller numbers have been killed by airstrikes and tank fire. One Israeli soldier was shot dead by a Palestinian sniper along the border in the same period. Palestinian protesters are calling to be allowed to return to lands their families fled or were expelled from in a 1948 war surrounding the creation of Israel and which are now inside the Jewish state. They are also opposing Israel's crippling blockade of Gaza. Israel accuses Gaza's Islamist rulers Hamas of orchestrating the often violent demonstrations. Paris (AFP) - France is ready to back "international sanctions" against those responsible for the murder of Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi, the Elysee Palace said after President Emmanuel Macron spoke by telephone to King Salman Wednesday. The French president "informed (King Salman) of his profound indignation at the crime and demanded that all possible light be shone on the circumstances that led to this drama", his office said in a statement. Saudi Foreign Minister Adel al-Jubeir on Sunday said the killing at the Saudi consulate in Istanbul was not ordered by the Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, the king's son and Saudi Arabia's de-facto leader The 59-year-old Washington Post contributor was a fierce critic of the crown prince. Macron told the king that France's main priority was "defending freedom of expression, freedom of the press and of the public. France will not hesitate to take international sanctions, together with its international partners, against the guilty", the statement said. After more than two weeks of near silence, Saudi Arabia on Saturday admitted that Khashoggi was killed in its Istanbul consulate, saying it was an unauthorised operation -- a claim other countries have rejected. The journalist disappeared after entering the consulate on October 2 to collect a document for his upcoming marriage. A body double was filmed leaving the building in the murdered journalist's clothes. The case has shone the spotlight on Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed, who has spearheaded reforms in the kingdom but now faces a stream of allegations -- denied by Riyadh -- that he ordered a high-profile critic killed. The crown prince on Wednesday called the killing "repulsive". Western countries have demanded a thorough and transparent investigation. The United States has threatened sanctions if the Saudi leadership is linked to the murder, and on Tuesday revoked the visas of 21 Saudi nationals implicated in the crime. Britain, too, has announced it will scrap visas held by any suspects. France said earlier Wednesday it would take "punitive measures" if Saudi Arabia is "proven" to be behind the murder. A Japanese journalist freed from Syria this week arrived home to overjoyed relatives and supporters, but also to vitriol from some who accuse him and other hostages of reckless behaviour. Jumpei Yasuda was kidnapped in Syria in 2015, and spent more than three years in conditions he described as "hell." He arrived back in Japan on Thursday night, greeted by his delighted wife and parents, who had brought him homemade Japanese food to celebrate. But even before Yasuda set foot on Japanese soil, he was the target of angry criticism -- mostly online -- ranging from accusations of recklessness to claims that he was not even Japanese. "He is disturbing society," wrote one Twitter user. "He's an anti-citizen," charged another. Perhaps anticipating the criticism, Yasuda's only statement upon arrival, read to reporters by his wife Myu, was dominated by an apology. "I apologise for causing such trouble and worry, but thanks to all of you, I was able to come home safely," he said. The anger directed at Yasuda -- author of books on the conflicts in Syria and Iraq, whose reporting has appeared on Japanese television -- is a far cry from the reception that journalism held hostage have received in other countries upon their release. When four French journalists held by the Islamic State group in Syria were released, then-French president Francois Hollande met the men as they arrived home. - 'It's your fault - But in Japan, freed hostages have often met a mixed reception, with critics suggesting victims were responsible for getting themselves kidnapped. "They are the victims, they haven't broken the law, but they have to apologise. It's strange, but it's the mentality of a part of Japanese society," said Toshiro Terada, a professor of philosophy at Sophia University in Tokyo. "The person is accused of having harmed society." In one of the more shocking examples of the reaction, three Japanese men held hostage in Iraq and freed in 2004 arrived home to find people at the airport holding up banners reading "It's your fault." Story continues Their kidnappers had threatened to burn them alive if Tokyo failed to withdraw non-combat troops stationed in southern Iraq. But then-prime minister Junichiro Koizumi refused the demands, and even declined to meet with the families of the hostages, a hardline position that was applauded in some quarters of Japanese society. The government itself, supported by right-wing media, described the men as "irresponsible youths" for having ignored warnings to avoid travel to Iraq, then an active war zone. One of the men, Noriaki Imai, said recently he received letters saying "die" or calling him "stupid." "Online, the bashing lasted ten years," he said. - 'Professional hostage' - Yasuda has faced similar criticism for venturing to Syria, a country where several Japanese citizens were kidnapped and eventually executed. Compounding the antagonism is the fact that Yasuda was kidnapped once before, in Iraq in 2004, prompting some to describe him as a "professional hostage." And detractors have claimed Yasuda is not even Japanese, partly as the result of a bizarre hostage video showing him and another captive in Syria that emerged in August. Despite speaking Japanese, he identified himself as a South Korean called "Omar", apparently after his kidnappers banned him from revealing his identity or nationality. "This guy isn't even Japanese," wrote one Twitter user. "He should go back to his country, South Korea," added another. A string of kidnappings of journalists in Syria at the height of the country's war exposed differences in how governments and publics responded. Some governments paid ransoms, while others refused, and while countries celebrated their journalists as heroes, others quietly criticised them for taking unnecessary risks. In Japan, mainstream media outlets and officials have largely avoided criticising Yasuda and other hostages, but the antipathy expressed online concerns journalists like Toru Tamakawa, a commentator for TV Asahi. "In the case of Yasuda particularly, the argument that 'it's his fault' must be firmly rejected," he said this week. "We need people who will risk their lives to go and get information on the ground." BRATISLAVA/PARIS (Reuters) - French President Emmanuel Macron said on Friday that he regretted Belgium's decision to choose Lockheed Martin's F-35 stealth jets over the Eurofighter Typhoon planes. "It's a decision that was the result of a process which I greatly respect and which was linked to political constraints specific to Belgium, which are not for me to comment upon, but strategically it goes against European interests," said Macron at a news conference held with Slovakia President Andrej Kiska. "For my part, I regret the choice that was made." On Thursday, Belgium announced its decision to go with the Lockheed Martin planes to replace its ageing F-16s in a 4 billion euro ($4.5 billion) deal, saying the decision came down to price. The decision is a setback for Britain, Germany, Italy and Spain, who are behind the Eurofighter program, and also means the rejection of an informal French offer to sell Belgium the Rafale fighter built by Dassault Aviation. (Reporting by Sudip Kar-Gupta and Jean-Baptiste Vey; Editing by Michel Rose) Jerusalem (AFP) - The sole power plant in the Gaza Strip reached its highest production level in months on Thursday, the United Nations said, as part of a deal to overcome chronic power cuts. "Today the second turbine of the Gaza power plant starts producing 52 MW, alleviating the suffering of two million Palestinians in Gaza," UN envoy Nickolay Mladenov, who helped broker the deal, said on Twitter. Mladenov said Thursday's supply reached 172 megawatts, the highest since January 21 although far from the 500 megawatts needed for the strip to have full power. Qatar earlier this month agreed to pay $60 million for fuel to be delivered to the plant over a period of six months, allowing it to increase operations. UN officials hope the deal could significantly increase electricity rates in Gaza, where residents receive only a few hours of mains power a day. It could also help calm tensions between Gaza's Islamist rulers Hamas and Israel. Fuel deliveries were temporarily suspended by Israel over violence emanating from the strip but resumed Wednesday. Fifteen trucks carrying around 500,000 litres of fuel entered Gaza on Thursday, an official said on condition of anonymity. The fuel deal was brokered through the UN without the involvement of the Palestinian Authority, the internationally-recognised Palestinian government which is based in the occupied West Bank. WASHINGTON (AP) Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Chuck Grassley on Thursday asked for a criminal investigation into whether Julie Swetnick and her attorney, Michael Avenatti, conspired to provide false statements to Congress and obstructed a congressional investigation during the confirmation process for Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh. Grassley wrote in a letter to the Justice Department that Swetnick and Avenatti made serious allegations that required significant resources to investigate. But Grassley says information from media interviews and elsewhere indicates their statements "likely contained materially false claims." "I don't take lightly making a referral of this nature, but ignoring this behavior will just invite more of it in the future," Grassley said. Avenatti released a sworn statement in which Swetnick said she witnessed Kavanaugh "consistently engage in excessive drinking and inappropriate contact of a sexual nature with women in the early 1980s." Kavanaugh denied the allegations. Avenatti told The Associated Press he would put his client's credibility up against Grassley's any day: "This is a classic case of be careful what you wish for." "The only way you test whether my client's allegations were true is if you find out whether they were true or not" through an investigation, Avenatti said. Kavanaugh's confirmation was delayed and nearly derailed when Dr. Christine Blasey Ford made sexual assault allegations against Kavanaugh. Amid the Judiciary Committee's investigation, Avenatti submitted the sworn statement to the committee from Swetnick. Grassley said that within hours of Avenatti submitting the statement, Democrats sought to cancel a committee vote on Kavanaugh. He said the committee investigated the claims and diverted significant resources to the effort. He said that Swetnick subsequently contradicted herself in media interviews and there is lack of credible evidence that she ever met or socialized with Kavanaugh. Friends of Kavanaugh also told the committee they had never heard of Swetnick, Grassley said. Story continues "It takes courage to come forward, especially with allegations of sexual misconduct or personal trauma. I'm grateful for those who find that courage," Grassley said in a statement. "But in the heat of partisan moments, some do try to knowingly mislead the committee. That's unfair to my colleagues, the nominees and others providing information who are seeking the truth. It stifles our ability to work on legitimate lines of inquiry." Avenatti also represents porn actress Stormy Daniels, who claims she had an affair with President Donald Trump, and is thinking about running for president in 2020. Trump denies the allegation. ____ Associated Press writer Catherine Lucey contributed to this report. Deborah Wallace and Cindy Chester live about 30 miles from each other in Maryland. They ride the same freeways, read the same billboards, dress for the same weather. To some extent they have even encountered the same trauma. But for all that, its not easy to locate their common ground. Wallace teaches in a part of Baltimore where gun violence is so common that in the space of 15 months, seven of the students at her high school were shot dead. Atop a massage table during a sea cruise she had booked hoping to escape reality, I just cried, Wallace says. The masseuse thought she hurt me. The 63-year-old views guns as a plague that needs to be eradicated. In suburban New Carrollton, Chester lives in regret that she did not have a gun at hand, and know how to use it, the day 10 years ago that her ex-boyfriend shot her. She lost her right leg and her unborn child. It could have changed my whole story, says Chester, 31 and a firm believer in the Second Amendment. She wants other women to be empowered to take the action she could not. Even though they may disagree on guns, their opinions are grounded in lived experience and expressed with a sincerity and respect often missing in the national debate. That was the most consistent takeaway from TIMEs project on guns, an undertaking that involved three cities and 245 people over five months. The artist JR assembled the mural on this weeks cover from separate photographs of every participant, each with a distinct view on firearms. They were situated in a tableau that evokes not only the spirit of debate associated with the Founding Fathers but something else as wellthe unity that flows from a sense of shared enterprise. We saw the same thing in St. Louis; in Washington, D.C.; and in Dallas: Were all in this together. Owning a gun remains one of the oldest and in many places most cherished traditions in America, but its no longer as commonplace as it was 230 years ago. The right to keep and bear arms with a well-regulated militia was regarded as so central to the notion of liberty that it came second in the Bill of Rights only to the freedom to think and speak. Story continues But when the topic is the Second Amendment, the exercise of the First Amendment lately amounts to talking past one another. The gun debate stands frozen in stalemate, advocates unable to agree even on the meaning of words. When one side appeals for commonsense gun controls, the other hears only control. When some say law-abiding gun owners, others only hear gun. How did we get here? Over time. See TIMEs special report on Guns in America America was a rural nation for most of its history. And in many places, firearms remain toolsfor sport, for securing food, for a bond to connect generations. In Lewisville, Texas, 10-year-old Cooper Buck spends many weekends hunting with her parents, something she has done since her grandfather gave her her first gun (it was pink) for Christmas when she was 5. I really want to pass this down to my kids whenever I get older, she says after being photographed by JR while holding a gun in early September in Dallas. She hopes to show people across the country that her gun is not something to fear. A firearm can be a beautiful thing, depending on the eye of the beholder. Wander the tables of a gun show and the combination of burnished walnut, tooled steel and exquisite balance might be fondly labeled artisanal by a city dweller. The craftsmanship displays tradition and care, including the solemn sort a parent brings to the instruction (often via an NRA safety course) of a youth in the responsible handling of a lethal weapon, a marker in the passage to adulthood. But fewer and fewer Americans learn about firearms tramping in the woods. Most today live in a suburb, neither city nor country, and in many ways the culture of gun ownership toggles between the two. Rural culture often evokes a defiant individualism that draws on the mythology of the American frontier, and a resistance to regulation as righteous and absolutist as anything free-speech advocates marshal in defense of their own favorite amendment. Gun owners are often gun enthusiasts, and a majority of owners have more than one gun. Research shows that while there are more guns in America than there were 20 years ago, they are owned by a smaller share of the population. Roughly 40% of Americans live in a gun-owning household, but just 30% own guns, according to recent Pew Research Center and Gallup surveys. Other studies have put the percentage of those who personally own guns even lower, at about 22%. And only 4.4 % of Americans over 16 actually hunt. The view from urban America is markedly different. In cities like St. Louis, which has lost a significant chunk of its population to the suburbs in recent decades and frequently has the highest murder rate in the country, not everyone experiences gun violence in equal measure. Black Americans are more likely to be shot than their white counterparts, and community leaders say much of the gun culture is tied to a lack of access to education, jobs and opportunity. If we had better job opportunities, better mentors, better role models then we wouldnt see this as much, says Emeara Burns, a 20-year-old college student and activist who grew up hearing gunshots in her St. Louis neighborhood. Shootings are a common occurrence across the country. On an average day, six children are injured or killed in unintentional shootings, according to data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). From 2012 to 2016, the last years for which data is available, an average of 35,000 Americans died from gun violence every year, according to the CDC. Nearly two-thirds are suicides. Homicides by gun, after declining from their peak in the 1990s, spiked 31% from 2014 to 2016, the CDC found. What more the CDC might have found we cannot say; Congress voted in 1996 to limit the scope of research into gun deaths and injuries by the countrys premier health agency. Similarly, there is wide disagreement over how to count mass shootings in America. The biggest point of contention is the minimum number of victims that qualifies as mass. There is, however, no question that the maximum number keeps climbing. The record for deadliest shooting in U.S. history having been set at 49 at Orlandos Pulse nightclub on June 12, 2016, stood for just over a year. It was eclipsed by the slaughter of 58 people at a Las Vegas music festival on Oct. 1, 2017. School shootings, astonishing a generation ago, have taken on the element of routineboth in the frequency with which they happen and in the public mind. Active shooter drills are now familiar to many kindergartners. And parents in suburbs see their children off in the morning with the pit in their stomach parents in inner cities have felt for decades. At the start of the school year, Beth Poquette Drews asked her music class at a Dallas middle school to create a respect agreement outlining how they would treat one another for the rest of the school year. Usually the answers we receive are things like Dont interrupt, Keep your hands to yourself, Listen to each otherthe typical things you would expect a child to say, she says. But this year the first one that came up on the list was Dont shoot each other. The school shootings also underscore the utter paralysis in our politics. In a Gallup poll taken in March, 67% of Americans said they wanted stricter laws on firearms sales, the highest percentage for any Gallup poll since 1993. A Quinnipiac survey found almost every American, 97%, in support of universal background checks. Yet Congress hasnt passed the Manchin-Toomey measure to expand background checks, first introduced after 20 first-graders were killed at Sandy Hook Elementary School in 2012. Its hard for people to settle for the modest progress or the modest change, says Senator Pat Toomey, a Pennsylvania Republican. Attention tends to gather instead at one extreme or the other, where maximalist positions generate enthusiasm among the confidently certain. In Texas, state representative Jonathan Stickland, a Republican, wants to remove permit requirements on gun owners in an approach known as constitutional carry. And in Northern California, Representative Eric Swalwell, a Democrat, stokes gun owners worst fears by proposing that they be required to sell their military-style semiautomatic assault rifles to the government, in a mandatory buyback. As Colin Goddard, 33, a survivor of the 2007 Virginia Tech shooting, puts it, Guns are a symbol for a lot of people, and they mean different things. I think the symbol to some Americans is of tradition, of family, of history. And others I think view it as a symbol of death, fear, destruction. And when you have such different values and feelings associated with one symbol like that, I think it helps explain why this issue and guns is so difficult to talk about. We divide ourselves. We cluster around the warmth of shared opinions, separate ourselves by disposition, neighborhood or, especially, news feed. Joe Enderby, a 36-year-old who owns a bird-hunting club in the Dallas area, calls himself a strong supporter of the Second Amendment. But he keeps mostly to himself his parallel thought, There is nothing to fear in gun regulation, because he knows what the reaction will be. In 2018, the middle is a very difficult place to be, he says. You have to be on polar-opposite sides, and I think the polarities are the loudest. Money also matters, and not just in rewarding or punishing candidates. Firearms are a $17 billion industry, and paranoia can juice demand. Gun and ammo sales soared when Barack Obama was President, as gun owners stockpiled whatever rumor said was about to be outlawed by the feds. (Nothing was.) After Trump was elected, helped along by $30 million from the NRA, sales slowed and have not fully recovered. In March, Remington filed for bankruptcy. TIME repeatedly invited the NRA to participate in this project, but ultimately the organization declined. The same polarizing political system shapes the side advocating for limits on guns. In addition to their own stereotypes and intolerances, they must lug into the public arena the burden of justifying regulation. In other words, differentiating between the impulse to do something vs. doing something likely to achieve the desired resultsa challenge that remains when the welling emotions summoned by a grieving parent have ebbed. There are reasons the status quo is a standoff. Yet as we learned from listening to many of the voices in our project, two clear themesresponsibility and the need for extraordinary care around lethal forceare common to both the ethos of gun ownership and the stated goals of those who seek controls. Which commends them as logical starting points for a conversation that takes place not through elected surrogates, and not online, but face to face, where Americans still tend to get along pretty well. Guns arent going anywhere, says Jamison Sweet, 47, a gun owner in St. Louis who served in the Marine Corps for 15 years. We need to come together to just listen. Thats the first step in bridging the divide, says Holly Sullivan, a 36-year-old single mother and firearms instructor who lives in Connecticut, about seven miles from Sandy Hook Elementary School. If we could educate on who we are and what we believe, she says, I think we could find common ground. HILO, Hawaii (AP) About 2,000 people have visited Hawaii Volcanoes National Park each day since it partially reopened last month, park officials said. Park spokeswoman Jessica Ferracane said the visitation last month was "about on par" with September 2017, a typically slower month for tourism on the Big Island, the Hawaii Tribune-Herald reported Tuesday. The park reopened Sept. 22 after it closed in May because of the Kilauea volcano eruption and resulting seismic activity. Since reopening, the number of visitors has remained consistent, with boosts on days cruise ships visit the Big Island, Ferracane said. Most of the park trails are back in operation, except the Ka'u Desert Trail and the Kilauea Iki Trail that were damaged by seismic activity. "Still, we're expecting big numbers when the winter season picks back up," Ferracane said. Since the day after reopening, park authorities have not cited any more people for attempting to enter restricted areas of the park, Ferracane said. Three people were cited last month when they tried to reach the closed Jaggar Museum. Park authorities have recently made two rescues on backcountry trails. A hiker became disoriented Monday in the overgrown foliage on the park's Keauhou Trail, and another visitor was rescued last week after becoming lost at Pu'u Huluhulu. Both hikers were found quickly, Ferracane said. Tourism on the island appears to be better than it has been in recent months though the September visitor numbers have not yet been released, said Ross Birch, president of the Island of Hawaii Visitors Bureau. "If we can meet the numbers from September of last year . which was about 120,000, then I would consider that a huge success," Birch said. ___ Information from: Hawaii Tribune-Herald, http://www.hawaiitribune-herald.com/ Helen Mirren (Credit: PA) If Bond 25 is after a villain, Helen Mirren has just thrown her hat into the ring. The iconic British actress has revealed that she has always secretly harboured the desire to play cat and mouse with 007. Women get to play much cooler villains these days, she told Harpers Bazaar. Ive always had a secret ambition to play a villain in a James Bond movie. I consider myself a scaredy-cat. Im constantly nervous. Im always worried that Im not going to do it right. But you have to just jump and then the adrenaline kicks in. Mirren has, of course, already shown her chops for playing an action movie villain. She briefly appeared playing Magdalene Shaw, mother to Jason Stathams rogue assassin Deckard Shaw and Luke Evans Owen Shaw in Fast & Furious 8. Prior to her casting shed appealed to the makers of the franchise to give her a shot. My great ambition is to be in a Fast and Furious movie. I so want to be a mad driver in a Fast and Furious movie. My claim to fame is I always do my own driving I was on Top Gear, and I did [my lap] in a very good time. I keep putting it out there, and they never ask me. Ill be in Fast and Furious 8. I have to say Vin Diesel is brilliant. I love Vin Diesel. Hes a great guy, smart I love him. Its partly because of him Id like to be in one, but also the driving, she told Yahoo Movies in the US. So maybe it could work with Bond too and judging by the Red movies, she knows her way around a handgun. (Credit: Summit Entertainment) Mirren also went on to discuss the Royal Family, having famously played Queen Elizabeth II in 2007s The Queen. She remarks that while she did watch the recent royal wedding of Prince Harry to Meghan Markle while on a movie set, I dont care that much, though I do watch The Crown. I just think its beautifully realized. She also added that she is sometimes invited to royal events by the Queen herself, and recently attended a horse thing. I was in the paddock. In her old age, she has that indomitable spirit. I love her. Im not a royalist; Im a queenist, she said. Story continues Mirren next appears in Disneys fantasy The Nutcracker and the Four Realms, based on Hoffmans The Nutcracker and the Mouse King and Tchaikovskys ballet. Also starring Keira Knightley, Richard E. Grant and Jack Whitehall, its due out next month. Read more Pierce Brosnan in reunion with Mrs Doubtfire child stars Halloween remake sequel already in the works Joseph Gordon-Levitt pays tribute to Heath Ledger The drone gang (West Midlands Police) Seven members of a gang who flew 500,000 worth of drugs into prisons using drones have been sent to jail. In total, they made more than 100 deliveries by drone they also smuggled in mobile phones and sim cards around the country between April 2016 and June 2017. Some of the deliveries went straight to inmates windows. A trial at Birmingham Crown Court was told they sent drone deliveries to Oakwood, Featherstone, Staffordshire, Wymott, Birmingham, Liverpool, Hewell, Risley and Dovegate prisons. One of the captured drones (PA) A total of 11 drones were used. The men were sentenced for between three and 10 years and six other gang members were given suspended sentences. Judge Simon Drew QC said custodial sentences were required. Each of you falls to be sentenced for your part in conveying controlled drugs, mobile phones and Sim cards into prisons up and down the country. Gang leader Lee Anslow who smiled after being jailed for 10 years (PA) The method you chose to do this was both carefully planned and executed. Each of you played a part in a wider conspiracy which resulted in approximately 100 separate deliveries. This was a sophisticated commercial operation and due to the high value placed on drugs and mobile phones in prisons, designed to make those of you who ran the operation hundreds of thousands of pounds in profit. He said deliveries of drugs and mobile phones had helped cause increased violence in Britains prisons. A bag full of drugs (PA) I have no doubt each one of you knew exactly what you were getting involved in, added the judge. Gang leader Lee Anslow, who was serving a sentence at HMP Hewell, was found with digital scales and 20,000 worth of cannabis in his cell after police smashed the network. The 31-year-old smiled at the public gallery after being jailed for 10 years, as the judge described him as effectively one of the key operation directors involved in at least 23 drone flights despite being behind bars. Among those jailed was drone pilot Brandon Smith, 24, from Kingsbury Road, Tipton, who was jailed for seven years. Commenting after the case, Detective Inspector Gareth Williams, said around 110,000 worth of drugs had been recovered from 11 drones. A modest estimate would be potentially 500,000 worth of drugs were flown into prisons. In addition to the Honda Civic Type R TCR, THR-W Honda Civic Type R, F3 Americas Race Car, Honda Ridgeline Overland Concept, 2019 Honda Insight, the first Honda Pedal car, and various Powersports models, Honda will also be revealing a mysterious "wild-looking Rugged Open Air Vehicle Concept." For this year's SEMA, Honda announced an impressively long list of models, from race cars to motorbikes to a secretive concept car, that will be on display at its booth. Let's cut to the chase: the Rugged Open Air Vehicle Concept, which Honda describes as "wild-looking" is definitely piquing interest. Unfortunately, no details are expected to be released until the press conference on the opening day of the exhibition. As for the rest of the lineup, a number of Honda race cars, some of which have been piloted by Ryan Eversley and Team Honda Research West, will be in Honda's display beside a Ridgeline Overland Project. This concept vehicle upgrades the four-wheel drive 2017 Ridgeline with more skid plates, some off-road wheels and tires, and a leveling kit for the 2019 generation of the truck. That 2019 Honda Ridgeline Black Edition is further equipped with a versatile Plateau roof rack system that houses "a lightweight, quiet and powerful Honda EU2200i generator" to power all electronics you may need while off-road. The new 2019 Honda Insight hybrid that became available earlier this year will be on stage outfitted with a plethora of dealer-installed accessories like additional interior lighting. Any and all the extras on the model are available at Honda dealers nationwide. The Powersports SEMA lineup comprises new and decorated adventure bikes and motorcycles from this and the previous model year. This collection parallels the vehicles on display spanning from off-roading bikes to more street-friendly models, many with flashy customized features that you can bring to your own models. Many extras will be available at Honda dealerships and online. As for the wild concept vehicle, you can watch hondanews.com on October 30 for images and the announcement video. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vBCq6bGyH1w The family of slain billionaires Barry and Honey Sherman is offering a reward of up to $10 million for for information that leads to the arrest of a suspect in the case. The couple were found dead in the pool room of their north Toronto mansion in December 2017. Brian Greenspan, the lawyer representing the family, announced the award on Oct. 26. He also announced the launch of a call centre to handle tips regarding the case, and a panel of criminal and forensic experts to assess the legitimacy and value of the tips. The tip line will be staffed daily from 8 a.m. to 8 p.m., and the panel includes Matthew Torigian, former Waterloo Region Chief of Police and Frank Addario, who Greenspan hailed as one of the leading criminal defense lawyers in Canada. The team will also include a professor from the University of Torontos forensic psychology department, and Greenspan has invited Toronto Chief of Police Mark Saunders to appoint someone from the force to round it out. Lawyer Brian Greenspan during a press conference on Oct. 26. While he insisted the family only wants to help the police further the investigation, Greenspan criticized the forces handing of the investigation both immediately following the Shermans deaths and in the year since. The Toronto Police Service classified the Shermans death as a targeted double homicide in January but havent provided any updates to on their investigation since then. Were trying to light the fire. Thats part of the reason why weve gathered today to both present the incentive to the public to come forward with any information that they may havebut also to light the fire under the Toronto Police Service. Greenspan listed the ways in which he believes the force mishandled the early stages of the investigation, which include not vacuuming the floors of the home for traces of evidence, not adequately inspecting entrances into the home and failing to notice 25 sets of palm and fingerprint impressions that private investigators later found. Anyone with information about the murders of Honey and Barry Sherman can call an official toll-free tip line at 1-833-668-0001 Story continues Police are required by law to maintain a certain professional standard, he said. The manner in which the Toronto Police Service conducted itself fell well below the standard of how a reasonable officer in these circumstances should act. Their oversights, Greenspan said, led police to announce last December that there were no signs of forced entry into the home, and therefore, they were not searching for any suspects. The Shermanss family was so upset by early reports that police were working with a murder-suicide theory that they hired Greenspan and a team of private investigators to conduct their own investigation. For the family, the most perplexing and upsetting aspect of the police investigation was the failure to observe the obvious, Greenspan said. He did not an update about the progress of his teams investigation. Here is what we know about the Sherman murders, including a new account of the crime scene by the real estate agent who stumbled upon it. The Shermans were embroiled in a family feud Barry Sherman had fought and won a drawn-out legal battle with his cousins the orphaned children of the uncle who gave him his start in the pharmaceutical industry. Following Louis Winters death, his four sons made a legal challenge claiming Sherman owed them a substantial stake in Apotex, since Sherman had bought their fathers drug venture, Empire Companies, in the 1960s. Three months before the Shermans deaths, a judge dismissed the case as frivolous. Barry Sherman might have had enemies in Big Pharma As Frank reported days after the murders, Barry Sherman owned drug company Apotex and made his fortune reverse-engineering patented drugs and putting his cheaper, generic versions on the market. In 2008 Toronto Life reported that the company could be engaged in 100 court cases with brand name drug companies at any given time. A private autopsy debunked the Toronto Police Services murder-suicide theory Early in their investigation, The Toronto Star reports, police had not ruled out the theory that Barry Sherman strangled his wife and then committed suicide. They were found handing by their necks from a railing near the pool. However, a private autopsy conducted as part of the familys investigation found that both Shermans been bound at the wrists at some point during the attack, although their wrists were free when their bodies were discovered. Since no pieces of a ligature or rope were found at the scene, investigators concluded the culprit or, more likely, culprits must have taken them when they left, meaning Barry couldnt have done it himself. On Jan. 26, police announced they were treating the case as a double homicide. We believe now, through the six weeks of work review, we have sufficient evidence to describe this as a double homicide investigation, and that Honey and Barry Sherman were, in fact, targeted, Toronto Police Det. Sgt. Susan Gomes said during a media event that day. A real estate agent and his clients were likely the first to see the bodies CBC reports a real estate agent was showing the Shermans home which was on the market for $6.7 million to two prospective buyers when the trio looked into the pool room and stumbled upon the crime scene on Dec. 15, 2017. However the agent, who asked not to be named, claims they thought it was a hoax, and left without reporting it to police. He told CBC the clients, who are from mainland China and are superstitious, were angry when they realized what they had witnessed, fearing it was a bad omen. The Toronto Star reports that an employee of the couples own real estate agent was present when the visiting agent and his clients found the bodies, but that it was a housekeeper who called 911. (Adds update on Thursday polling; paragraph 4) MEXICO CITY, Oct 25 (Reuters) - Mexico's incoming government opened polls on Thursday for a public consultation to decide whether to ditch a multi-billion-dollar new airport, a possibility that worries markets and business leaders. The poll from Oct. 25 to Oct. 28 will show if the government of leftist President-elect Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador should finish the ambitious but costly new Mexico City airport or scrap it and upgrade a military air base to complement a current hub. The consultation is being held in more than 500 municipalities, home to about 80 percent of the population, incoming transport minister Javier Jimenez Espriu said. More than 184,000 people cast ballots on Thursday in turnout that exceeded expectations, Lopez Obrador's team said in a statement. The results of the poll, which will guide the final decision of the new government, are one of the first big tests of Lopez Obrador's economic policy and his relations with the country's business elite he criticized during the campaign. Moises Kalach, a senior member of Mexico's powerful CCE business lobby, told media he was worried any contract cancellations could violate international treaties, adding that markets needed certainty. Lopez Obrador, who takes office on Dec. 1 after a landslide victory, jokingly asked reporters to turn off their cameras as he cast his ballot at a Mexico City polling station, saying his vote was secret. He ruled out an impact on the economy, saying contracts to develop the new airport would be "backed, protected, no injustice will be committed" even if the project was scrapped. Some business leaders have warned that project cancellation could spook investors and hit the Mexican peso and government bonds. "The impact on risk premiums and particularly on the currency could be significant," analysts at BBVA Bancomer said in a note. Opposition parties say the consultation has not followed the rules for referendums. Story continues "This consultation is unnecessary, since it will only serve to justify the decision that the president-elect has already made, and which he made public during his electoral campaign," the leftist Party of the Democratic Revolution said in a statement. The incoming president has railed against the new airport, saying it has been tainted by corruption and will be costlier than planned. The new airport, under construction on a drained lakebed on Mexico City's eastern flank since 2015, is about 20 percent to 30 percent complete. The Texcoco airport is projected to cost 285 billion Mexican pesos ($14.6 billion), up from an original estimate of 195 billion, says incoming transport minister Jimenez Espriu. ($1=19.4640 Mexican pesos) (Reporting by Anthony Esposito, Miguel Angel Gutierrez, Christine Murray and Daina Beth Solomon Editing by Susan Thomas) MEXICO CITY, Oct 25 (Reuters) - The incoming government of leftist President-elect Manuel Lopez Obrador opened polls on Thursday for a public consultation to decide whether to ditch a multi-billion dollar new airport that is already partly built. The public will be polled from Oct. 25 to Oct. 28 on whether Lopez Obrador's government should finish the ambitious new Mexico City airport or scrap it and upgrade the Santa Lucia military air base to complement the existing hub. The consultation will be held in over 500 municipalities, covering about 80 percent of Mexico's population, incoming transportation minister Javier Jimenez Espriu said this month. The results of the poll, which will be key to how the new government makes its final decision, will be the first test of Lopez Obrador's economic policy and his relations with the country's business elite he criticized during the campaign. Lopez Obrador, who takes office on Dec. 1 after a landslide victory, jokingly asked reporters to turn off their cameras as he cast his ballot at a Mexico City polling station, saying his vote was secret. He ruled out an impact on the economy, saying contracts to develop the new airport would be "backed, protected, no injustice will be committed" even if the project is scrapped. Some business leaders have warned that if the project is canceled it would spook investors and could hit the Mexican peso and government bonds. We will "guarantee impartiality, guarantee investment, and guarantee that there will be no corruption, zero corruption," Lopez Obrador said. Opposition parties have complained about the organization of the consultations, saying it has not followed rules for referendums. "This consultation is unnecessary, since it will only serve to justify the decision that the president-elect has already made, and which he made public during his electoral campaign," the leftist Party of the Democratic Revolution said in a statement. The incoming president has railed against the new airport, saying it has been tainted by corruption and will be more costly than projected. Story continues The new airport has been under construction on the drained bed of Lake Texcoco on the eastern flank of Mexico City since 2015 and is around 20 to 30 percent complete The Texcoco airport is projected to cost 285 billion Mexican pesos ($14.6 billion) compared with an original estimate of 195 billion pesos, according to incoming transportation minister Jimenez Espriu. ($1 = 19.4640 Mexican pesos) (Reporting by Anthony Esposito Editing by Susan Thomas) MEXICO CITY (AP) Prosecutors in western Mexico said Friday they have found the badly decomposed remains of 16 men and three women in clandestine burial pits. An official of the Jalisco state government who was not authorized to be quoted by name said the bodies were found during excavations starting earlier this week. The pits were detected near the city of Lagos de Moreno after neighbors reported foul odors coming from a vacant lot. Drug and kidnapping gangs in Mexico frequently use such mass graves to dispose of the bodies of victims and rivals. Earlier this week, prosecutors in Jalisco said they were also investigating the killing of five homeless people in the capital of Guadalajara. The state prosecutor's office said in a statement Wednesday that authorities are examining whether a single killer was "possibly" involved. "The victims were attacked while they were sleeping and defenseless," the office said. "The weapon used was a rock weighing over 11 pounds (5 kilograms), the injuries were traumatic wounds to the skull." The office said investigators are looking for a suspect who could have carried out the attacks between midnight and 5 a.m. and was strong enough to repeatedly lift and throw such a rock. By Ahmed Aboulenein BAGHDAD, Iraq (Reuters) - Iraq will prioritise its own interests and independence when it comes to helping the United States enforce sanctions against Iran, new Prime Minister Adel Abdul Mahdi said on Thursday. President Donald Trump's decision to withdraw the United States from a 2015 international nuclear accord with Tehran in May and reimpose sanctions has put Abdul Mahdi's incoming government in a difficult position, since Iraq's economy is closely intertwined with neighbouring Iran's. "We want to secure Iraq from any interference in issues, affairs of other countries, whether it's a neighbouring country or it's any other country in the world," Abdul Mahdi told a news conference in Baghdad. The United States and Iran, increasingly at odds, are Iraq's two biggest allies, and Washington has said there will be consequences for countries that do not respect the sanctions. Abdul Mahdi's statement on Thursday did not deviate much from the stance of his predecessor, Haider al-Abadi. In August Abadi said Iraq was against the sanctions "as a matter of principle", but that the country would follow them. "We consider them a strategic mistake and incorrect but we will abide by them to protect the interests of our people. We will not interact with them or support them but we will abide by them," he said. [nL5N1UY5XH] Abadi's government later asked Washington for permission to ignore some sanctions on its neighbour. Abdul Mahdi did not say on Thursday whether his government would continue to seek the exemptions. The next wave of sanctions are due to come into effect on Nov 4. U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo called Abdul Mahdi on Thursday to congratulate him on his swearing in. They also discussed the enhancement of bilateral relations, according to a statement from the Prime Minister's media office. Abdul Mahdi was speaking at his first news conference since being sworn in just past midnight on Thursday. He also announced that he would be moving the prime minister's office and cabinet outside Baghdad's heavily fortified Green Zone. "All of Iraq should be a green zone. Security and beauty should be everywhere in Iraq. Officials must share everything with citizens, the good and the bad. We should share everything with our people." (Reporting by Ahmed Aboulenein; writing by Raya Jalabi; Editing by Robin Pomeroy and David Stamp) Jerusalem (AFP) - Israeli Defence Minister Avigdor Lieberman said Friday he has selected Aviv Kochavi, a former military intelligence head, as the army's new chief of staff. Kochavi, who has served as deputy chief of staff since 2017, was picked after "consultations with dozens of people" including former premiers, Lieberman's office said. Kochavi is set to take up the post at the start of 2019, succeeding General Gadi Eisenkot, whose term ends this year. The appointment must first be approved by a government committee due to meet on Sunday, before going before cabinet. Kochavi has served as head of the army's northern command and as military intelligence chief during the 2014 war against the Palestinian Islamist movement Hamas in Gaza. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu welcomed the choice of Kochavi, a graduate of Harvard University and Johns Hopkins University in the United States. "Kochavi is the most worthy candidate to be the IDF's next chief of staff," Netanyahu said in a statement. Eisenkot, the current chief of staff, congratulated his deputy on being selected to succeed him, the army said in a statement, adding that Kochavi is "a distinguished officer with extensive combat experience from multiple combat theatres." Jerusalem (AFP) - Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has made the first visit to Oman by an Israeli premier in over 20 years, officials said Friday, in an apparent sign of growing regional ties. The surprise meeting with Oman's Sultan Qaboos late Thursday, which was kept secret until Netanyahu's return home, comes despite the two nations having no diplomatic ties. The trip is a major coup for Netanyahu, who has said he wants to bolster ties with the Arab world despite a stalemate on the Palestinian front. "A special visit in Oman -- we're making history!" Netanyahu wrote on Twitter, posting a video of his reception and meeting. Netanyahu and Sultan Qaboos discussed the Middle East peace process "and other issues of shared interest", the Israeli premier's office said in a statement. Netanyahu was accompanied by his wife Sara and his delegation included Mossad intelligence chief Yossi Cohen and National Security Advisor Meir Ben-Shabbat. The visit came at the invitation of Sultan Qaboos and followed "lengthy contacts between the two countries", the Israeli statement said. Palestinian president Mahmud Abbas also visited Oman this week, according to the official Palestinian news agency Wafa. The Israeli premier's trip formed part of "the policy outlined by Prime Minister Netanyahu on deepening relations with the states of the region", his office said. Oman's state broadcaster showed Netanyahu and his delegation walking alongside Sultan Qaboos - who has rarely been seen in recent pictures - and other Omani officials in traditional garb. In 1994, then-Israeli premier Yitzhak Rabin visited Oman, and acting prime minister Shimon Peres also made a visit in 1996 when the two countries agreed to open trade representative offices. In October 2000, Oman closed the offices after the outbreak of the second Palestinian intifada. Israel currently has full diplomatic relations with only two Arab states, Egypt and Jordan. Story continues - 'Open the door' - Netanyahu has long been seeking alliances with other Arab states which, like Israel, face an emboldened Iran, stressing that such ties could enable peace with the Palestinians. "We always thought that if we solved the Palestinian problem it would open up the doors to peace with the broader Arab world," Netanyahu said Thursday at the opening of an innovation centre named after Peres. But "if you open up to the Arab world and you normalise relations with them, it will open the door for an eventual reconciliation and peace with the Palestinians," he said. Israeli technology and innovation, Netanyahu said, was a "boon to peace" with Arab states. "Quite a few of the neighbouring countries... are reaching out to Israel and normalising relations with Israel which is a step towards peace because of innovation," he said. "They want it for water, they want it for health, they want it for IT, they want it for solar energy, they want it for everything." Gaza City (Palestinian Territories) (AFP) - A barrage of rockets from Gaza hit Israel during the night, the army said Saturday, hours after five Palestinians were killed during clashes on the Israeli border, in a flareup that could jeopardise truce efforts. The largest projectile attacks in months and the border fatalities came despite talk of progress towards an Egyptian-brokered deal to end months of often violent protests along the border. "Overnight, dozens of rockets were launched from the Gaza Strip at communities in southern Israel," the army said in a statement, putting the exact number in a separate announcement at 30. "The IDF's Iron Dome aerial defense system intercepted approximately 10 projectiles," the army said, adding that two rockets fell within the Gaza Strip while the others landed in "open areas". Israeli medics said seven civilians were being treated for shock. In response to the rockets, Israeli fighter jets, helicopters and drones struck "approximately 80 Hamas targets throughout the Gaza Strip". There were no reports of Gaza casualties as a result of the strikes. Hamas, the militant Islamist rulers of Gaza, did not claim responsibility for the rockets, but Israel holds it responsible for any launches from the coastal enclave. "The rocket fire is conducted in a terror-filled atmosphere which is generated by Hamas in the area of the security fence and in acts such as tonight's events," the army said. Islamic Jihad, the second largest militant group in Gaza, hailed the rocket fire in a statement as a response to "Israeli aggressions", stopping short however of directly claiming responsibility for the launches. A Hamas official said that following the escalation Egypt was again seeking to negotiate a return to calm. - 'Riot dispersal means' - Earlier, five Palestinians aged between 22 and 27 died in separate incidents along the border fence, the Gaza health ministry said. Story continues The army did not comment on the deaths but said around 16,000 "rioters and demonstrators" had gathered along the border, with some setting tyres alight and hurling rocks, firebombs and grenades towards soldiers. Troops responded with "riot dispersal means", a spokesman added. Three of the men were shot dead east of Khan Yunis in southern Gaza, while one was killed east of Jabalia in the north of the coastal territory, the health ministry said. A fifth man died east of Bureij in central Gaza when a hand grenade he was holding exploded accidentally, witnesses said. Palestinians have gathered for protests along the Gaza Strip's border at least weekly since March 30. At least 212 Palestinians have been killed by Israeli fire in Gaza since the protests began, according to figures collated by AFP. The majority have died during protests, while smaller numbers have been killed by airstrikes and tank fire. One Israeli soldier was shot dead by a Palestinian sniper along the border in the same period. The protesters are calling to be allowed to return to lands their families fled or were expelled from in a 1948 war surrounding the creation of Israel and which are now inside the Jewish state. They are also protesting over Israel's crippling blockade of Gaza. Israel accuses Hamas of orchestrating the often violent demonstrations. Israel and Hamas have fought three wars since 2008 and much of the international community considers the Islamist movement a terrorist organisation. - Truce deal at risk - The fresh violence could also scupper hopes of a deal to end the months of protests. Egypt and the United Nations have been brokering indirect negotiations between Hamas and Israel with the aim of calming the situation amid fears of another war. Last week, a rocket fired from Gaza hit an Israeli home, narrowly avoiding killing a family. In response the Israeli army carried out air strikes on around 20 Hamas targets in Gaza. The London-based Arabic newspaper Al-Hayat reported Friday that a deal had been reached that would see the protests end in exchange for an easing of Israel's blockade. Hamas officials denied a deal had been struck but confirmed to AFP that progress was being made. "We expect to reach an agreement very soon," a senior Hamas official said earlier Friday on condition of anonymity. Israel also fully reopened its border crossings with the Gaza Strip this week following a week of relative calm. It allowed dozens of trucks of fuel paid for by Qatar into the strip, having previously banned their entry in response to the border violence. Israel says the decade-long blockade is necessary to isolate Hamas, while critics say it amounts to collective punishment of Gaza's two million residents. By Nidal al-Mughrabi GAZA (Reuters) - Israeli forces shot and killed four Palestinians and wounded 232, 180 of them from live fire, during protests along the border with Gaza on Friday, Palestinian medical officials said. The Israeli military responded with air strikes at three positions belonging to Hamas, the Islamist group that rules the Gaza Strip, an army statement said. It said 16,000 Palestinians had gathered along the Gaza border and hurled grenades, firebombs and rocks at Israeli troops, who responded with "riot dispersal means" and live fire when required. Later, sirens sounded in Israeli towns and communities around the Gaza Strip to warn that militants had launched rockets. The military said the Iron Dome missile interceptor had taken down several of about a dozen rockets fired. Gaza residents then reported more Israeli air strikes. No casualties were reported from either the rockets launched at Israel or from the air strikes in Gaza. Palestinians have been protesting along the border since March 30, demanding an end to Israel's blockade of the territory and the right to return to lands from which they fled or were driven when Israel was founded in 1948. Since the protests began, 212 Gazans have been killed by Israeli troops, according to Palestinian Health Ministry figures. An Israeli soldier was killed by a Palestinian sniper. Egyptian security officials have in the last two weeks been talking to Israeli leaders and officials of Hamas, which runs Gaza, and other factions in an attempt to restore calm along the border. Fawzi Barhoum, a Hamas spokesman, said protests would continue "until we achieve our goals, and foremost is ending the blockade of the Gaza Strip". In the Israeli-occupied West Bank, troops shot dead a Palestinian protester, Palestinian medical officials said, after he was involved in a clash with Israeli soldiers in the village of Al-Mazraa Al-Gharbeya. Hamas said the dead man was a member of their group and had previously served a two-year term in an Israeli jail. The Israeli military said dozens of protesters hurled rocks and explosives at troops who responded with "riot dispersal means" and who fired live rounds in cases when there was a direct threat to life. An army spokesman said the military was aware there had been a fatality and a number of injured among the Palestinians and said the incident was being investigated. (Additional reporting by Ali Sawafta; Editing by Ori Lewis and Toby Chopra) Majdal Shams (AFP) - An election poster at the entrance to Majdal Shams in the Israeli-occupied Golan Heights offers a rare reminder that the Druze community is about to vote for the first time in more than 50 years. As across Israel, the residents of this mountainous region will have the chance to cast their ballots on October 30 for their local councils. But for the Druze of the Golan plateau these elections are different -- and far more controversial. Israel seized the strategic region from Syria in 1967, and later annexed it in a move never recognised by the international community. Now many fear the push for a vote -- the first since Israeli tanks rolled in -- represents just another bid by the Jewish state to try to legitimise its control. Such is the discontent that there has been a campaign to boycott the poll and a string of candidates have pulled out. Dolan Abu Saleh, 40, is still in the race. But he is not holding any public meetings or events and has to content himself with meeting a few voters in his offices. "It is very sensitive," he told AFP. Saleh, who is close to the Likud party of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, recognises that calls for a boycott will likely keep most people from casting their ballots. But he insists that for the Druze living in occupied Golan this vote is a good opportunity to help make their voices heard. Before now Saleh had served two terms as mayor of Majdal Shams, elected both times by local council members who were themselves appointed by Israel's interior ministry. "Between being appointed and being elected, there is no doubt that an election is more democratic," he says. - 'Not for us' - The majority of the 23,000 Druze in the occupied Golan have never opted to become Israeli citizens, according to Saleh. But most are "permanent residents" of the Jewish state who are allowed to vote in the election, while only those who got citizenship can run for office. Story continues This vote is taking place after a group of Druze lawyers petitioned Israel's supreme court for the right to hold it so they can elect a mayor who will improve services for their community. But the influential religious leadership has campaigned against them and, although there is little sign of enthusiasm, the community usually abides by their decisions. In the village of Buqata, residents shut their front doors or shrug their shoulders when questions are asked about the election. "We are not taking part," says an elderly woman dressed traditionally in black with a white veil. Amal Abu Shahin, 47, points at a Syrian flag painted on the wall behind him as he makes his point. "We are Syrian," he says. "This vote is not for us." But the war in Syria has changed the relationship between many in the community and their one-time homeland. Where once Druze from the region dreamt of going to study or work in Syria, now the seven-year conflict has seen more and more youths turn their hopes towards Israel out of pragmatism. "I'm for the elections, we're with Israel now, Syria is over!", says a 24-year-old man, who refuses to give his name. But despite that he will not cast a ballot. "There are people who will check who will vote or not," he explains. - 'Choose the right person' - Political activist Sameh Samara says he can't understand the calls to boycott the vote. Sitting in his house he insists it could help bring better services and rejects the claim it will bolster Israeli claims of sovereignty. It is better "to choose the right person, a child of this earth, rather than have someone imposed on us who is not suitable and not from here," he says. But from his balcony overlooking Majdal Shams and the disputed frontier 500 metres (yards) away, rights activist Wael Tarabieh holds a different opinion. Across the divide that snakes through the mountains lies Syria, where almost everyone here has relatives still living. And for him the election is just an attempt to further cement decades of unlawful occupation. "It is a way to get recognition for the fundamentally illegal presence of Israel," he says. JERUSALEM (AP) Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Friday returned from an unannounced visit to Oman, the two countries confirmed, meeting the Gulf state's leader in the first visit of its kind in over 20 years. The surprise visit was an important accomplishment for the Israeli leader, who frequently boasts of warming behind-the-scenes contacts with Gulf Arab states. But there were few concrete details on his talks with Oman's Sultan Qaboos bin Said. The sultanate has long had a low-key role in fostering negotiations between the Israelis and Palestinians. Days before Netanyahu's visit, Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas also visited Oman, raising the possibility that Oman might be trying to help revive negotiations or push forward a troubled U.S. peace plan. Oman, which sits on the southeastern tip of the Arabian Peninsula, with Saudi Arabia to its north and Iran to its east, also has a long record of being a quiet broker in the region, opting to stay on the sidelines of the rivalry between the two regional powerhouses. Netanyahu and Sultan Qaboos issued a joint statement saying the two sides "discussed ways to advance the Middle East peace process and discussed a number of issues of mutual interest to achieve peace and stability in the Middle East." While Oman's influence over Israel and the Palestinians is limited, its unique regional position could enable it to play a bigger role mediating between Israel and archenemy Iran. Israel has repeatedly expressed concern about Iran's military activities and support for Shiite militias in neighboring Syria and warned that it will not allow Iran to maintain a permanent military presence in Syria. In recent months, Israel has carried out a number of strikes on Iranian positions in Syria. In addition, U.S. sanctions on Iran are to soon go into effect after the Trump administration, with strong Israeli support, backed out of the international nuclear agreement with Iran negotiated by the Obama administration. Story continues Netanyahu's office said he had been invited by the sultan after lengthy communications. Oman state TV carried images of the two leaders meeting and Netanyahu shared a video of his visit on his official social media accounts, calling it "a special visit to Oman making history!" Israel and Oman do not have diplomatic relations. Israel is only officially recognized by two Arab states Egypt and Jordan. The meeting was the first between leaders of the two countries since then-Prime Minister Shimon Peres visited in 1996. A senior Palestinian official said the sultan had offered to play a role mediating between the Palestinians and Israelis, and that Abbas had said he welcomes any "meaningful" peace process. But the official said the visit was mostly connected to Oman's "regional role." The official spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to discuss the matter with the media. Israel and the Palestinians have not held substantive peace talks for the past decade. While President Donald Trump has promised a Mideast peace plan, U.S. relations with the Palestinians have deteriorated and his efforts to produce the "Deal of the Century" have so far proven fruitless. The Palestinians cut ties with the U.S. after the White House recognized Jerusalem as Israel's capital and then moved the American embassy there in May. The U.S. has also cut funding to the U.N. agency for Palestinian refugees and shuttered the Palestinian Liberation Organization office in Washington. All have further alienated the Palestinians. The U.S. has not released details of the plan, but it is widely expected to include a role for Saudi Arabia and other Gulf states. Arab states, including Oman, remain publicly committed to calls for a Palestinian state with east Jerusalem as its capital. Oman has joined a chorus of Arab countries that have strongly condemned Israel's killing of Palestinians in Gaza protests that erupted in May and continued Friday. Netanyahu and his wife were joined on the trip by the head of Mossad, Israel's intelligence agency, his national security adviser, his Foreign Ministry director, and other defense officials. Sultan Qaboos has managed to steer his country through choppy regional politics with a policy of non-interference, helping broker the release of Western hostages in Yemen and providing a back door for communications between Washington and Tehran under the Obama administration. Although it is a member of the Saudi-led six-nation Gulf Cooperation Council, it did not join the kingdom in its boycott of Qatar or the war in Yemen. Netanyahu has repeatedly stated in recent years that Israel has developed good relations with several Arab states, despite a lack of official ties. But he rarely publicizes these contacts or identifies his partners. In the lead-up to Friday's surprise visit to Oman, there have been signs that Israel's behind the scenes dialogue with Arab states is becoming more public. In February, Oman's foreign minister made a rare visit by an Arab official to Jerusalem's Al-Aqsa mosque compound and to the West Bank. The following month, Omani officials joined their Arab counterparts from the United Arab Emirates, Saudi Arabia, Qatar and Bahrain at the White House for a meeting with Israeli national security officials to discuss the dire humanitarian situation in the Gaza Strip. ___ Batrawy reported from Dubai, United Arab Emirates. Associated Press writer Mohammed Daraghmeh in Ramallah, West Bank, contributed to this report. Going through the IVF process can be tricky for same-sex couples: Who will supply the egg and sperm? Who will carry the baby? One couple in Texas found a way for both to take part. Ashleigh and Bliss Coulter, a couple in North Texas, welcomed their son, Stetson, five months ago via IVF. I wanted to be pregnant for so long and so bad, Ashleigh told NBC 5. I always wanted to have a child, I just didnt want to carry the child, Bliss said. Obviously, us being two women, we were like, How can we make this happen?' Ashleigh said. We felt like there has to be a way. The two ended up going to a fertility clinic that allowed them both to carry Stetson, and the process was similar to traditional IVF with a twist. Bliss went through the stimulation of her ovaries and the egg harvest, her doctor, Kathy Doody, told NBC 5. Typically at this point in IVF, a womans eggs would be fertilized with sperm and placed in an incubator in a lab to grow for a few days until they were implanted in the womans uterus. Blisss eggs were put not into incubators but into the chamber of a device called INVOcell and then inserted in Blisss vaginal cavity for five days. She got the embryo off to an early start, Doody explained. The eggs fertilized in her body, and when they returned five days later, we removed the device and froze the embryos. Then, an embryo was transferred into Ashleighs body. Almost like passing the baton, like its a relay race, Doody said. A couple in Texas was able to take turns carrying their son, through the power of IVF. Doctors weigh in on whats at stake. (Instagram: @Ashleigh.Coulter). [Bliss] got to carry him for five days and was a big part of the fertilization, and then I carried him for nine months, Ashleigh said. So that made it really special for the both of us that we were both involved. She got to be a part of it, and I got to be a part of it. The process is known as reciprocal effortless IVF, and it cost about $8,000, which is cheaper than traditional IVF, NBC 5 points out. It seems unusual, but using one mom as a form of an incubator might be better physiologically than the standard method of IVF, Jessica Shepherd, MD, a minimally invasive gynecologist and founder of Her Viewpoint, tells Yahoo Lifestyle. Doctors need to put the developing embryo into a device temporarily, because it needs to be contained in something, Shepherd explains. Then, when its time to retrieve it, doctors are able to find it easily. Story continues Just like more traditional forms of IVF, there are risks with reciprocal effortless IVF. Any time you have a transfer, whether from a petri dish or from a device to the other uterus, theres a risk the egg or embryo can be lost, Shepherd says. The overall health of the moms matters here too, she says: That can dictate how well the pregnancy does. Overall, though, Shepherd says this is a viable option for couples to discuss if they both want to be a part of the process. Bliss and Ashleigh are believed to be the first same-sex couple to carry the same baby. However, a second same-sex couple went through the same procedure at the same clinic subsequently, and had a healthy baby in September. Read more from Yahoo Lifestyle: Follow us on Instagram, Facebook, and Twitter for nonstop inspiration delivered fresh to your feed, every day. Japan and China signed $2.6 billion in business deals and touted their warmer ties on Friday during a rare visit to Beijing by Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe as both face trade challenges from US President Donald Trump. Abe met Chinese President Xi Jinping after a full day of activities that included talks with Premier Li Keqiang and an honour guard with Japan's flag raised outside the Great Hall of the People across from Tiananmen Square. Relations between Asia's two biggest economies have improved in recent years after they sunk to new lows in 2012 when Tokyo "nationalised" disputed islands claimed by Beijing. The last official visit to Beijing by a Japanese prime minister was in 2011. But as Trump's tariffs bite, China has increasingly looked to Japan to serve as a hedge against growing US protectionism. In their meeting, Xi told Abe that "interdependence between the two countries is deepening by the day", and pledged to increase economic cooperation, according to Communist Party mouthpiece the People's Daily. Earlier in the day Abe, standing alongside Li, told a press conference that the two countries must "play a constructive role for the sake of this region's peace and prosperity". "I believe active trade will deepen ties between Japanese and Chinese peoples further," he said. For his part, Li said "international conditions are unstable, and uncertainties have increased", but the countries' economic cooperation would "benefit the development of global free trade". The relationship has rapidly warmed up as Trump has slapped massive tariffs on China while also targeting Japanese exports in his effort to cut US trade deficits, despite touting his personal bonds with Abe and Xi. But despite the feel-good vibes, Abe also delivered a sterner message, a Japanese spokesman said, warning China that "without stability in the East China Sea, there will not be a true improvement in the relationship." Story continues He also told Li that "the international community, including Japan, is watching carefully the human rights situation in China". - Trump 'uncertainty' - Abe travelled with nearly 1,000 delegates from Japanese companies who struck 500 deals worth a total of $2.6 billion, Li said, without providing details. The companies are eager for increased access to China's massive market, while Beijing is interested in Japanese technology and corporate know-how. The two leaders also oversaw the signing of several political agreements, including a currency swap deal and a mechanism to avoid accidental clashes between their militaries which often come in contact in the disputed East China Sea. Hu Lingyuan, director of the Center for Japanese Studies at China's Fudan University, said Trump's trade policy had contributed to closer Sino-Japanese ties. "The uncertainty in Trump policy made Abe feel that he could not bet only on the United States," Hu told AFP. "If he adjusts his relationship with China, he will have more initiative and space in the future when he is negotiating with the United States." China's nationalistic Global Times said in an editorial that "though the US is quite an influential factor in China-Japan ties, the effect is limited". "If Beijing and Tokyo intend to plan their future bilateral relationship based on Washington's attitude, they will only get lost," the state-run daily said. - 'Safeguard free trade' - Abe's three-day trip, which began Thursday, sets up the possibility that Xi will visit Japan next year. Since an awkward 2014 encounter between Abe and Xi on the sidelines of a summit, there have been ministerial visits by both sides and a softening of rhetoric. Li visited Tokyo in May. Abe and Li met on Thursday during a reception to celebrate the signing of the treaty that put Japanese and Chinese relations back on track after World War II. But territorial disputes continue to cause frictions. Just days before Abe's trip, Tokyo lodged an official complaint after Chinese ships cruised around the disputed islands that Tokyo calls the Senkaku and Beijing labels the Diaoyu islands. China has long denounced Japan for what it says is an insufficiently contrite attitude towards its role in World War II. But ahead of the trip, Beijing has taken a more cordial stance than it has in the past. Shinzo Abe, Japan's prime minister, visits Xi Jinping, China's president, in the first state visit by a Japanese leader to China in seven years. - Kyodo News Japans relationship with China is at a historic turning point as the countries signed a series of agreements on Friday, although decades of historic tension still remain with Japan still critical of China's human rights record. Shinzo Abe, the prime minister of Japan, is on his second day of a rare state visit to China, a trip he said marked the new dawn for relations between the countries. From competition to co-existence, Japan and China bilateral relations have entered a new phase, Mr Abe said Friday. He added that relations were at a "historic turning point". Li Keqiang, premier of China's State Council, also praised the bright future of cooperation between the worlds second and third largest economies. Mr Li also boasted of $18 billion (14 billion) in business deals, but Japanese officials disputed the amount saying it was unclear how Beijing arrived at the figure. Indeed Mr Abes visit shows the relationship is on the mend after territorial disputes and a disastrous falling out in 2012 over islands in the East China Sea. Japanese officials reaffirmed Friday that it would not compromise or back down on issues including Chinas human rights record. Both sides have agreed to cooperate on denuclearising North Korea, to continue dialogue about the disputed region and maritime security, and signed a $30 billion currency (23 billion) swap. Chinese soldiers march out to form an honour guard for Shinzo Abe outside the Great Hall of the People, Beijing Credit: GREG BAKER/AFP/Getty Images Mr Abe also met Friday with Xi Jinping, Chinas president, and attended a state dinner in the evening. But despite the public displays of affection, both nations are keeping their distance Japan has invited Mr Xi on a state visit Japan next year though China has not yet accepted. Chinese state media covered Mr Abes visit, but with little fanfare. Pollution was also heavy Thursday in Beijing when he touched down Chinese authorities are known to stop factory production in order to ensure clear blue skies around important events. Story continues Japanese officials as well made it clear signing a broad range of business deals with China was not an official endorsement or participation by Tokyo in Beijings highly touted Belt and Road development programme. Japan and China are both important donor countries, and there could be cooperation in the future, Takeshi Osuge, Japans foreign ministry spokesman, told the Telegraph. Japanese firms may choose to invest in various projects with Chinese companies without Tokyos knowledge. Without us knowing it, the Chinese government might be calling it part of the Belt and Road initiative, Mr Osuge said. But for us, its a private companys decision to join in that project, or invest. Mr Osuge added there were no specific projects being discussed for official cooperation. Beijing (AFP) - Japan's Shinzo Abe and his Chinese counterpart Li Keqiang commemorated the 40th anniversary of a friendship treaty on Thursday, at the start of a rare trip to Beijing by the Japanese prime minister, who is seeking to repair frayed relations. Abe's visit is part of a painstaking courtship aimed at winning over the world's second economy after a disastrous falling-out in 2012, when Tokyo "nationalised" disputed islands claimed by Beijing. Slowly defrosting relations have warmed rapidly in recent months as the two countries face down huge tariffs from US President Donald Trump, who is set on reducing American trade deficits with both countries. Looking to hedge against the US leader, Abe and Chinese President Xi Jinping are expected to discuss how to improve economic cooperation between the world's second and third largest economies when they meet on Friday. Japanese business is eager for increased access to China's massive market, while Beijing is interested in Japanese technology and corporate know-how. During a reception to celebrate the signing of the treaty that put Japanese and Chinese relations back on track after World War II, Li called for the countries to "jointly promote regional peace" and "safeguard multilateralism and free trade," according to state broadcaster CCTV. "Japan and China play an irreplaceable role in the economic development of Asia and even the world," Abe said, according to CCTV, calling on both sides to work together to "promote world peace and prosperity." Abe's visit is the first by a Japanese prime minister since 2011. Since an awkward 2014 encounter between Abe and Xi on the sidelines of a summit, there have been ministerial visits by both sides and a softening of rhetoric. "Our two countries have been making continuous efforts to improve relations," Abe said before flying to Beijing, expressing his hope that the visit would "lift bilateral relations to a new level." Story continues Abe and Xi are likely to focus on a range of potential deals, including joint investments in infrastructure in regional nations including Indonesia and the Philippines. Abe said they also planned to discuss North Korea and territorial frictions -- calling to make "the East China Sea a sea of peace, friendship and cooperation." The Japanese leader, who leaves China on Saturday, will also hold additional talks with Li. - Peace treaty anniversary - Just days before Abe's trip, Tokyo lodged an official complaint after Chinese ships cruised around the disputed islands that Tokyo calls the Senkaku and Beijing labels the Diaoyu islands. Abe's three-day trip sets up the possibility that Xi will visit Japan next year. China has long denounced Japan for what it says is an insufficiently contrite attitude towards its role in World War II. But ahead of the trip, Beijing has taken a more cordial stance than it has in the past. Japanese media have reported Abe is hoping the visit will produce a soft power win in the form of some panda diplomacy, with zoos in Sendai and Kobe apparently angling for new additions. Former Vice President Joe Biden and actor Robert De Niro are the latest critics of President Donald Trump to be targeted by suspected pipe bombs following a wave of similar devices sent to top Democrats this week. A suspicious package addressed to Biden and similar to other packages containing bombs was intercepted at a Delaware mail facility, the Associated Press reports. The FBI said they are investigating the package at a postal service facility in Delaware. New York police are investigating a suspicious package addressed to the actor De Niro and sent to his Tribeca property Thursday morning. Security personnel reached out to police around 5 a.m. Thursday after intercepting the package, an NYPD spokesperson says. The package appeared similar and shared characteristics to packages addressed to Hillary Clinton, Barack Obama, Democratic donor George Soros, Congresswoman Maxine Waters, former CIA Director John Brennan, care of CNN and others. A bomb squad examined the package addressed to De Niro and determined it contained a device similar to the ones found in packages on Tuesday, the NYPD says. The bomb squad removed the package at 6:30 a.m. and transported it to the NYPDs bomb disposal facility in the Bronx, New York. Law enforcement is also investigating another suspicious package at a post office in Delaware, the FBI said Thursday. Thus far, the packages have been sent to people who have spoken out against Trump. De Niro, a vocal Trump critic, received a standing ovation at the 2018 Tony Awards for saying, fk Trump. After initially calling for unity, Trump went on to blame the media for the surge of pipe bombs sent to high-profile Democrats. The President on Wednesday told supporters that the media is at fault for current divisions in American society that lead to events like attempted bombings. Trump doubled down on the comments in a tweet Thursday morning disparaging the press. A very big part of the Anger we see today in our society is caused by the purposely false and inaccurate reporting of the Mainstream Media that I refer to as Fake News, he said. It has gotten so bad and hateful that is beyond description. Mainstream Media must clean up its act. FAST! Story continues A very big part of the Anger we see today in our society is caused by the purposely false and inaccurate reporting of the Mainstream Media that I refer to as Fake News. It has gotten so bad and hateful that it is beyond description. Mainstream Media must clean up its act, FAST! Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) October 25, 2018 Brennan, one of the targets of the suspected pipe bombs, said Trumps critics will not be intimidated into silence, in response to the presidents tweet. Stop blaming others. Look in the mirror. Your inflammatory rhetoric, insults, lies, & encouragement of physical violence are disgraceful. Clean up your act....try to act Presidential. The American people deserve much better. BTW, your critics will not be intimidated into silence. https://t.co/cS5qNiuU7o John O. Brennan (@JohnBrennan) October 25, 2018 Police said Wednesday that the explosive devices sent in the packages were pipe bombs packed with shards of glass, the Associated Press reports. All seven of the bombs sent were disabled by police and no injuries were reported. Amman (AFP) - At least 20 people, most of them school pupils, have been killed in flash floods in Jordan, the emergency services said Friday in an updated toll. A further 35 people were injured following heavy rains on Thursday, including members of the security forces involved in rescue operations, said an official from the civil defence -- Jordan's fire service -- who asked not to be named. He said rescuers were still searching for people missing in the area, a popular tourist attraction around 50 kilometres (30 miles) west of Amman. "Most of the dead were schoolchildren aged 11 to 14 who were taking part in a school trip to the Dead Sea region" when their bus was swept away by floodwaters. Also among the dead were passers-by who had been picnicking in the area, he said, adding that a nearby bridge had collapsed. "Security force personnel who were taking part in the rescue operations were among the injured," he added. The Dead Sea, the lowest point on earth, is surrounded by steep valleys and gullies that frequently see flash floods and landslides. Education Minister Azmi Mahafzah promised a "full inquiry" into the schoolchildren's deaths. He said the bus took a route not agreed upon by the ministry and the organiser of the trip bore full responsibility. Roads leading to the area were closed on Friday morning "to allow the continuation of search and rescue operations", the Directorate of General Security said. The Israeli military said on Thursday it was helping with the operation, sending helicopters and forces specialised in search and rescue. Jordanian television reported that King Abdullah II had cancelled a planned visit to Bahrain to monitor developments. Amman (AFP) - At least 21 people were killed in flash floods in Jordan, most of them children whose school bus was swept away, emergency services said Friday, in what a government newspaper dubbed a "Tragedy at the Dead Sea". Another 35 people were injured following heavy rains on Thursday, including members of the security forces involved in rescue operations, a civil defence official told AFP. A security source said rescuers were still searching for eight people missing in the Dead Sea area, a popular tourist attraction around 50 kilometres (30 miles) west of Amman. "The number of victims has risen to 21. Most of them were schoolchildren aged between 11 and 14, who were on a school trip in the Dead Sea area" when they were swept away by the floodwaters, he said. Security officials said the pupils, their teachers and minders had stepped out of their bus in a tourist area called Al-Miyah al-Sakhina when they were hit by a flash flood that washed them towards the nearby Dead Sea. Also among the dead were visitors who had been picnicking in the area, the civil defence said, adding that a nearby bridge had collapsed. Jordanian television reported that King Abdullah II called off a planned visit to Bahrain and returned home from the Gulf. "My sadness and sorrow are matched only by my anger at anyone who did not take the steps that could have prevented this painful incident," he wrote on Twitter. He chaired an emergency meeting with senior officials and called for a thorough investigation to determine who was responsible for what he termed the "great disaster that hurt us all as Jordanians". Government newspaper Al-Rai on Friday carried the headline "Tragedy at the Dead Sea" on its front page, while Al-Ghad daily said it was a "Black Day". - 'Full inquiry' - A medical source told AFP three Iraqi pupils were among the dead. Private television station Roya showed an Iraqi man crying and saying: "My wife died a month ago and today my son died." Story continues The Dead Sea, the lowest point on earth, is surrounded by steep valleys and gullies that frequently see flash floods and landslides in autumn and winter. Education Minister Azmi Mahafzah promised a "full inquiry" into the school children's deaths. He said the bus had taken a route not agreed upon by the ministry and that the organiser of the trip bore full responsibility. An official at Jordan's education ministry said the school had received permission around a week ago to visit Al-Azraq, the site of a nature reserve east of Amman. Social media users said several parents had at the last minute refused to let their children join the trip, after Jordan's meteorological office warned of severe weather conditions and possible mudslides. Roads leading to the area were closed on Friday morning "to allow search and rescue operations", the Directorate of General Security said. Jordanian television showed scenes from the rescue operation, with dozens of security personnel and local residents searching near the shore of the Dead Sea, with boats also deployed in its waters which had turned brown from mud. Neighbouring Israel's military said that at the request of the Jordanian government, it had sent helicopters and forces specialised in search and rescue to assist in the operation. By Caroline Anderson LOS ANGELES (Reuters) - Robert Durst, the subject of an HBO documentary, "The Jinx," must stand trial in the 2000 murder of his longtime friend, a judge ruled on Thursday at a hearing interrupted at times by outbursts from Durst. Durst, a 75-year-old multi-millionaire, was arrested in 2015 and charged with murder in the shooting death of his confidante Susan Berman. Prosecutors say Durst killed Berman because she could implicate him in the murder of his wife, who vanished in 1982 when the couple was living in New York City. The grandson of a wealthy New York real estate tycoon has pleaded innocent to Berman's murder. He will have a chance to again enter a plea at a second arraignment scheduled for Nov. 8. Los Angeles Judge Mark Windham, at the conclusion of a nearly two-week preliminary hearing during which prosecutors presented evidence, ordered Durst to stand trial on a charge of murder with the special circumstances that he used a gun and killed a witness by ambushing her. Windham said Durst had incriminated himself through his own statements, including comments he made in interviews for "The Jinx." "I order defendant to be held to answer therefore without bail until date of his arraignment," the judge said. If convicted, Durst faces a maximum sentence of life in prison. Durst repeatedly interrupted the hearing. At one point, during a pause in proceedings, he rolled backward in his wheelchair toward the nearest door and said: "And away we go. Bye! Have a good weekend!" The bailiff and one of his attorneys stopped him. Attorneys for Durst argued on Thursday there was insufficient justification for a trial, with no fingerprints or DNA evidence linking him to Berman's death. 'SUCCINCT CONFESSION' Berman, 55, was found dead in Los Angeles at her home on Dec. 24, 2000, shortly after it was revealed that police had reopened an investigation into the disappearance 18 years earlier of Durst's wife, Kathleen Durst. Story continues Durst has never been charged with killing his wife and her body has not been found. Durst's ties to Berman's death, his wife's disappearance and a 2001 Texas slaying for which he was acquitted by a jury were explored in "The Jinx," a six-part series. In the finale, which aired in 2015, Durst was caught on microphone talking to himself, saying: "What the hell did I do? Killed them all, of course." "It's cryptic," Windham said on Thursday, in reference to Durst's recorded comment. "But without explanation from the defendant, it operates as a succinct confession to murders with which he's been confronted." Windham also said he was swayed by Durst's admissions that he approved of the accuracy of 2010 feature film "All Good Things," which was directed by the filmmaker who made "The Jinx" and was based on Durst's life. Durst's approving statements about "All Good Things" were significant because the film portrayed Durst as a killer, prosecutors said in court papers submitted on Tuesday. (Reporting by Caroline Anderson; Writing by Alex Dobuzinskis; Editing by James Dalgleish and Peter Cooney) JEFFERSONTOWN, Ky. (AP) The Latest on the fatal shooting at a Kentucky grocery store (all times local): 5:10 p.m. Police say they are aware of reports that the man accused of fatally shooting two people at a grocery store in Kentucky made a racial comment to a bystander. But Jeffersontown Police Chief Sam Rogers said at a news conference Thursday that he "can't speculate on motive at this time" and that authorities are "pursuing all avenues of the investigation." Rogers did say that surveillance video shows the suspect tried unsuccessfully to enter the First Baptist church in Jeffersontown before he went to the Kroger store Wednesday. The church is headed by a black pastor and has a large African-American membership. Rogers also said the suspect, 51-year-old Gregory Bush, apparently does have a history of mental illness as news outlets have reported. He added that a SWAT team seized a cellphone and computers from the home in Jeffersontown where Bush was living with his parents. Two people were fatally shot at the store Wednesday. __ 3:20 p.m. A nephew of the woman killed in a shooting at a Kentucky grocery store described her as a "warm and giving" person with two sons and multiple grandchildren. Keith Gunn was quoted by the Courier Journal of Louisville on Thursday as saying that Vicki Lee Jones was retired from her job as an office administrator at the Veterans Affairs hospital. Gunn says it is hard to accept his aunt's death "because she was one of the sweetest people you could know" with a "warm and giving" heart. Jones was one of two people fatally shot at a Kroger grocery store in Jeffersontown, Kentucky, on Wednesday. The suspect has been identified as 51-year-old Gregory Bush. He has been charged with murder and other crimes and is being held on a $5 million bond. ___ 3 p.m. Court records show a Kentucky man who police say fatally shot two people at a grocery store punched and choked his elderly parents at their home several years ago. Story continues The parents of 51-year-old Gregory Bush told police in January 2009 that Bush punched his 78-year-old father in the face and grabbed his 74-year-old mother by the neck "and picked her up off the ground." The report says Bush repeatedly unplugged the phone so they couldn't call police and fled the home with a handgun. Police wrote in the report that Bush's parents are "terrified of (his) unpredictable behavior." The citation says Bush's father suffered a possible broken jaw in the attack. ___ 12:40 p.m. A man charged with killing two people at a Kentucky grocery store threatened his ex-wife and punched a deputy sheriff during a court hearing, according to court records. An arrest record from May 2009 says 51-year-old Gregory Bush was in a family court hearing when he became "irate" and shouted obscenities and threats at his ex-wife. When deputies tried to subdue him, he fought off attempts to handcuff him and he punched a deputy twice. He was charged with several counts including assault, resisting arrest and disorderly conduct. Bush was marked as a "suicide risk" on the arrest sheet. The arrest sheet says his ex-wife had an emergency protective order against Bush. In a 2003 incident, Bush was charged with menacing for following a 15-year-old into a movie theater bathroom and putting his hands around her waist. Bush told the girl he "thought we were family" and the girl pushed him away, according to the arrest record. ___ 12:05 p.m. The mayor of Louisville, Kentucky has identified one of the victims in the Kroger grocery shooting as the father of one of his staff assistants. Mayor Greg Fischer said Thursday he's "sick and heartbroken" that two people were shot to death, and says the tragedy "hit close to home." The local coroner's office identified the victims as Maurice Stallard and Vicki Lee Jones. Stallard is father of Kellie Watson, who serves in the mayor's office as his chief racial equity officer. Police said Stallard was shot in the back of the head inside the store and Jones was killed in the parking lot. Gregory Alan Bush was booked early Thursday on two counts of murder and 10 counts of felony wanton endangerment ___ 10 a.m. An arrest citation says a man charged with fatally shooting two people at a Kentucky grocery store shot the first victim in the back of the head. The document says 51-year-old Gregory Bush walked to the back of the Louisville Kroger store, pulled a gun from his waistband and shot a man in the back of the head, and then kept shooting the man multiple times "as he was down on the floor." Police say Bush then re-holstered his gun as he exited the store, and once outside, he shot another victim, a woman, several times. Police say Bush then encountered an armed civilian and the two fired at each other in the parking lot. Neither were injured. Bush is charged with two counts of murder and 10 counts of wanton endangerment. ___ 6:50 a.m. Kentucky authorities say a 51-year-old man has been charged with murder in the shooting at a grocery store on the outskirts of Louisville that left two people dead. Gregory Bush is charged with two counts of murder and 10 counts of wanton endangerment. He was captured shortly after Wednesday's shooting at a grocery store. Jeffersontown Police Chief Sam Rogers says both victims died at the store. Bush was booked into Metro Corrections in Louisville on Thursday. ___ 1:04 a.m. Police in Kentucky aren't yet saying whether they have determined a motive for the fatal shooting of two people at a Kroger grocery store on the outskirts of Louisville. Jeffersontown Police Chief Sam Rogers says one man and one woman died in Wednesday's shooting. Rogers has not identified the male suspect or what charges he may face. Rogers says the man fired multiple rounds at the man inside the store, and shot the female victim multiple times out in the parking lot. A citizen armed with a gun engaged the shooter in the parking lot, but the suspect was able to flee before police captured him on a nearby road. Bratislava (AFP) - French President Emmanuel Macron on Friday went from measured criticism against Hungary and Poland to anger, accusing their leaders "lying" to their people about the European Union. "In Hungary and Poland, some of their leaders played with an unacceptable idea. When I listen to leaders comparing Brussels with Moscow at the ancient (Soviet) times, this is crazy and unacceptable," Macron told a pro-European audience at a public meeting during a visit to the Slovak capital Bratislava. "They are lying to their people," Macron fumed, speaking in English. "When I see big billboards saying 'No Brussels' or 'Stop Brussels'. What are they doing?" Macron said, insisting that the political success of eurosceptic Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban and his nationalist Fidesz party is rooted in the prosperity that EU structural subsidies brought to Hungary after the ex-communist state joined the bloc in 2004. "What are these leaders doing with these crazy spirits and lying to their people like those who promoted the Brexit and left the country right after they won," he added. In an interview published in Czech, Hungarian, Polish and Slovak media earlier on Friday, the French leader adopted a more measured tone warning eastern EU members not to fall out of step with the bloc's principles, singling out Hungary and Poland whose nationalist governments have clashed with Brussels. Macron also insisted that "Europe is not a supermarket", driving home a point he made previously that eastern states could not pick and choose among the bloc's fundamental values. - 'Reciprocal commitment' - Seven months ahead of elections to the European Parliament, Macron said he expected the campaign ahead of the vote to be a duel between "progressives" and nationalists. During a two-day visit to Slovakia and the Czech Republic, Macron also warned that any moves by member states to reduce their payments into the common budget could serve to undermine EU unity, including its single market. Story continues "We cannot try to reduce our contribution to the European budget without understanding what the single market brings. If we want to kill Europe, we should continue like this," Macron said. "Europe isn't a one-way street: it is a reciprocal commitment," he added. Turning to Poland's controversial judicial reforms, Macron said he hoped that "the Polish government will take the necessary steps to address the concerns of the (European) Commission and its partners." Its nationalist government has put Poland on a collision course with the European Union by introducing a string of controversial judicial reforms that the bloc has warned pose a threat to judicial independence, the rule of law and ultimately to democracy. The French leader also noted that "the situation of the rule of law in Hungary is undergoing worrying developments", and pointed to threats to the division of powers and the independence of non-governmental organisations. He also condemned the February murder of a journalist in Slovakia, insisting that "threatening, attacking or killing journalists undermines the foundations of our democracies". Nathenje (Malawi) (AFP) - The gold rush is only four months old in Nathenje, Malawi, but already there are thousands of prospectors digging, shovelling and sifting soil in the age-old search for a nugget that will transform their lives. "Iyi, iyi," ("Here, Here!") is the cry when an excited miner spots any speck of the precious metal and others eagerly gather round at the site, 20 kilometres (12 miles) south of the capital Lilongwe. Traders from neighbouring countries have been paying up to $34 a gram for the gold, according to one local official. But first you have to find it. And much of the hard work done here, in scorching temperatures, brings only disappointment. The miners -- many of them women -- head back down the deep holes dug on the riverbanks of Nathenje river. They emerge with buckets on their heads and, after the silt has been trucked a short distance to drier ground, carefully pour the wet dirt onto a sieve to wash away sediment and examine the remains for signs of gold. Tandizeni Natani barely knew what gold was when she and her fellow villagers left their fields to join in the sudden mining boom. "All I knew was that it was a precious stone," the mother of five children, the youngest of whom is three, told AFP. "On the first day, I made 25,000 kwacha ($34) and I have made about 100,000 kwacha so far, which has enabled me to buy school items for my children." Another villager, Fatima Chikalipo, said she bought a plot of land measuring about five by 10 metres for $7. So far, she had experienced mixed fortunes. "The first days were good but now sometimes we dig on days and we don't find anything. So, I have not seen any tangible benefits yet," she said. "And the price of the gold has gone down. We used to sell for 25,000 kwacha per gram. Now the buyers are offering 20,000 kwacha." - Rumours of underground riches - Using rudimentary picks and shovels, villagers from the nearby settlements of Lumwira and Dzondi have been joined by other Malawians from across the country, more experienced in gold panning. Story continues An informal system of bosses and employees has also sprung up, alongside a makeshift collection of plastic shelters offering basic accommodation. "It's a lot of work," said local man Misheck Chilayison, who bought a plot of land for $55. "We pay women who carry the dirt and pay lorries to drive the sand from the riverbanks to the labourers who wash the soil to look for the gold." Chilayison said the gold rush began as news spread that an Indian man living in Lilongwe had arrived in Nathenje and started digging, apparently armed with geological research. "After a while he ran away because the police were hunting for him as he did not have a work permit. But he left two of his men here who brought in a couple of their friends," he told AFP. Traditional village head Katondo -- who only uses one name -- told AFP that the discovery of gold was a blessing for the area. "This is a huge relief for us, that is why we are all flocking there because this year the harvest was bad," he said. "There was going to be serious hunger. Now people make money and they can buy maize to feed their families." But illegal gold mining is a dangerous enterprise, and the government wants to regulate the industry to generate income. "Government is in the process of formalising illegal mining," said Jalf Salima, the government's director of mining, adding that licensing would be introduced and illegal miners evicted. - Calls for regulation - Salima said the quality of gold at Nathenje and five other gold-rush sites in Malawi was not known, and more exploration was needed as the gold in the river silt had been washed downstream from its source. British colonial rulers undertook a geological survey in 1960, shortly before Nyasaland -- as it was then known -- became independent Malawi, but little surveying has been done since. Percy Maleta, chairman of the Nyasa Mining Cooperative, said the authorities had to end illegal gold mining and develop a long-term strategy to exploit the reserves successfully. "We have been lobbying government to train local miners so that they can form cooperatives or mining clubs. This will ensure that they are better equipped and able to sell the gold on the formal market," he said. "Buyers smuggle the gold out of the country using illegal routes so Malawi is losing a lot of our gold." He said buyers were mostly from neighbouring Mozambique, Tanzania, Zambia and Zimbabwe, buying the gold at $24 to $34 per gram. For now, Damino Matenga, an intermediary buyer who came to Nathenje from southern Malawi, wants things to continue just as they are. "Business is so good that I am able to feed my family and send my children to school," he said. "This is genuine gold and we do not have any problem with international buyers." Singapore (AFP) - A convicted Malaysian drug trafficker was hanged in Singapore on Friday, officials said, after the city-state rejected last minute efforts to save him. The Malaysian government -- which decided earlier this month to abolish the death penalty -- had asked neighbouring Singapore to spare the 31-year-old man from the gallows on humanitarian grounds. But Malaysia's Ministry of Foreign Affairs said in a statement late Friday that Prabu N Pathmanathan was executed in Singapore's Changi Prison earlier in the day, in the presence of family members and a representative from the Malaysian embassy. The ministry said the Malaysian government had asked Singapore to spare the man on humanitarian grounds but respects the city-state's laws. Capital punishment, which is carried out by hanging, is a legacy of British colonial rule in both countries. Pathmanathan was sentenced to death in 2014 for trafficking 227.82 grams (7.97 ounces) of heroin into Singapore, media reports said. Family lawyer N. Surendran said in a statement that the family received a letter from the office of the Singapore president on the eve of the execution denying their appeal for clemency. The family has now claimed the body, their lawyer added. There was no comment from the Singapore government. Amnesty International, which had opposed the execution, urged Singapore to follow the example of Malaysia under the government of Prime Minister Mahathir Mohamad, who was swept to power in May elections. Malaysia's cabinet earlier this month decided to abolish capital punishment, a prelude to parliament amending the law. A moratorium on executions will be imposed in the meantime, with more than 1,200 people on death row set to win a reprieve. "This cruel and irreversible punishment has no place in any society, as more than two-thirds of the worlds countries have come to recognise," said Rachel Chhoa-Howard, Amnesty Internationals Singapore researcher. Singapore however has maintained that capital punishment is an effective crime deterrent and is crucial to fighting drugs. Amnesty said it is aware of six executions carried out in Singapore this year and eight in 2017, all for drug offences. Police in Salisbury, England, have arrested a 45-year-old man they say tried to steal an original copy of the Magna Carta from Salisbury Cathedral late Thursday. The unnamed suspect used a hammer to smash holes in the protective glass box surrounding the 803-year-old document, but was unsuccessful in reaching the document itself. Police arrested a man they say attempted to smash and grab an original copy of the Magna Carta in Salisbury, England. (Photo: ASSOCIATED PRESS) The Wiltshire police said the would-be thief was detained after alarms sounded and he attempted to flee. He walked out of the Chapter House and tried to leave the cathedral via our work yard and he was detained there and restrained until the police arrived, the Very Rev. Nick Papadopoulos, the dean of Salisbury, told the BBC. He had been carrying a hammer so our guys were very courageous, said the dean. The Very Rev. Nick Papadopoulos stands next to the damaged glass case. (Photo: PA Ready News UK) Only four original copies of the Magna Carta remain in existence. The cathedral bills its document as the best preserved original manuscript of the four. It was unharmed in the incident. King John signed the Great Charter in 1215, approving basic legal principles such as equality before the law and the right to a fair trial. At the time it was the solution to a political crisis in Medieval England, Salisbury Cathedral say on its website, but its importance has endured as it has become recognized as a cornerstone of liberty influencing much of the civilized world. The basic tenets of the Magna Carta inspired other major political documents including the U.S. Constitution, the Bill of Rights and the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. Related Coverage Bungling Robbery Suspects Receive Much-Deserved Dose Of Karma 10 Dumb Criminals Caught In The Act Destroying the Commons: How the Magna Carta Became a Minor Carta Love HuffPost? Become a founding member of HuffPost Plus today. This article originally appeared on HuffPost. Police have arrested a suspect in connection with at least a dozen packages containing likely pipe bombs mailed in the past week to people critical of President Donald Trump. Cesar Sayoc, 56, of South Florida was taken into custody on Friday, FBI Director Chris Wray confirmed at a press conference. Sayoc has been charged with five federal crimes interstate transportation of an explosive, illegal mailing of explosives, making threats against former presidents and certain other persons, threatening interstate communications, and assaulting current and former federal officers the Department of Justice said. He faces up to 48 years in prison. In remarks at the White House before a youth leadership summit, Trump congratulated local and national law enforcement agencies for apprehending the suspect. The president pledged to prosecute those responsible them, him, her, whoever it may be, he said to the fullest extent of the law. We must never allow political violence to take root in America, Trump said. The bottom line is that Americans must unify, he went on. His comments echoed those he has delivered at rallies and sent over Twitter in the wake of the bomb scares, calling for unity and a calmer discourse but refusing to tone down his own inflammatory rhetoric. Minutes after addressing the threats to prominent Democrats, Trump claimed Republicans are often attacked for supporting him. Come to think of it, does anyone get attacked more than me? Trump said. The development came hours after two additional packages were discovered, one addressed to Sen. Cory Booker (D-N.J.), and the other to former Director of National Intelligence James Clapper. A suspicious package was also found Friday in Burlingame, California, addressed to Democratic donor Tom Steyer, CNN and NBC reported. A law enforcement source told CNN the package was similar to the other ones sent to politicians and public figures this week. Were thankful that everyone we work with at NextGen America and Need to Impeach is safe, Steyer said in a statement Friday, referring to his super PAC NextGen and his campaign to impeach Trump. We are seeing a systematic attack on our democracy and our rule of law that extends much further than just one isolated terrorist in Florida. Whether its voter suppression, voter intimidation, attacks on our free press, gerrymandering, or attempted violence the trust and norms that are the actual basis for our civil society and political system are being eroded. Story continues Authorities have heightened their search in Florida, as several of the packages may have passed through the state. The FBI said Friday that the package for Booker was found in a Florida mail facility. Throughout the week, more than 10 packages containing potential explosive devices have been mailed to lawmakers and other public figures critical of Trump, including former President Barack Obama, former President Bill Clinton, Trumps 2016 presidential opponent Hillary Clinton, Rep. Maxine Waters (D-Calif.), actor Robert De Niro and former CIA Director John Brennan. The package addressed Brennan was sent to CNNs New York City bureau, sparking an evacuation Wednesday. Brennan is an MSNBC and NBC contributor. On Friday, postal officials intercepted the package for Clapper, a CNN contributor, before it could reach the CNN offices, where it was addressed, according to the network. The Sacramento County Sheriff Department also said Friday that a suspicious package found at a Sacramento mail facility and addressed to Sen. Kamala Harris (D-Calif.) contained an explosive device. FBI officials said they believed the package to be related to the others mailed out this week. All of the confirmed packages listed the Florida office of Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz (D-Fla.), the former chairwoman of the Democratic National Committee, as the return address. Asked why Sayoc appeared to be targeting Democratic politicians and others critical of Trump, Attorney General Jeff Sessions said he didnt know but that the suspect appears to be a partisan Wray added: Its too early at this stage to discuss motive. Investigators identified Sayoc based on a fingerprint found on the package sent to Waters and a DNA sample from a previous arrest in Florida, DOJ officials said Friday. When law enforcement arrested him on Friday in Plantation, Florida, they also took possession of a van covered in stickers supporting Trump and criticizing Democratic officials. Sayoc is a registered Republican and a self-described promoter and booking agent. He has a history of multiple arrests, including for felony grand theft and misdemeanor retail theft. A spokeswoman for Brevard College in North Carolina confirmed to HuffPost that Sayoc attended the school for three semesters starting in the fall of 1980 and did not graduate. Read more about Sayoc here. Authorities were initially vague about the content of the packages, calling them simply suspected explosive devices. Wray elaborated at Fridays press briefing that each device contained roughly 6 inches of PVC pipe, as well as a small clock and wiring. These are not hoax devices, he said. Wray noted that the investigation was ongoing and warned there could be other packages not yet intercepted. Sara Boboltz, Sarah Ruiz-Grossman and Antonia Blumberg contributed reporting. This is a developing story. Please check back for updates. Related Coverage New York Police Investigating Suspicious Package At Address Linked To Robert De Niro Donald Trump Attacks 'Hateful' Media Amid Flurry Of Suspicious Packages Another Suspicious Package Addressed To Cory Booker Found Bomb Mailing Suspect Cesar Sayoc Was A Big Trump Fan With A Criminal History Also on HuffPost Love HuffPost? Become a founding member of HuffPost Plus today. This article originally appeared on HuffPost. Manama (AFP) - US Defence Secretary Jim Mattis is to reaffirm America's role as a guarantor of stability in the Middle East, in a policy speech before Arab leaders on Saturday. Mattis, who arrived in Bahrain on Friday, will address the Manama Dialogue at a time of strained US ties with key ally Saudi Arabia over the murder earlier this month of journalist Jamal Khashoggi. Mattis will reiterate "our long term commitment to ensuring and helping these partners and allies... re-instill stability in a very chaotic region", said Principal Deputy Secretary of Defence for International Security Affairs Katie Wheelbarger. He will call on Arab nations to "continue to look to the United states as your security partner of choice because you can rely on us and depend on us to be there long term", Wheelbarger told journalists travelling with Mattis. The defence secretary's speech comes as Russia keeps up its military intervention in Syria and Washington accuses Tehran of sowing instability across the region. Wheelbarger did not say whether Mattis would directly address the Khashoggi murder in his speech. A critic of Saudi Arabia's powerful Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, Khashoggi was murdered after entering the Saudi consulate in Istanbul on October 2. On Thursday, CIA Director Gina Haspel briefed US President Donald Trump on the latest developments in the investigation after a fact-finding mission to Turkey. Pro-government Turkish media said that intelligence officers showed Haspel video images and audio tapes of Khashoggi's killing gathered from the consulate. His murder has generated international outrage and undermined relations with Riyadh, which Washington depends on to counter Shiite power Iran's regional influence. Bahrain is a key ally of both Saudi Arabia and the US, which bases its Fifth Fleet in the small island kingdom. The Sunni-ruled kingdom in 2011 crushed a Shiite protest movement that had been inspired by the Arab Spring, accusing Iran of provoking unrest. Michael Avenatti has apparently said that he believes Democrats should support his 2020 presidential bid for one particular reason: He is a white man. In an interview with Time, Mr Avenatti discussed his potential candidacy for the presidency. During the interview, the lawyer said the next Democratic nominee for President of the United States should be someone like him, according to the magazine. I think it better be a white male, Mr Avenatti said, referring to the Democratic nominee. The lawyer later insisted that he had been misquoted. When you have a white male making the arguments, they carry more weight, the interview said. Should they carry more weight? Absolutely not. But do they? Yes. Mr Avenatti received backlash for his comments. Some pointed out other high-profile women as potential candidates for the 2020 presidential election, including Senators Elizabeth Warren and Kamala Harris. In response to the criticism, The New York lawyer gave an exclusive interview with right-wing website Daily Caller and insisted Time misquoted him entirely. I never said that, thats complete bulls***, Mr Avenatti told the Daily Caller. Thats my comment, complete bullsh***. Time, however, said they stand by their reporting. Mr Avenatti rose to prominence this year for suing President Donald Trump on behalf of adult film star Stormy Daniels. Since then, Mr Avenatti has made a name of himself as the anti-Trump lawyer, often representing clients or providing media networks with material damaging to the Trump administration. Mr Avenatti believes he would be one of the few potential candidates that can push back against Mr Trump. Look, I can be aggressive at times," Mr Avenatti told Time. "I didnt get to where I am by being a pushover, O.K.? I dont generally go after people offensively, but if somebody comes after me, I will absolutely meet them every step of the way and then some, no question." People enter a voting precinct to vote in the Michigan primary at Robert Trombly Elementary School on Aug. 7, 2018, in Grosse Pointe Park, Mich. Michigan could be a bellwether of how the rest of the country may vote in November. (Photo: Bill Pugliano/Getty Images) With less than two weeks until the midterm elections, voter suppression is in the news in states from North Dakota (where a new law requiring voters to register with street addresses rather than post office boxes is likely to disenfranchise many Native Americans living on reservations) to Georgia (where the Republican secretary of state, who is also running for governor, has implemented a strict ID match policy that has stricken hundreds of thousands of mostly minority voters from the rolls). In Kansas, whose secretary of state who helped run the White Houses investigation of nonexistent voter fraud is also running for governor, the only polling station in a predominantly Hispanic town of 27,000 was shut down. And the long-standing protections for minority voters in the Voting Rights Act were mostly gutted by the 2013 Supreme Court decision in Shelby County v. Holder. But some states are going in the other direction. Michigan is leading the way with a ballot referendum for an amendment to the state Constitution: Proposal 3, known as Promote the Vote. It would implement automatic voter registration for anyone getting a drivers license or ID (unless the person choses to opt out), allow same-day registration with proof of residence and make it easier for deployed military personnel to vote. It would also introduce no-excuse absentee voting, allowing residents to mail in a ballot for any reason. And it would restore straight-party-ticket voting, allowing voters to check one box to choose all the candidates from one party, which could increase voting for down-ballot races that attract less attention. Polling indicates that the proposal is likely to pass. Todd Cook, the campaign director of the Promote the Vote campaign, told Yahoo News that the response in the state has been mostly positive; the main question among voters has been about the security protocols surrounding same-day registration. Proposal 3 has been backed by a wide array of civic organizations. Story continues A lot of different groups and a lot of different viewpoints have come onboard, said Cook. The Detroit Regional Chamber of Commerce is onboard, the Michigan state AFL-CIO, the Police Officers Association of Michigan, just kind of a vast range of different groups and viewpoints have come onboard, so Im pleasantly surprised. I also think it speaks to the fact that this is a common-sense proposal. I wish I could tell you the things in the proposal are groundbreaking or unique, but everything in this proposal is already happening in some other state around the country. The proposal was originally pushed by such groups as the American Civil Liberties Union of Michigan, the League of Women Voters, and the state and local branches of the NAACP. According to the National Conference of State Legislatures, 17 states plus the District of Columbia have same-day registration, and 27 states plus D.C. allow no-excuse absentee voting. Straight-ticket voting is available in only eight states and was eliminated by the Michigan Legislature in 2016. Another initiative on the ballot in Michigan, Proposal 2, would create an independent commission to draw congressional and state legislative districts. This is an attempt to eliminate partisan gerrymandering by the Legislature, which redraws the lines every 10 years when a new census comes out. The proposal would turn the job over to a commission with members of both major parties and independents charged with establishing geographically compact and contiguous districts of equal population, reflecting Michigans diverse population and communities of interest. A half-dozen other states, including California, also have nonpartisan or bipartisan commissions to draw legislative district lines. Jocelyn Benson, the Democratic candidate for secretary of state in Michigan, supports both measures. She has said that a purge of voter rolls by the outgoing Republican in that position led to Hillary Clintons narrow 10,000-vote loss in the state in 2016. Mary Treder Lang, the Republican candidate for secretary of state, opposes the ballot measures as a progressive power grab that will cost Michigan taxpayers millions of dollars and add more bureaucracy, red tape and government regulations. But she said she would implement the proposals if they pass. How likely are the measures to become new constitutional amendments? Enthusiasm for the proposals has been high, beginning with getting them on the ballot. Michigan state law required 315,654 signatures and in July, supporters submitted more than 430,000 signatures for Proposal 3. A poll earlier this month found 72 percent support for expanding voting rights and 19 percent opposing it. The same poll found 55 percent support for the independent redistricting plan. The process of getting measures on the ballot varies by state, so the path Michigan is taking to expand voting rights would not work everywhere else in the country. There are other ballot initiatives related to voting in play this November, including a Florida amendment that would restore voting rights to felons who have completed their sentence. A recent poll shows the measure leading 65 percent to 28 percent; it requires 60 percent to pass. A Nevada measure that would institute automatic voter registration is also on the ballot, and independent redistricting plans are up for a vote in Colorado and Utah. Georgia is on the brink of history ahead of November's midterm elections. Democrat Stacey Abrams, 44, is seeking to become the state's first black female governor but faces a tough challenge in the shape of Georgia's secretary of state, Brian Kemp. Heres our introduction to one of the defining election races of the autumn. Who are the candidates? The significance of a Stacey Adams victory in a state once at the centre of slavery and segregation cannot be understated. Achieving it will depend on her winning the votes of liberal residents of Atlanta, the birthplace of Dr Martin Luther King Jr. Much of the rest of Georgia remains fiercely Republican. Actually hailing from Madison, Wisconsin, and raised in Gulfport, Mississippi, Ms Abrams is a Yale law graduate and the author of eight romance novels under the pen name Selena Montgomery. Her opponent is the unabashedly Trumpian Mr Kemp, 55, Georgias secretary of state, who has called the contest a battle for literally the soul of our state. A self-styled politically incorrect conservative, Mr Kemp has proudly brandished a shotgun in a TV spot for his campaign and boasted of owning a big truck, just in case I need to round up criminal illegals and take em home myself. His appeal to knee-jerk right-wingers as the antidote to the progressive force represented by Ms Abrams is clear. If she can inspire the African-American vote, a Democratic victory would echo that pulled off in last years special election when scandal-hit Republican Roy Moore was toppled by Doug Jones. What are the key issues? Education, immigration, gun control and healthcare are all at the heart of the contest in Georgia, particularly the lack of hospitals and jobs in rural areas. Stacey Abrams (Getty) Another cause of particularly pressing concern is voting itself, with the states exact match law seeing 534,000 registrations scrubbed from the electoral roll since 2016. According to the Palast Investigative Fund, 340,000 were improperly removed on the mistaken assumption that the person concerned had moved house. Story continues The purging process also means that 53,000 registrations are currently pending with less than two weeks to go before the vote, often as a result of typos or minor grammatical technicalities, 70 per cent of which relate to black voters who might be expected to turn out for Stacey Abrams, according to The New York Times. Civil rights groups have filed a federal lawsuit over the issue but Mr Kemp whom Ms Abrams called the architect of voter suppression on The Daily Show with Trevor Noah - has insisted the matter is a diversionary tactic on behalf of her supporters to distract from her extreme agenda. The right to vote is a right. My father was arrested helping people to register, she has retaliated. Critics of the Ms Abrams have attacked her over what they characterise as her tax and spend approach to policy, particularly in light of the revelation that she herself owes $50,000 (38,680) to the Internal Revenue Service and more than $170,000 (131,500) in debt from credit cards and student loans, incurred supporting her parents after they suffered losses because of Hurricane Katrina and suffered serious illness. I have paid my taxes, unlike Ms Abrams, when they were due, Mr Kemp jibed in a recent debate in front of the Atlanta Press Club. President Trump has made his opinions known here too, telling his Twitter followers: Brian Kemp will be a GREAT Governor of Georgia. Abrams will destroy the State. Many caravan participants express optimism in their vision of the US as president tweets: Go back to your country Migrants hitchhike on a truck along the highway to Arriaga from Pijijiapan, Mexico, on 26 October. Photograph: Ueslei Marcelino/Reuters Hoping to avoid crushing tropical heat and the attention of Mexican immigration officials members of the migrant caravan began walking before dawn on Friday as they began a punishing 100km trek to the next station on their journey. The first groups set out from the town of Pijijiapan at around 1.00 on Friday morning, intending to make as much progress as possible to the next town, Arriaga, before the heat of the day. The group of several thousand people is still some 1,000 miles from the border crossing into the US, but their journey could be twice that if they head to Tijuana, the destination of a much smaller caravan which crossed Mexico in April. Resting before she set out, Dyana Avila, 24, said she was still determined to reach the US, where she hoped to find work so she can pay for epilepsy treatment for her three-year-old nephew. My dream is to go there, work and save enough money to help my family, she said. I can hopefully then have my nephew come to the United States legally, with a visa. The caravan has pushed through police blockades, closed borders and inclement weather as it winds its way through Mexico. Eventually, it will push up against Donald Trump, who has turned the caravan into a campaign wedge issue in the US midterm elections. The president has been firing up his base by branding the caravan an invasion. He has threatened to slash US assistance to governments in Central America and floated unsubstantiated stories about Middle Easterners moving northward with the migrants. On Wednesday, Trumps defence secretary, Jim Mattis, announced that 800 soldiers would be sent to the US border. But caravan participants appear unfazed by Trumps bluster. Story continues Many, including Avila, expressed optimism in their idealized vision of America: a country of justice and opportunity the opposite, they said, of the oppressive and corrupt governments back home, whose misrule has sent them fleeing with little more than the clothes on their back. We think hell change his way of thinking and let us through, Avila said of the US president. Whats were asking God for is that he allows us to enter the United States so that all this sacrifice doesnt go in vain. At times the journey has taken on the appearance of a biblical exodus: entire families, including babies in arms and people in wheelchairs, plodding through the punishing heat and downpours through the scrubby lowlands of southern Mexico. A woman baths her daughter as she and others, part of caravan from Central America en route to the US, rest in Pijijiapan on 25 October. Photograph: Adrees Latif/Reuters Just as the group reached Pijijiapan on Wednesday, Trump tweeted another threat, telling them: Turnaround, we are not letting people into the United States illegally. Go back to your Country and if you want, apply for citizenship like millions of others are doing. It is not possible to apply for citizenship from abroad, and the US is obliged by both international and domestic laws to consider all applications for asylum. And simply heading home is inconceivable for many in the caravan, who fled death threats, or forced recruitment by street gangs in their home cities. I cant go back. Theyll kill me, said Darwin Ramos, 30, who fled the rugged Olancho region of Honduras after being forced to work for a drug cartel. US political considerations of are from the migrants minds. Jimmy Pena, 17, a painter from El Salvador, gave a blank stare when told of the politics at play in the United States. But he expressed little doubt the caravan will cross the US border. I dont know why theyd be against us if were not terrorists or narcos, he said. There are babies here, pregnant women, people looking for a better life. Rodrigo Abeja, a Mexican member of the migrant support organisation Pueblo Sin Fronteras, who is accompanying the caravan, was very aware of the elections. But he confessed: It worries me, the repercussions this [caravan] could cause. But, he added: Its more important to accompany [the caravan] than worry about white voters, sitting down, watching TV, drinking beer and contemplating the election. Ex-sir? Philip Green with Kate Moss in 2014 (PA) If MPs calls to strip Sir Philip Green of his knighthood then the High Street titan wont be the first. Green is facing allegations of sexual harassment and racist abuse, only revealed in parliament after he had successfully got a gagging order on the claims to be kept secret. It is alleged that he spent 500,000 trying to silence alleged victims of sexism, racism and bullying. But the affair, which has been described as Britains #MeToo moment and compared to the Harvey Weinstein scandal in the US, has led to fresh calls for the controversial tycoon to be stripped of his knighthood. The Top Shop boss had already faced the same threat in the wake of the BHS pensions scandal. There have also been questions if Lord Hain was right to name him in the House of Lords. But if Green does lose his knighthood, he would join a select band of others who have suffered a similar fate. Fred Goodwin Fred the Shred Goodwin (PA) The former Royal Bank of Scotland lost his knighthood in January 2012. Goodwin was blamed after RBS bought Dutch bank ABN Amro at the height of the 2007 financial crisis, which led to RBS being bailed out by taxpayers to the tune of 45bn by taxpayers. Last month it was announced, it was reported that the man dubbed Fred the Shred had amassed a pension pot worth 17million despite his public disgrace. Robert Mugabe Robert Mugabe received an Independence medal from Prince Charles in 1980, in addition to his knighthood (PA) Zimbabwean tyrant Robert Mugabe was stripped of his title in 2008, 14 years after he received the award from the Queen. Mugabe, who was ousted from power in 2017 after 37 years in charge, was bestowed an honorary Knight Commander of the Order of the Bath. He could use the letters KCB, but not the title Sir. He was stripped of his title after opposition supporters were attacked ahead of elections in 2008. Nicolae Ceausescu On his way to the Palace, Romanias dictator Nicolae Ceausescu in 1978 (PA) Romanian dictator received an eye-raising knighthood in 1978, during the height of the Cold War. He was stripped of the award the day before he was executed, along with his reviled wife, Elena, by a revolutionary firing squad on Christmas Day 1989. Story continues Elena screamed You sons of bitches! at her executors just before her and her detested husband were shot. Soldiers fired 120 bullets. Jean Else Dame no more: Jean Else (PA) Not quite in the same bracket as those above, former Manchester headteacher Jean Else lost her damehood in 2011 after being found guilty nepotism, financial mismanagement and making illegal payments to staff. Her Damehood had been awarded in 2001 for her work in education. She is the only woman to have her Damehood revoked. Benito Mussolini Benito Mussolini (PA) Italys fascist leader Benito Mussolini was given an honorary knighthood in 1923. The award allowed him to appear in the next years issue of Whos Who. By 1940, when Britain was at war with Italy, his knighthood was revoked. Mussolini died five years later, his body and that of mistress Claretta Petacci, hung upside down and on a girder and beaten with hammers, after being shot dead. Women running to make history include, clockwise from top left, Kristi Noem, Stacey Abrams, Kyrsten Sinema, Christine Hallquist, Rashida Tlaib, Deb Haaland. As you may have noticed, the Year of the Woman catchphrase originally used in 1992, when voters elected more women to Congress than ever before in the wake of Anita Hills allegations against Supreme Court nominee Clarence Thomas is back with a vengeance. It began with a slow burn after the 2016 elections, heated up with the Hill-like bravery of Christine Blasey Ford at the Brett Kavanaugh hearings, and has lately exploded in use to reference the record number of women running for office in the upcoming Nov. 6 midterm elections. And whatever you think of the phrase itself, 2018, according to the Center for American Women and Politics (CAWP), is record-breaking regarding women candidates running for offices across the board U.S. Senate, U.S. House, state legislatures, and statewide offices, including governor races in 16 states, from Alabama to Wyoming. Deb Haaland is running for Congress in New Mexico. (Photo: AP Photo) Women have secured a record number of nominations for executive and legislative offices at the state level, said CAWP director Debbie Walsh in a press release. As states across the country gear up for redistricting in 2020, the winners of these races will play an important role in the shaping of our nations politics for the next decade. Of the 16 states with women gubernatorial nominees in 2018 (up from the last record of 10, first set in 1994), four have never had a woman governor: Idaho, Georgia, Maine, and South Dakota. In Iowa, where incumbent Kim Reynolds, a Republican, is on the ballot after being appointed last year, no woman has ever been elected governor. Women of color, who currently hold just eight (2.6 percent) of statewide elected executive offices, are 10 percent of all nominees and 30 percent of women nominees for statewide elected executive office (including governor) this year. Kyrsten Sinema is running for the U.S. Senate in Arizona. (Photo: Getty Images) Also a record breaker: the number of general election major-party match-ups in congressional races that will be contested between women. With more women running than ever before, it is not surprising that we would see more races in which both parties nominate a woman, Walsh said. We look forward to the day when races such as these are as commonplace as all-male political contests. Story continues Below, hear answers to questions from Yahoo Lifestyle put to six women candidates aiming to become firsts whether its transgender governor (Vermont) or Native American Congresswoman (New Mexico) in the national and statewide offices theyre vying for. They are: Christine Hallquist of Vermont (D), who would be the states first transgender woman governor; Rashida Tlaib of Michigans 13th Congressional District (D), who would be the first Muslim woman in Congress (along with Ilhan Omar, running in Minnesota); Stacey Abrams of Georgia (D), running to be the states first African-American woman governor; Kyrsten Sinema of Arizona, who would be the states first female and openly bisexual member of the U.S. Senate (D); Kristi Noem (R) of South Dakota, who would be the states first female governor; and Deb Haaland (D) of New Mexicos First Congressional District, who would be the first Native American Congresswoman. What inspired you to run for this office? I was raised to not stay on the sidelines when someone is being hurt. The corporate assault on my neighbors and Americans across the nation is creating harm to the air we breathe, impacting our quality of life at home and work. We all deserve a right to live in a just and equitable society. Rashida Tlaib Rashida Tlaib is running for Congress in Michigan. (Photo: AP Photo) I believe we have so much untapped potential in this country, but Washington isnt the one to unleash it. To really turn this country around, were going to need a few strong governors who care enough to do big things to lift people up, strengthen families, and give young people a new hope in the American Dream. Kristi Noem If elected, you would be a first. What sort of responsibility does that carry? How do you feel about it being a part of the conversation? Im running for governor because I care about the issues I want to expand connectivity in rural Vermont, combat climate, and make health care accessible to all, to name just a few and that should not be overshadowed by my gender. That said, I dont want people to ignore my identity either. There is an undeniable significance to what weve already achieved with our historic primary win, and to become the first transgender governor would be an important milestone for transgender people. The community benefits from visibility and positive representation, and to provide that would be an honor. It tells trans youth that the skys the limit for them. Christine Hallquist Christine Hallquist is running for governor of Vermont. (Photo: AP Photo) I am not alone. Other women of color are coming with me. Ilhan Omar, [contender for U.S. House Rep. of Connecticuts Fifth District] Jahana Hayes, Deb Haaland, Ayanna Pressley [poised to be the first African-American woman elected to Congress in Massachusetts], and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez [of New York, who would be the youngest woman in Congress ever] all made history. Together, we will help uplift Americans who have felt left out and unheard for far too long. Rashida Tlaib Stacey Abrams is running for governor of Georgia. (Photo: Getty Images) I grew up on a farm in rural South Dakota. We never had boy chores or girl chores. We just had a list of things to do and believe me, they had to get done. Whether managing our ranch or writing public policy, thats how Ive always approached my job. Sure, I didnt always finish the chores the same way my brothers did, but I did them my way, and I was judged by the end result. If I am fortunate enough to serve as South Dakotas first female governor, Ill expect the same. Kristi Noem Congress has never heard a voice like mine because, in over 240 years, there has never been a Native American woman elected to serve in that role. Im a single mother from Albuquerque. I know what it is like to rely on food stamps and WIC, to sit in the waiting room for three hours holding a sick child, and to have to decide between buying groceries and paying the rent. My hope is that I honor the sacrifices my parents and ancestors made to make sure I could even be here today. Maybe the next generations wont be faced with so many firsts as we increase indigenous representation in Congress. Deb Haaland Whats your No. 1 priority for your state or district? We need to expand connectivity. Many rural areas of the state still lack high-speed internet service in the 21st century this is outrageous and has seriously stunted economic growth in these regions. My background in utilities means Ive spent a lifetime thinking about how to improve our infrastructure. I want to work with electric utility companies to lay a fiber-optic network throughout the state. Once we have universal broadband access, we open up opportunities for development, education, and economic growth that simply werent possible before. Christine Hallquist Everywhere I go, Arizonans tell me theyre concerned about the rising cost of health care. All Arizonans deserve access to quality, affordable health care, yet it remains out of reach for too many families. We need to fix whats broken in our system and fight for what is working like protections for people living with preexisting conditions. Ive heard from Arizonans worried that their child who has asthma or their grandmother who has diabetes wont be able to get the care they need if Congress takes away these protections. Too often, steps to lower health care costs and fix the system have gotten bogged down in partisan politics. That has to stop. Kyrsten Sinema Kristi Noem is running for governor of South Dakota. (Photo: Getty Images) What was your biggest concern about running for office? Not connecting with my neighbors in the community before the haters did. I wanted my residents to meet me before someone else or a group tried to define me. We put in the hard work to raise money and build a team to be the first people talking to voters in our district. Rashida Tlaib I am not concerned about running because I realize we are building an inclusive campaign that lifts up every Georgian no matter who you are, what your background is, or what state youre running in. We are building something Georgians have never seen: a coalition of voters from all 159 counties who are ready for bold, decisive leadership that uplifts every family. Stacey Abrams Running is always tough on your family. I have three kids, a husband who only wants the best for our family, a mom with the biggest heart you can imagine, and a huge extended family who care so deeply. These races are not easy on them. Its not always executed perfectly, but we do try to talk about why Im doing this, why I feel called to seek this office. I do think that helps. They know were fighting for something important. Kristi Noem What women in politics or elsewhere do you look up to? Too many to choose from but right now, I am thinking of one of my high school teachers, Laveta Browne. She taught at Southwestern High School for years. She uplifted me so much during this campaign just by showing up. She stood at a polling location from the time it opened until closing. She came from a political family and reminded me of how it used to be done. Rashida Tlaib Justice Sandra Day OConnor has always inspired me. Justice OConnor was the daughter of a rancher and went on to become the first woman to sit on the Supreme Court. Thats a powerful story. Shes a woman of integrity and grit who represents the best of Arizona values. Kyrsten Sinema Ive always admired Margaret Thatcher. She was one tough lady. Kristi Noem Read more from Yahoo Lifestyle: Follow us on Instagram, Facebook, and Twitter for nonstop inspiration delivered fresh to your feed, every day. The hole in the ozone layer is gradually closing but the emissions are slowing down the healing process - Television Stills Mysterious emissions which are preventing the hole in the ozone layer from closing are coming from China, scientists have discovered. Researchers from the University of Bristol have found significant ongoing fumes of a potent ozone-depleting substance have their origin eastern China. The compound, carbon tetrachloride, contributes to the destruction of the Earths ozone layer, which protects us from harmful ultraviolet radiation. As a result, the production of carbon tetrachloride has been banned throughout the world since 2010 for uses that will result in its release to the atmosphere. However, recent studies have shown that global emissions have not declined as expected, with about 40,000 tonnes still being emitted each year. But until now, nobody knew where they were coming from. Alongside collaborators from South Korea, Switzerland, Australia and the USA, researchers at Bristol used ground-based and airborne atmospheric concentration data from near the Korean peninsula and computer modelling to work out the direction of the emissions. Their results, published in the journal Geophysical Research Letters, show that around half of the missing global emissions of carbon tetrachloride originated from eastern China between 2009 and 2016. Lead author, Dr Mark Lunt, from the University of Bristols School of Chemistry, said: Our results show that emissions of carbon tetrachloride from the eastern Asia region account for a large proportion of global emissions and are significantly larger than some previous studies have suggested. Not only that, but despite the phase out of carbon tetrachloride production for emissive use in 2010, we found no evidence for a subsequent decrease in emissions. The ozone hole was first discovered using ground-based data that began in the 1950s and in the mid-1980s, scientists from the British Antarctic survey noticed that the October total ozone was dropping. Story continues The hole has continued to widen ever since, peaking in 2000 at 15 million square miles and remaining fairly constant over the past 15 years, except for a few spikes. However new modelling by Nasa in Janaury showed that most recent spikes in ozone depletion were caused by volcanic eruptions rather than chlorine in the atmosphere and the hole is actually closing. But it would be closing more quickly if all countries stuck to the ban, researchers believe. The results from the new study shows emissions are now actually increasing again and a new source of emissions from the Shandong province of China began after 2012. Recent reports have suggested that very large amounts of this gas may be emitted inadvertently during the production of other chemicals such as chlorine. Emissions which damage the ozone later were banned under the Montreal Protocol Dr Matt Rigby, Reader in Atmospheric Chemistry at the University of Bristol and co-author, said: Our work shows the location of carbon tetrachloride emissions. However, we dont yet know the processes or industries that are responsible. "This is important because we dont know if it is being produced intentionally or inadvertently. There are areas of the world such as India, South America and other parts of Asia, where emissions of ozone-depleting gases may be ongoing, but detailed atmospheric measurements are lacking. "The recovery of the ozone layer will have been delayed by these emissions, compared to our expectations. " It is hoped that this work can now be used by scientists and regulators to identify the cause of these emissions from eastern Asia. Dr Lunt said: Studies such as this show the importance of continued monitoring of ozone-depleting gases. There is a temptation to see ozone depletion as a problem that has been solved. "But the monitoring of man-made ozone-depleting gases in the atmosphere is essential to ensure the continued success of the phase-out of these compounds. By Robin Emmott BRUSSELS (Reuters) - European members of NATO urged the United States on Thursday to try to bring Russia back into compliance with a nuclear arms control treaty rather than quit it, diplomats said, seeking to avoid a split in the alliance that Moscow could exploit. In a closed-door meeting at NATO, Pentagon, U.S. State Department and National Security Council officials briefed alliance envoys on U.S. President Donald Trump's decision to pull out of the 1987 Intermediate-range Nuclear Forces Treaty, which rid Europe of land-based nuclear missiles. Diplomats present said Germany and other European allies called for a final effort on Washington's part to convince the Kremlin to stop what the West says are violations, or possibly renegotiate it to include China. "Allies want to see a last-ditch effort to avoid a U.S. withdrawal," one NATO diplomat said on condition of anonymity because of the classified nature of the meeting, which took place two days after senior U.S. official John Bolton informed Russian President Vladimir Putin of the plans in Moscow. "Nobody takes issue with Russia's violation of the treaty, but a withdrawal would make it easy for Moscow to blame us for the end of this landmark agreement," a second diplomat said. NATO declined to comment on the details of the meeting but issued a statement saying that allies assessed "the implications of Russia's destabilizing behavior on our security." "NATO allies will continue to consult on this important issue," it added. Earlier this week, NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg laid the blame on Russia for violating the treaty by developing the SSC-8, a land-based, intermediate-range Cruise missile which also has the name of Novator 9M729. Russia denies any such violations. NATO allies including Belgium and the Netherlands, which host U.S. nuclear weapons facilities in Europe, warned in the North Atlantic Council, NATO's highest decision-making body, of a public outcry if the United States were to try to install medium-range nuclear weapons on their territory again. Stoltenberg said on Wednesday he did not think this would lead to reciprocal deployments of U.S. missiles in Europe as happened in the 1980s. European allies see the INF treaty as a pillar of arms control and, while accepting that Moscow is violating it by developing new weapons, are concerned its collapse could lead to a new arms race with possibly a new generation of U.S. nuclear missiles stationed on the continent. Diplomats said the U.S. officials did hold out the possibility that the United States may delay its formal withdrawal to after a planned meeting between Putin and Trump in Paris on Nov. 11. The treaty foresees a six-month notification period for any withdrawal, also potentially giving Washington time to negotiate with Moscow before finally pulling out. (Reporting by Robin Emmott; Editing by Hugh Lawson) Former Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich said Thursday that if Democrats attempt to subpoena President Donald Trumps tax returns after the midterm elections, the Republican party can find out if the bitter nomination battle of Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh was worth it. Gingrich, a Republican who served in the House for two decades, was speaking at a live event with The Washington Post on Thursday when moderator Karen Tumulty asked if the fight over Kavanaugh was worth the political fallout. The judge faced a chorus of opposition after he was accused by several women of sexual misconduct during his time as a student in high school and college, claims he vehemently denied. He was ultimately confirmed this month in a slim 50-48 vote. When Tumulty asked what would happen if a Democratic-controlled House demanded Trumps tax returns, the former lawmaker alluded that the Kavanaugh fight was political from the outset and that the justice could be a key ally to help protect the president should that happen. This is a billionaire who has fought lawsuits his entire career and hes never noticed them. He doesnt care. Thats why he has lawyers. So they can come at him from 100 levels hell just hire 100 lawyers, Gingrich said. I dont think he has any fear of the Democrats. He added that if the House requested Trumps tax returns, the party would then be trapped into appealing to the Supreme Court, and well see if the Kavanaugh fight was worth it. If Dems take control of the House and subpoena Trump's tax returns, Gingrich told @ktumulty that the legal fight would go to the Supreme Court "AND WE WILL SEE WHETHER OR NOT THE KAVANAUGH FIGHT WAS WORTH IT." Audible gasps in audience as he spoke: https://t.co/LkE6CbkUA1 Mary Jordan (@marycjordan) October 25, 2018 Democrats have reportedly been studying ways to obtain the presidents tax returns as the prospects of the party winning the House have crystalized. The New York Times reported earlier this month that lawmakers may try to use an obscure, century-old provision in the tax code to do so, but the demand may set up a legal fight that would likely make its way up to the Supreme Court. Story continues Gingrich has been a staunch ally of the president, but also said Thursday that he believes House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi will likely become the chambers next speaker, putting the odds at two out of three. I would say, first of all, Nancy Pelosi is a very smart, very tough person who has earned her position by just brute hard work, by applying her intelligence and by applying a network that has sustained her for a long time, Gingrich said. Anybody who thinks theyre going to outmaneuver her is up against somebody who has spent literally her lifetime shes been in this business forever. Democrats need to pick up 23 seats in the November elections to take control of the House. Love HuffPost? Become a founding member of HuffPost Plus today. This article originally appeared on HuffPost. * U.S. exit leaves NATO in difficult position on INF treaty * NATO focuses on Russian violations, avoids criticism of Trump (Adds Russian comment, details on missile defences) By Robin Emmott BRUSSELS, Oct 24 (Reuters) - NATO's top official on Wednesday blamed Russia for breaching a landmark nuclear arms pact that Washington is talking about quitting, but said he did not believe the Russian threat would lead to new deployments of U.S. missiles in Europe. The NATO allies are due to meet on Thursday to hear Washington explain the thinking behind President Donald Trump's move to quit the 1987 Intermediate-range Nuclear Forces Treaty, which rid Europe of land-based nuclear missiles. European allies see the INF treaty as a pillar of arms control and, while accepting that Moscow is violating it by developing new weapons, are concerned its collapse could lead to a new arms race with possibly a new generation of U.S. nuclear missiles stationed on the continent. In his first remarks since Washington announced on Saturday that it planned to pull out of the INF Treaty, NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg lay blame on Russia for violating the treaty by developing the SSC-8, a land-based, intermediate-range Cruise missile which also has the name of Novator 9M729. But he said he did not think this would lead to reciprocal deployment of U.S. missiles in Europe as happened in the 1980s. "We will assess the implications for NATO allies, for our security, of the new Russian missile ... but I don't foresee that allies will station more nuclear weapons in Europe as a response to the new Russian missile," Stoltenberg told a news conference. He spoke a day after senior U.S. official John Bolton informed Russian President Vladimir Putin of the plans in Moscow. Trump has said that the United States will develop new intermediate-range missiles unless Russia and China agree to halt development of their own. Military experts believe the United States would be better off modernising its long-range missile deterrent and ensuring that it could penetrate sophisticated Russian air defences, rather than developing a new class of medium-range rockets. Story continues "It's an extremely dangerous intention," Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said of Trump's comments when asked about them by reporters on a conference call. "It will make the world more dangerous." The INF treaty, negotiated by then-President Ronald Reagan and Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev and ratified by the U.S. Senate, eliminated the medium-range missile arsenals of the world's two biggest nuclear powers and reduced their ability to launch a nuclear strike at short notice. U.S. Cruise and Pershing missiles deployed in Britain and West Germany were removed as a result while the Soviet Union pulled back its SS-20s out of European range. But since 2014, the United States accuses Russia of breaching the INF by developing the SSC-8 though Moscow denies it is in violation and says the planned U.S. withdrawal from the INF pact is dangerous. "All allies agree that the United States is in full compliance ... the problem, the threat, the challenge is Russian behaviour," Stoltenberg said. "NATO is in favour of arms control but to be effective, arms control agreements have to be respected by all parties," Stoltenberg added. STRAIN ON NATO A U.S. exit from the INF treaty would put another strain on NATO allies already shaken by Trump's demands for higher defence spending by the Europeans. "It is another headache for the secretary general because there is no agreement in NATO about what to do," said Lukasz Kulesa, an arms control expert at the European Leadership Network think-tank. "European allies are not really sure where the U.S. strategy is going," he said. The treaty requires the United States and Russia "not to possess, produce, or flight-test" a ground-launched cruise missile with a range capability of 500 km to 5,500 km (310-3,420 miles), "or to possess or produce launchers of such missiles." At a NATO summit in July all 29 allies, including the United States, said they were "fully committed to the preservation of this landmark arms control treaty." NATO envoys are due to be briefed by a U.S. arms control official on Thursday in Brussels. They are concerned about the fate of other arms control and safety pacts with Russia, including the 2010 New START nuclear treaty which can be extended beyond 2021 by mutual agreement. Stoltenberg said he still hoped the United States and Russia could agree to extend the New START treaty, which also limits deployed land- and submarine-based missiles and nuclear-capable bombers, although Trump has described it as a bad deal. (Additional reporting by Andrey Kuzmin and Maria Kiselyova in Moscow; editing by Richard Balmforth) The Devon and Cornwall police poster (Devon and Cornwall Police) A police force is handing out posters to householders telling children not to trick or treat at their home during Halloween. Devon and Cornwall police say the posters can be used by those who find trick or treat a frightening experience. For some members of our community #Halloween can be a frightening experience, reads the message posted by police on Facebook and Twitter. Download and print our Sorry no trick or treat poster for your window or front door, and offer it to vulnerable relatives of neighbours. Children in Scotland in Halloween costumes (PA) The yellow poster features a pumpkin and can be displayed in windows. In recent years weve seen an increase in the number of people participating in Halloween fun.Bob Bunney from the Devon and Cornwall Police Prevention Department told the Falmouth Packet newspaper. We say to anyone whos going trick-or-treating to think about other people, particularly the elderly and vulnerable, as they may get worried or even frightened if strangers are continually calling at their door during the evening. People shopping for pumpkins in Suffolk (PA) We dont want to discourage anyone or spoil anyones fun, but we ask people not to call at homes displaying the Sorry, no trick or treat poster and not to be persistent if your requests are declined. The poster appears to be popular. Responses from locals online ask where they can get the posters. Halloween, or All Saints Eve, is a festival celebrating the dead and is thought to date back to the early Celtics, has become an increasingly popular celebration in the UK. In 2001, YouGov estimated that Brits spent some 12 million on Halloween products such as sweets , pumpkins and costumes. By last year that had risen to an estimated 320 million. Dubai (AFP) - A civilian is killed every three hours in Yemen, Oxfam said Friday, calling on the United States, Britain and other European states to suspend arms sales to Saudi Arabia. "One civilian has been killed every three hours in fighting in Yemen since the beginning of August, with many more people succumbing to disease and hunger," Oxfam said in a statement. Citing data collected by the Civilian Impact Monitoring Project, linked to the United Nations global protection clusters, the aid group said 575 civilians were killed between August 1 and October 15, including 136 children. "Oxfam is calling on the UK, US and other governments to suspend arms sales to the Saudis because of their disregard for civilian lives in the war in Yemen," read the Oxfam statement. Saudi Arabia leads a pro-government military alliance that has battled Yemen's Iran-backed Huthi rebels since 2015, pushing the impoverished country to the brink of famine. The UN categorises Yemen as the world's worst humanitarian crisis, warning Tuesday that 14 million people now face a serious threat of famine. Following the murder of journalist Jamal Khashoggi -- the Washington Post columnist and Saudi critic killed in his country's Istanbul consulate this month -- rights and aid groups have urged Western states to suspend arms sales to Saudi Arabia. Riyadh is the number one buyer of weapons from the United States. Germany last week said it had suspended the export of arms to Saudi Arabia pending "clarification" of how Khashoggi died. France and the US have declined to suspend arms deals with Saudi Arabia. Paris says none of its arms are used in the Yemen war. The UN estimates nearly 10,000 people have been killed in Yemen since 2015. Rights groups say the number could be five times as high. Andrea Horwath speaks to reporters at the Ontario Economic Summit in Niagara-on-the-Lake, Ont., on Oct. 25, 2018. (Yahoo Canada Finance) Ontario NDP Leader Andrea Horwath called Premier Doug Ford unfriendly to the provinces business interests, suggesting the Conservative government has created uncertainty on all levels since taking office. Speaking to reporters on the sidelines of the Ontario Economic Summit in Niagara-on-the-Lake, Ont., Horwath said Fords heavy-handed undoing of policies brought in by the previous Liberal government has made it harder to build a prosperous and secure economy. One of the concerns I continue to hear is the erratic behaviour of this government. Business has always told me they want stability . . . in terms of changes that affect business, the opposition leader said. Whether thats wages or regulations or tax changes or environmental assessment processes, businesses want predictability that helps them be able to invest. Since winning office in June, Ford has taken a number of actions aimed at luring outside investment in the province and lowering costs for business. Fords government announced plans on Tuesday to repeal chunks of the previous governments Fair Workplaces, Better Jobs Act. The changes include freezing the minimum wage at $14 until at least 2020, and repealing equal pay for equal work on the basis of employment status. Horwath acknowledged that Fords open for business policy platform likely resonated with many business leaders at the summit during the provincial election campaign. Since taking office, however, she said Fords decisions feel like they are based on who is in the premiers ear at any moment in time, instead of whats best for Ontario and Ontarios business, and are not backed by clear data and evidence. Asked about the provinces much derided online cannabis store, Horwath blamed Fords petty vendetta against Toronto City Council, which he shrunk to 25 seats from 47, for wasting time that should have been spent preparing for online pot sales. The hiccups occurred specifically because the government didnt utilize its time appropriately over the summer, she said. We have a government that was making changes on the back of a napkin. Story continues Horwath also took aim at Ford over the governments decision to axe funding for three satellite university campuses in the Toronto area. Merrilee Fullerton, Minister of Training, Colleges and Universities, said in a statement that the government is no longer in a fiscal position to fund the campuses in Brampton, Markham, and Milton. When I spoke to the mayors of those communities, not only was there deep concern about the direction that this government is now taking, but also disbelief in the lack of discussion, Horwath said. Im hopeful that this was an oops moment, and it will be corrected. Ford is scheduled to address the Ontario Economic Summit on Friday afternoon. Download the Yahoo Finance app, available for Apple and Android. A seven-alarm fire that tore through a 150-year-old church in Massachusetts miraculously spared a painting of Jesus Christ, WFXT reports. The piece of artwork, which hung near the front doors of First Baptist Church in Wakefield, Mass., somehow survived the massive blaze which was likely caused by a lightning strike completely unscathed. Wakefield's historic First Baptist Church was ravaged by fire Tuesday evening. But this painting of Jesus was somehow left unharmed by fire, smoke, or water. https://t.co/5qj2vIA29spic.twitter.com/9wJF1OjmJn The Boston Globe (@BostonGlobe) October 24, 2018 Shocking footage of the fire shared on social media shows the church engulfed in heavy smoke and flames. As firefighters battle the growing inferno, part of the church's 180-foot spire can be seen toppling over. Although members of the congregation say they are deeply saddened by the loss of the historic building, some have been able to find comfort in the painting's survival. "Its a beautiful sign of hope," Maria Kakolowski, one of the church members, told WFXT. "I am personally just taking it as a sign and a reminder that the Jesus, the Christ that we serve, is still alive and even though our church building is gone, our church is here. The God that we serve is still here." "Our kids are sad," said Heather McCarthy, a parent whose kids attended the church's affiliated nursery school, added. "My middle son was in tears." "The kids do a Halloween parade every year that they were getting ready for. To think of it not being in this church is tough, but you know, we'll figure something out," she added. Paris (AFP) - The warring parties in World War I signed no less than 16 peace treaties at the end of the devastating conflict, the most important being the 1919 Treaty of Versailles in which the victorious Allies made Germany accept responsibility. Here are the main accords. - Brest-Litovsk: March 3, 1918 - The first peace treaty of the conflict, it was agreed between Russia -- which had sided with the Allies -- and Germany and other members of its Central Powers coalition. Inked in the German-occupied city of Brest-Litovsk, today's Brest in Belarus, it followed a December 1917 armistice sought by an overwhelmed Russia immediately after its October 1917 Marxist revolution. The terms were harsh: Russia lost to Germany large parts of its western territory in the Baltic states, Finland and Poland, and more than 30 percent of its population. - Versailles: June 28, 1919 - Signed in the Hall of Mirrors at the Palace of Versailles outside Paris exactly five years after the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand that sparked the war, this treaty designated Germany responsible for losses and damages from the war. Among the terms, Germany was ordered to pay crippling war damages, which became a source of deep national resentment that fuelled Nazi propaganda and is seen as a key underlying cause of World War II. Germany was divided by the Danzig corridor which isolated eastern Prussia from the rest of the country. Berlin lost 15 percent of its territory and 10 percent of its population. The regions of Alsace and Lorraine were returned to France and the Saarland region in Germany was placed under an international mandate for 15 years. The treaty was never ratified by the United States Senate. - Saint-Germain-en-Laye: September 10, 1919 - This treaty established peace between the Allies and defeated Austria, and consecrated the dismantlement of the Austro-Hungarian empire into several smaller states, a source of many future tensions. Signed at the castle of Saint-Germain-en-Laye outside Paris, it recognised the creation of Czechoslovakia and the merger of southern Slav states, that were to become Yugoslavia. Story continues Romania expanded to include Transylvania and Bessarabia, and Poland was granted land occupied by Austria and Germany. This left a separate Austria with 6.5 million inhabitants and Hungary with eight million. - Neuilly: November 27, 1919 - Allied powers signed this treaty with Bulgaria, which had joined forces with Germany in 1915, in the Paris suburb of Neuilly. It saw Sofia lose land to the newly formed Yugoslavia, to Romania and to Greece, leaving Bulgaria without direct access to the Aegean Sea. - Trianon: June 4, 1920 - The Treaty of Trianon was concluded at Versailles between the Allies and Hungary, which lost two-thirds of the land it controlled as part of the Austro-Hungarian empire. It meant that three million ethnic Hungarians found themselves living outside their country, most of them in Romania. - Two with Turkey - Treaties signed with Turkey led to the dissolution of the once-mighty Ottoman empire and defined most of the borders of modern-day Turkey. The first was inked at Sevres, in France, on August 10, 1920. Its terms led to Turkey's war of independence and a conflict with Greece, and was superseded by the Lausanne treaty on July 24, 1923, that ended the conflict. Signed for the Allies by Britain, France and Italy, the treaties saw the country lose its Arab possessions, with Britain receiving a mandate for Palestine and Mesopotamia, and France awarded one for Lebanon and Syria. Almost 1.3 million ethnic Greeks were forced to leave Asia Minor and about 500,000 Turks left Greece. The US military is to be deployed to the border with Mexico, it was reported on Thursday, with James Mattis, the defense secretary, poised to sign deployment orders sending 800 troops to the region. The move is being seen as a response to a "caravan" of 7,000 Central American migrants, which is edging its way north through Mexico, with the intention of crossing into the US and claiming asylum. Donald Trump, the US president, is obsessed with the caravan, seeing it as catnip for his core voters ahead of the November 6 midterms. On Thursday morning he tweeted that he was "bringing out the military" to address what he's calling a national emergency at the southern border. Border crossings this spring were at a 40-year low. Around 300,000 people have crossed this year - well down from the early 2000s, when over a million crossed the border annually. Mr Trump on Wednesday evening told a rally in Wisconsin that the military was "all set." Mr Mattis is now believed to be finalising details of where the troops will come from, where they will be deployed, and what their role will be. The troops will not engage in lethal operations to stop the migrants, CNN reported. Instead they are expected to provide fencing, wall materials and other technical support at several key points along the border where it is believed the migrants may try to cross. The migrant caravan, pictured passing through Huixtla, southern Mexico, on Wednesday In this their role will be similar to that of the national guard, which was deployed in April and helps with manual labour. There are 2,200 national guard troops now serving on the border; 1,145 soldiers in Texas, 115 in New Mexico, 580 in Arizona and the remaining 360 in California. The troops sent by Mr Mattis will also provide tents and medical care for border authorities in those areas. They retain the right of self-defence, but border patrol officers will still be the ones physically stopping illegal migration. It is not yet clear if all or part of the new deployment will be federally-activated national guard forces - those currently there were sent by individual states, in response to the April announcement - or active duty troops. The troops are expected to be in position next week in advance of a possible arrival of some of the caravan. Steven Woolfe, the only British MEP to vote against moves to make European parliament expenses more transparent (Getty) A politician who has blasted the EU for being wasteful with taxpayers money was the only British MEP to vote against new transparency measures for expenses, Yahoo UK can reveal. A majority of MEPs this week backed the introduction of rules designed to improve the European parliaments 35m-a-year expenses system. The issue created a rare moment of consensus among British parties, even managing to unite the Greens with UKIP. Only one British politician outright opposed the move to make MEPs more accountable Steven Woolfe. The former UKIP man, who now sits as an independent, sharply criticised the EU over expenses after it emerged European Commission president Jean-Claude Juncker spent 22,600 on a private plane journey. No one in their right mind ever believed that there wouldnt be an expenses scandal like this in the European Union because everyone knows that its one of the most wasteful institutions in the globe, he told Talksport last August. It never has its accounts signed-off, its auditors are always pointing out that theres fraud and waste across the EU. But Woolfe opposed the push to clean-up the European parliaments controversial expenses system. On top of their salaries, MEPs receive a general expenditure allowance of 3,950 a month to cover the cost of running their constituency office. Unlike politicians at Westminster, they are not required to provide receipts to prove how their expenses money is spent because the European parliament says it would be an administrative burden. They are also not required to return unused funds. Green MEP Molly Scott Cato has accused Woolfe of hypocrisy (European Parliament) Many MEPs already voluntarily keep receipts and publishing records of their spending. An amendment seeking to make those practices compulsory was made to a report on the EU budget voted on in Strasbourg on Wednesday. It said MEPs should be required to keep receipts for all spending from their general expenditure allowance and return any unspent money. Woolfe found himself on the losing side in the vote on the amendment, which was passed with the support of a majority of British MEPs. Story continues Green MEP Molly Scott Cato told Yahoo UK his decision smacked of hypocrisy given that he had been first to point the finger about the wastefulness and lack of accountability of EU intuitions. This is public money and the public deserves to know exactly how it is spent, added Scott-Cato, who is among the majority of British MEPs who publish their accounts online. Woolfe also voted against an amendment which stipulated that the allowance may not be used to cover personal expenses or to fund grants or donations of a political nature. The only other British MEP to join him was Conservative Sajjad Karim. UKIP MEPs abstained. Richard Ashworth, a former Conservative who now sits with the centre-right EPP group, abstained on both amendments. The renewed push to tighten the rules of the general expenditure allowance comes just a month after a group of journalists lost their legal battle to obtain details of MEPs expenses claims. The European Court of Justice ruled in favour of the European parliament, who say it would be an excessive administrative burden for MEPs to account for all their spending. MORE: Court blocks bid to end secrecy over MEP expenses ATHENS (Reuters) - The rival leaders of ethnically divided Cyprus agreed on Friday to open more checkpoints along the militarized frontier that separates them, marking a rare sign of cooperation in the deadlocked conflict. Greek Cypriot leader Nicos Anastasiades and Turkish Cypriot leader Mustafa Akinci were meeting for the first time in about six months, but they stopped short of announcing the resumption of peace talks that collapsed last year. The leaders had a "frank exchange of views" on the way forward, they said in a joint statement after meeting at a United Nations compound on the island on early on Friday. Anastasiades and Akinci agreed to open one new checkpoint in the west of the island and another in the east. The crossing points are due to be opened on Nov. 12 and will ease interaction between populations estranged for decades until the first checkpoints opened in 2003. There are presently seven checkpoints dotted along the 180-km (112-mile) ceasefire line splitting Cyprus east to west, which is patrolled by U.N. peacekeepers. The island was split in a Turkish invasion in 1974 triggered by a brief Greek-inspired coup. U.N.-led peace talks between the two sides collapsed in acrimony in Switzerland in July 2017, mainly due to disagreement over the role Turkey could play in a post-settlement Cyprus. The perils of the stalled process have underscored simmering tension between Cyprus's internationally recognized Greek Cypriot government and Turkey in overlapping claims of jurisdiction for offshore oil and gas research. The matter also strains ties between NATO allies Greece and Turkey. (Reporting by Michele Kambas; Editing by Helen Popper) Nicosia (AFP) - Rival Cypriot leaders agreed Friday to open the first new crossing points in eight years across the island's divide in a move to improve the climate of the deadlocked talks process, the UN said. It was the first formal meeting between the two leaders since a UN-backed peace conference in Switzerland also involving the main outside powers collapsed in acrimony in July last year. "The leaders are pleased to announce that on November 12, 2018, crossing points at Lefka/Aplici (in the northwest) and Dherynia/Derinya (in the east) will be open," a UN statement said after the leaders' meeting. Greek and Turkish Cypriot leaders had agreed in 2015 that the two additional crossings through the UN-patrolled buffer zone that divides the island should be made ready for use. The opening of more crossings is seen as an essential element of trust building between the two communities that lived in virtual isolation from each other until Turkish Cypriot authorities cleared the way for the free movement of people in 2003. Currently, there are seven official crossing points between the breakaway Turkish Cypriot north of the island and the government-controlled south, but the last crossing to open was in 2010. President Nicos Anastasiades and Turkish Cypriot leader Mustafa Akinci met inside the UN-protected area in the divided capital Nicosia to try to move closer to resuming formal reunification talks. The UN statement said the leaders "had a frank exchange of views on the way forward. They confirmed their readiness to engage constructively with (UN envoy) Jane Holl Lute, who will be visiting the island on October 31." UN chief Antonio Guterres has instructed Lute to gauge the "true extent" of convergence on key issues and the willingness of the sides to incorporate novel proposals as part of an overall solution. He reported to the UN Security Council last week that a deal to end the island's more than four-decade-long division was "still alive" despite the collapse of last year's peace conference in Switzerland. Story continues Cyprus has been divided since 1974 when Turkish troops invaded its northern third in response to a coup sponsored by the military junta then in power in Athens seeking to unite the island with Greece. - 'Looser federation' - Successive peace proposals since the late 1970s have been based on reunifying the island as a bizonal, bicommunal federation. In recent days, Anastasiades created a stir among Greek Cypriots by floating the idea of a looser, decentralised federation, that critics said would amount to little more than a confederation of two separate states within the European Union. On Friday, the president tweeted: "We have reaffirmed that the solution sought is a bi-zonal bi-communal federation. I explained to Akinci and discussed my proposal for a more functional solution by decentralising some powers." Anastasiades has yet to elaborate publicly on what his proposals on a "looser federation" are. The United Nations has made clear it will not fully engage in a new peace process unless Cypriot leaders are committed into entering negotiations in a spirit of compromise. Friday was only the second time the two leaders have met face to face since last year's abortive peace conference. The previous meeting was an informal dinner in April at which they agreed to disagree. The Swiss peace conference collapsed over the security arrangements for a reunified island. The Greek Cypriot leadership is deeply opposed to Turkey retaining any long-term troop presence on the island or the right to intervene to safeguard Turkish Cypriot interests. Under the island's 1960 treaty of independence, Greece and Turkey, along with former colonial ruler Britain, secured rights to intervene to safeguard the island's sovereignty, rights the Greek Cypriots want scrapped. Turkish Cypriots are reluctant to do so, having endured armed attack and isolation in besieged enclaves for a decade after Greek Cypriots unilaterally changed the constitution in 1963. By Michelle Nichols UNITED NATIONS (Reuters) - Russia failed on Friday to get the U.N. General Assembly to consider calling on Washington and Moscow to preserve and strengthen an arms control treaty that helped end the Cold War and warned that if the United States quits the pact it could raise the issue in the U.N. Security Council. President Donald Trump said on Oct. 20 that Washington planned to quit the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces (INF) treaty which Mikhail Gorbachev, the last Soviet leader, and Ronald Reagan had signed in 1987. It eliminated all short- and intermediate-range land-based nuclear and conventional missiles held by both states in Europe. Washington has cited Russia's alleged violation of the treaty as its reason for leaving it, a charge Moscow denies. Russia in turn accuses Washington of breaking the pact. Russia had proposed a draft resolution in the 193-member General Assembly's disarmament committee, but missed the Oct. 18 submission deadline. On Friday, it called for a vote on whether the committee should be allowed to consider the draft, but lost with only 31 votes in favor, 55 against and 54 abstentions. "In a year, if the U.S. withdraws from the treaty and begins an uncontrolled build-up of weapons, nuclear-capable weapons, we will be confronting a completely different reality," Andrei Belousov, deputy director of Russia's Department for Nonproliferation and Arms Control, told the committee. He questioned whether the United States was preparing for a war, asking: "Why is it then ... do they want to leave the treaty? Why do they want to build up their nuclear capability?" Belousov said if the United States follows through on its threat to withdraw, then Russia could raise the issue in the 15-member Security Council. However, such a move would not lead to any action as both countries have veto powers in the council. U.S. Disarmament Ambassador Robert Wood told the committee Washington had spent some five years trying to engage Moscow on the issue of compliance and that Russia had "denied having produced or tested a ground-launch cruise missile." "It's only recently that they admitted to having produced a ground-launch cruise missile but then maintained that it did not violate the range limits of the treaty," he said. "The U.S. has been extremely patient with Russia and our hope is that Russia will do the right thing and destroy that ground-launch cruise missile," Wood said. European members of NATO urged the United States on Thursday to try to bring Russia back into compliance with the treaty rather than quit it, diplomats said, seeking to avoid a split in the alliance that Moscow could exploit. (Reporting by Michelle Nichols; Editing by James Dalgleish) who launched a racist tirade on a 77-year-old widow on a Ryanair flight has apologised, denying he is a racist. The manon a 77-year-old widow on a Ryanair flight has apologised, But Delsie Gayle rejected David Meshers public apology, aired on ITVs Good Morning Britain, saying he wouldnt have said what he said if he wasnt racist. In the same morning, Ryanair which came under fire for not throwing Mr Mesher off the flight made a lengthy defence of its conduct in a statement. Video footage of Mr Meshers verbal attack on Ms Gayle, during which he called her an ugly black b**tard and said Dont speak to me in a foreign language, you stupid ugly cow sparked outrage after it was shared on social media. Mr Mesher, who was been spoken to by police in Birmingham, where he lives, has now apologised for the first time for the incident, which happened on the flight from Barcelona to London on October 19. In his interview, he said the argument started after he asked Ms Gayle to move from her seat but she didnt seem to want to get up. He said: I probably lost my temper a bit and ordered her to get up. Im not a racist person my any means and its just a fit of temper at the time, I think. I apologise for all the distress youve had there and since. MORE: Teenage boy, 15, died in frozen field after inexplicably skipping school MORE: Shepherds delight! Stunning sunsets captivate UK before Hunters Moon But Ms Gayle rejected the apology, saying: You must forget and forgive but its going to take a long time for me to get over what he has done to me. Her daughter Carol added: He says he wasnt racist he wouldnt be saying words like that if he wasnt racist. The man who launched a racist tirade on a Ryanair flight has apologised (Picture: PA) In a lengthy statement, Ryanair said it immediately reported the video on Sunday after it surfaced on social media, but added that cabin crew were shown the video after the flight landed at Stansted Airport two days earlier. The budget airline which has also been criticised by Ms Gayle and her daughter said it was was issuing the statement to dispel false claims that it did not respond quickly. Ryanair said cabin crew spoke to both passengers who told them they were OK and decided to commence with take-off without removing the aggressor after deciding there was no threat to aircraft safety, but the airline did not immediately respond when asked why crew did not report the incident to police after being shown the footage. Story continues Ryanair has released images of a letter it says it sent to Ms Gayle, contrary to her claims that she hadnt received an apology (Picture: PA) Answering Ms Gayles claims that it had not apologised directly, the airline shared images of a letter and an email it said was sent to her on Sunday morning. Ryanair communications chief Robin Kiely said: We believe that by reporting this matter immediately to Essex Police and by apologising in writing to this customer early on Sunday morning, Ryanair treated it with the urgency and seriousness it warranted. The incident took place on the tarmac of Barcelona Airport before the plane departed for Stansted, so UK police have said officers will pass the investigation to Spanish authorities. Samantha Markle has responded to the reports on Twitter (Getty) The Duchess of Sussexs half-sister Samantha Markle has denied reports that her father Thomas has reached out to the Archbishop of Canterbury for help regarding access to his future grandchild. According to the Mail Online, Meghans father wants to help heal his rift with daughter Meghan and is allegedly considering a legal fight. A source also told The Mirror: Thomas says the Markle blood will be as much in the childs veins as the blue blood of the royals and he has rights. He admits mistakes but with Meghan pregnant, he is desperate to heal the rift. Thomas has reached out to Kensington Palace more so since news of Meghans pregnancy broke, hoping the baby will be what finally breaks their estrangement. But Samantha responded to the reports on Twitter with a link to the Mails article and just an idea of what tabloids make up none of this is true ha ha ha ha ha ha ridiculous [sic] Samantha Markle tweeted that the reports were made up (Twitter/@SammyMarkle64) Thomas reportedly found out that his daughter, 37, was pregnant with her and Prince Harrys first child on his car radio. At the time of the announcement, the palace declined to comment on whether Thomas had been informed of her pregnancy. However Samantha told The Sun: It just makes everything that happened over the last year disappear. I want Meghan to be happy and calm and have peace. Everybody needs to be positive. 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. Meghan and Harry are expecting their first child in spring 2019 (PA) I hope my dad is included and at a proper time. If he is excluded, I wont be happy. It is in the best interests of the baby for my dad to be included. A baby changes everything and softens everyone. I would only hope that there would be some adjustment or some way of including him. Samantha also apologised to her sister during an appearance on Jeremy Vine on 5. However, she has since criticised Meghan for her speech she gave about her college education in Fiji on the royal tour, branding her delusional and a liar. Story continues Istanbul (AFP) - Turkey on Friday said it wanted 18 Saudis extradited over the murder of journalist Jamal Khashoggi, as President Recep Tayyip Erdogan said Ankara still had more evidence to reveal in the case. The announcement came a day after the Saudi prosecutor said that based on evidence supplied by Turkey the murder appeared to have been premeditated -- the first time Saudi authorities had made such an admission. In a speech in Ankara, Erdogan said Saudi Arabia's chief prosecutor would visit Istanbul on Sunday to speak to Turkish authorities as part of the investigation. Saudi authorities earlier arrested 18 men wanted by Ankara following an international furore over the death of Khashoggi, a Washington Post contributor and critic of Saudi policies, who was killed at the Saudi consulate in Istanbul on October 2. The killing has tainted the image of Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, who has positioned himself as a Saudi reformer, and tested ties between Washington and Riyadh as Western powers demand answers over Khashoggi's death. A written request for the extradition of the 18 suspects had been prepared by Istanbul's chief prosecutor. "It is clear that the judicial system in Turkey is better equipped to genuinely serve the cause of justice in this case," a senior Turkish official said. Erdogan on Friday called on Riyadh to reveal who ordered the killing and the whereabouts of Khashoggi's body. "You need to show this body," Erdogan said. The Turkish president, who has stopped short of directly blaming the Saudi government, said that the 18 suspects must know who killed Khashoggi and repeated his call for the men to be tried in Turkey. "The culprit is among them. If that is not the case, then who is the local conspirator? You have to tell," he said. "Unless you tell, Saudi Arabia will not be free from this suspicion." - Fiancee calls for justice - Khashoggi, 59, who had lived in self-imposed exile in the United States since 2017, was not seen again after entering the consulate to obtain paperwork for his marriage to his Turkish fiancee Hatice Cengiz. Story continues A tearful Cengiz said in a TV interview on Friday that she never would have let Khashoggi enter the consulate if she had thought that "Saudi Arabia authorities would hatch a plot" to kill him. "I demand that all those involved in this savagery from the highest to the lowest levels are punished and brought to justice," Cengiz told the Haberturk television station. She said she had not been contacted by Saudi officials and that she was unlikely to go to Saudi Arabia for a possible funeral if Khashoggi's missing body is found. Saudi Arabia has sought to draw a line under the crisis with the investigation, but a string of gruesome details about the murder have continued to appear in the Turkish media. In his speech, Erdogan indicated that more evidence was yet to be revealed. "It is not that we don't have any other information or documents. We do. Tomorrow is another day," he said. - 'Childish' Saudi explanations - Riyadh's admission that the murder appeared to be a premeditated killing marked the latest twist in the shifting official narrative from Saudi authorities. They had first insisted Khashoggi left the consulate unharmed, then said he was killed in an argument that degenerated into a brawl. In his speech, Erdogan mocked the initial story of Khashoggi's disappearance as "childish" and "far from state seriousness". And the explanations have met with growing incredulity from Western governments who say many questions remain. German Chancellor Angela Merkel vowed on Friday that Berlin would not export arms to Saudi Arabia until the murder is clarified, a stance French President Emmanuel Macron dubbed "pure demagoguery" as it "has nothing to do with Mr Khashoggi". Austrian Foreign Minister Karin Kneissl, in an interview with a German newspaper Friday, backed the call for an EU embargo on weapons deliveries to Saudi Arabia. "Above all the awful war in Yemen and the Qatar crisis should lead us to finally act in a united fashion as the European Union towards Saudi Arabia," Kneissl told Die Welt. Meanwhile, the Kremlin said Russia believes that the Saudi royals were not involved in the murder. US President Donald Trump has called the case "one of the worst cover-ups in history". Pro-government Turkish media said that intelligence officers showed Haspel video images and audio tapes of Khashoggi's killing gathered from the consulate. A Turkish presidential source said Erdogan shared information about the case with Canada's Prime Minister Justin Trudeau during a phone call on Friday. Prince Mohammed, the kingdom's de facto ruler, has denounced the "repulsive" murder, denying any involvement. The kingdom's leadership has pushed responsibility down the chain of command. However UN expert Agnes Callamard said Thursday that Khashoggi was the victim of an "extrajudicial execution" committed by the Saudi state. She called for an international investigation. The Saudis may have finally admitted to the accidental killing of journalist Jamal Khashoggi, but they still dont have a coherent explanation that exonerates Crown Prince (and King in waiting) Mohammed bin Salman, known widely as MBS. Few believe Khashoggi could have been killed without his order. The response from political leaders is stiffening. Turkeys President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has been noisily picking holes in the Saudi accounts of the killing. German Chancellor Angela Merkel has halted arms trade with the Saudis, while Canada is also considering a freeze. While U.S. President Donald Trump appears to be looking for a way to condemn the killing without blaming MBS or jeopardizing U.S. arms sales to the kingdom, lawmakers of both parties have demanded Saudi answers and a tough U.S. response. Companies and investors, however, have been more cautious and nuanced in how they respond. Especially interesting has been their approach to MBSs Future Investment Initiative, a high-profile gathering in Riyadh for those hoping to establish a commercial foothold in the modernizing Saudi kingdom. Khashoggis killing cast a chill over the summit and sent reputation-conscious executives scrambling for cover. Media companies were among the first to desert the event, perhaps fearful of being seen to cozy up to a regime that had silenced one of their own. But by the time the summit began on Oct. 23, executives and investors were taking a more pragmatic approach. The head of Russias sovereign wealth fund led a sizable contingent to the event to ensure that losses for those sniffy about human rights would be Moscows gain. Financial institutions like Citigroup and JPMorganeach of which has investments and jobs riding on the kingdoms successchose to dispatch junior rather than senior representatives to signal unease with the Khashoggi story while acknowledging that business must continue. There are good reasons for both politicians and businesses to distance themselves from or censure Riyadh in response to Khashoggis killing. If governments dont impose a significant price on cold-blooded political murder, theyre showing MBS, and other autocrats, that its open season for the killing of critics, even on foreign soil. And shareholders are best served when company decisionmakers keep their distance from autocrats who fail to respect international rules in ways that dominate global headlines. This is not to say foreign investors wont continue doing business with the kingdomthey certainly will. A lot of companies in the U.S. and elsewhere have already reaped benefits from Saudi Arabia; dollars from the countrys $250 billion Public Investment Fund have helped grow tech startups like Uber, WeWork and Slack. But the reputational risks that had been temporarily swept under the rug with the political rise of a reformer like MBS are now back to the forefront. And the mooted transformation of Saudi Arabia from petrostate to cutting-edge modern economy by 2030always a long shot, even in the best circumstanceshas lost critical momentum. The attendance list at this years investor summit will surely say a lot about how Saudi Arabia is weathering the Khashoggi storm. But far more important for Mohammed bin Salman, and his countrys sizable ambitions, will be the success of the summit next year, and the year after that. Time will tell if business in Saudi Arabia can return to usual. Scientists harvest the urine from the mens toilets at the university (PA) Scientists in South Africa have invented environmentally-friendly bricks made from human urine. The bio-bricks are combined with sand and bacteria are said to be environmentally friendly even if they give off a smell at first. The odour disappears after 48 hours, researchers at the University of Cape Town have revealed. The team combined the human urine with sand and bacteria in a process that allows the bricks to cook at room temperature. The team at the University of Cape Town (UCT) Normally bricks are baked in kilns at very high temperatures, which produce large amounts of carbon dioxide. The urine is taken from the mens toilets at the university. It would take, on average, around 100 visits to the loo to produce enough urine to make a brick. Its essentially the same way that coral is made in the ocean, Dyllon Randall, their supervisor at the University of Cape Town, told the BBC. The research has been undertaken at the University of Cape Town (PA) After first making a solid fertiliser, the leftover liquid is then used in a biological process to develop what the university calls bio-bricks. The bacteria produces an enzyme that breaks down in the urine, forming calcium carbonate, which then binds the sand into rock hard, grey bricks, reported the BBC. Despite the fact they are environmentally friendly, the bricks do have a drawback, admitted Dr Randall. Say you had a pet and it peed in the corner, and you have that strong smell thats ammonia being released. This process produces ammonia as a by-product, he said, adding that this ammonia is then converted into nitrogen-rich fertiliser. Nothing to see here. Just pushing through some lifetime judicial nominees while everybody is gone. (Photo: Aaron Bernstein / Reuters) WASHINGTON The Senate is in recess and nobody is around, which means Republicans think its the perfect time to hold confirmation hearings for President Donald Trumps controversial nominees to lifetime courts seats. Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa), the chairman of the Judiciary Committee, has held two hearings in the past week, despite virtually every senator being back home ahead of the Nov. 6 elections. Even Grassley wasnt at his hearings: Sen. John Kennedy (R-La.) chaired the first one, last week, and Sen. Mike Crapo (R-Idaho) chaired Wednesdays hearing. Not a single Democrat could attend either hearing. Only one other Republican, Sen. Orrin Hatch (Utah), was present. That means, between those two hearings, that three of Trumps circuit court nominees and seven of his district court nominees sailed through without any real questions. The committee will likely vote to advance their nominations sometime after the elections. Not only are Republicans breaking from precedent by holding hearings while the Senate is in recess before an election, but their brazenly partisan move only intensifies the already toxic environment on Capitol Hill that couldnt get much worse after this months ugly Brett Kavanaugh confirmation fight. Todays hearing and last weeks were jokes, said Carl Tobias, a University of Richmond law professor and expert on judicial nominations. No Democratic senators and two GOP senators and no real questions asked? In his opening remarks in last weeks hearing, Kennedy read aloud a statement from Grassley suggesting that the top Democrat on the committee, Sen. Dianne Feinstein (Calif.), had given the green light to move forward with hearings without Democrats. The ranking member not only agreed to hold hearings on Oct. 10, Oct. 17 and Oct. 24, but she also specifically agreed not to object to the timing of these hearings, Kennedy said. Thats not so, says Feinstein spokesman Tom Mentzer. We were scheduled to be in session at that point, Mentzer told HuffPost. At no time was there an agreement to do this during recess. Story continues Feinstein, along with every other Democrat on the committee, made it clear last week that they werent on board with this. They all signed a letter to Grassley urging him to postpone any hearings until after the elections, when everyone would be back and could ask questions of the judicial nominees up for lifetime seats on federal courts. Holding hearings during a recess, when members cannot attend, fails to meet our constitutional advice-and-consent obligations, their Oct. 15 letter says. We respectfully request these hearings be postponed until after the recess. Eric Miller, a nominee to a lifetime seat on a U.S. circuit court, has built a career out of fighting tribal protections. Guess he won't face any questions about that! (Photo: ALM Media) Grassley spokesman Taylor Foy said Wednesday that the hearing schedule was set weeks ago, and that Feinstein did not make her agreement contingent on the Senate being in session. He pointed to a letter Grassley sent to committee Democrats last week saying he was tired of postponing hearings. It would be unfair to nominees to change the schedule at the last minute after theyve made their travel arrangements to Washington for their hearing, said Foy. So which nominees are getting a free pass on their confirmation hearings? Eric Miller is one. The 43-year-old attorney is a nominee to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 9th Circuit, and hes strongly opposed by national and local tribal organizations over his long career of fighting tribal interests and sovereignty. Our concern is that he chose to build a law practice on mounting repeated challenges to tribal sovereignty, lands, religious freedom, and the core attribute of federal recognition of tribal existence, reads an August letter to Grassley and Feinstein from the National Congress of American Indians and the Native American Rights Fund. His advocacy has focused on undermining the rights of Indian tribes, often taking extreme positions and using pejorative language to denigrate tribal rights. Millers law firm has developed such a reputation for going after tribal rights that one native leader described the firm, Perkins Coie, as the go-to destination for jurisdictions that want to fight an Indian tribe. Allison Jones Rushing, a nominee to the 4th Circuit, got her hearing too. The 36-year-old lawyer was a legal intern at the Alliance Defending Freedom, which the Southern Poverty Law Center has classified as a hate group, and she mentored people through ADFs controversial Blackstone Legal Fellowship program. As reported by Rewire in 2013, the program focuses on fighting for the criminalization of abortion; against the rights of LGBT people; for so-called religious liberty (which often comes in the form of defending clients who wish to discriminate against gay people based on their religious beliefs); and for organized Christian prayer in government or public school settings. Rushing also argued in a 2013 panel that there were both moral and practical reasons for creating the Defense of Marriage Act, the former federal law that banned same-sex marriage. She frequently referenced Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalias opinion that the 2013 ruling that struck down part of DOMA departed from traditional concepts of marriage and morality. Republicans strayed from another committee tradition by moving forward with Millers nomination without having blue slips from either of his home-state senators, Maria Cantwell (D-Wash.) and Patty Murray (D-Wash.). Blue slips are literally blue pieces of paper that senators turn in to signal they are ready to move forward with a nominee, who typically would not move forward without them. Grassley has been ignoring that tradition. These are just the latest examples of the institutional breakdown in the Senate since Republicans took control, said Tobias. The GOP has also broken from tradition by advancing judicial nominees without waiting for the American Bar Association to rate their qualifications, and by packing multiple circuit court nominees into the same hearing. Its all part of a broader plan by Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) to jam through as many nominees as possible to fill up the federal courts with conservative lifetime judges. His hardball tactics have paid off, but at the cost of blowing up Senate traditions and eroding goodwill between the parties. Republicans are undermining all customs of the Senate, Tobias said. Someone needs to halt the downward spiraling selection process. Related Coverage Trump Has No Idea Why He Gets To Fill So Many Empty Court Seats Democrats Just Confirmed Lots Of Trump's Judges So They Could Skip Town Democrats Agree To Confirm More Of Trump's Judicial Nominees Again Love HuffPost? Become a founding member of HuffPost Plus today. This article originally appeared on HuffPost. WASHINGTON (Reuters) - U.S. Senate Judiciary Chairman Charles Grassley on Thursday sought a federal probe of Julie Swetnick, who accused Brett Kavanaugh of aggressive sexual behavior before his confirmation to the U.S. Supreme Court, and her lawyer Michael Avenatti. Grassley referred them to the Justice Department for criminal investigation related to "a potential conspiracy to provide materially false statements to Congress and obstruct a congressional committee investigation," according to a statement from his office. The Justice Department did not immediately respond to a request for comment on the referral. Avenatti came forward with Swetnick's allegations after Christine Blasey Ford detailed her allegation that she had been sexually assaulted as a teenager by Kavanaugh, a conservative federal appeals court judge chosen by President Donald Trump for a lifetime job on the top U.S. court. Swetnick said she witnessed efforts by Kavanaugh and others to get girls drunk at parties so they could be raped. She said Kavanaugh was present at a 1982 party where she was raped. Kavanaugh denied all the allegations and was narrowly confirmed the Supreme Court by the U.S. Senate on Oct. 6. "When a well-meaning citizen comes forward with information relevant to the committee's work, I take it seriously," Grassley said in a statement. "But in the heat of partisan moments, some do try to knowingly mislead the committee. That's unfair to my colleagues, the nominees and others providing information who are seeking the truth." Avenatti also represented adult film star Stormy Daniels in her lawsuit against President Donald Trump. He responded to Grassley's statement with a tweet that referenced criticism from Democrats and others that the allegations against Kavanaugh were not thoroughly investigated. "It is ironic that Senator Grassley now is interested in investigations. He didnt care when it came to putting a man on the SCOTUS for life," Avenatti said. "We welcome the investigation as now we can finally get to the bottom of Judge Kavanaughs lies and conduct. Let the truth be known." Swetnick herself was not immediately available for comment. (Reporting by Doina Chiacu; Editing by David Gregorio) The boutique fitness industry is booming, and one woman, Ruth Zukerman, has had a groundbreaking role in the growth and change of it. She was one of the original three co-founders of SoulCycle in 2006, and after parting ways with that company in 2009, Zukerman started Flywheel with new business partners and financial backing by Tricera Partners. Flywheel now has fitness studios across 19 cities in the U.S. as well as a studio in Dubai. In her new memoir, Riding High: How I Kissed SoulCycle Goodbye, Founded Flywheel, and Built the Life I Always Wanted, Zukerman, 57, describes her journey to founding two successful boutique fitness companies. Yahoo Finance spoke with Zukerman, the founder of both SoulCycle and Flywheel spinning chains, about channeling her passion into success. Finding empowerment after divorce Zukerman wasnt sure where her career path would lead after ending her marriage. She says that before her divorce, she was in the dark about her finances. I never paid a bill, she says. She describes being shocked by the judge who presided over her divorce settlement, telling her she would not receive enough spousal support money to maintain her status as a stay-at-home mother. Zukerman recalls, she looked at me and said, Honey, youre gonna have to go get a job. Zukerman had no formal business training, but after attending her first spin class at the Reebok club in Manhattan, she says that something clicked. I had no idea what that would become, but there was obviously something in me that pushed me in that room and obviously started my path to success. Recognizing what people need Spinning, Zukerman realized, had a profoundly positive effect on her, and that she should embark on a mission to share the wealth with others. Being a former dancer made the transition natural. It made perfect sense, in light of the fact that I was a dancer, she says. The choreography on a stationary bike in the spin class, it turns out, is quite similar to that of choreography in dance. Story continues Zukerman also recognized in building her business that not only did her clientele need the positive one-on-one attention, but her employees needed it too. One of the things we instilled when we started Flywheel, I wanted everyone to be treated equally, no matter what their role was, she says. She feels that this policy has helped Flywheel be so successful. Employees are just as important as customers, she says. Why women are dominating the fitness industry While she was turning her passion into a job, Zukerman says she recognized that she should align herself with people who had skills that she didnt have. This included women she met through her journey at SoulCycle, and the people who became her business partners for Flywheel. She says that a big reason women are dominating the fitness space right now is that they recognize the importance of being strong both physically and mentally. I think it just all contributes to where we are right now. More from our Women + Money series: Colombo (AFP) - President Maithripala Sirisena installed Sri Lanka's controversial former strongman leader Mahinda Rajapakse as the country's new prime minister Friday, in a shock move that plunged the island into an unprecedented constitutional crisis. Sirisena's office announced the surprise decision moments after he sacked incumbent premier Ranil Wickremesinghe, despite opponents saying he had no power to do so under the constitution. Wickremesinghe insisted he was still the legitimate prime minister and would fight his dismissal in court. "I am addressing you as the prime minister of Sri Lanka," Wickremesinghe told reporters at a nationally televised press conference. "I remain as prime minister and I will function as the prime minister." The president's United People's Freedom Alliance party had earlier Friday quit the coalition that had governed with Wickremesinghe's party. Speaking to jubilant supporters outside his Colombo home, Rajapakse called on Wickremesinghe to step down. Members of Wickremesinghe's party must "respect democracy, respect the country and respect the law", the ex-president said through a loudhailer from a balcony. Rajapakse loyalists stormed two state-owned television networks overnight -- which they regard as loyal to the outgoing government -- and forced them off the air. Video footage from private networks showed police overwhelmed by mobs at the Rupavahini national TV station but elsewhere in the capital streets remained calm. Rajapakse was sworn in by Sirisena in a ceremony at the president's office before the smiling ex-president headed to worship at a Buddhist temple. A defiant Wickremesinghe, whose United National Party commands a majority in parliament, said he was calling on speaker Karu Jayasuriya to convene the legislature. The speaker said he was seeking legal advice and would announce Saturday if he recognises Rajapakse as the new prime minister. Story continues Sirisena won elections against Rajapakse in 2015 on a platform of economic reform and accountability for atrocities committed during his opponent's 10-year iron-fisted rule which saw the bloody end of Sri Lanka's brutal civil war. Colombo was on the verge of facing economic sanctions from Western nations over Rajapakse's human rights record before his government lost office. Sirisena's decision to appoint his former foe prime minister threatens the Indian Ocean island nation with fresh turmoil just as it was trying to emerge from the shadow of the civil war. The legality of the move is disputed after a constitutional amendment passed in 2015 removed the president's power to sack the prime minister. "The appointment of Rajapakse as the prime minister is unconstitutional and illegal. This is an anti democratic coup," finance minister Mangala Samaraweera wrote on Twitter shortly after the appointment was announced. The dramatic developments came after deepening disagreements between Sirisena and Wickremesinghe over economic policy and day-to-day administration of the government. - Simmering power struggle - In May, Sirisena asked his prime minister to end their power struggle and said the coalition should commit to a reform agenda to revive the country emerging from a decades-long ethnic war that claimed more than 100,000 lives. But Sirisena has reneged on a pledge not to run for re-election, sparking tensions with Wickremesinghe who is believed to have his own presidential ambitions. Sirisena is also believed to have been behind a failed attempt to impeach Wickremesinghe in April. Rajapakse lost the presidency in January 2015 and the subsequent parliamentary elections in August 2015. However, his new Sri Lanka Podujana Peramuna (SLPP) party won local council elections in February and he had been attempting to engineer a dramatic comeback ahead of presidential elections slated for 2019. The strongman put down the decades-old Tamil Tiger separatist struggle in May 2009 through a military assault that killed up to 40,000 ethnic Tamil civilians, according to rights groups. His regime refused to acknowledge war-era abuses, and bitter divisions between minority Tamils and majority Sinhalese persist. The legacy of the conflict has proved a divisive topic in parliament. Earlier this month, lawmakers passed legislation to pay compensation to victims of the civil war, but Rajapakse's supporters voted against the bill, arguing that it amounted to compensating separatist Tamil rebels. Rajapakse's hardline government was also accused of corruption and murdering political opponents. Several of Rajapakse's close family and associates face corruption prosecutions. Sirisena had pledged accountability for war atrocities, but has faced international criticism for being slow to deliver on justice. International rights groups have called for the prosecution of both the military and the Tigers, who were notorious for suicide bombings and enlisting child soldiers. One young person is diagnosed with an STI every four minutes in England [Photo: Getty] With the Internet at our fingertips, sex education in schools set to become compulsory and the power of social media youd think that the nation is pretty clued up on the risk of STIs. But recent statistics from Public Health England suggest otherwise. According to the health organisation, a case of chlamydia or gonorrhoea is diagnosed in a young person every four minutes in England. Further findings reveal that over 144,000 of those diagnosed back in 2017 were between the ages of 15 to 24. In terms of gonorrhoea, theres been a year-on-year rise in cases and with the sexually transmitted disease growing increasingly resistant to antibiotics, there are fears that it will eventually become untreatable. So why are STIs on the rise across the UK? Medical Director of sexual health clinic Brook, Anatole Menon-Johansson, told Yahoo UK: We are concerned but not surprised by these figures from Public Health England. There are a number of factors that could be contributing to this such as higher rates of infections which increase the likelihood of a young person being exposed to an STI, having multiple sexual partners and lack of access to services (which has been exacerbated due to closures). He also notes a lack of education around sexual health and concerns regarding confidentiality contributing to the increase in diagnosis amongst young people. Why arent young people using condoms? Although we may be more candid when it comes to discussing the birds and the bees with our friends and colleagues, condoms cant seem to shake their bad rep. According to a recent study conduced by SKYN Condoms, only 56% of men across the UK regularly practice safe sex. Despite condoms being the only form of contraception proven to prevent STIs on the market, a large majority of young people are embarrassed to use them. Dr Enam Abood, head doctor at Harley Street Health Centre, told Yahoo UK: Condoms still carry a reputation of reducing pleasure and I think young people may be pressuring each other to not use them. Story continues A large majority of young people eschew condoms due to embarrassment and the risk factor [Photo: Getty] She continued, Risk-taking is also common in this age group where they are testing life and its dangers and sex is commonly coupled with alcohol and drug use. Dr Abood also highlights that a large number of young people are primarily concerned about preventing pregnancy therefore dont believe a condom is necessary when other contraception is being used. A recent study conducted by Indiana University also revealed another reason why men often turn their noses up at the rubber. According to sexual health expert and leader of the study, Debby Herbenick, a large majority of 83% of men in the US have smaller penises than the standard condom length. She told The New York Times: The idea was it [the condom] had to be long enough to fit most men, and excess length could just be rolled. As a consequence, common complaints include the problem that condoms often slip off during intercourse while those with larger penises experience discomfort due to the contraception feeling tight. The social stigma surrounding STIs Despite a greater conversation on sexually transmitted diseases, theres still a social stigma attached to clinics with many concerned about confidentiality. But Dr Abood points out that a large number of young people are not fully informed on the dangers of not having regular check-ups. Many young people are unaware that STDs like chlamydia, syphilis, HIV and gonorrhoea often dont cause any symptoms early on, she revealed. What are the symptoms of an STI? Although a large number of sexual transmitted diseases are symptom-less, there are telltale signs to look out for. According to the NHS, you should be aware of the following: Unusual discharge from the vagina, penis or anus Pain when urinating Lumps or skin growths around the genitals or anus A rash Unusual vaginal bleeding Itchy genitals or anus Blisters and sores around the genitals or anus Follow us on Instagram and Facebook for non-stop inspiration delivered fresh to your feed, every day. For Twitter updates, follow @YahooStyleUK. Read more from Yahoo Style UK: Vaginisimus: the little-known condition making sex painful A smart condom is here to track your sex life Sex during pregnancy: Why arent couples doing it more? Can we stop the caravan? As Rod Dreher notes, the sight of thousands of Central Americans making their way en masse to the United States forces us to ask: How far would we go to defend the sovereignty of our nations from invaders who want to cross our borders not with weapons to conquer, but nevertheless to settle here? The presidents threat to deploy the military to the border to stop the caravan conjures images of gunning down unarmed border infiltrators. This is precisely the kind of confrontation that some of the radicals cheering the caravan would love to see. But this isnt a military problem. Its a law-enforcement problem, and one that ordinary civilian law enforcement can solve if provided with the right tools which it does not have right now. The current rules regarding asylum and the treatment of alien minors, and the inadequate level of funding for detention of people applying for asylum (to make sure they cant run off when their cases are rejected), effectively force immigration authorities into a catch-and-release policy, where aliens crossing the border are given a court date and then let go. This is a powerful incentive for more people to follow. The incentive is so powerful that the current caravan is just the most photogenic part of the problem; fiscal-year 2018 statistics show that a slow-motion caravan confronts the border every day, with a daily average in September of more than 500 illegal aliens traveling in family units apprehended on the border (and soon released). Many others walk up to an immigration inspector at a legal crossing point on the Mexican border (port of entry is the technical term) and simply utter the magic word asylum and get in. What to do? Deploying troops wont do any good because they cant arrest people; it would be just like the National Guard deployments under the Bush, Obama, and current administrations, where troops assisted the Border Patrol in reconnaissance and the like, which is fine as far as it goes but doesnt solve anything. And theyre obviously not going to open fire on unarmed people. Even land mines and machines guns atop concrete border walls wouldnt matter much, since most of those arriving would simply go to a legal port of entry. (About one-third of last springs caravan actually made it all the way to the border, and of those, the large majority went to ports of entry.) Story continues The presidents threat to cut off foreign aid to the source and transit countries south of the border is less fanciful but still counterproductive. The whole point of that money is to reduce emigration pressures, so eliminating it would seem to be a case of cutting off your nose to spite your face. If the aid isnt doing any good, we should just cut it off, caravan or no caravan, rather than using it as a threat. The presidents threat to shut down the border is a more realistic way to pressure Mexico to stop the caravan. President Nixon did essentially that in 1969 to pressure Mexico on drugs. President Reagan did the same in 1985 in the wake of Mexican recalcitrance in investigating the kidnapping of DEA agent Kiki Camarena. Or, if some large share of the caravan descends upon a single port of entry, we just close that one. This would cause more pain on our side than in decades past, because our economy is more integrated with Mexicos than it was in the 1960 or even the 1980s, but the pain would still be significantly greater for Mexico. Other measures could include deputizing state and local law enforcement to make immigration arrests (which the law permits in the case of an actual or imminent mass influx of aliens arriving off the coast of the United States, or near a land border), setting up emergency tent-city detention centers on the border, and/or using the travel-ban authority to prohibit the admission of anyone participating in a caravan. All that and more may well already be included in the existing contingency plans for coping with a Mass Immigration Emergency, which the president could well declare if the caravan reaches our border with the kinds of numbers were seeing in southern Mexico. The Washington Post reported Thursday that such measures are under active consideration. But the caravan, and new ones forming behind it, are merely symptoms. The problem is an overly permissive asylum system (including rules for dealing with illegal-alien minors) that has become the preferred way to penetrate our borders for those with no other way to do so. And only Congress can fix that. In a sense, forcing Mexico to stop the caravans before they get to our border, or even declaring a Mass Immigration Emergency, really just lets congressional Democrats off the hook. Given the persistence of the filibuster rule requiring a supermajority for the passage of any legislation to plug border leaks (like the Flores agreement and the Trafficking Victims Protection Reauthorization Act both regarding minors and low standards for establishing the credible fear needed to justify asylum) or to increase detention capacity, Chuck Schumer has an effective veto over efforts to enforce the border. Political pressure must be brought to bear on Democratic lawmakers, not just through White House statements, but also by the Republican leadership in Congress forcing them to vote on targeted measures addressing specific vulnerabilities. But a longer-term plan is also needed. As border control improves and we (hopefully) do a better job of policing legal visitors to ensure their timely departure, bogus claims of asylum are going to become the primary way to circumvent immigration limits. One concept that must be operationalized both in statute and through bilateral agreements is safe third country. The 1967 Protocol Relating to the Status of Refugees, the U.N. treaty that governs these matters, says states must recognize the refugee status of aliens coming directly from a territory where their life or freedom was threatened. People who pass through other countries with asylum systems (such as Mexico) should not be permitted even to apply for asylum because they are, by definition, no longer fleeing persecution. Another long-term objective should be to limit the grounds for asylum. Currently the U.N. language, incorporated into the 1980 Refugee Act, says asylum is for those persecuted because of their race, religion, nationality, membership of a particular social group or political opinion. It is the fourth of these five categories that has been the source of much mischief; membership in a particular social group is a catch-all that activist lawyers and their judicial accomplices have used to try to pry open our borders, concocting non-existent groups as a way of finagling asylum. As Justice Samuel Alito wrote when he was still a circuit-court judge, read in its broadest literal sense, the phrase is almost completely open-ended. Virtually any set including more than one person could be described as a particular social group.' The attorney general is instructing immigration judges to interpret the term narrowly, but only excising it from the law altogether can prevent its use by the opponents of borders. But the U.N. treaty mandates particular social group as a basis for asylum. For that reason, and more generally to reassert control over who is allowed into our country, the president should withdraw from the treaty. As it stands now, we have created a right to asylum in the United States, a surrender of sovereignty whose consequences are becoming increasingly clear. Only the American people, through their elected representatives, should decide who gets to move here, not individual foreigners asserting a right created by the U.N. and vindicated by post-national anti-borders activists. The subtitle of John Fontes 2011 book poses the first question we must ask ourselves in assessing asylum policy: Will Americans Rule Themselves or Be Ruled by Others? Officials on a remote US territory in the Pacific have appealed to the Trump administration for help with recovery efforts following the horrendous devastation caused by Super Typhoon Yutu. Residents of the Northern Mariana Islands are set to be without electricity and running water for months, after the category 5 storm wiped out the territorys infrastructure. At least one person was killed and several people were injured by spraying glass and other debris, as winds of 180 mph pummelled the islands on Thursday. Officials touring villages in the islands of Saipan and Tinian on Friday saw crumbling houses, smashed cars, fallen utility poles and the ground ripped clean of vegetation. Gregorio Kilili Camacho Sablan, the territorys delegate to the US congress, said he wanted President Donald Trump to approve a disaster declaration that would lead to extra resources for relief and recovery efforts. We want people to remember we are Americans and we exist, said lawmaker Edwin Propst, a member of the territorys house of representatives. This damage is just horrendous, its going to take months and months for us to recover. A US military plane is bringing food, water and other emergency supplies to the 50,000 people living on the islands. The Federal Emergency Management Agency (Fema) said it would aim to help restore power, reopen ports and airports and ensure mobile phone towers can operate on emergency power until utility services return. An overturned car at the Northern Mariana Islands airport (AP) The Trump administration was criticised for its slow response to Hurricane Maria, a Category 5 storm that hit Puerto Rico last year. The mayor of the unincorporated US territorys capital San Juan, Carmen Yulin Cruz, said the inadequacy of the response had killed the Puerto Ricans with neglect. Last month, Mr Trump claimed Democrats and Puerto Rican officials had inflated the death toll from the hurricane. The president refused to accept thousands of people had died, despite a study commissioned by the islands government putting the number killed at 2,975, and said the revised total was designed to look as bad as possible. Story continues Fema has made changes following Hurricane Maria, creating taskforces to tackle areas such as transportation, communications, food and water, and energy and fuel. The agency has supplies ready to move to the Northern Marianas because it had stored more than 220,000l of water and 260,000 meals at a distribution centre on nearby Guam, to prepare for Typhoon Mangkhut, which struck last month. The only hospital on the Northern Marianas said it received 133 people in its emergency room on Thursday. Three patients had severe injuries that required surgery. A 44-year-old woman taking shelter in an abandoned building died when it collapsed in the storm, according to the governors offices Facebook page. The hospital in Saipan was running on backup generators but otherwise operating normally, said Esther Lizama Muna, CEO of the Commonwealth Healthcare Corp. She said she expects more patients to seek medical help on Friday and is worried the hospital could run out of medical supplies. From my experience with previous typhoons, people tend to wait to care for their health, as they focus on their homes and others, said Ms Muna. So we do expect more injuries trickling in. Additional reporting by Associated Press A man who survived Wednesday's shooting at a Kentucky supermarket claims the gunman told him he only spared his life because of his race. Ed Harrell, a Louisville resident, told the Courier-Journal that he was waiting for his wife outside a Kroger in Jeffersontown, Ky., on Wednesday when a man later identified as 51-year-old Gregory Bush walked by him with a gun. Having already heard gunshots coming from inside the store, Harrell was crouched by the side of his vehicle, clutching his revolver when he shared a brief exchange with Bush. "Dont shoot me. I won't shoot you," Harrell claims the shooter told him. "Whites dont shoot whites." Harrell says he then dove behind a car and watched as the shooter got in a vehicle and drove off. Neither Harrell nor his wife were injured during the attack, which left two people dead. The victims, both African American, were later identified as Maurice Stallard, a 69-year-old man grocery shopping with his grandson, and Vicki Lee Jones, a 67-year-old woman who recently moved to Jeffersontown because it was "safe." Police say Bush "pulled a pistol from his waistband and shot (Stallard) in the rear of the head and again multiple times as he lay on the floor," the Courier-Journal reports. The shooter then re-holstered his weapon and walked out of the store, where he drew his weapon again and shot Jones dead. Bush was jailed on Thursday and is being held on a $5 million bond. He faces two counts of murder and 10 counts of wanton endangerment. He has a long criminal history, including a protective order taken out against him by his ex-wife and charges of second- and fourth-degree assault, menacing, resisting arrest, disorderly conduct, terroristic threatening and intimidating a witness. Bush also struggles with mental illness, including paranoid schizophrenia, according to a Facebook page that allegedly belongs to him. Beirut (AFP) - Syrian regime artillery fire Friday killed seven civilians in Idlib, in the highest death toll since a deal last month to prevent a government assault on the province, a monitor said. Three children were among those killed in the country's last major rebel bastion in the northwest of the country, the Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said. Regime ally Russia and rebel backer Turkey agreed on September 17 to set up a buffer zone around the Idlib region, which includes the province of the same name and parts of adjacent provinces. The deal was intended to protect three million inhabitants in the region, more than half of which is held by the Tahrir Hayat al-Sham (HTS) alliance led by jihadists of Al-Qaeda's former Syria affiliate. Friday's deadly shelling hit Al-Rifa, an HTS-held village in the southeast of Idlib province. In the neighbouring province of Aleppo, regime fighters and rebels exchanged gunfire on the western outskirts of the provincial capital, the Observatory said. Jihadists including HTS were to withdraw from the expected demilitarised zone under the Russian-Turkish deal, but did not do so by an October 15 deadline. After that date passed, shelling continued intermittently and escalated dramatically late Wednesday. Government rocket and artillery fire killed one girl in Kafr Hamra, a town in Aleppo province inside the planned buffer zone, the Observatory said. And rocket fire by both jihadists and Turkish-backed rebels hit second city Aleppo, wounding 10 people. Both Russia and Turkey have said the truce deal remains on course despite the missed withdrawal deadline. The leaders of the two countries are to be joined by their French and German counterparts for a four-way summit on Syria in Istanbul on Saturday. Syria's regime has insisted that the buffer zone deal is temporary and that Idlib would eventually revert to government control. On Friday, Syria's UN envoy Bashar Jaafari repeated this in comments reported by state news agency SANA. "It is normal that the Syrian state fights terrorism in Idlib to rid its people of terrorism, and to extend its sovereignty over it," he said. United Nations (United States) (AFP) - A United Nations plan to end the seven-year civil war in Syria has run aground after Damascus blocked the world body's proposal for a committee to draft a new constitution, provoking anger among western powers. UN special envoy Staffan de Mistura has been working since January on forming a group of 150 members to thrash out a new constitution, seen as a first step to winding down a conflict that has cost more than 360,000 lives. Under the UN plan, the Syrian regime would choose 50 of the committee members, the Syrian opposition another 50 and the UN would nominate the final 50, composed of representatives of civil society and technical experts. De Mistura, a veteran Italian-Swedish diplomat due to step down next month, said Friday that Foreign Minister Walid Muallem rejected the last list of UN-proposed names and suggested his own method to the final 50 members during talks in Damascus this week. "Walid Muallem didn't accept a role for the UN in identifying or selecting a third list," the envoy told the UN Security Council by video conference during an emergency session called by the United States. "Rather, Mr Muallem indicated that the governments of Syria and Russia had agreed recently that the three Astana guarantors (Iran, Russia and Turkey) and the Syrian government would in consultations among them prepare a proposal as regards the third list." De Mistura said withdrawing the UN list was only possible "if there was an agreement on a new credible, balanced and inclusive list" that complied with UN resolutions and commitments made in January talks in the Russian resort town of Sochi. - 'Unacceptable' for Washington - Unsurprisingly, the Syrian counter-proposal was met with widespread condemnation from western powers, led by Britain, France and the United States. "The United Nations has exclusive control over the committee's membership, schedule and scope of work -- as affirmed by the Russian Federation in its January 2018 Sochi Declaration," said Jonathan Cohen, the deputy US ambassador to the world body. Story continues "Further obstruction on the committee's formation is unacceptable," he added, calling for urgent action. French ambassador Francois Delattre warned that "the risk of new escalation cannot be ruled out. That can only be done through a solution that is politically credible and inclusive." "It is right that the UN is involved," in the political process, said Karen Pierce, the British ambassador to the UN, stressing the world body's deep engagement with issues of humanitarian aid, refugees and health. Vassily Nebenzia, the ambassador of Russia, a key ally of the Syrian regime, was critical of the decision to hold the Security Council meeting. "We cannot go against the will of Syria," he said. "We will help Staffan de Mistura create this constitutional committee with respect for Syrian sovereignty." Nebenzia urged caution in the process and stressed that the outgoing diplomat, who already addressed the council last week, not make the issue his "political legacy." De Mistura said he would take part Saturday in a special summit in Istanbul bringing together leaders from France, Germany, Russia and Turkey. The Syrian summit will be followed on Monday by a meeting of the so-called "small group" of Britain, Egypt, France, Germany, Jordan, Saudi Arabia and the United States, a UN official said. De Mistura will then go on to Geneva to meet with the Astana accord guarantors Iran and Russia, which are backing the regime of President Bashar al-Assad, and Turkey, a major sponsor of anti-regime rebel groups. The UN's attempt to broker peace in Syria have largely been eclipsed by a parallel diplomatic initiative by Moscow, Tehran and Turkey. Moscow (AFP) - Syria's opposition welcomes dialogue with Moscow to achieve a political settlement of the years-long war, said their chief negotiator, Nasr al-Hariri, in Russia on Friday. "Of course, Russia can do a lot and can facilitate the expansion of dialogue," he told reporters before meeting with Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov. "We have strived and will continue to strive for dialogue and negotiations with Russia to achieve a political solution," said the head of the Syrian Negotiation Commission. "Russia is a state that has major influence on the Syrian issue," he said, expressing hope that Moscow would seize "this historic moment" and help broker a solution that suited both the regime and the Syrian people. In the past, the opposition has described the role of Russia, which intervened militarily in the conflict on the side of Bashar al-Assad in 2015, as an "occupation". But Hariri's remarks signalled the Syrian opposition's readiness for more concessions following the regime's battlefield successes. Moscow said that Russia's top diplomat Lavrov and Hariri had a "frank exchange of opinions" and stressed the need to settle the crisis as soon as possible. Hariri visited Russia ahead of this weekend's four-way summit on Syria in Istanbul. Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan will host Russian President Vladimir Putin, France's Emmanuel Macron and German Chancellor Angela Merkel. Turkey, which has supported Syrian rebels, has been working with Syrian regime supporters Russia and Iran to end the more than seven-year civil war, efforts that have often been greeted with suspicion in the West. Tragic Daniel Chambers died tragically in a frozen field after going missing (Picture: Devon & Cornwall Police) A teenage boy died of hypothermia in fields in freezing conditions after missing school. Daniel Chambers, 15, was found on marshy land three days after he disappeared near his home in Tipton St John in Devon in December 17. The teenager had not got on the school bus and was seen by eyewitnesses walking nearby. After several days, his body was found partially-clothed and slumped at the base of a tree near the River Otter. An inquest reportedly heard that whisky was found in his rucksack and tests showed his blood alcohol level was over the legal limit for driving. The cause of death was found to be hypothermia and the teens death was described as a tragic accident, with his actions completely out of character. MORE: Woman, 95, left terrified after home targeted MORE: Dog called Princess pretends to be a stray Daniel was described by a friend as quiet and shy and he was said to have been his normal self the day before he disappeared. Detective Sergeant Charlotte Heath said his death was a truly tragic accident adding: It was very, very cold during that week. There are a number of areas where there is a lot of water at that time of year. His parents said in a statement: Daniel talked about his future, such as visiting his older sister, Melissa, at university, and partying with her, travelling abroad and possibly joining the forces as a career. His death was a tragic accident and a loss of his life which was just beginning. We will never see him grown into manhood, fall in love and achieve amazing things. The world has lost a wonderful young man. We cannot comprehend or accept life without him, and our world will never be the same again. Savannah Guthrie, Megyn Kelly, and Robin Roberts. (Photo: Getty Images) As we await official word as to what is happening with Megyn Kellys contract at NBC, the morning news shows covered the controversy extensively on Friday including at her home network. For the third day in a row, Kellys Today show colleagues addressed the drama head-on. Now, we move to Megyn Kellys future at this network in the wake of the controversy that has surrounded her this week, Savannah Guthrie said, before throwing to NBC News correspondent Morgan Radford. With news of her departure from NBC coming out now, all eyes are on what happens next for the morning anchor, Radford began. Citing a source familiar with the situation, Radford reported that Kelly is in talks with the network about her imminent departure. (NBC announced Friday that Megyn Kelly Today is not returning, but did not elaborate on her employment status.) Her apparent exit coming just days after Kelly made controversial comments on her show, defending the use of blackface, in a panel discussion on a universitys crackdown on inappropriate Halloween costumes, Radford said before showing a clip again of Kellys comments from Tuesdays episode of Megyn Kelly Today. It was a not-so-subtle dig that didnt go unnoticed by a rival network, but more on that later. Radford read a statement from NBC News that said, Given the circumstances, Megyn Kelly Today will be on tape the rest of the week. In the package, they went through mixed social media reactions in support of and against NBCs decision to put Kelly on hiatus. The segment also didnt shy away from noting Kellys high salary, something that was rumored to have caused tension behind the scenes at the network. Now, growing speculation this morning over what will happen to Kellys reportedly $69 million three-year contract, Radford stated. Sources familiar with the situation tell NBC News that conversations have already started about Megyns exit. The exact details of which remain unclear at this point. Story continues At Good Morning America, Robin Roberts introduced a segment on the controversy about 30 minutes into the show. Now, the continued trouble for Megyn Kelly, she said. Questions about her future are growing as she faces fallout for her remarks concerning blackface. ABCs Linsey Davis is here with the latest. Good morning. She was once listed as [one of] Time Magazines 100 Most Influential People in the world, Davis began. She is NBC News divisions highest-paid anchor and this morning, it appears Wednesdays show where Megyn Kelly apologized may have been her last, at least at NBC. The package showed clips of both Kellys blackface comments and the apology from her shows this week. Overall, GMA stayed away from the original reporting on the situation and relied on reports from the Hollywood Reporter about Kellys sit-down with the network planned for Friday. Before the proceeding returned to Roberts, Davis read a statement from Fox News about speculation that Kelly might return to her former network. We are extremely happy with our entire lineup, Fox said in a statement. That says a lot, Roberts quipped, before sitting down with ABCs chief legal analyst, Dan Abrams, and Marisa Guthrie of the Hollywood Reporter, to dissect the drama even further. Guthrie and Roberts noted how NBC was sending a clear message by including reports about Kelly on their own newscasts both Today and NBC Nightly News and by repeatedly airing her blackface comments, along with racially insensitive remarks Kelly made while at Fox, in their reporting. Thats a powerful signal they are not protecting her, Guthrie stated. Roberts later added, Her show did not live up to expectations and thats being generous in saying that and some are feeling NBC executives are using it as a way to get rid of her. Shes a tough person, she tried to make it more of a newsy show and really dug into the #MeToo stuff, she had a lot of accusers on, but when she offered to have Matt Lauer on with his accusers, the NBC executives were outraged by that, Guthrie reported. So this has been building. And they may find out just how tough she is, it doesnt appear she will go away quietly, Roberts said, concluding their nearly 10-minute long segment. CBS This Morning also covered the latest reports on Kelly at the top of the first hour, with Gayle King kicking things off about 13 minutes in. Megyn Kelly remains at the center of a controversy this morning, days after she suggested putting on blackface as part of a Halloween costume is not necessarily racist, she said. CBS included original reporting on the situation citing a source close to the TV host who claims her employment status at NBC News has not changed. King then introduced CBS News national correspondent Jericka Duncan, who reported on why her career there is still in jeopardy. That same source tells us reports that Kellys show will be canceled and that shes seeking a $50 million settlement sound untrue, but for a second day in a row, Megyn Kelly Today is a rerun, adding to the speculation of her imminent exit, Duncan said. The segment touched on Kellys history of making racially insensitive comments, including a clip from 2013 when she declared on Fox News that Jesus was a white man too. Kelly hasnt received much public support from her peers although its unclear if anyone reached out privately but Gayle King offered some words of encouragement off-air. I know Megyn Kelly. I happen to like Megyn Kelly. I think shes a very smart cookie, very smart at what she does, she told Stephen Colbert. But I think she clearly stepped in it. She made a terrible mistake. And I was surprised that she would make a mistake of that kind. King added, But I never wish bad on anybody, I dont. Im not a Pollyanna girl Im not that but I do feel that this is a rough time for her. While Kellys future at NBC remains unclear, the network said in a statement Friday, Megyn Kelly Today is not returning. Next week, the 9 a.m. hour will be hosted by other Today co-anchors, NBC said. Read more from Yahoo Entertainment: COLOMBO, Sri Lanka (AP) Sri Lankan President Maithripala Sirisena sacked the country's prime minister and his Cabinet and replaced him with a former strongman, creating what some observers said could be a constitutional crisis in the South Asian island nation. The prime minister, Ranil Wickremesinghe, told reporters Friday that he had no intention of leaving his post. "I have the majority. I will function as the prime minister. I will remain as the prime minister," he said. Sirisena informed Wickremesinghe that he was being replaced by his former nemesis, Mahinda Rajapaksa, according to aide Mahinda Amaraweera. Amaraweera, a lawmaker from Rajapaksa's party, said Rajapaksa had a majority needed in the 225-member Parliament for him to take over, but a recent constitutional amendment makes that unclear, experts said. BEIJING (AP) Shared trade friction with the U.S. appears to be drawing longtime Asian rivals China and Japan closer, with Chinese President Xi Jinping telling Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe on Friday that the two countries are "sharing more common interests and concerns." China-Japan relations have undergone turbulence but are now "back to a normal track," Xi told Abe during the first formal visit to Beijing by a Japanese leader in nearly seven years. "Under the new situation, our interdependence with each other has deepened. Also, we are sharing more common interests and concerns in multilateral and wider areas," Xi said. BEIJING (AP) China and Japan displayed a united front on "free and fair" trade as leaders of Asia's two biggest economies met Friday in Beijing. The visit by Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, along with hundreds of Japanese businessmen, took place against the backdrop of the festering trade dispute between China and the U.S. that has resulted in both sides imposing billions of dollars in tariffs on each other's exports. "I believe we need to take to a new level a free and fair trade system," Abe said after meeting with Chinese President Xi Jinping. The two sides signed a slew of agreements, including a currency swap deal and plans to work together in other markets. Story continues BEIJING (AP) The death toll in an eastern China coal mine collapse has risen to 11, with 10 miners still trapped underground, state media reported. One week after the disaster, rescue crews were clearing fallen rock from the shaft, with the remaining miners believed to be located 74 meters (242 feet) below the surface, the official Xinhua News Agency said late Friday. It said that rescuers were making progress but gave no indication of when they expected to break through. More than 300 people were inside the mine at the time of the collapse. China long had the world's deadliest coal mines but safety has improved considerably with more modern equipment, better training and the closure of most of the smallest, most dangerous mines. SINGAPORE (AP) An executive of one of two Singapore companies accused by the U.S. Treasury Department of violating U.N. sanctions against North Korea said Friday that he was unaware of any such dealings. The Treasury Department said in a statement Thursday that the companies, commodities trading house Wee Tiong (S) Pte. Ltd. and ship management services company WT Marine Pte. Ltd., engaged in laundering money for North Korea. The Singapore Police Force said in a statement Friday that the country takes its obligations under the U.N. sanctions seriously and "will take appropriate action based on the outcome of our investigations." It said it could not comment further until the investigations are complete. SEOUL, South Korea (AP) The North and South Korean militaries agreed Friday to completely destroy 22 front-line guard posts by the end of November as they discussed their next steps in implementing a wide-ranging military agreement signed last month to reduce tensions. They also agreed to conduct a joint survey early next month of a 70-kilometer (43-mile) -long waterway near their western border where civilian vessels from both countries eventually will be allowed to pass freely, according to a statement released after the general-level talks at the border village of Panmunjom. The plans to remove the guard posts and jointly use the Han River estuary were among the commitments spelled out in the military agreement reached last month on the sidelines of a summit between North Korean leader Kim Jong Un and South Korean President Moon Jae-in. BORACAY, Philippines (AP) Boatloads of tourists sailed Friday to the Philippines' Boracay island, which officials reopened to visitors after a six-month closure to clean waters the president had called a "cesspool" due to years of overcrowding, partying and neglect. Officials on the island in central Aklan province have imposed new rules to regulate the influx of visitors and beach parties, decongest resorts and prevent sewage from being discharged directly into the turquoise waters. Only a portion of Boracay's hotels and other businesses have reopened under the new rules, and a fraction of the more than 20,000 workers who lost their jobs have been rehired. SRINAGAR, India (AP) Eight rebels and two Indian soldiers were killed in gunbattles in disputed Kashmir that sparked violent anti-India protests by residents seeking an end to Indian rule in the region, officials said Friday. Indian troops laid siege to a village in northwestern Sopore area on Friday, leading to an exchange of gunfire in which two militants and a soldier were killed, police said. Government forces engaged militants at two places in the contested region on Thursday after troops launched counterinsurgency operations resulting in the death of six militants, the Indian military said. One soldier was wounded in the fighting. ISLAMABAD (AP) Pakistan's army chief has approved death sentences for 14 "hardcore terrorists" convicted by military courts for attacks in recent years that killed 19 security forces and three civilians. A military statement issued Friday says Gen. Qamar Javed Bajwa also approved prison terms for eight militants. It says those convicted were involved in attacks on security forces and civilians, as well as the destruction of educational institutions and a famous ski resort in Swat valley. It didn't say when the men would be executed. Military trials are not open to the public in Pakistani but defendants have the right to hire their own lawyers. NEW DELHI (AP) With air quality reduced to "very severe" in the Indian capital region, authorities are bracing for a major Hindu festival featuring massive fireworks that threatens to cloak New Delhi with more toxic smog and dust. The government's Central Pollution Control Board on Friday said New Delhi's air quality had plummeted to the worst possible category. The level of PM2.5, tiny particulate matter that can dangerously clog lungs, was 187, more than six times higher than the World Health Organization considers safe. The board warned people to avoid jogging outdoors in the early morning and after sunset, and to keep medicine nearby if asthmatic. Ottawa (AFP) - An overhaul of global trade is urgently needed, 13 trade ministers representing all regions of the world said Thursday, following two days of talks in Ottawa aimed at setting objectives to reform the troubled system. The group made a veiled appeal to the United States to stop blocking appointments to WTO dispute resolution panels, warning the system will otherwise collapse soon. Leaders also said a rethink is needed on the differential treatment of developing nations, in an apparent nod to US complaints that China is considered a developing nation, despite its economic might. Canada hosted officials from Australia, Brazil, Chile, the European Union, Japan, South Korea, Kenya, Mexico, New Zealand, Norway, Singapore, and Switzerland for the talks. The United States and China, however, were not at the table. "The current situation at the WTO is no longer sustainable and action must be taken," Canada's Trade Minister Jim Carr told a closing press conference. "We share (the US) appetite for reform," he added. "It is in need of renewal... It's time for this reform and this is a good place to start." The failure to adjust global trade rules in the last two decades -- particularly in agriculture and services -- has undermined the potential to boost growth and reduce poverty, according to a joint report by the International Monetary Fund, World Trade Organization and World Bank released September 30. The organizations are urging redoubled efforts to accelerate reforms, especially to the WTO -- moves they say are aimed at salvaging the economic benefits of trade and ensuring that prosperity is shared more widely. US President Donald Trump's relentless attacks on the Geneva-based WTO and threats to pull his country out of the global trade body added urgency to the discussions. His "America First" policy and use of punitive tariffs have unsettled trade relations. WTO Director General Roberto Azevedo, who joined the talks, has said he agrees that the WTO needs reforms, and soon. Story continues Carr meanwhile acknowledged that there can be no substantive reforms without the US or China. But he also stressed the need to frame rules for all 164 WTO member nations. "We are a relatively small country and our major trading partners are big," Carr said as the meetings began. "Rules matter because we each merit the protections they afford and the opportunity they create for even the smallest first-time exporter in the most far-flung corner of the world to compete and to succeed," he said. "To make that kind of relationship work, we have to believe the rules of trade work for all of us and our people have to see that, too." Among the objectives outlined at the Ottawa ministerial were safeguarding the WTO dispute settlement system, improving its "monitoring and transparency functions," and adjusting rules to reflect the dominance in trade of services, including ecommerce. In a joint communique, the delegates said they are "deeply concerned by recent developments in international trade, particularly the rise in protectionism, which negatively affect the WTO and put the entire multilateral trading system at risk." They said "continued vacancies in the Appellate Body present a risk to the WTO system as a whole" and "emphasized an urgent need to unblock the appointment of Appellate Body members." At the same time, the delegates acknowledged concerns about its functioning and vowed to "work on solutions." The Appellate Body normally has seven members, but is now down to three. If one more is lost, the dispute resolution system will stop functioning, putting trade disputes in limbo. The Ottawa group also said trading rules must be updated "to reflect 21st century realities" and the WTO must "explore how the development dimension, including special and differential treatment, can be best pursued in rule-making efforts." They refused to cast it aside, however, saying "development must remain an integral part of our work." Another meeting of the Canadian-led group is scheduled for January. TBILISI, Oct 26 (Reuters) - U.S. National Security Advisor John Bolton said on Friday that the United States wanted to hold strategic talks with Russia about China's belligerent activity. Bolton made the comments in an interview with Reuters in Tbilisi, the capital of ex-Soviet Georgia, where he was holding talks with senior government officials. Bolton said that Chinese missile capabilities posed a threat to Russia as the "Russian heartland" was in striking distance of such missiles. He also said that the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces (INF) treaty which the U.S. is planning to quit was "a relic of the Cold War". (Reporting by Margarita Antidze Writing by Maria Tsvetkova Editing by Andrew Osborn) TBILISI (Reuters) - U.S. National Security Advisor John Bolton said on Friday that the United States wanted to hold strategic talks with Russia about China's belligerent activity. Bolton made the comments in an interview with Reuters in Tbilisi, the capital of ex-Soviet Georgia, where he was holding talks with senior government officials. Bolton said that Chinese missile capabilities posed a threat to Russia as the "Russian heartland" was in striking distance of such missiles. He also said that the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces (INF) treaty which the U.S. is planning to quit was "a relic of the Cold War". (Reporting by Margarita Antidze; Writing by Maria Tsvetkova; Editing by Andrew Osborn) At least 800 troops are expected to be sent to the US-Mexico border after a request from Donald Trump - who says he is "bringing out the military" in response to a caravan of thousands of refugees and migrants that is making its way towards America. Mr Trump claimed in his tweet that he will use military forces to stop people at the border, to address what he calls a national emergency. Defence Secretary James Mattis is expected to sign the order as early as Thursday, with reports that the number of troops deployed could reach 1,000 The president does have the ability to do send the military, but troops do not have a lot of power to stop undocumented immigrants. They cannot legally detain or arrest anyone trying to enter, but they can provide aerial surveillance. The military will provide logistical support, like vehicles, tents, and equipment to border patrol agents. Mr. Trumps tweets are in response to a migrant caravan, consisting of thousands of Central Americans - mostly from Honduras feeling violence in their country - who to cross and seek asylum or work in the United States. Brandon Judd of the National Border Patrol Council is right when he says on @foxandfriends that the Democrat inspired laws make it tough for us to stop people at the Border. MUST BE CHANDED, but I am bringing out the military for this National Emergency. They will be stopped! Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) October 25, 2018 In response, the president has threatened to cut aid to Honduras, Guatemala and El Salvador, unless Mexico successfully stops the caravan. Mr Trump has repeatedly said, without evidence, that there are criminals and drugs in the caravan. There are already about 2,000 National Guard troops assisting at the border under a previous Pentagon arrangement. Story continues Other presidents have sent the military to the border as well. President George W Bush deployed National Guard troops to the border in 2006, and President Barack Obama did the same in 2010. On both the campaign trail and during his presidency, Mr. Trump has supported strengthening the southern border to prevent undocumented crossings. He has spoken many times of building a wall separating the borders of Mexico and the United States, although such an immense project would take years and cost billions. Mr. Trump has also claimed in his tweets - with less than two weeks until crucial midterm elections that democrats were responsible for weak laws that allowed immigrants from the countrys southern border in easily. He wants those laws chanded, which presumably means changed. By Ezgi Erkoyun and Ali Kucukgocmen ISTANBUL (Reuters) - Turkish prosecutors have prepared an extradition request for 18 suspects from Saudi Arabia in the killing of journalist Jamal Khashoggi, authorities said on Friday, after President Tayyip Erdogan urged Riyadh to disclose who ordered the murder. Erdogan has in recent days stepped up pressure on Saudi Arabia to come clean in the case, and Western governments have also voiced increasing scepticism, pitching the world's top oil exporter and a pivotal Middle East ally into a worsening crisis. Erdogan said Turkey had more information than it had shared so far about the killing of Khashoggi, a Saudi national and Washington Post columnist who was killed at the Saudi consulate in Istanbul on Oct.2. Khashoggi, who lived in the United States, was a critic of Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, the kingdom's de facto ruler. Saudi Arabia's public prosecutor on Thursday said the killing of Khashoggi was premeditated, contradicting a previous official statement that it happened accidentally during a tussle in the consulate. Riyadh's numerous shifting accounts of the killing have undermined Prince Mohammed's stance in the West. Turkish prosecutors seeking the extradition accuse the 18 of "murder by premeditation, monstrous intent or by torture". Riyadh previously arrested the 18 as part of its investigation into the case. Those include a 15-man security team that Turkey says flew in hours before the killing and carried it out. "Who gave this order?" Erdogan said in a speech to members of his AK Party in Ankara. "Who gave the order for 15 people to come to Turkey?" he said. Saudi officials initially denied having anything to do with Khashoggi's disappearance after he entered the consulate, which he had visited to obtain paperwork for a planned marriage. "The reasoning behind the extradition request is that Jamal Khashoggi was murdered in Turkey by Saudi nationals who traveled to Turkey for this specific purpose," a senior Turkish official said. "It is clear that the judicial system in Turkey is better equipped to genuinely serve the cause of justice in this case." Saudi Arabia has also sacked five senior government officials as part of the investigation. FIANCEE SPURNED TRUMP INVITE Khashoggi's Turkish fiancee, Hatice Cengiz, said she did not accept an invitation from U.S. President Donald Trump, the kingdom's staunchest Western champion, to visit the White House after Khashoggi's murder because she thought it was aimed at influencing public opinion in his own favor. In her first television interview since the killing, Cengiz recounted the events leading up to their visit to the consulate on Oct. 2 where Khashoggi handed her his two mobile phones and went inside while she waited outside for him to emerge. "Trump invited me to the United States but I perceived it as a statement to win public favor," Cengiz told broadcaster Haberturk, pausing at times during an interview and more than once breaking down in tears. Trump and Prince Mohammed have cultivated warm ties though the U.S. president said earlier this week that the crown prince, as the kingdom's de facto ruler, bore ultimate responsibility for the operation against Khashoggi. Trump also said Riyadh had staged the "worst cover-up ever" over the killing. Cengiz said Khashoggi was concerned tensions would arise when he visited the consulate for the first time on Sept. 28, but he was treated well at that visit, which appeared to reassure him, she said. "He thought Turkey is a safe country and if he would be held or interrogated, this issue would be swiftly solved," she said. SELF-STYLED REFORMER How Western allies deal with Riyadh will hinge on the extent to which they believe responsibility for Khashoggi's death lies directly with Prince Mohammed and the Saudi authorities. Prince Mohammed, who casts himself as a reformer, has said the killers will be brought to justice. Erdogan said he had spoken with Prince Mohammed. "I also told the crown prince. I said, 'You know how to make people talk. Whatever happened between these 18 people, this dodgy business is among them. If you are determined to lift suspicion, then the key point of our cooperation is these 18 people.'" Turkish officials suspect Saudi agents killed Khashoggi, 59, inside the consulate and dismembered him. Turkish sources say authorities have an audio recording documenting the murder. U.S. CIA Director Gina Haspel heard the audio during a visit to Turkey this week, sources told Reuters, and has briefed Trump about Turkey's findings and her discussions. Saudi state television quoted the Saudi public prosecutor on Thursday as saying Riyadh was interrogating suspects on the basis of information given by a joint Saudi-Turkish task force. Many Saudis have been shocked by Riyadh's admission after two weeks of denials and condemnation of foreign news reports. On Friday, authorities tried to stem the domestic fallout, instructing mosque preachers to focus sermons on "the fierce and unjust onslaught targeting the country", according to a directive seen by Reuters that did not specifically mention the Khashoggi murder. One Riyadh cleric warned worshippers against repeating reports from TV or social media "without contemplating the danger of this news", adding that "most of them are lies". (Additional reporting by Orhan Coskun and Tulay Karadeniz in Ankara, Maria Tsvetkova in Moscow; Yesim Dikmen and Daren Butler in Istanbul and Stephen Kalin in Riyadh; Writing by David DolanEditing by Mark Heinrich) WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The U.S. Treasury Department imposed sanctions on two Singapore-based companies and a man accused of money laundering through the U.S. financial system to evade sanctions against North Korea, the department said in a statement on Thursday. The United States said the person targeted by sanctions, Tan Wee Beng, a director and shareholder of a Singapore-based commodities trading company, Wee Tiong Holdings Pte Ltd, hid the origins of payments and structured transactions to fulfill millions of dollars in North Korean contracts since at least 2011. The Treasury Department also imposed sanctions on two vessels tied to a different company for which Tan is a managing director, and which the United States says engaged in illicit economic activity connected to North Korea. The Justice Department unsealed criminal charges against Tan, Treasury said. Tan was charged with bank fraud, money laundering and defrauding the United States, according to an FBI notice. The arrest warrant was issued for Tan last August. A representative for Wee Tiong Holdings Pte did not immediately respond to a request for comment. (Reporting by Makini Brice; Editing by Doina Chiacu and Jonathan Oatis) By Phil Stewart and Delphine Schrank WASHINGTON/PIJIJIAPAN, Mexico (Reuters) - U.S. President Donald Trump's administration may send up to 1,000 active-duty troops to the U.S.-Mexico border, officials said on Thursday, as Trump hammered away at the issue of illegal immigration two weeks ahead of congressional elections. Trump's threat was sparked by the advance of a caravan of Central American migrants trekking through Mexico, headed toward the United States. "I am bringing out the military for this National Emergency. They will be stopped!" Trump wrote on Twitter. But the migrants appeared undeterred on Thursday night as several thousand of them bedded down more than 1,000 miles (1,610 km) from the U.S. border, in the town of Pijijiapan in Mexico's southern Chiapas state, after hiking hours from their last stop. "Whatever Trump may say, he's not going to hold us back," said Denis Omar Contreras, a caravan organizer from Honduras, who plans to help lead the group to northern Mexico. Many said the fear of returning to a violent homeland loomed larger than the president's threats. "We've come fleeing our country. If we return to Honduras, the gangs will probably kill us," he said. Trump and his fellow Republicans have sought to make the caravan and immigration into major issues before the Nov. 6 elections, in which Republicans are battling to keep control of Congress. Trump, who has maintained a hard line on immigration since taking office last year, is considering a plan to ban entry of migrants at the southern border and deny them asylum, according to media reports. The reports offered few details. A White House official said "a wide range of administrative, legal and legislative options" were being considered, but that no decisions had been made. The possibility of executive action to lock out any migrants in the caravan and the likely positioning of more soldiers at the U.S. border with Mexico could energize Trump supporters at the ballot box. Any ban would face likely legal challenges. U.S. Homeland Security Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen said in an interview with Fox News Channel that her department had asked the Pentagon for help to bolster its capabilities as it polices the border, including asking for "some air support ... some logistics, planning, vehicle barriers, engineering." The DHS request could require deploying between 800 and 1,000 active-duty troops, two U.S. officials said, speaking on condition of anonymity. The U.S. military is prohibited from carrying out civilian law enforcement on American soil unless specifically authorized by Congress. There are currently 2,100 National Guardsmen along the border, but the DHS request could lead to the first large-scale deployment of active-duty U.S. military forces to support the border protection mission under Trump. 'GO BACK TO YOUR COUNTRY' "To those in the Caravan, turnaround, we are not letting people into the United States illegally. Go back to your Country and if you want, apply for citizenship like millions of others are doing!" Trump tweeted on Thursday. "We feel like he's not human," said Carlos Fernandez, a 39-year-old bricklayer, speaking by phone from the Guatemala-Mexico border after traveling since last Friday from the crime-wracked city of San Pedro Sula in Honduras. "If someone migrates to the United States, it's to work, and working is not a crime," he said. More than 1,000 people arrived in Guatemala on Monday, part of a second caravan, but have since divided into smaller groups to push on northward. The larger caravan is now in southern Mexico and left Honduras nearly two weeks ago. It numbered more than 5,000 when it settled in the town of Mapastepec on Wednesday night, a local official said. Many are fleeing violence, poverty and government corruption in their home countries. "I wish he could see that we are doing this from our heart, with great desire to move forward," said Jose Rodriguez, 29, referring to the U.S. president. Trump pledged during the 2016 presidential race to build a wall along the southern U.S. border with Mexico. But the funding for his signature campaign promise has been slow to materialize. In April, frustrated by lack of progress on the wall, Trump ordered the National Guard to help secure the border. Adam Isacson, an official at the Washington Office on Latin America, a group that advocates for migrant rights, expressed misgivings about the potential deployment. "Even if it's a short-term deployment, it's another step toward militarization of our border," Isacson said, adding that 40 percent of people being apprehended at the border were children and families. (Reporting by Phil Stewart in Washington and Delphine Schrank in Pijijiapan; Additional reporting by Makini Brice, Steve Holland and Yeganeh Torbati and Eric Beech in Washington, Michael O'Boyle in Mexico City and Sofia Menchu in Guatemala City; Editing by Will Dunham and Peter Cooney) New York (AFP) - Donald Trump on Saturday plunged into a frenzied last 10 days of campaigning ahead of crucial midterm elections, seeking to regain the spotlight briefly seized by the arrest of a Florida fan of his charged with mailing bombs to more than a dozen of the US president's leading critics. After initially denouncing the mailings as "terrorizing acts" and calling them "despicable," Trump has resumed his attacks on the news media, saying they themselves shared the blame. The president was due to speak later Saturday at a rally in Illinois, after he on Friday accused the media of using the bombing suspect's political inclinations to "score political points against me and the Republican Party." At a rally in Charlotte, North Carolina, on Friday he blamed the suspicious packages for slowing the Republicans' push to hold control of both houses of Congress in the November 6 midterms. "The Republicans had tremendous momentum, and then, of course, this happened," Trump said. Cesar Sayoc, 56, a registered Republican with a criminal history, was charged with mailing at least 13 bombs in a week-long spree that inflamed the country ahead of the elections. The FBI said late Friday that a possible 14th bomb, similar to the others, had been recovered at the California home of Democratic donor Tom Steyer. Sayoc was arrested outside a Florida mall, and his van, covered in pro-Trump and anti-liberal stickers, was seized. - 'I think I've been toned down' - Trump is planning an intensive schedule of big rallies -- the platform from which he has launched some of his sharpest strikes on political foes -- from now until the election. Along with attacks on his critics, he is expected to play up what he says is the "threat" of a caravan of mostly Honduran migrants moving slowly northward, mostly on foot, through Mexico. On Saturday after several people were reportedly killed at a synagogue in Pittsburgh, Trump addressed the poisonous climate. Story continues "It's a terrible, terrible thing what's going on with hate in our country, frankly, and all over the world and something has to be done," he told journalists before flying off to campaign. Top Democratic lawmakers Nancy Pelosi and Chuck Schumer have accused Trump of condoning "physical violence and dividing Americans." Asked on Friday by a reporter whether, in light of the bombing attempts, he would pledge "to tone down" his rhetoric, Trump replied, "Well, I think I've been toned down, if you want to know the truth. "I could really tone it up... The media has been extremely unfair to me and to the Republican Party." In his North Carolina rally the president lashed out at the top Democrats, drawing supportive boos with his dismissive mention of Pelosi and his mocking of "Cryin' Chuck Schumer." Among a flurry of election-related Twitter messages early Saturday, Trump retweeted, with evident approval, a headline from right-leaning website Breitbart News: "Trump Thunders at Media for Smearing His Supporters after Bomb Scares." - Obama, Clinton, Biden - Sayoc has been charged with five federal crimes, including mailing of explosives and threats against former presidents, Attorney General Jeff Sessions announced. If put on trial and convicted, Sayoc faces up to 48 years in prison. The bombs were sent through the mail, many of them via a US Postal Service processing center in Florida, and Sayoc was tracked down based on fingerprint and possible DNA evidence, agents said. He is accused of mailing explosives to prominent Trump critics in several states, including former president Barack Obama and Trump's opponent in the 2016 presidential election, Hillary Clinton. The other targets were ex-vice president Joe Biden, Hollywood star Robert De Niro, billionaire donor George Soros, former CIA director John Brennan, former intelligence chief James Clapper, former attorney general Eric Holder, Congresswoman Maxine Waters, and Senators Cory Booker and Kamala Harris. All the targets are loathed by Trump supporters for their public opposition to the US president. A lawyer for the suspect's family, Ron Lowy, told CNN that Sayoc had seemed more interested in "bodybuilding (and) nightclub events" than in politics. He was arrested in 2002 for making a bomb threat against a power company, according to court records, and was sentenced to a year on probation. He has also been arrested for theft and domestic violence. "It's my opinion that he was attracted to the Trump formula of ... reaching out to these types of outsiders, people who don't fit in, people who are angry at America, telling them that they have a place at the table, telling them that it's OK to get angry," Lowy said. "I believe that that was a motivating factor. Do I blame the president solely? No. This is a sick individual." Each of the homemade bombs included six inches of PVC pipe, a small clock, a battery, wiring and energetic material, defined by the FBI as potentially explosive. Just because the Leading Man commands center stage, through all the acts of comedy and tragedy and farce, does not mean he gets to decide how the play turns out. Every year, come November, the audience becomes the actor. Young and old, red and bluethe stage is yours. The most fateful question in any election cycle is not whos ahead; its who shows up. In 2014, the midterm mood was so lukewarm that turnout was the lowest in 72 years. But it appears that this year just might be different. Lets hope this is true, but not just because of who could win, control the Hill, approve the next Justice, partner with or police the President. Social scientists charting the health of Americas democracy see a series of threats ranging from distrust in institutions to attacks on the press to interference from abroad to deepening polarization at home. There is no easy way to fix this; its only easy to know where to begin. Vote because it is the one absolutely necessary step toward any better place. It reminds public servants about the public they serve. It dilutes the power of big donors and narrow interests. It builds civic muscles we need all through the year to serve our neighbors and strengthen our communities. And it confounds the experts who insist on predicting outcomes as though the election were a formality. Voting is an act of faith in the possibility that in a true democracy, anything can happen. Vote if the voices you hear dont speak for you. Elections have consequences, Barack Obama and Mitch McConnell have said in defense of their power plays. We shape outcomes only if we provide input. Otherwise, we are wind through a leafless branch, moving nothing at all. Vote because you refuse to let voting become the privilege of the enraged and engaged. Its fine not to care about politics; these days, its even healthy. You still get a vote, to remind politicians that they serve both the people who admire them and those who ignore them. Story continues Vote because there are those who may not want you to, who promote laws making it harder for poor people or young people or not-white people to cast a ballot. Nearly 16 million people were struck from voting rolls from 2014 to 2016, reports the Brennan Center for Justice at NYU Law School. From Georgia to North Dakota, activists are fighting in the courts and in the streets over who gets to cast a ballotbattles that both inspire and deter people from showing up at the polls. Vote to defy those who spread false rumors of active shooters near polling places, who create fake Facebook posts claiming you can vote by text, who distribute flyers listing the wrong date or address for elections and polling places. Vote as a nod to a time when people were fine if their son married a Republican and their daughter a Democrat. Vote because democracy would be healthier if races were closer. More than 60% of Americans live in counties that in 2016 were decided by more than 20 points. So why should politicians bother to engage in hard debates or even look for a middle ground? Your vote is not wasted if you are a San Francisco Republican or a Wichita Democrat. Even the reddest and bluest states can swerve; just ask Not-a-Senator Roy Moore, after crimson Alabama elected a Democrat, or Charlie Baker, the popular Republican governor of the socialist republic of Massachusetts. Vote because you refuse to let voting become the privilege of the enraged and engaged Vote because our civic culture needs some love right now. Most people dont care about democracy issues; they care about particular issues, like guns or health care or climate change, observes Archon Fung, a professor of citizenship and self-government at Harvard Kennedy School of Government. But that could change as people are growing more concerned about the health of our institutions. Democracy is being beaten up, by negative advertising, by low turnout, by tribes attacking each other rather than being willing to listen or engage with one another, Fung warns. All of that takes chunks out of democracy. And the more chunks we take out, the more fragile democracy becomes. Eventually it may fall apart. Vote as a positive act, since our system has become pitilessly negative. If at all possible, find someone you can vote for. Our politics cant reflect the best in us if it is powered mainly by the worstour fears, our resentments, our fevered tribal furies. If you only vote against people you cant stand, those you elect feel less accountable and have less reason to listen or learn. Lets vote because if by some miracle everyone voted, so much might be different. Roughly 40% of voting-age Americans cast a ballot in the 2014 midtermsthe lowest percentage since 1942. The 55.7% participation rate in 2016 puts us 26th among 32 developed nations in voter turnout. But involvement varies widely: in 2014, in California alone, turnout ranged from 22.6% in Imperial County in the south to 65.0% in Sierra County up north. In 2016, 70% of people over 70 voted nationally vs. only 43% of people under 25. This is partly because we make voting hard, in 50 states with 50 different systems. But that also means we can experiment with reforms, as individuals, employers and citizens of state governments. Denver decided in 2013 that it would mail all registered voters ballots, which they can send back or drop off at a designated spot. In 2016, 72% of its voters turned outwith increased participation from both Republicans and Democrats. As of this year, 13 states and Washington, D.C., have automatic voter-registration laws, meaning that when people interact with the government (from getting a drivers license to receiving food assistance), they are automatically registered. Oregon, the only state with data on the impact of these measures, instituted such a policy for the 2016 election and saw the largest turnout spike of all the states compared with 2012. Vote because there are fewer excuses. A 2014 Pew survey found that two-thirds of people who didnt vote said they just didnt have time. So outdoor-apparel retailer Patagonia will close all its stores and headquarters and give everyone a paid day off so they have time to get to the polls, just as companies like Spotify, Ford and General Motors did in 2016. No American should have to choose between a paycheck and fulfilling his or her duty as a citizen, argues Patagonia CEO Rose Marcario. Given the odds against Congress making Election Day a national holiday, groups like Vote.org are lobbying companies to give workers at least two hours paid time off for a trip to the polls. Companies from Pinterest to Walmart to Tyson have signed on. Vote if the voices you hear dont speak for you Vote because this is not the first time our politics has gotten ugly, though the ugly is now everywhere. We are in one anothers faces and feeds 24/7, in ways not possible 10 years ago. And we are served, though that hardly feels like the right verb, by a President with a unique indifference to uniting the country and a rare passion for jabbing his finger into our wounds. It is easier to incite than inspire; it is also effective, or he might not be the President, and Brett Kavanaugh might not be a Justice. Conflict drives engagement, which captures attention, the currency of our age. We get what we reward. So vote as an act of common commitment to the common good. At a time when Americans disagree on so much, we can agree that the four-alarm fire of our political scene is horrific. Think of your Facebook friends whose politics youre sick of or whose politics you share; vote because its a better response than a comment. Lets vote like it matters. Because then it will. Gibbs, a former editor-in-chief of TIME, is the Edward R. Murrow visiting professor at Harvard Kennedy School of Government This appears in the November 05, 2018 issue of TIME. In the first weeks of 2010, Coalition Forces under my overall command launched an operation to retake the Taliban-controlled district of Marjah in Afghanistans Helmand Province. We possessed the firepower to utterly destroy any Taliban resistance. But in the days preceding, I had met with a group of Marjahs tribal elders, who approved of our effort only on the understandable conditions that the assault not destroy their homes or harm the population. So for that, and other reasons, an operation was conducted that minimized the use of artillery and air strikes, even though it dramatically increased the danger to our soldiers. I knew that asking coalition soldiers far from home to accept greater risk by displaying what they termed courageous restraint was a tall order. Many were understandably reluctant while in pursuit of murky political gains. And, from afar, other observers opined that such a tepid approach to battle appeared weak and risked defeat, with little chance for decisive victory. They had a point. We might have appeared to win convincingly by pulling Taliban bodies from the smoking rubble of ruined farms, shops and homes. But victory must be measured by its sustainability over time. Overcoming a foe, joined by enraged civilians whose survivors would only regroup with hardening resolve to carry on the war doesnt constitute a true victory. Winning, it can be argued, isnt quite all its cracked up to be. Despite our preoccupation with victory, winning is often a double-edged sword. Eight years on from my Army career, Ive been surprised to see the win-at-all-costs attitude applied to our politics at home. Causes, campaigns and crusades are fueled by self-righteous enthusiasm in the struggle against those who we assess as wrong-headedly seeking to oppose us. If they cant be convinced, we think, they must be defeated. If in defeat they refuse subjugation, they must be destroyed. At all costs, we must win. Story continues Though the exact nature of our problems might be unique, its certainly not the first time in American politics that we find ourselves in a place where its much easier and a more certain path to electoral victory to destroy ones opponent rather than attempt to find common ground, or at least mutual respect. Of course, some things are worth fighting for at critical moments in our history, weve had winners and losers. The fatal trap is that an objective of destroying your political opponent is absurd. A functioning democracy not only has, but needs, at least two viable parties, not a triumphant victor and an opposition left hopelessly vanquished. The writers of the Federalist Papers correctly assessed that checks and balances were needed to defend ourselves from our own worst instincts as James Madison famously wrote in Federalist 51, Ambition must be made to counteract ambition. Total victory or catastrophic success can be the worst of calamities. Theres a point in the fight when we must understand that effective negotiation and compromise is not only the best course of action but its the only one that could possibly maintain a political environment where future two-party governance is possible. In politics, as in war, every decision must be taken with an eye to the future remembering that the next issue must be adjudicated by respected and respectful opponents. The need to moderate our push to destroy the opposition runs counter to our natural inclination, felt in the heat of combat, to demonize or belittle the foe. In the short term, it seems to unite us against a common, hated enemy. But when you seek to delegitimize your foe, youre actually inviting your own delegitimization. To be sure, its a precarious balance. Its important to fight for ones beliefs, but there is a point at which fighting erodes underlying foundations. In politics, at its hyperbolic end, the losing party is outlawed and its leaders jailed. And historically, the prevailing party, absent the moderating influence of a loyal opposition, soon runs off the rails. At the best of times, what youll leave behind is a generational divide. If people forget the protagonists involved, what theyll remember is what crushing the enemy, or being crushed, felt like. Theyll tell their children, and their childrens children, who to trust and who to malign. Soon, the Enlightenment ideals that harked in our democracy will wisp away, like the wind. The moment of apparent conquest can be the time of greatest vulnerability. Grasping for total victory can be our undoing. Today, all this leaves us in a painful position. Almost irrationally, we are often transfixed by the white-hot zealotry of leaders who deal in absolutes. We mistake their passion for courage and their unwavering conviction for actual virtue. At such points, history tells us that were in murky territory. From the cults of personality that gripped the totalitarian politics of the twentieth century, to the hyper-partisanship of the twenty-first, we let untamed beasts loose. Its tempting to want strength in these tumultuous times, but it is exactly the moment we yearn for a strong, charismatic leader to lead us in crushing our opposition that we actually need a more humble approach, one that brings together a community of leaders who are willing to compromise. This is the really hard part, for constituents have become hard-wired to punish any perceived weakness. The job of building that community cant be done by a single leader, however much our presidential system means were always on the look out for the one. The job of repairing our union has to come from a group of leaders. They wont look the same; they wont always agree with one another; and, as with any coalition, it wont make everyone happy at all points. Thats what compromise, and living in a functioning democracy, looks like. What will define this community of leaders is their stance towards those who may think a little different from themselves who may have a different order of priorities and way of doing business. Dont look out for these leaders as being the women and men with the loudest voices, or the most zealous convictions. Instead, theyll be the ones willing to let go of the side of the pool, so that they can swim towards the middle. It is a big ask of those who would step forward. There are few parades for the modest moderate and endless criticism from the frenzied fringes on both sides. Instead, these true heroes must take quiet satisfaction that their contributions will enable possibilities further in the future than most people look. And even when that future arrives, there will be loud complaints about the traffic from the vocal experts who rail on, oblivious to the selfless labor and thoughtful compromises that created the roads they take for granted. Still, those leaders are among us. We cannot wait for them to rise one-by-one only to be pummeled down by a cacophony of partisanship. It is up to us to encourage, support, and celebrate those who will serve and lead. When they stand, we must stand with them. Michael Avenatti, the lawyer and possible presidential candidate, caused a stir with his contention that theres only one type of candidate who can beat President Trump. In an interview with TIME published Thursday, Avenatti said the Democrats 2020 nominee better be a white male, because society affords more credibility to white men than it does others. Though the statement has struck many as inflammatory, it represents a real, if usually private, debate within the Democratic Partyone that is likely to recur as the next presidential election approaches. Avenatti, who once worked as a researcher on political campaigns, clarified his position on Thursday: Let me be clear: I have consistently called on white males like me to step, take responsibility, and be a part of stoping the sexism and bigotry that other white males engage in. It is especially important for them to call out other white males. I make this pt in my speeches. Michael Avenatti (@MichaelAvenatti) October 25, 2018 Read More: Michael Avenattis Past Wont Stop Him From Running in 2020 Heres what Avenatti told TIME in an interview on June 25 in New York City, before he began publicly considering a presidential run: Is there anybody that you like in the Democratic political class? Or do you think [the 2020 nominee] should be someone from outside politics? I think it better be a white male. Really? 100%. And I dont say that because I want it to have to be a white male. I say that because of just the realities of the situation. I think if the Democrats nominate anyone other than a white male at the top of the ticket, theyre gonna lose the election. Id be willing to bet anything. I feel highly confident in that. And it shouldnt be that way for this election But just because the electorate is too racist and sexist? Because of where the electorate lines up and where Trumps strengths lie. And I think if you nominate Story continues So Obama only won because of who he was running against? But a Trump who activates peoples racism and sexism No, I think Obama could have won against a lot of people. But I think this is a very unique situation. I think Donald Trump is a very unique candidate. And I think if you run anyone other than a white male against him in 2020 and I think a lot of people in the party agree with me on this, and I think a lot of people disagree with me I think you are begging for a repeat of 2016. Thats what I believe. Firmly. I firmly believe that. Look. If Joe Biden would have run in 2016, if Beau, his son, had not tragically died, we wouldnt be sitting here right now. We wouldnt be sitting here because I would have no case against Donald Trump. You dont think hed have been able to demonize Biden the way he did Hillary? No. No. And look, heres whats unfortunate. Its very difficult for a woman to run against Donald Trump. Women face a very, very difficult time when they run for higher elected office unfortunately, especially against a guy like Donald Trump. Okay? If they dont hit hard enough, theyre soft, right? And if they hit back with the same force as a man, theyre classified as a bitch, right? Which is entirely unfair to women. And thats a very fine line for a woman to walk. And its a line that a man doesnt have to walk. And, again, thats not right. It shouldnt be that way. But its a very, very difficult walk. So I do think it is a critical mistake for anyone other than a white male to lead the top of the ticket in 2020. And I wish I didnt have to say that. I wish it was different. But its not, in my view. Thats just my view. I might be wrong about this. In a separate interview the same day, Avenatti said the disproportionate authority society grants to white men is also a part of his success as an advocate: One of the reasons why Ive been effective with women and others, but especially with women is because I think its different when you have a white male making the arguments. I think they carry more weight. Should they carry more weight? Absolutely not. But do they? Yes. Its no different than when I make arguments on behalf of Hispanic families at the border. Because I happen to be a white guy, I think that they carry more weight. I think theres a segment of our population that looks at that and doesnt immediately discount what Im saying, because I happen to be one of them. Which is outrageous, that people view things that way. Thats not right. Thats not right. But the reality of the situation is that its important that we have white males standing up for women, standing up for minorities. Avenatti is considering running against Trump in 2020 In a subsequent interview, Avenatti made the same point in response to a question about whether he might himself run for office: Im not presently putting together a presidential run, but whoever the Democrats nominate in 2020 better be a street fighter, better be prepared to take the fight to Mr. Trump. If you want to know what They go low, we go high looks like, go interview Michael Dukakis about 1988. I think this is unfortunateplease get this rightI firmly believe, and I wish this were not true, neither a woman nor minority can successfully lead the ticket for the Democrats in 2020. There is no doubt in my mind that thats true. Do I think thats right? Absolutely not. Do I think its 100% correct? Yes. Democrats have responded to the Trump presidency by nominating a record number of women and minority candidates for the upcoming midterms. Many of the partys prospective 2020 candidates are also women or people of color, and black women in particular are the partys most reliable voters. But even if they dont put it in Avenattis stark terms, many in the party argue that the path to victory lies not in galvanizing reliably Democratic demographics, but in finding a way to appeal to swing-voting whites. Its those votersnon-college-educated whites in states like Ohio, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin that swung to Trump and put him over the top in 2016. Whether openly or in code, the 2020 Democrats will have to address a version of Avenattis sentiment, which is also on the minds of the party rank and file. Indeed, in interviews with a dozen attendees at the New Hampshire Democratic picnic where Avenatti spoke, the issue came up more than once. I dont think we should be trying to elect a woman, a black person or a Hispanic, said Nancy Walton-Hamm, a white 68-year-old retired computer programmer. Too many old white guys wont support that. Id be willing to wait another generation for a woman president. As a potential candidate, Avenatti is seeking to create an image as a product of the American heartland. Thats why Im very dangerous to this president thats exactly why the last thing in the world this guy wants is to run against somebody like me, he told TIME. Because I can talk to those people, and whoever the Democratic nominee is better be able to talk to those people. Whether or not Avenattis on the stage, the 2020 contenders will be debating this point. President Trumps tariffs are devastating, says Marquis-Larson Boat Group president and CEO Rob Parmentier. It has had a devastating effect on business, the Wisconsin boat builder told Yahoo Finances Midday Movers. And the minute that tariff hit, you can imagine. People that have enough money to buy a boat, most of these people we sell to are also small business people. They got a lot of things going on, whether they be in Italy, or Portugal, or Germany, or our partners right across the border, Canada. You hit them with another 25% and 10%, and the first thing they say is, No thank you. I dont want a boat anymore. A yacht sits on the Neuse river bank in between buildings after hurricane Florence passed through the area in New Bern, NC., Saturday, Sept. 15, 2018. (AP Photo/Steve Helber) But thats not the only hit that Parmentier has taken. He says the cost of materials has also increased. The majority of your little boats, most of the money that goes into those is through materials. Fiberglass, resin, steel, aluminum, he explained. I have been hit with anywhere between 5% and 40% price increases from every one of my vendors. And its just not sustainable. So if nothing is done, were going to lose it. Weve lost a big chunk of our business. I just dont agree with the way he did it Parmentier hasnt fired any employees, but its coming, he says. We cannot, I cannot sustain eating the losses from the tariffs, he explained. You know, weve been doing a lot of different things to keep everybody employed. But its been extremely difficult. I cant make up for that business. Despite the impact tariffs have on his business, Parmentier continues to support the president. I have a lot of experience in the international shipping of stuff, he said. And what your average American doesnt realize is it has been extremely unfair to us for decades. A Coast Guard boat is seen patrolling the waters in front of the Mar-a-Lago Resort where President Donald Trump held meetings with Chinese President Xi Jinping on April 7, 2017 in Palm Beach, Florida. (Photo: Joe Raedle/Getty Images) He added: When I ship a boat to Australia, Its 17%-plus tariff. We have 40%-plus tariffs in China. We have 75%-plus tariffs in Brazil, he explained. So I do understand what Trump and his team are trying to do. But I just dont agree with the way he did it. You got to do this in a much more negotiated fashion, instead of the way we went at it. Story continues Kristin Myers is a reporter at Yahoo Finance. Follow her on Twitter. READ MORE: Wealth manager on trade tensions: If youre a soybean farmer in Iowa, its a war Follow Yahoo Finance on Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, Flipboard, LinkedIn, and reddit. Authorities again asked for the public to contact the FBI, NYPD, and other law enforcement agencies for any tips as to the source of suspicious packages sent with suspected explosive devices to CNN, actor Robert De Niro, former President Barack Obama, former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and other public figures. At a press conference in New York, law enforcement representatives declined to provide many details of any leads they may have, and would not confirm reports that at least some of the packages were sent from Florida. This is absolutely terrorism, said New York Mayor Bill de Blasio, noting that it fits the definition of an effort to use violence to make a political impact. NYPD police commissioner James P. ONeill characterized the devices as suspected explosives, but declined to go into detail as to their characteristics or whether they were found to be functional. A white powder that was found in the package sent to CNN was deemed as not biological, he said. He said New Yorkers are safe, and that there were no credible threats, but that residents and visitors should remain vigilant. Ten packages have been identified, including those addressed to former President Barack Obama, former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, former Attorney General Eric Holder, De Niro, billionaire philanthropist George Soros, and two to Rep. Maxine Waters (D-Calif.) and two to former Vice President Joe Biden. CNN received a package that was sent to former CIA Director John Brennan. John Miller, the deputy commissioner, said a retired NYPD officer alerted authorities early on Thursday to a suspicious package that had sent been De Niros Tribeca office. He said the officer saw a picture of a suspicious package in media reports and saw that it bore similarities to one that he spotted on Tuesday that was to be screened for De Niro. In other developments on Thursday: Major contribution: AT&T, the parent company of WarnerMedia and CNN, announced that it was contributing $250,000 to the Committee to Protect Journalists. Its CEO, Randall Stephenson, said that journalists around the world do the important work of holding leaders accountable, exposing the truth, & telling the stories that need to be told. Threats to journalists are, at the very core, threats to freedom and liberty. Story continues He added, Leaders may not like everything that is written about them. I know I dont. But journalists serve as an indispensable check on power. They do the hard and often unpopular work of shining a light on issues that matter, so that people are better equipped to make decisions for themselves. Related stories Trump Intensifies Media Attacks as More Mail Bombs Are Discovered More Suspicious Packages Sent to Robert De Niro, Joe Biden Trump Bashes Media for 'Endless Hostility' at Rally Following CNN Bomb Scare Subscribe to Variety Newsletters and Email Alerts! 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. Close Get email notifications on {{subject}} daily! Your notification has been saved. There was a problem saving your notification. {{description}} Email notifications are only sent once a day, and only if there are new matching items. Fixated on the migrant caravan moving north through Mexico, President Donald Trump is weighing a plan to shut the U.S. border to Central Americans and deny them the opportunity to seek asylum, asserting similar emergency powers used during the early 2017 travel ban, according to administration officials and people familiar with the proposal. The White House is also preparing to deploy as many as 1,000 additional U.S. troops to assist in security operations at the southern border in anticipation of the caravans arrival, officials said. Under U.S. law, foreign nationals fleeing persecution have the right to apply for asylum once they reach American soil, but the executive order under consideration would suspend that provision and bar Central Americans as a matter of national security, according to those familiar with the proposal. Such a move would likely trigger immediate challenges in U.S. courts. With the midterm elections two weeks away, Trump has seized on the migrant caravan as a vehicle for his own campaign messaging, depicting the Central American families as dangerous criminals and Democrats as their enablers. Several administration officials cautioned that the proposal was not yet finalized and was one of several measures under consideration. Taken together, they could help physically and legally fortify the southern border in anticipation of the arrival of large numbers of migrants the president characterizes as a threat. The administration is considering a wide range of administrative, legal and legislative options to address the Democrat-created crisis of mass illegal immigration, said a White House official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss sensitive internal discussions. No decisions have been made at this time, the official said. Nor will we forecast to smugglers or caravans what precise strategies will or will not be deployed. Said another administration official, when asked about the Central America ban: Everything is on the table. The additional troops would reinforce the 2,000 or so National Guard personnel deployed to the border since April. Under a Pentagon order that could be issued as soon as Friday, they would not make arrests or operate in an enforcement role, according to officials with knowledge of the plan. The migrant caravan remains more than 900 miles from U.S. territory and has dwindled to about 3,000 people, according to the latest estimates from Mexican authorities. But the scenes of young men breaking through gates along the Guatemala-Mexico border earlier this week have alarmed the White House, and Trump continues to depict the Central American migrants as a criminal menace and a security threat. Impoverished families, many of whom are traveling with children and surviving on handouts, comprise the bulk of those advancing slowly through southern Mexico. The Trump administration has provided no evidence that Middle Easterners and dangerous criminals are mixed in. One potential problem with the border entry ban under consideration is that migrants who cross illegally would still have to be taken into U.S. custody. The administration could attempt to deny them access to U.S. courts and expedite their deportation, but those migrants would have to be returned to Central America, unless the Mexican government were to agree to take them. Any attempt to force Mexico to take the Central Americans back would risk potentially major conflict with its government, said one Department of Homeland Security official familiar with some of the policy proposals that have been under discussion. The United States has the legal authority to return them since they let them through in the first place, the person said. In recent weeks, record numbers of migrant family members have streamed across the border in the Rio Grande Valley of South Texas and into southern Arizona, overwhelming detention capacity and prompting mass releases. The Al-Hayat newspaper reported Friday that Israel and Hamas managed to reach understandings regarding a long-term ceasefire arrangement , through Egypt-mediated indirect negotiations, which would see the lifting of the Gaza blockade in exchange for complete cessation of border violence. Follow Ynetnews on Facebook STRONG> and Twitter According to the newspaper, the possible agreement would see Hamas put an end not only to the March of Return campaigncharacterized by weekly border riots, but also to the incendiary kites and balloons phenomenon that has been terrorizing the Gaza border communities for months. The latest development is the result of the efforts by the delegation of Egyptian intelligence officials, who have visited the Gaza Strip, Jerusalem and Ramallah over the past few weeks on several occasions. Incendiary balloons in Gaza border region (Photo: AFP) During that time, the officials reportedly met with the Hamas leadership in the Gaza Strip, headed by Ismail Haniyeh and Yahya Sinwar, at least four times. Members of the delegation also met with representatives of other Palestinian factions in the Gaza Strip over the past week. During the meeting, the officials have reportedly said their efforts prevented an all out war from erupting between Israel and Hamas, suggesting the factions have to be fully committed to the understandings that have been reached. The factions representatives agreed to the proposal presented to them by the Egyptians, according to Al-Hayat. Gaza border riots (Photo: AP) The newspaper also reports that Israel has committed to increase the strips fishing zone, allow the entry of fuel and more electricity into Gaza, and allow the continuation of UN-initiated infrastructure projects. In addition, Egyptian intelligence officials presented the proposal to the leadership of the Palestinian Authority (PA), which expressed its unequivocal opposition to any agreement signed between Israel and one of the Palestinian factions without the PAs involvement and signature as the sole legitimate representative of the Palestinian people. Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas is willing to consent to such an agreement only after the intra-Palestinian reconciliation is completed, which would return the PA to the Gaza Strip, and technically make it the official body that signs off on the ceasefire deal with Israel. The security forces arrested early Friday morning several Palestinians, who are suspected of aided the terrorist from the Barkan industrial zone shooting attack that left two people dead, to evade capture. Follow Ynetnews on Facebook STRONG> and Twitter The IDF Spokespersons Unit said that as part of the manhunt for Ashraf Na'alwa, IDF forces, the Shin Bet and the Border Police arrested several suspects, in the area of the Menashe Regional Brigade in the West Bank, who were later transferred for further questioning. The manhunt for the perpetrator who murdered Ziv Hagbi and Kim Levengrond Yehezkel has been ongoing since the incident took place more than two weeks ago. IDF forces in pursuit for Barkan terrorist (Photo: IDF Spokesman's Office) Last week it was reported that the IDF troops surrounded an abandoned building in Naalwas hometown of Shweiki near Tulkarem, where the security forces believed the terrorist might be hiding, but the search was unsuccessful. In addition, the IDF delivered a home demolition order to the family of the terrorist. On Thursday, a security official said that Na'alwa was part of a terror cell, which the defense establishment failed to detect beforehand, and not a "lone wolf" as it was assumed in the beginning. The terrorist was granted a work permit after being vetted by Israeli security officials, who did not find any ties to terrorism in his past. Footage of the 23-year-old terrorist But now it appears Na'alwa was a part of a terror cell, which is not affiliated with any of the terror organizations. The fact Na'alwa was not caught immediately after the attack, and that security forces have so far been unable to gather intelligence about his whereabouts, indicate the terrorist is receiving help from accomplices. The Shin Bet, meanwhile, have rejected the definition of a "terror cell" being behind the Barkan terror attack, preferring instead to use the term "collaborators." Since the Barkan terror attack, there has been a certain increase in the number of attempts by "lone wolf" attackers to carry out copycat attacks. Defense Minister Avigdor Lieberman addressed on Friday the escalation on the southern border and the expected weekly border riots, saying he "believes that this Friday will pass more quietly." Lieberman, who spoke during a visit to Kibbutz Kerem Shalom, added that "this is not a popular uprising, and Hamas is in complete control. In order to understand where the events lead us, we have to wait at least until the end of November and then draw conclusions." Giant posters on the streets of Beirut's southern Shiite suburbs display an armed Hezbollah fighter in uniform, holding the group's yellow banner and Lebanon's national flag, along with phone numbers where supporters can make donations to the Shiite guerrilla force. Follow Ynetnews on Facebook STRONG> and Twitter "He who equips a warrior is part of the battle," the posters declare, quoting a saying from Islam's Prophet Muhammad. Hezbollah's calls for donations have intensified in past months as the group and its main backer Iran come under increasing financial pressure under sanctions from the Trump administration. Hezbollah leader (Photo: AP) Washington has imposed sanctions on the militant group for decades. But a new wave this year appears to be more serious about targeting Hezbollah's top leadership as well as businessmen and companies that Washington says are funding the group. The latest hit came October 15, when US Attorney General Jeff Sessions designated Hezbollah as one of five groups considered top transnational organized crime threats. Iran, facing its own financial crises, has also reportedly cut back on funding for Hezbollah and Shiite militias it supports in Iraq. Iran touts itself as the leader of the so-called "Axis of Resistance," grouping the Syrian government of President Bashar Assad, Shiite militias in Iraq, Hezbollah in Lebanon and Shiite gunmen in Yemen known as the Houthis. The US State Department said in July that Iran has spent over $16 billion since 2012 supporting Assad and its proxies in Iraq and in Yemen, and it also gives $700 million a year to Hezbollah. It has also given the Syrian government $4 billion in lines of credit, it says. Hezbollah's budget has already been hurt ever since it became heavily involved in Syria's civil war in 2013, sending fighters to back Assad's forces and helping turn the conflict in his favor. An estimated 2,000 of its fighters have been killed and thousands more wounded, some with permanent disabilities. That only adds to the costs, since the group pays stipends to families of "martyrs" and provides health care for fighters. President Trump (Photo: AP) Recently, its leadership started to publicly acknowledge the strain. "I won't say that the sanctions will not have an effect ... They will have an effect for sure," Hezbollah leader Sheikh Hassan Nasrallah said in a speech in August. He vowed the sanctions won't diminish the group's power. "We have the strength, infrastructure and human resources to get through these difficulties, God willing," he said. In a closed meeting around the same time, he told Hezbollah cadres, "We have to tighten belts a bit," according to Ibrahim Bayram, an expert on Shiite affairs who writes about Hezbollah for Lebanon's An-Nahar newspaper and was informed about the meeting. The group is taking measures to reduce expenses, such as bringing down the number of fighters in Syria, especially now that Assad's military has taken back greater territory from his opponents, Bayram told The Associated Press. But he said it was not cutting back on stipends for families, medical care and retirement payments. A Lebanese citizen who has relatives in the group said it has pulled back some fighters in Syria, though it maintains its presence in eastern Deir el-Zour province and in the south, where fighting continues with the Islamic State group, and in Quseir, a town near the border with Lebanon that has been a Hezbollah stronghold for five years. It has also asked some full-time fighters to spend more time at home when there is no need for them and has reduced movements of vehicles to cut transportation costs, he said. He spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss the group's internal activities. Despite the tightening, the group hardly seems to be diminished from its status as the strongest fighting force in Lebanonand one of the strongest in Syriaboasting an arsenal of rockets and a powerful political structure. Even if other funding streams are under strain, Hezbollah can still count on public contributions, which stream in through tens of thousands of metal donation boxes placed in shops, streets, mosques and schools in predominantly Shiite areas of Lebanon. Its patron Iran, meanwhile, is facing deep economic woes. President Donald Trump withdrew the United States from the nuclear accord with Iran, although the United Nations has repeatedly acknowledged Tehran was living up to the terms of the deal. Trump said he wanted stricter terms to limit Iran's ballistic missile program, curtail its regional influence and forever limit its nuclear activities. President Trump (Photo: MCT) Crushing US oil sanctions on Iran will resume in early November and already, American allies in Asia are cutting back on their purchases of Iranian crude. While European nations say they want the deal to continue, US clout in global financial markets led oil companies and airplane manufacturers to withdraw from working in Iran. Iran's currency, the rial, has plummeted in value, and the downturn has sparked protests. Another ally of Iran, the Yemeni rebels known as the Houthis, are also preparing for difficult times, especially as their opponents, a Saudi-led coalition, besieges the port of Hodeida, a major source of income for the group. The rebels have sharply increased taxes on merchants and businesses. Iranian-backed militias in Iraq are buffered to an extent from any financial crunch because they also get funding from the Baghdad government, which is nominally a US ally. The militias are part of the government-sanctioned paramilitary group known as the Popular Mobilization Forces, with some 100,000 fighters, who get salaries and equipment from the state. Many of the militias also profit from businesses they run on the side. An official with Iraq's Kataib Hezbollah, one of the main groups backed by Tehran, even said his group could help Hezbollah financially if need be. He spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss the internal workings. "We can last this way for three years," he said. Defense Minister Avigdor Lieberman announced Friday that he has chosen Deputy Chief of Staff Maj. Gen. Aviv Kochavi as his candidate to become the next IDF chief of staff to replace Lt. Gen. Gadi Eisenkot, who is scheduled to conclude his tenure by the end of the year. Follow Ynetnews on Facebook STRONG> and Twitter The decision was made following an orderly election process conducted by Lieberman over the past three months. Kochavis candidacy will be presented before the Justice Eliezer Goldbergs appointments committee on Sunday and will then be subject to the approval of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's Cabinet. Aviv Kochavi (Photo: Motti Kimchi) Lieberman announced his decision to Prime Minister Netanyahu and Chief of Staff Gadi Eizenkot, and also spoke with the three other candidates, thanking them for the "professional, respectful and gentlemanly, way of competing for the position. The defense minister has reportedly held many consultations with former prime ministers, defense ministers and former chiefs of staff, as well as former senior officers, some of whom, served as the commanders of the four candidates. (Photo: Roee Idan) Lieberman's office issued an official statement following the announcement, emphasizing the defense ministers belief that Maj. Gen. Kochavi was the most suitable and the most experienced candidate. "Maj. Gen. Kochavi has impressive leadership skills, courage, creativity and impressive command capabilities. The unique combination of the positions in the IDF he has filled in the past, his ability to manages situations during the times of emergency, the esteem in which he is held by his fellow officers all of this make his the most suitable candidate to lead the IDF in the coming years, stressed the statement. Lieberman and Kochavi (Photo: Haim Horenstein) The 54-year-old Kochavi previously served as commander of military intelligence, chief of northern command and most recently as Eizenkot's deputy. Kochavi took part yesterday in the graduation ceremony of the officers course at Bahad 1 base, where he encouraged the soldiers to always take the initiative and lead the way. "The task that is imposed on all of us is becoming more complex every day. In this state of affairs, there is a special place for originality and innovation. So, do not settle for what you have, and do not take anything for granted. Stick to your goal, but question the method and the way. Do not accept any existing norms, but offer an alternative ... lead the way, he exclaimed. An incendiary balloon landed Friday in the Jerusalem neighborhood of Givat Zeev. Police sappers inspected the suspicious object. France has expelled an Iranian diplomat in response to a failed plot to carry out a bomb attack at a rally near Paris organized by an exiled Iranian opposition group, diplomatic and security sources say. Follow Ynetnews on Facebook STRONG> and Twitter France's foreign ministry said on October 2 there was no doubt the Iranian intelligence ministry had been behind the plot against the June 30 rally. It subsequently froze assets belonging to Tehran's intelligence services and two Iranian nationals. French President Macron; Iranian President Rouhani (Photos: AFP, MCT) About a month ago it went a step further, expelling an Iranian diplomat based in Paris, five sources said. Two of the sources said the diplomat was an Iranian intelligence operative under diplomatic cover. A spokesman at the Iranian embassy in Paris did not respond when asked about the diplomat's expulsion. Iran has previously said it had nothing to do with the attempt to carry out a bomb attack at the rally. One Iranian official, who declined to be identified, denied there had been any expulsion. French President Emmanuel Macron's office referred all enquiries to the foreign ministry, which said it would not comment. The fallout from the failed plot has further strained ties between Paris and Tehran, especially as France has been one of the strongest advocates of salvaging the nuclear deal between Iran and world powers, which US President Donald Trump withdrew from in May. The initial move by France to impose asset freeze was deemed relatively symbolic since neither diplomat targeted was based in France or had assets in the country. French officials at the time said Paris considered the matter closed, although they were still trying to determine how high up the hierarchy the order to carry out the attack came from. The decision to expel a suspected intelligence operative raises attention to the issue again. "Yes, it's true," one diplomat said of the expulsion, declining to give further details because of the sensitivity of the issue. The two sides agreed not to divulge details of the expulsion fearing it could undermine talks between the remaining parties to the nuclear dealFrance, Britain, Germany, Russia, Chinawho are working on ways to continue trading with Iran, two diplomats said. Two diplomats and one Western security source said the move was directly linked to the plot, which targeted a meeting of the National Council of Resistance of Iran (NCRI). A coordinated intelligence operation between Israel, French, German and Belgian services thwarted the planned attack in the days prior to the rally which attracted many VIPs, including Trump's lawyer Rudy Giuliani and several former European and Arab ministers. The NCRI rally in France (Photo: AFP) Belgium on October 10 charged an Iranian diplomat, who was one of the two sanctioned by Paris, and three other individuals with planning to bomb the gathering. Any hardening of relations with France could have wider implications for Tehran as a new round of even tougher US sanctions targeting the oil sector and financial transactions come into effect from November 4. France had warned Tehran to expect a robust response to the thwarted bomb plot. Macron and Foreign Minister Jean-Yves Le Drian spoke to their Iranian counterparts about the issue at the UN General Assembly meeting after demanding explanations over Iran's role. An internal French foreign ministry memo in August told diplomats not to travel to Iran, Reuters reported, citing the bomb plot and a toughening of Iran's position towards the West. Paris has suspended appointing a new ambassador to Iran and has not responded to Tehran's nomination of a new envoy in France, underscoring how sensitive the issue is. No appointments are expected until France receives more detailed information on who was behind the bombing attempt, two senior French diplomats said. "We are still following up with Tehran on the Villepinte affair to draw all the necessary consequences, but the political and diplomatic dialogue between Iran and France continues," said one senior French diplomat. Prime Nibster Benjamin Netanyahu's office says the Israeli prime minister has returned from a visit to the Gulf state of Oman. Netanyahu's office said in a statement Friday that Netanyahu had been invited by Oman's Sultan Qaboos bin Said after lengthy communications. Israel and Oman do not have diplomatic relations. The meeting was the first of its kind between leaders of the two countries since 1996. The two leaders issued a joint statement saying the two sides "discussed ways to advance the Middle East peace process and discussed a number of issues of mutual interest to achieve peace and stability in the Middle East." Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's office issued a statement according to which Maj. Gen. Aviv Kochavi, who is the candidate chosen by the defense minister to replace the outgoing Chief of Staff Lt. Gen. Gadi Eisenkot, Is the appropriate man for the job. The statement added that Kochavi's candidacy will be brought before the government after it is approved by the Goldberg committee. The White House has formally invited President Vladimir Putin to Washington, US National Security Advisor John Bolton said on Friday, returning to an idea that was put on hold in July amid anger in the US over the prospect of such a summit. President Donald Trump held a summit with Putin in Helsinki, the Finnish capital, and then issued Putin an invitation to visit Washington in the autumn. But that was postponed after Trump was accused of cozying up to the Kremlin. Benjamin Netanyahu's office said Friday that the prime minister has returned from a visit to the Gulf state of Oman, where he joined the country's leader in the first meeting of its kind in more than 20 years. Follow Ynetnews on Facebook STRONG> and Twitter The office said in a statement Friday that Netanyahu had been invited by Oman's Sultan Qaboos bin Said after lengthy communications. PM Netanyahu and Oman's Sultan Netanyahu and his wife were joined on the trip by Mossad Head Yossi Cohen, his Foreign Ministry director, and other defense officials. Israel and Oman do not have diplomatic relations. The meeting was the first between leaders of the two countries since 1996 and former Israeli premier Yitzhak Rabin made a similar surprise visit to Oman two years earlier. Video: Netanyahu arrives in Oman (: ) X The sultanate has long had a quiet role in fostering negotiations between the Israelis and Palestinians and has openly called for the need for a Palestinian state while also acknowledging a need for an Israeli state. Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas also paid a three-day visit to Oman earlier this week. While historic, the meeting did not immediately signal a breakthrough in peace efforts because Oman does not have the clout or leverage of nations like Saudi Arabia to strongly advocate for, or push the two sides closer to the negotiating table. The premier has repeatedly stated in recent years that Israel has developed good relations with several Arab states, despite a lack of official ties. Netanyahu visiting in Oman The two leaders issued a joint statement saying the two sides "discussed ways to advance the Middle East peace process and discussed a number of issues of mutual interest to achieve peace and stability in the Middle East." Oman, which sits on the southeastern tip of the Arabian Peninsula, with Saudi Arabia to its north and Iran to its east, has a long record of being a quiet broker in the region, opting to stay on the sidelines of the rivalry between the two regional powerhouses. Although it is a member of the Saudi-led six-nation Gulf Cooperation Council, it did not join in the kingdom in its boycott of Qatar or the war in Yemen. Its foreign minister made a rare visit by an Arab official to the West Bank earlier this year. Four Palestinians in their 20s were shot dead Friday during the weekly Hamas-led Gaza border riots, despite earlier report by the The Al-Hayat newspaper, according to which Israel and Hamas managed to reach understandings regarding a long-term ceasefire arrangement, which would see the lifting of the Gaza blockade in exchange for complete cessation of border violence. Follow Ynetnews on Facebook STRONG> and Twitter Twenty-seven-year-old Palestinian was killed in the violent protests east of Jabalia, and the three other rioters aged 22, 22, and 23 were killed in the Khan Younis area in southern Gaza. Gaza border riots (Photo: AFP) In addition, a Palestinian from the Mazra'a al-Arabiya village was shot dead by the IDF during skirmishes in the West Bank. IDF Spokesperson's Unit said that some 16,000 demonstrators attended Friday's riots, hurling Molotov cocktails, hand grenades and stones at the security forces, and burning tires. The IDF said it had identified two border breaches. The infiltrators returned to the strip shortly after unharmed. Gaza border riots (: ) X Furthermore, an Israeli Air Force (IAF) fighter helicopters and aircraft attacked three Hamas post in northern Gaza. Earlier, super-sized fans were stationed in Kibbutz Kerem Shalom in an attempt to prevent the smoke of the burning tires from penetrating into the Kibbutz. Residents of several Gaza border communities received phone messages, recommending them to stay inside their houses with the windows shut. Super-sized fans in Kerem Shalom Hamas welcomed the thousands of Palestinians taking part in the demonstration along the border fence. "We welcome the masses in Gaza participating in the 'March of Return' protests despite the crimes of the occupation against them. "This is our steadfast reply to all of the enemy's threats and killings. We will not give up on the "March of Return" despite Israel's terror," the terror organization stated. A barrage of 10-12 rockets was fired Friday from Gaza at Israel, with the Iron Dome system intercepting several of them, according to the IDF. Follow Ynetnews on Facebook STRONG> and Twitter Five consecutive sirens went off at 10:23 pm, two sirens followed at 10:21, three alerts sounded at 10:38, and eight additional Code Red sirens blared at11:22 pm across the southern city of Sderot, Kibbutz Gevim, Kibbutz Nir am, Kibbutz Mefalsim, Kibbutz Or HaNer, Kibbutz Erez, moshav Yakhini, and the village of Ibim. File Photo (Photo: Reuters) A 14-year-old boy and a 50-year-old man were very lightly wounded while trying to find shelter as the Code Red Sirens went off. They were evacuated to receive medical treatment at the Barzilai Medical Center in Ashkelon. one women suffering from anxiety was treated in Sderot. Video: rockets fired at Gaza border communities (: , ) X The IDF said the incident is being investigated. Earlier, Four Palestinians in their 20s were shot dead Friday during the weekly Hamas-led Gaza border riots, in which 16,000 Palestinians took part, hurling Molotov cocktails, hand grenades and stones at the security forces, and burning tires. An Israeli Air Force (IAF) fighter helicopters and aircraft attacked three Hamas post in northern Gaza. The IDF said it had identified two border breaches. The infiltrators returned to the strip shortly after unharmed. On Wednesday, a Red Code alert sounded at 11:17 pm on across the Eshkol and Merhavim Regional Councils, which were followed by explosive sounds. At least one rocket exploded in an open area in the eastern part of the Eshkol regional council. No casualties were reported, and according to the IDF, an Iron Dome interceptor missile attempted to down the rocket but failed. Israeli Air Force (IAF) aircrafts attacked overnight Wednesday eight Hamas sites in Gaza in response to a rocket fired from the strip. The IDF Spokespersons Unit issued an official statement following the strikes, clarifying that among the areas targeted were a military compound, a training camp and a weapons storage facility belonging to the terror group. Draining likely source of leaks throughout Ironwood STACEY MILLER, with Ruotsala Construction, uses an excavator to deposit a load of dirt while repairing a water leak Thursday on the 300 block of Arch Street in Ironwood between the U.S. 2 Business Route and East Frederick Street. By RICHARD JENKINS [email protected] Ironwood - The inspection of the city of Ironwood's water tank on Mt. Zion found no issues and the Michigan Department of Environmental Quality gave the go-ahead to begin refilling the tank. That's the good news. The bad news is the process of draining the water tank so it can be inspected is likely the cause of numerous water leaks throughout the city Wednesday and Thursday. "We have guys trying to take a peek in the tank and trying to put it back into service. And at the same time, we have crews trying to fix watermain breaks," utilities manager Bob Tervonen said Thursday morning. The city took the 2.5-million-gallon tank off line Monday after a routine inspection that day showed three locks had been removed from the tank. Tervonen said the unauthorized removal of the locks is considered tampering with a public utility and is a federal crime. While there are no cameras at the top of Mt. Zion, Tervonen said that would likely be part of future discussions. The city spent two days draining the tank as a precaution so it could be inspected to ensure the water hadn't be contaminated or tampered with somehow. "The ... samples we got back from the lab were fine, we did a visual inspection and there was nothing wrong, so we got the green light from the DEQ," Tervonen said later Thursday. "We've been working alongside the DEQ and they gave us the green light to fill it up." While there were no issues with the tank, the process is the likely cause of problems elsewhere. Roughly 10 leaks sprung up everywhere from Country Club Road to the area around Riverside Cemetery Wednesday and Thursday. Tervonen said this was likely due to the change in water pressure that resulted from draining the tank breaking through weak spots in the galvanized lines that make up parts of the system. "You'd think there's a relationship there, I mean they all popped up at once," he said. Tervonen explained the city uses its high-lift pumps to push the water out of the tank at roughly 240 pounds per square inch and then reduces the pressure once the water gets into town. "We trying to maintain a pressure of 100 PSI or less, otherwise you're going to blow faucets off," Tervonen said. He said small pressure changes, even as little as 5 to 8 PSI, could lead to the leaks. "That little bit can change everything," Tervonen said. Given the manpower needed to fix the various leaks and deal with the work on the tank itself, Tervonen said Ruotsala Construction was helping the city repair the leaks. Along with the leaks, Tervonen said the city has had complaints of dirty, discolored water. Almost all came from south of U.S. 2, according to Tervonen, who said much of the discoloration was caused by main valves being turned off to fix the leaks. "Everything is looking positive so I'm happy with that," Tervonen said. "It's an inconvenience for everybody, I understand it. Everybody has been really patient." He said the tank was being filled Thursday and he hoped it would return to service sometime today. The tank was taken out of service in the late 1980s for cleaning, according to Tervonen, and similar problems likely occurred then. It hasn't been taken out of service in the 25 years Tervonen worked for the city, as he said scuba divers had been used to clean it when needed. News West Lafayette, Indiana - Friday paydays and hot temperatures play a significant role in the rashes of violence in Chicago each summer, according to work by Purdue University and Arizona State University researchers. David Ebert, the Silicon Valley Professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering at Purdue, and Sherry Towers, a Purdue alumna and research professor at Arizona State University, poured over data from six million reported crimes in Chicago over 14 years, beginning in 2001. Their findings showed distinct patterns in when crimes happened and, more importantly, when those tendencies were suppressed. Crime dropped off during holidays as well as rainy or windy days. Ebert, an expert in the field of predictive analytics for policing, said putting the right officers in the right location at the right times can help police reduce crime. The study Factors Influencing Temporal Patterns in Crime in a Large American City; a Predictive Analytics Perspective, was published in the latest online edition of PLOS ONE. More information can be found here. Yuma News Yuma, Arizona - The City of Yuma will roll out trucks from its fire, police, utilities and public works departments and give residents a chance to touch and see them up close on Saturday, adding another dimension to a scheduled free park social. The touch-a-truck event and park social will take place between 11 a.m. to 1 p.m. Saturday, Oct. 27 at the Joe Henry Optimist Center Park, 1793 S. 1st Ave. Children will be invited to explore 8 trucks from various City departments and learn about their capabilities and functions. Free Health screenings will be offered for children in the mobile health clinic. Nonprofit agency partners will have tables offering information to parents. Partners will offer craft projects for children, plus giveaways, candy and more. The event will include the regular activities associated with Parks and Recreations series of park socials free hot dogs and childrens games, including Candy Land activities, taking advantage of the Candy Land-painted perimeter sidewalk that was installed last year. Park social activities are scheduled to take place from 11 a.m. to 12:30 p.m. In the spirit of the current season, children are encouraged to wear their costumes. Touch-A-Truck is a family-friendly event that will offer children a hands-on opportunity to see, touch, and explore the vehicles that protect, build, and serve our community, said Neighborhood Services Manager Rhonda Lee-James. The event coincides with Arizona Cities and Towns Week, which encourages residents to get to know more about the services and benefits their city provides them. Yuma News Yuma, Arizona - Arizona Western College and the Arizona Court of Appeals invite the community to attend an oral argument about the case Waltz Healing Center, Inc. v. Arizona Department of Health Services. The oral argument will be held Friday, Nov. 2, from 10:30 a.m. to 12:30 p.m. in the Schoening Conference Center at the AWC Yuma Campus, 2020 S. Avenue 8E. Participants are encouraged to arrive early to go through security for screening. This event will give students and members of the public an opportunity to see first-hand what goes on in an appellate court. After the oral argument, judges, attorneys and law clerks will debrief the case and answer questions about the judicial process and careers in legal professions. The issues Waltz Healing Center raises in the appeal from the Maricopa County Superior Court are whether the denial of its application for a medical marijuana dispensary registration was arbitrary and capricious, whether an error was made in affirming ADHSs decision to deny the application, and whether ADHS violated Waltzs equal protection and due process rights. This information derives from a case summary prepared by the Staff of the Arizona Court of Appeals, Division One, solely for educational purposes. It should not be considered official commentary by the Court or any member thereof or part of any brief or other filing made in this or any other case. The Arizona Legislature created the Arizona Court of Appeals in 1964. The Court serves as an intermediate appellate court with two divisions: Division One, based in Phoenix, and Division Two, based in Tucson. Division One resolves appeals from eight of Arizonas 15 counties: Apache, Coconino, La Paz, Navajo, Maricopa, Mohave, Yavapai and Yuma. Judges of the Court of Appeals are chosen by merit selection and appointed by the Governor. Division One decides appeals in three-judge panels, which rotate in composition every few months. Appeals are decided in a wide variety of substantive areas including civil, criminal, juvenile, family, mental health, probate, and tax law. Along with considering appeals from superior court decisions, administrative decisions first considered by the superior court, and some matters from the limited jurisdiction courts, the Court of Appeals also reviews decisions made by the Arizona Industrial Commission in workers compensation cases, by the Arizona Corporation Commission, and by the Arizona Department of Economic Security appeals board. It also considers special action petitions seeking pre-judgment and emergency relief. The panel meets to consider an assigned case and hear any oral argument provided in order to reach a decision. Each decision is memorialized in writing and posted on the Courts website. Although all the Courts decisions are subject to discretionary review by the Arizona Supreme Court, in 2017, Division Ones decision was the final word in more than 99 percent of the cases it resolved. For more information about the event, contact Angelica Diaz de Leon at This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. or (928) 344-7635 or Bertha Avila at This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. or (928) 344-7664. Yuma News Yuma, Arizona - The Yuma Police Department and the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) will give the public an opportunity to prevent pill abuse and theft by ridding their homes of potentially dangerous expired, unused and unwanted prescription drugs. Bring your pills for disposal to the Yuma Police Department, 1500 S. 1st Avenue, or to Frys, 11203 S. Frontage Rd, in Foothills on Saturday, October 27, 2018 from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. The service is free, just pull into the police departments and Frys parking lots and drop off your unwanted prescription drugs. This initiative addresses a vital public safety and public health issue. Medicines that languish in home cabinets are highly susceptible to diversion, misuse and abuse. Rates of prescription drug abuse in the U.S. are alarmingly high, as are the number of accidental poisonings and overdoses due to these drugs. Studies show that a majority of abused prescription drugs are obtained from family and friends, including from the home medicine cabinet. In addition, Americans are now advised that their usual methods for disposing of unused medicinesflushing them down the toilet or throwing them in the trashboth pose potential safety and health hazards. Event details: The program is free and anonymous. You are encouraged to remove your personal information from the prescription labels, but not mandatory. Participants may dispose of medication in its original container or by removing the medication from its container and disposing of it directly into the disposal box. All expired or unwanted controlled, non-controlled and over the counter medicines are accepted. Liquid products, such as cough syrup are not accepted by DEA, however the Yuma Police Department does accept it in their local drop-off prescription program. The liquid products should remain sealed in their original plastic container. The following items are NOT accepted: Glass containers, Intra-venous solutions, injectables, syringes, inhalers and illegal substances such as marijuana or methamphetamines. Yuma News Yuma, Arizona - Arizona Western College is inviting alumni and community partners to the annual AWC Alumni Breakfast and Hall of Fame Celebration on Thursday, November 1, from 8 - 9 a.m. in the Schoening Conference Center, 2020 S. Ave. 8E. AWCs 2018 Hall of Fame Inductees Dr. Kathryn A. Watson and Dr. George Montopoli will be honored at the breakfast. Doors will open at 7:45 a.m. and the event will begin with a performance of the alma mater by AWC choral students. It is an honor to recognize the 2018 Inductees for their outstanding service to our community. Their dedication and vision for their fields of study have enhanced the educational experience of our students, said Renee Smith, AWC Director of Institutional Advancement. For more information about the event, or to RSVP for the breakfast, contact the AWC Foundation Office at This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. or at (928) 344-1720. 2018 Hall of Fame Inductee Dr. Kathryn A. Watson Dr. Kathryn Watsons contributions are visible throughout the AWC campus and the larger Yuma community. During her 33 years as professor of Family Studies, she taught a wide variety of classes from Child Development to Family Relations. The state-of-the-art Child Development Learning Lab on the Yuma campus is named in her honor for her many professional contributions to this field of study. Dr. Watson has deep and broad ties to the Yuma region. She is a product of the community college/university partnership, having started with her AA in Home Economics at AWC and finishing as the first Yuma doctoral student to graduate from NAU-Yuma and be hooded at the AWC-NAU commencement ceremony. She is widely published in her field, including a 29-year position as Family Focus columnist with the Yuma Sun newspaper. She was named Yuma County Teacher of the Year in 1994 and earned the Yuma County Chamber of Commerces distinguished Athena Award for women in leadership in 2003. Dr. Watsons commitment to professional growth for both herself and her colleagues is demonstrated by a history of conference participation and presentations. Community organizations that have benefited from her leadership include First Things First, YRMC, Zonta International and the American Association of Family and Consumer Sciences. 2018 Hall of Fame Inductee Dr. George Montopoli AWC Professor Emeritus Dr. George Montopoli has spent his career working to make the world around him better. Montopoli spent 19 years on the faculty of AWC, and 13 years as adjunct professor with NAU-Yuma. He taught a wide range of subjects to thousands of students, including statistics, calculus, ecology and environmental science. Besides his teaching load, he also drew on his statistical expertise and independently evaluated 36 grants in 30 years. His work in a wide variety of fields has been widely published over the past 20 years. Beyond higher education, Dr. Montopoli has championed protected lands, wildlife preservation, and health and human service education in the US and abroad. Montopoli has served as a climbing/rescue ranger since 1977 in the Grand Teton Park, averaging 40 rescues per summer, where he developed and led Emergency Response training with a Wilderness First Aid focus. During four years with the Peace Corps in Chile and Ecuador he trained locals in Advanced First Aid, provided medical care, and assisted in 80 childbirths. As leading researcher on bald eagles in the Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem for the better part of 30 years, his team has greatly contributed to the species recovery, including the banning of lead when hunting or fishing in Grand Teton National Park. Montopoli is also a Master Falconer, and a principal avian rehabilitator of birds of prey in the Southwest region of Arizona. 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. Every young person dreams of getting an education from one of the most sophisticated and advanced learning institutions. In line with this, the University of Ghana Legon is one of the best institutions in Ghana that aspiring students can look up to for higher education. However, to gain entry into the institution, you must have made it to the Legon admission list. This list comprises of the selected students that the school wants to be part of their fraternity. This article is a detailed breakdown of what this list is all about. Basic level education does not cut it any more in today's competitive world. However, due to the nature of limited resources and the increasing number of learners daily, not everyone has the privilege of joining institutions of higher learning. The competitive spaces are only able to accommodate the very best. The University of Ghana works hard to ensure that all the applicants get to know their admission status by releasing the list of names of all successful applicants in good time. This is important as it helps the students to manage their expectations in addition to making necessary arrangements if they have to find alternatives. READ ALSO: Valley View University fees structure and programs UG Legon admission list contents UG admissions list is very important as it enables the applicant to know their admission status. The 2018/2019 admission list was released in three batches. The first batch had the highest number of considered applicants while the second and the third batches had the rest of applicants whose details were reviewed a bit later by the admissions board. Below are the admission contents for the 2018/2019 academic year. UG Legon undergraduate admission list In all the institutions of learning in Ghana, University of Ghana Legon receives the highest number of undergraduates every academic year. Their range of first-year students in school is about 8000 students every year. The total numbers of students who have secured admission in this academic year are 8,128 for the first and second batch. The university admissions make sure that the undergraduate admission list is released on time to give room for any adjustments that may arise. All needs for correction are handled before learning resumes. UG Legon undergraduate's admission list contains information vital to all the applicants. It serves to inform the applicants who have been successful in their application that they have been given a chance to study at the university. The list contains the following important information. Serial number In the admission list, the serial number is the admission number for the applicant's letter of admission. This number is unique to every applicant, and it serves as a reference number to the specific student. Surname and other names The correct names of the applicant are indicated on the admission list starting with their surname then followed by other names. Programme and programme option The programme, which the applicant is to undertake at the university, is indicated on the admission list. The options within the programme also shade some light on what the applicant is expecting once inside the campus. Campus/ college Due to the nature of the University having many branches, the admission list indicates the campus that the applicant will be. Student type Finally, the list should indicate the type of student the applicant is. This shows the mode with which the applicant will study. This may be a regular, sandwich, weekend or school-based mode. Check your Legon admission list status- Legon admission list 2018/2019 The release of the admissions list in the University of Ghana Legon is done after a thorough screening of the applicant's information by the admissions board. The admissions list is merely a list with names of all successful applicants who have secured a provisional admission in the given institution. All the successful applicants who obtained a chance to study at the University of Ghana Legon feature in Legon admission list 2018/19. The release of the admission list by the University of Ghana 2018/2018 comes in batches, featuring three categories. These are the 1st, 2nd and the 3rd batches. In case you do not find your name appearing on the first batch do not panic, all you need to do is to keep check using your pin voucher and hope to appear on the 2nd batch. Additionally, the institution releases the names of people in various departments and various programs ranging from certificates, diplomas, undergraduate and postgraduate programs. You need to keep checking what your status is online. READ ALSO: Berekum College of Education courses and admission requirements UG admission list second batch The most frequently asked question by all the applicants is, when is the Legon admission list coming out? The fact that it had been mentioned earlier that the admission list comes in batches, once the first list is out, applicants who dont see their name in this list tend to panic. There is no need to worry though. After the release of the first batch of the admission list, the next batch of admission list is expected to be out soon after. After the release of the first batch on Sunday 13th, August 2018 where 7800 applicants were featured, the University has released the second batch recently featuring 400 students. The school further clarifies that all admitted students should complete their registration process to seal their place in school. Applicants should take note of the fact that there is no provision for an exclusive list in the second batch of admitted students. Their names got added to the list of the first batch, which was previously released earlier making the total of all admitted students to be 8128. The 2nd batch of students is requested to confirm their names in the first list to avoid any inconveniences. READ ALSO: Anglican University College of Technology courses and admission requirements Legon admission list check If you are not lucky to appear in the first batch, do not give up. The University ensures that you are aware of how to check your admission status to ensure you are updated. Here is the process of reviewing your admission status. Visit the UG Legon undergraduate's admissions checking portal and click the link for the undergraduates international admissions list. A search box appears where you enter your serial number and the surname to check your admission status Finally, a 'check admission status' button appears where you click and access your UG admission status. After checking your admission status and finding that you are successful, many applicants always want to know what to do next. It is important not to lose your admission. Here are the things you must do to secure the chance you have been given permanently. Printing of the provisional admission letter All students are to log into the University's website using their serial numbers and their surnames and print their provisional admission letters. Payment of fees All students are supposed to pay fees within 24 hours after registration. This includes the academic fees and accommodation fees payable at any branch of the Standard Chartered Bank or ECOBANK in cash only. Students should quote their index number, the level of study and the University on the payslip. Selection the hall of residence The University provides a student with accommodation. Students who are admitted are supposed to select the hall they want to reside in as well as the room numbers. The list of all halls available is provided on the website. Students who do not pay their fees within 24 hours after admission are supposed to forfeit their rooms. Those not willing to reside in the hall are to indicate it online and those who are going to live there should provide their hall allocation letter. Academic and residential registration After the payment of the school fees for the first academic year and the residential fees for the first semester, the students are to take the academic and residential registration within 48 hours before arrival on campus through the University's website. With this information, you have a complete academic year settled with minimal disturbances. Legon admission list third batch The third batch of the admitted students in the University of Ghana is out. The applicants are requested to check their admission status and confirm their details online. The admitted students should download their admission letters from the University of Ghana website and pay their school fees to any of the banks indicated in the admission letter. The student-reporting day at the University is on the 21st of August 2018 as per the schedule. This is after completion of all other registration procedures. Legon admission list deadline The University has set the following deadlines for the applicants 2018/2019. All applicants who will not have met the subsequent periods are prone to be left out. The University announced to the public that the closing deadlines for the admissions list would be on July 15th, 2018. This change of deadline was due to the anticipation for the release of WASSCE results by the West Africans examinations council. All the applicants for the various undergraduate programs were to take note of the deadline, as those who would not have applied by then will not find their names in the admission list. The change of the deadline was also to enable the admissions board to start processing soon after the exams were released. Education is one of the critical factors taken into consideration when striving to achieve a sustainable development in any economy. Being the premier University and the largest in Ghana, UG Legon provides opportunities for young and ambitious people to pursue their dreams. The cooperation of the administration with the admissions board ensures that timelines for the application as well as set deadlines are in place. This gives everyone an equal chance to join the University. They also make sure that the selection process undergoes a thorough screening and no form of discrimination or corruption is involved. This ensures that the admission list produced is accurate and fair to all applicants. In conclusion, the details discussed herein about the Legon admission list should get any interested applicant ready for the next phase of life. Those who have been accepted should prepare for campus life. If anyone has been left out, they have ample time to explore other options in life. READ ALSO: Christ Apostolic University College courses, location and contacts Source: Yen Robert Mugabe is the oldest and most famous African leader of Zimbabwe in southern Africa since 1980 and was the countrys only leader since they gained independence from Britain. Robert Mugabe, Africas oldest leader, was born in 1924 and became the president in 1987. Due to his reign as president, he was criticized for practising corruption and abusing human rights. He recently left power but has certain famous quotes which he uses when addressing situations which are now recorded in the top books of the western world. Robert Mugabe famous quotes are now even more popular than the veteran themselves. Even though he is no more the president, we have a lot of people celebrating him still. An example is Buzzkenya. There are also people who called him a dictator, a tyrant, and even the Hitler of our time but truth be told he is very okay and totally fine with all the names he is being addressed with. Another thing to note is among all of this, which is his controversial leadership style, Robert Mugabe was very strong on his decisions, views and ruling when it came to leading. Below are 30 of the best most famous Robert Mugabe quotes. READ ALSO: I am sorry messages for boyfriend President Robert Mugabe quotes on lifestyle In the race of life, we don't have everything working smoothly that's why Robert Mugabe gave some wonderful funny quotes on lifestyle and relationship and there are some wise quotes of Robert Mugabe which serve as a motivation and an encouragement to us. Below are some of them which you will love and laugh over when you are not in the mood: 1. My dear ladies, if your boyfriend didnt wish you a happy Mothers Day or sing Sweet Mother for you, you should stop breastfeeding him". 2. If you are ugly, you are ugly. Stop talking about inner beauty because men dont walk around with X-rays to see inner beauty". 3. "If you have attended over 100 weddings in your life and are yet still you are single, then you are not different from a canopy." 4. "Any man who successfully convinces a monkey that honey is sweeter than a banana is capable of selling condoms to a Roman Father." 5. "Whenever things seem to start going well in your life, the devil comes along and gives you a girlfriend". 6. "Dear sisters, dont be deceived by a man who texts you I miss you only when its raining because you are not an umbrella." 7." Its hard to bewitch African girls these days. Every time you take a piece from her hair to the witch doctor, either a Brazilian innocent woman gets mad or a factory in China catches fire." 8. "Dating a slim/slender guy is cool. The problem is when you are lying on his chest then his ribs draw Adidas lines on your face. 9. "Respect pregnant women because its not easy walking around with evidence that youve had sex." 10." Some of the girls of today cant even jog for five minutes but they expect a guy to last in bed with you for two hours? Your level of selfishness demands a one-week crusade." 11. "I stopped trusting ladies when my class three girlfriend left me for another boy all because he bought a sharpener with a mirror." 12." Nothing makes a woman more confused than being in a relationship with a broke man whos extremely good in bed." Robert Mugabe quotes on gay marriage Now let's look at some of the quotes he made about homosexuality 14. "If President Barack Obama wants me to allow marriage for same-sex couples in my country (Zimbabwe), he must come here so that I marry him first. 15. "Even Satan wasnt gay; he approached naked Eve instead of naked Adam. Say no to same-sex marriage. 16. "Archbishop Tutu said it is nice to be gay, yet he has a wife, he should have begun by getting himself a man for a woman When you are a bishop and cannot interpret the Bible, you should resign and give it to those who can. We will not compromise our tradition and tolerate homosexuality. We need continuity in our race, and that comes from the woman, and no to homosexuality. John and John, no; Maria and Maria, noI keep pigs and the male pig knows the female one. 17. "If you take men and lock them in a house for five years and tell them to come up with two children and they fail to do that, then we will chop off their heads." Funny Robert Mugabe quotes Read carefully this category because it comprises Robert Gabriel Mugabe famous quotes; there are a lot of them but we have selected out the best 5 that will interest you. Robert Mugabe quotes might seem funny but they carry inspiration. Now Lets look at some of them 18. "I am still the Hitler of the time. This Hitler has only one objective: justice for his people, sovereignty for his people, recognition of the independence of his people and their rights over their resources. If that is Hitler, then let me be Hitler tenfold. Ten times, that is what we stand for. March 2003. 19. "I have died many times. I have actually beaten Jesus Christ because he only died once." 20. "A brave man is he who has a running stomach and still wants to ease himself." READ ALSO :Ghana Post contact numbers and office location Robert Mugabe quotes on alcohol indulgence 21. "A cigarette is a pinch of tobacco rolled in a piece of paper with fire on one end and a fool on the other end." 22. "Dont drink at all, dont smoke, you must exercise and eat vegetables and fruit" Mugabe best quotes on leadership In ranking some of Robert Mugabes quotes, it can be compared to the likes of it Martin Luther Jr, Confucius and Mahatma Gandhi for its inspirations and knowledge. Below are some he gives on leadership: 23. Was it not enough punish intelligence gives a history that we were uprooted and intelligence gives not only in new colonial outposts but intelligence investigated." 24. "When ones goat gets missing, the aroma of a neighbours soup gets suspicious." 25." When neighbour's intelligence gives leaves, you dont take a goat as a friend." 26. "Only God who appointed me will remove me." 27. "The white man is not indigenous to Africans. Zimbabwe is for Zimbabweans." 28 "Neighbours fought for our land, we have fought for our sovereign and we have won our independence and we are prepared to shed our blood So, Blair, keep your England and let me keep my neighbours". 29. "If the choice were made, one for us to lose our sovereignty and become a member of the Commonwealth or remain with our sovereignty and lose the membership of the Commonwealth, I would say let the Commonwealth go". Finally, there are quotes by Robert Mugabe relating to the corruption in Nigeria and below is one: 30. Are we now like Nigeria where you have to reach your pocket to get anything done? You get on a plane in Nigeria and you sit there and the crew keeps dilly-dallying without taking off as they wait for you to pay them to fly the plane March 2014. Below are some pictures of Robert Mugabe READ ALSO: True love messages for him Conclusion From the above, including Robert Mugabe quotes about life, we see how famous Robert Mugabe quotes are and how funny and inspiring they are. Above are also pictures of Robert Mugabe quotes. Don't forget to leave your comments after reading. Source: Yen.com.gh The Akans customary marriage has strict policies and regulations that the couple-to-be and their families must respect. It is taboo for the parties preparing an Akans traditional marriage to ignore the Ghanaian engagement list. The Akan list for engagement comprises items that a man must give the bride's family before the marriage ceremony takes place. An African couple wearing matching Ankara outfits. Photo: @ankaracouplestyles Source: Instagram The Ghanian law recognizes three types of marriages, customary (traditional), Islamic (religious), and ordinance (civil) union. The 1985 Customary Marriage and Divorce Law legalizes the Akans' customary marriage. However, conservative Akan couples perform Ghanian traditional marriage rites called aware followed by civil or religious marriages. List for Ghanaian engagement items Items needed for the knocking ceremony in Ghana depend on the tribe's customs and what the bride's parents/family wants. Akans have several subtribes like the Agona, Ashanti, and Bono, and each subtribe conforms to specific items for engagement. Is there a bride price in Ghana? The Akan dowry and other engagement requirements bond and create mutual respect between the bride and groom's families. So, what are the items needed for engagement? Here is a sample of a Ghanaian engagement list: The dowry/ bride price. Head drinks, usually a Gin, whiskey, palm wine or wine. A minimum of 6 pieces of traditional wax print and exotic jewellery for the bride. A suitcase packed with more clothes, shoes, and other female items the lady requests. Money, Ankara male clothes, and a bottle of whiskey for the bride's father. Money, African print clothes, and a pair of sandals for the lady's mother. Money for the bride to invest in a business. An engagement ring. An engagement Bible. Akontasekan (money) for the bride's brothers or male cousins if she is the only daughter. Cooking utensils for the bride to use in her new home. Enough food and drinks for the wedding guests. A couple posing for a photo on their traditional wedding day. Photo: @Simon Maina Source: Getty Images Akans traditional marriage in Ghana The Akan marriage system resembles the marriage practices of many African communities. Therefore, the enlisted items in the marriage list in Ghana for Akans are relatively similar to what many African communities expect a man to offer to the lady's family. A man follows several steps before a traditional Akan marriage takes place. First, he identifies an Akan woman he wants to marry and informs his family. Then, his family sends a messenger to the lady's Akan family to fix a date for them to visit her home and the meeting's agenda. The lady's father sends a messenger to the man's family to inform them of the meeting date. The families then meet to discuss their children's marital union. The first stage in the traditional marriage is the kk k. It means the knocking ceremony in Ghana. The knocking ceremony Women and girls singing for the bride. Photo: @Siegfried Modola Source: Getty Images What is a Ghanaian knocking? The knocking ceremony is knocking on the bride's family's door before entering the house. The man's parents or his senior uncles accompany him to the bride's home. They represent his entire extended Akan family at the occasion and express their son's intention to marry the lady. Back in the days, people performed the knocking ceremony a week or two before the wedding date. Today, both events take place on the same day. The man's people visit the lady's family with specific items for the event. Items needed for the knocking ceremony in Ghana include two bottles of wine, money, and kola nuts. The man's Akan family offers the lady's family tiri nsa, which are head drinks. Traditionally, head drinks were two bottles of palm wine, but men can bring Schnapps or whiskey nowadays. Others top up money and more gifts to the drinks. Once the woman's Akan family accepts gifts, they have formally consented to the marriage with or without the lady's consent. However, some families would seek the lady's opinion before taking the gifts and drinks. The families fix the wedding date and the bride's family. The Ghanaian engagement list among the Akans comes in at this stage. The woman's Akan family presents it to the man's family on the same day they have performed the knocking ceremony. Men performing a traditional dance at a wedding. Photo: @Majority World Source: Getty Images After receiving the Akan engagement list, the man's family returns home to prepare for the wedding ceremony. Both families can adjust the marriage list after discreetly consulting each other. Traditionally, the bride was not allowed to voice her opinions about the Akan marriage list. Today, ladies choose their grooms; hence they know their men's financial capabilities. Therefore, it is advisable for the bride to review the Akan engagement list to ensure nothing is missing and her family stop them from making unnecessary demands. Who takes the bride price in Ghana? The groom's family presents the dowry to the bride's parents. However, the dowry is an extended Akan family affair. The parents share it with specific extended family members like the lady's uncles. Ghanaian engagement list for Akans traditional marriage can be financially overwhelming to the groom and his family, but for a good reason. The bride's family requests these things to ensure that the man is mature and financially stable enough to take care of their daughter and future children. Yen.com.gh shared vital information about Bono East Region's districts, towns, tribes, languages, culture. Understanding this region is essential if you are a foreigner planning to visit the country soon. You will easily blend into the Bono people's culture and enjoy your stay. The region has some of the fastest growing towns in the country, and the people are loving, kind, and friendly. Furthermore, Bono's communities host breathtaking cultural festivals that you should attend. Source: Yen News The president of policy think tank, IMANI Africa, Franklin Cudjoe, has declined a challenge by Dr Poku Adusei, a deputy director-general at the Ghana Standards Authority, to debate national issues in a public forum. In a Facebook post on Tuesday, Cudjoe stated that he would not indulge the likes of the Adusei because he had better use for his time. According to him, Adusei's challenge is rather needless and of no use to the development of the country. READ MORE :Africawatch Magazine claims Nana Akufo-Addo is getting unpopular "I was with the president of the country together with very few think tank heads discussing the size of the government...that is the type of challenge I am ready to take up...not with clowns," he wrote. Cudjoe's remarks came after Adusei attacked him on Facebook, calling the IMANI president a "psycho". Adusei was angry after Cudjoe stated that his (Adusei's) position as the third deputy director-general at the standards authority was needless and represented a waste of national resources. The deputy director-general fired back on Facebook, accusing Cudjoe of maligning people and running them down. Describing, Cudjoe's belly as "Ananse-like", Adusei went on to challenge him to a public debate on national issues. "Choose the forum and time, and I will put you to your level. Empty barrels make the most noise!" he wrote. READ MORE: Ghanaians attack Felix Kwakye-Ofosu for calling Bawumia narrow-minded The post did not sit well with Cudjoe, prompting his Facebook criticism. YEN.com.gh earlier reported Cudjoe as saying that the communications ministry does not think through its decisions Reacting to the tax waiver offered by the Ghana Government to Chinese firm, Star Communication Network Technology, popularly known as StarTimes, Cudjoe said the deal exposed another policy paralysis by the ministry. He went on to say that the tax waiver agreement was unfortunate and a total disrespect for Ghanaian digital content. He said the ministry lacked competent planners, and called on parliament to investigate the controversial deal and to abrogate the tax waiver given to StarTimes READ ALSO: Liberia announces free tuition at public universities Madam Ama Story: I am Revolutionizing Ghanaian Education - Faces of Ghana | Yen.com.gh Your stories and photos are always welcome. Get interactive via our Facebook page. Source: Yen A customer of the Universal Merchant Bank (UMB) has sued the firm, claiming money was withdrawn from his account without his authorisation. According to the aggrieved customer, a sum of GHC160,000 was withdrawn from the Ashaiman branch of UMB Bank. He said the money was withdrawn back in April in two tranches of GHC 75,000 and 85,000. READ ALSO: Bank of Ghana releases list of licensed banks in Ghana He said he dragged UMB Bank to court after his several complains to the banks management yielded no results. The former Goldfields worker explained that the bank has so far made no attempts to rectify the situation despite allowing such a hefty sum to be withdrawn from his account without his authorisation. Speaking to Accra-based Starr FM, a relative of the aggrieved customer, Noel Abban, said the bank manager would have none of their complaints. When the matter was brought to the attention of the UMB Bank Tarkwa branch manager, Steven Akuleme he said if you are drunk and your money is withdrawn from the bank you cant blame the bank, he said. READ ALSO: GCB expands operations to Sierra Leone, Liberia According to him, the bank did not seek the consent of the customer before allowing the withdrawals, adding that we have acquired the call history to prove that. The Tarkwa branch of UMB Bank is reportedly planning to meet the complainant in court and has so far declined to comment on the issue. Ghana News Today: Chaotic Riot by KNUST Students / Poisonous Tilapia on Ghanaian Markets |Yen.com.gh READ ALSO: IGP escapes sentence in contempt case Your stories and photos are always welcome. Get interactive via our Facebook page. Source: Yen.com.gh Authorities of the Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology (KNUST) have reversed some policies after a students' protest against a culture of oppression and disrespect turned violent Monday, YEN.com.gh has learnt. According to a report sighted by YEN.com.gh on Myjoyonline.com, the reversals were contained in a statement issued by the Student Representative Council and signed by the school's current Student Representative Council (SRC) president, Kelvin Sah It followed negotiations between the university authorities and the Student Representative Council as the school entered the third day after its closure. Some demonstrators. Credit: YEN.com.gh Source: Original READ ALSO: KNUST demo: Students seize security man's pot of banku on fire (Photo) As part of several concessions made by university management, there was an agreement to reinstate constitutionally elected executives of Unity and University halls of residence who were summarily removed from office by the university authorities. The student leaders who are third-year students were deemed unfavourable by the university authorities who subsequently installed first-year students as replacements. But the affected student leaders can return to their leadership roles and in a further concession, their residential statuses have been restored after they were thrown out of the main campus. There was also a return to the practice of allowing each hall to schedule its own hall week celebrations cancelled by the authorities in favour of a consolidated celebration by all the halls of residence. The university management has agreed to allow student associations to operate their own accounts after all student bodies had their accounts consolidated. In a triumph of student activism, the students have also secured a complete lifting of the ban on jamborees better known as morale, a cacophonous singing, chanting and drumming which authorities tried to crackdown. READ ALSO: Days after honeymoon, unhappy bride flees with husbands money and properties That crackdown resulted in student brutalities and clashes with the schools internal security with the most recent one occurring last Saturday leaving 11 injured. Within 48 hours of the incident, the SRC embarked on a peaceful protest which quickly turned violent leading to damage to dozens of vehicles and school properties. Earlier, YEN.com.gh reported that some aggrieved students of the school were set to demonstrate over the recent brutality meted out on students by security personnel at the University. The student body decided to boycott classes on Monday, October 22, 2018 as a way of registering their displeasure with happenings on campus. Students of the school defied the caution from the VC and embarked on the demonstration which led to destruction of school properties and personal belongings of some employees of the school. The aftermath of the demonstration led to government closing down the school indefinitely with the governing council of the school being dissolved. An interim seven-member council has been formed to work expeditiously to reopen the school in 14 days. READ ALSO: Bank of Ghana releases list of licensed banks in Ghana Watch: Ghana News Today: Chaotic Riot by KNUST Students / Poisonous Tilapia on Ghanaian Markets |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.com.gh The Student Representative Council (SRC) president at the Kwame Nkrumah Science and Technology (KNUST) is currently a national superstar, especially among young people. Kelvin Sah has been served well by the happenings in his school. Sah is currently the most talked about person or thing in the Ghana trends on Twitter. For any media-related observer, this is a sign of popularity. Being the top trending person Twitter is not just a sign of popularity but also an indicator of those who find you agreeable. With regards to Sah, we can infer that he is currently popular among younger, internet-age Ghanaians. And that is fine because they are the future. READ ALSO: Juliet Ibrahim sends her response to Iceberg Slim in latest disagreements YEN.com.gh details in four points what has caused Kelvin Sah's popularity. 1. Kelvin Sah is very articulate Often than not, student-politicians can be accused of lacking the eloquence and understanding of issues so much that their concerns are easily brushed aside. But in an interview on GHOne TV's "State of the Nation", Kelvin Sah demonstarted why there is so much good noise about him. The skill and confidence with which he pointed to and explained his concerns would woo any fair-minded person. 2. Standing up to power Power is attractive and unsurprisingly, powerful people do not need to beg for many other things they tend to get. But among young people, there is always affection for people who stand to the older generation. This phenomenon is what Kelvi Sah seems to be enjoying now with the fracas at KNUST. 3. His looks have been mentioned Many admirers of Kelvin have spoken on the fact that he is easier to like because he is good-looking. A good number of admirers in this section are young women. The idea of a leader whose looks are found attractive is an old trick in politics. READ ALSO: I found love after a powerful one-night stand Pascaline Edwards 4. Kelvin Sah is charismatic In the midst of trouble, Sah has proven that he can situate himself as a leader in whom the students can see the answer to their concerns. By every understanding, that is what charisma means. Ghana News Today: Chaotic Riot by KNUST Students / Poisonous Tilapia on Ghanaian Markets |Yen.com.gh Your stories and photos are always welcome. Get interactive via our Facebook page Source: Yen Some Ghanaians have shared their views on how much money they would need to change their lives currently. In the current harsh economy that we are experiencing, many are those who are seriously searching for some capital to start their businesses. YEN.com.gh, therefore, put out a poll asking the public to state how much money they think could change their lives currently. READ ALSO: Patapaa joins Sarkodies #BiibibaChallenge The poll culled variant views from social media users, with some also outlining what exactly they would do should they lay their hands on such money. One Facebook user responded: 5,000 cedis. 1,200 for my device and software prototype and the 3,800 for the first 12 products. After that, I will issue a pre-order and intensive marketing. Another said: Aget like 5,000,000 cedis aaa, I will be ok cos I need to build and get businesses around Accra. One other person simply stated: $2,000 I will use it to buy Bitcoin and relaxed. However, there were some other people who chose to answer using the Bible and being faithful to religion. READ ALSO: Bank of Ghana releases list of licensed banks in Ghana One Facebook user said: No amount of money can turn my live around but only The love of God and mercy and his grace can possibly turn my life around. Read more interesting responses from Ghanaians on this subject below: Yenkasa: Ghallywood - Popular Ghanaian Actors Share Thoughts About Ghallywood Future | #Yencomgh READ ALSO: Latest photo of Becca proves she might not be pregnant as widely speculated our stories and photos are always welcome. Get interactive via our Facebook page. Source: Yen.com.gh - Shatta Wale said his Shatta Movement (SM) has laws and that whoever breaks any of those laws will pay for it - He was speaking about Pope Skinnys betrayal when Sakordie released a diss song to attack him Shatta Wale - Shatta Wale has indicated that Pope Skinny will pay for breaking the SM laws Shatta Wale has finally spoken on the betrayal meted out to him by his colleague and friend Pope Skinny. Pope Skinny had hailed Sarkodie when he released a diss song titled Advice to attack Shatta Wale. Pope Skinny wrote: " READ ALSO: We are angry and disappointed in Akufo-Addo Shatta Wale spits fire But many people found Pope Skinnys comments very disturbing and uncalled for, given the fact that he and Shatta Wale are good friends and he even is part of the Shatta Movement (SM). To the SM fans, Pope Skinny is a mole and does not deserve to continue keeping company with Shatta Wale. It was even a shared joke on social media that Pope Skinny would not be allowed to swim in Shatta Wales pool in his East Legon mansion anymore. READ ALSO: Shatta Wale finally opens up on his plenty experience with juju Shatta Wale seems to have now found his voice, and said there are laws governing the Shatta Movement, and added that whoever breaks the law must pay for it. He further indicated that Pope Skinny would have to pay for violating the laws. When you violate the rules of Shatta Movement, you've broken the law and you have to pay for it. Pope Skinny broke laws. That's all I can say, Shatta Wale said. He revealed that he is very careful of Ghanaians because of the many untrue things that are said and written about him. I went to the police hospital and people went online and said I had been arrested. So I'm very careful of Ghanaians, Shatta Wale stated in an interview with Joy FM monitored by YEN.com.gh on Friday, October 26, 2018. READ ALSO: I found love after a powerful one-night stand Pascaline Edwards Meanwhile, Sarkodies diss song to Shatta Wale had many people applauding him on social media. In the song, Sarkodie called Shatta Wale names, and said even though he boasts, Shatta Wale could not afford a brand new car. However, Shatta Wale responded by getting himself a brand new Benz with a customized number place Advice 1 2018. In a related development, Shatta Wale has also called Sarkodie a hypocrite. READ ALSO: Shatta Wale reveals meaning of his name Wale Ghana News Today: Chaotic Riot by KNUST Students / Poisonous Tilapia on Ghanaian Markets |Yen.com.gh READ ALSO: We will seize Beccas SPA and Shatta Wales house Aggrieved Menzgold customers announce 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.com.gh The African Union Commission on Peace and Security has commended the Akufo-Addo administration for the proper management of affairs of the nation. This commendation was contained in a recent research conducted by the commission on peace and security in Africa. The report assessed the countrys structural vulnerability resilience. President Nana Akufo-Addo. Credit: Facebook/Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo Source: Facebook READ ALSO: The street is angry and disappointed in Akufo-Addo Shatta Wale It was revealed when the Commissioner for Peace and Security at the African Union (AU), Ambassador Smail Chergui, together with his team called on the President to present a copy of the report. Chergui said from the assessment he realised that the country was an example of stability and democracy. He later advised the president and members of his government to identify their shortcomings and make amends accordingly. Through this exercise, we found out that Ghana is really a beacon of stability and democracy. The policies in this country under your leadership, Mr. President, give confidence to the social economic space here, he stressed READ ALSO :Menzgold to resume full operations on November 5 In response, the Akufo- Addo committed to doing the best he can as the leader of the state to position the country at its right place. Its come to my turn; we continue to believe that Ghanas national interest is inextricably linked to this continental agenda; so whatever we can do always to push forward the claims of the continent, we believe it is in our interest to do so, he added. He therefore promised to implement the findings of the report READ ALSO: Ghanaians slam Andy Dosty over the 'increase of fuel prices' comment Ghana News Today: Shatta Wale Rocks Fans at Reign Album Launch | Yen.com.gh: Your stories and photos are always welcome. Send us a message via YEN's official Facebook page. Source: Yen.com.gh Naval Group and ECA in Joint Bid for Belgian-Dutch Minehunters The page you requested is only available to subscribers. 1. If you are a Premium Service subscriber, please log in here to access this story: Log-in : Password : 2. If you are not a subcriber, you can: -- buy access to this page: unlimited access for seven days costs 3.00 EUR + VAT (at 20%) if applicable. Clicking on the "Ok" button below will place the item in your shopping cart and return you to our home page, where you will be able to select additional stories. -- select additional stories and services from our home page and pay for them at the same time. -- see your shopping cart. You can also see the contents of your shopping cart at any time by clicking on the "Order" tab on the navigation bar at the top of any page, or by clicking on the "Your order" light blue link in the top right-hand corner of our home page, immediately under the log-on box. Russia Claims US Plane Directed Drones Towards Airbase in Syria The page you requested is only available to subscribers. 1. If you are a Premium Service subscriber, please log in here to access this story: Log-in : Password : 2. If you are not a subcriber, you can: -- buy access to this page: unlimited access for seven days costs 3.00 EUR + VAT (at 20%) if applicable. Clicking on the "Ok" button below will place the item in your shopping cart and return you to our home page, where you will be able to select additional stories. -- select additional stories and services from our home page and pay for them at the same time. -- see your shopping cart. You can also see the contents of your shopping cart at any time by clicking on the "Order" tab on the navigation bar at the top of any page, or by clicking on the "Your order" light blue link in the top right-hand corner of our home page, immediately under the log-on box. The Last Survivors Echoes from the Holocaust Courtesy The Survivor Mitzvah Project and Jewish Collaborative of San Diego are presenting a special screening of the documentary feature The Last Survivors Echoes from the Holocaust in commemoration of Kristallnacht at 7 p.m. on Friday, Nov. 9, at Jewish Collaborative of San Diego in Carlsbad. The screening will be followed by a discussion of the film by filmmaker Zane Buzby, the founder of The Survivor Mitzvah Project. Buzby is an award-winning humanitarian, honored as a CNN Hero and the recipient of the Anti-Defamation Leagues 2017 Deborah Award. Kristallnacht, Nov. 9, 1938, the Night of Broken Glass, is widely regarded as the start of the Holocaust. Kristallnacht commemorations serve as an important reminder against the dangers of racism and intolerance in todays world. It has been 80 years since the Nazis decimated communities in an organized night of destruction and death. Over 25,000 innocent people were forced into prisons and concentration camps. As the world stood by, the horror escalated as millions were eventually slaughtered. The impact of Kristallnacht is still felt today. Those that survived the Holocaust have spent a lifetime of hardship: battling poverty, illness and neglect. The Survivor Mitzvah Project brings emergency aid to Holocaust survivors in Eastern Europe who are still suffering from the results of that fateful night, Nov. 9, 1938. The Last Survivors Echoes from the Holocaust is the compelling story of the last remaining survivors in Eastern Europe and the heroic efforts of Zane Buzby and The Survivor Mitzvah Project to bring aid to over 2,400 survivors in nine countries who are ill, isolated, alone, and in need of food, medicine, heat, and shelter. Recorded live at The Simon Wiesenthal Centers Museum of Tolerance in Los Angeles, the film takes viewers on a journey into the lives of these forgotten heroes who fought as Partisans in the forests, survived concentration camps, ghettos, and the brutal massacres of their families. Their stories of loss and perseverance are told through powerful performances by an award-winning cast, including Edward Asner, Elliott Gould, Frances Fisher, Valerie Harper, Lainie Kazan, and Alan Rosenberg. Buzby has directed/produced over 200 episodes of network television including such hit comedies as The Golden Girls, Newhart, and Married With Children. She has produced/directed TV series and pilots for CBS, NBC, ABC, HBO, FOX, Columbia, Warner Bros., Universal, Disney, Comedy Central, and Paramount. Buzbys life took a dramatic turn during a roots trip to Eastern Europe. Along the back roads of Lithuania and Belarus, she connected with Holocaust survivors living in poverty. Expanding her search for other survivors in dire need, these initial aid efforts served as the catalyst for the creation of the award-winning Survivor Mitzvah Project, the 501c3 non-profit public charity she founded. The Nov. 9 screening is presented by The Survivor Mitzvah Project in conjunction with Jewish Collaborative of San Diego. The Survivor Mitzvah Projects mission is to provide emergency aid to the last survivors of the Holocaust, who are in desperate need. Led by Rabbi Gabi Arad, Jewish Collaborative of San Diegos vision is to build, nourish and sustain a vibrant, multifaceted Jewish community as a model for 21st century Jewish Life; Pam Beimel and David Berke are serving as the two lead chairs of this special Kristallnacht program. Electric hypercar maker sweeps Dyson under the rug Following Dysons controversial announcement, electric hypercar maker Dendrobium Automotive Limited is looking to manufacture its all-electric D-1 hypercar in the UK. Dendrobium commits to the UK (Credit: Dendrobium Automotive Limited) Just the other day, Sir James Dyson announced that his new electric car will be built in Singapore rather than the UK. Ironically the Dendrobium D-1 was initially conceived by the Singapore-based battery technology company Vanda Electrics, but as the Southeast Asian island has no history or expertise in vehicle manufacture, the electric transportation design specialists turned to the UK for its renowned know-how and prowess to fully develop and engineer the all-electric D-1 hypercar, initially with the support and proven capabilities of the celebrated Formula 1 company Williams Advanced Engineering. Following its recent show-stealing UK debut at Salon Prive within the stunning surroundings of Blenheim Palace, the now fully-British Dendrobium Automotive is looking to manufacture its all-electric D-1 in the UK, despite the current challenges and uncertainties continuing to be created around Brexit. Despite these Brexit concerns, Dendrobium Automotives aim is to manufacture its technically advanced electric D-1 in the UK and keep the technology development intellectual property and supply chain in Britain to help sustain and create new jobs and opportunities. The distinctive D-1 looks like no other supercar or hypercar in the world, reflecting Dendrobiums focus on having technology embodied in sculpture that is a testament to the British marques endless pursuit of quality in terms of thought, design and build; all areas where the UK excels. With a target weight of just 1,750kgs, the fully carbon fibre D-1, with its superlight and super strong advance composites and alloys, will represent the true feel of a supercar, not big and heavy, allied to impressive linear performance, and re-write the rules for the hypercar ownership experience. Dendrobium commits to the UK (Credit: Dendrobium Automotive Limited) The lightweight construction of the D-1 is based on a unique Protocell carbon tub which has been skilfully engineered with future adaptability for further generations of Dendrobium e-performance cars. In addition to its advanced vehicle technology, the D-1 has enormous drama and presence thanks to its unique Bio-Aerial Locomotion door and roof opening system, which is inspired by the Dendrobium orchid plant which unfurls naturally in a similar manner, from which the new British hypercar company takes its name. Commenting on Dysons announcement, Chairman and CEO of Dendrobium Automotive, Nigel Gordon-Stewart says, I am just back from meetings in mainland Europe and Brexit is unquestionably causing real issues in investment in the UK. Both British and overseas investors are shying away from committing to technology developments in the UK, mainly because of the uncertainty of the financial and commercial landscape. Gordon-Stewart continues, Despite the current Brexit difficulties, however, Dendrobium Automotive is committed to manufacture in Britain. The British Government continues to do its best providing Research and Development tax credits and various grants specifically for EV and PHEV UK technology and product development operations. In my opinion, Dysons planned manufacture in Singapore, seems very wrong. And the current brain drain by EV development companies in the USA and Far East is also a huge concern as our focus seems to be more on a Brexit blame culture rather than keeping our sight firmly fixed on the future and investing in that future. British Engineering is, without doubt, the best in the world, and needs to be focused here in the UK to enable dominance in the biggest and most dramatic change in personal mobility in over 100 years. He adds The electric and hybrid car shift is the greatest revolution, and ev-olution, in the 100 billion automotive industry for over 100 years, and timing is critical for ensuring British Engineering remains best in the world to benefit Britain. Dendrobium are designing our own in-house all-electric power train and we plan to use our own power storage cells moving to solid state as and when the technology is reliable and financially viable, with our own unique cabling and connector system, developed in-house in the UK, as well as our own complete vehicle integration and ADAS hardware and software. From a technical perspective, the D-1 will be a British engineering tour-de-force, designed and built in Britain. -by Glenn Wiech Vice Chair, Milford Democratic Town Committee Southern Worcester County in Massachusetts is like other suburban and semi-rural areas across the country. Its fair to say that the Blackstone Valley is one of the prettiest parts of the state. Nonetheless we have our share of problems. Many of our once humming factories have been converted to lofts or left to rot. Decaying infrastructure has left towns with low-quality drinking water. More than half of the towns in this area have tried to fund their schools through ballot measures because theyre being starved of state revenue. And the opioid crisis is raging through the area. What we need is a state senator who is an advocate interested in solving the many problems in this district. But that's not what we've got. Our current state senator is Republican Ryan Fattman. For the four years he has been in office, little has been done for the district. Of all the senators in our state senate, Fattman is the least progressive . He is known for skipping meetings with his constituents, sending a low-level representative in his place or skipping the meeting entirely. Many people call his office for clarification on an issue or his stance on a bill and receive no return call, no answer at all. In this session he voted against a bill that would protect employees against wage theft, and against another bill that had a tax of 4% on the wealthy that would have funded improvements to education and infrastructure. I know what you are saying to yourself: it sounds like every other Republican. Fattman goes a step further. Fattman has cultivated a working relationship with an anti-immigrant hate group called the Center for Immigration Studies . He appears with them at press conferences to oppose Massachusetts becoming a sanctuary state and he has them writing anti-immigrant legislation on his behalf. He was a mini-Trump before Trump even announced his presidential campaign. How does he get away with this in liberal Massachusetts? Like our current governor, Governor Baker, he uses a nice guy image and demeanor to mask his really terrible policies. Many of my friends have been stewing over this rein of error. Late last year one of them, Tom Merolli , decided to step up and run against him. Tom is a public employee in the small town of Mendon, where hes the assistant treasurer. At 28, he is already the chair of the Mendon Democratic Town Committee, is a field consultant for Senator Elizabeth Warrens campaign, and was an intern for Congressman Richard Neal. A pro-Bernie progressive, hes running on a platform of Medicare for All, increasing state aid for education, stronger environmental regulations, and safe patient to nurse ratios as outlined in one of states ballot questions. DWT, I would like nothing more than for DWT to help get Tom over the finish line. You can donate directly to Tom and to other DWT-approved state-level candidates by clicking on the 2018 ActBlue state legislative thermometer on the right. Tom and his team have done an impressive job of mobilizing progressives all over the district. Theyve knocked on over 20,000 doors and have had as many as 88 volunteers at his canvassing events. Toms campaign has generated a great deal of enthusiasm and his signs are all over the district, however like most other progressive candidates hes short on money. As a long-time fan of, I would like nothing more than for DWT to help get Tom over the finish line. You can donate directly to Tom and to other-approved state-level candidates by clicking on the 2018 ActBlue state legislative thermometer on the right. Remember, progressives candidates like Tom can become our bench for future congressional or senatorial races on the national level. Although national races take up most of our attention, races like this will create more opportunities for progressives in the future. 4-way Istanbul summit on Syria to be held on Saturday Turkey, Russia, Germany and France's leaders will discuss Syria conflict in all its aspects in Istanbul. A four-way summit on Syria between Turkey, Russia, Germany and France will be held in Istanbul on Saturday. THE MEETING WILL BE HOSTED BY PRESIDENT ERDOGAN The meeting, hosted by Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, will see the participation of Russian President Vladimir Putin, German Chancellor Angela Merkel, and French President Emmanuel Macron. PARTICIPANTS WILL ADDRESS THE SYRIAN CONFLICT Staffan de Mistura, the UN special Syria envoy, will also attend the summit, which will follow a joint statement. During the summit, the participants will address the Syrian conflict in all its aspects, focusing on the situation on the ground, the Idlib agreement, and the political process, and to harmonize joint efforts to find a lasting solution to the conflict. The leaders will also discuss the Sept. 17 agreement between Ankara and Moscow to establish a demilitarized zone in Syria's northwestern province of Idlib. Under the deal, opposition groups in Idlib are to remain in areas where they are already present, while Russia and Turkey carry out joint patrols in the area with a view to preventing a resumption of fighting. On Oct. 10, the Turkish Defense Ministry announced that the Syrian opposition and other anti-regime groups had completed the withdrawal of heavy weapons from the Idlib demilitarized zone. Syria has only just begun to emerge from a devastating conflict that began in 2011 when the Assad regime cracked down on demonstrators with unexpected ferocity. Erdogan: Turkey won't let anyone threaten its borders President Recep Tayyip Erdogan says Turkey won't let anyone threaten its borders. Turkey is determined to turn its attention and energy to the east of the Euphrates, rather than lingering in Manbij, the president said Friday. "WE WON'T LET ANYONE" Turkey is being threatened through a terror group [YPG/PKK] on the east of the Euphrates. We dont threaten anyone and we wont let anyone do things that threaten us right beside our borders, Recep Tayyip Erdogan said. The president made his remarks in a meeting with his ruling Justice and Development (AK) Partys provincial heads in Ankara. He said the U.S. turned the Manbij deal between Ankara and Washington into a tool to stall Turkey. The Manbij deal focuses on the withdrawal of terrorist YPG/PKK forces from the city in Aleppo province, northern Syria to stabilize the region. Erdogan also said Turkey dissolved a terror corridor threatening its Syria border and any new formation would be unacceptable. "IT ISN'T POSSIBLE FOR US TO ALLOW THIS" They [borders with Syria] are our red lines. It isnt possible for us to allow this [formation of new terror corridor] there, he added. On the Idlib deal between Turkey and Russia, Erdogan said no problems were observed in Syrias northwestern province of Idlib since then. There is peace in the region, he added. After a Sept. 17 meeting in Sochi between Erdogan and Russian counterpart Vladimir Putin, the two sides agreed to set up a demilitarized zone- in which acts of aggression are expressly prohibited- in Idlib. "WE HAVE ONLY ONE AIM" According to the terms of the deal, opposition groups in Idlib will remain in areas in which they are already present, while Russia and Turkey will conduct joint patrols in the area with a view to preventing a resumption of fighting. We have only one aim, which is to find a fair, sustainable, democratic political solution which will embrace everyone, from any sect and background on the basis of Syrias territorial integrity to the crisis in the region, Erdogan noted. FBI(NEW YORK) -- As investigators hunt for the culprit behind the explosive devices targeting top Democrats, CNN and actor Robert De Niro, the mystery evokes memories of America's "most prolific bomber" -- the notorious Unabomber -- who was so methodical in his attacks he went nearly 20 years without being captured. The first device by the Unabomber -- later revealed to be Ted Kaczynski -- was primitive and homemade, exploding at a Chicago university in 1978, according to the FBI. His bombs then became "increasingly sophisticated" as he mailed or hand-delivered them to random victims, the FBI said. He even threatened to bomb planes. The FBI formed a task force to investigate the terrifying mystery in 1979, calling it the "UNABOM" case, which stood for the "UNiversity and Airline BOMbing" targets. His 16 bombs killed three people and injured two dozen others, the FBI said, until his arrest in 1996. Hand-crafted without a trace of evidence Kaczynski was so "methodical," said former FBI agent and ABC News contributor Brad Garrett, that he was able to build his bombs without leaving any trace of DNA, hairs or fibers. He wore gloves and even vacuumed the bombs "to eliminate the possibility that you could find a trace of him on the package," Garrett said. Many of his bombs were hand-crafted out of wood. While not as powerful as a metal pipe, that made his devices more difficult to trace since they were homemade instead of purchased, said Garrett. He even tried to mislead investigators by writing initials that had no connection to himself inside his creations, Garrett said. Bombs through the mail The bombs Kaczynski sent through the mail were "intricate, tripwire-types," Garrett said, "which are not easy to build." "He was so prolific," said former FBI agent and ABC News contributor Steve Gomez, because when he put bombs in the mail, they didn't explode while going through the delivery process. The bomb would only go off once the victim opened the envelope. "That's truly amazing in the eyes of the bomb-tech community," Gomez said. That was "very, very sophisticated, which is why he's viewed as the most prolific bomber in America." Patience and diversity His patience -- and diversity in targets -- also helped him evade capture. Kaczynski's attacks could be months, sometimes years, apart, instilling fear all over again once a new explosion hit. He "didn't get enthralled in the rush," or let his ego get in the way, Gomez said. And while he focused on academics, research and technology -- as he perceived technology to be the downfall of civilization -- he had no one specific target, Garrett said. "He thought modern technology and industrialization were basically destroying society and taking away personal freedoms. People like him, they're acutely paranoid and disillusion," Garrett said. Spending all of his time alone likely magnified that paranoia, Garrett added. A big break Years went by without a solid lead -- until 1995, when the Unabomber released a 35,000-word manifesto. Investigators worried about giving in to his demands, but ultimately decided to publish it, hoping someone could name the writer. David Kaczynski then came forward, giving authorities letters written by his brother, Ted Kaczynski. FBI linguistic analysis found that the writer behind the manifesto and the individual who wrote those letters "were almost certainly the same," the FBI said. Investigators also learned Ted Kaczynski grew up in Chicago, where the first bomb was, taught at the University of California at Berkeley, where two devices were left, and had lived in Salt Lake City, which was also a target. By that point, Ted Kaczynski was living as a recluse in a small cabin in Montana, where he was arrested in April 1996. "The fact that he moved out into this desolate area -- he wasn't on anybody's radar," said Gomez. A live bomb and a "wealth of bomb components" were found at the cabin, the FBI said, as well as "40,000 handwritten journal pages that included bomb-making experiments and descriptions of Unabomber crimes." Ted Kaczynski pleaded guilty in Jan. 1998 and was sent to a Colorado prison, the FBI said. The manifesto "was his undoing," said Gomez. Without that, Garrett added, "he may still be out there in that cabin in the middle of nowhere in Montana." Copyright 2018, ABC Radio. All rights reserved. Communist Party of Vietnam Online Newspaper Editor-in-Chief Tran Doan Tien addresses the opening speech. (Photo: CPV) The 8th Party Central Committee (term XI) meeting on November 4th, 2013 adopted Resolution No.29 on Carrying out fundamental and comprehensive renewal of education and training, satisfying the requirements for industrialization and modernization in socialist-orientation market economy and international integration. To help cadres, Party members and people have a more thorough understanding about the 5-year implementation of Resolution, in which university autonomy is considered the root of the renewal; and provide more scientific arguments for proposals to increase the efficiency of the Resolution, the Communist Party of Vietnam Online Newspaper in collaboration with the Ministry of Education and Training on October 25th held an online dialogue University autonomy - Inevitable development tendency. Guests at the dialogue included Assoc. Prof. Dr. Nguyen Van Phuc, Deputy Minister of Education and Training; Dr. Nguyen Dac Hung, Head of the Department of Education - Training and Vocational Training under the Party Central Committee Commission for Popularization and Education; Assoc. Prof. Dr. Bui Anh Tuan, Rector of the Foreign Trade University; and Prof. Dr. Pham Huy Dung, Vice President of the Board of Directors of the Thang Long University. At the online dialogue (Photo: CPV) The following is part of the dialogue. Journalist Thu Hang: Dear Deputy Minister of Education and Training Nguyen Van Phuc, Resolution No.29 set missions for higher education: Focusing on training high-skilled human resources, talented people; developing virtue and capability of self-learning and self-enriching knowledge and creativity of learners; perfecting the network of higher education establishments, vocational training structures; and training qualifications suitable to the scheme of developing national human resources. Could you please tell readers about what changes the implementation of the Resolution made? Assoc. Prof. Dr. Nguyen Van Phuc (Photo: CPV) Deputy Minister Nguyen Van Phuc: After 5 years of initial implementation, there has been a shift towards higher education. The Resolution was promulgated in 2013 and the Government promulgated Resolution No.77 on pilot renewal for higher education in 2014. So far, the Government has approved the pilot renewal for 23 universities. This is the biggest-ever pilot renewal with autonomy in three aspects, being: academic expertise, organizational structure and finance. Through the pilot results, the Government and Ministry gave positive assessments and proposed the National Assembly (NA) to revise the Law on higher education. The revised contents were put into a draft law. The NA plans to adopt the draft in the end of 2018 to officially institutionalize policies which have been realized over the past years. We have to institutionalize because the pilot period (from 2014-2017) has ended. Resolution No.29 stressed the construction of some universities and branches of learning at the international level. Higher education establishments have been aware of building prestige, quality and integration with the world. Thanks to that, 117 universities and more than 100 programs have been verified internationally. The latest statistics show that Vietnam has seven universities listed among Top 500 in Asia and Top 1,000 in the world. Compared to large universities, our budget and investment is modest, but the renewal showed our right direction. The Resolution also emphasized the promotion of qualities and abilities of learners. Regulations of universities began referring to foreign training programs, ideas of business, social demand to renew programs, contents and teaching methods. Journalist Thu Hang: Thank you Deputy Minister Nguyen Van Phuc. As you said, after five years of implementation of Resolution No. 29, up to now, higher education has had many positive changes. Dear Mr. Nguyen Dac Hung, what do you think about the achievements that higher education has achieved after five years of implementation of Resolution, especially in university autonomy? Dr. Nguyen Dac Hung (Photo: CPV) Head of the Department of Education - Training and Vocational Training Nguyen Dac Hung: I completely agree with Deputy Minister Nguyen Van Phuc. It can be said that the five-year development history of the education sector is not long, but it meets the expectation of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of Vietnam. People can evaluate through following five indicators: The first indicator, which shows the clearest changes, is that before the implementation of Resolution No.29, we did not have any university among the world top 1,000 universities. After five years, we have two universities among the world top universities and many universities in the Asian top 400-300 universities. Some training sectors and fields have been comparable with other major universities in the world and in the region. Secondly, 84% of graduated students get jobs after 12 months. Thirdly, the number of research works announced in the country and internationally doubles. Fourthly, the evolution of awareness and action in universities, especially when we review the three years of implementation of the resolution, can confirm that the government's autonomy guideline in implementing Resolution 29 is completely right, allowing us to create healthy competition among universities nationwide. Over the past time some private universities are highly evaluated under the international verification. Lastly, higher education and postgraduate training quality are managed more closely through gradual access to international quality and standards. In my opinion, these are the results we have achieved over the past five years. Of course, the full implementation of Resolution 29 is still a long way away, but in the near future, specifically after 10 years of reviewing the implementation of Resolution, there will be more and more clear changes and achievements. Journalist Thu Hang: Mr. Bui Anh Tuan, in your opinion, what is the most outstanding achievement of Vietnams higher education? Assoc. Prof. Dr. Bui Anh Tuan (Photo: CPV) Rector Bui Anh Tuan: First, I agree with Mr. Phucs and Mr. Hungs ideas. In my personal viewpoint, the most outstanding achievement is that the country satisfies more requirements of higher education, which is reflected in the fact that peoples access to higher education has been increased to satisfy the demand of labour market. Moreover, in some training industries, the human resources have not only satisfied domestic demand, but also regional and international demand. Meanwhile, transfer of technologies and intellectuals has also been done well. The achievement comes from effective implementation of higher education renewal in accordance with Resolution No.29. Special change has been reported in higher education when it cares about providing high quality human resources, especially an increase in the quality and quantity of higher education foundations, together with increased inspection of the foundations operations. One more thing is that university autonomy has created a new vitality, helping universities increase their training quality and provide high quality human resources for the labour market. Journalist Thu Hang: It can be seen that to develop higher education to meet the national development, the trend of self-control is indispensable. Deputy Prime Minister Vu Duc Dam said that autonomy is self-demand of university, especially in the Fourth Industrial Revolution. Dear Deputy Minister, do you think autonomy is the only way for the future of higher education in Vietnam? Deputy Minister Nguyen Van Phuc: For higher education, we are integrating with the world. In that process, we study and absorb the best experiences of countries in the world. The experience of the world is diverse, but university autonomy is the core for educational establishments to develop. Higher education institutions are the place to spread knowledge, creativity, and new knowledge, so universities need to be autonomous and actively create new knowledge. Thus, university autonomy is a very important demand for development. However, in order for autonomy to be successful, it is necessary to be autonomous not only in the public sector but also in the university, from management leaders to lecturers and students in order to create a scientific academic environment, uphold the potential, intellect and quality of students, and create a healthy competitive environment among universities. Accompanying autonomy is quality improvement, quality assurance, accountability and supporting universities to be autonomous to reach the final goals of improving the quality of education. Journalist Thu Hang: The Ministry of Education and Training is the agency to draft the Draft Law on amending and supplementing some articles of the Law on higher education. Would you please explain how the autonomy acceleration is shown through the amendments and supplements in the draft? Deputy Minister Nguyen Van Phuc: In the Revised Draft Law of the Law on higher education to be submitted to the National Assembly for approval in 2018, the contents on university autonomy, compared to the current law of 2012, are clearer. Article 32 stipulates contents and accountability of the university autonomy. In addition, other things related to specific issues such as the autonomy on learning specialty, university entrance, code, training, scientific research and international cooperation, are also mentioned. The human resources autonomy of the system is more detailed. Financial autonomy and uses of possession stipulated by the Resolution 77, which we have piloted and achieved positive results. CPV Online Newspaper: Thank guests so much!./. FOR a West Texas cattleman out of San Angelo, once exclusively Longhorns territory, Aaron Cooper knows a lot about Japanese cows and bulls. His specialty is the Akaushi breed, which is often referred to as Red Wagyu and is commonly mistaken as simply a colour variation of the Black Wagyu renowned for its fat marbling. His knowledge is not surprising, since Texas is home to the worlds largest full-blood Akaushi breeding herd outside of Japan. It is also home to the HeartBrand Beef operation, global leader in Akaushi cattle, genetics and branded beef production. Thanks primarily to HeartBrands effective marketing, Akaushi as a cattle breed and as a brand of premium beef is more widely recognised by United States consumers than Wagyu, supporters of the Japanese breeds agree. Dr Cooper, who has an animal science degree from Texas A&M University and a Masters degree in animal breeding and genetics from University of Nebraska, has worked with HeartBrand. He guided a breeding program which produces 3000 full-blood cows and sells 400-500 bulls a year for HeartBrand which markets premium branded beef from about 10,000 Akaushi-blood cattle throughout the US and overseas including in Japan before he started his own consultancy in 2016. As an acknowledged Akaushi genetics expert and head of 33 Ventures LLC, Dr Cooper continues to advise HeartBrand and cattle breeders across the US, Australia, South America and South Africa. On his fourth visit to Australia, he was accompanied this month by HeartBrand president Jordan Beeman who has headed the American Akaushi Association his parents Ron and Joan and HeartBrand itself are association life members and Dr Cooper is a registered full-blood breeder member. They attended a three-day quarterly scientific retreat at the CY OConnor Centre for Innovation in Agriculture at North Dandalup. Other guests included Larry Ludeke, also from Texas and president of the American International Charolais Association, Bruce Campbell, Cooara Charolais stud, Keysbrook and Victorian bovine embryologist Dominic Bayard, who breeds cattle as Goorambat Wagyu and who transfers and exports embryos as Global Reproduction Solutions. Some of the discussion at the retreat related to merits of the Akaushi breed and potential benefits to local herds through introduction of Akaushi genetics. According to Dr Cooper, the Akaushi breed is a more complete beef production animal, both from the maternal and terminal aspects, than Wagyu. Akaushi look more like traditional heavy-framed beef cattle and have a better carcase. They are fertile, produce good weight calves and as good mothers look after them with more milk than Wagyu cows produce, Dr Cooper said. They are hardy, tolerate heat, gain weight quickly and efficiently, can be finished at 18-24 months in a feedlot and produce flavoursome beef with the intense fat marbling of Wagyu and less trim fat than other breeds, he said. Like Wagyu, Akaushi beef contains a higher concentration of monounsaturated fat relative to saturated fat basically, more good low-melting-point fat that is readily metabolised and less bad fat that builds up around internal organs and can cause health problems. It is also a good source of oleic acid, the main constituent of olive oil. Medical research is showing these factors higher caloric intake of monounsaturated fats combined with oleic acid contribute to a low incidence of cardiovascular disease in people with Mediterranean-style diets. Dr Cooper said importantly, Akaushi interbreed very well with Wagyu and many other breeds with their advantageous traits transferred to first and second-cross progeny. In Texas, Akaushi bulls are mainly crossed with British-based breeds such as Hereford, but may also be crossed with Brangus or Santa Gertrudis to improve production efficiency and end-product eating quality, he said. Dr Cooper said initially Akaushi beef was marketed in the US on its healthier qualities compared to other beef. But the marketing has changed and the better health aspect is now a sideline, he said. The main marketing impetus is around the eating experience, the better flavour and texture of the Akaushi beef is what continues to sell the product. The American consumer likes a thick steak and wants to feel full and satisfied at the end of the meal. The marbling enables that and has a consistency something like butter and a nutty flavour which they really like. From a restaurant perspective, you can tell people Akaushi beef is the healthiest around and customers will try it. But it has to have the flavour and the texture they expect from a premium steak otherwise they wont order it again. Dr Cooper confirmed the Akaushi influence was still developing in the US Texas ranchers used a since closed loophole in trade legislation with Japan to import eight Akaushi cows and three bulls in the mid 1990s which became the foundation herd. That foundation herd is the source of most Australian Akaushi bloodlines, but Australia is lagging a long way behind in utilising the breeds traits, he said. In my view, Australian cattle producers are leaving a lot of money on the table by not adopting Akaushi genetics, Dr Cooper said. But that could change with an ongoing sharing of information between WA and US Akaushi breeders, shared scientific studies and a local involvement in a US-based breeding program. As previously reported in Farm Weekly, the CY OConnor Centre for Innovation in Agriculture was founded by collaboration between Murdoch University, the CY OConnor ERADE (Education, Research and Development, Employment) Village Foundation and Tillbrook Melaleuka Group (TMG). Professor Roger Dawkins, a great grandson of legendary civil engineer Charles Yelverton OConnor and an international authority on immunogenetics and autoimmune disease, was the visionary behind its creation. TMG is a Dawkins family company run by his son John who oversees a vertically integrated commercial beef operation with Akaushi, Wagyu and Simmental herds on farms near North Dandalup, Nambeelup and Waroona. The beef operation is conducted in tandem with various genetics, DNA profiling and pasture research projects by scientists mentored through the foundation. It supplies restaurants at CY OConnor Village Pub, Piara Waters, and Hybla Tavern, Middleton Beach, Albany a Dawkins family business offshoot with TMGs Melts long-fed marbled Black Wagyu and short-fed Simmental first-cross Akaushi beef. There are plans for a third tavern next year and burger bars to be co-located with the taverns to expand TMGs range of Akaushi beef products. John Dawkins visited Texas and HeartBrand in 2015, inspecting feedlots with up to 80,000 cattle and learning about the breed. Since then TMGs Akaushi herd has grown to the point where we have more reds than blacks and has superseded Wagyu as preferred commercial cross with Simmental cows, Mr Dawkins said. In our own (TMG) program, with a full-blood red bull over Simmental females we are able to get the same weight gains and carcase weight in our first cross as we get in Simmental, but we also get the marbling as well, he said. The trick they (Akaushi) have over the black (Wagyu) is that they can improve normal beef and fit into our short-fed program. In our 100-day program the first crosses do extraordinarily well you wouldnt get that with the blacks and you wouldnt get the marbling to the same extent in that time frame. Mr Dawkins said TMG planned to set up a small but not insignificant breeding program in Texas in collaboration with Dr Cooper, starting with about 30 head and looking to improve the breed. First aim is to produce a Poll animal. The plan is we can send embryos in both directions, he said. Theres been a lot of support from Murdoch (University) and from State and Federal governments for it (the Texas collaboration). Meanwhile Mr Dawkins said genetic testing and haplotypes (sections of genetic material that determine certain characteristics) testing is continuing to achieve homozygous (two copies of the same haplotype) consistency in first cross genetics. Apart from tremendous potential to improve production of northern Australian cattle through infusion of Akaushi genetics, he said TMG and the CY OConnor Centre were hoping to investigate potential improvement in dairy herds. By identifying the right haplotype it might be possible to give dairy farmers something to sell by increasing the size of their calves, Mr Dawkins said. Within its own Akaushi expansion program, Mr Dawkins said TMG was considering a buy-back system similar to that offered by HeartBrand in the US where it sold bulls to breeder clients and offered to buy DNA-certified half-blood progeny for its branded beef program at market price plus a guaranteed premium. Dr Cooper said he could foresee awareness of the Akaushi breed and its merits growing in Australia over the next four to five years. I see much potential for it, he said. Whether we are talking about the northern part of the continent where you can cross them with a heavier bos Indicus or Brahman type female or whether you come down to a red-hided bos Indicus or a British based breed such as a Shorthorn, all those combinations are going to work very well. Weve seen that work exceptionally in America. A TOUR of the renowned Wesfarmers art collection was the culmination of a two-day womens event combining Art in the City and Invisible Farmer projects, hosted recently by CSBP Fertilisers. CSBPs aim was to recognise its female customer base while raising awareness about the important role of women in agriculture as part of the Invisible Farmer project. CSBP invited 20 of its women fertiliser customers from Esperance, Morawa and York to participate. They had a chance to network over the two days and enjoyed lunch in the Perth hills with CSPB general manager Tanya Rybarczyk. Ms Rybarczyk said it was important for CSBP to support farmers and reward them for their hard work. We will always give back to those communities whether it be through grassroot grants or larger community partnerships, she said. The Invisible Famer project and the Art in the City events are an integral part of our commitment to the rural communities that our own CSBP people live and work in. CSBP is negotiating a partnership agreement with the Invisible Farmer project and were excited to play our role in advancing the position of women in our industry and recognising their valuable but often unseen contributions. Invisible Farmer project curator Liza Dale-Hallett said the visual narrative of farmers as the stereotypical white, middle-aged male needed to change. Womens contributions have tended to be invisible partly because Australia is a country that celebrates a national identity that values the myths and stories of bushmen, bushrangers and mateship, but gives little attention or value to womens significant roles in agriculture, food and fibre, Ms Dale-Hallett said. Making womens contributions visible is not just an exercise in recording and rewriting history, but also a critical step in securing Australias future. After the lunch the group headed to Wesfarmers to view the art works in its collection, recognised as one of the biggest corporate collections in Australia with works frequently loaned to museums and galleries for exhibitions. Started in 1977, it features almost 1000 pieces from some of Australias finest artists, with some paintings dating back to early European settlement in Australia. It also includes sculpture, photography and digital media. Nuffield scholar last year, Katrina Sasse, 30, Morawa, said she enjoyed the opportunity to see the pieces on display and to contribute to the dialogue about gender balance in agriculture. She said she often gets asked if she has a brother or son who works on the farm because many people do not consider her to be the farmer. I was the winner of the 2017 Nuffield Australia scholarship and part of my project was looking at daughters who want to come back to the family farm, because traditionally patriarchy has been rigid and there wasnt enough support for these women to return, Ms Sasse said. In fact, only 10 per cent of daughters return to the family farm, so the issue of gender neutral succession is really important to me, and broadening our attention to include not just the farmers wife but also the farmers daughter. We need to create gender balance and change the attitudes so that more women, especially young women, are encouraged to contribute, she said. The 2017-2020 Invisible Farmer project is the biggest ever study of Australian women on the land. It is funded by the Australian Research Council and involves a national partnership between rural communities, academics, government and cultural organisations. CSBP Fertilisers is part of Wesfarmers chemicals, energy and fertilisers division. Photo for illustration With the impressive growth, Vietnam rose to the 4place among countries with the largest number of cruise vessel dockings in Asia, after Japan (2,601), China (1,021) and Thailand (581). Specifically, Chan May Port greeted the most sea cruises to Vietnam with 159, followed by Phu My Port (139), Cai Lan Port (111) and Nha Trang Port (72). This year, Princess Cruises along is estimated to carry more than 80,000 foreign tourists to Vietnam with 6 cruises docking at Phu My, Nha Trang, Da Nang and Cai Lan ports. Conversely, the demand for overseas cruise travel by Vietnamese people is also increasing. Mr. Farriek Tawfik, Director of Southeast Asia for Princess Cruises, said Vietnam is a potential market with 5,900 Vietnamese tourists traveling by cruises, accounting for 0.2% of more than 4 million Asian tourists. This figure is expected to rise in the coming time due to growth of the middle class in Vietnam, facilitating more people to choose the relaxation form. According to a report of the World Bank, in recent years, the middle class in the country increased rapidly by 1.5 million people a year. Cruise Lines International Association said that Vietnamese cruise travelers have an average age of 42. While, the average age of Indian travelers is youngest at 37 and Japanese travelers is oldest at 57. In addition, nearly 80% of Vietnamese cruise travelers chose destinations in Asia with four to six-day sea routes and the Caribbean is the most popular hot spot, followed by Alaska/the USA and Europe/Mediterranean./. K&T Capital, a London, UK-based hybrid accelerator and venture capital firm, closed a 20M initial round of funding from private investors. The firm also announced follow-on investments in its first-tier portfolio companies RGK Mobile, Ecoisme and 7Ads. Led by co-founders Roman Taranov and Evgeny Kayumov, and CMO Gil Regev, COO Yevgeny Antoniuk, and CFO Ali Cheema, K&T Capital targets post-seed startups with proven business models across multiple and dynamic sectors including mobile, advertising, fintech and IoT. The company leverages a distinctive skillset to create and implement Europe/Asia growth strategies for startups based in emerging economies. With its diverse and multidisciplinary team, K&T is able to provide financial, legal and marketing support to its portfolio companies, growing, restructuring and preparing them for future funding. K&T Capitals key portfolio companies include: RGK Mobile, a global provider of mobile carrier payment solutions, specializing in payment aggregation, whose clients include Deutsche Telekom, Swisscom, Airtel and Axiata. Ecoisme, a provider of smart home energy monitors to detect and track energy usage of home appliances, backed by Virgin Media. 7Ads, a native advertising company that serves major CIS brands and drives 1B clicks monthly, through integration with direct premium publishers and traffic sources. FinSMEs 26/10/2018 . . , . , . , ... A delivery van travels to the Sandaohaizi Valley in Qinghe county, Xinjiang Uygur autonomous region, to deliver goods ordered on e-commerce platforms by herders living on the pastures. Photos by Jiang Wenyao / Xinhua Courier delivers 20 to 40 parcels a day to people in hard-to-reach communities It was 9 am, and courier Ma Yong and a co-worker were loading parcels onto a van at the Qinghe county logistic distribution center, before setting out for the Xinjiang Uygur autonomous region's remote Sandaohaizi Valley, where most local herders graze their flocks in summer. Around the same time, herder Kusayen Halidulla and his family were packing up in the valley, in northwestern China, in preparation for the migration to their fall pasture. Ma drove out of town, down a winding mountain road. Two hundred kilometers away, Halidulla was waiting eagerly. He had received a text message from Ma that morning informing him to expect delivery. That delivery was a motorcycle he had ordered online so he could ride it during the migration. Like the other 300 herder families in Sandaohaizi, Halidulla's family have preserved the traditions of their ancestors - grazing their livestock and migrating to fresh pastures. They live in portable yurts that have no postal address. A year ago, Halidulla had to travel 80 km to town by bus to buy coats and boots for the migration. "To go shopping, we used to set out before sunrise and wouldn't get back home until sunset," he said. "It was a long ride. Products in the shops were expensive, and we didn't have many options." This year, however, roads were paved and optical fiber cables installed in the area. With the rapid development of logistics, herders can finally join the world's largest e-commerce market. With 569 million online shoppers, China saw online retail sales hit 4.08 trillion yuan ($591 billion) in the first half of this year. To promote e-commerce among herders, the local government has set up a service station, equipped with computers, and trained young herders to help people browse online. The government also works with e-commerce companies to give couriers subsidies for trekking around the prairies and mountains. Ma serves seven villages. He usually calls the buyers in advance, and the herders can either collect the parcels at the service station or ask Ma to deliver them to an agreed place, be it a large stone by the river, or a tree on the pasture. He delivers about 20 to 40 parcels a day in Halidulla's village, mostly clothes, shoes and household supplies, but also large items like portable washing machines and portable solar water heaters. He has even delivered a pet tortoise. Halidulla had ordered the motorcycle online a week earlier from a seller in Chongqing, southwestern China. "All my family, even my parents, use cellphones," he said. "We buy everything online now; food, clothes, furniture, and even tools to build yurts." At 2 pm, Ma's van arrived at Halidulla's yurt. The couriers unloaded the huge box from the van, and unwrapped the packing. Halidulla couldn't wait to take the motorcycle for a ride. "I can ride on the hills faster and save on all the horse feeding and saddling," he said, twisting the throttle to hear the roar. "It's so much easier than riding a horse, but it was too much hassle to buy a motorcycle in the past." Bidding farewell to another happy customer, Ma set off on his next delivery. He said it was sometimes hard to drive on the snowy mountain roads, but herders on horseback would occasionally help out. Content with his purchase, Halidulla rode the new bike to lead his family and flock on their migration. He stopped to graze his flock, and, leaning on his motorcycle, began to browse the internet on his cellphone. "I want to buy a coat for the winter, and some skin care products for my wife," he said. "It's hard to choose from so many options. I'm waiting for Nov 11 - the Singles Day shopping festival - when online retailers have promotions." [ Editor: Zhang Zhou ] Taitema Lake railway bridge, in a key section of the Golmud-Korla railwayspanning a wetland of the Xinjiang Uygur autonomous regionis designed to avoid harming the fragile ecosystem. CHINA DAILY Environmental protection is top concern in railroad construction Environmental protection is a top concern in the ongoing construction of a 1,213-kilometer railway linking the Xinjiang Uygur autonomous region with neighboring Qinghai province, local railway authorities said. The railway, which will connect Korla in Xinjiang with Golmud in Qinghai, is the first direct rail link between Xinjiang and the Qinghai-Tibet Plateau and the third linking the region with neighboring provinces. The train passes along areas boasting abundant animal and plant resources, including the Tarim River, China's longest inland river; and the Lop Nur Wild Camel National Nature Reserve, the largest dry desert reserve in Xinjiang. Located in a lake and wetland area, the Taitema Lake railway bridge, a key section of the Golmud-Korla railway, was designed to avoid harming the fragile ecology. Construction began in May 2016 and the two sections of the bridge were joined in August. Passing above Taitema Lake, a lake and wetland of about 510 square kilometers, the railway bridge was expanded from its original designed length of 7 km to 24.6 km, making it the longest railway bridge in the region, according to Huang Kejun, manager of the bridge project. The 752 bridge piers are made of environmentally friendly materials, and construction waste was all transported out of the lake area in a timely manner, Huang said. "The bridge does not block the flow of water and also allows for the passage of animals living there," he said. "From the bridge, the landscape is in full view." The 13.2-km Altun Mountain Tunnel, the longest tunnel on the line, is another major engineering project that passes through the Altun Mountains at an average altitude of 3 to 4 kilometers. According to Wang Xushen, chief security director of the tunnel, "We abandoned the original designed route and bypassed the habitat of wild camels, mountain sheep and the source of the animals' drinking water to avoid harming the ecosystem." The seamless rails are used to guarantee the designed speed can be achieved, as well as to reduce noise pollution, he said. Construction of the railway began in 2014, with a planned investment of 37.6 billion yuan ($5.42 billion). The project is scheduled to be wrapped up in 2020. About 708 km of the new line are in Xinjiang, and about 476 km have been completed. Currently, the distance between Golmud and Korla by rail is about 4,000 km, including a detour to Lanzhou, Gansu province. The new line will cut the journey by more than 1,000 km. The line will cut travel time between Golmud and Korla from 26 hours to just 12 hours. It will carry passengers at a speed of 120 km/h, as well as freight. Xinjiang already has two railways connecting the region with other parts of China. One links Urumqi with Lanzhou; the other connects Ejin Banner in the Inner Mongolia autonomous region with Hami in eastern Xinjiang. [ Editor: Zhang Zhou ] Epic Games, the engine maker and game developer-publisher behind Fortnite, has secured $1.25 billion in funding from investors KKR, ICONIQ Capital, Smash Ventures, aXiomatic, Vulcan Capital, Kleiner Perkins, and Lightspeed Venture Partners. It's a deal that will see each of those investors join Tencent, Disney, and Endeavor as minority shareholders in Epic, which continues to be led by CEO and co-founder Tim Sweeney. The company didn't specify exactly how the cash will be spent. Instead, Epic (rather vaguely) suggested it'll be looking to "reinforce its position of leadership in real-time 3D technology," while also accelerating its ability to "improve the way people play, work, and interact with the world." The news comes shortly after Epic announced the opening of a new office in Australia and New Zealand, though again, the company is keeping its plans for the new branch under wraps for now. Whether you're just starting out, looking for something new, or just seeing what's out there, the Gamasutra Job Board is the place where game developers move ahead in their careers. Gamasutra's Job Board is the most diverse, most active, and most established board of its kind in the video game industry, serving companies of all sizes, from indie to triple-A. Here are just some of the many, many positions being advertised right now. If you're a recruiter looking for talent, you can also post jobs here. Location: Tokyo, Japan Square Enix is looking for motivated and experienced artists, programmers, and technical artists to join its Research and Development department in its Advanced Technology Division. The department aims to bring together experts from the fields of rending, animation, physics, simulation, AI, networking, big data, VR, and sound to research state of the art game technology and contribute to multiple projects. Location: San Mateo, California Monomi Park is seeking a talented 3D Environment Artist to join our team! This is a full-time position on-site in our San Mateo, California office. Were looking for a 3D Environment Artist to join development of our hit game, Slime Rancher, as well as the exciting games we cook up in the future. Candidates should be well-versed in 3D modeling, texturing, shader creation, and have an unquenchable, burning desire to make and play games! Location: Champaign, Illinois Volition is seeking an energetic, driven, and skilled multiplayer programmer to participate in the development of technology for our next generation of titles. You will be working in a collaborative environment of artists, designers, and programmers and you will have the opportunity to build systems for large-scale open world games. Tired of high cost of living and long daily commutes? Check out what Volition and Champaign, Illinois have to offer. We are considering applicants for a mid or senior programming position. Location: Sydney, New South Wales, Australia We seek a veteran VR/UE Blueprint/C++ Developer to Lead our Unreal Department onsite in our waterfront studio in Rhodes, Sydney. Were after someone who is passionate about developing real-time capture & render technologies to redefine the process of film and television production and empower the director and creative teams vision for our projects. As a Technical Team Lead, you will help grow and nurture the Unreal team. Youll be trusted to spearhead development efforts as well as work closely with stakeholders, Head of Studio, producers and relevant heads of department. As the Lead UE/VR Developer, you will have the incredible opportunity to create & influence the future of our VR/AR process. Board member Sunny Zia has said she would recuse herself from any discussions specifically related to her. A worker picks roses in a rose deep-processing field in Hotan, Northwest China's Xinjiang Uygur autonomous region, June 6, 2018. The rose industry has increased the income of local people. [Photo/Xinhua] Construction of a railway linking Hotan prefecture and Ruoqiang county in Xinjiang will start at the end of this year and is ultimately expected to boost development in southern Xinjiang, the local railway authority said. Spanning 826 kilometers, the railway will have 69 stops and a top speed of 120 kilometers per hour, according to the China Railway Corp Urumqi Bureau. With a planned investment of 22.2 billion yuan ($3.24 billion), the project, which will take three and a half years to complete, is expected to help boost the local economy and support poverty alleviation projects, the bureau said. The east-west railway will start from Hotan in the west, pass through several counties that currently have no rail access - including Lop, Qira, Yutian and Qiemo counties - and terminate at Ruoqiang county in the east. The Ruoqiang stop will link to the Golmud-Korla railway, a rail artery linking the region with neighboring provinces. That line is under construction and will be completed in 2020, the bureau said. Southern Xinjiang is a key area for the China to carry out targeted poverty alleviation. After the completion of the Hotan-Ruoqiang railway, people living there will have a much easier way to travel out of the area, the bureau said. It will also help boost the cultural, information and goods exchanges, and aid the coordinated development in Xinjiang, it said. Aybek Askhar contributed to this story. [ Editor: Zhang Zhou ] Possible stab wounds : 22-year-old seriously injured at Bonn Central Station Bonn On Thursday evening, a 22-year-old suffered serious injuries at Bonn Central Train Station. The young man had possible stab wounds on the upper body, but did not want to give any information about his assailant. Teilen Teilen Weiterleiten Weiterleiten Tweeten Tweeten Weiterleiten Weiterleiten Drucken A 22-year-old was seriously injured in the area of the Bonn Central Train Station on late Thursday evening. Police reported that at around 11:20 pm, the injured young man approached a passerby who was at the tram stop next to the bus station and asked for help. Rescue workers were alerted and they treated the young man on location, and then transported him to the hospital. According to the police report, the injuries suffered to his upper body are possible stab wounds. Medical reports indicate his injuries were not life-threatening. Based on the information that is currently available, investigators assume that the injured man and the assailant know each other. The attacker has not been found yet, a search up to now has been unsuccessful. Forensics work has not yet yielded the exact location where the attack took place and the weapon used in the attack has not been found. The 22-year-old has so far not wanted to give any information to police about what took place or about his attacker. A criminal unit has taken over the investigation. Possible witnesses who may have observed something or who can provide information on the identity and whereabouts of the assailant are asked to please contact the criminal police unit by calling 0228- 1 50. Orig. text: ga.de Passenger traffic on the Rhine : No room for cruise ships at the Bastei Here is where the FDP party proposed to add a jetty for river cruisers. But the position on shore near the Bastei is not long enough. Foto: Google Earth/Geobasis Bad Godesberg Dont expect river cruisers to be docking outside the Bastei anytime soon. A look at the situation in Bad Godesberg has revealed that it doesnt make sense due to cost, space and convenience factors. Teilen Teilen Weiterleiten Weiterleiten Tweeten Tweeten Weiterleiten Weiterleiten Drucken After proofing whether or not it was feasible for river cruisers to dock in Bad Godesberg, the city said that as of now, it would not happen. The possibility was examined at the urging of the FDP party. The only passenger cruiser that could be considered was the Koln Dusseldorfer Rhein Ship (KD) docking at Rheinallee, according to the administration. Other modern cruisers are too big for the spaces available and there are no other options between Plittersdorf and Mehlem. But the city says that even at Rheinallee, it would be problematic. If a river cruiser would stop at the Bastei, the stern would protrude into the ramp area of the Niederdollendorf ferry. This could "lead to conflicts with the ferry service". At the next stop upstream for the Siebengebirge cruiser (PSS), this would also be problematic as it is only available temporarily for limited use. "However, the KD leases the jetty to cabin cruisers of a permissible length, in particular for overnight docking," says the administration. The KD management also rejects the political initiative. In Konigswinter, just across the river, there are two jetties for 135-meter boats and one for 110-meters long cruisers. "Another jetty could be built there shortly." For that reason, the need in Bad Godesberg is "rather low". As well, it is difficult to get to the Rhine shore by bus, making the Rheinallee rather a second rate location. Low water levels along the Bad Godesberg Rhine also influence the thinking of the Bonn passenger ship management. If a new dock would be installed, they would have to dig out the riverbed regularly to make it accessible, and this would be expensive. The management also refers to the poor accessibility of the Rhine shore by bus or truck, one needed to bring passengers and the other to supply the ships. They conclude that it does not make sense to put another jetty in Bad Godesberg. At the moment, there are several docks in Bad Godesberg, suitable for the smaller passenger cruisers that serve the area. Orig. text: jab The location of the 8.2 earthquake was as a surprise, say researchers after a comprehensive study of data from multiple sources Last Septembers magnitude 8.2 Tehuantepec earthquake happened deep, rupturing both mantle and crust, on the landward side of major subduction zone in the Pacific Ocean off Mexicos far south coast. Initially, it was believed the earthquake was related to a seismic gap, occurring where the Cocos ocean plate is being overridden by a continental plate, in an area that had not had a quake of such magnitude since 1787. Subduction zone megaquakes generally occur near the top of where plates converge. The epicenter, however, was 46 kilometers (28 miles) deep in the Cocos plate, well under the overriding plate and where existing earthquake modeling had said it shouldnt happen, a 13-member research team reported Oct. 1 in the journal Nature Geoscience after an analysis of data from multiple sources. We dont yet have an explanation on how this was possible, said the studys lead author Diego Melgar, an earth scientist at the University of Oregon. We can only say that it contradicts the models that we have so far and indicates that we have to do more work to understand it. Earthquakes do occur in such locations, where a descending plates own weight creates strong forces that stretch the slab as it dives down toward the mantle, but have been seen only under older and cooler subduction zones. The 1933 Sanriku, Japan, earthquake was one. It generated a 94-foot tsunami that killed 1,522 people and destroyed more than 7,000 homes. The Mexican quake, ruptured the descending slab and generated a 6-foot tsunami, which likely was limited in size by the angle of the overriding continental plate so close to shore, Melgar said. This subducting plate is still very young and warm, geologically speaking, he said. It really shouldnt be breaking. Subduction zone ages and their temperatures relate to their distance from mid-ocean ridges, where plates are made in temperatures of 1,400 degrees Celsius (2,552 degrees Fahrenheit), Melgar said. The 25-million-year-old Cocos subduction zone is 600 miles from the mid-ocean ridge where it began. Japans subduction zone is much further from the ridge and 130-million-years old. Temperatures cool as plates move outward. Tension-related earthquakes, the researchers noted, have been restricted to older plates with temperatures that are cooler than 650 degrees Celsius (1,202 degrees Fahrenheit). Melgars team theorizes that seawater infiltration into the fabric of the stressed and diving Cocos plate has possibly accelerated the cooling, making it susceptible to tension earthquakes previously seen only in older and colder locations. Its also possible, the researchers noted, that the 8.0 magnitude 1933 Oaxaca earthquake, previously thought to be in a traditional subduction zone event, was instead similar to the one that struck last year. If such water-driven cooling is possible, it could suggest other areas, especially Guatemala southward in Central America, and the U.S. West Coast are susceptible to tension-zone earthquakes, Melgar said. The Cascadia subduction zone, from northern California to British Columbia, is 15 million years old and warmer than the similar geology along the Mexican-Central America coastlines, but could still be at risk. Building codes and hazard maps should reflect the potential danger, he added. Our knowledge of these places where large earthquakes happen is still imperfect, Melgar said. We can still be surprised. We need to think more carefully when we make hazard and warning maps. We still need to do a lot of work to be able to provide people with very accurate information about what they can expect in terms of shaking and in terms of tsunami hazard. Reference: Diego Melgar, Angel Ruiz-Angulo, Emmanuel Soliman Garcia, Marina Manea, Vlad. C. Manea, Xiaohua Xu, M. Teresa Ramirez-Herrera, Jorge Zavala-Hidalgo, Jianghui Geng, Nestor Corona, Xyoli Perez-Campos, Enrique Cabral-Cano, Leonardo Ramirez-Guzman. Deep embrittlement and complete rupture of the lithosphere during the Mw 8.2 Tehuantepec earthquake. Nature Geoscience, 2018; DOI: 10.1038/s41561-018-0229-y Note: The above post is reprinted from materials provided by University of Oregon. Original written by Jim Barlow. Known as the Icon of Evolution and the missing link between dinosaurs and birds, Archaeopteryx has become one of the most famous fossil discoveries in Palaeontology. Now, as part of an international team of scientists, researchers at The University of Manchester have identified a new species of Archaeopteryx that is closer to modern birds in evolutionary terms. Dr John Nudds, from the Universitys School of Earth and Environmental Sciences, and the team have been re-examining one of the only 12 known specimens by carrying out the first ever synchrotron examination, a form of 3D X-ray analysis, of an Archaeopteryx. Thanks to this new insight, the team says that this individual Archaeopteryx fossil, known as specimen number eight, is physically much closer to a modern bird than it is to a reptile. Therefore, it is evolutionary distinctive and different enough to be described as a new species Archaeopteryx albersdoerferi. The research, which is being published in journal Historical Biology, says that some of the differing skeletal characteristics of Archaeopteryx albersdoerferi include the fusion of cranial bones, different pectoral girdle (chest) and wing elements, and a reinforced configuration of carpals and metacarpals (hand) bones. These characteristics are seen more in modern flying birds and are not found in the older Archaeopteryx lithographica species, which more resembles reptiles and dinosaurs. Specimen number eight is the youngest of all the 12 known specimens by approximately half a million years. This age difference in comparison to the other specimens is a key factor in describing it as a new species. Dr Nudds explains: By digitally dissecting the fossil we found that this specimen differed from all of the others. It possessed skeletal adaptations which would have resulted in much more efficient flight. In a nutshell we have discovered what Archaeopteryx lithographica evolved into i.e. a more advanced bird, better adapted to flying and we have described this as a new species of Archaeopteryx. Archaeopteryx was first described as the missing link between reptiles and birds in 1861 and is now regarded as the link between dinosaurs and birds. Only 12 specimens have ever been found and all are from the late Jurassic of Bavaria, now Germany, dating back approximately 150 million years. Lead author, Dr Martin Kundrat, from the University of Pavol Jozef Safarik, Slovakia, said: This is the first time that numerous bones and teeth of Archaeopteryx were viewed from all aspects including exposure of their inner structure. The use of synchrotron microtomography was the only way to study the specimen as it is heavily compressed with many fragmented bones partly or completely hidden in limestone. Dr Nudds added: Whenever a missing link is discovered, this merely creates two further missing links what came before, and what came after! What came before was discovered in 1996 with the feathered dinosaurs in China. Our new species is what came after. It confirms Archaeopteryx as the first bird, and not just one of a number of feathered theropod dinosaurs, which some authors have suggested recently. You could say that it puts Archaeopteryx back on its perch as the first bird! Reference: Martin Kundrat, John Nudds, Benjamin P. Kear, Junchang Lu, Per Ahlberg. The first specimen of Archaeopteryx from the Upper Jurassic Mornsheim Formation of Germany. Historical Biology, 2018; 31 (1): 3 DOI: 10.1080/08912963.2018.1518443 Note: The above post is reprinted from materials provided by The University of Manchester. Tortoises are a group of terrestrial turtles globally distributed in habitats ranging from deserts to forests and include species such as the Greek and the Galapagos tortoise. Some species evolved large body sizes with a shell length exceeding 1 metre whereas others are no larger than 6-8 centimetres. Despite a particular interest from naturalists ever since the times of Darwin, the evolution of gigantism in tortoises remains enigmatic. The fact that all living giant tortoises are insular may suggest that their evolution followed the so-called island rule: a trend toward dwarfism of large animals and gigantism of small animals on islands. An example of insular dwarfism is the Florida key deer, a dwarf version of the mainland white-tailed deer; its small size may be an adaptation to the limited resources found on the islands. Insular gigantism is best exemplified by the famous dodo, an extinct flightless pigeon from Mauritius, probably evolving large body size due to release from predatory pressure. Previous studies on extant tortoises were partly inconclusive: giant size has been linked to the absence of predatory mammals in islands but it has been also proposed that tortoises were already giants when they reached the remote archipelagos. Since very few giant tortoise species survive to the present, these hypotheses are impossible to test without analysing extinct species through the help of the fossil record. In a recent study in the journal Cladistics, Dr Evangelos Vlachos from the Paleontological Museum of Trelew, Argentina, and Dr Marton Rabi from the Martin Luther University Halle-Wittenberg (MLU), funded by the German VolkswagenStiftung, assembled the most comprehensive family tree of extinct and extant tortoises so far. The researchers analysed genetic data from living species together with osteological data from fossil and living tortoises. This is the first study of such global scale to allow for investigating body size evolution in tortoises. The fossils reveal a very different picture of the past compared to the present. Giant size evolved on multiple occasions independently in mainland Asia, Africa, Europe, North and South America at different times of Earth history. However, all of these species went extinct at latest during the Pleistocene ice age. The fossils highlight a great number of extinct mainland giant species and suggest that the evolution of giant size was not linked to islands, says Dr Evangelos Vlachos. Instead, living insular giant tortoises, such as the ones from Galapagos and Seychelles, more likely represent survivors of unrelated giant species that once inhabited South America, East Africa, and/or Madagascar. Giant tortoises may have been better island colonizers because they can tolerate water and food shortage during an oceanic dispersal for a longer period than smaller species. Giant tortoises have been reported to survive 740 km of floating in the ocean, says Dr Marton Rabi. What led to the extinction of these mainland giants remains enigmatic. For the ice age species, it may have been a combination of predatory (including human) pressure and climate change. It is likewise unclear, if not the island rule, then what is driving tortoises to repeatedly evolve into giant forms? We expect that warmer climate and predator pressure plays a role in the evolution of giant size but the picture is complex and our sampling of the fossil record is still limited. Vlachos adds. An unexpected outcome of the study was that the Mediterranean tortoises (familiar due to their popularity as pets) actually represent a dwarf lineage as their ancestors turned out to be considerably larger. Tortoises have been around for more than 55 million years and we are now able to better understand the evolution of this successful group. Today, however, out of the approximately 43 living species 17 are considered endangered and many more are vulnerable largely due to human-induced habitat loss; this is a disappointing fact. Rabi points out. Reference: Evangelos Vlachos, Marton Rabi. Total evidence analysis and body size evolution of extant and extinct tortoises (Testudines: Cryptodira: Pan-Testudinidae). Cladistics, 2017; DOI: 10.1111/cla.12227 Note: The above post is reprinted from materials provided by Martin-Luther-Universitat Halle-Wittenberg. China's Vice President Wang Qishan and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu co-chair the fourth meeting of China-Israel Joint Committee on Innovation Cooperation during his visit to Israel, Oct. 24, 2018. Wang visited Israel from Oct. 22 to Oct. 25 at the invitation of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. (Xinhua/Pang Xinglei) JERUSALEM, Oct. 25 (Xinhua) -- Chinese Vice President Wang Qishan wrapped up a fruitful visit to Israel on Thursday with a reaffirmed commitment from both sides to further boosting bilateral innovation cooperation for mutual benefits. During his four-day stay, Wang met with Israeli President Reuven Rivlin and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, and co-chaired with the latter the fourth meeting of China-Israel Joint Committee on Innovation Cooperation (JCIC). In his meeting with Netanyahu, Wang recalled that Israel was the first country in the Middle East to recognize the People's Republic of China, and the bilateral ties have enjoyed steady and healthy development since the two countries established diplomatic relations. The China-Israel innovative comprehensive partnership, set up during Netanyahu's visit to China in 2017, accurately reflects the prominent feature and future direction of bilateral cooperation in the new era, Wang said. China and Israel, he suggested, should implement the important consensus reached by their leaders, and make good use of the JCIC mechanism, so as to push forward bilateral innovation cooperation to achieve more win-win results. As a friend of both Israel and Palestine, China hopes for the two sides to coexist peacefully, and stands ready to play a constructive role in achieving peace between the two neighbors and maintaining stability in the region, Wang added. Netanyahu agreed with Wang's comments and proposals on the bilateral ties, saying that the two nations both boast long history and splendid culture, and they have always admired and respected each other. Over recent years, two-way trips between the two countries have been increasing, practical cooperation growing steadily, and bilateral relations advancing continuously, said the prime minister. Israel, he said, is willing to actively participate in the Belt and Road Initiative, and enhance the synergy between its strength in science and technology and China's advantages in market and production capacity, so as to translate their partnership into more benefits for both nations and the world. Israel welcomes Chinese companies in its infrastructure construction and hopes to further boost trade and investment cooperation with China, added Netanyahu. He also said that Israel is willing to work with the Palestinian side to achieve peace in the region, and values China's positive role in the Middle East peace process. When meeting with Rivlin, Wang said Israel's development in the past 70 years has shown that the core of modernization is the modernization of humanity. China, he said, has listed innovation as the first of its five major development concepts, and is speeding up its transformation into an innovative nation. Noting that the two countries have a strong will and robust foundation for innovation cooperation, which has been remarkably productive, Wang said China stands ready to join hands with Israel to further deepen their innovative comprehensive partnership. For his part, Rivlin said the Israeli people will never forget the helping hand the Chinese people extended during World War II, and is greatly impressed by China's tremendous development achievements. With the two countries having established an innovative comprehensive partnership, Israel is willing to build on the momentum and enhance bilateral exchanges and cooperation in such fields as science and technology, agriculture, education, health care and culture, the Israeli president added. At the JCIC meeting, Wang said the China-Israel innovation cooperation features similar concepts, complementary advantages, enormous potential and broad prospects, and has over recent years borne rich fruits in such fields as basic science, modern agriculture, health care and energy. He urged the two sides to take stock of their past cooperation and chart the course for the future, calling for joint efforts to further expand exchanges, create a favorable environment and improve the JCIC mechanism. Noting that both Israel and China are innovative nations, Netanyahu said the two sides should expand their innovation cooperation into new areas and carry out new projects. Also at the JCIC meeting, relevant ministries on both sides reported the progress of bilateral cooperation in such fields as science and technology, trade, agriculture, health care and transportation, and laid out their plans and proposals on future collaboration. The two leaders signed an action plan for bilateral innovation cooperation from 2018 to 2021 and witnessed the signing of seven other documents. During the visit, Wang also attended the opening ceremony of an Israeli innovation summit in Jerusalem and the inauguration ceremony of an Israeli innovation center in Tel Aviv. He also talked with scientists from Weizmann Institute of Science, an Israeli research university. The Chinese vice president, who traveled to the West Bank for a visit to Palestine on Tuesday, is on a four-country trip to the Middle East, which also includes Egypt and the United Arab Emirates. 7 1 [ Editor: Zhang Zhou ] RIO DE JANEIRO, Oct. 25 (Xinhua) -- Fernando Haddad, the presidential candidate of the Brazilian Workers' Party, on Thursday promised to generate new jobs and prioritize education if he wins the election on Sunday. "Every human being has to get up and have a destination, whether that is the university, a school, daycare for their child, a workplace, a dignified job, a small business. It is very important that people have an activity," Haddad said during an interview with local radio station Tupi. According to a recent poll, Haddad has 43 percent of valid votes. His opponent, Jair Bolsonaro of the Social Liberal Party, has 57 percent. On Thursday, Haddad met with observers from the Organization of American States (OAS). He gave them a document with his claims of fake news against him on WhatsApp and the alleged illegal campaign financing of his opponent's campaign by businessmen. "What the people want are clean and free elections, a climate of peace in the country without gestures of violence," Haddad told the press following his meeting with the OAS members. The leftist candidate once again criticized Bolsonaro for not taking part in the televised debates and press conferences. Bolsonaro said he is under doctor's orders not to take part in the events due to his lengthy hospitalization after being stabbed on Sept. 6 during a campaign rally. In the first round of Brazil's presidential election held on Oct. 7, Bolsonaro gained 46 percent of the votes, while Haddad won 29.1 percent. They would race for Brazil's presidency in the run-off on Sunday. [ Editor: WPY ] UNITED NATIONS, Oct. 25 (Xinhua) -- UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres was deeply saddened by the loss of life and extensive damage caused by a large-scale flash flooding in Jordan, his spokesman said Thursday. Guterres wished to convey his condolences and deepest sympathy to the families of the victims and the government of Jordan, said Stephane Dujarric, the spokesman, in a statement. The United Nations stands ready to support ongoing rescue and relief efforts, said the statement. At least 17 people, most of them schoolchildren, were killed on Thursday when the bus they were traveling in was swept away in flooding near the Dead Sea, according to news reports. The bus was carrying 37 pupils and seven members of staff to the Zara Maeen hot springs area for sightseeing. [ Editor: WPY ] RIO DE JANEIRO, Oct. 25 (Xinhua) -- Jair Bolsonaro, a right-wing presidential candidate, on Thursday stressed the need to combat the high unemployment in the country. On Twitter, the Social Liberal Party candidate tweeted that the country's employment is suffering because "investors don't trust Brazil, thousands of businesses d because of violence, high taxes, bureaucracy, corruption and the crisis, all inherited from the PT (Workers' Party)." "We will change this situation. We will be the government of employment!" he said. According to Bolsonaro, the lowest unemployment rates are found in countries with the most liberal economies. "We will follow this direction. We will grow like never before," he wrote. The candidate also said that his government would follow the lead of other nations by boosting the interconnectivity of the highway and train networks with shipping ports to make transporting cargo and goods more efficient. Bolsonaro's remarks came ahead of Sunday's runoff against the PT candidate Fernando Haddad. A recent poll showed Bolsonaro won 57 percent of valid votes, compared with 43 percent for Haddad. [ Editor: WPY ] This years event featured the participation of 20 designers and brands, including 14 from Vietnam and six from foreign countries. The 2018 VIFWFWs catwalk was designed under the image of Dong Xuan market a cultural symbol of Hanoi. In the opening programme, designer Lam Gia Khanh treated the audiences with his latest collection inspired by ballet dancers. In addition, collections by Vietnams Veston Ngoc Lan brand and Turkish designer Mert Erkan were also introduced. This is the eighth time Vietnam International Fashion Week has been held in Vietnam, becoming an annual cultural event which is warmly welcomed by fashion lovers. The week will run until October 27. iStock/Thinkstock(NEW YORK) -- The Twitter account identified by federal officials as likely belonging to the Florida man arrested in connection with the suspected package bombs sent to high-profile figures this week is full of right-wing content and aggressive criticism of prominent liberal figures. One post believed to have been written by the suspect, 56-year-old Aventura resident Cesar Sayoc, read, "See you soon." and tagged some of the figures the packages were addressed to, including former U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder and Rep. Maxine Waters. On Oct. 12, a video was posted to a Facebook account associated with Sayoc, depicting what appears to be the suspect at a Trump rally, yelling, "Trump! Trump! Trump!" along with the crowd. A shorter version of the video was also posted to Twitter. Twitter has suspended the account, but the social media company declined to comment on the ongoing investigation to ABC News. Facebook also removed the accounts believed to belong to Sayoc. "There is absolutely no place on our platforms for people who attempt such horrendous acts," Facebook officials said in a statement to ABC News. "We have found and immediately removed the suspect's accounts on Facebook and Instagram. We will also continue to remove content that praises or supports the bombing attempt or the suspect as soon as we're aware." Sayoc has an extensive criminal history, a law enforcement source said, and has been arrested at least eight times in Florida alone, court documents show. The arrests range from misdemeanor giving false information to get a refund to grand theft auto. One of the arrests took place in 2002 when he pleaded guilty for a charge listed as "threaten discharge destructive device." In that incident, Sayoc reportedly called Florida Power & Light (FPL) and "threatened to blow up FPL and that 'it would be worse than September 11th," court documents state. He also "threatened that something would happen to the FPL representative if they cut his electricity." Sayoc was sentenced to probation for that charge, records show. In 2014, he was a road manager for a variety of traveling male revue shows Chippendales International Gold Productions, Cesar Palace Royale Burlesque Show" and he was involved with "the sale of merchandise, coordinating bookings and supervising operations," the court documents report. Chippendales denied that Sayoc was ever affiliated with the company. "Cesar Altieri or Cesar Sayoc, was, and has never been affiliated in any way with Chippendales USA, LLC," the company said in a statement. Sayoc filed for bankruptcy in 2012, when he was 50 years old, and the petition stated that he lived with his mother and had no furniture. He was taken into custody in Florida shortly before noon Friday for allegedly carrying out a mail bombing campaign that gripped the nation. The night before the arrest, around 10:20 p.m., Sayoc had checked into a South Florida gym where he is a member, sources told ABC News. His capture comes after 14 package bombs were intercepted over the course of the week, with targets including prominent Democrats like former President Barack Obama and former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton. Multiple law enforcement sources told ABC News that Sayoc was tracked using a cell phone. He was arrested at an AutoZone in the town of Plantation at around 10:30 a.m. Friday. Authorities have recovered a cell phone, a laptop computer and other electronic devices in connection from Sayoc. The case against Sayoc will be handled by federal prosecutors in the Southern District of New York, according to a senior law enforcement official. He is required to appear first in the jurisdiction in which he was arrested, the Southern District of Florida, but authorities are not yet certain whether that will happen on Friday. Attorney General Jeff Sessions announced Friday afternoon that Sayoc was charged with five federal crimes: interstate transportation of an explosive, illegal mailing of explosives, threats against former presidents and certain other persons, threatening interstate communications, and assaulting current and former federal officers. In total, those charges could lead to 48 years in prison. "This is a law and order administration. We will not tolerate such lawlessness, especially not political violence," Sessions said. Copyright 2018, ABC Radio. All rights reserved. Quan made the remark at the first plenum of the 10th General Assembly of the International Conference of Asian Political Parties (ICAPP) that opened in Moscow, Russia, on October 25. He called on Asian political parties to heighten the spirit of dialogue and cooperation, build trust and settle disputes and conflicts through peaceful measures based on fundamental principles of the UN Charter and standards of international relations. At this years general assembly, the CPV was elected as Vice President of the ICAPP Standing Committee. The two-day event brought together about 500 delegates, including representatives of more than 70 political parties from 40 countries and observers. The delegates focus on the role of political parties in ensuring international security and fighting extremism, as well as building and developing mutually beneficial political, socio-economic ties between countries. Earlier, the CPV delegation paid a courtesy visit to Boris Gryzlov, Chairman of the United Russia Party Supreme Council, and held talks with Evgeny Revenko, Deputy Secretary of the General Council of the United Russia Party. The two sides committed to making all-out efforts to effectively implement the outcomes of the visit to Russia by General Secretary of the CPV Central Committee Nguyen Phu Trong last September. They agreed to coordinate with relevant agencies of the two countries to prepare for upcoming visits to Vietnam by Russias senior leaders. At the same time, they will work to fruitfully realise cooperation agreements reached by the two parties, especially in intensifying political consultations and dialogues in order to continuously promote mutual trust and understanding, contributing to creating a firm political foundation and forging the Vietnam-Russia comprehensive strategic partnership. Hosting a reception in Hanoi on October 25 for Malaysian Deputy Prime Minister Wan Azizah Wan Ismail, who is on an official visit to Vietnam to attend the third ASEAN Ministerial Meeting on Women (AMMW) and related meetings, PM Phuc stressed that Vietnam wants to set up close relations with Malaysias new government, ruling party and parliament. He suggested both countries enhance high-level delegation exchanges and hoped to welcome Prime Minister Mahathir Mohamad on his official visit to Vietnam soon. The two nations have seen advancements in their relations after 45 years of diplomatic ties establishment. Describing Malaysia as one of the most effective economic partners of Vietnam, PM Phuc said that both sides are enjoying fruitful cooperation in maritime issues, labour, tourism, and education-training. He expressed his belief that Deputy PM and Foreign Minister Pham Binh Minh and Wan Azizah Wan Ismail, in their talks on October 26, will detail practical measures to bolster bilateral relations in the coming time, thus developing the Vietnam-Malaysia strategic partnership intensively. On the occasion, he recommended both sides should work to raise two-way trade to US$15 billion per year or higher by 2020. Vietnam wants to stably export rice, farm produce and seafood to Malaysia, he said, proposing the Malaysian Government support Vietnamese firms to satisfy Halal standards. Regarding investment, Vietnam encourages Malaysian projects in high-quality infrastructure, energy, port, logistics, high-tech agriculture, wood and food processing and smart city development, PM Phuc said. He hoped that the Malaysian Government will order relevant authorities to create favourable conditions for the Vietnamese community in the country, ensuring that they have a stable life. As both countries have mutual benefits in the region, they should step up cooperation to build an ASEAN Community of solidarity, resilience and development that plays a central role in the regional architecture. In the context of complicated development in the East Sea, Vietnam, Malaysia and other ASEAN members should enhance coordination to reach a common stance. The Malaysian Deputy PM said that Malaysia always values the policy of strengthening friendship and collaboration with Vietnam. As the training programme for Vietnamese officials has been carried out since 1991, Malaysia hopes to welcome more Vietnamese cadres to study, do research and exchange experience in the country. She said that Malaysia wants to foster trade ties with Vietnam, who holds a very important role in the region, and thanked the Vietnamese Government for facilitating Malaysian businesses operation in the country. As Malaysian PETRONAS Group has been present in Vietnam for a long time, she hoped that the enterprise will continue receiving support from the Vietnamese Government. Also, she agreed that both sides should further maritime and fishery cooperation, saying Malaysia wants to ensure maritime security, safety, peace and stability in the East Sea. She said that the Malaysian Government always pays due attention to addressing Vietnamese labour issues in the country. Vietnam and France set up diplomatic ties on April 12, 1973. Overcoming ups and downs in history, Vietnam-France relations have developed well over the past 45 years, especially since the establishment of the strategic partnership in 2013. In his congratulatory letter, Cambodian King Norodom Sihamoni expressed his belief that under the sound leadership of President Nguyen Phu Trong, Vietnam will reap greater successes and further prosper in the future as well as continue maintaining its important role in the region and the world. He hoped that Cambodia and Vietnam will continue to see thriving solidarity, friendship and cooperation at present and the future. Meanwhile, Singaporean President Halima Yacob and Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong stressed that Vietnam and Singapore enjoy a fine relationship in all spheres, especially economy, finance, defence and security. They share a lot of common interests and coordinate closely in ASEAN and other multilateral forums. The Singaporean leaders expressed their wish to work closely with President Nguyen Phu Trong to seek ways to lift bilateral ties to a new height. Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko, in his message, wrote that the election of Nguyen Phu Trong as President reflects the Vietnamese peoples high confidence in and recognition of his experience, leading capacity and great contributions. He wishes to soon meet President Trong to discuss bilateral ties and international issues of shared concern, thus fostering the Vietnam-Ukraine comprehensive partnership in a more intensive and practical manner. President of the Presidium of the Supreme Peoples Assembly of the DPRK Kim Yong Nam expressed his belief that the traditional friendship and cooperation between the two nations will be developed and expanded in the time to come. In addition, Iranian President Hassan Rouhani, Panama President Juan Cuarlos Varela Rodriguez and National Secretary of the French Communist Party Pierre Laurent cabled their messages of congratulations to the new President of Vietnam. Ambassadors of countries to Vietnam, including those from Chile, the US and Brazil, also sent congratulatory letters to President Nguyen Phu Trong. Politburo member Mai, who is also head of the Party Central Committees Mass Mobilisation Commission, made the statement during a meeting with Samdech Heng Samrin, Honorary President of the Cambodian Peoples Party (CPP) and President of the Cambodian National Assembly, in Phnom Penh on October 26. She congratulated Heng Samrin on his election as the top legislator for the sixth tenure, expressing her belief that under the leadership of the Cambodian legislature and government, the Cambodian people will score greater achievements in the implementation of the Political Platform of the CPP and the governments Quadrangle Development Strategy. She wished that the two legislatures would direct ministries, agencies and localities to seriously and effectively carry out signed joint statements and agreements. The guest also asked the Cambodian NA to ensure legitimate interests of Vietnamese nationals in Cambodia in line with its law and international practices. Speaking highly of cooperation between the two countries legislatures, governments, ministries, agencies and localities over the past years, Heng Samrin expressed his thanks to Vietnam for providing valuable, timely and effective support for Cambodia in national liberation and development. He affirmed that the fine neighbourliness, traditional friendship, comprehensive cooperation and everlasting ties between Vietnam and Cambodia are an invaluable asset that needs to be maintained, upheld and handed over to later generations. The host also vowed support for collaboration between the two mass mobilisation commissions. The same day, the high-level delegation of the CPV led by Truong Thi Mai held talks with its CPP counterpart headed by Deputy Prime Minister and head of the CPPs Mass Mobilisation Commission Men Sam On. Both sides agreed on measures to clear obstacles in the implementation of bilateral cooperation agreements, especially in processing legal procedures for overseas Vietnamese and evacuation of Vietnamese households on Tonle Sap lake to higher grounds. They pledged to strengthen cooperation between the two mass mobilisation commissions via the exchange of visits to share experience in the new situation. Host and guest promised to step up links across economy, investment, trade, culture, education-training, and science-technology. On the occasion, the Vietnamese delegation laid wreaths at the monument dedicated to King Father Norodom Sihanouk and the Vietnam Cambodia Friendship Monument in Phnom Penh. The delegation will leave Cambodia on October 28, concluding their four-day visit. The two sides said amid changes in the Asia-Pacific region, including ASEAN, that bring about both opportunities and challenges, the two countries should enhance their strategic partnership in a more substantive manner for the sake of the two peoples and for peace, cooperation and prosperous development in the region and the world. The Deputy PMs applauded the breakthroughs in the strategic partnership over the last five years since its establishment, noting close-knit political ties, substantive economic cooperation, and expanding relations in other fields like defence-security, education-training, labour, culture, and people-to-people exchange. They agreed to increase mutual visits at all levels between the countries Parties, Governments, States, Parliaments and people. Both sides also agreed to continue implementing bilateral cooperation mechanisms effectively and discuss to have a unanimous stance on regional and international issues of shared concern. Vietnam and Malaysia will keep tightening economic links and promoting bilateral trade to US$15 billion or higher by 2020, the officials said, stressing the need to boost dialogue between their Governments and businesses. They affirmed the determination to remove obstacles and create optimum conditions for Vietnamese and Malaysian firms to seek investment and business chances, especially in new sectors that apply technology and have high added value like digital economy, clean energy, hi-tech agriculture, infrastructure development and logistics. They also talks ways to step up cooperation in other fields such as culture, tourism and sea-related areas. Deputy PM Ismail said the Malaysian Government will further provide favourable conditions for Vietnamese who are living, studying and working in the country. She also agreed to strengthen bilateral ties in labour and vocational training. At the talks, the Deputy PMs exchanged views on regional and global matters of common concern. They said amid the current regional situation, the two countries should maintain consultation on issues relevant to regional security and strategies and coordinate to help build a united ASEAN, successfully realise the ASEAN Community Vision 2025, enhance the blocs centrality in the regional architecture, and bring into play its role in the settlement of strategic issues in the region. They affirmed the resolve to work closely together to reinforce regional economic connectivity, particularly within the framework of ASEAN, the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC), the Asia-Europe Meeting (ASEM), and the Comprehensive and Progressive Agreement for Trans-Pacific Partnership (CPTPP). Malaysia pledged to support Vietnams holding of the ASEAN Chair in 2020. Meanwhile, the Vietnamese side also committed support and close coordination when Malaysia hosts APEC events the same year. The announcement was made by the General Attorney in a statement carried by SPA, which said the Turkish information was sent through the Joint Working Team between the two countries. Saudi Arabia said on October 20 that 18 suspects had been arrested for links to the case of Khashoggi, who was killed after a brawl inside the Saudi consulate in Istanbul on October 2. Saudi King Salman bin Abdulaziz Al Saud later ordered the re-organization of the intelligence authorities and sacked senior intelligence officials. The Party secretaries and principals of more than 60 universities attended the 4th Peoples Daily Online University Presidents Forum, held in Taiyuan in North China on Oct. 25, 2018. They exchanged their opinions on building first-class universities, cultivating excellent graduates as well as other topics related to university education. Luo Qingyu, a member of the Communist Party of China Shanxi Provincial Committee and secretary of Taiyuan Municipal Party Committee gives a speech. Luo Qingyu, a member of the Communist Party of China Shanxi Provincial Committee and secretary of Taiyuan Municipal Party Committee, and Zhang Shouying, deputy editor-in-chief of Peoples Daily, attended the forum. Zhang Shouying, deputy editor-in-chief of Peoples Daily, gives a speech. The forum is a high-level dialogue on university spirit and innovative concepts, as well as a platform to share wisdom and pool consensus, Luo said in a speech delivered to the forum. It provides advanced experiences for mutual learning between universities, and serves as a valuable opportunity to improve university education, he added. The forum also saw the launch of a speech contest themed new talents of the new time. The contest will last a year, to pay tribute to China's 40th anniversary of reform and opening up this year, as well as the 70th anniversary of the founding of the Peoples Republic of China next year. Ye Zhenzhen, president of People's Daily Online, addresses the forum. A list of the top 165 influential Chinese universities was unveiled during the forum by Vice President of People's Daily Online Tang Weihong, to praise their far-reaching influence in news publicity and public image. BEIJING, Oct. 25 (Xinhua) -- A spokesman for the Chinese military on Thursday expressed hope for the United States to meet China halfway and promote military-to-military ties as a stabilizer for bilateral relations. Wu Qian, spokesman for the Ministry of National Defense, said at a regular press conference that the Chinese and U.S. sides should implement consensus reached by the two countries' leaders, deepen communication, increase mutual trust, enhance cooperation, and keep risks at control. Asked to respond to a speech made by U.S. Vice President Mike Pence earlier this month, Wu said China "resolutely opposes it as the speech was filled with slander and groundless accusations against China." Refuting the claim on China's military spending, Wu said China's defense budget amounted to just one-quarter of the U.S. one, and China's military spending per capita was about one-nineteenth of that of the U.S. China firmly adheres to a defense policy that is defensive in nature and has always been following the path of peaceful development, Wu said. China is committed to providing more public security goods for the international community, he said. The growth of China's military power is the growth of world peace forces. Chinese Premier Li Keqiang and Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe who is on an official visit to China attend a reception marking the 40th anniversary of the signing of the China-Japan Treaty of Peace and Friendship at the Great Hall of the People in Beijing, capital of China, Oct. 25, 2018. Li Keqiang and Abe also took a group photo with some of the people who witnessed the signing of the treaty 40 years ago and their families. (Xinhua/Ding Haitao) BEIJING, Oct. 25 (Xinhua) -- Premier Li Keqiang on Thursday called on China and Japan to work together to build more mature, steady and progressive bilateral ties. Li's remarks came as he delivered a speech at a reception marking the 40th anniversary of the signing of the China-Japan Treaty of Peace and Friendship together with visiting Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe at the Great Hall of the People in Beijing. "The China-Japan relationship has gone through wind and rain in the past four decades, yet peace, friendship and cooperation have always been the mainstream," Li said. "The elder generation of leaders of both countries showed great foresight and made a correct assessment of the situation 40 years ago to sign the treaty, which was another milestone in the history of bilateral ties following the normalization of relations between China and Japan in 1972. "The treaty established a general direction of peaceful coexistence and lasting friendship between China and Japan in the form of law and affirmed all principles in the 1972 Sino-Japanese Joint Statement. "The four political documents between China and Japan, including the treaty, laid a political and legal foundation for China-Japan ties and became the basic guiding principles for the healthy development of bilateral ties that should be firmly borne in mind. "On the occasion of the 40th anniversary of the treaty, we need adhere to the general direction of peace, friendship and cooperation and conform to the trend of the times so as to jointly build a more mature, steady and progressive China-Japan ties." This year also marks the 40th anniversary of China's reform and opening-up. "China will unswervingly continue its reform and opening-up. China's greater-scale opening-up to the world has provided broad space for higher-level cooperation between China and Japan," Li said. "We welcome Japan to take more active participation in the new round of China's reform and opening-up and continue win-win cooperation." Noting that regional and international situation was undergoing complicated and profound changes, Li said China-Japan ties were back on track and gaining positive momentum, producing not only huge cooperation potential and opportunities, but also difficulties and challenges. Li called on both sides to make concerted efforts in advancing bilateral ties to steadily forge ahead. "The two sides need to understand each other and foster their strategic positioning in a right way," Li said. "The consensus that China and Japan are partners rather than mutual threats should be better implemented in concrete actions." "The two countries need to manage differences and problems constructively on the basis of the principles set in the four political documents between China and Japan and in the spirit of 'taking history as a mirror and facing to the future,'" said Li. The Chinese premier called on the two sides to push forward pragmatic cooperation by tapping complementary advantages, encouraging innovation, and exploring third-party markets to upgrade the quality and efficiency of cooperation. Japan is encouraged to participate in construction associated with the Belt and Road Initiative, Li said. He also reiterated the importance of people-to-people exchanges, especially among the young. He called for more cultural, sports, and local cooperation in the hope of translating the friendship between Chinese and Japanese people into a social basis for bilateral ties. Calling China and Japan important Asian countries and major world economies, Li said the two countries should jointly safeguard and contribute to regional peace, development and prosperity and uphold multilateralism and free trade. Li voiced his hope that both sides would remain true to their original aspiration in pursing peace, friendship and cooperation in order to usher in a bright future of bilateral ties. Abe said the treaty reaffirmed important principles guiding the development of bilateral relations. "China has scored remarkable achievements since its reform and opening-up, while Japan also stepped forward alongside China," Abe said. Saying that Japan and China played "an irreplaceable role" in the world's economic progress, the Japanese prime minister encouraged both sides to jointly contribute to the continuous development of bilateral cooperation and the world's peace and prosperity. Li and Abe also took a group photo with some of the people who witnessed the signing of the treaty 40 years ago and their families, and visited a photo exhibition on economic and trade cooperation between China and Japan. Abe arrived in Beijing Thursday afternoon for a three-day official visit. It is the first official visit by a Japanese prime minister in seven years. Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images(WASHINGTON) -- President Trump has been briefed by CIA Director Gina Haspel on the latest in the U.S. investigation into how Washington Post columnist Jamal Khashoggi was killed in the Saudi consulate in Istanbul, Turkey. The CIA had no comment on a Washington Post report that Haspel had listened to audio purportedly capturing Khashoggi's killing. The president's briefing comes as Khashoggi's son Salah, his wife, and their children were finally able to depart Saudi Arabia after reportedly being under a travel ban, according to Sarah Leah Watson, Human Rights Watch's executive director for the Middle East and North Africa. Salah is a dual U.S. and Saudi citizen, and he was headed to the United States, State Department deputy spokesperson Robert Palladino said earlier Thursday. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo had told the Saudis "that he wanted Salah Khashoggi to be able to return to the United States, and we are pleased that that is the case," Palladino told reporters Thursday. Palladino said the U.S. continues to seek all relevant facts and will not make any judgments until then, including about Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman's role or what potential further penalties the U.S. would take against the Saudis after penalizing 21 Saudi officials with U.S. visa bans. While he refused to put a timeline on the investigation, he urged quick results. "The longer the investigation takes, the more concerned we become about its impact and its efficacy, and the longer it takes, the longer questions remain about this tragedy that remain unanswered," he said. Two days ago, Salah Khashoggi met with Prince Mohammed, the man who may have ordered his father's murder, and was seen in photographs appearing sullen and pained. Salah and family expressed "great thanks" to the crown prince and his father King Salman, according to Saudi state media, and they, in turn, expressed their condolences. Pressure has been increasing on Saudi Arabia to reveal what happened after their initial denials were proven false and their later explanations have shifted. The latest change came Thursday when the Saudi prosecutor said there was evidence that the murder of Khashoggi was premeditated, three days after a Saudi official told ABC News, "There was never a plan to kidnap or kill him." The Saudis said Turkish authorities shared the new evidence with them, but they declined to confirm the detail themselves. Either way, they maintain that the operation was never ordered by Saudi leadership and was instead a rogue directive by a deputy intelligence chief that was botched by a 15-man team. Neither King Salman nor Prince Mohammed knew about it beforehand, the Saudis say. It's unclear whether U.S. intelligence agrees. While several Republican and Democratic members of Congress have said the crown prince either knew or even ordered the operation, President Trump has so far repeated the Saudi line that both men denied any knowledge. That could change after his briefing with Haspel, however, who is back in Washington after a trip to Turkey where she was briefed on Turkey's own investigation. Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan said Tuesday in an address to parliament that the murder was "savage" and pre-planned. Last Friday, the Saudi government admitted that Saudi officials were responsible for the death of Khashoggi, who they said died in a fistfight -- later saying it was from a chokehold after he raised his voice in the consulate. While Pompeo was in Haspel's briefing, the State Department declined to provide a readout. Copyright 2018, ABC Radio. All rights reserved. OSLO, Oct. 25 (Xinhua) -- With around 50,000 participants from 31 countries, NATO on Thursday launched its biggest military exercise since the end of the Cold War in Norway, as Russia has complained the alliance's levels of military activities near its borders. All 29 NATO member nations and its partners Sweden and Finland, with around 250 aircraft, 65 vessels and up to 10,000 vehicles, will take part in the exercise, dubbed Trident Juncture 2018, from Oct. 25 to Nov. 7. NATO said the war games would test the alliance's ability to restore the sovereignty of an ally after an act of armed aggression and will also test and certify the NATO Response Force for 2019. "The participants will split into 'South forces' and 'North forces'. They will take turns playing the role of the fictitious aggressor and the NATO defending forces," NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg told a press conference in Brussels on Wednesday. Meanwhile, Russia has complained that the levels of military activities conducted by NATO near Russian borders have been higher than ever since the Cold War, according to Russia's Sputnik news agency. "NATO's military activity near our borders has reached an unprecedented level since the Cold War. The alliance's policies are aimed at strengthening its advanced military presence on the eastern flank," Russian Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu said Wednesday at a Russia-Belarus joint military panel in Minsk. "The scale of operation and combat training next to our borders is expanding, and their intensity is growing. The countries of the bloc are training to conduct combat tasks of an offensive nature," he said. The Trident Juncture 2018 exercise takes place in central and eastern Norway and the surrounding areas of the North Atlantic and the Baltic Sea, including Iceland and the airspace of Finland and Sweden. China Central Television (CCTV) on Thursday extended support to its journalist Kong Linlin, who was sued by a man called Enoch Lieu at a Birmingham court in the UK, saying CCTV will support Kong in safeguarding her legitimate rights. A CCTV spokesperson said in a statement that CCTV Europe has taken a note of the case and stressed that it's indeed the perpetrator that has dragged the victim to court. File photo shows the Central Chinese Television (CCTV) headquarters in Beijing's central business district. [Photo: CGTN] On September 30, during an annual session of the Human Rights Commission of the UK Conservative Party, a fringe event was organized on Hong Kong inviting so-called independence activists and organizers of the illegal Occupy Central movement. Kong expressed her views while raising questions at the event after which she was obstructed and physically harassed by Lieu. The British police released Kong shortly after the incident under growing pressure from the Chinese Embassy in the UK. The police confirmed physical assault on Kong and released her without any charge. In the statement, CCTV spokesperson urged the UK side to make a fair judgment based on facts and protect the legitimate rights of the Chinese journalist. CCTV supports Kong Linlin's right of counterclaims, the statement said. Saudi Arabia announces probe into what Turkey labels as "planned" murder of Khashoggi RIYADH, Oct. 25 (Xinhua) -- Saudi Arabia announced on Thursday that an investigation has been launched into Turkey's information indicating the murder of the Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi was "planned," Saudi Press Agency (SPA) reported. The announcement was made by the General Attorney in a statement carried by SPA, which said the Turkish information was sent through the Joint Working Team between the two countries. Saudi Arabia said on Saturday that 18 suspects had been arrested for links to the case of Khashoggi, who was killed after a brawl inside the Saudi consulate in Istanbul on Oct. 2. Saudi King Salman bin Abdulaziz Al Saud later ordered the re-organization of the intelligence authorities and sacked senior intelligence officials. What will happen in Heilongjiang Province in one minute? In one minute, what will happen in Heilongjiang Province? In one minute, Wudalianchi ushers in three tourists. In one minute, four people go to Mohe, the northernmost point of China. In one minute, 146 people go to Harbin to feel the beauty of Songhua River. In one minute, 312 people walk into the ice fairy world. In one minute, 1,237 kg of Wuchang rice flows to the table. In one minute, raw milk production reaches 10.3 tons. In one minute, 833 bottles and 1,500 cans of beer go out of the Harbin Brewery production line. In one minute, 22.7 mu of ecological high standard farmland is built. In one minute, artificial afforestation in Daxinganling reaches 50.7 square meters. In one minute, Wuying National Forest Park can release 2,706 negative oxygen ions per cubic centimeter In one minute, the red-crowned crane can glide 500 meters in the Zhalong National Nature Reserve. In one minute, 110 cars speed by on the Harbin Yangmingtan Bridge. In one minute, the "Polar Express" Harbin-Dalian high-speed railway operates for 4.4 km. In one minute, the 312E helicopter, produced by Harbin Aircraft Industry Group, can fly 4.8 km. In one minute, the Hamburg-bound cargo train can advance 2,000 meters. In one minute, the imports and exports from China to Russia amount to $20,909. In one minute, to meet the city of ice and snow. In one minute, to salute the years eroded by war. In one minute, to plant hope for the future. In one minute, to walk into the green. In one minute, to witness trade and cooperation. In one minute, to overlook the land of Heilongjiang. Heilongjiang in one minute: surging forward with great momentum; unfolding on a magnificent scale. In one minute, 15 people reach the top of the magnificent Mount Huang. In one minute, 21 tourists wander in Jiuhua Wonderland. In one minute, 4 people stroll along the lake of Hong Village. In one minute, 1,201 tourists go sightseeing in Anhui. In one minute, 219 kilograms of the delicate tea leaves in Anhui are tasted. In one minute, 3 tons of Dangshan crisp pears are sold around the world. In one minute, 49 passengers are transported through Hefei South Station. In one minute, the quantum science satellite Mozi can transmit 2.4 billion signal photons. In one minute, 32 square meters of world-class float electronic glass are produced. In one minute, 15 pieces of 75-inch LCD panels are produced on the first 10.5-generation production line around the world. In one minute, 201 televisions, refrigerators, washing machines and air conditioners are produced. In one minute, the largest floating photovoltaic power station in the world offers 285kwh of clean electricity in Huainan. In one minute, the value of imports and exports reaches $102,000. In one minute, Chinese calligraphy exhibits the elegance and charm of Anhui. In one minute, Huizhou welcomes visitors from around the world. In one minute, stroll along the picturesque riverside of Xin'an. In one minute, innovation is fostered in the city of science and education. In one minute, Anhui bursts with tremendous vitality. Chinese Premier Li Keqiang and Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe attended a joint press conference in Beijing to announce the outcomes of Abe's visit to Beijing, on Oct 26, 2018. [Photo/CGTN] The People's Bank of China, the countrys central bank, and the Bank of Japan signed an agreement for a bilateral currency swap on Friday for 200 billion yuan or 3.4 trillion yen, one of 12 cooperative documents inked during Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe's visit to Beijing. The agreement aims to safeguard financial stability for both countries and support economic and financial activity, the central bank said on its website. The agreement will be valid for three years and can be extended with both sides' permission. Another agreement was signed to set up a renminbi clearance bank in Japan. China and Japan signed other 10 documents to boost cooperation in fields such as securities market and senior care, under the eye of Premier Li Keqiang and Abe at the Great Hall of the People on Friday morning after their meeting. An aerial view of the Hong Kong-Zhuhai-Macao Bridge. At 55 kilometers, the bridge is the world's longest sea-spanning structure. [Photo/HZMB AUTHORITY] The gigantic Hong Kong-Zhuhai-Macao Bridge, opening on Tuesday in Zhuhai, Guangdong province, is a landmark project to boost infrastructure connectivity in the Guangdong-Hong Kong-Macao Greater Bay Area. The bridge marks a major step of the central government to support development of Hong Kong, Macao and the Pearl River Delta. It is also a key achievement made through close cooperation between Guangdong, Hong Kong and Macao under the principle of One Country, Two Systems. The Hong Kong-Zhuhai-Macao Bridge is a national engineering and pillar project of China. It is the worlds largest cross-sea bridge with the longest steel structure and undersea tunnel. The bridge is the most technologically complicated one in the world. Its construction is the most difficult and its scale is the largest in the world. The bridge builders have overcome a large number of world-class difficulties, applied the worlds most advanced management techniques and experience and finally completed the task with assured quality and quantity. Praising builders of the bridge for breaking a number of world records, Xi Jinping, general secretary of the Communist Party of China Central Committee, said they demonstrate the nation's spirit of striving to overcome any difficulties, the national strength, the innovative ability, and the aspiration to be the world's best. The bridge carried high expectations of the three areas for deep cooperation and common development since the beginning of its construction. It will slash travel time between Hong Kong and Zhuhai and Macao from 3 hours to just 45 minutes. The bridge opening means that passenger and freight transportation between the western side of the Pearl River and Hong Kong will no longer mainly rely on waterway as no detour is needed on land. In addition, the bridge provides great convenience for residents of the three places, and will become an important hub connecting the two sides of the Greater Bay Area. The opening of the worlds longest cross-sea bridge is of great value to promote the construction of the Greater Bay Area, as well as mutually beneficial cooperation between Chinese mainland, Hong Kong and Macao. It is also of great significance to maintain long-term prosperity and stability of Hong Kong and Macao by involving them into the national development strategy. The vision for the Greater Bay Area is to build it into a top-ranking bay area and a world-class city cluster full of international competitiveness and vitality, while adhering to the cardinal principle of one country and making the most of the advantages of two systems. Its also envisioned that the Greater Bay Area will become a model for high-quality development, a center of international scientific and technological innovation, a demonstration zone for deep cooperation between Chinese mainland and Hong Kong and Macao, and a paradise for life, work and sightseeing. To materialize all these visions, infrastructure connectivity is both a prerequisite and a crucial support. The Hong Kong-Zhuhai-Macao Bridge, which serves as the artery of the Greater Bay Area, is definitely going to spur people-to-people exchanges and economic and trade communication among the three places. Moreover, the bridge will boost the development of the Greater Bay Area and strengthen overall competitiveness of the Pearl River Delta. It will also create new opportunities for Guangdong, Hong Kong and Macao to complement each other with their respective advantages and carry out win-win cooperation. Op-ed: It is the US who is wild about meddling in others domestic affairs Washington, in recent days, has been busy with accusing China of meddling in its November midterm elections in a variety of occasions, but has provided no evidence from the very beginning till now. American media also turned their back on such fabricated blames after massive interviews with intelligence analysts from network security corporations who said there were no evidence to prove Washingtons claims. It is universally acknowledged that the rhetoric of the US to distort facts and beat the air cannot hold water at all. China, who never get back at the US and has a clear conscience, is still committed to the principle of non-interference in other countries' domestic affairs. It is a fact that cannot be changed by whatever rhetoric the US has cited. The world has already had a verdict on who is the biggest enthusiast of interfering in other countries domestic affairs on the whole planet. Its interference in other countries domestic affairs both in the past and today has been weighed recently as waves of migrant caravan from Honduras, El Salvador, Nicaragua and other Central American countries are moving their way through Mexico to head toward the US border. Even though the migrants are still thousands of kilometers away, the US cannot wait to ask relevant countries to take action and even threaten to close the southern border with Mexico. But as the matter of fact, the migrant issue it is now headache with is a sour fruit planted by the US itself, who has meddled other countries affairs with the so-called claims to be policeman of Western Hemisphere. In Honduras, the US set up military bases in the name of anti-drugs and humanitarianism. In Guatemala and El Salvador, tens of thousands of their residents deceased in the decades-long civil war caused by Washingtons military intervention, leaving the two nations in the shadow till now. The frequent intervention of the US in Central American countries is directly responsible for part of the immigration crisis which is now gripping the US, pointed out by Joseph Nevins, an American expert on border issue, in a published article titled How US Policy in Honduras Set the Stage for Todays Mass Migration. The US policy led to political upheavals, pervasive poverty and criminal issue in the Central American countries and as a result forced these migrants to flee from their hometown to the US, he added. It is astonished that the notorious Monroe Doctrine is a seemingly commendatory term in the political dictionary of the US leaders, since they applied such tactics as a granted tool in their Latin American policy from time to time by taking interventionism. But anyone with a basic knowledge of international relations know that the Monroe Doctrine has already been regarded as a code word of hegemony and evil, as this policy has brought Latin American countries and their people with endless military intervention, regime change and economic oppression. Those keeping eyes on international ties have found that the US has almost been accustomed to pointing fingers at domestic affairs of many countries in Latin America, Europe and Asia, but never made self-examination on such reach. Before making a baseless blame to other countries, those politicians in the US should look at itself in the mirror. They would be ashamed of their big mouth in face of the mainstream voices of the world and the reality. In the 21st century when the concept of mutual respect, fairness, justice and win-win cooperation has already become a global consensus, fairness, equality, and respect are no longer empty words or the hegemony to force others to take pills while itself is sick. Some American political heavyweights should bear in mind that if they fail to take concrete actions to keep abreast with the times because of their outdated mentality, they would finally lose more. (Zhong Sheng, a homonym in Chinese for voice of China, is a pen name often used by Peoples Daily to express its views on foreign policy) The Hong Kong-Zhuhai-Macao Bridge. [Photo/Xinhua] The China-built cross-sea bridge, which connects the mainland province of Guangdong with the country's two special administrative regions, Hong Kong and Macao, became a pride of Chinese engineering construction upon its opening to traffic on Tuesday. The Chinese builders have conquered difficulties ranging from technology, construction and workload, said Ge Changwei, head of the Guangdong Provincial Commission of Development and Reform. The bridge construction is a practice of the Chinese policy of One Country, Two Systems, as a great deal of coordination was carried out under the three different legal and management systems, said Ge. Without the guidance and support from the central government, our dream of building the bridge wouldnt come true, he stressed. The Hong Kong-Zhuhai-Macao Bridge has incorporated Hong Kong and Macao into the national highway network and opened the road network in the Guangdong-Hong Kong-Macao Greater Bay Area. Its construction marks the formation of the triangle with the Pearl River Estuary as the axis. The bridge is also a vivid echo to the concept of supporting Hong Kong and Macao in integrating their development into overall national development proposed in the report to the 19th National Congress of the Communist Party of China. The bridge withstood super typhoon Mangkhut, which landed on the Pearl River Delta on Sept.16, 2018 with a maximum wind speed of 55 meters per second. After the typhoon passed, the bridge was safe and no damage was tested in its major structure, houses under construction on the artificial island, the toll station and the ancillary facilities. Even no window was broken on the artificial island by the typhoon. The project has withstood three typhoons since 2017, fully testifying Chinas excellent skills and strong power in building bridges, such as the Hong Kong-Zhuhai-Macao Bridge. The Hong Kong-Zhuhai-Macao Bridge is a record holder in many areas. As the worlds longest cross-sea bridge, it has the longest underwater tunnel and longest steel structure in the world. By the eve of the opening of the bridge, the scientific research team of the bridge had applied for 454 patents with an innovation of 31 construction methods, 13 software products, 31 sets of equipment and three products. It was the leapfrog development of Chinas equipment manufacturing industry that strongly supported the construction of the bridge. As the bridge runs through a state protection area of Chinese white dolphin in the Pearl River Estuary, the bridge builders made plans to not have the dolphins relocated because of the bridge construction. The designers protect the ecological environment by limiting construction in the sea area and minimizing construction noises. A Hong Kong fisherman surnamed Cai now makes money by taking tourists on his boat to watch the Chinese white dolphins near the bridge. The number of dolphins here is almost the same as it was before the bridge was constructed. The tourists love to come here to take pictures of the dolphins jumping out of water. It is a nice view with the Hong Kong-Zhuhai-Macao Bridge as the background, Cai said. The Hong Kong-Zhuhai-Macao Bridge is a concentration of the advantages of the One Country, Two Systems policy, said Zhu Yongling, director of the management bureau of the bridge, adding that it was the complementary advantages of the three parties that contributed to the outstanding project. The construction and management of the bridge marks an institutional innovation, as it has effectively coordinated the different laws and regulations, technical standards, construction procedures and modes of thinking, in the three places, Zhu pointed out. The bridge will slash travel time between Hong Kong and Zhuhai and Macao from 3 hours to just 45 minutes. The opening of the bridge will serve as a new driver for governments of the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region (HKSAR) and the Macao Special Administrative Region (MSAR) to develop economy and improve livelihoods. The opening of the bridge has made the once remote Lantau Island in Hong Kong a new hot land for development. HKSAR Chief Executive Lam Cheng Yuet-ngor said that the island will become a pivotal that links Hong Kong and other cities in the Greater Bay Area. Chief Executive of MSAR Fernando Chui Sai On said recently that the bridge, which connects the eastern and western banks of the Pearl River by land transportation, is conducive to the sustainable social and economic development of the three places. Additionally, the first five-year plan of Macao will include the roadmap for the region to integrate into national development in the era of the mega-bridge, according to him. Hong Kong Tourism Board Chairman Peter Lam expressed that a "one-hour travelling circle" has formed surrounding the Guangzhou-Shenzhen-Hong Kong High-speed Railway, the Hong Kong-Zhuhai-Macao Bridge and the Guangdong-Hong Kong-Macao Greater Bay Area. The bridge will largely boost the development of industries in Macao, and help the place achieve the ambition of being a world tourism and leisure center, said Fanny Vong Chuk Kwan, president of Macao's Institute for Tourism Studies. The bridge will bring Hong Kong closer to the western regions of the Pearl River Delta, and even cities such as Nanning, Kunming and Chengdu, said John Slosar, former chairman of Swire Pacific. Egyptian Minister of Environment Yasmin Fouad met with her Sudanese counterpart Aboud Jaber Saeed in Khartoum on the sidelines of the Egyptian-Sudanese presidential summit on Thursday to discuss means of joint cooperation. The meeting was also held on the sidelines of the 30th session of the Council of the Arab Ministers of Environment. The two ministers discussed cooperation on environmental issues and broadening the horizons of joint action, in light of the great rapprochement between the countries. During the meeting, Fouad commended Sudan's support for the proposed Egyptian global initiative to promote the use of nature-based ecosystem approaches to address the loss of biodiversity, climate change, and land degradation. The Sudanese minister praised the strong relations between the two countries and stressed the importance of pushing this cooperation forward and focusing on the most important issues for the two countries and on exchange of experiences, pointing out that this cooperation will benefit the whole Nile Valley. Fouad invited Saeed to attend the UN Biodiversity Conference to be held in Sharm El-Sheikh next month. Search Keywords: Short link: Earl Gibson III/Getty Images(WASHINGTON) -- Rep. Maxine Waters spoke out on Thursday amid an investigation into suspected bombs mailed to her and other high-profile Democrats. Waters, one of President Donald Trump's most outspoken critics, said the suspicious packages will not stop her from protesting the president's administration. "We have to keep doing what were doing in order to make this country right. That's what I intend to do, and as the young people say, 'I aint scared,'" Waters, D-Calif., told Blavity in a video interview on Thursday. "We must not be intimidated to the point that we stop advocating and protesting for justice." The FBI is investigating at least 10 suspected bombs, including two addressed to Waters. Law enforcement officials haven't disclosed any information about potential suspects in the case, but Waters said she blames the president. "I think the president of United States should take responsibility for the kind of violence that we are seeing for the first time in different ways," Waters said. "I think the president of the United States has been dog-whistling to his constituency, making them believe that their problems are caused by 'those people over there.'" Waters, 79, ignited controversy earlier this year when she called on her supporters to publicly confront and harass members of the Trump administration in response to the zero-tolerance immigration policy that separated families at the border. Waters, whom Trump once called "an extraordinarily low IQ person," attempted to clarify her comments a few days later after Trump claimed she'd "called for harm" to his supporters. "I believe in peaceful, very peaceful protests," Waters told reporters in June. "I have not called for the harm of anybody. This president has lied again when he's saying that I've called for harm." Authorities intercepted suspected mail bombs addressed to Waters offices in Washington and Los Angeles this week. Former President Barack Obama, former Vice President Joe Biden, former Secretary of State and presidential candidate Hillary Clinton, CNN and other outspoken Trump critics were also targeted. The FBI said the mailings were an apparent attempt to further political aims. Trump urged the country to come together in "peace and harmony," but he said members of the media should bear some responsibility. "A very big part of the Anger we see today in our society is caused by the purposely false and inaccurate reporting of the Mainstream Media that I refer to as Fake News," Trump tweeted Thursday. "Funny how lowly rated CNN, and others, can criticize me at will, even blaming me for the current spate of Bombs and ridiculously comparing this to September 11th and the Oklahoma City bombing, yet when I criticize them they go wild and scream, its just not Presidential, he added in another tweet early Friday morning. Copyright 2018, ABC Radio. All rights reserved. Egyptian President Abdel-Fattah El-Sisi extended his condolences to Jordan's King Abdullah on Thursday after flash floods in the country caused a number of deaths. At least 20 people had died in the floods, most of them school pupils, Jordanian emergency services said on Friday, while a number of people were injured, including members of the security forces involved in rescue operations. El-Sisi expressed to King Abdullah Egypt's readiness to provide all necessary assistance and resources to help Jordan overcome the ordeal, his spokesman Bassam Rady said in a statement on Friday. The Egyptian foreign ministry issued a separate statement extending its condolences to the Jordanian kingdom for the victims and those injured and missing. Search Keywords: Short link: Egyptian President Abdel-Fattah El-Sisi has congratulated Ethiopian President Sahle-Work Zewde, who became the first female president of the country this week. El-Sisi hailed the trust the Ethiopian parliament has shown in electing Zewde as Ethiopia's new leader. El-Sisi expressed his "aspiration to further strengthen the relations of cooperation and brotherhood between Egypt and Ethiopia to achieve the common interests of the two countries, and guarantee the two brotherly peoples more development and progress," a statement by presidential spokesman Bassam Rady read. Zewde, an experienced diplomat, was elected by MPs on Thursday, becoming Africas only current female head of state. Search Keywords: Short link: Vice Admiral Ahmed Khaled Hassan Said, commander-in-chief of the Egyptian navy, tells Ahmed Eleiba about recent naval advances and Egypts plans to retain its position as one of the top 10 navies in the world. The deterioration in the state of security in the Middle East the proliferation of conflicts and their effects on Egyptian and Arab national security motivated plans to upgrade the navys armaments systems, strengthen its combat efficacy and introduce the latest educational and training programmes for its personnel. As part of the development process new naval bases have been constructed to allow the rapid deployment of forces in the Red Sea and the Mediterranean and the Alexandria Shipyard has become a base for the manufacture of weapons. Al-Ahram Weekly spoke with Commander-in-Chief of the Egyptian Navy Vice Admiral Ahmed Khaled Hassan Said about the navys plans to consolidate its weapons systems and expand local shipbuilding. Why was 21 October chosen as Navy Day 51 years ago? On 21 October 1967 the Armed Forces General Command instructed the navy to engage the largest Israeli naval vessel at the time, the destroyer INS Eilat. The ship had entered Egyptian territorial waters, an action the Israelis intended to signal their military superiority. Two fast attack craft (FAC) equipped with anti-ship missiles were ordered to engage the Eilat and succeeded in sinking it. There are two reasons why the date was chosen as Naval Day, First, the attack was carried out three months after the 1967 defeat rocked Egypt and the Arab world. It was a period of anguish and despair. Some heroic action was needed to lift the morale of our troops and revive confidence in the Armed Forces. Second, the Eilats sinking was a landmark in modern 20th century naval warfare. It was the first time in international naval history that a surface-to-surface missile was used and its success transformed naval tactics worldwide. The navy has made a quantum leap in armaments in recent years. Has the navy contracted any new combat systems in the framework of its strategy to diversify weapons sources? In light of the proliferation of regional conflicts and the accompanying deterioration in Egyptian and Arab national security the General Command of the Armed Forces formulated plans to increase the capabilities of the navy and purchase the most up-to-date combat and technical equipment. Among the navys latest acquisitions are two Mistral-class helicopter carriers, a FREMM Aquitaine-class frigate and the Russian-made Molniya-class fast missile craft. These represent a qualitative leap for the Egyptian navy, making it one of the largest fleets in the Mediterranean. It has the capacity to safeguard national interests at home and abroad, to deter anyone who contemplates threatening these interests. What does the building in the Alexandria Shipyard of the Port Said, a Gowind-class corvette, mean for the navy? The political leadership is keen to develop our heavy naval industries, as evidenced by the upgrading of the Alexandria Shipyard which is operated by the Armed Forces Naval Industries Authority. The aim is to ensure the navys equipment keeps pace with the latest scientific and technological developments. President Abdel-Fattah Al-Sisi inaugurated the shipyard in May 2015 and the navy has already begun building ships using Egyptian manpower. We have a two-phase strategy. First comes joint manufacture at Egyptian shipyards in partnership with allied nations. Fast craft of various classes have been built, and we are in the process of building three Corvettes in collaboration with France. The second phase to manufacture ships using Egyptian manpower exclusively. So far tankers, tugboats and escort vessels have been built and we are working towards a future in which all naval manufactures are homemade. The navy has recently performed missions to protect the home front and safeguard national security at home and abroad. Can you elaborate? The navy, in collaboration with the other branches of the Armed Forces, is responsible for carrying out numerous tasks to protect the home front. The tasks vary. They include protecting Egypts 22 ports around the clock, maintaining the order of maritime traffic, securing territorial waters, preventing incursions along our coasts, stopping arms and drug smuggling, combating illegal migration, safeguarding maritime communication routes and commercial shipping lanes, protecting vital installations along the coast and offshore oil and gas fields and conducting patrols and rescue operations in the event of disasters and other crises. The navy is also taking part in Comprehensive Operation Sinai 2018 (COS 2018) which aims to rid the Sinai of terrorist bases and takfiri elements. Since 2011 the navy has also helped secure polling stations. What role does the navy play in COS 2018? The navy helps safeguard strategic, tactical and deployment targets on all fronts and in all areas. Its role in COS 2018 includes isolating the theatre of operations from the direction of the sea, preventing the flight of terrorists by sea and preventing support from reaching them by staging board and search operations of suspect ships in Egyptian territorial and nearby waters. These activities are carried out in full coordination with the other branches of the Armed Forces and under the Armed Forces General Command. The navy has taken part in many joint training exercises with allied states. What benefits derive from these exercises? The Egyptian navys place among the leading navies of the world and as the largest naval force in the Middle East means many countries are eager to carry out joint exercises with Egypt. The drills help participants perfect the execution of various tasks and hone the skills of participants, familiarising them with the latest developments in training techniques and armament systems. Participants gain experience in different maritime environments and are able to study the effects of various environmental factors, including climate, on weapons and equipment. Our naval forces have taken part in joint exercises with many countries, including Saudi Arabia, the UAE, Bahrain, Greece, France, the US, Russia and Jordan. How does the navy contribute to ending the dangers posed by illegal migration and how does it apprehend people smugglers? Illegal migration is a relatively new phenomenon. The navy, in collaboration with all relevant governmental agencies Border Guard Forces and Military Intelligence has succeeded in apprehending numerous smugglers and foiled attempts to smuggle illegal migrants to Europe. In surprise board and search operations the navy has caught many ships in the act of smuggling drugs, arms and other merchandise. Detainees are handed to the relevant authorities to take appropriate legal measures. What are Egypts manufacture, repair and technical support capabilities for naval vessels? The navy operates three major facilities, the Arsenal, the Egyptian Ship Repair and Building Company and the Alexandria Shipyard Company. The three function as an integrated system that has the capacity to provide technical security, maintenance and repair services for ships. They have also acquired a manufacturing capacity after they were upgraded in accordance with international technical standards and with the support of the Armed Forces General Command. They have already begun to manufacture port patrol and tugboats. Allied countries have cooperated to the development through the transfer of technology, as is the case with the Gowind-class corvettes being built with French collaboration. How do you see the future of the navy? Work in progress includes the construction of new naval bases in order to facilitate more rapid deployment of naval forces in the Red Sea and the Mediterranean and more naval hardware will be built at the navys shipyard in Alexandria. * A version of this article appears in print in the 25 October, 2018 edition of Al-Ahram Weekly under the headline: Navigating turbulence Search Keywords: Short link: Ivan Surkos, head of the European Union delegation to Egypt, speaks with Ahmed Kotb about Egyptian-European cooperation Ivan Surkos has headed the European Union delegation to Egypt since February 2017. Between 2011 and 2015 he served as Slovakias ambassador to Syria, Lebanon and Jordan and earlier in his diplomatic career was posted to Tunisia, Iraq, Yemen and Egypt. He spoke to Al-Ahram Weekly about EU-Egyptian cooperation, particularly in the water sector. Cairo Water Week (CWW), organised by the Ministry of Water Resources and Irrigation in cooperation with the EU delegation in Egypt, was held last week to raise awareness about water scarcity, climate change and desertification, and to promote investment in Egypt. How important was the first Cairo Water Week for Egypt? The challenges posed by water scarcity in Egypt require rapid action to rationalise consumption, develop modern irrigation systems and reduce waste. Cairo Water Week offers a platform to meet ministers of water resources from different countries, as well as many other organisations. It is a significant venue for addressing the challenges and identify opportunities and solutions. Within the framework of Cairo Water Week the European Union delegation holds two main activities: The first is the EU-Egypt Water Business Forum which was designed to find the best way to promote Egypt and invite investors and international financial institutions to invest in the water sector. The second was the Egypt-EU Water Dialogue, which saw discussions on how best to improve water management. The EU has a vast experience in this field which we can share with our Egyptian partners. Cairo Water Week has both a local and international appeal, facilitating coordination between investors, the private sector and donors. The event allows for the coordination of efforts to mitigate the negative effects of water shortages and to promote more responsible use of water. The EU was an early supporter of Egypt in the area of water management and has contributed 450 million to establish projects since 2007. These grants leveraged 2.5 billion in funding from European financial institutions. The EU is committed to supporting sustainable water management in Egypt through development projects and dialogue with decision-makers. Cooperation between the EU and Egypt in the sector includes programmes covering 12 Egyptian governorates which will improve the lives of 12.5 million Egyptians. The programmes involve extending 6,000 pipelines and upgrading existing water treatment plants or else building new ones. We also offer technical assistance in areas in which we have expertise. The EU for Water in Egypt Programme will be implemented in 2019/2020 at a total cost of 120 million with the aim of improving water management in Egypt by contributing to infrastructure building and modernisation. Is cooperation over water part of the wider Egypt-EU partnership to achieve sustainability? Our aim is to support the efforts of the Egyptian government to achieve sustainable socio-economic development. We are involved in many areas to this end energy, agriculture, irrigation, education and supporting small and medium enterprises. We support many different projects that will contribute to the fulfillment of the Egyptian Sustainable Strategy 2030. Renewable energy is another area of cooperation. How important is it in the sector? Renewable energy is the future. Egypt has set an ambitious goal to generate 30 per cent of its energy needs from renewables by 2030, which is higher than Europes own target of 27 per cent. Egypt can benefit from our experience in overcoming the problems European countries faced at an earlier stage of energy transition, accelerating the process of transition to renewables in Egypt. Renewable energy projects like the Gulf of Zayt wind farms are being built to be environmentally friendly. Radars will be employed to detect migratory birds, automatically halting the mills as flocks approach to protect migratory species. Egypt has the potential to quickly grow its renewable energy sector but this must go hand-in-hand with energy efficiency. People need to know that energy efficiency is about more than turning off an unnecessary light bulb. It is also about constructing buildings in an energy efficient way which involves working with the construction sector, for example. How important is the Egyptian market to the EU in terms of trade? The EU is Egypts biggest trade partner, and this says a lot about the level of cooperation. For years now the EU share of Egypts total trade has been around 30 per cent. In 2017 the EUs share of Egypts trade increased 2.5 per cent to reach 28 billion. Egypts exports to the EU increased by 20 per cent to 8 billion while imports from the EU decreased by 3.5 per cent to 20 billion. The EU is also Egypts biggest source of Foreign Direct Investment (FDI). Net FDI inflows from the EU countries represent about 65 per cent of the total of FDI inflows to Egypt. There has been a steady increase of EU FDIs to Egypt, from $5.6 billion in 2012/2013 to $8.7 billion, 55 per cent growth over the last five years. Overall, EU investment reached 42.7 billion in 2016. What are the sectors where investment is concentrated? EU investment is concentrated in the oil and gas sector, electricity generation and, more recently, renewable energy. EU companies are also investing heavily in transport infrastructure, including the construction of Cairos new metro line and modernising and extending the railway system. EU companies can also be found in the retail, manufacturing and telecommunication sectors. * A version of this article appears in print in the 25 October, 2018 edition of Al-Ahram Weekly under the headline: Sustainable partners Search Keywords: Short link: Egypt's Prime Minister Mostafa Madbouly met Chinese Vice-President Wang Qishan at Cairo airport on Friday, according to a statement from the Egyptian cabinet. Wang arrived for an official visit to Cairo to discuss cooperation between Egypt and China in various fields. The Chinese vice-president and his accompanying delegation will hold wide-ranging talks with Egyptian officials to discuss bilateral cooperation, exchange views and plan further coordination on regional and international issues of common concern. Egyptian President Abdel-Fattah El-Sisi visited Beijing in September and signed five agreements with his Chinese counterpart Xi Jinping concerning the manufacture of an Egyptian satellite, as well as a framework agreement for future projects in the coming three years. El-Sisi also witnessed during his visit the signing of a number of contracts with Chinese companies to implement development projects in Egypt with an investment worth of $18.3 billion. Search Keywords: Short link: Russia has no reason to doubt the statements of the Saudi king and crown prince that the royal family was not involved in the murder of journalist Jamal Khashoggi, the Kremlin said on Friday. "No one should have any reasons not to believe them," Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov told a conference call on Friday, adding that the Kremlin welcomed the investigation into the murder. Search Keywords: Short link: At least 20 people, most of them school pupils, have been killed in flash floods in Jordan, the emergency services said Friday in an updated toll. A further 35 people were injured following heavy rains on Thursday, including members of the security forces involved in rescue operations, said an official from the civil defence -- Jordan's fire service -- who asked not to be named. He said rescuers were still searching for people missing in the area, a popular tourist attraction around 50 kilometres (30 miles) west of Amman. "Most of the dead were schoolchildren aged 11 to 14 who were taking part in a school trip to the Dead Sea region" when their bus was swept away by floodwaters. Also among the dead were passers-by who had been picnicking in the area, he said, adding that a nearby bridge had collapsed. "Security force personnel who were taking part in the rescue operations were among the injured," he added. The Dead Sea, the lowest point on earth, is surrounded by steep valleys and gullies that frequently see flash floods and landslides. Education Minister Azmi Mahafzah promised a "full inquiry" into the schoolchildren's deaths. He said the bus took a route not agreed upon by the ministry and the organiser of the trip bore full responsibility. Roads leading to the area were closed on Friday morning "to allow the continuation of search and rescue operations", the Directorate of General Security said. Jordanian television reported that King Abdullah II had cancelled a planned visit to Bahrain to monitor developments. Search Keywords: Short link: Although it cost Iraq one million people dead, disabled, widowed or orphaned, and huge destruction to the country as a whole, many Iraqis do not remember the war with Iran For the past 30 years Iran has been marking the anniversary of its eight-year war with Iraq in the 1980s with bombastic military parades in Tehran and other major cities and the commemoration of those Iranians who died defending the Islamic Republic. On 21 September, the first day of Irans annual celebrations of Sacred Defence Week begins, its military display of tanks, the newly supplied Russian S-300 air-defence missile system and its domestically-built ballistic rockets. For Iran, the eight-year conflict is a defining period in the countrys modern history, and the Islamic Republic has spared no efforts in continually keeping the memory of the conflict in public consciousness. Murals commemorating the martyrs of the 1980-1988 War still decorate street junctions in Tehran and other Iranian cities, along with pictures of Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, the founder of the Islamic Republic and Irans wartime leader. While the war remains a huge story in Iran, by contrast the anniversary does not receive much consideration from Iraqs current Shia leaders, who are mostly friendly to Iran and support its narrative that the war was imposed on Iran by then Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein. Iraq invaded Iran on 22 September 1980, with Saddam claiming the Iranian regime had started the conflict two weeks earlier by shelling Iraqi border posts. He also gave as a reason for the invasion a territorial dispute over the Shatt Al-Arab, the strategic waterway which forms the southern boundary between the two countries. Saddam, leading a secular, Pan-Arab regime, also feared that Khomeini, the Iranian revolutionary Shia cleric, wanted to make Iraq an Islamic Shia state. The Islamic regime in Iran has spared no efforts in keeping the memory of the war alive. At the Behesht-e Zahra Cemetery south of Tehran the authorities have built a Pool of Blood, a fountain dyed red to serve as a resting place for soldiers who died. Iranian officials still use the war to consolidate the Islamic Republic and mobilise the population in the face of domestic and foreign challenges. Worries about these were revived earlier this year when an attack on a military parade in the southern Iranian city of Ahvaz killed at least two dozen people. Iranian President Hassan Rouhani immediately evoked memories of the war to call for unity in the face of economic hardships and US pressure. Irans supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei blamed the attack on the United States and US-backed regimes in the region. The war has thus helped to crystallise Irans worldview as well as define the countrys security policy. Iran learned many lessons from the war, including the need to be self-reliant in order to face up to prolonged diplomatic isolation. With the Trump administration set on imposing more stringent sanctions on Iran in November, there are growing fears of a regional flare-up that could entangle the Islamic Republic in another war. But with the Saddam regimes animosity in mind, one of Irans main worries is the presence of a hostile regime in Iraq that could be incorporated in an anti-Iran regional alliance upsetting the balance of power that Iran now sees as operating in its favour. A look back at history, however, reveals that neither side won the war, which was disastrous for both countries in addition to its enormous human casualties, stalling economic development and disrupting oil exports which cost them billions of dollars. The conflict left the borders unchanged. Two years later, as war with the US-led Coalition over the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait loomed, Saddam recognised Iranian rights over the eastern half of the Shatt Al-Arab, a reversion to the status quo that he had repudiated a decade earlier. The US-led invasion of Iraq in 2003 put Iran in a favourable situation in the light of the destruction of the Iraqi military by the US and the empowerment of Shia opposition groups in Iraq that had been groomed by Iran to fight Saddam. Gradually, Tehran has managed to create huge influence in Iraq that includes political, economic and cultural assets and also and most importantly a vast pro-Iranian para-military force, or militias, that it has used to maximise its influence. Iraqi political leaders friendly to Iran cannot be expected to stand in front of war memorials to honour the names of those who went forth to fight the Iranians and did not come back. But even if they do not believe in the cause of the war, their view of it seems to be ideological or sectarian instead of patriotic or at least pragmatic. Since Saddams fall there has been no debate on the war in Iraq, specifically about the patriotism of millions of Iraqis who gave their lives or were made to pay a horrible price in hardship and suffering. Discussing the legacy of the war by the Shia ruling groups has become a propaganda industry to villainise Saddam as being solely responsible for the war, which they depict as an act of aggression against Islamic Iran. As a result, ignoring the commemoration of the war in post-Saddam Iraq should come as no surprise. Indeed, by failing to honour the memory of those Iraqis who made the ultimate sacrifice Iraqs rulers are actually underscoring the Iranian narrative of the war. By taking this approach to coming to terms with Iraqs new era in which Iran has been blended seamlessly into the new regime, the measures taken to dismantle Iraqs war heritage seem to be excessive. Many monuments depicting the war or paying tribute to war heroes or events or dates symbolising Iraqi sacrifices have been demolished or dismembered. A Martyrs Monument in Baghdad built during Saddams time in office to honour Iraqi soldiers who died in the Iran-Iraq War has been suffering from neglect, and part of it is now used to as a memorial to Saddams victims. Hundreds of thousands of veterans lost their pensions and benefits after Saddams fall, while survivors feeling hostility from Saddams successors only because they sided with their country in the war. Viewed from a larger security perspective, Iraqs main problem 30 years after the war ended remains its vulnerability in dealing with Irans increasing military power and its threats to the region. Arguably, such impressive military shows of strength by Iran should have reawakened old fears, but not in Iraq under its current pro-Iranian leaders even though the country is suffering from a huge military disadvantage when compared to Iran. Nobody disputes the fact that Saddams recklessness in attacking Iran triggered a broader conflict, but the roots of the war also lay in a number of territorial and political disputes between Iraq and Iran. It also reflected geopolitical and historical rivalries that have not died down and could be renewed. Yet, when it comes to Iraqs post-Saddams rulers, there has been strikingly little reflection about the range of challenges or potential security threats that Iraq faces and that consist of Irans rising power and influence. At present, the two countries enjoy peaceful relations, but this is only due to the client-type relationships Iran has succeeded in building with some of Iraqs Shia leaders. However, because nations are bound to seek their own national interests and are bent on developing effective security strategies, such relationships are doomed to change. Baghdad has also been challenged to address widening regional security threats, and sooner or later Iraqi policy-makers will need to realise that they must develop their own broad rethinking of national security policies dealing with some of these. Post-Saddam Iraq is not responsible for the 1980-1988 War, but acting as if the war did not happen is foolish because it ignores its military and security lessons. Any nations security is defined in the context of its relationship with other nations, especially its neighbours, but Iraqs security dilemmas seem to stem more from its own leadership than from geopolitics and recent history. * A version of this article appears in print in the 25 October, 2018 edition of Al-Ahram Weekly under the headline: Iraqs forgotten war with Iran Search Keywords: Short link: Sudan has turned a complicated chapter in its history with the death of former president Abdel-Rahman Suwar Al-Dahab Sudan has turned a complicated chapter in its history with the death of former president Abdel-Rahman Suwar Al-Field Marshal Suwar Al-Dahab, as he was amicably called by his supporters, exemplified a state governed by traditional feudalism, religious households and tribal leadership. His rule stood in opposition to Sudans modern powers, from the Graduates General Congress, Arab and African Nasserist nationalists, the communists, all the way through to the Muslim Brotherhood group, that governs Sudan to this day. Suwar Al-Dahab was born in 1935 in Al-Obeid, west Sudans biggest city, which decades later became a turning point in the field marshals life. He was raised in a religious household loyal to the Khatimiya, a Sufi order led by Al-Sayed Ali Al-Mirghani, who was close to the kingdom and republic of Egypt. Suwar Al-Dahab was taught in Omdurman, the national capital Khartoum was then regarded as the capital inhabited by the colonialists. Eventually, he sought his education at the military school, graduating in 1956, the year Sudan gained its independence from the UK. Suwar Al-Dahabs younger life was very much like Sudans history at the time: he grew up in a conservative, religious society, yet he graduated in a colonial, semi-secular school. He led a quiet life. He was promoted in his job but he was not interested in politics, in which hundreds of his fellow officers were immersed. Those officers were so immersed in this or that coup detat, whether of the right or left, that they became a stratum in and of themselves known as the proletariat military. In 1970, Suwar Al-Dahab moved back to Al-Obeid as a military leader, a year after Colonel Gaafar Al-Numeiri staged a coup supported by leftist, nationalist and communist officers in May 1969. Although Egyptian president Gamal Abdel Nasser was not involved in the coup, he rushed to support it and visit its leaders in the capital Khartoum. In August 1970, however, a month before his sudden death, he was implicated in taking Al-Numeiri and his partys side in their conflict with the strongest traditional household, that of Al-Ansar, led by late imam Al-Hadi Al-Mahdi, former prime minister Al-Sadik Al-Mahdis uncle. A year after Al-Numeiri and his group came out victorious in their White Nile fights against Al-Ansar, disagreements began to surface among the former group when communist officers staged a coup on 19 July 1971. The coup lasted for three days, but those were enough to show Suwar Al-Dahab for what he really was. During the coup, his fellow commander of the communist coup, Major Hashem Atta, asked Suwar Al-Dahab to hand over Al-Obeid to the new revolutionary authority. Suwar Al-Dahab refused, preparing to engage in a battle, though without need, thanks to Al-Numeiris support that was made possible with the help of the anti-communist late Egyptian president Anwar Al-Sadat. He thought the authorities were going to reward him for standing his ground, staying loyal to the military oath and his anti-communist, religious upbringing. It is yet unknown why Atta came out of Al-Obeid with a promotion and why Al-Numeiri ignored the matter. Suwar Al-Dahab was dispatched to Qatar as a military adviser to the new emir Sheikh Khalifa Al-Thani, grandfather of current emir of Doha, Tamim Al-Thani. In Qatar, the field marshal separated the army and the police, so that the two institutions could grow without tasks intertwining. After the dispatch/expulsion, Suwar Al-Dahab returned to Khartoum, climbing up the ladder of military cadres, and sticking to his Sufism outside of work. During the first half of the 1980s, with 25 years of experience, Suwar Al-Dahab became chief of staff. A year later, in 1983, he was promoted to minister of defence. But Sudan was not to enjoy a mood of calm for long. On the 14th anniversary of Al-Numeiris coup, May 1983, the spark of civil war was ignited. The army descended into a two-decade war with the south, led by Colonel John Garang. Sudan sought the help of Egypt, the Gulf and the West against the leftist Sudan Peoples Liberation Army, supported by the Derg, the military junta that governed Ethiopia, and its chairman Mengistu Haile Mariam, and later on by Ugandan President Yoweri Museveni. The war took the path of no return when Al-Numeiri announced the application of Sharia Law, dubbed by the Sudanese as the September laws. The power of the Muslim Brotherhood, led by Hassan Al-Turabi, reached its zenith in September 1983, driven by national reconciliation initiated between Al-Numeiri and his opponents in 1977. Suwar Al-Dahab didnt display any objections at the time, although most of the religious Sudanese people disapproved of the September laws which were not in line with the fundamentalist regulations of Islamic jurisprudence. Not long after, Al-Numeiri sentenced to death leader of the Republican Party Mahmoud Mohamed Taha, an anti-Muslim Brotherhood intellectual, in a trial that was legally flawed and illegitimate. Sudans conditions became more complicated with the wave of drought and desertification that swept the country in the early 1980s. Only in the past decade did Sudan start to recover from famine. Throughout this time Sudan was enduring difficult economic conditions. Then people revolted. Syndicates led what was then called the Ramadan Intifada or the April Intifada, ousting Al-Numeiri after 16 years at the helm. The military council stepped up to rule, promising a one-year transitional period after which would be held elections to form an assembly tasked with drafting the constitution. And so it was. Suwar Al-Dahab stepped down in April 1986. He went on to become chairman of the board of trustees at the Islamic Dawa Organisation, founded by members of the Muslim Brotherhood from various Arab countries, for two decades. The organisation faced accusations of implication in forced Islamisation, and trading in slavery in the south. Suwar Al-Dahab vehemently denied the accusations that were accompanied with little evidence. Suwar Al-Dahabs life was crowned with the International King Faisal Award for serving Islam for his efforts in developing Africa. He was also chosen Person of the Year by the International Dubai Award for Quran. The Islamic Dawa Organisations work spread in a number of African countries, building schools, digging wells and jump-starting projects that provided many job opportunities. The field marshal was a supporter of the regime of Omar Al-Bashir, both when it was pro and against Iran and when Khartoum joined the Gulf camp. The latter stance was severely criticised by his opponents. In all cases, nonetheless, Suwar Al-Dahab remained true to his conservative beliefs upon which he was brought up. These were his guiding compass, despite the disintegration of Sudan. He became an image of a country many Muslim Arabs sought after a country of their own. * A version of this article appears in print in the 25 October, 2018 edition of Al-Ahram Weekly under the headline: The religious general Search Keywords: Short link: Yemenis are sitting on abundant untapped prosperity. So how can Yemen be among the poorest countries on earth Could Yemen become one of the wealthiest countries on earth? What do economists think? Is it possible for a Yemen that poor to become a Yemen that rich? Yemen, dubbed in Arabic The Blissful, possesses vast stretches of strategic maritime waters, numerous ports situated along a major international navigation route, and more than 150 islands and archipelagos. In the Red Sea we find, the port of Mocha. Located near Taiz, it is oldest the port on the Red Sea, not just in Yemen, but also in the Arabian Peninsula. The name of the port is associated with Yemens famous coffee, known universally as mocha, the luxurious aromas of which enticed European powers, such as Britain and Italy, to attempt to occupy the port at the time when it was still under Ottoman rule. We find the Bab Al-Mandeb, occupying a unique strategic position on the route that connects the countries of the Middle East with Europe. The famous strait enables direct maritime contact between the Gulf and the Mediterranean via the Suez Canal. There is also the port of Hodeida. Situated in the middle of Yemens Red Sea coast, it is the second largest Yemeni port after Aden and occupies a strategic position near vital maritime routes. It is also Hodeida citys sole maritime outlet. The port of Saleef, meanwhile, is one of the most strategically important Yemeni ports. Saleef is situated northwest of Hodeida. It is noted for its anchorage depths of up to 50 feet which makes it able to receive giant ships with displacements of up to 55,000 tons. It now falls under the protection of the UAE. In the Gulf of Aden we find the port of Aden. One of Yemens main ports, strategically located, it is part of the city of Aden and is one of the largest natural ports in the world. In the 1950s it was ranked the worlds second refuelling port after New York. The port of Balhaf is one of Yemens main oil exporting points, located midway between Aden and Mukalla and that serves as the export terminal for the mixed crude from sector 14 in Masila. It is the largest industrial project in the history of Yemen. The Aden free zone was established in 1993 following the adoption of the free trade zones law in Yemen that eliminated all customs and non-customs restrictions on trade in order to boost volume of trade and spur economic growth. In the Arabian Sea we find the port of Mukalla, which is one of the most important Yemeni ports on the Arabian Sea and the sole maritime outlet for the governorate of Hadramaut. It was built in the Khalf area to serve as a multipurpose port to support trade, the fishing industry and the petroleum derivatives from Hadramaut and neighbouring governorates. The port of Shahr is one of Yemens main oil terminals located on Yemens southeast coast, it is equipped to load oil freighters with crude for export purposes. The port of Nashtun in Al-Mahra governorate is near the border with Oman. The port was rehabilitated in 2010. There are reports of Saudi Arabian plans to construct an oil pipeline from Al-Kharkhir in Saudi Arabia near the border with Yemen to Nashtun Port. The port of Qana (Bir Ali), an ancient port, is located 120 kilometres from Mukalla and 140 kilometres from the administrative capital of Shabwa governorate. It is noted for its anchorage depth and for the surrounding mountain ranges and islands that makes it a safe harbour in stormy weather. All these ports could draw in billions of dollars, but they are idle and not being put to the service of the Yemeni people. Still economists predict that Yemen will become one of the richest countries in the world because of its wealth in ports, islands and resources. The port of Aden, if put to use as a nexus of a vital artery of international trade, would reap at least $75 billion and spur the creation of jobs for the Yemeni people. Hodeida, ranked as the best port on the Red Sea, has the potential to become a transit station along with Saleef and earn $40 billion a year from transit commerce alone. As for the ports on the Arabian Sea, if developed, they could become among the worlds largest transit stations rivalling those in India and East Asia. In addition, they could serve as stations for aircraft carriers from all parts of the world and earn $100 billion from this alone. Millions of jobs could be generated directly related to the activities of the Arabian Sea ports. They could also serve as oil terminals for oil from the Gulf, bypassing the Bab Al-Mandeb, and accrue millions from that as well. According to the rates in current international agreements, $200 billion could be made from the transport of oil by pipeline between its source and the port and, again, this would generate innumerable jobs. It should also be added that a massive reserve of oil has been discovered in the area of Al-Jawf near the border with Saudi Arabia. It is estimated to be larger than the fields of Saudi Arabia, Kuwait and the UAE put together. This is not to mention Yemens many other resources: minerals, water, mines, fish, and of course coffee, which is an excellent source of wealth in its own right. Yemenis are sitting on abundant untapped prosperity. Are they capable of appreciating this and protecting their nation and the future of its people by choosing leaders with integrity capable of administrating the country well, safeguarding its resources and ensuring justice for all? How can Yemen be among the poorest countries on earth? * A version of this article appears in print in the 25 October, 2018 edition of Al-Ahram Weekly under the headline: Yemens vast potential Search Keywords: Short link: Alex Wong/Getty Images(WASHINGTON) -- The battle over the handling of Brett Kavanaugh's confirmation hearing isn't over as Sen. Chuck Grassley is calling on the Justice Department to criminally investigate one of the justice's accusers and her attorney. Grassley, who is the chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, sent a letter to the Justice Department calling for Julie Swetnick and her attorney Michael Avenatti to be subject to a criminal investigation. The probe will focus on what Grassley's office calls "a potential conspiracy to provide materially false statements to Congress and obstruct a congressional committee investigation." Grassley questioned the veracity of Swetnick's claims of allegedly being aware of sexual assaults that Kavanaugh may have participated in during his time in high school. Kavanaugh denied all of the claims. When a well-meaning citizen comes forward with information relevant to the committees work, I take it seriously. It takes courage to come forward, especially with allegations of sexual misconduct or personal trauma. Im grateful for those who find that courage, Grassley said in a statement. "But in the heat of partisan moments, some do try to knowingly mislead the committee. Thats unfair to my colleagues, the nominees and others providing information who are seeking the truth," Grassley said. "It stifles our ability to work on legitimate lines of inquiry. It also wastes time and resources for destructive reasons. Thankfully, the law prohibits such false statements to Congress and obstruction of congressional committee investigations. For the law to work, we cant just brush aside potential violations. I dont take lightly making a referral of this nature, but ignoring this behavior will just invite more of it in the future," Grassley said. Avenatti, who first came to national attention for representing adult film star Stormy Daniels, tweeted his response to Grassley's call for an investigation. "It is ironic that Senator Grassley now is interested in investigations. He didnt care when it came to putting a man on the SCOTUS for life. We welcome the investigation as now we can finally get to the bottom of Judge Kavanaughs lies and conduct. Let the truth be known," Avenatti wrote on Twitter. Swetnick was the third woman to publicly accuse Kavanaugh of alleged sexual misconduct during his confirmation hearings in September. The other two women who accused Kavanaugh were Christine Blasey Ford, who publicly testified before the Judiciary Committee about her alleged assault by the judge, and Deborah Ramirez, who accused him of sexual misconduct when they were both students at Yale University. Kavanaugh denied all of the claims. Swetnick shared her allegations after releasing a sworn declaration that Avenatti provided to the Senate Judiciary Committee. Swetnick claimed she observed Kavanaugh at more than 10 house parties in the early 1980s. She said at numerous parties Kavanaugh was drunk and engaging in what she called highly inappropriate conduct, including fondling and grabbing of girls without their consent. I observed Brett Kavanaugh drink excessively at many of these parties and engage in abusive and highly physically aggressive behavior toward girls, Swetnick wrote in the declaration, including pressing girls against him without their consent, grinding against girls, and attempting to remove or shift girls clothing to expose private body parts. In a statement at the time, Kavanaugh called the allegations by Swetnick ridiculous and from the Twilight Zone. I dont know who this is and this never happened, Kavanaugh said in a statement. After a contentious confirmation, Kavanaugh was ultimately sworn in as a Supreme Court Justice earlier this month. Copyright 2018, ABC Radio. All rights reserved. Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov met Syria's chief opposition negotiator Nasr al-Hariri in Moscow on Friday to discuss the conflict in Syria and ways to reach a political settlement, the ministry said in a statement. It added that Russia had confirmed its support for Syria's sovereignty, independence and territorial integrity. Search Keywords: Short link: German Chancellor Angela Merkel condemned the killing of journalist Jamal Khashoggi in the strongest terms possible during a phone call with Saudi Arabia's King Salman, and vowed to take appropriate measures in response, the chancellery said. Merkel "made clear that the exact course of events must be cleared up", the chancellery said in a statement after Thursday's telephone call between the two leaders. "The chancellor urged Saudi Arabia to ensure a rapid, transparent and credible investigation. She stressed that all those responsible must be held accountable," the statement said. Search Keywords: Short link: Authorities found two more suspicious packages on Friday addressed to U.S. Senator Cory Booker and James Clapper, the former U.S. director of national intelligence amid a manhunt for the person who sent bombs to prominent Democrats and critics of U.S. President Donald Trump. The 11th package was found at a mail sorting facility in Opa-Locka, near Miami, and was addressed to Booker, the Democratic senator from New Jersey, the FBI said on Twitter. A 12th package was addressed to James Clapper, the former director of national intelligence, and sent to CNN, the cable network reported. Meanwhile, a local police bomb squad and canine units joined federal investigators on Thursday to examine a sprawling U.S. mail distribution center at Opa-Locka, northwest of Miami, Miami-Dade County police said. U.S. Homeland Security Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen said that Florida appeared to be the starting point for at least some of the bomb shipments. "Some of the packages went through the mail. They originated, some of them, from Florida," she said during an interview with Fox News Channel on Thursday. "I am confident that this person or people will be brought to justice." Authorities called the parcel bombs an act of terrorism. They were sent less than two weeks before national elections that could alter the balance of power in Washington. No one has claimed responsibility for the bombs, and the public was asked to report any tips. All the people targeted were frequently maligned by right-wing critics. They included Democratic Party donor George Soros, former President Barack Obama, former Vice President Joe Biden, and former Secretary of State and presidential candidate Hillary Clinton. The Federal Bureau of Investigation has said that at least five of the packages bore a return address from the Florida office of U.S. Representative Debbie Wasserman Schultz, a former chair of the Democratic National Committee. Authorities believe the packages, which were intercepted before reaching their intended recipients, all went through the U.S. Postal Service at some point, a source said. None detonated and no one has been hurt. The devices were thought to have been fashioned from bomb-making designs widely available on the internet, a federal law enforcement source told Reuters. Still, investigators are treating the devices as "live" explosives, not a hoax, said James O'Neill, the New York City police commissioner. Two of the parcels surfaced there. "It does remain possible that further packages have been or could be mailed," William Sweeney, assistant director of the FBI, told a news conference in New York. Investigators have declined to say whether the devices were built to be functional. Bomb experts and security analysts say that based on their rudimentary construction it appeared they were more likely designed to sow fear rather than to kill. The parcels each consisted of a manila envelope with a bubble-wrap interior containing "potentially destructive devices," the FBI said. Each was affixed with a computer-printed address label and six U.S. "Forever" postage stamps, the agency said. Others who received the bombs were former Attorney General Eric Holder, former CIA director John Brennan, U.S. Representative Maxine Waters of California, and actor Robert De Nero. Two packages were sent both to Waters and Biden. Brennan's package was sent in care of the New York bureau of CNN, where he has appeared as an on-air analyst. The episode sparked an outcry from Trump's critics, who charged that his inflammatory rhetoric against Democrats and the press has created a climate for politically motivated violence. After first calling for "unity" and civil discourse on Wednesday, Trump lashed out again Thursday at the "hateful" media. His supporters accused Democrats of unfairly suggesting the president was to blame for the bomb scare. "Funny how lowly rated CNN, and others, can criticize me at will, even blaming me for the current spate of Bombs and ridiculously comparing this to September 11th and the Oklahoma City bombing, yet when I criticize them they go wild and scream, its just not Presidential! Trump said on Twitter at about 3:15 a.m. EST (0715 GMT) on Friday. Search Keywords: Short link: Defense Secretary Jim Mattis has authorized the use of troops and other military resources at the U.S.-Mexico border, U.S. officials said on Friday, bolstering President Donald Trump's battle against migrants trekking toward the United States. The Pentagon did not immediately respond to requests for comment. The officials, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said Mattis' authorization did not include a specific number of troops, something that would be determined at a later point, and was not itself a "deployment order." U.S. officials told Reuters on Thursday that the Trump administration was considering deploying between 800 and 1,000 troops. They would not be engaged in any law enforcement activities, something that is prohibited under U.S. law, and instead focus on support roles in areas like infrastructure and logistics. Trump has hammered away at the issue of illegal immigration two weeks ahead of congressional elections. Taking aim at the caravan of Central American migrants, Trump wrote on Twitter on Thursday he was "bringing out the military for this National Emergency. They will be stopped!" U.S. Homeland Security Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen said in an interview with Fox News Channel on Thursday that her department had asked the Pentagon for help to bolster its capabilities as it polices the border, including asking for "some air support ... some logistics, planning, vehicle barriers, engineering." The migrants appeared undeterred on Thursday night as several thousand of them bedded down more than 1,000 miles (1,610 km) from the U.S. border, in the town of Pijijiapan in Mexico's southern Chiapas state, after hiking hours from their last stop. Trump and his fellow Republicans have sought to make the caravan and immigration into major issues before the Nov. 6 elections, in which Republicans are battling to keep control of Congress. Trump pledged during the 2016 presidential race to build a wall along the southern U.S. border with Mexico. But the funding for his signature campaign promise has been slow to materialize. In April, frustrated by lack of progress on the wall, Trump ordered the National Guard to help secure the border. Search Keywords: Short link: The Istanbul prosecutor's office has prepared a request for the extradition from Saudi Arabia of 18 suspects in the killing of Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi, the Turkish Justice Ministry said in a statement on Friday. Riyadh has said 18 people have been arrested and five senior government officials have been sacked as part of an investigation into the case. Turkish President Tayyip Erdogan has called on the Saudi government to return the suspects to Turkey to face trial. Search Keywords: Short link: Egypt's Minister of Trade and Industry Amr Nassar said on Friday that food exports are expected to increase during the coming months now that Sudan has lifted a ban on Egyptian imports. Sudan's decision to lift a ban on Egyptian food imports came during this weeks Egyptian-Sudanese presidential summit in Khartoum, which ended on Thursday. In March 2017 Sudan banned the import of all Egyptian agricultural goods amid a range of disputes. Nassar said that the lifting of the ban was one of the most important results of the meetings between Egyptian President Abdel-Fattah El-Sisi and Sudans President Omar Al-Bashir this week. "The great support of the political leadership of the two countries is the main factor in the success of the efforts exerted, which included holding intensive meetings with the Sudanese side during which was stressed the importance of lifting all trade restrictions between the two countries, to contribute to the flow of trade and joint investment," said Nassar. The minister said that there had been a decline in exports to Sudan from $164 million dollars in 2016 to $44 million in 2017. Nassar said that intensive meetings had been held with relevant export councils to discuss increasing export rates, to benefit from the presence of land crossings between Egypt and Sudan, to allow the access of Egyptian products to the markets of COMESA countries. He said that Sudan is "the main gateway to this huge market," which includes 19 African countries. The minister said that he had received great understanding from his Sudanese counterpart Musa Karama, as well as all Sudanese government officials, to resolve the challenges that hindered the growth of trade. Nassar and Karama also signed a memorandum of understanding between the Egyptian Export Development Authority and the Sudanese Trade Authority to promote joint cooperation and establish a strategic partnership in the fields of exchanging experiences and trade information. Nassar said that the agreement will last for two years and aims at a regular exchange of trade information to support businessmen and small and medium-sized enterprises. According to the agreement, the two sides will encourage private sector companies to participate in trade fairs and conferences related to trade and business which are held in either country. He added that the agreement includes enhancing cooperation in organising commercial weeks for promising national products in both countries, as well as providing support to visiting trade delegations from the two countries. Search Keywords: Short link: This years World Economic Forum Global Competitiveness Report points to deficiencies in Egypts education and healthcare systems, while praising the countrys market size Egypt is the 94th most-competitive nation out of the 140 countries ranked in the 2018 edition of the Global Competitiveness Report published by the World Economic Forum. The countrys ranking averaged 93.5 from 2007 until 2018, and it scored its highest point in 2015 ranking 119. The Egyptian Centre for Economic Studies (ECES), a think tank, discussed the results of this years report this week at an expert event in Cairo. It said the report shed light on factors needed for productivity in the Fourth Industrial Revolution and provided tools for assessing these. Concerning the methodology by which countries were measured, new pillars and sub-pillars had been added to the 2018 report, it said, making a total of 12. These pillars include institutions, infrastructure, information technology (ICT) adoption, macroeconomic stability, product markets, labour markets, the financial system, market size, business dynamism and innovation capability. The four most-competitive nations in the world today are the US, which got the highest score (85.6 points), Singapore, in second place (83.5 points), Germany, in third (82.8 points) and Switzerland in fourth place (82.6 points). Egypts best performance was in the market size category, where it scored 72.8 out of 100 points, making it 24th among 140 countries. This year Egypt also scored highly in the pillar of infrastructure, with total points coming in at 70.5. Other sub-pillars favouring Egypt included road connectivity, airport connectivity, efficiency of air-transport services, and efficiency of seaport services. However, Egypt registered weak points in railroad density and the efficiency of train services. Egypts poor performance was obvious in the innovation capability pillar, with a score of 37.7, ranking 64th out of 140 countries, while Germany was the best performer. Weakness in sub-pillars such as patent applications per million of population, R&D expenditure, and quality of research institutions highlighted Egypts need to strengthen these sectors. Egypt scored 46.4 in the labour market pillar, due to low female participation in the labour force, inactive labour policies, and difficulties in the ease of hiring foreign labour. It ranked 130th among 140 countries, while the US was the best performer in this domain. For ICT adoption, Egypt ranked 100. It has high mobile-cellular telephone subscribers per 100 of population, but a very low rate of fixed-broadband Internet subscriptions, the report said. South Korea scored best in this area. Egypt had also retreated in the education and health sub-pillars, according to the report. According to Hossam Badrawi of the ECES, there was the political will to develop education, but civil society needed to participate in the process and there should be a strategy for the development of the sector, not just presentations and promises. At the same time as the report was launched, the ECES also launched its research report Your Directory to Industrial Investment in Egypt directed at businessmen, embassies and company heads who want more information about business in Egypt and about each governorate. The directory is divided into four parts, with special sections for the urban governorates, Lower Egypt governorates, Upper Egypt governorates and border governorates. It also includes information about start-up procedures in Egypt, utilities and energy prices, investment rules, tax structure, customs regulations, trade agreements and information concerning foreign labour and factory equipment. * The writer is a freelance journalist. * A version of this article appears in print in the 25 October, 2018 edition of Al-Ahram Weekly under the headline: More competitiveness needed Search Keywords: Short link: He received the Stella al Merito sociale 2018 award for his social giving Prominent businessman Mohamed Abul-Enein received Italys most prestigious social giving award 2018 Businessman Mohamed Abou El-Enein has received the Stella al Merito sociale 2018 award from Italys Culture and Solidarity Foundation, one of the largest social organisations in Italy, on Tuesday. The ceremony was attended by vice chairman of Cleopatra Group Tarek Abou El-Enein, Sada Al-Balad anchor Ahmed Moussa, and Egypt's consul-general in Milan Ehab Abu-Seriaa. Prominent businessman Mohamed Abou El-Enein won Italys social giving award 2018 for his social role in supporting and promoting the values of culture, solidarity, co-existence and cooperation among peoples and his support for friendship between the Egyptians and Italians,Abu-Seriaa said. The ceremony also honoured archaeologist Zahi Hawass, who won the Antiquities Award for his archaeological discoveries. Abou El-Enein was awarded the award due to his outstanding social role in supporting cooperation among the peoples of the world, and promoting friendship between Egypt and Italy, according to a statement by the organisation. His charitable institution has played a role in alleviating the social consequences of some major disasters such as the reconstructing of two villages after being subjected to floods, offering aid to the victims of 1992 Cairo earthquake, and a rock fall accident in El-Dowaiqa. He is also the honorary speaker of the Euro-Mediterranean Parliamentary Assembly. Search Keywords: Short link: Acting Director of the US Trade and Development Agency Thomas Hardy has met several Egyptian ministers, including Petroleum Minister Tarek El-Molla, to discuss the agencys support for US commercial engagement in Egypts infrastructure development. During the visit, Hardy signed a grant with Egyptian energy and electric cable corporation El Sewedy Electric to evaluate the technical, regulatory and financial viability of a waste lube oil collection and re-refining network in Egypt, the US embassy posted on its website. We are pleased to support this important project that will advance Egypts energy development goals, Hardy said in a statement. Todays grant is an excellent example of the types of projects that USTDA supports, one with a strongly committed Egyptian partner who seeks the best of U.S. technology in achieving its objectives. Hardy also met with leaders and members of the American Chamber of Commerce in Egypt to explore areas of collaboration between US and Egyptian businesses. The US Trade and Development Agency helps companies export US goods and services for priority development projects in emerging economies. USTDAs past successes in Egypt include a vessel traffic management system in the Suez Canal and various petrochemicals plants. Search Keywords: Short link: The Turkish regime has been attempting to capitalise on the death of Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi to gather acceptance for Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogans own tyrannical rule The horrific killing of Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi in the Saudi consulate in Istanbul in Turkey has sparked an unprecedented wave of condemnation of Saudi Arabia and its security apparatus. The latter has caused a major upheaval in Saudi Arabias international relations and one that it will take years to rectify. Even with Saudi King Salman announcing measures to investigate the incident on 20 October when Khashoggi was killed, the damage has already been done. This Saudi intelligence blunder and the international scandal that has resulted from it have been turned into a victory for the Turkish and Qatari regimes. These countries media have managed to control the narrative of the story and impose an international siege on the Saudi media, which was forced onto the defensive early in the crisis. The Saudi denials of involvement in Khashoggis disappearance, and the latter admission that he had been killed, were not accompanied by proof that the Saudi security services in Turkey had not killed Khashoggi. The result was that the Turks started to release one press statement after another detailing what they said had been a gruesome murder to the shocked international media. Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan attempted to become a champion of human rights and the freedom of expression even as his media were condemning the Saudis for the lack of these things. At the same time, the Qataris were pouring fuel on the fire internationally and managing to capture the attention of the worlds media, especially since Khashoggi had been a US resident since 2017. Qatar has been seeking revenge on the Saudis for their regional boycott of the Qatari state for its role in financing terrorist groups and even in supporting regime change in many countries in the region, including Saudi Arabia. The Qatari AlJazeera TV network is known for its support for jihadist movements, and it airs programmes in which guests openly declare their allegiance to groups such as the Islamic State (IS). It has been losing credibility since the Arab Spring revolutions owing to its support for Muslim Brotherhood terrorists across the region. Unfortunately, Khashoggis death has brought AlJazeera back onto the media scene, since it has coordinated with Turkey to keep it abreast of developments. The result has been a media victory for the Islamist regimes in Turkey and Qatar over Saudi Arabia, whose diplomatic efforts to contain the situation and the media response have been inconsistent and have served the Turkish and Qatari goal of blackmailing Saudi Arabia and smearing Saudi Crown Prince Mohamed Bin Salman. However, such tactics by Erdogan to divert attention from his own regimes crimes throughout the region cannot overshadow facts on the ground regarding freedom of speech and human rights in Turkey, especially regarding the Turkish treatment of journalists and the media. According to the Swedish NGO the Stockholm Centre for Freedom, 68 journalists have been convicted, 168 arrested, and 148 are still wanted in Turkey on various trumped-up charges. These figures do not include the unexplained deaths of journalists such as the Americans Serena Shim and Rohas Aktas in 2014 and 2016, respectively. Erdogan also ordered the shutting down of 16 television channels, 45 daily newspapers, 15 magazines, 23 radio stations and 29 publishing houses in Turkey as part of the purge that followed the failed coup detat in the country in July 2016. These numbers make Turkey the worst country on earth in which to practise journalism, and unfortunately they have been widely overlooked during the international coverage of the Khashoggi case. Moreover, during the Turkish regimes diplomatic assault on the Saudi authorities it revealed that it had been wiretapping diplomatic missions in Turkey, among them the Saudi consulate in Istanbul. Many have taken such espionage for granted, but it represents a huge breach of diplomatic protocol at the highest level, and the Turkish authorities may live to regret this admission because various countries will now take drastic security precautions to protect their diplomatic missions. They may even order the withdrawal of personnel if bugs are found in their embassies or consulates in Turkey. With the Turkish economy in turmoil, many political analysts had been predicting that Erdogan would attempt some wild move to divert attention from the domestic issues that have been piling up over recent months. Accordingly, the Turkish regime will attempt to capitalise to the maximum on the death of Khashoggi in an attempt to gather international acceptance after the years of isolation resulting from Erdogans tyrannical rule. However, it is unclear how far the Turks will be able to use this incident for these ends, and Erdogan might attempt another adventure in the form of a new Turkish military incursion abroad, perhaps in Iraq or Syria or even Cyprus, in order to shift the pressure from the domestic opposition to his rule. Unfortunately, the Saudis have given the Turks and the Qataris an unexpected gift that may help them whitewash the crimes they have committed over the past decade. These two terrorist-supporting regimes will now push for regime change in Saudi Arabia, hoping to see a new government in Riyadh that will mend relations with them over their support for the Muslim Brotherhood and other terrorist outfits. However, it is unlikely that King Salman will yield to such pressure, given these countries hostile stance towards the kingdom. The Qataris have now deepened the rift between them and the Saudis to such an extent that negotiations between the two countries seem nearly impossible as long as the current regimes in Riyadh and Doha stay in place. The Turkish and Qatari regimes should not be allowed to boast of a diplomatic victory over Saudi Arabia because of the killing of Khashoggi. Instead, they should be exposed to the world as prime supporters of terrorism and assassinations in the region. It should be remembered that when the Turkish, Qatari and Iranian regimes preach about human rights it is because they are planning dubious actions of their own. Regimes that have been involved in mass murders, assassinations, bombings, and the training and harbouring of terrorists can never be seen as the defenders of human rights. * The writer is a political analyst and author of Egypts Arab Spring and the Winding Road to Democracy. * A version of this article appears in print in the 25 October, 2018 edition of Al-Ahram Weekly under the headline: Erdogans media game Search Keywords: Short link: Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images(WASHINGTON) -- President Donald Trump unveiled a new "American patients first" strategy that accuses drug manufacturers of charging more for prescription medications in the United States than other countries with similar economic advantages. "We are taking aim at the global freeloading that forces American consumers to subsidize lower prices in foreign countries through higher prices in our country," Trump said during a speech at the Department of Health and Human Services. "I have seen it for years and never understood. Same company, same box, same pill, made in the same location, and you will go to some countries and it will be 20 percent [of the cost of drugs in the United States] because of what we pay and in some cases, much less than that. I say why is this?" Under the new plan, Trump said the Department of Health and Human Services would allow Medicare to determine the price it pays for certain drugs based on cheaper prices paid by other nations. "For decades, other countries have rigged the system so that American patients will be charged much more and in some cases, much more, for the exact same drug," Trump continued. "In other words, Americans pay more so other countries can pay less, very simple. That is exactly what it is. It is wrong, it is unfair, it is not surprising." Trump added that doctors would be paid "a flat rate" regardless of the cost of medications that they prescribe in order to counter doctors he says who prescribe more expensive medications so they can earn a higher commission. "I think this will be good in terms of the pricing of the drug - fantastic for that," Trump said. "It will also be much better for patients. It very well may be better for doctors." While Democrats have hammered Trump over the past week saying that his administration is working to undermine protections in the Affordable Care Act for Americans with pre-existing conditions, Trump promised he "will always protect Americans with pre-existing conditions." "Always," Trump emphasized. "In every action we take, we are putting America first. This is very much about putting America first." The push comes less than two weeks ahead of the midterm elections in which Democrats are striving to flip the House, Senate and several governor seats. Such a scenario could fundamentally change the nation's political approach to health care, making it much more likely that additional states would move to expand Medicaid coverage for low-income Americans and push back on efforts by administration efforts to relax regulatory standards. In response, Trump in recent days has hammered away with what he acknowledges is a "nationalist" message, deriding "globalists" he says force America to "play second fiddle." Health and Human Services Secretary Alex Azar tweeted early Thursday that Trump "wants to end global freeloading" and the administration's new policy aims to address the high cost of prescription drugs "and our work to put American patients first." Azar, a former executive at the pharmaceutical giant Eli Lilly, said his agency compared prices for the most costly drugs covered by Medicare insurance that are administered by physicians. The analysis found that Medicare pays nearly twice as much as it would for the same or similar drugs in other countries. "Medicare was found to be paying the highest price for 19 out of the 27 drugs studied compared to these other countries," Azar tweeted. "There was only a single case in which the U.S. was paying lower than the international average." "We can and must do better," he later added. Azar released his analysis, which noted there was "no clear pattern as to which countries were consistently paying lower prices." As details of the policy emerged, the pharmaceutical industry has expressed some concerns. We have serious concerns with any changes to Medicare Part B that threaten patient access to lifesaving medicines, undermine physician care quality or discourage continued medical progress," Holly Campbell, a spokeswoman for the Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America, a trade association known as "PhRMA. "More information is needed on the Administrations proposals, but policies that impose foreign government price controls in the U.S. health care system, reduce physician reimbursement for Part B medicines or insert middlemen between patients and their doctors could limit access to medicines and severely alter the market-based Part B program. Copyright 2018, ABC Radio. All rights reserved. The US president has to confront that segment of the US public that makes up the core of his popularity base and which is now asking him to do what he cannot It would be wrong to assume that the crisis surrounding the murder of the Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi affects Saudi Arabia alone. The crisis, from the outset, has thrown US President Donald Trump into one of the most difficult dilemmas he has had to face since entering the White House. For the first time, he finds himself having to confront that segment of the US public that makes up the core of his popularity base and which is now asking him to do what he cannot. Trump, when he came to power, initiated a new mode of relations with Saudi Arabia, one based on publicised financial deals that have no strings attached in the form of the types of principles with which countries generally mask their national interests. Trump has appeared on TV telling Saudi Crown Prince Mohamed bin Salman, with his customary crudeness, how many millions of dollars the prince just spent on an arms deal, adding, thats peanuts to you. Just before the Khashoggi case erupted, Trump upped crude to vulgar when, in one of his televised speeches, he said that he had called up King Salman and said, we protect Saudi Arabia. Would you say theyre rich. And I love the king, King Salman. But I said King were protecting you you might not be there for two weeks without us you have to pay for your military. Soon afterwards, he said that the Saudis got trillions of dollars but we dont get what we should be getting from them in exchange for US protection without which who knows whats going to happen. If such remarks are stomach churning for their grotesqueness and a source of unprecedented levels of embarrassment for many Americans, themselves, what is alarming is that the US president has no idea of the truth about his countrys trade deals with Saudi Arabia. How can it be that Trump is unaware of the well-known fact that his country does not spend a penny on the Saudi military and that the reverse is actually the case? The weapons that the US sends to Saudi Arabia are paid for up front and in full. The US does not pay a single red cent for this. If Trump consulted US military ledgers, he would also know who paid the lions share of expenses for US forces in their war against Iraq. In other words, if there is a party that is footing the military bills for someone else, it is Saudi Arabia, not the US. To this we should add that Saudi Arabia, naturally, is not a recipient of US aid. It has never been a recipient of US aid in any form. But Trump decided that his countrys foreign relations should be based on a single principle: getting as much money out of others at the expense of facts and by means of lies. He imagines that this will boost his popularity among the general American public to whom his way of handling state affairs conjures up fond memories of cowboy ethics as portrayed by the old Westerns they were raised on. But Trump simultaneously speaks of Saudi Arabia, which he is extorting so blatantly, as a friend and close ally and, accordingly, he hastened to its defence. But this article is not about an alleged crime, per se, which subject we will leave to another article. What concerns us here is how this crisis has turned into an inextricable dilemma for Trump. At the beginning of this crisis, Trump asserted that the Saudi regime had nothing to do with it. King Salman told him personally that he knew nothing about the incident, which did not occur in Saudi Arabia but in Istanbul. But Trump began to face increasing pressure from Congress, businessmen and the press. Congress wanted him to invoke the Magnitsky Act which calls on the US government to sanction human rights offenders, while a growing chorus of cries demanded a halt in US weapons sales to Riyadh. As one watched this concerted mobilisation of public opinion in the US, one could not help but to wonder, what about those hundreds of cases of deliberate murder and mutilation of Palestinians systematically perpetrated by Israel? True, none of those victims wrote for The Washington Post, like Jamal Khashoggi, but they were innocent civilians defending their freedom and national rights, just as Khashoggi advocated the rights of his fellow citizens. Trump resisted all pressures and, once again, defended that arms deal with Saudi Arabia. Pushing back against demands to cancel weapon sales to Saudi Arabia, he said that such a decision would be difficult to accept. Last week, he said, I dont like stopping massive amounts of money thats being poured into our country. They are spending $110 billion on military equipment and on things that create jobs for this country. Interestingly, in an article appearing on the front page of The New York Times, Jonathan D Caverley held that, in fact, the arms deals Trump concluded with Saudi Arabia were worth only around $20 billion and that this was only a small proportion of US arms exports. He also said that these exports do not create that many job opportunities for Americans. He cited, as an example, Lockheed Martins recent $6 billion helicopter sale to Riyadh which, according to the company, would support only 450 jobs. Trump dispatched his Secretary of State Mike Pompeo to Saudi Arabia in an attempt to stave off pressures to impose sanctions on his close ally. Upon his return from Riyadh, Pompeo asked for a few days more time. Will Trump, in the meantime, be able to hold on to that base, long accustomed to his impulsiveness and, indeed, recklessness, but which he is now asking to be patient and prudent? * A version of this article appears in print in the 25 October, 2018 edition of Al-Ahram Weekly under the headline: Trump in a corner Search Keywords: Short link: Until now, Israel struggles to acknowledge the extent to which it was out-smarted and out-manoeuvred by Egypt in October 1973 The October 1973 War went down in history as the first Egyptian military victory over the Israeli entity. Its documented events were the product of an Egyptian military undertaking that enthralled the world. The excellence of Egyptian commanders was evidenced at every phase, from preparation for the war to its unconventional and, indeed, unparallelled execution. It is little wonder that it is studied in most international military academies, particularly in light of the element of surprise that caught the enemy off guard and stunned the governments that supported it at the time and continue to do so today. In tandem with the phases that preceded the war, another fierce battle unfolded invisibly. Its instruments were the hostile intelligence agencies, most notably Mossad, which were trying to learn the true intentions of the Egyptian political leadership concerning a war to liberate Sinai. History has also recorded the valiant saga of Egyptian General Intelligence which stood like an impenetrable wall between Mossad and its intelligence-gathering ends, to which testify the numbers of spies that fell into the grip of that agency during this period (among the most notorious cases were those of Heba Selim and Farouk Abdel-Hamid Al-Fiqi). Egyptian political and military leaders were fully conscious of Israels qualitative and quantitative superiority in weapons and materiel and of the fact that Israel was supported by the strongest military and political power in the world at the time, the United States. These leaders were, therefore, aware of the need to maintain the tightest secrecy as they planned and prepared for the war. It was clear to them, from the outset, that the element of surprise would be extremely critical to offsetting Israels military superiority. So, in 1971, they set to work planning and executing a comprehensive system of strategic, tactical and mobilisational camouflage. This camouflage system was carried out at all levels, starting with the president, in his capacity as supreme commander of the armed forces, and proceeding down through the ranks of commanders, officers and soldiers. It also required exhaustive efforts on the part of Egyptian Intelligence to prevent, as much as possible, the Israeli enemys espionage apparatus from accessing information that might reveal how earnest the Egyptian leadership was in its declared intent to launch an immanent war against Israel. Egypts faithful son, Ashaf Marawan, had a central role to play in the symphony of subterfuge that was masterfully conducted by president Anwar Al-Sadat. The landmark achievements and repercussions of this war made it the greatest Egyptian military history since the Egyptian commander Ahmose routed and drove out the Hyksos. The war had a staggering impact on Israel, politically, militarily and, indeed, psychologically. Widespread and intense debate, controversy and fault-finding erupted in Israeli society. Senior political, military and intelligence figures accused one another of negligence, laxness, imprudence and poor judgement. They had all fallen into the ingenious trap laid for them by the Egyptian political leadership which had orchestrated and carried out the diverse forms of strategic, mobilisational and tactical deception from the second half of 1971 to the end of the October War in 1973. It was the element of surprise and initiative that made it possible for all Egyptian combat formations to cross over to the eastern bank of the Suez Canal in record time. Against this backdrop, the recently released Israeli film The Angel was clearly an attempt to raise the morale of the Israeli people, especially the younger generations who had not experienced that period in history. It was also a desperate attempt to undermine the Egyptian peoples faith in their armed and intelligence forces, and these forces ability to win the war. The film tries to create the impression that Israeli political, military and intelligence leaders had not fallen into the trap of the grand ruse devised by Egyptian strategists and planners to enable the Egyptian army to take the Israeli armed forces by surprise. But it is impossible to deny the Israeli military debacle that would, within a couple of months, set into motion the Agranat Commission and its inquiry into the failures of Israeli intelligence agencies such as Mossad and the Military Intelligence Directorate (Aman). * A version of this article appears in print in the 25 October, 2018 edition of Al-Ahram Weekly under the headline: Remembering the October ruse Search Keywords: Short link: 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 Tabletop exercises simulate a security and humanitarian emergency on a fictitious island in the Melaka Strait. /CGTN Photo Two armored vehicles escorting a car and carrying a VIP passenger came under attack. Soldiers leaped out and returned fire while their colleagues hustled the VIP to the safety of another vehicle before speeding off. Thankfully, this was just a demonstration by China's People's Liberation Army for a group of real VIPs looking on, senior military officials from host country Malaysia, China and Thailand. The three countries are taking part in the Aman Youyi military exercises, "Peace" in the Malay language and "Friendship" in Chinese. Close to 700 military personnel from China, 600 from Malaysia and 54 from Thailand participated. China has also sent a frigate and a destroyer to take part in bilateral naval exercises with Malaysia in the Melaka Strait later in the week. Troops demonstrated hand-to-hand combat. /CGTN Photo At the official opening ceremony, Malaysia's joint forces chief expressed his hopes for the exercises. "It will provide a good opportunity for all of us to exchange ideas and experiences so that we would be able to plan and conduct future exercises for the betterment of our nations' defense forces in operations such as humanitarian assistance and disaster relief operations, maritime security and counter-terrorism," Vice-Admiral Syed Zahiruddin Syed Osman said. It wasn't certain these exercises would go ahead after Malaysia's change of government in May, one military official told CGTN. Under the previous government of Prime Minister Najib Razak, strategic and military cooperation between Malaysia and China reached new heights. The two countries held major disaster relief exercises in 2014 and their first-ever bilateral military exercises the following year. Now there's a new prime minister at the helm in Mahathir Mohamad so it's understandable that there would be questions about the direction the strategic relationship would take. But during his previous incarnation as prime minister, Mahathir walked a firmly non-aligned path, aiming to stay on good terms with all the major powers, and that seems set to continue. Malaysia also conducted regular military exercises with Western countries and has close, if not very highly publicized, military cooperation with the US too. "Let's join hands to raise trilateral military cooperation to a new level and contribute to a deepening of the comprehensive strategic partnership," said Lieutenant General Ma Yiming, Deputy Chief of China's joint staff Central Military Commission. While China demonstrated its expertise in VIP escorts and extraction, Malaysian forces shared their in-depth skills in jungle survival techniques including how to quickly build animal traps, start fires and build shelters. The three countries also put on demonstrations of their sharpshooting abilities, with China's snipers in heavy physical camouflage that made them look like human foliage. The countries' forces have also been showing each other their respective martial arts, and hand-to-hand combat techniques as well as taking part in small arms drills. At the training center in the coastal town of Port Dickson, extensive table-top exercises are also taking place. The three countries are simulating having to deal with a humanitarian and security crisis due to political and economic upheaval in a fictitious island in the Melaka Strait. "In the coming days as the exercise proceeds, I believe that all the participating troops will do their job well with great enthusiasm, excellent professional skills, and close coordination and collaboration," said China's Lt. Gen. Ma. And that's the ultimate goal of exercises like these: not just to build skills, but to build linkages and bonds between the respective military forces to better team up when faced with real-life peacekeeping, humanitarian or disaster relief missions. General Wei Fenghe, Chinese State Councilor and Defense Minister, meets with Leandro Bacale, Minister of National Defense of Equatorial Guinea, in Beijing on Thursday. Leandro Bacale is here to attend the 8th Beijing Xiangshan Forum. (Photo by Mu Ruilin) By Yin Hang, Shao Longfei BEIJING, Oct. 26 (ChinaMil) -- General Wei Fenghe, Chinese State Councilor and Defense Minister, met with defense ministers attending the 8th Beijing Xiangshan Forum on Thursday. These include Leandro Bacale, Minister for National Defense in Equatorial Guinea, Atanasio M'tumuke, National Defense Minister of Mozambique, Aleksandar Vulin, National Defense Minister of Serbia, Vladimir Padrino, National Defense Minister of Venezuela and Oswaldo Jarrin, Minister of National Defense of Ecuador. The defense ministers of various countries expressed their congratulations on the successful convening of the 8th Beijing Xiangshan Forum and said that the forum is an important platform for multilateral security dialogue and will play an active role in enhancing mutual trust and strengthening cooperation. During his meeting with Leandro Bacale, Minister for National Defense in Equatorial Guinea, General Wei Fenghe said that the friendship between the two peoples has a long history, and that the friendly cooperation between the two countries and the two militaries is exemplary. Under the leadership and promotion of President Xi Jinping and President Teodoro Obiang Nguema Mbasogo, the two sides have established a comprehensive cooperative partnership of equality, mutual trust, cooperation and mutual benefit. China attaches great importance to the development of cooperative relations with the Equatorial Guinea military in various fields. Wei hopes that the two sides can work together to continuously improve the relationship between the two militaries. Bacale said that Equatorial Guinea deeply agrees with a series of ideas proposed by Chinese President Xi Jinping such as the community of shared future for mankind. Equatorial Guinea and China have many common interests and broad prospects for cooperation. Bacale hopes that the cooperation between the two militaries in various fields will continue to move forward and never stagnate, so that both sides can jointly safeguard regional peace and stability. During his meeting with Atanasio M'tumuke, National Defense Minister of Mozambique, General Wei Fenghe said that China and Mozambique are good friends, good partners and good brothers. In 2016, President Xi Jinping and President Filipe Nyusi upgraded the China-Mozambique relations to a comprehensive strategic partnership. The two heads of state met again during the 2018 Beijing Summit of the Forum on China-Africa Cooperation and reached a new important consensus not long ago. The Chinese side appreciates and thanks Mozambique for its adherence to the one-China Policy and its unwavering support for Chinas core interests and major concerns. China will continue to adhere to the principles of sincerity, practical results, affinity and good faith, adopt the right approach to justice and interests, and earnestly implement the consensus reached by the two heads of state. China will continue to deepen mutual trust, exchanges and pragmatic cooperation with Mozambiques armed forces, and promote continuous and in-depth development of the relations between the two militaries, said General Wei. Mtumuke said that Mozambique thanks the Chinese side for its assistance to Mozambiques economy and national defense construction over the years. Mtumuke hopes that the two sides will further strengthen cooperation in maritime safety and personnel training, jointly promote the construction of the Belt and Road Initiative and promote the development of relations between the two countries and the two militaries. During his meeting with Aleksandar Vulin, National Defense Minister of Serbia, General Wei Fenghe said that President Xi Jinping met with President Aleksandar Vucic in the middle of last month, and conducted in-depth exchanges on deepening cooperation in various fields between the two sides. The meeting pointed out the direction for the development of China-Serbia comprehensive strategic partnership in the future. The relations between the two armed forces have maintained a good momentum of development. The high-level exchanges between the two sides are close, and the cooperation in military medical service and other fields are very fruitful. The Chinese side has a positive attitude toward deepening cooperation between the two militaries. China is willing to work with the Serbian side to implement the consensus reached by the two heads of state and continuously deepen exchanges and cooperation between the two militaries, said Wei. Vulin said that he is honored to deliver a speech at the Xiangshan Forum. China upholds the principle of equal treatment of all countries and is a staunch force in maintaining the international order. The leaders of the two countries are highly consistent in terms of concepts such as peace and development. The Serbian side looks forward to working with China to promote the in-depth development of exchanges and cooperation between the two militaries in medical service and international peacekeeping, and jointly safeguard regional and world peace and stability, said Vulin. During his meeting with Vladimir Padrino, National Defense Minister of Venezuela, General Wei Fenghe said that the two leaders of China and Venezuela have met many times in recent years. The political mutual trust between the two sides has continuously deepened, the pragmatic cooperation in various fields has yielded fruitful results and the two sides have maintained good communication and coordination in international and regional affairs. The Chinese military is willing to work with Venezuela to conscientiously implement the important consensus reached by the two heads of state, strengthen mutual visits between the defense departments and military leaders, deepen exchanges and cooperation in various fields, and strive to build a bilateral relationship that is compatible with the comprehensive strategic partnership between the two countries, said Wei. Padrino said that Venezuela attaches great importance to the development of the relationship between the two countries and is grateful for Chinas long-term and valuable support. Venezuela is willing to work with China to strengthen cooperation between the two militaries in the field of delegation exchanges and personnel training, and promote the continuous development of bilateral military relations. During his meeting with Oswaldo Jarrin, Minister of National Defense of Ecuador, General Wei Fenghe said that the bilateral relations between China and Ecuador have made great progress and maintained a good momentum of development in recent years. The two heads of state jointly upgraded bilateral relations to a comprehensive strategic partnership in 2016. In the spirit of equality and mutual benefit, China is willing to broaden the channels for pragmatic cooperation between the two armed forces, further strengthen high-level military exchanges, deepen exchanges in professional fields, expand personnel training and cooperation, and make positive contributions to the development of comprehensive strategic partnership between the two countries, said Wei. Jarrin said that the cooperation between the two militaries has developed smoothly in recent years. The Ecuadorian armed forces thank China for its help and support over the years. Ecuador is willing to work with China to continuously deepen cooperation between the two militaries at all levels in various fields and promote the continuous development of relations between the two countries and the two militaries. Chinese President Xi Jinping, also general secretary of the Communist Party of China Central Committee and chairman of the Central Military Commission, shakes hands with military officers as he inspects the Southern Theater Command of the People's Liberation Army, Oct. 25, 2018. (Xinhua/Li Gang) GUANGZHOU, Oct. 26 (Xinhua) -- President Xi Jinping on Thursday inspected the Southern Theater Command of the People's Liberation Army (PLA) and stressed advancing capacity-building for commanding. Xi, also general secretary of the Communist Party of China Central Committee and chairman of the Central Military Commission, ordered a thorough implementation of the Party's thought on building a strong military in the new era. He stressed the need to focus on combat research and commanding, to advance work in all areas and accelerate developing strong and efficient joint-operation commanding institutions for theater commands to comprehensively boost the military's battle-winning ability. At about 9:15 a.m., Xi visited a command post to learn about the joint-operation commanding system for theater commands. He commended the progress on capacity-building for joint-operation commanding, encouraged officers to uphold the spirit of reform and innovation, and keep on practicing and experimenting. Xi had a video-conversation with field commanders on the coastal border and was pleased to learn the work of the troop is advancing steadily, with officers and soldiers in good morale. He ordered the troop to keep a close watch for changes in the situations and to strengthen analysis to firmly protect border stability and safety of the people's life and property. Xi then visited the theater command's headquarters. After hearing a report on their work, he underlined the importance of preparing for war and combat, while taking consideration of various complex situations, improving response plans and focusing on real-combat training. Xi instructed theater commands to accelerate capacity-building for commanding and improve their commanding and operation systems to ensure smooth and efficient command. Research on issues concerning war and combat should be encouraged to enhance the military's ability to win modern wars, he said. Xi stressed that Party committees of theater commands must uphold the Party's absolute leadership over the military, arm officers and soldiers with the Thought on Socialism with Chinese Characteristics for a New Era and the Party's thought on building a strong military, and consolidate the ideological foundation of absolutely obeying the Party's command. The opening ceremony of the ASEAN-China Maritime Exercise-2018 is held in Zhanjiang on Oct 22, 2018. [Photo/81.cn] Chinese and ASEAN navies wrapped up drills at sea in their first joint maritime exercise on Friday. The eight-ship fleet exercised in formation of single and double columns, and in communication in waters east of Zhanjiang in ASEAN-China Maritime Exercise-2018. They also conducted joint search and rescue of "victims" from water, helicopter cross-deck landing and replenishment maneuvering. Chinese and ASEAN navies exhibited excellent professional standard and conducted close coordination to achieve the goal as expected, said Peng Guliang, Chinese commander at the joint command at sea in the exercise. The Code for Unplanned Encounters at Sea (CUES) was applied during the entire exercise, with the participating vessels communicating, coordinating and acting within the framework of the rule in high efficiency, enhancing the understanding and application of CUES by all parties, he said. A joint command at sea was established, consisting of officers from multiple countries and jointly charged by commanders from China and Singapore. It fully embodied the boosted mutual trust among Chinese and ASEAN navies, Peng said. Different ships took turns in commanding the six events of the exercise. "Rotating the command of different serials is a common practice in all multilateral exercise. This is an opportunity when participating navies are taking charge of different serials and we can learn from each other," said Aaron Li Jun Hong, commanding officer of Stalwart of Singapore. "I think all participating navies from ASEAN and China have exhibited high level of professionalism for this exercise. The PLA Navy has been a very good host to ASEAN navies and facilitated us well for the conduct of our exercise," he said. Joint search-and-rescue exercise is deemed by all parties involved as important in plan meetings for the exercise because humanitarian rescue is important for vessels of all nationalities sailing in South China Sea, said Liang Zhijia, a Chinese Navy officer. Eight ships, three helicopters, five observers and more than 1,200 personnel from China and all 10 ASEAN countries have been participating in the exchanges on shore and the exercise scheduled between October 22 and 28. The exercise exhibited the will and determination of both China and ASEAN to safeguard the peace and stability in South China Sea through cooperation, and will help better attain the goal, said Zhang Junshe, a senior researcher at the PLA Navy Military Studies Research Institute. The Japanese government is furious at a Korean court ordering Mitsubishi Heavy Industries to compensate Korean workers who were forced to labor for the company during the Japanese occupation from 1910 to 1945. Japan's business lobby Keidanren is also preparing a statement warning the decision by the Gwangju District Court would have a "negative impact" on bilateral relations. The Japanese Foreign Ministry posted a statement on its website on Monday insisting that all Japans obligations for colonial atrocities were settled in a lump sum payment under a 1965 treaty that normalized Seoul-Tokyo relations. But the statement also contains a ruling by Korea's Supreme Court on forced labor stipulating that individual compensation claims for human rights abuses committed by Japan should be treated separately from the 1965 treaty, which was agreed between states rather than individuals. The Japanese Foreign Ministry in a report to the ruling Liberal Democratic Party on Monday claims that the Gwangju court ruling could rattle the "foundation" of Seoul-Tokyo relations. It also warns that the ruling "raises awareness" of Korean women who were forced into sexual slavery by the Japanese military during World War II, while encouraging a movement to set up memorials for those women in the U.S., which the rightwing Abe administration is eager to suppress. The report then leaps to Korean rebuffs to Japan's spurious colonial claim to Korea's Dokdo islets and attempts to establish use of the term "East Sea" for the body of water between the two countries. The Japanese government is also upset at President Park Geun-hye's comments during a recent interview. Speaking to the BBC ahead of a visit to Europe, Park said talks with Tokyo would be pointless if Japan does not change its stance on issues she said have not been properly resolved and stressed that Japan must apologize for war-time "wrongdoings." Japanese Foreign Minister Fumio Kishida told reporters that the comments are "extremely regretful" and vowed to continue efforts to explain Japan's position. Deputy Chief Cabinet Secretary Katsunobu Kato also expressed "regret" over Park's comments, but reiterated Abe still wants to meet her. Meanwhile, Keidanren and other business lobbies plan to protest against the court decision, Japan's Nihon Keizai Shimbun reported. "We are ready, and we are capable to meet any possible security threat coming to our NATO borders," he said. "Nobody's willing to mess with an alliance that has so much potential, so much capability." NATO's Command Senior Enlisted Leader for Allied Command Operations, Command Sgt. Maj. Davor Petek, told VOA in an exclusive interview that the large-scaled defensive games send a "very simple message." The massive exercise takes place in and around Norway and involves about 65 ships, 250 aircraft and 10,000 vehicles. About 50,000 NATO personnel from 31 NATO and partner countries are springing to action Thursday at the start of the alliance's Trident Juncture exercise, its largest drills since the end of the Cold War. Russia Invited NATO said the drills are not an act of aggression, and the exercise's commander said the alliance has invited Russia to observe. "I'm happy that we have observers because they're going to see that we're very good at what we do. And that will have a deterrent effect on anybody who wants to cross those borders, but one nation in particular," U.S. Navy Adm. James Foggo, commander of U.S. Naval Forces Europe and NATOs Allied Joint Force Command Naples, told reporters at the Pentagon earlier this month. The exercise comes with Russia and the West still bitterly divided over Russia's illegal annexation of Ukraine's Crimea peninsula, with some NATO countries worried Moscow may try to encroach on their sovereign land. NATO Funding It also comes as U.S. President Donald Trump has slammed NATO for benefiting Europe more than the United States. NATO members have committed to spend at least 2 percent of their GDP on defense by 2024, but just nine of the military alliance's 29 members are expected to reach or surpass that amount this year. Petek told VOA Trident Juncture helps display NATO's readiness and its commitment to stick together. "It's just an alliance that's been there for a long, long time -- over 70 years -- but I'd say it was never probably as active and determined as it is right now in this point of time," he said. Trident Juncture is expected to run through Nov. 7. After taking the oath of office Thursday, Sahle-Work said she sees a vital role for women in tackling society's biggest challenges, in Ethiopia and beyond. "If the reforms we have started are led in equal measure by both men and women, the country will soon forget poverty and backwardness and move toward prosperity," she said. But stark gender disparities in the country persist, and it's not yet clear how improved representation in the federal government will affect the status of Ethiopia's more than 50 million women and girls. And women now hold 37 percent of Ethiopia's parliamentary seats, almost twice the ratio of women in the U.S. Congress. Never before have Ethiopian women held so many high-ranking government positions. Sahle-Work's appointment Thursday follows a Cabinet reorganization by Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed that resulted in women getting 50 percent of the government's top ministerial positions. Ethiopian lawmakers have appointed the country's first female president, Sahle-Work Zewde. The position is ceremonial in Ethiopia. Nevertheless, the spokesman for Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed called the move "historic" and said it shows women will play key roles in Ethiopian politics. New Defense Minister: Moves Not Just Symbolic The women in Ethiopia's new Cabinet bring decades of government experience to their posts. Many have previously held lower-level ministerial positions, and most have advanced degrees in such fields as accounting, organizational leadership, law and gender studies. Ethiopia's new defense minister, Aisha Mohammed, is the first woman to hold that position. Born in Berhale, Afar, in northern Ethiopia, Aisha studied civil engineering and held managerial positions for several years before becoming the minister for construction, along with the minister of culture and tourism. She also earned a graduate degree in transformational leadership and change. Aisha rejected the idea the new appointments are merely symbolic or only substitutes for deeper reforms. "All women who are appointed to the minister position have both education and experience," she told VOA's Amharic service. "We are weighed the same way the men are weighed," she added. Gender Divide Despite recent political strides, women in Ethiopia face systemic inequities. In 2017, Ethiopia ranked 121 out of 160 countries on a UN gender equality index that considers various social, health and political factors. Discrepancies begin early and persist throughout many Ethiopian women's lives. Female genital mutilation rates remain high, with 74 percent of girls and women aged 15 to 49 years experiencing FGM, according to UNICEF. Child marriage is prevalent, with 58 percent of women marrying before they turn 18. Nearly twice as many men than women over age 25 have some secondary education. And 88 percent of men over 15 participate in the labor force, compared to 77 percent of women. Overall, gender inequalities appear to be narrowing, based on national surveys, but significant gaps remain. 'Half of Humanity' Sahle-Work started her career as a diplomat, serving as Ethiopia's ambassador to Senegal, Djibouti and France. She has worked most recently with the United Nations, where she became the special representative to the African Union and the head of the UN Office to the African Union in June, making her the first woman to hold that position. Speaking on International Women's Day in March, Sahle-Work addressed the role of women in fulfilling the U.N. mission to end poverty, hunger and other major problems, concerns she might now strive to address in her new role. "We cannot achieve the 17 sustainable development goals without the full participation of half of humanity," Sahle-Work said. "So today, gender equality and women empowerment is at the core -- should be at the core -- of our activities." The remains of two South Korean soldiers who were killed during the Korean War have been discovered in the demilitarized zone in Cheorwon, Gangwon Province. Demining operations are underway in the DMZ ahead of a joint-Korean excavation of remains of the war dead. But the Defense Ministry has already discovered the remains of the two soldiers there, which was the site of fierce battles during the war, a spokesman said Thursday. It also retrieved a dog tag showing the name Pak Je-kwon, an M1 bayonet and M1 bullets. South Korea sent some 100 tons of goods to North Korea this year that are prohibited under UN Security Council sanctions, including machinery, iron and steel products, electrical materials, and oil products. U.S. website NK News on Wednesday quoted customs data as showing that South Korea exported US$17 million of goods to North Korea and North Korea nearly $10 million worth of products to South Korea over the first nine months this year. Customs data also show that the Unification Ministry sent about 100 tons of banned goods worth W1 billion to North Korea (US$1=W1,138). They include iron and steel products, machinery including a reactor and boilers, copper, nickel, aluminum, and rolling stocks and their parts. It sent 82,918 kg of oil and diesel worth W103 million and generators worth W553 million in June and July. A ministry official said the goods were mainly shipped to North Korea to set up a cross-border liaison office in the North Korean border town of Kaesong and remodel or repair a meeting place for families separated by the Korean War. Inter-Korean trade volume sharply dropped from $1.2 billion in 2015 to $147 million in 2016 and less than $1 million in 2017. But at least on paper it increased to $27 million as of September this year. Vice Foreign Minister Cho Hyun met Thursday with his Japanese counterpart Takeo Akiba in Tokyo in a chilly meeting on Thursday and discussed a controversial 2015 agreement compensating Korean women who were forced into sexual slavery by the Japanese Imperial Army. Akiba expressed regret at Seoul's decision to shut down a foundation set up with 1 billion yen in Japanese money to compensate the women and insisted Seoul must faithfully abide by the agreement. The meeting came after President Moon Jae-in last month told Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe of his decision to close the foundation. Neither some of the victims nor the Korean public at large are happy about the agreement, which was concluded in murky circumstances by the Park Geun-hye administration and lets Tokyo off without admitting responsibility. The two officials also discussed the Korean Supreme Court's expected ruling on compensating Koreans laborers who were forced to work in Japanese factories during World War II. The court is to rule soon on a compensation suit filed by four victims against Nippon Steel. North Korea's economy will shrink five percent this year due to international sanctions, an expert said Thursday. Kim Byung-yeon at Seoul National University told Japan's Nihon Keizai Shimbun daily, "If the sanctions are thoroughly implemented, North Korea's exports this year will dive about 90 percent compared to 2016, exerting a huge impact on its domestic prices." Kim added, "The North has come to the dialogue table, as its elite class were unable to benefit from trade [due to the sanctions] and the economically distressed ordinary people failed to understand their country's nuclear development program." But he added that the North Korean regime will be able to hold out over the short term. Meanwhile, North Korea's official Rodong Sinmun daily slammed Australia's deployment of a navy frigate to monitor smuggling on the East China Sea, accusing the country of being a "pawn" of the U.S. "when many UN members call for easing or lifting the sanctions against us." The daily added that "sanctions or diplomatic pressure do not work" on North Korea. One researcher at a state-run think tank here said, "This paradoxically shows how much North Korea wants the sanctions to end." Cho Han-bum at the Korea Institute for National Unification said, "The U.S. is not yielding in terms of sanctions and Kim Jong-un is getting really nervous." 'Snack' packages help seniors pay power bills From:ChinaDaily | 2018-10-26 08:24 A product that allows buyers to pay electricity fees for seniors living in China's remote areas has sold very well among residents of Nanjing, Jiangsu province. The package, which resembles a snack and is sold at 10 Lawson convenience stores in Nanjing, has photos and brief introductions of the seniors. It also has a QR code for the buyers to pay the fees. They will pay at least 2 to 3 yuan ($0.29 to $0.43) toward the seniors' bills when they scan the code. Each package, with no real food inside, contains a piece of paper with a message. The message, written by an elderly person, includes feelings about life and other things they want to tell the public. More than 120 packages were sold on the first day at a convenience store in Central Emporium of the city's downtown Xinjiekou area, and 72 people paid fees. Mao Jiashu, a college student in Nanjing, had the idea of selling the fee packages when she visited the Inner Mongolia autonomous region earlier this year. "I noticed it was complicated for some seniors to pay their electricity bills, because they didn't know how to pay online. Sometimes the electricity was cut off because they could not walk the long distance to pay in time. Sometimes they simply didn't have enough money," she said. "As a college student who knows how to combine package design with online payment, I decided to do something to help the seniors and increase people's awareness of them." Mao and her friends contacted the convenience store management and secured their support. She put the photos of the seniors living in the Inner Mongolia autonomous region and other remote areas on the packages to draw attention. "I was worried that people might ignore the product," Mao said. "But it sold out the first day. I think what I did was meaningful, and I will continue to help those seniors who have trouble paying their bills." Many people were touched when they opened the packages and read the messages. A video from inside the convenience store showed a girl hugging her mother after she opened a package. The message she got read: "If you have someone by your side at this moment, please give him or her a hug for me. I no longer have a chance to hug." Another woman read the message in front of a camera: "The company you work for will survive if you collapse, but your family won't." Zhao Le, a resident who paid 20 yuan for one senior's electrical fees, said the message made her feel warm. "They don't simply ask you for a favor. They want to pay you back by sharing their life experience with you." Sui Zhenshan, general manager of Lawson's Nanjing branch, said that the company did not expect that the product would be so popular. "We'll count the total sales and release it to the public soon," he said. "We'll continue to support this form of public welfare at our stores." Guo Jun contributed to this story. Singapore museum artifacts to be shown in Shanghai 2018-10-25 17:46 Artifacts from the sunken ship Blackrock will be brought from Singapore to Shanghai in 2020 to be exhibited in Shanghai Museum, the museum representatives announced during a symposium themed on the joint archaeology of China and Sri Lanka and Belt & Road cultural collaboration on October 23. The "Blackrock" shipwreck was discovered in Indonesian waters in 1998. It is an ancient Arabian ship loaded with tens of thousands of Chinese Tang Dynasty artifacts, most of which are ceramics, as well as exquisite gold and silver pieces. As one of the most famous wrecks discovered on the Maritime Silk Road so far, it is the earliest archaeological evidence of direct trade between China and the ancient Arab region. According to Li Zhongmou, Deputy Director of the museum, the agreement reached with the Singapore Asian Civilization Museum will make the exhibition an international exchange program. Regarding the archaeological cooperation between China and Sri Lanka, in August, the Shanghai Museum and Sri Lanka jointly formed a joint archaeological team and conducted a 40-days of investigation and excavation in Jaffna, the northern port city of Sri Lanka. A large number of Chinese porcelain pieces have thus been found, providing important evidence for archaeological research of the Maritime Silk Road. This is the first official collaboration between China and Sri Lanka to carry out archaeological excavations. It is not only the first archaeological project of the Shanghai Museum overseas but also the first step in connecting Shanghai archaeology with other locations along the Belt and Road routes. On September 10th, the Shanghai Museum and the Central Cultural Foundation of Sri Lanka signed a memorandum of cooperation. This was the first time that the Chinese Museum and the Sri Lankan cultural organization have concluded a joint archaeological project. The two sides will conduct more in-depth cooperation in the fields of archaeological excavation research, professional exchanges, cultural relics protection and scientific analysis, museum exhibitions and education in the future five years. During the symposium, Shanghai Museum released a series of archaeological and exhibition projects around theBelt and Road, especially the Maritime Silk Road. On the same day, the Belt and RoadResearch and Development Center of Shanghai Museum was also unveiled. Home Politics Explainer: Heres all you need to know about Province 2 police law controversy Kathmandu, October 25 Before the Provincial Assembly in Janakpur endorsed the Provincial Police Bill through majority votes on October 11, no one except a handful of stakeholders had imagined that a provincial law would be the central issue in nationwide political discussions for next few weeks. Two weeks after that, the act has pushed the country towards a new episode of conflict between the federal and provincial governments. Here are key dimensions of the conflict that you need to know. Fundamental arguments Federal government: The provincial government should form laws on the basis of concerned federal laws. The central government is yet to enact new Federal Police Act. The provincial government should have waited till the introduction of the Act. Provincial government: Kathmandu does not have any objection to contents of the law. It is unhappy because the provincial government brought the law before the enactment of Federal Police Act. The central government is responsible for the delay, not the province. Constitutional provision Article 268: Provisions Relating to Nepal Police, Armed Police Force, Nepal and National Investigation Department: (1) The Federation shall have Nepal Police, Armed Police Force, Nepal and National Investigation Department. (2) Each State shall have a State police organisation. (3) Matters relating to the operation, supervision and coordination of functions to be discharged by the Nepal Police and the State police shall be as provided for in the Federal law. (4) Other matters relating to the Nepal Police, Armed Police Force, Nepal and National Investigation Department shall be as provided by the Federal law. Schedule 6: List of state power State police administration, and peace and order Quick province vs procrastinating centre During a provincial security meeting on April 25, Province 2 Minister for Internal Affairs and Law Gyanendra Yadav urged central governments Home Minister Ram Bahadur Thapa to enact the federal police law at the earliest so that the provincial government can enact its law. In response, the Minister assured that the government would enact the law within next two weeks. Yadav agreed to wait. The Home Ministry prepared a draft of the bill accordingly. But, it is gathering dust at the Ministry of Law, Justice and Parliamentary Affairs for past one and half months. While waiting for the federal governments response, the provincial government registered the bill at the Assembly on June 30. The Assembly, however, did not begin discussions over the bill as it was still waiting for Kathmandus response. In the meantime, the President prorogued Federal Parliament session on September 27. Then, the provincial government ended its wait. Despite the objection of provincial main opposition Nepal Communist Party, the Assembly endorsed the bill on October 11. The bone of contention Though Yadav claims that the federal government has not objected to any content of the bill, sources privy to opinions of both central and provincial officials say the provision about appointment of provincial police chief is the bone of contention. The provincial bill proposes that the provincial government will appoint the police chief, which the central apparently does not entertain, they claim. Likewise, the provincial government has retained all rights related to transfer and promotions as well. However, no one has officially spoken about the issue. Or, a mere tug of war? Of late, the dispute has turned into a prestige issue for both the sides and its theoretical dimension is in the dark. For example, on October 23, ruling Nepal Communist Party Chairman Pushpa Kamal Dahal told Province 2 Chief Minister Lalbabu Raut not to overtake the centre, warning it would lead to an accident otherwise. The province government, however, seems adamant. Yadav says, There is no point is going back from the law already endorsed from Assembly. In addition, we have registered another bill to recruit staff. Middle-path solution? Home Secretary Prem Kumar Rai has suggested that the federal government issue the new federal police law as an ordinance as it will take time to begin the next session of Parliament. He says the Ministry has already launched initiatives towards that option. Major Nepali and English broadsheet dailies published from Kathmandu on Friday have given the top priority to the government decision to remove two Nepal Police officials from the service for their alleged negligence in the investigation into the rape and murder of Nirmala Pant in Kanchandpur district three months ago. The newspapers have covered the issue from different angles. Other issues highlighted on the covers are scheduled resumption of registration of two wheelers in Kathmandu Valley and the governments preparations to issue an ordinance to facilitate staff adjustment process at provincial and local levels. Meanwhile, preparations of the ruling Nepal Communist Party to wrap up the unification process between then CPN-UML and CPN-Maoist Centre has also been featured on the front pages of major newspapers. Important Two police officials sacked for Pant murder probe negligence The Ministry of Home Affairs issued a statement yesterday to inform that it has sacked SP Dilli Raj Bista and Inspector Jagdish Prasad Bhatta after they were found destroying vital evidence of the case and failing to conclude the investigation, according to newspaper reports. Earlier, the Ministry had sought clarifications from them as a preparation to remove them from the service. Though they were removed from the job now, the two can rejoin the government service as they have not been make ineligible, according to The Kathmandu Post. Meanwhile, Nagarik and Naya Patrika highlight in their lead stories that no concrete conclusion has been drawn so far over the case despite the formation of a number of investigation committees. Govt prepares ordinance for staff adjustment Rajdhani and Nagarik report that the government is preparing to issue an ordinance in the absence of Parliament session on the adjustment of civil servants at local, provincial and federal levels. The new law will offer promotion opportunities to the staff willing to go to the local level, according to Rajdhani. Meanwhile, such provisions will cost the state Rs 15 billion, Annapurna Post writes in its anchor story. Ignored Probe finds no irregularities in NAC wide body purchase An investigation launched by the Ministry of Culture, Tourism and Civil Aviation has concluded that no irregularities occurred in the purchase of two wide body aircraft for Nepal Airlines Corporation as claimed by some media reports earlier. Karobar reports in its lead story that the team led by Joint Secretary Buddhi Sagar Lamichhane submitted its report to the government recently. Special campaign to control violence against women Nepal Police Headquarters has announced the launch of a special campaign to control violence against women, Gorkhapatra reports. The campaign will promote a partnership between police and public, mobilising citizens aged 16-35, as this is the biggest age group of VAW victims and perpetrators. Local students, teachers and guardians and people affiliated to civil society organisations will also be made part of the campaign. OPMCM to decide NRB reconstruction contract Following criticisms from various walks of life over its decision to hand over the Nepal Rastra Bank central office reconstruction contract to controversial Pappu Construction, the National Reconstruction Authority has withdrawn itself from the process and requested the Office of the Prime Minister to take an appropriate decision, Kantipur reports in a snippet. Men found involved in trafficking wives Some Nepali women, who were rescued by police from the clutches of traffickers, have been found trafficked by their own husbands, according to a brief story in Nagarik. The Central Investigation Bureau of Nepal Police has concluded that some men readily hand over their wives to the traffickers after being assured of more than Rs 30,000 income every month. They give company to women upto Delhi of India so that immigration officials cannot block them, the report adds. Lawyers demand early Inter-Provincial Council meeting Following growing incidents of conflict between provincial and federal governments, lawyers have suggested that a meeting of Inter-Provincial Council can be the only way to avert such situations in the future, according to The Himalayan Times. The Prime Minister, who chairs the Council, had cancelled a scheduled meeting of the body in September, and he is yet to call the next meeting, the report informs. Interesting Nepals first science and technology university in the offing The Kathmandu Post reports in a three column story that the government has begun preparations to establish Madan Bhandari University, which would be the first university to cater purely to science and technology education even as a majority of the existing universities have programmes in the category. The Cabinet has recently told the Ministry of Education, Science and Technology to draft a bill necessary to set up the university, according to the report. Kathmandu, October 26 Kathmandu has been selected as one of the must-see cities in the world by Lonely Planet. Qatar Airways recently organised a function to celebrate this recognition with NTB, NATTA and the travel fraternity Addressing the event, Qatar Airways Country Manager Jayaprakash Nair praised the effort of NTB, NATTA and the travel fraternity for this international recognition which will help Nepal achieve its dream of welcoming 2 million tourists by 2020. NTB CEO Deepak Raj Joshi said the recognition was a result of joint efforts by the government, NTB, airlines, and tourism entrepreneurs. C.N Pandey, President of NATTA congratulated all stakeholders on achieving the feat. Home Just In Tippers to be allowed to ply Kathmandu roads Kathmandu, October 26 Backtracking from its earlier decision of imposing a partial ban on the movement of tippers in Kathmandu Valley, the government is preparing to let the vehicles, notorious for hit and run cases, operate in the capital. As a preparation of lifting the ban, the government today decided to let 24 tippers of Ring Road Improvement Project ply the roads from today itself. Earlier, stakeholders had held a meeting at the Ministry of Home Affairs to discuss the issue. The meeting decided to let the tippers of Project ply freely as its deadline of December is coming closer, according to Lalitpur Chief District Officer Prem Raj Joshi who was present at the meeting. It has been learned that other tippers will also be allowed to ply freely soon. In the wake of fatal accidents caused by the tippers, the government had restricted their mobility in the Valley to nighttime (8 pm-5 am) only. Home Just In What will Dahal do during his daylong Delhi trip? Kathmandu, October 26 Nepal Communist Party Chairman Pushpa Kamal Dahal left for a visit to New Delhi, the Indian capital, on Friday morning. He is scheduled to return home after taking part in an event today itself. Dahal will be the chief guest of the function to be organised by India Foundation. Speaking with journalists at the Tribhuvan International Airport today, Dahal said he would address the programme, highlighting the partys perspectives on development Nepal and South Asia region. The former prime minister clarified that he would not hold any political meeting during the Delhi sojourn this time. This is Dahals second Delhi visit in past two months. He had visited India and China at an interval of few days in September. During that visit, he had held meetings with key Indian political leaders including Prime Minister Narendra Modi. In has been learned that the organisers had invited Prime Minister and another chairman of the party, KP Sharma Oli, to the event. Oli, however, chose to send Dahal. #Boeing 737 Max S. Korea to lift ban on Boeing 737 Max flights South Korea decided to lift the flight ban on Boeing 737 Max later this month, the land ministry said Friday, more than two years after its grounding following the crashes involvin... #National Assembly Assembly panel passes unification ministry budget amid opposition boycott A National Assembly committee passed the unification ministry's 2022 budget proposal on Friday despite a boycott by the main opposition party. The ministry had requested 1.27 tr... Twitter surges on profit, revenue growth Washington, Oct 25 (AFP) Oct 25, 2018 Twitter shares flew higher Thursday after the social network reported a record quarterly profit that helped investors look past a drop in the number of users due to the weeding out of fake and abusive accounts. The San Francisco group delivered a $789 million profit, including one-time gains, compared to a net loss of $21 million in the previous year, as revenues grew 29 percent to $758 million. Shares soared 15.5 percent to close at $31.80 following the better-than-expected results, which helped investors overlook a drop in Twitter's user base. Average monthly active users totaled 326 million, down from 335 million in the previous quarter. The company said the drop came from efforts to weed out fake and inauthentic accounts. Recently enacted privacy rules in the European Union also had an effect. The record profit represented a fourth consecutive positive quarter for Twitter after years of losses, and included one-time gains from tax adjustments. Excluding those items, profits amounted to $163 million. Twitter said the drop in its user count was a direct result of efforts to improve the "health" of its platform by removing fake and abusive accounts. "We're achieving meaningful progress in our efforts to make Twitter a healthier and valuable everyday service," said chief executive Jack Dorsey in a statement. "We're doing a better job detecting and removing spammy and suspicious accounts at sign-up... This quarter's strong results prove we can prioritize the long-term health of Twitter while growing the number of people who participate in public conversation." Brian Wieser at Pivotal Research Group called the results "very strong" and said Twitter appears on track to continue making profits. "Efforts by the company to eliminate inauthentic accounts -- even large numbers of them -- and improve the health of the platform should be viewed positively because these efforts improve Twitter's position with regulators and with advertisers, who see the user base as higher quality when purges occur," Wieser said in a research note. Richard Greenfield of BTIG Research said in a tweet that Twitter's data suggests its daily active users "are 33 percent higher today than in Q3 2015." - Health vs. growth - Twitter and other social networks have faced challenges in curbing manipulation and weeding out "hate speech," but Dorsey said the removal of abusive content will be beneficial for the platform in the long term. "We do see health as a growth vector over the long term," Dorsey told analysts on a conference call. "Our purpose is to serve the public conversation. And we have a singular objective within that purpose, which is around increasing health of the public conversation." Dorsey cited "some new techniques" that have helped curb the creation of inauthentic accounts, thereby reducing "abuse, misinformation, echo chambers and manipulation." Twitter has managed to swing into profit over the past few quarters after years of losses, but it has struggled to grow its user base beyond a core of celebrities, journalists and political figures. It has sought to expand its appeal with new services, including live video. Twitter claims its estimate of daily users, which it says reflects engagement, was up nine percent in the past quarter but offers no specific numbers. Advertising, which makes up the bulk of Twitter revenues, grew 29 percent over the past year to $650 million, according to the earnings report. Twitter said it had 67 million monthly active users in the US in the quarter, and 259 million internationally. Despite its unique offering of near real-time information, Twitter has lagged behind other social networks such as Facebook and Facebook-owned Instagram. According to the research firm eMarketer, Twitter's share of worldwide social network users is expected to drop slightly from 10 percent in 2018 to nine percent in 2022. In 2018, Twitter will take a 1.8 percent share of display ad revenue worldwide, according to eMarketer. Google parent Alphabet keeps ad growth in mixed quarter San Francisco, Oct 25 (AFP) Oct 25, 2018 Google parent Alphabet said Thursday its third-quarter profit rose 36 percent to $9.2 billion, fueled by gains in digital advertising delivered online and on smartphones. Profits were better than expected for the US technology giant, while revenues fell short of forecasts, rising 21 percent to $33.7 billion in the three months ending in September, compared with the same period a year earlier. The mixed results come with Google under scrutiny along with other tech firms for its privacy and data protection policies, and new revelations on the company's handling of sex harassment claims. "Our business continues to have strong momentum globally, led by mobile search and our many products that help billions of people every day," said chief financial officer Ruth Porat. In after-hours trade following the report, Alphabet shares slid 4.8 percent on apparent disappointment with revenue growth. "Alphabet is the ad revenue king, so any softness makes people nervous," said independent technology analyst Rob Enderle. The vast majority of revenue for Alphabet came from Google and more than $28 billion came from digital advertising, where it leads the market. But even though it dominates online advertising, Alphabet and Google have been working to become more diversified, with its own Pixel brand of smartphones and tablets, its Google Home smart speakers which are gaining ground on market leader Amazon, and services like cloud computing. - Hardware 'momentum' - "Our hardware efforts are picking up real momentum," Google chief executive Sundar Pichai told analysts on a conference call. Alphabet's "other bets," which include divisions on self-driving cars, internet balloon, drone, life sciences and cybersecurity, rose to $146 million from $117 million a year earlier. But the "other bets," which are not itemized in Alphabet's earnings, widened operating losses to $727 million from $650 million last year. The earnings report comes with Google faces increasing scrutiny from regulators in the US and Europe over privacy and data protection and the shutdown of its Google+ social network following a security flaw that exposed user data. The company faced a fresh controversy Thursday after a New York Times report said Google covered up claims of sexual harassment and paid one senior executive $90 million to leave as he was accused of misconduct. Pichai said in a statement the report was "difficult to read," but did not address specific allegations, noting instead that the company had taken an increasingly hard line on misconduct in the past two years. The CEO said in an email to employees 48 people had been terminated for sexual harassment in the past two years, including 13 who were senior managers and above and that none received "an exit package." "In recent years, we've made a number of changes, including taking an increasingly hard line on inappropriate conduct by people in positions of authority," Pichai said. "We are dead serious about making sure we provide a safe and inclusive workplace," he said. "We want to assure you that we review every single complaint about sexual harassment or inappropriate conduct. We investigate and we take action." jc-rl/it Moscow wants UN resolution to preserve nuclear arms treaty United Nations, United States, Oct 26 (AFP) Oct 26, 2018 The US pushed back Thursday against a Russian draft resolution to the UN General Assembly that proposed to preserve the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty (INF) that the US plans to pull out of, according to diplomatic sources. "The international community has an obligation to react to this apocalyptic situation," a Russian diplomat said in response to Washington's recent announcement. "The draft resolution pulls from a series of resolutions adopted by the General Assembly and aims to reinforce the viability of the treaty," he added. If passed, the resolution would allow "the continuation of discussions between Russia and the US in order to work through the two countries' concerns about the framework of the agreement." "That would allow us to preserve and reinforce the two parties' responsibilities for its implementation," the diplomat said. Moscow considers "preserving this agreement (to be) the sine qua non condition to continuing to advance the cause of reducing nuclear weapons," according to the diplomat, and called on all UN member states to consider the draft resolution. According to a UN source, the US rejected the Russian draft resolution because it came too late to be compatible with the agenda of the UN Disarmament Commission. And Washington criticized Moscow for having shared the resolution with Russian media before UN member states had seen it, according to the same source. US President Donald Trump announced Saturday that the US would pull out of the INF treaty, which prohibits nuclear missiles with a range of 500 (310 miles) to 5,000 kilometers -- and which the US has accused Russia of violating for several years. The treaty was signed in 1987 by Ronald Reagan and the last Soviet Union leader Mikhail Gorbachev, who has said abandoning the agreement would be a "mistake." Moscow officials have said the US has committed "flagrant violations" of the treaty and Russian President Vladimir Putin said the US decision to pull out could cause a "dangerous" situation. Putin and Trump could meet in Paris in November during events marking the 100-year anniversary of the end of World War I. Pentagon to send about 800 troops to US-Mexico border Washington, Oct 26 (AFP) Oct 26, 2018 The Pentagon is expected to deploy about 800 troops to the US-Mexico border, two US officials told AFP on Thursday, after President Donald Trump said the military would help tackle a "national emergency" and called on a caravan of migrants to turn around. The active-duty troops would augment the 2,000 or so National Guardsmen already deployed to support operations on the border, and could come from multiple military bases around the US. Defense Secretary Jim Mattis was expected to sign orders either Thursday or Friday for the new deployment, one official said. The troops would include doctors and engineers and would be used mainly to provide logistical support including tents, vehicles and equipment. The official said the troops would satisfy elements of a "wish list" for military assistance sent to the Pentagon by the Department of Homeland Security, the US agency with responsibility for the border. Trump tweeted that "Democrat inspired" laws make it difficult to stop people at the border. "I am bringing out the military for this National Emergency. They will be stopped!" he said. In April, Trump said he would send thousands of National Guard troops to the southern border. That initial authorization allowed for about 4,000 guardsmen to be sent to the frontier, but only about half that number have been deployed. Those troops are mainly serving in a support role to help free up border patrol officers. Pentagon spokesman Navy Captain Bill Speaks said the Defense Department was currently working with the Department of Homeland Security "to determine the specifics of our support" to border authorities. - A long march north - Thursday's move comes as thousands of Central American migrants are crossing Mexico toward the United States in a slow-moving caravan. The issue has become a rallying cry for the US president, who has taken a hard line on illegal immigration and has repeatedly kept the story in the headlines in the run up to America's midterm congressional elections that could see the Democrats regain some degree of power. Many of the migrants are fleeing poverty and insecurity in Honduras, where powerful street gangs rule their turf with brutal violence. "To those in the Caravan, turnaround, we are not letting people into the United States illegally," Trump tweeted Thursday afternoon. "Go back to your Country and if you want, apply for citizenship like millions of others are doing!" Trump had signaled his intention to send more troops last week, tweeting that unless Mexico stopped the "onslaught" of people from Guatemala, Honduras and El Salvador, he would "call up the U.S. Military and CLOSE OUR SOUTHERN BORDER!" He has also announced the US would start cutting aid to Guatemala, Honduras and El Salvador. Guatemalan Foreign Minister Sandra Jovel dismissed the threat as a posture adopted for the media, telling reporters that the country had received no official notice of the move. "We have had no official information, and I rather think it has all been a show for the media," the diplomat said Thursday, adding that the two countries maintained "excellent relations." Early Thursday, the caravan set off from the town of Mapastepec in the southern Mexican state of Chiapas, moving on to the next stop in their long march north. Some rode on trucks but most made the trek to the town of Pijijiapan on foot. "Yes, we could do it!" they shouted when they reached their, exhausted, seven hours later. "Little by little, we are going to arrive," said Luis Alberto Adalberto, 21, one of the migrants. But four days after crossing into Mexico, the caravan is still more than 3,000 kilometers (1,860 miles) from the US border. "It's hard, and we know this country is dangerous too, but back in Honduras it's even more dangerous, they kill for nothing," said Josena Anibal Mejia, 27, as he walked with his daughter. The United Nations estimates that 7,000 people have joined the caravan since it set out from San Pedro Sula, Honduras, on October 13. Japan's Okinawa to hold referendum on US base move Tokyo, Oct 26 (AFP) Oct 26, 2018 Japan's Okinawa region voted Friday to hold a non-binding referendum on a deeply unpopular plan to relocate a US military base, in the latest twist to a long-running saga. The decision, by local politicians, comes a month after residents elected a new governor who opposes plans to move the US Marines' Futenma Air Station from an urban area to a sparsely populated part of the island. While the referendum has no legal standing, a vote against the move is likely to pile fresh pressure on the central government, which backs the move as the best way to deal with anger in Okinawa about the base. Okinawa accounts for less than one percent of Japan's total land area, but hosts more than half of the approximately 47,000 American military personnel stationed in Japan. Noise, accidents and crimes committed by military personnel and civilian base employees have long irritated local residents, as has the perceived refusal of other parts of the country to share Okinawa's burden. The plan backed by the government would move the base from its current densely populated location to a remote area, partly created by land reclamation. Opponents do not want the base to remain where it is, but have nevertheless campaigned against the move because they believe it would entrench the US presence on the islands. They say it should be put elsewhere in Japan, or even shuttered completely. The construction of the new base "means pursuing national security at the expense of residents' rights to regional autonomy," assembly member Ichiro Miyagi said Friday. Construction work at the new site has been suspended since August, after the Okinawa government retracted its approval for land reclamation. New governor Denny Tamaki, who has vowed to continue fighting the new airbase, will set a date for the referendum, with local media saying it would likely be held before next spring. Okinawa was the site of a major World War II battle that was followed by a 27-year US occupation of the island. The archipelago's location means it is of huge strategic importance for US forward positioning in Asia. Stopping Saudi arms sales over Khashoggi 'pure demagoguery', Macron says Bratislava, Oct 26 (AFP) Oct 26, 2018 Halting arms sales to Saudi Arabia because of the murder of journalist Jamal Khashoggi would be "pure demagoguery", French President Emmanuel Macron said Friday. The sale of weapons "has nothing to do with Mr Khashoggi. One shouldn't mix everything up," he said at a press conference during a visit to Bratislava. If sanctions are called for, "this should be a European response, across the board," but only "once all the facts are known", he said. Earlier this week, French government spokesman Benjamin Griveaux also suggested France might take "punitive measures", but only if Saudi Arabia was "proven" to be behind the murder at its consulate in Istanbul of Khashoggi, a harsh critic of the Saudi government. Riyadh was the second-biggest purchaser of French weapons between 2008 and 2017, after India, with deals amounting to some 12 billion euros ($13.8 billion). On Sunday, German Chancellor Angela Merkel said Berlin would suspend arms exports to Saudi Arabia following Khashoggi's murder. "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," she said. Germany's Economy Minister Peter Altmaier said later that European nations should take a joint stance on whether to halt arms exports. Altmaier, a close Merkel confidant, underlined 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 on public television. No German arms to Saudi until Khashoggi case is clarified: Merkel Prague, Oct 26 (AFP) Oct 26, 2018 German Chancellor Angela Merkel vowed on Friday that Berlin would not export arms to Saudi Arabia until the murder of dissident journalist Jamal Khashoggi is clarified, a stance French President Emmanuel Macron dubbed "pure demagoguery". "The case of journalist Khashoggi is, of course, something incredible, I told the Saudi king yesterday in our telephone conversation," Merkel said at a press conference with Czech prime minister Andrej Babis. "We need to clarify the background of this horrible crime and until that, we will not supply weapons to Saudi Arabia," she added, reiterating comments made earlier this week. The stance led to a clash with France's Macron who told reporters in the Slovak capital Bratislava on Friday that stopping arms sales to Saudi Arabia would be "pure demagoguery". The sale of weapons "has nothing to do with Mr. Khashoggi. One shouldn't mix everything up," he said. Merkel also insisted on Friday that "Saudi Arabia must do everything to solve the urgent humanitarian situation in Yemen, there are currently millions of hungry people, we are witnesses of one of the greatest humanitarian catastrophes." 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. 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 jointly calling for Riyadh to clarify how Khashoggi died inside its Istanbul consulate, and for its account to "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 location of his body. Rwanda genocide survivors urge France to reopen case Paris, Oct 26 (AFP) Oct 26, 2018 Lawyers for survivors of Rwanda's genocide on Friday urged France to reopen its investigation into claims that French troops were responsible for the deaths of hundreds of people they had promised to rescue. Six survivors, backed by human rights groups and other plaintiffs, launched a legal case in 2005 accusing French soldiers of abandoning Tutsi civilians in Bisesero, western Rwanda, in June 1994. But France's probe into that claim was shut down in July as no one had been charged during 13 years of investigation. The survivors say French soldiers had promised to rescue terrified Tutsis hiding in the hills of Bisesero at the height of the killing on June 27, 1994. The troops arrived only three days later -- after hundreds of people had been massacred by genocidal allies of the Hutu government which had been backed by Paris for years. Their deaths came nearly three months into the 100-day killing spree that left an estimated 800,000 people dead, most of them members of the Tutsi ethnic minority. Fabrice Tarrit, one of the leaders of Survie, an anti-colonial activists' group which is a plaintiff in the case, said at a press conference that it was "premature" to close the case. "The lines of inquiry were not sufficiently investigated to allow investigators to determine (France's) military and political responsibilities," he said. The plaintiffs' lawyers have filed a request urging investigators to take further action despite the case being closed, including seeking testimony from soldiers and journalists who were nearby on June 27. Olivier Foks, a lawyer for Survie, said French troops' handling of events could be seen as "complicity in genocide". "French military authorities were aware that from the afternoon of June 27 onwards, civilians were being killed," he said. Even though keeping civilians safe had been their mission, "no measure or order was taken to allow them to be brought to safety," he said. On Thursday, the investigative website Mediapart published a video filmed on June 28, 1994, showing the head of France's special operations in Rwanda, Colonel Jacques Rosier, being told that Tutsis had been massacred at Bisesero. The army officer briefing him is also seen suggesting that the guide whom French troops were using in the area was himself likely a genocidal Hutu. "We avoided a lynching ourselves because the guide accompanying us was clearly one of the guys guiding the militias in the preceding days," the staff sergeant says in the video, which was handed to investigators five years ago. Rosier's lawyer Emmanuel Bidanda said the video was "not new". France's support for the ethnic Hutu forces which carried out most of the slaughter has been a source of deep acrimony in its relations with Rwanda ever since the genocide. France has admitted mistakes but denied Rwandan accusations of complicity in the mass killings. lp/kjl/js/har Macron brushes off halt to Saudi arms sales over Khashoggi Bratislava, Oct 26 (AFP) Oct 26, 2018 French President Emmanuel Macron on Friday dismissed calls to halt lucrative arms sales to Saudi Arabia over the murder of journalist Jamal Khashoggi, saying such a move would be "pure demagoguery". Sale of weapons to Riyadh -- France's second biggest customer after India -- "has nothing to do with Mr Khashoggi. One shouldn't mix everything up," Macron told a press conference during a visit to Bratislava. "I greatly admire those who, even before they know anything, say 'We won't sell any more weapons'!," the French leader said in an apparent reference to Germany. "They sometimes sell more than France thanks to their joint ventures," he added. The remark was interpreted as a veiled criticism of France's closest European ally after German Chancellor Angela Merkel announced a freeze on arms sales to Riyadh over the dissident's murder inside the Saudi consulate in Istanbul. Merkel confirmed her position during a visit to Prague on Friday. "We need to clarify the background of this horrible crime and until that, we will not supply weapons to Saudi Arabia," she said. At a joint press conference with Czech Prime Minister Andrej Babis, she also called on Saudi Arabia to help end the devastating humanitarian crisis in Yemen, which Riyadh has been pummelling with air strikes since 2015. "There are currently millions of hungry people, we are witnesses of one of the greatest humanitarian catastrophes," Merkel said. "We shall of course confer within the EU to work out what future steps we shall take," she added. - Joint EU stance? - Macron meanwhile insisted there was no moral link to be made between the death of Khashoggi at the beginning of this month and Saudi Arabia's purchase of French-made weapons. "What is the link between arms sales and Mr. Khashoggi?" he said. "I can understand the link with Yemen, but there isn't any with Mr Khashoggi. If we want to take sanctions, we must do so across the board. In that case, we should stop selling cars," he told reporters. Otherwise, he suggested, "we should take individual sanctions against those responsible". Macron said he was "waiting for the facts to be clearly established and for those responsible to be known so as to draw lessons and sanctions". Sanctions should come as "a European response" and be "clear and coherent... in all domains", the French leader said. Riyadh was the second-biggest purchaser of French weapons between 2008 and 2017, after India, with deals amounting to some 12 billion euros ($13.8 billion). Germany meanwhile last month approved 416 million euros worth of arms exports to Saudi Arabia for 2018. In the past, its military exports have mostly consisted of patrol boats. Germany's Economy Minister Peter Altmaier, a close Merkel ally, has called for European nations to take a joint stance on whether to halt arms exports. "There won't be any positive effects if only we halt exports and then other countries fill the gap," he warned on television earlier this week. "Only when all European nations are in agreement will this make an impression on Riyadh," he said. Macron rejects calls to halt Saudi arms sales over Khashoggi Bratislava, Oct 26 (AFP) Oct 26, 2018 French President Emmanuel Macron on Friday brushed off pressure to halt lucrative arms sales to Saudi Arabia over the murder of journalist Jamal Khashoggi, saying such calls were "pure demagoguery". Sales of weapons to Riyadh -- France's second biggest customer after India -- have "nothing to do with Mr Khashoggi. One shouldn't mix everything up," Macron told a press conference during a visit to Bratislava. "I greatly admire those who, even before they know anything, say 'We won't sell any more weapons'!," the French leader said in an apparent reference to Germany. "They sometimes sell more than France thanks to their joint ventures," he added. The remark was interpreted as a rare veiled criticism of France's closest European ally after German Chancellor Angela Merkel announced a freeze on arms sales to Riyadh over the dissident's murder inside the Saudi consulate in Istanbul. Merkel confirmed her position during a visit to Prague on Friday. "We need to clarify the background of this horrible crime and until that, we will not supply weapons to Saudi Arabia," she said. She also called on Saudi Arabia to help end the devastating humanitarian crisis in Yemen, which Riyadh has been pummelling with air strikes since 2015. "We shall of course confer within the EU to work out what future steps we shall take," she added. - Joint EU stance? - Macron meanwhile insisted there was no moral link to be made between the death of Khashoggi at the beginning of this month and Saudi Arabia's purchase of French-made weapons. "What is the link between arms sales and Mr. Khashoggi?" he said, calling it "pure demagoguery to call for a halt" to exports over the killing. "I can understand the link with Yemen, but there isn't any with Mr Khashoggi. If we want to take sanctions, we must do so across the board. In that case, we should stop selling cars," he told reporters -- another possible dig at Germany, a massive auto exporter. Otherwise "we should take individual sanctions against those responsible", Macron suggested. The French president defended close Western ties with Riyadh as crucial in a range of areas, from the fight against the Islamic State militant group to oil supplies from the OPEC producer. "There is strong cooperation with most Western countries, with military relations, which are clear and totally transparent," Macron said. He said he was "waiting for the facts to be clearly established and for those responsible to be known so as to draw lessons and sanctions". Sanctions should come as "a European response" and be "clear and coherent... in all domains", the French leader said. After India, Saudi Arabia was the second-biggest purchaser of French weapons between 2008 and 2017, with deals amounting to some 12 billion euros ($13.8 billion). Germany meanwhile last month approved 416 million euros worth of arms exports to Riyadh for 2018. In the past, its military exports have mostly consisted of patrol boats. Germany's Economy Minister Peter Altmaier, a close Merkel ally, has called for European nations to take a joint stance on whether to halt arms exports. "There won't be any positive effects if only we halt exports and then other countries fill the gap," he warned earlier this week. "Only when all European nations are in agreement will this make an impression on Riyadh." German weekly Der Spiegel reported Friday that differences between Berlin and Paris over the Saudi issue had prompted the French government to call into question a high-profile project developing a joint fighter jet. France wants the plane to be fully exportable -- "including to countries in crisis like Saudi Arabia" -- and has threatened to walk out if this is not the case, the magazine reported. Austrian Foreign Minister Karin Kneissl meanwhile suggested a joint EU ban on arms exports to Saudi Arabia could help bring the brutal Yemeni conflict to an end. Austria has exported no military equipment to Saudi Arabia since it began its bombing campaign, she said. But "if as a whole European Union we stopped arms deliveries to Saudi Arabia, that could help bring these conflicts to an end," she told Germany's Die Welt newspaper. Belgian purchase of US jets 'against European interests': Macron Bratislava, Oct 26 (AFP) Oct 26, 2018 French President Emmanuel Macron on Friday criticised Belgium's decision to buy US-made F-35 fighter jets instead of European planes, saying it "goes against European interests". The Belgian government announced Thursday that it would replace a fleet of ageing F-16 jets with the F-35 made by Lockheed Martin, rejecting rival offers to buy Eurofighter Typhoons or Rafales from the French group Dassault. "The decision was linked to a Belgian procedure and the country's political constraints, but strategically it goes against European interests," Macron told journalists during a visit to Bratislava. "Europe won't be strong unless it is truly sovereign and knows how to protect itself," he said, citing a need to develop "a genuine European defence capacity". "I will do everything possible to promote European offers in future contracts," Macron added. Critics said the choice of Lockheed would leave Belgium dependent on maintenance and operational systems firmly in US control, while also dealing a blow to Europe's efforts to unify its defence capacities. Belgium justified the decision by saying the F-35s offered better value for money while best allowing it to meet its NATO commitments. Prime Minister Charles Michel said his country would be purchasing equipment from both US and European suppliers as it bolsters defence spending. On Friday, the French defence ministry announced that Belgium had confirmed an order for 442 Griffon and Jaguar armoured vehicles for around 1.5 billion euros ($1.7 billion). The deal had been expected, but the announcement appeared timed to allay tensions between the two NATO allies. - 'Lost opportunity' - Last year the European Union launched its "permanent structured cooperation on defence", or PESCO, aimed at unifying defence strategies across the bloc and rationalising a fragmented approach to buying and developing military equipment. The EU itself is planning to vastly expand its defence budget starting in 2021, allocating some 13 billion euros over seven years to research and develop new equipment -- up from less than 600 million euros in the current budget. Most countries see no problem allowing non-EU firms to compete for contracts under PESCO, but France is leading a handful which want to restrict their participation. Washington has warned that excluding US companies could undermine NATO at a time when tensions are running high with Russia and new threats such as cyber attacks are emerging. French jet-maker Dassault said Belgium's decision not to buy its Rafales was "a bad signal for the construction of European defence". European aerospace consortium Airbus meanwhile expressed "sincere regret" that the country hadn't gone for the Eurofighter Typhoon. "It is a lost opportunity to strengthen European industrial cooperation in times when the EU is called upon to increase its joint defence efforts," said Airbus, one of the partners in the Eurofighter consortium. It added that in buying Typhoons, Belgium could have eventually joined a Franco-German project to jointly develop a new fighter jet. Macron, speaking at the start of a two-day visit to Slovakia and the Czech Republic, called on people to reject leaders who seek to "divide Europe". "I will fight wherever they are trying to roll back justice, the ability of journalists to work freely, the role of universities, all of which makes us European," he said. Macron is hoping to counter a surge in support for populist parties and leaders in many European countries ahead of European Parliament elections next May. leb/fc-kjl/pvh AIRBUS GROUP LOCKHEED MARTIN Swedes seek answers after alleged Stockholm sub sighting Stockholm, Oct 26 (AFP) Oct 26, 2018 Swedish politicians were seeking answers Friday after reports emerged of a submarine sighting in Stockholm waters in June, which the military did not tell parliament's defence committee about. Newspaper of reference Dagens Nyheter reported late Thursday that three teenage instructors and children at a sailing camp in the suburb of Lidingo had spotted the mystery vessel on June 28. For about 20 minutes, they observed what they believed to be a dark grey or black submarine near the surface and watched it sail away from where they were sailing dinghies. The teens took photographs and a short video of the object, which Dagens Nyheter published on its website. The Swedish military, which learned of the incident several days later by word of mouth, sent two officers on July 4 to question the teens, aged 17 and 18. "We are confident about the measures we took when we received this information. But I can't go into which measures were taken nor which conclusions were drawn," Armed Forces spokesman Jesper Tengroth told AFP. "The military does not share Dagens Nyheter's view that this was a foreign submarine," Tengroth later told the newspaper. But he refused to say whether the military had identified the object, and if so, what it was. Dagens Nyheter said neither the Swedish military nor civilian submarines were active in the area at the time of the sighting. Swedish politicians expressed surprise that they had not been told of the possible incursion. "We haven't been informed of this previously. They've been sitting on this (information) for several months, they should have sorted out what this is all about," Liberal lawmaker Allan Widman, a member of parliament's defence committee, told Dagens Nyheter. "We are of course going to make sure we get this information as soon as possible. Observations like this should be taken seriously," conservative Moderates MP Beatrice Ask told news agency TT. As a result, Tengroth said the military would inform lawmakers "relatively soon". Alleged submarine sightings are not uncommon in Sweden. -- Massive hunt in 2014 -- In October 2014, Sweden launched a massive hunt for a foreign submarine, suspected to be Russian, in the Stockholm archipelago over an eight-day period. The military subsequently confirmed "a mini submarine" had violated its territorial waters, but was never able to establish the vessel's nationality. After years of massive military cutbacks in the post Cold War period, Sweden has in recent years hiked defence spending, much of it focused on upgrading capacity to detect and intercept submarines. A non-NATO country, Sweden has also stepped up its military capabilities and exercises with the alliance, including the current Trident Juncture 18 exercises, amid signs of more assertive Russian behaviour in the Baltic region. That has included Russian planes occasionally skirting or violating the national air space of neighbouring countries. Austria calls for EU embargo on weapons deliveries to Saudi Arabia Vienna, Oct 26 (AFP) Oct 26, 2018 Austrian Foreign Minister Karin Kneissl called in an interview with a German newspaper Friday for an EU embargo on weapons deliveries to Saudi Arabia. "Above all the awful war in Yemen and the Qatar crisis should lead us to finally act in a united fashion as the European Union towards Saudi Arabia," Kneissl told Die Welt. "If we as the whole EU stopped weapons deliveries to Saudi Arabia, that could be a contribution towards ending this conflict," she said. She added that Austria had not sent any military equipment to Saudi Arabia since the beginning of the war in Yemen in March 2015. She condemned the murder of journalist Jamal Khashoggi as "deeply shocking" and an "unprecedented crime" but said it was only "the worst example of the "horrors" committed by the Saudi government. The Austrian opposition accused the government of confusion in its policy after government MPs failed to support a motion in parliament on Thursday to ban weapons sales to Saudi Arabia. However, this was because the wording of that motion could have included small arms, whereas the government's position is to ban only exports of heavy weaponry for military use, foreign ministry spokesman Peter Guschelbauer told AFP. Kneissl told Die Welt that in her opinion the past two years had seen a "massive deterioration in the human rights situation in Saudi Arabia", pointing to a large rise in the number of political prisoners. She has cancelled a visit she was due to make to Saudi Arabia in December. Responding to opposition calls to close down a Saudi-backed centre for inter-religious dialogue in Vienna, Kneissl said on Thursday that she had shown the centre a "dark yellow card". She said that the KAICIID centre would have to implement reforms including decreasing its financial dependence on Riyadh. Pentagon succesfully tests US-Japan missile interceptor Washington, Oct 26 (AFP) Oct 26, 2018 The US military successfully shot down a medium-range ballistic missile Friday in a test of a new interceptor system, which is being co-developed with Japan and has been dogged by previous failures. Sailors aboard the USS John Finn successfully detected, tracked and targeted the rocket with an SM-3 Block IIA missile during a test off the west coast of Hawaii, the Missile Defense Agency (MDA) said in a statement. The successful operation comes after two failed intercept tests, in June 2017 and January 2018. A test firing in February 2017 had been successful. "This was a superb accomplishment and key milestone for the SM-3 Block IIA return to flight," MDA Director Lieutenant General Sam Greaves said. The MDA in January said America had so far spent about $2.2 billion on the system and Japan about $1 billion. The MDA could not immediately confirm if those numbers had grown. The SM-3 Block IIA missile is part of the AEGIS Ballistic Missile Defense system and is made by arms giant Raytheon. UN panel rejects Russian proposal on nuclear treaty United Nations, United States, Oct 26 (AFP) Oct 26, 2018 A UN General Assembly panel rejected Friday Russia's proposal to debate its resolution on preserving the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty (INF) that the US plans to pull out of. Fifty-five countries on a General Assembly committee specializing in disarmament voted against putting the debate on the agenda, while 31 voted in favor and there were 54 abstentions. Several of the countries that abstained argued the issue was more a matter for the UN Security Council. Russia let it be known that it had not ruled out submitting its draft to the UN's highest body, despite the fact that the United States exercises veto powers there. Moscow could also propose its draft to the 193-country UN General Assembly without first receiving approval from the disarmament committee. Security Council resolutions are binding, however, whereas those passed in the General Assembly are not. "The international community has an obligation to react to this apocalyptic situation," a Russian diplomat said in response to Washington's recent announcement that it planned to pull out of the treaty, signed in 1987 by US president Ronald Reagan and the Soviet Union's last leader, Mikhail Gorbachev. Moscow's draft resolution, released to the media, "calls on Russia and the United States to pursue consultation in respect of their obligations conforming to the INF." It also calls for the resumption of "a constructive dialogue on strategic questions, based on the principles of openness and mutual respect." And it expresses hope that "the dialogue will contribute to subsequent progress in the reduction of nuclear arms and the strengthening of international security and stability." The draft also calls for "strict and entire respect" for the treaty and asks "all signatory states to exert efforts to reinforce the INF treaty and preserve its efficiency." In also proposes "supplementary cooperation measures to strengthen trust" and the "implementation of the INF treaty." US President Donald Trump announced last weekend that the US would pull out of the INF treaty, which prohibits nuclear missiles with a range of 310 to 3,100 miles (500 to 5,000 kilometers). Washington has accused Moscow of violating the accord years. Moscow officials have said the US has committed "flagrant violations" of the treaty and Russian President Vladimir Putin warned the US decision to pull out could cause a "dangerous" situation. Trump and Putin are due to meet in Paris on November 11. The content herein, unless otherwise known to be public domain, are Copyright 1995-2018 - Space Media Network. All websites are published in Australia and are solely subject to Australian law and governed by Fair Use principals for news reporting and research purposes. AFP, UPI and IANS news wire stories are copyright Agence France-Presse, United Press International and Indo-Asia News Service. ESA news reports are copyright European Space Agency. All NASA sourced material is public domain. Additional copyrights may apply in whole or part to other bona fide parties. Advertising does not imply endorsement, agreement or approval of any opinions, statements or information provided by Space Media Network on any Web page published or hosted by Space Media Network. Privacy Statement Optimization Are you frustrated with a slow pc or a hard disk not performing as it should? Try SLOW-PCfighter to speed up boot time on a slow PC, or try a free scan of FULL-DISKfighter to recover space on a full disk. The latest offering is DRIVERfighter to update your driver updater. Get complete PC optimization and extend the life of your PC with these must-have software tools. English25/10/2018 SRNA News Roundup /I/ - October 25, 2018 REPUBLIKA SRPSKA BANJALUKA - Speaker of the Republika Srpska National Assembly Nedeljko Cubrilovic will visit the Republika Srpska stand at the International Book Fair in Belgrade on Thursday. BANJALUKA - The Government of Republika Srpska is expected to review the information about the use of data from the Central Database of the second copy of registries on Thursday for the purpose of determining personal identification numbers for babies, registration of ones death and change of a surname. BANJALUKA - Czech film director Vaclav Dvorak says he and his collaborators are gathering materials for making a documentary about the suffering of Serbs in Srebrenica in the 1990s war in order to confront the lies which have been fed to the public for more than two decades. BELGRADE - The book "Izgradnja modela restorativne drustvene pravde u BiH" /Building a Model of Restorative Social Justice in Bosnia and Herzegovina/ by the US professor Laurence Armand French will be promoted at the Belgrade Book Fair on Thursday. The annual poetry evening will also take place at the Republika Srpska stand, reports the Srpska Representative Office in Serbia. BELGRADE - Wednesday saw the promotion of the translations of the project "Dusu mi nisu ubili" /They Didnt Kill My Soul/ by Mira Lolic Mocevic, as well as of the Russian, English and German translations of the historical monograph "Zatiranje Srba u 20. vijeku" by Draga Mastilovic at the Book Fair in Belgrade, where a supporting feature film was also screened. BANJALUKA - Prices of industrial products in the local market in September were 0.9 per cent higher than in August, reports the Statistics Institute of Republika Srpska. NOVI GRAD - Planting fruit trees should be done after the land receives more moisture and this is a good period for soil preparation, Mirko Jokic, expert on fruit breeding in the Prijedor agricultural extension service of the Ministry of Agriculture, Forestry and Management, told Srna. BANJALUKA - Russian animator Aleksandr Petrov opened the International Animated Film Festival Banjaluka 2018 on Wednesday where 48 animated films and 13 childrens films will be screened in the main competition programme. FOCA - Members of the Foca Police Administration have detected 20 migrants from Pakistan and Syria, five in Kalinovik and 15 in Foca. BANJALUKA - Police found eight migrants in Gradiska who entered Republika Srpska from the neighbouring countries. BOSNIA AND HERZEGOVINA SARAJEVO - The Presidency of Bosnia and Herzegovina will review the information regarding an increased inflow of migrants into the country on Thursday. BELGRADE - SNSD deputy in the BiH House of Representatives Stasa Kosarac hopes ten Serb votes will be found in the BiH Parliament to maintain Republika Srpska. SARAJEVO - HDZ leader Dragan Covic is accusing the Party of Democratic Action /SDA/ of devising the whole project of outvoting the Croats in the elections. FEDERATION OF BiH SARAJEVO - More than 100 migrants who arrived in the Una-Sana Canton by bus or train were immediately brought back to Sarajevo, as promised by the Cantonal Ministry of Internal Affairs. SARAJEVO - A monument to the Sarajevo Serbs brutally killed in Kazani 25 years ago has not been built yet and the money allocated for the purpose, which was transferred from the office of the former Federation of BiH vice-president Svetozar Pudaric to the Sarajevo city budget, has disappeared. SERBIA PRISTINA - A departure of Eulex, the EU rule of law mission in Kosovo and Metohija, will make room for the judicial authorities of self-declared Kosovo to issue indictments against prominent Serbs based on fictitious statements by one or two Albanians, mainly those who usurped the Serb property, Djokica Stanojevic, head of the Association of Displaced Serbs from Djakovica, told Srna. WORLD MOSCOW - Russian President Vladimir Putin has said that, if the United States deploys intermediate-range missiles in Europe, Moscow will have to target the countries hosting them, adding that there is no reason to put Europe in such serious danger. /end/ds 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. Herbert Leedham at the controls of the Comet 4 he was co-pilot and flight engineer of when it completed the first ever transatlantic flight in 1958. THIS month marks a highly significant, never to be forgotten moment in British aviation history when the Brits beat the Yanks for the coveted prize of hosting the first transatlantic flight by a jet engine and Herbert Leedham (Bob) from Gaydon was co-pilot on that very flight in October 1958. Now 96 years-old, Bob recalls how the US airline Pan Am promised to beat BOAC with the first non-piston flight from New York to London but were beaten by the British Overseas Airways Corporation (BOAC) by several weeks in a de Havilland Comet 4 aircraft, one also flew from London to New York on the same history making maiden flight which hit the front pages of British national press. Full story in this week's Herald. Thursday marked the opening of a special exhibition at the John Mackintosh Hall to commemorate the 100th anniversary of the end of World War I. It includes photographs, films and different items on display, some of which have been loaned by members of the public. The exhibition will continue until Armistice Day, 11 November. Gibraltar played an important role in World War I and dozens of Gibraltarians were among those who lost their lives fighting for their country. On 11 November, the government will be projecting 'The Biggest Tommy in the World' on the north face of the Rock, and it is also collaborating with a new book about Gibraltar during the war. In the future, Gibraltar may possibly want a deeper relationship with the European Union, deputy chief minister Dr Joseph Garcia told the European Parliament in Strasbourg this week. He was speaking in response to questions from the Green/EFA MEP working group, who had invited him to meet them. Dr Garcia explained that Gibraltar has enjoyed a differentiated, tailor-made relationship with the EU ever since it joined its predecessor, the European Economic Community, in 1973. This status was unique and did not apply to any other Overseas Territory, Devolved Administrations or the Crown Dependencies. He said that as the Brexit negotiations are ongoing it is still too early to tell what the future might look like, but that as 96% of Gibraltar had voted to remain in the EU it is likely that people would want a closer relationship going forward. The MEPs showed considerable interest in the details of the Gibraltar Protocol which will be attached to the Withdrawal Agreement between the UK and the EU, and in the five areas of arrangements for practical cooperation being discussed with Spain. Dr Garcia explained that the positions were now very close and he welcomed indications that Gibraltar will be included in the transitional arrangements which are expected to run until the end of 2020. If there is no UK-EU agreement there would be no Gibraltar Protocol either, he said, but there would be scope for practical cooperation with Spain nonetheless. The UK-EU Protocols will cover the three Territories which have a land border with the EU. These are the bases in Cyprus, Northern Ireland and Gibraltar. According to statistics, teenagers in Spain start to drink alcohol at the age of 14, and start smoking at 14.1. For some youngsters, these legal drugs are a starting point for the use of toxic substances and, although not in every case, they can lead to the abuse of illegal drugs like cannabis (14.8 years), cocaine (15.1) and ecstasy (15.2). All of these are known for their noxious effects and they are the basis upon which prevention policies are drawn up. However, there is another substance which teenagers are taking at an even earlier age (starting at 13.7 years old): hypnosedatives (or benzodiazepines), medication that is commonly found in household first aid cabinets to treat sleeplessness or anxiety disorders. Orfidal, Tranxilium, Valium and Trankimazin are part of this family of drugs which, used without controls, can create a serious problem. Information about the use of these, with or without prescription, by 14- to 18 year-olds, is included in the most recent survey on the use of drugs in secondary schools in Spain (the Estudes report, produced by the Ministry of Health, Social Services and Equality), and its analysis for the years 2016-2017 places hypnosedatives at the top of the list of early use. Beyond this first conclusion, the statistics show that the use of benzodiazepines among children has taken a quantitative leap in the past few years. In 1994 the figures showed that they were taken by 6.9 per cent of teenagers surveyed - a total of 35,369 students took part, 2,970 of them in Andalucia - but by last year 17.9 per cent of teenagers openly admitted having taken this medication at some point in their lives. This percentage drops significantly to 5.9 per cent when the question refers to use in the last 30 days (2017 figures), and although this does not sound alarming, it does show a need to look at the causes and the consequences of this phenomenon among this segment of the population. Sales have increased To analyse the statistics seriously and rigorously, a clear starting point is needed. "You have to differentiate clearly between therapeutic use by medical prescription and uncontrolled use or abuse, because that's where the problem lies, and the line that separates the two can be crossed at any moment," says Dr Carlos Sanchez Menendez, a medical psychiatrist who specialises in neuropsychiatry, young people and addictions. Every day in his consulting rooms in Malaga and Cordoba he sees young people with anxiety and depressive disorders which can need a specific "and combined" treatment with hynosedatives, different types of therapy and exhaustive monitoring by the specialist. That counts as use. In cases of abuse, on the other hand, there is no control by professionals, and they warn that the effects of these substances on young people can be serious if they are not administered under the relevant supervision. It is a fact that the sale of tranquillisers has increased tremendously in recent years, "but as we only talk about sales figures we don't know whether this is because more doctors are prescribing them or whether it is due to the black market for these substances," says Dr Sanchez Menendez, who is also the medical director of the Triora Monte Alminara specialist addiction clinic. "The data about the consumption of hypnosedatives by adults does show a considerable increase," agrees Dr Juan Aguilar, a medical psychiatrist and head of the Children and Adolescent Mental Health Unit at the regional hospital in Malaga (formerly the Carlos Haya). Both these professionals are concerned about the use of these drugs among young people and say there are two main warning signs: one is the "worrying increase in addictive behaviour", says Dr Sanchez Menendez, and the other, says Dr Aguilar, is "the general increase in problems relating to changes in behaviour". The risk of teenagers falling into abuse of toxic substances lies in the combination of both of these, including the use of hypnosedatives when not prescribed by a doctor. "We need to be well" With regard to the reasons, the specialists also say that these days "there are more cases of anxiety among children and teenagers, and that possibly results in more treatments". They also say that responsibilities lie in different areas: firstly, with a society that "increasingly has less tolerance for frustration, so it is harder these days for people to deal with problems, anxiety and bad times, and we need to calm those conditions above all. We need to be well," says Dr Aguilar, who confirms that more and more people these days are turning to tablets to keep them calm. This also applies to children and teenagers, he says: "We don't give them the chance to experience the essential part of growing-up which involves a natural ability to deal with certain problems without needing medication. If anything characterises the society of today, it is delegation: people think it's up to the hospital to solve the problem, or the school, or the police... there is a permanent battle within the family about who should sort things out," he says. "People should resist the temptation to anaesthetise teenagers against processes which sometimes are completely natural." Along the same lines, Dr Sanchez Menendez refers to a profile of parents who are "increasingly over-concerned about the wellbeing of their child, and as part of this hyperprotective mechanism they look for other resources to solve the problem. They place their trust in medication, teachers, doctors or therapists". He also adds something which gives cause for thought: "Nowadays children are expected to be permanently active, with an overload of intellectual activity compared with the physical, but both aspects should be balanced. Otherwise, we find children who when they reach adolescence, have access to these noxious substances they consider them a means of escape". Dr Sanchez Menendez also gives another incontestable fact: "In recent years we have seen profound cultural, social and family changes," he says, and "these profound changes can have an acute effect on some children, to the point that they need professional help". Within this complex scenario, real problems which do need to be treated with medication and specific monitoring also tend to be mixed up with other transitory ones which are part of the natural and necessary growing up process of the child or teenager. In other words, serious anxiety or severe depression are not the same as a case of intermittent sleep disturbance or anxiety. "These days, however, there is a great deal of pressure for all problems to be resolved medically," says Dr Aguilar, who from experience says that there is a growing demand for medical assistance from parents or schools. That is what happened to Blanca, a mother in Malaga who prefers not to be identified, but who still gets upset when she recalls a recent experience with one of her teenage sons. Almost overnight, he became so badly affected by anxiety that he couldn't bring himself to go into the school and then began to suffer panic attacks in places in which he previously felt secure. Once it was confirmed that there was no external cause for this radical change in behaviour (for example bullying at school or consumption of drugs), Blanca decided to take her son to see the psychologist at the local health centre, who rapidly identified the problem and gave the lad the tools "to overcome it little by little", says his mother. However, his anxiety continued for several weeks and at school it resulted in interruption of classes or anxiety attacks in the corridor, to the point that some teachers insisted that he needed medication and that "it would end the problem more quickly", says Blanca. She admits that at that time she felt under extra pressure from the school but is happy that now her son has returned to being "the same as he was before, a brilliant student and sociable child" who doesn't need to take medication. The two specialists who were looking after him didn't think the medication had been at all necessary. Why are they abused? So what happens when teenagers themselves decide to start taking hypnosedatives? Why does this abuse start? Virginia Perez Fernandez, the head of the prevention programme at Proyecto Hombre (an association that supporters people with addictions), is used to tackling these questions with adolescents. "These substances are easily available. The teenagers find them in the first aid boxes of their own homes, because their parents take them. So the first thing to bear in mind is that they are accessible, either at home or by other means," she says. In many cases, there is a 'mirror effect'. "Parents are role models, and if I see them taking these tablets and they seem to be working, the time may come when I decide I need to take them as well," she explains. Although there are no specific statistics about the consumption of these drugs among young people in each specific area, a few years ago Proyecto Hombre and the University of Huelva joined forces to carry out a study which involved talking to 4,000 secondary school pupils in the eight provinces of Andalucia. The conclusion was that most teenagers who took hypnosedatives did so "because others in their family took them". Also, so did their classmates. Copycat effect "Teenagers copy each other; if one says they have taken a tablet, others will decide to do the same," says Dr Aguilar. Although when considering the abuse of drugs it is difficult to separate the consumption of hypnosedatives from others, one thing is clear: girls take them much more than boys (according to the Estudes report, the girls make up 62.2 per cent). Apart from the urge to copy others, another aspect is that benzodiazepines have other characteristics which can make them attractive to teenagers, as Dr Sanchez Menendez explains: "They are very cheap. There is a black market which is easy to access, they are safe - they are rarely lethal even when taken in high doses - and they generate tolerance, so after you have been taking them for a while they become less effective and you need to increase the dose. That can lead to addiction," he says. With regard to use without medical prescription, Dr Aguila warns that "abuse of hypnosedatives can also be associated with an excessive use of stimulatory substances, and that rebound effect is like a timebomb". He believes the use of benzodiazepines should be limited to medical treatment and very specific cases; and even in these cases, they should only be taken for short periods. "It is not advisable for teenagers to take them for more than six months," he says. He and Dr Sanchez Menendez agree that this medication should be combined with individual therapy and, in the case of children, with therapies in conjunction with their parents. Their final message is clear: "People need to talk to their doctor. It's no good just going to see him or her because you want to be prescribed tablets." There was a steady stream of people coming and going on Wednesday morning at the unit on the Santa Teresa industrial estate where, just hours earlier, the authorities had seized the second biggest haul of cocaine in the history of Spain. They weren't carrying drugs: the boxes they were hugging contained bananas. The gang of drug traffickers had hidden the haul of over 6,000 kilos of cocaine among the fruit. When the police had removed the drugs, they said the owner of the warehouse could do what he liked with the bananas, so as soon as they had left he picked up the phone and started ringing around local charities to say that tonnes of the fruit were there for the asking, if they could use them. The response was immediate. Bancosol were interested, and Angeles Malaguenos de la Noche went straight there to collect several boxes. "It's fantastic that they contacted us. This will help the 600 people we provide food for every day," said Antonio Melendez, president of the organisation, as he and his team loaded up the fruit. Nor were the charities alone. Workers on the industrial estate, when they realised what was going on, also asked whether they could take a box of bananas home. After serving the expat community in Torremolinos for more than 16 years, an English greetings cards shop shut its doors for the last time on Wednesday. A Date to Remember has been offering greetings cards, stationery and party decorations since 2002, but owner, Sue Gillaspy, has decided to sell the business and enjoy her retirement. The shop, known locally as "the English card shop" has been a popular meeting place for expats, many of whom made use of the second-hand book club and the weekly UK postal service. It was also where many expats collected a copy of this newspaper every Friday. "I've been in Spain for over 30 years and I have had some good times here and I have made many friends over the years, but now is the time to start enjoying my retirement. Unfortunately, not many younger people send birthday and Christmas cards now, as most use social media," Sue told SUR in English. The shop, which was located off Calle San Miguel, will now be converted into offices. The storm that swept across parts of northern and western Malaga province last weekend cut off some railway lines, forcing the suspension of services for the time being. From early on Sunday morning there were no services on the Seville-Malaga, Malaga-Ronda, Granada-Bobadilla-Algeciras and Seville-Granada routes of the medium distance non-high speed trains. Sections of track and bridges had been swept away by the fast-moving flood waters. The AVE or Avant lines via Cordoba were not affected as they follow a different route. The damage to rail routes will take several months to put right, said track infrastructure owner Adif. Train operator Renfe quickly announced alternative routings and replacement bus services until further notice. Engineers are considering using an unfinished stretch of AVE high- speed line running from Antequera towards Seville. Parts of this route, which was mothballed when funds ran out, are close to the damaged Seville-Malaga traditional gauge line. This route was being seen this week as a possible, quicker solution to getting the trains running again on the old line, especially in Aguadulce, just across the provincial border in Seville, where the rains swept away a large metal bridge. A dozen main roads were also cut off during and after the torrential rain in Malaga province, including the A-92 Seville-Granada road, and the AP-7 and A-7 near Estepona. This week Estepona council has estimated that a million euros alone is needed to repair its damaged rural roads. However local farmers in the municipality have called for faster action to remove storm debris from rivers such as the Padron and Castor. Inland, the Caminito del Rey tourist walk will be closed until Tuesday, 30 October, due to damage, and in nearby Teba and Campillos water tankers are being used, as officials say that mains running water may not be restored to homes for several weeks as piping has been washed away in the flooding. The police are investigating a case in Las Flores district of Malaga, where a woman who had parked her car in the street overnight returned to it the next morning and found several bullet holes in the bodywork. When questioned, it appears that nobody in the area had heard the sound of gunfire. The car owner discovered the damage on Tuesday morning, when she was about to get into the car around 8am, and rang the police to report it. With the UK's exit from the European Union fast approaching, Spain's Minister for Foreign Affairs, Josep Borrell, had a message of reassurance for British people resident in Spain, especially on the Costa del Sol, on his visit to Malaga on Friday. Borrell, speaking at a conference for the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE) at the Hotel Miramar, insisted that the Brexit process "will not affect them [British residents in Spain] at all". "We have promised not to allow people to be used as hostages in the negotiations. Spain has made that very clear," he said. The minister also stressed that this was an issue that worked both ways. "The rights of citizens, whether those of Brits or Spaniards, are a fundamental part of the Brexit negotiations," he said. He said that those worried by Brexit could "rest assured" that the rights of the "hundreds of thousands of British people in Spain and the tens of thousands of Spaniards in the UK" would be the highest priority. Returning from the sherry region after a visit with a group of Australian wine writers, it seems a good moment to put into perspective the future of the region. The Jerez denomination of origin (DO) was the first ever to be authorised in Spain (Rioja was the second) and it was the first wine to be exported. The Aussies were of course aware of this, and did their best to increase their knowledge further by enjoying liberal amounts of delicacies such as manzanilla La Kika, fino Cruz Vieja en Rama, amontillado Cuatro Palmas, oloroso El Maestro Sierra, palo cortado Colosia Solera, etc. - wines which, looked at from any point of view, are among the very best in the world. WINE OF THE WEEK Felix Azpilicueta Crianza 2015 One of the many ongoing stalwarts that bolster the Rioja region's reputation, this reasonably-priced red from the 2015 vintage does not disappoint on any level. 12 months in oak followed by a further six months in bottle, the present offering is in good condition, priced at around 13 euros. However, and as is usual, the visitors came with the fixed idea that all sherries are blended wines that go through a solera system. These days, however, there are many excellent single vintage wines, such as the recent issue of the Finos de Anada of Gonzalez Byass and the new Vinos Finitos of Tio Pepe, as well as those produced by the smaller bodegas. The real problem of the region is the conservatism of the regulatory body, the Consejo Regulador, that covers both Jerez as well as the manzanilla zone of Sanlucar. The big bodegas want to control all the others, regardless, so the smaller ones are under a regime that mainly works against their interests. And while there are no buyers of fino and amontillado, everyone wants tankers full of cheap manzanilla and the sweet varieties. Box wine is not permitted and grape prices are the lowest in Spain. The prestigious old wines currently being bottled and sold in limited quantities add enormous prestige to the region, although financial benefits are inadequate. Pablo Casado, president of Spain's corruption-scarred Popular Party (PP), has made his first attack on the Socialists' proposed 2019 budget. In an interview with the UK's Financial Times this week, the Conservative leader said the spending plan outlined by Pedro Sanchez - which includes an array of expensive welfare policies - is "technically incorrect, political undesirable and economically suicidal". Casado is also concerned that the budget violates EU-imposed budgetary targets, arguing that it will be seen as too reckless by Brussels officials. The debate about the virtues of austerity, as a guiding principle for running Spain's economy, is about to start up once again. One way in which Sanchez proposes to fund his spending increases is by lessening Spain's deficit-reduction goals with the EU for next year. Under Mariano Rajoy - who Sanchez removed from office with a no-confidence vote back in June - the Conservatives agreed a target of 1.3% for 2019; the PSOE leader, however, wants it to be 1.8%. There are already signs that the Commission - perhaps wary of Italy's projected 2019 budget - is getting nervous about this suggested revision: in a letter sent to the Sanchez administration last week, Brussels fretted that the inflated public expenditure showed "a risk of deviation from the required [deficit-reduction] effort". Italy's current battle with the EU indicates that now is not the time to test Brussels' patience: this week, the EU Commission asked Giuseppe Conte's populist administration to revise its proposed 2019 budget, which it said showed "particularly serious non-compliance" with its targets. Conte's government has three weeks to rein in its projected levels of public spending, or it risks being fined by the EU (one wonders if this would only be a "symbolic" fine, like the absurd 0 penalty Spain incurred in 2016 for the same reason). Sanchez's opposite number, meanwhile, is at the helm of a party that has prided itself on championing austerity measures. Casado's predecessor, the ousted Rajoy, claimed that it was only by drastically reducing public spending that he was able to get Spain's economy back on track in 2012. Yet the PP's critics (chief among them Sanchez's Socialists) point out that the Conservatives' cutbacks, although popular with Brussels-based economists, resulted in poverty for thousands of Spanish households, an insecure labour market and a widening of the gap between rich and poor. The PP's austerity measures didn't even keep Spain in-line with EU budgetary targets: under Rajoy, the Spanish government missed every single one of its annual deficit-reduction goals. Sanchez will be preparing himself for potentially tough negotiations with the EU, while the latter cracks down on another southern European country that's asking for more relaxed deficit-reduction targets. As the Socialist leader tries to pass his 2019 budget, the pros and cons of austerity economics and the validity of EU fiscal targets will dominate economic debate in Spain. For many years, before the internet was to change the way we organise trips and book holidays for good, the giant tour operators had an absolute power over the tourism markets. They were able to condition prices in the holiday destinations and to divert the huge flow of tourists coming out of the most important consumer countries in Europe from one place to another. In other words they had the power to lift or sink the luck of holiday destinations, according to whether they met their demands or not. The marked concentration process that these giant companies under went in the first few years of this century threatened to leave all the power of decision in the European tourism industry in just a few hands. But it was then that the internet burst onto the scene, and with it two factors that changed everything, the arrival of low-cost airlines and the emancipation of many potential tourists, who were now able to put together their own holiday packages in front of their computers at home. Then some said that the giant tour operators had their days counted. However now they still hold some power which, while not insignificant, is a long way from the influence the enjoyed two decades ago. The present scenario has new players, among them the low-cost airlines that have managed to push the traditional tour operators out of the market for short and medium haul flights. The progress of the tourism industry now depends to a large extent on these companies. Many of them, if not them all, maintain their business model by reducing operating costs thanks to online commercialisation, luggage fees, the higher frequency of use of the aircraft and, let's not forget, the reduction of passenger's rights. The model of the low-cost airlines is a successful one that has changed our way of travelling, and, to a certain extent, has democratised access to air travel. They have become important heavyweight players in the tourism industry and therefore in the entire economy. Despite this, or perhaps precisely because of it, the authorities must draw the lines they must not cross, setting limits with confidence, not halfheartedly. Last week's incident in which the racist attitude of a passenger who refused to travel next to a black woman was tolerated - she was made to change seat, not him - should not go unpunished, however much power or influence these companies have. Business must not come before everything. It's a question of democratic health. LNG - powered Aframax arrives in Rotterdam with first cargo On 18th October, in Rotterdam, Konstantin Palnikov, Russian Maritime Register of Shipping (RS) director general, participated in an event dedicated to the successful operation of the Aframax Gagarin Prospect using LNG as a primary fuel. This pioneered the expansion of LNG fuel into the global shipping industry, for large-capacity ships not tied to fixed routes or set timetables, the class society claimed. Earlier, on 2nd October, Shells specialised LNG bunkering ship Cardissa successfully performed the first ship-to-ship LNG bunkering in Rotterdam to the Aframax. Later, on 15th October at Primorsk, the Sovcomflot managed Gagarin Prospect loaded her first cargo of 104,815 tonnes of crude oil and arrived in Rotterdam on 22nd October to discharge the cargo burning LNG as fuel. The tanker has been constructed to RS class for Sovcomflot to the notation - ?? IB IA (for Hull) AUT1-ICS OMBO LI VCS CCO ECO-S BWM(T) SPM GFS TMS IWS DE-Tier III Oil Tanker (ESP) CSR. "The use of LNG as fuel for large-capacity tankers has become a real technological breakthrough. When constructing a state-of-the-art tanker, the most recent advances in science and technology were used. A number of non-standard engineering solutions have been specially developed for this series of ships. The project brought together the leading world companies of designers, manufacturers of equipment and marine engineering, shipowners and classification societies. The work performed and the successful commencement of Gagarin Prospect tanker operation set new standards for the environmental safety of commercial shipping," Palnikov said. A total of 11 Aframaxes will be built to RS class for different customers at shipbuilding complex Zvezda and Hyundai Samho Heavy Industries. Shipmanagers sign up to Verifavia Verifavia, the verification company for the transport sector, has announced major co-operation agreements with Wallem Ship Management in Hong Kong and Zeaborn Ship Management in Hamburg. The agreements cover verification services for European Union (EU) Monitoring Reporting and Verification (MRV) and the IMOs Data Collection System (DCS), as well as certification of associated IT systems. For Wallem, Verifavia will provide verification services for EU MRV and IMO DCS across a number of its Liberia and Panama flagged vessels, as well as certifying independent IT system, Vertex SMMS. Julien Dufour, Verifavia Shipping CEO, who believed there was a common and unhelpful misconception that data must be submitted to the verifier in a certain format, commented: A key drive for both these organisations has been the ability to work with a verifier that offers maximum flexibility. If the content is complete and compliant with the requirements of the regulations, it can be submitted in any format, from simple spreadsheets, to advanced mark-up language format, or more complex formats used in IT systems for monitoring vessel performance. We then take the burden of transforming the data into a workable format for the verification,he explained. He added;We are extremely proud to be working with both Wallem and Zeaborn Ship Management, and believe that this is testament not only to our expertise, but also our genuinely differentiated approach as an independent emissions verifier. Both companies will now benefit from obtaining a flexible, top-class verification service at a reasonable price from a single point of contact, streamlining the reporting and verification process. With accreditation from the United Kingdom Accreditation Service (UKAS) and Frances national accreditation body, Cofrac, Verifavia can assess or verify any ship in the world, regardless of country of ownership, flag state, or class. The companys client list currently includes around 180 shipping companies spanning 1,700 ships, and 30 ICT providers. Vessel OPEX to rise Total vessel operating costs are expected to rise by 2.7% in 2018 and by 3.1% in 2019, according to Moore Stephens latest survey. Responses to the consultancys latest annual Future Operating Costs survey revealed that drydocking is the cost category likely to increase the most in both 2018 and 2019, accompanied in the latter case by repairs and maintenance. The cost of drydocking is expected to increase by 2.1% in 2018 and by 2.3% in 2019, while expenditure on repairs and maintenance is predicted to rise by 2% in 2018 and by 2.3% in 2019. Expenditure increase for lubricants is expected to be 1.9% in 2018 and 2.1% in 2019. Meanwhile, projected increases in spares are 1.9% and 2.2% in the two years under review, while those for stores are 1.6% and 1.9%, respectively. The survey also revealed that the outlay on crew wages is expected to rise by 1.3% in 2018 and by 1.9% in 2019, with other crew costs thought likely to go up by 1.5% in 2018 and by 1.8% in 2019. The cost of hull and machinery insurance is predicted to rise by 1.3% and 1.6% in 2018 and 2019 respectively, while for P&I cover the projected increases are 1.2% and 1.4% respectively. Management fees, meanwhile, are expected to increase by 1% in 2018, and by 1.2% in 2019. Tanker OPEX is expected to rise by 2.4% in 2018, and by 2.9% the following year. Respondents to the survey highlighted various areas of concern likely to result in increased operating costs over the next two years. Regulation was high on the list, with one respondent noting: New regulations will lead to extra costs for all owners, for example the Ballast Water Management Convention and IMOs 0.5% global limit on the sulfur content of fuel oil used on board ships. On the subject of crew costs, one respondent said, We do not expect any major variations in 2019. Basic crew wages for Filipino seafarers, however, will come under review in this period, and we may see some increase there. Fuel costs were referenced by a number of respondents. The cost of fuel treatment equipment will increase in the next two years, said one, while another remarked, The sulfur 2020 rules will have a significant impact. One respondent noted, Maintenance in general has been somewhat on hold, and we will see a correction in that in 2018 and 2019, while another said, We will see an increase in costs for automation and communications, not least because electronics have a shelf life. On a more general level, respondents voiced concerns about environmental issues, trade wars, the cost of securing finance, and the global economic recession, all of which were perceived to have the potential to result in increased operating costs. Richard Greiner, Moore Stephens partner, shipping and transport, said, The predicted 2.7% and 3.1% increases in operating costs for 2018 and 2019 respectively compare to an average fall in actual operating costs in 2017 of 1.3% across all main ship types recorded in the recent OpCost study. One year ago, expectations of operating cost increases in 2018 averaged 2.4%, so the increase now in that expectation to 2.7% must be regarded as sobering if not unexpected news. Projected increases in operating expenditure are part and parcel of the workings of any industry, and must be factored into budget projections. But these latest predicted increases, whilst a cause for concern, should not unduly surprise or concern shipping, an industry which has seen and in many cases endured much larger increases during the past decade. New regulations were included this year for only the second time in the life of the survey among the list of factors which respondents could cite as most likely to influence the level of operating costs over the next 12 months. This has proved to be a timely addition, with 23% of respondents citing new regulation as an influential factor, ranking it in first place. The Ballast Water Management Convention (BWM) and Sulfur 2020 are the major items on the list of incipient shipping legislation, but the industry is becoming more tightly regulated generally in terms of both safety and environmental responsibility, so compliance with evolving national and international regulation is likely to remain a significant item in operating cost analyses and projections for the foreseeable future. The fact that drydocking emerged as the cost category likely to increase most significantly in both 2018 and 2019 is unsurprising, given the need to comply with the existing and emerging regulatory framework within which the industry is being obliged to operate. The same may be said of repairs and maintenance, where any previous delay in attending to items of a non-critical nature will need to be addressed. Estimates relating to the likely increase in the cost of lubricants over the two-year period, meanwhile, are towards the higher end of the survey scale, which is in line with a predicted rise in oil prices this year and next. One could argue that the level of predicted operating cost increases for 2018 and 2019 ought to be manageable in a competitive, viable industry environment. Nobody doubts shippings essentially competitive nature, but the issue over viability is less clear-cut. Shipping has held up well during a ten-year economic downturn, and investors continue to express confidence in the industrys potential for profit. Sadly, some good companies have gone to the wall over the past decade but, overall, the industry has become leaner by virtue of having let market forces function as they should. Yet market intelligence and common sense suggest that freight rates still need to improve significantly in order for shipping to start making the sort of money it should command in light of the vital role it plays in international trade and commerce. The more money that shipping makes, the more comfortably it can meet its operating expenses. Increases in operating costs must be expected, and budgeted for. Those costs may change in nature, because new technology is already helping to reduce outgoings in some areas, while on the other side of the coin there is the evident need for technological investment to combat the likes of cyber-crime, he said. Wartsila sees orderbook increase Wartsila has reported a net sales increase of 13% for the third quarter of 2018 and a 5% increase for the first nine months of this year. Net sales amounted to 1,330 mill and 3,642 mill for the respective periods. The order intake was described as stable for 3Q18 at 1,372 mill and was up by 7% to 4,433 mill for the first nine months of the year. Comparable operating result increased to 141 mill for 3Q18, which was 10.6% of the net sales. For the first nine month of this year, the operating result increased to 352 mill, 9.7% of net sales. The orderbook at the end of September stood at 5,918 mill, an increase of 16% compared to the 2017 at the same stage. Demand for Wartsilas services and solutions is expected to improve somewhat this year from 2017. Demand by business areas is anticipated to be as follows: Solid in Services (lowered from good). Although there are growth opportunities in selected regions and segments, the development of transactional service volumes has been slower than anticipated. Good in Energy Solutions. The global shift towards renewable energy sources and increasing electricity demand in the emerging markets are supporting the need for distributed and flexible power capacity, including gas-fired generation, energy storage, and smart integration technology. Good in Marine Solutions. Wartsilas demand outlook is supported by its extensive product mix and broad segment exposure, which compensates for the slow pace of recovery in overall vessel contracting. Wartsilas current order book for 2018 deliveries is 1,364 mill and is comprised mainly of equipment deliveries. Services business is largely transactional, with only around 30% of its annual net sales coming from the orderbook. President and CEO Jaakko Eskola, explained; Wartsila's net sales developed well in the third quarter, thanks to the strong growth in newbuild marine and energy deliveries. This, in combination with slower than anticipated development in transactional service volumes, is affecting the group sales mix and burdening profitability. In the marine industry, the approaching IMO 2020 sulfur regulations has resulted in increased demand for exhaust gas cleaning systems. This boosted order intake in both Marine Solutions and Services. Marine Solutions orders were further supported by the continued high level of activity in the cruise and ferry segment. In the energy markets, postponed investment decisions for certain projects adversely affected Energy Solutions order intake. Nevertheless, a healthy project pipeline provides confidence in improved activity going forward. In August, Wartsila announced that it will build a new centre for research, development and production, in Vaasa, Finland. When finalised in 2020, this Smart Technology Hub will enable more agile and efficient testing, development, and production of solutions for the maritime, oil and gas, and energy industries. Another key step in the execution of our strategies was the decision to reorganise into two business areas, Wartsila Marine Business and Wartsila Energy Business, as of the beginning of next year. By forming two business areas that cover both new sales and services, we will enhance customer value through a stronger focus on lifecycle solutions tailored to specific market needs. Customers will also benefit from increased flexibility and even faster response times. I firmly believe that this will support our progression towards our long-term financial targets, he concluded. Japan rejects UN call to stop returns to Fukushima Tokyo, Oct 26 (AFP) Oct 26, 2018 Japan's government on Friday rejected calls from a UN rights expert to halt the return of women and children to areas affected by the Fukushima nuclear disaster over radiation fears. UN special rapporteur Baskut Tuncak on Thursday warned that people felt they were "being forced to return to areas that are unsafe, including those with radiation levels above what the government previously considered safe." In the wake of the Fukushima disaster, Japan's government lifted its standard for the acceptable level of radiation to 20 millisieverts per year from 1 millisievert. It has been urged to revise that level back down again, but has rejected calls to do so, a decision Tuncak called "deeply troubling." "Japan has a duty to prevent and minimise childhood exposure to radiation," he said. But Japan's government rejected the criticism, saying Tuncak's comments were based on "one-sided information and could fan unnecessary fears about Fukushima," a foreign ministry official told AFP. Japan's government has gradually lifted evacuation orders on large parts of the areas affected by the disaster, which occurred when a massive tsunami sent reactors at the Fukushima Daiichi plant into meltdown in March 2011. But other areas remain under evacuation orders because of continued high levels of radiation. Japan's government has pushed hard to return affected areas to normal, but has faced criticism that what it refers to as "safe" radiation levels are not in line with international standards. Around 12,000 people who fled their homes for fear of radiation have filed dozens of lawsuits against the government and the Tokyo Electric Power Company (TEPCO), the operator of the stricken nuclear plant. The Fukushima disaster was the worst since Chernobyl in 1986, though there has only been one death linked to it. More than 18,000 people were killed or left missing in the tsunami that prompted the meltdown. nf/sah/tom/mtp AfricaRice is a CGIAR Research Center part of a global research partnership for a food-secure future. It is also an intergovernmental association of African member countries. For more information visit: www.AfricaRice.org A propos dAfricaRice AfricaRice est un Centre de recherche du CGIAR un partenariat mondial de la recherche agricole pour un futur sans faim. AfricaRice est aussi une association intergouvernementale composee de pays membres africains. Pour plus dinformations, visiter : www.AfricaRice.org Share this article Whatsapp Facebook Twitter Linkedin Robi Kurniawan (The Jakarta Post) Jakarta Fri, October 26, 2018 15:49 1119 882ab4bc56dbda08a069b30877960a9e 3 Opinion Nobel-Prize,environment,#environment,household,carbon-emission,urbanization Free The Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences awarded this years Economics Nobel Memorial prize to two American environmental economists. Environmental economists generally study theoretical or empirical studies of the economic effects of national or local environmental policies worldwide, including the flow of residuals from the economy to the environment. William Nordhaus and Paul Romer are considered leaders in the work on the negative impacts of climate change on economics. Both of them were awarded for work in integrating economics analysis, innovation and climate change. Nordhaus, an academician of Yale University, was the pioneer of a quantitative model that explained the linkage between the economy and emissions. Romer, of New York University`s Stern School of Business, is known as the initiator of endogenous growth theory which explains how economic forces govern the willingness of companies to produces new ideas, technology and innovations. The Nobel committee argued that both economists have taken macroeconomics to a world perspective, to combat climate change as one of the biggest global problems. This is significant as climate change remains a significant burden for many countries performance, including Indonesia. Economic impacts of climate change are wide and complex and eventually may be larger, including on human health, productivity, and agricultural production. Indonesia has been experiencing a wide range of environmental problems including threats of climate change. The economic loss attributed to climate change in Indonesia is estimated to reach 2.57 percent of gross domestic product by 2100, according to the World Bank. Health problems caused by air pollution can cost more than US$400 million per year in the country. Before the program implementation, kerosene consumption constituted 72 percent of the energy source of the household sector. After the implementation, the bulk of the kerosene consumption became only 4 percent. Along with the growing population, rapid urbanization and economic growth, the final energy consumption of the residential sector has led to an increasing trend of CO 2 emission. Concerning climate change, Indonesia started the path to reduce greenhouse gas emissions by 26 percent unilaterally, and up to 41 percent with international support, below a projected baseline by 2020. To reduce emissions, the government has for instance initiated the massive kerosene to liquid petroleum gas (LPG) conversion program in 2007. The World Bank considered the program one of the world's largest efforts to promote cleaner cooking fuels; as the switching consumption of kerosene to LPG reduced CO 2 emissions by 8.52 million tons of CO 2 from 2000 to 2015. LPG is considered cleaner energy than kerosene since it has higher calorific value and efficiency, producing 20 percent emissions lower than kerosene. However, by including electricity consumption in the households, CO 2 emissions increased by 86 percent during 2000-2015. The high share of fossil fuel in electricity generation led to increasing indirect emissions. Despite its huge renewable energy potential, the share of fossil fuels is currently approximately 96 percent of the total primary energy consumption. As stipulated in the Energy National Plan, coal plays a significant role in Indonesia's electricity sector because of its reserves, ease of use and price. The increments in carbon intensity correspond to the increasing share of coal as fuel in power plants. During 2000-2015, coal consumption increased by more than 100 percent. Lowering carbon intensity in electricity has a vital role in reducing emissions. To reduce the emissions from the supply side, Indonesia should increase diversification of the energy mix towards cleaner renewable sources such as geothermal energy. Having a high share of coal-fired generation is essential for the country to improve efficiency by adopting cutting-edge technology and enhancing the coal-fired power plant. The growing population, increased urbanization and growing household income levels have triggered drastic demand and utilization of electronic home appliances in Indonesia. With over 4 percent urbanization growth Indonesia has been becoming more urbanized with over a half of the population living in urban areas. Energy consumption has naturally increased, with residential sectors being one of Indonesias largest consumers of energy. Given the increasing energy consumption trend, Indonesia must improve the energy efficiency of home appliances. Therefore Indonesia should continuously enhance energy efficiency standards and labeling systems for washing machines, refrigerators, air conditioners and other home appliances. Furthermore, Indonesia should keep gradually decreasing government subsidies for fossil fuel and electricity. Energy efficiency is the link that allows decreasing emissions compared to its level of business as usual. China was able to limit energy demand growth to less than half of its GDP growth. Facing increasing energy intensity, China re-created a policy apparatus to design and implement energy efficiency throughout the economy to keep their energy intensity on track. Chinas ability to limit energy demand growth does not only utilize natural capital as an input in a more efficient way but also reduces emissions. To reduce emissions and achieve transition to sustainable development, a joint commitment among all stakeholders is urgent, including the public and private sector and also NGOs and other non-profit institutions to encourage Indonesias low carbon development. It is entirely possible for humans to produce less carbon... Once we start to try to reduce carbon emissions, well be surprised that it wasnt as hard as we anticipated," Romer said at the press conference which announced the Nobel prize in economics. *** The writer graduated from the Graduate School of Environmental Studies, Tohoku University, Japan. His research focuses on environmental economics, sustainable development and energy policy. His current project is 'Inclusive wealth of nations: the measure of sustainable development. The above views are personal and do not necessarily reflect the views of the institution. Robi can be found at Research Gate and Google Scholar. 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 Facebook Twitter Linkedin Editorial Board (The Jakarta Post) Jakarta Fri, October 26, 2018 08:43 1120 882ab4bc56dbda08a069b3087794a68b 4 Editorial #Editorial,ubud-writers-readers-festival,Susi-Pudjiastuti,literary-festival,UWRF-2018,bali,Ubud,Eat-Pray-Love,Elizabeth-Gilbert,Literature Free It is hard to believe that the Ubud Writers and Readers Festival (UWRF) is celebrating its 15th anniversary this week. The annual event, held in the hill town of Ubud on Indonesias most renowned tourist island, was first held in 2003 as part of an effort to help revive tourism, the islands main economic lifeline, after terrorist bombings devastated the islands Kuta district a year earlier. The attacks seemed like they happened only yesterday and memories of the tragedy remain with us today. The Ubud festival itself, however, has grown into something beyond what it was intended to be and has continued to grow larger and livelier each year. After 15 years, the festival has gained international recognition as a major item on the calendar of events in the literary world. The 2018 UWRF features over 180 international and Indonesian writers and activists, including the United Kingdoms Hanif Kureishi and Geoff Dyer, Australias Kim Scott, Pakistans Fatima Bhutto and Italys Giuseppe Catozzella. There are book launches, panel discussions, book and poetry readings and screenings of the latest documentary films, and writers are sharing their stories, passions and unique writing techniques. The informal atmosphere breaks barriers between writers and readers as they rub shoulders in over 200 events throughout the six-day festival. The Bali setting may be the reason why the Ubud festival has been so successful. Its cultural backdrop brought Elizabeth Gilbert here to write the last part of her best-selling memoir Eat, Pray, Love. Ubud became more famous thanks to the book and its movie adaptation starring Julia Roberts, but the festival will likely far outlive the popularity of the book. The UWRF this year received an official stamp of approval of sorts with the presence of Maritime Affairs and Fisheries Minister Susi Pudjiastuti on Thursday, the opening day not that the festival needs an official endorsement. The reason why it has continued year after year is precisely because it is a private initiative and the brainchild of its founder, Janet DeNeefe, an Australian who has made Bali her home. Her tireless efforts, passion and energy, along with support from her team and sponsors, has made the UWRF what it is today. Ultimately, the recognition and endorsement that matters most comes not from the government, but from writers and readers. This is one area in which the UWRF could improve, as it needs to work more to gain recognition and appreciation from the wider public at home. Admittedly, it is a struggle, given the poor reading habits of the nation and lack of appreciation for literature. For Indonesia, Ubud is an important launching pad to help local talent take on the global literary world. There is no other festival like it. Being the guest country at the Frankfurt Book Fair in 2015 was certainly a great opportunity for Indonesian writers to go global, but it may be decades before Indonesia has that honor again. The UWRF, in contrast, is here every year. Indonesian writers, rise! Share this article Whatsapp Facebook Twitter Linkedin Rina Chandran (Reuters) Bangkok, Thailand Fri, October 26, 2018 09:07 1120 882ab4bc56dbda08a069b3087794d2ed 2 Art & Culture Bangkok,Thailand,art,art-festival,migrant-workers,sex-workers Free Sex workers and migrant laborers feature prominently in an art festival in Bangkok, which features local and international artists tackling issues that the artistic director says are otherwise ignored in the city. The inaugural Bangkok Art Biennale (BAB), which runs until February, features 75 exhibits in 20 venues that include the city's ancient temples, luxury hotels and malls. For the theme, Beyond Bliss, several artists chose social and environmental issues, said Apinan Poshyananda, the artistic director. "These are often collateral in our pursuit of bliss," he said. "This is why we decided to turn the entire city into a giant venue, so we could make it accessible to everyone, get everyone to think about it," he told the Thomson Reuters Foundation. One of those issues is migrant workers, who number more than 3 million in Thailand, according to the International Organization for Migration. Rights groups say there are many more, working largely in risky, low-paid jobs such as construction and in the fishing and seafood industries, where abuse is common. A large bamboo sculpture by Sornchai Phongsa - who is the son of illegal migrant workers from Myanmar - is titled Alien Capital, and was built by illegal migrant workers. "The work is a comment on how Bangkok thrives on migrant workers, yet the workers themselves are invisible and silent," said Poshyananda. "This work gives them a voice." Firoz Mahmud also addresses migration with his stylized photographs of Bangladeshis in large green glasses seeing a better life in Thailand. Read also: 'Venice of the East' plays host to first Bangkok Art Biennale Thai artist Imhathai Suwatthanasilp's "No More Sewing Machine" installation features parts of sewing machines wrapped in the hair of sex workers in the northern city of Chiang Mai. "It ridicules society's notion that sex workers can be rehabilitated by teaching them sewing," said Poshyananda. "Why must that be the only option?" Another Thai artist, Chumpon Apisuk, tackles the stigma that sex workers face, with a 10-minute video featuring female and transgender sex workers in Chiang Mai talking about their dreams. Pueng, who works in a massage parlor, says she would like to build a home for her family and have her own grocery shop. Apo, a bar girl, says she dream of owning an airline, because "it looks good, and people will see me as a smart woman". The video seeks to "build up confidence of sex workers, and is a way for them to voice their pride," said Chumpon. Thailand has more than 123,530 sex workers, according to a 2014 report by the U.N. agency for HIV/AIDS. Although prostitution is illegal, it is tolerated, with visitors to the country seeking out its go-go bars and "soapy" massages as much as its white-sand beaches and gilded Buddhist temples. "The sex industry is a big business that brings in tourists, and helps the workers support their families," said Poshyananda. "Yet we stigmatize them and dehumanize them. Perhaps this will open our eyes to their lives and their dreams." Share this article Whatsapp Facebook Twitter Linkedin News Desk (Agence France-Presse) Limoges, France Fri, October 26, 2018 08:31 1120 882ab4bc56dbda08a069b308779493e1 2 Health child-abuse,Coca-Cola Free The father of two boys, aged three and four, has been jailed in France for feeding them nearly exclusively on Coca-Cola, the children's lawyer said. The father, who can "neither read, nor write, nor count, doesn't realise the seriousness of the situation and spent all his welfare money on alcohol," Carole Papon, a representative of the association French Victims 87, said Wednesday. Within a few days of welfare payments being made "the family had nothing to eat. They only had Coca-Cola to drink," she said. Read also: Stunting and child marriage The father, who was described as violent towards his wife and children, was jailed for three months Wednesday in Limoges, central France. The eldest boy had to have seven sugar-rotten teeth removed, and the second does not speak. Both have been taken into care where they have been introduced to meat and vegetables. "There was nothing in their flat," Bruno Robinet, the deputy public prosecutor, told AFP. "There was no fridge, the children slept on a mattress without covers and there were no toys... Their father fed them on cakes and coke," he added. Share this article Whatsapp Facebook Twitter Linkedin News Desk (The Jakarta Post) Jakarta Fri, October 26, 2018 18:30 1119 882ab4bc56dbda08a069b30877968cc7 1 Books Gramedia-Pustaka-Utama,ubud-writers-readers-festival,#ubud-writers-and-readers-festival,Ubud,Book,#books,books,djenar-maesa-ayu,Emte,comic,comic-book Free Indonesian publisher Gramedia Pustaka Utama launched two books at the 2018 Ubud Writers and Readers Festival (UWRF) in Ubud, Bali, on Thursday. They are the English version of Nayla by Indonesian author Djenar Maesa Ayu and a silent comic, Gugug! by illustrator Mohammad Emte Taufiq. Nayla, Djenars debut novel that was originally published in 2005, explores distorted love in human relationships, including between men and women and mother and child. It was translated into English by Sebastian Partogi. Read also: Poetry legend Sapardi Djoko Damono honored at 2018 UWRF Meanwhile, Gugug! follows a dogs adventure in a city. The comic features no dialogue and, instead, Emte presents the story through illustrations, showing marginalized people and exploring their place in the hierarchy of urban life, from the slums to street communities. Gramedia Pustaka Utama public relations staff member Dionisius Wisnu said in a statement that the company felt honored to take part in this years UWRF. He expressed hope that the two books would be appreciated by international readers. (jes/wng) Share this article Whatsapp Facebook Twitter Linkedin News Desk (Reuters) Windsor, England Fri, October 26, 2018 23:02 1119 882ab4bc56dbda08a069b3087796c8ae 2 Lifestyle Meghan-Markle,Prince-Harry,Windsor,royals,Britain,wedding-dress,Givenchy,Givenchy-royal-wedding-dress Free Meghan Markles couture wedding dress goes on display at Windsor Castle on Friday in a new exhibition about her May nuptials to Britains Prince Harry. The white, sleek long-sleeved gown with a boat neck was designed by Clare Waight Keller, the British artistic director of French fashion house Givenchy for the May 19 wedding in Windsor, an event watched by millions around the world. Markle, now known as the Duchess of Sussex, also wore a five-meter veil decorated with hand-embroidered flowers which paid tribute to the 53 countries of the Commonwealth, as well as a diamond tiara borrowed from Queen Elizabeth for her big day. The full outfit, including Meghans shoes, has been put on display in a large glass box alongside an identical version of Prince Harrys wedding attire, a frockcoat uniform of the Household Cavalry, inside Windsor Castles Grand Reception Room - one of the rooms used for the wedding celebrations. This is a unique opportunity to see these outfits...worn on such a special day and actually in the surroundings where they were worn here at Windsor Castle, Caroline de Guitaut, senior curator of decorative arts at the Royal Collection Trust, said. Read also: Meghan takes spotlight amid royal fever in Fiji Visitors can see the veils intricate embroidery up close as well as listen to the couple talk about preparing for their wedding day through an audio device, which also has a recording of Waight Keller describing her work on the brides dress. Their Royal Highnesses have been very involved in the preparation for this exhibition, de Guitaut said. They...wanted to be interviewed...so that they could tell the visitors all about the planning that went into their day. Also on display are the bridesmaid and pageboy outfits worn by Harrys niece and nephew, Princess Charlotte and Prince George. Charlottes dress was also designed by Waight Keller while Georges outfit is a miniature replica of Harrys uniform. A Royal Wedding: The Duke and Duchess of Sussex opens on Friday and runs at Windsor Castle until January. Share this article Whatsapp Facebook Twitter Linkedin News Desk (The Jakarta Post) Jakarta Fri, October 26, 2018 07:02 1120 882ab4bc56dbda08a069b30877949017 1 City workers,UMP,minimum-wage,subsidy Free The Jakarta administration is set to hand out more workers card to residents, specifically to workers whose salaries are not more than 10 percent above the provincial minimum wage (UMP). Currently, the cards are only given to workers whose salaries do not surpass the UMP. "Therefore, even though workers may feel that their income is too low, they can reduce their expenses with subsidies given by the city administration," Jakarta Manpower and Transmigration Agency head Andri Yansyah said on Thursday as quoted by kompas.com. With the cards, Andri said, the city's workers could use the Transjakarta bus for free and shop in Jakgrosir, which sells affordable staple foods. Their children would also receive the Jakarta Smart Card, which could be used to buy subsidized food such as fish, chicken and milk. The Jakarta administration has decided to follow the central governments instruction of raising the 2019 UMP by 8.03 percent, referring to Government Regulation No. 78/2015 on wages. This means that Jakarta will likely increase its minimum wage from the current Rp 3.6 million (US$236.76) per month to Rp 3.9 million. The amount is lower compared to the labor organizations' request for the city administration to increase the UMP to Rp 4.3 million. (cal) Share this article Whatsapp Facebook Twitter Linkedin Ni Komang Erviani (The Jakarta Post) Denpasar Fri, October 26, 2018 06:55 1120 882ab4bc56dbda08a069b30877948b98 1 National IMF-WB-meeting,bali,Sri-Mulyani Free Schools in Bali, West Nusa Tenggara and Banyuwangi in East Java will get hundreds of secondhand laptops and printers that were used during the International Monetary Fund and World Bank Group Annual Meetings, held in Nusa Dua, Bali, on Oct. 12-14. Finance Minister Sri Mulyani officially handed over on Thursday at least 500 laptops and 300 printers used during the one-week event to the leaders of relevant local administrations in Denpasar, Bali. "Today, we [donated] 200 laptops to Bali, 200 laptops to West Nusa Tenggara and 100 laptops to Banyuwangi regency. Each administration will also receive 100 printers," the minister said. She added that the government looked forward to seeing schools and students make good use of the equipment. "I have a dream that someday, an Indonesian Jack Ma and other creative people will be born because of these laptops," she said, referring to the co-founder of Alibaba Group, a multinational technology conglomerate. The laptops and printers were valued at over Rp 8.67 billion (US$ 571,069). Bali Education Agency head Tia Kusumawardani said the equipment would be distributed to senior high schools especially in poorer areas in Bali, including Buleleng, Bangli, Jembrana, and Karangasem. "The school principals will have to sign an integrity pact that states they will make sure the laptops and printers remain in good condition," she said. (swd) Share this article Whatsapp Facebook Twitter Linkedin Callistasia Anggun Wijaya (The Jakarta Post) Jakarta Fri, October 26, 2018 14:35 1119 882ab4bc56dbda08a069b3087795df58 1 City anies-baswedan,jakarta,Argentina,Conference Free Jakarta Governor Anies Baswedan will fly to Buenos Aires, Argentina, on Saturday to attend the Urban 20 Mayors Summit (U20), during which leaders from G20 countries will discuss issues faced by big cities. Anies is scheduled to return to Jakarta next Thursday. The governor will hand over his tasks to City Secretary Saefullah while he is in Buenos Aires, given that the deputy governor position is still vacant. The Jakarta Development Planning Board (Bappeda) head and a staff member of the Gubernatorial and Foreign Affairs ( KDH-KLN) Bureau will assist Anies at the event. Facilitated by C40 Cities, the U20 is a new diplomatic initiative that aims to help cities develop collective messages and inclusive solutions to tackle global issues, such as climate change, the future of work and social integration. The citys 2018 budget sets aside Rp 54.5 billion (US$ 3.7 million) for city officials' work trips. Rp 36.4 billion has been allocated for domestic work trips and Rp 18 billion for overseas trips. (cal) Share this article Whatsapp Facebook Twitter Linkedin News Desk (The Jakarta Post) Jakarta Fri, October 26, 2018 18:49 1119 882ab4bc56dbda08a069b30877969faf 1 National BPOM,condensed-milk,Advertisement Free The Food and Drug Monitoring Agency (BPOM) officially issued on Friday a regulation on processed food labels that includes a point that suggests susu kental manis (sweetened condensed milk) is a dairy product. In May, the BPOM issued a circular that restricted condensed milk producers from advertising their products as fresh milk or an equivalent to it. Through the circular, the agency also prohibited sweetened condensed milk advertisements from being aired during prime time. Read also: Marketing of condensed milk as fresh milk not allowed: BPOM Sweetened condensed milk is safe for consumption but it can never substitute breast milk, agency head Penny Kusumastuti Lukito said during the dissemination of the regulation in Jakarta on Friday as quoted by Antara. The regulation, Perka BPOM No. 31/2018, requires producers of sweetened condensed milk to display a disclaimer on their packaging that says sweetened condensed milk cannot substitute breast milk, is not suitable for infants aged 1 year old and younger, and cannot be regarded as the main source of nutrients". Previously, Penny advised children aged 5 years or younger to avoid the consumption of condensed milk due to its high level of sugar content. She emphasized that the new regulation automatically annulled the May circular. BPOM deputy on processed food monitoring Tetty Helfery Sihombing urged producers to comply with the new regulation. Producers will be given a 30-month grace period from the day of the regulation's issuance to adjust their packaging accordingly. (swd) Share this article Whatsapp Facebook Twitter Linkedin News Desk (The Jakarta Post) Jakarta Fri, October 26, 2018 12:50 1120 882ab4bc56dbda08a069b3087795a716 1 Business e-commerce,taxation,NPWP,robert-pakpahan,Hestu-Yoga-Saksama Free The government has long planned to collect taxes from e-commerce companies, but officials have hinted that the Finance Ministry will not issue a specific regulation on the digital business anytime soon. The head of the Finance Ministrys state revenue policy center, Rofyanto Kurniawan, said in Jakarta on Thursday that his office was focusing on helping e-commerce players create reports on their businesses for submission to the government. The initial step is to help e-commerce players make reports, Rofyanto said as reported by kontan.co.id. Taxation Director General Robert Pakpahan said the tax office was studying how to enforce tax compliance among digital businesses and that in the near future, his office would issue a regulation requiring e-commerce players to have tax numbers (NPWPs). By having an NPWP, they will be required to submit their business data to the taxation Directorate General so that self-assessment can be applied in tax returns, Robert said. Taxation Directorate General spokesman Hestu Yoga Saksama said that with the regulation, the target would be individuals and micro, small and medium enterprises (MSMEs) that sell goods and services through e-commerce platforms. Hestu said the platforms were expected to help the tax office encourage e-commerce players to obtain NPWPs. The point is that e-commerce players can conveniently conduct business while also abiding by tax regulations, he added. The official added that the prevailing regulation on final income taxation that required MSMEs to pay 0.5 percent corporate income tax could be use to collect taxes from e-commerce players. (bbn) Share this article Whatsapp Facebook Twitter Linkedin (The Jakarta Post) Jakarta Fri, October 26, 2018 08:38 1120 882ab4bc56dbda08a069b30877949ac7 2 Business Garuda-Indonesia,operation,Bombardier-CRJ1000-aircraft Free National flag carrier Garuda Indonesia introduced a new flight class product called Explore Business Class on its Bombardier CRJ1000 aircraft on Thursday. The product is said to offer prestige value of service with a more competitive ticket price. The newly launched product will consist of 12 seats located in the three front-most rows. In line with the promising market potential for short-haul flights served by the Bombardier CRJ1000, we expect the Explore Business Class to be able to accommodate the market demand for the premium flight service concept, said Garuda Indonesia commercial director Pikri Ilham Kurniansyah in a statement. He added that the carrier had begun offering the new service on Thursday and would start operating it on Nov. 1. Passengers interested in trying the new product can purchase tickets through the airlines mobile app or website, as well as its ticketing sales offices. (brf) Share this article Whatsapp Facebook Twitter Linkedin News Desk (The Jakarta Post) Jakarta Fri, October 26, 2018 17:22 1119 882ab4bc56dbda08a069b30877966f0e 4 City Gerindra-Party,PKS,deputy-governor,Jakarta-administration,politics Free Old allies the Gerindra Party and the Prosperous Justice Party (PKS) have finally agreed on two names for the prospective new Jakarta deputy governor that they will propose to the Jakarta Legislative Council, a councilor has said. The two names have been approved but we cant announce them yet. Gerindra and PKS have agreed on the two candidates, PKS councilor Triwisaksana said on Thursday as reported by kompas.com. Gerindra and PKS were at loggerheads claiming entitlement over the vacant Jakarta deputy governor post following the resignation of Sandiaga Uno, who is running as a vice presidential candidate with Prabowo Subianto for 2019 presidential election. The two parties, as the winning parties of the 2017 Jakarta gubernatorial election, have the right to nominate two names based on the 2016 Regional Elections Law. The names must be approved by the city council during a plenary meeting, which will later decide on the new deputy governor. Triwisaksana did not provide further details but said the names were not far from what had been mentioned previously. He also refused to disclose if the names came from each party or from one party alone. PKS had insisted on nominating its cadres Agung Yulianto and Ahmad Syaikhu, while Gerindra had also considered deputy city council speaker Muhammad Taufik and Prabowos niece, lawmaker Rahayu Saraswati Djojohadikusumo. Most importantly we have made progress. Gerindra and PKS dont want to push our egos with our own cadres without thinking about Jakartas interests, he added. (ami) Share this article Whatsapp Facebook Twitter Linkedin News Desk (The Jakarta Post) Jakarta Fri, October 26, 2018 15:40 1119 882ab4bc56dbda08a069b30877960a3e 4 Business Esemka,cars,Jokowi,comments Free President Joko Jokowi Widodo has stressed that the government is not involved in the production of Esemka cars, which increased Jokowis popularity in 2012 when he the Surakarta mayor in Central Java. Esemka is developed fully by the industry without any involvement of the government in the production, the Jokowi stated on his Instagram account @jokowi on Thursday. President Jokowis comment on the cars was likely in response to public debate, following a report stating that several of the cars would be released this month based on a remark by Jokowis running mate Maruf Amin. In October, there will be the launch of the Esemka national car, which was introduced by Pak Jokowi. There will be mass production, Maruf said on Sept. 29, when speaking at an Islamic boarding school in Jember, East Java, as reported by tribunnews.com. Politicians from opposition parties criticized the timing of the launch of the Esemka car, months before the presidential election, claiming it was a move to boost the popularity of the President. Jokowi explained that the Esemka car had been designed by a vocational school (SMK) in Surakarta with help from technicians working in the automotive industry. He stressed that the duty of the government was to encourage that the cars passed emission tests and to assure that they were roadworthy. (bbn) Share this article Whatsapp Facebook Twitter Linkedin (The Jakarta Post) Jakarta Fri, October 26 2018 The East Jakarta administration has urged several business owners, including the management of Taman Mini Indonesia Indah (TMII) cultural park, to pay their taxes. The administration has put up warning notices, stating that the management has yet to fulfill its tax obligations, at three locations in TMII, namely Snowbay Waterpark, Skylift and the Tourist Village. TMII culture and information manager Dwi Windiarto said the management deplored the administrations move to put up the warning notices because TMII was in the process of fulfilling its obligations. to Read Full Story SUBSCRIBE NOW Starting from IDR 55,000/month Unlimited access to our web and app content e-Post daily digital newspaper No advertisements, no interruptions Privileged access to our events and programs Subscription to our newsletters We accept Register to read 3 premium articles for free Already subscribed? login Share this article Whatsapp Facebook Twitter Linkedin Marguerite Afra Sapiie (The Jakarta Post) Jakarta Fri, October 26, 2018 18:37 1119 882ab4bc56dbda08a069b30877969a01 1 National HTI,Hizbut-Tahrir-Indonesia,Nahdlatul-ulama,Banser,Wiranto,GNPF,blasphemy Free Hundreds of protesters took to the street on Friday against the recent burning of a black flag bearing an Islamic creed written in Arabic, demanding that the government and law enforcement prosecute the actors who had set the flag on fire. They staged a rally in front of the office of Coordinating Political, Legal and Security Affairs Minister Wiranto and decried the flag-burning incident, which involved members of Nahdlatul Ulamas (NU) Barisan Ansor Serbaguna (Banser) youth wing and occurred during National Santri Day celebrations in Garut, West Java, on Monday. Many of them, which include several conservative Islamic groups, carried a black-and-white flag bearing the tauhid and chanted the Islamic creed, the core of Islamic faith and belief, which says that "Allah is the one and only God." The protesters believed that the actions of the Banser members who had burned the flag because the latter thought it was the flag of outlawed Muslim group Hizbut Tahrir Indonesia (HTI) was unacceptable and an insult to all Muslims. "If the government doesn't want to be seen as anti-Islam or doesn't take sides with ulama, please prove that [the flag-burning] is wrong and cannot be tolerated," National Movement to Safeguard the Ulema Fatwa (GNPF) chairman Yusuf Martak said in his speech before the crowd. The GNPF was the force behind large rallies in late 2016 against former Jakarta governor Basuki "Ahok" Tjahaja Purnama, who was later convicted for blasphemy. They demanded that GP Ansor chairman Yaqut Cholil Qoumas be prosecuted for the flag-burning incident, while also demanding that Wiranto bridge a meeting between them, NU chairman Said Aqil Siradj, Yaqut and Banser executives. On Wednesday, Yaqut held a press conference responding to the incident and said his organization would give a stern warning to the flag burners but insisted that the flags were HTI flags. Yusuf and six other participants were received by Wiranto's secretary, Lt. Gen. Agus Surya Bakti, at the ministers office for a discussion over the protesters' demand. Agus represented Wiranto, who was on a visit to Palu, Central Sulawesi, to discuss post-earthquake recovery with local governments. After the meeting, Agus and the delegation representing the protesters addressed the crowd together; however, the participants of the rally expressed disappointment over Wiranto's absence as they booed when Agus spoke to them about the meeting at the office. "We had a good talk and we will convey all of [the protesters'] aspirations to the coordinating minister [Wiranto]," Agus said. Share this article Whatsapp Facebook Twitter Linkedin Yulia Savitri (The Jakarta Post) Palembang Sat, October 27, 2018 08:58 1119 882ab4bc56dbda08a069b30877967338 1 National Palembang,murder,suicide,FransiskusXaveriusOng,family Free A Palembang father who allegedly shot dead his family and pet dogs before ending his own life left two notes saying that he was so tired, but loved his wife and children and that he could not afford to leave them alone in this world. In a rare murder-suicide case that has shaken the South Sumatra capital, 45-year-old businessman Fransiskus Xaverius Ong, known by his colleagues as a family man, is strongly believed to have killed his 43-year-old wife, Margereth Yentin Liana, his 18-year-old son, Rafael Fransiskus, and 11-year-old daughter, Kathlyn Fransiskus. The murder took place at the familys residence in Kalidoni district, Palembang, South Sumatra, in the wee hours of Wednesday morning. Witnesses said Ong had given clues on what he was planning to do the night before he killed his family and pet dogs, Choky and Snowy. Ong, according to one of the housemaids, was drinking coffee while playing the piano at around 8 p.m. on Tuesday. The housemaid, identified only as Dewi, told the police that Ong only played the piano when he was having a problem. Later that night, she said, he did something unusual: calling on every employee working for his company as well as the housemaids to gather for a meeting at his residence, where he reportedly gave his employees some money. At 3 a.m. on Wednesday, he sent a message to his high school WhatsApp group asking for their forgiveness and for them to remember his good deeds only. One of the confused group members replied: What are you blabbering about at 3 a.m. in the morning? A message purportedly sent by Fransiskus Xaverius Ong, 45, to his high school WhatsApp group shortly before he allegedly killed his wife, children and himself. Ong was known by his nickname, Amat. (JP/File) The following morning, Sarah, the other housemaid, was shocked when she tried to wake Kathlyn up for school. My sister Sarah saw blood on the pillow when she tried to wake Kathlyn up. At first, she thought it was simply a nosebleed, but then she saw that the blood was coming from Kathlyns head, Dewi said, as quoted by kompas.com. The housemaids then rushed to the parents room to tell them what they had just found, but the door was locked and their calls were met with silence. They then decided to call for help from the neighbors and the police, only to find out that all the family members had been shot to death. South Sumatra Police chief Insp. Gen. Zulkarnain Adinegara said that, according to autopsy results and scientific investigation, Ong had carefully planned the murders. Based on [the findings] of gunshot residue analysis, it was revealed that Fransiskus was the one who pulled the trigger, he said on Friday. According to the police investigation, Fransiskus first shot his wife in their bedroom. He then paused for a while, sat outside the room and lit a cigarette. We found cigarette butts partly covered in blood, as well as coffee stains outside the bedroom. We assume he smoked a cigarette and thought about his actions before proceeding to murder his children, Zulkarnain said. He then allegedly went to his sons bedroom on the second floor and shot him in the head while he was asleep. The last victim was his daughter, who, like her brother, was allegedly shot from close range, according to the police. None of the maids claimed to have heard gunshots. The suicide notes left by Fransiskus Xaverius Ong, 45, read, Im so tired, Im sorry [] and I love my wife and children very much [as well as family dogs] Choky and Snowy. I cant afford to leave them alone in this world. (JP/File) Police believe that after killing his wife and children, Ong killed the family dogs by drowning them in the bathtub, after which he returned to his bedroom, locked the door and shot himself. The police have yet to find a clear motive behind the murder-suicide, but they suspect that it was triggered by a fight between Ong and his wife, who demanded a divorce over allegations that her husband was having an affair. The only other clue they have about a possible motive is in the suicide notes left by Ong. The notes read, Im so tired, Im sorry [] and I love my wife and children very much [as well as family dogs] Choky and Snowy. I cant afford to leave them alone in this world. He didnt want to die alone. Thats why he also murdered his entire family, Zulkarnain said. (rfa) Coast Guard Body (Balawisata) training participants rescue someone playing the role of victim during a drill on Kuta Beach in Bali on Thursday. At least 90 participants joined the training on saving victims amid ocean waves, which was led by an Australian instructor.(JP/Zul Trio Anggono)(Balawisata) training participants rescue someone playing the role of victim during a drill on Kuta Beach in Bali on Thursday. At least 90 participants joined the training on saving victims amid ocean waves, which was led by an Australian instructor.(JP/Zul Trio Anggono) Share this article Whatsapp Facebook Twitter Linkedin Apriadi Gunawan (The Jakarta Post) Medan Fri, October 26 2018 Meiliana, a resident of Tanjung Balai, North Sumatra, who was sentenced to 18 months imprisonment for blasphemy after complaining about the volume of adzan (call to prayer), is set to file a cassation appeal to the Supreme Court after the Medan High Court rejected her appeal. On July 22, 2016, the 44-year-old, who is Buddhist and of Chinese descent, complained to her neighbor during a morning chat that the volume of adzan made from a nearby mosque was so loud, it hurt her ears. About a week later, an angry mob burned and destroyed 14 Buddhist temples and two clinics in Tanjung Balai in an apparent response to her complaint. Many local residents of Chinese descent fled abroad for fear of repercussions. It was believed to be the worst anti-Chinese riot in the country since 1998. to Read Full Story SUBSCRIBE NOW Starting from IDR 55,000/month Unlimited access to our web and app content e-Post daily digital newspaper No advertisements, no interruptions Privileged access to our events and programs Subscription to our newsletters We accept Register to read 3 premium articles for free Already subscribed? login Share this article Whatsapp Facebook Twitter Linkedin News Desk (The Jakarta Post) Jakarta Fri, October 26, 2018 16:51 1119 882ab4bc56dbda08a069b30877964a3c 1 Business sofyan-djalil,land-distribution,land-certification,land-reform Free The Agrarian and Spatial Planning Minister has announced that the government's agrarian reform program distributed 188,000 hectares of land to the people over four years. In the last four years under President Joko Widodo's leadership, the government has [taken a serious stance] in addressing land and spatial planning issues, spatial planning minister Sofyan Djalil said in Jakarta on Friday as quoted by Antara news agency. He said the government had also started to address neglected and idle land, including plots with right-to-build (HGB) certificates and those with other land certificates that the property's owner had not utilized. Sofyan said the agrarian reform program also included redistributing land that had been taken over by large corporations and restoring the property to private ownership. Through the comprehensive systematic registration program (PTSL), the government aimed to assure legal certainty over land ownership to reduce land disputes and to facilitate smooth infrastructure development across the country, the minister added. Apart from intensifying its land distribution, the government had also introduced its popular land certification program. The government said it had issued 5 million land certificates last year, and planned to issue 7 million land certificates this year and 9 million certificates in 2019. (bbn) Share this article Whatsapp Facebook Twitter Linkedin News Desk (The Jakarta Post) Jakarta Fri, October 26, 2018 17:15 1119 882ab4bc56dbda08a069b3087796673d 1 Business Inalum,Moodys-Investors-Service,rating Free Moody's Investors Service has assigned a Baa2 issuer rating to state-owned mining holding company PT Indonesia Asahan Alumunium (Inalum) and a Baa2 rating to the company's proposed senior unsecured notes. The outlook on the ratings is stable. Proceeds from the notes issuance will be used to fund a portion of Inalum's proposed $3.85 billion payment to increase its ownership share of PT Freeport Indonesia (PTFI), which controls the rights to mine the Grasberg minerals district, to 51.23 percent. Inalum will benefit from the scale of PTFI's operations, who mines the world's second-largest copper mine and largest gold mine at Grasberg. However, credit risk will rise due to a considerable increase in financial leverage and complex capital expansion projects at PTFI," said Brian Grieser, Moody's vice president and senior credit officer and lead analyst for Inalum. Inalum is a government-appointed holding company for state-owned mining entities. It owns and manages the government's 65 percent stake in PT Aneka Tambang (Antam), PT Bukit Asam and PT Timah, as well as its 9.36 percent interest in PTFI. Moodys said Inalum's Baa2 issuer rating reflected the application of Moody's rating methodology for government-related issuers that combines its ba2 baseline credit assessment (BCA) and a three-notch uplift based on Moody's expectation of a high likelihood of extraordinary support for the company from the government of Indonesia (Baa2 stable) in times of need. This is the first time that Moody's has assigned ratings to Inalum. (bbn) Share this article Whatsapp Facebook Twitter Linkedin Anuj Chopra and Mohamad Ali Harissi (Agence France-Presse) Riyadh, Saudi Arabia Fri, October 26, 2018 08:48 1120 882ab4bc56dbda08a069b3087794b3bb 2 World #SaudiArabia,#MurderCase,Saudi-Arabia,Turkey,probe,journalist,murder,PremeditatedMurder Free Saudi Arabia said Thursday the murder of journalist Jamal Khashoggi appeared to have been premeditated, based on information from Turkey, backing away from an earlier claim that he was killed in a brawl. It was the latest twist in the shifting official narrative of the October 2 killing inside the kingdom's consulate in Istanbul, which US President Donald Trump has derided as "one of the worst cover-ups" in history. Saudi Arabia has sought to draw a line under the crisis, and a rights group said Thursday that authorities had allowed Khashoggi's eldest son Salah and his family to leave the country after lifting a travel ban. But the kingdom still faces mounting pressure from sceptical world powers demanding answers and to know the whereabouts of Khashoggi's body. The Saudi public prosecutor said he was making the latest assessment on the basis of evidence supplied by Turkey, which has been the source of a series of grisly revelations about the government critic's death. After first insisting Khashoggi left the consulate unharmed, Saudi authorities said he was killed in an argument that degenerated into a brawl before finally accepting what Turkey had said virtually from the start -- that he was killed in a premeditated hit. "Information from the Turkish authorities indicates that the act of the suspects in the Khashoggi case was premeditated," the office of public prosecutor Sheikh Saud al-Mojeb said in a statement carried by the state-run Saudi Press Agency. "The public prosecution continues its investigation with suspects... to complete the course of justice. Khashoggi was the victim of an "extrajudicial execution" committed by the Saudi state, UN expert Agnes Callamard said Thursday, calling for an international investigation. Separately, CIA Director Gina Haspel briefed Trump on the latest developments in the investigation of the killing after a fact-finding mission to Turkey. As the new Saudi admission came on Thursday, Turkish Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu said Riyadh still needed to provide answers to remaining questions, such as who ordered the hit and what happened to Khashoggi's body. "Where is (the body)? You admit they did it, but why are they not saying (where)?" Cavusoglu said at a press conference in Ankara. "His family also wants to know and pay their final tribute." - Slow drip of admissions - The slow drip of Saudi admissions cast a pall over a showcase three-day investment forum that ended on Thursday, with organisers putting a brave face on the array of no-shows among big-name guests. The Saudi energy minister said foreign companies which boycotted the Future Investment Forum (FII) had "apologised" and vowed to restore normal relations. "Some companies abstained from the conference due to political pressure as a result of an odious campaign directed from outside the kingdom which has failed," Khalid al-Falih told state-run Al-Ekhbariya news channel. "All the companies that abstained have been calling us during the past 48 hours to apologise," Falih said. A long list of investors and international policymakers declined to attend the conference, nicknamed "Davos in the desert", amid growing outrage over the Khashoggi murder. Siemens chief executive Joe Kaeser, corporate chiefs from JP Morgan, Ford and Uber, and media powerhouses like CNN and the Financial Times all scrapped plans to attend. Ministers from Britain, France and the United States also stayed away. - Travel ban lifted - In his first public comments on the case on Wednesday, Saudi Arabia's powerful Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman denounced the "repulsive" murder and pledged that "justice will prevail". The departure of Khashoggi's son, Salah, for Washington came after he was photographed on Tuesday with Prince Mohammed during a condolence visit, staring coldly as the pair shook hands. The photo went viral on social media, where rights activists demanded the immediate lifting of the travel ban. There was no immediate comment from Saudi officials, but Human Rights Watch Middle East director Sarah Leah Whitson told AFP they were apparently allowed to leave after the ban was lifted. Salah, a dual US-Saudi citizen, will be joined in the United States by his other siblings who are based there, friends of the family told AFP. "Jamal's family needs a place to be together where they feel safe to mourn their beloved one," said Randa Slim, director of conflict resolution at the Washington-based Middle East Institute, who knew the slain journalist personally. "It is tragic that it took his death to get the Saudi authorities to grant them the freedom to travel," Slim told AFP. An official in Washington said US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo had "raised the safety and security of the Khashoggi family members with the Saudi leadership", but declined to discuss the specifics of Salah's travel. Share this article Whatsapp Facebook Twitter Linkedin Sri Wahyuni (The Jakarta Post) Yogyakarta Fri, October 26, 2018 09:27 1120 882ab4bc56dbda08a069b3087794e433 2 Politics Islam,tolerance Free Participants of the Global Unity Forum (GUF) II, an international interfaith forum jointly hosted by Nahdlatul Ulamas youth wing GP Ansor and the Bayt Ar Rahmah dawa movement, signed a joint statement on Thursday calling for all people to stop politicizing Islam. The decree, called the Nusantara Statement, calls on people of every faith and nation to curtail the spreading of hatred and start building relationships founded upon respect for equal rights and dignity. We want to convey to the world that religion should be used as a basis for better civilization and not as a weapon or even norm to engage in conflict, GP Ansor chairman Yaqut Cholil Qoumas told The Jakarta Post on the sidelines of the forum on Thursday. Dozens of delegates representing Muslims, Jews, Christians and Catholics from the United States, Europe and the Middle East joined the two-day forum held to coincide with Kirab Satu Negeri, a movement launched by GP Ansor on Sept. 16 to campaign for pluralism and tolerance. Among the international delegates participating in the forum include Reverend Johnie Moore of the Commission on International Religious Freedom (US), head of the All-India Organization on Mosque Imams Maulana Umer Ahmed Ilyasi (India) and Imam Talib Shareef of The Nations Mosque (US). Yaqut said the forum was first initiated last year in Jakarta over concern about the endless conflicts, especially in Middle Eastern countries such as Libya and Syria, for which the fighting parties use religion as a basis. In fact we believe that none of the religions in the world, especially Islam, teach that religion can be used as a tool to engage in conflicts, Yaqut said. (wit) Share this article Whatsapp Facebook Twitter Linkedin Catherine Marciano (Agence France-Presse) Vatican City, Holy See Fri, October 26, 2018 11:05 1120 882ab4bc56dbda08a069b308779566ef 2 World #religion,#CatholicChurch,Vatican,married-bishop Free A bid by Belgium bishops to allow young married men to take the cloth has fallen flat at a Vatican meet -- though Pope Francis is considering testing out the idea in the Amazon. The suggestion of easing the rules on celibacy was raised by the Auxiliary Bishop of Brussels, Jean Kockerols, during a month-long meeting of the world's bishops. It appeared to fall on deaf ears -- at least officially. "There were no reactions" to that, or any of the "daring proposals" that made newspaper headlines during the synod, French bishop Emmanuel Gobillard told AFP. The 330 or so clerics and lay people taking part in the talks, which end Sunday, were tackling the thorny issue of how to make the Roman Catholic Church appeal to youngsters. "I am disappointed by the lack of reaction. One bishop compared it to stalactites that take a long time to grow," Kockerols told AFP. "Numerous bishops sought me out during coffee breaks, saying 'you are right, we should be heading in that direction,' but I notice the subject was never looked into in the working groups," he said. The number of priests and nuns dropped sharply in 2016 in Europe -- and the Americas to a lesser extent. The picture is rosier in Africa and Asia, according to the Fides Catholic agency. As the Argentine pontiff has repeatedly said, there is no doctrinal prohibition on married men becoming priests, and therefore the discipline can be changed. - 'Taboo' subject - Saint Peter, the church's first pope, had a mother-in-law, according to the bible. Celibacy was imposed in the 11th century, possibly partly to prevent descendants of priests from inheriting church property. But some within the church believe it is time to join many eastern rite Catholic Churches in permitting married men to take the cloth. Married Anglican priests keen to convert to Catholicism have already been welcomed over. The Vatican's number two man, Cardinal Pietro Parolin, suggested in an interview at the start of the synod that the church could "gradually look in depth" at the issue, while ruling out a "drastic change". Some 60,000 priests have given up their vocation over the past few decades, often to marry, according to a book on the topic presented a stone's throw from the Vatican during the synod. There were 414,000 Roman Catholic priests around the world in 2016. Some 1,000 of them are quitting each year, according to the book by Vatican expert Enzo Romeo. While there are no official statistics on the number of married ex-priests, he estimates that there are around 8,000 of them in Italy alone. "Priests' emotions are still often a taboo subject, swept under the carpet at the heart of the church," Romeo said. The decision to leave the priesthood -- despite the job security and free accommodation -- usually happens after 13 years on the job or is sparked by a mid-life crisis, he says. - Lonely hearts, rejects - One of the former priests quoted in Romeo's book says he quit not only because he fell in love, but also because he found it difficult to preach to others about the church's moral stance on sexuality. Pope Paul VI's refusal to open the door to the use of the pill in the Swinging Sixties saw many priests abandon their calling. "Celibacy is an extreme form of poverty which lumps those who practice it in with the loneliest people, the rejects," one older cleric, defending his radical choice, told Romeo. Pope Francis suggested in 2017 that the church "reflect" on the question of ordaining "viri probati", married men of proven virtue, particularly in far-flung places where priests are thin on the ground. The idea is likely to be on the table at a synod next year dedicated specially to the Amazon, an immense territory where clergy are scarce. Sensing a possible shift in attitude, some 300 or so married, former priests in Italy sent a letter to Francis at the start of October offering to take up the cloth once more should he need them. Share this article Whatsapp Facebook Twitter Linkedin Greget Kalla Buana (The Jakarta Post) Durham, UK Fri, October 26 2018 Indonesia with support from the Islamic Development Bank, has reaffirmed its position as one of the worlds Islamic economic and financial catalysts with the launch of the Waqf Core Principle during the recent International Monetary Fund and World Bank Group Annual Meetings. Following the successful inauguration of the Zakat Core Principle at the 2016 United Nations World Humanitarian Summit in Istanbul, the initiative is part of a broader focus on promoting inclusive economy. Waqf is not only perceived as an Islamic social finance instrument, but also involves the commercial sector. The meetings in Bali attended by 189 countries were therefore a perfect opportunity for the introduction of waqf to the world. Other than zakat, there are many Islamic finance instruments that can be harnessed to alleviate poverty. Indeed zakat redistributes wealth among people. However, ensuring such counter-cyclical attempt as well as achieving sustainable development at the same time need a supporting system. In that case, zakat as social safety net is short-term, whereas waqf is more likely long-lasting with its characteristic of perpetuity and income generation skills. to Read Full Story SUBSCRIBE NOW Starting from IDR 55,000/month Unlimited access to our web and app content e-Post daily digital newspaper No advertisements, no interruptions Privileged access to our events and programs Subscription to our newsletters We accept Register to read 3 premium articles for free Already subscribed? login Oct 25 2018 7:49 pm Congressman Chris Smith visited Lakewood onWednesday evening to hold a roundtable discussion with The Lakewood Vaad, LCSC and LRRC (the Kehilas social service agencies). He passionately advocated for his decades long agenda widely shared by the Lakewood Kehilla to fight anti-Semitism and promote traditional family values in a world becoming more and more hostile to our sacred Mesorah and values. He reiterated his two social priorities; upholding the sanctity of traditional marriage and legally respecting and protecting the absolute right to life for all, including the unborn, elderly and medically fragile. Frankly, it was a breath of fresh air and music to our ears to hear a respected public servant so articulately advocate for Kedusha throughout our nation and for safety of Yidden throughout the world, reflected Rabbi Moshe Zev Weisberg. He went on to share his battle stories and vignettes, including leading the charge in Congress to free Russian Yidden from communist oppression andshmad. He described how since the 1980s he has placed a unique focus on issues related to global anti-Semitism, even before there was a significant frum population in his district. Despite the many years even decades that have elapsed since some of these endeavors, the passion was evident in the Congressmans voice. The group fondly recollected how when Jewish Refuseniks were imprisoned behind the Iron Curtain of the former Soviet Union, Congressman Smith made several personal trips to visit them and was instrumental in freeing them. More recently, he traveled to Bolivia to visit Yanky Ostreicher, a frum yid who was unjustly imprisoned, and was instrumental in his eventual release. These and other bold foreign policy endeavors have earned Congressman Smith disproportionate influencein foreign affairs. Among his many leadership positions, he is a senior member of the House Committee on Foreign Affairs and Co-Chairman of the Commission on Security and Cooperation in Europe (where there is Rl growing anti-Semitism across the whole continent). Askonim thanked him for using his clout to battle anti-Semitism, terrorism and other human rights abuses, and thanking him for always being an unflinching ally of Israel. Within recent weeks, Congressman Smiths efforts led to the passage of the Special Envoy to Monitor and Combat Anti-Semitism Act, legislation he authored that guarantees the appointment of a Special Envoy whose sole focus is battling global anti-Semitism. Congressman Smith explained how none of these feats as logical and agreeable as they sound come easy. The legislative process and all its political complexities can stretch the process to as long as eight years from inception until enactment, and he has even been subject to credible death threats. Its baffling and frustrating at times, but I never give up, the Congressman explained. As a result of this persistence, Congressman Smith ranks #2 in the entire House of Representatives (435 members) in authoring legislation that is now law. On the issue of Israel, Congressman Smith shook his head and threw his hands up in the air when discussing the blood money that the Palestinian Authority pays terrorists and their families who brutally kill Achenu Bnei Yisroel BEretz Yisroel, Rl. He heralded the Taylor Force Act, enacted in March, which cuts US economic aid to the Palestinians as long as these terror subsidies are given. He shared that he is currently working across the aisle to advance even stricter legislation that would hold Palestinian officials criminally liable for the deaths of US citizens in terror attacks as long as these payments continue. A deeply religious person, Congressman Smith spoke with emotion how he empathizes with the Lakewood communitys religious and family values. He is reliably pro-life and pro-traditional marriage, and is at the forefront of the battle to ensure that Americas religious citizens and institutions are free to remain true to their values. The askanim shared the communitys concerns over the anti-Semitism prevalent in Lakewood and neighboring communities. When shown a new website targeting in a very derogatory fashion Ocean Countys Jewish communities, Congressman Smith was visibly disturbed and vowed to follow up on the issue. Lakewoods Kehilla social service staff members from the LRRC and LCSC thanked Congressman Smith for his longstanding support and noted that despite his focus on major national and international issues, his office has always been stellar in constituent services helping district residents navigate just about any issue with a federal agency. The Congressmans staff in the room confirmed that to date the office has handled over 90,000(!) individual constituent services cases. It is indeed a pleasure to work with Congressman Smiths office and staff, noted a prominent Kehilla caseworker. They take each issue seriously and give it the attention it needs. The Kehilla representatives further noted the outstanding response they receive when reaching out to Congressman Smiths staff on behalf of individual Yechidim in the Kehilla and beyond needing special high level Hishtadlus with problems both huge and small. A sincere Yasher Koach was extended to him on their behalf. Our community is diverse and there are assortedpolitical opinions, Rabbi Moshe Zev Weisberg of The Lakewood Vaad and LCSC told Congressman Smith. However, the wall-to-wall appreciation that this community has for you is very strong, ongoing and well-deserved. On behalf of all us, we thank you, bless you and wish you health and continued success. Unfortunately, The Content Is Not Here You have arrived at this page because the page or post you were looking for no longer exists. Please check our main navigation pages for other content: Home Page You have permission to edit this article. Edit Close Hope & Cope is putting the fun in fundraising with two special events this November: a hike of Mount Royals three summits on Sunday, November 4 and an exclusive screening of the film Love, Gilda on Monday, November 12. Hike of Mount Royals three summits Launched in March 2018, Kili chez nous features 10 monthly hikes in the beautiful mountain regions of Quebec. The hikes are part of an overall campaign called Tell Cancer to Take a Hike, which included a Climb of Africas Mount Kilimanjaro last March for the truly adventurous. Kili chez nous continues to attract fitness enthusiasts of all ages who love hiking in the great outdoors and who are motivated by the opportunity to help cancer patients with every step they take. This first foray into adventure fundraising has been a great success, raising in excess of $525,000 for Hope & Cope. As the campaign winds down, Montrealers of all fitness levels are invited to join the Kili chez nous team on Sunday, November 4, for a one-time minimum gift of $100 to Hope & Cope, as they hike the three summits of Mount Royal, with breathtaking views at the top of each summit. Says Hope & Cope Board member and Tell Cancer to Take a Hike Chair, Howard Stotland, We want to give everyone an opportunity to be part of the action and enjoy the Kili team spirit while raising funds for Hope & Cope. He adds that this pioneering cancer support organization matters to the thousands of patients diagnosed with cancer each year who depend on its support to cope with this devastating disease. Register online at https://hopeandcopekilicheznous.com/3/donate.htm Love, Gilda For the cinematically inclined, Hope & Cope is offering an exclusive screening of the film Love, Gilda. This uplifting documentary portrays the honest and whimsical world of the beloved performer Gilda Radner of Saturday Night Live fame, from her childhood through her comedy career and ultimately, her struggles with cancer. Much like Gildas Clubs founded in her name, the Hope & Cope Wellness Centre is a place where cancer patients and their families can focus on wellness, in mind, body and spirit, explains event chair Marlene King. Events like these help ensure that Hope & Cope can continue to offer these wonderful programs free of charge to all Montrealers. The screening will take place at Cinema Guzzo, Spheretech, 3500 Cote Vertu Blvd on November 12 at 7:30 p.m. Doors open at 6:30 p.m. Tickets cost $136 (includes complimentary snacks and a $100 tax receipt) and may be obtained online: https://jghfoundation.akaraisin.com/gilda Hope & Cope AB 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. Less than 50 years ago Cuyahoga Valley National Park was a sprawling community of farms and small-scale factories in the Cuyahoga Valley. Thanks to its natural beauty, intriguing fauna and flora and amazing story of habitat renewal, it was crowned as a National Park in 2000. Today it is one of just two national parks in the Great Lakes region of the U.S and a haven for wildlife such as bald eagles, white-tailed deer and beavers. The park is easy to access being a mere 20-minute drive from Downtown Cleveland and is close to the city of Akron. The tumultuous history of Cuyahoga Valley In the early 1800s, the US frontier was a patchwork of independent Indian nations and European settlers. Some settlers headed west in search of fertile farming land, and found their way to Cuyahoga Valley but with no viable way to export goods, they struggled to be self-sufficient. So, locals began the construction of the Ohio & Erie Canal, a man-made ditch that led from Cleveland to Akron and connected to the Ohio River. For decades the canal was a prosperous trade route and a popular recreational spot. Sadly, after the Civil War the canals expenditure started to outgrow its revenue, and in 1913 a major flood damaged the canal beyond repair. By the 1960s the rise of urbanisation, factory waste and sewage were causing environmental degradation. Campaigners successfully egged President Gerald Ford to sign a bill to establish the Cuyahoga Valley National Recreation Area in 1974. Clean-up of the park started in 1987 until it became a national park. Following the Towpath Trail While the canal has been consigned to history, visitors to the park can follow its path along the 87-mile Towpath Trail. Various parts of it are open to hikers, cyclists and horse riders bikes are available to rent at Century Cycles in the town of Peninsula. You can also attend ranger-led programmes to learn more about the park and its wildlife. The Towpath Trail weaves through dense woodland and flower-strewn pastures, offering occasional glimpses of the Cuyahoga River. We recommend hiking along the Towpath Trail from Boston Store Visitor Centre to Stanford House. From here, follow the 1.5-mile Stanford Trail along a gentle incline through the trees, where chipmunks dart about and the sunlight casts a beautiful dappled glow on the forest floor. One of the more unusual creatures we spotted are woolly aphids, who cling to the trees in their hundreds and resemble small tufts of cotton wool. As the trail comes to an end, a long wooden staircase takes you the final few paces to Brandywine Falls, which cascades dramatically into boulder-strewn gorge. The 65ft waterfall can also be viewed from a wheelchair-friendly upper boardwalk. Busy beavers: observing wildlife along the Towpath Trail Another highlight is Beaver Marsh, located mile north of Ira Trailhead along the Towpath Trail. The marsh is now one of the most diverse habitats at Cuyahoga Valley, but it could have had a very different story. Once the site of an auto repair shop, plans were being made to transform the site into a parking lot. However something extraordinary happened during a site clean up: a small group of beavers that had recently returned to the valley took advantage of the open space and built a series of dams that flooded the area. This created a natural wetland that soon became teeming with life. Depending on the time of year, you can see turtles swim among the lily pads, watch beavers nibbling away at branches and hear choirs of ribiting frogs. There are also plenty of bird watching opportunities and you may even spot a bald eagle. What else is there to do? A wonderful way to view Cuyahoga Valley is on horseback, and there are several designated horse trails including Wetmore Trail (4 miles) and Valley Trail (11.4 miles). The park also allows kayaking and canoeing on most of the waterways. However youll have to source your own horse/boat as currently there are no rental businesses within the park. As well as the spectacular nature, Cuyahoga Valley is home to some residential areas and farms, including the well-preserved 19th century town of Peninsula. You can contact the farmers directly to learn about their products and attend farm-based programmes. Dotted throughout the year are various events such as farmers markets to bird walks and outdoor yoga. For a full list of events visit the Cuyahoga Valley website. If you fancy spending the night, there are basic camping facilities located near to the Boston Store Visitor Centre youll need to bring your own food, tent and camping equipment. Alcohol though is not permitted in the park. Getting there Drive: If you have a car the good news is that the roads in Cuyahoga Valley are well paved and parking is free. Transport: It takes a bit more forward planning if you want to reach the park by public transport. If youre travelling from Cleveland, take a taxi/Uber to Rockside Station (takes about 20 minutes from Downtown Cleveland). From here you can hop on the Cuyahoga Valley Scenic Railroad, which has been running in some shape or form since 1880. The old-style train chugs merrily through the park from Rockside to Akron and has some lovely scenic views. Cycle: You can hire a bike at the Boston Mill for Boston Store Visitor Centre and Peninsula. As well as carrying people, you can pay an additional surcharge to carry your bike ($5 each way) or kayak ($10 for single seated kayak and $15 for double seated kayak each way). Train: Make sure you check the train schedule as the scenic railway only completes two loops on Monday-Thursday and three loops on Friday-Sunday. LUDZIDZINI Presentations made by Supreme Court Judge Phesheya Dlamini and Ndzingeni MP Lutfo Dlamini at the Cattle Byre yesterday, received rapturous applause from the nation. This was during day one of the Sibaya submissions as sanctioned by His Majesty King Mswati III on Wednesday. The Ndzingeni MP set the ball rolling when he was the first to be called by the Master of Ceremonies, Indvuna Sifiso Mashampu Khumalo, to address the nation on how the political and economic climate of the country could be improved. Humour The MP, as the first speaker, started his submission with some humour about his being the first speaker to be chosen stating that even during his parliamentary campaigns he would in most cases be picked as number one. This is clearly even the case at Sibaya as the trend continues, said Dlamini. Getting down to the real issues at hand, the MP likened the country to an expensive car like a Rolls Royce which was not utilised, but people parked it and instead asked for lifts. He said if the country could work hand in hand and put God and the King first, it would cover great strides. He said when the King appointed the next prime minister, it should be a man of great leadership quality. He said the first issue to be tackled was that the country should produce a lot of quality food. Let us also go and get involved in farming and that each individual should consume what they have personally ploughed, said the legislator. He said tractors should not be utilised by government for its own projects, but instead they should be directed to the people to use them for agricultural purposes. The MP also said the system which was used to pay the elderly needed to be revised, and cheaper ways to disperse the grants be adopted in order to ensure that they were paid timeously on a monthly basis. The elderly enjoy working and they could also utilise this money in their farming projects, said Lutfo. graduates Addressing the issue of the thousands of graduates who leave tertiary institutions every year, the Ndzingeni MP said the Royal Science and Technology Park (RSTP) needed to be fully utilised, stating that for now very little work had been done (nyalo sise dlalile). He said the graduates needed to be taken in by the call centres. The MP also called for the various Tinkhundla centres to be industrialised, stating that this was where the industrialisation needed to start. If you do not choose me, I wish to invite you to Ndzingeni where this process will start, said Dlamini. LUDZIDZINI The few women who attended the Peoples Parliament yesterday felt left out on countless times. This is because they felt that their male counterparts were being offered the microphone more than them. Directing the proceedings was Attorney General Sifiso Khumalo, who the women accused of always looking on the side where the males were seated every time after announcing that it was time for people to make submissions. Format The format used by the AG as he directed the proceedings was in such a way that the esteemed speakers would first make their presentations on the topic of the day after which three people would be pointed at to pose questions or have a say on the issues raised. One woman was heard shouting that she did not see the need of being in the Cattle Byre when she was not being given the chance to speak. Ngani akasibuki tsine. Manje sitokwentani lapha. Kuncono umuntfu avele ahambe, the woman shouted meaning; How come he does not look to our direction. So why are we here? Perhaps it is better to leave. When interviewed, some of the women said they felt let down as they were of the view that they also had good ideas to share with the nation. What I noted was that even the few women who were pointed at, the AG did not allow them to say everything they wanted. Yes, some of them did stray from the topic at hand but we all deserve to have our voices heard, she said. It should be noted, however, that even on the male side, there were incidents where it became a battle of the fittest to get the microphone. This saw those who were eager to make submissions moving to the front row where they competed with their hands to get Khumalos attention. LUDZIDZINI The nation was yesterday left both puzzled and disappointed when the Sibaya agenda was set out for them. This reality was laid out to the masses at 11:52am when Indvuna Sifiso Mashampu Khumalo informed them that the King had asked the nation to get him an assistant who could get on with the task at hand. As a result, Khumalo, who is also the Attorney General (AG) told the nation that there had been a selected group of men and women who would make individual presentations and they would be given 10 minutes each. He at first was not specific on who these men and women were, but all the speakers turned out to be either senators or Members of Parliament (MPs) with the exception of Swaziland Sugar Association (SSA) Chief Executive Officer Phil Mnisi and Supreme Court Judge Phesheya Dlamini. Assigned Khumalo said the King had assigned him, Indvuna Lusendvo Fakudze, Indvuna of Mbekelweni Themba Ginindza, the Kings Private Secretary Mbongeni Simelane and Sihle Dlamini. He also said the King had also roped in National Secretary Nhlanhla Dlamini, who would report to him on the proceedings. Khumalo said the main topics to be discussed by the chosen speakers included how the country could improve its political and economic situation. He said the speakers would analyse the situation and without necessarily directing them on the topics to address, but could also make suggestions on how the country could make more revenue without reliance on the Southern African Customs Union (SACU) receipts. He said they could also address issues of food security, including how the country could produce surplus for export and job creation issues. At this point, some of the people shouted; akusiko loko lesitengako (this is not what we came here for). They said they wanted to submit the names of the people they thought should be PM. However, Khumalo continued to state that the speakers could also address issues of the education system, in particular reference to free primary education (FPE) and social grants. He also said the speakers could also address the issue of the recently opened Royal Science and Technology Park and how the political system of the country could be improved. Comment His Majesty the King has opened the floor at Sibaya for people to help him decide who becomes the next prime minister of the Kingdom of Eswatini. Notably, when launching the Peoples Parliament on Wednesday, the King did not confine people to decide on possible candidates of the Dlamini surname. He also emphasised that time had come for this country to change gear, adopt a change of mindset and do things differently if we are serious about socio-economic transformation. This has opened the door for the populace to expand the scope of search to any individual who possess the qualities required to revive an ailing economy that has been run to the ground. When the country needs a capable man or woman to run our multi-million public enterprises, such as Eswatini Electricity Company, Eswatini Revenue Authority, etc, we employ the best candidates and they are not all Dlaminis. Choices Logic follows, therefore, that if we want the best for this country, we ought to choose the best individual from what this country has to offer, to lead us to the Promised Land. Limiting our choices is as good as limiting our growth, is it not? We are all emaSwati at the end of the day and we have the best interests of our country at heart. The change of mindset that His Majesty has called for, should include listening to the peoples views. Far too many a consultation, Vusela exercise, Dialogue and Sibaya has been held over the years, from which brilliant ideas to develop this country have been put forward. Sadly these have been ignored by those entrusted with the responsibility to advise the King. We do recall that at the last Sibaya, people called for the late former prime minister to go. This advice was not heeded. Now he is gone and we are left with a government that can barely function or deliver on its mandate. So if we are really serious about an economic transformation that will usher us into a First World status, this is the time that the peoples submissions are taken seriously and implemented. On the occasion of the EU Summit in Brussels, Greek Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras met with Mario Draghi, President of the European Central Bank (ECB), and with Benoit Coeure, Member of the Executive Board of the ECB, who confirmed the positive outlook for Greeces economy. The ECB officials stressed the positive course of Greeces economy and the continuing improvement of the fundamentals, which lead to the estimation that markets will start taking them into consideration in the forthcoming period. Furthermore, it was ascertained that the Greek bond is being detached from the Italian bond, slowly but steadily, and that any fluctuations in Greek bonds are due to exogenous factors and not to Greeces economy. Read more at int.ert.gr RELATED TOPICS: Greece, Greek tourism news, Tourism in Greece, Greek islands, Hotels in Greece, Travel to Greece, Greek destinations , Greek travel market, Greek tourism statistics, Greek tourism report Photo Source: Wikimedia Commons Copyright: DaveOinSF~commonswiki License: CC-BY-SA He will also visit the island of Cephalonia to pay tribute to the fallen Italian soldiers of Acqui Division Italys President Sergio Mattarella is currently on an official state visit to Greece, where he will join Greek President Prokopios Pavlopoulos to observe the military parade this Sunday in te northern city of Thessaloniki, to commemorate 28 October 1940. Following the military parade, both Presidents will visit the island of Cephalonia to pay tribute to the fallen Italian soldiers of Acqui Division and the Greeks who died in the National Resistance, at the respective monuments. Events in Thessaloniki celebrating its patron saint St. Demetrios, its liberation and the 28 October national holiday opened on Friday in Thessaloniki. OHI Day (meaning NO) is celebrated across Greece, Cyprus and the Greek communities around the world on 28 October each year. OHI Day commemorates the rejection by Greek Prime Minister Ioannis Metaxas of the ultimatum made by Italian dictator Benito Mussolini on 28 October 1940, the Hellenic counterattack against the invading Italian forces at the mountains of Pindus during the Greco-Italian War, and the Greek Resistance during the Axis occupation. Read more at greekcitytimes.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 Photo Source: Wikimedia Commons Copyright: en.kremlin.ru License: CC-BY-SA The programme, donated by the Stavros Niarchos Foundation comes ahead of the winter season and is part of a package of initiatives of the Region for fighting social inequality The Regional Governor of Central Greece Kostas Bakoyannis announced the launching of the programme Warm Home which provides vulnerable families with funding for the purchase of heating fuel. The programme, donated by the Stavros Niarchos Foundation comes ahead of the winter season and is part of a package of initiatives of the Region for fighting social inequality, said Bakoyiannis. The concept of providence and support for those in need has meaning and substance when it is removed from political statements and becomes an act. This, in the Region of Sterea Ellada, we have conquered it. Lets talk less and move on. The people that need our support shouldnt have to search for us, but rather we should always be aware of their their needs and be right next to them in their moment of need, noted the governor. Those interested in the programme for either themselves or people they believe are in need can acquire further information by visiting: www.gefyra.com.gr and www.pste.gov.gr. Read more at greekcitytimes.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 Photo Source: Wikimedia Commons Copyright: Pitichinaccio License: CC-BY-SA The city was freed only 20 days after the declaration of the First Balkan War It was October 26, 1912 when freedom bells rang throughout Thessaloniki, as the Greek army liberated the city from Ottoman rule. The city was freed only 20 days after the declaration of the First Balkan War. At the beginning of the 20th century, the Balkan region was a powder keg ready to explode. The nationalist Young Turks movement had taken control of the Ottoman Empire. The issue of the union of Crete with Greece had soured relations between Greece and Turkey, while the temporary liberation of the Dodecanese islands during the Italian-Turkish War triggered still more friction between the two. The then-prime minister of Greece, iconic statesman Eleftherios Venizelos, was closely following diplomatic developments in the international field. Venizelos noted that the Greek state was in a phase of reconstruction. His efforts to prevent an armed conflict ended with the declaration of war against Turkey by Montenegro on September 25, 1912. A few days later, and in light of the above developments, Greece officially aligned with Serbia and Bulgaria. On October 13, the three Balkan countries sent a joint ultimatum to the Ottoman Porte requesting to resolve a series of issues, including the ratification of the national autonomy of the Christian communities. The ultimatum was rejected, and military operations followed diplomacy. The armies of Serbia and Montenegro gathered in northern Macedonia and Albania, while Greek forces took over the fronts of South Macedonia and Epirus. The Bulgarians, on their part, were placed in the Thrace region, but their plan was actually to move into Macedonia, with the ultimate goal to take over Thessaloniki. Two days later, the Greek army scored its first victory by taking over Sarantaporo, opening the path to Macedonia. With the Turks retreating, Greek forces started to advance from Kozani, Grevena, and Katerini. At the same time, the Bulgarians were increasingly eager to move into Thessaloniki. Venizelos realized that Greece was in danger of losing the most significant city in Macedonia. He ordered the Hellenic Army Commander-in-Chief Crown Prince Constantine, who was moving north to Monastiri, to change course to prevent a Bulgarian invasion. In response, Constantine led the Greek army to the east. On their way, however, Constantines forces had to go through Giannitsa, a holy city for the Muslims. It was there that five Greek army divisions and one cavalry brigade clashed with the Turkish forces, which consisted of six artillery units and five divisions. A tough two-day battle followed on October 19-20, with many losses on both sides. In the end, the Greek army triumphed in Giannitsa, forcing the Turks to retreat to Thessaloniki. Read more at greekreporter.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 Photo Source: Wikimedia Commons Copyright: License: CC-BY-SA Hellenic Chamber of Hotels President Alexandros Vassilikos was elected as a new Executive Committee Member of HOTREC during its 77th General Assembly held in Krakow. The unanimous vote for Mr. Vassilikos ensures the presence of Greek hoteliers in the heart of the leading European Confederation of hotels, restaurants and cafes. Following his election, Mr. Vassilikos noted: "The promotion of entrepreneurship of small and medium-sized tourist enterprises in Greece for the upgrading of the tourist product of the country is a priority that we will serve with the participation in the Executive Committee of the Confederation. The defense of the interests of the sector and the active participation of the country in the development of the European tourism market is a great success for Greece." During HOTREC 77th General Assembly on 18 October 2018, the umbrella association of Hotels, Restaurants and Cafes in Europe, elected Mr. Zimmer Christensen as its new President and Executive Committee (ExCom) for a two years mandate, starting on 1 January 2019. The goal of the newly elected ExCom will be to foster innovation and to promote investment among the 1.9 million enterprises of the sector, promoting smarter and better regulation at the core of the new EU mandate. 2019 will be marked by European elections and a renewal of the European Parliament and Commission. It will be our task to convince policy-makers to make the 2019-2024 EU legislature a success for tourism by unlocking SMEs and microenterprises growth potential and by fostering entrepreneurship commented Mr. Zimmer Christensen. The newly elected President and Executive Committee will be representing a highly competent association, composed of 44 National Associations, located in 30 European countries, which offers a unique best practice and knowledge sharing platform. Mr. Zimmer Christensen added: I thank the outgoing President, Ms. Susanne Kraus-Winkler for her total of 15 years on Excom as well as the outgoing Executive Committee Members among them the Vice President Akos Niklai and the Treasure Marinus Cordesius for their work and in making HOTREC even more visible and strong. I also look forward to working with the CEO and a professional and effective HOTREC team. Mr Jens Zimmer Christensen is a member of HOTREC Executive Committee since 2016 and Chairman of HORESTA Denmark since 2009, the trade association representing the Danish hospitality sector. He comes with a vast experience in tourism and hospitality, among others as Owner and Manager of Hotel Maritime in Copenhagen and as member of the Executive Board of the Confederation of Danish Employers. The new HOTREC Executive Committee is now composed of President Jens Zimmer Christensen (Denmark), Vice-President Marc Van Muylders (Belgium), Treasurer Adrian Cummins (Ireland), Julian Bystrzanowski (Poland), Ramon Estalella (Spain); Antonio Flamini (Italy); Samuel Lacombe (France); Markus Luthe (Germany); Vaclav Starek (Czech Republic), Morten Thorvaldsen (Norway) and Alexandros Vassilicos (Greece). The sacred relic will stay in Thessaloniki, from Tuesday through to Sunday, October 28th, which is Greeces OXI national holiday Thessaloniki has welcomed with open arms, the Sacred Belt of the Theotokos (Virgin Mary) which is the only surviving relic of Panagia. The eminent Metropolitan of Neapolis and Barnabas along with many locals welcomed the small Holy Tomb on Tuesday, which holds the Holy Belt, while the local band played the Greek national anthem. The sacred relics will stay in Thessaloniki, from Tuesday through to Sunday, October 28th, which is Greeces OXI national holiday. The city welcomed the Sacred Belt from the Monastery of Vatopedi on Mount Athos. Elder Efraim from the Holy Monastery has given special permission for the Holy Relics to remain in Thessaloniki at the Ieros Naos Evaggelisomos tis Theotoukou during the next few days, where everyone is welcome to attend church and worship the Holy Belt. There will be many Liturgies at the Church over the next few days and opportunities both morning and night for people to come in close contact with the Holy Belt of the Theotokos, which is known to assist healing people. Read more at greekcitytimes.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 Photo Source: pixabay.com EU Commission did not take into consideration the very insular nature that characterizes Greece, with its scores of inhabited islands Greek Shipping minister Fotis Kouvelis this week promised restructure a recent decision applying VAT on goods and services supplied to non-ocean-going vessels and craft, such as ferry boats. The EU-mandated measure was recently imposed by a joint ministerial decision by the shipping and finance ministries and based on an EU directive that does not exclude Greece. According to Kouvelis, an out-of-Parliament choice for the shipping portfolio in the most recent Cabinet reshuffle, the Commission did not take into consideration the very insular nature that characterizes Greece, with its scores of inhabited islands. Among others, he promised the restructuring of the ministerial decision in collaboration with the finance ministry. Addressing the Piraeus chamber of commerce, Kouvelis, an attorney by training and a veteran leftist politician, also said continued deliberations over a master plan submitted by the Cosco-run Piraeus Port Authority (PPA) deals with wider commercial activities around Piraeus, and entails concerns over retail sector competition, labor relations and even environmental protection. PPAs leadership has called for an acceleration in the process to approve the wide-ranging master plan, with certain reports even citing references to delays, in the process, made by the Chinese embassy in Greece to the government side. Cosco is a state-controlled and Shanghai-based multinational shipping and port management company. It won an international concession to purchase a majority stake of the Piraeus Port Authority and assumed its management in August 2016. Among others, in representing the municipality of Piraeus, the port citys mayor, Yannis Moralis, has tabled his administrations opposition to the creation of a shopping mall within the port authoritys premises and concerning building co-efficients for new construction. Read more at naftemporiki.gr RELATED TOPICS: Greece, Greek tourism news, Tourism in Greece, Greek islands, Hotels in Greece, Travel to Greece, Greek destinations , Greek travel market, Greek tourism statistics, Greek tourism report Photo Source: Wikimedia Commons Copyright: NikoSilver License: CC-BY-SA Saudi Arabia's Ministry of Housing has announced the signing of three key agreements in the housing sector. Eskan Program, one of the programmes to achieve the Kingdom Vision 2030, signed two agreements and a memorandum of understanding in this respect. The kingdom aims to bring the best international technologies working with specialised companies in the field, said a Saudi Press Agency report. The agreements include: * A memorandum of cooperation between US-based Katerra and the Eskan Program to introduce modern and rapid construction methods to Saudi Arabia. This memorandum aims to build 50,000 housing units annually and six to eight plants specialised in modern construction technologies, in addition to creation of 15,000 jobs. * A memorandum for the development of a residential project at the Al Asfar project worth $2.7 billion between PowerChina International Group, the Ministry of Housing and National Housing Company. It is planned to build 17,000 housing units over the next six years. * A memorandum between the Sakani program, Alameriah and Sany (a Saudi-Chinese partnership) to develop residential projects. An investment of $1.2 billion is planned to build three housing projects with 9,500 units in Dammam and Jeddah. Dr Majed bin Abdullah Al Hogail, Minister of Housing, said these agreements will contribute to provide housing units with high quality and suitable prices, in addition to the creation of more than 15,000 jobs. Dubai-based Al Majid Travel and Tourism has undergone a complete rebranding as part of its mission to become one of the UAE's top five travel and tourism companies by 2022. The company has made significant changes and, for the first time, has gone online with all its travel services. The new website consists of over 400+ scheduled flights and 250+ low cost airlines, 208 million hotel properties including booking.com, transfer options across 12,000 resorts and cities in 130 countries, 900 car rental companies over 53,000 locations in 163 countries, 400 airport lounges in over 80 countries in above 250 airports, meet and greet services, over 300 holiday ideas to choose from, a specially designed travel insurance policy for business travellers and inbound/outbound visa services. One key 'problem area' identified by the firm was the 'holidays' sector. "A number of agencies are selling three-night packages to Georgia, Azerbaijan, Yerevan, Turkey and a few other low budget destinations, but we run travel businesses in the best-connected city in the world and the 9.5m people living in this country are looking to discover new destinations and experiences. Millennials, who make up around 45 per cent of the UAEs population crave a different type of holiday. They seek to explore new places and immerse themselves in rich, cultural experiences. They dont necessarily want to join 20 other holidaymakers on a fixed departure holiday," the company said in a statement. So, with the needs of Millennials and other key demographics firmly in mind, Al Majid Travel and Tourism has spent 18 months developing a far-reaching leisure travel and holidays product that currently includes over 300 published holiday packages worldwide as well as a tailor-made service empowering Leisure Travel Consultants to handle any enquiry to any destination. "We have been in this industry for almost 40 years and during that time, travel has changed a huge amount. But there is one thing that remains the same and that is how good travelling makes one feel from the very moment they decide to start planning a trip. We have never lost sight of this fact. We care about our customer's travel arrangements as much as they do, which is why we have built up a reputation over four decades as one of Dubais most trusted and admired travel companies," the statement said. In view of the changing trends, the company is now looking forward to having a travel club where people can communicate, ask questions, share experiences with one another and help people connect with like minded people. Al Majid Travel and Tourism has two offices in Dubai, one at Al Rigga and one at Salah Al Din, Deira. - TradeArabia News Service Auto-Execution Gains Ground in Fixed Income The buy side has been increasingly turning to automated execution in fixed income as shown by an increase in volumes for Tradewebs automated intelligence execution tool last month and MTS Markets launching new automation tools. Tradeweb said in its latest monthly activity report that AiEX (Automated Intelligent Execution) accounted for a meaningful percentage of activity in the institutional markets for US treasuries, European government bonds, US high-grade, European credit, and US and European exchange-traded funds. The adoption of automated trading is most pronounced in the ETF market, where 40% of total tickets processed in September were executed via the AiEX tool, added Tradeweb. Charlie Campbell-Johnston, head of integration and workflow solutions at Tradeweb, told Markets Media that in addition to the ETF volumes, one quarter of cash bond trades on the electronic trading platform are executed via AiEX. He said: We look at automation for every asset that we support and nothing is off the table. Campbell-Johnston said Tradeweb launched automated execution years ago but there has been a marked increase in readiness to embrace the tool. The testing phase has well and truly finished, and we are now firmly in the growth phase, he added. Those clients that we were speaking to in 2017 hit the button in 2018 after MiFID II went live. MiFID II, the regulations covering European Union financial markets came into force at the start of this year, and extended the best execution requirements from equities into a range of asset classes, including fixed income. Automating execution provides an audit trail which helps provide supporting evidence for the reasons behind a trade. The number of clients using AiEX has increased globally, and a typical client is now across five different asset classes, which was not the case a year ago. On a roadshow in Asia in April I was pleasantly surprised by the willingness to embrace automation, said Campbell-Johnston. It is not just the international houses but also houses who, for example, want to be able to trade treasuries in New York time. The pipeline is incredibly robust. He continued that the sell side is auto quoting for more bonds in larger sizes, but the buy side is also increasingly automating orders that are not auto quoted. Campbell-Johnston said Tradewebs top 30 clients by number of trades are either using AiEX or are onboarding. They could be real money asset managers with lots of small tickets; retail aggregators; ETF desks or derivatives traders who are taking advantage of faster access to liquidity by eliminating manual processes, he added. New trading styles have been created that did not previously exist. MTS Markets This month MTS Markets, part of London Stock Exchange Group, announced the launch of new automation tools for its MTS BondVision dealer-to-client electronic bond trading platform. Frank Cerveny, global head of sales at MTS, told Markets Media that the platform is providing additional tools to the buy side to make their workflow more efficient through a more intuitive user interface. The rules-based engine also removes the need for numerous clicks to execute a trade. Cerveny said: Traders can set the eligibility criteria for trades to be auto executed, select dealers and set execution criteria. If market conditions change, traders can change the execution rules in real-time. 1 2 next For more information on related topics, visit the following channels: FLASHBACK FRIDAY: MDA's Wings Over Wall Street Gala - 2009 Traders love a good party especially when its for a good cause. On October 1, 2009, Traders Magazine gathered with myriad other finance professionals at Gotham Hall in New York to help fund research to prevent Muscular Dystrophy. The Muscular Dystrophy Association was founded in 1950 by Paul Cohen, a prominent New York business leader living with muscular dystrophy, who invited a group of individuals to meet in his Rye, New York, office. Each had a personal connection to muscular dystrophy, and the gathering focused on the urgent need to raise funds to advance research seeking treatments and cures for muscular dystrophy. The group so vested in the fight against neuromuscular diseases formed the organization that became the Muscular Dystrophy Association. That year, MDAs first research grant for $1,500 was awarded to neuromuscular disease pioneer Ade. T. Milhorat, M.D. On June 29-30, 1956, Dean Martin and Jerry Lewis co-hosted their first MDA telethon from New York Citys famed Carnegie Hall. Jerry Lewis hosted subsequent telethons in 1957 and 1959. In 1966, the first MDA Jerry Lewis Labor Day Telethon was broadcast by a single station in New York (WNEW-TV). The telecast was so successful that MDA selected Labor Day weekend for all future telethons. Then, with help from broadcasting icons Sylvester Pat Weaver and Robert M. Bennett, MDA created a Love Network of stations that in 1971 facilitated the nations first networked telethon. Throughout the decades, the legendary Labor Day broadcast originated from different locations including New York, Las Vegas and Hollywood. The most successful fundraising event in the history of television, the show, with Lewis as its iconic host and with help from a legion of top celebrities and entertainers, raised nearly $2 billion during the years. Please click here for the photo galleries: http://www.tradersmagazine.com/gallery/-109282-1.html http://www.tradersmagazine.com/gallery/-109283-1.html For more information on related topics, visit the following channels: If our previous road trip around Southwest Turkey was about reacquainting ourselves with some old favourites the ruins of Ephesus, the Pamukkale travertines and Hierapolis then our most recent road trip was all about exploring pastures new around the Turkish Lake District. First stop, en route to Egirdir, was Salda Golu (Lake Salda). Other-Worldly Lake Salda We were a bit nervous about arriving at Salda Golu. Although it was declared a National Park in 2011, there was never much in the way of visitor facilities (there still isnt too much around there) despite a growth in visitor numbers. And no doubt social media particularly Instagram has had a part to play in rocketing visitor numbers. Weve seen so many photos of Salda Golu on there and the immediate thought is, Wow, amazing. I want to go there and see that, too. And we decided we needed to go there and see that, too, pretty quickly before the environment changed too much. Because Salda Lake is a truly amazing sight no exaggeration! Visit Salda Lake Out Of Season For Peace And Tranquility We wanted to see the vibrant blues of the lake, we wanted to see the dazzling white sand everything weve seen in the photos. We didnt want to see what everyone was starting to complain about litter! So yeah, we were a bit nervous that our excitement of finally driving up to visit the natural phenomenon that is Lake Salda would turn into being depressed by the state of the place. It was the end of September, dappled cloud cover and a weekday when we arrived at the car park in Salda. Maybe it was the time of year, time of week and the state of the weather that went in our favour because we arrived to a scene of isolated bliss. Just a few other visitors wandering across the vast open space towards the water. A Different Climate Lake Salda has an altitude of 1160 metres. That means summertime visitors get relief from the intense heat by enjoying the cool air and even cooler water. When Turkeys searing summer heat begins to cool in lower altitudes, however, that leaves Salda Golu feeling cold. We didnt need sleeves that day but the temperature difference between where wed just driven from in Fethiye compared to Salda was definitely marked. Most of the other visitors as you can see in the photos were wrapped up in coats. And that litter we feared? Well, maybe its because we visited out of season but, thankfully, someone somewhere has done a big clean up. This shore of the lake at Salda was pristine. Numerous litter bins now also line the beach. Lake Salda Another Planet? Lake Salda is a crater lake and reaches a depth of 196 metres, hence the dramatic change in colour between the shallows around the lake shore and the centre. It has high alkaline levels and people are starting to come here to bathe in the soft white mud. Apparently, partaking in such activities does wonders for a variety of dermatological problems. We werent here for bathing, however. This was a driving break and what a place to take that break! To stand there, on the shoreline, it really did feel other-worldly. Almost like being on another planet. Life On Mars? And dont just take our word for it when it comes to all this other worldliness. Microbiologists are in on the act, too. If the study of life on Mars is your thing, then you need to visit Lake Salda. Turkish scientists noticed that the white rock formations of Lake Salda called stromatolites resemble the ones on Mars. The studies centre around microbes in Lake Salda and other lakes in the area and whether they could also be Mars bugs. They may hold the clues to potential life on Mars The mysteries of life on Mars are not the preoccupation of most people who visit Lake Salda, however. We were there purely to marvel at the scene before us. A couple of brave people were there for a swim. Definitely a summertime activity for us, though. Barry waded in up to his knees and quickly waded back out again! The depth of Lake Salda means its only safe to swim in the shallows and the altitude of Lake Salda means even those shallows are a bit of a shock to the system by the end of September. Turkeys Maldives As well as being famous for its links to Mars, you probably wont be surprised to learn that Salda Golu also has another nickname. And the mayor of Yesilova the main town by the lake has fully adopted this nickname on the billboards around the area. Its that dazzling white shoreline (wear sunglasses) contrasting with the turquoise waters that does it. Welcome to Turkeys Maldives (Maldivler in Turkish). But the visitors to this lake are not content with borrowing another name and why should they be? So, welcome also to the Saldives (Saldivler in Turkish). Theres always something to make you smile on travels around Turkey. Of course, the eateries along the beach are not going to let those nicknames go to waste, are they? If you get hungry at Lake Salda you can eat at Maldivler, Saldivler or any of the other snack bars along the beach. They were all serving similar fare; gozleme, sucuklu tost, kofte and also a famous tost of the Burdur Province; Meshur Kymal Tost. You know us; if we spot a local speciality, thats definitely got to be our food of choice. So we went for the renowned Burdur kymal tost. A toastie with a mince meat filling. A bit of spicy salca (tomato puree) in there, too, and a sprinkle of chopped parsley for good measure. A local speciality lunch overlooking a mesmerising lake. What better set up to ready us for the next stint of our road trip? Onward from Burdur Provinces Lake Salda to Isparta Provinces Lake Egirdir; our base for the rest of our road trip Lake Salda Useful Information A displaced Yemeni family sit outside their tent at the Dharawan settlement, Sana'a, Yemen, May 2017, UNHCR/Mohammed Hamoud Amid rapidly deteriorating humanitarian crisis in Yemen, UNHCR, the UN Refugee Agency, has stepped up its efforts to ensure that tens of thousands of displaced Yemenis have immediate access to cash support. In a country where three out of four Yemenis require some form of aid and protection and where food and fuel prices have increased by 25 and 45 per cent respectively this year alone, this assistance is a life-line for the most vulnerable families, helping them to meet their urgent needs while in displacement. Current pre-famine conditions and cholera outbreak in Yemen come on top of the disastrous impact the conflict has had so far - massive displacement and mounting civilian casualties. Therefore, it remains vital that the critical life-saving activities - including protection and emergency shelter - are addressed and supported in parallel with food, health and education programmes. More than two thirds of an estimated 2.7 million internally displaced people (IDPs) have been living in displacement for more than two years. Many of them fled to safer parts of the country and have by now depleted all their resources. In order to meet their immediate needs and strengthen their resilience, UNHCR is providing cash assistance to the most vulnerable families. During October alone, UNHCR cash-interventions have reached more than 22,000 vulnerable families (approximately 150,000 people) across 14 of the worst affect hosting governorates. Families benefitting from this assistance have either fled fighting to areas of perceived safety, returned to their homes after internal displacement, often finding their homes damaged or destroyed. Many of vulnerable communities hosting IDPs are also struggling to survive. The funds are released based on an in-depth household assessments by UNHCRs partners operating across the country, often in hard to reach areas. Selected families receive cash to cover their immediate protection needs, for example life-saving medical treatments or subsidies that help families avoid evictions and secure a roof over their heads. This assistance is befitting the local economy, as families buy essential goods in local stores and pay for services. UNHCR is working with Al-Amal bank to distribute cash directly through a so-called Hawala system which is operational and reliable despite the conflict in Yemen. After assessment, an SMS message notifies families about their entitlements. They can then proceed to collect their assistance from any of the banks agents across the country. This allows UNHCR to provide assistance to families in hard to reach and remote areas. Cash assistance is the most cost-efficient way to offer a flexible and dignified form of support. Those benefiting say it helps them to avoid resorting to desperate coping mechanisms, such as child labour and forced marriages. UNHCR and its partners also provide protection services such as psychosocial counselling and legal assistance, as well as distribution of basic aid items for vulnerable IDPs. Given the increasingly protracted nature of the humanitarian crisis, as well as the dire economic situation in Yemen, UNHCR cash assistance is a life-line for many families. So far in 2018 UNHCR has distributed almost US $33 million cash assistance. We aim to distribute a total of more than US$41 million before the end of the year. In total, 700,000 IDPs, returnees and conflict-affected host communities and another 130,000 refugees and asylum seekers across Yemen will benefit from this assistance in 2018. For more information on this topic, please contact: SANAA, Yemen Hassan Naser was uprooted by war from his home in Aden three years ago and now lives with relatives in Sanaa with his wife and four children. Walking with the aid of a stick, he managed to collect cash assistance from a bank in the Yemeni capital, which will be vital for him and his family. I suffer from kidney failure and I can only walk very slowly because I have a slipped disc, he explains. I will use most of the money to pay for medicine and will use some of it to pay rent arrears for my house. UNHCR, the UN Refugee Agency, said on Friday it had stepped up efforts to ensure that displaced people in Yemen like 61-year-old Naser have access to cash support to meet their most urgent shelter and protection needs. UNHCR spokesperson Andrej Mahecic said the assistance was a lifeline for Yemens most vulnerable displaced families, helping them to meet their urgent needs. Current pre-famine conditions and cholera outbreak in Yemen come on top of the disastrous impact the conflict has had so far -- massive displacement and mounting civilian casualties, he told a press briefing in Geneva. It remains vital that the critical life-saving activities are supported." Therefore, it remains vital that the critical life-saving activities -- including protection and emergency shelter -- are addressed and supported in parallel with food, health and education programmes. The 20,000 or so families benefitting from the assistance have fled fighting to safe areas or have returned to their homes after being displaced. Many often find their homes in ruins and struggle to survive. Hassan Naser was forced to leave his home in Aden three years ago and now lives with relatives in Sana'a with his wife and four children. UNHCR/Shadi Abusneida Among recipients is Siham Abduallah, 27, who fled the western port of Hudayda four months ago with her two children and her twin brother Bassam, who has one child. They now live in temporary accommodation in Sanaa. All the shops closed and my children cried of hunger, she says. We had to leave. Shelling and air strikes hit our neighbourhood. Even our house was damaged by shrapnel." "I have one disabled child who needs treatment. It is cold in Sanaa and he is getting sick. She added: We are running out of food. I will use the money to buy food and pay the rent. My neighbours sometimes give us a piece of bread, because we have no food in our house. I have one disabled child who needs treatment. It is cold in Sanaa and he is getting sick. More than 22 million people are need of assistance in Yemen, where civil war erupted in 2015, of whom 2.7 million have been displaced internally. UNHCR is working with Al Amal Bank to distribute cash directly through a so-called hawala system, which functions in Yemen despite the conflict. Families are notified by SMS message about their entitlements and can then collect their assistance from any of the banks agents in the country. This allows UNHCR to provide assistance to families in hard-to-reach and remote areas. The cash avoids the need to resort to desperate measures, such as child labour and forced marriage. So far this year, UNHCR has distributed almost US$33 million in Yemen. During October alone, more than 22,000 vulnerable families about 150,000 people in total received cash payments from UNHCR. By the end of the year it aims to distribute more than US$41 million, benefiting 700,000 internally displaced people, returnees and host communities affected by conflict, as well as 130,000 refugees and asylum-seekers in the country. Fighting in Yemen, already one of the poorest countries in the Middle East, has severely compounded years of poverty and insecurity. The worsening violence has disrupted millions of lives, resulting in widespread casualties and massive displacement, and the situation is rapidly deteriorating. Two million people now languish in desperate conditions, away from home and unable to meet basic needs. Conditions are so serious that almost 1 million displaced Yemenis have lost hope and tried to return home, even though it is not yet safe. Yemen is facing a humanitarian catastrophe. Without help, many more lives will be lost to violence, treatable illnesses or lack of food, water and shelter. Declining human rights in Belarus results in wholescale oppression: UN United Nations, Oct 26 (UNI) A crackdown on free speech is the latest worrying development amid the deteriorating, wholescale oppression of human rights in Belarus, an independent expert told the UN General Assembly. The UN Special Rapporteur on the situation of human rights in Belarus, Miklos Haraszti, referred to the sad fate of freedom of expression, specifically pointing to legislation that ends anonymity for contributors to online media, and forcing all online platforms to register with the State, United Nations news reported. Mr Harasztis, whose six-year tenure is coming to an end, said that human rights abuses that had prompted international scrutiny when he took up his role, were worsening in important areas. Amalgamation of 3 banks decide to resist through 'struggles' Hyderabad, Oct 26 (UNI) In the back ground of Union Governments decision to amalgamate Bank of Baroda, Dena Bank and Vijaya Bank, a Special Meeting of the Office Bearers of All India Bank of Baroda Employees Co-ordination Committee, All India Dena Bank Employees Co-ordination Committee and Vijaya Bank Workers organisation at Ahmedabad, has decided to resist these attempts of mergers through 'struggles', General Secretary CH Venkatachalam, on Friday said in a statement . The meeting on Thursday, addressed by All India Bank Employees' Association (AIBEA) General Secretary CH Venkatachalam, had passed resolutions to oppose the unwanted and unjustified merger of BOB, Dena Bank and Vijaya Bank, to prepare the membership by mobilising them to participate in all the struggle programmes including strike actions that were chalked out by UFBU and AIBEA, to take all necessary steps to protect the jobs and job security and hard-won rights of the employees and to prepare organisations to all eventualities in the struggle against these attacks. The meeting noted that the Governments decision on merger and amalgamation of Banks has been a part and parcel of their reforms agenda and the same has been pursued in the last 25 years repeatedly through the recommendations of various Committees like Narasimham Committee-I (1991), Narasimham Committee-II (1997-98), Verma Committee (1999), KV Kamath Committee report (1999), Tarapore Committee (2006), Raghuram Rajan Committee (2007), Anwarul Hoda Committee (2008), High Power Expert Committee (2007), Planning Commission Recommendations for 12th Five Year Plan , OECD Report (2011), OECD Report (2014), RBI Discussion Paper on Banking Structure (2013), Nachiket Mor Committee (2014), PJ Nayak Committee (2014), Indradhanush (2015), Gyan Sangam I (2015) and Gyan Sangam II (2016). 'All these Committees have been singing the same song of privatisation of Banks and merger of Banks'. The meeting was clear in its understanding that the Governments decision on amalgamation of the 3 Banks is misplaced given the experience of the merger of Associate Banks with State Bank of India that was done last year. Neither SBI has become bigger nor any gain has been accrued. On the other hand, branches are getting closed, employees are declared surplus, fresh employment is jeopardised, existing business is lost, concentration of NPA has taken the backseat with the result that NPA has gone up enormously from Rs 177,000 crore as on March 31, 2017 to Rs 225,000 crore as on March 31, 2018. Merger only helped to swell bad loans, Mr Venkatachalam added. To hide the adverse impact of these growing NPAs, ordinary customers are sought to be burdened with penalties and higher service charges. To cap it all, SBI is in red now after the merger. Instead of learning lessons from this merger exercise, the BJP-led NDA Government is going ahead with merger of Banks. He said The FRDI Bill was brought with the view to punish the innocent depositors for the sins committed by the corporate defaulters. Due to public pressure, the Bill has now been withdrawn. But the attempt was clearly to pass on the burden of bad loans on the shoulders of the depositors. Similarly, the proposed decision to amalgamate the 3 Banks is only a diversionary tactics of the Government. The priority is recovery of bad loans and debts. The recovery is becoming difficult because of the nexus amongst the vested interests. At the end, the Banks became the casualty to bear huge haircuts, 40 per cent haircut in Bhushan Steels, 60 per cent haircut in Electro steel, 83 per cent haircut in Alok Industry. In the given circumstances when Banks are passing through challenging times due to Himalayan bad loans and huge provisions with consequent losses, recovery of bad loans is the only way out. Mergers are only to skip the real issue and divert the Nations attention. It is a deliberate attempt to masquerade and disguise. It is a naked attempt to camouflage the mess of bad loans contributed by the corporate borrowers and It is a cover-up operation, the Top Union leader observed. The meeting welcomed the initiatives of AIBEA and UFBU to launch further struggles to oppose these merger proposals. The meeting decided to resolutely fight back these offensives by rallying round the banner of AIBEA. UNI CS RSU 1356 Farm laws to be repealed during winter session: PM 19 Nov 2021 | 12:16 PM New Delhi, Nov 19 (UNI) Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Friday said the government has decided to repeal the three agriculture laws, which the farmers have been protesting since November 26, 2020, even as he stressed that the laws were brought for welfare of the farmers, especially small farmers. see more.. Farmers will wait for repeal to appear in B/W before celebrating 19 Nov 2021 | 11:33 AM New Delhi, Nov 19 (UNI) Samyukt Kisan Morcha, the umbrella body under which farmers have been protesting against the new farm laws, welcomed government's decision to repeal the controversial laws, but added that they will wait till the formal procedures are completed. see more.. Opposition reels under PM's 'farm law repeal bomb' 19 Nov 2021 | 11:11 AM New Delhi, Nov 19 ( UNI ) Congress and Trinamool took jibes at the Prime Minister and his party one after the other as PM Narender Modi on Friday morning in an unexpected development announced withdrawal of the three contentious farm laws just months ahead of five states heading for polls. see more.. Mexico, US, Canada agree on joint economic development, migration control 19 Nov 2021 | 12:37 PM Mexico City, Nov 19 (UNI/Sputnik) Leaders of Mexico, Canada and the United States have pledged to make concerted efforts to combat irregular migration, arms traffic, and jointly develop their national economies, at a trilateral summit hosted by US President Joe Biden in Washington. see more.. S Korea reports 3,034 new Covid cases 19 Nov 2021 | 12:34 PM Seoul, Nov 19 (UNI/Xinhua) South Korea has reported 3,034 more cases of Covid-19 in the past 24 hours, raising the total number of infections to 409,099. see more.. Russia-US relations to severe if Congress adopts resolution on 2024 election: Lawmaker 19 Nov 2021 | 12:33 PM Moscow, Nov 19 (UNI/Sputnik) Relations between Moscow and Washington will break if the US Congress adopts a resolution on the non-recognition of the 2024 election in Russia if Vladimir Putin runs for president, Vladimir Dzhabarov, the first deputy head of the Russian upper chamber's international affairs committee, told Sputnik on Friday. see more.. US, Canadian, Mexican leaders hold first summit in five years 19 Nov 2021 | 12:32 PM Washington, Nov 19 (UNI/Xinhua) US President Joe Biden hosted Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and Mexican President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador at the White House for their first North American Leaders' Summit since 2016. see more.. New Delhi, Oct 26 (UNI) External Affairs Minister Sushma Swaraj will make her maiden visit in the capacity of foreign minister to Qatar and Kuwait from October 28 to 31 at the invitation of her counterparts. During the visit to both these countries, besides trade and bilateral relations, matters related to energy are expected to be in focus. An MEA statement issued here on Friday described both Qatar and Kuwait as "reliable energy partners". "This will be Sushma Swarajs first visit as External Affairs Minister to both the countries. The visit is in pursuit of Indias objective of enhanced engagement with the Gulf region which is in Indias extended neighbourhood," an MEA statement said. The visit is expected to provide an opportunity to hold in-depth discussions with the political leadership on a wide range of global, regional and bilateral issues. This will also advance India's growing engagement with these countries in particular and the region in general, the statement said. Ms Swaraj will have engagements in Qatar on October 28 and 29 and and in Kuwait on October 30 and 31. During her visit to the State of Qatar, Ms Swaraj will interact with her counterpart Sheikh Mohammed bin Abdulrahman Al Thani, Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Foreign Affairs of Qatar. She will also call on Sheikh Tamim Bin Hamad Al-Thani, Emir of the State of Qatar. During her visit, the External Affairs Minister will also interact with the Indian community in Doha. India and Qatar share millennia old historic multi-dimensional, relations. The bilateral visit of the Emir of the State of Qatar in March 2015 and Prime Minister of Qatar to India in December 2016 and that of the visit of Prime Minister Narendra Modi to Qatar in June 2016 have further boosted traditionally cordial and close ties between the two countries. Qatar hosts about seven lakh Indians who form the largest expatriate community there, the MEA said. "Qatar is a reliable energy partner, supplying more than 50% of Indias natural gas imports. Our bilateral trade with Qatar in 2017-18 was US$ 9.9 billion," the statement said. On the next leg of the visit to Kuwait, Ms Swaraj will hold a bilateral meeting with her counterpart. Sheikh Sabah Al Khalid Al Sabah, Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Foreign Affairs of the State of Kuwait. She will also call on the Amir of the State of Kuwait, Sheikh Sabah Al-Ahmad Al-Jaber Al-Sabah and interact with the Indian community. India and Kuwait have close and friendly bilateral relations. Kuwait too is a reliable energy supplier to India and hosts about ten lakh Indians forming the largest expatriate community. Our bilateral trade with Kuwait in 2017-18 was US$ 8.5 billion. UNI DEVN AR 1809 (Oct. 26, 2018) -- This Fall, the UTSA Honors College launched a new curriculum devoted to experiential learning that aligns with UTSAs Classroom to Career initiative. Students in one course produced a new Dia de los Muertos exhibit on display now at the UTSA Institute of Texan Cultures (ITC) on the Hemisfair Campus. The UTSA Honors College's ethos is to help students develop concrete skills to apply and extend their academic knowledge in order to be more engaged citizens prepared for their next professional stage. >> Engage in experiential learning opportunities at UTSA. Honors upper division courses focus on interdisciplinary learning and one or more SPICES: Service, Professional Development, Intellectual Achievement (Research), Engaged Living and Skill Development. Each SPICES course emphasizes transferable skills through semester projects or civic engagements. The project or civic engagement activity is assessed by the faculty for academic mastery and by members of the community for professional or civic relevance and depth. The Fall 2018 Dia de los Muertos course falls under SPICES' Engaged Living. Led by Alegra Lozano, the students project with the ITC combines service to the community, deep cultural and intellectual exploration of concepts of tradition and remembrance, and skill development in museum curation and exhibit development. What is unique about this particular class is how well it integrates deep cultural understanding and services to our local community, said Sean Kelly, dean of the UTSA Honors College. The students in this class are exhibiting their skills in some of our key learning outcomes: project management, intercultural confidence, team-based learning and creative courage. Fully designed by Honors College students, the Dia de los Muertos exhibit features a timeline, interactive pieces and modern and historical cultural elements. The centerpiece is a community ofrenda, or offering to the memory of loved ones, which includes an interactive digital photo frame. Anyone who would like to include a photo for the digital frame can either scan the QR code at the exhibit or email the photo to honors@utsa.edu. The exhibit is open at the ITC through Jan. 6, 2019. The San Antonio community is invited to an opening reception from 6 p.m. to 8 p.m. on Monday, Oct. 29, where they can see the exhibit and meet the honors students who created it. Diwali Night Activities Nov. 3 at UW The University of Wyomings Indian student organization will host its annual Diwali Night cultural festival Saturday, Nov. 3. Diwali is one of the largest and most diverse festivals celebrated in India. It is the only festival that unites every culture and religion. Everyone is invited to participate. The free Diwali Night performance, music, dance and cultural information activities begin at 4 p.m. in the Education Building auditorium. UW President Laurie Nichols will be the guest of honor. The performance will be followed by an Indian dinner at 7 p.m. in the Wyoming Union. A Bollywood DJ performance will follow dinner. Entry to the dinner is free but limited. A limited number of free tickets will be distributed at the Wyoming Union information desk from 4-5 p.m. Nov 1-2. The government has issued the Social Security Scheme for expatriate workers, also known as Decree No. 143/2018/ND-CP, which will enter into force on December 1, 2018. Expatriate employers and employees should familiarize themselves with term amendments since new regulations will affect payroll and taxation. Both employers and employees are responsible for contributions to the scheme; the compulsory insurance package covers pension, sickness, maternity, labor and occupational accidents, retirement, and survivorship. Expatriate workers subject to the new law on social insurance are defined as foreigners with a minimum one-year labor contract that have been granted a work permit, practicing certificate, or practicing license. Workers exempted from the new social security measures include intra-corporate transferees and employees who have reached Vietnams statutory retirement age, which is 60 years for males and 55 years for females. Social insurance contribution rates The contribution rates will be applied equally for both expatriate and Vietnamese employees at a rate of 8 percent, while the employers rate is set at 17.5 percent. Both, however, have a capped limit of 20 times the nations minimum salary (the current minimum salary is VND 27,800,000 or US$1,200 per month). Now with the change, employers must make contributions for foreign employees at 3.5 percent of their monthly salary between December 1, 2018, and December 31, 2021. But beginning January 1, 2022, the rate will increase to 17.5 percent, separated into the following categories: 14 percent to retirement and survivorship, 3 percent to sickness and maternity funds, and 0.5 percent to occupational disease and accident funds. Employees will not be subject to make payments until January 1, 2022; their 8 percent of contribution rate will fund retirement and survivorship. If an expatriate employee has numerous labor contracts with different employers that are all subject to mandatory social insurance, standard contribution rates for the employee will apply to the first contract and will be exempted from making payments for the rest. Each employer is still responsible for compulsory social insurance with each contract, however, payments will only fund insurance for labor accidents and occupational diseases. A lump-sum payout option for the retirement benefit will take effect on January 1, 2022. Foreign workers entitled to this claim include: those who have reached retirement age but have not contributed to social insurance for 20 years in full, have a terminal illness under the scope of Vietnams criteria, qualified for retirement allowances outside of Vietnam, or have a terminated labor contract, expired practice license, and limited timeframe under a work permit. Concerns for expatriate workers and businesses Foreign workers that contribute to domestic social security schemes or invest in voluntary healthcare programs will be burdened with additional costs. Furthermore, foreign contribution payments for retirement and survivorship appear unnecessary for those who enter the country under comparatively short-term contracts. Meanwhile, small and medium firms that require foreign workers are sensitive to labor costs. Employers will be burdened with additional payment contributions for foreign employees, likely minimizing the number of foreign workers hired, and the technical skills they bring to the economy. Still, while many expatriate workers and employers will most likely object to the mandated taxation scheme. Bui Sy Loi, vice chairman of the National Assemblys Social Affairs Committee, has told the media that the implementation of social insurance changes is needed to ensure fairness between companies that employ local people and those that hire foreigners. Nevertheless, the government will still face implementation challenges. Tran Dinh Lieu, Vietnams Social Insurance Department Deputy Director, voiced concern over several challenges the government and industry must face once the new scheme is enacted, namely a synchronized database between different countries, in addition to currency conversion and the tax issues that will be raised. How to Clip Click and hold your mouse button on the page to select the area you wish to save or print. You can click and drag the clipping box to move it or click and drag in the bottom right corner to resize it. When you're happy with your selection, click the checkmark icon next to the clipping area to continue. Photo: Living Dead Media, Paramount Pictures, Universal Pictures and Allied Artists Pictures This story originally ran in 2018 and is being republished ahead of this weekends release of The Lighthouse. For nearly as long as there have been movies, there have been horror movies. The genre was there from the start, luring in audiences who wanted to witness things theyd never thought they wanted to witness before. Vampiric monsters, ghastly apparitions, human abnormalities they were all the stuff of nightmares a century ago, just as they are today. Many of the titles on this list of great black-and-white horror movie are well-known classics, others are smaller cult favorites, and a couple are recent works from directors who appreciate the potential power of black-and-white cinema. But theyre all worth revisiting this Halloween season. Widely considered the earliest example of horror cinema and the quintessential piece of German expressionism, Robert Wienes The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari is a stylized nightmare of sharp angles, abstract locations, diagonal staircases, and violent landscapes. The stark contrasts between the black-and-white colors are jarring to the eye, and add a layered intensity to the psychological delusions experienced by the audience. Perceptions of the world around are mangled by the visual stimuli, resulting in a horrific film that successfully captured the fear and mistrust of the isolated postWorld War I culture that created it. Available on YouTube. Nosferatu: A Symphony of Horror (1922) Released at the height of German expressionist cinema, Nosferatu was an unauthorized adaptation of Bram Stokers Dracula, and was almost lost forever after Stokers heirs sued over the adaptation and a court ruling ordered that all copies of the film be destroyed. Fortunately, a few copies of the film survived. Director F.W. Murnau was an innovator, combining built sets with real locations and adding a new layer of realism to the vampire tale, as well as trick photography to present Count Orlok as truly otherworldly. Its an infamous work of art, and its messages about political unrest and illness epidemics serve as the beginning of horror as social commentary. Available on Amazon Prime. The Man Who Laughs (1928) By definition, Paul Lenis The Man Who Laughs is not a horror movie, but a romantic drama not unlike The Hunchback of Notre Dame. Still, as a major influence on the later Universal Monster movies and the inspiration for the DC Comics illustrations of the Joker in the Batman comics, The Man Who Laughs legacy far surpasses its initial introduction as a German romance film. Largely due the startling features of the titular character (not to mention the looming gloom that surrounds him), the films imagery leaves the viewers with a deep level of dread. Available on YouTube. Universal Classic Monsters (19311954) Among the most iconic of all black-and-white horror films, the talkies of Universal Monster Movies (Frankenstein, Dracula, The Wolf Man, The Mummy, The Invisible Man, Creature From the Black Lagoon, and Bride of Frankenstein) all established the building blocks for what would shape the modern horror film. Creatures were used as a vehicle to tell stories about xenophobia, sexuality, challenging God, questioning ones identity, the inherent violence of mankind, and the fear of the unknown. Even in monochromatic tones, the Universal Classic Monsters painted worlds of horror, eliciting horror through trailblazing cinematic techniques rather than relying on the splatter or gore that would define the genre in later years. Available on Amazon. Freaks (1932) Banned in Britain until the 1950s and easily one of the genres most controversial and ethically questionable films, Tod Brownings Freaks serves as an examination of the monstrous extremes of human nature, forcing audiences to question their preconceived perceptions of those that appear different than the norm. Browning was fresh off of the success of Dracula when he made Freaks. The final moment of the film remains one of the most shocking endings in pre-code horror history, and takes a stance now common in horror: that sometimes the worst monsters are those that walk among us, undetected. Available on Amazon. Murders in the Zoo (1933) As one of the first examples of an animals run amok horror film, Murders in the Zoo was extremely graphic for its time, and remains to be a rather distressing film by even todays standards, due in large part to the footage showing the depressing state of zoos in the 1930s. Animals are crying out for food and kept in iron-clad cages, and at one point, they legitimately fight one another. In the film, a maniacal zoologist grows increasingly jealous of his unfaithful wife and decides to utilize live animals as a weapon to achieve the perfect murder. Barely over an hour long, the film unsuccessfully tries to marry horror and comedy together, but does provide one of the most jarring opening sequences of a film from this era using a mans mouth, a needle, and some thread. Available on Amazon. Cat People (1942) One of the first true low-budget horror success stories was also the saving grace of the financially failing RKO Studios. Perhaps the films greatest contribution is the iconic bus scene, a moment filled with such intensity that it serves as the premiere example of what would later become known as jump scares. It continues to serve as one of the most effective scares in horror history. Billed with a no-name cast and serving as the start of horror-producer extraordinaire Val Lewtons career, Cat People was a revolutionary landmark in horror cinema. Available on YouTube. The Seventh Victim (1943) Satanism and lesbianism go hand in hand in another Val Lewtonproduced masterpiece. Part noir, part horror film, The Seventh Victim is one of the first movies to treat women in horror as fully fledged people with their own thoughts and desires, allowing them full agency. The women are strong-willed, mouthy, and uncharacteristically bold in this pulp staple. Ultimately, its suggested that the power of these women comes from their participating in a Satanic cult, but since the film renders male participation to be all but useless, it deserves a rewatch by contemporary eyes. Available on DailyMotion. The Uninvited (1944) What is perhaps one of the first haunted-house films to treat ghosts as legitimate threats and sources of horror, the British-made flick has largely gone unnoticed by American audiences. Thats a crime: Its one of the titles that Guillermo del Toro cites as having a major impact on his own filmography. The Uninvited boasts high-caliber acting performances and, crucially, practical in-camera ghost effects that rely on lighting, sound, and wind machines. Its moody, its creepy, and while it may not deliver the scares today like it did then, a rewatch showcases an influence that can still be felt. Available on Criterion. Dead of Night (1945) Before horror anthologies became a subgenre of its own, there was Ealing Studios Dead of Night. Connecting five different stories from British filmmakers and a wrap-around, the film is a psychological creepfest and delivers what is arguably the best work of director Charles Crichton. In the films climactic ending, were introduced to a story involving a ventriloquist dummy that set the stage for just about every inanimate-object-thats-actually-alive film moving forward. Even today, the cold, dead eyes of the sinister dummy serve as nightmare fuel. Available at Best Buy. The Picture of Dorian Gray (1945) Im possibly cheating to include this film on the list, but The Picture of Dorian Gray is one of the first to showcase black-and-white as an aesthetic choice rather than a filmmaking necessity; four-color inserts of three-strip Technicolor were used for Dorians portrait, utilized as a special effect in a black-and-white world. Having that isolated moment of Technicolor heightens the horror of seeing Dorians painting age while he himself remains youthful. The film is a triumph in deep-focus cinematography, and earned Angela Lansbury her second Academy Award nomination for Best Supporting Actress (not to mention her first Golden Globe win in the same category). Available on Amazon. Abbott and Costello Meet Frankenstein (1948) As interest and popularity in horror movies began to wane, studios struggled to breathe new life into what had been one of their most profitable sectors. Enter the horror-comedy. While plenty of old movies attempted to add levity to horror, Abbott and Costello Meet Frankenstein set the standard for horror-comedies and left an impact thats still emulated decades later. By adding Bud Abbott and Lou Costello to pal around with established monsters like Lon Chaney Jr. and Bela Lugosi, Universal struck gold and spawned a franchise. Available on Amazon. Them! (1954) One of the first of the 1950s nuclear monster films, and the first big bug feature, Them! was a monumental success for Warner Bros. pictures, and one of the best examples of what would become the science-fiction subgenre. Borrowing elements of horror as well as influence from the Japanese kaiju flicks, Them! is one of the earliest examples of genre fusion under the horror umbrella. The film avoids the tropes that would become popularized in later B-movie cinema, opting instead to treat the gigantic ant monsters as legitimate threats and presenting the horror as sincere. Available on Amazon. Night of the Hunter (1955) The unfortunate truth of Charles Laughtons The Night of the Hunter is that this is easily one of the best horror thrillers ever made, and easily one of the most forgotten. Its the sole directorial effort of Laughton and stars Robert Mitchum, a prominent anti-hero of the noir movement who often played second banana. However, The Night of the Hunter is compelling, visually stimulating, and downright thrilling. Its a film that feels so far ahead of its time that it would play better for todays audiences than it surely did during the mid-50s. Available on YouTube. Invasion of the Body Snatchers (1956) Although not the best rendition of the Body Snatchers story, the original 1956 incarnation is one of the best examples of a sci-fihorror film rooted in reality, preying on the human fear that we are far more vulnerable to destruction than wed like to believe. Released at the peak of Cold War and Red Scare paranoia, the political roots of Body Snatchers were far less ambiguous than the films that came before it, and the film successfully solidified the relationship between politics and horror. Available on Amazon. The House on Haunted Hill (1959) William Castles magnum opus, The House on Haunted Hill is one of the greatest haunted-house movies of all time. An eccentric millionaire played with perfection by Vincent Price offers $10,000 to anyone who can spend a night in the titular mansion, the site of a plethora of murders. The participants are faced by a ceiling dripping blood, a severed head, a vat of acid in the cellar, and the iconic skeletal apparitions that walk on their own. While a fantastic movie in its own right, The House on Haunted Hills more prominent legacy is rooted in Castle deciding to gear his horror films to a teenage market, a trend that horror films followed moving forward. Available on Amazon Prime. Eyes Without a Face (1960) Georges Franjus ghastly yet dreamlike examination of the quest for physical perfection, the social value placed on womens appearances, and guilt. Once a respected surgeon, Dr. Genessier now lives in isolation, experimenting on animals and helpless women lured to him by his faithful nurse and lover Louise. The film is startlingly graphic and drips with art-house elements that greatly influenced filmmakers that followed. Eyes Without a Face is presented in stark black-and-white, but the surreal visual imagery added a muted softness to the chaotic horror within. Available on Amazon. Black Sunday (1960) Master of horror Mario Bava began his career with Black Sunday, an Italian gothic masterpiece and easily his most celebrated work. With sex appeal, Bava builds a horrific landscape enhanced with slick camera work and intense black-and-white contrasts. The film plays around with both vampire and witch mythology, which eventually leads to a spiked mask being hammered into a womans face. The visual of Barbara Steeles pale skin covered in deep, black holes has become an iconic image from classic horror, perfectly exemplifying her role as both attractive and horrific, desirable and revolting. Available on Amazon. Psycho (1960) Yes, its most influential horror film of all time. But it bears repeating: Alfred Hitchcocks Psycho was a true game-changer in horror cinema. The sight and sound of Marion Crane meeting her demise is synonymous with what one imagines when hearing the words horror movie. Psycho gave roots to the slasher films that were to come, not to mention completely disrupted the idyllic world of the 1950s. The quick-cutting editing technique paired with one of the greatest scores ever crafted and Norman Batess mania have solidified Psychos place in not just the horror canon, but the canon of all-time cinematic greats. Available on Hulu. The Innocents (1961) Based on Henry Jamess 1898 horror novella The Turn of the Screw, this remarkably unsettling psychological horror film from Jack Clayton continues to serves as one of the premiere British horror films. Its also one of the earliest and best examples of the creepy children subgenre. The plot is on the heavy side: The Innocents plays with the mental anguish of a person desperately trying to make sense of the world around them while simultaneously dealing with their own emotional turmoil. The films iconic ending scored an X-certificate upon the first release, and theorists continue to this day to analyze the subtext of sexual repression, ghastly possession, and how the two intertwine. Available on YouTube. Carnival of Souls (1962) Hailed by many as an independent masterpiece, Carnival of Souls plays more like an extended version of an episode of The Twilight Zone than it does a true-blue horror film. A low-budget endeavour with art-house sensibilities, the films fear factor is rooted in its odd visual imagery and dramatic light play. Director Herk Harvery also plays the horrifying apparition that haunts the leading ladys imagination, a manifestation of her repressed fears as a malevolent force that she cannot escape, try as she might. Carnival of Souls is dark, atmospheric, experimental and a disturbing look into full-blown mental break. Available on Filmstruck. Dementia 13 (1963) B-movie master Roger Corman produced this Psycho knockoff, which is also the non-pornographic feature debut of director Francis Ford Coppola. With a noticeably rushed script that nonetheless provided moments of legitimate shock, Dementia 13 was almost universally panned by critics and audience members alike. However, the movie is an extremely important addition to the black-and-white horror canon if for nothing else its unashamed aping of Hitchcocks masterpiece. From this moment forward, horror began to unapologetically borrow from films that came before an early sign of the remake culture to come. Available on Amazon Prime. Strait-Jacket (1964) While Whatever Happened to Baby Jane? launched the hagsploitation subgenre, it was Joan Crawfords starring role in William Castles Strait-Jacket that perfected it. Some critics viewed the film as one of the worst ever made, but Castles theatrical gimmicks developed the film into an audience favorite, and Crawfords turn as a psycho-biddy set the bar for so-called washed up actors retreating to horror films once their Oscar-bait roles had run their course. Available on Amazon. Repulsion (1965) Despite being over 50 years old, Roman Polanskis Repulsion remains one of the most disturbing films ever crafted. The first of his Apartment Trilogy, Repulsion is a psychological torture chamber of hallucinatory exploration. What begins as a calm and somewhat slow dissection of a characterless woman, quickly turns into a complete mental unraveling, a masterpiece in capturing the nightmare chamber that is an unwell woman with unchecked emotional traumas. Available on iTunes. Hour of the Wolf (1968) The sole horror entry in Ingmar Bergmans filmography, Hour of the Wolf is a psychological journey into the realm of perhaps the scariest world of all: the deep recesses of a humans personal demons and existential turmoil. Every minute of this film is drenched in ominous dread, frequently crossing into the supernatural. Viewers are ambushed by jarring visuals and ambitious moments of cinematography (theres a dinner scene that is downright remarkable), proving that what many believe is one of Bergmans lesser works is, perhaps, one of his most interesting. Available on YouTube. Night of the Living Dead (1968) George A. Romero is king of the zombies and the father of contemporary horror cinema, full stop. This low-budget, independent film from Pittsburgh completely revolutionized the horror genre and created a monster that has reigned supreme for the last 50 years. Before Romero, horror films were often set in faraway lands of isolation, but he brought horror to the suburbs, where families were only a monster outbreak away from meeting their demise. While he claimed until death that the casting of Duane Jones, an African-American as the lead role, was purely based on his acting talent, Romeros decision to present a black protagonist is still one of the most radical moves in horror history. Available on Amazon Prime. Eraserhead (1977) The debut of auteur David Lynch, Eraserhead is a surrealist and tantalizing slice of cinematic horror that combines excessive gore, eroticsm, brilliant black-and-white cinematography, melodramatic performances, excessively dark humor, and a healthy dose of gore. Its truly unlike anything that came before it, and nothing has come close to matching its power since the reveal of the child is one of the most traumatic visual scenes ever recorded in black-and-white. Available on Filmstruck. A Field in England (2013) There are few directors working today with as distinctive or as impressive of a reputation as Ben Wheatley. Covering a wide spectrum of genres across his career, his horrific period piece set during the English Civil War is perhaps his greatest cinematic endeavor. It examines the psychological breakdown of men completely destroyed by war under the influence of hallucinogenic drugs. Written by Wheatleys wife, Amy Jump, the dialogue serves as one of the strongest elements of the film, nestled with visually striking scenes of cosmic horror. Available on Amazon. A Girl Walks Home Alone at Night (2014) Ana Lily Amirpours feature debut is an Iranian-American vampire-Western rife with rage-filled feminism. A Girl Walks Home Alone at Night is as beautiful as it is peculiar, and as fascinating as it is haunting. Her strength is in creating atmosphere, a change of pace for a monster genre that frequently thrives on high-octane thrills. The film feels like an erotic 80s album cover come to life, and managed to breathe new life into one of horrors oldest subgenres (see: the second film mentioned on this list). Available on Amazon. The Eyes of My Mother (2016) Both breathtakingly stunning and one of the most legitimately fucked-up films in recent memory a feat made all the more impressive by the fact that its Nicolas Pesces debut feature. The film moves at a deliberate pace, slowly creeping under the skin of the viewers, and staying there long after the credits roll. The black-and-white cinematography only adds to its otherworldly aesthetic. The Eyes of My Mother is presented as an art film, but dont be fooled: Its a truly grotesque and emotionally jarring slice of cinema. Available on Amazon. Kevin Hart and Chris Rock. Photo: Getty Images An upcoming movie will boast two big comedians on either side of the camera, with Chris Rock directing and Kevin Hart starring. According to Deadline, Rock is in negotiations to direct Hart in a film titled Co-Parenting, which is written by Black-ishs Yamara Taylor and will be produced by Will Packer. The movie is based on an idea by Rock and Hart, and follows a stay at home dad who raises the kids while his star CEO wife serves as the breadwinner. The man finds himself in emotional and public turmoil when his wife kicks him to the curb, and they engage in a bitter divorce and custody battle. Packer and Hart previously worked together on the movie Night School, which premiered last month, while Rock released his most recent stand-up special on Netflix earlier this year and will also star in the upcoming fourth season of FXs Fargo. Williams. Photo: Roy Rochlin/Getty Images Hulu has announced the core cast of its forthcoming Four Weddings and a Funeral series, based on the 1994 film of the same name, and we are very pleased to meet them. Jessica Williams will lead the cast as Jess, a communications director for a New York senatorial campaign who sets off to London after shes invited to a wedding, and ends up staying long enough to reconnect with old friends and find herself in the midst of their personal crises. Those friends are Rebecca Rittenhouse, who will play Dallas socialite turned London transplant Ainsley who asks Jess to be her maid of honor; Nikesh Patel as Kash, who The Hollywood Reporter describes as a struggling actor meant to marry Ainsley; and John Reynolds as Duffy, a fellow American living in London who has long carried a torch for Jess. The series comes from writers Mindy Kaling and Matt Warburton, who will also produce, and it is expected to start streaming sometime next year. Greys Anatomy Everyday Angel Season 15 Episode 5 Editors Rating 4 stars * * * * Previous Next Photo: Derek Johnson/ABC Before we get into the meat of this stellar Greys episode, can we please have one moment of silence for the glorious gift that is that Doctor Jam Band? Link and DeLuca playing guitars and Richard, er Richie, singing The Thrill Is Gone? This development gives me so much joy, I have to question if Im really watching Greys Anatomy. For a show that has so much suffering in its history, Everyday Angel is an extremely uplifting episode. I mean, Doctor Jam Band aside, who wouldnt want to spend an entire day baking cookies and talking about life with Meredith Grey and Teddy Altman? To walk away with a goody bag of baked goods and motivation to do the right thing? Thats the best outcome for any heart-to-heart. Meredith of course knows Teddys big secret, and yes, she wants to protect Owen and Amelia, but she also wants Teddy to do whats best for both her and her unborn ginger baby. Just bask in the glow of a Meredith Grey who has it all together. Well, except for the baking part. She just learned that you need to preheat your oven. She finds Teddy in the park where Teddy used to make Cristina get her coffee every morning, and tells her she really needs to rip off the Band-Aid. They end up back at Merediths because she has to bake homemade cookies for Zolas school and the two ladies get into things. Teddy really was going to tell Owen. Then she got here and saw that the things she reamed him out for in Germany that he was incapable of not being in a relationship, that he was only in a foreign country declaring his love for her because Amelia rejected him were very, very true. Shes decided to go back to Germany and raise this baby on her own. Meredith not only speaks from experience as a mother, but as a daughter who grew up without her father simply because her mother hated him. When she finally sought out Thatcher as an adult, she didnt find a deadbeat dad who abandoned her, she found a decent man who was pushed out of his daughters life. (Apparently Thatcher makes his return to Grey Sloan next week, so well get into all of that drama later. I cannot wait.) Meredith warns Teddy: Her child will eventually go looking for his or her father, and that child will find Owen a good, kind man. Does Teddy want to do that to both her child and to Owen? The answer is of course no. But Teddy isnt holding on to this secret because she hates Owen its because she loves Owen. Shes always loved Owen. Because of this she knows that good, kind, loyal Owen will give up everything he has to be with her once he finds out about the baby. Then shell never know if hes with her out of obligation or love. Hasnt this woman suffered enough? (Seriously, Teddys list of People She Loved Who Have Tragically Died rivals Merediths.) Meredith tells Teddy two very wise things: First, she isnt telling Owen for her, shes telling Owen for her child. Second, itll only get harder the longer she waits. And we know this second thing is very true since we spend this entire episode watching Owen and Amelia acknowledge how much theyve grown both independently and together. Theyre staking out Bettys school because Amelia is a woman obsessed, natch, and she wants to make sure Betty doesnt sneak out to do drugs. She has tracking apps and everything! As Owen watches Amelia stressing over Betty and fawning over Leo in the backseat, he brings up the fact they they ostensibly broke up because she didnt want kids. She responds first by blaming this on that frickin tumor, WHICH IS RIDICULOUS, but then opens up about the baby she lost. She can finally say his name out loud: Christopher. She was worried that having another child would erase her son, but now with Betty and Leo, she sees that isnt true. This is good. So you know its going to be really bad once Teddy pops back into their lives. Itll be interesting to watch the fall out. Bring it on, Greys! Elsewhere, Jackson has returned from his journey of self-discovery with a pro bono surgery. This is great because, hello, Jackson taking off like that was silly. This is sad because I was really enjoying Maggie complaining about the amount of tree texts Jackson had been bombarding her with. Like, one picture of a tree is enough, sir. The reason this man searching for meaning has paused his trip is because during his hiking he happened upon a man and his son, Rafi, who suffers from osteochondroma of the scapula. The little boy has benign overgrowths on the bones and cartilage that connect his arm bone to his collarbone (Im not a doctor). Basically, it looks like he has angel wings jutting out from his back which is all very wink, wink since it was a doctor questioning a higher power who found him. WE GET IT GREYS. Youre wonderful. Jackson, Alex, and Link are going to operate and reconstruct his bones to look normal and give him full function of his arms. Alex is pumped to be on such an interesting case, but pissed that he has to share it with Link. Since discovering that Link and Jo knew each other back in the day, Alex has been giving him the stink eye. Link and Jo were friends in undergrad and worked at the crab shack together. They swear that nothing ever happened between them they were like brother and sister. Not like thats stopped anyone from pursuing a romantic relationship on this show before, amirite? But it turns out Alex isnt jealous of Link; hes mad that Link knew Jo when she was with Paul and he did nothing to stop that monster. Link looks genuinely hurt when Alex brings this up. He never liked Paul and he told Jo that, but Jo didnt listen to him. When Paul had problems with Jo and Link being friends, Jo pushed him away and Link tried to be respectful of her wishes. If Link knew what was really going on, he wouldve protected her. When he says this, he looks like he really means it. So, Alex is onboard with Link now. Welcome to the club, Karev. Its a very handsome, swoony place. Rafis surgery doesnt go as smoothly as they hoped. They discover that his benign overgrowths are malignant tumors. His options arent good, but Jackson didnt come back from his soul-searching sabbatical for nothing. He comes up with a plan in which they can perform radiation to the scapula once removed from Rafis body to kill the cancer without putting Rafi through that kind of treatment, and then put the scapula back in Rafi after. It seems crazy but it gets a wonderful, chill-inducing Greys Medical Montage and everything. And it works! Theyve healed Rafi completely. What a day! Because of that success, Jackson is reminded that his purpose is in the OR, not hiking among trees so hes back for good. Not like we ever had a doubt. Laughter Is the Best Medicine, Except for Real Medicine Glasses and Nico take baby steps toward maybe becoming Glasses and Nico. Helm spends the day convincing Schmitt that Nico has asked him on a date when he suggested he make good on the beer he owes him at Joes Bar later. Schmitt brushes it off, but then shows up expecting a date. Its not at all, but still: He showed up. DeLuca and Richard are buddies and it is so lovely! I mean, its not lovely when he sort of yells at DeLuca for not teaching his interns, but then it gets lovely again when he tells DeLuca that he believes he could be a great attending. You guys! Are Bailey and Jo kind of a dream team? They take on a patient who traveled a long way, after seeing many doctors, to finally get some type of diagnosis from General Surgery Goddess Meredith Grey. While they do eventually figure out whats wrong with her (she has MALS), they spend some time proving that they are just as good as Meredith Grey. Bailey molded Meredith Grey from a lump of clay, after all. Anyway, I like this team. You know what I dont like? Threatening the holy grail of Greys marriages: Bailey and Ben. Bailey has been trying to remove stress from her life post-heart attack and comes to the conclusion that her stress has nothing to do with work and everything to do with Ben being a firefighter. DO NOT GO THERE, SHOW. Is nothing sacred? Hello. I am very worried about Cece, our matchmaker in need of a heart transplant. That is all. Sob Scale: 2/10 That medical montage, friends. That medical montage really struck a chord. (The song is Taste by Sleeping At Last, if you, too, would like to listen to it on repeat.) Photo: Andrew Toth/Getty Images for GOOD+ Foundatio The New York Times published a new interview with comedian Jerry Seinfeld today, and it touches on practically every hot topic in the comedy world right now. Notably, Seinfeld was asked for his thoughts on Hannah Gadsbys Netflix special Nanette, and he did not hold back heaping praise on it. Loved it. She did a beautiful job, and the way she braided it with the art history she studied in school, that made it fascinating and fantastic, he said. When asked about how the special led to a debate over what qualifies as a stand-up special versus one-man show, Seinfeld said: But isnt that great, that she stretched the form of stand-up to encompass that? This is why people are excited about stand-up now. And how valuable is that, for other people that are going through or have gone through what she has? To see, heres a person thats thrived despite it. An incredible contribution. Thats the thing thats quite powerful about what were going through. Were figuring it out as we go along. And theres something very stimulating and empowering about that. We dont really know what the rules are. Were trying to make them up, other people make up rules and want everybody else to go by their rules. Elsewhere in the interview, Seinfeld claimed that his much-publicized comments about not performing on college campuses because he thinks students these days are too politically correct have been misconstrued. I play colleges all the time. I would never say theres any place I dont like these audiences. My job is the opposite of that, he said. I want to make them like what I do. I dont always succeed but thats my job. And never blame them, never. The worst possible situation the deadest, most hostile crowd I dont care. Its still my puzzle. Thats a professional attitude that Id never ever compromise. Additionally, Seinfeld was asked about nearly every comedian who has been the source of controversy in recent years. Is it too soon for Louis C.K. to perform in comedy clubs? Seinfeld says no, but that doesnt mean he disagrees with the blowback, either. We know the routine: The person does something wrong. The persons humiliated. Theyre exiled. They suffer, we want them to suffer. We love the tumble, we love the crash and bang of the fall. And then we love the crawl-back. The grovel. Are you going to grovel? How long are you going to grovel? he said. And people, I think, figured they had that coming with Louie he owes us that I cant say what he should do. You do whatever you want. If he does it wrong, hes going to suffer. And thats his deal. When it comes to Roseanne Barr and Bill Cosby, Seinfeld says the most notable thing is how swiftly their legacies were taken away. So much work, gone so fast. Were upset at the speed of it, because its new. I would say about Roseanne, I never saw anything that bad happen from a finger-tap on a screen. A whole career: gone, he said. Thats an aspect of this unease we feel, that you just wake up Oh, by the way, the Lincoln Memorials gone. What? Yeah, they took it down. Read the full interview over at NYT. The moon over Atlantic City turns blood red, then black. The angry ocean overtakes the dunes and rips the boardwalk to shreds. Every slot machine in every casino displays a result not of BAR, or LEMON, or 7, but 6-6-6, 6-6-6, 6-6-6. Thats what it feels like, anyway. Jen is coming. Lets start with the calm before the storm: Mike, Vinny, Pauly, and Paulys bedazzled megaphone take Deenas Chris and Angelinas Chris out to eat. The latter Chris in particular is earning major points, mostly for being able to kid around about his fiancees sexual past with Vinny, but also for generally not being as terrifying as she is. Hes so cool, in fact, that Ronnie thinks its weird, and given Rons record as a judge of character recently, Id consider this a compliment. (In my capacity as a federally appointed Circuit Judge for the United States Court of Attractiveness Appeals, I rule that Staten Island Chris is hot, a laboratory crossbreed of Bobby Cannavale and David Puddy. I am not accepting feedback on this verdict at this time.) At the ladies brunch, Jenni who is apparently angling for Megyn Kellys slot on the third hour of Today, but with less racism wants to know why Angelina has been engaged three times. (Thats nothing, by the way. Talk to me when she has Danielle Staubs numbers.) Is it because shes insecure? Whats her relationship with her dad like? Angelina shares that her father was in and out of jail throughout her childhood, and that when he wasnt, he was an abusive cheater. In fact, Papa Pivarnick only got her mom pregnant with the aim of getting a reduced prison sentence. No, thats not pessimistic speculation on Angelinas part he, uh, specifically told her so. Well, shit. Even Jenni, the supposed Jersey Whore herself, is moved. But no heavy personal revelation or joke about Angelina boning Vinny can change the fact that every minute that passes brings us closer to Jens arrival. No one has any idea how to behave, especially given that their friend has (literally! physically!) not yet healed from the last blowup with his girlfriend. Jenni feels shes in a particularly precarious position, given that Ron already got pissed at her in Vegas for maintaining an open line of communication with Jen. I give her a lot of credit for straight-up asking him, How do you want me to act? Just be her friend, he says! But is it possible, really, to be Jens friend while also being Rons friend? Jenni astutely predicts that Ron will never, ever be the one to leave a relationship, no matter how bad it gets. As with Sammi, it will be up to his girlfriend, whomever she may be, to break up with him. And Jen shows no signs of retreating. At dinner, the collective fear is palpable; Im sure the whole place stinks of cortisol and stress sweat. Jenni compulsively futzes with her hair, petting her extensions like theyre a lap dog. A cold wind rushes through the restaurant. The table-side flowers wilt, then crumble into dust. Jen and Ronnie have entered the building. Theres a long, uncomfortable lull in the conversation until episode MVP Jenni pipes up: Your mugshot, you look hot. Jen, mercifully, more or less takes this as a compliment, which is smart, given that the first rule of getting arrested as a reality TV personality is to own your mugshot. I know everything sounds so psycho and, like, crazy, Jen says, explaining to the group that she and Ronnie have both signed up for anger management, and even apologizing for her past behavior. Hmm. Mike diplomatically tells her that all they want is for Ron to be happy shell just have to be on probation for a while, with each of the Jersey Shore crew as one of her probation officers, thats all. Nobodys forgiving, and certainly nobodys forgetting, but theres something resembling progress here. She loves me and respects me enough to know these people will be a part of our lives forever, Ron says in a confessional. I would submit that she also loves him and respects him enough to drag him from a car. That said, this went surprisingly okay? The vibes are good enough to allow Vinny and Angelina to segue seamlessly back into their fight about exactly how far away from one another they grew up, until Vinnys own phone makes a loser of him: Google Maps confirms the houses were a measly 1.3 miles apart (insert fax machine emoji). Briefly, it seems like Ron and Jen might not be able to join in for Paulys DJ gig-slash-birthday celebration when a representative for the hotel appears at the suite and asks to speak to them outside. You see, Jen was banned from Planet Hollywood after her Vegas hallway meltdown, and Harrahs is technically owned by the same company, so I love this awkward conversation so much, I cannot tell you; I have never been more thankful for the alarmingly wide reach of a massive corporation. But when the couple promises to be on their very best behavior, an exception is made, and theyre allowed to stay. Surely nothing will go wrong. At first, it doesnt. DJ Pauly capably entertains his hordes of screaming fans, welcoming his Jersey Shore family to the stage. Even Vanessa, Paulys former stalker, wisely rebranded as his number one supporter, is on hand. It seems like a genuinely fun night, maybe because everyone is (sober and pregnant folks excluded) blissfully drunk. Angelina is remarkably huggy and cheek-kissy with Vinny right in front of Chris, which is a little disorienting, but whatever! Friendship is a rich tapestry! Even Ronnie and Jen seem like they dont hate each other. Then something changes. Jens drunkenness gets a little less blissful. Ron suggests that she not take another shot, which is perhaps an even bigger mistake than letting his girlfriend take the shot without comment would have been. Jens furious. Were suddenly in the midst of an ugly fight. As resident astrophysicist Mike explains, Its kind of like the Big Bang. Do you know how it started? No. From the next couch over, Deena tries, uncomfortably, to pretend none of this is happening, despite the fact that it is indeed happening, and loudly, just several feet in front of her. Get me the fuck out of here, Jen snaps at Ron who, at least according to the version of events presented by this episodes edit, doesnt seem to have done anything wrong before storming out on her own. You cause so much fucking drama, its ridiculous. Back up in the suite, a cart stacked with about a dozen boxes of pizza is wheeled to their door. Several of these pies, thanks to overzealous rummaging for his preferred toppings on Mikes part, will end up face-down on the carpet. Pauly has to leave for his next show, in Rhode Island, in just a couple of hours, so he excuses himself to shower. Vinny is displeased to be left alone with the mathematically imbalanced equation of the two girls he and his heterosexual life-mate had brought home to his singular self, so he sees them out. Only he and Ronnie are still awake. Vinny wants to talk about what happened with Jen but what is there to say? He puts his face in his hands. I dont know that you can convince someone that we just witnessed erratic, disproportionately angry behavior, and of how alarming that is, if they dont see it for themselves. Ronnie is not prepared to accept that he shouldnt accept this. If you truly didnt do anything tonight and she just, like, did this out of nowhere, I hope you just add this to your list of why possibly she has issues, Vinny says. Thats becoming a long, long list. Tekashi 6ix9ine. Photo: Shareif Ziyadat/WireImage SoundCloud rap has exploded over the last two years with rappers whose criminal pasts have led to uncertain futures. XXXTentacion was murdered last June while awaiting trial on charges that he brutally assaulted and threatened to kill his pregnant girlfriend in 2016, allegations which only heightened his notoriety online during his brief career. (He confessed to the abuse in a since-surfaced secret recording.) Similarly, Tekashi 6ix9ine, whose rainbow hair suits his troll persona, has had his fame come with an asterisk. Last year, 6ix9ine narrowly avoided jail time and having to register as a sex offender for pleading guilty to the use of a child in a sexual performance in 2015; instead, he was sentenced to four years probation. But that was only the tip of his controversies: He went on to dace life in prison on federal racketeering charges related to gang activity and a potential future in witness protection due to his cooperation with the federal government. On December 18, Tekashi met his fate in Manhattan Federal Court when he was sentenced to two years in prison after a whirlwind of chaos. To try to make sense of it all, weve compiled a timeline of his fast rise and even faster fall. Pre-2017 Rise to Fame 6ix9ine, born Daniel Hernandez in 1996, grew up in Bushwick, Brooklyn, New York, and was raised by a Mexican mother and Puerto Rican father. His father was murdered in 2009 when Hernandez was 13 years old. According to his No Jumper interview, 6ix9ine was expelled from school in the eighth grade and did not further his education. I stopped going to school to help my mom pay the rent, he said. Following his fathers death, he worked several jobs and began selling marijuana to help support his mother and brother. In 2014, 6ix9ine begins rapping on a whim. I started rapping for fun to be honest with you. I didnt really want to be a rapper or whatever, he told No Jumper. I just started making music because everybody was like, Yo you look mad cool. He develops an online presence built off his eccentric fashion choices including wearing oversize shirts emboldened with the words Pussy Nigga, his rainbow-colored hair and grill, many face tattoos including a giant 69 over his right eyebrow (he estimates he has over 200 tattoos of the number) and a portrait of Jigsaw, and starting beef with other SoundCloud rappers including Trippie Redd by trolling them on social media. Photos of him also start to become a viral meme. During that time, he begins releasing scream-rap music under the Slovakia-based label FCK THEM, including Scumlife, Yokai, and Hellsing Station, and featuring anime in his music videos. He establishes the 6ix9ine persona, describing it as a lifestyle. I stand up for the kids who cant stand up for themselves, hell later tell Mass Appeal. Kids that get bullied and deal with a whole bunch of cyberbullying and school bullying kids in group homes, detention centers, where they dont have parents there looking out for them. They feel alone, like outcasts, or some type of joke to society. Im the hope for those kids. His song, Scumlife, he explained, stands for Society Cant Understand Me. (It is also a reference to the Flatbush gang; 6ix9ine has also said hes been affiliated with the Bloods set known as 9 Trey Bloods his other nickname, TreyWay, is both a reference to that set as well as his manager of the same name.) He has refused to wear name-brand clothing like Supreme so as to appear relatable to kids who cant afford those designers the way he couldnt growing up. I start my own trends. Im making it cool to be a bum, to be poor, he says. Tekashi is his own character I build my own world and I want my world to look like its on fucking fire. 2015 Sexual-Misconduct Case February 21: Amid his rising notoriety, 6ix9ine is accused of having sexual contact with a minor. On February 21, he attends a gathering at a Harlem apartment where videos are filmed of a naked girl later revealed to have been 13 years old at the time. According to the details of a criminal complaint filed a week and a half after the incident, and later obtained and publicized by Jezebel in December 2017, 6ix9ine, who was 18 at the time, is seen in one of the videos making a thrusting motion with his pelvis and smacking her on her buttocks while she engages in oral sexual intercourse with another man, who was also later arrested. In a separate video, the girl is seen sitting naked on the laps of 6ix9ine and another man; in a third video; a man is seen pouring liquid on the girls breasts while she sits on 6ix9ines lap. The videos are uploaded to Instagram and 6ix9ine reuploads them to his own account, later telling police he did so for my image. 6ix9ine claims to have believed the girl was of legal age at the time. When she came in she asked me how old I was and I told her I was 18 and I assumed she was older. The way she was asking made me think she was older, he told police. March 5: 6ix9ine is arrested and charged with the use of a child in a sexual performance. October 22: 6ix9ine pleads guilty to one felony count of use of a child in a sexual performance. According to Jezebel, the terms of his plea deal state that in the time until his sentencing (originally meant for October 2017, but since continuously postponed until October 2018), he is to complete one year of probation, 300 hours of community service, two years of mental health treatment, not to share sexually explicit or violent images featuring women/children to social media, and write an apology letter to the victim and her family all of which appear to have since been completed. He is also required to obtain his GED and stay out of criminal trouble for two years. District attorneys are now arguing he has violated the latter two requirements. 2017 July: A photo of 6ix9ine on Instagram, displaying his tattoos and colorful hair, goes viral on Reddit, drawing attention to his music. October: 6ix9ine releases Gummo, his official debut single, which rises to No. 12 on the Billboard Hot 100. November: 6ix9ine does a widely circulated interview with DJ Akademiks in which he gives his version of the events of the 2015 case, speaking publicly about it for the first time. I dont know her exact age, I think she was 14 or some shit like that, he says. He claims to have been 17 years young at the time of the incident, despite correctly stating to police that he was 18, and denies having any sexual contact with the victim. Im not touching the girl, Im not having sexual intercourse with the girl, Im not doing nothing, she just nude in some type of way, he says. I didnt rape nobody, bro, the girl wasnt even raped I didnt have no sexual contact with the girl but I was in the video. 2018 January 6: 6ix9ine is involved in an alleged altercation with a 16-year-old boy at the Galleria Mall in Houston, Texas. According to the police report obtained by Pitchfork, the boy tries to take a video of 6ix9ine, prompting the rapper to grab him by the neck causing small scratch marks and pain. 6ix9ine and his bodyguards allegedly further threaten the boy to erase the video, which he does to not get hurt again. In July, 6ix9ine is arrested in New York at JFK airport on an outstanding warrant for the incident and is charged with misdemeanor assault. In October, the alleged victim, Santiago Albarran, appears in court to reportedly ask that 6ix9ine not be prosecuted, even posing for a photo with the rapper. The case is ongoing. February 23: He releases his debut mixtape, Day 69. April 19: A woman tells Babe that 6ix9ine knowingly engaged in a sexual relationship with her when she was underage. Martha Gold, now 18, claims that they met in March 2017 when she was 17 and he was 20 and that she repeatedly informed him of her age. She says they had sexual contact in Los Angeles, where the legal age of consent is 18. She does not appear to be pressing charges. Im not tryna put him in jail or anything, but he has to learn to stay in his lane, she says. April 25: 6ix9ines manager, Tr3yway, is reportedly investigated in connection with two shootings, one at Barclays Center on the day of the Adrien Broner fight, and the other hours prior on the streets of Brooklyn. His crew is also reportedly investigated for a shooting on a music video set in Brooklyn days prior. The incidents all reportedly involve rapper Casanova, with whom 6ix9ine had beef at the time. TMZ reports that 6ix9ine has been banned from performing at Barclays due to the alleged incident. May 20: 6ix9ine allegedly illegally parks in front of a fire hydrant in Brooklyn while also allegedly driving with a suspended license. He is reportedly charged with two misdemeanors: operating a vehicle without a license and facilitating aggravated unlicensed operation of a motor vehicle. May 21, the very next day: The morning after his arrest for the parking incident, 6ix9ine reportedly gets into an altercation with a police officer at the 77th Precinct in Brooklyn. After being instructed to take off his unlocked handcuffs, 6ix9ine allegedly grabs and squeezes the officers hand against the cuffs and refuses to take off the cuffs or let go of the officer, allegedly causing the officer swelling and redness to [his] fingers and, to suffer substantial pain, to fear further physical injury. He is slapped with four more misdemeanor charges due to the incident: third-degree assault, third-degree attempted assault, third-degree menacing, and second-degree obstructing governmental administration. Both cases are still ongoing. June 18: 6ix9ine is reportedly investigated for a shooting in New York involving rapper Chief Keef. He denies any involvement, though the two have beefed online and he insinuated his involvement on Instagram. July 22: He releases Fefe with Nicki Minaj, his biggest and most commercial song to date. It rises to No. 3 on the Billboard Hot 100. Minaj later defends working with 6ix9ine despite his misconduct, saying The thing with me, when I know somebody theres nothing you can tell me about them. Thats just how it is. Also on July 22: 6ix9ine is involved in an attack the same day his Nicki collaboration is released. He is reportedly kidnapped, pistol-whipped, and robbed in Brooklyn. As crazy as it sounds.. yesterday morning I had a feeling that it was my day to die, he later writes on Instagram. He also claims it was not a publicity stunt to promote the single. August 8: 6ix9ine starts beef with rapper YG over a line on YGs song Su Whoop in which he calls out fake Bloods, alluding to 6ix9ine. 6ix9ine taunts YG on Instagram, saying his single Fefe with Nicki is outselling YGs single with Nicki, Big Bank. He added, You a whole bum out here. Stop going on radio stations tryin to promote your album mentioning my name. You a big-ass dummy. August 10: The Manhattan District Attorneys office requests that a judge revoke 6ix9ines plea deal in the 2015 sexual misconduct case, arguing that he violated the terms of the deal by getting into further legal trouble and did not complete his GED in time. They ask that he be required to register as a sexual offender and that the rapper be sentenced to one to three years of jail time. 6ix9ines lawyers are arguing that any arrests that occurred after the original planned October 20, 2017, sentencing date should not count against his plea deal because it wouldve expired by then. Pitchfork reports that postponements to that hearing were due to 6ix9ines lawyers requesting more time for him to complete his GED, which they say he did in April 2018. August 21: Nicki Minaj claims that MTV would not allow 6ix9ine to perform with her at the VMAs. Tekashi, I wanted to perform with me at the VMAs. And somewhere along the line he didnt get approved to perform by the powers that be, she says. I dont want anyone to think for a second that I would not have asked him to come on my stage to perform his amazing hit Fefe. September 1: 6ix9ine performs at Jay-Zs Made in America Festival on the main stage to massive applause despite showing up two hours late. Its his first major U.S. festival performance, which he points out during his set saying no other festival had invited him. Minaj brings him out to perform with her during her headlining set at the festival. September 9: Kanye West hits the studio with 6ix9ine, fueling speculation that hell appear on Kanyes album Yandhi. September 14: YG releases the video for his song Bulletproof, which features a 6ix9ine look-alike in jail. He flashes the word pedophile on the screen, alluding to the misconduct case. October 22: Pitchfork reports that 6ix9ine is due in court for three separate incidents in the same week the 2015 sexual misconduct case, the Houston fan incident, and the altercation with the police officer in Brooklyn. He is expected to appear at a sentencing hearing in the misconduct case on October 26 where he could face jail time; he does not attend the October 25 pretrial hearing for the Houston case but is scheduled to be deposed on December 20; his October 23 for the cop case is adjourned and he is scheduled to be back in court on November 14. In the misconduct case, the D.A. further argues for jail time citing 6ix9ines multiple arrests that violate the terms of his plea deal, his gang affiliations, using his social media presence to perpetuate violence by starting feuds with other artists, as well as the criminal investigations involving the Chief Keef shooting and the shooting involving his manager. The DA writes: [6ix9ine] has failed to mature into the law-abiding adult anticipated by the plea agreement which he signed on October 20, 2015. October 26: 6ix9ine avoids jail time for the 2015 sexual misconduct case involving a minor, sentenced instead to four years probation. Hell get credit for one year served. At his sentencing, 6ix9ine tells the judge, Your honor, sometimes I feel like Im behind a closed door trying to convince the world Im a good man. Im not Tekashi 6ix9ine. Im not committing murders, Im not out there robbing people, and Im not out there raping people. October 26, later that day: According to TMZ, gunfire breaks out at a post-sentencing dinner in mid-town Manhattan following an argument between 6ix9ines entourage and a record executives bodyguard. A third party allegedly fires four shots during the dispute, hitting one of Hernandezs bodyguards in the stomach. He is subsequently taken to the hospital with non-life-threatening injuries.. October 28: 6ix9ine makes a surprise appearance at Power 105.1s Powerhouse NYC concert at the Prudential Center in Newark, NJ. He performs a full set and alludes to how his legal troubles have affected his career, telling the crowd, I never get invited to shit like this. October 29: The Associated Press reports that two men in 6ix9ines entourage are arrested for gang assault in connection with the afterparty shooting following his sentencing. One of the men, Faheem Walter, was the bodyguard shot in the incident; the other is named as Zachary Bunce. According to the report, the two men had attempted to enter the restaurant Philippe Chow on the Upper West Side and, when turned away, they returned and hit an armed security guard with a chair. That guard then shot Walter. 6ix9ine was reportedly not present at the time of the incident. November 4: Tekashi is reportedly involved in a verbal altercation with YG affiliate, rapper Slim 400, at ComplexCon in Los Angeles. According to reports and Slim himself, Slim and his crew barred Tekashi and his crew from entering the venue. November 5: Responding to the incident at ComplexCon in an interview with paparazzi, Tekashi mocks Slim for being lesser known and taunts YG for his affiliation with Slim. If YG was really your friend, you wouldnt be in the hood right now. But YG cant even get himself out the hood, he says. November 7: One of Tekashis managers, Shotti (ne Kifano Jordan) reportedly surrenders to police in connection with the shooting at Tekashis post-sentencing after-party where one of Tekashis bodyguards was shot. Shotti is charged with gang assault and criminal possession of a weapon. Tekashi is snapped out in Los Angeles with an entourage now including at least five bodyguards. Thats him overshadowed in the middle. Tekashi announces hes dropping his debut album, titled Dummy Boy, on Black Friday, November 23. Its cover features a cartoon version of Tekashi peeing out a rainbow onto a checkered floor. Watch me outsell everybody suck my dick, he writes. November 9: TMZ reports that an alleged shooting occurred on the Beverly Hills mansion set of a Tekashi music video featuring Nicki Minaj and Kanye West for a new song off 6ix9ines forthcoming album. It is described as a drive-by shooting where eight shots were fired, but no one was hit. One bullet reportedly struck a bedroom window. According to TMZ, both Tekashi and Kanye were on the set, but Nicki had not yet arrived; Kanye immediately left while production was halted and the crew was shaken up. November 14: TMZ reports that a man was arrested for allegedly robbing and kidnapping Tekashi 6ix9ine back in July. Anthony Jamel Ellison, a former member of Tekashis management team, was detained on November 6 on a federal warrant. He has been indicted on one count of carrying a firearm to commit a crime, one count of conspiracy to obstruct commerce by robbery, and one count of obstructing commerce by robbery. Ellison pleaded not guilty on all charges and awaits trial in Manhattan federal prison. Tekashi claimed at the time of the incident that it was an inside job; it appears he may have been right. Tekashi also accepted a plea deal in the case involving his assault on a police officer in Brooklyn during an arrest back in May. Pitchfork reports that he pleaded guilty to disorderly conduct and received a sentence of conditional discharge that requires him to stay out of trouble and not discuss the case on social media. He reportedly faces 15 days in jail if he breaks those terms. According to the Blast, the violation will not appear on his criminal record. November 15: Tekashi fires his entire team, including his manager Shotti, booking agent, and publicist. He also cancels his American tour. November 16: Tekashi appears on The Breakfast Club to explain why he fired his team saying he cant trust nobody and that the shooting on the set of music video with Nicki Minaj and Kanye West was the final straw, insinuating he suspected it mightve been an inside job. He also says he only fears two things: God and the FBI. November 18: Tekashi shares the track list for this debut album, confirming his song featuring Kanye West and Nicki Minaj, MAMA. (Kanye is also featured on another song, FEEFA.) November 19: Tekashi is arrested on federal charges of racketeering and firearms related to organized gang activity as part of the local set Nine Trey Gangsta Bloods, including armed robbery, conspiracy to commit murder, and drug trafficking. Hes taken into custody along with his ex-manager Shotti, bodyguard Faheem Crippy Walter, and three other associates. The arrest is reportedly part of a joint investigation between the NYPD, Homeland Security, and the Justice Departments Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives. He is charged with six counts of an eight-count indictment, two of which carry a maximum sentence of life in prison. 6ix9ine is held without bail and reportedly put in general population. It is revealed during his arraignment that his associates might have been planning a hit on 6ix9ine. They were secretly recorded saying they wanted to super violate 6ix9ine and that certain high ranking members of the Bloods had authorized violence. November 21: Two days after Tekashis arrest, Minaj posts to her Instagram saying his album Dummy Boy would be delayed due to reasons beyond music. His lawyer argues that Tekashi was never a gang member but just behaved like one as part of his rap image. An entertainer who portrays a gangster image to promote his music does not make him a member of an enterprise, the statement reads. November 22: Tekashi is reportedly transferred to a federal facility that is said to hold witnesses who are cooperating with law enforcement. His lawyer claims the transfer was for security reasons, after gang members threatened Tekashi at the original facility he was sent to. November 24: His new album Dummy Boy leaks days after its release is indefinitely delayed. November 26: Tekashi pleads not guilty to six counts of racketeering in federal court. November 27: 6ix9ines debut album Dummy Boy is officially released while hes in prison. He reportedly signs a new distribution deal with his publishing company Create Music Group to put out the album, exiting his previous contract with Capitol Music Group and Caroline after a disagreement stemming from the albums leak. The federal government announces it had an informant embedded in 6ix9ines crew who recorded secret conversations with the rapper as well as his associates. November 28: TMZ reports the findings of the wiretaps from the informant working with the Feds. Both Tekashis former manager, Shotti, and associate, Mel Murda, were recorded making violents threats against 6ix9ines life and discrediting him as a gang member. November 29: Complex host DJ Akademiks, who was the first to report 6ix9ines racketeering arrest, denies being the informant working with the Feds in a statement to TMZ. [I have] zero connection to this criminal case against Daniel Hernandez & other co-defendants. I view them as good people to me, he says. All these charges are a shock to me and do not involve me. I have never been questioned or much less cooperated in this. I am just a news reporter. November 30: Rick Ross taunts 6ix9ine over his legal troubles on new song Whats Free with Meek Mill and Jay-Z, using a homophobic slur to mock the rapper. Screaming gang gang now you wanna rap, racketeering charges caught him on a tap/Looking for a bond lawyers wanna tax, purple hair got them f****ts on your back, he raps. December 5: A Manhattan judge revokes 6ix9ines four-year probation in his 2015 child-sexual-misconduct case, giving him credit for time served. He will also no longer have to complete 1,000 hours of community service. The decision was reportedly due to his multiple pending federal racketeering and firearms charges. While awaiting trial in federal prison, it was deemed that the court cant enforce the terms of his probation or community service. The sexual-misconduct case is declared closed. 2019 February 1: Tekashi 6ix9ine pleads guilty to nine counts of federal racketeering, following his November arrest. Its revealed that 6ix9ine is discussing a plea deal with prosecutors involving the disclosure of information regarding multiple violent people associated with the same criminal enterprise. He faces 47 years to life in prison, though he likely wont be sentenced until 2020. March 28: The rappers former manager Kifano Shotti Jordan also pleads guilty to racketeering charges. During the proceedings, Jordan admitted to using and possessing a firearm in furtherance of a crime of violence and discharging a firearm in furtherance of a crime of violence, related to two assaults in April 2019. June 4: Rapper Kooda B admits to the court that Tekashi 6ix9ine paid him in exchange for getting someone to shoot Chief Keef, almost exactly a year after Keef was shot at in front of a Times Square hotel. Tekashi pleads guilty, saying that he did so in furtherance of the Nine Trey. Kooda B faces up to 20 years in federal prison. September 10: A report that lists the crimes Tekashi 6ix9ine has admitted to and wont be charged for under his plea agreement includes committing domestic violence from 2011 up until he was arrested in November. September 17: 6ix9ine testifies in court against Nine Trey Gangsta Bloods members Anthony Harv Ellison and Aljermiah Nuke Mack, whom he allegedly associated with. He also pointed out any alleged gang members who appear in his music videos, adding that it was his idea to include them. Tekashis witness statements are part of a plea deal with the Feds that may end with him in witness protection. 6ix9ine claimed that his role in the gang was to make music, make money, and in return they would offer protection. September 23: Its revealed that Tekashi 6ix9ines driver, Jorge Rivera, who was driving the car when 6ix9ine was allegedly kidnapped, had been working as a confidential informant following an ICE arrest. September 26: According to TMZ, sources say that Tekashi 6ix9ine has no plans to enter the witness protection program following his prison time. Instead, hell be paying for private security for both himself and his family. October 10: Tekashi 6ix9ine reportedly signs an over $10 million record deal with his former label, 10K Projects. The agreement includes two albums, one in Spanish and one in English. Plans for civilian life are underway. December 4: Prosecutors officially argue for a reduced sentence, calling his testimony both incredibly significant and extremely useful for their racketeering case against the Nine Trey gang. In their letter, prosecutors say they intend on requesting a lower-than-minimum sentence, provided that he continues to comply with the terms of his cooperation agreement. A minimum sentence for Tekashi 6ix9ine is 47 years in prison. December 11: I find it difficult to find the right words to express what my life has been like for the last year, the rapper said in a letter to the court, asking for leniency. It honestly feels like my world is crashing down. December 13: 6ix9ines mother, bodyguard, and girlfriend send their own letters to the court, vouching for him and explaining why he needs a reduced sentence. December 17: The two individuals Tekashi 6ix9ine and his associates mistakenly robbed at Rap-A-Lot Records in April 2018, instead of its CEO James Prince, send victims statements to the federal judge in charge of 6ix9ines fate. One victim described the impact the attack has on his life and asks, Why should this person, who nearly ended my life, be free when I am not free? December 18: Tekashi is sentenced to two years in prison, with credit for time served; hes expected to be released in 11 months and will remain on supervised release for five years. Tekashi addressed the judge at his sentencing, Im not a victim, I put myself in this position. Photo: Arik McArthur/FilmMagic Brooklyn rapper Tekashi 6ix9ine was sentenced to four years probation on Friday for sexual misconduct involving a 13-year-old girl. The rapper, whose legal name is Daniel Hernandez, admitted in 2015 to using a 13-year-old in a sexual performance, that was then posted online. Because the 22-year-old rapper copped to the charge under a youthful offender plea agreement, he could have avoided jail time altogether by staying out of trouble, as well as earning his GED and serving 300 community service hours. Prosecutors claimed Hernandez hasnt held up his end of the bargain by getting arrested two times in 2018 and have been pushing for him to get a jail sentence. Cops arrested Hernandez in May after he allegedly attacked a 16-year-old fan at a Texas shopping mall while he was trying to record video of the rapper. Hernandez was then arrested again in May after a traffic stop and accused of assaulting an officer at the station following that arrest. In pushing for a jail sentence, prosecutor Sara Weiss gave disturbing details about the sexual impropriety and subsequent video capturing the incident. In late February of 2015, the defendant participated in the sexual violation of a child, she said. During that encounter, there was also the creation of sexually explicit videos of that encounter. The defendant was filmed fondling this childs breasts and smacking her on her buttocks at the same time she was being penetrated by two adult males, she was being penetrated orally and vaginally. She was in the seventh grade, Weiss said. And when it was over, the defendant made the choice to continue to exploit her for his own benefit. He put the video on his social media, on his Instagram account, and he disseminated them online for the whole world to see, she said. He was describing himself as a scumbag. Weiss also said that Tekashi might have shed his scumbag label but is now flaunting his membership in a violent gang. We know he is a gang member because he talks about it. He publicly identifies as a member of 9 Trey, a Bloods offshoot, she explained. While asking Judge Felicia Mennin for leniency, Hernandez tried distancing himself from the rapper persona which prosecutors had said was proof of his continued misbehavior. Your honor, I am Danny Hernandez, he said. To the court I am Tekashi 6ix9ine. Hernandez claimed he was grossly misunderstood, saying he gives out his own money to people in need and that dying children cant wait to see him. A young brain cancer patient asked for the Make a Wish foundation to arrange a meeting with the rapper, he said. Your honor, if I was such a bad person, if I was such a criminal, he said rhetorically, why would his last wish be to see me? Hernandez also claimed young people see him as role model. They wake up and theyre like, my dream is to be like Tekashi 6ix9ine, not forgetting who he was as a kid not forgetting who he was as a person, he said. Your honor, he continued, sometimes I feel like Im behind a closed door trying to convince the world Im a good man. Im not Tekashi 6ix9ine. Im not committing murders, Im not out there robbing people, Im not out there raping people. Mennin was apparently swayed by the description of good works, saying he has engaged in a number of acts of unsolicited generosity and service to members of his community. Mennin said that hell receive credit for one year of his probation. He will remain out as long as he stays out of trouble and does 1,000 community service hours. She also downplayed the Texas incident as him possibly pushing back against an amateur paparazzi. When she issued her decision, the courtroom erupted into applause. Updated: According to TMZ, gunfire broke out at a post-sentencing dinner in mid-town Manhattan following an argument between Hernandezs entourage and a record executives bodyguard. A third party allegedly fired four shots during the dispute, hitting one of Hernandezs bodyguards in the stomach. He was subsequently taken to the hospital. Elaine May in The Waverly Gallery. Photo: Brigitte Lacombe Theres both a lot and very little happening in Kenneth Lonergans The Waverly Gallery. The lot is contextual: The 86-year-old comedy dynamo Elaine May is returning to Broadway for the first time since 1960, when she performed in this same theater as part of an era-defining sketch duo with Mike Nichols. Lonergans play, its director Lila Neugebauer, and Lucas Hedges, who plays its narrator (and was nominated for an Oscar for his performance in Lonergans film Manchester by the Sea), are all making their Broadway debuts. Michael Cera and Joan Allen are rounding out the cast, along with David Cromer, whose own directing work from The Treasurer to Our Town to The Bands Visit sits in conversation with The Waverly Gallery, a play thats dedicated to the meticulous commemoration of the unextraordinary. Thats the very little: The Waverly Gallery isnt so much a drama as it is an observance, in both senses of the word. With an ear like a tape recorder, Lonergan follows the descent of a woman into dementia. We watch her mind and personhood fracture as her family struggles to figure out day by day, loss by loss what to do with her. In the memory-play tradition, her grandson crosses the fourth wall to speak to us, turning her deterioration into a kind of rite. [This] really happened to her, he says, and it seems like somebody should remember it. For a while, the experience of watching The Waverly Gallery can feel like cognitive dissonance. As the plays starry container rubs up against its intentionally unassuming contents, the little, which is what Lonergan is interested in, gets temporarily subsumed in Broadway bigness. When I saw the show, the audience showered May with applause as soon as the gray brick wall concealing David Zinns hyperreal set flew out to reveal her as Gladys Green, owner of the titular gallery seated at a desk inside it, chatting with her grandson Daniel (Hedges). Gladys is garrulous and charming, her conversation that familiar blend of repetition, reminiscence, benign judgment, and kind, if forgetful, personal inquiry that weve all engaged in with someone whos closer to 100 than 50. And May is excellent understated and lively, both sharp and loose, balancing the inherent humor of Gladyss slips in memory with a sense of the embarrassment and deep loneliness the character is working so hard to hide. Whats strange, at least for a time, is the raucous laugh track. The audience around me came ready for comedy, and Mays every quip brought guffaws and sometimes even ovations. While Lonergans play is funny, its quiet-funny, painful-funny, knowing-half-smile-funny; only gradually, in a few calculated moments of release, is it big-funny, and even then its humor is never built for the laugh. I dont mean to criticize my fellow audience members in my hometown, a local critic once implied that I must have been an audience plant at a play that I happened to find hilarious. I simply found myself somewhere else, more detached from the carefully calibrated conversations I was watching than wrapped up in them. Perhaps its the inevitability: The Waverly Gallerys trajectory is clear from its opening moments. Gladyss mind will fall apart, is already falling apart, and we will watch it happen. And if we ever find ourselves questioning the lack of drama, the essential mundanity of the circumstances, well immediately wag a mental finger at ourselves because thats what were here to glorify. Somebody should remember, says Dan, and we lower our heads in respect, wanting to be those somebodies, making Gladyss story which happens to so many families into a kind of symbol, a monument at which to pay our respects for the unacknowledged ache of hundreds of thousands. Perhaps well be kinder in our minds to Gladys, more cognizant of the depth of her suffering, than weve been to our own families. Almost certainly we will. Theres nothing wicked about that. Thats part of what stories do give us a chance to clarify and focus our empathy, distilling our best human instincts for listening and compassion from the compromised messes of our own lives, where it can often be hard to find their essence in the muddied stream. My trouble with The Waverly Gallery, despite its painstakingly relatable dialogue and situational poignancy, is that I couldnt shake the feeling that I wanted it to do something else too. Watching Cromer as Gladyss son-in-law Howard a pragmatic, well-meaning man with a wry sense of humor and a tendency to try to shout his way through her hearing aid I thought back to his production of The Treasurer, another story of an aging woman whose mind is crumbling and whose family, especially her son, are coping with the scattered pieces. As directors, both Neugebauer and Cromer are interested in the ways the expansive lives inside the everyday, in Thornton Wilders assertion that theres something way down deep thats eternal about every human being and even the least important day in your life is important enough. But Cromer, with both The Treasurer and Wilders Our Town, has gotten to work with material that finds the rich theatricality of these ideas, that turn the stage into a conjuring place of shifting, overlapping realities, where the the lines between mind and matter, even between life and whatever comes after, are thrillingly, devastatingly blurred. With Lonergans play, Neugebauer gets nothing so layered, so interested in the unique potential of theater to unlock more than the factual step-by-step of Gladyss story. She still does mightily impressive work with her actors: They calmly weather the tempest of laughter at the plays beginning with her cool guidance, staying steady, focused, present, never overplaying a note. Hedges is at times almost a blank slate as Dan, the kind of smart, diffident young man whose experience of the world is still quite small, whose humor runs toward irony, and who will take a long, long time to find his emotional center, if he ever does. Cromer paints an effective picture of pretty much exactly that kind of man, grown up though hes Dans stepfather, the pair share a proclivity for dry detachment. Were liberal Upper West Side atheistic Jewish intellectuals, says Dan, and the home crowd goes wild. Michael Cera does a downplayed version of his patented awkward thing, plus a Boston accent, which works well for Don, the hardworking if clueless artist who befriends Gladys and exhibits in her gallery (and crashes in the back room). Don is the kind of person who listens to everything youre saying, pauses, then blithely goes on talking about himself, not out of malice or even vanity but simply because he cant quite comprehend anyone elses reality. When his car gets vandalized, Ceras flustered, I-dont-want-to-blow-up frustration is genuinely funny: I gotta admit Im very, very discouraged by this city, he squeaks, and you just wanna hug-slap him. Oh, sweetheart. Its Joan Allen, though, whos up there with May, giving the show its heartbeat. As Gladyss daughter Ellen an immensely capable, intelligent doctor whose impatience with her dwindling mother is mingled with, and concealing, fear and heartbreak she cant fully register Allen is sneak-up-on-you stunning. Even when her Ellen says things like I wish she would just die peacefully in her sleep or When I get senile, just put a bullet through my head, or when she finally explodes at Gladys who keeps attempting to feed the family dog against Ellens express orders we never feel cruelty in her performance, only the terrible, terribly common reality of trying to be a good daughter, of caring for a parent without really fully loving them, of being an efficient, hypercompetent person with no ability to fix something thats breaking. Neugebauer and May precisely locate each beat of Gladyss disappearance as the person she once was. May is predictably spot-on with the plays humor, and both piteous and powerful in the storys latter stages, where Gladys slips and panics and rambles, desperately reaching out of the lonely fog that envelops her. When Howard, cheerful and banal, shouts, ITS NO FUN GETTING OLD, she stops short like a cat drawing back from being pet, eyeing its caretaker like the condescending know-nothing he is: Well why do you always say that to me? she demands. Nobody wants to hear that! Gladys was a huge personality in her younger days, the kind of witty, worldly, connected New York woman that you went to if you wanted anything done. Now shes ringing her grandsons doorbell three times a night (they live in the same Greenwich Village building), unable to remember what he does for a living or where she put her keys or sometimes even who he is, uncertain of whats happening to her and ashamed and afraid of it. This whole neighborhood is changing, Gladys keeps saying and we watch projections (by Tal Yarden) of the transforming face of the Village on that big gray wall that descends in front of the set during each scene change. The world is slipping away from Gladys even as shes slipping away from it, and its a gasping, drawn-out parting, a kind of mental drowning. As multiple fully furnished sets appeared, and as Gladys and her family moved crack by crack toward the inescapable final disintegration, I could feel the theater settle, now understandably reverent in the face of this quiet, quotidian tragedy but I could also still feel my own detachment. Lonergans text seems to call for high realism, and thats what Neugebauer and her designers give it, which means that theres no other register in The Waverly Gallery beyond the keen observance of detail. The play tells us that we should remember Gladyss story, but doesnt take advantage of the infinite potential of its form in the telling of it. There are lots of things we should remember, from flossing to giving to charities, but what makes us remember theater is revelation. By confining itself to a familiar box, even an expertly rendered one, The Waverly Gallery ends up feeling smaller than it should, especially when its very mission is to see the world in a grain of sand. Even in the sensitive hands of its actors, especially May and Allen, its an affecting play, but not a revelatory one. The Waverly Gallery is at the John Golden Theatre. From Lewiston/Clarkston, at Rattlestick. Photo: Jeremy Daniel History is different when youre 6 years old, says Alice, a character in the first half of Samuel D. Hunters new play duet Lewiston/Clarkston. In her 70s, Alice owns some land along the Snake River, outside the northern Idaho city named for Meriwether Lewis, whom she claims as a distant ancestor. Across the river in the Washington town named for William Clark and in the play named for that town a young man called Jake has just arrived from the East Coast and picked up a night-shift stocking job at Costco. Clark is somewhere way back in Jakes family tree, and Jake carries a copy of the explorers journals in his backpack. I mean, if you think about it, Jake tells his fellow employee, Chris, a local whos never left the area, all these stores like Costco in towns like this, hundreds of miles in between one another maybe this is like the new West Maybe were like the last American pioneers. Hunters smart, sad, inquisitive plays rest somewhere between Jakes tentative sense of wonder, Alices wry weariness, and Chriss flat skepticism upon hearing his new co-workers theory. Thats like the most depressing thing Ive heard in awhile, Chris says, before he goes back to instructing Jake on shelf-stocking: Cheese puffs go on the bottom. Hunter, who was born and raised in Idaho, is playing with big ideas inside small boxes: Hes interested in American disenchantment, in the great adventure stories weve told ourselves about ourselves, and the legacy of those stories in a time when theres just nothing left to discover. His characters are contemporary lost souls, too aware of the underbelly of the American narrative of all that was lost and stolen and destroyed in the name of exploration and expansion to believe in anything so naive as a national dream, but still searching, stumbling down unknown paths toward something as small, or as great, as each other. Lewiston and Clarkston had separate premieres at different theaters, but the script refers to them as a single piece: A play in two parts. They need one another Lewiston especially needs Clarkston, which is tightly crafted, tender, and at times devastating, while its preceding play feels more nascent, as if Hunters still finding his way. Director Davis McCallum stages both pieces with simple dignity, locating the intimate, evening-length production each play is about 80 minutes long, and theres a 45-minute dinner between them thats included in your ticket in whats usually the seating area of the compact Rattlestick Playwrights Theater. The space has been stripped almost bare by set designer Dane Laffrey and lit by Stacey Derosier with a combination of parking-lot murk (in Clarkston) and vulnerable brightness (in Lewiston) that allows us to watch our neighboring audience members. There are only 51 of us, and we perch on folding chairs and high stools, packed in close on all sides of the action, the theaters frosted block-glass windows exposed and admitting the evening shadows and flashes of Greenwich Village. Exposed is how both production and audience feel, and thats as it should be. Lewiston and Clarkston are plays about the necessary pain of starting again and again and again in the face of disillusionment with the world and with ourselves. In Lewiston, we meet Alice just as shes about to let go of her last 20 acres of land. The property has been in her family since the 1850s, but shes broke, running a laughably unprofitable roadside fireworks stand with her 53-year-old, gay (not out, not in Lewiston) roommate, Connor. The subdivision developers that have eaten up all the rest of her acreage want to take the remainder and give her a condo by the pool for her losses. Connor (Arnie Burton) works part-time at Walgreens to make ends meet, and he and Alice (Kristin Griffith) mostly subsist on Michelob Light and reheated Tater Tots. Then Alices estranged granddaughter Marnie (Leah Karpel) shows up young, earnest, and self-righteous with secrets, resentments, and brand-new backpacking gear in tow having run from the urban farm in Seattle that she dropped out of college to found. Dont you want to I dont know, self-actualize or whatever? she says to Connor in a moment of extreme oblivion, having thoughtlessly called him out for being in the closet. Seems like youve been self-actualizing your entire life, Connor replies, his eyes hurt and hard. Hows that going for you? Burton is remarkable as Connor, whos kindhearted, loyal, and far more complex than Marnie knows. Without ever getting soppy, hes Lewistons heart, while Griffith is its steely, self-protecting backbone. As they face off with Karpels determined, defensive Marnie whos come back to the family land intending to buy if from her grandmother, and essentially planting her flag and demanding it as her birthright Hunter reveals the blind spots of both generations, particularly the younger. You have $30,000? Connor grunts when Marnie tells him about the offer shes made Alice. He pauses, then remembers he spotted her for dinner earlier: Your pizza cost twelve bucks. Money is real in Lewiston/Clarkston in a way its often just not on New York stages. Weve all seen the extravagantly produced issue play, in which characters who apparently never have to worry about making rent debate high-minded progressive talking points in sets that look like multimillion-dollar Cobble Hill brownstones. But in the purposefully revealed, peeling walls of Rattlestick, and in the anxious bodies of Hunters characters, money isnt an afterthought, and its the young people that have always had enough of it who in spite of their aggressively woke posturing have the most to learn. In Clarkston, Jake (Noah Robbins), like Marnie, comes from out of town, bringing with him a degree from Bennington in Post-Colonial Gender Studies, an upbringing by parents who hyphenated his last name and were hyper-okay with his coming out (like to the point where it was a little annoying actually), and a complete ignorance of what it means to be poor. What really pisses me off, Chris (Edmund Donovan) fumes at him in one of Clarkstons sharpest scenes, is I dont think you know how much [$5,000] is I think you could call up Mommy or Daddy and they would send you $5,000. I think for you $5,000 is pretty much meaningless Do you know what $5,000 is to me? Five thousand dollars is what I can put toward my college loans after eighteen months of working full time. Thats what $5,000 dollars means to me. Marnie and Jake are the explorers in their respective plays, and theyre not bad people. But like other explorers before them, they come full of assumptions, pretensions, and self-aggrandizing notions of their own enlightenment in a backward world. Hunter is on uncommon terrain for a contemporary playwright with something political to say: Not many new plays these days dare to point to the immaturities of the young progressive left, the privilege that it takes even to devote your time to privilege-checking. Im sorry. I was being mean, says Marnie to Connor after snubbing his job at the Walgreens. Then she adds, And classist. Connor raises an eyebrow. The fact that Marnie knows the word doesnt mean she gets it yet. But of course, Marnies suffering. And Jake is too. And so are Alice and Connor. And Chris and his mother, Trish. Hunter has compassion for all his characters, and so do we, even in their cruelest, most messed-up moments. Both Marnie and Alice are carrying the weight of Marnies mothers death she killed herself when her daughter was 8, after walking the Lewis and Clark trail and Marnie is actually carrying the relics of that journey, cassette tapes that her mother recorded like journals as she retraced her ancestors footsteps. (Lewis committed suicide, too, and Hunter is consistently looping the threads of his plays back into their historical inspiration.) She cant bring herself to listen to the last one, or to tell Alice the real reason shes run from Seattle, looking for a home, for some tiny patch of land where something new could grow. Jakes got a secret too, but hes forced to let Chris in on it early on after a spasm that causes him to spill a jumbo-size tub of popcorn kernels all over the Costco aisle floor. Hes got Huntingtons disease. Im gonna be dead before Im 30, pretty much for certain, he says blankly, and Chris subtly pulls back, uncertain how to respond. But the real trajectory of Clarkston is Jake and Chriss cautious motion toward each other. Both young men are gay (though Chris, like Connor, is quiet about it), and an awkward hookup attempt soon turns into a deeper, scarier kind of intimacy, a relationship thats less about sex than it is about really seeing the other person. The sweet, funny scene in which Chris who quietly writes fiction and aspires to an MFA from the Iowa Writers Workshop reads one of his stories out loud to Jake is beautifully played by both actors. Robbins brisk and diminutive, vulnerable and voluble is right on as Jake, and Donovan makes Chris hugely sympathetic. He nails the characters suspension between child and adult, his natural intelligence and his lack of experience, his fantasies of getting out and his ingrained, dull fear that he never will. That desolation comes in part from his having grown up with an addict. Chriss mother, Trish a former meth junkie who swears shes gone clean fills out the cast of Clarkston, and her presence is a brilliant stroke on Hunters part. The play could have easily been a two-hander, but Trish catapults its stakes and concerns to new heights. She also turns the play into a reverse mirror for Lewiston, reshuffling the numbers in the stories encounters between the generations. As the desperate, shiny-eyed Trish, Heidi Armbruster is frighteningly fantastic. In bootcut jeans, blingy belts, and tight, tucked-in T-shirts (the costumes, by Jessica Wegener Shay, feel particularly spot-on in her case), she shows up in the Costco parking lot pleading for her sons forgiveness. Of course, she never actually says it that way. She just comes around to bring him groceries, or to offer him a free breakfast at Dennys (where she works) after his night shift. Donovans whole body goes tense in Chriss interactions with his mother, who smiles and cajoles and promises great times ahead. Their scenes together especially the last one, which crescendos into terrible emotional violence are like punches to the sternum. Armbruster is wild and wheedling, her exuberance tinged with toxicity, but despite it all, her fierce love for Chris is clear, as is his for her, even through his horrified tears. Both Lewiston and Clarkston end on the Fourth of July, and theres a poignant satisfaction to realizing that the stories have been unfolding concurrently, with only a river between them. At each conclusion, a pair of characters sit, or stand, side by side, looking out at the unknown on this countrys so-called birthday, while all the troubled complexity of the land they stand on fills the air around them like the smoke from a sparkler. I guess I have no idea whats in front of me, says Jake to Chris, and for the first time, Davis puts them up on Rattlesticks actual stage, looking out from a new perspective in a cool wash of light. Jake blinks as if into the sun: That feels new, at least. In its intimacy and its honesty, Lewiston/Clarkston suggests that the terra incognita that remains for Americans isnt outside but in. Our own souls and the souls of our neighbors thats what weve got to be brave enough, and kind enough, to explore. Lewiston/Clarkston is at the Rattlestick Playwrights Theater through December 2. Photo: Hulton Archive/Getty Images The first movie monster that made an impression on me as a child was King Kong as he rampaged through New York, picked up a guy, and ate him. (At least, thats how I remembered it for many years. Actually, he puts the guy in his mouth, bites down in close-up, but then spits him out. ) Kong was cool, and scary, and by that point, his weirdly jittery stop-motion gestures, newfangled in their day but outdated by the time I got to them, added a whole other level of creepiness to his actions. But what really stuck out wasnt just Kongs terrifying rampage through the city. It was the fact that the filmmakers eventually asked you to care for the lonely and lovesick giant ape, right before he was finally shot by airplanes atop the Empire State Building and plummeted to earth. That whipsawing effect, between revulsion and tenderness, wasnt exactly subtle. Even my 5-year-old brain could grasp it. Kong was scary, and sad. And somehow the scariness made the sadness sadder, and the sadness made the scariness scarier. The question of what makes a movie monster frightening is an old one, and each era has its own range of answers, the same way that each has its own defining horror films. Attitudes change, ideas change, technology changes. Even the idea of what constitutes a monster, a nebulous concept to begin with, changes. When Peter Jackson remade King Kong in 2005, Kong had basically become the good guy, and the film not so much a horror fantasy as a sprawling, touching period epic with state-of-the-art special effects. Cinemas other popular behemoth, Godzilla, similarly went, over the course of its cinematic life, from being a fire-breathing lizard terrorizing the people of Japan a metaphor for nuclear devastation to something of an anti-hero, a ruthless defender of humanity against a whole host of other invading kaijus. Once upon a time, vampires were considered the ultimate movie monsters and with appearances in silents like Draculas Death in 1921 and Nosferatu in 1922, they were among the first to be regularly portrayed onscreen but nowadays theyre seen mostly as romantic figures. Meanwhile, one wonders if that oft-attempted remake of the Creature From the Black Lagoon will still happen, now that Guillermo del Toro transformed the creature (or at least one very much like it) into an object of desire in The Shape of Water. Nevertheless, monster movies have attempted a series of comebacks in recent years, with mixed results. After the failure of Universals Mummy reboot, the studio scrapped its Dark Universe plan to create a whole new series featuring such iconic figures as Dracula, Frankenstein, and Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. Both Kong and Godzilla have been rebooted as part of Warner Bros. attempt to create a MonsterVerse franchise, with 2014s Godzilla and 2017s Kong: Skull Island leading the way, each film leaning on the beasts roles as defenders of humanity against other, more ruthless creatures. The Pacific Rim efforts never quite caught fire, but their kaiju invaders were at least vividly realized, with tentacles and claws and multilayered beaks, each creature a new Lovecraftian vision. But were any of them scary? As technology has improved, our monsters have gotten more ornate and grotesque but less genuinely terrifying. One might even argue that as CGI has made these creatures more common, it has also taken many of them out of the realm of horror as if, somehow, the less thats left to the imagination, the less afraid we are of them. Thats not to say that we cant still feel wonder. The marvelous dinosaurs of the Jurassic Park and Jurassic World series often inspire awe, but once we see them in full, they rarely generate actual terror, and the films, despite having some genuinely suspenseful moments, are more kid-friendly adventures than anything else. The Marvel, Star Wars, and Lord of the Rings movies are filled with beings who might have once prompted shrieks, but are now often the good guys and even the monsters they do fight arent particularly scary. (Well, except for that giant fucking spider in The Return of the King; that thing messed me up for weeks.) Meanwhile, del Toro, a man who knows a thing or two about monsters, created his most elaborate and vividly designed creatures for Pans Labyrinth, which is a coming-of-age fable where the bad guys are not supernatural beings from the beyond but Spanish fascists. Maybe thats why many of the horror films (and sequels) that have been successful in our young century so far such as The Conjuring, Insidious, Get Out, and now Halloween, not to mention the various entries in the torture porn craze of the 2000s mostly tend to focus on the evils that we ourselves are capable of when possessed by demons, or ghosts, or simply our own capacity for cruelty. Who needs monsters, in other words, when weve got people? Still, theres something uniquely bone-chilling about a good monster. Of all the notable contenders of the past 40 years, few can come close to the sheer terror inspired by the Xenomorph of the first Alien film. There, Ridley Scott, taking a page from Steven Spielbergs Jaws just several years earlier, famously showed the creature only in bits and pieces a slashing inner jaw here, a spearing tail there waiting until the end to reveal the beast in all its nightmare-inducing glory, and even then only briefly. That uncertainty is one of the things that makes the alien so frightening: We cant quite get a proper fix on it. And the hybrid quality of H.R. Gigers design, mixing the organic with the reticulated, the oozy with the sleek, disturbs us even further, because we cant grasp where such a thing might have come from. In James Camerons 1986 sequel Aliens, however, the Xenomorphs are all over the place slithering and uncoiling out of walls, rising out of floor grates, crawling through ventilation shafts, and dropping from ceilings. And yet we still see relatively little of them. Even as he turns Scotts haunted-house movie in outer space into an all-out action extravaganza, Cameron adheres to his predecessors ethos of showing the monsters only in bits and pieces, fragmenting them visually and allowing them to maintain their frightening allure. Once again, its not until the end of the film, with our final, full shots of the giant Alien Queen, do we get a long hard look at one of these extraterrestrial fiends. In some senses, the journey of the Alien movies through the post-CGI filmmaking landscape says something about how revealing too much of a monster can undermine its very monstrosity. Subsequent entries have overexposed the aliens and essentially turned them into a joke. So much so that when Ridley Scott himself tried to reclaim the franchise with Prometheus and Alien: Covenant, he treated the classic Xenomorphs as afterthoughts and opted instead to focus on the many (perhaps too many) philosophical questions the earlier films had provoked. Classics like Alien (and Jaws and John Carpenters The Thing, and any number of other similar efforts) suggest that movie monsters get scarier the less we see of them. Among films of somewhat more recent vintage, Cloverfield and The Mist have also taken this idea to heart. (Meanwhile, it remains to be seen whether It has even shown us its true monster yet.) There can be exceptions, of course. Drew Goddards The Cabin in the Woods very consciously gives us a monster overload in its third act, as seemingly every horror nemesis you could possibly think of shows up and lays bloody waste to the human characters; the results manage to be both hilarious and quite frightening. In a somewhat more somber vein, Mama does not skimp on showing us its terrifying title specter, a maternal ghost that looks like a Modigliani and a Munch had a secret demon love-child; the film practically bludgeons us with jump scares, and somehow they all work. So, what distinguishes a monster movie that works from one that doesnt? Perhaps its worth looking at the one type of monster that has not only endured but thrived of late, even as its also been thoroughly overexposed. While modern-day effects have made horned, winged, goo-soaked, fire-breathing freaks more and more credible, its somehow that honest, anonymous day laborer of the horror genre, the humble zombie, who has become ubiquitous. Maybe its because zombies, at least in their more modern iterations, are also harbingers of our own doom, symptoms of an apocalyptic disease. Zombie movies such as World War Z and 28 Days Later and various entries in the Resident Evil series (and even such tongue-in-cheek efforts as Shaun of the Dead and Zombieland) manage to scare us because they also represent the imminent death of humanity. Whats left to the imagination in that case is not so much what the monsters look like, but what their presence portends. There is a gnawing sadness to the zombie movie yes, even some of the funny ones thats hard to shake. So, again we come to this notion of sadness. Its interesting to note how many of the classic monsters came with a dose of pathos. The Mummy was a man looking to reclaim the lover who was stolen from him. The Phantom of the Opera was just a scarred, lonely romantic driven mad by trauma and betrayal. Frankensteins monster, the saddest of them all, just wanted a friend in a world he had never asked to be a part of and the closer he got to people, the more dangerous he became. And in all of movie monster history, is there a more depressing and chilling climax than the finale of The Bride of Frankenstein, when the Bride, finally brought to life, takes a look at her supposed betrothed and screams in terror? Far from tempering the horror, this added layer of melancholy somehow added to it. Todays movie monsters at least, the memorable ones manage to tap into a similar gloom, one now rooted more in our loneliness than theirs. Cabin in the Woods, for all its cheekiness, basically closes with the end of the world; in fact, it turns Armageddon into a sight gag. Mama ends on a more personal apocalypse, as Mama claims one of the two young girls it raised from infancy, suggesting that it will make a better mother to the child than the films human protagonist, played by Jessica Chastain. The Alien movies, too, are suffused in a kind of overwhelming despair, as they portray a largely post-human universe, where people are repeatedly deemed to be expendable nuisances, with their meddlesome rules, compassion, and fear. Or consider Jennifer Kents The Babadook, which somehow brings all these elements together. There, the title monster is chillingly realized through a variety of methods. Sometimes hes a stop-motion figure, or a paper cutout. Sometimes hes composited into an old George Melies film. Sometimes hes a brief reflection, or a looming shadow. Sometimes hes (literally) an empty suit. Even after all that, the Babadook, with a design inspired in part by Lon Chaneys top-hatted vampire in London After Midnight, is shown remarkably little, leaving us with the task of imagining him in all his terrifying grandeur. But the Babadook is also a symbol, an echo of the rage and frustration the protagonist experiences as a beleaguered single mother entertaining dark thoughts about her child. The movie, under the surface, is essentially an epic struggle within the mind of a single human being, wrote David Edelstein. The monster is an analogue of the heros perceived failure as a parent and person; it grows in the darkness of her grief and self-doubt, threatening to consume both mother and child. Here, then, is a film that channels the old and the new, with both the human and the demon trapped in an eternal clutch of solitude and madness. Horror ultimately works not on revulsion but on a kind of helplessness on the part of the viewer a feeling that we, along with the characters, are being pulled toward an inexorable and terrible fate. And key to that effect is a sense that our fate will be not just a painful or menacing one, but also a profoundly sad one. Those old creature features often found that sadness in the monsters themselves; todays vintage finds it within us. In the end, the ubiquity of the modern monster suggests a notion that once was unacceptable: that perhaps these rough beasts deserve this world more than we do. At the invitation of the Intra-European Organisation of Tax Administrations (IOTA), WCO Secretary General Kunio Mikuriya attended the Tax Summit on Digital Economy, jointly organized by the Inter-American Center of Tax Administrations (CIAT), IOTA and the Portuguese Tax and Customs Administration. The event was held in Lisbon, Portugal, on 25 October 2018 and brought together Tax administrations from around 80 countries. Secretary General Mikuriya moderated the round table session on Tax and Customs Digital Administrations with the following four panel members: Mr. Paulo Ricardo de Souza Cardoso, Deputy Commissioner General of Brazil Federal Revenue; Mr. Jorgen Wissing Jensen, Director at Personal Tax, Individuals, Danish Tax Agency; Mr. Pramod Chandra Gyandeo Modi, Member (Administration) of the Indian Central Board of Direct Taxes; and Ms. Ana Paula Rapaso, Deputy Director General for the Customs Procedures Department, Portuguese Tax and Customs Administration. After an extensive discussion on the challenges posed by the digital economy and the future of Customs and Tax administrations, Dr. Mikuriya summed up that both Customs and Tax Administrations should look at the digital economy that provides a wealth of data and disruptive technology, such as blockchain, as an opportunity for accessing information. To that end, focus should be placed on digital platforms where information exchange is made possible between public institutions in order to analyse risks of revenue leakages and safety and security threats generated by illicit trade. Access to the requisite data will enable administrations to improve services, including e-tax services, and reduce clearance times. The challenges lie in accessing quality data and trained human resources capable of understanding and managing data and data analytics at the highest levels as well as on the ground. To tackle these challenges, heightened cooperation among Customs and Tax administrations is needed in the areas of information exchange and joint data analysis, capacity building and cultivating the trust of tax payers so as to enhance compliance in return for greater benefits. The panellists mentioned some of the contributions made by the WCO, including those in the areas of Customs-Tax cooperation, Authorized Economic Operator (AEO) programmes and cross-border e-commerce. Dr. Mikuriya concluded by expressing his gratitude to the Portuguese Tax and Customs Administration, and in particular to Ms. Helena Alves Borges, Director General, for her support for Customs in a range of international fora. If you have an event you'd like to list on the site, submit it now! Submit By West Kentucky Star Staff Oct. 26, 2018 | 04:09 PM | PADUCAH The girl and her younger siblings were placed in the custody of Department of Child-Based Services. A man and woman were arrested after police learned they were having their daughter perform sex acts for money, drugs, and cigarettes.According to Paducah Police, 37-year-old Carrie Renell Hageland, and 51-year-old Aubrey Keith Mackly, were arrested after being interviewed by detectives Thursday night.The investigation began after detectives received information about the family Thursday afternoon. They found that the 16-year-old is pregnant, and her mother admitted both she and her husband have had the girl perform oral sex, and engage in sexual intercourse in exchange for drugs, money and cigarettes. She said this has been occurring since April.Aubrey Mackly told detectives he had his daughter bring him cigarettes and ask older men for money to pay rent. Mackly admitted he knows the girl smokes marijuana, and that he has smoked it with her on occasion.Hageland and Mackly were arrested on charges of human trafficking, (victim less than 18), and unlawful transaction with a minor. They were taken to the McCracken County Regional Jail. Advertisement By Mike Cooper, West Kentucky Star Staff Oct. 25, 2018 | PADUCAH By Mike Cooper, West Kentucky Star Staff Oct. 25, 2018 | 10:26 PM | PADUCAH The Welcome Home opening ceremony for The Wall That Heals, Paducah visit, was held Thursday evening at Carson Park. The capacity crowd ceremony took place at the grandstands, with the wall in the background, which proved to be an extremely moving experience, with no dry eyes in the house. The welcome was extended by Randy and Andrea Orr, of Milner and Orr Funeral Homes. Special music was provided by the 101st Airborne Division Band, the Honorable Shea Nickell, singing "Welcome Home" and "God Bless the USA", and Kendra Robinson, singing "Veterans Hallelujah". Recognition of Vietnam Veterans and their families was given by United States Congressman James Comer, Paducah Mayor Brandi Harless, and McCracken County Judge Executive Bob Leeper. Special remarks were also given by Bill Evans, of The Paducah Sun. Presentation of Challenge Coins was made by Amanda Melton, of Milner and Orr Funeral Homes, and Local Heros on the Wall were announced by Perry Boxx of WPSD-TV, Brian and Jenna Wainer, of Morgan's and Lakeland Funeral Homes, and Logan and Alison Orr, of Milner and Orr Funeral Homes. Recognition of all veterans was given by Mary Beth Orr, of Milner and Orr Funeral Homes. United States Congressman James Comer told West Kentucky Star, "to be able to have The Wall That Heals here in Paducah, and have such a big turnout, and such an emotional ceremony, means a lot to me as Congressman." Vietnam Veteran and Reidland resident, Robert Harris, also spoke with West Kentucky Star. He explained, "this night is truly a night of healing. It's amazing to see this Wall for the first time. I served in 1967 and 1968. I was wounded two times, and the only survivor out of nine in a rocket explosion. I knew the number of people that died, but when I see the Wall, it's totally, completely different. There's a lot of emotion here, and there's a lot of room for improvement in healing. I got a chance to talk to many Vets, hear their stories, exchange tears, hugs, and laughter, and just how we're doing now, and how we're coping since the Vietnam War. It's very emotional, and I thank Paducah, and all the sponsors and donors, that brought this Wall here. It's given us a chance to heal that we didn't have before." Carson Park will be open 24 hours a day through Sunday, October 28th, for visitors that wish to see The Wall That Heals. The Wall bears the names of all 58,318 Vietnam service members that gave the ultimate sacrifice. The three-quarter scale Wall replica is 375 feet in length and stands 7 1/2 feet high at the tallest point. Visitors experience The Wall rising above them as they walk to the apex, which is a key feature of the design of The Wall. Like the original Memorial in Washington, DC, The Wall That Heals is erected in a chevron-shape, and visitors can do name rubbings of individual service member's names on The Wall. By West Kentucky Star Staff Oct. 26, 2018 | 10:30 AM | MAYFIELD A Georgia man was arrested Wednesday night in Mayfield on drug and other charges. The Mayfield Police Department says officers were dispatched to Walmart after receiving reports that 21-year-old Brandon Martin, of Moultrie, GA, had called 911 from the store and was making threats. When officers arrived at Walmart, Martin wasn't there. Officers were then dispatched to Budget Inn after Martin reportedly called 911 again, this time saying he was being followed, and there were people in his room trying to kill him. According to police, when they came into contact with Martin, they found him to be under the influence of drugs. According to officers, Martin admitted calling 911 from Walmart. He was arrested and charged with possession of marijuana, possession of drug paraphernalia, harassing communications and falsely reporting an incident. He was lodged in the Graves County Jail. Advertisement By West Kentucky Star Staff Oct. 26, 2018 | MARSHALL COUNTY By West Kentucky Star Staff Oct. 26, 2018 | 01:32 PM | MARSHALL COUNTY The Kentucky Transportation Cabinet is asking for information about a truck that damaged a railroad underpass along Interstate 24 on Tuesday, while repair work begins. Sometime between 11 am and 12:30 pm, a citizen called transportation officials to tell them that a truck pulling a lowboy trailer had bottomed out on the westbound underpass for P&L Railroad around mile marker 28. The trailer caused an estimated $75,000 damaged to a joint and concrete decking on the bridge. Officials are asking the witness, or anyone with information about the truck to contact them. They said in a press release that the truck may have been damaged in the accident. Anyone with information should contact the Kentucky Transportation Cabinet office in Paducah at 270-898-2431, or call the Kentucky State Police Division of Vehicle Enforcement at 270-856-3721. Meanwhile, a crew has started making temporary repairs to the bridge. The work requires a lane restriction on the westbound side of I-24, with all traffic moving to the passing lane. Once concrete work on Friday is completed and cures over the weekend, crews will return Monday and the restriction will shift to the other lane. This work zone is adjacent to an already existing work zone for the I-24 Tennessee River Bridge, which has barrier wall and a 16 ft. maximum load width restriction. Email To : Multiple e-mail addresses must be separated with a comma character(maximum 200 characters) Email To is required. Your Full Name: (optional) Your Email Address: Your Email Address is required. Advertisement By The Associated Press Oct. 26, 2018 | JEFFERSONTOWN By The Associated Press Oct. 26, 2018 | 12:31 PM | JEFFERSONTOWN The fatal shooting death of two black grocery patrons by a white gunman is being investigated as a possible hate crime, a U.S. official said Friday. Federal investigators are examining if there were any violations of federal law, "which includes potential civil rights violations such as hate crimes," said U.S. Attorney Russell M. Coleman in Louisville. Fifty-one year old Gregory A. Bush has been charged with murder and other crimes in the deaths of the man and the woman at a Kroger store Wednesday in Jeffersontown, located on the outskirts of Louisville. The FBI is investigating alongside local police. "The murders are not being taken lightly by the United States government," Coleman said in a prepared statement. The man may have been recorded on surveillance video as first trying to get inside a predominantly black church. Jeffersontown Police Chief Sam Rogers says a city employee tipped off police when he saw the photo of Bush, who is white, after it was released. Rogers says surveillance video confirmed Bush's presence outside the First Baptist church and that he "appeared to try to gain access to the church." The information comes amid news media reports that the suspect made a racial comment to a witness of the shooting. But Rogers says it's too soon to say whether the shooting was racially motivated. He also said the suspect apparently has a history of mental illness. A SWAT team seized a cellphone and computers from the home in Jeffersontown where Bush was living with his parents. Meanwhile, Bush has apparently had issues with aggressive behavior in the past. Court records show his parents told police in January 2009 that Bush punched his 78-year-old father in the face and grabbed his 74-year-old mother by the neck "and picked her up off the ground." Bush's father suffered a possible broken jaw in the attack. Police wrote in the report that Bush's parents were "terrified of (his) unpredictable behavior." An arrest record from May 2009 says Bush was in a family court hearing when he became "irate" and shouted obscenities and threats at his ex-wife. When deputies tried to subdue him, Bush fought off attempts to handcuff him and punched a deputy twice. He was charged with several counts including assault, resisting arrest and disorderly conduct. Bush was marked as a "suicide risk" on the arrest sheet, which also indicated his ex-wife had an emergency protective order against him. In a 2003 incident, Bush was charged with menacing for following a 15-year-old into a movie theater bathroom and putting his hands around her waist. Bush told the girl he "thought we were family" and the girl pushed him away, according to the arrest record. An arrest citation from Wednesday says Bush walked to the back of the Jeffersontown Kroger store, pulled a gun from his waistband and shot a man in the back of the head, and then kept shooting the man multiple times "as he was down on the floor." Police say Bush then re-holstered his gun as he exited the store, and once outside, he shot another victim, a woman, several times. Police say Bush then encountered an armed civilian and the two fired at each other in the parking lot. Neither were injured. Bush is charged with two counts of murder and 10 counts of wanton endangerment. By The Associated Press Oct. 25, 2018 | 10:32 PM | FRANKFORT Kentucky Attorney General Andy Beshear has sued a pharmaceutical company, accusing it of contributing to the state's opioid epidemic. Beshear says he has sued Pennsylvania-based Teva for marketing its products to treat chronic pain despite the drugs being approved for treating pain in cancer patients. Beshear called the deceptive marketing "one of the most egregious acts we have seen from a pharmaceutical company." A spokeswoman for Teva declined to comment. This is the eighth lawsuit Beshear has filed against a company that either makes or distributes opioid-based medication. Kentucky has one of the highest drug overdose death rates in the country. Most of the deaths are related to opioids. Beshear, a Democrat, is running for governor in 2019. CVS will close 900 stores over next 3 years China News on Women Sorry, the page you requested was not found. If you're having trouble locating a destination on Womenofchina.cn, try visiting the Womenofchina Home page Spectacular sight as 50 motorcyclists set to travel through Wrexham to mark start of local Poppy Appeal This article is old - Published: Friday, Oct 26th, 2018 More than 50 motorcyclists will travel from Wrexham and across North Wales this weekend to mark the start of this years Poppy Appeal. 2018 marks a special special for the British Legions Poppy Appeal as it represents 100 years since the end of the First World War. To honour the launch over 50 motorcyclists will arrive at the Guildhall on Sunday 28th to be met by the mayor, Cllr Andy Williams, as the annual poppy appeal gets under way in Wrexham. The Bikers will stay overnight in Gresford before embarking on their North Wales trip, beginning in Wrexham with a wreath laying at the Cenotaph in Bodhyfryd before calling into Llangollen, Porthmadog, Caernarfon and Llandudno. Commenting on the event, the mayor, said: It will be a spectacular sight seeing that many motor bikes arrive and leave the Guildhall, its not something you see very day. I would like to thank them for their support and commitment of the British Legions appeal. I know the people of Wrexham will appreciate their efforts and will support this years appeal as they do every year. The motor cyclists will arrive at the Guildhall at 9.00am and speak with the Mayor before departing for Llangollen at 10.15am. UK Prime Minister Theresa May met with backbench Conservative MPs Wednesday evening, gathered by the influential 1922 Committee. The days leading up to the meeting had a febrile atmosphere, with rumours that May faced an imminent leadership challenge led by hard-Brexit MPs. Sources suggested that the chair of the 1922 Committee, Graham Brady, had already received the required 48 letters from MPs to declare a leadership challenge. The weekend papers noted the incendiary language being used by some hardline Brexiteers, with the Sunday Times speculating May had possibly just 72 hours left in Downing Street. One unnamed MP said that May was entering the killing zone, with another saying that the knife would be stuck in her front and twisted. Shell be dead soon. Instead, May not only survived the Wednesdays meeting, but accounts also said that she was warmly greeted and met with what the Financial Times called thunderous applause as MPs accepted her heartfelt plea that they back her soft-Brexit plan to exit the European Union (EU). Michael Fabricant MP described the meeting as a love-in. ... It wasnt Daniella in the lions den, it was a petting zoo. She lives to fight possibly until the next election [set for 2022], the pro-Brexit MP added. According to the Guardian, May only faced a handful of awkward questions from Brexiters including Nadine Dorries, Sir Edward Leigh and Philip Davies, but loyalists said she won over the room. ... That May, who supported Remain in the 2016 referendum and who has been constantly forced to make concessions to her pro-Brexit wing for the last two years, was able to seize the day in this way reflects a pronounced shift in ruling circles, who cannot countenance a hard Brexit. With just over five months until the UK is formally set to exit the EU, the well-funded Remain campaign organised a show of force in London last Saturday, with a rally supported by hundreds of thousands. This was accompanied by warnings that investment levels have fallen for four in five businesses in fear of the consequences of a hard-Brexit. Jaguar Land Rover temporarily closed operations in Solihull for several weeks affecting 9,000 workers jobs. CEO Ralf Speth warned that major job losses were inevitable if firms lost access to the EU Single Market and Customs Union. The most exposed industries would have no way to survive a hard Brexit. The financial sector and services industries also face devastation. Around 40 percent of UK exports to the EU are accounted for in trade in services, including financial services and the legal profession. Londons economy is 92 percent based on service industries. The import of this was recognised even by ardent Brexiteer columnist Christopher Booker, who commented in the Daily Telegraph this week that at the outset of Brexit, politicians were simply unaware of how much of our national activity had become so closely intermeshed with that of the EU and thus legally dependent on its rules. The consequences for many of our most successful industries may thus be devastating: from chemicals, pharmaceuticals, financial services, aviation and our ports to Formula One motor racing: even our ability to move racehorses freely between Britain, Ireland and France. May told the 1922 Committee meeting that the Brexit deal was near completion, with two main issues outstanding. The most important is the post-Brexit border between Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland, which will remain an EU member. May is demanding the EU drop its proposal for a Northern Ireland-only backstop keeping it in a customs arrangement with the EU indefinitely if a future trade deal between the EU and UK cannot be finalised. Mays alternative, based on pressure from the Democratic Unionist Party whose 10 MPs give her a majority in Parliament, is for a time-limited UK-wide customs backstop. The other issue is on extending the transition period in which Britain stays within the single market and the customs union beyond the end of 2020, as is currently planned. Negotiations with the EU continue based on a deal being finalised by December at the latest, so the EUs national governments can sanction it. On Wednesday, European Council President Donald Tusk told MEPs, Since Prime Minister May mentioned the idea of extending the transition period, let me repeat that if the UK decided that such an extension would be helpful to reach a deal, I am sure that the leaders would be ready to consider it positively. A striking confirmation of the determination in ruling circles to clear all obstacles to a soft-Brexit is provided by the previously vociferously pro-Brexit Daily Mail. Following the departure of its editor Paul Dacre, the Mail has steadily moved towards support for Mays positions. Just 18 months ago, the Mail denounced judges who ruled that Parliament had to have a final say on any Brexit deal and advised May to crush any saboteur MPs who opposed a hard-Brexit. However, on Tuesday, it published a leader describing Tory MPs who were undermining May as Saboteurs endangering our nation. The Mail was well aware of the shortcomings of the Chequers plan. But the truth is that its the only plan on the tableand Mrs May is the only person who can drive it forward. As well as keeping May in place, getting a deal negotiated by May through Parliament requires a shift in line in the Labour Party under leader Jeremy Corbyn. On Monday, the Times, owned by the Brexit-supporting Rupert Murdoch, published an editorial titled Labours obfuscation over Brexit adds to the sense of national crisis. It noted that Corbyns absence from the Remain march, one of the biggest demonstrations in recent times was symptomatic of Labours absence from the broader Brexit debate. It noted that Labours setting of six tests by which it will judge any deal that the prime minister brings back from Brussels are based upon various statements made by Mrs. May and her ministers before they triggered Article 50 [starting the process to leave the EU], chosen in the certain knowledge that they cannot be met. In ordinary times, Labours policy of deliberate obfuscation would be politically understandable for the main opposition party. But these are not ordinary times, the newspaper warned Corbyn. If his efforts to derive party advantage from a moment of national crisis contribute to a terrible Brexit outcome, it wont be only the 700,000 marchers who will hold Labour partly responsible. All the Blairites within the Labour party are opposed to Corbyns stated aim of urging May to call a general election if her deal is rejected. Some have been holding out for a second referendum. But the Times is backing a faction said to number between 20 and 45 who are urging support for Mays deal as the only alternative to a no-deal Brexit. This would allow for the extension period of continued regulatory alignment to be used to campaign for a shift to remain. Among their main concerns is how to achieve their aims without precipitating the election of a Labour government, under conditions in which many workers and youth are seeking fundamental change and supported Corbyn on the basis of his professed opposition to austerity and war. Tory Brexiteer Andrea Jenkyns stated that some in the hard-Brexit wing backed off from issuing letters of no confidence in May because of fear of another election and a Corbyn government. In its editorial condemning Tory MPs seeking Mays removal, the Mail warned that if they continue with their wrecking tactics, they could force an election that no one wants and may well usher an unreconstructed Marxist into No. 10, with all the ruinous consequences that would wreak on the nation. The author also recommends: Peoples Vote campaign ups ante against hard Brexit with large London protest [22 October 2018] According to a report published on Patch.com, James Chalmers, 48, died after apparently suffering some kind of workplace injury related to a trash compactor at the Ford stamping plant in Chicago Heights, Illinois Thursday. The death adds to the growing toll exacted by dangerous working conditions directly related to the drive by Ford, abetted by the United Auto Workers, to increase production and profits at the expense of worker health and safety. The Patch report cites police, who say Chalmers, a worker in the rear waste area, was found unresponsive next to a trash compactor, with severe trauma to his chest area, strongly suggesting the injury was work-related. As the WSWS Autoworker Newsletter has previously reported, Fords profits have been reliant on an increase in the proportion of so-called temporary part-time (TPT) workers and other short-term workers, who are less likely to push back against unsafe line speeds or assigned tasks because of fear of termination. At some plants, such as Fords Woodhaven Stamping Plant, more recently hired workers are even segregated from senior workers so that they are not educated about maintaining a safe pace of production and resistance to management abuse. This is not the first death at the Chicago Heights stamping plant. In 1998, a worker standing underneath a crane was crushed when a cable snapped, releasing a large piece of metal, which fell on him. A few years before that, in 1995, another worker was killed when he was caught in a die press. Workers have also suffered major injuries, including two electricians who in 1995 suffered severe burns when they caught fire working on equipment. More recently, electrician Ivan Bridgewater at Fords Kentucky Truck Plant in Louisville was killed when he was pinned by a semi-trailer while working in a poorly lit loading dock. At Flat Rock Assembly south of Detroit, veteran worker Lynn Hagood had her legs crushed by machinery after falling into a pit. Hagood had been assigned to fill in at a workstation on the production line that she had not worked on before and for which she had not been adequately trained. The injury to Hagood sparked a rebellion by workers at the plant, who walked out after the accident rather than finish their shift as demanded by management. In both the case of Ivan Bridgewater and Lynn Hagood, the UAW colluded with management to cover up the causes of the accident and ensure there would be no serious consequences for Ford. The death at the Chicago Heights stamping plant follows the still unexplained death last month of a 24-year-old worker at the Ford Sterling Axle plant north of Detroit. The UAW has refused to answer any questions over the incident, despite indications that his death might have been workplace-related. Conditions at Chicago Heights stamping, like those at other Ford plants, have deteriorated due to the UAWs collusion with management. UAW Local 588, the union at the stamping plant, did not immediately respond to a request for comment. Conditions at Ford mirror conditions in large sections of industry. Since the global financial crash of 2008, the financial aristocracy has carried out a vast restructuring of class relations that has resulted in a significant increase in workplace deaths and injuries. In 2016, the last year for which there are full figures, 5,190 workers were killed on the job, up 7 percent from 2015, with 2.9 million nonfatal workplace injuries or illnesses. The author also recommends: Americas industrial slaughterhouse [25 September 2018] ABSTRACT The University of Namibia (UNAM) has developed and approved a policy on the recognition of prior learning (RPL), but the implementation thereof is dormant. The purpose of this paper is to present potential challenges and opportunities that can influence the implementation of RPL at UNAM. The paper used a qualitative approach and the phenomenological design to solicit participants views, perceptions and experiences concerning RPL at UNAM. Semi-structured interview schedules were employed to collect data from 12 staff members of UNAM who were purposively chosen based on their positions that are key to providing information to answer the research questions. The findings reveal opportunities such as the availability of political will to implement RPL at the institution, the availability of expertise, capability in terms of technology and infrastructure, the availability of RPL policy, quality assurance and the assessment policy of the institution. Challenges identified are lack of ontological knowledge of what counts as RPL, how it is assessed and its validity and integrity. The data reveal high demands regarding training on issues of assessment and raising awareness of RPL at the institution. The paper recommends that the Ministry of Education, the Namibia Qualifications Authority and the National Council of Higher Learning spearhead a campaign to raise awareness and sensitize the nation as to the significance of RPL. It also recommends that RPL be perceived as an assessment strategy of which the outcomes bring about admission, but is not by itself an admission issue. Keywords: Recognition of Prior Learning, Access, Assessment, Experiential Learning, Ontology, Alignment, Learning Outcomes, Lifelong Learning 1. Introduction The concept of recognition of prior learning (RPL) is framed within the discourse on lifelong learning, access and social justice. It is a process by which uncertified formal learning, uncertified organised non-formal learning, and uncertified and unplanned informal learning are given academic recognition (Garnett & Cavaye, 2015) . The learning is referred to as prior because it is a form of learning attained before a candidate is assessed in order to gain access to a course of study. The issue of RPL is significant; Berglund and Andersson (2012) acknowledge that knowledge and skills developed through work experience usually remain undocumented and unevaluated through a structured process. If such knowledge and skills were to be formally evaluated, the outcomes could result in upward progression in terms of employment or pursuing of further educational qualifications. It is therefore necessary that discussions of the recognition of learning achievements attained outside formal contexts become part of educational debates. Access to education is a constitutional right in Namibia, guaranteed by the Namibian Constitution. Being a member of the international community, Namibia is adhering to international frameworks, which calls for nations of the world to ensure equal access to all levels of education and to quality technical, vocational and tertiary education (Tabatadze & Gorgadze, 2017) . Equally, the Namibian National Qualifications Authority (NQA) Act, No. 299 of 1996 stipulates that it recognises all learning, irrespective of the setting where such learning occurred, provided such learning can be verified. Experiential learning is demonstrative in nature and can be justified if appropriate mechanisms are devised. The issue of RPL is not so much about the ability to justify the learning acquired, but the willingness to provide opportunities to assess and justify such learning. Skinner, Blackley and Green (2010) point out that universities have the capability to not only generate knowledge, but also to develop documentation to support the assessment and verification of knowledge. The RPL is one of the processes that could support these assessments and verifications of learning acquired outside classrooms. Skinner et al. maintain that most institutions that have implemented RPL still experience barriers to implementing the assessment and accreditation of experiential learning. Barriers identified are associated with resistance to the RPL concept due to ontological limitations. Cantwell and Scevak (2004) stress the ontological limitations with regard to what counts as knowledge and who defines the validity of that knowledge. These authors are of the view that such limitation creates fear of lowering entry requirements to institutions, thus causing resistance to the implementation of the RPL concept in higher education. Osman (2003) indicates that in most institutions of higher education, assessment of RPL is often aligned to and resembles methods of assessment used in formal higher education. Wihak (2006) reports doubts relating to whether prior learning has the calibre of formal education and whether contextualised knowledge can match subject knowledge. Skinner et al. (2010) report prejudices against competence-based knowledge in that it is viewed as vocational or corporate rather than as academic skills. Smith (2011) also reports on academics attitudes towards RPL as that of if knowledge is not invented here, then it is not credible. Moreover, the literature highlights financial implications as another challenge in the implementation of RPL in higher education, as RPL comes with extra load of labour-intensive performance in relation to assessment (Smith, 2011) . The few examples around the world that could be cited are from publications by Garnett and Cavaye (2015) at the Middlesex University in the United Kingdom, and Gonzales and Tabarak (2016) in France and in South Africa. The Middlesex University has developed a policy and approved regulations for accrediting learning from experience. They have established quality assurance principles and procedures to enable the accreditation to be conducted within the mainstream quality assurance framework of the University. They award specific credit, which implies a direct match between the submitted learning evidence and the learning outcomes of specific modules. General credit where no specific match is made, is also employed despite no details having been shared on how this is conducted. The Gonzales and Tabarak (2016) study holds that in France RPL implementation in higher education is made on the basis of candidates professional knowledge. The assessment involves candidates ability to prove the achievements of learning at the level of intellectual development corresponding to the level required at the institution (Gonzales & Tabarak, 2016) . They also explain that in South Africa RPL is philosophically framed in the discourse of access, equity and redress. Most admissions made on the basis of RPL are into professional programmes such as selected health sciences, engineering and computer science. Gonzales and Tabarak claim that there is evidence that RPL in South Africa is being offered across the higher education spectrum except at doctoral level. Also in South Africa, students are admitted to higher education through RPL by completing a portfolio. Gonzales and Tabarak argue that credibility and integrity in the assessment of RPL in South Africa are inherent in the use of well-developed and crafted principles, standards, models and procedures. The University of Namibia (UNAM) established an alternative admission route for entry into its programmes by adults who lack the traditional entry requirements. Adults who have completed Grade 10 (ten years of schooling) and have gained five years work experience relevant to the field in which they want to study, are considered under the Mature Age Entry (MAE) system. The MAE is one form of RPL, as it considers candidates that would traditionally not be accommodated. However, it recognises certificated learning and does not consider the assessment of experiential and work-based learning. Shaketange (2014) holds the view that candidates who go through the MAE system only have knowledge that resembles subject knowledge, and are not adequately prepared to reflect and demonstrate what they have learned from their professional practices; in most cases these students are often less qualified for the specific field of study they apply for. Moreover, credit transfer is also awarded at UNAM, but this service relates to awarding credits to similar subjects or modules passed at other institutions. It does not award credit to the learning previously acquired. In 2017, UNAM developed an RPL policy to guide the implementation of RPL in the institution, but the policy is dormant. Given the constant resistance to the implementation of RPL at institutions of higher learning internationally, this study aims to explore ways that UNAM intends to avoid similar ontological challenges as identified in the literature. The study explores opportunities that could lead to a successful implementation of RPL at UNAM. The presentation of topics in this article follows the sequence below: Presentation of the problem statement Discussion of the theoretical framework, description of the research design, strategy and methodology Presentation of data Discussion of the findings Conclusion and recommendations 2. Statement of the Problem Whereas UNAM wished to honour its national obligation towards inclusive education, the literature (Cantwell & Scevak, 2004; Osman, 2003; Wihak, 2006; Skinner et al., 2010) stresses ontological limitations as the most critical challenges capable of crippling implementation efforts of RPL in higher education. UNAM needs to employ strategies that would curb ontological limitations if successful implementation of RPL is to be realised at the institution. This article investigates possible challenges to opportunities available to respond to identified ontological limitations for a sustainable implementation of RPL at UNAM. This article will address the following research questions: What opportunities are available for implementing RPL at UNAM? What are potential challenges that could hinder the implementation of RPL at UNAM? What suggestions can be made to deal with ontological limitations in the implementation of RPL at UNAM? What is the role of existing quality assurance structures in the implementation of RPL at UNAM? What would be the ideal location for the RPL office that may aid the implementation of RPL at UNAM? 3. Theoretical Framework This study is grounded in critical theory, which came into existence in 1894 and evolved due to the transformation of society brought about by revolutionaries at the Institute for Social Research at Frankfurt University, to redress political injustices in Germany (Nel, 1998) . Critical theory therefore emerged as a tool for expressing the sentiments felt, and was an instrument for changing the future. Equally, critical theory in this article questions the ideology and ontological basis on which subject knowledge is anchored, to become the prestigious sole representation of knowledge. With Skinner et al. (2010) calling for a bridge between academic and vocational skills, questions have started to emerge expressing sentiments about the sole representation of subject knowledge. Garnett (2016) clearly expresses that universities no longer hold sole supremacy of knowledge production; they are facing stiff contestation from the workplace, which demands recognition as an equal knowledge production site. This contestation is perceived as an instrument for changing the traditional ideological view held about supremacy of subject knowledge. The current sentiments are that knowledge is vibrant, and is gathered from diverse sites. Universities should acknowledge the multiplicity of knowledge production sites and admit the need for varied assessment tools of such knowledge. 4. Methodology A phenomenological design of the qualitative approach was used in the study on which this article is based. Phenomenological design assumes that access to reality and knowledge is only achieved through social interaction. Within this view, the researcher came to understand participants feelings and convictions and was able to makes sense of the expressed opportunities and challenges for implementing RPL at UNAM. 4.1. Population and Sampling The purposive sampling strategy was used to select respondents from the population of 1200 UNAM employees on the main campus. Purposive strategy was significant to select informants who by virtue of their duties were perceived to possess rich information to answer the research questions. Twelve (12) staff members were purposively sampled from the office of the Pro-Vice Chancellors, the office of the Registrar, Quality Assurance Unit, and Deans of Faculties. This sample population occupies offices that are strategic to the implementation of RPL at UNAM. The Pro-vice Chancellors offices have the management will required for the successful implementation of RPL. Quality Assurance is needed to monitor and assess quality in every step of RPL implementation. The Registrar office deals with admission of students and Deans of Faculties are critical to agree with the implementation strategies since the faculties will implement RPL in practice. Therefore, the sample comprised respondents who would influence the implementation of RPL at the institution positively or negatively. Patton (1990) clarifies that qualitative inquiries are more concerned about quality of information collected, than the quantity of informants. 4.2. Research Instruments and Data Collection Procedures Asemi-structured interview schedule was employed to solicit the experience, knowledge and opinions about favourable opportunities to implement RPL and potential challenges that may hinder its implementation at UNAM. All participants were asked to answer research questions one to three, while inputs on quality assurance issues and the location of the RPL office were solicited from CEQUAM and offices of the pro-vice chancellors and the registrar respectively. The semi-structured interview was significant as it allowed new ideas to emerge. For comprehensive data-capturing and triangulation purposes, participants granted permission for the use of a tape recorder during interviews. 4.3. Data Analysis Since interview questions were recorded and data were transcribed into text, content analysis became relevant to analyse the data. Data analysis started with the transcription of interviews and the organisation thereof according to questions. Related answers were marked, grouped, labelled, compared and inductively generated into categories. For the purpose of reduction, the process of comparisons between properties in different categories was followed to form broad themes (Creswell, 2009). Data from categories were linked and aggregated across broad themes until themes of a manageable size emerged. 4.4. Ethical Considerations Permission was sought from the UNAM Research and Publications Unit to interview the relevant UNAM staff members. Written informed consent from individual participants was prearranged. Participants were clearly informed of their right to withdraw from the research at any time, and were assured that their identities and privacy would be protected through anonymity and confidentiality of the collected data. 5. Presentation and Interpretation of Data 5.1. Opportunities Available for Implementing RPL at UNAM The opportunities available for implementing RPL at the institution are presented in Table 1. Table 1 shows that some of the respondents felt that UNAM was ready, and that RPL was long overdue. Others were ambivalent in that there are issues that UNAM must address to become ready to implement RPL. These respondents explained that although the majority of UNAM staff agree that RPL should be implemented, there was a lack of RPL formal structure, resources and capacity-building opportunities. Most respondents maintained that RPL could be implemented provided that issues such as the integration of programme delivery and admission requirements pertaining to the respective department programmes were addressed. If the system for programme development and NQF registration was linked to the RPL and if UNAM puts formal structures in place, trains implementers, and avails resources, then it could be ready. One respondent stressed that the RPL process requires more manpower than that which Table 1. Responses as to whether UNAM is ready to implement RPL. UNAM currently has on the ground. UNAM needs to raise awareness about RPL, develop and understand the guidelines, and clarify the criteria for assessing experiential learning before the implementation of RPL. The assertions demonstrated above show that the institution in its present state does not seem to be ready to implement RPL. 5.2. Opportunities Available to Implement RPL at UNAM The respondents indicated that UNAM has both international and national imperatives which call for RPL implementation and that Agenda 2030 is an international authoritative tool which the Namibian nation needs to apply to ensure equal access to education. The respondents made references to the Namibian Constitution which stipulates the right to education, and the NQA Act that recognises all learning, irrespective of its setting. Respondents also made reference to the National RPL policy, the UNAM-RPL policy as well as the Vision and Mission of UNAM. As stated by one of the respondents: The international and internal imperatives, Agenda 2030, the Namibian Constitution, the NQA Act which calls for the need of RPL, the UNAM policy are all instruments that UNAM is responding to. Also, RPL fits well within the vision, mission of UNAM. The respondents clarified that the RPL provision fits well within the vision and mission of UNAM as both are framed within the governments agenda of economic development and quality of life. Another respondent mentioned the strong political will for RPL at the university: The political will. Management at UNAM are in agreement with the implementation of RPL. One respondent explained that UNAM has the capabilities in terms of resources and technology. UNAM has the capability, available technology, skilled people, resources, an approved RPL policy, all these create [an] enabling environment for the implementation of RPL at the institution. These viewpoints on RPL underscore support for the implementation of and belief in the high probability of RPL succeeding at the institution. 5.3. The Challenges that Can Hinder the Implementation of RPL at UNAM The challenges that might hinder the implementation of the RPL concept at UNAM are presented in Table 2. Table 2. Challenges that might inhibit the implementation of the RPL concept at UNAM. According to Table 2, all respondents concur with three critical challenges, namely the ontological limitations of RPL, which include the lack of knowledge in assessing experiential learning and the lack of resources at the institution. The ontological limitation refers to knowledge of RPL: What constitutes RPL knowledge, and how is informal learning identified and recognised? What credibility or worth does RPL knowledge have in comparison to subject knowledge? The assessment of RPL knowledge includes: The ability to identify sufficient evidence for assessment; how is the actual assessment done? What constitutes the knowledge that deserves recognition? How is the validation of the competencies done? Who constitutes the assessment team? Respondents felt that lack of answers to these questions has the potential to culminate in negative preconceived ideas about RPL. Respondents therefore call for the training of all those who would be concerned with the implementation of RPL at UNAM. Another challenge identified was the lack of resources at the institution. Despite indications by some respondents that UNAM does have the resources, the majority of respondents pointed out human and financial resources as challenges that may derail the implementation of RPL. The concern here was that experts in RPL are too few to launch RPL and meet its demands. Apprehension was raised regarding academic support to older students where needed; the team of implementers of RPL needs to be adequate to implement a successful innovation. Financial resources were stated as a concern in view of the few available experts who might need the assistance of additional staff, resulting in extra remuneration. 5.4. Suggestions to Facilitate the Implementation of RPL at UNAM The respondents suggestions about interventions to aid the implementation of RPL at UNAM are outlined in Table 3. Table 3 shows that awareness campaigns to educate the UNAM community about RPL and its significance werestrongly suggested. It appears that different role-players need to take responsibility for marketing the RPL concept. For example, the Communication and Marketing Division at UNAM could mobilise and inform the UNAM community about RPL. It was also suggested that RPL is a national issue and would require national intervention. Therefore, the Ministry of Education and the NQA, which is the custodian of this endeavour, together with NCHE should launch a national campaign advocating for the implementation of RPL. It was also suggested that UNAM should be the initiator of this national advocacy campaign. Such a campaign would boost the significance of RPL and avoid any form of stigmatization that may be attached to RPL out of ignorance. Another suggestion pertained to benchmarking the Namibian RPL with similar institutions that have implemented RPL, so as to ascertain what situations and challenges might block the RPL progress. A suggestion to begin RPL services at postgraduate level was also made. This would avoid the inflow of applicants for undergraduate programmes. Ontological questions need to be answered to facilitate understanding and give clear guidance as to how evidence of Table 3. Suggestions for implementing RPL at UNAM. learning is identified, assessed and validated. There is a need for rubrics and a clear rationale to facilitate smooth implementation. It was suggested that the assessment of RPL be made through and with programme development and NQF registration, and that a simple entrance test be introduced to measure the entry capability of candidates. 5.5. The Role of Existing Quality Assurance Structures in the Implementation of RPL at UNAM The officials from CEQUAM were solicited to state CEQUAMs role in the implementation of RPL at UNAM. Below are their responses: CEQUAM officials stipulated their role in the implementation of RPL as ensuring quality in the assessment process of RPL, and to guarantee that RPL procedures follow the principles of the UNAM assessment policy. 5.6. Location of the RPL Office to Aid the Implementation of RPL at UNAM Respondents from the offices of the Pro-vice Chancellors and office of the Registrar had different views as to where the office of the RPL should be located to aid the implementation of RPL at UNAM. Some respondents felt it should resort under the office of the Registrar because RPL is an admission matter. Others respondents indicated that it should fall under the office of the Pro-vice Chancellors-Academic Affairs because this would give RPL a respectful profile. Another opinion was that it should be independent, given that RPL is an assessment issue and not an admission matter. It was emphasised that only the outcome of the RPL assessment leads to admission, therefore, it should be independently administered in conjunction with the various faculties. Some respondents thought it should be under the Quality Assurance Unit since it deals with NQA frameworks and standards, which are quality matters. 6. Discussion of the Findings The discussion of findings will reflect on international and national imperatives, the need for political will at UNAM and the capability and constraints of UNAM to implement RPL. This section will also reflect on the potential challenges that could hinder the implementation of RPL at UNAM and attempt to answer the ontological questions raised during data collection. 6.1. International and National Imperatives The implementation of RPL at UNAM is said to be anchored in both international and national imperatives. Namibia, being a member of these international treaties, is responding through its educational institutions. UNAMs intention to implement RPL is based on fulfilling its national duty to bring about social justice. Equally, the UNAM Act, Act 18 of 1992, section 18directs that it may not confer a degree upon any person unless he or she has attended or attained the standards of proficiency in an examination or tests as determined by Senate. The Act paves the way for the provisions of RPL assessment. Equally, UNAMs vision and mission promote the development of individuals capable of driving public and private institutions towards a knowledge-based economy. 6.2. The Political Will at UNAM The matter of political will at UNAM was mentioned as an opportunity which favours the implementation of RPL. The policy was developed, together with the implementation guide. The political will in the context of RPL was justified by the institutions highest decision-making body, the Senate, who in 2017 adopted a resolution to approve the RPL policy. However, the implementation thereof is latent. The dormancy of the implementation of the approved policy contradicts the will unanimously expressed during data collection. Osman (2003) and Gonzales and Tabarak (2016) emphasise that policies and the managerial will of RPL are best understood in terms of practices, rather than in terms of idealistic statements of intentions. The proclaimed will by respondents at UNAM to implement RPL appears to be only idealistic statements of intention, with no commitment to put the implementation plan into practice. If implementation of RPL at UNAM is to be sustained, it certainly requires much stronger commitment than the idealistic intention exhibited by respondents during data collection. 6.3. RPL Capability and Constraints at UNAM The data reveal that despite UNAMs possession of technology, expertise and resources that were seen to provide a conducive environment for the implementation of RPL, the implementation of RPL at the institution is still being ignored. There appears to be a lack of felt need at UNAM to devote sufficient effort to RPL. Petersen and Osman (2013) call for higher education to realise that conventional classroom learning emphasises learning of subject matter and literature, which might be one-sided knowledge, and inadequate for practice. Petersen and Osman stress that just as university students need service knowledge through internships and practical attachments to balance their learning, candidates from workplace backgrounds would equally need academic learning to balance their service learning. Peterson and Osman caution that one-sided learning, irrespective of context, remains inadequate, insufficient, and often external to the local context. Therefore, UNAM should use the capability revealed in the data to embrace mobility between workplace and education as a way to contribute to the countrys competent and productive human resources, capable of shifting Namibia from a resource-based to a knowledge-based economy. Therefore, the policy should be functional to convey the purpose of its development. 7. Potential Challenges that Can Hinder the Implementation of RPL at UNAM Challenges to implementing RPL were divided into two main categories: lack of resources and ontological limitations. 7.1. Lack of Resources at the Institution There were conflicting responses to the question of resources availability to aid the implementation of RPL at UNAM. Some respondents maintained that resources are available, while others stated the lack thereof. The conflicting views insinuate the extent of devotion to the implementation of RPL at UNAM. There seems to be no felt need for the RPL implementation at the institution. If there is no agreement as to whether or not resources are available to accommodate RPL, it conveys a serious lack of interest on the institutions part in the RPL process. Most institutions that are not committed to the course often tend to base their arguments on the lack of resources in order to delay the implementation process. 7.2. Ontological Limitations The question of ontological understanding is divided into subgroups: 1) what constitutes RPL knowledge, its credibility and integrity in the academic milieu, and 2) how is it assessed, the identification of sufficient evidence, the ability to know which knowledge deserves recognition, validation of evidence and who constitute the assessment team. 1) What counts as RPL Knowledge? Academics in many institutions worldwide have always questioned what constitutes RPL knowledge, its integrity, legitimacy and validity to penetrate the academy. RPL is grounded on the belief that there are other ways of creating knowledge, and there are various sites at which academically credible knowledge can be created. Kolbs learning circle, John Deweys vision of egalitarian education and his call for a relationship of experience and learning have not only authenticated this argument, they have also given a theoretical legitimacy to experiential learning. What counts as knowledge is the level of learning evidence submitted by the candidates, and the extent to which such learning fits the entry requirements of a specific course. It is clear that the question of RPL in higher education has not doubted the ability of other sites to create knowledge, as higher education encourages internship and attachment programmes in workplaces. The issue in higher education appears to have been a discussion of power, and the traditional role of higher education which perceives itself as the gatekeeper of knowledge (Conrad, 2010) . One critical condition of accepting and authenticating work-based knowledge in higher education has been the demand to align such knowledge with subject knowledge. It appears that aligning work-based learning against subject knowledge on its own, creates the authenticity of knowledge gained in the work-place. This becomes difficult to understand, since what counts as knowledge in RPL is not necessarily the extent to which the evidence of learning resembles the subject taught in the programme. It is not possible for a candidate to have known the subjects in the programmes entry level which the candidate is seeking. Knowledge is measured by the level of complexity acquired by the candidate and the ability to exhibit that knowledge. Academics are usually the assessors of subject knowledge against the complexities of the NQF levels that are pitched at certain levels; it should apply the same principles with the assessment of RPL. In the RPL tradition, the supremacy role of academics is limited. Academics have little influence on the evidence of learning submitted. The candidate compiles the portfolio and submits the supposed learning for marking. This procedure differs from the way in which it is done in traditional higher education, during which students are taught and required to reflect on the content they have been taught. Conrad (2010) acknowledges that academics have always held on to the idea of knowledge ownership and the sole right to disseminate and defend that knowledge. If the traditional procedures are interrupted, academics might hardly accept changes. The issue of credibility and legitimacy of RPL in higher education is really about power. If the content is not created in the institution, it is perceived less credible and should be restricted. Peterson and Osman (2013) advise that a university is not only an environment which defines and constructs knowledge, but one which examines and engages with knowledge created in other sites of practice. The same sentiments are shared by Garnett and Cavaye (2015) who also caution that the discussion of higher education should focus on how foreign knowledge ought to be assessed, rather than arguing against its credibility and validity which research can identify. Missions of institutions of learning, including UNAM, are devoted to research; ontological issues should therefore not be allowed to constrain the implementation of RPL at the institution whose mission is invested in research. The critical theory used in this study advance the sentiments felt by the community of practice, concerning the marginalisation of knowledge created outside the formal settings of learning. Critical theory questions the basis on which the supremacy of subject knowledge over experiential knowledge is anchored. Ontological understanding is invested in the individuals perceptions of the form of knowledge created outside the formal settings of education. 7.3. Assessment of Experiential Learning Lack of knowledge in assessing experiential learning dominated the responses from interviewees. How experiential learning is assessed, the ability to identify the kinds of knowledge assessed, its scope and complexity were some of the doubts in the minds of most respondents. Interviewees expressed the need for clear instructions and a possible template of a portfolio which spells out explicitly how the assessment is to be conducted. These demands from respondents portray fear of the unknown and reveal that RPL assessment is foreign to the institution and to the lecturers expected to conduct it. Skinner et al. (2010) and Gonzales and Tabarak (2016) warn against this fear, that despite institutional policies, most institutions are still faced with fear and a lack of knowledge about RPL. Correspondingly, interviewees in this study demonstrated a similar fear regarding how experiential learning is assessed. Given this fear, the following question comes to mind in an endeavour to understand the assessment of experiential learning at UNAM: How does UNAM plan to assessexperiential learning: how is the assessment done, identification of sufficiency of evidence, which knowledge deserves recognition, validation of evidence and who constitute the assessment team? In the introduction section of the UNAM Assessment Policy (2013) it is stipulated that UNAM does not constrain the development of alternative or additional forms of effective assessment, and that the policy would consider a wide range of relevant performances information, be it formal, informal, standardised or non-standardised assessment (UNAM, 2013: p. 5) . If UNAM does not constrain the development of alternative forms of assessment, then the development of assessment tools for RPL would be embraced. Similarly, UNAMs assessment policy further stipulates that it perceives students as individual beings, with broad spectrums of abilities, skills and knowledge. The understanding of this statement implies that UNAM recognises the individuality of candidates to the extent that the assessment of their proficiencies would follow this noble perception. Therefore, an assessment that examines individuals claim of knowledge is in agreement with the assessment policy of the institution. RPL knowledge is different from subject knowledge. RPL knowledge is experiential; it is not encoded in media, books and articles in the same way as subject knowledge. It is reflective; it resides within the individuals skills or expertise. It involves action and is context specific. Since this knowledge is embedded within individual subjective thinking and is not coded in books, it appears to present stiffer challenges to articulate and eventually to assess. However, assessment of RPL is possible with the use of the alignment of evidence against the NQF levels descriptors. The use of the National Qualifications Framework (NQF) level descriptors is advocated in this paper as the assessment criteria, which are supposedly the measure of national and international comparability of achieving proficiencies. University departments have the responsibility to describe learning achievements at particular levels of the NQF that indicate the types of learning expected at specific learning outcomes. In the same way, these departments would describe the assessment criteria framed within the descriptors at the level required to access various programmes in the department. Assessment in RPL implies examination of knowledge as extracted from experience. The author of this article concurs with the explanation by Gonzales and Tabarak (2016) that the credibility and integrity in assessment are inherent in the use of well-developed and crafted principles and standard procedures of RPL. This article proposes the assessment of RPL to take the following into consideration: Departments at Faculties will devise assessment criteria which conform to the entry requirements of their various programmes. Candidates aspiring to register with specific programmes are asked to present their learning evidence in a portfolio of evidence. The learning evidence is measured against the assessment criteria as set by departments. The use of assessment criteria derived from NQF level descriptors is significant as level descriptors do not precisely measure the content achieved, but they provide an indication of the amount of learning acquired; the scope, in-depth and complexity of what is learnt. Although the level descriptors do not measure the content of what is learnt, because candidates have different contents derived from different contexts, the common denominator is the learning achieved, its scope, and complexity of learning. The NQF levels are currently used at UNAM as directives that express the relative size of qualifications. They can thus be used as assessment criteria for experiential learning. The community of practice in the area of subject matters is essential in constituting the assessment panel. Since higher education graduates are trained for the world of work, it is significant to partner with employers in assessing the complexity of knowledge required in workplaces. Candidates who are assessed through RPL are better prepared for the academic road ahead, they understand what they know, and they are also aware of what they would need to reach the expected standard of academic readiness. 7.4. Quality of RPL Assessment This paper advocates that NQF level descriptors be employed as the assessment criteria to determine the scope and in-depths of learning. The design of the portfolio should meet the outcomes or level of difficulties specified in the NQF level descriptors for a given level. The questions or instructions in the portfolio must prescribe what it is that needs to be assessed and indicate the criteria upon which assessment judgement is made. CEQUAM, being the body that controls quality in the institution, has the responsibility to advise academics on issues related to NQF level descriptors where extra assistance is required. 7.5. Location of RPL Office The data show that respondents had different views as to where the office of the RPL should be located. Smith (2011) advises that when an RPL unit resorts under another establishment it is usually doomed to fail. Smith strongly advises that unless the head of the section under which RPL is placed understands RPL and its functions, such head would allocate other duties to RPL officials, suppressing and eventually killing the work of the RPL unit. An independent office is advocated by literature so as to give RPL autonomy in its functions. 8. Conclusions and Recommendations to Enhance the Implementation of RPL at UNAM The main reason why institutions of higher learning are reluctant to implement RPL appears to be a lack of understanding by academics of what RPL is, and how such knowledge is assessed. The credibility and validity of RPL in comparison to subject knowledge come with more perceptions than the reality of the knowledge presented. However, this study has recognised these perceptions and has advocated for the National Qualifications Framework level descriptors, which are the national classification system used to classify the scope and describe the complexity of learning achievements at every level of learning (NQF, 2006) to strongly spearhead the assessment of RPL at UNAM. The author of this article extends the current knowledge base by arguing that, irrespective of expressed challenges and opportunities, the assessment of RPL is feasible when an alternative route is employed, one that aligns learning evidence with NQF level descriptors as assessment criteria. This route demands that candidates seeking entry to UNAM through RPL demonstrate the acquired learning to fit a complexity of learning outcomes on the NQF levels. Although the level descriptors do not exactly measure the content of learning evidence, they provide an indication of the required amount of learning to be attained at each level, which compares the weight of learning to any of the ten levels on the NQF. If the learning indicates equivalence to NQF level four, for instance, such a candidate would be admitted to the NQF level five in the field for which the candidate has applied. The fact is that UNAM has the capacity in terms of infrastructure and skills; it has the advantage of competing for a wider academic space in terms of students using appropriate alternative routes. This provision would encourage lifelong learning and inclusivity in education. Within the confines of the aforementioned discussions, the author recommends the following: Since RPL is a new strategy that openly challenges traditional subject knowledge, it can easily be misunderstood and negatively misconstrued. Therefore, to protect its credibility and validity, the Ministry of Education, the NQA and the NCHE should sensitize the nation about RPL and its significance to society. The UNAM Directorate of Marketing and Communication should initiate a national sensitization campaign, and then mobilise the UNAM community to acquire a general understanding of RPL. The University should live up to its intended drive to remain a national university by contributing to the governments national agendas in terms of creating a knowledge-based economy. Therefore, UNAM should realise its obligation to implement an RPL framed in social justice, lifelong learning and inclusive education. Ontological understanding of what counts as knowledge in RPL and the assessment thereof have the potential to derail the implementation of RPL in higher education. Therefore, the academic community at UNAM must be made aware of what counts as RPL, and its assessment procedures. The literature highlights that in universities where RPL has been attached to other divisions, such activity has failed, unless the head of the division understands the duties and functions of RPL. It is therefore recommended that an independently located RPL unit be established, which reports directly to the Pro-Vice Chancellor-Academic Affairs (PVCAA). RPL is an assessment strategy of which the outcomes bring about admission. It is not an admission strategy and it is not fitting to be placed directly under the office of the Registrar. The implementing process must be clearly spelt out, debated by Faculties and agreed to by stakeholders involved in the assessment of RPL. Quality of assessment of the RPL must be assured by CEQUAM as guided by Quality Assurance and UNAM assessment policies. Therefore, a panel of assessors must be created, constituting all people concerned in specific fields of assessment. All modules at UNAM and assessment criteria must be aligned to NQF level descriptors. Conflicts of Interest The authors declare no conflicts of interest regarding the publication of this paper. Cite this paper Shaketange, L. L. (2018). Challenges and Opportunities for Implementing Recognition of Prior Learning at the University of Namibia. Creative Education, 9, 2070-2087. https://doi.org/10.4236/ce.2018.913150 References The European Union (EU) summit on October 18 resolved to further tighten the censorship of the Internet. It also threatened with sanctions and penalties any party that diverges from the prescribed political line in the 2019 European election campaign. This is the response of European governments to growing opposition to militarism, social cuts and right-wing extremism. In the summits official conclusions, the European Council calls for measures to combat cyber and cyber-enabled illegal and malicious activities and build strong cybersecurity. The EU should be empowered to respond to and deter cyber-attacks through EU restrictive measures. These measures are justified not only by the supposed need to ward off hacking attacks, but also to combat disinformation, including in the context of the upcoming European elections. For this purpose, the EU Commission has proposed measures that, according to the Councils conclusions, deserve rapid examination. These include fighting disinformation campaigns, tightening the rules on European political party funding and operational follow-up by the competent authorities. German Chancellor Angela Merkel already announced this in her policy statement to the Bundestag on October 17. Among other things, she threatened parties whose campaigns actively engage in disinformation with financial sanctions. Anyone who does not abide by the democratic rules-of-the-game in Europe cannot expect to receive party financing funds from the European Union. Neither Merkel nor the European Council elaborated on what they mean by disinformation campaigns. However, it is clear what it is all about. The established media, parties, and Internet corporations label all who deviate from the standard line with terms such as fake news, disinformation, or cyber-attack. This is targeted first and foremost against left and progressive websites and organisations. For example, earlier this month, Facebook deleted numerous popular left-wing accountsincluding organisations fighting against war and police violencein the name of the fight against fake news. In Germany, since the entry into force of the so-called Network Enforcement Act (NetzDG), tens of thousands of contributions have been deleted using the same justification. For a year and a half, Google has been cooperating closely with German government circles in the censorship of left-wing and progressive websites, most notably the World Socialist Web Site. Wikileaks founder Julian Assange has been trapped in the Ecuadorian embassy in London for more than six years after Wikileaks exposed the war crimes of the US government. He faces extradition to the US and a potential death sentence if he leaves the embassy. In Germany, the latest report by the domestic intelligence agency, the Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution (BfV), uses the term disinformation to denounce any left-wing opposition to official government policies. Internationally broadcasted TV, radio and internet channels operate targeted propaganda and disinformation campaigns, the report claims. The BfV goes on to boasts that preventative measures have contributed to a high level of attention towards possible disinformation and has led to increased protective measures. The stated goal of the BfV, which works closely with the neo-fascist Alternative for Germany (AfD), is the persecution of socialist parties. Thus, its report lists the Socialist Equality Party (SGP) as a left-wing extremist party. Justification for the surveillance is not based on violations of law or violent acts, but rather the public advocacy of a socialist programme directed against the existing state and social order, as a generalised disparagement of capitalism, against the EU, against alleged nationalism, imperialism and militarism. The SGP will officially announce its participation in the European elections in the coming days. The party recognises the plans of the European Council as a direct threat. Merkel and the other European leaders must disclose the details of their clandestine preparations. What exactly do they mean by operational follow-up to be initiated by the competent authorities? Will this be similar to those operations carried out last week against political opposition parties in France? On October 16, heavily armed policemen raided the private residence of Jean-Luc Melenchon, leader of the Unsubmissive France (LFI) movement. The police were dressed in bulletproof vests and armed with assault rifles. Fifteen more assault teams broke into the homes of other LFI leaders and occupied the party headquarters. They confiscated material, downloaded data from computers, and unlawfully prevented Melenchon and other party members from entering their own party headquarters. Despite its political differences with Melenchon, the World Socialist Web Site has sharply condemned this attack, calling it an unmistakable threat to masses of people in France, across Europe and beyond. A decade after the Wall Street crash of 2008, the ruling elites are aware that their grotesque wealth and policies of austerity and war are overwhelmingly unpopular. Weak governments take desperate measures, and they aim to use ruthlessly the police-state powers built up during the war on terror against political opposition. It is in this context that one has to understand the conclusions of the EU summit. The ruling class is reacting with authoritarian methods to the increase in mass demonstrations and strikes across Europe. Despite fierce conflicts, European governments are joining ranks in suppressing growing popular opposition. The whole document of the European Council reads like a blueprint for the speedy development of a European police state. The summit agreed to provide Member States law enforcement authorities, Europol and Eurojust with adequate resources. This will be further strengthened by partnerships with the private sector as well as improved cooperation and access to data. Security and law enforcement agencies should thus be able to respond to new challenges posed by technological developments and the evolving security threat landscape. Among other things, a pan-European data system giving police and the law access to the data of millions of people is planned. To this end, the interoperability of information systems and databases should be improved, in particular through a common identity repository. All measures needed, according to the summit, should be given the highest priority. Gina Haspel, the director of the US Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), briefed President Donald Trump Thursday on her trip to Ankara, Turkey, this week in which she met with her counterparts at the Turkish National Intelligence Organization (MIT) and other senior officials to review evidence related to the savage murder of journalist and former Saudi insider Jamal Khashoggi at Saudi Arabias consulate in Istanbul on October 2. According to the pro-government Turkish newspaper Sabah, the evidence presented to Haspel included both audio and video tapes (apparently obtained through the bugging of the consulate by Turkish intelligence) of the torture and murder of Khashoggi and the subsequent dismemberment of his body. Haspels findings appear to have had no immediate effect on US policy toward Saudi Arabia, with the Trump administration thus far responding to the assassination of Khashoggi, a US resident who was employed by the Washington Post as a columnist, with only visa revocations for 21 Saudi citizens, all of them either charged by the Saudi monarchy in connection with the killing or fired from their posts. The Saudi regime, meanwhile, has once again shifted its account of Khashoggis death in its Istanbul consulate, which for 17 days it had denied ever happening. After claiming that he was killed in a fist fight with the 15-member death squad dispatched from Riyadh and then suggesting he was killed in a chokehold as part of a kidnapping attempt gone wrong, the countrys attorney general issued a statement Thursday acknowledging that the murder was premeditated. The public prosecution received information from the Turkish side through the Joint Working Group between the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia and the Turkish Republic, indicating that the suspects in Khashoggis case premeditated their crime, Attorney General Shaikh Suood bin Abdullah Al Mojab said in a statement posted on the state Saudi news agencys website. Whether the latest change in the official Saudi account came in response to Haspels trip to Turkey and viewing of the evidence is not clear. The claims of some kind of accidental death, however, had become increasingly untenable under the steady flow of leaks from Turkish authorities exposing grisly details of Khashoggis death. Among the latest revelations was that his killers severed his fingers while he was still alive, reportedly to take back to Saudi Arabias de facto ruler Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman as evidence of the missions success. Bin Salman had reportedly vowed to cut off the fingers of any Saudi writers criticizing his regime. It has also become increasingly difficult for the Trump administration to sustain its alibis for bin Salman, whom it had promoted as a reformer and the chief ally of US imperialism in the Middle East. Asked by the Wall Street Journal whether the desert kingdoms de facto ruler was responsible for the killing, Trump replied, The prince is running things over there more so at this stage. Hes running things and so if anybody were going to be, it would be him. At the same time, he recounted a telephone conversation with bin Salman in which the he said the crown prince had insisted he had nothing to do with planning Khashoggis murder and that those responsible were at lower levels. Asked if he believed these denials, Trump responded, I want to believe them. I really want to believe them. The statements follow a week in which the US president initially attempted to lend credence to the Saudi regimes claims that it knew nothing about the Khashoggi murder, and then that perhaps he was the victim of rogue killers. Later, he appeared to be critiquing the Saudi killers for botching the job, saying that it was carried out poorly and the cover-up was one of the worst in the history of cover-ups. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, who traveled to Riyadh last week to discuss the matter with King Salman and his son Mohammed bin Salman, declared afterward in relation to Khashoggis murder, I dont want to talk about any of the facts, they didnt want to either. While there, he and bin Salman hailed the close alliance between the US and the criminal monarchical dictatorship. Trump and other US officials have stressed the importance of the Saudi regimes role as a linchpin in US imperialisms Middle East strategy and its drive to war with Iran, while insisting that Washington will not halt arms sales to the kingdom, which are a major source of profits for American weapons manufacturers. Thus far, the government of Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, while insisting that Khashoggi was the victim of a ferocious premeditated murder and that all those who ordered the crime and those who committed it must be brought to justice, has failed to make public the tapes reportedly viewed by Haspel and has not charged bin Salman as the chief conspirator in the assassination. Ankara clearly sees the Khashoggi assassination as a means of promoting the Turkish regimes interests in relation to Riyadh and Washington. It has shared tense relations with both the Saudi regime and US imperialism, including over Saudi Arabias blockade of Qatar, a key ally of Turkey, and Washingtons utilization of the YPG Syrian Kurdish militia as a proxy ground force. Ankara views the YPG as a branch of the PKK, the Turkish Kurdish separatist movement against which it has waged a bloody counterinsurgency campaign for more than 30 years. While in political conflict with Saudi Arabia over a range of regional issues, the Turkish government also is not anxious to provoke a complete break with Riyadh, in large part out of concern that it would mean a cutoff of Saudi oil money that has been crucial to countering the countrys severe economic crisis. There is no doubt that Haspels mission to Ankara was not just to review forensic evidence, but to see what price needs to be paid to secure Erdogans collaboration in damage control over the Khashoggi murder. The choice of Haspel for this mission has grim historical resonance. She herself is no stranger to forcible rendition and torture, having presided over a secret CIA black site in Thailand where detainees were subjected to waterboarding, prolonged confinement in coffin-like boxes and other forms of torture. She also was deeply involved in the illegal destruction of videotapes made by the CIA of torture sessions, including of those that she had overseen. The dispatch of Haspel to Ankara to deal with the Khashoggi assassination only underscores the systemic criminality of US imperialism and its principal ally in the Middle East. This brutal murder has become a bargaining chip between regimes in Washington, Riyadh and Ankara that are all engaged in mass killings, assassinations, torture and political repression. Whether these machinations lead to a CIA-orchestrated palace coup in Riyadh, replacing the reformer crown prince with another reactionary member of the royal family, remains to be seen. The US Defense Department is expected to approve as early as next week the deployment of 800 to 1,000 active duty troops, mostly from the Army and Air Force, to the US-Mexico border, according to Trump administration officials. While media reports indicated that details have not been finalized, this is the most concrete indication so far that the Pentagon plans to deploy troops domestically against the caravan of thousands of Central American migrants, mostly families with women and children that are currently crossing Mexico and seeking to reach the US. The comments made by the US officials and media commenters sought to minimize the significance of the deployment, stating that the troops will be composed of engineers, aviation support, doctors and lawyers. Troops can still carry arms, CNN cites a military official, but solely for self-defense. However, the unofficial announcement comes exactly one week after Trump first threatened to call up the U.S. Military and CLOSE OUR SOUTHERN BORDER! He called the caravan an onslaught and said that the impoverished workers and peasants are hardened criminals, while making unfounded and racist claims that Middle-Easterners have joined it. On Thursday morning, Trump restated his threat to deploy the military on Twitter, calling it a National Emergency and adding, They will be stopped! The previous night at a rally in Wisconsin he said the military was all set to be sent against the migrants. Such a move would violate the Posse Comitatus Act, which prohibits the armed forces from carrying out domestic law-enforcement activities, excluding the National Guard. While US officials speaking to CNN denied that troops would deal directly with the caravan, a myriad of provocations can be construed to justify their direct intervention, which could turn into a massacre of unarmed workers and children on the basis of self-defense. Last weekend, at the Guatemala-Mexico border, about 400 Mexican antiriot police began an assault against the migrants by tackling and shooting tear-gas canisters against the defenseless families seeking to cross the bridge toward the port of entry. Some migrants responded by throwing rocks, sandals and other objects, which led to an even more aggressive attack by the police. While not confirming the deployment, Captain Bill Speaks, spokesman for the Office of the Secretary of Defense, wrote in an email to Military Times that the Department of Defense will ensure the safety and security of the CBP [Customs and Border Patrol] personnel involved in border security operations. The troops are expected to join the 2,100 National Guardsmen already deployed across the US-Mexico border in late May. The move is bound up with Trumps efforts to exploit the caravan to ramp up nationalist and xenophobic sentiments ahead of the November 6 midterm elections in the United States. The caravan has become a massive demonstration of workers. As they marched into Mexico, the 7,000-strong caravan chanted Migrants are not criminals! We are international workers! Mexican workers and peasants have warmly welcomed them with food, supplies and lifts. The domestic deployment of the military against immigrants is a serious warning to the entire working class in the United States and internationally, immigrant or native-born alike. The ruling class is ready to respond to any defiance to the foundations of capitalist rule by proclaiming a national emergency and employing deadly repression. As the Pentagon escalates its military confrontations against its main geopolitical rivals, the US ruling class is preparing to suppress all political dissent. The domestic deployment of troops is a precedent for waging total war against rivals abroad and social opposition at home. On Tuesday, US Vice President Mike Pence told the media that the Honduran president, Juan Orlando Hernandez, had assured him that the caravan was being organized by leftist organizations and financed by Venezuela, which Trump has referred to repeatedly as socialist. Such arguments seek to characterize the migrants as a foreign invasion to create a ready-made pretext for a violent attack against the migrants. The Mexican and Guatemalan authorities have also deployed their militaries to stop the caravan. The Guatemalan government reported that it has sent back about 4,000 Honduran migrants. It placed military personnel and barbed wire at the main highway into the country from Honduras, at Agua Caliente. However, about 2.500 Hondurans who crossed into Guatemala on Tuesday successfully repelled the Guatemalan police and military officials who were requesting documentation and seeking to make arrests. According to the Guatemalan Prensa Libre, they simply marched forward as a group. The current Central American caravan across southern Mexico and Guatemala is estimated at 14,000 migrants, according to the Mexican El Universal, with additional contingents planned. The main body leading the caravan yesterday left the town of Mapastepec in the Mexican state of Chiapas, about 95 miles from the Guatemalan border. The migrants are at least 1,000 miles from the US border. There can be long pauses to regroup as the caravan faces the efforts of Mexican authorities to divide, detain and deport the migrants. It is therefore uncertain when it will reach the US and how large it will be. The fascistic policy of the Trump administration builds on measures previously supported and implemented by the Democratic administration of Barack Obama, which presided over more deportations than any other. While Trump has taken these policies to a new level, the parallels of both administrations include family separations, the deployment of the National Guard to the border, the expansion of surveillance and physical barriers at the border, the deportation of minors, and the buildup and use of the Mexican armed forces as an extension of the US border patrol. Policies such as the separation and prolonged detention of migrant families violate US and international law, constituting torture and crimes against humanity. Moreover, the attempted deportation of a Salvadoran mother and daughter in August in the middle of an ongoing hearing demonstrates the sheer lawlessness with which the government is carrying out its policies. Trumps threat to force migrants to apply for asylum in Mexico before reaching the US is another breach of US and international law. The response of the Democratic Party to Trumps onslaught against immigrants was characterized by House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi, who told Democratic candidates this month that insisting on criticizing Trumps anti-immigrant policies was a waste of energy. Even after Trumps threats against the caravan, Democratic leaders kept accusing Trump for changing the topic. The Democrats have instead focused their electoral appeals on stoking militarism and anti-Russia hysteria to portray Trump as too soft on Russia. In addition to seeking to compel Trump to adopt a more aggressive stance against Russia, this campaign has been used to attack basic democratic rights, including through internet censorship. Democratic legislators have led an offensive for pressuring the Ecuadorian government to hand over WikiLeaks editor Julian Assange, calling him a threat to global security, while seeking to incriminate him as an actor in the supposed Russian interference in the 2016 elections. Without WikiLeaks, Americans and the world would not know the extent of the lies and US cover-up of the Honduran military coup of June 28, 2009 that installed a regime even more pliant to US demands and further worsened the social crisis behind the mass migration. After the coup in 2009, the State Department insisted to the press that it did not know who did what to whom. However, a cable released by WikiLeaks dated July 24, 2009 from the US embassy in Honduras and sent to the Obamas White House and Hillary Clintons State Department explores legalistic rationalizations for a solution to justify the overthrow. It concludes that the event constituted an illegal and unconstitutional coup and that the Forced Removal [of President Manuel Zelaya] by Military was Clearly Illegal. The months and years that followed saw a dramatic intensification of the use of death squads and the military to repress social opposition against the coup and the resultant wave of corporate tax cuts, tax exemptions, cuts to environmental and labor regulations, and corrupt concessions that chiefly favored US and local corporations. A 2014 report by the US think tank Center for Economic and Policy Research measuring the impact of the overthrow found that poverty had increased 13.2 percent and extreme poverty 26.3 percent in the first two years after the military coup. Some 48 hours after the detection of mail bombs addressed to former President Barack Obama, former Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton, and other leading Democrats and critics of President Trump, there has been little new information made public. Thursdays police and FBI briefings confirmed what has been widely reported in the media: a total of ten packages were put in the mail to eight individuals, including two packages each to former Vice President Joe Biden and Congresswoman Maxine Waters, and one each to Obama, Clinton, former CIA Director John Brennan, former Attorney General Eric Holder, billionaire George Soros and actor Robert De Niro. The ten packages were nearly identical, all carrying the same return address, that of Florida Congresswoman Debbie Wasserman Schultz, the former chairwoman of the Democratic National Committee. Unconfirmed media reports Thursday suggest that the packages may have been mailed from south Florida, where Schultz is the most prominent local Democrat. Each package contained the same type of crudely constructed pipe bomb, sometimes accompanied by an envelope of white powder, apparently harmless. The FBI has released no details on the triggering mechanism, except the obvious: there was no tripwire to detonate the bomb when the package was opened, as several were. FBI officials suggested that the proper term for the packages was suspected explosive devices, since they were unwilling to divulge whether the bombs were even capable of exploding and, therefore, whether there was any actual danger to the public. This lack of information has not stopped the Democratic Party and the pro-Democratic sections of the corporate media from describing the mailings as a mass attempted assassination targeting two former presidents, even though the packages addressed to Obama and Clinton were easily detected by Secret Service screeners and never came within miles of the intended targets. This strange and murky event inevitably gives rise to many suspicions, all of them presently unprovable. Were the packages sent by a Trump supporter responding to the presidents vicious rhetoric and incitements to violence? All of those targeted by bombs were previously targets of Trump tweets and diatribes at his campaign rallies, which included, for many of them, threats of prosecution, imprisonment or vigilante violence. Or, given that no Democrat was ever in danger, and that the Democratic Party has seized on the mail bomb attack to denounce Trump and boost its electoral position less than two weeks before the midterm election, were the packages a false flag operation? Trumps right-wing media supporters were quick to float that suggestion, and certainly the military-intelligence apparatus which has been allied to the Democrats in the anti-Russia campaign against Trump is fully capable of carrying out such a provocation. Significantly, Chuck Todd, the political director for NBC News, floated his wholly unsubstantiated and wildly improbable fear that the this could be some Russian operation too, designed to do what is happening now... it is dividing us. The World Socialist Web Site possesses no independent evidence, and one must be skeptical of all claims. Nothing can be believed simply because CNN, the FBI or the New York Police Department assert it, any more than the statements emanating from the White House or Trumps Twitter account can be taken as good coin. This is not the first time that the corporate media has sought to stampede public opinion with a scare campaign about terrorist attacks through the mail. Weve been down that road before, most notably in the anthrax scare in the fall of 2001, when a half dozen people were killed. Then, the Bush administration and much of the media sought to pin the blame on Iraq, as part of the campaign to prepare public opinion for the long-planned US invasion and occupation of that country. The anthrax, mailed mainly to leading Democrats, was eventually determined to have come from a US Army germ warfare facility, under conditions that have never been properly explained. What can be said is that the mail bombs take place under conditions of a raging political conflict within the US ruling elite. The timing of the suspected mail bombs and the consequent media uproar is remarkable. Less than two weeks before the election, all other issues have been virtually banished from public attention: Trumps witch-hunt against immigrants, the US complicity with the savage murder of a Saudi dissident by that countrys medieval monarchy, the convulsions rocking the US and world financial system, the steady worsening of social and economic inequality. A little noted aspect of Wednesdays lockdown of midtown Manhattan, after the mail bomb was found at CNN, was the first real world activation of the police takeover of the cellphone system, with a text alert blasted out to anyone located (based on their cellphone GPS) within a certain radius of the Time Warner headquarters building. The National Wireless Emergency Alert System was first tested exactly three weeks before, on October 3. The massive mobilization of local, state and federal police, as well as the intelligence agencies, and the all-out hysteria in the media, raise the following question: if such an incident took place on the eve of the election, or on Election Day itself, would the Trump administration invoke emergency powers to postpone voting in certain areas, or entire states, or even cancel the election altogether? And would the Democratic Party and the corporate media rally around the White House? Earlier this year, Trump pushed hard to get congressional approval for a full-scale military parade in Washington DC, which would have brought tanks and armored cars onto the streets of the US capital only a few days after the election. In the event, even congressional Republicans and the military brass were concerned that such a display would provoke popular opposition, and blocked it. The trajectory of these events is ominous. The US election itself takes place under conditions of what could be described as the Latin Americanization of American politics, characterized by the extreme decay of democratic forms combined with palace intrigues and plotting. Trump has made it a referendum on himself, presenting himself as a personalist, unchallengeable leader, a would-be politico-military strongman, delivering fascistic tirades to adoring audiences, threatening his enemies with destruction. His nominal opponents in the Democratic Party have directed all opposition behind powerful factions of the military and intelligence apparatusincluding figures such as Brennan. They have utilized the anti-Russia campaign to press for a more aggressive foreign policy in the Middle East and against Russia, while demanding ever more overt measures to censor the internet and block all views that sow divisions within the country. Both factions of the ruling class rest on extremely narrow social layers. While they wage their internal factional warfare, they are terrified above all by the implications of the deepening crisis of US and world capitalism and the growth of economic inequality on a scale not seen in modern history, which has begun to produce significant expressions of working class discontent and struggle. A few thousand billionaires and multi-millionaires effectively control the entire political life of the country, including the two official parties and the media. All of this produces a political system that is characterized above all by extreme instability. El Sueno Americano: The American DreamWorks by Tom Kiefer, at the Saugatuck Center for the Arts, Saugatuck, Michigan, October 25December 22, 2018 The remarkable German photographer August Sander (1876-1964) once suggested that he felt obligated to see things as they are and not as they should or could be, and to speak the truth in all honesty about our age and the people of our age. That apparently simple program is both ambitious and difficult to execute. Most of the images currently circulating obscure or conceal the truth. Photographer Tom Kiefer, born in Wichita, Kansas and raised primarily in the Seattle area, lived in Los Angeles for 20 years. He moved to Ajo, Arizonaa town of 3,500 people some 45 miles north of the Mexican borderright after the September 11, 2001 attacks, seeking a lower cost of living and a place to develop his work as a fine art photographer. Tom Kiefer In 2003 Kiefer needed to find a job to support his photography. He came across an ad for a part-time janitor, he told the WSWS, that paid $10.42 an hour at a US Customs and Border Patrol facility. At that time, in June of 2003, it was a really good wage here in Ajo. I was going to be a janitor in my early 40s. He worked at the job until August 2014. Kiefers current exhibition at the Saugatuck Center for the Arts in western Michigan, El Sueno Americano, features more than 100 photographs of itemseveryday and some deeply personal itemsconfiscated from undocumented men, women and children caught crossing the US border. The Saugatuck Centers website explains, The photographs and objects in El Sueno Americano first beg the questions: Whose things are these? Why so many? Who collected them and why? Photographer Tom Kiefer also wants the viewer to ask, What do I make of all this? Kiefer discovered the items in garbage bags. Taken from people and deemed non-essential items as part of the enforcement process, the items were bound for the dump. Kiefer was both intrigued and saddened by what he found in the garbage bags, and began making images of the items in an effort to answer his questions. The exhibition features images of soap, wallets, and canteens and also rosaries, Bibles, and family photos. Taken together the items weave tales of the mundane, of survival, and of the elusive American Dream (el sueno Americano). Billfolds and Wallets Tom Kiefer recently spoke to the WSWS about the project. I made a decision that whatever time I had left on this planet, what I wanted to do was record life through my camera and I chose to photograph America. Norisa Diaz: How did you come to obtain these items? Tom Kiefer: In 2007 I asked a supervisor if I could begin collecting the food that was being thrown away and deliver it to a food bank ... And I found deeply personal items like rosaries and Bibles, family photographs. That was just not right. I was not going to allow someones rosary or Bible to remain in the trash. I discreetly began taking them. Kiefer collected items for seven of the 11 years he was employed at the station, noting that it took some time to determine how to showcase the objects. Due to the inherent nature of what I was photographing, I needed to figure out a manner in which I could present the items in a respectful and dignified way. Primarily a landscape photographer, Kiefer explained, It was a good five years from the time I started collecting these items until I began photographing them. Even though I was an artist, a photographer, I didnt feel at first this was the type of subject matter that I was accustomed to doing, but on some level I realized thatmy God, this needs to be done. Oral Hygiene I saw an injustice, how do you personally respond to that? It wasnt right to leave these personal items here. They would throw away a wallet with personal identification in it. Such highly confidential information, it shouldnt be something I find in the trash, from anyoneimmigrant or not. I couldnt go to an agent and say, Hey, I found this wallet, and it would be returned. This was the only way that I could document this. Norisa Diaz: What conditions did you witness at these detention centers? Tom Kiefer: The detention centers are there to dehumanize, to act as a deterrent for those entering the US unlawfully. It was my job to be as invisible as possible, but the whole manner in which immigrants are treated is unimaginable, the policy of separating families is truly inhumane and magnified in ways I couldnt imagine. That type of brutality is just abhorrent, its just cruel! Kiefer described a newspaper story he had readabout Adrian Luna, a 45-year-old Mexican immigrant who was removed from his entire worldwife, children, job and church in a small town in Idahoas being typical of the fate of those who are deported. He was a model citizen, he had kidsjust imagine being separated from your kids, your flesh and blood. He tried to return home to Idaho, but he died in the California desert. Baby Food Its truly heartbreaking. The thing about these objects and personal drawings Ive recovered these items made it to the bitter end, so to speak. They hadnt been discarded, they didnt fall out of a backpack, or were taken out and left behind because the backpack was too heavy. The people decided to continue carrying a votive candle or bottle of cologne. Who is to say these people didnt decide to make the journey again and subsequently die crossing the desert? Immigrants are doing the dirty, degrading work in meat processing plants, agricultural field work, fast food, the hospitality industry. This work is part of the historical documentation of our countrys response to migration. A pair of gloves from a quinceanera [celebration of a girls 15th birthday], a family photograph of the kids, safety pins used for diapersthis is humanity and they are all profound objects that tell a story. Water Bottles Ive been away from it for four years now. I resigned August 2014 and worked on finishing the project in 2015. However, it wasnt until June 2018 that the project took off. Norisa Diaz: Whats interesting and telling about the timeframe when you were collecting these itemsit was during both the Bush and Obama administrations. Contrary to the claims of the Democrats, it hasnt just been the Trump administration doing this. Did you see any difference from one administration to the next? Tom Kiefer: It was just really a steady increase in things getting worse. 2009-2011 were the peak years. The financial crisis stopped some of the flow. Even though the numbers of people were at record levels, it acted as a check and balance. The entire framework of these detention centers , this was a continuation and an escalation by each administration. What we need to do is educate and explain what is going on, thats half the battle right there. Ive shown some of these pieces before and I cant tell you the numbers of people who have come up to me and are completely shocked: Really, our governments doing this? When will the turning point be? We are moving closer and closer to fascism, to tyranny and living under a totalitarian regime. This work is just my contribution to helping our democracy. After defying the no vote by tens of thousands of United Parcel Service (UPS) workers and ramming through its sellout contract, the Teamsters union is isolating thousands of Chicago-area UPS workers determined to fight for higher wages and end the exploitation of part-time workers. On October 5, the Teamsters announced it would impose its concessions contract on a quarter million UPS workers by using an antidemocratic constitutional loophole, permitting it to ratify the contract if less than half the membership votes, unless a two-thirds majority votes it down. Many workers have reported they never received a voting ballot. The illegitimate contract creates a new tier of 22.4 package delivery/warehouse hybrid workers, who will be paid up to $6 per hour less than current full-time drivers and can be forced to work on weekends. Part-time UPS workers, who constitute more than 70 percent of the workforce, will start on the poverty-level hourly wage of $13. Throughout this process, the Teamsters has isolated more than 8,500 UPS workers in the Chicago metropolitan area and 6,000 UPS workers in Illinois, Iowa and Indiana, who have been working without a contract. While the Teamsters signed their first national contract in 1979, Teamsters Local 705 (covering the Chicago area) and Local 710 (covering workers spanning 150 miles across three states) signed separate contracts and continue to do so. The leadership of these locals claims that their separation from the national contract provides UPS workers with better conditions. In fact, the local contracts have always closely paralleled concessions made across the country. They are always negotiated following the settling of contracts nationally, isolating this strategically critical section of UPS workers. Bob, a Local 705 UPS worker at the gigantic Chicago Area Consolidated Hub (CACH), which employs 8,500 workers, told the World Socialist Web Site, They started negotiating our contract separately. Originally it was set up so that we could get a better deal than the national, but we never do [The local] doesnt tell us anything. Teamsters Local 705 is currently posturing as a militant local willing to oppose UPS. It has claimed it will oppose the imposition of a hybrid driver, fight for a $15-an-hour part-time starting wage (a poverty-level wage that is now the starting wage for Amazon workers), increase pensions for retirees and improve the health care plans. It has claimed that it will not extend a contract for 30 days if these demands are not met and take a strike vote in early November, for a potential strike following the week after Thanksgiving. This is a fraud. In the first place, the union has consciously delayed any strike authorization vote until after the imposition of the contract nationally, ensuring that Chicago-area workers are isolated from UPS workers across the country. The Teamsters Local 705 in Chicago, as throughout the US, has a decades-long history of corruption and sellouts. In 2008, the local claimed it would go on strike, but never did, despite an overwhelming strike authorization vote. After 1997, under the reform slate of Jerry Zero, it imposed a new combination position with lower wages for warehouse workers, following the pattern set by the national contract. The bulk of the CACH workers are part-time and start out on as little as $10 an hour. In 2013-2014, the union transferred workers to the TeamCare health fund, which is jointly controlled by UPS management and the union. While workers co-payment charges have been increased as a result, the union executives have been able to secure control of a $5 billion investment fund. A small-sort UPS worker with 20 years at the plant told the WSWS, Were getting the shaft. I dont go to any union meetings because I think its bogus. I dont waste my time. We got shafted with the TeamCare insurance since the last contract. It sucks. They took away our fully covered insurance. With TeamCare, were paying like 20 percent of the balance. She added, I had a mammogram, and it cost me out-of-pocket $83. Most people here will tell you that theyre upset with the union, if theyre honest. We think they work for management more than us. Theyre not going to strike. We should not have separate contracts. We should all be fighting together. I think the 22.4 position is stupid. I dont think even $15 is enough because theyre making billions in profits. There is enormous determination among workers to fight. Andres, a 21-year-old unloader, said, Ive been working here eight months. I make $10.30 with some bonus, but thats not enough for the work we do. Theres a lot of people who work so hard, and if you have to pay rent you cant survive on what I make. I live with my parents. If the corporations like UPS and Amazon are making billions in profits, why cant we get paid more? Their wealth comes from us. Art, a combination worker with 20 years who does loading and small sort at night, said, We deserve more money. The Teamsters sucks for ratifying the national contract. The union doesnt represent us. Back in the day when I was a steelworker, the unions didnt play. John, a 25-year-old part-time loader who makes $11 an hour, said, We should be getting more than $15 an hour. Its very hard work for the pay. I lift packages from 50 to 150 pounds every day. I see people get hurt all the time. We have insurance, but at the end of the day its not enough to make a living. I just graduated college, and I have student loans. I live at home with my family. If you want to live on your own, you have to work two jobs or more. UPS keeps making profits from us. I dont think its right, and the union doesnt really protect us. The greatest obstacle to any struggle, however, is the Teamsters, which functions as an arm of UPS management. Leading Teamsters officials have incomes that place them in the top one to two percent of the population, including James Hoffa (salary almost $400,000, top one percent) and Juan Campos, secretary-treasurer of Local 705 (more than $235,000, top 2 percent). Campos income is more than 20 times the lowest paid part-time workers. On average, the top union executives at Local 705 make over $90,000 year, and the top 10 take in a combined $1.4 million. The Teamsters is relying on its loyal opposition in Teamsters for a Democratic Union (TDU) and Teamsters United (TU) to control workers opposition and prevent any rebellion against the union. In the lead-up to the contract vote, they claimed that a no vote would force Hoffa to renegotiate a better contract. Now, they insist that workers must sign petitions to Hoffa, urging him to change course. They are also promoting the illusion that Teamsters local 705 will conduct a struggle, which will pressure the Teamsters leadership to conduct a fight. The WSWS UPS Workers Newsletter urges workers to reject this perspective. Instead, we call for the formation of new organizations of struggle, rank-and-file workplace committees, democratically and directly controlled by UPS workers, in every hub to coordinate opposition to the illegitimate contract. Last August, angry Los Angeles teachers voted by more than 98 percent to strike the nations second-largest school district. The overwhelming vote followed nearly a year and a half of failed negotiations and more than a year in which the United Teachers Los Angeles (UTLA) ordered members to work without a contract. The UTLA has still refused to set a strike date for 33,000 educators but instead triggered fact finding. The UTLA kept teachers working without a contract throughout the springs walkouts in West Virginia, Oklahoma, Kentucky and Arizona, as well as during the recent strikes in Washington statein line with the national policy of the American Federation of Teachers and National Education Association of isolating and betraying each struggle. The UTLA is now preoccupied with preventing a walkout prior to the midterm elections. The union does not want any action that would expose the anti-working class character of the Democratic Party and undercut the turnout of voters for the Democrats. The most important thing we teachers can do now is make sure that Gavin Newsom is elected governor of California, UTLA President Alex Caputo-Pearl recently stated. To that end, the union has now invoked fact-finding, a procedural runaround that will delay any possible walkout until after Thanksgiving at the earliest. The mechanism, established by Democratic Governor Jerry Brown in 2011, involves a state-appointed chairperson, supposedly a neutral arbiter, to assess the demands of both sides and submit a nonbinding report on the financial state of the district. Not only is this a thinly veiled delaying tactic to get past the elections and wear down public sector workers, it is designed to further water down the already pitifully inadequate demands of the union. Teachers are livid over the defunding of public education and growth of the charter industry in Los Angeles, which have proceeded apace for years under a Democratic governor and Democratic-dominated State Assembly and Los Angeles municipal government. It seems clear talking to over 1,000 teachers in the district that the big issue for teachers in the Los Angeles Unified School District (LAUSD) is class size, easily at the top of the list. Its gotten out of hand, said Elgin Scott, a teacher at Los Angeles Taper Avenue elementary school told the Guardian. He explained that it is not uncommon for classes to have more than 30 or 40 students. The district says theyll reduce class sizes, but a provision in the current contract gives them an out. All they have to do is claim financial hardship, show no proof and they make the class sizes what they want, said Scott. Los Angeles educators, like those around the country, are paying thousands of dollars out of their own pockets for essential classroom supplies including even paper and pencils. There is a lack of school resources including school nurses, counselors, psychologists and social workers in a district with very high levels of poverty and other social ills. LAUSD has one counselor for every 945 students and one nurse for every 1,224 students, according to most recent reports. In the 1970s, California boasted among the top ten school systems in the nation. Today, with per pupil spending at about $11,000 per student, it is ranked 46th out of 50. Considered one of the big three Democratic-controlled US states, this defunding of public education has been enacted with a vengeance throughout California. Moreover, the federal cuts to special education and Title I enacted by the Obama administration hit California especially hard. The state has the highest number of students, 2 million, living in poverty in the US, with 28.3 percent of Los Angeless children in that category. During this period, the teachers unions suppressed any strikes and struggles. The last job action was a nine-day strike in 1989, almost 30 years ago. The role of the union has throughout been to double down on its support for Democrats. Last year, for example, the UTLA started a program known as PACE or Political Action Council of Educators. After years of artificially suppressing their wage demands, the union had the temerity to solicit donations from teachers for a special UTLA political fund, from $8.33 per month for the Bronze package to $45 per month for the Diamond package, to support Democrats. Wages are a major issue for educators trying to live in one of the nations most expensive cities. The school districts insulting final offer includes a 3 percent wage increase retroactive to 2017 with another 3 percent increase the following year contingent upon the districts financial health. Given the districts current budget outlook, this would likely mean that that second 3 percent increase would never come to pass. For their part, the union is asking for a grossly inadequate 6.5 percent, barely above the offer. Of course, the district, like virtually every municipality across the US, claims there is no money for public education, a storyline the fact finder will no doubt find. Nothing is further from the truth. The state, which if it were a country would be the sixth largest economy in the world, is home to 144 billionaires. The richest Angelino on the list, Elon Musk with a net worth of $20 billion, could pay the school districts yearly $7.6 billion budget more than twice with billions left to spare. Seeking to put pressure on teachers, Candi Clark, Chief Financial Officer of the Los Angeles County Office of Education, spoke at an emergency meeting of the LAUSD ten days prior to the strike vote. She demanded $72 million in cuts this year and the same amount next year, threatening, The fact is that LAUSD is not too big to fail, so it is up to all of us to resolve the districts fiscal challenges. In a provocative apparent down payment on these cuts, the district announced the layoffs of more than 15 percent of district staff in early October, as part of a plan to eliminate $43 million in administrative salaries. Those employees losing their jobs will be identified in January and be terminated in June. A similar number of administrative workers would lose their salaries the following year if the district gets its way. The district is being run by former investment banker Austin Beutner, who has stated that the schools will go broke if the districts offer is rejected. The county claims that the district will be on the verge of bankruptcy in two and a half years, while the union claims LAUSD has a current reserve of more than $1.7 billion. Nonetheless, a significant decline in enrollment due to the growth of private charter schools has severely decreased the districts annual revenues, to the tune of approximately $600 million annually. Los Angeles has more charters than any other US school district. A portion of this decline is also due to the creation of pilot schools, which are charter schools entirely run by the UTLA itself. Notably, most of the school privatization measures adopted throughout California have been spearheaded by Democrats. Gubernatorial candidate Newsom has received enormous amount of funding from some of the states billionaire and multimillionaire elite who run these private charter organizations. One of Newsoms most prominent financial backers is Doris Fisher, co-founder of the Gap clothing stores and also the Knowledge is Power Program network of charter schools, a notorious for-profit chain. For its part, the union is not at all opposed to charters; it only seeks their accountability and an opportunity to gain new dues-paying members no matter how miserable their wages and conditions are. Adding insult to injury, the union has made clear that teachers will not receive any money out of its strike fund should a work stoppage come to pass. A strike lasting longer than a month would also involve the cutting off of teachers health care benefits. With the collective force of the capitalist state and the trade unions arrayed against them, Los Angeles teachers have no choice but to take the struggle into their own hands. No faith whatsoever should be placed in the UTLA, its highly paid leaders and its fake left apologists such as the International Socialist Organization or Labor Notes. Instead, teachers should form rank-and-file committees, independent of the UTLA, and link together the struggles of all school workersboth union and nonunion. These committees should poll workers and outline real demands, including a 30 percent salary increase so that all school workers can live in the city in which they work without taking out payday loans or becoming Uber drivers. Not a single dollar more of state funding should be diverted from public schools into the billionaire-led charter school movement and tax cuts to Silicon Valley, Hollywood and other giant corporate interests. These rank-and-file committees should bring together parents and residents and fight for free, high-quality public education for all, fully funded classrooms with small class sizes, the expansion of the arts and the hiring of a full complement of counselors, librarians and nurses for every school. The fight for these essential rights requires a break with the two capitalist parties of big business and their corrupt lackeys in the phony pro-capitalist unions. The right to high-quality education for all children, black, white, native-born and immigrantcan only be won through a frontal assault on the entrenched wealth and power of the corporate and financial elite and the socialist reorganization of society to meet human needs. The mobilization of such a powerful contingent of teachers would rapidly gain the support of large sections of the working class, including Amazon and UPS workers, nurses, truckers, and many more throughout the US and the world. The WSWS urges workers with information on conditions in the plants to contact us. The recent interview by the WSWS with a veteran Ford Woodhaven Stamping worker about the still unexplained death of young temporary part-time (TPT) worker Jacoby Hennings on October 20, 2017 has gained a wide readership. The article detailing the role of the United Auto Workers (UAW), the police and the corporate media in covering up the circumstances surrounding Hennings death one year ago is being widely shared on Facebook and has provoked much discussion. To this day there has been no serious investigation of this tragedy. Following brief sensationalized coverage, there has been no further reporting by the media. While police said that an unexplained grievance brought Jacoby that fateful morning to the UAW office in the plant, there has been no explanation from UAW officials present as to what took place in the hour before Jacobys death. This case has highlighted the brutal treatment of TPT workers. The 2015 national UAW contract agreement allowed the virtually unlimited expansion of the use of TPT workers, who have few benefits and no contract protections, yet must still pay dues to the UAW. These workers are being used to replace older, higher-paid legacy workers, who management is attempting to drive out of the plaints. The sentiments expressed by the senior Woodhaven worker, who declared his solidarity with TPT workers, reflects a widespread feeling by older workers that the interests of younger and veteran workers are the same. The World Socialist Web Site Autoworker Newsletter encourages autoworkers to come forward and share their stories relating to the treatment of TPT workers, both at Woodhaven Stamping and other factories. A worker at Ford Dearborn Truck told the WSWS Autoworker Newsletter, Myself and all my friends voted against the 2015 contract. We said, why are all these young brothers coming in and not making the same as we are; all these two tiers and three tiers? The UAW wants their union dues, but doesnt want to represent them [TPTs]. They are letting the company get away with anything. It is really corrupt. They will sell their souls for anything. An in progression (second-tier) worker at Ford in Ohio said, I have seen a lot of what was reported [in the interview] here. Almost everything he described has happened at my plant too. I have seen a lot of dirty dealings. They hire a lot of family and friends. Currently I know TPT workers who havent been hired as full time after two years. Remarking on the conditions in the plant, he noted that there was a serious opioid crisis in the area and that a TPT worker had recently died of an overdose. A worker writing in anonymously to the WSWS Autoworker Newsletter made the following comments relating to the treatment of TPT workers: I am also a TPT for Ford and have been employed 2 years this month. Everything that is being said is correct about the abuse to TPT workers and the huge difference in job requirements for us compared to full-time workers. The full-time workers usually side with the TPTs just as 'Mike' did in the newsletter that I received. The problem is these workers have the right to speak up without losing their jobs but they don't. They will pull us aside and agree with us about the unfair differences in our employment, but never speak up. [The UAW] just takes our money and offers no help. I feel as though I am talking to management when I try to discuss anything with the Union and then I fear retaliation if I do say anything. Many autoworkers wrote comments on Facebook in response to the posting of the interview with the Woodhaven Stamping worker on autoworker discussion sites. Many workers drew a connection between the indictment of top UAW officials relating to the federal corruption investigation of payments by Fiat Chrysler to top union officials, the mistreatment of TPT workers and the abandonment by the UAW of any defense of workers. James wrote, NO ONE should be doing the same job for less pay and benefits period. Im disgusted people still call the UAW a union. If the Feds havent showed you yet I hope you figure out the real monsters are our sellout UAW leadership. The company will always push the envelope as expected however its our unions job to be our collective voice and they clearly are only out for themselves. I hope they all go to prison for what they did! Gus wrote, They are getting a slap on the hand. The indicted probably still have their positions and probably had Union lawyers defending them. The UAW leadership is a bunch of family and friends that go down the line to the shop floor. The UAW leadership has sold UAW for $9,000,000. When you consider years and years of fraudulent contract negotiation, I figure the UAW membership got shafted to the tune of $2,000,000,000 (2 billion). Add, all the members grievances that were ignored and not gone to Arbitration, we a talking another Billion dollars. A worker at the General Motors Lake Orion Assembly Plant outside Detroit shared her experiences with the UAW. The Lake Orion facility is one of the passenger car assembly plants that GM has targeted for possible closure. All the major car companies are moving away from passenger car production to focus on more profitable trucks and SUVs. A secret memorandum of understanding (MOU) signed by then UAW Vice President for GM Cindy Estrada and local UAW officials earlier this year allowed management to hire lower paid contract workers for materials jobs instead of regular GM employees at a considerable cost savings to the company. Gina, a Lake Orion worker, wrote, Its messed up, but since the IUAW forced this shit MOU on us at Orion Assembly, this is how the local management is treating all employees here!! Legacy employees! They are putting us all against here, so the worse it gets, the more will leave through an Appendix A transfer when Flint Assembly takes all the people they are planning on moving there. I think its a way to get legacy people out to be replaced by 3rd party or temp employees. And the IUAW is allowing it!!! Im in paint, but in GA, people are getting thrown out left and right for not learning their jobs fast enough or missing one or 2 things..stupid sh--t! Then, not only getting kicked out, being taken off your job, regardless of seniority. The WSWS Autoworker Newsletter welcomes feedback from readers on our postings, and in particular on the conditions facing younger workers. Please share our articles widely with friends and co-workers. Those interested in learning more about the fight of the Socialist Equality Party and the World Socialist Web Site to build rank-and-file committees in the factories, independent of the pro-company UAW, should write in. MADISON COUNTY, Fla. (WTXL) - An armed and dangerous man who threatened to kill officers after attempting to break into a Madison County home has been arrested. John Anthony Russell has surrendered himself to Madison County Sheriffs Office Investigators at a location in Taylor County without further incident. They say Russell didn't have a gunshot wound and was found to be without any injuries. Russell will be turned over to Taylor County deputies and transported to the Taylor County Jail were he will be booked on Madison County arrest warrants. I personally thank Taylor County Sheriff Wayne Padgett and his deputies for their assistance during this incident. I am extremely proud of the partnership between the Madison County Sheriffs Office and the Taylor County Sheriffs Office in our shared efforts to keep both our communities safe and secure, said Major David Harper. Manhunt continues for armed and dangerous suspect in Madison County break-in MADISON COUNTY, Fla. (WTXL) - The manhunt continues for an armed and dangerous man who threatened to kill officers after attempting to break into a Madison County home. The Madison County Sheriffs Office has active felony arrest warrants for John Anthony Russell for his involvement in an incident that occurred in Madison County on Thursday. MCSO says Russell attempted to break into the home near the Madison/Taylor county line. The homeowner, who knows Russell, fired multiple shots at him. It's unclear if Russell was hit by any of the shots, though deputies say Russell may be suffering from a gunshot wound or other injury to his abdomen sustained during the incident. Investigators later learned that Russell made threats by phone to kill all law enforcement officers who find him. Deputies say Russell should be considered armed and dangerous. If anyone has any information about the location of John Anthony Russell, you are asked to call 911 immediately. Do not approach him. Russell is described as a 48-year-old white male, around 5-foot-4 tall, weighing 165 pounds with salt and pepper hair and hazel eyes. He was last seen wearing blue jeans and no shirt with a last known address in Lamont, Florida. He is wanted for burglary and aggravated assault. Manhunt underway for suspect who tried to break into home in Madison County MADISON COUNTY, Fla. (WTXL) - A manhunt is underway for a suspect who tried to break into a home on the Madison/Taylor county line but ran away when he got shot at by the homeowner. The Madison County Sheriff's Office posted on Facebook that multiple deputies responded to a home near the Madison/Taylor county line located on U.S. 19/U.S. 27. Deputies with the Madison County Sheriffs Office in conjunction with deputies of the Taylor County Sheriffs Office are actively searching locations in Taylor County for John Anthony Russell, who is wanted for his involvement in an attempted burglary on Thursday. The homeowner, who knows Russell, fired multiple shots at him. MCSO said it is unclear if Russell was hit by any of the shots. Deputies deployed a K-9 and tracked Russell to a location where a car was recently parked. MCSO said it is believed Russell then returned to Taylor County. According to MCSO, Russell is described as a 48-year-old white man, 5-foot-4, weighs 165 pounds with salt and pepper hair. Russell was last seen wearing blue jeans and no shirt and has since made threats to kill law enforcement when he is found. Russell is considered armed and dangerous. If anyone has any information about the whereabouts of Russell you are asked to call 911 immediately. They are asking residents to not approach Russell if they see him. The scene is active and ongoing. An update will be provided when additional information is available. TALLAHASSEE, Fla. (WTXL) - The Department of Children and Families (DCF), in partnership with the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA), has just activated the the federal Disaster Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (D-SNAP) in 12 Big Bend counties to assist communities impacted by Hurricane Michael. D-SNAP, formerly known as Food for Florida, offers emergency food benefits to: Applicants who are not currently receiving food benefits through regular SNAP. Victims of hurricanes or other types of disasters. DCF anticipates serving approximately 130,000 families through the federal DSNAP program as a result of Hurricane Michael. DCF served more than 1.2 million households for Hurricane Irma disaster food assistance last year. Following DCFs request, the federal government has granted permission to conduct phone applications for those individuals in all 12 counties who may not be able to attend the in-person events. Families in these counties, and those who are displaced as a result of the storm, are strongly encouraged to pre-register and take advantage of the phone application option. DCF will host D-SNAP events in three phases, based on the order in which they were declared eligible for Individual Assistance by the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA): Bay, Franklin, Gulf, Taylor, Wakulla: Pre-Registration Window is from Oct. 26 - Nov. 4; Phone Application Window is from Oct. 27 - Oct. 30; In-Person Application Window is from Oct. 31 - Nov. 4. Calhoun, Gadsden, Jackson, Liberty: Pre-Registration Window is from Nov. 1 Nov. 11; Phone Application Window is from Nov. 3 - Nov. 5 and Nov. 7; In-Person Application Window is from Nov. 7 - Nov. 11 Leon: Pre-Registration Window is from Nov. 8 Nov. 19; Phone Application Window is from Nov. 10 - Nov. 13; In-Person Application Window is from Nov. 14 - Nov. 16 and Nov. 18 - Nov. 19 Holmes, Washington: Pre-Registration Window is from Nov. 8 Nov. 18; Phone Application Window is from Nov. 10 - Nov. 13; In-Person Application Window is from Nov. 14 - Nov. 18. To qualify for D-SNAP, applicants must have lived or worked in one of the counties declared for FEMA Individual Assistance on October 10, and not be receiving food assistance through the regular SNAP program. Additionally, eligible individuals and families must have suffered a disaster-related loss, such as damage to their homes or self-employment property, loss of food, reduction or loss of income, or have incurred other disaster-related expenses. Applicants must also be financially eligible. DCF will provide or mail Electronic Benefits Transfer cards to eligible individuals and families to use at authorized USDA food retailers. Individuals and authorized representatives are strongly encouraged to pre-register online. D-SNAP pre-registration will be available on the D-SNAP website and open for people in need of food assistance in eligible counties prior to the phone and on-site events. D-SNAP sites in Gulf, Bay, Franklin, Taylor, and Wakulla counties will open next week. Individuals who lived or worked in these counties on October 10 can pre-register beginning October 26 after 1:00 p.m. Pre-registration for other eligible counties will be available prior to the opening of the local site. Individuals, families, and authorized representatives that pre-register must still call or visit a D-SNAP site to be interviewed. Individuals may also apply at D-SNAP site locations without pre-registering. Applicants who choose to visit an on-site event to complete the application process should attend in their county. Only one person per household needs to visit the on-site event. Each site will also have designated areas for people with special needs. Current food assistance participants should not pre-register, apply over the phone, or visit the local D-SNAP site; additional October benefits will be added to current client EBT cards in the 12 impacted counties. DCF ordered an early release of food assistance benefits for those Florida residents in the 35 counties included in Governor Scotts pre-landfall emergency order who would have received normal SNAP benefits in October. DCF also waived restrictions on purchasing hot prepared food with SNAP benefits through October 31 statewide to assist customers who evacuated to another area or suffered storm damage to their home. Visit the D-SNAP website for more information on pre-registration, site locations, and hours of operation. TALLAHASSEE, Fla. (WTXL) - The WTXL Turkey Drive is coming up in three weeks so, one local artist made it her mission to make a difference and be a part of the efforts to benefit Second Harvest of the Big Bend. Last week at the WTXL Getdown, Kollet Probst started to create a very special and powerful piece. You watched her live on WTXL as she started to paint. Fast forward to Wednesday, and Probst has finished up the painting by putting her final signature on it and glossing the canvas. Along with the overalls she created the piece in, Probst has started a fundraiser on her personal Facebook page to donate the painting and overalls to a random person, all to benefit Second Harvest of the Big Bend. Probst says the piece represents the strong will of Floridians. "I went for a vintage Florida feel. Florida has been through this hurricane and disasters as long as time goes back and I wanted to send a message that we always come back," said Probst. If you want more information about the painting and helping out Second Harvest of the Big Bend, head over to Kollet's Facebook page. WASHINGTON (AP) The Latest on pipe bombs sent to prominent critics of President Donald Trump (all times local): 3:25 p.m. Attorney General Jeff Sessions says he doesnt know why pipe bombs were sent to prominent Democrats and CNN but says a Florida man charged in the case appears to be a partisan. Sessions and other law enforcement officials are declining to speculate on whether the current divided political climate in America and President Donald Trumps rhetoric emboldened the man. FBI Director Christopher Wray says its too early to discuss a motive behind the pipe bombs. Federal authorities have charged 56-year-old Cesar Altieri Sayoc with five crimes including mailing explosives and threatening former U.S. presidents. Sayoc is a registered Republican and ardent Trump supporter who pushed far-right conspiracy theories online. Some of Sayocs social media posts singled out the targets of the bombs. Trump has called for unity but also has blamed the press for the divisive political climate. ___ 3:10 p.m. The head of the FBI says the suspect arrested in the mail bombs sent to prominent Democrats was found in part using fingerprint evidence and possible DNA. FBI Director Christopher Wray said Friday investigators had fingerprints of Florida resident Cesar Sayoc and had possible DNA collected from two explosive devices. Wray says they matched a fingerprint found on one of the packages that had been sent to U.S. Rep. Maxine Waters of California. Sayoc was arrested Friday at an auto shop in Plantation, Florida. He has been charged with five crimes and faces 58 years in prison. He will be prosecuted in New York, where five of the 12 devices were found. The mail bombs have been sent in recent days to political opponents of President Donald Trump. ___ 3:05 p.m. FBI Director Christopher Wray says more than a dozen pipe bombs sent to prominent Democrats and CNN were not hoax devices. Wray says each of the pipe bombs contained materials that could react and cause a potential explosion. Wray made the comments Friday as federal authorities announced the charging of 56-year-old Cesar Altieri Sayoc, of Florida, with five federal crimes including mailing explosives and threatening former U.S. presidents. Wray says federal authorities have located 13 improvised explosive devices that were assembled in a similar manner. None of the devices has exploded and no one has been injured. ___ 2:55 p.m. Attorney General Jeff Sessions says federal authorities are charging a 56-year-old Florida man with five federal crimes including the mailing of explosives. Sessions says the charges carry a maximum of 58 years in prison. Session announced the charges Friday just hours after federal authorities arrested Cesar Sayoc. Sayoc is accused of sending more than a dozen pipe bombs through the mail to prominent Democrats including former President Barack Obama and to CNN. Sayoc is an amateur bodybuilder and ardent supporter of President Donald Trump who pushed far-right conspiracy theories online. None of the devices exploded, and no one has been injured. ___ 2:40 p.m. Sen. Kamala Harris office says authorities in Sacramento, California are investigating a suspicious package mailed to her. Harris office says the package was similar to those that have been sent to other prominent Democrats. The senators office says it was informed that the package was identified at a Sacramento mail facility. The FBI responded to the facility in a South Sacramento neighborhood thats been blocked off by caution tape. News of the package comes as authorities arrested a Florida man suspected of sending more than 10 mail bombs in recent days. Harris is a Democrat serving her first term in the U.S. Senate. __ 2:15 p.m. A law enforcement official says that the man detained in Florida in connection with the pipe bomb scare will be prosecuted in New York City. The official said Friday that Cesar Sayoc will face charges in federal court in Manhattan after an initial court appearance in Florida. Five of the 12 improvised devices involved in the case were recovered in the Southern District of New York. The official wasnt authorized to discuss the prosecution because a complaint was still being drafted and spoke on condition of anonymity. The mail bombs have been sent in recent days to political opponents of President Donald Trump. __ 1:35 p.m. A Twitter account that appears to belong to the suspect in the mail-bomb scare includes repeated attacks on billionaire George Soros and praise for President Donald Trump and other Republicans. The man was identified by law enforcement officials as Cesar Sayoc, 56, of Aventura, Florida. In linking him to the Twitter account, The Associated Press noted that it contains imagery that mirrored what appeared on the side of the van that authorities seized, in tweets that had been sent long before the explosive devices began to appear. Authorities have not said whether the van seized in Florida was linked to Sayoc. The tweets accuse Soros of paying off a victim from the Parkland mass shooting and accusing Florida gubernatorial candidate Andrew Gillum, a Democrat, of being a Soros puppet. The account also praises Trump and other Republicans. The account includes anti-Gillum memes, with one including the caption $500,000 SOROS PUPPET. The Oct. 24 posting includes a photo of Soros doctored to look like hes holding a puppet meant to resemble Gillum. __ 12:55 p.m. According to court and other public records, Cesar Alteri Sayoc Jr., 56, has a lengthy criminal and court record in Florida. He has been convicted on theft, stolen property and traffic charges and in 2002 on a threat to throw, place, project or discharge any destructive device. Sayoc is in custody in Florida in the mail bombs sent to prominent Democrats. He was born in New York. Sayoc was sentenced in August 2002 for threatening to throw a bomb in a conversation with a Florida utility representative, according to Ronald Lowy, a Miami attorney who represented him. Dade County court records showed Sayoc served a years probation after a judge signed a discharge certificate in November 2002. Lowy told The Associated Press that Sayoc made a verbal threat when he was frustrated at a lack of service. Lowy said Sayoc showed no ability at the time to back up his threat with bomb-making expertise. The lawyer said Sayoc was a bodybuilder then, and displayed no political leanings except for plastering a vehicle he owned with Native American signs. Court records also show that Sayoc was convicted in the 1990s in Broward County on grand theft and stolen property charges and in 2004 on a felony charge of fraudulent refunds and misdemeanor of tampering with physical evidence. __ 12:44 p.m. President Donald Trump is confirming that a suspect in the mail bomb scare is in custody and says he will be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law. Trump, in his first remarks since Cesar Sayoc, 56, was apprehended in Florida, declared that we must never allow political violence take root in America. More than 10 mail bombs have been sent in recent days to political opponents of the president. Trump declared that these terrorizing acts are despicable and said Americans must unify. But his remarks came just hours after Trump tweeted a complaint that the medias focus on bombs was distracting from Republican efforts in the upcoming midterm elections. He also put the word bomb in quotes, a seeming nod to those who believed the scare was a hoax. __ 12:30 p.m. The name of the man detained in connection with the pipe bomb scare is Cesar Sayoc, 56, of Aventura, Florida, according to law enforcement officials. Four officials familiar with the investigation identified the man to The Associated Press. They spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to discuss the matter on the record. It was not clear whether Sayoc had been formally charged in the rash of devices addressed in recent days to Democratic figures including former President Barack Obama, former Vice President Joe Biden and Hillary Clinton. WASHINGTON (AP) Federal authorities arrested a man in Florida on Friday in connection with the mail-bomb scare that widened to 12 suspicious packages, the Justice Department said. Law enforcement officers were seen on television examining a white van, its windows covered with an assortment of stickers, in the city of Plantation. They covered the vehicle with a blue tarp. The man was in his 50s, a law enforcement official said, but his name and any charges he might face were not immediately known. Department spokeswoman Sarah Isgur Flores said authorities planned to announce more information at a press conference at 2:30 p.m. ET. The development came amid a coast-to-coast manhunt for the person responsible for a series of explosive devices addressed to Democrats including former President Barack Obama, former Vice President Joe Biden and Hillary Clinton. Law enforcement officials said they had intercepted a dozen packages in states across the country. None had exploded, and it wasnt immediately clear if they were intended to cause physical harm or simply sow fear and anxiety. Earlier Friday, authorities said suspicious packages addressed to New Jersey Sen. Cory Booker and former National Intelligence Director James Clapper both similar to those containing pipe bombs sent to other prominent critics of President Donald Trump had been intercepted. The discoveries making 12 so far further spurred a coast-to-coast investigation, as officials scrambled to locate a culprit and possible motive amid questions about whether new packages were being sent or simply surfacing after a period in mail system. The devices have targeted well-known Democrats including former President Barack Obama, former Vice President Joe Biden, Hillary Clinton and former Attorney General Eric Holder. The FBI said the package to Booker was intercepted in Florida. The one discovered at a Manhattan postal facility was addressed to Clapper at CNNs address. An earlier package had been sent to former Obama CIA Director John Brennan via CNN in New York. Attorney General Jeff Sessions said Friday the Justice Department was dedicating every available resource to the investigation and I can tell you this: We will find the person or persons responsible. We will bring them to justice. Trump, on the other hand, complained that this bomb stuff was taking attention away from the upcoming election and said critics were wrongly blaming him and his heated rhetoric. Investigators were analyzing the innards of the crude devices to reveal whether they were intended to detonate or simply sow fear just before Election Day. Law enforcement officials told The Associated Press that the devices, containing timers and batteries, were not rigged to explode upon opening. But they were uncertain whether the devices were poorly designed or never intended to cause physical harm. Homeland Security Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen, in an interview Thursday with Fox News Channel, acknowledged that some of packages originated in Florida. One official told AP that investigators are homing in on a postal facility in Opa-locka, Florida, where they believe some packages originated. The package addressed to Booker was found during an oversight search of that facility, according to a law enforcement official. The officials spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to discuss the ongoing investigation by name Most of those targeted were past or present U.S. officials, but one was sent to actor Robert De Niro and billionaire George Soros. The bombs have been sent across the country - from New York, Delaware and Washington, D.C., to Florida and California, where Rep. Maxine Waters was targeted. They bore the return address of Florida Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz, the former chairwoman of the Democratic National Committee. The common thread among the bomb targets was obvious: their critical words for Trump and his frequent, harsher criticism in return. Trump claimed Friday he was being blamed for the mail bombs, complaining in a tweet sent before dawn: Funny how lowly rated CNN, and others, can criticize me at will, even blaming me for the current spate of Bombs and ridiculously comparing this to September 11th and the Oklahoma City bombing, yet when I criticize them they go wild and scream, its just not Presidential! The package to Clapper was addressed to him at CNNs Midtown Manhattan address. Clapper, a frequent Trump critic, told CNN that he was not surprised he was targeted and that he considered the actions definitely domestic terrorism. Jeff Zucker, the president of CNN Worldwide, said in a note to staff that all mail to CNN domestic offices was being screened at off-site facilities. He said there was no imminent danger to the Time Warner Center, where CNNs New York office is located. At a press conference Thursday, officials in New York would not discuss possible motives or details on how the packages found their way into the postal system. Nor would they say why the packages hadnt detonated, but they stressed they were still treating them as live devices. The devices were packaged in manila envelopes and carried U.S. postage stamps. They were being examined by technicians at the FBIs forensic lab in Quantico, Virginia. The packages stoked nationwide tensions ahead of the Nov. 6 election to determine control of Congress a campaign both major political parties have described in near-apocalyptic terms. Politicians from both parties used the threats to decry a toxic political climate and lay blame. Trump, in a tweet Thursday, blamed the Mainstream Media for the anger in society. Brennan responded, tweeting that Trump should Stop blaming others. Look in the mirror. The bombs are about 6 inches (15 centimeters) long and packed with powder and broken glass, according to a law enforcement official who viewed X-ray images. The official said the devices were made from PVC pipe and covered with black tape. The first bomb discovered was delivered Monday to the suburban New York compound of Soros, a major contributor to Democratic causes. Soros has called Trumps presidency dangerous. ___ Associated Press writers Laurie Kellman, Ken Thomas, Jill Colvin and Chad Day in Washington and Jim Mustian, Deepti Hajela, Tom Hays and Michael R. Sisak in New York contributed to this report. ___ For the APs complete coverage of the mail-bomb scare: https://apnews.com/PipeBombAttacks. TALLAHASSEE, Fla. (WTXL) - A 17-year-old is being charged as an adult for the robbing and shooting at Bank of America in Tallahassee on Tuesday afternoon. According to the State Attorney's Office, 17-year-old Weldn Powell is being charged as an adult for the Bank of America robbing and shooting. In a joint press release, the Leon County Sheriff's Office and the Tallahassee Police Department said a woman was robbed at gunpoint by Powell, while using the ATM outside the bank. The victim was shot during the course of the robbery and LCSO deputies used their agency issued tourniquet to treat her while on scene. She is expected to recover. While searching the area, TPD officers found the suspect who crashed his vehicle after fleeing the scene. Inside the vehicle, officers found a juvenile woman and Powell. Both matched the description of the suspect and woman involved in another robbery on Tuesday on FSU's campus near Macomb Street and College Avenue and previously obtained surveillance photos. Powell is being charged with robbery with a firearm and aggravated assault with the intent to commit a felony by TPD for the FSU robbery. LCSO is also charging him with robbery with a firearm, attempted homicide, and possession of a firearm by a delinquent for the Bank of America shooting, as well as an out of county warrant. The juvenile woman was not arrested and is not being charged. TALLAHASSEE, Fla. (WTXL) - The Leon County Sheriff's Office has arrested and identified the suspect in the shooting at the Bank of America on Thomasville Road that injured one person. LCSO stated the suspect is a 17-year-old from Palm Beach County, who also had a warrant out for his arrest in Palm Beach. According to LCSO, he robbed the woman while she was getting money out of the outside ATM, and ended up shooting her. Deputies say he did not know the victim. Deputy Dave Teems said they are reviewing video footage from nearby businesses, interviewing witnesses and processing evidence. LCSO said the 17-year-old was arrested for robbery, attempted murder, and possession of a firearm by a delinquent. We are choosing not to identify the suspect's name because of his age. This is a developing story and we will update this story as additional information becomes available. TALLAHASSEE, Fla. (WTXL) - The Leon County Sheriff's Office confirmed one person has been hurt after a shooting at the Bank of America on Thomasville Road. Deputy Dave Teems confirmed that deputies are responding to a "major scene" at 5676 Thomasville Road at the Bank of America Financial Center. LCSO says they responded to the area for a shooting at the bank. Deputies confirmed that one person was taken to the hospital with non-life threatening injuries. Deputy Teems confirmed that a person of interest is now in custody. A business in the area that did not want to be identified has informed WTXL that law enforcement agencies have told Bull Run residents, and neighboring businesses to stay indoors. The business says law enforcement agencies told them that there was an armed robbery at the Bank of America involving three suspects, with reports of one person shot. According to the business, two of the three suspects are now in custody but one remains at large. LCSO has not confirmed the information from the business. Teems said LCSO is reviewing video footage from nearby businesses, interviewing witnesses and processing evidence. Deputies said right now they can't tell me how many shots were fired or how the shooting started. We don't know if the suspect was at the bank when deputies arrived or if they found him after searching. The investigation is open and active. LCSO is asking travelers to be cautious in the area. This is a developing story and we will update this story as additional information becomes available. TALLAHASSEE, Fla. (WTXL) - Hurricane Michael is long gone but communities are still trying to piece together what they once had. Tallahassee Police officers went to one of the most devastated areas to do what they do best: serve and protect. The Big Bend was hit hard by Hurricane Michael. But only a few counties felt the Category 4 storm the way Jackson County did. After Michael passed, many Florida counties and even other states sent law enforcement officers to help rebuild Jackson County. "We get into this job to serve and protect so not only to serve and protect our own communities but also to go outside of our communities and serve and protect other communities, help our brothers and sisters that were there, so it was a great opportunity," said Patrol Officer Sean Wyman. Wyman and Maria Mercurio were part of a group from TPD that was sent to help with security in a county where many buildings were destroyed. "You got a lot of people that are going in there that you know they are impoverished right now and they are looking for resources so they are looking to take what they can get so basically do criminal activities," said Wyman. While security may have been the number one role for TPD officers, Mercurio said bringing joy to those who needed it provided the most fulfillment. "I was able to hand out some teddy bears some things that don't necessarily need to sustain but again to put a smile on someone's face when they are going through such a devastation," said Mercurio. Source: Xinhua| 2018-10-26 01:46:23|Editor: yan Video Player Close BELGRADE, Oct. 25 (Xinhua) -- Western Balkans needs a clear European Union (EU) integration perspective, especially in the light of growing international risks and political instability of the region, Montenegrin President Milo Djukanovic said Thursday. Djukanovic made the statement at the Economic conference Montenegro 2018 that he opened on Thursday in the coastal city of Budva, together with Austrian Chancellor Sebastian Kurz. The two-day annual conference was entitled "Balkan and European union -- a five-year cycle of the Berlin Process". It was also attended by officials of the regional countries as well as representatives of international financial institutions and investors, presidents of the chambers and associations, as well as representatives of successful companies that do business in the Western Balkans. Djukanovic said that the "vision of united Europe appears blurred, while the perspective for EU accession for candidate countries seems uncertain". According to him, the main reasons for this lie in the political problems and risks in Europe, as well as the upcoming elections for the European Parliament "whose results could change the essence of the EU as we know it" -- in case of victory of extreme populist parties. "Regional relations are still burdened by sensitive bilateral issues from the nineties. If, as expected, Macedonia resolves its decades-long conflict with Greece, there is a hope that the most sensitive issue will find its solution -- relations between Serbia and Kosovo," Djukanovic said. Kosovo unilaterally declared independence from Serbia in 2008. Serbia rejects it and considers Kosovo its own province. The EU needs to develop clear answers to these challenges, Djukanovic said in a statement released by his cabinet. He urged the EU to help the infrastructural development of the Western Balkans, explaining that this would be the biggest contribution to regional countries to overcome their underdevelopment. Kurz assured that the EU cannot be complete without the Western Balkans and said that the integration can become functional only through cooperation in politics and economy. "In the long term, this region can maintain security and stability only if it is a part of the EU," he said, explaining that the migrant crisis once again revealed the key value of this region for the EU. Kurz praised the European perspective of Montenegro as well as Serbia, estimating that it looks "better than ever". Source: Xinhua| 2018-10-26 01:46:23|Editor: Yang Yi Video Player Close Li Zhanshu, a member of the Standing Committee of the Political Bureau of the Communist Party of China (CPC) Central Committee and chairman of the National People's Congress (NPC) Standing Committee, listens to lawmakers' advice on improving the work of the people's congresses and rule of law at a symposium in Beijing, capital of China, Oct. 25, 2018. Li presided over the symposium on the sidelines of the ongoing bimonthly session of the NPC Standing Committee. (Xinhua/Liu Weibing) BEIJING, Oct. 25 (Xinhua) -- Top legislator Li Zhanshu on Thursday sat down with lawmakers to listen to their advice on improving the work of the people's congresses and rule of law, at a symposium. Deputies of the National People's Congress (NPC) should serve as a link between the Party, the country and the people, said Li, chairman of the NPC Standing Committee, who presided over the symposium on the sidelines of the ongoing bimonthly session of the NPC Standing Committee. Fifty-six NPC deputies attending the bimonthly session participated in the symposium and shared their experiences and thoughts on performing their duties. Li said the symposium was an important mechanism for the Standing Committee to strengthen its connection with deputies and receive supervision from them. He called on the deputies to report the situation at the grassroots level, and on the needs of the people and their suggestions, to push for improvements in the work of state organs. The deputies were also urged to improve their ability to perform duties, including conducting various forms of research and collecting real opinions from the public. Source: Xinhua| 2018-10-26 02:01:28|Editor: yan Video Player Close BEIJING, Oct. 25 (Xinhua) -- Chinese commercial banks saw a significant drop in net foreign exchange (forex) sales in the first three quarters of the year. Banks bought 1.4163 trillion U.S. dollars worth of foreign currencies and sold 1.4444 trillion dollars worth from January to September, resulting in net sales of 28.1 billion dollars, the State Administration of Foreign Exchange (SAFE) said in a statement Thursday. Net forex sales decreased 75 percent from a year ago, SAFE data showed. "China's cross-border capital flows remained generally stable and the supply and demand of foreign currencies were basically balanced," SAFE spokesperson Wang Chunying said. Source: Xinhua| 2018-10-26 02:11:31|Editor: yan Video Player Close BRATISLAVA, Oct. 25 (Xinhua) -- Britain's largest carmaker, Jaguar Land Rover, opened its new plant in Nitra in western Slovakia on Thursday, the luxury car maker's first in continental Europe. Jaguar Land Rover invested 1.4 billion euros (1.6 billion U.S. dollars) in building the car plant. According to operation director Alexander Wortberg, the company employs 1,500 people, and by the end of next year it should have 2,800 employees. "Total production capacity is 150,000 cars a year. The first model to be produced at the factory is the Land Rover Discovery, which will be made exclusively in Nitra," said Wortberg. The vehicles produced in Nitra will be sent to more than 170 countries. The company is also ready to further expand its operations in Nitra. "We can double our capacity to 300,000 cars a year if the market situation allows....However, we haven't yet adopted a decision on capacity expansion," Wortberg said. He also said that the decision to invest in Slovakia is part of a broader strategy that was adopted before the referendum on Brexit, and the current situation doesn't affect the firm's plans in Slovakia. "It's important to maintain an open market that is set well in order to keep conditions unchanged. A hard Brexit could cause us big problems. We have components that we import from the UK. We're getting ready for a variety of scenarios in order to make sure that their supply will be secure," Wortberg added. Source: Xinhua| 2018-10-26 02:56:39|Editor: Shi Yinglun Video Player Close People treat an injured student at a local hospital near the Dead Sea area of Jordan Oct. 25, 2018. At least 18 people died, dozens went missing and 34 were rescued by Thursday evening in flash floods in Jordan's hot springs area near the Dead Sea as the country witnessed heavy rain. (Xinhua/Mohammad Abu Ghosh) AMMAN, Oct. 25 (Xinhua) -- At least 18 people died, dozens went missing and 34 were rescued by Thursday evening in flash floods in Jordan's hot springs area near the Dead Sea as the country witnessed heavy rain. Majority of those killed, rescued and reported missing were students on a school trip to the Zara Maeen hot springs area, according to the Civil Defence Department (CDD), which said they were from a private school in Amman. A statement by the Prime Ministry indicated that the school received an approval to take the students to a trip to Azraq, but the school did not abide by the approval and took the students to the Dead Sea area. Personnel from several agencies, rescue helicopters and boats, marine divers and swimmers took part in the ongoing search. The CDD said in the statement emailed to Xinhua that the rescue operations were ongoing as dozens were still missing. Jordanian Prime Minister Omar Razzaz oversaw the rescue operations and instructed state agencies to provide all needed assistance to ensure the safety of the students. Jordan's King Abdullah II of Jordan cancelled his trip to Bahrain that was scheduled for Friday after the incident to follow up on the situation. Source: Xinhua| 2018-10-26 04:42:22|Editor: Yang Yi Video Player Close Visiting Chinese State Councilor and Minister of Public Security Zhao Kezhi (L) shakes hands with Bangladeshi Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina during their meeting in Dhaka, capital of Bangladesh, on Oct. 25, 2018. (Xinhua/Man Bo) DHAKA, Oct. 26 (Xinhua) -- Visiting Chinese State Councilor and Minister of Public Security Zhao Kezhi met with Bangladeshi Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina here on Thursday. Zhao conveyed the cordial greetings from President Xi Jinping and Premier Li Keqiang to the prime minister. He said that President Xi Jinping paid a historic visit to Bangladesh in 2016 and unanimously decided with Prime Minister Hasina to upgrade China-Bangladesh relations into a strategic partnership of cooperation and opened a new chapter in China-Bangladesh friendship. China is willing to work with Bangladesh to implement the consensus of the leaders of the two countries, strengthen the docking of the development strategy, expand cooperation in various fields, jointly promote the construction of the Belt and Road Initiative, deepen pragmatic cooperation in anti-terrorism, combating cybercrimes and transnational crimes. The pragmatic cooperation will continuously enrich the content of China-Bangladesh strategic partnership of cooperation and better benefit the two countries and the two peoples, said Zhao. Hasina during the talks asked Zhao Kezhi to convey her cordial greetings and best wishes to President Xi Jinping and Premier Li Keqiang. She said that Bangladesh highly appreciates China's development achievements and is willing to actively participate in the Belt and Road Initiative construction, strengthen exchanges and cooperation with China in various fields, continuously deepen law enforcement security cooperation, and promote the continued development of bilateral relations. During the visit, Zhao Kezhi will also hold talks with Bangladeshi Home Minister Asaduzzaman Khan Kamal. Source: Xinhua| 2018-10-26 04:47:23|Editor: yan Video Player Close MINSK, Oct. 25 (Xinhua) -- Belarus on Thursday called on the United States not to leave the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces (INF) Treaty. The intention of the United States to withdraw from this treaty cannot but cause regret and concern, Belarusian Foreign Ministry spokesman Anatoly Glaz said at a press briefing in Minsk. Such a step would cause significant harm to both regional security and global strategic stability, the official said. He said all of the issues surrounding the INF Treaty need to be solved at the negotiating table through dialogue. "We regard this document as one of the most important elements of the modern architecture of international security, which has contributed to and is helping today to reduce tensions on the European continent," he said. Source: Xinhua| 2018-10-26 04:47:24|Editor: Shi Yinglun Video Player Close Fire fighters try to extinguish a fire in Hlaingthaya township of Myanmar's Yangon, Oct. 26, 2018. Huge fire broke out at AA Electronics factory in Hlaingthaya township of Myanmar's Yangon on late Thursday. (Xinhua/U Aung) YANGON, Oct. 26 (Xinhua) -- Huge fire broke out at AA Electronics factory in Hlaingthaya township of Myanmar's Yangon on late Thursday. The fire broke out at 09:35 p.m. local time, an official from the fire service department told Xinhua. Firefighters have been battling to put the blaze under control until early hours of Friday. "It seems like the massive fire is burning down the whole factory," an eyewitness said. Source: Xinhua| 2018-10-26 06:42:51|Editor: ZD Video Player Close KIEV, Oct. 25 (Xinhua) -- A court in the Ukrainian capital said Thursday it has accepted a request from state prosecutors to extend the pre-trial detention of lawmaker Nadiya Savchenko for almost two months. Savchenko, who is accused of plotting a coup, will remain in custody until Dec. 23, the Shevchenko district court said in a statement. Savchenko was detained on March 22 as a pre-trial restriction measure after being accused of planning a "large-scale terrorist attack" in central Kiev aimed at a "forcible overthrow of the constitutional system and the seizure of state power in Ukraine." Earlier, a state prosecutor Olexandr Bannik said that Savchenko may face a jail term of 10 to 15 years or the whole-life sentence if found guilty. Savchenko, who is held at a temporary detention facility of the Security Service of Ukraine in Kiev, called the accusations against her "politically motivated". Savchenko, also a military pilot, has formerly participated in the conflict in eastern Ukraine along with government forces. She spent almost two years in prison in Russia after a court there found her guilty of complicity in killing two Russian journalists in 2014 during the conflict. The pilot has denied her role in the murder and said she had been kidnapped in Ukraine and then handed over to Russian authorities. Savchenko was elected as a member of the Ukrainian parliament while serving her jail term in Russia. She returned to Ukraine in May 2016 after Russian President Vladimir Putin pardoned her. Source: Xinhua| 2018-10-26 07:02:56|Editor: Shi Yinglun Video Player Close HAVANA, Oct. 25 (Xinhua) -- The leaders of Cuba and El Salvador on Thursday pledged to strengthen economic and trade cooperation between the two nations, and they highlighted the friendship ties uniting both countries. Cuban President Miguel Diaz-Canel and El Salvador's President Salvador Sanchez Ceren met at Havana's Revolution Palace to discuss bilateral cooperation, regional issues and other topics of the international agenda. "During the visit of comrade @sanchezceren, President of El Salvador, to Cuba, we reaffirmed the political will to promote economic, trade and cooperation relations between our countries," said the Cuban president in a message posted on his Twitter account. Ministers from both countries on Thursday finalized new mechanisms to continue strengthening trade relations by signing the first additional protocol to a bilateral cooperation association agreed between the two countries in 2012. The agreement contemplates the improvement of tariff related issues and other mechanisms of commercial exchange. With this extension to the original accord, both countries agreed to add new products to the bilateral export portfolio with tariff preferences. Among the main Salvadoran products exported to Cuba are concrete poles, cardboard boxes, medicines and PVC compounds, among others. While the island sends to the Central American nation devices for the medical industry, supplies for the chemical-pharmaceutical sector, cigars, among other products. Before returning to his country next Saturday, Sanchez Ceren will visit the eastern city of Santiago to pay homage to late Cuban leader Fidel Castro at the Santa Ifigenia cemetery. Source: Xinhua| 2018-10-26 07:12:59|Editor: Shi Yinglun Video Player Close UNITED NATIONS, Oct. 25 (Xinhua) -- The Economic Community of West African States, the African Union and the United Nations on Thursday urged Guinea-Bissau to hold its upcoming legislative elections on time and under the "conditions of transparency, regularity and credibility." In a joint communique, the three bodies urged all stakeholders to work towards creating the necessary conditions for the smooth running of the electoral process. The West African country is set to hold the elections of its People's National Assembly on Nov.18. But there have been talks of delaying the polls to allow for more time for voter registration. The three organizations also call upon African countries and the international community as a whole to mobilize the resources and logistical means required for the holding of the electoral process. The elections will "constitute a milestone in consolidating the gains achieved in Guinea-Bissau. In this context, the support of the international community remains more necessary than ever," the communique said. In late August, Jose Viegas Filho, the special representative of the secretary-general for Guinea-Bissau said at UN Headquarters that the preparation for the elections had met some difficulties. The problems, he said, included disagreements voiced by some political actors against the 30-day timeframe set by the government for voter registration, when the law stipulates a 90-day period for the process, and delays in arrival of biometric kits. A Google sign is seen during the WAIC (World Artificial Intelligence Conference) in Shanghai, China, September 17, 2018. (REUTERS PHOTO) MOSCOW, Oct. 25 (Xinhua) -- Russia's telecommunications regulator Roskomnadzor said Thursday that Google will be fined over its failure to remove links to prohibited resources from search results as requested by Russian legislation. "Google search engine has not complied with Russian law and will be fined," Roskomnadzor said in a statement. According to the statement, Roskomnadzor earlier sent a request to Google requesting connection to the Federal State Information System and later recorded an instance of the latter's failure to comply with the requirement. "The search engine must connect to the Federal State Information System that contains the list of prohibited Internet resources within 30 days upon the request of Roskomnadzor. In three business days, the search engine must begin filtering search results," it said. Legal entities face administrative liability with a fine varying from 500,000 to 700,000 rubles (7,600 U.S. dollars to 10,600 dollars) as a result of non-compliance, the watchdog said. Search engines operating in Russia are obliged to exclude Internet resources blocked in the country from search results, otherwise they will be liable to fines, according to amendments to the Code of Administrative Offenses, which were signed into law in June. Google has three days to reply and send its objection to Roskomnadzor, and after that the watchdog will file an administrative offense report to court, which will make a decision on imposing the fine, Roskomnxdzor's deputy chief Vadim Subbotin was quoted by Sputnik news agency as saying. Source: Xinhua| 2018-10-26 09:08:18|Editor: Shi Yinglun Video Player Close SAN FRANCISCO, Oct. 25 (Xinhua) -- U.S. internet giant Google said Thursday it has fired 48 employees for sexual harassment, including 13 who were senior managers and above, in the last two years. In an internal memo to Google employees disclosed Thursday, Google CEO Sundar Pichai said none of those individuals who were terminated received an exit package after Google took a tougher line toward its employees who were accused of sexual harassment or inappropriate conduct. "In recent years, we've made a number of changes, including taking an increasingly hard line on inappropriate conduct by people in positions of authority," Pichai said. The surprise disclosure came after Pichai sent the memo to Google staff amid a New York Times report that detailed the departure of Google's executive in charge of its Android software department Andy Rubin, who left the company in 2014 with a payment of 90 million U.S. dollars in exit package after he was accused of sexual misconduct. Rubin, who was known as "the father of Android" for creating the Android system for mobile phones, was investigated by Google for being involved in "inappropriate relationship" with a female subordinate, and was forced to resign and leave. He joined Google in 2005 after the Mountain View, a California-based high tech giant, acquired Android Inc. where he was the co-founder and CEO. Rubin served as the senior vice president of mobile and digital content at Google, and oversaw Android's development for smartphones. Although a spokesperson for Rubin insisted that he had left Google on his own accord and has never been aware of any accusations of sexual misconduct, the Times report said Google investigators believed the allegations against him were "credible." A colorful signboard is seen as workers prepare for the opening ceremony of Boracay Island, the Philippines, Oct. 25, 2018. (Xinhua/Rouelle Umali) MANILA, Oct. 25 (Xinhua) -- Tourists visiting Boracay, the world-renowned Philippine beach resort which will reopen on Friday after a six-month rehabilitation, will be asked to sign an "oath" to be responsible for the cleanliness of the island. The oath will be distributed to visitors upon entry to the resort island, according to the Philippine Department of Environment and Natural Resources. Printed in a piece of paper, the oath reads as a promise to "preserve Boracay's fine white sands and clear pristine waters by neither drinking alcohol or smoking on the beach." It also serves as a reminder for visitors to maintain the island's cleanliness through proper waste disposal, and by doing so protect the wildlife of the island as well. Tourists will be asked to sign the oath paper, which the authorities believe will serve as a tangible affirmation of the public's support in the government's effort to bring a better Boracay. The reopening on Friday is only a soft opening as the island is expected to undergo phases of rehabilitation until 2019. Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte ordered the closure of Boracay Island for six months starting on April 26, calling the island a "cesspool" as wastewater was discharged straight to the sea without being treated. Source: Xinhua| 2018-10-26 11:23:44|Editor: Shi Yinglun Video Player Close TOKYO, Oct. 26 (Xinhua) -- Tokyo shares fell Friday morning amid continued concerns over trade tensions. The 225-issue Nikkei Stock Average declined 47.23 points, or 0.22 percent, from Thursday to 21,221.50. The broader Topix index of all First Section issues on the Tokyo Stock Exchange was down 2.63 points, or 0.16 percent, at 1,598.29. Decliners were led by service, miscellaneous product and precision instrument issues. CIIE to provide trade opportunities in Chinese market: Wine Australia CEO Xinhua Weibo Facebook Twitter Reddit Diigo Delicious Digg Linkedin MySpace Sina Weibo Kaixin Renren Q-zone Tencent Weibo Sohu Weibo NetEase Weibo Source: Xinhua | 2018-10-26 11:28:46 | Editor: huaxia Photo taken on Oct. 11, 2018 shows a Nova Vita vineyard in Lobethal, Australia. (Xinhua/Pan Xiangyue) ADELAIDE, Australia, Oct. 25 (Xinhua) -- The China International Import Expo (CIIE) will provide a valuable platform to promote Australian wines and continue to cultivate the trade relationships within the Chinese wine market, said CEO of Wine Australia Andreas Clark. China is one of the world's largest markets for imported wine which presents enormous opportunities for Australian wine brands and businesses, Clark told Xinhua ahead of the CIIE, to be held on Nov. 5-10 in Shanghai. "It's very important for Australia to be part of this expo," he said. "China is Australia's largest wine export market by value and one of two key markets identified for a dedicated marketing push through the Australian government's 50-million-Australian dollar (35.3-million-U.S. dollar) Export and Regional Wine Support Package," he said. "The Chinese government is putting a lot of support behind this event and it's part of demonstrating their economic engagement with the world," he added. While Clark himself is going to attend the CIIE, he noted that Wine Australia will have a strong presence at the event. "We're going to be part of the national pavilion with Tourism Australia and there will be 14 Australian wine exporters present," he said. "We will present a snapshot of our diverse wine sector, showcasing a breadth of varieties and winemaking styles and sharing the stories of our wines that demonstrate the innovative spirit of our grape and wine community." A winemaker demonstrates how winemakers would retrieve and taste wines from barrels in the barrel room at Nova Vita's vineyard in Adelaide hills, Australia on Oct. 11, 2018. (Xinhua/Pan Xiangyue) He told Xinhua that the Australian wine community has enjoyed a long relationship with China's wine trade. "Our official records show Australian wine being shipped to Shanghai back in 1936," he said. "But it is really since the commencement of the China-Australia Free Trade Agreement (ChAFTA)that we've seen an acceleration in the demand for Australian wine in China." Since the year 2000, Australia's wine exports to China have experienced significant growth from 14 million Australian dollars (9.9 million U.S. dollars) to 1.06 billion Australian dollars (750 million U.S. dollars), with value more than doubling since the commencement of the ChAFTA in 2015. According to latest figures from Wine Australia, China has grown from having less than a 10-percent share of Australia's wine exports eight years ago, to, as of September this year, accounting for 39 percent of its wine exports by value and 21 percent by volume. "If you look back only a decade ago, we sent 2 million cases there," he said. "We are now sending 20 million cases, so it gives you a sense of that rise that we have enjoyed over the last decade." Photo taken on Oct. 11, 2018 shows a Nova Vita vineyard in Lobethal, Australia. (Xinhua/Pan Xiangyue) Australia's wine businesses frequently travel to China to build relationships with importers and consumers, he said, adding that "they are enthusiastic about the opportunities in market and in ensuring long-term relationships are established." Clark has witnessed the change in Chinese market over the years. "For Chinese wine consumers, imported wine has become more approachable and is increasingly consumed by middle-class drinkers and seen as suitable for consumption at more informal gatherings," he said. "Wine flavor has been increasing in its importance as a driver of choice and Chinese consumers are seeking wines that they enjoy consuming." While the red wine sales continue to grow, there is also a developing interest in China in white wines such as Riesling, Sauvignon Blanc, Chardonnay, Chenin Blanc and Moscato. "Through the China-Australia Free Trade Agreement there has been added motivation through the gradual reduction of wine tariffs, providing Australian wine exporters with a competitive advantage over key producers such as France, Italy and Spain," Clark said. "We intend to continue to nurture our relationships in the (Chinese) market to support ongoing commercial outcomes," he said. Xinhua Weibo Facebook Twitter Reddit Diigo Delicious Digg Linkedin MySpace Sina Weibo Kaixin Renren Q-zone Tencent Weibo Sohu Weibo NetEase Weibo Back to Top Close Photo taken on Jan. 29, 2018 shows a view of Gwadar port in southwest Pakistan's Gwadar. (Xinhua/Ahmad Kamal) by Misbah Saba Malik ISLAMABAD, Oct. 25 (Xinhua) -- "It made me believe in miracles," said 24-year-old Lata Mai who drives a 60-ton dump truck in a coal-based power plant in Thar desert of Pakistan's south Sindh province, a project under the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC). Belonging to an area where women are usually underprivileged and less educated, Mai dared to dream big. The childhood dream of Mai, now the mother of two, was to drive a vehicle on the barren road of Thar. But she knew it was a fancy thinking that would probably never be realized, until one day her husband brought a pamphlet home which said that the Thar coal project was hiring women to drive trucks. Mai, who had never shared her dream with anyone, hesitantly expressed her wish to apply for the post. Her husband merely laughed at the idea, but after seeing her determination, he agreed to support her. Naseem Memon of Sindh Engro Mining company, a member of the committee that hired Mai and dozens of other young women in Thar, told Xinhua that the women drivers are undergoing a 10-month training and will get behind the wheel in December. "Unlike other sectors, in a coal project, most of the mining jobs are related to truck driving. When we observed that women in Thar walk two to three miles a day in temperatures as high as 50 degrees Celsius, we believed that if we bring them to job sector, they can do wonders. We were right, they did not disappoint us, they are more hardworking than their male counterparts," said Memon. "You can imagine how CPEC has changed the lives of these women in a far flung desert of Pakistan. Women, who were utterly dependent on men, are now freely driving heavy dump trucks." Kiran Sidhwani, a young woman living in the Thar desert, also witnessed a surprising turn in her life after she got a job opportunity in the Thar coal power project. "She is a young university graduate who is working as an electrical engineer with us. Apart from Sidhwani, we have also hired a female civil engineer who will join work after completing her training," Memon told Xinhua. Pakistan's Minister for Human Rights Shireen Mazari said earlier this week that when CPEC moves beyond road construction to enter into the building process of economic zones, the standard of workforce will be raised in the country. "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," said the minister. According to the latest study of CPEC Center of Excellence, CPEC has the potential to create around 1.2 million jobs through the currently agreed projects, and the number may go up with the inclusion of new projects under its long term plan. The CPEC projects, including energy projects, infrastructure projects, Gwadar Port and industrial cooperation proposed under special economic zones in different provinces of the country, will immensely help reduce the unemployment rate in the country. Analysts believe that female employment rate in CPEC is low at this stage as the project mainly offers blue collar jobs, but with the development of economic zones, more white collar job opportunities will be offered and more women workforce will take part in it. A primary school has been established in Gwadar where 498 students including 348 girls are provided quality education to enable them to reap the benefits of CPEC-related projects in the Gwadar port. Women rights activists are hopeful that CPEC will not only be a game changer for Pakistan's economy, but will also provide opportunities to educated women as well as women laborers to utilize their talents. "Whole world is looking at CPEC, and Pakistan calls it a game changer, so it is very important that women, who make more than half of the country's population but only 22 percent of the work force, should be given an equal opportunity in it," Shaista Bukhari, president of the Women Rights Association South Punjab, told Xinhua. Source: Xinhua| 2018-10-26 11:48:49|Editor: Yang Yi Video Player Close WASHINGTON, Oct. 25 (Xinhua) -- The son of killed Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi has left Saudi Arabia and arrived in the United States on Thursday, reported U.S. media citing anonymous sources. Salah bin Jamal Khashoggi, the eldest son of the slain reporter, arrived in the United States after the Saudi authorities lifted an travel ban imposed on him, reported CNN. Earlier in the day, a U.S. State Department spokesperson revealed that Secretary of State Mike Pompeo had urged the Saudi government to release restrictions on Salah during his visit to Riyadh a week ago. On Thursday, the White House Spokeswoman Sarah Sanders said that President Donald Trump received a briefing from CIA director Gina Haspel after her trip to Turkey to investigate the case. "She briefed the President on their findings and discussions," said Sanders in a statement, without providing any details of the briefing. Khashoggi disappeared during a visit to the Saudi consulate in Istanbul, Turkey, on Oct. 2. After two weeks of denial, Riyadh admitted last Saturday that the journalist was killed during a physical fight with the people in the Saudi consulate, but did not give any explanation about the cause of his death. In his first public comments since the journalist's death, the Saudi crown prince promised on Wednesday that Khashoggi's killers would be brought to justice. So far, 18 Saudis have been arrested in connection with the incident. Source: Xinhua| 2018-10-26 11:48:49|Editor: Yang Yi Video Player Close CANBERRA, Oct. 26 (Xinhua) -- The Australian Federal Police (AFP) has helped counterparts in the United States, Spain and Colombia bust a major international drug ring. Authorities from the AFP, Colombian police, Spanish Civil Guard and U.S. Border Protection and Customs on Friday confirmed that 30 members of the ring, which specialized in cocaine trafficking on commercial flights, had been arrested. Of the 30 arrests, six were in Australia, 11 in Colombia, three in the United States and 10 in Spain. The ringleader, Spaniard Jorge Juan Merlo, was apprehended in Colombia. In addition to the arrests, authorities involved in Operation Ambassador seized 790 kg of cocaine, 200,000 U.S. dollars in cash, one firearm, 21 mobile phones and 10 vehicles. It is alleged that the cocaine was sent to the United States, Spain and Australia in suitcases on commercial flights. Payment for the drugs was then made by the recipient through currency exchanges. Merlo will face trafficking charges in the United States, Australia, Spain and Italy after authorities alleged he regularly travelled to the four nations to connect directly with criminals. Trafficking a commercial quantity of controlled drugs, which for cocaine is defined as 250 grams or more, carries a maximum penalty in Australia of life imprisonment. The AFP has highlighted international law enforcement and cooperation with international agencies as a "key area of emphasis," with a particular focus on fighting "transnational organized crime and corruption." Source: Xinhua| 2018-10-26 12:23:54|Editor: Yang Yi Video Player Close SYDNEY, Oct. 26 (Xinhua) -- Victoria has become the first state in Australia to sign a memorandum of understanding (MOU) with China on the Belt and Road Initiative. According to State Premier Daniel Andrews, the historic agreement means Victoria will be best placed in the country to capitalize on the trade and investment opportunities made possible by the global infrastructure project. "This new Australian first agreement sums up everything we have achieved with China over the past four years -- it means more trade and more Victorian jobs and an even stronger relationship with China," Andrews said on Thursday after he and Chinese Ambassador Cheng Jingye finalized the terms. The Silk Road Economic Belt and the 21st Century Maritime Silk Road Initiative, proposed in 2013, aims to build a trade and infrastructure network connecting Asia with Europe and Africa along the ancient trade routes of the Silk Road. The singing of the MOU comes as a result of an ambitious strategy set out by the State government in 2016 to strengthen the economy by increasing trade, the education sector, as well as its businesses and cultural ties with its largest trading partner China. With the relationship worth around 27 billion Australian (19.1 billion U.S.) dollars per year to the Victoria economy in merchandise trade alone, Andrews believes the agreement will now help cement Victoria as China's trade and investment gateway to Australia. "We said we'd reboot our relationship with China and we're getting it done," he said. "In four years we have more than tripled Victoria's share of Chinese investment in Australia and nearly doubled our exports to China." Currently in the midst of building the state's largest ever pipeline of infrastructure developments which include Melbourne's Metro Tunnel, the West Gate Tunnel and the North-East Link road project, Andrews said, "The expertise Victoria has when it comes to the delivery of these massive projects means we have the design and engineering skills China is looking for, meaning more jobs and more trade and investment for Victorians." Source: Xinhua| 2018-10-26 12:28:56|Editor: Yang Yi Video Player Close by Valentina Bastias Atias SANTIAGO, Oct. 25 (Xinhua) -- Terra Andes is the first Chilean honey brand to apply to China for export certification, and local experts saw it as a development that spells "goods news" for the country's producers as a whole. Home to more than 1.3 billion people, China's consumer market is a potential goldmine for the productive and export sectors, they believed. "The quality of our Chilean honey is very good, and we have noticed that in China, the public is very focused on that," said Juan Pablo Molina, founder of JPM Exports, Chile's leading exporter of honey in bulk, and owner of the Terra Andes brand. Molina got into honey production some 33 years ago, during a trip to southern Chile that introduced him to beekeeping and its close connection to nature. Today the company operates one of the most modern honey processing plants in Latin America. "We have been working for four years towards being able to sell to China. We are now close to achieving that since we have been visited by Chinese sanitary officials that evaluate sanitary protocols," said Molina. A Chinese delegation inspected the company's facility in Paine, a largely agricultural city near Chile's capital Santiago, in April 2017. Molina is hoping to get the sanitary permit by early 2019. A few months ago, the company's executives traveled to China to meet with a handful of supermarket chains interested in selling their product. The idea is to ship about 4,000 tons of honey, bottled "at the source and with a variety of flavors." Though the Terra Andes brand is relatively young, launched just a year ago, it has already received Chile's "Country Brand" seal designating a quality export product. JPM Exports works with 600 beekeepers across Chile, from the northern city of La Serena to the Chiloe archipelago off the south-central coast, so it offers "a very extensive and representative sampling of different geographies," said the company. Terra Andes exports to the United States and Canada, as well as Asia, including Thailand and Malaysia. Shipments to Japan and Singapore are also scheduled. Sales to China "are a done deal," awaiting only the green light of sanitary officials, which marks the last step in the export certification process, said the company. Statistics in 2017 showed Chile produced 9,000 tons of honey, 80 percent of it shipped abroad, mainly to the European Union, where Germany is the leading buyer. Last year, Chile ranked 20th among the world's top honey exporters, a list that includes China, the United States and Argentina. Source: Xinhua| 2018-10-26 13:39:06|Editor: Shi Yinglun Video Player Close SUVA, Oct. 26 (Xinhua) -- The Vanuatu government has awarded two international drone companies, Swoop Aero and Wingcopter, with commercial contracts to trial the use of drones to take lifesaving vaccines to children living in remote rural islands there. Ensuring vital supplies at health facilities are consistently available is an ongoing challenge for Vanuatu due to geography, logistics and high costs, the Vanuatu Daily Post online news reported on Friday. Director general of the Ministry of Health in Vanuatu George Taleo said an important step in dealing with challenges to provide healthcare to vulnerable communities was looking at innovative ways such as the use of drones to transport medical supplies. UNICEF Pacific representative Sheldon Yett said they were proud to partner with the Vanuatu government in such an innovative initiative to trial drones for delivering a reliable supply of vaccines to children living in remote communities." "The challenges of reaching children in the remote islands of Vanuatu are immense, nurses often walk several hours to deliver vaccines to health clinics in these communities. Every child in the world has the right to lifesaving vaccines and this technology is a step towards reaching those children most at risk," he added. Vanuatu is an island country in the Pacific, an archipelago of 83 islands that covers 1,600 km. About one-third of the inhabited islands have airfields and established roads, which creates considerable logistical challenges to reach, engage with and support remote communities. The first phase of the drone trials will take place on Dec. 3-7 when the two drone companies will test the viability of delivering vaccines to inaccessible areas. The second phase of the trial, which will transport vaccines to health facilities on the three islands, is expected to commence in early January 2019. Source: Xinhua| 2018-10-26 13:49:07|Editor: Shi Yinglun Video Player Close CANBERRA, Oct. 26 (Xinhua) -- The Australian government has announced new measures worth 7 billion Australian dollars (4.9 billion U.S. dollars) to drought-proof the nation. Prime Minister Scott Morrison, Deputy Prime Minister Andrew McCormack and senior members of government on Friday hosted more than 100 farmer representatives for a National Drought Summit to address the drought that has devastated farmers on Australia's east coast. Morrison used the meeting to announce a 5-billion-Australian dollar (3.5-billion-U.S. dollar) Future Drought Fund that would put "money aside for non-rainy days in the future." The government will provide an initial 3.9 billion Australian dollars for the fund, taken from the Building Australia Fund, growing to 5 Australian billion by 2028. Under the scheme, 100 million Australian dollars will be made available to future government every year from 2020 onwards to support local projects, infrastructure and research to support "long-term sustainability." "Our response to the drought has to be the same: deal with the here and now, but also make sure we plan for the future," Morrison said on Friday. "That's what the Future Drought Fund is all about. Putting money aside for non-rainy days in the future." "It guarantees drought support for the men and women who drive our nation. The challenges of drought vary from farm to farm, district to district, town to town and we continually need to adapt and build capacity - the Future Drought Fund gives us this opportunity." In addition to the landmark fund, Morrison revealed that the "Drought Communities Program," a system that provides local councils up to 1 million Australian dollars each for infrastructure projects, would be extended. "We have listened to farmers, their communities and their representatives in responding in this way," he said. The government will also provide charities supporting farmers with an additional 30 million Australian dollars and boost rural mental health services with 15 million Australian dollars. The New South Wales (NSW) Department of Primary Industries in August declared that 100 percent of the state was in drought while parts of Queensland have been in drought for over a decade. Annastacia Palaszczuk, the premier of Queensland, said that Morrison's raft of new measures did not do enough to immediately support farmers. "The farmers are hurting now, people are doing it tough," she told reporters in Canberra. "There needs to be some more up-front money to help those who are doing it tough." Palaszczuk was joined by Joel Fitzgibbon, the opposition Australian Labor Party's agriculture spokesperson, who raised questions about how the Future Drought Fund would be spent. "This is just an accounting trick designed to generate a big dollar headline for the government. It's fake money until it is allocated to program," he said. However, the National Farmers Federation (NFF), which has previously been critical of the government's drought relief package, was supportive. "We need a focus on building resilience and we need a focus on both rural and regional communities, as well as farming communities," NFF chief executive Fiona Simson said. Source: Xinhua| 2018-10-26 13:59:10|Editor: xuxin Video Player Close A colorful "Boracay" display is unveiled during the reopening ceremony of the Boracay Island, the Philippines, Oct. 26, 2018. The world famous Boracay Island reopened its beaches and waters to tourists amid pomp and fanfare on Friday after six months of rehabilitation and cleanup. (Xinhua/Rouelle Umali) BORACAY, the Philippines, Oct. 26 (Xinhua) -- The wait is over. The world famous Boracay Island reopened its beaches and waters to tourists amid pomp and fanfare on Friday after six months of rehabilitation and cleanup. Visitors were greeted by the island in a merrymaking mood, with dancers showing off an orchestrated number during the grand opening ceremony, just along the pristine white shores. Hordes of tourists thronged onto the island with excitement, most of whom arrived early in the morning at the Caticlan Port and are impressed by how the island has completely changed. "Boracay is always my go-to place, it's like my escape from stress. So, seeing it like this, even more beautiful than before, makes me want to come back again," tourist Jane Narciso said. According to the Philippine Department of Environment and Natural Resources, the island is expecting more than 6,000 tourists on the first day of the soft opening, but this carrying capacity is being closely monitored in the ports of entry to avoid the mistakes of the past. The reopening was a proud moment for the Philippine government who poured the needed effort to make the white sand spotless, and the water clean and safe ahead of the opening. However, the state of the roads is a different story. The main road to the island is still under construction, and some areas are not yet accessible to vehicles. The government said that there is nothing to worry about as 80 percent of road reconstructions for the first phase have already been finished. Many restaurants and hotels are still closed due to non-compliance, but more establishments are expected to reopen in the coming months as soon as their business permits are cleared by the concerned agencies. The Inter-Agency Task Force, which is responsible for the rehabilitation work, admitted that there is still much work to be done, and asked for patience from the tourists, after receiving reports of visitors getting confused about the unfinished rehabilitation. "This is only the first phase of rehabilitation, we have a lot to do in the next months. So, we ask our stakeholders to help us in taking care of the beauty and cleanliness of the island," Philippine Tourism Secretary Bernadette Puyat said. Boracay will go through two more phases of rehabilitation which will last until December 2019. In spite of the six-month hiatus in Boracay, the tourism department is confident that they still reach their target of 7.5 million total arrivals in the whole country by the end of 2018. The stakeholders of the island also want the lessons of Boracay to set an example of how proper handling of the environment should be. "The lessons learned here are not for Boracay alone but also for the other island destinations in our beautiful country. It will not end in Boracay. It is just the beginning," Puyat added. Source: Xinhua| 2018-10-26 14:29:16|Editor: Shi Yinglun Video Player Close NEW DELHI, Oct. 26 (Xinhua) -- India and Bangladesh have signed a slew of pacts for enhancing inland and coastal waterways connectivity between the two nations. "The two countries have signed an agreement to use Chattogram and Mongla Ports in Bangladesh for movement of goods to and from India. A Standard Operating Procedure has also been signed for movement of passenger and cruise services," Indian Shipping Secretary Gopal Krishna told media Thursday evening, after he inked the pacts with his Bangladeshi counterpart in Delhi. An addendum to "Protocol on Inland Water Transit and Trade" between India and Bangladesh has also been signed for the inclusion of Dhubri in India and Pangaonin in Bangladesh as new ports of call. These agreements will facilitate easier movement of goods and passengers between the two countries, giving an impetus to trade and tourism, an official release said. The Indian side has also proposed for extension of the protocol routes from the eastern city of Kolkata up to Silchar town in the northeastern state of Assam, the government said. Currently 3.5 MMT cargo is transported on protocol routes through inland waterways and it is expected to increase substantially after declaration of additional ports of call and extension of protocol routes between the two countries. Source: Xinhua| 2018-10-26 14:39:18|Editor: Shi Yinglun Video Player Close OTTAWA, Oct. 25 (Xinhua) -- Trade ministers from 12 countries and the European Union met here Thursday to discuss how to reform the World Trade Organization (WTO). The closed-door meeting, hosted by Canada's Minister of International Trade Diversification Jim Carr, focused on three main themes that need immediate actions, namely dispute settlement, negotiation and the effectiveness of the WTO. The WTO finds itself faced with serious challenges which are putting the multilateral trading system under stress since U.S. President Donald Trump said he was not happy with the organization. The United States has openly blocked the appointments of new judges to the WTO's dispute settlement mechanism, known as the appellate body, a tactic that threatens to paralyze the organization and prevent it from making decisions. The 12 WTO members hope to convince the two biggest economies -- the United States and China, to save the beleaguered body, but gave no timeline to bring them into the talks. The meeting was designed to proceed transparently, engage additional members when appropriate and ultimately lead to advancing ideas and suggestions to the broader WTO membership for consideration and discussion. Carr told at a press conference after the meeting that building consensus on specific reforms will take time and will be impossible without approval from China and the United States, which were invited to take part in the day-long meeting. He said many nations have seen the value looking at new ways to approach old problems. "It's time for reform," he noted. Source: Xinhua| 2018-10-26 14:54:21|Editor: Li Xia Video Player Close Li Zhanshu (R), chairman of the Standing Committee of the National People's Congress (NPC), meets with Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe at the Great Hall of the People in Beijing, capital of China, Oct. 26, 2018. (Xinhua/Liu Weibing) BEIJING, Oct. 26 (Xinhua) -- China's top legislator Li Zhanshu on Friday met with Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, calling for steady and progressive development of bilateral ties. Li, chairman of the Standing Committee of the National People's Congress (NPC), said this year marks the 40th anniversary of the signing of the China-Japan Treaty of Peace and Friendship, and relations between the two countries are at an important point. He called on the two sides to enhance the sense of mission and responsibility to implement high-level political consensus on the basis of the four political documents between China and Japan, adhere to the direction of peaceful coexistence and lasting friendship, cement political mutual trust, expand mutually beneficial cooperation, develop the friendship between the Chinese and Japanese people, so as to achieve steady and progressive development of bilateral relations. "The NPC stands ready to enhance exchanges at various levels between legislative bodies of the two countries, therefore providing political, legal and policy support for the development of bilateral ties," Li said. Abe said Japan attaches great importance to relations with China and welcomes China's development. He said Japan hopes to take the 40th anniversary of the signing of the treaty as an opportunity to promote high-level exchanges, facilitate cooperation across the board, and push Japan-China relations into a new stage of development. Source: Xinhua| 2018-10-26 15:04:23|Editor: xuxin Video Player Close MOSCOW, Oct. 26 (Xinhua) -- Russia's Northern Fleet will receive its first Tor-M2DT air defense missile systems in November, local media reported Friday. The first battalion of Arctic version of Tor-M2DT air defense missile systems will enter service with air defense units in November, Alexander Leonov, chief of the Russian Land Force's Air Defense Lieutenant, was quoted by TASS news agency as saying. According to Leonov, the Tor-M2 family is the most efficient means of combating all types of aerial targets, including low-observable unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs). In January, Russian defense ministry said Russian troops in the far north and the Arctic will be equipped with the Tor-M2DT autonomous short-range anti-aircraft missile system in the year. The Tor-M2DT is the Arctic version of the Tor-M2 air defense missile system. The system has 16 vertically-launched air defense missiles with a range of 12 km and an altitude up to 10,000 meters and can operate in manual and automatic modes. It can operate in harsh conditions of the Arctic and the Extreme North at temperatures down to minus 50 degrees Celsius. Russia is strengthening defense forces in the Arctic as it has stepped up efforts to exploit resources in the region and explore a polar shipping route. Source: Xinhua| 2018-10-26 15:34:27|Editor: Lu Hui Video Player Close HANGZHOU, Oct. 26 (Xinhua) -- A suspect has been returned to China from Ghana as part of a campaign against economic fugitives, police in east China's Zhejiang Province announced Thursday. With the help of the Chinese embassy in Ghana, the suspect surnamed Guo was brought back to China during the Fox Hunt campaign, which targets people suspected of economic crimes who have fled overseas. According to Zhejiang police, Guo forged purchases and sales contracts and filed a tax return to the administration of taxation in the city of Quzhou, and illegally obtained a tax refund of more than 6 million yuan (862,000 U.S. dollars) from May 2014 to July 2015. Guo fled to Ghana in Feb. 2016, police said. The people's procuratorate of Qujiang district in the city of Quzhou approved Guo's arrest in April 2018. The International Police Organisation (Interpol) issued a red notice for Guo in June. Guo was sent back to China on Tuesday after being arrested by Ghanaian police. Source: Xinhua| 2018-10-26 16:04:36|Editor: Lu Hui Video Player Close BEIJING, Oct. 26 (Xinhua) -- China's central bank said Friday that it has inked a bilateral currency swap agreement with its counterpart in Japan. The agreement will allow the two sides to swap a total of 200 billion yuan (about 28.78 billion U.S. dollars) for 3.4 trillion Japanese yen, and vice versa, the People's Bank of China (PBOC) said on its website. The move was aimed at enhancing financial stability of the two countries and facilitating bilateral economic and financial exchanges, the PBOC said. The agreement will be valid for three years and can be extended by mutual consent. A currency swap deal allows two institutions to exchange payments in one currency for equivalent amounts in the other to facilitate bilateral trade settlements and provide liquidity support to financial markets. The two sides also signed a memorandum of cooperation for a yuan clearing arrangement in Japan. The PBOC said the Bank of China's Tokyo branch has been designated as the yuan clearing bank in Japan. The arrangement will make it easier for the two countries' companies and financial institutions to conduct cross-border transactions using the yuan, and facilitate bilateral trade and investment, the PBOC said. Source: Xinhua| 2018-10-26 16:09:37|Editor: xuxin Video Player Close BISHKEK, Oct. 26 (Xinhua) -- More than 500 people have been convicted of extremist crimes in Kyrgyzstan, an official told the country's Kabar News Agency on Thursday. At the Central Asian Dialogue on Effective Prison Management of Violent Extremist and Terrorist Offenders held in Bishkek, Chief of the Legal Support Department Aivaz Kadyrov said that 96 of the criminals are kept in investigatory jails, 164 in closed institutions, 206 in penal colonies and 16 sentenced to life imprisonment. He also added that in recent years there has been an increase in the number of people convicted of crimes of a terrorist nature or an extremist orientation in Kyrgyzstan. The dialogue was organized by the Penal Reform International Office (PRI) in collaboration with the State Service for Punishment Execution of the Kyrgyz Republic and the UN Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC). The forum brought together representatives of penitentiary services from five central Asia countries -- Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan. Source: Xinhua| 2018-10-26 16:09:37|Editor: xuxin Video Player Close SEOUL, Oct. 26 (Xinhua) -- South Korea and the Democratic People's Republic of Korea (DPRK) agreed Friday to pull out 11 guard posts in border area on a trial basis by late November. The agreement was reached after a general-grade military dialogue was held earlier in the day at Tongilgak, a DPRK building in the truce village of Panmunjom. The military delegations of the two sides adopted a joint statement after the talks, which said South Korea and the DPRK agreed to withdraw troops and equipment and completely destroy 11 guard posts by the end of November. Seoul and Pyongyang already agreed in the past military dialogue to pull out guard posts on a trial basis from the Demilitarized Zone (DMZ), which has left the Korean Peninsula divided since the 1950-1953 Korean War ended with armistice. Through a joint verification in December, the two Koreas agreed to wrap up the guard post withdrawal by the end of this year, according to the joint statement. Based on the result of the pilot pullout, the two sides agreed to make working-level discussions for the withdrawal of all guard posts in the inter-Korean border area, the statement said. Source: Xinhua| 2018-10-26 17:24:51|Editor: Li Xia Video Player Close NEW DELHI, Oct. 26 (Xinhua) -- India's exports rose by 9.8 percent in 2017-2018 financial year, which is the highest rate of growth in six years, said Indian Minister of Commerce and Industry Suresh Prabhu on Friday. According to official figures, India's total exports during 2017-2018 period stood at 302.84 billion U.S. dollars. The positive growth in India's exports assumes significance as it took place at a time when there was a lot of negative headwinds globally, the minister said while speaking at the "Export Summit 2018" organized by the Confederation of Indian Industry (CII) in the Indian capital. He further stated that his ministry was working on how to revitalize India's exports by holding consultations with key exporting ministries in order to formulate sectoral, commodity and territory specific export strategy. Certain issues which were affecting growth of exports had been specifically taken up with the department of revenue and the ministry of environment, he said. "The soon-to-be-unveiled agri-export policy will give a major boost to the agricultural sector and will pave the way for Indian farmer's income to be doubled," he added. Also present on the occasion was Directorate General of Foreign Trade (DGFT) Alok Vardhan Chaturvedi, who spoke about the recent initiatives taken by the ministry of commerce to smoothen procedures for exporters. "DGFT is planning to have online export related courses to inform, train and facilitate first time exporters. The DGFT is also in the process of overhauling the information technology (IT) network of the DGFT so that there is no wastage of time for online submission of documents," said Chaturvedi. Source: Xinhua| 2018-10-26 17:24:51|Editor: Li Xia Video Player Close HONG KONG, Oct. 26 (Xinhua) -- The Education Bureau of China's Hong Kong Special Administrative Region (HKSAR) government announced Friday that the launch of a Belt and Road Scholarship for students from Myanmar. The scholarship was launched with a view to attracting outstanding students from Myanmar to pursue undergraduate studies in Hong Kong from the 2019/2020 academic year, according to the Education Bureau. Under the scholarship scheme, up to 10 scholarships will be offered annually to students from Myanmar who are enrolled in first-year undergraduate programs of publicly funded institutions in Hong Kong. All awardees will receive scholarships to cover the full tuition fees of relevant programs annually. The Education Bureau also signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) on Friday with the Ministry of Education of Myanmar on education cooperation to enhance education collaboration between the two places. The MoU, which provides a framework to facilitate strategic collaboration between the education communities of Hong Kong and Myanmar, covers initiatives including provision of scholarships for students, exchange of expertise and experience. "Signing the MOU with Myanmar and launching a new Belt and Road Scholarship can further internationalize the Hong Kong's higher education sector and enrich our pool of talents with international perspectives, with a view to contributing to the future development of Hong Kong," said Choi Yuk-lin, the HKSAR government's under secretary for education who signed the MOU with Deputy Minister of Education of Myanmar Win Maw Tun. To internationalize and diversify Hong Kong's higher education sector and groom talents with global vision and an international network to enhance human capital, the Education Bureau launched the Belt and Road Scholarship for Indonesia in the 2016/2017 academic year and expanded it to cover Malaysia and Thailand in the 2017/2018 academic year. The scholarship awardees can act as ambassadors to strengthen exchange and people-to-people bonds between Hong Kong and these places, the bureau said. Source: Xinhua| 2018-10-26 18:09:59|Editor: Li Xia Video Player Close HARARE, Oct. 26 (Xinhua) -- At least 37 illegal foreign currency dealers who were arrested in Harare under "Operation Dzosai mari" over the past few days have appeared at the Harare Magistrate's Court, with 10 of them being convicted for the offences and forfeiting their money to the State. Dzosai mari is the vernacular Shona for "return the money". The convicted will also do community service, while the remaining 27, who are still on trial, were granted bail ranging between 100 and 200 U.S. dollars depending on the amount of money they were found in possession of. The Herald newspaper reported Friday that they appeared on separate records before magistrates Rumbidzai Mugwagwa and Nyasha Vhitorini for contravening exchange control regulations which criminalize the illegal trading in foreign currency. The two magistrates said they convicted the illegal foreign currency dealers because they were sabotaging the economy by channeling huge sums of cash to unproductive sectors. They also took note of the fact that while banks were dry, the illegal traders were very liquid. Those who were convicted had their jail terms commuted to community service on condition of good behavior. Charity Mugoni (22) was sentenced to eight months in prison and four months were suspended for five years on condition she does not commit a similar offence within that period. The remaining four months were set aside on condition she performs 140 hours of community service. She forfeited 2,220 South African rands, 405 dollars in bond notes and 150 U.S. dollars to the State. The operation against the parallel market is being conducted by the police together with other stakeholders. About 170 illegal foreign currency dealers have so far been arrested countrywide since the operation began. The black market has been blamed for the rise in prices of basic commodities in recent weeks. Source: Xinhua| 2018-10-26 18:25:02|Editor: Li Xia Video Player Close SHANGHAI, Oct. 26 (Xinhua) -- The upcoming China International Import Expo (CIIE) is a big opportunity for businesses to connect with each other, which is even more important than showcasing products and services, said a renowned Malaysian fashion designer. China has opened up its market to the world and welcomes everybody regardless of their country or color, said Prof. Jimmy Choo Yeang Keat OBE, co-founder of London-based luxury shoe brand Jimmy Choo, in a recent exclusive interview with Xinhua. The first CIIE will be held in Shanghai on Nov. 5-10. More than 2,800 companies from over 130 countries and regions have so far confirmed participation in the event, while more than 100 new products and technologies are expected to debut at the expo. Among these is Genavant, a luxury brand newly founded by Choo and his godson, jewelry designer Reggie Hung. The brand, which features jewelry-studded shoes, is set to unveil one such pair priced at 30 million yuan (about 4.3 million U.S. dollars) at the CIIE. "I have never done a whole pair of shoes covered with pink diamonds before. We spent almost one year on it," Choo said. Noting that the expo is "big news" and "not only for China but the whole world," the 70-year-old said, "We cannot say enough of thanks to the organization for having invited us." He considered himself to still be a student, despite his 40 years of experience in the business, and said he wants feedback via the expo. Describing China as "strong, progressive and international," Choo remembered children asking him, "Can you speak Mandarin?" in Shanghai 10 years ago. Now, he said, he hears more people speaking good English in the city. Choo, whose parents came from China, said Chinese traditions, manners and the virtue of being easy to get along with had a profound influence on his life. He has also incorporated Chinese elements such as fabric and art into his design. A tenacious shoemaker who made his first pair of shoes at the tender age of 11 and started his business from scratch in London, Choo believes that creativity comes through skills. "All factories turned me down when I first asked them to make shoes for me. 'Why should I be helping you? You're not famous.' If I didn't have the skills, I wouldn't be here today talking to you," Choo said. He said there has been an increased presence of young talented Chinese designers at events such as Shanghai Fashion Week in recent years. "The young people of China are more determined and not scared to mix with the international community. They let their country feel very proud of what they are doing." Renowned for designing shoes for the late Princess Diana, Choo remembered his parents' disbelief at hearing him being invited to serve a member of the British royal family. "They said, 'How come Diana wants to see you? You are Chinese and not somebody special.'" The honorary Officer of the Order of the British Empire described Diana as being very nice when he interacted with her. "She always encouraged me: 'Jimmy, it doesn't matter. Now you are working hard. One day you will deserve what you want.'" Talking about his next big dream, Choo said he will continue to work on education, which he has been devoted to for 30 years. "Money is good, but education is also very important," he said, adding that he wants to train more young people and give them more opportunities. Source: Xinhua| 2018-10-26 18:30:02|Editor: Li Xia Video Player Close BEIRUT, Oct. 26 (Xinhua) -- A storm in the past hours ripped out plastic refugee camps in Wazzani, a village in Hasbaya district in southwestern Lebanon, local media reported Friday. The heavy storm resulted in damage in this area, according to a statement published by Elnashra, an online independent newspaper. More than 1 million Syrian refugees are registered with the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees in Lebanon, while the government estimates the true number of Syrians in the country at 1.5 million. A big number of these refugees live in camps in Lebanon. Source: Xinhua| 2018-10-26 18:30:02|Editor: xuxin Video Player Close NEW DELHI, Oct. 26 (Xinhua) -- India's main opposition Congress party on Friday held massive protests across Delhi and in several other parts of the country against the "illegal" removal of the head of the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI). In the national capital, the protests were led by Congress chief Rahul Gandhi who marched towards the CBI headquarters and then courted arrest along with leaders of some other Indian opposition parties, including Delhi's ruling Aam Aadmi Party. "Congress President, Sh. Rahul Gandhi & other leaders arrested," Congress spokesperson R.S. Surjewala tweeted as local media beamed footage of the Nehru-Gandhi scion and other opposition leaders being bundled into a vehicle and taken to a nearby police station. Delhi Police later denied that Gandhi was arrested. "He has only been brought to the police station for staging protests and blocking traffic," a police official said. Moments after Gandhi emerged out of the police station, he addressed the media. "The government can arrest me as many times as it wants but our protests will continue. We will protest against corruption," he said. Similar protests were led by senior Congress leaders outside CBI offices in other parts of the country as well. The Congress party has been up in arms against the Indian government's interference in the functioning of CBI, the premier probe agency, since CBI director Alok Verma and his deputy were sent on forced leave few days back after both traded allegations of bribery against each other. Gandhi has termed Verma's removal as a "disgraceful and unconstitutional attempt" by Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi to preempt a probe into his government's alleged role in a deal to acquire Rafale fighter jets from France, an allegation denied by the government as "false". Meanwhile, the country's Supreme Court this morning ordered the Central Vigilance Commission (CVC), the country's highest anti-graft body, to complete the corruption probe against the CBI chief within two weeks and that too under the supervision of a retired judge. "We make it clear that the introspect or supervision of the ongoing enquiry by a former judge is a one-time exception felt necessary by this court on the peculiar facts of this case and does not reflect on the functioning of the CVC," Chief Justice Ranjan Gogoi-led bench said. The legal direction came in the wake of a plea by Verma in the Supreme Court against his compulsory leave as the CBI director enjoys a fixed tenure of two years. In his plea, he said that the probe agency was handling sensitive cases, including against his deputy. "The court will take a call in the case only after completion of the probe by the highest anti-graft body. The court has also barred the interim CBI director from taking any policy decision till the next date of hearing in November," a lawyer said. The general elections are due next year and the issue of the removal of CBI director is gradually snowballing into a major controversy. Source: Xinhua| 2018-10-26 18:35:03|Editor: xuxin Video Player Close SARAJEVO, Oct. 26 (Xinhua) -- Two Bosnia and Herzegovina's (BiH) police officers were killed in a crossfire with car robbers on Friday morning. At around 4:00 a.m. (0200 GMT) in the capital Sarajevo, two policemen opened fire on thieves while they were stealing a car, then the perpetrators escaped. One police officer was killed and another passed away in the hospital due to a severe head injury, according to the Ministry of Internal Affairs of Canton Sarajevo. A further investigation is underway. The police didn't provide more details. In the first half of 2018, 243 cars were stolen in BiH, and 150 of the cars were in Canton Sarajevo. Source: Xinhua| 2018-10-26 18:35:03|Editor: Lu Hui Video Player Close Chinese President Xi Jinping, also general secretary of the Communist Party of China Central Committee and chairman of the Central Military Commission, shakes hands with military officers as he inspects the Southern Theater Command of the People's Liberation Army, Oct. 25, 2018. (Xinhua/Li Gang) GUANGZHOU, Oct. 26 (Xinhua) -- Chinese President Xi Jinping on Thursday inspected the Southern Theater Command of the People's Liberation Army and stressed advancing capacity-building for commanding. Xi, also general secretary of the Communist Party of China Central Committee and chairman of the Central Military Commission, ordered a thorough implementation of the Party's thought on building a strong army in the new era. Source: Xinhua| 2018-10-26 18:45:05|Editor: xuxin Video Player Close ULAN BATOR, Oct. 26 (Xinhua) -- Mongolia has extracted a total of 5.12 million barrels or 694,000 tons of crude oil from the beginning of the year to Oct. 19, data from the Ministry of Mining and Heavy Industry showed Friday. Of these, 4.83 million barrels or 655,000 tons were exported to China, according to the data. The mineral-rich Asian country plans to extract a total of 8.1 million barrels or 1.1 million tons of crude oil this year. The country has so far implemented 63.19 percent of its extraction plan and 59.57 percent of its export plan. Currently, there is no oil refinery in Mongolia. The first one in the country is expected to be commissioned in late 2022. Source: Xinhua| 2018-10-26 18:45:06|Editor: Yurou Video Player Close MUMBAI, Oct. 26 (Xinhua) -- China and India should enhance cooperation to boost each country's cinematic ideologies across the world, Indian television actor Gagan Malik has told Xinhua in an interview. Gagan, a popular television actor, who shot to fame for his role as Lord Rama in the television serial Ramayana, said Sri Siddhartha Gautama, an epic biographical film about Buddha that released in 2013 has given a breakthrough in Gagan's career. For his role as Buddha in the film, he has won Best Actor Award in the world Buddhist Film Festival organized by the United Nations. Gagan is about to attend the 5th World Buddhist forum, which is to be held in Putian city of China's Fujian province from Oct. 28 to Oct. 30. The forum will be based on the theme The Harmony of Mutual Exchange, aiming to provide an opportunity for the exchange of insightful Buddhist practices amongst participants and to spread the concept of Dharma internationally. Talking about the forum, the Indian actor said that it's a great honor for him to attend such forums since he believes the pleasure of Dharma "has to be spread across the world. "If we combine 60,000 movie theaters (from China and India) all together to release Indian movies in China and Chinese movies in India, definitely we will leave Hollywood behind. I am sure about it. We are ready, our companies are also ready for it including Bollywood and even the south that is another film industry in India. As I said, we will release Chinese movies in India, we can dub it in theatres, and we could give a chance." Gagan expressed his aspirations to make a collaboration between the Chinese and Indian film industries. The importance of media for spreading the goodness of Dharma between India and China is his major argument throughout the interview. He also said that he and his production partner has already discussed about starting a film production company that targets Chinese and Indian markets. They already have a few scripts ready in hand to make movies in collaborating with big companies in China. Source: Xinhua| 2018-10-26 18:45:07|Editor: xuxin Video Player Close MOSCOW, Oct. 26 (Xinhua) -- A flood caused by torrential rains in the Russian Krasnodar region in the North Caucasus on the Black Sea coast has destroyed 2,365 residential houses in 29 settlements with a population of 5,300 people, the Russian Emergencies Ministry said Friday. According to the ministry, an emergency situation was declared in three districts of the region. It said in a statement that six people were killed by the flood, two people were hospitalized, one person received medical help and another one was considered missing. Rescuers evacuated 270 residents, including 48 children, and accommodated them in temporary shelters. The rains and floods also disrupted power supplies to 20 settlements and water supplies to 11 localities, and the supplies are being restored. Several railway trains were stopped because of the damage caused to a local railway line with more than 500 people moved to hotels and mother and child care rooms at railway stations. The passengers are going to be evacuated by buses, the statement said. More than 1,460 people and 330 units of equipment were involved in dealing with the flood damage, it said. According to the weather forecast, the rains will be weakening on Friday and will not affect the course of emergency recovery work, the ministry said. Source: Xinhua| 2018-10-26 18:50:08|Editor: xuxin Video Player Close LOS ANGELES, Oct. 25 (Xinhua) -- The Consulate General of China in Los Angeles confirmed Thursday that no Chinese citizens had died in super typhoon Yutu that has hit the Northern Mariana Islands. The consulate said to have received phone calls asking for help from the islands in the western Pacific Ocean, which suffered "one of the most powerful typhoons," as described earlier by local authorities. A 24-hour hotline has been provided for Chinese citizen trapped on the islands, the consulate added. Yutu, which hit the island territories overnight on Wednesday, caused extensive damage to critical infrastructure on Saipan and Tinian islands, and displaced many families, said the Northern Mariana Islands Governor's Office. With sustained winds of over 270 km per hour, the powerful storm tore up roofs and pulled down trees and power lines in the Marianas, the office said. The island "has been devastated," said Tinian Mayor Joey San Nicolas in a video posted on Facebook. "Our critical infrastructure has been compromised. We currently have no power and water and our ports are inaccessible," he said. Consisting of 15 islands which accommodate over 50,000 residents, the islands welcomed an arrival of 653,150 tourists last year, and China was ranked as the second largest source, the Marianas Visitors Authority said. Yutu is now heading toward the northern Philippines. Source: Xinhua| 2018-10-26 19:10:10|Editor: Yurou Video Player Close BEIJING, Oct. 26 (Xinhua) -- China's top legislature on Friday passed a resolution to introduce "default judgment" in criminal trials to prosecute suspects who stay overseas and are involved in offenses of corruption, severely endangering state security or terrorist activities. To qualify a trial involving "default judgment" of the latter two types of crimes, there should be a time-sensitive urgency in handling the case and an approval from the Supreme People's Procuratorate, according to the revised Criminal Procedure Law. In the meantime, the revision also imposes stringent rules, requiring the courts to examine whether a case is applicable to a "default judgment." If a court decides to proceed with a trial in the absence of the defendant, a subpoena and indictment papers should be delivered through relevant channels, the revision says. It also gives the defendant the right to an attorney, who could also be entrusted by the defendant's close relatives, or assigned by legal aid agencies. After the judgement is issued, the defendant and the close relatives could also appeal to the court of the next higher level, the revised law says. Source: Xinhua| 2018-10-26 19:15:10|Editor: xuxin Video Player Close SKOPJE, Oct. 26 (Xinhua) -- Macedonia will send 12 servicemen to Afghanistan in November on a North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO)-led mission, Macedonian Defense Minister Radmila Sekerinska said Thursday. Speaking in front of the Parliament's Defense and Security Committee, the defense minister said the servicemen will participate in the missions for six months in the Train, Advice and Assist Command-West, part of NATO's Resolute Support Mission in Afghanistan. She said that the funding for compensation and wages will be covered by Macedonia, whereas transport, accommodation and food costs are provided by partner countries. Apart from the 12 servicemen that will be deployed in Afghanistan, Macedonia will also take part in the European Union-led military operation ALTHEA for six months with one staff officer in Bosnia and Herzegovina, Sekerinska said. "The decision for us to participate in the missions is reached in the Parliament, but it is a fact that our army in the name of interoperability and NATO membership will have to have more troops in NATO-led missions," said Sekerinska. In July, during the NATO summit in Brussels, NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg announced the military bloc's decision to invite the Macedonian government to start accession talks. On Aug. 21, the Macedonian government received the guidelines it needs to meet the NATO accession conditions within a period of 18 months. The document included a number of political, economic, security and judicial conditions that should be implemented by April 2020. Source: Xinhua| 2018-10-26 19:25:12|Editor: Xiang Bo Video Player Close Photo taken on Oct. 26, 2018 shows road damaged by a strong earthquake measuring 6.4 on the Richter scale which hit the Ionian Sea at Zakynthos, Greece. A strong earthquake measuring 6.4 on the Richter scale hit western Greece early Friday, with no casualties reported so far, Greek seismologists have said. (Xinhua/Antonis Nikolopoulos) ATHENS, Oct. 26 (Xinhua) -- A strong earthquake measuring 6.4 on the Richter scale hit western Greece early Friday, with no casualties reported so far, Greek seismologists have said. The tremor's epicenter was located in the sea area some 44 km southwest of Zakynthos island in the Ionian Sea at a depth of 10 km, about 280 km southwest of Athens, according to revised estimates of the Athens Geodynamics Institute of the National Observatory. The strong quake hit the island at 1:53 a.m. local time (2253 GMT on Thursday), followed by a 5.6-magnitude aftershock and a 5.1-magnitude tremor that struck the same area 16 minutes and 29 minutes later respectively, according to a revised official press statement released by the National Observatory. The tremor has caused material damage and electricity cuts and prompted residents to run out onto the streets, according to the Greek national news agency AMNA. According to deputy governor of Zakynthos Lefteris Niotopoulos, the infrastructure has withstood the tremor and electricity has been restored. However, schools and public services will remain closed on Friday as experts are checking the buildings, he said. Greek seismologists called for calm. The 6.4-magnitude quake was most likely the main tremor, Efthymios Lekkas, president of Greece's Earthquake Planning and Protection Organization, told local "Parapolitika" (Behind the scene) radio station. "It will not be a surprise for scientists if tremors up to 6.2 on the Richter scale are recorded in the following hours," Gerasimos Papadopoulos, director of the Athens Geodynamic Institute, told local news portal "in-gr." In 1999, over 100 people were killed when a 6-magnitude quake hit Athens. In 1953, more than 400 were killed on Zakynthos and nearby islands when a 7.3 quake hit the Ionian Sea. In 1997 a 6.6 tremor caused material damages. Source: Xinhua| 2018-10-26 19:35:15|Editor: xuxin Video Player Close ANKARA, Oct. 26 (Xinhua) -- Saudi Arabia's chief prosecutor will visit Istanbul on Sunday as part of the investigation of Khashoggi's case, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan said on Friday. Speaking at a meeting of the ruling Justice and Development Party, Erdogan said the Saudi prosecutor will meet his Turkish counterpart during the visit. Stating that Turkey has further information and documents about the 18 suspects related to the case, Erdogan called on Saudi Arabia to hand over them to Turkey. He also said Riyadh needs to disclose the identity of its "local cooperator" who purportedly took Khashoggi's body from Saudi agents after the journalist was killed at the consulate in Istanbul on Oct. 2. Jamal Khashoggi, a columnist for The Washington Post and a critic of the Saudi government, disappeared and reportedly died after he entered the Saudi consulate in Istanbul on Oct. 2. Turkish government described the killing as a planned political murder. Saudi prosecutors said Thursday that Turkish evidence indicates that the killing was premeditated. Source: Xinhua| 2018-10-26 19:40:16|Editor: Yurou Video Player Close BEIJING, Oct. 26 (Xinhua) -- China's top legislature on Friday passed a regulation on the ranking system for firefighting personnel. The regulation was designed to create a more standardized and professional force, increase responsibility, honor and discipline, and better command and manage the country's firefighting rescue team to ensure the team performs its duty in accordance with the law. The regulation was adopted at the closing meeting of a bi-monthly session of the National People's Congress Standing Committee. According to the regulation, firefighting personnel ranking is the basis for how they are treated by the country. It reads, "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. The regulation will enter into effect on Oct. 27. Source: Xinhua| 2018-10-26 19:40:16|Editor: Yurou Video Player Close HOHHOT, Oct. 26 (Xinhua) -- The Jilu Fortress, an important military construction on a section of the Great Wall built during the Han dynasty (206 BC to 220 AD), has undergone two years of restoration in north China's Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region. The name of the fortress has appeared in a large number of literary work written by famous Chinese poets through history and literally translates to English as "chicken and deer". "Who stirred up fighting at Jilu Fortress, as fire beacons were sent from the frontier ceaselessly," wrote famous Chinese Tang dynasty (618-907) poet Li Shangyin. The ruins of the rock fortress cover 4,700 square meters in the shape of a square. There are defense walls surrounding the interior city, while beacon towers can be seen in the distance from the north and southwest directions of the ancient city. Wang Weiqing, cultural chief in Dengkou County, said the restoration began in 2016 with 10.12 million yuan (1.45 million U.S. dollars) of funds earmarked by the State Administration of Cultural Heritage. The repair aimed to use traditional building techniques to restore the fortress back to its original look, he said. Along with the restoration, the region's cultural relic institute carried out archeological research on the ruins, which further assisted the restoration work in line with the original layout, said Wang. The Great Wall was built over centuries as a defense by the imperial court against northern tribes. The oldest sections of the Great Wall date back to around 200 B.C., when the first emperor of Qin required a fortress to be built. Source: Xinhua| 2018-10-26 19:40:16|Editor: xuxin Video Player Close MANILA, Oct. 26 (Xinhua) -- Three government soldiers and one Abu Sayyaf militant were killed following an encounter in Sulu province of the southern Philippines on Friday morning, the military said. In a statement from the Western Mindanao Command of the Armed Forces of the Philippines, the military said marines encountered an undetermined number of Abu Sayyaf militants on Friday morning in a town called Patikul in Sulu province. After a gun battle which lasted for several minutes, three marines were killed and three others endured minor injuries, according to the military statement. The military said the troops recovered one dead body of the Abu Sayyaf militant after the firefight. Patikul is a stronghold of the Abu Sayyaf militants in the Philippines. The group is notorious for carrying out kidnappings, bombings and beheadings in western Mindanao, particularly in their lair in the island provinces of Basilan and Sulu. The Abu Sayyaf Group, numbering about 500, have been sowing terror in the southern Philippine region since the early 1990s. Source: Xinhua| 2018-10-26 20:05:20|Editor: xuxin Video Player Close DENVER, the United States, Oct. 25 (Xinhua) -- Outdoor retail giant Patagonia has stepped into the political arena by endorsing two candidates running for the U.S. Senate. "Hundreds of corporations back political candidates," Patagonia spokesperson Tessa Byars said. "The difference with our activism is that we put our logo on it." With next month's pivotal mid-term elections just two weeks away, Patagonia's announcement stunned political observers with its support of candidates who are "running to protect public lands and waters." Byars told Xinhua Wednesday that "it is the first time a 'company' has done this," when Patagonia announced last week it was openly backing Democratic U.S. Senate candidates Jacky Rosen from Nevada and Montana's Jon Tester. The unprecedented move "was not born from a desire to get into partisan politics," Byars said. "In fact, it's the opposite -- it's about standing up for millions of Americans who want to see wild places protected for future generations ... something we will always do, regardless of political party," she added. With its gross revenue reaching 209 million U.S. dollars in 2017, Patagonia considers itself an "activist" company and has been donating 10 percent of its profits annually to environmental groups. "The endorsement of specific candidates by Patagonia is the next logical step in the company's consistent efforts to advocate for the preservation of public lands, and to fund grassroots efforts that do the same," Outdoor Industry Association (OIA) Executive Director Amy Roberts told Xinhua Wednesday. OIA has been endorsing political candidates for years, and its Nov. 6 election recommendations are bipartisan, including eight Republicans and 12 Democrats, all of whom share OIA's mission of protecting public land, promoting free trade for its members, and promoting America's outdoors to as many people as possible. "That outdoor activity generates an enormous industry of gear and services which gathers twice a year," said an article in Forbes, referring to two gigantic large-scale outdoor retail trade shows held in Salt Lake City for the past 20 years, which provide an estimated 45 million dollars of income to the state. Political insiders told Xinhua that despite Patagonia's unprecedented move, corporate America has been involved in politics since the founding of the republic. "To be fair, firms have been backing candidates for years, and that's what corporate campaign contributions are all about," said former Washington political wonk David Richardson. "I think Patagonia has staked out turf and is environmentally concerned, so they come to it honestly," said Richardson, a Capitol Hill policy analyst during the Reagan administration. "I think it just reflects the particular politics of the directors of this firm." "So they want to use whatever influence with their customers to tilt the political world in their direction, and they care enough about the issues to not worry so much about any sales hit they might face," he added. Patagonia founder Yvon Chouinard, called a "billionaire" by Forbes in 2017, pulls no political punches. "We are supporting Jon Tester because he gives a damn about protecting public lands -- and, like us, he's committed to fighting back against anyone who doesn't," Chouinard said in a published letter last week. Patagonia's support for Nevada's Rosen follows the same theme. "Jacky (Rosen) has a strong record of defending public lands in Congress and protecting our access to clean air and clean waters," Chouinard said. "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," he said. Source: Xinhua| 2018-10-26 20:05:21|Editor: xuxin Video Player Close JERUSALEM, Oct. 26 (Xinhua) -- Israeli researchers have discovered a method to turn the waste generated by olive oil production into fuel used by vehicles, the news website Ynet published Friday. During the olive oil production process, of every 1,000 kg of olives squeezed in the olive press, only 200 kg of olive oil are produced. The rest becomes solid waste. About 6 million tons of olive waste are produced every year worldwide, of which about 30,000 tons are in Israel. The new study, led by the University of Haifa in northern Israel and financed by the state's Ministry of Environmental Protection, shows a technique that will enable the transformation of solid waste into ethanol. Several kinds of engines are fueled with ethanol. Even a regular gasoline engine can operate normally with up to 10 percent ethanol. One of the advantages of using biofuels, such as bioethanol, is to reduce the dependence on fossil fuels such as coal, oil and natural gas, whose reserves are decreasing, use of which generates extensive emissions of greenhouse gas such as carbon dioxide. Source: Xinhua| 2018-10-26 20:05:22|Editor: xuxin Video Player Close PHNOM PENH, Oct. 26 (Xinhua) -- The Cambodian government on Friday approved approximately 6.7 billion U.S. dollars for the government's expenditure in 2019, an increase of 11.4 percent compared with that of 2018, said a government spokesman. "The (weekly) Cabinet meeting, presided over by Prime Minister Samdech Techo Hun Sen, unanimously approved the draft budget law for the 2019's expenditure," said Phay Siphan, a spokesman for the Council of Ministers. According to the draft budget law released by the Ministry of Economy and Finance, some 605 million U.S. dollars will be allocated to general administration for 2019, up 0.4 percent from 2018. About 1.1 billion dollars will go to national defense, security, and public order next year, an increase of 10.5 percent from this year. Social sector will get 1.78 billion dollars, up 3.4 percent, and the economy-driven sector will receive 1.62 billion dollars, up 16.8 percent. According to the draft law, the government's expenditure next year is equal to 24.72 percent of the country's gross domestic product (GDP). The ministries of education, health, and transport will receive 899 million dollars, 447 million dollars and 736 million dollars respectively for next year's expenditure. To meet the expenditure, the government is expected to make gross revenue of about 6.57 billion dollars next year, an increase of 14.4 percent from this year, the draft law said. It added that the government has planned to borrow another 1.9 billion dollars from friendly countries and development partners next year to develop the energy sector, agriculture and irrigation system, and transport infrastructure. The Southeast Asian country's economy is projected to grow by 7.1 percent in 2019, bringing the kingdom's GDP to 27.2 billion dollars, and the GDP per capita is expected to hit 1,706 dollars, the draft law said. Under the country's law, the draft budget law for 2019 needs to be adopted by the National Assembly before the year-end. Source: Xinhua| 2018-10-26 20:40:27|Editor: xuxin Video Player Close by Gui Tao, Peter Barker, Jiao Zhe LONDON, Oct. 26 (Xinhua) -- Brexit is fundamentally a political issue before it is an economic one, a senior Conservative Party figure has said, insisting Britain would be better off once Brexit had taken place. The writer of the TV series House of Cards and former deputy chairman of the Conservative Party Lord Michael Dobbs told Xinhua in a recent exclusive interview: "I have absolutely no doubt that once Britain is through on the other side and is outside of the European Union (EU) -- as long as that happens -- that it will be in a better place, a more flexible place." "Britain will be stronger economically, it will be stronger socially," said Dobbs, who served in the early 1980s as a close adviser to Conservative prime minister Margaret Thatcher. Dobbs has been at the heart of the Conservative Party for nearly four decades, working closely with Thatcher and John Major, who served as prime minister and leader of the Conservative from 1990 to 1997. The current Conservative Prime Minister Theresa May is negotiating a Brexit with the EU, following the June 2016 referendum result. Her Conservative Party has for decades been troubled over the relationship between Britain and the EU, with some Members of Parliament (MPs) fervently supporting leaving the EU, while others supporting remaining inside. POLITICAL ISSUE FUNDAMENTALLY According to Dobbs, Brexit is fundamentally a political issue before it's an economic one. "The economic (aspect) is important, but the EU is a political structure -- it's a political experiment; it wants to create the United States of Europe," said Dobbs. He believed that voters were frustrated because they did not have a say in electing senior EU officials, and that was a driving force behind Brexit sentiment. "The fact is that we have a government in Brussels which we can't elect, which we don't elect, and we can't change it," he said. "Nobody's ever voted for President Juncker or the European Commission -- the Commission doesn't appear to want to change itself. So, that is what has motivated (my own view)," he added. Dobbs stressed that it wasn't "wrong" but it wasn't what "electorates in Europe seem to want". And so, everything is driven towards that end political union. BREXITER THATCHER? Dobbs told Xinhua that as a close adviser to Thatcher during her time as prime minister, he felt she would now be a Brexiter. "I don't think Margaret Thatcher would have, for a moment, felt comfortable with that (political union) or accepted it," Dobbs said. His comments run counter to those of the foreign affairs adviser and private secretary to two former British prime ministers Charles Powell. Thatcher would have fought to improve Britain's terms of membership of the 28-nation bloc, and would have regarded Brexit "as quitting," Powell told Xinhua last year. Powell worked for Margaret Thatcher and then John Major as their private secretary from 1983 to 1991, and saw at first hand how foreign relations were created and handled by Britain. "I think Charles is 100 percent wrong on that," said Dobbs. "Couldn't be more wrong." Dobbs said he believes that Thatcher would have found the way that the EU operates "intolerable." BREXIT TO BE WORTH IT Dobbs is certain Brexit will deliver a better future for Britain outside the EU than it would have within the bloc. "I'm not a fan of the way that the EU has been organized and moves for," he said. "There's nothing wrong with the principle of it ... it's the practice of it that I think has held it back economically, socially and is now cause of all sorts of problems throughout Europe." The senior Conservative said that Europe politically is unstable. "It's filled with uncertainty and part over that is down to the way that the EU has operated and continues to operate," he said. Britain's decision to leave in 2016 is non-negotiable, Dobbs said. And a reversal of the decision is intolerable in the view of Dobbs. "I could not believe what Britain be like if it changed its mind and went back to the EU and said 'sorry we made this huge mistake, we really want to be in'," said Dobbs. But he stressed that it's not about being anti-anything, but about a positive future. "It's simply about the positive future that I believe that Britain would make for herself." For Dobbs, there is no going back on the referendum path. A demonstration in London last weekend campaigning for a second referendum on Brexit attracted 700,000 people, according to the demonstration organizers. This is the largest demonstration in London since an anti-Iraq War rally in 2003, and was larger than the anti-Trump demonstration this summer when the U.S. president paid a flying visit to London. Despite this unease at Brexit, Dobbs backs certainty as a path forward rather than a fork in the road, which a second referendum would represent. "A second referendum would be hugely unhelpful, because it would simply prolong the uncertainty," said Dobbs, adding "I would still expect a Brexit win in the second referendum and if it didn't, it would only lead to demands for a third referendum; the uncertainty would continue forever, and it is uncertainty in politics that can often do the most damage." "How can people get on with their lives? How can businesses get on with their business? When the constants are uncertainty, what people want is stability and certainty," he said. Source: Xinhua| 2018-10-26 20:40:27|Editor: Li Xia Video Player Close BEIJING, Oct. 26 (Xinhua) -- China and Japan on Friday inked a memorandum of understanding to strengthen cooperation of their securities market. Liu Shiyu, chairman of the China Securities Regulatory Commission (CSRC), and Toshihide Endo, Japan's Financial Services Agency commissioner, signed the document, CSRC said on its website. The two countries' securities supervisors have pledged to advance the mutually-beneficial and pragmatic cooperation of capital market in an all-round way, it said. Stock exchanges as well as industry associations of the two countries have also signed MOUs to boost bilateral cooperation, according to the CSRC. Source: Xinhua| 2018-10-26 20:40:27|Editor: Li Xia Video Player Close TIANJIN, Oct. 26 (Xinhua) -- Customs authorities in north China's Tianjin Municipality said 14,600 tonnes of foreign solid waste and hazardous chemical substances at the Port of Tianjin have been disposed of since September. Tianjin has been clearing solid waste at its port, a major port in China, since mid-September. Authorities said waste that failed to have been withdrawn, left uncustomed or left with no consignees, not only hinders the port's activities but also poses serious environmental risks. To date, the action plan has seen 785 containers of solid waste and hazardous chemical substances sent off for biological treatment, while another 6,000 tonnes of "foreign solid waste" are expected to be handled in the next two months. Tianjin Customs has launched four rounds of crackdowns on smuggled foreign waste so far this year, resulting in a total of 40 suspects getting detained and more than 3,500 tonnes of waste such as plastics, slag, cotton and yarn being seized. For some years, China had been the world's largest importer of solid waste. Given there is growing public awareness of environmental protection, the government decided last year to phase out and completely halt such imports by the end of 2019, except for those containing resources that are not substitutable. Although the ban has seen cases of smuggling, imports of solid waste in the first eight months of this year slumped 56.8 percent from one year earlier. Source: Xinhua| 2018-10-26 21:20:32|Editor: xuxin Video Player Close NICOSIA, Oct. 26 (Xinhua) -- The leaders of the Greek and Turkish Cypriot communities reaffirmed on Friday their commitment to what the state's common future should be, but they stopped short of agreeing on the resumption of reunification negotiations. Cypriot President Nicos Anastasiades, representing the Greek community, and Turkish Cypriot leader Mustafa Akinci talked for the first time on the substance of the Cyprus issue since their longstanding UN-led negotiations came to an unsuccessful end in July 2017. "We reaffirmed that the intended solution is the bi-zonal, bi-communal federation. I explained and we discussed my proposal for a more functional solution through the decentralization of certain powers," Anastasiades said in a tweet after the meeting which lasted for more than two hours. The two leaders decided to proceed with the opening on November 12 of two more crossing points between the government-controlled area and the part of the island occupied by Turkish troops in 1974, in reaction to a coup by the military rulers of Greece at the time. Anastasiades said they will meet again soon should technocrats conclude an agreement on establishing a joint mobile telephone system for the two parts, which currently use different codes. Anastasiades told journalists that he and Akinci discussed privately about the common future of Cyprus. Asked about the prospects of resuming peace negotiations, Anastasiades said they would wait for the arrival of the UN secretary general's personal envoy on Cyprus, Jane Holl Lute and her possible suggestions for further peace negotiations. In their separate statements, Anastasiades and Akinci said they reaffirmed that the future solution will be a two-zone, two-community federation. They also reaffirmed their commitment to a solution framework submitted by U.N. Secretary General Antonio Guterres, prior to the collapse of a conference under his auspices in Switzerland. The UN secretary general's personal envoy will arrive in Cyprus on November 1, for separate consultation with the two leaders before submitting a report to Guterres on the resumption of the negotiations. File photo shows Sahle-Work Zewde as the Director-General of the United Nations Office at Nairobi, delivers her speech during the celebration of the United Nations Day at the United Nations Office at Nairobi in Nairobi, capital of Kenya, Oct. 24, 2014. (Xinhua/Allan Muturi) ADDIS ABABA, Oct. 26 (Xinhua) -- Ethiopia's new President Sahle-Work Zewde has stressed unity among Ethiopians and the need to sustain the ongoing reform in the country. Zewde, who was elected as the east African country's first female president following the official resignation of the former President Mulatu Teshome on Thursday, addressed the parliament's two houses - the Ethiopian House of People's Representatives (HoPR) and the Ethiopian House of Federation, the lower and upper houses respectively. Zewde, in her acceptance speech before the two houses, vowed to serve her country and its people with her utmost efforts. She also stressed the need to maintain the longstanding unity among Ethiopians as well as sustain the ongoing reform of the Ethiopian government and the governance structure. "The ongoing reform process, which embraces equal representation of women as well as people from different ethnic groups, will lead us to realize a prosperous, developed and united Ethiopia in the near future," she said. Zewde, who is a well-regarded diplomat representing Ethiopia at global, continental and regional organizations including the UN and the Intergovernmental Authority on Development, had also served as Ethiopia's ambassador to various countries. Zewde had also served as Ethiopia's envoy at the African Union (AU). UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres in June 2018 appointed Zewde as his Special Representative to the AU and Head of the UN Office to the African Union at the level of Under-Secretary-General. The appointment of Zewde, 68, came shortly after the approval of Teshome's resignation request by the two houses' joint extraordinary session. Teshome was unanimously appointed as Ethiopia's president on Oct. 7, 2013 while he was serving as Ethiopia's ambassador to Turkey. Teshome's resignation, and the eventual appointment of Zewde, followed the recent Ethiopian government's cabinet reshuffle. The HoPR last week approved the appointment of 16 new cabinet members upon the endorsement of Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed, in which only four of the previous cabinet members remained in their positions. Exercising a parliamentary political system, the Ethiopian president has a ceremonial power, which includes granting amnesty to prisoners, officially opening the annual proceedings of the parliament's two houses, receiving foreign ambassadors, as well as presenting the country's annual targets to members of the parliament. The prime minister is the head of government, in which a political party or coalition with the highest parliamentary seats, at least 51 percent of the active seats at the Ethiopian parliament's lower house, forms a government. A farmer ploughs in preparation for planting following the beginning of rainy season in Addis Ababa, capital of Ethiopia, July 10, 2018. (Xinhua/Michael Tewelde) ADDIS ABABA, Oct. 26 (Xinhua) -- Ethiopia's sesame export to China represented close to 70 percent of the country's total export of the product, the Ethiopian Pulses, Oilseeds and Spices Processors-Exporters Association (EPOSPEA) revealed on Tuesday. Haile Berhe, President of EPOSPEA, told Xinhua that China's sesame market has become the major destination for Ethiopian producers and exporters amid an increasing demand for Ethiopian-produced sesame among Chinese buyers. "With the growing trend of sesame export to China, it has become very difficult to imagine the export of sesame without the Chinese market in it," Berhe said. Sesame, together with coffee, is considered as one of Ethiopia's top export commodities as well as the backbone of Ethiopia's economy. The Ethiopian Ministry of Agriculture and Natural Resources recently announced that sesame production during the current Ethiopian 2018-2019 fiscal year that started on July 9 would surpass 350,000 tons. The ministry further estimated the east African country's revenue from the export of sesame to reach some 500 million U.S. dollars during the current fiscal year. China takes the most significant share of Ethiopia's export of sesame seed with close to 70 percent of the country's export destined to China on average over the past decade, according to the EPOSPEA. The EPOSPEA, which was established in 1998 with the objective of building the capacity of its more than 130 active members in the global market, also aspires to maintain and further strengthen its members' approval among Chinese counterparts. According to Berhe, the first China International Import Expo (CIIE), scheduled to be held from Nov. 5 to 10 in Shanghai, China, would help Ethiopian exporters to maintain their stronghold in Chinese sesame market, eventually helping them to further penetrate the vast Chinese market. "Our association, with more than 130 active members, highly promotes our members to participate in the CIIE as well as other trade fairs and expos so as to assess opportunities that are available in linking up with our Chinese counterparts." he added. Source: Xinhua| 2018-10-26 21:40:36|Editor: xuxin Video Player Close NEW DELHI, Oct. 26 (Xinhua) -- At least eight people were killed and several others injured on Friday evening in a blast inside a fireworks factory in northern Indian state of Uttar Pradesh, police said. Source: Xinhua| 2018-10-26 21:45:37|Editor: xuxin Video Player Close GAZA, Oct. 26 (Xinhua) -- A Palestinian was killed Friday and another injured in a mysterious blast in al-Bureij refugee camp in central Gaza Strip, medical sources said. A Health Ministry statement said that Jabber Abu Hmeisa, 25 years old, was killed in an explosion in one of the houses in the refugee camp. Meanwhile, a security source told Xinhua that preliminary investigations showed that the death of the young man was a result of an explosion of a homemade bomb that had suddenly gone off in the house. Source: Xinhua| 2018-10-26 22:00:39|Editor: xuxin Video Player Close MOGADISHU, Oct. 26 (Xinhua) -- The African Union Mission in Somalia (AMISOM) confirmed Friday its troops killed a senior al-Shabab commander in an ambush in southern Somalia. The AU mission said the unnamed commander who was the terrorist group's chief finance controller and head of Zakat tax collection in Lower Shabelle region was killed on Monday after the AU troops ambushed the venue of an al-Shabab meeting in Bariire. "AMISOM will continue working with the federal and state governments to ensure al-Shabab is defeated and lasting peace and security is restored in Somalia," said the AU mission. According to a UN Monitoring report, the militant group always pays for weapons and fighters with revenue it earns from taxing traders and from the export of charcoal, trade that was banned by the UN Security Council Resolution which was adopted in 2012. The AU mission said the Monday's incident came after another seven al-Shabab fighters were killed on Sunday after a "botched" probe attack by al-Shabab on the mission's forward operating base. "In two separate incidents in Lower Shabelle region, AMISOM troops have killed more than eight al-Shabab fighters, including a top commander," said the mission. The AU forces, in cooperation with Somalia government, have been conducting a series of operations against al-Shabab in Somalia to degrade the al-Qaida affiliate's ability to recruit, train and plot external terror attacks throughout the region. Source: Xinhua| 2018-10-26 22:10:41|Editor: Li Xia Video Player Close BEIJING, Oct. 26 (Xinhua) -- China is dissatisfied with and opposes groundless accusations by a U.S. senator that it is severely violating the human rights of religious minorities, a Foreign Ministry spokesperson said Friday. In a recent op-ed in Politico Magazine, U.S. Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Chuck Grassley accused China of massively violating the human rights of its religious minorities, saying that fighting for religious liberty should be a central part of the U.S.-China relationship. "I'm very surprised and regretful about the senator's ignorance and prejudice toward China, and I'm very dissatisfied with and firmly oppose his groundless accusations," spokesperson Hua Chunying told a routine press briefing. "It is an undeniable fact that the people of all ethnic groups in China enjoy full freedom of religious beliefs in accordance with the law," she added. Hua said religions in China mainly include Buddhism, Taoism, Islam, Catholicism and Christianity, and there are nearly 200 million religious citizens, more than 380,000 people ordained for religious duties and more than 140,000 sites for religious activities registered in accordance with the law. "China's policies regarding religions and ethnic affairs have received support from people of all ethnic groups," she said. The spokesperson also listed a number of issues related to the human rights situation of religious and ethnic minorities in the United States. Citing poll statistics from Gallup and Pew, Hua said 42 percent of U.S. citizens are extremely concerned about ethnic relations in the country, with 58 percent of respondents saying they believe racism is a serious problem and 75 percent of American Muslims saying there is a lot of discriminations against Islam in the country. A quarter of African Americans and one-tenth of Latinos, meanwhile, said they had been harassed based on their race or ethnicity. China hopes that certain Americans can objectively and comprehensively acknowledge their own problems to do with religion and ethnicity, and do more constructive things to promote mutual understanding, trust, friendship and cooperation between the two countries, Hua said. Source: Xinhua| 2018-10-26 22:20:42|Editor: xuxin Video Player Close BERLIN, Oct. 26 (Xinhua) -- Former German foreign minister Sigmar Gabriel made a public appeal to the country's federal government on Friday to act decisively in response to the recently announced exit of the United States from the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces (INF) Treaty. Gabriel urged Berlin to help banish the threat of an uncontrolled nuclear confrontation. "I already warned more than a year ago when I was still foreign minister that we are in grave danger of entering a new nuclear arms race in Europe," the 59-year-old told the German press agency (dpa). Related warnings by then foreign minister had been met with little interest in Germany at the time, however, because of then looming federal elections. U.S. President Donald Trump on Saturday said that Washington would pull out of the INF Treaty on account of Russia's alleged breach of the agreement. The treaty was signed in 1987 between the Soviet Union and the United States on the elimination of intermediate-range and shorter-range missiles. The deal marked the first-ever pact reached by Washington and Moscow on nuclear disarmament and a major step forward in restricting the arms race. The Russian Foreign Ministry on Thursday denied U.S. allegations that Washington was abandoning the INF Treaty due to violations by Moscow. "We reiterate that Russia is strictly observing the clauses of the treaty," Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova said at a briefing. Gabriel has launched a "no arms race" initiative with his fellow Social Democratic Party (SDP) members to preserve the achievements of the nuclear non-proliferation movement of the 1970s and 1980s. The ex-foreign minister said he was "appalled" to see dangerous re-armament spreading across the world again and that the time had come to "stand up and stop this." Martin Schulz, the ex-SDP leader and former president of the European Parliament, joined Gabriel's initiative and offered similar criticism of Trump's conduct on Friday. Schulz complained about what he described as a one-sided focus on frequent U.S. demands for Berlin to raise its military expenditure in public debate and called for the launch of new non-proliferation initiatives. Source: Xinhua| 2018-10-26 22:20:43|Editor: xuxin Video Player Close BEIRUT, Oct. 26 (Xinhua) -- Lebanese President Michel Aoun said Friday that Lebanon is keen to strengthen all-round bilateral ties with France, Lebanon's presidential website reported. Aoun's remarks came during his meeting at the Baabda Palace with a delegation of the French lawmakers at the presence of the French Ambassador to Lebanon Bruno Foucher. Aoun said that Lebanon is committed to implementing an economic plan that would help productive sectors in the country. However, he reiterated the negative repercussions of the large number of Syrian refugees on the country's economy. "We support the safe and secure return of Syrian refugees to their homeland especially as clashes have eased in most parts of the country," he said. More than 1 million Syrian refugees are registered with the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees in Lebanon, while the government estimates the true number of Syrians in the country at 1.5 million. To facilitate the return of Syrian refugees to their homeland, Russia drafted a strategy, which aims at securing the return of 890,000 refugees to Syria, and presented it to the Lebanese authorities. Ola Boutros, advisor to the Lebanese foreign affairs minister, said on Thursday that the Lebanese-Russian joint committee has been working hard to remove obstacles for refugees to return home. Source: Xinhua| 2018-10-26 22:25:48|Editor: Li Xia Video Player Close VIENNA, Oct. 26 (Xinhua) -- There will be "an extremely excellent orchestral landscape in China," with the ever increasing number of highly-talented musicians coupled with a strong public interest, Daniel Froschauer, chairman of the Vienna Philharmonic said. China is witnessing a boom in its western classical music scene, said Froschauer, adding that orchestras in China, like the Shanghai Symphony Orchestra, are highly impressive. Proof provided by Froschauer was Austrian conductor Franz Welser-Most, who was impressed by the performance while attending the 2018 Shanghai Grand Theatre New Year's Concert. Continued exposure to the world stage will allow China to add finesse to the performance. Numerous highlights were seen in Vienna Philharmonic's history since its establishment in 1842, including ones when members played at the premiere of renowned pieces such as Symphony No. 9 by Ludwig van Beethoven. All these experiences have helped shape the world famous orchestra, said Froschauer. During visits to China, Froschauer noticed that the public expressed a keen interest in cultural aspects of music. Moreover, they understand it well. Children in China are brought by parents to witness an orchestral performance, something Froschauer held as a positive phenomenon. They can then pick up the musical instruments and try for themselves. There is also a high number of respected Chinese musicians whom children can look up to for inspiration. During its 2018 China Tour from Nov. 26 to Dec. 2, the Vienna Philharmonic will hold six concerts in Tianjin, Guangzhou and Shanghai. For Froschauer, Welser-Most is the big star of the tour. The Vienna Philharmonic does not often have a home-grown conductor. Welser-Most certainly adds an Austrian character to the team, said Froschauer. During last year's visit, Chinese audience appeared to prefer music with strong rhythms over the constant melody-based pieces, said Froschauer, adding that the orchestra will select music which match the Chinese audience's taste. Dvorak's Overture Carnival, will be included, which, Froschauer anticipates, will be well-received. Some of Froschauer's colleagues are teaching music in China and have established ties in order to enable Chinese students to study music in Vienna. China's classical music has always impressed Froschauer with its tonal diversity and richness in melody, such as those in the Butterfly Lovers' Violin Concerto. The music has a melody seldom found in other modern music, he said. Source: Xinhua| 2018-10-26 22:30:48|Editor: ZX Video Player Close NAIROBI, Oct. 26 (Xinhua) -- A consortium of Chinese companies operating in Kenya will hold an inaugural career fair day in Nairobi next week in an effort to attract future employees and build relationships with the Kenyan youth and Chinese companies. The day-long event to be held on Monday will be held under the auspices of the umbrella body of Kenya-China Economic and Trade Association (KCETA) and with the support from the Chinese Embassy in Kenya. According to the organizers, the career fair will attract some 50 Chinese companies based in Kenya who will showcase their businesses and share available job opportunities with the aim of finding employees with the set skills. The KCETA said in a statement that as a crucial player in the country, the association is on a mission to build sustainable businesses in Kenya, adding that this was only possible by employing local staff and working together with their local partners. "We want to create more job opportunities, especially to the youth who have just graduated and for those with work experience, provide them with career opportunities, and enable them to apply the skills they learnt in school," the statement said. Some of the leading companies expected to showcase their businesses include Power Construction Corporation of China, China Road and Bridge Corporation, China Overseas Engineering, China Wuyi, Huawei Kenya and AVIC International. Among the delegates invited to attend the fair are cabinet ministers, Chinese embassy officials, as well as chief executive officers and human resource directors of local Chinese companies. Hundreds of posts will be provided by Chinese companies from various industries who will set up booths on site to make detailed presentations about their firms regarding what they are doing in Kenya and what job opportunities they have available. The executives of the companies will also conduct on-site interviews for job seekers to help boost local employment. The KCETA is a non-profit organization with a membership of 97 companies whose mission is to explore business cooperation between the two nations, enhance cultural exchanges while actively shouldering corporate social responsibilities to promote community cohesion. Source: Xinhua| 2018-10-26 22:35:49|Editor: yan Video Player Close by Nathan Morley BRUSSELS, Oct. 26 (Xinhua) -- U.S. President Donald Trump's decision to tear up a Cold War-era nuclear treaty could have far-reaching consequences for global arms control, concerns have been aroused in both the United States and Europe. HISTORIC ARMS CONTROL DEAL The Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces (INF) Treaty is an arms control agreement signed on Dec. 8, 1987 by then U.S. President Ronald Reagan and then USSR General Secretary Mikhail Gorbachev in Washington. It was once hailed as an agreement that "demilitarized human life". "The announcement by President Trump was not expected and there was not much effort made to coordinate a strong positive response among U.S. allies or in the Congress," Jon Wolfsthal, who served on the National Security Council staff under former U.S. president Barack Obama, told Xinhua in an interview. From 2014 to 2017, Wolfsthal was the most senior White House official setting and implementing U.S. government policy on all aspects of arms control, non-proliferation, and nuclear policy. What made the accord especially notable was that in an age when the United States and the then-Soviet Union bickered over everything from human rights to religion and trade -- the nuclear deal represented a single area of agreement. It was credited with strengthening the United States and its allies' security, enhancing international stability, and opening a new chapter in arms control. "The treaty remains important because it provides a means to manage the nuclear competition between the U.S. and Russia," Wolfsthal said. The 1987 pact eliminated intermediate-range nuclear missiles, marking the first such arms deal between the super-powers since 1972. The deal flew through the U.S. Senate with unprecedented speed and little opposition. The landmark treaty, which came into force in 1988, obliged both countries to eliminate ground-launched cruise and ballistic missiles within three years' time, and not to test, deploy or possess these weapons in the future. The stipulation covers short-range missiles (500 to 1,000 km) and medium-range missiles (1,000 to 5,500 km), including conventional and nuclear warhead missiles as well as ground-based launchers. The actual scrapping of the weapons was seen as a key moment in consigning the Cold War to history. RETURN TO COLD-WAR MENTALITY "The two countries (Russia and the U.S.), and others, will be better off if the treaty remains in force and if all sides comply with its terms," Wolfsthal said in his interview with Xinhua. For over a decade, Moscow and Washington have accused each other of violating the agreement, but despite the accusations, the accord remained intact. Earlier this year, Washington's top diplomat in Moscow, Jon Huntsman, described the accord as "probably the most successful treaty in the history of arms control." But in a development that has alarmed Trump's critics and supporters at home and abroad, the United States has wound-up the rhetoric and pledged to increase its nuclear stockpile, unravelling the existing framework for nuclear control. "The main losers for this move will be both U.S. leadership and credibility, and also for Russia and Europe, who will be faced with even greater instability and risk of conflict," Wolfsthal added. For its part, Moscow brushed-off accusations that it was in violation of the accord, and said it would take measures if Washington started to produce and develop missile systems. But despite the bombastic rhetoric, Wolfsthal says there are no plans for the U.S. to deploy any INF controlled system in Europe. And despite some discussion that the U.S. might consider deploying in Asia, no plans to do so in Asia either In Europe, reaction to President Trump's announcement has been equally glum. "Trump's decision to tear up the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty will end the restraints on nuclear weapons that was achieved in the 1980s," high-profile British activist, Peter Tatchell, told Xinhua from London. "This risks an escalating nuclear arms race and increases global tension and insecurity. It is a return to a dangerous Cold War mentality," Tatchell added. This is not the first time the United States has abandoned Cold-War era agreements. In 2002, then President George W. Bush unilaterally quit the anti-ballistic missile (ABM) accord, which had been in force for three decades. Since taking office in 2016, President Trump has abandoned the Iran nuclear agreement along with agreements on trade and climate change. Source: Xinhua| 2018-10-26 22:45:51|Editor: ZX Video Player Close BANDAR SERI BEGAWAN, Oct. 26 (Xinhua) -- Forty cases of vehicle fires were registered countrywide by Brunei's Fire and Rescue Department from January to September this year, a record high compared to the previous years, local media reported on Friday. According to the Borneo Bulletin, 30 of the 40 cases were registered in the Brunei-Muara District, seven cases were reported in the Belait District, and three cases in the Tutong District. The total cost of the damages has been estimated at 212,850 Brunei dollars (153,871 U.S. dollars). Electrical problems, mechanical problems, impact from accidents, and suspicious reasons such as arson are identified as the four main causes of vehicle fires. Brunei's Land Transport Department (JPD) urges members of the public to stop carrying out modifications to their vehicles and their wiring systems without following the vehicles' original specifications. The JPD also advising the public to refrain from employing the services of unaccredited mechanics, as this can result in shoddy work that can affect their cars' safety. Source: Xinhua| 2018-10-26 22:50:51|Editor: yan Video Player Close SKOPJE, Oct. 26 (Xinhua) -- Macedonian former Prime Minister Nikola Gruevski should report to prison by November 8 to serve his two-year prison sentence for the illicit purchase of a luxury Mercedes, Macedonian Criminal Court in Skopje confirmed in a press release on Friday. The court declared that a referral act was handed to Gruevski, instructing him to report to serve his prison sentence in a prison near Skopje on November 8 at the latest. On October 5, the court found Gruevski guilty of acquiring personal gain and stimulating the commitment of a crime relating to the procurement of a new Mercedes vehicle in 2012 for more than 600,000 euros (681,000 U.S. dollars) and sentenced him to a two-year prison. Gruevski held the position of the prime minister from 2006 to 2016, representing the right-wing VMRO-DPMNE party in Macedonia. Source: Xinhua| 2018-10-26 22:55:54|Editor: yan Video Player Close MOGADISHU, Oct. 26 (Xinhua) -- The United States military said Friday its special forces conducted an airstrike in the vicinity of Kunyo Barrow in Somalia on Thursday, killing two al-Shabab militants. The U.S. Africa Command (Africom) said the latest precision airstrike which was conducted in cooperation with Somali government also destroyed one vehicle. "We currently assess this airstrike killed two militants and destroyed one vehicle. We also currently assess this airstrike did not injure or kill any civilians," Africom said in a statement. "Airstrikes reduce al-Shabaab's ability to plot future attacks, disrupt its leadership networks, and degrade its freedom of maneuver within the region," it added. Africom, which has in the past conducted counterterrorism airstrikes against the terror group in Somalia, said the group uses portions of southern and central Somalia to plot and direct terror attacks, steal humanitarian aid, extort the local populace to fund its operations, and shelter radical terrorists. Source: Xinhua| 2018-10-26 23:10:55|Editor: yan Video Player Close BERLIN, Oct. 26 (Xinhua) -- Employees in Germany work an average of four overtime hours per week, according to a poll published by the Federal Institute for Occupational Safety and Health (BAuA) on Friday. The figures are roughly the same as the first major poll in 2015. Drivers of delivery vans or trucks have worked an average of 7.2 hours per week in addition to their contractual time. The boom in online trading has put parcel service providers under great pressure and can have negative effects on the drivers' performance. "Since the group is mobile in road traffic, mistakes can have particularly far-reaching and sometimes fatal effects," the BAuA warned. Other groups that appear at the top of the overtime ranking are industrial workers, craftsmen, medical professionals and security services, the poll found. Almost half of all employees in Germany work overtime. As for the reasons for overtime work, one third of employees polled said that they felt "that the work could not be done within the expected time". Another frequently cited reason for additional work was "operational" company issues, according to the German institute. BAuA argued that at the beginning of the 20th century, studies showed that the most efficient duration of working time was eight hours a day. Longer working hours lead to an "increase of the risk of accidents, a decrease of efficiency, and a higher health risk for employees." Source: Xinhua| 2018-10-26 23:15:57|Editor: yan Video Player Close ADDIS ABABA, Oct. 26 (Xinhua) -- Unidentified gunmen killed four people in an attack on civilians foraging for wood in a wildlife park in southern Ethiopia, state-run Ethiopia News Agency (ENA) said on Friday. Lema Polo, head of security, Gamo Gofa Security Command Post, Southern regional state, said the attack happened on Thursday afternoon, when the gunmen ambushed civilians collecting wood in Nech-Sar wildlife park. The attack also left an unknown number of wildlife dead and property damaged, Polo said. "Local and federal security forces have been deployed to the attack area to guard locals and wildlife, and security forces are currently conducting manhunt for the attackers," the ENA quoted Polo as saying. Nech-Sar wildlife park, located on the border of Southern and Oromia regional states, has suffered repeated invasions from nearby communities looking for food and fuel wood. The wildlife park has also been caught in crossfires during clashes between ethnic Oromo and other ethnicities fighting over agricultural land resources. Source: Xinhua| 2018-10-26 23:25:58|Editor: yan Video Player Close CAPE TOWN, Oct. 26 (Xinhua) -- A major South African trade union on Friday added its voice to the chorus for lifting the decades-old U.S. embargo against Cuba. The economic, commercial and financial blockade imposed by the United States against Cuba for almost six decades "is evil, deplorable, unjust, severe and extended system of unilateral sanctions ever applied against any country," the National Union of Mineworkers (NUM) said. The union was speaking as the United Nations General Assembly is to vote again on an annual resolution to end the embargo on October 31, amid growing universal criticism against the U.S. for imposing the blockade. "The blockade constitutes a massive, flagrant and systematic violation of the human rights of all the Cuban people and it qualifies as an act of genocide by virtue of the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide of 1948," the NUM said. The embargo also violates the UN Charter and international law and constitutes an obstacle for international cooperation, said the union. The U.S. administration under President Donald Trump has intensified the blockade against Cuba since June, 2017, with the adoption of the Presidential Memorandum entitled "Strengthening the Policy of the United States towards Cuba." In November last year, the U.S. Departments of the Treasury, State, and Commerce imposed additional obstacles on the limited opportunities for the U.S. business community and restricted the right of Americans to travel to Cuba. The intensification of the blockade represents a serious setback to bilateral relations between the U.S. and Cuba, the NUM said. The new sanctions against Cuba have caused a visible decrease in visits coming from the U.S. and have generated greater obstacles for the economic and trade relations of Cuban companies with potential American and third country partners, the union said. These measures not only affect the Cuban state economy but they also affect the Cuban private sector, it added. "The NUM calls on the U.S. to end the unilateral and unconditional manner, the unfair blockade which for almost 60 years has imposed suffering on the Cuban people," NUM national spokesperson Livhuwani Mammburu said. Source: Xinhua| 2018-10-26 23:41:02|Editor: yan Video Player Close WASHINGTON, Oct.26 (Xinhua) -- The U.S. Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) said Friday it has located a package addressed to Democratic lawmaker Cory Booker, in addition to 10 other similarly suspicious packages intercepted earlier. The package was recovered in the southern state of Florida and had not detonated, according to a FBI tweet. The package was the 11th mailed to prominent Democratic politicians and activists over the past few days. Authorities said the packages shared similarities and all contained explosives. So far those targeted by the recent flux of explosive parcels includes former U.S. President Barack Obama, former U.S. Vice President Joe Biden, former U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, former U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder, U.S. Representatives Maxine Waters, Debbie Wasserman Schultz, actor Robert De Niro and former Director of Central Intelligence Agency John Brennan. U.S. media cited law enforcement sources as saying that the explosive devices were PVC pipes stuffed with what appeared to be fireworks powder and glass. Electrical wires leading out of the pipe led to an electric timer taped to the pipe. The attempted attacks have sent spooks in Washington and across the country and created political ripples in the run-up to the midterm elections, slated for the first week of November. Some accused the Trump administration, with its targeted rhetoric against Democrats, of having prompted the attacks. U.S. President Donald Trump defended the Republicans on Friday by tweeting that the bomb scares undermined the Republican "momentum". Source: Xinhua| 2018-10-26 23:41:04|Editor: yan Video Player Close KIEV, Oct. 26 (Xinhua) -- Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko and his Belarusian counterpart Alexander Lukashenko met on Friday to discuss trade and economic cooperation between their countries, Poroshenko's press service said. The two leaders held closed-door talks during the first forum of regions of Ukraine and Belarus in Belarusian southeastern city of Gomel, said a statement on the Ukrainian presidential website. Later in the day, Poroshenko wrote on Facebook that Kiev and Minsk have agreed to establish a working group to push for the removal of obstacles in bilateral trade, in particular, in such sectors as metallurgy and agriculture. Ukraine-Belarus trade has a potential to double, to reach 9 billion U.S. dollars, Poroshenko said. The two-day forum kicked off on Thursday. Some 100 companies from 17 Ukrainian regions took part in the forum. The trade turnover between Ukraine and Belarus increased by about 18 percent to 4.3 billion dollars last year. Source: Xinhua| 2018-10-26 23:46:07|Editor: yan Video Player Close BEIRUT, Oct. 26 (Xinhua) -- Toufic Dabbousi, head of the Chamber of Commerce, Industry and Agriculture, is looking forward to cooperating with China on some key economic projects in Tripoli in northern Lebanon, local media reported Friday. Dabbousi presented Friday a few economic projects to the Chinese Ambassador to Lebanon Wang Kejian, seeking to benefit from the Chinese expertise in different fields. "We would like to cooperate with China on key projects to be implemented in Tripoli, in order to benefit from the Chinese expertise and create hundreds of job opportunities for the Lebanese laborforce," said Dabbousi. "We are planning to expand Tripoli's Port and other public facilities including the Rashid Karami exhibition center and Rene Mouawad Airport as well as other projects that bring benefit to the public," he said. Meanwhile, Wang said that these projects are very important and they need the expertise of professional people. "We have a lot of good expertise in China and the Tripoli's Chamber of Commerce is invited to meet with these professional people and discuss ways of cooperation for the near future," he said. Source: Xinhua| 2018-10-26 23:56:10|Editor: Yang Yi Video Player Close Chinese State Councilor and Minister of Public Security Zhao Kezhi (R) meets with Bangladeshi Minister of Home Affairs Asaduzzaman Khan in Dhaka, Bangladesh, Oct. 26, 2018. (Xinhua/Liu Chuntao) DHAKA, Oct. 26 (Xinhua) -- China hopes to enhance law enforcement cooperation with Bangladesh, a senior Chinese official said here on Friday. Zhao Kezhi, Chinese State Councilor and Minister of Public Security, made the remarks during talks with Bangladeshi Minister of Home Affairs Asaduzzaman Khan. Zhao said leaders of the two countries have lifted China-Bangladesh ties to a strategic partnership of cooperation and mapped out the new blueprint for mutually beneficial cooperation between the two countries. Noting that China and Bangladesh are good neighbors, good friends and good partners, he said China stands ready to work with Bangladesh to implement the important consensus reached by the leaders of the two countries. He call on the two sides to strengthen alignment of development strategies, boost cooperation in various fields, and promote complementary strengths and common development. The senior Chinese official hoped that the law enforcement departments of the two countries will enhance exchanges and communication, improve cooperation mechanism, and jointly work for the security of the projects under the China-proposed Belt and Road Initiative. He also called for deepening practical cooperation in fighting terrorism, cybercrime, telecommunications fraud and drug crimes, as well as in law enforcement capacity building. For his part, Asaduzzaman Khan thanked China for its support and assistance to Bangladesh's development and stability. He said Bangladesh is willing to work with China to implement the consensus reached by the leaders of the two countries, deepen bilateral cooperation in the fields of law enforcement and security, and enhance security cooperation for the Belt and Road projects. After the talks, Zhao Kezhi and Asaduzzaman Khan witnessed the signing of relevant cooperation documents. On Friday, Zhao Kezhi also met with representatives of the Chinese enterprises in Bangladesh, urging them to follow the important consensus reached by the leaders of the two countries while doing business and seeking development in Bangladesh. Pointing out that Bangladesh is not only China's friendly neighbor but also an important country along the Belt and Road, he called on Chinese enterprises to always remember they represent the image of China. He also called on them to enhance safety awareness and make new contributions to continuously promoting China-Bangadesh friendship and the Belt and Road development. Source: Xinhua| 2018-10-27 00:01:11|Editor: yan Video Player Close UNITED NATIONS, Oct. 26 (Xinhua) -- Syria's permanent representative to the United Nations Bashar Jaafari on Friday threatened that his country will retake Idlib province, the last major rebel stronghold and home to a demilitarized buffer zone agreed to by Russia and Turkey. "Idlib is a dearly held part of my country. We are determined to recover Idlib," Jaafari told the Security Council. "We allow for diplomatic and political work. But our right under the UN Charter and international law allows us to fully recover Idlib when we deem necessary," he said. Russian President Vladimir Putin and Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan agreed to establish a demilitarized zone within Idlib province on Sept. 17 in a bid to avert a full-scale assault on the rebel stronghold, which humanitarians feared would have severe consequences for the 3 million civilians. The cease-fire in Idlib has so far been maintained. Attempts by the Syrian government to retake Idlib would represent a major change of situation on the ground. Source: Xinhua| 2018-10-27 00:16:12|Editor: yan Video Player Close by Burak Akinci ANKARA, Oct. 26 (Xinhua) -- Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan is playing a political balancing act over the killing of Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi, which could help revamp sensitive ties with Saudi Arabia, said local analysts. "Turkey is engaged in a cool-minded and rational policy regarding the Khashoggi case, avoiding to make it a bilateral issue between Turkey and Saudi Arabia, rather preferring to situate it on an a global platform," Ahmet K. Han, professor on international relations at Istanbul Altinbas University, told Xinhua. The expert underlined that Turkey is willing to use this dramatic case that has sparked international outrage and condemnation to better its chilly ties with the Saudi regime. ANKARA SEEKS BETTER TIES WITH RIYADH "Turkey will try to move its relations with Saudi Arabia on a more favorable platform and seek to unlock a door of cooperation" with Riyadh, insisted Han. Recent media reports suggested that Turkey would use Khashoggi's killing as political leverage in order to change the balance of power in Middle East politics in Ankara's favor. Han sees these analyses as "pretentious", explaining however that President Erdogan who used a respectful and uncritical narrative towards the Saudi King Salman, would like to see his son, Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, widely considered as the most powerful figure in the kingdom, removed from the sign of succession. "This would not make Turkey unhappy. This is very clear," said Han. An argument shared by Mideast expert Oytun Orhan who told Xinhua that Turkey is "very irritated" by the path taken by the crown prince to undermine it's influence in the region. The "planned" killing of Khashoggi in Saudi Arabia's Istanbul consulate in early October has put a strain on Turkey's relations with Saudi Arabia. "Turkey would want to have the crown prince dismissed or see his influence diminished in some way because he is considered responsible for the anti-Turkish strategy in the kingdom," said researcher Orhan from the Ankara-based Center for Middle Eastern Studies. Until recently, Turkey had been at pains to maintain good ties with Saudi Arabia, while also keeping friendly relations with the Sunni Muslim Brotherhood, an organization Khashoggi supported. President Erdogan's close relations to the Muslim Brotherhood, one of the most important political movements in the Arab world, always played an important role in ties between Ankara and Riyadh. The Saudis disapproved of Turkey's relationship with the Brotherhood. During a visit to Egypt in early 2018, Saudi Crown Prince accused Turkey of supporting Iran and Islamist organizations, and blamed the country for working towards building an Arab caliphate. Turkey for its part severely criticized Saudi Arabia when it, together with several other Arab states, imposed an economic embargo on Qatar in 2017. But while Turkey was helping Qatar fight the embargo, it was also trying to keep tensions with the Saudi kingdom to a minimum. ERDOGAN HOLDING THE CARDS Observers believe that Erdogan has the upper hand in the Khashoggi case against Saudi Arabia, seizing an opportunity to weaken a man hated by the Turkish pro-government press's who labeled him as an "enemy" of Turkey. Turkey appears to have skillfully managed the Khasoggi case to its advantage, by putting pressure on Saudi Arabia, but also by using the crisis as a means to remake its bruised relations with the United States and the western world in general since the failed coup in 2016. But while Turkey is holding the cards, its leader seems also mindful of not provoking Riyadh, especially at a time when the Turkish economy is vulnerable after a currency meltdown in the summer amid a diplomatic spat with the United States. Erdogan and the Saudi crown prince held their first telephone conversation on Wednesday since the Khashoggi affair erupted, according to Turkish presidential sources. Nevertheless, whether the Turkish strongman's strategy will work or not depends entirely on the attitude of the United States, Saudi Arabia's biggest support. U.S. President Donald Trump has made it clear that his country's close cooperation with Riyadh will go on unabated despite this crisis. Source: Xinhua| 2018-10-27 00:21:13|Editor: ZX Video Player Close SINGAPORE, Oct. 26 (Xinhua) -- Shanghai Pudong Development Bank (SPD Bank) opened its first overseas commodity center, the SPD Bank Singapore Commodity Center, here on Friday. The new center will provide commodity businesses from all over the world with its comprehensive suite of commodity-related financial services and solutions, according to a media release from SPD Bank Singapore branch. "Leveraging Singapore's strategic importance as a global financial hub and commodity trading center, the SPD Bank Singapore Commodity Center hopes to promote the involvement of Chinese enterprises in global commodity trading activities as well as to strengthen the commodity service capabilities of Chinese banks," said Liu Xinyi, vice chairman and president of SPD Bank. At the center's opening ceremony, Chinese Ambassador to Singapore Hong Xiaoyong expressed his confidence in the growing room for win-win collaboration between China and Singapore, as both countries are committed to an open global economic order and have enjoyed wide-ranging collaboration under the Belt and Road Initiative. Tan Wu Meng, senior Parliamentary secretary of Singapore's Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Ministry of Trade and Industry, said Singapore has developed a thriving ecosystem by bringing together traders as well as financial, legal and logistical providers, which enables industry players to do business in Singapore quickly and conveniently. "I firmly believe that the opening of SPD Bank's Commodity Center will add even more vibrancy into this ecosystem, and reinforce Singapore's position as a global commodity trading hub," he said. According to the media release, SPD Bank is the eighth Chinese bank entering Singapore. It established the Singapore branch, its first overseas branch of SPD Bank, in April 2017. Source: Xinhua| 2018-10-27 00:21:13|Editor: Liangyu Video Player Close Lai Bo, political counselor at the Chinese Embassy in Zambia, speaks during a jobs expo at the University of Zambia in Lusaka, Zambia, Oct. 26, 2018. Zambia's Confucius Institute at the University of Zambia on Friday held a jobs expo where Chinese firms based in the southern African nation showcased themselves and tried to lure students to join them. (Xinhua/Peng Lijun) LUSAKA, Oct. 26 (Xinhua) -- Zambia's Confucius Institute at the University of Zambia on Friday held a jobs expo where Chinese firms based in the southern African nation showcased themselves and tried to lure students to join them. Held in collaboration with the Chinese Embassy and Chamber of Commerce of China, the second expo attracted 14 Chinese enterprises that took time to explain to prospective job seekers the jobs on offer. Lai Bo, political counselor at the Chinese Embassy in Zambia, said the event is a significant sign of the close people-to-people exchanges between China and Zambia in line with one of the eight initiatives of the 2018 Forum on China-Africa Cooperation (FOCAC) summit. "I hope that both Zambian students and Chinese companies take this precious opportunity, work together to create a better future for individuals, enterprises and the friendship between China and Zambia," he said. China, he said, pays special attention to the younger generation in both China and Africa, adding that education plays a crucial role in the development of young people. China attaches great importance to the cooperation with Zambia in the education sector, with about 4,000 Zambian students currently studying in various universities in China, Lai said. The Confucius Institute has become one of the most important education platforms for promoting people-to-people exchanges between the two countries and that more than 10,000 Zambian students have learned the Chinese language through the institute in the past eight years, he said. Luke Mumba, vice-chancellor at the University of Zambia (UNZA), said the jobs expo was targeted at graduates as the country's future prosperity depends on their education, skills and creativity. He said the expo offers a unique opportunity to form platform partnerships between potential employers and employees. Preparing young people to meet the challenges and opportunities in a knowledge-based economy requires concerted efforts of all stakeholders, Mumba said, adding that businesses and enterprises at the expo had an indispensable role to play by absorbing graduates. Linda Yan, a human resources manager at Avic International, one of the firms that participated at the expo, said the company hopes to get more young Zambians to join the firm. She told Xinhua that her company, which has already employed hundreds of Zambians, is targeting skilled graduates from the university. Yan said local employees have done a lot in helping the firm achieve its objectives. Lisa Li, business manager at China Harbor Engineering Company Limited Zambia, expressed gratitude over the enthusiasm shown by the prospective employees who were inquiring about job prospects in the company. She said her company was looking for young graduates to push the company forward. Chalwe Chipili, a fourth-year student in political science and statistics, said young people were finding it difficult to find jobs even after graduating from universities, adding that the holding of the expo was one way of ensuring that the graduates got opportunities to find jobs. Bertha Nkunika, also fourth-year student, said she was at the expo to check if there could be any job opportunities in line with her major, mass communications. Source: Xinhua| 2018-10-27 01:06:18|Editor: yan Video Player Close LUSAKA, Oct. 26 (Xinhua) -- Zambian Vice-President Inonge Wina on Friday urged lawmakers to pass a law that criminalizes hate speech to strengthen the unity of the country. It is high time parliament considered enacting a law that will discourage perpetration of hate speech, Wina said. Speaking in parliament during a question and answer session, she said current legislation pertaining to hate speech is weak and needs to be amended and strengthened. Wina urged politicians to desist from making hate speech that has the potential to plunge the country into chaos. Source: Xinhua| 2018-10-27 01:06:18|Editor: yan Video Player Close ISTANBUL, Oct. 26 (Xinhua) -- Turkish prosecutors on Friday demanded the extradition of 18 Saudi suspects who were arrested in Saudi Arabia a week ago over their alleged roles in the killing of journalist Jamal Khashoggi, local media reported. The broadcaster NTV said the Istanbul Public Prosecutor's Office submitted the extradition request to Turkey's justice ministry to be delivered to Saudi officials. Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan earlier on the day said Saudi Arabia's chief prosecutor would visit Istanbul on Sunday as part of the investigation of the case. The Saudi journalist has not been seen since he entered the kingdom's consulate in Istanbul on Oct. 2 to obtain documents related to his upcoming remarriage. Riyadh has confirmed Khashoggi's death inside its consulate while Turkish police have been searching for clues about the whereabouts of his body across the city. A man mourns by a makeshifts memorial made of candles and posters picturing Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi during a gathering outside the Saudi Arabia consulate in Istanbul, on October 25, 2018. (AFP photo) ISTANBUL, Oct. 26 (Xinhua) -- Turkish prosecutors on Friday demanded the extradition of 18 Saudi suspects who were arrested in Saudi Arabia a week ago over their alleged roles in the killing of journalist Jamal Khashoggi, local media reported. The broadcaster NTV said the Istanbul Public Prosecutor's Office submitted the extradition request to Turkey's justice ministry to be delivered to Saudi officials. Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan earlier on the day said Saudi Arabia's chief prosecutor would visit Istanbul on Sunday as part of the investigation of the case. The Saudi journalist has not been seen since he entered the kingdom's consulate in Istanbul on Oct. 2 to obtain documents related to his upcoming remarriage. Riyadh has confirmed Khashoggi's death inside its consulate while Turkish police have been searching for clues about the whereabouts of his body across the city. Source: Xinhua| 2018-10-27 01:16:20|Editor: yan Video Player Close DAMASCUS, Oct. 26 (Xinhua) -- The Turkish intelligence has so far failed to persuade the extremist groups to leave the demilitarized zone in northern Syria amid breaches, a war monitor reported on Friday. With the presence of such radical groups, breaches continued to be reported in the demilitarized zone, which 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 Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said the rebels' snipers fired at Syrian government forces in the mountains east of Latakia province overnight, killing two soldiers. It added that the Syrian forces targeted the rebel positions in the northern and eastern countryside of Hama on Friday. Such breaches have been preceded by another exchange of fire, mainly in Aleppo province where the rebels fired mortar shells on the residential areas on Wednesday and Thursday, wounding 10 civilians. The Syrian forces then responded to the attacks and fired on the rebels' positions in the western countryside of Aleppo. Russia and Turkey reached the agreement to impose a demilitarized zone on Sept. 17 as the actual implementation of the deal started on Oct. 15. According to the deal, the ultra-radical rebels should withdraw fighters and weapons from the identified zone. Some of the weapons were taken out but the fighters of the radical groups such as those with the al-Qaida-linked Nusra Front and its umbrella of the Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS) have rejected to leave the zone. Those radical groups control 70 percent of the demilitarized zone, according to the Observatory. The Syrian government has initially welcomed the deal but noted that it will not be permanent and that Idlib, which is the cornerstone in the deal as it is the last major rebel stronghold in Syria, should eventually return to government control. But as the situation dragged on with the partial implementation of the deal and the reported breaches, the Syrian government said its patience has limits. Source: Xinhua| 2018-10-27 01:26:21|Editor: yan Video Player Close LISBON, Oct. 26 (Xinhua) -- Schools, hospitals and museums remained closed in Portugal on Friday as public sector workers staged a nationwide strike. "It is undoubtedly one of the largest public sector strikes of recent years," said Ana Avoila, coordinator of the main group organizing the strike, the Common Front, part of the General Confederation of Portuguese Workers (CGTP). "In overall terms, we're looking at participation and shutdowns of around 85 percent," she added, in a press conference held in Lisbon. The country's principal hospitals are providing only minimal services and hundreds of schools and nurseries have been closed all day. Citizens advice bureaus and social security and tax offices likewise failed to open and garbage went uncollected in several cities, including Lisbon. Tourist attractions such as the Belem Tower and the Jeronimos Monastery in Lisbon kept their doors closed, as did the majority of town halls and local councils. The cause of the strike is a pay dispute. Public sector workers have had their salaries frozen for ten years. In real terms, this equates to a 20 percent loss of purchasing power. Union representatives called the strike having failed to get the government to include pay rises in the 2019 state budget. The government had "simulated negotiation," said Avoila, without making a concrete proposal. The Common Front/CGTP was joined in industrial action by the General Union of Workers (UGT), the Federation of Public Administration Syndicates (FESAP) and the Union of State Technical Experts (STE). A second strike has been called for Nov. 15. Source: Xinhua| 2018-10-27 01:36:24|Editor: yan Video Player Close BEIJING, Oct. 26 (Xinhua) -- Tencent was ordered to remove vulgar online literature and close public WeChat accounts that spread them, according to a government statement Friday. The National Office for the Fight Against Pornography and Illegal Publications, along with the State Administration of Press and Publication, interviewed executives of the leading tech firm Friday after receiving complaints about public WeChat accounts spreading pornographic and vulgar fictions, said a joint statement from the two departments. The company was asked to carry out internal inspections, screen suspected public WeChat accounts, and shut down problematic ones, the statement said. It was also advised to improve screening of content, tighten qualification checks, enhance its blacklisting system and better respond to complaints. Source: Xinhua| 2018-10-27 01:36:25|Editor: yan Video Player Close ADDIS ABABA, Oct. 26 (Xinhua) -- Ethiopia is to issue visa on arrival to all Africans starting Nov. 9, said Fitsum Arega, chief of staff at the Ethiopian Prime Minister Office, on Friday. In a press statement, Arega said the visa-on-arrival policy for fellow African visitors is in line with Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed's vision of a closer and full integration in the continent. "Consistent with Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed's vision of a closer and full regional integration in Africa, where minds are open to ideas and markets are open to trade, Ethiopia will start on arrival visa to all Africans starting from Nov. 9, 2018," Arega said. Ethiopia hopes the visa-on-arrival initiative would facilitate the economic integration of Africa by pushing tourist flow to a higher level and help advance conference tourism. The east African country, which hosts the headquarters of the continental body, the African Union (AU), also hopes that the move will assist the AU's initiative on the free movement of people. The AU urged all African countries to issue visa on arrival as of 2023. Israeli Prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu meets Sultan Qaboos bin Said in this undated handout provided by the Israel Prime Minister Office, in Oman. (Reuters photo) JERUSALEM, Oct. 26 (Xinhua) -- Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu paid an official diplomatic visit to Oman where he met with Sultan Qaboos bin Said, according to a statement issued by the Prime Minister's Office (PMO) on Friday. Prime Minister Netanyahu's visit to Oman is the first official meeting at this level since 1996, said the statement. The statement said Netanyahu and his wife returned to Israel on Friday from an "official diplomatic visit" to Oman. They were invited to visit by Oman's ruler, Sultan Qaboos bin Said, after lengthy contacts between the two countries. A joint statement was made following Netanyahu's visit, said the PMO's statement. "Among the issues discussed were ways to advance the peace process in the Middle East as well as several matters of joint interest regarding the achievement of peace and stability in the Middle East," noted the joint statement. The prime minister's visit is a "significant step" in implementing the policy outlined by Netanyahu on "deepening relations with the states of the region while leveraging Israel's advantages in security, technology and economic matters," said the PMO's statement. Israeli other high-ranking officials including Mossad Director Yossi Cohen, National Security Adviser and National Security Council Director Meir Ben-Shabbat, Foreign Ministry Director General Yuval Rotem, the head of the Prime Minister's staff Yoav Horowitz, and the Prime Minister's Military Secretary Brig.-Gen. Avi Bluth also participated in the visit. Israeli media called Netanyahu's visit to Oman "a secret visit" and quoted Palestinian reports as saying that Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas also paid a visit to Oman earlier this week. So far, Israel and Oman do not have diplomatic relations. Netanyahu's visit was the first meeting between leaders of the two countries since 1996. Israeli former premier Yitzhak Rabin made a similar surprise visit to Oman in 1994. Source: Xinhua| 2018-10-27 02:11:35|Editor: yan Video Player Close BERLIN, Oct. 26 (Xinhua) -- Representatives from China and central Asian countries along the Belt and Road route promoted here on Friday their tourist resources. During the "Belt and Road" Culture and Tourism Forum held at the China Cultural Center Berlin, Uzbekistan, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan and China showcased the latest development in inbound tourism in their respective countries. Addressing the forum, Chen Jianyang, head of the China Cultural Center Berlin, said the forum is an opportunity for Belt and Road countries to showcase their culture, history and tourist resources, taking the opportunity to invite the Germans to experience the beauty of the "new Silk Road". Shokhrukh Gulomov, economic attache of the Embassy of Uzbekistan in Germany, told Xinhua: "To join the force of Silk Road countries is a good idea, because a lot of Silk Road countries have common history, similar cultures, and they were very interactive in history." "As far as I know, a lot of tourists who visit Central Asia go to several countries. For example, tourists to Uzbekistan also want to visit countries like Tajikistan and China," he said. Gulomov believed that tourism under the initiative of the Belt and Road could draw visitors to the whole map of Silk Road countries, and that cultural and tourism sectors would particularly benefit from the Initiative. The Silk Road Economic Belt and the 21st Century Maritime Silk Road Initiative, proposed in 2013, aims to build a trade and infrastructure network connecting Asia with Europe and Africa along the ancient trade routes of the Silk Road. Source: Xinhua| 2018-10-27 02:26:39|Editor: Liangyu Video Player Close Economic crime suspects are escorted to arrive at Guangzhou Baiyun International Airport in Guangzhou, capital of south China's Guangdong Province, Oct. 26, 2018. Seventeen fugitives suspected of illegal fundraising via online lending platforms returned to Guangzhou from Thailand on Friday. Since June, a number of senior managers running illegal online peer-to-peer lending platforms have fled overseas due to a capital crunch. The Ministry of Public Security has thus dispatched specialized working units overseas to catch these economic crime suspects. (Xinhua/Zhang Jiayang) GUANGZHOU, Oct. 26 (Xinhua) -- Seventeen fugitives suspected of illegal fundraising via online lending platforms returned to Guangzhou from Thailand on Friday. One major fugitive surnamed Wang is suspected of defrauding the public of bank deposits, while another surnamed Zhan is suspected of fraudulent fundraising, according to the Ministry of Public Security (MPS). In the last three months, the MPS has worked with police and migration departments overseas, to capture over 40 fugitives suspected of illegal fundraising via online lending platforms. Since June, a number of senior managers running illegal online peer-to-peer lending platforms have fled overseas due to a capital crunch. The MPS has thus dispatched specialized working units overseas to catch these economic crime suspects. China will step up efforts related to international law enforcement cooperation so as to crack down on economic crime fugitives, the MPS said. File Photo: Syrian Ambassador to the United Nations Bashar Jaafari (front) speaks during a Security Council meeting at the UN headquarters in New York, Aug. 28, 2018. (Xinhua/Li Muzi) UNITED NATIONS, Oct. 26 (Xinhua) -- Syria's permanent representative to the United Nations Bashar Jaafari on Friday threatened that his country will retake Idlib province, the last major rebel stronghold and home to a demilitarized buffer zone agreed to by Russia and Turkey. "Idlib is a dearly held part of my country. We are determined to recover Idlib," Jaafari told the Security Council. "We allow for diplomatic and political work. But our right under the UN Charter and international law allows us to fully recover Idlib when we deem necessary," he said. Russian President Vladimir Putin and Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan agreed to establish a demilitarized zone within Idlib province on Sept. 17 in a bid to avert a full-scale assault on the rebel stronghold, which humanitarians feared would have severe consequences for the 3 million civilians living here, many of them displaced people. The cease-fire in Idlib has so far been maintained. Attempts by the Syrian government to retake Idlib would represent a major change of situation on the ground and would compromise the United Nations' efforts to break the deadlock on the political process in Syria. UN Special Envoy for the Syria crisis Staffan de Mistura, who briefed the Security Council at the same meeting, is struggling to set up a constitutional committee, a key step in the political process. After Jafaari's statement to the Security Council, British ambassador to the United Natons Karen Pierce requested clarification on the Syrian government's stance and asked whether the retaking of Idlib would mean the end of the Russian-Turkish agreement on the buffer zone. Jafaari replied: "It's not surprising to say on behalf of my government that we will restore sovereignty over Idlib because it's part of our territory -- in a time we deem it appropriate." Russian ambassador to the United Nations Vassily Nebenzia said the retaking of Idlib does not contradict with the Russian-Turkish agreement on Idlib. "I would like to confirm what was said by the distinguished representative of the Syrian Arab Republic that we are talking about a territory which is part of sovereign Syria," he said after Jafaari, also in response to Pierce's request. "It goes without saying that we believe that ultimately the legitimate Syrian authorities will require control over all of their territory which makes up the territory of the Syrian Arab Republic. There is no contradiction with the Russian-Turkish agreement." Source: Xinhua| 2018-10-27 03:01:47|Editor: yan Video Player Close DAR ES SALAAM, Oct. 26 (Xinhua) -- Tanzanian Prime Minister Kassim Majaliwa said on Friday President John Magufuli supports cashew nuts farmers' boycott to sell their crop for low prices. "President Magufuli is fully supporting the farmers' boycott until the crop fetched handsome prices," Majaliwa told a meeting of leaders from cashew nuts growing regions. Cashew nuts growers in Mtwara, Ruvuma, Coast and Lindi regions have boycotted selling their crop at auctions, citing low prices. The prime minister suspended all cashew nuts auctions in the four regions until the pricing issue is sorted out. "The government is seriously addressing this issue and it will come up with a solution by the end of this month," said Majaliwa. Majaliwa held talks with regional commissioners of the four regions and chairmen of cooperative unions and officials of the Cashewnut Board of Tanzania on the price stand-off and other issues facing the cashew nuts market. At least three cashew nuts auctions have been boycotted by farmers so far due to prices which they said did not meet their expectations. The farmers enjoyed record high prices of up to 4,000 Tanzanian shillings (about 1.75 U.S. dollars) a kg last season, but buyers are offering a maximum of Tanzanian shillings 2,700 (1.18 dollars) a kg this season. The new buying season started early this month but no trading has taken place due to the boycott, leading to fears that the disruption would affect the country's foreign exchange earnings. International prices for cashew nuts have dropped by nearly half since March. Source: Xinhua| 2018-10-27 03:11:50|Editor: yan Video Player Close Chinese President Xi Jinping (R) meets with Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe in Beijing, capital of China, Oct. 26, 2018. (Xinhua/Li Tao) BEIJING, Oct. 26 (Xinhua) -- China and Japan are eyeing "new development" after their ties have recently come back on track. This was highlighted Friday as Chinese leaders met with Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, who is visiting Beijing this week. It has been the first official visit made by a Japanese prime minister since 2011. "China and Japan, as close neighbors with great converging interests, are major world economies and influential countries," said President Xi Jinping during his meeting with Abe at the Diaoyutai State Guesthouse, expressing his appreciation for the prime minister's willingness to improve bilateral ties in recent years. Prior to his visit, Abe has pledged many times to "shift from competition to coordination" between the two nations, which has been considered as a sign that the Japanese side has changed its attitude toward China. "The healthy, steady and long-term development of China-Japan ties is in the fundamental interests of the two countries' people, and represents common expectations of the international community," Xi said. He said the China-Japan ties had been "back on track" and gained positive momentum with concerted efforts by both sides. "This is worth cherishing," said Xi. Echoing Xi, Abe said he was glad to pay an official visit to China on the occasion of the 40th anniversary of the signing of the China-Japan Treaty of Peace and Friendship, and that he hopes the two sides will open up a new era of the Japan-China relationship through his visit. The treaty, signed by the elder generation of leaders of both countries, has established a general direction of lasting peace, friendship between the two countries in the form of law, and provided solid support for both sides to conduct mutual beneficial cooperation, achieve common development, and properly deal with sensitive historical issues and the Taiwan issue. A reception marking the anniversary of the treaty was held Thursday at the Great Hall of the People in Beijing, with the attendance of Premier Li Keqiang and Abe, as well as some 800 representatives from both countries. "The Japanese side stands ready to work with China to increase high-level exchanges and exchanges at other levels, continuously gain the public support for China-Japan friendship, properly manage differences and advance the in-depth development of strategic beneficial relationship," Abe said during his meeting with Xi. Gao Hong, an expert on China-Japan ties with the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, said: "Direct meetings between leaders of China and Japan during the visit have further improved mutual political trust and provided political guarantee for future bilateral cooperation." ENHANCED ECONOMIC TIES Pragmatic cooperation serves as "ballast" and a "thruster" for the development of China-Japan relations, Premier Li told Abe Friday. "China will unswervingly forge ahead opening-up to the world, promote fairer regulation, strictly protect intellectual property rights and create a market-oriented, law-based and internationalized business environment," Li said. He encouraged Japanese enterprises to take the opportunities of China's new round of opening-up and invest in China, adding that China was willing to enhance financial cooperation with Japan via currency swaps. The People's Bank of China, the central bank, said Friday that it had inked a bilateral currency swap agreement with its counterpart of Japan, a move aimed at enhancing financial stability of the two countries and facilitating bilateral economic and financial exchanges. The agreement will allow the two sides to swap a total of 200 billion yuan (about 28.78 billion U.S. dollars) for 3.4 trillion Japanese yen, and vice versa. The past 40 years has witnessed Japan's increasingly extensive engagement in China's reform and opening up process. "China's economic development presents huge opportunities welcomed by Japan and the rest of the world," Abe said in a written interview with Chinese media on the eve of his visit to China. "The economies of the two countries are inseparable." A case in point is that China-Japan bilateral trading volume bounced back to above 300 billion U.S. dollars in 2017, making China the largest trading partner with Japan. The China-proposed Belt and Road Initiative also provides a new platform and experimental field for mutually beneficial cooperation between the two countries. Hailing the above-mentioned initiative as a vision with great potential, Abe expressed the readiness to strengthen cooperation with China in multiple fields, including the third-party markets. At a forum on third-party market cooperation held Friday in Beijing, 50 plus cooperation agreements worth more than 18 billion U.S. dollars were signed, an indication that cooperation in this regard is bound to become a new pillar for pragmatic cooperation. UNITED FRONT ON FREE TRADE Upholding multilateralism and promoting economic integration of the Asia-Pacific region are also issues of common concern during Abe's China visit. In his meeting with Abe, Premier Li called on the two sides to boost trade and investment in the region and jointly build an East Asia economic community to promote the process of the Asia-Pacific regional integration. Pledging to build a free and just international economic order, Abe said he hoped to work with China in pushing for concrete progresses of Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership negotiations, thus contributing to free trade and world economic development. "In face of the momentum of unilateralism and protectionism with the rule-based international order being gravely challenged, China and Japan find it imperative to strengthen communication and cooperation to maintain an economic order, as a way to promote better global governance," said Ruan Zongze, executive vice president and senior fellow at China Institute of International Studies. Source: Xinhua| 2018-10-27 03:16:51|Editor: yan Video Player Close TIRANA, Oct. 26 (Xinhua) -- Albania has sent servicemen of the Commando Battalion of the Infantry Troops to participate in the Trident Juncture 2018, a military exercise led by the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) in Norway, local media reported Friday. "The commandos have joined Trident Juncture 18, the NATO-led military exercise. An expected 50,000 participants from 31 nations will take part, including 10,000 vehicles, 250 aircraft and 65 vessels," declared Albanian Defense Minister Olta Xhacka, quoted by the media. According to Xhacka, the exercises are held in Norway and the main goals of Trident Juncture 18 are to train the NATO Response Force and to test the alliance's defense capability. Trident Juncture 18, which started on Thursday, is held in Norway in October and November. The exercise consists of three main parts: a phase of deployment, a live field exercise from Oct. 25 to Nov. 7 and ultimately a command post exercise on Nov. 13-24. Source: Xinhua| 2018-10-27 03:31:55|Editor: yan Video Player Close BEIJING, Oct. 26 (Xinhua) -- The eighth Beijing Xiangshan Forum concluded in Beijing Friday. Through days of discussion, the theme, "Building a new type of security partnership of equality, mutual trust and win-win cooperation" has become a consensus of delegates at the forum. "Only through adhering to equality and mutual trust, dialogue and cooperation, seeking common ground and reconciling differences, as well as accomplishing sustainable security via common development, can win-win, multi-win and all-win get fulfilled," said Chen Guangjun, chairman of the China Institute for International Strategic Studies. "Going ahead with the company of countries around the world and taking care of the peace of the world are always an original aspiration of China." During the forum, delegates carried out frank and thorough interactions concerning topics including "international security governance: new ideas and approaches," "global terrorism: threats and countermeasures," "maritime security cooperation: reality and vision" and "UN peacekeeping: challenges and cooperation." "I love China. It is a country of much history and friendly people," Shaun Fogarty, director of strategic engagements with the New Zealand Defense Force, told Xinhua. "The forum has over the years become bigger and bigger, and the wide participation shows it is an important dialogue held with respect." Liu Lin, associate research fellow with the Chinese People's Liberation Army Academy of Military Science, said: "Delegates raised many innovative thoughts and ideas, and have reached consensus on the importance of strengthening strategic communication, enhancing security mutual trust and promoting pragmatic cooperation." "This fully demonstrates the ideas of 'equality, openness, inclusiveness, and mutual learning' at the forum." Source: Xinhua| 2018-10-27 03:42:00|Editor: yan Video Player Close UNITED NATIONS, Oct. 26 (Xinhua) -- UN Special Envoy for Syria Staffan de Mistura said Friday that Damascus does not recognize the world body's role in forming a constitutional committee tasked to draft a new constitution for the war-torn country. De Mistura noted that the final statement of inter-Syrian talks in Sochi in January that were brokered by Russia, Iran and Turkey did put the United Nations in charge of the composition of the constitutional committee. "Final agreement is to be reached in the UN-led Geneva process on the mandate and terms of reference, powers, rules of procedure, and selection criteria for the composition of the constitutional committee," de Mistura quoted the Russian version of the outcome as reading. At his meeting with Syrian Foreign Minister Walid Muallem in Damascus on Wednesday, the Syrian official, however, did not recognize the outcome of the Sochi talks as circulated to the Security Council by Russia, said de Mistura. "On the Sochi final statement, Muallem referred to another outcome rather than the one circulated by Russia to the Security Council. He said that it was possible for the government of Syria to take 'some elements' of the outcome circulated by Russia and 'reconcile' them with the government's preferred other 'outcome' -- and the key differences in this regard concerned, mainly, the role of the UN," de Mistural told the Security Council. As regards the understanding reached between Russia and the United Nations before the Sochi event that the Sochi outcome would be brought to Geneva as a contribution to the intra-Syrian talks process under the auspices of the United Nations, Muallem did not view it as consistent with the principles of sovereignty and non-interference, said de Mistura. "Basically, Minister Muallem did not accept a role for the UN in general in identifying or selecting the Middle Third list," said the UN envoy, referring to the list of civil society representatives to the committee. Under the Sochi agreement, the constitutional committee is to be composed of representatives of the Syrian government, the opposition and civil society representatives -- each with 50 members. De Mistura said he will be traveling to Istanbul, Turkey, on Saturday to brief the presidents of France, Germany, Russia and Turkey at their summit meeting on Syria. He said that he will use that occasion to remind these four important leaders that there is still a clear window of opportunity that needs to be urgently seized. Source: Xinhua| 2018-10-27 03:47:02|Editor: yan Video Player Close BUCHAREST, Oct. 26 (Xinhua) -- Remittances to Moldova by expatriates rose to almost one billion U.S. dollars in first three quarters of 2018, announced the National Bank of Moldova (BNM) on Friday. According to the BNM data, the net money transfers to private people exceeded 955 million dollars in the first nine months of this year, reaching an average of 9.5 percent as compared with the same period of the previous year. The proportion of remittances from the European Union maintained the growth trend in recent years, reaching 42.9 percent, while the share of the Commonwealth of Independent States continued to slowly decline to 26.2 percent from the two-thirds share of the historical peak. The rest of 30.9 percent of transfers were from the rest of the world. Most of the money transfers, 48.2 percent, were made in euro, followed by transfers in U.S. dollars, 44.7 percent and in Russian rubles, 7.1 percent. The remittances from workers abroad are the single most important net source of foreign exchange currency in Moldova, where an estimated one-third of the economically active population has been working abroad. In 2017, remittances to Moldova by migrant workers rose 11 percent to 1.199 billion dollars. Remittances to gross domestic product (GDP) ratio in the country are at more than 20 percent over the last 15 years. Source: Xinhua| 2018-10-27 04:17:10|Editor: yan Video Player Close UNITED NATIONS, Oct. 26 (Xinhua) -- The United States and several other countries on the Security Council on Friday demanded the swift convening of a Syrian constitutional committee, but Russia said there should be no hurry. "The United States, along with all other members of the Small Group -- Egypt, France, Germany, Jordan, Saudi Arabia, and the United Kingdom -- and other like-minded UN Security Council partners are united in our position that the UN should move swiftly to convene the constitutional committee," said Jonathan Cohen, the U.S. deputy permanent representative to the United Nations. "Further obstruction on the committee's formation is unacceptable. Further delay risks squandering the window of opportunity provided by the Turkish and Russian demilitarized zone that has succeeded in preventing further bloodshed in Idlib and beyond," he told the Security Council. Russian UN Ambassador Vassily Nebenzia, however, said: "There are no grounds for establishing artificial deadlines for the establishment of the constitutional committee." "Conditions cannot be imposed that contradict the will of the Syrian parties themselves," he told the council. In January talks in Sochi that were brokered by Russia, Iran and Turkey, Syrian parties agreed on the formation of an inclusive constitutional committee, which is tasked to draft a new constitution for the war-torn country. The formation of such a committee has stalled as Damascus refuses to accept a list of representatives of civil society prepared by the United Nations. Under the Sochi agreement, the constitutional committee is to be composed of representatives of the Syrian government, the opposition and civil society representatives -- each with 50 members. Nebenzia, the Russian ambassador, questioned the intention of Britain, France and the United States -- the countries that requested Friday's Security Council meeting, which heard a briefing from UN Special Envoy for the Syria crisis Staffan de Mistura. Russia is not convinced that the countries that insisted on the convening of Friday's meeting are working for a peaceful settlement of the Syria crisis, said Nebenzia. He accused them of Russia bashing. De Mistura, who briefed the Security Council via a video link from Beirut, Lebanon, after his meeting with Syrian Foreign Minister Walid Muallem two days ago, said Damascus does not recognize the United Nations' role in forming the constitutional committee. "Basically, Minister Muallem did not accept a role for the UN in general in identifying or selecting the Middle Third list," said the UN envoy, referring to the list of civil society representatives to the committee. Cohen, the U.S. representative, said no one should doubt that the UN special envoy has the mandate to move forward to establish the constitutional committee. Any list proposed by anyone must have the approval of the special envoy, not just in its membership, but in how it is compiled, he said. Despite what the special envoy heard in Damascus, the United Nations has exclusive control over the committee's membership, schedule, and scope of work -- as affirmed by Russia in its January 2018 Sochi Declaration, said Cohen. Source: Xinhua| 2018-10-27 04:52:18|Editor: yan Video Player Close PRAGUE, Oct. 26 (Xinhua) -- A foal of endangered Przewalski's horse, also known as the Mongolian wild horse, was born in Prague Zoo, said the zoo's spokeswoman Lenka Pastorcakova on Friday. The baby was delivered on Thursday, and it is healthy, active and now in close contact with the mother, said Pastorcakova. This year, this has been the fourth foal of this rare species among 239 Przewalski's horses born in Prague zoo, she added. The mother of the new offspring is named Hara, a mare from Chemnitz, Germany, and it is her sixth baby. The father is stallion Len from the Askania-Nova biosphere reserve in Ukraine. The Prague Zoo is famous for the longest breeding history of Przewalski's horses in the world. In 1933, its first foal was born. This rare species were on the brink of extinction as last spotted in the wild in June 1969. Prague Zoo joined the Return of the Wild Horses project in 1995 in order to revive the population and return the horses to their original home. Since 2011, the zoo has transported from the Czech Republic to western Mongolia a total of 31 Przewalski's horses. Four more horses later went to Mongolia too. Out of the 35 horses, 28 of them survived and successfully reproduced, said Pastorcakova. Source: Xinhua| 2018-10-27 04:57:19|Editor: ZX Video Player Close LOS ANGELES, Oct. 26 (Xinhua) -- The Consulate General of China in Los Angeles confirmed on Friday there were about 1,500 Chinese tourists trapped in Saipan by Super Typhoon Yutu, which hit the Northern Mariana Islands and caused extensive infrastructure damages. The consulate general has set up a 24-hour hotline on Thursday, and received nearly 80 calls from Chinese tourists searching for help after their flights were canceled due to Typhoon Yutu. The Chinese tourists hoped to leave the disaster area as soon as possible, said the consulate general in a release. The majority of the trapped Chinese flied to Saipan via domestic charter flights, while a few took flights of foreign airlines. Currently, no casualties of Chinese citizens have been reported, said the consulate general, adding their accommodation and food have been guaranteed. Local authorities were in efforts to resume flights on Saturday. The consulate general and other related domestic departments are working on evacuation plans of Chinese citizens after local airport resumes navigation. Yutu, which hit the island territories overnight on Wednesday, caused extensive damage to critical infrastructure on Saipan and Tinian islands, and displaced many families, said the Northern Mariana Islands Governor's Office. With sustained winds of over 270 km per hour, the powerful storm tore up roofs and pulled down trees and power lines in the Marianas, the office said. Source: Xinhua| 2018-10-27 05:02:20|Editor: yan Video Player Close BUDAPEST, Oct. 26 (Xinhua) -- German automobile giant Daimler inaugurated the Mercedes Benz Academy, a state of the art training facility next to its car factory in Kecskemet, central Hungary, on Friday. "In the first eight months of this year, vehicle production increased by 6.3 percent (in Hungary); for this kind of performance, the work of professionals with modern knowledge is essential, so our most important task is to put as many talented young people as possible towards vocational training," Laszlo Palkovics, Hungarian Minister of Innovation and Technology said at the inauguration. The academy occupies some 8,000 square meters on the premises of the Mercedes-Benz factory. Its investment was supported with a 622 million forint (about 2.2 million U.S. dollars) grant from the state of Hungary. Palkovics added that nowadays every third vocational training student was involved in some dual training. The factory played a pioneering role in introducing dual training in Kecskemet, Christian Wolff, managing director of Mercedes-Benz Manufacturing Hungary said. The factory in Kecskemet employs about 4,000 workers and produced more than 190,000 Mercedes-Benz compact cars last year. Source: Xinhua| 2018-10-27 05:27:26|Editor: yan Video Player Close BERLIN, Oct. 26 (Xinhua) -- German opposition parties have made a public demand on Friday for finance minister Olaf Scholz to prove a comprehensive clarification on the ongoing Cum-Ex tax fraud scandal and the massive losses suffered by European fiscal authorities as a result thereof. The Greens (Gruene) and Left Party (Linke) are formally calling for a "rapid discussion of the Cum-Ex topic by the parliamentary financial affairs committee under invitation of the federal finance minister Olaf Scholz", a letter sent by the financial policy experts Gerhard Schick (Gruene) and Fabio De Masi (Linke) to the committee read. The "Cum-Ex" scandal is widely considered to be the largest tax fraud scheme in German history. As initially revealed by journalists from the newspaper "Die Zeit", domestic and international banks as well as some investment funds used loopholes in stock trading regulations over the course of several years to strip the German state of billions of euros. Official estimates put the total damage caused by the fraudulent practices as high as 31.8 billion euros (36.1 billion U.S. dollars). Specifically, scores of lawyers, lobbyists, and banking staff were found to have assisted their clients with two lucrative "Cum-Cum" and "Cum-Ex" methods of diverting funds from taxpayers. "Cum-Cum" is a still legally-disputed practice whereby financial institutions help foreign investors in securing tax rebates they are not entitled to. "Cum-Ex" is more complex and was officially outlawed in 2015. Following this approach, a tax bill is settled by the owner of stocks once, before being claimed as a refund twice, or even multiple times. The profit thus achieved is then split again between the parties to the transaction. A long list of major banks, including Citigroup, Barclays, and Deutsche Bank, were found to have participated in and benefited from the multibillion-euro scheme. "The biggest tax theft in European history is acquiring increasingly extreme dimensions. And what is the federal government doing? It is slowing down, blocking and keeping silent," Schick complained on Friday. Aside from opposition party criticism, the German government has recently also been accused by Denmark of failing to provide an adequate warning that it was also being targeted with Cum-Ex practices. Shortly before the request by Greens and Left party for a parliamentary discussion, Danish tax minister Karsten Lauritzen urged Scholz to clarify why related information obtained by German authorities back in 2012 was not shared with its fellow European Union member. A migrant woman rests roadside with her child while traveling with a caravan of thousands from Central America en route to the United States as they make their way to Mapastepec from Huixtla, Mexico, Oct. 24, 2018. (REUTERS Photo) UNITED NATIONS, Oct. 26 (Xinhua) -- Some 2,300 children among the thousands of migrants marching through Mexico toward the U.S. border need protection and access to essential services like health care, clean water and adequate sanitation, the UN Children's Fund (UNICEF) said on Friday. "Some have already fallen ill or suffered from dehydration," said UNICEF in a statement issued at UN Headquarters. "The long and arduous journey has left children exposed to inclement weather, including dangerously hot temperatures, with limited access to proper shelter," said the children's agency, citing reports from teams on the ground. Those traveling with the caravan hope for safety in numbers, UNICEF said, but "the perils of using irregular migration routes remain significant, especially for children. The journey is long, uncertain and full of danger, including the risk of exploitation, violence and abuse." Members of the children's agency said they are working with the Mexican government and other partners to ensure that uprooted children are provided with the support and services they need and that their rights are upheld. This includes providing technical assistance to authorities on nutrition and child protection, and expanding access to psychosocial support. UNICEF and its partners said they are also providing children and families in the caravan with more than 20,000 liters of safe drinking water, hygiene and sanitation packs, oral rehydration salts, sunscreen and soap. Earlier in the week the official number of migrants trekking through Mexico on the way from Honduras and Guatemala was estimated at more than 7,000 migrants. However, the number has dwindled, reports from the scene indicate, but there so far has not been any official estimate of the reduced total number which some said could be in the range of 4,000 plus people. "Many of the children and families in the caravan are fleeing gang and gender-based violence, extortion, poverty and limited access to quality education and social services in their home countries of northern Central America -- El Salvador, Guatemala and Honduras," UNICEF said. "These conditions are part of daily life for millions of children in the region," the agency said. "Each day, families facing these harsh conditions make the painful decision to leave their homes, communities and countries in search of safety and a more hopeful future." Source: Xinhua| 2018-10-27 05:42:29|Editor: yan Video Player Close UNITED NATIONS, Oct. 26 (Xinhua) -- UN Special Envoy for Syria Staffan de Mistura said Friday that Damascus does not recognize the world body's role in forming a constitutional committee tasked to draft a new constitution for the war-torn country. De Mistura noted that the final statement of inter-Syrian talks in Sochi in January, which were brokered by Russia, Iran and Turkey -- the Astana guarantors, did put the United Nations in charge of the composition of the constitutional committee. "Final agreement is to be reached in the UN-led Geneva process on the mandate and terms of reference, powers, rules of procedure, and selection criteria for the composition of the constitutional committee," de Mistura quoted the Russian version of the outcome as reading. At his meeting with Syrian Foreign Minister Walid Muallem in Damascus on Wednesday, the Syrian official, however, did not recognize the outcome of the Sochi talks as circulated to the Security Council by Russia, said de Mistura. "On the Sochi final statement, Muallem referred to another outcome rather than the one circulated by Russia to the Security Council. He said that it was possible for the government of Syria to take 'some elements' of the outcome circulated by Russia and 'reconcile' them with the government's preferred other 'outcome' -- and the key differences in this regard concerned, mainly, the role of the UN," de Mistural told the Security Council. As regards the understanding reached between Russia and the United Nations before the Sochi event that the Sochi outcome would be brought to Geneva as a contribution to the intra-Syrian talks process under the auspices of the United Nations, Muallem did not view it as consistent with the principles of sovereignty and non-interference, said de Mistura. "Basically, Minister Muallem did not accept a role for the UN in general in identifying or selecting the Middle Third list," said the UN envoy, referring to the list of civil society representatives to the committee. Under the Sochi agreement, the constitutional committee is to be composed of representatives of the Syrian government, the opposition and civil society representatives -- each with 50 members. Muallem indicated that the Syrian government and Russia had agreed recently that the three Astana guarantors and the Syrian government would, in consultation among them, prepare a proposal as regards the civil society representative, and present it to UN facilitation. Since Muallem indicated that the Syrian government's preferred methodology at this stage was working with the Astana guarantors on a civil society component to the constitutional committee, he said, a lot of responsibility and expectation rests now on them and on how to implement the Sochi declaration in a manner that carries forward the implementation of Security Council Resolution 2254 and gives practical effect to the basic points on which the UN supported Sochi. The UN proposal was made after careful consultations including with the guarantors, and has been revised already in light of those consultations, he said. The very difficulties of keeping everyone on board should be a reminder to all to be careful in thinking that some radically different approach has any prospects of success, he warned. "The UN is not opposed to constructive and moderate suggestions -- so long as we maintain the same spirit of credibility -- I repeat credibility, balance, international legitimacy of the Middle Third list on the table, and we have a sense of urgency to find common ground or at least clarify where we stand. Because we should not miss the opportunity of the Idlib window (as a result of cease-fire). That is why November is becoming so important." At a certain point, Muallem proposed that the UN envoy withdraw the proposed civil society representatives list already on the table, said de Mistura. "I indicated that the UN could withdraw its proposal only -- only -- once and only if there was an agreement on a new credible, balanced and inclusive list consistent with Security Council Resolution 2254 and the Sochi final statement." Resolution 2254 provides for a political settlement in Syria. De Mistura said he will be traveling to Istanbul, Turkey, on Saturday to brief the presidents of France, Germany, Russia and Turkey at their summit meeting on Syria. He said that he will use that occasion to remind these four important leaders that there is still a clear window of opportunity that needs to be urgently seized. De Mistura, who will step down by the end of November, vowed to continue to push for the convening of the constitutional committee. "I will spare no effort in the time that remains of my mandate to verify whether it is indeed possible to convene a UN-facilitated, Syrian-owned, Syrian-led constitutional committee that is credible, balanced and inclusive, and contributes in the context of the Geneva process to implementing Security Council Resolution 2254," he told the Security Council. He said he will report back to the council on Nov. 19 after consultations with the Astana guarantors and with members of the so-called Small Group on Syria -- Britain, France, Germany, the United States, Egypt, Jordan and Saudi Arabia. Source: Xinhua| 2018-10-27 05:52:31|Editor: yan Video Player Close HELSINKI, Oct. 26 (Xinhua) -- Several Finnish trade unions on Friday announced that they interrupt their current political strike actions following a conditional acceptance by central labor organizations of a compromise plan from Prime Minister Juha Sipila. The three central organisations underlined that Sipila had promised that a new bill on job security would be prepared jointly with the labor organizations. The unions said they would continue with the strikes and other measures if the joint preparation hits a snag. Central organizations as such could not decide whether to end the strikes which were called by their member unions. Within hours, Sipila accepted the demand by the central unions that besides the law text also the crucially important preamble of the bill would be processed jointly in the traditional tripartite round table meetings between the unions, the government and the employer organizations. In the Finnish legal practice, the preambles of law bills are important as they are being used in the courts as a proof of what the "real intention" of the legislation has been. After several weeks of political labor action, the government on Thursday offered to take away from the job security bill the clause that dismissals would be easier in companies with less than ten employees. Instead, there would be a general principle that the size and "the overall situation of a company" would be taken into account in the court cases about dismissals. Teemu Luukka, a political analyst of the newspaper Helsingin Sanomat, said on Friday that the possibility exists that the unions "in their empowered state of mind now" would insist on such wordings in the preamble that would actually make dismissals more difficult. That would not be acceptable to the government and the crisis would start again. In fact, Helsingin Sanomat quoted Sipila as using the word "armistice" about the situation now between the government and the unions. Jarkko Eloranta, chairman of the blue collar central organisation, said Friday that joint work is important as the labor side does not have yet "the full picture of the planned legislation". Local commentators have noted that as a side product of the deal the traditional Finnish tripartite decision making got a new recognition, even a rehabilitation. Ari Hakahuhta, a political analyst of the national broadcaster Yle, said that disagreements between the unions and the government may re-emerge later as the government now could not reach its objectives. Source: Xinhua| 2018-10-27 06:02:35|Editor: ZX Video Player Close HAVANA, Oct. 26 (Xinhua) -- Cuba is set to use the celebrations of Havana's 500th anniversary to relaunch the capital city as a renewed world tourist destination, said Cuban Minister of Tourism Manuel Marrero on Friday. Marrero told the state-run Cuban News Agency that celebrations around the city's anniversary, which officially falls on Nov. 16, 2019, are the ideal platform to renovate Havana's tourism and make investments for a sustainable future. He also announced plans to open 12 new medium-high standard hotels in the city over the next year. New investments will be targeted at building more highly competitive facilities such as luxury hotels, to offer higher quality options for visitors and "change the image" of the Cuban capital, said the minister. "The change of image is one of the most important processes in the cities turning big anniversaries, as it is in the case of Havana," said the official. Marrero explained that Havana plays a vital role in tourists' impressions of the country, as over half of all international tourists that visit Cuba arrive in the capital first and later tour around the rest of the Caribbean nation. "Havana practically defines Cuba's tourism image," he said. Tourism is Cuba's second largest source of income and generates around 2.5 billion U.S. dollars a year. Some 4.7 million foreign tourists visited the island last year. Authorities expect to welcome over 5 million international visitors in 2018. Source: Xinhua| 2018-10-27 06:27:38|Editor: yan Video Player Close JERUSALEM, Oct. 27 (Xinhua) -- A barrage of 16 rockets was launched Friday night from the Gaza Strip towards Israeli city of Sderot and other settlements in southern Israel. The Israel Defense Forces (IDF) said in a statement that 10 of the rockets were intercepted by its Iron Dome defense system. Following the barrage, seven people were treated for shock at Barzilai Hospital in the southern city of Ashkelon. In addition, a 14-year-old boy and a 50-year-old man were lightly injured when they tried to take shelter during a siren. IDF added that fighter jets and helicopters attacked targets in the Gaza Strip a short while after the rocket barrage. Earlier Friday, some 16,000 Palestinians demonstrated near the security border fence, hurled grenades, firebombs and rockets and lit tires on fire. The Palestinians reported that four young demonstrators were killed by the Israeli army. In response, Israeli aircraft attacked three Hamas targets in the Gaza Strip. The Central European University (CEU) has said that unless the university can emerge from its current legal limbo in Hungary by December 1, incoming students will study at the CEUs new campus in Vienna. Michael Ignatieff, the CEUs president and rector, told a news conference in Budapest that the decision by the institutions board of trustees will come into effect on December 1, though, he added, hopefully a solution to the stand-off was still possible to ensure that courses continue in Hungary. But if a solution is not found, the CEU will move to Vienna given we cannot continue to operate legally in Budapest. Ignatieff added that the CEU had fulfilled the Hungarian governments conditions, but the government did not want to sign the related international convention. In response to the CEU press conference, government spokesman Zoltan Kovacs branded Ignatieffs statement as a political bluff on the part of US billionaire George Soros, the CEUs founder and main benefactor. He said the CEU will continue to operate in Hungary today, and, in our opinion, in the future too. The university very well knows what the Hungarian regulations are, but instead of actually complying with them, their response is political bluster, the spokesman said. Related articles: CEU To Start Recruitment For 2019-20 Academic Year CEU Plans To Stay In Hungary DK Calls On Govt To Sign CEU Agreement CEU In Talks Regarding Vienna Campus MTI Photo: Illyes Tibor At the CEUs news conference, Michael Ignatieff, the universitys president and rector, said that students who have already begun their studies in Budapest will finish them here, and as much education and research as possible would remain in the Hungarian capital. Ignatieff said a Hungarian examination had found that their expectations had been met. Further, as far as the CEUs accreditation in the United States is concerned, the university has met its obligations, he added. A few weeks ago, however, the American ambassador signalled that the Hungarian government does not want to sign the related international convention, he added. The rector said the CEU wanted to comply with Hungarian laws and remain in Budapest. Last week, the universitys leadership met Hungarian officials but they failed to reach a satisfactory outcome. The CEU would welcome further talks but wants its academic freedom as a US institution operating in Hungary to be recognised, the rector said, adding that the US Congress also underlined the importance of the CEU remaining in Hungary. Ignatieff said the Vienna campus has been preparing to open for several months. This will go ahead even if the CEU can retain its freedoms in Hungary, he said. The US embassy said in a statement that the US ambassador to Hungary is working to resolve the issue of the Central European Universitys status in Hungary. Ambassador David Cornstein said: CEU remains a priority for the U.S. Government and has overwhelming bipartisan support in the United States. I understand CEUs position -- prolonged uncertainty is not sustainable for an academic institution. However, a solution is still possible. There is a small window to resolve this, but it needs to happen fast. I am working with both parties to continue the negotiations and find an acceptable resolution before December 1, the statement added. The opposition Socialist Party said the CEU had been subjected to political persecution and its departure from Hungary would be a loss to the country and its higher education system. The Socialists called on the government to respect the law and recognise an interstate agreement tied to the universitys operations. The CEUs announcement is due to a political attack rather than professional necessity, deputy group leader Istvan Hiller told a press conference. Vilnius, he noted, has expressed willingness to join Vienna in hosting the university if it is forced to leave Hungary. Hiller, a former education minister, said the ruling parties had decided to amend the education law in spring 2017, and everybody who understood Hungarys higher education system and legislation knew that the move was aimed at curtailing the CEU. An agreement between the CEU and Bard College in New York State meets Hungarys higher education law in every way, yet the Hungarian government refuses to sign it, he said. Related articles: CEU To Start Recruitment For 2019-20 Academic Year CEU Plans To Stay In Hungary CEU Signals Move From Budapest To Vienna CEU In Talks Regarding Vienna Campus An Ukrainian nationalist group claims they stole confidential identification documents listing the passport information of hundreds of Hungarian citizens from Russian intelligence. Diplomatic tension has been building between the Hungarian and Ukrainian governments for weeks due to a list sharing the information of 300 ethnic Hungarians. The controversial document was published by Ukrainian website Myrotvorets. The database contains knowledge obtainable only by the government or secret service. Hungary has accused the Ukrainian security service of conducting operations against the Hungarian minority. For instance, Foreign Minister Peter Szijjarto said earlier that Ukraine went further than ever before when it violated every existing written and unwritten rule of international law and diplomacy by conducting an intelligence operation at a Hungarian consulate in Ukraine (referring to the illegal recording of an oath-taking ceremony). Myrotvorets claims they didnt receive the information from the Ukrainian security service, but instead stole it from Russian intelligence. The extremist group says they were in possession of Hungarian passport data through to 2015, therefore Russian intelligence must have been very active during this period. They revealed that they invented a special method of filtering out Hungarians who have Ukrainian citizenship. The story is suspicious as the Ukrainian Nationalist group could have gotten the data from other sources with less effort. Index.hu revealed that many violations occurred in Ukraine in the early stages of the Naturalization process when people with Hungarian origins could obtain Hungarian Citizenship. The newspaper gathered information proving that with the help of corrupt officials and lawyers, members of Russian and Ukrainian crime syndicates could take advantages of legal loopholes. On Wednesday, Myrotvorets added more than 300 individuals to the list. According to MTI (Hungarian wire service), people on the list noticed that the database displays their expired passport numbers from prior Hungarian documents next to their names. Related articles: Video: Ukrainian-Hungarian Dual Citizens 'Outed' In Ukraine Local Opinion: Tension Between Hungary & Ukraine Via: Index.hu MTI Photo: Mathe Zoltan Piedone se pregateste de iarna! Dragilor, din 15 noiembrie utilajele de iarna ale primariei au intrat in alerta! Ca va fi polei, ca va ninge vor iesi pe strazi si isi vor face treaba! Au oameni potriviti si pregatiti acum! Am avut primul comandament de iarna! Suntem bine! Si vom fi si mai bine de maine, poimaine! Asa ca nu va fi ca odinioara in sectorul nostru! [citeste mai departe] Stiri pe aceeasi tema - The chairman of the Social Democratic Party (PSD), Marcel Ciolacu, stated on Tuesday that there are ongoing negotiations with the National Liberal Party (PNL) and the Hungarian Democratic Union of Romania (UDMR) on the governing programme on the chapters regarding finance, budget projections for - Romanias National Institute of Statistics (INS) announced on Wednesday that the annual inflation rate rose to 7.9% in October 2021 from 6.3% in September, according to a press release. Prices for non-food goods rose by 11.39%, food goods prices increased by 5.25% and prices of services grew by 3.96%, INS - Romania's President Klaus Iohannis said on Wednesday that business people in Egypt and Romania should be encouraged to start up joint projects both bilaterally and in third markets, agerpres reports. "In our conversation, we agreed that moving forward we have to identify new ways to capitalise on - As many as 11,725 new cases of people infected with SARS-CoV-2 have been recorded in the last 24 hours, with 42,786 tests being carried out, the Strategic Communication Group reported on Sunday. As of Sunday, 1,561,928 cases of people infected with the novel coronavirus have been confirmed - National chairman of the National Liberal Party (PNL) Florin Citu said on Friday, after a meeting with Hungarian Democratic Union of Romania (UDMR) national leader Kelemen Hunor that discussions on a governing agenda started, and on Monday a list of the government members will be completed, and a - Articolul Concurs Viitorul Europei se poate citi integral pe Stiri de Buzau . Deputatul in Parlamentul European, Eugen Tomac a lansat un concurs pentru tinerii din Romania si Republica Moldova. Castigatorii au sansa de a participa la o Conferinta privind viitorul Europei, la [] Articolul Concurs - The People's Movement Party (PMP, non-parliamentary) requests President Klaus Iohannis urgently summon the Supreme Council for the Country's Defence (CSAT) for the critical situation the health crisis has reached. "There is need for an urgent plan as fast as possible to be implemented by a - Persons aged 65 and over represented 19.3% of the country's resident population, on January 1, 2021, respectively 3,707,080 citizens out of a total of 19,186,201, the country's resident population, according to a press release of the National Institute of Statistics (INS) published on the occasion Sweetgreen salad restaurants in Philadelphia, including this one on Walnut Street, went cashless in 2017. A City Council bill would require businesses to accept cash. Read more Philadelphia businesses would be required to accept cash under a City Council bill introduced Thursday. The bill, introduced by Councilman William Greenlee, would outlaw cashless businesses in the city. Violators could receive fines of up to $2,000, according to Greenlee's office. A few businesses in Philadelphia have gone cashless in recent years, notably the salad chain Sweetgreen and Bluestone Lane, a coffee shop. As technology gives consumers more ways to pay, including with their smartphones, some businesses have gone cashless to improve efficiency and reduce the risk of robbery, among other reasons. But consumer advocates say cashless businesses effectively discriminate against poor customers who don't have access to credit or bank accounts, and seniors who aren't comfortable paying with plastic or digital devices. New Jersey lawmakers are also considering a ban on cashless businesses. Similar bills have been introduced in Washington D.C. and Chicago, too. Lin-Manuel Miranda (middle) in support of Puerto Rican coffee farmers during a walking tour in Jayuya. Read more JAYUYA, Puerto Rico Taking a break from conquering Broadway, making movies, and writing books, Lin-Manuel Miranda tramped up a muddy slope in Puerto Rico's highlands on Wednesday, assessing his next challenge: helping revive the island's ailing coffee industry. Miranda is the public face of a multimillion-dollar, five-year effort that's being spearheaded by the Hispanic Federation and includes such heavy-hitters as Starbucks, Nespresso, and the Rockefeller Foundation. "These are the Avengers of coffee," he said of the assembled group, likening them to a pack of superheroes. "And you don't call in the Avengers when things are easy. You call in the Avengers when things are difficult." The island's estimated 4,200 coffee farmers certainly need the help. Hurricanes Irma and Maria destroyed about 80 percent of the harvest last year. Under this initiative, the Hispanic Federation which was founded by Miranda's father, Luis and Nespresso are each investing $1 million into the project. Starbucks will invest $475,000 and donate two million climate-resistant seeds. The Rockefeller Foundation is investing $500,000, and TechnoServe, an international nonprofit with a history of supporting the agricultural industry, will help implement the project. The team has set the bar high. William Warshauer, president of TechnoServe, said models suggest that coffee production could double its pre-hurricane levels within the next five years. And small farmers could see their profits increase 300 percent to 400 percent. Puerto Rico's coffee production was collapsing even before last year's twin hurricanes. In 1995, the country produced 280,000 quintals or 100-pound sacks of coffee. Last year, before the hurricanes hit, production had fallen to just 65,924 sacks. But despite its decades-long struggle, coffee has always had a powerful role in the Puerto Rican psyche. "We've always been proud of our coffee," Miranda said, hiking up his pant-leg to show a small tattoo of a coffee cup. Miranda the winner of the Pulitzer Prize, a Tony, an Emmy, and a Grammy for his work on the musicals Hamilton and In the Heights has been a vocal advocate for the island and its post-hurricane recovery. His family is from Vega Alta, on the northern coast of the island, though he lives in New York. Visiting Puerto Rico shortly after Maria tore through it, he said, he saw the denuded and brown landscape the storm left behind. "You would never think you would see winter come to Puerto Rico, but that's what it looked like," he said. The Hispanic Federation, a New-York based nonprofit and advocacy group, jumped in to help with emergency relief efforts shortly after Maria, which is blamed for killing nearly 3,000 people, destroying huge swaths of the island, causing months of blackouts, and worsening an already perilous economic situation. Puerto Rico's deeper structural problems were inescapable, said the organization's president, Jose Calderon. That a fertile and tropical island has to import 80 percent of its food illustrates the dysfunction. That situation "is the bigger task for us," he said. "How do we reimagine Puerto Rico? How do we make this a place that can provide for its people and work for its people?" Helping revive the coffee industry is part of that larger vision, he said. Vanessa Arroyo, a 36-year-old coffee farmer, said Maria set her farm, La Franca, back years. Of the 7,500 pounds she was expecting to harvest, she was left with about 1,000 pounds. Of the 20 acres of coffee she had planted, about half the plants survived. "When I saw my farm after Maria, I didn't even recognize it," she said. Just as she was recovering from the storm, a fungus hit, killing more of her plants. Unsure what to do, she resorted to YouTube videos looking for answers. She's hoping the technical training and support provided by the initiative will help her turn the corner. "I have so much hope in this," she said. "I have a lot of faith." One of the key elements of the project is the donation by Starbucks of two million high-quality, climate-resilient seeds. The effort will include funding to train local nurseries to improve local varieties. "We'll have a combination of local seeds and the imported seed to try to spark some hope in the industry, quite frankly, that revitalization can happen quickly," said Kelly Goodejohn, the director of social impact and public policy at Starbucks. Zia Khan, vice president of innovation at the Rockefeller Foundation, said his nonprofit is committed to promoting a broad recovery for Puerto Rico. And one of the key elements of that has to be its farmers. "We have done so much work over 100 years supporting agriculture and farmers and we know how critical it is not just for food supply and value chains, but for small-business people," he said. "And coffee is a good small business." About 70 percent of Puerto Rican coffee growers are considered "small" operating on plots of fewer than 10 acres. Miranda, who stars in Mary Poppins Returns, a sequel to the classic children's movie, and is preparing to reprise his lead role in Hamilton for its Puerto Rico debut in January, said he wanted the coffee initiative to bring hope to the island's hard-hit farmers. There's a frequently repeated saying on the island that Puerto Rican coffee used to be served to the Pope at the Vatican. "We'll get there again," Miranda said. Miranda, who has been raising money for Puerto Rico's recovery since the storm, has said proceeds from the Hamilton run will benefit the U.S. territory's hurricane recovery. "We are all pitching in to bring coffee back to Puerto Rico," he said. A view of the new Comcast Technology Center at 1800 Arch in Center City. The tower's developer, Liberty Property Trust, is being urged by an activist investor to consider selling itself. Read more Liberty Property Trust, the developer of Comcast Corp.'s two Center City skyscrapers, is reportedly being pressed by an activist shareholder to consider selling itself as a way of boosting the company's worth in the eyes of investors. Land & Buildings Investment Management LLC has urged the Wayne-based real estate trust to consider a "range of strategic options including a full sale," the Wall Street Journal reported Thursday, citing unidentified people familiar with the talks. Earlier this week, Liberty announced a plan to sell off its office holdings, which include 10 buildings at the Navy Yard in South Philadelphia and stakes in the Comcast towers, to focus on its rapidly expanding business as an owner and developer of warehouses and distribution centers. Land & Buildings, which owns less than 1 percent of Liberty, doesn't feel that plan will do enough to narrow the gap between its current share price and its "intrinsic value," the Journal reported. Liberty's market capitalization of around $6.3 billion is thought to about 10 percent less than the value of its assets if they were to sell privately, according to estimates based on comparable transactions by Plymouth Meeting-based financial firm CenterSquare Investment Management. "The public market isn't giving the company the same value for the real estate as the private market is currently willing to pay," Alex Snyder, a senior analyst with CenterSquare, said in an interview. "Selling would immediately close that gap and anybody holding Liberty's shares would benefit." Land & Buildings wants to see Liberty sold "to that private market because the public market isn't paying enough," Alex Snyder, a senior analyst with CenterSquare, said in an interview. Liberty spokeswoman Jeanne Leonard declined in an email to remark on the report, citing a policy of not commenting on market rumors or speculation. Land & Buildings, based in Stamford, Conn., was founded by a former Citigroup managing director, Jonathan Litt. The company did not respond to a request for comment. Its past targets have included Philadelphia-based mall landlord Pennsylvania Real Estate Investment Trust, owner of the Cherry Hill Mall and a partner in the redevelopment of the Gallery at Market East shopping mall, which it began pressuring in 2014 to accelerate a plan that had begun the previous year to sell off its lowest-performing properties. As of September 2017, when it sold the Logan Valley Mall in Altoona, PREIT had shed 17 properties, raising $750 million. Land & Buildings is also known for pushing companies including Mack-Cali Realty Corp., Taubman Centers Inc. and Hudson's Bay, owner of the Lord & Taylor and Saks Fifth Avenue department stores, to shift strategies. A Democratic committee woman captured video (left) of a Springfield Township employee taking her sign in support of Democratic state representative candidate Jen O'Mara (right). Read more The Philadelphia suburbs are home to some of the most competitive races in the country. Congressional seats, state Senate seats, and state House seats are all up for grabs in the city's collar counties, which have grown more liberal in recent years. Such high stakes can lead to election shenanigans or depending on how you see things political paranoia. In Delaware County, two Democratic committee people's campaign signs went missing last month. Karen McCunny and Marie Turnbull had put up the signs to broadcast their support of Democratic state representative candidate Jen O'Mara. McCunny checked her security camera and made a shocking discovery: A man in a Springfield Township car had removed her sign. Springfield Township Police Chief Joseph Daly said authorities later determined that the township employee, whom he declined to name, had taken both women's signs at the direction of his boss. "He probably would have been charged, but he was under instruction by somebody," Daly said of the worker. According to Daly, the employee believed "there was some long-term agreement that nobody contemporary remembers" between Democrats and Republicans to not put up political signs in the township before Oct. 1. How political parties could ever keep such a promise and why a township worker would ever think to uphold it isn't entirely clear. McCunny and Turnbull call it political hijinks. "I definitely think we were targeted because we are Democratic committee members," Turnbull said. "They're threatened because Jennifer O'Mara is running a good campaign." "My gut feeling is that they were just taking Democrats' signs," McCunny added. Delaware County Republican Party leader Andrew Reilly said, "There was no orchestrated or township-wide sanctioned effort to remove lawn signs. It was an employee operating under an old policy." Asked if the township employee's superior was being reprimanded, Daly said, "All that was passed over to" Springfield Township Manager Lee Fulton. Fulton did not respond to a request for comment. "From their point of view, I would think the same thing," Daly said of the Democrats' belief that the sign brouhaha was politically motivated. "But I'm a proof guy. I just don't know if it's true or not." Mysterious PAC mails misleading attack ad about GOP state lawmaker The general election is 11 days away, and you're probably already sick of campaign mailers piling up at your residence. But if you live in Pennsylvania's 157th House District, expect at least one more. A Chester County judge this week declared as "fraudulent" a mailing from a political action committee that inaccurately accused Republican State Rep. Warren Kampf of "living large on thousands of dollars in per diems." Members of the legislature can collect $183 in tax-free per diems for travel expenses without providing receipts if they live outside a 50-mile radius of the state Capitol, all courtesy of taxpayers. Kampf, seeking a fifth term in a district that covers parts of Chester and Montgomery Counties, doesn't collect per diems and never has. Instead, he files for individual expenses, such as miles and meals. The judge ordered PA Fund for Change, a pro-Democratic PAC that has declined to reveal details about its donors and spending plans, to send another mailing to about 12,000 addresses that received the first one, acknowledging it as deceptive. Shelly Chauncey, an attorney for the PAC, said the ruling was disappointing: "We don't see the difference between per diems and accepting tens of thousands of dollars in reimbursement payments. In the grand scheme of things, it's all the same concept." A juicy bit of political intelligence came to the surface when Kampf testified for an injunction: His polling numbers against Democrat Melissa Shusterman have taken a nosedive in the closing weeks of the election. "Things are more difficult for me, according to the polls I've heard about in the last couple of weeks, probably because of the barrage of mail the Fund for Change has made about me," Kampf said. Krasner didnt have a ponytail until he was 40, photo shows Democratic District Attorney Larry Krasner, whom one national journalist recently called "the progressive favorite for attorney general in the next Democratic White House," was the subject of a lengthy profile this week in the New Yorker. Local political reporters joked that the only news in the article was this line: Krasner "had a long ponytail until he was forty." A ponytail? Good God. We had to see this monstrosity. But when we fact-checked Krasner and the New Yorker, we found plenty of evidence showing Krasner didn't have a ponytail and no evidence showing he did. A tipster forwarded Clout a photo of Krasner in 1992, when he was in his early 30s, apparently without a ponytail. We unearthed another image of him at age 40 in 2001 that also appears to show him sans ponytail. We sent Ben Waxman, a spokesman for the District Attorney's Office, a copy of the evidence and asked him if the New Yorker got it wrong. "This photo is now the subject of an ongoing investigation by the Philadelphia District Attorney's Office," he said. "Due to office policy, I am unable to comment further at this time." We're setting a photo bounty: Send us your Larry Krasner ponytail pictures. The first person to show us unadulterated proof no cut-and-paste ponytails! will get an official Daily News T-shirt. This stone barn on Butler Pike in Plymouth Meeting was a major stop on the Underground Railroad. Its future is uncertain now that the Whitemark Board of Supervisors has approved townhouses on the 10-acre property. Read more The Whitemarsh Township Board of Supervisors has given a developer the green light to build 67 townhouses on a Plymouth Meeting farm that served as a major stop on the Underground Railroad. But a citizen group that has been fighting to protect two historic buildings on the property is considering an appeal. The Friends of Abolition Hall have argued that the townhouse project would destroy the integrity of one of Pennsylvania's most significant historic sites. The 10-acre Corson property, at Germantown and Butler Pikes in the village of Plymouth Meeting, was a hotbed of the antislavery movement during the first half of the 19th century. The farm's owner, George Corson, was a committed abolitionist who provided escaping slaves with a safe refuge and turned his barn into a lecture hall for antislavery rallies. Speeches by people such as Frederick Douglass and Lucretia A. Mott attracted so many people that the barn became known as Abolition Hall. The entire farm, including Abolition Hall and the Corson homestead, was listed on the National Register in 1971. But, two years ago, K. Hovnanian Homes acquired the rights to the property with the aim of developing the open land for townhouses. Although the two historic buildings would be left standing, they would lose their defining landscape. The 67 townhouses would come virtually to their back doors. The Friends of Abolition Hall have asked the supervisors to require Hovnanian to provide a buffer between the historic buildings and the new development. While their resolution, passed Thursday evening, increases the buffer slightly, it would leave the two buildings with just 1.6 acres between them. The supervisors imposed a total of 22 conditions on Hovnanian. But Sydelle Zove, who heads the Friends group, said, "We feel it doesn't go far enough. When you boil it down, it essentially says they have to comply with the zoning code." Numerous groups joined with the Friends of Abolition Hall in asking the township supervisors to reject Hovnanian's development plan. They range from the National Park Service to the Avenging the Ancestors Coalition, a Philadelphia group that lobbies for the protection of African American historic sites. The board also heard from best-selling author and editor the Rev. James J. Martin, who grew up in Plymouth Meeting and serves as a communications consultant to Pope Francis. "The destruction of this unique and historic landscape is not worth whatever financial gain the township will receive in the long run. History, our shared history, is more important than money," he wrote in a letter to the board. A Hovnanian spokesman, Brian Dries of Ceisler Media & Issue Advocacy, said the company was gratified by the supervisors' decision: "Hovnanian has reviewed the 22 proposed conditions and finds them acceptable." Hovnanian still needs final approval from Montgomery County and the local historical review board. The Friends of Abolition Hall has 30 days to file an appeal. CHENGDU One reason for the fashionable fear that Beijing is out to overtake America is the worry that China will soon outstrip the United States in key areas of technology. Chinese President Xi Jinping fanned this fear with his Made in China 2025 pledge to catch up with the USA in 10 critical areas of tech by the middle of the next decade, including automation and artificial intelligence. Add to that the incidents of Chinese theft of intellectual property and forced technology transfer from multinational firms that want access to Chinese markets. This all adds up to a tizzy about future Chinese technological triumphs. Yet a visit with a group of young entrepreneurs in Chengdu, the capital of Sichuan province, raised a question that clouds China's huge aspirations: Can your nation truly be innovative if your government directs the process from the top down? >> READ MORE: I'm heading to China to report: Are Beijing and Washington headed toward a new Cold War? | Trudy Rubin Chengdu is a logical place to noodle over that question. Best known abroad for its panda preserve and its spicy Sichuan food, this major city has become a center for a vibrant start-up culture that draws young Chinese and foreigners with its cheaper cost of living than Shanghai or Beijing. I met several entrepreneurs in a conference room at WeWork, a provider of shared office space located in a glass tower in the newish Jinjiang district. "China has opened more than 5,000 [tech] incubators, with 200 in Chengdu alone," said Erik Ackner, a German who has lived in China for five years. He helps China's start-up community connect with the rest of the world, through programs such as Startupbootcamp China in Chengdu. "There are so many innovation centers in universities, and in government," he added. And there is a ton of government money sloshing around to fund start-ups and fly young aspirants around to conferences (there is also substantial private venture capital). So even though half the 5,000 incubators may prove useless, adds Ackner, the government strategy is to see which can survive. But then there is the flip side, starting with the horribly slow internet controlled by government servers that ban Facebook, Google, and other outside content. The young entrepreneurs described having to "play hopscotch" with VPNs, the virtual networks designed to leap the great internet firewall. Often VPNs must be changed daily. Chinese business developers frequently write sophisticated software to get around the firewall. Internet restrictions harm China's bottom line. "A lot of start-ups leave China to Thailand and elsewhere because it is very hard to expand internationally," said Hungarian entrepreneur Rafael Raj, who has worked in Chengdu for 15 years and is cofounder of Blockwise Consulting. "We work in an isolated bubble here," he added. "Development is top down and the government tells you where the money should be used." >> READ MORE: Don't expect miracles when Trump and Xi meet at G-20 | Trudy Rubin The tech entrepreneurs were also troubled by a rigid Chinese education system that tells people "don't think" and a culture averse to risk-taking (the aim of successful start-ups is not to go public but to get bought out by medium-sized Chinese companies). Not an outlook that produces technological breakthroughs. Instead, the Chinese take a different approach. "The big thing now is not innovation, but implementation," said investment fund manager Dinis Gaspar Nunes. In other words, while the U.S. excels at innovation, the Chinese focus on taking established technologies and making them better. For example: "They didn't invent artificial intelligence (AI), but they want to be best at it," Gaspar Nunes said. So when it comes to technological breakthroughs, the United States will no doubt remain the leader. But given the scale of the Chinese market and available government funds, the Chinese could leapfrog ahead in some fields. And forced technology transfers could help them make that jump. A key area where China could take the lead is AI, in large part because the size of the Chinese population provides access to so much data. E-commerce is very advanced here, with everyone from kids to grandmas paying for nearly everything by flashing the barcode on their cell phones. And everyone can afford a cheap smartphone. Just imagine the amount of data that provides the Chinese government. What surprised me at the roundtable was the accepting attitude of some Chinese entrepreneurs toward government use of that data, which includes compiling a "social score" on individuals that can affect everything from jobs to mortgages to whether they are allowed to travel. "Your social score is to encourage better behavior," said Violet Chen, a Chinese native with a British graduate degree who helps foreign firms set up a Chinese digital presence. "If you have a higher score, for example, you can rent a phone charger without paying a deposit. It helps establish trust." Her point: In China, the public embraces technology that gives power to the system. We in the West assume that technological advances come from the bottom up in an open society. But the Chinese aim to prove that a top-down, closed system can still enable their country to play catch up with some help from forced technology transfer. Their odds appear disturbingly favorable. If there's a central musical meeting point for folk and classical, sacred and secular, ancient and modern, Jordi Savall found it, and has lived there for decades. His beginnings as a cellist, his continued work with the earliest surviving Iberian music, and his recent explorations of ethnic music have yielded his ever-growing "The Routes of Slavery" program that arrives at the Annenberg Center at 7:30 p.m. Thursday, Nov. 1. Some 25 musicians from Spain, Mexico, Colombia, Brazil, and Venezuela will trace the progression of slave songs from the 15th century on, interspersed with readings documenting the brutality of those eras, and concluding with the words of the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Having first toured the program in 2016 in conjunction with a book-size, two-CD recording, the Barcelona-based Savall is working on a sequel encompassing Cuba and Puerto Rico. Philadelphia listeners will get a bit of a preview. "It's one of the most complex programs I've ever had," Savall said recently. "It's a moment when people need to understand what happened when humans treat other persons like they're animals. To survive, the slaves would sing in order to remember who they are. Music was a space of freedom. When they were allowed to sing and dance, it was the most essential moment in their lives." Somber and explosively exuberant moments exist side by side with colorful, traditional costumes, to judge from YouTube videos of past concerts. "He's one of the few musicians who is truly diving into such topics," said Christopher A. Gruits, Annenberg Center executive and artistic director, who is bringing in major early-music groups that have missed Philadelphia in the past. "He dives deep and comes up with fresh and interesting programs and has gone through so many time periods." Only now is Savall, 78, making his Philadelphia debut, a long way from the 1991 film Tous les Matins du monde, which brought him to international attention. Savall contributed the delicate, meditative score, winning him a Cesar Award (the French Oscar). The soundtrack album sold a million copies. Before that, Savall had been part of the early-music think tank/conservatory in Basel, Switzerland, and he worked with historic-instrument pioneers such as Gustav Leonhardt and Nikolaus Harnoncourt. He has made more than 100 recordings, many with his Hesperion XXI ensemble and his late wife, soprano Montserrat Figueras, that are lavishly packaged on his own AliaVox label. His deeply researched books have been published in eight languages. Since Figueras' 2011 death from cancer, Savall has vowed not to reprise repertoire that was associated with her uniquely smoky voice. Yet he keeps building musical bridges from his Catalan heritage. Albums such as Hispania & Japan: Dialogues, Bal-Kan: Honey & Blood Cycles of Life and Jerusalem: City of Two Peaces, Heavenly Peace and Earthly Peace have had him working with Japanese, Arab, Israeli, Serbian, and Turkish musicians (among others) whom he auditions from all over the world. Often, that means managing players with huge political differences among themselves. "I've had great difficulty with musicians who don't like to play together," he said. "But I think music comes from a much more far-away place than any other art of communication." The soft-spoken Savall doesn't espouse a music-cures-everything philosophy, but he does believe that once wars and skirmishes have ended, his work starts, whether he's assembling concerts with a strong idealistic backbone or touring Syrian refugee camps. As much as he feels an artistic kinship with Yo-Yo Ma's cross-cultural Silk Road Ensemble, he more readily admires Daniel Barenboim's West-Eastern Divan Orchestra, formed in 1999 to bring together Arab and Israeli musicians at a time when musicians on both sides were barely speaking. Savall's own journey has been similarly fraught. One concert in Turkey was canceled because it dealt with the 1915 Armenian genocide in the Ottoman Empire. He turned down a major award from the Spanish government, citing "dramatic disinterest" and "grave incompetence" in the government's policies toward the arts. He's thought to be an advocate for Catalan independence, but he speaks more for the simple right to vote on the matter. He has performed in Israel but now declines engagements there due to the Israel army's actions against Gaza. What helped put Savall on his singular path was something of a conversion experience he had with humble Sephardic songs that, to his ears, had an unrecognized artistic stature. "We always put this type of music in a second category," he said. "When given a performance with huge emotions, Sephardic songs can have the depth of a Bach aria." Dating to medieval times, Sephardic music also was part of a heady cultural crossroads that included North African influences and Iberian music, from ethereal religious music to the 13th-century Cantigas de Santa Maria, a collection of songs whose words praise the Blessed Virgin Mary but whose manner is often earthy and raucous. Savall has performed them all and has three different ensembles to accommodate that panorama: the mixed-instrument, chamber-size Hesperion XXI; the larger, more orchestral Le Concert des Nations; and the vocal group La Capella Reial de Catalunya. Presiding over so many kinds of music can mean ceding the spotlight to guest performers who have been living with the music their entire lives, especially in programs such as "The Routes of Slavery," which includes much exuberant Caribbean music. He will be more on home territory with the French baroque program (he played in Tous les Matins du monde) Feb. 22 at Princeton's McCarter Theatre. But it's hard to say what isn't home territory for Savall: He will conduct and record all nine Beethoven symphonies over the next three years music that is studied exhaustively on its own terms, unlike medieval music that survives in fragmented notation requiring improvisation or even co-composition to fill in the blanks. If there's a Savall trademark, it's that he dresses the music in unusually rich outer garments. Some of his colleagues are more inclined to preserve what's there rather than speculate about what might have been. Savall has frankly likened his music to time travel no surprise, as his performances often give a sense of the larger world the music came from. One of his more solemn albums ends with celebratory bagpipes. "To me, authenticity is not when you play the music in the style of the period. Authenticity is when you are inside the music and understand why this has to be like this. It's the necessity of the music," he said. "And that's not something you necessarily learn from a conservatory." If he has a stealth weapon, it's time. During the academic years in Basel, he and Figueras pursued any number of research avenues that yielded programs years later. Savall said he heard his first slave song some 15 years ago, and that set him on his way to the current program. Before his current Beethoven symphony recording project, he recorded the politically influenced Symphony No. 3 ("Eroica") in 1997. Many musicians of his stature dismiss their previous work, especially older recordings. Instead, Savall has purchased recordings he made for other labels (including EMI and Astree) and put them out on AliaVox: "Every recording is a result of a life's work, of research and experience, expressing music of high quality and with emotional authenticity." Yes, even those made under fraught circumstances: One venue near an airport forced Savall to record at 4 a.m. "You're tired. You have to bring something exceptional to the music. But when you work so intensely," he says, "that stays forever." Netflix has canceled Exton native Tony Yacenda's penis-and-feces-focused true-crime satire, American Vandal, after two seasons. American Vandal will "not return for a third season," Netflix wrote in a statement of the show. The streaming company also thanked the show's creators, writers, actors, and crew for "bringing their innovative comedy to Netflix." Despite the show's cancellation, the show's production company, CBS TV Studio, is receiving incoming requests about potentially continuing American Vandal elsewhere, Deadline reports. No deal has yet been confirmed publicly. With it's debut last year, American Vandal followed student journalist Peter Maldonado (Tyler Alvarez) as he attempted to clear fellow student Dylan Maxwell (Jimmy Tatro) of vandalism incident in the fictional Hanover High School's parking lot. As part of the plot, someone spray-painted phalluses on 27 cars in the teachers' lot, and everyone pointed to Maxwell as the culprit. After its debut, American Vandal reportedly became one of Netflix's most binged shows, and earned a Peabody Award, as well as an Emmy nomination, as a result. Netflix renewed the show last October, with creators Yacenda and Dan Perrault this time focusing on feces-based vandalism at a Catholic school in Washington state. The show is the latest cancellation at Netflix, which also recently put an end to Luke Cage and Iron Fist, both Marvel series, after two seasons. More than five decades into her legendary career, Loretta Lynn remains a bracing breath of fresh air on her new "Wouldn't It Be Great." Read more Jon Batiste Hollywood Africans (Verve ***) Louisiana keyboardist and late-night talk show bandleader Jon Batiste was famous for a signature brand of fussy funk before ever coming to television. Now, he must act as an entertainer and collaborator (to host Stephen Colbert) as well as arranger/orchestrator. The needs of guests and their themes (Harrison Ford, Star Wars) are as much a part of his clever aesthetic as his star-clustered jazz and sedate swamp soul have been through his career. With Hollywood Africans and producer T Bone Burnett, however, Batiste takes his usually musky music into a spare, dynamic-rich place where flash meets the subtly subdued, and aged concepts of the "black entertainer" are turned on their head. With that in mind and named for a 1983 Basquiat painting Batiste's piano-heavy album spins the happy-go-lucky legend of a smiling Louis Armstrong (a remodel of Satchmo's "What a Wonderful World") into a tensely elegiac tone poem with fragrant hints of Stevie Wonder's "Black Orchid" thrown in. Other usually chipper moments also guided by Batiste's Satie-meets-Jelly Roll Morton-influenced sound like the New Orleans traditional "St. James Infirmary Blues" get the feel of the weight of the world on their shoulders. Yet it's Batiste's handsome self-penned and sung ballads such as "Mr. Buddy," and the classical "Don't Stop" that are most impressive, especially during the stately soul of the latter when Batiste leans on some old-fashioned Orleans Parish stride piano. A.D. Amorosi Usher & Zaytoven A (RCA ***) The interminable wait for 2016's Hard II Love found Usher discarding such A-list material as 2014's excellent "Good Kisser," so streamlining his approach is a good look for the now-40-year-old R&B idol. His ninth album, A, appeared within a day of its surprise announcement, and it's just eight songs entirely produced by Migos/Future whisperer Zaytoven, whose up-to-date trap'n'B style is best consumed in under 30 minutes anyway (you listening, Migos?). After a too-typical Future duet for an opener, A is all aces, with the proudly Young Thug-influenced "Ye-la-le-le-la-la-le-le-le" hook of "Ata" flowing into the sexy sparseness of "Peace Sign" and "You Decide," which sounds like a Black Panther soundtrack deep cut gone a bit reggae. The gorgeous but lurid "Birthday" caps off one of the strongest sequences in Usher's catalog, so why does A still feel meaningless in its full effect? Maybe because 2012's thrilling Looking 4 Myself promised more innovations than just chasing the current sounds again, but this guy was also once Beyonce's peer. Dan Weiss Loretta Lynn Wouldn't It Be Great (Sony Legacy **** ) On "Ain't No Time to Go," one of the new self-penned songs on her latest album, Loretta Lynn confesses, "I ain't as strong as you think I am." From a musical standpoint, the evidence on Wouldn't It Be Great is solidly to the contrary. The 86-year-old country legend sounds as vital as ever. Through newly recorded versions of new and old originals (including her signature "Coal Miner's Daughter") and one traditional number, Lynn presents the full dimension of her indomitable personality and underscores what a great writer she has been across the decades. She can be achingly tender and vulnerable as she is on the new "I'm Dying for Someone to Live For" ("The love of my life is long gone") and the title song, an '80s gem that she also revived in the '90s with Dolly Parton and Tammy Wynette. But she can also still be a real spitfire: The new "Ruby's Stool" exudes all the feistiness of, well, her first No. 1 hit, "Don't Come Home A-Drinking," which is also reprised here. Ain't no time to go, indeed. Nick Cristiano Orange foods have been popping up all over Philly this month, thanks to the city's new obsession Gritty, the Flyers' googly eyed, popcorn-dumping mascot. He's inspired everything from a short-lived doughnut at Dottie's Donuts to multiple cheesesteaks to wait for it a Dorito-flavored ice cream sandwich from Big Gay Ice Cream dusted in Doritos crumbs. (It gave one of my colleagues a stomachache, so you've been warned.) Although some of the Gritty foods looked, well, questionable at best, I tried them all and ranked them in order of tastiness and "Grittiness," or how well the dish captures the essence of Gritty himself. Mac Mart Mac Mart's "Gritty" mac and cheese was easily the most cohesive dish of the bunch, but let's be real can you ever go wrong with mac and cheese? It features shoestring fries topped with the restaurant's signature seven cheese mac, buffalo sauce, buttermilk ranch, and Cheetos crunch. Unfortunately, they ran out of fries and Cheetos when I went to sample the Gritty mac, so Mac Mart suggested I go with the closest option: the "In the Buff" mac with buffalo sauce, chicken, buttermilk ranch, and potato chip crunch. It was a mess but it packed a flavor punch, just like our favorite orange mascot. If he ever decides to take a break from snacking on popcorn at the Wells Fargo Center, we'd recommend he check this dish out. Taste Grittys 11 a.m. to 9 p.m. daily, 104 S. 18th St., $9.75, 215-444-6144, macmartcart.com Mikes BBQ This South Philly joint has added a Gritty twist to its popular brisket cheesesteak by topping it with Cooper sharp wiz, fried onions, lettuce, tomato, special sauce, and potato sticks on a long roll. The brisket was tender, the wiz tasted like real melted liquid cheese and didn't harden into lumps, and the potato sticks added texture that reminded me of Gritty's fur. I was especially impressed by the roll, which held everything together nicely without turning soggy. This was one mean, sloppy sandwich, like Gritty, and I'm willing to bet it'll taste even better after a couple of beers. It's a win in my book. Taste Grittys Noon to 6 p.m. Wednesdays through Sundays, 1703 S. 11th St., $12.50, 267-831-2040, mikesbbqphilly.com Joes Steaks & Soda Shop Cheesesteaks are quintessentially Philadelphia, and Joe's Steaks & and Soda Shop usually cooks up a pretty mean one. But its Gritty cheesesteak was not our favorite, simply because the "Gritty" ingredient Cheetos didn't add anything to the sandwich besides crunch and bright orange color. (It was made with traditional cheesesteak ingredients: steak, wiz, and raw onions.) But I immediately knew after one bite this was food Gritty would approve of because of how excessive it was. As for humans? Stick to regular cheesesteaks unless you absolutely love Cheetos. Taste Grittys 11 a.m. to 10 p.m. Sundays through Wednesdays, 11 a.m. to midnight Thursdays, 11 a.m. to 3 a.m. Fridays and Saturdays, 1 W. Girard Ave., $9.25, 215-423-5637, joessteaks.com Moms Organic Market The Naked Lunch counter is selling a Gritty quinoa bowl topped with spinach, black olives, feta cheese, sweet potatoes, shredded carrots, and roasted red pepper dressing. Upon first glance, it definitely captures the mascot's most recognizable physical features. Though tasty and healthy with a pleasingly gritty texture, I believe Gritty would enjoy dumping the bowl's contents on the heads of non-Flyers fans more than eating it. But if you're looking to celebrate him and eat clean at the same time, which is difficult given that most Gritty-themed food items are junk, this is a delicious option. Taste Grittys 11 a.m. to 8 p.m. daily, 34 S. 11th St., $9.75, 215-709-0022, momsorganicmarket.com The Sweet Box This 13th Street bakery is selling Gritty cupcakes by advance order for $5 each. At first, the cupcakes which are frosted meticulously to look like the mascot were in the display case, but they sold out faster than staff members could make them. Luckily, when we dropped by, Sweet Box had an extra one from an order, and a staffer frosted it for me on the spot. Visually, it is stunning and the cutest Gritty food item in the mix. But the cupcake was unremarkable and the extra frosting from Gritty's beard and face made it overwhelming. But if you're looking to be a hit at your next Flyers party, orders have to be placed at least three days in advance. Call the bakery or email it at sweetbox@comcast.net. Taste Grittys 10 a.m. to 7 p.m. Tuesdays through Sundays, 339 S. 13th St., $5, 215-237-4647, shopsweetbox.com Big Gay Ice Cream Easily the most outrageous of all the Gritty foods we sampled are "Gritty Pucksters" from Big Gay Ice Cream. The ice cream sandwiches are made from Doritos ice cream and two chocolate cookies, and is rolled in Doritos crumbs. I held out hope that it would blow my mind with its unconventional mix of flavors, but that hope quickly dissipated when I took a bite. The Doritos crumb dusting is the dominant flavor, making it a confusing dessert. I would recommend it only to people who like the aftertaste of processed cheese with their ice cream. But Big Gay Ice Cream gets points for creativity, and I'd love to see Gritty try one of these. Taste Grittys Noon to 10 p.m. Sundays through Thursdays, noon to midnight Fridays and Saturdays, 1351 South St., $4.50, 267-886-8024, biggayicecream.com The Food and Drug Administration is poised to approve a new form of a powerful opioid for use in hospitals and emergency rooms despite opposition from the head of the committee that reviewed the drug. The FDA is scheduled to decide by Nov. 3 whether to allow a California company to produce a 30-microgram pill form of sufentanil, a potent painkiller commonly used after surgery. An FDA advisory committee recommended approval of the drug in a 10-to-3 vote on Oct. 12. The FDA usually follows the guidance of those committees, which are comprised of experts on various drugs and medical devices. But in this case, the chairman of the committee, who missed the meeting because he was speaking at a medical conference in San Francisco that day, has publicly urged the agency to reject the drug application because of the epidemic of opioid overdoses in the United States. Raeford Brown, a professor of anesthesiology and pediatrics at the University of Kentucky who heads the FDA's Anesthetic and Analgesic Drug Products Advisory Committee, sent his views in a letter to FDA Commissioner Scott Gottlieb and other agency officials. He also made his opposition public, a rare step for an FDA advisory committee chairman. Brown said another potent painkiller is not needed in medical centers. The drug is five to 10 times more potent than pharmaceutical fentanyl. The tiny pill just three millimeters in diameter is all but certain to be diverted to the streets, he said. Brown also said the safety and effectiveness of the new drug has not been fully proven. Sen. Edward Markey, D-Mass., and the advocacy group Public Citizen, which co-signed Brown's letter to Gottlieb, also oppose FDA approval of the drug, which the company AcelRx would market as Dsuvia. "This is a drug which is being proposed for approval at a time when we are trying to get the issues of opioid misuse and abuse under control in the United States," Brown said in an interview. "We have yet [to] be effective at preventing diversion of these opioids, and we try very hard." More than 49,000 people, a record number, died of opioid overdoses in 2017, according to preliminary data released by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Illegal street fentanyl, heroin and prescription narcotics were responsible for most of those deaths. In July, Gottlieb issued a statement promising that the FDA would balance efforts to curb the drug crisis with the needs of patients in pain. "The FDA remains focused on striking the right balance between reducing the rate of new addiction by decreasing exposure to opioids and rationalizing prescribing, while still enabling appropriate access to those patients who have legitimate medical need for these medicines," he said. Hundreds of millions of doses of prescription painkillers have been diverted from the pharmaceutical supply chain to illegal users over the past 15 years, during what has become the worst drug crisis in U.S. history. In many cases, illicit users obtain them from friends, relatives or rogue doctors and pharmacists, according to a 2016 survey conducted by the federal Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration. A significant portion were stolen from health-care providers, according to the survey. The same survey shows that narcotics are rarely stolen from a doctor's office, clinic, hospital or pharmacy. Fewer than 1 percent of people said they acquired opioids that way. Pamela Palmer, AcelRx's co-founder and chief medical officer, said she started the company after she became aware of the large number of deaths in hospitals caused by opioid dosing errors. An anesthesiologist herself, Palmer said doctors and nurses make these mistakes as they calculate the amounts of clear liquid painkillers such as morphine to administer to patients via intravenous drips. A pre-measured, short-acting painkiller in pill form would cut that error rate and save lives, she said. Dsuvia also would reduce pain quickly because it is put under the tongue, not swallowed, and enters the blood stream rapidly, she said. The company already has approval for 15- and 30-microgram versions of the pill in Europe, she said. One Dsuvia would have the same impact as five milligrams of intravenous morphine, Palmer said. Each pill would be provided in a single-use plastic cartridge that resembles a syringe, which would prevent patients and caregivers from dispensing more than one at a time. "We made [the pill] small for two reasons: You want it to rapidly dissolve and we didn't want to reflexively create a lot of saliva production" that could interfere with the drug's effectiveness, she said. The tiny tablet dissolves in six minutes and the pain relief lasts an average of three hours, Palmer said. The U.S. Army is interested in the tablet for battlefield pain relief and has funded some of the company's research, public documents show. The FDA does not comment on drugs under review, but a spokesman issued a statement that said, in part: "The FDA's advisory committees provide independent, expert advice to the agency on a range of complex scientific, technical, and policy issues. This includes questions related to the development and evaluation of products regulated by the FDA." In their letter, Public Citizen and Brown also complained that some members of a separate FDA advisory committee on drug safety were not invited to the Oct. 12 meeting, which skewed the vote on Dsuvia. The FDA said some of those people also could not attend because of scheduling conflicts. The mural-painted floodwalls in Paducah frame the Queen of the Mississippi steamboat paddle-wheeler on the Ohio River. Paducah Wall-to-Wall, is a three-block long collection of 50 painted murals by Robert Dafford. Read more If you think of a charming, culturally significant, Southern river city, what springs to mind? All the usual suspects, of course: New Orleans, Memphis, Charleston, Savannah. One that probably isn't on your list but just might be the quintessential Southern river town is Paducah. In this city at Kentucky's extreme western edge, four rivers define the way of life. The Ohio and Tennessee meet here, with the Mississippi (west) and Cumberland (east) just a few miles away. In Paducah's historic downtown, you'll see elements of the other Southern gems. Courtyards with tinkling fountains a la Savannah. Musical melodies trilling through the night just like in Memphis. And if you stand in front of Market Square, you might think you were at New Orleans' French Market. But Paducah, at only 25,00 people and pretty much in the middle between St. Louis and Nashville, has something that none of these cities do designation as a UNESCO Creative City, one of only nine in the United States. Along with Santa Fe, N.M.; Tucson, Ariz.; Austin and San Antonio, Texas; Seattle; Detroit; Kansas City, Mo.; and Iowa City, Iowa, Paducah has been tapped for offering something unique to the culture of its region in one of seven categories: literature, music, design, film, media arts, gastronomy, and crafts and folk art. Paducah's designation is for crafts and folk art, due in large part to its incomparable National Quilt Museum. If you visit the museum thinking that this is a journey back to the days of quilting bees and your great-grandmother's patchwork offerings, well you're partly right. Opened in 1991, the National Quilt Museum does provide insight into the history of quilt-making as a form of American self-expression, but it goes far beyond that. Its three galleries covering 27,000 square feet showcase the finest quilt and fiber art in the world. With 500 quilts in its permanent collection, the museum has something to suit even mixed tastes a small quilt the size of a bath mat depicting pop icon Prince or an epic quilt illustrating scenes from Gandalf and Bilbo Baggins' journey in J.R.R. Tolkien's The Hobbit. Spotting all the intricate details in that one would take a day of standing and staring. If the quilts have put you in an artistic frame of mind, stroll a couple of streets over to the riverfront to see Paducah Wall-to-Wall, a three-block long collection of murals by renowned American artist Robert Dafford. The backdrop for these colorful displays of art is the protective wall built along the bank of the Ohio following a disastrous 1937 flood. The 50 murals depict the city's history from pre-Colonial days to the mid-20th century. Creative is a word often used to describe Paducah. But creativity wasn't the first thing artist Mark Barone had in mind when he began petitioning police in the 1980s to remove a phone booth below his window in the city's LowerTown neighborhood. Night after night, Barone watched a steady stream of people stand in line to use the phone. Based on his observations, he engaged in a one-man crusade to end illegal activities. Successful in his efforts, he then suggested that the city encourage artists to come revitalize Paducah's oldest historic neighborhood. "Thus, began a partnership between the city, its citizens, and Paducah Bank & Trust which ultimately resulted in the nationally acclaimed Artists Relocation Program," says Nathan Brown, a ceramics artist and musician. Begun in 2000 when funding for the arts nationwide had been drastically slashed, the program offered qualifying artists the opportunity to purchase a home in the neighborhood at an extremely low rate, sometimes for as little as $1. Response was immediate. Soon, 50 artists were living in LowerTown's mixed Victorian dwellings. Galleries exhibiting their work popped up. The relocation program became a national model for using the arts as an economic development tool. Many of the original artists have moved on. Currently, 20 live and work here, including Shand Stamper and Mitch Kimball, who relocated from North Carolina 11 years ago. Stamper, whose specialties are 3-D design and metalsmithing, and Kimball, a ceramicist, painter and art educator, are enamored of Paducah's river town character in general and their neighborhood's atmosphere in specific. Says Kimball: "Along with painters, watercolorists, batik and fiber artists, there are a host of other creative types who wanted to call LowerTown home teachers, small business owners, art collectors, and chefs." "The Artist Relocation Program cultured the whole population to expect something different," Stamper says. The city's creativity doesn't stop with traditional artists. There is a robust theater scene, a symphony orchestra, 13 museums, and a rising star chef. Sara Bradley is also the owner of the Freight House, Paducah's first farm-to-table restaurant, bringing ingredients sourced within a day's drive to dishes that define the flavor of the New South. Her signature dish is Kentucky Silver Carp with bean and mushroom succotash and Nashville hot sauce. She recently took her commonwealth cuisine to the James Beard House in New York. On my visit, I made a meal of several starters, including ruby beets with herbed yogurt and coriander; deviled eggs with Creole remoulade and parsley; cold golden carrot soup with ginger, Meyer lemon and peanuts; and shrimp cocktail with spicy horseradish, burnt lemon and dill. The creative dining experience extended to dessert French toast bread pudding with drunk peaches, candied bacon, and vanilla bean ice cream created by Bradley's mother, Bebe, who is the pastry chef. The Freight House's bar serves remarkable classic cocktails and in the true spirit of Kentucky, includes more than 300 bourbons. For simpler fare, don't leave town without stopping for coffee at Piper's or a pizza at the Mellow Mushroom. They are just two of the eight businesses that now occupy the city's former Coca-Cola bottling plant, a landmark of Art Deco architecture and design that includes a rotunda on the 9,000-square-foot terrazzo tile floor below a neon-lighted dome and amid a sweeping double staircase. Boy in third grade died after collapsing at John F. Hartranft School in North Philadelphia. Read more A third-grade boy died Friday after collapsing at a North Philadelphia school, a Philadelphia School District spokeswoman said. About 9:50 a.m. at John F. Hartranft School, Eighth and Cumberland Streets, the boy was eating breakfast with his class and had just stepped into the hallway to dispose of his trash when he collapsed, said district spokeswoman Megan Lello. A school staffer trained in CPR attempted to revive the boy, Lello said. The boy, whose age was not available, was transported by medics to St. Christopher's Hospital for Children, where he was pronounced dead. The cause of death was under investigation. The principal notified parents through automated calls and a letter sent home with students, Lello said. Behavioral health support was provided at the school for students and staff and will be offered at the school from 9 a.m. to noon on Saturday for families affected by the death, Lello said. U.S. Attorney Craig Carpenito said an alleged drug operation busted on Thursday may have been involved in a shootout at the Art All Night Trenton 2018 festival. Read more Federal prosecutors on Thursday filed charges against more than two dozen alleged members of a violent heroin operation in Trenton that may be linked to a gang-related shootout that left one dead and 22 injured at a nighttime arts festival in June. Prosecutors said an ongoing dispute between the group and a rival gang was responsible for a significant amount of recent gun violence in Trenton. U.S. Attorney Craig Carpenito said Thursday at a news conference in Trenton that the dispute may have led to the arts festival shooting, the Associated Press reported. On June 17, gunfire erupted during the 24-hour festival at the Roebling Wire Works Building, causing panic and resulting in the death of Tahaij Wells, 32, believed to be one of the gunmen involved. Authorities arrested 12 of the defendants early Thursday and charged 10 others who already were in custody. One person in a New Jersey state prison was charged in a separate complaint. Four defendants remained at large. Authorities seized five semiautomatic firearms allegedly possessed by defendants in the case. Participants in the conspiracy obtained large quantities of heroin from David Antonio, whom they called "Papi," prosecutors said. Antonio, 30, of Trenton, and 25 other defendants were charged with conspiracy to distribute one kilogram or more of heroin. That charge carries a mandatory minimum of 10 years in prison and possible maximum of life. Tom Watson was a popular disc jockey when he was murdered on May 11, 2013 inside an ice cream shop on South Street. Read more More than five years have passed since disc jockey Tom Watson, 36, was fatally shot on a Saturday morning inside the Haagen-Dazs ice cream store on South Street near Second Street. On Friday, after more than 10 days of trial before Common Pleas Court Judge Steven R. Geroff and five hours of deliberation, a jury convicted four Philadelphia men of his murder. Josephe Murray, 24, who shot Watson, and Larry Nelson, 52, who planned the robbery of Watson, were convicted of first-degree murder and robbery, and face life in prison. Lonnie Robinson, 45, a friend of Watson's who tipped off Nelson that the DJ could be a robbery target, and Clarence Pone, 47, who helped wrestle Watson into the store and onto the ground, were convicted of second-degree murder and robbery. All four denied the charges. Only Pone took the witness stand, acknowledging that he was at the scene but saying he had nothing to do with Watson's murder. Jurors viewed surveillance video taken from cameras outside and inside the ice cream parlor, and heard testimony that painted a grim picture of an attempted robbery that went awry. Around 3 a.m. on May 11, 2013, as a mist dusted South Street, Watson's driver and friend, Jimmy Weisbrod, helped him carry his DJ equipment from the trunk of Weisbrod's Lincoln Town Car to the front door of the store, which Watson lived above and which could only be entered through the store. Weisbrod, a Vietnam veteran with lingering wounds, limped to the door behind Watson, who wore a cap with a ponytail peeking out the back. Weisbrod put down the equipment and shook Watson's hand. Watson performed regularly under the name DJ Fenix at local clubs, including Copabanana at 40th and Spruce Streets, and was a cook at Tavern 222 on South Street. He also sold marijuana and cocaine on the side, which attracted the would-be robbers. Two men followed Watson, watching as he opened the door. As Weisbrod walked back to his car, the men pushed Watson inside the store, wrestling him to the orange ceramic-tile floor. Watson dug his fingers into one attacker's back, collecting skin under his nails. Weisbrod closed the trunk and hit the key remote lock once. He looked back and spotted some of the equipment still on the sidewalk. He went over and peered inside the store window, and saw chairs and tables toppled over. When he grabbed the door handle, the 6-foot-5 Pone confronted him and told him to leave. Inside, Murray was whipping Watson with the revolver, breaking his nose and fracturing his jaw. He shot him in the left chest and dragged him toward the basement door. Meanwhile, Weisbrod got into his car and started driving while Pone ran up American Street. Weisbrod spun around the corner and pulled back to the Haagen-Dazs. Murray shot Watson again at close range, striking him in the left ear. Weisbrod heard the gunshots and moved toward the front door. Murray, heavyset with braids and a teardrop tattoo on his face, walked past him. Weisbrod went into the store, peeked over the counter at the floor, now stained in blood, and saw his friend. Sentencing is scheduled for Nov. 28. Chester County District Attorney Tom Hogan , seen at a press conference in September, accused some state troopers stationed in the county of gross negligence in the way they handled a police-involved shooting earlier this year. Read more An attorney for Chester County District Attorney Thomas P. Hogan fired back at the state police union on Wednesday, filing objections to a lawsuit faulting the prosecutor for a list of law enforcement officers whom his office blocks from testifying in court and objecting to an internal memo criticizing the actions of one trooper recently placed on the list. The suit, filed by the Pennsylvania State Police Trooper Association in September, centers on a police-involved shooting in May in which three troopers fired at a suspect in a DUI-fueled chase. Lt. Brandon Daniels, the on-scene commander, was accused in Hogan's internal memo of making several critical errors during the investigation of the shooting, earning his place on the district attorney's "do not call" list of officers he deems unworthy of being called to the stand. In the suit, the union derides Hogan for keeping such a list, calls it arbitrary and capricious, and says its disclosure was damaging to Daniels and other members of the state force. Michael B. Pullano, Hogan's attorney, wrote that the suit fails to disclose that Daniels had retired from the force and found a new job, rendering moot the union's assertion that his reputation had been damaged. Pullano said Hogan learned that Daniels had left the force when he attended an event on gun safety organized by the Owen J. Roberts School District on Oct. 10 and school officials introduced Daniels as an employee. As for the list of officers the prosecutor has barred from being called to the witness stand, Pullano said, Hogan had complete discretion to maintain such a roster. "Prosecutors have a duty to protect the integrity of the criminal justice process, including identifying witnesses who cannot be used because they are untrustworthy or lacking in credibility," he wrote. "This may include law enforcement officers who have been deemed unreliable." Sean T. Welby, Daniels' attorney, did not immediately respond to a request for comment. In court filings, Welby confirmed that Daniels was planning to retire as of Oct. 19. In the lawsuit, Welby disputes allegations that Daniels, as on-scene commander, mishandled the investigation of the police-involved shooting on May 23 in London Grove Township. He also derides prosecutors for keeping the "do not call" list, and says its "partial publication" in Hogan's memo was "inherently damaging to the reputation of both Daniels and all members" of the state police working in Chester County. "Nor are there any apparent standards for being placed on the list other than the arbitrary and capricious whim of District Attorney Hogan," Welby wrote. After the shooting, Hogan said publicly that no charges would be filed against the three troopers who fired their weapons at the suspect. But privately, he sharply criticized Daniels, saying he did not report the shooting to the prosecutor's office the independent agency assigned to investigate police-involved shootings for four hours. Daniels later explained the delay by saying he "had other things to do" and did not have Hogan's cell phone number, reasons Hogan found not credible. Pullano's response Wednesday disputed contentions that the memo had harmed Daniels' professional reputation. He noted that in the months after the shooting incident, Daniels was able to testify in other counties where the state police have jurisdiction, and said that Daniels' job was never in jeopardy and that he was able to secure a job with the Roberts school district after he retired. Pullano said any harm that fell to Daniels came from his lawyer, who made the memo public in a court filing. Hogan, he said, had only intended the memo to be distributed among top state police commanders. Further, Pullano called the union's suit "an attempt to dictate what witnesses the Chester County District Attorney's Office will or will not call." "Daniels has been found to be lacking in credibility by the District Attorney's Office," he said. "Therefore it is within the discretion of the district attorney not to call him as a witness." Pullano said Hogan's maintenance of the "do not call" list is his right as the top prosecutor in the county, and a standard practice among his counterparts elsewhere in the state and the country. U.S. Attorney William McSwain speaks in his Chestnut Street office Thursday May 3, 2018. Read more U.S. prosecutors pursuing an unprecedented inquiry into clergy sex abuse and cover-ups within the Catholic Church in Pennsylvania have turned their attention to bishops outside the state, signaling a wider federal probe than initially reported. In a letter sent this month, Philadelphia-based investigators instructed the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops, its staff, and the nearly 200 prelates across the country who comprise its membership to preserve personnel records and documents related to sex abuse that could be of interest to the probe. A conference spokesperson declined to describe what types of records the prosecutors sought to preserve, but conference general counsel Anthony R. Picarello Jr. said Friday that his organization had complied. "We have transmitted the U.S. attorney's letter [to our staff] at his request, and in the spirit of cooperation with law enforcement," he said in a statement. News of the correspondence comes less than three weeks before the U.S. Conference and its members are set to convene in Baltimore after months of developments that have plunged the church into crisis over its handling of sex-abuse claims. The last three months have seen the toppling of Cardinal Theodore McCarrick of Washington and his successor, Donald Wuerl, over abuse-related complaints as well as a scathing Pennsylvania grand jury report that implicated six of the state's eight Catholic dioceses in decades of concealment, and inspired similar probes in at least a dozen other states. But until this month, the bishops had largely escaped federal scrutiny. All eight Pennsylvania dioceses confirmed last week that they had been served on Oct. 9 with grand jury subpoenas from prosecutors under the purview of William M. McSwain, U.S. attorney for the Eastern District of Pennsylvania. McSwain's letter to the U.S. Conference first reported by Rocco Palmo, a Philadelphia-based writer of the Vatican insider blog Whispers in the Loggia was sent on the same date and was distributed by the conference to dioceses across the country earlier this week. Archdiocesan spokespeople from across the country including in Louisville, Chicago, Los Angeles, and New Orleans confirmed Friday that they had received the message but said their offices had not been subpoenaed. The letter did not compel the organization or any particular diocese to hand over any information to federal authorities, although it ordered recipients not to "destroy, discard, dispose of, delete, or alter" any of the identified records. "The practice in the Archdiocese of New Orleans is to always cooperate with any civil investigation," said Sara McDonald, a spokesperson for the Louisiana archdiocese. Meanwhile, agents already have begun fanning out across Pennsylvania to begin interviewing potential witnesses. Michael McIlmail, who recently settled a lawsuit against the church after his late son said he was abused by a priest at a Northeast Philadelphia parish in the '90s, said he met with prosecutors assigned to the probe. "The feds have the resources," he said Friday. "And what I like about the FBI is, if you lie to the FBI, it's a crime." A spokesperson for McSwain's office has refused to confirm or deny the existence of an investigation. But sources familiar with the matter, although not authorized to discuss it, have said agents are looking at potential crimes ranging from possession of child pornography to aiding and abetting child exploitation and transporting children across state lines for the purposes of engaging in sex. The subpoenas served on Pennsylvania's dioceses sought records pertaining to church finances, clergy assignments, insurance coverage, and confidential personnel files that have come to be known as the church's secret archive. News of similar inquiries by federal prosecutors in Washington and Buffalo, N.Y. also emerged this week. Staff writer Craig R. McCoy and Liz Navratil of the Harrisburg Bureau contributed to this article, as did Peter Smith of the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette. A 37-year-old man who attempted to rob a takeout restaurant in the city's West Oak Lane section Thursday night was critically wounded in a shootout with the owner, police said. About 7:45 p.m., the armed man entered Peter's Chicken and Seafood at 7361 N. 19th St. and announced a robbery, said Chief Inspector Scott Small. The owner drew his own gun and the bullets started to fly. The alleged robber fired four shots before fleeing. The owner, who fired three shots, told police he wasn't sure if he hit the perpetrator. But about 15 minutes later, the alleged robber, whose name was not released, showed up at Einstein Medical Center with a gunshot wound to his chest and was admitted in critical condition. The owner and an employee went to the hospital and positively identified the man as the doer. Small said the shootout was captured on in-store surveillance video. No one else was hurt. Protesters and Logan neighborhood residents opposed to plans by Arizona-based VisionQuest to house 60 undocumented immigrant children gather outside the company's property on Wednesday. Speaking in front of the group are Erika Almiron, executive director of Juntos, and Josh Glenn, co-founder of the Youth Art & Self-Empowerment Project. Read more One child's head crashed through a wall during an altercation with a staffer at the VisionQuest shelter for troubled youths in North Philadelphia. Another youngster was struck in the face by an adult worker during an argument over a chair. In a separate incident, a youth was choked and slapped by a staff member. But physical violence toward children wasn't the only problem at the Arizona-based company's facility, according to Pennsylvania state inspection reports. Two staffers repeatedly cursed at the children, telling them, "You're nothing," and promising to "make life a living hell," inspectors wrote. Some workers didn't have adequate training. And the place was dirty. The shelter closed in late 2017. Now VisionQuest is back in Philadelphia, intending to use the same Logan neighborhood building to house 60 undocumented immigrant children, all boys ages 12 to 17, who arrived alone at the nation's southern border. They'll come here from shelters around the country, among the thousands of "unaccompanied minors" who fled violence and poverty in their homelands of El Salvador, Honduras, Guatemala, and Mexico. VisionQuest CEO Peter Ranalli said the new program will be better run, better staffed, and much better financed, through a contract with the federal government. As for its previous shelter at the site, he said, complaints of abuse occur at virtually all juvenile-justice centers, and not all those lodged against VisionQuest workers were true. "Did we have staff do inappropriate things?" Ranalli said. "When you have 130 staff, somebody is going to do something inappropriate." At least three VisionQuest employees were fired between 2011 and 2017 after hitting or physically handling children, state records show. VisionQuest had contracted with the city to provide protective care to teenagers awaiting court adjudication and placement, and other at-risk youths needing short-term supervision. The work could be difficult. At one point in 2013, for instance, 40 percent of the children at the shelter were mentally ill, and 85 percent had been judged delinquent. The first group of migrant children won't arrive for at least two months, during which VisionQuest says it will remake the Logan Plaza domain into comfortable, dormitory-style housing. It plans to try to find foster families for the children. Barring that, the youths could be housed here indefinitely. The federal government's treatment of migrant children has become an explosive issue. In the "sanctuary city" of Philadelphia, a surge of opposition brought about 40 protesters to the VisionQuest property at 5201 Old York Rd. on Wednesday. They said immigrant minors need care and love, not group housing. "VisionQuest has no place in Philadelphia," said Erika Almiron, executive director of Juntos, the advocacy group that organized the demonstration. Kenney administration officials called VisionQuest's plan "disturbing," and City Councilwoman Helen Gym said the agency "seeks to profit off the misery and terror of children." Philadelphia Federation of Teachers president Jerry Jordan, who spoke at the rally, said his 11,000-member union will not "stand by and watch VisionQuest enter our city and perpetuate a profoundly shameful practice." If union members need to march outside VisionQuest, he said, they'll do it. Councilwoman Cherelle L. Parker, whose district contains the VisionQuest site, wants to hear from neighbors in the area, some of whom have already expressed their concern, her spokesperson said. Founded in Arizona in 1973, VisionQuest operates in six states, focused on helping youths in the court and correctional systems. In February 2011, VisionQuest was licensed to run its New Directions Shelter in Logan, two blocks south of Einstein Medical Center. It added children in phases, toward an approved limit of 128 boys and girls. The youths got meals and schooling, along with group therapy sessions, anger-management counseling, and drug and alcohol therapies, records say. They were assigned four to a room. Inspectors from the Department of Human Services cited the first deficiencies six months later: A lack of supervision enabled two youths to leave the premises. Boys and girls complained they weren't permitted additional portions of food. Dirt and food droppings littered the stove area, and overall maintenance was poor. VisionQuest executives filed a plan to make fixes and were allowed to continue operating. Inspectors documented a physical altercation on July 27, 2012. At 11 p.m., a staffer heard a youth making noises while other children in the room were trying to sleep. Told by an employee to be quiet, the person refused, "but remained harmless to self or others," the inspection report stated. The staffer put the child in a restraint and took him out of the room, the young person kicking a dent in the wall as he resisted. VisionQuest fired the staff member, records show. In April 2013, investigators wrote that two staff members "do not treat the children that live at the facility with fairness, dignity and respect." Those staffers allegedly swore at the youths, and said, "You're going to be nothing in life." Both workers received written admonishments and warnings that further violations could get them fired, records show. The state reports do not identify staff members or children by name, age or sex. They provide a summary of events and findings, and in some cases do not specify the date of an altercation or deficiency. In August 2013, inspectors found that eight staffers had not been certified in CPR and first aid. Fire drills were an issue. VisionQuest needed to be able to evacuate all children within 2 minutes. Instead, it was taking three, four, or five minutes, and in one drill, nine minutes. In 2014 and 2015, a staffer was found to be working without a child-abuse clearance. Three had no CPR or first aid training, and five had no medical proof that they were free of serious communicable diseases, required when working around children or food. An August 2016 summary outlined the episode in which a staff member choked and hit a child. The cause of the violence was not stated, but an examination found scratches on the left and right sides of the youth's neck. The employee was suspended immediately and soon fired. The cleanliness of the shelter suffered through 2016: shower heads covered in mildew, a water fountain clogged with rusty brown water, mouse droppings in cafeteria heaters. Floors of community lunch areas and youth bathrooms were corroded with a dirty brown substance, a report stated. "The facility," VisionQuest wrote in response, "is under continuous physical renovation and improvement." In a November 2016 summary, signed in February 2017, inspectors described the episode when a child's head went through a wall. It occurred in what was called the Quiet Room, when a staff member with no training in restrictive procedures improperly attempted to restrain the child, they wrote. A May 2017 summary recounted how, after a child and a staffer got into an argument over a chair, the adult struck the youth in the face. The staffer was fired the same night. In October 2017, the state approved VisionQuest for another year of operation, but the center never made it that far. VisionQuest's Ranalli said his agency closed the shelter after the city declined to pay more for the program. City officials said that while they did deny a rate increase, they ended the contract because of poor oversight of the children and bad building conditions. "When it is clear that a service is not meeting our standards, we close intake" of children, said Heather Keafer, spokesperson for the city Department of Human Services. "We have closed sites that we believe do not serve the best interest of our youth." Staff writers Dylan Purcell and Nathaniel Lash contributed to this article. Jane Hinkle, 67, of Philadelphia, a former business writer, teacher, and partner in one of the early same-sex couples to raise children in Philadelphia, died Sunday, Oct. 21, of Alzheimer's disease at Wesley Enhanced Living at Stapeley. She had been ill for the last decade. Ms. Hinkle was born in Arlington and grew up in Springfield, both in Virginia. She graduated from Thomas Jefferson High School in Springfield and from Wellesley College in 1973. Ms. Hinkle's mother, Betsy W. Hinkle, was editor and publisher of the Springfield Independent and Burke Herald, both weekly newspapers in northern Virginia. Ms. Hinkle started her career working as a jack-of-all-trades for the weeklies. She was an editorial assistant on the Washington Post business desk and a business writer for the Charlotte News. In 1980 and early 1981, she took a leave of absence from the News when her mother became terminally ill and needed her care. A business writer named Abbe Fletman took over Ms. Hinkle's job. The two met briefly after Ms. Hinkle's mother died in April 1981. Fletman recalled being impressed with Ms. Hinkle's irreverence and fierce intelligence. In 1984, the two women had lunch. By that time, Ms. Hinkle was working as a chamber of commerce publicist in Charlotte. "It was presumably strictly a business lunch," Fletman recalled, "but for me, it was much more." Fletman found Ms. Hinkle to be witty and funny. She asked her out, and that date changed the trajectory of both their lives, Fletman said in a Feb. 11, 2009, Inquirer story about marriage. Ms. Hinkle and Fletman wanted to live openly as a gay couple but doubted they would feel comfortable doing so in Charlotte because of public attitudes at that time. Fletman was headed to the University of Pennsylvania Law School, so Ms. Hinkle moved with her to Fairmount, and then Germantown. They had two children. Fletman became a trial lawyer for the Philadelphia law firm of Flaster/Greenberg and is now a Philadelphia Common Pleas Court judge. They married on July 31, 2014. "I found that I really believe in marriage," she told the Inquirer. "All it took was finding my Princess Charming." Starting in 1990, Ms. Hinkle stayed at home for nine years to raise the couple's children. When the younger started kindergarten, Ms. Hinkle began studying for a master's degree in education at the University of Pennsylvania. She completed the degree in 1999. She taught fourth and fifth grade at the Philadelphia School and Friends Select School. She loved history and particularly enjoyed teaching students about the U.S. Constitution. Fletman said: "She also loved science and math, and coming up with ways to make fractions and decimals understandable to her students." Ms. Hinkle retired from teaching in 2010. In January 2011, she was diagnosed with Alzheimer's disease, although the symptoms had appeared earlier. She greeted the diagnosis with equanimity and often matter-of-factly told people, "I have Alzheimer's disease," when she couldn't recall a name or order food at a restaurant. She spent time quietly advocating for LGBT equality and raising consciousness about Alzheimer's disease by talking to people individually, Fletman said. She was not a joiner. Ms. Hinkle read all the Harry Potter books aloud to her family. She excelled at creating voices for the characters in the books. She loved to cook simple American foods, such as fried chicken and apple pie. In addition to her wife, she is survived by a son, Theodore Ross Fletman; a daughter, Elizabeth Woods Fletman; a brother; and many nieces and nephews. Funeral services were Oct. 24. Memorial donations may be made to the Alzheimer's Association, 399 Market St., Suite 102, Philadelphia, Pa. 19106, or the Center for Literacy, 399 Market St., Suite 201, Philadelphia, Pa. 19106. My son, Sean Schellenger, was murdered July 12. What I have learned since then is what too many victims' families in this city have already experienced. Philadelphia District Attorney Larry Krasner is not, in my opinion, working for justice in violent crime cases. >> READ MORE: Rittenhouse Square stabbing: How two lives and two Philadelphias led to a fatal night My son was murdered, and Krasner, who is my son's legal representative, agreed to a reduced charge in this case before a judge or jury had the opportunity to consider the original charge, made by his office. Krasner has not returned phone calls nor kept scheduled meetings with me. My family and I have met with him only once since my son was murdered and that was before the Aug. 1 hearing when he reduced the charge. During a chance encounter on the street on Oct. 1, I asked Krasner to reconsider the charge based on new evidence, and he asked me to schedule a meeting with him. I called his office five days in a row and left messages every day, with no return call. I finally reached the office's victims advocate, who scheduled a meeting for Oct.16, only to have it cancelled at 9:45 p.m. the night before. They said they'd send new dates. I've heard nothing since. We've been assigned prosecutors from the District Attorney's Office. They are fine, highly qualified professionals whom we have great faith in. However, it's been made clear to us that their recommendations can be and are overruled by Krasner. The shame of it is that I am a supporter of Krasner's political platform. I, too, believe that in the case of minor legal infractions or misdemeanors, sentences are too long, and people are incarcerated inappropriately. However, I do not, and have never, believed that reducing sentencing guidelines or charges in the case of violent crime, specifically murder, is just. Violent crimes, especially murder, should be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law. Sean was compassionate, smart, incredibly giving, the son and brother every family dreams of, a friend for life. His life was taken from us in a violent crime. The preliminary hearing for this case is Oct. 30, and my reasoned request, on behalf of the victims of violent crime across the city of Philadelphia, is that Larry Krasner do his job and ensure that this case and others like it is tried before a judge and jury, on the murder charge, so that justice may be served. Linda Schellenger is the mother of murder victim Sean Schellenger and the retired CEO of a Merck wholly owned subsidiary. In this Dec. 8, 1987 file photo U.S. President Ronald Reagan, right, and Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev exchange pens during the Intermediate Range Nuclear Forces Treaty signing ceremony in the White House East Room in Washington, D.C. Gorbachev's translator Pavel Palazhchenko stands in the middle. Trump's announcement that the United States would leave the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces, or INF, treaty brought sharp criticism on Sunday Oct. 21, 2018, from Russian officials and from former Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev, who signed the treaty in 1987 with President Ronald Reagan. Read more WASHINGTON In announcing his decision to withdraw from the 1987 Intermediate-range Nuclear Forces (INF) Treaty, President Trump cited Russia's repeated violations and the fact that the treaty does not bind China, which is engaged in the world's most ambitious ballistic missile development program. But Trump's withdrawal may also be designed for another purpose. It sends a subtle but unmistakable message to North Korea: If you refuse to denuclearize, we can now surround your country with short- and medium-range missiles that will allow us to strike your regime without warning. At the moment, the Trump administration appears to be making little progress in nuclear talks with Pyongyang. The threat of deployment of intermediate-range missiles in Asia could change the dynamics of those negotiations. Recall that in 1983, President Ronald Reagan announced plans to deploy hundreds of U.S. intermediate-range Pershing II missiles in Western Europe in response to the Soviet Union's deployment of SS-20 nuclear missiles. The U.S. deployment sparked mass protests throughout Europe, but it also put enormous pressure on Moscow, and in so doing laid the groundwork for a series of arms-control breakthroughs, including the INF Treaty. >> READ MORE: Mitch McConnell could be the most consequential conservative leader of the century | Marc Thiessen By withdrawing from the INF Treaty, Trump can now put similar pressure on Pyongyang. The treaty barred both conventional and nuclear land-based missiles with a range of 300 to 3,400 miles. Freed from the treaty's constraints, the United States can now deploy hundreds of conventional short- and medium-range missiles to bases in Asia, including in Guam (2,100 miles from North Korea) and Japan (650 miles). There would no longer be a need to send U.S. aircraft carriers on temporary deployments to waters off the Korean Peninsula as a sign of military strength. The deployment of intermediate-range missiles in the region would put North Korea permanently in our crosshairs. Pyongyang certainly does not want these U.S. missiles on its doorstep. Neither does Beijing, which knows such a deployment would restore U.S. military supremacy in the Pacific. According to Adm. Harry Harris, former commander of U.S. Pacific Command, China possesses the "largest and most diverse missile force in the world" and 95 percent of its missiles "would violate the INF [Treaty] if China was a signatory." The fact that Beijing has such missiles, while the United States does not, puts the United States at a strategic disadvantage in any conflict with Beijing. As my American Enterprise Institute colleague Dan Blumenthal pointed out in the Washington Post, our only possible response would be to strike China with intercontinental ballistic missiles an unacceptable escalation. By contrast, the U.S. withdrawal from the INF Treaty allows deployment of conventional mobile ground-based missiles in Guam and Japan, improving our ability to deter Chinese aggression. >> READ MORE: How not to modernize Saudi Arabia | Marc Thiessen Trump can deploy Tomahawk cruise missiles on ground launchers to the Pacific almost immediately after withdrawal from the treaty. Withdrawal would also pave the way for U.S. development and deployment of new missiles banned by the treaty, as well as new hypersonic weapons which travel five times faster than the speed of sound to compete with China's massive investment in these capabilities. This would be a massive strategic setback to both China and North Korea. So by withdrawing from the INF Treaty, and clearing the way for such deployments, Trump has given the United States a massive, new bargaining chip. North Korea now has a new incentive to denuclearize, and China has a new strategic interest pressuring them to do so. >> READ MORE: Democrats' smear of Kavanaugh sunk their own Senate chances | Marc Thiessen It still may not work. But if those negotiations fail, Trump's INF Treaty withdrawal has given the United States a fallback option that will allow Washington to more effectively deter both Beijing and Pyongyang and reassert American military primacy in the region. Marc Thiessen writes a twice-weekly column for The Post on foreign and domestic policy and contributes to the PostPartisan blog. He is a fellow at the American Enterprise Institute, and the former chief speechwriter for President George W. Bush. @marcthiessen Washington: Radio stations across Washington DC were evacuated after WMAL, a news and talk station, received a suspicious package on Thursday. The Federal Bureau of Investigation is currently investigating into 10 pipe bombs sent to high-profile Democrats and critics of US President Donald Trump ahead of November 6 US elections. In a tweet, WMAL confirmed that it received a suspicious package and the building has been evacuated. Suspicious package received at WMAL. Building evacuated. Police and fire are on scene. Well be back with you live as soon as we can, but for now enjoy our Best of programming on WMAL. WMAL DC (@WMALDC) October 25, 2018 Larry O'Connor, host of The Larry O'Connor Show on WMAL, also tweeted, I'm not going to describe the package in question because there is an ongoing investigation. We were informed moments after police studied it to immediately evacuate. Could be a bad copy cat or could be something more. We will return to the air as soon as we can. I'm not going to describe the package in question because there is an ongoing investigation. We were informed moments after police studied it to immediately evacuate. Could be a bad copy cat or could be something more. We will return to the air as soon as we can. @WMALDC Larry O'Connor (@LarryOConnor) October 25, 2018 After nearly three hours of search and examining the package contents, authorities gave an all clear to the FM station. An all-clear has been given to re-enter the building after a suspicious package was received at WMAL. Police were called and examined the package, opened it and it was not a threat. An all-clear has been given to re-enter the building after a suspicious package was received at WMAL. Police were called and examined the package, opened it and it was not a threat. More pictures: https://t.co/9HykWHN9VC pic.twitter.com/WCxN6gWogX WMAL DC (@WMALDC) October 25, 2018 On Thursday, two more suspicious bombs were sent to former Vice President Joe Biden and actor Robert De Niro. Previously, packages containing explosive devices were sent to former President Barack Obama, Democrat Hillary Clinton, former CIA Director John Brennan, former attorney general Eric Holder, Democratic Party donor George Soros and California Representative Maxine Waters. Two packages were sent to Waters, who Trump has called "an extraordinarily low IQ person." The CNN news bureau in New York's Time Warner building received a package addressed to Brennan, leading police to evacuate the entire building in a busy Manhattan neighborhood near Central Park. Authorities have stepped up the hunt for the serial bomber amid a contentious campaign season ahead of the November 6 elections in which Trump`s Republicans will try to maintain majorities in the Senate and House of Representatives. Trump condemned the bombs but later blamed the media, his frequent foil, for much of the angry tone. Trump and other Republicans have likened Democrats to an "angry mob," citing protests at the confirmation hearing of US Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh. With agency inputs New Delhi: WhatsApp has announced that it has introduced a new way for people to express themselves with stickers. Whether with a smiling teacup or a crying broken heart, stickers help you share your feelings in a way that you can't always express with words. To start, we're launching sticker packs created by our designers at WhatsApp and a selection of stickers from other artists, WhatsApp wrote in its blog The messaging app has also added support for third-party sticker packs to allow designers and developers around the world to create stickers for WhatsApp. To do this, WhatsApp has included a set of APIs and interfaces that allows users to build sticker apps that add stickers to WhatsApp on Android or iOS. You can publish your sticker app like any other app to the Google Play Store or Apple App Store, and users who download and install your app will be able to start sending those stickers right from within WhatsApp, the messaging app wrote. To use stickers in a chat, simply tap the new sticker button and select the sticker you want to share. You can add new sticker packs by tapping the plus icon. Stickers will be available for Android and iPhone over the coming weeks. Mumbai: Air Italy has announced its entry into the Indian market, offering services from New Delhi and Mumbai to Milan. The maiden flight from Delhi will kick off December 7 and the one from Mumbai will begin on December 14. Air Italy is offering promotional fares on the new route starting from Rs 29, 472 for a return ticket per person (all-inclusive) from Delhi, and Rs 30,597 from Mumbai. Connecting Italy to two of the main business destinations in Asia, India will be the 4th international addition to the Air Italy network after the successful launch of its operations to New York (JFK), Miami (MIA) and Bangkok (BKK) from its new hub in Milan-Malpensa (MXP), the company said in a statement. The company said that Airbus A330-200 will be deployed for the two new routes from India to Milan, operating thrice a week from both cities. The Airline company will offer 24 seats in the exclusive Business Class cabin and 228 seats in the Economy Class cabin. With the launch of our India operations in December, we are excited to offer newer routes and a wider travel option to the discerning travelers from India. Our new service will increase convenience for business guests, leisure travelers as well as students, traveling between India and Italy, further strengthening commerce as well as tourism ties between the two countries, Rossen Dimitrov, Chief Operating Officer, Air Italy, said. The Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) and the Janata Dal United (JDU) have decided to contest on equal number of seats during the 2019 Lok Sabha elections in Bihar. Addressing a joint press conference with Bihar Chief Minister Nitish Kumar, BJP chief Amit Shah said that other allies will also be given a respectable seat share. The BJP president declared that the exact numbers of seats for each NDA constituent would be announced in a few days. He further said that Rashtriya Lok Samta Party chief Upendra Kushwaha and Lok Janshakti Partys Ram Vilas Paswan will remain part of the NDA. Sources had earlier told Zee News that Nitish Kumars JDU had insisted that it should get equal number of seats as the BJP. The latest announcement by the BJP president confirmed that the BJP and the JDU would contest on 32 out of 40 Lok Sabha seats in Bihar, leaving eight seats for other constituents of the alliance. According to sources, Paswans Lok Janshakti Party is likely to get five seats while Kushwahas party may get two. Activists Arun and Vernon, who were under house arrest since August 28, were on Friday arrested by Pune Police in connection to Bhima Koregaon case. Pune Sessions court on Friday rejected bail plea for three activists - Arun Ferreira, Sudha Bharadwaj and Vernon Gonsalves. The Bombay High Court refused to extend house arrest for Arun and Vernon, following which Vernon was arrested from Mumbai and Arun was arrested from Maharashtra's Thane. The defence had moved an application before Pune Session Court seeking an extension of house arrest for seven days for Gonsalves and Ferreira since their house arrest ended today. The Special Judge of the Unlawful Activities (Prevention) Act Court, K.D. Vadane, passed a common order declining the bail applications of Sudha Bharadwaj, Vernon S. Gonsalves and Arun T. Ferreira in the case filed by the Vishramgbaug police station here. The three were under house arrest as per an earlier Supreme Court order. Bombay High Court on Friday also adjourned Gautam Navlakha and Anand Teltumbde's plea seeking rejection of FIR in Bhima Koregaon case till November 1. Interim protection will be provided to Navlakha till November 1. Earlier on Thursday, Hyderabad High Court had extended the house arrest for activist Varavara Rao for three weeks. During the investigations into the Koregaon-Bhima riots, the Pune Police had raided and arrested five accused including Bharadwaj, Gonsalves, Ferreira, Gautam Navlakha (now released) and P. Varavara Rao (currently in house arrest in Hyderabad). Earlier in June, the Pune Police had nabbed activists Rona Wilson, Sudhir Dhawale, Shoma Sen, Surendra Gadling, Mahesh Raut and Rana Jacob in the Koregaon-Bhima case. Besides the Koregaon-Bhima violence, the police claimed that they harboured links with Maoist terror groups, were allegedly planning to carry out high-level political assassinations in a Rajiv Gandhi-style operation and incite disturbances in the country to topple the government. (With Agency Inputs) The Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) on Friday registered a case of rape and unnatural sex against self-styled godman Daati Maharaj and three others. The case, which was previously being probed by the Delhi Police crime branch, was transferred to the CBI by the Delhi High Court earlier in October. The decision of the Delhi High Court for a CBI probe was challenged by Daati Maharaj in the Supreme Court, which asked him to raise his grievances in the High Court itself. The top court, however, granted liberty to Maharaj to approach it after the matter is finally adjudicated by the High Court. Daati Maharaj and his disciples have been accused of rape by a 25-year-old woman, who claimed to be one of the disciples of the self-styled godman. She had also alleged that a female disciple of the godman would force her into his room and if she refused, would tell her that other disciples too slept with him, the police said. While filing the petition in the High Court, the victim had demanded that the godman and his brothers be arrested at the earliest and that his two main ashrams be sealed. According to the complaint filed by her, she fled from one of the ashrams two years ago and was in depression for a long time. After she recovered from her trauma, she narrated her ordeal to her parents, who approached the police and a case was registered. Daati Maharaj, however, dismissed all allegations saying the complainant was like his daughter. He also assured that he would fully cooperate with the authorities in the investigation. He said that he would not blame the complainant even if he is executed for the crime. The Delhi Police had been questioned by the Delhi High Court and a lower court for alleged delay in the case. The Supreme Court is slated to hear on Friday the petition filed by CBI director Alok Kumar Verma challenging the decision of the Centre to divest him of his duties and sending him on leave. He has also sought stay of the Centre's order asking him to proceed on leave and giving the interim charge of his post to Joint Director M Nageswara Rao, a 1986 batch Odisha-cadre IPS officer. Verma's petition is listed for hearing before a bench comprising Chief Justice Ranjan Gogoi and Justices S K Kaul and K M Joseph. His petition will come for hearing along with another plea filed on Thursday by an NGO, 'Common Cause', which has sought SIT probe into the allegations of corruption against CBI officials including special director Rakesh Asthana. Verma seeking an urgent hearing on his plea, which was filed yesterday, had said that besides sending the agency's chief and the Special CBI Director on leave, several officers probing sensitive cases have been changed. Advocate Gopal Shankarnaryanan, appearing for the CBI chief on Wednesday had sought urgent hearing and had also referred to the fact that the Central Vigilance Commission (CVC) had taken the decision at 6 AM yesterday to divest Verma of his duties. Verma said there was a need for an independent probe agency as there were bound to be occasions when certain investigations into high functionaries do not take the direction that may be desirable to the government. He has assailed the decision of the Department of Personnel and Training (DoPT) giving Joint Director M Nageswara Rao, the charge as head of the probe agency. The feud between Verma and Asthana escalated recently leading to registration of an FIR against Asthana and others including Deputy Superintendent of Police Devender Kumar, who is in the CBI custody in an alleged bribery case. The FIR was lodged on a written complaint of Satish Babu Sana on October 15. It alleged that Kumar, the IO in a case, was repeatedly calling him to the CBI office to harass and compel him to pay bribe of Rs 5 crore for giving him clean chit. Asthana and Kumar both challenged the FIR in the Delhi High Court, which on Tuesday ordered CBI to maintain status quo on the criminal proceedings against Asthana. The Centre, the CVC and the DoPT intervened and decided to send the CBI Director and the Special Director on leave. The plea said the decision taken "overnight" by the Centre and the CVC to divest him of his role as the head of the probe agency was "patently illegal" and such interference "erodes" the independence and autonomy of the institution. "Over the recent past, although all functionaries within the CBI from the investigating officer and the superintending officers up to the Joint Director and the Director have agreed on a certain course of action, the Special Director has been of a different view," the plea said. It alleged that "hurdles posed" by Asthana have now been compounded by his complicity in "concocting evidence" to impugn the reputation of Verma, leading to a separate FIR being registered by CBI which has been challenged by the special director in the Delhi High Court. The second plea, of NGO Common Cause, has sought court-monitored SIT probe into allegations of corruption against various CBI officials, including Asthana, who was divested of his responsibilities as the agency's special director. The bench agreed to hear the plea after lawyer Prashant Bhushan, appearing for Common Cause, said that there were wider issues of corruption affecting the probe agency and the PIL needed to be heard urgently. The NGO has sought relief including court-monitored Special Investigation Team (SIT) probe into allegations of corruption against CBI officials including Asthana, who along with CBI Director Alok Kumar Verma had been divested of powers and sent on leave. New Delhi: Congress workers and party leaders on Friday launched protests outside CBI offices across the country but nowhere were the scenes as chaotic as outside the CBI headquarters in the capital where party president Rahul Gandhi led the 'CBI Gherao.' As pandemonium erupted, Rahul and several fellow leaders were arrested even as they alleged that the central government is bringing down democratic institutions. The protests have been organised to question the decision to send CBI chief Alok Verma on leave. Congress has levelled the charge that it is because Verma had begun asking questions about the Rafale deal that he was removed. And although CBI has clarified that Verma is still the chief and only temporarily asked to go on leave pending probe into allegations of misconduct against him, Congress remained defiant in its demand for his reinstatement. #WATCH Congress President Rahul Gandhi and Ashok Gehlot lead the protest march to CBI HQ against the removal of CBI Chief Alok Verma. pic.twitter.com/7FNkhoWQCb ANI (@ANI) October 26, 2018 Congress workers attempted to break barricades set up outside CBI headquarters while slogans were raised against BJP and the central government. There were also slogans against Prime Minister-led Appointments Committee of the Cabinet which had issued the orders with Rahul saying PM Modi was dismantling democratic institutions. He and several Congress leaders were eventually arrested and taken to the Lodhi Road Police Station where there were also reports of workers clashing with cops - shouting slogans and creating widespread mayham. Rahul eventually left the police station but not before firing another salvo at PM Modi. Meanwhile, Delhi Traffic Police said vehicular movement on Lodhi Road, CGO Complex, Bhishma Pitamah Marg, Sai Baba Chowk and near Dayal Singh College had been affected due to the large assembly of Congress workers. Elsewhere, protests were organised near CBI headquarters in Lucknow, Bengaluru and Patna. Water cannons were used against Congress workers in Chandigarh. Chandigarh: Police use water cannon at Congress workers who are protesting against the removal of CBI Director Alok Verma pic.twitter.com/SXwR3AgGRq ANI (@ANI) October 26, 2018 BJP - which had earlier said the decision to send Verma on leave was to maintain the integrity of CBI - countered Friday's protests by saying that the Congress has lost sight of real issues. "Congress doesn't have any people's issues to raise that is why they are taking up these non-issues. We should wait for the investigation report," said Home Minister Rajnath Singh. Finance minister Arun Jaitley too justified the action taken and slammed the protests against it. "The government has no intention of targeting anyone or any institution. The government only wants CBI to maintain its integrity and professionalism," he said. "Recent developments had eroded CBI credibility. SC even further strengthened criteria of fairness." #WATCH: FM Arun Jaitley says,"All officers of the CBI, particularly the top two officers like Caesar's wife must be beyond suspicion." pic.twitter.com/qlA1eLOCtH ANI (@ANI) October 26, 2018 Interestingly, the protests carried on well after a CJI-led Supreme Court panel said that the probe against Verma - and CBI No. 2 Rakesh Asthana - will be monitored by retired SC judge AK Patnaik. The apex court also said that the report must be submitted in two weeks and that the interim head of CBI - M Nageshwar Rao - will not take any policy decisions. It also issued notices to CVC and the Centre - asking for their replies - after Verma had filed a petition against the decision to send him on leave. Verma and Asthana have accused each other on a number of levels including corruption, official misconduct and/or creating hurdles within CBI. The premier investigative agency has been left red-faced and a probe has been launched into the allegations and counter-allegations. The Ministry of Defence on Friday appointed Colonel Aman Anand as its acting official spokesperson after incumbent spokesperson, Swarnashree Rao Rajshekhar, was proceeded on leave, after she inadvertently posted a tweet criticising misuse of privileges by military officials. She posted the tweet in response to a comment by former Navy Chief Admiral (retired) Arun Prakash. Following angry reactions from former military veterans, she took to microblogging site Twitter to say, The tweet was inadvertently done and the same is deeply regretted please. Admiral Prakash retweeted a photograph showing a military flag on the bonnet of an official car of the Internal Financial Adviser to the Western Command of the Army. "Even if misuse of an Army Command's insignia by a civilian is not a cognizable offence, the person needs to be reprimanded by the GOC in C whose 'Financial Adviser' he is," Prakash tweeted. Responding to the former Navy Chief's comments, Rajashekar, tweeted, "What about misuse of jawans in your residence during an officer's tenure sir? And how about children being picked up and dropped to school in Fauji (military) gaadis (vehicles)? Not to forget Madam's shopping expedition on government vehicles. And endless parties...Who pays for that?". Later, Rajashekar, an official from the Defence Accounts Service, deleted the tweet. Her response to 72-year-old Admiral Prakash, a war hero who was chief of Navy Staff between July 2004 and October 2006, drew sharp reactions from military veterans. Some of them even said the principal spokesperson's comments reflected the approach of the bureaucracy towards the armed forces. Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) Member of Parliament Rajeev Chandrashekhar also reacted strongly to her tweet, demanding that she must be sacked. (With PTI and ANI inputs) NEW DELHI: All decisions taken by interim Central Bureau of Investigation chief M Nageshwar Rao since October 23 will not be implemented, said the Supreme Court on Friday during the hearing of Director Alok Verma's plea. The top court further directed that Rao shall not take any major policy decisions till the next hearing of the case on November 12. Rao, a 1986 batch Odisha-cadre IPS officer, had signed the transfer order of 13 top CBI officers, many of whom were probing the case against agency Special Director Rakesh Asthana. The orders were passed immediately after he assumed position in the agency. The top officers included Deputy SP AK Bassi, Additional SP CBI SS Gum, CBI DIG Manish Kumar Sinha, DIG Tarun Gauba, DIG Jasbir Singh, DIG Anish Prasad, DIG KR Chaurasia, HoB Ram Gopal and SP Satish Dagar. The SC Friday ordered the Central Vigilance Commission (CVC) to complete the probe into allegations and counter allegations within two weeks. Former SC judge A K Patnaik will oversee the CVC inquiry. The Centre and the CBI need to submit their findings in the matter in 10 days to the CVC, said the three-judge bench comprising of Chief Justice Ranjan Gogoi, Justices S K Kaul and K M Joseph. A bench headed by Chief Justice Ranjan Gogoi posted the next date of hearing on November 12. Verma's lawyer Fali Nariman had argued that the 'order passed by the CVC and the Union Government to send Verma on leave was without any authority under the law.' The SC notices to the vigilance commission and the Centre asking them for their replies in the matter. The Opposition has hailed the SC order. The top court was listening to Verma's plea who sought an urgent hearing after being sent on leave on Tuesday night following his feud with CBI second-in-command Rakesh Asthana went public. Meanwhile, Rakesh Asthana the CBI Special Director also moved to the Supreme Court over the enforced leave. In an unprecedented development on Tuesday night, the Prime Minister-led Appointments Committee sent the top three CBI bosses - Director Alok Verma, Special Director Rakesh Asthana and Additional Director AK Sharma - on leave. It also appointed M Nageshwar Rao as the interim head of the investigative agency. Immediately after taking the mantle, Rao sent transferred top CBI officers investigating sensitive cases. Verma later approached the Supreme Court challenging the decision. The feud between Verma and Asthana had escalated recently, with both accusing each other or bribery and hampering probes. Last week, an FIR against Asthana and Deputy Superintendent of Police Devender Kumar was registered in an alleged bribery case. The FIR was lodged on a written complaint of Satish Babu Sana on October 15. It alleged that Kumar, the investigating officer in a case, was repeatedly calling him to the CBI office to harass and compel him to pay a bribe of Rs 5 crore for giving him a clean chit. He also falsified official records. Kumar is currently in CBI custody. Asthana and Kumar both challenged their FIR in the Delhi High Court, which on Tuesday ordered CBI to maintain status quo on the criminal proceedings against Asthana. The Opposition has come down heavily on the internal tussle at the CBI, holding the Narendra Modi government responsible for the entire mess and denting the central probe agency's credibility. Congress chief Rahul Gandhi also raked up the Rafale angle behind the action against Verma. New Delhi: Dalit leader and Gujarat legislator Jignesh Mevani, recently hurled insults galore at Prime Minister Narendra Modi while questioning his silence on recent attacks against migrant workers in Gujarat. Speaking at a rally in Patna on Wednesday, Mevani repeatedly called PM Modi 'namak haram' while attempting to highlight the plight of migrant workers from Uttar Pradesh and Bihar in Gujarat. "This captain is namak haram (disloyal). Workers from Madhya Pradesh, Jharkhand, UP and Bihar toil hard to build roads and flyovers in Ahmedabad, Surat, Rajkot and Baroda. In that Gujarat, workers from UP and Bihar were assaulted for 12 to 15 days but this namak haram did not utter a word," he said. In fact, in his entire nine-minute speech at Gandhi Maidan during a 'BJP Haraao, Desh Bachaao' rally organised by CPI-M, Mevani would use the word six times. "Shame on you Narendra Modi, shame on you." Mevani has repeatedly attacked PM Modi and the central government over a number of issues, including job creation and the economy. And he is not the first to have uttered insults agains the PM at a public forum. Congress social media head Divya Spandana was recently booked for allegedly posting tweets which insulted PM Modi. Others like Congress' Digvijaya Singh have called him Ravana, Anand Sharma has said he is mentally unstable and Pramod Tiwari - head of Congress in UP - compared PM Modi to Hitler and Mussolini. The BJP and the PM himself have countered the insults by saying that these show the level of desperation in rival parties - especially in Congress. "Where is the decency in the language Congress leaders have used for me? What did I do to deserve this? Is it my crime that the people of India have reposed their faith in me," he had tweeted after Congress' Mani Shankar Aiyar had raised a massive storm by calling him neech. The Inspector General (IG) of Odisha Arun Kumar Bothra on Friday clarified that Abhijit Iyer Mitra was arrested for his remark on Sun Temple and Odisha culture and not for comments on rosogollas. "I want to clarify that his arrest or legal action against him has nothing to do with rosogollas or his previous comments on rosogollas," Bothra said. The IG further added that Mitra had apologised for his remarks but it is for the court to decide if he should be punished or not, news agency ANI reported. A Konark court on Friday allowed police two-day remand of Delhi-based-journalist Mitra. The Judicial Magistrate (First Class), Konark granted local police to keep Iyer Mitra on its remand from 2 pm of October 26 till 2 pm on October 28. Mitra will be interrogated in connection with a case filed at the Konark police station in Puri district on September 19, a police officer said. A case was registered against Mitra at Konark police station under various sections of the Indian Penal Code and the Information Technology (IT) Act on the basis of a complaint lodged by Bimbadhar Goura of Konark area. Goura had alleged that Mitra had made derogatory remarks on Sun Temple in a video which he had posted on his Twitter handle. On Tuesday, Iyer was arrested by the Bhubaneswar Police in connection with a criminal case filed against him at Saheed Nagar police station after he appeared before the House Committee of the Odisha Assembly over breach of privilege. The panel has asked Mitra to appear in person again on November 2 and submit an affidavit. "The committee will decide whether to accept his apology or not after examining his affidavit. Accordingly, the committee will then recommend the House to take action against him if necessary," chairman of the committee Narasingha Mishra had said. Odisha Assembly Speaker P K Amat had set up a House Committee to probe the alleged derogatory remarks against the state, its culture and the lawmakers made by Mitra. A case has also been lodged under various sections of the Indian Penal Code and IT Act against Mitra at the Saheed Nagaar police station for his alleged objectionable remarks. Mitra had posted a video on his Twitter handle, where he "criticised Odisha, its people, Lord Jagannath, Konark temple and also Odisha lawmakers". (With PTI Inputs) New Delhi: At a time when several countries are looking to expand the technology powering their respective militaries, National Security Advisor Ajit Doval has said that India must not be left behind in taking on newer security challenges. Highlighting that conventional measures may not be enough in defending against threats, Doval said while delivering the Sardar Patel Memorial Lecture that India should prepare for fourth generation warfare which may involve fighting "invisible enemies". He also said that having a large army - India's Army is second-largest in terms of active personnel - and superior weapons are not going to ensure victory in times to come as the face of security challenges are ever-changing. Doval also backed 100 per cent technology transfer in defence hardware, calling on private sector to contribute in making India self-sufficient. While India remains one of the largest importers of arms and ammunition in the world, there has been a push for making the country a manufacturing hub of quality weapons as well. Defence Minister Nirmala Sitharaman recently said that the private sector, as well as students of engineering institutes and startups, must come forward to develop new-age devices like drones with missiles which could help the country's armed forces. Doval, however, added that all of this would be hampered if there was no strong government in the country. Citing Brazil's example, he said that the country has fared well at international levels but political uncertainties limit its rise. "India will need a strong, stable and decisive government for the next 10 years, let there be no doubt about it, to achieve our national, political, economic and strategic objectives," he said, adding that weak coalitions will be bad for the country," he said, while also making a case against populist measures. (Read full report here) Congress president Rahul Gandhi resumed his attack on Prime Minister Narendra Modi shortly after leaving Lodhi Colony police station, where he was taken after being arrested from outside the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) headquarters. He said that the Prime Minister could hide but the truth will be revealed. The Prime Minister can run, he can hide but in the end, truth will be revealed. Removing CBI Director will not help. Prime Minister acted against CBI Director, it was an act out of panic, the Gandhi scion told mediapersons soon after leaving the police station. , | | pic.twitter.com/AAE06H0790 Rahul Gandhi (@RahulGandhi) October 26, 2018 The attack by the Congress chief came even as the grand old party protested outside CBI offices across the country. The protest outside the CBI headquarters in the national capital was led by Rahul Gandhi himself. The party president and several other Congress leaders were arrested earlier on Friday. Before courting arrest, the Gandhi scion had said that the Congress would not allow chowkidar to do chori. He further alleged that every institution in India is being ruined by Prime Minister Narendra Modi. Protests were organised by the Congress party outside CBI offices across the country to question the decision to send CBI chief Alok Verma on leave. The Congress alleged that it was because Verma had begun asking questions about the Rafale deal that he was removed. Though the CBI has clarified that Verma is still the chief and only temporarily asked to go on leave pending probe into allegations of misconduct against him, the Congress remained defiant in its demand for his reinstatement. Congress workers attempted to break barricades set up outside CBI headquarters while slogans were raised against BJP and the central government. There were also slogans against Prime Minister-led Appointments Committee of the Cabinet which had issued the orders to send Alok Verma on leave. New Delhi Chief Justice of India Ranjan Gogoi said on Friday that AK Patnaik, a retired Supreme Court judge, will monitor probe against CBI Director Alok Verma and Special Director Rakesh Asthana. CJI Gogoi also said that the CVC inquiry into allegations and counter-allegations against the two officers, who have been sent on leave by the government, would be completed in two weeks. Verma's lawyer Fali Nariman had argued that the 'order passed by the CVC and the Union Government to send Verma on leave was without any authority under the law.' SC issued notices to CVC and Centre asking them for their replies in the matter. Significantly, the SC said that M Nageshwar Rao - the interim head of CBI - will not take any policy decisions and will only be responsible for routine tasks till SC hears the matter again on November 12. It also said that all decisions taken by Rao till Friday will have to be submitted to it in a sealed envelope. Meanwhile, there were protests organised by Congress outside CBI offices in several cities. Many state and national-level leaders joined party workers to protest against the order directing Verma to go on leave. The entire incident unfolded after the CBI No. 1 Verma and No. 2 Asthana levelled serious allegations of misconduct against each other. The government said that to maintain the integrity of CBI, it was necessary to send the two on leave. Lucknow: In a major breakthrough following reports of adulterated blood at medical centres, a Special Task Force (STF) of Uttar Pradesh Police apprehended five workers of a fake medical facility for supplying blood mixed with water. The STF caught five people in Lucknow who are suspected to have targeted labourers, rickshaw pullers and road-side beggers. The accused had no medical degree or qualification but still paid their targets Rs 1,000 to Rs 1,200 for their blood. They then reportedly mixed the blood with chemicals and water to increase the quantity and then sell it off to various blood banks. The STF also raided two blood banks in the city in connection with the case. Cops say one to two units of blood were sold at a time and it is when frequent reports of contaminated blood began surfacing, suspicions arose and an investigation was launched. New Delhi: Benchmark BSE Sensex slumped about 340 points Friday to settle at 33,349.31on fresh weakness in the rupee, weak opening of November derivatives amid a global sell-off. The 30-share Sensex touched a high of 33,776.80 and low of 33,291.58 intra-day. It finally settled 340.78 points, or 1.01 percent lower at 33,349.31. The gauge had lost 344 points on Thursday. Also, the broader NSE Nifty closed below the 10,100-mark by slumping 94.90 points, or 0.94 percent at 10,030.00. It shuttled between 10,128.85 and 10,004.55 during the session. Yes Bank was the worst performer in the Sensex pack falling by upto 8.97 percent after it Thursday reported a 3.8per cent decline in September quarter net at Rs 964.7 crore. Stocks of Yes Bank have lately seen a bit of volatility as its CEO Rana Kapoor's term was curtailed by over two years by RBI for unspecified reasons and a bank request for extension of his term beyond January 31, 2019 was also rejected by the regulator. Laggards included ICICI Bank, Power grid, NTPC, HUL, ITC, Infosys, ONGC, Kotak bank, TCS, Indusind bank and Axis Bank, falling by upto 4.04 percent. Bucking the trend, Tata Motors, Reliance, Bajaj Auto, Bharti Airtel, Tata Steel, HDFC and Heromoto Corp rose by upto 2.09 points. Global stocks slid lower on Friday and were set for their worst week in more than five years, a Reuters report said. The leading index of euro zone stocks fell 1.5 percent. Germany`s DAX was down 1.7 percent and France`s CAC 40 down 1.8 percent. The MSCI All-Country World Index, which tracks shares in 47 countries, was down 0.3 percent after trading began in Europe. It was set for its fifth straight week of losses, its worst losing streak since May 2013. With Agency Inputs By Vasudev The Special Task Force of Uttar Pradesh Police on Thursday night busted a gang that indulged in black marketing of blood. According to officials of the STF, they used to mix chemical and water with blood to convert one unit of to two units. As part of the racket, labourers and rickshaw drivers were made to donate blood and were paid an amount ranging from Rs 1000 to Rs 2000 for the same. The STF also conducted raids at two private blood banks BNK Blood Bank and Medicine Blood Bank. Of the five persons who were arrested, two worked at the BNK Blood Bank in Lucknow. The authorities have also taken several documents and ledger files in their possession for further scrutiny. The five arrested have been identified as Rashid Ali, Raghvendra Pratap Singh, Mohammad Naseem, Pankaj Kumar Tripathi and Honey Nigam alias Rajnish Nigam. They told the authorities during interrogation that the racket had been operational for the past six months. They allegedly sold over 1000 units of blood in the last six months. The blood was usually sold to government hospitals and some nurses were also involved in the same. The role of several hospitals is also being probed in connection with the racket. The racket was busted by a constable of the special task force who went to several hospitals and blood banks in disguise to know about the functioning. Reacting to this, Uttar Pradesh Health Minister Siddharth Nath Singh said that a thorough probe was being conducted by the STF into the racket, adding that strong action would be taken against those found involved. He further said that the government had adequate amount of blood and anyone in need could approach them for the same. Washington/Pijijiapan: US President Donald Trump's administration may send up to 1,000 active-duty troops to the U.S.-Mexico border, officials said on Thursday, as Trump hammered away at the issue of illegal immigration two weeks ahead of congressional elections. Trump's threat was sparked by the advance of a caravan of Central American migrants trekking through Mexico, headed toward the United States. "I am bringing out the military for this National Emergency. They will be stopped!" Trump wrote on Twitter. But the migrants appeared undeterred on Thursday night as several thousand of them bedded down more than 1,000 miles (1,610 km) from the US border, in the town of Pijijiapan in Mexico`s southern Chiapas state, after hiking hours from their last stop. "Whatever Trump may say, he`s not going to hold us back," said Denis Omar Contreras, a caravan organizer from Honduras, who plans to help lead the group to northern Mexico. Many said the fear of returning to a violent homeland loomed larger than the president`s threats. "We`ve come fleeing our country. If we return to Honduras, the gangs will probably kill us," he said. Trump and his fellow Republicans have sought to make the caravan and immigration into major issues before the Nov. 6 elections, in which Republicans are battling to keep control of Congress. Trump, who has maintained a hard line on immigration since taking office last year, is considering a plan to ban entry of migrants at the southern border and deny them asylum, according to media reports. The reports offered few details. A White House official said "a wide range of administrative, legal and legislative options" were being considered, but that no decisions had been made. The possibility of executive action to lock out any migrants in the caravan and the likely positioning of more soldiers at the US border with Mexico could energize Trump supporters at the ballot box. Any ban would face likely legal challenges. US Homeland Security Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen said in an interview with Fox News Channel that her department had asked the Pentagon for help to bolster its capabilities as it polices the border, including asking for "some air support ... some logistics, planning, vehicle barriers, engineering." The DHS request could require deploying between 800 and 1,000 active-duty troops, two US officials said, speaking on condition of anonymity. The US military is prohibited from carrying out civilian law enforcement on American soil unless specifically authorized by Congress. There are currently 2,100 National Guardsmen along the border, but the DHS request could lead to the first large-scale deployment of active-duty U.S. military forces to support the border protection mission under Trump. 'GO BACK TO YOUR COUNTRY' "To those in the Caravan, turnaround, we are not letting people into the United States illegally. Go back to your Country and if you want, apply for citizenship like millions of others are doing!" Trump tweeted on Thursday. "We feel like he`s not human," said Carlos Fernandez, a 39-year-old bricklayer, speaking by phone from the Guatemala-Mexico border after traveling since last Friday from the crime-wracked city of San Pedro Sula in Honduras. "If someone migrates to the United States, it's to work, and working is not a crime," he said. More than 1,000 people arrived in Guatemala on Monday, part of a second caravan, but have since divided into smaller groups to push on northward. The larger caravan is now in southern Mexico and left Honduras nearly two weeks ago. It numbered more than 5,000 when it settled in the town of Mapastepec on Wednesday night, a local official said. Many are fleeing violence, poverty and government corruption in their home countries. "I wish he could see that we are doing this from our heart, with great desire to move forward," said Jose Rodriguez, 29, referring to the US president. Trump pledged during the 2016 presidential race to build a wall along the southern U.S. border with Mexico. But the funding for his signature campaign promise has been slow to materialize. In April, frustrated by lack of progress on the wall, Trump ordered the National Guard to help secure the border. Adam Isacson, an official at the Washington Office on Latin America, a group that advocates for migrant rights, expressed misgivings about the potential deployment. "Even if it`s a short-term deployment, it's another step toward militarization of our border," Isacson said, adding that 40 percent of people being apprehended at the border were children and families. ISLAMABAD: A top Pakistan court was told on Thursday that internationally-designated terrorist Hafiz Saeed's outfits Jamaat-ud Dawa (JuD) and Falah-i-Insaniyat Foundation (FIF) are no longer on the banned outfits list, reported the country's media. Following international pressure and US act of freezing military and economic aids to Pakistan, former president Mamnoon Hussain had signed an ordinance in February 2018 amending the country's Anti-Terrorism Act to include entities banned by the UN Security Council. The UNSC sanctions list includes the names of terror organisations such as JuD, FIF, Lashkar-e-Toiba, al-Qaeda, Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan, and Lashkar-e-Jhangvi. During the hearing of a petition filed by Saeed, his counsel Raja Rizwan Abbasi and Sohail Warraich informed the Islamabad High Court (IHC) that the presidential ordinance had lapsed and it had never been extended or tabled in parliament to be converted into an act, reported Dawn News. Confirming that the ordinance has indeed lapsed, Deputy Attorney General Raja Khalid Mehmood Khan the IHC since the petitioner did not cite the interior ministry as a respondent, he could not give a statement unless the petition was amended and the interior secretary added as a party in the petition. Saeed, the co-founder of banned terrorist organisation Lashkar-e-Toiba (LeT), was put under house arrest in 2009 and 2017 but later released by a Pakistan court despite a massive global outcry. In a petition, the Mumbai attack mastermind claimed that he has cut off all ties with the LeT and that India continued to malign JuD for its past association with the banned outfit. According to a list updated on Sept 5 on the National Counter Terrorism Authoritys website, 66 organisations have been banned in the country and JuD and FIF are not among them. However, the two Hafiz Saeed-linked organisations are under watch by the ministry of interior under Section 11-D-(1), read with Schedule-II of the ATA, further reported Dawn. Open source On October 26, the Russian occupation forces performed three attacks on the positions of the Joint Forces Operatio; as a result, one Ukrainian serviceman sustained combat injuries, the press office of the Joint Forces Operation reported on Facebook. The enemy opened adjusted fire from grenade launchers of different systems, heavy machine guns and small arms near Krymske, Pavlopol, and Vodyane. Reportedly, on October 25, the militants shelled positions of the Armed Forces of Ukraine in Donbas 17 times. One of the Ukrainian servicemen sustained injuries during the hostilities. The Ministry of Defense claimed that the injured soldier is provided with a necessary medical aid at the military hospital. The enemy tried to provoke Ukrainian soldiers near Krymske On October 26, illegal armed formations of Russian mercenaries performed one attack in the Joint Forces Operation zone, as Col. Maksym Prauta, Defence Ministry Spokesperson said at the briefing. 'Today, as of 11 a.m., one attack was observed in Luhansk sector,' he said. The Defence Ministry stated that since 8:30 a.m., the enemy provoked the Ukrainian soldiers near Krymske for three hours straight, using automatic grenade launchers and small arms from the direction of the occupied settlement Sokolnyky. The Armed Forces did not open fire. On October 25, the militants opened fire 17 times in Donbas combat zone. One Ukrainian soldier got injured. The Defence Ministry reported that the soldier is receiving medical aid in a hospital. Pro-Kremlin mercenaries shelled Ukrainian army positions five times over the past 24 hours; one serviceman of the government troops was injured in combat, the HQ of the Joint Forces Operation. The most significant combat activity was observed in the area near Svitlodarsk. The enemy used mortars, IFVs and stationary grenade launchers. 82 mm mines to hit Luhanske, where the hostile troops also fired RPGs and heavy machine guns. Militants also attacked Avdiivka, Krasnohorivka and Hnutove. On October 24, the enemy landed 14 adjusted attacks on Ukrainian positions; they also fired on an inhabited locality. The Ukrainian intelligence reported that three pro-Kremlin militants were killed in action, while one Ukrainian serviceman suffered combat injuries. Ukraine's First Deputy Speaker of the Parliament commented on the recent statement of OSCE SMM's Alexander Hug who said the conflict in Donbas 'could be ended in an hour' Russia has seen sending the brand new military vehicles, weaponry, and hardware to the frontline in eastern Ukraine, which is why it takes a lot more than an hour to end the conflict in Donbas. Iryna Gerashchenko, the First Deputy Speaker of the Ukrainian Parliament said this commenting on the recent statement by Alexander Hug, OSCE SMM deputy head in Ukraine. 'One has to remind Mr. Hug that the OSCE monitoring mission, headed by Mr. Apakan and himself has been mentioning in their weekly official reports the presence of the brand new Russian radars, tanks, and other vehicles. The Russian ones, not the Soviet ones. You can't buy it at a local market or just draw a Russian flag over the Soviet star,' she said. The Ukrainian official underlined that the Ukrainian side has been paying a lot of efforts to reduce the number of Russian representatives in the OSCE SMM in Ukraine. 'Now, it is smaller than before, and the observers immediately began to 'see' the Russian military vehicles', Gerashchenko concluded. Hug is about to leave the office of OSCE SMM deputy head in Ukraine; he is supposed to step down on October 31. Open source Lifting sanctions against Russia is a non-issue currently as there is no process of implementing Minsk agreements. Foreign Minister of Austria Karin Kneissl stated that in her speech at the National Council, the lower house of the countrys parliament, Ukrinform news agency reported. 'Unfortunately, today we cant see any tangible success in Minsk agreement to enable lifting sanctions within the EU,' Kneissl said. According to Kneissl, in the frame of Austrias representative in the Council of the European Union, Austria stands for improving dialogue between the EU and Russia. However, she reminded that the EU sanctions against Russia were introduced in response to the annexation of Crimea and destabilization in Eastern Ukraine. At that, the Head of the Foreign Ministry complained about the impact of anti-Russian sanctions on the Austrian economy. She added that countrys export to Russia shrunk by one-third due to sanctions policy. Foreign Minister of Austria Karin Kneissl became famous for dancing with Russian President Vladimir Putin on her own wedding. Yet, Sebastian Kurz, the Chancellor of Austria, stated that the policy of his country concerning Russia would not change. Lukashenko noted that Belarus wants to be neither mediator nor a peacekeeper in the conflict in Donbas President of Belarus Aleksandr Lukashenko claimed that the armed conflict in Donbas must be resolved by the three Slavic nations. The Belarusian Leader made the statement at the meeting with his Ukrainian counterpart Petro Poroshenko, 112 Ukraine reports. In order to make myself absolutely clear for our brothers, the Ukrainians and those who will hear our position. I want to make a statement in front of you - we are ready to get ourselves involved in the conflict, where everything is difficult and where there is no trust, which should be there. We are ready to do this in the name of one thing peace! We, the three Slavic nations have to solve this problem. This is our disaster, out problem, - neither that of Europeans nor that of the Americans, no one else's. We have to solve this problem for it not to get frozen, Lukashenko claimed. Once I said: I would like some military in Ukraine to hear me, if we go to Ukraine from the north, we will use combine harvesters and field engines, trolleybuses and buses; we will never use tanks against you, the Leader of Belarus claimed. Also, Lukashenko added that Belarus wants to be neither mediators nor peacekeepers in the conflict in Donbas. We just care about you, the President added. It is noteworthy that Russia started its aggressive actions on the territory of Ukraine in 2014 having annexed Crimea and starting a war in Donbas. As of February 2017, 9.8 thousand Ukrainians deceased, 23 thousand were injured and almost 1.8 million people have been forcibly displaced. Thus, Russia captured 7.2 percent of the Ukrainian territory. On January 25, 2017, the Ukrainian Parliament acknowledged the Russian Federation as the aggressor country. Soon, a working group is to be created to improve the mutual trade between the two neighboring countries In the near future, Ukraine and Belarus will create a working group to improve the mutual trade between the countries. Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko claimed this during the meeting with his Belarusian colleague, reports 112 Ukraine. Poroshenko noted that Belarus is a strategic trade partner for Ukraine, namely the fifth largest trading partner in the world. We achieved the $4.5 - $4.6 billion of goods' turnover this year. But does this suit me and Aleksander Grigoryevich (Lukashenko, - 112 International)? It definitely does not. We agreed on different numbers. The only thing that we can be satisfied with is the growth rate. If the annual growth makes 23 percent, it is more or less decent, we are reaching the number that we agreed on. We hope that the growth will make $5.3 billion this year, and more than $7 billion the next year. It should be $10 billion, we have every reason for that, Poroshenko claimed. I am sure that we could have easily doubled our good turnover, and ten billion is absolutely realistic. The rebound in the export of the Ukrainian rolled metal products to the Republic of Belarus had a great impact on the growth. Also, we lifted the limits on agricultural products trade and timber trade, the leader of the Ukrainian State claimed. Also, Poroshenko added that he and the leader of Belarus agreed on the urgent creation of the working group, in order to clear all anti-dumping restrictions, to clear any obstacles that interfere with the mutual trade. This is our task. I predict that the group would be created in the near future, the Ukrainian President added. The private meeting of Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko and President of Belarus Aleksander Lukashenko took place in Gomel. Open source If the Russian Federation continues its aggressive activity in the Sea of Azov, it will suffer the influence of sanctions from the European Union. Serhii Popyk, the Adviser to the Ukrainian Prime Minister for International Affairs claimed this on the air of 112 Ukraine. I am sure that the document adopted by the European Parliament is extremely important, not only for Ukraine but also for the security situation in our region and is essential to resolve the issues we have in relations with Russia. Because a serious document was adopted at the highest European level, which clearly shows that one of the sides, in particular, Russia seriously violates everything that is possible to violate in terms of international obligations, the diplomat noted. Popyk noted that the adopted resolution is a serious political signal for the Russian side, which tells the Kremlin to stop. If the actions committed in the Sea of Azov are continued, it means the obstruction of shipping, unreasonable departures, constant provocations, deployment of military vessels in the sea bay. The next measures we take are serious economic and political sanctions that Russia will experience. This is why we need to consider this resolution as a caution made in the delicate form, the Adviser to the Ukrainian Prime Minister for International Affairs added. It should be noted that the Russian activity in the Sea of Azov increased over the last three months. Russians do not allow the trade vessels heading to and emerging from the Ukrainian ports to freely pass through the Kerch Strait. Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko commissioned the Minister of Defense, the Chief of the General Staff and the HQ of the Naval Forces of the Armed Forces of Ukraine to take measures to stop the Russian provocations in relation to blocking the entry of vessels into Ukrainian ports in the Sea of Azov. The Ministry of Infrastructure of Ukraine developed a set of measures in response to Russia's actionsm which includes the limit of passenger traffic with Russia. The Ukrainian MFA recalls that it is the blatant violation of obligations under the international humanitarian law Open source Ukraine demands that Russia withdraw the pracitce of military conscription in the temporarily occupied Crimea. The relevant protest note was sent on October 25, reports the press office of the Foreign Ministry of Ukraine. The Ukrainian MFA requires that the Russian Federation cancel the conscription on the occupied part of the sovereign territory of Ukraine the Autonomous Republic of Crimea and Sevastopol city, end the persecution of Ukrainian citizens for the unwillingness to serve in the occupant army, and ensure a strict compliance with its international obligations as an occupying state, reads the message. The Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Ukraine expresses a protest in connection with the conscription, stressing that such actions are the blatant violation of obligations under the international humanitarian law, which prohibits Russia, as an occupant state to force people to serve in its armed forces. It also prohibits exerting pressure and conducting propaganda in favor of voluntary entry into the army. The MFA recalled the numerous facts of Russia's persecution of residents of the Crimea for their reluctance to serve in the Russian army, which is recorded in the thematic report of the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights. Reportedly, almost 18 thousand people will be sent to do military service within the conscription campaign in October-December 2018. The U.S. President Donald Trump invited his Russian colleague Vladimir Putin to visit Washington next year, as John Bolton, the U.S. National Security Adviser stated, The Guardian reports. 'We have invited President Putin to Washington,' Bolton said during his visit to Tbilisi, Georgia. It remains unknown whether Putin accepted the invitation. 'The meeting would be a highly anticipated sequel to the pairs controversial summit in Helsinki in July, igniting a firestorm of criticism against Trump, who has ignored the Republican hawks to seek a close personal relationship with Putin,' the news agency reads. Besides, the leaders are to meet briefly in Paris next month, attending the centennial memorial service for the Armistice Day, which marked the end of the First World War on November 11, 1918. 'A Washington visit would be far more controversial, with relations between Russia and the west at their worst since the cold war. The US is to impose new sanctions on Russia next month over the use of Novichok nerve agent in the attempted murder of the former spy Sergei Skripal in Salisbury, England,' the message says. The first flight is scheduled for October 28 Wizz Air company opened the direct flight from Kyiv to Vienna. The press office of Kyiv Airport reported this on Facebook on Friday. 'The first flight from Kyiv airport is to take place this Sunday, October 28 at 9 a.m. The return flight from Vienna will land in Kyiv Airport at 1.35 p.m.', the message says. The airport's press office added that the flight will be serviced on the daily basis; Airbus A320 aircraft will be used to serve it. Wizz Air has been conducting passenger flights to and from Kyiv's International Airport named after Ihor Sikorsky since 2008. Previously, the airport's administration announced flights to Bremen (Germany), Riga (Latvia) and Billund (Denmark) in March 2019. Besides, the company is to open the new destinations from Lviv airport to Copenhagen and Frankfurt. WizzAir Hungary Ltd is a Hungarian low-cost airline established in 2003 and headquartered in Budapest. As of 2018, the airline operates a fleet of 100 aircraft, connecting 139 destinations throughout the globe. OSCE SMM deputy head reported that the mission observers saw people with the insignia of the Russian Army on the uniform but it 'can be bought anywhere' U.S. magazine Foreign Policy has deleted the statement by Alexander Hug, the OSCE SMM deputy head in Ukraine about the absence of the direct evidence of Russias interference in Donbas from the recent interview. The magazine itself reported it on Friday. 'The specification dated October 25, 2018. In the earlier version of the interview Hug claimed that the OSCE did not spot the direct evidence of the interference of Russia in the events in eastern Ukraine. We excluded this comment as it did not provide his supposed point of view. Then he provides the fact and observations spotted by the observers,' the magazine noted. In the initial version, when Hug answered the question about OSCE position toward Russias interference in the event in eastern Ukraine, he claimed: 'Talking about the things we saw there, we did not see the direct evidence (of the Russian interference)', he said. At the same time, according to Hug, the mission spotted the convoys entering in Ukraine and leaving it on unpaved roads at night in the areas with no official checkpoints. Also, Hug claimed that the observers saw 'the particular parts of the weapons', including the military-grade electronic weapons. Moreover, the mission communicated with the prisoners detained by the Ukrainian soldiers who stated that they are the soldiers of the Russian Armed Forces and participated in the Donbas Conflict during rotation. OSCE Deputy Head also claimed that the members of the mission saw the men with the marking of Russias Army at the uniform but it can be bought anywhere. And noted that OSCE observers saw the marking of Germany, Spain and other countries including Russia. Earlier Iryna Gerashchenko, the First Deputy Speaker of the Ukrainian Parliament said that Russia has seen sending the brand new military vehicles, weaponry and hardware to the frontline in eastern Ukraine, which is why it takes a lot more than an hour to end the conflict in Donbas. Related video: He cast the picture of the corridors and rooms of the college at the background of the videogame screenshot Vladyslav Roslyakov who committed a massacre at Kerch College on October 17 that led to the death of 21 people (including the shooter) might have contacted the Ukrainian neo-Nazis and modeled an attack based on the interface of the popular videogame Doom. Kommersant reported this citing the sources among the investigators. 'During the investigation, it turned out that before the attack, a teenager made a peculiar electronic photocollage at home. Doom and GTA were his favorite PC games and he casted the picture of the corridors and rooms of the college at the background of Doom screenshot,' the news agency said. It is noted that the proper scheme of the future massacre was saved to the USB device found at Roslyakov's bag. Now the experts check whether the mass murder was committed according to this scheme. At the same time, the investigation does not rule out that Roslyakov wanted to burn the building of the college after the shooting, as Molotov cocktail was also found at his bag. 'Besides, according to the investigation, Roslyakov could be connected to the 'extremists' in Ukraine with whom he played Doom via LAN; as he spoke with them, he said he was interested in creating bombs,' the Russian news agency noted. During the search of the internet-contact of the 'Kerch shooter' it was found out that he visited the websites and forums where the admirers of serial murder and the neo-Nazis gathered. As the photo at Telegram he used the photo of maniac Anatoly Onoprienko who killed 52 people in seven years. He called his Twitter account 'Want to die'. Also, it was established that most often, he googled such things as 'shotgun', 'terror', 'terrorist', 'Saiga', 'sterile, re-equipment', 'ISIS execution'. Moreover, he actively searched and watched the videos on the internet with different kinds of massacres such as human dismemberment. Preliminary, Roslyakov considered himself an anarchist and admirer of punk rock music. Ihor Parasych, the father of one of the classmates of the shooter, said that Roslyakov was interested in the Estonian movie 'The Class' that told about violence at school. He also reminded that in 2017, the shooter dispersed the pepper spray at the college and subverted the education process. He was almost expelled. As we reported, an explosion thundered at a college in Kerch, the town in Russian-occupied Crimea. The number of the victims increased up to 21. Russia's Investigative Committee opened a criminal proceeding due to Crimean blast upon the article on the terrorist action; however, later it was reclassified it to the mass murder. A crime was committed by an 18-year-old student of the college, later he shot himself. The so-called Head of Crimea Sergei Aksyonov stated that the Kerch shooter had support in preparing the terrorist attack in the college on October 17. Related video: According to the Russian side, the convoy delivered over 700 tons of aid Russia has sent so-called the 82nd 'humanitarian convoy' to Donbas, the press office of tRussia's Emergencies Ministry reported. The 82nd humanitarian convoy of the Ministry of Emergency Situations of Russia has completed its mission. The humanitarian aid was delivered to the residents of Donetsk and Luhansk regions, reads the message. Related: One attack performed in Donbas combat zone The Russian Ministry claims that vehicles delivered more than 700 tons of the 'humanitarian aid' to the residents of Donbas, and the convoy seemed to have successfully passed the necessary 'customs procedures' on the Russian-Ukrainian border. For its part, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Ukraine has sent to the Russian MFA a note of protest demanding that Russia put an end to the commitment of illegal actions against the sovereignty of Ukraine and abide the international law, the Ukrainian legislation and its international obligations. Related: Foreign Policy deletes Hugs words on Russias presence in Donbas On October 25, 2018, the Russian side carried out the illegal transfer of two convoys of so-called 'humanitarian aid' for the residents of the temporarily occupied Ukrainian territory of Donetsk and Luhansk regions through the border checkpoints Izvaryne and Uspenka, reads the message. It is reported that the 'humanitarian convoy' was transferred with the violations of the norms and the principles of the international law, the existing bilateral agreements, the Ukrainian legislation, and the previously agreed modalities for the delivery of humanitarian goods, including the need for them to be accompanied by representatives of the International Committee of the Red Cross and mandatory registration by representatives of border and customs authorities of Ukraine. Related: UN delivers 100 tons of humanitarian aid to occupied territories of Donbas Earlier the convoys of trucks entering and leaving Ukraine were spotted in the same area. On October 12, the OSCE SMM recorded a convoy of trucks that drove along the road in an uncontrolled area of Donetsk region; there were no border checkpoints there. Related: Ukraine checks information on Russian exports of coal from occupied Donbas to Turkey As we also reported, Russia deployed S-400 air defense systems in the occupied Crimea on the territory of Yevpatoria, designed for the elimination of the aircraft of strategic aviation. According to the Ministry of Defence of the Russian Federation claimed that S-400 'Triumph' is designed for elimination of strategic bombers, ballistic and cruise missiles, and can be used against ground objects as well. It is supposed that the official ceremony is to be held in Strasburg on December 12 Open source Ukrainian political prisoner Oleg Sentsov was awarded Sakharov Prize for Freedom of Thought, as Rikard Jozwiak, Radio Liberty correspondent, wrote on Twitter. The decision was announced in the European Parliament on October 25. It is supposed that the official ceremony is to be held in Strasbourg on December 12. Jozwiak has also noted that it remains under question whether Sentsov could be present at the ceremony personally on December 12. Whether his relative will receive the award or there will be an empty chair. Reportedly, Sentsov became a finalist of Sakharov Prize for Freedom of Thought. Earlier, the Verkhovna Rada is to consider a draft regulation, which proposes to nominate Oleg Sentsov for Nobel Prize. Lech Waesa, the President of Poland in 1990-1995, who won a Nobel Prize, offered to nominate Oleg Sentsov for Nobel Peace Prize. As we reported earlier, Oleg Sentsov, Ukrainian political prisoner announced a hunger strike in May 2014, demanding to release him and the rest of Ukrainian political prisoners illegally kept by the Kremlin. Sentsov already survived three health crisis; the medics warn that the fourth one, which might involve the breakdown of the body's internal organs, could begin anytime. The native of Crimea, film director, and political activist, Sentsov was illegally detained in Crimea in 2014, then taken to Russia. They judged him and sentenced him to 20 years of imprisonment at a high-security penal colony. The prosecutors charged Sentsov with preparing terrorist acts in the occupied Crimea. Sentsov denies his guilt. Ukraine's government, common citizens and the international society - politicians, artists, public figures - urge the Kremlin to release him. Solomiansky Court of Kyiv arrested Maksym Berezkin, the son of MP of the Verkhovna Rada of Ukraine Stanyslav Berezkin. He is suspected in the embezzlement of $20 million of Ukraine's state-run Oschadbank funds and set the bail in the sum of $175,995. Ukrainian News reported that citing the source in the Specialized Anti-Corruption Bureau (SAP). 'The arrest and bail in the sum of $175,995 were announced', the message said. It is noted that the court made such decision on October 25. The SAP considers the issue of the appeal against it as the office insisted on the bail in the sum of $5.2 million. In his turn, Stanyslav Berezkin told 112 Ukraine that neither he nor members of his family violated the law or committed the crimes so they are ready to defend their position in the courts and the Ukrainian Parliament - if the Prosecutor General files a petition on the lifting of the immunity from him. On October 25, Solomiansky district court of Kyiv has arrested Iryna Zemtsova, the Deputy Chairman of the Executive Board of 'Oschadbank' in the case of the embezzlement of the state funds of the bank. On October 23, under the procedural control of SAP prosecutors, National Anti-Corruption Bureau (NABU) detectives detained ten people who were served with charge papers concerning embezzling $20 million of Oshchadbank. Earlier, it was reported that NABU and SAP were preparing a petition on lifting the immunity of the peoples deputy who illegally embezzled $20 million. According to Ukrainian News agency, it was about Stanislav Berezkin from 'Will of the Nation' group. Eric Williams Photography State cannabis-related business laws aren't as simple as you might have thought. Carlos N. Martinez, Esq. of Legal Solutions of New Mexico, LLC, discusses how cannabis laws affect family and business law litigation. Weekly Alibi: Your firm places an emphasis on cannabis law. Why the interest? Martinez: Throughout our firms history, cannabis law has made multiple appearances in the areas that we practice in. The topic comes up a lot with child custody situations in multiple jurisdictions throughout the state as well as employment law issues. Specifically, issues regarding the workplacewhether it be within dispensaries, the grow houses, manufacturing warehouses, testing labs or wherever they're conducting operations. Cannabis law issues almost always go hand-in-hand with businesses. For example: dealing with local ordinances, state laws, federal laws, zoning, taxesit touches a lot of different areas of the law that most people may or may not even realize exist. So weve tried to brand ourselves as a law firm that recognizes the need for attorneys who understand the ever-evolving cannabis industry and are open and accepting of clients in that industry. We help them out in regards to what they can and cannot do here in the state of New Mexicohow we can support them and help them stay legal, help them maintain their licenses and grow their businesses. Unfortunately we all saw a producer lose their license recently, and we would like to help prevent that for our clients. The state's demand is already very high and growing, and the supply has, to this point, not been able to keep up with demand. We work with clients that are already in the industry, or clients who are looking to get into the industry, clients who are trying to merge with other businesses or companies looking to navigate the state's rules and regulations. The CBD laws are so squirrelly right nowhow do you untangle something like that? Well to be honest, its hard to untangle it. Businesses have to operate within whatever's out there. And it's not necessarily just the laws and regulations businesses have to worry about. They have to also be wary of directives coming from the statememos from federal agents and so on. So I don't really have a good answer for you. Navigate is what we're trying to do in that tangled mess of laws, and to keep our clients out of trouble. Our firm is not necessarily an expert on CBD as much as we are on cannabis rules. However, we know other attorneys that are experts on CBD, both locally and nationally; namely Patricia Monaghan. Does that only apply to dispensaries? To our knowledge, CBD products cannot be carried or sold by licensed producers and dispensaries at this time. Luckily, our firm has been able to create New Mexicos first Cannabis Law Section though the state bar of New Mexico, and team up with a group of attorneys who have much more CBD and hemp expertise. The Cannabis Law Section is a group of at least 51 attorneys licensed here in the state of New Mexico that recognize that cannabis law is an emerging legal field, and we need to have someone to represent that particular industry. It's a collective of legal minds dealing with cannabis law issues. Do you come across many personal problems with cannabis laws in your practice? We do a lot of work with domestic violence and child custody cases. And it's unique in the fact thatI don't know if it's unique or unfortunate or bothbut you will generally get different responses on cases from different jurisdictions as to whether or not it's okay to be a licensed cannabis user and still maintain child custody. Some courts are wholly against it, while others don't have a problem as long as you have a license and are following the laws and regulations and aren't being a danger to your kids. So if you have a medical card, it could come up in a custody hearing? Oh it will definitely come out. Now how it gets dealt with by the courts unfortunately varies from jurisdiction to jurisdiction from our experience. We practice throughout the state so we get a good look at courts in different jurisdictions. In contested custody situations, theres always an argument about whether or not this person uses cannabis or this person grows their own cannabis, when in all reality, this personthis parenthas a valid license, has a personal production license and is well within their state laws and regulations. Courts in some jurisdictions may say Theyre within the law and that won't come into play. Or a court could say, This is a huge issue we're going to have to look at closely. And these are all state courts? District courts. And it's not just judges. There's also hearing officers and domestic violence commissioners and family law hearing officers. It was one of the issues that my partner and I recognized as a problem. What's something that could fix that? I honestly think it's just education at this point. Get everybody educated on the topic of the state's cannabis program. I don't know if it's going to be going through changes here in the next election or notI'm assuming it willbut whatever it ends up being, the courts need to be educated about it, as well as their staff, hearing officers and domestic violence commissioners. We weren't necessarily dedicated to cannabis clients and cannabis industry in the beginning, but we started seeing it going to court and dealing with clients, so we decided to go ahead and enter this market and see if we can help out more than harm the system. It's been over a year since growing hemp for research was legalized in New Mexico, and the Department of Agriculture seems to finally be starting the process of introducing hemp production. It's still up in the air how the law will be enacted and what regulations will be in place. Michael Chappelear, the spokesperson for the New Mexico Hemp Association, spoke with us about the subject. Weekly Alibi: Why did you start the New Mexico Hemp Association? Chappelear: It was looking like hemp was in the spotlight and people were realizing that Americans are the largest consumers of hemp-based products in the world, yet we weren't growing it. All the products were being imported from China, Canada, Australia New Mexico, being predominantly an ag state in a lot of ways, seemed ripe for the whole industry. What do you think about hemp's current status here in the state? Our primary concern is that regardless of what the federal government does, it doesn't appear as though the state government is bending over backwards to open up the doors on this thing for the farmers of New Mexico. By setting up a procedure in which you're getting your licensure from the Department of Agriculture, but it's being done through the University of New Mexico, we think they can hold back the reins on this thing if they want and say, Well, we're not really sure about this hemp stuff yet, so if you want to grow some under the auspices of a 'research plot' through the University of New Mexico, well then maybe. Nobody knows for sure. The last updated thing I saw from the Department of Agriculture was discussion points back at the end of August. This is not set in stone. They're still feeling their way through this. Recently they held a series of meetings where they reached out to the community and said, What do you think? It'll be interesting to see what comes from that. Plenty of other states are starting hemp programs. Why haven't we? You can go back five years, to when we first started New Mexico Hemp Association and Kentucky, Coloradoseveral other statesare already on it. They're growing it. They're harvesting it. They have crops for manufacturers to make use of. Is New Mexico going to jump on the bandwagon? I don't know. I had high hopes at one point, but having been familiar with New Mexico politics for more than a decade, I've seen time and again where they drag their feet or even shoot themselves in the foot sometimes. Were here for the farmers, not those who hope to get rich off the taxes. Every individual who wants to see industrial hemp in New Mexico needs to get out and cast their vote. Does opening the door to research give you any hope at all? I mean, sure, any movement in the forward direction is a plus. But I've got people e-mailing me daily asking, Where can I get seed? When can I plant? And we haven't even answered the question of what is going to be considered acceptable certified seed in New Mexicowhich is also something the university will probably determine. I think Kentucky was in a unique situation because they had heirloom hemp seeds in-statestuff that they used back when they had a prosperous hemp industry. So it was fairly easy for them to say, This is the seed we used back then. I'm sure it would be fine now. Let's use this. But that was a unique scenario. So New Mexico isn't sitting on seeds we can just start using? Not to the best of my knowledge. And if they want to breed it, the standard that they have to hit is this 0.3 percent THCwhich I'll go on record with this one: That is about the dumbest thing anybody ever came up with, because they're not focusing on end use. If I'm growing a hemp crop, and I've got a manufacturer saying, As soon as your crop's harvested, I'm ready to make clothing out of this, or make rope or whatever they want to doeven if we loosened it up a little bit and said one percent THCnobody's going to be smoking the shirts that are being manufactured to get high. Especially when you have a medical and recreational industry established throughout the country that's hitting between 20 and 30 percent THC. Why would anybody bother? How did they arrive at that number? It was arbitrary. I believe Canada was using it and they said, Oh well that's a good bench mark. Let's use that. It's just trace amounts, but if you come in at 0.4 percent, like a guy in Colorado did, you have to destroy your crop. You sound a little disenchanted, maybe. I'm cautiously optimistic. There's a lot of people pushing really hard for an industrial hemp industry in New Mexico. And they have been for a long time. What makes hemp an attractive crop to grow here? Hemp is a great rotation crop, especially in those fields where they grow alfalfa, which is big in New Mexico. They could easily incorporate this into the mix. And there's something like 25,000 different products that can be made with hemp. That's a lot. A point that drives me is that if it's not organic, I can only hope that the market won't support it. Because there's no need to use a bunch of pesticides and chemicals on this plant. It does fine with a little bit of tendinggetting out in the field and dealing with whatever bug issues by hand. Because it grows faster than almost anything else. And it's also very hearty. People don't need to go spraying any pesticides or anything else on it. I just hope that the consumers will drive that end of it, and say, If it's not certified organic, then I don't want it. But another part of that isif we're really going to have an industry that is potentially going to change the nature of farming in this country, which it couldyou've got to let the farmers set the guidelines and the price. So what can someone reading this do? Vote. Tell your friends to vote. Grab your grandmother. Take everybody to the polls and turn these administrations around. This next election is going to get really ugly. It kind of scares me a little bit as to what direction it could go. Every individual who wants to see industrial hemp in New Mexico needs to get out and cast their vote. I'm not going to tell anyone who to vote for, but I'd say try and make sure they're sympathetic to this and that they're going to take strides to help support it. Sky Supply When Canada formally legalized marijuana on Oct. 17, officials foresaw a wave of international travelers without a safe place to dispose of the remains of their stash. Forward-thinking staff at Torontos Pearson Airport offered international travelers a lined trash can within which to abandon excess cannabis flower and edibles en route to almost anywhere, aka areas that have yet to legalize adult cannabis use and possession. Naturally the temporal absurdity of the provided solution captured the digital zeitgeist via a Reddit post titled Pearson International installed a free weed bin. As Gizmodo reports, Robin Smith, a spokesperson for the Greater Toronto Airport Authority, clarified the bins purpose. Free weed is resoundingly incorrect, and I think thats putting it mildly, Smith wrote via email. Once something goes into the container, it doesnt come out. Smith further noted that the permanent bins will allow for safe disposal of cannabis but will not facilitate any attempts at retrieval. Dream of Wire In the brand-new Poynter article In marijuana journalism boom, Cannabis Wire keeps its public health mission, David Beard examines the expanded coverage model of cannabis journalism website Cannabis Wire. Rather than capitalizing on the cannabis investment boom by pivoting away from health reporting toward advertorial, the site has expanded smartly with a grant from Civil, by hiring a new editor and three new reporters while striving to maintain their focus on reporting for the good of public health before consideration of profit. As Beard notes, [Cannabis Wire] writes accountability stories for a $6 billion industry that sees its sector swelling to $50 billion. The site doesnt shift its gaze from uncomfortable issues such as racial disparities in marijuana profits and punishment. Poynters reportage goes on to quote Cannabis Wire cofounder Nushin Rashidian, Theres a lot of cannabis journalism happening. I feel like there is something to be said for trying really hard to document a really significant moment. MONTREAL, Oct. 26, 2018 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Auxico Resources Canada Inc. (CSE:AUAG) is pleased to announce that its common shares began trading today on the NEX Exchange Growth Market (NEX Exchange) in London, UK. The NEX Exchange, which is operated by the NEX Group, is a regulated UK stock exchange for small and medium companies. The NEX Exchange provides access to capital and liquidity, and the Growth Market is the market for early stage, entrepreneurial companies seeking access to growth capital. Auxicos primary listing remains the Canadian Securities Exchange (CSE). Auxico is the first Canadian company to become dual-listed on the NEX Exchange using the fast-track procedure that the NEX Exchange has established across various stock exchanges around the world. The Companys ticker on the NEX Exchange will be AUAG, which is the same as that on the CSE; Auxicos ISIN number is CA05334L1094. Auxicos engaged Peterhouse Capital as its corporate advisor in connection with this NEX Exchange listing. Guy Miller of Peterhouse Capital stated, This is an exciting time for NEX and for us as a corporate adviser and believe that Auxicos quote will open opportunities for UK-based investors to be able to invest seamlessly into this Canadian-listed company, and set a precedent for further Canadian companies to follow. Patrick Birley, Chief Executive of the NEX Exchange, added, We are delighted to welcome Auxico Resources as our first dual quoted stock with the Canadian Securities Exchange. We have long admired the approach of the CSE and hope that by working together, we can offer dual quoted companies greater access to a wide range of investors. Pierre Gauthier, Chairman & CEO of Auxico, commented, The dual listing of Auxicos common shares on the NEX Exchange will provide our Company with access to the capital markets of London, one of the largest financial markets in the world. Access to growth capital from London, through the NEX Exchange, will help Auxico to advance its business plans in Colombia and Mexico, where we have access to significant opportunities in the mining sector. In addition, a NEX listing makes sense for our Company as a significant portion of our common shares are already held by residents of the UK. ON BEHALF OF THE BOARD OF DIRECTORS signed Mark Billings President, Auxico Resources Canada Inc. mb@auxicoresources.com Cell: +1 514 296 1641 About Auxico Resources Canada Inc. Auxico Resources Canada Inc. (Auxico) is a Canadian company that was founded in 2014 and based in Montreal. Auxico is engaged in the acquisition, exploration and development of mineral properties in Colombia and Mexico. The Canadian Securities Exchange (CSE) has not reviewed and does not accept responsibility for the adequacy or the accuracy of the contents of this release. ABMs Aviation team wins contract with JetBlue to provide catering logistic services NEW YORK, Oct. 26, 2018 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- ABM (NYSE: ABM), a leading provider of facility solutions, began offering catering logistic services earlier this year and has launched a multi-year contract with JetBlue to deliver on-time, in-flight food, beverages and related supplies for their flights out of four East Coast airports. JetBlues catering requirements have changed significantly over the last two years due to our expanding breadth of product, as well as the introduction of cart services for the core cabin, said Morten Buch, Catering General Manager, JetBlue. We were looking for an industry unique partnership, including full transparency, innovation, flexibility and collaborative exploration, which we found with ABM. Corporate culture and the commitment to make a difference and be of service made ABM our partner of choice. During the busy summer months, ABM in partnership with JetBlue and their chosen catering vendors, stood up catering logistics for JetBlues flights at Boston Logan International, Orlando International, New Yorks John F. Kennedy International and Newark Liberty International airports. Delivering quickly on these four catering logistic startups underlines the hard work of the ABM team and is a demonstration of our competitive advantage based on listening to our customers to drive efficiency and innovation, says Alex Marren, SVP and President, ABM Aviation. We are excited to offer this service to JetBlue and other airlines and look forward to continuing to expand our catering logistic services around the globe. ABMs Aviation team provides end-to-end services and solutions to airports and airlines globally, including aircraft and airport cleaning, wheelchair services, catering logistics, parking and transportation. For more information, visit www.abm.com/aviation/ . CONNECT WITH ABM ABOUT ABM ABM (NYSE: ABM) is a leading provider of facility solutions with revenues of approximately $5.5 billion and more than 130,000 employees in 350+ offices throughout the United States and various international locations. ABM's comprehensive capabilities include janitorial, electrical & lighting, energy solutions, facilities engineering, HVAC & mechanical, landscape & turf, mission critical solutions and parking, provided through stand-alone or integrated solutions. ABM provides custom facility solutions in urban, suburban and rural areas to properties of all sizes - from schools and commercial buildings to hospitals, data centers, manufacturing plants and airports. ABM Industries Incorporated, which operates through its subsidiaries, was founded in 1909. For more information, visit www.abm.com . CONTACT Media: Jennifer Miller (404) 926-4212 jennifer.miller@abm.com SOUTHFIELD, Mich., Oct. 26, 2018 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Premium lubricant manufacturer Idemitsu Lubricants America is proud to introduce three new products at the 2018 AAPEX Show at the Sands Convention Center in Las Vegas, Nevada on Oct. 31 Nov.1, Booth #6440. These new innovative OEM formulated Automatic Transmission Fluid (ATF) and Continuous Variable Transmission Fluids (CVTF) will bring the number of Idemitsus full line of vehicle specific ATF and CVTF products to 12, covering virtually every Asian transmission available in the American market. Strength in Single Formulation Multi-vehicle ATFs were introduced so quick-lubes and shops wouldnt have to carry multiple lines of transmission fluids. However, a blanket solution like a multi-vehicle ATF is no longer a satisfactory solution due to the differentiation in OEM transmission fluid specifications. Often times, performance and longevity is compromised by manufacturers in order to be able to claim it is a multi-vehicle product. Idemitsu ATF and CVTF products are exclusively designed to meet the unique needs of specific vehicle transmission applications. They are precisely engineered to match OEM friction materials and exact viscosity requirements for dialed-in performance, smoother shifting, anti-shudder durability, oxidation durability and deposit control. OEM Specific Formulas ATF Type HK4 For Hyundai, Kia and Mitsubishi vehicles with automatic (non-CVT) transmissions that require the use of ATF SP-IV . For Hyundai, Kia and Mitsubishi vehicles with automatic (non-CVT) transmissions that require the use of ATF . CVTF Type TLS-FE For Toyota, Lexus and Scion vehicles equipped with continuously variable transmissions requiring the use of CVTF FE . For Toyota, Lexus and Scion vehicles equipped with continuously variable transmissions requiring the use of CVTF . CVTF Type N3 For Nissan and Infinity vehicles equipped with XTRONIC continuously variable transmissions requiring the use of CVTF NS-3. New Convenient 5-quart Bottles In addition to the new products, Idemitsu Lubricants America is pleased to announce that four of the most popular Idemitsu transmission products are now available in convenient 5-quart bottles. These include the following products: ATF Type H Plus For Honda vehicles equipped with automatic (non-CVT) transmissions requiring the use of ATF Z1 or DW -1 . For Honda vehicles equipped with automatic (non-CVT) transmissions requiring the use of ATF or . ATF Type TLS For Toyota, Lexus and Scion vehicles equipped with automatic (non-CVT) transmissions requiring the use of ATF T-IV . For Toyota, Lexus and Scion vehicles equipped with automatic (non-CVT) transmissions requiring the use of ATF . ATF Type TLS-LV For Toyota, Lexus and Scion vehicles equipped with automatics (non-CVT) transmissions requiring the use of ATF WS. For Toyota, Lexus and Scion vehicles equipped with automatics (non-CVT) transmissions requiring the use of ATF CVTF Type N For Nissan and Infinities equipped with JATCO continuously variable transmissions requiring the use of CVTF NS-2. About Idemitsu Lubricants America Idemitsu began supplying lubricants in the United States in the late 1970s and built the state-of-the-art blending facility in Jeffersonville, IN in 1992 to meet increased production demands. Idemitsu Lubricants America (ILA) has sales offices in Detroit and Los Angeles, and has continued to expand its business in the United States and worldwide. It is the eighth largest lubricant manufacturer globally with over a century of unsurpassed quality, innovation and superior product development. Photos accompanying this announcement are available at http://www.globenewswire.com/NewsRoom/AttachmentNg/892a0630-2887-411c-8da0-98d1a77d2c82 http://www.globenewswire.com/NewsRoom/AttachmentNg/f627b399-0d62-44d6-b802-83fc0a98d0fb http://www.globenewswire.com/NewsRoom/AttachmentNg/91f1c28e-8a23-4fa8-9263-598d8596656a Contact Information: Marlena Solomon Digital Marketing Specialist msolomon@ilacorp.com 832-745-2403 LIVERPOOL, United Kingdom, Oct. 26, 2018 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- SPG Law has today announced that it will be launching a Group Action against Cathay Pacific following the airlines announcement on Wednesday October 24th that 9.4 million customers personal data was compromised in one of the global travel industrys most serious data breaches ever. SPG Law will launch the Group Action following Cathay Pacifics failure to offer financial compensation to individuals affected by the data breach for the inconvenience, distress and misuse of their personal information. Consumers around the world will be able to sign up to this claim, which will be brought in the High Court in London. Cathay Pacific has admitted that it discovered suspicious activity on its network in March 2018 and, by early May 2018, the airline knew that unauthorised access to the personal data of millions of its customers had taken place. To-date, Cathay Pacific has not offered to compensate individuals for direct financial losses or agreed to pay compensation for non-material damage despite being liable to do so for European customers under the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) that came into force in May 2018. SPG Law Partner Tom Goodhead commented that: It is shocking that it took Cathay Pacific nearly 6 months to admit this catastrophic data breach. The fact that passport numbers, historical travel information and other sensitive personal data was compromised has caused serious inconvenience and distress to millions of people around the world. Cathay Pacific is liable to compensate European claimants for non-material damage under the GDPR. SPG Law will hold them to account. SPG Law estimates that each affected person may be able to claim up to GBP 1,800/USD $2,300 in compensation against Cathay Pacific and in some instances even more depending on the individual circumstances. SPG Law believes that a significant aggravating factor in this case will be the sensitive nature and extent of the personal data that was compromised. Notes to editors: Expands geographic presence and enhances service offering SANTA ANA, Calif., Oct. 26, 2018 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Allied Universal, a leading security and facility services company, today finalized its acquisition of U.S. Security Associates (USSA), further building on its position as a leading player in the security services industry. This acquisition includes Andrews International (including its Government Services Division and Consulting and Investigations and International Division) and Staff Pro. As a result of the acquisition, Allied Universal is now an organization with approximate annual revenues of $7 billion and over 200,000 security professionals. The acquisition also increases Allied Universals national presence and customer service capabilities and enhances Allied Universals presence in Canada. It also expands its footprint to Central and Latin America and the United Kingdom. With this acquisition, Allied Universal enters the consulting and investigations business as well as event staffing, enhancing its unparalleled and comprehensive security offerings to its customer base throughout its service areas. I look forward to working with the USSA team, which has evolved over the years as a leader in security. Together we will bring unprecedented value to all of our customers with an array of combined offerings and concepts, said Steve Jones, Chief Executive Officer of Allied Universal. Richard Wyckoff, who previously served as President and Chief Executive Officer of USSA, will act as a consultant during the integration process. Transition of U.S. Security Associates domestic operations is expected to be completed by the second quarter of 2019. About Allied Universal Allied Universal, a leading security and facility services company with over 200,000 employees, provides unparalleled security services and solutions. The enterprise combines people and technology to deliver evolving, tailored solutions that allow our clients to focus on their core business. An unrelenting focus on clients success creates partnerships rooted in quality and value, and is supported by experience gained from being in business for over 60 years. Through our people and leading services, systems and solutionsAllied Universal is there for you. For more information, please visit www.aus.com. Media Relations Contact Allied Universal Nancy Thompson, Vorticom Public Relations 212-532-2208 nancyt@vorticom.com HOUSTON, Oct. 26, 2018 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Turner Valley Oil and Gas, Inc. (the Company TVOG) (OTC: TVOG), a technology-forward infrastructure holding company, today announced that Robert O. Paiva was appointed to the role of Chief Operating Officer to finalize integration for the companys pending infrastructure acquisition closings and to help launch an aggressive growth plan. Mr. Paiva is a highly versatile and hands-on executive leader, team builder and business strategist with a deep passion for capital markets and the energy sector. He has a broad operational background, with extensive experience in multiple industries. Mr. Paiva, new COO, commented, "I am excited to join the Turner team and work with the Company in a way that is beneficial to our shareholders while establishing a strong platform to build from. We are focused on integrating services, supply chain, and technology together so that Turner can become a leading infrastructure holding company during the early stages of the USA infrastructure boom. Turners Interim CEO Steve Helm commented, "We are very excited to welcome Robert to the team and are confident that his energy and passion for technology disruption will bring about meaningful, positive change for Turner as it expands its portfolio. His background in corporate development, capital markets, and the energy sector will help us execute our plans effectively. About Robert O. Paiva Robert O. Paiva has over 25 years of experience as a business executive, director and founder. Starting his career by enlisting in the US Navy, Mr. Paiva has held multiple positions, from Director and VP of Operations within operating businesses in Technology/IT, telecommunication, consulting, energy, and waste solutions as well as Chief Executive Officer, President and/or Founder within the professional services, clean energy and oil & gas sectors. He has advised, guided and directed hundreds of businesses, large and small, through numerous engagements as Managing Director at the Consultancy Norhill Gardner from 2011 to 2017. Mr. Paiva is a Committeeman for the Houston Livestock Show and Rodeo, a Director of the Veteran non-profit Impact a Hero, and Co-Host of Veterans Operations Command VOC Radio with Rob & Doc, a radio talk show and podcast focused on the Military and Veteran communities. Robert is a proud Veteran of the United States Navy and has a B.B.A. in Management/Marketing at the University of Texas at San Antonio. About Turner Valley Oil and Gas, Inc. Turner Valley Oil and Gas, Inc. (OTC:TVOG) is a technology-forward infrastructure holding company, built on three segments of services, supply chain and technology with a focus on the real assets, energy, infrastructure, concrete, bitumen, and asphalt segments. Certain statements in this press release are forward-looking and involve a number of risks and uncertainties. Such forward-looking statements are within the meaning of that term in Section 27A of the Securities Act of 1933, as amended and Section 21E of the Securities Exchange Act of 1934, as amended. Website: http://PrimeStarBitumen.com OTC Markets Profile: http://www.otcmarkets.com/stock/TVOG/profile Disclaimer: https://PrimeStarBitumen.com/disclaimer/ Contacts: Steve Helm, CEO Turner Valley Oil And Gas, Inc. Address: 1600 West Loop South, Suite 1600, Houston, Texas 77027 Phone: 1-713-588-9453 Email: TurnerValleyOilandGas@gmail.com Washington, DC, Oct. 26, 2018 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- The National Restaurant Association Educational Foundation (NRAEF) is proud to announce its participation in the Department of Defense Military Spouse Employment Partnership, connecting military spouses with more than 390 partner employers who have committed to recruit, hire, promote and retain military spouses in portable careers. The NRAEF officially joined the partnership on Oct. 16, 2018, at the annual Induction Ceremony held at the Hyatt Regency Crystal City at Reagan National Airport in Arlington, Va. The partnership launched on June 29, 2011, to serve spouses from all military services and focus on reducing unemployment for military spouses and veterans. We are thrilled to support those who currently serve, those who are veterans and, now through this partnership, military spouses, said Rob Gifford, executive vice president of the NRAEF. This is another win to support military members and their families in transitioning into our industry and providing them with pathways to advance into long-term careers. The restaurant industry currently employs 238,000 veterans. By joining the Military Spouse Employment Partnership, the Foundation will become part of an even larger collective effort to support military spouse employment. The Foundations military program seeks to help currently serving military, their families and all veterans transition into careers in our industry, bridging the gap between those serving our country and entering the workforce to reduce veteran unemployment. The Foundation also recognizes excellence in military foodservice at installations around the world through its annual Military Foodservice Awards. For more information about how the NRAEF is working to support military spouses in fulfilling their career goals, visit ChooseRestuarants.org/Military. For more information on the Military Spouse Employment Partnership, please visit https://msepjobs.militaryonesource.mil. Attachment SACRAMENTO, Calif., Oct. 26, 2018 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Aerojet Rocketdyne announced today that its propulsion systems supported a key intercept test of Raytheons Standard Missile-3 Block IIA guided missile. During the FTM-45 flight test, conducted by the U.S. Navy and Missile Defense Agency, the SM-3 Block IIA interceptor was launched from USS JOHN FINN (DDG-113). The intercept test was designed to further prove the effectiveness of the larger and faster SM-3 Block IIA variant in intercepting a medium range ballistic missile. Aerojet Rocketdynes MK 72 booster provided the first-stage propulsion on the SM-3 Block IIA, and the companys Throttling Divert and Attitude Control System (TDACS) maneuvered the kinetic warhead to successfully impact the ballistic missile target. We are proud that our TDACS and MK 72 booster played key propulsion roles in demonstrating the capabilities of the SM-3 Block IIA to defend our nation, said Aerojet Rocketdyne CEO and President Eileen Drake. We are excited to support the transition to production for the advanced SM-3 Block IIA interceptor that provides increased range, velocity and capability. The SM-3 Block IIA represents the newest generation of U.S. missile defense capabilities and is a key component of the European Phased Adaptive Approach for deployment at sea and ashore. Deployment of larger rocket motors and key technology improvements increases the area that can be defended and improves the probability of intercept against a larger threat set. About Aerojet Rocketdyne: Aerojet Rocketdyne, a subsidiary of Aerojet Rocketdyne Holdings, Inc. (NYSE:AJRD), is a world-recognized aerospace and defense leader that provides propulsion systems and energetics to the space, missile defense and strategic systems, and tactical systems areas, in support of domestic and international customers. For more information, visit www.Rocket.com and www.AerojetRocketdyne.com. Follow Aerojet Rocketdyne and CEO Eileen Drake on Twitter at @AerojetRdyne and @DrakeEileen. Media Contacts: Steve Warren, Aerojet Rocketdyne, 703-650-0278 steven.warren@rocket.com Lynn Machon, Aerojet Rocketdyne, 916-355-3587 lynn.machon@rocket.com English French MONTREAL, Oct. 26, 2018 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Bombardier (TSX: BBD.B) will publish its financial results for the third quarter of 2018 on Thursday, November 8, 2018, and subsequently, hold its Investor Day in New York City on Thursday, December 6, 2018 in the afternoon. Quarterly conference call On November 8, 2018 at 8:00 a.m., EDT, Alain Bellemare, President and Chief Executive Officer; John Di Bert, Senior Vice President and Chief Financial Officer; and Patrick Ghoche, Vice President, Investor Relations, will hold a conference call intended for investors and financial analysts to review the companys financial results for the third quarter of 2018. A live webcast of the call and relevant financial charts will be available at www.bombardier.com Stakeholders wishing to listen to the presentation and question and answer period by telephone may dial one of the following conference call numbers: In English: +1 514 394 9320 or +1 866 240 8954 (toll-free in North America) +800 6578 9868 (overseas calls) In French: +1 514 394 9316 or (with translation) +1 888 791 1368 (toll-free in North America) +800 6578 9868 (overseas calls) The replay of this call will be available on Bombardiers website shortly after the end of the webcast. Investor Day The event will feature updates from Alain Bellemare, John Di Bert and business segment presidents on Bombardiers progress on its five-year plan, positioning the company for stronger financial performance and growth through 2020 and beyond. These presentations will be followed by a Q&A session. Further details about the events schedule will be posted on Bombardiers website in the coming weeks. Please note that participation at Investor Day is by invitation only. The event is reserved for financial analysts and institutional investors. Details about the location will be provided directly to registered participants. For all media, shareholders and other stakeholders, a live webcast and relevant financial charts in support of the event will be available at www.ir.bombardier.com . A replay of the webcast will also be available at the same address the following day. About Bombardier With over 69,500 employees across four business segments, Bombardier is a global leader in the transportation industry, creating innovative and game-changing planes and trains. Our products and services provide world-class transportation experiences that set new standards in passenger comfort, energy efficiency, reliability and safety. Headquartered in Montreal, Canada, Bombardier has production and engineering sites in 28 countries across the segments of Transportation, Business Aircraft, Commercial Aircraft and Aerostructures and Engineering Services. Bombardier shares are traded on the Toronto Stock Exchange (BBD). In the fiscal year ended December 31, 2017, Bombardier posted revenues of $16.2 billion US. News and information are available at bombardier.com or follow us on Twitter @Bombardier . Raleigh, N.C., Oct. 26, 2018 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Camp Corral received a donation of $1,820,658 from Golden Corral at its annual convention in San Francisco this month. The donated funds were raised through Golden Corrals annual in-restaurant fundraising campaign, reliant on the generosity of valued guests and restaurant teams and in partnership with local DAV chapters. The charitable gift will assist with providing a free week of summer camp for the children of wounded, injured, ill or fallen military service members. Camp Corral, a dedicated supporter of military families, provides children ages eight to 15 with a free, once-in-a-lifetime week at summer camp where they are free to escape the challenges they face as military children. Camp Corral partners with camps across the nation to provide an experience that is fun, unique and challenging under the watchful eye of highly trained staff. Additionally, a military and family life counselor is available at each camp. Our research shows that the experience we provide to our campers makes a lasting impact, mentally and socially, said Leigh Longino, CEO of Camp Corral. Every year, with the support of Golden Corral and its generous customers and staff, were able to provide our services to more and more of these young heroes. We truly appreciate the support and unique partnership that equips us to provide this service to our nations military youth and their families. Camp Corral was founded in 2011 by Golden Corral and has received consistent support in its mission to serve military families from its founding company. With thousands of children remaining on the waitlist every year, contributions to Camp Corral can be made at any participating Golden Corral restaurant, by visiting the organizations website or mailed to the Camp Corral office located at 801 N. West Street, Raleigh, North Carolina 27603. About Camp Corral Camp Corral, a 501(c)(3) tax-exempt, nonprofit corporation, is a free, one-of-a-kind summer camp for children of wounded, disabled or fallen military service members. Since its founding in 2011 by Golden Corral, Camp Corral has grown to 24 camp sessions in 19 states and has served more than 21,000 children. Although any child ages 8 to 15 from a military family is eligible, registration priority is given to children of wounded, disabled or fallen military service members. For more information, visit www.campcorral.org . About Golden Corral Golden Corral , based in Raleigh, N.C., is the nations largest grill-buffet restaurant chain with 489 restaurants operating in 41 states as of January 1, 2018. Golden Corral is famous for its variety, including USDA steaks cooked to order, fried chicken, awesome pot roast, fresh salad bar, hot yeast rolls, and desserts like homemade carrot cake and the Chocolate Wonderfall. ### English French DELSON, Quebec, Oct. 26, 2018 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Goodfellow Inc, the wood specialist and value added product leader for more than 120 years is pleased to announce a new alliance with Sherwin Williams. Starting this fall, Goodfellow will use Sherwin Williamss finishes to coat its outdoor siding products across Canada. This strategic collaboration will enable Goodfellow to position itself even more strongly in high-end exterior siding products. In particular, with an increased production capacity, a wide range of products and a large variety of specialized finishes. Keep an eye out for our all new Goodfellow Wood Siding offered very shortly. Number one worldwide, Sherwin Williams has been in business for over 150 years and is renowned in the industry for, among other things, its expertise in specialized exterior finishes adapted to harsh climates. We will call on our Canada-wide professional sales force to make this alliance immensely successful. We are dedicated to providing enhanced and unparalleled customer service. For more information, visit: www.goodfellowinc.com & www.sherwin-williams.ca/en/ OTTAWA, Oct. 26, 2018 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- 24 prominent business and civil society leaders across Canada, members of the Smart Prosperity Initiative , are issuing the following statement: We are pleased to see that Canada is putting a price on carbon emissions, through a combination of federal, provincial and territorial policies. Most of the worlds major economies are now pricing carbon, because it is the most cost-effective way to reduce emissions and stimulate clean innovation. By starting slowly and ramping up over five years, the policy allows for a gradual adjustment to a lower carbon economy. Moreover, all revenues will stay in the province or territory they came from, offsetting costs while maintaining the incentive to reduce emissions. The policy also includes much-needed measures to address competitiveness, and support communities, sectors and Indigenous Peoples in making the low carbon transition; we look forward to hearing further details of that plan. A carbon price is a foundational policy to reduce emissions and build a low carbon economy. However, it should be part of an overall approach that includes complementary climate and energy efficiency policies, transitional support for affected workers and communities, and measures to drive the innovation, infrastructure, skills and investment needed for Canada to compete and prosper as the global economy shifts to cleaner growth (as set out in recent reports from Canadas Economic Strategy Tables , and the Expert Panel on Sustainable Finance ). Further details on our recommended approach can be found at www.smartprosperity.ca . We encourage all governments to work together with communities and businesses to ensure Canada meets its Paris climate commitment, and to build a cleaner, stronger economic future for all Canadians. Signatories: Meredith Adler, Executive Director, Student Energy Dominic Barton, Senior Partner, McKinsey & Company Ross Beaty, Chair, Pan American Silver Corp and Equinox Gold Corp. Brent Bergeron, Executive Vice President, Corporate Affairs and Sustainability, Goldcorp John Coyne, Vice President, Legal & External Affairs and General Counsel, Unilever Canada Michael Crothers, President & Canada Country Chair, Shell Canada Arlene Dickinson, CEO, Venture Communications Stewart Elgie#, Professor of law & economics, University of Ottawa David Hughes, President & CEO, The Natural Step Canada Greg Kiessling, President, UpCapital Ltd. Lorraine Mitchelmore#, Chair, National Economic Strategy Table, Resources of the Future Ken Neumann, Canadian National Director, United Steelworkers Merrell-Ann Phare, Founding Executive Director, Centre for Indigenous Environmental Resources David Runnalls, Board President, Pembina Institute Vicky Sharpe, Founding President & CEO, Sustainable Development Technology Canada Jean Simard, President & CEO, Aluminium Association of Canada and co-founder, SWITCH Marcia Smith, Senior Vice-President, Sustainability and External Affairs, Teck Resources Merran Smith, Executive Director, Clean Energy Canada Rick Smith, Executive Director, Broadbent Institute John Stackhouse, Senior Vice President, Office of the CEO, RBC Kirsten Tisdale, Managing Partner, Government and Public Sector, Ernst & Young Canada Scott Vaughan, President & CEO, International Institute for Sustainable Development Annette Verschuren#, Chair and CEO, NRStor; Former President, Home Depot Canada Rob Wesseling, President & CEO, The Cooperators # = Co-chair of Smart Prosperity * This is a personal statement by the leaders and may not reflect the views of all in their organizations For media inquiries, please contact: Jeremy Runnalls jeremy@smartprosperity.ca 613.462.3375 www.smartprosperity.ca Aberdeen, Md, Oct. 26, 2018 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Aberdeen, Maryland, is the hub for a major additive manufacturing (3D printing) initiative leading to unprecedented speed in parts production, new weapon system design and materials, dramatic cuts in costs and delivery times, and point-of-need part manufacturing. Dubbed AMMP (Advanced Manufacturing, Materials, and Processes), the new program brings together industry, academia, and government to advance, refine, and transition scientific breakthroughs in materials and machinery, according to Lisa Strama, President and CEO of the National Center for Manufacturing Sciences (NCMS). NCMS is launching the program in conjunction with the U.S. Army Research Laboratory (ARL), top U.S. manufacturers, and several leading universities. Strama addressed a group of about 150 government, academic, and manufacturing industry members and area dignitaries, along with ARL Director Dr. Philip Perconti, U.S. Senator Christopher Van Hollen (D-MD), Harford County Executive Barry Glassman, Steve Pennington from the Maryland Department of Commerce, Maryland Delegate Mary Ann Lisanti, and Chuck Hull, the recognized father of 3D Printing. Touting the groups shared vision to revolutionize defense logistics and strengthen the global competitiveness of the nations maker base through next-generation manufacturing prowess, Strama stated, Today is an opportunity to recognize the unanimous pledge of support AMMP is receiving for the scientific breakthroughs, accelerated manufacturing capabilities, stronger and more competitive industrial base and economic growth it stimulates. I also want to extend my thanks to Senator Van Hollen for his role in securing $15 million in new AMMP funding support. Strama added that Aberdeens selection aligns with NCMS belief that innovation happens best at the intersection of talent, infrastructure, and investment. Several other details about the AMMP Program emerged during the event, including an overview of the NCMS working model, the formation of an AMMP Technology Advisory Board (TAB), and the appointment of Dr. Cosima Boswell-Koller as Senior Project Manager and technical lead. Strama and Boswell-Koller are spearheading the TAB, saying its mission is to provide integrated executive direction and business-centered guidance in keeping with the overarching goals of RDECOM/ARL. TAB leadership will be determined by nominations received from AMMP member organizations with subcommittees planned for the near future. Boswell-Koller holds a Ph.D. in Materials Science and Engineering from the University of California, Berkeley, and following a Thermodynamics and Quantum Chemistry teaching assignment at Ohio University, joined the Corrosion and Wear Branch at NAVAIR in nearby Patuxent River, MD, holding leadership roles both in Acquisition, through support of the V-22 Osprey, and Science & Technology. The AMMP Program is enjoying a lot of early momentum, said Boswell-Koller. There are several new project calls, awards, and kick-offs well underway, and our membership base is growing rapidly. A total of eight additive manufacturing projects have been awarded to date in keeping with the ARLs essential science and technology, feedstock, and prototyping areas of focus. In addition to additive manufacturing, NCMS has long-standing success working with world- class companies of all sizes to advance innovative technologies in several more strategically critical areas, including digital manufacturing, Industrial Internet of Things (IIoT), cybersecurity, automation, robotics, maintenance, sustainment, and quality. About NCMS The National Center for Manufacturing Sciences (NCMS) is a cross-industry technology development consortium, dedicated to improving the competitiveness and strength of the U.S. industrial base. As a member-based organization, it leverages its network of industry, government, and academia to develop, demonstrate, and transition innovative technologies efficiently, with less risk and lower cost. For more information on NCMS or the AMMP Program, visit www.ncms.org and www.ncms.org/ammp . Presidente @MartinVizcarraC: Estamos recorriendo los diferentes poderes del Estado de Ecuador para conocer la gestion que se realiza, intercambiar experiencias y aprender mutuamente en beneficio de la poblacion.#20AnosDePaz ???????? pic.twitter.com/2GAzDBABze LOS ANGELES, Oct. 26, 2018 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Several LASIK and cataract surgeons who are members from of the Trusted LASIK Surgeons and Trusted Cataract Surgeons directories will be actively contributing and educating their peers at the 2018 Annual Meeting of the American Academy of Ophthalmology (AAO) in Chicago, Illinois from October 26th-30th. Approximately 22,000 medical professionals from all over the world will attend the upcoming AAO Meeting. Members of the Trusted LASIK Surgeons and Trusted Cataract Surgeons directories, which feature many of the leading vision correction experts in the United States, will be among this year's contributors, including Dr. James McCulley (UT Southwesterns Laser Center for Vision Care in Dallas, Texas) Dr. Deepinder Dhaliwal ( UPMC Eye Center in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania), Dr. George Waring IV (Waring Vision Institute, in Charleston, South Carolina), and Dr. James J. Salz , CEO of Trusted LASIK Surgeons who practices in Los Angeles, California. For more details about what each surgeon will be contributing at the 2018 Annual Meeting, please visit our Trusted LASIK Surgeons Blog , our Trusted LASIK Surgeons Facebook page or our Trusted LASIK Surgeons LinkedIn page. "The surgeons listed above are only a sample. Most of the members in our Trusted LASIK Surgeons and Trusted Cataract Surgeons directories actively contribute to meetings of eye doctors and eye surgeons like the 2018 Annual AAO Meeting, stated James J. Salz, M.D., co-founder and CEO of Trusted LASIK Surgeons. Our members are among the true visionaries and pioneers when it comes to improving vision through LASIK, cataract and other refractive surgery procedures. Their experiences in the field have led to significant advancements in LASIK, cataract and refractive eye surgery and this upcoming conference is an excellent time for the expert surgeons featured at our site to share their wealth of knowledge and educate their fellow eye surgeons. About Trusted LASIK Surgeons The primary mission of Trusted LASIK Surgeons is to assist consumers in finding an expert surgeon for LASIK, cataract, and other refractive surgery procedures who is among the best and most trusted professionals in the U.S. Trusted LASIK Surgeons utilizes a unique screening process to ensure only the best vision correction experts are featured in its directories. Each surgeon is screened based upon their professional credentials, experience, accomplishments, and quality of patient care. Most of the Trusted LASIK Surgeons have participated in FDA studies and/or have held academic appointments at the top medical schools and teaching hospitals in the United States. Because there are several options for vision corrective surgery beyond LASIK, our website endeavors to assist patients in exploring all available options available, including premium lens implants, KAMRA inlay, cataract surgery and other vision correction procedures. To locate an expert LASIK, cataract, or and vision correction surgeon near you, please visit our Trusted LASIK Surgeons Directory or our Trusted Cataract Surgeons Directory . Trusted LASIK Surgeons (800) 483-8028 Presidente @MartinVizcarraC: En 20 anos hemos tenido importantes avances, pero aun queda mucho por hacer. Hoy, debemos marcar una pauta y un plazo para dar soluciones definitivas a problemas que vayamos encontrando. #PeruVisitaEcuador ???? ???? pic.twitter.com/NXcXIr7m4H Presidente @MartinVizcarraC: La convivencia pacifica entre ambos paises cumple hoy 20 anos. Que esta paz se traduzca en progreso y desarrollo para las personas mas necesitadas, para nuestros pueblos.#PeruVisitaEcuador ???? ???? pic.twitter.com/YxYfLT97x9 Presidente @MartinVizcarraC: Fortalecer la integracion regional es imperioso para insertarnos en optimas condiciones a la economia global, profundizando en la libre circulacion de bienes, servicios, capitales y personas entre nuestros paises para beneficio de nuestros ciudadanos. pic.twitter.com/xdr7gbhQt9 The Arctic could and should be provided with alternative energy sources, said Roman Samsonov, Professor of the Gas Technologies and Underground Gas Storage Department at the Gubkin Russian State University of Oil and Gas, during the Arctic: Society, Science and Law international forum. "This process is currently underway," Samsonov said on the sidelines of the forum. "We have many examples of introducing wind, water and solar energy generation systems. Not all of them are successful due to the peculiarities of the Arctic environment; we need to resolve some technical issues first. This field requires better management and development; so far it is one of the biggest problems." Today, there is already a trend for switching from fuel oil to liquefied natural gas (LNG), which can also be considered an alternative energy source, the expert said. In addition, Samsonov believes LNG to be one of the most environmentally safe fuels, since it cannot spill and its air emissions are lower than those of fuel oil. "This will be our alternative fuel for the next 10 to 15 years," Samsonov said. He added that the issue of supplying the Russian Arctic with energy could be solved through introducing hybrid systems that combine the newest power generation technologies and fuel systems. Big companies, such as Total and Gazprom Neft, have already switched to them. "They take, say, liquefied methane, as the primary fuel source, and add the power generated with the help of a wind turbine or a solar battery," he said. In the Arctic environment, it is not always possible to generate solar or wind power, so in such a situation, liquefied methane can be used. Samsonov also noted that some countries do not encourage the introduction of hybrid systems namely, Russia and the US. "This issue is being actively discussed by the State Duma Committee on Energy, so we hope for some progress." The expert believes gas hydrates to be the fuel of the future; China, Japan and Canada have already switched to them. "The Arctic has huge gas hydrate resources," Samsonov said. "They occur at shallow depths, and this is a next generation fuel." YEREVAN, OCTOBER 26, ARMENPRESS. Turkish law enforcement agencies have thwarted an Islamic State terror plot in the Adana province that was planned to be carried out on October 29 the Turkish Republic Day, CNN Turk reports. According to the report six Islamic State terrorists have been arrested. One of the suspects is a woman. Police didnt disclose further details. Edited and translated by Stepan Kocharyan YEREVAN, OCTOBER 26, ARMENPRESS. According to the decision of Speaker of Parliament Ara Babloyan, the Parliament will convene an extraordinary session on October 31, at 11:00 by the initiative of the government, the Parliament told Armenpress. The session agenda includes the amnesty bill. Edited and translated by Aneta Harutyunyan YEREVAN, OCTOBER 26, ARMENPRESS. Acting minister of economic development and investments Tigran Khachatryan on October 25 met with Country Manager of the World Bank for Armenia Sylvie Bossoutrot, the ministry told Armenpress. Sylvie Bossoutrot congratulated Tigran Khachatryan on appointment and wished him success in this responsible work. In his turn the acting minister thanked Sylvie Bossoutrot and stated that he has always cooperated with the World Bank with pleasure. During the meeting the sides discussed the developments over new cooperation framework with Armenia. They also discussed the activities aimed at improving Armenias position in the World Banks Doing Business report, the expectations from the report. Edited and translated by Aneta Harutyunyan YEREVAN, OCTOBER 26, ARMENPRESS. The Investigative Committee has rejected the motion filed by former President Robert Kocharyan on granting him a status of a victim in court within the framework of the ongoing investigation into the leaked wiretapped phone recording of the National Security Service director and the Special Investigative Service director, according to the ex-presidents legal representative Hovhannes Khudoyan. The Investigative Committee has said it rejected the motion because the investigation did not reveal any information about possible influence on the judiciary. Kocharyan will appeal the rejection to the Prosecutor General, the attorney said. Edited and translated by Stepan Kocharyan YEREVAN, OCTOBER 26, ARMENPRESS. President of Armenia Armen Sarkissian participated in the 20th annual session of the Homeland and Global Security Forum of Crans Montana Forum in Geneva, Switzerland, the Presidential Office told Armenpress. The Crans Montana Forum cooperates with the UN, UNESCO, the European Union, the NATO, the Council of Europe and other international organizations and aims at promoting the international cooperation. 4 events are being organized annually on the sidelines of the Forum during which the key figures of more than 100 countries gather to discuss important social, economic and security issues in informal atmosphere. The discussion topics of the annual session of the Homeland & Global Security Forum are the current issues and risks in international relations, healthcare, cyber-security and information management. President Armen Sarkissian delivered remarks during the session, in particularly touching upon the importance of searching for new methods to manage the global security risks. The full text of his speech will be available soon. Edited and translated by Aneta Harutyunyan VANCOUVER, British Columbia, Oct. 26, 2018 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- The following issues have been halted by IIROC / LOCRCVM a suspendu la negociation des titres suivants : Company / Societe : Squire Mining Ltd. CSE Symbol / Symbole CSE : SQR All Issues / les Titres: Yes/Oui Reason / Motif : At the Request of the Company Pending News / A la demande de la societe en attendant une nouvelle Halt Time (ET) / Heure de la suspension (HE) 12:04: PM IIROC can make a decision to impose a temporary suspension (halt) of trading in a security of a publicly-listed company. Trading halts are implemented to ensure a fair and orderly market. IIROC is the national self-regulatory organization which oversees all investment dealers and trading activity on debt and equity marketplaces in Canada. LOCRCVM peut prendre la decision de suspendre (ou darreter) temporairement les operations a legard dun titre dune societe cotee en bourse. Les arrets des operations sont mis en oeuvre afin dassurer le bon fonctionnement dun marche equitable. LOCRCVM est lorganisme dautoreglementation national qui surveille lensemble des courtiers en placement et lensemble des operations effectuees sur les marches des titres de capitaux propres et les marches des titres de creance au Canada. Please note that IIROC is not able to provide any additional information regarding a specific trading halt. Information is limited to general enquiries only. Veuillez prendre note que l'OCRCVM n'est pas en mesure de fournir d'informations supplementaires au sujet d'une suspension des negociations en particulier. L'information est restreinte aux questions generales. IIROC Inquiries 1-877-442-4322 (Option 2) YEREVAN, OCTOBER 26, ARMENPRESS. Asian Development Bank (ADB) Deputy Director General Hong Wei has visited the Tranche 3 section of the North-South Road Corridor in Armenia. He was accompanied by officials from the Organization of Transportation Projects Implementation governmental non-commercial organization. The organization said that Wei held a meeting with representatives from Sinohydro Corporation the contractor of the Tranche 3, Spea Ingegneria Europea the company carrying out technical supervision, and the IRD Engineering Consortium, the Italian joint enterprise. Wei was briefed on the ongoing construction by the acting director general of the Organization of Transportation Projects Implementation Vazgen Petrosyan. He noted that certain organizational issues exist in the road section funded by the ADB, but that contractors are gradually solving the problems, and that construction volumes have increased in the past two months. He said that certain changes are required in order to successfully advance the project. He said that all parties are closely cooperating to eliminate existing problems and enhance volumes of construction. Team leader of the technical supervision organization Vache Minasyan highlighted quality and deadlines to be the priority task of the construction. Asian Development Bank (ADB) Deputy Director General Hong Wei noted that the North-South Road Corridor is a very important project for Armenia. He said that quality is priority and that the work should be continued through joint efforts to achieve good results. Edited and translated by Stepan Kocharyan YEREVAN, OCTOBER 26, ARMENPRESS. Within the framework of the working visit of Armenias acting healthcare minister Arsen Torosyan to Astana, a cooperation agreement in healthcare sector has been signed between the respective ministries of Armenia and Kazakhstan, the ministry told Armenpress. The document has been signed by acting minister Arsen Torosyan and his Kazakh counterpart Yelzhan Birtanov. According to the agreement, the sides agree to cooperate at 15 main directions. Armenia and Kazakhstan must show mutual support in case of threat of dangerous infections, diseases, take joint steps to prevent some diseases and etc. The sides are obliged to provide necessary medical care to the citizens of the other state according to the legislation of that state. At the same time the parties agreed to cooperate within the frames of the activities of the World Health Organization and international structures, in accordance with the national legislations of the states. Edited and translated by Aneta Harutyunyan YEREVAN, OCTOBER 26, ARMENPRESS. The state-legal and human rights protection committee of parliament today approved the bill package on electoral code amendments. All members of the committee in attendance voted in favor of approving it. The parliament will convene a special session on October 29 to debate the bill. Tsarukyan faction MP Gevorg Petrosyan, a member of the committee, dismissed opinions that the electoral code has been presented for debates hastily. Chair of the committee Gevorg Kostanyan, a former Prosecutor General, noted that as a legal document the code must be adopted and that it can serve as a method of reforms in the electoral institution. I also find this package to be positive and I recommend us all to vote in favor, he said. Edited and translated by Stepan Kocharyan YEREVAN, OCTOBER 26, ARMENPRESS. The Republican Party of Armenia (RPA) is going to be a radical-constructive opposition: the party wants to enter into the Parliament to show its face, to be restored, RPA faction head Vahram Baghdasaryan told reporters at a briefing, reports Armenpress. Our goal is to form a political parliament typical to the parliamentary country. We are entering into the Parliament to show our face, to be restored. We are going to be a radical-constructive opposition, he said. Baghdasaryan said being an opposition or leadership is not a priority goal for them. According to him, each political force should fight in order to be a majority. He also didnt rule out that their party may not be represented in the Parliament. Asked whether their party list will be headed by Serzh Sargsyan during elections, the RPA faction head couldnt say anything at the moment, adding that this issue will be discussed in coming days. They will hold a meeting in coming days after which they will announce their participation format in the elections. In case of participation our list should definitely be a political list. We act as an opposition, and our list will be in accordance with the opposition list, he said. Edited and translated by Aneta Harutyunyan YEREVAN, OCTOBER 26, ARMENPRESS. Acting deputy prime minister of Armenia Mher Grigoryan received the delegation led by Asian Development Bank (ADB) Deputy Director General Hong Wei, the government told Armenpress. Welcoming the guests, the acting deputy PM attached importance to the ADB programs in Armenia and thanked the Banks Armenia Office for the productive cooperation. Mher Grigoryan highly appreciated and promoted the ADB programs being implemented in the private sector, expressing hope that the experience received within their framework will be applicable and used in the programs to be implemented jointly with the government in the future. Mher Grigoryan expressed readiness to deepen the cooperation with the ADB. ADB Deputy Director General Hong Wei said this is his visit visit to Armenia, shared his impressions from the visit and praised the ADBs ongoing programs. He expects that the ADBs further cooperation with Armenia will further expand with new programs in social and private sectors. During the meeting the officials also discussed issues relating to Armenias securities market development, release of bonds in Armenia by ADB, the ADB experience of innovative programs in agricultural sector and the development of IT in Armenia. Edited and translated by Aneta Harutyunyan YEREVAN, OCTOBER 26, ARMENPRESS. Member of Parliament Manvel Grigoryan, the lawmaker currently under pre-trial detention suspected in embezzlement and fraud, has addressed the government expressing willingness to donate nearly 330 hectares of land of private property to the state. The land is part of a company owned by Grigoryan in Aknalich, a village in Armavir province. The representative of Manvel Grigoryan has sent a document to our committee stating that he [Grigoryan] is willing to donate territory without any obligations. I dont possess other details, since the agreement is under the authority of the other deputy chairman of the department, Sergo Atanesyan Deputy Chairman of the State Property Management Department told ARMENPRESS. The other deputy, Gevorg Loretsyan, confirmed the report. We will organize the process of receiving the property as defined by procedures, he told ARMENPRESS. Loretsyan said the land includes 5500 sq.m. of buildings and is worth roughly 6 billion drams (around 12,000,000 dollars). Manvel Grigoryan, a retired army general, is under arrest since July 19. At the time of his arrest he also served as president of the Yerkrapah Union of Volunteers, but was later ousted by the board of the organization amid highly scandalous accusations. Law enforcement agencies found a private zoo, a car collection, huge amounts of weapons and ammunition, as well as embezzled military supplies and donations in his compound. Edited and translated by Stepan Kocharyan YEREVAN, OCTOBER 26, ARMENPRESS. Artsakh Republic President Bako Sahakyan on October 26 visited the construction site of a new residential community in Tumanyan street of capital Stepanakert and got acquainted with the ongoing activities, the Presidential Office told Armenpress. The President attached importance to the implementation of the program, as a result of which apartments to socially vulnerable families will be provided, and gave concrete instructions to the heads of concerned structures within the framework of mortgage lending. Bako Sahakyan was accompanied by state minister Grigori Khachatryan, as well as other officials. Edited and translated by Aneta Harutyunyan YEREVAN, OCTOBER 26, ARMENPRESS. Acting minister of economic development and investments Tigran Khachatryan held a meeting with a business delegation led by Yan Jihan, president of the Jiangsu provincial branch of the Industrial and Commercial Bank of China, the ministry said. The Chinese businessmen said they want to make investments in Armenia and that they are particularly interested in the fields of IT, agriculture, processed industry and mining. Exporting opportunities of Armenian alcoholic drinks and mineral beverages were also discussed. Khachatryan welcomed the visit and expressed hope that the further meetings and discussions will be followed by tangible results. The minister assured that the Armenian government will support investment initiatives in all necessary phases. At the request of the Chinese businessmen, Khachatryan presented the countrys mining potential and opportunities. Deputy minister Mane Adamyan presented the tourism sector and briefed the businessmen of investment projects. Edited and translated by Stepan Kocharyan YEREVAN, 26 OCTOBER, ARMENPRESS. The Central Bank of Armenia informs Armenpress that today, 26 October, USD exchange rate up by 0.78 drams to 485.94 drams. EUR exchange rate down by 1.54 drams to 551.93 drams. Russian Ruble exchange rate stood at 7.39 drams. GBP exchange rate down by 3.75 drams to 622.20 drams. The Central Bank has set the following prices for precious metals. Gold price up by 34.77 drams to 19229.2 drams. Silver price up by 0.29 drams to 230.29 drams. Platinum price up by 98.85 drams to 12998.61 drams. YEREVAN, OCTOBER 26, ARMENPRESS. The first international China-Eurasia conference can boost attraction of investments from China to Armenia. Mher Sahakyan, head of the China-Eurasia political and strategic research foundation, told ARMENPRESS that currently Chinas role in world policy and economy has increased. This country plays an important role in the current global developments, and its important for Armenia to follow China, as well as the ongoing processes there. China deepens its influence in the Eurasian continent by One Belt, One Road program and is going to invest more than 1 trillion within the frames of the program, Sahakyan said. The first international China-Eurasia conference launched in Yerevan on October 26, within the frames of which scientists from 12 countries, in particular Finland, Russia, China, Portugal, UK and Pakistan, have arrived in Armenia. Armenia must be able to present programs thanks to which it would be possible to be included in the program and bring some part of that investments to Armenia. By inviting our partners here we aim to awaken their interest towards Armenia so that they will conduct research on our country, he said. The conference is co-organized by the China-Eurasia Council for Political and Strategic Research and Institute of Oriental Studies of the National Academy of Sciences of Armenia. ATLANTA, Oct. 26, 2018 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- WestRock Company (NYSE: WRK) today reported that its Board of Directors declared a quarterly dividend of $0.455 per share on its common stock, an increase of $0.025 per share from its previous dividend rate and representing an annualized increase of $0.10 per share, or 5.8%. The quarterly dividend of $0.455 per share will be paid to stockholders of record as of the close of business on November 9, 2018 and will be paid on November 19, 2018. WestRock has returned $2.3 billion in capital to stockholders and increased our dividend by more than 20% over the last three years, said Steve Voorhees, chief executive officer. Todays dividend increase demonstrates our confidence in WestRocks ongoing ability to generate strong cash flow over the long term. Cautionary Statements This release contains forward-looking statements within the meaning of the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. Forward-looking statements are based on our current expectations, beliefs, plans or forecasts. WestRock cautions readers that a forward-looking statement is not a guarantee of future performance and that actual results could differ materially from those contained in the forward-looking statement. Such forward-looking statements include, but are not limited to, statements regarding, among other things, that the announced dividend increase demonstrates our confidence in our ongoing ability to generate strong cash flow. With respect to these statements, WestRock has made assumptions regarding, among other things, economic, competitive and market conditions generally; volumes and price levels of purchases by customers; competitive conditions in WestRock's businesses and possible adverse actions of their customers, competitors and suppliers. Further, WestRock's businesses are subject to a number of general risks that would affect any such forward-looking statements. These risks, and other factors that may impact management's assumptions, are more particularly described in WestRock's filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission, including Item 1A "Risk Factors" in WestRock's annual report on Form 10-K for the fiscal year ended September 30, 2017 and quarterly reports on Form 10-Q. The information contained herein speaks as of the date hereof and WestRock does not have or undertake any obligation to update or revise its forward-looking statements, whether as a result of new information, future events or otherwise. About WestRock WestRock (NYSE: WRK) partners with our customers to provide differentiated paper and packaging solutions that help them win in the marketplace. WestRocks 45,000 team members support customers around the world from more than 300 operating and business locations spanning North America, South America, Europe, Asia and Australia. Learn more at www.westrock.com . CONTACT: Investors: James Armstrong, 470-328-6327 Vice President, Investor Relations james.armstrong@westrock.com Media: John Pensec, 470-328-6397 Director, Corporate Communications john.pensec@westrock.com John Stakel, 678-291-7901 Senior Vice President, Treasurer john.stakel@westrock.com YEREVAN, OCTOBER 26, ARMENPRESS. US President's National Security Advisor John Bolton describes Armenia as an important friend of USA in the region. ARMENPRESS reports Bolton tweeted about his visit to Armenia. Yesterday I had a nice visit to Armenia, an important friend in the region. I enjoyed productive conversations with the Prime Minister and his national security team, he wrote. Acting Prime Minister of Armenia Nikol Pashinyan received US President Donald Trumps national security advisor John Bolton and his delegation on October 25. Pashinyan said at the meeting, I am happy to host such a high-level delegation, which is historical for Armenia. Its very important to have high-level contacts with the US, and our government attaches importance to the Armenian-American active dialogue and close cooperation. The acting PM touched upon the ongoing political events in Armenia and stated that now the country is facing a historical period. The processes, which are taking place as a result of the peaceful, velvet revolution of love and solidarity, are based exclusively on democratic values. Now we are working on creating and strengthening sustainable and institutional democratic state, Nikol Pashinyan said, attaching importance to the democracy development in Armenia, strengthening of transparent public administration system, independent judiciary as a result of effective cooperation with international partners. Pashinyan noted that Armenia decisively moves on the path of democracy development which is an internal belief and value for the Armenian society. John Bolton thanked for the reception and conveyed to Pashinyan the warm greetings of US President Donald Trump. The US official said at this important historical period for Armenia they attach importance to the development and deepening of the Armenian-American relations. I am happy to discuss with you the wide range of bilateral and regional issues concerning the Armenian-American ties. Congratulations on successfully guiding the peaceful democratic transition in Armenia. The United States supports the efforts of the new government aimed at fighting corruption, raising the transparency degree of the judiciary and increasing the accountability of the government before the citizens with steps which will lead to strengthening democracy, rule of law and regional stability, John Bolton said. The officials discussed a number of agenda issues of the bilateral relations. In particular, they touched upon issues of cooperation in the directions of development of democratic institutions, economy, justice system, civil society. In this regard, Nikol Pashinyan and John Bolton highlighted the necessity to make such high-level mutual visits more frequent. The officials also exchanged views on the settlement process of the Nagorno Karabakh conflict. Both highlighted taking consistent steps aimed at peacefully settling the conflict within the OSCE Minsk Group Co-Chairmanship format, and forming a respective atmosphere for the negotiation process. Bolton told the reporters in Armenia that relations with Armenia are very important for the USA. Referring to NK conflict settlement, Bolton said that the settlement of the conflict stems not only from the interests of Armenia and Azerbaijan, but also the USA. Edited and translated by Tigran Sirekanyan YEREVAN, OCTOBER 26, ARMENPRESS. Acting Prime Minister of Armenia Nikol Pashinyan attended the conference Investments and trade. Parliamentarians, ministers, business representatives, chairmen of trade and industry chambers, representatives of major companies from 20 countries participated in the conference. As ARMENPRESS was informed from the official website of the Prime Minister of Armenia, Pashinyan saluted the intentions of the businessmen participating in the conference to invest in Armenia. Unfortunately, not so long ago some people used the words corruption and poverty when referring to our country and emphasized the factor that Armenia is an agrarian country. Following the non-violent, popular velvet revolution of Armenia in April-May we set a task to make Armenia a lawful country and to encourage labor and high technologies. And for reaching this goal we consider businessmen our best allies, who want to make new investments in Armenia. We want to promote labor in the Republic of Armenia and tell each investor to come and do business in Armenia, to become rich and make others rich. We invite every investor to Armenia for recording success and inspiring others by their success, the acting PM said. Pashinyan emphasized that today favorable conditions for investments have been created in Armenia, since equality before the law has been established in Armenia. I think its a tragedy when the head of a country is engaged in business and has business interests. I think its really a priority factor for promoting business. Therefore, I have good news for all of you. I am out of competition< pashinyan said. The participants of the 3-day conference will have the opportunity to get familiarized with the business and investment environment of Armenia, and discuss issues referring to the prospects of investing in Armenia. The delegates will visit various companies, and will get acquainted with the legal and economic specifications of investing in Armenia, Edited and translated by Tigran Sirekanyan The Belgian Council of Ministers of October 25, 2018 approved the signing of an intergovernmental agreement with France concerning the establishment of a strategic partnership in the field of land mobility under the CaMo program. French Company Nexter will deliver 382 Griffon 6x6 multi-role wheeled armored vehicles (VBMR) and 60 Jaguar 6x6 wheeled armored reconnaissance and combat vehicles to the Belgian army. Griffon 6x6 multi-role armored vehicle designed and manufactured by the French Company Nexter (Picture source Army Recognition) France and Belgium will develop close cooperation between the land forces of both countries. In this context, Belgium is planning the complete modernization of its motorized capacity (CaMo program) through the acquisition of 382 Griffon 6x6 multi-role wheeled armored vehicles (VBMR) and 60 Jaguar 6x6 wheeled armored reconnaissance and combat vehicles (EBRC), whose industrial mastery of work will be provided by Nexter Group. Nexter, system integrator architect of land defense and supplier of all combat vehicles of the French Army already equips the Belgian Land component with 105LG1, 105 mm guns. To respond to the CaMo program, the Group will rely on the know-how of its teams, its mastery of complex systems (LECLERC tank, JAGUAR design authority, VBCI, CAESAR, ...), and its central role in SCORPION French Armored Multi-Role vehicle (EBMR) program, alongside its French industrial cooperatives, primarily Arquus and Thales, grouped together in a temporary business venture. In parallel, Nexter has signed partnership agreements with several Belgian companies. It is in this context that the final assembly of the VBMR Griffon multi-role wheeled armored vehicles and EBRC Jaguar wheeled armored reconnaissance and combat vehicles will be done by CMI Defense in Belgium and that the remotely operated weapon station of the Belgian vehicle Griffon will be produced by FN Herstal. MECAR, the Belgian Nexter Group subsidiary, will be in charge of producing part of the ammunition. Stephane Mayer, Chairman and CEO of Nexter "welcomes the cooperation between Belgium and France, and between the two ministries of Defense. The Belgian Directorate General Material Resources (DGMR) and the French Defense Procurement Agency (DGA) have set up a joint office to conduct the CaMo acquisition program. I thank the two defense ministries for their trust. It is a great honor to be at the side of the Belgian Land component, with the supply of its next combat equipment and participating in this important new step in the construction of the Europe of Defense". The Griffon VBMR (Multi-Role Armoured Vehicle) is a new development of 6x6 Multi-Role armoured vehicle for the French Army under the program EBMR Scorpion (Engin Blinde Multi-Role - Armoured Multi-roles Vehicles). The vehicle was designed and developed by a consortium of French Companies including Nexter Systems, Renault Trucks Defense, and Thales. In armoured personnel carrier configuration, the Griffon is capable to carry a total of 11 soldiers including driver, commander, gunner and 8 infantrymen. The Griffon is fitted with a remote weapon system, that can be armed with a 7.62mm or 12.7mm heavy machine gun or an 40mm automatic grenade launcher. The Griffon will have a weight of around 24,500 kg. and has been designed to offer a high level of off-road performance and a high level of ballistic protection through its modular armour system (up to NATO STANAG 4569 Level 4) that provides a ballistic protection against firing of small arms 14.5114mm AP / B32 at 200 meters with 911 m/s and shell splinters at 30 m of the vehicle and mine protection 10 kg of mine explosion under the center of the hull and the wheels. Jaguar 6x6 reconnaissance and combat armored vehicle designed and manufactured by the French Company Nexter (Picture source Army Recognition) The Jaguar EBRC (Engin Blinde de Reconnaissance et de Combat - Reconnaissance and Combat Armoured Vehicle) is a development of a 6x6 Reconnaissance and Combat Armoured Vehicle for the French Army under the program EBMR Scorpion (Engin Blinde Multi-Roles - Armoured Multi-roles Vehicles). The Jaguar EBRC is fitted with a two-man turret 40 CTAS armed with one 40mm CTC cannon with Ammunition Handling System (AHS). The 40mm cannon will have a maximum range of 1,500 m. The right side of the turret is fitted with two launchers for the MMP (Missile Moyenne Portee - Medium Range Missile) missile designed by the French Company MBDA The Jaguar EBRC is based on 6x6 all-terrain vehicle chassis with the turret mounted at the centre of the hull. We can suppose that the hull of the Jaguar EBRC will have the same level of protection (NATO STANAG 4569 Level 4) as the Griffon VBMR which is also include in the EBMR Scorpion program of the French army. The STANAG 4569 Level 4 provides protection against fire of small arms 14.5mmx114 AP, 155mm artillery shell splinters at 30m and mine blast protection of 10 kg TNT under the wheel. The Director, DS Grove (1), himself a former kiap, wrote that critical problems were not being addressed and that the Assistant District Commissioner at Kieta, Max (MJ) Denehy (2), was over-committed and had no experienced field staff to assist him. The incidents related to opposition to the mining exploration activities of Conzinc Riotinto Australia. The report, on the same issue, related to the January 1966 visit to the site of a possible mine at Panguna by the Director of Lands, Surveys and Mines. It was then that incidents in Bougainville and a government report changed the course of my career. THE CHRONICLE CONTINUES It was 1966, the family and I had just returned from six months leave in Australia and I had resumed duty at Maprik in the Sepik District. At the authors request, this chapter is presented out of sequence. The intermediate chapters (17-19) will be published soon He said that Denehy was due for leave at the end of the year, but after four terms at Kieta it would not be in [Denehys] own interests or the interests of the Administration that he return for a fifth [term]. The Director of District Administration, JK McCarthy, should post an experienced officer to Kieta to understudy Denehy, tackle the land issues and take over from Denehy when he departed on leave. Four months later on 25 May 1966, McCarthy wrote to the District Commissioner Sepik District, You are no doubt aware of the possibility of large-scale mineral development in the Kieta area of Bougainville District and of the importance which the Commonwealth Government and the Administration attach to this project. There are various local factors and problems involved in this possible development which require that an additional experienced and capable officer of this Department be posted to the District, and I am under direction to arrange an early posting of such an officer. After close consideration, therefore, I have decided to transfer Mr WT Brown, District Officer, from your District to [the] Bougainville District for duty in the Kieta Sub-District." I had been stationed in the Sepik for 11 years. I knew nothing of CRA or its activities and little of Bougainville, but early in the morning on 2 June 1966, District Commissioner Ted Hicks came on the radio to tell me that I had been transferred to Kieta. I was required urgently. When we were packed, a Caribou aircraft would fly us there. It had all begun in 1963 when CRA geologist Ken Phillips drew the companys attention to the government geologists reports (Fisher in 1936 and Thompson in 1962) about the copper and gold deposits in the mountains behind Kieta: at Kupei, Pumkuna and Moronithe pre-war mining sites. The search was on. The company needed to find an ore body that was large enough to warrant commercial development. Bougainville District in the 1960s showing main towns Phillips visited Bougainville in February 1964 and met with ADC Denehy. That discussion was Denehys introduction to CRA and their prospecting arm Conzinc Riotinto Exploration (CRAE). Denehy would become more involved with them during the next three years and perhaps a little besotted by the economic opportunity they appeared to offer to the Bougainville people. Even though he had reverted from acting Assistant District Officer to Patrol Officer, Denehy must have thought that he was escaping to paradise when he was posted to Kieta in 1958. He had spent the previous three terms in the Papuan Gulf: at Ihu Patrol Post, Kerema and Kikori. Bougainville was a green and verdant island with pristine beaches, an aqua-blue sea, and fringing coral reefs. It had a fortnightly air service from Rabaul. A Catalina flying boat carrying freezer meat, mail and the occasional passenger landed in the roadstead between Pok Pok (Tautsina) Island and the peninsula. Burns Philps MV Tulagi, calling at six-weekly intervals to load copra, provided the opportunity to indent vegetables and frozen meats from the Australian mainland at Australian prices. Denehy, his wife and child were absent on the New Guinea mainland when Phillips returned to commence the search in April 1964. Andrew Melville, a junior Patrol Officer still in his first term, was in charge. He met with Phillips, and for some inexplicable reason provided an escorta police constableto accompany the CRAE team into the mountains. That gesture would have indicated to the local people that the party had official status, even though it was not intended to do so. Latvian-born geochemist Edgar Muceniakas and the two young field assistants were fresh from Australia; they had no New Guinea experience and did not understand Tok Pisin. Phillips had been a few weeks in the bush just out of Moresby and about two months at Porgera in the Western Highlands in 1963 whose population was primitive and non-Pidgin speaking. Neville (NC) Robinson, on loan from his government employment as Senior Field Assistant (Native Mining), accompanied the newcomers to help them communicate, obtain food and move from place to place. After four weeks with Phillips and his team, Robinson resumed his government role and set out for Atamo village to help the local people engaged in alluvial mining for gold. He didnt get very far. Just outside CRA's area of operations, at Boiraan Eivo village in the foothills on the left bank of the Pineithe people assumed he was on CRA business and refused to allow him to proceed. It was the first of many instances of the Bougainville people striving to confine CRA activities to the Panguna area. In the discussion that followed, CRAs Clem Knight (from Melbourne) and Phillips outlined the difficulties encountered with the native people and expressed their concern they considered that complete native co-operation was a basic necessity for the mining development on the scale envisaged by CRA. Robinson said that a patrol officer should be attached to CRA. Deputy District Commissioner Des (DJ) Clancy (3) did not agree, stating: word would be sent to the native leaders from all the villages concerned to assemble in Kieta and the whole situation explained and clarified. Officers of the Department of Native Affairs would assume all responsibility for the [future] trouble-free movement of the CRA party thus relieving the Division of Mines of this responsibility. Maybe Clancy had his tongue in his cheek. Only two years earlier in February 1962 when Hahalis villagers had defied a party of three Patrol Officers and 10 police attempting to make arrests, he had led a party comprising an expatriate police officer and 70 other ranks in a second attempt. They too were chased out of the village. Those same villagers then confronted a force of more than 500 police. If that was their reaction against a $2 head tax, how much more opposition could be expected to the invasion of their land by prospectors? Denehy was keeping close tabs on the events, sending Cadet Patrol Officer Bob (RG) Godden (4) to the area to ascertain if there was any change in the attitude of the people towards CRA activities. After 19 days in the area in January 1965 and 23 days in February-March Godden reported that there was no evidence of friction or animosity. CRAEs Director of Operations, Haddon King, and maybe Denehy, was not so sanguine. On 31 March, Haddon King wrote to Sir Donald Cleland, one of the Administration's problems is to satisfy the leaders of the indigenous people that it is in their interest to grant these extensive prospecting rights, and perhaps later mining rights.... In the course of this discussion, the suggestion has arisen that this company might sponsor a visit by up to six Bougainville people to selected mining areas in Australia accompanied by someone who has the confidence of the Bougainville people someone like Mr Denehy." The Brown family's journey from the Sepik to Bougainville Four months later, in July 1965, the flare-ups began. Angry villagers from the Mainoki area, eight hours' walk to the south-west of Panguna, were determined to prevent any CRA intrusion on their land, and forced a stream-sampling team to beat a hasty retreat. Within days, and nearer home, a particular incident was of more concern. A cement survey post that marked a corner common to all four CRAs leases was removed from its location. CRAs four lease applications, crafted on a map in far-away Melbourne, had a common corner that turned out to be located in the middle of Musinau village. Corners had to be marked by labelled posts and trenches dug to indicate the direction of the boundaries. The people watched the invaders enter their village carrying a heavy cement post and they watched as the surveyor established the posts position with his sextant. That night, the people mulled over all that had transpired and decided the company was attempting to steal their land. The next day they unearthed the post and returned it to Panguna. Perhaps it was that last event that overcame Canberras reluctance to approve the proposed company-sponsored tour to Australia. Denehy left with five Bougainville men in September 1965. Only two, Miringtoro Taroa of Musinau and Severinus Ampaoi of Dapera, president of Kieta Council, were from the prospecting area. The other three tourists were councillors from afar: Kenananai from Nagovis, president of the Bana Council, Moiku from Buin Council and Ionai from Kieta Council. During the course of the visit to Australia, the Bougainvilleans made three requests of Department of Territories officials in Canberra: a share of mineral and timber royalties to be paid to landowners; companies to contribute 25% of profits to a Bougainville development fund; and a greater proportion of Administration expenditure to be made in Bougainville. Nobody said no and they returned home satisfied. The Minister for Territories, Cedric (Ceb) Barnes arrived in Kieta on 11 February 1966 and in just two days at public meetings at Kieta and Panguna he dashed the hopes of all the people who were anticipating gaining personal, family and district wealth from Panguna. Patrol Officer Andrew Melville remembered the meeting at Kieta when the Minister told the people that, while the mine would not benefit them directly, it was going to do wonders for all the people of Papua New Guinea. He was asked, The mine may not be of benefit to us old guys, but what about our children and our children's children? What is it going to do for them?' Barnes replied: 'It is not going to do anything for you, for your children or for your grandchildren, but it is going to do wonders for the people of Papua and New Guinea as a whole. Haddon King, quoting from a memo he wrote on 15 March 1966, claimed, The effects [of the Ministers statements] on CRAs activities were dramatic: Three days later trees were felled across a helicopter pad; two days after this, surveyors met opposition in cutting lines west of the area being drilled The geologist in charge was told by the landowners that they wished to see mining activity confined to the area of present activities (about one-mile square) until they had the opportunity to see the effects of mining on the land, and also what they would get out of it. A few days later our present area of activities was surrounded by tambu (keep out) signs." Peter Steele Kings view that the Ministers statement triggered the disruption may have been simplistic. Two days prior to Barnes arrival, Cadet Patrol Officer Peter Steele (5) at Dapena-Larenai in the Guava area was told that people wanted no interference by the company; they owned the land and therefore the copper and they did not want the company to take it away and leave their children with nothing. They refused to accept that the minerals did not belong to the people. The Musinau villagers made headlines again at the end of May 1966 when a hunting party from the village stumbled across a CRA fly camp in their forest and pulled it down. The CRA employees, confronted by five angry villagers said to be armed with bows and arrows, radioed for a helicopter help and were evacuated. When Denehy put the villagers in gaol for a month Paul Lapun, the Member for Southern Bougainville, speaking in parliament, said that the five had not been armed and he asked did they not have the right to protect their land? Reporting the incident to Canberra by telephone on Sunday 30 May 1966, Administrator Cleland said, A good Native Affairs man, Mr Max [sic] Brown, has been sent over to Bougainville to assist Mr Denihy [sic], the Native Affairs man in the area. Some confused soul had given me Denehy's first name and misspelt his surname. We were supposed to fly out of Maprik airstrip in a Cariboua STOL (short takeoff and landing) aircraftto fly direct to Bougainville. The Caribou never came. We had been living out of suitcases for eight days when on 14 June, two Norseman aircraftsingle-engined and sluggishbegan shuttling our 33 crates, and burlap-wrapped bundles to the main Wewak airport at Boram where they were manhandled into the waiting Douglas Dakotathe cargo version of the DC3. Our mankimasta Suni, his wife Clara and their two children, my wife Pamela, our sons (Michael, almost six, and David, three) and I followed with last-minute items: half a dozen fowls and Ulupu the cat (a present from Divine Word missionary, Father Knorr) semi-secured in plaited coconut frond baskets; our soiled clothes; and the previous night's bed linen. After an unscheduled landing at Madang to have a leaking propeller oil seal repaired, the pilots diverted to Rabaul claiming they were out of hours. They were determined to avoid an overnight stay in Kieta. So what had been touted as a direct six-hour flight took two days before we landed on the grass airstrip at Aropa, 22 kilometres from Kieta town. We stood under an aircrafts wing sheltering from the burning sun until Greg Wall arrived and took us to Aropa plantation. More than an hour later, Denehy drove up in a LandRover along with the Bougainville District Commissioner, Pat Mollison (6). Mollison exchanged pleasantries before boarding the aircraft we had arrived in to fly back to his headquarters at Sohano. He did not visit Kieta again but maintained a peripheral involvement with CRA affairs until his departure on leave. Kieta from the air and nearby landmarks and features Maps, Images & Notes Maps Map 1 Bougainville District in the 1960s showing main towns (Bill Brown) Map 2 Bill and familys journey from the Sepik to Bougainville (Bill Brown) Images Photo 1 - The Brown family in 1966 Michael, Pamela, David and Bill Photo 2 - Peter Steele, Cadet Patrol Officer, Kieta 1966 Photo 3 - Beautiful Kieta from the air. (1) Arovo Island. (2) Bakawari Island. (3) Outer reef. (4) Tautsina or Pok Pok Island. (5) Kieta Harbour. (6) Bobuan, CRA's initial coastal base. (7) Pidia village (Tiny Wendt, CRA) Notes 1 - Donald Stuart Grove, son of an eminent Methodist clergyman, probably mirrored some of his fathers traits. He was friendly but reserved, did not drink or smoke, was almost prim and proper (something of a paradox as a kiap) but was liked and respected. During World War II he had served with the AIF in the Middle East and as a lieutenant in ANGAU. He became Patrol Officer in October 1946 and was posted to Kainantu in the Eastern Highlands. He completed the first two-year Diploma Course at ASOPA and served in Northern District as ADO Tufi and in Milne Bay as ADO Esaala before being posted to headquarters. 2 - Maxwell Joseph Denehy had served with 2/7th AIF Battalion in the Aitape campaign during the Pacific War and was wounded, shot in the right shoulder. He became a Cadet Patrol Officer in November 1946 and served in the Sepik and Madang Districts before attending the two-year Diploma Course at the ASOPA in 1952-53. He then spent three terms in the Papuan Gulf at Ihu Patrol Post, Kerema and Kikori before being posted to Kieta in 1958. Although taciturn and sardonic, Denehy was highly respected by his confreres and staff. 3 - Desmond James (Des) Clancy served in the Royal Australian Air Force from September 1943 until discharged as a Sergeant pilot in May 1945. He became a Patrol Officer in May 1946 and, after a period in the Western District, was involved in the re-opening of the pre-war station at Lake Kutubu. Clancy played a major role in the early post-war exploration of the Southern Highlands and led what kiap and author James Sinclair described as one of the greatest patrols ever made in PNG. He served as District Officer in the Sepik District prior to being posted to Bougainville as District Commissioner early in 1961. He was a big, suave man with a ready smile, a twinkling eye and more than a touch of Irish blarney. Phillips described him as a conciliator; others described him as a two-fisted man. 4 - Robert George Godden was in his twentieth year and had been a Cadet Patrol Officer for almost 18 months when he was tasked with ascertaining the reaction of the people in the prospecting area. Godden completed one term as a kiap then returned to Australia. As a Detective Inspector in the New South Wales Police, he was involved in a number of notable cases including the backpacker murders. 5 - Peter Donald Steele was 19-years old and had been a Cadet Patrol Officer for just over a year when he undertook his first solo patrol to the Guava area in February 1966. After one term as a kiap, he returned to Australia to pursue a teaching career. 6 - Patrick John Mollison became a Patrol Officer in 1936 and served as a Coastwatcher and a liaison officer with the US patrol boats in World War II. In the post-war years, he served in New Britain, New Ireland and Manus and was appointed a District Commissioner in 1957. At Bougainville, his last outstation posting, he created no waves and was said to avoid the trouble spots. He was affable and avuncular and enjoyed his daily visit to the small Sohano club, but was said to have short arms and deep pockets. Lucy, who is frying lamb flaps on a grill, talked about the improved roads and big new buildings. "Just because of the APEC, they're doing up the roads, he said. We need doctors at the hospitals, schools are not being upgraded. Classes are over-populated, there's not enough teachers. We should be having more teachers in government schools." AUCKLAND - In the roadside markets of Port Moresby, vendors struggle to earn a living in a city with few job opportunities. "It's good for the city but I'm not sure for the people living in the city. A lot of people are having an economic crisis. Companies are breaking down. There's been redundancies, I've noticed," she said. 2018 has been a year of crises for PNG that have included deadly tribal violence, political unrest, a polio outbreak and natural disasters. However, the government has poured its focus into preparing for APEC, arguing it will open up trade and investment opportunities and put PNG on the map. But there's been a public outcry over the government's recent purchase of 40 new Maseratis and hundreds of other other luxury vehicles for use in transporting leaders at the summit. Speaking to RNZ Pacific last month, before the Maserati deal became known, New Zealand's Foreign Minister Winston Peters said the government had to help PNG take its chance to unlock its enormous economic and social potential "To enable PNG to pull this APEC hosting role off, yes we are giving them $15 million, Mr Peters said, but it's a serious investment in helping them to better advertise who they are and what they are and how they can be of functional assistance to all of APEC and that's what is so important." The former governor of New Zealand's Reserve Bank, Allan Bollard, is the chairman of the APEC secretariat. He said hosting APEC is thrusting PNG into the limelight. "I think it's offering them leadership on the very big world stage and a way to influence how APEC goes during potentially quite a difficult year with evolving trade frictions between US and China, and some other issues around ASEAN as well, Mr Bollard said. But discussions at this international event won't touch the lives of most of those in PNG. An opposition MP Bryan Kramer warned that the government is borrowing beyond its means and spending in the wrong area. "It seems we're not focussing on our priorities and that is the welfare of the people. If we continue to focus on infrastructure at the expense of the people, eventually society is going to break down." Meanwhile, Australia is deploying about 1,500 military personnel to Moresby for the summit as PNG's security forces are considered too under-resourced to control crime in the city, let alone ensure security at a major event. A series of leadership spills havent helped the Australian economy. Images: Getty Australias enviable economy, natural wonders and strong relationship with China make it a wonder down under, but our politicians love affair with leadership spills could spell an end to all of that. Since 2006, Australia has had six different Prime Ministers thanks to party infighting and politically lethal climate change policies. A leadership coup may be good for politicians ambition, but its bad for the economy, the environment and democracy, a major new report from The Economist argues. Also read: ASX crashes to lowest level in 12 months It is easy to imagine a cycle in which the constant changes of leadership make policymaking even less consistent, further sapping faith in government and making politicians even more timid, Asia editor and report author, Edward McBride said. Attempts to deliver climate change policies have felled several leaders, but the environmental problem isnt going away, he warned. Neither is tepid wage growth. While Australias wage growth used to outpace other developed nations, thats also coming to an end. Policies underpinning this growth, like immigration, are also becoming more politically fraught. If politicians do not sort themselves out, Australia risks becoming as troubled as everywhere else. Also read: Sydney woman accused of $450,000 crypto theft Speaking to Yahoo Finance, McBride said he worries the constant leadership churn is also disenchanting voters. Many Australians complained to me that fewer and fewer MPs had had other careers before getting into politics, although Ive never seen any hard data on it. I think theres something to that concern, he said. But I think career politicians especially ought to be able to see that their current antics are putting voters off, which cant be good for their job security. Big questions need answering Some big questions need to be addressed. How cozy can Australia be with China and the US at the same time? How will Australia secure a sustainable energy future? How will we pay pensions to a growing number of retirees? Story continues Theyre big questions with massive economic, social and environmental ramifications, but difficult to answer while pandering to factions within parties, McBride said. The infighting, in other words, is clearly impeding the business of government, McBride wrote. Also read: This is the industry creating the most millionaires Even if Scott Morrison wanted to pursue bold reforms, he does not have time before the next election, which is due by May. Figuring out where Australia should get its energy from or how warmly to embrace China will have to wait yet another six months, at least. Look to the past for political bravery No other wealthy country has experienced a period of economic growth as long as Australias current stretch, and our relatively open approach to immigration is also a major asset. Australia takes in as many as 190,000 immigrants a year who work, pay taxes and have children all useful to address an ageing population. Then theres Australias world-class health-care and superannuation systems. Im surprised by how few Australians seem to realise how much their country stands out, McBride told Yahoo Finance. Not just in terms of how long it has gone without a recession, but also in terms of income growth, immigration and economic reform. Its an amazing record, and one that its really important not to jeopardise. The good news is Australia only needs to look to the past for leadership inspiration. Responding to questioning on which countries Australia should attempt to emulate when it comes to addressing political infighting and climate change, McBride said we dont need to look outside our own country. [Australia] has managed to make important, ambitious reforms stick in other areas. Think of super, or gun control, or immigration. The key is to get both Labor and the coalition on board. The problem at the moment is that one wing of the Liberal party undermines all attempts to stake out a centrist position on climate, he continued. Also read: When it comes to house prices, it seems you cant win Quoting University of Sydney emeritus professor in government, Rod Tiffen, McBride said leadership spills will continue until parties are penalised come election time. However, if the Wentworth by-election is anything to go by, the Liberal party will soon feel the full anti-spill backlash. I think Australian voters are sensible and the electoral system is intelligent, so there is a good chance that politics will correct itself, McBride said. Get Yahoo Finances top news and tips straight to your inbox. Sign up here. Germany's far right is trying to rehabilitate the German Empire and its role in World War I, resuming a decades-old debate ahead of the centenary of the armistice. The magazine Compact, which is close to the anti-immigration Alternative for Germany (AfD), is publishing a special November issue dedicated to the 1919 Treaty of Versailles which held the Reich responsible for the Great War and compelled the country to make colossal reparations. The title recalls the rhetoric used in the 1920s by those nostalgic for Imperial Germany and the Nazis: "The shame of Versailles: how the victorious powers enslaved Germany". Its online story is headlined "Germany in chains". The aim is to reevaluate the German Empire (1871-1918) which for decades has been seen in the collective consciousness as the first of the destructive powers of the 20th century. - 'Bid for world power' - Hamburg University historian Fritz Fischer in the early 1960s confronted the German public with the then controversial thesis that Imperial Germany carried the sole responsibility for the war and the horrors of the Somme, Verdun and Gallipoli. In his work "Griff nach der Weltmacht" (Bid for World Power), Fischer argued that the Germany of William II, dominated by a racist and imperialist elite, had deliberately instigated World War I in a bid to become a world power. Fischer argued that Berlin used the crisis sparked by the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand to go to war with France and Russia to create a German-dominated Europe and Africa -- and that this unfulfilled ambition paved the way for the Nazi regime to follow. This overturned the then entrenched national belief that Germany had fought a defensive war. Joern Leonhard of Freiburg University said Fischer's views -- at heart a "virulent criticism of the German Empire, militarism and imperialism" -- are "still broadly shared today by the left". By contrast, the AfD wants to "glorify the Empire" as a state that "was modern, had strong industrial development and was very conservative", said historian Klaus-Peter Sick. Representatives of the extreme right in their speeches praise the former Imperial Chancellor Otto von Bismarck (1815-1898) and the era of "Prussian Palaces". Sick said that "the values of the German Reich correspond" to those of the AFD, "discipline and order". AfD leader Alexander Gauland went so far as to describe the Hitler regime as a "mere speck of bird shit" relative to "1,000 years of glorious German history". Sick said that the goal of the far-right, at a time when the last eye-witnesses are disappearing, is to ensure "that the Germans are proud of their history and the German nation and stop seeing the spectre of Nazism everywhere". - Old wounds - Public interest in the origins of the First World War was revived with the 2013 release of the bestseller "The Sleepwalkers: How Europe went to war in 1914" by Australian historian Christopher Clark of Cambridge University. Rather than just blame Germany and the Austro-Hungarian empire, Clark argues that other European powers shared an imperialist paranoia and, without intending to, sleepwalked into the first industrial-scale war. The success of the book among German readers "betrayed a deep-rooted need to free themselves from blame and guilt," said the conservative daily Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung. The AfD's Bavaria chapter has promoted Clark's tome on its website. While Germany has gone to great lengths to remember and atone for World War II, Nazi atrocities and the Holocaust, remembrance of the First World War is far more low-key. Even in this centenary year, commemorations remain minimal. The foreign ministry hosted a conference entitled "Winning peace" in mid-October, but it was not open to the general public. German Chancellor Angela Merkel will only participate in one ceremony, alongside French President Emmanuel Macron, on November 10 in Rethondes, the site of the signing of the Armistice. "German politicians attach great importance to not opening old wounds," said Leonhard. While Germany has gone to great lengths to remember and atone for World War II, remembrance of the First World War is far more low-key Nationalist Bosnian Serb student Gavrilo Princip (second right) being arrested on June 28 1914 after assassinating Archduke Franz Ferdinand of Austria and his wife in Sarajevo Representatives of the extreme right praise the former Imperial Chancellor Otto von Bismarck Alexander Gauland, leader of the hard-right Alternative for Germany (AfD) party, described Hitler's regime as a 'mere speck' in '1,000 years of glorious German history' Afghans will risk their lives to vote in legislative elections in southern Afghanistan on Saturday, after the Taliban-claimed killing of a powerful police chief delayed the ballot by a week. More than half a million people -- the vast majority of them men -- are registered to vote in Kandahar province where organisers are under pressure to avoid last weekend's debacle that forced the Independent Election Commission (IEC) to extend the nationwide ballot by a day. Problems with untested biometric verification devices, missing or incomplete voter rolls and absent election workers following Taliban threats to attack the ballot forced Afghans to wait hours outside polling stations, many of which opened late or not at all. Despite fears of similar problems in Kandahar, the birthplace of the Taliban, IEC deputy spokesman Kobra Rezaei told AFP on Friday that "we are absolutely ready". Voting in the province was postponed following the October 18 death of General Abdul Raziq, an anti-Taliban strongman seen as a bulwark against the insurgency in the south, amid fears of violence flaring up. Raziq was among three people killed in an insider attack on a high-level security meeting in Kandahar city that was attended by General Scott Miller, the top US and NATO commander in Afghanistan. Miller escaped unhurt, but US Brigadier General Jeffrey Smiley was among 13 people wounded in the shooting claimed by the Taliban. It is hoped that the appointment of Tadeen Khan -- a brother of Raziq and a member of the Afghan security forces -- as acting provincial police chief will help keep a lid on polling day unrest. "We are willing to vote and we will come out even if it costs our lives," registered voter Samiullah told AFP. "Afghanistan has been torn by war and that's why we must decide our future and vote for our candidates." - Election death toll - IEC figures show around four million people voted in last weekend's parliamentary election that was held in 32 out of 34 provinces after months of chaotic preparations. That compares with nearly nine million on the voter roll, but many suspect a significant number of those were based on fake identification documents that fraudsters planned to use to stuff ballot boxes. Scores of attacks marred the first day of the election on October 20, with an AFP tally showing nearly 300 civilians and security forces were killed or wounded in poll-related violence. That was significantly higher than the government's casualty figures, supporting speculation that officials had deliberately downplayed the violence so voters would not be scared off. The discrepancy also added to concerns about the lack of transparency and credibility of the election, which is more than three years late and the third since the fall of the Taliban in 2001. More than 2,500 candidates, including mullahs, journalists and sons of warlords, are competing for 249 seats in the lower house. The election is seen as a dry run for next year's presidential vote and an important milestone ahead of a UN meeting in Geneva in November where Afghanistan is under pressure to show progress on "democratic processes". The IEC is scheduled to release preliminary results on November 10. Electoral employees load ballot boxes onto a truck ahead of legislative election in Kandahar province, where voting was postponed following the October 18 death of General Abdul Raziq More than half a million people are registered to vote in Kandahar province where organisers are under pressure to avoid last weekend's debacle Electoral chiefs in Kandahar, the birthplace of the Taliban, insist they are ready for the vote Saturday Afghan General Abdul Raziq, was among three people killed in an insider attack on a high-level security meeting in Kandahar city that was attended by General Scott Miller, the top US and NATO commander in Afghanistan German Chancellor Angela Merkel and Czech premier Andrej Babis agreed Friday to focus on economic development in Africa to try to slow migration into the European Union. "We are both convinced that we must achieve a win-win situation where the economic development of African countries will be possible and will give local young people reasons to see their future in these countries rather than having to leave," Merkel told reporters in Prague. Babis, who is known for his anti-migrant stance, stood by her side at the joint press conference. "We are of the view that we must cooperate with African countries, primarily in the economy to enable them to fare well," said Babis, a billionaire businessman turned politician. "We are discussing this and I suppose that we have the same opinion on the way to solve illegal migration systematically," he added. Babis said he intended to attend a conference in mid-November in Sicily focused on forging cooperation between the EU and Africa on tackling migration issues. The Czech Republic and fellow eastern EU states Hungary, Poland and Slovakia rejected a German-backed EU plan to introduce a mandatory quota system to distribute migrants and refugees across the bloc, following the 2015 migrant crisis. EU leaders dropped the mandatory quota plan in June. They agreed instead to consider setting up "disembarkation platforms" outside the bloc, most likely in North Africa, in a bid to discourage migrants boarding EU-bound smuggler boats. The deal also includes plans to set up secure centres on European soil to process new arrivals, to sort refugees in need of protection out from economic migrants who should be sent back. The central European states of Poland, Hungary, Slovakia and the Czech Republic hailed the agreement as a victory. After allowing more than one million asylum seekers into Germany since 2015, Merkel was forced this July to agree to tighten border controls and set up closed "transit centres" to hold migrants on the Austrian frontier. German Chancellor Angela Merkel held talks in Prague with Czech Prime Minister Andrej Babis, who has taken a tough line on immigration along with several other central European leaders RALEIGH, N.C., Oct. 26, 2018 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Twenty individuals were recently honored with the Governors Awards for Excellence at a ceremony hosted by the Office of State Human Resources and sponsored by the member-funded SECU Foundation. Honorees were nominated by their peers for the award, which recognizes staff members for their extraordinary accomplishments or meritorious service to the State and citizens of North Carolina, and is the highest privilege a state employee may receive. SECU Foundation Board Chair Cynthia Jolly welcomed guests to the ceremony held at the North Carolina Museum of History in Raleigh, with officials from State Employees Credit Union (SECU) and the Foundation also in attendance. Ms. Jolly remarked, There is no doubt that North Carolinas state employees are invaluable in their roles as public servants. Their passion and outstanding commitment to others are an inspiration to their colleagues, fellow citizens, and communities throughout the state. On behalf of all Credit Union members, SECU Foundation is proud to sponsor the awards ceremony and convey our genuine support and appreciation for the contributions made by these distinguished individuals. These state employees demonstrate compassion for their fellow North Carolinians and an unselfish devotion to serving our state, Governor Roy Cooper said. They put others first, and make life in North Carolina better as a result. Todays honorees have gone the extra mile to make a positive and lasting difference. The 2018 Governors Awards for Excellence were presented in the following categories Customer Service, Efficiency and Innovation, Human Relations, Outstanding State Government Service, Public Service, and Safety and Heroism. Recipients include: Customer Service Michael Last (University of North Carolina at Wilmington); Efficiency and Innovation Brian Maney (University of North Carolina, System Office); Team of Robert Leon, Tony Danks, Tracey L. Goodwin, Tass W. Jansen, Sharon Jones, Jamie Lamar Murphy, and William G. Robbins, II (Department of Public Safety/Correction Enterprises); Dane Johnston (North Carolina State University); David Josephus (North Carolina State University); Human Relations Tanya J. Dearmon (Department of Revenue); Outstanding State Government Service Roy Jackson Marshall, III (Department of Natural and Cultural Resources); Public Service A. Michelle Bryant (Department of Public Safety); Paula C. Gillikin (Department of Environmental Quality); Safety and Heroism Dwight L. Braswell (Department of Public Safety), Rick Dickerson (Department of Health and Human Services), Megan Kathleen Hess (Department of Public Safety), Cory M. Hinkle (Department of Public Safety, National Guard), David Setser (North Carolina State University). About SECU and the SECU Foundation A not-for-profit financial cooperative owned by its members, SECU has been providing employees of the State of North Carolina and their families with consumer financial services for 81 years. The Credit Union also offers a diversified line of financial advisory services including retirement and education planning, tax preparation, insurance, trust and estate planning services, and investments through its partners and affiliated entities. SECU serves over 2.3 million members through 265 branch offices, nearly 1,100 ATMs, 24/7 Member Services via phone and a website, www.ncsecu.org. The SECU Foundation, a 501(c)(3) charitable organization funded by the contributions of SECU members, promotes local community development in North Carolina primarily through high impact projects in the areas of housing, education, healthcare and human services. Since 2004, SECU Foundation has made a collective financial commitment of more than $154 million for initiatives to benefit North Carolinians statewide. Contact: Jama Campbell, Executive Director Office: 919-839-5562 | secufoundation@ncsecu.org From virtual reality police training programmes to gun-toting drones and iris scanners, a public security expo in China showed the range of increasingly high-tech tools available to the country's police. The exhibition, which ran Tuesday to Friday in Beijing, emphasised surveillance and monitoring technology just as the Communist government's domestic security spending has skyrocketed. Facial-recognition screens analysing candid shots of conference attendees were scattered around the exhibition hall, while other vendors packed their booths with security cameras. More innocuous applications, like smart locks for homes and big data applications to reduce traffic congestion, also occupied large swathes of the conference. But the high-end devices on display highlighted the emphasis that China has put on equipping its security forces with gear of the future. Megvii, an artificial intelligence company backed by e-commerce giant Alibaba, demoed different pairs of "smart" sunglasses, which sound an alarm when they spot a suspect. And they don't come cheap -- one pair costs around 20,000 yuan ($2,900), according to an employee manning Megvii's booth. Similar eyewear made global headlines in February when police in the central city of Zhengzhou used them to spot potential suspects in a crowded train station. Multiple companies also showed off iris scanners, which specialise in detecting and matching unique patterns on the iris, the coloured part of the human eye. "From fetal stage to adolescence to adulthood, the iris stays the same," James Wang, marketing director at IrisKing, explained to AFP. Compared to fingerprinting and facial recognition, the error rate for matching irises is also lower. "Since iris recognition is done in vivo, it's also very hard to fake," he added. - Big spending - China spent an estimated 1.24 trillion yuan on domestic security in 2017, a 12.4 percent increase from the year before, according to a March report by Adrian Zenz, a China security expert at Germany's European School of Culture and Theology. Bolstering security in China's minority regions has been a priority, according to Zenz's report. In Tibet, where numerous Tibetans have self-immolated in protest at Beijing's policies over the years, domestic security spending rose more than 400 percent between 2007 and 2016 -- almost double the growth in spending across all provinces and regions for the same period. In the restive northwest region of Xinjiang, where the government has used an array of surveillance equipment, the security spending spree ballooned nearly 100 percent in 2017 -- twice its spending on healthcare, according to Zenz. A UN panel has cited estimates that up to one million ethnic Uighurs and other Muslim minorities have been placed in internment camps in Xinjiang, a charge rejected by Beijing, which says it is combating separatism and religious extremism through vocational education. - Killer drones - The rapid deployment of surveillance-focused technology across China is not new -- police in Guiyang tracked down a BBC reporter in just seven minutes for a report on the southwest city's network of cameras last year. But the security expo shows how broadly technology is being applied to a variety of challenges for the country?s public security forces. A Shenzhen-based tech company called ZNV is using video analysis, such as the detection of facial "micro-expressions", to analyse emotional responses. One application is police interrogation, though the product is still in the pilot stage. At a booth run by the First Research Institute of the public security ministry, conference attendees took turns trying a VR game meant to teach police about proper firearm usage. One attendee waved around a fake gun in a simulated takedown of thieves who had robbed a fruit shop. Feedback from public security departments has been very good, said Gan Tian, the chief marketing officer at Wuhan-based tech company KitSprite, which is partnering with the First Research Institute. For instance, using VR, practical training of standard procedures can be conducted "in an unlimited time and space", Gan told AFP. So far, the ministry has over 30 VR training modules for police, all developed by KitSprite. In the pursuit of high-tech police products, however, some companies seem to have got a little carried away. For instance, drones developed by Harwar, a Shenzhen-based company, can come with a number of add-ons, including a "net gun module" that launches a net to ensnare criminals on the run. Facial-recognition screens analysing candid shots of conference attendees were scattered around the exhibition hall The exhibition was held as the Communist government's domestic security spending has skyrocketed China spent an estimated 1.24 trillion yuan on domestic security in 2017, a 12.4 percent increase from the year before WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange would end his five-year stay in Ecuador's London embassy and hand himself over to British authorities if given assurances he would not face extradition to the United States, his lawyer said Friday. Assange has been holed up at the embassy since 2012, concerned that a British arrest warrant would result in his extradition to the United States, where he could be tried for revealing state secrets. Assange would "face up" to surrendering to British authorities who want to arrest him for breaching bail conditions, said his lawyer Carlos Poveda. "In British justice, he could even be sentenced to three to six months' imprisonment," Poveda said. "But what is being requested from the legal team is that there is a necessary assurance that after that sentence he will not be extradited to the United States." This would be "an extremely important condition" for the 47-year-old Australian, the lawyer said. Ecuador gave Assange diplomatic protection in 2012 after a British judge ruled he should be extradited to Sweden to face allegations of sexual assault there. Sweden dropped its investigation last year, but British authorities say they still want to arrest him for breaching his bail conditions. Assange claims the accusations were politically motivated and could lead to him being extradited to the United States to face imprisonment over the release by WikiLeaks of secret US military documents and diplomatic cables in 2010. The Australian's relationship with his Ecuadoran hosts has steadily turned sour. Last week, he announced he was suing the Quito government, saying new rules imposed on his stay violated his rights to unfettered communications with the outside world. On Thursday, Eduador's attorney general Inigo Salvador told reporters that Quito has proposed that either Assange turn himself in to British justice, or continue to live in the embassy under strict rules. WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange seen at a window of Ecuador's embassy in London on February 5, 2016 Austrian Foreign Minister Karin Kneissl called in an interview with a German newspaper Friday for an EU embargo on weapons deliveries to Saudi Arabia. "Above all the awful war in Yemen and the Qatar crisis should lead us to finally act in a united fashion as the European Union towards Saudi Arabia," Kneissl told Die Welt. "If we as the whole EU stopped weapons deliveries to Saudi Arabia, that could be a contribution towards ending this conflict," she said. She added that Austria had not sent any military equipment to Saudi Arabia since the beginning of the war in Yemen in March 2015. She condemned the murder of journalist Jamal Khashoggi as "deeply shocking" and an "unprecedented crime" but said it was only "the worst example of the "horrors" committed by the Saudi government. The Austrian opposition accused the government of confusion in its policy after government MPs failed to support a motion in parliament on Thursday to ban weapons sales to Saudi Arabia. However, this was because the wording of that motion could have included small arms, whereas the government's position is to ban only exports of heavy weaponry for military use, foreign ministry spokesman Peter Guschelbauer told AFP. Kneissl told Die Welt that in her opinion the past two years had seen a "massive deterioration in the human rights situation in Saudi Arabia", pointing to a large rise in the number of political prisoners. She has cancelled a visit she was due to make to Saudi Arabia in December. Responding to opposition calls to close down a Saudi-backed centre for inter-religious dialogue in Vienna, Kneissl said on Thursday that she had shown the centre a "dark yellow card". She said that the KAICIID centre would have to implement reforms including decreasing its financial dependence on Riyadh. Austria's Foreign Minister Karin Kneissl, pictured August 2018, said that the "awful war in Yemen and the Qatar crisis should lead us to finally act in a united fashion as the European Union towards Saudi Arabia" Australia is setting up a billion-dollar fund to "future proof" the country against droughts, Prime Minister Scott Morrison said Friday, as farmers struggle with a "big dry" forecast to continue for months. Eastern Australia has been hit by a crippling drought -- in some areas for several years -- that has forced graziers to hand-feed their stock, sell them or even shoot them dead to stay afloat. The severe conditions are expected to continue, with more areas further south drying out as the country heads into the southern hemisphere summer season, according to Bureau of Meteorology forecasts. The unfolding crisis has sparked a raft of support measures from the government, including Aus$1.8 billion (US$1.3 billion) in financial aid for farmers and local communities launched in August. Morrison said a new fund with a kitty of Aus$3.9 billion would be established to pay for drought resilience and water projects in the coming decade. "(It) means we better future-proof against drought over the next 10 years and beyond," Morrison told commercial broadcaster Channel Nine ahead of a summit with agricultural leaders to discuss the drought. "We are doing a lot to back the farmers in the rural communities. Focusing on relief, but also on recovery, build resilience into the future." The government's Australian Bureau of Agricultural and Resource Economics (ABARES) said at the summit that the drought, while severe, covered a smaller area compared to a previous extreme dry in 2002-03. But the bureau added that in the east, home to important areas for livestock and crops, rainfall was 40 percent lower than the 20-year average. Even so, farm incomes were less likely to plunge as significantly as in previous drought periods amid "more favourable economic circumstances and other factors" such as improved productivity, ABARES said. - Dry extending further south - The drought, coupled with damaging frost in some areas, is set to produce the smallest winter grain crop in 10 years, according to a forecast from Rabobank, a specialist agribusiness bank. "The 2018/19 winter crop will go down as one of the worst in eastern Australia's history," it said in a report this week. The weather bureau meanwhile forecast that the next three months would be drier and warmer than average, meaning "a low chance of recovery for drought-affected areas of eastern Australia". Farmers have received some rain relief over the past month, but experts say the wet spell is not enough to break the drought after the extended dry period, and the heaviest downpours mostly fell in less affected areas. The weather bureau's long-range forecasts chief Andrew Watkins told AFP more areas are drying out, such as in Victoria, southeast South Australia and the southern coast of Western Australia states. The worst-hit areas have so far been in the eastern interior -- western New South Wales and southwestern Queensland. Queensland is currently experiencing a heatwave, with the inland outback town of Birdsville reaching a sizzling 44.7 degrees Celsius (112.5 degrees Fahrenheit) on Thursday -- very high temperatures for this time of the year. Watkins said there were two major climate drivers set to keep conditions drier and warmer in the near-term -- the warming El Nino weather phenomenon in the Pacific Ocean which has a 70 percent chance of forming this year, and the Indian Ocean Dipole. Eastern Australia has been hit by a crippling drought that has forced graziers to hand-feed their stock, sell them or even shoot them dead to stay afloat Map forecasting rainfall in Australia territory from November 2018 to January 2019 Australia's Bureau of Meteorology forecast the weather would provide little relief to farmers over the next three months Rainfall in the east of Australia was 40 percent lower than the 20-year average Eastern Australia has been hit by a crippling drought that has forced graziers to hand-feed their stock, sell them or even shoot them dead to stay afloat Full-back Dan Evans's late try saw an under-strength Ospreys beat Connacht 22-17 in the Pro14 at Bridgend's Brewery Field on Friday. It seemed the Welsh regional side and Irish visitors Connacht were heading for a draw at 17-17 in the 80th minute. But Ospreys centre Cory Allen made a break before almost crossing Connacht's line, with Evans then going over although it needed the television match official to adjudicate before the try could be awarded. Keelan Giles had earlier scored two tries for the Ospreys, with debutant scrum-half Harri Morgan also going over as well. Connacht's points came from second-half tries by Bundi Aki and captain Jarrad Butler, with Jack Carty kicking a drop-goal and a conversion. Wales flanker Dan Lydiate, returning from a month out with a shoulder injury , was the only Ospreys player released by the national squad ahead of next month's internationals taking part in Friday's match. In total, the Ospreys were without 20 players, including all of their other Wales internationals. Connacht, however, fielded their Ireland quartet of Aki, scrum-half Kieran Marmion, second-row Quinn Roux and prop Finlay Bealham in their starting line-up. But it was Ospreys who went 10-3 up on the back of two tries from wing Giles. Connacht responded with a drop-goal from Carty. Ospreys were a man down six minutes into the second half when No 8 Rob McCusker was sin-binned for a high tackle on Connacht wing Cian Kelleher. But despite being down to 14, Ospreys crossed for their third try six minutes later when Morgan was on hand to support an Allen break into the 22. Connacht, though, hit back through tries from Aki and Buttler before the Ospreys snatched victory right at the finish. Wales' centre Cory Allen, pictured September 2015, made a break before almost crossing Connacht's line, with Dan Evans then going over Facebook said Friday it had taken down accounts linked to an Iranian effort to influence US and British politics with posts about charged topics such as immigration and race relations. The social network identified 82 pages, groups and accounts that originated in Iran and violated policy on coordinated "inauthentic" behavior, Facebook head of cybersecurity policy Nathaniel Gleicher said. Gleicher said there was overlap with accounts taken down earlier this year and linked to Iran state media, but the identity of the culprits had yet to be determined. "It's often hard to know who is behind this type of activity," Gleicher said in a telephone briefing. Account owners tried to hide their identities by passing themselves off mostly as US citizens, and in a few cases as British citizens, according to Gleicher. Posts on the accounts or pages, which included some hosted by Facebook-owned Instagram, focused mostly on "sowing discord" via strongly divisive issues rather than on particular candidates or campaigns. Accounts and pages dated back several years, but most of the online activity took place in the past year, according to Facebook. The campaign involved the purchase of two online ads, costing a total of $100 paid for in US and Canadian currencies, the first of which ran in June of 2016 and the second of which ran at the start of this year. The purge involved 30 pages, 33 accounts and three groups at Facebook, as well as 16 accounts at Instagram. - One million followers - Slightly more than a million accounts followed at least one of the pages, with the majority of the engagement taking place over the past year, according to Facebook. Accounts involved in the influence campaign hosted seven real-world events, but Gleicher did not reveal details about whether they took place or how well they were attended. Sample posts shared by Facebook included inflammatory commentary about US President Donald Trump, British Prime Minister Theresa May, and the controversy around freshly appointed US Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh. Facebook said it spotted the coordinated activity a week ago, and moved quickly to stop it given US midterms elections on November 6. "We continue to get better at finding and taking down these bad actors, but we face smart, well-funded adversaries," Gleicher said. Some of the accounts shut down were linked to a stealth influence campaign out of Iran shut down by Facebook in August, according to the leading social network. Google at the time also blocked YouTube channels and other accounts over the misinformation campaign linked to Iran, on the heels of similar moves by Facebook and Twitter. Google said that working with the cybersecurity firm FireEye, it linked the accounts to the Islamic Republic of Iran Broadcasting as part of an effort dating to at least January 2017. A FireEye report released in August detailed its findings and expressed confidence in attributing influence campaigns to Iran. Facebook said it was often hard to know the identities of individuals behind coordinated influence campaigns Facebook's "war room" aimed at curbing foreign influence campaigns was unveiled to media earlier this month The use of mobile messaging platform Whatsapp to spread false information during the Brazilian presidential campaign has reached "a scope never before seen" and is a "constant worry" for Organization of American States (OAS) observers, the head of the mission said Thursday. "This is the first time we've seen the use of Whatsapp to spread fake news in a democracy," mission spokesperson Laura Chinchilla said during a meeting with representatives from leftist candidate Fernando Haddad's Workers' Party (PT) in Sao Paulo. Haddad will face far-right candidate Jair Bolsonaro in the election's second round October 28. Facebook-owned WhatsApp is extremely popular in Brazil, with 120 million users in a country of about 210 million people. Messages on WhatsApp are encrypted, meaning they're impossible for third parties to read, and therefore "harder for authorities to access and investigate," Chinchilla said. She said users tend to trust WhatsApp messages because they're often sent to them by people they know. "The phenomenon of fake news has taken nearly every democracy in the world by surprise, and what we're finding a lot of the time is that authorities are overwhelmed," Chinchilla, the former president of Costa Rica, said. "It's a very recent phenomenon and possibly at a magnitude we haven't yet considered." Chinchilla explained that election observers had been on the lookout for fake news after its proliferation during the 2016 US election. She said observers in Brazil "weren't prepared for" the spread of fake news to move from "public networks to private areas such as WhatsApp." The last three weeks of the campaign have been marked by complaints, especially from PT, over the spread of fake news. And journalists have faced threats after warning against broad, calculated efforts by Bolsonaro supporters to use WhatsApp to spread false information. Chinchilla said she had also received complaints of fake news from Bolsonaro's team, with which she has not met. She said those complaints were forwarded to the appropriate authorities and that "we're going to commit to following up" on them. She also called attention to "discourse that tends to incentivize political violence," advocating for a more civil tone during campaigns. Bolsonaro won the highest share of the election's first-round votes October 7 with 46 percent, compared to Haddad's 29 percent. The two will face off in a second-round contest October 28, with Bolsonaro seen as the considerable favorite. Messages on messaging platform Whatsapp are encrypted and impossible for third parties to read The French government on Friday ordered a three-month ban of a widely used pesticide after dozens of people, many of them farm workers, fell ill in western France in recent weeks. The move came after metam sodium was suspected when victims reported burning eyes and respiratory difficulties near Angers, an area which produces huge amounts of lamb's lettuce, also known as cornsalad. The salad green is popular on French and European tables, and producers often spread metam sodium powder on the ground to protect the plants against a wide range of insects. But the product, one of the most widely used pesticides in the US and Europe, is considered a "probable human carcinogen" by the US Environmental Protection Agency and is not meant to be applied directly to plants. There have been at least three outbreaks of illness in the Maine-et-Loire department since September 28, possibly because the product was improperly applied on land that was too dry during a period of unseasonably warm weather, officials said. Of the 61 reported cases, 17 people had to be briefly hospitalised, prompting local authorities to suspend metam sodium use earlier this month. The national ban "is a wise decision for the health of our farm workers and citizens," local lawmakers in President Emmanuel Macron's LREM party said in a statement. "We now need to help producers to quickly roll out existing alternatives" to the pesticide, they said. Metam sodium, sold under brand names including Vapam and Sectagon, is authorised in the EU until 2022, when it will come up for review by regulators. France has suspended a pesticide, metam sodium, used widely to protect lettuce from insects after several people fell ill A Japanese journalist freed from Syria this week arrived home to overjoyed relatives and supporters, but also to vitriol from some who accuse him and other hostages of reckless behaviour. Jumpei Yasuda was kidnapped in Syria in 2015, and spent more than three years in conditions he described as "hell." He arrived back in Japan on Thursday night, greeted by his delighted wife and parents, who had brought him homemade Japanese food to celebrate. But even before Yasuda set foot on Japanese soil, he was the target of angry criticism -- mostly online -- ranging from accusations of recklessness to claims that he was not even Japanese. "He is disturbing society," wrote one Twitter user. "He's an anti-citizen," charged another. Perhaps anticipating the criticism, Yasuda's only statement upon arrival, read to reporters by his wife Myu, was dominated by an apology. "I apologise for causing such trouble and worry, but thanks to all of you, I was able to come home safely," he said. The anger directed at Yasuda -- author of books on the conflicts in Syria and Iraq, whose reporting has appeared on Japanese television -- is a far cry from the reception that journalism held hostage have received in other countries upon their release. When four French journalists held by the Islamic State group in Syria were released, then-French president Francois Hollande met the men as they arrived home. - 'It's your fault - But in Japan, freed hostages have often met a mixed reception, with critics suggesting victims were responsible for getting themselves kidnapped. "They are the victims, they haven't broken the law, but they have to apologise. It's strange, but it's the mentality of a part of Japanese society," said Toshiro Terada, a professor of philosophy at Sophia University in Tokyo. "The person is accused of having harmed society." In one of the more shocking examples of the reaction, three Japanese men held hostage in Iraq and freed in 2004 arrived home to find people at the airport holding up banners reading "It's your fault." Their kidnappers had threatened to burn them alive if Tokyo failed to withdraw non-combat troops stationed in southern Iraq. But then-prime minister Junichiro Koizumi refused the demands, and even declined to meet with the families of the hostages, a hardline position that was applauded in some quarters of Japanese society. The government itself, supported by right-wing media, described the men as "irresponsible youths" for having ignored warnings to avoid travel to Iraq, then an active war zone. One of the men, Noriaki Imai, said recently he received letters saying "die" or calling him "stupid." "Online, the bashing lasted ten years," he said. - 'Professional hostage' - Yasuda has faced similar criticism for venturing to Syria, a country where several Japanese citizens were kidnapped and eventually executed. Compounding the antagonism is the fact that Yasuda was kidnapped once before, in Iraq in 2004, prompting some to describe him as a "professional hostage." And detractors have claimed Yasuda is not even Japanese, partly as the result of a bizarre hostage video showing him and another captive in Syria that emerged in August. Despite speaking Japanese, he identified himself as a South Korean called "Omar", apparently after his kidnappers banned him from revealing his identity or nationality. "This guy isn't even Japanese," wrote one Twitter user. "He should go back to his country, South Korea," added another. A string of kidnappings of journalists in Syria at the height of the country's war exposed differences in how governments and publics responded. Some governments paid ransoms, while others refused, and while countries celebrated their journalists as heroes, others quietly criticised them for taking unnecessary risks. In Japan, mainstream media outlets and officials have largely avoided criticising Yasuda and other hostages, but the antipathy expressed online concerns journalists like Toru Tamakawa, a commentator for TV Asahi. "In the case of Yasuda particularly, the argument that 'it's his fault' must be firmly rejected," he said this week. "We need people who will risk their lives to go and get information on the ground." Journalist Jumpei Yasuda has faced hostility from fellow Japanese since arriving back home after spending three years in captivity in the Middle East Yasuda's parents welcomed their son with homemade food and open arms, but the reaction online in Japan has not been as positive In this picture, which emerged while Yasuda was in captivity, he holds a sign saying 'Help me please. This is my last chance' and showing his name A father trying to protect his family has been filmed shooting a fully grown grizzly bear as it charged at him in his backyard. Lawrence Michalchuk said he and his family had been living in fear since a female bear and her three cubs had made themselves at home in the backyard of his home in British Colombia. Unable to go outside without feeling threatened, the 54-year-old decided to fire a warning shot in an effort to scare off the family. Footage captured by Mr Michalchuks wife shows him yelling at the grizzly before it suddenly turns and starts charging him. Pedalling backwards, Mr Michalchuk raises the 12-gauge shotgun and fires, sending the bear stumbling forward as he makes his escape. Lawrence Michalchuk said he and his family had been living in fear of the grizzly that had been staying in their backyard. Image: YouTube/JLM Are you OK? Oh s**t, where is it? Are you okay? Holy crap, where is she? Where did she go? his distressed wife can be heard asking as they slam the door shut. What are your choices? The Michalchuk family were heavily criticised when they shared the vision to YouTube but Lawrence says his hands were tied. What are your choices? You leave a bear in the yard who thinks it owns your yard and then your kids go out there? Michalchuk told the CBC. By leaving them on the property, youre playing Russian roulette, and Im not doing that with my kids or my family. The Canadian native said its not uncommon for people in the area to protect themselves from bears with guns, saying he couldnt let the bear think it owned his property. The problem was, I was gone for a bit and they got complacent in the yard and took it as theirs, he added. The BC Conservation Service confirmed its investigating the incident. Washington, DC, Oct. 26, 2018 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- On Saturday, November 3, hundreds of friends and families committed to fighting homelessness in our community will gather on the National Mall for the fourth annual Friendship Walks. All proceeds from the fun, family-friendly 1.5-mile walk will benefit Friendship Place, the premier provider of housing services for people experiencing homelessness in the Washington, DC region. Friendship Walks 2018 will center on homelessness among youth. Unaccompanied young people living on the street are at greater risk of experiencing drug addiction, trauma, suicide, sex-trafficking and other forms of exploitation, says Jean-Michel Giraud, Friendship Place President and CEO. Unless they are brought in, the trajectory of life for them is bleak. Guest speakers at the Walk will place a particular focus on the stunning rate of homelessness among LGBTQ youth. Nationally, up to 40 percent of homeless youth receiving agency services identify as LGBTQ. These are young people who are being forced out of their homes after coming out to family, says Giraud. We cannot allow them to be shut out from society for claiming who they are. With Friendship Walks, Friendship Place is saying, Were here for you and all people experiencing homelessness, and so is the community. Two Friendship Place programs especially target youth and young adults who lack stable housing and connect them with the support they need to rebuild their lives. Youth Connect and Before Thirty programs are designed to provide comprehensive care and individualized case management to help them access housing and employment services. Staff provide them with opportunities to achieve stability, and empower them to change the trajectory of their future. In 2018 Friendship Place has ended or prevented homelessness for more than 1,500 people in the Washington region through creative, customized housing solutions. And the annual Friendship Walks is a big part of that success: Since 2014 the event has raised more than a half million dollars to help people in our area leave homelessness for housing. But there is still work to be done, and Friendship Place is counting on the help the community to meet the urgent need in our area. All donations and fundraising dollars will allow the organization to help individuals and familiesmany of whom are sleeping in cars, in shelters, or on the streetfind stable housing and a path back to stability. Friendship Walks participants will be gathering on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial at 9:30 AM for registration and activities. Walking begins immediately following remarks from special guests at 10:30 AM. To learn more about Friendship Walks, visit friendshipwalks.org. ### About Friendship Place Friendship Place is a leader in Washington, DC, in developing solutions to homelessness that have demonstrable results and a lasting impact. Our innovative, customized, person-focused programs empower participants to rebuild their lives, find homes, get jobs and reconnect with friends, family and the community, permanently. Our goal is to end homelessness in Washington, DC, and to lead the way in modeling how this can be done in other parts of the country. Attachment The destruction in Syria's Eastern Ghouta is overwhelming and the humanitarian needs huge, a top Red Cross official said Friday after visiting the former rebel stronghold outside Damascus. Dominik Stillhart, director of operations for the International Committee of the Red Cross, said the scope of the devastation was still emerging, six months after the fighting ended. "I was really overwhelmed by the level of destruction that we found in Eastern Ghouta. I've never seen anything like this ever before," he told journalists in Beirut. After retaking significant territory from the Islamic State group, the government set its sights on recapturing Eastern Ghouta earlier this year, viewing the rebel presence so close to the capital as an affront to its authority. It launched a massive Russian-backed offensive against the besieged rebel enclave that killed more than 1,700 civilians. Tens of thousands of people fled as the enclave's towns surrendered one after the other. Residents have been trickling back to the area but the lack of infrastructure, the fear of arrest and the risk posed by unexploded ordnance are preventing mass returns. "In some parts of Eastern of Ghouta like Harasta where we were, up to 90 percent of infrastructure is completely destroyed," Stillhart said. "It's really breathtaking the level of destruction there," he said after his first visit to the area. He said he saw a boy being given life-saving care by four people in a medical facility in the Eastern Ghouta town of Kafr Batna. "The only light they had was a flash light from a mobile phone," he said. "These are the kind of conditions you would expect to see during the conflict but not six months after the conflict." Syrian children play among bombed out buildings in the Eastern Ghouta town of Zabdin on October 8, 2018. Reconstruction has barely begun, six months after the government's recapture of the longtime rebel stronghold outside Damascus The International Committee of the Red Cross's director of operations, Dominik Stillhart, says the scale of the destruction in the former rebel enclave of Eastern Ghouta outside Damascus is the worst he has seen Irish voters were deciding Friday whether to repeal a ban on blasphemy -- the latest potential reform distancing the once-devout nation from its Catholic past. The referendum was held alongside a presidential election in which incumbent Michael Higgins was expected to secure a new seven-year term in the largely ceremonial post. Voting stations were set to shut at 10:00 pm (2100 GMT) amid reports of low turnout -- seemingly the result of voter indifference and the strong lead displayed by Higgins in recent surveys. Irish law defines blasphemy as a "matter that is grossly abusive or insulting in relation to matters held sacred by any religion, thereby causing outrage among a substantial number of the adherents of that religion". It is currently punishable by a ?25,000 ($28,400) fine, although the last attempted prosecution is believed to have involved a priest who accidentally burnt a bible in 1855 -- before blasphemy was enshrined in the 1937 constitution -- rendering the present-day law largely obsolete. The law was heavily criticised three years ago when police were forced to investigate British TV personality Stephen Fry for calling God "stupid" during an interview. Many high-profile Irish figures have signalled their backing for the referendum for some years. But voters who spoke to AFP in Dublin seemed in the majority perplexed by the decision to hold the vote. - 'A more secular country' - Even local priest Father Walter Macken, who said he considered the blasphemy provision "one of the small guarantees of religious coherence" in Ireland, failed to evoke fire and brimstone over the vote. "It doesn't mean that much to me," the 80-year-old admitted after casting his ballot in central Dublin. "It's not that relevant to the everyday struggles -- even the ones that I'm involved in." "I've never, ever heard a blasphemy in my entire life." This latest vote follows a May referendum when citizens overturned a constitutional abortion ban by a landslide 66 percent. Many saw that vote as a bellwether issue, demonstrating the Catholic Church's diminishing influence in the once highly religious nation. "I think it's definitely becoming a more secular country," said David Tomkin, 70, as he prepared to cast his vote. "But I also think that this blasphemy law is too complicated for most people to understand." The vote count will not take place until Saturday. With the presidential election count to be undertaken first, a government spokesman told AFP it is possible that the referendum outcome will not be known until Sunday. Friday's turnout appeared markedly down on May. One lawmaker reported just 40 percent of eligible voters had turned out at a polling station by evening, whilst there were other unconfirmed reports of turnout as low as 16 percent in some areas late afternoon. "Every single vote matters and with voter turnout being reported as low all over the country, make your vote count," Higgins said on Twitter at 5pm. Ireland's electorate currently stands at around 3.2 million, according to figures from the housing ministry earlier this year. In the presidential vote Higgins, a 77-year-old former parliamentary politician, academic and poet known affectionately to many as "Michael D.", was facing five challengers but was forecast to win convincingly. Irish President Michael Higgins was expected to secure a new seven-year term in the largely ceremonial post Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has made an unannounced visit to Oman, an Arab state with which Israel has no diplomatic ties, and met with Sultan Qaboos, the premier's office said Friday. The two leaders discussed the Middle East peace process "and other issues of shared interest", it said in a statement released after Netanyahu returned from the first such visit by an Israeli premier for more than two decades. Netanyahu was accompanied by his wife Sara and his delegation included Mossad intelligence chief Yossi Cohen and National Security Advisor Meir Ben-Shabbat. The visit came at the invitation of Sultan Qaboos and followed "lengthy contacts between the two countries", the statement said. It formed part of "the policy outlined by Prime Minister Netanyahu on deepening relations with the states of the region", it said. In 1994, then-Israeli premier Yitzhak Rabin visited Oman, and acting prime minister Shimon Peres also made a visit in 1996 and the two countries agreed to open trade representative offices. In October 2000, Oman closed the offices after the outbreak of the second Palestinian intifada. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has made an unannounced visit to Oman, an Arab state with which Israel has no diplomatic ties, and met with Sultan Qaboos A barrage of rockets from Gaza hit Israel during the night, the army said Saturday, hours after five Palestinians were killed during clashes on the Israeli border, in a flareup that could jeopardise truce efforts. The largest projectile attacks in months and the border fatalities came despite talk of progress towards an Egyptian-brokered deal to end months of often violent protests along the border. "Overnight, dozens of rockets were launched from the Gaza Strip at communities in southern Israel," the army said in a statement, putting the exact number in a separate announcement at 30. "The IDF's Iron Dome aerial defense system intercepted approximately 10 projectiles," the army said, adding that two rockets fell within the Gaza Strip while the others landed in "open areas". Israeli medics said seven civilians were being treated for shock. In response to the rockets, Israeli fighter jets, helicopters and drones struck "approximately 80 Hamas targets throughout the Gaza Strip". There were no reports of Gaza casualties as a result of the strikes. Hamas, the militant Islamist rulers of Gaza, did not claim responsibility for the rockets, but Israel holds it responsible for any launches from the coastal enclave. "The rocket fire is conducted in a terror-filled atmosphere which is generated by Hamas in the area of the security fence and in acts such as tonight's events," the army said. Islamic Jihad, the second largest militant group in Gaza, hailed the rocket fire in a statement as a response to "Israeli aggressions", stopping short however of directly claiming responsibility for the launches. A Hamas official said that following the escalation Egypt was again seeking to negotiate a return to calm. - 'Riot dispersal means' - Earlier, five Palestinians aged between 22 and 27 died in separate incidents along the border fence, the Gaza health ministry said. The army did not comment on the deaths but said around 16,000 "rioters and demonstrators" had gathered along the border, with some setting tyres alight and hurling rocks, firebombs and grenades towards soldiers. Troops responded with "riot dispersal means", a spokesman added. Three of the men were shot dead east of Khan Yunis in southern Gaza, while one was killed east of Jabalia in the north of the coastal territory, the health ministry said. A fifth man died east of Bureij in central Gaza when a hand grenade he was holding exploded accidentally, witnesses said. Palestinians have gathered for protests along the Gaza Strip's border at least weekly since March 30. At least 212 Palestinians have been killed by Israeli fire in Gaza since the protests began, according to figures collated by AFP. The majority have died during protests, while smaller numbers have been killed by airstrikes and tank fire. One Israeli soldier was shot dead by a Palestinian sniper along the border in the same period. The protesters are calling to be allowed to return to lands their families fled or were expelled from in a 1948 war surrounding the creation of Israel and which are now inside the Jewish state. They are also protesting over Israel's crippling blockade of Gaza. Israel accuses Hamas of orchestrating the often violent demonstrations. Israel and Hamas have fought three wars since 2008 and much of the international community considers the Islamist movement a terrorist organisation. - Truce deal at risk - The fresh violence could also scupper hopes of a deal to end the months of protests. Egypt and the United Nations have been brokering indirect negotiations between Hamas and Israel with the aim of calming the situation amid fears of another war. Last week, a rocket fired from Gaza hit an Israeli home, narrowly avoiding killing a family. In response the Israeli army carried out air strikes on around 20 Hamas targets in Gaza. The London-based Arabic newspaper Al-Hayat reported Friday that a deal had been reached that would see the protests end in exchange for an easing of Israel's blockade. Hamas officials denied a deal had been struck but confirmed to AFP that progress was being made. "We expect to reach an agreement very soon," a senior Hamas official said earlier Friday on condition of anonymity. Israel also fully reopened its border crossings with the Gaza Strip this week following a week of relative calm. It allowed dozens of trucks of fuel paid for by Qatar into the strip, having previously banned their entry in response to the border violence. Israel says the decade-long blockade is necessary to isolate Hamas, while critics say it amounts to collective punishment of Gaza's two million residents. The largest projectile attacks in months and the border fatalities came despite talk of progress towards an Egyptian-brokered deal to end months of often violent protests along the border In response to the rockets, Israeli fighter jets, helicopters and drones struck 'approximately 80 Hamas targets throughout the Gaza Strip' Palestinian protesters ride in trucks waving Palestinian flags as they bring tyres to be burnt for cover during clashes along the border with Israel east of Gaza City A Palestinian protester uses a slingshot to hurl rocks during clashes following a demonstration near the border with Israel east of Gaza City Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi was the victim of an "extrajudicial execution" committed by the Saudi state, a UN expert said Thursday, calling for an international investigation. "Even Saudi Arabia itself has admitted that the crime was premeditated and involved state officials," Agnes Callamard, United Nations Special Rapporteur on Extrajudicial, Summary or Arbitrary Executions, said during a press conference. "Whether or not they acted in the name of the state, that remains to be discussed and investigated," she said. But Callamard added that "the people involved, the people who commanded it, who orchestrated it are high enough to represent the (Saudi) state." There has been no information, she said, that the killers "acted in a completely rogue fashion." Last week US President Donald Trump said "rogue killers" could be to blame, while Saudi Foreign Minister Adel al-Jubeir also blamed a "rogue operation," before the kingdom on Thursday cited information from Turkey in saying the killing appeared to have been premeditated. "We believe that an international investigation must follow" because of the "nature of the crime, of the victim, of the people involved, the location of the alleged killing," Callamard said. "Because we are talking about a crime against a journalist, that violence against journalists has been highlighted as a key priority for the United Nations and for a number of state members." According to Callamard, with Turkish and Saudi Arabian cooperation, such an international investigation could be presided over by the UN Security Council, the General Assembly, the UN security-general or the Council on Human Rights based in Geneva. Khashoggi, a Washington Post contributing columnist who had criticized policies of powerful Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, had been self-exiled in the United States for about a year. He was killed October 2 in the Saudi consulate in Istanbul, but his body has not been found. Turkish media have published details of his alleged torture and decapitation. In his first public comments on the case, Prince Mohammed, the kingdom's de factor ruler, this week denounced the "repulsive" murder for which 18 Saudis including a senior intelligence officer have been detained. Trump, in his most recent comments, called it "one of the worst in the history of cover-ups." Saudi authorities first insisted journalist Khashoggi came out of their Istanbul consulate alive on October 2, but now say he was the victim of a premeditated murder Japan and China signed $2.6 billion in business deals and touted their warmer ties on Friday during a rare visit to Beijing by Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe as both face trade challenges from US President Donald Trump. Abe met Chinese President Xi Jinping after a full day of activities that included talks with Premier Li Keqiang and an honour guard with Japan's flag raised outside the Great Hall of the People across from Tiananmen Square. Relations between Asia's two biggest economies have improved in recent years after they sunk to new lows in 2012 when Tokyo "nationalised" disputed islands claimed by Beijing. The last official visit to Beijing by a Japanese prime minister was in 2011. But as Trump's tariffs bite, China has increasingly looked to Japan to serve as a hedge against growing US protectionism. In their meeting, Xi told Abe that "interdependence between the two countries is deepening by the day", and pledged to increase economic cooperation, according to Communist Party mouthpiece the People's Daily. Earlier in the day Abe, standing alongside Li, told a press conference that the two countries must "play a constructive role for the sake of this region's peace and prosperity". "I believe active trade will deepen ties between Japanese and Chinese peoples further," he said. For his part, Li said "international conditions are unstable, and uncertainties have increased", but the countries' economic cooperation would "benefit the development of global free trade". The relationship has rapidly warmed up as Trump has slapped massive tariffs on China while also targeting Japanese exports in his effort to cut US trade deficits, despite touting his personal bonds with Abe and Xi. But despite the feel-good vibes, Abe also delivered a sterner message, a Japanese spokesman said, warning China that "without stability in the East China Sea, there will not be a true improvement in the relationship." He also told Li that "the international community, including Japan, is watching carefully the human rights situation in China". - Trump 'uncertainty' - Abe travelled with nearly 1,000 delegates from Japanese companies who struck 500 deals worth a total of $2.6 billion, Li said, without providing details. The companies are eager for increased access to China's massive market, while Beijing is interested in Japanese technology and corporate know-how. The two leaders also oversaw the signing of several political agreements, including a currency swap deal and a mechanism to avoid accidental clashes between their militaries which often come in contact in the disputed East China Sea. Hu Lingyuan, director of the Center for Japanese Studies at China's Fudan University, said Trump's trade policy had contributed to closer Sino-Japanese ties. "The uncertainty in Trump policy made Abe feel that he could not bet only on the United States," Hu told AFP. "If he adjusts his relationship with China, he will have more initiative and space in the future when he is negotiating with the United States." China's nationalistic Global Times said in an editorial that "though the US is quite an influential factor in China-Japan ties, the effect is limited". "If Beijing and Tokyo intend to plan their future bilateral relationship based on Washington's attitude, they will only get lost," the state-run daily said. - 'Safeguard free trade' - Abe's three-day trip, which began Thursday, sets up the possibility that Xi will visit Japan next year. Since an awkward 2014 encounter between Abe and Xi on the sidelines of a summit, there have been ministerial visits by both sides and a softening of rhetoric. Li visited Tokyo in May. Abe and Li met on Thursday during a reception to celebrate the signing of the treaty that put Japanese and Chinese relations back on track after World War II. But territorial disputes continue to cause frictions. Just days before Abe's trip, Tokyo lodged an official complaint after Chinese ships cruised around the disputed islands that Tokyo calls the Senkaku and Beijing labels the Diaoyu islands. China has long denounced Japan for what it says is an insufficiently contrite attitude towards its role in World War II. But ahead of the trip, Beijing has taken a more cordial stance than it has in the past. Ties between Beijing and Tokyo have rapidly warmed as Trump has slapped massive tariffs on China while also targeting Japanese exports in his effort to cut US trade deficits Japan's Prime Minister Shinzo Abe reviewed a military honour guard before heading into the the opulent Great Hall of the People for talks Chart showing the Japan-China trade from 2007 to 2017, and the relative size of their economies German, French and US leaders will visit Prague over the next three days for ceremonies marking a century since the creation of Czechoslovakia, the precursor of the modern Czech Republic and Slovakia. Culturally close, Czechs and Slovaks joined forces on October 28, 1918, to create Czechoslovakia, a country that rose from the ashes of the Austro-Hungarian empire after World War I. German Chancellor Angela Merkel, French President Emmanuel Macron and US Defense Secretary James Mattis will all attend the celebrations in Prague. Records show that people danced and waved the first national flags in the streets of Prague as sovereignty was proclaimed a hundred years ago, after three centuries under Vienna's rule. "Czechoslovak people, all you do from now on you do as a new free member of the big family of independent, free nations," said a statement issued by the National Committee issued on that day. Austria had captured the Czech lands after the 1620 Battle of the White Mountain, which crushed a rebellion by Czech Protestants and resulted in germanisation and a forced return to Catholicism. Moves towards linguistic, cultural and political emancipation started to gain strength at the end of the 18th century in both the Czech lands and Slovakia, which was dominated by Hungary. During World War I, the campaign for an independent Czechoslovakia was led by Czechs Tomas Garrigue Masaryk and Edvard Benes -- who later served as presidents of the country -- and the French-Slovak general Milan Rastislav Stefanik. - Peaceful split - At the end of that war, they persuaded the victorious Britain, France and the United States to approve the creation of the new state. During World War II, Czechoslovakia was stripped of its western borderland and split into the Bohemian-Moravian Protectorate and the formally independent Slovak state. It was reunited after the war, only to fall under the Soviet Union until their rule was toppled in the 1989 Velvet Revolution, four years before the country's peaceful split into the Czech Republic and Slovakia. Macron will visit both capitals on Friday, starting in Bratislava and moving on to Prague. He and Merkel will meet Andrej Babis, the Slovak-born Czech prime minister, separately on Friday in Prague before travelling to Saturday's summit on Syria with the Turkish and Russian presidents in Istanbul. Mattis will attend a grand military parade on Sunday. US President Donald Trump has for his part sent a congratulatory letter to Czech counterpart Milos Zeman, saying the United States "is proud of the role it played in the founding of Czechoslovakia". After World War I, then US President Woodrow Wilson actively supported small nations seeking independence. - 'Common Western bond' - In his landmark "Fourteen Points" speech to the US Congress in early 1918, Wilson backed freedom for nations under the rule of the Austro-Hungarian empire, as well as imperial Germany and Russia. "At this time in history, sustaining our common Western bond is more important than ever," wrote Trump, whose ex-wife Ivana is Czech. On Saturday, Babis will have lunch with several other prime ministers and attend the ceremonial opening of the National Museum after a reconstruction. The museum at the top of Prague's iconic Wenceslas Square, opened in 1891, has been closed for more than seven years. On Sunday, Zeman and Babis will meet their Slovak counterparts Andrej Kiska and Peter Pellegrini, respectively, at a wreath-laying ceremony. That afternoon, a parade of more than 4,000 soldiers and rescuers will be held on a boulevard in northwestern Prague. The parade will shutter the Prague airport for 90 minutes as the Czech capital will become a no-fly zone, the airport said. The Czech Republic kept the flag of Czechoslovakia -- flying here in Prague's Wenceslas Square Czech statesman and President Edvard Benes (1884-1948) one of the leaders in the campaign for an independent Czechoslovakia during World War I Jan Masaryk, Czechoslovak politician, also led the independence drive and the creation of the new state after World War I At least 19 bodies have been discovered in a field in Mexico's western state of Jalisco, scene of some of the worst violence in the country, local prosecutors said Thursday. The corpses have been identified as belonging to 16 men and three women, who are believed to have been killed about four months ago, the officials said. Two skulls were also recovered but it was not clear if that meant two more victims, or if the skulls belonged to people already declared dead. The number of murder victims in Mexico has exploded in recent years in spiraling violence linked to the country's powerful drug cartels. The first human remains were found on Monday in Lagos de Moreno, a part of Jalisco state near the border with Guanajuato state. Investigators then pursued a search in the area on Tuesday and Wednesday, allowing prosecutors to announce the final tally. Authorities said they could not say if the victims were local residents, where several disappearances had been recorded in recent months, or if their bodies had been relocated from elsewhere. Just over a week ago, 16 bodies were found in an unmarked grave outside Guadalajara, the state capital of Jalisco and the country's second-most populous city. Since the government deployed the army to fight the country's powerful drug cartels in 2006, Mexico has been hit by a wave of violence including more than 200,000 murders. Last year, the country registered a record 28,702 homicides. Mass graves are regularly discovered containing dozens or even hundreds of unidentified bodies. Nearly 4,000 such corpses have been found since 2007, according to the National Human Rights Commission. Violence in Guadalajara has skyrocketed since March 2017, when a power struggle erupted at the heart of the brutal Jalisco New Generation Cartel. In late September, authorities found the remains of 278 murder victims in a refrigerated truck in Guadalajara, after the city's morgues overflowed. Since the government deployed the army to fight Mexico's powerful drug cartels in 2006, the country has been hit by a wave of violence including more than 200,000 murders French President Emmanuel Macron on Friday went from measured criticism against Hungary and Poland to anger, accusing their leaders "lying" to their people about the European Union. "In Hungary and Poland, some of their leaders played with an unacceptable idea. When I listen to leaders comparing Brussels with Moscow at the ancient (Soviet) times, this is crazy and unacceptable," Macron told a pro-European audience at a public meeting during a visit to the Slovak capital Bratislava. "They are lying to their people," Macron fumed, speaking in English. "When I see big billboards saying 'No Brussels' or 'Stop Brussels'. What are they doing?" Macron said, insisting that the political success of eurosceptic Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban and his nationalist Fidesz party is rooted in the prosperity that EU structural subsidies brought to Hungary after the ex-communist state joined the bloc in 2004. "What are these leaders doing with these crazy spirits and lying to their people like those who promoted the Brexit and left the country right after they won," he added. In an interview published in Czech, Hungarian, Polish and Slovak media earlier on Friday, the French leader adopted a more measured tone warning eastern EU members not to fall out of step with the bloc's principles, singling out Hungary and Poland whose nationalist governments have clashed with Brussels. Macron also insisted that "Europe is not a supermarket", driving home a point he made previously that eastern states could not pick and choose among the bloc's fundamental values. - 'Reciprocal commitment' - Seven months ahead of elections to the European Parliament, Macron said he expected the campaign ahead of the vote to be a duel between "progressives" and nationalists. During a two-day visit to Slovakia and the Czech Republic, Macron also warned that any moves by member states to reduce their payments into the common budget could serve to undermine EU unity, including its single market. "We cannot try to reduce our contribution to the European budget without understanding what the single market brings. If we want to kill Europe, we should continue like this," Macron said. "Europe isn't a one-way street: it is a reciprocal commitment," he added. Turning to Poland's controversial judicial reforms, Macron said he hoped that "the Polish government will take the necessary steps to address the concerns of the (European) Commission and its partners." Its nationalist government has put Poland on a collision course with the European Union by introducing a string of controversial judicial reforms that the bloc has warned pose a threat to judicial independence, the rule of law and ultimately to democracy. The French leader also noted that "the situation of the rule of law in Hungary is undergoing worrying developments", and pointed to threats to the division of powers and the independence of non-governmental organisations. He also condemned the February murder of a journalist in Slovakia, insisting that "threatening, attacking or killing journalists undermines the foundations of our democracies". French President Emmanuel Macron said that Hungarian and Polish leaders "comparing Brussels with Moscow at the ancient (Soviet) times" is "crazy and unacceptable" A convicted Malaysian drug trafficker was hanged in Singapore on Friday, officials said, after the city-state rejected last minute efforts to save him. The Malaysian government -- which decided earlier this month to abolish the death penalty -- had asked neighbouring Singapore to spare the 31-year-old man from the gallows on humanitarian grounds. But Malaysia's Ministry of Foreign Affairs said in a statement late Friday that Prabu N Pathmanathan was executed in Singapore's Changi Prison earlier in the day, in the presence of family members and a representative from the Malaysian embassy. The ministry said the Malaysian government had asked Singapore to spare the man on humanitarian grounds but respects the city-state's laws. Capital punishment, which is carried out by hanging, is a legacy of British colonial rule in both countries. Pathmanathan was sentenced to death in 2014 for trafficking 227.82 grams (7.97 ounces) of heroin into Singapore, media reports said. Family lawyer N. Surendran said in a statement that the family received a letter from the office of the Singapore president on the eve of the execution denying their appeal for clemency. The family has now claimed the body, their lawyer added. There was no comment from the Singapore government. Amnesty International, which had opposed the execution, urged Singapore to follow the example of Malaysia under the government of Prime Minister Mahathir Mohamad, who was swept to power in May elections. Malaysia's cabinet earlier this month decided to abolish capital punishment, a prelude to parliament amending the law. A moratorium on executions will be imposed in the meantime, with more than 1,200 people on death row set to win a reprieve. "This cruel and irreversible punishment has no place in any society, as more than two-thirds of the world?s countries have come to recognise," said Rachel Chhoa-Howard, Amnesty International?s Singapore researcher. Singapore however has maintained that capital punishment is an effective crime deterrent and is crucial to fighting drugs. Amnesty said it is aware of six executions carried out in Singapore this year and eight in 2017, all for drug offences. Singapore has carried out 14 executions for drug offences in the last two years, according to Amnesty International The final quarter of 2021 is on its way and theres so much positivity about the rapid growth of the... SCHAUMBURG, Ill., Oct. 26, 2018 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Assurance employees have a lot of praise about working at the insurance brokerage; praise that has landed the organization a win on the 100 Best Medium Workplaces list by Great Place to Work and Fortune magazine for the ninth consecutive year. In a society where a unique and positive workplace culture drives talent retention and increasing revenue, Assurance has found a comfortable spot in the insurance space. We live in a society where organizations can no longer ignore the importance of company culture, said Tony Chimino, CEO of Assurance. Organizations that pay attention to providing a workplace environment that engages, recognizes and rewards employees are the ones who have the best people working for them, producing the best results. To determine 2018s Best Small & Medium Workplaces, Fortune and Great Place to Work analyzed feedback from more than 158,000 U.S. employees. Feedback from Assurance employees ranked high. Ninety-five percent of Assurance employees feel that the companys facilities contribute to a good working environment and that management is honest and ethical in its business practices. Ninety-seven percent of employees feel that they have great bosses and are part of an environment with great communication. Ninety-nine percent of employees feel they work in a great atmosphere. Assurance is the only insurance brokerage in its category on the list. To foster an engaging, award-winning work culture, Assurance puts a heavy focus on sharing positive stories every day and encouraging appreciation among the entire staff. That means staff members are giving each other personal, handwritten thank you notes for going the extra mile or dishing out electronic high-fives for a job well-done that can be seen company-wide. It also means that staff members, no matter what their job level, are receiving phone calls from Chimino on their birthday. Personal interactions with employees can really humanize workplace relationships and remind people why they are part of this organization during the everyday shuffle, explains Chimino. We try to make the day-to-day life of our employees bigger than just working at an insurance brokerage. Ninety-nine percent of Assurance employees feel good about the ways the company and its employees contribute to the community. Community impact is a strong pillar within Assurances award-winning culture. The insurance brokerages Assurance Caring Together (ACT) program aims to support local charities throughout the year with donations as well as employee engagement in charitable giving of time. In 2018, 21 non-profit organizations received assistance from Assurance in the form of labor hours from employees who are given a paid day off to volunteer in addition to 19 nonprofit partners which will receive monetary donations from 1 percent of Assurances operating profit. The organizations that benefit from ACT are selected each year by the employee-run program. Assurance is joined on the list by eight of their own clients. Our clients rely on us not only to provide the best insurance solutions for their business, but to help them create workplace wellness and culture packages that will uniquely engage their workforce and keep their employees healthy and safe, explains Chimino. It seems that work pays off. Assurance clients on the small and medium lists include West Monroe Partners; Burwood Group, Inc.; Sevan Multi-Site Solutions, LLC; 4imprint US Group, Inc.; FONA International, Inc.; Horizon Pharma, Inc.; ALKU; and The LaSalle Network. In addition to a heavy focus on employee appreciation and the ACT program, Chimino and the A Team at Assurance come up with new ways each year to enhance workplace culture and engage employees, from new wellness program elements to leadership selfie videos to communicate with employees. Other Assurance employee perks include insurance benefits, telecommuting options, birthdays off, tuition reimbursement, generous maternity/paternity leave and adoption assistance, commuter benefits, education rewards, shared success annual bonus program, employee referral program, anonymous counseling program, and other perks. We want to build an organization that employees want to work for, says Chimino. We spend as much time marketing to our own employees as we do externally to clients or customers. Employee retention is the key to customer success and increased revenue year-over-year. For more information about Assurance, visit www.assuranceagency.com. For tips from Chimino on calculating the ROI of company culture, click here. About Great Place to Work Great Place to Work is the global authority on high-trust, high-performance workplace cultures. Through its certification programs, Great Place to Work recognizes outstanding workplace cultures and produces the annual FORTUNE "100 Best Companies to Work For" and Great Place to Work Best Workplaces lists for Millennials, women, diversity, industries and, internationally, countries and regions. Through its culture consulting services, Great Place to Work helps its clients create great workplaces that outpace peers on key business metrics like revenue growth, profitability, retention and stock performance. About Assurance Assurance is among the largest and most awarded independent insurance brokerages in the U.S. A Top 50 broker and repeated national Best Place to Work winner, Assurance creates value by minimizing risk and maximizing health for 6,000 businesses and individuals across the country. Visit Assurance at assuranceagency.com. A photo accompanying this announcement is available at http://www.globenewswire.com/NewsRoom/AttachmentNg/106a4d21-4c7f-4bb8-beb4-ab5aa75c058e Mexico's incoming leftist government of President-Elect Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador on Thursday opened polls for a referendum on whether or not to keep building a controversial new airport for the capital area. The consultation is to last four days, with results expected on Sunday. The 64-year-old Lopez Obrador, who succeeds Enrique Pena Nieto on December 1, had threatened to cancel the multi-billion-dollar project, charging it was a waste of taxpayer money. The soon-to-be president, a former Mexico City mayor, has also criticized the environmental impact of the project -- whose estimated cost is more than $13 billion -- and said it is marred by corruption. "We're talking about millions of pesos, we're talking about corruption that could be avoided," Lopez Obrador said Thursday before casting his own ballot in the capital. But the vote has put him on a collision course with the business world, which says the new terminal is needed to ease woes at the aging current airport, which handled nearly 45 million passengers last year. Lopez Obrador says instead of building a new terminal northeast of the capital, a military airbase south of the mega-city could be repurposed. Mexican businessman Carlos Slim -- who was number seven on Thursday in Forbes magazine's real-time rankings of the world's richest people, with a net worth of $67.1 billion -- is the main investor in the airport. He has led the business community's criticism of Lopez Obrador, who won the presidency in a resounding victory in July. "Canceling the project would amount to canceling the economic growth of the country," Slim said in April. Slim's construction company CICSA was awarded the $4.7 billion contract to build the airport's terminal in consortium with six other companies. The new airport will create up to 450,000 jobs and have the capacity to handle 125 million passengers a year when fully operational, according to Pena Nieto's government. Lopez Obrador's decision to submit the airport project -- a technical one that has implications for air safety -- to a public vote has been widely questioned. The International Civil Aviation Organization, a specialized UN agency, supports the building of the new airport. - Voting irregularities? - Mexican voters have been asked to answer the following question: "Given the saturation of Mexico City International Airport, which option do you consider to be the best for the country?" Two choices are given: repurposing the Santa Lucia military base, a plan that would also mean renovating the current airport and one in neighboring Toluca; or keep building the new one and abandon the old one. "Whatever the people decide will be supported by the government," Lopez Obrador said, insisting that should the project be cancelled, the contracts would be protected -- meaning a slew of potential lawsuits on the horizon. Polling institutes say about 55 percent of respondents want the new airport to be built. Analysts are concerned that the vote organized by Lopez Obrador in 1,073 polling stations is sub-standard. An AFP journalist said it was possible to cast a ballot in more than one place on Thursday, after the failure of a computer system that was meant to centralize the voter rolls. Jesus Ramirez, a spokesperson for Lopez Obrador's team, acknowledged some difficulties but said they "did not invalidate the poll." There are no voting regulators taking part in the process. The Arthur Rosenblueth Foundation, a non-profit organization dedicated to the development of technology, will count the votes. The construction of the new airport - the site is seen here in July - could cost more than $13 billion Voting in the referendum is expected to last four days Analysts are concerned that the vote organized in 1,073 polling stations across Mexico is sub-standard, and could be marred by irregularities Ukraine's Patriarch Filaret was one of the top leaders in the Soviet era Russian Orthodox Church. But after the Soviet Union crumbled in 1991 and he began a campaign to give his native Ukraine an independent church he was defrocked and excommunicated by Moscow. Today the 89-year-old is arguably Ukraine's most powerful cleric. He hopes to unite all of the country's churches under his leadership to Moscow's fury. Filaret, whose secular name is Mykhaylo Denysenko, was born in 1929 in the Donetsk region of eastern Ukraine, which is now controlled by Moscow-backed separatists. He decided to become a priest after his father was killed during World War II. He studied in Ukraine and Moscow and forged a brilliant career in the Church, holding top posts in Russia and Ukraine. In 1966, he became Archbishop of Kyiv and Halych and was elevated to Metropolitan two years later, becoming the first ethnic Ukrainian to hold that post in 150 years. In 1990, he was a frontrunner to become the new Russian Orthodox patriarch but lost out to Alexy II. After Ukraine gained independence following the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991, Filaret began a long-running campaign for the Ukrainian church to gain independence from Russia. In 1992, Filaret established the Ukrainian Orthodox Church of the Kyiv Patriarchate and was elected patriarch three years later. "I decided that the time had come for the Ukrainian church to become fully independent of Moscow," Filaret told AFP. The Russian Orthodox Church has never recognised Filaret's church, first defrocking him and then excommunicating him in 1997. Critics have accused Filaret of fathering secret children and working for the KGB under the Soviets. Filaret told AFP the Soviet authorities threatened to execute him if he refused to breach the confidentiality of confession and inform on parishioners. "I am not afraid," he said he told them. "It does not matter for me when I die: now or in my old age." He wholeheartedly supported a popular uprising that ousted a Kremlin-backed regime in 2014, and his church gave shelter to anti-Kremlin protesters, many of whom were beaten by riot police. After Moscow annexed Crimea and supported a separatist insurgency in eastern Ukraine, Filaret said Russian President Vladimir Putin was possessed by the Devil and compared him to Hitler. Today, Ukraine is home to three churches: Filaret's church, the smaller Ukrainian Autocephalous Orthodox Church and the Ukrainian Orthodox Church of the Moscow Patriarchate, controlled by Russia. In a landmark decision this month the Istanbul-based Ecumenical Patriarchate, seen as the first among equals of Orthodox Church leaders, agreed to recognise the independence of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church and reinstated Filaret to his canonical rank. The move will allow the patriarch to realise his dream of finally breaking free from Moscow's chokehold and establishing a united Ukrainian church. Patriarch Filaret, who hails from an eastern region now controlled by Moscow-backed separatists, has been campaigning for Church independence from Moscow ever since the collapse of the Soviet Union 27 years ago The warring parties in World War I signed no less than 16 peace treaties at the end of the devastating conflict, the most important being the 1919 Treaty of Versailles in which the victorious Allies made Germany accept responsibility. Here are the main accords. - Brest-Litovsk: March 3, 1918 - The first peace treaty of the conflict, it was agreed between Russia -- which had sided with the Allies -- and Germany and other members of its Central Powers coalition. Inked in the German-occupied city of Brest-Litovsk, today's Brest in Belarus, it followed a December 1917 armistice sought by an overwhelmed Russia immediately after its October 1917 Marxist revolution. The terms were harsh: Russia lost to Germany large parts of its western territory in the Baltic states, Finland and Poland, and more than 30 percent of its population. - Versailles: June 28, 1919 - Signed in the Hall of Mirrors at the Palace of Versailles outside Paris exactly five years after the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand that sparked the war, this treaty designated Germany responsible for losses and damages from the war. Among the terms, Germany was ordered to pay crippling war damages, which became a source of deep national resentment that fuelled Nazi propaganda and is seen as a key underlying cause of World War II. Germany was divided by the Danzig corridor which isolated eastern Prussia from the rest of the country. Berlin lost 15 percent of its territory and 10 percent of its population. The regions of Alsace and Lorraine were returned to France and the Saarland region in Germany was placed under an international mandate for 15 years. The treaty was never ratified by the United States Senate. - Saint-Germain-en-Laye: September 10, 1919 - This treaty established peace between the Allies and defeated Austria, and consecrated the dismantlement of the Austro-Hungarian empire into several smaller states, a source of many future tensions. Signed at the castle of Saint-Germain-en-Laye outside Paris, it recognised the creation of Czechoslovakia and the merger of southern Slav states, that were to become Yugoslavia. Romania expanded to include Transylvania and Bessarabia, and Poland was granted land occupied by Austria and Germany. This left a separate Austria with 6.5 million inhabitants and Hungary with eight million. - Neuilly: November 27, 1919 - Allied powers signed this treaty with Bulgaria, which had joined forces with Germany in 1915, in the Paris suburb of Neuilly. It saw Sofia lose land to the newly formed Yugoslavia, to Romania and to Greece, leaving Bulgaria without direct access to the Aegean Sea. - Trianon: June 4, 1920 - The Treaty of Trianon was concluded at Versailles between the Allies and Hungary, which lost two-thirds of the land it controlled as part of the Austro-Hungarian empire. It meant that three million ethnic Hungarians found themselves living outside their country, most of them in Romania. - Two with Turkey - Treaties signed with Turkey led to the dissolution of the once-mighty Ottoman empire and defined most of the borders of modern-day Turkey. The first was inked at Sevres, in France, on August 10, 1920. Its terms led to Turkey's war of independence and a conflict with Greece, and was superseded by the Lausanne treaty on July 24, 1923, that ended the conflict. Signed for the Allies by Britain, France and Italy, the treaties saw the country lose its Arab possessions, with Britain receiving a mandate for Palestine and Mesopotamia, and France awarded one for Lebanon and Syria. Almost 1.3 million ethnic Greeks were forced to leave Asia Minor and about 500,000 Turks left Greece. The Hall of Mirrors where the Treaty of Versailles was signed on June 28, 1919 The front page of the 29 June, 1919 issue of French newspaper "Excelsior" on display at Paris's Museum of Letters and Manuscripts in 2014 The body of a man found dead in Sydneys southwest has been identified as police seek information on his last 48 hours alive. Jamie Phillips, 48, was found dumped and stripped bare in a vacant lot at the back of homes in Rosemeadow on Thursday about 1pm. Homicide detectives are running the strike force investigation with local detectives who said the Campbelltown resident was known to police. They are hoping for anyone who saw him in the last 48 hours to come forward. Jamie Phillips, 48, was found dumped and stripped bare in a vacant lot at the back of homes in Rosemeadow on Thursday about 1pm. Source: 7 News Campbelltown Police Detective Inspector Greg Inger said dashcam and CCTV footage was being sought. Were looking for the assistance of anyone who may have seen vehicles coming and going, he said. Police said its likely he knew his killers and Detective Inspector Inger added its nothing the public should be concerned about. Hes said to be known to police. Source: 7 News However, he said the crime scene was unusual. Detectives believe the 46-year-old may not have received his fatal injuries where he was found. They are looking for another crime scene. The post mortem is expected to be carried out over the weekend. Anyone with information is encouraged to call Crime Stoppers on 1800 333 000 or use the Crime Stoppers online reporting page. The equatorial sun has been up for about an hour as a gaggle of children set off from the Ivorian village of Allepilla on their hour-long trek to school. Back home in the evening, eight-year-old Marie-France Amoandji Ngbessoo does her homework by the light of her backpack's LED -- captured by solar panels on her way to and from school. The light can run for three hours. With insects flitting overhead, Marie-France points to the pictures in her textbook, identifying them: "Orange, plane... " Allepilla, some 100 kilometres (60 miles) north of the West African country's economic capital Abidjan, is a rural community centred on cocoa and coffee production. A single pump supplies water to the village of around 400 inhabitants including 150 children, and, as is the case for thousands of villages and hamlets across the country -- there is no electricity. Instead, oil-burning storm lanterns and battery-powered torches are the only sources of light. An Ivorian charity that promotes education for rural girls, Yiwo Zone, has raised funds to provide the backpacks -- which cost 13,000 CFA francs (20 euros, $23) apiece -- to schoolchildren across Africa. Computer salesman Evariste Akoumian had the idea for the solar backpack in 2015 when his car broke down as night was falling near Soubre, in the southwest of the country. "At the same time, children were returning home from school," he recalls. "I said to myself, 'We must give them light so they can study. It's not normal for rural children to be unable to do so." The Ivorian government has set a target of ensuring electricity to 80 percent of the country. "These rural children are poor. They use rice sacks or plastic bags to take their things to school," Akoumian said. "The idea was to kill two birds with one stone: give them a backpack with a light to go with it." The entrepreneur stressed that the solar backpacks belong to the children: "So Dad or Mum can't come and take the light from them... to use while they are cooking or doing housework." Sales are brisk and have reached 55,000. Akoumian's company Solarpak already sells the backpacks in Gabon, Madagascar and Burkina Faso, as well as to charities in France and Germany. Striving to keep up with demand, Akoumian is seeking aid or loans so that he can set up an assembly plant in Abidjan and boost production. - 'Better marks' - "It may seem cheap, but these are large sums that the villagers don't have," said Anna Corinne Menet Ezinlin, head of Ywo Zone. "Here in this village some people can't afford the school fees or even notebooks. Usually school is free, but there are always registration fees or (other) payments." Last year, Marie-France's 13-year-old sister Lucienne could not attend school at all because their mother was off work with an illness. "It's hard for the children," said village chief Jean-Baptiste Kotchi Okoma, whose seven-year-old daughter Nethania received a solar backpack. "There's not enough money here." He added: "I hope their marks will be better. Children are disadvantaged here. With the backpack, I hope they will all progress." Lucienne, flipping through a book, said: "I am happy. Before it was more difficult. It's easier now, with the backpack." Children in poor communities with no electricity are at a disadvantage, said inventor Evariste Akoumian "The idea was to kill two birds with one stone," Evarist Akoumian said: "Give them a backpack with a light to go with it" Akoumian's company Solarpak already sells the backpacks in Gabon, Madagascar and Burkina Faso, as well as to charities in France and Germany Last year, 13-year-old Lucienne, shown here walking to school with Marie-France, could not go to school at all because their mother was off work with an illness Rival Cypriot leaders agreed Friday to open the first new crossing points in eight years across the island's divide in a move to improve the climate of the deadlocked talks process, the UN said. It was the first formal meeting between the two leaders since a UN-backed peace conference in Switzerland also involving the main outside powers collapsed in acrimony in July last year. "The leaders are pleased to announce that on November 12, 2018, crossing points at Lefka/Aplici (in the northwest) and Dherynia/Derinya (in the east) will be open," a UN statement said after the leaders' meeting. Greek and Turkish Cypriot leaders had agreed in 2015 that the two additional crossings through the UN-patrolled buffer zone that divides the island should be made ready for use. The opening of more crossings is seen as an essential element of trust building between the two communities that lived in virtual isolation from each other until Turkish Cypriot authorities cleared the way for the free movement of people in 2003. Currently, there are seven official crossing points between the breakaway Turkish Cypriot north of the island and the government-controlled south, but the last crossing to open was in 2010. President Nicos Anastasiades and Turkish Cypriot leader Mustafa Akinci met inside the UN-protected area in the divided capital Nicosia to try to move closer to resuming formal reunification talks. The UN statement said the leaders "had a frank exchange of views on the way forward. They confirmed their readiness to engage constructively with (UN envoy) Jane Holl Lute, who will be visiting the island on October 31." UN chief Antonio Guterres has instructed Lute to gauge the "true extent" of convergence on key issues and the willingness of the sides to incorporate novel proposals as part of an overall solution. He reported to the UN Security Council last week that a deal to end the island's more than four-decade-long division was "still alive" despite the collapse of last year's peace conference in Switzerland. Cyprus has been divided since 1974 when Turkish troops invaded its northern third in response to a coup sponsored by the military junta then in power in Athens seeking to unite the island with Greece. - 'Looser federation' - Successive peace proposals since the late 1970s have been based on reunifying the island as a bizonal, bicommunal federation. In recent days, Anastasiades created a stir among Greek Cypriots by floating the idea of a looser, decentralised federation, that critics said would amount to little more than a confederation of two separate states within the European Union. On Friday, the president tweeted: "We have reaffirmed that the solution sought is a bi-zonal bi-communal federation. I explained to Akinci and discussed my proposal for a more functional solution by decentralising some powers." Anastasiades has yet to elaborate publicly on what his proposals on a "looser federation" are. The United Nations has made clear it will not fully engage in a new peace process unless Cypriot leaders are committed into entering negotiations in a spirit of compromise. Friday was only the second time the two leaders have met face to face since last year's abortive peace conference. The previous meeting was an informal dinner in April at which they agreed to disagree. The Swiss peace conference collapsed over the security arrangements for a reunified island. The Greek Cypriot leadership is deeply opposed to Turkey retaining any long-term troop presence on the island or the right to intervene to safeguard Turkish Cypriot interests. Under the island's 1960 treaty of independence, Greece and Turkey, along with former colonial ruler Britain, secured rights to intervene to safeguard the island's sovereignty, rights the Greek Cypriots want scrapped. Turkish Cypriots are reluctant to do so, having endured armed attack and isolation in besieged enclaves for a decade after Greek Cypriots unilaterally changed the constitution in 1963. Cypriot President Nicos Anastasiades (R) and Turkish Cypriot leader Mustafa Akinci have agreed to open the first new crossing points in eight years across the island's divide at their first formal meeting since a peace conference collapsed last year Map of Cyprus. Cyprus has been divided since 1974 when Turkish troops invaded its northern third in response to a coup sponsored by the military junta then in power in Athens seeking to unite the island with Greece President Maithripala Sirisena installed Sri Lanka's controversial former strongman leader Mahinda Rajapakse as the country's new prime minister Friday, in a shock move that plunged the island into an unprecedented constitutional crisis. Sirisena's office announced the surprise decision moments after he sacked incumbent premier Ranil Wickremesinghe, despite opponents saying he had no power to do so under the constitution. Wickremesinghe insisted he was still the legitimate prime minister and would fight his dismissal in court. "I am addressing you as the prime minister of Sri Lanka," Wickremesinghe told reporters at a nationally televised press conference. "I remain as prime minister and I will function as the prime minister." The president's United People's Freedom Alliance party had earlier Friday quit the coalition that had governed with Wickremesinghe's party. Speaking to jubilant supporters outside his Colombo home, Rajapakse called on Wickremesinghe to step down. Members of Wickremesinghe's party must "respect democracy, respect the country and respect the law", the ex-president said through a loudhailer from a balcony. Rajapakse loyalists stormed two state-owned television networks overnight -- which they regard as loyal to the outgoing government -- and forced them off the air. Video footage from private networks showed police overwhelmed by mobs at the Rupavahini national TV station but elsewhere in the capital streets remained calm. Rajapakse was sworn in by Sirisena in a ceremony at the president's office before the smiling ex-president headed to worship at a Buddhist temple. A defiant Wickremesinghe, whose United National Party commands a majority in parliament, said he was calling on speaker Karu Jayasuriya to convene the legislature. The speaker said he was seeking legal advice and would announce Saturday if he recognises Rajapakse as the new prime minister. Sirisena won elections against Rajapakse in 2015 on a platform of economic reform and accountability for atrocities committed during his opponent's 10-year iron-fisted rule which saw the bloody end of Sri Lanka's brutal civil war. Colombo was on the verge of facing economic sanctions from Western nations over Rajapakse's human rights record before his government lost office. Sirisena's decision to appoint his former foe prime minister threatens the Indian Ocean island nation with fresh turmoil just as it was trying to emerge from the shadow of the civil war. The legality of the move is disputed after a constitutional amendment passed in 2015 removed the president's power to sack the prime minister. "The appointment of Rajapakse as the prime minister is unconstitutional and illegal. This is an anti democratic coup," finance minister Mangala Samaraweera wrote on Twitter shortly after the appointment was announced. The dramatic developments came after deepening disagreements between Sirisena and Wickremesinghe over economic policy and day-to-day administration of the government. - Simmering power struggle - In May, Sirisena asked his prime minister to end their power struggle and said the coalition should commit to a reform agenda to revive the country emerging from a decades-long ethnic war that claimed more than 100,000 lives. But Sirisena has reneged on a pledge not to run for re-election, sparking tensions with Wickremesinghe who is believed to have his own presidential ambitions. Sirisena is also believed to have been behind a failed attempt to impeach Wickremesinghe in April. Rajapakse lost the presidency in January 2015 and the subsequent parliamentary elections in August 2015. However, his new Sri Lanka Podujana Peramuna (SLPP) party won local council elections in February and he had been attempting to engineer a dramatic comeback ahead of presidential elections slated for 2019. The strongman put down the decades-old Tamil Tiger separatist struggle in May 2009 through a military assault that killed up to 40,000 ethnic Tamil civilians, according to rights groups. His regime refused to acknowledge war-era abuses, and bitter divisions between minority Tamils and majority Sinhalese persist. The legacy of the conflict has proved a divisive topic in parliament. Earlier this month, lawmakers passed legislation to pay compensation to victims of the civil war, but Rajapakse's supporters voted against the bill, arguing that it amounted to compensating separatist Tamil rebels. Rajapakse's hardline government was also accused of corruption and murdering political opponents. Several of Rajapakse's close family and associates face corruption prosecutions. Sirisena had pledged accountability for war atrocities, but has faced international criticism for being slow to deliver on justice. International rights groups have called for the prosecution of both the military and the Tigers, who were notorious for suicide bombings and enlisting child soldiers. Former Sri Lankan president Mahinda Rajapakse, left, is sworn is as prime minister by President Maithripala Sirisena in Colombo, after incumbent premier Ranil Wickremesinghe was sacked Sri Lanka's former president Mahinda Rajapakse beams as he arrives at a temple after having been sworn in as prime minister in Colombo Soldiers stand guard at former president Mahinda Rajapakse's Colombo home after he was controversially sworn in as prime minister Ranil Wickremesinghe insisted that he was still the Prime Minister and would fight his dismissal President Maithripala Sirisena Friday sacked his Prime Minister Ranil Wickremesinghe and appointed former president Mahinda Rajapakse as the new premier, the president's office said. A private television network loyal to Rajapakse televised him being sworn in as the new prime minister, replacing Wickremesinghe. There was no immediate word from Wickremesinghe, who helped Sirisena win the January 2015 elections against Rajapakse. The surprise move comes after disagreements between Sirisena and Wickremesinghe over economic policy and day-to-day administration of the government. The pair were reported to have clashed in cabinet last week over government plans to lease a port terminal to neighbouring India. Wickremesinghe's government came to power promising economic reforms and accountability for atrocities committed in Sri Lanka's bloody civil war during Rajapakse's presidency. Sri Lankan President Maithripala Sirisena sacked his Prime Minister Ranil Wickremesinghe, seen here in Oslo on October 5, 2018, and appointed former president Mahinda Rajapakse as the new premier, the president's office said Even though his own country is seen as a bastion of cannabis use in Europe, Dutch Prime Minister Mark Rutte is categorical: don't try it. He offered the advice Thursday during a visit to Canada, just one week after the country legalized the drug. In the Netherlands the possession, consumption and sale of fewer than five grams of cannabis in special "coffee shops" has been allowed since 1976, and the European country is a long-time favorite destination of those wishing to use the drug. But for the country's prime minister, it's better to keep a distance. Asked to comment on the recent legalization of cannabis in Canada, he told the story of a relative whose marijuana over-consumption had serious mental health consequences. "The marijuana that you can buy today is so much stronger" than before, he said, "which is bad for the health, especially for the young." "The best policy on drugs for yourself is no first use. It sounds conservative, but I would urge you: don't try at all," Rutte said in an address to Canadian high schoolers, accompanied by Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau. "If you do, at least make sure that you don't move from this stuff to other drugs." In becoming the first G20 country to legalize the growing, selling and use of cannabis, Canada hopes to ensure that "the person that is selling you marijuana at an official place doesn't also have something else in their other pocket they are willing to sell you up on and further," Trudeau said. He said the measure "removes the contact that people had with criminals." Rutte indicated that his government is studying potential reforms, saying that compared to Canada "we have a different approach, which is not entirely successful." "The problem is those 'coffee shops' cannot get the stuff in a legal way" because the law doesn't allow it, he said, adding that the Netherlands was piloting a project to reform that issue. Canada's new cannabis rules took effect October 17 after a June parliamentary vote: those at least 18 or 19 years old (laws vary by province) may buy up to 30 grams of cannabis, and grow up to four plants at home. The sale of derivatives like edibles will be legalized next year. The new law makes it the second country in the world to legalize the drug, after Uruguay. Statistics Canada estimates about 15 percent of the population will legally purchase the drug this year. And official data forecasts the new rule could boost economic growth by up to Can$1.1 billion through sales. Netherlands Prime Minister Mark Rutte said during a visit to Canada that he advises young people to stay away from cannabis Restoration of 1960 John Deere 435 Delivers Life Skills and a $10,000 Grand Prize INDIANAPOLIS, Ind., Oct. 26, 2018 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Chevron Products Company, a Chevron U.S.A. Inc. division, maker of the Delo brand of technologically advanced engine oils, lubricants and coolants, announced Ricky Schilling of Fayetteville, TX as the Grand Champion of the 2018 Delo Tractor Restoration Competition . A dozen of the countrys top high school-age tractor restoration enthusiasts competed for the title in Indianapolis, IN during the 91st National Future Farmers of America (FFA) Convention this week. Ricky Schilling earned the 2018 Delo Tractor Restoration Grand Champion title for his restoration of a 1960 John Deere 435 tractor. This is my first year and I was not expecting this. I was just expecting to come up here and do my best. Evidently it was enough, because I won Grand Champion, said Ricky Schilling, 2018 Delo Tractor Restoration Competition Grand Champion. Someday I will pass on what I am learning to the next generation of small town kids who still love the agricultural life. Maybe as an Ag teacher, maybe as a rancher who hires, for sure as a judge of tractor restoration. Hopefully, Ill be as good as the men who taught me. Mr. Schilling was awarded $10,000 as the Delo Tractor Restoration Competition Grand Champion. The Reserve Champion title, and an award of $5,000 went to Devin Haywood of Hastings, MI for his restoration of a 1957 Farmall 450 Diesel. A team from the Four Rivers Career H.S. of Washington, MO took third place and a prize of $3,000 for their restoration of a 1949 John Deere Model A. The 2018 entries were narrowed down to 12 finalists who presented their projects to a panel of four seasoned tractor restoration experts. Each project was graded on the restoration process, safety precautions, results, documentation and their oral presentation. The value of the Delo Tractor Restoration Competition goes well beyond bringing an antique tractor back to life, said Dan Holdmeyer, Industrial and Coolants Brand Manager, Chevron Products Company. This event is a combination of a vocational and business school experience that provides lessons our participants will take with them throughout their lives. Congratulations to our Grand Champion, Ricky Schilling, and all this years competitors. You should be incredibly proud of what you have achieved as part of this event. The finalists for the 2018 Delo Tractor Restoration Competition are: Everett Herrington, Idalou FFA, Idalou, TX: 1968 Massey-Ferguson Austin Reynolds, Ira FFA, Ira, TX: 1955 Farmall Cub Austin Chavez, Cuero High School, Cuero, TX: 1965 John Deere Model 4020 Ricky Schilling, Fayetteville ISD #278, Fayetteville, TX: 1960 John Deere 435 Four Rivers Career H.S., Four Rivers Career Center Night Shift, Washington, MO: 1949 John Deere Model "A" Devin Haywood, Hastings FFA, Hastings, MI: 1957 Farmall 450 Diesel Box Elder High School, Box Elder FFA, Brigham City, UT: 1949 Farmall C Riley Dalrymple, Uvalde FFA, Uvalde, TX: 1925 John Deere D Ryder Merta, El Campo FFA, El Campo, TX: 1949, John Deere B NorthWood High School, NorthWood FFA, Nappanee, IN: 1950 John Deere MT Corey Verstraeten, Southwest FFA, San Antonio, TX: 1955 Oliver Super 88 L-P Mack Blair, Dubiski Career High School FFA, Grand Prairie, TX: 1949 John Deere A About the Delo Tractor Restoration Competition Since 1995 the Delo Tractor Restoration Competition has rewarded the determination, mechanical skills and business savvy of high school tractor restoration experts from around the country. Through the restoration of an antique tractor, participants develop skills applicable to the modern business world. The skills needed for success in the program equipment mechanics, teamwork, project management, budgeting, planning and marketing help develop the participants into future leaders in the agriculture community. All entrants to the Delo Tractor Restoration Competition are required to submit a workbook detailing the entire tractor restoration process, from mechanical overhauls of the engine, transmission and auxiliary and ancillary systems, to the external appearance of the tractors. The 12 finalists are invited to present their projects to a panel of four professional tractor experts during the National FFA Convention in Indianapolis. Projects are graded on restoration process, hands-on learning, results and documentation, as well as oral presentation and safety precautions. For more about the Delo Tractor Restoration Competition, go to: www.DeloTractorRestorationCompetition.com Follow the Delo Tractor Restoration Competition Online The Delo Tractor Restoration Competition can be followed on various social media channels, including Facebook , YouTube and Twitter . Chevrons Delo Product Family: Chevrons Delo product family includes engine oils, premium lubricants and extended life coolants that provide premium performance and bottom-line value for diesel powered vehicles. All Delo products are covered under the Delo Warranty Plus program, which provides bumper-to-bumper protection against lubricant and coolant related failures as described in the Delo Warranty. More information on Delo products can be found at: www.ChevronDelo.com About Chevron Products Company Chevron Products Company is a division of an indirect, wholly owned subsidiary of the Chevron Corporation (NYSE: CVX) headquartered in San Ramon, CA. A full line of lubrication and coolant products are marketed through this organization. Select brands include Havoline, Delo and Havoline Xpress Lube. Chevron Intellectual Property, LLC owns patented technology in advanced lubricants products, new generation base oil technology and coolants. For more information go to: www.ChevronLubricants.com Media Contacts: Cathy Hendrix, Demand Strategies for Chevron, cmccarty@demandstrategies.com, 502.419.8294 Swedish politicians were seeking answers Friday after reports emerged of a submarine sighting in Stockholm waters in June, which the military did not tell parliament's defence committee about. Newspaper of reference Dagens Nyheter reported late Thursday that three teenage instructors and children at a sailing camp in the suburb of Lidingo had spotted the mystery vessel on June 28. For about 20 minutes, they observed what they believed to be a dark grey or black submarine near the surface and watched it sail away from where they were sailing dinghies. The teens took photographs and a short video of the object, which Dagens Nyheter published on its website. The Swedish military, which learned of the incident several days later by word of mouth, sent two officers on July 4 to question the teens, aged 17 and 18. "We are confident about the measures we took when we received this information. But I can't go into which measures were taken nor which conclusions were drawn," Armed Forces spokesman Jesper Tengroth told AFP. "The military does not share Dagens Nyheter's view that this was a foreign submarine," Tengroth later told the newspaper. But he refused to say whether the military had identified the object, and if so, what it was. Dagens Nyheter said neither the Swedish military nor civilian submarines were active in the area at the time of the sighting. Swedish politicians expressed surprise that they had not been told of the possible incursion. "We haven't been informed of this previously. They've been sitting on this (information) for several months, they should have sorted out what this is all about," Liberal lawmaker Allan Widman, a member of parliament's defence committee, told Dagens Nyheter. "We are of course going to make sure we get this information as soon as possible. Observations like this should be taken seriously," conservative Moderates MP Beatrice Ask told news agency TT. As a result, Tengroth said the military would inform lawmakers "relatively soon". Alleged submarine sightings are not uncommon in Sweden. -- Massive hunt in 2014 -- In October 2014, Sweden launched a massive hunt for a foreign submarine, suspected to be Russian, in the Stockholm archipelago over an eight-day period. The military subsequently confirmed "a mini submarine" had violated its territorial waters, but was never able to establish the vessel's nationality. After years of massive military cutbacks in the post Cold War period, Sweden has in recent years hiked defence spending, much of it focused on upgrading capacity to detect and intercept submarines. A non-NATO country, Sweden has also stepped up its military capabilities and exercises with the alliance, including the current Trident Juncture 18 exercises, amid signs of more assertive Russian behaviour in the Baltic region. That has included Russian planes occasionally skirting or violating the national air space of neighbouring countries. File photo from October 2014 when Sweden launched a massive hunt for a foreign submarine, suspected to be Russian, in the Stockholm archipelago Swiss luxury goods group Richemont announced Friday a partnership with Chinese e-commerce giant Alibaba to develop platforms in China for high-end products. Under the deal, Richemont's online unit Yoox-net-a-porter and Alibaba will set up a joint venture with two mobile phone applications -- Net-a-Porter and Mr Porter -- to serve the Chinese market, a statement said. Net-a-porter and Mr Porter will also be made available on Alibaba's specialist luxury site, Tmall Luxury Pavilion, which was launched last year. The two companies also agreed to explore other opportunities to develop the luxury goods market in China. "Our digital offer in China is just getting started," Richemont chief Johann Rupert said in the statement. Richemont, ranked second only to French giant LVMH, has recently focused on online sales, a booming sector in the luxury goods industry and where China is seen as one of the most important markets. Its Net-a-Porter platform carries its own brands plus rivals', aiming to become a one-stop shop for the fashion conscious. Alibaba is one of the world's biggest e-commerce operations, with sales of nearly $40 billion in its last financial year to March 2018. Swiss company Richemont owns several of the world's leading luxury brands including the Piaget jewellery label A United Nations plan to end the seven-year civil war in Syria has run aground after Damascus blocked the world body's proposal for a committee to draft a new constitution, provoking anger among western powers. UN special envoy Staffan de Mistura has been working since January on forming a group of 150 members to thrash out a new constitution, seen as a first step to winding down a conflict that has cost more than 360,000 lives. Under the UN plan, the Syrian regime would choose 50 of the committee members, the Syrian opposition another 50 and the UN would nominate the final 50, composed of representatives of civil society and technical experts. De Mistura, a veteran Italian-Swedish diplomat due to step down next month, said Friday that Foreign Minister Walid Muallem rejected the last list of UN-proposed names and suggested his own method to the final 50 members during talks in Damascus this week. "Walid Muallem didn't accept a role for the UN in identifying or selecting a third list," the envoy told the UN Security Council by video conference during an emergency session called by the United States. "Rather, Mr Muallem indicated that the governments of Syria and Russia had agreed recently that the three Astana guarantors (Iran, Russia and Turkey) and the Syrian government would in consultations among them prepare a proposal as regards the third list." De Mistura said withdrawing the UN list was only possible "if there was an agreement on a new credible, balanced and inclusive list" that complied with UN resolutions and commitments made in January talks in the Russian resort town of Sochi. - 'Unacceptable' for Washington - Unsurprisingly, the Syrian counter-proposal was met with widespread condemnation from western powers, led by Britain, France and the United States. "The United Nations has exclusive control over the committee's membership, schedule and scope of work -- as affirmed by the Russian Federation in its January 2018 Sochi Declaration," said Jonathan Cohen, the deputy US ambassador to the world body. "Further obstruction on the committee's formation is unacceptable," he added, calling for urgent action. French ambassador Francois Delattre warned that "the risk of new escalation cannot be ruled out. That can only be done through a solution that is politically credible and inclusive." "It is right that the UN is involved," in the political process, said Karen Pierce, the British ambassador to the UN, stressing the world body's deep engagement with issues of humanitarian aid, refugees and health. Vassily Nebenzia, the ambassador of Russia, a key ally of the Syrian regime, was critical of the decision to hold the Security Council meeting. "We cannot go against the will of Syria," he said. "We will help Staffan de Mistura create this constitutional committee with respect for Syrian sovereignty." Nebenzia urged caution in the process and stressed that the outgoing diplomat, who already addressed the council last week, not make the issue his "political legacy." De Mistura said he would take part Saturday in a special summit in Istanbul bringing together leaders from France, Germany, Russia and Turkey. The Syrian summit will be followed on Monday by a meeting of the so-called "small group" of Britain, Egypt, France, Germany, Jordan, Saudi Arabia and the United States, a UN official said. De Mistura will then go on to Geneva to meet with the Astana accord guarantors Iran and Russia, which are backing the regime of President Bashar al-Assad, and Turkey, a major sponsor of anti-regime rebel groups. The UN's attempt to broker peace in Syria have largely been eclipsed by a parallel diplomatic initiative by Moscow, Tehran and Turkey. Outgoing UN envoy to Syria Staffan de Mistura says Damascus has rejected a plan to draft a new constitution Nasr al-Hariri, the chief negotiator for the Syrian opposition, in Moscow in October 2018 Three women found dead on the Greece-Turkey border earlier this month were a mother and two daughters whose throats were slit after they were tied up, a Greek police source said on Friday. The bodies were found on October 10 near the River Evros between Greece and Turkey, an area that is a major crossing point for refugees and migrants trying to get into the EU. Authorities are still investigating what happened to the three women of Asian origin although Greek media has reported they may have been killed as a "punishment" by migrant traffickers. "The women were forced to kneel down before they had their throats slit, which could evoke images of some kind of jihadists, but for now nothing is being excluded," the police source said. "It is without precedent in the country's history, it's a mystery." The latest results of the investigation confirmed the victims were a mother around 35 years old and her two daughters, 17 and 15. They are believed to be Asian but neither their nationality or identity have been confirmed. The medical examiner found the mother managed to untie herself to try to defend her daughters. It was not immediately clear whether they were migrants or refugees. No family has reported their disappearance as often happens with relatives of migrants trying to make the crossing through this area into EU-member Greece. The bodies were found by a farmer in a field on the banks of the Evros, where increasing numbers of migrants and refugees are seeking to cross following a border crackdown by eastern European states. Twelve people drowned in the river between January and July, according to Greek authorities. According to Greek police data, over 8,400 migrants and asylum seekers were arrested on the border in the first six months of this year, compared with about 1,600 in the same period a year ago. The three bodies were found on October 10 near the River Evros between the Greek and Turkey borders that is a major crossing point for refugees and migrants trying to get into the EU An overhaul of global trade is urgently needed, 13 trade ministers representing all regions of the world said Thursday, following two days of talks in Ottawa aimed at setting objectives to reform the troubled system. The group made a veiled appeal to the United States to stop blocking appointments to WTO dispute resolution panels, warning the system will otherwise collapse soon. Leaders also said a rethink is needed on the differential treatment of developing nations, in an apparent nod to US complaints that China is considered a developing nation, despite its economic might. Canada hosted officials from Australia, Brazil, Chile, the European Union, Japan, South Korea, Kenya, Mexico, New Zealand, Norway, Singapore, and Switzerland for the talks. The United States and China, however, were not at the table. "The current situation at the WTO is no longer sustainable and action must be taken," Canada's Trade Minister Jim Carr told a closing press conference. "We share (the US) appetite for reform," he added. "It is in need of renewal... It's time for this reform and this is a good place to start." The failure to adjust global trade rules in the last two decades -- particularly in agriculture and services -- has undermined the potential to boost growth and reduce poverty, according to a joint report by the International Monetary Fund, World Trade Organization and World Bank released September 30. The organizations are urging redoubled efforts to accelerate reforms, especially to the WTO -- moves they say are aimed at salvaging the economic benefits of trade and ensuring that prosperity is shared more widely. US President Donald Trump's relentless attacks on the Geneva-based WTO and threats to pull his country out of the global trade body added urgency to the discussions. His "America First" policy and use of punitive tariffs have unsettled trade relations. WTO Director General Roberto Azevedo, who joined the talks, has said he agrees that the WTO needs reforms, and soon. Carr meanwhile acknowledged that there can be no substantive reforms without the US or China. But he also stressed the need to frame rules for all 164 WTO member nations. "We are a relatively small country and our major trading partners are big," Carr said as the meetings began. "Rules matter because we each merit the protections they afford and the opportunity they create for even the smallest first-time exporter in the most far-flung corner of the world to compete and to succeed," he said. "To make that kind of relationship work, we have to believe the rules of trade work for all of us and our people have to see that, too." Among the objectives outlined at the Ottawa ministerial were safeguarding the WTO dispute settlement system, improving its "monitoring and transparency functions," and adjusting rules to reflect the dominance in trade of services, including ecommerce. In a joint communique, the delegates said they are "deeply concerned by recent developments in international trade, particularly the rise in protectionism, which negatively affect the WTO and put the entire multilateral trading system at risk." They said "continued vacancies in the Appellate Body present a risk to the WTO system as a whole" and "emphasized an urgent need to unblock the appointment of Appellate Body members." At the same time, the delegates acknowledged concerns about its functioning and vowed to "work on solutions." The Appellate Body normally has seven members, but is now down to three. If one more is lost, the dispute resolution system will stop functioning, putting trade disputes in limbo. The Ottawa group also said trading rules must be updated "to reflect 21st century realities" and the WTO must "explore how the development dimension, including special and differential treatment, can be best pursued in rule-making efforts." They refused to cast it aside, however, saying "development must remain an integral part of our work." Another meeting of the Canadian-led group is scheduled for January. Delegates gathers for the World Trade Organization reform talks in Ottawa, Ontario Roberto Azevedo, Director General for the World Trade Organization US Anti-Doping Agency chief executive Travis Tygart told AFP on Friday that athletes had lost confidence in WADA following the decision to lift the ban on Russia's anti-doping agency. The World Anti-Doping Agency reinstated Russia in September, paving the way for Russian athletes to return to competition across all sports. Tygart attacked the move when it was first announced, and pulled no punches when repeating his condemnation of the global anti-doping body. He suggested that the International Olympic Committee (IOC) was too close to WADA and that athletes' confidence in their system was now "in tatters". "The process was a secret, backroom deal. The process itself stunk, and the decision itself too," Tygart told AFP. His comments triggered an indignant response from WADA, who flatly denied his claim that there was anything untoward about the procedure. "The process was signposted at every turn, it was clearly communicated in a transparent way and the decision was reached following due diligence, consideration and with all the facts available," a WADA statement insisted. "People can of course disagree with the decision but to suggest it was a "backroom deal" is unfair and simply not true," it added. Tygart in his interview claimed athletes "have lost confidence in the global regulator to make good decisions in an open, fair and transparent manner". He asserted: "The practical effect (of allowing Russia back in) is nothing more than money being allowed to be spent for hosting events in Russia. The athletes, with exception on track and field athletes, have always been able to compete." Tygart said Russia had effectively been let off the hook after being exposed for state-sponsored doping at the Sochi Games in 2014. "We exposed a state system, they get caught with their hand in the cookie jar, but they basically got a 'get out of jail free' card. "No meaningful sanctions were imposed on the state that perpetuated this system, and that is the part that athletes are having a problem with." WADA countered Tygart's claims, pointing out that the proposal that was approved was worked out in June with the full knowledge of the Independent Compliance Review Committee. The agency spelled out the process involved. "When Russia accepted it in September, it was fully discussed and debated again by the CRC and then presented along with a positive recommendation to the Executive Committee. "This recommendation was made public by WADA in advance of the Executive Committee meeting on 20 September." It said at the crunch meeting the vote in favour was 9-2 (with one abstention). "This included a majority of both sports movement reps and government authorities". Tygart meanwhile explained how he would tackle the problem. "You need to outsource your control system," he said. "You cannot both promote and police sports. "So long as there is an IOC former executive board member or an IOC member in charge at WADA, then no we don't have any confidence that good decisions are gonna be made," he said. US Anti-Doping Agency chief executive Travis Tygart, pictured Feburary 2017, attacked WADA's reinstatement of Russia when it was first announced and has condemned the global anti-doping body Patriarch Filaret is months away from turning 90 but the Kiev cleric has told AFP he will not flinch in leading the Ukrainian Orthodox Church through a historic break with Moscow. The Ukrainian branch of Orthodoxy has been under Moscow's control for the last 300 years but this month the leading authority in Orthodox Christianity granted it the right to independence. The decision by the Ecumenical Patriarchate of Constantinople drew cheers from Kiev, fury from Moscow, and marked the culmination of more than two decades of work by Filaret. Now the cleric, excommunicated and defrocked by Moscow over his independence drive but reinstated by Constantinople, says he will seek formally to lead a unified Ukrainian Church. "I haven't been fighting for over 25 years, from the start of (Ukrainian) independence, only to withdraw from the service of this Church before it has acquired the formal status it deserves," he told AFP. "Of course" he will put himself forward to lead the unified Church when it its existence is formalised, he said in an interview at his residence in central Kiev. Though slower of movement and speech than he once was, the charismatic Patriarch Filaret appears younger than his 89 years. He leads the Sunday service in the Saint Volodymyr Cathedral in Kiev most weeks and travels frequently. "I haven't thought about it, I'm not thinking about it," he said when asked whether he was considering suggesting a younger candidate for the role. "While God gives me strength, I must serve the Church." Filaret served in the Russian Orthodox Church during the Soviet Union and was the influential Metropolitan of Kiev for over thirty years. But in 1990 he lost a struggle to lead the body to Patriarch Alexei II, who occupied the position until current Moscow Patriarch Kirill. After the collapse of the USSR the following year, Filaret began to push for an independent Ukrainian Church. In 2014, he embraced and found a political ally in the new Ukrainian government following the ousting of Moscow-backed president Viktor Yanukovych. - 'Religious war' - As political ties between Kiev and Moscow nosedived over Russia's annexation of Crimea in 2014 and the subsequent conflict in eastern Ukraine, the movement gained strength. Before the independence decision by the Istanbul-based Constantinople Patriarchate, an influential Moscow cleric warned that parishioners would not hand over churches to a new Orthodox institution willingly. But Filaret insists there will be no violence when individual parishes decide whether to join the new unified church. "Around two in three dioceses of the Moscow-aligned Ukrainian Church will transfer to the (unified) Ukrainian Church," according to research carried out by his branch. He insisted this would take place "without violence" even with historically important sites, such as the Kiev-Pechersk Lavra monastery that the Moscow branch currently uses. "The Lavras (large and important monasteries) are sacred Ukrainian sites. Of course they must belong to the Ukrainian Church," he said. The Kremlin has pledged to protect the interests of Russian Orthodox believers in Ukraine, while Kiev has accused Moscow of attempting to stir up "religious war". It is unclear exactly when Constantinople's decision will come into force, but Filaret is convinced it will be by early next year. "There is no other option," he said. "Moscow will try its usual tactics -- intimidation and defrocking." The Russian Orthodox Church has said it would cut ties with Constantinople, which it accused of supporting a "schism". Filaret, however, says Russia has only harmed itself by pulling away from the Orthodox governing body. Patriarch Kirill "will not communicate with me. And not only with me but with the Ecumenical Patriarch. He will be the architect of his own isolation." Ukrainian Orthodox Church Patriarch Filaret insists he is ready, even at 89, to lead an independent unified Ukrainian Orthodox Church, despite the prospect of stoking tension with Moscow Moscow Patriarch Kirill, seen attending the September inauguration of the mayor of Moscow alongside Russian President Vladimir Putin, will isolate himself if he rejects the Ukrainian Church's independence move, insists counterpart Patriarch Filaret More than two decades after his savage murder shocked America and launched a reckoning about homophobic violence, Matthew Shepard was finally laid to rest Friday at Washington National Cathedral. There were plenty of tears but also a few laughs -- and a few political jabs -- as hundreds of people including Shepard's parents Judy and Dennis gathered to say a final farewell to the Wyoming man, who became a symbol for the gay rights movement. "It's so important that we now have a home for Matt, a home that's safe, a home that others can visit, a home that is safe from haters, a home that he loved dearly," Dennis Shepard said at the towering Episcopal church. "Matt loved the church, he loved the ceremony, he loved the fact that it was a safe place for anyone who wanted to enter," he added, thanking the cathedral for "showing acceptance and inclusiveness." Shepard, a 21-year-old political science and foreign languages student at the University of Wyoming who wanted to become a diplomat, was lured away from a bar in Laramie in October 1998 by two young men pretending to be gay. They stripped him, violently beat him and left him to die, bound to a fence in a field in the bitter cold. Shepard was found 18 hours later by passers-by, who initially mistook him for a scarecrow. He died in hospital a few days later of head injuries. The two men, Aaron McKinney and Russell Henderson, were convicted of murder. Each received two consecutive life sentences. At his funeral, extremist Baptist protesters picketed, brandishing signs that read: "God hates fags." Fearing that any final resting place would be vandalized, Shepard's parents held on to his ashes -- until Friday. They were laid to rest in the cathedral's crypt -- a rare honor -- in a private ceremony after the public service. Shepard is now one of around 200 people interred at the Cathedral, including deaf-blind activist Helen Keller and former US president Woodrow Wilson. - 'And Matt? Welcome home' - The remembrance ceremony was presided over by Gene Robinson, the first openly gay US bishop in the Episcopal Church, who is close with Shepard's parents. Robinson, struggling to contain his own emotion, paid tribute to Shepard in an emotional homily that had congregants laughing and crying. "Matt was luckier than most young gay men in 1998. He had parents and a brother who loved him," Robinson said, hailing Judy and Dennis Shepard for turning "this horrendous event into something good." The reverend then turned political, making a plea to those gathered to vote in the country's midterm elections on November 6. In 2009, 10 years after Shepard's death, then president Barack Obama signed a law bearing his name, expanding existing federal hate crimes law to include crimes sparked by sexual orientation and gender identity. But Robinson warned that the rights of LBGTQ Americans were once again at risk of being curbed. "Right now, the transgender community is the target," Robinson said, referring to reports that the administration of President Donald Trump is mulling whether to narrowly define gender as purely biological. "There are forces about who would erase them from America, deny the right they have to define themselves -- and they need us to stand with them," he added, earning applause. Robinson finished with a heartfelt message for the slain student. "There are three things I want to say to Matt: Gently rest in this place. You are safe now. Oh yeah, and Matt? Welcome home," he said. Greg Fuller, a resident of the US capital, said he came to Friday's ceremony to celebrate Shepard's life, and appreciated Robinson's call to action. "There's too much divisiveness -- we need to learn from history," Fuller told AFP. The parents of slain gay student Matthew Shepard, Dennis and Judy, follow Reverend Gene Robinson as he carries the remains of their son at the Washington National Cathedral, where he was laid to rest 20 years after his murder In 1998, Matthew Shepard, a 21-year-old political science and foreign languages student at the University of Wyoming who wanted to become a diplomat, was lured away from a bar by two men pretending to be gay, who fatally beat him and left him to die Washington National Cathedral was full for the remembrance ceremony for Matthew Shepard The ceremony for Matthew Shepard was at times emotional, but also featured some sentimental laughs A bid by Belgium bishops to allow young married men to take the cloth has fallen flat at a Vatican meet -- though Pope Francis is considering testing out the idea in the Amazon. The suggestion of easing the rules on celibacy was raised by the Auxiliary Bishop of Brussels, Jean Kockerols, during a month-long meeting of the world's bishops. It appeared to fall on deaf ears -- at least officially. "There were no reactions" to that, or any of the "daring proposals" that made newspaper headlines during the synod, French bishop Emmanuel Gobillard told AFP. The 330 or so clerics and lay people taking part in the talks, which end Sunday, were tackling the thorny issue of how to make the Roman Catholic Church appeal to youngsters. "I am disappointed by the lack of reaction. One bishop compared it to stalactites that take a long time to grow," Kockerols told AFP. "Numerous bishops sought me out during coffee breaks, saying 'you are right, we should be heading in that direction,' but I notice the subject was never looked into in the working groups," he said. The number of priests and nuns dropped sharply in 2016 in Europe -- and the Americas to a lesser extent. The picture is rosier in Africa and Asia, according to the Fides Catholic agency. As the Argentine pontiff has repeatedly said, there is no doctrinal prohibition on married men becoming priests, and therefore the discipline can be changed. - 'Taboo' subject - Saint Peter, the church's first pope, had a mother-in-law, according to the bible. Celibacy was imposed in the 11th century, possibly partly to prevent descendants of priests from inheriting church property. But some within the church believe it is time to join many eastern rite Catholic Churches in permitting married men to take the cloth. Married Anglican priests keen to convert to Catholicism have already been welcomed over. The Vatican's number two man, Cardinal Pietro Parolin, suggested in an interview at the start of the synod that the church could "gradually look in depth" at the issue, while ruling out a "drastic change". Some 60,000 priests have given up their vocation over the past few decades, often to marry, according to a book on the topic presented a stone's throw from the Vatican during the synod. There were 414,000 Roman Catholic priests around the world in 2016. Some 1,000 of them are quitting each year, according to the book by Vatican expert Enzo Romeo. While there are no official statistics on the number of married ex-priests, he estimates that there are around 8,000 of them in Italy alone. "Priests' emotions are still often a taboo subject, swept under the carpet at the heart of the church," Romeo said. The decision to leave the priesthood -- despite the job security and free accommodation -- usually happens after 13 years on the job or is sparked by a mid-life crisis, he says. - Lonely hearts, rejects - One of the former priests quoted in Romeo's book says he quit not only because he fell in love, but also because he found it difficult to preach to others about the church's moral stance on sexuality. Pope Paul VI's refusal to open the door to the use of the pill in the Swinging Sixties saw many priests abandon their calling. "Celibacy is an extreme form of poverty which lumps those who practice it in with the loneliest people, the rejects," one older cleric, defending his radical choice, told Romeo. Pope Francis suggested in 2017 that the church "reflect" on the question of ordaining "viri probati", married men of proven virtue, particularly in far-flung places where priests are thin on the ground. The idea is likely to be on the table at a synod next year dedicated specially to the Amazon, an immense territory where clergy are scarce. Sensing a possible shift in attitude, some 300 or so married, former priests in Italy sent a letter to Francis at the start of October offering to take up the cloth once more should he need them. Pope Francis suggested in 2017 that the church "reflect" on the question of ordaining "viri probati", married men of proven virtue, particularly in far-flung places where priests are thin on the ground Pikeville, Kentucky, Oct. 26, 2018 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- While the conversation around distracted teen drivers often centers on the use of mobile devices, a report from AAA suggests that the presence of other teens inside a vehicle greatly increases the chances of a fatal crash. AAA said that when a teen driver has just one other teenager in the vehicle, the fatality rate for everyone involved in a crash increases by 51 percent . Conversely, when a teen has a passenger that is at least 35 years old, the fatality rate is 8 percent lower. Billy Johnson, a Pikeville injury attorney, has years of experience representing people injured in serious vehicle crashes. He said that the AAA report captures one of the biggest problems facing young drivers in our state. Dozens of people die every year in Kentucky in crashes involving teen drivers, Johnson said. Our state has one of the highest rates of teen involvement in fatal crashes. This is clearly a serious problem, but it might also be one that we can fix. AAA suggests that states require younger drivers to accumulate 100 hours of driving time under the supervision of a parent before being permitted to drive alone. The current number of hours required is 60. While this change would likely make roads safer for everyone, it doesnt address situations in which the rules arent being followed, Johnson said. Compliance is obviously a critical component of the laws effectiveness, he said. This is where the role of parents with teens becomes essential. We need to come to terms with the fact that drivers without sufficient experience arent ready to take on extra passengers. The risk of a teen driver being involved in a deadly crash increases dramatically as more passengers enter the vehicle. One teen passenger increases the risk by more than half. Two passengers double the risk. Three or more passengers create four times the risk. For some parents, it might seem overbearing or overly strict to tell their teens that they arent allowed to drive a friend, but when we look at the numbers from AAA, its clear that being stricter is in everyones best interests, Johnson said. As the guns fell silent in 1918, World War I victors all agreed on one thing: Germany must pay. How much was a matter of debate but there was never any doubt that the post-war settlement enshrined in the Treaty of Versailles was going to be punitive. Germany did pay, but it was not alone. A century on, the world lives with the consequences of a peace accord that, even at the time, was criticised as making another war inevitable in Europe, a continent which had dominated the world for centuries. Economist J.M. Keynes, then a British Treasury official, resigned rather than be associated with a treaty he denounced as "Carthaginian" in its harshness. French Marshal Ferdinand Foch judged it "not so much a peace as a 20-year armistice". The "war to end all wars" turned out to be the opposite. By ensuring Germany's economic ruin and political humiliation, the post-war settlement provided fertile ground for the rise of Nazism and its horrors. Beyond Germany, the slew of peace treaties redrew the map of Europe, carving up vanquished empires and creating as many future conflicts as new countries and borders from the Baltic States to Turkey, via Czechoslovakia and Yugoslavia. - Famine, terror and the Cold War - Just as important, the war served as an incubator for the 1917 Russian Revolution. Against a backdrop of desperate food shortages, military failure left the Tsarist state crippled and vulnerable to an assault by Lenin's Bolsheviks, who then established the Soviet Union as an authoritarian Communist state. Disastrous agricultural policies resulted in more than three million people dying in the famine of the early 1930s, millions more under the Great Terror unleashed by Lenin's successor, Joseph Stalin. By the mid-1930s, conditions were in place for the post-World War II division of Europe. That in turn produced the Cold War and its associated splitting of the rest of the planet into Western or Soviet spheres of influence, and an unstable global equilibrium that helped fuel countless conflicts across the developing world. While the political prestige of the main victors Britain and France was at a height in 1919, it did not hide the blossoming on the international stage of the United States, which would become the main economic, military and political power in the Western camp in the following decades. - Middle East overhaul - World War I also left a lasting mark on the Middle East. By encouraging an Arab revolt, Britain helped precipitate the collapse of the Germany-allied Ottoman empire. A secular Turkey emerged and Britain and France assumed post-war control of much of the Arab world. By then Britain had also made clear, through the 1917 Balfour Declaration, its support for the principle of a Jewish state on land it had pledged to the Arabs. Finally, the Ottoman empire's collapse also resulted in the killing of up to 1.5 million Armenians in what they steadfastly argue was a full-blown genocide. - A new social order - Events in Russia cast a long shadow over the rest of Europe, generating a fear of upheaval that helped accelerate reforms while also inspiring other revolutionaries, including the nascent fascist movement that was soon to seize power in Italy. Worker uprisings in Germany and Hungary immediately after the war were crushed or collapsed internally. But waves of militancy in other countries -- in the Fiat factories of Turin, Italy or the shipyards of Scotland's Red Clydeside -- delivered major advances in terms of working conditions and the rights of trade unions to represent their members. More broadly the aftermath of World War I was a period of rapid social progress in much of the industrialised world. This was most notable in terms of women's right to vote, which, in the popular memory, is often seen as having been "earned" through female participation in war-related activities. Less obvious positive legacies of a war which left millions maimed or traumatised were greater social acceptance of the disabled and the destigmatisation of mental illness. The war also spurred new waves of creativity in the arts. Poetry was revived as an art form across the world; Dadaism, the avant-garde art movement, was born and led in turn to Surrealism. Jazz, brought to Europe by American soldiers, became the soundtrack for the escapism and innovation of the "roaring '20s". Troops of the Sturmabteilung, the German Nazi party's paramilitary, pictured in the 1930s Undated picture of Nazi leader Adolf Hitler with colleague Joseph Goebbels (R) An undated portrait of Italian fascist dictator Benito Mussolini. Demonstration for votes for women in Paris in 1934 Every Friday, The Citizen features a pet available for adoption from the Finger Lakes SPCA of Central New York. This week, we spotlight Olivia. Q: Who is your best friend? A: That would be my BFF Thelma. Poor Thelma! Sometimes, for lack of a better description, my Thelma is just lacking in social graces. I have been working with her to teach her better manners and how to be friendlier with our wonderful visitors. I think I am making some progress, but this is a challenge. I know I am up to it and I want to succeed and see Thelma go home. Someone please give Thelma a chance! Q: Do you have a job at the shelter? A: Nothing specific, but I do pick up odd-jobs every once in a while. Right now, as I said, I am working with Thelma on her manners. I am an "out cat," which means that I do not spend my time in a cage. However, I do give lessons to the cats and kittens who are in cages on how to keep their rooms neat and tidy. This is also a challenge. There is nothing more fun than kicking up litter, so I am teaching restraint. The kittens are my most difficult students! Q: If you could meet someone famous who would that be? A: Well, I just learned about a cat appropriately named Blackie, whom I would have loved to have met. Blackie's owner, who was an antiques dealer, left him $12.5 million. That would be like winning the Powerball! I understand Blackie shared his good fortune with several cat sanctuaries, which was very kind. He was a lucky cat, and he was also very kind. Q: If you could visit any place in the world, where would that be? A: Well, I believe I would love to visit Nekobiyaka in Himeji, Japan! That's a mouthful, but it's a very important place as far as I'm concerned. Nekobiyaka is a black cat-only cat cafe! Yes, black cats are stars of this cafe, and visitors are invited to pet and socialize with all of these wonderful felines. Each of Nekobiyaka's identical-looking black cats wears a different colored bandanna to avoid any catastrophic mix-ups. Perhaps if there is an opening one day, I might get hired on! Q: Do you have an interesting fact to share? A: I do! While some might debate whether black cats are good luck or bad luck to humans, it seems that having a black coat is definitely good luck for me and my similarly coated feline friends! Studies conducted by the National Institutes of Health revealed that the same genetic mutations that give us a fully black coat also help protect us from a variety of diseases. OK! We'll take what we can get. Q: Do you have any advice for our good Citizen readers? A: I do! So, in case you hadn't noticed, the weather has taken a turn for the worst (or worse my grammar is sometimes not so good). Anyway, good Citizen readers, please remember that if your dogs spend any time at all outdoors in inclement weather, that they must have appropriate shelter. What is appropriate shelter, you might ask? Well, it must be a doghouse that is right for the size, breed and condition of your pup! It should have a sloping roof and have a flap to keep the weather out, among other things. We didn't just make this up because we didn't have anything to do it's a real law and my shelter people have copies of the law if you would like to be in compliance. Thank you for keeping your dogs (and cats) safe! Love, Olivia and friends. The Finger Lakes SPCA of Central New York is a New York state-registered shelter/rescue, registration No. RR-181. Pursuant to Article 26-A, Section 408 of the Agriculture and Markets Law, the registrant is authorized to operate as a registered pet rescue, in compliance with such law. Love 2 Funny 0 Wow 0 Sad 0 Angry 0 LEDYARD Following a lively public hearing in Ledyard last week, the Inns of Aurora secured approval to create a new spa facility. The town of Ledyard held a well-attended public hearing with about 20 visitors heard on Oct. 17 regarding a special permit the Inns needed to get in order to proceed with the project. While the decision was stayed the night of the hearing, the special permit was approved the following day. On Monday, Ledyard planning board's Chairwoman Deborah Ross announced that the town made a negative declaration on the proposal's State Environmental Quality Review and subsequently approved a special permit to allow the commercial enterprise in a parcel at 700 Sherwood Road, that was zoned as agricultural-residential. During the public hearing, however, residents expressed mixed feelings about the project. "A lot of you referred to this as 'a very small project,'" said Donna Goddard, who's lived in Ledyard since 1971. "This is not small to me and this isn't small to the people in this room ... this is a big deal, OK? And you need to know that." Goddard, who is a neighbor to the project, expressed additional frustration that the project planning had been going on for about a year, yet she hadn't heard of the project until notices for public meetings recently went out. The spa facility itself, situated on a 265-acre parcel split by Sherwood Road, is going to be about 26,000 square feet including about a 10,000-square-foot basement. The spa will include 10 spa treatment rooms, an exercise room, a kitchen for a simple cafe for spa guests, as well as outdoor pools and spas. "We really want you to feel like you're literally coming onto a farm," said project manager Ted Kinder of the spa sight, explaining that the guest entrance is low-key, narrow and largely unlit. He added that farming currently happening on the land by a renter "is going to stay exactly as it is." Additional development includes 59 parking spots for guests, 19 for staff and an extension to a farm pond and added walkways through nature. The farmhouse on the site will remain undeveloped and open to the public, Kinder added. In terms of added traffic to the town and the village, the project's traffic engineer Gordon Stansbury said the spa is seen as a minor development since it will never exceed more than 100 cars per hour. He estimated at the busiest times possible, 12 cars at most would enter and exit an hour. More regularly, he estimated three or four cars per hour. "The spa project is a very important project to the inns of Aurora," said Sue Edinger, manager of the Inns. "We're really excited about it." She explained that building the spa is crucial to the Inns achieving financial sustainability, filling rooms year-round and being able to continue to employ people year-round. While other residents expressed fear that the village of Aurora seems to be expanding further and further, there were also people who spoke or wrote letters expressing support of the project. Collectively, numerous Inns of Aurora staff expressed the need for the company to grow to remain financially stable, the benefit of adding job security to current jobs and creating jobs, bringing in more tourists, and offering young professionals employment and mentorship that is rare in the area. People also raised questions, that time didn't allow for addressing, such as "will employees live in Aurora?", "will the Inns apply for a tax abatement?" and even "is there a plan of succession for Pleasant Roland?" Another significant concern raised by many people was the issue of drainage. Project engineer Rudy Zona, of RZ Engineering, for stormwater, sewer and water explained that in terms of water and sewer services, the Inns have arranged with the village of Aurora for both water and sewer treatment with an out-of-village user agreement. Zona assured that there will be stormwater mitigation and the project is only allowed to discharge water that is equal to, or less than, the pre-project condition of the land. The system that will be implemented, he said, will collect the water, treat it and slowly release it which in some areas could reduce the amount of water by 10-30 percent, he said. On Monday, Ross said the only thing left for the Inns to do is get a variance from Ledyard's zoning board of appeals so that two buildings can get approval to exceed the current maximum building height restriction. One proposed building is about 12 feet above the max height, and another is just about 2 feet. While there were other concerns expressed such as fire access and worry over why Ledyard's planning board hadn't involved a lawyer of its own, many who spoke also supported free enterprise and bringing more people to the town and village of Aurora. "If we don't find something to keep this area sustainable we're going to find ourselves back in the '90s," said Barbara Blom, "with a village that is just falling into disrepair." Staff writer Megan Ehrhart can be reached at (315) 282-2244 or megan.ehrhart@lee.net. Follow her on Twitter @MeganEhrhart. Love 2 Funny 0 Wow 0 Sad 0 Angry 2 Get local news delivered to your inbox! Subscribe to our Daily Headlines newsletter. Sign up! * I understand and agree that registration on or use of this site constitutes agreement to its user agreement and privacy policy. Iowa Republican Senator Chuck Grassley, who chairs the Senate Judiciary Committee and who oversaw the hearings into the sexual assault allegations against now-confirmed Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh, wants lawyer Michael Avenatti and his client Julie Swetnick investigated by the United States Justice Department, claiming that the two made materially false statements to the committee during its hearings into the Kavanaugh accusations, according to a Washington Post report Thursday afternoon. Swetnick, as AVN.com reported, alleged that as a teenager, Kavanaugh participated in parties at which women were drugged with spiked punch and sexually violated while they were incapacitated by multiple high school boys. The 55-year-old also said that she was the victim of one such gang rape, though she did not allege that Kavanaugh was among her attackers. Kavanugh denied Swetnicks claims, saying they were from the Twilight Zone. When charlatans make false claims to the committeeclaims that may earn them short-term media exposure and financial gain, but which hinder the committees ability to do its jobthere should be consequences, Grassley wrote to Attorney General Jeff Sessions and FBI director Christopher Wray. These laws exist to ensure there are. But Avenatti, best known for representing AVN Hall of Famer Stormy Daniels in her lawsuits against Donald Trump, quickly responded to Grassley, saying that he welcomed such an investigation, and in fact called for the probe to begin tonight. I will make my client [Swetnick] available for a sworn interview and you can make Judge Kavanaugh available for a sworn interview, Avenatti wrote to Grassley on his Twitter account. We also have 9 other witnesses we want interviewed and specific documents we want requested. Lets go. In a separate Twitter message, Avenatti called it ironic that Grassley has now called for an investigation into Swetnick, when he didnt care when it came to putting a man on the SCOTUS for life. With a criminal investigation, Aveatti wrote, we can finally get to the bottom of Judge Kavanaughs lies and conduct. He also called Grassleys request for a Justice Department probe, Christmas in October. Maybe if Grassley was actually a lawyer that knew something about the law, he would realize what he has done, Avenatti wrote. He just opened up Pandoras box as it relates to Justice Kavanaughs conduct. According to The Post, the Justice Department would not comment on whether it would pursue the investigation into Swetnick and Avenatti requested by Grassley. Kavanaugh also declined to comment, through a spokesperson. Photos By United States Senate Public Domain/Luke Harold/Wikimedia Commons NEWARK, DEMonger Cash, which doubles as both a content producer and an affiliate program, is kicking off its new ParadiseGFs.com website with Hungarian twins Nikky and Kitty Fox on a five-day trip to Thailand. ParadiseGFs.com is a brand-new site from the Monger Cash affiliate program featuring stunning models playing horny girlfriends on exotic vacations. On the Thailand trip, Nikky and Kitty are seen enjoying their time at a private resort, having sex with their POV boyfriend on the beach, underwaterand even inside a nightclub bathroom during a night out on the town. This sort of action will be the hallmark of ParadiseGFs' content: videos of European girls in vacation spots around the world, lavishing attention on the POV viewer as he enjoys the sights. The combination of sightseeing and sexmuch like a real vacationkeeps the user interested throughout each trip. A trip to an exotic place with a beautiful girl ready and willing to fuck you at a moment's noticewhat's not to like? a Monger Cash spokesperson said. ParadiseGFs.com is every man's fantasy, delivered right to his device. ParadiseGFs.com is a departure for Monger Cash as it adds new avenues of appeal to its longtime legacy Asian-niched sites. A vacation with a beautiful girl is every man's dream," the company spokesperson said. " ParadiseGFs filters out the plane trip and the hotel check-in and gets right to the good stuff." Putting beautiful women into exotic locations makes ParadiseGF.com a wish-fulfillment destination site for users worldwide. We always strive to provide something a little bit different from everything else out there," the Monger Cash spokesperson said. "The combination of exotic women and new locations is going to be a winner for the subscriber. For more information, visit ParadiseGFs.com. Tampa-based MILF Charlee Chase (@Charlee_Chase) and Vicky Vette have announced the re-launch of Charlee's official site, CharleeChaseLive.com, with the popular VNA Girls Network. Charlee's new official site has a new tour, promo video and members area. It is 100% mobile friendly; members can watch and stream any of the content and free daily live camshows on their phones. Charlee has regular live shows for members on Mondays. Her next live show will be Monday, October 29, at noon ET. There are currently more than 1,200 videos on Charlee's site. Originally from Delaware, Charlee moved to Tampa when she was nineteen and started dancing in a bikini club. Her first foray into adult movies was in 1997. She started her own Clips4Sale store (Charlee's Adventures and Tickle Torture) specializing in everything from balloons to puffy coats to underwater sex, hair washing, smoking, body painting, tickling and more. In 2011, she signed with Vicky Vette's VNA Network to host her official site after bumping into Vicky at an event in Florida. She has a toy released by Doc Johnson (Charlee Chase's MILF in a Box). She has shot for Score, Brazzers, Naughty America, Bang Bros and many more. She won Best Boobs at Nightmoves in 2012. "Finally! I can't believe that I got my official site revamped," Charlee said. "It's been in the works for a while so I am psyched to get the new site out to the fans. It's amazing to think I've been with Vicky and the VNA for seven years. There's over 1,200 videos now on my sitean average of nearly 200 videos a year. Even I can't believe I did that much sucking and fucking. If you want nonstop Charlee Chase 24 hours a day, take a peek at the new site." "Charlee and I go back a long time together," recalled Vicki Vette. "Her site was one of the first we ever signed in the VNA so a redo with all the bells and whistles was in order. Charlee is one of the hardest working MILFs I know; a true MILF who makes her living 24/7 from shooting and performing. I am thrilled she trusts us to operate her site." As part of the VNA Girls Network, members get free live daily cam shows as well as 37 official VNA sites free (including the official sites of girls like Penny Pax, Julia Ann, Angelina Castro, Nikki Benz, Deauxma, Sara Jay, Vicky Vette, Sunny Lane and more). For a limited time, fans can join Charlee's new site for $19.95 a month (usually $25 or more) using this Grand Opening special code: CHARLEESALE. Charlee can be found on OnlyFans. Performers interested in joining the VNA Network can reach Vicky Vette directly at [email protected]. Toronto, Oct. 26, 2018 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- On Oct. 29 at 8 p.m. ET, WWF will release The Living Planet Report 2018, a comprehensive overview of the state of our natural world, focusing on wildlife and ecosystems, and the threats they face. Media availability: World Wildlife Fund Canada experts will be available to interpret the report and provide Canadian context: Megan Leslie, president and CEO James Snider, vice-president, science, research and innovation Sophie Paradis, director of Quebec conservation Sigrid Kuehnemund, vice-president, oceans conservation Emily Giles, senior species specialist Hussein Alidina, senior specialist, oceans Brandon Laforest, senior specialist, Arctic species and ecosystems The state of Canadian wildlife: Canadian wildlife are experiencing severe population declines in the face of increasing stresses. Species that could be featured in coverage of this report include: Barren-ground caribou (N.W.T, Yukon, Nunavut) Southern resident killer whales and chinook salmon (B.C.) Swift fox (Alta., Sask.) Blandings turtle (Ont.) St. Lawrence beluga (Que.) North Atlantic right whale (Atlantic Canada) Atlantic puffin and forage fish (Atlantic Canada) Little brown bat (national) About the Living Planet Report First published 20 years ago, this report is updated every two years. It measures the health of the planet using indicators such as the Living Planet Index, provided by the Zoological Society of London, the Species Habitat Index, the IUCN Red List Index and the Biodiversity Intactness Index, as well as planetary boundaries and the ecological footprint. About World Wildlife Fund Canada WWF-Canada creates solutions to the environmental challenges that matter most for Canadians. We work in places that are unique and ecologically important, so that nature, wildlife and people thrive together. Because we are all wildlife. For more information, visit wwf.ca. For further information or to book an interview, please contact Rebecca Spring, senior communications specialist, rspring@wwfcanada.org, +1 647-338-6274 Patisserie Holdings has announced that Chris Marsh has resigned from his position as finance director. The move follows the suspension of Marsh earlier this month, after the discovery by the company of serious accounting irregularities and the urgent need for a 20m cash injection. Two days after his suspension, Marsh was arrested by police and released on bail. In a statement released today, Patisserie Holdings reported: Following the suspension of Chris Marsh on 9 October 2018, the company has now accepted his resignation as the companys finance director with immediate effect, while reserving its position in respect of any potential claims it may have against him. On Wednesday the business announced that a winding-up petition against its trading subsidiary Stonebeach Limited had been dismissed. Patisserie Holdings Total number of sites: 206 * Brands: Patisserie Valerie (153 sites), Philpotts (22), Druckers (20), Baker and Spice (4), Flour Power City Bakery (1) Employees: 3,200 Food/drink split (2017): 57/43 Eat in/takeaway split (2017): 65/35 Turnover: 60.5m (six months to 31 March 2018) EBITDA: 13.6m (six months to 31 March 2018) HQ location: Birmingham Key management: Paul May, CEO; Luke Johnson, chairman Patisserie Holdings has a vertical supply chain, producing goods in-house at seven bakeries and delivering them to stores. Products are also sold online. Since acquiring the Patisserie Valerie business in 2006, the business has expanded rapidly through acquisitions and openings to more than 200 sites. In its current financial year, the business has been aiming to open 20 stores. Timeline 1926: First Patisserie Valerie cafe opened in Frith Street in Londons Soho by Madame Valerie to introduce Continental-style patisserie to the English 1939-1945: Cafe destroyed by bombing in Second World War, and Madame Valerie opens new Patisserie Valerie on nearby Old Compton Street 1945-2005: Patisserie Valerie grows to eight sites in central London 2006: Luke Johnsons private equity firm Risk Capital Partners backs acquisition of Patisserie Valerie by Patisserie Holdings 2007: Acquires Druckers Vienna Patisserie 2009: Acquires Baker & Spice, which operates sites in London and Oxford 2013: Acquires London-based organic bakery Flour Power City Bakery 2014: Acquires the Philpotts food supply and cafe chain 2014: Patisserie Holdings listed on Alternative Investment Market 2016: Annual sales exceed 100m for the first time 2017: Launches trial partnership with Sainsburys, selling branded products on 12 supermarket counters. Partnership is a success and has since been expanded to 70 stores. 2018 10 October (AM): Share trading suspended as company launches investigation into serious accounting irregularities. Chief financial officer Chris Marsh suspended. 10 October (PM): Winding-up petition filed at the High Court relating to 1.14m owed to HMRC by Stonebeach Limited, the companys principal trading subsidiary. 11 October: Patisserie Holdings reports it cannot continue to trade in its current form without immediate cash injection. 12 October: Chris Marsh arrested by police and released on bail. 15 October: Share offer raises 15.7m to help Patisserie Holdings continue trading, while chairman Luke Johnson provides 20m in loans. 24 October: Stonebeach winding-up order is dismissed. 26 October: Chris Marsh resigns from finance director role. Hon. Barbara Jackson, Republican. (One-term incumbent). Education: B.A. and law degrees from University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Occupation: Supreme Court justice. Career highlights: Judge for five years on N.C. Court of Appeals, general counsel for the N.C. Commissioner of Labor, deputy general counsel for N.C. Governor's Advocacy Council for Persons with Disabilities. Chris Anglin, Republican. Education: Wake Forest University and Elon University Law School. Occupation: Private practice attorney. Career highlights: Small business owner, seven years experience across civil, criminal, and family law in both state and federal courts. Anita Earls, Democrat: Education: B.A. from Williams College and J.D. from Yale Law School. Occupation: Civil rights attorney. Career highlights: Founder and executive director of the Southern Coalition for Social Justice, deputy assistant attorney general for civil rights for the U.S. Department of Justice. N.C. Supreme Court candidates Anita Earls, Chris Anglin, and Barbara Jackson answer questions Oct. 23, 2018, during a Federalist Society forum in Raleigh. North Carolina Supreme CourtIn the race for a seat on the N.C. Supreme Court, voters are the highest-ranking judges. But the final ruling on winners and losers this year may be complicated by legislative shenanigans, and by private attorney Chris Anglin, a wild card candidate who may split the vote between incumbent Republican Justice Barbara Jackson and Democratic challenger Anita Earls.The three contenders debated their positions and made thinly veiled jabs among themselves during an Oct. 23 debate hosted in Raleigh by The Federalist Society , a conservative-leaning nonpartisan organization of lawyers and legal scholars focused on civil discourse in public policy. John Locke Foundation Vice President of Marketing and Communications Donna Martinez moderated the debate.You can watch the debate, preceded by a forum including statements from six of the seven candidates for the N.C. Court of Appeals, by clicking on the video below.Democrats hold a 4-3 advantage on the Supreme Court. If Earls wins, the Democratic lead would go to 5-2.Incumbent Jackson, who has written about 700 opinions during her time on the court, is running on a platform of experience and commitment to the rule of law.Earls, whose resume spans a wide array of work in civil rights law and advocacy, is running to ensure a fair and impartial jury, increased access to justice, and elimination of unjust racial disparities in the criminal justice system.Chris Anglin, a one-time registered Democrat who switched to a Republican label before entering the race in July, said he wasA law passed this year by the General Assembly will affect partisan play in the race. Senate Bill 3 , which passed over Gov. Roy Cooper's veto, restored the partisan affiliation of judicial candidates on ballots. The General Assembly eliminated judicial primaries for this election cycle so several candidates from the same party could run against each other in the general election. Some, including former Supreme Court Justice Bob Orr - who Anglin repeatedly cites as a role model - called the legislation "too clever by half."Anglin opposes partisan elections for judges and has made the issue a key point in his campaign. Jackson leans toward nonpartisan races, stating they better uphold the spirit of the judiciary and the rule of law. Earls said a party label could provide voters with helpful information, but she said there should be no such thing as a Democratic or Republican judge once the person is elected.Judges shouldn't legislate from the bench, but should interpret the law first on how it is written, then on precedent, depending on the nature of the case, Earls said.Jackson agreed the judiciary isn't the policy arm of state government, but countered that law should be interpreted according to word only.Advocacy isn't the role of judges, Earl said in response to a question about whether she would abandon her activist role if elected.Anglin cited Orr's influence on his career.Anglin said,Jackson challenged that comment. Anglin countered he was only referencing his desire to follow Orr's example of nonpartisan professionalism.Polling on the race shows a general lack of voter awareness of the candidates.The most recent poll from the conservative Civitas Institute, scheduled for release today, put Earls in a comfortable lead, with 40 percent of the vote. Jackson was second with 16 percent, while Anglin had only 10 percent support. Roughly a third of those surveyed - 34 percent - either were undecided or refused to respond.A Spectrum News poll from early October had Earls with 43-percent support. Anglin came in second at 22 percent, with Jackson only 15 percent. Twenty-one percent were undecided.An average voter isn't likely to research each judicial candidate, but will check boxes according to political affiliation. Anglin's spot as the only male Republican candidate may divide conservative voters,, said Andy Taylor, a political science professor at N.C. State University. Hundreds of Central American migrants scrambled over a bridge wall and jumped into a river below as they battled to get past authorities stopping them at the Guatemala-Mexico border.The mob swelled to at least 5,000 people - some estimates go as high as 10,000 - and once past police dressed in riot gear, they resumed their trek to the U.S.-Mexico border. The throng is currently marching toward the Mexican town of Tapachula, "10 abreast in a line stretching approximately a mile," the Associated Press reported.At the Suchiate River, some 700 federal police officers from Mexico made no attempt to intervene as hundreds of young men dropped off the bridge into the water, then swam, floated or rafted to Mexico. They are still nearly 1,800 miles from El Paso, Texas, and Google Maps says that would take 573 hours on foot.They marched on through Mexico like a rag tag 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 neighborhood of Lorenzo handed out free sandals to the migrants as they passed. "It's solidarity," she said. "They're our brothers."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. "I've made highways."A day earlier, Mexican authorities halted entry to migrants on the bridge, but did allow women with small children in. By evening, the frustrated mob swept over the bridge fence and into Mexico. None were detained when they made it to land.U.S. officials - and President Trump - warned the marchers when they started the march earlier this month in Honduras.the U.S. Embassy in Honduras said in a statement.Meanwhile, Trump threatened to cut off aid to Honduras if they allow the march to continue.Trump said on Twitter.But Trump is taking a more pragmatic view of late and said on Saturday that he may have a solution.Trump said during a campaign rally in Elko, Nevada. Lewis Hamilton would doubtless rather have snatched second place in the dying laps in his beloved US and celebrated a fifth world title last week rather than this. But he could not sneak onto the second step of the podium and the party had to be postponed by a week. This time around though, the cork-popping will not be premature. The hard work has already been done. That said, there are not many places in the world where Red Bull's Renault engine can compete with the Mercedes power - but Mexico City is one of those places. The Autodromo Hermanos Rodriguez is 2,200 metres above sea level (nearly a kilometre higher than the UK's loftiest peak) and the thinner air serves to equalise the engine power around the paddock. And you don't need to tell Max Verstappen twice. "This is definitely the best chance for me to win out of the last three races," said Verstappen, who denied Lewis Hamilton the title by holding him off for second place at the US Grand Prix. Verstappen's chance The Dutchman is well worth a punt at 4/1 to produce a repeat of last year's result when he survived first-lap clashes with Sebastian Vettel and Lewis Hamilton to secure, what was then, his third career race win. That second place all but secured Verstappen an internal victory over Daniel Ricciardo in their last season as team-mates with the Australian Renault-bound in the winter. The gap between them is now 45 points which seems to justify the team's decision to give the youngster a lucrative contract and not offer Ricciardo an equal deal. You can get 7/2 on either Red Bull, the traditional kings of mechanical grip, to take the win which could represent a handy hedge against Verstappen's legendary impetuousness. But it will likely be the Ferrari of Vettel, priced at 13/8 to take the race win, not the Mercedes of 2/1 shot Hamilton, which stands between the Red Bulls and the top step of the podium. Their revival after a prolonged summer of Silver Arrows dominance was confirmed in Austin by Kimi Raikkonen's victory and Mexico should be no different. Hamilton can cruise - but will not want to Hamilton of course has no need to take risks. Only a Vettel victory keeps the title battle alive for another week and the Brit can lose to all the other "big three" drivers and still do as he did last year and clinch overall victory in Mexico. He is 1/6 to finish anywhere in the top six, something that even in an oxygen-deprived Mercedes most qualified drivers could achieve. Have a Hartley Brendon Hartley can be forgiven for losing a little bit of patience with the persistent questions about his seat next year - even if they remain valid until his number is on the car. The New Zealander, who branded such queries 'more and more annoying' this week, will have a vital upgraded aero package during practice which Toro Rosso hope will make them a legitimate points-scoring threat for the closing races as they scrap Sauber for eighth place. Hartley himself battled from 20th to ninth in Texas and is 2/1 to record another top-10 finish but those feeling really bold might want to look at his 10/1 top-six chances. Some drivers will be starting to look forward to a winter break and if enough carnage ensues, Hartley is the sort of driver who could benefit. PASCAGOULA, Miss., Oct. 26, 2018 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Huntington Ingalls Industries (NYSE:HII) announced today that Maj. Gen. Augustus L. Collins (Ret.), a member of HIIs Board of Directors, and Edmond Hughes, vice president of human resources and administration at HIIs Ingalls Shipbuilding division, were honored by Our Mississippi magazine as two of the Top 25 Most Influential African-Americans in Mississippi. The 2018 awards gala took place Thursday evening at the Westin Hotel in Jackson. Collins is the CEO of MINACT Inc., a Mississippi-based contractor that supports the Department of Labors Job Corps program in several states throughout the country. He served in the U.S. Army and Mississippi National Guard for more than 35 years. He was promoted to brigadier general in 2005 and was the first African-American to attain the rank of general in the history of the Mississippi National Guard. Collins received a bachelors degree in business administration from the University of Mississippi, an MBA from Jackson State University and a masters degree in strategic studies from the U.S. Army War College. Hughes is responsible for leading all aspects of human resources related to the attraction, development and retention of the workforce at Ingalls Shipbuilding. Before joining Ingalls in 2006, he was a director of human resources at TRW. Hughes serves on the board of directors of the Alabama/Mississippi National Multiple Sclerosis Society, the Gulf Coast Business Council and Jobs for Mississippi Graduates. He holds a bachelors degree in chemistry from Tougaloo College, where he currently serves on the board of trustees, and an MBA from Indiana University. Photos of Collins and Hughes are available at: https://newsroom.huntingtoningalls.com/releases/collins-hughes-most-influential-african-americans . In addition to the 2018 Top 25 awardees, six individuals were chosen earlier this year as Legacy Award Recipients and were also honored at the reception. They are: Myrlie Evers-Williams, James Meredith, Constance Slaughter-Harvey, Reuben Anderson, U.S Rep. Bennie Thompson and Robert Clark. An independent panel of statewide business and community leaders selected the award recipients from nominations received from the public in different categories, including business, education, politics, religion, media and servant leadership. Huntington Ingalls Industries is Americas largest military shipbuilding company and a provider of professional services to partners in government and industry. For more than a century, HIIs Newport News and Ingalls shipbuilding divisions in Virginia and Mississippi have built more ships in more ship classes than any other U.S. naval shipbuilder. HIIs Technical Solutions division provides a wide range of professional services through its Fleet Support, Integrated Mission Driven Innovative Solutions, Nuclear & Environmental, and Oil & Gas groups. Headquartered in Newport News, Virginia, HII employs more than 40,000 people operating both domestically and internationally. For more information, visit: HII on the web: www.huntingtoningalls.com HII on Facebook: www.facebook.com/HuntingtonIngallsIndustries HII on Twitter: twitter.com/hiindustries Contact: Frites, truffles and canals are awesome. Also doner kebab. I was meeting two US based criminal defense attorneys in Dublin for a couple days of slacking off. My objectives were to see Kilmainham Gaol, walk on a seawall, and enjoy a full Irish breakfast with a pot of Barry's. My traveling companions agreed to meet me in Dublin if I'd continue on with them to Amsterdam. I like waffles, I was in. The two defenders of justice had been discussing "truffles" on occasion, but it wasn't until the night before we flew to Amsterdam that it registered: these were psychedelic mushrooms, not chocolate covered truffles. For some reason I kept thinking there were gonna be amazeballs confection-stuff in ye olde Amsterdam. Life in a free marijuana state had largely blanked the long standing "Vegas or New Orleans, but the party is four hundred years old" reputation that lives alongside the canals. I had forgotten all the varieties of fun the Dutch capitol provides. All of them. We discussed the prospect of spending significant time out of our heads. I gave my emotional and physical states a good once over. My experience with psychedelic mushrooms was fairly extensive in the late 90s and early 2000s, and always inside the confines of the United States. I have kept up enough to know quality and variety have not changed from the awful tasting, dried up and barf-tastic 'shrooms Generation X is familiar with. I was tired, I didn't want to spend a lot of time puking, but I also love psychedelics and 'shrooms were always my favorite trip. I felt comfortable enough with my friends and their ability to maintain when shit got weird. I was in. After had a lovely chat on the flight over to the Netherlands with an Irish Crue fan about the Tedeschi Trucks Band, it was merely a short train ride to a hotel on the Singel canal. We dropped off our bags and took a walk. The composition of street front vendors in this neighborhood is pretty much bars, waffles, and dildos. There are occasional frites shops, plus an unhealthy obsession with the American hamburger. It took us no time to find some really good pre-rolled marijuana joints, a bar that would let us drink while we smoked, and some entertaining folk to chat with. There was at least a shop on every block selling truffles and "space cakes." I assumed that anything psychedelic being sold to the public was probably pretty weak and I an experienced US mushroom consumer would have nothing to worry about. One of my companions pulled me into a bodega to procure our psylocibine. There are 5 or so varieties commonly for sale! The Dutch have naturally gotten this down to a science and my assumption about potency was completely wrong. You can select strains based on which type of mushroom high you'd like to accentuate or perhaps avoid. My friend wanted as much visual punch as he could get, with as little brain or body high as he could manage. We bought a 20g package of Atlantis truffles with the idea the two juris doctors would take 5g a piece and I'd eat what I wanted from the remaining 10g. I ended up eating about 8g. The street party raged on all Thursday night, and we wandered around a bit. Largely we were too stoned and tired to get very far. We all went to bed early, anticipating a big day tomorrow. Waking up the next morning to see the locals putting the place back together was impressive! One dude endlessly polished a lovely metal statue of Ganesh with a toothbrush, and the streets were clean by 9am. Only a few whip-it canisters were laying in the cobblestones left proof of the insane party that raged up and down the street last night. I took a short walk around the canals, had a coffee and met my friends. We smoked a joint and split up the mushrooms. I was running on an empty stomach. I hoped I wouldn't want to puke too terribly. Fucking 'shrooms. The Atlantis mushrooms are not dried out! They are still wet, also slightly firmer and more crunchy than handling them would imply.The Atlantis did not taste nearly as disgusting as dried American psychedelic 'shrooms. These went down easily, I chewed the hell out of them. Happily, I didn't need to swig Pepto-bismal immediately after "Oh well, now we wait." We did not have to wait long, however. I'd had a lot of Guinness and Jameson over the last week, but aside from some amazing Fish and Chips on Fishamble Street (I thought it appropriate to enjoy them there,) I had perhaps made a mistake if I intended to gobble a handful of psychedelics. In a mere 30 minutes in I was scrunching my toes and wiggling my fingers in a very, very familiar way. Legal counsel indicated we should walk. It was around 10am. We headed to Vondlepark. Vondlepark is a fairly large park to have in the middle of a canal ridden city. It is lovely, displays Amsterdam's vibrant and friendly community, and was one hell of a long damn walk while coming on, and being buzz bombed by grandmothers on pedal bikes. 3 miles or so of trusting Apple Maps and my watch to just tell me where to go, I was marveling at some pretty amazing-to-a-Californian architecture and the color-shifting sky behind it. Then I realized all the buildings were leaning in, like they wanted to fall on me. It appeared that somewhere near 1/3rd the buildings were falling into the street. I assumed the other buildings were likely just leaning in another direction, maybe they didn't like the street. Then I wondered if I was just tripping. Then, I blamed the very idea of canals. Engineering projects like "canals" are something every Californian is trained to fear. Build your city on boxed in mud and stuff will move around, buddy! The shifting walls and foundations probably require a lot of fixing. I was not scared, however, I assumed these guys were on their game. I saw no buildings laying across a street. Good work, Hague guys. I was happy to get into Vondlepark. It is very nice. There was a huge field where locals clearly bring their dogs, to let their dogs run and play. It is wonderful to sit and watch dogs run around even when you aren't tripping. When you are tripping, happy dogs are awesome. I also enjoyed their small water features, ponds and whatnot, but for fucks sake do I hate the little bridges in that park. There is something able the angle of each one of those bridges that makes me feel like I am going to slide straight into hell. Every one of them. Straight to hell. But I did not slide straight to hell! Instead I was knocked in the gut by wave after wave of nausea. The feeling like I needed to vomit was pretty god damn strong, and would likely have overwhelmed me had I sat down for very long. I also felt like I had to pee very badly, and finding a public urinal was not proving to be easy. I did not realize that the Dutch have public, open air pissours. Evidently enough folks die by falling into a canal while pissing that the Dutch decided to put in phone booths you can pee in. Regardless, I had no idea these existed, was tripping pretty damn hard and had to pee. I paid E.50 to enter a stark white tiled room. Once I walked in, there was a toilet for me to pee in and magically my stomach calmed instantly down. Then the tiles started to dance. As soon as I finished peeing I got the hell out of there. I was worried I'd get distracted, and lose my legal counsel. Everyone was having a good time, but one of the guys wanted to return to our hotel, take whatever legal sleeping pill his doctor prescribes to help him deal with a life in criminal defense, and turn his trip off. We set out to find our hotel. We were about 2 hours into our trip and things were still getting weirder for me. We stumbled in a direction we hoped was right. With the tummy-troubles on the wane I was now having medium strength visuals and feeling kinda sped up. I was buzzing like I'd drank a pot of coffee. Any time I'd stop moving, pause or enjoy my surroundings, they'd be altered by shifting shapes, changing colors, and the occasional dude in a plague mask wandering the street. I think Amsterdites find plague masks fashionable. After dropping our pal off, we crossed a canal in a new direction. There were women standing behind glass doors like they were in a display case. Holy shit! Amsterdam has a famous red light district, and I had completely forgotten! Those women were in a display case! This was one hell of a place to wander into tripping balls. Clearly the folks working in the red light district were familiar with the look in my eyes. It didn't take very long for someone to open a door and ask me "Truffles? What kind sweetie?" I stopped to discuss what I thought she was interested in, but when it became clear I was not shopping just blissfully wandering around staring at things, my new friend abandoned me to my meandering. I was amazed. The red light district was polite, happy and clean. The number of mothers out on a Saturday afternoon, strolling with their young sons through the red light district was impressive. In my county we are still arguing that ANYWHERE is too close to a children's school to sell weed. In Amsterdam, you march your kids past the red light windows. I saw absolutely no bad behavior, and was just entertained as all get out. There is clearly someone for everyone. Mistakes were made: At some point we passed a sexy lingerie shop that had an amazing "sugar skull" style skeleton hoodie. It was a skeleton with all the bones done up for Dia de los Muertos and I knew my daughter would love it. Asking the store minder in a sexy lingerie shop if they have anything in 11-year-old sizes while tripping balls is a mistake. The shop keeper wanted me to leave. I'll check Amazon for the hoodie later. After about an hour of this, and about 4 hours into the trip, I saw a frites restaurant. Thank you Chipsy King. I stood on a bridge over a canal and really, really enjoyed a large cone of frites with peanut satay sauce. This bridge was my friend and I didn't feel bad at all, just like I was the luckiest dude on earth. I started to come down, the visuals slowed, I smoked a joint. The remaining tripping lawyer, however, was still really going. Evidently he had gulped down the mushrooms hoping not to taste them and become overcome with nausea. His assumption was that this slowed absorption and he felt like he'd taken a second dose about the same time I started to come down. We wandered. Hours later: I was exhausted. The drugs were largely worn off and now I was just tired, maybe mildly stoned. My friend was coming down, he surprised me with a doner wrap. Doner kebab is the best thing coming down food I've experienced this side of a Brazilian churrascaria. I'd say the truffles lived up to their advertising. They were 'shrooms. The visuals were strong, the rest of the high wasn't very intrusive minus the short bought of wanting to puke all over Vondlepark's bridges, and Amsterdam was a super chill place to trip. I certainly saw quite a few other people in the park, and in the red light district, clearly doing what we were. Later we met a pretty cool Canadian national, hanging by himself at a bar and planning to eat mushrooms the next day. He over heard us discussing the days trip and asked a few questions. We ended up hanging out and drinking with our Canadian pal for a few hours! Wonderful guy and I hope his trip went as well as ours. Chipsy King, I love you. English French TORONTO, Oct. 26, 2018 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Sunwing is encouraging Canadians to vacation better this winter at their newest resorts and destinations with special introductory pricing. Vacationers who book by November 2, 2018 can enjoy exclusive savings of up to $1,000 per couple on select vacation packages across the Caribbean, Mexico and Central America. Vacationers who book during this time limited promotion could be among the first to experience some of the tour operators latest resorts and save. New for this winter is Riu Palace Costa Mujeres , a brand-new resort option on the regions trendiest new beach offering rooms that can accommodate families of five or more, specialty restaurants and infinity pools together with full exchange privileges with the neighbouring Riu Dunamar and its expansive on-site water park. In Costa Rica, travellers can now Vacation Like a Star at the just opened Planet Hollywood Costa Rica , a luxury resort offering Hollywood-themed amenities and activities. Vacationers can also choose from a range of newly-renovated resorts with upgraded accommodations and facilities. Included in the sale is perennial favourite Riu Palace Tropical Bay , a recently-renovated resort on Negril Beach that now offers enhanced modern amenities and activities for both families and couples. Grand Memories Punta Cana is another popular resort that has recently undergone a modernization, offering family-friendly accommodations and unlimited access to an on-site water park , one of the largest in the Caribbean. At Iberostar Bella Vista , which now benefits from a sleek new decor, guests can enjoy amenities for both kids and adults on the famous shores of Varadero Beach. New destinations include the Caribbean islands of Grenada and Tobago and the Cuban destination of Cienfuegos on the islands southern coast. For those looking to stay closer to home, there are two new Florida destinations to discover Miami and Daytona Beach . All Sunwing packages include return flights on Sunwing Airlines where passengers can sit back and relax while on board with award-winning inflight service, complimentary non-alcoholic beverage service and buy on board selection of light meals and snacks with choices inspired by Food Network Canada Celebrity Chef, Lynn Crawford. Passengers also benefit from a generous complimentary 23kg checked luggage allowance. Ten adults travelling together can receive special prices, added values and reduced deposits. For more information on group vacations click here . To book your next vacation, visit www.sunwing.ca or contact your travel agent. About Sunwing The largest integrated travel company in North America, Sunwing has more flights to the south than any other leisure carrier with convenient direct service from over 33 airports across Canada to over 45 popular sun destinations. This scale enables Sunwing to negotiate the best deals and exclusive offers at all of the top-rated resorts across the Caribbean, Mexico, and Central America. Renowned for its award-winning service, Sunwing is consistently voted the #1 leisure airline by travel agents and is the perennial winner of the Consumer Choice Award. Customers can look forward to starting their vacation off in style with award-winning inflight service, which features a complimentary glass of sparkling wine*, tea and coffee and non-alcoholic beverage service; together with a buy on board menu of light meals and snacks (including kids choices) inspired by Food Network Canada Celebrity Chef, Lynn Crawford. Sunwing customers also benefit from the assistance of the companys own knowledgeable destination representatives, who greet them upon arrival and support them throughout their vacation journey. For all media enquiries, please contact: Rachel Goldrick Senior Corporate Communications Manager Sunwing Vacations 1-800-387-5602 | media@sunwing.ca https://www.facebook.com/SunwingVacations https://twitter.com/SunwingVacay https://www.instagram.com/sunwingvacations https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCzjZ-lcuaqBQH7Sq0u3ru7A A photo accompanying this announcement is available at http://www.globenewswire.com/NewsRoom/AttachmentNg/759fec30-6002-4dcc-a71a-ee63d3ce9ac5 In a new paper published in the journal Military Cyber Affairs researchers from the US Naval War College and Tel Aviv University document the use of BGP spoofing by China Telecom to redirect massive swathes of internet traffic through the company's routers as part of state military and commercial espionage efforts. BGP is a notoriously insecure protocol used to route internet traffic; by design it is dynamic and responsive, moving traffic away from congested routes and onto those with more capacity: this flexibility can be exploited to force traffic to route through surveillance chokepoints, as well as for censorship (publishing BGP routes to censorsed services that dead-end in nonexistent addresses are a common technique in repressive regimes). The researchers logged global BGP route announcements and discovered China Telecom publishing bogus routes that sucked up massive amounts of Canadian and US traffic and pushed it through Chinese listening posts. Much of today's internet traffic is still unencrypted, meaning that the entities monitoring these listening posts would have been able to read massive amounts of emails, instant messages and web-sessions. China Telecom's BGP attacks were also used to black-hole traffic in some instances (for example, traffic from an "Anglo-American bank's" branch in Milan was diverted wholesale to China, never arriving at its intended destination). After the traffic was copied by China Telecom for encyption breaking and analysis, it was delivered to the intended networks with only small delays. Demchak and Shavitt said. Such hijacking is difficult to detect as China Telecom has multiple points of presence (PoPs) in North America and Europe that are physically close to the attacked networks, causing almost unnoticeable traffic delivery delays despite the lengthened routes. China in comparison does not allow overseas telcos to establish PoPs in the country, and has only three gateways into the country, in Beijing, Shanghai and Hong Kong. This isolation protects the country's domestic and transit traffic from foreign hijacking. China's Maxim Leave No Access PointUnexploited: The Hidden Story of China Telecom's BGP Hijacking [Chris C. Demchak and Yuval Shavitt/Military Cyber Affairs] China systematically hijacks internet traffic: researchers [Juha Saarinen/IT News] (via /.) Your browser does not support the audio element. I subscribe to a service called Jolly Roger Telephone Co. It automatically picks up calls from telemarketers and connects them to a bot that speaks with them for as long as the telemarketer is willing to stay on the line with the bot. The purpose of Jolly Roger is to make it costly for telemarketers to ply their sleazy trade by wasting their time. The more time a telemarketer spends talking to a bot, the less time they have talking to potential victims. When Jolly Roger answers a call and one of its bots talks to a telemarketer, it makes a recording of the call and notifies me about it. Here's a call I got yesterday from "Alice," a professional fundraiser with AC Services. Her smarmy insincerity is so over the top that I thought it was worth sharing. The bot that Jolly Roger connected to Alice is a grumpy old man, and when he says "Hello?" in a suspicious tone, Alice says "Oh, it's so good to hear a nice voice again! My ears have been ringin' ever since my son got his band back together. Hahahahaha!!!" Alice is either reading from a script, or, more likely, simply pressing buttons that play bits of a pre-recorded script. When interrupted by the bot (which doesn't have any AI beyond being able to detect silence so it can say something random to the telemarketer), Alice presses the button again. She even presses a button that has applause and cheers from the office when she thinks the bot has agreed to donate $20 to a charity called United Breast Cancer Foundation, which has 1 star (out of 4) financial rating on Charity Navigator, and was listed by the Tampa Bay Times and the Center for Investigative Reporting as America's 38th Worst Charity: The charity has raised about $11.5 million over the past 10 years and spent more than half of that on professional fundraisers. About 6 percent of the money raised has been spent on direct financial assistance to those in need. On its website, the charity takes applications for grants to pay for breast reconstruction. It charges a $50 non-refundable deposit to apply. Here's a story from the Detroit Free Press that reports that Associated Community Services kept 90% of the funds it raised for a Vietnam veterans group: When the Vietnam Veterans of Michigan was looking to augment its fund-raising, the charity turned to a Southfield-based telemarketing firm to call up potential donors. For the past dozen years, Associated Community Services has put its banks of script-reading phone solicitors to work for the veterans group, dialing into homes and convincing people to give up their credit card number and make a donation. In 2011, the most recent year for which records are available, Associated Community Services raised $89,740 on behalf of the veterans group. But when the final check was cut, the charity received only $8,855 a mere 10% to put toward services for veterans. ACS kept the remaining $80,885 as payment for its fund-raising work, according to forms filed with the Internal Revenue Service. And look, here's Alice calling a fellow with the same pitch, and he asks her how much goes to the charity. She tells him the 15% goes to the charity and 85% goes to Associated Community Services. When he repeatedly asks Alice how much she gave, she refuses to answer and just reads the same snippet from her script: This blurry portrait of a man may not look like much but it just sold at auction for $432,500, nearly 45 times its high estimate. What makes it so special? The Portrait of Edmond Belamy is the work of Artificial Intelligence and it's the first of its kind to sell at a major auction house. Christie's: This portrait, however, is not the product of a human mind. It was created by an artificial intelligence, an algorithm defined by that algebraic formula with its many parentheses. And when it went under the hammer in the Prints & Multiples sale at Christie's on 23-25 October, Portrait of Edmond Belamy sold for an incredible $432,500, signalling the arrival of AI art on the world auction stage. The painting, if that is the right term, is one of a group of portraits of the fictional Belamy family created by Obvious, a Paris-based collective consisting of Hugo Caselles-Dupre, Pierre Fautrel and Gauthier Vernier. They are engaged in exploring the interface between art and artificial intelligence, and their method goes by the acronym GAN, which stands for 'generative adversarial network'. 'The algorithm is composed of two parts,' says Caselles-Dupre. 'On one side is the Generator, on the other the Discriminator. We fed the system with a data set of 15,000 portraits painted between the 14th century to the 20th. The Generator makes a new image based on the set, then the Discriminator tries to spot the difference between a human-made image and one created by the Generator. The aim is to fool the Discriminator into thinking that the new images are real-life portraits. Then we have a result.' However, there is controversy surrounding the piece, which is laid out in detail in The Verge: But for members of the burgeoning AI art community, there's another attribute that sets the Portrait of Edmond Belamy apart: it's a knock-off. The print was created by Obvious, a trio of 25-year-old French students whose goal is to "explain and democratize" AI through art. Over the past year, they've made a series of portraits depicting members of the fictional Belamy family, amplifying their work through attention-grabbing press releases. But insiders say the code used to generate these prints is mostly the work of another artist and programmer: 19-year-old Robbie Barrat, a recent high school graduate who shared his algorithms online via an open-source license. The members of Obvious don't deny that they borrowed substantially from Barrat's code, but until recently, they didn't publicize that fact either. This has created unease for some members of the AI art community, which is open and collaborative and taking its first steps into mainstream attention. Seeing an AI portrait on sale at Christie's is a milestone that elevates the entire community, but has this event been hijacked by outsiders? Continue reading The Verge article: HOW THREE FRENCH STUDENTS USED BORROWED CODE TO PUT THE FIRST AI PORTRAIT IN CHRISTIE'S More from the Christie's article: Is artificial intelligence set to become art's next medium? (Be sure to check out the signature on the piece!) (Neatorama) image via Christie's - Chad Le Clos is off the market, much to many a women's disbelief - The gold medallist made his stunning girlfriend known to the world with the sweetest post - His girlfriend followed suit shorty after and expressed her deep regard for her hunky bae with a sting of cute snaps PAY ATTENTION: Click 'See First' under 'Following' tab to see Briefly news on your news feed. Our gold medal winner has found the champion of his heart. South African swimmer Chad Le Clos is officially off the market ladies. The hunky athlete has always kept his private life to himself. So, we know when he makes something public, its real. Briefly.co.za learnt that Chad recently revealed his gorgeous girlfriend to the world with a cute little pic post of them together. Taking to social media, Chat posted the picture along with a caption that suggests that the two might be taking the next step real soon. PAY ATTENTION: Save mobile data with FreeBasics: Briefly is now available on the app. Earlier this year, Chat admitted that his heart has been stolen, but he did not say by who. The mystery bae has been revealed. Jeanni Mulder is the name of Chads stunning girlfriend. The two make a beautiful couple. READ ALSO: Rumour has it: Khaya Mthethwa and Ntando Kunene are expecting? After Chat made the public leap, Jeanni followed suit. She posted a thread of cute pictures and captioned it with "you make it so easy for me to love you". Another sizzling athlete lost to the whip. Sorry ladies, this fish has been reeled in.Do you have a story to share with us? Go to our Facebook page and leave a comment. For more amazing, funny and informative videos, please visit 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 News / National by Staff Reporter Zanu PF Manicaland Youth League has called for transparency in land allocation following alleged corrupt dealings in the past that saw youths failing to benefit from land programmes.There are hopes that through the downsizing of farms by the land commission set by President Emmerson Mnangagwa more youths will benefit enabling them to contribute to the country's economy through farming.Zanu PF Manicaland Youth League Secretary for Information and Publicity Pedzisai Mudende implored the government to allocate the youth land so as to promote hard work amongst them."As youth league, we have realised that when land was allocated we were young and did not benefit. But now we are all grown up and we feel we need the land. We want to farm so that we raise our families and we hope that through downsizing of farms we will be able to benefit," said Mudende.The Manicaland Youth League has set up a task team that will inquire on residential stands allocations in districts with hopes that many youths will benefit from the programme."We are set to have empowerment programmes so that the youths will benefit. We will speak to those who deal with land and different projects so that our people will have an opportunity to develop through those different programmes," said Zanu PF Manicaland Youth League Chairperson Tawanda Mukodza.Calls have been made to business owners in Manicaland not to sabotage the government by hiking prizes of basic commodities trying to create a situation that will put the government in bad light. News / National by Staff reporter Happy birthday to the Teacher, Bishop Paul Mwazha, a General in the FAITH who turns 100 years today having been born at Chirumanzu on the 25th of October 1918. God has used Bishop Mwazha mightily to bring many to salvation.God bless you Mudzidzisi!! pic.twitter.com/aqXpkT3eLc Nelson Chamisa (@nelsonchamisa) October 25, 2018 The Movement for Democratic Change Alliance leader, Nelson Chamisa, has congratulated the African Apostolic Church founder, Bishop Paul Mwazha on his centenary birthday.Posting on Twitter this morning, Chamisa said "Happy birthday to the Teacher, Bishop Paul Mwazha, a General in the FAITH who turns 100 years today having been born at Chirumanzu on the 25th of October 1918. God has used Bishop Mwazha mightily to bring many to salvation.God bless you Mudzidzisi!!Mwazha was born on the 25th of October in 1918 and is referred by his followers as "Mutumwa" meaning Apostle.Mwazha is the Arch Bishop of The African Apostolic Church, he received his calling in 1951 when he heard the voice of the Lord calling him, which he answered the call in his prayer communicating with God saying, 'Lord I heard your voice calling me'. Moreover, in the same period he also heard the voice of the Lord calling again saying , "Who shall we sent, who for us shall go?", yet he answered again in his prayer of gratitude to the Lord, saying O' Lord I had your voice saying "Who shall we sent who for us shall go?". I am here Lord, sent me to your people beginning in Africa, then the rest of the world if be it your will Lord.Prior to his commissioning, the Lord revealed Himself to Paul Mwazha on several occasions until this day for more than seven times.In his first encounter with our Lord Jesus Christ in 1934,upon his sleep in a divine revelation, he was on top of a rocky mountain and he heard a voice to saying him , "Behold the apostles of Jesus." When he looked yonder he saw African men clad in white gowns singing hymns to the Lord while standing under a lush green tree. Upon looking slightly to the south, he saw our Lord Jesus Christ sitting inside a rock with an open book in His hands while his countenance was facing towards north. Paul exclaimed "Ah Lord!" and he began to descend from that rocky height. This happened on the holy mountain of Guvambwa near Sadza Growth Point in Chikomba District, Zimbabwe. News / National by Staff reporter Government has dismissed calls for the establishment of a transitional authority as wishful thinking, a view that apparently is also being shared by former liberation war fighters.On Tuesday, MDC leader Nelson Chamisa proposed a transitional government as a panacea to the economic meltdown the country is currently grappling with.He also accused war veterans of reneging on an earlier undertaking to facilitate a power-sharing arrangement between Zanu-PF and the opposition after the demise of former president Robert Mugabe in November last year.But Information deputy minister Energy Mutodi told the Daily News yesterday that there was no room for a transitional authority, except for the Transitional Stabilisation Programme (TSP) introduced by government to cure Zimbabwe's economic crisis."The transitional government that had been proposed by war veterans during former president Mugabe's rule is now a brutum fulmen," Mutodi said adding that "it has been taken over by events"."We now have a new government with a five-year mandate from the people and it is this government led by (President Emmerson) Mnangagwa that has now introduced the TSP with the aim to stabilise the economy following many years of economic instability," he said.In legal terms, brutum fulmen means an ineffective order or empty thunder.The former musician, however, said the Mnangagwa administration will maintain an open door policy, tolerate dissent and respect the opposition."This is the spirit of inclusivity, tolerance and cooperation brought about by the Second Republic. We will not shut the door on anyone as we represent a clear breakfrom the past."However, anyone seeking the attention of government must understand that issues to do with the legitimacy of the government and its leaders were dealt with by the elections and now is the time for us to fulfil the electoral promises we made to the people of Zimbabwe," said Mutodi.Meanwhile, the Zimbabwe National Liberation War Veterans' Association (ZNLWVA) has also dismissed calls by Chamisa, saying the MDC leader was merely dreaming."That should remain his dream that will not see the light of day as the matter was already resolved on July 30 when a people's government was elected," said Sam Parirenyatwa, the ZNLWVA chairperson for Mashonaland Central Province.Parirenyatwa blamed the MDC for conniving with "imperialist handlers" to cause the worsening economic situation in the country.He said Mnangagwa and Zanu-PF have capacity to extricate the country out of the economic mess "as long as we put our house in order"."The solution lies in the president cleaning up our house which now has elements who are stuck in the past and do not want to move forward"We must get rid of those people otherwise we will continue to go round in circles," he warned. News / National by Staff reporter Newly-appointed Media and Information permanent secretary Ndavaningi Mangwana yesterday received a baptism of fire when he appeared before the Parliamentary Portfolio Committee on Media chaired by Prince Dubeko Sibanda (MDC Alliance).Mangwana and bosses of parastatals under his ministry, including the Broadcasting Authority of Zimbabwe (BAZ), Transmedia, New Ziana, Zimbabwe Broadcasting Corporation, Zimpapers and Zimbabwe Television and Film School of Southern Africa, had a torrid time explaining how they used funds this year.The team had not brought financial records to show how the fees they collected were used, resulting in MPs warning them it would not be business as usual and that Parliament would not tolerate institutions which fail to account for public funds."We are not going to tolerate publicly funded institutions to come before Parliament without audited statements," Sibanda said."You have just been eating and not showing how you have been spending and we need those audited figures by Monday next week."Mangwana was roasted over errors in amounts in his report, including in the 2018 Blue Book where the ministry said it had embarked on a digitisation programme whose progress was at 35% and was given an additional $16 million.But Mangwana told the committee that to date, the progress was at 36%, which meant that only 1% more work was done with the $16 million.Mangwana said it was an error in the Blue Book, which did not impress the MPs.There was another error pointed out by MPs in the salaries figures, and the numbers showed that allowances were far much more than salaries. The explanation was that bonuses were considered as allowances.BAZ CEO, Obert Muganyura said the authority had raised $1,1 million in fees in 2018 and got about $82 000 from rentals, but did not give details on how the money was used.Makonde MP, Kindness Paradza (Zanu-PF) then demanded that Zimpapers also produce audited accounts showing whether they were declaring dividends to government by Monday.Florence Sigudu-Matambo from Transmedia angered MPs by bringing the 2017 audited accounts."We have 20% shareholding at MultiChoice Africa. Last year (2017), we had a relationship with Kwese and raised $568 907 as income," Sigudu-Matambo said, which resulted in Mbizo MP Settlement Chikwinya (MDC Alliance) saying her 2017 figures were irrelevant as the MPs were interested in the 2018 figures.Harare Central MP Murisi Zwizwai (MDC Alliance) then demanded to know from Mangwana how much ZBC was making from live broadcasts of political parties, especially the receipts of the last six months in the new dispensation.Mangwana said digitisation was allocated $45 million, while $100 million was needed. The team was asked to make another appearance next week with proper documentation. News / National by Staff reporter Former Zanu-PF youth leader Kudzanai Chipanga has petitioned the High Court, seeking permanent stay of prosecution on charges of communicating falsehoods, causing dissatisfaction in the army and undermining public confidence in the Zimbabwe Defence Forces - arguing his rights were infringed during his arrest last year.He filed the court application on Monday through his lawyer Lovemore Madhuku and cited the National Prosecuting Authority (NPA), the acting Prosecutor-General (PG) Kumbirai Hodzi and the Attorney-General (AG) Prince Machaya, as respondents."The State, represented by the first and second respondents (NPA and PG), unlawfully arraigned me before the magistrates' court well knowing that I had been unlawfully arrested by the State agents and detained for a period in excess of 48 hours, and that during the arrest and detention, I was subjected to inhuman and degrading treatment," Chipanga said.In his founding affidavit, Chipanga said upon his arrest, he was detained for nine days without trial, contrary to section 49(a) of the Constitution and was neither informed of the reasons why he had been arrested by the State agents, contrary to section 50(i) of the Constitution."This is a constitutional application for a declaratory order. The declaration sought is for a permanent stay of my prosecution in the following pending criminal prosecution CRB 11635/17. I am seeking an order declaring that my rights were infringed by the State," he said."My right to personal liberty, my right to be informed at the time of arrest of the reason for the arrest, my right while under arrest to be treated humanely and with respect for my inherent dignity. The State agents detained me for nine days without trial, contrary to section 49(a) of the Constitution. The State agents deprived me of my liberty without just cause, contrary to section 49(b) of the Constitution. The State agents arrested me without informing me of reasons for the arrest, contrary to section 50(i) of the Constitution."Chipanga, who is also former Makoni West MP, also said the State treated him cruelly during his arrest, adding it was unconstitutional.The matter is yet to be set down for hearing. News / National by Stephen Jakes Zapu spokesperson Iphithule Maphosa has said the involvement of Lovemore Madhuku in President Emmerson Mnangagwa's set commission of inquiry into the August 1 killings was suspicious considering that he was one of the 23 candidates who contested against the head of state.Lovemore Madhuku is president of NCA, a political party that also contested the July 30 elections. He was the party's presidential candidate, one of the twenty something men and women who vied for the top job.Madhuku lost the poll to Emerson Mnangagwa of ZANU PF. His party also didn't manage any seats both in local authorities and Parliament. Fair and fine."On 1 August, soldiers shot and killed alleged demonstrators in Harare. Its said by Zimbabwean authorities that these demonstrators were demanding results of the presidential ballot. Seven lives were lost to the hail of bullets by the excited soldiers who took aim and shot with live ammunition at fleeing protestors," Maphosa said.."In a stunt to gain recognition, legitimacy and acceptance by the international community especially the British, Emerson jumped to blame the opposition MDC alliance for the demonstrations. In one of the many grandstanding stunts, he quickly set up a commission of enquiry into the shootings. Only him and his gods know the necessity of this commission of enquiry because everyone in Zimbabwe know that the zimbabwean soldiers shot and killed the fleeing and unarmed demonstrators, a phenomenon never heard of in Zimbabwe's history that is littered with government/citizen conflicts dating back to food riots of the 90s."He said an international commission commission was set up, with former SA President Montlante chairing it."This is despite Emerson having ignored me and my party ZAPU when we called on him to appoint a foreigner to chair the NPRC just before Justice Nare was appointed. He didn't think it mattered then, but saw it important to have a neutral commission when he wanted to appease his masters in Britain," he said."The commission has a few Zimbabweans, and prominent of these is ZANU PF functionary Charity Manyeruke and Prof Lovemore Madhuku.I'm especially interested in Madhukus involvement in this commission. I will dwell in his matter in the next episode...." Lead Plaintiff Deadline is December 18, 2018 NEW YORK, Oct. 26, 2018 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Wolf Haldenstein Adler Freeman & Herz LLP announces that a federal securities class action class action lawsuit has been filed in the United States District Court for the Northern District of Illinois against Camping World Holdings, Inc. (NYSE: CWH) (the Company or Camping World) from March 8, 2017 through August 7, 2018, inclusive (the Class Period). Investors who have incurred losses in the shares of Camping World Holdings, Inc. are urged to contact the firm immediately at classmember@whafh.com or (800) 575-0735 or (212) 545-4774. You may obtain additional information concerning the action on our website, www.whafh.com. If you have incurred losses in the shares of Camping World Holdings, Inc., you may, no later than December 18, 2018, request that the Court appoint you lead plaintiff of the proposed class. Please contact Wolf Haldenstein to learn more about your rights as an investor in Camping World Holdings, Inc. According to the filed complaint, defendants throughout the Class Period made false and/or misleading statements and/or failed to disclose that: Camping World disclosure controls and controls over financial reporting suffered from a host of material weaknesses; Camping Worlds historical financial results had been materially misstated; Camping Worlds Gander Mountain Co. stores had encountered integration setbacks, adversely impacting Camping Worlds earnings growth and profit margins; and Camping Worlds core RV business was experiencing decelerating growth as Camping World lagged industry trends and was losing market share to competitors. On February 27, 2018, the Company issued a release revealing that the Company had recently identified material weaknesses in [its] internal control over financial reporting. The release also revealed that Camping World would need to revise prior reporting periods due to various errors. The cumulative impact of these misstatements required the Company to restate and reduce its 2016 basic earnings per share from $0.11 per share to $0.08 per share, as the prior reported basic earnings per share had been overstated by more than 37%. Subsequently, on March 1, 2018, Camping World announced that it would be unable to timely file its 2017 Form 10-K due to expected material weaknesses in its internal control over financial reporting. On this news, between February 26, 2018 and March 2, 2018, the price of Camping World Class A common stock dropped $4.63 per share, or more than 10%. On May 8, 2018, Camping World reported disappointing financial results for the quarter ended March 31, 2018, including a decrease in adjusted EBITDA and adjusted EBITDA margin. In addition, the Company revealed adverse trends in its core RV business indicating that it had lost significant market share to its competitors. On this news, the price of Camping World Class A stock fell 17%. On May 22, 2018, Camping World announced it had replaced its auditor of 13 years, causing the price of the stock to decline another 10%. On August 7, 2018, Camping World reported disappointing financial results for the quarter ended June 30, 2018, including adjusted EBITDA of only $140.2 million for the quarter, 9% below its previous guidance. In addition, the Company revealed that problems in its Gander operations were more extensive than previously disclosed. On this news, the price of Camping World Class A stock fell $3.17 per share, or 14%, to close at $19.04 per share on August 8, 2018. Wolf Haldenstein Adler Freeman & Herz LLP has extensive experience in the prosecution of securities class actions and derivative litigation in state and federal trial and appellate courts across the country. The firm has attorneys in various practice areas; and offices in New York, Chicago and San Diego. The reputation and expertise of this firm in shareholder and other class litigation has been repeatedly recognized by the courts, which have appointed it to major positions in complex securities multi-district and consolidated litigation. If you wish to discuss this action or have any questions regarding your rights and interests in this case, please immediately contact Wolf Haldenstein by telephone at (800) 575-0735, via e-mail at classmember@whafh.com , or visit our website at www.whafh.com. ## Follow the firm and learn about newly filed cases on Twitter and Facebook. ## Contact: Wolf Haldenstein Adler Freeman & Herz LLP Kevin Cooper, Esq. Gregory Stone, Director of Case and Financial Analysis Email: gstone@whafh.com , kcooper@whafh.com or classmember@whafh.com Tel: (800) 575-0735 or (212) 545-4774 Attorney Advertising. Prior results do not guarantee or predict a similar outcome. News / Press Release by Jabulani Skhosana, 1893 MHRM RSA Student Wing Secretary We would like to thank the opportunity that we have been given by the 1893 Mthwakazi Human Rights Restoration Movement (1893 MHRRM) to be part of this great Human Rights Restoration Movement and a great cause as students in South Africa.We are in full support of the good cause of the Right to Self-determination and the Restoration of a broad spectrum of the Human Rights for Matabeleland people who have been subdued and subjugated since the 1st of November 1893 by Rhodes and his cronies in partnership with the Shona batman leading to the destruction of the Matebeleland Kingdom.We will shout the gospel of Hum Rights Restoration and Right to self-determination without hindrance. We are also determined to hold to account all those responsible for the systematic violation of the Rights of the people of Mthwakazi in all corners of academic institutes and elsewhere.We therefore call on all students from all corners of universities to join this struggle of affording Matebeleland her rights and freeing this ruthlessly oppressed and subjugated Nation for more than 100 years.We further call upon all Pan Africanists to come on board and we redefine our Africa by restoring our borders that were there before colonial empires arrived, starting with Matabeleland in Zimbabwe.All students from all Nations are welcome to join hands with the 1893 MHRRM student wing and be in solidarity with the cause of Restoration of Human Rights and Right to Self-determination of the Matabeleland people.We will also like to advise all students in UK to attend the Matebeleland "Gukurahundi" conference on the 3rd of November 2018 in Luton. We also want to inform all Truth and Justice seeking and loving people that we will organise the same Matebeleland Genocide conference in South Africa before the end of the year in one of the universities in Johannesburg, South Africa. The public will be updated in due course about these as preparations are already under way.If the world recognised the pain of Catalonia, Western Sahara, Palestine, Venezuela then the pain of Matabeleland matters too. We will never rest until all abusers of Matabeleland face justice and Mthwakazi attains its God-given Human Rights and the Right to Self-determination.Jabulani Skhosana1893 MHRM RSA Student Wing Secretary Facebook has uncovered another influence campaign tied to Iran. The company has removed 82 Pages, accounts, and groups for "coordinated inauthentic behavior" aimed at people in the United States and the UK. The accounts, which were on both Facebook and Instagram, were used to spread content on socially divisive issues, like race relations and immigration, according to Facebook. SEE ALSO: Facebook's fight against fake news is actually working. Sort of. The company was quick to point out that while the activity originated in Iran, they weren't able to attribute it to the Iranian government. "It's still early days and while we have found no ties to the Iranian government, we cant say for sure who is responsible," the company's head of cybersecurity policy, Nathaniel Gleicher, wrote in a statement. Examples of some of the content posted by the removed accounts. Image: facebook The accounts and Pages Facebook removed had been active over the last year and, all together, had more than a million followers. The content they posted, which was aimed at people in the U.S. and the UK, included memes on "politically charged topics." This is the second time Facebook has removed accounts tied to an alleged Iranian influence campaign. The company removed 652 accounts and Pages in August. Gleicher said the latest takedowns had some ties to the previous accounts it had detected. Examples of some of the content posted by the removed accounts. Image: facebook Facebook also touted its actions as a win for the company's election war rooms, dedicated spaces at Facebook's offices where employees are specially trained to spot attempts to meddle in elections. Because of the war rooms, the company was able to address the accounts much more quickly, Gleicher said. "Our threat intelligence team first detected this activity one week ago. Given the elections, we took action as soon as wed completed our initial investigation and shared the information with US and UK government officials, US law enforcement, Congress, other technology companies and the Atlantic Councils Digital Forensic Research Lab," Gleicher wrote. With a price gap and pipeline delays costing industry and government, conservative politicians are divided on whether buying up rail cars to transport oil is a viable solution. On Monday, Alberta Premier Rachel Notley said building pipelines is the best solution. But most urgently she suggested the federal government invest in any tools, including buying up rail capacity, to close the differential cost of oil. Conservative Party leader Andrew Scheer said the premier's call for more rail investments isn't a good sign for the country. "The very fact that the premier is proposing this, I believe, is an indictment on where we've got to in this country," Scheer said. "We don't have the capacity we need to get our energy to market." Notley's advice was to have the federal government buy more rail cars to help transport more Alberta oil. She said the government already supports grain transportation. Sean Kilpatrick/Canadian Press On Wednesday, United Conservative Party Leader Jason Kenney said Notley's call was ironic because, in his view, weak leadership has led to the price problems. "She allowed Justin Trudeau to veto Northern Gateway and kill Energy East and surrender to Obama's veto of Keystone XL," Kenney said. "So now we're talking about taxpayers owning a pipeline and buying rail cars." He said he'd keep an "open mind" about government investment in rail as a short-term solution but said the idea doesn't sit well with those he's spoken to in the energy sector. 'Unintended consequences' In Calgary on Thursday, Scheer told CBC News he prefers private sector solutions. "I mean, if it's government getting into the rail business when government intervenes in these types of things, it can never be a long-term solution," he said. " When a government starts getting involved. There are always unintended consequences." He said his preference would be to work on the regulatory side of the issue because private sector investments could help create more jobs and opportunities. Ontario's premier said Thursday cancelling the basic income pilot project was a "simple" matter of saving money. "It was very simple, it cost $17 billion dollars," Doug Ford said during an appearance at the Resolute Forest Products pulp and paper mill. "It's not realistic." "The best way to help people out of poverty is something called a job," he said. "A good paying job." Ford's appearance on Thursday drew protests from people against the early cancellation of the basic income pilot; Thunder Bay was one of the three communities to participate in the three-year project. The PC government announced this summer it would end the project early, in March 2019. The program was started under the previous Liberal government, which said the cost for the pilot was $150 million over three years. However, when the PCs took power, they pegged the cost at $17 billion a year if it was expanded to the entire province. Ford was in Thunder Bay to announce an investment of more than $53 million into Resolute's northwestern Ontario operation, including the Thunder Bay mill. No provincial money However, none of that money is provincial; it's all being put forward by Resolute Forest Products, part of a budgetary process that goes back a few years, long before the PCs formed the provincial government. Ford said his appearance at the mill was about building relationships, and letting the "people of Thunder Bay and Resolute know we're behind them." "They've been fighting so many regulations and bureaucracy over the years,' Ford said. "We're here to say we're behind you, we support you, we're building a relationship, and that's what I think the most important thing is." Jeff Walters/CBC Ford said he'd eliminate what he called "nasty" barriers in the mining and forestry sectors. "Who are better stewards in their own industry than these folks, than Resolute and companies like Resolute, that want to make sure that we have a thriving forestry business?" Ford said. "When the government gets involved in business, they get in the way of business to thrive." Story continues 'Green energy scam' When asked about cancelling the Green Energy Act which directly affects the Thunder Bay pulp and paper mill, which hosts a co-gen plant Ford called it the "green energy scam." "It was the biggest transfer of money from the poor and middle-class to the political insiders I've ever seen," Ford said. "Ever, in the history of Canada." He called the carbon tax the "worst tax ever," and the cap-and-trade "terrible, too." Ford said the government will fight the carbon tax "all the way up to the Supreme Court." Ford did say the government is open to talking to the Thunder Bay police about funding to combat guns and gangs in the city, and that the PCs are "working on" completing the four-laning of the highway between Thunder Bay and Nipigon. "You'll hear from our minister of transportation over the next week or so," he said. Canada has cleared the last legislative hurdle involved in implementing the Comprehensive and Progressive Agreement for Trans-Pacific Partnership (CPTPP) trade deal, paving the way for Canada to be among the first six countries to ratify the pact that will govern trade across 11 member countries. The legislation passed the Senate Thursday and then, following an unusually quick process, received royal assent evidence of the multi-partisan support the bill received in Canada's upper house as interest groups urged a speedy passage through Parliament. Canada is now in the final stages of adopting an agreement that covers a bloc that does more than $425 billion in trade each year. While Canada already has signed the CPTPP, each country party to the deal must also pass enabling legislation to make changes to tariff rates and other relevant legislation that might be affected by dropping most barriers to trade. Even after this Senate vote, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau's cabinet will have to make some regulatory tweaks, through orders in council, before Canada formally ratifies the trade deal. Ratification occurs after a notice of ratification has been filed with the CPTPP Depositary in New Zealand. The agreement comes into force 60 days after six of the 11 signatories have completed this ratification process. "Canada is committed to maximizing the global markets where Canadians have preferential access so that our exporters and investors can compete and succeed the world over," International Trade Diversification Minister Jim Carr said in a statement after the CPTPP implementation bill received royal assent. "Canada now has more predictability and certainty in the dynamic Asia-Pacific markets. The CPTPP will help Canadian businesses of all sizes to access these thriving markets, contributing to their economic growth." Canada joins four other countries that have ratified the deal or are in the final stages of the process: New Zealand, Mexico, Japan and Singapore. Two other countries Vietnam and Australia are also nearing ratification. Story continues Observers have said being among the first six countries to adopt the deal could be economically significant for Canada as it would give it "first-mover advantage," allowing it to establish itself in important supply chains early on. A concrete example of this first-mover advantage can be found in Canadian beef and pork exports to Japan. If Canada is part of the agreement when it first comes into force, beef and pork exporters will have the first crack at using their preferential market access to displace U.S. exports which will be more expensive because they'll face a higher tariff. (U.S. President Donald Trump pulled his country out of the TPP, brokered by President Barack Obama, shortly after he was elected. The other TPP countries subsequently pressed ahead without him, reaching an agreement-in-principle on a moderately revised deal earlier this year.) Fast work Thus, farm interests and other trade boosters have been urging the Senate to quickly pass the implementation bill, C-79, and forego extensive committee study as the agreement already has been the subject of much consultation and parliamentary work. Members of the Senate's foreign affairs and international trade committee largely obliged, completing their study including a clause-by-clause review of the bill in just three sittings over the course of a single week. The committee heard from labour, business interests and agri-food lobby groups. The committee's chair, Conservative Saskatchewan Sen. Raynell Andreychuk, said committee members were "efficient with their time." The bill passed third reading on a voice vote in the chamber Thursday afternoon. Despite the lobbying efforts, at least one group had been demanding the Senate slow down its review: the Council of Canadians, an organization that has raised red flags about trade agreements. The council urged the Senate to serve as a bulwark against a deal that passed the Commons quickly, advice the upper house clearly did not heed. 'Reckless' ratification "The ratification process of the CPTPP has been reckless," Maude Barlow, the honorary chairperson of the Council of Canadians, said in a statement to CBC News Thursday. "The Trudeau government decided a long time ago to promote the CPTPP as a fait accompli. It ignored the concerns of the large majority of those who participated in the consultations and who expressed many misgivings about the deal, particularly the investor state provisions that will give more corporations the right to challenge Canadian regulations and standards. "The Senate foreign relations committee similarly ignored the advice of so many Canadians and rubber-stamped the deal with little debate or information sharing. This is a shame because there are serious flaws in this agreement about which many elected leaders know very little." The benefits of the CPTPP are said to be substantial, as it will give Canadian companies more tariff-free access to the world's largest trading bloc, representing some 495 million consumers. The deal will eliminate up to 95 per cent of tariff lines among the parties. The chief economist at Global Affairs Canada has said the CPTPP will generate long-term economic gains for Canada in excess of $4.2 billion. "Canada must diversify it's trading relationships," said Brian Kingston, the director of international and fiscal issues at the Business Council of Canada, noting more than 76 per cent of Canada's exports are still destined for the U.S. "With growing protectionism in the U.S., the need to diversify has never been clearer. Asia is the growth engine of the global economy and Canada must be positioned to take advantage of it. We think the tariff reductions in the CPTPP will significantly boost our exports." Not everyone is convinced. Businesses in some sectors including auto parts manufacturing and dairy farming worry that opening up Canada to more imports from the Asia-Pacific region could challenge the competitiveness of domestic industries. By Prak Chan Thul PHNOM PENH (Reuters) - A senior Khmer Rouge figure who ran Cambodia's most notorious prison during the genocidal regime is in intensive care in hospital, but his health has stabilized, the director of a prison where he is serving a life sentence said on Thursday. Kaing Guek Eav, also known as Comrade Duch, was the first Khmer Rouge commander convicted of crimes against humanity in 2010, and sentenced in 2012 after a UN-backed tribunal rejected his appeal claim that he was a junior official following orders. He was hooked up to an intravenous drip after being admitted to hospital at the weekend, but was able to talk, said Chat Sineang, the director of the Kandal Provincial Prison where Duch is serving his sentence. "I asked him whether he wanted us to let his family know about his sickness and he said there was no need," Chat Sineang told Reuters. "He was able to talk. He's still in an emergency unit attached to an IV drip." The 75-year-old Duch was taken to the Khmer-Soviet Friendship Hospital in the capital Phnom Penh on Saturday, following diarrhea and breathing problems, he added. Up to 2 million people, or about a third of the population, are believed to have been killed or died of overwork and starvation during the Khmer Rouge's 1975-1979 reign of terror in Cambodia. Many were bludgeoned to death in mass executions. The Supreme Court ruled that Duch, as the commander of the notorious Tuol Sleng prison, codenamed S-21, should take full responsibility for the estimated 14,000 people killed there during the Khmer Rouge regime. Two other accused, Nuon Chea and former head of state Khieu Samphan, are on trial for war crimes and genocide. Now in their 80s and in declining health, they were sentenced to life in prison in 2014 for crimes against humanity. Most Cambodians now alive were born after the bloody era. (Editing by Amy Sawitta Lefevre and Clarence Fernandez) Renewed calls for public inquiry as France pushes appeal decision in Hassan Diab case to next year The French Court of Appeal did not deliver an anticipated ruling Friday in the case of Hassan Diab, the Canadian academic suspected by French authorities of involvement in a 1980 bombing outside a Paris synagogue. A formal hearing was set to take place at a Paris courthouse today to rule on whether the court would uphold a decision that released Diab from jail and sent him home to Canada. But no hearing occurred. Instead, Diab's defence team told reporters the court will assign a new investigating judge to the case. Lawyer Aurelie Lefebvre said that further review is needed in relation to handwriting analysis presented as evidence. She said the evidence must be reviewed by Feb. 15 of next year. Diab's French defence team now says the case could be wrapped up by next summer. "It is, of course, a new setback because we were expecting the decision today," Lefebvre said. "However, we remain confident. We have to consider the court has a doubt." Diab and his wife, Rania Tfaily, learned of the latest delay when the phone rang around 3:20 a.m. at their Ottawa apartment, where they were waiting with a group of supporters. "They don't want to admit they made a mistake," Diab said. "And I have this feeling they want to keep going ... they want to just keep going. "Eleven years and still, with all the evidence and everything, it's just a way of saying, 'We don't want to admit our mistake.' That's the message." Today's news prompted disappointment and renewed calls for an independent public inquiry and reforms to Canada's extradition laws. At a news conference on Parliament Hill, Diab's lawyer Donald Bayne said there is something "fishy, something political" about the case. "As this case get more bizarre, the case for a transparent public inquiry in Canada grows stronger and stronger and stronger," he said. "This is not a case to be handled with a secret, in-camera, behind closed doors review conducted by a non-judge who has no power under the terms of reference to examine the defects in the Canadian law." Story continues Never formally charged Diab, a 64-year-old Ottawa university lecturer, was accused by authorities in the attack, which killed four people and injured more than 40. Diab has consistently maintained his innocence. He was released in January after two French judges ruled the evidence against him wasn't strong enough to take to trial. He was never formally charged. Diab was arrested by RCMP in November 2008 and placed under strict bail conditions until he was extradited to France in 2014. Diab spent more than three years in prison in France before the case against him collapsed. If France wins its appeal, it could seek to extradite Diab a second time, or try him in absentia. Today, Diab said the additional delay only adds to his family's pain. "It has been 10 years of tarnished reputation, anguish, unbelievable stress, significant legal expenses and imprisonment away from my family," he said during the news conference. "Is it too much for the French legal system to finally admit that it made a mistake in prosecuting me in the first place?" The appeal was supposed to be resolved in July, but France's Court of Appeal put off releasing its decision until Friday due to the sudden appearance of new evidence from Greek authorities that needed to be translated and reviewed. That evidence proved to be of little value and was dealt with during a three-minute hearing in September. Back in June, CBC News confirmed that France was aware of and failed to disclose fingerprint evidence that ultimately helped to clear Diab. French officials did not share fingerprint comparison evidence in their possession with their Canadian counterparts. In fact, court documents showed French prosecutors denied the evidence even existed. 'A weak case' Diab's case has raised troubling questions about the standard of evidence required by Canadian law for extradition. Robert Maranger, the Ontario Superior Court judge who ordered Diab's extradition in 2011, wrote in his decision that France had presented "a weak case; the prospects of conviction in the context of a fair trial seem unlikely." Maranger ordered Diab's extradition on the strength of handwriting analysis that allegedly linked him to the bomber. It was said to be the only piece of physical evidence linking Diab to the attack. But in their January order, obtained by CBC News, French investigative judges dismissed that evidence as unreliable. Another key factor in Diab's release was the high probability that he wasn't even in Paris on the day of the bombing. Using university records and interviews with Diab's classmates, the investigative judges determined he was "probably in Lebanon" writing exams when the Rue Copernic attack happened. "It is likely that Hassan Diab was in Lebanon during September and October 1980 and it is therefore unlikely that he is the man who then laid the bomb on Rue Copernic on October 3rd, 1980," they wrote. Diab boycotting review Canadian Justice Minister Jody Wilson-Raybould has asked the former deputy attorney general of Ontario, Murray Segal, to conduct an external review of Diab's extradition. Through Bayne, Diab announced that he would boycott that review, arguing its scope is too narrow and it appears to be nothing more than a "concerted damage-control effort." Segal will be asked to assess whether Canadian Department of Justice officials followed the law and departmental procedures while conducting the extradition. He also will look at whether government lawyers who handle extradition cases need to change their approach, and whether Canada needs to address specific issues with France over that country's treatment of Diab. But Segal isn't being tasked with a review of Canada's extradition laws themselves something Diab and his supporters have demanded. Segal's authority also falls short of the judge-led public inquiry requested by Diab, rights groups such as Amnesty International and some politicians. "This is so fundamentally wrong and disappointing," said Bayne. "As fine a fellow as Murray Segal is, he is not an independent judge. He's a career prosecutor." Bayne said the external review will not allow for a cross-examination of Justice Department officials in the way a public inquiry would. "Where is Hassan Diab's right to challenge what they did to him? Only a public inquiry can have credibility," Bayne said. Segal spent decades in senior positions in the Ontario public service before leaving for the private sector, where he has worked as a lawyer, mediator and consultant. He has led a number of high-profile reviews notably the independent probe of the actions of Nova Scotia police and public prosecutors in the Rehtaeh Parsons case. He also has conducted reviews of CSIS and the Criminal Law Branch of British Columbia. Alex Neve, secretary general of Amnesty International Canada, said today's delay means there is no closure for the family as the mysteries and concerns about how the case was handled deepen. "Today's news comes, to say the least, as deep frustration and disappointment," he said. Canadian Press/CBC Jason Kenney, the leader of the United Conservative Party of Alberta, says if he were elected premier, he would fund legal action to support energy development and put the weight of the government behind targeting opponents. He was the first speaker at the Energy Relaunch conference taking place at the Metropolitan Centre in downtown Calgary on Thursday. Kenney said he would establish a "war room" within Alberta's department of energy to counter what he called the lies perpetuated by opponents of oil and gas development. He also suggested his government would establish a legal fund to support groups that want to take their support of energy development to the courts. "If I'm premier we'll be writing cheques to allow them to go to court," Kenney said. "We'll be supporting pro-development litigation." Kenney said there's too much of a focus on the minority of First Nations who are anti development. Watch Jason Kenney and Deron Bilous speak at the Energy Relaunch conference below: CRA audits and boycotts Kenney also said a government led by him would aggressively investigate what he called "flagrant violations" of Canada's charity laws by environmental groups and submit that evidence to the Canada Revenue Agency reminiscent of what happened when he was a minister in Stephen Harper's federal Conservative government. He would also boycott companies that boycott Canada's energy specifically mentioning HSBC and said there would be consequences for other Canadian jurisdictions that oppose Alberta's oil and gas industry. The Alberta government didn't hold back in its response to Kenney's comments, emailed to CBC News. "Premier Rachel Notley is busy fighting every day to build a pipeline to the West Coast and diversify our economy. Jason Kenney's plan is to make rich lawyers even richer and start fights on Twitter, while continuing his spotless record of failure to get a pipeline built when he had the chance," reads a statement attributed to the energy minister's spokesperson. Story continues "Thanks to Premier Rachel Notley, more Canadians than ever before support our fight for Alberta's energy sector, and we're not going to back down." Federal Conservatives echo Kenney Federal Conservative leader Andrew Scheer echoed some of Kenney's sentiments when he spoke at the conference on Thursday afternoon. He was tough on the federal government's purchase of the Trans Mountain Pipeline project, suggesting Conservatives would build pipelines "without having to buy them." "Justin Trudeau has bought a pipeline without actually planning to build it," he said. "He's punted the ball yet again and announced another round that will push this process down months ahead from now." He said those who oppose oil and gas development are spreading lies and those groups who support it should be celebrated. Scheer said his party would immediately repeal Bill C-69, which would replace the National Energy Board with the Canadian Energy Regulator and create a new Impact Assessment Agency. Scheer called the bill, still under consideration in the Senate, the biggest threat to the oilpatch since the National Energy Program. He also said he would force projects through that were in the national interest, end the tanker ban on the north coast of British Columbia, and kill the federal carbon tax. Watch Andrew Scheer speak at the Energy Relaunch conference below: NDP points to success Alberta's minister of trade and economic development said if you treat the economy and the environment as "mutually exclusive," you will fail. Deron Bilous told the crowd there is a role for government to play with industry in order to support the energy sector and contrasted his government's stimulus spending with Saskatchewan's austerity approach. "If you fast forward to today, those two different approach have led to two very different results," he said, citing positive job growth and GDP growth in Alberta compared with its eastern neighbour. Watch Saskatchewan Premier Scott Moe speak at the Energy Relaunch conference below: CBC covered the Energy Relaunch conference in Calgary on Thursday. The event was hosted by New West Public Affairs, a conservative communications firm, and addressed the future of energy in Canada with some of the country's leading politicians. And while Kenney renewed his promise that a UCP government would immediately kill the provincial carbon tax, Bilous said Albertans pay the lowest taxes in the country and said the price on carbon is pushing innovation. Calgary: The Road Ahead is CBC Calgary's special focus on our city as it passes through the crucible of the downturn: the challenges we face, and the possible solutions as we explore what kind of Calgary we want to create. Have an idea? Email us at calgarytheroadahead@cbc.ca By Mark Hosenball and Gabriella Borter WASHINGTON/NEW YORK (Reuters) - The investigation into 10 pipe bombs sent to high-profile Democrats and critics of U.S. President Donald Trump is focusing on leads in Florida, a federal law enforcement source said on Thursday while another source said investigators believe the devices' design came from the internet. All the suspicious packages were believed to have gone through the U.S. postal system at some point, the source said. Many of the packages had the return address of the Florida office of U.S. Representative Debbie Wasserman Schultz, who formerly chaired the Democratic National Committee, according to the Federal Bureau of Investigation. The instructions for such explosive devices are widely available on websites and in propaganda distributed by militant groups such as Islamic State and al-Qaeda, said the second law enforcement official and a former federal government bomb expert. Former Vice President Joe Biden and actor Robert De Niro on Thursday became the latest targets of the bombs, none of which exploded. The bombs have heightened what already was a contentious campaign season ahead of the Nov. 6 elections in which Trump's Republicans will try to maintain majorities in the Senate and House of Representatives. The episode has also called attention to the harsh rhetoric Trump wields against his rivals. Trump condemned the bombs but later blamed the media, his frequent foil, for much of the angry tone. No one has claimed responsibility and the FBI urged the public to report any tips. The packages consisted of a manila envelope with a bubble-wrap interior containing "potentially destructive devices," the FBI said. Each bore a computer-printed address label and six "Forever" postage stamps, the agency said. Some of the packages sent to New York locations had envelopes of white powder in them, but FBI Assistant Director William Sweeney said at a briefing in New York that initial analysis showed it was not a biological threat. The pipe bombs discovered on Wednesday were similar to the ones sent to Biden and De Niro, a federal official told Reuters. Authorities described the devices as crude while security experts said their goal may have been to create fear rather than to kill. FBI TO STUDY CNN BOMB One of the bombs was sent to the New York headquarters of CNN, which Trump has frequently derided for its coverage of him, and the network said on Thursday the device was being taken in a bomb-proof truck to the FBI lab in Quantico, Virginia, for analysis. Leading Democrats said the bombs were a dangerous outgrowth of an antagonistic political atmosphere created by the president. Trump and other Republicans have likened Democrats to an "angry mob," citing protests at the confirmation hearing of U.S. Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh. The FBI said on Thursday one of the two packages sent to Biden - who once said he would have fought Trump if they were in high school - was discovered at a mail facility in his home state of Delaware and the second at another location. The device intended for De Niro, who received a loud ovation when he hurled an obscenity at Trump at the Tony Awards in June, was sent to one of his properties in New York City. At a Wisconsin rally on Wednesday night Trump, who has denounced news media organizations as an "enemy of the people," called attention to "how nice Im behaving tonight but on Thursday morning he attacked the media. "A very big part of the Anger we see today in our society is caused by the purposely false and inaccurate reporting of the Mainstream Media that I refer to as Fake News," Trump wrote. "It has gotten so bad and hateful that it is beyond description. Mainstream Media must clean up its act, FAST!" TWO BOMBS FOR WATERS Several of the people who were sent bombs - including former President Barack Obama and Trump's rival for the presidency, Hillary Clinton - are frequent targets of right-wing critics. Also sent packages were Eric Holder, who served as attorney general under Obama; former CIA Director John Brennan, who had his security clearance withdrawn after frequently lambasting Trump; prominent Democratic Party donor George Soros; and California Representative Maxine Waters, another outspoken Trump critic. Two packages were sent to Waters, whom Trump has called "an extraordinarily low IQ person." Several politicians, including U.S. Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell and New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio, described the package bombs as an act of terrorism. "Someone is trying to intimidate. Someone is trying to quash voices in this country using violence," De Blasio said. "I am confident that we will find the perpetrator or perpetrators." (Reporting by Susan Heavey in Washington and Jonathan Allen in New York; Additional reporting by Brendan O'Brien in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, Mark Hosenball in Washington and Barbara Goldberg in New York; Writing by Bill Trott; Editing by Lisa Shumaker and Cynthia Osterman) Oakville, Ontario, Oct. 26, 2018 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- The Organization of Canadian Nuclear Industries (OCNI) is proud to recognize Terrestrial Energy as an innovation leader in the nuclear industry. Established in 2013, Terrestrial Energy is an industry-leading technology company committed to delivering reliable, emission-free, and cost-competitive energy with a truly innovative advanced reactor design. Terrestrial Energy is integrating a series of unique innovations to create the Integral Molten Salt Reactor, or IMSR. The IMSR uses a liquid nuclear fuel, a molten salt, a truly innovative approach. It will generate 190 megawatts of electricity per unit (or 400 megawatts of industrial heat). Terrestrial Energy has applied to construct a demonstration plant at the Chalk River Site. Proud to call Oakville home in Canada, Terrestrial is contributing to the nuclear industry in Ontario. Quotes: The global trends are becoming abundantly clear. We are recognising how crucially important nuclear innovation and SMRs are to our desired energy future, one that delivers both reliable, secure and zero-emissions energy and at cost-competitive prices. This creates the great opportunity that Terrestrial Energy and its Canadian partners are pursuing with IMSR technology. Simon Irish, CEO, Terrestrial Energy Canada has always been at the forefront of nuclear technology, and Ontario companies have proven to be innovative leaders in the energy sector. Our government is committed to find new ways to reduce wasteful spending, reduce hydro rates for Ontario, but also maintain an environment that will serve all Ontarians now, and in the future. Oakville is proud to be the home of Terrestrial Energy, both for its contribution to the local economy, and for its leadership in developing innovations solutions to the energy needs of tomorrow Stephen Crawford, MPP for Oakville Terrestrial Energy is such a valued part of our business community. Im proud of the work it is doing to develop clean energy technology while helping support the growth of our local economy and our livability Rob Burton, Mayor Oakville "OCNI is proud to recognize Terrestrial Energy and its dedicated employees for developing an innovative next generation small reactor design that will help establish Canada as a leader in the deployment of small, versatile and efficient reactors that will help combat climate change by providing non-emitting energy to both the electricity and industrial sectors for years to come. Ron Oberth, President & CEO, OCNI Terrestrial Energy was established in 2013 and is an industry-leading technology company committed to delivering reliable, emission-free, and cost-competitive energy with a truly innovative advanced reactor design. Organization of Canadian Nuclear Industries (OCNI) is an association of more than 200 Canadian suppliers to the nuclear industry that employ more than 14,000 highly skilled and specialized engineers, technologists, and trades people. OCNI companies design reactors, manufacture major equipment and components, and provide engineering services and support to CANDU nuclear power plants in Canada as well as to CANDU and Light Water Reactor (LWR) plants in offshore markets. Attachment Don't bother checking your mailbox in Calgary on Thursday. Postal workers have walked off the job as part of a rotating strike action across the country. The Canadian Union of Postal Workers began strike action in Calgary on Wednesday evening, which is expected to last until 6 p.m. Thursday. Anna Beale is a postal clerk with Canada Post and an executive with the local postal workers' union. She says postal workers are fighting for improved job security, an end to forced overtime and better health and safety measures. "We've had enough. We've been trying to get them to negotiate for 10 months and here we stand," she said. "We don't want to be out here. We'd rather be inside working, getting the public their mail. This is our way of saying, 'Canada Post, OK, enough. This is enough. Get seriously negotiating." The union represents more than 54,000 workers Canada-wide in the postal, delivery, logistics, transportation and communication sectors. Jennifer Lee/CBC Beale says one concern workers have centres around parcel deliveries. "Canada Post last year bragged, rightly so, that they were the No. 1 parcel delivery company in Canada, delivered the most parcels, and we were proud of that," she said. "But they didn't change the letter carrier walks to account for all the extra volume that letter carriers have to deliver in those parcels. And as a result, carriers are having to worked forced overtime, [working] 12 hours a day ... and that's no good. We don't get any kind of family life. Our injury rate has soared." Committed to bargaining process In a release, Canada Post says it continues to operate across the rest of Canada and is accepting and delivering mail and parcels in all other locations. It adds Canada Post remains "committed to the bargaining process." "The corporation has made significant offers to CUPW which include increased wages, job security and improved benefits and has not asked for any concessions in return," it reads. Story continues Kevin Gillis, a letter carrier for 14 years, says Canada Post's offer of a 1.5 per cent wage increase over a four-year contract was "embarrassing." "We all want to do our job, we don't want to inflame the public, it's not their fault their government is unreasonable," he said. "You won't get your weed today but chill out, you'll get it tomorrow." Rotating strikes began on Monday, after negotiators failed to reach a new contract agreement before the union's strike deadline. Canada Post is warning customers to expect delivery delays. The Qikiqtaaluk Corporation's president pleaded not guilty to an assault charge Thursday morning in the Nunavut Court of Justice. Harry Flaherty is alleged to have assaulted someone on July 8 in Iqaluit. The defence lawyer entered the plea in the Nunavut Court of Justice, but Flaherty was not present. His trial is set for June 26. Justice of the Peace Joseph Murdoch-Flowers noted, so it was on record, that the first available date for trial was in February, but the defence chose to push it until June. The Crown has chosen to proceed summarily, the less serious offence. If found guilty, the maximum penalty for summary convictions is a $5,000 fine, six months in prison, or both. Flaherty has been the corporation's president since 2009. The Qikiqtaaluk Corporation is the business development branch of the Qikiqtani Inuit Association, which is a non-profit that promotes the rights of 14,000 Inuit in the Qikiqtani region. Baton Rouge, Louisiana, Oct. 26, 2018 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Baton Rouge, LA A new, exhaustive national midterm election poll shows that nearly half of voters in battleground Congressional districts (42 percent) plan to use their ballot to show opposition to the President, while only 23 percent plan to use their vote to show support for the President. In battleground Congressional House races, Democrats hold a 12-point lead over Republicans (48 percent to 36 percent among registered voters in the 72 most competitive districts, as rated by the Cook Political Report). Further, while most Republicans (78 percent) say he deserves to be reelected in 2020, a sizeable share of Republicans (41 percent) said they would nevertheless like to see the President face a serious primary challenge. These results are showing us that President Trump is weighing down Republican prospects in the House. The remaining question is whether this mood and Democratic lead will translate into a pattern of turnout that shapes the outcomes in individual contests, Michael Henderson, Ph.D., lead researcher on the poll and director of LSUs Public Policy Research Lab said. The poll was conducted as a collaboration between the The Cook Political Report and LSUs Manship School of Mass Communication. [Dr. Michael Henderson and Dr. Martin Johnson are available for fiber/satellite interviews, phone interviews and Skype interviews. See additional video/sound bytes below.] Among other findings: HEALTHCARE AND THE ECONOMY ARE TWO MOST IMPORTANT ISSUES The economy and health care top the list of issues voters consider very important at 70 percent and 68 percent, respectively. In contrast, recent hot-button issues such as trade, immigration and guns rank relatively low in voters minds at 36 percent, 45 percent and 48 percent. 3 The parties diverge somewhat over which issue tops the list. Among Republicans, the economy is the top concern with 79 percent saying it is very important. Among Democrats, health care tops at 80 percent saying it is very important. AMERICANS CONFIDENT IN ELECTION INTEGRITY, BUT DIFFERS BY MEDIA USE AND PARTY Americans are also confident about the integrity of elections overall, with 77 percent reporting that they are at least somewhat confident that their votes will be counted accurately. This is especially true among those who prefer to get their news from a print newspaper, 54 percent of whom say they are very confident their votes will be counted accurately. The share is 20 to 25 points lower among those who chiefly rely on websites, smartphone apps or social networking sites for their news. Democrats are more likely to say foreign interference poses a greater threat to the integrity of our elections (64 percent say it is likely or very likely) than voter fraud (38 percent say it happens somewhat often or very often); whereas Republicans were more likely to say voter fraud poses a bigger threat (52 percent say it happens somewhat often or very often) than foreign interference (24 percent say it is likely or very likely). A THIRD OF AMERICANS FEEL HOPEFUL ABOUT TRUMPs PRESIDENCY, HALF FEEL FRUSTRATED Results from the poll underscore the similarities between now and the 2010 election season, but in reverse. Today, 49 percent of Americans feel frustrated about Donald Trumps presidency the same share that said they felt frustrated about Barack Obamas presidency during the first round of midterm elections in his administration (while 29 percent of Americans report that they feel hopeful). However, the partisanship of voters expressing frustration has flipped. Eight years ago, these were overwhelmingly Republicans. Today they are overwhelmingly Democrats. A similar pattern is apparent among those feeling angry, proud or hopeful about the presidency. This survey confirms the belief that many of us had that Republicans face a distinctly uphill challenge in holding onto their House majority. So many of the most competitive district contests are being fought in suburbs, where President Trump is a real liability. This is not the case in the Senate, which is being fought on a completely different battlefield, mostly in more conservative, red Republican states and where Republicans are far more likely to gain ground, Charlie Cook of the Cook Political Report said. See the full survey results here. VIDEO SOUND BYTES FOR DOWNLOAD Dr. Michael Henderson, lead researcher on the poll and director of LSUs Public Policy Research Lab Video sound byte 1 - Download here "So nationally, one of the interesting things coming out of this poll is that the 2018 midterms sort of look like the 2010 midterms in reverse. There's a fair amount of individuals who are disgruntled with either the President or Congress that are hopeful or angry; but whereas it was Democrats who eight years ago who were hopeful and proud, and now they're frustrated and angry. Eight years ago Republicans were frustrated and angry, and now they're hopeful and proud about the current state of politics in the country." Video sound byte 2 - Download here "Nationally - and we also see this in competitive districts as well - there are two issues that really stand apart at the top of voters' minds, and those are the economy and healthcare. And what's interesting is a little bit different by party. Democrats are more concerned about healthcare; Republicans are more concerned about the economy. But those are both pretty big issues across the board. What's also interesting is issues that rank relatively low in importance, and its things you might not guess. We've heard a lot in the past year or so about guns, about trade, about immigration, but those issues rank relatively low compared to things like healthcare and the economy in voters' minds." Video sound byte 3 - Download here "So what's really interesting is the Democrats seem to have a lead in terms of how much interest they have in following news about the campaign. And throughout the past year, Democrats have shown more political activity in terms of volunteering for campaigns and donating and contacting elected officials. So it looks on those dimensions like Democrats have an advantage on enthusiasm. But when we look at, you know, whether or not they'll actually vote, there we don't see as much of a difference. Republicans and Democrats are pretty close in their expressions of their likelihood to vote. So will Democratic advantage in enthusiasm translate to higher turnout than Republicans? That's really the big question we're waiting till the 6th to see." Download early voting video here. Download establishing shot of Dr. Michael Henderson here. ### The survey was funded by philanthropic supporters of the LSU Manship School of Mass Communication. The survey instrument was developed by the Public Policy Research Lab at LSU in collaboration with the Cook Political Report. LSUs Manship School of Mass Communication ranks among the strongest collegiate communication programs in the country, with its robust emphasis on media and public affairs. Its public relations students were recently ranked the #1 team in the nation, and its digital advertising and student media teams frequently earn national recognition. The Reilly Center for Media & Public Affairs is the primary vehicle for the Manship Schools outreach and external engagement activities. The Center is partnership-driven, action-oriented, and dedicated to exploring contemporary issues at the intersection of mass communication and public life. Its interdisciplinary approach draws together experts from diverse fields to advance research and dialogue. The intent is to inspire our communities to think deeply, take action, develop solutions and broaden knowledge. Underlying the Centers endeavors is to strengthen and advance the Manship Schools national and state leadership in media and politics. The Cook Political Report is a non-partisan newsletter and website that analyzes elections and campaigns for the US House of Representatives, US Senate, Governors and President as well as American political trends. Today, 34 years after publishing its first issue, The Cook Political Report has become known and respected both inside the Beltway and around the country as a preeminent source of independent political analysis that many rely on for accurate political forecasting Agile Cigar Reviews are cigar assessments where we use a lightweight, shorter format. These will never take the place of our comprehensive reviews. They are only used on blends we have previously assessed. This might be a blend we are re-scoring or giving a score for the first time. It might be a blend we are looking at in a different size.. Today we look at the Plasencia Alma Fuerte Nestor IV. This is a cigar line we have previously assessed in the Generacion V size back in March 2018. Wrapper: Nicaraguan Binder: Nicaraguan Filler: Nicaraguan Country of Origin: Nicaragua Factory: Plasencia S.A. Nestor IV: 6 1/4 x 54 (Toro) The Plasencias are world-renowned for being premier growers and tobacco manufacturers in the cigar industry. In 2016, the family took a new step bringing its very own cigar brand to market. The company established Plasencia 1865 cigars to handle the sales and distribution of these cigars. The first release was a line called Alma Fuerte, an ultra-premium Nicaraguan puro which utilizes some of the best tobaccos that the Plasencias set aside over a decade ago. Today we take a look at one of the sizes known as the Nestor IV, a 6 1/4 x 54 box-pressed Toro. Alma Fuerte was the first in a planned five-part series of Alma cigars. The name translates to Strong Soul something that reflects the passion of the Plasencias in the cigar business. Since then, the company has added the second installment, Alma de Campo. For the Alma Fuerte, the Plasencias opted to release a 100% Nicaraguan puro blend. Its a line that is Criollo 98-centric. The tobaccos are from Plasencia farms in the four main growing regions of Nicaragua: Condega, Esteli, Jalapa, and Ometepe. The cigar is produced at the Plasencia S.A. factory in Esteli, Nicaragua. Nestor IV is named for company patriarch Nestor Plasencia Sr. The box-pressed Toro is the simplest of the three sizes. Generacion V is a box-pressed Salomon named for the fifth generation of the Plasencias. Meanwhile, Sixto II is named for Sixto Plasencia, the second generation of the Plasencia family and is a unique six-sided hexagonal shaped vitola. The Plasencia Alma Fuerte Nestor IV kicked off with notes of natural tobacco, cedar, chocolate and earth notes. The natural tobacco and cedar notes had a savory quality during the first third. By the second third, the savory quality receded and the earth notes would replace the cedar in the forefront. During this stage, the earth and natural tobacco alternated in intensity and a slight black pepper note emerged. By the time the last third came around, the earth notes took over as the primary note. There was an increase in cedar and pepper notes. The flavors delivered started out medium-bodied before progressing to medium to full in the second half. This was countered by medium strength. OVERALL ASSESSMENT Final Thoughts The Plasencia Alma Fuerte line gets big props for having two very innovative vitolas with the Generacion V and the Sixto II, but the vitola that shines is the box-pressed Toro with the Nestor IV. The flavors were rich and seemed to gel together best with this vitola. I also found the classic shape to perform best when it came to the basics of burn and draw. This is a cigar I would recommend to an experienced cigar enthusiast, but its one that is nice for a novice looking to graduate to something fuller. At $20.00, its not an inexpensive cigar, but its one that certainly garners box worthy consideration. Summary Key Flavors: Chocolate, Cedar, Natural Tobacco, Pepper Burn: Excellent Draw: Excellent Complexity: Medium Strength: Medium Body: Medium (1st Half), Medium to Full (2nd Half) Finish: Very Good Rating Value: Box Worthy Consideration Score: 92 References Previous Assessment: Plasencia Alma Fuerte Generacion V News: Spotlight on Plasencia Cigars at the 2017 IPCPR Trade Show Price: $20.00 Source: Plasencia Brand Reference: Plasencia Photo Credits: Cigar Coop FRIDAY, Oct. 26, 2018 (HealthDay News) -- Obese patients in need of a kidney transplant may find themselves denied one because of their weight, but a new study says that shouldn't happen in all cases. Researchers have found that kidneys given to obese patients fared as well as those transplanted into normal-weight patients. In addition, no difference was seen in patient survival, regardless of weight. Boosting access to transplant "will have a significant impact on quality of life and longevity for these patients, compared to staying on long-term dialysis," said lead researcher Dr. Bhavna Chopra, a nephrologist at Allegheny General Hospital in Pittsburgh. Many transplant centers have arbitrary cutoffs that prevent obese patients from consideration for a kidney transplant, Chopra said. The bottom line, she said, is that a patient's weight shouldn't be the sole determinant of whether he or she is eligible for a transplant. Obesity is an issue when it comes to kidney transplants because, Chopra said, the odds of complications during surgery are higher for obese patients, as are possible complications with the organ itself. But the decision should be made on a case-by-case basis, not on weight alone, she added. For the study, Chopra and her colleagues used information from the United Network for Organ Sharing database from 2006 to 2016 on patients with various levels of body mass index (BMI). BMI is a measure of body fat that takes into account a person's weight and height. A BMI of 18.5 to 24.9 is considered normal, 25 to 29.9 is overweight, and above 30 is obese, according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. To minimize the effect of different transplanted kidneys as a variable, the researchers paired kidneys from the same deceased donor with recipients who had different BMIs. They found that although patients with BMIs of 19 to 25 were the ideal for a kidney transplant, there was no difference in overall patient survival across all BMIs. "Our data support a more favorable consideration of obese patients for kidney transplantation and suggest that the use of a BMI cutoff between 30 and 40 for wait-listing, while common, is arbitrary and unfounded," Chopra said. Dr. David Klassen, chief medical officer for the United Network for Organ Sharing, said the long-term effects of transplants for obese patients aren't known. Specifically, it's not clear if overall survival is the same as for normal-weight patients, or whether the transplanted kidney remains functional. Studies have shown that obesity has an effect on the viability of the transplanted organ, he said. "Still, having an absolute cutoff for obesity probably is not the best way to do it, and a more individualized approach is probably appropriate," Klassen said. The average wait for a kidney transplant is three to five years, Klassen said. That gives patients time to get into the best shape they can, including losing weight, he noted. Dr. Sumit Mohan is a nephrologist and associate professor of epidemiology and medicine at Columbia University Medical Center in New York City. He said many transplant centers have increased their BMI cutoff from 35 to 40, which is the difference between obesity and morbid obesity. Another option for obese patients awaiting a transplant is weight-loss surgery, Mohan said. "There are a number of centers that are debating coupling bariatric surgery and transplant surgery," he said. "At Columbia we don't have a BMI cutoff," Mohan said. "If we find that a patient is morbidly obese and that's going to affect their ability to have a transplant, we would then recommend weight loss or bariatric surgery -- we do that quite often." The results of the study are scheduled for presentation at the annual meeting of the American Society of Nephrology, Oct. 23-28, in San Diego. Research presented at meetings should be viewed as preliminary until it's been published in a peer-reviewed journal. More information To learn more about kidney transplants, visit the National Kidney Foundation. Share this: Twitter Facebook WhatsApp LinkedIn Email Telegram Senator Bob Corker United States Senate 425 Dirksen Senate Office Building Washington, DC 20510 Senator Bob Menendez United States Senate 528 Hart Senate Office Building Washington, DC 20510 Re: Jamal Khashoggi and the Global Magnitsky Act Dear Chairman Corker and Ranking Member Menendez, I am writing on behalf of the Committee to Protect Journalists, an independent press freedom advocacy organization, to thank you and your fellow senators for your October 10 letter to President Donald J. Trump. The letter triggered a provision in the Global Magnitsky Human Rights Accountability Act of 2016 that requires the president to investigate the death of journalist Jamal Khashoggi and report back to you within 120 days as to whether his administration will impose targeted sanctions on those found responsible. Your lettersigned by nearly every member of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee as well as the chairman and ranking member of the Subcommittee on State, Foreign Operations, and Related Programsrepresented a swift, bipartisan action in defense of press freedom. For this, we are grateful. In the weeks since your letter was sent to President Trump, the Turkish government and international media outlets have uncovered various findings that have helped shed light on what exactly happened to Khashoggi, and who may be responsible. It is now clear that Khashoggi was killed in the Saudi consulate in Istanbul; the Saudis admit this, after first denying his death. But many questions remain. Given the complexity of the situation, and the strong possibility that senior Saudi officials bear responsibility, CPJ has two requests for the committee: The committee should ensure the Trump administration conducts a thorough investigation by November 16, which is 45 days since Khashoggi disappeared at the Saudi consulate in Istanbul, and holds all those responsible to account. The committee should consider holding a hearing on Saudi Arabia to consider evidence of official involvement in the Khashoggi murder, the systematic persecution of journalists in the kingdom, its broader influence in the region, and possible responsesincluding sanctions, travel bans, prohibitions on arms sales, and other punitive measures. A 15-member team, some of which were linked to the state security apparatus known as the State Security Presidency, arrived in Istanbul the day of Khashoggis disappearance and left the same day, the Guardian reported. Intelligence officials have alleged that Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman ordered the operation, according to The New York Times, and Turkish news reports indicate that several of squad were members of the Saudi Royal Guards. While it may be difficult to trust reports from the Turkish government, given its own poor record on press freedom, journalists at The New York Times and The Washington Post have confirmed several key facts. Even absent confirmation of all the reported details, the U.S. government must consider the strong likelihood that such an operation could only have originated from the State Security Presidency with the knowledge of the crown prince. The Saudi royal family is sprawling, and the governments decision-making process opaque, but Mohammed bin Salmans ruthless quest to smother independent journalism and consolidate power has actually created a clearer target for potential Magnitsky sanctions. The Committee to Protect Journalists has documented how Crown Prince Mohammeds Saudi Arabia has detained journalists at an alarming rate, even by the kingdoms already repressive standards. Eman Al Nafjan, a blogger and prominent advocate for ending the kingdoms ban on women driving, was detained in May by authorities reporting to the State Security Presidency, and CPJ also learned that Marwan al-Mureisi, an established columnist who steered clear of politics, was detained by intelligence agents at the hospital bedside of his five-year-old son in Riyadh. Their arrests, along with the arrests of others who were peacefully expressing themselves, have a common thread: the Presidency of State Security. According to Reuters, the creation of this body on July 20, 2017, consolidated all of the kingdoms security and intelligence services under one roof and elevated its head, Abdulaziz bin Mohammed al-Howairini, to the level of minister while retaining his role as director of general intelligence. The move gutted the security and intelligence jurisdiction of the interior ministry and consolidated power over the Saudi security apparatus in the hands of King Salman and Crown Prince Mohammed. Understanding this move is critical for the White House and Congress as the Trump administration investigates culpability for Khashoggis death and considers actions to pursue justice. In fact, amid the firings and arrests meant to demonstrate their commitment to justice, the Saudi government has ordered the restructuring of its general intelligence service, sacked its head, Saud al-Qahtania top aide for the crown prince who is implicated in Khashoggis murderand put none other than the crown prince in charge, Reuters reported. There is no single path to justice for the murder of Khashoggi and, given the strength of Saudi influence and unreliability of the Turkish government on press freedom, there must be multiple efforts on different fronts. That is why CPJ joined Human Rights Watch, Amnesty International, and Reporters Without Borders this month in calling on Turkey to request that the United Nations establish an international investigation. But the U.S. government also has a role to play in these efforts. The Senate Foreign Relations Committee should continue to pressure the Trump administration to investigate and respond accordingly, and consider pursuing its own actions in order to learn more about Khashoggis murder, broader human rights repression in Saudi Arabia, and how the U.S. can constructively engage on the issue to prevent future situations like this. If the Saudis can get away with the murder of Jamal Khashoggi, then no journalist anywhere is safe. Sincerely, Michael De Dora Washington Advocacy Manager Committee to Protect Journalists BCEX Set to Open in S Korea, Govt Offers Glimmer of ICO Hope Canada-based cryptocurrency exchange platform BCEX is set to open a branch in South Korea in December this year. Source: iStock/APeriamPhotography Per a media outlets Market News and eDaily, the company, which is 16th in the world by the 24-hour trading volume, is planning a pre-launch event and range of marketing activities ahead of the opening. BCEX Korea officials have claimed South Korean customers are limited when it comes to their exchange options. The company stated that while new exchanges continue to open in South Korea, risks are increasing hinting that BCEX security systems may be stronger than those used by domestic platforms. The company will join a select group of big-name overseas exchanges such as Huobi, OKCoin and CoinBene who have all recently opened branches in a the country. At the time of writing, the 24-hour trading volume at BCEX stands at USD 153 million, according to CoinMarketcap. Top markets at BCEX: Source: coinmarketcap.com Overseas tech and internet enterprises have famously struggled in South Koreans fiercely competitive market. The cryptocurrency scene is currently dominated by the likes of Bithumb, called the Samsung of the blockchain industry by its new majority shareholder. Upbit, owned by tech giant Kakao Group, is Bithumbs closest rival, and other domestic companies like Coinone and Korbit also have wide customer bases. Earlier this week, the regulatory Financial Services Commission (FSC) issued a public warning about the dangers of cryptocurrency investors falling foul of the law. It stated that cryptocurrency funds were not legal investments, and thus could violate the countrys Capital Markets Act and hinted that it was consulting with government agencies on how to better protect investors. However, in better news for South Korean cryptocurrency enthusiasts, a leading FSC official this week told the National Assembly select committee on Industry 4.0 that the government may be prepared to reconsider its stance on the controversial initial coin offering (ICO) ban it used in September last year. Per Hanguk Kyungjae, the official told the assembly that the government is investigating the current state of ICO, and was likely to state its opinion on the matter sometime next month. He also vowed that the select committee which has previously called on Seoul to abolish the ICO ban will play a key role in making potential amendments to existing ICO legislation. RICHMOND HILL, Ontario, Oct. 26, 2018 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Helix BioPharma Corp. (TSX, FSE: HBP), an immuno-oncology company developing drug candidates for the prevention and treatment of cancer, today announced its financial results for the year ended July 31, 2018. FINANCIAL REVIEW The Company recorded a net loss and total comprehensive loss of $8,625,000 and $10,059,000 (a loss per common share of $0.09 and $0.11) for the fiscal years ended July 31, 2018 and 2017 respectively. Research and development Research and development expenses totalled $6,084,000 and $6,524,000, respectively for the twelve-month periods ended July 31, 2018 and 2017. The following table outlines research and development costs expensed and investment tax credits for the Companys significant research and development projects for the fiscal years ended July 31: 2018 2017 L-DOS47 $ 4,893,000 $ 5,496,000 V-DOS47 457,000 372,000 CAR-T 318,000 259,000 Corporate research and development expenses 432,000 474,000 Trademark and patent related expenses 440,000 361,000 Stock-based compensation expense 10,000 24,000 Depreciation expense 141,000 103,000 Research and development investment tax credit (132,000 ) (230,000 ) Polish government grant subsidy (V-DOS47) (475,000 ) (335,000 ) $ 6,084,000 $ 6,524,000 L-DOS47 research and development expenses for fiscal 2018 totalled $4,893,000 (2017 - $5,496,000). L-DOS47 research and development expenditures relate primarily to the Companys LDOS002 European Phase I/II clinical study in Poland, LDOS001 Phase I clinical study in the U.S., and preliminary expenditures related to the Companys LDOS003 Phase II clinical study in Poland and the Ukraine. The Company stopped further enrolment in the second stage of the Phase I/II component of the study due to lack of efficacy as defined by protocol. The final analysis has been completed and the Company is currently awaiting the clinical study report. In addition, given the limited cash resources, the LDOS003 clinical trial which was previously planned to commence enrolment in early 2018 had not moved forward though the Company is still committed to advance the program. The Company continues to be committed to the LDOS001 study and has re-allocated resources to improve patient enrollment. An amendment to the LDOS001 study protocol allowed the Company to advance enrollment from Cohort two at the beginning of the 2018 fiscal year to where it was most recently announced that the Company commenced enrolment in the final two cohorts of the study which is now enrolling patients in Cohort six. In addition, the Company has begun early development of a Phase I/II study, L-DOS47 given in combination with doxorubicin, for the treatment of metastatic pancreatic cancer. An initial draft study protocol was circulated in July 2018 and ongoing development continues. V-DOS47 research and development expenses for fiscal 2018 totalled $457,000 (2017 - $372,000). The higher expenditures in the current year mainly reflect the increase in staff and consultants as the Polish subsidiary ramped up activities in the program. In fiscal 2016 the Company established a wholly-owned subsidiary in Poland and entered into a grant funding agreement with the Polish National Centre for Research and Development (PNCRD) for research and development expenditures associated with V-DOS47. The Companys subsidiary received $475,000 and $335,000 in fiscal 2018 and 2017, respectively, from the PNCRD. CAR-T research and development expenses for fiscal 2018 and 2017 totalled $318,000 (2017 - $259,000). During the current fiscal year, the Company announced a collaboration agreement related to novel CAR-T therapeutics and new antibody-based technologies for cell-based therapies. Corporate research and development expenses were relatively flat for fiscal 2018 and 2017 and totalled $432,000 (2017 - $474,000). Trademark and patent related expenses for fiscal 2018 and 2017 totalled $440,000 (2017 - $361,000). The Company continues to ensure it works to adequately protect its intellectual property. Operating, general and administration Operating, general and administration expenses totalled $2,462,000 and $3,738,000, respectively for the fiscal years ended July 31, 2018 and 2016. The decrease in operating, general and administration expenses reflects the Companys cost cutting initiatives. The Company eliminated the employment/contractual arrangement with its then CEO, who was also a director of the Company, and also let go if its controller as part of a headcount reduction plan. Aggressive steps were also taken to reduce unnecessary expenditures such as travel and conferences. In addition, various third-party contracts were also eliminated. During the fiscal year the Company hired Deloitte as strategic advisor to explore partnering and licensing opportunities. Cost reductions in Canada were offset by operating, general and administrative expenditure increases incurred at the Companys Polish subsidiary. LIQUIDITY AND CAPITAL RESOURCES As at July 31, 2018 the Company had a working capital deficiency of $1,901,000 (2017 - $504,000), shareholders deficiency of $1,527,000 (2017 - $17,000) and a deficit of $164,005,000 (2017 - $155,380,000). The Companys cash reserves of $366,000, as at July 31, 2018 are insufficient to meet anticipated cash needs for working capital and capital expenditures through the next twelve months, nor are they sufficient to see the current research and development initiatives through to completion. Subsequent to the Companys fiscal year ending July 31, 2018, the Company closed two additional private placements for gross proceeds of $1,274,000. Though the funds raised have assisted the Company in dealing with the working capital deficiency, additional funds are required to advance the various clinical and preclinical programs and pay for the Companys overhead costs. To the extent that the Company does not believe it has sufficient liquidity to meet its current obligations, management considers securing additional funds, primarily through the issuance of equity securities of the Company, to be critical for its development needs. The Companys Consolidated Statement of Financial Position as at July 31, 2018 and July 31, 2017 is summarized below. Consolidated Statement of Financial Position (thousand $) 31-Jul-18 31-Jul-17 Non current assets 374 487 Current assets: Prepaids 92 173 Accounts receivable 315 630 Cash 366 897 773 1,700 Total assets 1,147 2,187 Shareholders' deficiency (1,527 ) (17 ) Current liabilities: Deferred government grant 38 44 Accrued liabilities 644 722 Accounts payable 1,992 1,438 2,674 2,204 Total liabilities & shareholders deficiency 1,147 2,187 The Companys Consolidated Statement of Net Loss and Comprehensive Loss and Consolidated Statement of Cash Flow for fiscal 2018 and 2017 are summarized below: Consolidated Statements of Net Loss and Comprehensive Loss Consolidated Statements of Cash Flows (thousand $, except for per share data) (thousand $) For the year ended For the year ended Jul-31 Jul-31 Jul-31 Jul-31 2018 2017 2018 2017 Expenses: Cash provided by (used in): Research and development 6,084 6,524 Net loss and total comprehensive loss (8,625 ) (10,059 ) Operating, general, administration 2,462 3,738 Gain on sale property, plant, equipment - (168 ) Items not involving cash: Depreciation 165 130 Results from operating activities Stock-based compensation 10 159 before finance items (8,546 ) (10,094 ) Foreign exchange loss (gain) 60 (33 ) Gain on sale property, plant, equipment - (168 ) Finance items (79 ) 35 235 88 Changes in non-cash working capital 866 676 Loss and total comprehensive loss (8,625 ) (10,059 ) Operating activities (7,524 ) (9,295 ) Loss per share -$ 0.09 -$ 0.11 * Figures are for both basic and fully diluted Financing activities 7,105 6,719 Investing activities (53 ) (214 ) Exchange rate changes on cash (59 ) 33 Net increase (decrease) in cash (531 ) (2,757 ) Cash beginning of the period 897 3,654 Cash end of the period 366 897 The Companys consolidated financial statements, managements discussion and analysis and annual information form will be filed under the Companys profile on SEDAR at www.sedar.com , as well as on the Companys website at www.helixbiopharma.com . About Helix BioPharma Corp. Helix BioPharma Corp. is an immuno-oncology company specializing in the field of cancer therapy. The company is actively developing innovative products for the prevention and treatment of cancer based on its proprietary technologies. Helixs product development initiatives include its novel L-DOS47 new drug candidate. Helix is currently listed on the TSX and FSE under the symbol HBP. INVESTOR RELATIONS Helix BioPharma Corp. 9120 Leslie Street, Suite 205 Richmond Hill, Ontario, L4B 3J9 Tel: (905) 841-2300 Email: ir@helixbiopharma.com Forward-Looking Statements and Risks and Uncertainties This news release contains forward-looking statements and information (collectively, forward-looking statements) within the meaning of applicable Canadian securities laws. Forward-looking statements are statements and information that are not historical facts but instead include financial projections and estimates, statements regarding plans, goals, objectives, intentions and expectations with respect to the Companys future business, operations, research and development, including the Companys activities relating to DOS47, and other information in future periods. Forward-looking statements include, without limitation, statements concerning (i) the Companys ability to operate on a going concern being dependent mainly on obtaining additional financing; (ii) the Companys priority continuing to be L-DOS47; (iii) the Companys development programs for DOS47, L-DOS47, V-DOS47 and CAR-T; (iv) future expenditures, the insufficiency of the Companys current cash resources and the need for financing; and (v) future financing requirements and the seeking of additional funding. Forward-looking statements can further be identified by the use of forward-looking terminology such as ongoing, estimates, expects, or the negative thereof or any other variations thereon or comparable terminology referring to future events or results, or that events or conditions will, may, could, or should occur or be achieved, or comparable terminology referring to future events or results. Forward-looking statements are statements about the future and are inherently uncertain, and are necessarily based upon a number of estimates and assumptions that are also uncertain. Although the Company believes that the expectations reflected in such forward-looking statements are reasonable, such statements involve risks and uncertainties, and undue reliance should not be placed on such statements. Forward-looking statements, including financial outlooks, are intended to provide information about managements current plans and expectations regarding future operations, including without limitation, future financing requirements, and may not be appropriate for other purposes. Certain material factors, estimates or assumptions have been applied in making forward-looking statements in this news release, including, but not limited to, the safety and efficacy of L-DOS47; that sufficient financing will be obtained in a timely manner to allow the Company to continue operations and implement its clinical trials in the manner and on the timelines anticipated; the timely provision of services and supplies or other performance of contracts by third parties; future costs; the absence of any material changes in business strategy or plans; and the timely receipt of required regulatory approvals and strategic partner support. The Companys actual results could differ materially from those anticipated in the forward-looking statements contained in this news release as a result of numerous known and unknown risks and uncertainties, including without limitation, the risk that the Companys assumptions may prove to be incorrect; the risk that additional financing may not be obtainable in a timely manner, or at all, and that clinical trials may not commence or complete within anticipated timelines or the anticipated budget or may fail; third party suppliers of necessary services or of drug product and other materials may fail to perform or be unwilling or unable to supply the Company, which could cause delay or cancellation of the Companys research and development activities; necessary regulatory approvals may not be granted or may be withdrawn; the Company may not be able to secure necessary strategic partner support; general economic conditions, intellectual property and insurance risks; changes in business strategy or plans; and other risks and uncertainties referred to elsewhere in this news release, any of which could cause actual results to vary materially from current results or the Companys anticipated future results. Certain of these risks and uncertainties, and others affecting the Company, are more fully described in the Companys annual managements discussion and analysis for the year ended July 31, 2017 under the heading Risks and Uncertainty and Helixs Annual Information Form, in particular under the headings Forward-looking Statements and Risk Factors, and other reports filed under the Companys profile on SEDAR at www.sedar.com from time to time. Forward-looking statements and information are based on the beliefs, assumptions, opinions and expectations of Helixs management on the date of this new release, and the Company does not assume any obligation to update any forward-looking statement or information should those beliefs, assumptions, opinions or expectations, or other circumstances change, except as required by law. India has won Commonwealth Association for Public Administration and Management (CAPAM) Award, 2018. The award was announced at Annual General Members Meet held at Georgetown, Guyana. Department of Administrative Reforms and Public Grievances (DARPG) under Union Ministry of Personnel, Public Grievances and Pensions is institutional member of Commonwealth Association for Public Administration and Management (CAPAM). Key Facts Unnayan Banka initiative for reinventing education using technology of Banka District, Bihar was awarded under Category Innovation Incubation. Unified Agriculture Markets of Karnataka Government was awarded in Innovation in Public Service Management. This initiative has also been awarded overall Gold Award for CAPAM Awards, 2018. Commonwealth Association for Public Administration and Management (CAPAM) CAPAM is non-profit association representing international network of over 1100 senior public servants, heads of government, leading academics and researchers located in over 50 different countries across the Commonwealth. It is guided by international leaders who believe in value of networking, knowledge exchange and promotion of good governance for betterment of citizens in Commonwealth countries. CAPAM announces its International Innovations Awards (IIA) Programme bi-annually, since 1998. These awards celebrate spirit of innovation in public service by recognizing organizations that have made significant contributions to improve governance and services in the public sector. Brexit brings a chance to strengthen ties between Argentina and the Falkland Islands, the country's foreign minister said yesterday.Jorge Faurie met with his counterpart Jeremy Hunt in London where the pair discussed increasing trade and travel links between the islands and South America.Afterwards Mr Faurie said: 'Our plan is to generate a greater link between the mainland and the insular part.'Rightly or wrongly, some interpreted his comments as part of a plot to use Brexit to ultimately take control of the islands.The Daily Telegraph said Mr Faurie is trying to 'exploit the situation to "enhance" efforts to pull the islands away from the UK.'The unofficial Falklands Islands twitter account, which has 70,000 followers, tweeted the Telegraph's story with the caption: 'Come and have a go if you think you're hard enough.'Brexit brings uncertainty for the Falklands because EU member states will no longer be obliged to help protect Britain's claims over sovereignty.This is because a treaty called the Duty of Sincere Cooperation - which includes a legal obligation for member states to assist each other over sovereignty - will no longer apply to Britain.Argentine President Mauricio Macri's previous foreign minister pointed to this when she said last year: 'When Brexit takes place, the EU could evaluate a decision on how to proceed and how to stand on these issues and there may be a change.'However, Mr Faurie's comments yesterday were conciliatory and emphasised co-operation between Britain and Argentina.He told Argentina's largest newspaper Clarin: 'We have a relationship with the British government, which includes the dialogue of those who live on the islands.'Our relationship is to generate a greater link between the mainland and the insular part.'That those who live in the islands feel that they can reach the continent to educate themselves, to take care of themselves in health issues and to do business.'The way we can have dialogue with those arriving from the islands will only have a positive effect and faced with rationality.'At this moment we are analyzing having a greater air connection, which facilitates the link between the continent and the islands.'This will only help to create trust and better knowledge of one and other.'A statement released by Argentina's government said Mr Hunt and Mr Faurie agreed to 'strengthen bilateral work to achieve greater co-operation between governments and the private sector.'Some analysts say increased trade with Argentina and South America will be essential for the Falkands to survive after Brexit.This is because the islands currently rely heavily on tariff-free access to the EU single market where it sells meat, fish and other products, sales which generate 70 per cent of its GDP.The foreign ministers' meeting at the British Foreign Office comes before Theresa May is due to meet Argentina's president at the G20 in Buenos Aires on November 30.The Falkland Islands is a British overseas territory off the east coast of South American which is claimed by Argentina.In 2013, 99.8 per cent of its 3,398 inhabitants voted to remain British. They did not get to vote in the Brexit referendum.Mr Faurie arrived in London for a 48-hour visit to speak at the Latin American Conference at the think tank Chatham House.Read more: Argentina will exploit a no-deal Brexit to 'enhance' its claims to Falklands, says its foreign ministerJorge Faurie: 'Los islenos pueden venir a educarse, atenderse y hacer negocios' - 24/10/2018 - Clarin.com A British wife facing the death penalty for murdering her husband in their idyllic retirement villa in Malaysia has told police she stabbed him in the heart with a kitchen knife in self-defence after suffering years of violent beatings at his hands.Samantha Jones, 62, says husband John punched her in the face and kicked her in the stomach after a night of drinking on the tropical island of Langkawi and even goaded her to stab him when she grabbed a kitchen knife to hold him at bay.In interviews with Malaysian detectives, she says she fled to the bedroom and only thrust the knife into the chest of the burly retired fire-fighter when he chased after her and lunged at her in a renewed attack.After the stabbing, Samantha ran out of the villa and alerted an expatriate woman neighbour. When they tried to go to John's help as he lay stricken, he pointed at Samantha and said in his dying words: 'Stay away. You stabbed me, you stabbed me.'The single knife thrust pierced John's heart and he was dead by the time an ambulance crew arrived at the 200,000 villa where the couple had lived for 11 years in the early hours of October 18th.Petite Samantha, a former insurance clerk from Somerset, is expected to be charged with murder early next week and transferred from police cells in Langkawi to a prison on the Malaysian mainland as she awaits trial.She faces a mandatory sentence of death by hanging under Malaysian law if convicted of murder but the sentence could be reduced to a jail term if the court accepts her claims that she killed her husband, also 62, in self-defence.However, the island's police chief Superintendent Mohamed Iqbal told Mail Online a medical investigation of Samantha after the killing found no evidence of any injuries to support her claim John kicked and punched her. 'There were no injuries (to Samantha) at all,' he said.Dramatic details of the killing and Samantha's claims of abuse by her husband emerged in interviews with neighbours, friends, and police officers investigating case which has shocked the relatively crime-free island where there has been only one other murder this year.The couple lived in a single-storey home with views over paddy fields in a tiny village two miles from the sea built 11 years ago under Malaysia's My Second Home programme which has seen hundreds of Britons gain residency on the island.Harley Davidson-riding John, who has two grown-up children from a previous marriage and four grandchildren, was a popular and gregarious figure on the island and a regular at bars and restaurants along the lively Centai Beach tourist strip.But despite their seemingly sunny lifestyle, Samantha has told police John was a heavy-drinking wife beater who she twice reported to police in the UK for assault before the couple emigrated to Langkawi.Friends say the couple separated temporarily while in Malaysia because of his violent outbursts. John, originally from Stourport in Worcestershire, underwent treatment to control his temper and his drinking before they reconciled.John, who was chief fire officer in Yeovil, Somerset, immediately before his retirement, had returned from a visit to his family in England shortly before his death.On the day of the murder, the couple went for sunset drinks together on Centai Beach, a popular area for expatriates to meet and drink out of sight of their teetotal local neighbours on the predominantly Muslim island.A close friend of the couple, who asked not to be named, said: 'Sam went home after a while because she wasn't feeling well and John told her he would be home by 9pm.'He ended up in another bar drinking with a friend. She kept trying to contact him through a friend to tell him to come home he doesn't carry a mobile phone. John didn't go home until after midnight. I just wish I 'd been there to tell him it was time to go home.'A fierce row broke out when John returned home which Samantha claims escalated when John kicked her in the stomach and punched her in the face.A police source said: 'She went into the kitchen and took out a kitchen knife to hold him at bay but he reacted by goading her and pointing to his chest and saying 'Go on then, stab me'.'Samantha tells police she then went into the bedroom holding the knife and stabbed her husband once in the chest when he came after her and lunched towards her as she backed up against a wardrobe.She then ran to her neighbours for help and returned with the wife, a middle-aged British expatriate, who witnessed John's dying words as he lay on the villa floor. Looking ashen-faced and upset, the neighbour declined to comment when approached by Mail Online.Samantha's sister has flown from the UK to visit her in the Langkawi police cells where she is being held, say police. A British embassy official from Kuala Lumpur has also visited.Supt Iqbal said the police investigation was now complete and Samantha was expected to appear in court on the island early next week to be charged with murder.'Samantha has given us good cooperation with our investigation,' he said. 'She said they had a quarrel and then there was a fight and she accidentally stabbed her husband. She has confessed.'Another expatriate friend of the couple, who also asked not to be named, said: 'John and Sam had had had problems in the past and separated for a while and that John went into rehab to get himself sorted out.'But we thought they'd put all of that behind them. They were absolutely devoted to each other and John even had her name tattooed on the inside of his arm.'Everyone is just trying to get their heads around what has happened. They were the nicest people you could meet. But who knows what goes on behind closed doors?'One of the couple's near neighbours, taxi driver Mohammed Kamal, 26, said: 'John was a very good guy and always had time for people. Everyone around here liked him. We are all very shocked at what has happened.'We saw the ambulance arriving at 2.30 am in the morning and we heard John was ill. After five or 10 minutes it left already because John was already dead. Then police arrived at the scene.'Another neighbour, 70-year-old Talib, said John and Samantha had been the first westerners to build a home in their village. Since then, two more British families had built homes on adjoining plots.'When he first came here he shared our power supply and he was around here all the time,' said Talib. 'He was a good man and always very friendly.'In a tribute to John in his hometown newspaper, relatives said: 'John was a loving family man who thought the world of them. He moved to Malaysia after retiring but often returned to see his family.'He even came back earlier this year to complete the Three Peaks Challenge, climbing Ben Nevis, Snowdon and Scafell, with his daughter. He spent his whole working life with the fire service and he will be greatly missed.'Although murder currently carries the death penalty in Malaysia, the government has announced it is preparing to change the law to abolish capital punishment. More than 1,200 people are currently on death row in the country. Saudi Arabia's King could have his Crown Prince son replaced to restore the credibility of the monarchy amid turmoil over the Jamal Khashoggi murder, Britain's former defence attache to the kingdom has claimed.Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman has faced claims he may have been behind the death of the journalist who went missing after entering the Saudi consulate in Istanbul.Saudi Arabia first denied any role in Khashoggi's disappearance before blaming his October 2 death on a botched attempt to return him to the kingdom.On Thursday, J amal Khashoggi's eldest son left Saudi Arabia for Washington DC with his family after a travel ban intended to lure the journalist home was lifted.It came as Saudi prosecutors said the murder was planned and suspects were being interrogated.According to Colonel Brian Lees, once the UK's defence attache to Saudi Arabia and Yemen, the Crown Prince's days as de facto ruler are numbered and his father, King Salman, may now look to replace him following his disastrous handling of the case.Colonel Lees, author of A Handbook of the Al Sa'ud Ruling Family of Saudi Arabia , told Rudaw: 'The Saudis will never admit that MbS (Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman) was culpable but this does not mean that he is in the clear. I believe that the king assuming he is in one of his "clear" periods will get rid of MbS by replacing him.'He cannot do so immediately, or even in the next few months, because that would look like bowing to foreign pressure. He may use the already established device of using the special advisory council within the family to appoint a successor. This would certainly restore the credibility of the monarchy.'Yesterday US President Donald Trump, in his toughest comments on the case yet, said the Crown Prince bore ultimate responsibility for the operation that led to the journalist's killing, piling pressure on his ally.Critics suspect the royal ordered the high-profile operation or at least knew about it.But at an investment forum in Riyadh yesterday the defiant 33-year-old declared the murder a 'heinous crime that cannot be justified' and said Saudi Arabia was cooperating 'to bring the perpetrators to justice'.It come days after it emerged that King Salman is now personally intervening in the Khashoggi case amid claims he had been kept in the dark about the crisis by his powerful son's aides.The 82-year-old monarch has delegated vast powers to his son, essentially handing him the day-to-day running of the kingdom.Salah bin Jamal Khashoggi, a dual US-Saudi citizen, had his passport blocked last year because officials wanted to lure his dissident father home, it was reported.Today his travel ban was lifted and he flew to Washington DC with his family, Human Rights Watch was told by a friend.'Salah and his family are on a plane to DC now,' said Sarah Leah Whitson, the group's executive director for the Middle East and North Africa.There was no immediate comment from Saudi officials but Ms Whitson said the family were apparently allowed to leave after a travel ban on Salah was lifted.But his 33-year-old heir is facing a battle to contain the fallout from the disappearance of Khashoggi amid claims the journalist was tortured, murdered and cut up after entering the Saudi consulate.Such a development would prove hugely embarrassing for the young Crown Prince, who has implemented a series of high-profile social and economic reforms since being handed increasing authority to run Saudi Arabia.Since he acceded to the throne in January 2015, the king has given MbS, his favourite son, increasing authority to run Saudi Arabia. But the king's intervention reflects growing disquiet among some members of the royal court about MbS's fitness to govern, five sources told Reuters last week.MbS has implemented a series of high-profile reforms since his father's accession, including ending a ban on women driving and opening cinemas in the conservative kingdom.But he has also marginalized senior members of the royal family and consolidated control over Saudi's security and intelligence agencies.His reforms have been accompanied by a crackdown on dissent, a purge of top royals and businessmen on corruption charges, and a costly war in Yemen.Khashoggi's disappearance has further tarnished the crown prince's reputation, deepening questions among Western allies and some Saudis about his leadership.'Even if he is his favourite son, the king needs to have a comprehensive view for his survival and the survival of the royal family,' a Saudi source with links to the royal court told Reuters. 'In the end it will snowball on all of them.'Read more: Saudis will never admit MbS was culpable but hes still finish Tamil Nadu: Power station keeps residents in fear by R LENIN October 26,2018 | Source: Deccan Chronicle Enough studies and inspections have been done, but there is no lasting solution for villagers living in the vicinity of the North Chennai Thermal Power Station, as it emits toxic coal fly, fly ash and effluents. The approaching northeast monsoon has instilled a sense of fear among residents, who say that all water bodies located near the plant have been polluted. Worse still, residents also lamented that the plants have destroyed the groundwater table and they are getting drinking water by spending money. Moreover, since the place where such plants are located stinks, they find it difficult to reside in the village, Residents living in Kattupakkam, Athipattu, Ernavur and Mugathwara Kuppam villages pointed their fingers at government for not formulating a mechanism to let out effluents safely. Large quantities of fly ash have silted the water bodies, as officials failed to transport fly ash for discharging it. The situation has not spared fishermen too, as fishing activities have been affected. S. Bharathi, president of the South India Fishermen Association said, There is a guideline which states that coal fly should not be disposed off on barren land and water-bodies. Even though the plant administration has a separate place for disposing such coal ash in large quantities, the place is not maintained well. Effluents are mixing in the Ennore creek and fish are dying near the plant, he noted.Villagers said that the plants are posing a big threat to their livelihood. K. Manikandan, a resident of Athipattu recounted, All the villages surrounding the plants decades ago were neat and clean. The water quality was good and there was no contamination. We breathed fresh air. Things gradually reversed after these plants commenced. Despite repeated complaints, government did not pay attention, he added. Another resident said, We are living in fear. No official has visited us. Many come to this place in the name of inspection and collect water samples. They ask our grievances but there is no solution. Environmentalists are also raising their voices. There should be a comprehensive study and local people should be involved in this. Fly ash and other kind of effluents affect the ground water table. Thermal power plants are important for power supply, but they should not affect the livelihood of people living nearby, said a city-based environmentalist. When contacted, an official of the environmental department said that they were closely monitoring the plants. There is no need for panic and plants are regularly checked to know lapses. We are also visiting local people. We will apply corrective measures to dispose coal fly properly and guidelines will properly be followed, the official said, adding that they would soon conduct a public hearing. NEW YORK, Oct. 26, 2018 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Pomerantz LLP announces that a class action lawsuit has been filed against Pretium Resources, Inc. (Pretium or the Company) (NYSE: PVG) and certain of its officers. The class action, filed in United States District Court, Southern District of New York, and index under 18-cv-09624, is on behalf of a class consisting of all persons and entities, other than Defendants and their affiliates, who purchased or otherwise acquired shares of Pretium securities between July 21, 2016, and September 6, 2018, inclusive (the Class Period), seeking to recover damages caused by Defendants violations of the federal securities laws and to pursue remedies under Sections 10(b) and 20(a) of the Securities Exchange Act of 1934 (the Exchange Act) and Rule 10b-5 promulgated thereunder, against the Company and certain of its top officials. If you are a shareholder who purchased Pretium securities between July 21, 2016, and September 6, 2018, both dates inclusive, you have until November 6, 2018, to ask the Court to appoint you as Lead Plaintiff for the class. A copy of the Complaint can be obtained at www.pomerantzlaw.com. To discuss this action, contact Robert S. Willoughby at rswilloughby@pomlaw.com or 888.476.6529 (or 888.4-POMLAW), toll-free, Ext. 9980. Those who inquire by e-mail are encouraged to include their mailing address, telephone number, and the number of shares purchased. [Click here to join this class action] Pretium acquires, explores, and develops precious metal resource properties in the Americas. The Brucejack Project, or Brucejack Mine, is a mine located in northwestern British Columbia and is comprised of 4 mining leases and 6 mineral claims currently totaling 3,304 hectares in area. The Valley of the Kings zone is the heart of the Brucejack Project. This is the only material mineral project that Pretium is required to report under Canadian reporting regulations governing mineral properties. Accordingly, the Brucejack Project is essential to Pretiums business and to the public market valuation of the business. Throughout the Class Period, Defendants made materially false and misleading statements regarding the Companys business, operational and compliance policies. Specifically, Defendants made false and/or misleading statements and/or failed to disclose that: (i) that the Brucejack Project is not a high-grade, high-output mine; and (ii) that, as a result of the foregoing, Defendants positive statements about the Companys business, operations, and prospects were materially false and/or misleading and/or lacked a reasonable basis. On January 23, 2018, the Company disclosed lower gold production for the Brucejack Mine than previously projected, and also delayed achievement of steady-state gold production and operation of the grade control program. On this news, the Companys share price fell $2.86 per share, or over 26%, to close at $7.93 per share on January 23, 2018. On September 6, 2018, Viceroy Research published a report entitled Pretium Resources digging up dirt, alleging, among other things, that the Companys reported grades and reserves are significantly inflated, a much greater amount of waste is being dumped into local lakes, and more explosives are being utilized. The report further alleged that management is scrambling to find consistent, high-grade ore to maintain the charade that its debt and equity are viable. On this news, the Companys share price fell $0.77 per share, or approximately 10%, to close at $6.94 per share on September 6, 2018. The Pomerantz Firm, with offices in New York, Chicago, Los Angeles, and Paris, is acknowledged as one of the premier firms in the areas of corporate, securities, and antitrust class litigation. Founded by the late Abraham L. Pomerantz, known as the dean of the class action bar, the Pomerantz Firm pioneered the field of securities class actions. Today, more than 80 years later, the Pomerantz Firm continues in the tradition he established, fighting for the rights of the victims of securities fraud, breaches of fiduciary duty, and corporate misconduct. The Firm has recovered numerous multimillion-dollar damages awards on behalf of class members. See www.pomerantzlaw.com CONTACT: Robert S. Willoughby Pomerantz LLP rswilloughby@pomlaw.com 888-476-6529 ext. 9980 Bangladesh: WB approves 240 mln USD for Bangladesh marine fisheries project The Bangladeshi government Thursday signed a 240 million U.S. dollars financing agreement with the World Bank to help improve management and production in marine and coastal fisheries and aquaculture. The Sustainable Coastal and Marine Fisheries Project will help improve fisheries management systems, infrastructure, value chain investments, and encourage private sector investment to increase the availability and quality of sea fish, said the Washington-based lender. Kazi Shofiqul Azam, senior secretary of Economic Relations Division of Bangladesh, and Qimiao Fan, World Bank country director for Bangladesh, Bhutan and Nepal, signed the agreement on behalf of their respective sides in Dhaka. According to the bank, it will also support reforms in fisheries policies and regulations. "In the last decade, the fisheries sector accounted for around four percent of Bangladesh's economy and is the country's second largest export earning sector after garments," said Qimiao Fan, World Bank Country Director for Bangladesh, Bhutan and Nepal. "World Bank financing will aim to expand coastal and marine fisheries with the goal of further increasing the fisheries sector's contribution to the economy," he said. In 16 coastal districts, World Bank said the project will set up community co-management associations with fishing communities, enabling them to adopt supplementary and alternative livelihoods. While empowering fishing communities, especially women through skills development and nutrition awareness, the project will also establish 100 model fishing villages, it said. "For Bangladesh, the fisheries sector is a major driver for growth. The marine and coastal fisheries have significant potential for sustainable and higher production," said Azam. "The project will directly contribute to Bangladesh's Blue Economy initiatives." Manipur: CM launches 'Loktak Livelihood Mission' around 1000 hectares area identified for pisciculture To protect the largest Freshwater Lake of the NorthEast India and to provide employment opportunities to fish farmers and youths of the State, Chief Minister Shri N.Biren Singh today launched the Loktak Livelihood Mission. The launching function was held at Ningthoukhong, Bishnupur District today. Speaking as Chief Guest of the function, Chief Minister said that our State is spending of about Rs 400 crores annually for the procurement of fish from outside the State, Chief Minister assured that State would have self sufficient fish production by 2020 . Farmers would be encouraged to take up pisciculture, he added. Altogether around 1000 hectares of land have been identified in areas like Mayang Imphal, Bishnupur, Wangoi and Thanga for fish farming, he added. With such cage culture farming, fishes would be matured and can be produced in three months, he added. Chief Minister spoke elaborately on the harmful effects of fertilizers and other chemicals on human health. He mentioned that prolonged usage of such chemicals and fertilizers are the main cause of various deadly diseases among the people of the State. Mentioning the advantages of organic fertilizers and vermicompost during farming, Chief Minister said that it will benefit in two ways i.e.cost effective and healthy living. He said that Self Help groups would be formed in villages to prepare vermicompost and other organic fertilizers. Chief Minister said that people of the State want a government that is result oriented and the present government is committed to fulfil the aspirations of the people and wouldn't give any false promises. The government is committed to work at grassroots and uplift the lives of the poor people. The government has introduced various welfare programmes such as CHMT, CMST, and Start-up Policy etc. Encouraging the farmers and unemployed people of the State to apply Manipur Start-up Policy, Chief Minister said that subsidized loans have been given to hundreds of unemployed youths, entrepreneurs recently. He mentioned that he had sacrificed the rest of his life for the welfare of the people of the State. While delivering his Presidential address, Minister for CAF&PD Shri Karam Shyam said that it is the bounden duty of the people of the State to protect and preserve Loktak Lake. Stressing on the Loktak Livelihood Mission, Minister said that the farmers and unemployed youths should seize the opportunity. Mentioning various initiatives of the government, Minister said that the Cabinet decision to institute Lok Ayukta in the State is a clear stand of the present government to bring transparency in governance and root out corruption. Minister for Agriculture Shri V.Hangkhanlian, Minister for PHED Shri Losii Dikho, Chairman Manipur Pollution Control Board Shri L.Radhakishore, Chairman PDA Shri T.Robindro, Deputy Speaker Shri K.Robindro, Chip Whip, Government of Manipur Shri P.Sharatchandra, MLA Sekmai AC Shri H.Dingo, MLA Yaiskul AC Shri Th.Satyabrata, Former Union Minister Shri Th.Chaoba, Addl. Chief Secretary Dr.Suhel Akhtar, DC and SP Bishnupur and others attended the function. Myanmar: EU green lights aquaculture imports from Myanmar October 26,2018 | Source: The Fish Site Its a great accomplishment for the EU projects/people that have been working hard for the past years to make this happen, said Jonah van Beijnen, an aquaculture expert closely involved with EU projects in Myanmar. Its a big step forward for Myanmar and its people as this creates the opportunity to export their aquaculture produce to the single biggest global seafood market, he added. In 2017, the country produced a total of 1,048 million tonnes of seafood from 240,000 hectares of ponds, mainly stocked with native carp species and tilapia for domestic consumption and export to other countries in the region. However, the country's shrimp producers have been looking to access the EU market for some time, but had previously not been allowed due to the earlier lack of food-safety regulations and control systems. The decision was made by the Commission Implementing Decision (EU) and amends Annexes I and II to Decision 2006/766/EC as regards the import of bivalve molluscs and fishery products from Peru and Myanmar for human consumption. Singapore has executed six men convicted of drug offences in October, despite pleas from Amnesty International and Malaysia, which recently pledged to abolish the death penalty altogether. Prabu N Pathmanathan, a 31-year-old from Malaysian who had been on death row since 2014, was hanged at Changi prison on Friday morning. A second man, reported to be Singaporean Irwan bin Ali, was executed alongside Mr Pathmanathan, following the "secret" hanging of Selamat bin Paki, according to the International Federation for Human Rights. They were among six men executed in October, all on drug offences. N Surendran, the lawyer for Mr Pathmanathan's family, told the ABC that Singapore authorities had unlawfully refused to consider a petition for clemency. According to local media, the office of Singapore President Halimah Yacob had delivered a letter to Prabu's family in response to their petition, saying it was "unable to accede to [their] request". Mr Surendran said his client "felt he had become a new man after the experience of being in prison" and had become "very spiritual". "He wanted to live. He wanted to have another chance," he said. Mr Surendran added that Singapore appeared to be shortening the notice given to prisoners "so they can execute with the minimum of fuss". "It's extremely unfair and prejudicial to the prisoner and his family to give him practically less than a week notice of execution," he said. Calls to abolish the death penalty The case has fuelled a fresh push against the wealthy state's use of the death penalty. Rachel Chhoa-Howard, Amnesty International's Singapore Researcher, said the death penalty contravened international law. "It is time for Singapore to re-establish its moratorium on the death penalty and follow the Government of Malaysia's example, who have suspended all executions and announced plans to abolish the use of this cruel punishment for all crimes," she said. "This cruel and irreversible punishment has no place in any society, as more than two-thirds of the world's countries have come to recognise." Malaysia surprised many by abolishing the death penalty, making the announcement on October 10 the World Day Against the Death Penalty. It is expected to come into effect by the end of the year. Drug offences accounted for the largest number of executions in Malaysia, which previously mandated capital punishment for crimes ranging from murder and kidnapping to drug offences and treason. Amnesty International reported in March that 799 people on death row were convicted of drug trafficking, including 416 foreign nationals. Singapore's Ministry of Home Affairs, which runs both the Singapore Central Narcotics Bureau and the Singapore Prison Service, could not be immediately reached for comment. Malaysian drug courier dies on Singapore gallows, family's lawyer confirms Malaysian Prabu Pathmanathan, 31, was executed at dawn in Singapore's Changi Prison today, lawyer N. Surendran said in a statement. Surendran who represents Prabu's family also confirmed that they have collected his body for cremation later today, but called the hanging by Singapore a lawless act that disregarded the due process. "The execution was an unlawful, and brutal act, carried out in breach of due process and in defiance of the appeals made by neighbouring Malaysia," he said. Prabu was convicted of smuggling 227.82 grams of diamorphine from Malaysia into Singapore in 2014. Surendran who is also adviser for civil group Lawyers for Liberty claimed the Singapore authorities gave less than a week's notice on Prabus execution to his family even as they and the Malaysian government sought to commute his death sentence. He said the Singapore President's Office also rejected petitions for clemency and gave its reply to the family late last night, then questioned the entire manoeuvre which he called "underhanded". "It is a flagrant breach of due process for the Singapore President to reject the family's clemency petition without even considering it. It was thus a lawless act. "Prabu's parents and siblings are devastated by the execution of their son and brother," the lawyer said. Surendran conveyed the family's gratitude to the Malaysian government and other anti-death penalty advocates in the country and outside for their support. Groups like Lawyers for Liberty, Amnesty International, We Believe in Second Chances and Singapore Anti-Death Penalty Campaign were among those who voiced their opposition to Prabu's hanging. Malaysia has equally strict laws as Singapore with regards to drug trafficking but the Pakatan Harapan government recently announced that it would abolish the mandatory death penalty as part of its promised legal reforms after taking power in the May elections. De facto law minister Datuk Liew Vui Keong told reporters Wednesday that he would issue a letter to the Singapore government asking that Prabu be given a 2nd chance. | Report an error, an omission, a typo; suggest a story or a new angle to an existing story; submit a piece, a comment; recommend a resource; contact the webmaster, contact us: deathpenaltynews@gmail.com Opposed to Capital Punishment? Help us keep this blog up and running! DONATE! "One is absolutely sickened, not by the crimes that the wicked have committed, but by the punishments that the good have inflicted." -- Oscar Wilde Hyderabad: Telangana Pradesh Congress Committee president N. Uttam Kumar Reddy has accused two IPS officers uncles of taking the side of caretaker minister K.T. Rama Rao and harassing Opposition leaders. Mr Rama Rao came back with a strong reply. Mr Uttam Kumar Reddy in a post on his twitter handle alleged that the DIG Intelligence Prabhakar Rao was tapping the phones of Opposition leaders and alleged that Task Force officer Radhakrishna Rao had directed his team to harass the Opposition leaders. He urged the Election Commission to take action against the police officers. @KTRTRSs uncle DIG Prabhakar Rao & his cronies are snooping illegally on all opposition leaders including me during this election campaign. They are brazenly violating all known election norms for free & fair polls. I urge @ElectionComm to take serious cognisance of this matter (sic), Mr Reddy tweeted. In another tweet he said, Another @KTRTRSs uncle Radhakrishna Rao has tasked his taskforce to specifically search (& harass) cars of opposition leaders only. All these illegal & partisan acts by KTRs uncles now, will be dealt with very severely by the next @INCTelangana led government. #UnclesofKTR (sic)". Responding to the charges, Mr Rama Rao posted, Stop being downright crass & cheap @UttamTPCC. Are you insinuating that everyone who belongs to a community is related & biased? I understand your anxiety about cars being searched (as in 2014 when you were caught with 3Cr cash stash), atleast uphold dignity of the post you hold (sic)." He said, For your information @UttamTPCC Garu @TelanganaPolice headed by @TelanganaDGP Mahendar Reddy Garu has been consistently rated as the best & a role model to the country in maintaining law & order. Lets not unnecessarily politicise & demoralise hardworking Telangana officers (sic). f there is heavy traffic flow, diversions will be implemented accordingly, the traffic official said. (Representional Image) Hyderabad: One hundred traffic cops have been pulled out from the city jurisdiction duty for the BJP meeting at Parade Grounds. A total of 100 traffic cops will be deployed to control the heavy traffic flow in view of the Yuva Morcha meeting at Parade Grounds. If there is heavy traffic flow, diversions will be implemented accordingly, the traffic official said. Bharatiya Janata Yuva Morcha (BJYM) youth wing of the Bharatiya Janata Party will be organising Maha Adhiveshan, a three-day national convention in Hyderabad from October 26 to 28 at Parade grounds Secunderabad. According to the organisers they are expecting as many as 72,000 delegates and on the last day, they are expecting a crowd of over 1,00,000 BJP supporters. BJP-ruled Chief Ministers and Cabinet Ministers will be also attending the event. N. Rahul, a regular commuter from Tarnaka to Hi tec City, mentioned, Just because its a national party political event hundreds of cops are deployed there. Then what happens to security in the rest of the city? How will traffic jams in those areas be controlled? Following diversions will be implemented. Vehicles coming from YMCA towards Begumpet will be diverted at YMCA Junction through Patny Junction and move towards Begumpet. Vehicles coming from Begumpet will be diverted from CTO Junction will take left towards Rajiv Gandhi statue, Brooke Bond Trivoli, Sweekar Upkar and join at YMCA junction. Speaking to this newspaper, P. Venkat Ramana ACP said, If there is heavy traffic inflow the vehicles will be diverted from CTO junction. to YMCA circle otherwise. BJP state president K. Laxman said, The convention will be inaugurated by Union Home Minister Rajnath Singh. BJP president Amit Shah is also expected to attend the convention along with several other national leaders from the party. Around two lakh people are expected to take part in a three-day long programme. BJYM national president Poonam Mahajan will preside the event. Dyson said on Tuesday the decision was based on supply chains, access to markets and the availability of expertise, which offset the cost factor. When James Dyson, the billionaire British inventor of the bagless vacuum cleaner, unveiled a plan to build an electric car plant in Singapore, it raised a few eyebrows. Not only does the land-starved city-state have some of the highest average salaries in the world, but it has been nearly 40 years since Ford closed its factory in Singapore, effectively ending car production on the Southeast Asian island. It is a bit of a surprise because of the cost base and no other car manufacturing plant being here, said Shantanu Majumdar, a regional director at consultancy JD Power. Dyson said on Tuesday the decision was based on supply chains, access to markets and the availability of expertise, which offset the cost factor. But what other factors could have influenced the decision? Why not head straight to the biggest electric vehicle market in the world, China, like rival Tesla? Heres a look at some of the less obvious pros and cons: 1. High Costs vs Generous Incentives Compared with other global cities, Singapore has some of the highest average salaries in the world after tax, according to studies by Deutsche Bank. Land available for industrial use is scarce and expensive, and it ranks highly in general cost-of-living indexes. But aside from its skilled engineers and scientists, for a high-tech firm like Dyson, Singapore offers generous incentive schemes. Some schemes include tax breaks for five years, which can be extended, and grants that can cover up to 30 per cent of the cost of projects to improve business efficiency. Singapore declined to comment on whether Dyson benefited from any such schemes. To shore up productivity in its manufacturing sector, which makes up less than a quarter of its output, Singapore has focused efforts on attracting high-end manufacturers and those who adopt automated production processes. 2. Small Market vs China Gateway Dyson may have decided to make electric cars in Singapore, but few are likely to be driven here or anywhere in Southeast Asia for that matter. The number of privately owned electric vehicles in Singapore is in single digits, and Tesla CEO Elon Musk has criticised Singapore for not being supportive of electric vehicles. Singapore is one of the worlds most expensive places to own a car because the government strictly controls the vehicle population by charging owners a variable rate for the right to own and use a vehicle for a limited number of years. In the broader Southeast Asia, only 142 electric vehicles are forecast to be sold this year, data from consultant LMC Automotive shows. By contrast, sales in China are forecast to almost reaching 700,000 vehicles this year, more than double the combined sales from the United States and Europe. But with one of the worlds busiest ports on its doorstep, Dyson can roll a car off the production line in Singapore and within the hour it can be on its way to China or other sizable electric vehicle markets like South Korea or Japan. Dyson products - which also include bladeless fans, air purifiers and hair dryers - are becoming a premium brand in China and other Asian markets. Asia accounted for more than 70 per cent of its growth last year, the firm said. 3. Familiarity vs New Frontier Dysons history with Singapore probably also played a role. It already employs 1,100 people in Singapore, making 21 million digital electric motors a year. It also has manufacturing hubs in Malaysia - connected to Singapore via two road bridges - and the Philippines. This is obviously a surprise but since Singapore is at the heart of Southeast Asia, Dyson would be best placed to source many components from neighbouring countries and, locally, assemble and manufacture the high-tech car here, said a corporate banker who deals with multinational firms in the region. Another option for Dyson could have been to follow rival Tesla to the biggest market, China. By the time Dysons first car is ready in 2021, Tesla may already be selling locally produced cars in China after it signed a deal with the Shanghai government for an 860,000 square meter plot of land to build its first overseas Gigafactory. But China is becoming a crowded market for making electric vehicles and the government is reining in subsidies. Meanwhile, Singapore does have an extensive free trade agreement with China, which lists various car types and car parts in its tariff-reduction schedule. Singapores Ministry of Trade and Industry said electric vehicles were covered under this arrangement with China. JD Powers Majumdar said intellectual property would be another consideration for Dyson. Intellectual protections are very strong in Singapore... It is definitely an advantage. When you are in China...you may not be so comfortable on that part. 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. Islamabad: Mumbai attack mastermind Hafiz Saeed-led Jam-aat-ud-Dawa (JuD) and Falah-i-Insaniyat Foundation (FIF) are no longer on the list of banned outfits in Pakistan as the ordinance that proscribed them under a UN resolution has lapsed and the new Imran Khan-led government did not extend it, a media report said on Friday. In February this year, former president Mam-noon Hussain promulgated an ordinance amending the Anti-Terrorism Act, 1997 to declare JuD and FIF as proscribed groups. During a hearing on Thursday of a petition filed by Saeed, his counsel informed the Islamabad High Court (IHC) that the presidential ordinance had lapsed and it had ne-ver been extended, Dawn newspaper reported. The petitioner had challenged the ordinance under which his organisations had been banned for being on the watch list of the UN Security Council. Saeed contended in the petition that he established JuD in 2002 and cut off all ties with the banned Lashkar-i-Tayyaba (LeT), but India continued to malign the JuD for its past association with LeT, the report said. The petitioner said he was kept in detention in 2009 and 2017 due to Indias pressure. He said that the UN Security Council had passed a resolution against the JuD after which the government of Pakistan put it on the watch list, it said. India has been pushing Pakistan to bring to justice the planners of the November 2008 Mumbai terror attacks. Saeed is the co-founder of the LeT, which was responsible for the deadly attack in which 166 people were killed. Saeeds counsel Raja Rizwan Abbasi and Sohail Warraich appeared before Justice Aamer Farooq of the IHC. On a query, Saeeds counsel informed the court that the current government did not extend the ordinance or table it in parliament to convert it into an act. Deputy AG Raja Khalid Mehmood Khan confirmed the ordinance lap-sed. He, however, declined the request of advocate Abbasi for giving a statement on behalf of interior ministry about the lapse of the ordinance. PTI Khan told the court that since the petitioner did not cite the interior ministry as a respondent, he could not give a statement unless the petition was amended and the interior secretary added as a party in the petition. Justice Farooq held that the petition became infructuous since the ordinance challenged by the petitioner has lapsed. The judge disposed of the petition with an observation that in case the government renewed this ordinance, the petitioner was at liberty to file another petition against the promulgation of the law. The petitioner claimed that the promulgation of the ordinance was not only prejudicial to the sovereignty but also contradictory to the fundamental rights enshrined in the Constitution. He said that any law which was violative of constitutional provisions was liable to be struck down. According to a list updated on September 5 on the National Counter Terrorism Authority's website, 66 organisations have been banned in the Pakistan and the JuD and FIF are not among them. San Jose, Calif., Oct. 26, 2018 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Bay Area high school students are organizing a summit for fellow teens to address the effects of climate change. The Tech for Global Good Youth Climate Action Summit will bring hundreds of high schools students together at The Tech Museum of Innovation in San Jose Nov. 10 to learn about climate change and discuss what their generation can do. The summit comes on the heels of a U.N. climate report warning the world will suffer tremendous consequences of rising global temperatures as early as 2040. Climate change is a cornerstone issue of my generation. Problems like deforestation, ocean acidification and species extinction are happening at an alarming rate. Were going to inherit this planet in a state of total crisis, said Haris Hosseini, Tech for Global Good Student Board president. We want to understand the issues and how we can play a role in saving our future. Students will talk to scientists documenting dramatic changes around the world. National Geographic Explorer in Residence Bob Ballard, known for discovering the Titanics wreckage, will deliver the keynote remotely from his research vessel Nautilus. The summit will feature panels and activities with nine National Geographic Explorers, an engineering design challenge, an immersive VR experience with HTC Vive, a United Nations Climate Interactive negotiations simulation, rainforest-themed escape room and more. Sessions will explore how technologies like blockchain, apps and VR can make a difference We are inspired by the passion of students ready to solve one the biggest problem of our times. Their energy, creativity and persistence will lead to real solutions and inspire other generations to take action, said Rufaro Kangai Sibanda, The Tech for Global Good Vice President. The inaugural youth summit is organized by 12 students from eight different Bay Area high schools. Students plan to lead calls to action with EcoChallenge. San Jose Mayor Sam Liccardo will deliver closing keynote address. I look at my generation and I see an undeniable vitality a willingness to fight, a willingness to stand up for beliefs, a willingness to march. If were not ready now, were really close to being ready to take on the challenges of tomorrow, said Hosseini. The Youth Climate Action Summit is part of The Tech for Global Good program, a signature program of The Tech Museum of Innovation. The summit was made possible with support from National Geographic, the Applied Materials Foundation, and Intel. Youth Climate Action Summit Saturday, Nov. 10. 9 a.m. to 6 p.m. The Tech Museum of Innovation 201 S. Market St. San Jose, CA 95113 For more information or to sign up, visit: https://www.techclimatesummit.org/ About The Tech The Tech Museum of Innovation is a hands-on technology and science museum for people of all ages and backgrounds. The museum located in the Capital of Silicon Valley is a non-profit experiential learning resource established to engage people in exploring and experiencing applied technologies affecting their lives. The Techs mission is to inspire the innovator in everyone. thetech.org Attachments Artwork and wine benefit Oregons fish and wildlife Wednesday, October 17, 2018 SALEM, Ore Enjoy fish and wildlife art, wine and music at the Oregon Department of Fish and Wildlife Art Show and Duck Pond Cellars Conservation Cuvee Lot 6 wine release party. This free, family-friendly event is Saturday, Nov. 3 from 1 p.m. 4 p.m. at Duck Pond Cellars, 23145 Hwy 99W, Dundee. Artwork submitted by artists competing for ODFWs 2019 Habitat Conservation, Upland Game Bird, and Waterfowl Stamp contests will be displayed. ODFW will announce the winning entry from each contest which is then used to produce collector stamps and other promotional items with proceeds benefitting Oregons fish and wildlife. Visitors can vote on their favorite artwork for the Peoples Choice Award, enjoy live music by Bri Cauz, and sample complimentary tastings of Conservation Cuvee. Duck Pond Cellars winemaker, Trevor Chlanda will release Conservation Cuvee Lot 6 labeled with the 2018 contests winning artwork of Pygmy Rabbit by Kip Richmond of North Carolina. Please dress warmly as the event will be held in the winerys production cellar. ODFW stamp art information: Habitat Conservation Stamp This stamp and art prints feature fish, wildlife, plants and invertebrates identified in the Oregon Conservation Strategy as species of greatest conservation need such as the Kit Fox, Western Painted Turtle, Chinook Salmon and many others. Revenue helps restore habitats essential to declining or at-risk species native to Oregon. Purchase a Habitat Conservation Stamp or art print. Waterfowl Stamp This year, artists were asked to feature Lesser Scaup, Red-breasted Merganser, American Green-winged Teal, or Greater White-fronted Goose in their natural habitat. Sales of this stamp fund waterfowl management projects such as population surveys, banding, and wetland management and enhancement. For example, wetland rejuvenation and enhancement projects at Klamath and Fern Ridge Wildlife Areas got underway this year. These projects were funded in part by sales of the Waterfowl Stamp. Purchase a Waterfowl Stamp. Upland Game Bird Stamp Artists were asked this year to showcase Ruffed Grouse in its natural habitat. The sale of upland game bird stamps funds game bird research, surveys, habitat improvement and conservation projects. Stamp sales are also used to purchase birds for 11 youth upland hunts around the state, to promote game bird hunting opportunities, and to support the Upland Cooperative Access Program in the Columbia Basin. Purchase an Upland Game Bird stamp. Duck Pond Cellars conservation information: Conservation Cuvee Lot 6 is the sixth in a series of Duck Pond Cellars specialty wines that benefit Oregons wildlife. The winery crafts a limited edition wine and donates $5 for each bottle sold to ODFWs Conservation Program. To date, Duck Pond has donated $42,385 which is used to benefit species of greatest conservation need in Oregon. Check Duck Pond Cellars website for more information on their conservation efforts. Conservation Cuvee Lot 6 Pinot noir has rich fruit tones of black raspberry and dark cherries with subtle framing of new French oak. Its best to enjoy this wine over the next two to three years, Chlanda said. This special Pinot noir, made with fruit from Duck Ponds Coles Valley Vineyard in the Umpqua Valley, can be purchased at Duck Pond Cellars or through the winerys website. ### In Vietnam, buying and selling foreign currencies on the free market is against the law. Photo by Reuters The unofficial currency exchange market functions normally in Vietnam although a man was recently fined heavily for a $100 transaction. It was business as usual Wednesday with many gold sellers near the Ben Thanh Market in HCMCs District 1 offering currency exchange services. One gold shop, which was selling a dollar for VND23,490, and buying it for VND23,440, said better prices would be offered for large transactions. Police arrest two men and confiscate 35 kilograms of narcotics in Ha Tinh Province Thursday. Photo by VnExpress/Duc Hung Ha Tinh police caught two Vietnamese men Thursday as they were smuggling 32 kilos of methamphetamine and three kilos of heroin from Laos. The two men were traveling in a vehicle with a Laos license plate when the police stopped them. Tran Xuan Thanh, 30, and Vo Quoc Duong, 41, said theyd bought the drugs in Laos and were looking to sell them in Vietnam. Vietnam has some of the worlds toughest drug laws. The production or sale of 100 grams of heroin or 300 grams of other illegal narcotics is punishable by death. 200 photos, documents and other items reveal how the chemical sprayed years ago continues to kill, cripple Vietnamese. A photo of Ke Van Bac, who belongs to the second generation of Agent Orange victims in A Luoi District of Thua Thien-Hue Province, home to former imperial city Hue in central Vietnam. A compilation of police photos shows a pangolin and turtles among endangered animals seized from a man in Nghe An Province Thursday. Police in Nghe An Province in central Vietnam have arrested a man for allegedly smuggling in rare turtles and pangolins from Laos. Luong Van Keo, 32, was caught early Thursday with 24 turtles and five pangolins, one of which was dead. Authorities said the animals are endangered and could fetch VND200 million ($8,600) on the black market. The Foreign Ministry has denounced Taiwan's live-fire drill plan near the Spratly Archipelago as a serious violation of Vietnam's sovereignty. "We are closely following the situation and developments in the East Sea," Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Le Thi Thu Hang said Thursday, using the Vietnamese name for the waterway. She was responding to a question about Taiwans plan on holding a three-day live-fire drill around Ba Binh Island, internationally known as Itu Aba, beginning November 21. Chinese Premier Li Keqiang and Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe attend a welcoming ceremony outside the Great Hall of the People in Beijing, China, October 26, 2018. Photo by Reuters/Thomas Peter China and Japan on Friday pledged to forge closer ties as both countries stood together at an historic turning point. The countries have signed a broad range of agreements including a $30 billion currency swap pact, amid rising trade tensions with Washington. The pacts were reached on Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abes three-day visit to Beijing as the two neighbours looked to carve out new areas of cooperation and seek new ways to promote trust, which has been fragile at times since diplomatic relations resumed in 1972. Chinas foreign ministry on Thursday suggested the Trump administration to use a Huawei handset if it's worried about foreign eavesdropping. The riposte came after the New York Times reported that American intelligence reports indicated that Chinese and Russian spies often listen in on President Donald Trump when he uses his Apple cellphones to chat with old friends. Aides have repeatedly told him that his cellphone calls are not secure, but although the president has been persuaded to use his secure White House landline more often, he has refused to give up the phones, the Times said. A senior long-term loan of up to EUR 15 million will be provided to I&U Group, a vertically integrated agricultural holding engaged in crop farming and sugar production in Ukraine. The EBRD is promoting investments in innovative technology and best practices associated with the use of agricultural waste in Ukraine by providing sustainable energy financing in line with its strategy for the country. A senior long-term loan of up to EUR 15 million will be provided to I&U Group, a vertically integrated agricultural holding engaged in crop farming and sugar production in Ukraine. The funds will be used to finance the development, construction and operation of a 6 MW biogas plant located in Kirovohrad region of central Ukraine, the EBRD said. Read alsoEBRD approves new five-year strategy for Ukraine The financing package will consist of a EUR 13 million loan from the EBRD and a EUR 2 million concessional loan from the Clean Technology Fund (CTF) designed to support renewable energy and technology aimed at reducing carbon intensity. This will be the first project supported under the Ukraine Agribusiness Waste Residues Window, funded by the CTF. This will be the first facility in Ukraine to use an innovative biogas production technology, which will reduce energy consumption. The remaining residues of the biogas process will be used as bio-fertilisers, partially replacing the use of chemical fertilisers. The project will result in a total reduction of 24,000 tonnes of CO2emissions annually. The project will benefit from a US$534,800 incentive grant from the EBRD's Finance and Technology Transfer Centre for Climate Change (FINTECC) programme, funded by the Green Environment Facility and designed to transfer technology in the area of climate change mitigation and adaptation, as well as a EUR 22,150 grant from the European Union's Neighbourhood Investment Facility. A significant part of the legal due diligence cost will be covered by grant funding from the Japan-EBRD Cooperation Fund (JECF). The EBRD is the largest international financial investor in Ukraine. To date, the Bank has made a cumulative commitment of almost EUR 12.1 billion across some 400 projects since the start of its operations in the country in 1993. VANCOUVER, British Columbia, Oct. 26, 2018 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Allegiant Gold Ltd. (ALLEGIANT) (AUAU: TSX-V) (AUXXF: OTCQX) announces that further to its press release dated October 16, 2018, it has extinguished existing debt in the amount of $13,361 by issuing 32,368 common shares (the Settlement Shares) at a deemed price of $0.41 per Settlement Share to certain of its independent directors. The Settlement Shares were issued on October 24, 2018 and are subject to a four month hold period expiring on February 25, 2019. The issuance of the Settlement Shares has been approved by the TSX-V. ON BEHALF OF THE BOARD, Robert F. Giustra Chairman & CEO For more information contact: Investor Relations (604) 634-0970 or 1-888-818-1364 ir@allegiantgold.com Neither TSX Venture Exchange nor its Regulation Services Provider (as that term is defined in policies of the TSX Venture Exchange) accepts responsibility for the adequacy or accuracy of this release. EU Delegation comments on Ukraine's public administration reform Among ongoing reforms, the EU particularly supports the advanced setup of the recruitment and selection of the new civil servants within Reform Staff Posts mechanism. If you see a spelling error on our site, select it and press Ctrl+Enter Israel Conference: Celebrating EU-Israel Relations and their Future When: Thursday, December 6, 2018 09:00 - Thursday, December 6, 2018 12:30 Where: European Parliaments Buildings, Brussels, Room P1A002 The registration is closed because the deadline has closed. For more information lk@ecpm.info On the 6th of December 2018 ECPM is organizing together with the European Coallition for Israel (ECI) a conference at the European Parliament with the title Celebrating EU-Israel Relations and their Future. The event will be hosted by ECPM MEPs Bas Belder, Arne Gericke and Branislav Skripek. The first segment of the event will have the title: EU, Israel and European Jewry - the next fifteen years. It will be the 15th anniversary symposium of the ECI, an organization founded in 2003 to combat anti-Semitism in Europe and promote good relations between the European Union and Israel. We will examine: The current attitude in Europe towards the Jewish communities and the State of Israel How EU-Israel relations have evolved in the last fifteen years. The outlook of EU-Israel relations for the next 15 years Among the speakers will be: Leading EU-personalities Experts Jewish and Christian community leaders The second segment of the event will be titled: The future of Israel EU relations and from Horizon 2020 to Horizon Europe. It will focus on the possibilities of collaboration between Israel and the EU in the field of innovation as the Union is developing its new research and innovation programme: Horizon Europe. Invited speakers include: Representatives of the European Commission Members of the Knesset Representatives of the Israel Innovation Authority R epresentatives of the Mission of Israel to the EU and NATO Representatives of leading Israeli companies on the field of innovation This page will be updated continuously with more information. Confirmed speakers: Joshua S. Reinstein President, Israel Allies Foundation Director, Knesset Christian Allies Caucus Josh Reinstein has been the Director of the Knesset Christian Allies Caucus since its inception on January 5th 2004, and is also the President of the Israel Allies Foundation. Mr. Reinstein is the producer and founder of the hit TV show, Israel Now News. Israel Now News is a half an hour weekly news magazine that is broadcast to 35 million viewers in 191 countries around the world. He has recently launched a second TV show called Land of the Bible, which appears weekly on the Daystar network. Mr. Reinstein also owns and operates JSR International Marketing, an international marketing and public relations firm based in Israel. Josh Reinstein grew up in Dallas, Texas and Toronto, Canada. He is an honors graduate of the University of Western Ontario, where he earned a degree in Political Science. He served as a tank gunner in the elite 188 unit of the Israel Defense Forces Armored Corps. He currently lives in Jerusalem with his wife, Rebekah and four children. Mr. Reinstein was named as one of the 50 most influential Jews in the world by the Jerusalem Post. Shai Newman Co-Founder and Chief Technology Officer at Compedia. He is responsible for technology and innovation in the company. Shai initiated and managed Compedia's cooperation projects with Microsoft, Rare/Nintendo, News Corp, Intel, Samsung, Siemens and others. Shai has started programming at an early age and has a strong R&D background in development of advanced platforms, expert systems, AR technologies and training systems and was a senior programmer and large projects manager at the IAF prior to becoming the CTO of Compedia. Shai is the Author of 3 patents in the field of AR, VR and visual computing. Shai has led Compedia's participation in all of its European research projects and is now acting as Technological Director in LAW-TRAIN (Horizon 2020). He was also a member of the MY-WAY (http://www.mywaystartup.eu/ ) advisory board that promoted entrepreneurship for young adults in Europe. His educational multi-disciplinary background and degrees include: Mathematics, Marketing and management and computer science (with Distinctions). VANCOUVER, British Columbia, Oct. 26, 2018 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Squire Mining Ltd. (CSE:SQR; FRA:9SQ; OTCQB:SQRMF) (Squire or the Company). Squire is pleased to announce the appointments of two new Directors and the subsequent appointment of three accomplished executives to its leadership team. Given the recent successful milestones achieved by the Company, specifically related to progress with the development of Squires next generation ASIC chip and mining rigs for Bitcoin Cash (BCH), Bitcoin Core (BTC) and associated cryptocurrencies, the Board has undertaken to establish a market leading executive team to help evolve the Company from a research and development business to include an international sales and marketing group focused on launching our next generation Bitcoin mining rig to Squires exclusive distribution partner, CoinGeek.com. To undertake this next phase in corporate growth, both Taras Kulyk and Marco Strub have been appointed to the Board of Directors of the Company (the Board). Taras Kulyk has spent his career in venture capital, banking, and technology. Most recently, Mr. Kulyk led the CoinGeek Mining and Hardware team where he oversaw the development and growth of one of the largest crypto mining fleets globally. Before joining CoinGeek, Mr. Kulyk was part of Decentrals leadership team in Toronto, Canada. Prior to this, Mr. Kulyk spent three years in investment banking at CIBC World Markets and BMO Capital Markets in the resources sector, followed by two years with TD Securities with the Communications, Media and Technology team, where his coverage focus was on the Canadian tech and media sectors. He is a graduate of Osgoode Hall Law School at York University where he received a Juris Doctor with a focus in Banking, Corporate, Finance, and Securities Law, and earned his MBA, with distinction, with a specialization in Finance and Strategic Management from the Schulich School of Business. Marco Strub has over 25 years of experience as an entrepreneur and executive in the financial services and consulting sectors. Since March 2003, Mr. Strub has been the Principal and Chief Executive Officer of Sircon AG, a portfolio management company based in Zurich, Switzerland. Prior to this, Mr. Strub served as a Partner of Exulta AG from 1997 to 2003. He has been an Independent Director of numerous private and publicly listed companies, including Triumph Gold Corp and ZincX Resources Corp, listed on the TSX Venture Exchange. Mr. Strub received a Master of Arts degree from the University of St. Gallen, Switzerland in 1982. The foregoing appointments fill vacancies on the Board as David Rokoss and Garry Stock have each resigned as directors of the Company. In connection with such appointments, the Board has granted 200,000 options to Mr. Stock at an exercise price of CAD 0.4250, exercisable for a term of one year from the date of grant. The Board wishes to thank both Mr. Rokoss and Mr. Stock for their many contributions to the Company, and wishes them well for the future. Following the above appointments, the Company is pleased to announce that the new Board has appointed Mr. Kulyk as Chief Executive Officer of Squire. Mr. Kulyk will lead the Company as it aims to become an international leader in the development, production and sales of leading cryptocurrency mining technology. Simon Moore, Squires current CEO and Chairman has stepped down effective immediately to facilitate the transition. The Company sincerely appreciates the leadership and dedication Mr. Moore has provided, guiding the Company from its early conceptual stage to its current form. Joining Mr. Kulyk at the executive level will be Yevgeniy Meshcherekov, who has been appointed Chief Financial Officer (CFO) of the Company. Mr. Meshcherekov is a Chartered Professional Accountant with more than 15 years of management experience in industry and public practice. He has demonstrated financial and organizational leadership in the wealth management, blockchain technology and fintech sectors within operations spanning Canada, Europe and Asia. Prior to joining Squire, Mr. Meshcherekov was Director of Finance of the nChain Group, a global leading blockchain research and development company. Previous to that he was Director of Finance of nTrust Technology Solutions Corp., a regulated money transfer platform which evolved into a Bitcoin wallet and exchange. He started his career and gained extensive experience through a Canadian audit firm providing tax, reporting and accounting assurance services to private and publicly traded companies. Mr. Meshcherekov has board and committee level experience, having recently served a three year term on the board of a local not-for-profit organization. Mr. Meshcherekov replaces Rich Wheeless, the current CFO of Squire, who has resigned effective today. Additionally, the Company is pleased to announce that Angela Holowaychuk has been appointed as its Chief Operations Officer. Over the last 15 years, Mrs. Holowaychuk has found herself at the forefront of emerging technologies, holding senior management positions leading day to day operations, technical development teams and global expansion projects within the fintech, regtech and most recently, blockchain and Bitcoin exchange sectors. Her expertise is building global operations and service channels from the ground up and working closely with legal and regulatory advisers, executives and technology specialists. Mrs. Holowaychuk attended the British Columbia Institute of Technology for Operations and Supply Chain Management. Richard Underhill has also resigned as an executive officer of the Company. I am very excited to be joining the Company at this critical stage of growth, commented incoming CEO and Director Taras Kulyk. The team is very excited by the vast potential of our new technology. For further information contact: Taras Kulyk, CEO, Director Telephone: (647) 703-6456 The Canadian Securities Exchange accepts no responsibility for the adequacy or accuracy of this release. CAUTIONARY STATEMENT REGARDING FORWARD-LOOKING INFORMATION: This news release includes forward-looking information under applicable Canadian securities legislation. Forward-looking information and statements include, but are not limited to, statements regarding the Companys initial ASIC chip and mining rig for Bitcoin Cash (BCH), Bitcoin Core (BTC) and other associated cryptocurrencies and the timing for development and completion thereof. Forward-looking information is necessarily based upon a number of estimates and assumptions that, while considered reasonable, are subject to known and unknown risks, uncertainties, and other factors which may cause the actual results and future events to differ materially from those expressed or implied by such forward-looking information. Such factors include, but are not limited to: general business, economic, competitive, political and social uncertainties, uncertain and volatile equity and capital markets, lack of available capital, risks related to chip and rig design, development and manufacturing (including design flaws, software/programming errors, hardware/software integration issues, manufacturing delays, inability to source components on a timely basis or at all, etc.), technological change, obsolescence and the marketability of any chips or rigs developed by the Company. See also the Companys Form 2A Listing Statement dated July 31, 2018 (the Listing Statement) filed with the CSE and SEDAR for a more detailed discussion of risk factors facing the Company and its development and manufacture of ASIC chips and mining rigs. There are no assurances that the Company will successfully design and develop a commercially viable ASIC chip or mining rig or that such chip and rig will provide the estimated terahash to energy consumption ratio or improvement over currently available systems as contemplated. Actual results and future events could differ materially from those anticipated in such forward looking information. Accordingly, readers should not place undue reliance on forward-looking information. All forward looking information in this news release is made as of the date hereof and qualified by these cautionary statements and those in our continuous disclosure filings available on SEDAR at www.sedar.com including the Listing Statement. The Company disclaims any intention or obligation to update or revise such forward-looking information, whether as a result of new information, future events or otherwise, except as required by law. The Supreme Court has turned down the principal claims of state-owned Ukreximbank against PJSC Ukrtelecom, ruling to collect UAH 795,344 of fine and UAH 85,122 of interest (3% per annum) from the operator in favor of the bank. "The cassation claim of PJSC Ukreximbank is partially satisfied [the court rules] to collect UAH 795,344 of fine and UAH 85,122 of 3% per annum from PJSC Ukrtelecom in favor of PJSC Ukreximbank," the court said in its ruling posted in the unified register of court rulings. Thus, the Supreme Court upheld the rulings of the courts of lower instances, in particular, the ruling of the business court of Kyiv dated April 16, 2018 and the ruling of the Kyiv business court of appeals dated June 4, 2018. The Supreme Court explained its decision, in particular, by the impossibility of collecting from Ukrtelecom the value of the bonds of the company to which the ownership of these bonds was not transferred. "As you know, at present, a number of litigations are being held between LLC ESU and several banks regarding the debt obligations of ESU, the correct calculation of their size, and the order and terms of their repayment. At the same time, within the framework of these disputes, they tried to make claims not only to ESU as a borrower, but also to Ukrtelecom," Ukrtelecom Corporate Relations Director Mykhailo Shuranov told Interfax-Ukraine. He also said that Ukrtelecom considers these claims to be groundless. "The decision of the Supreme Court finally established this in relation to the claim of Ukreximbank. And the obligations (in the form of penalties and 3% per annum amounting to about UAH 880,000) established by this court decision in respect of Ukrtelecom will be fulfilled by the company in the due time," Shuranov said. The Russia Federation's key idea is to destabilize the situation in Ukraine, and this is a signal for the West that Moscow has got an opportunity to undermine the international security system, Julianne Smith who served as a Deputy National Security Advisor to the Vice President of the United States Joe Biden from 2012-2013 has announced. Speaking at the Warsaw Security Forum on October 25, Smith said that she thinks that the key idea is to destabilize the internal Ukrainian policy to show to the NATO, the United States, and the EU that Russians have got plenty of opportunities to undermine the system. She said that we need to send Russia a signal that this is a "red line" and we will not tolerate the annexation of the territory of sovereign nations. She said that she expects a more active stance of U.S. President Donald Trump's administration when it comes to providing arms to Ukraine. The expert added that the United States and Europe are being distracted by China, in particular. She believes this is a problem because while Ukraine is staying out of the focus of international attention, Russia is escalating its aggressive actions in Ukraine. She said she is interested to see when at long last Trump's administration makes the decision to start providing arms to Ukrainians. She said that Moscow is still trying to interfere with the domestic affairs of Ukraine. Smith said that, unfortunately, it is as clear as day that Russia is not interested in leaving Ukraine, and this does not meet the expectations of the international community in its campaign to isolate Russia and impose sanctions on it. The Board of the National Bank of Ukraine (NBU) plans to follow the recommendation of the Council of the NBU regarding the limitation of government-issued securities on its balance sheet, NBU Governor Yakiv Smolii has said. "As for the monetization of government domestic loan bonds, which are currently in the portfolios of state-owned enterprises and state-run banks, the NBU has already expressed its opinion and used the recommendations of the NBU Council on limiting government securities on the balance sheet of the National Bank," he said at a monetary briefing in Kyiv on Thursday. As reported, the NBU Council at a meeting on July 16 recommended the board to refrain from purchasing government securities. The council also instructed the board by October 1, 2018 to develop a methodology for calculating and establishing parameters for the upper limit of the volume of government securities in the NBU portfolio. Head of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church of the Kyiv Patriarchate, Patriarch Filaret (Denysenko) can not name the date for the Unification Council of the Orthodox Churches in Ukraine, since this depends on the Ecumenical Patriarch. "I can not name the date of the convocation of the council for it depends on the Ecumenical Patriarch," he said at a briefing in Kyiv on Friday. Belarus and Ukraine may increase mutual commodity turnover to $5 billion in 2018, Belarusian Deputy Prime Minister Igor Lyashenko said. "Positive dynamics of trade and economic relations between our countries was observed in the past few years. We have managed to stop the fall that was in 2013 and resume growth," Lyashenko said at a plenary session of the first forum of Belarusian and Ukrainian regions in Gomel on Friday. The amount of bilateral trade reached $4.6 billion in 2017 and went up 20% against 2016, he said. "We project commodity turnover at $5 billion this year [an 8.7% increase from 2017]," Lyashenko said. Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko and Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko have decided to bring mutual commodity turnover to at least $8 billion in 2019. Not only the governments of the two countries, but also the regions need to contribute to achieving this goal, Lyashenko said. Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko has said it is important that Russia not use Belarus for its aggressive actions against Ukraine, according to the official website of the head of state. "This is a border of friendship, and in no case should we allow any threat from the territory of Belarus to Ukraine. We do not wait, we know that this will not happen, and, of course, we don't want Russia to use Belarus in order to take us on the flank," Poroshenko said at a meeting with representatives of the Ukrainian community in Gomel on Friday. He emphasized the important role of the Ukrainian community for cooperation between the two states. "Thank you, first of all, for supporting Ukraine. We now need this support very much. Thank you for keeping your good relations with Belarus through your prayers and your efforts. This is also important to us," Poroshenko said. "We have arrived in Belarus with good intentions," he said. The head of state noted that he had once decided to hold Ukraine peace talks in Minsk. Poroshenko also stressed that the Minsk negotiating process on resolving the situation in eastern Ukraine in connection with armed Russian aggression opens Europe's gate for Belarus. Ovostar Union, one of the leading producers of eggs and egg goods in Ukraine, in January-September 2018 increased sales of eggs by 27% compared to the same period in 2017, to 1.056 billion pieces. According to a group report on the Warsaw Stock Exchange, egg production during this period decreased by 3.5%, to 1.202 billion pieces. Egg exports in the nine months increased by 27%, to 443 million eggs. The share of exports in total sales of eggs remained at the level of last year and amounted to 42%. The average selling price rose by 34%, to UAH 1.79 per unit. As of September 30, 2018, the total livestock of the company decreased by 7.6% compared to the same period in 2017, to 7.3 million birds, the number of laying hens by 4.4%, to 6.5 million. "The dynamics is mainly due to the increase in the number of chickens placed in modified cages in accordance with European standards," the report says. The group also reported that in January-September the volume of egg processing grew by 6%, to 401 million eggs. Production of egg powder declined by 5%, to 2,255 tonnes, and that of liquid egg products was up by 14%, to 9,026 tonnes. The Forum of Regions of Belarus and Ukraine has potential, Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko said at a meeting with Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko in Gomel, and proposed to continue holding such forums, according to the Belarusian state news agency BelTA. Poroshenko said mutual trust had developed through his contacts with Lukashenko. "There is confidence between Ukraine and Belarus, between Lukashenko and Poroshenko. I am positive that this confidence will evolve into security, reliability, friendship, and cooperation," Poroshenko said. The border between Belarus and Ukraine should be one of peace, friendship, and reliability, Poroshenko said. "You and I are doing the utmost to achieve that," he said. The first Forum of Regions of Belarus and Ukraine is taking place in Gomel on October 25 and 26. The two presidents are taking part in the second day of the forum. They will hold talks to discuss trade, economic cooperation, and investment and will attend the plenary session. Ukraine and Belarus will create a working group to eliminate existing antidumping restrictions, President of Ukraine Petro Poroshenko has said. "We with Alexander Grigoryevich [Lukashenko] agreed to instruct the government to urgently set up a working group to eliminate all antidumping restrictions. Remove any obstacles to mutual trade," he said at the opening of the Forum of Regions of Ukraine and Belarus in Gomel (Belarus). "I foresee that this group will be created in the near future," he stressed. According to Poroshenko, Belarus is the fifth trading partner for Ukraine, trade turnover between the countries this year amounted to $4.5-4.6 billion. At the same time, he expressed hope that by the end of the year this figure would reach $5.3 billion, and next year no less than $7 billion. According to the Ukrainian president, the countries could double trade turnover. "We could easily double our trade turnover: the figure of $10 billion is quite real. To a large extent this would be favored by the resumption of exports of Ukrainian metal products to Belarus, as well as the lifting of restrictions on trade in agricultural products and timber," he said. Kernel, one of the largest Ukrainian agricultural groups, intends to contest the decision of the arbitration court in the case on the purchase of Stiomi-Holding LLC in the High Court of Justice in London. According to the group's annual financial report, Kernel in early March 2018 received the ruling on arbitration proceedings (the court's jurisdiction is not specified in the report) regarding the purchase of the company in April 2012. The decision of the arbitration is not specified in the document, at the same time it is indicated that Kernel intends to contest it in the High Court of Justice in London. Kernel also said that as of June 30, 2018 the group's structures in the framework of this transaction transferred $33.47 million to Stiomi-Holding structures. The remaining amount, in accordance with the agreements, was subject to payment after Stiomi-Holding fulfills certain conditions. Kernel claims that the agreed conditions were not met, after which the parties entered into litigation. VANCOUVER, British Columbia, Oct. 26, 2018 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Nevada Exploration Inc. (NGE or the Company) (TSX-V: NGE; OTCQB: NVDEF) is pleased to announce the engagement of PNW Corporate Services & Advisory Ltd. (PNW) to provide the services of Ms. Christina Blacker, who has been appointed to the role of Chief Financial Officer of the Company. Ms. Blacker is a Chartered Professional Accountant (CA) and has more than 13 years of experience working with public companies, predominantly in the mining industry, including current roles as controller for two other TSX Venture listed issuers. Ms. Blacker obtained her undergraduate degree from the University of California, Los Angeles, and obtained a diploma in accounting from the Sauder School of Business at the University of British Columbia. In connection with Ms. Blackers appointment, the Company has accepted the resignation of Cyrus Driver as Chief Financial Officer of the Corporation. The Company would like to express its sincere appreciation for Cyruss dedication and contributions to NGE during his 9 years with the Company, both as Chief Financial Officer as well as Director for much of that time. The Company also announces that pursuant to its stock option plan, subject to TSX Venture Exchange approval, NGE has granted incentive stock options to PNW to acquire a total of 150,000 common shares of the Company, exercisable for a period of ten years at an exercise price of $0.35, subject to vesting requirements. Upcoming Events NGE is pleased to welcome its stakeholders to visit with its team at the following upcoming events, including the Silver and Gold Summit in San Francisco beginning this Sunday, October 28, 2018: SILVER AND GOLD SUMMIT (San Francisco) BOOTH 406 Sunday to Monday, October 28th to 29th, 2018 https://cambridgehouse.com/e/silver-and-gold-summit-2018-75 Presentation #1: Sunday, October 28, 2018 (limited space, register at: https://investor.nevadaexploration.com/silver-gold-summit/ ) Presentation #2: Monday, October 29, 2018, at 2:10 PM in the Silver Hall (open to all conference registrants) MINES AND MONEY (London) BOOTH C26 Monday to Thursday, November 26th to 29th, 2018 https://london.minesandmoney.com/ AMERICAN EXPLORATION & MINING ASSOCIATION (Spokane) Monday to Friday, December 3rd to 7th, 2018 https://www.miningamerica.org/2018-annual-meeting/ VANCOUVER RESOURCES INVESTMENT CONFERENCE (Vancouver) Sunday and Monday, January 20th and 21st, 2018 https://cambridgehouse.com/e/vancouver-resource-investment-conference-2019-76 PDAC (Toronto) Sunday to Wednesday, March 3rd to 6th, 2019 https://www.pdac.ca/convention About Nevada Exploration Inc. NGE is an exploration company advancing a portfolio of new district-scale gold exploration projects along Nevadas Battle Mountain-Eureka (Cortez) Trend. NGE is led by an experienced management team that has been involved in several significant discoveries in Nevada, including the discovery of Lone Tree and Rabbit Creek (part of the Twin Creeks Mine). NGEs team has spent the last decade integrating the use of hydrogeochemistry with conventional exploration tools to develop a Nevada-specific regional-scale geochemistry exploration program. With new proprietary technology, NGE has completed the worlds largest groundwater sampling program for gold exploration, collecting approximately 6,000 samples to evaluate Nevadas covered basins for new gold exploration targets. To advance follow-up targets, NGE has overcome the high drilling costs that have previously prohibited the wide-spread use of drilling as a prospecting tool by developing its Scorpion drill rig, a small-footprint, truck-mounted, small-diameter RC drill rig specifically tailored to the drilling conditions in Nevadas basins (analogous to RAB drilling in other parts of the world). By integrating hydrogeochemistry and early-stage low-cost drilling with conventional exploration methods, NGE is overcoming the challenges and radically reducing the costs of exploring in Nevadas covered basins, and is taking significant steps to open this important new search space up for district-scale exploration. For further information, please contact: Nevada Exploration Inc. Email: info@nevadaexploration.com Telephone: +1 (604) 601 2006 Website: www.nevadaexploration.com Neither the TSX Venture Exchange nor its Regulation Services Provider (as that term is defined in the policies of the TSX Venture Exchange) accepts responsibility for the adequacy or accuracy of this release. Cautionary Statement on Forward-Looking Information: This news release contains forward-looking information and forward-looking statements (collectively, forward-looking information) within the meaning of applicable securities laws, including, without limitation, expectations, beliefs, plans, and objectives regarding projects, potential transactions, and ventures discussed in this release. In connection with the forward-looking information contained in this news release, the Company has made numerous assumptions, regarding, among other things, the assumption the Company will continue as a going concern and will continue to be able to access the capital required to advance its projects and continue operations. While the Company considers these assumptions to be reasonable, these assumptions are inherently subject to significant uncertainties and contingencies. In addition, there are known and unknown risk factors which could cause the Companys actual results, performance or achievements to be materially different from any future results, performance or achievements expressed or implied by the forward-looking information contained herein. Among the important factors that could cause actual results to differ materially from those indicated by such forward-looking statements are the risks inherent in mineral exploration, the need to obtain additional financing, environmental permits, the availability of needed personnel and equipment for exploration and development, fluctuations in the price of minerals, and general economic conditions. A more complete discussion of the risks and uncertainties facing the Company is disclosed in the Companys continuous disclosure filings with Canadian securities regulatory authorities at www.sedar.com. All forward-looking information herein is qualified in its entirety by this cautionary statement, and the Company disclaims any obligation to revise or update any such forward-looking information or to publicly announce the result of any revisions to any of the forward-looking information contained herein to reflect future results, events or developments, except as required by law. The European Union is ready to further continue to financially support the reform of public administration in Ukraine, the EU Delegation to Ukraine has said. "The EU is closely following the recent developments of the public administration reform in Ukraine. Much progress has been achieved, while more needs to be done. The EU remains committed to providing further budget support of which EUR15.5 million were released in 2018 based on good results achieved," the EU Delegation said on Twitter. "We also welcome the government's efforts to update the PAR strategy according to the OECD/SIGMA recommendations and the review of progress so far. Among ongoing reforms, the EU particularly supports the advanced setup of the recruitment and selection of the news civil servants within the Reform Staff Posts mechanism. This needs to be supported be speedier reorganization in participating ministries," the report states. A tender to sell a 78.289% stake in power generating enterprise PJSC Centrenergo is to begin at 11:00 a.m. Kyiv time on December 13, 2018, Head of the State Property Fund Vitaliy Trubarov wrote on Facebook. The announcement of the tender will be published in the Vidomosti Pryvatyzatsii privatization bulletin on Monday, October 29. "The investor has 45 days to examine the performance and financial results of the enterprise and to prepare all the necessary documents," Trubarov said. As reported, the starting price of the state stake in the power generating company was set at UAH 5.985 billion. The conditions introduced under Cabinet resolution No. 756-r dated October 3, 2018, foresee the payment of dividends to the national budget in the amount of 30% of net profit for 2018 by Centrenergo, whereas the figure in 2017 was 75% and it was 50% in 2016. The tender will take place only if there are two bidders. A recommendation to use coal produced in Ukrainian mines with full identity of the cost and quality characteristics with coal of foreign origin was also added to the obligations of the winner of the tender. In addition, the government guarantees compensation to a potential investor for losses that the generation company could potentially incur before the date of transfer of the package to the new owner. This concerns any court decisions, which entered into force after the date of transfer of ownership of the shares or the corresponding accrual of taxes, fees or fines. Centrenergo in 2017 increased net profit by 4.9 times compared to 2016, to UAH 1.891 billion; net income rose by 2.1%, to UAH 10.918 billion; gross profit grew by 19.3%, UAH 2.529 billion. In 2017, Centrenergo reduced electricity production by 36.2% (3.573 billion kWh) compared to 2016, to 6.285 billion kWh. Its electricity sales in 2017 fell by 36.5% (3.249 billion kWh) compared to 2016 to 5.648 billion kWh. The large decline in power generation is linked to a shortage of anthracite coal, which is produced on the occupied areas of Donbas. Under Centrenergo's financial plan for 2018, the company is to generate 9.371 billion kWh, which will be 1.5 times up on 2017. Centrenergo operates the Vuhlehirsk, Zmiyivska and Trypillia thermal power plants, which have a total installed capacity of 7.660 gigawatts. The state owns 78.3% of the shares in the company. President of Belarus Alexander Lukashenko will take part in the plenary session of the first Forum of Regions of Belarus and Ukraine, which will be held in Gomel on Friday, the presidential press service of Belarus has reported. "President of Ukraine Petro Poroshenko is expected to attend this event, as well. Prior to participating in and speaking at the main platform of the forum, the heads of state will meet one-on-one. The main focus at their talks will be the development of trade-economic and investment cooperation between the two countries through the prism of potential of direct contacts at the level of regions," the press service said. At the end of the forum, the sides are expected to sign documents and agreements aimed at promoting interaction in all of the areas in which Belarus and Ukraine cooperate, it said. Batkivschyna leader Yulia Tymoshenko, speaking at the 20th Annual Session of the Homeland and Global Security Forum, held by the international organization Crans Montana Forum in Geneva (Switzerland), has stressed that Ukraine has earned its right to be in NATO and the European Union. "The 100th anniversary of the end of the World War I, which lasted four years, three months and 14 days, will be celebrated around the world on November 11. The events and lessons of the World War I will be discussed at the highest level. This is certainly correct and important. But few people know that the war in eastern Ukraine, together with the annexation of Crimea, has been going on longer than World War I - more than four years and eight months. It is spoken about less and less," said the party leader, presenting her report "Regional and Global Challenges: The Example of Ukraine." Tymoshenko recalled that during the undeclared war of Russia against the Ukrainian state more than 10,000 people have been killed, including 147 children; nearly 30,000 wounded, including 300 children; at least 1,300 people are considered missing; almost 2 million Ukrainians are displaced. According to her, the occupied territory of Ukraine is more than the area of the whole of Switzerland; more than 400 km of the state border is not controlled by the government. The politician urged the world community "not to turn a blind eye to the events of the present." "If we don't start today, we'll quickly realize that we started too late," she added. According to her, the events in Crimea and eastern Ukraine and the response of the international community are and will be "one of the key indicators of the ability or inability of existing security mechanisms and institutions to pass a stress test." Tymoshenko also stressed that most Ukrainians see their future in the EU and NATO. "The war that has been going on for the past four years has shown that it is difficult for us to resist Russia's aggression alone. The Russian Federation must accept the fact that the Soviet Union no longer exists, that there are new independent states that have the right to this independence and sovereignty. And Ukraine has won its right to join NATO and the EU," the party's leader said. As reported, on October 25-27 Yulia Tymoshenko is participating in the Crans Montana security forum, where current security challenges and threats to the modern world order are being discussed by heads of state and government, ministers, parliamentarians, representatives of international organizations, leading world politicians and experts. The Crans Montana Forum cooperates with the UN, UNESCO, the EU and other institutions for the sake of ensuring stability, security and respect for human rights in the world. This year, the Forum discusses the current challenges in the field of security and the threat to the modern world order. Heads of state and government, ministers, parliamentarians, representatives of international organizations, leading politicians of the world and experts take part in it. One Ukrainian soldier wounded in Donbas in past 24 hours Russia's hybrid military forces have mounted 17 attacks on Ukrainian army positions in Donbas in the past 24 hours, with one Ukrainian soldier reported as wounded in action, the press centre of the Joint Forces Operation (JFO) has reported. "Russian invaders opened fire on the positions of our troops 17 times, four times of which with the weapons banned by the Minsk agreements ... During hostilities on October 25, a JFO member was injured," the JFO press centre said on Facebook on Friday morning. Russian occupation forces opened aimed fire from grenade launchers of various systems, heavy machine guns and small arms. Ukrainian positions were shelled in the vicinity of Zolote, Svitlodarsk, Luhanske, Avdiyivka, Maryinka, Krasnohorivka, Pavlopil, Hnutove, Vodiane, Lebedynske, and Shyrokyne. Infantry fighting vehicles and 120mm mortars were fired near Svitlodarsk, and 82mm mortars were used near Luhanske and Avdiyivka. One enemy soldier was killed and another five were wounded, intelligence reports say. No attacks have been recorded since the beginning of the day. The Kyiv Court of Appeals has upheld a claim of Prominvestbank (PIB, Kyiv) against actions of a private judicial officer regarding the arrest of assets of the bank under a ruling of Court of Appeals of Kyiv City dated September 5, 2018 when the court ruled to arrest shares of Ukrainian subsidiaries of Russian banks with government capital: VTB, Prominvestbank and Sberbank (all based in Kyiv). The court issued the ruling after a hearing held on October 22, 2018. According to the ruling, the decision of Court of Appeals of Kyiv City September 5 clearly specified the debtor in the enforcement proceeding the Russian Federation in the person of the Justice Ministry. However, the private judicial officer on September 20, 2018 made a decision to open proceedings in the case where PIB was announced the debtor. On the same day, the private judicial officer decided to arrest the assets of the debtor PIB's shares. The court found that the private judicial officer went beyond the scope of his authority, changing the debtor in the open enforcement proceedings and the seized property. Thus, the court concluded that the arguments of the PIB complaint were valid. The court also said that the Kyiv Court of Appeals began to function on October 3, 2018. It was established instead of liquidated of the Court of Appeals of Kyiv City and the Court of Appeals of Kyiv region in accordance with the presidential decree dated December 29, 2017. Thus, the consideration of cases and materials that were in the proceedings of the liquidated courts, taking into account the new automatic distribution of cases, is carried out by the Kyiv Court of Appeals. Sentsov's lawyer, his cousin to go to EP to receive Sakharov Peace Prize Political prisoner Oleh Sentsov's lawyer Dmitry Dinze and his cousin Natalia Kaplan have been invited to the European Parliament to receive the Sakharov Freedom of Thought Prize awarded to him. "Lawyer of Ukrainian film director, political prisoner Oleh Sentsov, Dmitry Dinze, and his sister Natalia Kaplan were invited to the European Parliament to receive the Sakharov Freedom of Thought Prize awarded to the Ukrainian director," Sentsov's cousin said on the air of Hromadske TV channel on Thursday. "It is planned so far that two of us will go," said Kaplan. Kaplan noted that a money reward of EUR 50,000 is likely to be deposited in a bank account where it will wait for Sentsov, or, if necessary, it will be handed to his children. "It would be ideally if Oleh himself receives this award and disposes this money himself," she added. The awarding ceremony of the Sakharov Prize takes place on December 12. Earlier, Kaplan said that the Sakharov Prize was an additional step towards the release of Sentsov. As reported, Ukrainian film director Oleh Sentsov was awarded the Andrei Sakharov prize "For Freedom of Thought" by the European Parliament. Sentsov was nominated for the preliminary list of candidates by the largest political faction of the European Parliament - the European People's Party (EPP). Since 1988, Parliament has awarded the Sakharov Prize to individuals and organizations that defend human rights and fundamental freedoms. The 2017 Sakharov Prize was awarded to the Democratic Opposition in Venezuela. Sentsov has become the first Ukrainian in the history who received this award. On October 23, Sentsov also won the Pro Dignitate Humana Prize, awarded by Poland's Minister of Foreign Affairs. The transition of the parishes into the single Ukrainian Orthodox Church will take place if such a decision is supported by two thirds of the parishioners, Patriarch Filaret (Denysenko), the head of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church of the Kyiv Patriarchate has said. "The mechanism [of transition] consists of the meeting of the whole parish. If two thirds of the parish votes to stay in the Russian Church, then this parish will belong to the Russian Church. If two thirds of the parishioners votes for the Ukrainian Church, then the church together with parishioners will go to the Ukrainian Orthodox Church," he said, answering a question from Interfax-Ukraine agency in Kyiv on Friday. At the same time, the head of the UOC-KP clarified that if two thirds of the votes are not reached to take a decision, then the position of the parish will remain the same. The Boryspil City District Court in Kyiv region has sentenced Ihor Kornilov to a five-year prison sentence following charges with assault on journalist and civic activist Tetiana Chornovol and now a member of the parliament in December 2013, Ukrayinska Pravda has reported. The sentence was announced on October 25. The defendant's attorney Valeriy Buniak said that the defense will most likely appeal the court's ruling because they believe that the defendant is innocent. "Our stance is that Ihor Mykolayovych was not involved in committing that crime; therefore, it is logical that we will appeal this verdict," Buniak said. He added that he will seek approval of this stance with Kornilov. According to the attorney, his client was given the maximum sentence, so when it comes to counting the term of his imprisonment, the fact that he has been in custody since July 21, 2017 will be taken into consideration. The Prosecutor General's Office announced back in January 2018 that the pre-trial investigation into the case was completed and the bill of indictment with regard to one of the suspects who had been charged with attempted murder of Chornovol was sent to court. Also, the Prosecutor General's Office said that a total of five people had been given notices of suspicion: the bills of indictment for two people were sent to court and those persons were given prison sentences, one person was being wanted, and one suspect passed away. As was earlier reported, journalist and public activist Tetiana Chornovol and now a member of the parliament was assaulted on the Boryspil-Kyiv motorway in the early hours of December 25, 2013. The multinational exercises of NATO member and partner countries in Norway with the participation of Ukraine are designed to confirm the Alliance's readiness to respond to new types of threats, President of Ukraine Petro Poroshenko has said. "The multinational exercises Trident Juncture-18 started in Norway with the participation of NATO member countries and partners. Ukraine is among them. These powerful exercises are designed to confirm the Alliance's readiness to respond to new types of threats, in particular, hybrid warfare and propaganda," Poroshenko wrote on Facebook on Friday. He stressed that Ukraine would continue strengthening the qualification of its military personnel and its military potential. "Everyone understands that Ukraine today is on guard for the European security, because the aggressor country is next to us that threatens not only our country," Poroshenko noted. Chinas Private-Sector Rescue Looks Like Anything But Xi Jinping has vowed to take care of Chinas troubled private-sector companies. That actually seems to mean more state control. By Jacky Wong An investor sits at a brokerage house in Beijing. Photo: Mark Schiefelbein/Associated Press Chinese President Xi Jinping has pledged unwavering support for the countrys struggling private companies. That may not come in the form entrepreneurs desire. Along with recent efforts from top policy makers to talk up local stock markets, Mr. Xis commentspublished over the weekend in state mediaindicate high anxiety in Beijing. But that concern likely isnt much about stock prices themselves, given share ownership still makes up only a small percentage of household wealth in China. Insteadas in 2015, when Chinese stocks crateredthe worry is more to do with the high level of leverage in the market, and what that could mean for Chinas financial system. The difference this time is the prevalence of major shareholders in listed companies that have pledged their stakes in return for loans. Three years ago, the problem was retail investors bingeing on margin loans to buy stocks. Some 4.3 trillion yuan ($620 billion) worth of Chinese stocks is now being used as collateral for borrowing, according to Windequal to about 9% of the whole market. Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko has noted the trends of strengthening Ukrainian-Belarusian relations, according to the official website of the head of state. "We are absolutely sure that relations have reached serious growth. The economy of our countries emphasizes that the increase exceeds 23% every year, in foreign currency," Poroshenko said during a one-on-one meeting with Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko in Gomel on Friday. He noted an increase in the supply of Ukrainian products to Belarus. "It is very important for us to maintain these trends," Poroshenko added. Poroshenko also emphasized the effectiveness of the first Forum of the Regions of Ukraine and Belarus, during which a number of agreements were signed between the regions of the two states, and announced the signing of several more documents. Less than a third of Ukrainians know what tomos means Only 28.5% of Ukrainians say they know what a tomos is. Some 75% either do not know what it is or have difficulty saying, according to a poll conducted by the Kyiv International Institute of Sociology (KIIS) commissioned by NGO Detector Media. Of those who know what a tomos is, 43.5% learned it from media, from religious leaders 19%, from speeches of Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko 17.4%, from politicians 15.9% and from other people 11.5%. More people living in Ukraine's western regions (43%) know what a tomos is than in central Ukraine 30% and eastern Ukraine 16-18%. The KIIS poll was conducted from September 8 to 23 on an order by the non-government organization Detector Media with the financial support of the Danish Foreign Ministry. A total of 2,026 respondents from all the regions of Ukraine except for Crimea and the territories in Donetsk and Luhansk regions that are beyond the control of the Ukrainian authorities participated in the poll. The sampling error does not exceed 3.3%. A tomos is a small book that contains a major announcement or similar text promulgated by a holy synod, such as a grant of autocephaly. Belarus is ready to join efforts to resolve the Donbas conflict if the parties concerned agree, Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko said. "I state clearly that we are ready to get involved in this conflict where it's complicated, but only in the name of peace," Lukashenko said at the first Forum of Regions of Belarus and Ukraine in Gomel on Friday. It is "us, three Slavic nations," who must resolve this problem, and "we are not angling for the role of peacemakers or mediators," he said. "If we need to get involved, we will act in line with the agreements achieved by the two presidents," Lukashenko said. Second Forum of Regions of Ukraine and Belarus to be held in Zhytomyr in 2019 - Poroshenko The second Forum of the Regions of Ukraine and Belarus will take place in Zhytomyr in 2019, Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko has said. "I hope that we will soon be able to talk about the tradition of holding [fora] annually, alternately in each of our countries. I, as president of Ukraine, want to invite all the [forum] participants next year [...] We decided that it would be held in Zhytomyr," he said at the first Forum of the Regions of Ukraine and Belarus in Gomel on Friday. Poroshenko said that 12 interstate, intergovernmental and interregional agreements are to be signed at the forum in Gomel. He also noted that the regional forum had become the center of the unity of cultures of two friendly peoples. Principal Deputy Chief Monitor of the OSCE Special Monitoring Mission to Ukraine (OSCE SMM) Alexander Hug said that the remarks in an interview with the U.S. publication Foreign Policy about the absence of Russian military intervention in Donbas did not reflect his point of view. During a Skype briefing on Friday, Hug said that the published text was misleading and did not reflect his opinion, and that an amended version had already been issued. The facts presented by the SMM speak for themselves, he said. "I have been myself very clear all along over the past four-and-a-half years that the SMM is not speculating, it is not concluding on the fact it does establish. The facts that are listed in these reports we issue and in the interview that you refer to speak for themselves. The SMM will continue to implement its mandate and it will continue to document facts and establish facts. We are in Ukraine upon the invitation of Ukraine and we will continue to support Ukraine," Hug said. The SMM recorded and documented the presence of various types of weapons originally from Russia in the areas not controlled by the Ukrainian government. He also said that he and other SMM staff saw and spoke to people held captive by the Ukrainian military, who said they were regular Russian troops and were sent to Ukraine on a rotational basis. In the original interview, Hug was quoted as saying that SMM staff saw people with Russian insignia in Donbas but that such uniforms can be purchased anywhere. Asked what the OSCE position was on the question of Russian intervention in eastern Ukraine, he said that the SMM saw no direct evidence of it. Illegal armed groups violated the ceasefire in Donbas three times on Friday, wounding one Ukrainian serviceman, the press center of the headquarters of the Joint Forces Operation (JFO) has reported. "Russian occupying forces shelled the positions of the Joint Forces three times. [...] One Ukrainian soldier was wounded as a result of enemy fire," the JFO HQ said in a report on its Facebook page. The enemy opened fire from grenade launchers of various systems, heavy machineguns and small arms near Krymske, Pavlopil and Vodiane. On Tuesday, October 30, at 11.00, the press center of the Interfax-Ukraine news agency will host a press conference entitled "Results' Presentation of Second Wave of All-Ukrainian Study "3D Portraits of 2019 Presidential Elections Participants." Participants include head of think tank "Practice of Power," Vice President of Ukrainian PR-League, PhD in economics Olena Derevianko (8/5a Reitarska Street). The study was conducted by the sociological company "Center for Applied Research" on October 1-12, 2018. Details by phone: (098) 799 5892 (Tetiana). Press accreditation at: https://docs.google.com/forms/d/1Mv2ddnk4z04D9DQOiH5ndpWlZNaD9L3jju-ks8lTiiI/viewform?edit_requested=true BAGHDAD, Oct 26 (Reuters) Iraq will stop trucking crude from its northern Kirkuk oilfield to Iran in November to comply with sanctions imposed on its neighbour by the United States, five sources familiar with Iraqi oil export operations said on Friday. Kirkuk is one of the biggest and oldest oilfields in the Middle East. Last year Iraq began to ship crude from Kirkuk to Iran for use in its refineries, and Iran agreed to deliver the same amount of oil to Iraq's southern ports. Currently, Iraq is exporting less than 30,000 barrels per day (bpd) to Iran via truck, the sources told Reuters. "Kirkuk oil trucking to Iran will be halted in November in line with the American sanctions against Iran. (State oil marketer) SOMO plans to sell 30,000 bpd from a small oilfield near Mosul as of November as an alternative. SOMO issued the tender on Thursday," one source said. President Donald Trump's decision to withdraw the United States from a 2015 international nuclear accord with Tehran in May and reimpose sanctions has put Iraqi Prime Minister Adel Abdul Mahdi's incoming government in a difficult position as the country's economy is closely intertwined with neighbouring Iran. OIL MAY FLOW TO TURKEY Abdul Mahdi said on Thursday that Iraq would prioritise its own interests and independence when it comes to helping the U.S. enforce the sanctions but Washington has said there will be consequences for countries that do not respect the sanctions. "The U.S. has been putting pressure on Iraq to suspend shipments of oil to Iran and to resume Kurdish oil flows towards Turkey. If Turkey gets more oil from Iraq, it will be more difficult for Ankara to argue it needs a U.S. waiver to continue buying Iranian oil," a source familiar with Iraqi oil export operations told Reuters. Former prime minister Haider al-Abadi's outgoing federal government agreed a deal in mid-October with the Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG) to resume exporting crude to Turkey's Ceyhan port via the KRG, the sources said. The deal is subject to final approval by Abdul Mahdi and Oil Minister Thamer Ghadhban, they added. "Kurdish authorities reached a deal with Abadi's government to resume Kirkuk exports and it was decided that the final say should be left to the new government and oil minister to sign a final deal," one source said. Two oil officials with the North Oil Company (NOC) confirmed to Reuters that the federal government and the KRG had reached a deal but that Abdul Mahdi's signature is needed before it becomes final. Meanwhile, SOMO announced a tender on Thursday to sell small quantities of heavy crude from the northern Qayyara oilfield for export by road tankers. SOMO invited companies to submit bids by Nov. 4, right around when new sanctions against Iran come into effect. U.S. energy secretary Rick Perry said last month The Trump administration was not considering a release from the U.S. emergency oil stockpile to offset the impact of looming Iran sanctions, and will instead rely on big global producers to keep the market stable. He said up to 300,000 barrels per day (bpd) of oil could reach markets if Iraq allows it to flow from the Kurdistan region in the north. Late last year, Iraq began diverting output from Kirkuk oilfields to local refineries to boost fuel production and help free up more oil for exports from southern oilfields. Exports from Kirkuk's oilfields were halted after an Iraqi military offensive to retake the disputed territories which had come under Kurdish control in 2014 following a failed Kurdish independence referendum opposed by Baghdad. (Reporting by Ahmed Rasheed; Additional reporting by Dmitry Zhdannikov in London and Mustafa Mahmoud in Kirkuk; Writing by Ahmed Aboulenein; Editing by Dale Hudson and Elaine Hardcastle) Prominent teachers' rights activist Hashem Khastar, who mysteriously disappeared October 23 in the city of Mashhad in northeast Iran, is being detained by the Islamic Republics Intelligence Ministry at a psychiatric hospital, his wife disclosed in an exclusive interview with Radio Fardas Mahtab Vahidirad. "Without clear charges, my husband has been detained by the Intelligence Ministry and, for unknown reasons, taken to a psychiatric hospital in Mashhad," said Khastars wife, Sediqeh Maleki, insisting that her husband is not suffering from any mental or physical illness. Khastar, a former teacher at the Agriculture Technical High School in Mashhad and an agricultural engineer, is the Head of the Mashhad Teachers Union. He went missing October 23, and Maleki says his cellphone was turned off and his car left parked outside his home in Golbahar Park. Two days later, Khastar's relatives received a call from an unknown telephone number and were informed he had been hospitalized for a psychiatric disorder at a hospital in Mashhad, where they were allowed to visit him. It is not yet clear, however, who made the decision to admit him to the hospital. "My husband is in good health and does not take any medicine, said Maleki. While at the psychiatric hospital, one of the sick men there attacked him. Khastar has been detained several times for defending teachers' rights, most recently having served a term from 2009 to 2011 in Mashhad's notorious prison, Vakilabad. He has also publicly criticized the Islamic Republic's Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei in online forums and called him a "dictator" in a January 2018 commentary published by Iran Kargar, an Iranian pro-union group operating outside the country, VOA reported. Earlier, the New York based Center for Human Rights in Iran (CHRI) reported the arrests of five Iranian Teachers' Trade Association members by Iranian authorities in connection with a nationwide teachers strike held October 13. The strike, called by Iran's Coordinating Council of Teachers Syndicates, saw teachers stage sit-ins at schools across the country to demand better wages and reforms of the national education system. Following the two-day teachers strike, Khastar offered his gratitude to the striking teachers and criticized the Iranian regime in an open letter published on social media. We dont have guns. Our guns are our pens and our words and our gatherings and our sit-ins, Khastar wrote. The guns are in the hands of those who protect lawless, tyrannical, cruel rulers instead of defending the rule of law. They defend those who steal millions and arrest petty thieves and cut off their hands and legs. Iran may start rationing gasoline instead of raising the price, Oil Minister Bijan Namdar Zangeneh announced October 24. Earlier, the Islamic Republic's Vice President, Eshaq Jahangiri, had also said it would be politically unfeasible to raise gas prices, as Iranians are already suffering economic hardships. Irans overall troubled economy, the dwindling value of the national currency, and reimposed U.S. sanctions have exacerbated the problem. The sanctions, in particular, have hit Irans oil and gas sector, with production expected to be significantly curtailed when the second round of sanctions officially take effect November 4. Amid the economic downturn, some Iranians have turned to smuggling, despite the risks. More than one billion liters (roughly 265,000 gallons) of gasoline have been smuggled out of Iran in the past few months, said Iran's anti-smuggling police chief IRGC, Briadier-General Ali Moayyedi October 10. The Rouhani administration has proposed raising the price of gasoline by 5,000 rials (roughly $0.12) per liter in order to raise funds for developing Irans dilapidated public transportation network. Defenders of the plan say it would raise an estimated $4 billion for infrastructure projects and create thousands of jobs. "We should apply managed policies compatible with the society's condition to move forward, Jahangiri said, according to state-run media. The price of gasoline in Iran is currently $0.24 per liter, while the average price of gasoline in the world is $1.17. The price of 24 cents per liter is calculated according to the official government exchange rate. On free market rates, the price of gasoline would be closer to 7 cents. Rejecting the idea of raising the price of gasoline, Zangeneh said the revival of smart fuel cards, a rationing system used in the past, is again on the table. "Fuel cards, if revived, will be issued for the whole country and not limited to Iran's regions bordering its neighbors, Zangeneh said, speaking to state-run media. Zangeneh's comments echoed remarks by pro-reform MP Ali Bakhtiar two weeks ago. "Given the huge difference between fuel prices in Iran and the neighboring countries due to the dramatic rise in foreign exchange rates in recent months, fuel smuggling has increased tremendously. Under such conditions, reviving fuel rationing and issuing fuel cards can help solve the dilemma, Bakhtiar said. Bakhtiar said that while parliament has not yet approved fuel rationing, it is likely to do so in the near future. Meanwhile, a member of parliaments Energy Commission, Jalal Mirzaei, said on Wednesday that a dual price scheme will be set in the next few weeks. "It is highly likely that 60 to 80 liters of rationed gasoline will be offered at the current price, i.e. 10,000 rials ($0.24), while any amount more than that should be bought on the basis of free market prices, said Mirzaei. But in a country where the oil and gas industry is nationalized, there is debate over what a free market price means. Only 20% of Tehran's sewage is properly treated and the rest is contaminating underground water reservoirs and agricultural lands, a member of the Iranian parliament has warned. Based on tests carried out at vegetable and fruit markets, traces of heavy and illegal toxic metals in root vegetables, including carrots, potatoes and onions are much more than admissible levels, said the spokesman of parliament's Agriculture Commission, Ali-Mohammad Shaeri. Lambasting the Department of Environment (DoE) for negligence in supervising Tehran's sewage system, Shaeri noted, "While the whole world is moving toward organic agriculture, the Ministry of Agriculture Jihad should not allow farmers to irrigate their lands with sewage water." He also maintained, "DoE needs more supervision on agricultural lands in southern parts of Tehran" and called on Tehran's prosecutor general to step in. Tehran with an estimated 8,700,000 population, is one of the largest cities in the world without a modern sewage system. Expansion of the wastewater network development project is one of the most important urban projects underway in Tehran since four decades, but the lack of funding for the major undertaking plus the fast development of urban areas have impeded completion, reported Iran Financial Tribune. Nearly 10,000 km of underground pipes should be installed to cover the citys entire wastewater system. So far 6,000 km of pipelines have been laid, says Mohammad Salari, head of the Urban Planning and Architecture Commission of the Tehran City Council (TCC). Constraints in funding, rapid growth of urban areas and narrow alleys in the older districts are among the main reasons that work has been delayed, pro-reform daily, Sharq, has quoted him as saying. A pilgrimage intended to rival the Hajj gathers millions of Shiites in Iraq this coming weekend. An event that showcases a variety of socio-political dynamics from rivalry between Iran and Saudi Arabia to Ayatollah Ali Khamenei's personality cult, to tasting Iraqi cuisines. One million and seven hundred thousand Iranians have registered for the march to Karbala in Iraq to mark Arbaeen (October 30), the 40th day after the martyrdom of Imam Hussain, the third Imam of the Shiite sect in 680 AD, Tasnim news agency reported on Thursday October 25. The pilgrimage, has been highly popular in recent years among devoted Shiite Muslims in Iran and in particular among those who subscribe to the Islamic Republic ideology. In previous years up to two million Iranians took part in the pilgrimage encouraged and partly funded or subsidized by the government. Various government organizations also reportedly send thousands of their staff members, often like a paid holiday. This year the contingent includes hundreds from the Tehran Municipality. According to Tasnim, some 47,000 Pakistani pilgrims have arrived in Iran during recent days to join the long March to Karbala in Southern Iraq. Every pilgrim is allowed to purchase up to 100,000 Iraqi dinars ($85) at the subsidized rate of 96 rials per dinar, before they leave for the Iraqi border and Iraqi bank notes will be given to them at the Iraqi side of the border or in certain places in a few Iraqi cities where Shiite shrines are located. Iran's leading economic daily Donya-ye Eqtesad reported on October 13 that President Hassan Rouhani has approved a 35% discount in the rate of exchange for the Arbaeen pilgrims, in addition to the subsidized fixed sum. Some of Iran's reformist media protested to Rouhani for his decision, but IRGC-linked daily Javan supported the government's measure. Reports during the past days say Iranian pilgrims were facing difficulties in Iraq while trying to cash in the money orders they were given by the banks in Iran. As far as the Iranian government is concerned, more political significance than religious importance has been attached to the pilgrimage in recent years. Officials did not conceal their inclination to see and portray Iraq as the strategic depth of the Islamic Republic. In several speeches by Iranian officials they said that the pilgrimage marked Iran's influence in the region and showed that Tehran was capable of restoring security during such a huge gathering outside its borders. Middle ranking officials talk about Khamenei's welcome leadership in the Muslim world, to please the supreme leader. The Arbaeen March also reveals the rivalry between Iran and Saudi Arabia. Both countries claim leadership of the Muslim world.According to Khat-e Hezballah, a pamphlet published by Khamenei's office, some 22 million Shiites took part in the march in 2014, while only some two million Shiite and Sunni Muslims took part in the Hajj pilgrimage in Saudi Arabia in the same year. Khamenei puts the overall number of Arbaeen pilgrims at 20 million in a recent tweet. Social media users have noticed changes in the form of Arbaeen pilgrimage in recent years, which has turned into a massive whirling crowd marching around and outside Mausoleums in Iraq, in a way that is reminiscent of the way Hajj pilgrims move in Mecca. Pictures tweeted by Iran's Telecommunications Minister Mohamad Javad Azari Jahromi shows the size of the crowd and the way pilgrims move around the shrines in Karbala. An analysis published on the Iranian state TV's website probed into the significance of the Arbaeen pilgrimage from political and sociological points of view, calling it an annual event that highlights the Shiite identity in Iran and Iraq and the unity among the sect's members. The analysis calls the march "an anti-imperialist event" in which millions coming from various countries take part. The political importance the Islamic Republic has attached to the Arbaeen pilgrimage, appears to have changed a traditionally one-day event into a gathering that goes on for about two weeks as Iranians tend to visit religious sites in various Iraqi cities, and involves not only remembering a religious event, but adds other cultural dimensions to it. Many pilgrims, for instance, write about food in Iraq. This one is about lime juice extracted from semi-dried Iraqi fruit: A non-Iranian pilgrim calls the gathering "life-changing": On the other hand, an Iranian pilgrim says: "Do not believe the propaganda on the TV. The number of Iranians here is rather small and the number of politically-minded even smaller." Tehran, Oct 25, 2018 (AFP) Iran's judiciary has arrested a journalist over "insults" to Imam Hussein, one of the most revered religious figures in the Shiite Islamic republic, its news agency reported on Thursday. "Pouyan Khoshhal... who was being prosecuted over insults to Imam Hussein and (other) imams, was arrested last night as he was trying to exit the country," Mizan Online reported. The official Shiite narrative says that Hussein, the grandson of Prophet Mohammed, was killed in the seventh century while refusing the Caliph Yazid's right to rule the Islamic world. The annual commemoration of Ashura, which marks Hussein's death, is one of the holiest days in Shiite Islam. Khoshhal worked at the reformist Ebtekar daily and wrote a report on October 21 referring to Imam Hussein's death as "passing away" instead of the officially accepted "martyrdom". According to Mizan, this sparked "considerable outrage and criticism". The judiciary also said that its investigations showed Khoshhal had repeatedly insulted imams before on social media and that "reports by the people" drew its attention to the case. Khoshhal's personal Twitter account has since been deleted and the phrase changed on Ebtekar's website. Ebtekar's editor in chief, Reza Dehaki, apologised to all those offended and told a Mizan journalist that they have changed the report and cut ties with the author, the agency reported. Another journalist, Mir Mohammad-Hossein Mir-Esmaili, was sentenced to 10 years in prison in August over "insulting" Imam Reza, one of the 12 revered figures of Shiite Islam. He was similarly arrested while trying to leave the country in April 2017. Baku, Azerbaijan, Oct.26 Trend: AZAL President Jahangir Asgarov met with the delegation of the airline Iran Air, headed by its CEO Farzaneh Sharafbafi in Baku on October 26. During the meeting, the sides exchanged views on issues related to the further development of cooperation between Azerbaijan Airlines and Iran Air. Jahangir Asgarov told the guests about the state of affairs in Azerbaijans civil aviation, noting the record increase in passenger traffic of the Heydar Aliyev International Airport. In the first nine months of 2018, the capitals airport served 3.49 million passengers (10 percent more than last year). Taking into account the opening of new flights by the end of 2020, the priority task is to increase this figure up to 7 million passengers per year. According to Jahangir Asgarov, Iran borders with Azerbaijan and full assistance will be provided to the southern neighbor in increasing passenger traffic. Farzaneh Sharafbafi noted that the progress in Azerbaijans civil aviation made a great impression on her. She said that Iranian tourists interest to see Azerbaijan is constantly increasing. Farzaneh Sharafbafi expressed her hope that the negotiations held in Baku will serve as an impetus for further expansion of cooperation. At the meeting, the parties expressed their intention to consolidate mutual efforts to further develop and strengthen air transportation between the two countries. It should be noted that Baku-Tehran flight is one of the most popular destinations. In particular, the low-cost airline Buta Airways, which is part of AZAL, operates flights to Tehran every day, and Iran Air - twice a week. Baku, Azerbaijan, Oct. 26 Trend: Baku hosted the forum on Sustainable Development as part of the 6th Baku International Humanitarian Forum on 25 October, 2018 under the slogan Strengthening the Regional Partnership on Implementation of Sustainable Development Goals. Riccardo Giovannini, Climate Change and Sustainability Services Partner of EY for Mediterranean Area (Italy, Spain, Portugal), was a panelist and keynote speaker. He noted the essential role of Sustainable Development Goals and how private businesses can integrate these goals into their business processes to enhance their performance, as well as, stay competitive in a world where sustainability is becoming increasingly critical for success. Ali Ahmadov, Deputy Prime Minister and Chairman of the National Council for Sustainable Development featured the 6th Baku International Humanitarian Forum and the Baku Forum on Sustainable Development as landmark events. Inga Ronda, President of the United Nations Economic and Social Council (ECOSOC), stated the importance of giving assistance to the private sector together with other sectors in order to accomplish the Sustainable Development Goals. According to Ghulam Isaczai, UN Resident Coordinator in Azerbaijan, Baku Forum plays an important role in contribution to the achievement of the Sustainable Development Goals in 2030. He also expressed his gratitude to the Azerbaijani Government for its cooperation with the UN office in the country. About EY EY is a global leader in assurance, tax, transaction, and advisory services. The insights and quality services we deliver help build trust and confidence in the capital markets and in economies the world over. We develop outstanding leaders who team to deliver on our promises to all of our stakeholders. In so doing, we play a critical role in building a better working world for our people, for our clients and for our communities. EY works together with companies across the CIS and assists them in realizing their business goals. 4,500 professionals work at 19 CIS offices (in Moscow, St. Petersburg, Novosibirsk, Ekaterinburg, Kazan, Krasnodar, Rostov-on-Don, Togliatti, Vladivostok, Almaty, Astana, Atyrau, Bishkek, Baku, Kyiv, Tashkent, Tbilisi, Yerevan and Minsk). EY refers to the global organization, and may refer to one or more, of the member firms of Ernst & Young Global Limited, each of which is a separate legal entity. Ernst & Young Global Limited, a UK company limited by guarantee, does not provide services to clients. For more information about our organization, please visit ey.com. EY in Azerbaijan EY made a major commitment to the development of Azerbaijan and the region by opening the office in Baku 23 years ago. Today, in addition to being the leading audit and consulting firm in Azerbaijan, we are the leading professional services firm in the region. As a result of our experience and competence, we have been able to assist both domestic and international companies as well as state-owned entities to develop and manage the challenges of the international economy. There are currently more than 200 people working in our Baku office that serve our clients in Azerbaijan. EYs strength in the Caspian Region and the firms commitment of resources are important to the entities operating in the region. It means that as we grow, EY will continue to demonstrate a tradition of hiring and training local professionals to be leaders in our practice. Baku, Azerbaijan, Oct. 26 By Fikret Dolukhanov Trend: The Nagorno Karabakh and seven adjacent regions should be returned to Azerbaijan without any preconditions, the Member of Lower House of Russian Parliament Dmitry Savelyev said Oct. 26 at the working session entitled as "Disinformation Policy - a Threat to Stability in the Modern World" within the VI Baku International Humanitarian Forum. He noted that the Azerbaijani diaspora needs to increase the intensity of activity in the media sphere in order to convey objective information about the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict. 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. 26 By Fikret Dolukhanov - Trend: As long as acting Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan does not deal with the settlement of the Nagorno-Karabakh problem, Armenias economy will be in the same state as it is now and there will be no improvement, Russian journalist, military expert, editor-in-chief of the National Defense magazine Igor Korotchenko told Trend at the working session Disinformation Policy a Threat to Stability in the Modern World held within the 6th Baku International Humanitarian Forum on Oct. 26. Pashinyan will not be able to fulfill his main promise regarding the fight against corruption and the improvement of the living standards of the Armenian population,Korotchenko said. The Armenian diaspora did not respond to Pashinyans call to invest in Armenia, because the unresolved Nagorno-Karabakh conflict creates great military-political risks for investments, he added. Korotchenko stressed that the solution of Armenia's problems rests on the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict. He added that despite Pashinyan's promises, Armenia may end up sinking lower and lower. 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. 26 By Fikret Dolukhanov - Trend: The Western media outlets do not sufficiently cover the issue of the occupation of Azerbaijans Nagorno-Karabakh region by Armenia and the damage it causes to the nature of the region, Peter Tase, US expert on Global Politics and Transatlantic Relations, adviser to Global Engineering Deans Council and other prestigious international institutions, said. Tase made the remarks at a session titled Disinformation Policy - Threat to Stability in the Modern World, held during the 6th Baku International Humanitarian Forum on Oct. 26. He said the activity of the illegal regime harms the flora and fauna and poses a big threat to the nature of Nagorno-Karabakh. Tase stressed that the illegal regime pursues a policy of using the natural resources of the region, plunders them. As a result of the activity of the Kapan Mining and Processing Enterprise in Armenia itself, the Araz River is greatly polluted. The expert stressed that military exercises conducted in the occupied Azerbaijani territories also cause big damage to the environment of the Nagorno-Karabakh region. 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: @FDolukhanov Baku, Azerbaijan, Oct. 26 Trend: Azerbaijani Foreign Minister Elmar Mammadyarov met with Rashid Khalikov, the Assistant Secretary-General of the UN for Humanitarian Partnerships with the Middle East and Central Asia on the sidelines of the VI Baku International Humanitarian Forum, the Azerbaijani Foreign Ministry said in a statement. Rashid Khalikov expressed his satisfaction with participation at the Baku Humanitarian Forum and thanked for the high level organization of this international gathering. Underlining that today Azerbaijan is an emerging donor country the UN official praised the activities of Azerbaijan in the sphere of humanitarian assistance and especially noted in this regard the assistance of Azerbaijan to UNRWA and Indonesia recently. Minister Elmar Mammadyarov noting the active participation of Azerbaijan within the humanitarian projects of the UN, stressed that Azerbaijan has emerged as a donor country from aid receiving country. In this respect, he informed his interlocutor on the role and humanitarian and aid to development projects of Azerbaijans International Development Agency (AIDA) of MFA of Azerbaijan. The sides had exchange of views on existing cooperative relations between Azerbaijan and UN Office for Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) and future prospects for development of these relations. Baku, Azerbaijan, Oct. 26 Trend: Foreign Minister Elmar Mammadyarov received the Speaker of the House of Representatives of Uruguay Jorge Gandini on the sidelines of VI Baku International Humanitarian Forum, the Azerbaijani Foreign Ministry said in a statement. Minister Elmar Mammadyarov greeted the official from Uruguay and spoke about the developing relations of Azerbaijan with Latin American states over the last years, including Uruguay. Expressing satisfaction with his first visit to Azerbaijan, speaker of the House of Representatives of Uruguay underlined the importance of Baku Humanitarian Forum for exchange of views on the issues of international importance, in particular the intercultural dialogue issues. He stated the interest of Uruguay in developing relations with Azerbaijan. The sides underlined that there is a huge potential for the development of cooperation relations between Azerbaijan and Uruguay and discussed the cooperation issues in the economic sphere. The activities of interparliamentary friendship groups were highly appreciated in the development of relations between the two countries. Briefing his interlocutor about the negotiation process on the settlement of the Armenia-Azerbaijan conflict, Minister Elmar Mammadyarov stressed that the Armenian armed forces should be withdrawn from all occupied territories of Azerbaijan for ensuring the lasting peace and cooperation in the region. The sides also exchanged their views on other issues of mutual interest. From now until Election Day, The Brian Lehrer Show is hosting a series called 30 Issues in 30 Days. The idea is to dive deep on one issue a day to give voters a sense of what candidates are saying about the policies that affect their lives. This week the series is looking at how Democrats would try to change policy if they won Congress. Todays issue: Paid Family Leave. Ivanka Trump made paid maternity leave her thing when her dad got elected, mandating early child care should not be the luxury of a fortunate few. Some observers portrayed her as a moderating force, equipped with the maternal power to soothe the often impulsive demands of her father. [Its] going to make a lot of people very happy, a lot of moms very happy, the President cooed about his daughters plan. But two years into Trumps presidency, paid federal family leave legislation has yet to be passed. What is Americas family leave policy now? Out of 193 countries in the United Nations, only a few do not have a national paid parental leave law: New Guinea, Suriname, a few South Pacific island nations and the United States. What the U.S. does offer is, well, very stingy. The Family and Medical Leave Act was passed in 1993 and it mandates that employers give eligible employees 12 weeks of unpaid leave to attend to pressing life matters, like a new baby or a sick relative. The issue iswell first, its unpaidand it doesnt even apply to all workers. A worker is only eligible for their no-pay time off if theyve been an employee for over a year, and they have to work in a business with more than 50 employees. Only three statesNew Jersey, California, Rhode Island, and New Yorkcurrently offer paid family and medical leave. (New York started this year. Why does the issue matter in November? In many ways family leave is an issue whose time has come, and some form of it is likely to pass next year. What kind of family leave is passed, and how its paid for, comes down to the party in power. This year Senator Marco Rubio (R-Fla.) proposed the Republican version of the legislation, which Ivanka Trump endorsed. Contrary to Ivankas original proposal, which took money from state unemployment insurance, the Rubio plan would allow people to get parental leave by collecting early Social Security benefits. Later in life, those same people would have to delay the date they receive Social Security to offset the cost. This past summer, when asked about the plan, Ivanka Trump said she was cautiously optimistic and thought the plan could be passed after the midterm elections. Democrats have their own version drafted by Senator Kirsten Gillibrand (D-N.Y.) Her version would not be limited to new parents, but would allow a worker to take paid time off for a number of reasons, like an illness or to take care of a dying parent. It would be financed through payroll taxes. You buy into it like an earned benefit, Senator Gillibrand told Brian Lehrer on Thursday, and your employer matches that investment. It's .2 percent of your income and for New Yorkers thats an average of about 2 dollars a week, a cup of coffee Gillibrand does not agree with taking money from Social Security. We should be strengthening Social Security, not cutting it, Gillibrand said, adding that the Republican plan would overwhelmingly harm women. Women tend to live longer. Social Security is not a great deal of money and if you have to draw it down early you might not have it when you need it, and it might mean you have to work longer. Gillibrand said she would not support the Republican model, and believes over the next year she can get bipartisan support on her plan. I don't think the time has come to compromise. I think it's time to keep advocating for what would be a really vibrant, effective program. For more, listen to Brian Lehrer's segment on the issue here: Loading... Baku, Azerbaijan, Oct. 26 Trend: Azerbaijan's Foreign Minister Elmar Mammadyarov received a delegation of the Republic of Sudan headed by the Minister of Federal Government Chamber Hamid Mohamed Elnour Ahmad on the margins of the VI Baku Humanitarian Forum, the Azerbaijani Foreign Ministry said in a statement. Minister Elmar Mammadyarov noting the existing beneficial cooperation within the international organizations, especially the UN, OIC, NAM as an impetus to developing the relations between the two states, stated his assurance on further strengthening of cooperation between Azerbaijan and Sudan in future. Minister expressed his gratitude to his Sudanese counterpart on just position of the Republic of Sudan on the settlement of the Armenia-Azerbaijan conflict. Minister Hamid Mohamed Elnour Ahmad thanked Minister Mammadyarov for his warm greeting, underlined that Azerbaijan is an important country for Sudan and the principled position of his country on supporting the sovereignty and territorial integrity of Azerbaijan will remain unchanged. Expressing the interest in development of cooperation between the two states in trade and economic fields, Minister Hamid Mohamed Elnour Ahmad especially noted their desire to learn the experience of Azerbaijan in the field of energy and oil production. Minister Elmar Mammadyarov in his turn noted the readiness of Azerbaijan to share experience with Sudan in the areas necessary for this country in the field of energy. The sides also discussed the cooperation opportunities between two states in the fields of agriculture, high technologies, public services and etc. Baku, Azerbaijan, Oct. 26 By Ilhama Isabalayeva - Trend: A round table meeting on the topic Investing in Future: Towards Sustainable and Inclusive Development was held at Azerbaijans ADA University Oct. 26 as part of the 6th Baku International Humanitarian Forum. Speaking at the event, Azerbaijani Foreign Minister Elmar Mammadyarov described the creation of the International Association of Foreign Alumni Association of Azerbaijani Universities as an important step. He reminded that students from many foreign countries study in Azerbaijan. Education of foreign students at the ADA University is not accidental, since this university is recognized in the world, said Mammadyarov. The same can be said about Azerbaijan State Oil and Industry University. In turn, Rector of ADA University Hafiz Pashayev said that 99 students from 40 countries study in the university. He stressed that the university has achieved very good academic success. Held under the slogan Shaping a New World and a New Humanity: Creativity and Human Development, the 6th Baku International Humanitarian Forum that kicked off Oct. 25 brings together 581 delegates from 86 countries and 24 international organizations. Baku, Azerbaijan, Oct. 26 By Matanat Nasibova - Trend: The Baku International Humanitarian Forum is a very serious dialogue platform being held under the patronage of the presidents of Russia and Azerbaijan, and it has achieved international recognition, Deputy Chairman of the Lower House of the Russian Parliament Sergey Neverov told Trend Oct. 26 on the sidelines of the 6th Baku International Humanitarian Forum. He noted that the interest in the Forum is growing, since the pressing issues discussed at this large-scale event are resolved in the future. Global problems, serious challenges that no country can handle on its own are discussed at this global dialogue platform, said Neverov. He pointed to the high level of the Russia-Azerbaijan relations, which are dynamically developing and getting stronger. Touching on the Convention on the Legal Status of the Caspian Sea, signed this year by the Caspian states, he noted the historic significance of this document. I believe it is necessary to ratify this convention between our countries and amend the legislation, he said. This step requires active interaction and detailed discussion of the relevant issues. Held under the slogan Shaping a New World and a New Humanity: Creativity and Human Development, the 6th Baku International Humanitarian Forum that kicked off Oct. 25 brings together 581 delegates from 86 countries and 24 international organizations. Baku, Azerbaijan, Oct. 26 By Fikret Dolukhanov Trend: Russia as the pivotal state of the Collective Security Treaty Organization (CSTO) will fully support the entry into the organization of such a strong partner and friend like Azerbaijan, which has proved its reliability, the Member of the Lower House of Parliament of the Russian Federation Dmitry Savelyev told Trend on the sidelines of the working session entitled Disinformation Policy - a Threat to Stability in the Modern World on Oct. 26 within the VI Baku International Humanitarian Forum. He noted that Azerbaijan is a state that is exerting influence on the stability and peaceful course of events in the region. On the other hand, Savelyev noted that involvement of the CSTO into the process of resolving the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict and the bringing of its settlement up for the discussion on yet another platform would certainly have a positive effect on the negotiation process. Touching upon the statements of Armenia about the unwillingness to admit Azerbaijans entry into the CSTO, the Russian MP stressed that Armenia adversely affects the stability of the CSTO organization itself. Russia, Savelyev said, will stridently pursue the policy of Azerbaijans accession to the CSTO, if official Baku expresses a desire to join the organization. The CSTO is a military-political alliance within the CIS, established on the basis of the Collective Security Treaty, signed in May 1992. The list of members of CSTO includes Russia, Belarus, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Uzbekistan, and Armenia. The validity period of the treaty is extended every five years. The VI International Humanitarian Forum the theme of which is Shaping a New World and a New Humanity: Creativity and Human Development, began its work in Baku Oct. 25. More than 580 people including 416 foreign guests from 86 countries and 24 international organizations participate in this two-day forum. Baku, Azerbaijan, Oct. 26 By Ilhama Isabalayeva - Trend: The tenth anniversary of the Baku Process will contribute to building a new world order, said Abdulaziz Othman Altwaijri, director general of the Islamic Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (ISESCO). He made the remarks at a session Baku Process Advancing Intercultural Dialogue for Human Security, Peace and Sustainable Development: 10 Years Lessons and Perspectives, being held as part of the 6th Baku International Humanitarian Forum on Oct. 26. He said that crisis of trust is observed between the peoples of different countries and around the world, adding that in order to accept diversity, it is necessary to preserve the cultural values of people. He stressed that a way out of the cultural crisis must be found. The security of mankind should be ensured and efforts made for the sake of fraternity, peace and prosperity, so ISESCO wants intercultural dialogue to strengthen, he noted. Held under the slogan Shaping a New World and a New Humanity: Creativity and Human Development, the VI Baku International Humanitarian Forum that kicked off Oct. 25 brings together 581 delegates from 86 countries and 24 international organizations. The Baku Process initiative was launched in 2008 by President of Azerbaijan Ilham Aliyev in order to establish a dialogue between cultures. As part of this initiative, on December 2-3, 2008, the Conference of Ministers of Culture of Europe and its Neighboring Regions took place on the topic Intercultural dialogue as a basis for peace and sustainable development in Europe and its neighboring regions, while the 6th Conference of Culture Ministers of Member States of the Organization of the Islamic Conference (OIC) to ensure the sustainability of the Baku Process was held on October 13-15, 2009. During the 65th session of the UN General Assembly on September 23, 2010, President Ilham Aliyev announced the initiation of the World Forum on Intercultural Dialogue. Baku, Azerbaijan, Oct. 26 Trend: Ambassador Rudolf Michalka, the newly appointed special representative of the OSCE Chairperson-in-Office for the South Caucasus, has met with Chairman of Azerbaijani Parliament Ogtay Asadov, Azerbaijani parliaments website reported. During the meeting, Michalka said he will try for the OSCE to increase its efforts in the settlement of the Armenia-Azerbaijan Nagorno-Karabakh conflict. During the meeting, issues of cooperation between Azerbaijan and the OSCE were discussed. Asadov noted that Azerbaijan attaches special attention to the development of relations with authoritative international organizations, including the OSCE. He expressed hope that the newly appointed special representative of the OSCE Chairperson-in-Office for the South Caucasus will make every effort to deepen cooperation. It was noted at the meeting that important steps are being taken for the development of the East-West as well as the North-South international transport corridors, where Azerbaijan is a participant. Asadov spoke in detail about the Armenia-Azerbaijan Nagorno-Karabakh conflict. Unfortunately, during 25 years of negotiations to resolve the conflict, the OSCE Minsk Group has been unable to present a normal document and show a normal solution, said Asadov. The OSCE Minsk Group should increase its efforts to resolve the conflict. The ambassador said that he is sufficiently aware of the region, Azerbaijan, and the existing conflicts. At the meeting, the sides noted the importance of expanding relations of Azerbaijan with authoritative international organizations, including the OSCE. 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. 26 By Fikret Dolukhanov Trend: Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyevs stance is clearly sounded in the Russian media field and in the international media space, Russian journalist, military expert Igor Korotchenko told Trend. Korotchenko, who is also editor-in-chief of the National Defense Magazine, made the remarks on the sidelines of the session titled Disinformation Policy - Threat to Stability in the Modern World at the 6th Baku International Humanitarian Forum on Oct. 26. However, he stressed that the position of the country's leader cannot fill the entire information spectrum, as it covers the most important, key problems of the country. The structures that deal with information and media issues should take on this role, Korotchenko added. He particularly stressed that Azerbaijan must pay more attention to the fight against fakes and false information that denigrates Azerbaijan and more actively convey its point of view to the Russian public. In this regard, communication with Russian political analysts and media experts is required, Korotchenko said. "Today, information operations are an element of military building and military activity of all advanced, militarily developed countries, he added. It is absolutely normal if Azerbaijan pays more attention to this area, because information is a very powerful weapon, even stronger than military equipment." Korotchenko stressed that information is the weapon that can be used when there is no real, big war. Further development of Azerbaijans capabilities in protecting its information space is required, he said. --- Follow the author on Twitter: @FDolukhanov Baku, Azerbaijan, Oct. 26 By Elchin Mehdiyev - Trend: By hosting such forums as the Baku Forum on Sustainable Development, Azerbaijan proves that it can make great contribution not only in terms of its national interests, but also the interests of the whole world, Vice Speaker of the Azerbaijani Parliament Bahar Muradova said. She made the remarks Oct. 26 as part of the session Interactive Discussion on the Role of Youth, Women, Parliament, Civil Society and Other Stakeholders on the Way of the Implementation of Sustainable Development Goals during the Baku Forum on Sustainable Development. She said Azerbaijan has carried out enough work to achieve the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). Muradova noted that the social orientation of Azerbaijans state budget accelerates the process of achieving these goals. I believe the Parliament of Azerbaijan decently performs its work in this direction, the vice speaker said. Muradova noted that 20 percent of Azerbaijans territory is under occupation, more than a million people have become refugees and IDPs, but the Azerbaijani state is carrying out serious work to improve the situation of refugees and IDPs, and the Parliament also adopted important laws in this direction. She said the condition of refugees and IDPs in Azerbaijan is better than of those in other countries. Held under the slogan Shaping a New World and a New Humanity: Creativity and Human Development, the 6th Baku International Humanitarian Forum that kicked off Oct. 25 brings together 581 delegates from 86 countries and 24 international organizations. Baku, Azerbaijan, Oct.26 Trend: Unfortunately, there is still no international mechanism that would force the aggressor to implement the resolutions adopted by the leading international organization, said Azerbaijans President Ilham Aliyev addressing on Oct.25 the opening of the 6th Baku International Humanitarian Forum held under the slogan Shaping a New World and a New Humanity: Creativity and Human Development. We attach great importance to humanitarian cooperation. These issues are always on the agenda both in a bilateral format with friendly countries and within the framework of international organizations. At the same time, we ourselves are faced with a major humanitarian disaster. A week ago, on 18 October, we celebrated the 27th anniversary of the restoration of the state independence of Azerbaijan. Azerbaijan has been an independent country for only 27 years, and the first days and first years of our independence were very difficult and tragic, said the head of state. President Aliyev noted that the political crisis, internal strife, civil war, economic recession, public disobedience, as well as the aggressive policy pursued by Armenia against Azerbaijan, led to great disasters and hardships. As a result of Armenias aggressive policy, 20 percent of our land is under occupation. Armenia has conducted a policy of ethnic cleansing against our people, more than a million Azerbaijanis have become displaced in their native land. All leading international organizations have adopted decisions and resolutions in connection with this conflict, including the UN Security Council which has adopted four resolutions. These resolutions explicitly state that Armenian armed forces must immediately and unconditionally withdraw from the occupied lands, said the president. Twenty-five years have passed since the adoption of these resolutions. Armenia does not comply with them. Unfortunately, there is still no international mechanism that would force the aggressor to implement the resolutions adopted by the leading international organization. A similar resolution has been adopted by the UN General Assembly. The decisions and resolutions adopted by other international organizations, including the Non-Aligned Movement, the Organization of Islamic Cooperation, the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe, the European Parliament and others, express support for a settlement of the conflict within the territorial integrity of Azerbaijan, said the president. This is the only way of resolving the conflict: the territorial integrity of our country recognized by the international community must be restored, the occupying forces must immediately and unconditionally withdraw from our lands, as indicated in the resolutions of the UN Security Council, and the citizens of Azerbaijan must return to their homes and ancestral lands, noted the head of state. Nagorno-Karabakh is our historical and native land, an integral part of Azerbaijan. The Azerbaijani people have lived, created and built on these lands for centuries. Our historical monuments, place names of cities and villages show that these lands belong to the Azerbaijani people. President Aliyev noted that unfortunately, the aggressor state has destroyed Azerbaijans historical and religious monuments on the occupied lands. The OSCE Fact-Finding and Observation Mission sent to our occupied lands twice confirmed this in its reports. Our mosques and graves have been destroyed, museums have been looted, and an act of cultural genocide has been committed on the occupied lands. In 1992, the Armenians perpetrated the Khojaly genocide. As a result of this heinous war crime, more than 600 innocent civilians, including more than 60 children, were brutally murdered. The Khojaly tragedy is officially recognized as an act of genocide by more than 10 countries of the world. During this genocide, more than a thousand people went missing and nothing is known about their fate, said the president. President Aliyev noted that the Armenia-Azerbaijan Nagorno-Karabakh conflict must be resolved on the basis of the norms and principles of international law. Azerbaijan will never come to terms with this occupation and the territorial integrity of our country must be restored. This is required by historical justice and international law, said the head of state. Baku, Azerbaijan, Oct. 26 By Elchin Mehdiyev - Trend: Friendly relations of Azerbaijan and Turkey arent directed against other countries, Turkish Chief Ombudsman Seref Malkoc said. He made the remarks Oct. 26 as part of the session Interactive discussion on the role of youth, women, parliament, civil society and other stakeholders on the way of the implementation of Sustainable Development Goals during the Baku Forum on Sustainable Development as part of the 6th Baku International Humanitarian Forum. The ombudsman noted that Armenians occupied the Nagorno-Karabakh region of Azerbaijan and seven adjacent regions. As a result of the Armenia-Azerbaijan Nagorno-Karabakh conflict, there are more than one million refugees and IDPs in Azerbaijan, he said. Turkey opened the doors to three million Syrian refugees, he noted. Some of their family members died in the war, this is a tragedy. Turkey is taking steps to solve this problem. He added that fraternal relations exist between Azerbaijan and Turkey. The presidents of both countries demonstrate close relations in all spheres, and these friendly relations arent directed against other countries, the ombudsman said. Held under the slogan Shaping a New World and a New Humanity: Creativity and Human Development, the 6th Baku International Humanitarian Forum that kicked off Oct. 25 brought together 581 delegates from 86 countries and 24 international organizations. From now until Election Day, The Brian Lehrer Show is hosting a series called 30 Issues in 30 Days. The idea is to dive deep on one issue a day to give voters a sense of what candidates are saying about the policies that affect their lives. This week the series is looking at how Democrats would try to change policy if they won Congress. Todays issue: the Federal Role in Affordable Housing. This year the White House attempted to slash funding for the Department of Housing and Urban Development by $8.8 billion. New Yorks very own NYCHA braced for major jettisoninga 66% cut to big-ticket capital projects and an 11% trim to day-to-day operations funds, according to The Daily News. In a tweet, HUD Secretary Ben Carson defended the budget slash, saying it would move people towards self-sufficiency. Though Congress struck down the budget proposal and voted to keep HUD fully funded, the proposed cut is consistent with how the federal government has approached the issue in the last few decades. There has not been enough investment to maintain public housing. Instead theres been a retrenchment. It just hasnt been a priority, said former HUD secretary Julian Castro on the Brian Lehrer Show Friday. But now, some politicians are pushing to make it a priority with the top Democratic contenders for a 2020 presidential run rolling out their own plans to fix Americas affordable housing crises. How has Ben Carson approached his job as HUD secretary so far? Secretary Carson has so far mostly changed the tone and emphasis of housing policy by pulling HUD away from its traditional role of improving housing conditions for low-income families said Jenny Schuetz, who studies housing policy at the Brookings Institution, a think tank. Secretary Carson is skeptical that HUD (or the federal government more generally) should provide a safety net for families who need help. In his tenure, Carson has sent mixed messages, particularly on the critical issue of enforcing the Fair Housing Act, which requires any city, county, or state that receives federal housing funds to work actively to undo patterns of racial segregation. Before becoming HUD Secretary he said Fair Housing enforcement was social engineering. But more recently, Carson announced he wants to spur the creation of mixed-income multi-family households by rolling back regulations and zoning rulesa mishmash of liberal and conservative thinking that has some observers confused about intent and outcome. If Carson continues to passively undermine HUDs mission and fails to provide clear direction for the agency, said Schuetz, he will undermine past progress. Failing to address housing affordability will have very real human costs, as well as leading to less productive workers and a weaker US economy, Why does the issue matter in the midterms? Housing, and who pays for it, could become a more central issue in Congress next year if Democrats win control of the House. The Democrats infrastructure proposal, which is a top priority for the party, allocates $70 billion to upgrade NYCHA and public housing across the country. Congressman Hakeem Jeffries (NY-08), who supports the proposal, said upgrading living conditions in public housing is a top priority, and promised that if the Democrats win the House NYCHA will get all of the funding support it needs. (How Jeffries will keep that promise if Republicans still control all other branches of the federal government remains an open question.) There are more than $20 billion unmet in capital repair and maintenance needs that have created a situation where NYCHA residents are living in unacceptable conditions, Jeffries told City & State. We have to get that fixed. And beyond... Three of the most likely 2020 Democratic presidential candidatesSen. Kamala Harris (D-CA), Sen. Cory Booker (D-NJ), and Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-MA)have revealed their own policy proposals on how to fix Americas affordable housing crisis. Though their plans differ, the commonality of their effort underscores the fact that rent prices are on voters minds. Diane Yentel, president of the National Low Income Housing Coalition said the housing crisis has reached historic heights. For every 100 of the lowest income families, there are just 35 homes affordable and available to them. Yentel hopes the plans by the three prominent politicians will spark a national conversation about the governments willingness to invest in solutions to solve the crisis. She also has faith in the nuts and bolts of the policy: Senator Warrens bill would create 3 million units of deeply affordable housing and lower rents for everyone by 10%, and Senators Bookers and Harriss would help bridge the significant gap between what people earn and what it costs to rent a modest apartment. For more, listen to Brian Lehrer's segment on this issue here: Loading... Baku, Azerbaijan, Oct. 26 By Jani Babayeva Trend: It is a great honor for me to participate in the III Summer Youth Olympic Games in Buenos Aires, the Azerbaijani gymnast Samad Mammadli said after the ceremony of honoring of the Azerbaijani athletes - the winners and participants of the III Summer Youth Olympic Games. The event was held at the National Olympic Committee (NOC) of Azerbaijan. Samad Mammadli has taken part in the Youth Olympic Games in artistic gymnastics competitions. Unfortunately, I didnt perform at the Youth Olympic Games in Buenos Aires as good as I wished. I made some mistakes, but I tried very hard. It was probably the excitement that affected my performance in many respects. But, despite this, the participation in the Youth Olympic Games is a chance and great experience for me," the gymnast said. Samad Mammadli also thanked the Azerbaijan Gymnastics Federation for the conditions created for the athletes. "The Azerbaijan Gymnastics Federation provides great support to us, all the conditions have been created for us, we have a wonderful gymnastic hall," Mammadli said. Baku, Azerbaijan, Oct. 26 Trend: Azerbaijan`s Ministry of Transport, Communications and High Technologies has installed its own pavilion at the Heydar Aliyev Center as part of the 6th Baku Humanitarian Forum, which showcases innovative products and services and successful start-up applications. Vice-president of the Heydar Aliyev Foundation Leyla Aliyeva viewed the pavilion. Minister of Transport, Communications and High Technologies Ramin Guluzade informed vice-president of the Heydar Aliyev Foundation Leyla Aliyeva of the pavilion. Baku, Azerbaijan, Oct. 26 By Ilhama Isabalayeva Trend: The Baku International Humanitarian Forum is enjoying interest at the global level, President of the Azerbaijan National Academy of Sciences (ANAS), Academician Akif Alizade said at round table discussions on the theme "Investing in Future: Towards Sustainable and Inclusive Development". He said the forum is being held at the initiative of President Ilham Aliyev. "The main driving force of social progress is science, which can help solve many problems of society," Alizade added. The 21st century is called the 'age of physics'. However, biology began to increasingly acquire value, and the number of researches this area has increased by many times." "Serious advances are expected in molecular biology in the coming years. Today, the development of ICT exerts great influence on our lives. Around the world, less attention has been paid to the humanities, but the interest in the technical sciences has increased," the president of ANAS said. The 6th International Humanitarian Forum, the theme of which is Shaping a New World and a New Humanity: Creativity and Human Development, began its work in Baku Oct. 25. More than 580 people, including 416 foreign guests from 86 countries and 24 international organizations, participate in the two-day forum. Baku, Azerbaijan, Oct. 26 By Ilhama Isabalayeva Trend: Establishing relations with representatives of the Azerbaijani intelligentsia living abroad is extremely important, Fuad Muradov, Chairman of Azerbaijans State Committee on Work with Diaspora said. He was speaking at a roundtable on Investing in the Future: Towards Sustainable and Inclusive Development held as part of the VI International Humanitarian Forum. Muradov noted that one of the main goals of the humanitarian forum is to establish a dialogue between people, adding that one of the main tasks ahead is the establishment and development of ties with diaspora organizations. "For this purpose, it is very important to establish relations with representatives of the Azerbaijani intelligentsia living abroad. We need that our compatriots who live abroad would teach their children the Azerbaijani language and history of Azerbaijan," he said. The VI International Humanitarian Forum the theme of which is Shaping a New World and a New Humanity: Creativity and Human Development, began its work in Baku Oct. 25. More than 580 people including 416 foreign guests from 86 countries and 24 international organizations participate in this two-day forum. Baku, Azerbaijan, Oct. 26 By Matanat Nasibova - Trend: Azerbaijan's success is obvious and economic indicators confirm the progress made by the country, Kazakhstan's Human Rights Ombudsman Askar Shakirov told Trend at the Baku Forum on Sustainable Development, which was held as part of the VI Baku International Humanitarian Forum on Oct. 26. "The significance of the Baku Forum cannot be overestimated, since the Sustainable Development Goals are a global program of worldwide scope. Now it has already acquired legal forms and is one of the indicators of a state's development," Shakirov said. Shakirov stressed that holding such a powerful forum in Baku is a landmark event. "Azerbaijan's success and progress are obvious, and even a quick look at Baku, as well as economic indicators confirm this, which is very impressive," Shakirov added. Kazakhstan and Azerbaijan very effectively use their advantages, and first of all the hydrocarbon resources and geographical location. "There is stability in Kazakhstan and Azerbaijan. It contributes to the improvement of welfare and sustainable development, therefore, in this sense, our countries are very similar. Kazakhstan has already achieved certain sustainable development goals thanks to the implementation of state programs with the direct initiative of President Nursultan Nazarbayev," the ombudsman said. The VI International Humanitarian Forum the theme of which is Shaping a New World and a New Humanity: Creativity and Human Development, began its work in Baku on Oct. 25. More than 580 people including 416 foreign guests from 86 countries and 24 international organizations, participate in this two-day forum. The Baku Forum on Sustainable Development is held under the slogan "Strengthening the Regional Partnership on Implementation of Sustainable Development Goals". The forum participants discuss the role of youth, women, legislative bodies, civil society on the path of achieving sustainable development goals. Baku, Azerbaijan, Oct. 26 By Elchin Mehdiyev - Trend: Population census will be held in Azerbaijan in October next year, Chairman of Azerbaijans State Statistics Committee Tahir Budagov said Oct. 26 at the Baku Forum on Sustainable Development, held as part of the VI Baku International Humanitarian Forum. He said that preparatory work is underway. Budagov noted that on October 1-10 this year, a test population census was held in Gabala district. The information obtained in this district is being processed, and at the same time, software is being tested, he said. Earlier, President of Azerbaijan Ilham Aliyev signed a decree on holding the next population census on October 1-10, 2019. The preparatory work, the census itself, the processing and publication of the results will be carried out by Azerbaijans State Statistics Committee. Baku, Azerbaijan, Oct. 26 Trend: Today the Baku International Humanitarian Forum is appreciated on all continents and countries thanks to Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyevs successful policy, chairman of the board of Azerbaijans AZERTAC news agency Aslan Aslanov told reporters in Baku on Oct. 26. He stressed that the Baku International Humanitarian Forum is a global platform where current issues and problems are discussed. "This forum, which is an initiative of the presidents of Azerbaijan and Russia, originates from the idea of bringing together famous scientists, politicians, public figures, experts, economists, journalists from around the world has fully justified itself over the past period," Aslanov added. The scope of coverage of the forum is expanding and interest in it is gradually growing, he said. "Azerbaijan has become a center for inter-civilization dialogue and the world is already accepting that, Aslanov said. We can proudly say that as a result of the successful policy of President Aliyev, the Baku International Humanitarian Forum is appreciated on all continents and countries. Interest in this forum is great, he said. You know that the plenary sessions, as well as working sessions on various topics are held during the forum. The threat to stability in the world, which is created as a result of fake news, the policy of disinformation were discussed during today's working session." Stressing that journalism is undergoing great changes, Aslanov said that the competition between traditional media and online journalism, willy-nilly, creates new challenges, problems and threats. One of these threats is artful use of fake news by some forces using social networks, disinformation to launch the information war, spreading of false information against various countries and peoples, Aslanov said. Today, there is an even greater need to intensify the struggle of traditional media against disinformation policy. Azerbaijan is also one of the countries suffering from disinformation, he said. For example, the Armenian armed forces occupied 20 percent of Azerbaijani lands, destroyed our monuments, cemeteries, Aslanov added. However, shamelessly spreading false information about Azerbaijan, they are trying to mislead the world community. The Baku International Humanitarian Forum and other similar international events are also important from the point of view of exposing such malevolent forces." Held under the slogan Shaping a New World and a New Humanity: Creativity and Human Development, the 6th Baku International Humanitarian Forum that kicked off Oct. 25 brought together 581 delegates from 86 countries and 24 international organizations. Baku, Azerbaijan, Oct. 26 By Jani Babayeva & Azad Hasanli - Trend: The trade turnover between Azerbaijan and Kazakhstan in 2018 is expected to show growth of 90-95 percent, Ambassador of Kazakhstan to Azerbaijan Beibit Issabayev told reporters. In the first nine months of 2018, the trade turnover between Azerbaijan and Kazakhstan grew by 70 percent compared to the same period of 2018, the ambassador said. "During the visit of the President of Kazakhstan Nursultan Nazarbayev to Azerbaijan in April 2017, the heads of the two states decided to set a task to double the turnover by the end of 2019. But by the end 2018, we expect the trade between the countries to grow by 90-95 percent. Therefore, we can say that we have completed this task ahead of time," Issabayev said. The ambassador also mentioned the upcoming meeting of the intergovernmental commission between Azerbaijan and Kazakhstan at the end of October. As the he noted, the main issues on the agenda will be the discussion of the progress of the work on the task set by the heads of state during the April visit of the Kazakh president, a report on the implementation of the measures reflected in the minutes of the previous meeting and a discussion of the challenges facing the governments of both countries for the period of 2018-2019. The main areas of cooperation between the two countries are the transit and logistics, agriculture, energy, chemical industry and other sectors. Baku, Azerbaijan, Oct. 26 By Matanat Nasibova - Trend: Sustainable economic and social development has always been a priority for Azerbaijan, the Deputy Economy Minister of Azerbaijan Sevinj Hasanova told Trend at the Baku Forum on Sustainable Development, which was held as part of the VI Baku International Humanitarian Forum on Oct. 26. Azerbaijan has implemented various programs to reduce poverty and achieved good results, Hasanova said. The events of recent decades show how sustainable development is important in general, including for further improving the well-being of the population, and therefore, the UN adopted the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) in 2015, Hasanova said. Speaking about the significance of the Forum, the deputy minister noted that it brings together participants from the region's countries to discuss the results of the three-year phase of the SDGs' implementation. "In my opinion, the Forum is a real platform for effective interaction and discussion of global issues of the social and economic agenda," she added. The VI International Humanitarian Forum dedicated to "Shaping a New World and a New Humanity: Creativity and Human Development", was launched in Baku on Oct. 25. The two-day forum is attended by 581 people, including 416 foreign guests from 86 countries and 24 international organizations. Baku, Azerbaijan, Oct. 26 Trend: The Ministry of Innovation Development of Uzbekistan signed a $40 million agreement for creation of the University of the Future, Uzbek media reported. The document was signed with the City University of Hong Kong, Udacity, Iversity and Open Polytechnic of New Zealand. Foreign partners, as part of the document, will invest their own funds worth $40 million in the project to create a remote higher educational institution, University of the Future, in Uzbekistan. The project provides for the introduction into the educational process of advanced pedagogical and information technologies, the latest achievements of science and technology. For this, the necessary conditions will be created for the functioning of the electronic information and educational environment, which includes electronic information resources (in Uzbek and Russian) and which provides full education programs for about 50,000 students per year, regardless of their location. When assessing students knowledge, their results will be received and stored in a database in New Zealand. This factor will serve as a guarantor to prevent corruption during the exams. In addition, at the main office and branches of the university, certification exams will be held with the provision of verification of the students identity and control of the examination procedure. For this, a system will be used that passed many years of testing in New Zealand. Federal investigators have identified a suspect in connection with the string of mail bombs sent to prominent Democrats and CNN this week. Cesar Sayoc Jr., 56, was arrested in Fort Lauderdale, Florida on Friday morning, authorities say. He is a registered Republican with a lengthy criminal history, including a past arrest for making a bomb threat in 2002. A longtime resident of Florida, Sayoc was born in Brooklyn and lived in Mill Basin for a brief time in 1987, public records show. During the 1980s, he worked at a gentleman's club in New York called String Fellas, according to the Albany Times Union. He appears to be an ardent supporter of President Trumpregularly attending rallies for the president and threatening his enemies on social media. A white van that apparently belonged to Sayoc, which was seized by authorities following the arrest, was also covered in pro-Trump decals. The van is covered with President Trump pictures and stickers @NBC6 pic.twitter.com/pdVOTwE36S Dan Krauth (@DanNBC6) October 26, 2018 A closer view of the van shows several images of the president riding a tank and giving the thumbs up sign, along with photos of Democrats and left-leaning media figures in gun sights. One stickers says "Dishonest Media" and "CNN Sucks," and features an image of Van Jones with a target on his body. @CBSMiami I have some pictures of this van I saw him at a stoplight one day and thought is was very strange. pic.twitter.com/VWUwznJK8k Mahmud mohamed (@thereal_mo01) October 26, 2018 A Twitter account that appears to belong to Sayoc has repeatedly issued threats to the recipients of the explosive devicesincluding the Clintons, Joe Biden, Eric Holder, and Maxine Watersalongside other graphic content. The account also frequently tweets angrily about CNN, once writing that they are "fraud puppets" who "will just vanish." Hey CNN all BS con job fraud puppets media blocked,Banned,Barred from all of our properties feel lucky make our day . You will just vanish pic.twitter.com/BOTOk59Rfs Cesar Altieri (@hardrock2016) October 12, 2018 The arrest comes hours after two more suspicious devicesintended for New Jersey Senator Corey Booker and former Director of National Intelligence James Clapperwere intercepted by authorities. Another possible mail bomb was reportedly found at the Sacramento office of Senator Kamala Harris around 11:00 a.m. on Friday, bringing the total number of suspicious packages up to 13. The device meant for Clapper was reportedly addressed to CNN's midtown headquarters, which was evacuated earlier this week, after a similar package addressed to former CIA Director John Brennan was spotted in the mail room. The first package sent to CNN also contained an unidentified white powder, police said. According to an NYPD investigator who spoke with the Daily Beast, the bombs were mixed with bits of metal and glass along with black powder. The devices also reportedly included an image featuring a right-wing meme showing an ISIS flag with the "Git 'Er Done" catchphrase, surrounded by silhouettes of naked women. The explosives did not detonate, and no one was injured. On Friday morning, President Trump appeared to suggest that the serial bombing campaign was intended as a media distraction, claiming on Twitter that the "'Bomb' stuff" was depressing Republican voter turnout. Republicans are doing so well in early voting, and at the polls, and now this Bomb stuff happens and the momentum greatly slows - news not talking politics. Very unfortunate, what is going on. Republicans, go out and vote! Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) October 26, 2018 The Justice Department will have a press conference at 2:30 p.m. today. This is an ongoing story and we'll update as more information becomes available. Baku, Azerbaijan, Oct. 26 Trend: The Center for Chemical Technologies will be established in Uzbekistan, the Uzbek media reported. Uzbek President Shavkat Mirziyoyev signed the Decree on Measures for Accelerated Development of Chemical Industry in Uzbekistan. The Center will be created in collaboration with the Korea Research Institute of Chemical Technology (KRICT). The Uzbek president instructed the State Committee for Investments, Uzkimyosanoat JSC and the Foreign Ministry to ensure attraction of a $50 million Eximbank loan through South Koreas Economic Development Cooperation Fund (EDCF) and grant funds to organize the Centers activities. Uzkimyosanoat JSC, together with the State Committee for Investments and the Finance Ministry, has been instructed within two months to submit to the Uzbek Cabinet of Ministers proposals on the organization of the Centers activities and define sources of financing its activities. Baku, Azerbaijan, Oct.26 By Leman Zeynalova Trend: OPEC+ has achieved a conformity level of 111% in September 2018, according to the Joint Ministerial Monitoring Committee (JMMC). The Joint Ministerial Monitoring Committee (JMMC) reviewed the monthly report prepared by its Joint Technical Committee (JTC), including the overall conformity levels of the countries participating in the Declaration of Cooperation, during the month of September 2018, as well as the short-term prospects of the global oil market, said a message from OPEC. The JMMC noted that countries participating in the Declaration of Cooperation achieved a conformity level of 111 percent in September 2018, which shows significant progress towards the goal set at the 4th OPEC and non-OPEC Ministerial Meeting of 23 June 2018. The Committee expressed overall satisfaction with the collective performance of Member Countries in the month of September. The Committee also reviewed recent market fundamentals, which showed a very comfortable supply level relative to demand. The committee however expressed concerns about rising inventories in recent weeks and also noted looming macro-economic uncertainties which may require changing course. The JMMC directed the JTC to continue to monitor oil fundamentals and market conditions as well as conformity levels in its efforts to maintain market balance. It further directed the JTC to continue to study the 2019 outlook and present options on 2019 production levels to prevent reemergence of a market imbalance. The next meeting of the JMMC is scheduled to take place on 11 November 2018 in Abu Dhabi, UAE. Earlier, OPEC and several other non-OPEC producers reached an agreement to extend the production deal for a further nine months. This would shift the expiration date of the agreement from March to the end of 2018. The agreement is on the same terms as those agreed in November last year. --- Follow the author on Twitter: @Lyaman_Zeyn Ashgabat, Turkmenistan, Oct. 26 By Huseyn Hasanov Trend: Turkmen Oil Products (Turkmennebitonumleri), which carries out wholesale and retail trade of oil products in the country, has refuted information about a possible increase in gasoline prices in 2019, the Turkmen Oil (Turkmennebit) State Concern said in a message. Some foreign media reported that car owners in Turkmenistan began to actively save gasoline in additional tanks in light of the rumors about a possible rise in price for fuel from the beginning of 2019, the message said. The last time prices for gasoline in Turkmenistan went up on February 1, 2018. The cost of the most demanded AI 95 gasoline increased from 1 Turkmen manat to 1.5 manats per 1 liter. The official rate of the Turkmen manat against one US dollar has remained at 3.50 manats since January 2015. Presently, gasoline in Turkmenistan is produced at oil refineries in Turkmenbashi and Seydi. The produced gasoline fully meets the needs of the domestic market. A part of the gasoline is exported. At the end of 2018, it is planned to commission a new plant for production of liquid fuel from natural gas with an annual capacity of 600,000 tons of gasoline and 12,000 tons of diesel fuel, which meet the Euro 5 requirements. Baku, Azerbaijan, Oct. 26 By Leman Zeynalova Trend: The Russian global energy company Gazprom is always open to further dialogue with the Azerbaijani side, Deputy Chairman of Gazproms Board Alexander Medvedev said in an interview with the "Gazprom" magazine. "We have excellent working relations with the Azerbaijani side, he said. Gas is supplied to Azerbaijan within an existing contract. As for the prospects for further cooperation, we are always open to further dialogue." Speaking about the possibility of a competition between Russian gas and Azerbaijani gas, Medvedev stressed that there is enough space in the market for all suppliers. As for the competition of Russian gas and gas from other suppliers in the European market, I can say that own production of Europe is falling, while import requirements are steadily growing, he said. There is enough space in the market for all suppliers." The strongest competitors will be those who are able to offer consumers the most commercially attractive terms of supply, he added. Russian company Gazprom and the Azerbaijani state oil company SOCAR discussed the issues concerning gas supplies to Azerbaijan. These issues were discussed during a meeting between Chairman of the Board of Gazprom Alexey Miller and SOCAR President Rovnag Abdullayev. Gazprom has supplied 1.15 billion cubic meters of gas to Azerbaijan since November 22, 2017 when gas exports to the country were resumed. The sides discussed cooperation prospects in this direction. SOCAR is Azerbaijan's biggest oil and gas company. The company's activity includes exploration, production, processing, transportation and sale of oil, natural gas and gas condensate. In October 2009, Gazprom Export LLC and SOCAR signed a medium-term contract to supply gas from Azerbaijan in 2010-2015 through the Shirvanovka point at the Russian-Azerbaijani border. During the period, 5.4 billion cubic meters of Azerbaijani gas were bought. In 2015, a subsidiary of Gazprom Export LLC, Gazprom Schweiz AG, supplied gas to Azerbaijan Methanol Company (AzMeCo). Under the contract, 107.4 billion cubic meters of gas were supplied. Gazprom Export LLC and SOCAR signed a contract on gas supply to Azerbaijan on Nov. 21, 2017. --- Follow the author on Twitter: @Lyaman_Zeyn Gazprom built 95.5% of the Power of Siberia gas pipeline, including welding and laying of 2,064 km of pipes from Yakutia to the border with China, the company said in its press release on Friday, according to TASS. "2,064 km of pipes were welded and laid on the segment of the Power of Siberia gas pipeline from Yakutia to the Russia-China border, which totals 95.5% of its length. Construction readiness of the two-line underwater crossing of the Power of Siberia over the Amur River is 90%. Pipe pulling in both tunnels was completed. Construction of Atamanskaya border compressor station continues," Gazprom says. Baku, Azerbaijan, Oct. 26 By Huseyn Veliyev - Trend: Azerbaijans Ministry of Transport, Communications and High Technologies is working to expand the activity of technology parks and create new industrial facilities in the sector of high technologies, Transport, Communications and High Technologies Minister Ramin Guluzade said Oct. 26 at the presentation of Azerbaijans innovative development project. He said a business incubation center has been established under Azerbaijans High Tech Park LLC to stimulate innovation activity, and more than 30 start-ups currently operate in the center. In addition, the Research Center for High Technologies under the Ministry is currently working on priority areas in nanotechnology, he noted. To support innovative entrepreneurship, the State Fund for Development of Information Technologies of the Ministry acts as an investor of successful projects. In this direction, 117 projects were financed following six grant competitions held by the Fund. He added that many countries are preparing programs, strategies and road maps for the innovative development of the economy. For the preparation of these documents, it is important to attract international and local experts, he said. It is for this reason that we highly appreciate the work of UNDP, which provided support in the preparation of Azerbaijans innovation road map. UNDP plays a special role in global sustainable development. Baku, Azerbaijan, Oct. 26 Trend: Bakcell, the First Mobile Operator and the Fastest Mobile Internet Provider of Azerbaijan, has yet again rewarded its Ulduzum partners in order to express the Companys appreciation of their cooperation. Along with offering a wide range of discounts and services to its own subscribers, Bakcell pays a special attention to rewarding the employees of the Ulduzum program partners. Thus, since the year 2016, Bakcell implements a special program to stimulate representatives of Ulduzum partners network, as they are the ambassadors of this loyalty program at the points of sale. Participants of the program are collecting points from each Ulduzum redemption, and exchange these points into gifts by using the specially created portal. Until now, representatives of 133 Ulduzum partners have joined the program and more than 900 users have already received valuable prizes from Bakcell. Moreover, all partners representatives who joined the Stimulation program were able to participate in the special campaign and get a chance to win a trip to Dubai, iPhone smartphone and other exciting prizes. As a result of the campaign, the main prize being a trip to Dubai went to Tahir Uzunalov representative of FLO shoe stores chain. The prize package includes a visa, round trip ticket, accommodation, transfers, travel insurance as well as interactive tours in United Arab Emirates. Im very thankful to Bakcell and Ulduzum for organizing this campaign for the representatives of partner network. This demonstrates that Ulduzum program cares not only about the customers but about the program partners as well. said Tahir Uzunalov (winner of trip to Dubai). FLO chain of stores provides opportunities to the Ulduzum users to benefit from special discounts as of the year 2016. The customers of FLO stores are very pleased with our partnership with Ulduzum. Thanks to this cooperation, we have achieved the increase in the customer loyalty and gained many new customers says Akbar Adigozalov, Brand Manager of FLO. With almost 3 million users and more than 250 active partners, Ulduzum has proved itself to be one of the best customer service programs not only in Azerbaijan, but in the whole Middle East, Central and Southern Asia and Northern Africa region, by offering a wide range of discounts and services to the subscribers and promoting corporate loyalty among own customers and customers of the programs partner companies. More information about the program is available at www.ulduzum.az *** About Bakcell Bakcell, the First Mobile Operator and Leading Mobile Internet Provider of Azerbaijan, offers a wide range of products and Services to users of modern mobile communications Services. The company provides its customers with the best-in-class 4G mobile internet. The 4G services of Bakcell are already available in Baku and Absheron peninsula, as well as central parts of more than 40 regions of Azerbaijan. With more than 7000 base stations, Bakcell network covers 99% of the population and 93% of the land area of the country (except for the occupied territories). In 2017, Bakcell network has been recognized as the Best in Test in Azerbaijan by P3 Communications, being one of the most trusted independent authorities in mobile benchmarking. Bakcell has been recognized as the Fastest Mobile Network in Azerbaijan. This award, presented by world-famous Ookla company, recognizes Bakcells commitment to delivering fastest speeds to customers all across Azerbaijan. For more information about Bakcell products and services, please visit www.bakcell.com or call 555. For press releases please see www.bakcell.com/az/news (or www.bakcell.com/en/news for press releases in English). If you are not a Bakcell subscriber, but wish to find out about Bakcell and its products and services, please call 012 498 89 89. Baku, Azerbaijan, Oct. 26 Trend: Representatives of the World Bank and South Koreas KT (Korea Telecom) Corporation offered Uzbekistan to cooperate in improving the transport system in Tashkent, the press service of the Tashkent City Administration said in a statement. At a meeting with transport experts of the World Bank, a grant for a pre-project survey of the transport network and joint study of innovative methods for obtaining and processing data about passenger mobility were discussed. In turn, the South Korean corporation proposed to introduce an automated payment system in public transport in Tashkent that will allow passengers not to use cash when traveling in buses, subway or taxi. Representatives of the KT Corporation noted that they implemented this system in almost all cities of South Korea. As part of the project, they are also ready to provide Tashkent with points of sale of payment cards for public transport, create points for topping up the balance, as well as data processing centers. Baku, Azerbaijan, Oct. 26 Trend: The Kazakhstan-Uzbek consultations on consular issues have been held in Astana, Podrobno.uz reported Oct. 26. The Kazakhstan delegation was headed by Tauboldy Umbetbaev, Director of the Consular Services Department, and the Uzbek delegation was headed by the Deputy Director of the Consular and Legal Department Fariddin Nasriev. "During the consultations held in a constructive atmosphere, the parties discussed in detail the state of bilateral relations in the consular sphere, which resulted in the signing of the relevant protocol," the press service of the Foreign Ministry of Kazakhstan said in a statement. One of the issues raised during the bilateral meetings was the introduction of a Silk Road visa, which will contribute to the development of tourism sectors of the two countries. Earlier, the Kazakhstans Senator Dariga Nazarbayeva proposed to create an Asian Schengen - Silk viza. " It is important not only to stimulate the development of tourism of Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan, but also visiting of tourists from far abroad to our states who want to see all attractions of Central Asia at once, and to this end a unified visa is necessary," said Nazarbayeva. In addition, the chairman of the committee stated the necessity of creation of a transparent, open and friendly border. Ashgabat, Turkmenistan, Oct. 26 By Huseyn Hasanov Trend: The sixth meeting of the subcommittee on energy of the Turkmen-Chinese intergovernmental cooperation committee was held in Ashgabat, the Turkmen Foreign Ministry said in a message. The event addressed the development of mutually beneficial cooperation in the fields of oil and gas, chemical and power industries. The parties analyzed the current state of relations and reviewed the implementation of joint agreements in the energy sector, the message read. The subcommittee was attended by leaders and representatives of ministries, sectoral departments and private organizations of the two states in the field of oil and gas. The Chinese delegation was headed by the deputy head of the state energy administration of the Peoples Republic of China, Li Fanzhun. The sides stressed that the Turkmen-Chinese energy cooperation has a positive impact on the processes of economic integration in Central Asia and is an important factor in strengthening regional security and sustainable development. China has implemented a number of major projects in the gas sector. In particular, CNPC company is taking part in the development of the Bagtyyarlyk contract territory and construction of facilities on the Galkynysh giant gas field. Since 2009, China has been importing Turkmen gas with the prospect of increasing the volume of gas imports to 65 billion cubic meters of fuel per year. According to data for 2016, about forty enterprises with Chinese capital were operating, and about 70 investment projects totalling more than $4 billion and 2.3 billion yuans have been registered in Turkmenistan. Federal authorities have confirmed that Florida resident Cesar Sayoc was arrested on Friday for allegedly sending more than a dozen mail bombs to high-ranking Democratic officials, celebrities, and media organizations in the last week. Sayoc, 56, has been charged with five federal crimes, including interstate transportation of an explosive, illegal mailing of an explosive, and threats against a former president, according to Attorney General Jeff Sessions. He now faces up to 58 years in prison. During a news conference on Friday, Sessions said that Sayoc "appears to be a partisan." The attorney general would not speculate on a motive, other than to say that it's "what you might normally expect." According to his social media profiles, Sayoc is a fervent Trump supporter, who often threatens violence against those the president vilifies. A white van that Sayoc reportedly lived out of was also covered in pro-Trump decals, and featured stickers of Trump critics with gun sights superimposed on their faces. Watch! Tarp flies off van... showing us a VERY clear picture of the POLITICS behind the stickers... including a hatred of CNN pic.twitter.com/vzb2tnku7G Jason K. Morrell (@CNNJason) October 26, 2018 According FBI Director Christopher Wray, Sayoc sent a total of 13 improvised explosive devices to various individuals, including former President Barack Obama, former Vice President Joe Biden, and former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton. Sayoc left a latent fingerprint on one of the devices sent to Congresswoman Maxine Waters, Wray said, which the FBI traced back to Sayoc. The FBI director added that each device consisted of roughly six inches of PVC pipe, a small clock, a battery, wiring, and potential explosive material. Contradicting widespread theories circulating on right-wing media, Wray emphasized that "these are not hoax devices." Authorities said that an investigation is ongoing, and cautioned that it's possible more explosive devices are still in the postal system. Since Sayoc's arrest was first reported, two additional suspicious packages have been recoveredat the offices of Senator Kamala Harris and the home of billionaire donor Tom Steyer. The United States District Court for the Southern District of New York is prosecuting Sayoc, and you can read the criminal complaint in full below. Ashgabat, Turkmenistan, Oct. 26 By Huseyn Hasanov Trend: A meeting with Emilia A. Puma, the Acting Deputy Assistant Secretary in the State Department's Bureau of South and Central Asian Affairs, overseeing Central Asia and press and public diplomacy, has been held at the Foreign Ministry of Turkmenistan, the Ministry said in a statement. The sides discussed the issues of political and regional cooperation, various areas of bilateral relations. The two countries discussed the trade and economic partnership and the humanitarian interaction, the development of social and cultural ties, and the protection of human rights, a commentary by the state news agency Turkmen Dovlet Khabarlary reads. An important aspect of bilateral relations between Turkmenistan and the United States is the partnership in ensuring universal peace, security and stability, and countering global challenges and threats, the "Neutral Turkmenistan" newspaper wrote. Moscow is taking steps to minimize the adverse effect of the US' sanctions on its relations with Iran, said the spokeswoman of the Russian Foreign Ministry, while describing the sanctions as 'illegitimate', IRNA reports citing Sputnik. In a press briefing, Maria Zakharova said the sanctions Washington is imposing on Iran are 'illegitimate' and Russia is to adopt measures to ensure that the sanctions have as little impact as possible on its business with Tehran. 'I would like to once again affirm Russia's principled position that US unilateral sanctions are illegitimate. We are taking measures to ensure that they have minimal negative impact on Russian-Iranian trade and economy cooperation,' Zakharova said. She also referred to Iran's Sirik thermal power plant in the southern country, and the construction of the second and the third units of Bushehr nuclear power plant as instances of economic cooperation between Tehran and Moscow, particularly in the field of energy. The health ministers of Iran and Russia in a meeting in Almaty, Kazakhstan discussed ways of promoting bilateral cooperation in the fields of health, treatment, education and supply of medicines, IRNA reports. Iranian Minister of Health, Treatment and Medical Education Hassan Qazizadeh Hashemi met with his Russian counterpart Veronika Skvortsova on the sidelines of a conference marking the 40th anniversary of Declaration of Alma-Ata. Referring to the development of pharmaceutical sector in Iran, he underlined the need for Iran and Russia to expand cooperation in this sector with a view to increasing production capacity in this sector. The Russia health minister , for her part, said her country should make further use of Iran's successful experiences in the field of pharmaceutical industry and vaccine production. The Declaration of Alma-Ata was adopted at the International Conference on Primary Health Care, Almaty, Kazakhstan, 612 September 1978. It expressed the need for urgent action by all governments, all health and development workers, and the world community to protect and promote the health of all people. Iranian and Kazakhstani health ministers have signed a document for cooperation in healthcare and medicine, according to IRNA. At the meeting, Yelzhan Birtanov also awarded his Iranian counterpart Hassan Qazizadeh-Hashemi the medal of honor of Kazakhstan's government. Kazakhstan medal is awarded to a few number of influential figures, and this shows that the Iranian minister has played a major role in promotion of health in the world, the Kazakh minister said. Qazizadeh-Hashemi, who was visiting Kazakhstan to attend a conference, marking the 40th anniversary of Declaration of Alma-Ata, has also met with counterparts from various countries. On the sidelines of the conference, the Iranian minister met with his Armenian counterpart Arsen Torosian. The two sides emphasized the nececity of drawing an agenda and action plan by the joint working group for more cooperation on health issues. The Iranian minister in a meeting with his Indonesian counterpart signed a document for healthcare and medical cooperation. He had also a meeting with his Indian counterpart J P Nadda, where they agreed on sharing information and experience in medicine, pharmaceutics, and vaccine production. Yet in another meeting, Qazizadeh-Hashemi and his Russian counterpart Veronika Skvortsova vowed to enhance cooperation on healthcare, medication and pharmaceutics. An agreement on conducting fieldworks on hydrocarbon resources in Georgia was signed by the LEPL State Agency for Oil and Gas of the Ministry of Economy and Sustainable Development of Georgia and private company ExxonMobil. The Minister of Economy and Sustainable Development, Giorgi Kobulia, attended the signing ceremony, GeorgiaToday reports. Within the scope of the Agreement, the company will evaluate the potential of hydrocarbons in West Georgia. The parties agreed that after completing an examination of the geological and geophysical data transmitted by the Agency to the company, ExxonMobil will prepare a report and an integrated database. The fact that such a large company that is a leading company in the world got interested in Georgias potential in terms of oil and gas, is a promising fact of outstanding significance. We are looking for having the opportunity to use the gas and oil resources for the good of our country, said Kobulia. Exxon representative Jonathan Wilson expressed his satisfaction with their cooperation with Georgia, and are looking forward to studying Georgian hydrocarbon potential. On behalf of ExxonMobil I would to say what a pleasure it is to sign this cooperation agreement today. We have worked for a decade in the Black Sea and the surrounding areas, and it is a pleasure to extend our knowledge and experience to evaluate the potential of Georgia. We look forward to working closely with the state agency involved in the gas sector. And it is a great pleasure to sign this agreement here in this beautiful city of Tbilisi, remarked Wilson. The Head of the LEPL State Agency for Oil and Gas, Giorgi Tatishvili, highlighted the importance of cooperation with one of the largest companies in the world, saying "Following the Agreement, ExxonMobil will examine the data provided by our agency and then prepare the Evaluation Report on Hydrocarbon Potential in West Georgia. We will use that Report for further planning which should lead us to new sources of oil and gas." Tatishvili also noted that ExxonMobil will provide trainings for Agency employees to perfect their skills in using the database and stratigraphic analysis. Vice-Prime Minister and Minister of Internal Affairs, Giorgi Gakharia, met with the Ambassador Extraordinary and Plenipotentiary of the Kingdom of the Netherlands to Georgia Johannes Douma, GeorgiaToday reports. Gakharia informed Ambassador Douma about ongoing and planned reforms within the system and introduced the priorities of the Ministry. During the meeting, the sides discussed their mutual desire for close and fruitful cooperation between the law enforcement agencies of Georgia and the Netherlands. Gakharia and Douma agreed to continue their active cooperation to deepen the relationship between Georgia and the Netherlands. US President Donald Trumps Security Advisor John Bolton stated in Tbilisi today that Georgia is of the highest strategic importance for the US, Agenda reports. Responding to a question about corruption, Bolton stated that before coming to Georgia he met with representatives of the US Chamber of Trade and asked them questions about the situation in Georgia in terms of corruption. I was told that there is a certain level of corruption in Georgia, but this level is the same as in many other developed countries, in the US among them, Bolton said. Bakhtadze further stated that the situation in the Georgian occupied regions and possibilities for a Georgia-US free trade regime were the key issues discussed at his meeting with Bolton. Bakhtadze called Bolton a true friend of Georgia, who is taking steps to further enhance Georgia-US strategic ties. Bolton has also met with Georgian Defence Minister Levan Izoria, and the officials discussed the 2016-2019 agreement between the Georgian Defence Ministry and the US Defence Department. Steps included in the document are being implemented successfully, the Georgian Defence Ministry said. Bolton praised Georgias contribution to international peace and security and reaffirmed US support for Georgias sovereignty and territorial integrity. Earlier today Bolton met with the Georgian Interior Minister and the head of the State Security Service. Bolton is scheduled to leave Georgia tomorrow. The eldest son of murdered Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi arrived in Washington with his family from Saudi Arabia on Thursday, according to two sources close to the family, after U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo pushed for his return, Reuters reported. Salah Khashoggi, who holds dual U.S.-Saudi citizenship and had thus far been under a travel ban, departed Saudi Arabia on Wednesday. He and his family joined his mother and his three siblings in Washington, said the sources, both speaking on condition of anonymity. Several hours after their arrival, State Department deputy spokesman Robert Palladino disclosed that Pompeo told Saudi leaders in Riyadh earlier this month that he wanted Salah Khashoggi returned to the United States. We are pleased that is the case, Palladino said, reiterating that the United States is continuing to press for all the relevant facts in the killing of Khashoggi in the Saudi consulate in Istanbul on Oct. 2. We intend to consult with Congress and to work with other nations to hold accountable those responsible for the killing of Jamal Khashoggi, said Palladino. The Saudi public prosecutor on Thursday said the murder of Khashoggi, a Washington Post columnist and critic of the kingdoms de facto ruler Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, was premeditated, revising previous statements that his death was unintended. Salah Khashoggis departure from Saudi Arabia came a day after a meeting at the al Yamama Palace in Riyadh in which he and other family members received condolences from King Salman and the crown prince. The Kremlin welcomes Saudi Arabias intention to investigate the death of journalist Jamal Khashoggi, Russian Presidential Spokesman Dmitry Peskov told, TASS reports. "[President Vladimir] Putin has clarified Russias position, we have also heard the [Saudi] royal familys statements condemning the murder and rejecting the royal familys involvement. It is up to investigators to deal with all other issues, and the royal family stands for conducting an investigation," the Kremlin spokesman said, adding that "we welcome that." Putin held a telephone conversation with Saudi King Salman bin Abdulaziz Al Saud on October 25. Khashoggi, known for his criticism of Saudi Arabia's policies, left his home country and moved to the United States in 2017. He worked for The Washington Post, analyzing the situation in Saudi Arabia and the country's foreign policy. On October 20, Saudi authorities announced that the journalist died in a fight in the Saudi Consulate in Istanbul. Saudi Attorney General Saud al-Mojeb said that 18 Saudi nationals were under investigation in this connection. The international community condemned Khashoggis murder and called for a transparent investigation. Chinas total fixed asset investment in transport infrastructure hit 2.28 trillion yuan ($327.77 billion) from January to September this year, up 1.4 percent from a year earlier, according to government data published on Friday, Reuters reports. China is increasing infrastructure spending in order to boost its slowing economy. The value of fixed-asset investment projects approved in the third quarter of this year hit 437.4 billion yuan, more than four times the amount during the April-June period. According to a briefing by the Ministry of Transport, Chinas spending on high-speed highways reached 702.6 billion yuan, up 12 percent on the year, though much of the increase was offset by declines in investment in rural road infrastructure. China has promised to boost its railway freight capacity in order to ease traffic congestion and pollution. The ministry said rail freight volumes rose 7.9 percent in the first three quarters, with deliveries of coal by rail rising around 10 percent. Rail still only accounted for 8.1 percent of total freight, which amounted to 37.74 billion tonnes over the period, up 7 percent on the year. China said in July that it would boost the volume of goods delivered by trains by as much as 30 percent by 2020, noting that trucks produced 13 times more pollution per unit of cargo than trains. The NYPD is investigating a suspicious package in Hell's Kitchen, at a mail facility on 52nd Street between 8th and 9th Avenues. Police have warned people to avoid the area and expect "heavy traffic." We are responding to a report of a suspicious package in the vicinity of West 52nd Street and 8th Avenue, #Manhattan. Please avoid the area and expect a police presence and heavy traffic. More information to follow. pic.twitter.com/fygm9IvS63 NYPD NEWS (@NYPDnews) October 26, 2018 An NYPD spokesperson confirmed that investigators are at a US Postal facility on 322 West 52nd Street. The spokesperson said employees at the facility discovered a package that "closely resembled" other suspicious packages recovered recently. Investigators were seen at the location on Wednesday when the Time Warner Center was evacuated after an explosive device was sent to CNN. NBC is now reporting that a suspicious package in Manhattan was addressed to former Director of National Intelligence James Clapper. The NYPD did not confirm to whom this morning's suspicious package was addressed, but CNN's James Sciutto reports that the package was addressed to Clapper at CNN's midtown HQ. BREAKING: Suspicious package addressed to former Director of National Intelligence Clapper intercepted in Manhattan, @PeteWilliamsNBC reports; a 12th device. NBC News (@NBCNews) October 26, 2018 Breaking: NY package addressed to Former DNI James Clapper at CNNs NY office. Jim Sciutto (@jimsciutto) October 26, 2018 Meanwhile, the Associated Press is reporting that an 11th suspicious package has been recovered in Florida that is "similar in appearance to others [and] addressed to NJ Sen. Cory Booker." UPDATE 9:17 a.m.: The AP confirms the suspicious package under investigation on West 52nd Street is addressed to former Intelligence Director James Clapper. Clapper has been an outspoken critic of President Trump; in his memoir, Facts and Fears, Clapper wrote that Russia's interference in the 2016 election swung the election to Trump. UPDATE 10:35 a.m.: The suspicious package at West 52nd Street has been safely removed, the NYPD said. Traffic and a heavy police presence should be expected in the area this morning. In a statement released Friday, Robert De Nirowhose office received one of the suspicious packages on Thursday morningsaid, I thank God no one's been hurt, and I thank the brave and resourceful security and law enforcement people for protecting us. There's something more powerful than bombs, and that's your vote. People MUST vote!" Predictably, President Trump now appears to believe that the threats are part of a left-wing false flag operation, noting on Twitter Friday morning that the "bomb stuff" is depressing Republican voter turnout. (Here's a look at how the mail bombs are actually impacting local voters ahead of the midterms). Republicans are doing so well in early voting, and at the polls, and now this Bomb stuff happens and the momentum greatly slows - news not talking politics. Very unfortunate, what is going on. Republicans, go out and vote! Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) October 26, 2018 Additional reporting by Alec Hamilton and Jake Offenhartz. A 6.8 magnitude earthquake struck off the coast of Greece in the early morning hours of Friday, being felt as far as Italy, Albania, Malta and Macedonia, Sputnik reported. According to the US Geological Survey, the epicenter was recorded in the Ionian Sea, roughly 50 miles from the Greek city of Pyrgos and 175 miles from capital city of Athens. BNO News reported residents in Greece describing the quake to officials with the European-Mediterranean Seismological Centre as "strong," adding that they experienced shaking for an estimated 15 to 30 seconds. "Extremely violent shaking," another person said. "Objects fell off of shelves. Loud rumbling sound." No damages or deaths have yet been reported. However, power outages have been reported on the island of Zakynthos, according to BNO. The European Union plans to connect Russia and China to its international payment system, currently being designed as an alternative to the global provider of financial messaging services, SWIFT, Russias EU envoy said, TASS reports. "There is an understanding that they will create it on their own, put it into practice and then open it for third states, first and foremost Russia and China," Russias Permanent Representative to the EU, Ambassador Vladimir Chizhov, said in an interview with the Rossiya-24 TV channel. The ambassador said that the project to create a special mechanism for financial transactions with Iran bypassing the US sanctions is now in full swing. "Less than a half of EU members have no economic ties with Iran at all. But those who have are the biggest countries, and they are actively involved in the project, first off all the signatories of the JCPOA [Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action on Irans nuclear program] - namely, Germany, France and the United Kingdom," the high-ranking Russian diplomat said. EU High Representative for Foreign Affairs and Security Federica Mogherini announced in New York on September 24 that the EU countries have started preparations for setting up a special mechanism for transactions with Iran. The aim of the mechanism is to support international trade, including in the oil sector, and protect the interests of European companies who plan to continue their business projects with the Islamic state following Washingtons unilateral withdrawal from the deal and the announcement of sanctions earlier this year. According to Mogherini, a decision on setting up this mechanism at the level of the EU member-states has been made and other countries could join it. Chairperson of the Bank of Russia Elvira Nabiullina said last Friday the Central Bank has not yet received an invitation to join the European counterpart of SWIFT. SWIFT is the international interbank system of information transmission and payments. Over 11,000 financial institutions of more than 200 countries of the world are connected to it. The possibility of disconnecting Russia from SWIFT has been discussed since 2014, when first anti-Russian sanctions related to the situation in Ukraine were introduced. Chinas Vice President Wang Qishan said at an innovation summit in Tel Aviv that the rising anti-globalization backlash and protectionism have become a major threat to the global economy, and China seeks to counter those trends, The Times of Israel reports. China stands ready to work with all countries to build an innovative, open, interconnected and inclusive global economic landscape and to build a community with a shared future for all mankind, he said at the Prime Ministers Innovation Summit in Tel Aviv, in the shadow of a trade war with US President Donald Trump. His comments were delivered in Chinese. Wang arrived in Israel for a four-day visit focusing on high-level talks on economic cooperation, and is co-hosting the Innovation Summit in Tel Aviv with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. Venezuela's Vice President of the economy Tareck El Aissami on Thursday announced the commercial alliance with the tourism and airline services company Air Europa, Xinhua reported. During a press conference, El Aissami said they have "sealed a very important deal, which could be called historic, with Air Europa whom we thank for having confidence in Venezuela." He said that the alliance consists of an "important investment in the area of hotels, and a strategic and commercial alliance with our main airline Conviasa." The agreement with Air Europa also includes an alliance with "global tour operators, mainly European and an administration investment in some of Venezuela's international airports," he said. El Aissami said that the agreement with the European company was made in the context of the program of recovery, growth and economic prosperity of Venezuela. He added that they agreed that "all the operations contemplated in these investment, commercialization and tourism operation agreements will be backed by the petro." The petro is the cryptocurrency being driven by the Venezuelan government to combat the sanctions placed on the country by the United States. El Aissami highlighted the advantages that Venezuela has as a tourism destination, which would be enhanced with the services that will be available through the partnership with Air Europa. Singapores central bank warned on Friday that an intensifying trade row between China and the United States is likely to hurt the city-states economy in coming months, though it said the domestic growth impact of the dispute has so far been minimal, Reuters reports. The tiny Southeast Asian state, a global trading hub and financial center, is seen as a bellwether for the global economy because its exports equate to around 200 percent of its output. Since the start of the year its politicians and policymakers have been warning of blowback from a tariff dispute between two of Singapores top trade partners. Washington has imposed tariffs on $250 billion of Chinese goods - the latest round coming last month - knocking Chinas growth rates to their slowest in almost a decade. The trade frictions have had a limited impact on the Singapore economy thus far, but the negative spillovers could become more discernible in the latter part of this year and beyond, the Monetary Authority of Singapore said in its semiannual macroeconomic review. These could pose some downside risks to growth in the quarters ahead. MAS forecasts GDP growth should come in the upper half of its 2.53.5% range for 2018 and moderate slightly in 2019. The electronics segment - a backbone of Singapores manufacturing sector - is one area of concern because of its links with China in the global supply chain, the central bank said. Another industry that might feel the heat is transportation, it added. Singapore has one of the worlds busiest ports - connecting the west with Asia. Yet there might be a silver lining. The Russian military police and a UN mission have conducted their first joint patrol of the Golan Heights region at the Israeli-Syrian border, Deputy Commander of the Russian Forces in Syria Lt. Gen. Sergei Kuralenko has told, TASS reports. "The Russian military police has long been patrolling the entire demilitarized zone, but the joint patrol [of the territory] to the south of the Quneitra crossing took place for the first time today," he told reporters on Thursday evening. "Today, the Russian military police ensures the safety of the UN team on the mission." "In the future, we plan to carry out a joint patrolling mission directly to the southernmost end of the demilitarized zone," Kuralenko said. On October 15, a ceremony to hoist the Syrian national flag was held on the Syrian side of the Quneitra crossing, separating the Syrian and Israeli forces at the Golan Heights. The conditions for the Syrian side to resume operations of the border crossing emerged after the government forces regained control over the southern areas and the UN peacekeepers returned to the line of separation with Israel. Dates for North Korean leader Kim Jong-uns visit to Russia are under consideration, Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Igor Morgulov told on Friday, TASS reports. "Dates for the visit are under consideration, work on the matter continues," he said in response to a question concerning Kim Jong-uns visit to Russia. According to the Russian deputy foreign minister, he will hold a meeting with his North Korean counterpart Sin Hong-chol in Moscow next week. "Consultations on bilateral relations will be held. This is a planned meeting included in the two ministries consultations schedule. I expect to discuss the entire range of bilateral issues with my counterpart," Morgulov added. Russian Federation Council (upper house of parliament) Speaker Valentina Matviyenko said earlier following her visit to Pyongyang that the North Korean leader was willing to visit Russia in the near future. Last week, Russian Presidential Aide Yuri Ushakov confirmed that a meeting between Vladimir Putin and Kim Jong-un may take place before the end of the year. Baku, Azerbaijan, Oct. 26 By Rufiz Hafizoglu - Trend: A terrorist attack has been prevented in Turkey's Adana Province, Turkish media reported on Oct. 26. The attack was planned by the IS terrorist organization for October 29 - The Republic Day of the Turkey, the reports said. During a special operation by the police in Adana, six members of the IS, who were planning the attack, were detained. One of the members was a woman, reports say. The names of the detainees and details of the operation were not made public. Meanwhile, 33 members of IS were detained in Istanbul in July. In May, police detained 51 more IS members. Syrian citizen Riad Haji Osman, one of the IS executioners, was detained during a special operation in Turkeys Adana Province on April 13. Kifah Bashir Hussein, the so-called minister of health of IS, was detained in Sanliurfa on Jan. 24. On Jan. 12, the Turkish police detained the so-called minister of agriculture of IS, Tarik Ahmet. --- Follow the author on Twitter: @rhafizoglu Baku, Azerbaijan, Oct. 26 By Rufiz Hafizoglu - Trend: From July 24, 2015 to October 24, 2018, during the operations carried out in Turkey and beyond the country's borders, 14,694 terrorists have been eliminated, including members of the Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK), as well as the Islamic State (IS), Turkish media reported citing the Minister of National Defense of Turkey Hulusi Akar on Oct, 26. Turkey, as before, will continue merciless fight against terrorists, Akar said. The conflict between Turkey and the PKK, which demands the creation of an independent Kurdish state, has lasted more than 25 years, claiming more than 40,000 lives. The PKK is recognized as a terrorist organization by the UN and the EU. --- Follow the author on Twitter: @rhafizoglu Baku, Azerbaijan, Oct. 26 By Rufiz Hafizoglu - Trend: In the morning of Oct. 26, three suspicious packages were taken out from the consulate general of Saudi Arabia, where an investigation into the murder of Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi was previously conducted, Turkish media reported on Oct. 26. The consulate's employees did not allow journalists approach the consulate general, reports read. On Oct. 2, Khashoggi, known for his criticism of the policy of Riyadh, disappeared when he visited the consulate general of Saudi Arabia in Istanbul, where he came to obtain documents for registration of marriage with a Turkish citizen. A few days later, the Turkish police launched an investigation into his disappearance. On Oct. 20, the Saudi authorities reported that Khashoggi was killed as a result of a conflict in the consulate general. The Attorney General of Saudi Arabia Sheikh Saud al-Muadjib said 18 nationals of the country are under investigation, whose identities have not been revealed. --- Follow the author on Twitter: @rhafizoglu The NYPD has arrested another Proud Boy for his alleged role in an assault on antifascist protesters following an appearance by Gavin McInnes at the Metropolitan Republican Club earlier this month. David Kuriakose, of Old Westbury, Long Island, was arrested on misdemeanor charges of riot and assault on Thursday, police said. In video captured by journalist Sandi Bachom, the thirty-five-year-old Kuriakosewearing the Proud Boys uniform of a Fred Perry polo and a MAGA capcan apparently be seen shoving a protester to the ground, who's then repeatedly stomped on by other members of the group. He was arraigned on Thursday night, and subsequently released on bail. It's unclear whether Kuriakose turned himself inas previous Proud Boys hador was arrested by police. David Kuriakose (Shay Horse) So far, five other men affiliated with the far-right nationalist group have been charged, in addition to the three antifascist protesters who were arrested on the night of the incident. The NYPD is still looking for three other Proud Boys and two antifascist protesters involved in the fight, they said. Two of the previous arrestees, Maxwell Hare and Irvin Antillon, are expected to appear in court on Friday. On Thursday, Jay Kinsman, allegedly the "single most vicious" of the attackers, arrived at Manhattan Criminal Court sporting a brand new look. This time, his Proud Boy forearm tattoo was not visible. Baku, Azerbaijan, Oct. 26 By Rufiz Hafizoglu - Trend: Turkey has a lot of new facts regarding the murder of Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi, but, at the same time, Turkey considers it premature to make public all the obtained information, Turkish media quoted President Recep Tayyip Erdogan's speech in Ankara during a meeting with heads of municipalities Oct. 26. Erdogan noted that Jamal Khashoggi's murder is not an ordinary crime. The Turkish president also noted that 18 people are suspected of Khashoggi's murder and the Saudi authorities should investigate the case. On October 29, the Prosecutor General of Saudi Arabia will arrive in Turkey to get acquainted with the case, Erdogan said. On Oct. 2, Khashoggi, known for his criticism of the policy of Riyadh, disappeared when he visited the consulate general of Saudi Arabia in Istanbul, where he came to obtain documents for registration of marriage with a Turkish citizen. A few days later, the Turkish police launched an investigation into his disappearance. On Oct. 20, the Saudi authorities reported that Khashoggi was killed as a result of a conflict in the consulate general. The Attorney General of Saudi Arabia Sheikh Saud al-Muadjib said 18 nationals of the country are under investigation, whose identities have not been revealed. Earlier, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan said the murderers of Khashoggi must be convicted in Turkey. "Although Khashoggi was killed in the Consulate General of Saudi Arabia, the crime was committed in Turkey, which makes Ankara pay more attention to this," he said. Considering that Khashoggi was brutally murdered, Saudi Arabia must do everything possible to find and punish the criminals." The authorities of Saudi Arabia claim that the body of the killed reporter was handed over to someone in Turkey, Erdogan noted. If Saudi Arabia claims that the body of Khashoggi was handed over to someone, that persons name should be revealed, Erdogan said. --- Follow the author on Twitter: @rhafizoglu US authorities believe that several packages containing pipe bombs sent earlier to the prominent US politicians were processed in a mail distribution center in Opa-locka, Florida, Sputnik reported citing CNN. The FBI and a Miami-Dade county police bomb squad are investigating a US postal facility in Florida as part of the investigation into the wave of suspicious packages sent to prominent Democrats and CNN, the police said in a statement. "Our Bomb Squad & K-9 Unit are currently providing assistance to our federal partners at the @USPS Opa-Locka mail facility as part of the ongoing investigation into suspicious packages located in other jurisdictions," the Miami-Dade police department said in a tweet on Thursday. At least ten potentially harmful devices and pipe bombs have been mailed to prominent democratic politicians including former President Barack Obama and former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton this week and federal agencies are hunting for the perpetrators. The CNN news agency also was targeted. None of the the devices exploded or resulted in any physical damage or injuries. However, The US Department of Homeland Security (DHS) has bolstered security at federal facilities. DHS Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen said that DHS and the US Secret Service are working closely with the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) as well as state and local law enforcement on the active investigation. Nielsen condemned the incidents in the strongest way possible, calling them "cowardly acts." US authorities discovered three more suspicious packages on Thursday, two of which were delivered to former Vice Pressident Joe Biden and one that was sent to actor Robert De Niro, a frequent critic of President Donald Trump. U.S. President Donald Trumps administration may send up to 1,000 active-duty troops to the U.S.-Mexico border, officials said, as Trump hammered away at the issue of illegal immigration two weeks ahead of congressional elections, Reuters reports. Trumps threat was sparked by the advance of a caravan of Central American migrants trekking through Mexico, headed toward the United States. I am bringing out the military for this National Emergency. They will be stopped! Trump wrote on Twitter. But the migrants appeared undeterred on Thursday night as several thousand of them bedded down more than 1,000 miles (1,610 km) from the U.S. border, in the town of Pijijiapan in Mexicos southern Chiapas state, after hiking hours from their last stop. Whatever Trump may say, hes not going to hold us back, said Denis Omar Contreras, a caravan organizer from Honduras, who plans to help lead the group to northern Mexico. Many said the fear of returning to a violent homeland loomed larger than the presidents threats. Weve come fleeing our country. If we return to Honduras, the gangs will probably kill us, he said. Defense Secretary Jim Mattis has authorized the use of troops and other military resources at the US.-Mexico border, US officials said on Friday, bolstering President Donald Trumps battle against migrants trekking toward the United States, Reuters reported. The officials, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said Mattis authorization did not include a specific number of troops, something that would be determined at a later point, and was not itself a deployment order. US officials told Reuters on Thursday that the Trump administration was considering deploying between 800 and 1,000 troops. The Pentagon did not comment on potential troop numbers but said Mattis had authorized the military to provide mission-enhancing capabilities to US Customs and Border Protection agency, including engineering support to help build temporary barriers and build temporary housing. US pilots would also provide transportation for civilian government personnel and medical teams, it said in a statement. Officials said US troops will not be engaged in any law enforcement activities, something that is prohibited under US law, and instead focus on support roles in areas like infrastructure and logistics. Trump has hammered away at the issue of illegal immigration two weeks ahead of congressional elections. Taking aim at the caravan of Central American migrants, Trump wrote on Twitter on Thursday he was bringing out the military for this National Emergency. They will be stopped! US Homeland Security Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen said in an interview with Fox News Channel on Thursday that her department had asked the Pentagon for help to bolster its capabilities as it polices the border, including asking for some air support ... some logistics, planning, vehicle barriers, engineering. The migrants appeared undeterred on Thursday night as several thousand of them bedded down more than 1,000 miles (1,610 km) from the US border, in the town of Pijijiapan in Mexicos southern Chiapas state, after hiking hours from their last stop. Trump and his fellow Republicans have sought to make the caravan and immigration into major issues before the Nov. 6 elections, in which Republicans are battling to keep control of Congress. Trump pledged during the 2016 presidential race to build a wall along the southern US border with Mexico. But the funding for his signature campaign promise has been slow to materialize. In April, frustrated by lack of progress on the wall, Trump ordered the National Guard to help secure the border. Dr. Timothy A. Davis, professor in the Department of Computer Science and Engineering at Texas A&M University, is the 2018 recipient of the Sigma Xi Walston Chubb Award for Innovation. This award is given to honor and promote creativity in science and engineering, and it carries an honorarium and invitation to give a lecture at Sigma Xis annual meeting. Davis work focuses on solving sparse matrix problems, and he is a go-to expert in the area. Google Street View uses his software to place images in their accurate location to create a high-quality viewing experience for users. Linux also steadily relies on his software in its open-source systems, and his work is behind the programming platform MATLAB. The use of his algorithms and software extends further than even he is often aware. For example, the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) used Davis solvers to scan for illegal activity on the dark web, and this analysis helped the FBI rescue six girls from sex trafficking in Colorado. "I encounter new applications of my work in unexpected areas, often out of the blue because the codes I write are so robust and well-documented that the engineers and scientists who rely on my work rarely need to ask me how to use them, Davis said. Google used my solvers for a year before they dropped me a note. The U.S. Geological Survey previously took days to create maps of the moon, Mars and other planets, but thanks to Davis solvers, they now create these maps in minutes. They thanked me for helping to pave the way for future human exploration, Davis said. Companies, government labs and academics also work with Davis to incorporate his software into their projects. His solvers have improved drones, VLSI circuit simulators, database systems, earthquake simulators, engineering computer-aided design tools and half a billion smartphones. As his research continues to impact the world of computing and assist others in their endeavors, an often-revisited crowd favorite of Davis algorithms is his art. When a coordinator for the London Electronic Arts Festival caught sight of the colorful images of his sparse matrix collection, the coordinator asked Davis if he could graph music in the same way. Although it was completely unlike any he'd done before, Davis' creative passion led him to accept the challenge. In 2013, the London Electronic Arts Festival used his artistic algebra as their theme for the event, and his artwork appeared on billboards all over London. Today, Davis research is focused on two areas: sparse linear algebra on graphics processing units (GPUs), and methods for solving graph algorithms in the language of sparse linear algebra over semirings. GPUs provide the promise of high performance and lower energy use, but they work best on very regular problems. The challenge is to map the irregular nature of sparse matrix algorithms to perform well on GPU architectures. KYODO NEWS - Oct 26, 2018 - 16:54 | All, World The Japanese government and ruling parties appear to be holding off on criticism of a freelance journalist who returned to Tokyo on Thursday after spending 40 months in captivity in war-torn Syria, in stark contrast with similar incidents in the past. When citizens, particularly journalists, have been taken captive in conflict zones in the past, criticism that they failed to take "personal responsibility" for their actions has been a standard ruling party talking point. The different stance the government and the ruling bloc have taken in the wake of the release of Jumpei Yasuda has fueled speculation that they want to take advantage of the 44-year-old journalist's situation to show a softer side and increase public support ahead of the House of Councillors election and other elections next year, observers say. The administration of Prime Minister Shinzo Abe apparently thinks it preferable to celebrate Yasuda's release rather than attacking him for putting himself in danger by entering a war zone, allowing Abe to tout the successful, if confidential, release negotiations. In 2004, in the midst of the Iraq war, a terrorist organization kidnapped three Japanese nationals and demanded the withdrawal of the nation's Self-Defense Forces from Iraq and the end of their humanitarian mission. Related coverage: Freed Journalist returns to Japan after 3-year hostage ordeal in Syria Parents rejoice at release of Japanese journalist Yasuda Wife of Japanese journalist calls on captors in Syria to release him "Help me, right now": Video likely shows Japan journalist held in Syria Around the same time, Yasuda was involved in his first hostage situation when he was taken captive by a local Iraqi terrorist group before later being released. There is a strong view that in order to deflect domestic criticism, the Japanese government at the time blamed the victims for not taking responsibility for their actions. "Too much reckless behavior causes trouble for others," said Abe, who was then secretary general of the Liberal Democratic Party. "We hope that everyone adheres to our evacuation advisory," he said. "(Yasuda's release this time) is the result of the International Counter-Terrorism Intelligence Collection Unit, under the directive of the prime minister's office, working with relevant countries," crowed Chief Cabinet Secretary Yoshihide Suga during a press conference on Wednesday. Since Yasuda's disappearance in Syria in June 2015, people in the Foreign Ministry and prime minister's office, have questioned behind the scenes how he could repeat such a mistake. (Still image from online video in July 2018) However, this time, Yasuda's successful release has not so far brought with it commentary about his risky behavior. Despite the Cabinet reshuffle on Oct. 2, public support for the Abe administration has not made a notable recovery. "It is unusual to publicize the contribution of the unit, which is supposed to work clandestinely," said a government source. "Local elections and an upper house election will be held next year. The administration may be aiming to bolster itself by taking 'a mature posture' toward Mr. Yasuda, who has been a critic of the Abe government. They also want to raise support by portraying themselves as tough in times of crisis," the source said. Yasuda attended meetings across Japan after freelance journalist Kenji Goto and another Japanese were captured and killed by Islamic State in Syria in January 2015, saying the role journalists play in reporting from conflict zones is significant. "Japan's international aid will be untenable unless the situation of people oppressed by dictatorships is reported," he said. Takeharu Watai, a 47-year-old freelance journalist who covers conflicts in the Middle East, echoes Yasuda's sentiments. He stresses that a journalist's role is to record and disclose information about victims of wartime violence, representing their plight to the outside world. "Someone needs to be courageous like Mr. Yasuda and record what happens in war," he stressed. KYODO NEWS - Oct 26, 2018 - 18:20 | World, All Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe expressed concern over the human rights situation in China during his meeting with Premier Li Keqiang in Beijing on Friday, a government official said. "Of course, with the Uighur issue in mind, (Abe told Li that) the international community including Japan has been paying close attention to the human rights situation in China," the Japanese official told reporters. Abe's remarks indicated that Japan and China have been at odds over several political issues, although they have agreed to bolster economic cooperation as bilateral relations have been markedly improving since late last year. Earlier this month, authorities in China's far-western Xinjiang region moved to set up vocational training camps for impressionable Muslim Uighur youth to master the Mandarin language, gain knowledge of the law and acquire professional skills, with the goal of containing and eradicating extremism. The move has further raised international fears over human rights situation in the region where many Uighurs, who have opposed growing state surveillance, have been detained under the "reeducation" campaign. In April last year, "de-radicalization regulations" were implemented that prohibit "abnormal" beards and wearing veils in public places, among other behaviors, while banning the use of some Islamic names when naming children and setting punishments for the teaching of religion to children. KYODO NEWS - Oct 27, 2018 - 08:10 | World, All Japan and China pledged Friday to accelerate new economic cooperation by changing the dynamics of bilateral relations "from competition to collaboration," as ties markedly improve amid trade disputes with the United States. Chinese President Xi Jinping also told Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe during their talks in Beijing that he will "seriously" consider making a trip to Japan next year, with both expressing willingness to promote high-level reciprocal visits. Tokyo and Beijing made an agreement to create a "new framework" to jointly move ahead with infrastructure projects in third nations and strengthen a wide range of cooperation ranging from finance to innovation, Abe said at a press conference. Japan has already announced it will discontinue its 40-year official development assistance to China. By bolstering investment in other countries, the governments of Asia's two biggest economies will aim to form a new model of economic cooperation between them. Early Friday, Abe agreed with Chinese Premier Li Keqiang to start talks about cooperation in state-of-the-art technology and protection of intellectual property rights, as well as to resume their currency swap line in times of financial emergency. "Japan and China are neighbors and partners. We will not become a threat of each other," Abe told Li at the outset of their meeting. Abe arrived in Beijing on Thursday for the first official visit to China by a Japanese political leader in nearly seven years. Until late last year, relations between Tokyo and Beijing had been at their worst level in decades over a territorial row in the East China Sea. Since earlier this year, Japan and China have been trying to boost economic ties as U.S. President Donald Trump has either threatened or implemented tariffs in an attempt to curb the huge U.S. trade deficits with them. Li told Abe, "We would like to achieve win-win outcomes by stably developing our ties in the long term. Especially regarding our economic and trade cooperation, we earnestly want to lift it to a new phase." At his talks with Xi later Friday, Abe invited Xi to visit Japan sometime in 2019 and on the occasion of the 2020 Tokyo Summer Olympic Games, a Japanese government official told reporters. Xi told Abe that China and Japan should move bilateral relations in a "new historic direction" as "instability and uncertainties are growing" worldwide, adding the two countries "have been sharing wider and more pluralist common interests and common concerns." "Sound and stable development of China-Japan relations would become fundamental benefits of people of the two nations, which is widely hoped by this region and the international community," Xi said. Abe and the Chinese leaders agreed that Japan and China will remain committed to free trade, apparently pushing back against Trump's trade protectionism. Aiming to deepen trust in the security field, Tokyo and Beijing also signed an agreement to facilitate cooperation over search and rescue operations in the event of accidents in waters off the two nations. Abe said Japan and China agreed to work together to open a hotline as soon as possible to avert accidental clashes at sea and in the air, adding that they should make efforts to make the East China Sea a "sea of peace, cooperation and friendship." The Japanese prime minister asked Xi to improve the unstable situation in the contested waters, the official said. Abe and Xi agreed to continue to communicate to restart talks about a 2008 bilateral accord on joint gas development there. Both countries, meanwhile, confirmed the importance of cooperation between them to achieve denuclearization of North Korea, with Abe saying Tokyo and Beijing will "fulfill responsibilities" for peace and stability in East Asia. Abe also said China has promised to consider, on scientific grounds, relaxing its ban on Japanese food imports that was imposed following the 2011 Fukushima nuclear crisis triggered by a devastating earthquake and tsunami. As a symbol of friendship, the two sides agreed to push forward talks about another giant panda to be leased to a zoo in Japan, the Japanese official said. During their meeting on Friday, however, Abe and Li were at odds over several matters such as human rights and economic practices. With reports of the mass detentions in China's far-western region of Xinjiang in mind, Abe told Li, "The international community including Japan has been paying close attention to the human rights situation in China," according to the official. Tensions remain high in Xinjiang between Chinese authorities and the native Uighurs, a Turkic-speaking and largely Muslim ethnic group. Many Uighurs, who complain of religious and cultural oppression by China's Han-dominated government, have been detained under the "reeducation" campaign. Abe also urged China to take measures to prevent intellectual property theft. For years, Tokyo and Beijing had been mired in a territorial dispute over the Senkaku Islands in the East China Sea. The group of uninhabited islets, which are called Diaoyu in China, are controlled by Japan but claimed by Beijing. Strains particularly intensified after the Japanese government of former Prime Minister Yoshihiko Noda, Abe's predecessor, decided to bring the Senkakus under state control in September 2012. But the situation has changed recently, as this year marks the 40th anniversary of the signing and entering into force of the Treaty of Peace and Friendship between Japan and China. By Rini Dutta, KYODO NEWS - Oct 26, 2018 - 22:11 | World, All Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi said on Friday he looks forward to deepening relations between India and Japan when he visits the country this weekend for an annual bilateral summit with his Japanese counterpart Shinzo Abe. In an interview with Kyodo News, Modi said his two days of talks with Abe on Sunday and Monday "will be an opportunity to review our ongoing cooperation and discuss ways for expanding our relationship for promoting peace, progress and prosperity throughout the Indo-Pacific region and beyond." In recent years, he said, "the India-Japan partnership has been fundamentally transformed and it has been strengthened as a 'special strategic and global partnership'." "There are no negatives but only opportunities in this relationship which are waiting to be seized," he added. India and Japan share a close diplomatic and business engagement under the framework of the "special strategic and global partnership," the level to which bilateral relations were formally elevated during Modi's visit to Japan in 2014. Modi and Abe are expected to hold wide-ranging discussions on strengthening collaboration in key areas such as regional security, defense exchanges and technology. Indian officials said the two leaders are likely to consider bolstering the "strategic alliance" between the Indian Navy and the Japan Maritime Self-Defense Forces. This comes on the backdrop of China stepping up its naval patrolling of key routes through which international commerce flows in the Indo-Pacific region. "I am confident that our discussions will give a much more concrete direction to India-Japan relationship," Modi said. Along with the United States and Australia, both the nations are also part of a quad grouping that was revived in 2017 and seeks closer cooperation in the Indo-Pacific region, with an aim to counter China's ever growing influence in the area. Modi said Japan has been an important partner for India in propelling forward its economic growth. "We would like to see many more Japanese companies to make use of the opportunities available in the Indian economy under 'Make in India,' 'Digital India,' 'Startup India,' 'Clean India Mission,' 'Smart Cities' and other such flagship initiatives." On Japanese assistance for a $15 billion high-speed rail project in India that will use Japan's Shinkansen technology, Modi said, "India-Japan cooperation to launch the Mumbai-Ahmedabad High Speed Rail project is an iconic example of Japanese technology and finance contributing to India's economic modernization." According to Indian railway officials, Japan is expected to contribute over $12 billion in loans for the project, repayable over 50 years. Last month, India signed an agreement with the Japan International Cooperation Agency on the provision of a low-interest loan of around $800 million as the first tranche. At the upcoming summit, two sides will sign an agreement on the second tranche. Among obstacles faced by the project targeted for completion in 2022, the 75th year of India's independence, are land acquisition and labor issues, farmer agitation in certain parts of Maharashtra state and active resistance by local political parties. "Both sides are confident that we will be able to meet our mutually decided deadline," Modi said. "The project will be a major booster to our 'Make in India' initiative and will enrich India with latest technology needed for ultra-modern transportation, along with capital investment and employment agreement," he added. At the summit, there will also likely be discussions on Delhi's mass rapid transit system, some hydroelectric and road projects, and how Japan can help in improving infrastructure in India's less-developed northeastern states. Regarding the two countries' 2016 agreement on cooperation in the peaceful uses for nuclear energy, Modi called such cooperation "a manifestation of the significant deepening of our strategic partnership and our shared objective of realizing clean energy and sustainable development." Modi said India remains committed to its "voluntary, unilateral moratorium" on the testing of nuclear weapons. After arriving in Tokyo late Saturday, Modi will travel the following day to Abe's private villa in picturesque Yamanashi Prefecture for a private dinner -- in a rare gesture of friendship shown to a visiting foreign leader. Their formal summit talks are set for Monday in Tokyo. This will be Modi's third visit to Japan as prime minister and 12th meeting with Abe. Abe traveled to India in September last year, while Modi last came to Japan in November 2016. KYODO NEWS - Oct 26, 2018 - 09:20 | All, Japan, Feature The Japanese government must halt the return of women and children displaced by the March 2011 nuclear disaster back to areas of Fukushima where radiation levels remain high, a U.N. human rights expert said Thursday. The special rapporteur on hazardous substances, Baskut Tuncak, also criticized in his statement the government's gradual removal of evacuation orders for most of the irradiated areas as well as its plan to lift all orders within the next five years, even for the most contaminated areas. (File photo, March 2018) "The gradual lifting of evacuation orders has created enormous strains on people whose lives have already been affected by the worst nuclear disaster of this century. Many feel they are being forced to return to areas that are unsafe," he said. An official of Japan's permanent mission to the international organizations in Geneva refuted the statement, saying it is based on extremely one-sided information and could fan unnecessary fears about Fukushima. Tuncak expressed concerns about people returning to areas with radiation above 1 millisievert per year, a level previously observed by Japan as an annual limit so as to prevent risks to the health of vulnerable people, especially children and women of reproductive age. "It is disappointing to see Japan appear to all but ignore the 2017 recommendation of the U.N. human rights monitoring mechanism to return back to what it considered an acceptable dose of radiation before the nuclear disaster," he said. (File photo of stacks of contaminated soil, March 2018) In the wake of the Fukushima nuclear incident, the Japanese government heightened the annually acceptable level of radiation to 20 millisieverts, raising concerns for the health of residents. In August, Tuncak and two other U.N. human rights experts jointly criticized the Japanese government for allegedly exploiting and putting at risk the lives of "tens of thousands" of people engaged in cleanup operations at and around the crippled Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant, a claim Tokyo dismissed. News 'We thought he had COVID-19 but it was smog:' Life in polluted Pakistani city of Lahore "It's very worrisome," the father of a 4-year-old boy admits. "I knew that the smog can be bad for health but I didn't know it would be so bad that my son would be hospitalised." Teachers also worry for the children. By Miki Ishibashi, KYODO NEWS - Oct 26, 2018 - 11:58 | All, World With the number of women running for Congress hitting a record high in the Nov. 6 midterm elections, the growing participation of women in American politics may prompt a change in the male-dominated political and business circles in Japan, according to U.S. and Japanese experts on women's leadership. "I do think the increase in women running in the United States has an opportunity to do a role modeling effect in Japan," said Glynda Carr, co-founder of Higher Heights for America, a New York-based organization dedicated to bringing black women into politics and elected office. Partly in protest at President Donald Trump's derogatory remarks against women and his alleged sexual harassment scandals, data show a record 237 women -- 185 Democrats and 52 Republicans -- are running for the 435-seat House of Representatives, up from the previous high of 167 in 2016, in what's being called a "pink wave" of candidates. A record 23 women -- 15 Democrats and eight Republicans -- are also campaigning for 35 of the 100 Senate seats up for grabs, up from 18 in 2012, according to the Center for American Women and Politics at Rutgers University. (Glynda Carr, left, in June 2018) [Getty/Kyodo] When Japanese women see more American women running and winning, "they can see the possibility that exists" and this could inspire them to run, Carr said on the sidelines of a recent event in Washington. The Rutgers body said the United States is "on track to see a record number of women" in Congress, but that "achieving gender parity in Congress will take more than one election cycle." Women's political representation in the United States is not as high as might be thought, with the percentage of female members in the House at 19.6 percent as of Sept. 1. But the figure is still higher than 10.1 percent for the Japanese House of Representatives. The percentage of women members in the Senate came to 23.2 percent, compared to 20.7 percent for the Japanese House of Councillors, according to data by the Geneva-based Inter-Parliamentary Union. Mari Miura, a professor of political science at Sophia University in Tokyo, expressed hope for an increase in women leaders in the United States. "If we hear more voices directly coming from women in the United States, that will empower more women in Japan," she said in a telephone interview. Miura said it is imperative that women be well represented in decision-making bodies, otherwise issues of women's concern -- such as sexual harassment, pay gaps with men and declining birth rates, especially in Japan -- would not come to the fore. Enthusiasm among young women voters and political activists is also a key part of the women's movement in the United States. [Getty/Kyodo] According to a recent poll conducted by the Washington Post and ABC News, certainty to vote is up 32 points among women younger than 40, compared with 2014, the year of the last midterm elections. Among registered voters, 59 percent of women favor Democratic House candidates while 37 percent prefer Republicans, the poll shows. Citing the #MeToo movement against sexual harassment and assault, analysts said women backing female Democratic candidates oppose Trump's dealings with women and other issues such as health care. GOP-leaning women are also uncomfortable with the way the president treats women, but they tend to pay more attention to the upbeat economy and historically low unemployment levels. Asked what Japan can learn from the United States to boost women's political participation, Miura cited political training programs for women and a greater role of women activists in civil society. "The United States is a leading country in terms of political training programs for women, as well as other leadership training, an initiative that helps women aspiring to run for office," she said. "I think we need to create and expand those programs in Japan." In this context, Miura welcomed Japan's gender parity law, new legislation that requires local governments to expand support for recruitment and training for women wishing to enter politics. Cynthia Terrell, a U.S.-based advocate for rules and systems reforms to advance women's representation and leadership, points out that the single-member district electoral system mainly used in Japan's lower house makes it difficult for women candidates to win more seats. She suggested a broader use of the proportional representation system could raise women's representation to a 20 percent level as in the upper chamber. [Getty/Kyodo] The farmers had opposed the laws saying the legislation left them at the mercy of corporates, while the Centre claimed the intent was to unshackle farm markets and boost agrarian incomes. Highlights Patients with acute kidney injury had more than a 3-fold higher risk of developing dementia compared with those without acute kidney injury during a median follow-up time of 5.8 years. Results from the study will be presented at ASN Kidney Week 2018 October 23-October 28 at the San Diego Convention Center. San Diego, CA (October 25, 2018) -- Acute kidney injury (AKI) is linked with a higher risk of developing dementia, according to a study that will be presented at ASN Kidney Week 2018 October 23-October 28 at the San Diego Convention Center. AKI, an abrupt decline in kidney function, often arises after major surgeries or severe infections, and it is associated with long-term health problems including the development of chronic kidney disease and cardiovascular disease. AKI is also associated with acute neurologic complications, but the long-term consequences of AKI on brain health are unclear. To study the issue, Jessica Kendrick, MD (University of Colorado School of Medicine) and her colleagues analyzed information on 2082 patients without a prior history of dementia from an integrated health care delivery system in Utah. Patients had a hospital admission between 1999 and 2009. During a median follow-up time of 5.8 years, 97 patients developed dementia. More patients with AKI developed dementia (7.0% vs. 2.3%), and patients with AKI had more than a 3-fold higher risk of developing dementia compared with those without AKI. "AKI, even with complete renal recovery, is associated with an increased risk of dementia," said Dr. Kendrick. "Further studies are needed to determine the long-term cognitive consequences of AKI." ### Study: "Acute Kidney Injury is Associated with an Increased Risk of Dementia" ASN Kidney Week 2018, the largest nephrology meeting of its kind, will provide a forum for more than 13,000 professionals to discuss the latest findings in kidney health research and engage in educational sessions related to advances in the care of patients with kidney and related disorders. Kidney Week 2018 will take place October 23 - October 28 at the San Diego Convention Center. Since 1966, ASN has been leading the fight to prevent, treat, and cure kidney diseases throughout the world by educating health professionals and scientists, advancing research and innovation, communicating new knowledge, and advocating for the highest quality care for patients. ASN has more than 20,000 members representing 131 countries. For more information, please visit http://www.asn-online.org. The location of the 8.2 earthquake was as a surprise, say researchers after a comprehensive study of data from multiple sources EUGENE, Ore. - Oct. 25, 2018 - Last September's magnitude 8.2 Tehuantepec earthquake happened deep, rupturing both mantle and crust, on the landward side of major subduction zone in the Pacific Ocean off Mexico's far south coast. Initially, it was believed the earthquake was related to a seismic gap, occurring where the Cocos ocean plate is being overridden by a continental plate, in an area that had not had a quake of such magnitude since 1787. Subduction zone megaquakes generally occur near the top of where plates converge. The epicenter, however, was 46 kilometers (28 miles) deep in the Cocos plate, well under the overriding plate and where existing earthquake modeling had said it shouldn't happen, a 13-member research team reported Oct. 1 in the journal Nature Geoscience after an analysis of data from multiple sources. "We don't yet have an explanation on how this was possible," said the study's lead author Diego Melgar, an earth scientist at the University of Oregon. "We can only say that it contradicts the models that we have so far and indicates that we have to do more work to understand it." Earthquakes do occur in such locations, where a descending plate's own weight creates strong forces that stretch the slab as it dives down toward the mantle, but have been seen only under older and cooler subduction zones. The 1933 Sanriku, Japan, earthquake was one. It generated a 94-foot tsunami that killed 1,522 people and destroyed more than 7,000 homes. The Mexican quake, ruptured the descending slab and generated a 6-foot tsunami, which likely was limited in size by the angle of the overriding continental plate so close to shore, Melgar said. "This subducting plate is still very young and warm, geologically speaking," he said. "It really shouldn't be breaking." Subduction zone ages and their temperatures relate to their distance from mid-ocean ridges, where plates are made in temperatures of 1,400 degrees Celsius (2,552 degrees Fahrenheit), Melgar said. The 25-million-year-old Cocos subduction zone is 600 miles from the mid-ocean ridge where it began. Japan's subduction zone is much further from the ridge and 130-million-years old. Temperatures cool as plates move outward. Tension-related earthquakes, the researchers noted, have been restricted to older plates with temperatures that are cooler than 650 degrees Celsius (1,202 degrees Fahrenheit). Melgar's team theorizes that seawater infiltration into the fabric of the stressed and diving Cocos plate has possibly accelerated the cooling, making it susceptible to tension earthquakes previously seen only in older and colder locations. It's also possible, the researchers noted, that the 8.0 magnitude 1933 Oaxaca earthquake, previously thought to be in a traditional subduction zone event, was instead similar to the one that struck last year. If such water-driven cooling is possible, it could suggest other areas, especially Guatemala southward in Central America, and the U.S. West Coast are susceptible to tension-zone earthquakes, Melgar said. The Cascadia subduction zone, from northern California to British Columbia, is 15 million years old and warmer than the similar geology along the Mexican-Central America coastlines, but could still be at risk. Building codes and hazard maps should reflect the potential danger, he added. "Our knowledge of these places where large earthquakes happen is still imperfect," Melgar said. "We can still be surprised. We need to think more carefully when we make hazard and warning maps. We still need to do a lot of work to be able to provide people with very accurate information about what they can expect in terms of shaking and in terms of tsunami hazard." ### Co-authors on the study were researchers in several divisions of the National Autonomous University of Mexico, Kyoto University's Disaster Prevention Research Institute, Astronomical Institute of the Romanian Academy of Bucharest, Romania, University of California, San Diego, and Wuhan University in China. The research was supported by grants from three countries: the U.S. National Science Foundation; Japan's International Cooperation Agency, program for Science and Technology Research for Sustainable Development, and Science and Technology Agency; and Romania's Ministry of National Education and Scientific Research and Romanian Space Agency's Development and Innovation program. Source: Diego Melgar, assistant professor, Department of Earth Sciences, University of Oregon, 541-346-3488, dmelgarm@uoregon.edu Note: The UO is equipped with an on-campus television studio with a point-of-origin Vyvx connection, which provides broadcast-quality video to networks worldwide via fiber optic network. There also is video access to satellite uplink and audio access to an ISDN codec for broadcast-quality radio interviews. Links: About Diego Melgar: https://earthsciences.uoregon.edu/profile/dmelgarm/ Melgar's UO lab: http://pages.uoregon.edu/dmelgarm UO Department of Earth Sciences: https://earthsciences.uoregon.edu/ Subject: LongIsland.com - Your Name sent you Event details of "CANCELLED Stand-up comedy in Huntington at Cinema Arts Centre: Emmy Blotnick (Comedy Central, Colbert, Conan)" SAO PAULO, Oct 8 (Reuters) - JBS SA, the world's largest meatpacker, is expanding production capacity at two of its Brazilian units as Chinese demand for its beef exports remain strong, the company said in a statement on Monday. The plants, which received combined expansion investments of 45 million reais ($12 million), are located in the state of Minas Gerais, the statement said. The investment aimed at doubling production capacity at the two units is mainly related to opportunities to export beef to the Chinese market out of Brazil, JBS said. "When comparing exports (to China) this year with the same period of last, we had a 125 percent increase in volume," Renato Costa, chief of the country's JBS beef division, was quoted as saying in the statement referring to Brazilian exports of beef to China. ($1 = 3.7535 reais) (Reporting by Ana Mano Editing by Chizu Nomiyama) Barrons.com CVS Health is planning to close approximately 300 stores a year for the next three years, prompting the store to lower its end-of-year guidance. The store closures are a bid by CVS to restructure the companys brick-and-mortar retail operations to adapt to changing consumer behavior, which favors retailers with effective digital channels as well as physical presence. Investors are reacting positively to the entire new approach that CVS is taking which is, at its core, about making health services convenient and accessible in a consumer-friendly way, said Jennifer Foster, Chilton Trust co-chief investment officer. Texas Capital (TCBI) reported earnings 30 days ago. What's next for the stock? We take a look at earnings estimates for some clues. First Mid-Illinois Bancshares (FMBH) came out with quarterly earnings of $0.75 per share, beating the Zacks Consensus Estimate of $0.67 per share. This compares to earnings of $0.61 per share a year ago. These figures are adjusted for non-recurring items. This quarterly report represents an earnings surprise of 11.94%. A quarter ago, it was expected that this bank holding company would post earnings of $0.64 per share when it actually produced earnings of $0.72, delivering a surprise of 12.50%. Over the last four quarters, the company has surpassed consensus EPS estimates three times. First Mid-Illinois, which belongs to the Zacks Banks - Northeast industry, posted revenues of $38.01 million for the quarter ended September 2018, surpassing the Zacks Consensus Estimate by 3.66%. This compares to year-ago revenues of $30.53 million. The company has topped consensus revenue estimates two times over the last four quarters. The sustainability of the stock's immediate price movement based on the recently-released numbers and future earnings expectations will mostly depend on management's commentary on the earnings call. First Mid-Illinois shares have lost about 12.8% since the beginning of the year versus the S&P 500's decline of -0.7%. What's Next for First Mid-Illinois? While First Mid-Illinois has underperformed the market so far this year, the question that comes to investors' minds is: what's next for the stock? There are no easy answers to this key question, but one reliable measure that can help investors address this is the company's earnings outlook. Not only does this include current consensus earnings expectations for the coming quarter(s), but also how these expectations have changed lately. Empirical research shows a strong correlation between near-term stock movements and trends in earnings estimate revisions. Investors can track such revisions by themselves or rely on a tried-and-tested rating tool like the Zacks Rank, which has an impressive track record of harnessing the power of earnings estimate revisions. Story continues Ahead of this earnings release, the estimate revisions trend for First Mid-Illinois was favorable. While the magnitude and direction of estimate revisions could change following the company's just-released earnings report, the current status translates into a Zacks Rank #2 (Buy) for the stock. So, the shares are expected to outperform the market in the near future. You can see the complete list of today's Zacks #1 Rank (Strong Buy) stocks here. It will be interesting to see how estimates for the coming quarters and current fiscal year change in the days ahead. The current consensus EPS estimate is $0.74 on $42.50 million in revenues for the coming quarter and $2.81 on $145.05 million in revenues for the current fiscal year. Investors should be mindful of the fact that the outlook for the industry can have a material impact on the performance of the stock as well. In terms of the Zacks Industry Rank, Banks - Northeast is currently in the bottom 41% of the 250 plus Zacks industries. Our research shows that the top 50% of the Zacks-ranked industries outperform the bottom 50% by a factor of more than 2 to 1. Want the latest recommendations from Zacks Investment Research? Today, you can download 7 Best Stocks for the Next 30 Days. Click to get this free report First Mid-Illinois Bancshares, Inc. (FMBH) : Free Stock Analysis Report To read this article on Zacks.com click here. Zacks Investment Research RIYADH, Oct 24 (Reuters) - Middle East-focused education company GEMS and a Saudi Arabian state investment firm agreed to invest up to $800 million over the next 10 years to develop a network of schools across the kingdom, the government said on Wednesday. GEMS, majority-owned by Dubai-based Varkey Group and backed by Blackstone, signed a memorandum of understanding to form the partnership with Hassana Investment Co, an asset management arm of Saudi Arabia's General Organization for Social Insurance. The network will accommodate up to 130,000 students and create jobs for 16,000 people, of which approximately 40 percent will be Saudi citizens, the government said. The partnership would both build new schools and upgrade existing ones. The plan, announced at an international business conference in Riyadh, is an example of how Saudi authorities are seeking to raise low levels of foreign investment in the economy by using deep-pocketed state funds to bring in partners from overseas. Earlier, London-listed NMC Health said it had signed an agreement with Hassana Investment to develop a network of healthcare facilities across Saudi Arabia. The memorandum of understanding targets total investment of 6 billion riyals ($1.6 billion) and employment of up to 10,000 staff over the next five years, NMC said. (Reporting by Andrew Torchia; Editing by Alison Williams) MEXICO CITY, Oct 26 (Reuters) - Mexican broadcaster Grupo Televisa's executives said on Friday that a strategic review of company is ongoing, stressing they will only do deals that make sense for shareholders. Televisa has previously said it is considering whether to spin off parts of the company. On Thursday the company reported a 3.6 percent decline in net profit for the third quarter as costs rose. (Reporting by Julia Love Editing by Christine Murray) Mathieu Stern is an experimental photographer who traveled to Iceland in search of ice pure enough to use as a camera lens. After two days of trial and error, Stern was able to mold the ice lens and take a few eerily beautiful pictures and videos. By Jacob Gronholt-Pedersen COPENHAGEN (Reuters) - Danish cannabis firm StenoCare sparked a stock market stampede on Friday as investors rushed to buy into its shares on their debut, driven by enthusiasm for the therapeutic benefits of its products. StenoCare's stock nearly quadrupled in price to hit a high of 33.50 Danish crowns in early trade, valuing the company at more than 200 million crowns ($30 million). They had been priced at 8.80 crowns in their initial public offering. Interest from investors in the stock had been overwhelming, Chief Executive Thomas Skovlund Schnegelsberg said. "From our communication with investors, we get a sense that many might have followed their heart rather than their wallet." Scientists say evidence is growing that cannabis can ease epilepsy and other conditions such as chronic pain and multiple sclerosis, prompting renewed interest in a substance best known for its psychoactive properties. The European market for medicinal cannabis, forecast to grow from around 100 million euros ($114 million) this year to at least 450 million in 2022, is benefiting from looser legislation in countries like Germany, Britain, Italy and Denmark. For now, recreational use of the substance, which has prompted interest from companies such as Coca-Cola and Molson Coors for cannabis-infused drinks in North America, remain prohibited in most of Europe. Denmark legalized the medicinal use of cannabis from Jan. 1 and is also one of the few European nations to legalize local production. Recreational use is still prohibited even though Copenhagen's Christiania district is famous for cannabis-selling booths which are rarely targeted by the authorities. Anita Ambjorn, 75, a pensioner who suffers from a muscle disease and has been using cannabis oil drops since March this year, attempted to buy shares in the IPO. "I have never invested in the stock market before, but I was willing to support this case with a small saving of 5,000 crowns. Unfortunately I didn't manage to get any shares this time around," Ambjorn said by phone. BETTER LIFE Story continues Ambjorn had just returned home from the pharmacy, where she spent 2,700 crowns to buy enough cannabis oil drops to last her a month and a half. The prescription cost her an additional 1,000 crowns. "The price is horrendously high," Ambjorn said. "But it's worth it. I used to stuff myself with morphine, but this has given me a new and better life." StenoCare, which currently imports cannabis from Canada's CannTrust, plans to use money raised in the IPO to launch its own production. "Our ambition is to have our own products on the shelves next year, but the exact timing depends on approval from the Danish Medicines Agency," said Schnegelsberg. Cannabis is also attracting the interest of consumer product companies after Canada last week became only the second country in the world after Uruguay to fully legalize cannabis. Canada's move has helped boost shares in North American cannabis stocks like Tilray Inc and Cronos Group . "That this is an explosive market has been proven in North America. But UK and European investors haven't really had a chance to participate," said Geremy Thomas, chief executive of London-based medicinal cannabis investment vehicle Sativa Investments. Sativa hopes to become the first in Britain to legally grow and sell cannabis after last week presenting a plan to build a production facility. "My hope is that as more companies begin producing and selling cannabis oil, the cheaper it will become to the benefit for people like me who are chronically ill," said pensioner Ambjorn. ($1 = 6.5702 Danish crowns) ($1 = 0.8804 euros) (Reporting by Jacob Gronholt-Pedersen; Editing by Robin Pomeroy and David Holmes) Oct 26 (Reuters) - The following are the top stories on the New York Times business pages. Reuters has not verified these stories and does not vouch for their accuracy. - Marlboro maker Altria Group Inc announced on Thursday that it would discontinue most of its flavored e-cigarettes and stop selling some brands altogether, after it came under pressure to curb vaping among young people. https://nyti.ms/2AsiH8W - U.S. President Donald Trump proposed that Medicare pay for certain prescription drugs based on the prices paid in other advanced industrial countries, a huge change that could save money for the government and for millions of Medicare beneficiaries. https://nyti.ms/2AssHPs - U.S. President Donald Trump is considering taking executive action to bar migrants, including asylum seekers, from entering the country at the southern border, according to people familiar with the plan. https://nyti.ms/2PVFzDj - A longtime deputy in the Taliban, Mullah Abdul Ghani Baradar, who was arrested in a joint intelligence raid by American and Pakistani agents eight years ago has been freed, the insurgent group confirmed on Thursday. https://nyti.ms/2PUktFa (Compiled by Bengaluru newsroom) TOTAL S.A. TOT reported third-quarter 2018 operating earnings of $1.47 per share (1.26 per share), beating the Zacks Consensus Estimate of $1.31 by 12.2%. The bottom line improved 42.0% from the year-ago figure of $1.04 (0.88 per share). This upswing is due to solid operational performance, improvement in commodity prices and new project ramp ups, boosting its production. Total Revenues Total revenues came in at $45.48 billion, up 49.0% from $30.62 billion generated in the year-ago quarter. The top line surpassed the Zacks Consensus Estimate of $36.18 billion by 25.7%. TOTAL S.A. Price, Consensus and EPS Surprise TOTAL S.A. Price, Consensus and EPS Surprise | TOTAL S.A. Quote Production Touched New Highs Total hydrocarbon production during the third quarter averaged 2,804 thousand barrels of oil equivalent per day, up 9% year over year. The increase was due to higher contribution from Kashagan, Moho Nord, Fort Hills, Edradour-Glenlivet, Yamal LNG and the integration of Maersk Oil, partially offset by natural field decline and PSC price effect. In the reported quarter, liquids production averaged 1,611 thousand barrels per day, increasing 16% from the year-ago period. Gas production during the quarter was 6,557 thousand cubic feet per day, up 2% year over year. Increased production in Africa, Europe and Middle East was partially offset by soft production from the Asia-Pacific region and Americas. Realized Price In the third quarter, realized price for Brent was up 44% to $75.2 per barrel from $52.1 in the year-ago quarter. Average realized liquid price improved 42% to $69.5 per barrel from the year-ago level of $48.9. Realized gas prices in the quarter improved 22% from the prior-year quarter to $4.96 per thousand Btu. Realized hydrocarbon prices increased 45% to $55.4 per barrel of oil equivalent from $38.1 in third-quarter 2017. Highlights of the Release Operating income was $4,548 million, up 49% from the year-ago period. Higher contribution from Exploration & Production, and Gas, Renewable & Power segments boosted the operating income. Adjusted net income in the reported quarter was $3,957 million, up 45% from the year-ago quarter. Interest expenses in the reported quarter were $536 million compared with $368 million in the year-ago period. Segment Details Exploration & Productions operating income was $2,864 million compared with $1,439 million in third-quarter 2017. The year-over-year increase was due to production growth, cost reduction and an increase in average realized hydrocarbon price. Gas, Renewable & Powers operating income was $272 million compared with $97 million in third-quarter 2017. The year-over-year improvement was due to strong performance from LNG and gas/power trading. Refining & Chemicals operating income was $938 million compared with $1,020 million in the year-ago quarter. Marketing & Services operating income was $474 million compared with $506 million in third-quarter 2017. Sale & Purchase of Assets In the first nine months of 2018, TOTAL acquired assets worth $7,964 million, primarily comprising the acquisition of interest in deep-water offshore fields in Lara and Lapa in Brazil, two new 40-year concessions in offshore Abu Dhabi, 16.3% interest in the Waha field in Libya, offshore assets from Cobalt in the Gulf of Mexico and Engies LNG business, Direct Energie. In the first nine months of 2018, the company sold assets worth $3,071 million, comprising mainly the sale of Martin Linge field in Norway, an interest in the Fort Hills project in Canada, a stake in marketing activities in Italy, SunPowers sale of its interest in 8point3, Joslyn in Canada and Rabi in Gabon. Financial Update Cash and cash equivalents as of Sep 30, 2018 were $25.25 billion compared with $28.58 billion on Sep 30, 2017. Net debt-to-equity ratio was 22.4% at the end of the quarter, up from 17.7% at the end of third-quarter 2017. The company intends to buy back shares worth $1.5B in 2018 and repurchase shares valued at $5B over the 2018-2020 time frame. 2018 Guidance TOTALs upstream production is expected to increase 8% in 2018, and improve in the range of 6-7% in the 2017-2020 time frame. The company expects that the startup of new trains, namely Yamal LNG in Russia, Egina in Nigeria, Tempa Rossa in Italy and Ichthys LNG in Australia, will continue to boost production. It aims to invest $16B in 2018 and is implementing a 10% increase in dividend rate. Our View TOTALs earnings and revenues in the reported quarter surpassed the Zacks Consensus Estimate, courtesy of improvement in commodity prices, as well as strong contribution from new upstream projects. In addition, strategic acquisitions strengthen its portfolio and help expand operation. Th company is utilizing its strong cash-flow generating capacity to strengthen balance sheet and repurchase outstanding shares, which is positively impacting earnings. Currently, TOTAL carries a Zacks Rank #3 (Hold). You can see see the complete list of todays Zacks #1 Rank (Strong Buy) stocks here. Upcoming Releases Exxon Mobil Corporation XOM is expected to release third-quarter earnings on Nov 2. The Zacks Consensus Estimate is pegged at $1.21. Chevron Corporation CVX is anticipated to report third-quarter earnings on Nov 2. The Zacks Consensus Estimate stands at $2.06. BP plc BP is expected to announce third-quarter earnings on Oct 30. The Zacks Consensus Estimate is pegged at 86 cents. The Hottest Tech Mega-Trend of All Last year, it generated $8 billion in global revenues. By 2020, it's predicted to blast through the roof to $47 billion. Famed investor Mark Cuban says it will produce "the world's first trillionaires," but that should still leave plenty of money for regular investors who make the right trades early. See Zacks' 3 Best Stocks to Play This Trend >> Want the latest recommendations from Zacks Investment Research? Today, you can download 7 Best Stocks for the Next 30 Days. Click to get this free report Exxon Mobil Corporation (XOM) : Free Stock Analysis Report BP p.l.c. (BP) : Free Stock Analysis Report Chevron Corporation (CVX) : Free Stock Analysis Report TOTAL S.A. (TOT) : Free Stock Analysis Report To read this article on Zacks.com click here. Zacks Investment Research (Updates to clarify Bolton comments based on U.S. government transcript) MOSCOW, Oct 24 (Reuters) - The United States has yet to decide if it will impose new sanctions on Russia, U.S. President Donald Trump's National Security Advisor John Bolton said on Wednesday, saying it was in the process of making a decision. Bolton made the comments at a news conference in Baku, the capital of Azerbaijan, according to a transcript of the event provided by the U.S. National Security Council. Earlier on Wednesday, Russia's Interfax news agency had incorrectly reported Bolton as saying that the United States was not currently considering imposing additional sanctions on Russia, sending the rouble higher. But the transcript showed Bolton had said that the matter was being actively considered in Washington. "On the potential for additional sanctions on Russia, we are still considering what we may be obligated to do under a statute related to chemical weapons attacks," the transcript cited Bolton as saying. "No decision has been made at this point, and I wouldnt predict timing, whether it might be before the (U.S. mid-term)election or after the election. The decision-making is ongoing as we speak." The U.S. State Department in August announced sanctions which targeted U.S. exports of sensitive national-security related goods to Russia after determining that Moscow had used a nerve agent against a former Russian spy, Sergei Skripal, and his daughter, Yulia, in Britain, something Moscow denies. It said at the time it would consider imposing a second tranche of sanctions after 90 days if Moscow failed to provide "reliable assurances" it would no longer use chemical weapons and stopped blocking on-site inspections. (Writing by Andrey Kuzmin/Andrew Osborn Editing by Polina Ivanova) China's retaliatory statements over U.S. sanctions on its armed forces could lead to a possible military confrontation. President Donald Trumps move to put sanctions on Chinas military in September (to teach both China and Russia a lesson for their military transactions) hasnt been taken lightly by Beijing. Earlier this week, United States sent two warships through Taiwan Strait, a step that indicates the countrys support to democratic Taiwan. The move angered China, which admittedly had no plans to give up Taiwan or its territory in the disputed South China Sea. Beijing claims the self-ruled Taiwan under its command. Chinas stock markets climbed following their defense ministers statement, with Shanghai Composite Index (SCI) and Hang Seng Index (HSI) opening 7 and 37 points higher, respectively, on Oct 26 than the previous days closing price. However, the news finally failed to cheer the markets, as SCI and HSI closed 20 and 212 points lower, respectively, on the same day. Chinas recent spat over U.S. sanctions could lead to possible military action between the two largest economies in the world, making it prudent to include some defense stocks in your portfolio at present. U.S. Sanctions on China for Purchasing Russian Missiles According to a Reuters report, China purchased 10 SU-35 combat aircraft in 2017 and S-400 missile system-related equipment in 2018 from Russia. This is the trigger for United States decision to put sanctions on the countrys military. The S-400 surface-to-air missile system, developed by Almaz Central Design Bureau of Russia, can identify, track and destroy unmanned aerial vehicles, aircraft, cruise and ballistic missiles over a range of 402 kilometers. United States doesnt possess any defense systems to destroy Russias S-400 missiles yet. Trump pulled the United States out of a 1987 nuclear weapons pact with Russia last week because Russia and China were developing banned weapons that posed a threat to the former. The Asian countrys unwavering resolution to put pressure on the Unites States despite the ongoing trade war, which was affecting its own economy, and its refusal to give U.S. companies an equal chance in its markets reflects the countrys protectionist attitude. In addition, Chinas purchase of Russian military equipment indicates the Asian nation is unlikely to consider a diplomatic resolve with the United States anytime soon. Story continues Since the commencement of U.S.-China trade war, Chinese indexes have been taking the constant blow of several U.S. tariffs on Chinese goods. HSI and SCI have lost 3363 and 143 points, respectively, since the trade conflict started on Jul 6. Defense Stocks to Buy As U.S.-China conflict on military may be in the cards, we have hand-picked a few defense stocks for your consideration. AeroVironment, Inc. AVAV provides advanced technological defense products, systems and services to government agencies, consumers and businesses. The company carries a Zacks Rank #1 (Strong Buy) and its earnings per share (EPS) is expected to grow 25.9% for the current year. AeroVironments shares have gained 58.4% since the beginning of 2018. The Boeing Company BA manufactures commercial jetliners and defense, space and security systems and is the largest aerospace company in the world. The aerospace manufacturers shares have climbed 23.4% year to date and it bears a Zacks Rank #2 (Buy). The companys EPS is estimated to grow 21% this year. You can see the complete list of todays Zacks #1 Rank stocks here. Transdigm Group Incorporated TDG supplies highly engineered aircraft components for use on nearly all commercial and military aircraft in service today. The company carries a Zacks Rank #2 and its shares have gained 19.4% so far this year. Transdigm Groups EPS for 2018 is expected to increase 42.5%. L3 Technologies Inc. LLL provides communication and electronic systems and products used in military and commercial platforms. The company bears a Zacks Rank #2 and its EPS for the current year is estimated to grow 22.2%. L3s shares have gained 3.3% year to date. The Hottest Tech Mega-Trend of All Last year, it generated $8 billion in global revenues. By 2020, it's predicted to blast through the roof to $47 billion. Famed investor Mark Cuban says it will produce "the world's first trillionaires," but that should still leave plenty of money for regular investors who make the right trades early. See Zacks' 3 Best Stocks to Play This Trend >> Want the latest recommendations from Zacks Investment Research? Today, you can download 7 Best Stocks for the Next 30 Days. Click to get this free report The Boeing Company (BA) : Free Stock Analysis Report Transdigm Group Incorporated (TDG) : Free Stock Analysis Report AeroVironment, Inc. (AVAV) : Free Stock Analysis Report L3 Technologies Inc. (LLL) : Free Stock Analysis Report To read this article on Zacks.com click here. Zacks Investment Research News release from Vestas Wind Systems A/S Fortaleza, 25 October 2018 Vestas has signed a framework agreement with the intention to produce V150-4.2 MW nacelles in the Brazilian state of Ceara. The framework agreement was signed by the Governor of Ceara, Camilo Sobreira de Santana, and Rogerio S. Zampronha, General Manager for Vestas Brazil and Latin America South, at a signing ceremony Monday. With this agreement, Vestas breaks new grounds for the expansion of its 4 MW platform both in Brazil and in the Latin American region and confirms its commitment to the Brazilian market. The V150-4.2 MW is very suitable for the countrys most prevailing wind conditions and will deliver excellent performance and production for customers. The new production setup continues Vestas presence in the state of Ceara, where it has previously manufactured V110-2.0 MW nacelles. Vestas planned investments in the new production setup will total approximately EUR 23m, with the prospect of generating 200 direct jobs and 800 indirect jobs. Speaking at the signing ceremony, Rogerio S. Zampronha said Ceara has been like a second home to Vestas in Brazil. Our decision to stay and extend our footprint in the region is based on the high quality labour, the proximity to the Port of Pecem and to many wind energy project areas. But I would like to highlight the business-friendly environment fostered by the regional government, which has also been a key factor for this decision. The new setup will provide Vestas customers with the companys latest wind technology and access to financial support from the Brazilian Development Bank (BNDES), which covers the acquisition of Brazilian-produced machinery and equipment. During the next months, Vestas will decide if the nacelle plant will remain in the municipality of Aquiraz, where it has assembled V110-2.0 MW nacelles, or another location in Ceara. Vestas has been present in the Brazil since 2000, where it has played a key role for the development of wind energy. Vestas currently has 1.5 GW either installed or under construction in the country, which corresponds to around 750 wind turbines. Vestas has a Sales Office in Sao Paulo that also manages construction and service operations, as well as a Service Centre in Natal (Rio Grande do Norte). Story continues For updated Vestas photographs and videos, please visit our media images page on: https://www.vestas.com/en/media/images . For more information, please contact: Irene Rodriguez Alvarez Communications Specialist Vestas Mediterranean Tel: +34 91 362 81 13 Mail: IRRAL@vestas.com About Vestas Vestas is the energy industrys global partner on sustainable energy solutions. We design, manufacture, install, and service wind turbines across the globe, and with 94 GW of wind turbines in 79 countries, we have installed more wind power than anyone else. Through our industry-leading smart data capabilities and unparalleled 79 GW of wind turbines under service, we use data to interpret, forecast, and exploit wind resources and deliver best-in-class wind power solutions. Together with our customers, Vestas more than 24,300 employees are bringing the world sustainable energy solutions to power a bright future. We invite you to learn more about Vestas by visiting our website at www.vestas.com and following us on our social media channels: Attachment Ranger Energy Services, Inc. (RNGR) shares have started gaining and might continue moving higher in the near term, as indicated by solid earnings estimate revisions. Washington Reit (WRE) came out with quarterly funds from operations (FFO) of $0.45 per share, missing the Zacks Consensus Estimate of $0.46 per share. This compares to FFO of $0.46 per share a year ago. These figures are adjusted for non-recurring items. This quarterly report represents an FFO surprise of -2.17%. A quarter ago, it was expected that this real estate investment trust would post FFO of $0.47 per share when it actually produced FFO of $0.48, delivering a surprise of 2.13%. Over the last four quarters, the company has surpassed consensus FFO estimates just once. Washington Reit, which belongs to the Zacks REIT and Equity Trust - Other industry, posted revenues of $82.50 million for the quarter ended September 2018, missing the Zacks Consensus Estimate by 2.69%. This compares to year-ago revenues of $82.82 million. The company has topped consensus revenue estimates two times over the last four quarters. The sustainability of the stock's immediate price movement based on the recently-released numbers and future FFO expectations will mostly depend on management's commentary on the earnings call. Washington Reit shares have lost about 6.7% since the beginning of the year versus the S&P 500's decline of -0.7%. What's Next for Washington Reit? While Washington Reit has underperformed the market so far this year, the question that comes to investors' minds is: what's next for the stock? There are no easy answers to this key question, but one reliable measure that can help investors address this is the company's FFO outlook. Not only does this include current consensus FFO expectations for the coming quarter(s), but also how these expectations have changed lately. Empirical research shows a strong correlation between near-term stock movements and trends in estimate revisions. Investors can track such revisions by themselves or rely on a tried-and-tested rating tool like the Zacks Rank, which has an impressive track record of harnessing the power of estimate revisions. Story continues Ahead of this earnings release, the estimate revisions trend for Washington Reit was mixed. While the magnitude and direction of estimate revisions could change following the company's just-released earnings report, the current status translates into a Zacks Rank #3 (Hold) for the stock. So, the shares are expected to perform in line with the market in the near future. You can see the complete list of today's Zacks #1 Rank (Strong Buy) stocks here. It will be interesting to see how estimates for the coming quarters and current fiscal year change in the days ahead. The current consensus FFO estimate is $0.46 on $84.52 million in revenues for the coming quarter and $1.86 on $340.82 million in revenues for the current fiscal year. Investors should be mindful of the fact that the outlook for the industry can have a material impact on the performance of the stock as well. In terms of the Zacks Industry Rank, REIT and Equity Trust - Other is currently in the bottom 26% of the 250 plus Zacks industries. Our research shows that the top 50% of the Zacks-ranked industries outperform the bottom 50% by a factor of more than 2 to 1. Want the latest recommendations from Zacks Investment Research? Today, you can download 7 Best Stocks for the Next 30 Days. Click to get this free report Washington Real Estate Investment Trust (WRE) : Free Stock Analysis Report To read this article on Zacks.com click here. Zacks Investment Research With Halloween approaching and October being National Childrens Health Month, the Tooth Wizard and his antagonist, Plaque Man, stopped by Calhan Elementary School in Calhan on Wednesday for some tooth talk with 190 kindergarten through third-grade students. The interactive presentation, Land of Smiles, by Delta Dental of Colorado, focuses on teaching kids how to properly brush and floss their teeth and develop good oral health habits for a lifetime. Students learn what is a cavity, How often should they brush their teeth and everything about flossing. By establishing those habits at a young age, we hope more Colorado kids wont experience the negative effects of tooth decay, Allison Cusick, executive director of Delta Dental of Colorado Foundation, said in a news release. Cavities are the most common chronic childhood illness, with half of Colorados third-graders having at least one cavity, according to Delta Dental, an insurance company. Children with pain from tooth decay typically miss more school and have lower grades than their peers, the company says. The program has visited 300 schools, reaching 117,000 students since 2014. It focuses on impacting underserved children, as 68 percent of Colorado kids reporting poor oral health live in low-income households. Students received a free bag with dental hygiene products. Contact the writer: 719-476-1656. Wells Fargo executives are said to get OCC letters before leave A judge on Friday extended the legal limbo of the man who admitted to killing three people and wounding nine at a Planned Parenthood in Colorado Springs. Fourth Judicial District Judge William Bain ruled that Robert Lewis Dear Jr., 60, remains mentally unfit to be to be tried in the Nov. 27, 2015, attacks. The move means that Dears prosecution will be in abeyance while he is in treatment at the Colorado State Mental Health Institute in Pueblo. A judge in May 2016 ruled that Dear is mentally incompetent to stand trial, meaning that he doesnt have a rational understanding of the charges against him. Dear, who has been diagnosed with delusional disorder, has been found incompetent every three months since. His treatment team in Pueblo has sought and received permission to force medication on him, but privacy rules prevent state authorities from commenting on whether medication has begun, or if its having an effect. Dear declared himself a warrior for the babies after unleashing five hours of mayhem from a semi-automatic rifle at the clinic in northwest Colorado Springs. He later said he mounted the standoff out of fears that the FBI was surveilling him at his trailer home in Hartsel, 70 miles west of Colorado Springs. WASHINGTON Police intercepted suspicious packages addressed to actor Robert DeNiro and former Vice President Joe Biden on Thursday, and inve PUEBLO Local members of the Colorado Chemical Demilitarization Citizens Advisory Commission said they are out of patience with the Pentagons latest plan to ship another 250,000 gallons of contaminated water to Texas and not neutralize it at the chemical demilitarization plant at Pueblo Chemical Depot. From day one, weve told you we dont like transporting (waste off-site), Pueblo County Commissioner Terry Hart told officials from the Pentagons Assembled Chemical Weapons Alternative program. We told you once you open that Pandoras box, transportation will become (your) preferred way to dispose of the hydrolysate and youve promised us repeatedly that wouldnt happen, Hart said at a meeting this week with Assembled Chemical Weapons Alternative officials and operators of the Pueblo Chemical Agent Destruction Pilot Plant. This would mark the third time in a year that contaminated hydrolysate the water used to neutralize mustard agent weapons would be shipped off the Pueblo site for disposal in Texas. It would bring the amount of shipped waste to nearly 750,000 gallons. The new demilitarization plant is designed to both destroy mustard-agent weapons and the contaminated water that results. The plant has had a stop-and-start record in the past year but is now destroying several hundred howitzer rounds a day. What isnt working as fast is the neutralizing process for the hydrolysate, so the contaminated water coming out of the destruction plant is being stored on site. Assembled Chemical Weapons Alternative officials want to empty the tanks and ship another 250,000 gallons to Texas for disposal. Hart and other members of the citizens advisory group Irene Kornelly, Dr. Velma Campbell and John Norton challenged that this week, pointing to the plants production figures. Why cant you slow down your (destruction process) until youve been able to take care of the 250,000 gallons you have in your storage tanks? asked Kornelly, chairwoman of the citizens commission. Plant officials gave answers about wanting to keep the plant operating at a high rate of efficiency, but ultimately they acknowledged the timetable could be adjusted to reduce the amount of hydrolystate being produced to a manageable level. Frankly, our patience is gone, Hart told the Assembled Chemical Weapons Alternative officials. We dont want to see any trucks driving away from this plant. It took decades for Pentagon, state and local officials to reach agreement on building a water-neutralization plant at the Pueblo Chemical Depot for dealing with the thousands of old Cold War mustard-agent weapons stored there. Early in the discussions, state and local officials insisted they didnt want old-fashioned incinerators built at the Pueblo depot to burn up old weapons. And they didnt want any hazardous waste being trucked onto or off of the site. Thus, all parties agreed on the $4 billion PCAPP plant that now is operating. The citizens committee doesnt have veto power over the Pentagons decision-making process but they do have the ear of Sens. Michael Bennet and Cory Gardner, as well as Rep. Scott Tipton, who represents Pueblo and the 3rd District. What we can do is raise hell, Norton said. Joshua Sharf is a fiscal policy analyst at the Independence Institute, a free market think tank in Denver. The Institute is the main backer of Prop 109. As his administration approaches its final two months, Colorado Gov. John Hickenlooper on Friday released new data celebrating the impact of outdoor recreation on the states economy. He also signed an executive order to establish the Inter-Agency Trails and Recreation Council, which he said will promote outdoor recreation and conservation in Colorado, as well as improve coordination on outdoor recreation among eight state agencies and related state-funded entities. Those entities include the Department of Natural Resources, Colorado Parks and Wildlife, Great Outdoors Colorado and the Colorado Office of Economic Development and International Trade. Standing in front of downtown Denvers Confluence Park on Friday, the governor spoke about the future of Colorado outdoor recreation, whether its hiking or hunting or fishing in the mountains, or biking and trails in urban areas. He pointed out that the metro Denver area has 1,000 miles of bike/pedestrian trails, almost all interconnected. We just have to make sure people know about it, he said. Biking gets people into shape, reduces traffic congestion and adds economic impact, he added. That economic impact in 2017 topped $37 billion in consumer spending, generated $9 billion in local and federal taxes, and is tied to 511,000 jobs. The overall economic contribution in 2017, including salaries and wages, was $62 billion, nearly twice what it was five years ago, according to the governors office. Nearly 134,000 jobs on the Western Slope are tied to outdoor recreation, with another 120,000 along the Continental Divide in northern Colorado. The executive order the governor signed Friday is something weve been working on for a long time, Hickenlooper said. Its lean and straightforward and allows us to continue the momentum. The goal is to make it easier for the next governor. The most important thing it does is delineate how the different agencies can work together, Hickenlooper said. It also puts more meat on the bone to Colorado the Beautiful, the statewide effort to ensure that every Coloradan is no more than a 10-minute walk from a trail or green space. The executive order is also intended to help clarify and disseminate information on the rights of private property owners who allow people to cross their lands to reach a trailhead, for example. State law shields those private property owners from liability, he said. Additionally, the executive order looks to increase diversity hiring at the state division of parks and wildlife, as well as develop a mobile app by next month that will show off the states trails. When we look to the future, we see children who have traded playgrounds for PlayStations, said Colorado Department of Natural Resources Executive Director Bob Randall. We see a lack of diversity and limited access to those who seldom think of the outdoors. Generations raised on hunting and fishing struggle to pass that on to future generations, and urban neighborhoods have too few connections to open spaces and outdoor recreation. Fostering a greater connection among people, especially young people, matters for our physical and mental well being, as well as for the recreational spaces, he said, adding that the time will come to pass the baton. Without a new generation of people who share a curiosity and passion about sustaining the states treasures, we put that inheritance at risk. This is a video of two of the FlyCroTug drones developed by researchers at Stanford University and the Ecole Polytechnique Federale de Lausanne in Switzerland that are capable of working together to manipulate heavy objects. In this example, one uses a hooked wedge inserted below a door to pull it open after the other has depressed its handle (both contain microspines on their undercarriages to anchor themselves to the carpet while pulling). Even with the world political environment aside, these are truly terrifying times we're living in. Remember to tell your kids you love them but the robots are coming and its everybody for themselves. Keep going for the whole video. On the upside, at least they're not particularly quick door openers. Thanks again to K Diddie, who agrees this is why it's important to switch to round doorknobs. English Finnish Sp Mortgage Bank Plc, Central Bank of Savings Banks Finland Plc & Savings Banks Group Stock Exchange Release 25 October 2018 at 9 am (CET +1) Sp Mortgage Bank Plc and Central Bank of Savings Banks Finland Plc will publish their Board of Directors Report and IFRS Financial Statements 2018 on 15 February 2019. Savings Banks Group will publish their Releases of Financial Statements for 2018 at the same time on 15 February 2019. All will be published as a stock exchange release and on internet page www.saastopankki.fi. SP MORTGAGE BANK PLC, CENTRAL BANK OF SAVINGS BANKS FINLAND PLC & SAVINGS BANKS GROUP Further information: Tomi Narhinen, Managing Director Savings Banks Union Coop tomi.narhinen@saastopankki.fi +358 40 724 3896 Sp Mortgage Bank Plc is part of the Savings Banks Group and the Savings Banks Amalgamation. The role of Sp Mortgage Bank is, together with Central Bank of Savings Banks Finland Plc, to be responsible for obtaining funding for the Savings Banks Group from money and capital markets. Sp Mortgage Bank is responsible for the Savings Banks Group's mortgage-secured funding by issuing covered bonds. English Lithuanian Taking into account the growing volume of production and sales of corrugated cardboard, in order to ensure a more efficient management of corrugated cardboard business, its further development and increase the profitability of this business, on the 26th of October, 2018 the Board of AB Grigeo adopted a decision to transfer a part of the business of AB Grigeo - the corrugated cardboard production business (hereinafter - the Business) to its 100 % owned subsidiary UAB Grigeo Packaging, legal entity code 302329061, address Vilniaus g. 10, Grigiskes, Vilnius City municipality, the Republic of Lithuania, in exchange for the newly issued shares of UAB Grigeo Packaging. The transfer of the Business to UAB Grigeo Packaging will be implemented by increasing the authorized capital of UAB Grigeo Packaging. AB Grigeo will make payment for the entire new issue of shares by contribution other than in cash, i.e. by the Business, as a complex of assets, rights and obligations that from an organizational point of view is an autonomous economic unit, in exchange for new ordinary shares of UAB Grigeo Packaging. Business, as a contribution other than in cash, will be transferred to UAB Grigeo Packaging on the basis of the Share subscription agreement and the Business Acceptance-Transfer Act (hereinafter together referred to as the Transaction). The Transaction is intended to be concluded on the 2nd of January, 2019 in accordance with the requirements established in the legal acts of the Republic of Lithuania. After the transfer of the Business to a subsidiary, AB Grigeo and UAB Grigeo Packaging will continue their production activities at the same address as before the transfer of the Business at Vilniaus g. 10, Grigiskes, Vilnius City municipality, the Republic of Lithuania. AB Grigeo will concentrate its activities on the production of tissue paper products, and UAB Grigeo Packaging will carry out corrugated cardboard production activities. The Board of AB Grigeo believes that concentration of corrugated cardboard production in a separate company will ensure greater clarity and efficiency of the management of the Business and, in the short term, will not have a significant impact on the financial indicators of the AB Grigeo group of companies. English French MONTREAL, Oct. 26, 2018 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Saputo Inc. (Saputo or the Company) (TSX: SAP) announces today that it has entered into an agreement to acquire the activities of F&A Dairy Products, Inc. (F&A Dairy Products). Its activities are conducted at two manufacturing facilities located in Las Cruces, New Mexico, and Dresser, Wisconsin (USA). The business employs approximately 170 people. The purchase price of US$85 million (approximately CDN$111 million), on a cash-free and debt-free basis, will be paid in cash from cash on hand and available credit facilities. F&A Dairy Products manufactures a variety of natural cheeses, including mozzarella and provolone, which are distributed in the United States and Mexico. For the twelve-month period ended on August 31, 2018, F&A Dairy Products generated revenues of approximately US$163 million (CDN$212 million). The acquisition of F&A Dairy Products activities will add to and complement the activities of Saputos Cheese Division (USA). The transaction is subject to customary conditions (including regulatory approval) and is expected to close by the end of 2018. About Saputo Saputo produces, markets, and distributes a wide array of dairy products of the utmost quality, including cheese, fluid milk, extended shelf-life milk and cream products, cultured products and dairy ingredients. Saputo is one of the top ten dairy processors in the world, the largest cheese manufacturer and the leading fluid milk and cream processor in Canada, the top dairy processor in Australia and the second largest in Argentina. In the USA, Saputo ranks among the top three cheese producers and is one of the largest producers of extended shelf-life and cultured dairy products. Our products are sold in several countries under well-known brand names such as Saputo, Alexis de Portneuf, Armstrong, COON, Cracker Barrel*, Dairyland, DairyStar, Devondale, Friendship Dairies, Frigo Cheese Heads, La Paulina, Milk2Go/Laits Go, Montchevre, Murray Goulburn Ingredients, Neilson, Nutrilait, Scotsburn*, Stella, Sungold, Treasure Cave and Woolwich Dairy. Saputo Inc. is a publicly traded company and its shares are listed on the Toronto Stock Exchange under the symbol SAP. *Trademark used under licence. CAUTION REGARDING FORWARD-LOOKING STATEMENTS This news release contains forward-looking statements within the meaning of applicable securities laws. These statements are based, among other things, on Saputos assumptions, expectations, estimates, objectives, plans and intentions as of the date hereof regarding projected revenues and expenses, the economic, industry, competitive and regulatory environments in which the Company operates or which could affect its activities, its ability to attract and retain customers and consumers, as well as the availability and cost of milk and other raw materials and energy supplies, its operating costs and the pricing of its finished products on the various markets in which it carries on business. These forward-looking statements include, among others, statements with respect to the Companys short and medium-term objectives, outlook, business projects and strategies to achieve those objectives, as well as statements with respect to the Companys beliefs, plans, objectives and expectations. The words may, should, will, would, believe, plan, expect, intend, anticipate, estimate, foresee, objective, continue, propose or target, or the negative of these terms or variations of them, the use of conditional or future tense or words and expressions of similar nature, are intended to identify forward-looking statements. By their nature, forward-looking statements are subject to a number of inherent risks and uncertainties. Actual results could differ materially from the conclusion, forecast or projection stated in such forward-looking statements. As a result, the Company cannot guarantee that any forward-looking statements will materialize. Assumptions, expectations and estimates made in the preparation of forward-looking statements and risks that could cause actual results to differ materially from current expectations are discussed in the Companys materials filed with the Canadian securities regulatory authorities from time to time, including the Risks and Uncertainties section of the Managements Discussion and Analysis included in the Companys 2018 Annual Report. Forward-looking statements are based on Managements current estimates, expectations and assumptions, which Management believes are reasonable as of the date hereof, and, accordingly, are subject to changes after such date. You should not place undue importance on forward-looking statements and should not rely upon this information as of any other date. To the extent any forward-looking statement in this document constitutes financial outlook, within the meaning of applicable securities laws, such information is intended to provide shareholders with information regarding the Company, including its assessment of future financial plans, and may not be appropriate for other purposes. Financial outlook, as with forward-looking information generally, is based on current estimates, expectations and assumptions and is subject to inherent risks and uncertainties and other factors. Except as required under applicable securities legislation, Saputo does not undertake to update or revise these forward-looking statements, whether written or verbal, that may be made from time to time by itself or on its behalf, whether as a result of new information, future events or otherwise. Media Inquiries 1-514-328-3141 / 1-866-648-5902 PDF available: http://resource.globenewswire.com/Resource/Download/cb99ffdb-d7fe-493a-a7ec-b49335fcf805 State Agencies Announce Medication Disposal Sites Across New York State on National Prescription Drug Take Back Day - Saturday, October 27, 2018 Unused, Expired and Unwanted Prescription Drugs Can Be Discarded at More Than 250 Locations Statewide Drug Disposal at Participating Locations is Free and Anonymous 231 Collection Boxes Distributed Across State Under DEC's Pharmaceutical Take-Back Program ALBANY, N.Y. (October 26, 2018) - The New York State Departments of Health and Environmental Conservation and Offices of Alcoholism and Substance Abuse Services and Aging today announced they are partnering with the Drug Enforcement Administration and local law enforcement to participate in National Prescription Drug Take Back Day on Saturday, October 27, 2018 from 10 a.m. - 2 p.m. New Yorkers can prevent addiction before it can start by disposing of their medications at one of 255 participating locations across the state, which can be found online using the online collection site locator tool. Allowing unnecessary or expired medications to languish in your medicine cabinet can present a danger to you and your loved ones, said Health Commissioner Dr. Howard Zucker. National Prescription Drug Take Back Day provides the perfect opportunity to dispose of medications that are no longer needed and may do more harm than good. By participating in this event, New Yorkers may have the opportunity to save lives. Saturday's event marks the 16th time in eight years that New York has participated in National Prescription Drug Take Back Day. Last April, Americans turned in 474.5 tons of prescription drugs at 5,842 sites operated by the DEA and 4,683 of its state, local and tribal law enforcement partners. In the 15 previous national Take Back events, the DEA and its partners have taken in nearly 5,000 tons of pills. The DEA's New York Division alone collected approximately 20 tons of discarded prescription drugs from designated collection sites last April. Office of Alcoholism and Substance Abuse Services Commissioner Arlene Gonzalez-Sanchez said, Safe, responsible disposal of medications is an important action that everyone can take to keep themselves out of harms way. With the many takeback events throughout the state, New Yorkers are able to take an active role in ensuring these unused drugs are kept away from people who should not have them. These events are a crucial way that we can fight this public health crisis, and help prevent substance use disorders. DEC Commissioner Basil Seggos said, Flushed medications have been found in New York lakes, rivers and streams and can negatively affect our states waterways, fish and other aquatic wildlife. With support from the States Environmental Protection Fund, DEC is working with hundreds of pharmacies, hospitals and long-term care facilities through our Pharmaceutical Take Back Program to install medication collection boxes across the State. DEC encourages all New Yorkers to help protect and improve water quality and reduce harmful impacts to fish and aquatic organisms by taking part in the upcoming drug takeback day and to be mindful every day of proper disposal of unused, unwanted, or expired pharmaceuticals. New York State Office for the Aging Acting Director Greg Olsen said, It's not uncommon for some older adults to be prescribed 14 or more medications a yearand over time, changing medical conditions can mean different medications. Having expired or unneeded prescription drugs can lead to potentially dangerous situations from incorrect dosages, taking expired pills that are no longer effective, or having unused medications find their way into the wrong hands. National Prescription Drug Take Back Day helps older New Yorkers and caregivers dispose of unused medications safely to avoid accidental misuse or abuse. In addition to the law enforcement sites available to the public, 448 healthcare facilities across the state will also be participating in National Prescription Drug Take Back Day. The facilities, including institutional settings, such as long-term care facilities and nursing homes, will be disposing of their own unused and expired medications to further reduce the potential of diversion of dangerous controlled substances. The DEA can only accept pills or patches, not liquids, needles or sharps. The service is free and anonymous with no questions asked. According to the 2016 National Survey on Drug Use and Health, 6.2 million Americans abused controlled prescription drugs. The number of accidental poisonings and overdoses due to these drugs is also alarmingly high. Studies show that a majority of abused prescription drugs are obtained from family and friends, often from the home medicine cabinet. In addition, there are concerns about unused pharmaceuticals getting into the wrong hands. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reports that one U.S. citizen dies every 16 minutes from a drug overdose and has declared this public health threat an epidemic. The usual methods for disposing of unused medicines - throwing them in the trash or flushing them down the toilet - pose potential health, safety and environmental hazards. With technological advances in analytical techniques, it is now possible to detect low levels of drugs in surface water and groundwater. Some drugs pass largely unaltered through wastewater treatment plants and enter rivers and other waterways. Flushed medications have been found in New York lakes, rivers and streams and can negatively affect the waterways. A national study conducted in 1999 and 2000 by the U.S. Geological Survey found low levels of drugs such as antibiotics, hormones, contraceptives and steroids in 80 percent of rivers and streams tested. Medications adversely affect fish and other aquatic wildlife and increase the development of drug-resistant bacteria. The State Department of Environmental Conservation announced that, under New York's $2 million pilot Pharmaceutical Take-Back Program, 231 collection boxes have been distributed to participating retail pharmacies, hospitals and long-term care facilities across the state. The pilot program to safely collect unused and expired waste medication was launched by DEC in December 2017, and a total of 246 facilities have agreed to participate. Since May 2018, DEC has collected over two tons of unused, unwanted, or expired medications through the pilot program and New Yorkers are encouraged to use the medication collection box locations, which can be found by visiting the DEC website. The pilot is funded with $2 million from the state's Environmental Protection Fund, which covers the full cost of purchasing U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration-compliant medication drop boxes, as well as the cost of up to 50 inner liners, pick up, transport and destruction of collected waste pharmaceuticals for a period of two years. At the end of the pilot program participants are required to continue the program, at their own expense, for six additional months. As proposed by Governor Cuomo, the Enacted Budget for 2018-19 includes an additional $1 million to support the expansion of this pilot program. DEC plans to install another 230 medication collection boxes across the state under the second phase of the pilot program, which will begin in February of 2019. New Yorkers struggling with an addiction, or whose loved ones are struggling, can find help and hope by calling the states toll-free, 24-hour, 7-day-a-week HOPEline at 1-877-8-HOPENY (1-877-846-7369) or by texting HOPENY (Short Code 467369). For more information about the disposal of prescription drugs or about National Prescription Drug Take Back Day, go to the DEA Diversion website. | Sony PS 5550 dsfsfb1 : dsfsfb1 : 3 : dsfsfb1: 3 #1 Sony PS 5550 / 26-10-2018 07:12 Sony PS 5550 ( 07-11-2018 20:56 #1 .) : : : -------------------- -- Hi-Fi ---- ---- ---- ---- -- -- -- -- ---- D ---- BD/DVD/LD ---- - ---- , ---- ---- -- -- -- : 1 () | DUAL 1019 DUAL 1019 dsfsfb1 : dsfsfb1 : 3 : dsfsfb1: 3 #1 DUAL 1019 DUAL 1019 / 26-10-2018 07:12 DUAL 1019 DUAL 1019 ( 07-11-2018 20:53 #1 .) : : : -------------------- -- Hi-Fi ---- ---- ---- ---- -- -- -- -- ---- D ---- BD/DVD/LD ---- - ---- , ---- ---- -- -- -- : 1 () The author and her family own and operate a 570-cow Holstein and Jersey dairy near Berlin, Pa. Walking through a boggy section of pasture or swampy wetland, landowners in the Northeast may never see one of its oldest inhabitants the bog turtle. At only 4 inches across, its also one of the smallest turtle species, but it thrives in wetlands that often are used to pasture cattle. Pete Jones, a dairy farmer in eastern New York, partnered with the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service and the USDA-Natural Resource Conservation Service (NRCS) to initially enroll 20 acres of pasture in the Wetlands Reserve Enhancement Program. The agreement is beneficial to Jones, allowing him to reclaim pasture ground, and to the turtles, which gain a safe place to nest and live their lives. Authors note: The bog turtle is in the equivalent of the witness protection program. That being the case, Pete Jones is a pseudonym for the landowner to keep the turtle habitat safe. We can help you Jones, who milks 70 cows, was struggling with invasive plants in his fields and asked NRCS for some advice. Jason Tesauro, a contractor for USDA-NRCS, visited the fields and made a surprise discovery. A self-proclaimed turtle nerd since 1994, Tesauro found the remnants of a hatched bog turtle nest. The nest qualified Jones for enrollment in the NRCS Wetlands Reserve Enhancement Program (WREP). Through the program, and with the help of the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, Jones would regain his pastures, put conservation easements on a portion of his property, and become steward of a large bog turtle population. An estimated 40 turtles thrive on his lands. According to Tesauro, landowners and farmers benefit from cooperating with federal conservation agencies. Landowners get paid from the sale of the wetland easement, based on a per-acre value, he said. At one time, this value was as high as $9,000 per acre in New York and even higher in Pennsylvania. Easement rates are lower nowadays but still enticing enough. He said dairy or beef farmers can reclaim overgrown, weedy or scrubby wetlands for seasonal pasture. NRCS funds the mechanical clearing of the wetland, the installation of a permanent cattle fence, and provides compensation for grazing. Watch stocking densities Grazing is not done on a conventional production scale. We need to be extremely careful with stocking densities as there is a risk of cattle trampling bog turtles or depleting the vegetation so that there is no cover, he said. Under the easement program, NRCS stipulates in a contract with the landowner that grazing be done May through September at the rate of one cow per 2 acres of pasture with no feed subsidies. Jones property now contains the largest protected turtle habitat in New York. There are 11 other active grazing projects under NRCS in the state, and the technique has been used in other Northeast states and as far south as North Carolina. Generally, the sites are small, only 2 to 3 acres each, Tesauro said. These are not typical standing-water wetlands, he added, but wetlands that are permanently saturated by groundwater seepage where the water is mostly restricted to the upper horizon of the soils or in shallow rivulets. Tesauro first began working with Jones in 2009. At that time, he was working for the Environmental Defense Fund (EDF), which partnered with NRCS to enroll landowners with significant bog turtle habitat on their land into NRCSs easement program called Wetlands Reserve Program, WRP (now WREP). EDF viewed WRP as a major conservation tool for helping to secure the long-term protection for bog turtles in light of the ultimate goal of removing them from their federal threatened status to stable or recovered, he said. My job was to promote the program, educate landowners about the plight of the bog turtle, and show them how they could benefit financially, either through improving or expanding seasonal pasture or simply through the sale of a deed restricted conservation easement on their wetlands. The financial aspect, Jones admits, was beneficial, helping him keep the farm going while putting his kids through school. The money was a big incentive, he said. The improvement of the land was important as well. Jones has benefited from the federal government covering the easement payment, 75 percent of fencing and vegetation, and annual payments for his cows to graze the habitat. The take-home message is that cattle grazing improved and expanded nesting habitat, Tesauro said. At only about 4 inches long, the bog turtle is one of North Americas smallest turtles. They have a bright yellow, orange, or red blotch on each side of the head. These small creatures are tiny and secretive, Tesauro said, which is why farmers may never see them in their pasture walks. The bog turtles biggest threats are loss of habitat and natural predators, like raccoons and skunks. Raccoons exist in high numbers and are one of the biggest predators, he said. They feed on bog turtles and during nesting season they look for eggs to eat. Bog turtle eggs are only an inch long. Eggs are laid in the first half of June along the tops of the grassy hummocks, making them easy targets for skunks and raccoons. Eggs hatch at summers end if they survive. Tesauro has placed small wire cages on top of turtle nests to help keep them safe during this time. Cages are positioned just above the waterline to keep the predators from snatching them. He added that bog turtles are popular as pets on the black market, so protected sites are generally kept secret. Bog turtles usually spend their entire life in the same area they were hatched, eating insects, snails, worms, seeds, and carrion. Tesauro said they can live in densities as high as 50 per acre and have a profound impact on the ecology of the wetland. So why work to save such a small creature? I like to say in response to what are bog turtles good for? is that they are symbolic of a healthy wetland and ecological landscape, Tesauro said. Landscapes that support bog turtles support healthy watersheds and are often characterized by rich biodiversity. When I was in middle school, the barn on my familys dairy farm burnt down. Most of the cows escaped, but the entire wooden part of the structure was gone, leaving just the brick walls standing. We used those brick walls as the foundation for the new tie stall barn we built. During clean up and construction, we housed and milked our cows at a farm that had recently sold out about 25 minutes away. It was a June day when construction of the new barn was complete and the herd could return home. Fittingly, the first cow to walk into the barn was one of the boss cows, a leader, who had always been one of the first cows to return to the barn after being released to pasture. Even though the cows were being unloaded through a different door (not the one they would have normally come through), that cow marched right down the alley and hopped into the stall that always had been hers, third from the front door. That cows actions have always stuck with me. I think it showcases how good a cows memory is and it proves that cattle are certainly creatures of habit. Researchers have observed cows in barns to estimate how much time they do certain activities each day. Obviously, dairy cows need to eat, drink, and be milked. They also need time to socialize, and most importantly, they need time to rest and make milk. The University of Wisconsin (UW) School of Veterinary Medicine recommends a minimum of 12 hours of lying time per day for a lactating dairy cow. That leaves half a day to accomplish all the other tasks. The UW team estimates that cows spend about 4.5 hours per day eating and 2.5 hours per day in the alley of the freestall barn (this includes drinking time). Another two hours are spent standing in the stalls, which leaves just three hours per day for milking. Any additional time over three hours spent away from the pen typically means a reduction in lying time. While time budgets for cows in tie stall barns would look different, access to fresh feed, clean water, and a comfortable lying surface are all just as crucial to be sure a cow can fill its day productively. Certain parts of a cows day are scheduled by humans, such as milking time and when feed is available. However, the more free time we can provide cows to eat, drink, and rest will hopefully keep them healthier and making more of the milk we depend on. Abby Bauer The author is an associate editor and covers animal health, dairy housing and equipment, and nutrient management. She grew up on a dairy farm near Plymouth, Wis., and previously served as a University of Wisconsin agricultural extension agent. She received a masters degree from North Carolina State University and a bachelors from University of Wisconsin-Madison. 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. TO THE EDITOR: In the Illinois governor's race, pro-lifers know that Governor Rauner has betrayed his promise to stay out of the moral issues, having signed into law House Bill 40. The bill provides funding for Medicaid and state employee abortions, and restricts the free speech of pregnancy care centers. So, is State Senator Sam McCann, the Conservative Party candidate, a good alternative for pro-lifers?Not so fast, pro-life voter!! McCann isn't proclaiming the positives of the Constitution. Oddly enough, McCann is attacking PRO-LIFE and conservative Republicans that are in races with Democrats. Former Gube candidate Jeanne Ives is outraged at McCann. McCann attacked several conservative lawmakers - including State Rep. Tom Morrison (Palatine) and State Rep. John Cabello (Rockford). 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 These activists from the Persian Wildlife Heritage Foundation were arrested in January, along with at least four other people, and accused of espionage, something that international human rights campaigners and Irans own government say there is no evidence for. Thus, the Iranian Regime changed the charges to corruption on earth, which is punishable by execution. UN Environment head, Erik Solheim, said that the UN is deeply troubled by these cases and that the latest development gives them even greater cause for alarm. The five environmentalists are Houman Jowkar, Taher Ghadirian, Morad Tahbaz, Sepideh Kashani and Niloufar Bayani. Tahbaz, who is Iranian-American, is CEO of the PWHF, while Bayani who has worked with the UN, only returned to Iran last June to join the group. One source familiar with the Iranian Regime said that its intelligence apparatus is suspicious of NGOs, especially those with dual nationals involved, because it sees them as threats to the status quo of the Regime. Meanwhile, Iran is plagued by environmental challenges, including water shortages and air pollution, which have been triggers for the nationwide protests in Iran that sprang up in December, but the people most equipped to help are being jailed by the mullahs. In January, the Revolutionary Guards Corps arrested at least nine members of the PWHF, one of whom has already died in jail. Professor Kavous Seyed-Emami, a celebrated Canadian-Iranian environmentalist, died in February and the Regime claimed it was suicide, but many disagree. The Regime accused Seyed-Emami of being a CIA-Mossad agent and claimed that the PWHF had used surveys of endangered Asiatic cheetahs as a cover for spying on missile test sites. However, they produced no evidence for that. The source said: After the death in custody of Seyed-Emami, the Revolutionary Guards went on defensive and to extremes to prove that something was wrong, especially when the government is saying they havent done anything wrong. Solheim explained that the UN was kept in the dark about Seyed-Emamis death and the new charges against the environmentalists. He said: This sends an extremely ominous message to Irans environmentalist community. The Regime also arrested Kaveh Madani, the deputy head of Irans environmental protection organisation, and held him for 72 hours. Following his release, he fled the county. The three other environmentalists who were not charged with corruption on earth, but whose fate is still unknown are Amir Hossein Khaleghi, Sam Rajabi and Abdolreza Kouhpayeh. We have previously discussed how the MEK were subjected to great hardship from both the Iranian Regime and their proxies within the Iraqi government during their time at Camp Ashraf and Camp Liberty. Now, we will discuss how the MEK was finally moved to relative safety in Europe in 2016. Relocation Following the brutal rocket attack on Camp Liberty, which killed 52 MEK members, the group was forced to accept that they would never be safe in Iraq, while the Iranian Regime was pulling the strings. Thus, over a long four-and-a-half-year resettlement process, almost 2,000 MEK members were relocated to European countries as part of an international effort to save their lives, despite various attempts by the Iranian Regime to discredit the MEK, obstruct their safe passage, and even threaten the MEK and authorities. Most of the MEK members were sent to Albania, but others were rehomed in Germany, Norway, the United Kingdom, The Netherlands, Finland, Denmark, Belgium, Italy and Spain. The final group of 280 MEK members left Camp Liberty for Albania on September 9, 2016. A few days before the final relocation, the National Council of Resistance of Iran commended the efforts of President of the Iranian Resistance Maryam Rajavi, along with many distinguished American, European, and Arab personalities, to relocate the MEK. Iran Regimes Response The Iranian Regime tried every trick in the book to hamper the MEKs transfer, including faking arrest warrants, providing fake red notices to Interpol, and even trying to arrest officials. Irans elite security unit, the Quds Force, even provided missiles to three of its Iraqi proxy groups- Kataeb Hezbollah, Asaeb Ahl Al-Haq, and Harakat al-Nujaba in order to launch missile attacks on the MEK atCamp Liberty to prevent them from leaving. Kataeb Hezbollah planned to carry out an attack on the MEK on August 19, 2016, and stationed a missile-equipped truck near to Camp Liberty, but thankfully the plan was discovered and thwarted by Iraqs Federal Police. When those plans did not work, the Regime sent Iraqi intelligence agents to effectively steal the personal belongings of MEK members, including cell phones, laptops, radios, and even electric shavers. While the Iraqi government was also instructed by the Iranian Regime to prevent the MEK from selling their property in Camp Liberty a government-approved Iraqi merchant wanted to buy their property for $10.7 million. In the end, only 10% of the property was allowed to be sold and only for a quarter of what it was worth. Of course, the Iranian Regime opposed the relocation of the MEK. As made abundantly clear by the Regimes constant attacks on the MEK, which only grew following the Regimes infiltration of post-Saddam Iraq, they wanted to annihilate the MEK. The Regime conducted three massacres at Camp Ashraf, five missile attacks at Camp Liberty, two abductions of MEK members, and a fully fledged eight-year siege, which killed 177 residents. While the MEK is now in Europe, they are still not safe from the Iranian Regime, as evidenced by the Regimes two terror plots in 2018 against the MEK in Albania and France show. The Institute for Science and International Securitys report says satellite imagery and information gathered during a raid on a Tehran warehouse in January show that Iran conducted more high explosive tests related to nuclear weapons development at Parchin than was previously thought by the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA). The IAEA had said that Iran was merely involved in feasibility and scientific studies. The report, written by watchdog director David Albright, IAEA former Deputy Director General Olli Heinonen and other top experts, said: The information highlights dual-use, controlled equipment used at the site, such as a flash x-ray system utilizing a Marx generator and a variety of neutron measurement equipment, with electronics, designed to monitor high speed, explosively driven tests of a neutron source commonly used in a nuclear weapon. While the report is focused on Irans activities until 2003, the new knowledge, gathered from a site that was not disclosed to the IAEA, indicates that Iran could build a nuclear weapon much faster than the international community believed. Indeed, they have already overcome many obstacles that the IAEA didnt believe they had. The report read: The additional evidence specifically mentions explosions and radioactivity at the Parchin site, and this information far more vividly establishes Irans nuclear weapons-related activities there. These findings also show that Iran consistently lied about its nuclear weapons programme and that it violated the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons (NPT) and the Comprehensive Nuclear-Test-Ban Treaty (CTBT), both of which Iran signed. IRGC threats This information was released after Iranian General Hossein Salami, second-in-command of Irans elite Revolutionary Guards (IRGC) force, threatened to destroy Israel and sparked fears of a major conflict breaking out in the powder keg region. Salami said: I tell the Prime Minister of the Zionist regime (Israels Benjamin Netanyahu)that he should practice swimming in the Mediterranean. Because soon there will be no way to escape but the sea. The Iranian Regime continually refers to the Israeli Government as the Zionist regime in order to discredit and delegitimize their rule. Salami claimed that Israel could be defeated by Iran-backed terror group Hezbollah, which currently has about 150,000 rockets and missiles stored away across Lebanon. The terror group was already involved in a deadly war with Israel in 2006, during which thousands of rockets were fired at Israeli cities from southern Lebanon. Shealah Craighead/The White House President Donald Trump talks on the phone aboard Air Force One during a flight to Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, to address a joint gathering of House and Senate Republicans, Thursday, January 26, 2017. This was the President We see many celebrities on social media buying gifts like watches, bags, clothes, jewelry, gadgets and cars for their loved ones. However, some of them go the extra mile and actually purchase houses for their family. KAMI presents to you a list of a few famous celebrities who gave their family a house and lot as a gift. PAY ATTENTION: Click "See First" under the "Following" tab to see KAMI news on your News Feed 1. Alden Richards When the Kapuso actor was looking for a house to buy, he made sure that it is ideal for his grandparents. He settled with a 300-sq-m house in Laguna. "My grandparents, kung saan kami nakatira before, e, sa sala lang natutulog. 'Tapos yung tinutulugan ng lolo ko, may chip pa 'yong bed. Tapos, we didn't have enough rooms pa." "Dapat merong room sa baba. Pag walang room sa baba, regardless of how it looks, hindi pasok, he explained, according to PEP.ph. 2. Daniel Padilla Daniels gift for his mother in 2014 is her very own 1,000-sq-m house. The house is located in an exclusive village in Fairview, Quezon City. 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! 3. Piolo Pascual In California, Piolo gave his mother a 1,200-sq-m house. It has three bedrooms, a swimming pool and a lawn. 4. Kris Bernal The Kapuso actress bought a house for her family in California, USA. It has four bedrooms. I still couldnt believe that we already have our own home here in America. Like, we can call it ours and its just so overwhelming. Its pure hard work, Kris said. Philippines Social Experiment: Borrowing Money From Strangers Part 2 I need help! I lost my wallet and need money for transportation. See how Filipinos react to such a request. Watch the part 1 of this experiment on KAMI HumanMeter YouTube channel! Source: Kami.com.ph - The Philippines was ruled by then President Ferdinand Marcos for 20 years - He also put the entire Philippines under martial law in 1972 - Until now, his regime has been controversial whether it did good for the country or not PAY ATTENTION: Click "See First" under the "Following" tab to see KAMI news on your News Feed! The late Ferdinand Emmanuel Edralin Marcos Sr. was known as a dictator and he had been controversial since then until now. He first seated as the President of the Philippines back in December 1965 until February 1986. Marcos ruled the Philippines for over 20 years. In September 23, 1972, he declared martial law due to alleged attack from rebels and communists. He was ousted when People Power Revolution rose which then made for former President Corazon Aquino to replace him. In 1989 at the age of 72, Marcos died in Hawaii, United States. Under the administration of President Rodrigo Duterte, Marcos was finally allowed to be buried at the Libingan ng mga Bayani which many Filipinos contested to. KAMI has listed the pros and cons of the Marcos regime throughout the 21 years he governed the country: Pros Infrastructures Photo from vigattintourism Source: Facebook During the time of Marcos, infrastructures in the country had bloomed. As written by Max Sangil in SunStar, Marcos administration was able to build the Cultural Center of the Philippines, Kidney Center, Philippine Heart Center, Folk Arts Center. Marcos also put up the Lung Center, San Juanico Bridge, and the Manila Film Center. Criminal activities According to Sangil as well, the criminality lowered during the time of Marcos due to the curfew imposed as part of martial law. The corruption also lessened in government agencies like Bureau of Customs and Bureau of Internal Revenue to the point that they brought their own baon for lunch when they used to eat at the Manila Hotel before. Transportation and Geothermal power Photo from Rappler Source: Facebook Marcos was the man behind the North Luzon Expressway (NLEX) as well as the South Luzon Expressway (SLEX). During his regime, Manila Light Rail Transit (LRT) was also built. All these are still being used by the Filipinos up until now. According to Lopez Link, in 1983, Philippines became the worlds second largest producer of geothermal power. 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! Cons Philippines external debt Photo from ABS-CBN News Source: Facebook In a report by ABS-CBN News, Marcos went on a borrowing spree in between the 70s to early 80s. In 1975, the external debt reached from $4.1 billion to $8.2 billon. In 1982, it went higher up to $24.4 billion. The debt exceeded more than the exports at that time. Freedom of Expression and of the Press When Marcos declared martial law, the media was shut down. As written by Jose Santos and Melanie Pinlac in Center for Media Freedom and Responsibility (CMFR)s website, media practitioner as well as the opposition personalities who criticized Marcos were brought to military camps for detention. As per Department of Public Information (DPI) mandated, all media publications must seek permission from them first. Marcos also issued a Presidential Decree to penalize anyone who would undermine the integrity if the government through print or even just possessing leaflets about it. Everything went through censorship. Human rights violation Photo from Newsfeed.ph Source: Facebook As reported by The Manila Times, around 3, 257 were killed during the martial law. The data was written by American historian Alfred McCoy who authored A Question of Torture and Policing Americas Empire. Under Marcos military murder was the apex of a pyramid of terror with 3,257 killed, an estimated 35,000 tortured, and some 70,000 arrested, McCoy wrote. Prominent oppositions were also arrested that time like the late Senators Ninoy Aquino, Jose Diokno, Lorenzo Tanada and Jovito Salonga. Former Senate President Auquilino Nene Pimentel Jr. was arrested as well. Editor's note: The views and opinions expressed in the content are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views and opinions of KAMI.com.ph. Philippines Social Experiment: Borrowing Money From Strangers Part 2 I need help! I lost my wallet and need money for transportation. See how Filipinos react to such a request. Watch the part 1 of this experiment on KAMI HumanMeter YouTube channel! Source: Kami.com.ph - Actor Nash Aguas finally admitted the real score between him and Mika Dela Cruz - The celebrity said Mika is her long-time crush even when they were still child stars - Nash also shared that he cried because of the actress PAY ATTENTION: Click "See First" under the "Following" tab to see KAMI news on your News Feed Kapamilya actor Nash Aguas finally ended the speculations about the real score between him and former co-star Mika Dela Cruz. KAMI learned that the two former Goin Bulilit artists sparked rumors of being more than just friends after they threw separate dating statements that, according to netizens, led to both of them. Nash initially admitted in an interview on October 20 that he is really dating the Kapuso actress for one year already. In fact, he said that he already got the sweetest yes of Mika just a week before the interview commenced, making them an official off-screen partner. "Opo, sinagot na rin ako sa wakas, the actor exposed. "Wala pa nga pong one week. One year po (akong nanligaw)," he added. 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! Nash bravely expressed that he cried during the time when the Kapuso actress made their relationship official. The actor even disclosed that he admires Mika ever since their childhood days but he also admitted that he needed to set aside his feelings because of how the actress treated him before. "Yung iyak ko po noon (noong sinagot ako) parang pang-'TV Patrol,'" he said. "Kasi ang istorya noon, noong bata po ako crush na crush ko siya. Siya, sobrang takot sa ate niya kaya tinatarayan niya ako. So dumating ang point na napagod ako. So doon sa 15 pages na 'yon, doon niya sinabi 'yung side niya bakit niya ginawa 'yon, he added. In a previous article by , The Kapamilya actor opened up about the gap between him and former partner Alexa Ilacad. Nash is a Filipino actor who began his showbiz career at the age of 5. He made his television debut in the defunct noontime show, MTB and eventually joined reality competitions such as Star Circle Kid Quest where he won the grand prize. POPULAR: Read more news about Nash Aguas! Many of you had asked us to shoot The Nun prank and we did it! So, today we are proud to present you an extraordinary lady, Scary Nun! In this episode, she is going to roam the streets of the Philippines and scare innocent people to death! (Laughs evilly) on HumanMeter! Source: Kami.com.ph - Mikee Cojuangco posted on Facebook about her old vehicle, bought in 1991 - The former actress explained that the 27-year-old car brings to her good memories - It was also bought when her niece Ina was born PAY ATTENTION: Click "See First" under the "Following" tab to see KAMI news on your News Feed Mikee Cojuangco belongs to one of the wealthiest clans in the Philippines. Despite this, she still values a car that is almost three-decades-old. KAMI learned that the former actress posted on social media about the 27-year-old car. According to Mikee, she values the car for the memories it brings to her and because it was bought when Ina Cojuangco Guingona was born. Ina is the daughter of Mikees sister, Josephine Cojuangco Guingona. Fine, I know its weird, but this car has been with us since 1991 and Im feeling sentimental. (Can you tell from my pa-cute pose?) Our Dad got it when @inacg was born! Gosh, having feelings over a car, but in fairness to me, its more about the memories made from the places weve been in this car. The AC is busted and the exterior has gotten dull, but the engine works like a dream. And just to be clear, hindi galit si @mai.cojuangco, plus also, sorry @china_cojuangco I tried to fix the antenna but was not successful, she wrote on Facebook. 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! Mikees father is to Jose Cojuangco, Jr., former Congressman of Tarlac, and Tingting Cojuangco, former Governor of Tarlac. She is married to Pasig City congressman Robert "Dodot" Jaworski, Jr., who she has three sons with Robert Vincent Anthony III (Robbie), Rafael Joseph (Raf) and Renzo Mikael. Philippines Social Experiment: Borrowing Money From Strangers Part 2 I need help! I lost my wallet and need money for transportation. See how Filipinos react to such a request. Watch the part 1 of this experiment on KAMI HumanMeter YouTube channel! Source: Kami.com.ph - Lea Salonga posted in Twitter and Instagram her hopes of legalizing same-gender marriage in our country - The 47-year old wishes that she see this happen in her lifetime - Netizens gave their opinions on the matter PAY ATTENTION: Click "See First" under the "Following" tab to see KAMI news on your News Feed In a recent Twitter post, Lea Salonga wondered when the Philippines would embrace, accept, and legalize same-gender marriage. In a report by PEP.ph, the 47-year old Broadway royalty expressed her support for the LGBTQ+ community and that she wished that same-gender marriage would be made available in this country. She just posted in her Instagram her full support and that transgender people have rights too. PAY ATTENTION: Using free basics app to access internet for free? Now you can read Of course, the fans of the international star are quick to express their opinion on the matter that sparked an exchange over Twitter. Then someone chimed in that we are still narrow-minded of the concept and just do not fully understand it. POPULAR: Read more news about Lea Salonga! Read more You can see the long discussion in Leas Twitter post. What do you guys think? Post a comment below and tell us your thoughts. Lea Salonga already made a name for herself locally before garnering international stardom for her being cast for Les Miserables. She was only 14 years old when she got the part. Since then, she sang for numerous Disney films such as A Whole New World for the movie Aladdin and Reflection for the movie Mulan. In a previous report by , Everybody is excited for Leas duet with her daughter Nicole Chien.. Today we are doing a social experiment in the Philippines to see how much the locals care about proper trash disposal. Littering problems have always been present in the country. In this social experiment, you can see how different people react when a man throws a garbage bag right next to them. How will they handle the littering problem? Will they pick it up or leave it? In this video, you can see all the effects of littering and how it's being handled by the locals. - on Source: Kami.com.ph The site will be managed by a municipal company "Traffic Management Center." The Parkovy Exhibition and Convention Center downtown Kyiv, known as the so-called ex-president Viktor Yanukovych's Helipad, was handed back to the capitals municipal community, according to Nadiia Maksymets, press secretary of the Kyiv Prosecutors Office. "The helipad on the Park Alley has officially been transferred to be managed by the community of the city of Kyiv," Maksymets wrote on Facebook. The transfer was carried out on Friday, October 26, with the participation of a representative of the Kyiv Prosecutors Office, the Asset recovery and Management Agency. The site was transferred to the municipal company "Traffic Management Center." Read alsoPM Groysman: Kyiv-Boryspil railbus to be launched in Nov UNIAN memo. "Parkovy" was put into operation in May 2013. The site covers an area of 2,715 square meters. Of these, 930 sqm are occupied by 14 rooms designed to accommodate 400 cabinets with network equipment. On the building's second floor, where the data center is located, there is also the infamous "Yanukovych Helipad." Its construction began in October 2010. The customer was Amadeus Co. The main contractor was the Ukrainian-French joint venture with foreign investments, Osnova-Solsif. Aging Autocrat Whips Opposition and Claims Victory in A Disputed Poll Leaders of the opposition were roundly defeated in this months national elections that gave the six term incumbent President Paul Biya a new seven year term. The 85 year old chief of state was returned to power amidst a deepening split along linguistic lines, a quarter of a million of Cameroonians living in exile, and a Boko Haram terrorist camp just above the nations border. Biya can now rule the country well into his 90s. The government did away with presidential term limits years ago. ADVERTISEMENT An investigation this year supported by the Organized Crime and Corruption Reporting Project may give a clue to the presidents resilience. Over the course of his administration, President Biya has spent at least four and a half years out of the country on brief private visits at the Intercontinental Hotel in Geneva with its views of Lake Geneva and Mont Blanc. The recent election, upheld by Biya loyalists, may have won the President another term but peace remains elusive as the struggle for the rights of an English-speaking minority is met with force. If the president sees this as a chance to address anglophone grievances, we should be optimistic, said former UN diplomat and coordinator of next months Anglophone General Conference, Simon Munzu. 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. International critiques of the conduct of the election cite numerous irregularities. By any objective standard, the Cameroonian election on Oct. 7 was a farce, Foreign Policy magazine observed in a recent article. Voter turnout was marked by apathy, and in some regions, outright fear, with credible sources saying that less than 1 percent of voters cast ballots in some areas. In the countrys English-speaking regions, harsh crackdowns on an emerging secessionist movement kept many polling stations closed and left others mostly attended by soldiers. Protecting President Biya is a powerful constellation of U.S. lobbying and public relations firms that keep in contact with U.S. lawmakers. For their services, Cameroon pays upward of $184,000 a month. ADVERTISEMENT Defeated frontrunner, Maurice Kamto, thanked his supporters on social media which elicited this from Valentina Bih among many: Thank you for all your sacrifices. You have ignited in us a love for our country. Something we had lost. Namibia Agrees to Land Deal with Russian Billionaire The Namibian government has leased four farms for 99 years to a company owned by a Russian billionaire. The farms, valued at $3 million and measuring a total 42,000 acres, were registered as state property by the land reform ministry. Land reform minister Utoni Nujoma appears to be having second thoughts about being linked to the unusual transaction, struck two days before a national land conference began on Oct. 1. ADVERTISEMENT When news of the deal was leaked to the public, the official opposition Popular Democratic Movement threatened to take the government to court, while the Affirmative Repositioning movement said it would approach the Anti-Corruption Commission and the ombudsman to investigate the transaction. Documents seen by The Namibian newspaper revealed the name of Nujoma signing the title deeds of the farms on behalf of the government. Utoni Nujoma initially took responsibility for the sale, saying that he obtained Cabinet permission to grant approval to Sardarovs company to take the farms under stringent conditions. The following day, however, there was a change of heart. Nujoma denied any part in the transaction and claimed the document made public was fake and that his signature was a forgery. In the meantime, criticism about the deal has escalated, with National Unity Democratic Organization deputy secretary general Vetaruhe Kandorozu calling on Nujoma to resign with immediate effect. He further called on President Hage Geingob to cancel the transaction between the government and the Russian billionaire. ADVERTISEMENT Allocate those farms for the resettlement of the landless dispossessed and all Namibians to be resettled there as per the resolutions of the just-ended land conference, he said. The conference addressed restoring property rights to the original Black property owners. An earlier land conference said that the complexities in redressing ancestral land claims and restitution of such claims in full was impossible. A presidential commission of inquiry on the issue was proposed to restore social justice and ensure the economic empowerment of the affected communities. The government can now confiscate foreign-owned farmland with just compensation and absentee landlords can now lose their underutilized commercial land if it is eligible for expropriation. The conference drew hundreds of protestors who charged that the outcome was premeditated, making the convention a rubber stamping exercise. Over 200,000 Congolese Driven Out of Angola in Anti-Smuggling Row Under the name Operation Transparency, Angolan officials in less than a month evicted between 200- and 400,000 migrants, mostly Congolese from the neighboring Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), claiming the migrants were plundering Angolas resources specifically diamonds. The charges were refuted by the United Nations refugee agency (UNHCR) which said the Congolese had been working as informal miners and the mass expulsions were contrary to obligations under the African Charter. Angola is a democratic and lawful state, countered Pedro Sebastiao, Angolan state minister and head of presidential security. Operation Transparency is not based on any xenophobic sentiment against citizens of neighboring countries or any other nationality. ADVERTISEMENT The crackdown across northern and western Angola was legitimate, he said, in order to ensure that the countrys diamond reserves were correctly exploited. Angolan President Joao Lourenco is said to be trying to boost investments in diamonds and wean the country off a heavy reliance on oil exports. Reforming the diamond industry is part of that drive, and Operation Transparency in Lunda Norte was aimed at reducing diamond smuggling and raising more revenues from the lucrative sector. Diamonds seized in the operation were worth more than $1 million, the Minister estimated, and over 200 premises for illegal diamond trading were closed with 59 weapons seized. He denied reports that the migrants were evicted violently or beaten by police. But the ministers account was disputed by many Congolese who described being forcibly thrown out of Angola even after living there for more than 10 years. Migrants who crossed back to the border town of Kamako told the French news agency AFP that their houses had been set on fire by police and gangs of Angolan youths, and some had been attacked with machetes and beaten as they fled. ADVERTISEMENT In a briefing note by the Norwegian humanitarian group ACAPS, the Congolese were victims of violence and human rights abuses and many arrived with almost nothing. The returning migrants have ended up in the Congos unstable Kasai region which is in the throes of a cholera outbreak and has severe food insecurity. The U.N. refugee agency says the arrival of another 200,000 people into the area could further destabilize this fragile region. Angola is the worlds No.4 diamond producer by value and No.6 by volume, with companies such as Australias Lucapa Diamond frequently finding massive precious rocks beneath the soil. The operation is scheduled to continue for two years. Pimp Found Guilty of Human Trafficking of Minors A jury today found a 43-year-old Los Angeles man guilty of trafficking girls as young as 13 for commercial sex, the Los Angeles County District Attorneys Office announced. Raylonzo Roberts, aka Major, was found guilty of 11 felony counts: two counts each of pandering by procuring a minor under age 16; human trafficking of a minor for commercial sex act; human trafficking of a minor for commercial sex act by force, fear, fraud or threat of injury; and lewd act on a child, as well as one count each of human trafficking to commit another crime, aggravated sexual assault of a child and possession of a firearm by a felon. Sentencing is scheduled on Nov. 26 in Department 104 of the Foltz Criminal Justice Center. The defendant faces multiple life sentences. ADVERTISEMENT Deputy District Attorney Guillermo Santiso of the Human Trafficking Section of the Sex Crimes Division said Roberts sexually assaulted or sexually trafficked eight girls at various times between August 2011 and July 2015. According to evidence presented at the trial, he physically assaulted two of the young victims, one because she failed to make sufficient money and the other because she left him to work for another pimp. Case BA439381 was investigated by the Los Angeles Police Departments South Bureau Human Trafficking Unit and the Long Beach Police Department. Friday, October 26, 2018 The New York Appellate Division for the First Judicial Department disbarred a convicted attorney for an offense described in a press release of the United States Attorney's Office for the Eastern District of New York Earlier today, Ira Shapiro, the former Chief Executive Officer of CodeSmart Holdings, Inc. (CodeSmart), a publicly-traded company, and Darren Ofsink, a Manhattan attorney and founder of Ofsink LLC, pleaded guilty to one count of conspiracy to commit securities fraud for their participation in a $86 million market manipulation scheme involving CodeSmart, which traded under the ticker symbol ITEN. The plea was entered before United States District Judge Eric N. Vitaliano at the federal courthouse in Brooklyn. The guilty pleas were announced by Bridget M. Rohde, Acting United States Attorney for the Eastern District of New York, and William F. Sweeney, Jr., Assistant Director-in-Charge, Federal Bureau of Investigation, New York Field Office (FBI). According to court filings, in early May 2013, the defendants, along with their charged co-conspirators, engineered a reverse merger of CodeSmart, a private company, with a public shell company. After gaining control of CodeSmarts three million purportedly unrestricted shares, the co-conspirators on two occasions fraudulently inflated CodeSmarts share price and trading volume and then sold their shares at a profit when the price reached desirable levels a scheme commonly referred to as a pump and dump. The first pump and dump occurred between approximately May 13, 2013 and August 21, 2013. During this period, the co-conspirators manipulated CodeSmarts stock price by raising it from $1.77 to a high of $6.94, before causing it to drop to $2.19. The second pump and dump occurred between approximately August 21, 2013 and September 20, 2013. During this period, the defendants and their co-conspirators manipulated CodeSmarts stock price by raising it from $2.19 to a high of $4.60, before causing it drop to $2.13. CodeSmarts market capitalization at its highest closing price of $6.94 per share on July 12, 2013 was $86,347,800. However, that same day, CodeSmart filed with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission an amended Form 10-K, in which it listed only $6,000 in total assets, $7,600 in revenue, and a net loss of $103,141. By December 30, 2013, CodeSmarts stock was trading at $0.66 per share, and on July 9, 2014, its stock closed at $0.01 per share. When sentenced, Shapiro and Ofsink each face up to five years in prison, a fine and the forfeiture of criminal proceeds. They will also be required to make full restitution to their victims. The governments case is being handled by the Offices Business and Securities Fraud Section. Assistant United States Attorneys Shannon C. Jones, Patrick T. Hein, and Mark Bini are in charge of the prosecution with assistance provided by Assistant United States Attorney Claire Kedeshian of the Offices Civil Division, which is responsible for the forfeiture of assets. The Defendants : IRA SHAPIRO Age: 56 Residence: Congers, New York DARREN OFSINK Age: 48 Residence: Merrick, New York E.D.N.Y. Docket No. 14-CR-399 (S-1) (ENV) (Mike Frisch) https://lawprofessors.typepad.com/legal_profession/2018/10/the-new-york-appellate-division-for-the-first-judicial-department-disbarred-a-convicted-attorney-for-offenses-described-in-a.html In West Africa, dancing is an important part of many family traditions. An ocean away, in the United States, a German-Jamaican-American family has made performing those dances part of their tradition. Their family name is Von Hendricks. Six years ago, two sisters and their brother formed an African dance company. They named it Keur Khaleyi, which means the House of Children in Wolof, a language in Senegal. The group is based in the eastern U.S. city of Baltimore, Maryland. Its members perform in local and national festivals. They also recently set up a school to teach dance moves to others. At first, the dance company was made up of two dancers, sisters Jihan and Ayana, and their brother Shakai, who played the drum. Soon, two younger family members joined them. Later, a sister-in-law joined the group. The family performs dances from Senegal, Mali and Guinea, but has no family ties to those places. My grandfather was German and my grandmother was from Jamaica, Jihan Von Hendricks told VOA. She said her interest in dance started when she was a child. Her parents made her attend an African dance school. She learned a few dance moves, then taught her brother and sister. In time, the West African culture became part of who they were. My heart really is with Senegal, Jihan added. There, she said, people dance for all kinds of reasons: to play with children; to honor a woman before she is married; to mark the end of the harvest. Her brother, Shakai, says his heart is also with Senegal. He loves African drumming. "Ever since I saw it when I was 10, I was hooked, he remembers. Performing together strengthens family ties and fuels creativity. Shakai added Our parents knew what they were doing. They put us into this at a young age to keep us together." "My happy place" The Von Hendricks family uses the dance company to keep generations close. Jihans daughter, 13 year old Diallo, dances and plays the drum with the group. She started dancing when she was 18 months old. She says it helped her develop social skills and make friends. She likes everything about performing: the music, the costumes and the feeling of accomplishment. Dancing is my happy place, Diallo said. The Von Hendricks share their joy and knowledge with their neighbors in Baltimore. One of their students is a 71-year old hair stylist, Shakoorah El Sharief. She learned many African dances in the past, but says she likes West African dances best. "I love everything about it, she says. "Its like my medicine." The Von Hendricks' dream is to teach more members of their community and family about West African dances and drumming. Im Kelly Jean Kelly. Kelly Jean Kelly adapted this story for Learning English from VOA. Caty Weaver was the editor. _________________________________________________________________ Words in This Story festival - n. an organized series of performances drum - n. a musical instrument that is made with a thin layer of skin or plastic stretched over the end of a round frame and that is played by hitting the skin or plastic with sticks or with your hands hooked - adj. very interested in and enthusiastic about something stylist - n. a person whose job is to make something look attractive Public opinion studies suggest that Brazilian presidential candidate Jair Bolsonaro is likely to win Sundays election. The candidate believes he knows of a resource that may help his nations economy: niobium. Niobium is a metal that is added to steel to make it stronger and lighter. It is in high demand by carmakers, space travel companies and in many other industries. Brazil produces about 85 percent of the worlds supply of niobium. Bolsonaro wants to keep Brazils market position. In 2016, Bolsonaro made a 20-minute YouTube video about the value of the metal and how it could be a large part of Brazils economy in the future. Brazils military dictatorship, which ruled from 1964 to 1985, wanted to protect natural resources, such as oil and minerals, from foreign companies. Bolsonaro is a former military officer. He has long supported the idea of a military-led government. But he has said he supports free-market economics as a presidential candidate. The 2016 video was recorded at a mine owned by a privately-held Brazilian company known as CBMM. Bolsonaro praised CBMM for its jobs that pay well, its private pre-school and other support the company provides for its workers. He added that Brazil would be better off if it supported CBMMs method of development and centered its efforts on future applications of niobium. The same year, the Chinese company China Molybdenum Co. Ltd., or COMC, bought a niobium mine 200 kilometers away from CBMM. Bolsonaro is believed to be the first presidential candidate to make niobium a campaign issue. Speaking on national television in August, he criticized the CMOC purchase. He said, Its something only we have, we should invest in technology and research to use this mineral. Instead we sell and deliver the mine to them. Mining experts say Bolsonaros niobium fears are exaggerated. Hugo Nadler is a former CBMM executive. He says CMOCs Brazil mine makes up just 10 percent of the global market. That leaves about 75 percent to Brazils CBMM. In a statement, CBMM told Reuters it is the only company that sells in all parts of the niobium market. That includes products used to make airplanes and superconductors. CBMM said there is a lot of potential for expanding the use of niobium in applications such as car batteries and other products. Nadler said, if the niobium market grows, it is unlikely to have much of an effect on an economy the size of Brazils. Mining makes up 5 percent of GDP, if you take the portion that is niobium, its nothing, he said. GDP is the most used measure of all the goods and services produced within a country. But Bolsonaro remains a believer. In his video, he said, [Niobium] can give [Brazil] economic independence. Im Jonathan Evans. Jake Spring reported this story for the Associated Press news agency. Jonathan Evans adapted it for Learning English. Mario Ritter was the editor. _________________________________________________________________ Words in This Story applications n. the use of an idea, method, law, etc., in a particular situation or for a particular purpose purchase n. something that is bought exaggerated adj. something thought of or described as larger or greater than it really is The Russian military intelligence service GRU is not as famous as other Russian government agencies, like the KGB or the FSB. But the GRU has been getting more attention as other countries accuse it of launching secretive and deadly operations. The latest accusation came earlier this month from Britain, when the government identified two Russian men as GRU agents. It blamed them for nerve-agent poisonings earlier this year in Salisbury, England. The agency The official name of the military intelligence service is the Main Directorate of the General Staff of the Armed Forces. However, the agency is usually known by its former acronym. The GRU is the most secret of Russia's secret services. When its former director Igor Sergun died in 2016, the official announcement was so short that it failed to give the date, place or cause of death. The agency appears to have many responsibilities. The Russian Defense Ministry website says its job is to aid with the success of the Russian Federation by giving the government the intelligence it needs to make decisions in the political, economic, defense, scientific, technical and environmental areas." Allegations Britain claims that two GRU operatives carried out the nerve-agent attack in Salisbury on former GRU officer Sergei Skripal and his daughter. Both survived the poisoning. Three months later, two people who lived nearby became sick from the nerve agent. One died. Investigators believe they found the container the carried the poison used in Skripals attack. The claim came less than two months after the United States announced charges against 12 suspected GRU agents. They were accused of hacking into the election campaign of presidential candidate Hillary Clinton and the Democratic Party in 2016. U.S. officials say the GRU released tens of thousands of private communications as part of the Russian plan to interfere in the 2016 elections. This year, the investigative group Bellingcat reported that a GRU officer was responsible for operations in eastern Ukraine in July 2014. At that time, Russia-supported separatist forces that were fighting Ukrainian forces. Two-hundred-ninety-eight people were killed when a Malaysian passenger airplane flying over the area was shot down. International investigators say the plane was shot down by a mobile missile launcher brought in from Russia. The GRU officer named by Bellingcat reportedly was responsible for moving weapons to Ukraine. Russia's RBC news service also reported this year that the GRU directs Russian citizens fighting in Syria. Russian officials usually deny accusations against the GRU and refuse to discuss its activities. They said they did not recognize the suspects named in the Salisbury poisoning. Other agencies The GRU is part of Russia's large security and intelligence system, which includes the Foreign Intelligence Service, known as the SVR. It also includes the Federal Security Service, or FSB, which gathers intelligence both in Russia and overseas. The SVR and FSB were once part of the KGB. After the collapse of the Soviet Union, they became their own organizations. Russian President Vladimir Putin, a former KGB agent, led the FSB before becoming president. As head of state, Putin names the top leadership of the GRU. For most Russians, however, the FSB is the frightening organization because it looks for threats inside Russia. But the GRU, created under Soviet founder Vladimir Lenin, has an even harder reputation, because it looks at foreign threats. The two agencies' operations seem to both compete and cooperate. Pavel Felgenhauer, an independent military expert, told The Associated Press that the SVR stays away from military intelligence, and the GRU stays away from political intelligence. He said that if both sides keep this divide, they do not have to share information. In the case of U.S. election-related hacking, Felgenhauer said, he believes the services worked together. Im Susan Shand. The Associated Press reported this story. Susan Shand adapted it for Learning English. George Grow was the editor. _____________________________________________________________ Words in This Story acronym n. a word formed from the first letters of each one of the words in a phrase nerve-agent n. a toxic gas the affects the nerve impulses of the brain and can cause death hack v. to gain access to someone elses computer mobile adj. able to move from one place to another reputation n. the common opinion that people have about someone or something President Donald Trump has criticized a report by the New York Times about the use of his personal cellphone. Trump tweeted Thursday that the report was incorrect and said he used only government phones. The New York Times reported Wednesday that Chinese and Russian spies often secretly listen when Trump talks with old friends on his Apple iPhone. The Times story said that American intelligence reports suggested this was the case. The Times also reported that Trumps aides have repeatedly warned him that his cellphone calls are not secure. Chinese foreign ministry spokeswoman Hua Chunying was asked about the story during a press conference on Thursday. Hua compared the report to fake news. She said that releasing such a report would only add to evidence that it was fabricating fake news. She went on to suggest that mobile phones produced by Huawei might be a better choice for security. Huawei is a major Chinese telecommunications company. American intelligence agency leaders and others have expressed concern about the Huawei Technologies company. They say Huawei may have ties to the Chinese government or ruling Communist Party, increasing the risk of spying. Reuters reports that the U.S. Democratic National Committee warned party candidates seeking election in November not to use Huawei or ZTE devices. ZTE is another major Chinese telecommunications company. The U.S. Department of Defense stopped selling some Huawei and ZTE devices on military bases last May, Reuters reports. And in March, Federal Communications Commission Chairman Ajit Pai told Congress he shared concerns about Huawei and spying. The New York Times cited U.S. officials as saying China was seeking to use information from the presidents calls to learn what Trump thinks, whom he listens to and how best to influence him. The report said China was especially interested in trying to use what it learns to stop the current trade war between the two countries. Im Mario Ritter. Mario Ritter adapted this story for VOA Learning English based on Reuters and other news sources. _____________________________________________________________ Words in This Story aide n. a person whose job it is to assist someone cite v. to write or say the words of another fake adj. not true or real fabricate v. to create or make something up Sean Kammer (University of South Dakota Law School) has posted 'Whether or Not Special Expertise Is Needed': Anti-Intellectualism, the Supreme Court, and the Legitimacy of Law (South Dakota Law Review, Forthcoming) on SSRN. Here is the abstract: Recently, there has deservedly been much consternation regarding what some see as the increased politicization of the judiciary and the impact it could have on the laws legitimacy within the broader political order. While that is a valid concern, we should not ignore other potential threats to the judiciarys legitimacy, including the spread of a particularly virulent strain of anti-intellectualism. Notably, judges have shown an antipathy to expertise aimed not only toward highly technical or complex fields of study, but also toward scholarly fields that judges and lawyers have typically been willing to apply in their analyses, such as history. This article builds upon scholarship regarding the propensity of lawyers and judges to produce simplistic, selective, and ends-oriented histories, a practice that has come to be known as law office history, in support of their legal arguments and rulings. It does so by examining two Supreme Court opinions that represent fundamentally different judicial philosophies, thereby demonstrating that law office histories are not unique to any particular approach to judicial lawmaking. It then examines the history of how the judiciary (especially the Supreme Court) and the broader legal profession have come to attain their elite positions within the American social order. This history shows laws positionindeed, its legitimacyto be a tenuous one built in substantial part on the perceived intellectual character of law and the perceived intellectual aptitudes of its practitioners. This article thus concludes that the embrace of anti-intellectualism by the legal community, including the frequent dismissal of the work and methodologies of professional historians, threatens to undermine the rule of law itself. The Chief Executive, Chui Sai On, has said that developing new models of tourism, such as sport-related tourism, would help advance Macaus status as a world center of tourism and leisure. Chui discussed the topic this week during a meeting in Macau with the Secretary-General of the World Tourism Organization (UNWTO), Zurab Pololikashvili, prior to the opening ceremony of the Global Tourism Economy Forum. Pololikashvili said that Macau was a fascinating tourism destination, and noted that days launch of the Hong Kong-Zhuhai-Macau Bridge, which is expected to promote further development of the local tourism industry. Leong wants to limit students mobile time Lawmaker Leong Sun Iok has called on the local government to conduct a survey on mobile addiction among primary and secondary school students. The lawmaker recommended that the survey include an evaluation of all the types of problems that mobile addiction can cause for students. The lawmaker further suggested that Macau should limit internet surfing time for students, in order to prevent them from becoming addicted to the internet through mobile devices. The government has also been asked whether or not it will work with telecommunication service providers to launch mobile applications to limit function for parents who need these applications. 64 illegal workers caught in September The Public Security Police Force has identified 64 people suspected of undertaking illegal work in September, in a joint operation between the PSP, the Labor Affairs Bureau and other governmental departments. In a statement issued on Wednesday, the police authority revealed that 298 locations were inspected last month with the purpose of combating instances of illegal workers. The locations targeted by the inspection consisted of construction sites, private residences, and commercial and industrial establishments. Skincare product contains excessive bacteria The Health Bureau (SSM) detected excessive levels of bacteria in the Synocare Theraderma Cream, and is now calling for the immediate recall of this product. So far, SSM has not received any reports concerning adverse reactions caused by the use of this product. However, SSM suggests residents who have this product stop using it and return it to any of the participating pharmacies. The products importers and retailers are arranging for a new batch of product to be transported to Macau soon. Coloane proposed to increase height of breakwaters The latest plan for the flooding prevention project in the Coloane area has proposed increasing the height of breakwaters. On Wednesday, the Land, Public Works and Transport Bureau introduced two plans to the Urban Planning Committee. The bureau proposed to increase the height of the breakwaters at R. dos Navegantes and Avenida de Cinco de Outubro to 5.4 meters (during Hato, a 3.7 meter high flood was recorded). The 5.4 meter height is said to be enough to prevent severe flooding. In addition, the government expects to transform the area into a leisure harbor space. Chui to deliver 2019 Policy Address on November 15 The Chief Executive, Chui Sai On, will deliver the Policy Address for the Fiscal Year 2019 on November 15 at the Legislative Assembly. The session will be held at 3 p.m. and will be followed by a press conference at the Government Headquarters at 5 p.m., when Chui will answer questions from the media. The following day, from 3 p.m. to 6 p.m., the CE will attend a plenary meeting of the Legislative Assembly to explain the governments policy program and to answer questions from lawmakers. Hengqin waived MOP15m in taxes of local companies Macau enterprises operating in the Hengqin free trade zone have had MOP15 million in taxes waived since 2017, according to Guangdong provinces tax authority. In the last three years, Hengqin attracted a total of 2,434 Hong Kong and Macau enterprises, 1,258 of which were from Macau. Also according to Hengqins tax authority, Hengqin will continue implementing tax benefits for Macau and Hong Kong people who operate in the area, and will promote the same quality of services for all. These campaigns are said to be particularly aimed at pushing forward the diversification of Macaus economy. Gambling addict mother left baby alone in hotel room A mother has been arrested and charged after leaving her one-year-old daughter alone inside a hotel room while she went out to gamble. The baby was asleep the moment the mother left, but later, when the baby woke up, the woman was still absent. The mother gambled for more than 12 hours while her child was alone inside the hotel room. The 40-year-old mother is currently unemployed and entered Macau with a Hong Kong travel document. The baby is now in the care of the Macau Social Welfare Bureaus shelters. In its quarterly financial statement released yesterday, Sands China reported that its Macau property portfolio delivered adjusted EBITDA (earnings before interest, tax, depreciation and amortization) of USD754 million (HKD5.9 billion), representing an increase of 15.8 percent when compared to the same quarter in the previous year. The rise was led by a bigger take at the gaming tables of The Venetian Macao, but dampened by the performance at The Parisian Macao. In the financial statement, the company wrote that the strong financial performance of The Venetian Macao contributes to our unwavering confidence in the future of Macau. Analyzed by major Macau properties, The Venetian Macao saw its casino revenue expand 22.2 percent on annual basis to reach $689 million, while The Parisian Macao contracted 5.9 percent to $321 million. Sands Cotai Central and Sands Macao grew by 5.9 percent and 12.3 percent respectively to reach casino revenues of $321 million and $146 million respectively. Meanwhile, total net revenues for Sands China increased 13 percent to $2.15 billion (HKD16.8 billion) in the third quarter, compared to $1.9 billion in the third quarter of 2017. Net income for the company also increased 12 percent to $454 million, compared to $403 million in the third quarter of last year. We are pleased to have delivered strong financial results in the quarter, led by continued growth in every market segment in Macau, said Sheldon Adelson, chairman and chief executive officer of Las Vegas Sands, according to the financial report. We remain supremely confident in the future opportunity in Macau, and have therefore elected to meaningfully increase the scale of our investments. Las Vegas Sands owns approximately 70 percent of the issued share capital of Sands China. Jeju Air to add 11 new routes this year Budget carrier Jeju Air Co. is planning to add 11 new international routes linking South Korea to various destinations across East Asia before the end of this year, the company said yesterday. Among the new routes to Daegu, a municipal city in the southeast of Korea, will be Tokyo and Kagoshima in Japan, the Vietnamese coastal destinations of Nha Trang and Da Nang, as well as the Macau SAR. The Macau and Japan routes may start operating as early as this weekend, while the Vietnamese air links are scheduled to commence in December. Additional international services will commence from Muan International Airport in South Jeolla Province connecting Cebu in the Philippines and Kota Kinabalu in Malaysia, starting in mid-December. A daily service operated out of the airlines hub at Incheon International Airport will soon fly daily to Chiang Mai in Thailand, the company said. Meanwhile, the airlines services from South Koreas second most-populous city, Busan, to the Chinese mainland will be expanded to include a new Busan-Yantai route from next week. Other routes to Taipei and Hong Kong are also due to be launched before the end of the year. According to Maeil Business Newspaper, the new international routes are expected to help Jeju Air pull ahead of its rival low-cost carriers in the region. The company said that its latest expansion will also benefit the balanced development of the airline sector in South Korea. The President of the Macao Trade and Investment Promotion Institute (IPIM), Jackson Chang, is under criminal investigation for alleged irregularities regarding the granting of residency status through an investment scheme, the Commission Against Corruption (CCAC) announced this morning (Friday). A member of the executive committee of the trade and investment agency and a former chief of the Residency Application and Legal Affairs Division, who is currently the Pension Funds chief, are also being investigated, following CCACs probe. Enforcement measures have been imposed on the three suspects, including suspension of public office, and restrictions from leaving the MSAR. The three high level public servants are under investigation owing to their alleged commission of duty-related crimes in the process of vetting and approving applications for real estate investment immigration, major investment immigration and skilled workers immigration. Later today (Friday), the Secretary for Economy and Finance, Lionel Leong, announced that the three suspects will also face disciplinary procedures within the administration. Leong said in a statement that he profoundly regrets the incident. The government has this [case] in high consideration, he said, adding that his office has been cooperating fully with CCAC in the investigation. Chief Executive Chu Sai On also promised full cooperation with the judicial authorities and stated that the government has zero tolerance for corruption among public servants. Charlie Agar scrunches his face as bees fly in his face on Wednesday, April 4, 2018. Bees are attracted to carbon dioxide, which humans breathe out, causing bees to be drawn to faces. Herald-Zeitung photo. A Japanese journalist returned to Tokyo yesterday after being freed from more than three years of captivity in Syria. Jumpei Yasuda was released earlier this week and taken to neighboring Turkey. Yasuda, wearing a black T-shirt, was escorted from his plane at Tokyos airport by Japanese officials and ushered into a black van. He left without talking to a large group of reporters who had waited for his arrival. On an earlier flight from the southern Turkish town of Antakya to Istanbul, Yasuda said he was happy to be going home after living in hell for more than three years, but was worried about how he will catch up with a changed world. Im so happy to be free, he told Japans NHK television on a flight from Antakya in southern Turkey to Istanbul. But Im a bit worried about what will happen to me or what I should do from now on. Yasuda, 44, who was kidnapped in 2015 by al-Qaidas branch in Syria, said he felt as if hed fallen behind the rest of the world and was uncertain how to catch up. He described his 40 months in captivity as hell both physically and mentally. He said he was kept in a tiny cell and tortured. There was a time when he was not allowed to bathe for eight months, he said. Day after day, I thought Oh I cant go home again, and the thought took over my head and gradually made it difficult for me to control myself, he said. Yasuda was kidnapped by a group known at the time as Nusra Front. A war monitoring group said he was most recently held by a Syrian commander with the Turkistan Islamic Party, which mostly comprises Chinese jihadis in Syria. Yasuda said he believes he was moved several times during his captivity but stayed in Syrias northwestern province of Idlib, where he sometimes heard distant firebombing. I was living in endless fear that I may never get out of it or could even be killed, Yasuda told another Japanese broadcaster, TBS. He said he gradually became pessimistic about his fate because his captors kept breaking their promises to release him. His release Tuesday came suddenly when his captors drove him to the border with Turkey and dropped him off and handed him over to Turkish authorities, he said. AP The rival Koreas and the U.S.-led U.N. Command finished removing firearms and troops from a jointly controlled area at a border village yesterday, as part of agreements to reduce decades-long animosity on the Korean Peninsula. South Korea separately announced that its troops found what it believes are Korean War remains in another front-line area where they have been clearing land mines with North Korean soldiers. The rival Koreas plan their first-ever joint searches for war dead there after their demining work is done. Disarming the Joint Security Area at the border village of Panmunjom and the joint searches are among a package of deals the Koreas defense ministers struck on the sidelines of their leaders summit last month. Other steps include creating buffer zones along their land and sea boundaries and a no-fly zone above the border, as well as removing some of their front-line guard posts. The Koreas and the U.N. Command completed a removal of weapons, ammunition and soldiers manning guard posts at Panmunjoms Joint Security Area, Seouls Defense Ministry said in a statement. The three sides earlier finished removing mines from the village. The three sides will jointly verify their disarmament work on Friday and Saturday. Under the September deals, the two Koreas are to let 35 unarmed personnel from each side guard the Joint Security Area and let tourists freely move around there. The area symbolizes the Koreas seven decades of division. Its where an armistice was signed at the end of the 1950-53 Korean War. Rival soldiers have faced each other only meters apart in the zone, which has been the scene of numerous incidents of bloodshed and violence. It is also a venue for talks and a popular tourist destination. Soldiers and visitors were previously allowed to move freely inside the area, but the 1976 ax-killing of two American troops by North Korea at Panmunjom led to the creation of ankle-high concrete slabs that mark the border there. The Koreas are split along the 248-kilometer-long, 4-kilometer-wide border called the Demilitarized Zone that was originally created as a buffer. But unlike its name, the DMZ is now the worlds most heavily fortified border. An estimated 2 million mines are peppered inside and near the DMZ, which is also guarded by barbed wire fences, tank traps and combat troops on both sides. Officially, the entire DMZ area, including Panmunjom, is jointly overseen by North Korea and the U.N. Command. About 28,500 U.S. troops are deployed in South Korea to deter possible aggression from North Korea. The Defense Ministry said earlier yesterday that its troops found what they believe are two sets of human remains at another DMZ spot. It was the first such discovery since South Korea began the joint demining work with North Korea on Oct. 1 at a place where one of the heaviest Korean War battles took place. According to the ministry, a bayonet, bullets and a South Korean army identification tag with the name Pak Je Kwon were found along with the remains. Military records show Pak was a sergeant first class who died in a battle in 1953 in the final weeks of the Korean War. Pak has two surviving sisters and authorities will take their DNA samples to find out if parts of the bones belong to him. During a media visit to the site, South Korean soldiers wrapped a piece of bone in white paper and put it into a wooden box. They later wrapped the box with a national flag, placed it on a small table and offered a shot of liquor before they paid a silent tribute. Sgt. 1st Class Pak Je Kwon has come back to us. Its been 65 years since he died in battle. Now, we can offer up a shot of soju [Korean liquor] to him, South Korean President Moon Jae-in tweeted. The area, known as Arrowhead Hill, is where South Korean and U.S.-led U.N. troops repelled a series of Chinese attacks to secure a strategically important hilltop position. South Korea said the remains of an estimated 300 South Korean, French and U.S. soldiers are believed to be in the area. The remains of a large number of Chinese and North Korean soldiers are also likely there. The Korean War left millions dead or missing, and Seoul officials believe the remains of about 10,000 South Korean soldiers alone are still inside the DMZ. Septembers agreements received strong criticism from conservatives in South Korea that Moons government made too many concessions that will eventually weaken the countrys military strength at a time when North Koreas nuclear threat remains unchanged. Moon, a liberal who wants greater ties with North Korea, has facilitated a series of high-profile U.S.-North Korean talks, including a June summit between North Korean leader Kim Jong Un and President Donald Trump, to address the standoff over Kims nuclear program. Hyung-Jin Kim, Seoul, AP Yesterday, the University of Macau held the 11th International Conference on the Legal Reforms of Macau in the Global Context. During the morning, two sessions took place: one on the Macau model of operation of games of chance in casinos, and another on the Portugal and Macau models of operation of games of chance in casinos. Joao Pacheco Amorim, assistant professor from the Faculty of Law of the University of Porto, gave a talk on the Legal Framework for the Concessions and Sub Concessions of the Operation of Games of Chance in the Macau Legal System. The Portuguese law professor had doubts about a specific regulation written in Macaus gaming concession law. There is a possibility left open by article 32 that the rules presented by the government can be changed for public necessities. But this openness that the law allows increases my doubts for the regulation. Why should you have a regulation and be able to change it midway? asked Joao Pacheco, whose talk was simultaneously interpreted from Portuguese to English by a translator. There is a principle of not changing the regulation presented initially, of course. [] Even if the law does not mention [what kind of change it should be], [the change] is a very grey area. The regulation cant go against the main principle, [and the regulations] cant go against the principle of law, said Joao Pacheco. However, I feel that [this specific regulation] does [go against the principle of law]. The negotiations of the entities of the tenders are not limited [according to the regulation]. We can have negotiation at any time; the regulation seems very vague. The principles of fair competition are questionable, the law professor pointed out. The negotiation is [related] to public interests, and it is very important. But at the same time, we are questioning the principles, said Joao Pacheco, if allowing negotiation throughout the process, then why the evaluation? Another speaker, Ricardo Siu, associate professor from the Institute for the Study of Commercial Gaming of the University of Macau, believes that the government is very clear about future gaming concessions having to comply with Macaus development as a world tourism and leisure center, and it will consider Macaus competencies. Compared to 2004, the government is now paying more attention to the improvement of laws and regulations. Furthermore, Siu also believes that it is better for the local government to extend the concessions of the concerned gaming operators until 2022 to allow all gaming operators to bid for the concessions at the same time. The professor believes that the Macau government will consider, during the next gaming concession, the ratio between foreign and local gaming operators. Former Malaysian Prime Minister Najib Razak and his ex-treasury chief were jointly charged yesterday with criminal breach of trust involving 6.64 billion ringgit (USD1.6 billion), while his ex-spy agency head was charged with misappropriating $12.1 million. The six new charges against Najib come on top of 32 earlier counts of corruption, breach of trust and money laundering that he face linked to the multibillion-dollar looting of the 1MDB state investment fund. Malaysias new government has stepped up prosecution of Najib and other former officials over the 1MDB scandal and other alleged graft cases since its stunning electoral victory in May that led to the countrys first change of power since independence from Britain in 1957. Both Najib and former treasury secretary-general Mohamad Irwan Serigar Abdullah pleaded not guilty to misappropriating government funds between December 2016 and December 2017. The charge sheets said part of the money involved a subsidy for the poor and an airport management budget but gave no further details. Najibs lawyer, Shafee Abdullah, slammed the charges as foolish, saying the fund was merely being diverted for more urgent needs which were to meet payment datelines mainly for 1MDB as well as for a Chinese-backed rail link and two gas pipeline projects. Shafee said the two men had made executive decisions to reallocate the funds to avoid debt defaults that could cause dire financial consequences. Its just a question of making priority, which one you pay firstthis [has been] done many, many, many times. It is being done even today, he told reporters, adding that he believed the charges were very political in nature. The new government has said it would cancel the Chinese-backed projects and is probing why Najibs administration paid an unusually large sum of money to Chinese contractors despite little work done. Separately, Hasanah Abdul Hami, the former chief of the foreign intelligence agency that is now defunct, pleaded not guilty to misappropriating $12.1 million weeks before the May 9 general election that ousted Najibs coalition. Hasanahs lawyer, Shaharuddin Ali, told reporters that her case is not related to the 1MDB scandal. He said the utilization of the money for intelligence purposes was a state secret and mustnt be made public in an open court. All three have been released on bail. Each of the charges against them carries a jail term of up to 20 years and a fine. Prime Minister Mahathir Mohamad, who is in Bangkok for a state visit, warned that many more former officials could be hauled to court but reiterated that all prosecution is done in accordance with the law. What we are seeing today, of course, are charges being made against several people, but there are many more. We cant bring everyone to court in one go. We have to take [them] one by one, and the more serious one is the former prime minister, Mahathir was quoted as saying at a forum in Bangkok by The Star online. The 1MDB fund, set up by Najib, is being investigated in the U.S. and several other countries. AP Cathay Pacific Airways Ltd. said a hacker accessed personal information of 9.4 million customers, becoming the target of the worlds biggest airline data breach. The airlines shares sank the most in almost two years, shaving USD201 million off its market value, after the Hong Kong-based carrier disclosed the unauthorized access late Wednesday, seven months after discovering the violation. While passports, addresses and emails were exposed, flight safety wasnt compromised and there was no evidence any information has been misused, it said, without revealing details of the origin of the attack. This is quite shocking, said Shukor Yusof, founder of aviation consulting firm Endau Analytics in Malaysia. Its probably the biggest breach of information in the aviation sector. Affecting more people than the population of Cathay Pacifics home base of Hong Kong, the hack is in another league to breaches reported by British Airways Plc and Delta Air Lines Inc. this year. Those carriers boosted spending on cybersecurity after hacks, which saw personal and financial information of hundreds of thousands of customers illegally accessed. At this point, we believe it is uncertain if Cathay Pacific would be liable to any fines imposed by government authorities for such a breach, Geoffrey Cheng, an analyst at Bocom International Holdings Co., wrote in a research note yesterday. However, we expect the share price jitters to linger on for a while. The data breach at Cathay a partner of British Airways in the Oneworld airline alliance adds to the carriers woes, with Chief Executive Officer Rupert Hogg trying to turn it around after two straight annual losses. Im truly sorry for the concern this may have caused you, Hogg said, addressing customers in a video posted to the carriers website. For the majority of people affected, the hackers accessed a combination of passenger name, and either phone number or email, Hogg said. No ones travel, Asia Miles or Marco Polo Club loyalty program profiles were accessed in full, and no passwords were compromised, he said. Cathay Pacific is notifying affected passengers, and will provide free ID monitoring to those who request it, he said. Upon discovery, we acted immediately to contain the event and to thoroughly investigate, Hogg said. We engaged one of the worlds leading cybersecurity firms to assist us, and we further strengthened our IT security systems too. Shares of Cathay Pacific tumbled 3.8 percent in Hong Kong yesterday, the biggest loss since January 2017. Kyunghee Park and Jinshan Hong, Bloomberg What got exposed? Names, nationalities, dates of birth, telephone numbers, email, physical addresses, numbers for passports, identity cards and frequent-flier programs, and historical travel information. 403 expired credit card numbers 27 credit numbers with no CVV, or a security code About 860,000 passport numbers 245,000 Hong Kong IDs. Hong Kongs privacy commissioner expressed serious concern over the leak and said the office will initiate a compliance check with the airline. A dedicated website, infosecurity.cathaypacific.com, provides information about the event and what affected passengers should do next. Hawaii scientists found two tiny baby octopuses floating on plastic trash they were cleaning up as they monitored coral reefs. Marine ecologist Sallie Beavers of Kaloko-Honokohau National Historical Park said Wednesday that the octopuses were the size of green peas. She believes they were likely either day octopus or night octopus, both species commonly found off Hawaii. They can grow to 5.4 kilograms as adults, with arm spans of 1 meter. Scientists found them months ago, but the U.S. Interior Department highlighted them this week when it posted a photo of one on social media. Octopus babies hide under logs and other floating debris until theyre a few months old. Beavers says one squirted a tiny bit of ink when they released it in the ocean. Power to the people: Where have we heard that before? In the 1960s, to be sure. And again today in Read & Riot, an invigorating new guide to radical protest by Pussy Riot founder Nadya Tolokonnikova. Most of the world first heard of the punk art collective when Tolokonnikova and two others were arrested in an anti-Putin protest inside Moscows Cathedral of Christ the Savior in 2012. Tolokonnikova and Maria Alekhina, whose prison memoir, Riot Days, came out last year, were sentenced to two years in prison on charges of hooliganism. Since their pardon in late 2013 as the Kremlin tried to clean up its image before the Sochi Olympics, they have traveled the world as global celebrities, speaking out about their ordeal behind bars. Tolokonnikovas stomach-churning description of the barbarous conditions of the labor camp where she was sent will resonate with activists in the U.S. protesting the penal system here. She sees numerous parallels between the two countries When two people fight for a long time, they end up looking more and more alike and between Donald Trump and Vladimir Putin. She hopes to spark protest against a cosmic rise in inequality, the global empowerment of oligarchs, threats to public education and health care, plus a potentially fatal environmental crisis with a DIY spirit and pirate mentality. The book is divided into a series of 10 rules, one per chapter, each accompanied by tactics and strategies and enlivened by quotes from some of her cultural and political heroes. Thats a long list that includes Vaclav Havel and Noam Chomsky, Emmeline Pankhurst and bell hooks, Bernie Sanders and Diogenes the Cynic. Tolokonnikova, a self-described nerd who has read widely and deeply, fairly bursts with all the energy and passion youd expect of a bright, thoughtful idealist whos not even 30. She credits the Riot Grrls feminist punk movement of the 1990s for inspiration as well as the radical protesters of the 1960s. Her joyously anarchic, radically egalitarian spirit recalls a revolutionary of that earlier era, Abbie Hoffman, whose 1971 manifesto, Steal This Book, offered tips on how to live for free and on the run. While much has changed since Hoffman was the face of youthful rebellion, he would no doubt be smiling at a how-to section of Tolokonnikovas book devoted to shoplifting in Moscow. Chinese spies might be listening in on U.S. President Donald Trumps personal phone calls, assessing how much influence his friends wield over the head of state. According to a New York Times source who interviewed several current and former U.S. officials (who asked to remain anonymous), Trump is still using several personal cellphones even after security advisors have pressured him to use his more secure White House landline. The U.S. President reportedly uses his cellphones to call friends including former casino magnate Steve Wynn and Stephen A. Schwarzman, who heads the Blackstone Group. Both men are or were highly involved in China; the former used to own casinos in Macau and the latter has endowed a masters program at Beijings prestigious Tsinghua University, whose alumni includes several political leaders in China such as President Xi Jinping. The NYT says that White House security officials have repeatedly warned Trump that his cellphones calls are not secure and that Chinese and even Russian spies may be listening. But, as a matter of convenience, Trump refuses to stop using them. The officials suggested that Chinese spies are using the information gathered from Trumps phone calls to ascertain the best ways to influence the President. They are examining who wields considerable influence over Trump and on what issues. Then they may pressure these individuals to pass information or feed arguments sometimes without them even knowing to Trump in the hope of influencing his policies. Reportedly, limiting the scope of the Sino- U.S. trade war is at the top of the list, though there are a host of other issues that will be of interest to Chinese intelligence officials too. One U.S. official told the NYT that Chinese officials were pushing for sit-down meetings between Trump and Xi as often as possible, adding that their impression is that these personal, one-on-one meetings are more likely to yield diplomatic breakthroughs than communication through government channels. The silver lining, according to the NYT sources, is that Trumps natural paranoia about technology and surveillance might led him to be more reserved in disclosing information on his insecure personal cellphones. They told the newspaper that Trump rarely shows an interest in intelligence briefs and is therefore unlikely to be relaying that information to anyone. President calls report on phone spying soooo wrong U.S. President Donald Trump disputed the accuracy of the New York Times report that the Chinas spies eavesdrop on calls he makes on unsecured iPhones after Beijing dismissed the story as fake news. The so-called experts on Trump over at the New York Times wrote a long and boring article on my cellphone usage that is so incorrect I do not have time here to correct it, Trump said yesterday morning in a Twitter posting. I only use Government Phones, and have only one seldom used government cell phone. Story is soooo wrong! The presidents comments follow Chinese Ministry of Foreign Affairs spokeswoman Hua Chunyings comment earlier yesterday that certain people in the U.S. are sparing no efforts to win the best screenplay award for the Oscars. Hua didnt directly address allegations the Times reported that Trump had disregarded warnings from his aides that China and Russia were monitoring his conversations. The former commander of the U.S. Army in Europe warned yesterday [Macau time] that its very likely the United States will be at war with China in 15 years. Retired Lt. Gen. Ben Hodges said that European allies will have to do more to ensure their own defenses in face of a resurgent Russia because America will need to focus more attention on defending its interests in the Pacific. The United States needs a very strong European pillar. I think in 15 years its not inevitable but it is a very strong likelihood that we will be at war with China, Hodges told a packed room at the Warsaw Security Forum, a two-day gathering of leaders and military and political experts from central Europe. The United States does not have the capacity to do everything it has to do in Europe and in the Pacific to deal with the Chinese threat, Hodges said. Hodges was U.S. Army commander in Europe from 2014 until last year. He now is a strategic expert with the Center for European Policy Analysis, a Washington-based research institute. Despite shifting geopolitical priorities, Hodges said the U.S. commitment to NATO remains unshakable. He said he is certain the Trump administration views Europes security as a key U.S. interest even though President Donald Trump has sometimes questioned the Western military alliances usefulness. So youre going to see us continue to invest here in Europe, continue to train, to practice rotational forces, as well as permanently assign forces for the eventuality that in 10 or 15 years were going to be having to fight in the Pacific, Hodges said. Hodges told The Associated Press that a recent near-miss between a U.S. Navy destroyer and a Chinese warship in the disputed South China Sea was only one of the signs pointing to an increasingly tense relationship and increasing competition in all the different domains. Others, he said, are Chinas constant stealing of technology and how China is gaining control of infrastructure by funding projects in Africa and Europe. He said that in Europe, China owns more than 10 percent of the ports. AP The President of South Korea, Park Chung Hee, has been accidentally shot dead by the chief of his intelligence service, Kim Jea Kyu. Five other people, including the presidents bodyguard, were also killed. The incident took place at the Korean Central Intelligence Agencys headquarters during a dinner being held by Kim in honour of the president. A government statement revealed that an argument broke out between Kim Jae Kyu and Parks chief bodyguard, Cha Chi Chul, during which a shot was fired by Kim which hit the president as he tried to intervene. The President was taken from the scene to a nearby army hospital where he later died. There had been a long-standing dispute between the president and Kim Jae Kyu over whether to adopt a tough or moderate policy towards political opponents. An emergency meeting of the Cabinet has named Prime Minister Choi Kyu-Hua as acting president. Martial law has also been proclaimed throughout the country. General Chung, the army chief of staff, has been appointed commander of martial law. His first act was to order a nightly curfew and to ban all demonstrations throughout the country. The US Government reacted immediately saying that it would deal strongly with any attempt by North Korea to exploit the situation. The US Defense Department ordered American troops based in South Korea to be on alert status as a warning. Park Chung Hee became President in 1961. He was known for his firm rule which he said was justified by the constant threat of invasion from North Korea. He had already survived one assassination attempt. In August 1974 a series of shots were fired at him as he gave a speech. All shots missed him but one killed his wife. Courtesy BBC News In context When the presidents body was moved from Government House to the national cemetery more than two million Koreans lined the streets. In a re-enactment of the incident, required by Korean law, Kim Jae Kyu showed how he first shot the presidents bodyguard and then the president himself whom he shot twice. The incident was seen as an attempted coup with intelligence agents admitting to shooting four of the presidents other body guards after being told of the plan by Kim Jae Kyu. Kim Jae Kyu and four KCIA agents were tried and sentenced to death for the murder of President Park Chung Hee and his bodyguards. I was there I was stationed in country at the time with an air defense unit and they did more than put us on alert. We were deployed into the field between Dong Du Chon and the DMZ with ammo and missiles loaded. We were out there about 10 days. The North Koreans were jamming our radar and things were pretty tense. While we were out there I didnt see much of the civilian population, but from what I was hearing on Armed Forces Radio the civilian population remained reasonably calm. Jim Sears, USA New Braunfels, TX (78130) Today Some clouds in the morning will give way to mainly sunny skies for the afternoon. High 67F. Winds ENE at 5 to 10 mph.. Tonight Clear skies. Low 47F. Winds light and variable. Pipe bombs packed with shards of glass were intercepted en route to several prominent Democrats, including former President Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton, in an unnerving wave that deepened political tensions and fears two weeks before national midterm elections. Yesterday, a New York City police bomb squad recovered a suspicious package addressed to actor Robert DeNiro, who has been critical of President Donald Trump. Investigators told The Associated Press that it contains a similar device, according to an X-ray, as those sent to Democratic figures and CNN. None of the seven bombs detonated and no one was hurt as authorities in New York, Washington, D.C., Florida and California seized the suspicious packages. The targets of the bombs were some of the figures most frequently criticized Trump, who still assails Clinton at rallies while supporters chant lock her up two years after he defeated her. Trump also often singles out cable news network CNN and other news media whose reporting he does not like, terming them fake news. Yesterday, without directly referencing the explosive devices, Trump again blamed the media for the anger in society. A very big part of the Anger we see today in our society is caused by the purposely false and inaccurate reporting of the Mainstream Media that I refer to as Fake News, he said in a morning Tweet. It has gotten so bad and hateful that it is beyond description. Mainstream Media must clean up its act, FAST! Hours earlier, he took a softer tone at a rally in Wisconsin Wednesday night. Lets get along, he said. By the way, do you see how nice Im behaving tonight? Have you ever seen this? The attacks overtook other news in an already-tense political season that could reshape Congress and serve as a referendum on the first two years of Trumps presidency. The actions, which caused panicked building evacuations and reports of additional explosives that later proved unfounded, are bound to add to fears that overheated rhetoric could lead to deadly violence as the parties engage in bitter fights over immigration, the Supreme Court and the treatment of women. The bombs, each with a small battery, were about six inches long and packed with powder and broken glass, said a law enforcement official who viewed X-ray images and spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss an ongoing investigation. The official said the devices were made from PVC pipe and covered with black tape. The first crude bomb to be discovered had been delivered Monday to the suburban New York compound of George Soros, a liberal billionaire and major contributor to Democratic causes. The FBI said an additional package was intended for former Attorney General Eric Holder, but that one ended up at a Florida office of Democratic Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz, whose return address was on it. Later yesterday [Macau time], the FBI said two additional packages addressed for Rep. Maxine Waters had been intercepted that were similar in appearance to five others. The White House condemned the attacks aimed at Democrats and other perceived foes of the administration. Acts or threats of political violence have no place in the United States, Trump said. This egregious conduct is abhorrent. Other Republican leaders said the same. But Democratic Senate and House leaders Chuck Schumer of New York and Nancy Pelosi of California said such words ring hollow when coming from Trump. They noted the presidents recent praise of a GOP congressman who body-slammed a reporter, among other Trump statements. Law enforcement officials said all the packages were similar: manila envelopes with bubble-wrap interior bearing six stamps and the return address of Florida Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz. She is the former chairwoman of the Democratic National Committee who was accused by Clinton rivals of secretly helping the partys eventual presidential nominee. The package intended for Holder had the wrong address and was forwarded to Wasserman Schultz. The devices all were sent to an FBI lab in Virginia to be studied. Officials provided no details on a possible suspect or motive. Suffice it to say, it appears an individual or individuals sent out multiple, similar packages, said John Miller, the New York Police Departments head of intelligence and counterterrorism, who briefed reporters. The U.S. Secret Service intercepted the bomb that was addressed to Hillary Clinton at the Chappaqua, New York, home she shares with former President Bill Clinton, and another that was sent to Obama at his home in Washington. A police bomb squad removed still another from CNNs New York office, which was evacuated. The CNN package was addressed to former CIA Director John Brennan, who has publicly clashed with Trump and is a regular television contributor. Speaking at an event in Austin, Texas, Brennan called the spate of pipe bombs a very unfortunate turn of events, particularly if he and others are being targeted for their public comments. Unfortunately, I think Donald Trump, too often, has helped to incite some of these feelings of anger, if not violence, when he points to acts of violence or also talks about swinging at somebody from the press, the media, Brennan said. The package sent to CNN contained a live explosive, with wires and a black pipe, and an envelope with white powder, officials said. The powder was tested and determined to have been harmless, according to a law enforcement official who spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss an ongoing investigation. New York City Police Commissioner James ONeill says investigators are reviewing security video to see if they can identify a courier believed to have delivered the pipe bomb package to CNNs office. ONeill said in an appearance on CNN that he was pretty sure those images will be caught on video, and well be able to find out where that person came from before they entered the building and where they went to after. Waters, whom the president has denigrated as a low-IQ individual, reported earlier that she was the target of a suspicious package. Though the FBI did not initially include her on a list of targeted individuals, the bureau later said two packages addressed to her and similar to the five others had been found. One was intercepted at a Los Angeles mail facility. White House press secretary Sarah Sanders said in a statement, These terrorizing acts are despicable, and anyone responsible will be held accountable to the fullest extent of the law. But while stopping short of blaming Trumps rhetoric for inspiring the attacks, Jeff Zucker, the president of CNN Worldwide, contended there was a total and complete lack of understanding at the White House about the seriousness of their continued attacks on the media. The president, and especially the White House press secretary, should understand their words matter. Thus far, they have shown no comprehension of that, he said. Michael Balsamo, Eric Tucker & Colleen Long, Washington, AP Credit: CC0 Public Domain At least 120 countries around the world require pictorial warning labels on cigarette packagesfor example, gangrene feet or a dead bodybut the United States is notably missing from the list. Despite a 2009 Congressional act instructing the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) to implement pictorial warning labels, American cigarette packs still contain text-only warnings. A new court order issued in September 2018 says the FDA must speed up its timeline for the implementation of pictorial warning labels. A new study from the Annenberg School for Communication at the University of Pennsylvania aims to contribute valuable research toward this end. Researchers analyzed more than 300 pictorial warning labels to determine which features most effectively get smokers to quit. They found that testimonial frameworks and images of diseased body parts were the most effective individual features. "Humans act in response to our emotions," says Doctoral Candidate Jazmyne Sutton, lead study author. "When we feel a negative emotionfear, disgust, etc.we want to avoid the source of that emotion." It makes sense, then, that images of diseased body parts and smoking horror stories told by real people would be most influential in getting smokers to stop smoking. No one wants to end up as the testimonial on a cigarette pack. To analyze the various features used in pictorial warning labels, the researchers collected more than 300 warning labels from various sources. They used pictorial warning messages on cigarette packs in Australia, Canada, New Zealand, and the United Kingdom; pictorial warning messages proposed by the FDA that have not been implemented; a set of anti-smoking messages produced by tobacco companies; testimonial pictorial warning messages developed for an experimental study; and pictorial ads used in various local and national campaigns. The researchers identified 48 objective features that could be present in the ads, including factors like image color, photo type, presence of male or female characters, presence of medical equipment, and argument type. They then recruited nearly 1,400 current smokers to view the ads and answer questions about how the ads affected them. "A wide variety of studies from different countries show that pictorial warning labels are effective in curtailing smoking behavior," says senior author Joseph N. Cappella. "Our work seeks to isolate some of the specific elements that enhance and retard effectiveness to help guide future message designs." The researchers say they hope that this study can offer generalizable guidelines for label designers to create more effective pictorial warning messages, which will eventually impact smoking-related attitudes and promote behavior change. In upcoming studies, they will focus on the relationship between text that appears on the labels and the pictorial elements. The study, "Perceived Effectiveness of Objective Features of Pictorial Warning Messages," was published in Tobacco Control. Authors include: Doctoral Candidate Jazmyne Sutton, Doctoral Candidate Sijia Yang, and Professor Joseph N. Cappella. Explore further Study shows effectiveness of testimonial warning labels on tobacco products More information: Jazmyne A Sutton et al, Perceived effectiveness of objective features of pictorial warning messages, Tobacco Control (2018). Journal information: Tobacco Control Jazmyne A Sutton et al, Perceived effectiveness of objective features of pictorial warning messages,(2018). DOI: 10.1136/tobaccocontrol-2018-054488 Credit: Wikipedia Commons A study published in the Community Mental Health Journal examines the potential application of family interventions for psychosis (FIP) within a Chinese context. The study's researchers, led by Dr. Jeremy Dixon of the University of Bath's Centre for Analysis of Social Policy, investigated Chinese mental health service managers' views of FIP and found that FIP must be modified in a number of ways if it is to be implemented in China. Recommended changes include embracing cultural values of interdependence by supporting client recovery within the family home, and recognizing the influential role stigma and families' need to "save face" would likely play in Chinese family-oriented mental health care. Family interventions for psychosis (FIP) have been recommended as first-line care by national guidelines in the U.K., Australia, and New Zealand. FIPs initially focused on improving the family emotional environment, based on the theory that high levels of expressed emotion within families (i.e., criticism or over-involvement) resulted in poorer outcomes in psychosis. FIPs have since become more focused on empowering families through psychoeducation and support in joint problem-solving. Dixon and his team sought to investigate whether and how FIP might be adapted to Chinese mental health care settings. China's growing community mental health care network offered the researchers an infrastructure in which to explore FIP's possible fit in China. In recent years the Chinese government has signaled support for community-based mental health services through official plans and legislation, including the creation of mental health centers dedicated to providing "community care" to those with "severe mental disorders." Dixon and his team conducted a pilot study with 10 Integrated Mental Health Service Centre (IMHCs) managers in Guangzhou, China, in which they delivered a presentation about FIP to the managers, conducted a focus group and analyzed the group transcript using thematic analysis. The researchers found that many of the managers spoke about the fact that the families coming in for services are highly concerned about the "economic impact" of supporting relatives with psychosis both due to the cost of treatment and the relative's lost wages. Families, therefore, expected mental health workers to connect them with government financial assistance. Given that FIP typically seeks to "engage with families through addressing their presenting concerns," the researchers suggest that FIP would need to be linked to "financial problem-solving" to be relevant in a Chinese cultural context. Other themes that emerged concerned aspects of Chinese family dynamics that would be important to consider when implementing FIP cross-culturally. These included the presence of "key decision makers" within families to whom all other members defer; the tendency for families to present a "united front" to the community in order to maintain "family harmony" and defend against the cultural stigma of psychosis; and an emphasis on interdependence, which the researchers suggest points to the need for in-home recovery. Given deference to authority within families and family members' views that relatives with psychosis are "handicapped," the authors suggest that Chinese FIP implementation should focus on education and intervention with family "carers" first before bringing service users into sessions. This approach stands in contrast with Western FIP models, which "promote the expertise of the person with psychosis." Limitations of the study include the fact that it was a pilot study and therefore had a small sample size; its lack of rural and other regional perspectives; and its focus on the experiences of mental health managers versus service users and their families. In closing, the authors conclude that FIP's possible use within China's expanding community mental health services holds promise: "FIP can offer an effective way to provide community support in a culture which as always placed emphasis on the centrality of family." However, FIP is not one-size-fits-all, and as such must be adapted to the nuances of Chinese culture in order to be useful in this environment. Also, "the evolving nature of family" within China's ever-changing cultural terrain must be thoughtfully considered. Explore further Uncertainty leads to treatment delays for young people with mental illness More information: Jeremy Dixon et al. The Views of Mental Health Manager Towards the Use of a Family Work Model for Psychosis in Guangzhou, China, Community Mental Health Journal (2018). Jeremy Dixon et al. The Views of Mental Health Manager Towards the Use of a Family Work Model for Psychosis in Guangzhou, China,(2018). DOI: 10.1007/s10597-018-0247-7 Credit: Alter-ego, Shutterstock Lower costs, less wastage and higher-quality milk on the horizon for dairy farmers, thanks to a new optical sensor that scans for contaminants and proteins in 5 minutes. Food safety is a pressing issue affecting food industries, and the dairy industry is no exception. Just like any other food type, milk and milk products can have an adverse effect on consumer health if contaminated. Harmful microorganisms are usually introduced into the milk through udder infections (e.g. Staphylococcus aureus) or sanitation problems (e.g. Escherichia coli). But milk can also be contaminated with chemicals such as antibiotics, mycotoxins and pesticides through the water or feed that cows consume or through inadequate control of equipment and milk storage facilities. To prevent contaminated milk and dairy products from entering the food chain, tests are conducted throughout the production process. Standard testing for milk quality and safety can be a costly and time-consuming process. The recently launched EU-funded project MOLOKO has found a way to dramatically reduce costs and the time it takes to detect contaminants in milk. Able to produce a reading in just 5 minutes, MOLOKO's new sensor provides an early warning system that may also lead to less milk wastage and antibiotic use in the dairy industry's production and processing stages. Biosensor for on-site detection The new optical sensor is constructed using four high-tech building blocks: organic light-emitting transistors, organic photodetectors, recombinant antibody technology and a nanostructured plasmonic surface. The last, a nanoplasmonic grating, is supported by powerful, label-free screening technology called surface plasmon resonance (SPR). Highly sensitive and non-invasive, SPR provides real-time information on how specific, pre-programmed receptors interact with selected bacteria, toxins, antibiotics and other contaminants. "Detection and investigation of contaminants in fluids is a rapidly growing field in SPR bio sensing," says Italian National Research Council researcher and project coordinator Stefano Toffanin in a news item posted on the 'Photonics21' website. "Until recently optical constrains, high costs and limitations in the detected parameter number prevented the use of SPR outside of a laboratory. Within our unique integrated sensing architecture, MOLOKO can deliver results in minutes, for advanced dairy analysis." Suitable for use by technicians as well as non-specialists working at farms, the handheld biosensor scans for 10 contaminants (mycotoxins, antibacterial drugs and staphylococcal enterotoxins) and provides fast results on-site. The sensor system can also be integrated into a milking machine for inline detection. Protein detection for high-quality cheese The biosensor is also programmed to check for two proteins (kappa casein and lactoferrin) that measure milk and other dairy product quality. The kappa casein B-type milk protein, in particular, is valued in the cheese industry for its ability to clot quickly, producing high yields of firm cheese. Dairy processors therefore usually pay more for milk containing this protein. Aided by the new optical sensor, farmers will be able to adjust their breeding programmes, by rearing cows that produce milk containing high-value proteins. "With this sensor system, farmers will be given an insight to understand the health of their cows, dairies will be able to make instant judgements about the contaminants in milk and processors can keep an eye on quality control," says Toffanin. MOLOKO (Multiplex phOtonic sensor for pLasmonic-based Online detection of contaminants in milK) expects to have a prototype of the sensor ready by 2021. More information: MOLOKO project website: MOLOKO project website: www.moloko-project.eu/ Credit: CC0 Public Domain A trio of public officials is issuing a warning in a Policy Forum piece in the journal Science regarding the call to include genetic sequence data under the Nagoya Protocol. In their essay, Carolina dos S. Ribeiro, Marion P. Koopmans and George B. Haringhuizen with the Netherlands National Institute for Public Health and the Environment and Erasmus Medical Center, suggest that such a move could jeopardize international efforts to combat a future pandemic. The Nagoya Protocol is a binding treaty adopted and signed by many nations of the world back in 2010. Its purpose was to protect the rights of entities involved in the creation of products through genetic research. The idea was to make sure that those groups who developed products owned the rights to benefit from them. The protocol extended to governmental rights, which led to sometimes complicated processes involved in obtaining permission to obtain and use samples. Recently, some in the field have suggested that genetic sequence data be added to the protocol. In their essay, the authors suggest such a move could be dangerous due to the complexity involved in allowing the sharing of genetic resources. The authors suggest that inclusion of proprietary genetic sequence data in the protocol could result in preventing researchers around the world from acting swiftly to respond to outbreaks of deadly diseases, particularly those that could evolve into a pandemic. They note that sharing of genetic sequence data between researchers working to stop such an epidemic would be critical to the success of such an endeavor. They also note that the process of obtaining permission to receive such information from others under the protocol has become complex and difficult in many cases. They outline four scenarios, which they describe as models, to demonstrate the many hoops that researchers must jump through in order to obtain samples currently covered under the protocoland how that requirement in a crisis would work against fighting off a rapidly expanding pandemic. The authors conclude by suggesting that public officials work to reduce barriers to access during times of crisis in the interests of public health. They offer examples of material transfer agreements that could be created and used during such times to prevent bottlenecks when speed is of the essence. Explore further UN meet reviews steps to save global biodiversity More information: "Threats to timely sharing of pathogen sequence data," Science 26 Oct 2018:Vol. 362, Issue 6413, pp. 404-406. Journal information: Science "Threats to timely sharing of pathogen sequence data,"26 Oct 2018:Vol. 362, Issue 6413, pp. 404-406. DOI: 10.1126/science.aau5229 2018 Science X Network An alarming proportion of New Zealanders are neither wearing hats nor seeking shade to protect themselves from the sun, University of Otago research reveals. The study observed 2,635 children and adults in outdoor recreation spaces in the Wellington region between September 2014 and April 2015, including beaches, playgrounds and outdoor pools. It found that only 4.3 per cent of people wore sun protective hats (broad-brim, bucket and legionnaire styles) and only 10.7 per cent were under shade at times when sun protection was warranted. "Previously we only had information from surveys to tell us about the sun protection used by New Zealanders in recreational settings," Ryan Gage from the Department of Public Health at the University of Otago, Wellington, says. "Direct observations are needed to show what is actually happening." The research, which is published in the New Zealand Medical Journal today, is part of the landmark Kids'Cam Study, funded by the Health Research Council of NZ, which saw children capturing images of their world from wearable cameras. Professor Louise Signal says the findings suggest that children and adults are less sun-safe in recreational settings than previously believed. The lack of hat-wearing mirrors a recent analysis of sun safety in Wellington primary schools, where less than a quarter of students wore a hat during lunch breaks in summer. New Zealand currently has the highest rate of melanoma skin cancer in the world. Each year, nearly 90,000 skin cancers are diagnosed and 500 New Zealanders die from skin cancer. Most of these cancers are caused by overexposure to the sun. Unlike Australia, which has funded sustained awareness campaigns around sun smart behaviours, New Zealand has released no public media campaigns in almost a decade. "Skin cancer is a highly preventable disease and represents a significant cost to the health system," Mr Gage says. "We should learn from Australia and do more to encourage sun protection in general, both for children and adults. The SunSmart Schools programme alone is not enough to influence behaviours outside school grounds. Sun burning is highly common in outdoor recreational areas, and sun damage at any age contributes to skin cancer risk." Professor Signal says encouraging local councils to develop sun safety policies would be a useful first step for supporting sun protection in outdoor recreation spaces. "We know that some councils do this well already, for instance by considering shade in playground upgrades and urban design." Explore further Sun protection poor for NZ secondary school students This image shows a cross section of a kidney. Credit: Holly Fischer/Wikipedia Although there have been considerable reductions in disparities in adult kidney transplant outcomes in the United States, a new study found that disparities in long-term patient survival among pediatric kidney transplant recipients have worsened. The findings will be presented at ASN Kidney Week 2018 October 23-October 28 at the San Diego Convention Center. For the study, Tanjala Purnell, MPH, Ph.D. (Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine) and her colleagues examined information on 3,295 White, 2,049 Black, and 2,073 Hispanic children who received a kidney transplant in the United States between January 1, 1995 and December 31, 2014. From 1995 to 2014, patient survival after transplantation improved for all recipients; however, racial/ethnic disparities in long-term survival worsened over time. In 1995, compared with White kidney transplant recipients, Black and Hispanic recipients had 11% and 49% reduced risks of death, respectively. In 2014, compared with White recipients, Black recipients had an 84% higher risk and Hispanics had a 29% lower risk. "In this national study of pediatric kidney transplant recipients, we found that while survival after KT improved overall, disparities in long-term patient survival worsened from 1995 to 2014. ?In stark contrast to prior study findings of reduced racial/ethnic disparities in outcomes for adult kidney transplant recipients, we found that disparities in long-term survival worsened over the last two decades for Black children in the United States," said Dr. Purnell. "Our findings suggest that national strategies to elucidate and intervene on mechanisms driving disparities among pediatric kidney transplant recipients are needed." Explore further Racial disparities in kidney transplant outcomes are narrowing More information: "Racial and Ethnic Disparities in Pediatric Kidney Transplant Outcomes in the United States: Have We Made Any Progress Over the Last Twenty Years?" ASN Kidney Week 2018. 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For almost nine years, Ive blogged on various topics. I blogged as Blaque Ink first, and as Brotha Wolf second. The latter had a mu... 2 years ago Comic Con is a much-loved event around the world, and it finally landed in South Africa this year with the first-ever Comic Con Africa. South Africans flocked to the Kyalami International Convention Centre from all across the country to the official Comic Con event hosted by Reed Exhibitions Africa. Comic Con Africa featured a number of the attractions normally seen at international conventions, including celebrity panels, the Artist Alley, and high-quality cosplay. Weeks later, South Africans were treated to the annual rAge gaming expo. rAge 2018 saw an attendance of 34,002 people walking through its doors, but Comic Con Africa pulled a larger attendance more than 45,000 people. Despite its high attendance, however, Comic Con Africa pales in comparison to similar events held around the world. South African events vs the rest of the world MyBroadband compared these South African attendance numbers to those of major geek and gaming events held around the world. Some of the more well-known events include the likes of Blizzcon, E3, San Diego Comic Con, and Gamescom. Some bigger events that may not be as well-known include the likes of the giant comic market called Comiket that takes place in Tokyo, Japan. It is a monstrous event that happens in the streets of Tokyo, pulling in upwards of 35,000 Dojin circles groups that self-publish their work and 550,000 attendees. The attendance numbers for some of the biggest gaming and geek conventions in the world are compared in the table below and listed in ascending order. Communications Minister Nomvula Mokonyane says the delays in digital migration is a concern as it is costly for government and the industry. Over the past few years we have experienced several delays due to a variety of circumstances that are well known to this forum, Mokonyane said on Thursday, during a three-day colloquium, held in Bloemfontein in the Free State. The colloquium is being held under the theme: All hands on deck Towards accelerating viewer migration. Mokonyane said the delays have led to South Africa being unable to meet the deadline set by the International Telecommunications Union. This situation is of great concern to government as the delays have been costly for government and the industry. I am confident that the colloquium has found ways to ensure that we can assist the province in coordinating with manufacturers and retailers to accelerate the supply of decoders and (integrated digital television) IDTVs in stores in the province, Mokonyane said. The Minister told the delegates at the colloquium that it is time to move decisively and ensure that government speedily switch off the analogue broadcasting system in the shortest possible time. Achieving this requires increased partnership and collaboration with industry. This will happen both at the level of implementation and provision of equipment and infrastructure. So all of us here today have a central role to play in unlocking the digital frontier. From day one our objectives with regards to digital migration were aligned to those of the National Development Plan, Mokonyane said. She said the successful migration will empower government to bridge the digital divide, increase the competitiveness of the South African economy, create jobs and build social cohesion. Digital migration and ensuing digital revolution will truly be a game changer. The full implementation of the project will unlock valuable spectrum which can be used by government and the industry to drive the fourth industrial revolution. It will also bring with it greater benefits for content development, especially locally produced and relevant content. The rollout of the programme will be an enabler for the revitalisation of the electronic manufacturing industry and broadcast content generation, Mokonyane said. The objective of the colloquium is to enhance the communication, awareness and education of the migration programme. This also includes fast-tracking the viewer migration element in the areas of registrations, distributions and installations, create a platform for content providers, local media and other members of the value chain to network and identify opportunities that comes from the project. The colloquium is also aimed at attracting local installers and grow the Free State provincial database. The Free State province will be the first province to be switched off. It is anticipated that this will unlock opportunities for the Free State citizens and businesses. It is anticipated that the switch-off analogue broadcast services in the Free State will take place by 31 December 2018. The colloquium is being held to explore opportunities for private sector, industry and local government to assist the Department of Communication to fast tracking analogue switch off in the province. The Minister said in a digital future, SMMEs are likely to be the greatest beneficiaries both through the supply of migration of devices and the content required to feed the multitude of new channels. Last month, Cabinet announced that government will no longer be involved in procurement of set top boxes, warehousing, transportation and installation of devices. The revised model adopts a market/retail driven approach, through collaboration and partnerships with the private sector and industry. There is an estimated 14 million television owning households in the country. South Africa has three tier broadcasting, namely, Free-To-Air, Pay and Community broadcast services. According to Mokonyane, an estimated 8.8 million, equivalent to 62% market share of the entire television viewing, already own digital satellite decoders and are considered to have migrated to digital platform. SA News South Africa has a proud Internet history, which started in 1991 when the first IP packets were sent over a 14.4kbps link between Rhodes University in Grahamstown and the United States. In 1993 The Internet Company of South Africa (Ticsa) was formed, and the first commercial Internet service providers were given live access to the Internet. Between 1995 and 2000 the Internet started to gain traction in South Africa after Telkom and MWEB (with its Big Black Box) popularised dial-up connections for home use. During this time many South African companies launched websites and started to experiment with an online presence. With more South Africans starting to go online, companies like Mail & Guardian, IOL, and Bidorbuy built an online presence. Slow Internet speeds typically between 56kbps and 128kbps means that these websites could not contain any large components. To ensure that a website would load fast on a 56kbps, there were no large images or other data-heavy components on websites. What South Africas oldest websites looked like 20 years ago The Internet Archive makes it possible to look at what South Africas oldest websites looked like 20 years ago. The Internet Archive has built an Internet library of websites, which include snapshots of South African websites over time. It should be noted that these snapshots do not always contain images and other web elements. The screenshots below have therefore been edited slightly to remove the broken images. Here is a look back at what some of South Africas top websites looked like in the late nineties, when the Internet started to take off in South Africa. Mail & Guardian 1998 vs 2018 MWEB 1998 vs 2018 IOL 1999 vs 2018 News24 2001 vs 2018 Moneyweb 1999 vs 2018 Jobs.co.za 1996 vs 2018 Stores worldwide make use of Electronic Article Surveillance (EAS) systems to prevent shoplifting of merchandise. Special tags are affixed to merchandise, which are detected by systems situated at the exits of the store. An alarm is sounded when a tag is detected by the system, notifying store employees that someone is attempting to leave with a stolen item. The tags need to be removed or deactivated by the store at the point of purchase, which allows a customer to leave with the item without setting off the alarm system. Criminals are constantly working at finding new methods to bypass these security systems, however. These include simple methods such as breaking the tags and using foil-lined bags, and more complex methods such as the use of tag detachers or signal blockers. To combat this, EAS system manufacturers are constantly working at new developments for their tags and detection systems. To learn more about these circumvention methods and how to combat them, MyBroadband spoke to Stock Loss Prevention (SLP) Technologies. Removal or deactivation of tags One of the more common methods that has been used is simply to remove or deactivate a security tag. Criminals will use various methods from physically cutting or breaking the tags off to bringing their own deactivators or detachers to remove or deactivate the tags before stealing the items. This has driven manufacturers such as Dexilon, whose systems SLP solely distributes in South Africa to constantly improve their systems. Theres a myriad of devices and solutions for all different types of products that they steal the more they steal, the more you have to look for something new to overcome their theft, said SLP. This includes alarm systems within the tags that will sound when a tag is broken or cut, and detection systems within the posts at the store entrance that will sound an alarm if a detacher or deactivator is detected on a person entering the store. Another common method criminals are known to use to remove tags is by physically cutting a hole around the pin of the tag that is large enough to remove the tag from a clothing item. Security companies have thus increased the size and functionality of their tags to combat this. Increasing the size of the tags ensures that it is too large for the criminal to cut a hole in the item, as it will then ruin the item. Ink tags which release ink onto clothing when the tag is tampered with have also been developed. Signal jammers Similar to car remote jammers, criminals use signal jammers that are designed to block the acousto-magnetic (AM) or radio frequency (RF) signals that are used by the EAS systems. However, EAS systems now include jammer detectors that are able to pick up on the jamming signals, and can trigger an alarm that notifies a store clerk or manager that a jammer is being used on their system. Our Dexilon systems have got something called a jammer alert, which will tell you if someone is trying to jam your system, SLP said. Foil-lined bags Another method criminals use to steal merchandise especially clothing has been through the use of a foil-lined bag. The inside of a bag is lined with several layers of aluminium foil, which shields the tag from being detected by the detection posts at the store exits. Metal detectors have been incorporated into EAS systems, though, allowing the entrance posts to detect any metal objects that are brought through the entrance into the store. SLP said that the metal detectors in these systems are commonly calibrated to only detect metal with an area of or larger than an A4 page. This stops the detection of smaller metal objects, such as a smartphone or coins, from triggering the alarm whenever a customer enters a store. Removing food contents from a container For products such as baby formula powder and coffee, criminals would commonly just steal the contents of the product by opening the container and pouring the contents into another container. This is used to circumvent specialised tags called clamps that are clamped around the bottom of the item. SLP told MyBroadband that the main reason criminals in South Africa will steal certain products, such as baby formula or alcohol, is to sell them to informal shops rather than for personal use. To combat this, manufacturers like Dexilon have developed specialised clamps that fit around the top of a container, essentially clamping the top of the container closed. This prevents the theft of the contents by ensuring the lid of the container cannot be opened without tampering with the clamp and setting off an alarm. Now read: How criminals secretly steal your airtime The Napa Valley Wine Train will join with Tequila Casa Dragones for a third installation of the Tequila Train, commemorating Day of the Dead with a traditional Mexican menu from Criollos Chef Luis Arellano on Thursday, Nov. 1. The Tequila Train will greet guests aboard with a welcome Tequila Casa Dragones signature cocktail upon embarking on the three-hour train journey. The tour will include four gourmet courses featuring authentic Mexican specialties all to the beat of live DJ Spanish tunes. To conclude the journey, guests are invited to enjoy a celebratory Dia de las Muertos Tequila Casa Dragones Jovan shot at the wine trains own Altar de Muertos, or Day of the Dead Altar. AMERICAN CANYON COMMUNITY CHURCH Worship at 10 a.m. Programs for children and youth during worship service. 2 Andrew Road, American Canyon. ARBOR ALLIANCE Join us Sundays at 5 p.m. Why 5 p.m. worship? It is a good time for busy people and young families. Kids church and nursery available. 721 Trancas St., Napa. thearborchurch.org; 530-304-4704. BEIT ABBA Messianic Jewish ministry of The Fathers House is held the first and third Friday of each month at 7 p.m. Child care provided for ages infant to 7 years old. 2557 Napa Valley Corporate Drive, Napa. tfh.org/beitabba. CARMELITE MONASTERY Mass times: Sunday, 9 a.m.; Monday-Saturday, 8 a.m. Confession Days for English and Spanish: Mondays and Fridays, 10 a.m.-noon; 3-5 p.m.; 8-9 p.m. First Saturdays: Confessions at 10 a.m. followed by Mass at 11 a.m. 944-2454. oakvillecarmelites.org. CENTER FOR SPIRITUAL LIVING Services are at 9 and 10:30 a.m. with Teen Group at 10 a.m. and Youth Program at 10:30 a.m. Rev Jay Lang's topic is "Everyone (All y'all) Can Be Abundant." Spanish Meditation Mondays, 7-8 p.m. Open Meditation Wednesdays, 6:30-7 p.m. New four-week class, "A New Gratitude: Cultivating a Grateful Life" begins Thursday, Oct. 25, 6:30- 8:30 p.m. No meditation Wednesday, Oct. 31 due to Halloween. Day of Remembrance Meditation on Thursday, Nov. 1, 5-6 p.m., 1249 Coombs Street. 252-4847. CHRISTIAN SCIENCE CHURCH Sunday service and Sunday school for youths up to age 20 at 10 a.m. The Wednesday evening service is at 7:30. Child care provided at all services. New hours for the Reading Room, located in our church building, open to the public weekdays except Wednesdays, 1-4 p.m. All current Christian Science literature, including the writings of Mary Baker Eddy and the renowned Christian Science Monitor, are available to all to read or purchase. 2210 Second St., Napa. 255-5255. christiansciencenapa.com. CHURCH OF JESUS CHRIST OF LATTER-DAY SAINTS, NAPA SECOND WARD Sacrament meeting is each Sunday at 10 a.m., followed by Sunday School at 11:15 and Priesthood and Relief Society at 12:10 p.m. Young mens and young womens programs are on Tuesdays at 7 p.m. Corner of Trower Avenue and Dry Creek Road, Napa. 224-6496. CONGREGATION BETH SHALOM Congregation Beth Shalom Worship Services this Friday, Oct. 26 at 6 p.m. will be led by Nadya Schmeder. Linda and Larry Miller will host an Oneg Shabbat at 7. Tickets are still available for L'Chaim Napa Valley on Saturday, Oct. 27. Walkabout and taste the wines poured by 16 Notable Napa Valley Vintners from 4 to 6 p.m. accompanied by cheeses curated by Janet Fletcher. A sumptuous dinner featuring Chef David Nayfeld, prepared by Blossom Catering, will follow at 6:30 to 9:30. Proceeds from this event will benefit youth programs at Congregation Beth Shalom. Contact CBS at 1455 Elm Street, Napa, 94559. www.cbsnapa.org, 253-7305. CORNERSTONE MINISTRIES Sunday service is at 10:15 a.m. Spanish Church begins at 1:30 p.m. Sunday school and childcare are available at both services. Our midweek service is at 6:30 on Wednesday nights. There is childcare and childrens activities at this service. Middle school and high school study meets on Wednesday nights, as well, at 6:30 in the Youth Room. 3305 Linda Vista Ave., Napa; 252-2909. cmnv.org. COVENANT PRESBYTERIAN CHURCH CPC follows the Presbyterian tradition of being reformed and always reforming. As we think about changes in the world, the church, our communities, and our lives, well contemplate how we adapt and manage. Rev. Jesse Larson takes a close look at Ephesians 2:4-10 and hell remind us what he likes about this textthat we are saved by Gods loving grace. Liturgist, Kathleen Montgomery, assists this week, and Mark Osten is our organist. Its beautiful out here in north Napa right now, vines changing color, early morning balloons brightening the sky. Come change with us. Come be with us. No matter where you are in your journey of faith, you are welcome here. 1226 Salvador Ave. 255-9426 cpc.napa.org CREEKSIDE COMMUNITY CHURCH Weekly worship service is Sunday at 10:30 a.m. Services and attire are casual with a blend of fellowship, music and teaching. Child care and childrens church offered during service. 1050 Hagen Road, Napa. CreeksideChurchNapa.org. 255-7266. CROSSWALK COMMUNITY CHURCH CrossWalk Community Church invites you to worship with us on Sunday. Service times are 8:30 and 10 a.m. with children's programs available during the 10 a.m. service. Our new teaching series led by Dr. Peter R. Shaw, Senior Pastor is "Me. Free." You are invited to join Pastor Pete for Praxis -- Integrating deep faith into real life -- on Wednesdays at 11 a.m. and again at 6:30 p.m. (light dinner served). 2590 First St., 226-1812, crosswalknapa.org. FIRST CHRISTIAN CHURCH We welcome you to come and experience First Christian Church and become part of our family. Our Sunday service is at 10 a.m. and Kids Ministry has a great time planned for your kids (babies through 5th graders). Students@First for Middle and High Schoolers is at 6:30 p.m. 2659 First Street www.fccnapa.org FIRST PRESBYTERIAN CHURCH Please join us this week for your worship experience. Visitors to the Napa Valley are always welcome, and we are just a short walk from many of the downtown hotels. Pastor David will be preaching this week and his sermon title is Ill Scratch Your Back and You Scratch Mine - Not! with a scripture reference of 2 Samuel 7:1-7. We sing hymns at 9 and we have praise music at 10:30. Look for our greeters near the front doors to answer any questions and to assist with the ADA elevator lift. Childcare for newborn to age 4 is available each week. Our weekly Sunday School programs are: The Path Sunday School for kids at 10:30; The Friendship Class at 10; The Adult Bible Study meets at 10:30. We have treats and coffee after both worship times. 1333 Third St., 707-224-8693, fpcnapa.org, facebook.com/fpcnapa, look for us on Givelify. GRACE CHURCH OF NAPA VALLEY Worship service at 9 a.m. and 10:40 a.m. Adult Sunday school classes at 9 a.m. Childrens service at 9 and 10:40 a.m. Nursery and preschool care available. Junior high ministry meets Tuesday at 7 p.m.; high school meets Thursday at 7 p.m. at 3765 Solano Ave., Napa. 255-4033, GraceNapa.org. HIGHLANDS CHRISTIAN FELLOWSHIP If youre a regular church attendee, never been or maybe its just been awhile, we invite you to come join us this Sunday and start the adventure with us at 10:30 a.m. Spanish speaking service on Sunday evenings at 6:30. Alcoholics Anonymous group meets weekly on Monday and Wednesdays from 6-7 p.m. 970 Petrified Forest Road, Calistoga. HILLSIDE CHRISTIAN CHURCH We meet at 9 a.m., 11 a.m. and 6:30 p.m. at 100 Anderson Road, Napa. 255-3036. hccnapa.com. HOLY FAMILY PARISH Holy Mass is celebrated at 9 a.m. on Sundays and in the traditional Tridentine Latin (Extraordinary) form of the Roman Rite, according to the 1962 Missal, at noon. Before Low Masses, there is a recitation of the Most Holy Rosary of the Blessed Virgin Mary at 11:30 a.m. Confession is available after every Low Mass. Holy Family Parish is a Catholic mission-parish of St. Joan of Arc in Yountville. 1241 Niebaum Lane, Rutherford. 944-2461. HOLY GROUND CHRISTIAN CENTER Sunday worship begins at 10 a.m., and Bible study is Wednesday at 7 p.m. 3860 Broadway, Suite 111, American Canyon. 373-2015. LIVING VINE CHURCH We meet every Sunday morning at 10. 3305 Linda Vista Avenue, Napa. 226-5551. MEMORIAL CHAPEL AT VETERANS HOME OF CALIFORNIA, YOUNTVILLE Sunday worship service 10:15 a.m. Coffee fellowship one hour before service. Bible study on Wednesday at 1 p.m., Fellowship Room, with refreshments served; prayer meetings Thursday at 1 p.m. The memorial chapel is on the Veterans Home at Yountville campus on California Drive, across from the administration building. 944-4840. The public is welcome. MONT LA SALLE CHAPEL Roman Catholic liturgical services are open to all in this chapel of the De la Salle Christian Brothers at 4401 Redwood Road, Napa. Sunday Mass is celebrated at 11 a.m. NAPA COMMUNITY SEVENTH-DAY ADVENTIST CHURCH Please join us on Saturday morning at 10 a.m. for Sabbath School and Connection Classes. Stay for the worship service at 11:15 a.m. Our Community Services is open on Tuesdays from 9 a.m. to noon at 2110 Seminary St., 252-8552, Napacomm.com, 1105 G St., Napa, 252-2444. NAPA METHODIST CHURCH Napa Methodist is a progressive, reconciling church where ALL people are welcome! This Sunday morning, Oct. 28, at 9:30 Pastor Marylee Sheffer's talk will be "The Spiritual Practice of Celebrating" and at 11 "The Spiritual Practice of Generosity" will be discussed by Keith Calara and John Casciani. 625 Randolph St., downtown Napa. 707- 253-1411. NAPA FRIENDS MEETING (QUAKERS) Sunday worship at 10 a.m. Silent meeting in the custom of Friends. Meet at the VOICES Youth Center, 780 Lincoln Ave., Napa. Enter at parking lot on left side of building, using door at end of wheelchair ramp. Quaker signs will be posted on Sunday mornings. We welcome visiting friends or those who are new to Quaker practice. Childrens program available with advance notice. nvquaker@gmail.com; 253-1505. NAPA VALLEY BAPTIST CHURCH Join us Sundays at 9:30 a.m. for Bible Study for all ages, 10:30 a.m. for worship service and a fun, interactive and energetic childrens program for preschool through fifth grade. Nursery provided for all Sunday services. 2303 Trower Ave., Napa. napavalleybaptist.org; 252-2100. NAPA VALLEY BIBLE CHAPEL We start Sunday services by remembering the Lords death, burial and resurrection during a time of worship and thanksgiving at 9:30 a.m., followed by a fellowship and coffee time starting at 10:30 a.m. At 11 a.m., we enjoy a time of Bible teaching. On Wednesdays at 6 p.m., we meet for a brief Bible study and a time of prayer. 1559 Second St., Napa. napavalleybiblechapel.com. NAPA VALLEY COMMUNITY CHURCH This Sunday at 10 a.m., we will study Romans 1 and the Biblical teaching that changed the world! Join us for a time of worship and the study of Gods Word. Childcare and Sunday School for children is provided. 4149 Linda Vista Ave, Napa. www.napavalleychurch.org. NVCC is a ministry of the Christian Reformed Church. NAPA VALLEY LUTHERAN Sunday worship at 10 am. Includes Children's Time. Fellowship time follows. All are welcome. Church is located at Jefferson and Elm. 226-8166, napavalleylutheran.org NAPA VALLEY UNITARIAN UNIVERSALISTS At 9:30 a.m. Leader Rev. Christian Schmidt talks about Sharing Ministry. Unitarian Universalism has long understood that our congregations are at their best when we share leadership widely. We have ordained and trained ministers, capable staff, and passionate and talented lay leaders. When all are working together, more can be accomplished than any of us can do alone. Come learn what shared ministry means and why it matters. 11 a.m.: "Attempting Church" Traditional service with Rev. Christian Schmidt and Sunday Service Assistant, Rainer Hoenicke. A friend recently said that she was "attempting church" for the first time in a while, and I said, "Aren't we all?" As we search for a new minister, it's worth taking a look at what it means to be a congregation and just what we think we are doing here! Infant care, child care, and religious education provided. 1625 Salvador Ave., Napa; www.nvuu.org; 707-226-9220. NEW LIFE TABERNACLE Sunday school at 10 a.m., followed by worship service at 11. Sunday evening service the first Sunday of every month. Bible study on Wednesdays at 7:30 p.m. 2625 First St., Napa. 255-1062; NewLifeNapa.com. ST. APOLLINARIS CATHOLIC CHURCH All masses are in English. Visitors are welcome. Sunday Mass times: 7:30, 9 and 10:30 a.m., noon, and 5:30 p.m., Saturday Evening (Vigil for Sunday) 4:30 p.m. Daily mass times: Monday-Friday: 7 and 8:45 a.m.; Saturday: 8:45 a.m . Confession: Saturdays: 3:30-4:15 p.m., Monday-Friday: 6:30-6:50 a.m., Monday-Saturday: 8:15-8:35 a.m. 3700 Lassen St., Napa. ST. JOHN THE BAPTIST St. John the Baptist Church holds daily masses in English at 7:30 a.m. and 12:05 p.m. Weekend masses are Saturday at 5 p.m. (English) and 7 p.m. (Spanish) and Sunday 8 a.m. (Spanish), 10 a.m. (English), noon (Spanish), and 5 p.m. (English). Wednesday evening mass at 7 (Spanish). Corner of Caymus and Yajome streets in downtown Napa. ST. JOHNS LUTHERAN CHURCH Sunday services are at 8:30 and 10:15 a.m. The early service makes use of traditional Lutheran liturgy and hymns, with the singing led by the organ. The 10:15 service is more informal with the singing led by the band. Childrens church is offered during the 10:15 service for preschool through 4th grade. ST. MARYS EPISCOPAL CHURCH Worship on Saturdays at 5:30 p.m. or Sundays at 8 a.m. or 10 a.m. (organ and choir). Childrens Chapel (Sunday school) is at 9:50 a.m. Sunday. Nursery care is provided during the 10 a.m. service. Coffee hour follows the worship services on Sunday. 1917 Third St., Napa. 255-0991; StMarysNapa.org. ST. STEPHENS ANGLICAN EPISCOPAL CHURCH Sunday at 8:30 and 10:30 a.m., sung using the 1928 Book of Common Prayer. Refreshments and social time after the 10:30 service. 1250 Oakville Grade, Oakville. 944-8915; ststephensoakville.org. ST. THOMAS AQUINAS CHURCH Mass times are Saturday at 4 p.m. (English), Sunday at 8 a.m. (English), 11 a.m. (English) and 1:30 p.m. (Spanish). Daily mass is at 9 a.m., except on the first Friday, which is at noon and in English. 2725 Elm St., Napa. 255-2949; stthomasaquinasnapa.com. SALVATION ARMY Join us for services Sundays at 10 a.m. 590 Franklin St., Napa. napasalarmy.org. THE FATHERS HOUSE Service times are Saturday at 6 p.m., and Sunday at 9 and 11 a.m. Child care and Kids Church are available (ages infant through sixth grade). Youth ministry Encounter meets every Wednesday night at 7. Celebrate Recovery meets on Monday nights at 6:30. 2557 Napa Valley Corporate Drive, Napa. tfh.org. UNITY SPIRITUAL CENTER IN NAPA VALLEY Sunday, Oct. 28, 10 a.m. service. Unity once again welcomes, Rev. David Lyman. His message is titled, Exploring the Holidays/Holy Days-Thanksgiving to New Years Day, our 40 Days in the Desert, His theme, The holidays can be a time of joy, of commercialism, of resentment. We will explore how to prepare for them spiritually and let our souls catch up!. Our Sunday Service music will be performed this week by our guest musician, Ric Morgan. 11:40 a.m.-Forum-After a brief refreshment break, Rev. Dave will conduct a discussion group pertaining to his message. Sunday Service and Forum are held at the historic Grange Hall, 3275 Hagan Road (1 mile east of the Silverado Trail), Napa. Parking next to the building. www.Facebook.com/USCNV www.UnitySpiritualCenterNapa.org. 707-255-6881. YOUNTVILLE COMMUNITY CHURCH This Sunday, Oct. 28, at 10 a.m., we will have our weekly service. Our sermon is titled: Love & Truth. The main church building is under repairs, and we are meeting in our Sunday School classrooms on the North side of the church. Come join us for coffee, donuts, and learn about our Savior, Jesus Christ. Sunday School is at 9 a.m. for all ages. We have an Adult Bible class, Youth Group (fifth - eight grades and high school students),and Children's classes "Jesus and Me", (Birth-Kindergarten) and first through fifth grades are offered. Church office hours: Tuesday, 8 a.m. - 2 p.m.; Wednesday - Thursday, 8 a.m. - 1 p.m. 6619 Yount St., Yountville. 944-2179. Want to have your church included in Worship Notes? Need to update your congregations information? Contact editor Kelly Doren at kdoren@napanews.com or 256-2263. Federal and local authorities were investigating reports of suspicious packages in Burlingame and Sacramento Friday morning. Both packages were allegedly addressed to Democrats who have been outspoken about their opposition to U.S. President Donald Trump. The FBI put out a statement on Twitter at 11:23 a.m. PST on Friday stating that "explosives technicians are on scene" at a U.S. Postal Service location in on Rollins Road in Burlingame. The FBI said they received reports of a "suspicious package" but that there was no immediate threat to public safety. A spokesman for California billionaire and environmental activist Tom Steyer confirmed that the package was addressed to Steyer and intercepted at a mail facility in Burlingame. Steyer has been a vocal critic of President Trump and has spearheaded a campaign to impeach him. The second package was addressed to U.S. Senator Kamala Harris (D-California) and discovered at a mail facility located in Sacramento, the Sacramento Bee reported. Sacramento Sheriff's spokesman Sgt. Shaun Hampton told the Sacramento Bee that the sheriff's department is investigating reports of a suspicious package in South Sacramento that resembles the packages that were reported around the country this week. The suspicious packages come the same week that a dozen other suspicious packages containing explosives targeting outspoken Trump opponents, were discovered. Among those who the packages were addressed to were CNN, former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and former U.S. President Barack Obama, U.S. Senator Cory Booker (D-New Jersey), and actor Robert De Niro among others. On Friday, the FBI announced that they have arrested Cesar Sayoc in connection with their investigation into the suspicious packages. Eighteen years ago, a group of volunteers began a project to create a new play space in the city of Napa a playground like none other. Named Playground Fantastico, it was built in south Napa, next to what is now Harvest and River middle schools on Old Sonoma Road. During a six-day building blitz in summer 2002, thousands of volunteers descended on the space to donate their time and labor. Some $400,000 was raised to build the playground. Public art installations were also included. Today, It has become a destination playground, said Matt Eisenberg. A Napa father, Eisenberg was the project coordinator for the new play space. Playground Fantastico is by far, the most used and beloved playground in Napa, he said. Because it is so well used, big changes are coming to the Playground Fantastico site yet again. After many years of use and natural wear and tear, the wooden part of the playground or about 70 percent of the structure is now being demolished. It will be replaced with new playground equipment that should be installed in spring 2019. Were hoping to celebrate Playground Fantasticos past and plan for a future that continues to inspire children and families, said Ali Koenig, Napa city parks and recreation project manager. The citys goal is to create a one of a kind recreational/public art/cultural experience that does not exist anywhere else in the Napa Valley, she said. Demolition started on Monday, Oct. 22, and should last two to four weeks, said Koenig. The playground will be closed until the construction and installation is complete, she said. That includes the parking lot of the playground as well. The Playground Fantastico improvement project will replace the original wood structures and components of the playground that have reached the end of their useful life, said Koenig. Playgrounds generally dont last more than 10 to 15 years, said Eisenberg. Its had a long and normal lifespan. The swings, public art, shade structures, engraved bricks, pathways and picnic area will all remain. The new play components will be made of materials that can withstand the elements and heavy use for many years to come, said Koenig. To decide what to build next, the city of Napa and the Foundation for Napa Recreation formed a steering committee of community stakeholders, including organizations and individuals serving children and playground designer Landscape Structures Inc., said Koenig. The committee has been working intensely for six months on design development, she said. The city budgeted approximately $475,000 for the project. The Napa Valley Education Foundation, the initial financial sponsor, has about $40,000 from the 2002 fundraising effort dedicated to rebuilding and long-term repair that can be used for the current project, said Koenig. This combined amount is enough to replace the wooden components to meet current playground safety standards. However, to enhance the playground design with more customized, unique equipment, additional money would be needed, said Koenig. Eisenberg estimated that another $350,000 is needed for those enhancements. We need funds, and we need them as soon as possible, he said. We need to raise the money to replace this Playground Fantastico with something equally creative and accessible, and to maintain the sense of wonder, creativity and fantastico, of the park. Falling well short of our goals could mean we end up with a much more generic replacement for this community jewel, he cautioned. Unlike in 2002, this version of Playground Fantastico wont be constructed using the same community build labor model. The new structure will be prefabricated off site and then installed on site when completed. Opportunities for volunteers will be announced, said Koenig. Eisenberg said even though his children have grown up, he still has a soft spot in his heart for Playground Fantastico. Can you believe its been 16 years? he asked. I think Im getting old. But Im just happy it lasted this long. Get local news delivered to your inbox! Subscribe to our Daily Headlines newsletter. Sign up! * I understand and agree that registration on or use of this site constitutes agreement to its user agreement and privacy policy. As Election Day approaches this fall, it is reasonable to ask not only who would likely vote on Nov. 6, but who has been voting for most of the last month. Thats because mail ballots went out weeks ago, while electronic voting centers in some counties have also been open for weeks. Those procedural changes, adopted in as-yet-unproven hopes of increasing voter turnout, dont change the fundamental question of who will actually decide the many ballot proposition questions and other races before voters this fall. The answer has not changed much in decades: The electorate will be whiter, older and wealthier than the overall populace of California. That means it may be slightly more conservative than the general population might like, which could make some outcomes surprising. Here are some findings from a thorough survey of registered voters by the non-partisan Public Policy Institute of California: Almost eight out of 10 eligible Californians were already registered to vote six weeks before registration closed Oct. 22. Of the 19 million registered voters, 44.4 percent were Democrats, up slightly from the last mid-term election in 2014. Another 25.1 percent were Republicans, but the GOP was surpassed by voters who declined to state a party preference, now accounting for 25.5 percent of the electorate. This represents a small gain for Democrats and a significant (more than 3 percent) loss for Republicans, possibly one result of the extreme unpopularity of President Trump in California. With no-party-preference voters, the PPIC found, Democrats have an edge even larger than their 19 percentage point lead among voters declaring for the major parties. Fully 47 percent of those self-defined independents leaned toward voting Democratic, while only 18 percent say they usually prefer Republicans. But there are large parts of the state where those numbers dont reflect reality. Democrats tend to be concentrated in Los Angeles County and the Bay Area, home to 56 percent of registered Democrats, while 63 percent of Republicans live in Orange or San Diego counties and the Central Valley. This goes far toward explaining why Republicans fare much better in congressional and legislative races in those areas, while getting almost no seats elsewhere. The statewide distribution of likely voters, defined as people with a history of voting often or saying they are determined to vote this time, pretty much follows party registration. Just short of half of all registered voters live in the two areas most dominated by Democrats, while 43 percent of likely voters reside in the Orange-San Diego county, Central Valley and Inland Empire regions. The PPIC also found that the while millennials (aged 22-37), Generation Xers (aged 38-53) and baby boomers (ages 54-72) account for 90 percent of California voters, the more senior so-called silent generation (ages 73 and up) votes in the highest numbers, proportionately. Fully 88 percent of the oldest age grouping surveyed were registered to vote, while just 60 percent of millennials signed up. But baby boomers, with 39 percent of the states likely voters, say they will cast more ballots than any other age group. Put them together with their seniors, who make up 13 percent of likely voters, and more than half of all ballots will be cast by folks aged 54 and above. Thats far higher than the average Californians age, 35.4. The differential of almost 20 percent between average ages of citizens and voters is the highest ever. All these numbers help make some contests and campaigns unpredictable. But they tend to favor, for example, proponents of Proposition 6, which would repeal last years gasoline tax increase, as those on fixed incomes a high percentage of the silent generation and some baby boomers can be expected to favor repeal. The numbers also may portend a weak performance by state Sen. Kevin de Leon in his all-Democrat contest with incumbent Sen. Dianne Feinstein, who at 85 may not look as old to many baby boomers and those in the silent generation as de Leon would hope. But those same numbers wont do much to help any Republican seeking statewide or legislative office. Thomas D. Elias writes the syndicated California Focus column. He is author of the book, The Burzynski Breakthrough: The Most Promising Cancer Treatment and the Governments Campaign to Squelch It. Are we still headed for a Democratic wave in the House next month? That all depends on how you define a wave. But one thing is clear: Democrats are still likely to flip the chamber even after all the buzz about a post-Kavanaugh Republican bounce. A wave occurs when a large number of one party's seats flip to the other party, invariably because of a national political figure (the president, usually) or a national issue. Many competitive seats change hands, and at least a few entrenched incumbents suddenly find themselves in trouble. How many seats need to flip to constitute a wave? 20 seats? 30? 50? The best way to answer that unanswerable question is to look at history. During the 17 midterm elections that have occurred since 1950, five have produced single-digit changes, while another four have been in the teens and low double digits. Three elections have produced net changes from 26 to 30 seats, while five more have produced gains of 48 to 63 seats. The single-digit changes -- in 1962, 1986, 1990, 1998 and 2002 -- clearly were not waves. One party cherry-picked enough seats to make a net gain, but there was no sign of national political momentum. The teens/low double-digit change elections -- in 1954, 1970, 1978 and 2014 -- may have reflected one party's advantage, but for me, the net changes don't constitute a substantial enough surge for one side to be defined as a wave election. I've always used 20 seats or even 25 seats as the minimum number of seats that a party needs to gain before calling an election a wave, though I don't think there is a magic number. In part, the number of seats that need to switch depends on where the two parties start. Moreover, not all waves are alike. There are smaller waves (20-30 seats) and larger ones (48 seats each in 1958, 1966 and 1974) -- and there are tsunamis, including 1994, when Republicans gained 54 seats, and 2010, when they gained 63 seats. This cycle, a modest wave has been developing for months. President Donald Trump's job approval has been low, and voters have told pollsters they want a Democratic Congress as a check on him. Trump's job approval climbed in the Oct. 14-17 NBC News/Wall Street Journal poll, but that survey also gave Democrats a 9-point advantage (50 percent to 41 percent) in the generic ballot among likely midterm voters. And while Republican enthusiasm has grown over the last month, it fails to match Democratic enthusiasm. Women and college-educated whites have moved strongly toward the Democrats, and younger and minority voters appear unusually energized. More important at this point of the election cycle, surveys in individual congressional districts show GOP-held suburban districts like Virginia's 10th District (Barbara Comstock), Colorado's 6th (Mike Coffman), New Jersey's 11th (retiring Rodney Frelinghuysen's open seat) and Kansas' 3rd (Kevin Yoder) poised to flip. Incumbents in these and similar districts have proved that they can win even in difficult political environments, but a wave is an entirely different matter since it makes the election about someone else (in this case, Trump and Republican control of the House), not the individual Republican nominee or member of Congress. Of course, not all seats behave the same way even during a political wave. Not even all suburban seats behave the same way. Candidates and their campaigns matter. Strategists from both parties have very different views of the current House playing field and how it has changed. GOP strategists generally express confidence that the party's "worst case" scenario has been avoided, thanks to the confirmation fight surrounding Supreme Court Justice Brett M. Kavanaugh. They once feared losses of 40 to 50 seats, but now generally expect somewhat fewer losses, probably in the 30-40 seat range. A veteran Democrat I spoke with laughed at the prospect that Democrats were ever going to win 50 seats, insisting that 30 or 35 seats was always a more reasonable number. Inside Elections with Nathan L. Gonzales has projected Democratic gains of 25-35 seats, a "Category 1" hurricane that would produce a wave that would cost Republicans the House but wouldn't produce anything close to a 1994 or 2010 tsunami. In an early September column, I found Democrats heading for a gain of about 30 seats, with larger gains very possible, though I have generally been saying that I expect Democratic gains in the 30-40 seat range. I see no reason to alter that expectation. Others, of course, have suggested that Democratic prospects in the House were much greater a month ago and have dimmed of late. Some districts do look worse for Democrats, while others suddenly look intriguing, but that is the nature of campaigns -- and of political handicapping. Moreover, it is quite possible that some of those who once expected greater Republican losses were overly optimistic about Democratic prospects. Pennsylvania, California and New Jersey continue to be prime Democratic targets, but there are many races that are still competitive, including Kansas' 2nd District, Maine's 2nd, Kentucky's 6th, Florida's 15th and 26th, New Mexico's 2nd, Virginia's 2nd and Iowa's 3rd. Republicans, on the other hand, will win a Pennsylvania open seat and are likely to swipe one or two pro-Trump districts in Minnesota. Although I have watched House campaigns and elections closely for almost four decades, I'm less confident I know how this cycle will end. Trump, after all, is an untraditional figure, and that makes his impact uncertain. But for now, just two weeks before Election Day, the contours of the 2018 midterm elections haven't changed dramatically in the House. The focus remains primarily on suburban districts, college-educated whites, younger voters and minorities, not on rural and evangelical voters or whites without a college education. The House is still poised to flip party control. Stuart Rothenberg is a political analyst and columnist for CQ-Roll Call. The Green Partys 10 Key Values drive its decision-making and positions on the issues. They are: Grassroots Democracy, Social Justice and Equal Opportunity, Ecological Wisdom, Non-violence, Decentralization, Community-based Economics, Feminism and Gender Equity, Respect for Diversity, Personal and Global Responsibility, and Future Focus and Sustainability. After weighing in with local members, the Napa County Green Party (NCGP) has endorsed the following candidates for the November 2018 election: Don Williams, Calistoga City Council; Geoff Ellsworth, St. Helena mayor; James Hinton, Napa City Council; Jason Kishineff, American Canyon City Council; Amy Martenson, Napa Valley College Board, Area 2; Xulio Soriano, Napa Valley College Board, Area 4; and Beth Goff, Napa Valley College Board, Area 3. The NCGP opposes regressive taxes that disproportionately affect those living in poverty and supports initiatives that give local citizens a financial break, given that wages have been stagnant and the cost of living has been going up. In order to make up for the lost revenue, we support taxing large corporations and the 1 percent in future ballot initiatives. Although it is a general obligation bond, we have endorsed Proposition 1, because most, if not all, of this bond will be repaid not out of property taxes but out of rents collected from the veterans the bond assists. We are supporting Proposition 2, because it allocates money from the Mental Health Services Act Fund to house those who are both mentally ill and homeless to support their treatment. We are supporting Proposition 5 to allow property owners to move without raising their property taxes; Proposition 13 reform will be on the ballot in 2020 and will make up for the lost revenue by making large corporations pay their fair share in property taxes. We support Proposition 6; instead of taxing gas, which is a regressive tax, we support taxing oil companies on the extraction of oil and natural gas, especially since California is the only major oil producing state in the country that does not have such a tax. In support of working people and the elderly, we endorse Proposition 8 to cap the amount that dialysis clinics charge for treatment. Lastly, we support Proposition 7 to give California the option to implement year-round Daylight Savings Time, and Proposition 12, because we believe that animals should be treated more humanely. The NCGP is against Proposition 3, because it provides money for dams and canals, which will degrade the health of the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta-- a critical ecosystem for the entire Bay Area. Instead of building more childrens hospitals (Proposition 4), we believe the government should address the underlying causes of the growing epidemic of childhood illnesses caused by environmental factors, such as genetically engineered foods and exposure to synthetic pesticides. The NCGP took no position on Proposition 11. The NCGP opposes the local measures I (Napa County), Measure F (Napa), Measure H (American Canyon), Measure E (St. Helena), Measure S (Yountville) and Measure D (Calistoga) to increase the Transient Occupancy (Hotel) Tax, because there is no specific plan for this money. Furthermore, instead of raising the hotel bed tax, the County should repeal the Tourism Improvement District that funds Visit Napa Valley and have that money go into the Transient Occupancy Tax to fund the low-income and affordable housing we need. Please vote on or before Nov. 6. Kenneth Graham Napa County Green Party This letter is in support of Amy Martensons campaign for the Napa Valley College Board of Trustees. I met Amy about nine years ago as part of a cultural excursion group that traveled to Peru. Some say that much can be learned about a person while traveling together, and I do agree. I was very impressed by Amys knowledge, passion and kindness. Ever since, I have been able to know her more, in different capacities, and the more I know her, the more respect and admiration I have for her. Amy is good-hearted, conscientious, and smart. I strongly believe these are critical characteristics for anyone who holds any public office. Amy is passionate about her beliefs and advocates for what she believes is right, which I think is courageous and especially important now, given the political climate of the country. Inclusivity is important to her, and personally, I greatly appreciated that Amy took the time to ensure that her campaign materials were translated into Spanish. Many candidates ignore that so many of our Napa County residents are bilingual or monolingual, speaking only Spanish. She acknowledged that need in our community and addressed it in her campaign. That's commendable. Amy has dedicated her professional occupation to serving our local schools. Not only does she have experience teaching in the classroom and working directly with students, but she has also served our local district as a counselor. Amy understands and believes in public education. If Im not mistaken, currently, she is the only educator on the NVC board of trustees. Why am I supporting Amy? You can count on her to ask the right questions. Inquiries are imperative on boards, and they often lead to necessary action or at the very least provide thought for self-auditing and/or reflection. That is what I expect from elected officials: to completely inform themselves prior to making a decision that will affect thousands of students, faculty and staff. Amy is honorable and holds herself to a high level of integrity. In a world in which so many of our politicians are tempted by special interest groups, let us not forget that a diverse board is probably a good foundation for good decision making and just what our students deserve. What good will it do to have everyone on the board agree on everything? What would be the point in having boards? I propose being more inclusive of diversity of thought. Vote for Amy. Maria L. Bernal Fairfield Dont say no to Merlot. Thats the social media message behind the sixth annual Merlot Me month this month. Known for its luxurious Merlot wines, the Duckhorn family partnered with a few Napa and Sonoma wineries to spearhead the Merlot movement in 2013, and thanks to their efforts the much-maligned wine is moving back into the spotlight. Only last year, Duckhorn Vineyards 2014 Three Palms Vineyards Merlot garnered the number one spot on Wine Spectators Top 100 list. We want to give the wine its due and shower attention it so richly deserves, said Carol Reber. The chief marketing director at Duckhorn added that the universally adopted #merlotme movement has gained momentum as more than 100 producers from Washington state, Australia, Chile even New Zealand have joined in to celebrate the month-long movement culminating with National Merlot Day on Nov. 7. Its well poised to reestablish itself, said Reber. The $25-plus Merlot is up by 14 percent as of last year, the prices are right and millennials are discovering it. For the past two years, the social media activity on Twitter and Instagram includes 11.5 million reach, 62 million impressions and over 7,000 posts, according to data pulled from Keyhole, a hashtag tracker. Merlot has come a long way since one damning movie line pushed Merlot under the rock. This, of course, happened when the character of Miles, played by actor Paul Giammatti in the 2004 film, Sideways, in a wine-induced rage, declares to his buddy Jack, I am not drinking any f***ing merlot! Thus, in Sideways silky, sexy Pinot became the darling of wine fashionistas while Merlot became an ugly stepsister. Long before Merlot was the go-to wine in the 1990s, Dan and Margaret Duckhorn launched their version in 1979, and they have been carrying the Merlot banner ever since, crafting exquisite and complex wine that continues to garner high ratings. Our heritage is Merlot, Reber said. To get on the Merlot bandwagon, vintners in Napa, Paso Robles and Washington state offered their feedback. California leads in Merlot planting with 39,394 acres, according to USDAs 2017 grape acreage report compared to Washington states 9,071 acreage. Our Merlot never lost its following, Cleo Pahlmeyer said. She recently took over the reins as president of her familys eponymous winery founded by her father, Jayson Pahlmeyer in Napas Atlas Peak district. Now retired from the wine industry, Jayson began crafting Merlot-driven, Right Bank-style wines in 1992. My dads dream was to make the greatest Bordeaux-style wine in Napa, said Cleo. And our wine blend is 90 percent Merlot. Wines such as Pahlmeyer and other high-end, small- production Merlots are generally hand sold by sommeliers and retailers so they dont go through the up- and-down cycle, Cleo added. Violet Grgich, president of Grgich Hills Estate, admitted that their Merlot sales were affected by the negative image. The trade said ours was the best Merlot but the customer wasnt buying it because of the outcry, she said. The tasting room sales still fluctuate, with last year being slow. But people who try it like it, she added. Ours is a big complex wine, not wimpy, more like a cab, she said of the winerys annual Merlot production of 3,000-5,000 cases. Another textured and complex Merlot comes from Novelty Hill, a 24,000-annual case production winery in Columbia Valley, Washington. Our Merlot has structure, we extract more than other places, said winemaker Mike Januik. People say our Merlot is more like cab. Theres much more Cabernet Sauvignon planted in Washington, he noted. But after a decline in the 1990s, Merlot planting has recovered in recent years. Our Merlot sales are good but not like cab, Januik said. Merlot still has an identity crisis, said Ash Mehta, owner of three wine retail and bars along the Central CoastTaste of the Valleys in Pismo Beach, Taste in the Alley in Paso Robles and Wine Sneak in San Luis Obispo. Yet customers have no problem asking for a blend, which could be Merlot-driven, he noted. The bars wine director, Mary Bradley, sees some interest from her customers. I pour a taste not telling them its Merlot and theyre surprised and love it. Its softer, with more fruit up front and fleshy on the palate, said Scott Shirley, winemaker at Justin Vineyards & Winery in Paso Robles. At its worst, a Merlot can be thin with no structure. And at its best? Its elegant on entry, good mouthfeel mid-palate and a soft finish, Shirley said. Other Paso producers who did not give up their adoration include Rich Hartenberger of Midnight Cellars who crafts unapologetically 100 percent Merlot and Goran Bjekovic who muses, When did Merlot die? The owner-winemaker of Aleksander Wines highlights the versatility of the wine in comparison with the limitations of the bigger Cabernet Sauvignon that begs for red meat pairing. But a Merlot can go with anything, he said. Its well rounded. Its a tough sell, until I tell them it has 15 percent malbec, said Steve Peck, red winemaker at J. Lohr Vineyards & Winery. But it does open a level of interest to consumers. A merlot tasting After talking to handful of industry professionals, I hosted a #merlotme tasting at our home in Paso Robles with a group of local winemakers. The selection of Napa, Sonoma, Paso Robles and Washington states Columbia Valley and Walla Walla ranged from 2014-21016 vintages. Two of Napas mountain Merlots showed exuberance and complexityLa Jota from Howell Mountain flexed its weight on the palate with intense ripe blackberry fruit and the well rounded Mt. Brave from Mt. Veeders thin rocky soils and steep slopes rocked with blue fruits and mocha. Duckhorns 2015 Napa Valley bottling with 85 percent Merlot blended with Cabernet Sauvignon, Cabernet Franc and Petit Verdot was a riot of cherries, raspberries and plums, and lush with silky textures. The 2015 concentrated Three Palms Vineyard showed elegance with silky tannins and aromas of rose petals and plums with a long structured finish. Duckhorn continues to craft this vineyard designate merlot from this legendary property since its inaugural 1978 vintage. The 2014 Long Meadow Ranch,Merlot-driven wine blended with Cabernet Sauvignon, Petit Verdot and a splash of sangiovese, danced with plums, black cherry and rich fruit cake on the palate; Trefethens 2015 was a classic silky Merlot perfumed with red fruits and earthy notes while the 2014 HALL was an exuberant wine whirling with ripe cherries and hints of chocolate and nutmeg. Silverado Vineyards 2014 estate grown Mt. George was another intense wine with black fruits and multilayered with jasmine, earth and spice; Pahlmeyers 2015 was decadently plush, flexing its red fruits, balanced with vibrant acidity. Its a wine that begs for cellaring. Grgich Hills velvety 2014 estate grown Merlot showed firm tannins and a delicious long finish. Ehlers Estates 2015 was redolent with raspberries layered with hints of chocolate. From Coombsville region, Hestan Vineyards 2012 Stephanie Merlot was a delicious wine a heady compote of plums, blackberry pie and brown spice, ending with an elegant finish. The few Washington state wines we tasted showed finesse and elegance powered with delicious fruit. Novelty Hills 2015 Stillwater Creek was a good representation of Columbia Valleys full bodied Merlots, offering an expressive mouthful of ripe cherries and wild raspberries backed by soft supple tannins. Also from this appellation the 2014 fruit forward NorthStar was lush with cherry and plums backed by elegant tannins. The 2015 LEcole No.41 from Walla Walla Valley showed an elegant old-world style laced with dense flavors of black cherry, cedar and earth. Pasos collection of fruit forward wines ranged from J. Lohrs 2015 Merlot-driven Cuvee Pom expressing bright fruit and firm tannins to a 2015 LXV from Cira Vineyard, a party on the palate, rocking with red cherries and a hint of spice. Others sampled included a silky textured 2016 Ancient Peaks and a layered 2016 Eclusethe latter a Rhone house entering the Merlot arena with its first release. As he uncorked his Opolo Vineyards Merlots, Paul Quinn, son of the winerys co-founder, said his family has been crafting Merlot since 1999 in Paso Robles. At the time, they were selling their fruit to several Napa wineries, among them Rodney Strong, Sterling and Neibaum Coppola. Opolos Merlot-driven Bordeaux-style 2012 Concerto showed rich flavors of black cherry skirted by firm tannins on the mid palate. The opulent 2014 100 percent Merlot was impressive with well-knit tannins, expressing Pasos terroir for complex wines. Now that social media has turned up the heat on Merlot-mania, check out the website www.merlotme.com, which offers three tips on how to be part of the movement and encourages fans to film a six-word love story video waxing poetic about their love for Merlot. Maybe even Miles will change his mind. Masters of Merlot, a panel and tasting will take place on Nov. 1 at CIA Copia in Napa from 2-4.30 p.m. with panelists including Cleo Pahlmeyer, PJ Alviso, vice president of winemaking at Duckhorn and winemakers Chris Carpenter from Mt Brave and La Jota and Ted Edwards from Freemark Abbey. Assam Chief Minister Sarbananda Sonowal met Assistant High Commissioner of Bangladesh to India Dr Shah Mohammad Tanvir Monsur on Friday. The Chief Minister and the envoy vowed to strengthen the bilateral relations with increased people to people contact between Assam and Bangladesh. During the meeting it was proposed that the two geographical entities can enter into Memorandum of Understanding between universities to facilitate educational exchange programmes. Stating that the culture of Assam has had deep impact in enriching the cultures of Bangladesh, the Assistant High Commissioner said that both Assam and Bangladesh must go to help each other for the mutual benefits of both the geographical entities. The Assistant High Commissioner also invited Chief Minister Sonowal to Bangladeshs Vijoy Dibos (Victory Day) to commemorate the countrys liberation to be celebrated on December 16. Stressing on the increased volume of trade between Assam and Bangladesh, the meeting also discussed on the need to have a direct flight between Guwahati and Bangladesh. 799 new cases of COVID-19 confirmed in Armenia Katherine Clark: Azerbaijan must acknowledge and respect Armenian sovereignty Eurasian Intergovernmental Council enlarged meeting underway in Yerevan Russia peacekeepers patrol along Karabakh border delimitation line MOD: According to current data Armenia has 6 military casualties as result of Tuesdays attack by Azerbaijan Turkish Islamic preachers organization denies reports of his death Newspaper: What happened to missing Armenia soldiers during recent hostilities? Armenia MOD dismisses reports about not allowing officers with higher rank than major to go up to combat positions US virtually completes development of new tactical nuclear gravity bomb B61-12 Newspaper: Officers with higher rank than major not allowed to combat positions during recent hostilities in Syunik Opposition MP: Granting corridor to Azerbaijan through Syunik Province will be gravest crime against Armenia US Department of State representative says why Azerbaijan is not invited to Summit for Democracy Armenian human rights activists to submit letters to ECHR regarding soldiers captured and considered missing Armenia FM stresses importance of addressable response to Azerbaijan's actions during talk with Greek counterpart Ex-ruling party official: Armenia authorities found reason for MOD's resignation after his visit to Karabakh Republican Party of Armenia spokesperson: Nikol Pashinyan gave a confessional testimony in parliament yesterday Armenia President talks about states' collective responsibility at Bloomberg New Economy Forum Turkish website reports poisoning of Fetullah Gulen Armenia FM holds phone talks with Cypriot counterpart, presents situation created after Azerbaijani attack Mirzoyan, Zas discuss CSTO's possible actions to stabilize situation on Armenia-Azerbaijan border, if necessary Mothers of deceased servicemen demand Armenia PM's resignation Azerbaijani Armed Forces open fire at tractor in Armenia's Verin Shorzha village Putin: Events unfolding on Armenia-Azerbaijan border attest to fact that situation has not calmed down in the region Lithuania supports Armenia's territorial integrity NEWS.am daily digest: 18.11.21 Ex-ruling party official: Incumbent authorities created deliberately organized chaos in Armenia Armenia Prosecutor General's Office to examine news about 6 Azeri servicemen captured and then secretly returned Dollar goes up in Armenia Armenia MOD planning training camps for reservists Sergey Lavrov, OSCE Chairperson-in-Office to discuss assistance to resolve situation in Karabakh High-tech industry minister receives Chinese recipient of Armenia State Prize for global contributions to IT sector Eurasian Intergovernmental Council's narrow-format session kicks off in Yerevan Pashinyan views Eurasian integration as one of Armenia's priorities Two Armenian citizens found in Afghanistan Armenian health ministry gets $ 2.5 million to fight COVID-19 OSCE Chairperson-in-Office has telephone conversation with Jeyhun Bayramov Deceased Armenian soldier Taron Sahakyan's brother refutes news that he was captured and tortured to death Armenia seeks to develop cooperation in food safety within EEU Armenia Ombudsman, UNICEF Representative discuss problems with right of children of borderline villages to education Armenia allocates AMD 462 mln for 4 subvention programs ahead of local self-government elections Major incidents not recorded in Armenia's border zones as of 2 p.m., operative situation is under army's control Armenia parliament approves several legislative amendments PMs discuss prospects for development of Armenia-Kyrgyzstan collaboration Turkish Nationalist Movement Party gifts Erdogan a map of Turkic World, with a part of Russia 'seized' Man, 49, found dead inside truck near Armenia village sand mine Armenia emergency ministry uses off-road vehicles to provide for needs of Syunik Province border villages, says minister There is investment activeness in Syunik Province, says Armenia economy minister Russia PM arrives in Yerevan 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 YEREVAN. The Investigative Committee of Armenia has rejected the petition by Hovhannes Khudoyan, the attorney of Armenias second President Robert Kocharyan, and with respect to granting Kocharyan the status of a victim along the lines of the case which the committee is investigating, and regarding the publicizing of the audio recording of the telephonic conversation between National Security Service Director Artur Vanetsyan and Special Investigation Service Head Sasun Khachatryan. Khudoyan told about the aforesaid to Armenian News-NEWS.am. As per the petition, the latter was submitted taking into account the fact that the aforementioned audio recording contains information which confirms the taking of actions aimed at unlawfully restricting the freedom of the second President. Kocharyans legal representative informed that the Investigative Committee, however, had rejected the petition arguing that no information was obtained regarding interference with court proceedings. The attorney added that they will appeal this decision by the Investigative Committee to the Prosecutor General. In their wiretapped telephonic conversation which was posted on the internet on September 11, Vanetsyan and Khachatryan were discussing some particulars of the criminal cases which have been launched into the events that had occurred in capital city Yerevan in March 2008. Also, they had mentioned the name of the judge who later granted the petition to remand second President Robert Kocharyan in custody along the lines of a criminal case into those events. On March 1 and 2, 2008, the then authorities of Armenia used force against the opposition members who were rallying in downtown Yerevan, and against the results of the then recent presidential election. Eight demonstrators as well as two servicemen of the internal troops were killed in the clashes. But no one had been brought to account for these deaths, to this day. Seoul and Pyongyang agreed to remove by November 22 security posts from the common border, Reuters reported. The agreement was reached within the agreement reached last month in the North Korean capital, and calls for the cessation of all hostile actions. As an initial step, the neighbors agreed to demolish 11 guard posts within 1 km (0.6 mile) of each side of the border and withdraw equipment and personnel stationed there by the end of November, the ministry said. The measures will be finished through mutual verification in December, it said in a statement. The talks were led by South Korean Army Major General Kim Do-gyun and North Korean Lieutenant General An Ik San at the border village of Panmunjom within the DMZ. Both sides also discussed reinstating a joint military commission and forming a combined team to survey watercourses in the Han River their commercial ships could share. The US Secretary Advisor John Boltons visit to Armenia is very important and far-reaching, Armen Rustamyan, head of the Armenian Revolutionary Federation (ARF) Dashnaktsutyun Party faction at the National Assembly (NA) of Armenia said during Fridays briefings at parliament. According to him, this region is of great geopolitical importance. Hints made by Bolton are really vital both for the region and for Armenia, at least from the point of view of implementing its foreign policy, Rustamyan noted adding that Armenia should have a stable foreign policy course, and the position on various issues should be clear and predictable for both Russian and Western partners. According to him, Yerevan should have a clear goal to demonstrate to everyone that its intentions are not directed against someone, while Armenia is based solely on its own interests. Bolton understands the negative consequences of strained relations between Washington and Moscow and Tehran, and does not want their partners in the region to suffer, which is important for the Armenian side, said Rustamyan. Speaking about the supply of weapons to the region, Armen Rustamyan noted that co-chair countries should not sell weapons to the parties to the conflict, or at least they should provide it in such quantities that the balance of forces was not disturbed in favor of any of the parties. As soon as the balance is broken, wars and aggressive actions will immediately begin. Armenia has already lagged behind on this issue. And if Bolton hinted at restoring the military balance between the parties, as well as for the Armenian side to have new weapons that would contribute to the alignment of forces, then why not, the ARF head concluded. 799 new cases of COVID-19 confirmed in Armenia Katherine Clark: Azerbaijan must acknowledge and respect Armenian sovereignty Eurasian Intergovernmental Council enlarged meeting underway in Yerevan Russia peacekeepers patrol along Karabakh border delimitation line MOD: According to current data Armenia has 6 military casualties as result of Tuesdays attack by Azerbaijan Turkish Islamic preachers organization denies reports of his death Newspaper: What happened to missing Armenia soldiers during recent hostilities? Armenia MOD dismisses reports about not allowing officers with higher rank than major to go up to combat positions US virtually completes development of new tactical nuclear gravity bomb B61-12 Newspaper: Officers with higher rank than major not allowed to combat positions during recent hostilities in Syunik Opposition MP: Granting corridor to Azerbaijan through Syunik Province will be gravest crime against Armenia US Department of State representative says why Azerbaijan is not invited to Summit for Democracy Armenian human rights activists to submit letters to ECHR regarding soldiers captured and considered missing Armenia FM stresses importance of addressable response to Azerbaijan's actions during talk with Greek counterpart Ex-ruling party official: Armenia authorities found reason for MOD's resignation after his visit to Karabakh Republican Party of Armenia spokesperson: Nikol Pashinyan gave a confessional testimony in parliament yesterday Armenia President talks about states' collective responsibility at Bloomberg New Economy Forum Turkish website reports poisoning of Fetullah Gulen Armenia FM holds phone talks with Cypriot counterpart, presents situation created after Azerbaijani attack Mirzoyan, Zas discuss CSTO's possible actions to stabilize situation on Armenia-Azerbaijan border, if necessary Mothers of deceased servicemen demand Armenia PM's resignation Azerbaijani Armed Forces open fire at tractor in Armenia's Verin Shorzha village Putin: Events unfolding on Armenia-Azerbaijan border attest to fact that situation has not calmed down in the region Lithuania supports Armenia's territorial integrity NEWS.am daily digest: 18.11.21 Ex-ruling party official: Incumbent authorities created deliberately organized chaos in Armenia Armenia Prosecutor General's Office to examine news about 6 Azeri servicemen captured and then secretly returned Dollar goes up in Armenia Armenia MOD planning training camps for reservists Sergey Lavrov, OSCE Chairperson-in-Office to discuss assistance to resolve situation in Karabakh High-tech industry minister receives Chinese recipient of Armenia State Prize for global contributions to IT sector Eurasian Intergovernmental Council's narrow-format session kicks off in Yerevan Pashinyan views Eurasian integration as one of Armenia's priorities Two Armenian citizens found in Afghanistan Armenian health ministry gets $ 2.5 million to fight COVID-19 OSCE Chairperson-in-Office has telephone conversation with Jeyhun Bayramov Deceased Armenian soldier Taron Sahakyan's brother refutes news that he was captured and tortured to death Armenia seeks to develop cooperation in food safety within EEU Armenia Ombudsman, UNICEF Representative discuss problems with right of children of borderline villages to education Armenia allocates AMD 462 mln for 4 subvention programs ahead of local self-government elections Major incidents not recorded in Armenia's border zones as of 2 p.m., operative situation is under army's control Armenia parliament approves several legislative amendments PMs discuss prospects for development of Armenia-Kyrgyzstan collaboration Turkish Nationalist Movement Party gifts Erdogan a map of Turkic World, with a part of Russia 'seized' Man, 49, found dead inside truck near Armenia village sand mine Armenia emergency ministry uses off-road vehicles to provide for needs of Syunik Province border villages, says minister There is investment activeness in Syunik Province, says Armenia economy minister Russia PM arrives in Yerevan 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 Make America Hair Again...? Reply Parent Thread Link Make America('s Hair) Grow Again! Reply Parent Thread Expand Link Is that a hair tattoo? What is going on? There's so many questions. Reply Parent Thread Expand Link Wtf He looks like he could be Mr. Furleys son Reply Parent Thread Link I am so confused. Reply Parent Thread Link His hair looks like it came from a can. Reply Parent Thread Link Maybe he stans for the janitor from I Have Friends but ran out of markers Reply Parent Thread Link hahahahahaha Reply Parent Thread Link I hope this gets white people to stop worrying about Latinos becoming the majority! Reply Parent Thread Link fucking creepy omg Reply Parent Thread Link Of course he's from Florida. Of course. God I have to get out of this state. Reply Thread Link LMAO Florida does have a lot of wacko's. It's probably because it's warm pm year round. Reply Parent Thread Link It literally just started to cool off here. And by cool off I mean a high of 82. I want to move away but my family is all here. Reply Parent Thread Link Coming from Washington State which is beautiful(with lots of liberal views) but fucking cold and often rainy 6 months out of the year and then on fire the other 5 months with that one month a year that's decent? I'll trade you places! Reply Parent Thread Expand Link i'm from fl and even i want this state destroyed at this point, don't care if i go with it or not. Reply Parent Thread Expand Link seriously. when my brother told my mom and i that he was from florida, we both were like OF FUCKING COURE HE WAS, UGHUGHUGH. Reply Parent Thread Expand Link His car.... I've seen so many INSANE cars like that in Florida. The right has been radicalized. Reply Thread Link I drive past one that's always parked across our courthouse. I've never seen the nutcase paste photos of politicians with targets on their heads, tho. Everything else is pretty much the same. He also blocks traffic sometimes which just makes me want to run him over, but you know.. jail and shit. Reply Parent Thread Link WTF. I read your comment and looked up photos. I've pumped gas next to his van before, I even discretely took a photo of his vehicle because it was so crazy. Jesus Christ. Reply Parent Thread Link that shouldn't be legal just because of blindspots and shit Reply Parent Thread Link People are still claiming this is some democratic hoax. This country is fucked beyond repair. Reply Thread Link People do that every time an angry unhinged right winger does shit like this. Every time there's another shooting, the bottom feeders on TD and 4chan immediately start spreading rumors that the person is either left leaning or the whole thing is a hoax. It'll happen next time, and the time after that too. Reply Parent Thread Link If anything, the claims of it being a hoax are intensifying. I feel like this is just another example that the Internet was a mistake. :/ Reply Parent Thread Link The photos of his van are wild af Reply Thread Link RIGHT? He wallpapered the windows with stickers, jfc. Reply Parent Thread Link How is that even legal? Or safe? How the fuck does he drive? Reply Parent Thread Expand Link The cross hair ones? Jesus. Reply Parent Thread Link Can't wait to see the spin that this was orchestrated by Democrats. Reply Thread Link It's already started since the news came out. Should see the megathread in r/politics getting inundated by new accounts and r/thedonald weirdos. I think they're having a hard time banning people quick enough. Reply Parent Thread Link [refuses to acknowledge the guy is on video at multiple trump rallies for the past few years] NEW STICKERS ON HIS VAN?! DEF FISHY!pic.twitter.com/WkdFClqdLJ low voter turnout (@JordanUhl) October 26, 2018 here's one Reply Parent Thread Link bb they've been doing that from the start Reply Parent Thread Link Someone shared a picture of his alleged car (it seems like it is because it was outside his house but no news source confirmed it yet) which is (shocker!) basically like a walking Trump billboard. Reply Thread Link @CBSMiami I have some pictures of this van I saw him at a stoplight one day and thought is was very strange. pic.twitter.com/VWUwznJK8k Mahmud mohamed (@thereal_mo01) October 26, 2018 /in all seriousness white men are the greatest threat in this country Edited at 2018-10-26 04:19 pm (UTC) tag urself I'm youth soccer recruits for trump/in all seriousness white men are the greatest threat in this country Reply Thread Link That US Soccer logo though. Cars like this are really not that uncommon in Florida, it's crazy. Theres this one that I see on I4 all the time that literally is just covered in Jesus stickers, not just the windows, they have it on the hood, door, etc. Florida remains fucking crazy. Reply Parent Thread Link when I go back to St. Augustine to visit my mom I see a lot of cars like this just parked at Publix or some shit lol. I went to college in Mississippi when Obama was first running in 2008 and some of the stickers were wild. Reply Parent Thread Link hillary w/ the target over her face is scary af Reply Parent Thread Expand Link omg this is so unsettling. thank god i live in a blue state though i still see plenty of tr**p stickers Reply Parent Thread Link I wonder how much money in bumper stickers that is. Reply Parent Thread Link Giving serious side eye of law enforcement didnt already have an eye on him. Its 100% not okay to drive around displaying images of multiple public figures & a former president with crosshairs. Reply Parent Thread Expand Link America is weird. The only stickers people put on their cars here is baby on board ones. Reply Parent Thread Expand Link How does this person even see out of the back of their car? Reply Parent Thread Link lmao jill stein with crosshairs. i thought she was helping trump? michael moore next to her, too. lol Reply Parent Thread Expand Link Top Youth Soccer Recruit for Trump How very Hitler youth of him. Reply Parent Thread Link way to keep a low profile Reply Parent Thread Link i thought the trumpkins think soccer is gay and unamerican Reply Parent Thread Expand Link i wonder if the criminal history includes domestic violence like it almost always does. fuckin' men. Reply Thread Link the mugshot is from a prior assault Reply Parent Thread Link I did read something that his mother reported domestic violence but it's hard to know what info is real atm. Reply Parent Thread Link Sayoc filed for bankruptcy in 2012 in a Miami court. A note which is part of the filing said: Debtor lives with mother, owns no furniture. https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2018/oct/26/cesar-sayoc-who-is-he-pro-trump-pipe-bomb-suspect-criminal-record-party-affiliation It could be - this from an article Reply Parent Thread Link Florida Man strikes again! :/ Glad he was caught and nobody was hurt tho. Reply Thread Link so much wtf here. ~of course there's a city called plantation, florida. ~of course this crazycakes is from florida. ~of course he's an old white man. ~of course there were return addresses on the bombs. Edited at 2018-10-26 04:20 pm (UTC) Reply Thread Link The return address for all of the packages was Debbie Wasserman Schultz's office. Reply Parent Thread Link wow that's really fucking disturbing Reply Parent Thread Link And some dumbass Republicans were gleeful yesterday because they seriously believed that it must have come from a Democrat and that the return address proved that. Like how fucking moronic do you have to be to think the terrorist wouldnt be at least somewhat competent to try to frame the Democrats by using a return address for a Democratic Congresswoman??? These people just live a completely different reality at this point. Reply Parent Thread Expand Link It's like the ultimate Florida Man meme, only awful and not funny at all. Reply Parent Thread Link Evidently he's not white, he's Native American (Seminole). Which I get that his patriarchy was made happy by Twitler, but everything else that Twitler stands for, hurts him. Reply Parent Thread Expand Link Plantation was also where the school shooting was, and it's actually a nice area. South FL is very different from the rest of the state. He was born in Brooklyn apparently. Reply Parent Thread Expand Link Of course he is a Republican. Reports are saying hes Indigenous/Native American? Any validity to that? Reply Thread Link If you believe the pictures posted of the van, there is a sticker that says Native Americans for Trump. Reply Parent Thread Link I just looked at his supposed Twitter. Fucking yikes all around. Reply Parent Thread Link He's also registered a bunch of businesses with Native American in the name. Reply Parent Thread Link His name is Cesar, which is a fairly common Latino name, no? Reply Parent Thread Expand Link Is he actually or does he just say he is. Having a sticker and registering business with Native American mean shit. Reply Parent Thread Link Apparently something on his Facebook says he is too Reply Parent Thread Link I'd wait for verification on that tbh. Reply Parent Thread Link I believe so. His sticker, his occupation, and his twitter is chock full of indigenous references. Reply Parent Thread Expand Link Well...he identified as Seminole. Wonder if Twitler will call him "Pocahantas," if it turns out he wasn't an official member of the tribe? Somehow I doubt it. Reply Parent Thread Expand Link Florida of course. Reply Thread Link is the president not talking anymore because of the van i wonder lmao Reply Thread Link Despite finding itself the midst of a massive glut, the United States ethanol industry is set to see three new plants come online over the next year, adding a combined annual production of 270 million gallons to the nations already ballooning ethanol oversupply. The industry has been plagued by overproduction and low demand since 2015. Over the past 5 years, ethanol production has increased by 10.5 percent, rising from 14.3 billion gallons in 2014 to 15.8 billion gallons in 2017. This is despite the fact that only one new ethanol plant began production in the years between 2015 and 2018. The increase is in large part due to more efficient means of production, allowing producers to get more fuel out of each kernel of corn, and the expansion of existing plants in lieu of building new plants from the ground up. Now there will be three new plants coming online all within a span of mere months. Atlantic, Iowa will be home to 120-million-gallon-a-year dry mill ethanol plant Elite Octane, LLC before the end of 2018. Ring-Neck Energy & Feed, LLC will go online in Onida, South Dakota in early 2019, and ELEMENT, Inc., a 70-million-gallon-a-year ethanol plant, is currently under construction in Colwich, Kansas. In an effort to reduce the U.S. ethanol glut, which is undeniably about to skyrocket even higher, the industry has been strategizing aggressive campaigns to boost demand. It has become abundantly clear that in order to return to its strong profit margins of 2013-2014, the U.S. ethanol industry will need to look overseas. Part of the ethanol industrys auto-resuscitation plan involves increasing its market share of liquid fuel in the U.S. by promoting higher ethanol blends like E15 (15 percent ethanol to a gallon of gas), E30 (30 percent), and E85 (85 percent), but this angle alone will not produce nearly enough demand to contend with supply. Related: Middle East Crude Oil Prices Tumble After Global Sell-Off Advancements in U.S. production of ethanol have simply outpaced growth of demand domestically, but this growing gap has been catalyzed to an extreme degree by politics. Despite outcry from the agricultural industry and representatives of Big Corn states like Iowas Republican Senator Chuck Grassley, the Trump administration has largely acted in the interest of Big Oil. The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has been rolling back Obama-era biofuel blending guidelines and granting an unprecedented number of hardship waivers, allowing refiners to ignore biofuel requirements contained in the Renewable Fuel Standard. Now, in order to save itself, the U.S. ethanol industry will have to turn their focus to exports. The industry has already seen major growth in international markets, breaking records with nearly 1.4 billion gallons of exports last year. These numbers are particularly impressive when you consider that Brazil instated a quota and duties on U.S. imports and China slapped major tariffs on U.S. sales. Related: The IEAs Warning To Oil Producers While 1.4 billion gallons still pales in comparison to the 14 billion gallons of fuel ethanol the U.S. burned last year, the international market show way more potential for growth, while letting the pressure off of U.S. production glut and contributing to a much-needed overall demand growth. The most likely candidates for increased consumption of U.S. ethanol are Brazil, Canada, India (who are already the biggest buyers of U.S. ethanol), as well as China, Mexico, and Japan. The last three nations listed, while they are not already major buyers, all have publicized goals to blend 10 percent ethanol (E10) into their fuel over the next few years. While China has largely cut off imports of U.S. ethanol thanks to tariffs introduced in the escalating trade war, if they were to re-enter the market they could boost U.S. exports by as must as 200 million to 300 million gallons. While the ethanol industry has already been expanding its exports, it will need to seriously speed up growth. Even with the progress the industry has already made, demand continues to lag behind production, and thats without the new plants ready to come online over the next year. In order to close the gap, the international markets will need to start buying aggressively, or something in U.S. politics will need to see a major shift. By Haley Zaremba for Oilprice.com More Top Reads from Oilprice.com: In a fascinating twist of price trends, a barrel of Canadian heavy crude that is selling for less than US$20 a barrel in Alberta could sell for three times that on the Gulf coast, the Calgary Herald reports, citing an analyst from AltaCorp Capital. Were not even talking about a different barrel, Nickolas Lupick said. However, only a small portion of Canadian heavy crude reaches the Gulf coast. The companies that have the luck, or maybe privilege, to have pipeline and rail car capacity to ship their crude to the south are making out like bandits. MEG Energy corp. and Cenovus are probably among the lucky few who are selling some of their otherwise cheap crude at US$64.74 per barrel, while the competition is taking it on the chin. According to data from the EIA, the total is about 458,000 bpd. A lot more, or some 2.64 million bpd of Canadian heavy crude, is sold at the low prices, data for the first seven months of the year reveals. This crude goes to refineries in the Midwest. Access to transport seems to be the key. If you can physically move it on some sort of take-or-pay arrangement, the price youd be able to get is that price in the other market less the transportation cost to move it there, IHS Markits VP for North American crude oil markets, Kevin Birn, told the Calgary Herald. As of this morning, the discount of Western Canadian Select the benchmark price of oil from Canadas oil sands delivered at Hardisty, Albertato West Texas Intermediate stood at US$51.49 a barrelthe latest stage in a development that has hammered Canadian producers margins thanks to the pipeline capacity shortage combined with higher railway transportation costs. While addressing the pipeline shortage problem has proven quite tricky, rail cars are available. Earlier this week, Albertas premier Rachel Notley asked the federal government to provide Albertan producers with more railway car capacity to help them fight the discount. By Irina Slav for Oilprice.com More Top Reads From Oilprice.com: The Liberal opposition in the British Columbia parliament have asked the NDR government to make public its agreement with the consortium that will build and operate the first LNG complex in Canada. The Vancouver Sun reports the Liberals had accused the government of John Horgan of being non-transparent about its dealings with the consortium, since the agreement it is currently negotiating will likely be binding for future governments as well as the current one. What has this government promised in exchange for the decision to proceed, and how long have they promised it for? one Liberal MP, Mike de Jong, asked. It may be eminently defensible, but surely people are entitled to know, he added. The five companies behind the US$31 billion (C$40 billion) LNG Canada project made the final investment decision on the project earlier this month, ending months of uncertainty and worry that the large-scale project could become the second failed LNG initiative in British Columbia. LNG Canada is a project of Shell, with a 40-percent stake, Malaysias Petronas with 25 percent, PetroChina with 15 percent, Mitsubishi with 15 percent, and South Koreas Kogas with 5 percent. The facility is expected to become operational before 2025 and will initially have two liquefaction trains, each with a capacity of 6.5 million tons of LNG with the prospect of adding another two trains at a later stage for a total capacity of 26 million tons of LNG. The B.C. government, according to its Finance Minister, is currently in the process of finalizing the part of the agreement regarding payments, and as quoted by the Vancouver Sun, Carole James said, Basically, it will just align the payments and pieces they pay back. Were working through that piece and as weve done with the four (additional LNG) agreements, those have been out since March, well release all the information. By Irina Slav for Oilprice.com More Top Reads From Oilprice.com: The Chinese government has warned state energy companies CNPC, CNOOC, and Sinopec to be careful with price-setting for gas ahead of the winter season when demand rises substantially, Reuters reports. The government has already set a ceiling for prices and the new warning sought to make sure gas suppliers will adhere to this ceiling. In the past 10 years, Chinas natural gas consumption has risen fourfold to more than 25 billion cu ft daily. Last year, China became the worlds second-largest LNG importer, taking in some 38 million tons of the fuel, a 46-percent increase on 2016. Now, companies are turning depleted gas fields into storage facilities as part of efforts to avoid a repeat of last winters gas shortage, caused by failure to get a distribution network completed and operational when demand hit a peak in heating season. Despite this major growth in gas consumption, the fuel still accounts for just 7 percent of Chinas total energy mix, according to Forbes Jude Clemente. Clemente notes this compares with almost a third in developed economies. So its hardly a surprise that Chinas domestic gas production has been growing steadily: over the last decade its annual growth rate has been 9 percent, Clemente notes, which is more than double the United States 4-percent annual growth in production. In September, Chinas natural gas production hit 12.2 billion cubic meters, up by 8.5 percent on the year, government statistics showed. Over the first nine months of the year, domestic production came in at 116.2 billion cubic meters, by 6.2 percent on the year. Imports also grew ahead of peak demand season, reaching 7.62 million tons in September, up by a hefty 28.3 percent on the year, Xinhua reported. The nine-month export figure came in at 64.78 million tons, up 34 percent on the year. By Irina Slav for Oilprice.com More Top Reads From Oilprice.com: Europes economy could suffer from the refusal of European companies to work with Iran under pressure from the U.S. sanctions on Tehran, Rosnefts chief executive Igor Sechin said at the Eurasian Economic Forum in Verona, Italy, on Thursday. Sechin, who has been on the U.S. list of sanctioned individuals in his personal capacity since 2014, criticized in his speech at the forum what he called unilateral sanctions on countries, saying that such sanctions have turned into a routine instrument in the hands of one country. Referring to the sanctions on Iran and European companies quitting projects to avoid coming under secondary sanctions, Sechin said, as quoted by Russias TASS news agency: Earlier, we noted the fact that Total has left one of the largest gas projects in the world South Pars-11 with significant losses. The effect from European companies refusing to work with Iranian partners, including, perhaps, a complete ban of Iranian oil imports from November 5, 2018, could have the most serious consequences for the European economy. Meanwhile, the European Union (EU) is working to set up a payment mechanism for trade with Iran, and that mechanism should be legally in place by November 4, when the U.S. sanctions on Iran return, three EU diplomats told Reuters on Wednesday, noting that the mechanism wont be operational until early in 2019. Related: Why Big Oil Loves Artificial Intelligence Still, the biggest European companiesnot only in oil and gas but in other industries as wellare not taking any chances and are withdrawing from Iran due to the U.S. sanctions. The EUs oil imports from Iran are also expected to cease as refiners are not eager to open themselves up to risk. Iran, for its part, said earlier this week that its oil revenues in the first half of the current calendar year that began in March were 25 percent higher than expected in Irans budget. Although Irans exports have dropped in recent months, oil prices have risen. Irans exports of crude oil and condensate peaked in June at about 2.7 million bpd, up by 300,000 bpd from the average during the first four months of the year before the May announcement of sanctions, the EIA said this week, quoting data from ClipperData. To compare, Irans crude oil and condensate exports fell to 1.9 million bpd in September. By Tsvetana Paraskova for Oilprice.com More Top Reads From Oilprice.com: Less than two weeks after Cuadrilla resumed hydraulic fracturing in the UK for the first time in seven years, the company paused fracking at its drilling site in northwest England on Friday morning after a 0.76 on the Richter scale micro seismic event was recorded, the latest of some dozen seismic events since fracking started, but one that was above the 0.5 threshold requiring a halt. According to regulations, in case of micro seismic events of 0.50 on the Richter scale or higher, fracking must temporarily be halted and pressure in the well reduced. On Friday morning, a 0.76 on the Richter scale event was recorded, in an event classed as red in the traffic light monitoring system regulated by the Oil and Gas Authority (OGA), Cuadrilla said today, adding that All the relevant regulators were informed without delay and we have verified that the well integrity is intact. Work will now pause for at least 18 hours and is expected to resume in the morning on Saturday, October 27, the company said. Meanwhile, some dozen micro seismic events have been recorded since fracking at the site began early last week. Cuadrilla said on Thursday that a 0.3 on the Richter scale micro seismic event was recorded on Thursday afternoon, and noted in a statement: People should remember and be reassured that anything registering between 0 and 2.0 on the Richter Scale is generally categorised as a micro seismic event, far below anything that could be felt at surface or cause damage or harm. On Wednesday, four minor events were recorded in one day. At the start of Cuadrillas fracking on October 15, protesters gathered outside the Preston New Road shale gas exploration site in Lancashire in northwest England to protest the return of fracking in the UK. The previous week, Justice Supperstone at the High Court in London had dismissed a last-minute request for an interim injunction from a campaigner to prevent this from happening. By Tsvetana Paraskova for Oilprice.com More Top Reads From Oilprice.com: Although Venezuela is regularly delaying or avoiding bond payments and is behind on billions of U.S. dollars in such payments, it is preparing to make a rare US$949-million payment on one bond, because that bond is backed by a stake in its key U.S. asset, Citgo, Bloomberg reports, quoting a person with direct knowledge of the plans. Venezuelas state oil firm PDVSA is getting ready to pay the coupon and partial principal repayment due on October 29 on 2020 notes, which are backed by a stake in Citgo. Analysts say that Venezuela continues to consider Citgo as a very important asset and doesnt want to open the door to investors who would lay claims on it if it doesnt make the bond payment. Although its not clear how much longer PDVSA will be able to continue servicing the payments on this particular bond, analysts at JP Morgan, Torino Capital, and Eurasia Group told Bloomberg that the government of Nicolas Maduro would make the payment due at the end of this month because it will want to hang onto this key asset as long as possible. Related: Why Big Oil Loves Artificial Intelligence The governments strategy with regards to various creditor obligations seems to be to avoid or delay paying wherever possible but pay or settle when valuable external assets are in jeopardy, Bloomberg quoted a note by Risa Grais-Targow, a senior analyst at Eurasia Group, as saying this week. The analyst, however, notes that this strategy of Venezuela has its limits. The Maduro government faces declining export revenues from its only cash cow, the oil industry, where production continues to plunge. But even if Venezuela makes the upcoming bond payment next week, it has to service other debts to keep control of its strategic U.S. asset, Bloomberg notes. Citgo itself has debts of US$3 billion, and some of it may have to be repaid. Earlier this year, Canadian gold miner Crystallex won the right to tap Citgo for compensation of US$1.4 billion for the forced nationalization of its assets by the Hugo Chavez government. Russias largest producer Rosneft could also claim Citgo shares, if PDVSA, which had pledged 49.9 percent in Citgo as collateral for loans from Rosneft in 2016, defaults on those loans. By Tsvetana Paraskova for Oilprice.com More Top Reads From Oilprice.com: Majority of Filipinos believe that the country is treading the right direction. This was the result of the latest social weather station survey conducted from September 15 to 23 among 1,500 respondents. The survey showed that 75 percent of the Filipinos are convinced that the country is on the right direction; five percent higher compared to that of last June. However, 22 percent say we are in the wrong direction, while three percent have no answer. The most number of Filipinos who believe that the country is on the right track came from the Mindanao region followed by Luzon and Visayas. Metro Manila recorded the least number. Malacanang said that the result of the new survey is an inspiration and reiterated that this only proves that the public appreciates the policies and programs of the Duterte administration. But one Moro group said they are not convinced that the country is in the right direction. They said the president failed to act on his promises and programs. They claimed that their situation has gotten worse since the declaration of martial law in Mindanao. This, they said, prompted them to call for the ouster of President Duterte. Tapusin na itong rehimen ni President Duterte dahil nagdulot ito ng pasismo,pahirap at pasakit at matinding paglabag sa hanay ng bangsamoro, kaya kaisa kami na patalsikin na ang rehimeng Duterte, Sandugo co-chairperson, Jerome Succor-Aba said. Despite of criticisms, Malacanang still calls on all sectors to work hand in hand to be able to meet the Presidents vision for the Philippines. Joan Nano The post 75% of Filipinos believe Philippines is on the right track SWS appeared first on UNTV News. PRESIDENT Rodrigo Duterte, who once branded Boracay Island as a "cesspool," was "very pleased" with the massive cleanup of the world-famous beach destination that paved way for its PRESIDENT Rodrigo Duterte, who once branded Boracay Island as a "cesspool," was "very pleased" with the massive cleanup of the world-famous beach destination that paved way for its reopening six months after its closure, Malacanang said on Friday, October 26. During the ceremonial reopening of Boracay at the Cagban Port, Presidential Spokesperson Salvador Panelo said the President was all praise for the Cabinet secretaries who took part in the "evolution and development" of Boracay. "He (Duterte) is very pleased with what has happened in Boracay," Panelo said. "Definitely, the President has commended the secretaries for the evolution and development of this place." Boracay, famous for its powdery white sand and clear turquoise water, was closed to local and foreign tourists for six months beginning April 26 upon the President's directive. The renowned tourist destination reopened on Friday, following the six-month efforts of the Boracay inter-agency task force to rehabilitate the island. Panelo said the rehabilitation of Boracay served as a "lesson of political will and cooperation among the people in this country." "Boracay is a lesson of political will exhibited by the President, and yet, it is also a lesson of neglect and misfeasance and malfeasance in office, because this would not have happened if political will would have been exhibited, if only the officials of this place, as well as the stakeholders, operated following the law and the rules and regulations," he said. "It has to take President Duterte to put things in order. And I think, that we should all lear from these lessons so that Boracay will become the attraction, not only in this country but in the world," the Palace official added. Duterte ordered Boracay's closure because of environmental issues plaguing the island, which include problems on waste management and sewage disposal. The President also planned to place the entire Boracay under land reform program and distribute agricultural lands to indigenous peoples residing on the island. The Agrarian Reform department earlier said that some 408.5113 of 628.96 hectares of agricultural land on the island may be subject to the proposed land reform. (SunStar Philippines) Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has made an unannounced visit to Oman, an Arab state with which Israel has no diplomatic ties, and met with Sultan Qaboos, the premier's office said Friday. The two leaders discussed the Middle East peace process "and other issues of shared interest", it said in a statement released after Netanyahu returned from the first such visit by an Israeli premier for more than two decades. Netanyahu was accompanied by his wife Sara and his delegation included Mossad intelligence chief Yossi Cohen and National Security Advisor Meir Ben-Shabbat. The visit came at the invitation of Sultan Qaboos and followed "lengthy contacts between the two countries", the statement said. It formed part of "the policy outlined by Prime Minister Netanyahu on deepening relations with the states of the region", it said. In 1994, then-Israeli premier Yitzhak Rabin visited Oman, and acting prime minister Shimon Peres also made a visit in 1996 and the two countries agreed to open trade representative offices. In October 2000, Oman closed the offices after the outbreak of the second Palestinian intifada. THE Philippine National Police (PNP) has increased the number of policemen deployed to Boracay Island to ensure strict implementation of the rules and regulations there as it officially reopened on Friday, THE Philippine National Police (PNP) has increased the number of policemen deployed to Boracay Island to ensure strict implementation of the rules and regulations there as it officially reopened on Friday, October 26. PNP Chief Oscar Albayalde said from at least 200 police personnel deployed to Boracay, the PNP provided over 400 more security personnel to ensure the peace and order, as well as the safety and security of the locals and tourists. As of this time, we have a total of 667 uniformed personnel (in Boracay). Meron tayong augmentation coming from the Philippine Coast Guard and the Armed Forces of the Philippines (AFP) for a total of 170 and as I have said earlier, nagbigay tayo ng apat na brand new patrol vehicles dito lang sa Boracay Island yun, he said. Albayalde said a task force composed of concerned government agencies, including the PNP, AFP, Department of Tourism, Department of Environment and Natural Resources, and non-government organizations, were also formed to ensure the maintenance of cleanliness and peace and order in the island. He said the PNP is very much prepared for the re-opening of Boracay. Ready na tayo that's why yesterday (October 25), we conducted a simulation exercise. Meron tayong capability demonstration to ensure the public and tourists both local and foreign na maging kampante sila, that we are ready to secure their properties and lives not only the tourists but the whole community of Boracay, Albayalde said. During the capability demonstration exercise conducted on Thursday, October 25, in Boracay, authorities showcased their skills in responding promptly and effectively to any contingencies, such as hostage taking incidents, bomb threats, sea rescue and any other crime incidents. Albayalde expressed confidence that the government had placed well-trained and equipped forces that will keep the island resort safe and protected, as they are expecting the influx of both local and foreign tourists during its re-opening. Story continues He said among the issues they will focus on is the possible proliferation of illegal drugs. We will not allow illegal drugs to proliferate in the island even as we will muster all effort to sustain the downtrend in crime here and across the nation, he said. Police presence will remain high while police community assistance centers will be on hand to render police service to both tourists and residence, he added. Boracay, one of the Philippines top destinations, was closed in April to give way to its rehabilitation following the discovery of various environmental and zoning problems there. (SunStar Philippines) A member of a rare group of 410-million-year-old jawless fishes from Australia meets a mate.along the shoreline (artists impression). Credit: Nobumichi Tamura You walk and talk and live on land, but your ancient relatives were fish. It took about 480 million years for these fish to evolve and adapt to different environments and become the many different back-boned species (including ourselves) that are known as vertebrates. But how did it happen? The field of palaeontology looks at the when, where and why of animals changing over time and in response to their environment. Today a new paper by University of Pennsylvania's Lauren Sallan (with other US and UK colleagues) answers the "where" question concerning our most distant fishy ancestors. For the first time, the work shows that shallow coastal lagoons were vital in the early days of fish evolution. Today, similar seas ("shelf seas") include places like Bass Strait, where water less than 200m deep forms around a continental shelf. These places are still important today in sustaining biodiversity of life on Earth so if we don't look after our shallow oceans, the long term consequences for sea life could be dire. Invasion of the ocean To conduct their research, the scientists used a database of 2,827 fossil vertebrate species. These spanned the 120 million years from when fishes first appeared (around 480 million years ago) to when they conquered the land as four-limbed creatures known as tetrapods (around 360 million years ago). The database plotted species habitats against their time ranges, and identified important stages in new species forming (known as diversification). Ancient fishes lived, evolved and died in relatively shallow seas near land, similar to todays Bass Strait between Tasmania and Victoria. Credit: from www.shutterstock.com The research highlights that nearshore coastal environments, including estuarine and lagoonal settings, were hotspots for major episodes of early vertebrate diversification not the open oceans where we might think fishes would naturally undergo evolutionary events. Fishes with robust body shapes (such as lobe-finned species like the lungfishes) later sought habitats closer to land to diversify, whereas slender small-scaled forms like the jawless thelodontids (such as the yellow fish in the image below) and certain sharks tended to move to deeper water environments. Lead researcher Lauren Sallan told me: "This research sets up an "invasion of the ocean" on par with the invasion of land. Our early ancestors moved into freshwaters quickly, but shifts onto reefs, and from there to the open ocean and new continents, required a great deal of time and change." Fish with and without jaws The first diversification of early jawless fishes (resembling the lampreys and hagfish of today) lead to many armoured fish groups appearing early in the Silurian Period (around 420 million years ago). Armoured fish had hard plates on their bodies, and most lived in shallow inland seas of the Northern hemisphere continents. The oldest fossil record of jawless fishes comes from Australia, as seen by simple torpedo-shaped forms like Arandaspis that lived in the shallow Larapintine seaway across Australia some 470 million years ago. An angelfish-like jawless thelodont schools among jellyfish in shallow waters 415 million years ago (artists impression). Credit: Nobumichi Tamura The first great radiation of jawed fishes (known as "gnathostomes") took place in China about 440 million years ago. By the start of the Devonian Period (419 million years ago), all the major groups of jawed fishes had appeared and dispersed to all parts of the globe. Other fishes evolved in discrete regions, like the East Gondwana Province (Australia and Antarctica) and in the supercontinent of Euramerica (a landmass combining much of North America and Europe). Animals known as "the Wuttagoonaspis fauna" included many bizarre forms of placoderm and other primitive fishes, and is Australia's oldest local group of vertebrates. Remains of these distinctive fishes that lived around 395 million years ago are found at many sites within a two million square kilometre area of central Australia. Historic reefs were different Reefs are well known as hotspots of biodiversity today, many thousands of species of fishes live around coral reefs. But we now know this wasn't always the case. Prehistoric reefs, known from about 500 million years ago, were built by different organisms throughout time. Devonian period reefs, home to many species of fishes, were predominantly constructed by algae and sponges, with lesser input from corals. An angelfish-like jawless thelodont schools among jellyfish in shallow waters 415 million years ago (artists impression). Credit: Nobumichi Tamura Kimberley Devonian reefs were home to over 50 different species of ancient fishes that lived on algal structures bordering most of north-western Australia. But the new research shows that Silurian and Devonian reefs were not unusually high in diversity, as previously supposed. This suggests that reefs played a much less important role in the early rise of jawed fishes than we thought. Look after our shallow waters The take home message of the new paper is that the cradle of early vertebrate diversification took place mostly in shallow water habitats near or spilling over the edges of a continent. The regular rise and fall of sea levels over time would have had a great effect on habitat size for these marine species, making them particularly vulnerable to extinction when communities lived in basins that developed low oxygen levels. Such extinctions involved many factors, and wiped out some of the dominant groups of fishes at the end of the Devonian period, including the placoderms. This allowed the modern fish groups, comprising mostly bony fishes and sharks, to become established. The research holds some implications for today, as explained by one of the paper's authors, University of Birmingham's Ivan Sansom: "This work highlights how important these increasingly vulnerable near-shore areas are for species evolution. Modern threats from a combination of climate change, elevated sea levels, over-fishing and pollution could have extremely damaging effects on future species diversification." A jawed placoderm from the Devonian period but resembling a modern stingray sits near the edge of the shelf in Germany (artists impression). Credit: Nobumichi Tamura Explore further Tracing the evolutionary origins of fish to shallow ocean waters This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article. A news study can help wildlife managers mitigate conflict as bears expand their ranges Credit: Jon Beckmann/WCS A new study by WCS, American Museum of Natural History, and other partners uses long term data on bear mortality to map high-probability hot-spots for human-bear conflicts. The authors say this is a critical tool for wildlife managers to reduce mortality of bears as they recolonize their former range in the Great Basin and in other parts of the country. The study, which appears in the latest issue of Global Ecology and Conservation, represents the latest information from the first and longest running effort to understand the impact of an increasing human footprint on American black bears at the wildland-urban interface. The authors looked at expanding bear populations in the Lake Tahoe Basin and Western Great Basin Desert in Nevada, examining 382 bear deaths between 1997 and 2013. They found that the largest causes of mortality were vehicle collisions (160) and management removal of bears (132) due to animals breaking into people's homes and/or causing property damage, or other threats to human safety. The authors say that by understanding the causes and consequences of mortality on bears using long-term data, wildlife managers will be able to reduce bear deaths in urban interface areas where bears could otherwise be killed more frequently. Said the study's co-author Jon Beckmann, Science Director of WCS's Rocky Mountain West Program: "Ultimately the goal of conservation is to have more individuals of species like bears and other carnivores on landscapes like we have accomplished in the Great Basin, but we then have to understand how to limit their mortality that results from conflicts with humans." Lead author Rae Wynn-Grant from the Museum's Center for Biodiversity and Conservation suggests "This approach to understanding local drivers of bear mortality can be replicated in other areas where human influence varies across the landscape. We were surprised to find subtle indicators of human activity were important drivers of bear mortality risk, an important finding for wildlife recovery efforts." WCS and Nevada Department of Wildlife (NDOW) currently use this information to try and reduce mortality of bears in areas where bears already occur, and to predict hot-spots of human-bear conflict as they currently recolonize their historical range in the state of Nevada. In the Great Basin, bears are returning after an absence of 80-plus years due to recovering habitats and WCS/NDOW conservation efforts such as the Bear Aware Campaign, changing regulations, and policies prohibiting the feeding of wildlife along with ordinances requiring bear-proof dumpsters in many regions of western Nevada. These efforts have led to the bear population expanding in number and geography over the past several years, resulting in bears showing up in areas of central and eastern Nevada. The authors say that these conservation successes can be a model for other places, including in New York and New Jersey, and areas throughout the U.S. that are dealing with increasing human-bear conflicts at the wildland-urban interface. In addition, the authors say there are lessons for other regions of the globe where large carnivores occur in these wildland-urban interface areas such as lions at the wildland-urban interface of Nairobi, Kenya. More information: Rae Wynn-Grant et al, Risky business: Modeling mortality risk near the urban-wildland interface for a large carnivore, Global Ecology and Conservation (2018). Rae Wynn-Grant et al, Risky business: Modeling mortality risk near the urban-wildland interface for a large carnivore,(2018). DOI: 10.1016/j.gecco.2018.e00443 Traditional methods of assessing platypus populations, like trapping, are unreliable and resource-intensive. Credit: Josh Griffiths We all leave traces of our presence behind as we move through our environment. Our skin cells, hair, saliva, or blood persist in places we have been. DNA can be taken from these cells to identify us, just like in crime shows. Animals are no exception they leave DNA behind as they swim, crawl, and walk through their various habitats. And just like the criminal who inevitably leaves behind traces of their DNA, we can now harness advances in genetic sequencing technologies to detect species in their habitats without even having to see the animal. And we're using this technology to launch the largest-scale investigation of platypus populations ever undertaken. Finding DNA in our environment DNA found in environmental samples, like water, is aptly called environmental DNA or eDNA. The sources of this DNA varies from skin cells and hair, to faeces and mucous. DNA can come in the form of intracellular DNA from living cells, as well as extracellular DNA which comes from the breakdown of cell structure in the environment. The array of possible environmental samples in which we can find eDNA is astonishing. We can analyse honey from bees to see what flowers they've visited, examine predators' faeces to determine what they've eaten, or take water from a river to identify which species of fish live there. Scientists can collect environmental DNA from freshwater and seawater, as well as snow, ice cores, cave sediments, and even the air. Depending on the study's aims, we can target a single species, or whole communities consisting of multiple species. Single-species detection methods identify a target species' DNA in a sample. Scientists can now use environmental DNA samples to determine which species are present at particular sites. Credit: Josh Griffiths We might wish to locate populations of a threatened species, like the Dwarf Galaxias in Victoria State, or to test for the presence of an invasive species, like the Cane Toad in Australia's North. Multi-species sampling, often referred to as metabarcoding, has been developed more recently due to the increasing accessibility of next generation sequencing technologies. Metabarcoding can yield huge amounts of information by identifying entire groups of species from an eDNA sample. The multitude of DNA sequences (the code of DNA) found in the sample is compared to a database of known genetic sequences to determine which species are present. Environmental threats As threats to our environment and biodiversity grow, there is an increasing need to monitor species across entire landscapes efficiently. And sometimes these animals are hard to detect using traditional methods, like trapping or electrofishing. Researchers or managers may have to visit a site repeatedly to be certain whether a species is there or not. Detection can be especially difficult for rare or cryptic species. Environmental DNA sampling is non-invasive, as we don't need to handle or trap animals to get the evidence we need. Environmental DNA sampling can also occur in places where it isn't feasible or possible to use other methods. For example, electrofishing a method commonly used to survey fish can't happen where the salinity is too high. Some types of animals are also hard to differentiate at certain life stages, like tadpoles or larvae, but these organisms still shed DNA that can be detected using environmental DNA sampling. Environmental DNA sampling is also more sensitive for detecting many species than the appropriate traditional sampling method. While eDNA currently doesn't provide information on individuals, like their health status or sex, it allows data on species to be collected over large spatial scales, and adds to the tools that managers, conservationists and scientists can use to preserve our wonderful biodiversity. The platypus has recently been categorised as near threatened. Credit: Josh Griffiths On the trail of the platypus Platypuses are one of Australia's favourite and most unique species but have recently been classed by the IUCN Red List of Threatened Species as near threatened. Researchers have detected population declines or localised extinctions in some areas, but platypuses can be notoriously hard to detect in the wild. Typically, populations are sampled using direct capture in fyke or gill nets. Catching platypuses is time and labour intensive and there's no guarantee that even if platypuses are in a stream, they will be caught, particularly where there aren't many of them. While platypuses are known to be found throughout eastern Australia, from Victoria through to Queensland, their exact distribution remains largely unknown. This makes a rigorous assessment of their true conservation status or the impacts of major threats very difficult. Traditional survey methods are simply too expensive and logistically challenging to really assess platypus occurrence across large areas. In our new project a collaboration with San Diego Zoo Global, cesar, and several State agencies we will collect thousands of eDNA samples across south eastern Australia in the largest-ever investigation of platypus distribution. Our intensive sampling across such a large area will provide data unlike any trapping survey could achieve, and will hopefully provide an answer to one of the major questions facing platypus conservation: where are they now? Not only will this project produce new data on the current distribution of the platypus, it will also enable us to understand why the species is declining in areas where it has been seen in the past. Using eDNA to understand the causes of platypus declines, we can help inform management actions to conserve this iconic Australian species. We want future generations to continue the unique experience and excitement of seeing this duck-billed, beaver tailed, egg laying mammal, diving in the streams and rivers of eastern Australia. Explore further Using DNA technology to track marine life Cardiac pacemakers are usually housed in a titanium housing that is welded together from two parts. Empa has optimized the frequency of the working laser so that no black edges appear during welding, which would reduce the value of the medical product. Credit: istockphoto Using laser technology Empa scientists optimized a technique to weld the electronics of implantable pacemakers and defibrillators into a titanium case. The medtech company Medtronic is now using the method worldwide to produce these devices. In Tolochenaz (Canton of Vaud) the US medtech company Medtronic produces one out of five heart pacemakers available on the global market and one out of four defibrillators. The electronics of these implantable devices are housed in titanium cases, which thus far were welded hermetically with a solid state flash laser. However, the lasers are high-maintenance and often the source of irregularities. Moreover, they require water cooling and take up a lot of space. A new type of laser launched in 2015 by US company IPG Photonics came to the rescue: This fiber laser is cooled energy-efficiently using air instead of water, requires less maintenance, works more consistently and is more compact. Initial tests conducted by Medtronic, however, revealed that the weld seams now have black edges that look a lot like soot extremely problematic for implants. Therefore, Medtronic's Sebastian Favre approached Empa materials specialists Patrik Hoffmann and Marc Leparoux from the Advanced Materials Processing Laboratory at the Thun site, who initiated a project to optimize the new laser for usage with titanium. The project was funded by Innosuisse, the former Commission for Technology and Innovation (CTI). Titanium nanoparticles look black In order to simulate production processes at Medtronic, Empa built its own "plant" to precisely analyze the behavior of the laser in a controlled environment. The results revealed that an interaction with the titanium vapor interferes with the process: The black edge on the seams turned out to be titanium nanoparticles. In follow-up experiments, the Empa researchers demonstrated that the black edge disappears if the laser is operated at a different wavelength. Laser manufacturer IPG Photonics subsequently built a fiber laser tailored towards the Empa researchers' specifications and offered it for further tests. As these experiments confirmed, adjusting the laser frequency indeed solved the problem. Meanwhile, Empa, Medtronic and IPG Photonics jointly hold a patent for the optimized fiber laser. Medtronic benefits from improved production processes for its implants at considerably lower costs. And Switzerland could confirm its status as a leading technology hub within the globally operating US multinational. After all, the special lasers "made in Switzerland" are now being used at Medtronic factories in Puerto Rico, Singapore and the US. Explore further Medtronic co-founder who created wearable pacemaker dies In this Oct. 16, 2018 photo, Cesar Batiz, news director of El Pitazo, center, stand next to journalist at the news room of the El Pitazo, a popular digital platform in Caracas, Venezuela. In a fight against press censorship around the world, Google has unveiled a new tool first put to the test in Venezuela where journalists say they're battling a government bent on burying online stories that expose corruption and human rights abuses. (AP Photo/Ariana Cubillos) Google has unveiled a tool meant to help fight press censorship around the world, testing it first in Venezuela, where journalists say they're battling a government bent on burying online stories that expose corruption and human rights abuses. News junkies in Venezuela clicking on links to independent websites have been frustrated in recent years by messages on their screens saying the pages don't exista problem most blame on government moves to block access to critical information. "It's very hard to get news to the people," said Melanio Escobar, a Venezuelan journalist and social activist who tested the Intra app on Google's behalf before it was launched this month. "We promote this and other tools, but it's not easy." The government controls the internet as owner of CANTV, the largest internet service provider with more than 2.5 million customers, and Escobar said smaller, private providers follow its directives to stay in business. The Press and Society Institute of Venezuela, a press freedom group, says that news websites critical of the government have been increasingly targeted since 2014. A four-day test trying to access 53 websites hundreds of times each day in August found roughly half were blocked, according to researchers. Venezuela's communications ministry didn't respond to a request for comment by The Associated Press for this story. The Android-only app Intra is designed to frustrate that tactic by connecting users' phones directly to Google servers that access the domain name systema kind of phone book of the internet. That bypasses any blocks set up by local internet providers, making it harder for governments or other interlopers to deny access certain websites. The once-wealthy oil nation is plummeting into a deepening political and economic crisis under two decades of socialist rule and President Nicolas Maduro's government has increasingly squeezed or shut down opposition media he often accuses of taking cues from the U.S. and other foreigners conspiring to overthrow him. Venezuelan journalists work under the threat of jail or crushing lawsuits, driving several abroad fearing for their personal safety. A pro-government constitutional assembly created last year to bypass the opposition-controlled congress has passed a law decreeing up to 20 years in prison for publishing material deemed hateful. Jared Cohen, founder and CEO of Jigsaw, a unit of a Google's parent company, said his team created the app out of an ongoing conversation with journalists and tech-savvy Venezuelans over obstacles they confront disseminating their work. Intra launched worldwide on Oct. 3 after a test run over several months in Venezuela. Cohen, a former U.S. diplomat who advised both Condoleezza Rice and Hillary Clinton on freedom of expression issues in their tenures as secretary of state, said he and his team of engineers saw opportunity for its use around the world. "We didn't build Intra for Venezuela," Cohen said. "But the insights came from our work with Venezuelan journalists." In this Oct. 16, 2018 photo, Cesar Batiz, news director of El Pitazo, speaks with the Associated Press at the El Pitazo headquarters in Caracas, Venezuela. In a fight against press censorship around the world, Google has unveiled a new tool first put to the test in Venezuela where journalists say they're battling a government bent on burying online stories that expose corruption and human rights abuses. (AP Photo/Ariana Cubillos) The app works on older Android devices that are still used by billions around the world, extending protections built into the phone's latest model. Since Intra's launch, it has been downloaded 130,000 times worldwide, according to Jigsaw. Venezuela is among the top three countries but Jigsaw declined to name the others. China ranks as the world's worst abuser of internet freedom, followed by Syria and Ethiopia, while Venezuela is among 30 countries classified as "not free" because of government actions to counter critics on social media, according to a 2017 press freedom report by the Washington-based Freedom House. Domain name tampering and other high-tech tactics have been used to restrict access to websites such as El Pitazo and Armando.info, both formed by journalists from once-independent newspapers that were bought by pro-government businessmen. The country's last-remaining opposition newspaper, El Nacional, has also been frequently blocked as has CNN's Spanish-language affiliate. "Our investigative journalism and reporting contains elements that, as we see it, put the government in very uncomfortable situations," said Cesar Batiz, news director of El Pitazo. Batiz said he first tried confusing the censors by switching up domains: using elpitazo.info and even elpitazo.mlan internet code for the African country of Malias well as elpitazo.com. The website took a big hit, however, following a report in September 2017 accusing socialist party boss Diosdado Cabello of using his cousins as fronts for illicit business. The website's 70,000 daily page visits plummeted the next day to 11,000, Batiz said. So far the new app hasn't caught on in large numbers with readers, Batiz said, though the site urges readers to download it with Twitter links of its stories, or through WhatsApp audio messages. It's struggling to rebuild its base of readers, who rely on news filed by a network of 70 reporters across the country. "While our website traffic is diminished, we've won recognition because people see that we're fighting for human rights and democratic liberties," he said. "That is what we want to do." Explore further Measles cases surge amid Venezuela's crisis 2018 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. In the first-ever research of its kind, a new study by a Brock University Labour Studies professor has examined labour issues for Ontarians working with horses. The result is a very mixed picture of this province's equine industries, with half of stable staff respondents saying they're paid minimum wageor less. "This will be a wakeup call about the severity of some problems," says Brock Professor Kendra Coulter, Chancellor's Chair for Research Excellence and Chair of the Labour Studies Department. "My hope is that the report shines a light, inspires new conversations and adds fodder to those that are underway about how to improve job quality in stables." On Thursday, Oct. 25, Coulter released her report, Work in Ontario Horse Stables, which presents key findings from a survey of 1,000 people including stable owners and operators, and current and former workers. Coulter says it sheds much-needed light on a widely misunderstood workforce. "The results provide empirical evidence of certain trends horse people knew informally were happening, as well as some new and promising insights," she says. Coulter, whose research work on animals, labour and humane jobs has been recognized in Canada and around the world, says those working with horses are often under-valued and under-appreciated. "Stable workers are asked to do very difficult work under challenging conditions, and they are excluded from some of even the most basic protections outlined in the Employment Standards Act," she says. "It can manifest in frustration about working conditions and high turnover rates for front-line workers, and difficulty recruiting and retaining talented and reliable staff for employers." In addition to the low rates of pay, Coulter found many working on the front lines in equine industries are also not being legally classified, or may be being misclassified as independent contractors, a move which downloads certain costs onto staff. "This may be unintentional, or it may be about trying to save money in the short term," she says. Coulter, who will discuss her research Saturday at the University of Guelph Equine Industry Symposium, says the number of jobs and the working conditions of people directly affect the care they are able to provide to horses. "To work effectively and thoughtfully with horses, people need multi-faceted intellectual and physical skills, knowledge, understanding and empathy," she says. The reasons people had left the equine industries mirrored the greatest sources of dissatisfaction for the current workforce: pay, disrespect and the schedule. On the positive side, some employers are trying to tangibly demonstrate their appreciation for front-line workers, despite the high costs associated with running a horse stable. The survey found that workers and employers were united by their commitment to horses, and their interest in providing improved care. One discovery Coulter was happy to find was the shared interest in stronger animal welfare laws and greater investment in animal cruelty investigations and prevention. Animal cruelty investigations work and policy is one of Coulter's other areas of expertise, and she was heartened to see it highlighted, noting that there is growing public interest in improving the province's approach. Coulter hopes this report and further research will help stimulate larger conversations and plans of action. "People and horses definitely deserve better," she says. Explore further Study examines how therapy horses are affected when helping others More information: Work in Ontario Horse Stables: Work in Ontario Horse Stables: humanejobs.org/work-in-ontario-horse-stables/ This image of asteroid Ryugu was taken with Hayabusa2's ONC-T (Optical Navigation Camera-Telescopic) on October 15, 2018 from an altitude of 42 meters. The resolution is about 4.6millimeters per pixel, and this is the highest resolution that Hayabusa2 spacecraft has taken. This is the highest resolution image that a spacecraft has taken of an asteroid. Credit: JAXA, Tokyo University, Kochi University, Rikkyo University, Nagoya University, Chiba Institute of Technology, Meiji Univeristy, Aizu University, and AIST JAXA's (Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency's) Hayabusa2 mission is on track to return samples from its target asteroid, 162173 Ryugu, a C-type Near Earth Asteroid (NEA). The past month has seen the successful deployment of two rovers and a lander. The mission focus is now on the successful retrieval and return of a surface sample. Two members of the Planetary Science Institute's (PSI's) science staff are on the Hayabusa2 science team as part of NASA's Participating Scientist program, a cooperative effort between NASA and JAXA. Deborah Domingue is a member of both the Optical Navigation Camera (ONC) and Near Infrared Spectrometer (NIRS3) instrument teams. Lucille Le Corre is a Co-Investigator on the ONC team. Their focus, over the past several months, has been in support of data processing and analysis of Hayabusa2 data for landing site selection. The Hayabusa2 engineering team's safety constraints restrict where the spacecraft can safely touch down. These constrains include regions of 100 meter diameter with an average slope less than 30 degrees, boulder heights less than 50 centimeters, and an absolute temperature less than 370 degrees Kelvin (97 degrees Centigrade). This limited the selection to a region plus or minus 30 degrees from the equator. The challenge of the science team was to find a region of scientific interest that meet the engineering constraints. The biggest hurdle seems to be finding regolith in a place that is comprised of boulders less then 50 centimeters, within a 100 meter diameter region. The lack of a powdered, fine-grain regolith on asteroid Ryugu will make it difficult for the Hayabusa2 spacecraft to collect a sample to be returned to Earth. "Unlike other asteroids we have visited, Ryugu has no powder, no fine-grain regolith. That makes selecting a place to sample more challenging," said PSI's Domingue. "We are helping characterize the surface to optimize landing site selection." "Since the approach phase began last June, my main goal was to support the Hayabusa2 team in the preparation of touch down operations," said Le Corre. "In order to assess the sampleability of Ryugu's terrains I have worked on generating products such as ONC image mosaics and local topographic models. Our data show that the Hayabusa2 team has to carefully select a sampling site to avoid the numerous boulders present on the surface." Domingue has been working on regolith analysis, with a focus on the photometric and spectral characterization of the surface. Le Corre has been focused on mapping the surface, combining both the geologic features with the topographic properties. The goal of the science team is to select a site that will return a sample of the least processed material, yet meet the engineering constraints. "We need to have a very detailed understanding of the nature of the surface to be sampled in order to maximize the realization of the science goals of the mission," Domingue said. Explore further Japan delays spacecraft landing on very rocky asteroid A combination of factorsa lack of formal records or destruction during China's wars and the Cultural Revolutionhave meant there are few ways for Chinese to trace their genealogy in the ethnically diverse country Chinese executive Miao Qing spits into a specially designed container, destined for a lab where her saliva will be analysed and sequenced, offering an insight into her genetic make-up andmore importantlyher ancestry. A combination of factorsa lack of formal records or destruction during China's wars and the Cultural Revolutionhave meant there are few ways for Chinese to trace their genealogy in the ethnically diverse country. But with a growing middle-class, an increasing number are now keen on tracing their roots, and DNA testing companies are cashing in. China's DNA sequencing market was worth about 7.2 billion yuan ($1.05 billion) last year and is forecast to grow to 18.3 billion yuan in 2022, according to estimates by Beijing-based CCID Consulting. Over-the-counter genetic testing kits are not newusers simply buy the kit, spit into the provided container and mail the sample back. Their growing popularity in China has meant tests now cost as little as 199 yuan ($29) and can be easily purchased on e-commerce apps like Taobao and JD.com. But the success of a test is very dependent on the data pool of the company offering the service, which allows a basis for comparison. While firms like 23andMe and Ancestry DNA are popular globally, they have a relatively small Asian pool that lumps all Chinese into a single category, according to Chen Gang, the chief technology officer of Shenzhen-based WeGene. The growing popularity of DNA tests in China has meant they now cost as little as 199 yuan ($29) "There's a difference in the genetic makeup of Caucasians and Asians. For example people who get flushed easily after drinking alcohol," Chen told AFP. "This gene has a higher mutation rate in Chinese people, but it is not as obvious in Caucasians." Northern or southern Han? DNA tests tailored to the Chinese market are able to discern different ethnicities, right down to whether one is a northern or southern Han Chinese. And while people are freely giving their DNA for the genealogy kits, human rights groups have voiced concern about China's use of a national DNA database - which authorities say is especially aimed at helping people find missing children - and the collection of samples in Xinjiang, a region dominated by the Muslim Uighur ethnic group. Other tests have an element of noveltyGeseDNA, which roughly translates to "Personality DNA", works with behavioural geneticists who analyse the way they say genetics may affect one's behaviour, from personality right down to spending habits. DNA tests tailored to the Chinese market are able to discern different ethnicities, right down to whether one is a northern or southern Han Chinese Although many experts dispute the extent to which genes influence or predict behaviour, others insist reliable forecasts can be made from a DNA test. "People have a misconception that physiology and psychology are separate... but this is an incorrect assumption," said Zhang Leilei, Gese's research and development director and a behavioural geneticist. "Just like height and your looks, whether you're an introvert or extrovert, whether you're competitive or have a stable temperament and communicate well with others, this is all affected by your genes." In Miao's case, the test was prompted by the desire to discover her heritage and possible genetic issues with her future children. "It was driven by a curiosity and three philosophical questions: who am I, where did I come from, and where I will go," Miao told AFP. "Since I grew up in the south, I was quite certain that I'm a southerner, but I just wanted to be extra certain," she said. China's DNA sequencing market was worth about 7.2 billion yuan (1.05 billion USD) last year and is forecast to grow to 18.3 billion yuan in 2022, according to estimates by Beijing-based CCID Consulting But when results of the test came back, Miao had 60 percent Manchurian ethnicitya northeastern group. This led to a search of her grandmother's surname, which revealed that she was descended from the Red Bannera division of Manchu society during the Qing dynasty period. "I was curious about the whole thing and this has helped answer a lot of questions I had. It's a good experience so I've just bought another kit that can reveal your personality," she said. "Who knows what else I'll find out about myself!" Explore further China tries to reassure foreign companies over industry plan 2018 AFP The compound, carbon tetrachloride, contributes to the destruction of the Earth's ozone layer, which protects us from harmful ultraviolet radiation. As a result, the production of carbon tetrachloride has been banned throughout the world since 2010 for uses that will result in its release to the atmosphere. However, recent studies have shown that global emissions have not declined as expected, with about 40,000 tonnes still being emitted each year. The origin of these emissions has puzzled researchers for many years. Alongside collaborators from South Korea, Switzerland, Australia and the USA, researchers at the University of Bristol aimed to quantify emissions from eastern Asia. To do this, they used ground-based and airborne atmospheric concentration data from near the Korean peninsula and two models that simulate the transport of gases through the atmosphere. Their results, published in the journal Geophysical Research Letters, show that around half of the 'missing' global emissions of carbon tetrachloride originated from eastern China between 2009 and 2016. Lead author, Dr. Mark Lunt, from the University of Bristol's School of Chemistry, said: "Our results show that emissions of carbon tetrachloride from the eastern Asia region account for a large proportion of global emissions and are significantly larger than some previous studies have suggested. "Not only that, but despite the phase out of carbon tetrachloride production for emissive use in 2010, we found no evidence for a subsequent decrease in emissions." In fact, emissions from certain regions may have increased slightly since 2010. The results from the study show the emergence of a new source of emissions from the Shandong province of China after 2012. Whilst the results of this and earlier studies in Europe and the USA now explain a large part of the global distribution of carbon tetrachloride emissions, there are still large gaps in our knowledge. Furthermore, recent reports have suggested that very large amounts of this gas may be emitted inadvertently during the production of other chemicals such as chlorine. Dr. Matt Rigby, Reader in Atmospheric Chemistry at the University of Bristol and co-author, said: "Our work shows the location of carbon tetrachloride emissions. However, we don't yet know the processes or industries that are responsible. This is important because we don't know if it is being produced intentionally or inadvertently." He also added: "There are areas of the world such as India, South America and other parts of Asia, where emissions of ozone-depleting gases may be ongoing, but detailed atmospheric measurements are lacking." It is hoped that this work can now be used by scientists and regulators to identify the cause of these emissions from eastern Asia. Ultimately, if these emissions can be avoided, it would hasten the recovery of the stratospheric ozone layer. Dr. Lunt said: "Studies such as this show the importance of continued monitoring of ozone-depleting gases. There is a temptation to see ozone depletion as a problem that has been solved. But the monitoring of man-made ozone-depleting gases in the atmosphere is essential to ensure the continued success of the phase-out of these compounds." Explore further Emissions of banned ozone-eating chemical somehow are rising More information: M. F. Lunt et al, Continued Emissions of the Ozone-Depleting Substance Carbon Tetrachloride From Eastern Asia, Geophysical Research Letters (2018). Journal information: Geophysical Research Letters M. F. Lunt et al, Continued Emissions of the Ozone-Depleting Substance Carbon Tetrachloride From Eastern Asia,(2018). DOI: 10.1029/2018GL079500 A new device bends visible light inside a crystal to produce "synchrotron" radiation (blue and green) via an accelerating light pulse (red) on a scale a thousand times smaller than massive facilities around the world. Credit: University of Michigan image/Meredith Henstridge The DESY accelerator facility in Hamburg, Germany, goes on for miles to host a particle making kilometer-long laps at almost the speed of light. Now researchers have shrunk such a facility to the size of a computer chip. A University of Michigan team in collaboration with Purdue University created a new device that still accommodates speed along circular paths, but for producing lower light frequencies in the terahertz range of applications such as identifying counterfeit dollar bills or distinguishing between cancerous and healthy tissue. "In order to get light to curve, you have to sculpt every piece of the light beam to a particular intensity and phase, and now we can do this in an extremely surgical way," said Roberto Merlin, the University of Michigan's Peter A. Franken Collegiate Professor of Physics. The work is published in the journal Science. Ultimately, this device could be conveniently adapted for a computer chip. "The more terahertz sources we have, the better. This new source is also exceptionally more efficient, let alone that it's a massive system created at the millimeter scale," said Vlad Shalaev, Purdue's Bob and Anne Burnett Distinguished Professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering. The device that Michigan and Purdue researchers built generates so-called "synchrotron" radiation, which is electromagnetic energy given off by charged particles, such as electrons and ions, that are moving close to the speed of light when magnetic fields bend their paths. Several facilities around the world, like DESY, generate synchrotron radiation to study a broad range of problems from biology to materials science. This accelerating light pulse (left) met expectations (right) that it would follow a curved trajectory and emit radiation at the terahertz frequencies of security technology and other sensing applications. Credit: University of Michigan video/Meredith Henstridge But past efforts to bend light to follow a circular path have come in the form of lenses or spatial light modulators too bulky for on-chip technology. A team led by Merlin and Meredith Henstridge, now a postdoctoral researcher at the Max Planck Institute for the Structure and Dynamics of Matter, substituted these bulkier forms with about 10 million tiny antennae printed on a lithium tantalite crystal, called a "metasurface," designed by the Michigan team of Anthony Grbic and built by Purdue researchers. The researchers used a laser to produce a pulse of visible light that lasts for one trillionth of a second. The array of antennae causes the light pulse to accelerate along a curved trajectory inside the crystal. Instead of a charged particle spiraling for kilometers on end, the light pulse displaced electrons from their equilibrium positions to create "dipole moments." These dipole moments accelerated along the curved trajectory of the light pulse, resulting in the emission of synchrotron radiation much more efficiently at the terahertz range. "This isn't being built for a computer chip yet, but this work demonstrates that synchrotron radiation could eventually help develop on-chip terahertz sources," Shalaev said. Explore further Researchers develop small device that bends light to generate new radiation More information: "Synchrotron radiation from an accelerating light pulse" Science (2018). Journal information: Science "Synchrotron radiation from an accelerating light pulse"(2018). science.sciencemag.org/cgi/doi 1126/science.aat5915 Long-term Trends in the Development of GDP Growth in CIS Countries Credit: Centre for Business Tendency Studies (CBTS) Experts from the HSE Centre for Business Tendency Studies (CBTS) analysed for the first time the growth of the manufacturing industry in CIS countries between 2004 and 2016. It was conducted within the framework of a regional project of the United Nations Industrial Development Organization (UNIDO) "Improvement of industrial statistics and development of indicators of industrial performance for policy-relevant analysis in CIS countries". The CBTS analysis, which covered the trends and scale of this growth, demonstrated a global slowdown in the long-term macroeconomic development of the region. During the period under review, CIS countries were not able to take advantage of various economic growth opportunities to boost their industrial potential. The results of the study were presented in the UNIDO report Industrial Development in CIS Countries: Are There Conditions for Re-Industrialization Capacity Building? This research was conducted by CBTS Deputy Director and UNIDO Consultant Liudmila Kitrar jointly with Georgy Ostapkovich, CBTS Director, and experts Tamara Lipkind, Irina Kulikova and Dmitry Chusovlyanov. Experts from HSE CBTS compared metrics on the manufacturing industries of CIS countries between 2004 and 2016. This approach allowed them not only to analyse the industrial development of CIS countries together, but also to see the role of each country reviewed in the project. The results showed a global macroeconomic slowdown as concerns long-term steady growth in all countries. Additionally, CBTS experts saw evidence of a recession in the cyclical development of most economies in the region. Experts believe price shocks on oil markets made the situation even worse for oil-exporting nations. For importers, oil revenues were partially neutralised by a deficit on the domestic market, as well as by the side effects of Russia's recession. Practically all countries boosted value added of trade and services over the decade under review. This occurred alongside a drop in the size of the industrial market. This premature deindustrialisation, particularly under conditions of unstable revenues, made it impossible to maintain adequate economic growth rates. This also limited the number of new technologies that could be introduced. The industrial markets of most CIS countries traditionally relied on low-tech production, while imports largely met domestic needs for high-tech products. It was harder for the majority of countries in the region to produce high-tech products due to labour-intensive assembly processes. At the same time, exports from the region mostly consisted of resource- and labour-intensive products, which were greatly exposed to external shocks. Over the decade, a cluster of countries with solid industrialisation, high production and export potential, and regional influence of manufacturing had formed in the CIS. These countries include Russia, Kazakhstan, Ukraine, and Belarus. Azerbaijan and Armenia were catching up in terms of development and industrialization. Kyrgyzstan, Moldova, and Tajikistan continued expanding the large-scale processing of resources-based and low-tech production. The region did not experience a noticeable growth in employment in the formal sector of the manufacturing industry, and it was shown that this sector was not a critical source of new jobs. Only Russia, Belarus, and Ukraine demonstrated a high level of industrial employment (over 18% of those employed in these countries worked in manufacturing) as a sign of real and timely industrialization. Explore further Industrial robots increase wages for employees Provided by National Research University Higher School of Economics Credit: Royal Holloway, University of London Researchers from Royal Holloway, University of London, together with the University of Osnabruck in Germany, have discovered that a fascinating plant employs two mechanisms to survive, no matter where it grows. New research, published in New Phytologist, looked at Aethionema arabicum, also known as "stone cress", and found the plant is unique in its seed and fruit dispersal strategies. Most plant species produce a single type of fruit and seed that is adapted to the environment, but stone cress produces two sizes of fruit: a large fruit which opens by splitting, and a small fruit which remains closed until it has found a suitable habitat in which to germinate. Not only are the fruits different, but inside there are two different types of seed: multiple slime- coated seeds in the large fruit, and a single non-coated seed in the small fruit. Waheed Arshad from the School of Biological Sciences at Royal Holloway, was awarded a Royal Holloway Travel Grant to present this research at a major conference in Canada last August. He said: "We revealed two very contrasting dispersal mechanisms, employed by the same plant, at the same time. The slimy seeds adhere to the soil, effectively preventing their dispersal, while the small fruit disperses in its entirety by wind or water currents, thereby promoting its dispersal. "The work forms part of the SeedAdapt consortium project, a European Union funded grant of 1.9 million. Investigating fruit/seed-related traits, which evolved as adaptations to cope with stresses in harsh environments, is undoubtedly of utmost importance. "The dispersed seed or fruit is often the only phase in a plant's life cycle when it can travel therefore, dispersal has far-reaching ecological and evolutionary consequences. "The common daisy is a classic example of this amazing phenomenon. The next time you mow your lawn, take a daisy and inspect it closely. The outer ring of the flower head is actually composed of many flowers, known as ray florets, and the inner circle consists of even smaller disc florets. "These two types of florets often possess different morphological, dispersal, dormancy and germination properties." The published work advances knowledge about plant-climate interactions, and demonstrates that Aethionema arabicum provides an excellent model system for studying the role of bet-hedging to survive unpredictable environments. Explore further For one tropical tree, effective seed dispersal relies especially on elephants More information: Waheed Arshad et al. Dispersal biophysics and adaptive significance of dimorphic diaspores in the annual Aethionema arabicum (Brassicaceae), New Phytologist (2018). Journal information: New Phytologist Waheed Arshad et al. Dispersal biophysics and adaptive significance of dimorphic diaspores in the annual Aethionema arabicum (Brassicaceae),(2018). DOI: 10.1111/nph.15490 Where Persecution Comes From Christians in Bhutan are viewed and treated as traitors to the countrys particular brand of nationalism. The government is intent on maintaining a strong national identity and unity by suppressing foreign elements, including Christianity. According to the government, the definition of Bhutanese identity is Buddhism, and it works to eliminate groups perceived as threats. Ethnic religious beliefs have merged with the Buddhist identity, further ostracizing Christians, especially in the central and eastern parts of the country. Converts to Christianity also experience a great deal of Christian persecution from their family members, who pressure them to return to ethnic or Buddhist beliefs and customs. How Christians are Suffering Because Buddhism and traditional Bhutanese religions are seen as the countrys heritage, Christians experience tremendous pressure to conform, and are persecuted accordingly. For Christian converts, cooperative surveillance at the hands of religious leaders, families and entire communities prevents the free expression and practice of the Christian faith. Along with this surveillance, theres also a collaborative effort to compel believers to renounce their faith. No churches are formally recognized, meaning that all Christian worship is technically illegal. Baptisms cannot be held in public, and Christian burials are often denied. Examples One young student in Bhutan was kept from graduating from school for no other reason than her being a Christian. A Christian man was denied a government ID because his Christian mother refused to renounce her faith in the registration process. A church building was recently locked up, and another demolished. Christian farmers are excluded from participating in the traditional communal planting and harvesting process, forcing them to do all of the work on their own. Two massive data breaches undisclosed for some three years and affecting 3.5 billion users will cost Yahoo $50 million in settlement damages in the culmination of a two-year-long class action lawsuit and the humiliating end of Yahoo as an independent company. Yahoo will also have to foot the bill for two years of credit-monitoring services for approximately 200 million users whose personal information was stolen in the breach, as well as up to $35 million in attorney fees. The data breach that affected 3.5 billion users took place in 2013, while another breach affecting 500 million users took place the following year; however, Yahoo only disclosed the breaches in 2016. The breach led to the theft of users personal information, including names, birthdays, email addresses, encrypted-but-crackable passwords and even security questions and answers. Its not a huge victory for affected users, who in the best case scenario can claim $375, and in the worst case, only $125, depending on documented losses related to the breach. Half of the $50-million bill will be paid by Verizon, which acquired Yahoos internet services in 2017. The remainder will be paid by Altaba Inc., which is responsible for that part of Yahoo not acquired by Verizon in the deal. Related: MIT Invests $1 Billion In Artificial Intelligence Yahoos failure to disclose the breaches until 2016 shaved $350 million off its price tag for Verizon after the two had already negotiated the sale for $4.83 billion. While the settlement this week is only $50 million, another $300 million was lost on Yahoos tainted reputation over the scandal and any other costs that might end up being associated with the breach-related damage control. Also this week, Facebook has been fined $645,000 by the UKs Information Commissioners Office over the Cambridge Analytica data breach that exploited the data of 87 million users, harvested for political purposes. The paltry fine represents the maximum fine that the UK information watchdog can levy. Facebook lucked out here because the breach took place shortly before Europe enforced stricter privacy rules through the GDPR. In slapping the fine on Facebook, Information Commission Elizabeth Denham said the social media giant should have known better and it should have done better. In September, Facebook announced another breach, saying that hackers had stolen the private data of some 30 million users, exploiting bugs in the login system. This time around, they were quick to disclose, with the breach happening only a few days after being discovered internally. According to the IBM-sponsored 2018 Cost of a Data Breach study conducted independently by Ponemon Institute, the global average cost of a data breach is up 6.4 percent over 2017, to $3.86 million. The average cost for each lost or stolen record containing sensitive and confidential information also increased by 4.8 percent year over year to $148, the study said. Related: The Divide Between Italy And The EU Is Growing In the meantime, victims of data breaches are probably wondering whether enough is being done to both protect them and compensate them. Speaking to Slate, Ashkan Soltani, former chief technologist for the Federal Trade Commission, said, I definitely dont think the industry has gone far enough in terms of finding ways to make people whole and mitigating the impact to someone else. Thats because state laws, federal laws and the courts that interpret those laws tend to let companies ride by too easily on breaches because they dont yet view exposure of personal data as harmful in and of itself. And the burden of demonstrating harm is a tough one and largely only focused on concrete financial loss. By Michael Scott for Safehaven.com More Top Reads From Safehaven.com: Thank you for reading! Please log in, or sign up for a new account and purchase a subscription to continue reading. " " Recruits try on their bulletproof vests at the New York City Police Academy. Mario Tama/Getty Images In August 2017, 30-year-old New York Police Department officer Hart Nguyen was shot while responding to a call regarding a 29-year-old Andy Sookdeo, an emotionally distraught man. As Nguyen approached the door to a bedroom where Sookdeo had barricaded himself, he was shot three times once in the arm, and twice in his bulletproof vest. He survived. "His vest definitely saved his life," tweeted NYPD Police Commissioner James O'Neill after the attack. In 2016, 23-year-old Joaquin Mendez of Tampa, Florida, was killed by a gunshot to the chest. According to the local CBS affiliate, Mendez sat in a chair, put on a bulletproof vest, and wondered if it worked. His friend, 24-year-old Alexandro Garibaldi, pulled out a pistol and shot the vest to find out. The bullet pierced the vest and killed Mendez. As these two stories demonstrate, bulletproof vests do indeed save lives, but they are not always, um, bulletproof or perfect. Do bulletproof vests degrade over time, and can they fail? Advertisement First, a Bit of History Early bulletproof vests were mainly made from poly-paraphenylene terephthalamide better known as Kevlar. It was invented by Stephanie Kwolek, a chemist working for DuPont in the early 1960s. DuPont had already invented Nylon and Spandex and was on the hunt for the next generation of high-performance fibers. Synthetic fibers are created with polymers large molecules composed of repeating subunits, effectively creating a chain of molecules. Nylon, for instance, is a polymer made from hexamethylenediamine, an organic compound, and adipic acid, an ingredient often found in Jell-O. Kevlar is made from molecules para-phenylenediamine, often used in antioxidants and as dyes, and terephthaloyl chloride. What Kwolek discovered would eventually become Kevlar and would see application in tires, racing sails and bulletproof vests. Bulletproof vests today are made from polyethylene fibers a popular plastic polymer seen in nearly everything we use: grocery bags, toys, plastic trash bins and so on. Polyethylene fibers (or "PE" as it's called), are woven in layers to form the guts of a protective vest that is cheaper and stronger than Kevlar. In 1989, AlliedSignal developed a competitor for Kevlar and called it Spectra Shield. Originally used for sail cloth, the polyethylene fiber is now used to make lighter, yet stronger, non-woven material for use in bulletproof vests alongside the traditional Kevlar. Advertisement Different Vests for Different Guns According to Tom Nardone, president and founder of BulletSafe, a manufacturer of bulletproof vests, the layers inside a vest are designed to reduce the velocity of a round to a point below supersonic faster than the speed of sound so the fibers can have time to react to the bullet and exert their toughness on the bullet. The more layers, or the greater the density of the weaving of layers, the greater the toughness of the fibers a measure of their strength and how much they will bend before they break and the more capable they are of stopping a bullet. Most pistols fire bullets at velocities that are slightly above the speed of sound. A bullet from a 9mm travels around 984 feet (380 meters) per second, roughly 164 feet/second (50 meters/second) faster than the speed of sound. Slugs from shotguns travel even slower. A good vest doesn't need to work hard to bring a 9mm bullet or shotgun shell's velocity down to a point where it can make use of the toughness of its fibers. A rifle bullet, however, is another matter entirely. Depending on the grain and quality of the propellant, a bullet fired from an AR-15 travels, roughly, 3,300 feet/second (1,005 meters/second), nearly three times the speed of sound. It'll take a far greater density of ballistic fiber to stop that bullet. "Supersonic rounds need plates to shatter the bullet into pieces," Nardone says. Most vests designed to stop rifle bullets are backed up with high density insert plates made from ceramics and polyethylene to break up a bullet into pieces and capture it. "A PE vest with a [rifle] round, that bullet would be going faster than the speed of sound for so long that it would go through until the vest failed," Nardone says. The material of the vests themselves is also prone to break down for various reasons. Kevlar, for instance, degrades when exposed to salt such as the salt in human sweat. The longer a person exerts themselves while in a bulletproof vest made of Kevlar to the tune of years the greater the likelihood of failure. Vests made from PE also will break down over time when exposed to UV light. "There is a five-year lifespan on vests. Sometimes people are buying older, used vests, mostly police-work vests, [from back when] they didn't have as high a level of protection," Nardone says. Now That's Shocking According to The Baltimore Sun, in 2014, Darnell Mitchell and his friend Mark Ramiro were recording a "Jackass"-style prank for the internet. Mark would shoot Darnell while Darnell wore a bulletproof vest. Both were intoxicated. Mark leveled a .22 caliber pistol at his friend of 15 years and pulled the trigger. Darnell died and Mark was sentenced to four years in prison. Supreme Court grants cert on Haymond from Tenth Circuit to address when Apprendi and Alleyne meet supervised release!! | Main | Following the Charleston script, will federal authorities take the lead in capital prosecution of anti-Semitic mass murderer Robert Bowers? October 26, 2018 Attorney General Sessions indicates pipe bomb suspect Cesar Sayoc charged with five federal crimes and facing "only" 48 years in prison Deal enough marijuana, as the Life for Pot website highlights, and you can get sent federal prison for life. But, according to this statement by Attorney General Jeff Sessions, the fellow arrested for sending pipe bombs to a dozen prominent politicians and others is, at least for now, only facing five criminal charges and a maximum sentencing exposure of 48 years. Here are excerpts from the AG's comments today: Over the past week, more than a dozen suspicious packages have been sent through the United States Postal Service to a media outlet, a Hollywood actor, and at least seven high-ranking current and former political leaders in the Democratic Party. This is utterly unacceptable. Political violence or the threat of violence is antithetical to our vigorous system of self-government. It is a threat to that respect for law and process that allows our people to accept legislation, elections, and court rulings with which we do not agree. This is the central feature of our system of government: you advocate for your beliefs enthusiastically but we peaceably and lawfully comply with the results. Please know that from the beginning this investigative team has made this matter a top priority, focusing their great talents and expertise on neutralizing this threat. They have moved swiftly and professionally, using extraordinary technical expertise, to apprehend the one alleged responsible. This is a demonstration of the skill, the capability, and determination of our American law enforcement. So I am pleased to participate in this announcement that a suspect is in the custody of the FBI. I want to remind everyone that the defendant in this case as in every case is innocent until proven guilty. He has been charged today with five federal crimes, including interstate transportation of an explosive, illegal mailing of explosives, threats against former presidents and certain other persons, threatening interstate communications, and assaulting current and former federal officers. For these charges, the defendant faces up to 48* years in prison. [*An earlier version of these remarks incorrectly stated 58 years.] These charges may change or expand as the investigation continues. This is a law-and-order administration. We will not tolerate such lawlessness, and especially not political violence.... I want to reiterate that the defendant in this case is innocent until proven guilty. But let this be a lesson to anyone regardless of their political beliefs that we will bring the full force of law against anyone who attempts to use threats, intimidation, and outright violence to further any agenda. We will find you. We will prosecute you to the fullest extent of the law. Regular readers of this blog should know I am much more troubled by people getting sentenced to "life for pot" than I am by pipe bomb suspect Cesar Sayoc facing "only 48" years in federal prison. Assuming the feds have the right guy, I would predict he ends up facing a lot more charges and that he ends up pleading guilty in the hopes of reducing his sentencing exposure. But what the feds might still charge and ultimately accept in any deal will be interesting to watch. October 26, 2018 at 04:46 PM | Permalink Comments I'm sure stacked 924(c) charges are coming. The penalty provisions for using a "destructive device" under 924(c) are especially harsh, with the first count carrying a 30-year mandatory minimum and the second count carrying mandatory LWOP. The Eleventh Circuit recently revived the 924(c) residual clause as well, making such charges easier to bring. Posted by: Anon AFPD | Oct 26, 2018 5:29:15 PM https://www.powerlineblog.com/archives/2018/10/our-under-incarceration-problem-explosive-packages-edition.php He should have been in prison already Posted by: federalist | Oct 26, 2018 6:22:24 PM In my view, an effective life sentence would be just fine. I would further support changing the law to allow a death sentence for attempted mass murder, with a definition broad enough to include this particular crime. For example, one might define it as an attempt to kill five or more people. Posted by: William Jockusch | Oct 26, 2018 7:11:05 PM Anon AFPD, that was my first thought too: a whole bunch of 924(c) alleging destructive deice would make it a virtual mandatory life sentence. Posted by: another afpd | Oct 26, 2018 7:40:17 PM But right now its 48 yrs. Before Begay Owis qualified as a crime if violence, tagging lots as a career & armed career offender. Some got 30-40, not far from this guy. Goes to show how out if line the guidelines are with drugs & Guns or any ammo. I agree, this guy should if been in prison and needs to go away forever. Death penalty, yes, he needs it. Sessions finally has a cause.... Posted by: MidWestGuy | Oct 26, 2018 9:02:55 PM Couple things, I wonder if lack of a trigger makes the destructive device charge harder to prove but regardless I would expect at least one federal charge to stem from each (interstate at the very least) device as well as any device sent to a federal official in Florida. Posted by: Soronel Haetir | Oct 26, 2018 11:25:09 PM @Soronel I agree, feds have several avenues to charge this guy. Lack of a trigger, dont know on that one. From what Ive seen, guidelines are normally open enough to lasso a kangaroo in Australia from America. General in nature. Yes, sent to high ranking officials, that in itself is substantial. I wouldnt want to be this guy, oh boy. A world of hurt forever. Imagine visitation, phone privelages can be voided in a case like this as well? Posted by: MidWestGuy | Oct 27, 2018 8:37:43 AM federalist, the significant push for sentencing reform, especially for low-level drug offenses and for using modern risk-assessment tools, is driven in part by (1) the reality that many persons of color with much shorter rap sheets are in prison, and (2) the concern that frequent prosecution of low-level drug offenders takes up space/time/energy and distracts from persons who pose greater threats. You have acknowledged point 2 in the past, federalist, but I wonder if you think there is something to point 1? Posted by: Doug B | Oct 27, 2018 11:34:19 AM I would say that to the extent that we have an incarceration problem it is an under-incarceration problem rather than one of over-incarceration. The vast majority of charged offenders get off light compared with their provable conduct, not to mention the even larger cohort that are never charged to begin with. Posted by: Soronel Haetir | Oct 27, 2018 6:37:43 PM Given that we have the world's largest incarcerated population, Soronel, and yet you see our problem as under-incarceration, do you think the US has the largest crime problem in the world or do you think other nations have an even bigger under-incarceration problem. If you think the problem is high crime in the US, what do you think makes us so poorly behaved? Posted by: Doug B | Oct 27, 2018 9:38:34 PM I honestly don't see enough information about other countries to venture an opinion in any direction there. As for the US I don't believe crime is a terrible problem here; I simply believe things could be even better if we did a better job getting rid of the trouble makers we do catch. Posted by: Soronel Haetir | Oct 27, 2018 10:35:05 PM Wouldn't these crimes qualify as "non-violent"? Posted by: federalist | Oct 28, 2018 8:27:16 AM federalist, are you talking about the current or past charges against Sayoc? I think most, if not all, of the current charges against him qualify as violent crimes. The past crimes included battery and domestic violence that would seem to be "violent." Meanwhile, the latest mass shooter apparently cannot be dismissed as someone we should have obviously locked up sooner, as he apparently did not have a rap sheet other than a 2015 traffic ticket for driving without tags. Posted by: Doug B | Oct 28, 2018 10:53:47 AM He's 56 years old. 48 years in prison is life without parole. That seems like enough. Posted by: Stephen Hardwick | Oct 29, 2018 1:09:03 PM Post a comment "How End Mass Incarceration Became a Slogan for D.A. Candidates" | Main | Supreme Court grants cert on Haymond from Tenth Circuit to address when Apprendi and Alleyne meet supervised release!! I recently received a kind offer from Alison Siegler, Clinical Professor of Law and Director of the University of Chicago Law School's Federal Criminal Justice Clinic, for an update on the extraordinary litigation her clinic has done in response to so-called "stash house stings" in which federal agents lure defendants into seeking to rob a (non-existent) drug stash-house. In this post last year, I highlighted this lengthy Chicago Tribune article, headlined "ATF sting operation accused of using racial bias in finding targets, with majority being minorities," on this topic. Alison's update is so detailed and interesting, I will need three posts to report all she has to report. This first one covers what she calls "sentencing Victories": The Federal Criminal Justice Clinic that I founded and direct at the University of Chicago Law School has engaged in systemic litigation against fake stash house robbery cases in Chicago. Our litigation has resulted in dramatically lower sentences for scores of clients and is changing the law around the country. Sentencing Victories Several years ago, the Federal Criminal Justice Clinic (FCJC) filed pretrial Motions to Dismiss for Racially Selective Law Enforcement on behalf of 43 defendants charged in the 12 pending fake stash house cases in Chicago, alleging that the ATF had unconstitutionally discriminated on the basis of race in targeting people of color. The FCJC approached the legal issue of racially selective law enforcement in an innovative fashion by coordinating across cases and bringing empirical evidence to bear. See ATF Sting Operation Accused of Using Racial Bias in Finding Targetsthe Majority of Them Being Minorities, Chicago Tribune (Mar. 3, 2017). Last December, the 9 federal judges presiding over these cases held a joint evidentiary hearing on our motions, an unprecedented occurrence. See Was Racial Profiling Behind ATF Stash House Stings? Chicago Judges to Take Up Landmark Case Today, Chicago Tribune (Dec. 13, 2017); Court Decision Could Force Changes to ATFs Undercover Operations, NPR: Morning Edition (Dec. 15, 2017). When the FCJC began this litigation, our clients were facing 15-to-25-year mandatory minimums and far higher sentences under the federal Sentencing Guidelines. In the wake of the hearing, the U.S. Attorneys Office in Chicago made highly unusual plea offers in all of the cases, offering to dismiss all of the remaining mandatory-minimum gun and drug charges. See Under Pressure by Judges, Prosecutors to Offer Plea Deals in Controversial Drug Stash House Cases, Chicago Tribune (Feb. 21, 2018). Of the 43 clients who participated in our selective enforcement challenge, 34 have now been sentenced. Fully 27 of the 34 received sentences of time served, despite requests by the government for within-Guidelines sentences that ranged as high as 12 years. The remaining clients received significantly below-Guidelines sentences. The chart linked here depicts these incredible outcomes and is being filed publicly with the judges to show that time-served sentences are now the norm in these cases. As a result of the plea offers and time-served sentences, clients on bond were allowed to remain in the community, clients in custody were promptly released, and our clients collectively were spared hundreds of years in prison. These remarkable results are attributable to the tremendous efforts of everyone in the FCJC: Professor Erica Zunkel (the Associate Director of the FCJC), Professor Judith Miller, and the many students who worked on the litigation. These extraordinary sentencing outcomes show the power of litigating creatively and demonstrate that sometimes the fight alone can bring about systemic change, regardless of the legal outcome. The FCJC did not win the motions to dismiss, but the U.S. Attorneys Office and the ATF have entirely stopped bringing fake stash house cases in Chicago, even as those cases continue to be prosecuted elsewhere. The FCJCs litigation also changed the judges perspective on these cases. Although Chief Judge Castillo reluctantly denied the FCJCs Motion to Dismiss in his two stash house cases, he wrote: Our criminal justice system should not tolerate false stash house cases in 2018. United States v. Brown, 299 F. Supp. 3d 976, 984 (N.D. Ill 2018). In particular, he said, The inherent problems of this Districts false stash house cases must be seen through the lens of our countrys sad history of racism, id. at 985, and implored the government to relegat[e] them to the dark corridors of our past, id. at 984; see also Editorial: Even Fighting Capone, Feds Knew Better Than to Resort to Cheap Tricks, Chicago Sun Times (Mar. 13, 2018). In another FCJC case, Judge Gettleman issued a sentencing opinion express[ing] this courts disgust with the ATFs conduct in this case. United States v. Paxton, 2018 WL 4504160, at *2 (N.D. Ill. Sept. 20, 2018). SINGAPORE (Oct 26): Jeffrey Tiong, CEO, PatSnap has been named EY Entrepreneur Of The Year (EOY) 2018 Singapore by EY. The results were announced at the 17th EY EOY awards gala held at The Ritz-Carlton, Millenia Singapore on Friday evening. Tiong also won the EY Entrepreneur Of The Year Analytics Intelligence. He will go on to represent Singapore in the EY World Entrepreneur Of The Year (WEOY) to be held in Monte Carlo, Monaco in June 2019. At the WEOY, Tiong will compete against more than 50 other countries for the coveted world title. The EY WEOY competition is the hallmark of the awards program, offering a platform to profile local entrepreneurs among the worlds best business leaders. Chairman of the judging panel, Robert Yap, also Executive Chairman of YCH Group says, Jeffrey is an outstanding technopreneur and innovator in his use of analytics intelligence to address the information gap in the R&D industry. He did not let his youth or inexperience hold back his bold ambition. He pursued his entrepreneurial vision upon graduation with resilience and learned how to grow and lead a business. By taking strategic risks to disrupt the industry, he was able to carve out a new market and build a notable presence worldwide. Since the launch of PatSnap in 2012, his company now serves 3,000 organizations spanning 28 countries. On winning the award, Tiong says, It is a great honor to win this award. This would not be possible without the support of all the people around me my family and my team. In addition, EY also presented five other EOY category awards: EY Entrepreneur Of The Year Engineering and Construction Von Lee Yong Miang, Chairman, Expand Construction Pte Ltd EY Entrepreneur Of The Year Analytics Intelligence Jeffrey Tiong, CEO, PatSnap EY Entrepreneur Of The Year Media and Lifestyle Cheong Chia Chou, Managing Director, Pictureworks Pte Ltd EY Entrepreneur Of The Year Sustainable Bathroom Solutions Christopher Ng, Group CEO, Rigel Technology (S) Pte Ltd EY Entrepreneur Of The Year Outsourced Solutions Laurent Junique, CEO, Teledirect Pte Ltd See: 5 named winners of EY Entrepreneur of the Year 2018 Story continues Max Loh, EY Asean and Singapore managing partner, Ernst & Young LLP, says, Innovation is vital to building future-ready businesses and a resilient and competitive economy. While government and regulatory support is important in creating an enabling ecosystem for innovation to flourish and go beyond ideation, it takes every individual and business to reignite the curiosity and courage within each of us to never stop questioning if there is a better way to build a better business for a better working world. Guest-of-honour, Josephine Teo, minister for manpower, says, What is remarkable is that these businesses started even as employment rates have increased and unemployment rates remained low. Which means people were not turning to entrepreneurship because they had no other options. Although it is competitive, there are still opportunities. Being part of a growing region has also helped. The Edge Singapore is one of the official media partners for EY EOY 2018 Austria's Foreign Minister Karin Kneissl addresses the Human Rights Council at the United Nations in Geneva, Switzerland, June 26, 2018. REUTERS/Denis Balibouse BERLIN (Reuters) - The European Union should halt arms sales to Saudi Arabia following the killing of journalist Jamal Khashoggi, Austrian Foreign Minister Karin Kneissl told a German newspaper, saying such action could also help end "the terrible war in Yemen". The comments from Austria, current president of the EU, came after Germany said it would stop approving weapons exports to Saudi Arabia until Khashoggi's death at the Saudi consulate in Istanbul is cleared up. Chancellor Angela Merkel's government is also discussing how to deal with sales that have already been approved. Referring to the wider EU, Kneissl told Die Welt newspaper: "The halt in arms deliveries proposed by Chancellor Merkel would be a correct signal." Austria had already stopped sending military equipment to Saudi Arabia in March 2015, she added. France and Britain - which will leave the EU in March - are major arms suppliers to Riyadh. President Emmanuel Macron told King Salman on Wednesday that France, in coordination with partners, could take action against those held responsible for the murder. However, since coming to power last year Macron has largely ignored protests over arms sales he deems vital to jobs and France's strategic relationships in the region. French arms deals with Riyadh totalled 1.5 billion euros ($1.7 billion) last year. The European Parliament adopted a resolution on Thursday calling on member states to impose an EU-wide arms embargo on Saudi Arabia. Merkel spoke to the king on Thursday, condemning the killing and saying Germany was ready to take "appropriate measures" along with international partners, her chancellery said. Kneissl said the war in Yemen and a crisis in relations between Qatar and Saudi Arabia and its Arab allies should prompt joint EU action. "If we as the entire EU stop weapons deliveries to Saudi Arabia, that could help end these conflicts," she told the newspaper. Story continues A Saudi-led coalition that intervened in Yemen's war in 2015 has conducted frequent air strikes targeting the Iran-aligned Houthi group and has often hit civilians, although it denies doing so intentionally. The war has killed more than 10,000 people, displaced more than 2 million and driven Yemen to the verge of widespread famine. Saudi Arabia's public prosecutor said on Thursday that Khashoggi's murder earlier this month was premeditated, reversing previous official statements that the killing was unintended. Kneissl described the case as "profoundly shocking" and an unprecedented violation of law, but said it marked the culmination of two years of "massive deterioration in the human rights situation in Saudi Arabia". The Austrian foreign ministry confirmed the remarks were accurate, but had no further comment. (Reporting by Andrea Shalal; Additional reporting by Francois Murphy in Vienna; editing by David Stamp) Belgium said Thursday it had chosen to buy US-made F-35 stealth warplanes over the Eurofighter Typhoon, which critics call a blow to the EU's bid to build its own defences. In a multi-billion-euro deal with Lockheed Martin, the Belgian government said it would buy 34 radar-evading F-35s to replace its ageing US-made F-16s, from 2023. Critics called the decision "very bad news" for a more autonomous EU defence strategy, which got a boost after Brexit and US President Donald Trump's election. Lockheed Martin said it looked forward to ties with "the Belgian government and industry for decades to come," according to a statement on its Twitter feed. Belgian Prime Minsiter Charles Michel sought to head off his critics when he said Belgium was looking to both Europe and the United States to meet its defence needs. Belgium is also buying drones, frigates, minesweepers and armoured vehicles "within the framework of NATO and European defence," Michel told a news conference. "The planes and drones are American, the other equipment is European and Belgium will enjoy the economic benefits," Michel added, Foreign Minister Didier Reynders said the US offer "was the best from the price and operational standpoint." The F-35 ran against a bid from the Eurofighter, developed by a European consortium that also comprises Italy's Finmeccanica and Airbus. Jean-Dominique Giuliani, who heads the Robert Schuman Foundation, a European think-tank, lamented the decision. "It's not a European choice. It's worse than a slap, it is dreadful for European defence," Giuliani told AFP. "It is very bad news." The F-35 requires a whole maintenance and operational system that depends "on the control of the United States," he added. - "Muddy the waters" - Marking a move away from Europe's decades-long reliance on the United States for its defence, Brussels last year launched "permanent structured cooperation on defence", known as PESCO. The aim was to unify European defence thinking and to rationalise a fragmented approach to buying and developing military equipment. France was also likely to be unhappy with the decision. The United States, acting on behalf of the F-35, and Britain, pushing for the Eurofighter, responded formally to the bidding process Belgium launched in March 2017. However, the French government took a different tack in September last year by proposing "in-depth cooperation" with the Belgian air force in additon to supplying Rafale fighters, built by the French firm Dassault. Defence Minister Steven Vandeput said France had ruled itself out with its approach. "We regret that France voluntarily withdrew from its obligation to present a bid in the framework of our transparent competitive process," he said. Christophe Wasinski, professor of international relations at ULB University in Brussels, said the announcement of plans to buy 400 French armoured vehicles amounted to government spin. "It sought to muddy the waters by saying it would buy not just American materiel when the star of these purchases is in fact the F-35," Wasinksi said. According to Pentagon figures earlier this month, 320 F-35s have been delivered globally, mainly to the US but also to Israel and Britain. Cathay Pacific Airways fliers were on Thursday still reeling from the shock of the airlines massive data leak revealed the night before, but lawyers said it would be hard for the affected passengers to seek damages unless they suffer actual monetary loss. The Hong Kong-based carrier revealed late on Wednesday night that 9.4 million customers personal details including names, nationalities, dates of birth and identification numbers were illegally accessed in March. The airline is in the process of alerting affected passengers, offering them ID monitoring services by a third-party provider. The victims included Hong Kong resident Marcus Langston. Cathay Pacific on Thursday night alerted Langston via email that his personal data including travel documents and date of birth were involved in the leak. He said he immediately went online to reference the leak of 380,000 British Airways passengers data in August and September to get an idea how his situation might play out. After I googled the British Airways case, my main concern was the data being used on the dark web as fake identification, Langston said, referring to media reports that the leaked data was up for sale on the dark web or a crime-linked deep layer of the internet. As Langston noted that British Airways could face a class-action lawsuit to compensate affected customers, he said Cathay should do more than provide an email urging him to update his password. Other fliers were awaiting notification about whether their personal information had been compromised in the breach. Some wondered why it took seven months for Cathay to come forward. Simone Chen said she was concerned about what precautions the company would put in place in future. She added she would be watchful if there is a financial loss and how they offer to compensate it. Another flier, Ada Lam, said she was not expecting compensation beyond vouchers if her personal data had been leaked. Lam described the news as the latest in a long line of frustrations that she and other Hongkongers had encountered with the airline. Story continues They lost money in fuel hedges, but it doesnt mean they have to cut costs for basic services and frontline staff, she said. Passengers get affected. Lam has not contacted Cathay to ask about her data, but said the situation left her feeling worse. Now I never know who will have my personal data on hand Ada Lam, Cathay customer I dont feel secure, she explained. Now I never know who will have my personal data on hand. An angry passenger, identified by the user name smileymiley, left a comment on the Posts website, claiming in the past six months I have had to cancel credit cards which were registered with Cathay showing unauthorised transactions of US$4,000 from airlines. He could not be reached for comment. Under Hong Kongs privacy law, there is no mandatory time limit for notifying a regulator or affected person of a data breach, lawyer Dominic Wai Siu-chung said, adding that affected passengers face an uphill battle holding the airline accountable. Although they could file a complaint with the privacy watchdog, they can't really sue unless they can prove they suffer actual loss, monetary or not, Wai noted. Mark Ross-Smith, an airline loyalty data expert who formerly oversaw Malaysia Airlines business in that area, said depending on how much data was taken, hackers could potentially access and change flights, access a passengers lucrative frequent flyer accounts through brute force or phishing attacks to potentially steal and spend the air miles on free flights and hotels. Passengers could be susceptible to a sophisticated phishing attack to make the user think the airline was sending a genuine email. It's a scary situation for passengers as there is a big unknown on where their data has gone, who will have access to it, and how it may affect them in the future, Ross-Smith said. Personally I wouldn't trust an email from Cathay at all if I was an affected user. Who knows where the data will go or be sold to on the dark web? Additional reporting by Danny Lee This article Cathay Pacific passengers dont feel secure after massive data leak hits Hong Kong-based airline first appeared on South China Morning Post For the latest news from the South China Morning Post download our mobile app. Copyright 2018. Hong Kong environmental officials are overlooking the immense potential of school rooftops in their quest to develop more renewable energy generation in the city, a green group has asserted. The Environment Bureau previously estimated that with limited space and the currently available technology, Hong Kong would at most only be able to draw up to 4 per cent of its electricity needs from renewable sources between now and 2030 up from less than 1 per cent now. But Greenpeace East Asia said officials were not looking hard enough. With the help of Baptist Universitys Asian Energy Studies Centre, the environmental group surveyed 22 different primary and secondary schools across the city between January and August. Having obtained rooftop floor area data for 19 of them, researchers computed that 2.4 million kilowatt-hours of electricity could be generated per year, if just half of their rooftops were fitted with photovoltaic (PV) solar panels. That amount is enough to meet the average power consumption of 751 three-person households in Hong Kong. At present, the installed capacity of renewable energy is not even at 1 per cent Dr Daphne Mah, Baptist University At present, the installed capacity of renewable energy is not even at 1 per cent, centre director Dr Daphne Mah Ngar-yin said. The government needs to actively develop this by further exploiting the solar potential of some 1,000 primary and secondary schools instead of just letting these natural resources go to waste. In her recent policy address, Chief Executive Carrie Lam Cheng Yuet-ngor said the government would take the lead in promoting such renewable energy in a more systematic manner. Measures included exploring the feasibility of installing PV panels on landfill slopes and expanding floating PV systems at reservoirs. New programmes to help schools and NGOs implement small-scale renewable energy systems were also being launched. Story continues A bureau spokesman said the new scheme for schools and NGOs would involve helping them pay the relevant capital costs including components, installation fees, site inspections and technical support. The Environment Bureau and Electrical and Mechanical Services Department ... will announce detailed arrangements next year, the spokesman added. Meanwhile, the citys two power companies have just launched their respective feed-in tariff schemes, which allow households and businesses that generate clean power to sell it to the grid at higher than market rates. This would shorten the payback period on their investments. In addition to landfills and reservoirs, school rooftops have potential, Greenpeace climate and energy campaigner Walton Li said. Schools can also use PV systems as part of their environmental and science education. But regardless of the new feed-in tariff scheme, Li noted, many schools faced red tape and high entry costs. Hiring surveyors and contractors for handling the installations were major expenses that few public schools could easily shoulder. Application procedures were complex, time-consuming and tedious, according to To Kar-hing, principal at the Buddhist Wing Yan School in Yuen Long. To recalled how the school waited five years to obtain funding from the governments Environment and Conservation Fund for just a dozen solar panels. In the time it took to handle paperwork, installation costs increased 20 per cent, he said. This article Dont waste renewable energy potential of Hong Kong school rooftops, Greenpeace says first appeared on South China Morning Post For the latest news from the South China Morning Post download our mobile app. Copyright 2018. More from South China Morning Post: Malaysian leader Mahathir Mohamad on Thursday said his country cannot accept LGBT rights such as same-sex marriage, dismissing them as "western" values. The blunt remarks come against a backdrop of what activists say is a growing intolerance towards the LGBT community in Malaysia. "At this moment, we do not accept LGBT but if they (the West) want to accept, that is their business. Don't force it on us," the 93-year-old told a packed audience at Bangkok's Chulalongkorn University during the second day of his state visit to Thailand. "The institution of marriage, the institution of the family has now been disregarded in the West. Why should we follow that? Our value system is as good," he added. "If they (the West) one day decided to walk around naked, do we have to follow?" Malaysia operates on a dual track legal system that gives Islamic courts the right to handle religious and family matters for Muslim citizens, who make up more than 60 percent of the population. Islamic laws are also overseen by individual states in Malaysia. Mahathir, who returned to the premiership this year after a surprise victory in national elections in May, rode to victory based on widespread frustration with corruption in Malaysia. But the popular campaign to root out government malfeasance has overshadowed some of his controversial statements on LGBT rights and Jewish people, whom he has called "hook-nosed". Malaysia's Islamic Affairs minister has previously spoken out against homosexuals, and in September Mahathir said same-sex unions were not suitable for Malaysia, which he doubled down on in his comments in Bangkok. "For example in the west now, men marry men, women marry women, and then the family is not made up of father, mother and child, but it's two men adopting one child from somebody," he said Thursday during the Q&A. "They call themselves a family." Despite his stance Mahathir recently denounced the caning of two women accused of having lesbian sex in Malaysia. The punishment was carried out in front of more than 100 spectators in an Islamic court in early September in the conservative northern state Terengganu. It was the first time women have been caned for same-sex relations in Malaysia, according to campaigners, heightening fears among the country's LGBT community. On the first part of his visit to Thailand, Mahathir met junta leader Prayut Chan-O-Cha and pledged Malaysia's help as a facilitator for talks between the Buddhist-majority state and Malay-Muslim insurgents in the south along the shared border. The region has been in the grips of a low-level but bloody insurgency for more than a decade, as rebels seek more autonomy. Autostrada Motore, Inc., the official distributor of Ferrari in the Philippines, recently held a two-prong celebration as it launched the Ferrari Portofino and announced its newest partner in its automotive endeavor. The Ferrari Portofino is the Italian carmakers latest entry-level V8 twin-turbo grand tourer and is the successor to the Ferrari California. Named after an idyllic fishing village and famous resort town in the Liguria region on the Italian Riviera, the Ferrari Portofino is aptly-named as it combines both power and luxury underneath its beautiful exterior. Like its predecessor, the Portofino has a convertible hardtop, transforming from an authentic Berlinetta into an open-top Spider in just 14 seconds, even while driving at a low speed. Traditionally, theres a compromise to be made with a folding hardtop; either the car looks like a notchback with the top up or the rear haunches look too broad as the rood is designed to be small to fit into the rear compartment. With the Portofino though, the car looks like a classic coupe or Berlinetta until youre surprised as the convertible hardtop does its mechanical ballet and the two-piece top is stored in the trunk. And when that happens, what will surprise you even more is that, even with the roof stowed at the back, theres still enough space to accommodate enough luggage and souvenirs from a weekend trip out of town. The Portofino is powered by the same direct-injection, twin-turbo V8 F154 engine family that was named as the International Engine of the Year for three straight years from 2016 to 2016. With an output of 592 hp and 760 Nm of torque that lets it sprint from 0 to 100 kph in just 3.5 seconds before it reaches its top speed in excess of 320 kph, Ferrari calls the Portofino as the most powerful convertible car that Ferrari has ever producedwhich is technically true if one only considers Ferrari models that were designed from the ground-up as convertibles and not coupe models that eventually had a convertible variant later on like the 488 and its many iterations. Story continues The Portofino boasts of many new features that are offered for the first time in its class, like its third-generation electronic rear differential (E-Diffs) thats been integrated with its F1-Trac to improve both mechanical grip and the control of the car to the limit, and its Electric Power Steering (EPS). Combined, the integration of the EPS and the E-Diff3 supposedly reduces the steering ratio by seven percent for even more responsive steering without a trade-off in stability at high-speed driving. The Portofino also has an upgraded magnetorheological damping system (SCM-E) that, thanks to the adoption of dual-coil technology, helps reduce roll while contributing to improving absorption of road surface unevenness. Inside, the Portofino has a 10.2-inch touchscreen infortainment system, a new air-conditioning system that improves passenger comfort either with the top up or down, a new steering wheel, 18-way adjustable electric-powered seats with a new backrest design that boosts legroom for rear seat passengers, and the passenger display. All passengers will also appreciate the new wind deflector which can cut air flow inside the cabin by 30 percent and reduces aerodynamic noise in open-top driving. Ferrari Portofino Now, thats it for the Ferrari Portofino. As we previously reported in our Facebook page assoonaswehearditstraightfromthesource, Autostrada Motore has taken in a new partner as it seeks to expand the Ferrari brand in the Philippines and that is with Udenna Corporation. Headed by Dennis Uy, Udenna Corportation is the holding company behind the Phoenix brand of petroleum products. According to Autostrada Motore, the partnership between long-serving company chairman and president Wellington Soong and Udennas Uy paves the way for the next generation in Autostrada to develop and grow the Ferrari brand in the Philippines. Does this mean Autostrada Motore will finally expand its Ferrari dealership outside of Metro Manila to cities like Davao, where Uy hails from? That has certainly never looked more certain than it does now. Ferrari Portofino Ferrari Portofino Ferrari Portofino Ferrari Portofino Ferrari Portofino Ferrari Portofino Ferrari Portofino Ferrari Portofino Ferrari Portofino Ferrari Portofino Ferrari Portofino ENGINE Type V8 90 twin-turbo Overall displacement 3855 cc Max. power output 592 hp (600 cv) at 7500 rpm Max. torque 760 Nm at 3000 to 5250 rpm DIMENSIONS AND WEIGHT Length 4586 mm Width 1938 mm Height 1318 mm Weight Distribution 46/54 percent front/rear PERFORMANCE 0-100 kph 3.5 seconds Max. Speed >320 kph Fuel Consumption 10.7 L/100 km or 8.35 km/L The post Ferrari PH Brings in Ferrari Portofino, Reveals New Partner appeared first on Carmudi Philippines. Leaders of China and Japan announced they had agreed to boost economic cooperation and not to pose a threat to each other at a joint press conference on Friday. Chinese Premier Li Keqiang, who held the press conference in Beijing alongside Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, also announced that the two countries had signed over 500 business deals during Abes ongoing visit to China, the first by a Japanese leader in seven years. A series of cooperation agreements were signed, including reviving a currency-swap deal dropped in 2013, while Li also called for an early conclusion to an Asia-Pacific nations trade pact that includes 16 countries but not the United States. Li did not provide further information on the business deals, but said they would provide great opportunities for both sides, and that they would push for more cooperation on innovation, environmental protection and health and welfare. China invites Japan along belt and road as Shinzo Abe makes landmark trip to Beijing We both feel that it is in our mutual interest to maintain a long-term stable China-Japan relationship, which is also beneficial to the stability of the region, said Li, adding that China was willing to increase high-level dialogue. We also agreed that we do not threaten each other and do not direct aggression towards each other, Li said. We need to have constructive ways to eliminate any kind of frictions or conflicts between the two countries. Abe is accompanied by about 500 Japanese businesspeople on a visit that both countries have hailed as an important step in their rapprochement after years of tension over wartime grievances, geopolitical rivalry and competing sovereignty claims over the East China Sea. Increasing uncertainties in the two countries respective ties with the US have pushed the two Asian rivals closer. Japan is increasingly worried about the decline of the US presence in the region, while China looks to Japan to ease the impact of its escalating trade war with the US. Story continues The fine line Japan must walk between frenemy China and Donald Trumps America first agenda Li said the two countries cooperation on third-country markets, as well as their free trade agreements in the region including the Beijing-led Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership and a free trade agreement between China, Japan and South Korea would help stabilise the free trade environment in the region and bring more opportunities. Abe said at the press conference that the nature of the relationship between Beijing and Tokyo had been transformed from competitive to cooperative. From competition to cooperation, I believe our relationship is entering a new phase, he said. We want to expand our relationship significantly. How China plans to use infrastructure projects to build bridges with Japan We are neighbours. We are partners cooperating with each other. We have to avoid becoming a threat to each other. Abe said the two countries had put a new framework in place to promote their cooperation on infrastructure projects in third countries, and that more than a thousand Chinese and Japanese business leaders had signed a memorandum of understanding to deepen their cooperation based on international standards and in areas such as finance and innovation. Abe also stressed that intellectual property rights needed to be protected as the two countries furthered their cooperation. Following the press conference, Abe was due to take part in a forum on infrastructure projects and visit Peking University, before having a meeting and attending a dinner with Chinese President Xi Jinping. This article Li Keqiang and Shinzo Abe announce China-Japan deals, commit to stable relations first appeared on South China Morning Post For the latest news from the South China Morning Post download our mobile app. Copyright 2018. Mexico on Friday announced it will offer Central American migrants medical care, education for their children and access to temporary jobs as long as they stay in two southern states. The plan was the first broad and detailed bid to address concerns of the flood of migrants, mostly from Honduras, who -- facing deadly violence and desperation at home -- set out in caravans for the United States. President Enrique Pena Nieto announced the "make yourself at home" plan that migrants who agree to remain in Chiapas and Oaxaca states can "receive medical care and even send your children to school," according to a video posted on Twitter. Migrants who want to take up his offer must file paperwork with the National Institute of Migration. "This plan is only for those who comply with Mexican laws and is a first step towards a permanent solution for those who have refugee status in Mexico," Pena Nieto said. A caravan with some 7,000 Central Americans is traveling through southern Mexico and many are determined to reach the United States -- despite warnings from US President Donald Trump, who says they will be turned back. Minister for Manpower and Second Minister for Home Affairs Josephine Teo speaking at the Institute of Policy Studies 30th Anniversary conference at Marina Bay Sands on 26 October, 2018. (PHOTO: Jacky Ho, for the Institute of Policy Studies, NUS) It is not yet practical to implement minimum wage across the board in Singapore, said Minister for Manpower Josephine Teo during a panel discussion at the Institute of Policy Studies 30th Anniversary conference at Marina Bay Sands on Friday (26 October). In her opening remarks, Teo had argued that implementing minimum wage would force employers to pay more than the market rate for some types of labour. As a result, it would have the same effect as a tax on employment, with the lowest-waged workers attracting the highest tax, she added. Not all employers would want to employ workers at this rate, which could lead to lower levels of employment, she argued. To secure a job, some workers may even choose to work illegally below the minimum wage, which makes them even more vulnerable. Teo said that the Singapore government chooses to supplement incomes through the Workfare Income Supplement Scheme (WIS), which is a permanent feature of our social security system. The scheme encourages low-wage workers to work regularly by providing support to the bottom 20 per cent of workers. Eligible workers receive 60 per cent of WIS as CPF top-ups to build up their retirement savings and 40 per cent of WIS as cash supplements to help them meet their daily needs. The WIS payouts can comprise up to an extra 30 per cent of the workers monthly income, achieving the same uplift as a minimum wage. But theres a crucial difference the cost of WIS is borne by the government, with no risk of inducing unemployment or illegal employment of such workers, she explained. Minimum wage, on the other hand, will be borne by the employers. A ladder While income supplements help, Teo believes that a better solution lies in growing wages sustainably, and one method is through the Progressive Wage Model (PWM) developed by the tripartite partners. Unlike minimum wage which specifies a floor, PWM specifies a ladder. In fact, there are four inter-linked ladders for skills, jobs, productivity and wages. A worker can be paid a higher wage on the basis of his improved skills, enlarged job or heightened productivity, she said. Story continues The rungs of the ladder provide an upward path, so the worker is not stuck earning minimum wages. Ambassador-at-large Tommy Koh during a question-and-answer session at the Institute of Policy Studies 30th Anniversary conference on 26 October, 2018 (PHOTO: Jacky Ho, for the Institute of Policy Studies, NUS) The minimum wage topic drew a response from Ambassador-at-large Tommy Koh during the question-and-answer session. He cited examples of places which implemented minimum wages such as Hong Kong, Japan and South Korea, and that these economies lifted many people out of poverty and enabled them to live in dignity. He also said that these economies did not encounter scenarios of illegal employment nor unemployment. In her response, Teo countered by citing an anecdote which she heard from a Hong Kong businesswoman shortly after minimum wages were implemented. An elderly security guard in her condominium was replaced by a much younger man, and he eventually had to move out of Hong Kong to live his retirement life in Southern China, where the cost of living is presumably cheaper. To what extent is he living his retirement years in dignity? she asked. Olive versus pear Koh also drew a lively response when he referred to an analogy made by former Prime Minister Lee Kuan Yew to illustrate the perception of growing social and economic inequality. Mr Lee said, I want to build a Singapore which resembles an olive very few very rich, very poor people, and a very large middle income. I recently plotted the income profile of Singapore. It does not look like an olive. It looks like a pear a large number of people at the bottom, Koh said. How did the olive become a pear? And if the pear is not what we want, what can we do about it? he asked. Nominated MP Walter Theseira, who was also on the panel, cautioned against artificial redistribution of income in order to move Singapores income profile from a pear to an olive. With any straight taxation or redistribution policies, you can take any arbitrary pear-shape income distribution and massage it into an olive, he explained. The question we have to ask is that, after the massaging is done, do you end up with a lot less fruit than what you started off with? Teo also responded by saying that the most practical solution in addressing social inequality is to convince Singaporeans to not equate economic worth with moral worth. We must be able to look each other in the eye and look past the markers of social success. Treat each other with respect and consideration, she said. Other Singapore stories: Singapore has to keep the escalator of social mobility moving up: DPM Tharman People care, so they debate on hawker centre model: NHB Workers Party MPs raise nearly $500,000 to fight town council lawsuits SsangYong Philippines announced at the 7th Philippine International Motor Show (PIMS) that it is ready to enter the competitive pickup truck segment with the SsangYong Musso. The Musso is set to go up against the Nissan Navara, Ford Ranger, Isuzu D-Max, Toyota Hilux, among others. SsangYongs pickup truck is based on the same body-on-frame construction of the Rexton, the brands seven-seater SUV. The Mussos exterior is bold and composed with a hint of a stylish front end, which makes it truly a SsangYong. Of note, the Musso is integrated with a five-link suspension configuration in the rear. Martin Aguilar for CARMUDI PHILIPPINES It has a large front bumper integrated with the pickups honeycombed lower grille. The upper grille is accented by a chrome bar while the headlights give the Musso a stylish look. The headlights of this vehicle is sharp-looking and its overall design gives the Musso a distinct character. Turning at the side, you can see the Mussos character lines, which gives flair to the vehicles design. The rear, on the other hand, is fitted with huge taillights while the tailgate has character lines as well. Inside, the Musso gets a two-tone interior theme. It features a Brown Nappa leather seats as well as a leather steering wheel, and an eight-inch infotainment system with Apple Carplay and Android Auto. In addition, the Musso gets an eight-way power driver and front passenger seats, and SsangYong says the second-row seat can recline up to 27 degrees. Under the hood, the SsangYong Musso is equipped with a 2.2-liter turbo diesel engine that delivers 179 hp and 420 Nm of torque. The engine is connected to a six-speed automatic transmission. The Musso is initially available in 42 configuration. Martin Aguilar for CARMUDI PHILIPPINES SsangYong says the Musso comes with a free three-year (or 60,000 km whichever comes first) Periodic Maintenance Service. Aside from that, the Musso also comes with a five-year warranty (or 100,000 km whichever comes first). The Musso pickup truck is priced at PHP1.495 million and is available in seven colors: Atlantic Blue, Silky White Pearl, Maroon Brown, Indian Red, Marble Gray, Space Black, and Fine Silver. The post PIMS 2018: SsangYong Musso Enters Pickup Segment appeared first on Carmudi Philippines. A young Sandi Tan in Shirkers. (Photo: Netflix) Where does one begin describing the strangeness of the triumph-over-the-odds story that film-maker Sandi Tan attempts to tell in her Sundance award-winning documentary Shirkers? In 1992, Singapore-born Tan, then a 19-year-old aspiring auteur, rounded up two of her schoolmates, Jasmine Ng and Sophie Siddique, to make a ragtag indie feature-length flick in a country with a nascent filmmaking scene. The teenagers spent their combined savings and two months shooting in more than a hundred locations around Singapore. Tans French New Wave-inspired script for that original Shirkers (which her current documentary is named after) was about a serial killer named S, played by Tan herself, who goes on a murderous road trip around the island. At the heart of Tans fantastical work was a deep desire to document everything she loved about Singapore in one film, she told Yahoo Lifestyle Singapore in an interview ahead of Shirkers release on Netflix on Friday (26 October). Then disaster struck: Before they could edit the film, the girls eccentric film teacher-mentor, American Georges Cardona, who was also the director, made off back to the United States with all 70 reels of their raw 16mm footage without their knowing. Sandi Tans enigmatic film teacher, Georges Cardona, who absconded with all the footage of Shirkers after filming. (Photo: Netflix) Their masterpiece never got to see the light of day that is, until the film canisters were sent back to Tan in pristine condition by Cardonas wife when he died 20 years later. Shocked at first, Tan then set out to investigate the story behind her stolen dream a journey that is documented in the new Shirkers, which combines the 1992 footage with interviews that attempt to elucidate Cardonas betrayal. Strange as that story may be, Shirkers struck a chord with viewers when it premiered at the prestigious Sundance Film Festival in January, where Tan won Best Director in the World Cinema Documentary category. Streaming giant Netflix quickly acquired it for an exclusive global release. Tan has two other short films to her name Moveable Feast and Gourmet Baby as well as a novel The Black Isle. When asked whether she considers herself more a writer or film-maker, she says that her passion for now is in making films. Story continues Sandi Tan set out to investigate the story behind her stolen dream, a journey that is documented in Shirkers. (Photo: Stefan Khoo Studio for Netflix) Although a deeply personal film, there is also something universal in Shirkers surreal tale of an artist triumphing over setbacks that a global audience can identify with, says Tan, who is now a US citizen based in Los Angeles. Its a compelling story, said Tan of her empowering journey to reclaim the achievement that she once thought was lost in a black hole in her life. From the premiere, we could tell that people were moved. Its about youthful endeavours, banding together to do something that was impossible. Tan says that her driving motivation for making the original Shirkers was to capture locations and colourful characters that represented all the best of Singapore, as I saw it while paying tribute to her favourite films such as mob movies, the Terminator series and Tim Burtons works. I saw all these places that I loved so much and I wanted to capture them all before they vanished, said Tan. All these beautiful things that people were taking for granted, that I wanted to put all in one place in a way that we could show all the grown-ups who werent paying attention to the small beauties around them. The 16mm film canisters from Shirkers that disappeared for 20 years. (Photo: Netflix) For Tan, these locations worthy of preserving on film included the sleepy neighbourhoods of Katong and Siglap, mannequin shops in Outram Park, and 50s apartments in Labrador Park that would later be torn down. She speaks fondly of Tay Buan Guan Supermarket in Katong, one of Singapores first supermarkets, which was eventually closed in 2000. Filming Shirkers in 1992 was a monumental achievement for the three friends, said Tan. The teenagers had to cast adults, including 100 extras, and cajole free equipment from companies as well as free labour from friends. When the fruit of their labour their footage was all taken away from them by Cardona, it was very traumatic for them to have all the proof of their hard work disappear, said Tan. If you work in the film industry in the US, its not uncommon to meet a mentor who both enables and thwarts your dreams, said Tan. People find it cathartic to have this story told. Follow Yahoo Lifestyle Singapore on Facebook. Related stories: Film Review: Shirkers Singapore-born filmmakers documentary to premiere at Sundance after 26 years (Reuters) - Former Trump White House adviser and conservative firebrand Steve Bannon said on Friday he was endorsing Brazil's far-right presidential candidate Jair Bolsonaro, hoping he could win Sunday's vote and contribute to a global populist tide. "Captain Bolsonaro is a Brazilian patriot, and I believe a great leader for his country at this historic moment," Bannon said in a text to Reuters about the former military officer. Bolsonaro's team has courted Bannon's support and his son Eduardo tweeted in August about visit with him in New York. "We had a great conversation and we share the same worldview," wrote Eduardo Bolsonaro, the top-voted congressman in Brazil, above a smiling photo by his side. He said they planned "to join forces, especially against cultural Marxism." Opinion polls point to a decisive win for Bolsonaro in the run-off vote against his leftist rival Fernando Haddad on Sunday. The tough-talking right-wing lawmaker has successfully pitched himself as the one to clean up a corrupt political establishment and crack down on crime. "The populist movement is a global phenomenon," Bannon told Reuters in an interview this week. "The trend is definitely in our favor and that's why I think Bolsonaro will win big." After leaving the White House, Bannon has been throwing his weight behind far-right politicians in Europe and elsewhere in an attempt to shake up the global order. However, he said he was not working for Bolsonaro's campaign. Bannon, the chief strategist of Trump's 2016 campaign, said he saw similarities between the political and economic forces that elevated Bolsonaro and that swept his former boss to power. "He's a figure like Trump," Bannon said of Bolsonaro, who took 56 percent of voter intentions in the Datafolha poll released on Thursday, compared to Haddad's 44 percent. It was the 2008 financial crisis that "lit the fuse that exploded with Donald Trump's candidacy and his presidency," Bannon said in the interview earlier this week. "Brazil is going through that type of crisis now." (Reporting by Nathan Layne in New York; Editing by Chizu Nomiyama and David Gregorio) A United Nations plan to end the seven-year civil war in Syria has run aground after Damascus blocked the world body's proposal for a committee to draft a new constitution, provoking anger among western powers. UN special envoy Staffan de Mistura has been working since January on forming a group of 150 members to thrash out a new constitution, seen as a first step to winding down a conflict that has cost more than 360,000 lives. Under the UN plan, the Syrian regime would choose 50 of the committee members, the Syrian opposition another 50 and the UN would nominate the final 50, composed of representatives of civil society and technical experts. De Mistura, a veteran Italian-Swedish diplomat due to step down next month, said Friday that Foreign Minister Walid Muallem rejected the last list of UN-proposed names and suggested his own method to the final 50 members during talks in Damascus this week. "Walid Muallem didn't accept a role for the UN in identifying or selecting a third list," the envoy told the UN Security Council by video conference during an emergency session called by the United States. "Rather, Mr Muallem indicated that the governments of Syria and Russia had agreed recently that the three Astana guarantors (Iran, Russia and Turkey) and the Syrian government would in consultations among them prepare a proposal as regards the third list." De Mistura said withdrawing the UN list was only possible "if there was an agreement on a new credible, balanced and inclusive list" that complied with UN resolutions and commitments made in January talks in the Russian resort town of Sochi. - 'Unacceptable' for Washington - Unsurprisingly, the Syrian counter-proposal was met with widespread condemnation from western powers, led by Britain, France and the United States. "The United Nations has exclusive control over the committee's membership, schedule and scope of work -- as affirmed by the Russian Federation in its January 2018 Sochi Declaration," said Jonathan Cohen, the deputy US ambassador to the world body. "Further obstruction on the committee's formation is unacceptable," he added, calling for urgent action. French ambassador Francois Delattre warned that "the risk of new escalation cannot be ruled out. That can only be done through a solution that is politically credible and inclusive." "It is right that the UN is involved," in the political process, said Karen Pierce, the British ambassador to the UN, stressing the world body's deep engagement with issues of humanitarian aid, refugees and health. Vassily Nebenzia, the ambassador of Russia, a key ally of the Syrian regime, was critical of the decision to hold the Security Council meeting. "We cannot go against the will of Syria," he said. "We will help Staffan de Mistura create this constitutional committee with respect for Syrian sovereignty." Nebenzia urged caution in the process and stressed that the outgoing diplomat, who already addressed the council last week, not make the issue his "political legacy." De Mistura said he would take part Saturday in a special summit in Istanbul bringing together leaders from France, Germany, Russia and Turkey. The Syrian summit will be followed on Monday by a meeting of the so-called "small group" of Britain, Egypt, France, Germany, Jordan, Saudi Arabia and the United States, a UN official said. De Mistura will then go on to Geneva to meet with the Astana accord guarantors Iran and Russia, which are backing the regime of President Bashar al-Assad, and Turkey, a major sponsor of anti-regime rebel groups. The UN's attempt to broker peace in Syria have largely been eclipsed by a parallel diplomatic initiative by Moscow, Tehran and Turkey. (Top L-R) Actor Robert De Niro, U.S. Representative Debbie Wasserman Schultz, former Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton, Democratic Party donor George Soros and former U.S. President Barack Obama, (Bottom L-R) former U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder, U.S. Congresswoman Maxine Waters, former U.S. Vice President Joe Biden and former CIA director John Brennan are pictured in a combination photograph from Reuters file photos. REUTERS/File Photos (Reuters) - FBI agents used DNA and a fingerprint to arrest a man in Florida suspected of sending at least 14 bombs to critics of U.S. President Donald Trump days ahead of congressional elections. Cesar Sayoc faces up to 48 years in prison if found guilty, said U.S. Attorney General Jeff Sessions. He earlier said he faced 58 years. Following are the figures targeted, starting with the most recent. Many packages used the return address of Representative Debbie Wasserman Schultz of Florida, former chairwoman of the Democratic National Committee. 1) Billionaire Tom Steyer, a Democratic donor 2) Senator Kamala Harris, a Democrat from California 3) Former Director of National Intelligence James Clapper and CNN 4) Senator Cory Booker, a Democrat from New Jersey 5) Former U.S. Vice President Joe Biden (2 packages) 6) Actor Robert De Niro, who hurled obscenities at Trump at the Tony Awards in June 7) Representative Maxine Waters from California (2 packages) 8) Former Attorney General Eric Holder, who served under former President Barack Obama 9) Former CIA Director John Brennan and CNN 10) Former President Barack Obama 11) Former U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, who ran against Trump for the presidency 12) Billionaire George Soros, donor to liberal groups (Reporting by Susan Heavey; editing by Lisa Shumaker and Cynthia Osterman) Trade war will drive Chinese investment in Asean to US$500 billion by 2035, think tank says Chinese investment in Asean countries is set to more than triple to US$500 billion by 2035, with the US-China trade war likely to provide a catalyst for the spike, according to a regional think tank. The claim was made in a report published on Thursday by the Asean+3 Macroeconomic Research Office (AMRO), a regional macroeconomic surveillance unit based in Singapore that represents the 10 members of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations, plus China, Japan and South Korea. While the trade conflict between Washington and Beijing could cause some short-term disruption to supply chains and production networks, in the longer term it may also accelerate investment between China and Asean, said Chaipat Poonpatpibul, AMROs principal economist. The report estimated that China has invested US$150 billion in Asean countries in 2018, but said that figure could soar by more than 230 per cent by 2035. Investment in the other direction was forecast to rise by a similar proportion, to US$200 billion in 2035 from an estimated US$60 billion this year, it said. The trade war has already led to South Koreas LG and Samsung Electronics shifting part of their manufacturing from China to Vietnam to avoid the US tariffs on Chinese imports. But while that might benefit Vietnam in the short term, its own exports may be hit if Washington extends its punitive measures to Chinese producers operating there. In the long term, we see this as a catalyst for further trade and investment integration [between China and Asean], as some industries may move to Asean and that will create further investment and trade opportunities between the two sides, Poonpatpibul said. Beijing has said Asean is a key investment destination for China. As of the end of last year, there were more than 4,000 Chinese companies in the region, employing about 300,000 locals. Story continues Some of Chinas investments come under the umbrella of Beijings Belt and Road Initiative, although Xi Jinpings pet infrastructure development project is not without its problems. After returning to office in May, Malaysian Prime Minister Mahathir Mohamad halted work on a US$20 billion rail link and two natural gas pipeline projects funded by Chinese investors. AMRO, which also works as an advisory body for regional governments, said it expects China to account for 22 per cent of Aseans trade by 2035, up from 17 per cent this year. At the same time, Asean is forecast to account for 18 per cent of Chinas total trade, from 11 per cent in 2018. Meanwhile, the number of Chinese tourists visiting Asean countries is expected to double to 72 million by 2035, the report said. Despite the mostly positive outlook, the AMRO report said the current slowdown in the worlds second-largest economy could have a detrimental impact on its neighbours. One of the risks is the external environment, said Hoe Ee Khor, its chief economist. If countries become more protectionist, it will slow down the speed of integration. Asean comprises Brunei, Cambodia, Indonesia, Laos, Malaysia, Myanmar, Philippines, Singapore, Thailand and Vietnam. This article Trade war will drive Chinese investment in Asean to US$500 billion by 2035, think tank says first appeared on South China Morning Post For the latest news from the South China Morning Post download our mobile app. Copyright 2018. Donald Trump on Saturday plunged into a frenzied last 10 days of campaigning ahead of crucial midterm elections, seeking to regain the spotlight briefly seized by the arrest of a Florida fan of his charged with mailing bombs to more than a dozen of the US president's leading critics. After initially denouncing the mailings as "terrorizing acts" and calling them "despicable," Trump has resumed his attacks on the news media, saying they themselves shared the blame. The president was due to speak later Saturday at a rally in Illinois, after he on Friday accused the media of using the bombing suspect's political inclinations to "score political points against me and the Republican Party." At a rally in Charlotte, North Carolina, on Friday he blamed the suspicious packages for slowing the Republicans' push to hold control of both houses of Congress in the November 6 midterms. "The Republicans had tremendous momentum, and then, of course, this happened," Trump said. Cesar Sayoc, 56, a registered Republican with a criminal history, was charged with mailing at least 13 bombs in a week-long spree that inflamed the country ahead of the elections. The FBI said late Friday that a possible 14th bomb, similar to the others, had been recovered at the California home of Democratic donor Tom Steyer. Sayoc was arrested outside a Florida mall, and his van, covered in pro-Trump and anti-liberal stickers, was seized. - 'I think I've been toned down' - Trump is planning an intensive schedule of big rallies -- the platform from which he has launched some of his sharpest strikes on political foes -- from now until the election. Along with attacks on his critics, he is expected to play up what he says is the "threat" of a caravan of mostly Honduran migrants moving slowly northward, mostly on foot, through Mexico. On Saturday after several people were reportedly killed at a synagogue in Pittsburgh, Trump addressed the poisonous climate. "It's a terrible, terrible thing what's going on with hate in our country, frankly, and all over the world and something has to be done," he told journalists before flying off to campaign. Top Democratic lawmakers Nancy Pelosi and Chuck Schumer have accused Trump of condoning "physical violence and dividing Americans." Asked on Friday by a reporter whether, in light of the bombing attempts, he would pledge "to tone down" his rhetoric, Trump replied, "Well, I think I've been toned down, if you want to know the truth. "I could really tone it up... The media has been extremely unfair to me and to the Republican Party." In his North Carolina rally the president lashed out at the top Democrats, drawing supportive boos with his dismissive mention of Pelosi and his mocking of "Cryin' Chuck Schumer." Among a flurry of election-related Twitter messages early Saturday, Trump retweeted, with evident approval, a headline from right-leaning website Breitbart News: "Trump Thunders at Media for Smearing His Supporters after Bomb Scares." - Obama, Clinton, Biden - Sayoc has been charged with five federal crimes, including mailing of explosives and threats against former presidents, Attorney General Jeff Sessions announced. If put on trial and convicted, Sayoc faces up to 48 years in prison. The bombs were sent through the mail, many of them via a US Postal Service processing center in Florida, and Sayoc was tracked down based on fingerprint and possible DNA evidence, agents said. He is accused of mailing explosives to prominent Trump critics in several states, including former president Barack Obama and Trump's opponent in the 2016 presidential election, Hillary Clinton. The other targets were ex-vice president Joe Biden, Hollywood star Robert De Niro, billionaire donor George Soros, former CIA director John Brennan, former intelligence chief James Clapper, former attorney general Eric Holder, Congresswoman Maxine Waters, and Senators Cory Booker and Kamala Harris. All the targets are loathed by Trump supporters for their public opposition to the US president. A lawyer for the suspect's family, Ron Lowy, told CNN that Sayoc had seemed more interested in "bodybuilding (and) nightclub events" than in politics. He was arrested in 2002 for making a bomb threat against a power company, according to court records, and was sentenced to a year on probation. He has also been arrested for theft and domestic violence. "It's my opinion that he was attracted to the Trump formula of ... reaching out to these types of outsiders, people who don't fit in, people who are angry at America, telling them that they have a place at the table, telling them that it's OK to get angry," Lowy said. "I believe that that was a motivating factor. Do I blame the president solely? No. This is a sick individual." Each of the homemade bombs included six inches of PVC pipe, a small clock, a battery, wiring and energetic material, defined by the FBI as potentially explosive. US and China officials meet ahead of possible talks between Xi Jinping and Donald Trump A US trade official met with his Chinese counterpart in Beijing last week, in a sign that working-level contact between the two nations has resumed despite rising tensions, ahead of a possible summit next month between their leaders. Alan Turley, deputy assistant secretary on China and Mongolia in the US Commerce Department, also met US business representatives during his visit, according to the US embassy in Beijing and other sources familiar with the situation. A US embassy spokesman said Turley was in the region primarily to accompany a trade mission of US companies to Mongolia, and had stopped in Beijing on his return to meet companies and have industry-related government meetings. Other sources said Turley landed in Beijing last Wednesday night and departed on Friday, and also met with Chinese economists and think tanks. Turley was part of the US delegation which attended the 2017 Belt and Road summit in Beijing. He was also a member of the US negotiating team which visited Beijing in May. Working level contact has been on hold for months as the US and China have exchanged tit-for-tat punitive tariffs, one US source said. The trade war has already hit confidence in both countries. We have been clear on each others perspectives so now it is time to push forward to work out a way out of the trade conflicts, according to a Chinese source who met Turley last week. With trade tensions high, the embassy said the US would not be sending any high-level officials to the International Import Exhibition in Shanghai early next month, urging the Chinese government to continue market-oriented reform and offer a level playing field. The trade talks ended in deadlock in June, and the confrontation between the worlds two largest economies has now gone beyond trade issues as the US has initiated new tensions with China over the South China Sea and Taiwan. Story continues But officials are arranging for Chinese President Xi Jinping and his US counterpart Donald Trump to meet on the sidelines of the G20 summit in Argentina next month. Lu Xiang, a US specialist with the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, said the US was continuing to test Beijings bottom line on the South China Sea and Taiwan issues, but trade was vital to bilateral ties. Bilateral relations will be in crisis without a proper solution to the trade war, he said. But it is unclear who represents the US government. That is the biggest puzzle in the current situation. Chinas ministries for foreign affairs and commerce have not responded to questions from the South China Morning Post. This article US and China officials meet ahead of possible talks between Xi Jinping and Donald Trump first appeared on South China Morning Post For the latest news from the South China Morning Post download our mobile app. Copyright 2018. Worried after Cathay Pacifics data breach? Heres all you need to know about privacy protection in Hong Kong Cathay Pacific Airways sent ripples of alarm across Hong Kong on Wednesday night when it revealed that the data of 9.4 million passengers was compromised in March. The belated disclosure has raised concerns about how personal data is safeguarded in the city. Heres all you need to know about privacy protection in Hong Kong. What does the privacy law regulate? The Personal Data (Privacy) Ordinance protects the privacy rights of a person in relation to personal data. But non-compliance by a data holder does not automatically constitute a criminal offence. The privacy commissioner first issues an enforcement notice asking the data holder to rectify any breaches, and those who do not do so could be fined up to HK$50,000 (US$6,410) and jailed two years. There is no statutory requirement that data breaches be reported. How often is the law enforced? The Post reported earlier that the number of formal investigations launched by the privacy commissioner for personal data has dropped from more than 100 in 2014 to just one last year. Instead, it has mostly turned its attention to checking individuals and companies for compliance. From 2014 to 2017, the office conducted between 219 and 279 compliance checks annually. Privacy Commissioner Stephen Wong Kai-yi told the Post the decline in investigations could be attributed to most of the affected data users being very cooperative and taking immediate remedial actions after the breaches. When was the law last updated? The ordinance was enacted in 1996 and last updated in 2012, but the update only addresses direct marketing. In 2009, the government carried out a public consultation to review the ordinance. This included a proposal to set up a notification system requiring organisations to notify the privacy commissioner and affected individuals when a breach of data security gives rise to the leakage or loss of personal data. But officials said most people supported setting up the system on a voluntary basis amid concerns that data users would bear an undue burden. Story continues In April this year, Wong said he would review the citys 22-year-old data protection law following a series of major data leaks locally. More than half a million people were affected in an incident relating to an inactive database owned by Hong Kong Broadband Network. The database held information on 380,000 customers, and it was ensnared in a number of cyberattacks targeting travel agencies involving some 220,000 clients. How do local rules for data breach disclosure compare with those of other countries? The European Union has toughened its data protection regulation since May 25. Under the new General Data Protection Regulation, companies must report personal data breaches within 72 hours or face a fine of 4 per cent of their annual global revenue. But lawyers have said the stricter law would not be applicable to the Cathay Pacific breach detected in March, as the EU rules are not retroactive. However, some EU nations such as France, Germany and the Netherlands punish a failure or even a delay in flagging a data breach. In Canada, it is against federal law not to notify the data regulator or affected persons in the event of a compromise. Most states in the US require businesses to notify residents of any breaches of personal information. However, the legal consequences for non-compliance are not always clear. California in July passed a law, effective January 1, 2020, stating businesses could be prosecuted for failing to disclose a data breach within 30 days of its happening, effective January 1, 2020. Cathay has declined to comment on where the affected customers are based. Jonathan Kok, a partner at Singapore-based RHTLaw Taylor Wessing, said affected Cathay passengers could file complaints with regulators in their respective countries, who could then demand answers from the airline about the data breach. What actions will the privacy commission take regarding the latest breach? The Office of the Privacy Commissioner for Personal Data said it would initiate a compliance check on Cathays data breach. Wong on Thursday said he was considering stiffening the rules, but conceded this could take a long time. He also stressed that organisations amassing and deriving benefits from personal data should be held to a higher ethical standard as well as be respectful and fair as advocated in a report recently put out by his office. This article Worried after Cathay Pacifics data breach? Heres all you need to know about privacy protection in Hong Kong first appeared on South China Morning Post For the latest news from the South China Morning Post download our mobile app. Copyright 2018. 1. Comments must not be racist, misogynistic, homophobic, or otherwise bigoted. 2. Comments must not involve little more than name-calling and insulting remarks. 3. Comments must not be made by "anonymous" or "unknown". 4. Comments must not try to sneak in some free advertising for themselves (like spam). I invite anyone who wishes to comment on this blog to do so. I enjoy the comments, whether you agree with what I have said or not. But some people want to abuse the right to comment, and since this is my blog, I have decided to lay down the following rules. If your comment violates these rules, it will not be published. Why I voted for Trump: Two Photos Sarah McKinley Kathryn Steinle By David Stolinsky. October 22nd, 2018 Article Original There are many reasons that citizens vote for a candidate. Blue-collar families often vote for the one who will bring back manufacturing jobs. Military families often vote for the one who will leave no man behind. And there are intangible, psychological reasons, which the voters themselves may not be aware of. For me, public safety is a primary consideration. People have a finite amount of sympathy. Im sure Mother Teresa had more than I do, but even hers was not unlimited. Wisely, she spent hers for the poor. But many people are unwise. They spend their sympathy on illegal immigrants and criminals, leaving none for law-abiding citizens. This failing is illustrated by these two photos. Sarah McKinley. Eighteen-year-old Sarah McKinley was home with her three-month-old son on New Years Eve 2013. She lived in the rural community of Blanchard, Oklahoma, and police response times tended to be long. Her husband was not with her; he had died of cancer on Christmas Day. She saw two men attempting to break in. She recognized one as a man who had been stalking her since her husbands funeral. Apparently he was looking for drugs in the cancer victims home. She gave the baby his bottle, then retrieved a shotgun and a handgun and barricaded the door. She phoned 911 and asked what to do. She was told she could not shoot unless they came through the door. But the 911 dispatcher, who was a woman, added, You do what you have to do to protect your baby. ....... 'Gun control', illegal immigration and porous borders - all add up to a recipe for a potentially reduced ability to defend the self. No disrespect to law enforcement but the inevitable delays in response time inevitably lead to inadequate protection when seconds really matter. We do NOT need armed illegals, but we for sure DO need citizens to have a means of defending themselves at all times. "You don't have to be Jewish to fight by our side." You just have to love freedom. 2018 JPFO All rights reserved. jpfo@jpfo.org 1-800-869-1884 Jews for the Preservation of Firearms Ownership 12500 NE 10th Pl. Bellevue, WA 98005 USA "America's most aggressive defender of civil rights" We make the NRA look like moderates Join JPFO Back to Top In an Oct. 27 Slatest, Daniel Politi misspelled Talia Lavins last name as Talia Levin. An Oct. 26 Interrogation mistranscribed two words: theology instead of sociology and rate instead of brake. In an Oct. 26 Moneybox, Henry Grabar misstated that the LinkNYC boards were run by Google. They were installed by Intersection, a company launched by Sidewalk Labs, which is a part of Alphabet, which Google renamed itself in 2015. Due to an editing error, an Oct. 26 the World by Isabela Dias identified Carlos Eduardo Lins da Silva as a former editor in chief of Folha de S. Paulo. He is a former deputy editor in chief. Advertisement In an Oct. 25 Moneybox, Jordan Weissmann misidentified Data for Progress as Data Progress. In an Oct. 25 Science, Daniel Engber incorrectly stated that the ovulating women in Ruben Arslans study were not more likely to fantasize about men other than their boyfriends. In fact, they expressed increased sexual attraction for both their current partners and for other men. Advertisement Advertisement Advertisement In an Oct. 25 Wide Angle, Kaya Oakes misspelled conductor David Moschlers last name. In an Oct. 24 Life, Daniel Villarreal misidentified the founder and organizer of the club NSFW. His name is Daniel Saynt, not Adam Saynt. In an Oct. 23 Brow Beat, Hailey Gavin misspelled Alex Brinas last name. In an Oct. 22 Metropolis, Henry Grabar misspelled Chris Stirewalts first name. Advertisement In an Oct. 21 Brow Beat, Matthew Dessem misspelled musician Benmont Tenchs first name. In an Oct. 19 History and an Oct. 19 Angle, Rebecca Onion and the Slate Copy Desk originally misstated that the Proud Boys are an alt-right group. Though the Proud Boys have espoused anti-immigrant and Western chauvinist views, founder Gavin McInnes has asserted that the group is not a part of the alt-right movement. Due to an editing error, Oct. 18, Oct. 22, and Oct. 23 Future Tense pieces misstated the date of Future Tenses event on the 100th anniversary of the 1918 influenza pandemic. In an Oct. 18 Slatest, Aaron Mak misidentified the acronym for Asian Americans Advancing Justice as AAAJC. It is AAAJ. Advertisement In an Oct. 18 Slatest, Ben Mathis-Lilley misstated that Elliot Broidy and George Nader had reportedly secured contracts from Saudi Arabia and the UAE when they had only reportedly been close to securing them. The piece also called the two men ex-cons. Nader did serve jail time, but while pleading guilty to a felony that was later knocked down to a misdemeanor, Broidy did not. Advertisement In an Oct. 16 Medical Examiner, Keven Franciotti misstated that MAPS would not be allowed to advertise MDMA therapy if it receives FDA approval. It will be. Due to an editing error, the Oct. 15 Women in Charge show page misstated that Nadja West runs the military branch of the U.S. Army. She runs the United States Army Medical Command. Advertisement Advertisement In a May 21 Slatest, Elliot Hannon misstated in the headline that Trump fundraiser Elliot Broidy and George Nader had reportedly secured $1 billion in contracts from Saudi Arabia and the UAE. They were reportedly only close to securing those contracts. In an Oct. 23, 2014, Technology, David Auerbach misidentified the number of porn aggregator sites owned by MindGeek. It owned four out of the top 10 in 2014. Slate strives to correct all errors of fact. If youve seen an error in our pages, let us know at corrections@slate.com. General comments should be posted in our Comments sections associated with each article. Sen. Cory Booker did not come out and propose reparations for black Americans this week. But the policy idea he rolled out on Monday might be the closest thing that we can expect to see from a serious presidential contender going into 2020. The senator from New Jersey, who is gearing up for a White House run, plans to introduce legislation soon that would create a baby bond programa concept left-wing thinkers have talked about for years as a tool that could reduce Americas yawning racial wealth gap. Advertisement Under the bill, every child born in the United States would receive a federal opportunity account containing $1,000, which they could not touch until they turned 18. The money would be managed by the Treasury, with the aim of earning a small annual return. But depending on a familys income, children would receive up to an additional $2,000 each year from the government, with poorer kids getting relatively higher payments. Advertisement Advertisement Advertisement Bookers office estimates that a child born into poverty could end up with approximately $46,000 to her name by the time she became an adult. She could only use the money for certain wealth-building purposes, such as buying a home, paying for college tuition, or retirement savings. Advertisement As you may have noticed, race does not factor directly into any of this. But because black and Hispanic families tend to have lower incomes than whites, their kids would receive significantly more money on average. According to a fact sheet produced by Bookers office, the average black child could expect to have an account worth $29,038 by the time they were ready to graduate high school. White children, on average, would receive just more than half of that. Advertisement Advertisement Bookers baby bond program would be a significant step toward addressing the wealth divide between blacks and whites, whichperhaps more than any other fact of U.S. economic lifeencapsulates the countrys long history of systemic discrimination against black Americans. Depending on whether you count the value of cars in the calculation, the median white household is worth either about 10 times or 41 times more than the median black household. According to New York University economist Edward Wolff, the median black household had just $3,400 of net wealth in 2016, compared with $140,500 for the median white household. (Thats the calculation that doesnt count the family Ford, because Wolff discounts cars as depreciating assets most families cant sell.) Advertisement Advertisement The fact that most black families lack any meaningful amount of wealth may also explain why their children have so much trouble moving up the economic ladder. Research by the Urban Institute has shown that even when you account for factors like parental education and income, children born into highernet worth families are more likely to graduate college, for instance. Having financial resources matters. The reasons underpinning the racial wealth gap are complicatedbut research has shown it cant be explained away by factors like education or family structure or frugality. As Ta-Nehisi Coates memorably wrote in his case for reparations, a large part of the problem was that black Americans were systemically prevented from buying homes and accumulating wealth by racist government policies like redlining. White Americans during and after the New Deal, meanwhile, had access to government handouts in the form of Federal Housing Administration loans that black Americans did not. Today, blacks are far less likely to receive large gifts or inheritances. On average, black Americans just dont have much accumulated wealth to pass between generations. Advertisement Advertisement Baby bonds, again, are not the same thing as reparations. The latter would be meant to be part of a process of truth and reconciliation, where the U.S. government acknowledges and apologizes for the wrongs done specifically to the black community, then makes financial restitution. Baby bonds are race-neutral and dont involve any recognition of historic wrongs. But given how fraught racial politics are in this country, this policy might be one of the best facially race-neutral alternatives to address the wealth gap, as Darrick Hamilton, an economist at the New School who has been a key proponent of using baby bonds to address the black-white wealth gap, explained to me. The most salient outcome of those years of oppression directed at black people is probably exemplified in the racial wealth gap, Hamilton, who told me he worked with Bookers team on their proposal, said. The most parsimonious way to address racial wealth inequality is a system of reparations. But if were not at the political moment for reparations, then baby bonds are a very good mechanism. Advertisement Advertisement Would baby bonds really win political support from people who would oppose reparations? Polling by Data for Progress suggests they might.* The group finds that reparations are deeply unpopular overall and only enjoy 2 percent net approval among Americans under 45. Universal basic wealtha version of baby bondsis slightly more popular than not overall and enjoys 27 percent net approval among those under 45. In other words, white millennials and Gen Xers seem open to the ideawhich isnt entirely surprising, since baby bonds would be a way to address the wider wealth gap between Americas haves and have-nots. The program is not exclusively about racial justice, and so it appears to be more palatable to whites. Advertisement Its possible that baby bonds would become less popular as they became a subject of debate outside wonky left-wing circles, especially if conservatives decide they are, simply, a soft version of reparations. There are also many reasons progressives might question Bookers proposal. Some might prefer a program that gives money to families upfront when theyre raising children, such as a child allowance or the tax credits California Sen. Kamala Harris, another likely presidential contender, proposed recently. But if you think that the United States owes the black community financial justice for the wrongs that have been inflicted on it over time, baby bonds would be one way to come close to delivering it. Itll be interesting to see if Booker can sell it on the campaign trail. Why I voted for Trump: Two Photos Sarah McKinley Kathryn Steinle By David Stolinsky. October 22nd, 2018 Article Original There are many reasons that citizens vote for a candidate. Blue-collar families often vote for the one who will bring back manufacturing jobs. Military families often vote for the one who will leave no man behind. And there are intangible, psychological reasons, which the voters themselves may not be aware of. For me, public safety is a primary consideration. People have a finite amount of sympathy. Im sure Mother Teresa had more than I do, but even hers was not unlimited. Wisely, she spent hers for the poor. But many people are unwise. They spend their sympathy on illegal immigrants and criminals, leaving none for law-abiding citizens. This failing is illustrated by these two photos. Sarah McKinley. Eighteen-year-old Sarah McKinley was home with her three-month-old son on New Years Eve 2013. She lived in the rural community of Blanchard, Oklahoma, and police response times tended to be long. Her husband was not with her; he had died of cancer on Christmas Day. She saw two men attempting to break in. She recognized one as a man who had been stalking her since her husbands funeral. Apparently he was looking for drugs in the cancer victims home. She gave the baby his bottle, then retrieved a shotgun and a handgun and barricaded the door. She phoned 911 and asked what to do. She was told she could not shoot unless they came through the door. But the 911 dispatcher, who was a woman, added, You do what you have to do to protect your baby. It takes only seconds to call the police. Waiting for them to arrive could take the rest of your life. Anon. When seconds count, the police are just minutes away. Clint Smith, firearms instructor Sarah was on the phone with 911 for 21 minutes, and the police still had not arrived when the men broke down the door. The first man, the stalker, came at her with a 12-inch hunting knife. She fired the shotgun, killing the man. His companion fled, quite possibly breaking the Olympic 100-meter record. He later turned himself in to police. Later Sarah explained: I knew that I was going to have to choose him or my son, and it wasnt going to be my son, so I did what I had to do. Theres nothing more dangerous than a mother with a child. If we truly want to save just one life, we will remember Sarah McKinley and all those like her. We will read the work of Dr. John Lott, especially More Guns, Less Crime, which shows that violent crime decreases when more law-abiding citizens are armed, after background checks and suitable training. We will read the work of Dr. Gary Kleck, especially Point Blank: Guns and Violence in America, which shows that guns are used more often to defend against violent crime than to commit it. It is bizarre that progressives who claim to fear the imposition of a Nazi regime, by Trump or others, are the same people who work to disarm the citizens. They seem utterly unaware of the massive contradiction. If we truly want to save just one life, we would be guided by logic instead of emotions. We would not vote for a candidate like Hillary Clinton, who wants to eviscerate the Second Amendment. We would vote for a candidate like Donald Trump, who could afford all the bodyguards he wanted, but who went to the trouble of obtaining his own carry permit. And we did. Kathryn Steinle. Like many liberal cities, San Francisco declared itself a sanctuary city, so that illegal immigrants would be reported to Immigration only if they commit violent felonies. The supremacy of federal law is a concept that seems to have eluded San Francisco officials. In fact, tens of thousands of illegal immigrants have been released from custody in California without immigration officials being notified. In fact, about 39% of the federal prison population is composed of illegal aliens, of whom over 25,000 were arrested for homicide. How well the sanctuary city program works was illustrated with striking clarity. Jose Ines Garcia Zarate, age 45, is an illegal immigrant who had been deported five times. If you are deported and return, you have committed a felony, so Garcia was guilty of four felonies before he even got started. Not satisfied, he then accumulated at least four arrests on drug charges in three states. Garcia Zarate stated that he came to San Francisco because he knew it was a sanctuary city, and he would not be deported again. He was correct. He was arrested again (a fifth time) on drug charges, and Immigration put a hold on him, so he could be deported again when he was released from jail. But San Francisco authorities followed their policy and refused to honor the hold, because Garcia Zarate had not committed a violent felony. He was released ? and obligingly committed a violent felony. He shot 32-year-old Kathryn Steinle, who died in her fathers arms at a tourist attraction on Pier 14. She worked for a medical technology company. Eventually, the San Francisco jury acquitted him of murder or manslaughter, but found him guilty only of illegal weapons possession. Of course, Garcia Zarate will not receive the death penalty, because California no longer has one. Correction: California no longer has a death penalty for people like Garcia Zarate, but it does have one for people like Kate Steinle. Garcia Zarate was arrested under the name Francisco Lopez Sanchez, illustrating that even a multiple felon was not correctly identified by police for several days. We not only dont know who is coming across our border we dont even know who is already here. Kates last words were, Dad, help me, help me. But her dad couldnt help her. It was up to us to help her by keeping the streets as safe as possible. We didnt. We used up all our sympathy on those who dont deserve it, leaving none for those who do deserve it. We made a sanctuary city that was safe for Jose Ines Garcia Zarate, but very unsafe for Kathryn Michelle Steinle. Summing up. In the case of gun control, excessive regulations are more likely to cost lives than to save them. If you doubt this, just ask Sarah McKinley. How else did you expect the young mother to defend herself and her baby against two intruders armed with a large knife? What did you expect her to do when the police had not yet arrived after 21 minutes? If she didnt have that shotgun, she would probably be dead, as would her baby if he were lucky. Here, gun-control activists with their If it will save just one life actually would have cost two lives. Yet somehow, people like Sarah McKinley just dont register on the progressive radar. People like Sarah McKinley and her baby son are dumped into Hillary Clintons basket of deplorables. And they are included in Barack Obamas bitter clingers who want to hold onto their religion and guns. After all, how can we expect the self-anointed elite, the graduates of prestigious Ivy League universities, to concern themselves with ignorant rednecks? They are much too elevated for such mundane matters. When they say social justice, they mean big government controlling virtually every aspect of daily life. But their version of social justice somehow fails to include the very lives of Sarah McKinley and her child. When it comes to illegal immigration, as well as to other policies progressives favor, the proponents never seem to remember their beloved mantra of save just one life. If our border were more secure, and if our immigration laws were more conscientiously enforced, and most of all if San Francisco hadnt declared itself a sanctuary city then Kathryn Steinle would still be living her life, working at the medical technology company, interacting with her close-knit family, and charming others with her infectious smile. If Hillary Clintons anti-gun agenda had been enacted, Sarah McKinley and her baby would probably be dead. But if Donald Trumps border-control agenda had been enacted, Kate Steinle would probably be alive. Its that simple. Others undoubtedly have their own reasons. But if you want to know why I voted for Donald Trump, just look at these two photos. David Stolinsky - www.stolinsky.com. Contact: dstol@prodigy.net. Back to Top Last month, Sen. Elizabeth Warren released a $450 billion housing plan called the American Housing and Economic Mobility Act. The proposal is a comprehensive and bold step toward providing affordable housing for the most vulnerable Americans. The bill is the first since the Fair Housing Act with the explicit intent of redressing the iterative effects of our nations sordid history of housing discrimination. Critically, it has the potential to make a substantive dent in closing our enormous and persistent racial wealth gap. Advertisement Government discrimination played a big role in creating that gap. President Franklin D. Roosevelts New Deal built an American middle class, but many programs were discriminatory in practice, bifurcating the nation into wealth-building white communities and segregated black communities. Most notoriously, the Home Owners Loan Corporation and the Federal Housing Administration helped millions of white Americans buy homes but deliberately refused to insure mortgages for black families, particularly in white communitiesa process known as redlining. Private lenders followed suit, refusing to provide loans to creditworthy borrowers, largely depriving the black community of mortgage credit and the opportunity to buy a home. Advertisement Advertisement Advertisement Over the next decades, white families used their home equity to secure small-business loans, send their children to college, or help their children put together home down paymentsan iterative wealth building that was passed on to the next generation. In contrast, black families were left exposed to predatory private finance. Racially determined distribution of federal capital coupled with lending and housing discrimination begat an expanding racial wealth gap and decades of inter-generational poverty. Advertisement Warrens bill is a monumental step forward that acknowledges injustice of the past and invests real money to redress it. Americas policies to redress these economic injustices have been largely insufficient. The Fair Housing Actpassed in the wake of the Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr.s assassination in 1968provided crucial legal protections against racial discrimination in housing, including the kinds of discriminatory practices that steered blacks away from high-amenity white neighborhoods toward high-poverty segregated onesa common tactic of Northern segregationists. To promote desegregation, the bill gave the Department of Housing and Urban Development a strong mandate to affirmatively further the inclusion of black Americans in fair housing. But the bill failed to commit financial resources or drive capital into black neighborhoods to enable them to buy homes and close the gap from white communities who had enjoyed government support for decades. Advertisement Advertisement As a result of this history, our nation still lives in the shadow of those fateful New Deal policies that were discriminatory in application. In America today, black children still suffer due to past segregation promoting housing policies that have confined blacks to low wealth and low asset appreciating ZIP codes. According to a recent report, 74 percent of neighborhoods that were redlined are still low income, and 64 percent are still minority neighborhoods. Warrens bill is a monumental step forward that acknowledges injustice of the past and invests real money to redress it. Her bill would seek to address the racial wealth gap by establishing a down payment assistance program designed to support families who were historically excluded from government programs. The bill directs HUD to provide a grant that would be equivalent to an FHA loan down payment to all low- and middle-income first-time homebuyers who live in formerly redlined communities that are still low income. While many first-time homebuyers have help from family in putting together a down payment, government discrimination robbed most families in redlined neighborhoods of that opportunity. And so this provision has the potential to facilitate homeownership for hundreds of thousands of black families. Advertisement Advertisement Advertisement The bill also toughens the Community Reinvestment Act to force financial institutions to serve creditworthy families in communities theyve ignored for decades. The bill expands the CRA to include nonbank mortgage lenders and credit unions who now provide more than half of mortgages; clarifies the laws requirement that institutions serve their communities, which have been subject to gaming by financial institutions; gives community groups more opportunities for input into regulators evaluations of financial institutions; and requires regulators to disclose more of the data that informs their evaluations so that communities can assess whether investments that are supposed to support the community fulfill that promise. The bill encourages local jurisdictions to shed unnecessary lawssome of which were enacted shortly after the Fair Housing Act banned explicit exclusion of black familiesthat have made housing more expensive and prevented new residents from moving in. And it expands the Fair Housing Act itself to ban discrimination based on sexual orientation, gender identity or marital status, and source of income, including government benefits. Advertisement The American Housing and Economic Mobility Act also addresses the poverty caused by generations of housing discrimination. Black families are more likely to rent their homes because of historic exclusion from the housing market and restriction from accumulating and passing down wealth in general. In recent years, a severe shortage of affordable housing affecting every county in America has caused rents to spike for low- and middle-income renters, stretching their budgets and putting them at risk of eviction. The bill would invest $45 billion a year for 10 years in proven federal programs that use public capital to subsidize the construction and preservation of housing thats affordable to working families. An independent analysis by Moodys Analytics suggests this investment will produce more than 3 million new units and that new supply will pull down rents by 10 percent and create 1.5 million new jobs. In addition, the bill provides $2 billion in new grants to states to help homeowners and communities targeted with the most abusive loans before the financial crisisoften communities of colorwhere many homeowners still owe more on their mortgages than their properties are worth. These grants could be used for loan modifications that include principal reduction, purchasing or rehabilitation of vacant lots to increase neighborhood property values, or providing loans to negative equity borrowers to allow them to maintain or rehabilitate their homes. Advertisement Advertisement Advertisement All in all, the legislation will help families buy affordable homes but also build asset security and community wealth by providing capital for down payments to those who have been historically excluded from homeownership. It has the potential to lift historically marginalized communities by reversing more than a century of capital exclusion and housing discrimination. In a holistic way, Warrens bill attempts to address our past and ongoing housing problem by including targeted investments in rural communities, Native American communities, and formerly redlined black communities, echoing President Lyndon B. Johnsons War on Poverty and Kings Poor Peoples movement. The New Deal showed us the iterative and multigenerational value of wealth creation resulting from capital finance provided by government housing assistance. It is in this tradition that Warren is charting a way forward in which all Americans can have the economic security of having a roof over their heads. The following is a lightly edited adaptation of the Oct. 22 episode of Women in Charge, a Slate podcast in which Slate editor-in-chief Julia Turner interviews women who are in charge of things about the things they are in charge of. In this episode she speaks with Ellen Stofan, the director of the Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum and former chief scientist at NASA. Listen to Women in Charge in the player below, or via Apple Podcasts, Overcast, Spotify, Google Play, Stitcher. Advertisement Julia Turner: Lets start with the question of, what are you currently in charge of and what does that entail? Ellen Stofan: The Smithsonians National Air and Space Museum consists of two different museums; our building on the National Mall, as well as another facility out near Dulles Airport called the Steven F. Udvar-Hazy Center. Both my museums are amazing. Out at Udvar-Hazy we have the space shuttle Discovery, we have an SR-71 Blackbird, and downtown at our National Mall building, which were about to do a major renovation project on, we hold, for example, a lot of the legacy of the Apollo program and then slightly historic artifacts from fairly historic objects like the 1903 Wright Flyer, the first airplane to ever fly, and the Spirit of St. Louis, which was, of course, where Charles Lindbergh crossed the Atlantic for a first time in an airplane. Advertisement Advertisement Advertisement Advertisement Recently in Women in Charge No results You took on this position five months ago. Can you talk a little bit about how big the team is that youre leading there, and how do you think about directing that team to drive the outcomes you want and avoid the outcomes you dont want? We have about 300 people at the museum, and our team ranges from people who are curators who study the history of the artifacts, to exhibit designers, to communicators, to people who are helping us raise money to pay for the renovation that were doing of the inside of the museum. We have quite a diverse team, and theyre an amazing team. Its been really fun to come in over the last five months, get to know the team, understand what their strengths are, and to think how do we take this group, how do we take the worlds most popular museumOK, were actually usually the third most popular museum but close enoughhow do we take this iconic museum and take it to the next level? Thats been a really fun process over the last five months. Advertisement What does the next level look like for you? What are some specific things that, when you see the team achieving them, you think, Ah, yes, thats exactly what I was hoping to get? What are some things that you think, Oh, I dont want us to do so much of that? Advertisement Well, were in the midst of renovating the entire museum downtown. That means all 23 galleries and exhibit spaces downtown are being reimagined. Its, how do you take this history of this human struggle with gravity to learn how to fly, to make it to the top of the atmosphere, to make it to space, and what is that story? If you look at how museums have historically told those stories, its sometimes been told through the great man theory. The idea that one iconic person has really moved everything forward. A lot of it has been just like, Heres the artifact. Heres a label. Thats sort of the old-fashioned way museums were. Advertisement Advertisement Now, its much more about storytelling. How can we tell the story of who built this, why did they build it, and almost inevitably its the story of a team who actually got something accomplished. The Wright brothers werent the only people on the beach that day. There were photographers, there were people who helped them move the airplane, there was a mechanic. Everyone has a team. How do you tell those team stories, which I think are truly inspiring? A lot of it is understanding from my curators, who are truly the experts on those artifacts, what are those stories and how can we make sure were working with people who understand how to communicate, especially to 21st-century audiences? How do we make sure were working to inspire that next generation of explorers? Advertisement Advertisement The role that youre in now has its own challenges and is about education and communication and narrative as you just described it. When you were the chief scientist at NASA, presumably the role had a different responsibility set and was more about research and other factors. Is that a fair assessment? There are interesting overlaps between the two. While I was at NASA, one of the things that I was working on was, what is our vision for getting humans finally beyond low Earth orbit, where weve been so long on the International Space Station, how do we get humans to Mars? Which is something Im really passionate about. A lot of it was, how do you put together a team to really think about this? How do you think about how to accomplish something so difficult as getting humans to Mars? How do you motivate a team to have a common vision? How do you look at the skills you have internally as an organization to say, how can we make this happen? Advertisement Advertisement How can we be innovative? How can we maybe not look at this in kind of the linear way we have, but are there ways to look at this problem sideways? In a sense, thats what Im still doing at the museum. Where you say, All right, we have to change these galleries. Are there ways to sort of change the narrative? Are there different ways of looking at what in some case are quite old stories? The story of the Wright Flyer is a story that weve had since 1903. Are there new ways, are there new narratives? Twenty-first century audiences, especially kids, take in information in a very different way than people of my generation did. Theyre much more digitally inclined. Theyre probably not going to stand there and read a lot of text on a label. How do you find new ways of conveying information to this much more diverse, much more digitally inclined 21st-century kid? Advertisement Advertisement Will you indulge two questions from my two 21st-century kids? Sure. One son wants to know, how do they hang the planes and other spacecraft from the ceiling and make sure they dont fall on everybody? The second question is how do you get the planes and big things inside the building? Thats something were really working on right now, because part of this reimagining the interior of the museum and repairing the exterior of the museum, which has become quite worn and damaged over time, is that we actually have to get all those planes down off the ceiling and out of the building to go out to our facility near Dulles Airport to have some conservation work done on them and to store them until were ready to take them back into the museum downtown. Advertisement Advertisement How we hang those airplanes, how we rig them from the ceiling so that they dont sway around, that theyre shown at their best angle to give people a sense of the dynamism of that particular aircraft, is really an art. We have these people who are great artists at rigging aircraft. They usually get it right, but sometimes they have to add more cables in case the air conditioning comes on in a weird way and they start swaying around. We really do a lot of work to get them hung carefully. What were going to start doing in January of next year is, were going to start taking them down off the ceiling, which is a whole other long and somewhat interesting process. Advertisement Advertisement Advertisement I can tell your son that we wonder how they got one of those artifacts in the building. Thats the model of Sky Lab. Its almost two stories tall. To be honest with you, I really dont know how they got it in the museum. We do have large doors down at the west end of the museum, which is the opposite end from the Capitol side, and we have very large doors that were going to use to take large artifacts in and out of the museum as we get ready to send them out to Udvar-Hazy. A lot of these artifacts are going to be transported on trucks in the middle of the night on [Interstate] 66. Advertisement I love the way you describe the museums mission as talking about humanitys struggle with gravity. This is a struggle with gravity. Exactly. Its interesting to hear you talk about the role as chief scientist at NASA, because in talking about leadership challenges with people, I think often leaders of teams know what the tasks are at hand and have a vague sense of what the tasks are that their team need to accomplish and have different ideas about how to communicate that, and often one of the lessons that management gurus and other people talk about is that you really have to explain what the mission is, whats the vision, whats the broad goal. It strikes me that at NASA, perhaps you had the opposite problem. If your teams goal is were going to put humans on Mars, thats the most insane, astonishing, motivating, seemingly impossible goal. Its very clear, its very abstract. It almost seems like you maybe have the reverse question, which is, how do you take the crazy big goal and break it down into, what does Joe do tomorrow? What does Jane do in the lab on Tuesday? How do you do that? How do you figure out where to start on a goal that big? Advertisement Advertisement Advertisement I think you have to keep it simple. Thats one of the things when youre trying to develop what we call an architecture for something like how do you get to Mars, you have to say, How do you at least start with the simplest steps possible? We had an administrator once at NASA who said, Try to minimize the number of miracles that youre hoping will happen. You have to sort of say, Given what I have the capability to do now, can I at least set out an architecture or a path that is the simplest path, because thats usually the least expensive path. Obviously, one of the issues is, anyone could come up with huge incredibly interesting architectures with armadas of spacecraft going toward Mars that have people on then, but you say, is that affordable? One of the things youre always having to balance is, heres the money I have. How can I have a step-wise plan Advertisement Wait, sorry. I was not aware that that was the case. That, actually if we could spend infinite funds, it would be easy to get people to Mars, and the problem is the budget? Advertisement Its a combination of budget and technology. If you think back to the time of Apollo, were spending a lot of time at the Air and Space Museum really reflecting on the Apollo program. Its the 50th anniversary of Apollo this coming year, the 50th anniversary of landing on the moon. At that time, NASA was 4 percent of the U.S. federal budget. It is now 0.4 percent of the federal budget. If you put a lot of money into something, youre going to accelerate the pace. Advertisement In some cases, we need technology development, and that is not always a smooth and easily predictable path. On the other hand, look at what they accomplished with Apollo. You had President Kennedy saying, Within a decade, were going to land a human on the moon. Yet, at that point in the early 1960s, we had all this infrastructure that had to be built. We had to figure out math to figure out how to get humans up there and get them safely back. We know all that now. In that sense, getting humans to Mars is actually much easier, in my opinion, than it was to get the humans to the moon. Advertisement Advertisement Sometimes when Im talking even to my kids, I say, This is how you figure out how to go to Mars. You understand what your goal is. You understand what the constraints arefor example it might be budget. Then you say, How do we develop a step-wise plan to get from here to there? You have to know where youre going and that clear vision of, for example, I want humans on the surface of Mars by the end of the 2030s, thats a clear goal. Now I can say, All right, theres multiple paths to get there. How much do those cost? What are the technologies? Advertisement That makes sense. I guess the broader question Im asking is: How do you think about leading research and planning for exploration versus leading communication and education, which strike me as the two distinct roles? You need a clear vision. For example, if I look at education around the Air and Space Museum, you have to say, All right, weve made a clear decision that we want to reach middle-school kids, because we know thats when kids tend to turn away from science, technology, engineering, and math subjects. Especially girls and especially kids from underrepresented groups. We have a clear vision: Were going to try to reach middle-school kids and inspire them about aviation and space. Advertisement Advertisement Advertisement Now you say, Well, how are we going to get there? Whats my budget? What are my creative ideas? Can we create programming that inspires kids, helps teachers, and has the potential to be scalable? You can say, OK, maybe we can help 30 kids at a time or 60 kids at a time, but wouldnt it be great if we could create programs that we could then export beyond the museum for other people to use? What are your values, what are you trying to accomplish? Advertisement All those things are incredibly important. To me, the execution is the much easier part. Understanding what the constraints are and understanding exactly what it is youre trying to accomplish is the more difficult part. Once you map that out as carefully as you can, executing it becomes much easier, because youre walking within a much narrower path. Advertisement Did you imagine when you were just starting out in your career that you would have the leadership roles that youve taken on? Not in the slightest. I think it was partially being a girl growing up in the 1960s. When I looked to women in science, those stories were hard to find. There was Marie Curie, Florence Nightingale, Jane Goodall, Mary Leakey. The role models I had were women doing research and moving science forward. I thought, OK, thats what I would like to do. Advertisement I didnt see women leaders out there, and that is one of the reasons that I think its so important, when people ask me, Is it important that youre the first woman director of the Air and Space Museum? I would like to say no, but I think it is, because I want girls to think, Well, thats a possible career path for me. The more women are in leadership positions, the more it gives girls that vision to say, Well, maybe thats a path I would like to go down. Frankly, I stumbled into it. Advertisement Tell us a little bit about your early career and about your research. You started down the road studying planetary geology. What were you studying? What were you trying to find out? What were those early years in your career like? Ive always been really interested in the question of, how does this planet work? To me, it really all does come back to the Earth, how does the Earth operate. Looking at other planets, and the ones that Ive studied the most are Venus, Mars, and one of the moons of Saturn called Titan. All these bodies in the solar system have pieces of their history or their present that helps us understand the past, present, and potential future of this planet. Advertisement Advertisement Advertisement Advertisement Venus has a runaway greenhouse atmosphere that informs us about greenhouse atmospheres and how they behave. Its also a very volcanic planet, and I study volcanoes around the solar system. Titan, Saturns moon, is the only other body in the solar system besides Earth that has open bodies of liquid. OK, theyre not water, theyre actually seas of basically gasoline. Its liquid methane and ethane. Here you can understand how a body of water interacts with its atmosphere. How do waves form? Could there be anything possibly living in those seas? When I wanted to study the solar system, it was really always about turning back and saying, How does this planet work, and how can we use all that information to better understand this planet? Early in my career, actually through most of my career, I was one of the only women in the room. It was always intimidating to look around a room and say, Theres nobody in here who looks like me. I even had a fellow student once, when we were talking about trying to find jobs after graduate school, he looked at me and he said, Well, you have a husband. You dont need a job. You think, Did I go to college for 10 years to go home and do nothing? Those kinds of things were frustrating. Advertisement Advertisement One of the things thats really important to me now is that I was never in a position where people told me no. My parents supported me, teachers supported me, my college professors supported me. I did not have a situation where I was harassed. Did I have ridiculous comments made to me now and then? Yes, but Im thinking of all the girls and all the women who, throughout the years, were actively discouraged from going into science fields, who were harassed, who left. I just see this brain drain that has happened over the last decades because women have not been made to feel welcome. People of color have not been made to feel welcome. That, to me, is what has to change, because weve just lost capability because of that. Advertisement Advertisement Were there particular things that you did along the way to change practices in labs and places where you worked to try to facilitate a more welcoming environment? Or were there things that people did to facilitate a more welcoming environment? One of the things thats been important to me and that I certainly try to pass on is that I had incredible mentors throughout my careers. Not just mentors, but sponsors. People who not only supported me and gave me great advice, but who also would say, Oh, theres a position open. Maybe Ellen would be a good candidate for that. I think everyone needs that, and its something that, because it happened for me, because that is part of the reason I am in the position I am in today, its important for me to pass that on. Advertisement Advertisement Advertisement When I was chief scientist at NASA headquarters, I spent a lot of time working with our team on diversity and inclusion issues. Its that inclusion piece that I feel is so incredibly important, because its not just about saying, We need to open the door and let people in. Its how do you make them feel welcome? How do you make them feel valuable, part of the team? How do you make them feel not different so that they dont feel welcome? I think were getting better at the diversity piece. I think we still have a long way to go in our society on that inclusion piece. When you think about trying to lead a team of people in this goal of really connecting with middle schoolers, how do you propagate that among this whole team of more than 300 people? How do you communicate to them what the goal is? How do you track the results? How do you encourage people to evaluate and test their ideas? Whats the process of putting that vision into practice once youve articulated it? Advertisement Advertisement The good thing is that vision was started before I got there. Its already been propagated through. What Im trying to do is to say, how can we as we go through this transformation of the interior of the museum, how can I get the team to make sure that theyre following through with this? Its one thing to say, Oh, lets pay attention to middle schoolers. OK, but how are we doing that? Does the team have clear direction from me on that being important? Then what are they expected to come up with, and what is the schedule for that, and is there budget and people allocated for that, and do we have experts on staff who can actually be providing that? If there is content outside the museum that we can borrow or people we can partner with, are we looking for those things? I think a lot of it is with the staff, trying to make sure that they understand how important that is. Then, making sure that theyre actually following through. Advertisement Advertisement This is someone that everyone at the museum is really passionate about. Its not just my passion, it really goes throughout the staff. Thats what we want these artifacts to do. We want them to inspire that next generation. Its one thing to think that, and its another to think, Are we working with middle-school core curriculum standards so were giving teachers things they can use? Are we making sure we represent all faces so that every kid who comes into the museum can see themselves in the stories? Are we going to provide teachers materials so that we make their lives easy? We dont have to make it so that they come into the museum and dont really know how this is relevant to them. Those are the things, were trying to make sure, are we dotting all the Is and crossing all the Ts so that we attack this problem from every angle. Advertisement Advertisement Once you made the switch from research into leadership roles in these various institutions, what are some mistakes you made early on that you learned from and then tempered your course going forward? What were some things that you had to figure out on your way to being an effective leader? Advertisement Advertisement I think effective leaders know how to build teams, and they know how to manage people. That was something that didnt come naturally to me. It was something I had to learn. Luckily I got to have lots of leadership opportunities over the years, from helping to lead small science teams, to leading larger teams, to finally leading a mission proposal process that took about five years and had a lot of people involved. I think over that time I learned about listening, how to bring a group to consensus, the importance of making sure people have their say. Advertisement Its also understanding the humility of making sure, back to that listening piece, that youre not listening just for listening sake, but that you actually might be wrong about something. While you certainly have a vision and a strong goal and an idea in mind, somebody on your team might have a better idea. Even though youre the leader, you actually really need to listen to people, because sometimes theyre going to be telling you youre off-course, and you are, and you need to figure that out. Obviously, I sometimes found that out the hard way by being a little off-course and not listening. Advertisement Sometimes it was just, how do I work in a difficult situation of stress and not take my stress out on other people? How do I deal with people who are taking their stress out on other people? How do I bring us back to a point where we can all work together as a team and respect each other? Those are things I just learned over the years. I dont think I had that many really bad experiences, but you stumble and you learn and you get criticized and you have to suck it up and figure out, All right, I didnt handle that well. A lot of it has to be this issue of self-reflection. How could I have handled that better? How could I have done that better? How am I listening to my team to make sure that were functioning well? Advertisement Advertisement Are there structures youve created to make it possible for your team to share that kind of feedback? Are there tricks you have for making sure they feel safe offering criticism or that youre getting that kind of input? I think thats something that sometimes comes with time, but sometimes you have to actually encourage it. Im constantly asking my team, How did you think that went? What could we have done differently to make this situation come out better? I think it is offering to the team to say, I value your opinion. Please give me your opinion. If you can show them, I am listening to you. I dont always agree with you, but here in this case I took your opinion and acted on it, in these two cases I didnt, and in that way, the more you listen and act on peoples advice, the more they start to understand you are listening to them. Advertisement Advertisement Advertisement At the Air and Space Museum, they already had a process of having town halls. We had them at NASA also, and I think its incredibly important to have a forum where employees feel, I can ask questions. I can say, Why are we doing things? They can have feedback and say, Why are we doing this this way? I think creating an open communication system in a workplace, and again, luckily, that already existed at the Air and Space Museum, is incredibly important. Im just able to take advantage of it. You talked about the structures for making sure that people are able to give you criticism and feedback. I think one thing that young people just figuring out how to be managers sometimes struggle with is how to give negative feedback. One of the things you have to do when youre leading a team and not just leading yourself is figure out how to take that observation, reflection, criticism, and change for next time, and instead of pointing it inward toward yourself and your own work, share that with someone else. I think thats a big stumbling block for young managers, and possibly, particularly for young female managers. I think for all kinds of young managers, just how do you tell people they did something wrong and how to do it better? Whats your advice to people just figuring out how to do that? Advertisement Advertisement Advertisement I think its a hard thing. I will say in most organizations Ive been in, both men and women have a hard time giving that negative feedback. You go and you look in peoples personnel files and its Lake Wobegonyou know, every employee is outstanding. Youre like, OK, not every employee is outstanding. Im not always outstanding. How are you creating a culture that says, I can provide you negative feedback, but boy, the minute you do something right, Im going to give you a lot of positive feedback. I think its that balance thats important. If I have a young manager, I say, Its really important for you to follow through with negative feedback, because if you dont, the problem is just going to grow and grow and grow. Youve got to come forward and say to the person, You know what? This is not meeting expectations. If you frame it in a very professional way, no matter how hard it is, because none of us like doing this, but it is so critically important to not let a problem get to the point. If you dont step up on a problem and say, We need to change this, why would the person change their behavior? Then it becomes your problem, because you were the manager who didnt give the feedback that caused the employee to change their behavior. Then its on you. Thats the other thing I try to work with managers to understand. Its on you if you dont take care of this. Advertisement Advertisement Advertisement I noticed your elocution there, not meeting expectations is a little just like, Theres an abstract bar and you need to get there. Its not about my feelings, its just about facts. Advertisement Because, for most people it instantly becomes emotional. None of us take criticism well. I dont, no one does. It doesnt feel good to be criticized. I think you have to keep it objective. You have to keep it on such a professional level. Then again, you have to counter it by saying, You know, heres some things youre doing really well. Heres some things that I would like to see a better performance on, or where youre not meeting expectations. I think that balance is important. If youre going to criticize someone, find a way to also compliment them so that they dont walk away just thinking, Oh my gosh, the sky is falling. Unless maybe, the sky is actually falling. Advertisement I want to talk to you about how you think things are for women in science now, as compared to when you were starting out. Do you think things are better or worse for young women entering science today? Advertisement I would love to say that theyre much, much better. When you read the headlines, you know these problems still persist. I do think theyre overall better, and why I think they are better is because of the sheer number of women that are now coming into these fields, in some areas. For example, if you look in the biological sciences, women are almost 50 percent. In geology though, women are about maybe 30-some percent. If you go into engineering, computer science, all of a sudden the numbers start dropping to about 20 percent. The numbers, especially in computer science and engineering, have not been moving very much. Thats incredibly frustrating. Its a pipeline problem. If youre not encouraged when youre in middle school that its cool for a girl to think about engineering, if youre not encouraged in high school, if a science teacher makes you feel like women dont belong in a science class or your peers make you feel that way, if you face harassment at some point in college or you go to graduate school and your fellow students make you feel not welcome because youre a women, all along the way those things have to be corrected. Are they getting better? Yes. Are they anywhere near where we want them to be? No. Advertisement Advertisement Advertisement What I love and what encourages me is what Ive seen over the last five years but obviously especially over the last year or so: women stepping forward in a way that my generation just didnt. My generation was avoid that professor, dont be in a room late at night with him. This generation is like, Wait, stop. Im not going to tolerate being treated that way. Thats what I love. I do think the #MeToo movement is making a huge difference. I do think this next generation of women have a much stronger voice than my generation did, and that makes me really hopeful. I wish my generation had had a stronger voice, but we were too intimidated. There were too few of us. The other things is, I think we have a much better understanding of implicit bias than we used to. With all the piles and piles and piles of research that has been done that show that women arent being treated equally, that show that women of color are treated even worse than white women are. We have this research. We have the basis to say, Things are not going well. Increasingly, we have the basis to say, What are practices that actually make it better for women? To me, the fact that we can now move toward research-based solutions means were more likely to actually come to a point where we are able to take advantage of the talents of all of our population, not just half of it. Advertisement Do you think that research-based solutions and research-based arguments about the importance of diversity and inclusion are particularly persuasive in science? Have you found that just because of the focus on facts and the discovery of knowledge that that kind of argument around this question can be more effective in science spheres? Advertisement Ill be honest with you, it varies. I think the myth of a meritocracy is something that persists in all fields. For people who are in those positions to think that they didnt get there because theyre the best, but rather they got there because they are white males is hard. Of course they want to say, No, its a meritocracy. I got here because Im the best. Men get the bulk of the research money because we do better work. When youre told, Look, I have this research that shows that womens proposals arent treated equally, that women arent cited as much, that women of color get cited [less] in research, which then feeds into how easy it is to get money less than men are, you can say, OK, its clearly not a meritocracy when people are being judged on their gender, when people are being judged on the ethnicity of their names. Theres extensive research that shows this is what happens. People want to believe we live in a meritocracy, but were not there yet. We can get there because we have the research, we know what to do to fix it, and well get there. Advertisement Advertisement I want to talk actually about budgeting. You have now had big leadership positions in these two institutions that are incredibly dependent on federal funding. Of course, for any leader the question of whats the budget, what are the budget constraints, what are the budget targets, thats a huge part of how you figure out the tools you have to achieve any task, even one much more mundane, literally, than going to Mars. How do you navigate that uncertainty around the level of economic commitment to what youre doing and building, being dependent on forces outside the walls of the institution youre in? Advertisement I think sometimes people who are outside the federal government forget that all of us who are federally funded, we are all taxpayers too. Im just as concerned as everybody that my tax dollars are being spent in a way thats responsible, thats accountable, and that Im making the best use of every penny. Obviously, the uncertainty that goes on year to year to year in the federal budget situation, you can complain about it, but it is the way the system works. For an agency like NASA, it is very difficult. I would always joke and say, NASAs a 10- to 20-year agency that basically lives in a one- to two-year town. How do you do that? How do you set these long-term goals when budgets an uncertainty? Complaining about it doesnt change the situation. Advertisement At the Smithsonian, were an interesting institution, where were part federally funded and part privately funded. We get donations from very generous donors, and we also have retail and food that we make money from. We dont charge admission. The great thing about the Smithsonian being the nations museum is that were free and open 364 days a year. You do have these two sources of money coming in, and you have to say, Am I putting my federal dollars to their best use? Then, what can I do with this additional funding that I have to really create a rich program that gives everyone who walks through the door of my museum an amazing experience and makes them appreciate the wonder of flight? What advice would you give to a young woman entering science today? Go for it. The one thing I always say to girls is, Dont let anyone ever make you feel like you dont belong here. Even in the days before Hidden Figures came out. I would say, Think about Katherine Johnson, who would go sit at a table, who forced her way into meetings where she was not wanted and was regarded as being lesser. She knew that she had skills, that she had talent, that she had information. That the mission wasnt going to succeed unless she was there. Advertisement Advertisement Advertisement She did what I think many of us would find very difficult to do. She walked into the room. She said, No, you need me at the meeting, and I need to be at the table. For a lot of us, I think we have to some extent imposter syndrome, where youre like, Do I really belong at the table? Do I really need to be there? I tell girls, Channel your inner Katherine Johnson. You belong at the table. You have a contribution to make, and dont ever forget that and dont let anybody ever tell you no. That is great advice. Its advice I would share and endorse. I think one thing thats hard for women at all ages in their career is how to balance that sense of bucking yourself up and giving yourself confidence in the face of people who maybe dont appreciate what you have to contribute as much as they should with humility about the fact that you are young, and you are still learning, and you could still make mistakes, and you probably dont know as much as some set of people. Obviously, both things can be true simultaneously. What advice would you give people for navigating that emotional terrain of having a reasonable amount of humility and self-doubt while simultaneously projecting absolute confidence that you belong? Advertisement One of my big mentors, said to me, Dont come to me with problems. Come to me with solutions. Dont just point out, This thing is not very good. Be able to say, I dont think this thing is optimized. Here are two ideas that could possibly make it better. Or, you know, If three of us went into a room together, we can come back to you with a better solution. Advertisement I think its putting yourself in that position as a problem-solver. I think if we can get women who are not feeling confident to say, You know what? Im going to think of myself as a problem-solver. Can I identify a problem and can I offer some solutions? I know this from people of color, I know this from white women. You spend part of your time acting. You are acting like you are much more confident than you are. You are acting like you are much braver, and its exhausting, but I think thats part of being an early career person when you are in a room where no one looks like you. I like the advice to focus on solving problems, because then its less about, am I talented or am I smart, its more focused on, what do I have to contribute? Then maybe that makes it easier to be like, I do have something to contribute. Advertisement Advertisement Yeah, because if youre really focused, all of us can always go into a situation and say, Those people didnt do a good job. But sometimes we dont feel confident about speaking up. I do think its that, how can I help solve a problem, and can I make sure I phrase it that way? Then people are going to turn to you and say, Well, that persons not just pointing out this is flawed. They are actually offering us some paths forward. Even if you dont have a solution, can you suggest a path to a solution? Thats really good advice. Youve spoken about some of the heartening things for women in the field. Are there any disheartening signs or anything that you find troubling about how women are faring in science right now? Advertisement I would like to see the numbers moving more than they do. When you look at the fact that women are actually 4 percent of commercial aviation pilots, when you know that this number of women in computer science, again, in engineering thats hovering around 20 percent, despite the fact that trying to get, for example, girls engaged in STEM, I mean, thats been going on for a bit. Why arent those numbers moving more? What can we do to make them move? Where do we see successes and how can we amplify and scale those programs? Advertisement At Harvey Mudd College in CaliforniaIm pretty sure thats where its atrather than saying, Were going to try to weed people out of this program, its, How are we going to keep people in the program? They have a really strong mentoring and tutoring program to make sure that everyone has the opportunity to be successful. If you think back to college calculus or freshman calculus, freshman engineering, its used to be, Were only going to keep the best. That tends to drive women away. Lets think of how we design our programs to keep women in. They are seeing the numbers move in those programs. When they have programs that focus on engineering for the developing world, engineering to solve problems like climate change, women tend to apply at much higher rates rather than for mechanical engineering. When its applied to a problem, it sounds appealing. Lets find those pockets where the numbers are moving, and lets try to expand that. When you have those solutions, not only do women thrive, men thrive also. This isnt an or, its an and. Lets welcome everyone. If we support women in engineering and computer science, were going to support men too. Were supporting everyone, and that just makes all boats rise. Suppose the Criterion Collection abruptly calls a press conference. The 80th anniversary of Citizen Kanes 1941 release looms, they announce to a room full of film critics, and that anniversary will be celebrated by the release of a new version in full color. Yes, color. The film was fine in black and white in 1941, but now that color technology has gotten better, theyre going to have a technician sit down and painstakingly rework the film to bring it into modern, vivid color. What better way to celebrate the anniversary? No, this is not a joke. Criterion would not joke. Advertisement Thats essentially what happened this year when Top Shelf Comics announced that, in honor of the 20th anniversary of the Alan Moores and Eddie Campbells landmark comic From Hell, the book would receive a 10-part serial re-release in color. At the news, my monocle flew across the room. Is this an outrage? This seems like an outrage. Wait, Campbells personally doing the colorization? Maybe this isnt an outrage. Advertisement Advertisement Advertisement Advertisement From Hell, originally released serially and then collected as a single book in 1999 (the color serialization will wrap in 2019, preserving the 20-year interval), represents writer Alan Moores investigation into the body of myth around Jack the Ripper. On a surface level, it works as a relatively straightforward, meticulously assembled Victorian police procedural. On a level of just-barely-subtext, Moores script is an assault on the idea that the identity of Jack the Ripper is even knowable, given a centurys worth of murky sensationalism and conspiracy-mongering. This second level is engaged most tightly in the books copious footnotes, and in a postscript comic wherein Moore and Campbell, in high postmodernist fashion, draw themselves into an illustration of a crowd of half-crazed conspiracy theorists tramping all over any clues left on the ground. Advertisement Advertisement This multileveled significance stood out in the late 90s, an era when patronizing headlines along the lines of Comics! Theyre Not Just for Kids Anymore! were still endemic. The ambition and quality of its script turned From Hell into a statement of what the comics medium was capable of, even more than Watchmen, Moores best-known work. Watchmen may have reinvented superheroes, but the equally provocative From Hell interrogated literary, historical fiction, a culturally prestigious realm that comics werent previously known for inhabiting. Advertisement Both Citizen Kane and From Hell stand as boundary-expanding statements of what a new and relatively unrespected medium is capable of. Both combine superlative scripts with daring and innovative visuals. Both eventually became benchmarks within their art forms. And both look quite striking in black and white. Until now. Advertisement One of the reasons that Top Shelfs announcement of a colorized From Hell was so monocle-popping was that the books black-and-white aesthetic was central to its success. Eddie Campbells moody hatchwork was as important to the comics evocation of an era as Moores detailed, carefully researched script. The Ripper murders occurred in 1888; many of Campbells panels, especially wide shots showing urban architecture buried in moody, sooty layers of tight cross-hatching, could be passed off as Victorian-era illustrations on their own. Messing with that artwork meant messing with a key element of what makes the book great to begin with. In comics, the art does the mood-conveying work that a writers style and syntax do in prose. If Jennifer Egan were to announce a new version of A Visit From the Goon Squad with twice as many adjectives, youd think that was crazy. Was a colorized From Hell any crazier? Advertisement Advertisement Advertisement However, even at the first announcement, there were reasons to believe that a color edition might not be a total hash. While Campbells original black and white artwork somewhat resembles work from 1888, judiciously-used color wouldnt necessarily upset this dynamic. Color printing existed in the late 19th century, often dominated by a distinct, muted set of colors, and the use of a period-appropriate color palette would have the potential to stick the reader just as firmly into the storys milieu. And one of the few weaknesses of Campbells original art in From Hell is that some characters, with similar Victorian costumes and hairstyles, can be difficult to distinguish from each other. Advertisement Advertisement Perhaps most importantly, Eddie Campbell thought it was worth doing, and would be doing the work himself. If he knew how to be so effective the first time around, why not trust him to do something interesting with color? (Contrast this attitude with that of Orson Welles, who took great pains to ensure his work wouldnt be altered in any way, going so far as to plead successfully with the Directors Guild of America not to let Ted Turner deface my movie with his crayons in 1989 when Turner selected Kane as the jewel in his project to use the magic of late-80s technology to bring color to classic movies.) Even if the results didnt work, the black and white edition wouldnt be going anywhere. Advertisement Advertisement Advertisement Advertisement So does it work? Im pleased to say that it does. In the first serial installment, out this monthwhich includes the prologue and first two chaptersCampbells new color adds visual interest and occasional clarity without detracting or distracting from the work. Campbells muted palette and wouldnt be at all out of place in a print from 1888. (The main deviation from that muted palette is an occasional, effective appearance of bright, shocking red; this is a book about Jack the Ripper, after all.) To take one example of improved effect, the text makes note of a red scarf owned by the painter Walter Sickert; in the black and white version, the scarf just looks like another piece of clothing with no significance beyond the footnotes mentioning it. In this Master Edition, it leaps off the page. Advertisement Its clear to anyone whos spent time making comics that Campbell took time and care with the colorization. The simplest way to add color to black and white art would be to import the line art into Photoshop (or its equivalent) and spread colors underneath on a separate image layer, so that the existing black lines sit above areas of color. This is what Campbell does most of the time, but not always. In some panels, he redraws formerly-black linework in a new color. This care allows the color to do its work without interference, preventing grotesqueries. Color outlined by black lines tends to pop out of an image, an effect desirable some, but not all, of the time; sometimes you want a more subtle effect, as in the Morgans Tobacconist sign in the street scene panel above. Advertisement Advertisement In some panels the effect is strikingly new and effective, especially in close-ups of characters faces where features had been formerly delineated by masses of black lines. Note the eyebrows and hair in the From Hell, Netley panels above, or the details of the womans face and her slightly smaller hat in the Not your brother panels. In the end, then, Campbells care and craft are succeeding, so far, in threading the needle. Everything that made From Hell great in black and white is still there, and the new elements add a lot more than they subtract. The art just looks great. Advertisement Orson Welles never went back and added color to Citizen Kane. But he did famously specify a series of modifications to the 1958 studio cut of Touch of Evil, changes that werent enacted until after his death. The re-edited version was released in 1998 to wide acclaim and is now considered the definitive cut of the movie. Going back and messing with a classic isnt always a great idea, but sometimes it works out just fine. Slate has relationships with various online retailers. If you buy something through our links, Slate may earn an affiliate commission. We update links when possible, but note that deals can expire and all prices are subject to change. All prices were up to date at the time of publication. Listen to this episode of Studio 360 by clicking the arrow on the audio player below: Get More Studio 360 Slate Plus members get extended, ad-free versions of our podcastsand much more. Sign up today. Join Slate Plus Subscribe to Studio 360 Copy this link and add it in your podcast app. copy link copied! For detailed instructions, see our Slate Plus podcasts page. Kurt Andersen talks with Sandi Tan, who shot a film as an 18-year-old in Singapore in 1992, but the footage disappeared. She finally got her hands on the footage a few years ago, and the mystery of its disappearance is the subject of her new documentary, Shirkers. Then, Tanwi Nandini Islam is both a novelist and a perfumerand she demonstrates how she applies both of those talents to create a fragrance based on the Toni Morrison novel Beloved. And getting to the bottom of the hidden meanings and long life of Don McLeans American Pie. Studio 360 plugs: Please remember to like us on our Facebook page and Twitter. Send your emails to incoming@studio360.org. That was fun! exclaimed one young woman sincerely to her friend as the Suspiria credits began to roll at my half-press, half-public screening. Is there going to be a nine-hour sequel? groaned a guy a few rows back, feeling in the dark for his coat. Luca Guadagninos remake of the giallo horror classic by his countryman Dario Argento has divided critics along those same lines. Is it a lush, meticulously crafted exploration of female sexuality and revolutionary violence and psychoanalysis and the work of historical trauma and other important stuff? Or is it an overlong, overstuffed, and under-scary bore whose main points of interest are its kinky production design and #HalloweenGoals costumes? Advertisement In that moment after the moviestiff not with terror but from the effects of spending two and a half hours in a bad cineplex seat stuck in the most reclined positionI tended to place myself more in the camp of Coat Guy. But a day later, I couldnt stop thinking about Suspiria, even if its only to get annoyed all over again. It can only be to this movies credit that I care enough to keep wondering: What was it trying to do? Did it succeed on its own terms? Why did I find myself admiring nearly every external element of the filmperformances, lighting, editing, costumingand yet find Guadagninos extremely aesthetically pleasing assemblage of these same elements into a whole somehow drab? Advertisement Advertisement Advertisement Advertisement Guadagnino saddled the slim frame of the 98-minute original with layers of meaning it may not have been designed to carry. Both versions of Suspiria hang on the same simple but rich horror premise: an elite German modern-dance company is secretly a functioning witches coven, with the staff of teachers (played in the 1977 Argento version by classic-Hollywood grandes dames like Alida Valli and Joan Bennett and in the remake, which is set in that same year, by veteran international actors Tilda Swinton, Sylvie Testud, and Ingrid Caven) grooming the beautiful young dancers for their own occult purposes. An American student named Susie Bannionplayed this time around by Dakota Johnson and in the original by Jessica Harper, who appears here in an extended cameojoins the company. In good Gothic fashion, the Markos Dance Academy also functions as a kind of boarding school where the dancers live on site, swanning through the ominously whispering halls in extremely artful nightwear. Susie moves in, takes up a position in the company, and soon gets swept up in the obscure but nefarious doings of her creepy dance mistresses. Advertisement Though hes added a boatload of characters, subplots, and twists, Guadagnino has held on to Argentos basic structure, including most of the character names. Hes also stuffed this remake with more Easter eggs than there are on the White House lawn in April. The new Suspiria is a deeply respectful, even extravagant homage to the old one, a love letter from an evident admirer of genre filmmaking to this particular cult genres most celebrated practitioner. But Guadagninothe maker of such paeans to sensual pleasure and erotic obsession as I Am Love and Call Me by Your Namehas saddled the slim frame of the 98-minute original with layers of meaning it may not have been designed to carry. Advertisement Advertisement The setting has been changed from a small German town to Berlin in the bleak days of the Cold War, with the forbidding graffitied wall between East and West dominating nearly every outdoor scene. A freaked-out dancer, Patricia (Chloe Grace Moretz), who escapes the school just before Susie arrives, is motivated to flee not only by an understandable fear of becoming satanic-ritual fodder but by her passion to join the Baader-Meinhof gang of leftist militants who are disrupting life in the city. The films action takes place over a period now known as the German Autumn, when in addition to the civil unrest and violence caused by domestic terror, there was a disastrous international hijacking incident involving a Lufthansa airplane. Radio and television broadcasts about these events make up part of Suspirias murmuring ambient soundtrack, though the facts of what happened seem less important than the general mood of anxiety and enervation. Advertisement Advertisement As if the combined fears of terrorist violence and demon possession through dance werent enough, Suspiria also boasts a significant Holocaust-themed subplot thats arguably, in its low-key way, the movies main story. It involves an elderly German widower, Dr. Josef Klemperer (Lutz Ebersdorf, a previously unknown performer about whom you can, if you dont mind some meta-narrative spoilers, read more here). Josef is the psychoanalyst of the tormented Patricia until her sudden, unexplained disappearance. Perhaps driven by the still-raw memory of losing his wife in World War II, the frail but determined Josef begins to question whether the fantasy he had diagnosed as Patricias paranoid delusionthat her dance teachers were secretly a pack of evil witches plotting to harm hermight point to some earthly form of wrongdoing on the Markos companys part. So he starts to investigate the group on his own, eventually bringing in the Berlin police to question the companys council of eccentric crones. The acting head of the school is the steely and monastically clad head dance teacher Madame Blanc (Swinton), who decides Susie should become the lead dancer in the companys challenging next production based on a single audition. Advertisement Advertisement Thats a lot of story even for a two-and-a-half-hour-long movie to manage, and each of those strands contains flashbacks on multiple timelines, along with dreams, fantasy sequences, slo-mo, snap zooms, and quite possibly a partridge in a pear tree. Guadagnino is in cinematic maximalist mode, strewing references and demonstrations of technique everywhere: Hell frame and light one shot in a way that recalls Fassbinder, then compose the next with a nod to Visconti. I dont mean to suggest that this approach is emptily imitative, all style and no substance. The assured fluidity of Guadagninos camera (the cinematographer is Sayombhu Mukdeeprom, who also shot Call Me by Your Name) is a pleasure to behold, and the images it captures are never less than beautiful. And certainly no movie could be more easily accused of coasting on its style than the original Suspiria (which, full disclosure, I adore). That versions tale of dance mentorship gone very, very wrong (the script was written by Argento and his then-partner and frequent leading lady Daria Nicolodi, the mother of Asia Argento) provides the flimsiest of pretexts for a visual phantasmagoria of magenta arterial sprays and a relentlessly nerve-jangling prog-rock score by the Italian group Goblin. This Suspirias softer, more emo, but still plenty spooky score comes from Radiohead frontman Thom Yorke. And the color palette is no longer all lurid crimsons and purples, but instead more of a Cold Warera ash grayat least until the Argento-esque deep reds start to come gushing out in the gory final act. Advertisement Advertisement Advertisement For a movie that takes place in a dance school, Guadagninos Suspiria demonstrates little interest in the process of studying, teaching, or performing dance. Damien Jalets choreography seems to have been designed around the limited dance experience of the films leading lady; though Johnson studied movement for about a year before filming started, she is a stretch as a prodigy so impressive she immediately lands a plum spot in a world-renowned company. The dances themselves involve lots of tortured floor-writhing and sudden, angular contortions of head and shoulders. Justin Chang of the L.A. Times, who liked the movie much more than I did, aptly and hilariously characterized the style of choreography as Hieronymus Bausch. Advertisement Tilda Swinton certainly makes for a more interesting dom figure than Jamie Dornan. The movies most effective horror set piece, though, directly involves dance. While Susie demonstrates her knowledge of the companys signature repertory piece, the Holocaust-themed Volk, another dancer whos been locked into a separate studio seems to be magically controlled by Susies movements. Each momentary contortion of one dancers body becomes a permanent disfiguring of the others, so that as Susies passionate performance builds to its climax shes unwittingly torturing her poor colleague into a twisted, broken heap. The editing by Walter Fasano is as important as the special effects in convincing us of this awful telekinetic puppetry. I watched that scene with a hand half-shielding my eyesbut I wish I hadnt, because as it turned out, the movie would never again be that viscerally scary, and I should have enjoyed it while it lasted. Advertisement Advertisement Advertisement In one early scene, as Dr. Klemperer is off to a lecture on the other side of the divided city, he calls over his shoulder the name of the speaker whose talk hes about to attend: Lacan! That difficult and sometimes deliberately cryptic French psychoanalyst is clearly an influence in the script by David Kajganich. Susie and Madame Blancs punishing rehearsal sessions together, often conducted with the rest of the company standing by, unroll at first like psychoanalysis sessions and later like BDSM flirtations. Were used to seeing Dakota Johnson in blank-faced naive sub mode after the Fifty Shades of Grey movies, and Tilda Swinton certainly makes for a more interesting dom figure than Jamie Dornan. But while both women are excellent in their roles, the intricacies of this sick teacher-student relationship are never explored. Buried in the elegant production design and gruesome body horror of Suspiria is a meditation on the dangers of pedagogy and the perils of placing your art above all else, but it never quite fights its way to the surface. Advertisement Advertisement I admit that when a title card promising Six Chapters and an Epilogue flashed up at the beginning of Suspiria, I shifted in my overly reclined seat and sighed. Its a word I seldom use as a lifelong art-film aficionado, but this remakes fussy, overthought structure occasionally struck me as pretentious, and I found myself counting down the chapters with dismay as they passed: Still three to go and an epilogue? Guadagnino is now talking about making a prequel that would follow the companys founder, Helena Markos (also played by Swinton, unrecognizable beneath prosthetics) centuries back in time to before the establishment of the coven. The director has said that a companion piece might be a way to investigate the concept of different layers of time. Im not averse to the notion, especially if Swinton is involved. But I hope the next time around Guadagnino also adds a few more layers of fun. Ever since President Donald Trump was elected back in November 2016, women have been re-energizedeven radicalizedin the political sphere. Gloria Steinem says shes never seen anything like it in her eight decades on the planet. As the 2018 midterm elections approach, women are not just preparing to votetheyre hoping to be elected. The number of women seeking political office this year has broken records. At least 476 women filed to run just for House seats in the 2018 electionthats nearly 60 percent more than the previous high in 2012. And 235 of those women won their primaries, which was up from 167 in 2016 when the previous record was established. Advertisement But in addition to that quantifiable jump in the number of women on the ballot, theres also been a qualitative difference in how female candidates have marketed themselves. Multiple women have shown themselves breastfeeding in their campaign ads, and theyre also showing their tattoos. Theyre wearing jeans and T-shirts, and getting ultrasounds on camera. Advertisement Advertisement Advertisement To mark this historic shift, the Waves, Slates podcast on gender and feminism, has teamed up with Glamour magazine for a special episode to analyze the 2018 midterms before you head to the polls. Below youll find a lightly edited conversation between Waves regulars Hanna Rosin, co-host of NPRs Invisibilia, and Christina Cauterucci, a staff writer for Slate, in addition to Celeste Katz, senior political reporter for Glamour, and Latifa Lyles a former Obama administration official, vice president of the National Network to End Domestic Violence, and a D.C. Democratic state committeewoman. Advertisement Want the full discussion? Listen to the Waves via the audio player below, or get the show in Apple Podcasts, Overcast, Spotify, Stitcher, or Google Play. Christina Cauterucci: It seems like for a lot of candidates, this year has sort of marked an opportunity to stop pretending that theyre just like any male candidate, that the experience of living as a woman is sort of incidental to their qualifications for political office, and theyre making it more of a part of their affirmative argument for themselves. Celeste, youve been following a lot of these races. Which candidates have stood out to you as far as self-presentation is concerned? Advertisement Celeste Katz: Thereve been a lot of women that have done some innovative things. A lot of us have looked at this idea of authenticity on the trail that as you say, its no longer sort of a hindrance [to be a woman], although, obviously, it never should have been considered one. But now its not just OK to be a woman. Its important to be a woman. Advertisement And being a woman means maybe youve had experiences that men havent had or that you consider problems in a way that men dont consider them. Being a mom isnt something that, traditionally, voters have lacked questions about. Theres research that shows that female candidates are questioned by voters as to whether they can handle the rigors of public life while taking care of their families. Advertisement Now, you see a lot of women out there breastfeeding [in political ads], but also talking about being a mom and being a family person as a qualification, as an experience. And that is something thats been really prominent in this race. Not every candidate who does this wins, though. We had one candidate in New York, Zephyr Teachout who was running for state attorney general, who was pregnant during the campaign in the primary. She even had an ad where she was undergoing a sonogram while talking about what a good attorney general she would be. Advertisement Advertisement You could literally hear the babys heartbeat while shes talking about how awesome shed be at this office. It was something that I dont believe I had seen in any of the 85,000 campaigns Id covered before this. Hanna Rosin: You used the word authentic. Its so interesting, and that stuck out to me because it feltit feels performative. And I love it. Im not saying performative in a bad way, but to me, whats intoxicating when you sit down and watch these [campaign] videos is that theyre, like, performing motherhood on the ads. Its so in your face. Its not the way, like, the male campaign ads just have their family around. Theyre, like, in your face, [Heres] my breastfeeding, and my ultrasound. Its very performative of, I wouldnt say femininity, but just, like, femaleness in a way which feels very badass to me. Advertisement Cauterruci: Yeah. I hesitate to use the word gimmicky. But that was the first word that sort of popped to my mind when I watched two candidates who are breastfeeding in their ads. Both of them lost their primaries, but one was running for Maryland governor, the other was running for governor of Wisconsin. And the fact that both of them were breastfeeding in their videos, it seemed slightly awkward, like they were trying to make it seem like, Oh, this wasnt plannedI just had to breastfeed at this exact moment that my commercial had to be filmed. We couldnt have timed it around the babys feeding schedule. Advertisement Advertisement It was clear to me that they had probably thought a lot about this because theyre sharing this intimate moment with their baby on camera. Clearly, youve planned it. And same with Zephyr Teachout. I dont think Ive even seen a political candidates belly button before, much less watching them get a medical procedure in a doctors office. And so, I agree with you, Hanna, it was kind of shocking to me. Advertisement Latifa Lyles: Yeah. The statement part of it is really clear, and if theres time for folks to make a statement, I guess people are like, This is it. This is my time to show my boob on camera. The fact that there has to be such a dramatic display is, I think, in some ways a little bit of a backlash against [the idea that women] need to show up as gender neutral as possible. Historically, a lot of women have, down to how they dress. They dont talk about their family or family responsibilities because of the fear that it might seem [like an impediment]. Just like when you walk into a job interview, you dont start off by saying, So, I have five kids, and Im expecting another one. Theres this conversation about whether thats even OK for people to ask. Advertisement Advertisement Advertisement Theres what we call the motherhood penalty, where whether its getting a job, keeping it, wages, or running for office, this is really the contrast to that is so stark. And I think its important that its so stark because the penalty is paid so much every day. Rosin: For me, I was really scared. Like, the penalty is realthe cultural, visceral stereotypes are real. My mind was racing when I watched these ads because I thought like, Do it! Dont do it! Do it! Dont do it! Advertisement Lyles: And also as somebody who just, like, threw my hat in the ring for local politics, that is absolutely something that I would never do nor would I advise someone to do. Advertisement Rosin: Whats the that? Be a woman or breastfeed or what would you never do? Lyles: On some level, Im also one of these people whos very private, and it just seems like a very intimate, private moment. And the sort of oversharing cultureI have family members who [say], like, Dont take pictures of your bare belly when youre pregnant, thats crazy! Theres definitely this foundation that I have for my upbringing of modesty when it comes to bodies and even putting your kids out there. Thats the other piece of that I was shocked about too. I was like, No, because now youre going to be like the breastfeeding candidate and thats all anyones going to ever talk about. Youre the breastfeeding candidate, which is what were talking about right now. Advertisement Advertisement Katz: Maybe thats the point, though? The fact is it is getting attention, and a lot of people got a lot of attention through these ads that they might not have gotten. And of course, thats just one part of the story. But, I think people sort of also, at least observationally, if this was their year to do it, this was going to be the year. This was going the time to sort of turn the tables. Rosin: Why? Katz: Well, because women have been so much at the forefront of politics in terms of the #MeToo movement, in terms of just a backlash to Donald Trump, to sort of translating the passion and the intensity of the Womens March into action. Walking with a sign for a lot of people wasnt enough to express [themselves] or to take action on how they felt about a lot of stuff the Trump administration was doing. And that was way before Brett Kavanaugh got involved in the picture. Advertisement Advertisement Cauterucci: Celeste, you wrote in a piece about women candidates that if women dont confront questions about having kids and balancing their life at home with their life in public, they will take a hit with voters. I wonder if some of these women, by coming out and saying like, Look, Im a woman. Im a mom. Heres what my life looks like. Im not gonna pretend that Im not at home surrounded by primary-colored childrens toys all the time and a burp cloth on my shoulder. Theyre trying to get out ahead of some criticisms that they might face or some stereotypes that might be projected onto them. Advertisement Katz: Yeah, I think that there is a reality that for women candidates, those questions with voters are different than for men. You see men featuring their loving wife and family in their commercials all the time. And its never like, God, hows he going to make it work? Being a dad, being in public office, its just too much. You dont get that dynamic, but with women, some people are like, But what about the children? Its really not fair. So you do have to talk about that. Advertisement There was a big case even in this cycle with a woman whos running for Congress out on Long Island in New York who convinced the [Federal Election Commission] to let her use some of the money that shed raised in donations for child care. That was a big deal. Lyles: The other point I think is important is that in addition to standing out, its like how do I relate to voters and how do I get people out in the midterms? How do I relate in a way that is outside the party norms? And this is one way that people have reached out outside the norms in cases where women are running without endorsement of the national party or without the coffers and the financial backing. And there is this sense that we have to change and not be theno one wants to be the establishment right now because thats a losing message for every town in America. Advertisement Advertisement Advertisement Rosin: What is the best possible scenario of all these ads, and the worst possible scenario? The best possible scenario [as I see it] is we change the language around political presentation. We make it more real. We allow women to be themselves. Its a kind of authenticity, like, it leads to authenticity, because eventually, women can be more honest about the realities they face and what their life is like and they can handle it. So, there isnt this kind of unspoken question around whether women are able to do power and children at the same time. Whats the worst possible scenario? Katz: I think its exactly the stuff that you describedthat people have a bad reaction to it. They think its sort of cheap, that its sort of like, Let me exploit my adorable baby to get you to vote for me because I really want to go to Congress or I want something from you and I am using my personal story to tug at your heartstrings and to get it. Rosin: No, but I mean, like spin it out even further. Thats what happens in this and so therefore what happens for women in politics? Lyles: I think that the broader question about whether we can use identity or at least embrace identity as an asset in politics is still on a lot of peoples minds, especially following the 2016 presidential election. But at the end of the day, its the identity, or the gender, or the being the woman itself that is so hard for people to get around which sucks and is cynical. The night after the first round of Brazils extremely polarized presidential election on Oct. 7, the two leading candidates, who will face each other in a runoff on Sunday, appeared via conference call on a popular TV Globo news show. Jair Bolsonaro, the 63-year-old former army captain who secured almost 47 percent of the votes, and his Workers Party opponent, Fernando Haddad, who had come in second with 29 percent, were each allowed two minutes to address the voters. The front-runner chose to thank the evangelical leaders and the armed forces supporting his campaign while Haddad alluded to a future government plan focused on education and social inclusion. The hosts then asked both candidates, What would you say to your critics who worry about Brazils democracy in case youre elected president? Advertisement Advertisement Advertisement Advertisement For me, democracy always comes first, Haddad said. Well be slaves of the constitution, Bolsonaro said. The question echoed concerns expressed by the international press over the Bolnosaros rise. Spearheaded by the Economist and its recent cover story headlined Latin Americas Latest Menace, outlets including El Pais, the Guardian, the New York Times, Financial Times, and Clarin have raised alarm about the danger posed by his candidacy to Brazils young and struggling democracy. Over the years, Bolsonaro has repeatedly expressed appreciation for the military regime that ruled Brazil in the 1980s, contradicting the consensus that it was a brutal dictatorship, and even said he was in favor of torture. He claims to stand by traditional family values and proposes to loosen gun laws and reduce the age of criminal responsibility from 18 to 16. International accounts have frequently described Bolsonaro to foreign audiences as the Trump of the tropics, compared his rhetoric on crimes to Philippines President Rodrigo Duterte, and desribed him as a would-be dictator. Advertisement This certainly isnt the tenor of coverage in Brazil, however, where the mainstream media is still grappling with the dilemma of where to place Bolsonaro on the political spectrum and has been reluctant to describe him as a threat to the countrys democracy in the manner of foreign outlets. Recently, Folha de S. Paulo, the most prominent daily newspaper in the country, with 41 million online unique visitors just last September, shared an internal guidance with the newsroom stating that none of the candidates should be described as far right or far left. The publications ombudsman then came forward in disagreement with the policy, writing that the newspaper and most media outlets in Brazil are wrong in not defining Bolsonaro as a far-right candidate and dont seem interested in the historical dimension of such understanding. Advertisement Advertisement For Carlos Eduardo Lins da Silva, a former deputy editor in chief of Folha de S. Paulo, the resistance to identifying Bolsonaro as a far-right candidate is a dangerous mistake.* Theres a degree of condescension towards Bolsonaro from the press here, he said. And they made a mistake in not treating him like a winning candidate for most of the campaign. They made a mistake in not treating him like a winning candidate for most of the campaign. Carlos Eduardo Lins da Silva Even after Bolsonaro was officially announced as the presidential candidate of the conservative Social Liberal Party, known as PSL, in July, the 28-year congressman was routinely portrayed as a grotesque figure with little political capital and a member of a party too small to catapult him to the Palacio do Planalto. Now, only a few days before Brazilians vote for the second time, polls indicate that Bolsonaro has the support of 56 percent of intended votes. And what were previously dismissed or relativized as vulgar remarks by an outsider with quixotic pretensionslike when he said he wouldnt rape a congresswoman because she didnt deserve it or that hed rather have a dead son than a gay onenow have to be reconsidered as the rhetoric of a the man most likely to be president. Advertisement Advertisement The current election cycle has also featured a number of examples of politically motivated acts of violence and intimidation. In early September, Bolsonaro himself was stabbed during a rally and had to undergo surgery. The day after the first round, a capoeira master known as Moa do Katende was stabbed to death following a political discussion in a bar. And pictures showing two Bolsonaro supporters and members of his party destroying street signs honoring Marielle Franco, a councilwoman from Rio de Janeiro who was murdered earlier this year, created an uproar on social media. Such instances and many others have led to the creation of several independent platforms to document threats, assaults, and even homicides in the context of the political campaign, including Vitimas da Intolerancia and Mapa da Violencia. Advertisement Advertisement The media has also been a constant target. According to a recent report by the Brazilian Association of Investigative Journalism, or ABRAJI, there were 141 physical and digital attacks against journalists during the 2018 elections, the majority of which have been attributed to Bolsonaros supporters. The latest was against a Folha de S. Paulo reporter, Patricia Campos Mello, who conducted an investigation on how businessmen were financing the dissemination of fake news targeting Haddad on WhatsApp. Campos Mello claimed to have received a series of threats and had her Whatsapp account hacked, leading the newspaper to ask the Federal Police to investigate. The PSL candidate has since denied the allegations, but following the publication of the article, the message application stated that it was removing accounts associated with spreading fake news. Advertisement Advertisement Not unlike Donald Trump in the U.S., Bolsonaros strategy has been partially focused on discrediting the traditional media. The candidate has systematically refused to attend official debates on television, instead choosing on one occasion to give a simultaneous one-on-one interview to Rede Recorda network owned by a Universal Church leader who had declared his support for the candidateand to address supporters directly on his Facebook page. After Bolsonaro announced that he wouldnt be attending the TV Globo debate scheduled for this week, the network canceled it, as two other networks had done already. So by election day on Sunday, Bolsonaro and Haddad wont have faced each other in a face-to-face debate. Advertisement The less he [Bolsonaro] exposes himself to independent journalism and to the other candidates, the more he wins, da Silva said. He doesnt have consistency or a clear ideology. And the media in Brazil has fallen for the same trick as the American press [has] with Trump: that is, focusing on his outrageous declarations instead of questioning him about his government plan. Advertisement He also believes that most outlets havent been bold enough in pushing back against fallacious statements from the candidate in their daily news coverage, leaving the burden to dedicated fact-checking agencies. Despite efforts like Projeto Comprova, which brings together 24 different news outlets and is supported by Facebook and Google to verify and call out fake news, misinformation has been rampant. A recent analysis by the fact-checking agency Agencia Lupa of 50 of the most-shared images on 347 different public WhatsApp political-discussion groups between August and October found only 8 percent to be fully truthful. Advertisement Advertisement Advertisement By tradition, the Brazilian mainstream media doesnt openly support candidates in its editorials, a common practice in the United States and some countries in Europe. But some commentators have been using their spaces in print and time on television to criticize what they consider a false equivalence between Bolsonaro and Haddad. A recent example is Miriam Leitao, an influential economic journalist and O Globo columnist, who said on air that Haddad and the Workers Party have always played according to the rules of democracy while Bolsonaro built his career around the defense of the dictatorship and torture. The press made that equivalence and normalized Bolsonaro throughout the campaign, Jose Roberto de Toledo, one of the founders of ABRAJI and a reporter for the magazine Piaui, said. There was a flaw in the coverage to treat different things as equals. Advertisement Angela Pimenta, president of Projor, an institute for the development of journalism, and executive coordinator of Projeto Credibilidade, the Brazilian chapter of the Trust Project, agrees that it took time for the national media to understand and respond to the phenomenon of Bolsonaromuch like the U.S. elections in 2016attributing it to the unexpected rise in Bolsonaros popularity after the stabbing incident. That virtually reset the election campaign, Pimenta said. He was spared from public scrutiny and went into a hospital room, where he started to use social media to bypass the press. Advertisement Advertisement Two events in the past week, however, have led not only the media but also the judiciary to take a stand. A recently released video from four months ago shows Bolsonaros son Eduardo, a congressman, saying that the Supreme Court could be shut down if it countered his father. And in a message broadcasted to a crowd in Sao Paulo, the candidate said that his red rivals from the Workers Party would be banished from the country. It will be a cleanup the likes of which has never been seen in Brazilian history, he said. Advertisement Were living under the threat of far-right phalanxes like weve never had here, de Toledo said. Bolsonaro is a surfer of a wave much bigger than him of discrediting the institutions in general, including the press. Its a process that has been brewing in Brazil for a decade and for which Bolsonaro is a spokesman. He added, The Brazilian press cant claim surprise. Allegations of voter suppression in Georgia, where there is high-profile gubernatorial race that could make history by electing Democrat Stacey Abrams the states black female governor, have roiled the states already race-conscious politics. The fact that the Republican candidate is Georgia Secretary of State Brian Kemp, whose office technically oversees the election, has raised concerns about equal access to the ballot box, particularly for minority communities. On Thursday, a New York Times report that Democratic officials discovered 4,700 vote-by-mail applications have gone missing in DeKalb County, one of the states largest and most left-leaning counties, only compounded those concerns. Advertisement From the Times: County officials acknowledged the missing applications in a phone conversation this week with Democratic voter protection officials, and pledged to call the thousands of voters to inform them of the error, according to multiple people familiar with the conversation. A spokesman for the DeKalb County elections board would not confirm the details of the call. Sam Tillman, the chairman of the board, added that there is no evidence that there are any missing or lost absentee ballot request forms. He said of a list of 4,700 names provided by the Democratic officials, he could confirm that the county had only received 48 of the requests. To vote in November, the voters caught in the discrepancy will have to re-request a ballot, according to the Times. The deadline for the state to send an absentee ballot to a voter is Nov. 2. The state also has in-person early voting until Nov. 2. Democratic Party officials are worried that some voters who had requested the vote-by-mail applications are out of state, away at college or cannot leave their homes, and cannot vote in person. Listen to What Next: Get More What Next Slate Plus members get extended, ad-free versions of our podcastsand much more. Sign up today. Join Slate Plus Subscribe to What Next Copy this link and add it in your podcast app. copy link copied! For detailed instructions, see our Slate Plus podcasts page. Listen to What Next via Apple Podcasts, Spotify, TuneIn, Stitcher, Overcast, Google Play, or iHeart. When it comes to the people we vote for, how corrupt is too corrupt? With Herb Jackson, Washington correspondent for USA Today and the Record. A whirlwind tour of the U.S. politicians hitting the campaign trail with a dark cloud hanging over their heads. We land in New Jersey, where Senate Democrats suddenly have to worry about a tighter race. The reason? Their incumbent, Bob Menendez, narrowly escaped corruption charges last year. Well be piloting What Next in public for the next several weeks. Tell us what you think: whatnext@slate.com. Follow us on Instagram for updates on the show, our weekend reading lists, and occasional posts about pita chips. Podcast production by Mary Wilson and Jayson De Leon. Engineering by Terence Bernardo. The white man who shot and killed two black people in a Kroger in Jeffersontown, Kentucky, on Wednesday tried to enter a black church just minutes before the attack, police said. Surveillance video shows the gunman, identified by police as 51-year-old Gregory Bush of Louisville, attempting the enter the First Baptist Church of Jeffersontown during a midweek service just before the shooting, according to the New York Times. A church member in the parking lot witnessed the man aggressively pulling on the churchs front doors, according to the Times. Less than 10 minutes later, he drove off toward the Kroger. Advertisement According to the church administrator, there were eight to 10 people inside the church at the time. An hour before, there had been 70 people at a weekly meeting service. Advertisement Advertisement Advertisement Bush has been charged with two counts of murder and 10 counts of wanton endangerment. The victims, identified as 67-year-old Vickie Lee Jones and 69-year-old Maurice E. Stallard, do not appear to have been known by the shooter. On Wednesday, a man who said he saw the gunman leaving the scene of the shooting told local news that after he heard the gunfire, he grabbed his revolver and yelled out to the shooter from behind his car. According to the witness, the gunman replied, Dont shoot me. I wont shoot you. Whites dont shoot whites. Police told the Times that they have not confirmed this account. Advertisement According to police, Bush has a history of mental illness and domestic violence. As the Courier Journal reported, Bushs father once petitioned the court for emergency protection after his son lifted his mother off the ground by her neck and punched his father in the jaw. The father wrote that Bush always carried guns, made threats, and exhibited signs of paranoia. A judge ordered him to surrender his guns and undergo mental health treatment in 2009, but that order was lifted in 2011. Jones family described her as one of the sweetest people you could know, with a a warm and giving heart, according to the Courier Journal. She had retired from the local veterans affairs hospital, where she had worked as an office administrator. She had two sons and multiple grandchildren. Stallard had been shopping with his 12-year-old grandson for a poster board for his school project when he was shot. A military veteran and retired GE employee, he was described as a generous family man who always greeted people with a hug, according to the Courier Journal. He was the father of Kellie Watson, who works in the mayors office as Louisvilles chief racial equity officer. Assault on elderly: Three arrested for force-feeding faeces Police on Thursday arrested three persons for their alleged involvement in force-feeding faeces to an elderly woman at Udayapurgadhi Rural Municipality-5 in Udayapur district. Equal opportunity terrorism: In the wake of several mail bombs (none of which detonated) sent to prominent Democratic politicians and media outlets, among others, Rush Limbaugh declared the explosives to be a liberal false flag operation: Republicans just dont do this kind of thing. Except, as Rebecca Onion writes in her history of letter bombs, they do and they have. Derailed: On Wednesday, Fox News anchors were forced to take a break from their xenophobic coverage of the migrant caravan to report on the pipe-bomb story. Justin Peters explains how the conservative outlet managed to blame it all on the Democrats anyway, in a midterms revival of Slates Watching Fox series. Advertisement Burning up: Critic Inkoo Kang met actor Steven Yeun in L.A. to chat about how the Walking Dead star finally felt at home acting in South Korea, the linguistic nuances of his new film Burning, and why hes a reluctant heartthrob. Inkoo also reviews the unsettlingly tense thriller, which shows a more intimate side of Korean cinema. Voting while trans: Harris R. Mason tackles the legal burdens for transgender voters who live in states with exact match or strict photo-identification laws, which can disenfranchise trans voters by subjecting them to humiliating scrutinyfor having mismatched photos or informationor requiring surgical intervention(!) in order to vote. For fun: An interview with 98-year-old twin Irene Thomas. Just be nice to people, Dawnthea Perhaps realizing that tweeting at the Honduran migrants walking towards the border wont effectively deter them, President Trump is reportedly considering a plan to shut down the U.S.-Mexico border with a travel-ban-style executive order or at least threatening to do so as an electoral gambit or a way to force Democrats to negotiate with him on immigration legislation. The Washington Post reported Thursday night that Trump is weighing a plan to shut the U.S. border to Central Americans and deny them the opportunity to seek asylum, asserting similar emergency powers used during the early 2017 travel ban. Advertisement The proposed order, the Post reports, would try to sidestep existing U.S. asylum law, namely that anyone on U.S. soil, no matter their legal status, can at least claim asylum and enter into a legal process that could eventually end with them legally residing in the U.S. Advertisement Advertisement Advertisement The executive order under consideration would suspend that provision and bar Central Americans as a matter of national security, according to the Post, and would use the same legal authority he invoked during the travel ban, that allows the president to bar certain people from claiming asylum because it would be contrary to the national interest. The proposal would obviously provoke lawsuits and protests and the White House may not be able to get it off the ground before what is left of the migrant caravan arrives at the border or the midterm elections. It seems like Trump is running a two-track strategy: developing new legal tools that would allow immigration authorities to choke off asylum claims, and using that as a threat that would let him enact more far-reaching immigration changes. Advertisement The United States has been spending Billions of Dollars a year on Illegal Immigration. This will not continue. Democrats must give us the votes to pass strong (but fair) laws. If not, we will be forced to play a much tougher hand. Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) October 26, 2018 Trumps previous attempts at trying to run a hostage-taking strategy, such as the plan Jeff Sessions announced last year to scrap legal authorization for people brought into the country illegally as children, ran into problems: several federal judges allowed the program to continue and Trumps preferred harsher immigration reform measure was not even able to get majority support in the House of Representatives. No matter what policy he chooses to pursue, Trump seems perfectly happy to keep talking about the migrant caravan and immigration policy more generally as the midterm election gets closer. President Trump, perhaps realizing that the military engineers, lawyers and medical personnel, that are being deployed to the border wont actually be a meaningful deterrent to anyone attempting to enter, tweeted that the four-to-five-thousand strong migrant caravan in southern Mexico should turn around. To those in the Caravan, turnaround, we are not letting people into the United States illegally. Go back to your Country and if you want, apply for citizenship like millions of others are doing! Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) October 25, 2018 Advertisement Advertisement Advertisement Advertisement Besides the fact that applying for citizenship comes at the end of a years-long-process that includes already residing in the U.S. and having permanent legal residence, its also perfectly plausible that the caravan members who make the over 1,000 mile trip to the border will try to apply for asylum legally at a port of entry. The few hundred people who made it to the border from the last major caravan this past spring sought asylum at a border crossing in San Diego. According to the New York Times, three have won asylum, 30 are still in detention, and the majority have been released as their asylum cases wind through the immigration courts. About 1,700 of the current caravan members have already applied for asylum in Mexico. It is also possible to legally apply for legal entry into the United States from abroad without a close family connection or a specific employment or educational opportunity. Its typically done through the diversity visa lottery, a program that, of course, Trump wants to abolish. A man has been arrested in Florida in connection to the investigation into the explosive packages that have been sent to prominent Democrats over the past week, CNN reported Friday. Two more packages were intercepted Friday, bringing the total number of explosive devices found this week to 12. The two discovered Friday were addressed to Sen. Cory Booker and former Director of National Intelligence James Clapper (via the CNN offices in New York). The package intended for Booker was intercepted at a mail facility in Florida, the state from which authorities now believe some of the packages were sent. Advertisement CNN obtained a photo of the suspicious package addressed to James Clapper and the CNN offices in New York:https://t.co/VBhL4kKShW pic.twitter.com/MWEljibkHr andrewkaczynski (@KFILE) October 26, 2018 Advertisement Advertisement Advertisement ABC News reported that the package intended for Booker but intercepted in Florida has been rendered safe. None of the devices have detonated, and law enforcement officials said Thursday that at least some of the bombs were incapable of exploding. It is not yet known if that defect was intentional or a design flaw, and if the bombs were intended to harm their intended recipients or simply sow fear. Advertisement The first package was delivered to liberal donor George Soros home in New York on Monday. On Wednesday, Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton, former Attorney General Eric Holder, former CIA Director John Brennan (whose package was addressed to CNNs New York offices, prompting an evacuation), and Rep. Maxine Waters, whose name appeared on two packages, were all targeted. Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz, a former chairwoman of the Democratic National Committee, was listed on most packages as the return address. Her office in Sunrise, Florida, was evacuated when the package addressed to Holder was returned. On Thursday, three more packages were found, with one addressed to actor and Trump critic Robert De Niro and the two others addressed to former Vice President Joe Biden. Advertisement Like the others, the packages addressed to Booker and Clapper were sent in manila envelopes with Wasserman Schultzs office as the return address. The other bombs have included shards of glass along with explosive powder, but law enforcement have said they were not rigged to explode upon opening. At least some of the devices have been delivered through U.S. mail, and authorities have said one or two were likely hand-delivered. Experts at the FBIs forensic lab in Quantico, Virginia, are examining the devices for evidence. Investigators are still looking for other suspicious packages that could appear, and they are warning the public to remain vigilant. Advertisement Also on Friday, President Donald Trump tweeted twice about the bombs: once at 3 a.m. to criticize CNN, one of the targets of the attack, for criticizing him in its coverage, and again later in the morning to suggest that the Bomb stuff was distracting voters. Advertisement Say what you will about Donald Trumps declining facility with language, but the guys vocabulary is remarkably consistent! Consider that he publicly described 35 separate things as beautiful in the span of one month in 2017, including the Cuban people, farming, and airports. Its easy to see, then, why the prospect of losing access to this versatile descriptor would send the president into a fake panic. In an address to a gathering of young black conservatives on Friday, Trump praised the crowds beautiful and handsome faces, then lamented that you cant say those things anymore because its not politically correct. Advertisement We have to bring that back into the world of being OK, he said. This is clearly a jab at feminist movements in general and the #MeToo movement in particularan oblique attempt to characterize a massive reckoning with sexual harassment as a hysterical crusade against well-meaning compliments. Its similar to the claims Trump and other conservatives make about the (never not extremely popular!) phrase merry Christmas, which the president claims people have started saying again after Barack Obama forcibly removed the phrase from Americans vocabularies. By reframing calls for religious inclusivity as anti-Christian attacks, Trump tries to paint progressives and religious minorities as malicious and unreasonable opponents of free speech. Advertisement Advertisement Advertisement The strange thing about Trumps unnecessary defense of beautiful in the face of fanatical feminists is that the president himself rarely uses the word to describe an attractive woman. Sure, hes called several wives of heads of state beautiful, as well as women hes slept with, and he once called the Queen of England beautiful six times in response to a single question. But Trump has said his own fingers are beautiful. Other beautiful items, per Trump: his presidential campaign, a lot of dead people, the signs protesting Brett Kavanaughs Supreme Court nomination, Kavanaughs family, Kavanaughs swearing-in ceremony, clean water, clean coal, the myth of clean energy, farming, sleeping gas, military equipment, and his own totally controlled temperament. None of these things are going to be offended by Donald Trump calling them beautiful. Advertisement Its impossible to escape the conclusion that beautiful, which took on a menacing cast when he used it in the Access Hollywood recordingIm automatically attracted to beautiful, I just start kissing themhas become completely desexualized over the course of Trumps presidency. Rather than blaming politically correct leftists for changing the traditional definition of beauty, Trump should hold himself responsible for saying a whole lot of incredibly weird stuff. Advertisement That still leaves handsome, however. For Trump, handsome, unlike beautiful, remains connected to sexual desirability. He has called Kavanaugh and former White House physician Ronny Jackson handsome several times, and in June, at his Singapore summit with Kim Jong-un, he asked photographers to make sure the two leaders looked nice and handsome and thin. Kim responded by glancing around the room in what looked like discomfort and disbelief. Perhaps that encounter was on Trumps mind on Friday when he wished for more talk of peoples good looks. He wasnt pining for more opportunities to sexually harass people. He was, in his peculiar and idiotic way, conducting diplomacy. On Oct. 20, Saudi Arabia issued a statement on the death of Jamal Khashoggi, a dissident journalist who had walked into the Saudi consulate in Istanbul on Oct. 2 and never walked out. The Saudis claimed that Khashoggi had somehow died in a fistfight, apparently involving 18 suspects. It was the latest in an ever-changing series of absurd tales told by the regime. But when President Donald Trump was asked whether he found the statement credible, he replied, I do. Advertisement Trumps answer seemed ridiculous. But in context, it made sense. He was sitting at a table full of defense-industry executives. Most of them were counting on a Saudi arms deal he had signed the previous year. Probably the people around this table have the vast percentage of the $110 billion order from Saudi, said Trump. Almost 100 percent of it would be sitting right around this table. Trump gestured to Dennis Muilenburg, the CEO of Boeing, and Marillyn Hewson, the CEO of Lockheed Martin. He pleaded, I dont want to look over and tell Marillyn or Dennis, By the way, were going to take $25 billion worth of sales away from you. Advertisement Advertisement Advertisement Thats why Trump talks like a Saudi puppet: He is one. He has reduced the United States from the leader of the free world to an obsequious vendor. He made a sale to a rich client, and hes afraid to lose it. Advertisement Trump came into office with no experience in public office or the military. He ran a company, so he treats the United States like a company. His foreign policy is about making money. In Iraq, its take the oil. In Japan and South Korea, its pay us more, or well stop protecting you. In Europe, its pony up more for NATO. Trump sees Western European countries not as political or military allies but as economic enemies. When President Barack Obama met with Saudi leaders, he talked about many issues: counterterrorism, ISIS, Yemen, Syria, Iraq, Libya, and Iran. He also brought up universal human rights. But when Trump went to Saudi Arabia in May 2017, he sidelined those issues. In his prepared remarks, he espoused a principled realism under which our friends will never question our support. We are not here to lecture, said Trump. We must seek partners, not perfection. Advertisement To Trump, the trip to Riyadh was all about the money. He sat in a chair next to the Saudi monarch, King Salman, and watched as executives from defense contractors and other American corporations paraded to center stage to receive elegantly bound contracts from Saudi leaders. The grotesque ceremony featured CEOs and senior executives from Alcoa, Boeing, Cisco, Dow Chemical, Exxon Mobil, General Dynamics, General Electric, Halliburton, Honeywell, Lockheed Martin, Raytheon, and 16 other companies. Advertisement A year later, when Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman visited the White House, Trump couldnt stop talking about money. He held up posters that showed how many billions of dollars he had racked up in sales to Saudi Arabiaand how many jobs these deals would produce in key states. The crown prince had to remind Trump that Saudi Arabia was also an ally. At a Cabinet meeting later that day, Trump boasted, Saudi Arabia is a very wealthy nation, and theyre 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. Advertisement Advertisement Thats why Trump bends over backward to excuse the Saudi government in Khashoggis death. The Saudis ever-changing alibis arent credible, but Trump says they are. The Saudis have dragged their heels in disclosing what happened, but Trump praises their speed. Trump has also touted an alternative theory of rogue killers and has suggested that audio evidence of the murderwhich CIA Director Gina Haspel has now heardmight be fictional. When hes asked whether Saudi Arabias human rights violations were overlooked, he changes the subject to Irans violations. In an interview with the Associated Press, Trump complained that the Saudi regime was being treated as guilty until proven innocent. I dont like that. We just went through that with Justice Kavanaugh. And he was innocent all the way. Advertisement Advertisement Trump is afraid he might lose the Saudi contracts. Reporters dont even have to bring them up. Since Khashoggi disappeared, Trump has started every discussion about the dissident journalist by insisting that America mustnt cut off or risk losing the arms sales. When we take away $110 billion of purchases from our country, that hurts our workers, that hurts our factories, that hurts all of our companies, Trump pleaded at the White House on Oct. 13. Were really hurting our country a lot more than were hurting Saudi Arabia. Theyll go to Russia. Theyll go to China. Trump treats the United States like a company. His foreign policy is about making money. Republican senators argue that the arms sales help Saudi Arabia fight terrorism, contain Iran, and limit civilian casualties in Yemen by improving airstrike precision. But Trump doesnt make those arguments, because they arent about money. In an interview with Fox News on Oct. 11, he described defense as just another industry: We have a country thats probably doing better economically than its ever done before. A part of that is what were doing with our defense systems, and everybodys wanting them. When Trump is asked about Saudi Arabias reliability as a partner or ally, he changes the subject to its role as an arms purchaser. Advertisement Advertisement Advertisement Trump is blunt about his transactional relationship with Riyadh. Speaking to reporters on Oct. 13, he said he chose Saudi Arabia as his first presidential destination not for strategic reasons, but because no other country is going to be investing $450 billion. I worked very hard to get the order for the military, said Trump. Russia and China wanted it very badly. I got 100 percent, almost 100 percent, of their order. At the defense industry roundtable, he bragged that he had bargained with the Saudis, telling them, I want you to order a tremendous amount of stuff. When Trump talks about the contracts involved in the deal, he doesnt talk about the weapons or how theyll be used. He talks about the companies: Raytheon and General Electric and General Motorsthey were there getting contracts for $25 billion, $30 billion, $40 billion. Nobody has ever seen anything like it. He talks about states that will benefit from the deal: Texas has a big chunk of it, he says, and almost every state in the union is affected, because its the largest order ever given. He keeps inflating the number of jobs the deal will create. First he said it was 40,000. Then it became 450,000. Then 600,000. Then a million. Advertisement Advertisement Advertisement Trump is exaggerating the payoff. But financially, hes making the smart play. By looking the other way while the Saudis murder Khashoggi and cover it up, hes protecting corporate profits and jobs in key electoral states. The only price, aside from a mans life, is our soul. At a White House meeting two weeks ago, Trump pleaded that he didnt want to cancel the arms sales to Riyadh but insisted, There are other things we can do that will be very severe. When reporters asked him for an example, he drew a blank. He turned to Sen. James Lankford and asked, James, do you have any suggestions? Thats what happens when you reduce your foreign policy to commerce. You think youre putting America first. But what youre really putting first is money. And if the money isnt yours, then youre not the owner. Youre the owned. Early this week, reports emerged that special counsel Robert Mueller is continuing to examine former Donald Trump adviser Roger Stones relationship with WikiLeaks, as well as WikiLeaks publication of thousands of emails stolen from the Democratic National Committee and the Hillary Clinton campaign in 2016. This is news worth paying attention to. The question of Stones connections to WikiLeaks gets to the heart of the special counsels investigation into whether Trump and his associates colluded with Russian intelligence services to win the 2016 election. Advertisement Mueller wants to know who served as an intermediary between Stone and WikiLeaks, and in turn, how Stone may have passed along information about the stolen emails to the Trump campaign. The emails and campaign voter data stolen by the Russians and then published by WikiLeaks, in conjunction with the Kremlins social media disinformation campaign, could have easily been the key factor in swaying the election in Trumps favor, according to University of Pennsylvania professor Kathleen Hall Jamiesons new book, Cyberwar: How Russian Hackers and Trolls Helped Elect a President. Advertisement Advertisement Advertisement More specifically, Mueller is looking into whether conspiracy theorist Jerome Corsi acted as a conduit for information between Stone and WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange. The special counsel reportedly wants to know why Corsi seems to have held advanced knowledge that Clinton campaign chair John Podestas emails would be released by WikiLeaks, which occurred starting on Oct. 7, 2016. According to NBC News, Corsi has told Muellers investigators that he simply figured it out on his own, reasoning that an absence of Podestas emails in WikiLeaks first release of stolen emails in July 2016 meant that the anti-secrecy organization was holding Podestas communications for an October surprise. For his part, Stone tweeted on Aug. 21, 2016 that it would soon be Podestas time in the barrel. Advertisement The special counsel also wants to understand the connection between Corsi and Trump, whom Stone claims were in touch as far back as 2011, the year Corsi published his book Wheres the Birth Certificate?: The Case That Barack Obama is Not Eligible to be President. Stone, meanwhile, told the Washington Post that comedian Randy Credico was his principal source regarding WikiLeaks and the stolen emails, an allegation he has made numerous times and that Credico denies. (Here is an October 2016 tweet and accompanying selfie by Credico in which he claims to have been leaving the Ecuadorian embassy in London where Assange has lived for several years. Its also worth noting that Corsi spoke of being willing to travel to London to meet with Assange that year, according to NBC News.) Advertisement Advertisement By deciphering Stones interactions with WikiLeaks and the Trump campaign, Mueller may be able to establish whether the campaign unlawfully cooperated with Russian intelligence in an effort to win the election or was merely a beneficiary of the Kremlins independent actions. Advertisement Stone began to draw attention to possible links between himself and those involved in the theft and release of the stolen emails in the summer and fall of 2016. That was the period when, according to Mueller, Russian intelligence was publishing the emails through Guccifer 2.0the hacker supposedly behind the email thefts, who was actually a front persona used by Russian intelligencethe website DCLeaks (another front created by Russian intelligence), and WikiLeaks. Throughout that time, Stone publicly encouraged the release of the emails, made predictions about new tranches of emails that would be published, and even claimed that he was in touch with Assange. Advertisement In August and September of 2016, Stone and Guccifer 2.0 carried out a running dialogue over Twitter. As the Washington Post notes, there was, by this time, widespread public discussion that Russian intelligence was connected to the Guccifer 2.0 persona, an allegation Stone dismissed in an Aug. 5 column in Breitbart. All the while, Russian intelligence and WikiLeaks continued to publish stolen emails, while Stone made public comments that seemed to suggest he had prior knowledge of the emails contents and when they would be released. Advertisement Mueller and his team want to know if Stone indeed had advance knowledge of the hacks or provided input as to how the emails could be weaponized against Clinton, and if so, what his level of contact was with the Trump campaign at the time. Its worth noting that Muellers July 13 indictment of 12 Russian intelligence officers for hacking the DNC and Clinton campaign describes Stone as being in regular contact with the Trump campaign while he was interacting with Guccifer 2.0. Advertisement What does all of this mean legally? The short answer, as Ryan Goodman wrote in Just Security, is that if the Trump campaign consulted with the Russians on weaponizing the stolen emails, or approved of or supported their release, even tacitly, it could directly implicate them in in the conspiracy to defraud the United States that Mueller charged Russian intelligence officials with in July. And if the campaign or its associates tried to cover up the facts of the Russian effort, they could be open to charges of misprision of a felony, according to Goodman. Advertisement Finally, as Sam Berger noted, the interactions with Russian officials may have also violated campaign finance laws since campaigns cannot coordinate, consult, cooperate, or even request or suggest action by foreign nationals on any expenditure that seeks to influence a U.S. election. Amid all the news over the past few months about Mueller charging Trump associates with crimes ranging from money laundering to obstruction of justice, the fact that he is looking into Stones interactions with WikiLeaks shows the special counsel is still aggressively pursuing the question at the heart of his investigation, and that it could have very real consequences. Uberland: Tech ethnographer Alex Rosenblat spent four years riding thousands of miles with Uber drivers. She talks to Isaac Chotiner about how algorithmic bosses are changing the nature of work and whether Lyfts labor practices are any better than Ubers. It happened again: On Sunday, Brazilian citizens are set to vote for their president in a runoff, and it looks like the far-right candidate, Jair Bolsonaro, is going to win handily. Isabela Dias comments on how Brazilian media, during the election cycle, didnt take the threat Bolsonaro represented seriously until his chances of victory seemed certain. Advertisement I say, Sickert! Adding color to a black-and-white classic can either be a way to adapt old material for new times or a sickening cash grab at the expense of art. Or as Keith Pille writes about the colorized re-release of Alan Moore and Eddie Campbells From Hell: At the news, my monocle flew across the room. Is this an outrage? This seems like an outrage. Wait, Campbells personally doing the colorization? Maybe this isnt an outrage. So long, farewell: Friday is editor-in-chief Julia Turners last day at Slate before she departs for a new job at the L.A. Times. Slatesters past and present share their favorite memories of her, and Turners predecessors pay their respective tributes as she bids goodbye. For fun: Be a pineapple for Halloween. Trick or treat, Nitish On Friday, Facebook announced that it had removed yet another batch of pages and accounts from its platforms that pretended to be U.S. activist groups. These Facebook and Instagram accounts were made in Iran, like the more than 600 pages and accounts that the company removed in August. Unlike that earlier batch, Facebook has not linked the newly disclosed accounts to Iranian state media, though the company says it is still investigating. Whatever these pages provenance is, its clear from looking at the kinds of content they shared that they had a political motive. Advertisement The pages that Facebook removed on Friday had names like No racism no war, Wake Up America, and Thirst for Truth, and it appears they were posting content well into this year, touching on hot-button issues like the Supreme Court nomination of Brett Kavanaugh, as seen in sample posts shared by Facebook. Facebook further shared data on some of the accounts it removed with the Atlantic Councils Digital Forensics Lab, which reported that many of the pages taken down had a substantial reach. Although Facebook says that only 1.02 million accounts followed one of the pages, the data retrieved from the Atlantic Council shows that many of these pages were able to reach many more millions of people. One of the pages, I Need Justice Now, had raked in more than 13 million views on its videos, and the page No racism no war had logged more than 10 million video views. Advertisement Advertisement Advertisement Advertisement The content that was intercepted by Facebook this time, unlike much of what was shared in August, appeared to be more attuned to what an actual American following political news might do on social media. The post about Brett Kavanaugh that Facebook included in its sample set, for example, came from the account No racism no war, which posted a cartoon of the Justice testifying in front of Congress with black men sitting behind him in the audience wearing shirts and hoodies with the names of black people who had been killed by police, like Eric Garner, Tamir Rice, and Trayvon Martin. The comic features Justice Kavanaugh with a talk bubble that reads, My life has been destroyed by unproven allegations without a trial! to which the character in the hoodie that says Trayvon responds, Thats rough, bro. A reverse image search of this cartoon shows that it was once tweeted by the Center on Race, Inequality, and the Law at New York University Law School, but its unclear which account tweeted the cartoon first. Advertisement In America, race overwhelms the presumption of innocence-in the streets, in the courts, in private, and in public. pic.twitter.com/21a02YmCTF RaceNYU (@RaceNYU) October 14, 2018 Advertisement In contrast, the pages from Iranian fake accounts revealed in August primarily focused on issues of importance to Iran, like the Iranian nuclear agreement and U.S.-Israeli relations. Some of the tweets from the associated Twitter accounts included an awkward array of hashtags affixed to the end of tweets about totally unrelated news events. For example, one tweet about gun control actions taken by the Florida senate included the hashtags #TheBachelor and #StarWarsRebels. Advertisement Advertisement Many of the pages that were removed in this recent purge, according to the Atlantic Council, were created this year and were actively posting this fall. Like the content made by Russian trolls, these posts were clearly intended to widen social and political divides in America. The Iranian accounts removed Friday were primarily focused on riling up Americans on the political left, and had far fewer pages aimed at conservatives, which Russian efforts have largely (but not exclusively) focused on. Though the Iranian accounts were generally fairly convincing impersonations of politically concerned Americans, some showed signs that an American might not be at the helm. One meme posted by the Iranian page Voice of Change, shared by the Atlantic Council, would only make sense if it was read from right to left, like in the way Farsi is read. Advertisement Advertisement In a call with reporters on Friday, Nathaniel Gleicher, the head of cybersecurity policy at Facebook, said that the company detected these accounts through its own internal investigations last week, meaning that the time between detecting accounts, removing them, and alerting the public is rapidly decreasing. Remember, Facebook reportedly first learned about Russian interference in the election in the fall of 2016. In May of 2017, the company told Time that no evidence of Russian agents buying ads on Facebook to target specific users with divisive content. Then in September, the company finally published a blog post detailing that it had found 470 inauthentic accounts pretending to be U.S. political groups from the Kremlin-linked Internet Research Agency, which was working to stir social and political divisions ahead of the 2016 elections. Coming forward about Iranian inauthentic activity it found in the span of a week is a marked improvement for Facebook. But the fact that this activity is still popping up just days before the 2018 midterm elections is unsettling. And as Facebook gets better and faster at detecting this kind of activity on its platform, it remains very possible that the trolls are going to better at covering their tracks, too. The standard QWERTY keyboard is a rather limited tool. Designed and tinkered with over the early 1870s by newspaper editor Christopher Latham Sholes, the typewriter configuration has barely changed since 1873, when the rights to the product were sold to E. Remington and Sons, which released the following keyboard: 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 - , _ Q W E R T Y U I O P : A S D F G H J K L M & Z C X V B N ? ; . Advertisement Thats right, no zero or 1. These days, we have a few extra characters at our fingertips. We have brackets, (round), [square], and {squiggly}. We have all the symbols we might need for typing fake $@*% words. We can over! enthuse! our emails! But we still do not have our deliciously protracted, overapplied em dasha beloved tool in many a writers toolbox. And while the French-Canadian keyboard comes with an accented e, we English speakers are still stuck with our regular old e, making it difficult to differentiate between rose and rose. Advertisement Advertisement Advertisement Fortunately, weve found ways other than the dreaded Insert > Symbol on Microsoft Word to say what we need. A recent conversation on Slates Slack revealed just how creative writers can be in avoiding the Insert path. Many admit they Google, copy, and paste characters that are AWOL on the QWERTY when they need them: the dashes, the accents, the umlauts. In high school, I regularly Googled the name of my own schoolafter all, when you attend Sacre Cur and take an obnoxious pride in spelling it correctly, the search engine becomes your meilleur ami. Others admit to typing the letters c-a-f-e in Word and stealing the autocorrected e when they need it (deja vu works too), but if you want to be a jerk about how you spell doppelganger and Sudoku, theres no obvious autocorrect for umlauts or macronsif youre trying to write about Bjork, its back to Google or the cumbersome Word process. Advertisement The debate surrounding the use of the em dash rages on in editorial circlesperhaps, as the Ringer writer Kate Knibbs tweeted, the difficulty of applying it discourages its overuse (and perhaps that em dash could have been a semicolon). But its not workingwe writers are a resourceful bunch, at least when it comes to em dashes. Theres Google, of course (Slate editor Dan Kois admits to keeping a bookmark of the search results for em dash), but the true em dash abusers among us have actually learned the keyboard shortcut: [Option] + [Shift] + [-] on Mac, or [Ctrl] + [Alt] + [-] on PC. Advertisement There are other lesser known Mac keyboard shortcuts out there. For the accented letters, theres the Option keypressing [Option] + [E] will provide a , which you can follow up with any vowel of your choosing. [Option] + [`] will provide a grave accent, [Option] + [I] a circumflex, [Option] + [U] an umlaut, and [Option] + [N] a tilde. On PC, its [CTRL] + various combinations. On Apple keyboards, you can also hold down a letter to see alternative versions of that letter: holding A, for example, offers eight alternatives, a, a, a, a, , a, a, and a. Advertisement Advertisement But wait theres moredozens more. There are sites out there dedicated to describing the full range of Mac keyboard modifiers, if you want to use Google to actually learn something, rather than copy-pasting. You want ? Its [Option] + [R]. ? [Option] + [2]. Paying in ? [Option] + [Shift] + [2]. Tired of typing out degrees? [Option] + [Shift] + [8] will bring you . But honestly, who has time to memorize all these? Certainly not people who spend their days typing words on the internet. (As Slates Heather Schwedel noted, it seems easier to wait for computers to read my mind.) But it doesnt have to be this wayfor Mac users at least. It turns out theres a shortcut to end all shortcutsone that cuts out having to remember (almost) anything at all. Advertisement Advertisement As outgoing Slate design director Jason Santa Maria pointed out, there is such a thing as a Keyboard Viewer on Mac. Enabling it brings up a virtual keyboard that can show you the alternate keysall the options at your fingertips when you hold down [Option]. (PC users have an OSK, or On-Screen Keyboard, which replaces a regular keyboardSHIFT brings up a capitalized set of letters, but its not clear it can do much else). Heres how to access it: Go to System Preferences, and click Keyboard. Under the Keyboard tab of Keyboard, check the box Show Keyboard & Emoji Viewers in menu bar. An icon should appear in your menu bar, featuring the looped square symbol ()click on it, then Show Keyboard Viewer, to display the on-screen keyboard. Advertisement It may look like the normal keyboard, but by holding down [Option], [Shift], or [Option] + [Shift], you can see the alt-keys. [Option] + [Shift], for example, will show you the glorious em dash in place of the hyphen. Advertisement You can press the button on either the digital or physical keyboard. From here, youll only need to remember the three modifiers: [Option], [Shift], or [Option] + [Shift]. It may sound like a few more steps than youre used to (um, four) but truly, you have nothing to lose but your QWERTY chains. But bad news for \_()_/ users, who were no doubt reading this just to find out how to type their little friend. Not all the symbols in his body are available, even on the extended keyboard. Its back to Google for your bemused friend. \_()_/ Dahal heads to Delhi for one-day visit Nepal Communist Party Co-chairman Pushpa Kamal Dahal is leaving for New Delhi on Friday to participate in a conference organised by India Foundation. On Wednesday, the New York Times reported that Chinese and Russian spies have been routinely eavesdropping on President Trumps calls to advisors and friends that he makes on an unprotected iPhone. By listening to the calls, China has reportedly been able to pinpoint which people have influence over Trump and attempted to have them deliver messages that will benefit the country. The president has two iPhones that have been modified by the National Security Agency to limit the potential for tampering, which necessarily requires the disabling of functions like contact lists. However, according to the report, Trump prefers to use his personal iPhone, which lacks these protections. Advertisement Trump disputed the Timess report on Twitter by claiming that he rarely uses cellphones. It appears that he sent the tweet on an iPhone. Advertisement Advertisement Advertisement The so-called experts on Trump over at the New York Times wrote a long and boring article on my cellphone usage that is so incorrect I do not have time here to correct it. I only use Government Phones, and have only one seldom used government cell phone. Story is soooo wrong! Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) October 25, 2018 Advertisement Its unclear exactly what tricks and ruses foreign spies could be using to tap into the presidents calls. There are at a lot of approaches that are used to subverting systems, and that applies to whether youre dealing with the phone system, whether youre dealing with critical infrastructure, says Clifford Neuman, the Director of the University of Southern Californias Center for Computer Systems Security. All these critical techniques they all come into play in this question of: If someone were to target a particular cellphone, how would they accomplish it? Advertisement The two most obvious ways to eavesdrop on Trumps phone conversations would be to tamper with the switches, which are essentially computers that route calls, or with the device itself. Tampering with the switches would require a deep understanding of Washington, D.C.s phone systems in order to identify which computers are handling the traffic for a particular set of calls. This sort of probing can be done remotely. Intelligence agencies are constantly probing networks to find vulnerable routers, servers, switches. If you can get a piece of spyware onto that machine, then you can see all the things that are happening, says Andrew McLaughlin, who served as the deputy chief technology officer in the Obama administration. You absolutely dont have to be walking around in a trench coat and sunglasses in D.C. This would be people sitting in a dark basement in Moscow. Advertisement Advertisement Once spies have identified the switch they want to target, they could compromise the developers of the equipment and sneak spyware in through a software update or other means. If they have access to the supply chain for the hardware, they could also insert a malicious device. There is also a way to direct cell traffic through a fake switch under a nefarious actors control. Cell-site simulators, also known as Stingrays, are a technology that send broadcast signals that appear to be stronger than those from actual switches in the area. Phones in that area will connect to that stronger signal, allowing the people who control the stingray to pinpoint GPS locations and eavesdrop on calls. Advertisement Breaching the presidents actual phone would give foreign governments an even more potent espionage tool. The holy grail is to get spyware onto the device, McLaughlin notes. If you can get spyware onto the presidents iPhone, turn on the microphone, turn on the camera, grab screenshots. Targeting the device, though, is more difficult. Spies would most likely need to know the model of the phone, the number, and other details. From there, they could deliver malware through operating system updates or app downloads. Foreign actors may also be able to launch a zero-day attack, which essentially takes advantage of a security flaw of which the phones developer is unaware. If we are looking at the things a nation state might have in terms of being able to try to target a phone that is being used by the president, zero-days would be things that are in their arsenal, says Neuman. Such attacks can go undetected, which is why there is a policy that the president must switch out his phone every 30 days. According to the Times, however, Trump rarely does. In addition to the attack on the United Nations International Maritime Organization, multiple public and commercial shoreside facilities and vessel owners and operators around the world were hit by ransomware attacks, according to the 2020 MTS-ISAC Annual Report. The report did not cite any specific reason for the rise in attacks, but instead said multiple factors were responsible, including geopolitical tensions, transitions in criminal activities in response to the COVID-19 pandemic, legal challenges that make cybercrime a low-risk endeavor, an increase in remote workers, and inadequate resources for IT and security teams in the maritime sector. 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 ... Kinzua Bridge State Park Complex November Programing The Kinzua Bridge State Park Complex is excited to offer the following public programs at Kinzua Bridge during the month of November. Dates times and descriptions for each program are provided below. Participants should dress for the weather and plan to be outside. Kinzua Bridge State Park Winds of Change: Wind Turbines & Wildlife Virtual Program Monday, November 8, 2021 (6:00 p.m.) In order to mitigate the impacts of global climate change more and more of our energy needs are being met by renewable sources such as wind and solar. While both of these renewable sources of energy produce less emissions they still have impacts on wildlife. Join us for a virtual program exploring how using innovation in turbine design can reduce the impacts on wildlife from wind energy development. *Please note this is a virtual program delivered via Microsoft Teams and will not be presented physically in the park. Pre-registration is required, to register visit: https://events.dcnr.pa.gov/event/winds_of_change_wind_turbines_wildlife-_virtual_program Saturday Morning Bird Walk Saturday, November 13, 2021 (8:30 a.m.) Bring your own binoculars to look for birds and plan on hiking around the park and out on the bridge! Growing Up Wild- Virtual Teacher Workshop Wednesday, November 17, 2021 (9:00 a.m.) Virtual professional development opportunity for current and future early childhood educators looking for innovative ways to engage young learners (ages 3-7) with nature. Along with sampling some of the 27 different lessons contained in the curriculum all participants will receive a free curriculum guide for their classrooms and will be eligible to receive 2 Act 48 hours. *Please note this is a virtual program delivered via Microsoft Teams and will not be presented physically in the park. Pre-registration is required to register visit: https://events.dcnr.pa.gov/event/virtual-growing_up_wild_educator_workshop#.YX149Z7MLIU For more information, please contact Kinzua Bridge State Park Visitor Center and Park Office at (814) 778-5467 or e-mail us at kinzuabridgesp@pa.gov . Visit DCNRs website directly at www.dcnr.state.pa.us or visit DCNR through the PA homepage at www.state.pa.us Peace pillars can be found there, too. News: Receive favorite authors articles by email. Try the new feature and turn on the subscription. Font size: A - | A + Comments disabled More information about travelling in Slovakia Please see our Please see our Spectacular Slovakia travel guide A popular hill to climb near Kosice is Kojsovska Hola (1,246 metres above sea level). It is one of the highest peaks of the Volovske Vrchy with a weather station located on top. Kojsovska hola is one of the most visited peaks in eastern Slovakia. Spectacular views from the top when the weather is good attracts many hikers. Approximately 1 km below the peak of Kojsovska hole at an altitude of 1,045 m stands the Erika chalet which is the second highest hut in the Kosice Region. On the southwest slope of Kojsovka (about 240 m from the meteorological station) stand the 49 Pillars of Peace which mark the location of Slovakia on the 49th parallel and symbolise the preservation of peace in Europe. They were installed here in 1997 and the area became known as the Mountain of Peace. The arrangement of three triangles expresses symbolic support for the physical, and spiritual growth of man. They bear the inscription "Let peace always rule on Earth and let peace be in Slovakia". Kojsovska hola is accessible almost from every side. The classical hike leads from the old mining village of Zlata Idka and takes about two hours. Europe is based on common values, said the French president; member states accept money but sometimes start resisting the need to implement European values. Font size: A - | A + Comments disabled French President Emmanuel Macron is visiting Slovakia for two days before the centenary of the emergence of Czechoslovakia, then he moves on to the Czech Republic. Prior to his visit, he answered questions from four Central-European media: Sme daily from Slovakia, Hospodarske Noviny from the Czech Republic, HGV from Hungary and Rzeczpospolita from Poland. Last year you said the V4 countries treat the EU as a supermarket, enjoying the benefits of membership while refusing to share the costs. Do you still think that? What I said was: Europe is not a supermarket. Europe is common fate. I have also specified that it was not about the discussion between the East and the West, and I am still convinced about that. The conditions are the same for all. Most of all those that concern the internalisation of our common values. The EU is based on common foundations single market in economy, humanity in politics. The EU is a common cohesion model for European civilisation. It consists of people, their personal freedom, their creative solidarity and cultural diversity. This common foundation cannot be weakened or divided it is a whole. We might be different in everything else, our actions within the Union might not always be the same, but the values must remain our joint assets. Respecting these values, we bear collective responsibility for solidarity. It is not possible to draw from the European budget without showing solidarity, for instance, in migration policy. One cannot attempt to lower their contribution to the EU budget without understanding the advantages of the single European market. If we continue this way, we bear ill will to Europe. Europe is not a one-way street, it is a mutual bond thanks to which each state can strengthen its sovereignty rather than weaken it. In 2018, Slovakia experienced the murder of a journalist who wrote about corruption at the governmental level, about the abuse of EU funds. The mass protests that followed were, according to Robert Fico, organised by George Soros. How did these events change the position of Slovakia in the EU and the hope that the country will someday belong to the core of the EU? Emmanuel Macron Macron was a banker, advisor to the French president, and minister, until he became the French president one and a half years ago. His movement En Marche! helped him win over the far-right candidate Marine Le Pen. In his campaign, he promised to deepen European cooperation, and he continued promoting it after he assumed presidential office. The murder of Jan Kuciak and Martina Kusnirova was a great shock. It shook Slovakia, France, and the whole of Europe. Threats and attacks on the media or murders of journalists are a direct blow to the very foundations of our democracies. But I will always remember how Slovaks responded to this event. The citizens have shown how much they care about the freedom of expression and freedom of press. Their gatherings at the SNP Square were full of EU flags. Thanks to the European identity and European values, Europe is alive. To be in its heart is not a question of geographic position, it is a question of political ambition present all around Europe. By accepting the common currency and by entering the Schengen zone, Slovakia sent a clear signal about that. We do not sort member states into quality-based classes, there is no East-West division, or division into old and new member states. There are only concrete projects in defence, digitalization, intensifying cooperation within the eurozone. In other words, there are common interests that transform into open cooperation among member states who have the courage to lead the way of progress. This is the vision I want to build, because this is what the core of Europe is to me. The French president visited Slovakia on October 26, repeatedly refused division of Europe into east and west, old and new. News: Receive favorite authors articles by email. Try the new feature and turn on the subscription. Font size: A - | A + Comments disabled French President Emmanuel Macron visited Slovakia on October 26, ahead of the celebrations of the centenary of the emergence of Czechoslovakia. France was the first country in the world to recognise the newly-emerged European state on October 28, 1918. Read also: Read also: Macron: When the EU distributes money, nobody shouts it is dirty money Read more Macron visited Slovakia for the first time since he assumed the presidential office in 2017. It is also the first visit of the French president to Slovakia since Francois Hollandes visit in 2013. After the day in Bratislava, Macron flew to Prague to meet the Czech Representatives. Slovaks are convinced Europeans You are convinced Europeans and you trust the European ideas, Macron said to Slovaks during the press conference following his meeting with Slovak President Andrej Kiska, as quoted by the Sme daily. Change the future of Europe. Its up to you, up to each member state. Use every opportunity to take part in the European dialogue. Macron and Kiska at their meeting discussed the future of Europe and problems in the regions. Kiska reported that he warned Macron of the threats that the Nord Stream 2 gas pipeline project poses, which could eventually cause Ukraine to be cut off from gas supplies. Kiska praised Macron as a strong leader who clearly names the problems of the European Union and presents a vision, Sme wrote. The European Union is not the problem, the European Union is the solution, Kiska said. Macron repeatedly stressed during his visit that he does not believe in dividing Europe into old and new member states. We will never pay Europe back for what she gave us, Macron told the press conference. We need to talk, explain, ask, seek the truth and listen to the legitimate aspirations of Slovakia. Slovakia has things to say. Macron: I want Europe to be the leader of a sustainable world Macron then met with PM Peter Pellegrini and together they also attended a meeting with the public. Europe is not something that is owned by leaders or member states. Europe belongs to the people, Macron said as he addressed the public gathering. Macron admitted that the refugee redistribution quotas that Slovakia fiercely opposed might not have been effective but that does not mean Europe should be put aside. Member states should not only gain money from the EU but also show solidarity towards other countries. Macron called on people not to give a voice to people who want to break up Europe. Pellegrini told Macron that Slovakia wants to be a responsible partner for the EU and participate in all the activities directed towards unity and self-defence of the EU. In that, Slovakia will always be on the side of France, Pellegrini said. During the public meeting, Pellegrini reiterated that he wants the EU to be united and safe and we can only get there if we are equal and if we also have the vision beyond our borders and sincerely talk to our citizens. Macron has stressed the need for deeper integration and labelled some peoples attempts to change Brussels for Moscow as madness. Macron said he wants Europe to be the leader of green economies, of the sustainable world. At the end of his speech, he addressed the generation of the 1989 Velvet Revolution in Czechoslovakia and thanked them for taking risks. "My generation, we are born with peace and prosperity and a lot of people forgot that it was a reason of past conquest," Macron said. "Let's be loyal to the spirit of the revolution." Coffee Design is proudly sponsored by Savor Brands , your boost in coffeedence through maximizing designs in packaging, sustainability and tech. Coffee Manufactory, the San Francisco-based coffee company, debuted its fresh, new look this month. Bags of coffee now sport a lovely saturated color palette in delicious letter-pressed Biotre bags. Coffee Manufactory also refreshed its website and brand-identity with the help of NY creative agency Gin Lane. To learn more, we talked to Maja Vojnovic over e-mail. Hi, Maja! Can you tell us a bit about Coffee Manufactory? Coffee Manufactory was born from a conversation about what is possible in coffee. With over two decades of green coffee supply chain experience, we hope to look at new ways to work with producers through our buying practices, multi-platform roasting strategies, and interconnected retail and supply chain collaboration. Our focus on sourcing impacts and sets the standard for every part of our business. We believe that through key sourcing partnerships, coffee quality will reach its highest potential. To do this, we are working towards a more sustainable future for our producers. We want to bring customers closer to farms, farms closer to roasters, roasters closer to baristas, and back again. Back to the roots of great farming relationships and precise roasting. Back to being good. Balanced. Clean. When did the coffee package design debut? Starting October 1, 2018, Coffee Manufactory will launch its new packaging, website, and branding, this launch represents nearly a year of heavy thought, research and design work. Who designed the package? We worked with Gin Lane, a creative agency based in New York City. Their main focus was to have our packaging reflect our simple, humble, and global approach toward design and connections. What coffee information do you share on the package? Each bag has a correlating letterpressed label which is made by our close friends at Aesthetic Union, an artist-run letterpress print shop in San Francisco. Each label contains the SKU number (00-11), name (Decaf, Espresso, Filter, Africa SO, Latin SO, Dark), and coffee components. Our blend labels have a % breakdown for all the coffees that go into them listed by country and name. Our SOs have the coffee name listed. One really unique feature is the product marks and regional markers which are featured in the circle on the label front of our bags. Our blends and 00 Decaf receive a product mark featuring the CM lion, while our single origin, 03 and 04, coffees are branded with a mark representative of the coffees origin. We worked with Gin Lane to design regional markers for each origin region we buy coffee from. These marks are designed to capture on the ground experiences from these coffee growing locations whether its the local flora and fauna, an architectural landmark, a municipal monument or sign, or a local form of transport, such as the Kenyan boda boda, or scooter taxi. The CM Lion: So much of our story is rooted in our work and efforts at origin. We choose to pay homage to Ethiopia, the birthplace of coffee and one of the origins we have immense involvement in. The CM Lion is inspired by the 1954 modernist Lion of Judah statue by Maurice Calka located in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia. This mark is a symbol of producer independence and the origin of coffee. It is proud, humble, regal, and respected. Whats the motivation behind that? With our markers, we wanted to feature a visual system that aims to connect consumers with origin and give them a sense of where our coffees are come from. We are very upfront with our blend composition %. Since we source our blends with the utmost intention and roast profile in mind, we wanted to be very transparent about what goes into our blends. What are some of the improvements made in the packaging? We chose to go Eco-Friendly and work with Pacific Bag Company to create a custom sized block bottom white kraft BiotreTM bag. Our bags are made up of 60% compostable and renewable plant-based materials which have been shown to break down into healthy compost in 12 weeks. We also added a zipper to ensure optimal freshness once the coffee bag is opened. Why are the aesthetics of coffee packaging so important? Packaging has the ability to say so much about a brand and their story. We want our new bags to tell our story. A story of origin and simple design that is approachable and conversational. Whether its via our regional markers or our color associated SKUs, we want our consumers to feel connected to what they are buying. Where is the bag manufactured? The bag is manufactured by Pacific Bag. What type of package is it? Our bags are made out of BiotreTM, which is a packaging material composed of multiple, laminated layers. The outer layers consist of cellulose from wood pulp. Also, all colors printed on the bag are printed using Eco-Friendly water-based ink. Is the package recyclable/compostable? The bags are made up of 60% compostable and renewable plant-based materials. However, the zipper and valve need to be removed before placing these bags into a compost bin. Pacific Bag is currently working on a version that will have an eco-friendly valve and zipper, so look out for that! Where is it currently available? Starting October 1st, you will be able to purchase our bags from our website or from any of our amazing wholesale partners! Tartine Bakery Subrosa Coffee Bi-Rite Triniti Echo Park Fred Segal Cafe Constellation Coffee Float Thank you! Company: Coffee Manufactory Location: San Francisco, CA Country: United States Release Date: October 2018 Designer: Gin Lane Zachary Carlsen is a co-founder and editor at Sprudge Media Network. Read more Zachary Carlsen on Sprudge. EC fails to resolve party name row Election Commissioners failed to resolve the row over the name of Nepal Communist Party (NCP) at its meeting held on Thursday. Credit: University of Texas at Austin Changing market conditions have made natural gas, wind and solar energy the lowest-cost technologies for new electricity generation for most of the U.S., according to updated research released today by The University of Texas at Austin's Energy Institute. The research features a series of maps that have been revised to reflect shifting market conditions, a new policy environment and other factors affecting the cost of electricity generation in counties across the U.S. The updated version also displays the same data for congressional districts. The original analyses supporting the maps is contained in a white paper titled "New U.S. Power Costs: by County, with Environmental Externalities." The paper is part of a comprehensive study coordinated by the Energy Institute, the "Full Cost of Electricity (FCe-)," initially issued in December 2016 and updated for today's release with additional research. Researchers analyzed data for the most competitive sources of new electricity generation. Wind again proved to be the option with the lowest cost, on a levelized basis, for a broad swath of the country, from the High Plains, the Midwest and Texas, and even portions of the Northeast. Solar power is the cheapest technology in much of the Southwest, and, based on updated data, also in the eastern and northern regions of the U.S. Natural gas prevailed for much of the rest of the country. Joshua Rhodes, a research affiliate at the Energy Institute and lead author of the paper, said the research assesses multiple generation technologies including coal, natural gas, solar, wind and nuclear. The maps released today feature updated prices for natural gas and renewables. "The new maps present a more accurate reflection of current market conditions, including revised prices that indicate the cost of various generating technologies," Rhodes said. Researchers examined existing studies to enhance a formula used to calculate generation costs known as the Levelized Cost of Electricity (LCOE). The formula factors in "externalities" such as the public health and environmental effects associated with electricity generation which the LCOE formula typically does not include to calculate truer costs for each generation technology. The team also developed online calculators to facilitate a discussion among policymakers and others about the cost implications of policy actions associated with new electricity generation. "We think our methodology is sound and hope it encourages constructive dialogue," Rhodes said. "To enable this dialogue among stakeholders who disagree about the various cost factors, we've created tools to allow them to change the factors and observe the outcomes." For the FCe- study as a whole, researchers adopted a holistic approach to probe the key factors affecting the total direct and indirect costs of generating and delivering electricity. Their work resulted in the production of more than a dozen authoritative white papers that provide an in-depth assessment and examination of various electric power system options. "These are complex, interrelated issues that warrant a cross-disciplinary examination," said Carey King, an assistant director at the Energy Institute and a principal investigator for the study. "The research team we assembled reflects considerable depth of expertise on a wide range of disciplines including engineering, geosciences, business, public policy and law," he added. The updated version of the study also contains several new white papers, including an analysis of how the integration of distributed energy resources such as rooftop solar onto the electric grid is disrupting the traditional utility business model. Graduate students participating in a research project directed by the Energy Institute as part of a Policy Research Project in UT's LBJ School of Public Affairs produced the paper, which assesses the efficacy of six new utility business models. Another new paper explores the impact of financial support for electricity generation technologies. The report examines data from government and other sources to calculate a dollar-per-megawatt value of subsidies and their effect on technologies or fuels extensively used in power generation. "The new papers contained in this updated version complete the picture," King said, noting that the tools researchers created allow customers to consider how various factors affect their electric bills. "The LCOE calculator shows new power plant costs, but that accounts for only half of a customer's bill," King noted. "You can choose to include externalities, or exclude them. You then add the LCOE with or without externalities to the cost of operating the electric grid, plus subsidies that affect practically all energy technologies, to see how they affect the consumer." For more about the FCe- study and for digests of the white papers, read the executive summary. Explore further NREL updates baseline cost and performance data for electricity generation technologies EC quashes complaint against Nepal Communist Party The Election Commission (EC) has quashed the complaint filed against the name of ruling Nepal Communist Party, upholding its earlier decision. Tika R Pradhan is a senior political correspondent for the Post, covering politics, parliament, judiciary and social affairs. Pradhan joined the Post in 2016 after working at The Himalayan Times for more than a decade. Binod Ghimire covers parliamentary affairs and human rights for The Kathmandu Post. Since joining the Post in 2010, he has reported primarily on social issues, focusing on education and transitional justice. Intimate partner violence Lack of laws and weak implementation forces young people to suffer in silence Malaysia to scrap hiring of foreign workers through agents Malaysia, which is due to sign a bilateral labour agreement with Nepal next month, is gearing up to abolish the system of hiring foreign workers through recruiting agencies. Mayors Summit vows to fight Valley air pollution Elected representatives of all local governments here on Thursday committed to jointly fight the Valleys environmental degradation and the rising air pollution. Issues of concern to people who live in the west: property rights, water rights, endangered species, livestock grazing, energy production, wilderness and western agriculture. Plus a few items on western history, western literature and the sport of rodeo... Frank DuBois served as the NM Secretary of Agriculture from 1988 to 2003. DuBois is a former legislative assistant to a U.S. Senator, a Deputy Assistant Secretary of Interior, and is the founder of the DuBois Rodeo Scholarship. Nepali safari-goers pack Sauraha during Dashain The popularity of Sauraha, one of the most popular tourist destinations in the country, has increased among domestic sightseers. The number of Nepali sightseers visiting the jungle safari destination increased during the recently concluded Dashain festival. Today we meet the curator of Design City, the first design biennial in Luxembourg. Today we meet the curator of Design City, the first design biennial in Luxembourg. Every two years Anna Loporcaro, who is also head of production at Mudam, coordinates the whole festival in collaboration with the City of Luxembourg and many other partners. 10-man U23s the heroes as McCarthy returns Saturday, 27 October, 2018 Everton U23s 1 - 0 Manchester City U23s The stream went live shortly before the 7pm kick-off with Darren Griffiths joined in the commentary box by Graham Stuart. Everton's goalless draw at Arsenal on Monday kept them ahead of the Gunners at the top of Premier League 2, while Manchester City sit 6th in the table but only two points behind the Under-23s. Beni Baningime plays again after a long injury layoff. James McCarthy was also fit to start after his long layoff since breaking his leg against West Brom in January. Everton took an early lead, Sambou's relaxed style from the spot enough to bamboozle the City goalie. Sambou should have scored again but was a fraction slow pulling the trigger and the keeper anticipated well. In true Everton fashion, the feed froze in the second half, just as Mason Holgate saw a second yellow card and then a red. City proved to be a difficult and tenacious side, coming close on a few occasions in the keenly contested second half, but Everton U23s held on for a very important victory that further consolidates their lead atop Premier League 2. Everton U23s: Virginia, Holgate [Y:; YR:78'], Browning, Feeney, Charsley, Dowell (90' Lavery), McCarthy, Baningime, Adeniran, Broadhead, Sambou (70' Gordon (83' John)). Subs not Used: Hilton, Markelo. About these ads NOC to install locking system on all tankers Nepal Oil Corporation (NOC) has planned to enforce the security locking system on all petroleum tankers that dispatch fuel to domestic petrol pumps by mid February. Petrol pump fined for giving short measure The Department of Supply Management and Protection of Consumers Interest on Wednesday slapped Bhadrakali Oil Store, Gothatar with a fine of Rs200,000 for giving customers short measure. The European Commission (EC) is considering an investigation into whether Vietnamese bus and truck tire exporters are avoiding tariffs or employing unfair underpricing after spotting a suspicious rise in Vietnamese tires entering the European market, the Trade Remedies Authority of Vietnam said on Wednesday. If an investigation is opened, domestic tire companies could be seriously affected, the agency said. The specter of a tax evasion and dumping probe arose after the EC imposed a six-month anti-dumping duty of 52.9 to 82.2 percent on Chinese tires on May 4. Meanwhile, Vietnamese rubber tire exports to Europe Union countries have increased since the tariff was imposed, from 3,494 tires in May to 18,974 in August, according to figures on the trade remedies authoritys website. The European Union has a history of launching dumping investigations into multiple products from Vietnam after its imposition of anti-dumping tariffs on Chinese goods. Vietnams major markets, like the United States, South Korea, Australia and Canada, have also conducted protectionist probes against the Southeast Asian country in similar cases. Like us on Facebook or follow us on Twitter to get the latest news about Vietnam! The owner of a gold shop in the Mekong Delta city of Can Tho who made headlines after being fined for exchanging foreign currencies without a license is now considering bringing a lawsuit against local authorities for seizing property unrelated to the case. Confiscated assets from the gold shop, which include 20 diamonds and 19,910 artificial gemstones valued at more than VND548 million (US$23,500), are currently set to be auctioned off and all proceeds to be added to public coffers. Can Tho police staged a raid on the shop in January, catching owner Le Hong Luc exchanging a customers 100-dollar bill for VND2.26 million. Officers also conducted a thorough search of the building, claiming that they had received a tip-off about other illegal transactions taking place at the business and seizing 20 diamonds and 19,910 artificial gemstones for lacking proof of purchase. Last month, Luc was slapped with a VND180 million ($7,700) fine for running an unlicensed currency exchange service. The customer he was caught transacting with was fined half the amount. The Can Tho administration recently issued their approval for a plan to liquidate the assets seized from Lucs shop. Accordingly, the civil fine paid by Luc and his customer will be deposited into the State Treasury of Can Tho, which is also tasked with storing the diamonds and gemstones until they can be liquidated. An asset appraisal committee is also to be formed to value the confiscated items for auctioning, the proceeds from which will be added to the provincial budget. A gold shop in Can Tho City in southern Vietnam is empty of customers after news broke about a police raid on the shop. Photo: Tuoi Tre Speaking with Tuoi Tre (Youth) newspaper, Luc said he only found out that his assets would be auctioned through media reports. Im astounded, he said. The fact that I paid my fine doesnt mean I wont file a complaint or lawsuit against the police for the raid and the confiscation of my diamonds and gemstones, Luc added. I paid the fine out of my respect for the law and willingness to strictly abide by administrative decisions. Luc said the confiscated diamonds were his personal property and were being stored inside a private safe, not intended for sale. Therefore, he had no papers proving their origin to show authorities. He said his family is consulting lawyers to possibly bring the case to court. Though the confiscation happened back in January, Vietnamese laws allow a one-year window for complaints or lawsuits to be filed against an administrative decision, Luc said. Meanwhile, Can Tho chairman Vo Thanh Thong said the decision to add the confiscated assets to public coffers was issued days ago. They are confiscated assets, and the violator has also paid their fine without any complaints, Thong explained. Its common and legal practice to auction these assets for money that will be added to the public budget, he said. Like us on Facebook or follow us on Twitter to get the latest news about Vietnam! President Bhandari to leave for 4-day state visit to Qatar President Bidya Devi Bhandari is leaving for a four-day state visit to Qatar on Monday. The Heidelberg Laureate Forum 2018 which took place in the German city of Heidelberg attracted more than 200 young researchers in the fields of mathematics and computer science from 16 countries. The talented youths who attended the forum had the opportunity to meet with heavy-hitters in various fields, including American computer scientist Vinton Gray Cerf, widely recognized as a Father of the Internet, Jeff Dean, Google director of AI, and Peter Scholze, who at one point was Germanys youngest professor. Promoting the passion for research Andreas Reuter, scientific chairperson of the Heidelberg Laureate Forum 2018, said most young researchers are typically still undecided about their future career. As such, one of the forums main draws is the opportunity it provides for its participants to speak with experts and seek inspiration to pursue new ideas, research projects, and collaborations. One of the problems they face is the current trends in the economy. There are so many job opportunities [in other fields] for people with their qualifications so there is a certain danger that the brightest minds will be steered away from science and the whole process of innovation will eventually slow down, he explained. Do Trong Hoang, a PhD who currently works at the Hanoi Mathematical Institute and one of the only two Vietnamese selected to join the forum, asserted that the Heidelberg Laureate Forum is a great opportunity for young researchers to meet world-renowned professors and become updated on the latest innovations resulting from their research. The program supports young researchers from developing countries like Vietnam by offering them a grant for free travel, meals, and accommodation, he shared. Professor Caucher Birkar, the UK-based Kurdish-Iranian mathematician who received the Fields Medal in August this year, said that the students are always welcome as long as they are willing to learn and work hard. Talking about the initiatives to support students, especially young researchers, director of Googles AI division Jeff Dean shared that the company regularly offers scholarships and training programs to talented young researchers so that they can improve their experience and knowledge. Supporting young female researchers According to Andreas Reuter, many countries face the issue of women being underrepresented in technical fields, a status quo many attribute to traditional gender roles. If we want to change something, we need to start at the kindergarten level to make sure that girls are not treated any differently than boys. If we start later, like in primary school, those stereotypes will have already taken root and will be very hard to change, he emphasized. The forums scientific chairperson shared that besides the one-week meeting, other activities organized by the Heidelberg Laureate Forum include exhibitions and educational events for schools and kindergartens in order to plant the seeds of science, technology, and engineering in youth at a very early age. He revealed that over the years the forum has actually seen a decline in the percentage of female applicants in each category. In the undergraduate category, the percentage of female applicants is around 38 percent. It goes down to 34 percent when we look at PhDs and below 30 percent in the postdoc category," Reuter noted. As the level rises, that number continues to fall. There are far fewer women professors in mathematics and computer science, as well as senior scientists. Therefore, there are fewer female prize winners. It means women enter the field but they are not choosing to advance themselves because something has happened along their career path. It is a complex societal problem because women have to take care of their families and children while the way many career systems are set up in many societies is basically that once you leave the system for a while its very hard or even impossible to return, he concluded. Like us on Facebook or follow us on Twitter to get the latest news about Vietnam! Vietnams representative to the Miss Grand International 2018 beauty contest ended her run in the Top 10, shortly before a finale that shocked audiences when the winner collapsed just seconds after her name was announced. Miss Vietnam 2018 first runner-up Bui Phuong Nga joined 75 other international candidates to compete at the Miss Grand International 2018 final night, the sixth edition of the prestigious pageant which calls for peace across the world, in Myanmar on Thursday night. The show began with all 76 finalists parading in black costumes alongside the reigning winner, Perus Maria Jose Lora, before the Top 20 finalists were announced. Although Ngas name was not among those called for the Top 20, the 21-year-old Vietnamese beauty was lucky enough to skip the quarterfinals and move directly into the Top 10 as the nights Miss Popular after garnering the most online votes. Vietnam's Bui Phuong Nga wins Miss Popular at the Miss Grand International 2018 finale in Myanmar on October 25, 2018. In the semifinals, the contestants took to the runway in their mesmerizing evening gowns before the presentation segment. Nga was the last to speak during the segment, and, unfortunately, was not able to wow her way into the Top 5. At Thursdays finale, the winner of national costume was also awarded to Miss Grand Peru 2018 Andrea Moberg. Best Swimsuit went to Miss Grand Cuba 2018 Gladys Carrodeguas, Miss Grand Indonesia 2018 Nadia Purwoko won the Best Social Media prize, and Miss Grand Thailand 2018 Moss Namoey Chanaphan claimed the Best Evening Gown. The highlight of the event in Yangon was the moment when Paraguay's Clara Sosa was crowned Miss Grand International 2018. Sosa collapsed in shock just seconds after the announcement. Fortunately, the Paraguayan beauty was able to recompose herself just a minute or two afterward and properly took her first walk as the winner. Paraguay's Clara Sosa manages to pick herself up after appearing to pass out and do her first walk as the winner of this year's Miss Grand International. Like us on Facebook or follow us on Twitter to get the latest news about Vietnam! Vietnams Prime Minister Nguyen Xuan Phuc called on the eliminations of all barriers for women to access better employment opportunities and social welfare during the third ASEAN Ministerial Meeting on Women (AMMW-3) in Hanoi on Thursday. ASEAN women have made significant contributions to prosperity in the region, PM Phuc said at the event, adding that the number of seats held by women in the ASEAN countries parliaments, as well as the number of local businesswomen, has increased in recent years. We cannot become a community of solidarity, resilience, innovation and sustainable development without the engagement of women and girls, the premier remarked. They deserve equality in families and society, protection and empowerment. Various initiatives in Vietnam have integrated into national programs to promote gender equality and improve social welfare for women and children, Phuc continued. Delegates at the ASEAN Ministerial Meeting on Women (AMMW-3). Photo: Tuoi Tre The female representation in the countrys National Assembly accounts for 27.1 percent, he elaborated, adding that up to 98 percent of businesses owned by women are small-and medium-sized enterprises. He took the occasion to recommend collaboration related to women and girls within the bloc in the future, namely equipping women with new skills and forming life-long study networks. Efforts should also be exerted to provide women with sustainable jobs and remove all barriers for women to access better employment opportunities and social welfare. The AMMW-3 ran from October 18 to 25 against the backdrop that the bloc is accelerating the implementation of commitments and priorities in social welfare and gender equality. Like us on Facebook or follow us on Twitter to get the latest news about Vietnam! Vietnams National Assembly chairwoman Nguyen Thi Kim Ngan has received the highest level of confidence from lawmakers, followed by Prime Minister Nguyen Xuan Phuc, in a vote held earlier this week. Members of the lawmaking National Assembly on Thursday conducted a vote of confidence for a total of 48 high-ranking officials as part of the legislatures sixth session from October 22 to November 21 in Hanoi. The vote was meant to review the performance of the officials as well as their political qualities, morality, lifestyle, and compliance with the law. The delegates decided on their level of confidence toward each official by selecting between low, medium, and high. NA chairwoman Nguyen Thi Kim Ngan received the highest confidence score from the delegates, with 437 votes of high confidence, accounting for 90.1 percent of NA members. PM Nguyen Xuan Phuc ranked second with 393 votes of high confidence, accounting for 81.03 percent. Meanwhile, Minister of Education and Training Phung Xuan Nha scored the lowest level of confidence, receiving low confidence ballots from 137 NA deputies, or 28.85 percent. I will try to do a better job to meet the expectations of the National Assembly and Vietnamese people in general, Minister Nha said following the publication of the results. A total of 107 delegates, or 22.06 percent of the total lawmakers, also expressed low confidence toward Minister of Transport Nguyen Van The. On the same day, chairwoman of the legislatures Committee for Judicial Affairs Le Thi Nga brought forth for discussion a report on the verification and amendment of the revised Anti-Corruption Law . They also mulled a draft Law on Protection of State Secrets. The legislators are scheduled to review the countrys socio-economic development during the 2016-18 period and discuss a developmental plan for 2019. Like us on Facebook or follow us on Twitter to get the latest news about Vietnam! Check out news you should not miss today, October 26: Politics -- French Prime Minister Edouard Philippe will pay an official visit to Vietnam from November 2-4 at the invitation of Prime Minister Nguyen Xuan Phuc, the Vietnamese Ministry of Foreign Affairs has announced. -- In his Thursday remarks at the 8th Beijing Xiangshan Forum in China, Vietnamese Minister of National Defence General Ngo Xuan Lich urged all countries to reinforce cooperation institutions and mechanisms, particularly multilateral ones, to better manage international security. Society -- Vietnam each year spends some 2.6 percent of its GDP on social support programs including those for women and girls, Prime Minister Nguyen Xuan Phuc said at the third ASEAN Ministerial Meeting on Women in Hanoi on Thursday. -- During the first nine months of this year, the Hung Vuong Obstetrics and Gynecology Hospital in Ho Chi Minh City has received 728 pregnant teenagers arriving for labor, according to the clinics data. -- Police of Ho Chi Minh Citys Hoc Mon District said on Thursday are investigating a robbery case in which a GrabBike driver was stabbed in his neck in the locality on October 21. Business -- Ho Chi Minh City on Thursday signed a memorandum of understanding with Dubai-based airline Emirates to strengthen tourism and economic trade activities between Vietnam and United Arab Emirates, with numerous tourism and trade fairs and workshops to be boosted. -- VinFast, a unit of Vietnams largest conglomerate Vingroup JSC, on Thursday signed a memorandum of understanding with PetroVietnam Oil Corp. (PV Oil) to build 30,000 to 50,000 charging stations for its electric cars and scooters at 20,000 stations of PV Oil by 2020. Education -- The Vietnamese Ministry of Science and Technology has recently announced its 2018 Innovative Technopreneur Contest, a competition for start-up business in seven areas including agricultural technology, education technology, health technology, tourism start-up, financial technology, 4.0 technology, and social impact. Lifestyle -- The Ho Chi Minh City administration has approved a plan to develop river tourism plus a night food street at the Bach Dang Wharf in District 1. -- Around 110 silk paintings by 24 painters with 93 sculptures by 21 sculptors nationwide are being on show at an exhibition held by the Department of Fine Arts, Photography and Exhibitions in Hanoi. Like us on Facebook or follow us on Twitter to get the latest news about Vietnam! A privately-funded playground has been inaugurated in an area home to many factories in the southern province of Dong Nai, promising various benefits for children of workers in the locale. The venue, spanning 200 square meters within the community center of Hiep Phuoc Hamlet in Nhon Trach District, some 52 kilometers southwest of Ho Chi Minh City, was opened on October 21. The VND200 million ($8,600) playground was entirely funded by contributions from university students in Dong Nai and an unnamed local firm. According to Ho Hong Nguyen, president of the Vietnam National Union of Students, this is the first privately-funded playground in the neighborhood. The venue creates a free, entertaining, and relaxing environment for local children, Nguyen said. As a huge industrial province with a highly populated community of workers, the ever-growing demand for childrens playgrounds in Dong Nai is yet satisfied. In the near future, the Vietnam National Union of Students will continue to call for more playground investments from contributors and benefactors, Nguyen added. Like us on Facebook or follow us on Twitter to get the latest news about Vietnam! Police in Ho Chi Minh City are hunting five South Korean men who are still on the run after assaulting their fellow countrymen and business rivals at the latters residence in District 2, leaving the victims with severe injuries. Two members of the seven-man gang, all of whom are South Korean nationals, have already been captured, police say. According to information released by District 2 police, Park Gun-huk and Min Kyung-man are both South Korean nationals staying in the Thao Dien neighborhood in District 2. The two were involved in a work-related dispute, which prompted Park to call his friends from South Korea to come to Ho Chi Minh City for a plan to ambush his rivals. On Monday, six of Parks friends, Im Tae-woon, Lee San-ha, Kim Young-jeam, Lee Moyng-woon, Park Gan-min and Kim Jung-hoon, landed in Ho Chi Minh City after boarding a flight from South Korea, according to police officers. The men stayed at a hotel in District 2 and bought six hammers together with a bundle of plastic zip ties which they planned to use during the ambush. At around 3:30 am on Tuesday, the gang hailed a taxi to Mins residence, where there were six South Koreans staying, wiin Thao Dien and sneaked into the house unbeknownst to their victims. The attackers, armed with hammers, quickly had their sleeping victims under control and dragged them down to the ground floor, where they were tied up in plastic zip ties and hit with hammers. The men also searched the rooms for valuable properties to steal. After the initial confusion, the victims came to their senses and began to fight back, eventually taking back control of the situation. After around five minutes of resistance, the assaulters fled the scene with the stolen properties, but they were detected by neighborhood security guards stationed nearby. Panicked, the men split into multiple directions in an attempt to escape. Police officers were called in to help and managed to capture two of the seven men, Im Tae-woon and Lee San-ha. Min and the other five in his residence were taken to hospital for treatment for injuries, including a man named Park Jung-il who suffered severe head wounds and internal bleeding, police said. Authorities are still hunting for the remaining five members of the gang. Like us on Facebook or follow us on Twitter to get the latest news about Vietnam! Police in Ho Chi Minh City said Thursday that they are investigating a case where a Grab driver was stabbed in the neck and robbed of his motorcycle on Sunday. In the early hours of October 21, GrabBike driver Nguyen Vu was driving a customer along an empty road in the citys suburban Hoc Mon District when the passenger attacked him with a sharp object, officials said. The customer fled the scene with Vus mobile phone and Yamaha Exciter motorbike. Locals found Vu lying on the street with a stab to his throat and injuries on his back and the right elbow, before rushing him to the hospital. Residents reported the case to police at around 3:00 am the same day. Doctors said Vus health condition is improving. Vu, 33, comes from a poor family. His father originally left his hometown in Quang Ngai Province in central Vietnam to work as a scrap dealer in the south of the country, relatives said. Vu sells banh bao (steamed pork buns with hard-boiled quail eggs) during daytime and moonlights as a driver in Ho Chi Minh City. He sends a portion of his earnings to his wife and two children, who live in Quang Ngai. The man bought the motorcycle that is now gone in the above incident after hearing complaints from customers that his old bike was too slow. Vus case occurred just two days after a 15-year-old passenger killed a student GrabBike driver, also by causing throat injuries. The primary suspect of this case is now in police custody for investigation. Like us on Facebook or follow us on Twitter to get the latest news about Vietnam! A province in northern Vietnam originally calling for nearly 2,000 hectares of forest to be rezoned for a hydroelectric facility and several resource exploitation projects has slashed the area in question to just 130 hectares, just seven percent of the original proposal. The administration in Lao Cai, a mountainous province about 300 kilometers from Hanoi, announced their original proposal to allow 68 local projects to transform 1,963 hectares of its forest by 2020 in an official suggestion, the Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Development said. Recently, however, the local government has amended their plan to limit the included area to just 129.7 hectares, saying that only 13 of the 68 projects would actually need forest land. Now, locals are wondering why that information was not clear from the outset. The ministry, which received the proposal for each of the projects, has only granted licenses to 12 of the projects in order to show a stricter attitude toward forest repurposement. The one excluded project was meant to include a running tap water system for Lao Cais Sa Pa Town, a tourist attraction. Most of the other plans involve constructing hydroelectricity facilities, expanding an existing stone quarry, and conducting mineral exploration. All the projects must receive the imprimatur from Vietnams premier before they can be given the official green light. Like us on Facebook or follow us on Twitter to get the latest news about Vietnam! A new Bevan Lee script is cause for celebration for Sevens Director of Network Programming, Angus Ross. He knows Lees track record in grabbing viewers thanks to his work on Packed to the Rafters, A Place To Call Home, All Saints, Winners & Losers, and Always Greener. Yesterday Seven announced Between Two Worlds, with a video of Lee hinting at an incident will change the lives of polar opposites: corporate and working class characters. A lot of scripts need a lot of work when you see them, with revisions and rewrites. But Bevans scripts always blow you away from the word go. This is something weve been working on or a while to get it to screen and putting all the financing in place. Its very, very ambitious and were very excited about it, Ross tells TV Tonight. It will debut in the second half of 2019. But there are two new dramas circled for early 2019. Ms Fishers Modern Murder Mysteries will be straight out of the gate on Q1. Its a lot of fun, as 4 x 2 hour telemovies. Geraldine Hakewill is a chameleon, he continued. Australian Gangster will also be straight off the top (of the year). Although Seven screened a trailer to media yesterday it is revealing no more while a legal case remains underway. Elizabeth Colemans play Secret Bridesmaids Business is to become a new miniseries. Ive read 2 scripts of Secret Bridesmaids Business. Its a 6 part thriller, a female-skewing, very adult series and again, very ambitious. Amongst the surprises yesterday was a second, event size version of My Kitchen Rules in the back half the year (returning favourites from across the 10 years perhaps?). But first the standard MKR will mark its 10th anniversary with an unfiltered contestant who says what he thinks. We gave an example of one of the characters today and those boys are an interesting pair. Promos will have a field day. And the perfect strangers (twist) was also shown today as well, with 2 people meeting for the first time. The MKR second season will go part-way to Seven building on the second half of its programming year. We still feel we have strengthened this year and that was shown in the result, versus our competitors. Its fair to say weve had the odd programming stumble but we have the depth in the schedule to be able to absorb those which is why we keep talking about a programming spine like news, sport and the absolute dominance of our multichannels. 7mate and 7TWO are really part of our overall strategy of a Seven network total picture. But we are not relenting on further strengthening the back half of the year, we will put a couple of stripped shows in there. Ross has two new titles acquired from his recent visit to MIPCOM but wont hint at the genres. Surely not more dating shows? At certain times of the year you only have certain options to go with to avoid what your competitors are doing. In the back half of the year Nine basically runs The Block for 5 months or so. So renovation isnt the go. TEN runs dating shows in the back half. But relationships are a very demo-rich type of programme, attracting younger viewers, very strong on BVOD on 7Plus. So we think there is a lot of life in that genre, he explains. We had a couple of misfires this year but we are bring back shows like The Super Switch that do have a heritage and have performed strongly in the past. So I think that brings a bit more certainty. And The Proposal is an absolutely bonkers show and did very well on ABC over the US summer. It will be a pretty tough casting proposition! Every show you get an engagement at the end. As I say its bonkers. Lastly what are his picks of the international titles for 2019? I would keep an eye on Cheat which is from the producers of Liar. Ive read the scripts and its an amazing 4 parter. From FOX weve got The Passage and Proven Innocent. The Passage is quite high concept, based on a series of books, so I think that could launch well. You can read all about Sevens AllFronts here. Team formed to complete provincial committees of ruling party The Nepal Communist Party (NCP) has formed a two-member team to complete the provincial committees and to decide the responsibilities of the partys central members. NBC News and US anchor Megyn Kelly are in talks about her leaving the network, after she defended the use of blackface during Halloween. What is racist? Because you get in trouble if you are a white person who puts on blackface for Halloween or a black person who puts on whiteface for Halloween, she said during a segment. When I was a kid, that was OK as long as you were dressing up like a character. Following a backlash on social media and from NBC colleagues, Kelly apologised on during her show, Megyn Kelly Today. Im Megyn Kelly and I want to begin with two words: Im sorry, she said. I learned that given the history of blackface being used in awful ways by racists in this country, it is not OK for that to be part of any costume, Halloween or otherwise. But NBC has since switched Live episodes of Megyn Kelly Today to repeats. Kelly is reportedly negotiating her exit from the network where she is paid $23 million per year (AU$33m) , and has a three year deal signed in January 2017. Today show veteran Al Roker, said, She owes a bigger apology to folks around the country of colour. This is a history going back to the 1830s minstrel shows to demean and denigrate a race. It wasnt right. NBC News Chairman Andy Lack said, There is no other way to put this: I condemn those remarks; there is no place on our air or in this workplace for them. Updated: NBC has since cancelled Megyn Kelly Today. Cookies op Tweakers Tweakers maakt gebruik van cookies Tweakers is onderdeel van DPG Media en maakt gebruik van cookies, JavaScript en vergelijkbare technologie om je onder andere een optimale gebruikerservaring te bieden. 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Accepteer cookies ... Om deze pagina op Tweakers te kunnen bekijken, moet je cookies accepteren. Cookies accepteren Heb je al een account? Dan kun je hier inloggen! Truck hit kills pedestrian in Dhading A pedestrian died after being hit by a truck at Mahadev Besi in Dhading district along the Prithvi Highway on Friday. EQS-News / DHgate.com has global grassroots ambitions DHgate.com, a leading Chinese cross border ecommerce company, is fast building a grassroots network of fans the world over. Small businesspeople from Laos, to Brazil, to Botswana see the company is committed to the concerns of small and medium sized companies and helping them conquer the odds of doing business abroad. For two weeks, more than 20 participants from 9 counties gathered in Beijing for the APEC Women Connect Capacity Building program - co-hosted by DHgate.com. It was a deep dive into globalization and the Chinese economy, in which participants spent two weeks touring Beijing and the ecommerce hub of Zhejiang province, a once in a lifetime opportunity to learn about the secrets of China's success, and the secrets of succeeding at business with their Chinese counterparts. "They say 'knowledge is power and when you know better you do better'" said Mmantlha Sankoloba, the CEO of Botswana Exporters and Manufacturers Association, one of the participants on her time spent in China. The participants in the program have a number of things in common - they are from small companies, small countries, and many are women. Ms. Sankoloba and many others who participated see their main challenge as improving their place, and the place of their countries, in the global value chain. "Small countries can't do everything" said Victor Hugo of ESPM, a Brazilian business school "but globalization gives everyone and opportunity to specialize" he said. The participants had lively discussion over coffee on Sunday, the last full day of the program. One point of contention was whether Global Supply Chains make life easier or harder for small companies: while multinational corporations have tended to dominate global trade, the rise of global supply chains creates space for small entrepreneurs to specialize, said Mr. Hugo and others. Meanwhile, they all see China, and DHgate.com, as a friendly force in helping them and their countries move into global markets. "We see DHgate.com as our principal partner for Ecuador in establishing trading relations with China, said Javier Lopez, a businessman from Ecuador. The question of gender divided the students as well - the rise of the high technology economy has benefitted both men and women. But at the coffee debate on Sunday, participants argued good naturedly about who benefitted more, and who needed more help in adapting to the new world of ecommerce. "We should help women more, because when you help women you are also helping children," said Monica Retamal, CEO of Kodea a Chilean company. The program, made in partnership with Beijing's University of International Business and Economics, offered DHgate.com a chance to showcase its vision of a fairer, more diverse global trading system. DHgate.com is uniquely placed to offer object lessons to these small businesswomen. Diane Wang, DHgate.com's Founder and CEO, launched the company as a startup in 2004 and has focused DHgate.com's mission on connecting small businesses around the world with each other. Ms. Wang has long been an advocate for a more inclusive trade, meaning trade with more small businesses, more women, and more diversity. DHgate.com is to date the only e-commerce platform which is dedicated to serving small and medium-sized retailers worldwide, by integrating the whole ecosystem together from logistics to payment, from marketing to customs clearance, to lower the entry barriers for SMEs to access global markets. DHgate.com expects that, though this unique opportunity, more and more people will soon be able to share China's digital trading skills and technology, transforming the global economy for the better. Document: http://n.eqs.com/c/fncls.ssp?u=EDMUBFXHMD Document title: DHgate.com has global grassroots ambitions 26/10/2018 Dissemination of a Financial Press Release, transmitted by EQS Group. The issuer is solely responsible for the content of this announcement. Media archive at www.todayir.com ROME, Oct (Shenzhen: 000069.SZ - news) 26 (Reuters) - Italy's environment ministry did not find any irregularities in its assessment of the controversial Trans Adriatic Pipeline (TAP (Shenzhen: 002826.SZ - news) ), it said in a statement on Friday. The TAP pipeline is the last leg of the $40 billion Southern Gas Corridor that will bring Azeri gas to Italy. It is due to start pumping gas in 2020 but local opposition has raised concerns that work at the Italian end may not be completed in time. The ministry said that, after examining the 1000-page long dossier, which had already been authorised back in 2004, had sent its assessment over to Prime Minister Giuseppe Conte. TAP's shareholders are BP, Socar, Snam (Amsterdam: QE6.AS - news) , Fluxys, Enagas (Amsterdam: EG6.AS - news) and Axpo. (Reporting by Massimiliano Di Giorgio, writing by Giulia Segreti, editing by Valentina Za) By Helen Reid and Julien Ponthus LONDON (Reuters) - European shares were on course for their worst month since 2015 on Friday after a spreading global sell-off hit regional equity markets and missed results expectations sapped risk appetite. The leading index of euro zone stocks <.STOXX50E> fell 1.4 percent with Germany's DAX <.GDAXI> down 0.9 percent and France's CAC 40 <.FCHI> down 1.3 percent. The pan-European STOXX 600 lost 1.2 percent and is down about 8 percent so far in October, a size of fall not seen since August 2015. Overall the third-quarter earnings season has been marred by rolling sell-offs across global markets. Wary analysts were downgrading their earnings estimates for the MSCI Europe index <.dMIEU00000PUS> at their fastest pace since Feb 2016 and disappointments over results caused sharp share falls. Shares in French auto parts maker Valeo sank more than 21 percent after its second profit warning in three months flagged disruption from tougher European emissions tests and a sharp sales downturn in China. Peer Faurecia also tumbled 5.7 percent after it agreed to buy Japanese car navigation system maker Clarion from Hitachi. The autos & parts sector index <.SXAP> fell 1.6 percent. Swedish appliances maker Electrolux fell 4.4 percent after it trimmed its market demand expectations and forecast higher costs due to increasing raw material prices and tariffs. Shares in French household appliances maker SEB fell 11 percent for their worst day since 2012 after the company cut revenue guidance due to a "difficult environment" with FX and raw material costs rising. Also posting its worst ever daily fall after disappointing results was Spanish sausage casings producer Viscofan . Its shares fell 19.4 percent after it warned it would miss full-year profit guidance. Kepler Cheuvreux analysts downgraded the stock to "reduce" from "hold". Story continues Altran shares were a bright spot, surging 15.3 percent after the engineering and tech consultancy reported strong third-quarter results thanks to good growth in Germany and the Americas. Results from banks were more mixed after encouraging results from UBS boosted its shares in the previous session. Spain's Banco Sabadell topped the IBEX with a 5.1 percent gain after third-quarter profit beat expectations. [nL8N1X613E] (Reporting by Helen Reid; editing by Josephine Mason, Andrew Heavens and Kirsten Donovan) Satellite images show Hawaiian island entirely washed away by devastating hurricane A tiny Hawaiian island has vanished off the map as Hurricane Walaka swept over the half-mile stretch of sand swamping it beneath the waves. Experts say that climate change may be partly to blame for the disappearance of East Island, which was previously an important pupping area for endangered monk seals. Before-and-after pictures from the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service (FWS) show how the island was submerged by the raging seas after the powerful hurricane swept through. Chip Fletcher from the University of Hawaii told Honolulu Civil Beat, I had a holy shit moment, thinking, Oh my God, its gone. The island was just washed away (FWS) Fletcher says, The probability of occurrences like this goes up with climate change. MORE: Dognappers hold knife to stomach of pregnant mother as they steal eight newborn puppies MORE: Mothers voice more likely to wake a sleeping child than the sound of a smoke alarm Fletcher said, Its one more chink in the wall of the network of ecosystem diversity on this planet that is being dismantled. This is not surprising when you consider the bad luck of a hurricane going into that vicinity and sea level rise already sort of deemed the stressor in the background for these ecosystems. The son of murdered journalist Jamal Khashoggi has left Saudi Arabia after the kingdom revoked a travel ban, allowing him to come to the United States. The move is the latest event in the saga of the Saudi writer and dissident whose macabre killing earlier this month at the Saudi consulate in Istanbul shocked the world. US state department spokesman Robert Palladino said Washington welcomed the decision to have Salah Khashoggi and his family leave Saudi Arabia. His destination has not been disclosed, but his late father lived in the Washington area. A vigil for Jamal Khashoggi in Istanbul (AP) Mr Palladino said US secretary of state Mike Pompeo had discussed Jamal Khashoggis son during his recent visit to Riyadh and made it clear to Saudi leaders that Washington wanted him free to leave the kingdom. We are pleased that he is now able to do so, Mr Palladino said. Saudi media had showed images of a meeting earlier this week between Mr Khashoggis son and Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, who reportedly expressed his condolences. Mr Palladino also said Mr Pompeo attended a briefing on the former Washington Post writers death by CIA director Gina Haspel, following her return from Turkey. Mr Khashoggi was killed in the Saudi consulate in Istanbul on October 2 (AP) The developments came after the kingdom cited evidence showing Mr Khashoggis killing was premeditated, changing its story again to try to ease international outrage over the death of a prominent critic of Crown Prince Mohammed. The announcement contradicted an earlier Saudi assertion that rogue officials from the kingdom had killed Mr Khashoggi by mistake in a brawl inside their Istanbul consulate. That assertion, in turn, backtracked from an initial statement that Saudi authorities knew nothing about what happened to the columnist for The Washington Post, who vanished after entering the consulate October 2. The shifting explanations indicate Saudi Arabia is scrambling for a way out of the crisis that has enveloped the worlds largest oil exporter and a major US ally in the Middle East. Story continues However, a solution seems a long way off, partly because of deepening scepticism in Turkey and elsewhere that the brazen crime could have been carried out without the knowledge of Prince Mohammed, the heir apparent to King Salman. An activist wearing a mask depicting Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman (AP) At a conference in Riyadh, the crown prince said the killing was a heinous crime that cannot be justified and warned against any efforts to manipulate the crisis and drive a wedge between Saudi Arabia and Turkey, which are regional rivals but also diplomatic and business partners. On Thursday, Prince Mohammed attended the first meeting of a committee aiming to restructure the kingdoms intelligence services after the killing of Mr Khashoggi, the state-run Saudi Press Agency said. Mr Khashoggis death has derailed the powerful princes campaign to project a modern image of the ultra-conservative country, instead highlighting the brutal lengths to which some top officials in the government have gone to silence its critics. Mr Khashoggi, who lived in self-imposed exile in the United States for nearly a year before his death, had written critically of Prince Mohammeds crackdown on dissent. Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman (AP) A statement by Saudi attorney general Saud al-Mojeb attributed the latest findings of a joint Turkish-Saudi investigation to information from Turkish counterparts. The evidence of Turkish investigators indicates that the suspects in the incident had committed their act with a premeditated intention, the Saudi statement said. After the journalist disappeared, Saudi Arabia initially insisted Mr Khashoggi had walked out of the consulate after visiting the building. It later dropped that account for a new one, saying it had detained 18 people for what it described as an accidental killing during a fistfight. What US president Donald Trump called one of the worst cover-ups in the history of cover-ups was revealed to the world through information leaks from Turkey, including references to purported audio recordings of the killing and security camera footage of Saudi officials who were involved as they moved around Istanbul. Saudi officials said that the kingdom sent a team to Turkey which included a forensics expert and a member whose job was to dress in the 59-year-old writers clothes and pretend to be him even though they were insisting as late as Tuesday that Mr Khashoggis death was an accident. DEAD SEA, Jordan (Reuters) - At least 18 people, mainly school children and teachers, were killed on Thursday by a flash flood during a school outing near Jordan's Dead Sea in one of the worst disasters in the kingdom in years, rescuers and hospital workers said. Thirty-four people were rescued in a major operation involving police helicopters and hundreds of army troops, police chief Brigadier General Farid al Sharaa told state television. Some of those rescued were in a serious condition. Many of those killed were children under 14. A number of families picnicking in the popular destination were also among the dead and injured, rescuers said, without giving a breakdown of numbers. Hundreds of families and relatives converged on Shounah hospital a few kilometers (miles) from the resort area. Relatives sobbed and searched for details about the missing children, a witness said. The flooding occurred after heavy rainfall, the first such rains after the end of the summer season. Prime Minister Omar Razzaz said it appeared the school had broken regulations by the ministry of education that forbade trips to the Dead Sea due to bad weather and pledged an investigation that would hold anyone found responsible for any wrongdoing accountable. Razzaz said divers and civil defence search teams would be conducting search operations deep inside the Dead Sea throughout the night. A father of one of the survivors said a bus with 37 school children and seven teachers had been on a trip to the resort area. They were caught in a narrow stream as sudden torrential rainstorm flooded the area. "The children tried to escape the floods by going to the bus but its doors were closed," said Abu Yousef told reporters. "The teachers tried to save the children but the floods intensity made it impossible," he added saying the children were swept to the shores of the Dead Sea, the lowest point on Earth. King Abdullah cancelled a trip to Bahrain to follow the rescue operations, state media said. Story continues Neighbouring Israel sent search-and-rescue helicopters to assist, an Israeli military statement said, adding the team dispatched at Amman's request was operating on the Jordanian side of the Dead Sea. Civil defence spokesman Captain Iyad al Omar told Reuters the number of casualties was expected to rise. Rescue workers using flashlights were searching the cliffs near the shore of the Dead Sea where bodies had been found. There have been deadly incidents involving flash floods in Jordan in the past and in 1963, 23 French tourists were swept away by flash floods when they were trapped in the ancient Petra city. (Reporting by Suleiman Al-Khalidi in Amman; Additional reporting by Dan Williams in Jerusalem; Editing by Alison Williams and Sandra Maler) A dead fin whale has been pulled ashore on Belgiums North Sea coast. Fin whales, which can weigh up to 45,000 kilograms, are the second-largest animal in the world. The carcass was cut into pieces on the De Haan beach, with the meat carried off before it rotted further. The whale was found off the de Haan beach on the North Sea coast (Francisco Seco/AP) It has been two decades since a similar whale was found on a Belgian beach. Professor Thierry Jauniaux, of Liege University, said scientists will try to establish a cause of death. He said the animals fat is too low and the animal is suffering from emaciation. There is also evidence of some trauma. He said the whale could have been hit by a passing ship. (Reuters) - FBI agents used DNA and a fingerprint to arrest a man in Florida suspected of sending at least 14 bombs to critics of U.S. President Donald Trump days ahead of congressional elections. Cesar Sayoc faces up to 48 years in prison if found guilty, said U.S. Attorney General Jeff Sessions. He earlier said he faced 58 years. Following are the figures targeted, starting with the most recent. Many packages used the return address of Representative Debbie Wasserman Schultz of Florida, former chairwoman of the Democratic National Committee. 1) Billionaire Tom Steyer, a Democratic donor 2) Senator Kamala Harris, a Democrat from California 3) Former Director of National Intelligence James Clapper and CNN 4) Senator Cory Booker, a Democrat from New Jersey 5) Former U.S. Vice President Joe Biden (2 packages) 6) Actor Robert De Niro, who hurled obscenities at Trump at the Tony Awards in June 7) Representative Maxine Waters from California (2 packages) 8) Former Attorney General Eric Holder, who served under former President Barack Obama 9) Former CIA Director John Brennan and CNN 10) Former President Barack Obama 11) Former U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, who ran against Trump for the presidency 12) Billionaire George Soros, donor to liberal groups (Reporting by Susan Heavey; editing by Lisa Shumaker and Cynthia Osterman) Turkey has intensified its demands for Saudi Arabia to extradite 18 suspects in the killing of journalist Jamal Khashoggi. Mr Khashoggis Turkish fiancee, meanwhile, gave an anguished and tearful TV interview in which she said she keeps asking herself if she had missed some signs and should have prevented him from entering the Saudi Consulate in Istanbul on October 2. The Istanbul chief prosecutors office submitted a request for Saudi Arabia to hand over the suspects in the killing, and Turkeys Foreign Ministry will formally notify the kingdom, Turkeys state-run Anadolu news agency reported. The Saudi government has said it arrested and would itself punish 18 people for what it described as a rogue operation by officials who killed Mr Khashoggi in the consulate. We expect our request (for the suspects) return to be fulfilled because this atrocious event took place in Turkey, said Turkish justice minister Abdulhamit Gul. Saudi Arabia has returned suspects to Turkey before. The stakes are much higher in the Khashoggi case, however, as some of those implicated are close to Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, the kingdoms heir apparent whose condemnation of the killing failed to ease suspicions that he was involved. Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman (Amr Nabil/AP) Turkish prosecutors want the suspects to face prosecution for premeditated killing executed with fiendish sentiments or by causing torment, according to the Anadolu agency. The reasoning behind the extradition request is that Jamal Khashoggi was murdered in Turkey by Saudi nationals who travelled to Turkey for this specific purpose, a senior Turkish official said. CCTV of Jamal Khashoggi entering the Saudi consulate in Istanbul (CCTV/Hurriyet/AP) Turkeys judicial system is better equipped to serve the cause of justice in this case, the official said, adding: The court proceedings in Turkey will be open to international observers in order to ensure the greatest level of transparency. Turkey alleges a 15-member hit squad was sent to Istanbul to kill the journalist, a onetime Saudi insider who became a critic of Prince Mohammed and was a columnist for The Washington Post. Story continues Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has said the three others in the group of 18 who were detained in Saudi Arabia were consulate employees. Turkeys President Recep Tayyip Erdogan (Presidential Press Service via AP, Pool) Mr Erdogan said on Friday that Turkey would reveal more evidence about the killing but was not in any rush to do so, indicating that Turkish authorities will methodically increase pressure on Saudi Arabia. There is no point in being too hasty, Mr Erdogan said in an address to ruling party leaders. He added that the Saudis who killed Mr Khashoggi must reveal the location of his body. Saudi prosecutors have said evidence from Turkey indicates that the killing was premeditated, a change from previous Saudi statements seeking to dodge responsibility for a crime that caused global outrage. Hours after Mr Erdogans speech, Mr Khashoggis fiancee Hatice Cengiz told HaberTurk, a Turkish news channel, about her pain since he disappeared after entering the consulate. I found myself in a darkness I cannot express, Ms Cengiz said. She described how she had accompanied Mr Khashoggi, 59, to the consulate and waited outside while, she thought, he was getting paperwork for their planned marriage. He never came out. I still have questions that I cannot answer, said a tearful Ms Cengiz. Did I miss something? Did I not notice something? Ms Cengiz said she has not received any condolence call from Saudi officials after the death of Mr Khashoggi, who left Saudi Arabia for self-imposed exile in the United States a year ago. On Thursday, one of the journalists sons, Salah Khashoggi, flew with his family from Saudi Arabia to the US. Prince Mohammed has condemned the killing, but critics suspect a cover-up designed to protect him, noting that he has tight control over the day-to-day affairs of the kingdom. Pakistan's Prime Minister, Imran Khan speaks during a news conference at Saudi investment summit in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia October 23, 2018 in this still image taken from a video. Saudi TV/Reuters TV/via REUTERS Thomson Reuters By Drazen Jorgic ISLAMABAD (Reuters) - Western nations, including the United States and European countries, have expressed "serious concerns" to Pakistan's new Prime Minister Imran Khan about a crackdown on aid groups, diplomats said. Pakistan has long viewed foreign-funded aid groups with suspicion and many members of the powerful military believe that Western countries often use such groups as a cover for spying. Diplomats and foreign journalists also face severe restrictions on their movements in the nuclear-armed nation. At least 18 international aid agencies, most of them working on human rights issues, were ordered to leave Pakistan over recent months after being refused registration. The countries have written a letter to Khan saying the groups did not get a proper explanation for why the government had ordered them out and they criticized a "lack of transparency" in the registration process. "We are writing to express serious concerns with respect to recent developments," the countries said in the letter seen by Reuters. Four diplomats confirmed its authenticity. "Restriction on civil society risks affecting Pakistan's international reputation as a genuine partner on human developments and undermining confidence of the international donor and business community," they said in the letter. Neither Khan's office nor the foreign ministry had any immediate comment on the letter, which was signed by envoys from the United States, Canada, Japan, Australia, Norway and Switzerland. The European Union ambassador signed on behalf of the 17 EU countries with missions in Pakistan, including Britain and France. A similar letter was sent to the Interior Ministry in September, diplomatic sources say. The 18 aid organizations were appealing against their expulsion orders, issued late last year to 27 non-governmental organizations (NGOs) in all. The Western envoys said the impact of expelling the groups would be "significant", and warned that it would imperil some of development goals championed by Khan, who was elected in July on a populist platform to help the poor. Story continues "Restricting INGO operations will affect millions of poor Pakistanis. In 2017 alone, the INGO sector reached 34 million people with humanitarian relief and development assistance," the counties aid in their letter, referring to international NGOs. "This will mean thousands of Pakistanis employed by INGOs and local partners may lose their jobs." One of the 18 groups facing closure, ActionAid, which focuses on education, poverty alleviation and human rights, said this month the expulsion of the groups was part of a broader pattern. "Pakistan's decision to shut down ActionAid and other International NGOs is a worrying escalation of recent attacks on civil society, academics and journalists," the group said. Media groups have warned of a more difficult environment for them with increasing censorship and threats from the military, which denies intimidation. (Reporting by Drazen Jorgic; Editing by Robert Birsel) See Also: Two more Trump critics get suspicious packages as manhunt pivots to Florida Police found two more suspicious packages on Friday addressed to U.S. Senator Cory Booker and James Clapper, the former U.S. director of national intelligence, as the hunt for the person who mailed bombs to prominent Democrats and critics of U.S. President Donald Trump focused on Florida. The number of cars built in the UK in September fell by 16.8 per cent compared to the same month last year, with the automotive industry facing many competing challenges. The Society of Motor Manufacturers and Traders (SMMT) reported that 127,051 cars were built last month 25,610 fewer than the 152,661 produced during September 2017. Production for the home market fell by 19 per cent and production for overseas markets fell by 16.2 per cent with exports accounting for 80 per cent of units produced. Overall output in the year to date has declined by 6.6 per cent, from 1,254,352 cars to 1,171,765. The SMMT attributed the decline to several issues. Chief among these are the negotiations for the UKs exit from the European Union, which are still ongoing and make no promises on future trading arrangements. British car manufacturing declines -16.8% in September, with 127,051 units produced. https://t.co/GbCp2DJTaY pic.twitter.com/ZrTGAO8iDF SMMT (@SMMT) October 25, 2018 Manufacturers have held off on investment in the UK until a deal or lack of is confirmed, and companies such as Jaguar have moved some production overseas. Changes to model line-ups were also blamed, with new emissions regulations requiring the streamlining of product ranges and in some cases cars total removal from sale until the new standards have been applied. Cars can no longer be sold unless they meet new WLTP regulations, which came into force on September 1. The governments attitude towards diesel was also blamed, with manufacturers such as Jaguar and Land Rover seeing sales of their traditionally diesel-heavy line-ups plummet. Jaguar Land Rover has today opened its state-of-the-art manufacturing facility in Nitra, Slovakia the first time a UK automotive company has opened a production centre in Slovakia. pic.twitter.com/vIMyr5GYsw Jaguar Land Rover (@JLR_News) October 25, 2018 Mike Hawes, chief executive of the SMMT, said: These figures highlight the many competing challenges facing UK Automotive. It has been a turbulent year and the industry needs stability, something which appears elusive given the lack of resolution to Brexit negotiations. Story continues The UK government has recognised the importance of a deal that maintains free and frictionless trade with the EU, but it is up to all sides to deliver this to safeguard the hundreds of thousands of jobs depending on the sector. Stability is also needed at home and a stronger UK new car market would go a long way to boosting manufacturing output. The Chancellors Budget next week is the perfect opportunity to stimulate the market, sending consumers and businesses the right signals to encourage the purchase of new cars, which would help bolster economic performance as well as deliver environmental goals. Wizz Air Miglena Pencheva/shutterstock A Warsaw-bound flight made an emergency landing Thursday in Romania's capital because of a bomb threat, Romanian officials said. The flight, operated by the Hungarian low-cost carrier Wizz Air, had departed from Kutaisi, Georgia. The plane's 173 passengers were evacuated immediately upon landing in Bucharest. "The bomb threat was (flagged) from the Kutaisi airport by a woman (who) gave very precise details," the Bucharest Airport spokesman Valentin Iordache told reporters. A flight operated by the low-cost Hungarian carrier Wizz Air from Kutaisi, Georgia, to Warsaw made an emergency landing on Thursday in Romania's capital because of a bomb threat, Romanian officials said. The plane landed in Bucharest at about 1:20 p.m. GMT, or 9:20 a.m. ET, and its 173 passengers were evacuated immediately. "The bomb threat was (flagged) from the Kutaisi airport by a woman (who) gave very precise details," the Bucharest Airport spokesman Valentin Iordache told reporters. Iordache added the checks were expected to be completed by about 5 p.m. GMT. NOW WATCH: Why Louboutin shoes are so expensive See Also: Workers start returning to India after Dashain Nepali men from various districts of Sudur Paschim and Karnali provinces have started to leave for India for jobs with the end of Dashain festival. 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 Christy Wampole in Aeon: Simone Weil (1909-43) belonged to a species so rare, it had only one member. This peculiar French philosopher and mystic diagnosed the maladies and maledictions of her own age and place Europe in the first war-torn half of the 20th century and offered recommendations for how to forestall the repetition of its iniquities: totalitarianism, income inequality, restriction of free speech, political polarisation, the alienation of the modern subject, and more. Her combination of erudition, political and spiritual fervour, and commitment to her ideals adds weight to the distinctive diagnosis she offers of modernity. Weil has been dead now for 75 years but remains able to tell us much about ourselves. Born to a secular Jewish family in Paris, she was gifted from the beginning with a thirst for knowledge of other cultures and her own. Fluent in Ancient Greek by the age of 12, she taught herself Sanskrit, and took an interest in Hinduism and Buddhism. She excelled at the Lycee Henri IV and the Ecole normale superieure, where she studied philosophy. Plato was a lasting influence, and her interest in political philosophy led her to Karl Marx, whose thought she esteemed but did not blindly assimilate. As a Christian convert who criticised the Catholic Church and as a communist sympathiser who denounced Stalinism and confronted Trotsky over hazardous party developments, Weils independence of mind and resistance to ideological conformity are central to her philosophy. In addition to her intelligence, other aspects of her biography have captured the publics imagination. As a child during the First World War, she refused sugar because soldiers on the front could have none. Diagnosed with tuberculosis, she died at 34 when working for the resistance government France libre in London, refusing to eat more than the citizens rations of her German-occupied France. Teachers and classmates called her the Martian and the Red Virgin, nicknames suggestive of her strangeness and asexuality. A philosopher who refused to cloister herself behind academias walls, she worked in factories and vineyards, and left France during the Spanish Civil War to fight alongside the Durruti Column anarchists, a failed mission in many respects. Several mystical experiences, including Weils discovery of the poem Love (III) by the 17th-century poet George Herbert led her to embrace Christianity, and many have called for her canonisation as a saint. In her book Devotion (2017), the Francophile poet and punk-rock star Patti Smith described Weil as an admirable model for a multitude of mindsets. Brilliant and privileged, she coursed through the great halls of higher learning, forfeiting all to embark on a difficult path of revolution, revelation, public service, and sacrifice. The French politician Charles de Gaulle thought Weil was mad, while the authors Albert Camus, Andre Gide and T S Eliot recognised her as one of the greatest minds of her time. More here. En espanol | About one-fifth of U.S. adults get an annual physical. But increasingly, research suggests that it's not necessarily a critical appointment to keep. A number of randomized controlled trials now show that these yearly exams dont improve peoples health or health outcomes, says Ateev Mehrotra, M.D., an associate professor of health care policy and medicine at Harvard Medical School and a hospitalist at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center. One 2012 review of over 180,000 people, published in the British Medical Journal, for example, found that the practice didnt do anything to reduce rates of disease or dying from disease. As a result, groups like the Society of General Internal Medicine no longer recommend physicals for people who are healthy, without any symptoms of illness. Part of the concern, says Christine Laine, M.D., editor in chief of Annals of Internal Medicine and a senior vice president at the American College of Physicians, is that during an annual exam, your doctor may order tests such as blood or urine tests, or an electrocardiogram (EKG) that arent necessary in otherwise healthy people. If your doctor finds something they didnt need to find, they may end up ordering more tests, which is expensive and can cause you to worry, she notes. Instead, if youre otherwise healthy, with no chronic conditions, youre best off simply just seeing your physician once a year, or once every two years, for what's come to be known as a wellness check-in or wellness exam kind of like a physical but without the battery of tests. Just like infants have well-baby visits, it makes sense to see your provider to make sure youre up to date on all your needed screening tests, as well as to discuss basic preventative lifestyle strategies like eating healthfully, exercising regularly and getting enough sleep, Laine says. But thats not to say that you should skimp on the doctor visits. Where people go wrong, especially as they age, is putting too much stock in physicals and not enough emphasis on taking charge of chronic conditions. As you get older there are specific health conditions, such as high blood pressure or type 2 diabetes, that you'll need to monitor with more frequent visits, says Michael Hochman, M.D., assistant professor of clinical medicine and director of the Gehr Family Center for Implementation Science at the Keck School of Medicine at the University of Southern California. But if youre already in your doctors office several times a year, you dont need to schedule a separate wellness exam, too. During these visits your physician should be able to address any other concerns, says Laine. Hauling someone back in for another visit to address preventative health isnt convenient for patients. There is one advantage to scheduling an actual annual wellness visit, Mehrotra notes. You wont have to shell out an insurance copay, since most plans pay for one of these exams each year. If youre in your doctors office two to three times a year to monitor a condition, for example, its perfectly reasonable to make one of those visits your so-called wellness exam. But you dont need those head-to-toe exam elements, including annual blood work. Instead you should spend any additional time discussing ways to improve your lifestyle, and any other concerns. To help you sort through what you really do or don't need every year or so, we've highlighted tests you likely can skip, followed by screenings you really should schedule. Getty Images En espanol | You served your country years ago, or maybe your spouse did. Now, youre retired, your health is declining, and you struggle with everyday things, like bathing and dressing. You need help, but you think you cant afford it, and it never occurs to you to turn to the VA. If that sounds familiar, you have plenty of company. Large numbers of veterans and their survivors who need caregiving help have no idea they might qualify for thousands of dollars a year through a program called Aid and Attendance (A&A), experts say. Its a benefit that many, many elderly vets are eligible for and have no idea, says Alene Tarter, director of benefits and assistance for the Florida Department of Veterans Affairs. Im retired military, and I never heard of it until I worked for the state. The government estimates that hundreds of thousands of people whose incomes are low enough to qualify for VA pensions havent applied, and many of them could be eligible for extra caregiving-related payments through A&A. Its an entitlement that can improve their lives, and theyre not taking advantage of it. Thats disturbing, says Kevin Friel, deputy director of pension and fiduciary service at the VA. To qualify for the program, veterans in most cases must be at least 65, have had at least one day of service during wartime, and have at least 90 days of active service before 1980 or at least 24 months after Sept. 7, 1980. They also must meet certain income requirements, and, under new rules adopted this month, their net worth cannot exceed $123,600, not counting their primary residence. Friel said many older veterans who served during wartime and their survivors could qualify for pensions that are based on financial need, even if they dont think of themselves as poor, because of the way the government calculates need. The formula allows people to deduct medical expenses from their income, which means that as people grow older and their medical needs rise, they often can qualify for pensions, even if they couldnt when they were younger. A&A allows people to get an increased monthly pension if they can prove they need help from another person for everyday tasks such as bathing, dressing, feeding and going to the bathroom. People who are bedridden also can qualify for extra payments. The money can be used to pay for care at home or in nursing homes and other facilities. A single veteran can receive up to about $1,800 a month and a veteran with a spouse or dependent up to about $2,200. A surviving spouse can get a monthly payment of up to about $1,200. Carol Howell, the author of a book on caregiving for people with dementia, says the program has been crucial for her 79-year-old mother, who has advanced dementia and recently moved into a skilled nursing facility in South Carolina. In seeking the benefit for her mother, Howell was helped by the National Association of Veterans & Families. The A&A payments that her mother receives as the spouse of a veteran allow her to hire a private caregiver who comes into the facility daily to help with her care. Without that extra private help, Howell says, her mother probably would not be allowed to stay in the facility. If that private caregiver went away, she would probably be asked to leave the skilled nursing community she is in. And then what would I do? I have no clue what I would do," says Howell, who lives in Rock Hill, S.C., not far from her mother. It would be awful. Howell says her brother-in-law, a Vietnam veteran with multiple health problems, also receives A&A payments that help him pay the cost of living in a local assisted living community. Without the payments, she said, he would have to move to a facility where he would be less comfortable. Friel, at the VA, says that several factors probably keep potentially eligible veterans from applying for the benefit. One is that many people eligible for VA pensions and A&A havent had a reason to be in contact with the VA for many years, and it doesnt occur to them to look into benefits that might help them when they are older. Another obstacle, he said, is that many veterans take pride in not asking for help from the government. Sometimes its the pride of the veteran. They got the GI bill and thought they didnt want to apply for anything else, he says. Part of our job is to make them understand its not a handout. They served our country. En espanol | Issues such as health care, retirement security and prescription drug prices will be uppermost in the minds of older voters as they go to the polls on Nov. 6. But this midterm election season has brought out another overriding concern among the age 50-plus electorate: how divided America and Americans have become. I would say in my lifetime, it seems worse than ever, said Brenda, a 57-year-old project coordinator from the Pittsburgh area, at a recent AARP/Politico focus group that brought together 50-plus voters. Nothing can be done if nobody compromises, and now thats the line: No compromise. An AARP national survey this summer of voters over 50 found that 73 percent often worry about how divided the country has become. And in 20 polls AARP conducted this fall in states and individual congressional districts, about half of all those surveyed cited political divisiveness as a top concern. That stood out in all our polls the sense among older voters that their greatest fear is the division in the country right now, says John Hishta, AARP senior vice president for campaigns. Nobody has figured out a way to deal with that because both sides go to the lowest common denominator in debates. As campaigns come down to the wire and races across the country are polling increasingly close, older voters are likely to decide which party controls Congress, governorships and statehouses. People over the age of 50 have decided these elections historically, and they probably will do so again, Hishta says. The oversized importance of that part of the electorate is something that we want to continue to bring attention to. For nearly four decades, the turnout of voters older than 45 has been significantly higher than that of younger Americans. In the last midterm election, in 2014, citizens over 60 accounted for 39.4 percent of all voters the largest single voting bloc. And adults between 45 and 59 were the second largest group, accounting for 30.3 percent. This year, all 435 seats in the U. S. House of Representatives, 35 U.S. Senate seats and 36 governorships are up for election, along with thousands of seats in state legislatures. Seniors carry disproportionate weight in the electorate, says Karlyn Bowman, a senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute who analyzes polling data. Older adults tend to feel they have more of a stake in the country, probably have more time to think about issues and also tend to be more informed than younger voters, she adds. When you care deeply about the fabric of your country and you hear about these divisions day after day, seniors might be particularly sensitive to that. In an effort to highlight the importance of the over-50 vote, AARP and Politico collaborated on a series of polls and election events in key battleground states: Florida, Arizona, Ohio and Pennsylvania. In each of those surveys, health care, Social Security and Medicare topped the list of issues that older voters care most about. AARP tracks political advertising to see whether the issues important to its 38 million members are resonating with candidates. They seem to be. For example, of 53 political ads AARP reviewed that aired on Oct. 23, 42 mentioned issues older voters care about, including health care, Medicare, Social Security, veterans and the cost of prescription drugs. At the AARP/Politico Pennsylvania focus group, several participants said they were worried that politicians in both parties are so divided and determined to get their way that progress isnt being made on important issues such as health care, Social Security and drug costs. Alex Ariano, a mental health counselor, and Hope Reynolds, a retired author, attended an AARP/Politico event in Miami earlier this year to hear several congressional candidates and a Republican party leader discuss the upcoming elections. Ariano and Reynolds say their greatest concern centers on the lack of civility in government and politics. Weve lost the decency, Reynolds says, to accept that people maybe have a different opinion than mine. Northern State University student, wrestler dies Wednesday Caden Moore died unexpectedly Wednesday, and authorities have told university officials that no foul play in suspected, per the release. WASHINGTON The Trump administration is planning to dispatch at least 800 active-duty troops to the southern border at the direction of a president who has sought to transform fears about immigration into electoral gains in the midterms as a caravan of thousands of migrants makes its way through Mexico. Defense Secretary Jim Mattis is expected to sign an order sending the troops to the border, bolstering National Guard forces already there, an official said Thursday. The action comes as President Donald Trump has spent recent days calling attention to the caravan of Central Americans slowly making its way by foot into southern Mexico but still more than 1,000 miles (1,600 kilometers) from U.S. soil. Trump, who made fear about immigrants a major theme of his 2016 election campaign, has been eager to make it a top issue heading into the Nov. 6 midterm elections, which will determine control of Congress. The president and senior White House officials have long believed the issue is key to turning out his base of supporters. The additional troops would provide logistical and other support to the Border Patrol, said the U.S. official, who spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss a plan that had not been finalized and formally announced. Its not unusual for the National Guard to help with border security. Active-duty troops, however, are rarely deployed within the United States except for domestic emergencies like hurricanes or floods. Fears of militarizing the border were fanned by a May 1997 incident in which a Marine on a counter-narcotics mission shot to death an 18-year-old who was herding goats in Redford, Texas. Troops being sent at Trumps direction would not be on armed security missions. They would assist the Border Patrol by providing things such as vehicles, tents and equipment. There already are about 2,000 National Guard members there under a previous Pentagon arrangement. Homeland Security Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen said in an interview with Fox News on Thursday that the Department of Homeland Security had asked the Department of Defense to bolster their capabilities with air support, vehicle barriers, engineering and other logistical assistance. National Guard troops can perform those same functions, so it was not immediately clear why active-duty forces were sought. Asked if the troops would be armed, Nielsen said Mattis would decide the rules of engagement, but added: We do not have any intention right now to shoot at people. They will be apprehended, however. Trump has used the caravan to bolster his election-season warnings that the U.S. is being infiltrated by immigrants pouring across the border illegally. He has claimed, without any apparent basis in fact, that Middle Easterners were among the group. At rallies and on Twitter, Trump has tried to portray Democrats as pro-illegal immigration, even claiming, with no evidence, that Democrats organized the caravan. He tweeted Thursday that Democrat inspired laws make it tough for us to stop people at the border and said he was using the military to respond to what he called a National Emergency. Many migrants in the sprawling caravan once estimated by the United Nations to number more than 7,000 are hoping to make it to the United States. Most are Hondurans, seeking to escape poverty and violence, and include families with children. The caravan swelled dramatically soon after crossing the Mexican border on Oct. 19, but sickness, fear and police harassment have whittled down its numbers. Trump tweeted a direct message to the migrants Thursday, urging them to return home. To those in the Caravan, turnaround, he wrote. We are not letting people into the United States illegally. Go back to your Country and if you want, apply for citizenship like millions of others are doing! The migrants have largely been disconnected from news reports about them. When asked about Trumps tweets, they have generally responded that he should stop attacking them and said they would keep heading north. Candy Guillermo, a 37-year-old migrant in the caravan who had heard about the plan to deploy troops, was surprised she and the children in the group would be considered a threat. Trump should be more humanitarian, she said. We only want to give our kids a better future. Migrants who do reach the U.S. border can claim asylum under U.S. and international law. Those who clear an initial screening are often released until their cases are decided in immigration court, which can take several years. But Nielsen warned: This caravan cannot come to the United States. They will not be allowed in. They will not be allowed to stay. In 2017, the U.S. had 331,700 asylum claims, more than any country in the world, according to the U.N. Refugee Agency. Thats nearly double the asylum claims the U.S. fielded in 2015 and nearly quadruple the claims in 2013. Trump ordered the deployment of the National Guard earlier this year to respond to an increase in illegal crossings. Those troops are under the control of state governors and are limited to support roles such as providing surveillance. The planned deployment of active-duty troops is in response to a request from the Department of Homeland Security, which manages the Border Patrol. Earlier this year, Mattis authorized Pentagon funding for up to 4,000 National Guard troops on the border. So far, only a little over 2,000 have been used. Federal law prohibits the use of active-duty service members for law enforcement inside the U.S. unless specifically authorized by Congress. Trump hinted at the troop announcement at a rally in Wisconsin on Wednesday. Waitll you see what happens over the next couple of weeks. Youre going to see a very secure border, he said. You just watch. ___ Associated Press writers Elliot Spagat in San Diego and Julie Watson in Pijijiapan, Mexico, contributed to this report. Copyright 2018 Albuquerque Journal The ghosts of notable New Mexicans will share their stories during a Halloween celebration of the states history and folklore. At El Rancho de las Golondrinas Spirits of New Mexicos Past, volunteers will perform short vignettes, dressing and acting as ghostly versions of real-life characters. The spirits will be stationed throughout the candlelit top section of the ranch-turned-living history museum, according to education and volunteer manager Laura Gonzales. They go from the Spanish Colonial period all the way to the territorial period, she said of the characters. Those scheduled to make appearances include Bishop Jean-Baptiste Lamy, the first leader of the diocese of New Mexico; buffalo hunter Manual Maes; William Watts Hart Davis, a Mexican-American veteran who became the U.S. attorney for the territory of New Mexico during the mid-1800s; and Marion Sloan Russell. Russell, Gonzales explained, was the wife of an Army lieutenant and a frequent traveler on the Santa Fe Trail throughout her life. Fitting with the holiday, her spirit will speak of the scary aspects of traveling along the trail for women who didnt know what to expect out West. According to Gonzales, Russell wrote about fearing the cross-country trek in her early writings and diary entries. This was before she became acclimated to the local culture. Its not for the faint of heart, Gonzales said of the Santa Fe Trail journey. Youre traveling 2,000 miles over the course of three-four months to somewhere that might as well be the moon. The Spirits of New Mexicos Past celebration was introduced last year and Gonzales said it was brought back after an unexpected turnout of about 700 guests. She said the museum staff estimated maybe 200 would show up. It was more successful than we anticipated, she said, adding that changes have been made for this years event based on visitor feedback. It will be longer by an hour, and food and drinks from New Mexico Hard Cider will be added. The staff also now knows how many farolitos will be needed to brighten up walkways. Aside from ghostly tales, there will be performances by local pueblo and flamenco dance groups, other live music, face painting and crafts. A Curandera or a traditional healer will have a space to conduct spiritual cleansings, Gonzales said. She also mentioned that there will be a presentation by an actress playing La Llorona, clad in tattered rags and ghostly face paint. According to legend, La Llorona, Spanish for Weeping Woman, is the spirit of a woman loudly mourning her dead children. Most tellings say she killed her children. In local versions, she haunts the Santa Fe River, and kids are told that La Llorona will take them if they stay out after dark. Shell be with us again, kind of haunting the area, said Gonzales. Though La Llorona roaming the property may be slightly spooky for young kids, Gonzales said the festivities are appropriate for all ages and are not designed to be like a haunted house. She said there are not many evening Halloween celebrations targeted at kids and families, and thats what they hope to create with Spirits of New Mexicos Past. Its our way of celebrating the history of folklore, said Gonzales. So many of our events focus on the quote unquote factual history. And while guests will learn from the historical figures on hand, this is our fun way of making it Halloween-y without making it just Halloween and going away from our mission, she said. Spirits of New Mexicos Past WHEN: Saturday, 5-9 p.m. WHERE: El Rancho de las Golondrinas, 334 Los Pinos Road in La CienagaTICKETS: $8 for adults. Seniors ages 62 and over and teens 13-18 are $6. Kids 12 and under are free. Early voting started last Saturday. Here are some of the Journal Norths recommendations for the Nov. 6 general election: A ballot question before Santa Fe voters would amend the City Charter to move municipal elections from March in even-numbered years to November in odd-numbered years. Its part of an effort under the states new Local Elections Act to consolidate smaller, non-partisan elections like those for city councils, school boards and community college boards instead of holding them on various separate dates. The measure before city voters asks: Shall the Santa Fe Municipal Charter be amended to allow the City to enact by ordinance its election date and the date on which officials take office as provided in the Local Election Act? The Journal North recommends a yes vote here. It makes sense to have a single election day for the now-scattered local elections. Consolidated elections in November, when were used to going to polls, also should attract more attention and, one hopes, more voters. Also, the new system provides for a needed and reasonable transition period. Now, the mayor and City Council take office within days of the March municipal election. If voters approve the proposed measure, the elected officials would take office on Jan. 1, allowing about two months after a November election for winners to get up to speed before being thrown into the details of a city budget or other serious issues. In Los Alamos-centered House District 43, the Journal North endorses Democrat Christine Chandler to fill the seat being vacated by Stephanie Garcia Richard, who is running for state Land Commissioner. Chandler, retired after years as an in-house lawyer at the Los Alamos lab, has experience as a County Councilor, and on important boards in and out of local government. She also has served a useful apprenticeship as a legislative analyst for the Senate Judiciary Committee, which works on drafting and evaluating the legality of bills at the Legislature. In another open seat, in House District 40, our choice is Democrat Joseph Sanchez to replace retiring Rep. Nick Salazar of Ohkay Owingeh. Sanchez grew up in Alcalde, hes as an engineer at Los Alamos National Laboratory and he has served a three-year stint as CEO of the Jemez Electric Cooperative. To top it off, he plays various instruments in the legendary northern New Mexico band Los Blue Ventures. For House District 50, the strangely drawn district that stretches from Eldorado south to the outskirts of Belen, our recommendation is that voters go with incumbent Matthew McQueen, an attorney who has stuck up for neighborhood groups in and around Santa Fe. But Independent Jarratt Applewhite, a former Santa Fe school board member, also has appeal as a smart candidate with a varied background who might serve as a maverick at the Legislature. Copyright 2018 Albuquerque Journal The Los Alamos County sheriff probably has the least number of duties for any sheriff in the state, and the job pays only $7,000 a year. Yet four people a Republican, a Democrat, a Libertarian and an independent are all vying for the position in the Nov. 6 general election. The post is also tied up in litigation after the Los Alamos County Council tried to eliminate the sheriffs office, using a measure that was on the 2016 general election ballot. Voters decided to keep the office. Still, a lawsuit filed by current Sheriff Marco Lucero challenging the ballot measure resulted in a ruling by a Santa Fe District Court judge that the Los Alamos sheriff cannot carry out law enforcement duties. Thats due, in part, to the fact that Los Alamos County, where there are no city governments, has a full-blown county police department that carries out law enforcement duties. That leaves the sheriff with the sole responsibility of maintaining the sex offender registry. As it turns out, none of this years candidates for the $6,888-a-year position has ever been a police officer. The lawsuit filed two years ago against the county by incumbent sheriff Lucero, who has reached his two-term limit, claimed the countys ballot question to eliminate the sheriffs office is unconstitutional and exceeds the authority of the countys state-granted charters. Luceros suit also said he makes arrests of sex offenders who dont comply with registration requirements. The ballot measure said the county police department is capable of performing all duties assigned to the sheriff by state statutes. Lucero told the Journal in 2016 that every county needs an elected sheriff accountable to voters so you can go to them with allegations of corruption. In July, Judge Francis Mathew ruled that the sheriffs office has no law enforcement authority, but he also ruled that the county cannot effectively eliminate the office by not funding it. Sheriff Lucero is permanently restrained from exercising law enforcement duties involving keeping the peace, Mathews finding of facts and conclusions of law says. In an appeal to the Court of Appeals, Lucero is being represented by Blair Dunn, the Libertarian candidate for Attorney General. Some of this years candidates are also at odds with the County Council and also claim the governing body ignores state law by trying to eliminate the sheriffs office. Greg White, the independent candidate, has filed eight lawsuits this year in either state District Court or the state Supreme Court, most of which targeted the County Council. The three filings he made in the Supreme Court were dismissed within days. White said in a recent interview that he filed the lawsuits because he wants the County Council to follow the state law. The council doesnt pay any attention to their own ordinances, let alone the (county) charter and state law, White said. You simply cant run a government like that. Im simply trying to make them follow the law. White says his relevant experience comes from stints in the Coast Guard and Air Force, as well as being a hotel security guard in Las Vegas, Nev. White said he filed for bankruptcy in 1997 and 2003. He pleaded guilty to misdemeanor DWI in 1999 and had to attend DWI school, but couldnt say much else about the arrest. I honestly dont remember what the circumstances were, White said. James Whitehead, the Republican candidate, has a pending lawsuit against the County Council, the county police department, and the county parks and recreation department for state Inspection of Public Records violations regarding requests he made for records pertaining to a property he owns. He has another lawsuit against Los Alamos National Security, LLC, which runs Los Alamos National Laboratory, for breach of contract and other alleged violations. Whitehead, a former deputy fire marshal in Raleigh, N.C., said he didnt want to comment on the lawsuits, because theyre pending. He also believes the county council has gone rogue. I believe Los Alamos County, from its creation, has not been compliant with state law, Whitehead said. What does the County Council have to hide that they feel that they have to control law enforcement? But, he says, he can get along with the council if hes elected. Its my intention to set everything to the side with my situation with the county and handle it amicably, Whitehead said. Libertarian Chris Luchini does not have law enforcement experience, but he does have a Ph.D. in physics. He says he wants to be sheriff because he wants to serve the public. I want to continue to make sure we have a viable sheriffs office, Luchini said. We need somebody who can define what the proper role of the sheriffs office is. Luchini is the chair of the Libertarian Party of New Mexico, according to the organizations website. He said that, if elected, hell have to wait until Luceros case gets through the courts before negotiating with the county council on what the sheriffs duties are. He added that he would bring in an under-sheriff who is already a certified law enforcement officer. Joseph Granville, the Democratic candidate who is currently a kitchen and bathroom designer, says he wants to come in and mend the relationship between the sheriff and the county council. I thought it would be great to come in and cool the relationship down, Granville said. I want an environment thats conducive to decision-making. LOS ALAMOS COUNTY SHERIFF CANDIDATES James W. Whitehead AGE: 41 EDUCATION: B.S. Fire Protection and Safety Engineering OCCUPATION: Fire Protection Engineering Design Engineering RELEVANT EXPERIENCE: 7 years, U.S. Army Infantry; former Deputy Fire Marshal City of Raleigh, N.C.; fire protection specialist, Wolf Creek Nuclear Operating Corporation; Fire Protection Engineer, Los Alamos National Laboratory. Greg White AGE: 58 EDUCATION: AAS Contract Administration, B.S. Social Psychology OCCUPATION: Retired RELEVANT EXPERIENCE: U.S. Coast Guard, non-commissioned officer, Search & Rescue, first responder, drug Interdiction; U.S. Air Force, non-commissioned officer, contract specialist, contract review, zero overpricing supervisor, blanket purchase agreement administrator; security officer, New York New York Hotel/Casino, officer academy training and on-the-job experience in crime scene investigation, detention and arrest, disarming and takedown of suspects in crowded environments, profiling suspected pedophiles. Chris Luchini AGE: 54 EDUCATION: Ph.D. in High Energy Physics (elementary particle physics). OCCUPATION: Business owner RELEVANT EXPERIENCE: As the principal investigator for technologies related to seismic source and sensors for hydrocarbon exploration, Ive managed large diverse teams over multiple years. This includes conflict resolution outside of the court system for contract and other related disputes. The organizational lessons learned from running a small business since 2002 will be applicable to the Office of Sheriff. Joseph Granville AGE: 55 EDUCATION: Associates degree in Interior Design OCCUPATION: Kitchen and Bathroom Designer for Poulin Remodeling RELEVANT EXPERIENCE: Board of Directors, Los Alamos Family Council and Little Forest Playschool. Business owner, Home Improved USA. JOURNAL QUESTIONS 1. Explain why you are running for sheriff and what you see as the biggest issues for the sheriffs office. WHITEHEAD: I am running for Sheriff of Los Alamos County because I have witnessed the systematic defunding and dismantling of the office since May 2016. The occurrence of violent crime within Los Alamos County is represented at much lower levels than what is reported to the state. We need a sheriff that is not only willing, but also capable or restoring the rule of law in this county . Theres a sheriff in town! WHITE: I love Los Alamos. The best way I can give back is doing what I know. Despite a District Court order, the County Council still refuses to allow a functional sheriff, let alone a department. Eventually, they will have to give in or go to jail. The re-establishment of a sheriffs department is best accomplished by a person with experience in law enforcement, knowledge of statutes, and office management and supervisory experience. Please visit greg4sheriff.com. LUCHINI: Im running for sheriff of Los Alamos County to ensure that there will be a person in that office who believes that there should be an elected representative of law enforcement/peacekeeping in the county, and who will be able to effectively interact with the County Council and the state Legislature to adjust to the future court rulings that will define the role of sheriff in the county. The anticipated appellate court/Supreme Court ruling on the status of the sheriff is the only real issue for the sheriff in this county. GRANVILLE: I am running because, in my business, I have to be able to work with people. This job at this time needs a person committed to clearly defining the role of sheriff, a person willing to do the hard work of collaboration and relationship building. 2. Why is the Los Alamos County Sheriffs Office needed, necessary or a practical use of tax dollars, given that the Los Alamos Police Department provides law enforcement for the county? WHITEHEAD: The function of the Los Alamos County Sheriffs Office is to execute any civil action, enforce the laws of the state and ordinances of the county, and to follow diligently all orders of the courts of competent jurisdiction, and to serve those orders under the law in a proper and timely manner. These duties and powers are separate and apart from those of the Police Department. This subject has been misrepresented for far too long. WHITE: The police should do the policing. My priorities as sheriff are ending child suicide and protecting children from sexual predators. We have the most rights of any nation. Especially electing those who serve us, including law enforcement. The court stated a sheriff does state functions and cannot be done away with or diminished. If people want one department, it has to be led by elected law enforcement. State law requires sheriffs to attend a law enforcement academy. LUCHINI: The LA Sheriffs Office is needed because the residents of LA County deserve to have an elected representative of law enforcement in this county. The coexistence of a sheriffs office and the police department doesnt require any extra costs if the duties of the respective offices are chosen to be non-duplicative. GRANVILLE: Judge Mathew has decided that the office will remain. The key now is to assure that the scope of the sheriffs office is clearly defined. I dont think a police department headed by an elected sheriff is a good idea. Law enforcement like the fire department should be free of political influence. 3. Have you or your business, if you are a business owner, ever been the subject of any state or federal tax liens? WHITEHEAD: No. WHITE: No. LUCHINI: No. GRANVILLE: Never been subject to tax liens. 4. Have you ever been involved in a personal or business bankruptcy proceeding? WHITEHEAD: No. WHITE: Yes. In 1987, I was employed at very low pay for a long time when I first got out of the Air Force and filed chapter 7 discharge bankruptcy that was granted in 1988. LUCHINI: No. GRANVILLE: Never been involved in bankruptcy. 5. Have you ever been arrested for, charged with or convicted of drunken driving, any misdemeanor or any felony? WHITEHEAD: I have never been charged with drunken driving or any felony. WHITE: Yes. Im human, Ive made some bad decisions in life. Ive never committed a felony. Ive never committed any misdemeanor that would disqualify me from being a law enforcement officer in any state. I have never been denied a job requiring an extensive criminal background check. I hope people appreciate my frank honesty. In 1994, the DA dismissed a charge of battery when she determined the complainant was lying and no altercation occurred. I was never told their reason for making it up. In 1999, I plead guilty to a misdemeanor DWI that occurred on Sept. 10, 1998. My breath test was a .13 when .10 was the limit. In 2004, I had a misdemeanor reckless driving. I never rush anywhere now. If Im late, Im late. In 2009, at 2 in the morning, while I slept, I was accused of banging on a neighbors door. My boss would not give me time off to go to court, so I had to have a friend enter a no contest plea for me to Disturbing the Peace. LUCHINI: No. GRANVILLE: Never been arrested, charged or convicted of any misdemeanor or felony. LOS ALAMOS Both candidates running for the House District 43 seat in the state Legislature say they came to live in New Mexico because they saw it as an adventure. I grew up in the East and wanted to do something different. I viewed it as an adventure to come to New Mexico, said Christine Chandler, who won the Democratic nomination by beating fellow Los Alamos County councilor Peter Sheehey in the June primary election. A native of Northampton, Mass., Chandler started clerking for the Montgomery & Andrews law firm in Santa Fe in 1984, spent a few years lawyering there, then embarked on a long career as an in-house attorney at Los Alamos National Laboratory. Its been quite a ride. To be able to live in a small town, a small state environment and work on complex issues sometimes national issues, sometimes high-profile issues that would have a huge impact on not just the state, but the country as a whole what an exciting thing for a lawyer to be able to do. Its been almost an ideal job, and I enjoyed it tremendously, said Chandler, who retired from the lab in 2013. Lisa Shin, who ran unopposed in the Republican primary, arrived in Santa Fe in 1997 fresh out of optometry school, accepting an internship at the Santa Fe Indian Hospital. Shes originally from suburban Atlanta. I just thought, wow, Ive never been to New Mexico, she said. I just thought it would be an exciting adventure. For three months, why not just check it out. That was nearly 20 years ago. Los Alamos caught her eye, and up the hill she went. I knew this would be a great place to build a practice people were very friendly, it was safe, good education system, the quality of life up here. There are a lot of engineers and scientists, so they all need glasses, she said with a laugh. Both candidates have lived happy lives in Los Alamos. They each met their lab employee husbands here. Shin has a nearly 10-year-old daughter, and Chandler has three stepchildren. Now, their dual adventures have taken them to a duel for the House District 43 seat vacated by Stephanie Garcia Richard, who is running for state Land Commissioner. The district encompasses Los Alamos County, and parts of Sandoval, Rio Arriba and Santa Fe counties, including the communities of La Cienega, Jemez Springs and Cuba. It is considered a swing district in the House, where Democrats hold a 38-32 advantage over Republicans. I can bring them in Shin says she didnt become active in local politics until about five years ago, helping out Republican candidates leading up to the 2014 election. But Shin quickly made it to the GOPs national stage, literally, when she was asked to speak on behalf of then-presidential candidate Donald J. Trump at the Republican National Convention in July 2016. I think the fact that Im an ethnic minority, Im the daughter of immigrants, and I was there supporting Trump, that really caught their attention, said Shin. Her parents came from South Korea. Shin admits she played the race card, the woman card, and the small-business owner card in lobbying the state Republican Party to be selected as a national convention delegate. I was aggressive about it. I called 700 people and wrote follow-up letters to 700 people. I took it really serious, she said. I told them, You know what? We need minority representation. We need to reach out to everybody. We need new people, and I can bring them in. And it worked. She was chosen as a delegate and separately picked by the Trump campaign to speak on his behalf. She was introduced as the head of Korean Americans 4 Trump, what she describes as a loosely organized grassroots-driven social media group that created a webpage and Twitter account. We all kind of found each other, she said. In her less-than five minute speech in Cleveland, she told the story of her parents immigrating to this country because they knew America was an exceptional and generous country where immigrants could become American citizens, participate in democracy and live the American dream. It wasnt easy for them, she said. Her family made sacrifices in pursuit of that dream and they never imagined their daughter would be speaking to you today, she said, then exclaiming, This is the beauty of the American dream! To do and to be the unimaginable! She went on to disparage Hillary Clinton before concluding that only Trump would ensure a prosperous, safe and secure country, and defend the principles it was founded on. Why Trump and not one of the other 15 Republican presidential hopefuls? I saw him as an outsider, and someone who would challenge the whole political system and shake it up, she said. Mitt Romeny, the 2012 GOP nominee, was polished, but he didnt inspire. I thought, if we put another Romney out there were going to lose. Shin also agreed with Trumps policies, including on immigration. Hes not anti-immigration, she says, but it has to be done right. What gives them the right to come up here and evade that legal process, and think that they can just stay and have the rights, protections and benefits of an American citizen? she asked about those who enter the country illegally. Its very difficult for me to accept that. Asked about the caravan of U.S.-bound Central American immigrants making their way through Mexico, Shin was in step with the president. Its a national security issue, really. I dont agree with that caravan coming up. I mean, we dont know who is in there. Are there people who want to harm American citizens? We cant have that, she said. She can do without some of Trumps rhetoric and tweets, she said, but hes delivering on his promises. Lining up on what makes sense Certainly, Los Alamos folks know shes an active Trump supporter, Chandler said of her opponent. I guess voters will tell us if thats a benefit to her. Chandler points out that Los Alamos County went heavily for Hillary Clinton in 2016. She got 51 percent of the vote, compared to 31 percent for Trump and 14 percent for Libertarian Gary Johnson. She is also encouraged by the trend of voter registration in the county. Republicans had long held the advantage until after the 2012 election cycle when they were surpassed by Democrats. Certainly, we have our share of right-leaning Republicans, Chandler said of Los Alamos County, where 39 percent of registered voters are Democrats, 32 percent are Republicans and the rest are independent or registered to other parties. But generally people here are data-based. They make decisions on their assessments and they are thoughtful. Chandler hopes that will work in her favor. Shes no newcomer, having launched her political career while still a teenager. When I was in high school, I was one of these kids who would go to school board meetings and say things, she said. I would mostly listen, but I would occasionally speak up. Then, while a 19-year-old attending Smith College in Northampton, Mass., she ran for school board and won. That was a time when people were getting energized and were participating, she said of the final years of the Nixon presidency. Chandler went on to law school at Boston College, then ventured to New Mexico. She eventually jumped back into the political ring, winning a seat on the Los Alamos County Council in 1996. She was elected again 20 years later and now is council vice-chair. In between, she served as a probate judge and on the countys Charter Review and Planning and Zoning commissions. She also served on the New Mexico Commission on Access to Justice, a group that works to expand legal services to low-income residents, and on nonprofit boards. Chandler touts her recent experience as a legislative analyst for the Senate Judiciary Committee, which works on drafting and evaluating the legality of bills at the Legislature. Chandler says her experience in state and local government gives voters a reason to support her. Youre dealing with practical problems on a daily basis, she said. And you dont line up on party divisions, youre lining up on what makes sense to you. Youre using your best judgment from your perspective, and the input youre getting from constituents and how you interpret that input. Thats a useful skill you learn at the local level that you can bring to the state level. Chandler was involved in some controversy years ago when an embezzlement scam resulted in convictions of two LANL employees and allegations that lab brass tried to impede the investigation. An investigator said at a congressional hearing that Chandler tried to verbally intimidate him to obtain his notes. Chandler acknowledged a discussion about FBI notes, but denied any intimidation. Like Shin, Chandler is the daughter of immigrants. Her parents met on the ship that carried them to America from Poland just after World War II. Recent campaign finance reports show Chandler with an advantage. While Shin had just short of $30,000 in the bank, Chandler had more than $73,000, including her own $26,500 loan. Not surprisingly, unions are backing the Democrat. The American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees, the American Federation of Teachers, Iron Workers Local 495, and New Mexico Building and Construction Trades Council combined to contribute $7,100 to Chandler. Oil and gas money is going to Shin. She got $2,000 each from Jalapeno Corp., whose president is Harvey Yates Jr., and Peyton Yates Jr. of Yates Petroleum. Mark Murphy of Strata Production Co. contributed $1,000. Permian Energy gave $2,250. HOUSE DISTRICT 43 CANDIDATES Christine Chandler POLITICAL PARTY: Democratic OCCUPATION: Attorney CITY OF RESIDENCE: Los Alamos RELEVANT EXPERIENCE: Los Alamos County Council vice chair and two-term councilor; Legislative Analyst for the New Mexico Senate Judiciary Committee (four sessions); former probate judge; licensed New Mexico attorney; former Los Alamos National Laboratory attorney and manager; small-business owner. EDUCATION: Smith College, A.B. Economics; Boston College Law School, J.D.; Georgetown University Law Center, L.L.M., International & Comparative Law CAMPAIGN WEBSITE: christine4statehouse.com Lisa Shin POLITICAL PARTY: Republican OCCUPATION: Optometrist CITY OF RESIDENCE: Los Alamos RELEVANT EXPERIENCE: Health care provider and small-business owner for 21 years EDUCATION: Wellesley College, B.A.; Pennsylvania College of Optometry, O.D. CAMPAIGN WEBSITE: lisasfor43.com ISSUES QUESTIONS 1. What are the top two things you would do to improve the economy in New Mexico? CHANDLER: Businesses look to the quality of the workforce and infrastructure when considering locating in a state. We need a coordinated framework that supports occupational/trade training, certification, and four- and two-year colleges. We must invest in infrastructure, such as roads, utilities and broadband, in order to recruit and retain businesses. SHIN: Prioritize vocational education and technical-career training. There is a serious gap when it comes to middle skills in New Mexico. Ease the regulatory and tax burden on small businesses. New Mexico currently ranks at the bottom for business friendliness; we have to change that. 2. What are the top two things you would propose to address the states high crime rate? CHANDLER: The certainty of being caught deters crime, but increasing the level of penalties does not. We must improve the effectiveness of the police and courts. We must support triage: imprison serious and violent offenders; divert low-level offenders to treatment and education; and provide effective rehabilitation for the incarcerated. SHIN: Support three strikes laws, such as House Bill 18 and House Bill 28, which addressed the high rates of violent and property crime in New Mexico. Provide the resources and support to first responders at a crime scene. Mayor Kellers plan to use new technology in the fight against gun-related violence is promising. 3. New Mexico now spends about $300 million a year for early childhood programs, such as home visiting, pre-kindergarten and child care assistance. Do you support or oppose a constitutional amendment that would withdraw more money from the Land Grant Permanent Fund to increase funding for early childhood services? CHANDLER: Despite New Mexicos current level of funding, early childhood programs remain underfunded. Because investment in these programs has been shown to reap long-term educational and behavioral benefits, I support a constitutional amendment that would allow an additional, reasonable increase to support these important programs. SHIN: I oppose such an amendment. Studies show that distributions greater than 5 percent risk the Funds long-term solvency. 4. Do you support or oppose legalizing recreational marijuana use in New Mexico and taxing its sales? CHANDLER: Yes, with appropriate regulations and applicable taxes. SHIN: I oppose state-wide legalization of recreational marijuana. I support the use of medical marijuana for treatment of diseases where it has been proven to be a successful homeopathic alternative to pharmaceuticals. 5. Do you support or oppose raising New Mexicos minimum wage, currently $7.50 per hour? If so, by how much? CHANDLER: Yes, ultimately to $12.00/hour, phased in over a reasonably short period of time. Workers must be able to earn a living wage to support themselves and their families. SHIN: I support a minimum wage increase to no more than $9.00/hour in 2019, with modest incremental changes over time. Our Mom-and-Pop businesses simply cannot survive a $12/hour minimum wage law. 6. Do you support or oppose opening the states primary elections to voters who arent affiliated with either major political party? CHANDLER: Yes, I support opening primaries to allow Independents to participate. SHIN: My opponent has a record of stopping local elections, as well as ignoring their outcomes. I support each individuals right to have a vote in any election, which gives the citizens a voice in our government. 7. Do you favor making New Mexico a sanctuary state? CHANDLER: The term sanctuary state means different things to different people depending on perspective. State officials must and should follow applicable federal law; however, it has been held by the federal courts that the federal government cannot require state officials to enforce federal laws. SHIN: No, I do not support such a policy PERSONAL BACKGROUND 1. Have you or your business, if you are a business owner, ever been the subject of any state or federal tax liens? CHANDLER: No. SHIN: No. 2. Have you ever been involved in a personal or business bankruptcy proceeding? CHANDLER: No. SHIN: No. 3. Have you ever been arrested for, charged with, or convicted of drunken driving, any misdemeanor or any felony in New Mexico or any other state? If so, explain. CHANDLER: No. SHIN: No. Go to abqjournal.com to see the candidates answers to more issues questions. Click on the Voter Guide button. SANTA FE The mayor of Espanola is calling on the community to help bring an end to violence by participating a series of events intended to create a blueprint for deescalation. In a Call to Action letter sent out this week, Mayor Javier Sanchez said violence has infiltrated local neighborhoods in the Espanola Valley and ingrained itself in our very being. It has almost become a normal part of everyday life, he wrote. But we mustnt let it. We have the ability and responsibility to attempt to put an end to the violence around us. Sanchez said Thursday that the shooting death of 18-year-old Cameron Martinez of Espanola earlier this month police say shooters afraid of someone else mistakenly targeted the car he was riding in certainly acted as a catalyst, but he doesnt want to single out any one incident in a dialogue about a widespread problem. Especially because every soul in our community has value and I dont want it to appear we choose one over the other, he said. We have root causes that need to be addressed for the sake and health for all of our children. Police have arrested seven people, including three teenagers, in connection with Martinez death. The Espanola police are also investigating the homicide of 30-year-old Anthony Manzanares, who was found shot in his home last weekend. Part one of a series of community discussions is scheduled for Monday, Oct. 29 from 8 a.m.-3 p.m. at the Santa Claran Event Center. For the series, Sanchez is teaming up with the Espanola Police Department; Espanola Public Schools Superintendent Bobbie Gutierrez; Northern New Mexico College President Rick Bailey; and other local leaders. Sanchez said they will use community feedback to determine specific actions that can be implemented to combat violence. His letter also mentions finding ways to provide children with coping mechanisms and tools necessary to live a happy and constructive life. Those interested in participating in Mondays discussion are asked to register with Angelica Serrano at 505-747-6012 or aserrano@espanolanm.gov. Copyright 2018 Albuquerque Journal Four and a half years after she was shot and killed by an Albuquerque police officer, the death of 19-year-old Mary Hawkes is once again under review. The Bernalillo County district attorney announced in a letter this week that the fatal shooting of Hawkes by former officer Jeremy Dear will be reviewed by a panel of three district attorneys from elsewhere in the state to see if they recommend charges against the officer. District Attorney Raul Torrez, in a letter to an attorney representing Hawkes family, said that after reviewing evidence in the case, he decided six months ago that another review of the shooting was warranted. But the panel only recently volunteered to review the case. He said that the state doesnt fund such reviews and that the district attorneys have been busy with their own cases. Hawkes adoptive mother felt terrible that Jeremy Dear thought he had gotten away with it, said Shannon Kennedy, an attorney for the Hawkes family. So she felt so relieved that someone is really going to look at the evidence. Dear shot Hawkes a suspected car thief in a foot chase near Wyoming and Zuni on an early Monday morning in April 2014. Dear has said she had a gun and pointed it at him, but attorneys for the Hawkes family have questioned that account, saying it doesnt jibe with forensic and other evidence in the case. The city of Albuquerque reached a $5 million settlement with the Hawkes family in a civil case brought in connection with her death. In February this year, special prosecutor Michael Cox recommended to Torrez that no charges be filed against Dear. The panel of district attorneys may well reach the same conclusion that Mr. Cox did regarding whether or not the state of New Mexico could satisfy its burden of proof in a potential criminal case against officer Dear, Torrez wrote. However, I do find that there are clear, articulable facts and matters of law which warrant further examination. Through a spokesperson, Torrez declined to comment further about the case. Kennedy said in a letter to Torrez earlier this year that Cox overlooked several key pieces of evidence when recommending that Dear not face charges. She said there was deposition testimony from several officers on scene that they didnt see Hawkes with a gun, and that Hawkes DNA and fingerprints were not found on a firearm that police recovered on the scene. That was just some of the evidence she said Cox failed to consider. Torrez will ultimately have the final decision on whether Dear should face charges for the shooting. Dear, meanwhile, remains a certified law enforcement officer in New Mexico and is working for a private company in Bosque Farms, said Thomas Grover, Dears attorney. Grover said Dear has called for a transparent review of his shooting and that any problems with the investigation into the shooting were the fault of the former police administration, not Dear. I think this is politics at play, Grover said. I think Raul (Torrez) is trying to get as far away from this case as he can because its a lawful shoot and he doesnt want to be the guy who is tainted on this issue. Copyright 2018 Albuquerque Journal The state of drought in New Mexico could be described as a tale of two cities. A strip of counties along the states eastern border with Texas is drought-free, while the Four Corners area and northwestern New Mexico continue to be what one expert described as an epicenter of drought, according to an updated map released Thursday by the U.S. Department of Agriculture, the University of Nebraska-Lincoln and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. About 15.5 percent of the state San Juan County and parts of Colfax, McKinley, Mora, Rio Arriba, Santa Fe, Sandoval, San Miguel and Taos counties is in exceptional drought, the most serious category. Royce Fontenot, senior hydrologist with the Albuquerque office of the National Weather Service, said during a New Mexico Drought Monitor Working Group session Tuesday that the area of exceptional drought is centered over the Four Corners and not budging. The epicenter of drought in the United States is the Four Corners region, Fontenot said. Its very persistent. Its pretty much where all the (NWS forecasters) eyes are. Meanwhile, 5.3 percent of the state parts of the eastern New Mexico counties of Union, Harding, Quay, Curry, Roosevelt and Lea is drought-free. By contrast, 88.6 percent of the state was drought-free at this time last year. We had a pretty good monsoon season in a lot of places but it was still hit or miss, Fontenot said. It was good on the eastern border but pretty abysmal for the Four Corners region and a mixed bag along the central Rio Grande Valley. We saw some areas that got a lot of precipitation, and just a few miles away not so great. Its been one of those raining on your porch, not your back sort of situations. The Drought Monitor Work Group, made up of members of the National Weather Service and state and federal agencies, determines the extent and severity of drought in the state. The southwestern and central parts of Bernalillo County are in moderate drought, and the southeastern and northern parts of the county are in severe drought. The Albuquerque International Sunport has received 1.64 inches of precipitation this month, almost twice as much as the average, 0.86 inch. Most of that came on Tuesday and Wednesday, when a slow-moving Pacific trough brought long-duration rainfall to most of the state. The rainfall was beneficial, said meteorologist Todd Shoemake of the weather service in Albuquerque, but not a drought-breaker. This is one of the more beneficial precipitation events for us in a drought-stricken area, Shoemake said. Most of New Mexico saw this rainfall over a 36- to 48-hour period, so its a slow precipitation. It wasnt too fast or too furious, for the most part. That longer duration allows it to absorb into the soil, as opposed to thunderstorms that we see during the monsoon season, where it falls too fast and goes straight into the streams and rivers and doesnt benefit the soil. The state would need at least two similar storms to pull out of this drought, Shoemake said. The city is still in a rainfall deficit for the year, at 7.88 inches. Average precipitation for the year to date is 8.22 inches. Experts said they hope drought conditions in the state will improve this winter with the probable arrival of El Nino, an ocean-atmosphere climate interaction that is linked to periodic warming in sea surface temperatures in the central and eastern equatorial Pacific. Meteorologists from NOAAs Climate Prediction Center said during a briefing this week that they project a 70 to 75 percent chance that El Nino will develop during the next few months. The precipitation outlook for December through February favors wetter-than-average conditions for New Mexico. Drought improvement is likely for the state, as well as for Arizona and southern parts of Utah and Colorado. Also during the conference, Raymond Abeyta of the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation, which manages water resources in the western part of the country, reported that the Rio Grande is flowing continuously again after recent rains. The Navajo, Conchas, Ute, Santa Rosa, Heron, El Vado, Abiquiu and Caballo reservoirs showed lower water levels this month, compared with September. Should voters give the go-ahead on Election Day, $7 million in property tax revenue would flow into the University of New Mexico to start renewing and replacing what President Garnett Stokes calls the atrocious facilities currently used by the universitys ROTC programs. Another $20.3 million would allow UNM to continue chemistry building upgrades and to construct a new College Pathways to Careers Center at its Taos branch. UNM and UNM-Taos are among 26 college, university and specialty school campuses that stand to benefit from a $128 million general obligation Bond D question on this years ballot. School leaders say passage of Bond D would positively impact New Mexico now by generating construction and related jobs, but also in the long term by helping schools produce a better workforce. For all of us who are concerned about the education in New Mexico, concerned about the economy in New Mexico, what we really want is the kind of higher education system and the kind of higher education capital that allows us to be competitive to provide a better life for New Mexicans, Central New Mexico Community College President Kathie Winograd said in championing the bond in a recent meeting with Journal editors. How do we create an opportunity that we keep our best and brightest both faculty and students in the state, and how do we make this a competitive place? Bond D is one of four general obligation bonds on this years ballot. The bonds would not increase property taxes, instead maintaining the existing mill levy. At UNM, the bond revenue would cover classroom, class lab and office space updates in the 1951 chemistry building a modernization effort Stokes called absolutely crucial for teaching as well as student and faculty recruitment and retention. The states largest university could also begin the first phase of an ROTC Complex for the campus three programs Navy, Army and Air Force which currently utilize separate, older facilities UNM says cannot support modern technology and lack proper facilities for women. It is actually atrocious how we have housed our ROTC people, Stokes said. CNM, the states largest community college, would get $7.5 million for various infrastructure needs, such as upgraded HVAC systems, roofing, and parking lot lighting. Bond D would fund $25 million in renovations and updates within New Mexico State Universitys College of Agricultural, Consumer and Environmental Sciences but also smaller-scale projects like $800,000 in paving and signage around Mesalands Community College. The other bonds on the ballot: Bond A for up to $10.8 million in facility improvements, construction and equipment for more than 60 senior centers in the state. The highest-dollar projects include the Gadiiahi Chapter Senior Center in San Juan County, the Abedon Lopez Senior Center in Santa Cruz, and the Twin Lakes Senior Center in McKinley County. Bond B for up to $12.9 million for acquisitions at libraries around the state, including funds for the purchase and installation of broadband equipment and infrastructure. Bond C for up to $6.1 million to the New Mexico Public Education Department to purchase and upgrade school buses, including those owned by school districts and buses provided by a service contractor if the school district determines that air conditioning as standard equipment is necessary, according to state legislation. The bill does not specify which districts would benefit, and a PED spokeswoman did not return Journal messages seeking more information about the plans. Election Day is Nov. 6. Copyright 2018 Albuquerque Journal SANTA FE Lindsay Sledge was there for her daughter. Shes not a public speaker but, still, she traveled from Albuquerque to the state Capitol to tell the Legislative Health and Human Services Committee a personal and intimate story about her family and the medicine she gives her daughter, Paloma Sledge-Guba, to help her 5-year-old with a severe form of epilepsy called Dravet syndrome. We moved to New Mexico in a desperate attempt to save her life, she said. That medicine is cannabis oil. As the country and state grapple with the legality, liability and even at times morality of medical cannabis, Sledge was there to share the positive results cannabis oil has had on her family and to advocate for her daughters medicine to be treated like any other medicine on school grounds. To be clear about what Im asking, Id like to see the law changed, she told the committee on Thursday. She emphasized that school is one of the few places Paloma gets to feel like any other kid. But Paloma has not been attending kindergarten because she isnt allowed to take her medicine on campus. It still hurts me she cant be at school, Sledge told the Journal. The mother of three said Paloma frequently asks when she is going to go back to school, especially as Sledge drops off her other children at class each day. I tell her Im doing everything I can, the mother said, the words breaking as tears formed. State law right now is very clear that medical cannabis is prohibited on school grounds and on school buses. For some conditions, medical cannabis is legal in New Mexico, but it remains illegal under federal law. State Sen. Candace Gould, R-Albuquerque, is currently working on a bill to change state law, according to Sen. Gerald Ortiz y Pino, D-Albuquerque, the vice chairman of the committee. Ortiz y Pino said he has volunteered to co-sponsor the bill with Gould, who was not at Thursdays meeting. The language of the draft mirrors a similar bill in Colorado and aims to address issues like the campus and school bus prohibitions, who is permitted to administer the medicine and whether school districts may opt out. While the interim committee is able to endorse legislation, a bill would still have to go through the regular legislative process. Ortiz y Pino told the Journal that based on the committees questions and responses on Thursday, I would imagine theyd endorse it. Sledge also said she was hopeful, adding that she felt the representatives and senators were receptive to her story. You never know what theyre going to say, she noted. The law as it is now resulted in Sledge sitting in the parking lot for hours at Petroglyph Elementary School last academic year so that she could drive Paloma off campus to administer the medicine when the then-preschooler was in need of it. Even after giving her daughter regular doses, she still waited in the lot. In the event Paloma had a seizure, Sledge had to be on hand to administer cannabis oil immediately. That oil shortens and de-intensifies Palomas seizures that she has had since she was 5 months old, Sledge previously explained to the Journal. But waiting in her car was a temporary solution. Now, Paloma should be in kindergarten. Sledge previously told the Journal that she had requested to send Paloma to school for only half a day of kindergarten, but she said APS told her thats not allowed. The school district said in May an error was made and Paloma would be allowed to attend half-day kindergarten if her mother chooses, which is in accordance with state law that says full-day kindergarten is voluntary. This fall, Sledge sat through a three-day hearing as she and her lawyer filed a due process complaint. Sledge testified and her lawyer argued that Albuquerque Public Schools and the state Public Education Department denied Paloma educational resources and options to which she has a legal right. Sledge decided to file the complaint so that a hearing officer could decide whether Paloma was given the full range of education she was entitled to under the law, particularly for an option called homebound instruction, a form of schooling that brings a teacher to the students residence for about an hour and a half each day. A hearing officer ruled APS should have offered homebound instruction throughout Palomas education something the mother had asked for in every meeting with APS concerning Paloma, according to Sledges lawyer Gail Stewart. Sledge saw that ruling as a small win. However, it too was a temporary solution. She told the Journal she was glad the hearing officer ruled in this way, but ultimately she said she hopes lawmakers recognize cannabis laws are problematic for children who are patients and entitled to an education. Arthur Melendres, an attorney for APS, was also at the committee meeting. He said the district recognizes every child should have a free, appropriate public education, but the district also has to be aware of how decisions including allowing medical cannabis on school grounds affects both students and the staff, who dont want to face legal liability, the attorney said. We are faced quite frankly with a bit of a conundrum, he said. Melendres said as lawmakers consider possible changes, Superintendent Raquel Reedys goal is to work cooperatively with the Legislature. This problem is not exclusive to Paloma. Sledge says shes been in contact with about 20 families that are in similar circumstances. At the meeting, Tisha Brick said her 11-year-old son Anthony uses cannabis oil for attention deficit hyperactivity disorder, post traumatic stress disorder and a type of schizophrenia. While she used to bring it to his school in the Estancia Municipal School District, she told the committee that the school district barred the medicine after an administration shift occurred. In fighting for cannabis oil to be permitted, Brick said, the state Children, Youth and Families Department was called and eventually her child was disenrolled. Her son hasnt been in school for a year and a half now and has seen the negative effects of not interacting with his peers, his mom told the committee. In addition to what Sledge is asking, Brick wants any legal changes to include ways to prevent school officials from discriminating against students and caretakers or retaliating. Committee chairwoman and state Rep. Deborah A. Armstrong, D-Albuquerque, thanked the two mothers for attending the meeting and sharing their stories. Some of the greatest work weve done in the state came from moms who got really mad, she said. I have a question for white people. I will preface it with an excerpt from a recent email sent by a reader named James. He wrote: It is the blacks who are by far the most racist of all people as they cant seem to simply forget their damn color and move on with life, get more education and skills, manage their money, stay married, stay out of crime and live a good life. I share this email not because its surprising, but, rather, because its common. Indeed, its a rare day when I dont get three just like it before lunch. Which brings me to the aforementioned question for white people or at least, for white people who, like James, fret about African-American bigotry. The question is this: How, precisely, does all this black racism impact your life? Does it cause police to be called out while you are barbecuing in a park, swimming in a public pool, smoking in a parking garage, sitting in a coffee shop or otherwise minding your own business? Does it cause politicians to close polling places in your neighborhood, or pass Photo ID laws demanding forms of identification you literally cannot get, in order to suppress your vote? Does it impact your health? African Americans are routinely under-treated for their pain compared with whites, according to research. Washington Post, April 4, 2016. Your wealth? According to a new study median Black and Latino households will lose the little relative wealth they have by about the time people of color form a majority of households in the U.S. By 2053, Black households will have a median wealth of zero. Forbes, Sept. 11, 2017. Your housing? A half-century after the Fair Housing Act became a civil-rights landmark, multiple studies show housing in America is nearly as segregated as it was when LBJ enacted a law designed to eliminate it. U.S. News and World Report, April 20, 2018. Your children? Racial bias against black students begins long before they get to their teens it starts in preschool, according to a study released today from the Yale Child Study Center. U.S. News and World Report, Sept. 28, 2016. Let me help you with the answers: no, no, no, no, no and no. Which raises another question: what are people like James whining about, then? I make no claim of sainthood for people of color. It is entirely possible and not uncommon for blacks and browns to harbor racial antipathy. But the issue here isnt antipathy. No, its the power to channel that antipathy in ways that impact lives. For illustration, just look around. We live in a time when people of color are besieged by right-wing assaults upon our rights and dignity, all carried out behind fig leaf excuses about voter fraud and national security. Our so-called president offers ample examples. There he is on Twitter, lashing out at imaginary Middle Easterners infiltrating a refugee caravan. There he is tweeting ominous warnings of voter fraud penalties, trying to scare people of color into staying home. At a rally, he declares himself a nationalist, a word favored, not incidentally, by gangsters like those who marched through Charlottesville with Tiki torches last year, screaming hatred. America is unraveling along seams of color and culture. And James thinks our problem is black racism? Thats sad, yet ridiculous, too. If they end up sorting through the wreckage of us someday, his words may inspire a fitting epitaph: Here lies America, where they worried about the wrong thing far too long. And the right thing far too late. E-mail at lpitts@miamiherald.com. (c) 2018 The Miami Herald distributed by Tribune Content Agency LLC. Journal endorsements in the general election continue today with more contested Albuquerque metro-area House races. For election coverage, including other endorsements and candidates profiles and answers to questions, click here. House District 44: Jane Powdrell-Culbert Jane Powdrell-Culbert, a Republican training consultant who resides in Corrales, has served her constituents well during her 16 years in the Legislature. She came to the Legislature with broad experience, having worked for corporations as well as local and state government agencies. She supports making New Mexico a right-to-work state to improve the economy. She is against pulling more money from the Land Grant Permanent Fund to increase funding for early childhood services, noting that a thorough evaluation is needed to assess where funds are needed most. She supports open primaries and understands our state must take steps to make our state pension funds solvent, even if it means raising the number of years state employees must work and requiring they pay more into the retirement plan. And she is against turning New Mexico into a sanctuary state. The Journal recommends Jane Powdrell-Culbert for House District 44, which includes Bernalillo, Rio Rancho and Corrales. House District 57: Jason Harper Republican Jason Harper holds a doctorate in chemical engineering and works as a research engineer at Sandia National Labs. In the state House, where he has served for the past six years, Harper has developed a reputation as someone willing to work across the aisle to try to address big issues, whether it be reforming our states inefficient capital outlay system or overhauling our gross-receipts tax system, which is rife with exemptions. Voters should re-elect him so he can continue to push for a GRT system thats fair to all of us and a capital outlay system that truly addresses our states biggest infrastructure needs. His list of accomplishments is long. He pressured the current administration to make evaluations fairer for teachers. He has led the effort to protect the lottery scholarship program. He got legislation through that protects the Severance Tax Permanent fund, requiring that more of the fund be invested. He co-sponsored legislation that helped create the 500-mile Rio Grande Trail along the river. He co-sponsored a bill that fixed high school graduation requirements, ensuring they dont change for students once they start high school and allowing such things as marching band and JROTC to count toward the physical education requirement. The Journal endorses Jason Harper for House District 57 in northern Rio Rancho. House District 60: Tim Lewis Republican Tim Lewis is a high school teacher who has served in the state House since 2011, and during that time hes championed stronger DWI and other public safety legislation, while also focusing on education and the economy. He supports gross-receipts tax reform and says if judges dont start holding criminals accountable on their own, it might be time to consider passing mandatory minimum sentences for criminals. He realizes taking more money from the permanent fund would only reduce payouts to future generations of children. He says its time to look at allowing independent voters to cast ballots in primary elections. And he opposes making New Mexico a sanctuary state. The Journal endorses Tim Lewis for House District 60 in Rio Ranchos south side. House District 68: Monica Youngblood Theres no question Republican Monica Youngblood made a huge mistake earlier this year when she got behind the wheel after drinking, was stopped at a DWI checkpoint and then refused to submit to a Breathalyzer. And she made the situation worse by making it clear to the officer she was a lawmaker who fights for police in the Legislature. She was convicted last month of aggravated DWI and served time in jail. But until this example of monumental poor judgment, Youngblood had served her constituents well. Ironically, during her time in the Legislature she has pushed for tougher DWI laws and allowing Uber and Lyft to come to New Mexico. And shes sponsored other meaningful legislation, cracking down on food-stamp fraud, reducing opioid overdoses via drugs less likely to be abused, regulating rideshare services to ensure insurance coverage and driver background checks and trying to make sure children can read. She supports tax reform and opening the states primary elections to independent voters and those not affiliated with a major political party. We acknowledge this was a difficult decision. But because of her strong record as a lawmaker, especially when compared to the inexperience and positions her opponent holds, the Journal recommends Monica Youngblood for House District 68 in northwest Albuquerque. Get informed, go vote! In-person early voting in the general election is ongoing through Nov. 3. For election coverage In-person early voting in the general election is ongoing through Nov. 3. For election coverage click here 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. More than a year after a one of the countrys foremost experts in nuclear weapons was charged with sexually assaulting his 4-year-old daughter, prosecutors have dropped the charges. Adam Lowther, arrested in September 2017 when he worked on Kirtland Air Force Base as the director of the Air Forces School for Advanced Nuclear Deterrence Studies, has emphatically denied the charges of one count of criminal sexual penetration of a minor under 13 and two counts of criminal sexual contact of a child. Last week, in a three-page letter of declination to Bernalillo County Sheriffs Office detective Jacob Wootten, the lead detective in the case, prosecutors outlined several problems with the case. They include a lack of forensic evidence; problems with the childs safe house interview; a conclusion that the childs disclosure could have resulted from an adult assisting a young child in the bathroom; and the Sheriffs Offices misinterpretation of a polygraph that a sergeant administered in which Lowther discussed the allegations. The Districts Attorneys Office said that a later polygraph Lowther gave, in which he denied the allegations, was better and showed that Lowther was truthful, according to the letter. Lowther, 43, said in an interview with the Journal that he felt little vindication by the dropping of the charges. He said the allegations have destroyed his career he has been both an enlisted member of the Navy, and worked as a civilian and contractor for the Department of Defense and traumatized his children. His two children, ages 4 and 7 at the time of his arrest, spent about 10 weeks in state foster care before being returned to their mother. Lowther was prohibited from seeing or speaking to his wife for four months and wasnt allowed to see his children for more than six months while criminal charges were pending. The Lowther family has since been reunited and is living in Katy, Texas, according to court documents. A pending lawsuit that Lowther and his wife brought accuses deputies of violating their constitutional rights numerous times throughout the investigation, and omitting and misrepresenting facts in their official reports and news releases sent out after his arrest. The lawsuit was filed against officials from the Sheriffs office and the Children, Youth and Families Department. I want the people who perpetrated these crimes to be held accountable, Lowther said. My daughter deserves to know the truth, and she deserves to know, when shes old enough, that what happened to her family was not her fault. She deserves to know that the people who lied, the people who broke the law were held accountable. Vincent Ward, Lowthers attorney in the civil case, said, I dont think BCSO appreciates the consequences of not doing their job professionally. If youre a parent, you should be terrified to know that stuff like this happens in this town, he said. BCSO and CYFD declined to comment on the Lowther case. Michael Patrick, a spokesman for the District Attorneys Office, said additional investigation by prosecutors found there wasnt enough evidence to prove the case. Marc Lowery, Lowthers attorney in the criminal case, said that over the past year the district attorney has sent Lowther five letters telling him he was the target of a grand jury, but the defense provided prosecutors with evidence showing no crime had occurred and the jury was never convened. It was a travesty, Lowery said. Heres somebody who dedicated his life to protecting all Americans. And rather than giving him some of the constitutional privileges that he defended, there was a rush to judgment. Copyright 2018 Albuquerque Journal SANTA FE Republican Steve Pearce has made his success as a businessman in New Mexicos oil fields a pillar of his campaign pitch to voters. But Democrats have seized on Pearces financial interests as a line of attack in the closing stretch of the campaign for governor, accusing him of having conflicts and failing to disclose his businesses accurately. Pearce says the accusations are baseless. The clash surfaced again in this weeks televised debate, and its a topic in campaign ads. Pearce sold the assets of his oil field services company, Lea Fishing Tools, upon joining Congress about 15 years ago. Thats the business he usually highlights on the campaign trail when he speaks about emerging out of childhood poverty and succeeding in a competitive sector. But he and his wife, Cynthia, still own two Hobbs-based companies that either have or used to have ties to the oil industry, according to Journal interviews and a review of public records. Each company generated somewhere between $100,000 and $1 million in income for the couple in 2017, Pearce reported in a financial disclosure to Congress. Pearces critics point out that if elected governor, he would be in charge of the state agency that regulates the oil and gas industry in New Mexico. Pearce campaign spokesman Kevin Sheridan said that the Pearces arent involved in running either company and that neither of the businesses would present a conflict if Pearce were elected governor. One of the companies, Trinity Industries Inc., is listed in state corporation records as dealing in oil field equipment and other aspects of the oil and gas industry. But Sheridan says that isnt accurate, and he says the company has no oil field equipment. The other company, LFT LLC, is a small portion of the couples investments, he said. LFT has equipment thats rented to an oil field services company, Sheridan said, but its managed by a third party. The Pearces do not market, manage, or operate any type of equipment, Sheridan said. They do not have employees or customers. All gains or losses are the result of passive investments. Pearce has a broad portfolio of investments that are professionally managed, his campaign says, so he and Cynthia do well when the economy does well and face losses when it doesnt, similar to many other Americans. In 2017, Pearce and his wife made $395,281 of income from capital gains, which can be profits from either investments or property sales, according to tax returns released by the candidate this month. But they reported a loss of $332,595 from a tax category that includes rental real estate, royalties and trusts. TV debate Pearces business interests have come under fire by his opponents as the race for governor has turned decidedly negative in the final weeks. Pearce is competing with his congressional colleague, Democrat Michelle Lujan Grisham, to succeed Republican Gov. Susana Martinez. In the candidates final TV debate, Lujan Grisham accused Pearce of hiding his oil field business interests by describing them as a company that rents party equipment. She also alleged that he had used his position as a member of the House Natural Resources Committee to enrich himself by supporting less regulation of the oil and gas industry. What exactly are you hiding from New Mexico voters? she asked. Pearce shot back that she was misstating the facts all the way through. He said he did have a party-equipment rental business at one point. Theres nothing that were hiding, he said. Actually, these things were asked to the (House) Ethics Committee in Washington, and they said, No, it is OK. He has filed exactly correctly. Republicans, meanwhile, have also accused Lujan Grisham of conflicts, assailing her for her ties to a company that helps run New Mexicos high-risk insurance pool. Lujan Grisham divested herself from the company, Delta Consulting, last year. Inquiry sought Current and former Democratic elected officials have joined Lujan Grisham in accusing Pearce of hiding his interests in the oil and gas industry. They say that he released far less personal tax information to the public than Lujan Grisham did and that the congressional disclosures dont mention oil field equipment. Pearce, for example, released only his 2017 state and federal tax return cover sheets not the attached tax schedules along with the required congressional financial form from 2017 that he had filed earlier this year. Lujan Grisham, by contrast, released five years of her state and federal income tax returns earlier this year during her campaign to win the Democratic nomination. Releasing tax returns is voluntary, and theres no precedent for doing so in a New Mexico governor race. But Pearce pledged to release his tax returns if his opponent did. Former Albuquerque Mayor Martin Chavez, a Democrat, said Pearce has not been honest with New Mexicans. Conflicts of interest are natural, he said, but they have to be disclosed. Steve Pearce failed to disclose to New Mexicans what his actual financial interests are in his votes. Three district attorneys in New Mexico Mark DAntonio, Richard Flores and Lemuel Martinez, all Democrats sent a letter to the U.S. House ethics committee this week requesting an investigation into Pearces financial dealings. Sheridan, the spokesman for Pearce, said the political attacks are a desperate attempt to distract from Lujan Grishams own problems but that lying isnt going to save her. Pearce has repeatedly made full financial disclosures to Congress and had his records reviewed by the House ethics committee, Sheridan said. Allegations Democrats have singled out a variety of businesses or transactions for criticism. Heres a closer look: In 2003, Pearce sold the assets of Lea Fishing Tools to Key Energy. A group backed by the Democratic Governors Association released an ad this week that says Pearce sold the assets for twice the stated value of the company, citing a 2008 article by Roll Call, a newspaper that covers Capitol Hill. But Roll Call also reported that year that it found no evidence that Pearce has taken any legislative action to specifically benefit Key Energy Services, according to FactCheck.org, a website run by the Annenberg Public Policy Center at the University of Pennsylvania. A Pearce spokesman at the time also told Roll Call that it is standard accounting practice to value a company based on the depreciation of its assets, but that the sale price is based on future potential earnings. Pearces most recent disclosure report to Congress says he and Cynthia jointly own LFT LLC, which is valued at between roughly $1 million and $5 million, with income ranging from $100,000 to $1 million. The income is from capital gains, interest and rent, according to the disclosure. Sheridan said the company has equipment thats rented to an oil field services company. The equipment was left over from the Pearces earlier company, he said, and its now managed by a third party. Pearces financial disclosure statement, filed with the state, describes LFTs business purpose as real estate/equip rental. n Pearces disclosure report to Congress says he and Cynthia jointly own Trinity Industries Inc., which is valued at $5 million to $25 million, with income of between $100,000 and $1 million. The income is from capital gains, dividends, interest and rent, the disclosure says. The companys corporation documents maintained by the New Mexico Secretary of States Office list dealing in oil field equipment and buying and selling oil and gas leases as among the purposes of the business. Pearces campaign says that isnt correct and may be outdated, given that the company was formed in 1965. Pearces financial disclosures statement, filed with the state, describes Trinity as investments/equip rental. Sheridan described the company as professionally managed investments. Pearce owns stock in Exxon Mobil Corp., valued at between $15,000 and $50,000, with dividend income of $1,000 to $2,500. Sheridan said Exxon is one of the most widely held stocks in the world, owned by pension funds, mutual funds, and tens of millions of retail investors. A previous financial disclosure by Pearce said he inherited the Exxon stock from his mother. Journal Capitol Bureau Chief Dan Boyd contributed to this article. JEFFERSONTOWN, Ky. The fatal shooting death of two black grocery patrons by a white gunman is being investigated as a possible hate crime, a U.S. official said Friday. Federal investigators are examining if there were any violations of federal law, which includes potential civil rights violations such as hate crimes, said U.S. Attorney Russell M. Coleman in Louisville. Gregory A. Bush, 51, has been charged with murder and other crimes in the deaths of the man and the woman at a Kroger store Wednesday in Jeffersontown, located on the outskirts of Louisville. The FBI is investigating alongside local police. The murders are not being taken lightly by the United States government, Coleman said in a prepared statement. Police said Bush attempted to enter a historically black church minutes before arriving at the grocery store. A surveillance video confirmed Bushs presence at the Jeffersontown First Baptist Church about 10 to 15 minutes before he went to the Kroger, Police Chief Sam Rogers said. The church is headed by a black pastor and has a large African-American membership. Bush appeared to try to gain access to the church, Rogers said. The information came as news media outlets reported that Bush made a racial comment after the deadly shooting in Jeffersontown, a city of about 26,600 people. Rogers said it was too soon, however, to say whether the shooting was racially motivated. Rogers said Bush apparently does have a history of mental illness, as news outlets have reported. An arrest report says Bush walked into the Kroger, pulled a gun from his waist and shot a man in the back of the head, then kept shooting him multiple times as he was down on the floor. The report says Bush then reholstered his gun, walked outside and killed a woman in the parking lot. Each victim died of multiple gunshot wounds, Rogers said. Rogers said Bush was standing at arms length when he shot the woman in the back of the head. A man carrying a concealed weapon who happened to be in the parking lot challenged Bush, and police say the suspect then began firing wildly at him, putting other shoppers in the parking lot in danger. Neither man was hurt in that confrontation, Rogers said. Bystander video shows a white man in a distinctive neon-yellow shirt trying to drive away while an officer chases after him on foot. Many more officers converged on the scene and made the arrest just a few hundred yards (meters) from the store on Wednesday afternoon. Bush was jailed on $5 million bond Thursday on two counts of murder and 10 counts of felony wanton endangerment. Ed Harrell was quoted by the Courier Journal of Louisville as saying he was waiting on his wife in the parking lot when he heard gunshots and grabbed his revolver. As he crouched down, he said he saw the gunman walk nonchalantly by with a gun by his side. Harrell said he called out to ask what was going on, and the gunman replied: Dont shoot me. I wont shoot you. Whites dont shoot whites. Rogers said police are aware of that statement and are evaluating any factors that may come into play with it. Bushs ex-wife is African-American, and she has received protection orders against him after violent outbursts, including an incident in 2009 when she told police he called her racial epithets during a custody exchange of their son. They divorced in 2000. The local coroners office identified Wednesdays shooting victims as Maurice Stallard, 69, and Vicki Lee Jones, 67. Police said there didnt appear to be any connection between Bush and the victims, or any link between Bush and the Kroger store. Stallards 12-year-old grandson was shopping with him in the store when he was gunned down, Jeffersontown Mayor Bill Dieruf said Thursday. The boy was physically unharmed, but most certainly traumatized, the mayor said, adding, He was there and cannot unsee what he has seen. Stallard was the father of Kellie Watson, the chief racial equity officer for Louisville Mayor Greg Fischer. The mayor shared his outrage Thursday over what he called an epidemic of gun violence that hit close to home. Authorities removed computers and cellphones from the house where Bush lived with his parents. Bushs criminal record shows he threatened his ex-wife and punched a deputy sheriff during a family court hearing years ago. He also was charged with assaulting his elderly parents in January 2009. A judge ordered him to comply with mental health treatment and prohibited Bush from possessing firearms for two years. An arrest citation said Bushs parents were punched and choked, and they told police they were terrified of (his) unpredictable behavior. Bushs ex-wife told authorities in a domestic violence petition in 2009 that Bush was diagnosed paranoid in 2003 but had stopped taking his medication. I am afraid for me and my son. I want him to stay away, she wrote in the court document. SANTA FE A coalition of progressive New Mexico groups is calling for a boycott of Chevron, after the global oil giant gave $2 million to a Texas-based political committee that has launched hard-hitting TV ads in New Mexicos land commissioner race. The groups held a news conference Thursday near a Chevron station in Albuquerque to announce the proposed boycott. Were trying to send a message to Chevron that its not OK to try to buy an election, Eric Griego, a former state senator and state director of New Mexico Working Families, told the Journal after Thursdays event. Other groups involved in the boycott effort include the Native American Voters Alliance and the Albuquerque-based Organizers in the Land of Enchantment, more commonly known as OLE. Chevron Corp. is one of the worlds largest oil companies, with more than $141 billion in revenue in 2017. The company has made waves with recent political contributions, including $4 million to try to defeat a petroleum-related initiative in San Luis Obispo County in California. In New Mexico, the state land commissioner race between Republican Pat Lyons, a former land commissioner, and Democrat Stephanie Garcia Richard has apparently caught the companys eye. New Mexico Strong, a Texas-based political committee that was created in December 2017, reported earlier this month getting a $2 million contribution from Chevron in early September. With that money, the political committee spent roughly $600,000 during a recent four-week reporting period, most of it on television and internet ads attacking Garcia Richard. The contribution was legal because court rulings have established that New Mexicos campaign donation limits enacted after the 2010 election cycle dont apply to independent political committees, or super PACs, which can accept contributions of any size but are barred from coordinating directly with candidates. Garcia Richard has described the outside spending as an attempt to influence the elections outcome, while Lyons says he isnt a fan of super PAC spending in general. I dont have anything to do with them, Lyons said in a recent interview. I dont even know what theyre doing. However, Lyons also said oil and natural gas companies are fired up about the Nov. 6 general election. The land commissioner has authority to administer the use of 9 million acres of state trust land and 13 billion acres of subsurface mineral rights, and state oil production levels have surged to unprecedented levels in recent months primarily in southeastern New Mexico due largely to the use of new drilling techniques. ALAMOGORDO New Mexicos Attorney General filed a lawsuit against the Otero County Board of Commissioners on behalf of the 12th Judicial District Court Oct. 18. In the lawsuit. AG Hector Balderas stated the Board is presently violating its mandatory duty under New Mexico law to provide adequate district courthouse facilities in Otero County. The suit cites concerns with safety and the condition of the current courthouse building located at 1000 New York Ave. According to the lawsuit, the existing courthouse has a number of significant and pervasive deficiencies which endanger courthouse employees and the general public alike. Rather than even attempt to comply with its statutory duty to provide an adequate district courthouse in Otero County, the Board recently has taken affirmative steps to evade that duty. The lawsuit was filed with the 12th Judicial District Court after a notice from the Attorney Generals Office provided to the County Commissioners in August that the state was intending to sue. According to state law, the county is obligated to provide housing for the district courts and the district attorney. Otero County instituted a Hold Harmless bond for the construction of a new courthouse and detention center in September 2015. A feasibility study on options for a new courthouse was completed in April 2017, with no appreciable movement on the project since then, according to the Attorney Generals August letter. Twelfth Judicial District Chief Judge James W. Counts said the security and structural issues include insufficient parking, respiratory problems caused by the buildings faulty ventilation and HVAC systems, and the commingling of prisoners and the pubic, which facilitates the transfer of contraband to prisoners. No amount of money is going to fix these issues in the current building, Counts said. There are three property owners in Otero County willing to donate land for the new courthouse, but the current administration wants to keep the courthouse at its current location, which studies determined was the least viable option, he said. They have the money, but theyve chosen not to do anything meaningful to fix the building, Counts said. Theyve been dragging their feet for three years, and theyre no closer now to a courthouse today than they were three years ago. Otero County Commission Chair Lori Bies said she understands the judges frustrations but that the complicated nature of constructing a new courthouse means the project will take time to get going. Bies said renovations to the Otero County Detention Center took precedence. She said OCDCs renovation costs were twice the amount than expected. Bies said the County is in the final design phase for OCDCs renovation then the Request for Qualifications and Request for Proposals will get underway. Theyve come and spoken with us and showed us the deficiencies, she said. Weve tried to correct those and make things better for them, but theyre just impatient. Its challenging, its frustrating, and were trying to get these things done. I can see why theyre upset, and I can see why were upset. Bies said Commissioners are hopeful to break ground on the renovations to the jail in the spring, with movement on the new courthouse to follow. She said Commissioners estimate the renovations to the courthouse or construction of a new courthouse building are between a few million dollars and $54 million. Bies said 12th Judicial District judges did not consider any of the feasibility studys options. Otero County doesnt have the money to build a new building outright, she said. Were not allowed to run a deficit budget. We cant borrow more or bond more than we have to cover those bonds. Wed encumber the entire County, run the real possibility that we end up bankrupt, and then the state would take us over, and nobody wants that. According to Otero County documents, the Hold Harmless bonds have brought in about $10.5 million. Were being cautious, were doing our jobs, were doing our due diligence, were making sure that we have everything in place, so that once we start the process and come up with something we can actually do, then everything is covered and we can just get started, Bies said. Just because someone said Im going to sue you doesnt mean that the process becomes any faster. That doesnt change how long it takes to do things. Counts said all the 12th Judicial District Judges named in the lawsuit will recuse themselves from it. He said the state Supreme Court will appoint a new judge to preside over the case. Like any lawsuit, the parties could get together, talk things out, and dismiss the lawsuit the next day, he said. If it ends up going to court, well see what happens. They could say this derelict old building is fulfilling the Countys obligation, or the court could say the County is not meeting its obligation and will have to move forward with providing adequate facilities, and hopefully provide some definition of what constitutes adequate. 2018 the Alamogordo Daily News (Alamogordo, N.M.) Visit the Alamogordo Daily News (Alamogordo, N.M.) at www.alamogordonews.com Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC. Copyright 2018 Albuquerque Journal SANTA FE A judge has dismissed the latest criminal case against Tai Chan, a former Santa Fe County sheriffs deputy accused of fatally shooting a fellow deputy in Las Cruces after a night of drinking. District Court Judge Conrad Perea ruled Friday that the Las Cruces District Attorneys Office failed to follow court rules and due process when it filed a criminal information on Oct. 2 charging Chan with voluntary manslaughter. The DAs office says it will ask Perea to reconsider. The widow of the slain deputy said there likely had been a law clerk error in the case. Chan, 32, already has been tried twice for murder in the death of 29-year-old Jeremy Martin at the Hotel Encanto in Las Cruces. The two deputies were staying there on their way back from delivering a prisoner to Arizona. Both of Chans trials ended in hung juries without a verdict. A third try at a murder charge was abandoned earlier this year, after Judge Perea found that pursuing a murder conviction yet again would constitute double jeopardy. John Day, one of Chans attorneys, said Pereas Friday ruling against the recent manslaughter charge should end Chans prosecution. He said a fifth try at convicting Chan would be the definition of insanity. There was no defense motion seeking the latest dismissal, which Judge Perea undertook on his own. Its a pretty strong rebuff of the district attorney, Day said. He said DA Mark DAntonio in Las Cruces needs to stop wasting taxpayer dollars prosecuting an innocent man. DAntonio, in a statement provided by his staff, said the state disagrees with Pereas ruling and is filing a response and motion to reconsider the courts order purely on perceived procedural concerns. On the night of Oct. 24, 2014, Martin and Chan argued and drank heavily at a bar and then returned to their room at the Hotel Encanto. Martin died after being shot five times in the back and arm. Ten shots were fired from Chans duty weapon. But who shot the gun first and who was the aggressor were disputed at trial. Chan maintains the shooting was in self-defense. They should stop persecuting Tai for defending himself, Day said Friday. Sarah Martin, the slain deputys widow, said in a statement Friday, Jeremy was shot in the hallway of a full hotel and every shot went into Jeremys back. Chan hunted Jeremy down, pursued him, shot 10 rounds at him from behind. Thats not self-defense thats execution. While Chan carried out this deliberate execution he carelessly endangered the lives of many others. How could we not continue to pursue justice? She also said: We understand the latest dismissal was likely a law clerk error. We fully expect charges to be filed again and appreciate the DAs commitment to justice and our family. In Fridays dismissal order, Perea noted that DAntonios office had failed to go to a grand jury or a preliminary court hearing to determine whether there was probable cause for bringing a new case against Chan. Perea also cited part of the states Rules of Criminal Procedure that calls for a written statement from the district attorney containing the essential facts of a case. The criminal information filed by a senior trial prosecutor in DAntonios office charging Chan provided the date of the alleged crime of voluntary manslaughter and identified Martin as the victim but had no details of what happened. Filing this Criminal Information based on prior testimony of trial witnesses is not sufficient and violates notions of procedural and substantive due process, Perea wrote. These eyewitnesses gave testimony based upon charges of First and Second Degree Murder. They clearly did not testify as to the facts in consideration of Voluntary Manslaughter, i.e., testimony did not address the statutory elements of Manslaughter. Perea dismissed the criminal information without prejudice, meaning a charge can be refiled. Late last year, DAntonio appointed two lawyers from the state Office of the Superintendent of Insurance as special prosecutors to take over the Chan case. After the two mistrials on murder charges, he said, fresh eyes would help. In August, one of those appointed prosecutors, Troy J. Davis, had the case dismissed. In his court filing, Davis said Chan possibly needs to be re-indicted for Voluntary Manslaughter with a firearm enhancement. Davis was reacting to ruling in May by Judge Perea, who found against further prosecution of Chan for murder on double jeopardy grounds. Perea ruled that another judge who presided over Chans second trial had erred by failing to poll jurors to clear up questions about their impasse on a range of charges from first-degree murder to manslaughter. When special prosecutor Davis dropped the case, he said dismissing and then starting a new case with re-indictment of Chan for voluntary manslaughter would resolve the legal issues. DECISION: YES - 3,449,189 votes, 61 percent NO - 2,213,912 votes, 39 percent **REMINDER: These are the unofficial results from the midterm elections. All official results must be certified by the Secretary of State. --- Prop 11 - What is it about? Proposition 11 is an attempt to regulate how workers take breaks. Right now ambulance companies require workers to remain on call during breaks and Proposition 11 would make that law. If Proposition 11 fails these companies would be subject to California labor laws concerning off duty breaks. Right now there is a pending lawsuit against one of the biggest private ambulance companies, AMR, regarding break times for ambulance crews. There was no formal opposition to this proposition filed on the California ballot. A local ambulance crew reached out to voice its opposition saying in part that this would mean the state would take over in disputes regarding breaks between their ambulance companies and their employers also calling it a wolf in sheeps clothing. What does my vote mean? YES: Makes it legal for ambulance companies to require crews to be on call during breaks and be paid for it NO: Means that in cases of break time disputes the courts would decide and EMT crews would be subject to California labor laws and most likely mean that EMT crews would take off duty breaks CHICO Calif. - A heated battle between Audrey Denney and incumbent Congressman Doug LaMalfa is getting muddy. Audrey Denney claims Doug LaMalfa's campaign doctored a picture of her and sent it out to everyone in the district. Audrey Denney claims Doug LaMalfa's campaign took this picture of her pledging not to take money from big oil and changed to a photo of her signing a pledge to Congresswoman Nancy Pelosi. "A photo from my facebook feed had been photoshopped to make false accusations about me and so we posted the photoshopped version and the original version on our social media feeds to let the residents of the first district know what was truth and what was not truth," Denney said. The original picture is more than six months old. "So the picture that was photoshopped was a picture of me signing a pledge from February this year to not accept any corporate contributions from big oil and other industries and that the text of the pledge that I had signed had been erased and they had inserted other text," Denney said. Action News Now spoke with Dave Gilliard, Congressman LaMalfa's campaign spokesman, on the phone and he said they stand behind the doctored image. "That photograph was taken from a campaign website it's obviously a parody and she needs to go back and look in the mirror, Audrey Denney has got her hands dirty all over this, she's got a lot of explaining to do," Gilliard said. Denney said this isn't going to distract her from running her campaign. "I've gotten emails calls and texts from people all across the political spectrum that like me see it as a laughable old trick to get people to believe falsehoods," Denney said. "We're not gonna let this distract us from what we're doing." SACRAMENTO, Calif. -The Sacramento Police Department has turned over its investigation into the Shephon Clark shooting to the District Attorney. The shooting happened on March 18 when officers shot and killed an unarmed man. Police shot Clark seven times when they saw him holding a cell phone that they thought could be a weapon. The incident sparked outrage and protests near the state capitol by demonstrators that argued police officers are biased against people of color. "It's important for everyone to know that an investigation like this is very lengthy and there are a lot of details that investigators need to process," said Sargeant Vance Chandler of the Sacramento Police Department. Since Clark's death, the Sacramento Police Department has changed its foot pursuit and body camera policies. The officers who fired weapons in the deadly incident are still on duty. Abhishek Joshi has been appointed as CMO and Head of Business Partnerships at MX Player. Joshi was formerly SVP & Head-Marketing, Subscriptions & Content Licensing - Digital Business at Sony Pictures Networks India and had quit the organisation a month ago. Joshi is a media executive with over 17 years of marketing, analytics, business development and content partnerships, strategy business planning and execution expertise spanning across television networks, internet video, content distribution, ad agencies and brand licensing & marketing. Joshi joined Sony in 2015 as VP & Head - Marketing & Analytics, Digital Business. In 2017, he was elevated to the role of Vice President & Head - Marketing, Analytics & Content Syndication - Digital Business. We wish him all the best!!! Vietnamese smartphone brand Mobiistar, which entered the Indian smartphone market in May this year, has awarded its creative duties to Dentsu Impact. Following a multi-agency pitch, Dentsu Impact has bagged the creative mandate for Mobiistar. India is one of the most important markets for Mobiistar and the company has a wide range of phones across segments. With an aim to be one of the leading handset brands in the sub 10k segment, the company is in process of roping in over 3000 employees and bolstering its presence pan India. Additionally, the company has already partnered with 600 distributors across the country and has over 1000 service centers pan India to live up to its promise of best-in-class customer experience. While we entered the country in May, we wanted to highlight our strong commitment towards the country by establishing ourselves more deeply into its ecosystem. Hence to reach out to the discerning smartphone consumers, we have roped in Dentsu Impact as the brand's creative partner in India. The team at Dentsu Impact will work closely with the Mobiistar team for the offline launch strategy and the communication roll-out pan India. We are excited about the possibilities and are going to be quite aggressive in this extremely busy category. said Mr. Aniruddha Deb, Chief Marketing Officer, Mobiistar. Commenting on the win, Amit Wadhwa, President, Dentsu Impact says "We are excited to partner Mobiistar as this gives us the canvas to build this compelling brand in the Indian market. The category is extremely competitive, and it is not just about getting the right pulse of the market but also about getting the right handle on the mediums today. Dentsu Impact is going to be Mobiistars creative, communication strategy, advertising and branding partner. The agency will help Mobiistar in understanding the consumers mindset, behavior, motivations and triggers that will help the company make a mark in a cluttered smartphone category. The brand has planned multiple campaigns in the coming months and Dentsu Impacts partnership will be key in rolling out integrated campaigns for new products. Dentsu Impact is a creative agency of the Dentsu Aegis network that handles Maruti Suzuki, HT, Ikea, Carlsberg and the agency recently set up its Bangalore office as well. FreakOut, the global marketing technology company, part of FreakOut Holdings Inc [TSE:6094], has announced its expansion into 3 regions: Australasia, Middle East and Russia & CIS. FreakOut has appointed senior leadership to drive growth in the named regions as part of its ongoing commitment to deliver best-in-class service and expanded geographical coverage to its clients. Commenting on the announcement, Narayan Murthy Ivaturi, Vice President - FreakOut said: When FreakOut selects new geographies to launch into, the decision is heavily driven by the needs of our clients and agency partners. The demand for our mobile marketing solutions, specifically programmatically available mobile-first in-feed display and video products, demonstrates a huge opportunity in Australasia, Middle East and Russia & CIS. Moreover, the metrics of these dynamic markets speak for themselves. Mobile advertising in Russia is growing at 35-40% year-on-year, while in Australia, according to Business Insider, Native Advertising will drive 74% of all ad revenue by 2021. MENA has been on the cusp of a mobile advertising explosion with more brands are choosing mobile first strategies in their marketing plans. Mobile advertising that is programmatically available has changed our current digital ecosystem allowing us and companies like us to compete in a duopoly-driven market. And in order to successfully harness this opportunity, I am excited to welcome to FreakOut three established leaders who come with distinguished credentials and years of leadership. In addition to covering the local clients digital marketing needs in Australasia, Middle East and Russia & CIS, FreakOut offers clients the ability to launch their overseas programmatic campaigns successfully in solely Japan, South East Asia, or globally in all 16 markets and more. Benefiting from FreakOuts existing range of products which span from native, programmatically available video to Digital OOH and television sync, clients can easily rely on the expertise of FreakOuts established local leadership team. Tasneem Ali, fondly known as Tas, has been named Managing Director, FreakOut Australia and New Zealand. With over 15 years of experience, Tas has successfully maneuvered brand strategy campaigns for some of the largest and most challenging domestic and international brands in Australia. In a span of 3 years, Tas took Australias first International University from 90% print to 90% online, bringing in revenues of over $1.5M. Prior to joining FreakOut, Tas was Country Manager, Australia, for Kiosked, where she brought onboard and managed one of the largest media publishers in Australia. In her new role at FreakOut, Tas will lead business development and strategy, strengthen existing and new product partnerships with publishers, and address diverse marketing challenges for FreakOuts clients and for FreakOut Australias business overall. Sadia Akhtar has been appointed as Managing Director, FreakOut Middle East. Sadia joins from Addictive Mobility and brings over 14 years of experience in digital marketing communication to FreakOut. Her primary objectives will be to lead FreakOuts entry into the Middle Eastern market, onboard the best local talent and collaborate with clients, agency partners and publishers on identifying the best digital and mobile strategies for them. By bringing her wealth of programmatic expertise into play coupled with a strong local relationship network, Sadia is poised to deliver FreakOuts growth objectives and engender the FreakOut brand in the GCC region. Alexey Romanenkov has joined the FreakOut family as General Manager, FreakOut Russia & CIS. Alexey has a remarkable 20 years of experience, focusing on the Russian digital market. In his previous role, Alexey championed business expansion into new geographies for several clients including Alibaba, Booking.com and CNOVA. At FreakOut, Alexeys primary role will be to develop both local and cross-border business lines. Locally, he will lead and expand FreakOuts operations in Russia & CIS markets, working together with clients on addressing their digital needs as well as onboarding local publishers into FreakOuts network. For the overseas business, he will collaborate with his counterparts in APAC to bring market-specific expertise and traffic to Russian companies that are interested in expanding their service offering to the APAC region. Tasneem Ali, Sadia Akhtar and Alexey Romanenkov will report into Narayan Murthy Ivaturi, Vice President - FreakOut. The pace at which major developments are taking place both nationally and internationally, one could say that there is no business like news business. Added to that is the all important Lok Sabha elections in 2019, which will be preceded by no less than five State Assembly elections. With 22 channels in the news genre, viewers can expect a deeper coverage from all the channels that are faced with tough competition to gain eyeballs. News18 India has been going from strength to strength in the Hindi News space and as per BARC ratings for Week 41, the channel was placed in second position in Hindi News genre in Urban+Rural as well as urban markets. In the rural markets, News18 India is placed third. Leading the channels charge is Prabal Pratap Singh, Managing Editor, News18 India, a veteran journalist with over two decades of experience in journalism. Prior rejoining to News18 India, Singh was working as a consultant for various media houses. He was earlier associated with Aaj Tak as Executive Editor from 2007 to 2013, during which he was Head of the Special Investigation Team and had carried out some major sting operations. He is well known for his coverage on Afghanistan and Iraq war. Post Aaj Tak, he joined Live India as its Managing Editor. Before joining Aaj Tak, Singh had worked with Eenadu, The Pioneer and Rashtriya Sahara. In conversation with Adgully, Prabal Pratap Singh, Managing Editor, News18 India, speaks about the channels approach to news coverage, strategy to tackle fake news, challenges faced by Hindi News broadcasters and more. Excerpts: What is your approach to news coverage? There are two things: the first and the foremost, whether a particular news is of any interest to our viewers and secondly, whether it has a social impact. If it is going to affect our viewers enormously, we will definitely attempt and telecast it. And if it is going to engage our viewers, we will put it. What, according to you, are the reasons that the channel is witnessing such a significant growth week after week and being No. 1 in a lot of markets? I would say that people love watching News18 India because of our differentiated content. When we revamped the channel, we were the only ones to do back-to-back debates at 7-8 pm and 8-9 pm. No other channel was doing it. We then introduced Prateek Trivedi with Bhaiyaji Kahin. Its again a debate, but in a different format it is not a studio-based debate, but is out of the studio with a live audience. It was News18 India that came out with this concept of three back-to-back debates and now everybody is following us. We were the first movers in that direction. It means that our viewers are watching these debates and hence, others are replicating it. When we introduced a show like Lapete Mein Netaji a year ago, nobody was doing such shows. Now, if you look at every channel, they have copied it - in one format or the other, but the concept is the same. What is your strategy to leverage this growth and further strengthen the channel? First and foremost, the plan is to do what we are doing best. We are trying to improve upon ourselves for now because what we have done, viewers have liked it and that is why we are getting the numbers. So, our focus will be to improve on what we have been doing. Secondly, we have a couple of things in the pipeline, which I would like to reveal when they are finalised. Are there any slots that you feel need to be improved? There are no specific areas; I would say that we are trying to tweak our programmes and that is why we use the word improvement. We are trying to make our programmes more interactive. For us, we cant afford to take some drastic steps. Our channel is already being watched by the viewers and more and more people are coming to us. Thats an indication of the fact that we are being liked by the viewers. We already command a 13.9 per cent market share (Source: BARC, NCCS All 15+, Wk41'18, HSM) at the moment and are leaders in the evening primetime with a 17.3 per cent share. (Source: BARC India Market: India Urban TG: 15+ Time Period: Wk 38 2018 -41 2018 Mon-Fri 1900-2300) Therefore, there is no need for me to take any drastic steps to undo the things that we have done till date. Yes, there is scope for improvement that we are working on and you will witness it in a couple of weeks time. How is News18 India tackling the issue of fake news? There is a programme that has been designed by our HR department, wherein we are sending our people for training as to how to differentiate between fake news and genuine news. We are training our assignment guys and our output guys that any news that falls in, how to differentiate between fake and genuine news. Our colleagues are been trained in this matter. It is a problem that we do encounter every day. And the problem becomes more painful when fake news is shared by the Twitter handle or the Facebook account of a renowned personality. Then you know it aggravates the problem. As of now, there has not been a single incident of us putting out fake news on air. We have been very alert and cautious. You know as a journalist, you get a sense of it - whether it is fake or genuine. Most of the journalists get the rough idea; they get the sense of it whether it is fake or genuine. The moment your experience tells you that there is something fishy about this news, you become alert and then you probe it and only then do you put it on air. Even if you are late by half an hour, its better to put genuine content late than to put fake content just for the sake of putting it on air. It is a problem, but its not that big a problem that we cannot handle it. I have told all my colleagues, my reporters that I dont want any incorrect or fake news to be put on air. I have been very clear on it. The news can be late by 10-15 minutes, but you have to be factually correct. How are you gearing up to cover the 2019 Lok Sabha elections? We are in the process of preparing a detailed plan for covering the forthcoming General Elections, and this time we intend to come out with something different for our viewers. We will share it with you once we finalise things at our end. News18 Network announces Rising Maharashtra 2018, a leadership initiative that will witness state leaders, luminaries and dignitaries coming together to map the future of the state. Gracing the event as the chief guest will be Honourable Chief Minister of Maharashtra, Shri Devendra Ji Fadnavis who will also be seen delivering a speech where he shall share his ideas and vision for Maharashtra. This high-profile event, attended by the top brass of Maharashtra politics will be held on Monday, October 29, 2018 at ITC Grand Central, Parel. The event will see ministers such as Shri Subhash Desai, Shri Radhakrishna Vikhe Patil, Shri Dhananjay Mundhe, Shri Girish Mahajan, Shri Harshwardhan Patil, Shri Bhai Jagtap, Shri. Jayant Patil and Shri Chandrakanth Patil among many others. Talking about the event, Uday Nirgudkar, Editor, News18 Lokmat said, I am proud to see that the Rising Series initiative of News18 Network continues to touch new horizons by initiating critical dialogue between the administrators and general public. Maharashtra is a state that continues to grow from strength to strength thereby contributing a significant share to the GDP of the country. The state also contributes a significant share of Income Tax collected in the country. And BMC, the municipal corporation of Mumbai is considered the richest in India. Keeping in mind such economic indicators, Rising Maharashtra becomes the most relevant platform to converse on the future of the state. Rising Maharashtra 2018 serves as an effective platform for multiple stakeholders to come together and engage in an open and direct dialogue with top policy-makers. In addition to that, impactful conversations and discussions recognising the areas of scope and challenges by political leaders will shed light on the current state of affairs in Maharashtra. The event is a riveting opportunity for state ministers, politicians and corporate head honchos to look into potential solutions and work towards fulfilling them. The Rising Series, an initiative by News18 Network, has seen a tremendous response in states such as Uttar Pradesh, Bihar, Rajasthan, Madhya Pradesh, West Bengal, Karnataka and Kerala where Chief Ministers and key policy-makers chalked out the roadmap for their respective states. Now with this event making its way to Maharashtra, influencers and leaders are gearing up to keep the momentum going and taking the series into its next phase. Nine Triangles a digital strategy consulting company launched by Krishna Mohan Jha has won the digital strategy mandate from Eudaemon. Nine Triangles would be responsible for developing strategy and thereby undertake execution for all of Eudaemons initiatives in the online space. Eudaemon a personalised menswear company, conceptualises and manufactures one of the finest clothing across their production facilities in Italy, with their India operations based in Delhi. Founded by ex-Zegna business head ManikHanda, the company has the investment backing of BrahmalVasudeman of Private equity fund Creador. In the last few years Eudaemon has already made a niche in the ultra-premium made-to-measure menswear category, and now plans to launch a ready-to-wear collection in the same segment. The appointment of Nine Triangles follows a multi-agency pitch, to create traction for the ready to wear line using digital avenues. The aim is to build strategy that enables to brand to leverage the digital medium for awareness, engagement & transaction for its new line of collection. Manik Handa founder of Eudaemon speaks on the appointment we are excited to venture out into this new vertical and having a veteran like Krishan of Nine Triangles as a partner, makes us confident that we have a lot to look forward to in the near future. Krishna Mohan Jha founder of Nine Triangles comments Eudemon is an extremely focussed brand be it the category of customers they want to cater, sourcing & curation of product and their collections. We are absolutely delighted on this mandate as it is unique and challenging. In the crowded digital agency space, here is an assignment which allows us to create a new brand narrative from scratch and then implement it across digital avenues. If there is something that can never be fully unraveled, its the infinite mysteries of this Universe. For the first time on television, &Prive HD, the premium destination for nuanced cinema, is all set to premiere, The Space Between Us, the interplanetary voyage of boy who travels from Mars to discover the enchanting life on Earth, on Saturday, October 27 at 1:00 PM and 9:00 PM. Nominated twice in the Teen Choice Award, the film is directed by Peter Chelsom and the British-Irish actor of the year nominee, Gary Oldman, plays the role of the Scientist Nathaniel Shepherd. The film also features an excellent set of actors like Janet Montgomery and Adande Swoozie Thorne playing in supporting roles. Shortly after arriving to help colonize Mars, an astronaut dies while giving birth to the first human born on the red planet - never revealing who the father is. Thus, begins the extraordinary life of Gardner Elliot (Asa Butterfield)- an inquisitive, highly intelligent boy with an unconventional upbringing. While searching for clues about his father and the home planet hes never known, Gardners interest starts to grow. The urge to resolve his existences biggest mystery and witness the beauty of Earth begins to propagate. Excited to be in the real world first-hand after escaping from Mars, he takes off with Tulsa to explore the mysteries of where he belongs in the Universe, despite knowing the perils that Gardners existence will bring. Feel the other side of The Space Between Us on Saturday, October 27 at 1:00PM and 9:00PM only on &Prive HD. Note: No one has done more to ring the bell of alarm over the autism epidemic worldwide than our own Anne Dachel. Here, she reports on a similar disconnect between the difficult reality of autism's never ending climb and what seems to be a hallucinatory denial of the severity. There is no known cause, just coincidence. Dr. Wazed Hossain knows in her very heart of hearts (insert gag) that it is NOT vaccines - that theory has never been replicated (wrong) and has been "debunked." When you read the word debunked you must ALWAYS put on your bull&hit goggles. It's a playbook code word. No matter the topic. Debunked means, dismissed. By Anne Dachel An article published on Oct 23, 2018 by a news source in Sri Lanka shows just how paralyzed experts are when it comes to addressing autism. The piece, Autism may reach epidemic proportions in Lanka, warns WHO expert Dr. Saima Wazed Hossain, contains a maze of remarks that will only leave the reader mystified. Hossain, "an expert on neuro-developmental disorders," is actually very clever at double speak. Take your pick of her views from this interview: She sounds worried about the rising rate. "Autism has reached alarming numbers worldwide, and that it may reach epidemic proportions in Sri Lanka." "It is an increasing number all over the world." And in the same breath she chalks it up to better diagnosing, no real increase. "It is believed, awareness and better diagnostic mechanisms are exposing more and more numbers that would not have come to light otherwise." She tells us to be patient when it comes to finding the cause of autism. "No specific cause has been established for the rise. It takes time to know if there is a connection to our changing lifestyle, if something related is causing this genetic mutation to effect." Hossain cites DDT exposure, cosmetics, and processed food as possibly linked to autism. Again she focuses on an increase. Would you like to receive breaking news notifications from The Post and Courier? Sign up to receive news and updates from this site directly to your desktop. Breaking News Columbia Breaking News Greenville Breaking News Myrtle Beach Breaking News Aiken Breaking News N Augusta Breaking News Click on the bell icon to manage your notifications at any time. Success! Please click the 'Allow' button in the 'Show Notifcations' alert in your browser if one is available. Thank you for signing up! Please enable notifications in your browser and reload the page. A federal appeals court has affirmed a lower court's injunction requiring the U.S. Department of Energy to remove weapons-grade plutonium from South Carolina. Judge Robert B. King of the 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, in a 45-page written opinion, described the injunction as "carefully" and "appropriately" crafted and considerate of all parties, positions and record. The opinion joined by two other judges and related order were filed Friday. The injunction, issued in December 2017 by District Court Judge J. Michelle Childs, orders the DOE to remove at least 1 metric ton of weapons-grade plutonium from the state within two years or at the latest Jan. 1, 2020. The DOE appealed the matter shortly after the injunction was issued. During appeals, the DOE argued the mandated two-year time period was an abuse of the district court's discretion, according to court documents. In sum, the DOE insisted the two-year goal was impossible to meet, which rendered it unfair. State of SC, Energy Department negotiating plutonium removal settlement The state of South Carolina and the U.S. Department of Energy are now in talks to potentially settle a multimillion-dollar plutonium-related c The DOE also argued the district court "erred as a matter of law" during its injunction decision, according to the same court documents. The appellate judges rejected both claims the abuse and the error on Friday. "It thus did not abuse its discretion or improperly burden DOE by imposing ... two-year removal timeframe," King wrote, referencing the lower court. S.C. Attorney General Alan Wilson brought the initial lawsuit against the DOE. On Friday, Wilson described the court's affirmation as "a victory for the rule of law." "It doesn't get much clearer than this," Wilson said in a prepared statement. "Congress passed a law requiring that the plutonium be removed and the Department of Energy has not followed that law." When the plutonium removal injunction was issued last year, Wilson made similar comments. "This ruling is a vindication of the principle of the rule of law and the state's position that it will not be a dumping ground for the plutonium," he said at the time. A federal judge sentenced a Columbia man last week who pleaded guilty in May to torturing and killing an Aiken man in 2008. Antonio Miller, 40, pleaded guilty on May 11 to three counts in connection with the torture, robbery and murder of Frederick Tucker in Aiken; using a firearm to commit murder in furtherance of a crime of violence and drug trafficking; kidnapping resulting in death; and conspiring to distribute crack cocaine resulting in death, according to a release. On Oct. 17, Miller was sentenced in federal court to 30 years imprisonment, to be followed by five years of supervised release, said United States Attorney Sherri A. Lydon. Hearings revealed that on Sept. 15, 2008, Miller and three others targeted Tucker to rob him of drugs and drug proceeds to further their ongoing efforts to distribute crack cocaine. According to court documents, Miller and three other men Marquise Redfield, Ronald J. Grooms Jr. and Melvin Cummings were involved in killing and torturing Tucker, who lived on Old Barnwell Road. Miller and the others drove in a rental car to Tuckers house in Aiken, carrying multiple firearms. The four men entered Tuckers home, subdued and restrained Tucker, binding his hands and feet with duct tape, before repeatedly burning him with a scalding flathead screwdriver. After torturing Tucker in order to learn the location of hidden drugs and drug proceeds, Tucker was fatally shot in the chest. Through the work of local law enforcement, searches of the rental car and Millers own residence revealed crack cocaine taken from Tucker and firearms that ballistically matched those used to murder Tucker. Columbia man pleads guilty to 2008 Aiken murder A Columbia man pleaded guilty Thursday to his part in a drug-related murder in Aiken in 2008. After his co-defendants pleaded guilty to various changes including voluntary manslaughter, a state-court jury convicted Miller of kidnapping, murder and related charges before S.C. Circuit Judge Doyet A. Early III. In 2012, Miller was sentenced to life in prison for murder and life for first-degree burglary for Tucker's death. However, on appeal in 2016, the S.C. Supreme Court reversed the convictions and sentences for murder, burglary and the weapons charge. The Supreme Court determined that the affidavit supporting a search warrant issued for Millers home in Columbia was invalid because it failed to establish probable cause that evidence of a crime may be contained in the residence, according to a previous Aiken Standard article. Law enforcement officials found a pair of shoes and a gun in the home that later were connected to Tuckers murder. As part of a longstanding history of cooperation with Second Circuit Solicitor Strom Thurmond Jr., federal authorities indicted Miller in 2017. After U.S. District Judge Lewis denied Millers attempts to suppress evidence of the murder, Miller agreed to plead guilty and be sentenced to 30 years in federal prison. The case was investigated by the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives (ATF); Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI); the Aiken County Sheriffs Office; the Richland County Sheriffs Department; the Aiken Department of Public Safety; the North Augusta Department of Public Safety and the United States Marshals Office. Assistant U.S. Attorney J.D. Rowell prosecuted the case, along with assistance from Special Assistant United States Attorney Beth Ann Young of the Second Circuit Solicitors Office. With crippling sanctions set to resume next month, the Donald Trump administration is debating how far to go in cutting off Iran from the global financial system. Treasury Secretary Steve Mnuchin has told foreign governments that Washington is backing off its push to force the Belgium-based financial messaging network SWIFT to kick out sanctioned Iranian banks, the Wall Street Journal reports. Iran rejoined SWIFT as part of the nuclear deal in 2016 after it was kicked out in 2012 amid increased sanctions pressure from Washington. Why it matters: The SWIFT question is part and parcel of the Trump administrations upcoming oil sanctions, which would force other countries to cease importing Iranian petroleum. If the United States grants waivers to certain countries allowing them to continue Iranian oil imports, SWIFT would be integral to facilitating those transactions. That's why anti-Iran hard-liners in the US administration want to threaten SWIFT board members with sanctions should they enable Tehran to conduct financial transactions. Whats next? The European Union is moving ahead with an alternative special purpose vehicle to facilitate transactions with Iran. The EU announced that it would be symbolically ready when US oil sanctions take effect on Nov. 4, but will not be operational until next year. Meanwhile, the United States is expanding the scope of sanctions on Iranian banks, with new penalties imposed this week on Parsian Bank for connections to the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps. Know more: Read Bijan Khajehpours assessment of how well the EUs planned special purpose vehicle would work as an alternative to SWIFT. -Bryant Harris Increasing reports of academic and cultural exchanges between China and Iran indicate that China is pursuing an active public diplomacy in Iran. On Sept. 29, Wang Jisi, the president of the Institute of International and Strategic Studies, Peking University, visited Irans Islamic Azad University and met with its chairman, Ali Akbar Velayati. Both sides reiterated the significance of Iran-China academic exchanges and agreed to establish a joint research institute. On Oct. 5, the head of Chinas state broadcaster met with his Iranian counterpart, Abdulali Ali-Asgari, and called for expanding bilateral relations. It seems that there are headlines on similar meetings on an almost daily basis in Iranian news outlets. However, the critical question is whether Chinas measures to capture the imagination of the Iranian people and build a positive image of itself as a rising power is effective and appropriate given its ever-increasing economic and geopolitical ties with Iran. Chinas public diplomacy has four pillars: the Confucius Institute, academic exchanges, international broadcasting by state-affiliated media and tourism. Modeled after Alliance Francaise and Germany's Goethe-Institut, the Confucius Institute is a nonprofit organization affiliated with the government of China to promote Chinese language and culture. It is considered the crown of Chinas public diplomacy, with around 500 centers around the globe, 135 of which are in Belt and Road Initiative countries. However, Iran is only home to one such institute, compared with four in Pakistan, four in Turkey and 17 in France. When it comes to academic exchanges, the situation is not much closer. Chinas Ministry of Education reports that last year, 489,000 foreign students pursued education in China, out of which 317,200 students were from Belt and Road Initiative countries. However, there are only 1,400 Iranian students in China, according to Iranian media. The exact number of Chinese students in Iran is not announced by the Iranian authorities; however, given that 90% of the 52,000 foreign students currently studying in Iran are from Afghanistan (41%), Syria (20%), Central Asia (21%), and India and Pakistan (8%), the numbers of Chinese students are not likely to be overwhelming. In addition, in the tourism sector which provides effective people-to-people cultural communication Iran-China exchanges are not very large. In 2017, 120,000 Iranians visited China, while 95,000 Chinese tourists visited Iran. Given the overall Chinese outbound tourism of 129 million people, the share of Iran is meager standing at less than 0.07% of the total Chinese outbound tourists. There is also the media aspect to consider in this equation. Although the Persian service of China Radio International (CRI) started broadcasting in 1957, it is not an influential outlet in the region. The Persian version of China.com is also active. This entity is owned mostly by the government-affiliated Global Broadcasting Media Group, and largely disseminates the Chinese governments views on current affairs and news of Chinas technological and business advances. Perhaps the most successful Persian-language initiative of China is the Facebook page of CRI Persian, which has gotten 440,000 likes. But this is only a fraction of the 4.5 million likes of BBC Persian and 2.5 million likes of VOA Persian. When considering audience engagement with posts, the outcome is not comparable to the Western Persian-language media outlets. Thus, in contrast to the impression one may get from the abundant reports of exchanges between the two countries, the tools of Chinese public diplomacy have been unable to sketch a promising image of the so-called China model for the Iranian public, let alone Iran's intellectuals. The image one instead sees from the widespread coverage of China in the Iranian media is of an authoritarian capitalist country whose main objective in its international relations is short-term business benefits. Indeed, a quick look at a report prepared by Iranian journalists who went on a tour of China sponsored by the All-China Journalists Association 2018 Belt and Road Journalists Forum testifies to this negative image. Though the report acknowledges Chinas spectacular and rapid development, more attention is paid to its opportunistic approach in foreign relations and its authoritarian domestic political stage. For example, referring to Chinas measures to attract tourists, one journalist said, Chinese authorities are using everything at their disposal to make money and expand tourism. Another Iranian reporter referred to the strict control of the internet inside China, even compared with Iran, writing: Instagram, Telegram, WhatsApp and Google were blocked in China. Chinas public diplomacy is focused on projecting an image of a harmless China in the international arena: a country that is economically powerful, technologically advanced and a glamorous tourist destination but that is also neutral toward the internal affairs and cultural values of other countries. This is in stark contrast to Western countries, which have long histories of colonialism and waging wars in other countries especially in the Middle East. Professor Yue Hanjing, a distinguished research fellow at the Center for Iranian Studies at Southwest University in Chongqing, told Al-Monitor, China is less concerned with political issues of the Middle East [countries] than about developing, in particular, economic relations with them. This perhaps overly cautious and nonpolitical approach has resulted in an image that lacks inspiring, visionary and promising elements for its audiences. Chinas public diplomacy has also been incompetent in transcending the factional lines in Iranian domestic politics. In the absence of the Chinese states effective image management, Iranian conservatives are misusing the China model to justify their authoritarian approach to governance and limiting individual freedoms and the internet, while they do not refer to the benefits of the China model namely increasing prosperity and growth. Indeed, conservative media in Iran does not highlight the other side of the China model namely, China's level of well-being and prosperity but also its long battle against corruption and its "democracy at the bottom, meritocracy at the top and experimentation in between." On the other side of the political spectrum in Iran, Reformist media conversely exaggerate the shortcomings of the China model, concentrating more on Chinese treatment of its Uighur Muslim community, restrictions on social media and the internet, and so on. As such, the image of China in Iran is contested along highly factional lines and is thus distorted by each party to justify its own political objectives. Many have referred recently to the rising power of China in the Middle East. Yet one wonders how sustainable this can be if China cannot improve the way it is perceived among regional publics and intellectuals so that it will be accepted as a legitimate global power, if not an alternative to the United States as the leading world power. Millions of Shiite Muslims make a pilgrimage every year to the Hussein ibn Ali shrine in Karbala, Iraq, to commemorate the battle in which the grandson of the Prophet Muhammad was killed. Under Saddam Hussein's rule, Arbaeen meaning the 40th day commemorations were subdued. With the fall of Saddam and closer Iran-Iraq relations, Arbaeen pilgrimages have become important not only for millions of Iranian pilgrims but also for Iranian leaders who see the rise of the significance of the event with their own geopolitical rise. At a meeting with the families of those who lost their lives fighting in Iraq and Syria fighters whom Iran refers to as defenders of the shrines Irans Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei stressed the importance of this group for the significance of Arbaeen today. Khamenei recounted the actions of the early believers who protected Ali's tomb and likened them to todays defenders of the shrines. Khamenei said that if it were not for the early believers who would not allow the desecration of Ali's tomb, there would not be 20 million Arbaeen pilgrims today. He continued, It is the same for your children. If not for your children your dear martyrs if these people had not gone, the enemy would have been very close to the sacred tombs. Khameneis reference to the enemy is the Islamic State (IS), which took over large parts of Iraq in June 2014. He said that IS was so close to the shrines particularly the Al-Kadhimiya shrine, which contains the tomb of the seventh Shiite imam, Musa al-Kazim, and the ninth imam, Mohammad al-Jawad they could have shelled and destroyed the shrines. An interesting point Khamenei also claimed was that unlike the Iran-Iraq War in which Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini encouraged Iranians to go to the front lines and defend the country against invading Iraqi troops in the 1980s, no one was encouraged to go to Syria or Iraq in a similar fashion. The great task that your youth accomplished this was for God, Khamenei said. We did not encourage anyone to go. Khamenei is right in that there was not a large push by the state to recruit Iranians to fight in Iraq and Syria. However, the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) certainly was active in recruiting young Shiites in these campaigns. This is one reason perhaps why Saudi Arabia, Irans regional rival, and Bahrain chose to include the IRGC on their list of terrorist organizations. The list also included IRGC Quds Force commander Qasem Soleimani as well as Quds Force members Hamed Abdollahi and Abdul Reza Shahlai. In response to the designations, Mohammad Saleh Jokar, IRGC deputy for parliamentary affairs, said that the listing of Soleimani and the IRGC as terrorists was a tactic by Saudi Arabia to distract public opinion from the Jamal Khashoggi murder. Former Iranian Deputy Foreign Minister Amir Abdollahian tweeted, The Saudi and Bahrain regimes which govern their own people through terror and fear are in no place to name IRGC and Soleimani terrorists. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu exchanged accusations with former minister and fellow Likud member Gideon Saar over the past two days, with Netanyahu accusing Saar of plotting against him. Netanyahu's actions can be seen as a reflection of the uncertainty of the next election, with criminal investigations hovering over him. While it is possible that the prime minister is paranoid, the bottom line is that everything Netanyahu did is part of his fight for survival. It meant removing Saar, who has regained public and political strength over the last few months and is frequently mentioned as Netanyahus heir. It also meant preventing a scenario based on rumors surrounding President Reuven Rivlin, who is despised by Netanyahu but is a close friend of Saar. The rumor goes that Rivlin will prevent Netanyahu from forming the next government. How? The law states that after the election, the president gives the task of forming a new government to the Knesset member he believes has the best chance of assembling a majority. The law does not require the president to pick the head of the largest party, nor does it state that it even has to be head of a party. After the 2009 elections, President Shimon Peres tasked Likud head Netanyahu to compose a government, though Kadima head Tzipi Livni amassed more Knesset seats. Ostensibly, Rivlin could decide after the next election that Saar is best suited to form a government even if Netanyahu, as head of the Likud, wins the election by a huge margin. According to a report by Israel Hayom, Netanyahu received information that the heads of the opposition parties are plotting with Saar and Rivlin to prevent him from forming the next government because of the criminal investigations he faces. The claim has not been substantiated in any way and is based entirely on rumors and political assessments. In other words, it sounds like a conspiracy theory. But even so, Netanyahu lent it credence by announcing through his coalition chairman, David Amsalem, that he plans to amend the Basic Law to reduce the presidents power and prevent a Knesset member who is not the head of a party from forming a coalition. Rivlin has never hidden his disdain for Netanyahu or any of the bad blood between him and the prime minister. His spokesmen reacted with a scathing response, accusing Netanyahu of being paranoid and saying, Dealing with such phenomena should be left to professionals who are not spokespeople. Netanyahu addressed the potential threat directly in a video his staff disseminated on social media that day. While celebrating his 69th birthday with his wife, staff and senior Likud members, Netanyahu delivered the following monologue: I have known for the past few weeks that a former Likud minister has been speaking with members of the opposition and planning a subversive plot. Even when I lead the Likud to an overwhelming victory in the next election, they will still make sure that I am not prime minister. They will be acting against the will of the Likud electorate, against the will of the people and against democracy itself. We will see what we will do about it. Netanyahu went on to call the idea the plot of the century. If these words sounded like a paranoid attack and a total loss of control, it soon became apparent that it was all carefully orchestrated, as within hours, Saar would walk right into his trap. Saars decision to take the gloves off an interview to Army Radio was exactly what Netanyahu hoped he would do. Saar sounded articulate. He was scrupulous and bold. After all, it has been years since any Likud senior dared to speak about Netanyahu like he did. Among his many comments, Saar said that the prime minister decided to make false accusations against him. That is very serious. It crosses a red line. It is a highly publicized court martial without any facts. Saar called on Netanyahu to retract his statement or apologize. Netanyahus inner circle responded within moments, and there was no apology. Instead, they stepped up their attacks. Sa'ar was accused of acting hysterically and of planning a subversive attempt to undercut the prime minister. It looks like Saar just got a political promotion and is now positioned as Netanyahus main political rival. Netanyahu created the perfect justification to attack and heap abuse on him. I a second stage, assuming that he wins in the next election, he will have the perfect excuse to sideline Saar entirely. It would be the same brutal course that Netanyahu followed with Silvan Shalom, another former minister. Netanyahu is now at the height of his power, both in the Likud and among the general public, and his attack on Saar was politically lethal. Now, other Likud Knesset members and ministers will distance themselves from him so as not to be suspected of conspiring against the prime minister. Indeed, not a single minister has come out in Saars defense. A poll released by the News Corporation in the evening of Oct. 25 found that more Likud voters believe Netanyahu (37%) than Saar (13%). It's the opposite of the feeling among the public at large, where Saar enjoys more trust (35%). The problem is that the people who will ultimately decide his fate are Likud voters, since they will elect the Likuds Knesset list for the next election. On the other hand, Saar may find comfort in a poll released at the same time by Channel 10. It found that the Likud would win 25 seats with him as head of the party, compared to 30 seats with Netanyahu as head. This may explain why Netanyahu feels so threatened by a political outsider. Netanyahu may be paranoid, but he has managed to neutralize a potentially powerful political rival. And Netanyahus maneuver doesnt stop at Saar, effectively paralyzing the president. Rivlin now knows that anything he says or does after the election will come under extreme scrutiny. Then there is still the amendment to reduce Rivlins power. These dramatic events demonstrate that Netanyahu is extremely tense right now with early elections in the air and news that the police are in the final stages of wrapping up their investigations. Jordans King Abdullah ended weeks of speculation when he announced Oct. 21 that the kingdom is terminating two annexes in its 1994 peace treaty with Israel regarding the special use of Jordanian territories. The 25-year special regime allowing Israelis to use Baqoura and Ghumar lands in northern and southern Jordan ends in November 2019, but notice of termination must be given by either party one year before. Pressure by political parties, lawmakers and the public has been building for some time on the Jordanian government to clarify its position regarding the fate of Baqoura and Ghumar. For the majority of Jordanians, the leasing of Jordanian lands to Israel under the peace treaty was seen as a national disgrace. It is no wonder that Jordanians from all walks of life warmly welcomed the kings announcement, first made through his official Twitter account. The king tweeted that Baqoura and Ghumar have always been at the top of our priorities, adding, Our decision is to terminate the Baqoura and Ghumar annexes from the [1994 Jordan-Israel] peace treaty out of our keenness to take all decisions that would serve Jordan and Jordanians. Baqoura, a strip of agricultural land at the confluence of the Jordan and Yarmouk rivers in northern Jordan, was occupied by Israel in 1950, while Ghumar in southern Jordan was captured by Israel between 1968 and 1970. Both lands were returned to Jordanian sovereignty under the peace treaty, but Israel was allowed to use them for a period of 25 years. The decision was seen as a royal jab at Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, whose relations with King Abdullah were never easy. Jordanians have been exasperated by the killing of two Jordanian nationals in July 2017 at the Israeli Embassy compound in Amman by an Israeli security guard. Netanyahu has snubbed Jordans demand to put the culprit on trial, and he offered what was seen as an informal apology to the kingdom. King Abdullah has expressed his frustration with repeated provocations by Israeli religious extremists at Al-Aqsa Mosque in East Jerusalem despite promises by Netanyahu to honor Jordans special custodianship under the peace treaty of Muslim holy places in the city. Jordan had slammed Israels decision in July 2017 to install metal detectors at the entrances to Al-Aqsa Mosque compound, and the kings efforts were instrumental in reversing the Israeli move. The king has been a vociferous critic of Israels far-right government actions to dismantle the two-state solution, denying Palestinians the right to have their own state in the West Bank and Gaza Strip with East Jerusalem as its capital. Jordan had rejected President Donald Trumps decision last year to recognize Jerusalem as Israels capital and relocate the US Embassy there, and to end financial backing of the UN agency responsible for Palestinian refugees, the United Nations Relief and Works Agency. It was always believed that a decision on the fate of Baqoura and Ghumar would be made by the king himself and not the government. It is clear that the decision, which was described by local pundits as bold and brave, was taken after careful consideration and for domestic as well as regional reasons. The government which was appointed in June after popular protests against its predecessors economic policies is under domestic pressure as it prepares to pass a controversial income tax law. The kings move is a much-needed shot in the arm for the government. The current euphoria will boost national unity and divert attention for some time from the difficult economic decisions that the government and parliament must make by the end of the year. The termination of the annexes will satisfy political parties and activists who are critical of any form of cooperation with Israel, especially an agreement by the former government to buy liquid gas from Israel. But while the decision has stunned Israel, it is not expected to affect the peace treaty or security ties between the two countries. Reacting to the Jordanian decision, Netanyahu was quoted Oct. 21 as saying that Israel plans to negotiate with Amman to ensure that the entire deal remains intact. There is no doubt that the entire agreement is important and dear to both our countries, he said, adding that they will negotiate with Jordan for its extension. The annexes allow for bilateral discussions, and Israel will attempt to politicize the issue despite the fact that Jordan is within its right to terminate the agreement. While Jordanian sovereignty over Baqoura is not in question, the fact that most of the land there is privately owned by Israelis will be the main stumbling block. The Jordanian government can buy the land back; if that fails, then the Israeli owners will be treated under Jordanian laws that cover foreign land ownership in the kingdom. Israel was quick to deny reports that Israeli Agriculture Minister Uri Ariel had threatened Oct. 22 to cut off water to Jordan in response to King Abdullahs decision to cancel annexes in the peace treaty. But Jordan may come under pressure from the United States to reconsider its decision a possibility that the king appears ready to deal with. Meanwhile, Israel will hope to engage the kingdom in protracted negotiations in an attempt to extract possible concessions. Deadlock has been plaguing political life of the Palestinians after two major developments took place four years ago. In April 2014, Israel announced freezing negotiations with the Palestinians on the heels of the Fatah-Hamas reconciliation agreement, which was followed by the outbreak of the third Israeli war on the Gaza Strip in July-August of that year. The Palestinians have been suffering under the same situation ever since. There are no negotiations with Israel, no implementation of the internal reconciliation agreement and the security tension in Gaza remains the same. The situation worsened when US President Donald Trump announced in December 2017 his recognition of Jerusalem as the capital of Israel and moved the US Embassy there in May. Consequently, the Palestinians have expressed striking positions, reflecting unconventional convictions in terms of negotiations and resistance. A poll by the Jerusalem Media and Communication Center (JMCC) published Oct. 16 revealed differences among the Palestinians on the best means to achieve their goals to end the Israeli occupation and establish a Palestinian state. The poll showed that 46.9% now believe peace negotiations are the best solution. In January, 25.2% believed this, 37.6% in February 2017 and 33.6% in March 2015. The poll, funded by the Friedrich Ebert Foundation in Germany and conducted on Sept. 19-24 among 1,200 Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza Strip, showed that supporters of the armed resistance declined to 24.7% from 30.3% in February 2017 and 33.1% in March 2015. Support for peaceful mass resistance dropped to 20.3%, compared to 25.4% in February 2017 and 27% in March 2015. In addition, 31% of Palestinians said that rockets fired from Gaza toward Israeli targets benefit the national interest, while 61.8% had believed that in October 2014 and 74% in December 2012. Ghassan Khatib, JMCC director and former minister of planning in Ramallah, told Al-Monitor, Overall, Palestinians have fluctuating and unstable opinions, but their support for the resistance in the last 15 to 20 years is declining, suddenly rising on some occasions like the Gaza wars between 2008 and 2014, when they see missiles being launched from Gaza to Israel. The situation then returns to normal, but in the long run, [support for the resistance] is declining. He added, Meanwhile, the high support of the Palestinians in Gaza for the negotiations is remarkable. They are living under bad conditions, which make them look for an alternative to the resistance. Palestinians in the West Bank, however, support the resistance because negotiations have failed to yield a result. Palestinians prefer negotiations, not 'the deal of the century,' which they believe is a US conspiracy to impose a one-sided vision. The poll showed that 42.1% of the Palestinians in the West Bank support the negotiation path with Israel, while 54% of the population in the Gaza Strip backs such talks. It is no secret that the Palestinians, no matter where they live, are frustrated now more than ever. In the West Bank, the Palestinian Authority is absent on the ground in exchange for the increased powers of the Israeli army and the Israeli Civil Administration. Negotiations since 1993 have proved that no state has been established and no occupation has been withdrawn. In the Gaza Strip, the situation never changes. The Israeli siege grows fiercer by the day and there is no prospect of alleviating or lifting it. Talk of an imminent Israeli war against Gaza is raising concerns among the Palestinians who fear its terrible consequences as they have not yet recovered from the previous three devastating wars. Amin Maqboul, member of Fatahs Central Committee, told Al-Monitor, These results reflect the decline in Arab and international attention to the Palestinian cause. Palestinians are leaning toward negotiations rather than the armed struggle since no countries support the latter. Palestinians have become frustrated with the future of the resistance. However, in the West Bank unlike Gaza support for the resistance is rising with the increase of the occupations level of repression there. Palestinians in the Fatah-controlled West Bank are not supporting such negotiations with Israel as much as they used to. Meanwhile, Palestinians in the Gaza Strip, where Hamas rules and has built an armed military arsenal, are supporting resistance less, according to the poll. This raises questions about the success or failure of the two movements in promoting their political program on the ground. The poll further showed that 20.4% of West Bank Palestinians support armed resistance, while 30.9% support it in the Gaza Strip. In the West Bank, 26.7% support peaceful resistance, while 10.7% support it in Gaza. Hamas spokesman Hazem Qassem told Al-Monitor, Other polls have shown that the majority supports resistance in all its forms and rejects negotiations, since they failed to yield positive results for our people. Hamas adopts general strategies based on national constants, and does not formulate its policy in a way that detracts from these rights, although it can use different tools and means at every stage. Hamas has expressed these approaches with its political document in May 2017. The results of this poll shows the Palestinian peoples positions that vary depending on political developments. Meanwhile, other polls and statistics show different results. Gaza supporting negotiations is quite logical given the Israeli siege imposed on Palestinians there. Meanwhile, there are concerns about the results of polls being manipulated to serve the interest of the funding parties. I will not mention any names, but I know a lot of Palestinian researchers who fill out surveys in the comfort of their own homes, while others ask their friends to fill them out for them, which makes me doubt all results, Nashaat al-Aktash, professor of media and public opinion at Birzeit University, told Al-Monitor. The political options for Fatah and Hamas have not produced results on the ground be it through negotiations or resistance and I have no idea what other option might work with Israel, Jihad Abdel Rahman, owner of a Ramallah money exchange store, told Al-Monitor. Speaking to Al-Monitor, Wafa Salim, a student at Al-Azhar University in Gaza, said, I do not see the US deal of the century leading to success. Washington is biased toward Israel and given the Palestinian division, Palestinians do no have a unified vision. I am inclined to support holding an international conference that will impose an acceptable solution for both Palestinians and Israelis. Despite the importance of the results of this poll, which seem striking and impressive, one cannot blindly believe them because all results are relative and prone to mistakes. However, it may still be able to urge that the Palestinian political forces reconsider their policies and positions, because they usually pay little attention to the Palestinian public opinion and rather adhere to their organizational agendas in isolation from popular tendencies. John Archibald delivered the keynote address to Auburn students on Journalism Day this week. This is an abridged version of that address. They keep telling you the golden age of journalism is dead. They keep telling you the business model is broken, the audience fragmented and youd have to be nuts to do this job. You know what? Theyre right. So if it scares you, run away now. Go into cost accounting or something that better suits you. Make a bunch of money. Dont make waves. Everybody wins. Because this business is uncertain and its changing and its not for everybody. Politically funded groups will target you and commenters will call you names. But heres the secret: It has always been hard and you always had to be a little nuts. So if you are unafraid? Come on. If truth drives you and injustice drives you crazy theres work to do. If you want to give voice to the voiceless or question those who too often go unquestioned, we have never needed you more. No, jobs are not as easy to find or as comfortable as they used to be. But theres opportunity for those who are honest and creative and committed. And brave. I hate to say that, because it sounds hokey. But you gotta be brave to even try this business these days. Which is good. Because you gotta be brave in this job or youre part of the problem. I cant imagine America without young, aggressive, journalists pushing us to higher ideals. But then I cant imagine a life without this job. It showed me everything. Ive met presidents and CEOs and laborers and migrant workers and homeless men and women struggling to survive. The ones who were most remarkable were not the ones with titles in front of their name. Youd be amazed what you learn when you dont judge them beforehand. This job taught me that. That people are people, and they almost always surprise you if you give them the chance. Ive seen so many things here. Corruption and deception and tragedy. People dying in the streets and in the electric chair. Ive seen planes crash and bombs and lives explode. Ive seen tornadoes and hurricanes and some of the biggest manhunts in history. Ive seen whole families wiped away and horrors that would keep you up nights if you let them. But thats never what sticks out. What sticks out is the people who rise, remarkably and inevitably, from the wreckage. Mothers, sick of violence, who stood to make a movement. A preacher who lost her daughter and much of her congregation when a tornado hit her church on an Alabama Palm Sunday. She used her grief to build a better world. Every time I start to think the world is too grim, I try to go out and meet real people. Because they are our reminder. Always. Real people are not the ones fighting on Twitter. Theyre the ones trying to survive, trying to give a better life to their children. They always give me hope. That we meet them so often in the midst of tragedy? Well thats what news is. Its stuff that did not go right. Its the stuff we dont expect. A plane lands safely 99.99 percent of the time, and thats not news. Because its what planes are supposed to do. People arrive home safely, and come home without getting shot, and perform their jobs honestly every day, and its not news because it routine. Which is beautiful. You dont have to point out someone doing good. All you need do is look around. So when people ask why we dwell on the negative, I say thank God. When you have to worry is when it becomes so routine we dont pay attention anymore. So whatever you decide to do, be courageous, and trust the voice in your head, and put your faith in real people. Theyre why we do this. And they are worth it. .John Archibald, a Pulitzer Prize winner, is a columnist for Reckon by AL.com. His column appears in The Birmingham News, the Huntsville Times, the Mobile Register and AL.com. Write him at jarchibald@al.com. A former Alabama prison guard Thursday was sentenced to serve six years in federal prison for intending to smuggle drugs into prison, the Department of Justice announced. Antwan Dandre Giles, 29, Thursday was sentenced to six years in federal prison for possession with intent to distribute controlled substances, said Louis V. Franklin, Sr., U.S. Attorney for the Middle District of Alabama. Giles worked as a guard at Kilby Correctional Facility in Montgomery County. On Jan. 22, 2017, Giles brought food into the jail he intended to give to an inmatewhich is a violation of department police. Agents with the Alabama Department of Corrections Investigations and Intelligence Division searched Giles vehicle after suspecting he was conspiring with an inmate to smuggle contraband and drugs into the prison. Agents found packages of Suboxone, Hydrocodone, Oxycodone methamphetamine, marijuana Xanax and synthetic marijuana in his car. Officials said he intended to smuggle those items into the prison. Agents also searched Giles home and found several new, in the package, prepaid mobile phones that Giles also intended to smuggle into the prison. It is no secret that drugs have become rampant within Alabamas prison system, Franklin said. Unfortunately, sometimes it is the corrections officers, the very people who are supposed to keep contraband out, who are responsible for bringing it in. Thats just the situation we had here. Antwan Giles knew better, and he abused his position of public trust. We hope this six-year prison sentence will send a clear message to other correctional officers. Giles had worked for ADOC for three years at the time of his arrest. Mr. Giles conviction and sentence shows our commitment to the citizens and the public safety of the State of Alabama. It is unfortunate to have staff compromise themselves, and when incidents like this occur, the ADOC Investigations and Intelligence Division will act swiftly to stop them and make sure those involved are prosecuted the fullest extent of the law, said Corrections Commissioner Jeff Dunn. The case was investigated by Drug Enforcement Administration and the Alabama Department of Corrections Investigations and Intelligence Division and prosecuted by Brandon Bates. Two sisters from Birmingham who were reported missing have been found safe with their father in California, Birmingham police said. The girls, 17-year-old Mirna Lorena Coyoy-Perez and 10-year-old Kimberly Elizabeth Coyoy-Perez, were last seen around 8 a.m. Friday, said Sgt. Johnny Williams. Both girls are Hispanic females. Sometime before 6:45 p.m., the girls were found in California with their dad, who lives there. Williams said the girls are reported to be fine. Anyone who has information on the girls location should contact Birmingham police at 205-478-0913, Crime Stoppers at 205-254-7777 or call 911. A Lowndes County jury convicted a Montgomery man on capital murder charges Thursday in the 2012 killings of 9-year-old twins Jordan and Taylor Dejerinett and their 73-year-old caretaker, Jack Mac Girdner. Deandra Marquis Lee, 22, was found guilty on six capital murder charges -- three for the killings, two for killing victims under 14 years old and an additional charge for committing the murder during a robbery, according to court records. Lee shot the victims while robbing the 73-year-old caretaker of his 1998 Mercedes Benz, which was found in Dallas County with all four doors missing. Their bodies were found on a remote road in Lowndes County after they were reported missing two days earlier in June 2012. Lee was on the lam for nearly a week before he was captured in a massive search that included the U.S. Marshals and the Alabama Bureau of Investigation. Lee had been acquitted on capital murder and attempted murder charges in March 2011 in an unrelated 2008 shooting. The penalty phase of Lees trial is scheduled for Monday. A Montgomery police officer was placed on leave after he was arrested for allegedly enticing a 15-year-old girl for sexual purposes, the Alabama News Network reported Thursday. Steve Rodgers, 22, was charged with enticing a child to enter a house for immoral purposes. The officer was out on a call Wednesday to respond to a report of a disturbance involving teenagers in a residential neighborhood when he allegedly tried to lure the victim. Rodgers was being held in the Montgomery County Jail under $5,000 bond, the Alabama News Network reported. An Ohio man wanted for murder in the Buckeye State was apprehended in Huntsville on Thursday after nearly two years on the lam, authorities said. Chaz D. Jackson, 23, of Lima, Ohio, was indicted on a murder charge in November 2016 for allegedly killing an Ohio man, the Lima Police Department said on its Facebook page. Jackson was captured in Huntsville on a felony warrant around 1 p.m. Ohio prosecutors alleged that Jacksons accomplice set up a drug deal and that Jackson fired that fatal shots that killed Ryan Vanbuskirk, according to the Lima News. Montgomery attorneys Julian McPhillips and Melissa Isaak today called on Montgomery County District Attorney Daryl Bailey to investigate Attorney General Steve Marshall for what they say is a violation of state campaign finance law. They made essentially the same claim that Marshalls opponents have made during the election campaign, that Marshall illegally accepted $735,000 in campaign contributions from the Republican Attorneys General Action Fund. The Marshall campaign dismissed the attorneys assertions as a political stunt. Marshall, the Republican attorney general, faces Democratic challenger Joe Siegelman in the election in 12 days. McPhillips said he talked to Siegelmans father, former Gov. Don Siegelman, about the subject of todays news conference. He didnt really ask me to do it, McPhillips said. But he was certainly not opposed to it. McPhillips and Isaak said they werent attacking Marshall for partisan reasons. This is not a partisan issue, Isaak said. This is not Democrats, this is not Republicans. Im a conservative. McPhillips called on Marshall to withdraw from the race, saying he has clearly, unequivocally violated state law. We believe he not only has violated it but knows he has violated it and we think hes in a pickle or a stew not knowing what to do, McPhillips said. The Marshall campaign issued this statement: "Unfortunately this is just another political stunt. Alabamians are sick and tired of Democrats using paid bloggers to promote fake news and liberal activist lawyers who abuse the court system with false and frivolous accusations." The issue is $735,000 in contributions the Marshall campaign has received from the Republican Attorneys General Action Fund. McPhillips and Isaak said it was illegal for Marshall to accept the money because the RAGA received money from other political action committees. Its illegal in Alabama for political action committees, PACs, to accept or give money to other PACs, a practice known as PAC-to-PAC transfers that obscures the identity of the original donor. McPhillips and Isaak asserted, as Joe Siegelman and Troy King had before, that its also illegal for candidates to accept money from PACs that engaged in PAC-to-PAC transfers. We found no loophole where this is legal, Isaak said. He cannot accept money that is the product of a PAC-to-PAC transfer. And, if he accepts from a PAC-to-PAC transfer, it must be returned within 10 days. King, who lost to Marshall in the Republican primary, raised the same issue during the primary campaign. King filed a lawsuit against Marshall and a complaint with the Alabama Ethics Commission in July. A Montgomery County Circuit judge dismissed the lawsuit. The Ethics Commission has not taken any public action on the complaint and does not comment on the status of pending cases. Montgomery County District Attorney Bailey said today he had not seen the letter from McPhillips and Isaak, which requests that he take all appropriate action as required by law, including presenting these facts and the law to a grand jury. Bailey declined to say what actions, if any, he might take. I would have to look at what they are asking, Bailey said. And obviously we dont talk about anything that might be before a grand jury. The Ethics Commission operates somewhat like a grand jury and can forward cases to district attorneys if it finds probable cause. Bailey noted that he had not received any referral from the Ethics Commission on the King ethics complaint against Marshall. He said that would not necessarily preclude him from doing an investigation. Alabama Secretary of State John Merrill, the states top election official, filed the original request to the Ethics Commission for a review or determination of whether the RAGA contributions to Marshall were legal, said John Bennett, Merrills deputy chief of staff. We have continued to ask for a ruling but have not received any word as to a status, Bennett said. Montgomery County Circuit Judge James Anderson dismissed Kings lawsuit challenging the legality of the RAGA contributions to Marshall. The dismissal came after lawyers for Marshall argued in a brief that RAGA was a federal PAC in full compliance with federal law and not regulated by Alabamas Fair Campaign Practices Act. Marshalls lawyers also argued that the Alabamas ban on PAC-to-PAC transfers does not prohibit candidates from receiving money from PACs that have violated the ban. They said the Legislature could have included that in the law but did not. McPhillips and Isaak pointed to another section of the Alabama law that says its illegal for a candidate to receive a contribution that the candidate knows or reasonably should know was made in violation of this chapter. They said Marshall was obligated to return the RAGA contributions within 10 days to avoid violating the law. King, in his ethics complaint against Marshall, noted that in 2014 Attorney General Luther Strange returned a $50,000 contribution from an RAGA PAC because that PAC had received money from other PACs. The Strange campaign said the contribution was legal but returned it out of an abundance of caution. McPhillips said theres a good reason not to allow candidates to receive money from PACs that have mingled their money with other PACs. The rationale behind it is good, McPhillips said. You want to know who is giving folks money. An Auburn University engineering professor is suing the public Alabama school, claiming a group of his colleagues discriminated against him because of his race and national origin, the Opelika-Auburn News reported Friday. Joseph C. Majdalani filed a lawsuit last week in U.S. District Court for the Middle District of Alabama. He alleges several Caucasian co-workers refused to accept him as chair of the university's Department of Aerospace Engineering, opposing his efforts, not respecting his authority, calling him slurs, excluding him from gatherings and important email chains, among other allegations. The suit says Majdalani is Semitic, was born in Lebanon and is of Lebanese descent. He was naturalized as a U.S. citizen in 1995, it says. Some of the defendants include the university, its Board of Trustees, university President Steven Leath, Engineering College Dean Christopher Roberts and Aerospace Engineering Department Chair Brian Thurow. Majdalani was working as a tenured professor in advanced aerospace engineering at the University of Tennessee when he applied for and accepted the chair position for Auburn's Aerospace Engineering Department in 2013. According to the lawsuit, Majdalani was called to a meeting in 2016 with Roberts and told that some faculty weren't happy with his management style. The dean gave him gave him two options, both of which resulted in him losing his chair position. Majdalani chose one and signed a resignation Roberts drafted. The suit says that before Majdalani's start date, some faculty had met with Roberts, who hired Majdalani, and asked him to rescind the job offer. The university's website lists Majdalani as an aerospace engineering professor. A staff directory of the Aerospace Engineering Department lists him as the Francis Chair. A university spokesman emailed a statement to the newspaper on Thursday saying, Auburn will not publicly discuss personnel matters or pending litigation. Update: Cesar Sayoc of Florida is in custody in connection with a string of pipe bombs sent to high-profile Democrats, according to multiple sources. Sayoc, a 56-year old who reportedly has a criminal record, was taken into custody Friday in Florida. He reportedly has an Aventura, Florida address but has ties to New York, where some of the packages were discovered. Photos of a van reportedly belonging to Sayoc show the windows covered in pro-Trump stickers. BREAKING: Justice Department: Person in custody in connection with mailing of pipe bombs The Associated Press (@AP) October 26, 2018 US Justice Dept. spokesperson: "We can confirm one person is in custody. We will hold a press conference at the Dept. of Justice at 2:30 p.m. ET." MSNBC (@MSNBC) October 26, 2018 BREAKING: Federal authorities have arrested a man in connection to the suspected explosive packages, according to multiple law enforcement sources Follow live updates: https://t.co/VlvTDuNkn5 CNN (@CNN) October 26, 2018 Update: Suspicious packages addressed to New Jersey Sen. Cory Booker and former Director of National Intelligence James Clapper have been discovered, NBC reported. The packages appear to be similar to those discovered in recent days. The package addressed to Booker was intercepted in Florida; the Clapper package was found in New York. The #FBI has confirmed an 11th package has been recovered in Florida, similar in appearance to the others, addressed to Sen. Cory Booker. FBI (@FBI) October 26, 2018 President Trump criticized frequent target CNN for its coverage of the bomb package incidents. Funny how lowly rated CNN, and others, can criticize me at will, even blaming me for the current spate of Bombs and ridiculously comparing this to September 11th and the Oklahoma City bombing, yet when I criticize them they go wild and scream, its just not Presidential! Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) October 26, 2018 Earlier: Authorities have searched a mail processing and distribution center in connection to a series of mail bombs mailed to prominent Democrats. The facility is in Opa-Locka, Florida, roughly 12 miles from Miami, CNN reported. The facility handled mail that is incoming and outgoing from South Florida. The Miami-Dade police bomb squad and K-9 unit confirmed in a tweet it was called in to assist with the search, though no additional details were released. Our Bomb Squad & K-9 Unit are currently providing assistance to our federal partners at the @USPS Opa-Locka mail facility as part of the ongoing investigation into suspicious packages located in other jurisdictions. This assistance is as a precautionary measure... pic.twitter.com/PoZj7PkL6F Miami-Dade Police (@MiamiDadePD) October 25, 2018 Ten Democrats, including former President Barack Obama, former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and former Attorney General Eric Holder, were targets of packages that the FBI said contained explosive devices. No one was injured, and the investigation is ongoing. Heres what we know today: Not hoax devices New York Police Commissioner James ONeill said the devices are being treated as live and are not considered hoaxes. This is something that should be taken seriously, ONeill said during a Thursday press conference. We are treating them as live devices. As far as a hoax device, were not treating it that way. All the devices were discovered between Monday and Thursday of this week and most were intercepted before they reached their intended targets. Two New York locations were evacuated Thursday night after reports of suspicious packages. Those packages were later deemed safe by law enforcement. As a precaution, the NYPD is currently evaluating a pair of unattended packages at the Time Warner Center Mall, Columbus Circle in Manhattan. More information will be released as it becomes available. pic.twitter.com/VqrzHZJ6zv NYPD NEWS (@NYPDnews) October 26, 2018 Targets of the packages At least 10 packages have been reported so far. The packages were intended for: Democratic activist George Soros Package delivered to his home in New York Former president Bill Clinton and former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton - Package intercepted at screening facility before it reached the Clintons home in Westchester County, New York. Former Attorney General Eric Holder Package addressed to Holder was delivered to Florida Congresswoman Debbie Wasserman Schultzs office in Florida. Former CIA Director John Brennan The package was delivered to the offices of Time Warner Center in New York City, headquarters of CNN. Rep Maxine Waters, D-Calif. Packages intended for the California Congresswoman were intercepted at mail screening facilities in Maryland and Los Angeles. Former President Barack Obama- The package sent to Obama was intercepted at a screening facility in Washington, D.C. Actor Robert De Niro - The package was sent to a Manhattan building where the actors offices and restaurant, Tribeca Grill, are housed. Former Vice President Joe Biden -Two packages addressed to Biden were intercepted. The first was found at a postal facility in New Castle, Delaware, the other at a facility in Wilmington, Delaware. The packages were mailed in manila envelopes with bubble wrap around the interior. The envelopes were affixed with computer-printed address labels and six Forever flag stamps. All packages had a return address of Debbie Wasserman Shultz (sic), the Democratic congresswoman from Florida. The bombs were packed with powder and broken glass. The powder was later tested and found not to be anthrax or other known agents. Tests on the substance are continuing. FBI investigation The packages have been taken to FBI facilities in Alexandria, Virginia. Investigators will be looking for fingerprints on the packages, as well as on the tape, stamps and labels affixed to the envelope. Investigators may also be able to pull DNA if the sender licked the stamps or labels. Its possible additional packages have been mailed to other locations, the FBI said. The FBI advises the public to remain vigilant and not touch, move, or handle similar-looking packages, or any suspicious or unknown packages; call 911 or contact your local law enforcement agency, the agency said in a statement. Anyone with information on the packages are asked to call the FBI at 1-800-CALL-FBI (1-800-225-5324. These packages contain potentially destructive devices and are dangerous. Anyone with info is asked to contact the #FBI tip line at 1-800-CALL-FBI (225-5324) or online at https://t.co/iL7sD5efWD. Tipsters can remain anonymous. https://t.co/43gM4NBm9s pic.twitter.com/jvVn0VE16i FBI (@FBI) October 26, 2018 Cesar Sayoc of Florida is in custody in connection to a string of 13 pipe bombs sent to high-profile Democrats, according to multiple sources. Sayoc, a 56-year old who reportedly has a criminal record, was taken into custody Friday in Florida. He reportedly has an Aventura, Florida address but has ties to New York, where some of the packages were discovered. Photos of a van reportedly belonging to Sayoc show the windows covered in pro-Trump stickers. Record from the Florida Department of Law Enforcement show Sayoc has a string of arrests dating back to the early 1990s, including a 2002 arrest for a threat to bomb and threatening to discharge a destructive device. No details on those cases were available. His other arrests included grand theft, battery, fraud, drug possession and multiple probation violations, among other incidents. Cesar Sayoc threatened to blow up a Florida utility company and said it would be "worse than September 11th," according to a police report from Miami Police Department in 2002 obtained by CNN. Kristin Donnelly (@kristindonnelly) October 26, 2018 Sayoc previously attended Brevard College in North Carolina. He enrolled in 1980 but did not graduate, CNN reported. Officials said fingerprints from explosive devices mailed Congresswoman Maxine Waters was key to finding the suspect. DNA recovered from the packages was also used. Attorney General Jeff Sessions said the investigation was a top priority of the Justice Department. Political violence or the threat of violence is antithetical to our system of self-government, Sessions said in a Friday press conference at the Justice Department. This is a law and order administration. We will not tolerate such lawlessness, especially not political violence. Sessions said he would not comment on why Sayoc was targeting Democrats. Sayoc is charged with five federal crimes: interstate transport of explosives; illegal mailing of explosives; threats against former presidents and other persons; threatening interstate communications.; and assaulting current and former federal officers. Those charges could be expanded or changed, Sessions said. He faces up to 58 years in prison. Officials urged people to remain vigilant and warned that more packages could be in the mail system. Photo of suspect Cesar Sayoc Jr. pic.twitter.com/dvjEApfhAL Spectrum News NY1 (@NY1) October 26, 2018 Federal agents and police officers earlier searched a mail processing facility in Opa-Locka, Florida, roughly 12 miles from Miami and video from television news casts showed a white van being searched in a parking lot of a business in Plantation, Florida. The Justice Department, which earlier confirmed one person is in custody, will hold a press conference at 2:30 p.m. ET. President Trump praised law enforcement for apprehending the suspect. I am pleased to inform you that law enforcement has apprehended the suspect, and taken him into custody," President Trump said Friday. We must never allow political violence take root in America. The bottom line is Americans must unify and we must show the world that we are united together in peace, love, and harmony as fellow American citizens. .@POTUS: "I am pleased to inform you that law enforcement has apprehend the suspect and taken him into custody." pic.twitter.com/mhgcSfuGfq FOX Business (@FoxBusiness) October 26, 2018 Law enforcement had been searching for a suspect in a string of 12 pipe bomb packages sent to high-profile Democrats in recent days. The packages were sent to: Democratic activist George Soros; former president Bill Clinton and former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton; former Attorney General Eric Holder; former CIA Director John Brennan; Rep Maxine Waters, D-Calif.; former President Barack Obama; actor Robert De Niro; and former Vice President Joe Biden. Two more packages one addressed to New Jersey Sen. Cory Booker and another to former National Intelligence Director James Clapper were discovered Friday morning. Authorities are also investigating a package addressed to Democratic Senator Kamala Harris. This is an opinion column. When Julian McPhillips and Melissa Isaak are the last line of defense in Alabama campaign law, the battle is probably lost already. McPhillips has a history of stepping in it deep from the time in a Democratic primary campaign he said his opponent couldnt have family values because she didnt have a family (her doctors had told her she wasnt capable of having children) to that time he went on the Daily Show to talk about his clients, which were fetuses. It didnt go well. Isaak runs a law firm that specializes in representing men in divorce cases, except when shes representing Roy Moore. Ill leave it at that. This is definitely an Alabama Odd Couple and they dont carry that much credibility in the political world. But all that aside, their argument made in a press conference today deserves to be taken seriously. McPhillips and Isaak have asked Montgomery County District Attorney Daryl Bailey to investigate whether Alabama Attorney General Steve Marshall has broken Alabamas Fair Campaign Practices Act. Apparently, they're among the few who care. Heres how we got to this point. Alabama law prohibits campaign contributions from one political action committee to another, known as PAC-to-PAC contributions. The Alabama Legislature passed this law in 2010 to stop a system of legal political money laundering that allowed special interest groups to hide their contributions and that let candidates keep their benefactors secret from voters. The law defines the PACs affected as in-state or out of state if they are trying to influence Alabama elections. The entity in question this time is the Republican Attorneys General Association, a national group that solicits money from deep pockets including other PACs and sprinkles it on Republican attorney generals running across the country. Marshalls campaign has argued that, since RAGA is based out of state and files reports with the IRS and the Federal Elections Commission, Alabama law doesnt apply here. Theres just one problem: Thats not what Alabama law says. Whats more, Alabama law does say that when candidates accept illegal contributions, they have to give them back. Marshalls predecessor, Luther Strange, got caught doing something similar four years ago and gave back his $50,000 in RAGA donations out of an abundance of caution. But this time RAGA has given Marshall more than $700,000 in campaign contributions. If he has to return that much money, its going to hurt. A lot. One of Marshalls Republican primary opponents, Troy King, begged the Alabama Ethics Commission to weigh in, and the Ethics Commission then did what the Ethics Commission is prone to do absolutely nothing even though the Ethics Commission director is on record saying hes told others that similar arrangements wouldnt be legal. In its last meeting before the election, the Commission didnt take up Kings complaint. Which leaves the Montgomery County District Attorney as the last authority with an opportunity to enforce the law. Under Alabama law, the Montgomery DA shares jurisdiction in complaints against statewide elected officials. Isaak and McPhillips want the Montgomery DA to take their complaint against Marshall to the grand jury. I wish we had better champions of the law than these two. Its tempting not to take their argument seriously. But we should. Because if the state attorney general is above the law, then the rule of law means nothing here. We live in the Alabanana Republic. McPhillips might be a Don Quixote. Isaak might be his Sancho Panza. But if thats all weve got left, somebody please give those two a lance. Kyle Whitmire is the state political columnist for the Alabama Media Group. Want access to the best analysis and in-depth reporting about Alabama each week? Sign up for the weekly Reckon Report newsletter and follow Reckon on Facebook and Twitter. Hoover will not offer $20 million in financial incentives to move UAB Medical west from Bessemer, two members of the Hoover City Council said Friday. Its dead on arrival, to use a hospital term, Councilman John Lyda said. Its just not going to happen. Council President Gene Smith said a majority of the council opposes the $20 million but will listen to any other proposals that might be in the works. Smith said if the mayor is working with hospital officials and developers on another proposal, he will seek the advice of council members. Efforts by AL.com Friday to reach Mayor Frank Brocato were not immediately successful. If that is where things are, then there is not sufficient support from the council, Smith said of the proposed incntive package. We havent been apprised of any other offers. The hospital, a mainstay in Bessemer for nearly 55 years, is continuing to examine its options. In order to properly serve the residents of west Jefferson County, we need to build a modern hospital to replace current MedWest inpatient offerings, as well as repurpose the current MedWest facility to support the care of the people of Jefferson County," UAB West CEO Keith Pennington said in a statement. "There are still two sites we are considering, and we are in the process of gathering information and considering those options. We will make a decision once we have all the information. Lyda said after a recent public meeting about the proposal it became clear there was not community support for the plan. Access to health care in Hoover is just not an issue, Lyda said. When you added a $20 million price tag, it really created a negative response. The latest development leaves Hoover with a 115-acres that can be developed, Lyda said. Medical West is welcome in Hoover, but we cant pay for them to relocate, Lyda said. Bessemer Mayor Kenneth Gulley scheduled a news conference Monday to discuss the hospitals future. The hospital has been in Bessemer for nearly 55 years. This is a developing story and will be updated. An Ardmore, Tenn., man has been charged with murder of an Alabama a woman and sex abuse of a child, authorities say. The charges stem from separate incidents in Athens and Elkmont. Thomas Edward Green, 30, of 9 Franklin Road Ardmore, Tenn., is in the Limestone County Jail after being indicted by a grand jury for murder and sex abuse of a child under 12, according to the Limestone County Sheriffs Office. He is being held on a combined $55,000 bond. Green is charged with shooting a woman Jan. 25 on Levert Avenue in Athens. Green allegedly admitted the shooting but said it was an accident. In April, the state Department of Human Resources reported a sex abuse complaint against Green to investigators. The abuse allegedly occurred at Greens home at the time in Elkmont and involved inappropriate contact with a 3-year-old girl. Green hasnt had any contact with the child, who is a family member, since the allegations came to light, the sheriffs office said. Did you know that in most of Alabama our energy future lies in the hands of three elected people? Will these three folks tie us to a 100-year-old, monopoly-based model dependent on coal and gas with next to no meaningful input from the public? The Alabama Public Service Commission regulates Alabama Power Company and Spire gas our monopoly energy providers almost exclusively behind closed doors. One result: Our state is a serious laggard when it comes to benefiting from renewables such as solar, which could offer a cleaner and more affordable electricity future for Alabama. Why should you care? Its not only because large businesses are selecting sites based on electricity supplied by renewables, and because there are more jobs there than in last centurys power plants, but also because we, the public, should have a meaningful say in determining what that energy future will look like and what it will cost. Why dont we have a say? Its by design. And that has been the case since 1982. We have elections coming up that give us an alternative to this business-as-usual process. The question for us is, are we going to continue under the current commissioners or take a fresh look at candidates that arent steeped in, or beholden to, the old culture of closed doors? There should be a balance between consumer and energy company interests. The attorney generals office is crucial. That office has the mandate and the muscle to intervene on our behalf, but only if the AG decides that it would be in the public interest. Recent AGs have reined in their able assistants when we needed them most. Whats wrong with business as usual? Opaque proceedings and plug-in formulas prevent any meaningful opportunity for the public to obtain evidence concerning the rates requested by utilities. In short, we have no way to determine if were getting the best service at the lowest cost. Theres a narrow window to even know what is proposed, much less to have any input. Alabama Power, for example, works with PSC staff to get pre-approval on proposals, then files its online request only two weeks before the scheduled vote. Return on equity, or ROE, allowed for Alabama Power has been among the highest in the country at 13.25 percent. Most electric utilities are allowed below 10 percent. In March 2014, the PSC stopped basing Alabama Power profits on the universal standard, ROE, and substituted a unique formula which looks much lower. But do the math, solve for ROE, and you find that Alabama Power retains its rich rewards of over 13%. This system has allowed a stealthy and surprise extra fee for customers generating their own grid-connected power, which has stymied the solar industry in our state and is currently being challenged, yet Alabama Power wants to raise it. The resulting discussions arent public. We cannot influence the 20-year integrated resource plan that most electric utilities, including Alabama Power, create every three to five years to outline how they will meet our power needs. In other states, stakeholders have access and input but we in Alabama are shut out and cannot even see it. What can you do about it? As a recent AL.com opinion writer stated Its time for accountability and transparency to be more than buzzwords. The entrenched monopolies have money and power, and the current PSC and AGs assistants have lost much of their needed clout. APCo has made electricity and we have had to buy it. But now, we can make it ourselves, use it, store it, and sell it back if the PSC will permit equitable options. Ive attended almost every available PSC meeting dealing with electricity for over five years. There are some good people involved who are doing a good job, considering the constraints of limited authority and resources. But now its time to change the outdated frame of reference and release the stranglehold that the PSC and our monopoly electricity provider have on our regulatory system. We do have power. Its called voting. On Nov. 6, use your power go to the polls and vote for a fresh approach. Tajiks banned at home form opposition alliance in Poland, where Islamophobia and anti-refugee sentiment is rising. Warsaw, Poland To human rights campaigners, Alim Sherzamonov is a civil society activist. But in his native Tajikistan, he is considered an extremist. Sherzamonov is from Khorog in eastern Tajikistans Gorno-Badakhshan Autonomous Region, which borders Afghanistan, and is a local opposition leader. Tensions between the Tajik government in Dushanbe and the people of Gorno-Badakhshan run high. Demonstrations six years ago turned deadly as the army and local armed forces clashed. Like other Tajik opposition dissidents, Sherzamonov fled Tajikistan for Poland. We hope that Polish authorities will help us endorse our plight, said Sherzamonov, who reached the Eastern European country last year. In early September, he was appointed as a deputy leader of the National Alliance of Tajikistan an opposition coalition of four Tajik dissident parties and organisations: the Forum of Tajik Freethinkers, the Islamic Renaissance Party of Tajikistan (IRPT), the Association of Central Asian Migrants, and the Peoples Movement Reforms and Development in Tajikistan. The Alliance represents a broad section of Tajik society, including secular and traditional figures, and is based in Poland. Jamshed Yorov, a lawyer from Dushanbe, is also among the Tajiks living in Poland. He was detained several times in his homeland on various charges before he escaped to Poland. Meanwhile, his brother Buzurgmehr Yorov, a human rights lawyer, was sentenced to 28 years in prison for defending political dissidents from the banned IRPT. Shabnam Hudoidodova is an independent human rights activist. Hudoidodova was one of hundreds of thousands of Tajik citizens who left for Russia seeking more economic freedom. In Saint Petersburg, she joined Group 24, a dissident movement, and became active on social media. Group 24 was founded in Moscow in 2012, but banned in Tajikistan which considered it an extremist organisation two years later. Hudoidodova told Al Jazeera that Tajikistan had filed an international warrant for her arrest through Interpol because of her social media posts about womens rights. In 2015, she was detained by Polish border guards while trying to escape to Poland, sent back to Belarus and imprisoned there. I was imprisoned for eight months, uncertain of my fate, she said. Human Rights Watch and Belarusian NGO Vyasna worked on her case and she was later released and granted asylum in Poland. Banned at home Tajik President Emomali Rahmon has run the country for more than 25 years. Today, there are around 500 Tajiks in Poland. This number includes Tajik citizens who are in possession of a valid temporary residence permit, Jakub Dudziak, a spokesman of the Polish Office for Foreigners, told Al Jazeera. The figure doesnt include Tajiks in Poland on a tourist visa. Many apply for refuge in Poland because EU law requires migrants to claim asylum in the first port of entry. But there are also other reasons. Some Tajik refugees speak Russian a Slavic language like Polish because of their countrys Soviet heritage. Some of them stay in Poland because it is easier to overcome the language barrier, said Muhammadjon Kabirov, a Poland-based Tajik who runs Eurasian Dialogue, an NGO helping newcomers adjust and integrate into Polish society. Before moving to Warsaw, Kabirov managed an independent TV channel in Russia. In 2016, upon the request of Tajik security services, it was closed and Kabirov and his wife sought refuge outside Russia. Muhiddin Kabiri, leader of the IRPT which is also banned for extremism told Al Jazeera via Skype that the National Alliance of Tajikistan plans to nurture a new political landscape and offer an alternative to out-of-touch autocrats by a mixture of pressure and dialogue. We want to become the political force that will represent and endorse interests of Tajik diaspora abroad, said Kabiri, who lives in Western Europe. Muhamadjon Kabirov said some Tajiks stay in Poland because they are able to speak Russian, a Slavic language that has some overlap with Polish [Courtesy: Muhamadjon Kabirov] The IRPT is one of the leading political movements behind the new opposition coalition and the most controversial. The Tajik Supreme Court outlawed its activity in September 2015. Almost all of its members, including Kabiri, were placed on Interpols wanted list. In November 2017, Russias Interfax agency reported that around 2,000 people were on the Interpol list. Eugene Chausovsky, senior Eurasia analyst at consulting firm Stratfor, said that while Tajikistan does face some security issues sharing a border with Afghanistan and there was a recent attack on foreign cyclists claimed by the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant, the threat is often exaggerated for political purposes. The government in Dushanbe, he noted, blamed the IRPT for the attack on the foreign cyclists. In a telephone conversation with Al Jazeera, a senior Tajik diplomat denounced the new alliance as an extremist and terrorist organisation. The Tajik government will never go into negotiations with them. This is an illegal movement, said the diplomat, who spoke on the condition of anonymity. Relations between the opposition and government remain incredibly strained. An anticipated OSCE (Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe) conference in Warsaw last month, during which representatives of the official Tajik delegation were expected to enter talks with the opposition, ended in a scuffle between the two sides with punches and kicks thrown. Each side accused the other of causing the hostilities. It certainly polluted the political atmosphere, an anonymous OSCE delegate told Al Jazeera. Eurasian Dialogues Kabirov claimed: The envoy who attacked us was the economic adviser to Tajik ambassador in Germany. According to the official Facebook page of the Tajik Embassy in Germany, the envoy was appointed charge daffaires shortly after the incident. Rising Islamophobia in Poland The Tajik dissident diaspora is growing at a time of rising Islamophobia and anti-refugee sentiment across Europe, especially in Poland. Kabirov and Hudoidodova denied any presence of xenophobia or racism. But just a few days after the National Alliance of Tajikistan was formed, far-right website Ndie.pl published stories about the organisation and activists, labelling them as Islamists and suggesting radicalism or militancy. An admin for the site declined to comment to Al Jazeera, but publishing appeared to have stopped in early October. The Polish government itself touts an anti-Muslim narrative. On October 17, the ruling Law and Justice party released a campaign threatening voters with waves of Muslim refugees if they choose to side with opposition candidates in upcoming local elections. Since 2017, the Center for Research against Prejudice recorded a sharp rise in Islamophobia. Muslims in Poland comprise less than 0.1 percent of the total population, but according to an IPSOS poll, ethnic Poles believe that 7 percent of the country is Muslim. The [IRPT] is not a radical movement. It is a cultural mirror of Christian democratic parties in Europe, Jamestown Foundation analyst Nurlan Aliyev told Al Jazeera. An adviser to the Polish government, who wished to remain anonymous, told Al Jazeera: These stereotypes that appeared in the [Ndie.pl] article were aimed at reducing the image of Tajik dissidents to that of religious fanatics. This rhetoric mimics the regimes stance, and this is dangerous for the dissidents. On October 25, a special joint session of both houses of the Ethiopian parliament accepted President Mulatu Teshome Wirtus letter of resignation. The much-respected presidents resignation was a surprise to many, yet it soon became clear that this was yet another meticulously planned move by Ethiopias reformist Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed. The very same morning, seasoned diplomat Sahle-Work Zewde was appointed the countrys fourth president under EPRDF rule, an era which began in 1991. With this appointment, Zewde also became the second woman in the countrys modern history to serve as head of state. Ethiopias last female leader before Zewde was Empress Zewditu, who had governed the country between 1916-1930. President Zewde has a successful public service career spanning decades. Her first ambassadorial appointment in service of her country was in 1989 to Dakar, Senegal with additional accreditation to Mali, Cape Verde, Guinea-Bissau, Gambia and Guinea. During that time, Ethiopias brutal military-socialist regime was still in power and Ethiopias civil war was at its peak. When the military regime was overthrown two years later, most government ministers and high-ranking public servants were either purged or arrested, with most Ethiopian diplomats serving the country abroad requesting political asylum in the countries they had been residing in. However, even during this tumultuous time, Zewde chose not to abandon her post and continued to serve the new regime. She quickly gained the trust of the new leadership with her diplomatic competence and managed to stay in the ranks of the foreign service. Since then, Zewde served Ethiopia as an ambassador in many countries across Africa and Europe. Eventually, she moved on to serving the international community at large, especially through her work at the United Nations. With her extensive experience working across conflict-prone nations in Africa, Zewde has helped the UN in its peace-building efforts in the Central African Republic. Zewdes final role at the UN, however, was arguably the most important. She was the first woman to be appointed by the international body as special representative to the African Union and head of the United Nations Office to the African Union, a role she served at the level of under-secretary-general. Zewdes appointment as Ethiopias new president came on the back of another surprising, but very welcome development. On October 16, Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed announced that he decided to fill 50 percent of his cabinet with female ministers. Ahmeds decision to have a gender-balanced cabinet was applauded in Ethiopia and beyond, but it was partially clouded by the fact that cabinet appointments are not always based on merit in Ethiopia. In this country, prime ministers are inescapably hostage to a culture of coalition politics, where party interests triumph over the interests of the people. Thus, despite the symbolic importance of the realisation of a gender-balanced cabinet, for some these appointments were not as important a victory for Ethiopian women, and Ethiopian people in general, as theyve been trumped up to be. However, this appointment is unquestionably momentous and groundbreaking. In spite of the fact that, in parliamentary Ethiopia, the office of the presidency is very much ceremonial, most Ethiopians respect and look up to the president. Anyone who serves in that role gets the opportunity to build a personal legacy, and leave their mark in the countrys history. Moreover, the office of the president is a bully pulpit that allows its holder to have direct access to the countrys prime minister and gives them an opportunity to comment and offer advice on political events. The head of state also presides over special parliamentary sessions and delivers speeches on the parliament opening sessions where he or she presents what the priorities of the government should be. Having a woman take over such a revered office is undoubtedly going to inspire millions of Ethiopian women. However, the ways in which Zewdes presidency is really going to affect the condition of women in Ethiopia will be determined by the causes she is going to champion and prioritise throughout her tenure. Ethiopia embarked on a reform process six months ago and the changes its new leadership promised to make to achieve better governance and democratic improvement are slowly materialising. However, the country is still carrying the wounds of a devastating civil war, years of oppression and ongoing ethnic tensions and conflicts. And the burden of all this has been felt the most by Ethiopias women who, on top of losing their husbands, sons and brothers in conflicts and being displaced from their homes, also had to navigate their lives in a highly patriarchal society. For example, problems within the countrys education sector such as the meagre level of access to education in rural Ethiopia is still affecting women more than men. Beyond all this, Ethiopia still suffers from one of the highest maternal mortality rates in the world. Although there have been promising improvements, to this day, most Ethiopian women give birth at home. In light of all this, Ethiopian women desperately need a heroine who can be their voice and allow them to be heard clearly and loudly by the leadership of the country. This heroine can and should be the countrys first female President Zewde. To achieve this, she needs to make the empowerment of women the priority of her presidency. Zewde has already implied that she is willing and eager to take on this duty during her acceptance speech before the joint session of the parliament. At some point in her speech she even joked: if you think I am talking a lot more about women, well, I have not even started. President Zewde is now in a position to help implement important reforms that would significantly elevate the life quality of the most under-served and most well-deserving segment of the countrys citizenry: women. The fact that the current head of government, Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed, is a feminist reformer will likely help her in this journey. Ethiopian women are undoubtedly happy to see a woman in one of the highest offices of the land. But beyond providing mere inspiration, what they expect from their new president is to actually change their lives for the better. Only time will tell whether President Zewde will be able to live up to their expectations. The views expressed in this article are the authors own and do not necessarily reflect Al Jazeeras editorial stance. When Jamal Khashoggi disappeared after entering the Saudi Consulate in Istanbul on October 2, credible reports began almost immediately to emerge that he was murdered inside. Silence was the initial EU response to the crime, carried out within the borders of a NATO ally, on a ground reserved for diplomatic and consular services, in violation of the 1963 Vienna Convention. It took a full two weeks before the EU High Representative for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy Federica Mogherini emerged to say that the EU expects Saudi authorities to conduct a full investigation. She added that the EU expects and hopes that the answer will be found with full transparency and clarity. In a G7 statement on October 17, Mogherini also stated that she looked forward to the Saudi authorities carrying out a thorough, credible, transparent, and prompt investigation. Three days later, on October 20 the EU reaffirmed the same message entrusting the perpetrator of the murder, the autocratic authorities in Saudi Arabia, to investigate its own crime. By definition, the outcome of such an investigation cannot be credible or transparent, as demonstrated by the string of blatant lies released by Saudi Authorities the moment of Mr Khashoggis disappearance. The European Union prides itself on its democratic credentials, its support for human rights and its contribution to a rules-based international system. The murder of Khashoggi represents one of the most egregious violations of those principles, in the most visible way possible. Further, intelligence and circumstantial evidence confirm that the decision to target Khashoggi was taken at a high level, involving Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman (MBS) and close members of his inner circle. The EUs response to those violations was slow and limited. Indeed this feeble response can be seen as part of the policy of principled pragmatism the EU officially adopted in 2016. That policy allows the EU to set aside its more tender-minded liberal values and give primacy to tough-minded realist interests in realms of security, economy and migration. After the 2011 Arab revolts the EU became very concerned with stability in its so-called southern neighbourhood, a region predominantly made up of Arab countries. Such stabilisation was wrapped into the language of security and made possible by the logic of principled pragmatism. Values like human rights and democracy were demoted, while cooperation with repressive and autocratic regimes was elevated. Meanwhile, democratic elections in Arab countries (Egypt, Lebanon, Palestine, Tunisia) had been won with a plurality of votes by Islam-oriented parties that the EU has historically viewed as a threat. Saudi Arabia and other repressive regimes in the region also perceived the rise of these political forces, as well as liberal democracy, as an existential threat. They saw their grip on power and other privileges at risk. Thus, the EU quickly allied itself with the most conservative and extreme governments in the Middle East to combat the rise of democracy and liberal values. Khashoggis murder came on the heels of the principled pragmatic shift in EU foreign policy towards the Middle East. This shift has sanctioned unabashed cooperation with autocratic regimes as partners to safeguard stability and curb migration. At the same time, Saudi Arabia is an important trading partner and a close ally of the United States. The US is the EUs most important trading partner and military ally and heads the NATO military alliance central to EU defence policy. The result is that immediate stability, security, alliances and economic interests weigh more in the calculus of the EUs principled pragmatism than liberal values. The result is that when the EU considers brazen human rights abuses like Khashoggis murder, for practising a fundamental right to express his views and an assault on norms in international relations, Mogherini can offer only a feeble response that no perpetrator will feel threatened by. The EU stands with Washington Mogherinis office has confirmed that the EU stands with the US on Khashoggis gruesome murder. However, this begs a question that Mogherini likely does not want to answer: which US is the EU standing with? The Trump Administration is by no means a champion of human rights or freedom of expression. Rather, it prefers to maintain a strong relationship with the current Saudi government led by MBS. Trump has shown no hesitation to accept any Saudi cover story, no matter how bald the lie. Meanwhile, the American public, media and Congress have a completely different view than the Trump Administration. Some have even called for an arms sale boycott, while others have called openly for Saudi Arabia to pick a new leader. I could not agree more. We should also halt all military sales, aid and cooperation immediately. There must be a severe price for these actions by Saudi Arabia. https://t.co/ebi9dqYND8 Senator Rand Paul (@RandPaul) October 20, 2018 The stakes are high for Europe. Khashoggi laid out the stakes in his final column published posthumously by The Washington Post. In it, he described how assaults on freedom of expression and the press in the Arab world, no longer carry the consequence of a backlash from the international community. Instead, these actions may trigger condemnation quickly followed by silence. As a result, Arab governments have been given free rein to continue silencing the media at an increasing rate. The consequences are broad. The security cooperation and repression of the peoples of the Arab countries may create a false, short-term sense of stability for European policymakers. This will come also with the sweetener of advantageous trading opportunities, like arms deals with repressive regimes. Such an arrangement covers up the realities of deeper, simmering social malaise in the region, and may achieve at best a short-term sense of security. Longer-term, that policy approach can be expected to contribute to bigger crises as the underlying social issues get worse before boiling over again across the region. When that crisis comes, the EU will have lost serious credibility in its foreign policy posturing, as its policy of principled pragmatism will have come at the expense of the people living in the region. That will weaken or completely discredit part of the EU foreign policy toolbox to deal with those crises and engage in normal relations with the region. Meanwhile, principled pragmatism reveals the consequences of an international system run without rules, which are always constructed around values. For repressive regimes like the one that carried out the murder of Khashoggi, principled pragmatism offers an open license for reckless and aggressive actions, both at home and abroad. With this license and silence, the region and the world have been subjected to the ISIL-inspired macabre which Khashoggi endured, the war on Yemen threatening 13 million people with starvation, the large-scale imprisonment and torture of critics and human right activists, the kidnapping of Lebanons prime minister and the imposition of a blockade on Qatar (which was nearly an invasion) threatening its sovereignty. Trading values for stability is not only morally bankrupt but also self-defeating. Those values were developed not just out of idealistic tender-mindedness, but for lasting stability that can endure systemic shocks. A security-centric approach built around support for murderous autocrats only covers over deeper problems in a young region aspiring for the freedoms they see in the West. Stability based purely on repression is not just wrong, but incredibly ephemeral, ready to collapse into chaos at a moments notice. In this way, the EUs policy of principled pragmatism contributes both to the erosion of the liberal values the EU defines itself by and the incredible instability we are now seeing in Middle East and global affairs. The views expressed in this article are the authors own and do not necessarily reflect Al Jazeeras editorial stance. On October 23, Human Rights Watch (HRW) published an extensive 149-page report titled Two Authorities, One Way, Zero Dissent on the abuses and crushing of dissent by both the Hamas led government in Gaza and the Palestinian Authority (PA) in the occupied West Bank. The report comes out of 2 years worth of research including interviews with former prisoners and activists and an analysis of the systematic abuses of human rights. It provides an overview of a deteriorating situation in Palestine wherein the context of Israeli occupation and colonisation, the Palestinian leadership is crushing dissent and political organising. The interviews collated by HRW detail some horrific cases of torture and interrogation. One particular method known as shabeh was described where detainees are held in excruciating positions for hours and even days upon end. Sometimes they are made to crouch or squat, others are hung from ceilings. In addition, prisoners held in custody are routinely beaten, often leaving scars or life-long injuries and threats are made to their families. More recently there has also been a cyber crackdown targeting journalists and activists who have been arrested for writings and social media posts. These arbitrary arrests and interrogations of students, activists, journalists and political opposition is characteristic of many despotic regimes in the region and around the world. {articleGUID} While the report does not reveal anything new indeed various Palestinian NGOs and organisations have long documented this kind of repression it elevates these extensive and troubling details to an international platform. Importantly, it also calls on the international community to suspend the assistance to the PA security forces until it complies with international conventions. Rather than placing the onus solely on the Palestinian leadership, this report needs to be considered in the wider political and historical context which has facilitated these abusive regimes. The creation of the PA by the Oslo Accords sought to contain and maintain the Palestinian populations in the 1967 territories. In Fanonian terms, this created a colonised elite that would watch over the rest of the colonised peoples on behalf of the coloniser. Essentially the PA and its security forces became an extension of the Israeli occupation. Furthermore, the intense development of the security sector in the years following Oslo intertwined politics and security, resulting in security personnel being elevated to politically powerful positions. The merging of the political and security elites created the perfect environment for a police state. Meanwhile, this has all happened under the watchful eye of Israel and the donor community. The security coordination that exists between the PA and Israel demonstrates this par excellence. This coordination among many things involves the sharing of intelligence, the arresting of activists and the quelling of political mobilisation, all conducted under the false auspice of preventing terror. Indeed, the security coordination facilitated the assassination of the political activist Basil Al Araj nearly a year-and-a-half ago in Ramallah. Al Araj had previously been held and tortured by the PA, and upon his release went into hiding knowing full well that the Israeli occupation forces would come after him. He resisted arrest for six months before they found him with the assistance of the PA. Meanwhile, in Gaza, Hamas is similarly accused by HRW of abuses and violations of human rights to those under their rule. In addition to living under an Israeli imposed siege and regular Israeli bombardment, Palestinians contend with an oppressive authority determined to quell political criticism. The abuse of power documented in the new HRW report is not a sign of strength from the Palestinian leadership. Rather it demonstrates its weakness and its inability to lead their people let alone deliver liberation. These testimonies thus present an important challenge to a system that was designed broken. They reveal an intricate system of abusers and abused which services the Israeli regime in its endeavour to conquer fully the Palestinian people. However, perhaps one of the most important aspects of this report are the questions that it provokes among Palestinians themselves. The time has come for us to think about what kind of leadership we actually want and what comes next after Abbas, rather than who comes next. The views expressed in this article are the authors own and do not necessarily reflect Al Jazeeras editorial stance. Cesar Sayoc is charged with five federal crimes in connection with 13 suspicious packages sent to top Democrats, others. Federal authorities have arrested one individual in connection with suspected explosives sent to top Democrats, former senior US officials and prominent critics of President Donald Trump, the Department of Justice said on Friday. FBI Director Christopher Wray told reporters on Friday that Cesar Sayoc was arrested in connection with the bomb investigation. Wray said Sayocs fingerprints were found on a package sent to Democratic Congresswoman Maxine Waters. Attorney General Jeff Sessions said Sayoc was charged with five federal crimes, including threats against former presidents and the illegal mailing of explosives. Sayoc faces up to 58 years in prison, if convicted. The news of the arrest came not long after authorities said several more suspicious packages were found on Friday, bringing the total number of explosive devices discovered over the past week to at least 13. Two new packages discovered on Friday included those addressed to US Senator Cory Booker and James Clapper, the former US director of national intelligence. This is definitely domestic terrorism, no question about it in my mind, Clapper told CNN. This is not going to silence the administrations critics. Photos of the van confiscated at the time of Sayocs arrest show the vehicle plastered with pro-Trump stickers, the slogan CNN SUCKS and images of Democratic figures with red crosshairs over their faces. Authorities have not confirmed that the van was linked to Sayoc, who has a long criminal history, records show. Trump said on Friday that he knows the suspect was one of his supporters, but said he bears no blame for the suspects actions. Authorities said there could be other packages. Trump says bomb stuff slowing Republican momentum The wave of parcel bombs has been denounced by authorities as terrorism and comes less than two weeks before US congressional elections. The results could alter the balance of power in Washington, DC. {articleGUID} Senator Mark Warner, the top Democrat on the Senate Intelligence Committee, told MSNBC on Friday that the mail bombs were stoking fear across the county and that US leaders, including Trump, must reassure the public. Elected officials and others need to say that this is not who we are as a country, Warner said. That would be a heck of a lot stronger if that message also came from the White House. All the individuals targeted by the suspicious packages have often been maligned by right-wing critics. They included Democratic Party donor George Soros, former President Barack Obama, former Vice President Joe Biden, and former Secretary of State and presidential candidate Hillary Clinton. The FBI said that at least five of the packages bore a return address from the Florida office of US Representative Debbie Wasserman Schultz, a former chair of the Democratic National Committee. There has been an outcry from Trumps critics, who charged that his inflammatory rhetoric against Democrats and the press has created a climate for politically motivated violence. After first calling for unity and civil discourse on Wednesday, Trump lashed out again on Thursday at the hateful media. His supporters accused Democrats of unfairly suggesting the president was to blame for the bomb scare. Funny how lowly rated CNN, and others, can criticize me at will, even blaming me for the current spate of Bombs and ridiculously comparing this to September 11th and the Oklahoma City bombing, yet when I criticize them they go wild and scream, its just not Presidential! Trump said on Twitter early on Friday. Hours later, he tweeted that this bomb stuff is slowing the momentum for Republicans in the leadup to the November 6 midterm elections. Republicans are doing so well early voting, and at the polls, and now this bomb stuff happens and the momentum greatly slows news not talking politics, he said, adding Very unfortunate, what is going on. Republicans go out and vote! Speaking to reporters later in the day, Trump declared we must never allow political violence to take root in America. He added that the person responsible would be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law. Devices treated as live explosives Authorities believe the packages, which were intercepted before reaching their intended recipients, all went through the US Postal Service at some point, news agencies reported, citing federal security sources. None detonated and no one has been hurt. {articleGUID} The devices were thought to have been fashioned from bomb-making designs widely available on the internet, a federal law enforcement source told Reuters news agency. The FBIs Wray said on Friday that the explosives were not hoax devices, and each pipe bomb contained materials that could react and cause a potential explosion. Two packages were sent to Waters and Biden. Others who received the bombs were former Attorney General Eric Holder, former CIA director John Brennan, US Representative Maxine Waters of California, and actor Robert De Niro. On Friday, authorities were also investigating a suspicious package mailed to Democratic Senator Kamala Harris in Sacramento, California, her office said. Brazil election officials battle fake news on social media Last week, Facebook was made to remove dozens of links to false stories targeting Fernando Haddad. Scarborough Leader The Oak Hill Players are performing the musical 'Honk!', their first live performance since the COVID-19 pandemic. Traditional Asian rivals agree to work together to boost economic ties amid rising trade tensions with Washington. China and Japan on Friday pledged to forge closer ties as both countries stood together at an historic turning point, signing a broad range of agreements including a $30bn currency swap pact, amid rising trade tensions with Washington. Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe and Chinese Premier Li Keqiang also agreed the two countries would work together to achieve denuclearisation on the Korean Peninsula. The pacts were reached on Abes three-day visit to Beijing as the two neighbours looked to carve out new areas of cooperation and seek ways to promote trust, which has been fragile at times since diplomatic relations resumed in 1972. From competition to co-existence, Japan and China bilateral relations have entered a new phase Shinzo Abe, Japanese prime minister From competition to co-existence, Japan and China bilateral relations have entered a new phase. Hand in hand with Premier Li, I would like to advance our ties forward, Abe told reporters after the pair met on Friday morning. Premier Li said 500 business deals worth $18bn had been signed between Chinese and Japanese companies during the visit, a reflection of the bright prospects for cooperation between the two countries. He said the countries relations have returned to a normal track, and China wants to stably develop ties in the long term. Both countries are neighbours and partners, and will not become a threat to each other, Abe said after meeting with President Xi Jinping on Friday in the first full-scale Sino-Japanese summit since 2011. With President Xi Jinping, I would like to carve out a new era for China and Japan, Abe said. Xi said bilateral ties had returned to the right track and China would ensure the positive momentum continues, according to state media. The Chinese president will seriously consider Abes invitation to visit his country, a Japanese government spokesperson told reporters in Beijing. We need to nail down a date now, Yasutoshi Nishimura, deputy chief cabinet secretary, said on Friday after the summit. Warm relations The historical rivals have been drawn closer together under pressure from the United States to slash trade deficits. Both countries would like to move their relationship back to focusing on economics and trade and to push aside some of the difficult political issues that [represent] a division between the states, Stephen Nagy, from the Tokyo Christian University, said. [ I think] China would like to warm relations with traditional rivals such as Japan and concentrate the diplomatic efforts on United States. China is also worried about its own economic slowdown, and its economic slowdown is going to require more technological infusion from Japan, more foreign direct investment and more trade with Japan, Nagy added. {articleGUID} China is Japans main trading partner, with bilateral trade reaching $300bn last year. But relations between both soured in 2012 over a territorial dispute over several tiny Japanese-controlled islands in the East China Sea. Upon returning to power in 2012, Abe took a firm position on Japans sovereignty over the island chain, aggravating tensions with Beijing. But he has since softened his rhetoric as the issue of North Korean denuclearisation brought the two countries closer, with Abe calling on China to put pressure on North Korea. According to Kyodo News, the two countries agreed to work together to make the East China Sea a sea of peace, cooperation and friendship and signed an agreement to work together on naval search and rescue operations. The leaders will discuss a range of regional and global issues, including North Koreas denuclearisation. Abe has invited President Xi Jinping to visit Japan next year. Prosecutors say shooting that left two African Americans dead in the US state is being probed as possible hate crime. Moments after allegedly killing two African Americans at a supermarket in the US state of Kentucky, 51-year-old Gregory Bush reportedly muttered to a white bystander, Whites dont kill whites. Bush, who is white, has been charged with two counts of murder and 10 counts of wanton endangerment, and a judge set his bail at $5m on Thursday. A federal prosecutor said on Friday that the shooting is being investigated as a possible hate crime. US Attorney Russell Coleman said federal investigators are investigating whether there were any violations of federal law, which includes potential civil rights violations such as hate crimes. The FBI is investigating alongside local police. Before entering the Kroger supermarket in a suburb of Louisville, Kentucky, on Wednesday, Bush attempted to break into a nearby predominantly African American church, police said. After failing to enter the church, Bush entered the supermarket and shot dead 69-year-old Maurice Stallard, according to police, before killing 67-year-old Vickie Jones in the car park. Local media reported that Stallards 12-year-old grandson witnessed his killing. An armed bystander exchanged gunfire with the suspect in the car park of the Jeffersontown store before the shooter fled in a car. He was taken into custody soon afterwards, Jeffersontown Police Chief Sam Rogers said at a news briefing outside the store. There were no further injuries, he said. It does appear she was a random victim out in the parking lot, said Rogers. Asked if the male victim in the store was also killed at random, Rogers said. It does appear to be possibly the case. {articleGUID} Steve Zinninger told Wave3 News that his father was waiting outside the supermarket while his mother shopped inside when he heard shooting and saw panicked people running from the store. Please dont shoot Zinninger said the shooter casually walked towards his father in the car park and his father drew his gun and confronted the man from behind his car. He [the armed man] said, please dont shoot and I wont shoot you, whites dont kill whites, Zinninger told Wave3 News. It was not clear whether Zinningers father was the armed bystander who Rogers said exchanged gunfire with the suspect. Video taken by a store owner showed the suspect wandering around the car park as bystanders shouted his location to police. The man then sped off, chased by a police officer on foot. Thanks to the quick response of the local police department, the suspect was apprehended and our store is secure, Kroger said in a statement. Drew Butler said he was shopping in the store when he heard multiple shots. He and a woman barricaded themselves inside a room. After the fourth shot, I dont know if there were five or 15, Butler told Wave3 news. Rogers said both the man and woman were shot multiple times. Local media reported that Bush had a long history of criminal offences, including assault and domestic violence. Leaders of Turkey, Russia, Germany and France to discuss Idlib, aid, drafting of constitution and reconstruction. Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan is set to host the leaders of Russia, Germany and France at a four-way summit in Istanbul to discuss the long-running war in Syria, now in its eighth year. In Saturdays meeting, Ankara is expected to press for a clear outline of steps towards a political resolution, as well as for the preservation of a deal reached in September with Moscow that set up a demilitarised zone around Idlib, the last major rebel bastion in Syria. The solution in Syria is a political one, not a military one, Ibrahim Kalin, spokesperson for the Turkish president, said on Friday. Erdogan and his guests German Chancellor Angela Merkel, French President Emmanuel Macron and Russian President Vladimir Putin will also hold discussions on humanitarian aid, the drafting of a constitution and reconstruction of the war-torn country. On Friday, seven people were killed in rebel-held areas in Idlib after Syrian government forces shelled two villages, according to opposition activists. The UK-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights (SOHR) said three children were among those killed in the shelling of Rafa and Umm Jalal villages. The White Helmets, a civil defence group operating in rebel-held parts of Syria, also reported the same death toll, as cited by Anadolu news agency. The villages are part of the demilitarised zone in Idlib, agreed by Turkey and Russia in Sochi last month. The agreement reached between Russia and Syria prevented a government offensive on the last rebel stronghold in the country. {articleGUID} Idlib has been relatively calm since, though some armed groups have not met an October 15 deadline to evacuate the demilitarised zone. Many feared that a government offensive in Idlib would trigger a new refugee crisis as the region is home to some three million people, many of whom were already displaced by the war from other parts of Syria. France has said it intends primarily to promote the maintenance of the ceasefire in Idlib to avoid a humanitarian catastrophe and a new mass wave of refugees. Paris also said it wants the effective launch of an inclusive political process in accordance with a United Nations resolution. The summit comes amid Turkish threats of a new military operation across the border into northern Syria, in zones held by Syrian Kurdish fighters. Turkey considers the Syrian Kurdish militia, which is backed by the United States, to be terrorists and a part of the Kurdish armed campaign within Turkey. On Friday, Erdogan said Ankara would not allow terror groups located east of the Euphrates River to threaten Turkeys security. Turkey launched two incursions into Syria, in 2016 and 2018, into areas west of the Euphrates, pushing fighters from the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) armed group as well as Syrian Kurdish fighters from its border. With a thumbs up, a half-hug and a smile, Georgia gubernatorial candidate Brian Kemp posed for a photograph with a well-known far-right and anti-Muslim activist at a campaign event. The far-right conspiracy theorist James Stachowiak wore a t-shirt that read, Allah is not God, and Mohammad is not his prophet, in a photo posted on what appears to be his Twitter account on October 15. The tweet reads, This is me a week ago meeting Brian Kemp in August Georgia he will be on the governor of Georgia. On Friday, the Georgia chapter of the CAIR called on Kemp, a Republican who currently serves as Georgias Secretary of State, to apologise for the photograph. With less than two weeks until midterm elections, Kemps photo controversy comes on the heels of a lengthy spate of a lengthy spate of anti-Muslim incidents in 2017 and 2018, according to a new report. I am rarely surprised when I see anti-Muslim bigotry these days, but Mr Kemp should apologise, meet with us and other Georgia Muslim leaders, and renounce this mans support, Edward Ahmed Mitchell, CAIR-Georgias executive director, told Al Jazeera. Stachowiak, a pro-Trump activist and former police officer, has been defaming, harassing and threatening Georgia Muslims for at least the past two years, Mitchell added. In the past, CAIR-Georgia has had to call the police on Stachowiak over alleged violent threats and intimidation, he said. At the time of publication, Kemps campaign spokesperson had not replied to Al Jazeeras request for a comment. {articleGUID} With less than two weeks before US midterm elections, Kemp is polling neck and neck with Democratic challenger Stacey Abrams. In campaign ads, Kemp, a vocal supporter of President Donald Trump, joked about his willingness to round up criminal illegals in his big truck and bragged about owning guns. Posing with Stachowiak marks the latest in a spate of controversies marring Kemps campaign, including allegations that Kemp has engaged in voter suppression through his position as Georgias secretary of state. In the past, Stachowiak has called on the US military to bomb Mecca, urged people to open fire on Black Lives Matter (BLM) protesters and destroyed copies of the Quran in front of Georgia mosques. The Alabama-based Southern Poverty Law Center has described him as a long-time militia organiser. Stachowiak has also bragged about his guns. In an August 2016 YouTube video, he lifted a military-grade gun to the camera and held up a bullet with BLM written on it in black marker. Ill drop you like its hot, you little maggots, he said in the video. And by the way, Black Lives Matter are working with the Muslim Brotherhood. Uptick in anti-Muslim campaigning Earlier this week, the Muslim Advocates civil rights group released a report documenting at least 80 instances of political candidates using clear anti-Muslim rhetoric in 2017 and 2018. The vast majority of those incidents involved Republicans, and 64 percent of the listed candidates held office before or enjoyed a presidential endorsement. More than a third of the candidates included in the report alleged that Muslims are innately violent or pose a physical threat. {articleGUID} Although anti-Muslim movements have been growing for years, Scott Simpson, public advocacy director of Muslim Advocates, explained that Trumps election energised them. [Anti-Muslim] individuals are in power right now, and we see the outcome of that on a weekly basis, he told Al Jazeera by telephone. On Monday, Trump baselessly claimed that unknown Middle Easterners had embedded in a US-bound caravan of Central American refugees and migrants. The following day, the president defended his comments, but admitted that he had no evidence to substantiate the claim. Theres no proof of anything, but they could very well be, Trump told reporters at the White House. Throughout the ongoing midterm campaigning period, Republicans and right-wing Super PACs have attempted to link Democratic candidates to terrorism, in many cases evoking Islam and Muslims. CEO Sundar Pichai says 48 staff sacked since 2016 in response to Times report that said the firm shielded executives. Google has sacked at least 48 employees, including 13 senior managers, over sexual harassment since 2016, according to an email sent by chief executive Sundar Pichai on Thursday. The letter was in response to a New York Times report that said that the tech giant shielded a handful of executives. The New York Times report claimed that Andy Rubin, creator of the Android operating system that runs on a majority of the worlds smartphones, received a $90m exit package from Google as he was mired in multiple misconduct allegations. The article also alleges that Google has gone to great lengths to silence accusers. In recent years, weve made a number of changes, including taking an increasingly hard line on inappropriate conduct by people in positions of authority, Pichai said in the letter. Google CEO Sundar Pichai just sent out an email regarding the huge NYT story on Andy Rubin.https://t.co/1m1bJDq5K3 pic.twitter.com/azxs7rneCw Ryan Mac (@RMac18) October 25, 2018 The chief executive listed initiatives such as Respect@, an annual Internal Investigations Report and confidential channels to report misconduct. Pichai also said that none of the 48 dismissed employees received exit packages. The New York Times article cited a civil suit filed by Rubins ex-wife, Rie, that claimed he had self-proclaimed ownership over women during their marriage. A screenshot of an alleged email sent by Rubin to one of these women said You will be happy being taken care of Being owned is kinda like you are my property, and I can loan you to other people. one of the most unsettling details in this story: Andy Rubin's "ownership" relationships with women https://t.co/Tyx9eEGDrR pic.twitter.com/ed6StWaal4 erin griffith (@eringriffith) October 25, 2018 A spokesperson for Rubin has denied the allegations, the New York Times said. Google has faced other controversies in recent months, including reports the company was preparing to launch a censored search engine in China, named Project Dragonfly. An employee troubled by the development of Project Dragonfly reportedly leaked internal documents to the press. Over a thousand employees signed a letter condemning the plans. Google is the worlds most popular search engine and its parent company, Alphabet, is worth almost $1 trillion. Google famously had a Dont be evil clause in its code of conduct. That clause was removed either in late April or early May. Still more than a 1,500km from the US border, thousands of migrants and refugees continue to trek north. Tonala, Chiapas, Mexico Oscar Omar Nunez, a 37-year-old street vendor, said in Honduras you have to pay to work. Extortion and death threats make even the sidewalk business in some neighbourhoods dangerous and expensive, he said. Thats why Nunez along with his wife and their three children fled Honduras more than a week ago. It was difficult for us to get out of Honduras, he told Al Jazeera in Tonala, a town in the Mexican state of Chiapas. We left fleeing through our own lands, arriving through blind spots. The family travelled with one of Nunezs brothers, a sister, three nephews and his brother-in-law. They eventually caught up with an initial wave of thousands of US-bound Honduran refugees and migrants fleeing violence and unemployment. First we asked God to give us strength and to make it [to the US] to give our children better lives, he said. Weve got some years on us, but they are young and thinking of them first is what we have always done. There is no work in Honduras, and the insecurity and violence are overwhelming, according to Nunez. He knows it is not going to be easy to cross the one border left on their journey, but he, like many in the caravan, feel they have no other choice, even as US President Donald Trump ramps up his threats against the group. As the vast majority of Hondurans in southern Mexico set up camp in Pijijiapan, Tonala and Arriaga on Thursday night, news began to surface that the White House was considering using an executive order that would restrict the Honduran migrants and refugees from entering the US. The plan is under consideration, according to US media, who cited unnamed officials familiar with the proposal. {articleGUID} The Trump administration also reportedly requested the US military to deploy hundreds of troops to the US-Mexico border. The Wall Street Journal reported on Friday that Secretary of Defense James Mattis approved that request, though details about the number and role of the troops were not disclosed. Amid the threats from the US, Mexico and Central American countries have fortified their borders and put up additional roadblocks on the routes the migrants and refugees normally take. Nothing new Honduran human rights activist Yessica Trinidad told Al Jazeera that the reactions to Hondurans fleeing en masse by the US and regional governments are misleading and overblown. Hundreds of Central Americans, including Hondurans, leave their countries to head to the US every single day, she said in a telephone interview. {articleGUID} This is not anything new. It is something that has been going on because the government of Honduras has not fulfilled one of its main responsibilities, which is that the people of Honduras live in conditions with dignity, said Trinidad, coordinator of the Honduran Network of Women Human Rights Defenders. What is happening now and what creates such an impact is the quantity of people altogether, she said. Smaller groups of Honduran migrants and refugees continue to travel through Guatemala, but an estimated 7,000 are already in Mexico, heading north through the state of Chiapas. A Honduran laces up a donated pair of shoes in Tonala, Mexico. His old ones are worn out from nearly two weeks of walking [Sandra Cuffe/Al Jazeera] There were piles of clothing on tables around the gazebo in the Tonala central plaza, water was across the street in front of the municipal office building, nurses and other Chiapas state health workers had set up. Municipal police had cordoned off two blocks of the street between the town plaza and municipal government building. Since four days ago, we have been preparing everything, said Eduardo Thomas Gordillo, second in command of the Tonala volunteer firefighters. He paused for a few seconds as a woman on a loudspeaker, told the groups there that a clown show for children would be starting soon. She added later that men could line up behind the gazebo for free haircuts. {articleGUID} The truth is it is sad to see that people have to leave their homes and families to seek well-being. As firefighters we have always supported the lives of people. We do this wholeheartedly, Gordillo tells Al Jazeera. Some Hondurans rested under tarps set up in green spaces in the Tonala plaza, and others ate food prepared by volunteers. Nunezs 13-year-old son played with his five-year-old brother and other kids rode one of two little merry-go-rounds at one edge of the plaza. A long journey There are only two international borders between Honduras and Mexico, but Nunez and his family had to make three border crossings to get here. Al Jazeera first met the family last week in Esquipulas, Guatemala after they had crossed into Guatemala for the second time. Before then, they had made it by bus and on foot to the Agua Caliente border, the main crossing between Honduras and Guatemala. There, Honduran police blocked Hondurans hoping to join the caravan, so Nunez and his family hiked around it. They were stopped by Guatemalan authorities the next day, however, and were taken back to Honduras. {articleGUID} Preventing people from leaving their own country and by informally deporting people whose lives may be at risk at home are both violations of international law, Amnesty International researcher Madeleine Penman told Al Jazeera earlier this week. Nunez and his family hiked around the Agua Caliente crossing into Guatemala through the bush for the second time. Then, travelling through Guatemala with more than 1,000 people, they were able to make it through checkpoints. Like thousands of others, Nunez and his family took rafts to cross the Suchiate River into Mexico, eventually catching up with the initial wave of the caravan earlier this week. Families with small children get truck rides in Tonala to meet up with the thousands more Honduran migrants and refugees 25km further along up the highway [Sandra Cuffe/Al Jazeera] The family is still more than 1,500km from the US border, and they, like many in the group, have only heard bits and pieces of the news about how Trump plans to stop them. Nunez dismissed Trumps remarks about Middle Easterners and criminals infiltrating the caravan. Everyone here on the ground knows that is not true, he said. For now, though, they are grateful to the people of Guatemala and Mexico, Nunez said, adding that in every place we pass, people do everything possible to help us. On Friday morning, the Nunez family, along with hundreds who spent the night in Tonala, lined up to get into trucks to take them 25km up the highway to Arriaga, where thousands will spend the night. Thank you Tonala! Hondurans shout out from the back of a truck, waving as they take off to their next stop. Hatice Cengiz speaks to Turkish TV and calls for punishment for all involved in his savage murder. The fiancee of Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi has called for those responsible for his murder to be brought to justice, adding that she declined an invitation by US President Donald Trump to visit the White House. Hatice Cengiz, a Turkish national, made the comments in an emotional interview with broadcaster Haberturk on Friday, her first TV appearance since Khashoggis killing inside the kingdoms consulate in Istanbul more than three weeks ago. I demand that all those involved in this savagery from the highest to the lowest levels are punished and brought to justice, she said. Khashoggi, a Washington Post columnist and critic of Saudi Arabias government, walked into the main entrance of the Saudi consulate at 1:14pm on October 2 to obtain paperwork for his upcoming marriage. Cengiz said she waited outside the consulate for Khashoggi for more than 10 hours. But he never re-emerged. Saudi Arabia denied any knowledge of Khashoggis fate for more than two weeks, before claiming he was killed accidentally in a fight at the consulate. On Thursday, officials changed the kingdoms account again, saying the murder appears to have been premeditated. Khashoggis killing has spiralled into a major crisis for Saudi Arabia and its powerful Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, with the kingdoms shifting narrative being met with scepticism in Turkey and other parts of the world. Amid increasing international demands for accountability, Trump has vowed severe punishment if the Saudi government was found to be involved in the killing. He also said Saudi authorities had staged the worst cover-up ever over the case. In her interview with the Turkish broadcaster, Cengiz said Trump has invited her to visit the White House but said she would not go until the US was sincere in its efforts to uncover the truth behind Khashoggis killing. Referring to Trumps invitation, she said: I perceived it as a statement to win public favour. Darkness I cannot express Cengiz broke down in tears more than once as she spoke about Khashoggi, whom she described as a patriot. I found myself in a darkness I cannot express, she said, describing the aftermath of Khashoggis disappearance and death. She told Haberturk she never would have let Khashoggi enter the consulate if she had thought that Saudi authorities would hatch a plot to kill him. Khashoggi was not worried as he entered the building on October 2, she said, because he was treated well during a first visit to the consulate on September 28. He also assumed Saudi authorities would not give him problems or arrest him in Turkey, she said. His local network in Turkey was very good, as you know, his political network as well, Cengiz told Haberturk. He thought Turkey is a safe country and if he would be held or interrogated, this issue would be swiftly solved. She said that she had not been contacted by Saudi officials and added she was unlikely to go to Saudi Arabia for a possible funeral if Khashoggis missing body is found. {articleGUID} Al Jazeeras Charles Stratford, reporting from Istanbul, said Cengizs interview could be part of Turkeys very well-choreographed effort to put more pressure on the Saudis. Her account suggested a plan had been put in place to lure him back to the embassy, he added. Cengizs television appearance came hours after Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan announced the Saudi chief prosecutor will visit Istanbul on Sunday as part of the investigation into Khashoggis death. Speaking in Ankara, Erdogan, who has so far stopped short of directly blaming the Saudi government, called on Riyadh to reveal who ordered the killing and the whereabouts of Khashoggis body. He also said Turkey has other information and evidence about the killing, which it will release when the time is right. As probe into journalists killing progresses, Erdogan ramps up pressure on Riyadh and says Turkey has more evidence. Turkey has ramped up pressure on Saudi Arabia over the murder of Jamal Khashoggi, demanding Riyadh reveal who gave the order to kill the journalist in the kingdoms consulate in Istanbul. If you are determined to lift this shroud of mystery, then this is the key point of our collaboration, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan said in a speech on Friday in the capital Ankara. Addressing provincial members of his Justice and Development Party (AK Party), the president said Turkish authorities have gathered more evidence, which will be made public when the time comes. He added that he suspected Khashoggis killer is among the 18 men arrested by Saudi Arabia in connection to the case and called on the kingdoms authorities to identify the local collaborator whom they say disposed of the journalists body. These 18 people know who killed Khashoggi. There is no other explanation for this. Because the perpetrator is among them. If the perpetrator is not among them, then who is the local collaborator? Erdogan asked. You have to announce it, he added. Erdogan branded the kingdoms various explanations for Khashoggis disappearance and death as childish statements do not go hand in hand with statesmanship or seriousness of a state. He also said the Saudi public prosecutor will arrive in Istanbul on Sunday and meet Turkish investigators. Harsher tone Khashoggi, 59, a Washington Post columnist and critic of Saudi Arabias Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman (MBS) vanished after entering the Saudi consulate in Istanbul on October 2. On October 20, after more than two weeks of denials, the kingdom finally confirmed Khashoggis death on October 2, claiming he had died in a fistfight. In his first major speech on the case earlier this week, Erdogan called Khashoggi the victim of a vicious murder and called for an independent international probe into the incident. He also referred to Saudi King Salman respectfully but did not refer directly to MBS by name. {articleGUID} According to Mehmet Celik, a journalist from the pro-government English language newspaper Daily Sabah, Erdogan appeared to harden his tone with his latest remarks. I think the [tone] and the language he used was significant in todays speech; he was definitely harsher, Celik told Al Jazeera. He said the explanations made so far by Saudi Arabia were childish and he demanded more concrete and consistent answers, added Celik. Sinan Ciddi, executive director at the Institute of Turkish Studies at Georgetown University, told Al Jazeera Erdogan is attempting to not only raise Turkeys profile vis-a-vis Saudi Arabia but also to recast Ankaras deteriorating relations with its international allies. Hes showing partners that there might be problems in Turkey, but that at least Turkey is not Saudi Arabia. Ciddi said Erdogan has adopted a more careful approach compared with how he has handled other foreign policy issues in the past. Ahead of the Turkish presidential elections, Erdogan took a very aggressive stance versus Europe and that backfired for him, Ciddi said, referring to Turkeys strained relations with major European countries. This time he has been more cautious. For example, he has said that the Turks have more evidence but hasnt put the actual evidence out there yet. That would really annoy the Saudis, so he hasnt done that. As a result of Erdogans handling, Ciddi noted, Turkey appears to have emerged stronger from the crisis and is being taken more seriously at the international level. This is really a gift that landed in his lap. Erdogans speech came a day after several vigils were held around the world to commemorate the slain journalist. Members of the Jamal Khashoggi Friends Association gathered outside the Saudi consulate in Istanbul and said they would do anything to uncover the truth behind the killing. On this occasion, and from this place where the spirit of Jamal has been lost, we clearly state that we will not accept compromises in the case of his murder, and that we will not keep silent on any attempt to evade any criminal from accountability and punishment, the group said. With reporting by Yarno Ritzen in Istanbul Search and rescue efforts continue in the Dead Sea area after flash floods swept away scores of people on Thursday. The death toll from flash floods in Jordans Dead Sea area has risen to at least 21, according to the countrys civil defence, as search and rescue operations continued for a second day. The victims were mostly schoolchildren from the capital, Amman, who were visiting the area on a field trip, Petra news agency reported on Friday. They were swept away when a heavy downpour on Thursday sent flash floods towards the area where the students and other picnickers were sitting. At least 35 people were injured and a nearby bridge also collapsed, according to local media reports. Jordanian civil defence said in a statement that some people are still unaccounted for, raising fears that the death toll could rise. Doctor Mahmoud Zureigat, general manager of al-Basheer public hospital in Amman where the victims were transported, said the dead arrived with severe injuries to their bodies. Though the final cause of death was drowning, all of the victims however suffered from broken bones and other injuries because they were hit by huge boulders as they were being swept away by the flash flood, he told Al Jazeera. Zureigat said almost all of the dead have been claimed by their families. Jordanian Prime Minister Omar al-Razzaz was on the scene to oversee the rescue mission on Friday. He said he would form a fact-finding committee to investigate the circumstances of the deaths, according to Petra. For his part, King Abdullah II cancelled a trip to Bahrain to follow the rescue operations, ordered flags to be lowered to half-mast and announced a three-day mourning period. The king expressed his anger and great sadness in a Twitter post on Friday and promised to hold those responsible to account. My sorrow and pain are severe and great, and I am only as angry with all those who failed to take action that could have prevented this painful incident, he said. I console Jordan and myself for losing members of my large family. The pain and suffering of every family is my own pain and suffering as well. We belong to God and to him we return. . . (@KingAbdullahII) October 26, 2018 Accountability On the day of the schools field trip, Jordans national weather and government agencies had issued severe weather warnings. Jordanian schools must submit detailed plans of their intended field trips and obtain the Ministry of Educations approval before going on a trip. Education Minister Azmi Mahaftha said the private school Amman-based Victoria College was responsible, not his ministry, for providing wrong information on their field trip application, according to local media reports. Meanwhile, several people from the area where the floods hit told Al Jazeera that they had repeatedly complained about the bridge that collapsed to the Ministry of Public Works and Housing. They said that no action had been nor had the bridge been inspected. Hasan al-Ghwairi, a local resident, said the bridge and the roads in the area were in poor condition. Despite our protests and asking for repairs, the government never paid attention to us, he said. Al Jazeera contacted the Jordanian government for comment but did not receive a response prior to publication. We will investigate this tragic incident and hold those responsible to account and bring them to justice if found responsible, Ghazi al-Hawamleh, a member of parliament from the southern city of Tafelieh, told Al Jazeera. He added that there must be accountability for anyone found to be responsible for the bridges collapse, which could include the construction contractor and the minister of public works, who would have authorised the construction. Jordanians took to social media to express condolences to the families of the victims while criticising the government for poor infrastructure in the country and a lack of accountability. Follow Ali Younes on Twitter: @ali_reports President-elect Lopez Obrador says he will go by what people decide but scrapping the project would cost billions. An earlier version of this story incorrectly stated the estimated cost of the NAIM proyect as $13bn. The most recent estimate is $14.5bn. Mexicos President-elect Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador has said the fate of a controversial new airport in the countrys capital will be decided by voters in a popular consultation that began on Thursday. The president-elect, popularly known as AMLO, made the future of the already under construction airport one of the key issues of his campaign, describing it as a waste of taxpayers money. The 64-year-old leader, who succeeds Enrique Pena Nieto on December 1, has also criticised the environmental impact of the project that is estimated to cost more than $14.5bn. The new airport is a bottomless pit rife with corruption, he said during the presidential election campaign. But the vote, whose results are expected on Sunday, has put the president-elect on a collision course with the business sector and rival politicians, particularly from the outgoing Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI) party. Business leaders and many analysts say the country needs to replace the capital Mexico Citys current airport which, according to them, is ageing and overstretched. It is essential to build this new airport, Jorge Triana, a Mexican politician affiliated with the National Action Party (PAN), told Al Jazeera. [Mexico City] holds a strategic position between the Atlantic and the Pacific, and this means we can be a strategic connection point which eventually will lead to investments and economic growth. Our current airport is saturated, he added. Once completed, the airport will be able to handle 125 million passengers annually, making it the second-largest airport in the world, according to the outgoing government of Pena Nieto. Obrador threatened to cancel the project as part of his promise to crack down on public waste and improve Mexicos finances, but after he won the election he proposed a referendum to decide the fate of the project. All Mexicans will decide, there will be a public consultation, transparent and honest, to reflect the feeling of most Mexicans, and that result will be binding, Obrador said in August. Javier Jimenez, the incoming transportation minister, said there would be two choices in the referendum, to continue the project or cancel it. If people vote to continue it, the government could resort to a mix of public and private financing to save taxpayers money. But if people vote to cancel it, the government would continue to use the existing airport and repurpose an old military airbase in Santa Lucia south of the capital. I believe the option in Santa Lucia is the most feasible one, Armando Vazques Pliego, a Mexican pilot, told Al Jazeera. Pliego said that Mexico could operate without a new airport if Santa Lucia were developed. I believe not all options are being rightly assessed, and the negative economic and ecological impact are not being rightly considered, he said, referring to the environmental impact of the new airport. It was not until 2014 that current President Pena Nieto put the airport back on the agenda [Miguel Tovar/AP photo] An old idea The proposal for an airport in Mexico City was first announced in 2001. Vicente Fox, Mexicos president between 2000 and 2006, tried to acquire land for the proposed airport but the plan did not take off due to farmer protests. It was not until 2014 that current President Pena Nieto put the airport back on the agenda. Carlos Slim, Mexicos richest person, is the main investor in the controversial project, which is expected to be completed by 2020. Slims construction firm CICSA was awarded the $4.7bn contract to build the terminal in consortium with six other companies. Supporters of the project argue that it will bring jobs to the capitals poor eastern districts [File: Miguel Tovar/AP Photo] But supporters of the project argue that it will attract investors and bring jobs to the capitals eastern districts. And if the president-elect decides not to continue, analysts believe he will scare investors the very people that Mexico needs for creating jobs. This is one of the biggest projects the country has had in decades, Victor Alvarado Martinez, a Mexican economist, told Al Jazeera. But as an economist, I have to say the cost of cancelling right now is really high, a radical change in this project that has already started would concern the investors. And that would directly affect our economy, particularly our exchange rate. This is not a risk we should take, Martinez added. But those against the project argue that the rich biodiversity of the area, which attracts tens of thousands of migratory birds annually, would be destroyed. The new airport has been criticised by ecologists because there is an artificial lake with hundreds of thousands of birds. Some of them, the ducks, were dangerous for the aeroplanes and they were expelled by reducing the water level, Professor Bernardo Bolanos, based in Mexico City, told Al Jazeera. The controversy over the project has divided Mexicans and caused a war of words between Slim and AMLO. During the campaign period, Slim said AMLO would stop the development of the country, while the leftist leader dubbed the airport as a symbol of waste and corruption. But Obrador softened his stance after his election victory in July. The airport, which is about one-third completed, will cost billions of dollars if the new government decides to scrap it. The consultation process is a preview of the democracy that the president-elect is envisioning for his administration. But Triana from PAN believes Obrador is setting a dangerous precedent. Asma Jahangir, Rebeca Gyumi, Joenia Wapichana and Front Line Defenders honoured by the UN for promoting human rights. The United Nations has hailed the inspiring work of four individuals and organisations as it announced the winners of its Prize in the Field of Human Rights for 2018. The honour was given on Friday to Asma Jahangir, the late Pakistani lawyer and leading human rights defender, along with Tanzanian activist Rebeca Gyumi, Brazils first indigenous lawyer Joenia Wapichana and Irish human rights groups Front Line Defenders. Today I announced the 2018 winners of the UN Human Rights Prize, Maria Fernanda Espinosa, UN General Assembly president, wrote on Twitter. I am proud to recognise the contributions of individuals and organisations that promote and protect human rights. Your work is an inspiration to us all, she said. Today I announced the 2018 winners of the @UN Human Rights Prize. I am proud to recognise the contributions of individuals & organizations that promote & protect human rights @RebecaGyumi @Asma_Jahangir Joenia Wapichana @FrontLineHRD Your work is an inspiration to us all #UN4ALL UN GA President (@UN_PGA) October 25, 2018 Jahangir is the fourth Pakistani woman to receive the prestigious award, which recognises individuals or organisations for outstanding achievements in the field of human rights and is given every five years. Past winners include Mauritanias Biram Dah Abeid, Finlands Liisa Kauppinen, Khadija Ryadi of Morocco, Pakistans Malala Yousafzai and the Supreme Court of Justice of Mexico. This years award ceremony will be held at the UN headquarters in New York on Human Rights Day, which is marked globally on December 10. Find out more about this years winners below. Asma Jahangir Known for her persistence on advocating for issues such as womens rights and discrimination against minorities, Jahangir was the first woman to serve as president of the Supreme Court Bar Association of Pakistan. Critical of Pakistans military, intelligence and armed groups, she braved death threats, imprisonment and beatings as she worked tirelessly to protect human rights. Jahangir helped bonded labourers get legislation passed through parliament and worked on blasphemy cases. People worldwide reacted to the news of her death in February, with UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres saying the world had lost a human rights giant. Thousands of people attended her funeral in the eastern city of Lahore. Rebeca Gyumi Gyumi is the founder of the Msichana Initiative in Tanzania, a local NGO that advocates for girls right to education. A lawyer by profession, Gyumi won a landmark case in 2016 on child marriages after petitioning against the 1971 Tanzania Marriage Act which allowed girls as young as 14 to get married. For her work on girls rights, the 31-year-old won the UNICEF Global Goals Award in 2016 and was named Woman of the Year by New African Women magazine. Joenia Wapichana Wapichana is a 43-year-old indigenous lawyer from northern Brazil [PhotoCourtesy of Joenia Wapichana campaign] In Brazils elections earlier this month, Wapichana became the first indigenous woman to be elected to the Congress. Ten years ago, she was the first indigenous lawyer to speak in front of the Supreme Federal Court and more than a decade before that she became the first indigenous person to graduate from law school in the country. Im very happy to be answering the call of all the indigenous people who yearn to have their rights represented in Congress, she told Al Jazeera just after winning her seat. People had the hope to believe we can create positive change, that we can have a voice there to represent our rights. Front Line Defenders Ireland-based charity Front Line Defenders provides support to human rights defenders whose lives and health are at risk through advocacy, grants, security and training. The group was founded in Irelands capital, Dublin, in 2001. We are hugely honoured to receive this prize, Executive Director Andrew Anderson said. Front Line Defenders dedicates this prize to human rights defenders at risk around the world, who struggle every day to advance and defend the rights for their communities, the group said in a statement. UN special rapporteur says those who orchestrated Khashoggis murder represent the Saudi state. The United Nations special rapporteur on extrajudicial, summary or arbitrary executions said the killing of Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi bears the hallmark of an extrajudicial execution, and those who orchestrated his murder are high enough to represent the state. What we know is sufficient to suggest very strongly that Mr Khashoggi was the victim of an extrajudicial execution, Agnes Callamard told Al Jazeera. Khashoggi, 59, a Washington Post columnist and critic Saudi Arabias powerful Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman (also known as MBS) vanished after entering the Saudi consulate in Istanbul on October 2. After weeks of denials, the kingdom finally confirmed Khashoggis death on October 20, claiming he died in a fistfight. The claim sparked global outrage which has since mushroomed into a crisis for the worlds top oil exporter. First, we know that killing was in the consulate, which is representative of the state of Saudi Arabia, Callamard said. Second, the individuals present at the time of the disappearance and the alleged killing were representatives of the state. Subsequently, over the last few days at least, Saudi authorities have recognised individuals at the highest levels of the structures of authority of being involved in the disappearance and the killing. All of these elements indicate that the disappearance and now killing of Jamal Khashoggi bear the hallmark of an extrajudicial execution. So far, Saudi authorities have arrested 18 people in connection with the killing and fired top security officials considered close to MBS. The young crown prince has denied having knowledge of the alleged assassination mission and on Wednesday promised to bring those responsible to justice. Callamard added: it will now be up to a thorough, impartial investigation to determine how far up this goes and who was the ultimate decision-maker. But we have enough right now to determine that the government of Saudi Arabia is responsible and is implicated. Faisal Fahad, a Saudi representative at the UN, said Callamard had overstepped her remit with her comments. My delegation would like to denounce the statement by the special rapporteur. We call on her not to exceed her mandate on extrajudicial executions. Kindly do not give us any personal opinions in this official meeting, said Fahad. Worst cover-up ever For the past three weeks, pro-government Turkish media have been publishing leaked information on the investigation and details of alleged recordings of the murder. The reports have claimed Khashoggi was tortured and killed by a 15-member hit squad from Saudi Arabia. The Turkish government has so far declined to elaborate on the alleged audio recordings, but on Wednesday, the Washington Post reported that CIA Director Gina Haspel had listened to them. The paper cited an unnamed source as calling the audio evidence compelling, adding that it could put further pressure on the US to hold Saudi Arabia accountable for Khashoggis death. While the Trump administration had initially defended the kingdoms explanation for how Khashoggi was killed, on Tuesday, US President Donald Trump said Saudi authorities had staged the worst cover-up ever. Asked by a reporter in the White House how the Khashoggi killing could have happened, Trump said: They had a very bad original concept. It was carried out poorly, and the cover-up was one of the worst in the history of cover-ups. There should have never been an execution or a cover-up, because it should have never happened. I would say it was a total fiasco from day one. Saudis do not have a blank check However, the US president has implied that Washington has little obligation to investigate the incident, emphasising that Khashoggi was not a US citizen. Trump has also insisted that killing will not interfere with US arms sales to Saudi Arabia, citing a $110bn deal with Riyadh he announced last year. Meanwhile, in an op-ed for the New York Times, US Senator Bernie Sanders urged Congress to redefine Washingtons relationship with Riyadh, saying it was time to show that the Saudis do not have a blank cheque to continue violating human rights. One place we can start is by ending United States support for the war in Yemen, Sanders wrote. The US is deeply engaged in this war. We are providing bombs the Saudi-led coalition is using, we are refueling their planes before they drop those bombs, and we are assisting with intelligence. I very much hope that Congress will act, that we will finally take seriously our congressional duty, end our support for the carnage in Yemen, and send the message that human lives are worth more than profits for arms manufacturers. Failure to intercept a tonne of drugs prompts Philippines leader to order restaffing of customs office. Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte removed all top customs bureau officials, including the chief, a day after the agency failed to intercept more than a tonne of drugs. Duterte said on Thursday that Customs Commissioner Isidro Lapena would be reassigned to the role of the director general of Technical Education and Skills Development Authority a government training agency in the Philippines. According to local media, he described the transfer as a promotion. The commissioners are out, the department heads are out, he said during a speech at a ceremony commemorating the founding of the coastguard. Duterte announced he was appointing Rey Guerrero, a retired army general who is currently the administrator of Maritime Industry Authority, to take over the bureau and soldiers and members of the coastguard would help him. I know that you [Guerrero] are reluctant to I know that youre happy there [in Marina] and you are contented, so Ive heard, but the demands of public service and the need for honest men requires your presence there. Good luck, he said, according to Rappler, a Filipino news site. Surprise new posting Lapena, who was at the ceremony, expressed surprise by his removal but thanked Duterte for his new posting. The retired police general has been under pressure since customs authorities failed to detect a shipment estimated at more than a tonne of methamphetamines being smuggled into the country in July. Drug enforcement agents later found traces of the drugs in the containers in which they were smuggled, but the drugs were gone. Duterte did not refer to that case on Thursday. The previous head of the customs bureau was removed after a huge amount of drugs were smuggled into the country in May last year. Duterte has made a bloody fight against drugs the centrepiece of his administration since he won a presidential election in 2016. Thousands of people have been killed in the crackdown. Nalaka De Silva, who was accused of plotting to assassinate the president, arrested after five days of questioning. A top Sri Lankan police official was arrested on Thursday over a suspected plot to assassinate President Maithripala Sirisena, according to a police spokesman. The Criminal Investigation Division of police today arrested Nalaka De Silva after five days of questioning him, police spokesman Ruwan Gunasekara said. He added that Silva was accused of plotting to kill the president, several senior police officials and a former defence secretary. The alleged plot briefly threatened to cause tension between Sri Lanka and India, after an Indian newspaper reported that Sirisena had accused Indias intelligence services of involvement. New Dehli and Colombo have both denied the claim. Silva will be held until November 7, on magistrates orders. He was arrested after a police informant made the allegations against Silva in a news conference. Investigators say they are seeking access to deleted data from the informants mobile phone with the help of Chinese telecommunications company Huawei after a court granted permission to request the companys help. A Huawei spokesman told Reuters news agency that the company had received no such request from Sri Lanka and Silvas lawyers were not immediately available for comment. Sacked PM Ranil Wickremesinghe says presidents decision to replace him with Mahinda Rajapaksa is unconstitutional. Former Sri Lankan President Mahinda Rajapaksa has been sworn in as prime minister after the countrys president sacked incumbent Ranil Wickremesinghe, in a surprise move that threatens political turmoil in the Indian Ocean nation. The appointment was confirmed in a statement from President Maithripala Sirisenas office on Friday, but Wickremesinghe later insisted he remained the prime minister. I retain the confidence of the house. I am the prime minister and I have the majority, Wickremesinghe told local media. According to the constitution, Im the prime minister. That [removal] is not legal. Sirisena, who was health minister under Rajapaksa from 2010 to 2014, joined forces with Wickremesinghe to defeat the former president in elections in January 2015. He was elected president largely thanks to the backing of Wickremesinghes United National Party (UNP). But earlier on Friday, Sirisensas United Peoples Freedom Alliance (UPFA) said it would quit the ruling coalition. The developments bring an end to a coalition government that was formed more than three years ago on promises of economic reform and accountability for alleged atrocities committed during Rajapaksas 10-year rule at the close of Sri Lankas bloody civil war. Instability and uncertainty Al Jazeeras Minelle Fernandez, reporting from Colombo, said Rajapaksas shock appointment has brought uncertainty to Sri Lanka amid questions whether the president has the power to dismiss the prime minister. There was no inkling that this might happen. It was only after the swearing-in that we started seeing videos and pictures of the ceremony, she said. Mangala Samaraweera, the finance minister of the outgoing government, argued that Rajapaksas appointment was a violation of the constitution, which was amended in 2015 to curtail the presidents powers. This is an anti-democratic coup, Samaraweera wrote on Twitter. Ultimately, the question of who remained prime minister was up to parliament, analysts said. This has to be resolved on the floor of the parliament, said Gehan Gunatilleke, a human rights lawyer. The important question here is whether the prime minister enjoys the confidence of the parliament, he told Al Jazeera. We hope parliament reconvenes as soon as possible. Now this happened late on a Friday evening. And there is a sense this was timed so the [Sirisena-bloc] gets a few days before parliament reconvenes to get the required numbers. {articleGUID} Paikiasothy Saravanamuttu, executive director at the Centre for Policy Alternatives, a Colombo-based think-tank, said Rajapaksa would not have made the decision if he did not have the numbers. We are in a bit of a grey area at the moment. Until a new government is sworn in, there will be a certain amount of instability and uncertainty, he told Al Jazeera. Mahinda Amaraweera, a presidential aide, told The Associated Press news agency that Rajapaksa has the majority needed in the 225-member parliament to run a stable government. Strained relations Relations between Sirisena and Wickremesinghe have soured since their parties suffered humiliating losses to Rajapaksas party in Februarys local council elections. The two have disagreed over economic policy and day-to-day administration of the government. Last week, they reportedly clashed during a cabinet session over plans to lease a container terminal to neighbouring India. Ranil Wickremesinghe said his sacking by Sirisena was unconstitutional [File: Dinuka Liyanawatte/ Reuters] Earlier this year, Sirisena reneged on a pledge not to run for re-election, sparking tensions with Wickremesinghe who is believed to have his own presidential ambitions. Sirisena is also thought to be behind a failed attempt to impeach Wickremesinghe in April when 122 legislators in the 225-member parliament voted to back the now-sacked prime minister. The ruling coalition has been further strained in recent days by strong criticism from Sirisena and his allies that ministers from Wickremesinghes party did not act properly in investigating an alleged assassination plot against the president and former Defence Secretary Gotabaya Rajapaksa, the new prime ministers younger brother. Rajapaksa, who served as president from 2005 to 2015, put down the decades-old Tamil Tiger separatist struggle in May 2009 through a military assault that killed up to 40,000 ethnic Tamil civilians, according to rights groups. His government was also accused of corruption and murdering political opponents. Sirisena had pledged accountability for war atrocities but has faced international criticism for being slow to deliver on justice. International rights groups have called for the prosecution of both the military and the Tigers, who were notorious for suicide bombings and enlisting child soldiers. Zaheena Rasheed contributed to this report. A political earthquake is shaking Brazil, and its young democracy is at stake. Brazil heads to the polls on Sunday to decide the countrys next president. The two candidates in the presidential runoff are very different: Fernando Haddad is a soft-spoken former academic from the powerful but discredited left-wing Workers Party. He campaigned on the fumes of jailed former President Luis Inacio Lula da Silvas popularity and is trailing behind far-right firebrand Jair Bolsonaro. Bolsonaro is where this election gets interesting, and some even say scary. His entourage is packed with the countrys military, and he has promised a purge of left-wing politics. The election comes during the countrys worst-ever recession, and at a time where crime and unemployment rates are soaring. Theres a lot at stake, and supporters on both sides are frustrated. Yet, one thing is clear: Brazil wants change. In a new episode of The Take, host Imtiaz Tyab breaks down the elections with Al Jazeeras Latin America editor Lucia Newman. Hundreds of candidates in Brazil election accused of corruption Campaigning before Brazil runoff vote marred by violence More on Brazils 2018 Elections The Team: Kyana Moghadam produced this episode. She had production help from Morgan Waters, Jasmin Bauomy, Jordan Marie Bailey, and host Imtiaz Tyab. The sound designer was Ian Coss. Graelyn Brashear is the shows lead producer. Subscribe to The Take New episodes of the show come out every Friday. Subscribe to the The Take on Apple Podcasts, Google Play, or wherever you listen. Follow The Take Twitter at @thetake_pod or on the shows Facebook page. Wednesday, Vice President Mike Pence spoke at a rally and told us to get on our knees and pray for the upcoming election. And then turn out to vote. It was a rally in Lititz, Pennsylvania for Congressmen Scott Perry and Lloyd Smucker, with senatorial candidate Lou Barletta. I brought my kids. They are too young to vote, but old enough to boo at the mention of Nancy Pelosi, and they are old enough to pray, which is what Mike Pence asked us to do. It isn't the first time he told me to pray. In 2005 my marriage was falling apart; I attended a weekend men's event at my church in Springfield, Virginia, where I met then-Congressman Pence. He was a leader in the men's movement at church, and he told me to pray with my wife every single day, no matter what. He said it was one of the transformative things he had done in his marriage. I started doing it, and 14 years later we are still praying together every day. Mike Pence didn't single-handedly save my marriage, but we were headed for divorce when he told me that, and things have been better every day since then, and that conversation was the turning point. But then he told us to pray for the country, our elections, and our future on Wednesday. And then vote. Friends dont let friends vote alone, he said. He is right. We need to pray, and we need to turn out a lot of voters. This midterm election is going to be an important one. Representative Scott Perry, who introduced Pence at the rally, was forced into a new congressional district earlier this year by the Pennsylvania Supreme Court. The new district is vastly different from the one he has represented for the past six years, and although he has to campaign in the new district, he still has to maintain his offices and represent the old one for the time being. No, the Pennsylvania Supreme Court is not allowed to just create a new electoral map whenever they want, any way they want. But that is what they did, to the severe detriment of Scott Perry and several other Republicans around the state. Perry served in the United States Army for over thirty years, starting as a private and reaching the rank of Brigadier General. He is a master aviator and flew 44 combat missions in Iraq. On September 11, 2016 our church invited him to speak and pray for our country. He led us in prayer, and told us that he prays with his wife and kids daily. He is honorable and he cares about his community. He calls himself a Christian, and he acts like it. Mike Pence said his only regret is that he became Governor of Indiana at the same time Perry became a congressman, so their terms never overlapped. Perry's opponent is a socialist Democrat named George Scott, who I have met several times during community meetings among pastors. He and I are both pastors in the same region, but he is pro-abortion, anti-marriage, anti-gun, and he never met a tax he didn't want to raise. The new voting district means the seat is basically open, and socialist George Scott is running very close in the polls. Naturally, his campaign is attracting Democrat money from all over the place, and he is lying about Scott Perry virtually every day. Socialist George Scott may be a pastor, but he is campaigning like a Democrat. Perry has had to resort to posting daily Facebook videos to correct the lies. Everywhere I go people ask me how a pastor can support the things George Scott supports and say the things he says. I have no answer for them except the answer Mike Pence gives. We need to pray, and we need to get out the vote. Pennsylvania Senatorial Candidate Lou Barletta was also in attendance. I met him a few times in 2000 and 2001 when he was starting out as the mayor of Hazleton, PA. He is a good man, a faithful Catholic, and he has never shied away from saying and doing what is right, without regard for what anyone else will say. His campaign signs are all blue with just his first name, "LOU," in all caps. Lou is a household name in Pennsylvania, but so is his opponent, Bob Casey, Jr., the son of late Governor Bob Casey, Sr. The elder Casey was one of the last pro-gun and pro-life Democrats in the country. Casey, Jr. is not. He is a lock-step leftist picking up votes based on his fathers name alone. When he entered politics he claimed to be a good pro-life Catholic like his father and a Second Amendment supporter. Reality has been quite different. NARAL-Pro-Choice America gives him a grade of 100% for abortion. A good rule of thumb is that if NARAL thinks you are a good Catholic, you arent. On gun control, taxes, open borders and sanctuary cities he is always in favor of more. In politics this is known as "Flip Flopping." To everyone else it is called "Lying to get a job." We need to pray. And we need to get out the vote. In the morning, before the big rally, I also attended a local chamber of commerce meeting with the two men running for our local Pennsylvania 193rd District. They are my friend Torren Ecker and a Democrat named Matt Nelson. Ecker won his four-way Republican primary by a single vote earlier this year, and says it was extremely humbling. Every single vote counts, and nothing can be taken for granted. I am glad to know Torren Ecker and will be happy to vote for him. He is a hard-working family man with well-behaved kids, a gracious wife, and serves in his church. He has surrounded himself with good people working on his campaign and shows up at virtually every community event just to help. His opponent seems to be a decent and humble man too, but in our local district the only way to win is to sound like a conservative. Torren Ecker is an actual conservative, while his opponent tries to sound like one. I have nothing against him in person, but it was evident that he was out of his element. Perhaps having been burned by Bob Casey Jr. in the past, one of the Chamber of Commerce members called him out for it, directly. "Why are you are talking like a conservative, He said, when you are a Democrat?" Nelsons answer started off with the words "Ahh, well, the thing is, actually..." We need to pray. And we need to get out the vote. Do not vote alone. Photo: YouTube screen grab T.S. Weidler is a pastor who is passionate about teaching the Bible and serving the community of York Springs, Pennsylvania. Senator Bernie Sanders, in keeping with his socialist proclivities, wants single-payer government run healthcare for everyone. As he describes it on his website, Health care must be recognized as a right, not a privilege. Every man, woman and child in our country should be able to access the health care they need regardless of their income. The only long-term solution to America's health care crisis is a single-payer national health care program. It all sounds great. Everyone should also live in a nice house, drive a late model car with all of the recent safety features, and receive an Ivy League education. Unfortunately, economics gets in the way through cost and the relentless operation of the law of supply and demand. Since Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer claimed that that healthcare would define next months midterms, its worth revisiting the Democrats plan. Bernies plan is not new. It was first introduced into Congress in 2003 by former Democrat Congressman John Conyers, who resigned in disgrace last year over multiple sexual harassment allegations. Since then Medicare-for-all has been sitting in a desk drawer waiting for the optimal political opportunity to be resurrected. Its been proposed or threatened in the intervening years but never seriously on a national level. Several states have tried this type of plan, appropriately, under the concept of states being laboratories of democracy. Prove that it works at a state level before foisting it on an entire country -- but even that has proved to be a challenge. Vermont passed a single-payer plan only to have the governor decline to implement it since it would cost more than the entire state budget and would drive businesses to neighboring states due to the new taxes necessary to fund the monstrosity. Colorado tried its hand at a mile-high version of single-payer via ballot referendum in 2016. Voters noted the cost, doubling the state budget, and the taxes needed to fund the plan and rejected ColoradoCare by a four to one margin, despite Hillary Clinton winning the state on Election Day. Theoretically, Democrats could have passed Conyers plan into law in 2009 when they had veto-proof majorities in both houses of Congress and control of the White House. Go big or go home. The Democrats settled for Obamacare instead and are now in no position to legislate anything. Starting with cost, BernieCare will bust the federal budget. According to the Mercatus Center, a George Mason University research institute, this scheme will cost $32.6 trillion over the first ten years. Or about $3.3 trillion per year. The entire federal budget is $4.1 trillion per year, meaning that this plan will consume over three quarters of the federal budget, leaving little money for anything else. This also assumes that these projections will stand the test of time. Medicare, when created in 1965, was projected to cost $12 billion per year by 1990, but in actuality cost $90 billion that year. No doubt the projections about BernieCare similarly far underestimate the actual costs. What happens if BernieCare underestimates cost by a factor of two or four? What happens then? Bernie has not addressed this likelihood. Such a plan would eliminate private insurance, and premiums would be replaced by taxes. As Mercatus observed, Even doubling all federal individual and corporate income tax collections would fall short of fully funding the plan. Yes, a doubling of taxes and still not fully funded. How will they make up the shortfall? Cut payments to providers. Physicians will be paid 40 percent less. With many specialty practices already running at over 50 percent or higher overhead, expect these practices to close. Working at a loss wont appeal to many physicians or clinics. Enter supply and demand. Give everyone in America access to unlimited free healthcare, including all of the illegal immigrants welcomed by open-borders Democrats, and expect demand to surge. Combine that with fewer physicians willing to work at half their previous payment rates, and supply dwindles. The only solution when demand exceeds supply is, An artificial control on the distribution of scarce resources, which is the definition of rationing. Democrats consider this a dirty word and accuse Republicans of fear-mongering when using the dreaded R-word. In healthcare, rationing translates to wait lists for elective surgery, imaging tests, and specialist appointments, just as is commonplace in countries with single-payer schemes such as Canada, New Zealand, and the UK. In Canada, the average wait time from referral from a general practitioner to a specialist for treatment is 21 weeks or over 5 months. Great news for those waiting for a specialist to evaluate their failing kidneys, shortness of breath, or diminishing eyesight. The latest and greatest medicines would not be covered under BernieCare. Medical innovation would grind to a halt. Why would companies research and develop new drugs if they arent on the BernieCare formulary and the company cant recoup the billion dollar-plus investment in bringing a new drug to market? Medicare patients will be hit particularly hard. Medicare is not an entitlement like Medicaid or food stamps. Seniors have been paying into Medicare their entire working lives, in the form of a Medicare tax, as have all working Americans, of any age. With BernieCare they will be in the same category as those who have paid nothing into Medicare. This is hardly fair to those forced to pay into a system via taxes with future expected benefits. Democrats are welcome to run on Medicare for all, and Republicans will point out the consequences as President Trump did in a recent editorial. It wont be Paul Ryan pushing granny off the cliff but instead Bernie and his fellow democratic socialists trying to turn America into Venezuela, one doctor visit at a time. YouTube screen grab Brian C Joondeph, MD, MPS, a Denver based physician and writer. Follow him on Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter. Media outrage directed against Saudi Arabia is boiling following the apparent murder of Saudi columnist Jamal Khashoggi at the Saudi consulate in Turkey. Members of Congress from both sides of the aisle are demanding that President Trump hold Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman (MBS) responsible for the Washington Post "journalist's" death. (I place quotes around "journalist" because Khashoggi was no reporter, but rather an opinion columnist who reliably carried water for the Islamist movement for his entire adult life.) Meanwhile, the president of Turkey saw a perfect opportunity in this crime to overshadow his public embarrassment, having unceremoniously caved to pressure from President Trump to release American pastor Andrew Brunson. As usual, when dealing with the Saudi government in particular and the Middle East generally, there is more here than meets the eye. It is wise to support Trump's wishes to ensure that all facts are on the table before accusing an ally of a political murder, and certainly before any consideration be given to an American response. Contrary to the suggestion from the left that Trump has a personal affection for the sharia-abiding dictator, MBS, or that an agenda is in play to protect his personal financial holdings in the kingdom, the stark reality remains that these flimsy attempts at narrative-building don't jibe with facts. The president's former life as a businessman, complete with his lavish hotels and flashy business model, are far too provocative for Saudi sixth-century cultural sensitivities. His holdings in the kingdom are miniscule compared to not only his total wealth, but also the money Trump loses every year by making America great again rather than tending to his business empire. During Trump's last four rallies, he even went so far as to publicly humiliate the Saudi royal family. Hardly the behavior of a Saudi vassal. There is a far stronger case to be made that our president is fighting for America's interests, not his own, and that is no less true in his dealings with Mohammed bin Salman. He recognizes that MBS is a useful ruler and has deftly leveraged the Saudi crown prince's hunger for power, wealth, and Western approval to the benefit of the United States and Israel and, by extension, the entire Mideast. Here are the reasons to believe this. First, MBS is working with Trump on a major deal regarding Israel. Included is a peace treaty between the Arabs and Israel that may bring long sought stability to the Middle East. Moving the embassy to Jerusalem with MBS's cooperation was the first step of this proposed peace plan. Furthermore, MBS has aided the U.S. and Israel by diffusing and opposing the aggression of Iran. The prince has built coalitions between the Saudi government and the Emirates to ensure that sanctions against Iran will cause no disastrous ripple within oil markets. To that end, he increased his own oil production by nearly ten percent to offset the shortage caused by the sanctions. He is working tirelessly to defang the Islamist movement driven by the Muslim Brotherhood, first by outlawing the organization within his country and wholly supporting Egyptian president el-Sisi's similar actions in Egypt. He has put more than five hundred Islamic religious leaders under house arrest and has forbidden the grand imam of the Kaaba to pray for the destruction of the Jews, an ancient tradition followed without break since the time of Muhammad. It is no mystery why Trump is working with MBS. The benefits are tangible and the reasons legion. The more salient question is why Khashoggi was ever hired by the Washington Post. Equally of interest is why he was allowed to both live and work in the United States, given his long, undeniable association with both terrorists and the international Muslim Brotherhood. Jamal Khashoggi is not the innocent journalist the Washington Post would have you believe. Khashoggi, before his fame as a journalist, was into international illegal arms-dealing. He became a sworn member of the Muslim Brotherhood during his time in Egypt. He was a close friend of Osama bin Laden and fought alongside him in Afghanistan. His association with America's mortal enemy was no secret. Khashoggi outed himself in numerous articles he wrote praising and advocating for al-Qaeda and bin Laden, leading some to wonder how a man with this kind of past managed to enter the United States, much less live and work here. The media are again ignoring the facts. True to form, they rush to condemn MBS without waiting for evidence. Everything we know of the alleged murder comes from Turkish state-run media, and all of that has been leaked to them by Turkish security forces loyal to Turkish president Erdogan, a known Muslim Brotherhood sympathizer and ally with an axe to grind against MBS and Saudi Arabia. Is it because MBS's alliance with the U.S., Egypt and the Emirates is delivering a crushing blow to the Muslim Brotherhood, the Islamist movement, Iran, and the anti-Israel contingent? Is the perennial girl-left-without-a-date Erdogan hosting this operation in the hopes of separating MBS from his Western allies and regional friends? Without any substantial evidence to add credibility to their claims, the media say a group of intelligent, high-ranking Saudi officers killed Khashoggi while at the embassy in Turkey, on the direct orders of MBS. It strains credulity to believe THAT the same man who coordinated the arrest of more than three hundred Muslim Brotherhood-supporting members of the royal family, all on the same day without a single leak or hiccup, would behave so clumsily in allegedly ridding himself of a writer who, in all honesty, didn't really have anywhere near the impact on Saudi affairs his former colleagues now ascribe to his memory. Were MBS indeed responsible, he has the resources to make sure the job was done in a quieter, cleaner manner. His ability to wield significant power with amazing rapidity was evident with his arrest of the aforementioned terror-supporting royals and the Wahhabist imams they sponsor, including, most notably, Prince Alwaleed bin Talal, founder of the Islamic Centers at Harvard and Georgetown University, and the man allegedly responsible for helping former president Obama get into Harvard. Also among the arrested was the founder of the Saudi intelligence agency, Muhammad bin Nayef. Given the circumstances surrounding the alleged murder and the motivations of all involved, it appears that rather than perpetrating the deed, MBS is the patsy in an attempt to discredit and remove him from power. It is entirely likely that the alleged murder being pinned on MSB was the first element of a coup attempt against the Saudi royal family. If the Trump administration rushes headlong to judgment, as is urged by many on both sides of the aisle, he will reinforce the skewed narrative of the mainstream media and expose his most powerful Arab ally, MBS, to the predations of the Islamist movement, strengthening the hand of the Muslim Brotherhood and ensuring that terrorism and the ideology of Islamic supremacy remain the chief export of the Mideast for years to come. It will truly be a sad day for America if we allow that to happen, especially in response to the death of a not so innocent man. Joe Herring writes from Omaha, Neb. and welcomes visitors to his website, www.dailyherring.com. Dr. Mark Christian is an Egyptian-born former Muslim who is the founder and executive director of the Global Faith Institute. www.globalfaith.org "Our attack is merely the beginning," Antifas terror manifesto read after they led a premeditated and well-coordinated assault on our Metropolitan Republican Club in Manhattans Upper East Side. They hoped we would cancel a scheduled event the next night with founder of the Proud Boys Gavin McInnes as a result of their violent outburst. They were wrong. It is not easy to be a Republican in New York City, but our ragtag group does the best we can to fight for conservative values in the belly of the beast. Earlier this week, we refused to back down in the face of extreme oppositiony from the leftist mob. Those of us who have been in the fight since at least the 2016 Trump campaign have seen our fellow patriots demonized, ambushed, insulted, defamed, beaten, and robbed of their livelihood. From our experience, we know that to acquiesce to their ultimatums and threats is to surrender. We stood defiantly in the face of those anti-American terrorists in the street, and welcomed Gavin McInnes to our event as he held a rubber sword to honor legendary Japanese anti-socialist Otoya Yamaguchi. The leftist terrorists shouting unoriginal slogans in the streets were enraged that we exercised our 1st Amendment rights. Despite all their threats, the event proceeded, largely thanks to the great work of New Yorks Finest. They guarded the doors even while chanting Antifa berated them as Pigs and Fascists. After leaving the event, a colleague and I witnessed a right-leaning independent journalist being assaulted and mugged by multiple masked Antifa thugs who did not want their likenesses revealed to the greater public. We saved the man from a vicious mob beating from Antifa, who called me a "Nazi" despite my being Jewish and having family who died in Europe during the Holocaust. These Neo-Brownshirts even attacked the man's girlfriend, showing that these enemies of America will stoop to any depth in order to shut their opposition down, all under the guise of Fighting Fascism. Like all bullies, Antifa wither when they are directly confronted. They only advance on Trump supporters when their basement-dwelling army of unemployable dope smokers clearly has the numbers. When they don't have a sizable advantage, they are routinely embarrassed and sent crying back to their trust-fund parents on the Upper West Side. However, there is an ace in the hole that these cowards do have that patriots fail to realize at their peril. The swamp has shown time and again they have Antifas back. After meeting with the police to give a statement on what I saw, I was confident that justice would be served. I could have never imagined what was next to come. A complete inversion of reality was widely reported by the press, who seized upon the incident to fabricate an "October Surprise" to damage the GOP's chances for November's midterm elections. Top Democratic officials, including the New York governor, New York City public advocate, and the attorney general all badmouthed the Proud Boys publicly and called for their prosecution for defending their rights and engaging in self-defense during other incidents that night. Antifa assailants are referred to simply as protestors while a multiracial and multiethnic group of Proud Boys are defamed as White Nationalists in the press, being simultaneously doxxed by the online wing of the Antifa mob. Now, the feeding frenzy has started. Our stand for freedom against leftist terror has been completely spun. Out-of-context quotes from Gavin McInnes are being used to paint him as a right-wing militant leader when he in all actuality he just runs a patriotic fraternal group who like America and beer. Antifas acts of terror and manifesto promising more violence were glossed over completely in nearly all reports. This is what makes Antifa so dangerous. It is not their fighting skills, which are subpar at best, but it is their immense establishment support. These people would be laughable otherwise, but they operate with near impunity due to supporting the establishment's values of open borders, globalist socialism, censorship, social degeneracy, and limitless centralized power. There is an organized network of leftist lawyers who will defend these terrorists free of charge, and countless deep state apparatchiks working as judges, journalists, law enforcement officials, university administrators, and federal bureaucrats who regularly abuse their power to protect these unabashedly violent activists. This is a far worse problem than Antifa merely getting payoffs from Soros and other far-left oligarchs through their shady non-profit networks. Even conservatives -- such as the shameful New York Republican candidate for governor Marc Molinaro and other #NeverTrump crybabies -- are turning their backs on the men who stood up against Antifa terror. It has become fashionable for spineless conservatives to throw the Proud Boys to the wolves for actually standing up for their rights. We have seen this in the past, when Sen. Marco Rubio and current Senate candidate Mitt Romney defended Antifa to score political points against President Trump. If we do not have the courage to stand with those who defend their right to public assembly and self-defense, as the Founding Fathers did, the Republic is all but lost. It is truly surreal to watch these events unfold in real time, and then have the media report the exact opposite of what took place. It is difficult for outsiders to understand just how calculated, nefarious and dishonest the corporate media has become in the age of Trump. Although it might not be a widespread popular sentiment, Trump is a hero for calling out the purveyors of fake news. While it may inconvenience ivory tower Republicans concerned about their prestige and social status, Trump having our backs in this fight makes all the difference. This event has changed me and many of my friends. I used to consider myself a live-and-let-live libertarian who thought that nonviolence and understanding would solve our laundry list of societal problems. Attempting to organize peaceably has shown me that this is no longer tenable. The leftists tuned us out when we talked about nonaggression, the Bill of Rights, the Constitution, free-market economics, and all of our other talking points. These people are jackals and on the march. Complacency only emboldens them. It is time for unity to emerge amongst the right, along with an understanding that we are all under attack and all in this together. Whether you are a moderate Christian like Brett Kavanaugh or a rowdy Trump-supporting Proud Boy or anywhere in between, the organized left means business and are rapidly advancing to destroy you and everything you hold dear. Squabbling amongst ourselves only emboldens this existential threat to our civilization. These forces will have to be stopped if we are able to retain a semblance of our free society moving forward. We all must wake up if we are to have a chance of defeating the left. We are all Proud Boys now. Gavin Wax is the former deputy political director for the Nicole Malliotakis Mayoral Campaign and the New York State director for the 2016 Ted Cruz presidential campaign. He is also small business-owner. His work has appeared in The Daily Caller, The Federalist, The Washington Examiner, The Hill, Townhall, The American Thinker, and Newsmax. You can follow him on Twitter at @GavinWax." Latinos and Hispanics legally here in the U.S. are speaking out against the caravan heading north from Honduras to the U.S. That was the report from Univision, which is hardly a conservative news site. According to the Daily Caller, they're saying things like this: "How is it possible that a caravan from Central America is on it's [sic] way to the U.S. and the people are speaking the way they're speaking, demanding to get in[?] No sir, this isn't their country and they need to respect it," one man said. Another woman told Megid, "[L]ike the president says, they can come here, but they need to come here legally like the rest of us." Megid also spoke with a Honduran woman who says she came to the U.S. in the last caravan from Central America. "It's not right that so many people are heading to the U.S. in this Honduran caravan," she said. It squares with what a lot of Latinos and Hispanics are thinking, at least the ones I know. Unlike the black community, they aren't a near-monolith on the political front. Trump got a healthy 29% of their vote, in what USA Today called "another election surprise," which suggests unfamiliarity with Latinos, who, by the way, hate being called that. (Like Italian-Americans and Irish-Americans, they're happy to just be called by their country of origin as a shorthand even though they are Americans e.g., Venezuelans, Cubans, Mexicans.) There are plenty of conservative and libertarian Latinos, too. Off the top of my head, one of the most interesting, Lydia Ortega, runs the San Jose State University economics department and ran for California's lieutenant governor's slot. I voted for her. Many very conservative Latinos live in the Los Angeles area, working-class and sometimes elite. I know one working-class family in the construction industry that was originally from the Guadalajara area, refugees from the Cristero persecution of the early 20th century, who moved to Glendale to get away from all the illegals and their mayhem around South Pasadena. They can't stand lawbreaking, including immigration lawbreaking. Two-time Pulitzer prize-winning cartoonist Michael Ramirez in the Los Angeles area would kill you if you called him Mexican, but yes, half his ancestry is also of Cristero Mexican origin, and his views on illegality are perfectly visible in his art. I have an Argentine friend who pulled herself up by her bootstraps, starting as a Miami club hostess owing to her spectacular beauty, and moving on to become a Los Angeles Police Department officer. She is now working on her master's in psychology to become a psychologist. An amazing immigrant success story, and she's conservative as hell. Of course, she's against the lawbreakers. New Mexico is loaded with conservatives of Hispanic origin, and so are Nevada, Arizona, and Texas. Let's not even get started Miami Cubans and Miami Venezuelans in Florida. People like this, in fact, are "normals," as Kurt Schlichter would say people who obey the rules; work hard; achieve success; and expect no favors, no goodies, no free stuff. They are not at all different from other normal Americans. They like rule of law. They like one set of laws for everyone, not two. They like laws to mean what they say. It's all part of being normal and conservative. And yes, they get lumped in with what Democrats imagine is Their Vote. Lately, the news has been citing a Pew study suggesting that Latinos have "serious concerns" about their place in America. I read the study closely and found that it did not distinguish between immigrants and illegal aliens. Take out the mixed immigrant count from it, and you see a healthy regard among Latinos for Trump and his agenda, as well as a healthy regard for his economy. If you're here illegally, yes, your work prospects have probably gone down. So to say Latino-Americans are against Trump is nonsense, and to say they all support the left-wing Chavista-inspired caravan is absolute nonsense. Based on the random people Univision found, sentiment against illegal immigration is high among random Latinos. Their quotes suggest they dislike the arrogance, the entitlement, and the inability to address rule of law of the immigration activists whipping up Central America's migrants. They don't want to see the place they came to become the place they left, because the biggest difference we see out there is that the U.S. has rule of law, and the other countries do not. Even Hernando de Soto, who wrote The Mystery of Capital, pinpointed that difference between the two places. Latin Americans and U.S. Americans get along great with each other all the time, always amazed at how like each other they are. I hear this over and over and think it myself. The problem is illegality, and the caravan is an open advertisement and advocacy of just that. Any questions as to why so many Latinos are speaking out? Image credit: Ali Zifan via Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 4.0. These are exciting political times. The economy is booming; ISIS is on the run; and, as the president put it, "America is respected again." It's a great time to be alive. Notably through the Walk Away movement, Americans are walking away from the liberal globalist groupthink. They are now embracing liberty as well as American values. I grew up in a home of secular mainline Democrat Jews. Needless to say, this was not yet the party of democratic socialism. My family had always been patriotic, stood for the flag, and most importantly believed in Gd. I followed their lead but also rooted for Al Gore to win. This was about to change. George Bush won, and then the unthinkable happened: America was attacked by ruthless terrorists on 9/11. I was in middle school, and we were called in for an assembly. As students, we were told our country had been attacked. Right away, I knew the attackers were Middle Eastern Muslims. Despite the fact that the hijackers came from the Middle East with many coming from Saudi Arabia, the elites seemed more concerned with protecting the reputation of Islam than with defending America. September 11 was a turning point. The images of the towers collapsing and people jumping from the towers are etched in my mind. Immediately after that, I knew that evil is real. I knew that political correctness was a willing accomplice in the attack. Politicians of both parties covered up the role of the Saudis in the attack. Around this time, I was also going through a religious transformation. By the Grace of Gd, I embraced my faith and brought Gd into my life. I began to encounter on a personal level the hostility of the secular elite. As a religious Jew, I knew that the values of the Torah were not consistent with secular liberal permissiveness. A combination of these events lead me to register as a Republican. Together with my entire immediate family, we walked away from the Democratic Party. With their drift farther and farther left, I am glad to have gotten out when I did. I cast my votes for McCain and Mitt Romney. Then, this past election, I had a historic opportunity. I now could be part of a historic movement, voting for Donald J. Trump. President Trump has without a doubt been the best president of my lifetime. Unlike past presidents, he actually carries out his campaign promises. With extreme vetting of refugees, tax cuts, and moving the embassy to Jerusalem, President Trump has shown more leadership then any president in my lifetime. Despite Deep State saboteurs, President Trump presses forward. President Trump is defending our nation and our borders. I am honored to support this movement. This is a movement of the forgotten men and women who are the bedrock of this nation. Controlling our climate is a big deal for some constituencies. Despite claims of "global warming," "climate change," or whatever this week's terminology is, increased CO2 from burning fossil fuels has served as a crop fertilizer, diminishes plants' need for water, and caused entire regions like the Sahel in North Africa to green up. But look at this from the perspective of a guy in Michigan. The place where I'm sitting right now was at the bottom of 300 feet of ice 12,000 years ago. Thankfully, it all melted due to unaccountable but very welcome global warming. Some "scientists" assert that the globe warmed up by 16 degrees F since the last (of many) ice age(s). We have mixed opinions on whether this welcome warming is continuing. The 3 degrees (maybe) due to man-made industrial pollution is small compared to the 16 degrees ascribed to the latest ice age cycle think of an unimpressive wave on a vast tide of the ocean sloshing around as the globe turns. And we have no idea whether the ice-age warming is continuing to wax or whether it is waning. We could be staring at another ice age for all that climate "scientists" know. We in Michigan live in a harsh climate, a relatively short growing season, and freeze-thaw cycles that bust up our roads; make cars careen out of control with every freeze; and, as I'm reminded of daily in my FB and email feeds, inspire retirees who can afford it to migrate to Florida in the fall. Portside politicians want to deny us the sun-splashed environs every Michigander fantasizes about. I'd guess most of us would be happy if only our winters were milder and snow-free say, like those in North Carolina or Georgia. Yet the same doctrinaire politicians and environmental fanatics decree that we not build cheap and cost-effective gas-fired electric power plants and factories here lest we melt ice somewhere else. They want to deny us the tools to prosper in our own state. Why should we in the north worry about slight warming? The leftist politicians and "scientists" who promise us near-term doom have not accurately predicted our climate in the last 40 years. (One of our sons is an engineer working at Goddard on weather satellites and knows a bit about Microwave Sensing Units, polar orbits, and the rest.) They ignore the ice age because it clouds their narrative. They predict the future by inventing it. Why let them ruin our lives? And why should we vote for people who concoct a future to augment their political power over productive elements here in Michigan, all the while irresponsibly condemning us to their globalist-inspired poverty? Erwin Haas is a former flight surgeon in Vietnam, Kentwood city commissioner, and assistant clinical professor of medicine at Michigan State. He is running as a Libertarian for Michigan's 26th state Senate district. His blog is here. Richard M. Langworth has spent the better part of his lifetime studying, documenting, interpreting, and promoting the true words, deeds, and legacy of Sir Winston Churchill. The corpus of Langworth's efforts is manifest in the lectures, publications, and websites of The International Churchill Society, which he founded, and The Churchill Project of Hillsdale College, founded in 2006. Winston Churchill, Myth and Reality: What He Actually Did and Said by Langworth (McFarland: North Carolina, 2017) is the refined and distilled version of Langworth's life's work, readily accessible, highly readable, and most necessary for anyone seeking the flesh-and-blood Churchill behind the legends and caricatures. In effect, this book is the legal brief and exegesis for Churchill's defense for all purposes. Langworth names and considers poorly framed criticism of Churchill based on a lack of analysis and consideration of evidence to the contrary. Most of all, he exposes such criticism as a product of bias and partisan animus directed at Churchill because he was a full-fury British imperialist, and he devoted his life to the survival and success of the British culture and empire. Langworth systematically debunks the many calumnious and vitriolic attacks on Churchill leftist antagonist deceptions that have been the basis for assaults on Churchill's reputation. Langworth puts the actions and words of Churchill in context and the circumstances of the time, particularly Churchill's military and naval responsibilities and then his performance as the prime minister of a nation in peril from Nazi aggression. He addresses the accusations and vilification, then analyzes Churchill's conduct, given his times, his well founded opinions, and his extraordinary responsibilities. Langworth is arguably the living expert on Churchill, and his book exposes the lies of the critics while extolling the good about the legend asserted to be "the greatest Englishman." One last consideration as articulated by Sir Martin Gilbert, noted and accomplished historian and Churchill's biographer: As I open file after file of Churchill's archive ... I am continually surprised by the truth of his assertions, the modernity of his thought, originality of his mind, constructiveness of his proposals, his humanity, and most remarkable of all, his foresight. Great men of great vision, doing great things, are an inspiration. Churchill was a monumental phenomenon and our great good fortune. News about the caravan of illegal aliens from Central America who are making their way across Mexico in an attempt to breach the U.S. border has been shuttled to the sidelines thanks to the attempted bombing of prominent Democrats. But they're still coming. And as they approach the U.S. border, more questions are being asked about who organized the caravan in the first place. Many on the right believe that George Soros is behind the effort. But an investigation by Fox News discovered that domestic Honduran politics was the impetus for forming the caravan and sending it on its way. "This caravan was initially organized by Bartolo Fuentes, a known leftist activist and former member of the national Congress in 2013, representing the political party of deposed Honduras president Manuel Zelaya," Johan Obdola, president of Latin America-focused global intelligence and security firm IOSI, told Fox News. "Now, this is not new, but is the first time it gets a high level of international media attention. And the reasons are beyond the political." Obdola argued it's in the interest of Honduran opposition members like Zelaya to "actively create violent acts and destabilization in Honduras," and said the caravans are part of a plan to keep the region "in constant chaos." He also argued the former Honduran leader who served as president from 2006 to 2009 is closely allied with the Venezuelan regime of Nicolas Maduro, and questioned that conflict-riddled nation's role in fostering mass migration in an effort to embarrass the current, pro-U.S. Honduran President Juan Orlando Hernandez. Honduras has been plagued by discord since its election last November of Hernandez, who defeated Zelaya. Many Zelaya supporters protested the results, claiming they were fixed in favor of a U.S-approved leader. The subsequent unrest has been cited as a key factor for Hondurans wanting to leave their country. Fuentes, a former Zelaya government legislator and host of the migration-focused radio show "Without Borders," is often characterized by Honduran government figures as a "coyote," or human trafficker. To others, he is a social activist. Fuentes himself last week was pulled from the main caravan group in Guatemala and deported back to Honduras. Zelaya staunchly denied any link to the caravan, or any effort to push Hondurans toward the United States. Zelaya's supporters may be pulling the strings behind the scenes, but the group Pueblo Sin Fronteras, or "People Without Borders," was heavily involved in organizing the caravan. Capital Research Center: Some left-leaning publications such as the New York Times have said that "no group has claimed responsibility for organizing [the most recent] caravan," perhaps in order to stave off claims by President Trump and other conservatives that it is being aided by left-wing activists in the United States. The Times, however, is only partially correct. While no single group has claimed control of the migrant caravan, at least two activists from Pueblo Sin Fronteras Denis Omar Contreras and Rodrigo Abeja are embedded in the caravan, according to the Los Angeles Times, the Washington Post, and the Mexican newspaper La Jornada. Contreras (sometimes spelled Contera or Contrera) reportedly helped lead the caravan to illegally enter Mexico, where he told migrants "Welcome to Tapachula!" (referencing a town near the Guatemala border). Abeja, too, was identified as one of the leaders of the April 2018 caravans, which were also supported by Pueblo Sin Fronteras. On October 18, Irineo Mujica director of Pueblo Sin Fronteras in Mexico and an American citizen was arrested by Mexican officials for allegedly attacking immigration officials at a pro-illegal immigration protest near the Guatemala-Mexico border. And while Pueblo Sin Fronteras organizer Alex Mensing, an American, told reporters that Mujica was not involved in the most recent caravan, Mujica was detained in April for leading a previous caravan into Mexico with the support of Pueblo Sin Fronteras. A March 23, 2018 press release on the group's Facebook page lists Mujica as its Mexico contact, as well as Mensing in the United States. And in an October 21 press release also signed by Mujica, the group accused the governments in Mexico and Central America of adopting "a policy of fear and racism imposed by the United States, doing its dirty work and shouldering the cost of repressive tactics that do not take into account the root causes of this exodus." The group then demanded Mexico become a "sanctuary country." People Without Borders has numerous U.S. connections to left-wing individuals and groups, including the Hispanic radical group LULAC and a Chicago church known for its activism on behalf of illegal aliens. Mexico seems disinclined to stop the caravan from getting to the U.S. border. The president has asked the Pentagon to send 800 more troops to the border to assist ICE in preventing the mass violation of our border laws, but most of the people in this caravan are not looking to force their way into the country. They will line up and request asylum. What Trump does at that point is anyone's guess. Maison Carree in Nimes, France. Photo credit: Lamax/Shutterstock.com The Maison Carree in the city of Nimes, in southern France, is the only ancient Roman building that you dont have to use the word ruins to describe. Although not as impressive as the Parthenon of Athens, nor as elegant as the Pantheon in Rome, the Maison Carree retains an integrity in its design, and preserves much of its original ornamentation, unlike so many ancient buildings that have been repurposed through the ages. The Maison Carree was built in the beginning of the first century. According to the inscription, it was dedicated to Lucius and Gaius Caesar, the grandsons whom Emperor Augustus had adopted as his hopeful heirs. Unfortunately, they died young before Augustus could be succeeded, prompting the Emperor to dedicate the temple to his dead grandsons. The inscription dedicating the temple to Lucius and Gaius Caesar was destroyed in the Middle Ages, perhaps vandalized by the people who loathed the ancient Romans worshiping the imperial family. It was only in the 18th century that scholars were able to reconstruct the inscription based on the number of the holes and their position on the temples facade to which the bronze letters had been affixed. Starting from the 19th century, the temple slowly began to recover its original splendor. The Maison Carree is nearly a textbook example of Vitruvian architecture. The temple is raised on a high podium, has a deep porch, almost a third of the building's length, with six Corinthian columns under the pediment at either end. The side walls are embedded with more columns. Above the columns, the architrave is divided by two recessed rows of petrified water drips into three levels, while egg-and-dart decoration divides the architrave from the frieze. The interior is single-celled and window-less, accessible through a large door. The temple was once flanked by several buildings constructed at a later period. These were demolished in the 19th century, restoring Maison Carree to the isolation it would have enjoyed in Roman times. The porch was restored and a new ceiling designed in the Roman style was added. Further restoration was carried out during the 1980s and 90s, revealing the outlines of the forum or square where the temple once stood. The Maison Carree has inspired several buildings around the world, such as the neoclassical Eglise de la Madeleine in Paris, St. Marcellinus Church in Rogalin, Poland, and in the United States the Virginia State Capitol. Photo credit: Graeme Churchard/Flickr Photo credit: Bill Bereza/Flickr Photo credit: Guido Andolfato/Flickr Photo credit: Graeme Churchard/Flickr Photo credit: Graeme Churchard/Flickr Andy Rubin left Google in 2014, with a $90 million payout from the search giant. This was after a sexual misconduct claim was made against Rubin to Google executives. The claim was made by a woman that Rubin had been having an extramarital relationship with, noting that he coerced her in a hotel room in 2013. Google did an investigation into the claim and concluded that it was credible. Following that, Googles CEO (at the time, this was before the spin off into Alphabet) Larry Page had asked for Rubins resignation. Which is what happened, and with that exit, Rubin was paid $90 million. As you might have expected, Google could have simply fired Rubin, and paid him little to nothing. But the search giant instead decided to give him a $90 million exit package that was paid in installments of around $2 million per month for four years. That last payment to Rubin is scheduled for next month. But this is not what was made public when Rubin decided to leave Google in 2014. Instead, Googles CEO, Page stated that he wanted to wish Andy all the best with whats next. With Android he created something truly remarkable with a billion-plus happy users. While keeping the sexual misconduct claim under wraps from the world. However, this claim came to light last year, shortly after Rubins new company, Essential Products, launched its first (and only) phone, the Essential PH-1. This caused Rubin to take a sabbatical from the company for a few months before returning earlier this year. The reason behind the sabbatical was hoping that the issue would go away and people would forget about it. But that doesnt seem to have happened here. Background: Rubin isnt the only one that Google has protected from sexual misconduct claims over the past decade. He is the third executive to get that protection. Two of the three executives were ousted and Google paid them millions of dollars in an exit package, even though it wasnt required to do so. The third instance remained in a highly compensated post at the company. And Google stayed silent about all of the accusations. This is coming to light now, because the New York Times has obtained some documents, and spoken to more than 30 current and former Google employees about these claims. This also included some that were handling the claims. the cases werent all the same, but Rubins really stood out because of how much Google paid him, and after Rubin left, Google invested millions into his next company, Essential Products. Advertisement This is all part of the way things work in Silicon Valley, in fact one of Googles co-founders, Larry Page had dated Marissa Mayer, who was one of the first engineers at Google and later became CEO of Yahoo before its sale to Verizon. The other co-founder, Sergey Brin, had an extramarital affair with an employee in 2014. And Googles former CEO, Eric Schmidt had retained a mistress to work as a company consultant. But the difference with those three, is that these were consensual relationships, and not sexual misconduct. But there is still that environment of having mistresses and extramarital affairs. And its all to common in Silicon Valley unfortunately. Then there was also Amit Singhal, who was a senior vice president at Google, and was accused of groping a female coworker at an off-site event, in 2015. Singhal left the company in 2016, saying he wanted to focus more on philanthropy and his family, though it was likely that he was also forced to resign like Rubin was. Rubin is not the only one to be accused of sexual misconduct at Google, or really any company in Silicon Valley and all of this is part of the #MeToo movement that has been occurring over the past year or so, with women speaking up more and more now about sexual misconduct against them. Impact: Rubin was likely the biggest case for Google because of who he was. Rubin created Android. He then sold it to Google in 2005. Google paid around $50 million for the startup, which in 2005 and for a company that had done effectively nothing at the time, was a whole lot of money. Rubin continued to work with the Android team for a few years after the company bought Android, before moving onto robotics inside Google. He eventually lost out on the power struggle for Android when Google decided to merge the two teams and Sundar Pichai (now Googles chief executive) took control of both Chrome and Android. That was the start of Rubins exit. It was also mentioned that Rubin would often times berate his subordinates, calling them stupid and such. Google reportedly did very little about this. Of course, this is something weve also heard about another executive that came to Google in an acquisition and is no longer with the company: Tony Fadell, the founder of Nest who eventually left the company due to the fact that it couldnt get any products created. Internally, it looks like there are a number of issues when it comes to Google. Not only the sexual misconduct issues, but also how product managers and VPs are talking and treating their subordinates. Now obviously, its none of Googles business if these executives are dating coworkers in an extramarital affair, if it is consensual, like Page and Brins relationships were. But if they were not consensual, then that is where Google needs to step in, obviously. Of course, paying Rubin that big exit package was likely how Google was planning to keep this all quiet and swept under the rug. Many of the sources that the New York Times spoke with about this, were under non-disclosure agreements, so they couldnt be named. Like the #MeToo movement that has rattled hollywood and the news industry, with people like Harvey Weinstein, Charlie Rose, and Matt Lauer being ousted, the same needs to happen in Silicon Valley, and rather soon. Its very clear that there is a big issue in Mountain View, but there is also likely an issue with other companies out west including Facebook, Twitter, Apple, Microsoft and more. Amazon is selling the SteelSeries Stratus XL game controller right now for just $28.95. That is actually down from its normal price of around $59.99. That is a great price for a controller in the first place, but one that works on multiple platforms makes it an even bigger deal. This also brings the SteelSeries Stratus XL down to its lowest all-time price. Making it a fantastic time to pick one up. This is also not one of those cheapo controllers thats going to break pretty easily. Just take a look at the over 800 reviews of the Stratus XL, with an average of 4.5 out of 5 stars. The SteelSeries Stratus XL is compatible with many different platforms, this includes Android (supports Android 3.1 and later, so it supports nearly everything), iOS, Windows 7 and later, Samsung Gear VR, HTC Vive, Oculus and so much more. Of course, this is going to work better with stuff that actually supports a controller. This also works really well with the Big Picture mode that Steam has on its platform, so you can really play some pretty sweet games on the big screen using this controller. It will also work with the NVIDIA SHIELD TV so you can play games like Asphalt 9: Legends. Its a pretty fun game to play in the first place, but with a controller, it makes it much easier. Of course, the NVIDIA SHIELD TV does come with a controller, but if you opted not to get the version with a controller, the SHIELD TV controller is still around $50. And at under $30, this is a much better deal. SteelSeries has included home and back buttons, so if you are using this with an Android smartphone, you can easily go back and home in the interface of your smartphone or tablet. SteelSeries offers a ton of customization with the Stratus XL, so you can set up the controller how you like for different games, which is also pretty important. From the directional pad, to the joy sticks, and everything in between. SteelSeries has also included some LED lights so youll know when the battery is getting close to dying. The Stratus XL runs on two AA batteries, and SteelSeries touts that you can get around 40 hours of gameplay out of those two batteries. Of course, that is going to depend on how you use the controller. Advertisement This is also eligible for Amazon Primes free shipping. Which includes free two-day shipping, and pretty cheap (usually $3.99) next-day shipping if you need it extra fast. However, if you are in one of the select areas that has Prime Now, this is also available and you can get it within a couple of hours, if you are in desperate need. If you are not an Amazon Prime member yet, you can sign up for a free trial of Amazon Prime. Youll get 30 days free (if youre a student, you get 6 months), and then its $119/year (or $59/year for students). Prime members do get a whole lot more than just free shipping though, so be sure to check out the full benefits. That includes Amazon Prime Video, Twitch Prime, and even some benefits at Whole Foods. BarcelonaExactly one year after the Unilateral Declaration of Independence (UDI), employment in Catalonia has failed to live up to the pessimistic forecasts. In the last twelve months, Catalonia has created more jobs than Madrid and the Basque Country combined. Specifically, unemployment has fallen by 77,300, while in Madrid it fell by 49,300 and in the Basque Country by 16,400. Combined, this represents the creation of some 65,700 new jobs, fewer than in Catalonia alone. It is worth noting that Madrid and the Basque Country are the autonomous communities with the highest per capita income in Spain and jointly they have a population comparable with Catalonia. It is not only unemployment figures which disprove any negative impact of the [independence] process on the labour market. The rate of change in employment in Catalonia has also increased by 2.33% over the last year, a figure similar to the Spanish average and higher than the figure for Madrid (+1.67), Navarre (+1.72%), the Basque Country (+1.81%) and Valencia (+2.26%). The figures come from the latest Active Population Survey (APS), released this Thursday by the Spanish Statistical Office (INE). Unemployment fell by 28,300 in Catalonia in the third quarter, a decrease of 6.55% over the previous quarter, meaning the total number of jobless stands at 403,700. The unemployment rate is now at 10.6%, a drop of around one percent since July, when it stood at 11.4%. This is the lowest figure since the third quarter of 2008, when unemployment rose from 8.8% to 11.75% in just three months. In annual terms, this means unemployment figures have dropped by 72,000 in Catalonia, 15.13% lower than last year. In spite of the drop in tourism last summer, Catalonia spearheaded the decrease in unemployment in Spain between July and September, months which typically see new jobs in the service sector. Nevertheless, in annual terms, Catalonia remains in second place with 72,000 fewer unemployed, behind Andalusia, where jobless figures fell by 107,400. Catalonia was also the second autonomous community in terms of job creation during the third quarter, with 33,500 new jobs, behind the 47,500 generated by the Balearic Islands. Unemployment drops by 15% in Spain In Spain as a whole, unemployment fell by 164,100. This represents 4.70% fewer unemployed than the previous quarter, meaning the total number of those out of work stands at 3.32 million. According to the APS, the unemployment rate in Spain now stands at 14.55% compared to 15.28% in the previous survey. With the new figures, Spain has managed to fall below the psychological barrier of 15%, reaching the lowest level since the end of 2008. With regard to employment, 183,900 jobs were created in the third quarter, some 1% more than the previous quarter, meaning 19.5 million people are now in employment. Since the beginning of the year, 478,800 more people found a job, an increase of 2.51%. Spains Deputy Prime Minister, Carmen Calvo, welcomed the figures and emphasised the new unemployment rate was "historic and significant, as Spain hadnt achieved it in over a decade. By sector, the service industry created the most jobs, with a total of 210,200 new employees during the last quarter. Meanwhile, in the whole of Spain, industry created only 2,800 more jobs, while agriculture lost a total of 54,000. In addition, full-time contracts increased by 369,000, while part-time workers fell by 185,900, leading to a drop of 13.9% in the overall percentage of workers who are not in full-time employment. Despite the enthusiasm shown by Pedro Sanchez's cabinet, Ernesto Poveda the economist and Chief Executive of ICSA Grupo which specialises in human resources believes that the APS figures also hide the precarious nature of Spains labour market. According to Poveda, "the prospect for the future is far from certain. Theres a big push from the service sector, but the type of jobs being created need to be less temporary and of a higher standard". The Latvian Ministry of Defense is purchasing more missiles for its Saab Carl-Gustaf man-portable weapon system for $18.73m, under a framework agreement signed with the Swedish Defence Materiel Administration. Ammunition for Saab's Carl-Gustaf multirole system (Picture source: Saab) Saab Dynamics Business Area head Gorgen Johansson said: This order demonstrates the continued strong belief in our weapon systems and is a clear proof of the trust we have with the customer and the capability it creates for the Armed Forces of Latvia. The Carl-Gustaf M4 is the latest version of the combat proven, shoulder-launched, multi-role weapon system currently being fielded with multiple armed forces around the world. It gives users a wide range of engagement options and allows troops to remain agile and effective in any scenario. Building on the systems already formidable capabilities, the M4 offers a higher degree of accuracy, lighter construction as well as compatibility with future innovations. The weapon is successively being upgraded by the company to support new ammunition types and increased capabilities. 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. 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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/ The Salt Lake Tribune Copyright 2018 The Salt Lake TribuneAll Rights Reserved Here is a timeline of events leading up to the Oct. 22 shooting death of University of Utah student-athlete Lauren McCluskey, as compiled by campus police and with additional Tribune reporting. Sept. 2 Lauren McCluskey met Melvin Shawn Rowland at a local bar where he was working as a bouncer and began a relationship with him. He visited her often at her residence hall and built friendships with other students in the building. While police did not specify the bar, FOX13 has reported Rowland had worked in the past as a bouncer inside Maxwell's East Coast Eatery. Black Diamond Security Group said Thursday it had ended its relationship with Rowland about a month ago; the state is now investigating the company. Oct. 9 McCluskey learned Rowland's real identity - including that he had lied about his age, 37, and not disclosed that he was a registered sex offender. She invited him to her dorm room, confronted him with the information, and broke off their relationship. He admitted his sex-offender status, but denied the age difference. McCluskey told Rowland she was ending the relationship, but allowed him to spend the night in her room and borrow her car the next day to run errands. Oct. 10 Jill McCluskey, Lauren's mother, contacted campus dispatch to request a campus security escort to help Lauren retrieve her vehicle from Rowland. University police contacted Lauren. She at first declined assistance, saying Rowland was going to drop the vehicle at her apartment and she felt comfortable with him doing that. A dispatcher told Lauren she would have security officers near the building just in case. At 5 p.m., Lauren called back, saying the car was dropped off at the Rice-Eccles Stadium parking lot and she needed a ride to pick it up - which a security escort provided. Oct. 12 Lauren McCluskey contacted University police, reporting she had received suspicious messages she believed were from Rowland's friends. The texts said Rowland was dead and that it was her fault. But she found he had recently posted on social media, disproving the claim. Such posts were a violation of Rowland's parole terms, which prohibited him from using social media. Lauren told the reporting officer she did not feel in danger or threatened by the texts, but felt his friends were trying to lure her out of her dorm. Oct. 13 At 9:22 a.m., McCluskey again contacted University police, reporting she had received more messages she believed were from Rowland or his friends. The messages demanded money in exchange for not posting compromising photos of McCluskey and Rowland online. McCluskey said she sent $1,000 to an account as demanded, in hope of keeping the photos private. Police took a report, pulled Rowland's criminal history - but did not learn he was on parole, Chief Dale Brophy said - and assigned a detective to follow up on possible charges of sexual extortion. Oct. 16 A parole agent spoke with Rowland - but University police had not communicated with Adult Probation and Parole. Rowland's use of social media violated his probation, and involvement in a new crime also would have been a violation. A spokesman for the Board of Pardons and Parole said Thursday, "if the parole agent has enough information to establish probable cause that the person violated parole, then the agent can request a warrant from the Board. The person would be returned to prison and the Board may revoke parole." Oct. 19 A formal investigation of the extortion charges began, after McCluskey received another text. Explaining why a formal investigation did not begin on Oct. 13, Brophy said: "Our detectives have many cases, and our detectives started work on the Tuesday after the initial report on the 13th and [were] working other cases until" Oct. 19. A detective contacted McCluskey for more information about the extortion, to identify all suspects who might be involved, and worked on seeking an arrest warrant for Rowland and his acquaintances. It's unclear whether a request was filed or a warrant was issued. Oct. 19-22 Security video shows Rowland at various campus locations, apparently seeking McCluskey. --- The day of the shooting Oct. 22, 1039 a.m.: McCluskey emailed police that she had received another text from a spoofed number, claiming to be Deputy Chief Rick McLenon, asking her to go to the police station. University police now believe the text was from Rowland, with the intent of getting McCluskey to leave her dorm. Oct. 22, 3 to 6 p.m. Rowland waited for McCluskey with some of her friends in the residence hall. Oct. 22, 820 p.m.: Rowland confronted McCluskey in the parking lot outside her residence hall. She was returning from a night class and on the phone with her mother. He grabbed her, and she dropped her cellphone and belongings. He dragged her to a different spot in the lot, forcing her into the back seat of a car he had driven to campus. Once she was in the car, Rowland shot McCluskey multiple times. As a felon, Rowland could not possess a gun; a man who had loaned the gun to him said Rowland claimed he had a girlfriend and wanted to teach her how to shoot. Oct. 22, 823 p.m.: Matt McCluskey, Lauren's father, called dispatch. He relayed what Jill McCluskey heard on the phone, and asked officers to respond. Oct. 22, 832 p.m.: Police went to the parking lot and found McCluskey's belongings. More police were mobilized. A search began of her dorm room, the parking lot and the surrounding area. Oct. 22, 838 p.m.: Rowland called a woman he met on a dating site, and asked her to pick him up. They went to dinner at a restaurant, drove by the state Capitol and went to her home downtown, where he took a shower. She then dropped him off at a coffee shop. Later that night, she saw news reports about the shooting, recognized photos of Rowland, and called the police. Oct. 22 9:55 p.m.: While searching the parking lot, police find McCluskey's body in the back seat of a car. Oct. 22, 956 p.m.: A secure-in-place alert was sent campus-wide, telling the university community that there had been a shooting on campus. Oct. 22, 1009 p.m.: An alert was sent with suspect information. Updates were sent about every 30 minutes. Oct. 22, 1146 p.m.: An alert lifting the secure-in-place order was sent, after University police determined Rowland had left campus. Oct. 23, 1201 a.m.: An alert was sent identifying the suspect as Melvin Rowland. Oct. 23, 1246 a.m.: Salt Lake City police found Rowland and followed him on foot. He entered Trinity AME Church, at 239 E. Martin Luther King Blvd. (600 South). As police entered the church, Rowland fatally shot himself. Oct. 23, 147 a.m.: An alert was sent saying Rowland had been located and was no longer a threat. -Tribune reporters Nate Carlisle and Courtney Tanner contributed to this story. Read More of Today's AB Headlines Subscribe to Our Daily E-Newsletter We are delighted to have been able to advise Pacific Hydros financiers on this milestone solar farm project, said Lynch. The Gilbert + Tobin team was able to bring to bear its long-standing experience in major renewables project development and financing and achieve a tailored funding package for Pac Hydro and its lenders. Lynch and McCann were assisted by lawyers Ehren Terenyi, Lindsay Crawford and Dylan Gardner. Ashurst advises on off-market takeover of Atlas Iron A team from Ashurst has advised Hancock Prospecting Pty Ltd on its off-market takeover of Atlas Iron Limited by its subsidiary Redstone Corporation. A previously announced proposed scheme of arrangement, under which Mineral Resources Limited would acquire all the Atlas shares was not supported by Fortescue Metals Group which had a 19.9% stake in Atlas. Fortescue sold down part of its stake in the course of Redstones offer in June and ultimately accepted the Redstone offer in respect of the remainder. I was shocked at first. I didnt know what to think, Buzzard told KOMO News. The judge said that by the time the men, who were still in handcuffs, hit the door, he thought about how nobody was between the inmates and the street. He said he wanted to at least find out where they were headed. Once I got to the stairwell I knew I was going to be able to catch the one that was just in front of me because I immediately started gaining on him. I was yelling at them all the way down the stairs to 'stop, you're making things worse, he said. Authorities caught Jacobson just a few blocks from the courthouse. Buzzard also explained why he immediately took off his robe before going after the inmates. He said that a case in April devolved to a litigant attacking a lawyer, forcing him to wrestle the litigant to the floor because the courtroom didnt have security personnel since it was just a civil case. Including the $895 destination charge, the Civic Si now starts at $25,195. The $200 increase goes on the Display Audio, which now features buttons for the volume and other essential functions. Improved smartphone integration by means of Bluetooth is another highlight, along with physical buttons for the climate control, electronic parking brake, larger cupholders, and buttons on the steering wheel.The summer tire option isnt available from the factory for the 2019 model year, but customers can get it as a dealer-installed option on the Civic Si from here on in. A six-speed manual transmission comes standard, sending 205 horsepower to the front wheels. The suck-squeeze-bang-blow of the 1.5-liter VTEC Turbo is complemented by two-mode adaptive dampers and a helical-type differential, ensuring that the Civic Si corners as good as it looks.Arriving at U.S. dealers on November 1st, the sportier lineup benefits from two new colors. Platinum White Pearl is available on both models, but Tonic Yellow Pearl is exclusive to the Civic Si Coupe. Both of the exterior finishes are optional, of course.Assembled in Ontario, Canada using domestic and globally-sourced components, the Civic Si returns 32 miles per gallon on the combined cycle. Honda quotes 28 mpg in the city and 38 mpg out on the highway, which isnt bad at all for a compact-sized car with seating for five.The engine is built at the Anna plant in Ohio, where Honda also builds the 2.0-liter VTEC Turbo of the Civic Type R . The hot hatchback has 306 horsepower (310 PS) to offer, along with one of the best-handling chassis in the business. After all, the R to rule all Rs still holds the record for the fastest front-wheel-drive production car on the Nurburgring. Following news of Phoenix Petroleums Dennis Uy commiting to a partnership with their group, it looks like Autostrada welcomes this development with the addition of another vehicle to their lineup. To commemorate their strategic alliance, Ferrari coincided the launch of the Portofino on our local shores. Held yesterday at The Cove in Okada, we were able to take a closer look at Ferraris latest grand tourer. If youll recall, the Portofino was launched late last year at the Frankfurt Motor Show. Finally having made its way to the Philippines, this new Grand Tourer from the Prancing Horse acts as the direct successor to the California T. Being the only front-engined folding hardtop in Ferraris lineup thats already safe to say if their similar font style hasnt been enough of a giveaway already. Much unlike most of their lineup which focuses on raw, unadulterated performance, the Portofino is geared towards overall versatility and comfort for long-distance driving. Nissan put on quite the show at this year's Philippine International Motor Show. Not only did they show concepts of the Terra and Navara, they unveiled the future Nismo range in the Philippines. Aside from the GT-R Nismo, which was sold in limited quantities here, the local Nismo range also includes two new models. These models are the Juke Nismo and the 370Z Nismo. With that, Nissan Philippines Inc. (NPI) not only has a range of pickups, SUVs, crossovers, and sedans, they also have quite the portfolio when it comes to performance cars. So why then did NPI bring their performance division, particularly the Juke Nismo, into the country? It all started with the GT-R Nismo and, according to NPI president Ramesh Narasimhan, it took off from there. The goal for Nismo in the Philippines is simple on paper, but challenging in application, and that's expanding the appeal of the performance division to a bigger audience. As Narasimhan put it, We want to have Nismo models that are affordable, and make the Nismo brand's appeal (be) wider. Volocopter announced that it will be performing urban flight tests with its Volocopter 2X eVTOL in Singapore in the second half of 2019. The company says the tests are designed to validate the aircrafts ability to operate in an urban environment and that it is looking to enable air taxi service in Singapore. Volocopter will be working with the Civil Aviation Authority of Singapore to establish safety requirements and scope for the test flights. We are getting ready to start implementing the first fixed routes in cities, said Volocopter CEO Florian Reuter. Singapore is a logical partner: The city is a true pioneer in technology and city development. We are confident this is another exciting step to make air taxi services a reality. The two-seat Volocopter 2X is fully-electric with a 17-mile (27 km) range, 353-pound (160 kg) payload, and a maximum speed of 62 MPH (100 km/h). It is capable of piloted, remote-controlled and fully autonomous flight. Germany-based Volocopter was granted provisional licensing for the 2X by the German aviation authorities in 2016 and says it is cooperating with the European Aviation Safety Authority (EASA) to receive a full commercial license. The company completed its first public unmanned test flight in Dubai in September 2017. The aircraft flew for the first time in the U.S. during a brief demonstration at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas in January 2018. California has agreed not to enforce its new net neutrality law until the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals reaches a decision on the legal challenge of the FCC's decision to overturn federal net neutrality rules. Why it matters: It's a setback for net neutrality advocates, but FCC Chairman Ajit Pai said in a statement that California's agreement to delay demonstrates "that there is no urgent problem that these regulations are needed to address." Telecom companies reiterated their call for Congress to adopt national legislation. Go deeper: California vs. Trump on net neutrality 1 big thing: GM shakes up auto regs fight General Motors is urging the Trump administration to create what amounts to a national electric vehicle sales mandate that's modeled on a program in place in California and followed by 9 other states. Why it matters: The powerful automaker's proposal Friday adds a new wrinkle to the intense, high-stakes battle over administration moves to scuttle auto mileage and carbon emissions standards for 20212025 imposed in the Obama-era. The big picture: GM says its proposal for a national zero emissions vehicle (ZEV) program could lead to addition of 7 million "long-range" EVs on U.S. roads by 2030. This would cut CO2 emissions by a cumulative 375 million tons between 2021 and 2030 over the existing ZEV program, according to GM, which also says the proposal would bolster jobs and U.S. economic competitiveness in the EV space. ZEV programs are essentially mandates for EV sales to account for an escalating percentage of an automaker's total sales. They assign credits that are based on the range of the vehicles, and automakers can sell and trade with each other. Of note: The new proposal is also probably in GM's interest. The automaker plans to launch at least 20 all-electric models by 2023. Where it stands: It's part of wider comments that GM is filing today on a joint EPA-Transportation Department plan to freeze the escalating Obama standards in 2020 rather than allowing them to keep rising. Under the Obama-era plan, the escalating standards would have reached over 50 miles per gallon in 2025 (or around 36 mpg in real-world conditions). The administration plan would also revoke California's power to impose standards which a number of other states can follow that are tougher than federal mandates. That's putting the administration on a legal collision course with California, which is vowing to move ahead with tougher rules even if the national standards are rolled back, if the federal government and the state can't reach a compromise. The intrigue: GM and other big automakers have applauded White House moves to rewrite auto mileage and emissions rules, calling the Obama-era mandates too onerous and out of step with consumer preferences. However, the industry has not embraced Trump's move to outright freeze the standards. The Alliance for Automobile Manufacturers, a big trade group that includes Ford, GM and Toyota, has been saying it supports "year over year" increases. Mark Reuss, GM executive vice president of global product development, told reporters yesterday that GM's wants to avoid a "protracted legal battle." But automakers also want to avoid having to produce vehicles that meet a patchwork of state requirements. "Engineering to multiple standards is very costly and frankly unnecessary," he said. But, but, but: Environmentalists I touched based with were critical. "GM wants to be able to make a small number of EVs and a vast number of gas guzzling SUVs and other light trucks instead of complying with the clean car standards which they negotiated with the Obama administration," said Daniel Becker, a veteran of battles over auto rules. Public Citizen's Madeline Page said that while she has not seen details of the plan, she believes "This year automakers like GM and Ford have used electric vehicle announcements in order to distract from their (and their trade associations) costly lobbying effort to rollback clean car standards." The bottom line: Autotrader analyst Michelle Krebs tells Bloomberg... "GM is taking a leadership position in at least offering an alternative to what could be this endless battle between the federal government and California. ... Whether the administration will accept it, thats another question. A group of roughly three dozen scientists and other energy experts are claiming a seminal United Nations report on climate change is biased against nuclear power. Why it matters: A global entity like the UN climate panel can have a big impact on the acceptance of nuclear power, as calls to address climate change intensify and the challenges facing the nuclear industry grow around the world. The big picture: Nuclear power, which provides 30% of the world's zero-carbon electricity, is facing international skepticism over past accidents and public fear about its radioactive waste. In the U.S., numerous plants are poised to shut down earlier than their licenses allow and some already have due primarily to market and policy hurdles. due primarily to market and policy hurdles. Natural gas has largely made up the difference after these plants have shut down, so greenhouse gas emissions ticked up in some parts of the U.S. The details: A letter being sent to leaders of G-20 nations claims the recent report by the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change includes misinformation about nuclear energy, contrasts nuclear negatively to renewables, and in some cases suggests an equivalency with fossil fuels. While IPCC authors note that public fears of nuclear are an obstacle to its diffusion, in several instances they reinforce unfounded fears," the letter states. The signatories include: Tom Wigley , a climate scientist at the University of Adelaide in Australia , a climate scientist at the University of Adelaide in Australia Kerry Emanuel , atmospheric science professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology , atmospheric science professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology David Lea, professor of earth science at the University of California What they're saying: Emanuel told Axios the IPCCs latest report contains a number of factual errors and displays a bias against nuclear power that many environmental groups struggle with. The IPCC says, correctly, that even 1.5 degrees of warming is dangerous, especially for the developing world. We agree with that, on the other hand it throws cold water on what empirically is the fastest way to mitigate emissions we know about today." Kerry Emanuel He cited a statement in Chapter 5 of the report that says replacing fossil fuel power plants with nuclear energy has mixed effects for human health despite the millions of premature deaths that occur worldwide from coal-fired electricity, for example. Jonathan Lynn, an IPCC spokesman, rejected the accusation that the panel has it in for nuclear power, telling Axios: We completely reject the idea we are biased about nuclear power or anything else. Jim Skea, a climate researcher who worked on the IPCC study, said most low-carbon scenarios the organization laid out assume the share of nuclear power will increase worldwide. Between the lines: Opposition to nuclear power from environmentalists, policy leaders and the general public likely hampers nuclear powers growth, but its hard to really know how much would change if the opposition lessened or dissolved altogether. This energy resource faces a lot of challenges independent of its criticism, including high upfront capital costs competing with increasingly cheap wind and solar energy, along with natural gas. Go deeper: The Trump administration has invited Russian President Vladimir Putin to visit Washington D.C. in early 2019 for "a full day of consultations," U.S. National Security Adviser John Bolton said Friday. It's still unclear whether Putin has accepted the invitation and the exact date and scheduling is still to be determined. Why it matters: If Putin comes to Washington, it'll mark his first visit to the White House since the George W. Bush administration. U.S. National Security Adviser John Bolton warned Armenia against sending combat troops to Syria to aid Syrian government forces or their allies when he visited Yerevan on Thursday. Prime Minister Nikol Pashinian announced the impending launch of a Russian-Armenian humanitarian mission in Syria following his September 8 talks in Moscow with Russian President Vladimir Putin. He declined to give any details. Deputy Defense Minister Gabriel Balayan clarified on September 11 that Yerevan is planning to dispatch medics and demining experts primarily tasked with helping civilians in the war-ravaged city of Aleppo. They are expected to be from the Armenian military. Balayan told RFE/RLs Armenian service that the deployment will be carried out at the request of the Syrian government. "We do not rule out cooperation with Russia in some ways, but the group will operate exclusively under the flag of the Republic of Armenia, he said. Bolton said he discussed the issue at a meeting earlier in the day with Pashinian, which was also attended by Armenian Defense Minister Davit Tonoyan. The prime minister said this was not going to be military assistance, it would be purely humanitarian, he told a news conference. I think thats important. It would be a mistake for anybody else to get involved militarily in the Syrian conflict at the moment. There are already seven or eight different combatant sides. To get involved with anyone of them for any other country would be a mistake, he said. Bolton said he told the Armenian leaders that while providing extensive humanitarian assistance to Syrians the United States has sought to avoid aiding terrorists on the one hand and the regime on the other. Washington believes that any important long-term humanitarian assistance in reconstruction should depend on progress toward a political resolution in Syria, he added. Russia has been trying to legitimize its strong military presence in Syria, criticized by the West, by getting other countries to also deploy military personnel there. A top Russian military official said in August 2017 Armenia and Serbia are ready to join a multinational coalition which Moscow hoped would help its soldiers clear landmines. The former Armenian government seemed reluctant to commit troops for such a mission. Speaking at the UN General Assembly in September 2017, then President Serzh Sarkisian said Armenian deployment in Syria requires a UN mandate. An estimated 80,000 ethnic Armenians lived in Syria before the outbreak of the bloody civil war there in 2011. Most of them have since fled the country. Thousands of Syrian Armenians have taken refuge in Armenia. John Bolton, U.S. President Donald Trumps national security adviser, described Armenia on Friday as an important friend of the United States after visiting the country and meeting with its leaders. Yesterday I had a nice visit to Armenia, an important friend in the region, Bolton wrote on his Twitter page. I enjoyed productive conversations with the Prime Minister [Nikol Pashinian] and his national security team. Bolton also retweeted a U.S. Embassy post that quoted him as telling Pashinian that the U.S. supports the new Armenian governments efforts to address corruption, increase judicial transparency and enhance the governments accountability to its citizens in ways that strengthen democracy, rule of law and regional stability. Speaking in Yerevan, Bolton said he discussed with Pashinian a very wide range of subjects, notably the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict. He said Washington expects the Armenian leader to take decisive steps towards a compromise peace deal with Azerbaijan after his widely anticipated victory in upcoming general elections. Bolton also indicated that the Trump administration is ready to allow Yerevan to buy U.S. weapons and thus reduce Russias excessive influence on Armenia. The Trump adviser noted that Russia has been the principal arms supplier of both Armenia and Azerbaijan. That has given Moscow enormous leverage against the two warring nations but not contributed to the resolution of the conflict, he said. Together with France, the U.S. and Russia have long been jointly spearheading international efforts to broker a Karabakh settlement. Armenian officials have not yet publicly commented on Boltons surprise offer. One of them said earlier this month that Yerevan is seeking yet another Russian government loan for more arms acquisitions from Russian manufacturers. The Armenian National Committee of America (ANCA), a Washington-based lobbying group, voiced concern at some of Boltons statements later on Thursday. Bolton expressed openness to U.S. arms sales to Armenia, which - almost certainly - would happen in the context of such sales to Azerbaijan, it said in a statement. The danger here is that Azerbaijan, given the size of its military budget, can afford significantly more advanced U.S. arms than Armenia - leading to imbalances both on the battlefield and in terms of political relationships. Armenias relations with neighboring Iran and renewed U.S. sanctions against Tehran were another major theme of Boltons talks in Yerevan. In an interview with RFE/RLs Armenian service, Bolton said he told Pashinian that the Trump administration will enforce those sanctions very vigorously. For that reason, he said, the Armenian-Iranian border, one of Armenias few conduits to the outside world, is going to be a significant issue. Obviously, we dont want to cause damage to our friends in the process, added the U.S. official. The ANCA said in this regard that it will work with key government stakeholders to ensure that regional sanctions do not improperly or unduly impact Armenia. Maggie's Farm We are a commune of inquiring, skeptical, politically centrist, capitalist, anglophile, traditionalist New England Yankee humans, humanoids, and animals with many interests beyond and above politics. Each of us has had a high-school education (or GED), but all had ADD so didn't pay attention very well, especially the dogs. Each one of us does "try my best to be just like I am," and none of us enjoys working for others, including for Maggie, from whom we receive neither a nickel nor a dime. Freedom from nags, cranks, government, do-gooders, control-freaks and idiots is all that we ask for. By Trend The trade turnover between Azerbaijan and Kazakhstan in 2018 is expected to show growth of 90-95 percent, Ambassador of Kazakhstan to Azerbaijan Beibit Issabayev told reporters. In the first nine months of 2018, the trade turnover between Azerbaijan and Kazakhstan grew by 70 percent compared to the same period of 2018, the ambassador said. "During the visit of the President of Kazakhstan Nursultan Nazarbayev to Azerbaijan in April 2017, the heads of the two states decided to set a task to double the turnover by the end of 2019. But by the end 2018, we expect the trade between the countries to grow by 90-95 percent. Therefore, we can say that we have completed this task ahead of time," Issabayev said. The ambassador also mentioned the upcoming meeting of the intergovernmental commission between Azerbaijan and Kazakhstan at the end of October. As the he noted, the main issues on the agenda will be the discussion of the progress of the work on the task set by the heads of state during the April visit of the Kazakh president, a report on the implementation of the measures reflected in the minutes of the previous meeting and a discussion of the challenges facing the governments of both countries for the period of 2018-2019. The main areas of cooperation between the two countries are the transit and logistics, agriculture, energy, chemical industry and other sectors. --- Follow us on Twitter @AzerNewsAz By Narmina Mammadova The Ministry of Transport, Communications and High Technologies of Azerbaijan is working on expanding the activity of technology parks and create new manufacturing enterprises in the field of high technologies, the Minister of Transport, Communications and High Technologies, Ramin Guluzade, said at the presentation of the innovative development project of Azerbaijan on October 26. A high-tech business incubation center has been set up under the High Technologies Park LLC in order to stimulate innovation activity. Over 30 startups are currently operating there. "In addition, the Research Center for High Technologies under the Ministry is working on priority areas in the field of nanotechnology now. The State Fund for Information Technology Support of the Ministry acts as an investor of successful projects to support innovative entrepreneurship. 117 projects were financed in this direction according to the results of the six grant competitions held earlier by the Fund, the minister noted. He further said that in many countries programs, strategies and roadmaps for the innovative development of the economy are worked out today. "It is important to attract international and local experts for the preparation of these documents and that is why we highly appreciate the work of UNDP, which provided support in the preparation of a roadmap for innovation in Azerbaijan. UNDP plays a special role in global sustainable development," the minister said. Azerbaijan has already opened a Technopark in Sumgait. The Sumgait Technopark, being a pioneer in the creation of technology parks in the region, is a specialized giant complex of factories functioning in various production areas. The establishment of such Industrial Center in Sumgait city is not only a boost in economic development of Azerbaijan, but also is a restoration of the historical traditions of Sumgait founded as an industrial center in the Caucasus. All plants of the Sumgait Technopark are equipped with modern European equipment. The raw materials used in the production process are also imported from leading European countries. All the plants of the park are equipped with laboratories made in Europe, accredited in accordance with the AZS ISO / IEC 17025-2009 standards, and all manufactured products have relevant certificates. The High-Tech Park has already concluded major contracts for the export of cables with Georgia, Kazakhstan, Tajikistan and Kyrgyzstan. The signed agreements are already being fulfilled. The Sumgait Technopark plans to expand operations in the Central Asian market, as well as to enter the markets of Western Europe and Africa. Some 28 types of cable are produced at the cable plant of Sumgait Technopark. The park was commissioned by President Ilham Aliyev on December 22, 2009. --- Follow us on Twitter @AzerNewsAz By Sara Israfilbayova Azerbaijan invites foreign companies to participate in the privatization of state enterprises and facilities. Chairman of State Property Issues Committee Karam Hasanov made the remarks at the 6th meeting of privatization department heads of the Economic Cooperation Organization (ECO) members on October 26. In order to attract foreign investors to the privatization process, invitations were sent to many investment companies, commercial and investment banks, as well as foreign companies, the chairman of the Committee said. According to Hasanov, today there are ample opportunities for cooperation with foreign investors in the fields of metallurgy, chemical industry, agriculture, culture, tourism, etc. In addition, Hasanov noted that at this stage independent appraisers are involved in evaluating state property in accordance with market principles, adding that over the past year, 1,500 state properties were privatized. In general, for all the time, over 1.1 billion manats ($647.06 million) was attracted through investment competitions and more than 20,000 jobs were opened. He went on to say that Azerbaijan is working to fully digitize the privatization process. Hasanov stressed that work is underway in Azerbaijan to bring property management up to world standards. In particular, he noted that such major projects as the creation of the Electronic Cadastral Information System, a satellite observation system aimed at ensuring more efficient use of land plots are being implemented. The State Committee on Property Issues was established on May 19, 2009 on the basis of the relevant presidential decree. The main activities of the State Committee are the management of state property, attraction of investments, maintenance of a single cadastre of immovable property, maintenance of a land cadastre, organization of a land market, protection and improvement of land quality. The country launched portal for privatization privatization.az in July 2016. The portal reflects all necessary information about the facilities, their addresses, location, and even initial cost and aims at facilitation of the process. The website is available in two languages - Azerbaijani and English. Why Azerbaijan is special section available on the website explains the reasons and advantages of investing in the country. The privatization process is designed to attract both foreign and local investors, as well as develop the business environment of Azerbaijan. --- Sara Israfilbayova is AzerNews staff journalist, follow her on Twitter: @Sara_999Is Follow us on Twitter @AzerNewsAz By Narmina Mammadova The opening of the first personal exhibition of the artist Farhad Gamzaliyev (1953-2008) "Life is creativity" took place at the Museum Center in Baku, Trend Life reports. The exhibition is dedicated to the 65th birthday of the artist. The exhibition includes the authors 55 paintings, 30 graphic and 12 ceramic works. The director of the Azerbaijan State Picture Gallery, Galib Gasimov, talking about the creative talent of the master of the brush, noted at the event that members of the public, especially the creative youth, should be familiar with his works. The exhibition allows to get acquainted with the work of the master of brush in a broad aspect. A special catalog was published for the exhibition, in which there was the information about the Farhad Gamzaliyevs creative path and areas of the fine arts, used in his paintings. Galib Gasimov expressed his gratitude to the organizers of the exhibition for holding a high-level event. Irina Eldarova, Honored Artist of Azerbaijan, who is one of the curators of the exhibition, admitted that she was not familiar with Farhad Gamzaliyev, and while working on the design of the exhibition, she visited the workshop of the master. She said that she was surprised how Gamzaliyev created his works in such a small room. "Apparently there are no boundaries of space for real art. Farhad Gamzaliyev proved it to us with all his creativity. His painting, graphics, ceramics ... it seems that the whole exhibition is glowing. I am very glad that these works are presented to a wide audience," she added. Secretary of the Union of Artists of Azerbaijan, People's Artist Agali Ibrahimov, Honored Artist of Azerbaijan, art critic Ziyadkhan Aliyev praised the Farhad Gamzaliyevs works. The Farhad Gamzaliyevs wife, Afyat Gamzaliyeva, expressed her great appreciation to the curators of the exhibition - Director of the Museum Center Liana Vezirova and Honored Artist of Azerbaijan Irina Eldarova. Then the guests of the event got acquainted with the exposition. Not everyone knows the name of Farhad Gamzaliyev. His name means a lot for nowadays young people working in the field of painting and various types of decorative and applied art and whom Farhad Gamzaliyev provided comprehensive, deeply professional support, helping to stand up and master the basics of craftsmanship. He is well known both by young architects and designers who mastered the art of drawing and painting at the Azerbaijan University of Architecture and Construction under his leadership. Here, at the Department of Fine Arts, Farhad worked for a short time - about three years. Farhad Gamzaliyev is a native Absheronese. The artists life was associated with oil since childhood. Grandfather - Gurban Guliyev - owned the oil field in Surakhani. Father - Islam Gamzaliyev - worked in the fields. Uncle - Musa Guliyev - for many years headed the OGPM "Garadagneft". Growing up first in Surakhani, then in Mardakan, he is imbued with the subtle, but infinitely attractive beauty of the Absheron nature. Farhad Gamzaliyev graduated from the Leningrad Higher Industrial Art School named after V.I. Mukhina (at present, Stieglitz St. Petersburg State Academy of Art and Industry). The artist started drawing a lot in the late 1990s: technical difficulties with the production of ceramics affected. Close contact with such brilliant painters as Ismail Mamedov and Darwin Velibekov came in handy in these times. They saw the main advantage of art in the independent life of the means of artistic expression. These were artists who saw in the form the main factor influencing the work of art on our senses, giving it a leading role in the awakening of any emotions in the viewer. He is a master of three-dimensional forms. His paintings are many-sided. They belong not only to different genres, but are executed in different manners of the letter and represent, at times, polar artistic trends, such as objective realism and geometric abstractionism, dramatic expressionism and sentimental romanticism. The late 1990s - 2000s was a period of high creative activity of the artist. He is engaged in painting a lot and enthusiastically, experiments with glass and mirrors, with wood, metal, his favorite ceramics, and all this found its way into creating some objects that attracted both novelty technology and new interpretation of old themes. A bit later Farhad discovers a completely new technology for those years - computer graphics, the Pandoras Box, which opened up unlimited possibilities for experimentation to artists - with color, composition, and form. The system itself here sometimes suggests unexpected configurations, geometric and organic shapes, shades and color gradations. He was only 55 - healthy, beautiful, optimistic, full of creative plans ... He passed away, sitting at the easel, holding a brush in his hand ... --- Follow us on Twitter @AzerNewsAz By Laman Ismayilova Baku International Jazz Festival is underway in Baku. Helge Lien Trio (Norway) delighted Baku audience with their fascinating music at the Rotunda Jazz Club on October 25 as part of the music festival, Azertag reported. Helge Lien is a Norwegian jazz pianist, composer and band leader. The core of Liens work since 1999 has been the Helge Lien Trio, consisting of the classic jazz constellation piano, bass and drums. In 2008 the trio won the Norwegian Grammy for their album Hello Troll, and has achieved international acclaim following nine international album releases, as well as numerous tours and festival performances in Japan, Canada, South Korea, Europe and Scandinavia. In recent years, Lien has successfully joined forces with Polish violinist Adam Baldych, who released the album Adam Baldych & Helge Lien Trio Bridges on ACT in 2015. With their seven albums and thrilling live performances Helge Lien and his band have already earned a large fan base, and when the Helge Lien Trio completed their first tour of Germany on the Berlin Jazz Club A-Trane in 2008, the album Hello Troll was the first Helge Lien Trio release for Ozella Music in Germany. In addition to his activities as composer and performer, Lien is currently employed as an associate professor in jazz at the Norwegian Academy of Music in Oslo. The concert was met with great interest. The audience was captivated by his thrilling performance. 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. 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 Laman Ismayilova The opening ceremony of the exhibitions "Felt art in modern art" and "Traditional Felt art" was held at the Azerbaijan Carpet Museum on October 25. The exhibitions were organized as part of the 3rd International Symposium of Common Languages of Turkic World Patterns under the topic "Intersections in Felt", Azertag reported. The event brought together talented artists from Azerbaijan, Turkey, Russia, Georgia, Kyrgyzstan, Switzerland, Sweden, Hungary and the United States. Prior to the opening of the exhibition, director of the Azerbaijan Carpet Museum, Honored Culture Worker Shirin Melikova informed the guests about the symposium. In her speech, Melikova stressed that felt art is an example of ancient cultural heritage. She said that a three-day exhibition-fair will be also held in the territory of the Icherisheher State Historical-Architectural Reserve. Finally, the guests got acquainted with the exhibition. Notably, the symposium will last until October 27. The event is co-organized by, the Ministry of Culture and the Azerbaijan Carpet Museum with the support of Azerbaijan National Commission for UNESCO, the Interstate Fund for Humanitarian Cooperation of the CIS Member States (MFGS) and Baku Yunus Emre Institute. --- Laman Ismayilova is AzerNews staff journalist, follow her on Twitter: @Lam_Ismayilova Follow us on Twitter @AzerNewsAz By Laman Ismayilova Landmark Cinema Club will host a presentation "Jazz Classics" by Ulvi Mehdi on October 27. Polish drama "Knife in the Water" will be presented as part of Baku International Jazz Festival, Trend Life reported. "Knife in the Water" (1962) is a Polish drama film co-written and directed by Roman Polanski, which was nominated for Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film. The film has garnered acclaim from film critics since its release, and is one of Polanski's best-reviewed works. Andrzej (Leon Niemczyk) and Krystyna (Jolanta Umecka) are driving to a lake to go sailing when they come upon a young man (Zygmunt Malanowicz) hitchhiking in the middle of the road. After nearly hitting him, Andrzej invites the young man along. When they arrive at the lake, instead of leaving the young man behind, Andrzej invites him to go sailing with them. The young man accepts the offer, and, not knowing much about sailing, must learn many hard lessons from Andrzej... The even starts at 15:00. 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. --- Laman Ismayilova is AzerNews staff journalist, follow her on Twitter: @Lam_Ismayilova Follow us on Twitter @AzerNewsAz By Trend The Nagorno Karabakh and seven adjacent regions should be returned to Azerbaijan without any preconditions, the Member of Lower House of Russian Parliament Dmitry Savelyev said Oct. 26 at the working session entitled as "Disinformation Policy - a Threat to Stability in the Modern World" within the VI Baku International Humanitarian Forum. He noted that the Azerbaijani diaspora needs to increase the intensity of activity in the media sphere in order to convey objective information about the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict. 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 Minister of Defense of the Republic of Azerbaijan, Colonel General Zakir Hasanov has met with Alexandre Zouev, UN Assistant Secretary-General for Rule of Law and Security Institutions, the Defense Ministrys press service reported Oct. 25. During the meeting, sides held an exchange of views on the military-political situation in the region. Azerbaijans activities within the UN, in particular the participation of the countrys peacekeepers in various missions, as well as their contribution to maintain international peace and security were highly appreciated. --- Follow us on Twitter @AzerNewsAz By Trend President of the Republic of Azerbaijan Ilham Aliyev has received a delegation led by President of the National Council of the Republic of Slovenia Alojz Kovsca. The head of state thanked President of the Slovenian National Council Alojz Kovsca for attending the 6th Baku International Humanitarian Forum, saying his visit created good opportunity for discussing the issues relating to Azerbaijan-Slovenia bilateral relations. President of the Slovenian National Council Alojz Kovsca hailed good relations between the two countries, underlining opportunities for further development of these ties. Alojz Kovsca noted that he held discussions on defining areas of mutual interest for expanding cooperation between the two countries, and expressed his hope that measures will be taken in this regard in the years to come. The head of state hailed the successful development of Azerbaijan-Slovenia relations. President Ilham Aliyev noted the significance of reciprocal visits at the level of presidents in terms of the development of bilateral ties, and recalled his official visit to Slovenia. Underlining the necessity of expanding bilateral relations, President Ilham Aliyev pointed out the significance of defining areas of partnership between the two countries. The head of state noted the importance of increasing the level of mutual trade in this regard. The President underlined that companies from both countries can further enhance their activities by benefiting from good political environment that exists between Azerbaijan and Slovenia. President Ilham Aliyev recalled his visit to the memorial of Mehdi Huseynzade during his Slovenia trip. The President also hailed good prospects for the development of humanitarian cooperation between the two countries as well as tourism, which, he said, is of crucial importance. --- Follow us on Twitter @AzerNewsAz Metro Pacific Tollways Corp. on Friday announced key appointments in major business units to strengthen and integrate the increasingly complex business of constructing and managing expressways in the Philippines and other member countries of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations. We are simultaneously working on several multi-billion-peso projects in various locations, and even extended our investments to three neighboring Asean countries. While we face numerous challenges, we look forward to the future with a healthy dose of optimism, MPTC president and chief executive Rodrigo Franco. MPTC said J. Luigi L. Bautista was appointed president and general manager of NLEX Corp. that currently oversees three concessions toward the northern part of Luzon-North Luzon Expressway, Subic-Clark-Tarlac Expressway, and the NLEX Connector Road. Also appointed was Roberto Bontia as president and general manager of MPT South Corp. and its two main expressway companies toward the southCavitex Infrastructure Corp. and MPCala Holdings Corp. Bontia will lead the company that oversees the two southern concessionsCAVITEX and the Cavite-Laguna Expressway. Raul Ignacio was named chief operating officer of NLEX.Bautista, who earlier headed the concession companies south of Manila for six years was credited by Franco for the business units growth in revenue and pipeline projects citing Bautistas strong leadership. Bautista was with NLEX for 15 years holding several senior executive positions. His last post at the NLEX was as senior vice president of program management until he was assigned as president of Cavitex Infrastructure Corp. in January 2013. Bontia, who replaces Bautista in the southern concession companies, held several senior management roles in the tollways group. He handled the group-wide operations and technology team in the business units and concurrently is president and CEO of Tollways Management Corp. Ignacio currently heads NLEX Corp.s Tollway Development and Engineering division and is responsible for establishing and aligning the groups standards on project management. In his capacity as NLEX COO, Ignacio will cover the operations and technology functions. By Trend President of the Republic of Azerbaijan Ilham Aliyev has met with deputy director-general of UNESCO Qu Xing. President Ilham Aliyev thanked UNESCO deputy Director-General Qu Xing for participating in the 6th Baku International Humanitarian Forum and described it as a good example of Azerbaijan-UNESCO cooperation. Noting that Azerbaijan-UNESCO relations enjoy strong partnership and rich history, the head of state hailed the successful continuation of bilateral cooperation. President Ilham Aliyev described Azerbaijan as UNESCO`s reliable partner. The President said Azerbaijan is grateful to UNESCO as the country`s historical and cultural monuments as well as historical sites, which are included in the UNESCO Intangible Cultural Heritage List, became common universal assets. The head of state said that all this clearly demonstrates the successful cooperation existing between Azerbaijan and UNESCO. President Ilham Aliyev also hailed promotion of Azerbaijans history and culture around the world through UNESCOs activity. Qu Xing extended UNESCO Director-General Audrey Azoulays greetings to the head of state. He highlighted the importance of the 6th Baku International Humanitarian Forum. Qu Xing noted that Azerbaijan is an ideal place for organizing this kind of intercultural dialogue. Emphasizing that Azerbaijan is located at the crossroads between the North and the South and also the West and the East, Qu Xing hailed the 6th Baku International Humanitarian Forum as a landmark event. He mentioned that UNESCO highly appreciates its cooperation with Azerbaijan, noting the country`s enormous contribution to the work of this organization with its dynamic activities. Noting that Baku will host the UNESCO World Heritage Committee conference next year, Qu Xing stressed the importance of this event. President Ilham Aliyev thanked for the UNESCO Director-Generals greetings and asked Qu Xing to extend his greetings to Audrey Azoulay. --- Follow us on Twitter @AzerNewsAz By Trend Any development of bilateral humanitarian ties is welcomed, Russian Foreign Ministry Spokeswoman Maria Zakharova said Oct. 25 at a press conference speaking on the importance of the 6th Baku International Humanitarian Forum, which started today in the capital of Azerbaijan. "Any development of bilateral humanitarian relations and ties that provide an opportunity for development of multilateral cooperation can only be welcomed, especially when they reach this level and produce such results," she said. Today, the 6th International Humanitarian Forum, dedicated to the theme Shaping a New World and a New Humanity: Creativity and Human Development, has been launched in Baku. More than 580 people, including 416 foreign guests from 86 countries and 24 international organizations, participate in the two-day forum. The International Humanitarian Forum is a prestigious event that brings together prominent statesmen from various countries, Nobel Prize winners in various fields of science and leaders of reputable international organizations, in particular the representatives of the political, scientific and cultural elite of the world in order to hold wide-ranging dialogues, exchange views and conduct discussions on global issues. The initiators of the forum, which has been held since 2010, are the presidents of Azerbaijan and Russia. --- Follow us on Twitter @AzerNewsAz By Narmina Mammadova The number of varieties of cultivated colored cotton may increase in Azerbaijan. Head of the State Seed Control Service of the Ministry of Agriculture Imran Jumshudov said that two varieties of colored cotton were grown so far in order to accumulate experience. Cotton seeds were delivered from China. According to Chinese experts, these varieties are suitable for cultivation by no means in all countries of the world, and they do not produce a normal crop everywhere. However, the climate of Azerbaijan makes it possible to grow such varieties of cotton, as colored and organic, he noted. The head of the state service said that these seeds were planted in the sown area of the Regional Agrarian Scientific Information Center of the Terter region. Very good results have already been achieved: at present cotton is at the stage of maturation," Jumshudov pointed out. He went on to say that the cultivation of organic cotton makes it possible not to use chemical dyes for dyeing children's clothes, but to make clothes from colored cotton. It is planned to grow other flowers of this cotton further in Azerbaijan, Jumshudov said. For the time being, brown and light-brown cotton is grown in Azerbaijan. However, there are also varieties of red, green, light pink and blue cotton. If the already planted varieties give a big harvest, in the future other varieties of colored cotton can be grown in Azerbaijan, he added. Jumshudov further said that this variety of cotton is superior to local ones in quality and fineness of the fiber. The cotton industry, which was once the traditional branch of agriculture in Azerbaijan, is effectively reviving today. Cotton production is most developed in Saatli (25,437 tons), Bilasuvar (24,234 tons), Barda (21,552 tons), Aghjabadi (19,555 tons) and Sabirabad (17,608 tons). President Ilham Aliyev, who constantly made accent on importance of developing of this sphere, raised this issue once again at a meeting of the Cabinet of Ministers dedicated to results of socio-economic development in the first half of 2017 and objectives for the future. The head of state said Azerbaijan restored the glory of cotton growing by increasing crop area of cotton by about three times. In early 2017, the State Program for 2017-2022 was approved with an aim of strengthening measures directed at developing this sphere. The purpose of the State Program is to develop cotton growing, increase export potential in this sphere, ensure employment of the rural population and increase the production of cotton. The new goal of the state is to bring the cotton production up to 500,000 tons by 2022 from the current 260,000 tons. There are ancient traditions of cotton in Azerbaijan. A flap of cotton fabric was found several thousand years old, during excavations at the construction site of the Mingachevir Hydroelectric Power Plant. Cotton is a drought-resistant plant, but it does not tolerate frost and low temperatures, so Azerbaijan is a safe place to grow it. At the beginning of the eighties, Azerbaijan harvested up to a million tons of cotton per year. But then, like all other industries, as in all other Union republics, cotton growing declined and it could not receive the necessary investments for revival for a long time after that. That is, on the one hand, Azerbaijan has a rich potential and experience in this matter, whereas, on the other hand, there is a high need. The oil era is coming to an end, or at least the events of recent years have made the world's oil countries understand that the state treasury is not filled with oil, and attempts to prove the opposite are fraught. And Azerbaijan became one of the first countries that promptly reacted to the challenges of the time, set as one task the diversification of the economy, in particular, the development of the non-oil sector. On top of that, cotton growing is a highly profitable segment of the agrarian industry. Cotton is used in various areas of life. It goes to the textile processing for the production of cotton yarn first of all. Cotton is used to produce fabrics, knitwear, threads, cotton wool and more. Cotton fluff and cotton mats are used in the chemical industry as raw materials for the manufacture of artificial fibers and threads, films, varnishes, etc. It is also used in explosives ... The practice of other states shows that cotton production can bring millions to the budget. --- Follow us on Twitter @AzerNewsAz By Sara Israfilbayova A population census will be conducted in Azerbaijan next October, said Chairman of the State Statistical Committee of Azerbaijan Tahir Budagov during his speech at the Baku Forum on Sustainable Development, held as part of the 6th Baku International Humanitarian Forum. He went on to say that preparatory work in this direction is underway, further adding that a test census was held in Gabala. Currently, the information obtained in this area is being processed, and at the same time, software is being tested, said the chairman of the Committee. Earlier, Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev signed a decree on holding the next census of population on October 1-10, 2019. The current demographic situation in Azerbaijan is positive, while the population size of the country is expected to reach 12 million people by 2050. Azerbaijan has an estimated 2018 population of 9.92 million, up from the 2014 estimate of 9.5 million. The population density is 115 people per square kilometer. As of April 1, 52.9 per cent of the population lives in urban areas, 47.1 per cent in rural areas, 49.9 per cent are men, and 50.1 per cent are women. Azerbaijans population is equivalent to 0.13 percent of the total world population. The country ranks number 90 in the list of countries (and dependencies) by population. According to the latest WHO data published in 2018 life expectancy rate in Azerbaijan stands at 70.3 for men, 75.7 for female. Total life expectancy is 73.1, which gives Azerbaijan a World Life Expectancy ranking of 96. --- Sara Israfilbayova is AzerNews staff journalist, follow her on Twitter: @Sara_999Is Follow us on Twitter @AzerNewsAz By Trend Azerbaijan and Slovenia have discussed in Baku the cooperation in the framework of the Southern Gas Corridor project, the Azerbaijani Foreign Ministry said in a statement Oct. 25. The Azerbaijani Foreign Minister Elmar Mammadyarov met with Alojz Kovsca, President of the National Council of the Republic of Slovenia, in the framework of the 6th Baku International Humanitarian Forum. During the meeting, the parties highly appreciated the current level of relations between the countries, stressed the need to strengthen ties of cooperation in the energy, agricultural, tourism and other fields. Mammadyarov thanked the President of the National Council of Slovenia for the fair position of the Slovenian legislative body, based on the norms and principles of international law, and the decision taken by it on the Khojaly genocide. The parties discussed projects being implemented at the initiative of Azerbaijan. During the meeting, an exchange of views on issues of mutual interest took place. --- Follow us on Twitter @AzerNewsAz By Abdul Kerimkhanov A single Silk Way visa project will be introduced between Uzbekistan and Kazakhstan, thus making the neighboring countries easily accessible for foreign tourists. Kazakh-Uzbek consultations on consular issues were held between the ministries of foreign affairs of both countries, Kazakh media reported. Kazakh delegation was headed by Director of the Consular Service Department Tauboldy Umbetbaev, while the Uzbek delegation was led by Deputy Director of the Consular and Legal Department Fariddin Nasriev. During the event, the parties discussed the state of bilateral relations in the consular field, following which a corresponding protocol was signed. One of the issues raised during the bilateral meetings was the introduction of Silk Road - a visa, which will contribute to the development of tourism of the two countries. For the first time, the creation of a single visa was announced during the international exhibition "Tourism on the Silk Road", which opened in Tashkent on October 4. Visa involves the free movement from country to country for tourists. Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan are confident that the project of the Silk Road visa will soon be supported by other neighboring countries. With the launch of the project, tourists will be able to easily cross the Kazakh-Uzbek border. Tourists coming to Central Asia want to see not only one particular country such as Kazakhstan, but also Uzbekistan, Kyrgyzstan, and Tajikistan. Therefore, it would be a great opportunity to discover the whole region. The idea to create a single visa between Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan, which should become an analogue of a Schengen visa, was first voiced by Senator Dariga Nazarbayeva in June 2018. Earlier, Kazakhstan offered Azerbaijan, Turkey and Kyrgyzstan to join the introduction of the Silk Road visa intended for tourists. Multivisa between Kazakhstan, Turkey, Azerbaijan and Kyrgyzstan is proposed to be introduced within the Modern Silk Road project. Currently, the countries of the Turkic Council are developing proposals for this tourism product. --- Follow us on Twitter @AzerNewsAz By Trend A meeting with Emilia A. Puma, the Acting Deputy Assistant Secretary in the State Department's Bureau of South and Central Asian Affairs, overseeing Central Asia and press and public diplomacy, has been held at the Foreign Ministry of Turkmenistan, the Ministry said in a statement. The sides discussed the issues of political and regional cooperation, various areas of bilateral relations. The two countries discussed the trade and economic partnership and the humanitarian interaction, the development of social and cultural ties, and the protection of human rights, a commentary by the state news agency Turkmen Dovlet Khabarlary reads. An important aspect of bilateral relations between Turkmenistan and the United States is the partnership in ensuring universal peace, security and stability, and countering global challenges and threats, the "Neutral Turkmenistan" newspaper wrote. --- Follow us on Twitter @AzerNewsAz By Abdul Kerimkhanov Turkish company and Uzbekistan signed an agreement on the development of two gold deposits. The State Committee of Uzbekistan for Geology and Mineral Resources and the company TASYAPI (Turkey) signed an agreement on the development of two gold deposits in the Samarkand region. Within the framework of the document, the parties will organize joint exploration and development of the Galabulak and Kushtepa fields. At the first stage, TASYAPI will conduct verification drilling operations at the facilities in order to clarify information on the available resource base and confirm historical exploration data, including use from international standards. The company will also conduct metallurgical tests for the development of process schedules and will develop a preliminary feasibility study for the development of gold deposits. Following the results of the positive results of the first stage of the project, the parties will agree on the forms and conditions for cooperation in the development of gold deposits. There are currently about 500 companies in Uzbekistan with Turkish capital, 100 of which are representative offices. They carry out activities in the sectors of textile, food, hotel management, building materials, plastic, medication, and services. The investments of the Turkish side in the economy of Uzbekistan are about $1 billion. There are 114 companies in Turkey with Uzbek capital. Only last year more than 20 enterprises with the participation of Turkey's investments were organized and 53 companies were accredited in Uzbekistan. Since the beginning of 2018, over 230 joint Uzbek-Turkish enterprises have been created in Uzbekistan, and mutual trade has grown by over 40 percent. In the first half of 2018, Turkey entered the top five foreign trade partners of Uzbekistan. The trade turnover between the two countries amounted to $940 million. Over the seven months of 2018, Turkey came out on top in terms of the number of new foreign enterprises in Uzbekistan. Some 147 enterprises were established with participation of the residents of Turkey. Trade turnover between Turkey and Uzbekistan will reach $ 2 billion by the end of 2018. --- Follow us on Twitter @AzerNewsAz By Abdul Kerimkhanov Over the past few years, the tourism market of Azerbaijan has made a big leap forward. Today, the tourism industry is one of the priorities of the non-oil sector of Azerbaijan. In order to ensure the continuity of development of this sphere, important programs and projects are being implemented, legislation is being improved, and an appropriate infrastructure is being created with the support of the state. From January to September 2018, 2,446,800 accommodations were registered in hotels in Azerbaijan, which is 24.4 percent more compared to the same period 2017, the State Statistics Committee of Azerbaijan said on October 25. Most often, foreigners stay in capital hotels, while Ganja accounts for less than one percent of hotel rooms booked by tourists. Baku accounted for 57.8 percent of all accommodations, Gabala - 10.6 percent, Khachmaz - 6.6 percent, Naftalan and Guba - 3.9 percent each, Gusar - 3.8 percent, Nakhchivan Autonomous Republic - 2.7 percent, Gakh - 1.1 percent, Ganja and Lankaran - 0.8 percent each, and other districts of Azerbaijan - 8 percent. The number of foreigners and stateless persons who booked accommodations in Azerbaijani hotels also increased by 31.3 percent compared to the same period of 2017, reaching 1,651,700, which is 67.5 percent of total hotel accommodations. As many as 13.3 percent of accomodations accounted for UAE citizens. Some 11.4 percent fell for the share of Russia, 9.9 percent - Saudi Arabia, 5.2 percent - Iran, 4 percent - Turkey, 3.8 percent - Israel, 3.6 percent - India, 3.3 percent - Kuwait, 2.7 percent - the UK and Iraq each, 2.6 percent - the US, 2.5 percent - Qatar, 2.2 percent - Pakistan, 1.5 percent - Kazakhstan, 1, 4 percent - Oman, 1.2 percent - Germany, 1.1 percent - Bahrain, 1 percent - Ukraine, 26.6 percent - other countries. Accommodation of Azerbaijani citizens in hotels increased by 12 percent (reaching 795,100 accommodations) compared to the same period of 2017. Hotel revenues amounted to 286.1 million manats following the results of the first nine months of 2018. 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 AZAL President Jahangir Asgarov met with the delegation of the airline Iran Air, headed by its CEO Farzaneh Sharafbafi in Baku on October 26. During the meeting, the sides exchanged views on issues related to the further development of cooperation between Azerbaijan Airlines and Iran Air. Jahangir Asgarov told the guests about the state of affairs in Azerbaijans civil aviation, noting the record increase in passenger traffic of the Heydar Aliyev International Airport. In the first nine months of 2018, the capitals airport served 3.49 million passengers (10 percent more than last year). Taking into account the opening of new flights by the end of 2020, the priority task is to increase this figure up to 7 million passengers per year. According to Jahangir Asgarov, Iran borders with Azerbaijan and full assistance will be provided to the southern neighbor in increasing passenger traffic. Farzaneh Sharafbafi noted that the progress in Azerbaijans civil aviation made a great impression on her. She said that Iranian tourists interest to see Azerbaijan is constantly increasing. Farzaneh Sharafbafi expressed her hope that the negotiations held in Baku will serve as an impetus for further expansion of cooperation. At the meeting, the parties expressed their intention to consolidate mutual efforts to further develop and strengthen air transportation between the two countries. It should be noted that Baku-Tehran flight is one of the most popular destinations. In particular, the low-cost airline Buta Airways, which is part of AZAL, operates flights to Tehran every day, and Iran Air - twice a week. --- Follow us on Twitter @AzerNewsAz To inform more Filipinos abroad about the governments security policies and programs, the Philippine National Police will formally launch its first Global Police Community Relations in Europe next month. Some 300 officers and leaders of Tapang at Malasakit DDS Europe from 11 countries are expected to attend the event, dubbed Global PCR Launching, Meet & Greet at 6 pm on Nov. 2 at COo COo Bar and Restaurant, 395 Cascina Gobba in Milan, Italy. Former PNP and Bureau of Corrections chief Ronald dela Rosa and other PNP officials, led by Global PCR head PCSupt. Gen. Rhodel Sermonia, will grace the event. DDS Global president Gemma Sotto, AKO OFW headed by founding chairman Dok Chie Umandap, and national president Marcia Sadicon, have organized Europes Global PCR launching. Dela Rosa will deliver a speech and will be interviewed one-on-one by Sotto, also head of Global PCR International, during the Meet & Greet portion of the launching. Sermonia will give updates on the governments plans and programs. Global PCR aims to create a platform of support and cooperation between the government and various organizations of Filipino communities abroad. It serves as venue to explain the plans and programs of President Rodrigo Dutertes administration to the overseas Filipino workers, while assuring them of government protection for their relatives in the Philippines.A 24/7 Global PCR Portal using the Internet and social media can be used by the OFWs to communicate with their relatives back home through OFW desks that will be set up in every barangay of the country.Overseas Workers Welfare Administration Deputy Administrator Arnell Ignacio has also been invited to attend the first launching of Global PCR in Europe. Recently, the PNP launched its Global PCR in Los Angeles and San Francisco in California. In his previous foreign trips, President Duterte has repeatedly assured the OFWs that his government would continue the relentless fight against illegal drugs, criminality and corruption. The Chief Executive gained overwhelming support from the OFWs in the 2016 presidential elections. Speaker Gloria Macapagal Arroyo has acknowledged the importance of cooperatives in uplifting the lives of Filipinos. In commemoration of Cooperative Month, Arroyo attended as guest of honor of the Gawad Galing Kooperatiba Awards 2018 in Malolos, Bulacan Wednesday to show support for the efforts to recognize Bulacan as the Cooperative Capital of the Philippines. Arroyo lauded the strength of the cooperative industry in tahe province, noting that Bulacan has several cooperatives and that a significant number of Bulacenos are members. Arroyo was elated by the fact that Bulacenos have managed to build about 800 cooperatives, where majority of the locals are members. In light of the booming industry, Rep. Jose Antonio Sy-Alvarado of Bulacan expressed hope the leadership of the House of Representatives will support his House Bill 8285 declaring Bulacan as the Cooperative Capital of the Philippines. Sy-Alvarado was with Arroyo during the event. The bill, which Arroyo noted had received the endorsement of the Cooperative Development Authority (CDA), states that Bulacan has the greatest number of registered cooperatives and immense amount of combined assets of cooperatives in the country based on the records of the CDA. In addition, it has remained in the top five of all success indicators since cooperatives started in the country. The Bulacan provincial government has always been an advocate of strengthening the viability and growth of the cooperative as a valuable partner in economic development and nation building, Alvarado said in the bills explanatory note.HB 8285 comes on the heels of measures that have sought to recognize cooperatives and advocating for their rights. In 2003, Arroyo signed Presidential Proclamation 493 during her presidency, declaring October as Cooperative Month.Also enacted during her term was Republic Act 9520, the Philippine Cooperative Code of 2008, which addresses the challenges faced by cooperatives such as ineffective and unprofessional management, lack of transparency, and unfair taxes. I am happy to see the results of the Cooperative Code of 2008 which indeed strengthens the countrys cooperatives, Arroyo said, pointing to the improved management and opportunity for self-assessment that resulted from the enactment of the law. Moreover, Arroyo advised prospective members to seek out successful cooperatives instead of establishing a new one. She added the objective of cooperatives should not be to borrow, but to shore up savings. The Gawad Galing Kooperatiba Awards is an annual event that seeks to recognize the top-performing Bulacan cooperatives and reward their contributions to the community. Bakersfield, CA (93308) Today Considerable clouds early. Some decrease in clouds later in the day. High 66F. Winds light and variable.. Tonight Partly cloudy during the evening followed by cloudy skies overnight. Low 47F. Winds light and variable. Speaker Gloria Macapagal Arroyo on Friday admitted that only a law banning political dynasty would prevent the so-called family affairs governance in various elective posts. Arroyo said the absence of a law on this rendered government helpless from preventing close family members from running for different positions. Until such time that there would be a law defining what political dynasty is, we would not be able to check the practice, Arroyo told reporters in an ambush interview Friday during an inspection of a retaining wall project in Sasmuan, Pampanga. Well, like any political activity, there are things positive, and there are things negative about the issue. Nothing is totally good or totally bad, Arroyo added, replying to a question if political dynasty is good for the country. Earlier, lawmakers said criticisms that the family of President Rodrigo Duterte had been building a political dynasty should be best left to the sound discretion of the electorate. Representatives Manny Lopez of Manila and Alfredo Garbin of Ako-Bicol Party-list defended President Dutertes family from criticisms of having too many members running for public office in next years midterm poll.They said the issue of so-called political dynasty would not mattet as long as their leaders were responsive to the needs of their people. Past and present Congresses were composed of family members serving in the same Congress like husband and wife, uncle and nephews, parent and offspring like former Senators Loi Estrada and Jinggoy Estrada, and siblings. During the 15th Congress, former Deputy Speaker and Cebu Rep. Pablo Garcia and son, former Cebu Rep. Pablo John Garcia, served at the same time. Also members of the 17th Congress are husband and wife: Sultan Kudarat Rep. Horacio Suansing and Nueva Ecija Rep. Rep. Estrellita Suansing. After three years of study, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers announced Friday that the so-called "Ike Dike" -- the 70-mile-long coastal barrier that could cost as much as $31 billion -- is the preferred choice for protecting the Texas coastline from future storm surges. The coastal barrier plan, developed in a partnership between the Army Corps of Engineers and the Texas General Land Office, is similar to the original "Ike Dike" proposal made by researchers at Texas A&M University in Galveston after Hurricane Ike devastated southeast Texas in 2008. "One storm can cost many lives and billions of dollars in damage, so the expense of doing nothing far outweighs the investment to protect and enhance our coast," Texas Land Commissioner George P. Bush said in a written statement. "Texas' coast is home to one in every four Texans and 30 percent of the American oil refining sector resides here," Bush said. "The Coastal Texas Study is about protecting our people, our economy and our national security. The options selected are proven to be effective in mitigating the deadly effects of storm surge on our state." The barrier system would be a system of levees and sea gates beginning on high ground north of High Island and running the length of Bolivar Peninsula. It would then cross the entrance of Galveston Bay and run the length of Galveston Island, incorporating the existing Galveston seawall, It would end at San Luis Pass. Read more: Coastal barrier plan 'Ike Dike' draws support, needs funding At the entrance of Galveston Bay, a system of storm surge gates would be constructed to accommodate navigation to the ports of Galveston, Texas City and Houston. A large navigation gate would also be placed along the Houston Ship Channel. These gates would only close during storm events, and are modeled after similar gates in London on the River Thames and on the coast of the Netherlands. A "ring levee" would also be placed around Galveston to protect the backside of the island, a densely populated area, from surge and flood waters. Gates and other barriers would be built near Clear Creek, Dickinson Bayou, Offatts Bayou and Highland Bayou. The plan released on Friday also includes beach and dune restoration along the lower Texas coast, and nine ecosystem restoration projects to increase resilience. The report outlined several environmental concerns, however, including possible impact on wetlands and constriction of tidal exchange that could affect the salinity of estuaries such as Galveston Bay. This, in turn, could potentially impact the ecology of Galveston Bay and the fish, birds and wildlife species that depend on the resources provided by wetland and marsh habitats. The Army Corps and GLO will hold a series of public meetings to review the plans for the coastal spine, beginning Nov. 27 in Port Lavaca. The final feasibility report and environmental impact study is expected in 2021. Once a final report is issued, it would be sent to Congress to consider funding the project. nick.powell@chron.com The Bureau of Immigration has downgraded Australian missionary Patricia Foxs visa status from missionary visa to temporary visitor, which allowing her to stay for only 59 days in the country. The BI board of commissioners headed by BI commissioner Jaime Morente denied the 72-year-old nuns appeal for an extension of her missionary visa, insisting that she violated immigration law by joining political protests. BI Spokesperson Dana Krizia Sandoval said that Foxs visa had to be downgraded after the bureau denied the extension of her missionary visa. Downgrading reverted her status to a temporary visitor, and she is given 59 days from the day her missionary visa expired, which was Sept. 5, she said in a statement. However, Fox is still appealing a BI-issued deportation order before the Department of Justice and the petition is currently pending before the office of Justice Secretary Menardo Guevarra.We have to wait for the decision of her appeal to the DOJ first, Sandoval said. The controversial nun has been working in the country as a missionary worker for almost 27 years and is accused of joining political activities prohibited among foreigners. President Rodrigo Roa Duterte had ordered Fox investigated for criticizing the governments campaign against illegal drugs. But the Australian nun maintained that she did not violate any immigration law and denied joining any political rallies. California officials on Friday plan to submit a 400-page repudiation of the Trump administration's proposal to freeze fuel-efficiency standards for the nation's cars and trucks through 2026, calling it a deeply flawed, disingenuous effort that will harm the health and pocketbooks of Americans. "Finalizing this proposal would worsen air quality for the most vulnerable, waste billions of gallons of gasoline, forfeit our best chance to fight climate change, and result in years of uncertainty in the marketplace," reads a draft of comments from the California Air Resources Board obtained by The Washington Post. It calls the Trump administration's plan "a contrived solution to justify a predetermined outcome." The scathing document, which foreshadows the outlines of a potential legal battle between the federal government and numerous states, attacks nearly every part of an analysis published in August by the administration. That proposal found that tightening fuel requirements would make new vehicles more expensive and encourage people to drive older, less-safe vehicles. California argues the government relied on modeling that is "fundamentally inappropriate" and does not "reflect reality," resulting in "a stack of bad ideas" that "do not pass basic tests of mathematical and statistical rigor." California officials also blast the administration for arguing that the increased greenhouse-gas emissions that would result from its proposal would have little impact on the climate, because the world already is on track for seven degrees Fahrenheit of warming by the end of the century. "This is a nihilistic and fatalistic view that future generations will necessarily be subject to a climate in which human civilization as it currently exists is impossible. It is also illegal," state officials wrote, referring to a Supreme Court finding that the government has a legal obligation to regulate carbon dioxide emissions. "They are continuing their war not only on science but on common sense," California Gov. Jerry Brown, D, said in an interview Thursday, calling President Donald Trump's approach a "profoundly misguided and dangerous" proposal that would harm the car industry and consumers. Officials at the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration declined to address California's critique, saying only that they will follow legal requirements for reviewing and responding to comments. The Environmental Protection Agency, the other agency behind the proposal, did not respond to a request for comment. California's criticism will join the more than 72,000 comments that the government has received on its controversial proposal. The comment period is scheduled to close Friday. But the fight over rolling back fuel-efficiency standards is probably just beginning. During the Obama administration, the federal government worked with California and the auto industry to craft a uniform set of national fuel-economy standards. The White House's latest proposal threatens to blow up that delicate compromise. Trump has proposed revoking California's long-standing legal ability to set its own, more stringent tailpipe standards - and restricting the ability of other states to follow its lead. His proposal rejects findings by the Obama administration that more-fuel-efficient vehicles would improve public health, combat climate change and save consumers money without compromising safety. Trump's proposal estimates that halting fuel-efficiency targets at 2020 levels could save $500 billion in "societal costs," avert thousands of highway fatalities and save an estimated $2,340 on each new automobile. A group of nearly two dozen attorneys general have vowed to use every legal tool available to defend the Obama-era fuel standards, which would require automakers to reach a fleetwide average of roughly 54 miles per gallon by 2025. In addition, California Attorney General Xavier Becerra, D, and other officials say they will go to court if necessary to preserve the state's ability to set its own standards. If California were to prevail, the state could set tougher standards than the federal government, leaving automakers with the specter of manufacturing vehicles that meet different rules in different states. The prospect of an ugly and protracted legal standoff with California has some carmakers scrambling for a compromise. General Motors, as part of its comments Friday on the administration's proposal, plans to make a pitch that executives hope could end the federal-state standoff. The company wants a national program requiring that a growing percentage of cars sold in each state be fully electric or otherwise have very low emissions. California has such a "zero-emission vehicle" requirement, which a group of other states follows. Expending GM's resources on such a clear nationwide goal would be more efficient than having to follow today's numerous and complex standards, said Mark Reuss, a GM executive vice president and president of its Global Product Group, adding the company is working to get beyond the administration's proposed freeze. "We know we can do better than that," Reuss said. "We know the industry can do better than that." GM's comments underscore automakers' uneasiness with the administration's regulatory rollback. Shortly after Trump took office, the industry urged the administration to relax the Obama-era standards. A February 2017 letter from the Auto Alliance, which represents most major automakers, said the EPA's move to forge ahead with stricter tailpipe standards "may be the single most important decision that EPA has made in recent history." Last month, the Auto Alliance appealed to the administration for an extension in the deadline to comment on its latest proposal. "Due to extensive changes" in the analytical model NHTSA used to set the policy, an extension of at least a couple of months is "reasonable and necessary," the group wrote. In response, NHTSA's deputy administrator, Heidi King, offered a three-day extension. At a public hearing later on the proposal, a Ford executive said: "Let me be clear - we do not support standing still. Clean car standards should increase year over year, with the inclusion of provisions that promote ongoing investment in technology that will further drive greenhouse-gas reductions." On Thursday, even as he said California would vehemently oppose Trump's proposal, Brown held a sliver of hope that the president might alter course. "He can change," Brown said, "and I hope to hell he does." --- The Washington Post's Juliet Eilperin contributed to this report. Click through the slideshow to see October 2018 restaurant inspection reports from eateries around Beaumont. RELATED: What inspectors found in Jefferson Co. restaurants this month Port Arthur ISD trustees voted Thursday to strip Confederate names from two of its elementary schools that memorialize Dick Dowling and Robert E. Lee, saying that the new names are "neutral" and "bring people together." Trustees narrowly voted to change the name of Dick Dow-ling Elementary School to Port Acres Elementary School in a 4-3 vote. Trustees Kenneth W. Lofton Sr., the Rev. Donald R. Frank Sr. and board secretary Brandon Bartie voted against the name change, deferring comments to the board president. Confederate Gen. Robert E. Lee and Lt. Richard "Dick" Dowling will "always be in our books but not on our buildings," said board president Debra Ambroise. The vote to change Robert E. Lee Elementary to Lakeview Elementary was less contentious, with trustees voting 6-1 in favor of the name switch. The new names are effective immediately. Superintendent Mark Porterie said the district wanted to "stay away from proper names" and choose names that would "promote harmony and unity." He called Lakeview and Port Acres "very neutral" choices. A few Port Arthur residents made their displeasure known during the Thursday night board meeting, groaning and walking out of the room after the board members announced their decision. Gregory Richard, who said he's been asking the school district for years to cut its Confederate ties, said he believed officials should have named the schools after community members like A.Z. McElroy, the first black school board trustee. Austin McElroy, the son of Alfred Z. McElroy, said he believed the school board missed an opportunity to remember "a great man" who led the district during integration. McElroy lauded the district's "courage" in renouncing the Confederate names. Still, he said he believed that choosing Port Acres and Lakeview Elementary was "the easy way out." The Port Arthur native said the names were too generic, adding that the trustees could have renamed the buildings to "Public School No. 1 and Public School No. 56." Ambroise said she is "thankful to the people who paved the way" for Port Arthur ISD, but at the same time, said the district is "in the business to educate children." Porterie said the district received numerous name suggestions through letters, public hearings and an online poll. Neither Port Acres nor Lakeview was submitted in the online poll launched in September. Of 188 respondents to the online survey, 75 community members said they wanted to keep the schools named for Lee and Dow-ling, whose actions at the Battle of Sabine Pass in 1863 have long been a point of pride for many Texans. A majority of survey respondents said it's time to break from the Civil War era inscriptions, nominating former President Barack Obama and A.Z. McElroy as possible school names. The name change issue comes as the school board is in the process of rebuilding some of the district's schools and looking to put the issue of its Confederate connections to rest. A previous effort to remove the Confederate names was launched on Change.org in 2015. The online petition was unsuccessful, according to previous Enterprise reporting. Port Arthur's Lee and Dowling elementary schools were two of nearly three dozen Texas schools named after Confederate leaders, according to a survey by the Texas Tribune. A new campus for Dick Dowling Elementary School was planned before Tropical Storm Harvey hit, district spokeswoman Kristyn Hunt Cathey said, so the approximately $200,000 cost to change signs has already been factored in. Changing signage at Robert E. Lee Elementary will cost around $100,000, Superintendent Mark Porterie said in August. Phoebe.Suy@BeaumontEnterprise.com Twitter.com/PhoebeSuy The University of Virginia on Friday imposed a four-year ban from campus on Richard Spencer and nine other people who participated in a white-supremacist march on the school's grounds last year. Spencer, a U-Va. graduate, led the torchlight procession of 150 to 200 marchers chanting "Our blood, our soil" and "Jews will not replace us!" through campus on Aug. 11, 2017. The march culminated with participants surrounding and attacking a much smaller group of counterprotesters who had circled a statue of Thomas Jefferson, the university's founder. The following day, Spencer and the others took part in the white-supremacist Unite the Right rally in Charlottesville that led to violent clashes and the death of counterprotester Heather Heyer, who was run over by a car that police say was driven by a man with neo-Nazi ties. "The trespass warnings issued today reflect our commitment to ensuring the safety of our community while upholding the principles of freedom of speech and assembly," U-Va. President Jim Ryan said in a statement. Spencer, in a written response to a request for comment, said: "Ideas have no jurisdiction and ultimately can't be censored. That said, I have no immediate plans to engage in activism on campus, at U-Va. or anywhere." The university announcement of the no-trespass orders followed a year-long investigation by the U-Va. Police Department in coordination with state and federal law enforcement agencies that identified the 10 individuals as "either committing or conspiring with others to carry out acts of violence or other conduct that directly threatened the health and safety of members of the community and other people on Grounds," Assistant Vice President and Chief of Police Tommye S. Sutton said in a statement. "We have drawn a distinction between free speech and conduct that is aimed to intimidate others and promote violence. Such conduct and intimidation will not be tolerated." A violation of the no-trespass order is a criminal trespass offense and violators would be subject to arrest. According to university policy, trespass warnings expire four years after the date the warning is served. In an interview, Timothy Heaphy, U-Va. counsel, reiterated that the decision to ban the men was because they violated policies of conduct, not speech. "If you cross the line from offensive speech to take action, that goes over the line of protected expression," Heaphy said. Heaphy said he hopes to identify more individuals who took part in the march who acted in violation of university policy and add them to the list of banned individuals. Jason Kessler, another organizer of the Unite the Right rally and a U-Va. graduate, was issued a trespass warning in April. Walter Heinecke, a U-Va. associate professor who rushed to help students injured by the white supremacist marchers, called the university's decision to ban Spencer and the others "a highly appropriate move." "As someone who was at the Rotunda on Aug. 11, I feel grateful the university is finally taking some responsibility and action," Heinecke said in an interview. "To hear that they're banning Spencer and Kessler and the others is a positive sign to me that the university is taking seriously its obligation to address white supremacy." The university said it was prohibiting Spencer because of his role in organizing the torchlight march and for giving a speech at the statue "in which he took credit for 'occupying space' and 'defeating' counter protestors that evening." In its statement, the university said Spencer's "words and actions at and after the rally provide evidence of his involvement in a conspiracy to commit acts of violence at the Jefferson statue." Earlier this week, Spencer was accused by his wife, Nina Koupriianova, of physical, verbal and emotional abuse during their eight-year marriage, according to documents filed as part of their divorce proceedings. Koupriianova submitted emails, text conversations and photographs in a court brief as evidence of her allegations. Spencer disputed Koupriianova's charges in an affidavit. "More importantly, none of the allegations of 'abuse' have anything to do with my children," he wrote. "My interactions with my children have only been healthy . . . Petitioner's behaviors reveal that she simply wants to 'score points.' " In addition to Spencer, the university identified those who were banned as Benjamin Daley of Redondo Beach, California; Antonio Foreman of Thousand Oaks, California; Thomas Gillen of Redondo Beach, California; Elliott Kline of Reading, Pennsylvania; Michael Miselis of Lawndale, California; Vasillious Pistolis of Charlotte, North Carolina; Robert Ray of Frankston, Texas;, Wil Smith of Nocona, Texas; and Cole White of Clayton, California. Efforts to reach them were unsuccessful. Four of the men banned Friday - Daley, Miselis, Gillen and White - were arrested by federal agents earlier this month and charged with violating federal laws against rioting for their alleged actions in the Unite the Right rally. Pistolis was dismissed from the Marines this summer after being tried at a court-martial and found guilty. Vidor High School students held in class during an "investigation" are now being released. VISD announced on its Facebook page at around 3:30 that students were being held in class while officials investigated comments. The Philippine National Police has identified eight witnesses to thein Hacienda Nene in Barangay Bulanon in Sagay City, Negros Occidental, on Oct. 20. The witnesses also told the police what they witnessed before and after the crime. We are also looking at the before and after, so everything connected to the case may be used, said Insp. Robert Mansueto, head of the Sagay City Police. Police also said the 14-year-old who survived the massacre in Sagay City has been placed under government custody as a. According to Chino Gastons report aired Wednesday night on State of the Nation with Jessica Soho, the minor, who was only identified as Ben, was a friend of 17-year-old Marchstil Sumicad who was among the casualties. Mansueto said they could not yet reveal the identities of the witnesses for their safety. The witnesses have given their respective affidavits that the police will use to file charges of multiple murder against the suspects.Meanwhile, a 47-year-old witness went missing after giving his statement, according to the police. And 14 minors who witnessed the incident are being given counseling at the Department of Social Welfare and Development for the trauma that they went through. The Police Provincial Office has created a Special Investigation Task Force to focus on the Sagay massacre. The remains of the nine farmers, meanwhile, are now at the city hall gym for public viewing. The term Tokhang has been chosen as Salita ng Taon at Fridays Sawikaan 2018 at the University of the Philippines-Diliman. The winning word was announced after deliberation among a group of academics at the university. Tokhang is the name of the Philippine National Polices anti-drug campaign involving visits to alleged drug suspects at their homes as part of the Duterte administrations war on drugs, which has drawn international criticism over the rising death toll. The word is a portmanteau of katok and hangyo, the Cebuano word to plead. Fake news trailed behind at second place while dengvaxia placed third. Foodie was the online favorite based on the vote on Friday afternoon. This years conference was organized by the Filipinas Institute of Translation, Komisyon sa Wikang Filipino and the UP Diliman Information Office.The colorful terms that have spread through the internet are among the 11 final entries in consideration for Sawikaan 2018s Word of the Year. Language experts were allowed to defend their entries in a final joust before the vote on Friday at University of the Philippines-Diliman. Among them were author and essayist Mark Angeles, who defended tokhang, and language researcher Roy Cagalingan who defended troll while wearing a mask. The 2018 entries include Dengvaxia, DDS Dilawan, Fake news, Federalismo, Foodie, Quo warranto, Resibo, Tokhang, Train and Troll. READ: Trapo, bongga , new Oxford words Here are 31 benchmarks to know on mergers and acquisitions from a variety of sources in the industry. HealthCare Appraisers surveyed 15 respondents representing more than 700 surgery centers across the U.S. to formulate its results, including statistics on ASC acquisition activity and competition: Acquisition activity 1. No change from previous year: 27 percent 2. Decreasing: 33 percent 3. Increasing: 40 percent Competition for acquisitions 4. No change from previous year: 47 percent 5. Decreasing: 13 percent 6. Increasing: 40 percent HealthLeaders Media surveyed 190 respondents on mergers and acquisitions. Of all respondents, 128 were exploring and completing deals. Here are the entities those 128 organizations are interested in pursuing: 1. Physician practice: 48 percent 2. Health system: 37 percent 3. Hospital: 29 percent 4. Physician organization: 27 percent 5. Ancillary, allied (home health, rehab, lab): 23 percent 6. Long-term care, skilled nursing facility: 20 percent 7. Retail clinic/urgent care clinic: 20 percent 8. ASC: 19 percent 9. Ancillary (diagnostic, therapeutic, custodial): 18 percent 10. Health plan, insurer: 14 percent 11. Other healthcare organization: 8 percent 12. Other non-healthcare organization: 2 percent HealthLeaders asked 13 respondents, who said they would not participate in a merger, acquisition or partnership again, why previous MAPs didn't meet expectations. Multiple responses were permitted. 13. Incompatible cultures: 54 percent 14. Governance problems: 31 percent 15. Operational transition problems: 31 percent 16. Financial goals not achieved: 31 percent 17. Disagreement about organizational mission: 31 percent 18. Costs to support the transaction too high: 15 percent 19. Lack of community support: 15 percent 20. Other: 23 percent Mergermarket surveyed 100 senior corporate and private equity executives from U.S. firms that had completed at least one healthcare deal in the past two years to compile the oversights and challenges facing healthcare organizations in mergers and acquisitions. Biggest oversights made during due diligence 21. Mismatch in work cultures: 36 percent 22. Outdated IT infrastructure: 26 percent 23. Ill-equipped management team: 18 percent 24. Cybersecurity vulnerabilities or undisclosed breaches: 10 percent 25. Financial misses: 10 percent Biggest challenge in the integration/post-close phase 26. Allocating investment effectively: 24 percent 27. Making effective cost cuts: 22 percent 28. Culture clash with the acquired company's personnel: 21 percent 29. Capturing identified synergies from diligence: 14 percent 30. Combining IT infrastructures: 10 percent 31. Retaining key personnel: 9 percent Here are the five most popular gastroenterology stories from the week of Oct. 18 through Oct. 24. 1. 3 GIs share their thoughts on Exact Sciences' Cologuard Click here 2. Artificial intelligence identifies 20% more polyps than traditional colonoscopies: 3 details Click here 3. Austin Gastroenterology signs on to anchor large development 3 insights Click here 4. American Cancer Society Cancer Action Network volunteers urge legislators to close colonoscopy screening loophole 4 insights Click here 5. New GERD treatment option 'significantly more effective' than standard of care 5 insights Click here The following hospital and health system credit rating and outlook changes or affirmations occurred in the last week, beginning with the most recent: 1. Moody's affirms North Memorial Health's and Maple Grove Hospital's 'Baa1' rating Moody's Investors Services affirmed the "Baa1" ratings for Robbinsdale, Minn.-based North Memorial Health Care and and Maple Grove (Minn.) Hospital's outstanding revenue bonds, affecting a combined $162 million of debt. 2. Moody's downgrades Fairfield Medical Center's rating to 'Baa3' Moody's Investors Service downgraded Lancaster, Ohio-based Fairfield Medical Center's revenue bond rating from "Baa2" to Baa3," affecting $90 million of debt. 3. Moody's downgrades Gwinnett Hospital System revenue certificates to 'Baa1' Moody's Investors Service downgraded Lawrenceville, Ga.-based Gwinnett Hospital System's revenue certificates from "A3" to "Baa," affecting $132 million of rated debt. 4. Fitch assigns 'BBB+' rating to various series of ProMedica Health System debt Fitch Ratings assigned a long-term "BBB+" rating to various series of debt for Toledo, Ohio-based ProMedica Health System. 5. Fitch downgrades Erlanger Health System's rating to 'BBB' Fitch Ratings assigned a "BBB" issuer default rating to Chattanooga, Tenn.-based Erlanger Health System and downgraded its rating on a series 2014A bond from "BBB+" to "BBB." 6. Fitch affirms Regional West Health Services' 'BBB+' rating Fitch Ratings assigned Scottsbluff, Neb.-based Regional West Health Services a "BBB+" issuer default rating and affirmed its "BBB+" rating for a series 2016A bond. 7. Fitch affirms Carson Tahoe Health System's 'BBB+' rating Fitch Ratings assigned Carson City, Nev.-based Carson Tahoe Health System an issuer default rating of "BBB+" and affirmed its "BBB+" ratings for outstanding bonds issued by Carson City. 8. Moody's affirms Temple University Health System's 'Ba1' rating Moody's Investors Service affirmed Philadelphia-based Temple University Health System's "Ba1" bond rating, affecting $478 million of debt. 9. Moody's affirms Forrest County General Hospital's 'A2' rating Moody's Investors Service affirmed Hattiesburg, Ms.-based Forrest County General Hospital's "A2" bond rating, affecting $104 million of outstanding bonds. 10. Moody's affirms Holland Community Hospital's 'A2' rating Moody's Investors Service affirmed Holland (Mich.) Community Hospital's "A2" bond rating, affecting $36.5 million of debt. 11. S&P lowers Integris Health's bond rating to 'A+' S&P Global Ratings lowered its long-term rating for Oklahoma City-based Integris Health's series 2015A bonds from "A+" to "AA-" and its series 2015B bonds from "AA-/A-1+" to "A+/A-1." 12. Fitch assigns PeaceHealth 'F1+' short-term rating Fitch Ratings assigned an "F1+" short-term rating to the state of Oregon, Oregon Facilities Authority refunding revenue bonds for Vancouver, Wash.-based PeaceHealth and also revised the bonds' long-term rating to "AA-." 13. Fitch revises Edward-Elmhurst's long-term rating to short term Fitch Ratings revised its "A" long-term rating for Naperville, Ill.-based Edward-Elmhurst Healthcare's series 2018 bonds and assigned the bonds an "F1" short-term rating. 14. Fitch assigns 'AA-' issuer default rating to Johns Hopkins Health System Fitch Ratings assigned an "AA-" issuer default rating to Baltimore-based Johns Hopkins Health System. 15. Moody's assigns 'A1' rating to UnityPoint Health's proposed bonds Moody's Investors Service assigned an "A1" rating to West Des Moines, Iowa-based UnityPoint Health's proposed revenue bonds, affecting $929 million. 16. S&P revises TJ Samson Community Hospital outlook to positive S&P Global Ratings revised its outlook on Glasgow, Ky.-based T.J. Samson Community Hospital from stable to positive. Adventist Health System, a Florida based system with 47 hospitals across the Southeast and Midwest, transformed its billing process by asking one question: How can the patient financial experience be as consumer-centric and accessible as possible? "What we focused on is making the experience of paying a bill pleasing. I know that sounds weird a pleasing bill," Tim Reiner, senior vice president of revenue management at Adventist Health, said during a workshop at Becker's Hospital Review's 4th Annual Health IT + Revenue Cycle Conference in Chicago. A "pleasing" bill is no small feat especially in healthcare, where consumer expectations are incredibly high. Affordability of medical costs ranks No. 1 on Americans' list of priorities, according to a Public Agenda's Hidden Common Ground Initiative report. Additionally, nearly a third (29 percent) of Americans have problems paying medical bills, according to the Kaiser Family Foundation. Whether its greater likelihood of patients having a high-deductible health plan, or their households not having enough savings to cover a medical bill, patient affordability issues pose a serious threat to hospitals. Adventist Health knew its legacy paper bills and confusing payment portal left patients with an uncoordinated billing experience. Charges couldn't be broken down, and patients couldn't direct their own payment plans. Inefficiencies in these revenue cycle processes not only left self-pay revenue on the table, but left patients even those with the best clinical experiences unsatisfied. As part of a systemwide initiative to serve the consumer, Adventist Health partnered with Simplee to make price transparency and self-service key components of the system's billing experience. Through the collaboration, Adventist Health began using predictive analytics to match patients with a unique payment plan based on their specific needs. "Our patients are seeking self-service experiences. I know I'll do so many things before I actually call in to talk to someone," Mr. Reiner said. "Why should patients be any different? Providers need to do a better job of putting the right resources in patients' tool boxes to encourage self-service." Adventist Health's new process prompts patients to pay their bill through an email after receiving care. After clicking on the message, patients can log in, view what each encounter across the system cost, and even set up a PayPal account for quick payments. Simplee's platform also provides a staff experience that allows hospital support teams to see a patient's consolidated bill and recommended payment plan options for that patient. Adventist Health quickly found the revamp not only encouraged patient financial engagement, but improved the system's financial performance. The system saw its patient payment volume more than double between the second quarter of 2017 and the same period of 2018, from $7.2 million to $25.8 million per quarter. Of its online payments, 29 percent were made from a mobile device, which is higher than retail ecommerce, where 24 percent of payments are mobile. Patients also have the option to pay via paper bills if they wish. Notably, the Simplee portal allows patients to enter feedback about their billing experience while inside the platform. Adventist Health found consumer satisfaction within the platform often outpaced satisfaction with major brands. The system's Net Promoter Score, a measure of customer loyalty, beat brands like Mercedes Benz, Nordstrom and Comcast, Mr. Reiner said. Its Net Promoter Score was more than twice what the average healthcare organization received. Mr. Reiner doesn't want Adventist Health's billing improvements to stop there. Looking ahead, he imagines an entirely self-service registration and billing experience that "obviates the need for waiting rooms, or an FBI-style interview before your care about who your next of kin is and who has your will." "Those are the old way of doing things," he said. "We're trying to make it more consumer friendly and let people self service themselves like they want to." In doing so, Adventist Health has shifted to a paradigm hospitals have long sought a patient billing experience that works for patients and improves bottom line performance. More articles on healthcare finance: Louisiana hospital files for bankruptcy, blames ex-administrator for financial crisis Private equity pushes into healthcare: 8 latest deals HCA to close Sister Emmanuel Hospital in Miami Baltimore-based University of Maryland Medical Center received a $25 million gift the largest in its history to fund a major expansion of its cancer center. The donation, made by Baltimore businessman Leonard Stoler and his wife Roslyn, will be used to build a patient care tower at the University of Maryland Marlene and Stewart Greenebaum Comprehensive Cancer Center. The new $175 million building will be named after the Stolers. It will house inpatient and outpatient cancer care services and is set to open in 2023, pending regulatory approval. Maryland Republican Gov. Larry Hogan will provide $125 million in state funding for the expansion. Mr. Hogan received treatment for non-Hodgkin lymphoma at UMMC's cancer center in 2015. The Stolers cite their long relationship with UMMC, as well as their granddaughter's successful cancer treatment 26 years ago at UMMC, as key reasons for the philanthropy. The family also gave UMMC another gift to help build the cancer center's outpatient pavilion 15 years ago. More articles on healthcare finance: Louisiana hospital files for bankruptcy, blames ex-administrator for financial crisis Private equity pushes into healthcare: 8 latest deals HCA to close Sister Emmanuel Hospital in Miami Political conversations can pop up in any work environment. In healthcare, organizations choose to handle these conversations in a variety of ways. Becker's Hospital Review asked healthcare leaders to share how they handle these discussions at work. Below are their responses. Jeanne Armentrout Chief Administrative Officer of Carilion Clinic (Roanoke, Va.) "Today's workplace is very dynamic, and people bring with them their own attitudes, beliefs and passions. At Carilion, we address any differences of opinion by reflecting back to our core values: compassion, commitment, curiosity, courage and community. We stress collaboration, respect and inclusivity. These values guide us when we face conversations that naturally draw people to one side or another, like politics. "We certainly have our share of politics directly related to healthcare as well. For us, our strategy is to remain apolitical and focus on the goals or outcomes that would benefit our patients, our business and our community. Focusing on the solution versus debating the problem is a technique that works best for me." Dallis Howard-Crow Chief Human Resources Officer of UCHealth (Aurora, Colo.) "UCHealth values a diverse and inclusive workforce that is always respectful of co-workers, patients and visitors. We appreciate differing opinions, including differing political views, and we encourage staff to ensure those conversations are kind and respectful at all times." Orest Holubec Senior Vice President and Chief Communication Officer of Providence St. Joseph Health (Renton, Wash.) "Civil discourse is important and seems in short supply these days at the office, coffee shops and even some of our kitchen tables. When engaging in political discussion at work, it's important to remind ourselves and our caregivers [employees] that everything we do in the workplace including participating in sometimes tough political discussions must be aligned with our values. Our value of dignity calls on us to respect one another, even when we disagree. The best thing we can do is lead by example. "As a nonprofit healthcare organization, Providence St. Joseph Health can't support specific candidates or parties, but we do have a strong point of view on social justice issues aligned with our Catholic identity and heritage. We believe health is a human right, and we've long advocated for important healthcare and social programs with a special focus on those who are poor and vulnerable. This includes protecting and expanding Medicaid, ensuring a just immigration policy, stewarding the earth's resources and providing access to high-quality and safe care. "We have a diverse workforce and recognize that our stances align with some of our caregivers but not others. We're conscious about articulating how our public positions align with our mission, our values and vision of health for a better world. We're also fortunate that we attract people who are committed to making a difference. "Finally, we make it easy for caregivers to communicate with their state and federal policy makers through a simple online tool. For example, we engaged them recently during the attempted ACA repeal. When advocating for the preservation of Medicaid, more than 7,500 of our caregivers and board members sent nearly 9,000 letters to 22 members of Congress. We're proud that our caregivers are committed to helping others, particularly those who are the most vulnerable, but it's important to note that their actions are voluntary, and they never feel pressured to participate publicly." Stacey Lawson Director of Human Resources at Miami Valley Hospital (Dayton, Ohio) "I think we all have likely heard that we should not talk religion or politics in the office, which is easy enough until you hit election year and then it becomes top of mind. It becomes the watercooler conversation. It becomes the backdrop of a lot of people's dialogue within the workplace. "Leaders should ensure they're representing the voice of all employees. As such, I discourage the conversation in the workplace because seemingly innocuous conversations can easily morph into something that becomes more heated. It can be politically loaded, and it can cause division. "As leaders, I believe it's important we are careful with our words. If we don't measure our words, our words will measure us, and they're measured on the basis of party line, unfortunately. So, people will draw conclusions about who we are, the decisions we make, and our perspective and views by virtue of some of the beliefs that we espouse. For that reason, I believe that it's important that we avoid those conversations, that we demonstrate an openness to hearing differing perspectives, particularly when they are different than ours." Mike Yost Vice President of Marketing, Outreach and Experience at Indiana University Health (Indianapolis) "I try to listen more than talk to understand where the conversation is going. As long as the discussion is lighthearted, I will engage in the discussion but continue to listen more than speak. If the conversion moves toward a debate, I'll do what I can to change the topic and move on." Only five associate justices of the Supreme Courtfour senior and one junior will vie for the most coveted post in the judiciary vacated by Chief Justice Teresita Leonardo de Castro, who was compulsorily retired last Oct. 8, as the deadline for the reception of application and nomination for the post ended at 4:30 pm on Friday. Justice Secretary Menardo Guevarra, an ex-officio member of the Judicial and Bar Council, revealed that no other application or nomination for the top post has been received on Friday, the last day of filing of application and submission of the required documents. No additional constants for the CJ [chief justice] position. Still only five applicants as of this time. The deadline is at 4:30 pm, Guevarra said in a text message to reporters. The five senior justicesActing Chief Justice Antonio Carpio and Associate Justices Diosdado Peralta, Lucas Bersamin and Estela Perlas-Bernabehave accepted their automatic nominations for chief justice post, while Associate Justice Mariano del Castillo declined. A junior magistrate, Associate Justice Andres Reyes Jr., also accepted his nomination by retired Sandiganbayan Justice Raoul Victorino for the post. Victorino nominated all 13 incumbent justices of SC. Del Castillo, the only senior magistrate who declined his automatic nomination, will sit as acting chairman of JBC when it deliberates on the vacancy. As a matter of practice, the most senior SC justice who did not apply for the chief justice post will preside over the deliberations on the chief justice position. Hence, Justice Del Castillo will preside over the JBC when the chief justice post will be taken up, Guevarra explained. Del Castillo cited his retirement in July next year as reason for declining the nomination. I foresee that, as chairperson of the 2018 Bar examinations, my work will extend to the months just prior to my retirement. That will leave me not much time to embark on notable projects that a Chief Justice will normally want to have an imprint on, he stressed. Earlier, the seven-member council decided to scrap the conduct of public interviews of the senior members of SC who are vying for Chief Justice. This was after the Supreme Court unanimously passed a resolution calling for the JBC to do away with the public interviews of senior magistrates seeking the top post in the judiciary, as they insisted that judicial philosophy could already be known through the decisions they had written. The scrapping of the public interview, in effect, amended Rule 7 of the JBC Rules which provides that interviews for the positions in the Supreme Court, Court of Appeals, Sandiganbayan, Court of Tax Appeals, and Sharia Appellate Court; Ombudsman, Deputy Ombudsman, and Special Prosecutor; and Chairperson and Regular Members of the Legal Education Board shall be conducted in public by the JBC en banc.Justices Carpio and Bernabe are the ones who will benefit from the JBCs decision considering that Reyes, Peralta and Bersamin will no longer need to be interviewed by the panel, since their previous interviews for the CJ post that was left vacant by lawyer Ma. Lourdes Sereno is valid for one year. The JBC thoroughly discussed the SC resolution in its last two en banc meetings. In the end by a majority vote, the JBC agreed to dispense with the public interview of senior SC justices vying for the CJ position, without prejudiced to closed-door interviews by the members of the JBC, Guevarra said. Majority members of the JBC believed that sitting members of the of SC had already been publicly interviewed when they first applied for the SC positions, the justice secretary explained. Any public inquiry anew on matters pertaining to their SALNs (Statement of Assets, Liabilities and Networth) and other personal matters in full view of the public through live media coverage would not serve any substantially useful purpose, Guevarra added. He stressed that the Carpio and Bernabe may still be thoroughly interviewed by the JBC, albeit not in full glare of the public. Guevarra clarified that the exemption from public interview would only cover senior associate justices who were automatically nominated and accepted their nomination, and associate justices who have served the SC for at least five years. The rest of the candidates will be subjected to a public interview. For non-SC justices applying for the CJ, the public interview is mandatory because theyre not even part of the SC yet. For junior SC associate justices, they have yet to prove themselves worthy of aspiring to become primus inter pares (first among equals), Guevara said. The JBC earlier extended the Oct. 15 deadline for nominations for the chief justice post to Oct. 26. The Constitution requires the Chief Justice, just like the associate justices, to be a natural-born Filipino citizen, at least 40 years old, with experience as judge or in private law practice for at least 15 years, and a person with proven competence, integrity, probity and independence. Duterte is expected to appoint over 10 members of the High Court during his six-year term. He has already appointed six justices so far current Ombudsman Samuel Martires, Noel Tijam, Andres Reyes Jr., Alexander Gesmundo, Jose Reyes Jr. and Ramon Paul Hernando. A Texas hospital that unexpectedly closed earlier this year has found a new operator, according to the Houston Chronicle. The University of Texas Medical Branch at Galveston signed a 15-year lease to take control of Webster, Texas-based Bay Area Regional Medical Center, which closed in May. UTMB officials said they signed a letter of intent for the 191-bed hospital in August and finalized the deal Oct. 25, according to the report. As part of the deal, UTMB will pay roughly $210 million during the course of the lease for the hospital, which will be rebranded as UTMB Health Clear Lake Campus. It is expected to reopen in spring 2019 under a "phased-in" process, as hospital equipment must be tested and recalibrated. Officials also said they aim to rehire many of the 900 employees who were laid off when the hospital closed. Bay Area Regional Medical Center closed in May after operating for four years. In an email to the Houston Chronicle at the time, Bay Area Regional Medical Center CEO Stephen K. Jones Jr. said the hospital was forced to shutter because it "was not able to overcome significant hurdles with managed-care companies." An estimated 900 employees were laid off at the time. However, a hospital spokesperson told the publication 342 employees have found jobs at other hospitals in the Houston area. Soon after the hospital's closure, several former Bay Area Regional Medical Center employees filed a class-action lawsuit against the hospital, arguing the facility did not give employees proper notice of the closure. The lawsuit seeks damages in the amount of 60 days' pay, the report states. To access the full report, click here. Thousands of University of California unionized workers ended a three-day strike at UC medical centers on Oct. 25. The strike involved American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees Local 3299, which represents more than 25,000 UC service and patient care technical workers. Members of University Professional and Technical Employees-Communications Workers of America 9119, which represents more than 13,000 UC technical and professional employees, also participated. AFSCME Local 3299 leaders said workers are concerned about widening income, racial and gender disparities and job outsourcing at the university.. According to The Sacramento Bee, workers want concessions on outsourcing and pay raises of up to 8 percent annually. University spokesperson Claire Doan told Becker's that union leaders "are spreading false information" and that the university gave all patient care employees represented by AFSCME Local 3299 a 2 percent raise. "Anything beyond that requires union leaders to get back to the bargaining table," she said. UPTE-CWA 9119 members reportedly seek pay raises of 6 percent. Emergency rooms remained open during the strike. However, temporary workers filled in for striking hospital employees, and about 4,200 nonurgent appointments, 241 surgeries and 172 chemotherapy and other infusion treatments were rescheduled at several UCSF medical centers. Ms. Doan said operations were back to normal Oct. 26, and no bargaining sessions are scheduled between the university and AFSCME Local 3299 leaders. More articles on human capital and risk: Some healthcare workers at California hospital don't want to remain unionized Pennsylvania nurses authorize strike University of California workers go on strike Virginia Gay Hospital, a critical access hospital in Vinton, Iowa, sued three private insurers managing Iowa's Medicaid program for allegedly recouping overpayments, according to court documents. The hospital's petition, filed in September in the Iowa District Court of Benton County, named Amerigroup Iowa, UnitedHealthcare of the Midlands and AmeriHealth Caritas Iowa as defendants. VGH accused the managed care organizations of recouping overpayments related to emergency room reimbursements. In an April 2017 bulletin, the Iowa Department of Human Services and Iowa Medicaid Enterprise recognized the ICD-10 code list used by MCOs to determine recoupments was "incomplete and inaccurate" and said it "does not include a number of codes that are used in the ER, particularly those related to behavioral health," according to VGH's petition. VGH claims the MCOs violated their contracts and federal law by failing to follow and use the right ICD-10 codes. VGH said it lost thousands of dollars in patient revenue and accused the groups of not providing a functioning appeals process, calling the MCOs' process a "virtual sham." In an answer to the petition, one MCO AmeriHealth Caritas, which pulled out of Iowa's privatized Medicaid program in November 2017 denied using an incomplete and inaccurate list of ICD-10 codes. AmeriHealth also denied recouping alleged overpayments from VGH. The lawsuit "fails to state a claim for breach of contract with sufficient specificity regarding the relevant contract and its terms," the answer said. AmeriHealth added it "at all times acted in good faith, reasonably, for legitimate reasons, and in accordance with applicable laws." Amerigroup's parent company, Anthem, told Becker's Hospital Review it does not comment on pending litigation. Becker's Hospital Review also reached out to UnitedHealthcare of the Midlands.This article will be updated if more information becomes available. More articles on legal & regulatory issues: CHI allegedly defrauded of millions by IT employee, 2 others Malpractice suits against cardiologists jump 91% between 2006-15 Texas judge's ruling on ACA expected soon: 4 things to know In his latest effort to lower prescription drug prices in the U.S., President Donald Trump proposed Oct. 25 that Medicare pay for certain prescription drugs based on the prices other economically similar countries pay, according to The New York Times. Here are seven takeaways: 1. As part of a demonstration project authorized by the Affordable Care Act, CMS would establish an "international pricing index" and use it as a benchmark to decide how much Medicare would pay for drugs covered by Part B, which covers physician visits for seniors and drugs prescribed to them during their visits. The project would cover half the country. 2. HHS estimates the new pricing index would save Medicare about $17.2 billion over five years. Under the model, Medicare would pay physician fees more closely aligned with the prices other countries pay. 3. Medicare would be allowed to directly negotiate prices with drug companies that President Trump said have "rigged the system," according to The Washington Post. 4. The proposal, which would take effect late next year or early 2020, was immediately criticized by the drug industry's main lobby group, Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America. 5. "The administration is imposing foreign price controls from countries with socialized health care systems that deny their citizens access and discourage innovation," said Stephen Ubl, president and CEO of PhRMA. 6. President Trump, on the other hand, called the proposal a "revolutionary change," adding that "Nobody's had the courage to do it, or they just didnt want to do it." 7. The announcement on drug prices came hours after HHS released a report that said Medicare was paying 80 percent more than other advanced industrial countries. Read the full story here. The New Jersey Department of Health investigated Newark, N.J.-based University Hospital after the death of a premature baby and uncovered "major infection control deficiencies," according to NJ.com. Health officials started their investigation Oct. 1 and found the hospital had issues related to hand hygiene, personal protective equipment and cleanliness. The health department created a correction plan for the hospital after the investigation revealed the hospital failed to follow the department's recommended infection control practices. "The plan calls for the hospital to hire a full-time certified infection control practitioner consultant, who will report to the department on immediate actions taken in the coming days," the correction plan outlined. "The department is also exploring further actions it may need to take in the coming days to ensure patient safety." The premature baby stayed in the hospital's neonatal intensive care unit where it contracted an Acinetobacter baumannii bacterial infection, which often occur in intensive care settings. The bacteria are found in water or soil, and potentially cause pneumonia or serious blood infections. The baby was transferred to another facility and died in late September, before the health department's investigation. "Due to the other compounding medical conditions, the exact cause of death is still being investigated," the state told NJ.com. Four more cases of A. baumannii have been reported in the hospital's NICU. The hospital said it will continue to work with the health department to address these issues. "University Hospital takes patient safety, including infection control, very seriously," the hospital said in a statement cited by NJ.com. "We have been in regular communication with the Department of Health and continue to work closely with them to address this issue as quickly as possible." More articles on clinical leadership and infection control: In-hospital patient suicide rate hits 48.5 to 64.9 per year CDC committee recommends hep A vaccine for homeless people More Congo locals cooperating with Ebola response efforts, officials say New Jersey health officials will launch an infection control and prevention campaign at three New Jersey pediatric specialty hospitals that care for medically fragile patients, similar to those affected by a recent adenovirus outbreak at a rehabilitation center in the state, according to NJ Spotlight. The education and training campaign will emphasize "staff and administrators at (the three) similar facilities who take care of these medically fragile children to ensure infection control protocols are followed," Shereef Elnahal, MD, New Jersey's department of health commissioner, told NJ Spotlight. As of Oct. 25, Wanaque (N.J.) Center for Nursing and Rehabilitation reported 19 confirmed adenovirus infections and seven patients death linked to the outbreak. Rep. Holly Schepisi, R-Passaic County, also pledged to introduce legislation to require healthcare facilities like Wanaque to notify family members within 24 hours of an infection outbreak or health emergency involving patients. More articles on clinical leadership and infection control: How EMR interventions helped Boston Medical Center cut unneeded testing Only 37% of adults got flu shot last year, says CDC Broad-spectrum antibiotic use may kill good gut bacteria, study finds Pennsylvania Democratic Gov. Tom Wolf signed a bill amending the state's organ donation laws Oct. 25, which aims to reduce wasted organs and improve survival rates among transplant patients, reports WFMZ. Here are three things to know: 1. The bill now lets individuals with power of attorney to give permission to donate a loved one's organs. 2. It also lays out a procedure for determining the deceased patients' intentions if they did not made it clear they wanted to donate their organs or tissues. 3. Pennsylvania officials indicated the state's transplant waiting list currently holds about 7,500 people. More articles on clinical leadership and infection control: 'Major infection control deficiencies' identified after infant's death at New Jersey hospital In-hospital patient suicide rate hits 48.5 to 64.9 per year CDC committee recommends hep A vaccine for homeless people Amazon, through a partnership with health brand consultancy Arcadia Group, will sell an exclusive new brand of consumer-focused medical devices, including blood pressure cuffs and glucose monitors, according to CNBC. Arcadia Group said it had created a brand of at-home medical devices for Amazon, called Choice. It will be sold exclusively on the e-commerce giant's website. "I approached Amazon last year as they began to expand their healthcare footprint," Arcadia CEO Bob Guest told CNBC. "I felt that something that was missing from their offerings was products for people with diabetes and other chronic disease states." Although Choice will be run by Arcadia Group and is exclusive to Amazon, it is not an Amazon private label brand, an Amazon spokesperson told CNBC. The Choice brand is working to expand its offerings. A page on its website asks visitors to vote on which health products it should offer next. This is the latest move by Amazon to sell more exclusive health brands on its website. In February, news broke that it had quietly launched Basic Care, an exclusive line of 60 over-the-counter healthcare products, including ibuprofen and hair regrowth treatment. John Sarcona was diagnosed with scoliosis and kyphosis at the age of 5, according to CNN. By the age of 16, Mr. Sarcona had already undergone 16 spine surgeries to treat his disease. One morning, Mr. Sarcona's mother noticed the rods in his spine were protruding from his back. Mr. Sarcona was rushed to the hospital to have the rods removed in his 17th surgery. However, Mr. Sarcona's spine continued to bend. His surgeon recommended he visit Lawrence Lenke, MD, a spine surgeon and surgeon-in-chief at NewYork-Presbyterian in New York City. An expert surgeon, Dr. Lenke is a former president of the Scoliosis Research Society. Dr. Lawrence told CNN Mr. Sarcona's spine was, "bending by the hour." His planned to perform a vertebral column resection. Mr. Sarcona's spine bent forward more than 120 degrees, leaving him with only 22 percent of his lung capacity. The 13-hour surgery was successful. Mr. Sarcona is now seven inches taller. READ: Shabu mess: Plot thickens Defence under-secretary Stuart Andrew has defended the UK's record on selling arms to Saudi Arabia. Britain's lucrative trade relationship with the kingdom has been under scrutiny since a Saudi-led military coalition commenced a bombing campaign in Yemen three years ago. But the sale of arms has come under fresh scrutiny this week in the wake of the murder of journalist Jamal Khashoggi, who was killed inside the Saudi consulate in Istanbul three weeks ago. Speaking in Belfast yesterday, where he announced a 93m missile contract for Thales UK, the MOD minister said: "This has been a week where a lot of questions have been raised, but what I would put to you is that we have among the most stringent and toughest licensing regimes in the world. "We are very careful about making sure that any of the equipment that we sell meets international obligations. "We are not afraid of making sure that we have the right licensing processes in place. We have got them, they are very strong and we are proud of that. "The British Government is constantly looking at each of these situations," he said. "We recognise that there are issues in Yemen, that is why we are also making sure that there is a significant amount of money being sent through our international aid budgets to support the people who are caught up in that conflict. There is also a lot of work going on to try and broker a resolution to the issue there." Also commenting on the situation, Philip McBride, who heads the Thales operation in Belfast, said the arms trade remained heavily regulated. "We will only sell to places that the UK Government feel are appropriate to sell to, so I don't have any qualms about that." While Thales UK does not currently sell to the Middle East, Mr McBride identified it as a potential future growth market for the business. The drinks industry is hoping for the cheer of a cut or freeze on excise duty The Northern Ireland drinks industry has called on the Treasury to reduce, or at a minimum freeze, excise duty on alcohol in Monday's Budget. The Alcohol Beverage Federation of Ireland (ABFI) has said the expected excise increase on booze will hit businesses, tourism and consumers here. The trade body has written to Chancellor of the Exchequer Philip Hammond and Secretary of State Karen Bradley to express its grave concerns ahead of the Autumn Budget. The AFBI said around 5.6 million cases, or over 67 million bottles, of Irish whiskey, Irish cream liqueur and gin were produced in Northern Ireland during 2017. Of this, approximately one million cases were sold in the UK. "The UK already has the fourth highest aggregate rate of excise on alcohol products in the EU," said AFBI director Patricia Callan. "With Brexit leading to a number of uncertainties for the future of the Northern Irish drinks industry, we are clear that any excise increase would be hugely damaging for the sector." Reacting to new research yesterday that supermarkets are selling beer for as low as 79p a pint, the chief executive of Hospitality Ulster, Colin Neill, accused the Government of "pushing people out of pubs". "We are astounded to see the research from the pub trade publication The Morning Advertiser that the below cost selling of alcohol is rife within supermarkets - a contributory factor in putting so many pubs here under extreme pressure," he said. "This shocking information comes just days away from a Budget that is likely to see the Chancellor increase beer duty by 3.5%, which will put 4p on the price of a pint. "This is not acceptable and will be the ruination of many livelihoods, taking away jobs." Meanwhile, hopes remain high for news of a Belfast Regions City Deal on Monday, which could release 1bn of funds and trigger significant investment from the private sector. However Janette Jones, head of tax at PwC in Northern Ireland, said: "From a local perspective, Northern Ireland continues to trail the other 11 UK regions in terms of economic growth and productivity and its unlikely the Budget will deliver a silver bullet to address either challenges." Predicting another Budget before Brexit, she added: "As has been the case for recent Budgets, the unsettled political landscape in which the Chancellor is operating leaves little room for manoeuvre. But having committed an extra 20bn a year in NHS funding, he now faces the conundrum of how to raise taxes in ways that won't be too unpalatable to the electorate." Digital business and the self-employed appear to be obvious targets, but with innovation and entrepreneurship both key to future attractiveness, measures need to be properly targeted and thought through. A rise in Capital Gains Tax is expected on Monday, according to Tom Penman of advisory firm Baker Tilly Mooney Moore. The tax adviser said: "Currently individuals making gains on the sale of residential property (where principal private residence relief does not apply in full) pay CGT at the rate of 28%, with the rate being 20% on other types of gains. "Don't be surprised if the Chancellor raises these rates. "It would be especially timely in relation to residential property given the current publicity around increasing the amount of affordable housing for the younger generations." Hospitals in the Republic built by a Co Tyrone firm will undergo examination to ensure they are structurally sound, Taoiseach Leo Varadkar has said. Work by Coalisland company Western Building Systems (WBS) is under scrutiny after two schools it built in Dublin were closed this week over safety concerns. All 42 school projects involving the firm since 2008 are now being reviewed. The company said all its work had complied with regulations and been subject to inspections. It called for an urgent meeting with the Minister for Education in the Republic Joe McHugh to discuss concerns over the projects. The Department of Education in Northern Ireland has also said it is compiling a list of projects involving the firm. WBS carried out a number of projects for local health trusts, including a renal unit at Altnagelvin Hospital and offices at Lagan Valley Hospital. The South Eastern Trust has already confirmed that the modular accommodation installed by WBS in Lisburn is being demolished to make way for a new primary care centre. Meanwhile, Tanaiste Simon Coveney was accused of being disingenuous and heckled repeatedly during leaders' questions in Dail Eireann yesterday. Solidarity TD Paul Murphy asked why the issues, which he says were known to the department before, were kept under wraps. He said: "Over 1,000 pupils have no school to go to, parents are scrambling for childcare, 42 schools to be inspected, how many more pupils are in a school with 80% chance of a wall falling down? "This is a consequence of a race to the bottom in the construction industry, this is the model that brought on Grenfell and has to end." Mr Coveney said he was less interested in engaging in a "slanging match" and more in fixing the problem. "What we're focused on now is trying to ensure we can reassure staff and children, as well as putting contingency plans in place," he said. "All schools involved will be inspected in the coming days, some of them won't need to move, some may have dangers we need to respond to, I would ask people to work with us rather than organise protests. "Let's have some calm here." An agri-food company with 1,500 staff is shedding 70 EU workers a month as the uncertainty over its future continues, it has been claimed. John Allan, the president of the CBI in the UK, spoke to the Belfast Telegraph ahead of the organisation's annual Northern Ireland lunch at Titanic Belfast. He said members here were anxious about what a no-deal Brexit could bring, including their future access to migrant labour. "We have one member in the agri-food industry which has 1,500 staff in Northern Ireland and they have told me they are losing 70 workers from the EU every month." Mr Allan said the CBI was in favour of immigration. "Immigration is an economic benefit and in the UK immigrants put in more than they take out," he said. "Politicians may not be quite as close to the realities of business life as our members. Business can see with their own eyes that the flow of people in from the EU is diminishing." He said the constitutional integrity of Northern Ireland was not being raised as a concern by business. Politicians including the DUP and some members of the Conservative Party have said they fear that a Brexit deal or backstop scenario which gives Northern Ireland a different status than other parts of the UK will threaten the Union. But Mr Allan said: "In my view, those concerns are a red herring." He said the CBI was lobbying both the Government and Brussels on concluding a free trade agreement. Mr Allan, who is also chairman of grocery giant Tesco, said he'd also felt a "wave of anger" from local businesses over a telling-off by MPs on the House of Commons' Brexit committee earlier this week. He said members told him they'd been angered by comments from Tories Peter Bone and Christopher Chope, who sit on the Exiting the EU Select Committee. Mr Chope told the businesspeople: "You've known we've been coming out of the EU since June 2016 and now you're just waking up to the fact with five minutes to go that there might not be a deal. You've not done a pretty good job." The CBI's annual lunch also heard from CBI NI chairman Trevor Lockhart, who is head of agri-food firm Fane Valley. In a Financial Times interview last week, Mr Lockhart said Fane Valley may have to look at a change in its businesses in the event of a no-deal. One measure could include shifting its cereals business to the Republic, which would be the only way to get oatmeal and animal feed into the EU at speed. But a spokesman for Fane Valley said such contingency plans did not mean uprooting any local business. "There is no suggestion that we would be relocating any facility currently based in Northern Ireland as these assets will be required to serve our UK business," the spokesman added. The firm owns White's Oats, which are produced in Tandragee, Co Armagh. Debenhams has unveiled plans to axe up to 50 high street shops, putting five stores across Northern Ireland at risk. The retailer employs 27,000 staff across the UK and Ireland, with its NI flagship store in Belfast's CastleCourt complemented by outlets in Craigavon, Newry, Ballymena and Londonderry. The retailer's announcement yesterday is the latest blow to Northern Ireland's retail industry, and comes after it was revealed last month that the store chain had called in auditors to consider closures and insolvency. The closure plans, to be implemented over the next three to five years, were revealed on Thursday alongside a dire set of financial figures. Up to 4,000 jobs UK-wide are to be affected. Debenhams took a 491.5m loss in the year to September 1 after being stung by exceptional write-downs of 512.4m, primarily relating to store and lease provisions, IT costs and impairment charges. The loss compares to a 59m profit in 2017. A Debenhams spokesperson said: "We have identified up to 50 stores, accounting for under 15% of total sales, which are currently profitable, but where we do not see a long term future, we intend to exit over the next three to five years. "This is an ongoing five-year programme and we are not disclosing a list of these stores." Sales for the year also slipped 1.8% to 2.9bn while like-for-like revenue fell 2.3%. As part of the shake-up, Debenhams will look to take 130m of costs out of the business, including suspending the dividend. Debenhams Chief Executive, Sergio Bucher, said: "It has been a tough year for retail in 2018 and our performance reflects that. We are taking decisive steps to strengthen Debenhams in a market that remains volatile and challenging. "We are taking tough decisions on stores where financial performance is likely to deteriorate over time." Mr Bucher insisted: "Debenhams remains a strong and trusted brand with 19 million customers shopping with us over the past year. With a strengthened balance sheet, we will focus investment behind our strategic priorities and ensure that Debenhams has a sustainable and profitable future." To compound matters, Debenhams is also the subject of takeover talk, with speculation building that billionaire Newcastle United owner Mike Ashley is set to merge it with his newly-acquired House of Fraser. Mr Ashley owns just under 30% of Debenhams, close to the threshold at which he must launch an official takeover bid. Woes at Debenhams come as a number of retailers on the Belfast high street continue to suffer in the wake of the catastrophic fire at the Bank Buildings, which housed Primark. Belfast City Council's economic development team has estimated that the city will lose between 1m and 3m per month in the short-term as a result of the fire. Around 300 businesses have been impacted and 22 organisations within a cordon around the site have had to close as a result, including 14 retailers. Businesses outside it have seen sales levels drop by between 20% and 70%. According to the team's statistics, CastleCourt has experienced a drop of almost 50% in footfall in September compared to the same period last year. With the future of up to five Debenhams stores in doubt in Northern Ireland, the Belfast Telegraph spoke to shoppers on the street to hear their views. Perhaps unsurprisingly, they blamed Debenhams' woes on a shift to online retailing - although some admitted that they preferred internet shopping themselves. Peter Ives (76), who was with his wife Emily (79), make the 17-mile trip down from Carrickfergus by train once a week. Peter said: "As we were coming out of the shop we were saying this place is normally chock-a-block with people, you are falling over people coming out of the door. But not today and not any other day recently really." Mr Ives, who moved to Northern Ireland from England in 1965, added: "We shop online, yes we do. But I don't buy clothes or shoes because the hassle of them not fitting and sending them back is a pain. "Other than that, electrical or whatever, it's always online." Emily said: "He's always on Amazon and some of the American sites." Customer service worker, Claire Baker (36), said: "It would be a big loss to the city centre as I shop in Debenhams. But I do shop online to be fair. "I think it would be a shame if it closed as it's good to get some things in real life, you know, to see something that I know I can get in my size. "It's not good for the people whose jobs are at risk. I wouldn't like it to happen to myself." Isobel Morrison (62), who works for an accounting firm in Belfast, said: "There is a real problem here, especially having to go all the way around Primark to get to the bank on my lunch break. "Something needs to be sorted out very quickly. The town's just on a bit of a downer at the minute." Sitting on a bench outside Debenhams, Tracey Graham (46), from Belfast said: "All the shops are emptying here. It's not just Debenhams. All the rows are the same. It's about time the council was doing something about all these shops - after all they're getting big bucks from them." A Co Antrim teenager was ordered to stand trial for the murder of a woman on Christmas Day last year. Nathan Ward (19), of Mornington Lane, Lisburn, appeared at Belfast Crown Court for an arraignment hearing on three charges in connection with the incident. Dressed in grey tracksuit bottoms and a black T-shirt, Ward has led into the dock in handcuffs by two prison officers. Ward pleaded not guilty to the murder of 43-year-old nurse Jayne Reat on December 25, 2017 and not guilty to the attempted murder of her 21-year-old daughter Charlotte Reat on the same date. He further denied a charge of unlawfully and maliciously wounding his father Joseph Tweedie with intent to cause him grievous bodily last December 25. All the offences were alleged to have been committed at a house in Mornington Lane. As he entered his not guilty pleas, Charoltte Reat broke down sobbing in the public gallery and was comforted by family members and friends. Defence barrister Joel Lindsay told Mr Justice Colton that a consultant psychiatrist was being instructed to assess Ward's mental state at the time of the incident. Mr Lindsay added: "He has accepted that he committed these acts.'' However, the defence barrister told the judge that a matter to be looked into was whether he committed the acts by way of "diminished responsibility''. Mr Justice Colton set the trial date for February 11, 2019. The trial is expected to last up to three weeks. The judge added that he would review the case in early December for an update on the psychiatrist's report. When Ward was led handcuffed back to the cells to await his trial, Charlotte Reat broke down again and was heard crying as she left the courtroom. The chair of a powerful Westminster committee has written to the Department of Health here with concerns about cancer screening services and the lack of an up-to-date cancer strategy. House of Commons' NI Affairs Committee chairman Dr Andrew Murrison MP wrote to health department permanent secretary Richard Pengelly after it was revealed that a quarter of patients in Northern Ireland are still not receiving treatment within 62 days of an urgent referral from their GP for suspected cancer - well short of the official target of 95%. Dr Murrison, who is leading an inquiry into health funding here, said: "Northern Ireland is lagging behind the rest of the UK in its cancer screening and care. It's the only region in the UK that does not carry out the recommended FIT screenings for bowel cancer and HPV tests for cervical cancer. "Additionally, patients in Northern Ireland face severe delays in receiving diagnosis and treatment, and some patients are expected to finance the up-front costs of their own travel to England for specialist treatment. "In the absence of a devolved Assembly, there is a risk that Northern Ireland's now out-of-date cancer strategy will not be comprehensively updated. It is vital that the department acknowledges these shortfalls in cancer care and develops a strategy for addressing them." A spokesman from the Department of Health said: "Meeting the challenges posed by cancer is, and will continue to be, one of the department's highest priorities. "We have made great strides in tackling cancer and significant progress has been made in the past decade; cancer survival rates in NI are better now than they ever have been. Six out of 10 people with a diagnosis of cancer live more than five years and five out of 10 live for more than 10 years." One of four men accused of attempted murder following a suspected paramilitary-style attack in west Belfast has failed in a bid to be released from custody. Ciaran Fryers was refused bail on charges connected to last month's alleged assault, the Courts Service confirmed. The 35-year-old, of Lagmore Avenue in the Dunmurry area, faces a further count of intentionally causing grievous bodily harm to the same man. He was arrested earlier this week along with three co-defendants accused of the same two offences. The charges against them relate to an alleged attack carried out at a location on September 28. At their first court appearance police described it as a paramilitary-style assault. A detective confirmed no statement has been received from the alleged victim, claiming this may partially be due to fear on his part. On that basis reporting restrictions were imposed to protect the man's identity. Fryers was the first of the four accused to seek bail. But a District Judge at Belfast Magistrates' Court denied the application due to concerns about potential further offences and interference with witnesses. His co-accused, Mark McGrann, 35, of Old Colin; 42-year-old Stephen McCullagh, from Aspen Park; and Sean Megaw, 30, of Brians Well Grove - all in the Dunmurry area - remain in custody. Northern Ireland is not well-prepared for a no-deal Brexit in areas such as trade and customs, auditors have said. The ability to plan is also "severely constrained" amid uncertainty surrounding the border, migration and the repatriation of powers from Brussels, comptroller and auditor general of the Northern Ireland Audit Office Kieran Donnelly said. Those responsibilities fall to Westminster in the form of "reserved" powers which were never devolved to Stormont. Extensive preparations have been made by civil servants here in areas which did come under the remit of the former powersharing government at Stormont, the review said. It warned: "In respect of those areas where policy is reserved, Northern Ireland is not well prepared for leaving the EU without a deal. The Civil Service remains engaged with the UK Government to ensure that Northern Ireland's interests are recognised in the negotiations, although without a functioning Executive its influence has undoubtedly been limited." It added: "Negotiations between the EU and the UK are on-going and in the absence of an agreed exit deal, the way ahead on the key issues is far from clear. The UK Government's position remains that it will achieve a deal that will mitigate these risks as far as is possible. However, time is running short. "The lack of clarity so far on the shape of an exit deal and a clear way forward inevitably means that Northern Ireland is limited in terms of the practical preparations it can make. "It is not fully ready, in operational terms, for a no-deal exit. There are also concerns that whatever the outcome, Northern Ireland's capacity to implement any changes necessary may be constrained given the short time available." A UK Government spokeswoman said: "The Government is resolute in our commitments to Northern Ireland. This includes no hard border between Northern Ireland and Ireland and any physical infrastructure or related checks and controls. It remains the responsibility of the Government to continue preparations for the full range of potential outcomes, including no deal. "As we do, and as decisions are made, we will take full account of the unique circumstances of Northern Ireland." Sinn Fein's Brexit spokesman Mairtin O Muilleoir said: "This report underlines the need for the British Government to honour its commitment to a backstop. A backstop will help protect us from the economic ruin the DUP and the Tories are seeking to impose." SDLP economy spokesman Daniel McCrossan said Brexiters need to "swallow a dose of reality about the impact Brexit will have on our already struggling economy". Six Abu Sayyaf bandits and three marine troops were killed while several othersterrorists and soldierswere wounded as intense fighting erupted anew in the uncharted ridges of Patikul, Sulu early Friday, military officials said. The firefight erupted after security forces encountered some 50 terrorists in Barangay Timpook as the military continued the relentless hunt against the terrorist group in its forested haven in Patikul. Lt. Col. Gerry Besana said soldiers of the Joint Task Force Sulu under Brig. Gen. Divino Rey Pabayo were on combat patrol in a suspected ASG lair when gunfire ripped the environment. Besana said troops of the 62nd, 61st and 64th Marine Companies engaged the ASG bandits under sub-leader Alnijar Ekit and Aldi Alun and was continuing after sundown. Heavy exchange of fire rang out between the terrorist and the government troops but the bandits were overwhelmed by the firepower unleashed by government forces, forcing the ASG members to withdraw and flee, according to the military. The chase by soldiers sparked renewed skirmishes, the military added. As the troops battled the bandits, soldiers found one dead body of a militant along with an M14 rifle with seven M14 magazines. Besana said the firefight resulted in the death of six bandits on the basis of human intelligence accounts while the number of wounded terrorist has not been thus far determined.He said three soldiers were killed while three others sustained minor injuries. Twelve persons, apparently near the vicinity of the gunfight, were arrested and have since been subjected to proper identification. Besana said government casualties were evacuated to Kuta Heneral Teodulfo Bautista Station Hospital for treatment and post mortem examination. We are sad to report that we lost three of our valiant marines, said Lt. Gen. Arnel dela Vega, commander of the Western Mindanao Command. We ask for prayers from all peace-loving people of the country for their eternal repose and for the speedy recovery of the three others who were wounded during the encounter, he added. The ASG were held at bay and have laid low after the military launched massive operations against the terrorists in Mindanao. Leaders of Northern Ireland's four main Churches yesterday united to voice their concerns to the Irish Government about the lack of progress to restore Stormont. Their audience with Tanaiste Simon Coveney was the latest in a series of meetings between the churchmen and key political figures. Speaking after the meeting at Iveagh House in Dublin, the leaders said: "As part of the ongoing dialogue in relation to restoring the devolved institutions to Northern Ireland, following the collapse of the Assembly in January 2017, we welcomed the opportunity today to meet with Mr Coveney as an important part of those discussions. "In our previous meetings with the political parties and the Secretary of State over the last few weeks, we have impressed upon them our concerns that the absence of devolved government in Northern Ireland was affecting many areas of community life, the delivery of public services and cross-border co-operation. "We conveyed these concerns to the Tanaiste, while emphasising the importance of continuing to build relationships and trust among all concerned, even in these difficult times. We also welcomed the opportunity to hear the Irish Government's assessment of the current situation. "While not underestimating the challenges involved in moving forward, we emphasised the importance of dialogue and finding the space that encourages engagement and participation. "As we had done with the political parties and the Secretary of State previously, we reiterated our willingness and desire to assist in the process where we could." Attending were Church of Ireland Primate Dr Richard Clarke; Rev William Davison, president of the Methodist Church in Ireland; Monsignor Joseph McGuinness, diocesan administrator for the Diocese of Clogher; Presbyterian Church moderator Dr Charles McMullen, and Rev Brian Anderson, president of the Irish Council of Churches. Adrian Moynihan of First Trust Bank (second left) with Trevor Lockhart, John Allan and Angela McGowan of the CBI Head of one of the UK's top business groups has urged politicians here not to "sleepwalk into a no-deal Brexit" and to learn from the compromise which led to the Good Friday Agreement. John Allan, the president of the CBI, said he wanted to address local politicians directly. He urged them to take heed of the views of members, 90% of whom believe a backstop agreement for the province is to be preferred over a no-deal Brexit. Mr Allan was speaking at the annual lunch of the CBI in Northern Ireland, which took place at Titanic Belfast yesterday. He also urged politicians to get back to power-sharing at Stormont to enable local decision-making on key infrastructure projects such as the North-South Interconnector and the upgrade to the A5. Mr Allan said: "I want to speak directly to the politicians. You're arguing about Northern Ireland. "Why not learn from recent history what compromise can achieve? We're 20 years on from the Good Friday Agreement that put people, peace and prosperity first; we need that spirit now. "Specifically, over 90% of CBI Northern Ireland members believe the proposed backstop is a better outcome for the economy than 'no-deal'. "Does anyone want history to say a reasonable exit from the EU was thwarted by a generation of politicians who would not compromise? Let's not sleepwalk into a no-deal Brexit." A new report published by the CBI yesterday on the impact of a 'no-deal' here said businesses trading north/south and east/west would face significant disruption. While Britain is Northern Ireland's largest market for goods by value (14bn), the report noted that more businesses trade across the border (7,659) than across the Irish Sea (7,046). Mr Allan said the whole of the UK needed a workable post-Brexit immigration system. "Northern Ireland doesn't have an immigration problem - it has an emigration problem," he said. "With all the uncertainty in the air, people we need are going elsewhere. Many go back to their home countries in the EU. A third of young people leave Northern Ireland to complete their education. Many don't come back. "Year by year, Northern Ireland's reliance on international workers, whether via the EU or the Common Travel Area, has increased. So businesses need action now to address the shortfall, support prosperity and secure vital public services." And he repeated a warning by the CBI that not securing enough migrant labour could result in a fall in our GDP of nearly 10% in the long-term. A report by the Migration Advisory Committee, which emphasised the importance of 'skilled' labour over 'unskilled' labour and announced a possible salary threshold of 30,000 for immigrants, "left people scratching their heads a bit". "Reducing access to lower-skilled workers - through a 30,000 salary threshold - simply won't work for Northern Ireland, or for anywhere else. "A single, global immigration system is a huge change from where we are today. So businesses right across the UK will need ample time to adjust." Mr Allan said leadership and compromise was needed to restore the power-sharing Executive in Northern Ireland. He told politicians: "It is time to do what you were elected to do - govern. "It's not just Brexit. It's about a billion pounds worth of Northern Irish infrastructure projects awaiting a decision. "It's failure to reform the health system, failure to deliver a regional industrial strategy. "Northern Ireland deserves better." Adrian Moynihan, the head of First Trust Bank in Northern Ireland, also addressed the event, and said the growing economic and governmental trend towards protectionism was at odds with business. "As we enter the final stages of Brexit and in the absence of a devolved government in Northern Ireland, it is critical that the business community continues to prioritise partnership and collaboration, working together to ensure our collective voice is heard. Equally, we believe there is a huge opportunity for the business community to come together to develop and create the future vision for Northern Ireland Inc., helping to shape the future business environment for years to come." Detective Constable Brannigan urged the public to come forward with information (stock picture) An elderly woman was forcibly restrained by two men who ransacked her home in an attack that has shocked a small rural Co Down community. The robbery happened on Tuesday night in Seaforde and police are appealing for witnesses to come forward. Detective Constable Michael Brannigan said: "We received a report on Wednesday that the female occupant of a house in the Newcastle Road area of Seaforde was outside her property on Tuesday night when two males approached and forced her inside. "Once inside the property the suspects forced the woman, aged in her 70s, onto a chair and held her hands behind her back. The suspects then carried out a search and subsequently fled with a sum of money. "It's believed this occurred some time between 7.30pm and 7.45pm on Tuesday night. "The woman was not injured. However, she was left badly shaken by her ordeal. "The suspects are described as being aged in their 20s, of slim build and wore grey-coloured tops, with the hoods pulled up." SDLP MLA Colin McGrath last night condemned the attack on the vulnerable elderly woman, saying the local community had been shocked by the outrage. Speaking to the Belfast Telegraph, the South Down representative said "this was a disgraceful act and one that has left a lady in a very shaken state". He added: "For some in our community to pick on a vulnerable lady on a dark autumn evening is horrendous." "The local community are unhappy at this incident and are in shock. My thoughts are with the lady at this time but I am sure that the local community will rally round and support her. "I would urge anyone with any information to contact the police so the full force of the law can be directed to these individuals to ensure our community is safe for everyone." Councillor Roisin Howell said the robbery would have been very frightening for the victim "It's a dreadful thing to have happened," she said. "It doesn't bear thinking about. It's very worrying for everyone in the village. "My thoughts are with the poor woman who suffered this terrible ordeal." Detective Constable Brannigan urged the public to come forward with information. "I am appealing to anyone who was in the area on Tuesday night between 7.30pm and 7.45pm in particular in the Newcastle Road, Seaforde or Clough areas and who saw any suspicious activity to get in touch with us," he said. "I would also appeal to anyone who has information they believe may assist our investigation to contact detectives in Ardmore on the non-emergency number 101, quoting reference number 399 of 24/10/18." Fianna Fail announced its first ever candidate to stand in an election in Northern Ireland - and then promptly sparked confusion by claiming no decision had been made. Sorcha McAnespy is expected to stand in next May's local election. Fianna Fail, currently the main opposition party in the Republic, is due to unveil a number of other candidates in the future. Ms McAnespy, a member of the party's national executive, is already an independent councillor for Fermanagh and Omagh District Council. She left Sinn Fein in 2016 after accusing the party of "nepotism and misogyny". Party leader Micheal Martin, who has long pledged to contest elections north of the border, has informed her she will be a candidate next May. The move comes amid ongoing speculation that Fianna Fail might ultimately merge with the SDLP to run in future elections here. The party's director of elections Eamon O'Cuiv TD and Senator Mark Daly attended an event in Omagh, Co Tyrone, last night to announce Ms McAnespy's candidature. The pair will be her joint campaign managers. "I am delighted Deputy O'Cuiv and Senator Daly agreed to come to Omagh this evening to launch my campaign following my invitation and have both agreed to be my campaign managers," Ms McAnespy said. "There is an appetite for change in Northern Ireland and there is an appetite now more than ever for Fianna Fail to contest elections in Northern Ireland. "Micheal Martin made the commitments in 2013 to contest local elections in 2019 and I was delighted when he confirmed I would be a candidate for Fianna Fail in the upcoming local elections in 2019." However, minutes after the announcement a tweet appeared on the party's Twitter feed contradicting the news. The tweet stated: "Despite some reports, the party has made no decision with regard to contesting the 2019 NI local elections. "The party is continuing its discussions with the SDLP." Established in 1926, Fianna Fail has long claimed to be Ireland's true republican party. As such, it has faced questions about why it would not contest elections on a 32-county basis. Its eventual decision marks a significant move in the political landscape on the island and comes when the debate over Irish unity has gained renewed traction due to Brexit. Mr O'Cuiv said his party would offer "fresh thinking" in Northern Ireland. "I believe that Fianna Fail standing in the North will help to give proper representation to the people concerned with the day-to-day issues, we will offer fresh thinking and challenge the status quo of Sinn Fein and DUP which has led to the shutting of Stormont and dysfunctional politics," he said. Senator Daly said he expected the launch to be the "first of many to come". At the event, Ms McAnespy said "all politics is local". She said: "My constituents' concerns are the lack of investment, cuts to funding for education, pressures on our health services, shortages of staff in front-line services, waiting lists for people with mental health problems, disproportionately high levels of suicide, crumbling infrastructure causing road deaths, lack of accessibility to public transport. Housing shortages, increasing cost of living, lack of broadband. "We in Fianna Fail are here to listen to these concerns and work to address them." Britain First leader Paul Golding on an earlier visit to Ballymena Britain First is still planning to hold a rally in Ballymena despite the arrest of the group's leader Paul Golding, who was last night charged with stirring up hatred. Concerns among local traders are growing over the impending public protest, which they fear could have a catastrophic effect on retail. An increased police presence is expected in the Co Antrim town over the weekend, with the PSNI confirming that officers are being deployed "to provide reassurance to traders and wider community". Speaking to the Belfast Telegraph, DUP councillor and former businesswoman Audrey Wales called for calm and urged residents to refrain from engaging in any activity that will affect the town's livelihood. "Retailers are already struggling in the current economic downturn and I would ask everyone to refrain from organising events that will make people stay away from Ballymena," Ms Wales said. "Traders from the town, who we rely on to employ local people, really need our support so I'm urging people to be tolerant and keep the peace, stay calm and respect one and other." She added: "I don't know who invited Britain First into Ballymena but this will only exacerbate the situation and will not achieve anything in the run-up to Christmas, when retailers really need a trade boost." Britian First claims it has distributed more than 5,000 leaflets ahead of tomorrow's event, which is scheduled to take place at 3pm in Harryville. Posters advertising the controversial protest claim Britain First is "leading the campaign against this huge wave of immigration" and is "demanding an immediate halt" in Ballymena. It comes amid simmering tensions over a surge of Roma migrants moving into Ballymena. Mr Golding was last night charged with three counts of publishing written material intended to stir up hatred and one count of using threatening, abusive, insulting words or behaviour. He is due to appear at Ballymena Magistrates Court on November 15. Britain First's website, however, said Saturday's rally in the town "will proceed as planned". It added: "A team of activists is already there preparing for the event, and we have local speakers ready to participate." Sources said 400 supporters went to hear the Britain First leader address a similar rally a fortnight ago. The PSNI told this newspaper it is "working with all interested parties to find long-term solutions to ease community tensions". "We will have officers in the town over the weekend to provide reassurance to the traders and wider community," Superintendent Darrin Jones said. "Police are one of several partners in the multi-agency forum with a shared goal of ensuring residents, traders and visitors feel safe and secure. "The increase in police patrols over the last number of weeks has resulted in a decrease in crime and an increase in clearance rates which is to be welcomed." The scene at the old Belfast Telegraph building on Royal Avenue in Belfast city centre after the fire. Mandatory Credit Matt Mackey / Presseye.com The scene at the old Belfast Telegraph building on Royal Avenue in Belfast city centre after thefire. Mandatory Credit Matt Mackey / Pressye.com A man allegedly raided a technology hub located at former newspaper headquarters in Belfast city centre before starting a fire that caused 87,000 worth of damage, the High Court heard. Prosecutors claimed Cristian Topiter, 33, broke into the building on Royal Avenue, hid there and then crashed through a ceiling to steal high-value electrical equipment. The premises, once home to the Belfast Telegraph and now occupied by technology innovation centre Digital Catapult, were set alight on February 21 this year. Topiter, a Romanian national with an address at Parkmore in Craigavon, Co Armagh, faces charges of burglary and arson. Refusing bail, Lord Justice Deeny said: "This is a very concerning matter." Topiter allegedly entered the building in the evening and hid in a space over a suspended ceiling before crashing down onto the first floor, the court heard. A Crown lawyer claimed that over the next three hours he went through rooms in the empty premises, taking digital equipment and putting them in a rucksack. She said a fire started in a storeroom spread to other parts of the offices. The blaze was not discovered until early the following morning. "There was extensive fire and smoke damage caused to the office of Digital Catapult," the prosecutor added. She revealed the estimated cost is in excess of 87,000. The burglar's movements and escape through a fire exit door were allegedly captured on CCTV footage. Blood found at the scene was forensically examined and matched Topiter's, the court was told. He was arrested in May, with the prosecution claiming he made little comment during most of his police interviews. Defence counsel accepted a prima facie case has been established against his client, based on the forensic link. He argued that Topiter has lived in Northern Ireland for a number of years and could be released from custody. Denying the application, however, Lord Justice Deeny added: "I consider it's my duty to refuse bail." A Queen's University scientist has been awarded more than 260,000 by the British Heart Foundation Northern Ireland to look into combating the link between diabetes and major cardiovascular diseases. Dr Andriana Margariti and her team at the Centre for Experimental Medicine have been granted 264k to develop new ways to diagnose and treat people with diabetes. Blood cells donated by patients will be used to try to repair cell damage caused by the disease - and reverse its effects. "Diabetes is a major risk factor for heart attacks, stroke, lower limb amputation, kidney failure and blindness, all of which are devastating conditions which severely affect quality of life," said Dr Margariti. She added that it is estimated by 2025 there will be around 300m people across the world with diabetes. The cause and progression of the disease begins with the damage of particular cells that line our arteries named endothelial cells. Understanding the causes of his damage could help screen for the disease and improve quality of life, she added. More than 92,000 people in Northern Ireland have diabetes. Around 10 per cent have Type 1 and 90 per cent have Type 2. Thousands more are estimated to have Type 2 but have not been diagnosed. The condition makes adults two to three times more likely to develop heart and circulatory problems such as coronary heart disease, stroke and vascular dementia. The scientists are investigating how a harmful form of a molecule known as 'quaking' may help damage blood vessels in people with diabetes. They will look into how quaking affects the function of endothelial cells which they have grown in a lab from tiny blood samples taken from people with and without diabetes. The team believe the harmful form of this molecule is higher in the cells of people with diabetes, and they hope to uncover how the increase occurs and whether reversing it could prevent damage to blood vessels. In discovering what causes an increase in this "bad" form of quaking, the findings could be used to treat the heart problems associated with diabetes or screen patients sooner. Karen McCammon, from BHF NI, said: "We are delighted to award this grant to Dr Margariti and her team at Queen's University. "Having diabetes makes adults two to three times more likely to develop heart and circulatory disease, so that is why we are funding this research so we can beat the heartbreak of these conditions and their risk factors." Ian Paisley has described an encounter with former Enterprise Minister Jonathan Bell as 'meeting Walter Mitty in the flesh' in written evidence submitted to the RHI Inquiry. In the document, posted to the RHI Inquiry website on Friday, North Antrim MP Ian Paisley was asked about any discussion he had with Mr Bell "in or around December 2016", in which Mr Bell's interview with Stephen Nolan about the RHI scheme had been discussed. Mr Paisley is asked to detail whether or not the discussion had taken place, if anyone was present at the time, and "what was said by you and by Minister Bell; and the outcome of the discussion, if any". In his response, Mr Paisley dismisses any suggestion Mr Bell had discussed a possible Nolan Show appearance with him, but gives a candid account of a phone call he had with him in early December. Saying he had known the former Enterprise Minister "since university days", Mr Paisley says he spoke to Mr Bell between December 7 and December 9 by telephone, in Parliament Buildings and at Mr Bell's home. "He was quite troubled and concerned about his future because of the RHI scheme and appeared that he wanted a shoulder to cry but he did not reveal to me any plan to speak publicly in the way he subsequently did," Mr Paisley said in his evidence. "The discussion from memory was rambling and long it was over a late night cup of tea, I vaguely recall one of his children being there for part of the discussion so the conversation was quite casual." Mr Paisley said he listened to his DUP colleague "out of interest and at times amusement" as Mr Bell "outpoured his incredible view of his place in the Government". He says that Mr Bell spoke about possibly taking legal action, and quoted Ian Paisley's father - the late Ian Paisley, founder of the DUP - and "reminisced heavily" about a Bible verse he felt was appropriate. "It was a long and bizarre and rambling conversation," said Mr Paisley. "He spent time slagging off Nigel Dodds, Gregory Campbell, Maurice Morrow and most other people in the DUP leaving me to think if I wasn't there he would be slagging me off to whoever cared to listen. "He then had a number of grievances which appeared equally bizarre against Timothy Johnston, John Robinson, Andrew Crawford and Timothy Cairns who he claimed all had their hand in the RHI scandal and that some were making vast amounts of money out of it and that he had a map that proved where all of the schemes had opened up during the critical period all of which happened to be in the back yard area of Timothy Johnston and John Robinson. Mr Paisley described the scenario as "quite sad" but said the two "parted on good terms". He recalled: "I was aware I had just met Walter Mitty in the flesh and I believe Jonathan Bell believed he had met someone who would support his assertions. Only one of us was correct." In September Mr Paisley was suspended from Parliament for failing to declare two holidays paid for by the Sri Lankan government and then lobbying on its behalf. Oral evidence to the RHI Inquiry concluded on Friday. This time 25 years ago, Northern Ireland was in the midst of one of its most frightening and dangerous periods of the Troubles. The horrific Shankill bombing had sparked off a spate of killings, including the brutal Greysteel massacre. It was difficult to see how Northern Ireland could ever emerge from the darkness and fear that engulfed all of our communities. We cannot ever forget those who lost their lives and were injured at that time, and the families whose lives would never be the same again - as well as the thousands of others who suffered throughout our troubled past. But we have to take hope that we did emerge from it. The 1998 Belfast Agreement was secured within five years and that resulted in the remarkable transformation of Northern Ireland in the 20 years since. Employment is now at record levels, the highly talented and educated workforce is attracting serious foreign direct investment, and some of the world's biggest television programmes and movies are made here. And despite the difficulties and uncertainties that surround us, it continues to thrive. But we must be honest, and say for this rate of progress and success to continue, it is vital we get the Stormont institutions restored. We need locally elected politicians taking local decisions that impact on the lives of local people. Northern Ireland needs all the functioning political institutions of the Belfast Agreement and its successors. The only sustainable way forward lies in stable and inclusive devolved government. That is why on Wednesday, I brought forward a Bill which takes an important step towards our goal of restoring the devolved power sharing Executive and Assembly. The UK Government remains completely and unequivocally committed to this goal. The main purpose of the Bill is to provide for a fixed period in which an Executive can be formed at any time. It provides us with the time and space to continue our engagement with the political parties in Northern Ireland and with the Irish Government, where appropriate, to renew the talks process towards the shared aim of restoring devolved government at the earliest opportunity. It is widely recognised that an election would not be helpful at this time. The Bill enables me to remove the current legal requirement to call an election for a period of five months. But I will not be waiting until March to bring the parties together. I will meet party leaders as soon as possible to discuss the basis and process for further talks. But we need commitment and willingness from the political parties and from others. In that vein, I wish to commend church leaders, who I met earlier this month, who are making a concerted effort to improve political dialogue and had a successful meeting with party leaders recently. I welcome all efforts in this regard. We also need to ensure the good governance of Northern Ireland during this period. The Bill also provides the Northern Ireland departments with the certainty and clarity they need to continue to deliver public services during this fixed period. It is also vital that we make it clear this does not give civil servants any new powers. Rather, it gives clarity on how they exercise their existing powers in the absence of ministers. And I will provide supporting guidance which provides a framework for decision-making for Northern Ireland departments when they have to make judgements on how those powers should be used in the absence of ministers. The current impasse is difficult. But when you think about the horrific events 25 years ago, it is clear that the people of Northern Ireland and their representatives have the resilience, the imagination and the will to overcome the current challenges. Northern Ireland has made huge progress in the intervening period. But we can achieve even more with a devolved government that unlocks all of the potential Northern Ireland has to offer. I look forward to the Bill passing through the House of Lords next week. I genuinely believe it will mark a significant step forward towards the best and only solution for all of the people of Northern Ireland. President Rodrigo Duterte will announce his new Cabinet appointees next week following the resignation of five Cabinet officials to run in the 2019 midterm elections, Malacanang said Friday. Presidential Spokesman Salvador Panelo said the President will reveal the new appointees exact assignments in the following days. Their appointments will be released later on. The President has said he will announce it next week, Panelo said. He made his statement even as the rift within President Dutertes party may force the likes of Senator Aquilino Pimentel III, Christopher Bong Go, and Ronald dela Rosa to run as independent senatorial candidates, the leader of a PDP-Laban faction said Friday. Lawyer Rogelio Garcia said Thursday he was confident the Commission on Elections would favor his faction over the group led by Pimentel, who is seeking reelection under PDP-Laban. Five of Dutertes officials have already expressed their interest in seeking elective posts in the upcoming elections. The five Cabinet officials who have sought elective posts are former Special Assistant to the President Christopher Lawrence Go, former Presidential Spokesman Harry Roque Jr., former Presidential Adviser on Political Affairs Francis Tolentino, former Foreign Affairs Secretary Alan Peter Cayetano, and former Cabinet Secretary Leoncio Evasco Jr.Under the rules of the Commission on Elections, sitting government officials will be deemed resigned from their respective posts the moment they file their certificates of candidacy. Earlier this week, Duterte announced the appointment of several people to serve under his administration. On Oct. 17, he appointed former Permanent Representative to the United Nations Teodoro Locsin Jr. to be the new Foreign Affairs chief. On Wednesday, he also appointed Police Senior Inspector Sofia Loren Deliu as Presidential Aide, but she will not hold a Cabinet title. The President also appointed Presidential Peace Adviser Jesus Dureza and broadcaster Ramon Tulfo as special envoys to the European Union and China, respectively, the following day. A multi-million pound roads project aimed at easing traffic congestion in Belfast is facing further hold-up after a High Court judge confirmed the contract award is to be set aside. Department for Infrastructure officials may now re-run the procurement process for the York Street Interchange following the outcome of a legal challenge. Read More Mr Justice Maguire ruled: "The result of the set aside will be that the matter will have to be reconsidered by the department." The road improvement scheme is designed to transform traffic flow at the intersection of the Westlink, M2 and M3 - one of Northern Ireland's busiest junctions. With an estimated cost of between 130m and 165m, the project is expected to take around three years to complete. It was to be funded through some of the 1bn spending package pledged to Northern Ireland under the DUP-Conservative Party Westminster pact. Last year the department announced the process to appoint a contractor had been completed. But the tender award was delayed after a legal challenge was mounted by a BAM Civil Ltd and FP McCann Ltd, a joint venture who narrowly failed to win the contract. In August the court held that the department's decision making and evaluation processes had been legally flawed. A further hearing on remedies then focused on what should happen next. Lawyers for BAM-FP McCann contended a declaration should be made that it would be lawful for the department to award the York Street Interchange contract to the joint venture plaintiff. Counsel representing the department resisted such an outcome, arguing that the matter should be left for his client's reconsideration. Declining to make the declaration sought by the plaintiff, Mr Justice Maguire said: "Such an order seems to the court to be unnecessary in a context where the court is setting aside the award of the contract, as in this case." The contract award is the function of the department, not the court, he added. Unless the main judgment is appealed, the outcome raises the possibility of the procurement being re-run. Turning to the issue of costs, the judge made an award against the Department for 75% of the plaintiff's fees in the case. Police have confirmed a man has died following a one-vehicle crash on the Newferry Road, near Bellaghy, Co Londonderry on Thursday. The collision occurred at around 5pm on Thursday when a BMW car with four men on board left the road. Reece Kelly (22) from the Draperstown area was pronounced dead at the scene whilst three other men were taken to hospital with one described as being in a critical condition. A PSNI statement said: "The circumstances surrounding the collision are under investigation and officers have appealed to anyone who witnessed or who has dash-cam footage of the collision or who saw the blue BMW car being driven in the area before the collision to contact them at the Collision Investigation Unit on 101 quoting reference number 931 25/10/18." DUP leader Arlene Foster has sent a message of congratulations to the Conservative Party's leader in Scotland Ruth Davidson following the birth of her child. Ms Davidson announced the news that she had given birth to a baby boy on her Twitter on Friday afternoon, writing that her and her partner Jen Wilson are "delighted". "Welcome to the world, little one," wrote Mrs Davidson. "Finn Paul Davidson, born today, 10lb 1.5oz. Know that you are loved. X" Responding to Ms Davidson's announcement, DUP leader Arlene Foster wrote: "New life is wonderful. We can all remember our first cuddle. Many congratulations." New life is wonderful. We can all remember our first cuddle. Many congratulations. https://t.co/NMjN1QcYqw Arlene Foster #WeWillMeetAgain (@ArleneFosterUK) October 26, 2018 Following the announcement on Friday a number of other politicians and well-known personalities took to Twitter to send their congratulations to the couple. "Many congratulations to you both. I wish wee Finn a lifetime of happiness," wrote Scottish First Minister Nicola Sturgeon. Good Morning Britain presenter Suzanna Reid tweeted: "Congratulations - the most wonderful news & a gorgeous name". After announcing her pregnancy in April, Ms Davidson took maternity leave off from her role in Scottish Parliament, and told the BBC she had suffered from morning sickness during her pregnancy. "I've had a bit of the fatigue, the nausea and the dizzy spells and all the rest of it, and I think trying to do everything I was doing before and keep up the pace so people couldn't tell, just until we knew everything was OK, was a bit of a struggle, so I don't think everyone's noticed," she said in an interview earlier this year. The Scottish Conservative leader announced she was expecting a child in April after undergoing successful IVF treatment. The issue of the confidence-and-supply agreement between the DUP and the Conservative party has proven a testing issue for Mrs Davidson in the past. The Scottish Conservative leader - who announced her engagement to partner Jen Wilson in May 2016 - walked out of an interview in June 2017 ahead of the agreement being reached on the voting pact between the two parties, with the Scottish Tory leader taking exception to questions about the DUP's opposition to same-sex marraige. Last year Mrs Davidson said it was "pretty awful" same-sex marriage is banned in Northern Ireland. Speaking at a fringe event at the Conservative party conference, she was asked how she felt about her party "getting into bed" with the DUP in order to run a minority government. "I'm not sure Arlene Foster would be comfortable with the idea of getting into bed with me," she said. There has been an increase in the number of people waiting over twelve hours for treatment. The number of 12-hour breaches in Northern Ireland's A&Es have almost doubled compared to last year, according to new figures. Statistics released by the Department of Health have revealed 1,716 people waited longer than 12 hours in emergency departments (EDs) in September. This is up by 759 compared to September last year. Read More The jump has occurred despite the fact there was less than a 1% increase in the number of attendances at EDs last month compared to the same period last year. The Royal College of Emergency Medicine (RCEM) has issued an urgent plea to the Department of Health to intervene to stop the situation spiralling out of control. Dr Ian Crawford, vice president of the RCEM in Northern Ireland, has warned up to 50,000 people could spend longer than 12 hours on trolleys in the coming year if nothing is done to address the crisis. Meanwhile, a paramedic with more than four decades' experience has described the conditions in accident and emergencies here as "horrific". Brian Maguire said: "It's the worst I've ever seen and I'm sure that people have already come to harm. "Typically when you arrive at an emergency department now there are 12, 13, 14 ambulance crews in front of you waiting to hand over their patients." Mr Maguire continued: "It's not unusual to wait six hours to hand over your patient to the hospital staff and nurses are even triaging the patients in the hospital corridors as well. "It's not safe and it's not dignified and it also means that paramedics are off the road as well. "That means the response times to 999 calls go up as well because we're tied up in hospital," Mr Maguire said. While official figures show that almost three-quarters of people were treated and discharged or admitted within four hours, the number of 12-hour breaches has rocketed. According to Dr Crawford, 5,085 patients spent more than 12 hours in Northern Ireland's EDs between July and September this year. This equates to 55 people waiting longer than 12 hours every day over the three-month period. Dr Crawford said the breaches are a "direct consequence of inadequate capacity and reducing capacity in the face of increasing demand". "Between April and September this year, 9,002 patients spent longer than 12 hours in our EDs compared to the 3,216 patients who did so in the six months between April and September 2017," he explained. "This is a year-on-year increase of 280%." He said that if he applied this percentage increase across the coming six months from October 2018 to March 2019, then "a staggering 48,572 patients could spend more than 12 hours in our emergency departments in Northern Ireland in 2018/19." He added: "This is a truly frightening prospect." Dr Crawford warned action must be taken now to tackle the growing crisis. "Again, the Department of Health must immediately prioritise increasing capacity to provide the breathing space so desperately needed to protect our patients and staff in the face of the unprecedented risks to quality of care and patient safety that lie ahead," he said. "This will require corrective investment to increase staffing end to end, the number of acute hospital beds and the social care that are fundamentally required." Dr Crawford's comments come just a month after he made a similar plea for action by health officials as he warned there are not enough hospital beds in Northern Ireland to ensure patient safety. A spokeswoman for the Health and Social Care Board said: Across Northern Ireland, all emergency departments (EDs) experienced a challenging quarter in the period July to September 2018. This was due to continued rising attendances at EDs and to an increase in the number of older, sicker people with more complex needs attending and being admitted to hospital, and the challenges in supporting them to return home when they are medically fit. During the quarter ending September 2018, there were 201,150 attendances in EDs, an increase of 3.6% compared to the same quarter in 2017 (194,172) and some people had to wait longer to be seen, treated, and either discharged or admitted to hospital. This is simply not acceptable and the service is taking steps to ensure improvements are put in place. During the quarter ending September 2018, almost three quarters (71.3%) of people attending EDs were seen and treated within four hours, however, more people had to wait longer than 12 hours to be seen, treated and either discharged or admitted to hospital. We recognise this needs to improve. People may have a longer wait in ED if they require to be admitted to a hospital ward, but a bed is not available. Staff across all Trusts are working closely with the Health and Social Care Board and the Public Health Agency to identify areas where improvements can be made. Almost 8m of transformation funding has been made available in 2018/19 to invest in reforming and enhancing services that should help reduce the pressures on emergency care. Importantly, this includes measures to help prevent people needing to attend EDs and also steps to support people when they leave hospital. In addition, Trusts have developed plans setting out a range of measures to enhance the resilience of the system to respond to expected pressures during the coming winter period. The family member and the four police officers in attendance at the scene all stated that she had resisted arrest and there was a violent struggle (stock picture) A police officer accused of sexual assault by a woman he arrested for drink-driving has been cleared following an investigation by the Police Ombudsman's office. Three other officers were also cleared of allegations ranging from assault to failure in duty. The complaints were made after the woman was arrested at her Belfast home on suspicion of drink-driving. The woman, who alleged the arresting officer had put his hands up her hoodie, pushed up her bra and touched her inappropriately, also accused a female officer of grabbing her hood and trailing her to the floor after she was placed in a police Land Rover. She accused another female officer of running towards the Land Rover and kneeing her in the ribs, holding her down with her knee, grabbing her by the throat and making threats. The Ombudsman yesterday revealed its decision but did not provide details of when it had received the complaint. Officers were also cleared of having acted inappropriately by refusing her a drink and the use of a toilet while in custody. A further complaint that the arresting officer had tried to provoke her by insisting on a blood sample despite her fear of needles, was also dismissed when CCTV footage from the custody suite showed the Forensic Medical Officer pointing out her tattoo, thus rejecting her phobia claim. Police Ombudsman staff examined all relevant police documentation and photographs of the woman's injuries, and took statements from a relative and officers at the scene. A CCTV check and a witness appeal letter drop were also carried out. The family member and the four police officers in attendance at the scene all stated that she had resisted arrest and there was a violent struggle. The witnesses did say that during attempts to get the woman into the Land Rover that her top had risen up but none said they had seen anyone touch her inappropriately. The PPS directed that there was insufficient evidence to prosecute any of the officers in relation to the claims. A PSNI spokesman said: "We welcome the findings of the Police Ombudsman. We are committed to ensuring that officers and staff maintain the high standards expected of them and are satisfied that our officers involved in this incident acted with professionalism and integrity." A senior civil servant has said it was a "quare gunk" moment for officials after they received a damning audit report. Dr Andrew McCormick used the well-known local expression at the public inquiry into the Renewable Heat Incentive. It was a learning day for panel member Dame Una O'Brien, from London, who had never heard the term. She said: "I'm sorry, you'll have to explain it. What does it mean?" Dr McCormick explained that "bombshell" would be a loose translation. Read More The "quare gunk" in question was when Northern Ireland's auditor general blasted the Civil Service for a culture of short-cuts and a failure to manage taxpayers' money. Appearing before the inquiry last week, auditor Kieran Donnelly told the panel it was "clear to me that value for money isn't front and centre in the minds of just too many civil servants". In a short appearance yesterday afternoon, Dr McCormick faced further questions about a two-week delay to shut down RHI in 2016. Nearly 300 extra claimants applied, boosting the cost by an estimated 91.5m over a 20-year period. Dr McCormick said that this had been accepted as a political judgment by the DUP and Sinn Fein at the time. He said Sinn Fein's Mairtin O Muilleoir agreed to the extension after a "public and political outcry" over the scheme. He said he didn't see "anything untoward" about the decision. On reflection, he said there was no exact reason why it was decided that two weeks would be the right amount of time. The main thinking at the time, he said, was a desire by everyone involved to resolve the situation extremely quickly. Mr O Muilleoir told the inquiry on Tuesday that the "phones lit up" with countless claimants complaining it was unfair to shut the scheme down so abruptly. "We thought the immediate closure would cause loss of jobs and a loss of business," he said. He likened the crisis period to a runaway train. "We needed an emergency stop, but even an emergency stop requires skill." Earlier this month Dr McCormick detailed the dysfunctional environment leading up to the closure of RHI. This included a culture of not taking notes at key meetings for fear the contents would be leaked to the Press. He said the situation was made even worse by escalating tensions between the DUP and Sinn Fein. Dr McCormick is due back in front of the panel this morning in what is scheduled to be the final day of oral evidence. His session is to be followed by an appearance from the former head of the Civil Service Sir Malcolm McKibbin. Restoration work has begun on the cenotaph in Londonderry - despite efforts by some councillors who tried to block council funding for materials and labour. Independent republican member Gary Donnelly described the war memorial at the Diamond as "grotesque" and argued that he would be equally opposed to Derry City and Strabane District Council funding for the republican memorial at the City Cemetery. However, unionists have unanimously backed the work currently being carried out on the memorial ahead of this year's Armistice Day commemorations on November 11. Explaining his objections, Mr Donnelly said: "I have nothing against anyone honouring their dead, but I do have a problem with council paying to clean up the war memorial at the Diamond. "We are constantly being told council can't and won't pay for any number of back lanes to be cleaned up even though they are infested with rats because they are not council property. I would not expect the council to pay to clean up a memorial to republican dead, even though the city cemetery is council property. "So why is council money being wasted on this grotesque memorial at the Diamond? "This memorial depicts a soldier stabbing someone and that is grotesque. "But sometimes when we say things like that and it's the truth you are labelled as sectarian." DUP councillor Graham Warke said the cenotaph belonged to everyone in the city. "Despite efforts of independent councillors to block the restoration work and insult the men from the city it commemorates, I am delighted it has started and will be completed in time for this year's commemorations," he said. "This memorial belongs to the people of Londonderry and remembers all the men from this city from both traditions who lost their lives in the two World Wars. It is only fitting that council has taken ownership for the maintenance of the memorial and I look forward to the rest of the work being completed. "The DUP on the council has fought hard to get funding for this restoration. "It is wholly appropriate that the war memorial is maintained to the highest possible standard." The principal of a Lisburn secondary school has paid tribute to one of his most valued staff members ahead of her funeral today. James Martin, head of Laurelhill Community College, was speaking following the death of Caroline Flynn, who taught there for more than 25 years. Ms Flynn (50) died suddenly at her home in Belfast on Tuesday. Staff and pupils at the school are mourning the popular teacher's passing. Ms Flynn taught French and Spanish and was head of the school's modern languages department. The school cancelled its annual celebration of success evening last night and today's planned GCSE options event for Year 10 pupils as a mark of respect for her. Speaking to the Belfast Telegraph, Mr Martin led tributes to his popular and respected colleague. He said: "Caroline was an excellent communicator and a great teacher who really engaged with her students. "She was dynamic and interactive in her teaching method and in some ways, she was ahead of her time. "Her classes were less about chalk and talk but more focused on the conversational aspect. "As well as teaching students, she would have also accompanied them on school trips to France and Spain in the past. "Everyone in the school has been deeply shocked at Caroline's untimely death and I know she will be sadly missed by so many colleagues, past and present." Hundreds of past pupils have also paid tribute to Ms Flynn on social media, describing her as "a wonderful teacher and a lovely person". One former student said yesterday: "She was a wonderful teacher, one of my favourites. She'll be dearly missed." Another said: "She was one of the few teachers I remember in my school years who actually tried and took the time with you. "She was down to earth and levelled with you." Another former student added: "Such a talented teacher who was so enthusiastic about her subject and the children she taught. I had the pleasure of learning Spanish from her between 98-03. "Some of the best memories from school are from her class." A native of Ballymena, Ms Flynn attended Ballymena Academy and later studied at Queen's University, Belfast. She is survived by her mother Elizabeth, brother Nigel, twin sister Margaret, nephews, nieces and family circle. Her funeral service will take place in Henry's Funeral Parlour, Broughshane Street in Ballymena at 1pm this afternoon and she will be laid to rest afterwards in Ballymena cemetery. A councillor has claimed a poster advertising the commemoration of the death of Shankill bomber Thomas Begley contains the silhouette of a soldier used for Remembrance Day events in Northern Ireland. Thomas Begley died and nine others, all Protestants, were killed when the bomb he was carrying exploded prematurely at Frizzell's fish ship on the Shankill Road on October 23, 1993. Read More As event commemorating Begley's death will take place at Milltown cemetery on Saturday. DUP councillor John Scott is the uncle of Wilma McKee, who died in the blast. Speaking on the Stephen Nolan Show, Councillor Scott said he was "sickened" that Sinn Fein party members will be attending the event. He said that the poster, which has been put up in shops in Belfast, carries the same silhouette of a soldier holding a rifle that is used in Remembrance Day posters. "When I saw that poster my stomach just turned," he said. Expand Close Posters in shop windows. Freddie Parkinson / Facebook Twitter Email Whatsapp Posters in shop windows. He added: "The silhouette of that soldier, you go all around Carrickfergus and at the minute they have black silhouette for Remembrance Day coming up and with poppies on them. That is where they have got the picture of that silhouette, it is exactly the same." Councillor Scott also questioned why Sinn Fein party members are going to the event. "Sinn Fein always says about equality and that we all come from the one island. "[This] sends a message to say 'to hell with the victims, we are doing what we want to do'. It doesn't matter if it was Protestants or Catholics that were killed, Sinn Fein don't seem to worry." The father of IRA bomber Thomas Begley has said he would have chained his son to his bed if he had known he was about to carry out a devastating attack on Belfast's Shankill Road. Billy Begley also said his family have been praying for his son's nine victims this week. He was speaking as anger erupted over a planned tribute to his son this weekend. Read More Thomas Begley died and nine others, all Protestants, were killed when the bomb he was carrying exploded prematurely at Frizzell's fish shop on the Shankill Road on October 23, 1993. Begley and a second bomber, Sean Kelly, wearing white coats and posing as delivery drivers, carried the bomb into the shop. Begley (22) was later buried with full IRA honours in the republican plot in Milltown Cemetery, and his coffin was carried by former Sinn Fein president Gerry Adams. A year later Begley was commemorated by a parade through Ardoyne. The 25th anniversary of his death will be marked at a Milltown commemoration tomorrow afternoon at 1pm. Begley's elderly father, Billy, said the event has been organised by his son's comrades and friends. The family have previously publicly stated their opposition to the IRA bombing and their son's role in the attack. Read More Speaking at his home in north Belfast yesterday, Mr Begley said the family have been marking the anniversary privately this week. "We have nothing to do with this event on Saturday and prefer to remember our son in our own private way. This week we have just been going to Mass and saying prayers for him. We also prayed for all the innocent people who were killed on that day," he said. "We are very sorry for what happened - it was all wrong. Our family is not like that and if we had known what Thomas was going to do that day, we would have chained him to his bed." Sinn Fein has confirmed that while tomorrow's commemoration has been organised by Begley's friends and not the party, some of its members will be represented at the event. It will take place just four days after hundreds of people from both main traditions in Northern Ireland marked the 25th anniversary of the atrocity. Read More The mother of one teenager murdered in the bombing said the planned commemoration of her killer's death is "trampling on the graves" of all those who died. One of the bomb victims was Gina Murray's daughter Leanne, who had celebrated her 13th birthday just four weeks before. Mrs Murray (67) says this weekend's event to honour Begley is distressing for the families of the victims and will be hurting them all over again. Expand Expand Expand Expand Expand Expand Expand Expand Expand Expand Expand Expand Expand Expand Expand Expand Expand Expand Expand Expand Expand Expand Expand Expand Expand Expand Expand Expand Previous Next Close A wreath laid by Girls Model Head Girl Caitlin Herron hangs to the side of what was Frizzell's fish shop after a service at West Kirk Presbyterian Church in Belfast to mark the 25th anniversary of the IRA bombing of a fish shop on Shankill Road. Liam McBurney/PA Wire PA People inside West Kirk Presbyterian Church in Belfast for a service to mark the 25th anniversary of the IRA bombing of a fish shop on Shankill Road. Liam McBurney/PA Wire PA DUP leader Arlene Foster and DUP deputy leader Nigel Dodds (centre) in West Kirk Presbyterian Church in Belfast for a service to mark the 25th anniversary of the IRA bombing of a fish shop on Shankill Road. PRESS ASSOCIATION Photo. Picture date: Tuesday October 23, 2018. See PA story ULSTER Shankill. Photo credit should read: Liam McBurney/PA Wire PA People listening to a service outside the West Kirk Presbyterian Church in Belfast to mark the 25th anniversary of the IRA bombing of a fish shop on Shankill Road. PRESS ASSOCIATION Photo. Picture date: Tuesday October 23, 2018. See PA story ULSTER Shankill. Photo credit should read: Liam McBurney/PA Wire PA Alan Lewis - Photopress Belfast 23/10/2018 Photograph by Justin Kernoghan Mairia Cahill attends today's service - An emotional day for Michelle Williamson, who lost her parents in the bombing. A service to mark the 25th anniversary of the Shankill bombing. Nine people and one of the IRA bombers were killed in the 1993 attack. More than 50 people were injured. The Shankill bombing happened at Frizzell's fish shop on 23 October 1993. Two IRA men, Thomas Begley and Sean Kelly, posed as fishmongers and carried the bomb into the shop where shoppers were queuing for food. DUP leader Arlene Foster and her deputy Nigel Dodds are among those attending the service at West Kirk Presbyterian Church. Also present are representatives of the Ballymurphy families whose relatives were shot dead in west Belfast in 1971. Photopress Belfast Pacemaker Press 23/10/2018 Gary Murray (brother of Leanne), who was killed in the 1993 bombing. A Memorial service takes place at West Kirk Presbyterian Church on the Shankill Road on Tuesday to mark the 25th Anniversary of Shankill bomb. Nine Protestant civilians and an IRA bomber, Thomas Begley, were killed in the attack in Belfast on 23 October 1993. Pic Colm Lenaghan /Pacemaker Press George Lenahan greets DUP leader Arlene Foster and DUP deputy leader Nigel Dodds outside West Kirk Presbyterian Church in Belfast for a service to mark the 25th anniversary of the IRA bombing of a fish shop on Shankill Road. PRESS ASSOCIATION Photo. Picture date: Tuesday October 23, 2018. See PA story ULSTER Shankill. Photo credit should read: Liam McBurney/PA Wire PA People gather outside West Kirk Presbyterian Church in Belfast for a service to mark the 25th anniversary of the IRA bombing of a fish shop on Shankill Road. PRESS ASSOCIATION Photo. Picture date: Tuesday October 23, 2018. See PA story ULSTER Shankill. Photo credit should read: Liam McBurney/PA Wire PA Charlie Butler (left) and Michelle Williamson (right) in West Kirk Presbyterian Church in Belfast for a service to mark the 25th anniversary of the IRA bombing of a fish shop on Shankill Road. PRESS ASSOCIATION Photo. Picture date: Tuesday October 23, 2018. See PA story ULSTER Shankill. Photo credit should read: Liam McBurney/PA Wire PA Dessie Williams handing out orders of service outside West Kirk Presbyterian Church in Belfast for a service to mark the 25th anniversary of the IRA bombing of a fish shop on Shankill Road. PRESS ASSOCIATION Photo. Picture date: Tuesday October 23, 2018. See PA story ULSTER Shankill. Photo credit should read: Liam McBurney/PA Wire PA (left to right) Alan McBride, Tim McGarry and Zoe McBride in West Kirk Presbyterian Church in Belfast for a service to mark the 25th anniversary of the IRA bombing of a fish shop on Shankill Road. PRESS ASSOCIATION Photo. Picture date: Tuesday October 23, 2018. See PA story ULSTER Shankill. Photo credit should read: Liam McBurney/PA Wire PA Gary Murray enters West Kirk Presbyterian Church in Belfast for a service to mark the 25th anniversary of the IRA bombing of a fish shop on Shankill Road. PRESS ASSOCIATION Photo. Picture date: Tuesday October 23, 2018. See PA story ULSTER Shankill. Photo credit should read: Liam McBurney/PA Wire PA (left to right) Michelle Williamson, Alfie McCrory and Willie Frazer outside West Kirk Presbyterian Church in Belfast for a service to mark the 25th anniversary of the IRA bombing of a fish shop on Shankill Road. PRESS ASSOCIATION Photo. Picture date: Tuesday October 23, 2018. See PA story ULSTER Shankill. Photo credit should read: Liam McBurney/PA Wire PA Moke Devlin outside West Kirk Presbyterian Church in Belfast for a service to mark the 25th anniversary of the IRA bombing of a fish shop on Shankill Road. PRESS ASSOCIATION Photo. Picture date: Tuesday October 23, 2018. See PA story ULSTER Shankill. Photo credit should read: Liam McBurney/PA Wire PA Gina Murray (left) enters West Kirk Presbyterian Church in Belfast for a service to mark the 25th anniversary of the IRA bombing of a fish shop on Shankill Road. PRESS ASSOCIATION Photo. Picture date: Tuesday October 23, 2018. See PA story ULSTER Shankill. Photo credit should read: Liam McBurney/PA Wire PA People listening to a service outside the West Kirk Presbyterian Church in Belfast to mark the 25th anniversary of the IRA bombing of a fish shop on Shankill Road. PRESS ASSOCIATION Photo. Picture date: Tuesday October 23, 2018. See PA story ULSTER Shankill. Photo credit should read: Liam McBurney/PA Wire PA People listening to a service outside the West Kirk Presbyterian Church in Belfast to mark the 25th anniversary of the IRA bombing of a fish shop on Shankill Road. PRESS ASSOCIATION Photo. Picture date: Tuesday October 23, 2018. See PA story ULSTER Shankill. Photo credit should read: Liam McBurney/PA Wire PA People listening to a service outside the West Kirk Presbyterian Church in Belfast to mark the 25th anniversary of the IRA bombing of a fish shop on Shankill Road. PRESS ASSOCIATION Photo. Picture date: Tuesday October 23, 2018. See PA story ULSTER Shankill. Photo credit should read: Liam McBurney/PA Wire PA A member of the Sea Cadets rings a bell nine times at a memorial where the bomb went off, during a service in Belfast to mark the 25th anniversary of the IRA bombing of a fish shop on Shankill Road. PRESS ASSOCIATION Photo. Picture date: Tuesday October 23, 2018. See PA story ULSTER Shankill. Photo credit should read: Liam McBurney/PA Wire PA Representatives from Belfast Model School for Girls lay a wreath at a memorial during a service at West Kirk Presbyterian Church in Belfast to mark the 25th anniversary of the IRA bombing of a fish shop on Shankill Road. PRESS ASSOCIATION Photo. Picture date: Tuesday October 23, 2018. See PA story ULSTER Shankill. Photo credit should read: Liam McBurney/PA Wire PA Representatives from Harmony Primary School lay a wreath at a memorial during a service at West Kirk Presbyterian Church in Belfast to mark the 25th anniversary of the IRA bombing of a fish shop on Shankill Road. PRESS ASSOCIATION Photo. Picture date: Tuesday October 23, 2018. See PA story ULSTER Shankill. Photo credit should read: Liam McBurney/PA Wire PA DUP leader Arlene Foster (left) shaking hands with Alliance Party leader Naomi Long after a service at West Kirk Presbyterian Church in Belfast for a service to mark the 25th anniversary of the IRA bombing of a fish shop on Shankill Road. PRESS ASSOCIATION Photo. Picture date: Tuesday October 23, 2018. See PA story ULSTER Shankill. Photo credit should read: Liam McBurney/PA Wire PA Representatives from Belfast Model School for Girls (right) and Harmony Primary School (left) lay a wreath at a memorial during a service at West Kirk Presbyterian Church in Belfast to mark the 25th anniversary of the IRA bombing of a fish shop on Shankill Road. PRESS ASSOCIATION Photo. Picture date: Tuesday October 23, 2018. See PA story ULSTER Shankill. Photo credit should read: Liam McBurney/PA Wire PA DUP leader Arlene Foster is embraced by Michelle Williams after a service at West Kirk Presbyterian Church in Belfast for a service to mark the 25th anniversary of the IRA bombing of a fish shop on Shankill Road. PRESS ASSOCIATION Photo. Picture date: Tuesday October 23, 2018. See PA story ULSTER Shankill. Photo credit should read: Liam McBurney/PA Wire PA Caitlin Herron of Girls Model school lays a wreath to the side of what was Frizzell's fish shop during a service at West Kirk Presbyterian Church in Belfast to mark the 25th anniversary of the IRA bombing of a fish shop on Shankill Road. PRESS ASSOCIATION Photo. Picture date: Tuesday October 23, 2018. See PA story ULSTER Shankill. Photo credit should read: Liam McBurney/PA Wire PA Jim Allister leader of the TUV before a service at West Kirk Presbyterian Church in Belfast for a service to mark the 25th anniversary of the IRA bombing of a fish shop on Shankill Road. PRESS ASSOCIATION Photo. Picture date: Tuesday October 23, 2018. See PA story ULSTER Shankill. Photo credit should read: Liam McBurney/PA Wire PA Jude Whyte (left) whose mother, Peggy Whyte, was killed by a UVF bomb in 1984 and Alan McBride who wife Sharon McBride was killed in the Shankill bomb, after a service at West Kirk Presbyterian Church in Belfast for a service to mark the 25th anniversary of the IRA bombing of a fish shop on Shankill Road. PRESS ASSOCIATION Photo. Picture date: Tuesday October 23, 2018. See PA story ULSTER Shankill. Photo credit should read: Liam McBurney/PA Wire PA Zoe McBride, daughter of Shankill bomb victim Sharon McBride after a service at West Kirk Presbyterian Church in Belfast for a service to mark the 25th anniversary of the IRA bombing of a fish shop on Shankill Road. PRESS ASSOCIATION Photo. Picture date: Tuesday October 23, 2018. See PA story ULSTER Shankill. Photo credit should read: Liam McBurney/PA Wire PA / Facebook Twitter Email Whatsapp A wreath laid by Girls Model Head Girl Caitlin Herron hangs to the side of what was Frizzell's fish shop after a service at West Kirk Presbyterian Church in Belfast to mark the 25th anniversary of the IRA bombing of a fish shop on Shankill Road. Liam McBurney/PA Wire She said: "I'm not happy about this event at all - it only adds to the distress of this already very difficult week. "Those behind it have no thought for this week's commemorations by the families of those who lost their lives. "We were expecting something to take place on the actual anniversary of the bomb but at least they had the decency not to do anything then. "They are always hurting us and now they are doing it all over again. We've had no break this week at all and this just tops it off. "It's as though they are trampling on the graves of all those who were killed," she added. Nationalist and unionist politicians were among those in attendance at Tuesday's anniversary service in West Kirk Presbyterian Church. "The cross-community aspect of Tuesday's service was really wonderful and shows that people are trying to move on, but Sinn Fein are stopping them," Mrs Murray added. Victims campaigner Willie Frazer has hit out at the planned commemoration for Begley, calling it "beyond grotesque". He said: "Republicans call for equality and respect while they commemorate and glorify Provo terrorists, idolising and normalising actions of absolute depravity. "Victims who speak out and condemn such commemorations are accused of living in the past, they're told to move on. "Republicans need [to be] called out on their hypocrisy, their lack of respect and remorse needs [to be] highlighted and scrutinised." North Belfast DUP MLA William Humphrey added: "Yet again Republicans seek to glorify a terrorist and terrorism. Let's be clear, there was nothing glorious or brave in what Thomas Begley did. Begley died planting the Shankill bomb, a device which murdered nine innocent people." "Somebody should have advised President Duterte not to issue Proclamation No. 572 declaring void the amnesty given to Senator Antonio Trillanes by his lackluster predecessor. " Legal circles are abuzz on what to do, with many speculating that the decision by the RTC Judge Andres Soriano of Makati Branch 148 upholding the validity of the amnesty despite it having disappeared from the custody of the Armed Forces, is legal. The presumption that then Lt. SG Antonio Trillanes IV was granted amnesty should favor the grantee. In the absence of amnesty papers, legal procedures should be construed in favor of the accused and his cohorts who were all accused of staging a mutiny and for their brief occupation the Oakwood Building and Manila Peninsula Hotel. The case should ipso facto be dismissed. In the cases filed against Trillanes for attempted coup d etat before RTC Judge Elmo Alameda, Makati Branch 150, appears to be a last-ditch attempt to salvage the case from inevitable dismissal. The case would equally not hold water much that the presumption of the validity of the amnesty refers to the case for which he was granted amnesty. Even if said document appears to be missing, the presumption that it exists should be interpreted in favor of the grantee. Sad as it is to say, the dismissal was an awaited event. Be that is it may, somebody should have advised President Duterte not to issue Proclamation No. 572 declaring void the amnesty given to Senator Antonio Trillanes by his lackluster predecessor. At its face value, the proclamation was void ab initio for the reason that the basis upon which it was issued does not exist. When Solicitor General Jose Calida and Secretary of Justice Menardo Guevarra initiated their case against Trillanes on the bases of Proclamation No. 572 declaring void the alleged amnesty given to Trillanes by his benefactor, President Noynoy Aquino, both were acting on the presumption that an amnesty in favor of Trillanes exists. Simple logic and common sense dictates that one cannot declare void or illegal an amnesty or law on the basis of infirmity if it does not exist. The word verification upon which all complaints should comply cannot be truthfully stated if what is being verified is nonexistent. It becomes a case of one presumption after another, and no case can prosper on the basis of presumption. To be impartial in our analysis of the bungled case against this rather loquacious renegade soldier, the decision of Judge Soriano favoring the validity of the amnesty based on the video clips and the testimony of his co-accused-turned-clappers was, in all honesty, also based on presumption. I am saying this because the judge himself never saw the amnesty document but our legal procedures and practice, doubts always favor the innocence of the accused. The duty of the judge is to decide according to the facts alleged and proved or in Latin, judicis est judicare secondum allegata et probata. One reason why the judge could not give in to the petition filed by Solicitor General Jose Calida is the likely possibility it could create precedents that could overturn all established judicial decisions. A second look at the missing amnesty paper allegedly extended to Trillanes by B.S Aquino would surely not favor the administration. To prosecute him based on the presumption that the amnesty given him was invalid is to revert back the issue to Aquino himself for knowingly allowing one to run for an elected public office while facing serious charges of mutiny and/or launching an attempted coup d etat against the Arroyo administration. Many will be dragged into the case. As columnist Ricardo Saludo put it, officials of the B.S. Aquino administration can be held accountable for gross negligence and for serious case of graft and corruption for failing to do their duty of examining the qualifications of the candidates, whether or not they are qualified for the office.The case of Trillanes and his cabal of renegade soldiers cannot be described as isolated because they were on the media limelight for some time. The commissioners of the Commission on Elections can be charged for negligence, just as the President of the previous administration can be held for culpable violation of the constitution and for graft and corruption because the issuance and processing of amnesty papers directly falls on his table. But if he did not, as argued by the Secretary of Justice Menardo Guevarra, that could spell a trouble for B.S. Aquino because the loquacious senator is insisting that he was given an amnesty, which reason why he was allowed to run for senator. Holy cow, he was even allowed to run for the position of vice president! For Noynoy to say he never granted amnesty to Trillanes is to sign his own death warrant. Without the amnesty, there would be a chain of serious violations beginning with the fact of being allowed to run, receiving salary and his shares of the corrupted pork barrel, and even daydreaming to become the vice president, funded and brokered by the party in power even if the purpose is to divide the expected landslide votes of Bongbong Marcos. This now logically explains why Judge Soriano will never buy the argument that the amnesty given to Trillanes never existed. Even if one sets aside his political prejudice that Soriano is an appointee of B.S Aquino, that is rather beside the point for even he is not, it will not spare him the blame of rendering a wrong decision that would inferentially absolve Trillanes, not based on facts but based on the presumption that there was no amnesty given him. Only from there can one proceed to examine the infirmities in the amnesty to warrant the issuance of Proclamation 572. The issue then would be shifted to the legality of the proclamation. It would now be up to the opposition led by Trillanes and his grandstanding Liberal Party to question the validity and legality of the proclamation. In the meantime, he cannot seek to enjoin the court from not issuing an arrest order while the validity of his amnesty is being determined. Neither can the government proceed to separately hear the charges filed against Trillanes and his group for their brief occupation of Oakwood before Judge Elmo Alameda. The two cases are interconnected, not to mention that the charges arose from almost one and the same incident. Paradoxically, if the case filed before Judge Alameda is given due course, effectively that will overturn the decision rendered by Judge Soriano to the effect that the amnesty given to Trillanes existed was ipso facto invalid. This will not only result in the government being embarrassed but could give the opposition the opportunity to make a hero out of this loquacious senator. The family of IRA bomber Thomas Begley say they will now attend the commemoration of his son's death on Saturday in an apparent reversal. Begley's father had told this newspaper they would "have nothing to do" with the event over the weekend. The 25th anniversary of his death will be marked at a Milltown commemoration on Saturday. Thomas Begley died and nine others, all Protestants, were killed when the bomb he was carrying exploded prematurely at Frizzell's fish shop on the Shankill Road on October 23, 1993. Begley and a second bomber, Sean Kelly, wearing white coats and posing as delivery drivers, carried the bomb into the shop on a busy Saturday afternoon. On Thursday Begley's father told the Belfast Telegraph the family would not be attending. He said his prayers were with those that were killed in the 1993 atrocity and had he known what his son was going to do on the day he'd have chained him to his bed to stop the attack. However, in a U-turn the family now say they will attend the memorial. In a statement issued to the Press Association, Billy Begley senior said: "I and members of my family will be in attendance at the dignified and respectful commemoration in memory of our son Thomas being held tomorrow at the Republican Plot in Belfast. "I am asking media to respect the privacy of our family home at this difficult time." Sinn Fein has confirmed that while tomorrow's commemoration has been organised by Begley's friends and not the party, some of its members will be represented at the event. Sinn Fein president Mary Lou McDonald has defended party members attending a commemoration to Shankill bomber Thomas Begley days after victims families marked the 25th anniversary of the blast. The memorial event has been strongly criticised by relatives of the nine Shankill bomb victims who earlier this week gathered to remember their loved ones. Sinn Fein members are expected to attend the tribute which is to take place at Belfasts Milltown Cemetery on Saturday. It comes as the family of Mr Begley insisted they are attending the commemoration despite earlier media reports that suggested they were snubbing the event. Mr Begley died, along with the nine victims, after the bomb he was carrying exploded prematurely when he entered a fish shop on the Shankill Road in October 1993. I have consistently said that for us to respect each other and for us to begin the process of healing and reconciliation, we have to allow for remembrance by everybody, by all sides.Mary Lou McDonald Earlier this week, hundreds of people from across the communities of Northern Ireland came together for a church service to mark the 25th anniversary of the bomb. People gathered to remember the nine victims, including two young girls, who were killed when the IRA bomb detonated inside Frizzells fish shop. Victims from other atrocities during Northern Irelands past, including the Ballymurphy massacre, attended in a show of solidarity with the Shankill families. A number of posters advertising Saturdays tribute event have been put up in Belfast. Speaking in Dublin on Friday, the Sinn Fein leader said events of remembrance are difficult and sensitive. I have consistently said that for us to respect each other and for us to begin the process of healing and reconciliation, we have to allow for remembrance by everybody, by all sides, Ms McDonald said. That includes, in this case, the loved ones and families of those who were killed in the bomb and that includes Thomas Begley. I know that creates a difficulty for people, it creates controversy but the truth is for us really to begin the process of putting the conflict to rest and creating a healing environment we have to allow for remembrance on all sides and Im saying that very conscious of the fact that creates a sensitivity and difficulty for many people. Meanwhile, Mr Begleys family confirmed they will attend the commemoration. In a statement issued to the Press Association, his father Billy Begley senior said: I and my members of my family will be in attendance at the dignified and respectful commemoration in memory of our son Thomas being held tomorrow (Saturday) at the Republican Plot in Belfast. I am asking media to respect the privacy of our family home at this difficult time. A man who lost three loved ones in the Shankill bombing has said the commemoration of IRA man Thomas Begley is like "tramping over the graves of our loved ones". It comes after the elderly father of Thomas Begley, Billy, told the Belfast Telegraph his family will not be attending the commemoration event for his son to be held in Milltown cemetery on Saturday. Read More Charlie Butler's niece Evelyn Baird, her partner Michael Morrison, and their seven-year-old daughter Michelle were killed along with six others when a bomb Begley was carrying exploded prematurely at Frizzell's fish shop on the Shankill Road on October 23, 1993. Begley and a second bomber, Sean Kelly, disguised themselves as delivery drivers as they carried the bomb into the shop. Mr Butler, speaking on the Stephen Nolan Show, said it was "gut wrenching" for the families of the victims to see a commemoration was planned for Begley. "To see people who are going to commemorate someone who murdered children and women, unborn babies and pensioners, I think any society needs to look at itself and know it is not right," he said. He added: "[This was] someone who wasn't a victim, this was a perpatrator. To glorify perpetrators, it is total unbelievable in this country. It wouldn't happen in any other country in the world. Shocking." "They were anything but soldiers, they were terrorists. There is no other word for them. An army? They were not an army, they were hooligans." Mr Butler said the IRA sought to "tear the heart out" of the protestant community on the Shankill Road but they had not succeeded. "I am shocked and saddened that Sinn Fein, like other political parties that tell us, the victims, that we need to forgive and move on, we can't do it while this is happening and while our representatives are attending these commemorations," he said. "Terrible, shocking. It hurts, it really hurts." Billy Begley, speaking to the Belfast Telegraph, said he would have chained his son to his bed if he had known he was going to carry out the bombing. He said his family would not be attending the commemoration and that they will remember their son in a private manner. Expand Expand Expand Expand Expand Expand Expand Expand Expand Expand Expand Expand Expand Expand Expand Expand Expand Expand Expand Expand Expand Expand Expand Expand Expand Expand Expand Expand Previous Next Close A wreath laid by Girls Model Head Girl Caitlin Herron hangs to the side of what was Frizzell's fish shop after a service at West Kirk Presbyterian Church in Belfast to mark the 25th anniversary of the IRA bombing of a fish shop on Shankill Road. Liam McBurney/PA Wire PA People inside West Kirk Presbyterian Church in Belfast for a service to mark the 25th anniversary of the IRA bombing of a fish shop on Shankill Road. Liam McBurney/PA Wire PA DUP leader Arlene Foster and DUP deputy leader Nigel Dodds (centre) in West Kirk Presbyterian Church in Belfast for a service to mark the 25th anniversary of the IRA bombing of a fish shop on Shankill Road. PRESS ASSOCIATION Photo. Picture date: Tuesday October 23, 2018. See PA story ULSTER Shankill. Photo credit should read: Liam McBurney/PA Wire PA People listening to a service outside the West Kirk Presbyterian Church in Belfast to mark the 25th anniversary of the IRA bombing of a fish shop on Shankill Road. PRESS ASSOCIATION Photo. Picture date: Tuesday October 23, 2018. See PA story ULSTER Shankill. Photo credit should read: Liam McBurney/PA Wire PA Alan Lewis - Photopress Belfast 23/10/2018 Photograph by Justin Kernoghan Mairia Cahill attends today's service - An emotional day for Michelle Williamson, who lost her parents in the bombing. A service to mark the 25th anniversary of the Shankill bombing. Nine people and one of the IRA bombers were killed in the 1993 attack. More than 50 people were injured. The Shankill bombing happened at Frizzell's fish shop on 23 October 1993. Two IRA men, Thomas Begley and Sean Kelly, posed as fishmongers and carried the bomb into the shop where shoppers were queuing for food. DUP leader Arlene Foster and her deputy Nigel Dodds are among those attending the service at West Kirk Presbyterian Church. Also present are representatives of the Ballymurphy families whose relatives were shot dead in west Belfast in 1971. Photopress Belfast Pacemaker Press 23/10/2018 Gary Murray (brother of Leanne), who was killed in the 1993 bombing. A Memorial service takes place at West Kirk Presbyterian Church on the Shankill Road on Tuesday to mark the 25th Anniversary of Shankill bomb. Nine Protestant civilians and an IRA bomber, Thomas Begley, were killed in the attack in Belfast on 23 October 1993. Pic Colm Lenaghan /Pacemaker Press George Lenahan greets DUP leader Arlene Foster and DUP deputy leader Nigel Dodds outside West Kirk Presbyterian Church in Belfast for a service to mark the 25th anniversary of the IRA bombing of a fish shop on Shankill Road. PRESS ASSOCIATION Photo. Picture date: Tuesday October 23, 2018. See PA story ULSTER Shankill. Photo credit should read: Liam McBurney/PA Wire PA People gather outside West Kirk Presbyterian Church in Belfast for a service to mark the 25th anniversary of the IRA bombing of a fish shop on Shankill Road. PRESS ASSOCIATION Photo. Picture date: Tuesday October 23, 2018. See PA story ULSTER Shankill. Photo credit should read: Liam McBurney/PA Wire PA Charlie Butler (left) and Michelle Williamson (right) in West Kirk Presbyterian Church in Belfast for a service to mark the 25th anniversary of the IRA bombing of a fish shop on Shankill Road. PRESS ASSOCIATION Photo. Picture date: Tuesday October 23, 2018. See PA story ULSTER Shankill. Photo credit should read: Liam McBurney/PA Wire PA Dessie Williams handing out orders of service outside West Kirk Presbyterian Church in Belfast for a service to mark the 25th anniversary of the IRA bombing of a fish shop on Shankill Road. PRESS ASSOCIATION Photo. Picture date: Tuesday October 23, 2018. See PA story ULSTER Shankill. Photo credit should read: Liam McBurney/PA Wire PA (left to right) Alan McBride, Tim McGarry and Zoe McBride in West Kirk Presbyterian Church in Belfast for a service to mark the 25th anniversary of the IRA bombing of a fish shop on Shankill Road. PRESS ASSOCIATION Photo. Picture date: Tuesday October 23, 2018. See PA story ULSTER Shankill. Photo credit should read: Liam McBurney/PA Wire PA Gary Murray enters West Kirk Presbyterian Church in Belfast for a service to mark the 25th anniversary of the IRA bombing of a fish shop on Shankill Road. PRESS ASSOCIATION Photo. Picture date: Tuesday October 23, 2018. See PA story ULSTER Shankill. Photo credit should read: Liam McBurney/PA Wire PA (left to right) Michelle Williamson, Alfie McCrory and Willie Frazer outside West Kirk Presbyterian Church in Belfast for a service to mark the 25th anniversary of the IRA bombing of a fish shop on Shankill Road. PRESS ASSOCIATION Photo. Picture date: Tuesday October 23, 2018. See PA story ULSTER Shankill. Photo credit should read: Liam McBurney/PA Wire PA Moke Devlin outside West Kirk Presbyterian Church in Belfast for a service to mark the 25th anniversary of the IRA bombing of a fish shop on Shankill Road. PRESS ASSOCIATION Photo. Picture date: Tuesday October 23, 2018. See PA story ULSTER Shankill. Photo credit should read: Liam McBurney/PA Wire PA Gina Murray (left) enters West Kirk Presbyterian Church in Belfast for a service to mark the 25th anniversary of the IRA bombing of a fish shop on Shankill Road. PRESS ASSOCIATION Photo. Picture date: Tuesday October 23, 2018. See PA story ULSTER Shankill. Photo credit should read: Liam McBurney/PA Wire PA People listening to a service outside the West Kirk Presbyterian Church in Belfast to mark the 25th anniversary of the IRA bombing of a fish shop on Shankill Road. PRESS ASSOCIATION Photo. Picture date: Tuesday October 23, 2018. See PA story ULSTER Shankill. Photo credit should read: Liam McBurney/PA Wire PA People listening to a service outside the West Kirk Presbyterian Church in Belfast to mark the 25th anniversary of the IRA bombing of a fish shop on Shankill Road. PRESS ASSOCIATION Photo. Picture date: Tuesday October 23, 2018. See PA story ULSTER Shankill. Photo credit should read: Liam McBurney/PA Wire PA People listening to a service outside the West Kirk Presbyterian Church in Belfast to mark the 25th anniversary of the IRA bombing of a fish shop on Shankill Road. PRESS ASSOCIATION Photo. Picture date: Tuesday October 23, 2018. See PA story ULSTER Shankill. Photo credit should read: Liam McBurney/PA Wire PA A member of the Sea Cadets rings a bell nine times at a memorial where the bomb went off, during a service in Belfast to mark the 25th anniversary of the IRA bombing of a fish shop on Shankill Road. PRESS ASSOCIATION Photo. Picture date: Tuesday October 23, 2018. See PA story ULSTER Shankill. Photo credit should read: Liam McBurney/PA Wire PA Representatives from Belfast Model School for Girls lay a wreath at a memorial during a service at West Kirk Presbyterian Church in Belfast to mark the 25th anniversary of the IRA bombing of a fish shop on Shankill Road. PRESS ASSOCIATION Photo. Picture date: Tuesday October 23, 2018. See PA story ULSTER Shankill. Photo credit should read: Liam McBurney/PA Wire PA Representatives from Harmony Primary School lay a wreath at a memorial during a service at West Kirk Presbyterian Church in Belfast to mark the 25th anniversary of the IRA bombing of a fish shop on Shankill Road. PRESS ASSOCIATION Photo. Picture date: Tuesday October 23, 2018. See PA story ULSTER Shankill. Photo credit should read: Liam McBurney/PA Wire PA DUP leader Arlene Foster (left) shaking hands with Alliance Party leader Naomi Long after a service at West Kirk Presbyterian Church in Belfast for a service to mark the 25th anniversary of the IRA bombing of a fish shop on Shankill Road. PRESS ASSOCIATION Photo. Picture date: Tuesday October 23, 2018. See PA story ULSTER Shankill. Photo credit should read: Liam McBurney/PA Wire PA Representatives from Belfast Model School for Girls (right) and Harmony Primary School (left) lay a wreath at a memorial during a service at West Kirk Presbyterian Church in Belfast to mark the 25th anniversary of the IRA bombing of a fish shop on Shankill Road. PRESS ASSOCIATION Photo. Picture date: Tuesday October 23, 2018. See PA story ULSTER Shankill. Photo credit should read: Liam McBurney/PA Wire PA DUP leader Arlene Foster is embraced by Michelle Williams after a service at West Kirk Presbyterian Church in Belfast for a service to mark the 25th anniversary of the IRA bombing of a fish shop on Shankill Road. PRESS ASSOCIATION Photo. Picture date: Tuesday October 23, 2018. See PA story ULSTER Shankill. Photo credit should read: Liam McBurney/PA Wire PA Caitlin Herron of Girls Model school lays a wreath to the side of what was Frizzell's fish shop during a service at West Kirk Presbyterian Church in Belfast to mark the 25th anniversary of the IRA bombing of a fish shop on Shankill Road. PRESS ASSOCIATION Photo. Picture date: Tuesday October 23, 2018. See PA story ULSTER Shankill. Photo credit should read: Liam McBurney/PA Wire PA Jim Allister leader of the TUV before a service at West Kirk Presbyterian Church in Belfast for a service to mark the 25th anniversary of the IRA bombing of a fish shop on Shankill Road. PRESS ASSOCIATION Photo. Picture date: Tuesday October 23, 2018. See PA story ULSTER Shankill. Photo credit should read: Liam McBurney/PA Wire PA Jude Whyte (left) whose mother, Peggy Whyte, was killed by a UVF bomb in 1984 and Alan McBride who wife Sharon McBride was killed in the Shankill bomb, after a service at West Kirk Presbyterian Church in Belfast for a service to mark the 25th anniversary of the IRA bombing of a fish shop on Shankill Road. PRESS ASSOCIATION Photo. Picture date: Tuesday October 23, 2018. See PA story ULSTER Shankill. Photo credit should read: Liam McBurney/PA Wire PA Zoe McBride, daughter of Shankill bomb victim Sharon McBride after a service at West Kirk Presbyterian Church in Belfast for a service to mark the 25th anniversary of the IRA bombing of a fish shop on Shankill Road. PRESS ASSOCIATION Photo. Picture date: Tuesday October 23, 2018. See PA story ULSTER Shankill. Photo credit should read: Liam McBurney/PA Wire PA / Facebook Twitter Email Whatsapp A wreath laid by Girls Model Head Girl Caitlin Herron hangs to the side of what was Frizzell's fish shop after a service at West Kirk Presbyterian Church in Belfast to mark the 25th anniversary of the IRA bombing of a fish shop on Shankill Road. Liam McBurney/PA Wire He said: "We are very sorry for what happened - it was all wrong. Our family is not like that and if we had known what Thomas was going to do that day, we would have chained him to his bed." Addressing Billy Begley's comments, Mr Butler said: "The families don't hold Mr and Mrs Begley, and the Begley family, responsible for what happened. "We have never felt that we held the family responsible. Their families are victims in this as much as we are, for what their son did. "The unfortunate thing is , if they are listening to this, they have to hear the likes of myself, who are saying, unfortunately their son was a murderer of children, women, unborn babies and pensioners. And that is the truth." Alliance leader Naomi Long said: "Holding public commemorations, putting up posters and all of the rest that goes with this is like rubbing salt in the wounds. Not just of the Shankill bombing families but also of his own family, and disrespecting their wishes. "It is time for people now to see the damage that this causes in the hear and now." Irish President Michael D Higgins casts his vote at the polling station in St Marys Hospital, Pheonix Park, Dublin, as the country goes to the polls to vote in the Irish presidential election. Candidates in the Irish presidential election have started casting their votes at polling stations across the country. Outgoing President Michael D Higgins attended the polling station in St Marys Hospital, Phoenix Park, Dublin, along with his wife Sabina. Mr Higgins is running again for the highest office in the state, along with five other candidates. In north Co Donegal, one of his rivals, Peter Casey, voted in Greencastle. The Londonderry-born businessman arrived at the polling station at Greencastle National School with his wife Helen at 9.20am. Irish Presidential candidate Peter Casey has cast his vote at Greencastle National School in Co Donegal pic.twitter.com/kCWIDBid7J Rebecca Black (@RBlackPA) October 26, 2018 He chuckled when a local man asked him: Peter, who are you going to vote for? Sean Gallagher attended a polling station in Greystones, Co Wicklow, with his wife Trish at 8.30am. Gavin Duffy has also voted in Julianstown, Co Meath. Expand Close Sean Gallagher, with his wife Trish and children, arrives at a polling station in Wicklow (Aoife Moore/PA) PA Wire/PA Images / Facebook Twitter Email Whatsapp Sean Gallagher, with his wife Trish and children, arrives at a polling station in Wicklow (Aoife Moore/PA) There are six candidates in total running to become the tenth president of Ireland. They also include Senator Joan Freeman and Sinn Fein MEP Liadh Ni Riada. Polling stations opened at 7am and will remain open until 10pm to give people the opportunity to cast their ballot. More than 3.2 million people are entitled to vote in 40 constituencies. Expand Close Presiding officer Carmel McBride, Garda Sgt John Gallagher and Irish Air Corp helicopter crewman Craig Cullen deliver a ballot box to Inishbofin Island off County Galway (Niall Carson/PA) PA Wire/PA Images / Facebook Twitter Email Whatsapp Presiding officer Carmel McBride, Garda Sgt John Gallagher and Irish Air Corp helicopter crewman Craig Cullen deliver a ballot box to Inishbofin Island off County Galway (Niall Carson/PA) The constituency with the single largest electorate in the country is Donegal, with more than 116,000 people registered to vote. This is closely followed by Tipperary with some 110,000, and Wexford with more than 108,000. In Dublin, more than 560,000 people are eligible to cast their ballot in the capitals 11 constituencies. The constituency with the smallest electorate is Dublin Central with 40,000 voters. Expand Close Election warehouse manager Michael Leonard checks the seals on ballot boxes in Dublin (Brian Lawless/PA) PA Wire/PA Images / Facebook Twitter Email Whatsapp Election warehouse manager Michael Leonard checks the seals on ballot boxes in Dublin (Brian Lawless/PA) The electorate will also be asked on the ballot paper whether they want to remove the offence of blasphemy from the Irish constitution. Most islanders have already had their say as voting got under way on 12 islands off the coast of counties Donegal, Mayo and Galway on Thursday, a day ahead of the rest of the country. Some 2,601 islanders are eligible to vote in this years election. Douglas Hyde became Irelands first president in 1938. Expand Close A ballot box arrives on Tory Island, off the coast of County Donegal (Niall Carson/PA) PA Wire/PA Images / Facebook Twitter Email Whatsapp A ballot box arrives on Tory Island, off the coast of County Donegal (Niall Carson/PA) Mr Higgins is the countrys ninth president. He was elected in 2011. Four presidents have served for two terms, or 14 years in total. They were Sean T OKelly, Eamon de Valera, Patrick Hillery and Mary McAleese. The Irish Government has appealed for people to use their vote but turnout is not expected to be as strong as it was for the abortion referendum earlier this year. Count staff will begin sorting and collating the ballot papers at centres across the country from 9am on Saturday. A result is expected by Saturday evening, or by early Sunday at the latest. Liverpool manager Jurgen Klopp has donated money to the fund (Martin Rickett/PA) Liverpool FC manager Jurgen Klopp has made a 5,000 euro (4,400) donation to a supporter who was critically injured in an attack outside Anfield. Sean Cox, 53, suffered a severe traumatic brain injury when he was assaulted ahead of the Champions League semi-final between Liverpool and Roma on April 24. The father-of-three, from Dunboyne, Co Meath, Ireland, is receiving treatment in the National Rehabilitation Centre in Dun Laoghaire and friends have set up a fundraising page to help provide the long-term care and support he is expected to need. Expand Close Liverpools Georginio Wijnaldum and Andy Robertson hold a banner for Liverpool fan Sean Cox (Niall Carson/PA) PA Wire/PA Images / Facebook Twitter Email Whatsapp Liverpools Georginio Wijnaldum and Andy Robertson hold a banner for Liverpool fan Sean Cox (Niall Carson/PA) A donation of 5,000 euro was made by Reds manager Klopp on Friday afternoon. He left the message: Youll Never Walk Alone Best Wishes, Jurgen Klopp. The Gofundme page, set up by Mr Coxs friends, has raised 50,000 euro (44,400) of a 2m euro (1.78m) goal. A message on the website said: Over the past number of months Sean has been taking small but important steps on a road to recovery. His journey will be a long and difficult one and the focus will continue on ensuring the best possible care to maximise the potential in Seans recovery. Sean has recently commenced a program of rehabilitation in Dun Laoghaire and following this will continue to require ongoing and intensive long term care and support. The reality is that the provision of this long term care and support for Sean will necessitate significant funding over many years. Last week, Roma fan Filippo Lombardi, 21, was cleared of being part of a joint attack on Mr Cox. During the trial at Preston Crown Court, Mr Coxs brother Martin told the court his brother could not speak or sit up unaided following the attack. The court heard another man had been arrested in Rome in connection with the attack and was awaiting extradition. Taoiseach Leo Varadkar moved to reassure Irish citizens living in Northern Ireland that his government will not turn its back on them during a visit to a city just a few miles from the border. Speaking to the media during a visit to Londonderry, Mr Varadkar said he was confident but not complacent that a hard border can be avoided after the UK leaves the European Union. Mr Varadkar also criticised the ongoing suspension of the Northern Ireland Executive, saying it meant that the regions voice was not being heard as it should be in the Brexit negotiations. I think if we have some certainty about the next few years when it comes to Brexit, and of course certainty that there wont be a hard border, I think we may then be in a good position to try and get those talks going againLeo Varadkar People in Northern Ireland from both communities and all communities are losing out because we dont have a functioning Executive and Assembly to support decisions that have to be made around healthcare and major infrastructure projects, he said. For us in Ireland, we have a huge difficulty in not being able to ensure that north-south bodies operate when they were operating well for so long, co-operation around health, infrastructure, tourism is still happening but not to the extent that we would like and of course, anyway, the voice of Northern Ireland isnt being heard the way it should be during the Brexit negotiations. We, of course, as co guarantors of the agreement, want to help the parties come together to agree to get the institutions up and running again, we do appreciate that the uncertainty around Brexit hasnt created a good environment for that, but Simon Coveney and I are really going to be working over the next few weeks to get agreement between the UK and the EU. I think if we have some certainty about the next few years when it comes to Brexit, and of course certainty that there wont be a hard border, I think we may then be in a good position to try and get those talks going again. Lovely to meet the girls from the St Cecilias College Choir - they provided some great music on my arrival at the Rath Mor Centre in the Creggan. pic.twitter.com/eO6JPC1k8V Leo Varadkar (@LeoVaradkar) October 26, 2018 The agreement says that everyone in Northern Ireland has the right to be Irish or British or both, and thats a principle that I really support and very much stand by. Mr Varadkar said that he wants to ensure that those in Northern Ireland who are Irish citizens can retain European citizenship after Brexit. What we are trying to do in these negotiations is to ensure that people in Northern Ireland who choose to avail of Irish citizenship, who choose to retain that European citizenship, continue to have all the rights that are associated with being a European citizen, the right to travel freely, to work or study in any of the 27 remaining member states, he said. We are also examining the rights linked to residency, for example participation in Erasmus, participation in the European health insurance card system, and we want to see if we can ensure that EU citizens living in Northern Ireland can still benefit from those as though they still resident in the EU. Scaffolding at Tyrrelstown Educate Together School in Dublin, one of two schools in that has been closed amid concerns over significant structural issues ( Cate McCurry/PA) The Tanaiste was accused of being disingenuous and heckled repeatedly during Leaders Questions in Dail Eireann on Thursday. Simon Coveney was asked about building inspections in schools around the country. The Department of Education has ordered risk assessments at more than 40 schools amid structural fears. The review was prompted by concerns over the integrity of facilities built by Tyrone-based construction firm Western Building Systems between 2009 and 2013. Solidarity TD Paul Murphy asked why the issues, which he says were known to the department before, were kept secret. @paulmurphy_TD challenging Tanaiste Simon Coveney at Leaders Questions in the Dail on the school construction crisis. Demands State construction company that builds for need not profit. Mick Barry TD (@MickBarryTD) October 25, 2018 He said: Over 1,000 pupils have no school to go to, parents are scrambling for childcare, 42 schools to be inspected, how many more pupils are in a school with 80% chance of wall falling down? This is a consequence of race to the bottom in construction industry, this is the model that brought on Grenfell and has to end. Mr Coveney said he was less interested in a slanging match and more in fixing the problem. What were focused on now is trying to ensure we can reassure staff and children as well as putting contingency plans in place, he said. All schools involved will be inspected in the coming days, some of them wont need to move, some may have dangers we need to respond to, I would ask people to work with us rather than organise protests. Lets have some calm here. In relation to healthcare facilities, there is no reason to believe hospitals are affectedTanaiste Simon Coveney Mr Murphy said Mr Coveney was being disingenuous and if the country does not discover why the issue happened he could be faced with the issue repeatedly. He also noted Western Building Systems built hospitals in the same time period. In relation to healthcare facilities, there is no reason to believe hospitals are affected but the HSE are determining what projects have been completed by Western Building Systems, the Tanaiste said. Independent Thomas Pringle raised concerns about Letterkenny Education Together, a school that only opened in January of this year, which now faces closure. He said the lack of information was causing further anxiety for parents and teachers. Mr Coveney was shouted and heckled at when he said price was not the sole determining factor in contracting Western Building Systems. There is a group of people whose job it is to work with schools and work with institutions to help schools, students and staff, nobody will be left alone here, he said. This situation unfolded quickly, the communications team was put in place yesterday and are only getting up and running. FF TD for Offaly, Barry Cowen, questioned the Tanaiste on the loss of more than 400 jobs at Bord na Mona announced on Wednesday. Mr Coveney said the Government was dedicated to helping those affected by the job losses to re-skill. Sinn Feins Eoin OBroin asked Mr Coveney if he would support the new Focus Ireland Amendment to tackle homelessness but Mr Coveney did not answer directly. The Taoiseach will travel to Northern Ireland later to hear Brexit concerns of people living close to the border. Leo Varadkar is visiting Londonderry, where he will also make a symbolic visit to the headquarters of the Apprentice Boys of Derry, a Protestant loyal order. That outreach initiative comes months after Mr Varadkar visited the HQ of the Orange Order in Belfast. Mr Varadkar will also visit a community centre in the nationalist Creggan neighbourhood. He will round off his trip to the north west by speaking at a dinner in honour of former SDLP leader Mark Durkan. Expand Close Apprentice Boys of Derry march through the centre of Londonderry (Paul Faith/PA) PA Archive/PA Images / Facebook Twitter Email Whatsapp Apprentice Boys of Derry march through the centre of Londonderry (Paul Faith/PA) I am looking forward to returning to Derry, said Mr Varadkar. Todays visit gives me the opportunity to meet with members of the wider community and to hear directly from them about their views on the political situation in Northern Ireland and of course the uncertainty being caused by Brexit. West Ulster the North West region has significant growth potential and the Irish Government is committed to the cross border initiatives under way which aim to boost development in the region. In particular, we are committed to increased investment in the regions infrastructure network, including the much needed A5 [dual carriageway]. I am also pleased to be attending the dinner for Mark Durkan later this evening and honouring his commitment to peace and reconciliation. Taoiseach Leo Varadkar arrives to cast his vote in the Irish presidential election (Niall Carson/PA) Turnout in the Irish presidential election appears to be low in many areas of the country as voters continue to cast their ballots. There were reports that polling stations in many places were relatively quiet through the morning and across the afternoon, especially in comparison to the abortion referendum early this year. Traditionally stations are busier during the evening period with people choosing to vote after leaving work. All six candidates in the running for the highest office in the state voted before noon. Outgoing president Michael D Higgins attended a polling station in St Marys Hospital, Phoenix Park, Dublin, along with his wife Sabina. The 77-year old is running for a second seven-year term. Expand Close Irish President Michael D Higgins and his wife Sabina cast their vote (Niall Carson/PA) PA Wire/PA Images / Facebook Twitter Email Whatsapp Irish President Michael D Higgins and his wife Sabina cast their vote (Niall Carson/PA) Sean Gallagher, who is also running for a second time after a failed attempt in 2011, attended a polling station in Greystones, Co Wicklow, with his wife Trish at 8.30am. In north Co Donegal, independent candidate Peter Casey, voted in Greencastle. The Londonderry-born businessman arrived at Greencastle National School polling station with his wife Helen at 9.20am. The former Irelands Dragons Den star has a home in the coastal village as well as Atlanta. Expand Close Sean Gallagher, with his wife Trish and children, arrives at a polling station in Wicklow (Aoife Moore/PA) PA Wire/PA Images / Facebook Twitter Email Whatsapp Sean Gallagher, with his wife Trish and children, arrives at a polling station in Wicklow (Aoife Moore/PA) He chuckled when a local man asked him: Peter, who are you going to vote for? Gavin Duffy voted in Julianstown, Co Meath, alongside his wife Orla and family. Sinn Fein MEP Liadh Ni Riada voted in Baile Bhuirne in her native county of Cork, with her husband Nicky by her side, while Senator Joan Freeman and her husband Patrick cast their votes in Lucan, Co Dublin. Expand Close Sinn Fein MEP and presidential candidate Liadh Ni Riada casts her vote in Cork (Aoife Moore/PA) PA Wire/PA Images / Facebook Twitter Email Whatsapp Sinn Fein MEP and presidential candidate Liadh Ni Riada casts her vote in Cork (Aoife Moore/PA) Polling stations opened at 7am and will remain open until 10pm. Turnout is not expected to be as strong as it was for the abortion referendum earlier this year but it is thought it may be in line with the 2011 presidential election when 56% of the electorate turned out. More than 3.2 million people are entitled to vote in 40 constituencies. Expand Close Presiding officer Carmel McBride, Garda Sgt John Gallagher and Irish Air Corp helicopter crewman Craig Cullen deliver a ballot box to Inishbofin Island off County Galway (Niall Carson/PA) PA Wire/PA Images / Facebook Twitter Email Whatsapp Presiding officer Carmel McBride, Garda Sgt John Gallagher and Irish Air Corp helicopter crewman Craig Cullen deliver a ballot box to Inishbofin Island off County Galway (Niall Carson/PA) In addition to voting on the next president, the electorate are being asked on the ballot paper whether they want to remove the offence of blasphemy from the Irish constitution. The constituency with the single largest electorate in the country is Donegal, with more than 116,000 people registered to vote. This is closely followed by Tipperary with some 110,000, and Wexford with more than 108,000. In Dublin, more than 560,000 people are eligible to cast their ballot in the capitals 11 constituencies. Expand Close Election warehouse manager Michael Leonard checks the seals on ballot boxes in Dublin (Brian Lawless/PA) PA Wire/PA Images / Facebook Twitter Email Whatsapp Election warehouse manager Michael Leonard checks the seals on ballot boxes in Dublin (Brian Lawless/PA) The constituency with the smallest electorate is Dublin Central with 40,000 voters. Most islanders have already had their say as voting got under way on 12 islands off the coast of counties Donegal, Mayo and Galway on Thursday, a day ahead of the rest of the country. Some 2,601 islanders are eligible to vote in this years election. Douglas Hyde became Irelands first president in 1938. Mr Higgins is the countrys ninth president. He was elected in 2011. Expand Close A ballot box arrives on Tory Island, off the coast of County Donegal (Niall Carson/PA) PA Wire/PA Images / Facebook Twitter Email Whatsapp A ballot box arrives on Tory Island, off the coast of County Donegal (Niall Carson/PA) Four presidents have served for two terms, or 14 years in total. They were Sean T OKelly, Eamon de Valera, Patrick Hillery and Mary McAleese. Count staff will begin sorting and collating the ballot papers at centres across the country from 9am on Saturday. A result is expected by Saturday evening, or by early Sunday at the latest. "What a way to go down." It seems that two of the Presidents staunchest allies are headed for a collision course. This was after the PDP-Laban, the political party which served as President Rodrigo Dutertes vehicle for his presidential run, fielded candidates in Taguig to oppose Dutertes running mate, former Foreign Secretary Alan Peter Cayetano and his brother Linos respective bids. According to reports, Cayetano, who is running under the banner of the Nacionalista Party, was disappointed with the leadership of PDP-Laban upon learning that the ruling party has endorsed Allan Cerafica as its official candidate for district of Taguig-Pateros in next years midterm elections, replacing his brother, Arnel, who is the lone districts incumbent congressman. Arnel will be slugging it out with Lino as PDP-Labans official candidate for the Taguig mayoralty post. According to reports, Alan felt betrayed by the acts of PDP-Laban, with whose president, Senator Koko Pimentel he had maintained close relationship. The two, together with Senator Antonio Trillanes IV, embarked on a demolition job against former Vice President Jejomar Binay, frustrating the latter in his 2016 presidential bid. Cayetano was of course rewarded by being chosen as Dutertes running mate, and eventually, being appointed as Foreign Affairs secretary after he lost in the polls. While Alan can still emerge victor in his tiff with Serafica, the question now is, without the support of PDP-Laban, can he still corner the Speakership post in the 18th Congress? Cayetanos NP is only one of the minority parties in the Lower House. His quest for the Houses top post is further hampered by the fact that most of the Presidents allies in Congress have reportedly been reporting back to their old political partyLakas. Without any strong party support to lean on, Alans only hope to get the Speakership then is for a presidential intercession, which political pundits say, wont be coming.It had happened before when former Speaker Pantaleon Alvarez failed to get Dutertes support to thwart off the ouster move against him. And that is considering that Alvarez was one of the Presidents closest friends. Alan should have known better than tinker with the idea of colliding with PDP-Laban. He should have instead run for Taguigs congressional district instead of his wife, Lani, thereby avoiding a confrontation with Kokos party. * * * Speaking of Koko, it seems lawyer Ferdie Topacio has a strong argument in his petition against the candidacy of the PDP-Laban top gun. According to Topacio, Koko cannot use the case of Clavel Martinez and Benhur Salimbangon as that was a totally different case. In the News and Nuances Forum at Nanka Restaurant in Quezon City, Topacio explained that in Salimbangons case, the HRET nullified his victory over Martinez, declaring the latter as the true winner, thereby serving the congressional term of the Fourth District of Cebu in the 14th Congress. Salimbangon, according to Topacio, was allowed to run for three consecutive terms from 2010 up to the present, not because his term was interrupted, but because he was never considered a member of Congress prior to 2010. In Pimentels case, he was declared winner in the 2007 senatorial elections after Senator Migz Zubiri, the 12th-ranked senator then, quit amidst Kokos protest. Thus the senator cannot claim he can still run in the 2019 polls as his term was never interrupted. What a way to go down. Losing the Senate presidency, and now, probably his chance to return to the Senate. Ironically, while he is in collision course with his former partner, they might both be bound to suffer the same fate. The head of the Northern Ireland Civil Service has denied blaming a colleague for the botched Renewable Heat Incentive scheme in order to secure a promotion. David Sterling appeared before the RHI Inquiry yesterday. He dismissed a claim by a former DUP special adviser that he tried to pin the blame on fellow civil servant Dr Andrew McCormick. Both Mr Sterling and Dr McCormick had been in the running to succeed Sir Malcolm McKibben as Civil Service chief. Read More His evidence also included details of how the "febrile" political tensions nearly derailed any chance of bringing RHI under control before Stormont collapsed. In January 2015 Mr Sterling was the top civil servant at the Department of Finance. He sent an email to Dr McCormick, then heading the Department of Enterprise, Trade and Investment (Deti), asking how his officials had got RHI so wrong. Ex-DUP Spad Tim Cairns said Dr McCormick believed at the time he was being unfairly blamed. Mr Sterling rejected the accusation he did this to gain an advantage, saying: "It's just not in my nature to seek to do something like that." Having known Dr McCormick for 18 years, Mr Sterling said he regarded him as a friend and that he would never try to shift blame towards him. Another accusation was that Mr Sterling had a major row with the another DUP Spad, Dr Andrew Crawford. Dr Crawford removed a reference to the poultry industry in a key document about reducing spending on RHI. It emerged that some poultry farmers were exploiting the scheme by heating empty sheds to receive more public subsidies. Three relatives of Dr Crawford had 11 biomass boilers between them registered with RHI. Mr Sterling said he didn't know if Dr Crawford removed the poultry reference for political purposes or the benefit of his family. Former DUP minister Jonathan Bell claimed he'd heard that Mr Sterling told Dr Crawford: "You kept this scheme open for the benefit of your family and you've caused a significant budgetary crisis in Northern Ireland." Mr Sterling, however, said he would have remembered any such exchange and that he couldn't recall Dr Crawford's family being raised as a significant issue. He went on to detail the many hurdles the Civil Service faced in closing RHI. In early 2016 Mr Sterling said Stormont ministers hoped the Treasury would bail them out. In contrast, civil servants had been told there was no chance of that, as extra money had just been given to Northern Ireland after the Fresh Start Agreement. Mr Sterling said he believed the Treasury was growing tired of how Northern Ireland "always does well when there are political negotiations". This was confirmed by a letter from the Treasury in January 2016 making it clear the Stormont Executive would be paying the bill. Initially, it was believed this would overrun by 33m, something Deti could not afford. At this time he said there was a consensus that RHI needed to be shut down; the only question was how quickly, due to fears of a legal challenge. The DUP and Sinn Fein agreed to shut the scheme down, but with a two-week grace period. Sinn Fein had asked for the extension, allowing nearly 300 more people to apply at an estimated cost of 91.5m over 20 years. Although officials didn't know the cost the delay would have, Mr Sterling said: "There wasn't much more we really could do whenever the First Minister or Deputy First Minister had agreed that this was the way that they wanted to play it." When the RHI scandal fully emerged at the end of December 2016, Mr Sterling said the "political crisis" between the DUP and Sinn Fein held up attempts to cut RHI subsidies. He said "the pretty torrid" period was made worse by key documents being leaked to the media. The fear was the impending collapse of Stormont meant there would be no way to legislate on crucial matters. The cost controls were eventually passed in January 2017, but Mr Sterling said the "febrile" political atmosphere at the time made this especially hard. The inquiry heard that former DUP Economy Minister Simon Hamiton had been concerned at "foot-dragging" by Sinn Fein's Finance Minister Mairtin O Muilleoir over approving the new regulations in January 2017. "I was seriously concerned (by the delay) because there was a lot at stake," Mr Sterling said. At the time the Assembly was about to collapse for a new election leaving a limited time to approve the business case. "My personal calculation was that Mr O Muilleoir would approve the business case... to be candid, in the political environment at the time he wasn't likely to make that easy and it would go to the wire, and so it transpired." Inquiry counsel Joseph Aiken asked Mr Sterling about how the Civil Service could restore public confidence. Mr Sterling said: "It's only right to recognise the extent of the failings and I should offer a profound and unequivocal apology for the mistakes made." He also promised that any recommendations made by the inquiry will be implemented quickly. "There's still a bit of a silo-based mentality in departments, that's something we're trying to break down," he said. Other areas of concern included problems with secret documents being leaked to the Press. Looking ahead, Mr Sterling said the Civil Service was still facing profound challenges. "The obvious point is that we're heading towards two years without ministerial direction, something that would not be tolerated anywhere else on these islands," he said. "We have another five months without that. The Secretary of State's guidance is welcome... but this will be an intensely difficult period." French Spiderman Alain Robert is due in court after climbing the Heron Tower in London (Kirsty OConnor/PA) A skyscraper climber dubbed the French Spiderman is due to appear in court after scaling one of Londons tallest buildings. Alain Robert, whose feats have included climbing Dubais 2,717ft (828m) Burj Khalifa, was seen tackling the Heron Tower in the City of London. The 56-year-old reached the top of the 662ft (202m) tower, known as the Salesforce Tower, without using safety gear or a rope. A City of London Police spokesman said: Yesterday, a man was charged for causing a public nuisance. Alain Robert, 56, a French national, is currently being remanded at Bishopsgate Police Station and will appear at City of London Magistrates Court today. The City of London Police arrested and charged Robert after he free climbed the Heron Tower at 110 Bishopsgate yesterday. Officers arrived at 1.37pm on Thursday, setting up a taped cordon to stop traffic around the building and ushering the growing crowd of onlookers to move back and keep out of the road. We can confirm we have arrested a man aged 56 for causing a public nuisance. He is currently in police custody. pic.twitter.com/CzWqGzRASv City of London Police (@CityPolice) October 25, 2018 Commander Karen Baxter said the incident had a considerable impact on police, other emergency services and the local community. Our officers, the London Fire Brigade and the London Ambulance Service all attended this incident, taking them away from genuine emergencies, she added. While the incident has caused immense disruption to everyday business in the City of London, it also posed a significant level of risk to the safety of people in and around Heron Tower at the time. Still from handout video of a passenger on Ryanair flight FR015 believed to be David Mesher (David Lawrence/PA) Ryanair has made a lengthy defence of its conduct after one of its passengers racially abused an elderly woman on a flight. The budget airline said it immediately reported the video on Sunday showing the attack on 77-year-old Delsie Gayle after it surfaced on social media. But the statement added that cabin crew were shown the video after the flight landed at Stansted Airport two days earlier. The defence came as David Mesher publicly apologised to the widow he called an ugly black bastard on the flight before it took off in Barcelona and denied he was a racist. Ryanair on Friday said it became aware of the video circulating online late on Saturday night before sharing it with Essex Police at 9am the following day. Expand Close The incident took place on a Ryanair flight from Barcelona to London (Peter Byrne/PA) PA Wire/PA Images / Facebook Twitter Email Whatsapp The incident took place on a Ryanair flight from Barcelona to London (Peter Byrne/PA) The airline, saying it was issuing the statement to dispel false claims that it did not respond quickly, said the Spanish crew were not aware of the racist comments before take-off. While these events were videoed by another passenger on a mobile phone, this video was not shown to cabin crew until after landing in London Stansted, the statement added. Ryanair did not immediately respond when asked why cabin crew did not report the incident to police after being shown the footage. Its defence said crew spoke to both passengers, who told them they were OK, and decided to commence with take-off without removing the aggressor after deciding there was no threat to aircraft safety. Ms Gayle and her daughter, Carol Gayle, have been highly critical of the airline, and said it had not apologised directly. Ryanair shared with the press images of a letter and an email it said was sent to Delsie Gayle on Sunday morning. Mr Mesher apologised publicly for the first time, in an interview aired on Friday, after he was captured yelling at the widow and saying: Dont speak to me in a foreign language, you stupid ugly cow. Expand Close Officers from West Midlands Police leave a sheltered retirement housing block in Yardley Wood, Birmingham, after speaking to David Mesher (Aaron Chown/PA) PA Wire/PA Images / Facebook Twitter Email Whatsapp Officers from West Midlands Police leave a sheltered retirement housing block in Yardley Wood, Birmingham, after speaking to David Mesher (Aaron Chown/PA) The man, who was spoken to by police in Birmingham, where he lives, told ITVs Good Morning Britain that the dispute began after he asked Ms Gayle to move from her seat but she didnt seem to want to get up. I probably lost my temper a bit and ordered her to get up, he said, adding that he absolutely regrets his behaviour and apologises for it. Im not a racist person by any means and its just a fit of temper at the time, I think, he continued. But Ms Gayle said she did not accept the apology over the language used on the plane on October 19. I dont think so, she said. You must forget and forgive but its going to take a long time for me to get over what he has done to me. Ryanair communications chief Robin Kiely apologised again over the regrettable and unacceptable remarks. We believe that by reporting this matter immediately to Essex Police and by apologising in writing to this customer early on Sunday morning, Ryanair treated it with the urgency and seriousness it warranted, he added. Officers from West Midlands Police assisted Essex Police, who are leading the investigation, by speaking to Mr Mesher in his sheltered accommodation in Yardley Wood on Thursday. The incident took place on the tarmac of Barcelona Airport before the plane departed for Stansted, so UK police have said officers will pass the investigation to Spanish authorities. Ryanair has been accused of talking rubbish over its claim it immediately reported footage of racist abuse on one of its flights to police. Delsie Gayle, a 77-year-old widow, was the victim of a tirade and called an ugly black bastard on one of the budget airlines planes. On Friday, a week after the incident, Ryanair issued a lengthy statement defending its handling of the matter after coming under criticism. Despite admitting cabin crew were shown the video after landing at Stansted, Ryanair claimed it immediately shared the footage with police two days later on Sunday morning. David Lawrence, 56, from Kent, was the passenger who took the video on the flight before it took off from Barcelona. They are talking rubbish, he said. Their statement is making a lot of people confused it doesnt make sense. Mr Lawrence said he showed the footage to flight attendants at the end of the flight on October 19, as well as to Ryanair staff at the front desk. The airline issued the statement in an effort to dispel false claims that it did not respond quickly. Expand Close A letter issued by Ryanair from its customer services department to passenger, Delsie Gayle (Ryanair/PA) Press Association Images / Facebook Twitter Email Whatsapp A letter issued by Ryanair from its customer services department to passenger, Delsie Gayle (Ryanair/PA) It said Ryanair only became aware of this video late on Saturday, before reporting it to Essex Police at 9am on Sunday. This came after the footage spread widely on social media, and they came under much criticism for failing to eject the passenger from flight FR9015 before take-off. The airline has not responded to repeated requests for comment on why staff did not raise the video with police after the flight. Ryanairs statement came as David Mesher, of Birmingham, publicly apologised for the first time over his treatment of Ms Gayle, while he denied being a racist. But Ms Gayle and her daughter, Carol Gayle, rejected the apology over the language used. Asked if she accepts the apology, Delsie Gayle said: I dont think so. You must forget and forgive but its going to take a long time for me to get over what he has done to me. Her daughter added: He says he wasnt racist he wouldnt be saying words like that if he wasnt racist. The airlines communications chief Robin Kiely apologised over the regrettable and unacceptable remarks. We believe that by reporting this matter immediately to Essex Police and by apologising in writing to this customer early on Sunday morning, Ryanair treated it with the urgency and seriousness it warranted, he added. Expand Close The sheltered retirement housing block in Yardley Wood, Birmingham where David Mesher lives (Aaron Chown/PA) PA Wire/PA Images / Facebook Twitter Email Whatsapp The sheltered retirement housing block in Yardley Wood, Birmingham where David Mesher lives (Aaron Chown/PA) Officers from West Midlands Police assisted Essex Police, who are leading the investigation, by speaking to Mr Mesher in his sheltered accommodation in Yardley Wood on Thursday. The incident took place on the tarmac of Barcelona Airport before the plane departed for Stansted, so UK police have said officers will pass the investigation to Spanish authorities. Anglers will be able to keep the fish they catch on more rivers next year than in 2018 following improvements in the way stocks are assessed. The annual assessment for the 2019 fishing season has been completed and Environment Secretary Roseanna Cunningham has now launched the annual consultation on conservation of salmon measures. The consultation invites representations or objections to the proposed gradings for the 2019 angling season, affecting 173 salmon rivers across Scotland. New regulations will be laid as soon as possible once consideration of representations has been completed. Salmon numbers returning to Scottish rivers are still on a downward trend so theres no room for complacencyEnvironment Secretary Roseanna Cunningham Speaking from the banks of the River Earn at Forteviot in Perth and Kinross, Ms Cunningham said: I know that todays news will be warmly welcomed by anglers across the country, including on the River Earn behind me. Its only possible thanks to the close working between the Scottish Government and partners like Fisheries Management Scotland, local fisheries trusts and other partners, which has allowed us to improve how we assess salmon stocks. Salmon numbers returning to Scottish rivers are still on a downward trend so theres no room for complacency. Careful management, including voluntary catch and release, and close co-operation is needed to ensure we protect this iconic species for future generations. Ms Cunningham was also joined by the presidents of international organisations committed to conserving and managing salmon stocks around the world, as she launched the International Year of the Salmon 2019. Joannes Hansen, of the North Atlantic Salmon Conservation Organisation, and Professor Kim Suam, of the North Pacific Anadromous Fish Commission, are in Scotland to launch the year-long event, which aims to raise awareness of the importance of salmon and the issues they face, and their impact on the communities that benefit from the resource. A student who hadnt told her mum she had her nipples pierced has been rumbled by an X-ray. Sydney Allen, 20, was getting scans on her spine due to a rare disorder and her mother was with her when the X-rays were revealed to her in the hospital but the scan revealed more than expected. My mom found out I got my nipples pierced today pic.twitter.com/BCRE1dz68f Syd (@Sydney_allenn) October 23, 2018 My mum had no idea, Sydney, from Clearwater, Florida, told the Press Association. When the scan was first pulled up I started laughing hysterically as well as the doctor. She was not as happy, but kept her composure in front of the doctor, just stating were going to have to talk about this later. I guess the big lesson I learned from all of this is that you cant keep secrets from your mom. It always finds a way to come out. Fortunately, Sydney said once the initial shock had passed her mum no longer cared as much and agreed the X-ray was pretty funny. It turns out Sydneys not alone either. Although the piercing-revealing X-rays are entertaining, Sydney says her favourite response to her picture going viral is hearing from other people with her condition. Sydney has syringomyelia, a disorder which causes the spinal cord to build up with fluid, caused by Chiari malformation a condition in which brain tissue extends into your spinal canal. I was getting the X-ray to check the alignment of my spine, said Sydney. If my spine is aligned it helps relieve pain a bit. Its a pretty rare disease and I have never talked to anyone my age that also has it so it has been really awesome to discuss tips and doctor referrals. An activist lights a candle during a candlelight vigil for Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi outside the consulate (AP) The son of murdered journalist Jamal Khashoggi has left Saudi Arabia after the kingdom revoked a travel ban, allowing him to come to the United States. The move is the latest event in the saga of the Saudi writer and dissident whose macabre killing earlier this month at the Saudi consulate in Istanbul shocked the world. US state department spokesman Robert Palladino said Washington welcomed the decision to have Salah Khashoggi and his family leave Saudi Arabia. His destination has not been disclosed, but his late father lived in the Washington area. Expand Close A vigil for Jamal Khashoggi in Istanbul (AP) AP/PA Images / Facebook Twitter Email Whatsapp A vigil for Jamal Khashoggi in Istanbul (AP) Mr Palladino said US secretary of state Mike Pompeo had discussed Jamal Khashoggis son during his recent visit to Riyadh and made it clear to Saudi leaders that Washington wanted him free to leave the kingdom. We are pleased that he is now able to do so, Mr Palladino said. Saudi media had showed images of a meeting earlier this week between Mr Khashoggis son and Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, who reportedly expressed his condolences. Mr Palladino also said Mr Pompeo attended a briefing on the former Washington Post writers death by CIA director Gina Haspel, following her return from Turkey. Expand Close Mr Khashoggi was killed in the Saudi consulate in Istanbul on October 2 (AP) AP/PA Images / Facebook Twitter Email Whatsapp Mr Khashoggi was killed in the Saudi consulate in Istanbul on October 2 (AP) The developments came after the kingdom cited evidence showing Mr Khashoggis killing was premeditated, changing its story again to try to ease international outrage over the death of a prominent critic of Crown Prince Mohammed. The announcement contradicted an earlier Saudi assertion that rogue officials from the kingdom had killed Mr Khashoggi by mistake in a brawl inside their Istanbul consulate. That assertion, in turn, backtracked from an initial statement that Saudi authorities knew nothing about what happened to the columnist for The Washington Post, who vanished after entering the consulate October 2. The shifting explanations indicate Saudi Arabia is scrambling for a way out of the crisis that has enveloped the worlds largest oil exporter and a major US ally in the Middle East. However, a solution seems a long way off, partly because of deepening scepticism in Turkey and elsewhere that the brazen crime could have been carried out without the knowledge of Prince Mohammed, the heir apparent to King Salman. Expand Close An activist wearing a mask depicting Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman (AP) AP/PA Images / Facebook Twitter Email Whatsapp An activist wearing a mask depicting Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman (AP) At a conference in Riyadh, the crown prince said the killing was a heinous crime that cannot be justified and warned against any efforts to manipulate the crisis and drive a wedge between Saudi Arabia and Turkey, which are regional rivals but also diplomatic and business partners. On Thursday, Prince Mohammed attended the first meeting of a committee aiming to restructure the kingdoms intelligence services after the killing of Mr Khashoggi, the state-run Saudi Press Agency said. Mr Khashoggis death has derailed the powerful princes campaign to project a modern image of the ultra-conservative country, instead highlighting the brutal lengths to which some top officials in the government have gone to silence its critics. Mr Khashoggi, who lived in self-imposed exile in the United States for nearly a year before his death, had written critically of Prince Mohammeds crackdown on dissent. Expand Close Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman (AP) AP/PA Images / Facebook Twitter Email Whatsapp Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman (AP) A statement by Saudi attorney general Saud al-Mojeb attributed the latest findings of a joint Turkish-Saudi investigation to information from Turkish counterparts. The evidence of Turkish investigators indicates that the suspects in the incident had committed their act with a premeditated intention, the Saudi statement said. After the journalist disappeared, Saudi Arabia initially insisted Mr Khashoggi had walked out of the consulate after visiting the building. It later dropped that account for a new one, saying it had detained 18 people for what it described as an accidental killing during a fistfight. What US president Donald Trump called one of the worst cover-ups in the history of cover-ups was revealed to the world through information leaks from Turkey, including references to purported audio recordings of the killing and security camera footage of Saudi officials who were involved as they moved around Istanbul. Saudi officials said that the kingdom sent a team to Turkey which included a forensics expert and a member whose job was to dress in the 59-year-old writers clothes and pretend to be him even though they were insisting as late as Tuesday that Mr Khashoggis death was an accident. Damage at the port of the western island of Zakynthos (AP) Schools have been closed as officials survey the damage on the Greek island of Zakynthos after a powerful earthquake that was felt as far as Libya jolted western Greece. The magnitude-6.5 undersea quake caused many island residents to spend the night in their cars and triggered a tsunami warning that ended several hours later. No serious damage or injuries were reported, although the main harbour for the island of Zakynthos in the Ionian Sea was damaged, and the sidewalk near moored boats cracked and warped. More than 15 aftershocks occurred before dawn. It was a powerful and shallow earthquake that was felt throughout western Greece, up to Athens, the Western Balkans, even in Italy and Libya, said seismologist Gerasimos Papadopoulos of the Geodynamic Institute in Athens. Power was lost in the island capital and main town, also called Zakynthos, for several hours and power cuts were also reported elsewhere. Were checking out the villages on the island, where there are several older buildings, civil protection agency press spokesman Spyros Georgiou told The Associated Press. The lack of electricity is a problem, but technicians are trying to restore power. Expand Close Cracks in the ground appeared at the port of Zakynthos (imerazante.gr via AP) AP/PA Images / Facebook Twitter Email Whatsapp Cracks in the ground appeared at the port of Zakynthos (imerazante.gr via AP) The fire service said rockfalls were reported in another part of the island, and part of a church wall collapsed on the mainland town of Pyrgos, in the southern Peloponnese area. A couple of people were treated for minor injuries. The US Geological Survey said the undersea quake was magnitude 6.8 and its epicentre was 20 miles south-west of Mouzaki in the southern part of the island. It had a depth of 8.6 miles and struck just before 2am local time (midnight BST). Greeces main earthquake monitoring centre, the Geodynamic Institute, measured the magnitude at 6.5, and said it had a depth of (3.1 miles). Measurements of quake strength can vary due to the equipment each institution uses and other factors. The village of Mouzaki is near the popular tourist resort of Laganas. The quake rattled the whole of western Greece and was strongly felt in the capital, 174 miles to the north-east of Zakynthos. Greece lies in one of the worlds most earthquake-prone regions, with thousands of quakes recorded every year. But few cause injuries or significant damage. In 1999, a magnitude 5.9 quake on the outskirts of Athens killed 143 people. Zakynthos has had severe earthquakes in the past, and as a result has a very strict building safety code. The Florida man in custody in connection with the package bombs sent to Democratic political figures is a fervent supporter of US President Donald Trump. Cesar Sayoc, 56, of Aventura, has an extensive record of past arrests, including a stint served on probation for making a bomb threat. Sayoc is an amateur bodybuilder and businessman whose online CV describes him as a promoter and booking agent for male stripper and burlesque shows. He was born in New York City and attended college in North Carolina before moving to the Miami suburbs in the late 1980s. He is a registered Republican with social media accounts containing memes supporting Mr Trump, denigrating Democrats, and promoting conspiracy theories about George Soros, the billionaire political donor who was the first targeted this week by a package bomb. At the auto parts store in Plantation, Florida, where Sayoc was taken into custody, authorities towed away a white van covered with stickers supporting Mr Trump and criticising media outlets that included CNN, the news channel also targeted by a mail bomb this week. Expand Close An FBI agent and detective talk to an employee at the auto parts store in Plantation where authorities took Cesar Sayoc into custody (AP Photo/Wilfredo Lee) AP/PA Images / Facebook Twitter Email Whatsapp An FBI agent and detective talk to an employee at the auto parts store in Plantation where authorities took Cesar Sayoc into custody (AP Photo/Wilfredo Lee) Court records in Florida show that Sayoc was arrested in 2002 and served a year of probation for a felony charge of threatening to throw or place a bomb. Court records available online did not immediately provide further details about the case, but his lawyer in the case told The Associated Press it involved a heated conversation with a Florida utility representative. Ronald Lowy, a Miami lawyer, said Sayoc became frustrated about a lack of service and told a Florida Power and Light employee something to the effect that youre not taking care of my problem and I bet you would if I threw a bomb at you. Mr Lowy said Sayoc showed no ability at the time to back up his threat with any bomb-making expertise. The lawyer went on to describe Sayoc as a confused man who had trouble controlling his emotions. Mr Lowy said Sayoc displayed no political leanings at the time except for plastering a vehicle he owned with Native American signs. Mr Lowy said Sayoc told him his father was Native American. Sayoc was also convicted in 2014 for grand theft and misdemeanour theft of less than 300 US dollars, and in 2013 for battery. Expand Close The van that federal agents are investigating in connection with package bombs that were sent to high-profile critics of President Donald Trump (Carline Jean/South Florida Sun-Sentinel via AP) AP/PA Images / Facebook Twitter Email Whatsapp The van that federal agents are investigating in connection with package bombs that were sent to high-profile critics of President Donald Trump (Carline Jean/South Florida Sun-Sentinel via AP) In 2004, he faced several felony charges for unlawful possession of a synthetic anabolic steroid often used to help build muscles. He also had several arrests for theft in the 1990s and faced a felony charge for obtaining fraudulent refunds and a misdemeanour count of tampering with physical evidence. Mr Lowy said he recalled that Sayoc also had a run-in with authorities over possession of steroids and another case in Broward County where he was charged with possessing a fake drivers licence after altering his birth date to make him appear younger. His mind doesnt seem to operate like most peoples, Mr Lowy said. It shows in his anger, his emotion and his behaviour. A Twitter account that appears to belong to Sayoc, @hardrock2016, includes memes denouncing Florida gubernatorial candidate Andrew Gillum, including a photo of Mr Soros made to look like he is holding a puppet that resembles Mr Gillum. Other posts called Parkland shooting survivor David Hogg fake phony. He posted memes repeatedly attacking Mr Hogg in July. He also called governor Rick Scott greatest Governor Ever in a posting that shows the Republican governor alongside Mr Trump. In June, he praised Mr Trump in a birthday message saying: Happy Birthday President Donald J. Trump the greatest result President ever. FBI agents covering a van in connection with the case (WPLG-TV via AP) A man has been charged in connection with a mail bomb campaign targeting prominent Democrats who have criticised US President Donald Trump. US Justice Department officials revealed that a fingerprint found on one package helped them identify their suspect as Cesar Sayoc, 56, of Aventura, Florida. The criminal complaint charges Sayoc with illegally mailing explosives, illegally transporting explosives across state lines, making threats against former presidents, assaulting federal officers and threatening interstate commerce. Court records show Sayoc, an amateur bodybuilder with social media accounts that denigrate Democrats and praise Mr Trump, has a history of arrests for theft, illegal steroids possession and a 2002 charge of making a bomb threat. Expand Close Cesar Sayoc has been charged (Broward County Sheriffs Office via AP) AP/PA Images / Facebook Twitter Email Whatsapp Cesar Sayoc has been charged (Broward County Sheriffs Office via AP) The development came amid a nationwide manhunt for the person responsible for at least 13 explosive devices addressed to prominent Democrats including former president Barack Obama, former vice president Joe Biden and Hillary Clinton. The case widened on Friday as investigators in California scrutinised a similar package sent to Democratic senator Kamala Harris, her office said. In Washington, US attorney general Jeff Sessions cautioned that Sayoc had only been charged, not convicted. Expand Close Attorney general Jeff Sessions speaks about the arrest of Cesar Sayoc (AP Photo/Alex Brandon) AP/PA Images / Facebook Twitter Email Whatsapp Attorney general Jeff Sessions speaks about the arrest of Cesar Sayoc (AP Photo/Alex Brandon) But he said: Let this be a lesson to anyone regardless of their political beliefs that we will bring the full force of law against anyone who attempts to use threats, intimidation and outright violence to further an agenda. We will find you, we will prosecute you to the fullest extent of the law. In Florida, law enforcement officers were seen on television examining a white van, its windows covered with an assortment of stickers, outside the Plantation auto parts store. Authorities covered the vehicle with a blue tarp and took it away on the back of a truck. Expand Close The vans windows were covered with stickers (Courtesy of Lesley Abravanel via AP) AP/PA Images / Facebook Twitter Email Whatsapp The vans windows were covered with stickers (Courtesy of Lesley Abravanel via AP) The stickers included images of Mr Trump, American flags and what appeared to be logos of the Republican National Committee and CNN, though the writing surrounding those images was unclear. Mr Trump, after Sayoc was apprehended, declared that we must never allow political violence take root in America and Americans must unify. As in comments earlier in the week, he did not mention that the package recipients were all Democrats or officials in Mr Obamas administration, in addition to CNN, a news network he criticises almost daily. Earlier on Friday, he complained that this bomb stuff was taking attention away from the upcoming election and said critics were wrongly blaming him and his heated rhetoric. The Justice Department scheduled a Friday afternoon news conference in Washington that was to include New York Police Commissioner James ONeill, whose department investigated the mailings with the FBI. Law enforcement officials said they had intercepted a dozen packages in states across the country. None had exploded, and it was not immediately clear if they were intended to cause physical harm or simply sow fear and anxiety. Earlier on Friday, authorities said suspicious packages addressed to New Jersey senator Cory Booker and former national intelligence director James Clapper both similar to those containing pipe bombs sent to other prominent critics of Mr Trump had been intercepted. Investigators believe the mailings were staggered. The US Postal Service searched their facilities 48 hours ago and the most recent packages did not turn up. Officials do not think they were sitting in the system without being spotted. "The success of the RH bill advocacy can also be claimed by the thousands of ordinary women who actively took part in it." The book The RH Bill Story: Contentions and Compromises by Dr. Marilen Danguilan was recently launched. As expected it became a reunion of sorts of those who were involved in the more-than-a-decade-long relentless advocacy for the passage of the bill. Some authors of the bill were there, led by the father of the law himself, Rep. Edcel Lagman. Also present was former Health Secretary Esperanza Cabral, the head of the Commission on Population Dr. Jeepy Perez, and a host of leaders and members of pro-RH civil society organizations. The book successfully chronicles the protracted, complex, and difficult advocacy that significantly helped in the passage of the RH bill into law. It captures the many years of negotiations and coordination between and among stakeholders, particularly the authors of the bill and the advocates. It also shows most of the pressure tactics employed by both the anti-RH groups led by anti-choice legislators and the Roman Catholic Church hierarchy, and the pro-RH composed of the bills authors, CSOs, and some government officials from the Executive Department. The book, undoubtedly, can serve as a rich resource by future advocates and for other advocacies. In writing this piece, I wish to highlight some matters that I think are important, but missing in the book. My organization, the Democratic Socialist Women of the Philippines, was one of the CSOs that had been actively involved from the start to the enactment of the bill into law. The DSWP served as the secretariat of the Reproductive Health Advocacy Network (RHAN, the leading RH network then) during some of the busiest and most contentious years of the advocacy. As such, my group served as the focal point of activities and, therefore, has full knowledge of advocacy tactics and strategies conducted within the period. Moreover, the DSWP has always been in the RHAN Steering Committee, and a major group in the Purple Ribbon for RH movement. Thus, the organization has consistently been in the thick of things in relation with the RH bill advocacy, and knows parts of the RH bill herstory that are also good to share with others. The story is long and complex, and involved many players. Thus, it is hard for one book to tell all the exciting stuff. I would like to add to the story from the point of view of my organization and as we experienced the advocacy. It is a fact that many other organizations outside of Metro Manila were involved in this struggle, particularly community womens organizations. It is not an overstatement when I say that they played an important role in the success of the RH Bill advocacy because they made it a NATIONAL advocacy, and deserve to also be recognized. These groups participation proved that support for the bill was truly nationwide. As a national womens agenda, there were many activities conducted in different parts of the country. In the beginning of the advocacy, as part of the education campaign on the bill, a series of RH Bill forums was conducted by the DSWP. These happened in Metro Manila (participated in by community women from Quezon City, Manila, and Rizal); San Pablo City (attended by women leaders from Laguna, Batangas, and Quezon); Iloilo City (participated in by women leaders from Iloilo City, Iloilo Province, Negros Occidental, Guimaras, and Antique); Cagayan de Oro City (with participants from CDO, Misamis Oriental, Marawi City, and Bukidnon); and Davao City (participated by women from Davao City, Davao del Sur, Davao del Norte, Agusan del Sur, and Agusan del Norte). These activities helped lay the foundation for the sustained local community organizations support for the bill that manifested itself during the many years of advocacy.Moreover, the Purple Ribbon for RH Movement, the bigger network of pro-RH groups and personalities convened by former Secretary Espie Cabral, was launched in various places The launching happened in Tondo, Manila; Payatas, Quezon City; San Pablo City; the fifth district of Pangasinan; Baguio City; and Iloilo City. All the launches were attended by hundreds of pro-RH advocates. The events in Manila, Quezon City, San Pablo City, and Iloilo City were coordinated and led by the DSWP and most of those who attended were members of local chapters. The Pangasinan launch was led by former Representative of Pangasinans Fifth District Kimi Cojuangco, a co-author of the RH bill. It was a big fiesta. We did a Purple Ribbon for RH motorcade, and RH Forums in at least three towns of the district. I am not joking when I say that thousands attended the activities in Pangasinan. The Baguio launch was spearheaded by the Philippine Legislators Committee for Population and Development. Beyond the big events, community women were moving on their own. They held discussions and dialogues with their district representatives. Using the political mapping of members of the House of Representatives done by PLCPD, (this is a document that contains how each of the representatives stand on the bill), the DSWP sought the assistance of its local chapters in convincing their Representatives to support the RH bill which was then undergoing interpellation at the HOR. Community women leaders responded by visiting and holding dialogues with their Representatives. The women spoke of the RH situation in their communities, the problems they face, and explained their reasons for fully supporting the passage of the RH bill into law. They asked their reps to truly represent them when the bill is put to the vote. These dialogues happened in Caloocan City, Quezon City, Quezon, Laguna, Bataan, Camarines Sur, Negros Occidental, Iloilo City, Iloilo Province, Bukidnon, and Cagayan de Oro City. We also did a nationally coordinated Mothers Day celebrations. During the height of the congressional and public debates on the RH bill, the DSWP, Likhaan, and PLCPD led the initiative to do a nationally-coordinated Mothers Day celebrations highlighting the issue of maternal mortality which was the battlecry of RH advocates. The activity happened in Quezon City (led by Likhaan), San Pablo City and Iloilo City (led by DSWP), Baguio City (led by PLCPD), and Davao City. Each of the events was attended by hundreds of women and other pro-RH allies. They all involved marches where participants carried pictures actual of women who died due to childbirth-related complications. The events were highlighted by stories of these women and candle lighting of giant numbers representing the total number of women dying due to maternal complications on a yearly basis. No doubt, the success of the RH bill advocacy can also be claimed by the thousands of ordinary women who actively took part in it. More next week. Blood is probably the most powerful substance for a politician to invoke, as Enoch Powell knew all too well. It summons up deep, visceral images of homeland, motherland, territory, sovereignty, life and death. To speak, as the DUP leader Arlene Foster has done in the context of the Brexit negotiations, of a "blood red line" amplifies the word still further. This is far more than a line in the sand, a point beyond which you are not prepared to go. This is a line that is so vital and defended that it is symbolically guaranteed by blood, the very stuff of which each one of us is made. Under no circumstances, the DUP insists, must Northern Ireland be treated any differently to the rest of the UK. We are all as one, for ever and ever, equal constituent parts of the same precious union. "I am a unionist. I believe in the union of the United Kingdom, all four elements of the United Kingdom," Mrs Foster told EU chief negotiator Michel Barnier. "We do not want Northern Ireland going off in a different direction from the rest of the UK." It is a point of fundamental principle with the party, an article of faith, integral to its very essence. Such a Brexit battle-cry, with its bullish overtones of 'no surrender', might sound impassioned, and no doubt resonates deeply with the party's hardcore base. But the reality, as any fool knows, is that Northern Ireland is utterly different from the rest of the UK. Politically, culturally, socially, legally, we are at a stark remove. We're a weird little statelet, out on our own. And the DUP, those apparently stalwart blood-defenders of UK unity, those flag-waving champions of core Britishness, are the very people who maintain that difference most trenchantly. Corporation tax, air passenger duty, libel law: these are all areas where the DUP is perfectly happy to diverge from the rest of the UK. Indeed, the latest issue of the satirical and investigative magazine Private Eye describes in interesting detail how the DUP blocked libel reform in Northern Ireland by resisting the extension of the Defamation Act, passed by Westminster in 2013. But to my mind the most egregious example of the DUP's double standards is its implacable opposition to abortion rights for women in Northern Ireland. If we are all part of one glorious and indivisible union, why are women here denied dominion over their own bodies? Why are they prevented from accessing the human rights afforded to those in the remainder of the UK? Under the current archaic law, as the Labour MP Stella Creasy has pointed out, if you are raped in Northern Ireland, become pregnant as a result and seek a termination, you could face a longer prison sentence than your attacker. Creasy and other Westminster politicians are currently attempting to legalise abortion in Northern Ireland by removing the Victorian-era legislation which continues to apply here. And Belfast woman Sarah Ewart, who was forced to travel to England for a termination after being told her unborn child had no chance of survival, has now won High Court permission for a judicial review. Meanwhile, Arlene Foster's DUP maintains an absolute distinction between the way women seeking abortions are treated in Northern Ireland - described as "cruel and inhuman" by UK human rights courts - and the way their counterparts are treated across the water. So much for "all four elements of the United Kingdom" working as one. More like one element of the UK off on its own misogynist and hyper-religious kick, in defiance of the majority will of the Northern Irish people, who have consistently supported compassionate reform. Of course, we're also the only remaining part of the UK, and Ireland, where same-sex marriage remains illegal, again courtesy of the DUP. No border down the middle of the Irish Sea - except the huge moralistic one that prevents gay couples from publicly formalising their commitment to one another. These should not be snootily dismissed as "social issues", of less significance than customs regulation. They are central to the quality of people's lives. The DUP has always enjoyed indulging in big talk, right back to the guldering days of Rev Ian Paisley. It's a primitive way of puffing themselves up and making them look larger and thus more threatening than they actually are. Arlene Foster's blood-red line, supposedly protecting the Union, is more of the same. But there is an invisible border dividing us off from the rest of the UK, and the DUP is instrumental in maintaining it. Republicans make much of demanding respect, especially when it comes to their commemoration of their dead. But respect does not flow in only one direction. If it means anything it must be reciprocal. How then can former IRA members and current Sinn Fein members even contemplate holding a memorial service tomorrow at Milltown Cemetery for Thomas Begley, the IRA man who was killed when carrying out the Shankill bombing 25 years ago this week? Read More That bombing killed nine other people who were in Frizzell's fish shop going about their mundane Saturday lunchtime shopping. It was a grotesque massacre of the innocents and this week there have been several events, including ones attended by cross-community audiences who felt it necessary to continue to mark their abhorrence of the killings. Read More Even the most superficial examination of the bombing shows that the IRA had a total disregard for the lives of anyone, including Begley and his accomplice Sean Kelly who was seriously injured. The supposed target was a UDA office above the fish shop but the 11-second fuse meant there was little hope of anyone in the shop escaping. In the event, the UDA targets were not even in the office. And the IRA planners knew fine well that whatever the outcome, vicious loyalist retaliation would inevitably follow against equally innocent Catholics, and so it did, causing another 14 lost lives. So on all fronts there is no reason to venerate a man who carried out a barbarous act. As one of the people bereaved by the Shankill bombing says, tomorrow's commemoration is dancing on the graves of the victims, and seldom can that sentiment have rung truer. There will be notable exceptions at the Milltown event - the Begley family who, according to Thomas's elderly father, have been spending this week going to church, praying for their dead family member and also for those he killed. Unlike the IRA, the Begley family have apologised for the Shankill bombing and there is no reason to doubt Mr Begley's assertion that had he known what his son was going to do that day 25 years ago, he would have chained him to his bed to prevent him leaving the house. Anyone with the slightest moral compass or human compassion will view tomorrow's republican commemoration as repugnant and agree that republicans demand for respect is not applicable. Garda Eamonn McGinley and presiding officer Marian Roarty arrive on Tory Island, off the coast of Co Donegal, with a ballot box for the Irish presidential election and referendum on blasphemy For those who adhere to such matters, the second of the 10 Commandments forbids "impious or profane speaking of God or sacred things". The Irish Constitution, under Article 40.6.1.i, bans "the publication or utterance of blasphemous, seditious, or indecent matter"; offences "which shall be punishable in accordance with law". Today, as well as voting for a new president, people in the Republic are being asked to vote in a referendum which proposes to amend the article by removing the word "blasphemous", so it would simply read: "bans the publication or utterance of seditious, or indecent matter". The article was enacted by the people on July 1, 1937 and, while the 1961 Defamation Act prescribed maximum penalties of seven years' "penal servitude" for blasphemous libel, or two years' imprisonment and a 500 fine, the move still did not define the exact offence, leaving it somewhat in a limbo for learned lawyers to argue. Not that they ever needed to, for, between the years 1855 and 1955, there were no prosecutions on the matter. In 1855, in Dun Laoghaire (then Kingstown), a Protestant Bible was burned by a Redemptorist priest, one Fr Vladimir Pecherin, originally from the Ukraine and then chaplain at Dublin's Mater Hospital. He was charged following a complaint from a Methodist minister, Rev Robert Wallace, but the case was thrown out when Pecherin claimed he had "not intended to include a Bible (even a Protestant one) in his bonfire of bad books". There had been one successful prosecution for blasphemy, back in 1703, when a Unitarian minister, Thomas Emlyn, was fined a whopping 1,000 and imprisoned for a year when he denied the divinity of Christ. During the contentious campaign for a referendum on divorce in 1995, three cases were brought by one John Corway, a Catholic, who claimed an editorial in Hot Press magazine and cartoons in the Irish Times and the Irish Independent were blasphemous. One cartoon showed three Irish TDs refusing Holy Communion at Mass, as divorced people were denied that sacrament by the Catholic hierarchy. The cases were thrown out by the High Court and the Supreme Court, following an appeal. In 2008, a joint Oireachtas committee said that, following on from Corway's cases, the reference to blasphemy in the Constitution was really "a dead letter". The committee reported: "In a modern constitution, blasphemy is not a phenomenon against which there should be an expressed constitutional prohibition." Then-Minister for Justice, Dermot Ahern, brought in a law "to remove the possibility of prison sentences and private prosecutions for blasphemy, currently provided for in Irish law". He said the "only credible alternative" to this was a referendum, which "I consider, in the current circumstances, a costly and unwarranted diversion". Only in Ireland could a minister introduce a law which prevented prosecutions for blasphemy, but also "complied with the Constitution" when the Defamation Act 2009 introduced a new offence of "publication or utterance of blasphemous matter" which carried a maximum fine of 25,000. Up to then, blasphemy, frighteningly, applied only to Christianity; the new Act changed this to apply to all religious beliefs. Which brings us to where we are today, but not before the infamous Stephen Fry matter on Gay Byrne's The Meaning of Life on RTE in 2015, when the English actor ridiculed a God he did not believe exists: a God who would allow children to die of cancer. Two years later, a man complained to gardai in Ennis, Co Clare, about the programme. Gardai were beside themselves frenetically investigating, but, two days later, were unable to find "a substantial number of outraged people" to bring an action. Fry later said he was contacted by the man who had complained, who told him he had done so to show how the law on blasphemy was "really an ass". The multi-talented thespian thought this a "wonderfully Irish solution" to the problem of outdated legislation. Polls suggest the majority of people have little interest in this referendum. Almost 30% of people do not know how they will vote today. The latest Amarach/Claire Byrne Live poll for TheJournal.ie found that the majority of people (54%) would vote to remove the offence of blasphemy from the constitution, compared with just 17% of those who said they would vote against. Around 29% said they did not know how they would vote, including over a third of women and those aged 35-44 (both 35%). A Yes majority today will allow legislators to amend the 2009 Defamation Act. Primarily, we see blasphemy as outdated, just not tenable in a modern Ireland. The "crime" emerged during an era when Church and State were seen as a single entity; when defaming the established religion was nothing short of committing treason. In a Republic now premised on separation of Church and State, such a crime is irrelevant. Following a long, sad and shameful history of collusion between Church and State, the repression of women and children, notably in industrial schools and Magdalene laundries, we are, thank God, moving out of that awful era, as shown by the referenda on marriage equality and abortion. If we are to learn anything from our history, we should be fearful of retaining a law that provides an elevated position for religion (and, frighteningly, just Christianity at that) above all other beliefs. There is a old German saying: 'The less people know about how sausages and laws are made, the better they sleep at night.' Watching events unfold at the RHI Inquiry there may be some truth in that. If there are enthusiastic cheerleaders for a speedy return to devolution as we have recently experienced it - there is no evidence they are clamouring for it. Read More Even the most ardent supporters of the two large parties appear happy for the current stalemate to prevail. Democracy as perpetrated (and I mean perpetrated) by the DUP and Sinn Fein has been obliterated. The RHI Inquiry has shown us, not just how our sausages (aka laws) are made - it has taken us on a journey through the inside of the sausage-making machine. And boy, it's not a pretty sight. In fact it's rank. There is a huge difference in winning power, which Sinn Fein and the DUP excel at, and the administration of that power which both parties fail miserably at. Over the years, DUP and Sinn Fein administrations love-bombed the media with photo opportunities. Press releases gushed with their achievements, when in effect, their most incredible achievement was simply sticking it out for so long when the scaffolding which held them together was built on the twin pillars of distrust and disrespect for each other. Yes, they were good at political lip-syncing when the occasion demanded, but when the lights dimmed the trust evaporated. It was like a dysfunctional marriage hidden behind lace curtains. The evidence as presented to the RHI Inquiry this week has been shocking - ministers appearing to approve of leaks to direct the media away from their party. Some individuals seemingly allowing themselves to be cuckold by political advisors. Non-accountable party political figures beyond the reach of public scrutiny and external to the making of public policy apparently signing off on key decisions. This would be farcical if it was a House of Cards episode or a comedy scene worthy of a Baldrick or an Alan B'Stard: the fact it masquerades for real time politics in Northern Ireland is no laughing matter. It's not much better for those parties in opposition either. So poorly funded, under-resourced and overly-reliant on departments for accurate information, scrutiny committees are more like toothless Tiggers than tigers. The RHI Inquiry is shining a light into the corners of administration within Northern Ireland into which there was no light. One can expect a degree of political shenanigans between parties forced into a mandatory coalition but what we are witnessing is the corruption of process. Not corruption in the sense of personal or illegal activity but a corporate and collective corruption of governance. Without prejudging any conclusions the RHI Inquiry Panel may come to, it's hard to see anyone coming out of this with any credit. Not the civil service, certainly not the two big political parties and most definitely not the system of special advisors as operated by the DUP. Ministers, who are meant to be actually politically accountable for their advisors, departmental staff and policy have been reduced to playing cameo roles in their own productions. Anyone following the RHI Inquiry can only be as flummoxed as those on the Panel at the explanations. We are told that a jigsaw puzzle is an assembly of often oddly-shaped interlocking and tessellating pieces that when finished produces a complete picture -a bit like our system of governance, only some of our pieces are missing: namely those of accountability, responsibility and scrutiny. And if the civil service embroils itself in partisan actions to please or acquiesce political parties, impartiality is missing too. A worrying factor is the way the public are now immunised against whatever the machinations of politics. In a recent by-election, albeit in a mostly unionist area, eight out of 10 voters stayed away from the polls. And yet, still the DUP prevailed. Voter apathy is a curse on all political parties but it changes very little in terms of outcomes. Stay at home voters may be turned off by politics but they are also a godsend to political parties in turmoil because they let them off the hook. Recently a group of young 16-24 year olds from Northern Ireland went to Westminster to lobby MPs for a second referendum. They feel it's their future that's being squandered. If, as Brexiter Jacob Rees-Mogg and others suggest, that it will be between 25 and 50 years before the so-called perceived benefits of leaving the EU emerge for the UK, it is young people like these who will be shouldering the burden. These young people listen to the RHI Inquiry with incredulity. They resent that their arguments about the future are reduced to those of Orange versus Green by local politicians. It's unfortunate that at this time our young people are witnesses to politics at its worst. A time when political polarisation is actually being fuelled by the main political parties. A time when the very system of government is paralysed and the governance itself is being bastardised. Where is the leadership for them? It's not at Stormont nor at Westminster at the moment. Some people in Northern Ireland are fond of quoting scripture - so here is one for the leadership of the DUP and Sinn Fein: Proverbs 29:18: "Where there is no vision, the people perish". People are perishing on hospital waiting lists and corridors, attending under-funded schools and dealing with crumbling infrastructure, all for the want of a vision. To the wider public, politics is seen as the preserve of the greedy and self-serving. That is regrettable. Many are drawn to it by the noblest of convictions. Others drag politics to the level of the grubbiest gutter. The old German saying is wrong about making laws but right about making sausages. To make laws we need transparency. We need light. The type of light provided by the team at the RHI Inquiry. Too much of our past was shrouded in darkness and we know where that led. Indonesian Muslims carry a giant flag inscribed with an Islamic declaration of faith during a rally in Jakarta, Oct. 26, 2018. Thousands of Muslims rallied in several Indonesian cities on Friday to protest the burning of a banned hardline Islamic group's flag that was inscribed with a declaration of faith, police said, while organizers seeking to promote moderate Islam canceled a demonstration outside Jakarta. There were no reports of violence during the protests, police said, as authorities deployed 7,000 security personnel, but observers said the flare up of religious fervor indicated that political Islam had started making inroads in the worlds largest Muslim-majority nation. Anyone who insults shahada must be condemned and be punished for blasphemy, protest leader Yusuf Martak told one of the rallies. The protests came after members of Banser, a paramilitary group under the countrys largest Muslim organization, Nahdlatul Ulama, burned a black flag with a shahadah - an inscription that proclaims the Islamic faith - during a rally on Monday in Garut regency in West Java province. Banser members said the flag belonged to Hizbut Tahrir (HTI), an outlawed Islamic group seeking to establish a caliphate in Indonesia. The two-minute video, which went viral Monday on social media, showed unidentified men wearing Banser uniforms setting fire to the flag. Some Muslim leaders called the burning an insult because the flag, with its Islamic tenet, belonged to all the faithful. Religious blasphemy carries a maximum sentence of five years in prison under Indonesian law. On Friday, about 1,000 people calling themselves the National Front for the Defense of Tawhid, marched through Jakartas main roads while carrying black flags and chanting slogans demanding the government disband Banser. They later picketed the coordinating ministry for political, legal and security affairs, but failed to meet Minister Wiranto who was out of town. Protesters in Jakarta, including children and women wearing headscarves, began marching after Fridays prayers and took turns giving speeches demanding legal action against the flag burners. Disband Banser, otherwise this regime of Joko Widodo is an oppressor of Muslims, one protester shouted. An online petition calling for the group to be disbanded garnered almost 150,000 signatures as of late Friday. Muslims believe that the black banner with the white shahada inscription, also known as al Raya (the banner), is one of the flags flown by the Prophet Muhammad. But variants of the black banner have been used by militant groups including the Islamic State. Similar rallies occurred place in Bandung and Ciamis in West Java province, as well as in the devoutly Muslim province of Aceh, police said. Muslim protesters hang banners, including one calling for Muslim paramilitary group Banser to be disbanded, during a rally in Jakarta, Oct. 26, 2018. (Arie Firdaus/BenarNews) Presidential decree President Joko Jokowi Widodo issued a decree in 2017 banning organizations the government deemed to threaten the countrys unity. Hizbut Tahrir, whose members say they campaign to establish a caliphate through peaceful means, was the first organization to be banned under the decree. Critics said the ban violated the freedom of assembly guarantee in the constitution. One of Fridays rallies targeted the offices of Nahdlatul Ulama, the mother organization of Banser, in Central Jakarta. Yaqut Cholil Qaumas, chairman of Nahdlatul Ulamas pro-government Ansor Youth Movement, has apologized for the uproar caused by the flag burning. But Jafar Shodiq, deputy chairman of the Islamic Defenders Front, said Yaqut should be held legally responsible for the incident. Yaqut has to face trial, he said, warning that his group would stage another demonstration next Friday if its demand was not met. Jokowis running mate, Muslim cleric Maruf Amin, is the supreme leader of Nahdlatul Ulama, which boasts 40 million members. Analysts said Jokowis pick of Maruf was intended to boost his Islamic credentials. In recent years, Middle Eastern-style Muslim garb has become much more common in Indonesia, including in Jakarta, where Muslim groups held protests focused on blasphemy in 2016 and 2017 against former Gov. Basuki Ahok Tjahaja Purnama, a Christian. Ahok was convicted of blasphemy and sentenced to two years in prison after an edited video made it appear like he was saying that the Quran deceived people. Meanwhile, Nahdlatul Ulamas youth wing cancelled a unity rally planned for Friday in the city of Yogyakarta, southeast of the capital Jakarta, over fears of clashes with people angered by the flag burning. Organizers had hoped 100,000 people would attend the rally. We want to prevent clashes and provocations, organizer Abdul Rohman said. On Wednesday, Widodo called on police to investigate the incident. Police have detained three Banser members and a man who carried the flag linked to HTI. Kusumasari Ayuningtyas in Yogyakarta contributed to this report. A child plays on a beach on Boracay island in the central Philippines in March before the government ordered it closed to tourists for six months. The Philippine island of Boracay reopened Friday, six months after the government ordered it closed to visitors for a clean-up following President Rodrigo Dutertes complaint its beaches had turned into a cesspool. Amid strict regulations and tight security, officials allowed only up to 6,000 tourists with confirmed bookings to enter the island famed for its stretches of white-sand beaches. The closure of Boracay, a top tourism draw and important source of revenue, displaced thousands of workers. Duterte said he was pleased with the clean-up effort. Estimates of how big the losses were have not been disclosed, but the Boracay tourism sector last year pulled in about 56 billion pesos (about U.S. $1 billion). Boracay is a lesson of political will as exhibited by the president and yet, it is also a lesson of neglect and misfeasance and malfeasance in office, Duterte spokesman Salvador Panelo said in a statement. Panelo said Duterte wouldnt have ordered the closure had local tour officials operated following the law and the rules and regulations. He stated that it has to take a President Duterte to put things in order and I think that we should all learn from these lessons so Boracay will become the attraction not only in this country but in the world, Panelo said from the island as it opened again to the world. Tourism Secretary Bernadette Romulo Puyat said she hoped the new Boracay would be the start of a culture of sustainable tourism, adding that other destinations have been put on notice that they should clean up or face a similar shut down. It means taking account of the repercussions of our actions on current and future situations of the environment, she said. Our efforts have proven once again that change is indeed possible with a strong political will as our dear President Duterte has exhibited an eagerness to work together for love of country, Puyat said. She had told the Foreign Correspondents Association of the Philippines (Focap) that written warnings have been given to the beach resort destinations of El Nido in Palawan island, Panglao island and La Union in the north. Similar warnings were issued to whale shark watching destination in Oslob in central Philippines and the mountain resort town of Baguio city. Previously, Duterte described the beaches around Boracay as a cesspool and a danger to human health. He made the statement even though the island has been touted as the upcoming Southeast Asian tourism hotspot to rival Phuket in Thailand and Bali in Indonesia. Parties, fire dancers, masseuses, vendors, stray dogs, bonfires and even sand castle building have been banned from the beachfront, according to Environment Secretary Roy Cimatu, head of the government group overseeing the rehabilitation of the island. I will immediately report to President Duterte how much we have accomplished in six months, Cimatu said, adding the islands three casinos were closed permanently in line with the Presidents order. The justice department also issued a legal opinion last week, agreeing that the president can impose a no-casino policy without needing congressional action. The state possesses police power to prohibit gambling in the Philippines or any part of it and this power was validly delegated by law to PAGCOR, a government corporation, which is subject to control by the president, the department order said, referring to the Philippine Amusement and Gaming Corp. Security Police said more than 6,000 officers have been deployed to guard the island. Since this becomes now an attractive area for the Islamic state militants. We do not want to be alarmists, but we are preparing for possible incidents involving terrorism, regional police commander Chief Superintendent John Bulalacao said. With the influx of tourists, we will be expecting more human activities and therefore we expect the crime incidence will increase, he added. In 2017, members of a militant group from the Abu Sayyaf tried to kidnap foreigners in Bohol island, southeast of Manila, but authorities killed five of the militants before they could carry out their plan. In 2001, 23 people including three U.S. citizens in the Dos Palmas resort in Honda Bay, Palawan, were kidnapped by the Abu Sayyaf Group. Mark Navales in Davao contributed to this report. Udomchai Thammasarorat (left-center), Thailands new chief negotiator in Thai Deep South peace talks, and Abdul Rahim Mohd Noor, the new Malaysian facilitator, talk to reporters at the Shangri-la Hotel in Bangkok, Oct. 25, 2018. The new Thai and Malaysian chief negotiators in talks aimed at resolving an insurgency in southern Thailand said they agreed to meet all involved groups and hear their demands as they begin working together to revive the peace process. Udomchai Thammasarorat, a former Thai army general, and Abdul Rahim Noor, a former Malaysian national police chief, met for the first time in Bangkok this week after their governments appointed them as their new top representatives in the Malaysia-brokered peace talks. From what I heard from Tan Sri (Abdul Rahim), all troubles are not hard to resolve. Thailands approach is we talk to all dissident groups who have differences with the Thai government. We are open to all groups, Udomchai said on Thursday, using a Thai term synonymous with rebel groups. He did not specify whether that would include hardcore elements of the National Revolutionary Front (BRN) the largest and most heavily armed rebel group waging a separatist war in the Thai Deep South in the current peace talks. Udomchais comments were recorded in a video of a press briefing at a five-star hotel in Bangkok that followed his discussions with Abdul Rahim. The pair met in Bangkok over two days and on the sidelines of Malaysian Prime Minister Mahathir Mohamads first state visit to Thailand since his Pakatan Harapan alliance was elected in May. They said this signaled a fresh start in a peace process. To some extent, it is a new era in terms of direction and the push to quicken the peace process, which has been going on for six years, said Abdul Rahim, who was appointed as the Malaysian facilitator in August, according to state-run news service Bernama. There is now a new era and better momentum for achieving peace in southern Thailand and calls for the process to be quickened, the former police inspector-general told reporters in Bangkok. Abdul Rahim said that, apart from the Thai sides, he intended to communicate with both moderate and hardcore insurgent groups, according Bernamas report, which was published Friday. He has already talked with both types of rebel organizations during his three first months as facilitator, the article noted. I am personally and definitely confident that, given the correct momentum, peace in southern Thailand will be achieved sooner rather than later, the new Malaysian peace broker said. All parties must have the political will to find solutions suitable for southern Thailand, Abdul Rahim added. Udomchai, the former army chief in a regional military command that covers the Deep South, said weve invested a lot in peace talks over the past several years. I told Tan Sri that the approach wont be different from 30 years ago when he dealt with [communists], Malaysia was a negotiating party, the Thai negotiator said, adding that his Malaysian counterparts new role as a peace broker was a reversal of roles for him. Udomchai was alluding to a previous long-running Malaysian communist insurgency along the Thai-Malaysia border that Abdul Rahim helped settle decades ago when he served as his nations negotiator in that conflict. The BRN factor Days ahead of Mahathirs visit to Bangkok and his meeting with Thai counterpart Prayuth Chan-o-cha, the BRN warned that the talks would succeed only if the Thais negotiated directly with it. The group previously criticized negotiations between Thailands military government and MARA Patani an umbrella group that claims to negotiate on behalf of all the southern rebel groups and include BRN representatives on its panel. We have to make it known to them today, between the two PMs, they have to recognize that we are important, BRN spokesman Abdul Karim Khalid told BBC Newss Thai service on Oct. 22. If both sides are not interested or dogmatic to do the same thing, I can say that there is no meaning whatsoever, he said. MARA recently announced its expansion from five to eight groups, and rebranded itself as MARA Patani Plus. However, spokesman Abu Hafez Al-Hakim, who could not be reached for comment on Friday, earlier declined to identify the new groups. The talks between the junta and MARA started in mid-2015, but so far have failed to produce a limited ceasefire or so-called safety zone seen as a linchpin to taking the peace process beyond the negotiations table. The MARA talks followed another set of Malaysia-brokered talks directly between BRN and the government of then-Prime Minister Yingluck Shinawatra. Those talks began in February 2013 but went nowhere in December of that year after the Thai government rejected five demands presented in a YouTube video by BRN negotiator and chief Hassan Bin Toyib. One demand was that Thailand grant the Deep South sovereignty and recognize the Patani Malay Nation, which was unacceptable to Bangkok. In May 2014, Yinglucks government was toppled in a military coup led by Prayuth, the then-army chief. The decades-old insurgency in the predominantly Muslim and Malay-speaking Deep South which encompasses Narathiwat, Pattani and Yala provinces, as well as four districts of Songkhla has resulted in nearly 7,000 deaths since it re-ignited in 2004. Rungrawee Chalermsripinyorat, an expert on the conflict in Thailands southern border region, said the talks could not gain traction unless the Thai government includes BRNs leadership in the negotiations. The BRN is ready to come to the table should Bangkok allow international observers. If it accepts this, the peace talks could proceed in a more fruitful and meaningful way, Rungrawee told BenarNews. Whether Mahathir wishes or could persuade Thailand to accept such pre-conditions, it is up to him. After landing in Bangkok on Wednesday, the 93-year-old Malaysian prime minister pledged that his government would help in whatever way possible to end this violence. Counselor Ra'Chelle Roberson with a truckload of supplies to help those impacted by Hurricane Matthew in Panama City. Saudi Arabia has lifted the travel ban that was imposed on Jamal Khashoggis son Salah and his family. The son of the murdered journalist arrived in the United States which praised the Saudi move, according to Al Jazeera TV newtwork. A State Department spokesperson said the US welcomed the decision by Riyadh to allow the dual Saudi-American citizen to go. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo discussed Salahs status during his recent visit to the kingdom, spokesman Robert Palladino told reporters. Palladino said Pompeo made it clear to Saudi leaders that he wanted Salah Khashoggi to return to the United States, and we are pleased that he is now able to do so. The destination of Salah and his family was not known, but his late father lived in the Washington area. The Saudi leadership drew sharp condemnation this week for staging a photo-op showing a clearly uncomfortable Salah shaking hands with Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, who has been accused of orchestrating Khashoggis murder, Al Jazeera commented. After weeks of denial following the disappearance of Jamal Khashoggi, Saudi Arabia finally admitted last Saturday that he has been killed inside its consulate in the Turkish city of Istanbul during a brawl. The kingdom also announced the arrest of 18 people in connection with the killing and the firing of senior intelligence officers. On Tuesday, Turkish leader Recep Tayyip Erdogan told members of the parliamentary group of his party Justice and Development (AK) that Khashoggi was killed in a premediated plot and that several Saudi hitmen were involved. The squad was dispatched from Saudi Arabia to eliminate the 59-year old journalist who had been very critical of Saudi Crown Prince Mohamed bin Salman (MbS) and who had gone missing since October 2 after entering the Saudi consulate in Istanbul for some paperwork. Following Erdogans official account of the unfolding of the investigation into the death of the journalist, President donald Trump seemed to take a tougher line on the Saudi kingdom, his key business and counterterrorism ally in the Middle East region. Trump promised hell to the mastermind of Khashoggis killing and added the cover-up was one of the worst in the history of cover-ups. Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan announced this Friday that Ankara has more documents and information, which it will reveal when the time is right. He reiterated his calls on Saudi Arabia to reveal who gave the order for the dissident journalist to be killed. The Turkish President also announced that the chief Saudi prosecutor will be arriving in Istanbul on Sunday to meet with his Turkish counterpart as part of the investigation into Khashoggis murder. Erdogan added that Khashoggis killer is likely to be among the 18 men arrested by Riyadh. The decision by French car manufacturer Renault to produce half a million cars in Morocco is reflective of the success of Moroccos industrialization strategy, notably in its automotive segment which has been leading Moroccos exports since 2017. Renault will reach the 500,000 vehicle target in Morocco after it announced a two fold increase of its production at its Casablanca factory. Renault Casablanca will boost production from 80,000 cars currently to 160,000 cars combined with the 340,000 vehicles produced at the companys plant in Tangier. The decision was announced by Renault President and CEO Carlos Ghosn who was received by King Mohammed VI in Marrakech Thursday. The trust in Moroccos industrial potential was a result of significant investments in improving the countrys infrastructure and the business climate. In addition to Renault, Peugeot has also set up a factory in Kenitra where production is planned to start in 2019 with a capacity of 200,000 cars annually. The two factories will enable Morocco to reach its 2025 target of producing one million cars and generating cash worth 200 billion dirhams, according to the ministry of industry and trade. Between 2014 and 2017, total jobs created in the automotive sector rose to 83,845. At the continental level, Morocco has unseated south Africa as Africas largest car producer as many Sub-Saharan countries look forward to learning from the north African Kingdoms success story. The investments by Renault and Peugeot in addition to incentives from the Moroccan government have attracted leading car part makers to the country, which aspires to bring the local sourcing rate to 80%. Morocco is actually on track to become the worlds third largest producer of aluminum wheels as it continues to attract investments by world automotive industry giants. Chinas Citic Dicastal and South Koreas giant Hands corporation are both two leading wheel producers who chose Morocco as a base Plus, Bill's Message of the Day, Why is Kamala Harris so Unpopular? Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices For Immediate Release, October 26, 2018 Contact: Sarah Baillie, (520) 623-5252 x 308, sbaillie@biologicaldiversity.org 6,000 Endangered Species Condoms to Be Distributed in Six States on Halloween Campaign Highlights Horrors of Human Population Growth Pushing Out Wildlife TUCSON, Ariz. The Center for Biological Diversity is giving away 6,000 free Endangered Species Condoms this Halloween to highlight the scary costs of unchecked human population growth on wildlife. The condoms will be distributed in six cities across the country, from San Francisco to Baltimore. The colorful condom packages include species threatened by population growth and slogans like Wrap with care, save the polar bear and When youre feeling tender, think about the hellbender. Its terrifying how quickly human activity is pushing species to the brink, said Sarah Baillie, Endangered Species Condoms coordinator at the Center. Slowing population growth is vital to prevent the loss of more endangered species. The Endangered Species Condoms help people make the connection between safe sex and saving wildlife. Volunteers will be giving out the condoms at Halloween-themed parades, concerts and parties in Maquoketa, Iowa; Sumner, Maine; Richmond, Va.; Flagstaff, Ariz.; Baltimore, Md. and San Francisco, Calif. In addition to distributing Endangered Species Condoms, the Center is urging people to dress up as their favorite wildlife this Halloween to foster conversations about how human activity affects wildlife. The Center is asking people to share their creative animal or conservation-themed costumes on social media with the hashtag #WrapYourHalloWeenie. The Center's population and sustainability program uses creative media to promote a range of common-sense solutions like access to family planning and reproductive health services, as well as education, opportunity and equal rights for women and girls. For Immediate Release, October 26, 2018 Contact: Amaroq Weiss, (707) 779-9613, aweiss@biologicaldiversity.org Washington Wildlife Agency to Kill Last Two Members of Endangered Wolf Pack OLYMPIA, Wash. Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife Director Kelly Susewind today issued a new order authorizing the killing of the last two remaining wolves of the Old Profanity Territory pack in Ferry County. The targeted wolves are likely the packs last pup and its breeding male. The decision to kill wolves was made despite the fact that the cattle involved in a recent livestock predation were on a public lands grazing allotment past Oct. 15, when the rancher was legally required to remove his cattle. Additionally, calves with prior injuries were not removed from the field to avoid drawing in wolves or other predators. Its gut-wrenching that Washingtons wildlife managers are wiping out an entire wolf pack on public lands to satisfy the livestock industry, said Amaroq Weiss, West Coast wolf advocate at the Center for Biological Diversity. Washington residents have made it clear that they support wolf recovery, but state officials seem intent on gunning them down again and again. Its disgusting. Since 2012 the state has killed 21 state-endangered wolves, 17 of which were killed for the same livestock owner. That rancher is a vocal opponent of wolf recovery who has historically refused to implement meaningful nonlethal measures designed to protect his livestock from wolves. The state killed two members of the Old Profanity Territory pack this summer for the same livestock owner, shooting a five-month-old pup and then the pups mother. Cattle were drawn to a salt block near the packs rendezvous site, but the salt block was not removed. And though the agency recommended moving cattle out of the area, many still remain. In early October multiple calves were found with two-week-old injuries from wolves; these injured animals had been left on the range, even though it is well known that injured animals draw predators. The latest predation was found Oct. 23, eight days past the date the cattle were required by the terms of the grazing permit to be removed. As of today the state wildlife department reports that 20 to 35 cow-calf pairs still remain onsite. Washington residents are fed up with wolf-management policies that reward livestock owners for irresponsible business practices, said Weiss. The wildlife departments mission is to preserve and protect the states wildlife, not slaughter endangered wolves to keep the livestock industry happy. Rising India must work with West to find common ground in complex world Professor Robin Mason welcomes Ambassador Dr. S. Jaishankar, Mrs Kyoko Jaishankar and India Consul General Dr. Aman Puri to the University of Birmingham. A rising India needs to work with Western nations to find new ground to further strengthen a relationship that has already delivered considerable global political benefits and economic gains, one of Indias most eminent figures told an audience at the University of Birmingham. Distinguished political, diplomatic and business leader Ambassador Dr. S. Jaishankar delivered the University of Birmingham India Institutes inaugural Distinguished Lecture on his countrys relationship with Western nations. He told the audience that working with the West was an essential means for India to continue to flourish in an increasingly fragmented world, adding that our turbulent times could create new opportunities to find common ground. Dr Jaishankar, who is now President, Global Corporate Affairs, Tata Group, explored What India means to the West, with unique insights from his time as Foreign Secretary of India, and Indian Ambassador to the United States, China, and the Czech Republic. Ambassador Dr. Jaishankar said: It would be in Western interest that India emerge more rapidly as a source of global demand and supply, thereby reducing excessive dependence on any single geography. There are larger political principles to prove by ensuring Indias success. It will affirm that democratic politics and high growth economics are not mutually exclusive, as well as establishing that democratic values are global and not just Western. After delivering his lecture, Ambassador Jaishankar participated in a discussion panel featuring University of Birmingham Chancellor Lord Bilimoria of Chelsea, Consul General India Dr Aman Puri and Professor Scott Lucas, from the Universitys Department of Political Science and International Studies. India Consul General Dr. Aman Puri commented: I am delighted that the University of Birmingham and the Consulate General of India are jointly hosting their first ever Distinguished Lecture. The Universitys India Institute is playing an important role in improving collaboration between India and UK and we offer our best wishes and support for all future endeavours. In a post-Brexit world, collaboration between UK and India is only expected to increase. As the British economy addresses crises in terms of shortage of skilled manpower, linkages between British and Indian universities and institutions can help tap into the huge pool of English-speaking professionals available in India. In partnership with the Consulate General of India, the University welcomed the former Indian Foreign Secretary to an evening that opened with Sampad Arts performance of Converse, featuring outstanding dance and music artists Vidya Patel and Shammi Pithia. Professor Robin Mason, Pro-Vice-Chancellor (International) at the University of Birmingham, said: Were delighted to welcome Ambassador Dr. Jaishankar to the University of Birmingham. His reading of Indias relationship with Western nations, clearly drawn from his vast political, diplomatic and business experience, provided thought-provoking insight. As a civic university with a global outlook, we could not have wished for a better guest to deliver the India Institutes inaugural Distinguished Lecture, in partnership with the Consulate General of India. We thank Dr. Jaishankar for giving people in the UK this unique opportunity to listen to and ask questions of an influential and distinguished thought leader. ENDS For more information or interviews, please contact: Tony Moran, International Communications Manager, University of Birmingham on +44 (0) 121 414 8254 or +44 (0)782 783 2312. Out-of-hours enquiries: +44 (0) 7789 921 165. Note for editors Ghana commemorates this Wednesday October 24, 2018 the 73rd Anniversary of the founding of the United Nations with a focus on the life and achievements of the late former UN Secretary-General and global peace icon, Kofi Annan. The West African nations commemoration, held under the local theme Legacy of Kofi Annan: An illustrious son of Ghana and Global statesman, is to further highlight the achievements and contributions of the late global icon. A Flag Raising Ceremony is organized by the government at the Forecourt of the State House in Accra to mark the day, among other events planned to commemorate the legacy of the former UN chief. The United Nations (UN) Secretary-General, Antonio Guterres on Wednesday, described Kofi Annan as a wise leader who embodied the ideals of the UN. Kofi Annan was the United Nations and the United Nations was him, Guterres said. He also remembered Kofi Annan as a man who pioneered landmark global initiatives and opened the doors of the United Nations, bringing the organization closer to the worlds people. Kofi Annan died on August 18 in Switzerland at the age of 80. He was the first black UN Secretary-General, from 1997 to 2006 after Egypts Boutros Boutros-Ghali. PR Newswire SANTA CRUZ, Calif., Oct. 26, 2018 SANTA CRUZ, Calif., Oct. 26, 2018 /PRNewswire/ -- Lighthouse Bank (OTC-QB: LGHT), a top-rated bank with offices in Santa Cruz and Silicon Valley, today announced that its Board of Directors has declared its second quarterly cash dividend in the amount of $0.10 per share. The dividend is payable on November 26, 2018 to shareholders of record at the close of business on November 13, 2018. The cash dividend is the result of the Bank's strong ongoing financial performance and significant capital strength. In August 2018, the Bank paid its first $0.10 per share quarterly cash dividend payment to shareholders, which followed four consecutive quarterly cash dividends of $0.09, $0.08, and $0.075 per share. In addition to regular quarterly cash dividends, the Bank previously declared special cash and stock dividends. Since January 2015, the Bank has paid $3.5 million in cash dividends to shareholders. The Bank recently released its third-quarter 2018 financial results, reporting net income of $1.1 million for the quarter, which represented the Bank's 37th successive quarter of profitable operations. Net income year-to-date through September 30, 2018 totaled $3.3 million, an increase of $865 thousand, or 35%, over the same nine-month period in 2017. ABOUT LIGHTHOUSE BANK:Lighthouse Bank is a highly rated locally owned and operated full-service commercial bank with offices in Santa Cruz and Silicon Valley. The Bank has earned a number of top industry rankings based on a variety of categories including asset quality, capital adequacy, return on average assets, return on average equity, and operational efficiency. Milestones Reached, Recognition & Awards Received: Lighthouse Bank's "Modern Banking, Traditional Service" mantra extends into every aspect of their customer experience. The Bank's dedication to providing personalized relationship-based service and easy access to decision makers give its customers a refreshing alternative to "big banking". The Bank further supports this commitment by offering unique services such as worldwide surcharge free ATM/Debit Cards, remote deposit capture, and complimentary business courier service throughout Santa Cruz County. Lighthouse is also focused on supporting the community and actively participates and donates to over 120 local non-profits, which includes matching employees' personal donation to non-profits of their choice. The focus on community and creating a customer experience that blends modern banking standards and traditional service has been the foundation of a number of local businesses choosing Lighthouse Bank. Lighthouse offers a variety of competitive deposit and lending solutions for businesses and individuals; including loans, lines of credit, construction and commercial real estate financing, SBA government guaranteed loans, credit cards, merchant services, mobile banking, remote deposit capture, and online banking bill payment and cash management. Lighthouse Bank stock is actively traded under the symbol LGHT. More information on the Bank's stock and historical financial performance may be located on the Bank's website at www.lighthousebank.com or by calling 831-600-4000. Member FDIC / Equal Housing Lender / SBA Preferred Lender The attached release may contain forward-looking statements that are subject to risks and uncertainties. Such risks and uncertainties may include but are not necessarily limited to fluctuation in interest rates, inflation, government regulations and general economic conditions, and competition within the business areas in which the Bank is conducting its operations, including the real estate market in California and other factors beyond the Bank's control. Such risks and uncertainties could cause results for subsequent interim periods or for the entire year to differ materially from those indicated. Readers should not place undue reliance on the forward-looking statements, which reflect management's view only as of the date hereof. The Bank undertakes no obligation to publicly revise these forward-looking statements to reflect subsequent events or circumstances. View original content to download multimedia:http://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/lighthouse-bank-declares-quarterly-cash-dividend-payment-to-shareholders-300738865.html SOURCE Lighthouse Bank 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 Borsa Italiana non ha responsabilita per il contenuto del sito a cui sta per accedere e non ha responsabilita per le informazioni contenute. Accedendo a questo link, Borsa Italiana non intende sollecitare acquisti o offerte in alcun paese da parte di nessuno. Sarai automaticamente diretto al link in cinque secondi. US Congressman Mike Coffman is pushing for sanctions to be slapped on Ethiopias former intelligence chief, Getachew Assefa. Getachew was the countrys head of intelligence services for many years under the Tigray Peoples Liberation Front (TPLF) regime but was removed after reformist Prime Minister, Abiy Ahmed, took control of political power in April. Getachew and his spy agency have been responsible for the imprisonment, torture and killing of dissidents including journalists, according to local media. In a letter addressed to Secretary of State, Mike Pompeo and Secretary of the Treasury, Steven T. Mnuchin, Congressman Coffman described Assefa as a criminal and ruthless human rights violator, who needs to be sanctioned along with all persons who aided him during his reign of terror. The Congressman said his demand for the Magnitsky Act to be imposed on Assefa was also to curtail his actions and abilities despite being out of his position. The Magnitsky Act allows the U.S. president to impose visa and asset sanctions on a person of interest. In August, an Ethiopian court issued an arrest warrant on Getachew Assefa, who has reportedly escaped to neighboring Sudan. Assefa remained faceless and has rarely been seen in public. The Tunisian government has reached an agreement with the powerful trade union center, General Union of Tunisian Workers, UGTT, to raise salaries of civil servants. The move comes after the union has threatened to start a series of strikes from October 24. Prime Minister Youssef Chahed governments decision to raise salaries may provoke a disapproval of the IMF, which has been worried for years about the weight of the wage bill, according to Reuters. Tunisia has dropped into a deep economic slump following the overthrow in 2011 of autocratic leader Zine El-Abidine Ben Ali. The government has been trying to cut the public sector wage bill to 12.5 percent of GDP in 2020 from 15 percent by offering voluntary redundancies. New austerity measures, dictated by the IMF, have met resistance from the UGTT, which has rejected plans to dismiss public servants and sell loss-making state firms. Last month, the IMF approved the payment of a $245 million loan tranche to Tunisia, the fifth under its loan program with the country. The loan program is tied to Tunisias pursuing economic reforms aimed at keeping its deficit under control. Tunisia expects economic growth to accelerate to between 3 and 3.5 percent next year from an expected 2.9 percent in 2018, driven by a recovery of the tourism industry. News Story not available This story has been published on: 2021-11-19. To contact the author, please use the contact details within the article. This story is no longer available on our site. In Equatorial Guinea, 81 people including 34 opposition figures have been freed this week following a presidential pardon by President Teodoro Obiang Nguema to mark the countrys 50th anniversary of independence from Spain. A former Spanish colony of 1.2 million people, awash with oil but mired in poverty and corruption, Equatorial Guinea has been ruled with an iron fist by Teodoro Obiang Nguema since August 1979. In July, the 76-year-old called for dialogue and political interaction and for the first time invited foreign observers to the talks. Political leaders living in self-imposed exile abroad did not show up. The last such dialogue was held in 2014 and five opposition parties were legalized after that. Since the discovery of considerable oil reserves in 1996, Obiang has come to preside over one of the main oil exporters in sub-Saharan Africa, but most of the 1.2 million inhabitants still live in poverty. The leading opposition, the Citizens for Innovation (CI) party was banned on February 26. Twenty-one of its members, including the partys sole MP, were subsequently sentenced to 30 years in prison for sedition, public disorder, attacks on authority and serious bodily harm. Dozens of its supporters have been tortured, according to the CI party, which says two have died in custody. As a reminder, Obiang seized power in the former Spanish colony by ousting his own uncle, President Francisco Macias Nguema. He won a fifth seven-year term in 2016 with nearly 94 percent of votes. Mozambiques main opposition party, Renamo, on Wednesday said peace talks with the government were on hold. The move follows allegations of fraud in this months local elections in the southern East African nation. The main opposition Renamo party, which has maintained an armed wing since the end of the countrys civil war, said the election authorities had falsified results and robbed its victory in five of the 53 municipalities. Renamo fought a brutal 16-year civil war against the Marxist-inspired Frelimo government that devastated the economy and left one million people dead. When the war ended in 1992, the group soon began participating in elections. The October 10 polls were seen as a key test of the peace process between the ruling Frelimo party and Renamo. Now the peace negotiation is on hold, Renamo spokesperson Andre Magibire told reporters. He said a resolution of the electoral dispute will be the only way it can return to the peace negotiations table. Among the disputed municipalities is Matole, the countrys largest city, which borders on the capital Maputo. Our priority is to manage the electoral conflict, Magibire said. We are struggling to recover the five cities which were stolen. Mozambiques ruling Frelimo party has ruled Mozambique since its independence from Portugal in 1975. The Ethiopian Parliament on Thursday elected Sahle-Work Zewde as the countrys first female president. The move follows the resignation of Ethiopias outgoing President Mulatu Teshome on Wednesday. Teshome, who has been the East African countrys head of state since October 2013, on Wednesday submitted his letter of resignation. According to State news agency ENA and Addis Standard newspaper, Ambassador Sahle-Work Zewde, a top official with the United Nations, was elected by the two houses of the parliament to replace Mulatu Teshome. The extraordinary joint session of the Ethiopian parliament on Thursday deliberated on the presidents application for resignation and elected Sahle-Work Zewde as new president, ENA reported. Sahle-Work Zewde was until recently Director General of the UN offices in the Kenyan capital, Nairobi. She is currently the Special representative of the UN Secretary General to the African Union, AU. Her resignation from the UN role this week is said to be to allow her to take the new position of president. The presidential election held on 7 October 2013 was the fourth presidential election of the Federal Democratic Republic of Ethiopia to elect the countrys third president. Mulatu Teshome was elected by the parliament to a six-year term. A woman who accused a man of assaulting her has been charged herself after she admitted she lied about the incident, police said. Hey there, time traveller! This article was published 25/10/2018 (1121 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current. Advertisement Advertise With Us A woman who accused a man of assaulting her has been charged herself after she admitted she lied about the incident, police said. On Oct. 20, the woman reported that a male suspect had assaulted her. On Tuesday, she contacted the police investigator and told him she had lied. The 24-year-old Brandon woman was arrested and charged for providing a false statement. She was released to appear in court Dec. 17. The Brandon Sun Of the last three municipal elections in Brandon where a mayoral candidate was acclaimed, Wednesdays election result stands as having the lowest voter turnout at less than 17 per cent. Hey there, time traveller! This article was published 26/10/2018 (1120 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current. Advertisement Advertise With Us A Brandon Sun story from Oct. 7, 1992, about Rick Borotsik being acclaimed for a second term as mayor of Brandon, at which time he received a pie in the face for charity. (Brandon Sun Archives) Of the last three municipal elections in Brandon where a mayoral candidate was acclaimed, Wednesdays election result stands as having the lowest voter turnout at less than 17 per cent. The official election results show voter turnout came in at exactly 16.86 per cent, meaning of the 36,675 eligible voters in Brandon, only 6,185 cast a ballot. Beyond Mayor Rick Chrest being acclaimed for a second term, Brandonites have seen the same situation play out before on two previous occasions in the last four decades once in 1980 with then-mayor Ken Burgess and again in 1992 with then-mayor Rick Borotsik with turnout coming in at 22.5 and 29 per cent, respectively. A shortage of campaign issues, voter apathy and bad weather were blamed for 1980s poor election result, according to a story from The Brandon Sun at the time. Bad weather was also to blame for the 1992 election. But in both cases, the lack of mayoral race served as a common theme. "Twenty-nine is still a lot better than 17," Borotsik reflected on Thursday, recalling the 1992 election as being a "quiet" one. As a resident of Linden Lanes ward, Borotsik could only vote for school board trustees after his councillor Shawn Berry was acclaimed last month. "I had to certainly think about it and force myself to go to vote ... but obviously a lot of people didnt do that." Although there werent any real contentious issues that underscored the election unlike in Winnipeg, where voters had their say on the opening of Portage and Main Borotsik said these last four years have been relatively good, with council keeping tax increases low and setting a congenial tone around the table with Chrest at the helm. "He was acclaimed because hes doing a fantastic job and obviously the people saw that, and there wasnt anybody that wanted to challenge that and I can understand why. Rick would have obviously won, hands down," Borotsik said. While disappointed in the turnout, Borotsik said it was also somewhat expected. "But not to the degree that it came in at only 17 per cent." Kelly Saunders, an associate professor of political science at Brandon University, called the result "abysmal" given the candidates did try to raise issues around the methamphetamine crisis, affordable housing and economic development. "Its puzzling as to why so few Brandonites got out, but its very disturbing moving forward because it certainly doesnt bode well for healthy civic engagement in the city," she said. Saunders said the morning after the election she asked the students in her second-year Canadian politics class if they had voted and 80 per cent said they did. "Its a mystery," she said. "Im not really sure what the answer is and I know as well that this council really tried after the last municipal election to encourage people to learn more about municipal issues, to get out and participate and vote." "I know they had some community meetings and some public information sessions. Councillors are really trying hard to engage people and certainly our mayor is very community oriented. I think theyre trying to do the best they can. It just seems to be voters themselves are tuned out." Preliminary numbers provided by the Association of Manitoba Municipalities show that 48 per cent of officials were newly elected, while 30 per cent were acclaimed. The number of women elected to office rose by three per cent, making up 174 of all 879 elected officials in the province. Twenty-one women were also elected head of council, mayor or reeve, compared to 15 in 2014. All six incumbents in the Assiniboine, Rosser, Victoria, Meadows-Waverly, Richmond and Riverview ward races won re-election, including councillors Jeff Fawcett, Kris Desjarlais, Barry Cullen, John LoRegio, Ron Brown and Glen Parker. Brown won by only six votes against challenger Ron Cayer, but senior election official Melanie Powers said according to The Municipal Councils and School Boards Elections Act, the SEO can only apply for a judicial recount in the event of a tie. The same rule applies for candidates as well, although an application can also be made on one of several grounds involving ballots, the statement of the vote and the official results. The Brandon Sun could not reach Cayer for comment. New councillors Shaun Cameron and Bruce Luebke were elected to University and South Centre wards, while councillors Berry and Jan Chaboyer were acclaimed in Linden Lanes and Green Acres wards. mlee@brandonsun.com Twitter: @mtaylorlee The Miami Tribe was honored for its program myaamiaki eemamwiciki (pronounced ay-mom-witch-EE-kee). It means Miami Awakening. By Margo Kissell, university news and communications The Miami Tribe of Oklahoma has received a prestigious national award recognizing its cultural heritage and language revitalization program, which has resulted in the first generation in nearly 100 years learning to speak the Myaamia language. The Harvard Project on American Indian Economic Development presented tribal leaders with an Honoring Nations Award, with the distinction of honors. The tribe was recognized during the 75th Annual Convention & Marketplace of the National Congress of American Indians in Denver Thursday, Oct. 25. It was one of six award winners selected from applicants representing 51 tribes and four tribal consortia. Left to right: Daryl Baldwin, director of the Myaamia Center, Miami University President Greg Crawford and Douglas Lankford, chief of the Miami Tribe of Oklahoma. "I am so honored to serve the Miami Tribe of Oklahoma as chief at this time in our history and to witness and support the great awakening we are experiencing with the return of our language and culture, Chief Douglas Lankford said. Our relationship with Miami University, their commitment to our Myaamia Center and the incredible work accomplished there are components to our success in community revitalization. The Myaamia Center on Miamis Oxford campus is the tribes research arm. The Honoring Nation Award identifies, celebrates and shares outstanding tribal governance. It also aims to expand the capacities of Native American nation builders by enabling them to learn from each others successes. These finalists are exercising their self-determination and implementing effective solutions to common governmental challenges in the areas of environmental research and management, health provider training, language revitalization, agriculture, child welfare and restorative justice, stated the Harvard Project, based at the Harvard Kennedy School of Government in Cambridge, Mass. Miami Awakening The Miami tribe was honored for its program myaamiaki eemamwiciki (pronounced ay-mom-witch-EE-kee) in Myaamia. It means Miami Awakening. The program serves about 5,300 residents in the tribal community by delivering a wide range of educational projects and publications designed to restore the Myaamia language and culture to every tribal household, free of charge. It hosts gatherings to provide a place for the community to engage and share through language use and cultural activity. That includes playing games and creating ribbonwork like their Myaamia ancestors did. Since 2003, the tribe has offered youth programs for children ages 5-16. That same year the Myaamia Heritage courses began at Miami University as a component of the Myaamia Heritage Program, which began in 1991. The program is a four-year undergraduate college experience for tribal youth enrolled as Oxford campus students. It provides a tuition waiver and additional course work relative to their heritage. This semester, 30 Myaamia students are enrolled at the university. To date, 76 Myaamia students have earned undergraduate or graduate degrees (two students earned both), said Bobbe Burke, coordinator of Miami Tribe Relations. Daryl Baldwin, director of the Myaamia Center, said a team from the Harvard Project visited Miami, Okla., in June to talk to tribal leaders, Cultural Resources Officer Julie Olds, him and parents of Miami University students. Baldwin teaching Myaamia words to Miami Tribe children. They were very interested in the connection between the university, the tribe and how the center fits into the revitalization effort, said Baldwin, a linguist and cultural preservationist with the tribe who was awarded a genius grant as one of the 2016 MacArthur Fellows. Baldwin was recognized for his work to revive his Miami Nations cultural heritage and language, which had all but vanished after a 19th-century, forced removal from their homelands in what is now Ohio, Indiana and Illinois. By the mid-20th century, the last tribe member to speak Myaamia conversationally had died. For members of the tribe, it was as if much of their communal understanding went to sleep. A leap of faith Tribal leaders took a leap of faith when they sought a federal Administration for Native Americans (ANA) grant in the mid-1990s. They were standing on the precipice of a cultural void which they had no financial means to address, their application stated. The ANA funding, awarded in 1996, supported the tribes first steps toward language revitalization. Another significant step came in 2001 with the creation of the Myaamia Project (predecessor to the Myaamia Center) to conduct research supporting tribal initiatives to preserve language and culture and expose university students to efforts in those areas. The Myaamia Center works closely with the tribes Cultural Resource Office in Oklahoma. The office focuses on community programming and providing tribal support, while the centers four pillars target educational development, assessment, research and collaboration. Olds called the Myaamia Centers work the fuel to the fire of the tribes community revitalization effort. Eemamwiciki, or our awakening, is very much a communal fire providing light and warmth, or care, to all Myaamia people who gather to it, she said. My joy, in 20 years of revitalization work, is to see it continue to burn bright with an ever-increasing store of fuel, or reclaimed knowledge, and a growing number of Myaamia scholars and active learners to tend to it. Bernard Byrne is to step down as Chief Executive of AIB. He informed the Board of AIB Group plc of his intention to step down as Chief Executive Officer and Executive Director. Mr Byrne was appointed as CEO in May 2015, having previously held a number of senior executive positions and was appointed to the Board of Allied Irish Banks, p.l.c. in June 2011. He was appointed to the Board of AIB Group plc in December 2017. "It was a very grim day in my life when Bernard told me that he had an external opportunity which he wanted to pursue," said AIB Group Chairman, Richard Pym. "The fact that it came so soon after the resignation of our CFO, Mark Bourke, made it doubly difficult. "Bernard has been a great business partner to me and a good friend. "He has produced exceptional results from the bank - not just financially and operationally, but has also dramatically improved staff engagement and customer advocacy. "He is liked and admired by the entire AIB team who I am sure join with me in wishing him well for the future. He is an exceptional chief executive with a very wide set of business and personal skills. Minister for Finance and Public Expenditure and Reform Paschal Donohoe thanked Mr Byrne for his "professionalism and dedication". "AIB has continued its transformation under Mr Byrnes leadership and is an important supporter of economic growth and jobs in the Irish economy. "Mr Byrne was instrumental in the successful IPO of AIB last year working closely with my predecessor and I and officials in my Department. "Mr Byrne can be proud of the many changes he introduced in the bank including a renewed focus on customers and staff engagement. "He leaves the bank in a much stronger financial position as outlined in this mornings trading update. I would like to thank Mr Byrne for his professionalism and dedication throughout his time in AIB and I wish him continued success in the future. Mr Byrne will remain as CEO of AIB Group into 2019. The Board will appoint his successor. The bank's latest trading update, released today, shows strong quarterly performance. "Following a positive financial performance in H1, we continue to deliver strong profitability, generate capital and increase new lending. With a strong capital base, lower NPEs and a growing loan book the balance sheet continues to strengthen and risk profile improves," Mr Bryne said. "In October we executed a successful inaugural USD 750m MREL issuance, putting us firmly on track to meet our overall MREL requirements. By Ann O'Loughlin The High Court will rule at a later date on an application by a finance director with pharmaceutical company Merck for an injunction preventing her employer from dismissing her. Barbara Whooley seeks various orders against her employer Merck Millipore Ltd of Tullagreen, Carrigtwohill, Co Cork whose German parent is Merck KGaA, based in Darmstadt, Germany. The 52-year-old has asked the High Court for injunctions preventing the defendants from dismissing her or interfering with her salary or benefits, and if necessary and an injunction compelling her employer to pay her a severance package. She also seeks an order restraining the German parent company from unlawfully interfering with the contractual relationship between her and Merck Millipore. Today her lawyers applied to the High Court for injunctions to be put in place until her case against the two company's has been concluded. The defendants have opposed the application, and deny any wrongdoing. They claim the employment of Mrs Whooley of Lindville, Blackrock Road, with the company has been lawfully terminated after it gave her three months notice on October 18th last, and has offered to pay her 100,000. The court previously heard that she had worked for the company in Cork for 25 years, including spending the last four years on secondment to the German parent. She had recently returned to work in Ireland, as she did not wish to continue the secondment. She had hoped to return to a similar position she had previously held in Cork. Following her return to Cork she claims she was informed by her employers that she had been deemed to have resigned. Represented by Marguerite Bolger SC and Tom Mallon Bl, she claims that as no suitable job in Cork was available she is entitled to an appropriate redundancy package. She rejects claims she resigned and fears the defendant's actions will damage her reputation. In her proceedings, she seeks damages and various orders against the defendants including a declaration that she did not resign from her employment with the Irish based company, and that she remains an employee of Merck Millipore. Marcus Dowling Bl for the defendants said it was accepted that Mrs Whooley had not resigned. However, his clients had lawfully terminated her employment and had offered to pay her 100,000. Counsel said she had been offered a job within the group, but following months of discussions had turned that position down. There was no post available in Cork, and her employment had been terminated, counsel said adding that she was now seeking a redundancy package which she is not contractually entitled to. Following the conclusion of submissions from both parties Ms Justice Teresa Pilkington said she was reserving her decision and would give a ruling as soon as possible. Update 5.30pm: Two Dublin schools that had to shut this week due to structural issues should reopen in alternative accommodation after the mid-term break. The Department of Education says it is working to secure interim solutions for Tyrrelstown Educate Together National School and St Luke's National School. It comes as the company at the centre of the controversy has defended the inspection process used during construction. The Department of Education says it has set a target of after the mid-term break to have accommodation in place for the two Dublin schools closed this week, while arrangements have already been made for Ardgillan Community College students to return. The Department has warned parents that there may be further school closures - they are to inspect 40 facilities next week to ensure they are safe. The engineering examinations do not need the presence of department personnel and once completed the reports will go back to the department. Meanwhile, Western Building Systems has defended the construction process. The company has published certificates of completion which they received from the Department of Education for the affected schools. WBS also says they have only been invited to visit 4 of the schools being assessed. - Digital Desk The company at the centre of the school structures controversy says they have only been invited to visit four of the 42 schools identified as having problems. Western Building Systems have met with representatives from both of the schools that have been closed over safety concerns. Western Building Systems issued a statement today outlining key points they want to establish and repeating their request to meet the Education Minister. The company wants to find out why schools previously deemed compliant by the department now are not and they want to see all reports from previous Department inspections. WBS also says they have been granted 42 out of 80 tenders by the department since 2005. The company says they are doing a full audit of WBS schools not based on concern but to ensure standards. Digital Desk A court has accepted that a protected witness in the Gareth Hutch murder trial was a reluctant and unwilling part who was acting under duress. The non-jury Special Criminal Court has spent the day reading out its lengthy judgement in the trial of three Dubliners accused of murdering Mr Hutch. Gareth Hutch, a nephew of Gerry The Monk Hutch was shot dead on May 24 2016 in the car park outside his flat in Dublins north inner city. At the end of the nine-week trial, the prosecuting barrister told the three judges it wasn't a sudden or a spur of the moment kind of thing. Regina Keogh from Avondale House, Dublin 1; her brother Jonathan and Thomas Fox of Rutland Court, Dublin 1 deny murdering him. It is the prosecutions case that Mr Keogh was one of two shooters and the other two played various roles in the planning and execution of the killing. A woman called Mary McDonnell was initially charged with withholding information but turned State witness and was granted immunity. She said Mr Keogh and another man used her flat to stakeout Mr Hutchs home on the morning of the killing. Today, the judges said they did not accept she was motivated by money and believed she would never have allowed her flat to be used without being seriously steamrolled by others. The court will resume delivering its judgement this day next week. - Digital Desk By Ruaidhri Giblin The ringleader behind a spine chilling attack in which a student was frog marched to an ATM machine and told to withdraw money or his girlfriend would be raped by two accomplices, has had part of a suspended sentence activated by the Court of Appeal. The 22-year-old, who cannot be identified for legal reasons, had pleaded guilty to aggravated burglary, robbery and false imprisonment at Botanic Avenue, Dublin 9 on April 27 2011. He was sentenced to six years detention by Judge Martin Nolan on March 29 2012. The Court of Appeal heard that the victims were a young woman and her civil-engineering-student boyfriend who had broken up as a result of the incident. The boyfriend blamed himself for not being able to spare his girlfriend from the ordeal. She moved back to live with her parents while he cut short his college career. Counsel for the Director of Public Prosecutions, Anne Rowland SC, had said the young offender was the ringleader from the time he entered the house with his accomplices. He held a knife to the student's throat and commented that he would 'give him a quick' cut while moving it across his face. After he had gotten 40 from the victims, he told them 'you better get more than that or I'll slice you' and referring to the student's girlfriend, he said 'I'll hurt her if you don't give me the PIN number' to an ATM card. The boyfriend was then frog marched from his girlfriend's home to a nearby ATM machine while his girlfriend was held back at the house by two accomplices. The victim was told that if he didn't comply his girlfriend would be raped, Ms Rowland said. Eventually, at 11:15pm 600 was withdrawn from the ATM and there were suggestions that they would wait until midnight to get another withdrawal. Ms Rowland said the motivation behind the offence was money. The Court of Appeal suspended the final 12 months of his six year sentence in July 2015 following an appeal. The three-judge court held that cases involving youths required particular attention on the question of rehabilitation. A section of the Children's Act states that detention must only be imposed as a last resort. However, the Court of Appeal activated all but six weeks of his 12-month suspended sentence yesterday on foot of an application by the Probation Service. President of the Court of Appeal Mr Justice George Birmingham said the chance that was given to the young man - the suspension of the final 12 months of his sentence - wasnt taken. He said prison sentences totalling nine months had since been imposed by the District Court and activation inevitably followed. Mr Justice Birmingham said there had been sporadic cooperation with the Probation Services mixed with periods of serious engagement. He said the court would reactivate 10-and-a-half months of the suspended sentence that would see his current period in custody extended. Mr Justice Birmingham said he wished to particularly thank the Probation Officer in charge of the case whose commitment had been outstanding. In identifying an error in the six year sentence in July 2015, Mr Justice Alan Mahon said the final 12 months should have been suspended. Obviously he was a child out of control, Mr Justice Mahon said, who needed rehabilitation if there was any chance of him avoiding a life of serious crime as an adult. The offender, although young and still 15 when he committed this offence, was a hardened criminal who had accumulated 23 previous convictions and was on bail at the time for a number of robberies. What occurred was spine chilling, Mr Justice Mahon said, and quite horrific. If the offender had been an adult it could be said that the six year sentence was unduly lenient. However, what made this case different was the offender's very young age at the time. Mr Justice Mahon said these cases required particular attention on the question of rehabilitation. A section of the Children's Act states that detention must only be imposed as a last resort, as had been submitted by his barrister at the time, John Aylmer SC. The judge said the courts had struggled for some time with that concept and the need to balance between protecting society and providing for rehabilitation. Health minister Simon Harris has said that Bray schoolboy Eric Zhi Ying Xue faces "no imminent threat of deportation". The nine-year-old is a fourth class student in St Cronan's school in Bray and, although born in Ireland, he is not a citizen. He had been facing deportation. Eric's mother arrived in Ireland 12 years ago but was served a deportation order in 2015. Despite appealing the decision on numerous occasions, her final appeal was rejected in June. However, speaking on The Last Word on Today FM, health minister Simon Harris said he had some "good news" for the family. Ive just got some good news, very recently from the Department of Justice, which Ive conveyed to Erics family, that there is no imminent threat of deportation. Thats all I ever called for, thats all Erics family ever asked for, was an opportunity for a humanitarian review of the case to take place The idea that a nine-year-old boy who is as much from Wicklow as I am, as much from Ireland as I am would be told that he is 'going back' to China, a country he had never been to was simply ludicrous," he said. By Liam Heylin The former office administrator of Gurranabraher Credit Union in Cork was yesterday jailed for two years for stealing 325,000 in a phenomenal breach of trust carried out over several years. Leona Daly, 36, with an address at 4 Meadow Avenue, The Meadows, Knocknaheeny, Cork, was sentenced at Cork Circuit Criminal Court on 167 charges. Judge Sean O Donnabhain said the proposal to pay back 400 a week after handing back 10,000 in cash was entirely unrealistic and a jail sentence had to be imposed. The judge said the credit union branch could pursue her through civil proceedings for compensation if it wished. The mother-of-two had pleaded guilty to 105 counts of theft of sums ranging from 500 to 11,000 contrary to Section 4 of the Criminal Justice (Theft and Fraud Offences) Act 2001. She also pleaded guilty to a further 62 charges of false accounting, contrary to Section 10 of the same act where it was alleged she furnished false information in relation to accounts to make a gain. It was confirmed no account holders were at a loss and the loss was borne by the credit union. Detective Garda Maura ORiordan of the Garda Economic Crime Investigation Unit said Ms Daly first started working at the credit union in 2005. She became an administrator which gave her a higher level of access to accounts than she previously had and it was in that role she stole the money. Discrepancies in accounts started to come light in 2016 and management reported the matter to gardai who launched an investigation which led to Ms Daly being charged. Det Garda ORiordan said after the financial irregularities came to light, she made full admissions. She was dismissed in October 2016. Det Garda O'Riordan said Daly handed in 2,000 to the court by way of compensation earlier this week while a further 8,000 was handed over yesterday and she proposed to repay 400 a week. Defence barrister, Niamh Stewart BL said Ms Daly had made full voluntary admissions. The defendant's husband David Lynch, who the court heard had no knowledge of his wife's theft, gave an undertaking to sell his car and to make the monthly payments on his wifes behalf. No explanation was given as to where the funds had been spent or the motivation for the theft but Ms Stewart said Ms Daly suffered from depression. Gurranabraher Credit Union said, in a statement, it had suffered "reputational damage". Judge O'Donnabhain described the breach of trust as being "phenomenal", particularly given that credit unions were local financial institutions set up for the benefit of its members in the community. By Joe Leogue The man shot dead on a farm outside Macroom, Co Cork on Tuesday night will be buried following his funeral mass on Sunday. Derry Coakley (59) died in Raleigh, Macroom after suffering a single gunshot wound to the arm. Mr Coakley was an agricultural contractor who also carried out work in the area for Cork County Council, and was well known in Macroom where he lived with his mother Joan on Castle Street. A man in his sixties was arrested on Wednesday morning in connection with the shooting and was detained at Bandon Garda Station under Section 50 of the Criminal Justice Act, 2007, where gardai continued to question him today. Mr Coakley will lie in repose in St Colmans Church, Macroom from 5pm tomorrow, Saturday, followed by Requiem Mass at noon on Sunday and burial at St Colmans Cemetery. Mr Coakley is survived by his mother Joan, sister Siobhan, daughter Deirdre and her mother Siobhan. Update 8.50pm: Igor Tomkiewicz has been located safe and well this evening. Gardai have thanked the public for their assistance. Earlier: Gardai appeal for help in finding 14-year-old missing from Dublin Gardai are seeking assistance from the public in locating a missing 14-year-old boy from Dublin. Igor Tomkiewicz was last seen on October 22 in Saggart. He is described as being 59 with a slim build and blonde hair. When last seen he was wearing a black Nike coat, grey Jumper, blue shirt, blue/gold tie and black shoes. He was carrying a black Timberland backpack and a white and red Fila' gym bag. Gardai say they are extremely concerned for the welfare of Igor. Anyone who has seen Igor or who can assist in locating him is asked to contact Clondalkin Garda Station on 01-6667600, the Garda Confidential telephone line on 1800 666 111 or any garda station. - Digital Desk New data has suggested Ireland is the third most expensive country in the EU for a night out. OneBigSwitch has found that it costs 180 euro for a couple here to go out, the same as it would cost to book a return flight to Berlin or a four-month gym membership. Irish charity Front Line Defenders has been chosen as one of the four winners of the prestigious United Human Rights Prize. The prize, awarded every five years, recognises the organisation's work in providing supports and protections to human rights defenders working in some of the most dangerous and oppressive countries in the world. United Nations General Assembly president, Maria Fernando Espinosa Garces, made the announcement in New York where she described the winners as "an inspiration to us all". Front Line Defenders dedicated the award to all human rights defenders at risk around the world. "Front Line Defenders has worked with incredibly brave and resilient activists who inspire and shine a light in often dark places," it said. Andrew Anderson, executive director, said they are hugely honoured to receive the prize. We must redouble our efforts to protect those who risk their lives in the pursuit of justice and dignity. This recognition will help Front Line Defenders bring attention to the important work human rights defenders undertake at great personal risk. Minister for Foreign Affairs, Simon Coveney, congratulated the organisation: "Proud to see them honoured as they work to protect human rights defenders in the most dangerous and challenging parts of the world." Irish Aid is a supporter of the organisation, grant-aiding it by 500,000 a year in recent years. The UN award is non-monetary but is greatly valued for the attention it brings to human rights abuses and the individuals and organisations who work to overcome them. Prize-winners are selected by the current and previous presidents of the UN General Assembly and by the chairs of various UN bodies such as the Commissions on Human Rights and the Status of Women. Other winners this year include the late Asma Jahangir, a human rights lawyer and social activist who co-founded the Human Rights Commission of Pakistan and fought for the rights of women and minorities and for free speech. She died earlier this year and will receive her award posthumously in a ceremony on December 10. Tanzanian lawyer, Rebeca Gyumi, will also be honoured for her work to overturn the law allowing child marriage in her country and for her ongoing efforts as founder and director of the Msichana Initiative which supports girls to attend school and campaigns to remove obstacles to education for girls. Front Line Defenders is profoundly honored to be named one of the winners of the 2018 United Nations Human Rights Prize - full statement here: https://t.co/iNAVApzDQ4 @ettrick49 pic.twitter.com/RScMu057CN Front Line Defenders (@FrontLineHRD) October 25, 2018 Another lawyer, Joenia Wapichana from Brazil, is the fourth of the winners. She is Brazil's first ever native lawyer and also the first indigenous woman to hold a seat in the Brazilian Congress. She has fought to protect the land rights of Brazil's indigenous peoples against the forcible encroachment of large-scale agribusiness. Front Line Defenders was founded in 2001 by former head of the Irish section of Amnesty International, Mary Lawlor, who set it up with financial support from businessman Denis O'Brien who remains a trustee and chairman of the board of directors. By Eoin Reynolds A 37-year-old man was on his way to sell 3,000 Diazepam tablets the night he was stabbed to death, a murder trial has heard. Luigi Forte told gardai that the deceased Andrew Guerrine thought he was going to make 150 from the sale. Stephen Tynan (41) of Deerpark Lodge, Kiltipper, Tallaght, Dublin 24 and Raymond Fitzgerald (37) of Knockmore Grove, Killinarden, Tallaght, Dublin 24 have both pleaded not guilty to the murder of Mr Guerrine at an unknown place between May 22 and May 23, 2015. Mr Guerrine suffered 20 stab wounds including two which penetrated his skull and cervical spine. Mr Forte (34), from Drimnagh, Dublin 12, gave a statement to gardai in May 2015. Detective Garda Patrick Flood told prosecuting counsel Brendan Grehan SC that Mr Forte had refused to give evidence in the trial and that he was therefore going to read the statement to the court. Mr Forte said he sold drugs to make money but gave up after spending time in prison in 2015. Mr Guerrine sometimes sold drugs for him and even after Mr Forte stopped selling and taking drugs he would sometimes get them for Mr Guerrine. The deceased, he said, owed him 2,700 and was paying 50 per week off his debt. On the evening Mr Guerrine went missing he called Mr Forte and said he needed 3,000 Diazepam tablets that night. Mr Forte said the cost would be 40c per tablet and Mr Guerrine agreed, telling him he had a buyer and would make a profit of 150 from the sale. The deceased and Mr Forte travelled by taxi from the Square in Tallaght to a dark area near the Maldron Hotel. Mr Guerrine took the drugs while Mr Forte waited in the taxi. After about 25 minutes Mr Forte saw Mr Guerrine moving away. "I was convinced he was after ripping me off," he said. Mr Forte went home and later tried calling Mr Guerrine. When he got no answer he texted: "What's the story? Do you think I'm a thick? You're after ripping me." That was the last time he saw Mr Guerrine. Darren Finnegan told Mr Grehan he sold a black Peugot 307 to Mr Tynan and another man on May 22, 2015. The car was in front of his home in Knockmore and had a "for sale" sign on it. Mr Tynan, who he knew all his life, and another man he did not know, called to his home at about mid-night. The other man offered him money and tablets for the car but Mr Finnegan said he wasn't interested in tablets. He wanted 600 but the man gave him 300 while Mr Tynan told him he would get the rest the next day. Mr Finnegan was tired, he said, and wanted to go to bed so he took the money and threw the keys to the other man. He later realised that he had left documents, a baby's car seat and jackets belonging to his own children in the car. Gardai later showed him one of those jackets which he said had belonged to his son. Mr Finnegan told defence counsel for Mr Tynan, Seamus Clarke SC, that he believed Mr Tynan walked across the street towards his father's home following the sale of the car. The trial will continue on Tuesday in front of Justice Michael White and a jury of seven men and five women. By Ann O'Loughlin A man whose elderly and ill mother was moved to hospital and later to a nursing home after a secret recording of "vile" exchanges between the two at home emerged is disputing the High Courts jurisdiction to make her a ward of court. The president of the High Court, Mr Justice Peter Kelly, urged the man today to concentrate on his mother's best interests and welfare, stop listening to "barrack room lawyers" and cease making "wild allegations" in court, including about doctors involved in treating her. The judge told the man his very lengthy affidavit contends his mother's best interests are served by her returning home but it ignored "a battery" of evidence to the opposite effect from medical consultants, and a court-appointed medical visitor. I suspect you are under the influence of barrack room lawyers who have not a clue what they are talking about," he said. The man disputes the courts findings, based on several medical assessments, that his mother lacks the capacity to make decisions concerning her health and welfare. He alleges she was abducted by the HSE and is now falsely imprisoned in a nursing home. The woman, aged in her seventies and with dementia and other health difficulties, was moved to hospital after one of her daughters secretly recorded interactions between the man and his mother and father in their home. The man has raised issues about the legitimacy of the 33-minute recording made on his sister's mobile phone in proceedings aimed at having his mother returned home to the care of himself and his father. The man is also appealing another High Court judges refusal to his challenge to the legality of his mothers hospital detention and all that has occurred since. He alleges the procedure under which his mother was made a ward of court involved violations of human rights and abuse of power. He has entered a conditional appearance in the case concerning his mother which was mentioned before Mr Justice Kelly on Friday to deal with issues concerning exchange of documents. The man alleged his mother received "botched" treatment in hospitals some years ago and said he was awaiting material from the relevant hospitals. The judge made directions for exchange of documents and returned the matter to late November. Earlier, the judge declined to recuse himself from further dealing with the case or to refer issues concerning the High Court wardship jurisdiction to the Supreme Court for determination and urged the man to focus instead on his mother's welfare. The man said his mother's best interests are his priority but she has "never been asked what she wants". All I have done is for love of my mother. Arising from allegations by the nursing home about the man's behaviour when visiting his mother, he continues to be restrained from doing so. The judge told the man, if he provides sworn undertakings concerning behaviour during visits, those could be permitted and the matter was "entirely in your hands". Certain conditions had been applied to visits by his father following claims the latter had tried to remove his wife from here on one occasion and on another had tried to give her an orange liquid. In court today, the father said the claim he tried to take his wife out was "ridiculous". He said his wife had not been out of bed in six weeks and all he had wanted to do was take her out of the bed and let her sit in a wheelchair for a time. Because a wheelchair was not to hand, he went to his car to get the one he used for her, he said. Having obtained sworn undertakings from the father concerning visits, Mr Justice Kelly said he was happy for the man to visit his wife. Such visits are very important because her prognosis is not good, the judge stressed. By Fiachra O Cionnaith and Eoin English Thousands of parents affected by the deepening schools safety scandal could sue the State for considerable damages as a direct result of the decade-long failure to uncover the potentially life-threatening crisis. A leading solicitor issued the warning as it emerged the company at the centre of the scandal is still building schools for the State and as opposition parties labelled the crisis Irelands equivalent of the Grenfell Tower in London. More than 40 schools are set to undergo safety checks between today and Tuesday. Education Minister Joe McHugh admitted it is guesstimate territory how many will close. Cantillon Solicitors, which specialises in social, health, and educational rights cases, said the State must brace itself for a flurry of parental legal cases. Joey Cantillon said it is inevitable the State will face legal claims for considerable damages from families caught up in the scandal. The State is now talking of suing the builders, he said. It is all good and fine that the State is pursuing the builders for its losses, but what about the children and the parents? They also have the right to sue for their loss and damage. Children, under the Constitution, have a right to education. As a result of these school closures, the childrens right to education is being disrupted. This is most unfair on Junior and Leaving Certificate students. The State needs to take immediate steps to ameliorate the plight of these children and their parents to limit any compensation which may be accumulating. The warning came after this weeks shock decision to close three schools in Dublin, built by Western Building Systems, due to fire and construction audit safety fears. While all of Westerns 42 school builds are now being examined due to similar concerns, it has emerged that the company is still building schools for the State. Speaking to reporters after visiting two affected schools in his constituency, Taoiseach Leo Varadkar said Western is building schools in Sandymount, Dublin, and in Greystones, Co Wicklow. Stressing that he and his officials are working night and day to find out the scale of the problem, Mr Varadkar admitted there are no clear alternative sites should thousands of children be without a school to go to after the Halloween break. In an interview on RTE radios Drivetime show after his own officials met with Western, Mr McHugh said the number of schools affected is in guesstimate territory. Principals will be told today when their schools will be the subject of physical on-site inspections between now and Tuesday. The inspections involve opening the walls of the schools, among other matters, and have already led to three school closures this week, all of which involve three-storey buildings built between 2008 and 2014. TDs lashed out at the Governments failure to uncover the crisis until now, despite Department of Education officials being warned by Educate Together and Dublin Fire Brigade of serious fire safety issues at the Rush and Lusk Educate Together school in 2014 which took almost 1m to fix. This was reported in a 2015 Irish Examiner expose. Likening the schools situation in Ireland to what happened to Grenfell Tower in London, Solidarity-People Before Profit TD Paul Murphy said, under Dail privilege: This is a consequence of the race-to-the-bottom model in the construction industry, a model of putting profits before peoples lives, in this case the lives of children. This is a model which brought London Grenfell and brought us Priory Hall, Longboat Quay, and this crisis. It is a model in which the Government and the State have been active participants. It is a model that has to end. By Joe Leogue The woman subjected to a racist tirade on a Ryanair flight last week has rejected her abusers apology, while the airline has moved to defend its actions following the incident. David Mesher appeared on ITVs Good Morning Britain yesterday to apologise for his behaviour on board Ryanair flight FR9015 on October 19 from Barcelona to London, in which he was filmed hurling obscenities at 77-year-old Delsie Gayle. Mr Mesher told the programme that the dispute began after he asked Gayle to move from her seat but she didnt seem to want to get up. He said he absolutely regrets his behaviour, but denied that he was racist. The man who racially abused an elderly black passenger onboard a Ryanair flight has apologised for his outburst, saying he is not a racist and blaming a fit of temper for the incident which went viral. More: https://t.co/mUzkHmApI2 pic.twitter.com/k0BAjV8kpF Good Morning Britain (@GMB) October 26, 2018 I probably lost my temper a bit and ordered her to get up, he said. Im not a racist person by any means and its just a fit of temper at the time, I think. I apologise for all the distress youve had there and since, he said. Appearing on the same programme, Ms Gayle was asked if she accepted the apology. I dont think so. You must forget and forgive but its going to take a long time for me to get over what he has done to me, she said. Her daughter added that Mr Mesher wouldnt be saying words like that if he wasnt racist". Meanwhile Ryanair yesterday said it only became aware of the video late on Saturday October 20, after the flight had landed. Ryanair immediately reported this video, and the racist abuse, to the Essex Police in Stansted Airport at 9am on Sunday, October 21. We provided the police with a copy of the video and relevant details of the two passengers involved. These prompt actions disprove the false claims that Ryanair did not respond quickly or appropriately to this video, the airline said. It said it did not comment at the time to allow the Police investigation to occur...despite the considerable and inaccurate media commentary". Ryanairs Spanish cabin crew were aware of an argument between these two passengers during the boarding process, but were not aware of, as they were not present when, racist comments that were made by the male passenger towards the female passenger, the airlines statement continued. As the cabin crew believed they were dealing with an argument between two passengers, they followed company procedure, to defuse the argument, and separate the passengers by offering to move one to alternative seating. In this case, the female passenger was moved at her request, to a seat adjacent to her daughter who was also travelling on this flight. After moving the female passenger, both passengers were asked if they were okay, and both confirmed that they were. As far as the cabin crew were concerned, that was the end of the matter, and since there was no threat to aircraft safety, the issue of offloading one passenger did not arise. ANZ Bank is expected to ask the courts to put on hold a Federal Court case against the bank over its botched $2.5 billion share placement as it fights a criminal case relating to the same raising. ANZ revealed the strong probability it would ask for the Federal Court to stay the civil proceedings in the Federal Court brought by the Australian Securities and Investments Commission at a hearing on Friday morning. Justice Mark Moshinsky flagged ANZs likely postponement of the case by telling the court: There is a real prospect of a stay application being made. Counsel for ANZ, Alan Archibald, QC said the bank was still considering whether to ask for a stay of the ASIC matter in part because of the likely similarities between the two proceedings. At the moment we have no more than a court attendance notice that formulaically described the offence, Mr Archibald told the court. With the increasing possibility of a change in government, low income and pension fund investors need to plan for the loss of cash refunds for their unused imputation credits. Their domestic options include switching their investments to debt instruments, property and staple securities where the income is not subject to company tax. They can also look overseas for investments and if they opt to stay with Australian shares focus on more risky growth stocks paying lower dividends but offering more capital gains. In this process of portfolio reinvestment, share prices particularly of companies paying high fully franked are likely to fall because of the selling pressure. Pension fund investors wanting to retain their exposure to dividend paying shares may also have ways of cushioning the adverse impact of the loss of cash refunds. Credit:Jessica Shapiro Theres always the possibility that the proposed changes wont be legislated. However, those many investors likely to be affected by the changes could consider starting to restructure their portfolios now while despite recent falls share prices are still relatively strong. There are two main obstacles to acting now. First, returns on cash and fixed interest returns are lower than the current return on shares. A full franked dividend increases the total return by 42 per cent when franking credits are refunded in cash to zero rate taxpayers. Second, there may be capital gains tax liability on investments that have appreciated substantially in value. 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 [] After long negotiations and planning the Enfield Intermodal Logistics Centre (Enfield ILC) has been given the green light to start construction on a sought-after 60 hectare site. NSW Ports, custodian of Enfield Intermodal Logistics Centre, Port Botany, Port Kembla, and industrial property company Goodman Group, have received planning approval for the master planned estate. The site, located about 15 kilometres west of the Sydney CBD, incorporates the active Enfield Intermodal Terminal, operated by LINX Cargo Care Group, which provides a dedicated and direct freight rail line to Port Botany. Goodman Group and NSW Ports have received planning approval for the Enfield Intermodal Logistics Centre. Under the master plan, the new development will encompass warehouse and logistics operations for customers wanting to facilitate "last mile delivery" around Sydneys road network given its close proximity to the M4 and M5 motorways. Vida Goldstein called on expat women to help their less fortunate British sisters in the struggle for the vote. Credit:actian.warden This extraordinary situation that Australia was the proving ground for democratic idealism comes as something of a shock to Australians today. This history of idealism and experimentation has largely been lost to popular memory. We have become accustomed to seeing ourselves as country cousins to the world's political affairs; signatories, allies and partners, not agenda-setters. But in the decade and a half before 1914, Australia was as one observer called us "the envy of the world". Journalists, sociologists and political scientists travelled to Australia to observe what might happen in the unprecedented petri dish of political and legislative reform, the test site that would also formulate the living wage, the first elected Labor government and other socially progressive legislation such as pure food laws, old-age pensions and the maternity allowance. And Australians took their responsibilities as the democratic start-up of the world seriously. Australia was, as the globe-trotting American journalist Jessie Ackermann put it, "in the noonday glare". People across the globe watched on with either delight or horror or just plain curiosity as Australian women turned up at polling booths and stood for election. A Lowy Institute survey in 2017 found that only 60 per cent of Australians believed that democracy was the best system of government. Given this present state of disillusionment, it is important to remember that people once cared so very much about defending it, sharing in it and exercising their right to it. The turn of the 20th century was an era of extreme optimism, the dawning of a new day in the world's history. Women and men the world over were swept up in "a whirl of speculation, proposals, policies and utopian visions", according to historian Sheila Rowbotham. One of those visions was a world in which women enjoyed the fruits of participatory democracy. The suffrage movement or The Cause, as it was known stood for rebellion, emancipation, spiritual renewal and a fundamental change in the sexual, political and industrial structure of society. "Its insurgence is worldwide," wrote one commentator. "For this reason, I think the woman suffrage crusade will, in the eyes of the historian, overshadow all the other events of these tumultuous times." (Hindsight can be a terribly depressing thing!) The Cause focused its tactical energies on one solution to the problem of gendered inequality and oppression: the vote. As the world's newest nation, Australia played a leading part in the global suffrage movement as inspiration and gold standard. Many Australian women played leading parts as activists, agitators, intellectuals and educators. Jessie Ackermann observed that "the freest girls in the world" were to be found in Australia; "girls who could make a mark upon the age in which they lived". The technological innovations of the era the motor car! flight! were matched by the human momentum of generational and gendered change. The New Woman was on the move! Ackermann was convinced that "the world's greatest reforms must be brought about by girls, and Australia is the natural starting point ... where they enjoy the advantages of citizenship". Many of these women such as Vida Goldstein, Muriel Matters, Dora Montefiore and Nellie Martel were known across the globe. Their audacious acts of boundary-pushing and disruption regularly filled columns in newspapers world wide. There is one lasting relic of this otherwise forgotten chapter in Australia's history that remains like a bookmark in time to remind us of just how brightly our democratic tiger burned. The Women's Suffrage Banner, painted by ex-pat Australian artist Dora Meeson Coates in the English summer of 1908, now hangs in Parliament House in Canberra, having been purchased by the Commonwealth as a bicentennial gift "to the women of Australia" in 1988. (It had been found gathering dust in the back of a London library.) The banner was originally made to parade through the streets of London in the monster Suffragette marches of 1908 and 1911. By 1911, Vida Goldstein the acknowledged leader of the Australasian suffrage movement was also in London, by invitation of Emmeline Pankhurst, the leader of the most prominent British Suffragette organisation, the Women's Social and Political Union. Goldstein called upon all Australians travelling or residing in London to contact her, to discuss the means by which they, as women voters, could help their "less fortunate British sisters" in the struggle for the vote. Meeson Coates was one of the Australians who came forward, pledging the use of her banner in the Women's Coronation Procession which saw 40,000 Suffragettes march, banners aloft (a thousand of them) from the Embankment to Albert Hall, watched by over 100,000 Londoners, on June 17, 1911. Meeson Coates' magnificent banner was 2 metres high and 1.4 metres wide. It took four bearers to "stagger under its weight" in the procession. "No more striking method could have been devised for bringing Australasia into prominence," wrote one newspaper. The banner depicts Mother Britannia, draped in white, holding her sceptre, hip and head cocked, staring into the middle distance; Daughter Minerva, bearing a shield with heraldry of the Australian Federation, leaning forward, reaching out, offering advice. Written across the top in red are the words COMMONWEALTH OF AUSTRALIA, and below it, in shouty caps and quotation marks, the words that Australia speaks to England: "TRUST THE WOMEN MOTHER, AS I HAVE DONE". It is a banner replete with allegorical effrontery, signifying that as one European suffrage leader put it it was impossible to think of "that far-off future" when the world's women would vote "without bringing to mind an antipodal empire, that island continent, our best beloved suffrage achievement, Australia". The banner articulated what one Australian woman living in London described "as the fact of our having proved to the world our political fitness a fine object lesson". So is there an object legacy in Dora Meeson Coate's beautiful banner for our present lives? As a new form of Australian citizenship led to the creation of the welfare state with its emphasis on entitlements, can women, who historically have understood the challenges of being treated equally, continue to advocate for a world where justice is highly prized? Could men be more active in meeting the justice needs of women, as some were in the past? What the suffragists of Australia and the Suffragettes they inspired in England have bequeathed us is an example of how coherent grassroots opposition to the forces of oppression can impact on the structures and institutions of power and privilege. How acts of creative resistance are empowering, forming communities of hope and strength in numbers. And how unity of purpose, together with collective aims and ambitions, can create real and lasting change. If there was a hashtag to represent this inheritance, it might be #UsToo. The Duchess of Sussex had been shining a spotlight on local designers during her tour of the Pacific, but, since leaving Australia to tour Fiji and Tonga, her wardrobe had become not unlike that of your standard Hollywood actor. She toured Fiji in Jason Wu (a US brand), Figue (a US brand) and Safiyaa (a UK brand), and touched down in Tonga yesterday in a red number by Self-Portrait (a UK brand, as the tag captured in so many pictures would have revealed). Britain's Prince Harry and Meghan, Duchess of Sussex, are given flower garlands at the Fa'onelua Convention Centre in Nuku'alofa, Tonga. Credit:AP However, that changed on Friday, when Meghan and Prince Harry visited an exhibition of local Tongan artisans. The couple were up early on Friday morning to meet with the prime minister of Tonga, 'Akilisi Pohiva, before they were accompanied by Tonga's Princess Angelika Latufuipeka to the exhibition. The first thing I do when I check into a new hotel room is check out the minibar. It's always worth a look, even if just to decide I can't possibly pay nightclub prices for a sparkling water. As a Melburnian who travels to Sydney about once a fortnight for work, I've stayed at just about every one of the hip boutique hotels which have been sprouting up all over town. Trust me: not all minibars are created equal. Even now, when a tap on the UberEats app can summon snow eggs and slabs of beer, there's something indulgently rock'n'roll about raiding the minibar. A good one isn't prohibitively expensive and contains a few surprises. It has nice glassware and an easy-to-find bottle opener. And it is never hooked up to a system which puts any item you move on the tab. QT Hotel Bondi minibar has both food and clothing in the minibar offerings. Credit:HAND OUT Paramount House Hotel in Surry Hills has by far the best offering I've seen this year. The glorious Mack Daddy suite is more like a New York loft with its blush-pink linen, Aesop soaps and sun-dappled private terrace. A drawer-style fridge is concealed under the bronze-patina sideboard and holds a treasure chest of goods you never knew you needed: bottles of good local wine, sliced charcuterie from LP's Quality Meats, weird beer from Greece, soft cheeses from Formaggi Ocello. I glance at the price list and tell myself I deserve a $7 packet of artisanal kettle chips and crunch through them while reclining in the wooden Japanese bathtub. Bliss. At the Albion Street Guest House down the road, there are no minibars in the rooms, but rather an "honesty bar" in the lobby. Its shelves recall a retro apothecary, glinting with individual bottles of Bombay Sapphire and Chivas Regal. There are quirky snacks, too, and little paper forms on which to write down whatever you've had, although the public nature of it all makes me self-conscious. Minibars offer the impulse buys of the hotel world; and having to ferry the stuff back to my room provides me with too much time to change my mind. Canberra MP Gai Brodtmann has called for an independent review of the household drone delivery trial in Bonython after being inundated with negative feedback from the local community. Ms Brodtmann said hundreds of residents had contacted her office since Wing's trial started in the Tuggeranong suburb in July, raising concerns about noise, privacy, disturbance to wildlife and a perceived lack of transparency and government oversight in approving and assessing the flights. She last week wrote to ACT Chief Minister Andrew Barr, Planning Minister Mick Gentleman and the Civil Aviation Safety Authority to pass on her constituents' concerns, and to seek assurances the trial would be thoroughly reviewed. Canberra MP Gai Brodtmann is calling for an independent review of Wing's household drone delivery trial in Bonython. Credit:Jamila Toderas The trial is set to finish when Wing's lease over a testing site in Greenway expires in February. Every soldier who's ever worked with dogs in combat situations knows how valuable their contribution can be. But rarely do their stories of courage get told. On Friday the life of military working dog Kuga was celebrated at the Australian War Memorial, after he was shot five times when he detected an insurgent no one else in his patrol could, potentially saving the lives of his entire unit. The Belgian Malinois served the Special Air Service Regiment, and was posthumously awarded the PDSA Dickin Medal for Animal Gallantry, regarded as the animal equivalent of the Victoria Cross, the most prestigious medal in the military. The award was accepted on his behalf by retired military working dog, Odin, and Victoria Cross awardee Corporal Mark Donaldson. Another Australian premiere, and a contemporary story, is the documentary TransMilitary (PG, American), screening on November 2 at 6pm. "It chronicles the lives of veterans who have transitioned and how they have come out," Papas says. "It's one of the most remarkable documentaries I have seen." The film focuses on four people - Senior Airman Logan Ireland, Corporal Laila Villanueva, Captain Jennifer Peace and First Lieutenant El Cook - who came out as transgender to officials in the Pentagon hoping of attaining the equal right to serve their country. The ban was lifted in 2016, but President Donald Trump has been trying to reinstate it. In TransMilitary: from left Corporal Laila Villanueva, Captain Jennifer Peace, and Senior Airman Logan Ireland. "They want to get recognised as veterans who don't have to hide who they are." On November 3 are two documentaries about the Second World War. At 11am, writer/director Patrick Lindsay's Kokoda, The Spirit Lives ( PG, Australian), made for the History Channel, tells some of the stories of the Australian soldiers who fought against the Japanese on the Kokoda Track in Papua New Guinea during World War II and revisits the track now. Papas says it uses a lot of contemporary technology to bring the story to life. At 2pm is the Canberra premiere of Spitfire (PG, British). Narrated by Charles Dance (Game of Thrones, The Imitation Game), it is screening in the 70th anniversary year of the war-changing fighter plane. "It played an important role in the history of World War II." Along with the Hurricane, the Spitfire was used by the Royal Air Force during the Battle of Britain in 1940 during the German mass bombing campaign known as the Blitz. The RAF emerged victorious in the fight against the Luftwaffe and stopped a German invasion of Britain. The film features present-day aerial photography as well as digitally remastered footage from the war and the story is told through the words of several surviving combat veterans. "We want to bring people to discover these amazing stories." Before the screening at 1.30pm a special guest historian will speak and his first book will be launched. "Adam Lunney wrote the book Ready to Strike: The Spitfires and Australians of 453 (RAAF) Squadron over Normandy," Papas says. It tells the story of the only Australian squadron to operate from airfields built immediately behind the front lines of the Normandy battlefield after the landings in France of June 1944. A scene from Fighting Season. Also on November 3, at 2pm (arrive by 1.45) is a free screening of two episodes from the Foxtel series Fighting Season. This Australian series stars Jay Ryan (Beauty and the Beast), Ewen Leslie (Top of the Lake), Kate Mulvany (The Great Gatsby), among many others and is directed by Kate Woods (Looking for Alibrandi). This six-part drama is about a platoon of soldiers who from Afghanistan after a controversial mission that was marred by mistakes and cover-ups. After the screening will be a Q&A session with actors George Pullar and Julian Maroun along with producer Kylie du Fresne and writer Blake Asyhford (Barracuda). A scene from the animated film Sgt Stubby. Also on November 3 at 4pm is the Australian premiere of the America animated film 2018 Sgt Stubby: An Unlikely Hero ( PG). It's based on a true story. A young American army private, Robert Conroy (voiced by Logan Lerman) adopts a stray, stump-tailed terrier he names Stubby. He smuggles the dog to France during World War I and Stumpy becomes a mascot for Conroy's unit. He also proves his worth, saving the soldiers from mustard gas attacks and finding wounded men, among other brave deeds. Gerard Depardieu voices a French soldier who befriends Conroy and Stumpy and the film is narrated by Helena Bonham Carter, whose great-grandfather, H.H. Asquith, was prime minister of Britain from 1908 to 1916. The festival's closing gala screening on November 3 at 6pm is the Australian premiere of the Russian film Anna's War (M), a story of survival set during World War II. In Nazi-occupied Ukraine in 1941, six-year-old Anna is the only one who lives when her family are shot. She hides in a chimney, peering out through a chink, and comes out at night to forage for food and water. But how long can she survive? Papas says, "The Veterans Film Festival is a not-for-profit arts organisation, whose aim is to raise awareness and contribute to our understanding of those who have been part of international conflict." A woman has pleaded not guilty to assaulting a mental health nurse at Canberra Hospital. The accused, 30, entered the pleas in the ACT Magistrates Court on Friday to charges of assault and property damage. The defendant allegedly assaulted a nurse - causing cuts and bruises to the staff member - in the hospital's adult mental health unit in September. Loading The defendant applied for bail on Friday, however, the application was opposed by the prosecution due to risk of reoffending and likelihood of failing to reappear. It was also at the beginning of a new phase for the navy, in which women who signed up could stay on after they were married and had children. It was only the late 70s that that changed. I remember thinking it was a fairly modern navy, she says. But she soon discovered how little progress had been made - not that she had anything to compare it to. We were being paid the same as our male colleagues, that was not an issue, but we had very limited choices as to what roles we could have, she says. We were limited to communications, logistics and administration. We couldn't drive ships, couldn't fly planes, couldn't be engineers - all those things that now, thankfully, women take for granted and accept as normal roles that you can undertake in the navy. They werent even allowed to wear trousers, back in 1980. Wittwer decided early on that she would complete 20 years of service, after which she would get a pension. In those early years, with no other goals or sense of what lay ahead, it was, she says, simply a matter of gritting my teeth and bearing it. Since then, Wittwers entire career has been defined by change, by being at the forefront of seismic shifts in how the navy treats women in the workplace. But in the beginning, she had no sense of how much things would transform. She simply envisaged a land-based career in what was then the Womens Royal Australian Navy. But when the womens navy became amalgamated with the general service, she was suddenly competing for positions and promotions with men. By the early 1990s, she was told she would have to go to sea - a possibility that had never entered her mind when she had signed up. She was 34 when she took charge of her first ship, with no prior sea experience. She found herself seasick, and in charge of all ship logistics, including bringing aircraft on and off the ship, and monitoring practice nuclear and chemical attacks. Jennifer Wittwer on HMAS Swan, as Helicopter Patrol Officer in 1996. These were all responsibilities that my male colleagues had developed, grown into. I was just thrust into it, she says. She was one of two women on board with 212 men. Not surprisingly, she dealt with harassment from her fellow officers. I dealt with those situations, I got them sorted, but it was uncomfortable, and it was unnecessary, and I felt it was an attack on my credibility as a logistics officer, she says. Well before that, as a more junior officer, like many of the women who joined the navy in the 1980s, she had also been subject to sexual harassment and abuse - events that were par for the course. I didn't do anything about it at the time, because I didn't think it would be taken seriously, she says. There wasn't even a process to protect me. You've got to remember, this was the days when office walls were covered with pornographic pictures of women. And men would swear, make inappropriate jokes, all those things were going on all the time with women in the office. Nowadays, as in most modern Australian workplaces, there are processes in place to protect women from abuse and harassment. But it wasnt until many years after the fact - in 2013 - that Wittwer had the opportunity to address what had happened to her, via the Defence Abuse Response Taskforce. [It] was then the organisation that was set up to actually take personal submission, she says. Loading I went through that process, including having that investigated by Victorian police. Unfortunately it didn't come to fruition because of the passage of time, the difficulty in identifying the perpetrator, and so on, but I was happy that I as an individual along with many others was given an opportunity through a process to have it recognised and taken into account, and provided with some form of compensation and the opportunity to have it properly investigated. But in the meantime, Wittwer was clocking up her qualifications, and ticking of her personal list of goals. She was already married by the time she went to sea, but put off having children until after she had completed her 12 months on the ship. By then, she had been in the navy about 15 years. It was around this time that she moved away from logistics, and into what she calls the gender space, a space she has filled and expanded and amplified steadily ever since. I'd always had a passion for women, and I think that was born out of recognising that in the 80s and 90s I struggled, she says. Not struggled in terms of my own personal achievements, but just struggled against the system to amplify women's participation, women's roles, the importance of having women in the organisation, and not just a bunch of blokes. Loading "And of course, having been a victim of the sexual harassment and abuse that was going on during that time, I was very passionate about protecting women's rights and enhancing their rights in our organisation. In the years leading up to the defence force review by former Sex Discrimination Commissioner Elizabeth Broderick in 2011-12, Wittwer was busy laying the groundwork to what would become a serious rethink of womens opportunities and participation in the navy. She was appointed to oversee a reform of the navys values and culture, and specifically how to get more women to join. She eventually became the navys Womens Strategic Advisor, to advise senior leaders on womens participation and representation. I was part of that whole cultural reform bubble, which was a really exciting time, she says. I think for the first time in my naval career, which by this time was 28 years or something, we were starting to see positive change. To me the positive change was more about the way people treated each other, not necessarily about women getting something more than men. But it has been about recognising that women add value to the organisation, and just treating everyone that you work with with respect in the workplace. Nothing more, nothing less. By the time the government-initiated Broderick review came out, Wittwer was ready to move into another space - Women, Peace and Security, a resolution of UN Women passed in 2000. Wittwer was sent to Afghanistan in 2013 - her first overseas deployment, at the age of 50, as a gender advisor to NATO operations. It moved me into a different area, but still touched on women's participation and representation, in a much broader way, she says. I had to leave behind my passion for navy women, and thinking now a bit more strategically about how we contribute women to peace and security operations, and to do that, how do we enhance their participation and representation in national institutions. ...as the world evolves, and as workplaces evolve, there's always going to be firsts. Earlier this year, Wittwer left the navy after 37 years, and set up her own consulting firm, Steorra Consulting, helping organisations to increase womens participation and representation in the workplace - mainly in overseas armed forces, working with UN Women. She has twice been named in The Australian Financial Reviews 100 Women of Influence, and is a finalist in this years Canberra Women in Business Awards. But her two daughters, aged 21 and 18, still show no signs of wanting to follow in their mothers footsteps, a fact that makes her wistful. We've got a lot of very smart, very intelligent women in our organisation, and I think my two daughters would fit in very well, she says. But again, this is the end product of her years of trailblazing, of that original determination to just grit my teeth and bear it. People often say to young people, You can't be what you can't see, and we argue that we need to have role models, for young girls to see that there are women pilots, engineers, and all these other opportunities that exist, she says. Twenty-one years after 15-year-old Jessica Small was last seen screaming in the back of an old white sedan, homicide investigators have a message for the people involved, and "one million reasons" for them to finally speak up. "We know there are other people who haven't told us things ... and we know that the people who werent involved, but know about it, still havent come forward," homicide squad commander Detective Superintendent Scott Cook said. Jessica was last seen in the early hours of Sunday October 26, 1997, after she and a female friend attended the Amuse Me amusement centre on Russell Street, Bathurst. The girls entered a white-coloured sedan driven by an unknown man, in an attempt to hitch-hike home, although both were allegedly assaulted by the man, before Jessicas friend escaped. Parramatta Council might need to repay nearly $2 million in parking fines because inspectors have been marking tyres with crayon instead of chalk, potentially rendering masses of tickets invalid. The council sought legal advice over the possibly costly bungle that affected fines handed out after September 2017. It stemmed from a parking policy loophole, which the council is trying to close. Parramatta parking inspectors' preference for using industrial crayon, rather than chalk, has drawn attention to a legal loophole. Credit:Eddie Jim Parking inspectors in the western Sydney area use industrial crayon, rather than chalk, to scrawl on vehicle tyres for timing-related parking offences. The legal body representing Queensland solicitors has written to the head of the Crime and Corruption Commission and the state's attorney-general, asking them to share evidence about six men including four lawyers charged with fraud and money laundering offences. In the letters, Queensland Law Society president Ken Taylor advised both of the situation facing the industry after serious charges were lodged against the six men, which included four lawyers in Queensland. Queensland Law Society president Ken Taylor. "We note in our letter that the equivalent New South Wales legal profession legislation has a provision expressly empowering the local regulatory authority to suspend a practising certificate where a charge of a serious offence has been made but not yet determined but our Act has no corresponding specific power," Mr Taylor writes to Attorney-General Yvette D'Ath. "In this context, evidence beyond the mere fact of charge is needed to take action against any solicitor," he said. Queenslanders braced for searing lunchtime heat on Friday, with the mercury jumping six degrees in two hours in a township west of Brisbane. Brisbane was expected to reach 36 degrees and Ipswich was forecast to hit 37, sparking a warning from paramedics about the dangers of potentially fatal heat-related illnesses. The central-western town of Birdsville (pictured) was bracing for a top of 44 on Friday. Credit:Darren England/AAP At Gatton, in the Lockyer Valley west of Brisbane, the mercury tipped 32 degrees by 11am, six degrees hotter than at 9am. The Bureau of Meterology said the chance of a storm in Brisbane on Friday night was slight. A WA piggeries company, its manager and an employee were before court on Friday morning facing several charges relating to the illegal importation of pig semen. The accused faced Mandurah court on Friday morning. Credit:John Russell GD Pork Pty Ltd have yet to plead to 12 charges of aggravated illegal importation and four charges of bringing or importing conditionally non-prohibited goods into Australian territory. Managing director Torben Soerensen and internal consultant Henning Laue did not enter pleas in the Mandurah Magistrates Court to 11 charges of aiding, abetting, counselling or procuring the commissioning of an offence. The case has been the subject of an ongoing investigation by the Department of Agriculture and Water Resources since January 2017. A man who sexually abused his friends' children and is considered "well above average risk" of reoffending has had his sentence appeal thrown out. Matthew Robert Underwood was convicted in March of various sex offences committed against two boys, aged eight and 13, between November 2016 and February 2017 at his Perth home. Underwood was deemed to be a risk to the community if released. Underwood, who was 38 at the time of the crimes, was sentenced to nine years and six months behind bars, which the WA Court of Appeal ruled on Friday was not unreasonable or plainly unjust. The court heard he had also sexually offended against three girls, who were the daughters of his friends, in 2008 and 2009. Former education minister Simon Birmingham vetoed $4.2 million in recommended university research grants, the first time a minister has used such powers in more than a decade. Senator Birmingham blocked federal funding for 11 projects in the humanities and the arts at leading research universities last financial year, a move Labor has dubbed as "politicisation". The vetoed grants included nearly $1 million for a project called "Writing the Struggle for Sioux Modernity", $391,574 for "Price, Medals and Materials in the Global Exchange", $330,466 for "Legal Secularism in Australia", $336,000 for "Soviet Cinema in Hollywood Before the Blacklist, 1917-1950" and $162,000 for "Beauty and Ugliness as Persuasive Tools in Changing Chinas Gender Norms". Former education minister Simon Birmingham said taxpayers didn't want their money spent on frivolous research. Credit:Alex Ellinghausen The secret interventions were revealed in a late-night Senate estimates hearing on Thursday. On Friday, Senator Birmingham - who is now the Minister for Trade - defended his decisions, saying he approved more than 99.7 per cent of recommended grants during his tenure. Opposition Leader Bill Shorten has called on bank executives to hand back bonuses earned while their employees were fleecing customers, as more harrowing stories emerge of people mistreated by unscrupulous lenders. In apparently off-the-cuff remarks in Melbourne on Friday following a meeting with banking victims, Mr Shorten said people who stole from banks were jailed but "if the banks steal from you they [executives] get a bonus". "People shouldnt be getting bonuses in order to rip people off ... the rewards in the system are all wrong," he said. Opposition Leader Bill Shorten says people who steal from banks are jailed, while bankers who rip off customers are rewarded. Credit:AAP "I think it would be very healthy of people who have been in charge of banks and the boards to hand back some of their remuneration they've made over the last few years ... whilst [their banks] were exploiting ordinary Aussies. In any event, the rise of the base in political rhetoric is particularly dangerous for the Liberal Party, says Stirton, because, of all modern parties, it demonstrably has no such thing. In Robert Menzies famous words, the Liberal Party was to serve the forgotten people, those not represented by trade unions and those not to be found either in great luxury hotels and the petty gossip of so-called fashionable suburbs. Then prime minister Robert Menzies in 1965. Credit:R. L. Stewart Menzies Liberal Party was to be socially progressive and economically dry, hence Howards rhetoric of the broad church and his effective appeal not only to traditional conservatives but to the so-called Howard battlers. During the recent coup the term base was co-opted by the Liberal Partys conservative wing to mean, says Stirton, those people who agree with me. Or, bluntly, the partys right wing. One Liberal insider described this group this week not as conservative, but as reactionary. It is not hard to find evidence for Stirtons point. The plotters leader of choice was Peter Dutton, a man best known for articulating the rights various hard lines. In his maiden speech Dutton sought to recast Menzies own words. The fight for a better place in which to live is today made even more difficult for many reasons, not least of which is the fact that the boisterous minority and the politically correct seem to have a disproportionate say in public debate today, he said. The plotters leader of choice was Peter Dutton. Credit:Alex Ellinghausen The silent majority, the forgotten people - or the aspirational voter of our generation, as some like to term them - are fed up with bodies like the Civil Liberties Council and the Refugee Action Collective, and certainly the dictatorship of the trade union movement. Over the years Dutton came to embody the right in his position on asylum seekers and in his vigorous contempt for climate science. As the faction grew more frustrated with both Turnbulls centrism and his failure to dominate Labor in polling, Duttons champions made plain their claim for the base. Fundamentally in order to win elections, you have to start by securing your base, and reaching out across the spectrum, to a broad cross-section of the community, but it is very, very difficult to win elections, without your traditional supporters behind you, and that is one of the reasons, that a number of people have come to the conclusion that Peter Dutton is the best man to lead us, the ACT Senator Zed Seselja told ABCs 7.30 program days before the coup. Loading "You can't win an election without your base. It's a called a base for a reason and you build on it with other parts of the community, but you need to listen to your traditional supporters." Seseljas view - and that of his conservative colleagues - held firm even though support for Dutton was demonstrably limited. In an Essential poll conducted in April, Dutton was the preferred choice of Liberal leader of just 3 per cent of respondents, trailing Turnbull on 24 per cent, and Someone Else on 14 per cent. Just 4 per cent of Liberal voters backed him. Even in the wake of the bloodletting, prominent advocates of a return to a hardline have continued in their advocacy of base politics. Hours after Turnbull narrowly survived the Dutton challenge in August, the conservative commentator Janet Albrechtsen wrote, This is not over. There is unfinished business in the Liberal Party that guarantees another leadership spill. The rising damp of the wets in the party has left the joint with dodgy foundations. Until that is fixed, the Liberal Party will crumble further, unable to define itself, prosecute policy or win an election. She went on to observe that, Turnbull is decidedly more ABC than Sky News. And though he will say speaking with Leigh Sales rather than, say, Paul Murray is all about audience reach, Turnbull should be brave enough and smart enough to reach out to both audiences. Murrays audience is where Turnbull needs to make a mark. When you lose the base, its clear that you have lost your philosophical bearings. Turnbull might be more ABC than Sky News, but so is Australia. While Turnbull was favouring Leigh Sales over Paul Murray, her nightly audience was around 600,000 and his was less than 60,000. A similar gulf can be found between those self-identifying as the Liberal base and the opinions of the broader Australian public. While Tony Abbott opposed gay marriage, 61 per cent of Australians supported it, including 75 per cent of voters in Abbotts own seat. While the hardliners oppose action on climate change to keep faith with what they call the base, 58 per cent of Australians see it is as a critical threat according to a recent Lowy Institute poll, while 84 per cent want the government to focus on renewable energy even if it costs more. So why are the hardliners defending the base at such political cost? The Liberal Party may have learned the wrong lessons from Tony Abbotts 2013 victory, says John Stirton. Credit:Alex Ellinghausen Stirton points to two factors. He believes many may have learned the wrong lessons from Abbotts victory over Kevin Rudd in 2013. While it is understood by many of his supporters in the party to have been a win secured by the maintenance of a conservative hardline, Stirton believes it could also have been due to Abbotts effective communication and clarity in the face of a weak government. Secondly, he believes that many in the parliamentary party are no longer acting in their political self-interest, rather they are wedded to views that are becoming increasingly unpopular, much as parts of the Labor party were during their years in the wilderness. They truly believe that gay marriage is wrong, he says. They would rather be ideologically pure in opposition than compromised in government. Moderate Liberals have been flagging similar concerns. Senator Dean Smith told Fairfax Media this week he feared that the party risked losing touch with key demographics, particularly young voters. In all this discussion of the base, people have overlooked the fact that with our compulsory voting system we need to win the vote from the centre right, he said. He notes some people appear to have misread the success of US President Donald Trumps rhetorical flamboyance, noting that American politicians do need to narrow cast to their political base simply to motivate them to turn up to the polls. Emulating Trumps style has limited utility in Australia, he says. The political historian Judith Brett sees another trend in play. Like Stirton she believes that the term base is used too loosely, and often as a rhetorical tool to silence dissent. If such a thing did exist, she says, one working reasonable definition of it might be the card-carrying members, those foot soldiers who turn up to polling booths and help the party win elections. Though the major parties are coy about membership it is clear that it has been declining for both parties for many years. She estimates Liberal Party membership to be around 50,000. This leaves the Labor Party with an advantage, says Brett, because it can turn to the union movement for practical support during elections. In response the Liberal Party has been turning to church groups to fill the gaps. People brought up in the church, says Brett, make ideal political recruits. They are used to joining community events, to offering their time to support a common cause, and to public advocacy. Former prime minister John Howard appealed to traditional conservatives and the so-called Howard battlers. Credit:AAP Professor Marion Maddox, author of God Under Howard, says this trend is clear but hard to quantify. She agrees that there are more practising Christians in the Liberal Party - and in the Labor Party - than in the general population and more again in parliament. This trend, Brett and Maddox note, could be drawing the party to the right and redefining its base. An investigation by Fairfax Media earlier this year found that members of the Mormon church were making a concerted effort to take control of parts of the Victorian Liberal Party machine, securing nearly 13 per cent of key positions within the partys organisational wing, while making up just 0.3 per cent of all Australians. Answer me honestly. Does this sound like careful legislative process to you? Or does it sound like suspicious and indecent haste? A bill entered the lower house one Tuesday in September. The next day, Wednesday, was its second reading speech. The following Wednesday it was sent to committee, which gave a bare week for public submissions (of which, nevertheless, 110 were received) and a single day for a public hearing. A mere six days after that the final report final, mind was bound, gagged and delivered. A week later again, the full bill passed unmolested through both houses. Four weeks, go to woah. Water flows over the wall at Warragamba Dam. Credit: Or maybe, more accurately, go to woe. For this bill - which concerned citizens and interest groups enough to spawn 110 submissions in an instant, yet bothered politicians so little they whizzed it through unamended is legislation to enable raising the Warragamba dam wall by 14 metres. You might think its about water. Certainly, with a growing city, warming climate and shrinking rainfall youd be forgiven for making that presumption. But no. Wrong. Melbourne is becoming a place of "haves and have-nots" as the gap in income growth between the inner suburbs and the fast-growing fringe widens, new research shows. An influential advocacy group is now calling on the winner of next months state election to consider establishing a Greater Melbourne Commission, to better guide the citys development as it grows from its current 5 million residents to an anticipated 8 million by 2050. The Committee for Melbourne warns that, while Melbourne has been a success story, it is becoming "an economically polarised city, a place of haves and have nots, driven by our geographical size". Economist Peter Brain, transport expert Professor John Stanley and social resilience researcher Janet Stanley from Melbourne University last week presented new data from work they completed for the Municipal Association of Victoria. WA's Corruption and Crime Commission has dropped another report into corruption in the state's prisons, this time calling out the state government for failing to act on recommendations, some dating from 2012, and labelling the Department of Justice's response "disappointing". The CCC called for a "wholesale change of culture, simplified policies and procedures and improved technology" to combat prison corruption. It said "time is passing and action within our prison system is overdue" and the situation was reaching a "critical point". Corrective Services Minister Fran Logan in Parliament defending the McGowan Government's record on prisons. Credit:WA Parliament The report, which was released on Friday, highlighted a "disturbing failure to respond to recommendations to improve the management of prisons and prisoners in Western Australia". Winemakers are worried. The vines being planted now will be harvested in 2050. Changing climate means changing grapes, and different grapes make different wines. Can Bordeaux, once it has the climate of 20th century Tunisia, keep putting out wines even vaguely like the ones that gave it its supreme reputation? We certainly hope we will be able to, says Allan Sichel, wine merchant, winery owner and president of the Conseil Interprofessionnel du Vin de Bordeaux, the regions peak wine industry body. We want to keep and maintain the Bordeaux wine style; thats very important. Chateau Larose Trintaudon is a 300-year-old estate in the Haut-Medoc region of Bordeauxs wine country. Credit:Nick Miller The 2018 harvest is in, he says the dry whites, the reds, all except some of the sweet white wine grapes. Everyone is pleased with the quality, he says. Bordeaux had a fantastic August and September, sunny and warm and there was no rush to pick the grapes they could wait until they saw perfection on the vine. It was a relief after the spring, which was unusually damp, Sichet says. The drizzle and humidity had made it difficult to keep the mildew under control. Worse, some vineyards were hit by severe hail storms in April and July. Research on past Bordeaux vintages has found the best drops came from periods in which cool, wet winters and springs were followed by warm, dry summers. The only problem is that winemakers had to get back from their summer holidays early to avoid being caught out. The French take their summer holidays seriously, but a 2016 study found that harvest dates have moved two weeks earlier since the 1980s in Bordeaux. Sichel says climate change has had a positive effect so far on the region. Bordeaux always had a marginal climate pattern, he says. Thirty years ago you had three very good years in every 10, now we have more years with nice, full, ripe grapes. But we dont want it to go any further, because then things become rather difficult. There are signs the changing climate is changing the wine. There is a higher sugar content in the grapes, more alcohol in the finished wine. Bordeauxs reputation is based on digestibility and harmony and balance in the finished product, the sensation the consumer gets, Sichel says. But higher alcohol content can turn off some consumers and can mask complexities of aroma and flavour. Research has found the chemistry of grapes changes with more sunshine and warmth. The fruity and floral nuances, to quote one paper, improve at first but then hurt the wine, leading to increased perception of overripe fruity notes. Too high a temperature, and the aromatic compounds are essentially destroyed, with white wines especially vulnerable. Dry years also lower levels of an antioxidant in sauvignon blanc grapes that usually protects wines from premature aromatic ageing. And thats if they are even harvestable. We are also noticing more violent weather patterns, hail storms and severity of frosts, Sichel says. Even if overall global warming is helping us, it is also bringing lots of unsettled weather and fierce weather changes, which make it more difficult. It is a concern for the future and something we are trying to prepare for. In the short term producers are changing the way they work in the vineyard. In the past they used to increase canopy size on the vines to encourage photosynthesis; now, with more sunlight, they are reducing it. They used to de-leaf around the grape bunches; now they work to protect them. In the longer term vineyards can switch to later-ripening grape varieties, or even new varieties engineered to resist drought or floods. This could fall foul of the old appellation laws that govern French winemaking and give select brands their stature. These appellations are a mark of quality but also a handbrake on progress. But laws can change, says Sichel. Appellations may have to be opened up to new grape varieties. Many winemakers also want to end their restriction on irrigation. Regulation is also very tight about yields per hectare, leading to excess, excellent crop being destroyed. Sichel is a fan of a new proposal to allow this excess to be used by, for example, a winery whose vines were devastated by hail or mildew. It wouldnt just help that one winemaker, it would help the whole region keep a big presence on shop shelves during short harvests. Nobody is panicking, nobody is unduly worried, but everybody is thinking about it and preparing, Sichel says. One of the people they turn to for advice is Nathalie Ollat, at the University of Bordeauxs Institut des Sciences de la Vigne et du Vin (ISVV). Ollat is the head of a France-wide project to examine the impact of, and adaptation to, climate change in the wine industry. She agrees that, so far, growing conditions are better than they were before. By the mid-21st century, she says, the system will have to adapt. And by 2100, with up to five degrees of warming predicted, there are much more concerns. We may have some technical solutions but they will be more difficult to implement and it will raise more questions regarding the appellation system, the way the industry is organised and the way French wines are marketed, she says. Maybe it is possible to keep the frame, the idea of terroir, but the way it is organised will have to evolve. Ollat says the best way to tackle the problem is through developing more drought and sunshine-resistant strains of grapevine work that is taking place at the ISVV, which is testing new varieties in its backyard vineyard. But this comes up against the appellation rules, which have a very closed approach to which grapes can be planted where. It is very difficult to introduce new varieties in the appellation, Ollat says. Appellation doesnt mean no innovation, but it does take a long time because it has to be decided collectively by all the growers. You have to convince them it wont change the idea behind, or the way to market [the wine]. If you change the link to the origin, does it lose what it means? They know they have to do something but they are concerned by the fact that appellation is a very good marketing system and they want to keep it. How to change without changing too much? Latest News Effi launches solution that can get brokers paid their commission on the day of settlement New product can reduce the time it takes for commissions to get paid from 45-60 days to just one NAB throws weight behind e-lodgement disruptor Sympli Major mortgage lender signs deal with conveyancing start-up A fintech founder with a passion to change the way banking is done, has explained why he will not be disregarding the broker channel in the future. Speaking to Australian Broker at Salesforces Financial Services Basecamp in Sydney last week, the co-founder and CEO of volt, Steve Weston, said the broker proposition was outstanding. Although technology and regulation will continue to disrupt the industry, he said changes to the broker role will simply provide better customer outcomes. Volt was the first entity to be granted a restricted banking licence, after the Australia Prudential Regulation Authority (APRA) announced it would provide a new way for groups to register as a bank. The Restricted ADI licence is meant to assist potential new entrants to the industry as they navigate the licencing process with limited funds. Volt was granted its Restricted ADI in May and Weston believes the full licence will be granted by the end of this year. After becoming a fully licenced bank, the 100% digital bank is planning to move from deposits to personal loans to home loans within its first year. Explaining why Weston decided digital was the way forward, he said, Banking has always been done the same way and banks have competed largely based on distribution. So the most successful banks were those with the most branches: that was the competitive advantage. The world is changing. With the growing popularity of smartphones, thats the branch. Suddenly youre previous competitive advantage has now become a commodity. Itll be your product thats your competitive advantage, but not product in the sense of a deposit or a loan or a car. Despite going 100% digital for his bank, Weston said there were certain aspects that needed human creativity. He used the analogy of asking a robot to fetch a specific cleaning product out from under the kitchen sink, saying the human brain was much more complex and capable of understanding which product to choose. He added, Home loans are a really complex product suite. The biggest financial transaction that most people will make. Many people are going to want to see the colour of someones eyes before they trust a machine. In volt banks case well even have our own mortgage team, but if were going to respect customer choice the broker proposition is outstanding, so well be broker sourced. It doesnt matter what I think, customers are going to need them, getting that impartial advice, being able to access a choice of providers. Its incredibly attractive. Weston said with new technologies and the introduction of open banking next year consumers may be able to do things like refinance a mortgage or switch to P&I themselves. Instead of this taking away the ongoing role of a broker, however, he said the role will change to one with a better customer experience. Weston said, Theyll focus on rapport building, educating customers about all the things that they need to know about home loans, to make sure all their needs are met and not just the home loan because they might only buy one home in their life. How can you pay more debt down quickly? Brokers will be able to service a larger number of customers. Theyll get them in the right home loan and then the brokers role will change to help them get rid of the thing. The minute they have the home loan they want to get rid of it. So brokers will have more a role to help people repay loans than we have seen in the past. Sign up for our PoliticsNY newsletter for the latest coverage and to stay informed about the 2021 elections in your district and across NYC The Feds on Friday arrested a former Brooklynite now living in Florida for allegedly mailing a dozen bombs to news organizations, politicians, and activists often criticized by President Trump, according to multiple reports. Authorities cuffed the 56-year-old registered Republican in the Sunshine State hours after the latest of his man-made explosive devices were intercepted en route to the offices of CNN the second of his bombs to shipped to the networks Manhattan headquarters and Democratic New Jersey Senator Cory Booker earlier that morning, multiple outlets reported. The suspect started his alleged maniacal mass-mailing days ago, sending an explosive device to the home of billionaire George Soros, a donor to Democratic causes and frequent Trump target, that arrived on Monday. Officials on Wednesday, Thursday, and Friday recovered more bombs sent to the homes and offices of blue pols and their supporters, including former President Barack Obama, former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, California Rep. Maxine Waters and Senator Kamala Harris, actor Robert De Niro, and former Vice President Joe Biden all of whom have been publicly bashed by the 45th President. The former Brooklynite suspected of sending the bombs has racked up a lengthy rap sheet since 1991, according to a New York Times report, which notes his arrests for felony theft, drug and fraud charges, and previously threatening to detonate a bomb. He will in part be prosecuted in a Manhattan federal court, according to the Times. And the Floridian by way of Brooklyn isnt the only suspected bomber in federal custody with connections to Kings County last December, cops cuffed Flatlands resident Akayed Ullah after he nearly blew himself up in a botched attempt to bomb a Manhattan subway station, and the suspects trial is expected to start next week in Manhattan, according to court documents. Dear Reader, Business Standard has always strived hard to provide up-to-date information and commentary on developments that are of interest to you and have wider political and economic implications for the country and the world. Your encouragement and constant feedback on how to improve our offering have only made our resolve and commitment to these ideals stronger. Even during these difficult times arising out of Covid-19, we continue to remain committed to keeping you informed and updated with credible news, authoritative views and incisive commentary on topical issues of relevance. We, however, have a request. As we battle the economic impact of the pandemic, we need your support even more, so that we can continue to offer you more quality content. Our subscription model has seen an encouraging response from many of you, who have subscribed to our online content. More subscription to our online content can only help us achieve the goals of offering you even better and more relevant content. We believe in free, fair and credible journalism. Your support through more subscriptions can help us practise the journalism to which we are committed. Support quality journalism and subscribe to Business Standard. Digital Editor With the sixth and final season of Netflixs wildly popular original series House of Cards slated to be released on November 2, I have been meaning to watch all the previous five. I have wanted to write about the series for some time but have not been able to do so. But, earlier this week, events on Raisina Hill not Capitol Hill prompted me to return to the series that I had binged on early last year, when Season 5 was released. I am referring to the midnight rejig of brass at the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) on Tuesday, and the series of incidents that ... With promoters wanting to get back Essar Steel, lawyers expect the insolvency case to drag on. Lenders could outright reject the promoters offer even if they want to pay the entire debt, since lawyers say such an offer is invalid. Withdrawal of this application is not permissible as the company has come forth for payment after the due process. Expression of interest to the selection of bidder and voting has been completed. Section 12(A) does not allow withdrawal once all processes are over under the Insolvency and Bankruptcy Code (IBC), Shardul Shroff, executive ... Led by robust growth in nearly all its major business verticals, cigarette-FMCG major ITC Ltd met Street estimates to post an 11.9 per cent growth in its net profit for the quarter ended September 31, 2018, at Rs 29.55 billion. The same during the corresponding quarter of the previous financial year stood at Rs 26.40 billion. Its gross revenue from the sale of products and services stood at Rs 110.95 billion during the second quarter of the current financial year as against Rs 96.76 billion earned in the similar quarter of the last financial year. However, ITC said that these ... South Korean telecom giant Samsung is planning to conduct 5G field trials in the country by the first quarter of next year. The trials are likely to be held in Delhi, and for the purpose, the company is working closely with the Department of telecommunications (DoT). Samsung India senior vice-president and head (network business) Srinivasan Sundararajan said the trails will be done for technology and use cases that are already available commercially. Asked if the company is in talks with any telecom operator for the trials, Sundararajan said Reliance Jio is its prime ... Hours after four Intelligence Bureau (IB) personnel were caught in a dramatic move by the security staff of Director outside his residence in the heart of the capital, the released all of them, an official said. spokesperson Madhur Verma told IANS, "All the four IB personnel were released by the police after they were handed over to it by Verma's security staff." He said the police did not receive any complaint from any of the parties. On Thursday morning, the security staff of Verma, who was stripped of his powers post midnight Tuesday, caught hold of the IB personnel who were seated in two parked cars outside the Director's Janpath residence and dragged them into his house. Each IB operative was caught by at least two of Verma's guards -- in one case one man was held by his collar -- and taken into Verma's bungalow and asked to reveal their identity. The men had been seen in their cars since Wednesday night, raising suspicion that they were spying on Verma. The chief had earlier been sent "on leave" by the after a high-profile spat with CBI Special Director Rakesh Asthana, who too has been sent on leave. As a video showing the men being dragged by Verma's security officers went viral, the IB admitted that the men were its operatives. "The IB is entrusted with the responsibility of collecting intelligence on situations that may affect, inter alia, public order and internal security. Its units are routinely deployed on a regular basis in sensitive areas," the normally reticent IB said in a statement. "One such unit, in early hours of today (Thursday), halted on Janpath, where there was an unusual collection of people. This was with a view to check the reason why people had collected at the location... This is a high security zone. Unfortunately, their presence was projected otherwise," the statement said. The four men were handed over to and they identified themselves as Dheeraj Kumar, Ajay Kumar, Prashant Kumar and Vineet Kumar Gupta. Dheeraj Kumar and Ajay Kumar told the police they were junior IB officers while the other two claimed to be seniors in the Bureau. Identity cards and several were recovered from their possession. Verma and his deputy Asthana were divested of their duties on Tuesday night amid an unprecedented feud in the agency as the two hit out at each other over bribery accusations. The Bombay High Court on Friday restrained Pune Police from arresting civil rights activist Gautam Navlakha, an accused in the Bhima-Koregaon case, till November 1. A division bench of Justices Ranjit More and Bharati Dangre adjourned the hearing on Navlakha's plea till November 1, and extended the interim protection from arrest granted to him till then. Navlakha, in a petition filed through advocate Yug Chowdhary, has sought quashing of the FIR lodged against him by Pune police. The high court, however, refused to grant any interim relief to professor Anand Teltumbde, a co-accused in the case who has not been arrested yet. Teltumbde moved the high court Friday afternoon after his anticipatory (pre-arrest) bail plea was rejected by a lower court. The high court said it will hear his plea on November 1. Government lawyer Aruna Pai opposed the pleas of both Navlakha and Teltumbde. Police have enough evidence against the two as well as the other accused, she said. Advocate Chowdhary, on the other hand, said the charges against Navlakha and the other accused are baseless, and they are "professors and intellectuals working in public interest for decades". Arun Ferreira, another accused in the case whose house arrest ends Friday, also approached the high court seeking an extension of the house arrest. But the division bench did not grant him an extension, saying that it will hear him on November 1. Navlakha, Varavara Rao, Ferreira, Vernon Gonsalves and Sudha Bharadwaj were arrested on August 28 for allegedly having links with Maoists in the aftermath of violence at Bhima Koregaon in Pune district on January 1. Police alleged that Maoists had supported the Elgar Parishad conclave in Pune which led to the violence. Navlakha was released by the Delhi High Court after which he moved the Bombay High Court seeking to quash the FIR. A special court in Mumbai directed Thursday that Shyamvar Rai, an accused-turned-approver in the murder case, be produced on October 29. Rai, lodged in the Taloja prison in Navi Mumbai since his arrest in 2015, has written a letter to the court. A former driver of prime accused was earlier named as an accused in the case, but later became an approver (a prosecution witness). Responding to his letter, special judge J C Jagdale asked prison officials to produce him in the court Monday. While the content of his letter was not known, an official said he has pleaded for bail. He had written a similar letter, seeking release on bail, in April this year. The murder of 24-year-old Sheena Bora, daughter of media executive from an earlier relationship, came to light in August 2015 after Rai, arrested for illegal possession of a firearm, spilled the beans. The arrested Indrani, her former husband Sanjeev Khanna and Rai in the murder case. Indrani's husband Peter Mukerjea, a former media baron, was arrested later on the charge of being part of the conspiracy. was allegedly killed in April 2012. As per the CBI, a financial dispute within the family led to her murder. Congress President Friday courted arrest after staging a protest outside the CBI headquarters in New Delhi against the move to divest CBI Director of his powers and send him on leave. Earlier addressing the gathering Gandhi attacked Prime Minister over the issue. He also accused him of destroying institutions including the CBI, the Election Commission and the Enforcement Directorate. Senior Congress leaders, including Ashok Gehlot, Ahmed Patel, Motilal Vora, Veerappa Moily and Anand Sharma, took part in the march that culminated in a demonstration ahead of the CBI headquarters. Loktantrik Janata Dal leader Sharad Yadav, leader D Raja and TMC's Nadimul Haque joined the protest. The Congress' protests in the capital were replicated in other parts of the country. State Congress leaders led demonstrations in their regions against what the Congress described as the "illegal, unconstitutional and illegitimate removal of the CBI director by the Modi-Shah duo". The apex court said former Supreme Court judge A K Patnaik will oversee a CVC inquiry into the allegations against Verma and the report has to be placed before it within two weeks. It directed that interim CBI chief M Nageswara Rao shall not take any major policy decisions. Decisions taken by him since October 23 till date shall not be implemented, it said. All decisions taken by Rao shall be placed before the apex court in a sealed cover. The Union Home Ministry has directed platforms to take concrete steps to prevent spread of rumours and messages inciting unrest, cyber crimes and other activities that could be detrimental to security. The sites -- Google, Twitter, WhatsApp, Facebook, Instagram, and others --have also been asked to nominate India-based grievance redressal officers, develop a monitoring mechanism for time-bound preventive and other actions to remove objectionable contents from public view, said a Home Ministry official on Thursday. Chairing a review meeting with the representatives of these platforms on Wednesday, Union Home Secretary Rajiv Gauba told them to promptly share the information sought by law enforcement agencies for investigation purposes. In the meeting, the representatives of the social media platforms explained the actions taken by them to ensure blocking of websites, removal of objectionable, malicious contents from public view, said the official. "All social media platforms assured full cooperation in this regard." Gauba had earlier held a review with the representatives of social media platforms on June 28 and since then a series of meetings have taken place with law enforcement agencies and social media firms to ensure an effective mechanism to prevent misuse of these platforms by anti- elements. The government's step comes in the wake of recent incidents where social media platforms were used by some miscreants to spread rumours, causing unrest, inciting cyber crimes especially against women and children and other activities against the interest. Over 35 deaths due to lynching have been reported from nine states in 2017 after circulation of rumours on social media. designated terrorist and 26/11 attacks mastermind Hafiz Saeed's Jamaat-ud-Dawa (JuD) and Falah-i-Insaniyat Foundation (FIF) are no longer mentioned in the list of banned outfits after a presidential ordinance that prohibited them under a UN resolution lapsed. In February, former promulgated an ordinance amending the Anti- Act 1997, thereby banning terrorist individuals and organisations that were listed by the The JuD and FIF were proscribed under this ordinance. According to a petition filed by Saeed, his counsel Raja Rizwan Abbasi and Sohail Warraich told the Islamabad High Court (IHC) on Thursday that the ordinance had lapsed and was never extended by the Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) government, The Dawn reported. The globally designated terrorist challenged the ordinance under which his organisations, the JuD and FIF, were blacklisted for being on the watch list of the In his plea, Saeed had claimed that the ordinance issued was against the sovereignty and the Constitution of The counsel informed Justice Aamer Farooq of the IHC that the ordinance was neither extended by the current government nor it was tabled in the to convert it into an act. Subsequently, the judge said that Saeed's plea was no longer effective as the ordinance was not extended by the government. The had banned terror organisations and individuals from making donations to JuD, FIF, and others on the sanctions list. The UNSC sanctions list includes the names of terror organisations such as al-Qaeda, Tehreek-e- Pakistan, Lashkar-e-Jhangvi, JuD, FIF, and Ahead of his visit to Japan on Saturday for the annual bilateral summit with his counterpart Shinzo Abe, Prime Minister said on Friday that his visit is aimed at boosting trade and investment ties and bilateral cooperation in new areas. "I will have wide-ranging talks with Abe and interact with business leaders and captains of industry from both countries," Modi said in a pre-departure statement here, adding that he will also interact with members of the Indian community there. "These interactions will help to further strengthen our trade and investment ties, and cooperation in new areas such as healthcare, digital technologies, agriculture and food processing, disaster risk reduction and disaster resilient infrastructure." Stating that Japan was one of the "most trusted partners" in India's economic and technological modernisations and one of the top investors in India, Modi said: "Projects like Mumbai-Ahmedabad High Speed Rail and Dedicated Freight Corridors reflect the high level and strength of our economic engagement. "Japan is also at the forefront of engaging in our initiatives, such as 'Make in India', ;Skill India', 'Digital India', 'Start Up India'." He also said that Japanese investors had faith in India's economic future, "which is marked with myriad opportunities". "We value Japan's global leadership in innovation, technologies and best practices. "During this visit, I will have a chance to see some of Japan's high-tech capabilities in robotics." This will be Modi's third visit to Japan since 2014 for the annual bilateral summit and his 12th meeting with Abe. While India is the only country with which Japan holds annual bilateral summits, India has a similar mechanism with Russia too. It's the month when summer slips into autumn and festivities are in the air with celebrations but October is also when violent cyclones are likely to batter India's eastern coast, as Mrityunjay Mohapatra knows only too well. It has been 13 years since the additional director general of the (IMD), who specialises in predicting and monitoring cyclones, went home to his village in for This year was no different, said India's 'cyclone man', who spent the festival week tracking Cyclone that struck the coasts of and Andhra Pradesh, killing over 50 people, and Cyclone Lubna that hit Yemen. is in charge of the north Indian Ocean region. Mohapatra, 53, and his team have been busy tracking and predicting the two cyclones -- hit early morning of October 11. "My entire team was in office as we were giving hourly updates," Mohapatra said. Mohapatra and his team won praise from the World Meteorological Organisation, a UN body, for their precise prediction. "Cyclonic storms # and #Lubna recently hit India, Oman and Yemen. Accurate warnings and forecasts from WMO Specialised Meteorological Centre New Delhi @Indiametdept helped minimise impact and save lives," the World Meteorological Department tweeted. It is not the first time that Mohapatra's team has won accolades. Their precise forecast led to many lives being saved when Cyclones Phailin (2013), an extremely severe cyclone, and Hudhud (2014), hit the state. Cyclone are a regular phenomenon in and in October-November. For Mohapatra, cyclones come with the distressing memories of childhood. On October 29, 1971, a deadly cyclone, which claimed 10,000 lives, hit the Odisha coast and also his village in Bhadrak district. He was only six at the time but the vision of his ravaged village remains etched in his mind. At that time, there was no system of cyclone prediction. No one in our village owned even a radio so there was no question of us knowing about the impending natural calamity. My father stepped out for some work and realised the flow of the streams in our village had surged due to the storm and saline water was steadily increasing, Mohapatra said. There were only two 'pucca' houses in the village, barely five kilometres from the coast. One of them belonged to the Mohapatra family and nearly 300 people took refuge there. Among those killed were one of Mohapatra's uncles. Once the waters abated, people died of water borne diseases, he said. Eleven years later, in October 1982, another deadly cyclone hit the state, again killing nearly 10,000 people. Mohapatra's family lost the entire paddy crop, the only source of income for the family. At that time there was hardly anything to eat. The paddy crop across the cyclone-hit state was destroyed, he said. The two disasters left an indelible impression. After completing his masters in Physics, he joined the Defence Research and Development Organisation (DRDO) laboratory in Chandipur. This was also the time that the first Agni missile was tested in 1988. After the successful test, (former president and then a senior scientist at the DRDO) Dr APJ Abdul Kalam shook hands with everyone in the team, he said. The job as a scientific assistant did not give him the satisfaction he was seeking, so he took up a job as a lecturer at a government college in Bhubaneswar. When there was an opening at the IMD, he knew it was his calling. I was earning more as a professor, but there was little scope of research. Plus the childhood hardships haunted me, Mohapatra said. He was also a part of the cyclone warning division at the Bhubaneswar when the 1998 super cyclone hit Odisha and It was the also the time the decided to gear up in a major way to invest in the prediction of cyclones. By 1998, our monitoring of cyclone had improved, but not the forecasting, Mohapatra said. After getting transferred to Delhi, Mohapatra has been working mostly on cyclone prediction. However, the Cyclone Warning Division and the got a bad name during Cyclone Ockhi 2017 that killed several people in Kerala. The state government also alleged that the IMD failed to provide precise forecast. Indian public sector companies have already placed orders with Iran for crude oil supply during November, a senior government official said on Friday. "Our public sector companies have already placed orders for the month of November with Iran," said Sunjay Sudhir, joint secretary for international cooperation at the Ministry of Petroleum and Natural Gas. "Iran, historically, has been a key supplier of crude for India," he stressed after presenting investment opportunities in the Indian Strategic Petroleum Reserve programme Phase II (ISPR) to Singapore-based investors. "In India, we are guided by our consideration for energy security," Sudhir said. He also said Indian officials were in talks with the US on waivers relating to Washington's sanctions on dealing with Iran. 65 per cent of India's crude supply comes from the Middle-East from Iraq, Saudi Arabia and Iran. The other two main suppliers are Venezuela and Nigeria. Crude oil supply from the US has been choked due to the pipeline and terminal infrastructure at the supply points. "The constraints are on the US infrastructure side," he said. India has imported about 30 million barrels of US crude over the last year, starting October 2017. India imports over 80 per cent of its crude oil needs. Touching on the ISPR II programme, Sudhir said, "we are exploring the Public-Private Partnership (PPP) model". The final investment model will depend on investors' participation, he said. The Indian government's participation will depend on how the investors respond to ISPR II. Investors are being sought for the $1.6 billion cavern-type facilities at Chandikhol in Odisha and Padur in Karnataka for storing 6.5 million metric tons of crude oil. The ISPR I, in partnership with ADNOC of Abu Dhabi, is for holding 5.33 million metric tons of crude oil, on a seven-year contract basis. National security is served by the fact that there is always the minimum threshold, with the government having the first right of refusal, said Sudhir. ISPR II would be a contractual obligation based on a seven-year contract as is the case for ISPR I with ADNOC. Kerala will need about Rs 310 billion for recovery and reconstruction following the century's worst floods, according to a UN report presented to the Chief Minister by UN Resident Coordinator in India Yuri Afanasiev. Afanasiev presented the Post Disaster Needs Assessment (PDNA) report to Chief Minister here on Friday. This is the first time the UN has prepared such a report in India. The report assessed the damage and loss incurred due to the devastating floods in the state in August. It said the state would need about Rs 310 billion for recovery and reconstruction. The highest amount would be needed for the reconstruction of roads and transportation (Rs 100.46 billion), followed by housing (Rs 54.43 billion), agriculture, fisheries and livestock (Rs 44.98 billion), employment and livelihood (Rs 38.96 billion), other infrastructure (Rs 24.46 billion), irrigation (Rs 14.83 billion) and water and sanitation (Rs 13.31 billion). The report highlighted the international examples and models for building back a better Kerala in 16 sectors. It suggested that Kerala could become the first green state in the country by building on the four pillars of integrated water resources management; eco-sensitive and risk-informed approaches to land use and planning; inclusive and people-centred approaches; and by adopting knowledge, innovation and technology. Chief Minister Vijayan thanked the UN for providing support to the state for flood response and developing the PDNA. He sought UN technical support in developing sectoral recovery plans, bringing international models and new technologies to Kerala and in strengthening the recovery committees with experts. The Chief Minister sought UN support for mobilising resources for the state within and outside the country. Kerala Finance Minister Thomas Issac thanked the UN for its assistance in mobilising grants for reconstruction. "This would reduce the amount of borrowing." The PDNA is the global methodology developed by the UN, the World Bank and the European Union to assess damage and loss in the wake of disaster and to recommend the recovery needs and strategies. In all, 76 experts from 10 UN agencies and EU across 13 sectors collaborated to develop the report in 20 days. The UN agencies included UNDP, UNICEF, UNESCO, UN Women, UNFPA, UNEP, WHO, WFP, ILO and FAO and adopted reports of three sectors from World Bank and ADB. Besides, two experts on integrated water resources management from the Netherlands also provided support. The report was prepared after visiting 120 villages in 10 districts and interacting with experts, affected people, elected representatives, officials and representatives of civil society organisations. The Swedish Consulate will stage special screenings of select works of the renowned Swedish filmmaker Ingmar Bergman to mark his birth centenary as part of the 20th Jio MAMI Mumbai Film Festival with Star, an official said here on Friday. The screenings will be held in selected Mumbai cinemas from Saturday as part of the ongoing global celebrations of the birth centennial of Bergman, who passed away in July 2007. The to be screened between October 27-31 are his masterpieces like "Seventh Seal", "Sarabanda, "Summer With Monika", "Persona", and "Searching Ingmar Bergman". "Bergman is undoubtedly one of the best-known Swedes in the world. He is also widely regarded as one of the foremost filmmakers in cinematic history and has directed more than 40 feature films," said Bjorn Holmgren, the Charge d'Affaires of the Swedish Consulate. The other best-known of Bergman are "The Silence", "Wild Strawberries" and his last film "Fanny and Alexander", he added. Later this year, the #Bergman100 will be screened at the 49th Goa International Film Festival of India (IFFI), where additional like "Autumn Sonata" and "Bergman Island" shall also be shown. Ingmar Bergman Foundation CEO Jan Holmberg said that the huge interest in celebrating #Bergman100 exceeded their highest expectations. "Though great art is timeless, it still needs support from public and private institutions to remain available. Most important, it needs the support of the audience, and the art of Bergman, luckily, enjoys all this," remarked Holmberg. Born in Uppsala, Sweden on July 14, 1918, Bergman became a world-acclaimed director, writer and producer working in films, television, radio and theatre. Ranked among the most accomplished and powerful filmmakers of all time, other notable works include "Smiles of a Summer Night", "Cries and Whispers", "Screens from a Marriage" and three of his films bagged the Academy Awards in the Best Foreign Language Film category. He died in his home country on July 30, 2007, at the age of 89. Ahead of Pakistan Prime Minister Imran Khan's maiden visit, China on Friday sounded positive about extending new loans to Islamabad to avoid another IMF bailout package which may carry stringent conditions. Khan's visit from November 2 to China, Pakistan's all-weather ally, will come ahead of a visit to Islamabad by Monetary Fund (IMF) officials on November 7 for formal discussions on a bailout package for the cash-strapped country. "We noted the difficulties faced by Pakistan in its financial situation...we support Pakistan in taking proactive measures to deal with this. Actually, we also provide our utmost efforts and assistance to Pakistan," Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesperson Hua Chunying told a media briefing Friday. "We believe Pakistan has the capability to ensure steady economic development," Hua said. She was replying to a query on whether China would consider providing new financial assistance to Pakistan during Khan's visit. Khan, accompanied by Foreign Minister Shah Mahmood Qureshi, will lead a delegation from November 2-5 to Beijing for talks with Chinese President amid anxieties here over his government's approach to deal with the $60 billion China-Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC) following reports about Islamabad downsizing certain projects. Pakistan has reportedly sought to amend the CPEC, which Beijing touts as the flagship infrastructure programme in its vast Belt and Road Initiative, to put greater emphasis on projects that focus on social development, rather than purely on infrastructure. The US has said the debts accrued on the CPEC projects were to blame for Pakistan's current economic crisis, a statement which was rejected by both Beijing and Islamabad. The IMF had said it would closely scrutinise CPEC projects and US is opposed to using IMF money to service the Chinese loans. Though Pakistan has approached the IMF for a bailout package, it is also in touch with other "friendly nations" for loans so as to minimise borrowing from the lender. "Their (friendly nations) response is positive. I am quite hopeful that we will not have to approach the IMF for our economic needs," Khan said on Wednesday. Pakistan has also recently secured $6 billion in financial support from Saudi Arabia, another close ally. Replying to a query on China's expectations from Khan's visit, the Foreign Ministry spokesman said, "China and Pakistan are all weather strategic cooperative partners. We enjoy high standard bilateral relations. After Imran Khan was elected Prime Minister, he reaffirmed Pakistan's commitment to developing our bilateral relations as well as the CPEC." Recalling Chinese State Councillor and Foreign Minister Wang Yi's recent visit to Pakistan after Khan's government took over power, she said, "We compared notes and reached a wide consensus on a series of issues." "We will try to make our relations a pillar underpinning the regional peace and will ensure full success for Khan's visit this time to make greater progress in China Pakistan relations," Hua added. The Pakistani premier would also visit Shanghai to attend China's import and export fair which would be inaugurated on November 4. Khan has reiterated his government's support to CPEC projects during Wang's visit to Islamabad. Hua also spoke about Khan's reiteration of his commitment for CPEC projects. However, according to a Dawn report, during his meetings, "Khan would inform the Chinese leadership that his government wanted to bring about a significant shift in the projects falling under the purview of CPEC". Quoting sources, the report said 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 centrestage. There were also concerns in Beijing about Khan roping in Saudi Arabia to invest in Balochistan bordering Iran. The province is key to CPEC as it terminates at the strategic located there. The CPEC connects China's Xinjiang province with Gwadar through a rail, road and pipeline network. China do not want the CPEC projects to get caught in the Saudi-Iran rivalry. India is opposed to the CPEC as it traverses through Pakistan-occupied Kashmir. In moments of national crisis, presidents typically reach for unifying themes, as Bill Clinton did after the Oklahoma City bombing and George W. Bush did with the bullhorn on the wrecked fire truck after 9/11. President Trump on Thursday chose confrontation over conciliation. Upset that critics linked a spate of pipe bombs targeting his adversaries to his own angry messaging, Mr. Trump abandoned the scripted call for national solidarity he issued the day before and lashed out at perceived enemies for fomenting the toxic political environment they say he has encouraged. Even ... US Defence Secretary is expected to sign deployment orders that could send over 800 more troops to the border with to help border patrol authorities stop a migrants' caravan from Central America to enter the US. Administration officials told on Thursday that final details were being worked out including where the troops will come from and their specific tasks. It was anticipated that the would pay for the bulk of the mission by using active duty troops but it was not yet clear if the Department of Homeland Security would reimburse the According to the officials, the has been under growing pressure from the to send troops to the southern border, especially after repeatedly called for the use of the The troops will not engage in lethal operations to stop the migrants. Instead they are expected to provide fencing, wall materials and other technical support at several key points along the border where it is believed the migrants may try to cross. They will also provide tents and medical care for border authorities in those areas and retain the right of self-defence, but border patrol officers will still be the ones physically stopping illegal migration, the officials told The troops are expected to be in position next week. On Thursday morning, the caravan left Mapastepec, Mexico, about 80 miles from the Mexico- border and it isn't expected to reach the US border for weeks. Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman of Saudi Arabia wowed a hall full of global investors with his plan to build a $500 billion city of the future that would attract the worlds brightest minds in business and tech. But that was last year. This year, many of those investors stayed away as the killing of the dissident Saudi columnist Jamal Khashoggi cast a shadow over the princes trademark investment conference and his wider ambitions to reform the kingdoms economy. It is both a political and an economic crisis, said Karen E. Young, a resident ... Japan pledged to "actively participate" in China's ambitious (BRI) as the two nations on Friday shed their bitterness over territorial disputes and vowed to promote economic cooperation during talks held between the leaders of Asia's two biggest economies on improving ties amid their trade friction with the US. Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, who is on a rare visit to Beijing, held talks with his Chinese counterpart Li Keqiang and called on President The multi-billion dollar BRI project has evoked global concerns over growing indebtedness of small countries to China. The two countries have agreed to create a "new framework" to jointly move ahead with infrastructure projects in third nations and strengthen a wide range of cooperation ranging from finance to innovation, Japanese news agency Kyodo reported after Abe's meeting with Xi. "Japan has also expressed its readiness to actively participate in the BRI...We are now actively conducting third market cooperation. We are looking for more proactive cooperation in this regard," Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesperson Hua Chunying told media here on Friday. "We will build the third-party cooperation as a new pillar of our cooperation," she said. India is opposed to the BRI as it includes the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC), which transverses through Pakistan-occupied Kashmir. According to observers, China has begun warming up to India and Japan, two of its most significant neighbours, as it grapples with a trade war initiated by the US President Japan too is facing a trade dispute with the US. The two sides also signed several agreements after Abe and Li's meeting on Friday. The two leaders also met on Thursday. Abe's visit to Beijing comes days ahead of Prime Minister Narendra Modi's visit to Japan to boost bilateral ties. The agreements included cooperation in state-of-the-art technology and protection of intellectual property rights, as well as to resume their currency swap line in times of financial emergency, Kyodo reported. ALSO READ: Abe to bring 500 Japanese business leaders to Beijing amid US trade spat The delegation of Abe, who is the first Japanese premier to visit China in seven years, included about 1,000 Japanese businessmen. Li said they had signed 500 agreements worth $18 billion. The central banks of the two countries also signed a three-year, bilateral currency swap agreement enabling both sides to swap up to about $28.8 billion. "Switching from competition to collaboration, I want to lift Japan-China relations to a new era... Japan and China are neighbours and partners. We will not become a threat of each other," Abe told Li. During his meeting with Abe, Xi said, "As the situation changes, China and Japan are becoming increasingly dependent on one another." He said the two neighbours have a growing number of common interests and concerns on a multilateral level. "The rapid changes in the world are providing China and Japan with opportunities for more in-depth cooperation," Xi said. The Japanese TV NHK quoted Abe as saying, "I want to use my visit as an opportunity to elevate the Japan-China relationship to a new phase from competition to cooperation...We need to maintain and further develop fair and free trade systems...we want to work with China for the peace and stability of the world, and the region, and that's what countries around the world expect of us." ALSO READ: China may use currency reserves to prevent yuan from breaching 7 per dollar In an apparent reference to Japanese invasion in an early 20th century during which the Japanese army was accused of committing massive human rights violations, Xi said, "China and Japan have interacted for more than 2,000 years...In that long history, there were deplorable times and the Chinese people suffered tremendously." Besides the rancour over Japanese army committing alleged human rights violations, ties between the two countries hit rock bottom in 2012 after Japan purchased some of the disputed islands in the East China Sea from their Japanese owner. While Japan calls the islands Senkakus, Chinese refer to them as Diaoyu islands. Though Japan controls the islands, both China and Taiwan make their claim over them. When Donald Trump offered to pay $10,000 from his personal charitable foundation for a six-foot oil portrait of himself, the future president only meant to get the bidding started during a 2014 auction at his Mar-a-Lago resort, his lawyer told a New York judge. No one else bid, attorney Alan Futerfas said in a packed Manhattan courtroom on Thursday, so hes stuck with the painting. Trumps lawyer offered the account as one of several reasons why New York Attorney General Barbara Underwoods lawsuit against the Donald J. Dear Reader, Business Standard has always strived hard to provide up-to-date information and commentary on developments that are of interest to you and have wider political and economic implications for the country and the world. Your encouragement and constant feedback on how to improve our offering have only made our resolve and commitment to these ideals stronger. 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Digital Editor North and South Korea held military talks on their border on Friday to discuss implementing a broad-reaching military agreement last month to reduce tensions. South Korean Major Gen Kim Do-Gyun before the meeting at Panmunjom said the discussions will include establishing a joint military committee that's meant to maintain communication and avoid crises and accidental clashes. The planned committee is one of many inter-Korean commitments spelt out in the military agreement that was reached on the sidelines of a summit between North Korean leader and South Korean President last month in The talks came a day after the Koreas and the US-led UN Command completed removing firearms and troops from a jointly controlled area at the border village. The Koreas have also been clearing mines from front-line areas and plan to conduct their first-ever joint search for remains of soldiers killed during the 1950-53 South Korea on Thursday had confirmed its soldiers had found war remains in a different front-line area. The Koreas have also agreed to create buffer zones along their land and sea boundaries, as well as a no-fly zone above the border, and remove 11 front-line guard posts by December. Moon has described the military agreement as an important trust-building step that will reduce border tensions and create more space for larger US-led negotiations to denuclearise the North. Some experts say the South risks conceding its conventional military strength before the North takes any concrete steps toward relinquishing its nuclear weapons. Law enforcement authorities from New York to Los Angeles this week have intercepted at least 10 crudely built pipe bombs addressed to outspoken critics of President Trump who have drawn the ire of right-wing groups, including former President Barack Obama and former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton. After a wave of packages was discovered on Wednesday, law enforcement officials across the United States undertook a sweeping search for the person or persons who sent the devices. That search is now turning its focus to southern Florida, where investigators believe a number of the ... China and Japan on Friday pledged to forge closer ties as both countries stood together at an "historic turning point", signing a broad range of agreements including a $30 billion currency swap pact, amid rising trade tensions with Washington. Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe and Chinese Premier Li Keqiang also agreed the two countries would work together to achieve denuclearisation on the Korean Peninsula. The pacts were reached on Abe's three-day visit to Beijing as the two neighbours looked to carve out new areas of cooperation and seek new ways to promote ... The Thursday dismissed The New York Times report that US has three cellphones, saying he has only one official government iPhone, the security of which follows industry best practices. Citing agencies, the daily reported Wednesday that and eavesdrop on Trump as he uses his unsecure cellphone to "gossip, gripe or solicit" his friends' take on how he is doing. Trump termed the NYT report as "fake story" and said he rarely uses his cellphone. The New York Times said it stands by its story, even as Trump through his tweets and the in a statement later in the night challenged the authenticity of the investigative story by the daily. Quoting unnamed government officials, the New York Times claimed that has two official iPhones that have been altered by the to limit their abilities and vulnerabilities, and a third personal phone that is no different from hundreds of millions of iPhones in use around the world. The daily reiterated that calls made by Trump to his friends through these cellphones are being listened by the Chinese and the Russians. "The article written by the New York Times presented inaccurate information about the President's cellphone and its usage. The does not have three cellular phones. He has one official government iPhone," Deputy Press Secretary Hogan Gidley said. "This phone security follows industry best practices and is closely managed under government supervision in conjunction with recommendations from industry partners," he said. Gidley asserted that the phone is rotated on a regular basis and is constantly monitored for any security vulnerabilities and attacks, in accordance with recommendations from the intelligence community. According to The New York Times, aides and people who know Trump said that it was only late last year that he finally began to regularly use his government-issued cellphone instead of his personal cellphone. But the president kept his personal phone because he did not have any numbers stored on the government phone, they said. "For many months, Mr. Trump also did not commit to memory the number of one of his government phones, the aides said. He found the situation aggravating, complaining to aides that he had no number to provide when friends at his private club, Mar-a-Lago, in Palm Beach, Fla., asked how to reach him," the daily said. Early in the morning, Trump in a tweet said that the New York Times story is false and he uses only one cellphone. "The so-called experts on Trump over at the New York Times wrote a long and boring article on my cellphone usage that is so incorrect I do not have time here to correct it. I only use Government Phones, and have only one seldom used government cell phone. Story is soooo wrong!" Trump tweeted. President Trump proposed on Thursday that Medicare pay for certain prescription drugs based on the prices paid in other advanced industrial countries a huge change that could save money for the government and for millions of Medicare beneficiaries. As part of a demonstration project covering half the country, Medicare would establish an international pricing index and use it as a benchmark in deciding how much to pay for drugs covered by Part B of Medicare. This is a revolutionary change, Mr. Trump said in a speech on Thursday at the ... President on Thursday denied that China and Russia have tapped his personal cellphone, a report made public by The New York Times, which said that the president continues to use that device despite warnings from the intelligence services. "The New York Times has a new Fake Story that now the Russians and Chinese (glad they finally added China) are listening to all of my calls on cellphones," said Trump on his official Twitter account. "Except that I rarely use a cellphone, & when I do it's government authorized. I like Hard Lines. Just more made up Fake News!" the President added. Trump made his Twitter comments after the New York daily on Wednesday published a story saying that Chinese and Russian spies were "routinely eavesdropping" on the phone calls he makes from his personal cellphone, Efe reported. The New York Times, citing top government officials, said that despite warnings from services, the president so far has refused to exchange his personal cellphone for more secure communications methods, although that has been strongly recommended to him. According to US intelligence, China intends to use what it is learning from Trump's personal calls - for instance, what the president's thinking is, what arguments he is considering and who he is listening to - to its benefit in the current bilateral trade dispute. Among the people to whom Trump allegedly has spoken using that phone are the CEO of investment bank Blackstone Group, Stephen A. Schwarzman, and casino magnate Steve Wynn, who have ties to Beijing, according to the daily. One of China's aims, according to these reports, is to influence Trump's environment and contacts. agents say - according to The Times - that Trump takes electronic security very lightly and does not limit his communications to secure devices that he has access to as president. According to these reports, the president has three personal cellphones, two of which have been altered by the to modify their functions, but the third is a completely normal cellphone with the standard vulnerabilities. US investigators have been searching coast-to-coast for the culprit and motives behind the bizarre mail- plot aimed at critics of the president, analysing the innards of the crude devices to reveal whether they were intended to detonate or simply sow fear two weeks before Election Day. Three more devices were linked to the plot Thursday two addressed to former Vice President Joe Biden and one to actor bringing the total to 10 in an outbreak of politically loaded menace with little if any precedent. Authorities warned there might well be more. Law enforcement officials told The Associated Press that the devices, containing timers and batteries, were not rigged like booby-trapped package bombs that would explode upon opening. But they were uncertain whether the devices were poorly designed or never intended to cause physical harm. A search of a postal database suggested at least some may have been mailed from Florida, one official said. Investigators are homing in on a postal facility in Opa-locka, Florida, where they believe some of the packages originated, another official said. The officials spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorised to discuss the ongoing investigation by name. Homeland Security Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen, in an interview Thursday night with Fox News Channel, acknowledged that some of packages originated in Florida. New details about the devices came as the four-day mail- scare spread nationwide, drawing investigators from dozens of federal, state and local agencies in the effort to identify one or more perpetrators. The targets have included former President Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton, CNN and Rep Maxine Waters of California. The common thread among them was obvious: critical words for Donald Trump and frequent, harsher criticism in return. At a press conference Thursday, officials in New York would not discuss possible motives, or details on how the packages found their way into the US postal system. Nor would they say why none of the packages had detonated, but they stressed they were still treating them as "live devices." "As far as a hoax device, we're not treating it that way," said Police Commissioner James O'Neill. Details suggested a pattern that the items were packaged in manila envelopes, addressed to prominent Trump critics and carried US postage stamps. The devices were being examined by technicians at the FBI's forensic lab in Quantico, Virginia. The packages stoked nationwide tensions and fears as voters prepared to vote November 6 to determine partisan control of Congress a campaign both parties have described in near-apocalyptic terms. Even with the sender still unknown, politicians from both parties used the threats to decry a toxic political climate and lay blame. "A very big part of the Anger we see today in our society is caused by the purposely false and inaccurate reporting of the Mainstream Media that I refer to as Fake News," Trump said on Twitter. "It has gotten so bad and hateful that it is beyond description. Mainstream Media must clean up its act, FAST!" Former CIA Director John Brennan, the target of a package sent to CNN, fired back. "Stop blaming Look in the mirror," Brennan tweeted. "Your inflammatory rhetoric, insults, lies, & encouragement of physical violence are disgraceful. Clean up your act....try to act Presidential." The list of bombing targets spread from New York, Delaware and Washington DC, to Florida and California. The explosive devices were packed in envelopes with bubble-wrap interiors bearing six American flag stamps and the return address of Florida Rep Debbie Wasserman Schultz, the former chairwoman of the Democratic National Committee. The bombs seized Wednesday were about six inches long and packed with powder and broken glass, according to a law enforcement official who viewed X-ray images. The official said the devices were made from PVC pipe and covered with black tape. At the New York briefing, authorities confirmed that at least some of the packages were distributed through the US mail, and cautioned that there could be additional devices in the postal system. They said investigators searching for more suspicious parcels had not found any during the previous eight hours. Inspector General of Police (Kashmir) SP Pani on Friday asserted that as many as eight terrorists were neutralised in three different encounters in the Valley since yesterday. Out of eight terrorists, six of them found had links with two banned terrorist organisations, Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT) and Hizbul Mujahideen. "Three encounters have taken place since yesterday. The first encounter took place in Baramulla in which two terrorists linked with Lashkar-e-Taiba were killed. In the second encounter at Anantnag's Arwani, four terrorists linked with Hizbul Mujahideen were killed," Pani told ANI. "Another encounter took place in Sopore last night in which two more terrorists were killed. Unfortunately, one soldier has lost his life. In all three encounters, there has been no civilian casualty and no-collateral damage," he said. The operation ended this morning. Pani also advised citizens to stay away from encounter area. "Encounter site is a prohibited site. At these prohibited sites, unauthorised access must be avoided. Nobody should venture to such sites until it is cleared," the IGP said. (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) The second International Day of Diplomats was recently celebrated in Brasilia to highlight the contributions of diplomats as everyday peacemakers. Diplomats from over a dozen countries including Austria, India, Brazil, Egypt, Netherlands and Zimbabwe on October 24 came together to mark the day dedicated to all diplomats, no matter where do they come from or which country they represent. Speaking on the occasion, the Charge de affaires of Zimbabwe Kossam Mupezeni said, "As diplomats, we are like nomads and it's important that once in a while we celebrate our uniqueness, our nomadic way of life. The work that we do is very challenging, demanding, sensitive and at times very dangerous. We need to sit down and reflect about the work we do, our contributions to humanity, so it's important that this day is commemorated." Peter Rodrigues from the Food Programme of the United Nations said, "It's a good celebration because the work of the diplomats is very important. Their performance is not recognized in the countries they work at. Many countries have their own day of diplomats but the International Day of Diplomats is a good initiative. I believe in a few years more countries will start celebrating this day and it's a recognition of his work and also a day we all can celebrate together." Isabella Tomas, the Deputy Chief of Mission of Austria in Brazil said, "I believe it's another good occasion we can meet our good friends and there is already an international day for almost everything so I think having an International Day of Diplomats is a very good thing. I heard that this celebration started last year and it's working so far. People don't really know what a diplomat does so this date would be a good occasion to explain the profession." Wellington Bujokas from DPLP, Itamaraty, the Brazilian Ministry of Foreign Affairs also commented, "It's a good date to show people that diplomats are normal people and that the profession is not that glamorous as it is shown and that diplomats have a lot of obstacles to reach their goals." Hoeck Miranda, the diplomatic coordinator of the Bahai community in Brasilia said, "It's an extremely important day. I see the work of a diplomat, the work of fundamental importance in the globalised The globalisation has brought close different communities and they exchange both good and bad things. A diplomat is a person who must know not just how to create peace but to keep peace. The profession of a diplomat is very important for peace." Leandro Estevao Zenni, Head of DESET at Itamaraty said, "It's important to recognize the importance of diplomats and show their efforts to keep peace and make the world a better place. The celebration of the Diplomats Day on 24th of October is symbolically important as it is the also the UN Day." The celebration of International Day of Diplomats was started in Brasilia last year by Indian diplomat Abhay K on October 24. Speaking on the occasion, he elucidated, "It is heartening to see the idea of celebrating International Day of Diplomats turning into a reality. It is growing fast. This year more diplomats participated in the event in Brasilia. The day was also marked in Mexico City, Washington DC and Dhaka. I hope that it will grow rapidly and will be celebrated across the world along with the UN Day. (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) Andhra Pradesh Chief Minister N Chandrababu Naidu on Friday termed the attack on YSR Congress Party (YSRCP) chief YS Jaganmohan Reddy at Visakhapatnam airport as "drama" played on the direction of the central government. Naidu also lashed out at the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP)-led Centre for not allocating funds for the development of the state. "While our government is developing the state with our own resources, they are creating obstacles everywhere and are hampering development. There has been a prolonged friction between the centre-state relations," he said. The Andhra Chief Minister also hit out at the central government for all the sudden raids that recently took place. Naidu alleged that Prime Minister Narendra Modi-led government is practising oppressive methods and is trying to threaten them with Income Tax raids. "Never in the past have so many raids taken place. These developments are a result of conspiracy to create tension in the investors," he said. He also accused the Centre of conspiring against his state. "Many more conspiracies will be hatched against us and our state. You have to be mentally ready and prepared. The Centre is weakening Central Bureau of Investigation, Enforcement Directorate, Income Tax and all constitutional bodies. But ultimately truth will prevail," Naidu said. "The Centre is creating hurdles for international air services from Vijayawada. We have given 750 acres of lands worth Rs 1,000 crore. Even after five years, the Centre is not permitting services. How much time is needed to run a flight to Singapore? The Centre did not give viability gap funding. The state has to bear that burden. Customs department asked for nominal funding. We came forward to provide as the Centre did not come forward," he added. Naidu further alleged that the government is not doing justice to the state of Andhra Pradesh. "We asked the central government for special status of the state. We asked them to implement the reorganisation act. But since the Centre is not doing so, we are creating awareness among the public," said Naidu. He also emphasised on the importance of political fights, saying that the same is inevitable in the current times. "We are seeking justice and they are trying to finish us. Come what may, we have to reach our target. The interest of the state should be fulfilled at all cost and all of us must strive hard for its development," he said. (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) Union Home Minister Rajnath Singh on Friday asserted that the Pradhan Mantri Jan Arogya Yojana - Ayushman Bharat (PMJAY-AB) is one of the best gift for poor people of the country by Prime Minister Narendra Modi. Further outlining the benefits of Ayushman Bharat, Singh said, "In Lucknow alone, 45 people have been treated since the launch of this scheme. Ayushman Bharat is a very big gift to poor countrymen from the Prime Minister. In India, as much as 5 crore people have gone below the poverty line because of the financial burden of a medical emergency." The Home Minister also praised the impact of Swacch Bharat Mission and remarked that cleanliness leads to wellness. "He launched Swachh Bharat Mission to ensure wellness of people, as cleanliness leads to wellness. Even World Health Organisation has praised India's Swachh Bharat Mission," Singh added. On the occasion of the 72nd Independence Day, Prime Minister Narendra Modi had announced AB-PMJAY scheme from the ramparts of the Red Fort. The Prime Minister later launched the Pradhan Mantri Jan Arogya Yojana (PMJAY)- Ayushman Bharat in Jharkhand's capital Ranchi on September 23. During the event, he had also laid foundation stones for medical colleges in Chaibasa and Koderma of Jharkhand. (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) The Pune Sessions Court on Friday rejected bail plea of Vernon Gonsalves, Arun Ferreira and Sudha Bharadwaj, three of the five activists arrested on August 28 in the Bhima Koregaon violence case. On October 24, the Pune Sessions Court had said that it will pronounce the verdict on bail applications of Gonsalves, Ferreira and Bharadwaj today. All three are presently under house arrest which is ending today. A three-judge bench of the Supreme Court led by Chief Justice of India (CJI) Ranjan Gogoi will on October 29 hear Maharashtra government's plea challenging a Bombay High Court order that refused to grant more time to the Pune Police for filing charge sheet against activists arrested in connection with the case. The five activists, namely poet Varavara Rao, lawyer Bharadwaj, activists Ferreira, Gonsalves and Gautam Navlakha, have been under house arrest since August 28 for their alleged involvement in the violence which took place on January 1. However, Hyderabad High Court yesterday extended the house arrest of activist Rao by three weeks. The five accused were arrested from various cities for their alleged involvement in the violence during the 200th anniversary of the Bhima Koregaon battle. One person was killed and many were injured in the clashes. (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) After receiving a bomb threat with a "suspicious" package, former United States President Bill Clinton and wife Hillary Clinton hit up at Bruce Springsteen's Broadway show. TMZ spotted the Clintons looking unconcerned while leaving the Walter Kerr Theatre on Thursday night (local time) where Springsteen is the hottest ticket in town. A "suspicious" package believed to be containing an explosive device was found in the vicinity of Clinton residence in Chappaqua in New York on Wednesday morning (local time). Several packages were delivered to the country's leaders and influential people including former US President Barack Obama. Packages addressed to former Vice-President Joe Biden and actor Robert De Niro were also intercepted on Thursday by the postal facilities. (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) CANPACK Group, a global manufacturer operating on the packaging market, is celebrating the opening of its new facility in Nuh, Haryana. The event was attended by the owner of the CANPACK Group and the Chairman of the Supervisory Board of CANPACK Peter F. Giorgi, along with Herman Nicolaas Nusmeier - CEO and President of the Managing Board of CANPACK and other Supervisory and Managerial Board Members. "Following the increased demand of modern aluminum packaging, CANPACK India has now decided to accelerate its expansion into the Indian market and has established its second beverage cans manufacturing plant in India. This investment has been triggered by a forecast indicating that there is great potential for growth within the Indian market. We are optimistic that India will soon be one of the most important markets for the CANPACK Group. The decision to invest so highly in the country was taken after several studies, focusing on our sustainable development in the long term," said Nico Nusmeier. "We remain excited at the potential of the CANPACK Group to continue to grow in service of its customers and through the efforts of its dedicated employees," said Peter F. Giorgi. The Nuh plant will employ approximately 160 workers, bringing CANPACK India's total employment base to over 750 direct employees. The 36 acres of acquired land in Nuh will manufacture 180 ml, 250 ml, and 500 ml cans with a capacity of 950 million cans per year and will employ a world-class manufacturing system. The capacity of this plant is expandable to 2.4 billion cans per year. Even though North India will be the major market space, cans produced at the Nuh facility will also be exported to neighbouring countries. The Nuh plant received first stage Industrial clearance by the Chief Minister of Haryana through H.E.P.C. (Haryana Enterprise Promotion Council) for setting up its second Indian aluminum can manufacturing facility in Nuh Haryana, NCR region in February 2017. CANPACK is the first company which received this clearance through H.E.P.C. "This establishment in Nuh district is a result of a CANPACK's goal of transforming the downstream value chain and decreasing the logistics cost for its customers as Northern India contributes to a major share of the overall Indian beverage can market," said Herman Nicolaas Nusmeier. CANPACK India is committed to further strengthening its positive impact on the community, with a special focus on water conservation, education, sanitation, and rural development. (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) Special Director on Friday moved the challenging the central government's decision to send him on leave. Earlier on October 24, CBI Director had moved the apex court against the Centre's leave order. Gopal Sankaranarayanan, the lawyer appearing for Verma, had told the apex court that the Centre on Wednesday morning asked his client and Special Director to go on leave, hence compromising the investigation into various sensitive cases. After a spell of infighting in CBI, the Centre divested Verma and Asthana from their roles and asked them to go on leave. Asthana and Verma were at loggerheads on several issues and accused each other of blocking investigation of several important cases. Amid this tug of war, M Nageshwar Rao, who was working as the Joint Director of the CBI, was appointed as the interim director with immediate effect. The Centre's decision came after Asthana moved the Delhi High Court seeking the quashing of First Information Report (FIR) filed against him by the CBI. The court, however, ordered that no action would be taken against Asthana until next hearing, which is scheduled for October 29. The CBI had filed an FIR against Asthana for allegedly accepting a bribe from a businessman, who was linked to Moin Akhtar Qureshi case. Asthana was heading the Special Investigation Team (SIT) that was probing Qureshi's case. However, CBI official spokesperson on Thursday confirmed that Verma will continue to remain CBI Director, Asthana to remain Special Director. Rao will look after duties and functions of the CBI Director in the interim period till the time the Central Vigilance Commission (CVC) looks into the allegations, it said. Stepping up their attack against the Democratic Alliance (NDA) government, the Congress party has started their protest outside Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) offices across India demanding the reinstatement of the premier investigative agency's director Alok Verma. The party is also demanding an apology from Prime Minister Narendra Modi for allegedly destroying the image of the investigative agency. The Congress has termed the Centre's move to send Verma on leave as a disgraceful attempt to prevent an investigation into the alleged Rafale scam. In Delhi, Congress leaders Ambika Soni, Anand Sharma, Selja Kumari, former Uttarakhand chief minister Harish Rawat among others took part in the protest which is being led by party president Rahul Gandhi. Scores of protestors raised slogans against the Centre's decision and displayed placards reading, " CBI has stopped all investigation since BJP came to power", "CBI: Closed Bureau Investigation." The Congress leaders, along with their party workers, are marching from Dayal Singh College on Lodhi Road to the CBI headquarters at JLN marg here. Congress spokesperson Jaiveer Shergill, who was present at the demonstration, said, "Rafale ke khel se ghabraayi Modi-Shah ki jodi isliye raaton-raat CBI todi. Satyamav Jayate! Loktantra Moditantra ko harayega (Prime Minister Modi and Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) chief Amit Shah were scared of investigation in Rafale deal, so they sent the CBI director on leave. Satyamav Jayate! Democracy will defeat the government of Prime Minister Modi)" Meanwhile, in Bengaluru, Congress workers wearing masks of Prime Minister Modi hit the streets and raised slogan against the Central Government. In Lucknow, Uttar Pradesh Congress Committee (UPCC) chief Raj Babbar led a protest against the Centre. Similarly, in Bihar the Congress workers took to streets expressing angst over the decision to send Verma on leave. Earlier in the day, Rahul had tweeted, "Join us today at 11 AM as we march from Dayal Singh College on Lodhi Road to the CBI HQ, to protest the PM's disgraceful & unconstitutional attempt to block an investigation into the Rafale scam by removing the CBI Chief. Similar protests are being held today, across India." Gandhi on Thursday linked Centre's action against Alok Verma with a probe into the alleged Rafale scam, which, he claimed, was about to be conducted by the Verma. He said that the Prime Minister panicked anticipating an investigation. Terming the temporary removal of CBI director from his official post as illegal, he said, "Appointment and removal of CBI director are done by a committee of three people -- the Prime Minister, Chief Judge of India and the Leader of Opposition. The Prime Minister removed CBI Director at 2 am in the night. This is illegal and criminal. This is an insult to the Constitution, an insult to the CJI, an insult to the Leader of Opposition and insult to people of India." However, the CBI on Thursday informed that Alok Verma and Rakesh Asthana, who were sent on leave, will continue to remain the CBI Director and Special Director, respectively. M Nageshwar Rao, who was appointed as the interim director of the CBI will look after duties and functions of the CBI Director in the interim period till the time Central Vigilance Commission (CVC) looks into the allegations. Verma and Asthana were sent on leave by the government on Tuesday midnight after they charged each other of accepting bribes. Asthana has been charged with extortion and forgery in addition to the bribery and corruption charges. It has been alleged that he received a bribe from an accused to give him a clean chit in Moin Qureshi case. He was heading the Special Investigation Team (SIT) that was probing Qureshi's case. (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) Finance Minister Arun Jaitley on Friday asserted that the decisions related to the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) controversy were positive. He underlined that the central government is not biased against anyone, and it will ensure the intelligence agency's professionalism and institutional integrity is maintained. He said, "The current CBI controversy is an extremely positive development. The government has no interest for or against any individual. The government is interested in maintaining professionalism, image and constitutional integrity of CBI." Jaitley added, "Recent developments have eroded the credibility of the CBI. The Central Vigilance Commission (CVC) in the interests of fairness had passed an order that till investigations or inquiries are pending against two top officers of CBI, they must step aside and recuse themselves from CBI functioning till it's over. This was in the larger interest of fairness because you can't be heading an investigation or agency which is going into your own conduct. All officers of the CBI, particularly the top two officers like Caesar's wife must be beyond suspicion." Earlier today, the Supreme Court ruled that an inquiry against CBI Director Alok Verma must be completed within two weeks and M Nageshwar Rao, who was appointed as the interim Director, cannot take any policy decision till the court hears the matter again on November 12. Reacting to the court order, Jaitley underlined that the ruling by the apex court has further strengthened the fairness criteria and termed it a positive development. "What has happened in the Supreme Court is that the court has further strengthened the fairness criteria. They have fixed a time limit that this must be over in two weeks, which is a positive development. In order to ensure that the highest standards of fairness are maintained even in the inquiries, they have appointed a retired judge to ensure that the CVC inquiry is absolutely fair. It's an inquiry which maintains the highest level of fairness, which will ensure that truth comes out. The truth coming out is in the larger interests of India." Earlier in the day, Special Director Rakesh Asthana had moved the Supreme Court challenging the central government's decision to send him on leave. On October 24, Verma had moved the apex court against the Centre's leave order. After a spell of infighting in CBI, the Centre divested Verma and Asthana from their roles and asked them to go on leave. Verma and Asthana were at loggerheads on several issues and accused each other of blocking investigation of several important cases. The Centre's decision came after Asthana moved the Delhi High Court seeking the quashing of First Information Report (FIR) filed against him by the CBI. The court, however, ordered that no action would be taken against Asthana until next hearing, which is scheduled for October 29. The CBI had filed an FIR against Asthana for allegedly accepting a bribe from a businessman, who was linked to Moin Akhtar Qureshi case. Asthana was heading the Special Investigation Team (SIT) that was probing Qureshi's case. Amidst this tug of war, Rao, who was working as the Joint Director of the CBI, was appointed as the interim director with immediate effect. Stepping up their attack against the Democratic Alliance (NDA) government, the Congress party is protesting outside Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) offices across India demanding Verma's reinstatement as the CBI Director. The party is also demanding an apology from Prime Minister Narendra Modi for allegedly destroying the image of the investigating agency. (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) Union Home Minister Rajnath Singh on Friday said that Congress is unnecessarily raising its voice against the Centre over the false assumption that the government is tinkering with the institution such as Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI). Speaking to media, the Union Minister said, "Congress has no issues of public interest to discuss and that is why they are misguiding people." Commenting on the ongoing CBI case in the Supreme Court, Singh added that an authority is investigating the matter involving Alok Verma, CBI Director and Rakesh Asthana, CBI Special Director. The Congress must wait for the investigation report." Congress president Rahul Gandhi on Thursday linked the central government's action of sending Alok Verma on leave with a probe into the alleged Rafale scam, which, he claimed, was about to be conducted. He said that the Prime Minister panicked anticipating an investigation. Terming the temporary removal of CBI Director from his official post as illegal, he said, "Appointment and removal of CBI Director are done by a committee of three people -- the Prime Minister, Chief Judge of India and the Leader of Opposition. The Prime Minister removed CBI Director at 2 am in the night. This is illegal and criminal. This is an insult to the Constitution, an insult to the CJI, an insult to the Leader of the Opposition and insult to people of India." However, the CBI on Thursday informed that Alok Verma and Rakesh Asthana, who were sent on leave, will continue to remain the CBI Director and Special Director, respectively. Today, the apex court ruled that an inquiry against Verma must be completed within two weeks and M Nageshwar Rao, who was appointed as the interim Director, cannot take any policy decision till court hears the matter again on November 12. The top court ordered a CVC inquiry under the supervision of retired Supreme Court Judge AK Patnaik. (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) New Delhi [India], Oct 26 (ANI): The Delhi Police on Friday withdrew two of its Personal Security Officers (PSOs) posted with Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) Director Alok Verma and placed them in an 'undisclosed location'. According to sources, these two PSOs, who were in charge of security of Verma, have been moved to a safe place by the Delhi Police following a severe reprisal from the Intelligence Bureau (IB) over the incident that occurred on Thursday at the CBI Director's residence in which the PSOs nabbed four IB operatives near Verma's house. The IB is upset over the way the Delhi Police PSOs handled four of its operatives on duty near the CBI Director's house. The IB is also unhappy over the fact that their names and identity was made public leading to security risk for its men. The Delhi Police, on the other hand, fears for the lives of its PSOs, who sources said were just doing their duty. "They have been moved out and the situation will be assessed further," the sources said. Talks between senior IB officials and the Delhi Police have been going on since Thursday to sort out any misunderstanding between the two organisations. Till the time the two agencies are able to resolve their differences, the Delhi Police decision to shift the personnel to safe place is a precautionary measure so that the IB does not pick up these men. It is learnt that IB Director had met Security Advisor Ajit Doval on Friday morning and apprised him of the incident. Sources said that the NSA, reportedly, advised both the Delhi Police and the IB to resolve the matter among them and not to convert the issue of "mistaken identity" into "prestige issue." Four people were caught lurking outside the official residence of Verma on Thursday when the Delhi Police personnel posted with Verma nabbed them in full public glare and took them for questioning. They were later let off but their identity documents were kept by the Delhi Police men. Shortly after the incident, the IB sources said that the four men were working for it and were on "routine duty" and the presence of these men was unnecessarily "projected otherwise. (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) Two schoolgirls were arrested in a middle school in central Florida on the charges of conspiring to murder classmates and drink their blood and eat their flesh. According to CNN, the authorities revealed that the girls aged 11 and 12 years waited in the school washroom to kill other students with knives. During a news conference, Bartow Police Chief Joe Hall said that the girls have charged with conspiracy to commit murder, possession of a weapon on school property, carrying a concealed weapon, and disruption of a school function. The girls admitted to being Satan worshippers, reported the officials. The two also planned on killing themselves, the officials said. They were caught after an automated call from the school intimated one of the girls' parents that their daughter was not in the class. It is still unclear whether the girls will be tried as adults. (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) French film director Francois Ozon is all set to direct 'By the Grace of God,' a drama looking at a real-life case of sexual abuses allegedly committed by a French priest in the late 1980s. Now in post-production, the film is inspired by the scandal surrounding Bernard Preynat, a Roman Catholic priest who was accused of having abused scouts from 1986 to 1991 and was only recently indicted after several victims decided to file lawsuits, confirmed Variety. The movie will follow Alexandre, a man in his 40s living in Lyon with his wife and children, who discovers that a priest who abused him decades ago continues to work with children. He then joins forces with Francois and Emmanuel, who were also victims of the priest, to bring justice and lift the burden of silence about what they endured. It will also reunite Ozon with Melvil Poupaud, who starred in the helmer's 2005 drama 'Le temps qui reste' and in the 2010 drama 'Le Refuge. (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) has fired around 48 people for sexual in the last two years. According to an email sent to by Chief Executive Officer (CEO) Sundar Pichai, people from the management who were accused of sexual misconduct were also sacked from the company. In the email, spokesperson stated that "the company was dead serious about making sure we provide a safe and inclusive workplace." The email which was also sent to all the employees of the Google came after a US national daily reported that the company gave creator $90 million as an exit package after being accused of sexual misconduct by an employee. Pichai, however, said that as many 13 senior managers were sacked from the company and none of them received any exit package. The email which was also signed by Eileen Naughton, vice president of people operations, encouraged the employees to report any incidents of sexual misconduct or they experience or notice. Amnesty India's Executive Director Aakar Patel in a statement on Friday accused government authorities of increasingly treating human rights organisations like "criminal enterprises". Patel's statement comes following Enforcement Directorate's (ED) raids at the Amnesty International's office in Bengaluru yesterday. "We could not agree more with the Prime Minister when he says that periods of repression, like during the Emergency, have left a stain on India's history. Sadly, those dark days are now casting a shadow over India again. Instead of protecting human rights, as it vowed to do, the government is now targeting the people who fight for them," read his statement. "Our work in India, as elsewhere, is to uphold and fight for universal human rights. These are the same values that are enshrined in the Indian Constitution and flow from a long and rich Indian tradition of pluralism, tolerance and dissent," Patel added. Venting anger over the government for its move, Patel said: "Amnesty India is thus the latest target of the government's assault on civil society in the country. Amnesty India's bank accounts have been frozen by the Enforcement Directorate, effectively stopping our work." Giving out clarification on the ED raids, he stated, "Most of the documents asked for during the search were available in the public domain or were already filed with the relevant authorities. Details of our current structure, which was the focus of much of the questioning, have been available on our website since 2014. However, ahead of the raids, the Indian authorities leaked a cache of their internal documents marked secret that appear to cast Amnesty India's operations as a dark web of intrigue." In his concluding remarks, the Executive Director of Amnesty India said, "Over 40 lakh Indians have supported Amnesty India's work over the last six years and around 1 lakh Indians have made financial contribution. (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 has asserted that India attaches great significance to the issue of Gilgit Baltistan and the country's claim to the region is stronger than Pakistan's. "Our case, as far as Gilgit Baltistan goes, is, even more, stronger for the important reason that when Jammu and Kashmir acceded to India, technically Gilgit Baltistan was an integral part of the then state of Kashmir and Jammu, under Maharaja Hari Singh and it was not annexed through any army encroachment," Madhav said at a launch of a book 'Gilgit-Baltistan and its saga of unending human rights violations' in Delhi on Thursday. "However, this strategically important region of Jammu and Kashmir was handed over to the then Pakistani rulers by two deceitful British officers. It was taken over without resistance and in an illegal manner. This area is of great significance to us as it acts as a gateway to Afghanistan and Central Asia" he added. Madhav also pointed out that the international communities should take cognisance of the atrocities committed by the Pakistani establishment in the Pakistan Occupied Kashmir (PoK) and Gilgit Baltistan and that the propaganda machinery rolled out by the Pakistan government to incite violence in Jammu and Kashmir through sponsoring terrorists and proxies. "A propaganda is being long unleashed by Pakistan and their proxies about Jammu and Kashmir by whitewashing the human rights violence committed by them in the PoK and Gilgit Baltistan. It is important for us to understand the real nature of the Pakistan administration. There has also been a concerted effort over the last 50 years to change the demography of Gilgit Baltistan. These are matters for the world at large to know," Madhav stated. Gilgit-Baltistan is a part of the erstwhile princely state of Jammu and Kashmir and has been under the control of Pakistan since 1947. (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) As part of security cooperation between them, India and Myanmar decided to take action against the insurgent groups operating within their territories. At the end of their two-day Level Meeting on Friday, the two countries also agreed for a security cooperation along with international border and to facilitate movement of people and trade across the international border. Both sides also agreed to cooperate in preventing smuggling of wildlife and narcotic drugs and to strengthen cooperation on international border management including construction of subsidiary pillars to better demarcate the border. The Indian delegation was led by Rajiv Gauba, Secretary, Ministry of Home Affairs, and the Myanmar delegation was led by Major General Aung Thu, Deputy Minister, Ministry of Home Affairs. The Myanmar delegation also called on Union Home Minister Rajnath Singh. In another meeting, the two country discussed progress of India-Mayanmar transport connectivity projects during the meeting between Union Minister Shipping, Road Transport, Highways minister Nitin Gadkari and Myanmar Minister for Communication and Transport U Thant Sin Maung. Discussions were also held on the present status of the projects and upgradation of Kalewa-Yagyi stretch of the India-Myanmar-Thailand (IMT) Trilateral Highway. The upgradation of Kalewa-Yagyi stretch of IMT (India Mayanmar Thailand trilateral highway) is being executed by Highways Authority of India. During the meeting Imphal-Mandalay bus service was also discussed. To enhance connectivity both countries have showed interest to sign a bilateral Motor Vehicles Agreement for seamless movement of cargo and passenger. The draft of the agreement is under discussion. Earlier this year, India and Myanmar had operationalised the Land Border Crossing Agreement which allows nationals from these two countries holding valid passport and visa to cross over without requiring special permission. (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) Governor on Thursday announced to appoint liaison officers in states having more than 12 Kashmiri students. Referring to the recent controversy at the (AMU) that led to the suspension of two Kashmiri students, Malik said, "10 days back, there was a controversy at the where two students from this state were suspended after they organised a prayer meeting to honour slain terrorist Manan Wani who was killed during an encounter with the security forces. Even the Vice-Chancellor of the University urged the students to offer the funeral prayer, but inside a mosque. However, they didn't listen to the University authorities and did the opposite. The proctorial board picked them up and they were later suspended." "I made the authorities revoke the suspension and the VC was kind enough to agree to what I said. So, we have decided that wherever more than a dozen of Kashmiri students are studying, we will recruit liaison officers in each of those states who will take care of such issues," Malik said. On October 12, two students were suspended for allegedly raising anti- slogans at the and organising a prayer meet for terrorist Manan Bashir Wani, an aluminous of the university who was killed in an encounter with the security forces on October 11 in Jammu and Kashmir's district. The suspension also led to a huge controversy as 1,200 Kashmiri students studying in AMU threatened to leave their studies midway. At least 18 people including several children were killed after a school bus swept away in flash flood on Thursday near the Dead Sea here. The school bus with a group of teachers and students were touring the Dead Sea when the incident happened, reported Al Jazeera quoting the sources in the country's civil defence directorate. Most of the children killed in the incident were below 14. According to the officials, the death toll is expected to rise. Jordan health minister Ghazi al-Zaben confirmed that 11 people were injured in the incident and 21 others have been rescued so far. The Israeli military, in a statement, confirmed that it has sent search and rescue helicopters to help Jordan following Amman's request for assistance. (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) UF scares up new class, leaving students with monsters on the mind Each October, crowds of ghosts, goblins and gremlins will flock to your doorbell to celebrate the ghoulish joys of Halloween. However, the idea of monsters is not unique to the holiday. The lore behind these spooky monsters has been told for centuries, with basis in literature and scientific fact, and this Halloween, the University of Florida has a class that will leave you with goosebumps. The UnCommon Read course -- called What Makes A Monster -- is open to students in the undergraduate Honors Program for Fall 2018. Inspired by the 200th anniversary of the classic work of literature, Frankenstein by Mary Shelley, the course touches on the idea that monsters are not just fascinating creatures, but that the concept of a monster taps an important part of the human psyche. Identifying our current cultural monsters has a lot to do with how we confront our fears and what were afraid of, according to Nina Stoyan-Rosenzweig, senior associate in the UF Health Science Library, who designed this innovative class to provide students a unique opportunity to collaborate with the Harn Museum of Art. In fact, the study of monsters is becoming increasingly important, used to gain insight into a culture and its upheavals. Studying monsters in America and how American society is obsessed with identifying monsters, or using the term monsters almost as a form of stigma, to stigmatize someone in times of crisis or anxiety, added Stoyan-Rosenzweig. We kind of look for blame and identify those people we blame as monsters. The class opens up the door to a whirlwind of ethics, humanities, psychology and science with a twist: it is led by undergraduate student instructors. A typical class would involve discussion, imagery, literature and sometimes film. Thats what students are learning each week when class meets, while also learning about the nature of monsters through great immersion and discussion. The course has become part of an effort on the part of the Health Science Center Library to engage a larger audience in a discussion on monsters. Four undergraduate students from the Honors Program-- Yasmina Bassi, Mary Johnson, Arvind Sommi and Olivia Trumble-- have come together to team-teach the UnCommon Read class. The idea, inspired by a similar class at the University of Michigan, aims to support the continuous professional and academic development of the student instructors by providing them a unique opportunity to co-lead a university-level course. An important component of Honors Education in Higher Ed is exposing students to greater breadth. Classes like these challenge a student to get out of their discipline and to think critically about subject matter outside of their expertise, said Mark Law, director of the UF Honors Program. Plus, they can be fun and a great break from weightier classes. The coursework is decidedly unconventional, allowing undergraduate students lead the course and its curriculum while connecting students enrolled in the class with the Harn Museum to curate a museum exhibit, which opens in January. Yasmina Bassi leads class discussion while Mary Johnson, center, and Olivia Trumble, right, assist. I think its really exciting to be teaching a course as an undergrad and to bolster a conversation. Its a great feeling when students participate, said Trumble, junior pre-professional biology and anthropology student. The students taking the class are benefiting from the students who are leading it because the instructors are teaching subjects they are passionate about. Johnson, whos studying history and English with minors in French, classics, and education, and will be graduating with a teaching certificate in Spring, was able to kick-start her career in education because of this instruction opportunity. I like it because were getting to learn about other student instructors and what theyre doing. Its much more of a relaxed setting, so we get more on-on-one time, stronger personal connections, than with the traditional professor, said Brady Alexander, freshman pre-med student. Its more relatable. What makes a monster? Over the years, our idea of what defines a monster has evolved. The course pushes students to think about how the creation of monsters over centuries can be indicative of both moral and empirical challenges societies face. Students have been reading Monstrous Progeny: A History of the Frankenstein Narratives by Lester Friedman, emeritus professor of media and society at Hobart William Smith Colleges, to better their academic understanding of monsters. With funding from the Creative Campus effort and the Center for Humanities and the Public Sphere, he will visit the class when it meets on Halloween. The old-school definition would be the objective one, where a monster is based off of someones looks, but in todays society, we take the subjective approach, and it is based off of someones actions. I would say that a monster is [based] off of someones actions and if theyve wronged society in general, Alexander said. At the beginning of the semester, museum curators selected some of the most "horrifying" art pieces, including photography, posters, sculptures, paintings and drawings, in its collection for students to choose from. For each, students were assigned a piece of art to research throughout the semester, write label text that will be used at the exhibit, and help promote the display. Rachel Hernandez, left, and Brady Alexander, right, review the artworks they picked that will be on display in the Harn Museum of Art in January. Photo courtesy of the Harn Museum of Art. Some of the pieces evoke horror and fear, instead of portraying a true monster in a classical sense. Many people think monsters are the things that haunt you in your nightmares, but what truly makes something monstrous? Monsters are prevalent and have been residing among us, and maybe even inside some of us. When you think about some of the most infamous villains in literature, its likely that youll mention, or at least think about, Dracula. Juliana Boisse beside her monster choice of Dracula by Andy Warhol, 1981. Dracula is probably the most iconic monster in American culture and one of the things Andy Warhol was trying to get across is this idea of significant figures that have defined our culture. By using dracula as the icon for the series, Warhol was trying to pinpoint why were fascinated by monsters, and what they represent symbolically, said Juliana Boisse, freshman, undecided major. While some of the art is monstrous in the classical sense, other pieces modernize the idea of what a monster could be. Brandi Caughorn, alongside the Guerrilla Girls cover image, the monstrous art book she is examining this semester. Being a monster is a distinctly human concept because it is a physical representation of moral or social deviation from the norm. This is the Guerrilla Girls comic book based on the representation of female stereotypes in society, generated largely by men, said Brandi Caughorn, freshman, undecided major. We have this image of a gorilla-like figure, but with a female body, and the female body is the most striking image in this piece because it's about the physical form of a woman and the power that it harnesses. The Guerilla Girls, hardcore feminists devoted to fighting sexism and racism, make commentary throughout the art book on how men perceive women, the fear, desire and control women can exude or evoke, and how men try to marginalize, stereotype or control women in return. One student, Rachel Hernandez, freshman psychology major, picked the piece Amona, Israel, because she found it to be visceral and interesting. This artwork was selected by Rachel Hernandez. It is Natan Dvir, Amona, Israel, from the series, Belief, 2006, Digital print, Harn Museum of Art Facilitating in the execution of the exhibit, Carol McCusker, curator of photography at the Harn Museum of Art, has hopes that students come away with a new appreciation of what a work of art can represent, and how the students perceive it and themselves in the art of looking. We need art in our lives. It makes our lives richer by giving form to what is often left unspoken: beauty, sadness, memory, a new perspective, life from another culture, joy, energy, conflict and resolution, McCusker said. [Art] provides time for the viewer to slow down, stop the media buzz, reflect, listen to their own inner compass, and make a personal connection to the art. Carol McCusker, curator of photography at the Harn Museum of Art, shows the class the space where their exhibit will live. Photo courtesy of the Harn Museum of Art. The students interpretive texts will go on display in an exhibition called Monsters and the Monstrous. The exhibit will run January 22 - June 2, 2019. For more information, visit http://guides.uflib.ufl.edu/monster. North and South Korea on Thursday agreed to withdraw 11 border guard posts from either side and verify their removal by next month. The two sides also agreed to establish a joint military committee aimed at reducing border tensions at the earliest date. During the general-grade military talks at Panmunjom border village, situated in the Demilitarised Zone (DMZ), the two Koreas also decided to form a joint team comprising 10 government, military and civilian staffers from each side for conducting research on the Han River estuary for ensuring safe navigation of the civilian vessels, which has been restricted due to border tensions, Yonhap News Agency reported. From South Korea, Major General Kim Do-gyun led a delegation, while Lieutenant General An Ik-san represented the North Korean side. "The South and North agreed to make active efforts to implement the military agreement to enforce the historic Panmunjom declaration, and to this end, agreed to have close consultations through military talks and exchanges of documents," a statement by the two Koreas read. Apart from this, the two sides held the meeting to review and implement the military agreement which was signed by North Korean leader Kim Jong-un and South Korean President Moon Jae-in during their meeting in Pyongyang last month. The divided Koreas also reaffirmed their commitment to cease all hostile acts against each other on land, sea and air from November 1 and start new procedures for commencing military operations, the Yonhap report said. Both North and South Korea agreed to contribute jointly to prepare for a project thoroughly to excavate mortal remains of soldiers killed in 1950-53 Korean War in the DMZ, which is scheduled to begin in April next year. Inter-Korean relations have dramatically improved this year following Moon's meetings with Kim in the past few months. The two Korean leaders have met thrice -- in April, May and September - agreeing to cease hostilities against each other, strengthening inter-Korean cooperation and achieving complete denuclearisation in the Korean Peninsula. (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) Clearing the air over his meeting with Rashtriya Janata Dal (RJD) leader Tejashwi Yadav, Union Minister and Rashtriya Lok Samta Party (RLSP) chief Upendra Kushwaha said that the meeting was a "coincidence". Kushwaha on Friday held close door talks with Tejashwi at the circuit house in Arwal hours after Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) president Amit Shah met with Bihar Chief Minister Nitish Kumar in Delhi and announced that the BJP and the Janata Dal-United (JD-U) would contest 2019 Lok Sabha elections on equal number of seats in Bihar. Shah also said that a respectable share of seats would be given to other allies in 2019 Lok Sabha elections. Kushwaha and Tejashwi's meeting triggered speculation about former's possible exit from the ruling NDA. However, Kushwaha said ,"Nothing is final on seat sharing. Amit Shah ji also said that we will finalise it in a few days. Meeting with Tejashwi Yadav was just a coincidence." Reacting on the same, Tejashwi confirmed that the meeting took place but refrained from divulging details. "Meeting took place. But it's not compulsory to reveal what did we talk. Everything cannot happen in just one day." "I had a scheduled event in Arwal and met him (Upendra Kushwaha) at the circuit house. Meetings are always positive. What conversation happened with whom, everything will be revealed in due time," he added. Earlier, Shah informed that the RLSP chief and Lok Janshakti Party (LJP) chief Ram Vilas Paswan would continue to remain with the BJP. (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) A war of words broke out on social media after an "inadvertent" post by the spokesperson for Ministry of Defence (MoD) upset serving and non-serving officers of the Indian defence forces. The spokesperson for MoD, however, later withdrew her tweet and apologised for the "inadvertent" post on the official handle of the MoD's Twitter handle in which she appeared to be attacking the former Navy chief, Admiral (Retd) Arun Prakash for the privileges that top military brass enjoys. It all started when on Friday morning spokesperson for Ministry of Defence (MoD), Swarnashree Rao Rajshekhar, responded to a retweet by former Navy Chief, Admiral Prakash highlighting the misuse of flags by civilian officers. This tweet had a visual of a car having the flag of Internal Financial Advisor (IFA) attached to Indian Army's Western Command. Since bureaucrats are not entitled to such privilege reserved only for top military brass, the visual went viral on social media. While retweeting the picture, Admiral Prakash wrote, "Even if misuse of an Army Command's insignia is not a cognizable offence, the person needs to be reprimanded by the GOCinC whole Financial Advisor he is." Responding to Admiral Prakash's tweet, Rajshekhar wrote back to India's one of the most decorated officer: "What about the misuse of jawans in your residence during an officer's tenure sir? And how about children being picked up and dropped to school in Fauji gaadis? Not to forget Madam's shopping expedition, in government vehicle. And endless parties...who pays for that?" The post ignited strong reactions from people on the social media including military veterans who felt that Rajshekhar's tweet reflected "a deep-rooted and twisted anti-armed forces mindset that prevails in MoD" and bureaucracy. The post also caught the eye of Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) Member of Parliament, Rajeev Chandrasekhar, who called for Rajshekhar's sacking. "U need to be more than worst insensitive bureaucrat to tweet like this -- u need to be a world class IDIOT who should be sent back to paper pushing or whatever his/her life's achievement is so far and NOT destroy goodwill n respect for PM and govt which has done so much for our Armed forces," Chandrasekhar said while venting out anger on Twitter. The MP even tagged Defence Minister and her deputy urging them to remove the officer and initiate an inquiry. Facing flak from all sides, Rajshekhar later deleted her post and apologised. "I had received a forward on the Whatsapp which while forwarding it to a group by mistake got posted on the ministry's official Twitter handle. I have deleted that tweet and have also apologised to the officer," Rajshekhar told ANI. Admiral Arun Prakash too tried to tone down the anger against the bureaucrat saying: "Rather than getting excited over indiscreet tweet of @SpokespersonMoD I would suggest sober reflection; (a) by MoD on state of civil-mil (military) relations & (b) by Military Leadership on the aspersions cast by MoD (IDAS?) civil-servant on personal conduct of Service officers. (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) Former prime minister Dr Manmohan Singh on Friday lashed out at the central government and dubbed his successor Narendra Modi as 'a paradoxical Prime Minister'. While addressing a gathering at the book launch of Congress leader Shashi Tharoor, Singh lauded the book but did not mince his words while attacking Prime Minister Narendra Modi-led central government. Singh called Shashi's book "The paradoxical Prime Minister" as a "very timely and important book." He further thanked Tharoor for reminding people "that the idea of India is under threat today. From those who not just seek to rule India but to change India's very heart and soul." The former prime minister, however, said, "Narendra Modi is a paradoxical Prime Minister. He (Modi) has spoken of being a prime minister for all Indians but he presides over and has mostly been silent in the face of widespread communal violence, mob lynching, and cow vigilantism. The environment in our universities and institutions like the Central Bureau of Investigation is being vitiated." Singh also hit out at the economic policies of his successor and called Demonetisation and the Goods and Service Tax (GST) disastrous for the nation. "On the economic front, nothing concrete has been done to bring back the promised billions allegedly held abroad as black money. A hastily implemented demonetisation and GST have proven to be disastrous for the economy," he added. Further sharpening his attack on the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), Singh said, "Petrol and diesel prices are at historic high despite the fall in international crude oil prices because the Modi government chose to levy excessive excise duty instead of passing on the benefit of the low prices to the people of India." He also alleged that Prime Minister Narendra Modi's rule has not been good for India and said, "The Modi government has turned out to be a little more than a series of empty gestures and marketing gimmick with very little substance having been achieved on the ground. (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) Launching a scathing attack on Prime Minister Narendra Modi for sending Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) Director Alok Verma on leave, Congress president Rahul Gandhi on Friday said that the former acted out of fear as he was involved in corruption. "The Prime Minister has put Rs 30,000 crore in the pocket of Anil Ambani after stealing from the Air Force, and the youth. The country knows about it. The Prime Minister can run, but can't hide from the truth. It will come out. Removing the CBI director will not make any difference. The truth will come out in the end," the Gandhi scion said after leaving Lodhi Colony police station, where he was taken after being detained for protesting outside the CBI headquarters. During the demonstration, several party workers marched towards the CBI headquarters with their president. Protestors raised slogans and placards as their party president sat atop a crowded truck amidst tight security. A supporter was seen sitting inside a cage with a placard that read 'the CBI'. Deputy Commissioner of Police (DCP South) Vijay Kumar said that eight leaders and 150 workers of the Congress were detained for 20 minutes before being released. The grand old party had called for nationwide protests outside the offices of the CBI. Uttar Pradesh Congress Committee chief Raj Babbar, who was leading a protest in Lucknow, was also detained. Police also used water cannons to disperse protestors in Chandigarh. The government recently sent Alok Verma and his deputy Rakesh Asthana on leave after both levelled allegations of accepting bribes at each other. However, the CBI on Thursday informed that Alok Verma and Rakesh Asthana would continue to remain the CBI Director and Special Director, respectively. (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) The Supreme Court on Friday ruled that an inquiry against Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) Director Alok Verma must be completed within two weeks and M Nageshwar Rao, who was appointed as the interim Director, cannot take any policy decision till court hears the matter again on November 12. The top court ordered a Central Vigilance Commission (CVC) inquiry under the supervision of retired Supreme Court Judge AK Patnaik. "Inquiry in respect of the allegation made in the note of the Secretariat as regards the present CBI Director Alok Verma shall be completed by the CVC within a period of two weeks from today. The inquiry will be conducted by the retired SC judge AK Patnaik," Chief Justice of India (CJI) Ranjan Gogoi in his order stated. "CVC will carry on probe in 10 days under the supervision of a judge of this court. M Nageshwar Rao shall perform only routine task. Change of investigating officer by CBI will be furnished in sealed cover on November 12 before Supreme Court. Rao will not take any policy decisions till Supreme Court hears the matter again" he added. Senior lawyer General Fali S Nariman, who was representing Verma, had cited the Vineet Narain judgement to say that the CBI Director enjoys a protected two-year tenure. Nariman had also submitted that the "order passed by the CVC and Union Government was without any authority under the law." Meanwhile, the Supreme Court has issued a notice to CVC, the Centre and CBI Special Director Rakesh Asthana on their pleas. Earlier in the day, Asthana had moved the Supreme Court challenging the central government's decision to send him on leave. Earlier on October 24, Verma had moved the apex court against the Centre's leave order. Gopal Sankaranarayanan, the lawyer appearing for Verma, had told the apex court that the Centre on Wednesday morning asked his client and Asthana to go on leave, hence compromising the investigation into various sensitive cases. After a spell of infighting in CBI, the Centre divested Verma and Asthana from their roles and asked them to go on leave. Verma and Asthana were at loggerheads on several issues and accused each other of blocking investigation of several important cases. Amid this tug of war, Rao, who was working as the Joint Director of the CBI, was appointed as the interim director with immediate effect. The Centre's decision came after Asthana moved the Delhi High Court seeking the quashing of First Information Report (FIR) filed against him by the CBI. The court, however, ordered that no action would be taken against Asthana until next hearing, which is scheduled for October 29. The CBI had filed an FIR against Asthana for allegedly accepting a bribe from a businessman, who was linked to Moin Akhtar Qureshi case. Asthana was heading the Special Investigation Team (SIT) that was probing Qureshi's case. However, CBI official spokesperson yesterday confirmed that Verma will continue to remain as Director of the probe agency and Asthana to remain Special Director. Rao will look after duties and functions of the CBI Director in the interim period till the time the CVC looks into the allegations, he said. (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) Congress president Rahul Gandhi and other party leaders, protesting in front of the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) headquarters, were arrested, party spokesperson Randeep Surjewala informed on Twitter. "Congress President, Rahul Gandhi & other leaders arrested," Surjewala tweeted. Rahul, along with party leaders and a massive crowd, was protesting against what they termed as the Prime Minister Narendra Modi-led government's interference in the investigating agency's functioning. The government recently sent the CBI chief Alok Verma and his deputy Rakesh Asthana on leave after both trade bribery charges against each other. The Congress party chief, in a tweet, said that "CBI Chief Alok Verma was collecting documents relating to the Rafale scam. He was forcibly sent on leave". Several party workers, during the Friday's protest, marched with their president on a road to CBI headquarters in central Delhi's Lodhi Road area. Protestors raised slogans and placards as their party president sat atop a crowded truck amidst tight security. A supporter sat inside a cage with a placard that read CBI. The Congress party has called for nationwide protests outside the offices of CBI. The Uttar Pradesh Congress Committee chief Raj Babbar, who was leading a protest in Lucknow, has also been detained. Police had to use water cannon at protestors in Chandigarh. (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) Italian actor Roberto Benigni is all set to return to the big screen after a seven-year hiatus in director Matteo Garrone's live-action version of 'Pinocchio.' The 65-year-old will star as Geppetto in the movie and will start shooting in the beginning of 2019 at locations across Italy, including Lazio, Tuscany Puglia, confirmed The Hollywood Reporter. Benigni, who has won an Oscar and an Academy Award in the best foreign-language film category for 'Life is Beautiful', directed and starred in his own version of 'Pinocchio' in 2002. Benigni's last directorial venture was 'The Tiger and the Snow,' in 2005, in which he also starred. His last acting turn was a cameo in Woody Allen's 'To Rome With Love' in 2012. (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) United States President Donald Trump's National Security Adviser John Bolton has announced that Russian President Vladimir Putin has been invited to visit Washington, D.C. in early 2019. As per Fox News report, Bolton, while speaking at a press conference in Georgia on Friday morning, has said that the scheduling of the visit is yet to be finalised, but the Russian President would be invited "after the first of the year." "We have invited President Putin to Washington after the first of the year for, basically, a full day of consultations.What the scheduling of that is we don't quite know yet," he said. Trump and Putin have held a summit in July in Helsinki, Finland which was touted to be a 'great success' by the US President. Russian president Putin had last visited the White House in September 2005. The then-President George W. Bush had termed it 'a new day in the long history of Russian-American relations, a day of progress and a day of hope'. During his visit to Moscow earlier this week, Bolton had also announced another meeting between the US President and his Russian counterpart on November 11 in Paris on the sidelines of the 100th anniversary of the armistice that ended War I. (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) The Enforcement Directorate (ED) on Friday moved a special court seeking a fugitive tag against Sterling Biotech promoters under Section 4 of the Fugitive Economic Offenders Act in connection with Rs 8,100 crore bank loan fraud case. The ED moved the plea before additional sessions judge Satish Kumar Arora to declare promoters-- Nitin Sandesara, Chetan Sandesara, Dipti Sandesara and Hitesh Patel as fugitives. The ED claimed that the promoters have reportedly fled the country to avoid criminal investigation and sought confiscation of the assets worth over Rs 5,000 crore of the Sandesara business family as a part of the action under Fugitive Economic Offenders Act. Till date, 191 have been accused in the case including 184 companies (179 shell companies) and seven individuals namely Nitin Sandesara, Chetan Sandesara, Dipti Sandesara, Delhi based businessman Gagan Dhawan and others. The original PAN cards, stamps, seals, Memorandum of Association and signed but blank chequebooks of the shell companies have been seized. Banks have declared loans to the tune of Rs 8,100 crores as fraud and Rs 13,754 crores as the total outstanding amount. The Fugitive Act was introduced by the central government in 2018 to confiscate properties and assets of economic offenders. (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) The United Nations Resident Coordinator in India, Yuri Afanasiev, on Friday presented the Post Disaster Needs Assessment (PDNA) report to Kerala Chief Minister Pinarayi Vijayan. The report assessed the damage and loss incurred due to the devastating floods in the state in August. This is the first time the UN has prepared such report in India. According to the report, the state would need about Rs 31,000 crore for recovery and reconstruction. The highest amount would be needed for the reconstruction of roads and transportation (Rs 10,046 crore), followed by housing (Rs 5443 crore), agriculture, fisheries and livestock (Rs 4498 crore), employment and livelihood (Rs 3896 crore), other infrastructure (Rs 2446 crore), irrigation (Rs 1483 crore) and water and sanitation (Rs 1331 crore). The report highlights the international examples and models for building back better Kerala in 16 sectors. It suggests that Kerala could become the first green state in the country by building on the four pillars of integrated water resources management, eco-sensitive and risk informed approaches to land use and planning, inclusive and people centred approaches, and by adopting knowledge, innovation and technology. Chief Minister Vijayan thanked the UN for providing support to the state for flood response and developing PDNA. He requested for the UN technical support in developing sectoral recovery plans, bringing international models and new technologies to Kerala, and in strengthening the recovery committees with experts. The chief minister also sought UN support for mobilising resources for the state within and outside the country. Echoing the views of the Chief Minister, Dr Thomas Issac, Finance Minister, thanked the UN for its assistance in mobilising grants for reconstruction. "We thank the UN for mobilizing grants. This would reduce the amount of borrowing," Issac said. The PDNA is the global methodology developed by the UN, the World Bank and the European Union to assess damage and loss in the wake of disaster and to recommend the recovery needs and strategies. In all, 76 experts from 10 UN agencies and European Union across 13 sectors collaborated to develop the report in 20 days. The UN agencies included, UNDP, UNICEF, UNESCO, UN Women, UNFPA, UNEP, WHO, WFP, ILO and FAO and adopted reports of 3 sectors from World Bank and ADB. Besides, two experts on integrated water resources management from Netherlands also provided support. The report was prepared after visiting 120 villages in 10 districts and interacting with experts, affected people, elected representatives, officials and representatives of civil society organisations. "On behalf of the United Nations in India, I am very pleased that we are able to support the exemplary recovery efforts of the Government of Kerala. The resilience and initiative of the people of Kerala have been remarkable throughout and in the aftermath of this disaster, with valuable lessons in innovation for the world. The UN-supported Post Disaster Needs Assessment builds on this and the best international models for building back better. I strongly believe that Kerala is poised to emerge stronger in a way that sets the standard for future disaster response needs in the region and beyond, and become India's first green state. The UN team continues to support Kerala through our technical expertise and global linkages across a variety of sectors," said Afanasiev. The PDNA was led by the Additional Chief Secretary, P.H. Kurian, Department of Revenue and Disaster Management and nodal officer, S. Venkatespathy, the Director of Fisheries. (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) The law enforcement authorities on Friday continued to search post offices after 11 potential explosive devices were mailed to eminent Democrats. The authorities also warned the public that the packages could still be at large, USA Today reported. "This has to be taken with the most seriousness," New York City Police Commissioner James P. O'Neill was quoted by USA Today as saying. "We are treating them as suspected explosive devices," the Commissioner added. The New York Police Department on Friday morning (local time) even closed intersection to traffic and pedestrians in Manhattan because of the possible explosive package found at the post office. The Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) confirmed it was an eleventh package, "similar in appearance to the others," and had been addressed to Sen. Cory Booker, a Democratic from New Jersey. According to USA Today, none of the suspected packages have injured anyone. Officials were searching a mail distribution center in Florida on Thursday night for possible clues on where the packages originated. A scare at Time Warner Center in New York caused more panic, after reports of unattended packages. The US Secret Service on Wednesday tweeted that it had intercepted two suspicious packages addressed to the residences of former US President Barack Obama and former Secretary of State and First Lady Hillary Clinton. The Secret Service released a statement which mentioned, "Late on October 23, 2018, the Secret Service recovered a single package addressed to Former First Lady Hillary Clinton in Westchester County, New York. Early this morning, October 24, 2018, a second package addressed to the residence of Former President Barack Obama was intercepted by Secret Service personnel in Washington, DC. (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) While the unannounced swearing-in of Mahinda Rajapaksa as the new Prime Minister of Sri Lanka on Friday evening took everyone by surprise, the mood for change was building up for the last few days. People closely watching these developments in Colombo said that the change was a result of a situation developing for the last few months and was not sudden. "It is not a sudden change. The situation has been developing for the last few months. President Maithripala Sirisena and Prime Minister Ranil Wickremesinghe are from two different parties and differences between them had emerged within months of coming together after the general elections in 2015," Sugeeswara Senadhira, Director (Research and International Media), Presidential Secretariat in Colombo told ANI. On Friday, former President Rajapaksa was sworn in as the Prime Minister of Sri Lanka replacing Ranil Wickremesinghe. President Sirisena and Prime Minister Wickremesinghe had come together to form the Unity Government in August 2015 following the general elections in the country. Sri Lanka Freedom Party (SLFP), under the leadership of President Maithripala Sirisena and Prime Minister Ranil Wickremesinghe's United Party (UNP), were the main constituents of the Unity Government. SLFP is the main constituent party of the United People's Freedom Alliance (UPFA) which on Friday decided to quit the alliance. SLFP has nearly 70 per cent of the total UPFA seats in the Sri Lankan Parliament. However, UNP has 105 MPs in the Parliament while SLFP has 95. Prime Minister Rajapaksa too had contested under the UPFA banner which now needs only 18 seats for a majority in the Parliament. "UPFA can easily rely for these 18 seats on the upcountry Tamil parties, Sri Lanka Muslim Congress, Ceylon Workers' Congress etc," Sugeeswara explained. Elaborating on the development, Sugeeswara added that there were reports of clashes between the coalition partners and that President Sirisena felt that decisions on economic policies were largely taken by Prime Minister Wickremesinghe, which became one of the reasons for the fallout between the two parties. "President Sirisena had realised it was a difficult coalition and there were clashes from the beginning. They came to a point when there were several points of disagreement as several issues had cropped up between them. There was a point when President Sirisena realised that it is difficult to go with UNP. He felt that entire economic policy was decided by UNP which was detrimental for the country," Sugeeswara said. "In fact, last month President Sirisena had asked Prime Minister Wickremesinghe to resign which he refused and President Sirisena could not do anything because of the 19th Amendment under which Presidential powers have been curtailed and the PM has got more powers", Sugeeswara said. He added that even ousted Prime Minister Wickremesinghe was aware that they were drifting away but he did not know that it would happen so suddenly. The next Presidential elections in Sri Lanka are due in 2019. Shortly after the swearing in, Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) leader Subramanian Swamy tweeted: "My friend Mahinda Rajapaksa has just been sworn in as Prime Minister of Sri Lanka... Now I will get to work in Maldives and Afghanistan." Prime Minister Rajapaksa had visited India last month at the invitation of Swamy to deliver a lecture on India-Sri Lanka relation. (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) A day after YS Jagan Mohan Reddy was attacked at Visakhapatnam airport, his YSR Congress Party (YSRCP) has moved the Hyderabad High Court, seeking a central agency enquiry into the attack. Senior party leader Subba Reddy filed a writ petition in the court and alleged the ruling Telugu Desam Party (TDP) of being behind the assault. "YSR Congress party suspects a conspiracy by Telugu Desam Party (TDP) government and police machinery. Hence, is pleading before the High Court for an unfair investigation to find out the truth", the party tweeted. Reddy, who is the leader of opposition in the Andhra Pradesh legislative assembly, was attacked with a knife by an airport canteen worker. The assailant, who was later identified as Srinivas, came close to the YSR Congress chief on the pretext of taking a selfie and then attacked him. Reddy was provided with first aid at the airport lounge after receiving a minor cut on his left arm. He was later taken to Omega Hospital in Hyderabad. "YSRCP Chief YS Jagan Mohan Reddy was attacked after the Security Check in Vizag Airport which is a major security lapse since the attack has happened post the Security Check, said the YSRCP in its official statement. "Srinivas struck Jagan's shoulders with the knife used in cockfights. Srinivas is a staff with Airport canteen run by TDP leader Harsha Vardhan and YSRCP prima facie suspects conspiracy by TDP Government," the statement added. (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) The domestic Telecom industry is set to rollout one million WiFi hotspots in the country by December 2019, according to Manoj Sinha Minister of State (Independent Charge) for Communications and Minister of State for Railways. This will be another step towards the digital empowerment of the nation. Bharat Wi-Fi, a country-wide common inter-operable platform of one million Wi-Fi Hotspots, owned and operated by Telecom Service Providers, Internet Service Providers and Virtual Network Operators will be rolled out across the country. This initiative allows consumers to access Wi-Fi Hotspots of any of the partnering operators. He made these comments at the latest India Mobile Congress (IMC). The National Frequency Allocation Plan 2018 (NFAP) was unveiled during the inauguration of the event presenting a pioneering roadmap for the Indian digital communications industry. The NFAP released a quantum of 605 MHz license exempt spectrum in 5GHz band for Wireless Access Services and Radio Local Area Networks in outdoor, to meet the ever-growing appetite for data (from a current figure of 50 MHz since 2007). The NFAP also offered over 30 license exempt bands for Short Range Devices (SRDs), Ultra-Wideband Devices (UWDs) and additional spectrum for M2M services, creating opportunities for the public to enjoy benefits from technologies and enabling the industry to build domestic manufacturing ecosystem. India has signalled its spectrum plans for 5G services aspiring to adopt the next generation technology as a leading market. In a major policy initiative, which will give impetus to small and medium entrepreneurship in Telecom Sector, DoT decided to deduct payments for resources taken by Virtual Network Operators (VNOs) from telecom service providers, thereby reducing levies payable by VNOs. This avoids double taxation at various stages. Powered by Capital Market - Live News (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) Amnesty International India on Friday dubbed the Enforcement Directorate's (ED) 'raid' on its head office here on Thursday an assault on civil society in the country and said New Delhi was treating rights bodies like "criminal enterprises". "Amnesty India is the latest target of the government's assault on civil society in the country," said Amnesty India Director Aakar Patel in a statement on its website. Accusing the government of treating human rights organisations like criminal enterprises, Patel alleged that ED had frozen Amnesty's bank accounts earlier this month. "The accounts of Greenpeace India were frozen earlier this month, effectively stopping our work," claimed Patel without specifying on which date and the reasons for such action. The ED searched Amnesty's head office in the city's eastern suburb in connection with foreign remittances allegedly in violation of the FDI guidelines. "Amnesty had received Rs 36-crore foreign funds till date from overseas in violation of the Foreign Direct Investment (FDI) guidelines," said the ED in a statement on Thursday night. Amnesty said on its website that a group of officers from the ED entered its premises at 1.30 p.m. on Thursday and locked the gates behind them. "They ordered the staff to remain in office, shut their laptops and not use their mobile phones," said Patel. Clarifying that Amnesty was committed to the rule of law and its operations in the country, Patel said the principles of transparency and accountability were at the heart of its work. "Most of the documents asked for during the search were available in the public domain or were filed with the relevant authorities," said Patel. Saying the ED's questioning was the relationship between its two entities -- Amnesty International India Pvt Ltd (AIIPL) and Amnesty International India Foundation (AIIF), Patel said details of the organisation' structure were available on its website since 2014. "Ahead of the raids, the Indian authorities leaked a cache of their internal documents marked 'secret' that appear to cast our operations as a dark web of intrigue," added Patel. The ED said that of the Rs 36 crore Amnesty received from abroad through commercial route, Rs 10 crore was placed in Fixed Deposit (FD) as a long-term loan and the balance was deposited in two bank accounts of AIIPL as 'consultancy services'. --IANS bha-fb/mr (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) The BJP and JD-U will contest an equal number of seats in the Lok Sabha elections in Bihar next year under a seat-sharing formula between the two sides, BJP President Amit Shah and Bihar Chief Minister Nitish Kumar announced after talks between them on Friday. The other alies -- LJP headed by Union Minister Ram Vilas Paswan and RLSP headed by another Union Minister Upendra Kushwaha -- would be given "respectable number of seats", Shah told the media with Nitish Kumar by his side. The talks between the two leaders followed a separate meeting between Nitish Kumar and Prime Minister Narendra Modi. Both Shah and Nitish Kumar said the details of the number of seats and the constituencies from which the parties would contest would be made public in two-three days. Shah said discussions would be held with LJP and RLSP on the number of seats to be contested by them. In 2014, the JD-U contested the Lok Sabha polls alone. "Upendra Kushwaha and Ram Vilas Paswan will remain with us. When a new fried has joined, the number of seats for each will come down," Shah said. Of the 40 Lok Sabha seats, the BJP had won 22 out of 30 it contested while the LJP won 6 out of seven it contested and the RLSP all 3 it contested as part of the NDA alliance. The JD-U had bagged only two seats. Shah said there was agreement that the alliance would contest under the leadership of Modi and form the government at the Centre after the 2019 elections. Nitish Kumar, Paswan and Sushil Modi, the Deputy Chief Minister, will lead the campaign in Bihar. Shah expressed confidence that the NDA would win more seats in Bihar in 2019 than in 2014. However, the LJP and the RLSP indicated that they were not going to compromise even a single seat less than it contested in 2014. Meanwhile, Kushwaha's meeting with Leader of Opposition in Bihar Assembly, Tejasvi Yadav in Arwal triggered speculation that the RLSP may "walk" out of the NDA if not given adequate seats. However, RLSP General Secretary Madhaw Anand told IANS, "We fought on three seats in 2014 elections. And since 2014 we have been with the NDA and would also remain with it in 2019. Suggesting that the BJP should not neglect RLSP's rising popularity, he said: "The BJP needs to assess a party's popularity before coming up with a seat-sharing formula. And if they come up with the assessment, then we would get not less than three seats." LJP national spokesperson Sanjay Saraf told IANS: "We have not been conveyed anything about the seat-sharing formula." --IANS aks-bns/prs (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) The BJP and JD-U will contest an equal number of seats in the Lok Sabha elections in Bihar next year under a seat-sharing formula agreed to between the two sides, BJP President Amit Shah and Bihar Chief Minister Nitish Kumar announced after talks between them on Friday. The other alies -- LJP headed by Union Minister Ram Vilas Paswan and RLSP headed by another Union Minister Upendra Kushwaha -- would be given "respectable number of seats", Shah told the media with Nitish Kumar by his side. The talks between the two leaders followed a separate meeting between Nitish Kumar and Prime Minister Narendra Modi. Both Shah and Nitish Kumar said the details of the number of seats and the constituencies from which the parties would contest would be made public in two or three days. Shah said discussions would be held with LJP and RLSP on the number of seats to be contested by them. In 2014, the JD-U contested the Lok Sabha polls alone. "When a new fried has joined, the number of seats for each will come down," Shah said. Of the 40 Lok Sabha seats, the BJP had won 22, LJP 6 and RLSP 3 as part of the NDA alliance. The JD-U had bagged only two seats. Shah said there was agreement that the alliance would contest under the leadership of Modi and form the government at the Centre after the 2019 elections. Nitish Kumar, Paswan and Sushil Modi, the Deputy Chief Minister, will lead the campaign in Bihar. Shah expressed confidence that the NDA would win more seats in Bihar in 2019 than in 2014. --IANS bns/vsc/mr (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) A plane operated by budget carrier Wizz Air made an emergency landing on Thursday at Bucharest International Airport due to a bomb threat, Romanian authorities said. The aircraft, an Airbus A320, was carrying 173 passengers from Kutaisi, Georgia, to Warsaw, when the crew were alerted about a possible bomb on board, Efe reported. The threat was conveyed in a telephone call to the Kutaisi terminal, Bucharest Airport spokesman Valentin Iordache said. The pilot diverted to Bucharest, where the plane landed without incident. Once the passengers and crew got off, the A320 was moved to an isolated area to proceed with a search of the plane and the baggage, Iordache said. --IANS ahm/ (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) Delhi Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal on Friday welcomed the Supreme Court intervention in the ongoing CBI row, saying he hoped the agency's institutional integrity will be upheld. "Welcome intervention by the Supreme Court in the CBI matter. In the interests of the nation, hope that institutional integrity of CBI will be upheld and powers that be will understand that their illegal acts will not go unchallenged," Kejriwal tweeted. Earlier, the apex court asked the Central Vigilance Commission to complete an inquiry within two weeks into the allegation against Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) Director Alok Verma. The inquiry will be done under the supervision of former apex court judge A.K. Patnaik. --IANS nks/ksk/mr (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) Global cybersecurity solution provider Check Point Software Technologies has announced the acquisition of Israel-based Cloud security company Dome9 for an undisclosed amount. This acquisition enhances Check Point's fully consolidated Infinity architecture and its Cloud security offerings with advanced active policy enforcement and multi-Cloud protection capabilities, Check Point said in a statement. "This acquisition will enhance our ability to deliver the benefits of Cloud with the critical security that must extend from the networks, endpoints and data centers to the Cloud and Mobile enterprise-wide," Check Point CEO Gil Shwed said. Founded in 2011, Dome9 enables its customers to use its platform to secure multi-cloud deployments across Amazon Web Services (AWS), Microsoft Azure and Google Cloud. The company provides significant Cloud-native security capabilities including intuitive visualisation of security posture, compliance and governance automation, privileged identity protection and cloud traffic and event analysis, enabling Cloud deployments safer and more manageable. Check Point Software Technologies, which has its international headquarters in Tel Aviv, is a leading provider of cyber security solutions to corporate enterprises and governments globally. --IANS gb/mr (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) China and Japan, arch rivals in Asia, on Friday warmed up to each other as both countries stuck over 500 deals and pledged to improve their ties as the US cranks up pressure on them for trade concessions. Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe's three-day official China visit, the first such trip by a Japanese Premier in seven years, is a sign of a thaw in Sino-Japanese ties that nosedived in 2012 when Tokyo nationalised some islands in the East China Sea also claimed by Beijing. After meeting Chinese Premier Li Keqiang earlier in the day, Abe met President Xi Jinping and both agreed that rivalry between both countries should stop. "As the international situation changes, China and Japan are becoming increasingly dependent on one another. Our countries also have a growing number of common interests and concerns on a multilateral level. The rapid changes in the world are providing China and Japan with opportunities for more in-depth cooperation," Xi said. Abe echoed Xi's view. "I want to use my visit as an opportunity to elevate the Japan-China relationship to a new phase from competition to cooperation. Japan and China are neighbours and partners and we will not be a threat to each other," the Japanese leader said. "We need to maintain and further develop fair and free trade systems... we want to work with China for the peace and stability of the world and the region... that's what countries around the world expect of us." Earlier in the day, both sides signed big deals like currency swap agreement, joint infrastructure projects in a third country and joint exploration of gas in the disputed East China Sea. Abe's visit came at the commemoration of 40 years to the treaty of peace and friendship between the two countries. Japan's invasion of China and atrocities perpetuated from 1931 to 1945 still rankles in Chinese minds. "The China-Japan relationship has gone through wind and rain in the past four decades, yet peace, friendship and cooperation have always been the mainstream," Li said. "On the occasion of the 40th anniversary of the treaty, we need to adhere to the general direction of peace, friendship and cooperation and conform to the trend of the times so as to jointly build more mature, steady and progressive China-Japan ties. "The two sides need to understand each other and foster their strategic positioning in a right way. The consensus that China and Japan are partners rather than mutual threats should be better implemented in concrete actions," said Li, whose Japan visit in May this year broke the ice. Abe said Beijing had scored remarkable achievements since its reform and opening up while Japan also stepped forward alongside China. He said Japan and China played "an irreplaceable role" in the world's economic progress and added that both sides will jointly contribute to the continuous development of cooperation and to world peace and prosperity. China and Japan, the second and third largest economies in the world, have been bitter rivals. Tokyo is an old ally of the US and Beijing is a new adversary of Washington. Experts say that with President Donald Trump's stepping up trade pressure on China and even US allies had brought Tokyo and Beijing together. Japan and China have a long-standing dispute over a set of islands in the East China Sea. Tokyo is also a part of the anti-China bloc "Quad" which has the US, Australia and India as members. However, the Japanese need greater access to the Chinese market, especially at a time when new trade problems with the US have cropped up. China wants Japanese technology and cannot afford an anti-Beijing Japan when it is facing the heat from the US on multiple fronts. --IANS gsh/soni/ (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) China hopes to enhance law enforcement cooperation with Bangladesh, a senior Chinese official said here on Friday. Zhao Kezhi, Chinese State Councilor and Minister of Public Security, made the remarks during talks with Bangladeshi Minister of Home Affairs Asaduzzaman Khan, reports Xinhua news agency. Zhao said leaders of the two countries have lifted China-Bangladesh ties to a strategic partnership of cooperation and mapped out the new blueprint for mutually beneficial cooperation between the two countries. He also called for deepening practical cooperation in fighting terrorism, cyber crime, telecommunications fraud and drug crimes, as well as in law enforcement capacity building. --IANS mr/ (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) The Supreme Court's decision to intervene in the Central Bureau of Investigation row is a "commentary on a failed government" led by Prime Minister Narendra Modi, the Congress said on Friday. "Today, Modiji was again reminded that 'Modi Rule' fails miserably before the 'Rule of Law'," Congress spokesperson Randeep Singh Surjewala tweeted. The party said "brazen attempts to interfere, infiltrate or capture institutions" will not be tolerated and "people of India will remind you (Modi) in 2019 that bad governments come with an expiry date!" The apex court on Friday appointed one of its former judges, Justice A.K. Patnaik, to supervise an inquiry into the allegations against CBI Director Alok Verma while giving two weeks time to the Central Vigilance Commission to complete the probe. This came "despite the government's protests in court", as a bench of Chief Justice Ranjan Gogoi, Justice Sanjay Krishan Kaul and Justice K.M. Joseph called the probe an "exception" to be supervised, stripping the interim Director M. Nageswara Rao of all powers except daily administration, Surjewala said. "History will not forget how you severely undermined the reputation of two premier institutions, CBI and CVC. You are the sole reason for this trust deficit!" the party said hailing the top court's decision. With this yet again the Modi government's "sinister attempt to capture CBI through lackeys" have fallen flat, the party said, adding that the BJP-led NDA should consider it a "slap in face of tyrants who wanted to pin the last nail in CBI's independence". The controversy over a senior Punjab cabinet Minister sending indecent messages to a senior woman IAS officer has taken a new turn, with a woman leader of the ruling Congress in Punjab claiming that no complaint has been made against the Minister. Congress party in-charge for Punjab Asha Kumari told rhw media here on Friday that no action was being contemplated against Technical Education Minister Charanjit Singh Channi as the party had received no complaint. Asha Kumari's statement is contrary to a statement earlier by Punjab Chief Minister Amarinder Singh that the matter was brought to his notice and that it was "resolved" to the satisfaction of the concerned woman officer. Amarinder Singh, who admitted that the matter came to his knowledge about one month back, had said that the Minister apologized to the woman officer. The Chief Minister, now visiting Israel and Turkey, had said on Wednesday that the matter relating to the reported objectionable message to the woman officer had been "taken very seriously" and, to the best of his knowledge, resolved to the officer's satisfaction. "The matter was brought to my notice some weeks ago and I had asked the Minister to apologize and sort it out with the officer. I understand he had done so to the satisfaction of the officer and thus the matter was resolved," the Chief Minister said. Shiromani Akali Dal (SAD) President Sukhbir Singh Badal on Friday condemned Congress President Rahul Gandhi "for assigning party General Secretary for Punjab Asha Kumari to cover up the misdeeds of Minister Charanjit Singh Channi". "Asha Kumari's statement would be remembered in history as the first instance when someone who had already admitted his mistake was being given a clean chit. Chief Minister Amarinder Singh has already disclosed that after the complaint by the IAS officer was received by him, Channi had apologized to the woman," Badal said in a statement. "When the Chief Minister has acknowledged Channi's guilt, how is Asha Kumari giving him a clean chit?" "The matter should be taken up officially and investigated by a harassment panel following which action should be taken against Channi as per the law. In the meantime he should be sacked from the cabinet," Badal said. --IANS js/mr (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) The Enforcement Directorate (ED) on Friday urged the court to declare Gujarat-based businessmen Sandesara brothers as fugitives and permit it to confiscate their properties in India and abroad in connection with a Rs 8,100 crore taken by them and their pharmaceutical company from domestic and offshore branches of Indian banks in 2004-12. Besides Chetan Jayantilal Sandesara and Nitin Jayantilal Sandesara, known as Sandesara brothers, the ED asked the court to issue an order declaring their relative Dipti Sandesara and an associate Hitesh Patel also as fugitives, an agency official said. "We moved the court to declare the promoters of Sterling Biotech group as fugitives and confiscate their properties in India and abroad under section 4 of Fugitive Economic Offenders Act," said the official. The ED said that the Sandesara brothers and Dipti were found to be residing in Nigeria while Hitesh was in the US. All the four accused are promoters of Sterling group and fled country to avoid criminal investigation and prosecution. The agency said that the accused have incorporated more than 100 entities in various countries including the United Arab Emirates, the US, the UK, British Virgin Island, Mauritius, Barbados and Nigeria and that their main entities outside India include Richmond Overseas, Sunshine Trust Corp, SEEPCO BVI, SEEPCO Nigeria and Atlantic Blue Water Services Pvt Ltd. "Investigation has revealed that Sandesara are engaged in oil business in Nigeria and are having numerous assets there. These include oil evacuation and transportation equipments such as oil blocks (Durga 1-4), barges and ships (Tulja Bhawani, Varinda). Some of their vessels are also registered in Panama. "Besides, they have immovable properties in British Vergin Island. All these properties are sought to be confiscated under Fugitive Offenders Act. Further investigation is ongoing to identify their other properties abroad involved in money laundering," said the official. The agency's move comes three days after it filed a chargesheet under the anti-money laundering law naming 191 accused and 184 companies of the Sterling Biotech group which includes Sterling Biotech Ltd, PMT Machines Ltd, Sterling SEZ and Infra Ltd, Sterling Port Ltd, Sterling Oil Resources Ltd and 179 shell companies. The Sandesara brothers and one Rajbhushan Dixit, their chartered accountant Hemant Hathi and middlemen Gagan Dhawan were also named in the chargesheet. Action under the Fugitive Economic Offenders Law shall be initiated soon against the Sandesara brothers and a Red Corner Notice shall be issued, said the ED. The agency registered a money laundering case against the SBL group, Sandesara brothers and others in August 2017, days after a case of alleged bank fraud of Rs 5,700 crore was filed against them by the Central Bureau of Investigation. Investigation by the ED revealed that Sandesara brothers and others hatched a criminal conspiracy to cheat banks by manipulate figures in the balance sheets of their flagship companies to induce banks to sanction higher loans. "After obtaining loans, the accused diverted them to non-mandated purposes through a web of shell companies. Thus, the loan funds were diverted, layered and laundered by the promoters for personal purposes. Total amount of loan fraud as on date is Rs 8,100 crore," said another ED official. Loans to the tune of Rs 5,700 crore was disbursed by various banks from 2004 to 2012. The ED said the banks have also declared the loans to the tune of Rs 8,100 crore as fraud (domestic loans Rs 3,675 crore and foreign loans Rs 4,425 crore). The ED said it had arrested four persons in the case including a Delhi-based businessman-cum-middleman Gagan Dhawan, Ex-Director of Andhra Bank Anup Garg, Director of SBL R.B. Dixit and Ranjeet Malik, an aide to Dhawan. The ED has so far attached assets to the tune of Rs 4,710 crore in the case. ---IANS rak/mr (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.) Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan on Friday called on Saudi Arabia to reveal the location of murdered journalist Jamal Khashoggi's body and hand over the suspects involved in his killing. Erdogan's comments came after the Turkish reported that the country's police found no DNA traces of the Washington Post columnist in water samples taken from a well at the residence of the Saudi Arabian consul in Istanbul. The leader said that the top Saudi prosecutor will travel to Turkey on Sunday to meet the top Istanbul prosecutor and argued that those responsible for killing him should face trial in Turkey, CNN reported. After Saudi Arabia admitted that the supporter-turned-critic of Crown Prince Mohammad bin Salman was killed on October 2 in its Istanbul consulate, five high-ranking officials were dismissed, including Bin Salman's chief and the deputy head of the Saudi intelligence service. Eighteen people were arrested. "Whatever happened, it comes down to these 18 persons. If you are determined, if you want to remove the suspicion and clear the air, these 18 persons are the bottom line to this," Erdogan said, addressing the provincial heads of his ruling Justice and Development Party in Ankara. If the Saudis can't make the suspects talk, then Turkey will, he said. "The incident took place in Istanbul. So, hand them to us, and let us judge them." Erdogan described some of the statements made by the Saudis as the Khashoggi case unfolded as "very funny". "These juvenile statements do not match with the seriousness of government affairs... It is obvious that (Khashoggi) is killed. But where? Where is the body?" After weeks of providing conflicting accounts of what happened to Khashoggi, the kingdom last week said that he was killed "accidentally" in a fist fight at the consulate by "rogue" agents. But Riyadh maintained that neither the Crown Prince nor King Salman knew of the operation to target Khashoggi. US officials have said such a mission -- including 15 men sent from Riyadh -- could not have been carried out without the authorization of Bin Salman, the country's de facto ruler. News of the Saudi Attorney General Sheikh Suood bin Abdullah Al Mo'jab's planned trip to Turkey came a day after he said that the kingdom now considered Khashoggi's killing to be "premeditated", based on information from Turkish investigators. Meanwhile, CIA chief Gina Haspel briefed US President Donald Trump on Thursday on her findings following her trip to Turkey, where she was dispatched to assess the information the Turks collected in the case. The Washington Post reported that Haspel listened to the audio purportedly of Khashoggi's interrogation and murder. The White House confirmed the briefing had taken place but gave no further details. The Saudi government has faced wide condemnation from western nations over Khashoggi's killing and its apparent cover-up. Russia, however, has yet to criticize the kingdom. Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said on Friday that there was no reason to doubt what the Saudi royals said about Khashoggi's death. Asked if the Kremlin believed the statements, Peskov said: "That is an inappropriate question, there is an official statement from the King and Crown Prince. There is no reason basically not to believe it." Russian President Vladimir Putin discussed the case with King Salman on Thursday in a phone call held at the initiative of the Saudi side, the Kremlin said. --IANS soni/bg (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) The Supreme Court on Friday appointed one of its former judges, Justice A.K. Patnaik, to supervise the inquiry into the allegations against CBI Director Alok Verma while giving two weeks time to the CVC to complete the probe. Making it clear that prolonging the inquiry was not in the nation's best interest, a bench of Chief Justice Ranjan Gogoi, Justice Sanjay Krishan Kaul and Justice K.M. Joseph said the inquiry would be conducted on the allegation contained in the Cabinet Secretary's note to the CVC. As Attorney General K.K. Venugopal told the court that the inquiry should not be on the allegation against Verma but also on the allegations raised against CBI Special Director Rakesh Asthana, Chief Justice Gogoi said: "We are only concerned with Verma." The court also asked the officiating Director M. Nageswara Rao not to take any policy or major decision except for routine ones. It directed all decisions taken by Rao "after taking over charge till this hour" (when the order was being dictated) to be submitted to the court in a sealed envelope by November 12. The court said it may reverse or retain Rao's decisions. --IANS pk/in/ksk (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 FBI on Friday arrested a man suspected of sending packages containing suspected explosives in recent days to major Democratic Party figures and critics of President Donald Trump, the Justice Department said. The individual was arrested in Florida, Efe news quoted the federal government agency as saying. "We can confirm one person is in custody," Sarah Isgur Flores, a Justice Department spokeswoman, wrote on Twitter. The arrest comes after 12 people received suspicious packages containing suspected explosives in the last few days, including former President Barack Obama and former Secretary of State and Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton. The last two suspicious packages, intercepted on Friday in Florida and New York, were addressed to Democratic Senator Cory Booker and to the former director of National Intelligence, James Clapper. None of the packages exploded though they have elevated the level of alert of US authorities as they fear more packages will be found in the coming days. The FBI said Friday on Twitter that a similar package was found in Florida addressed to Senator Booker, who is considered a possible contender in the 2020 presidential election. The New York Police Department (NYPD), for its part, intercepted a suspicious package on Friday addressed to Clapper at a post office in Manhattan. The discovery of suspicious packages containing suspected explosives began on Monday when billionaire philanthropist George Soros, a known Democratic donor, received one at his home in the state of New York. On Tuesday and Wednesday, two packages were sent to Hillary Clinton and Obama, while other similar packages were sent to former Attorney General Eric Holder, Democratic Congresswoman Maxine Waters, former CIA Director John Brenan and CNN's New York offices. The fact that all of the packages were addressed to members of the Democratic Party or to Trump critics suggests a possible political motivation. This comes less than two weeks ahead of the November 6 mid-term elections taking place in the US. Trump acknowledged on Friday that the discovery of the suspicious packages could affect Republican candidates' momentum for the mid-term elections, in which a third of the seats in the House of Representatives and all of the seats in the Senate are up for grabs. --IANS mr/ (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) Marking a red-letter day for the 11 Base Repair Depot (BRD), Ojhar, the first indigenously overhauled Sukhoi Su-30MKI supersonic aircraft was handed over to the Operational Squadron of the Indian Air Force here on Friday. Air Marshal Hemant Sharma, Air Officer Commanding-in-Chief, Maintenance Command, formally handed over the gleaming overhauled Su-30MKI fighter aircraft to Air Marshal H.S. Arora, Air Officer Commanding-in-Chief, South Western Air Command at an impressive ceremony here. The aircraft first took-off post-overhaul on April 24 and since then, it has been undergoing test flights before it was finally handed over to be inducted for operational tasks in a flying squadron. "During the overhaul, the aircraft was stripped completely and rebuilt from scratch, replacing certain worn out parts/components. It has now become almost like a brand-new aircraft with its life-span doubled," a senior official told IANS. Established in April 1974, the 11 BRD, Ojhar, is the only fighter aircraft repair depot of the IAF and undertakes repairs, renovations and overhaul of frontline fighters like the MIG-29 and now the Su-30MKI. The 11 BRD progressively built and improved upon the technical expertise and infrastructure over the years and by 1983, it had overhauled 100 Su-7 aircraft. From 1983, it undertook the overhaul of 28 MIG-21 aircraft and later set up a facility in 1986 to overhaul MIG-23s of which 248 were overhauled till May 2015. In 1996, the overhaul facility for MIG-29s was set up and presently the upgradation of these aircraft, besides repairs and overhaul of the Su-30MKI has also been taken up at the 11BRD. The Ojhar depot is the only agency to undertake the complete overhaul of ejection seats and role equipment of the Su-30MKI, both for the IAF and Hindustan Aeronautics Ltd.(HAL), Bengaluru. Air Commmodore S.V. Borade, Officer Commanding, Air Force Station Ojhar, said that with this overhaul capability, the 11BRD has exhibited what the unit is capable of and is ever ready to tackle new challenges. Besides 11BRD, HAL also overhauls and maintains the Su-30MKI, said an official. The twin-finned, twin-jet multi-role Su-30MKI is capable of attaining speeds of Mach 2 (double the speed of sound or 2,120 kmph) at high altitudes and can carry guns, missiles, bombs, rockets and other weaponry. The aircraft, developed by Russia, is now built at HAL under licence for the IAF since the past nearly two decades. --IANS qn/ksk/bg (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) Former Leader of Opposition in West Bengal Assembly and a founding member of the Trinamool Congress, Pankaj Banerjee, passed away late on Friday. Banerjee, 71, a three-time legislator, is survived by his wife and daughter. A product of the student movement, Banerjee joined the Congress in the 1960s, and won his first election from the Tollygunge constituency in South Kolkata in 1972. A marine engineer by profession, he later won from the same constituency in 1996 on a Congress ticket, and in 2001 as a candidate of the Trinamool Congress. With the Trinamool emerging as the largest opposition party in 2001, Banerjee became the leader of the opposition, and served in that capacity till 2006. However, he surprisingly announced his retirement from in 2006, in the run up to the assembly polls, citing poor health. But many still believe that Banerjee had called it quits over some differences with party supremo Mamata Banerjee. The leader's death, however, saw a high drama. After a private hospital announced his death, and his 'body' was brought home, a family doctor examined him and claimed that his heart was beating. By then, the Chief Minister had twitted a condolence message expressing her shock over Banerjee's demise. The tweet was soon erased and Banerjee was rushed to another private hospital, where doctors declared him dead. Later, the AMRI Hospital, where Banerjee was first taken, claimed that its doctors "were under no confusion over his demise" as two ECG graphs - the first one conducted on him in the ambulance on way to the hospital - had shown flat line," indicating "that he expired even before he had reached the hospital". "Since protocol demanded that if admitted, Banerjee's body had to undergo a post-mortem examination, accompanying family and friends decided to take the body back to his residence," the hospital said in a statement. --IANS ssp/ahm/ (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) Former Sri Lankan President Mahinda Rajapaksa was sworn in as the new Prime Minister at the Presidential Secretariat here on Friday, a government official said. Rajapaksa took the oath in front of President Maithripala Sirisena shortly after the Sirisena-led United People's Freedom Alliance (UPFA) withdrew from the national coalition government, reports Xinhua news agency. Sirisena sacked Prime Minister Ranil Wickremesinghe and appointed Rajapaksa as the new Prime Minister after UPFA's withdrawal. The coalition government consisted of the UPFA and the United National Party (UNP), led by Wickremesinghe. Meanwhile, Finance Minister and UNP legislator Mangala Samaraweera called the appointment of Rajapaksa "unconstitutional," while another cabinet Minister said UNP would challenge the move in court. Wickremesinghe was quoted by local media as saying: "I am still the Prime Minister." UPFA General Secretary Mahinda Amaraweera said that Parliament Speaker Karu Jayasuriya had been informed of UPFA'a decision. --IANS mr/ (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) For the third consecutive week, authorities did not allow Friday prayers at the historic Jamia Masjid in old Srinagar. Authorities imposed restrictions in Nowhatta area disallowing prayers. Mirwaiz Umer Farooq, senior separatist leader who delivers the Friday sermon at the Jamia Majid, tweeted that on the one hand, youths were being killed in Kashmir and on the other hand, religious rights of the people were being snatched by using force. Fearing clashes between the youth and the security forces after the Friday prayers, authorities had made heavy deployments of security forces to impose restrictions in Nowhatta area where the Jamia Masjid is situated. --IANS sq/prs (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) Mumbai terror attack mastermind Hafiz Saeed's Jamaat-ud-Dawa (JuD) and the Falah-i-Insaniyat Foundation (FIF) are no more on the list of banned outfits after the presidential ordinance that proscribed them under a UN resolution lapsed, a court here was told. During a hearing on Thursday of a petition filed by Saeed, his counsel informed the Islamabad High Court that the presidential ordinance had lapsed and it had never been extended, Dawn news reported. Deputy Attorney General Raja Khalid Mehmood Khan confirmed that the ordinance had lapsed. The petitioner had challenged the ordinance under which his organisations had been banned for being on the watch list of the UN Security Council. In February, former President Mamnoon Hussain promulgated an ordinance amending the Anti-Terrorism Act, 1997, with regards to proscription of terrorist individuals and organisations to include entities listed by the UN Security Council - in a move to declare JuD and FIF as proscribed groups. Saeed contended in the petition that he established JuD in 2002 and cut off all ties with the banned Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT), but India continued to malign JuD for its past association with the terror outfit. The petitioner said he was kept in detention in 2009 and 2017 due to India's pressure. He added that the UN Security Council had passed a resolution against JuD after which the government of Pakistan put it on the watch list. The JuD chief termed it against the sovereignty of Pakistan that an ordinance was issued to ban his organisation. According to a list updated on September 5 on the National Counter Terrorism Authority's website, 66 organisations have been banned in the country and JuD and FIF were not among them. However, the two Hafiz Saeed-linked organisations were "under watch by the Ministry of Interior". --IANS ksk/vm (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) A division bench of the Rajasthan high court has issued notices to the state government along with the district and civic administration of Jodhpur seeking their response as to why goat sacrifice on the day of Bakrid is not banned. Allowing a PIL seeking a ban of the sacrifice of goats, a division bench headed by justice Sangeet Lodha issued the notices to the state government, district magistrate and the municipal corporation of Jodhpur seeking their reply in four weeks. Petitioner Purushottam Agarwal has linked goat sacrifice with the environment. "A large number of goats are sacrificed on Bakrid and the disposal of the remains and blood causes a huge blow to the environment," argued the petitioner's counsel Moti Singh Rajpurohit. "An Uttarakhand court has already ruled that the sacrifice of animals affects the environment badly", said Rajpurohit, adding that such sacrifice can not be a part of any He said markets selling goats ahead of Bakrid in the city are unauthorized and illegal. "There are several court directions already that no cattle can be sold and purchased for the purpose of sacrifice and that nor could they be transported without a medical certificate", said Rajpurohit. He said in Rajasthan, only 9 places have been designated and authorized for cattle fairs. "Except these 9 places, there can not be a cattle gathering for the purpose of their sale anywhere", he argued. --IANS ajay/prs (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) To accelerate enterprise digitisation in India and help the industry test and develop innovative solutions, Chinese technology giant Huawei on Friday launched its first "market-oriented" OpenLab in the country which is the company's 12th such facility globally. "Over the next three years, Huawei will be investing $23 million jointly in its OpenLabs in India and Thailand. These facilities will provide platforms for customers and partners to innovate together using Huawei's ICT capabilities and India's local talent," said Jay Chen, CEO, Huawei India. Compared to traditional technology-centric labs, Huawei said its OpenLab Delhi will be market-oriented, and aims to develop hardware and software services as well as solutions based on customers' requirements during their digital transformation. Built as a part of Huawei's Global OpenLab Programme, the OpenLab Delhi will provide Huawei ecosystem partners and customers a platform to freely test and customise their solutions. The OpenLab Delhi will focus on driving smart city innovations in areas as diverse as IoT (Internet of Things), smart building, smart campus (perimeter alarm, smart parking, energy efficiency management and visitor management), smart transportation, intelligent video surveillance solutions and convergent command and control solutions, Huawei said. "In the future we will extend the range of solutions to digital banking, smart energies, and more and more areas," Derek Hao, President, Enterprise Business Group, Huawei India, told IANS. "With this OpenLab, Huawei looks to serve India as well as global partners and customers leveraging its global expertise, talents, technologies, and customer business successes," he said, adding that the facility will serve as a co-innovation platform for Huawei, its customers and partners for incubating industry solutions to address the challenges of digital transformation. The OpenLab Delhi, located at the company's Gurugram headquarters, will also be providing training and certification to Indian ICT talent in the latest technologies. It will offer ICT training to nearly 400 personnel per year and provide "ICT Career Certification" to 250 engineers per year; and "Proof of Concept Training" to nearly 100 engineers annually, Huawei said. In the first three quarters, Huawei achieved 60 per cent growth in the enterprise business in India, compared to the growth achieved in the three quarters of last year, Hao said, adding the the Huawei Enterprise Business Group is now serving top manufacturing, retail and large enterprise customers in India. --IANS gb/bg (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) has asked the Security Council to impose sanctions against involved in in armed conflicts after Secretary-General had reported a huge increase in such brutalities. "Sexual violence, abductions and human trafficking continue to be used as weapons of war in armed conflict by non-state actors and terrorist organisations," Paulomi Tripathi, First Secretary in the told the Council on Thursday. "The Sanctions Committees of the Security Council need to address the issue of proactively listing terrorist individuals and entities involved in sexual and gender-based in armed conflicts," she said while participating in a debate on Women, Peace and Security. "International cooperation for the prosecution of criminals engaged in trans-boundary crimes are important to bring justice to the victims majority of whom are women and girls," she added. Earlier, Guterres told the Council: "The UN documented more than 800 cases of conflict-related in 2017 - a 56 per cent increase since 2016." "Conflict continues to have a devastating effect on women and girls," he added. Various UN reports have chronicled the systematic rape, kidnapping and enslavement of thousands of women and girls by terrorist organisations like the Daesh or Islamic state in Syria, Boko Haram in and Lord's Resistance Army in several countries in the eastern side of While several Security Council committees have imposed sanctions on and terror groups, none have so far meted out sanctions specifically for crimes against women and girls. Tripathi also spoke of the general toll that instability caused by terrorism and criminal networks impose on women. "Rapidly expanding trans-boundary criminal networks finance terror, arms supply, recruit and train of foreign fighters and destabilise whole regions which disproportionately affect women," she said. "Large scale movements of refugees emanating from armed conflicts increase the vulnerability of women to discrimination and exploitation." Lt. Cmdr. Christopher Logan, a Pentagon spokesman, said Monday the guided-missile cruiser USS Antietam (CG 54) and the guided-missile destroyer USS Curtis Wilbur (DDG 54) sailed through the Taiwan Strait on October 22 in accordance with global law. China has also expressed concern after U.S. President Donald Trump said the United States would withdraw from a Cold War-era treaty that eliminated nuclear missiles from Europe because Russian Federation was violating the pact. Colonel Rob Manning from the US Department of Defense told reporters that the USS Curtis Wilbur and USS Antietam conducted a routine transit to demonstrate US commitment 'to a free and open Indo-Pacific'. Reuters was first to report USA consideration of the sensitive operation on Saturday. Hua said the Taiwan question concerns the sovereignty and territorial integrity of China and is the most important and sensitive issue in the Sino-US relationship. The arms sale coincided with a USA decision to issue a visa ban and assets freeze on China's Equipment Development Department and its director, Li Shangfu, over the purchase from Russian Federation of Su-35 combat aircraft in 2017 and S-400 surface-to-air missile system-related equipment this year. China "expressed concern" to the USA about the transit, Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Hua Chunying told a regular briefing yesterday in Beijing. The Pentagon says Washington has sold Taiwan more than $15 billion in weaponry since 2010. China's military ties with the USA are important and sensitive, Mr Wei said, adding that Taiwan was a "core" interest of China's and Beijing opposed displays of strength by "outside forces" in the South China Sea. Li Haidong, a USA studies researcher at China Foreign Affairs University, said that such a move demonstrated that the USA is trying to pressure China into making concessions on other issues by making use of the Taiwan question, which damages the political basis of bilateral ties. In response, China demanded the sanctions be revoked, summoned the American ambassador and defense attache to deliver a protest, and recalled its naval commander from a USA trip. On Monday, the United States sent two warships through the Taiwan Strait in the second such operation this year. Mattis delivered that message to China's Defense Minister Wei Fenghe personally on Thursday, on the sidelines of an Asian security forum. Union Road and Transport Minister Nitin Gadkari on Friday discussed the progress of India-Myanmar transport connectivity with the Myanmar Minister for Communication and Transport U Thant Sin Maung. "The two sides discussed the status of the project for upgrading the Kalewa-Yagyi stretch of the India-Myanmar-Thailand (IMT) Trilateral Highway, starting Imphal-Mandalay bus service, and a bilateral Motor Vehicles Agreement between the two countries," a statement released by Gadkari's office said. The upgrade of the Kalewa-Yagyi stretch of IMT is being executed by the National Highways Authority of India (NHAI). "The project is running well within time and we hope to complete it before the scheduled date," NHAI said. The two sides, the statement said, also expressed willingness to start the Imphal-Mandalay bus service. "India and Myanmar had operationalized the Land Border Crossing Agreement earlier this year. The agreement allows nationals from the two countries holding valid passport and visa to cross over without requiring special permission. Now both countries have to select bus operators to run the service," it said. Once the service starts, a bus from India will take passengers to the Myanmar border where they will be transferred to the bus run by a Myanmar operator for travelling further into Myanmar. Likewise, India-bound Myanmar nationals will transfer into bus run by an Indian operator for further travel into India. Gadkari's office said that both the countries also expressed their eagerness to carry forward the process of connectivity by signing a bilateral "Motor Vehicles Agreement" for seamless movement of cargo and passenger movement. "The draft agreement is under discussion and the two sides are keen to finalize it soon," it said. The 1,360-kilometer-long IMT Trilateral Highway is a regional highway being constructed under India's Act East policy to boost connectivity in the region. --IANS sd/prs (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) While some countries in the world including South Korea will start commercial roll out of 5G this year itself, India is on track to start the process in 2020, a top Samsung executive said at India Mobile Congress 2018 here on Friday. In collaboration with the Department of Telecommunications (DoT), Samsung is planning to commence the first large-scale 5G trials in India in the first quarter of 2019. "We will start India 5G trials in New Delhi," Srini Sundararajan, Senior Vice President and Head of Networks Business at Samsung India, told a group of journalists. The adoption of 5G in India will depend on the kind of use cases that the people of the country want. The spectrum which is allocated will also influence what kind of use cases will be suitable for 5G adoption. "Once the country decides on the use cases, we will have all other equipment including the devices necessary for those specific use cases ready," Sundararajan said. The roll out of 5G is expected to accelerate India's GDP growth and transform many sectors including healthcare, education, disaster management and agriculture. "5G is a complete ecosystem. Its adoption will not completely replace 4G," Sundararajan said, adding that a nationwide commercial roll out of 5G is not immediately necessary to leverage the benefits of low latency and high throughput that this technology provides. While adoption of this technology may initially be limited to a few sectors of the economy, it will also gradually transform consumer experiences. "The television talking to the refrigerator and the refrigerator talking to the microwave will be a reality in a few years from now," Sundararajan said. At IMC 2018, Samsung showcased how its 5G solutions can enable a variety of 5G-powered business models and scenarios, including 5G home broadband services, smart cities and smart agriculture. With its successful development of the first commercial ASIC-based 5G modems and mmWave RFICs, the company has been manufacturing compact-sized 5G radio and router devices and CPEs (customers premises equipment). Samsung been selected by the world's leading operators such as Verizon, AT&T, Sprint and SK Telecom for both 4G and 5G solutions and services. In India, the company is a key provider of network infrastructure for Reliance Jio which has successfully built a large mobile network in the country within a short period of time. The Jio-Samsung 4G LTE network handles over 90 petabytes of data traffic every day, equivalent to 600 billion photographs shared on social media in a day. "Jio was built for 5G. It is a complete IP network and will mostly require software upgrades to update the network," Sundararajan said. Samsung's solutions span network equipment, devices and chipsets. In his keynote address on the inaugural day of IMC) 2018 on thursday, Youngky Kim, President and Head of Networks Business at Samsung Electronics, emphasised that Samsung will pave the way for 5G to unlock the full potential of India together with industry leaders. --IANS gb/bg (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) Israel's Prime Minister paid a historic visit to Oman, where he met the Sultan of the Gulf country which is yet to establish formal diplomatic ties with Israel, official sources said on Friday. The Omani state-run TV broadcast a video of Sultan Qaboos bin Said welcoming Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu at the royal palace of Bait al-Baraka, near Muscat, reports Efe news. "Prime Minister Netanyahu's visit to Oman is the first official meeting at this level since 1996," Netanyahu posted on his official Twitter account, accompanying the tweet with a photo of the meeting. During the meeting, Netanyahu and the Sultan discussed boosting the peace process in the Middle East and matters of mutual interest, including security and stability in the region, according to the sources. Israeli media reported that Netanyahu was accompanied during the visit by his wife Sara and a number of leading state officials, including the director of the Israeli intelligence agency Mossad, Yossi Cohen. Oman, like most Arab countries except Egypt and Jordan, does not recognize the state of Israel. --IANS mr/ (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) The Jharkhand government on Friday asked officials to assess the ground situation on the loss of crops due to a rain deficit this year. "State Chief Secretary Sudhir Tripathy has asked the officials to assess the ground situation and submit a report by October 31," an official statement said here. Tripathy held a meeting with secretary rank officials of Agriculture, Social Welfare and Disaster Management departments to assess the situation. "This year Jharkhand received 72 per cent of the average rainfall. But in Pakur and Koderma districts, it was less than 50 per cent," an official who was present at the meeting told IANS. Places like Ranchi, Khunti, Gumla, Garhwa, Latehar, Dumka, Jamtara, Deoghar received more than 50 per cent but less than 75 per cent rainfall. In Jharkhand, paddy sowing is done on 18 lakh hectares of land but this year sowing took place on 15.27 lakh hectares, the official said. The average rainfall in the state is 1,027.7 mm. This year, Jharkhand received only 741.9 mm. In August and September, the normal rainfall should be 276.2 and 235.5 mm respectively but the state received only 213.2 and 133.6 mm rainfall leading to damage to crops. --IANS ns/ksk/bg (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) The Jordanian Department of Civil Defence on Friday said the number of victims of the flash floods that have hit the Arab country had risen to 21 dead and 35 injured, with several people still missing. Sources inside the civil defence department told Efe that three Iraqis were killed due to the flash floods that hit an area near the Dead Sea, in the west of Jordan on Thursday, including two children and a 20-year-old man, while the rest of the victims were Jordanians, Efe reported. Most of the victims were children aged between 11-13 years who were on a school trip, riding in a bus that was washed away by the floods. So far, it is not clear from reports whether all the fatalities counted were aboard the damaged school bus. Authorities had said on Thursday that first responders had been able to rescue 10 of the students from the bus. Torrential rains ended earlier on Friday and Jordan's King Abdullah II presided over a National Policies Council meeting and ordered a comprehensive report on what happened, according to the Jordan state-run Petra news agency. "What happened yesterday is a terrible catastrophe that we all were very saddened (by). May Almighty Allah rest the deceased souls in peace. I console the Jordanian people," Petra cited the monarch as saying. Jordan Prime Minister Omar al-Razzaz and other officials visited the affected area on Thursday to oversee the rescue operations the civil defence department and the army have been carrying out. --IANS ahm/ (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) The son of murdered Saudi Arabian journalist Jamal Khashoggi, has arrived in the US after leaving Riyadh with his family, an informed source told CNN on Thursday. Salah bin Jamal Khashoggi, a dual US-Saudi citizen, had previously been unable to leave Riyadh after his passport was restricted by the Kingdom few months ago. A State Department spokesman said Secretary of State Mike Pompeo urged the Saudis to release the dead journalist's son and Deputy spokesman Robert Palladino said the US was "pleased" that he was allowed to leave the country. Salah Khashoggi is the eldest son of The Washington Post columnist who Saudis officials now admit was killed in a pre-meditated murder executed by a squad of men with close ties to the country's Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman. Initially, Saudi Arabia denied all knowledge of Khashoggi's disappearance inside their consulate in Istanbul on October 2. Saudi officials later announced that they had identified 18 men involved in the operation, leading the State Department to announce it was freezing visas for 21 Saudi nationals. On Thursday, Palladino said the additional three people targeted by the US belonged to Saudi Arabia's intelligence services, royal court and a government ministry. On Tuesday, the Crown Prince and his father King Salman bin Abdulaziz were pictured shaking hands with the Salah at an investment conference in Riyadh, CNN reported. Salah Khashoggi's departure came hours after the public prosecutor's office admitted, based on a report from Turkey, that the killing of the journalist had been planned in advance, adding that those responsible for the crime would be punished. Turkey said it believed a hit squad of Saudi nationals had travelled to Istanbul with the sole purpose of killing Khashoggi, a former member of the Saudi elite who became critical of the current government's administration in his country. --IANS ksk (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) The two Koreas agreed on Friday to withdraw 11 border guard posts each by November as part of a bilateral military agreement, the South Korean Defence Ministry said. The decision was adopted at a meeting in the Joint Security Area in the heart of the militarized border between the countries, which have been technically at war for over six decades as the Korean War in the 1950s had ended with an armistice and not a peace agreement. The ministry said that the two Koreas will also withdraw personnel and equipment from the guard posts by the end of November. The removal of the guard posts would be a first step for the eventual elimination of all guard posts along the dividing line, Yonhap news agency reported. The two countries also agreed to set up a joint team to study the possible re-opening of the Han River estuary (west of Seoul and adjoining the border with North) -- which has been restricted owing to cross-border tensions -- to civil navigation. The two Koreas will also establish a joint commission in the future to monitor the implementation of the military agreement signed during the summit between South Korean President Moon Jae-in and North Korean leader Kim Jong-un in Pyongyang on September 19. This year has seen relations between the two neighbours thaw considerably after a decade of tensions, owing to a hardline stand by conservative governments in Seoul, and Pyongyang's refusal to abandon its nuclear and missile program. The two countries had also removed landmines from around the JSA and Cheorwon, a South Korean border town, to ease tensions. --IANS soni/ (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) Union Minister Smriti Irani on Friday said Irish educationist, social activist and Swami Vivekananda's disciple Sister Nivedita was nothing less than a revolutionary whose life can inspire today's youth to strike a balance between science and faith. "Sister Nivedita expressed her faith towards God and spirituality. She was also was a firm promoter of science. It is very rare that a person of science is also a person of faith. Her ideas were nothing less than revolutionary," said Irani at Nivedita's 150th birth anniversary celebrations organised by the Sister Nivedita Mission Trust. "She was a person who gave her everything for India. There are many inspirational aspects of her life which are relevant to the countrymen even today. The kids and youths of today should be inspired by her revolutionary idea to strike a balance between science and faith," she said. Nivedita, born Margaret Elizabeth Noble in Ireland in 1867, was deeply inspired by Swami Vivekananda's lecture on Vedanta philosophy and travelled to India in 1898. She worked as a teacher, social reformer and dedicated her life to the country. Noting that "debate and deliberation" was the very fulcrum of the relationship between Swami Vivekananda and her disciple Nivedita, Irani said the youth should shun arguing for the sake of it and look to hold meaningful discussion and debate regarding India's centuries-old culture and history before jumping to a conclusion. "Vivekananda and Nivedita showed how debate and deliberation can bring out the true essence of knowledge. Before jumping to a conclusion regarding our nation's culture and history , today's youth can hold meaningful debates with those with more experience," she added. --IANS mgr/ssp/prs (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) French President Emmanuel Macron on Thursday discussed the situation in Syria and the summit on the Syrian conflict scheduled in Istanbul at the weekend, with US President Donald Trump in a phone conversation. In a statement issued by his office, the Elysee, Macron "presented the issues of this meeting which aims to reach a sustainable ceasefire in the region of Idlib and to deepen the discussions on the political process to resolve Syria's conflict," Xinhua reported. "President Trump supported this position. The United States and France share the same security, humanitarian and political objectives in Syria," it added. The two leaders also held talks about Washington's decision to withdraw from the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty (INF Treaty). They agreed to have tripartite discussion with Russia on the issue. The leaders of France, Germany, Turkey and Russia will hold a summit on the Syrian conflict in Istanbul on Saturday to seek ways to avoid a humanitarian crisis in Idlib region and ensure a lasting ceasefire. --IANS ahm/ (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) As part of the announcement, a Dutch warship will sail alongside the Queen Elizabeth aircraft carrier in her first deployment in 2021. Theresa May will welcome the King and Queen of the Netherlands to Downing Street to thank the Dutch for their help exposing global cyber-attacks conducted by Russia's GRU. The Dutch king and queen are beginning a state visit to Britain that will include full ceremonial honours. The Queen, who remains impartial on political matters, added that as "innovators, traders and internationalists we look with confidence to the future". Queen Maxima, of course, curtsied in typical royal fashion to greet the monarch, but then went in for a double kiss - as did King Willem-Alexander - in true European style. Dutch King Willem-Alexander and Queen Maxima are set to arrive in London on Tuesday for their first state visit to the United Kingdom, the UK Foreign Office said in a statement. "That's understandable and necessary". The last state visit from the Netherlands was by Queen Beatrix and Prince Claus in November 1982, while Queen Elizabeth and her husband Philip paid a state visit to Queen Juliana and Prince Bernhard of the Netherlands in March 1958. 'One group deserves special attention: the 50,000 British nationals who live in the Netherlands, and the 150,000 Dutch nationals who live in the UK, ' the king told his audience, which included British prime minister Theresa May. The greater narrative of freedom, openness and cooperation. In her speech, the Queen said she looked "with confidence" to the future. "We have a thriving Dutch community, and artistic and sporting exchanges are at an all-time high". King Willem-Alexander made his position on the Brexit clear when he addressed British journalists at Noordeinde Palace in The Hague. The glittering event saw the British and Dutch Royal Families dressed in white tie for the official function, which meant sashes, badges and tiaras for the women. British police said on Friday that they have arrested a hammer-wielding man in Salisbury, England, for trying to steal Magna Carta, one of the most famous documents in British history. Alarms went off when an attempt was made to smash the glass box which protects the charter, reports Xinhua news agency. The document was not damaged and nobody was injured, police said. The Magna Carta, an English historical writ that enshrined the principles of the rule of law, was issued by King John of England in 1215. The document is housed in Salisbury Cathedral. A visitor was seen "smashing the case of the Magna Carta with a hammer and trying to destroy it" on Friday, according to media reports. A press photo showed that the hammer made three holes in the top layer of protective glass. --IANS mr/ (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) A 35-year-old engineer was shot dead in Jharkhand's Palamau district on Friday when he escorted his child to the school bus, police said. Sudhir Kumar Roshan sustained bullet injuries in his head and waist and died on the way to Ranchi for treatment. In another incident, Ranchi Police found a body of man near Mahendra Prasad Women's College. He was stabbed to death. --IANS ns/ksk/mr (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) Emphasising the need for independence in the central bank's functioning, Reserve Bank of India (RBI) Deputy Governor on Friday said the market can make the government pay for eroding the bank's independence. Speaking at the A.D. Shroff Memorial Lecture in Mumbai, he said markets keenly watch government's activities which exert pressure on the central bank's independent functioning. His statement assumes significance as their have been instances in the past few years when the government has reportedly tried to undermine RBI's autonomy. "The market can discipline the government not to erode central bank independence, and it can also make the government pay for its transgressions," Acharya said. "Markets watch keenly, and if uncertainty grows and confidence in central bank independence and credibility erode, then markets rap bond yields and exchange rate on the knuckles," he added. He also noted that the market also forces central banks to remain accountable and independent when it is under government pressure. "The presence of this third player -- the market -- in the back and forth between a government and the central bank (more generally, regulatory institutions) is an important feedback mechanism," the Deputy Governor said. Speaking of the current challenges to the RBI's autonomy, he mentioned limited powers with the central bank in taking actions against public sector banks (PSBs) as a major limitation. "The Reserve Bank is statutorily limited in undertaking the full scope of actions against public sector banks -- such as asset divestiture, replacement of management and Board, license revocation, and resolution actions such as mergers or sales -- all of which it can and does deploy effectively in case of private banks," Acharya said. He also said that having a strong balance sheet and adequate reserves is an important part of the central bank's independence from the government. "A thorny ongoing issue on this front has been that of the rules for surplus transfer from the Reserve Bank to the government," he observed. He also reiterated the RBI's dissent to the creation of separate payment's regulator for oversee payment and settlement systems. "A final issue is one of regulatory scope, the most recent case in point being the recommendation to bypass the central bank's powers over payment and settlement systems by appointing a separate payments regulator." The RBI on October 19, 2018 published a dissent note against the recommendation to appoint a separate payments regulator. Mizoram's NGO Coordination Committee on Friday urged political parties in the state not to field any candidates from the Chakma tribe in the November 28 Assembly polls, terming them as "Bangladeshi foreigners". Around 90,000 to 100,000 Chakmas (out of a total population of 1.1 million) live in Mizoram and constitute the second largest ethnic group after majority Mizo (Lushai) tribe. They have their own Autonomous District Council in south-western Mizoram. Vanlalruata, President of the Young Mizo Association (YMA), the most powerful NGO in Mizoram, told the media that the Committee last year itself had asked all the political parties not to field any Chakma tribals in the Assembly elections. "Chakmas are Bangladeshi foreigners and have no political right to contest the Assembly elections in Mizoram," the YMA chief said. Besides the YMA, the Mizoram Upa Pawl, Mizoram Elders' Association, Mizo Women Federation, Mizo Students' Union are also members of the Committee. Vanlalruata expressed disappointment after the ruling Congress declared two Chakma candidates - Amit Kumar Chakma from Tuichawng and Nihar Kanti Chakma from West Tuipui. Sources in the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) and main opposition Mizo National Front said both the parties were also likely to field Chakma candidates in Tuichawng and West Tuipui. The BJP is likely to nominate Buddha Dhan Chakma, a prominent Chakma leader, who resigned from the Congress and joined the saffron party earlier this week in presence of party President Amit Shah. The Chakma tribals are also found in Arunachal Pradesh, Tripura, Assam and neighbouring Chittagong Hill tracts of southeast Bangladesh. --IANS sc/ksk/vm (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) With Prime Minister Narendra Modi embarking on a visit to Japan on Saturday for the annual summit with his Japanese counterpart Shinzo Abe, the special strategic and global partnership that the two sides share is expected to get a further impetus. This will be Modi's third visit to Japan for the summit and his 12th meeting with Abe since 2014. Cooperation in the Indo-Pacific region and development aid under Japan's Official Development Assistance (ODA) programme, of which India is the largest recipient, will be the key focus areas during the summit. At a media briefing, Foreign Secretary Vijay Gokhale said the Indo-Pacific will be a major topic for discussion during the summit on Monday. "If you make a comparison, you will see that there are a number of areas of convergence, commonality and common vision," Gokhale said. "The two leaders will obviously discuss how we can take this vision forward and present it to the world and try to see how we can concretise it." 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. Gokhale said one of the areas forming a part of this discussion will be how India and Japan can collaborate in the context of the Indo-Pacific in Asia and in Africa and on capacity building and on infrastructure projects in a trilateral format -- India, Japan plus one. Similar views were reflected by Japanese Ambassador to India Kenji Hiramatsu during an interaction organised by New Delhi-based think-tank Brookings India earlier this week. "I am sure in the (upcoming) meeting, the two leaders will discuss the region in more concrete terms," Hiramatsu said. He said 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. The regional security situation will be another area of discussion in view of Japan's interest in developments in the Korean Peninsula and in North Korea. "We will certainly raise our concerns over terrorism and other international trans-border crimes," Gokhale said. The Foreign Secretary stressed that bilateral issues will be of special interest during the discussions between the two leaders, both at the one-to-one level and delegation-level talks. He said the foremost of these would be how to leverage Japan as a development aid partner for India's economic modernisation and flagship development programmes such as Skill India, Make in India, and Digital India, as also the Mumbai-Ahmedabad high-speed rail project. The ground-breaking ceremony for the high-speed rail project was held during Abe's visit to India in September last year for the annual bilateral summit. With Japan already having released the first tranche of Rs 5,500 crore for the rail project, Gokhale said that discussions will now be held for the second tranche. Also, there will be discussions on the Dedicated Freight Corridor that is close to its time framework. Costing nearly Rs 50,000 crore, Japanese assistance for this has been to the tune of Rs 38,000 crore. With Modi describing Japan as the cornerstone of New Delhi's Act East Policy, Gokhale said that connectivity projects in the Northeast will be of special focus during the discussions. Defence and security cooperation will be another area of discussion. Stating that India has shown interest in Japanese submarines, Ambassador Hiramatsu 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. Modi will also attend a series of business events during the course of his visit to the East Asian powerhouse. This will be followed by a meeting between the India-Japan Business Leaders Forum. On Sunday, the first day of his official visit, Modi will visit the Yamanashi prefecture near Tokyo, which has a sizeable industrial base. Given the known personal chemistry between the two leaders, Abe will host Modi for a private dinner at the former's holiday home in Yamanushi following which both will travel to Tokyo the same evening for the official engagements the next day. --IANS ab/prs (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Friday urged scientists in the country to find a concrete solution to deal with the problem of stubble burning even as he asked farmers to seek out methods to earn money using the agriculture residue. He said the government had taken several measures to address the problem arising out of paddy residue burning in the northern states of Haryana, Punjab and Uttar Pradesh, which has led to smog formation in the national capital. The government had given a subsidy of 50-80 per cent on farm machines but there was a need to find a "concrete solution" by scientists, Modi said while addressing the farmers' conclave "Krishi Kumbha" in Lucknow through video conferencing from New Delhi. He said the work of the scientists would have an impact on "the economic capabilities" of the country and asked them to hold discussions with farmers over issues such as optimum use of water, reduction in fertiliser use and storage facilities. The Prime Minister said farmers can turn the agriculture residue into wealth as everything found in the farms has the worth of gold. He said there was need to work collectively and comprehensively to free farmers from stubble burning and save the Modi said the government had undertaken a project to replace diesel and electricity-operated water pumps with those run on solar energy. "We have mission to distribute solar systems to 28 lakh farmers in the country," he said. He said farmers, who are called "annadata" (food provider), can become "urjadata" (power provider) if they sell additional electricity that is saved after their personal consumption to electricity distribution companies. He gave an example of some Gujarat farmers who earned Rs 50,000 annually by selling a part of the electricity they generated using solar systems. Modi also praised the Yogi Adityanath government in Uttar Pradesh for achieving record grain procurement and directly benefiting the farmers. Compared to his predecessors the Adityanath government has procured seven to eight times more crop produce, Modi said, adding that the state produces almost 20 per cent of the total grain in the country. "This year 50-55 lakh tonnes of wheat was purchased in Uttar Pradesh...," Modi said, adding that his government increased the procurement price of Rabi and Kharif by 21 per cent. He said that direct procurement eliminated the middlemen and benefited the farmers. The BJP government is concerned about the farmers, the Prime Minister said. In a first, the state would soon procure potatoes to enable farmers to get a fair price, he added. --IANS spk/soni/bg (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) Thousands of Congress activists on Friday staged a noisy protest outside the CBI office in Bandra Kurla Complex (BKC) here, shouting anti-government slogans following the move to strip CBI Director Alok Verma of his powers. Led by party chief Sanjay Nirupam, senior leaders including several former Ministers and ex-MPs like Eknath Gaikwad and Priya Dutt and thousands of workers joined the demonstrations carrying placards and banners with anti-BJP slogans. Slogans of "Modi se CBI Bachao", "Chehre pe jo laali hai, Rafale ki dalali hai" and "Chor hai, Chor hai, Narendra Modi Chor hai" rent the air outside the CBI city headquarters. "We are opposing Prime Minister Narendra Modi's disgraceful and unconstitutional attempt to block the investigations into the Rafale scam by removing the CBI Director Alok Verma," Nirupam said. Nirupam said that the Modi government had not spared a single institution and undermined the integrity of all critical organisations including the CBI. Besides Mumbai, the Maharashtra Congress also organised similar demonstrations in Pune and Nagpur outside the CBI offices there as part of nationwide protests. --IANS qn/mr (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) Nepal President Bidya Devi Bhandari will visit Qatar from October 29 to November 1, the Foreign Ministry announced here on Friday. During her visit, Bhandari will hold a meeting with Amir of Qatar Sheikh Tamim Bin Hamad Al-Thani, Xinhua news agency quoted the Ministry as saying. Bhandari will address a joint interactive meeting of the business community on the theme of "Business and Investment Opportunities in Nepal" on October 30. --IANS mr/ (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) The Pakistan Supreme Court has ordered that a committee suggests measures to curb unchecked availability of smuggled Indian direct-to-home (DTH) devices in markets across the country. The committee will consist of Federal Board of Revenue (FBR) Chairman Jahanzeb Khan, Member Customs Mohammad Zahid, Federal Investigation Agency (FIA) Director General Bashir Memon and Pakistan Electronic Media Regulatory Authority (Pemra) Chairman Saleem Baig, Dawn news reorted. The directive was issued on Thursday by a three-judge bench headed by Chief Justice Saqib Nisar that had taken up a case relating to easy availability of Indian DTH devices in Pakistani markets. The court directed the committee to come up with a way out on a war footing to tackle the menace seriously and submit their recommendations in 10 days. It also ordered the Customs to identify how such devices were being smuggled into Pakistan. Nisar said such devices mostly consisting of Indian channels resulted in draining of hard-earned money out of Pakistan. --IANS ksk/vm (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) Punjab has witnessed a steep decline in stubble burning this kharif season, a senior official said on Friday. Secretary-cum-State Nodal Officer of Anti-Stubble Burning Campaign K.S. Pannu said data from Punjab Remote Sensing Centre (PRSC) depicted that 3,228 cases of stubble burning were reported in the state from September 27 to October 22 this year. Last year and in 2016 there were 8,420 and 13,358 cases respectively in the same period. Pannu pointed out that the marked improvement was mainly attributed to the positive response of the farmers coupled with environmental-friendly initiatives taken by Punjab and the Centre. He said the Air Quality Index (AQI) of Punjab is far better now than that in the corresponding period. "The AQI of Punjab is 111 against 326 in the corresponding period last year. 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 to 500 severe," Pannu pointed out. He said that the state government has already embarked upon a massive programme for management of paddy straw, without burning, by the farmers. As many as 24,315 subsidized agro-machines are being supplied to the farmers, cooperative societies and Custom Hiring Centres to achieve zero burning of paddy straw, he added. Neighbouring Haryana has also claimed a steep decline in number of stubble burning cases this year. Stubble-burning in agrarian Punjab and Haryana in October and November leads to pollution over north India, particularly in national capital New Delhi, with smog in the winter months (November to January). This leads to health complications, particularly breathing problems, to many people. Farmers indulge in burning the crop residue of paddy after harvesting to prepare their agricultural fields for the next crop. --IANS js/prs (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) The Commission has previously dealt with France, Spain, Portugal and previous Italian administrations that broke European Union fiscal rules, but none of those violations were as blatant as the latest Italian budget draft, the Commission said. "Today, for the first time, the commission is obliged to request a euro area country to revise its draft budgetary plan. Unfortunately, the clarifications received yesterday were not convincing", Commission Vice-President Valdis Dombrovskis said at a press conference following the Commissioners' weekly meeting in Strasbourg, France. "If trust is eroded all member states take damage". The scale of those Italian debts to Europe's central bank gives its partners in the single currency great leverage over its affairs, yet the confrontation looks certain to revive anti-euro sentiment in Italy. After the EU's unprecedented rejection of Italy's budget on Tuesday, an Italian MEP went up to the European Commissioner for finance, slammed his shoe on his notes and shouted "Italy deserves respect!". However, our door is not closing: we wish to continue our constructive dialogue with the Italian authorities. On 13 July 2018, the Council, including Italy, recommended unanimously that Italy should ensure that the nominal growth rate of net primary government expenditure does not exceed 0.1% in 2019, corresponding to an annual structural adjustment of 0.6% of GDP. All seven months of the european elections of 2019. While the country's debt-to-GDP ratio is the second-highest within the European Union at 131.2%, with the highest debt servicing costs within the bloc, Italy's interest expenditure stood at around 65.5 billion, or 3.8% of GDP, in 2017. This is the equivalent of an average burden of 37,000 per inhabitant. "Moody's have downgraded Italy's credit rating to one notch above junk status, but the agency lifted its outlook to stable from negative, so investors aren't afraid of another downgrade in the near-term", noted David Madden, market analyst at CMC Markets UK. The country's debt servicing cost is the highest in the bloc, amounting to about 65.5 billion ($75.21 billion) or 3.8 percent of GDP in 2017. And the increased spending mean Italy would not reduce its debt as it had promised. Speaking at a press briefing in Luxembourg, Managing Director Klaus Regling also said Italy's debt problems were different from those of Greece, which had to be bailed out three times. It is, of course, the prerogative of each Member State to set priorities and determine the allocation of budget resources. The greenback has also made gains against the Japanese yen. "We are aware of having chosen a budget policy approach not in line with the rules of the Stability and Growth Pact". Italy is the second biggest beneficiary under the Juncker Plan. "We want a better Europe, a more supportive Europe". MSCI's broadest index of Asia-Pacific shares outside Japan .MIAPJ0000PUS rose 0.2 percent following a decline of more than 2 percent the previous day. The Commission is giving Italy three weeks to come up with a new proposal. Congress President Rahul Gandhi on Friday refused to comment on the Supreme Court order on an inquiry into the allegations against CBI Director Alok Verma by the CVC, saying it was a "process being carried out". "It's a Supreme Court judgement, a process that is being carried out. I don't want to comment on it," Gandhi told reporters outside the Lodhi Road police station where he was briefly detained for leading a protest outside the CBI headquarters. "But I will say that the Prime Minister acted against the Director of the CBI as a result of panic, as a result of fear, because he has helped Mr Anil Ambani with Rs 30,000 crore," he said. The Supreme Court earlier in the day appointed one of its former judges, Justice A.K. Patnaik, to supervise the inquiry into the allegations against Verma while giving two weeks time to the CVC to complete the probe. -- IANS vn/vsc/vm (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) Actor Govinda says "Rangeela Raja" is typically his brand of film, complete with dances and songs. Govinda was interacting with the media at the music launch of "Rangeela Raja" along with his co-actors Shakti Kapoor, producer Pahlaj Nihalani and director Sikander Bharti here on Thursday. Nihalani and Govinda have together given Bollywood films like "Ilzaam", "Shola Aur Shabnam" and "Aankhen". The duo is joining forces again after over 25 years for "Rangeela Raja". Govinda, who plays a double role in the movie, said: "I started working with Pahlaj sir in 'Ilzaam' and after that, we both delivered number of hit films like 'Shola Aur Shabnam' and 'Aankhen'. I am feeling like a newcomer who has started his career. There are lots of surprises in the film. "I would like to say that it's a typical Govinda film in which the audience will be able to see dance and songs throughout the film. I feel that this film will touch the heart of the audience because in every household, there are people like Rangeela Raja. We have also tried to give a really nice message through the film." Govinda hasn't been able to deliver a hit film as a solo lead from very long time. Talking about his struggling period in the Hindi film industry, he said: "I am thankful to Pahlaj sir for giving me the opportunity to work in his film. I hope we would continue our past record of hit films with this one as well. "Since past 9 years, I wasn't getting an opportunity to do substantial roles of my choice. I did comedy in 'Happy Ending' and in 'Kill Dil', I played a negative character. I haven't got an opportunity to appear as a hero in a film from a very long time. Therefore, I produced 'Aa Gaya Hero' but it didn't do well because of demonetisation at that time. "My last released film 'FryDay' did well. So, I hope that I keep getting success with my upcoming films." --IANS iv/rb/vm (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Friday praised the Yogi Adityanath government in Uttar Pradesh for achieving record grain procurement and directly benefiting the farmers. Modi congratulated the state administration as he inaugurated a three-day farmers' conclave "Krishi Kumbha" in Lucknow via video conference. Compared to his predecessors the Adityanath government has procured seven to eight times more crop produce, Modi said, adding that the state produces almost 20 per cent of the total grain in the country. "This year 50 to 55 lakh metric tonnes of wheat was purchased in Uttar Pradesh,...," Modi said, adding that his government has increased the procurement price of Rabi and Kharif by 21 per cent. He said that direct procurement eliminated the middlemen and benefited the farmers. The BJP government is concerned about the farmers, he added. While Rs 27,000 crore has been paid to the farmers in the state, around Rs 11,000 crore payment was still pending, which mostly involves the sugarcane farmers, the Prime Minister said. In a first, the state would soon procure potatoes to enable farmers to get a fair price, he said. Israel and Japan are official partner countries while Haryana and Jharkhand as partner states for the event. Over one lakh farmers, scientists, experts and entrepreneurs are expected to take part in the farmers meet. --IANS kd/in/bg (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) Non-life insurer Company Ltd on Friday said it closed the quarter ended September 30, with a net profit of Rs 560 million. In a statement issued here the company said its gross written premium for the quarter under review was Rs 20.25 million logging a year-on-year (YoY) growth of 20 per cent. The profit after tax (PAT) went up to 560 million, a YoY growth of 20 per cent. Company Ltd is a wholly owned subsidiary of Reliance Capital Ltd. The combined ratio (ratio of total incurred losses and expenses: earned premium) improved from 109 per cent in Q2 FY18 to 106 per cent in Q2 FY19. The company's investment book increased to Rs 86.50 million - a YoY increase of 19 per cent. "The industry will benefit from favourable regulatory enactments such as compulsory long-term insurance for motor vehicles and enhancement in the compulsory personal accident cover. We remain focused on our journey of profitable growth. For Q2, our premium grew by 20 per cent against industry growth of 13 per cent," Rakesh Jain, ED and CEO, was quoted as saying in the statement. Criminals looted Rs 1.60 lakh from the staff of a contractor here on Friday, police said. When Santosh Vyas and Aswani Kumar were on their way to deposit the money in a bank, the criminals came on a motorcycle and looted the money at gun point. The incident took place at near the Food Corporation of India (FCI) godown near the Katrabha roundabout. --IANS ns/mr (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) Spain's civil guard police force raided the premises of nine companies on Friday and arrested 10 people in a crackdown on a gang that allegedly made a vast profit from selling fake tickets to a Barcelona vs Real Madrid Clasico. Sources close to the case told Efe that the operation was ordered by Judge Joaquin Aguirre in Barcelona following a complaint filed by the Prosecutor's Office after detecting 2,822 fake attempted entries to the Barca match against Real Madrid at the Catalan club's Camp Nou Stadium on May 6. The investigation uncovered a network of nine companies, including some based in Barcelona, which supposedly sold forged tickets for the Clasico and made a 1.5 million euros ($1.7 million) profit. Friday's raids were launched two days ahead of another Clasico clash between Barca and Real Madrid at the Camp Nou and investigators searched the offices of the companies allegedly involved, arresting 10 managers as suspects. The tickets for the May 6 match were forged using official Barcelona membership cards which had been made available to the suspects in exchange for money. The forgers then used the QR codes on the cards to print forged tickets which were re-sold at a vast profit. The forged tickets were detected on entry to the stadium. Given that the forgery had caused Barca a huge loss, the club sanctioned the members who had provided the suspects with access to their membership cards, suspending some of them and expelling 33 others who had been caught doing this before. A total of 525 of the penalized members filed a class action in court against the sanctions imposed by the club, but the court dismissed their cases. --IANS gau/bg (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) External Affairs Minister Sushma Swaraj will visit Qatar and Kuwait, two of India's key energy security partners in West Asia, from October 28 to 31, it was announced on Friday. According to the External Affairs Ministry, during her visit to Qatar on October 28-29, Sushma Swaraj will meet Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Foreign Affairs Sheikh Mohammed bin Abdulrahman Al Thani. She will also call on Emir of Qatar Sheikh Tamim Bin Hamad Al-Thani besides meeting members of the Indian community. "Qatar hosts about seven lakh Indians," a Ministry statement said. "Qatar is a reliable energy partner, supplying more than 50 percent of India's natural gas imports." India-Qatar bilateral trade stood at $9.9 billion in 2017-18. After Qatar, Sushma Swaraj will visit Kuwait where she will meet Deputy Prime Minister and Minister for Foreign Affairs Sheikh Sabah Al Khalid Al Sabah. She will also call on Amir of Kuwait Sheikh Sabah Al-Ahmad Al-Jaber Al-Sabah and interact with the Indian community. Kuwait is home to around 10 lakh Indians, who form the largest expatriate community in that country. India-Kuwait bilateral trade stood at $8.5 billion in 2017-18. These will be Sushma Swaraj's first official visits to both countries. "The visit is in pursuit of India's objective of enhanced engagement with the Gulf region, which is in India's extended neighbourhood," the statement said. "It will provide an opportunity to hold in-depth discussions with the political leadership on a wide range of global, regional and bilateral issues and will advance India's growing engagement with these countries in particular and the region in general," it added. --IANS ab/mr (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) US President Donald Trump has dismissed the New York Times report about Chinese and Russian spies listening in on his cellphone calls as "fake" and "wrong". "The so-called experts on Trump over at The Times wrote a long and boring article on my cellphone usage that is so incorrect I do not have time here to correct it," Trump said in a Thursday tweet. "I only use government phones and have only one seldom used government cell phone. Story is soooo wrong!" In another tweet Trump insisted that his cellphone usage was rare. "I like Hard Lines," he wrote. "Just more made up Fake News!" The Times report published on Wednesday detailed how American intelligence agencies figured out that China and Russia were eavesdropping on calls Trump makes from his iPhones. The report also said that the President continued to use a cellphone despite warnings from aides that calls on it were not secure. White House spokesman Hogan Gidley said that the article "presented inaccurate information about the President's cellphone". He added that "the President does not have three cellular phones. He has one official government iPhone. This phone security follows industry best practices and is closely managed under government supervision in conjunction with recommendations from industry partners". Responding to the Times report, Chinese Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Hua Chunying had said that "certain people in the US are sparing no efforts to win the best screenplay award for the Oscars". "I would like to say that this only provides another piece of evidence of the New York Times concocting fake news... I suggest they replace their phones with Huawei (Chinese mobile phone manufacturer) ones," she said. The Times, citing current and former US officials, had said that the US President uses the iPhones to speak to "old friends", and domestic spy agencies had determined China was seeking to use information from the calls to keep a trade war with the US from escalating. The agencies were said to have learned of the eavesdropping from people inside foreign governments and through intercepting communications between foreign officials, the report said. --IANS soni/ (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) US President Donald Trump has signed new sanctions targeting the Iranian-funded militant group and political party Hezbollah, which is considered a terrorist organisation by Washington. "Over the past year we have levied the highest sanctions ever imposed on Hezbollah -- in a single year, by far. Just a few moments ago, I signed legislation imposing even more hard-hitting sanctions on Hezbollah to further starve them of their funds. And they are starving for them," Trump said during an event on Thursday marking the 35th anniversary of the attack on US Marine barracks in Beirut. The legislation, known as the Hezbollah International Financing Prevention Amendments Act, was sponsored by Senator Marco Rubio, a Florida Republican, reports CNN. The bill ramps up reporting requirements and places further financial and economic sanctions on the group. "We will target, disrupt and dismantle their operational and financing efforts, of which they have plenty and we will never forget what they did to our Marines in Beirut," the President added. White House press secretary Sarah Sanders said in a statement that the sanctions "will further isolate Hezbollah from the international financial system and reduce its funding". "These sanctions will target foreign persons and government agencies that knowingly assist or support Hezbollah, and Hezbollah-affiliated networks that engage in drug trafficking or other transnational crime," she added. --IANS ksk (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) Rome, Oct 26 (IANS/AKI) Amid a spectre of mass famine in Yemen, the UN has intensified its efforts to ensure that tens of thousands of displaced Yemenis have immediate access to cash support, Andrej Mahecic of the UN refugee agency UNHCR said on Friday. "In a country where three out of four Yemenis require some form of aid and protection and where food and fuel prices have increased by 25 and 45 per cent respectively this year alone, this assistance is a life-line for the most vulnerable families, helping them to meet their urgent needs while in displacement," Mahecic said. Current pre-famine conditions and cholera outbreak in Yemen come on top of the disastrous impact the conflict has had so far - massive displacement and mounting civilian casualties, Mahecic warned. "Therefore, it remains vital that the critical life-saving activities - including protection and emergency shelter - are addressed and supported in parallel with food, health and education programmes." More than two thirds of an estimated 2.7 million people who fled the conflict to safer areas of Yemen have been living as refugees for more than two years and have depleted all their resources. Many host communities are also "struggling to survive", UNHCR said. Other Yemenis who returned to their homes have often found them damaged or destroyed, UNHCR reported. UNHCR said it was providing cash assistance to the most vulnerable families to help meet their immediate needs including life-saving medical treatment. "So far this year, UNHCR has distributed almost $33 million cash assistance. We aim to distribute a total of more than 41 million dollars before the end of the year," Mahecic stated. At least 10,000 civilians have been killed and millions displaced in Yemen's three-year-long civil war, which began in 2015 after Shia Houthi rebels backed by Iran seized much of the country, including the capital, Sanaa. Saudi Arabia and allies including the United Arab Emirates joined the war in 2015. --IANS/AKI mr/ (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) The Free Media Movement of Sri Lanka today called on the government of Sri Lanka to condemn the "brutal killing" of journalist Jamal Khashoggi inside Saudi Consulate in Turkey and to raise the issue with the government of Saudi Arabia. Speaking at an investment forum hosted by Riyadh, the crown prince said, "Many are trying to exploit the Khashoggi affair to drive a wedge between Saudi Arabia and Turkey". But the shifting Saudi narrative on what happened to Khashoggi, including the whereabouts of his remains, have left the rest of the world unconvinced that the kingdom's explanation or its moves to detain or fire people it said were involved in his killing are enough. The kingdom's de facto ruler vowed that those responsible for what he described as a "heinous crime" would be held to account, adding "justice will prevail". The crown prince said Saudi Arabia was "carrying out all legal measures" in cooperation with Turkish authorities to "present the perpetrators to the court" in the case. He had been planning to settle in Istanbul and marry his Turkish fiancee when he was detained and killed in the Saudi consulate. That has included identifying a Saudi forensics specialist who is an expert in mobile autopsies that had traveled to Istanbul the day Khashoggi was planning to visit the consulate and pictures of Saudi diplomatic vehicles scouting wooded areas in the days before Khashoggi disappeared. I have people in Turkey and I have people in Saudi Arabia and other places, and they're all coming back as we speak, they're heading back, he said. However, amid the worsening diplomatic crisis, USA firms are hoping to preserve agreements with Riyadh that have near-term delivery dates - in 2019 and 2020 and stabilise the soft commitments that Trump made during his visit to Saudi Arabia previous year, Reuters added. The official Saudi Press Agency reported that Thursday saw Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman chair the first meeting of a committee to reform the state's intelligence services, which was set up following Mr Khashoggi's death. Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman said all culprits would be punished, and that Saudi and Turkey would work together 'to reach results'. The officials said the nine members of the 15-strong team who were inside the consulate at the time then panicked and made plans with a local Turkish "collaborator" to remove the body. Rouhani jeered at the United States for complaining about human rights in Iran while allegedly taking a payoff to let the Saudis get away with murder. Saudi state media on Tuesday published photos of Jamal Khashoggi's son Salah Khashoggi with Saudi Arabia's King Salman and Prince Mohammed. Saudi leaders have denied involvement in Khashoggi's murder, pushing responsibility down the chain of command. Saudi Arabia first denied any role in Khashoggi's disappearance before blaming his October 2 death at the Saudi consulate in Istanbul on a botched attempt to return him to the kingdom. There were conflicting reports Thursday about whether investigators had searched the well in a case that has geopolitical implications because of the Saudi-Turkish rivalry in the Mideast region, as well as the US alliance with both countries. Vice President M. Venkaiah Naidu will embark on a week-long three-nation tour of Africa from October 31 that will see him visiting Botswana, Zimbabwe and Malawi, it was announced on Friday. The visit comes amidst India's increasing engagements with Africa with as many as 26 visits at the level of President, Vice President and Prime Minister being made to Africa in the last four years. Briefing the media here, T.S. Tirumurti, Secretary (Economic Relations) in the External Affairs Ministry, said Naidu will first visit Botswana from October 31 to November 2. "Our ties with Botswana have diversified in terms of defence cooperation, trade and capacity building," Tirumurti said. Bilateral trade between India and Botswana stands at $1.75 billion. Botswana has also some of the world's largest diamond mines. Besides meeting Botswana Vice President Slumber Tsogwane, Naidu will also call on President Mokgweetsi Masisi and the Speaker of the National Assembly. Along with Tsogwane, Naidu will also jointly inaugurate the Botswana Expo in which a large number of Indian companies will take part. Naidu will also interact with members of the Indian community in Botswana. Naidu will then visit Zimbabwe from November 2 to 4 in what will be the first high-level visit from India to that country in 21 years. "Our ties with Zimbabwe have been close and cordial," Tirumurti said. He said that during the visit, India will extend a $3 million line of credit for the expansion of the Hwange thermal power plant. Apart from holding meetings with the country's leadership, the Vice President will also meet members of the 9,000-strong Zimbabweans of Indian origin. A number of agreements across various sectors are expected to be signed between India and Zimbabwe. Naidu will be in Malawi on November 4 and 5 on the last leg of his tour. Malawi is home to around 8,500 people of Indian origin and 2,500 Indian nationals. India-Malawi bilateral trade stands at $260 million. Apart from meeting the Malawi leadership, Naidu will inaugurate a Jaipur Foot distribution camp. India will also extend a $215 million line of credit for 18 water projects in that country. The Vice President will be accompanied by Minister of State for Social Justice Krishna Pal Gurjar and four MPs. --IANS ab/mr (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) Wearable technology such as fitness trackers, smart watches, are the number one fitness trend for 2019, according to an annual survey of health and fitness professionals. Wearable technology returned to the top-ranked position it had occupied for two consecutive years, before dropping to number three in last year's survey. It "may be the result of manufacturers correcting some monitoring inaccuracies of the past", said Walter R. Thompson, from the Georgia State University. Conducted each year since 2007, this year's annual survey, detailed in the ACSM's Health and Fitness Journal, also showcased other trends including the high-intensity interval training (HIIT) referring to short bouts of high-intensity exercise followed by a short rest period. HIIT, the number one trend in 2014 and 2018, fell to the third spot in 2019. While group training has been at the second spot for the past two years (2018 and 2019), fitness programming aimed at older adults has regained some popularity after falling out of the top 10 trends in 2017, appearing at number nine in 2018 and now at the fourth spot for 2019. Bodyweight training first appeared as a fitness trend at number three in 2013 and has been a top five fitness trend since that time. In 2019, bodyweight training ranked as the fifth fitness trend. A new trend to watch will be the employment of certified fitness professionals, a new potential trend for 2019 (number sixth) replacing educated, certified, and experienced fitness professionals, the survey showed. Yoga including power yoga, yogilates, yoga in hot environments, appeared on the seventh spot. Other trends to watch are mobile exercise apps, worksite health promotion and workplace well-being programmes, outcome measurements, and post rehabilitation classes. "While no one can accurately predict the future of any industry, this survey helps to track trends that can assist owners, operators, programme directors, and health fitness professionals with making important business decisions," Thompson noted. The survey included responses from more than 2,000 health fitness professionals from India, the UK, Australia, Canada, China, France, Germany, Japan, Italy, Russia, Singapore, Taiwan, and the US. --IANS rt/mag/vm (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) The UN has denounced that women were still being excluded from peace negotiations, despite the fact that their participation has proven to be key in conflict resolution around the world. "Women cannot be excluded from the peace process simply because they do not engage in battle," UN Women Executive Director Phumzile Mlambo-Ngcuka said on Thursday. Mlambo-Ngcuka presented a report on women, peace and security to the UN Security Council, which celebrated its annual open debate on the matter, reports Efe news. The Director said that the report is a "loud alarm bell" on systemic failures to bring women into peacemaking in a meaningful manner. Between 1990 and 2017, women constituted only two per cent of mediators, 8 per cent of negotiators, and five per cent of witnesses and signatories in major peace processes, according to UN figures. "Only three out of 11 agreements signed in 2017 contained provisions on gender equality, continuing last year's worrisome downward trend," she said, expressing her concern for the absence of women in the current negotiations in Yemen, as well as their limited presence in Mali, the Central African Republic and Afghanistan. UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres, meanwhile highlighted various studies that show the link between women's participation and peace, urging the international community to continue their efforts toward achieving full gender equality. Guterres added that approximately 41 percent of chiefs and joint chiefs in peace operations are now women, adding that such proportion had never been reached before. --IANS ksk (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) This week, while crossing Bhimtal on the drive down from Almora in Uttarakhand, I commented on how the once-sleepy village around the lakefront had morphed into a crowded, tourist destination. Indeed it has, said taxi driver Ashok Singh, who turned out to be from Bhimtal. It used to be surrounded by jungles till 20-odd years ago but the growing demand from tourists and real estate developers has made Bhimtal a wonderful place to live today, he added. Dear Reader, Business Standard has always strived hard to provide up-to-date information and commentary on developments that are of interest to you and have wider political and economic implications for the country and the world. Your encouragement and constant feedback on how to improve our offering have only made our resolve and commitment to these ideals stronger. Even during these difficult times arising out of Covid-19, we continue to remain committed to keeping you informed and updated with credible news, authoritative views and incisive commentary on topical issues of relevance. We, however, have a request. As we battle the economic impact of the pandemic, we need your support even more, so that we can continue to offer you more quality content. Our subscription model has seen an encouraging response from many of you, who have subscribed to our online content. More subscription to our online content can only help us achieve the goals of offering you even better and more relevant content. We believe in free, fair and credible journalism. Your support through more subscriptions can help us practise the journalism to which we are committed. Support quality journalism and subscribe to Business Standard. Digital Editor On June 28, 1914, the heir to the Austro-Hungarian Empire, Archduke Franz Ferdinand, was assassinated in Sarajevo. The details of the incident are baroque. Sarajevo is the capital of Bosnia-Herzegovina, a former Turkish possession, which had been formally annexed by Austria in 1908. Many people in Serbia thought the map of the Balkans would look more aesthetic if Bosnia was part of Serbia instead. Six members of a Serbian secret society, The Black Hand, were stationed along the VIP route to target the royal as he paraded around in an open car. One of them threw a grenade. The Archduke ... A strike by baggage handlers at Brussels airport has caused the cancellation of around 100 flights, affecting thousands of passengers during a major school holiday, an official said Friday. Some 300 travellers spent Thursday night at Brussels-Zaventem airport after handlers at Belgian firm Aviapartner went on strike, airport spokeswoman Nathalie Pierard told AFP. Pierard said about 100 departing and arriving flights were cancelled, mainly at Ryanair, as media reported the strike was over demands for higher staffing levels. "Friday is one of the busiest days of the autumn. A total of 47,000 passengers are due to leave today," Pierard said. Many other flights were delayed, she added. The strike comes at the end of a school holiday in neighbouring Netherlands and the start of one in Belgium that coincides with All Saints Day. A meeting between union delegates and at Aviapartner was due Friday in a bid to resolve the dispute. Brussels airport is the largest in Belgium, with nearly 25 million passengers passing through last year, compared to seven million at Charleroi airport in the south, the country's second biggest. (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) A 34-year-old man was arrested for allegedly hacking to death a minor girl in outer Delhi, police said Friday. The accused Rakesh, a resident of Moti Nagar and hailing from Garhwa district in Jharkhand killed the 16-year-old victim, Soni Kumari, with the help of his three accomplices-- Gauri, Sahu and Manjeet Karketa in May earlier this year, they said. According to police, the gang of four trafficked girls from Jharkhand by promising them well-paying jobs in Delhi but would instead force them to work as domestic helps here. During interrogation, Rakesh told police that Kumari had been pestering them about the non-payment of salary and return to her home in Jharkhand, they said. Fed up, they killed the girl, chopped her body and stuffed it in a bag before throwing it away, police said. Rakesh's arrest came after the police received a tip-off on Wednesday that he would be going to Hiran Kudna village, Seju Kuruvilla, Deputy Commissioner of Police (Outer) said. The cut up body of Kumari was found near Rao Vihar, Delhi on May 4 and the CCTV footage of the nearby area was analysed leading to the arrest of Karketa from Nangloi on May 17, they said. Months later, Gauri was arrested by the special cell in October, while Sahu is still absconding, they added. (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) After Australia, the couple will finish their trip with a four-day visit to New Zealand. The challenge kicked off with a wreath laying ceremony, in western Fiji. Both Princes wore bright, fun, Hawaiian-style short-sleeved shirts, whilst both Duchesses opted for ankle-length red, pink, and purple printed dresses with heeled wedges. After less than 24 hours in Tonga, they return to Australia later Friday for the final days of the Invictus Games, the Olympic style sporting event for wounded soldiers that Harry helped found. They arrived in Tonga from Fiji, where on Thursday morning they unveiled a statue to honour Sgt. Talaiasi Labalaba, a British-Fijian war hero who died at age 30 while fighting insurgents during the 1972 Battle of Mirbat in Oman. Sergeant Talaiasi Labalaba, of the Special Air Service (SAS), single-handedly held off 250 insurgents with a 25-pounder field gun after being shot in the jaw during the battle in Oman in 1972. Sgt Labalaba was posthumously mentioned in dispatches for his bravery in battle. "Little did I know that I would stand looking back over my shoulder at how far we've come in the world towards true multiracial and multicultural appreciation, contrasted with how far we have to go in our evolution towards Dr. Martin Luther King's Dream". Samantha now claims that Meghan's speech "is not true" and that their dad, Thomas Markle, paid for her university fees. Take a look at the video here. Meghan dazzled in a flawless white, sleeveless gown, and Prince Harry in a black tuxedo wore his miniature medals. Kensington Palace announced on the eve of the tour that Meghan was expecting a baby next spring. After all, have you seen how many outfit changes she's already made? The day had started very early on Friday for the royal couple when they met Tongan prime minister, 'Akilisi Pohiva, before visiting an exhibition of Tongan artists with Princess Angelika Latufuipeka. Four US colleges, which depend heavily on foreign students including those from India, have filed a lawsuit against the Trump administration's recent changes in the student visa policy, saying it would impact America's standing as a center of global The lawsuit -- filed in a District Court in North Carolina by Guilford College International Club in North Carolina, The New School from New York City, Foothill-De Anza Community College District in California and Haverford College -- alleges that the latest move would make it difficult for foreign students to come to America. It also said that the changes by the Department of Homeland Security in August to non-immigrant visas could make it easier to bar international students from the US for periods of three or 10 years if they fall out of status. "The new policy's use of a backdated unlawful-presence clock will render tens of thousands of F, J, and M visa holders subject to three- and 10-year reentry bars without any opportunity to cure. "This policy is intentionally designed to impose tens of thousands of reentry bars on F, J, and M visa holders each year," the colleges, which heavily depend on foreign students including those from India, said in the lawsuit. F, J and M visas are normally issued to students and research scholars. According to the lawsuit, foreign students under the new policy are given 180 days from the time it is determined their status violation began, instead of the previous practice of 180 days when they received the notification of unlawful presence. As a result, the new policy will result in the three- or 10-year banishment of untold numbers of international students and exchange visitors acting in good faith, it alleged. The lawsuit said that for those students and visitors who have chosen to teach or work in the US, imposition of a three- or 10-year reentry bar will fundamentally and irreparably injure their lives. "It also imposes a financial harm on institutions in terms of lost tuition dollars and local communities in terms of foregone discretionary expenditures by bias holders," the lawsuit alleged. Of the four colleges, New York City-based The New School has more than 3,600 international students on F-1 visas. It also has roughly an additional 900 F-1 alumni currently completing optional practical training. The school has approximately 100 students on J visas and roughly an additional 38 J-1 scholars. According to the lawsuit, recently, because of the August 2018 Policy Memorandum, a student of The New School left the US in order to take the correct action to regain her status but subsequently took a semester-long leave of absence out of fear of accruing unlawful presence time under the new policy. "That fundamentally disrupted the student-university relationship, and The New School lost tuition as a result. But for the August 2018 Policy Memorandum, the student would not have stopped her with The New School," it said. Another student at The New School, a doctoral candidate, had an I-20 with a programme end date of June 30, 2018. This student has been at The New School since 2012 and because of financial constraints, the student was unable to extend the I-20, as the Designated School Officer was unable to determine that the student could support themselves. "To avoid accruing unlawful presence under the August 2018 Policy Memorandum, the student was required to travel in order to restart the I-20, which came at significant cost," the lawsuit said. As a result of the new policy direction, the lawsuit said Haverford recently was required to ask two international students to leave the campus based on potential status violations that, prior to the new policy, would not have disrupted their studies. "This upsets the crucial student-university relationship with these students and has irreparably disrupted these students' educational plans, and Haverford has lost tuition as a result," it added. (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, who is on a rare visit to Beijing, has expressed concern over the human rights situation in China, specially over large scale detention camps in Xinjiang province, during his meeting with Chinese premier Li Keqiang on Friday, a Japanese government official said. "Of course, with the Uighur issue in mind, (Abe told Li that) the international community, including Japan, has been paying close attention to the human rights situation in China," Japanese agency Kyodo quoted an unnamed Japanese official as saying. Abe's remarks indicated that Japan and China have been at odds over several political issues, although they have agreed to bolster economic cooperation as bilateral relations have been markedly improving since late last year, the report said. The Japanese prime minister's remarks came in the backdrop of a UN Human Rights panel report in August stating that China had detained over a million Uighur Muslims, who have opposed growing state surveillance, in re-education camps, which are also called indoctrination camps. The UN's Geneva-based Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination said it was alarmed by "numerous reports of ethnic Uighurs and other Muslim minorities" being detained in Xinjiang region and called for their immediate release. China defended the camps saying that they are re-education camps aimed at de-radicalise sections of the Uighur Muslim population from extremism and separatism. US and several other countries have also expressed concern over the camps. The Chinese Muslim community has reportedly resisted coercive "re-education" efforts by the authorities, which have progressively restricted religious minorities from observing the basic articles of their faith. This includes programmes that focus on psychological indoctrination. (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) A case was registered against activist Rahul Easwar Friday for allegedly making provocative statement on the Sabarimala issue, police said. A case was registered against Easwar, who belongs to the Thazhamon family of Sabarimala tantris (priests), on the basis of a complaint filed by a Thiruvananthapuram native, they said. He has been charged under IPC Section 153 (Wantonly giving provocation with intent to cause riot). Easwar, among those who spearheaded the frenzied protests in Sabarimala, had said they had a contingency plan to force the closure of the temple by spilling blood on its premises by some devotees in case any woman in the 'barred' age group managed to reach it. He had claimed that 20 Lord Ayyappa devotees opposing the entry of women in the age group of 10 and 50 were ready to inflict knife injuries on themselves on the temple premises which would have forced the priests to close the gates on account of impurity. "Had their blood fallen on the floor of the temple, that would have forced the priests to shut the shrine for three days for purification rituals," Easwar, President of the 'Ayyappa Dharma Sena', had told reporters here. Kerala Devaswom Minister Kadakkampally Surendran had claimed Thursday that effective police intervention had foiled the protesters' bid to "desecrate" the Ayyappa Temple by spilling blood in the premises if women devotees in the 10-50 age group offered prayers. He had said the "conspiracy" of the devotees was made clear by the statement of Ayyappa Dharma Sena president Easwar. "This was a planned attempt to desecrate the holy temple, but effective police intervention defeated their efforts," Surendran had said. The Minister had said the disclosure showed that there was a well-conceived plan, similar to that followed by nations to attack their enemies and added that this attempt was not only 'seditious,' but also against the interest of devotees. The temple had witnessed high drama with around a dozen women in 10-50 age group being prevented from entering the temple by protesting devotees after the doors were opened for all women following the Supreme Court verdict. The Kerala High Court had Thursday dismissed a Public Interest Litigation seeking barring of entry of women in the menstrual age group into the Sabarimala hill shrine till additional facilities were set up for them, and said the petitioner can approach the Supreme Court. On September 28, a five-judge Constitution bench of the Apex Court, headed by then Chief Justice Dipak Misra, had lifted the centuries-old ban on the entry of women of menstrual age into the shrine. (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) An advocate, on whose petition the Supreme Court had asked the Centre to provide details of the decision-making process in the Rafale deal, approached the CBI Friday seeking registration of an FIR in the fighter jet deal. The court had earlier, while seeking the report in sealed cover, had clarified that it does not want information on pricing and technical particulars. In his complaint before the CBI, advocate M L Sharma has sought registration of FIR against high functionaries of the government under sections 409 (Criminal breach of trust by public servant), 420 (cheating) and 120-B (criminal conspiracy) of the Indian Penal Code and Prevention of Corruption Act. Sharma's move comes within a couple of days of former Union ministers Yashwant Sinha and Arun Shourie and activist lawyer Prashant Bhushan lodging a complaint with the CBI for registration of FIR into the Rafale fighter jet deal between India and France. India signed an agreement with France for the purchase of 36 Rafale fighter aircraft in a fly-away condition as part of the upgrading process of the Indian Air Force equipment. The Rafale fighter is a twin-engine Medium Multi Role Combat Aircraft (MMRCA) manufactured by French aerospace company Dassault Aviation. Indian Air Force had advanced a proposal to buy 126 fighter aircraft in August 2007 and floated a tender. Following this, an invitation was sent to various aviation companies to participate in the bidding process. (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) US President said Thursday all American sanctions against Iran will be in full force on November 5, as he signed into law another legislation imposing hard-hitting sanctions on Lebanese militant group "On November 5th, all US sanctions against Iran lifted by the nuclear deal will be back in full force, every sanction that we had on their originally, which would have -- if they would have just left it a little bit longer, would have been so much easier than what we've been through over the last number of years," Trump said at a event. After withdrawing from the Iranian nuclear deal, Trump has asked all countries to reduce their purchase of oil from Iran to zero or face secondary sanctions. India, being one of the largest importers of Iranian oil, also comes under the purview of American sanctions. To avoid this, India either needs a waiver from the US or has to bring down the purchase of Iranian oil to zero. Trump said these sanctions will be followed up with even more sanctions to address the full range of Iran's "malign conduct". "We will not allow the world's leading sponsor of terror to develop the world's deadliest weapons. Will not happen," he said. Moments earlier, Trump signed into law the Financing Prevention Amendments Act (HIFPAA) of 2018, which imposes additional hard-hitting sanctions on "Hezbollah has kidnapped, tortured, and murdered American citizens, including in its brutal attack in 1983 on our Marine Barracks in Beirut, Lebanon, which killed 241 American Marines, Sailors, and Soldiers, wounded 128 other American service members, and killed a Lebanese civilian. "Another bombing against the French barracks killed 58 French peacekeepers and five Lebanese civilians, Press Secretary Sarah Sanders said. The legislation, Sanders said, will further isolate Hezbollah from the financial system and reduce its funding. These sanctions will target foreign persons and government agencies that knowingly assist or support Hezbollah, and Hezbollah-affiliated networks that engage in drug trafficking or other transnational crime, she said. During a event Thursday night to commemorate the 35th anniversary of the attack in Beirut on the Marine Barracks with survivors and family members of the victims, Trump said over the past year, his administration has levied the highest number of sanctions ever imposed on Hezbollah in a single year, by far. "Just a few moments ago I signed legislation imposing even more hard-hitting sanctions on Hezbollah to further starve them of them of their funds. And they are starving of funds," he said. "We will target, disrupt, and dismantle their operational and financing networks of which they had plenty. They don't have plenty now. And we will never forget what they did to our great Marines in Beirut. We will never forget," the US president said. / -- - Medvarsity course to help in improving skills while reducing attrition - Medvarsity, a pioneer in online medical training has been chosen by Apollo Hospitals to support the online simulation training for resident doctors. The training aims to augment medical education for healthcare professionals through the utilization of state-of-art technology with the goal of improving overall clinical outcomes. This simulation environment would allow doctors to learn, practice and repeat procedures as often as necessary in order to correct mistakes, fine-tune their skills, and optimize clinical outcomes. (Photo: https://mma.prnewswire.com/media/775328/Medvarsity_For_Resident_Doctors.jpg ) "With passing time, we are observing critical challenges in healthcare, a dearth in skilled junior doctors and lack of access to simulation tools for training. With Medvarsity's simulation training program for resident doctors, we are looking at bridging the gap in skills and also use the training program as a capacity builder. This will be a great program for young doctors to acquire good clinical skills that will help them in managing their patients better," said Dr. K Hari Prasad, President Apollo Hospitals Division. India, along with the rest of the world, is seeing a scarcity of skilled doctors; according to a study by PwC, there are 1.7 doctors to 1,000 population. The state of Indian healthcare is worrisome on the whole and more so because of number of less skilled professionals. Owing to the situation, there is a great demand for upskilled healthcare practitioners who can understand the dynamics of growing challenges that the industry is facing, on the whole. With the outlook to provide better patient care and career opportunities for the doctors, a strategic approach is necessary. Medvarsity, with its varied range of clinical and non-clinical courses, have been specially designed by doctors, for the doctors. "We are proud to support Apollo Hospitals in the key area of upskilling their residents on critical clinical skills. Apollo's need to have the best talent is critical to their success and our simulation training tools are best suited to bridge the skill gap," said Mr. Gerald Jaideep, CEO, Medvarsity Online Ltd. Even with information overload of today's times, a busy doctor still struggles to be well-versed with the latest developments in the industry and that is where Medvarsity aims to bridge the gap. About Medvarsity Online Ltd. Medvarsity is India's first & largest e-learning and training platform for healthcare professionals that was established in 2000. It has over 35000+ certified graduates. It offers a wide range of clinical and non-clinical courses that are responsible for upgrading clinical, management & leadership skills of doctors and nurses. The courses are exclusively designed by doctors and industry experts in association with leading universities. Our courses consist of 20,000 hours of content with over 8,000 active learners and course accreditation by global partners like University of New South Wales, Royal Liverpool Academy, ATI(USA), Amity University etc. We have over 40 clinical training partners across the country with top hospitals like Apollo, Columbia Asia, MaxCure, MyCure Hospitals. Medvarsity is working at impacting the healthcare ecosystem in a substantial way by providing cutting-edge knowledge gamut for about 20 counties across the world through its disruptive online education technology platform. For further details, log onto: http://www.medvarsity.com Follow us on facebook: https://www.facebook.com/medvarsity/ About Apollo Hospitals It was in 1983, that Dr. Prathap Reddy made a pioneering endeavour by launching India's first corporate hospital - Apollo Hospitals in Chennai. Over the years Apollo Hospitals has established itself as home to the largest cardiac practice in India with over 160,000 cardiac surgeries. Apollo Hospitals is also the world's largest private cancer care provider and runs the world's leading solid organ transplant program. As Asia's largest and most trusted healthcare group, its presence includes over 10,000 beds across 71 Hospitals, 3,000 Pharmacies, over 90 Primary Care and Diagnostic Clinics, 110 plus Telemedicine Centres and 80 plus Apollo Munich Insurance branches spanning the length and breadth of the Country. As an integrated healthcare service provider with Health Insurance services, Global Projects Consultancy capability, over 15 medical education centres and a Research Foundation with a focus on global Clinical Trials, epidemiological studies, stem cell & genetic research Apollo Hospitals has been at the forefront of new medical breakthroughs with the most recent investment being that of commissioning the first Proton Therapy Center across Asia, Africa and Australia in Chennai, India. Every four days, the Apollo Hospitals Group touches a million lives, in its mission to bring healthcare of International standards within the reach of every individual. In a rare honour, the Government of India issued a commemorative stamp in recognition of Apollo's contribution, the first for a healthcare organization. Apollo Hospitals Chairman, Dr. Prathap C Reddy, was conferred with the prestigious Padma Vibhushan in 2010. For more than 30 years, the Apollo Hospitals Group has continuously excelled and maintained leadership in medical innovation, world-class clinical services and cutting-edge technology. Our hospitals are consistently ranked amongst the best hospitals globally for advanced medical services and research. For further details, log onto: http://www.apollohospitals. (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) A 30-year-old man armed with a gun and live cartridges, and loitering near a school was arrested Friday here in Madhya Pradesh, police said. The man, Anil Burman, was apparently looking for a girl student studying in the school at village Boriya, around 17km from the district headquarters, they said. As soon as the police got information about the armed man moving near the school, they swung into action and arrested Burman, a resident of Pondi-Patan village in Jabalpur district, Katangi police station Assistant Sub-Inspector Milan Singh Rajput said. One country-made revolver, two live cartridges and three caps of used cartridges stuck in the firearm were seized from him, he said. Five mobile phones were also seized from him, he said. The incident occurred when students were leaving for home after school hours, the ASI added. The man appeared to be "mentally sick", the police officer said, citing preliminary interrogation. Rajput said they were grilling the accused to find out from where he obtained the firearm and also about the girl student he was searching for. He said Burman had come to Boriya to meet his maternal uncle. (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) An Army jawan was arrested in Bihar's Muzaffarpur district for taking part in robberies, a senior police officer said Friday. Senior Superintendent of Police (SSP), Manoj Kumar said a police team arrested Army jawan Pushpraj Kumar from Madhopur Susta village on Thursday while he was planning to execute another dacoity. The police team seized the jawan's Army ID card, his driving license during the raid, SSP said adding that on the basis of ID card, it seems that the person arrested is an Army jawan but police have sent the ID card for verification to find out whether he is actually an Army jawan. The team also seized a car, four ATM cards, which were looted in the past 48 hours in the district, SSP said. Pushpraj Kumar, a resident of Sabalpur Babhantoli village of Saran district, was posted as an Army jawan in Nasik, the SSP said. The SSP said that Pushpraj used to come on leave from Army camp but instead of going to his home, he used to join his group members in Muzaffarpur to take part in robberies. (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) The Army on Friday paid tributes to three jawans killed in separate incidents, including anti-militancy operations, in Kashmir valley. "In a solemn ceremony at Badamibagh cantonment here, General Officer Commanding of Chinar Corps of the Army Lt Gen A K Bhatt and all ranks paid homage to the martyrs on behalf of a proud nation," an Army official said. Director General of Jammu and Kashmir Police Dilbag Singh and representatives from various security agencies also joined in paying the last respects to the soldiers -- Lance Naik Brajesh Kumar, Sepoy Ngamsiamliana and Sepoy Rajendra Singh, he said. Kumar (32) sustained splinter injuries during a fierce operation against militants in Baramulla district's Sopore area on Friday. Two militants were also killed in the operation, the official said. A native of Himachal Pradesh's Nanawin village, Kumar had joined the Army in 2004. He is survived by his wife and a daughter, he added. Ngamsiamliana was killed on Thursday during an attack on an Army camp in Luragam village of Tral in Pulwama district. He hailed from village Rengtekawn in Mizoram and had joined the Army in 2013. He is survived by his parents, the official said. Singh (22) was injured in a stone-pelting incident on Thursday and later succumbed to injuries at a hospital here. "Singh was part of a quick reaction team which was providing security to a Border Roads Organisation (BRO) convoy on Thursday. At around 1800 hrs, when the convoy was passing through the Anantnag bypass tri-junction near NH-44, few youths hurled stones at the vehicle and Singh was injured after being hit by a stone directly on the head," the official said. He said Singh was provided immediate first aid and evacuated to 92 Base Hospital where the soldier succumbed to injuries. A resident of Uttarakhand's Badena village, Singh had joined the Army in 2016 and is survived by his parents. "The mortal remains of the martyrs were flown for last rites to their native places, where they would be laid to rest with full military honours. In this hour of grief, the Army stands in solidarity with the families of the bravehearts and remains committed to their dignity and well being," the official said. (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) Textiles major Arvind Friday said it has received nod from the National Company Law Tribunal (NCLT) for its scheme of demerger of its branded apparel and engineering businesses into separate entities. According to the company, it expects demerger of branded apparel business and engineering business to become effective from the second half of November. Moreover, Arvind Fashions and Anveshan may also get independently listed in early January, it added. "We would like to inform you that today NCLT Ahmedabad has sanctioned the Composite Scheme of Arrangement... amongst Arvind Ltd and Arvind Fashions and Anveshan Heavy Engineering and The Anup Engineering and their respective Shareholders and Creditors," said Arvind Ltd in a regulatory filing. The Ahmedabad bench of NCLT has approved scheme of demerger of branded apparel business and engineering business of Arvind Ltd into Arvind Fashions and Anveshan Heavy engineering. Commenting of the development Arvind Chief Financial Officer Jayesh Shah said a certified copy of the order will be received in due course. "We expect that demerger will become effective during 3rd or 4th week of November and Arvind Fashions and Anveshan may get independently listed in early January," Shah said. In FY 2017-18, Arvind Ltd had a revenue of Rs 6,423.34 crore. (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) The Department of Homeland Security requested the troops, NPR's Tom Bowman reports, after President Trump said he is intent on stopping any of the migrants from crossing the border. The president first threatened to send troops to the U.S. -Mexico border in April, telling foreign leaders that America would be "guarding our border with our military". In another post, Trump defended his administration's "hard line on illegal immigration" and praised Italian Prime Minister Giuseppe Conte for taking a similar stance. "We do not have any intention to shoot at people", Nielsen said, "but they will be apprehended". Trump had signalled his intention to send more troops last week, saying on Twitter that unless Mexico stopped the "onslaught" of people from Guatemala, Honduras and El Salvador, he would "call up the U.S. Military and CLOSE OUR SOUTHERN BORDER!" The troops will not engage in lethal operations to stop the migrants. "I'm floored that that happened", he said, adding that the selection was a point of contention and the choice was not made by Trump personally. "We only want to give our kids a better future". That's almost double the asylum claims the US fielded in 2015 and almost quadruple the claims in 2013. But those members remain under the control of the governors of the states where they're positioned, and their activities are limited to supportive roles, such as providing surveillance. The addition of 800 or more active duty troops, if approved, as expected, by Mattis, is in response to a request from the Department of Homeland Security, which manages the Border Patrol, a US official said. DHS asked for help in various forms, the official said, including air transport and other logistical assistance. It's not yet clear if the deployment will come from the National Guard or active duty troops. The troops will also provide tents and medical care for border authorities in those areas. But Trump told a rally crowd in Wisconsin on Wednesday that moves were under way. In May, National Border Patrol Council President Brandon Judd told the Los Angeles Times that Border Patrol agents "have seen no benefit" and that the deployment was "a colossal waste of resources". The opposition in on Friday sought to fish in troubled waters, scoffing at the BJP for agreeing to treat the JD(U) as its equal in terms of seat-sharing while "neglecting trusted allies" like and Upendra Kushwaha in order to woo an "undependable" heir-apparent Tejashwi Yadav made the statement hours after BJP national president Amit Shah, in a press conference in New Delhi, said that his party and the JD(U) will be assigned "an equal number" of seats and the remaining two allies will be "duly represented". "The BJP had won 22 out of 40 seats in in the 2014 polls. Its willingness to treat Kumar as an equal partner, whose JD(U) had won only two seats and lost its deposit in most, shows the desperation on part of and Prime Minister Narendra Modi," the of the opposition in the state assembly told reporters here. "Moreover, the meeting between Shah and Kumar gives the impression that the BJP has made up its mind to go with the JD(U) chief, who is undependable having cheated both them (BJP) and us (RJD), and given a short shrift to Paswan and Kushwaha, who have been firmly with the NDA," the former deputy Chief Minister said. About his meeting with Kushwaha who heads the RLSP earlier in the day at Arwal district, Yadav said, "People are free to draw their own conclusions. I can only say that the meeting was not pre-planned. It was a coincidence that he and I were at the Circuit House at the same time and hence it was natural for us to exchange pleasantries." Pressed further, he said, "It is probably the first time that I have met Kushwaha in person. As far as prospects of his joining our Mahagathbandhan is concerned, we had invited him to do so long ago and the invitation stands. It is for him to accept it or ignore it." Speculations have been rife, for quite some time that Kushwaha might gravitate towards the Grand Alliance which at present comprises the RJD, the and former Chief Minister Jitan Ram Manjhi's Hindustani Awam Morcha. The speculations have gained ground since national vice president and state unit chief Shivanand Tiwary and Ram Chandra Purve respectively turned up at a "human chain" organized by the RLSP and got photographed holding Kushwaha's hands even as leaders of the BJP and the JD(U) remained conspicuous by their absence. A couple of months ago Kushwaha, despite having repeatedly said that he will remain with the NDA, said that he looked forward to preparing a "kheer" -- cooked with the help of rice grown traditionally by members of his caste and milk, produced by Yadavs -- which was seen as an indication of his willingness to form an alliance with the RJD. Yadav, on his part, has been claiming that Kushwaha will leave the NDA and join the Grand Alliance following in the footsteps of Manjhi, who had quit the BJP-led coalition in February this year. Like Manjhi, Kushwaha is a former JD(U) leader, who had formed his own party after falling out with and joined the NDA while the Bihar Chief Minister was out of the BJP-led coalition. Kumar's return to the NDA last year was understood to have caused a lot of consternation among the likes of Kushwaha and Manjhi. WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange would end his five-year stay in Ecuador's London embassy and hand himself over to British authorities if given assurances he would not face extradition to the US, his lawyer said Friday. Assange has been holed up at the embassy since 2012, concerned that a British arrest warrant would result in his extradition to the United States, where he could be tried for revealing state secrets. Assange would "face up" to surrendering to British authorities who want to arrest him for breaching bail conditions, said his lawyer Carlos Poveda. "In British justice, he could even be sentenced to three to six months' imprisonment," Poveda said. "But what is being requested from the legal team is that there is a necessary assurance that after that sentence he will not be extradited to the United States." This would be "an extremely important condition" for the 47-year-old Australian, the lawyer said. Ecuador gave Assange diplomatic protection in 2012 after a British judge ruled he should be extradited to Sweden to face allegations of sexual assault there. Sweden dropped its investigation last year, but British authorities say they still want to arrest him for breaching his bail conditions. Assange claims the accusations were politically motivated and could lead to him being extradited to the United States to face imprisonment over the release by WikiLeaks of secret US military documents and diplomatic cables in 2010. The Australian's relationship with his Ecuadoran hosts has steadily turned sour. Last week, he announced he was suing the Quito government, saying new rules imposed on his stay violated his rights to unfettered communications with the outside world. On Thursday, Eduador's attorney general Inigo Salvador told reporters that Quito has proposed that either Assange turn himself in to British justice, or continue to live in the embassy under strict rules. (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) The city's Kempegowda International Airport will see 17 per cent more overseas flights this winter as three domestic carriers including national carrier Air India are set to scale up their international operations from here, BIAL said Friday. Budget carriers IndiGo and GoAir besides Air India will launch additional flights from Bengaluru to eight existing international destinations during the period between this October and March next year, the Bangalore International Airport (BIAL) said in a statement. BIAL is the joint venture company that manages and operates the country's third largest airport. It is majorly owned by India-born Canadian billionaire Prem Watsa's Fairfax. While, according to the statement, IndiGo will operate daily flights to Male, Bangkok, Kuala Lumpur, Hong Kong and Kathmandu, Air India is set to commence services to Bangkok and London from the Bengaluru airport. Wadia group-promoted GoAir, which commenced its international operations this month, will also connect Bengaluru with Phuket in Thailand during the winter schedule. Besides, Air India Express will launch a round-trip flight to Singapore from Bengaluru, flying four times a week, from October 29, BIAL said. Airlines' winter schedule in India this year will commence from Saturday mid-night and will go on till March 30 next year. "Resurgent growth translates into the need for new routes and the addition of aircraft to the existing base. We will continue to work with our airline partners to offer passengers attractive routes that connect Bengaluru to some of the most exotic destinations in India and abroad," said Javed Malik, chief operating officer, BIAL. On the domestic side, no-frills carrier SpiceJet have plans to connect Kanpur, Gorakhpur and Udaipur with the city, while peer IndiGo has also announced its plans to fly to Udaipur and Prayagraj (erstwhile Allahabad) from the Bengaluru airport, the statement said. Also, Jet Airways will operate flight services from Bengaluru to Aizawl through Guwahati and Air India's regional arm, Alliance Air, is connecting Kolhapur from here during the winters, BIAL said. In all, flight operations from the Bengaluru airport will be extended to seven new routes, while two new airlines Air India Express and Turkish Cargo - will be starting their operations from here during the coming winter, it said. With this, Bengaluru will now connect to 82 destinations 53 domestic and 29 international, it added. BIAL expects the Bengaluru airport to achieve about 744 aircraft movements per day (659 domestic, 85 international) at the start of winter this year. This is expected to progressively achieve 766 ATMs (air traffic movement) per day (675 domestic and 91 international), it added. The airport operator expects the average international ATMs for winter 2018-19 to grow at 17 per cent over summer 2018, while domestic movements are expected to achieve a growth of 10 per cent. The overall growth forecast for the forthcoming schedule is pegged at 11 per cent, it said. (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) Bangladesh will look to arrive at solutions to the problem of delays faced by Indian barges at its ports, industry body Assocham said Friday quoting a top official. The india's neighbouring nation has given a positive indication on minimising delays faced by Indian barges at its ports, the statement said. India's shipping secretary Gopal Krishna during an event said Bangladesh had shown a very positive frame of mind on resolving this issue which is to the benefit of both, largely Bangladesh exporters and the spinoff would be to ship lines and to Indian ports, the Assocham statement said. Krishna said: "Let me place on record that we had flagged this issue very prominently with Bangladesh side and also mentioned that it being a very huge exporter of garments but when we are visiting our ports, the constant demand is that delays in exports is costing Bangladesh economy orders." The statement also said the shipping ministry is awaiting Revenue Department's response on allowing domesticated containers to carry exim cargo for exim routes. "We have taken this issue with Department of Revenue, generally they feel that they would also require to consult transportation stakeholders because lot of transporters use built-in containers and there could be an issue vis--vis that mode," Krishna said addressing the meet. In her address, Director General Shipping Malini V Shankar said that while India's trade with Bangladesh has grown rapidly in the past few years, there are issues that need to be discussed so that participation of Indian ships in the coastal trade can be enhanced. "The possibility of allowing transportation of exim and transhipment cargo under the coastal shipping agreement needs to be explored," she said. "Similarly, the removal of limit of 6,000 GT (gross tonnage) for operation of vessels under the agreement also needs to be explored in order to encourage more and more number of vessels to engage in coastal shipping between the two countries," added DG Shipping. (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) Belgium's decision to buy US-made F-35 fighter jets instead of a rival European aircraft "strategically goes against European interests," French President Emmanuel Macron said on Friday. Belgium announced on Thursday it will purchase Lockheed Martin's stealth jets in a multi-billion-euro deal to replace its ageing fleet of F-16s in a blow to rival French aircraft maker Rafale. "I regret this choice. This wasn't just the Rafale offer, it was also the Eurofighter, a real European offer," Macron told reporters in Bratislava. "The decision is linked to a Belgian procedure, to the political constraints of the country, but strategically goes against European interests." He said: "Europe must develop a real capacity for a European defence industry, in all the countries that believe in this venture." The F-35 ran against a bid from the Eurofighter Typhoon, developed by a European consortium that also comprises Italy's Finmeccanica and Airbus. The Belgian government said it would buy 34 radar-evading F-35s to replace its F-16 jets, from 2023. Prime Minister Charles Michel had attempted to ward off criticism saying Belgium was looking to both Europe and the US for its defence needs. (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) Demanding Uttar Pradesh government to declare minimum support price of sugarcane before the start of crushing season by mills, Bhartiya Kisan Union activists Friday blocked the collectorate office here with tractor-trolleys loaded with sugarcanes. They are also demanding clearing of dues by sugar mills, allowing plying of old tractors, implementation of recommendations of the M S Swaminathan Committee report. The protest will continue till their demands are not met, said BKU district unit chief Raju Ahalawat. (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) / -- Blueleaf Cyberspace, a SaaS (Software as a Service) company launched 99attendance, an App that replaces biometric attendance. Once registered, all an employee has to do is download the App through an SMS and it registers attendance automatically. The setup for 99attendance is online and takes just 15 minutes to complete. It is also priced very competitively; the subscription charges for a company starts as low as Rs. 500 a month for 99attendance. Unlike biometrics, automated WhatsApp reports are sent to authorized people in the company on a regular basis. 99attendance is backed up by a powerful cloud enterprise system called 'Weballigator' which offers more extensive features like multi-locations, multi-reporting and flexible access, all at the click of a button. 99attendance works in any industry and at any location across the globe. According to Dr. Joseph Rasquinha, Co-Founder & CEO, "The biometric market in India is expected to cross Rs. 21,000 crores (3 billion dollars) by 2020. Worldwide, it is at almost 40 billion dollars or Rs. 280,000 crores. However, the levels of satisfaction for biometric product performances are low and dropping even further. 99attendance which is innovative, simple, easy-to-install, and gives information on WhatsApp is a game changer." "To ensure complete security of your personal data, the 99attendance app installed on the employees phone, can be uninstalled at the time of leaving the organization. In comparison, a biometric system stores a person's fingerprint which can pose as a major threat since many financial transactions and services today can primarily be controlled using finger print data," he added. According to Nagaraj Bolakatti, Senior Sales Manager, "We have gone an extra step to identify and ensure that no manipulation can be done using this software. We have algorithms to identify irregular and suspicious patterns. With this app we have tried to analyze and eliminate all the loopholes in the biometric attendance system. For Eg.: In biometric or other systems, an employee can always leave a premise once he is logged in and return sometime later to logout, but in 99Attendance, once a person logs in, the software checks his attendance in the premises regularly. If it is unable to register him, it will alternatively identify the location and enter it in the attendance log. This means that an employee who logs-in and leaves the office will still have their attendance and location registered in 99attendance as long as they are signed in. When a person logs out at the end of the day, the system shuts down, leaving their privacy intact." Blueleaf Cyberspace has received a number of awards and Government recognitions, and also has other innovative products that help improve and scale up employee productivity. More information on 99attendance can be seen at http://www.99attendance.com. About Blueleaf Cyberspace: A Startupindia company from the Govt. of India who has received funding from a 2000 crore Group which has a portfolio for investment in startups. We are founded by a number of professionals, the key co-founder being Dr. Joseph Rasquinha, and mentored by Shoaib Ahmed, the former President of Tally, and Co-Founder of ISPRT. In 3 months, our SaaS (Software as a Service) product which is a combination of different Apps and a powerful entreprise system has multiple clients in B2B industries from retail, real estate, financial services, hospitality, aviation, and education. Our product is so versatile that we have clients who have 5 people on it and others who have 1,200 people. It is easy to setup and use. The company website is blueleaf360.com. Company Linkedin Profile - https://www.linkedin.com/company/blueleaf-cyberspace/ Founder Linkedin Profile - https://www.linkedin. (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) State-run telecom BSNL has signed an agreement with Nokia to jointly market and deploy smart poles that will detect pollution levels and alert the offices concerned, amid growing concerns over worsening air quality. "We have signed an agreement with Nokia to jointly market and deploy smart poles across the country. These smart poles are capable of detecting pollution levels and alert the concerned office for timely action. It will also sense pollution level in air where stubble burning takes place," BSNL chairman and managing director Anupam Shrivastava told PTI at the India Mobile Congress. Air quality in the national capital deteriorated Friday, gradually inching towards the 'severe' category, as parts of the massive Bhalswa landfill site continued to smoulder. The Central Pollution Control Board (CPCB) recorded the overall Air Quality Index of Delhi at 358 this morning, which falls in the 'very poor' category. Air pollution in Delhi is also attributed to stubble burning in neighbouring states. Shrivastava said that BSNL has initially purchased 50 smart poles from Nokia for Rs 46 lakh a unit. These smart poles will also work as mobile towers, wifi hotspot, street lighting and surveillance. "Both BSNL and Nokia are in talks with municipal bodies for deployment of the smart poles. We are looking at deployment of these poles," Shrivastava said. At the event, BSNL also signed an agreement with home-grown telecom gear maker Vihaan Networks Limited (VNL) to jointly explore possibilities for establishment of indigenous secured network to counter external cyber threats like snooping, illegal tapping etc. "There is an urgent need to have a secured communication network to protect one's data from external threats. We look forward to working closely with VNL and develop technologically robust security system that will guard against any threat including data thefts," Shrivastava said. (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) Taking to the streets, the Congress on Friday took out nationwide protest marches to CBI offices accusing the government of trying to 'cage the CBI', as the party president Rahul Gandhi, along with several others, courted arrest and alleged "every institution was being ruined" in the country. While Gandhi led hundreds of Congress workers and leaders on their protest march here, he was also joined by leaders from some other opposition parties as well, including from the CPI, Trinamool Congress and Loktantrik Janata Dal. Similar marches were taken out by the Congress in Patna, Hyderabad, Gandhinagar (Gujarat), Mumbai, Bengaluru, Bhubaneshwar, Chandigarh and Hyderabad, among other cities. While police briefly detained the protesters at several places and released them later, there were no report of any violence. In Chandigarh, police said they had to use water cannons against the agitators and also suspend traffic for some time around the area of protest. Traffic was impacted for some time in the national capital also on a few stretches. Amid tight security arrangements by the police and with a large number of camerapersons jostling to record the protests, protesters moved on shouting slogans and carrying placards alleging the government of trying to 'cage the CBI'. The Congress has alleged Rafale link in the government decision to divest CBI Director Verma of his duties, but the government has rejected these allegations. The nationwide protests by Congress took place on a day when the Supreme Court ordered completion of a CVC probe, under supervision of a retired judge, into allegations against the top CBI officials within two weeks. While Gandhi refused to comment on the court order, saying that the process is "carrying on", Finance Minister Arun Jaitley welcomed the order and said the government has no interest for or against any individual and is keen only on maintaining institutional integrity of the investigative agency. Gandhi, who led the nearly one-kilometre protest march of hundreds of Congress workers from Dala Singh College to the CBI headquarters in the national capital, also tweeted pictures of the protest march and him sitting at the Lodhi Road police station and said, "No matter how hard the government tries, it will not be able to cage the truth." A police officer said 130 protesters including Gandhi and other Congress leaders such as Ashok Gehlot and Bhupinder Hooda were detained and released after 30 minutes. Loktantrik Janata Dal leader Sharad Yadav, CPI leader D Raja and TMC's Nadimul Haque also joined the Congress protest. Asserting that people are coming on the streets to show Prime Minister Narendra Modi "the mirror of reality", Gandhi lashed out at the government alleging that Modi "stole" money from the country and can run but not hide from the truth. There were no immediate reactions from the Prime Minister's Office on Gandhi's allegations. While Ambani has been consistently denying the allegations, the BJP has accused Gandhi of manufacturing lies every day on the Rafale deal. Asked about the commotion during his arrest, Gandhi said, "You can push me or arrest me as many times but I do not care." At one point, he even got onto a truck in front of the police barricades put up ahead of the CBI headquarters to prevent the marchers from reaching the building. The Congress leader alleged the Modi government of destroying institutions like the CBI, the Election Commission and the Enforcement Directorate. "Every institution in India being ruined by the prime minister," he alleged. Joining Gandhi in the protest, Gehlot said the decision to remove the CBI director was "illegal" and such a decision can only be taken together by the chief justice of India, the leader of the opposition and the prime minister. Replicating the Delhi protests, Congress workers, including scores of women, in Patna sat on a dharna outside the CBI office, carrying placards that read, 'Save CBI, Save Democracy'. The Congress was also joined by the Telugu Desam Party and CPI in their protest march in Hyderabad (Andhra Pradesh) In Mumbai, city Congress president Sanjay Nirupam led the protest and accused Prime Minister Modi of "removing" Verma "illegally and by going against the Constitution". Over 40 Congress workers and leaders from Gujarat, including eight MLAs and a former state unit chief, were detained during their protest outside the CBI office in Gandhinagar. They were released later, the police said. In Bengaluru also, the Congress workers protested in front of the CBI office, but several party MLAs and corporators were absent. While the party's national general secretary and Karnataka in-charge K C Venugopal participated in the protest, party spokesperson Subhash Agarwal said the presence of MLAs and corpororators did not matter much as it was a symbolic agitation. Former chief minister Siddaramaiah took to Twitter to target the prime minister over the CBI issue. In Tamil Nadu and Puducherry, demonstrations were held in front of central government offices. In Bhunaneshwar, hundreds of Congress workers, wearing black T-shirts, tried to enter the CBI office, but were stopped by the security personnel at the gate. Kerala Congress leaders marched to the local CBI office in Thiruvananthapuram. Similar demonstrations were held in Jammu, Ranchi, Dhanbad, Vijayawada, Guwahati, among other cities. (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) Activists and leaders of Jharkhand Pradesh Congress Committee (JPCC) on Friday staged a demonstration outside CBI office in Dhanbad, as part of the party's nationwide protest against the decision of the Centre to send the agency's director, Alok Verma, on leave. At Ranchi, the party workers burnt an effigy of Prime Minister Narendra Modi, alleging that the NDA government's action against Verma was "illegal and unconstitutional". The Centre on Wednesday divested Verma and special director Rakesh Asthana of their powers and sent the two feuding officials on leave. Verma had reportedly opposed Asthana's elevation as the special director of the premiere agency on the ground that he was being probed in a graft case. JPCC spokesperson Rajeev Ranjan said the party plans to hold another demonstration against the Centre's decision, in the state capital on Monday. "Our party workers in Dhanbad, under the leadership of district president B P Singh, staged a demonstration in front of the CBI office, seeking immediate reinstatement of Verma. We plan to hold another similar demonstration on Monday in Ranchi," Ranjan added. (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) Central Intelligence Agency director Gina Haspel heard an audio recording of the killing of Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi during her visit to Turkey this week, two sources told Reuters on Thursday, the first indication Ankara has shared its key evidence. CIA Director Gina Haspel on Thursday briefed Trump on the evidence about Khashoggi's death that she reviewed during a trip to Turkey. President Donald Trump called Khashoggi's killing "the worst cover-up ever". He did not address charges that some of his closest security aides have been implicated in the October 2 death at the Saudi Consulate in Istanbul and made a particular plea that the incident would not cause a diplomatic break between Saudi Arabia and Turkey. Through a steady stream of leaks to Turkish and foreign media, Turkish officials have mounted a compelling case that shows the Saudi agents planned to kill Khashoggi, dismember him and dispose of his remains. Spain has said that the $2.1 billion purchase by Saudi Arabia for five navy ships was put at risk when the government pondered cancelling the shipment 400 precision bombs purchased by Riyadh in 2015. Saudi officials at first said that Khashoggi walked out of the consulate and that they did not know his whereabouts. Turkish sources say authorities have an audio recording purportedly documenting the murder. It was not clear what could be heard on the tape. It was the first indication Ankara has shared its key investigative evidence. "He's running things and so if anybody were going to be, it would be him", Trump told the Wall Street Journal, answering a question about the Saudi crown prince's possible involvement into the killing of the journalist. But he suggested responsibility lay higher up: "Well, the prince is running things over there more so at this stage". While Tehran's official reaction was initially tempered, Iranian President Hassan Rouhani said Wednesday that the Saudis must have thought they could get away with the writer's "brutal killing" because there would be no retribution from the USA government. The Saudi officials said their initial response to Khashoggi's disappearance was based on a false report filed by the team sent to Istanbul, which maintained he had left the consulate after refusing to agree to return home. Meanwhile, Turkish investigators continue in search of Khashoggi's corpse and new elements that could shed light on the affair. "How should a real investigation in Saudi Arabia work when one of the main suspects is the crown prince MBS?" said a Turkish senior official. For Saudi Arabia's allies, the burning question has been whether they believe that Prince Mohammed, who has painted himself as a reformer, has any culpability in the killing, a possibility raised by several USA lawmakers. President Tayyip Erdogan has called Khashoggi's murder a "savage killing" and demanded Riyadh punish those responsible, no matter how highly placed. "As long as the facts have not been clearly established, and corroborated by our information services, we will not take any decision", said Griveaux. Iran, meanwhile, claimed Saudi Arabia had the United States' backing to murder Khashoggi. "Those behind this crime will be held accountable.in the end justice will prevail". He had been living in exile in the United States of America since September 2017. Saudi state oil giant Saudi Aramco said it signed deals with 15 global partners worth more than $34bn. For their part, the Trump administration and the US defence industry are scrambling to save the few actual deals in a much-touted $110 billion arms package for Saudi Arabia. Congress workers in Tamil Nadu and Puducherry Friday staged demonstration in front of central government offices as part of nation-wide protest called by the party chief Rahul Gandhi against CBI Director Alok Verma being divested of powers. The cadres carried placards and shouted slogans denouncing the BJP-led government at the Centre. Addressing protesters near Shastri Bhavan in Chennai where the CBI zonal office is located, TNCC President Su Thirunavukkarasar repeated Gandhi's accusations and said the Centre intended to remove the central agency's director to 'disrupt' probe into the Rafale deal. The Congress has alleged a scam in the purchase of the French made fighter aircraft. Calling the action against Verma an "undemocratic move," Thirunavukkarasar said the decision 'destroyed' credibility of the country's apex investigating agency. Early this week, the Centre had sent Verma and Special Director Rakesh Asthana, who have accused each other of corruption, on leave on Tuesday. The government has strongly defended its decision, saying it was "absolutely essential" to maintain the CBI's institutional integrity and the move was based on recommendations by the Central Vigilance Commissioner. State Congress leaders including former TNCC chief KV Thangkabalu, Kumari Ananthan along with over 200 workers took part in the protest that witnessed altercations with the police, who removed the protesters. In Puducherry, AICC secretary Sanjay Dutt protesting outside head post office, accused Prime Minister Narendra Modi of "misusing the CBI as an extended wing of the BJP." Dutt, who is also in-charge of Puducherry Congress unit, said during its reign his party never interfered in the agency's independence. Taking swipes at Puducherry Lt Governor Kiran Bedi, Dutt said, "Bedi is remote-controlled by Modi to undermine the democratically elected government headed by Congress Chief Minister V Narayanasamy here." Addressing the protesters, Narayanasamy alleged that Modi was functioning in an "authoritarian manner."He also expressed confidence that in the next year's Lok Sabha polls Congress would romp home and Narendra Modi would be unseated through people's mandate. Two days ago, Gandhi alleged that Verma was forcibly sent on leave as he was collecting documents relating to the Rafale 'scam'. (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) China has taken actions that have provided risk to the American people, US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said Friday, alleging that Chinese have been "bribing" leadership in countries to bag infrastructure projects. "I think if you go look at (Chinese) President Xi's (Jinping) stated intentions, you can clearly see that China has a plan that is different than the one that they had five years ago or even two or three years ago. You see this in their ability to use their money around the world," Pompeo said in an interview with Hugh Hewitt of the Hugh Hewitt Show. Pompeo said that he has spoken about this repeatedly. "I spoke to it when I was in Panama and I travel the world. "I remind countries we welcome commercial competition with China on a fair and reciprocal basis, but when China shows up with bribes to senior leaders in countries in exchange for infrastructure projects that will harm the people of that nation, then this idea of a treasury-run empire build is something that I think would be bad for each of those countries and certainly presents risk to American interests, and we intend to oppose them at every turn," he said. Pompeo said that the US has been consistent with its strategy on China since the beginning of this administration, which is to recognise the competitive nature of the relationship between the two countries, and as China has taken actions that have provided risk to the American people. "Whether that's a risk through the stealing of intellectual property or trade rules that are unfair or activity in the South China Sea or their continued expansion in space and their efforts to develop their military, each of those actions has been met with a strong and vigorous response from the United States of America and we'll continue to do so. "There wasn't a moment, but rather an administration that has recognized the difference in China's behaviour and the requirement for an American response to that changed behaviour," Pompeo said. Responding to a question on reports of imprisonment of as many as one million Uighurs, Pompeo said that these camps are clearly a Chinese effort to reduce the capacity for Chinese people to exercise their religious freedom. "We've seen it in many different forms. We've seen it being more difficult for churches to put crosses on the roofs of their buildings. We've seen religious freedom practices be denied in ways that they had not been in years previously," he said. These are real threats to religious freedom, something that President Trump has directed this administration to take seriously, Pompeo said. "We are not only talking about this where countries are denying religious freedom around the world, but beginning to use American efforts and global efforts to push back against these denials of the most basic human rights. "Indeed, an International Religious Freedom Day is upon us and is something the State Department will be talking about a great deal," Pompeo added. (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) China's Ambassador Yao Jing Friday said that the financial support provided for the USD 50 billion China-Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC) was not a burden on the economy of Pakistan. He told media in the Chinese embassy here that the CPEC was a win-win project for both Pakistan and China and ultimately of huge benefit to Pakistan. "The CPEC is beneficial not only for China but also for Pakistan and it is a wrong impression that only Chinese companies are benefiting from it," Yao said. As the ambassador said that the "CPEC is not a burden on Pakistan's economy", China's deputy ambassador Lijian Zhao said that it was wrong to attribute Pakistan's economic hardships to Chinese loans. "China's debt to Pakistan is 6.3 per cent of Pakistan's total debt. Pakistan only has to pay two per cent interest. It has 15 to 20 years to repay the loan. From 2020 to 2021, Pakistan has to pay between USD 300 million and USD 400 million," he said. Lijian said that the CPEC would create 700,000 jobs by 2030, while by 2022 Pakistan's energy needs will be met through various power generation initiatives by China. The deputy ambassador also said that the early harvest project of the CPEC would be by early 2019. He said that out of the 22 projects, 10 had been completed which include seven relating to energy. He said that Iran and Afghanistan could also become part of the CPEC in future. However, the ambassador said that China was spending USD 19 billion on the 22 projects, as he hit out at the global powers for trying to undermine the importance of the CPEC for Pakistan. "Some powers are bothered by Pakistan and China's cooperation, relationship and friendship," Yao said. He also claimed that Chinese projects were completely transparent and so far no report about any financial misappropriation was received. Yao also said China would provide all possible assistance to help Pakistan to come out of the current the economic challenges. "We understand Pakistan right now faces some challenges and definitely as a friend China will extend whatever assistance possible," said the ambassador. He said China was looking forward to the upcoming visit of Prime Minister Imran Khan who will pay a official visit to China in the first week of November. However, the deputy ambassador was more precise to indicate that China will provide financial assistance. "In terms of financial assistance during the visit of Khan, we will provide hopefully a grant to the Pakistani government and at the end of the visit there will be good news," said Lijian. (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) CIA chief Gina Haspel has briefed President Donald Trump on the outcome of her visit to Turkey this week over the murder of Saudi dissident journalist Jamal Khashoggi, who was brutally killed inside Saudi Arabia's consulate in Istanbul, the said. There are no details of what was discussed, and there has not been any reaction from the president. "The president received a briefing from director Haspel this morning following her return from Turkey. She briefed the president on their findings and her discussions," Press Secretary Sarah Sanders said Thursday. In Turkey, she met with officials involved in the investigations of the murder of 60-year-old Khashoggi. Turkish officials say they have audio as the proof of the murder. In a news report, The Washington Post said that Haspel listened to the audio tape which Turkey claims capture the murder. A person familiar with the audio said it was "compelling" and could put more pressure on the US to hold the kingdom accountable for the death of Khashoggi, the daily reported. Turkish officials have leaked details of an alleged recording of Khashoggi that apparently proves he was murdered and dismembered. Up until now, both US and Turkish officials have said the alleged recording had not been shared by Turkey. The existence of such a recording has not yet proven. Khashoggi was a contributing columnist for The Washington Post. "This puts the ball firmly in Washington's court," Bruce Riedel, a former CIA official and scholar at the Brookings Institution, told the Post. "Not only will there be more pressure now from the media but Congress will say, 'Gina, we would love to have you come visit and you can tell us exactly what you heard'," he told the daily. Haspel's briefing to Trump comes amidst latest change in Saudi stance in which it acknowledge that Khashoggi was murdered by its officials in a "premeditated" operation. Meanwhile, Senator Jack Reed, Ranking Member of the Senate Armed Services Committee, alleged that the Saudis are still engaged in cover-up. "In the face of mounting evidence, the Saudis now admit Khashoggi's torture and murder was premeditated. But they are still engaged in a cover-up," Reed said. "The Saudi Crown Prince must direct those responsible to produce Khashoggi's body immediately so that an autopsy may be conducted and his family can have a proper burial. If the Crown Prince is unable or unwilling to do so, then it will become clear that he is complicit in the cover-up," he said. Reed alleged that Trump's feeble response to the brutal torture, murder, and apparent dismemberment of a journalist who was legally living in the United States shows a stunning lack of leadership. "The Saudis ever-changing story underscores the need for an independent and credible investigation of what happened to Mr. Khashoggi," he said. "If President Trump abdicates his responsibility to hold the Saudis accountable then Congress must go it alone. Congress must follow the facts and act in a responsible, bipartisan manner to hold the killers, and those who ordered the killing, accountable," Reed said. Senator Bernie Sanders said the brutal murder of Khashoggi demands that the US make clear that its support for Saudi Arabia is not unconditional. CIA Director Gina Haspel on Thursday briefed President Donald Trump on the investigations related to US-based journalist Jamal Khashoggi, who was brutally killed inside Saudi Arabia's Istanbul Consulate, the White House said. "The president received a briefing from director Haspel this morning following her return from Turkey. She briefed the president on their findings and her discussions," White House Press Secretary Sarah Sanders said. The White House did not provide any other details of the meeting. Haspel returned from Turkey last night. In Turkey, she met with officials involved in the investigations of the murder of the Saudi journalist Khashoggi. Turkish officials say they have audio of the proof of the murder. In a report, The Washington Post said that Haspel listened to the audio tape. A person familiar with the audio said it was "compelling" and could put more pressure on the US to hold the kingdom accountable for the death of Khashoggi, the daily reported. Khashoggi was a contributing columnist for The Washington Post. "This puts the ball firmly in Washington's court," Bruce Riedel, a former CIA official and scholar at the Brookings Institution, told The Washington Post. "Not only will there be more pressure now from the media but Congress will say, 'Gina, we would love to have you come visit and you can tell us exactly what you heard'," he told the daily. Haspel's briefing to Trump comes amidst latest change in Saudi stance in which it acknowledge that Khashoggi was murdered by its officials in a "premeditated" operation. Meanwhile, Senator Jack Reed, Ranking Member of the Senate Armed Services Committee, alleged that the Saudis are still engaged in cover up. "In the face of mounting evidence, the Saudis now admit Khashoggi's torture and murder was premeditated. But they are still engaged in a cover up," Reed said. "The Saudi Crown Prince must direct those responsible to produce Khashoggi's body immediately so that an autopsy may be conducted and his family can have a proper burial. If the Crown Prince is unable or unwilling to do so, then it will become clear that he is complicit in the cover up," he said. Reed alleged that Trump's feeble response to the brutal torture, murder, and apparent dismemberment of a journalist who was legally living in the United States shows a stunning lack of leadership. "The Saudis ever-changing story underscores the need for an independent and credible international investigation of what happened to Mr. Khashoggi," he said. "If President Trump abdicates his responsibility to hold the Saudis accountable then Congress must go it alone. Congress must follow the facts and act in a responsible, bipartisan manner to hold the killers, and those who ordered the killing, accountable," Reed said. Senator Bernie Sanders said the brutal murder of Khashoggi demands that the US make clear that its support for Saudi Arabia is not unconditional. (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) A class 10 student of a private school in west Delhi's Vikaspuri was apprehended after he allegedly brought a pistol to the institution to threaten his senior with whom he had a fight over a petty issue, police said Friday. The 15-year-old boy also brought two men with him to the school for helping him exact revenge on the class 12 student but they were held, police added. During a picnic organised by the school on Wednesday, two teenagers got into an argument after one of them directed the other to push the swing. The argument turned into a scuffle and the class 10 student was injured, a senior police officer said. Enraged over this, the class 10 student along with two others went to the school with a pistol on Thursday afternoon and started quarrelling with the senior and his friends and showed them a pistol, the officer said. They were overpowered by the guards in the school and handed over to police, the officer added. Following the incident, the class 10 student was apprehended by police while the two others were arrested in connection with the incident, he said. One of his accomplices was employed by his father who owns a jewellery shop while the other accused was his friend. They were aged 22 and 28, respectively, the officer said. The weapon belongs to either of the two men and efforts were being made to ascertain its ownership, he added. (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) An MLA of the opposition AIUDF has charged the authorities of a premier college in Assam's Nagaon district with "saffronising" the college environment by asking the students to wear "proper uniform". There cannot be any harm if some girl students go to college in 'hijab' (veil worn by Muslim women) and 'niqab' (clothing that covers the face), All India United Democratic Front (AIUDF) MLA Aminul Islam said in a Facebook post. Principal of Anandaram Dhekial Phookan (ADP) College Dr Surajit Kumar Bhagowati on Friday said he did not ban any religious outfit and only issued a notice before the Autumn vacation asking students to wear "proper uniform". Of the 20 per cent Muslim students of the college, only the MLA's daughter comes in burqa, Bhagowati said, adding that he was feeling threatened and has lodged a police complaint over the Facebook post of the AIUDF leader. In his October 24 post, Islam said, "No such decision (banning religious outfits) was taken in the last 60 years of the college's existence. I would like to know where in the Indian Constitution or the state gazetted notification it is written that one cannot wear such outfits." "The college has been imparting to students irrespective of caste, creed, race and religion for the last 60 years but you (Bhagowati) have tried to saffronise the system in the college," the MLA, a former student of the ADP College, said in the post written in Assamese. He asked, "Is the college your paternal property? What was so bothersome about a few students attending the college wearing 'hijab' or 'niqab'? Does wearing decent clothes affect the college environment?" Islam said he has urged various student organisations to look into the matter, otherwise the principal would "ruin" the status, dignity and heritage and educational environment of the college. Talking to the media, Bhagowati said, "All the students come to college in proper uniform as mentioned in the college prospectus. But only one student who is MLA Islam's daughter wears burqa in college." On whether he has banned 'hijab' and 'niqab' in the college, the principal said he neither ordered any such ban nor did he ask the concerned student not to wear burqa in the campus. He said he only issued a common notice to the students asking them to wear proper college uniform. "I have filed a police complaint as I am feeling threatened," the principal said. The college's Students Union and the Teachers' Council have criticised the MLA for the social media post. The Muslim students have also come out in support of the move of the principal. They said before journalists that if students of different religious communities insist on coming in their respective outfits to the institute, the secular environment of the college will be vitiated. The ADP College was set up in 1959 and named after Anandaram Dhekial Phookan, a pioneer of Assamese literature. (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) The commerce ministry is working on a comprehensive strategy and considering incentives for exporters with a view to boost the country's outbound shipments, a senior government official said Friday. Director General of Foreign (DGFT) Alok Chaturvedi said that the exports, which recorded about 10 per cent growth in 2017-18 to over $300 billion, is expected to reach $330-340 billion this fiscal. In the first half of the current fiscal, the exports grew by 12.5 per cent to $164 billion. He said the ministry has prepared a matrix of action plans for specific sectors, including engineering, gems and jewellery, chemicals, textiles and pharma, and issues pertaining to these areas are being taken up with the concerned departments. There are some cross-cutting issues such as withdrawal of amendment in the CGST rules, which is being partially resolved. "We are thinking of having some kind of incentives, where exporters are at disadvantage with respect to our competing countries where they are having some kind of free agreement with common markets. "So, we are trying to finalise a scheme...you can provide incentive to partially compensate for that disadvantage, which our exporters are facing," the DGFT said here at CII's Summit. The ministry is also working on tax rebates, duties and embedded taxes, besides alternative payment mechanism in potential problem countries such as Venezuela, Sudan, and CIS nations. He said that it is the right of exporters to get rebate on those levies as "those duties and taxes should not be exported. We are working on a pilot scheme". Further, the DGFT said soon the IT system for exporters will be revamped completely and the ministry will float tenders for the same. Speaking at the summit, Commerce and Industry Minister asked the industry to become more aggressive in exploring opportunities in new markets such as and He said the action plan prepared by the ministry to boost exports will be released soon. "There are huge opportunities for exports in SAARC and Asean countries," Prabhu said, adding is working with the US to resolve all the pending issues to boost bilateral "The US is raising issues related to data localisation, issues related to duty imposed by Indian on IT products. We are engaged with the discussion (with them)," he added. Since 2011-12, India's exports have been hovering at around $300 billion. During 2017-18, the shipments grew by about 10 per cent to $303 billion. Promoting exports helps a country to create jobs, boost manufacturing and earn more foreign exchange. Activists and leaders of Assam Pradesh Congress Committee (APCC) staged a dharna outside the CBI office here on Friday, as part of the party's nationwide protest against the decision of the Centre to send the probe agency's director, Alok Verma, on leave. Slamming Prime Minister Narendra Modi for allegedly "degrading the autonomy of the nation's top investigating agency", APCC president Ripun Bora, who led the demonstrators, said Verma was divested of powers to "stifle probe into allegations of corruption in Rafale jet deal". "We are protesting against Modi's disgraceful attempt to prevent an investigation into the Rafale scam by removing CBI chief Alok Verma," he said. The Centre on Wednesday divested Verma and special director Rakesh Asthana of their powers and sent the two feuding officials on leave. Verma had reportedly opposed Asthana's elevation as the special director of the premiere agency on the ground that he was being probed in a graft case. In a memorandum submitted to President Ram Nath Kovind, Assam Congress Legislature Party Debabrata Saikia demanded Verma's immediate reinstatement. Verma was removed from his office "arbitrarily and illegally", at the behest of PM Narendra Modi, he said. Seeking Kovind's intervention into the matter, the memorandum said, "The Modi-led NDA government has sent CBI director Alok Verma on leave to protect its handpicked officer Rakesh Asthana, against whom serious charges of corruption have been leveled. "Such malafide action of the Modi government is an attempt to save the skin of BJP leaders, who are involved in the corruption case along with the accused officer," it contended. (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) The question of whether or not to celebrate Columbus Day or have Indigenous Peoples Day celebrated along with or in place of it is a topic of public discourse. While others may disagree, it is this authors assertion that Columbus Day should be the sole celebration for that day. This is beca The Opposition Congress in Meghalaya on Friday staged a dharna outside the CBI office to demand reinstatement of CBI Director Alok Verma, who has been divested of his powers and sent on leave. As part of the party's nationwide protest, Leader of the Opposition Mukul Sangma led the demonstrators and accused Prime Minister Narendra Modi of attempting to manipulate the administration of justice in the country. "It was a disgraceful attempt by Modiji to prevent an investigation into the Rafale scam," Mukul told mediapersons. The Centre had on Wednesday divested Verma and special director Rakesh Asthana of their powers and sent the two warring officials on leave. The Leader of Opposition also attacked the ruling National People's Party for allegedly attempting to use government officers as "henchmen" by transferring them at their will. Mukul said, "It (transfer) is something which is more or less comparable to what Modiji is doing to the premiere investigating agency like the CBI. They want to use the officers as their henchmen." The former chief minister was referring to the transfer orders of bureaucrats and police officers soon after taking charge. "It is for the interest of somebody who wanted to do business in certain block but they are not able to get the compliance of the officer concerned. So the best solution is throw him out and bring somebody else thinking that he or she will comply to whatever they say," he claimed. This practice would destroy the state, he said. (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) Hundreds of Congress workers along with their leaders in Bihar Friday staged a demonstration here as part of the partys nation-wide protest against the decision of the Centre to divest CBI Director Alok Verma of his duties and sending him on leave. The demonstrators, including scores of women, sat on a dharna outside the gate of the CBI office at Bailey Road, carrying placards reading 'Save CBI Save Democracy' and raised slogans amid a heavy contingent of police. Talking to reporters, BPCC president Madan Mohan Jha said "we demand resignation of Prime Minister Narendra Modi. CBI Director Alok Verma was sent on leave in a late night exercise to save the government from the embarrassing truth that was coming out on the Rafale deal." RJD spokesman Bhai Virendra, whose party was not taking part in the demonstration, said "we may not be physically participating in the protest, but Congress is our ally and their efforts have our full moral support. (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) : Congress leaders took out a march to the CBI office here Friday protesting against Prime Minister Narendra Modi's alleged attempt to 'politicise' the central investigating agency. Senior party leaders marched to the local CBI office at Muttathara as part of a nation-wide agitation called by the All India Congress Committee (AICC) demanding reinstatement of CBI Director Alok Verma, who has been divested of his powers and sent on leave. Leader of Opposition in the assembly Ramesh Chennithala, who inaugurated the march, made a scathing attack on the Prime Minister and alleged that Modi was the "most corrupt politician" the country had ever seen. "The CBI, the country's highest investigating agency, has lost its glory and pride," he said. Chennithala alleged that the midnight removal of Verma was 'illegal' and was to cover up corruption. He also said any attempt of the BJP-led NDA government to sabotage the corruption cases using CBI would not be allowed. KPCC president Mullappally Ramachandran also attacked the Prime Minister. Party MLAs, V S Sivakumar, M Vincent and K S Sabarinathan and senior party leaders including Neyyattinkara Sanal, Pandalam Sudhakaran, Varkala Kahar, Selvaraj, Lathika Subhash and Sarathchandra Prasad took part in the march. (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) The Congress protest demanding reinstatement of ousted CBI Director Alok Verma, who has been divested of his powers and sent on leave, threw traffic on some roads of the national capital in a tizzy as commuters faced a tough time reaching their destination. The traffic was affected on Lodhi Road, CGO Complex, Bhishma Pitamah Marg, Sai Baba Chowk and near Dayal Singh College, traffic police said. "The traffic was affected but it was for a short period. Lodhi road and Bhishma Pitamah Marg road have now been opened", Alok Kumar, Joint Commissioner of Police (Traffic) said. Congress workers led by their president Rahul Gandhi took to the streets on Friday against the move to divest CBI Director Alok Verma of his powers and send him on leave, and to demand an apology from Prime Minister Narendra Modi. The Congress, which marched from Dayal Singh College on Lodhi Road to the CBI headquarters about a kilometre away, has termed the move against Verma "illegal and unconstitutional". Senior Congress leaders, including Ashok Gehlot, Ahmed Patel, Motilal Vora, Veerappa Moily and Anand Sharma, took part in the march that culminated in a demonstration ahead of the CBI headquarters. (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) Congress workers held a protest outside the CBI office here, terming the Centre's decision to divest the investigating agency's director Alok Verma of his powers as "unconstitutional" and "illegal". Constitutional agencies like the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI), Enforcement Directorate, Central Vigilance Commission (CVC) and Union Public Service Commission are being misused under the BJP rule, something which has never been done before, Uttarakhand Congress president Pritam Singh said while addressing party workers. He claimed this is discrediting the country's legal system at the global level. Verma forcefully being sent on leave has also hurt the citizens' trust and made it clear that the Centre wants to use the CBI for its political convenience, he said. The Congress leader claimed that Verma was probing the Rafale deal and it is likely that he collected some proof against corruption in it, which is why he was sent on leave on leave by the CVC on the Centre's order. Later, the Congress workers submitted a memorandum addressed to President Ram Nath Kovind to Uttarakhand CBI chief Akhil Kaushik. In the memorandum, the party demanded a rollback of the Centre's decision and an apology from Prime Minister Narendra Modi for damaging the country's image at the international level. (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) Congress workers led by UPCC president Raj Babbar on Friday demonstrated near the CBI office here and courted arrest as part of the opposition party's nationwide protest against the Centre's move to divest the investigating agency's director Alok Verma of his powers. All roads leading to the CBI office were barricaded and the protesters were stopped by a large posse of policemen on their way to the CBI office. The Congress workers carried banners and placards and raised slogans against Prime Minister Narendra Modi-led government and blamed it for problems in the CBI. The BJP says that Narendra Modi works 18 hours a day for the country, but he works to increase the corruption, Babbar said. Congress spokesperson Anshu Awasthi said Babbar and other partymen were taken to the Cant Kotwali police station. The Congress has described Verma's removal as "illegal, unconstitutional and illegitimate". It has alleged that the CBI director was sent on leave to stop him from launching a probe into the Rafale fighter jet deal. Speaking to reporters in Balrampur district, senior party leader Ghulam Nabi Azad also condemned Verma's removal. He alleged the deal had robbed the treasury and the heat generated by the row has reached the prime minister's home. (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) Mumbai Congress workers Friday staged a demonstration outside the CBI office here as part of the opposition party's nationwide protest against the Centre's move to divest agency director Alok Verma of his powers and send him on leave. City Congress president Sanjay Nirupam, who led the protest outside the CBI office in suburban Bandra, accused Prime Minister Narendra Modi of "removing" Verma "illegally and by going against the Constitution". The premier investigating agency has of late witnessed a raging feud between two of its top officers - Verma and special director Rakesh Asthana - who were sent on leave by the government Tuesday night. Verma and Asthana were also divested of all powers. As an interim measure, the charge of the CBI has been given to Joint Director M Nageswar Rao. Criticising the Centre over its action against Verma, Nirupam said Modi should apologise to the nation over the "unprecedented" developments in the probe agency. "Verma was removed illegally and unconstitutionally. Because they (the government) knew Verma was going to issue an order for a CBI probe into the Rafale deal," Nirupam told reporters. "So, to hide their sordid affairs, the prime minister damaged the Constitution and law and order," the former Member of Parliament said. Nirupam charged the prime minister with threatening the autonomy of the central agency. "He is misusing the power. We had heard the prime minister was threatening people using the CBI, but now he himself is feeling threatened by the CBI," he added. The protesting Congress workers also raised slogans against the prime minister. The main opposition party's central leadership had called for a nationwide protest against what the Congress described as the "illegal, unconstitutional and illegitimate removal of the CBI director". (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) Scores of Congress workers were taken into custody after they attempted to march to the Income Tax department office in Vijayawada Friday as part of a nation-wide protest against the move to divest CBI Director Alok Verma of his powers and send him on leave. The state unit of the Congress had planned to take out a protest march to the IT department office there as there was no CBI office in the city. However, a large posse of police personnel prevented the Congressmen from carrying out their plan. Besides Andhra Pradesh Congress Committee president Raghuveera, police took AICC secretary Sheik Mastanvali and other leaders into custody and drove them away to Bhavanipuram police station. Later talking to reporters, Raghuveera said the CBI Director Alok Verma was abruptly removed under the direct instructions of Prime Minister Narendra Modi and BJP president Amit Shah. Verma was removed only because he wasinvestigating the Rafale deal in which both Modi and Shah were involved, he alleged. "This is like killing the Constitution," he added. CBI Director Verma and Special Director Rakesh Asthana have been sent on leave amid an ongoing spat between them. The prime minister-led appointments committee in an order Tuesday night had given charge of director to Joint Director M Nageshwara Rao with immediate effect. (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) A city court is likely to pass its orders on October 30 on a plea filed by businessman Vijay Mallya, seeking a stay on the proceedings initiated by the ED to declare him a Fugitive Economic Offender (FEO). The special court heard extensive arguments on Friday from Mallya's lawyer as well as the Enforcement Directorate (ED) counsel before reserving its order for October 30. The ED has sought that Mallya, who is currently in the UK, be declared an FEO and his properties be confiscated and brought under the control of the Union government as per provisions of the new FEO Act. Mallya's counsel Amit Desai, however, urged the court, set up under the Prevention of Money Laundering Act (PMLA), to refrain from hearing the ED's plea at least till November 26. Desai told the court that earlier this month, the appellate tribunal against money laundering had directed the ED to maintain status quo with regard to properties of the beleaguered businessman till November 26, the next date of hearing before the tribunal. "Passing any orders declaring Mallya an FEO under the new central legislation will automatically bring his properties under the Centre's control," Desai said. "Irrespective of whether or not, this court then orders for the attachment of such properties, merely declaring Mallya as an FEO will mean that this court's order will be in conflict with that of the tribunal's," he added. He also argued that attaching Mallya's properties under the new Act would deprive his creditors of any chance to ensure that his assets are sold and their proceeds used to recover the money they had lost. Desai said Mallya was keen on ensuring that the creditors were paid off and that his former employees, too, received their pending salaries and dues. The ED, represented by advocate D P Singh, however, told the court that Desai's arguments were aimed only at ensuring that Mallya did not have to face any proceedings before any court in India. "He has no intention of repaying anyone, or, of ever coming back to India. He is using the pending extradition proceedings and his bail conditions imposed by an English court as mere excuses to avoid coming back to India," Singh said. "Declaring him an FEO is the only way to bring him back," he said. The ED counsel argued the court could first declare Mallya an FEO and then wait for the tribunal's proceedings before acting upon the agency's plea for confiscation of the embattled liquor tycoon's properties and assets. Mallya, accused of defaulting on loan repayments and money laundering, left India in March 2016. The 62-year-old former Kingfisher Airline boss is fighting extradition to India on charges of fraud and money laundering. (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) The Communist Party of India (CPI) has decided to suspend publication of its Bengali mouthpiece 'Kalantar' from next month due to financial constraints, a senior party leader said. 'Kalantar', first published as a daily newspaper in 1966, played a vital role in helping the CPI to expand its political base post the party's split which led to the formation of the Communist Party of India (Marxist) CPI(M) in 1964. "Due to financial constraints, we have decided to suspend publication of 'Kalantar' from November one. It is not possible for us to run the newspaper by providing a heavy subsidy," CPI state secretary Swapan Banerjee told PTI. "Earlier we used to get both state and central government advertisements. But for the last few years, advertisements have stopped coming from both the governments. It has only augmented our financial problems," he said. Banerjee said that during its 52-year-old journey, the party was twice forced to suspend the publication of its mouthpiece due to financial issues. "Earlier also we had to close down the newspaper but we had, later on, bounced back and had reopened it. We hope this time too we would be able to reopen it," he said. Earlier 'Kalantar' was a weekly newspaper since 1965. A senior official of information and cultural affairs department said government advertisements were being given after careful consideration of various parameters including the budget of the government. "The claim that just because they are not getting government advertisements they can't run a newspaper is ridiculous. How can a newspaper which is run by a private entity claim that government has to give them advertisements. it is the prerogative of the government to decide on it," he said. Several calls and messages to the Minister of State for Information and Cultural Affairs Indranil Sen went unanswered. Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee holds the cabinet portfolio of the department. (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) What services does your agency provide, and who generally does it serve? We're an organization that matches a mentor and mentee that get together one hour a week on school grounds. It's meant for the mentee to have a positive role model in their lives. Mentees are children from grades 3-12. Defence ministry spokesperson Swaranashree Rao Rajashekar went on leave Friday after a tweet by her appeared to criticise former Navy Chief Arun Prakash and triggered outrage among military veterans. The defence ministry in a tweet said, "Col. Aman Anand, took over as the acting Official Spokesperson of MOD as the Spokesperson proceeds on leave." Sources said Rajashekar was asked to go on leave as her tweet, criticising misuse of privileges by military officials, left the defence ministry red faced. She had posted the tweet while responding to a comment by the former Navy Chief. The tweet was later deleted. What about misuse of jawans in your residence during an officer's tenure sir? And how about children being picked up and dropped to school in Fauji (military) gaadis (vehicles)? Not to forget Madam's shopping expedition on government vehicles. And endless parties...who pays for that?" she tweeted. Her tweet from the handle of defence ministry's spokesperson came after Admiral Prakash retweeted a photograph showing a military flag on the bonnet of an official car of the Internal Financial Adviser to the Western Command of the Army in Chandimandir in Haryana. No civilian officer is allowed to use military flags on their vehicles. As the tweet by the spokesperson drew angry reactions from military veterans, she deleted it saying, "The tweet was inadvertently done and the same is deeply regretted please." "Even if misuse of an Army Command's insignia by a civilian is not a cognizable offence, the person needs to be reprimanded by the GOC in C whose 'Financial Adviser' he is," Prakash tweeted after retweeting the photograph. Her response to 72-year-old Admiral Prakash, a war hero who was chief of Navy Staff between July 2004 and October 2006, drew sharp reactions from military veterans. Some of them even said the principal spokesperson's comments reflected the approach of the bureaucracy towards the armed forces. In a tweet, Retired Major General Harsha Kakar told Defence Minister Nirmala Sitharaman that the spokesperson's comments mirrored true colours of the ministry towards the three services. "Is this inadvertent. It shows the true colours of your MoD Madam. You are meant to protect the military, not insult it. Keeping this spokesperson is an insult to India, its armed forces and their sacrifices. It shows no respect for senior veterans. Your spokesperson is a disaster," he said. Retired Air Vice Marshal Manmohan Bahadur called the tweet to the former Navy chief by Rajashekar as "shameful". BJP MP Rajeev Chandrasekhar also took strong exception to the spokesperson's comments and demanded an inquiry into the matter. "Dear @DefenceMinIndia @DrSubhashMoS - who is this 'Defence spokesperson' who reprsnts MoD ie govt n talks like this. This is unacceptable conduct n I wud rqst an enquiry into this. This is unconscionable, disrespectful n arrogance tht behooves a response. @PMOIndia (sic)" he tweeted. Amid angry reactions by veterans, Admiral Prakash said there should be sober reflection on state of civil military relationship. "Rather than getting excited over indiscreet tweet of @SpokespersonMoD I would suggest sober reflection; (a) by MoD on state of civil-mil relations & (b) by Military Leadership on the aspersions cast by MoD (IDAS?) civil-servant on personal conduct of Service officers," he said. (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) The in the city Friday recorded the worst on the pollution index this season, gradually inching towards the 'severe' category, with experts cautioning that the quality in Delhi-NCR might worsen from next month as wind is likely to come from the northwest direction. The Board (CPCB) recorded the overall Index of Delhi at 361 this evening, which falls in the 'very poor' category, but not very far from the 'severe' category. 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'. The Centre-run System of Forecasting and Research (SAFAR) also reported an AQI in the 'very poor' category. The SAFAR also recorded high content of PM10 and PM2.5 in the air at 332 and 195 microgramme per m3. It has forecast even worse indices for Sunday -- 359 (PM10) and 211 (PM2.5). PM10 and PM2.5 are ultra fine particles that may reach lungs and affect its functioning. The permissible level for the two particles are 100 and 60 microgramme per m3 respectively. Faridabad, Noida, Greater Noida, Ghaziabad and Gurgaon also recorded air quality in the 'very poor' category Friday, according to the CPCB data. Experts have projected that air quality may dip further in the coming days, especially from beginning of the next month, due to adverse weather conditions and approaching winter. "As per data from the IMD, we can say the air quality is likely to get further affected due to change in wind direction and slower and calmer winds. Right now, the wind is coming from south, southeast and east. From November 1, it is expected to come from the northwest, that is, from Punjab and Haryana. So, that might affect the quality," an environmental expert said. Delhi-NCR faces pollution every year due to stubble-burning of crops by farmers in these states. The air quality in the capital had shown signs of improvement Monday as it moved from 'very poor' to 'poor' category. However, it dipped to 'very poor' again Wednesday even as parts of Bhalswa landfill site in north-west Delhi continue to smoulder. On Thursday too, the capital city recorded an AQI in 'very poor' category at 331. Sunil Dahiya, Senior Campaigner at Greenpeace India, expressed concern over the deteriorating air quality in the city and urged authorities to take action. "Everyday delay in our action is causing huge health and economic damage to the country. The NCAP (National Clean Air Programme) in its modified forms with fixed targets should be implemented now without any further delay," he said. A Delhi Fire Service official said Friday that a fire tender was stationed at the landfill site as parts of the dump site was still smouldering. The fire had raged at the landfill site on October 20. However, by Tuesday evening, the flames were somewhat brought under control, DFS officials had said. Meanwhile, an inspection team led by Delhi Environment minister Imran Hussain Friday found "serious violations" in norms for dust control at the Pragati Maidan redevelopment site, following which the minister directed authorities to take strict action, the city government said. The team undertook a surprise inspection at the ongoing construction sites of ITPO at Pragati Maidan, where a new International Exhibition cum Conventional Centre, Executive Accommodation blocks and a tunnel is being constructed, it said. "The team found a number of serious violations of dust control measures at the Pragati Maidan redevelopment site, following which the minister directed the Delhi Committee (DPCC) to take strict action against the violating agency," the environment department said in a statement Friday. A few days ago, Hussain had chaired a multi-stakeholder meet and directed officials to be in "war mode" to combat pollution in the city. Delhi Waqf Board chairman Amanatullah Khan Friday assured a compensation of Rs five lakh to the kin of eight-year-old madrasa student who died in a scuffle involving minors in south Delhi's Malviya Nagar. Ajim died Thursday after he sustained a head injury following a scuffle between two groups of minor boys. The incident occurred when the students objected to playing by a few local boys on a vacant land in front of the madrasa, police said. Khan accompanied by Malviya Nagar MLA Somnath Bharti visited the madrasa and announced the compensation. "The family of Ajim will be provided Rs five lakh compensation by Delhi government," he said. Khan said Bharti has promised to construct a boundary wall around the madrasa through his MLA local area development fund. He said Waqf Board will give no objection certificate as the belongs to it. He also claimed the local police officers have assured him that no slackness will be allowed in probing the death of the student. Four minor boys, who are suspected to have been involved in the incident, have been apprehended, police said, adding that the accused used to often play on the vacant land in front of madrasa. (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) Members of the Delhi University's Academic Council have written to the varsity vice-chancellor expressing their dismay on a varsity panel recommendation for removal of Dalit writer-activist Kancha Illaiah's books from the institution's political science syllabus over their "controversial content". The signatories to the letter sent to DU vice-chancellor are Executive Council member Indira Chandrasekhar and academic council members Deo Kumar, Jyoti Sabharwal, Mohd Riyazuddin Khan, Sachin N, Saikat Ghosh, Shashi Shekhar Prasad Singh and V S Dixit. The Delhi University's Standing Committee on Academic Matters had also recommended removal of the word 'Dalit' from academic discourse and said it should be be replaced with 'Scheduled Caste'. The committee had also recommended for the removal of Illaiah's three books from the masters course in political science. These recommendations will be discussed at the Academic Council meeting likely to be held next month. The letter urged the vice-chancellor to intervene in the matter to "ensure that fairness and objectivity is restored in the functioning of the Standing Committee and the decisions of the Academic Council". For a start, your office is urged to immediately reverse the exclusion of elected AC members of a different ideological persuasions from the Standing Committee on Academic Affairs, the letter said. "We also hope that the University of Delhi will issue an official apology to Kancha Ilaiah Shepherd while immediately withdrawing the slander (attributed to the Standing Committee constituted by the University of Delhi) against him that has unfortunately been put on record in the public domain," the letter said. On the basis of their ideological predilections, they have repeatedly resorted to censoring curricular content in the Humanities and Social Sciences, the letter said. The letter also stated that the Standing Committee had earlier recommended removal of Prof Archana Prasad and Prof Nandini Sundar's works from the MA History syllabus. The term 'Dalit' is widely used in academic discourse, the letter said, adding that it is an acceptable coinage, as can be evidenced from the widespread use of categories like 'Dalit Movements', 'Dalit assertion', 'Dalit Political Philosophy', 'Dalit Literature', 'Dalit Poetics' etc. "The Standing Committee has been wilfully misled into believing that the Supreme Court has proscribed the use of the term. "In fact, the Supreme Court has directed public institutions to use the terms 'Scheduled Castes' and 'Scheduled Tribes' instead of the terms 'Dalit' and 'Adivasi' in official correspondence pertaining to the government policy as the former terms are strictly juridico-legal in nature whereas the latter terms are political and cultural," the letter said. The letter also said Ilaiah's intellectual accomplishments need no certificate of merit from the varsity. (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) The Enforcement Directorate (ED) on Friday filed supplementary charge sheet before a Delhi court against journalist Upendra Rai, accusing him of laundering around Rs 23 crore. The supplementary charge sheet, filed before Additional Sessions Judge Rakesh Syal, against Rai and four others, has sought their prosecution for money laundering. The court put the final report, filed by ED's special public prosecutors N K Matta and Nitesh Rana, for consideration tomorrow. In an earlier charge sheet in the case, the ED had alleged that Rai projected properties, worth over Rs 29 crore, which he generated through "blackmail" and "extortion" as a scribe, as untainted. The Delhi-based journalist was arrested by the agency for alleged money laundering, punishable under the Prevention of Money Laundering Act (PMLA). It had said that Rai was a journalist, who crafted leverage out of his access to government offices as a mediaperson. The agency further said Rai used the "ill-gotten" money to acquire various movable and immovable properties in his or in the name of his family members, in his personal and travel expenses, and also used it to repay loans taken from financial organisations to acquire various properties. Rai was arrested on June 8 by the ED under the PMLA at the Tihar jail here, moments after he secured bail in a Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) case related to alleged extortion and dubious financial transactions. The ED had registered a money laundering case against him based on the CBI FIR related to alleged extortion and dubious financial transactions. (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) The Enforcement Directorate Friday filed a supplementary charge sheet before a Delhi court against journalist Upendra Rai, who was arrested for his alleged involvement in dubious financial transactions. The supplementary charge sheet was filed before Additional Sessions Judge Rakesh Syal. The court had rapped the CBI on October 22 for seeking adjournment to procure sanctions to prosecute an accused in the case against Rai. Rai, who is presently in judicial custody, was arrested on June 8 by the ED under the Prevention of Money Laundering Act at the Tihar Jail here, moments after he secured bail in a Central Bureau of Investigation case related to alleged extortion and dubious financial transactions. (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) An engineer working with the Palamau district rural development agency, was shot dead Friday by unknown gunmen at Belvatika Chowk in the district, a senior police officer said. The engineer, Sudhir Kumar Roshan was on morning walk when the assailants fired at him, Superintendent of Police Inderjeet Mahata said. The SP said Roshan was rushed to a hospital where he died during treatment. Prima facie, the incident appeared to be land dispute, the SP said, adding the gunmen were caught in the CCTV and search is on to nab them. (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) A team of European Union observers Friday released its final report on Pakistan's July 25 general elections, recommending 30 suggestions to improve the future electoral process in the country. Chief Observer of the European Union Election Observation Mission (EU EOM) Michael Gahler, member of the European Parliament from Germany, returned to Pakistan to present the final report. "Our final report brings together the findings and analysis of our observations over the period the mission was in Pakistan, as well as comprehensive recommendations for future elections," said Gahler. "The recommendations in the report are addressed to the relevant institutions the Election Commission of Pakistan (ECP), the government, the National Assembly, political parties, civil society and other key stakeholders," he said. The report notes the inclusive and consultative reform process undertaken after the 2013 elections, resulting in the partial or complete implementation of 38 of the 50 recommendations made by the EU EOM in 2013. However, key concerns remain, including: a lack of oversight of political party campaign finance; vague and subjective candidacy registration criteria; incomplete access for observers to all stages of the electoral process; the absence of a unified electoral roll; and limitations on media and freedom of expression, he said. On the work of the ECP, the EU EOM concludes that, while the technical aspects of the elections were largely well administered, the ECP failed to provide timely information to voters and stakeholders on its decisions, procedures and other information of public interest. The report also highlighted inadequate voter education, flawed postal voting and a lack of transparency in the delimitation of constituencies and the transmission of results. Other issues mentioned in the report include: the undue restrictions on freedom of expression which led to considerable media self-censorship; constraints on freedom of assembly; the presence of the armed forces inside polling stations; and the under-representation of women as voters and assembly members. The report makes 30 recommendations for consideration, the demand to review the Constitution and Elections Act so that any restrictions imposed on the right to stand as a candidate are not subject to vague, moral and arbitrary criteria. It asked to revise the Elections Act, Election Rules and Codes of Conduct to ensure robust mechanisms for transparency of the ECP. These would include specific time frames for, and the manner of, dissemination of information of public interest, including online. "Following the elections of 2018, various stakeholders informed the EU EOM of the need to revisit the Elections Act and to engage a new parliamentary committee for additional electoral reforms. We encourage such action to ensure further progress," said Gahler. The EU EOM was present in Pakistan between June 24 and August 23. It was the largest international observation mission, comprising 122 observers from all 28 EU member states. (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) Controversial Sri Lankan strongman Mahinda Rajapaksa staged a dramatic political comeback on Friday, becoming the new Prime Minister after President Maithripala Sirisena sacked premier Ranil Wickremesinghe who termed the move as "unconstitutional" and vowed to prove his majority in Parliament. The sudden development came amid growing tensions between Sirisena and Wickremesinghe on several policy matters and the President has been critical of the Prime Minister and his policies, especially on economy and security. Rajapaksa, 72, tweeted a photo of him and Sirisena after the swearing in ceremony at the Presidential Secretariat here. "Former #SriLanka President Mahinda Rajapaksa sworn in as new Prime Minister," he said in the tweet. Reacting sharply to his sacking, Wickremesinghe asserted that the swearing in of Rajapaksa in his place is "illegal and unconstitutional" and he will prove his majority in Parliament. "I will continue to be the Prime Minister. Mahinda Rajapaksa's appointment is unconstitutional," he said. Similarly, Finance Minister Mangala Samaraweera tweeted that "the appointment of Mahinda Rajapaksa as the Prime Minister is unconstitutional and illegal. This is an anti-democratic coup". The political developments unfolded after Sirisena's broader political front United People's Freedom Alliance (UPFA) announced that it has decided to quit the current unity government with Wickremesinghe's United National Party (UNP). Mahinda Amaraweera, agriculture minister and the general secretary of the UPFA, told reporters that the UPFA decision has been conveyed to Parliament Speaker Karu Jayasuriya. The unity government was formed in 2015 when Sirisena was elected President with Wickremesinghe's support, ending a nearly decade-long rule by Rajapaksa. Rajapaksa's return to power ends a more than three-year-old coalition government that was formed by Sirisena and Wickremesinghe on a promise to combat corruption and financial irregularities. Sirisena, who was Rajapaksa's minister of health, broke away from him to contest the presidential elections. Political analysts said Sirisena's move to install Rajapaksa as the prime minister could lead to a constitutional crisis as the 19th amendment to the Constitution would not allow the sacking of Wickremesinghe as the premier without a majority. Rajapaksa and Sirisena combine has only 95 seats and is short of a simple majority. Wickremesinghe's UNP has 106 seats on its own with just seven short of the majority. The unity government was thrown into a crisis after Rajapaksa's new party pulled off a stunning victory in local elections in February seen as a referendum on the ruling alliance. Last week, it was reported that Sirisena accused his senior coalition partner the UNP of not taking seriously an alleged conspiracy to assassinate him and Gotabhaya Rajapaksa, the former top defence ministry bureaucrat and brother of ex-president Mahinda Rajapaksa. Sri Lanka nearly faced economic sanctions from the West over Rajapakse's brutal military crackdown on the banned Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE). The LTTE sought a separate Tamil homeland in the northern and eastern provinces of the island nation for nearly 30 years before its collapse in 2009 after the Sri Lankan Army killed its supreme leader Velupillai Prabhakaran. Rajapaksa and his family were facing several cases of corruption and financial irregularities. (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) Sri Lanka's Parliament was told on Friday that the life of former president Mahinda Rajapaksa is also under threat, following an alleged plot to assassinate President Maithripala Sirisena and Rajapaksa's brother. "I have to inform the house that despite instructions to increase the personal security of the former President Mahinda Rajapaksa due to threats on his life we have seen no such action. We urge immediate action," said Dinesh Gunawardena, leader of the joint opposition. Prime Minister Ranil Wickremesinghe in response said that adequate security had been provided at three residences of Rajapaksa, including deployment of the police's crack special task force which can be further strengthened if required. Last month, a man named Namal Kumara had alleged that there was a plot to assassinate Sirisena and Gotabhaya Rajapaksa, the former top defence ministry bureaucrat and brother of the ex-president, which had led to arrests, including of an Indian national here. (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) Click the photo to write a caption and have a chance to win a free subscription to the Norfolk Daily News. Mahinda Rajapaksa staged a dramatic political comeback on Friday, becoming Sri Lanka's new Prime Minister after President Maithripala Sirisena sacked premier Ranil Wickremesinghe, triggering angry reactions from the finance minister who termed the former strongman's return as an "anti-democratic coup". Visuals of the former president Rajapaksa taking oath as the premier were released to media and was shown on TV channels. Rajapaksa, 72, tweeted a photo of him and Sirisena after the swearing in ceremony. "Former #SriLanka President Mahinda Rajapaksa sworn in as new Prime Minister," he said in the tweet. The sudden development came after Sirisena's broader political front United People's Freedom Alliance (UPFA) announced that it has decided to quit the current unity government with prime minister Wickremesinghe's United National Party (UNP). Mahinda Amaraweera, agriculture minister and the general secretary of the UPFA, told reporters that the UPFA decision has been conveyed to Parliament. Reacting sharply to the development, Minister of Finance and Media Mangala Samaraweera said that the appointment of Rajapaksa as the prime minister is "unconstitutional and illegal". "This is an anti democratic coup," he said in a tweet. The unity government was formed in 2015 when Sirisena was elected President with Wickremesinghe's support, ending a nearly decade-long rule by Rajapaksa. The sudden political development ends an over three-year-old coalition government that was formed by Sirisena and Wickremesinghe on a promise to combat corruption and financial irregularities. Sirisena, who was Rajapaksa's minister of health, broke away from him to contest the presidential elections. Political analysts said Sirisena's move to install Rajapaksa as the prime minister could lead to a constitutional crisis as the 19th amendment to the Constitution would not allow the sacking of Wickremesinghe as the premier without a majority. Rajapaksa and Sirisena combine has only 95 seats and is short of a simple majority. Wickremesinghe's UNP has 106 seats on its own with just seven short of the majority. There was no immediate comment from Wickremesinghe or the UNP. President Sirisena's party withdrew from the ruling coalition after simmering tensions between him and Wickremesinghe. The unity government was thrown into a crisis after Rajapaksa's new party pulled off a stunning victory in local elections in February seen as a referendum on the ruling alliance. Last week, it was reported that Sirisena accused his senior coalition partner the UNP of not taking seriously an alleged conspiracy to assassinate him and Gotabhaya Rajapaksa, the former top defence ministry bureaucrat and brother of ex-president Mahinda Rajapaksa. (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) A 26-year-old junior artist has alleged that she was molested near the sets of 'Housefull 4' film here, police said Friday. The alleged incident occurred Thursday night at Chitrakoot Studio at Amboli in western suburbs, where shooting of the Hindi film is going on, an official said. Two persons came to the spot and allegedly started manhandling the victim's male friend over some previous enmity, he said, quoting the complaint filed by the artist. The duo, according to the woman, pushed and "touched her inappropriately" when she tried to intervene, the official said. She approached the Amboli police station and lodged a complaint, he said, adding that an offence of molestation has been registered against the accused, who have been identified. The alleged incident took place near the sets and it had nothing to do with the film's shooting, the official said. "We are investigating the case and nobody has been arrested so far," he said. Executive producer of 'Housefull 4' Manoj Mitra said the incident took place off the sets when the lead actors had already packed up for the day. In a statement, he said, "It is disheartening to hear about this incident. As an executive producer, I would like to clarify the recent incident that showed up in the related to the sets of 'Housefull 4' is something that evidently didn't happen on the sets or during the shoot. "It took place off the sets and hence I have to state that it is beyond our capabilities," he said. "I would also like to clarify that Akshay Kumar and Ritiesh Deshmukh (who feature in the film) had packed up way before this incident occurred. It was their personal matter and nothing related to our film shoot," Mitra said. Raman Dave, the head of dancers for the film, said, "There was some argument between the boys which happened post pack up outside the set. The woman tried to save one of the males who was her friend, she tried to stop the fight, but unfortunately it was a heated argument and during this fight the boys happen to push her away to stay out of the fight." Dave said the argument was between the dancers and an "outsider" and it had nothing to do with the film. "We have learned that the argument was between the dancers and Pawan Shetty (who is an outsider) and nothing to do with our film. I had left from shoot but my set attendant Sandra was there on the set and even she has mentioned that nothing happened on the set," he said. (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) Flood-hit Kerala would need Rs 31,000 crore for rebuilding, a UN report said. The post disaster needs assessment report prepared by an UN team was submitted to Chief Minister Pinarayi Vijayan, Friday by United Nations Resident Coordinator Yuri Afanasiev. During the meeting, he informed Vijayan that the UN would assist the state in getting international level technical know how for rebuilding Kerala, which had witnessed widespread destruction when floods ravaged the state in August this year. The UN body has also promised assistance in getting resources from global institutions for rebuilding the state, an official press release here said. According to the report, funds for rebuilding various sectors, include housing (Rs 5443 crore), transport infrastructure (Rs 10,046 crore), agriculture and dairy farming (Rs 4498 crore) and other infrastructure Rs 2246 crore. During the south west monsoon over 400 people had lost their lives and several houses destroyed in the unprecedented deluge in the state. (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) A Japanese journalist freed from Syria this week arrived home to overjoyed relatives and supporters, but also to vitriol from some who accuse him and other hostages of reckless behaviour. Jumpei Yasuda was kidnapped in Syria in 2015, and spent more than three years in conditions he described as "hell." He arrived back in Japan on Thursday night, greeted by his delighted wife and parents, who had brought him homemade Japanese food to celebrate. But even before Yasuda set foot on Japanese soil, he was the target of angry criticism -- mostly online -- ranging from accusations of recklessness to claims that he was not even Japanese. "He is disturbing society," wrote one Twitter user. "He's an anti-citizen," charged another. Perhaps anticipating the criticism, Yasuda's only statement upon arrival, read to reporters by his wife Myu, was dominated by an apology. "I apologise for causing such trouble and worry, but thanks to all of you, I was able to come home safely," he said. The anger directed at Yasuda -- author of books on the conflicts in Syria and Iraq, whose reporting has appeared on Japanese television -- is a far cry from the reception that journalism held hostage have received in other countries upon their release. When four French journalists held by the Islamic State group in Syria were released, then-French president Francois Hollande met the men as they arrived home. But in Japan, freed hostages have often met a mixed reception, with critics suggesting victims were are responsible for getting themselves kidnapped. "They are the victims, they haven't broken the law, but they have to apologise. It's strange, but it's the mentality of a part of Japanese society," said Toshiro Terada, a professor of philosophy at Sophia University in Tokyo. "The person is accused of having harmed society." In one of the more shocking examples of the reaction, three Japanese men held hostage in Iraq and freed in 2004 arrived home to find people at the airport holding up banners reading "It's your fault."Their kidnappers had threatened to burn them alive if Tokyo failed to withdraw non-combat troops stationed in southern Iraq. But then-prime minister Junichiro Koizumi refused the demands, and even declined to meet with the families of the hostages, a hardline position that was applauded in some quarters of Japanese society. The government itself, supported by right-wing media, described the men as "irresponsible youths" for having ignored warnings to avoid travel to Iraq, then an active war zone. One of the men, Noriaki Imai, said recently he received letters saying "die" or calling him "stupid." "Online, the bashing lasted ten years," he said. Yasuda has faced similar criticism for venturing to Syria, a country where several Japanese citizens were kidnapped and eventually executed. Compounding the antagonism is the fact that Yasuda was kidnapped once before, in Iraq in 2004, prompting some to describe him as a "professional hostage." And detractors have claimed Yasuda is not even Japanese, partly as the result of a bizarre hostage video showing him and another captive in Syria that emerged in August. Despite speaking Japanese, he identified himself as a South Korean called "Omar", apparently after his kidnappers banned him from revealing his identity or nationality. "This guy isn't even Japanese," wrote one Twitter user. "He should go back to his country, South Korea," added another. A string of kidnappings of journalists in Syria at the height of the country's war exposed differences in how governments and publics responded. Some governments paid ransoms, while others refused, and while countries celebrated their journalists as heroes, others quietly criticised them for taking unnecessary risks. In Japan, mainstream media outlets and officials have largely avoided criticising Yasuda and other hostages, but the antipathy expressed online concerns journalists like Toru Tamakawa, a commentator for TV Asahi. "In the case of Yasuda particularly, the argument that 'it's his fault' must be firmly rejected," he said this week. "We need people who will risk their lives to go and get information on the ground. (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) The Supreme Court on Friday stayed an Uttarakhand High Court order which directed the Rishikesh AIIMS to hand over the body of environmentalist G D Agarwal to an ashram in Haridwar. Earlier in the day, the high court had directed the hospital to hand over Agarwal's body to Matri Sadan, the ashram he was associated with, after embalming it to enable his followers to pay their last respects and perform religious ceremonies. Agarwal, also known as Swami Gyanswaroop Sanand, died at the All India Institute of Medical Sciences (AIIMS) in Rishikesh on October 11 after fasting for 111 days, demanding measures from the Centre to keep the Ganga clean and free-flowing. Agarwal's "spiritual guru" Swami Avimukteshwaranand has laid claim on his body while the government hospital says the activist had pledged his organs for medical research at the institute. A Supreme Court bench comprising Chief Justice Ranjan Gogoi and Justice M B Lokur said the high court order, if implemented, will make the organs of the deceased unfit for transplantation. "In view of the above, we deem it proper to stay the order of the High Court dated October 26, 2018...until further orders," the bench said. The high court's order came on a PIL that Swami Sanand's body had not been handed over to his followers for last rites. The court had also ordered that the body shall be handed back to the Rishikesh AIIMS after 72 hours. "The Senior Superintendents of Police, Dehradun and Haridwar are directed to make all arrangements for handing over the body of Swami Sanand to Matri Sadan and for returning the same to AIIMS Rishikesh, Dehradun, by deploying sufficient police force," the high court had said. "We make it clear by way of abundant precaution that no political party shall derive political mileage on the basis of this order," it said. The hospital moved the Supreme Court against the order. (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) The Crime Branch of Mumbai police Friday busted a racket which allegedly helped accused persons secure bail by providing fake documents for money. Unit-1 of the Crime Branch laid a trap outside the Sessions Court and arrested eight men, a police official said. The gang facilitated bail by providing forged documents, said Dilip Sawant, Deputy Commissioner of Police (Detection). It operated in the sessions court and metropolitan magistrate courts in Mumbai and neighbouring Thane and Navi Mumbai, he said. Normally, the accused is asked to provide a police verification report and a surety (who guarantees good conduct on the accused's part upon release) for bail. The gang prepared bogus police reports using fake stamps and forging signatures of the concerned police officials, Sawant said. They also provided bogus documents for the surety including salary slips and employer identity cards. The arrested men were identified as Shakir Hussain Khan (35), Shafique Qureshi (34), Faiyaz Khan (34), Imran Salmani (27), Mohammed Parvez Shaikh (50), Riyaz Pathan (35), Muzaffar Kazi (38) and Yusuf Khan (31). All are residents of Govandi and Mankhurd in eastern suburbs and none of them has studied beyond Class 5, the official said. The gang charged between Rs 25,000 to Rs 40,000 for providing bogus documents, Sawant said, adding that police were probing if some more persons were involved in the racket. (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) General Officer Commanding-in-Chief of the Eastern Command, Lt Gen M M Naravane has expressed satisfaction at operational preparedness of the Spear Corps in Dimapur and complimented the troops for their hard work and dedication, a defence spokesman said on Friday. During his two-day visit to the state, the GoC-in-C reviewed the security situation in the North Eastern states and along the Line of Actual Control with China, Defence spokesman Col Chiranjeet Konwer said. Gen Naravane also expressed satisfaction on the operational preparedness of the Spear Corps. Col Konwer said the the GOC-in-C left for Kolkata on Friday afternoon. (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) The governing body of Dyal Singh College sealed the office of its principal for not abiding by the body's orders that had asked him to proceed on leave over allegation of him involving in financial and administrative irregularities. The governing body of the Delhi University college had initiated a probe last month against principal I S Bakshi over alleged financial and administrative irregularities and had directed him to proceed on an indefinite leave. However, Bakshi, the principal of Dyal Singh (Morning) College, had refuted the charges levelled against him. In a meeting on Friday, the governing body of the college said it decided to seal Bakshi's office as he was not cooperating in the inquiry against him. It said Bakshi continued to come to the college, defying the order. "As principal's office is sealed, he will be out of bounds from the college till the enquiry is completed. Now, Bakshi will come inside the college campus only after written information to the convenor of the inquiry committee O P Malik, retired IPS and former DGP," the body said. Meanwhile, Bakshi's bank signatory power has also been suspended and officiating principal Pawan Kumar Sharma was given the power. Bakshi said this evening he got to know his office was sealed. After the order last month, he had written to the varsity's vice-chancellor and the vice president about the matter. "I was assured by the varsity authorities that the matter will be resolved but nothing was given to me in writing," he said. Bakshi said he will write to the HRD Ministry to inform them about what is happening in the college. In a reply to the governing body's decision, Bakshi said, "Reference your notice dt 26.10.18 barring my entry into the college and your act of sealing principal's office, it is to reiterate that your actions are without force of governing body, university rules and regulations. I was appointed by approval of the University Executive Council and you have no power whatsoever to not allow me to perform my duties as principal in absence of approval of University Executive Council. I, therefore reserve my right to respond to your illegal orders in a befitting and lawful manner. (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) Over 40 Congress workers and leaders from Gujarat, including eight MLAs and former state unit chief, were Friday detained for protesting outside the CBI office in Gandhinagar, police said. Before their detention, Congressmen took out a one km-long march - from a church to the CBI office located in sector 10 of the state capital- to protest against the move to divest CBI Director Alok Verma of his powers. "We detained 47 Congress workers and leaders, including (party's former state unit chief) Bharatsinh Solanki and eight MLAs. They were released after some time," Gandhinagar Superintendent of Police, Mayur Chavda, said. The legislators, who took part in the protest and were taken into custody by the police included Shailesh Parmar, C J Chavda, Himmatsinh Patel and Imran Khedawala, among others. During their protest march, Congress workers raised slogans against Prime Minister Narendra Modi, accusing him of "interfering in the affairs of the CBI", Parthivraj Kathvadia, general secretary of Gujarat Congress's youth wing, said. Congress's protest in Gandhinagar was part of the opposition party's nationwide stir against the government's decision to divest CBI Director Alok Verma of his powers. (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) Assam Government Friday said the state capital will be connected to six capital cities of South Asian countries by the end of December to boost connectivity in the region. While inaugurating the ASEAN section of the 2nd Guwahati International Film Festival (GIFF), Assam Act East Policy Affairs Minister, Chandra Mohan Patowary said films are bridges between two cultures. "We are very focused to increase connectivity between the South Asia. In this direction, Guwahati will be connected with six capital cities of South Asian nations by the end of December," he said addressing the gathering. Patowary also informed that an inter-country pact was signed yesterday to augment waterways in the region. "A tri-lateral highway has also been planned and construction is almost done. The bridges are only left. This will be from Afghanistan to Burma (Myanmar) via India," he added. The initiatives like the GIFF are very positive in the cultural arena that will help know each other, the minister said. "We are trying to develop the relation between India and South East Asian countries in the field of trade, commerce and other segments. GIFF can play an important role in that direction," he added. During the inauguration of the ASEAN segment, the Myanmar Ambassador to India, Moe Kyaw Aung was also present. In this year, the ASEAN countries are the focus region of the 2nd GIFF with 14 films from 10 countries of the region instead of having any focus country. The ASEAN segment began with showing of 'In the Life of Music' by Caylee So and Sok Visal. Some other films from the South East Asian nations will be 'Woman of the Weeping River' by Sheron Dayoc, 'The Seen and Unseen' by Kamila Andini, 'Father and Son' by Luong Dinh Dung, 'Poppy Goes to Hollywood' by Sok Visal and 'Smaller and Smaller Circles' by Raya Martin and 'Mudras Calling' by Christina Kyi. The 2nd Guwahati International Film Festival began with much fanfare on Thursday with a collection of 108 acclaimed films from over 50 countries that is likely to attract nearly 5,000 domestic and foreign delegates in the next one week. Assam Chief Minister Sarbananda Sonowal inaugurated the seven-day long film extravaganza saying that the festival is aimed to integrate the world as a family. The ceremony was also attended by Lithuanian Ambassador Julius Pranevicius, Serbian Ambassador Vladimir Maric and Latvian Ambassador designated Artis Bertulis. During the festival, nearly 35 film personalities from abroad will take part with their flicks, while Ambassadors from Lithuania, Myanmar, Argentina, Latvia, Estonia, Serbia, Singapore and Malaysia will be present. The Assam government-owned Jyoti Chitraban (Film Studio) Society is the organiser of the festival, which will be held from October 25 to 31, in association with Dr Bhupen Hazarika Regional Government Film and Television Institute. (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) King Mohammed VI who is following up with keen interest the evolution of the booming automotive industry in Morocco was briefed Thursday on the extension project of the Moroccan Society of Automotive Construction (SOMACA), which is planning to double its production capacity by 2022. The plan was unveiled by Minister of Industry, Investment, Trade and Digital Economy, Moulay Hafid Elalamy, and President and CEO of the French Renault Group, Carlos Ghosn who were received by the Monarch in the Royal palace in Marrakesh. SOMACA intends to double its production capacity to reach 160,000 vehicles per year by 2022. With the increase of SOMACAs production capacity, Renault will bring up its output in Morocco to 500,000 vehicles per year, including 340,000 manufactured at its Tangier plant. In 2007, SOMACA exported its first vehicle Made in Morroco. Since then, it has become a genuine export platform, as over 60 pc of its production is destined for export. This extension of SOMACA is part of the development of the automotive sector, which targets the production of one million vehicles a year by all auto-makers operating in Morocco and a turnover of 100 billion dirhams per year. The rapid expansion of the automotive sector in Morocco was made possible thanks to the Sovereigns vision and to the industrial acceleration plan he launched in April 2014. Two years later, Renault group launched a new structural project called Renault Ecosystem. The project, meant to consolidate the positioning of the Moroccan automotive sector on the world chessboard, requires an investment of about $1.0 billion and is to develop a global supply platform for the manufacturer, Renault had then announced. The project would generate a $2.0 billion additional turnover per year, and multiply by three folds the amount of purchases by Renault of parts manufactured in Morocco, the group had said. The automotive sector in Morocco currently has a local integration rate of more than 50% and employs 85,000 people. The Renault Ecosystem was to create 50,000 new permanent jobs, tripling thus the number of jobs generated by Renault in the North African country. The Kings interest in such job-generating projects falls in line with the great importance he attaches to employment, especially the employment of youths, to nurture their confidence and hope in the future. The Haryana government plans to develop five new cities of 5,000 hectares each alongside two major expressways -- Kundli-Manesar-Palwal (KMP) and Kundli-Ghaziabad-Palwal (KGP) -- to boost industrial, commercial and housing activities in areas bordering the national capital, its Chief Minister Manohar Lal Khattar said Friday. Addressing a real estate conference organised by realtors' body NAREDCO, Khattar said the state government would also reopen the licensing process for group housing projects under the affordable segment. "We have prepared a draft plan to develop five big cities alongside KMP and KGP expressways covering 185 km. It's in pipeline and (corridor) is being considered," the chief minister said. Each city would spread over a minimum area of 5,000 hectares and will be developed as industrial, economic and commercial corridor, Khattar said, adding that there would also be provision of housing, providing business opportunities for realty firms. The chief minister said his government has completed four years on Friday and he would like to implement this plan before the end of his tenure. Khattar said the state government has taken a number of initiatives during the last four years to boost the real estate sector and it has also announced affordable housing policy to help achieve the target of 'Housing For All' by 2022. The chief minister promised developers that the government could make changes in the policies for the benefit of all stakeholders in this sector, including home buyers. Khattar said the government would soon "open the window" for 60 days to get licences for group housing project under the affordable category. The state would also extend the deadline for Transit Oriented Development (ToD) policy by three months. The ToD is a mixed-use residential and commercial area for maximising access to public transport and often incorporates features to encourage transit ridership. Developers get extra FAR (floor area ratio) under this policy. Stating that the government has tried to streamline the real estate sector, Khattar said the Haryana has two authorities under the new real estate law RERA, of which one regulator is specifically for the IT city Gurugram. The chief minister said the government has regularised 628 colonies at a very minimal fees. For Gurugram, he said the government has sanctioned 50 new vehicles for police to do patrolling and maintain law and order. Speaking on the occasion, NAREDCO Haryana President Praveen Jain said he appreciated the policies of the government for a better future of the state. He also said "... the first time we got policies that were beneficial to buyers as well as builders. Till now, housing was the prerogative of rich people. The pace of infrastructure in the last five years in Gurugram have been exceptional." Lalit Aggarwal, co-founder and Joint Managing Director, Signature Global, said, "We welcome the Haryana government's decision of introducing the project clearance window of Group Housing project for 2 months from next week. The fastened approval process would encourage the developers to complete the project on time. (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) The Delhi High Court on Friday asked the Centre and the AAP government to sit together and work out a solution regarding the future of a 99-year-old school, which is in a dilapidated state, and the students studying there. A bench of Chief Justice Rajendra Menon and Justice V K Rao said the "endeavour at first instance" should be to provide a suitable alternative site to shift the Rajputana Rifles Heroes Memorial Senior Secondary School, currently located in Delhi Cantonment, and the second option ought to be accommodating the students in other schools. The direction by the court came after the Ministry of Defence said the land where the school is located cannot be handed over to the Delhi government for setting up a new institute. "Handing over the land in question is out of the question," the ministry told the bench. The Delhi government, on the other hand, said that while it can accommodate the students in other schools, it needs the school in question as its other educational institutions are "overburdened". The court, thereafter, directed that deliberations be held at the highest level to work out a solution and a report be filed in three weeks. "Endeavour at the first instance shall be to provide a suitable alternative site for the school," the court said and listed the matter for further hearing on January 8, 2019. The bench was hearing a PIL by NGO Social Jurist which has alleged that Rajputana Rifles Heroes Memorial Senior Secondary School, taken over by the Delhi government in 1975 and getting 100 per cent aid from it, was in a horrible condition. The Directorate of (DoE) of the Delhi government had earlier told the court that a joint inspection of the building had revealed that it was constructed in 1919 and has outlived its useful life and was unsuitable for habitation. Advocate Ashok Agarwal, appearing for the NGO, had earlier said around 450 students are studying in the school and they have been unjustly deprived of adequate physical infrastructure and academic faculty. The plea has said though the school is open for all, it mainly caters to the children of servants of military officials who are not in a position to educate their kids in private school. It has alleged that the school lacks basic amenities, including potable drinking water, functional toilets, science and computer labs, clean classrooms and proper boundary wall and several posts of teaching staff are lying vacant. The petition has sought direction that the existing building of the school be demolished and rebuilt as a state-of -the-art school. (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) The Jharkhand High Court Friday directed the CBI and Enforcement Directorate to place before it the progress report in the investigation into the chit fund cases by November 31. Hearing a bunch of public interest litigations, Chief Justice Aniruddha Bose and Justice D N Patel also asked the SEBI what are the rules to return money of the investors in such cases and how the money can be returned to them. The CBI informed the court that investigation is on and that there is delay as probe is being done into several companies. The ED informed the court that probe is on. The case pertains to chit fund companies allegedly promising people of several districts of Jharkhand that significant interest would be given on their investment. But the companies fled after taking the money. The court had directed the CBI and the ED to investigate into the matter. The high court also imposed a ban on the owners and directors of Kolkata-based Falcon Group of Companies and Falcon Industries of India from selling or handing over their property. The bench ordered that it is mandatory for them to take permission from the court before sale or handing over the property. The court also asked to serve notices to the two companies to inform where they have invested the money of the investors. (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) The Bombay High Court Friday rapped the Mumbai University for its submission on staff shortage to justify a new '60-40 evaluation system' for Law students. The university, which filed an affidavit through its registrar, said that it had introduced the new evaluation system, comprising a semester-end exam for 60 marks and internal assessments, class projects etc for 40 marks, to avoid delays in evaluation of examination papers and the declaration of result. In the affidavit, the university said that, in the past, exam result had been delayed because of a shortage of staff to evaluate answer sheets. It said that for the 53 Law colleges under its jurisdiction, it only had 47 permanent teachers and added that often guest lecturers and lawyers had to fill in to conduct classes in these colleges. A bench of Justices BR Gavai and MS Karnik, however, took strong exception to the university's submission on the shortage of staff. "Why don't you put a lock and close down the university?" the bench asked. It also asked if the court too, when facing a shortage of judges, should ask "lawyers" to preside over cases and pass judgements. "What sort of an explanation is this?" the bench asked. It was hearing a bunch of petitions filed by a practising lawyer, and a law student from the university, challenging the 60-40 evaluation system for the three-year and five-year LLB course. The petitioners also challenged a similar system introduced for the five-year BBA-LLB (Bachelor of Business Administration and Law) course in the university. For BBA-LLB, 75 percent marks depend on semester exams and the remaining on internal assessments, projects, attendance etc. The petitioners have said, among other things, that the new evaluation system lowers the standards of and the examination system. The university's counsel, advocate Rui Rodrigues, however, argued before the court that the new system was not hampering the standard of imparted or the examinations conducted for the students. The bench is likely to continue the hearing on Monday. (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) The Kerala High Court Friday warned that a heavy price would have to be paid if innocent persons are arrested, as it rapped the state government on the arrest of Ayyappa devotees who had allegedly engaged in violent protests against the Supreme Court order allowing women of all age groups into the Sabarimala shrine. Taking stringent action against the protesters, police have arrested more than 1,400 people in connection with the protests all over the state and registered 450 cases over the past few days. "Don't play to the gallery," a division bench, comprising justices P R Ramachandra Menon and Devan Ramachandran, said. Considering a plea challenging the "massive" arrest of Ayyappa devotees, the bench directed that the arrest should be made only after properly investigating such persons' participation in the alleged violent protests. The court also directed police to investigate whether it was true devotees who had reached the temple for offering prayers during the recent monthly pooja. Petitioners Suresh Kumar and Anoj Kumar, hailing from Pathanamthitta where the hill shrine is located, alleged that even devotees who participated in the "Nama Japa Yajnam" (chanting of Ayyappa mantras) were harassed by police. Police reportedly told them that they were liable to be prosecuted for committing various offences, of which they are totally ignorant, they alleged. The temple had witnessed high drama recently with around a dozen women in the 10-50 age group being prevented by protesting devotees from entering it after the doors were opened for all women following the apex court verdict. The bench also directed the government not to appoint non-Hindus as Devaswom Commissioners. The court gave the direction while disposing of a plea filed by Kerala BJP president P S Sreedharan Pillai, challenging the amendments to the Travancore-Cochin Hindu Religious Institutions Act, 1950, which allow appointment of non-Hindus as Devaswom Commissioners. The state government has submitted only Hindus would be appointed Commissioners of the Travancore Devaswom Board and the Cochin Devaswom Board. (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) The Madras High Court Friday directed the Centre to reply within four weeks to a petition seeking a direction to secure the traditional rights of fishermen and protect their livelihood. A division bench of Justices S Manikumar and Subramonium Prasad issued notice to the Ministry of and Forests, and the Department of Animal Husbandry Dairy and Fisheries on a public interest litigation by Fishermen care, an organisation protecting rights of fisherfolk. It also directed the Centre to file its reply within four weeks. The petitioner claimed that a large number of families living in fishing hamlets for centuries were evicted for setting up information technology companies and industries. It also submitted that commercialisation of the 'no development zone' has led to environmental pollution resulting in a dip in fishery resources and that the fishermen had to take up deep-sea fishing for their survival. The petitioner alleged that coastal areas, where the fishermen community has been living for generations and berthing their boats and drying their nets, were used for rampant mining of sand. The fishermen's care noted that a report of a committee headed by Agriculture Scientist M S Swaminanthan was submitted to the Union Ministry for and Forests on July 16, 2009, recommending a separate legislation like the Traditional Forest Dwellers Act, 2006, for securing the traditional rights of fishermen and their families. As there was no action taken on the report, the petitioner had applied for an RTI and the ministry replied that no separate law for protection of traditional rights and interest of fishermen and coastal community has been enacted by it on the basis of recommendations of the committee. Referring to his representations to the ministries concerned to act upon a communication dated September 22, 2009, of the Ministry of and Forest to the Ministry of Agriculture seeking opinion on drafting the legislation, the petitioner prayed for a court direction to the ministries to act on the same. (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) In a setback for Ahmed Patel, the Gujarat High Court on Friday said it will hear a petition filed by BJP's Balwantsinh Rajput against the senior Congress leader's election to the Rajya Sabha last year. Patel's application questioning the maintainability of Rajput's plea was dismissed by Justice Bela Trivedi. The court will now hear the plea from November 19. The Congress leader was elected to the upper house of Parliament after he defeated Rajput who had quit the Congress to join the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP). Patel was declared the winner after the Election Commission invalidated the votes of rebel Congress MLAs Bholabhai Gohel and Raghavjee Patel, bringing down the number of votes needed for victory to 44 from 45. Rajput challenged, before the high court, the poll panel's decision to invalidate the votes of the two rebel MLAs. Had these votes been counted, he would have defeated Patel, the BJP leader said. Rajput also alleged that Patel had taken Congress MLAs to a resort in Bengaluru before the election which amounted to "bribing the voters". Patel sought dismissal of the petition for not serving the respondents an attested copy, as required by law. The petition was "not at all maintainable" as it violated provisions of the Representation of the People Act, 1951, he argued. However, the high court, on April 20, rejected Patel's plea, saying the petitioner had substantially complied with the provisions of the law. Patel moved the Supreme Court against the order, contending that the decision of the poll panel cannot be challenged by an election petition. Last month, the Supreme Court sent the matter back to the high court for a fresh hearing. The high court on Friday once again rejected Patel's application. (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) Hectic campaigning continued in Telangana for the December 7 Assembly elections Friday with the Telangana Rashtra Samithi, Congress-led "grand alliance" and BJP making spirited efforts to bolster their cause. TRS leader and irrigation minister in the caretaker government T Harish Rao, addressing a gathering here, criticised the "grand alliance." Claiming that the alliance is day-dreaming about coming to power in the state, he said the coalition would not get even opposition status after the elections. TRS has been attacking the "grand alliance", comrprising Congress, Telugu Desam Party, CPI and Telangana Jana Samiti, alleging that TDP chief N Chandrababu Naidu had written letters to the Centre opposing irrigation projects in the state in his capacity as chief minister of Andhra Pradesh. The TRS is going it alone in the assembly polls. Telangana Pradesh Congress Committee (TPCC) president N Uttam Kumar Reddy, addressing a group of youth and students, alleged that the TRS government let down the students. The Osmania University here lost the opportunity to host the prestigious Indian Science Congress because of the TRS government's attitude, he claimed. Osmania University was a hub of separate Telangana agitation by the students. Congress, TDP and CPI organised a protest at the CBI office here Friday as part of Congress-sponsored agitation against the developments in the probe agency. Meanwhile, BJP's manifesto committee chairman NVSS Prabhakar alleged that the TRS government was mainly focused on encouraging "defections" from other parties in the four-and-half-years of its rule. BJP's youth wing BJYM is holding its national convention in Hyderabad for two days from Saturday and party chief Amit Shah is scheduled to address a rally on Sunday. Shah had kicked off the party's campaign last month. BJP is also going it alone in the assembly elections. (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) The Economic Offences Wing (EOW) of Mumbai police Friday arrested Nowhera Shaikh, managing director of Heera Group, for allegedly duping investors of around Rs 300 crore. The companies in the Heera group had floated several investment schemes claiming that they were compliant with Islamic principles of finance, police said. Shaikh was first arrested by Hyderabad police on October 17 after several investors there filed complaints of cheating against her group. After she was released on bail by a court, a team of Mumbai EOW took her in custody, a police official said here. She was produced before a Mumbai court Friday evening which remanded her in police custody till November 3, he said. Shaikh also dabbled in politics and had floated an outfit named 'All India Mahila Empowerment Party'. On October 23, a case was registered against Shaikh and officials of Heera Gold Exim Ltd, Heera Retail Pvt Ltd, Heera Textiles and Heera Foodex here, the official said. Shaikh and others allegedly launched several investment schemes promising returns as high as 2.8 to 3.2 per cent per month, and syphoned off the money, he said. They mostly targeted Muslim investors, claiming that their schemes offered 'profit' on investment and not interest which is prohibited in Islam, the official said. The Heera group has over 20 companies and has its headquarters in Hyderabad, he said. The companies had operations in Dubai, Sharjah, Saudi Arabia, Ghana and were involved in businesses such as sale and purchase of gold, garments, electronics and food itmes. The group first floated an investment scheme specially designed for Muslims in 2008, the official said. The EOW also raided the group's offices in Bhendi Bazar area of south Mumbai and in Mira Road, the official said, adding that further probe was on. (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) The International Finance Corporation (IFC) has sealed an agreement with Atlantic Microfinance for Africa (AMIFA), a subsidiary of the Moroccan Banque Centrale Populaire (BCP) Group, for developing new products and services to boost financial inclusion in Sub-Saharan Africa. The agreement will enable AMIFA to strengthen the development capacity of its microfinance program in Sub-Saharan Africa dedicated to very small enterprises and entrepreneurs, in particular, to enhance their financial inclusion and economic integration. Despite a remarkable increase in financial inclusion in the region, from 23 percent in 2011 to 43 percent in 2017 (Findex, 2018), a majority of adults in Sub-Saharan Africa still lack access to regulated and sustainable financial services. Kamal Mokdad, Co-CEO, Head of the International Global Banking at BCP Group, said, the partnership will enable us to benefit from IFCs expertise and support in optimizing our model and delivering a microfinance program that contributes more efficiently to the financial inclusion of a significant part of the low-income population. AMIFA was created by BCP in 2014 to extend the reach of its microfinance services, when BCP also opened its first microfinance institution in Cote dIvoire. The bank has since been developing a network of microfinance institutions in the West African Economic and Monetary Union (WAEMU) region. Small-scale entrepreneurs need access to formal financial services to be able to grow their businesses to full potential, said Riadh Naouar, Manager, IFC Financial Institutions Group Advisory, Middle East and Africa. With its region-wide reach, this initiative by BCP Group can have a significant impact on the expansion of microfinance in West Africa, added the IFC official. IFC, member of the World Bank Group, and BCP Group began a partnership in 2012. Through various investment and advisory actions, IFC has supported BCP in its mission to expand access to finance for businesses to drive growth and job creation. The new partnership also confirms IFCs commitment to supporting Moroccan companies in expanding into Sub-Saharan Africa. Himachal Pradesh Chief Minister Jai Ram Thakur on Friday expressed grief over the death of a soldier from the hill-state who made the supreme sacrifice while fighting terrorists in Jammu and Kashmir, an official spokesman said. Brijesh Kumar (32) was a resident of Nanavi village of Bangana sub division in Himachal Pradesh's Una district. He was killed in an encounter in Sopore area of north Kashmir's Baramulla district earlier in the day. In his condolence message, the chief minister said Kumar sacrificed his life for maintaining the unity, integrity and security of the nation. The brave soldiers of Himachal Pradesh have always made supreme sacrifices for the sake of the country. Their sacrifices will always be remembered by the people of the state and the country, he added. Expressing his heartfelt condolences, Thakur said the people of Himachal were standing with the bereaved family in this hour of grief. (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) The HaryanaRoadways employees continued their strike Friday, even as hundreds of employees from various state government departments expressed solidarity with them and went on a day's mass casual leave. The employees affiliated to Sarv Karamchari Sangh in Haryana and other trade unions went on a mass casual leaveon Friday. Roadways union leaders claimed that these employees alsojoined the transport workers at dharna at various places in the state. "Nearly two lakh employees went on mass casual leave as a result of which work in various government departments was badly hit. Among the departments where work was affected included the School Education Department, the Power Department,municipalties, the PWD (B&R), the Public Health Department and the Rural Development and Panchayats Department. "A large number of employees from the Tourism Department, besides Boards and Corporations also went on mass casual leave. However, emergency and essential services were attended by the employees who were on casual leave," Subhash Lamba,general secretary of the Sarv Karamchari Sangh, Haryana, said. He claimed the Haryana government was bent upon privatising the roadways and asserted that the trade unions would not allow privatisation in any of the state government departments. "The state government should immediately rollback its decision to run 700 private buses, take back cases registered against the striking transport workers under the Essential Services Maintenance Act or else we will be forced to take some big step," he said. The Haryana Roadways employees had Thursday decided to further extend their strike till October 29 as their fresh round of talks with the government failed to make any headway. Chief Minister Manohar Lal Khattar had earlier said that roadways employees should put forward the issues concerning employees and not "interfere" in policy matters of the government, while justifying the decision to run 700 private buses for public's convenience. The employees are on strike since October 16 against the government's decision to hire 700 buses from private owners. The state government had offered to reconsider its decision on 190 private buses as the tenders for the same were yet to be finalised, but remained firm on 510 buses, saying it cannot be reworked as the Cabinet had already decided on this matter and signed an agreement to this effect. The employees' union, however, remained adamant on their demand that the tenders issued until now be cancelled under the kilometre scheme. Under the kilometre scheme, private operators and bus owners will pay salary to drivers, bear diesel and maintenance cost, while conductors would be appointed by the government and the revenue generated from the tickets would be deposited in the state exchequer, officials had earlier said. There are about 19,000 employees in the Haryana Roadways. The roadways, having a fleet of 4,100 buses, cater to about 12 lakh passengers daily. (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) An A320 neo aircraft, operated by GoAir, returned to the national capital on Friday due to a "suspected technical glitch", according to the airline. While the carrier did not mention exact reasons, A320 neos powered by Pratt & Whitney engines have been facing engine problems. The Hyderabad-bound flight -- G8 423 -- returned back to Delhi and made a normal landing. It had 90 passengers on board. In a statement, the airline said there was suspected technical glitch. "After normal landing, the passengers were accommodated in another aircraft through ramp to ramp transfer. Post inspection and investigation, the aircraft has been declared serviceable and operational," it added. (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) The Hyderabad High Court has directed the Telangana government and Telangana State Industrial and Infrastructure Corporation to pay over Rs 660 crore to debt-laden Limited towards principle and interest in a case related to a land development project in 2008. Justice M S Ramachandra Rao gave the direction on October 23, on the petition by Limited in the case pertaining to development of 350 acres of land here in 2008 by the company. The petitioner alleged that the state government entity did not handover the land due to titles dispute and sought the return of the Rs 1.65 billion it had paid to the Andhra Pradesh Industrial Infrastructure Corporation of the then united Andhra Pradesh State (now TSIIC) during 2007 and 2008. It also sought interest on the principle amount. According to the petitioner, the amount was deposited after it emerged as the successful bidder for developing the design and constructing an integrated airport township and multi-services aerospace park, in a bidding process by the APIIC in 2008. Andhra Pradesh was bifurcated in June 2014 and subsequently Telangana government created TSIIC. In his order, the judge said, "Therefore I hold that the amount of Rs 6.60 billion is due and payable to the petitioners by respondents, which shall be paid by respondents to petitioner no.3 within 4 weeks from today." "However they are entitled to recover it from the State of Andhra Pradesh and the APIIC, if under law they are entitled to do so." "This does not preclude the petitioners from claiming other amounts from respondents towards damages under other heads, if they are entitled to do so under law," he said. Indians would have required visas to visit Junagadh and Hyderabad had Sardar Patel not taken tough action against the erstwhile Nawab-ruled states and merged them with the Indian Union, Gujarat Chief Minister Vijay Rupani said Friday. He was addressing a public meeting in Chhani area on the outskirts of Vadodara as part of the Bharatiya Janata Party's (BJP) 'Ekta Yatra' which has so far covered 5,000 villages in the state. Flagged off by Rupani on October 19 ahead of Prime Minister Narendra Modi unveiling the Statue of Unity dedicated to Sardar Patel on October 31, the march aims to make people aware of Patel's contribution in uniting the country. "It was due to the tough stance of Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel that these two nawab-ruled states were merged with India or else we would have required visas to visit these two places," Rupani said. The two princely states, in present day Gujarat and Telangana, had refused accession to India during Independence following which Patel ordered police action against them. Rupani added that there would have been no issue of terrorism in Jammu and Kashmir had Sardar Patel been given a free hand there. The chief minister said that Modi had paid a tribute to Sardar Patel, the architect of modern India, by constructing the 182-metre tall statue, touted as the world's largest. The Statue of Unity is located on Sadhu Bet island near the Sardar Sarovar Dam on Narmada River. The chief minister further told the gathering that 5.50 lakh people nationwide had contributed in building the memorial as he reminded the crowd that Sardar Patel had himself addressed a rally in Chhani in 1939. He alleged that earlier Congress-led government's had propagated the history of just one family and ignored the contributions of other freedom fighters. "They ignored the history of Mahatma Gandhi... Even Sardar Patel's portrait inside Parliament was not installed by them for years. The contribution of freedom fighters like Veer Savarkar, Dr B R Ambedkar was never mentioned," Rupani told the crowd. (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) Indian Foreign Services officer Devyani Khobragade, who was stripped searched in the US in 2013, finally was promoted Friday, seven months after the Central Administrative Tribunal ruled in her favour, according to an official order. The Appointments Committee of Cabinet has approved the empanelment of Dr (Mrs) Devyani Uttam Khobragade for promotion to Grade-III (joint secretary) of the Indian Foreign Service in "on notional basis with effect from November 1, 2016", the order stated. It comes nearly seven months after the CAT asked the Ministry of External Affairs (MEA) to promote the 1999 IFS officer as a joint secretary within two months if she was found fit for the job. The direction had come on her plea alleging that when her batch was considered for promotion to Grade-III of the Indian Foreign Service, that is the joint secretary rank for he vacancy year 2016-17, her case was not considered and kept in a sealed cover, apparently due to the pendency of enquiry proceedings against her. The MEA had initiated proceedings against her for giving interviews to the media without taking permission from the ministry, as also for her "misleading" statement that it was permissible for her children, who were both under 18 years of age, to retain both Indian and US passports. The disciplinary authority (DA) had in November 2017 imposed on her the penalty of "reduction to a lower stage in the time scale of pay by one stage for a period of one year without cumulative effect and not adversely affecting her pension". The CAT noted there was an "inordinate and unexplained" delay of about 20 months on the end of the ministry in acting on Khobragade's March 2015 reply on the charges and said the penalty imposed by the DA shall be treated as effective from September 2015 and ending on August 2016. "From the inordinate delay of 20 months at the end of the respondents (ministry), we are fully convinced that the respondents have not shown any alacrity or seriousness to complete the proceedings against the applicant (Khobragade) in a reasonable time frame," it said. Khobragade was deputy consul general in New York in late 2013 when she was arrested by the US authorities for allegedly underpaying her Indian maid in a fraudulent manner. Her strip-search, which followed the arrest, had created an uproar in India with the then UPA government threatening similar action against US diplomats and scaling down the immunity enjoyed by them here. Khobragade's children live in the US with their father while she is not allowed to travel abroad pending the case against her in the US. She has also moved the high court against denial of Indian citizenship and passport to her children by the MEA. She has also written a book "The white sari" after the controversies in the US. (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) The Indian Institute of Technology-Madras Friday unveiled what it claims to be the first indigenously-developed microprocessor in the country that can be used in mobile computing devices, embedded low-power wireless and network systems. The product would come in handy to sectors such as defence, nuclear power and government agencies, as it can reduce the threat from systems infected with back-doors and hardware Trojans, a release from the institute said. Researcher in the institute, professor Kamakoti Veezhinathan, said in the release, "With the advent of digital India there are several applications that require customised processor cores." The 'Shakti' family of processors was fabricated at semi-conductor laboratory (SCL) of Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) in Chandigarh, it said. The launch would help reduce reliance on import of microprocessors, the release claimed. The SCL is an autonomous body engaged in research and development in microelectronics to meet strategic needs of the country, it added. (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) US President Donald Trump on Friday lashed out at CNN for blaming him for the current spate of bombs being sent to present and former high-ranking officials including his predecessor Barack Obama, saying it is "funny" how he is being criticised by the cable network and others. The President, who has been at loggerheads with several mainstream media outlets including CNN, ABC News, The New York Times and The Washington Post, has quite often described them as "fake media". So far, law enforcement agencies have detected eight explosives-laden suspicious packages sent to high-level current and former officials including Obama, former vice president Joe Biden and former secretary of state Hillary Clinton. The FBI is investigating the case. Most of these explosives are crude pipe bombs coming in a similar kind of yellow packages with a return address of Florida. One of these packets went to CNN office in New York. Friday morning another suspicious packages was found addressed to Democratic Senator Cory Booker. Over the past two days, Trump has been briefed multiple times on the investigation relating to the spate of bombs. Coming less than a fortnight before the mid-term elections, Democratic opponents and some media outlets led by CNN have blamed this for his rhetoric against the press. CNN and the White House have been engaged in a war of words on this issue, with CNN charging the administration of being insensitive. "Funny how lowly rated CNN, and others, can criticise me at will, even blaming me for the current spate of bombs and ridiculously comparing this to September 11th and the Oklahoma city bombing, yet when I criticise them they go wild and scream 'it's just not Presidential!' Trump said in a 3 am tweet Friday. Democratic party, CNN and many other media outlets said that Trump's rhetoric and also his anti-press statement is responsible for the current divisive atmosphere in the country. Trump has blamed the media for this and have asked them to play a responsible role. (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) State-owned Food Corporation will start rice procurement for the first time in Tripura from December as the Centre has given in-principle nod after state chief minister Biplab Kumar Deb resolved certain issues in his meeting with Union Food Minister Ram Vilas Paswan here Friday. The Food Corporation of India (FCI) will procure paddy directly from farmers at a minimum support price (MSP) and get it milled at a rate of Rs 15-20 per quintal on behalf of the state government for distribution through the public distribution system (PDS). Tripura produces 12 lakh tonnes of rice, while its PDS requirement is around 2.71 lakh tonnes per annum. In the absence of procurement, rice is being transported from Punjab for PDS distribution in the state at present. "Farmers are not getting benefit of the MSP in Tripura in the absence of FCI procurement. Farmers are selling rice at a lower rate of Rs 12 per kg, whereas the MSP fixed by the Centre is Rs 17.50 per kg rice. We discussed about the need to start the procurement for the benefit of farmers," Tripura chief minister Deb told reporters after the meeting with Paswan here. Since the milling charges in Tripura are much higher than the rate fixed by the FCI, the state government has agreed to bear the difference, he said. "FCI was not willing to procuring at a high milling rate. We have decided to bear the difference. FCI will start procurement from December onwards," Deb said. Milling charge in the state is high at Rs 150 per quintal for milling, while the FCI has an uniform rate of Rs 15-20 per kg for milling for all states. Since the rice to PDS in Tripura is brought from Punjab at a transportation cost of Rs 250 per quintal, the chief minister demanded the centre to consider a relaxation in the norm for the northeastern state in milling charges. "Even if rice is milled at a rate of Rs 100 per quintal in Tripura, there will be a saving of Rs 100 per quintal. A separate policy for the state should be there," he said. To this, a senior Food Ministry official said that the government has agreed to look into this proposal. The state also demanded that a percentage of rice milled from one quintal of paddy to be kept at 65 per cent instead of 68 per cent at present. To this proposal, the ministry official said there are several demands from other states and a study is being conducted by a south-based rice institute. A decision will be taken after examining the study report. (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) Morocco and the European Union commended on Thursday in Brussels the signing of the amendment of the protocols of their Association Agreement, saying the move aims at strengthening the agricultural partnership between the two parties. The two sides said the new farm deal reinforces the multidimensional partnership between Rabat and Brussels. The EU has extensive ties with Morocco on trade, political and security matters. The European bloc is Moroccos largest trading partner, accounting for 59,4 pc of its trade in 2017. 64,6 pc of Moroccos exports went to the EU, and 56,5 pc of Moroccos imports came from the EU. Morocco is the EUs 22nd trading partner representing 1,0 pc of the EUs total trade with the world. Total trade in goods between the EU and Morocco in 2017 amounted to 37,4 billion. The EUs imports from Morocco are dominated by machinery and transport equipment (6,0 billion, 40,4 pc), agricultural products (3,4 billion, 23,0%), and textiles and clothing (2,9 billion, 19,3 pc). The EUs exports to Morocco are dominated by machinery and transport equipment (8,4 billion, 37,7 pc), followed by fuels, metals and minerals (5,2 billion, 23,4 pc), textiles and clothing (1,8 billion, 8,1 pc), and agricultural products (1,6 billion, 7,3 pc). Two-way trade in services amounted to 8,8 billion in 2016 with EU imports of services representing 5,2 billion and exports 3,6 billion. Prime Minister Narendra Modi Friday described India and Japan a "winning combination" and said the island nation is New Delhi's most trusted partners in its economic and technological modernisation. In a statement before he leaves for Japan Saturday to attend the Annual Summit on October 28 and 29, Modi said India's partnership with Japan is of great substance and purpose. "We have a special strategic and global partnership. Our ties with Japan, both economic and strategic, stand completely transformed in recent years. It is today a partnership of great substance and purpose. It rests on the strong pillars of India's Act East Policy, and our shared vision and commitment to a free, open and inclusive Indo-Pacific," he said. Modi said it will be his 12th meeting with Prime Minister Shinzo Abe since he first toured Japan as prime minister in September 2014. He said, as democracies, the two countries have shared values and they seek peace and prosperity for all. "Our complementarities make India and Japan a winning combination. Japan today is one of the most trusted partners in India's economic and technological modernisations and one of the top investors in India," he pointed out. The PM said that projects such as Mumbai-Ahmedabad High Speed Rail and Dedicated Freight Corridors reflect the high level and "strength of our economic engagement". "Japan is also at the forefront of engaging in our national initiatives, such as 'Make in India', 'Skill India', 'Digital India', 'Start Up India'...Japanese investors have faith in India's economic future, which is marked with myriad opportunities," Modi said. He said India values Japan's global leadership in innovation, technologies and best practices and during his visit, he will have a chance to see some of Japan's high-tech capabilities in robotics. "I will have wide-ranging talks with Prime Minister Shinzo Abe and interact with business leaders and captains of industry from both countries. I will also address the Indian community. These interactions will help to further strengthen our trade and investment ties, and cooperation in new areas such as healthcare, digital technologies, agriculture and food processing, disaster risk reduction and disaster resilient infrastructure," he said. He recalled that last year, he had hosted Prime Minister Abe and his wife Akie Abe in his home state of Gujarat. In a special gesture, Modi will be hosted by his Japanese counterpart for a private dinner at his holiday home in the picturesque Yamanashi prefecture on October 28, which will be, perhaps, the first such reception to be extended to a foreign leader. (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) India and Myanmar have agreed to fight insurgent groups operating along the border between the two countries and check smuggling of wildlife and narcotic drugs. It was agreed upon at the 22nd national level meeting between India and Myanmar held on Thursday and Friday. During the meeting, both the sides agreed to take action against insurgent groups operating within their territories, a Home Ministry statement said. The two countries agreed on providing security cooperation and facilitate movement of people and trade across the International Border. It was also agreed to cooperate in preventing smuggling of wildlife and narcotic drugs and to strengthen cooperation on the international border management, including construction of subsidiary pillars to better demarcate the border, the statement said. The Indian delegation was led by Union Home Secretary Rajiv Gauba and the Myanmar delegation by Major General Aung Thu, Deputy Minister, Ministry of Home Affairs, Myanmar. (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) India and Myanmar on Friday discussed various projects to enhance bilateral connectivity, besides agreeing to ink a pact for the seamless movement of cargo and traffic, an official statement said. Myanmar Minister for Communication and Transport U Thant Sin Maung called on Road Transport, Highways and Shipping Minister here. Both the leaders discussed the progress of the ongoing India - Myanmar transport connectivity projects. "The two sides discussed the status of the project for upgradation of the Kalewa-Yagyi stretch of the India-Myanmar-Thailand (IMT) Trilateral Highway, starting Imphal-Mandalay bus service and a bilateral Motor Vehicles Agreement between the two countries," the said in the statement. The upgradation of the Kalewa-Yagyi stretch of IMT is being executed by the and is expected to be completed within the scheduled date. "The two sides also expressed keenness to start the Imphal-Mandalay bus service soon. India and Myanmar had operationalised the Land Border Crossing Agreement earlier this year," the statement said. The agreement allows nationals from the two countries holding valid passport and visa to cross over without requiring special permission. Now both countries have to select bus operators to run the service, the statement said, adding once the service starts, a bus from India will take passengers to Myanmar border where they will be transferred to the bus run by Myanmar operator for travelling further. Likewise, India-bound Myanmar nationals will be transferred to the bus run by an Indian operator. "Both countries expressed their eagerness to further carry forward the process of connectivity by signing a bilateral Motor Vehicles Agreement for seamless movement of cargo and passenger movement," the statement further said. The draft agreement is under discussion and the two sides are keen to finalise it soon, it said. India's #MeToo movement is not a copy of the campaign that began in Hollywood with the collective outrage against Harvey Weinstein but reflects the struggles of Indian women in the past, feminist author Urvashi Butalia said here Friday. Long before women in the American film industry called out their perpetrators, women's rights activist Ela Bhatt had exposed the plight of Indian women cart-pullers and head-loaders who were sexually harassed by men on the street in the early 1970s, Butalia said. She was speaking at a session titled "From Existentialism to Feminism" to commemorate the 70th anniversary of French feminist-author Simone de Beauvoir's work "The Second Sex". "Headloading women came to Bhatt and described how the street was their workplace and their home and they lived there. And they were subjected to workplace sexual harassment at the hands of the police, their male colleagues and every other man on the streets. "And this led Ela Bhatt to focus on the rights of the women workers. To me, that is a very significant moment in the early 70s in the history of the MeToo movement today," Butalia said. The founder of Zubaan, a feminist publishing house, also recalled the 1988 sexual harassment case filed by IAS officer Rupan Deol Bajaj against IPS officer Kanwar Pal Singh Gill for "patting" her "posterior" in an inebriated state at a party. Gill was convicted eight years later in 1996. "So at this moment when so much is happening, which is helping to broaden and deepen the discussion on sexual harassment at the workplace, it is worth remembering that the history we have inherited was substantially due to the courage of these women, and it is not a copy of what happened to Harvey Weinstein," Butalia said. Beauvoir, who wrote the book in 1949, is known as an iconic figure of contemporary feminism. She emphasised in her work "the question of women's autonomy" and the need to "broaden the horizon of the movement". According to Butalia, the introduction of the Vishakha guidelines against sexual harassment in the workplace in 1997 following the Bhanwari Devi gang rape case marked a significant shift in the horizons of India's women's rights movement. "When Bhanwari Devi's case came in, the horizon shifted by bringing the Vishaka guidelines into play... I take into account the new reality of more and more women entering urban workplaces as well and now in the more recent cases the horizon has once again shifted and no doubt will continue to do so," the activist-author said. (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) The 11 Base Repair Depot (BRD) of the Indian Air Force at Ojhar in Maharashtra's Nashik district Friday handed over its first indigenously overhauled Sukhoi Su-30MKI fighter jet to the IAF, an official said. Sukhoi Su-30MKI is a twin-jet multi-role air superiority aircraft developed by Russia's Sukhoi and built under licence by India's Hindustan Aeronautics Ltd (HAL). The aircraft was handed over to the Operational Squadron of the IAF, a defence spokesperson said. Air Officer Commanding-in-Chief of the Maintenance Command Air Marshal Hemant Sharma handed over the aircraft to Air Marshal H S Arora, Air Officer Commanding-in-Chief of South Western Air Command, at a ceremony held at the Air Force Station Ojhar, about 200km from Mumbai, he said. The 11 BRD is the only fighter aircraft repair depot of the IAF and undertakes repair and overhaul of frontline fighters such as MiG-29 and Sukhoi 30 MKI, the official said. Established in 1974, the depot progressively built and improved the technical expertise and infrastructure over the years and by 1983 it had overhauled 100 Su-7 aircraft. From 1983 to 1988, the depot also undertook overhaul of MiG-21 fighters. Later, overhaul facility for MiG-23 aircraft was set up in 1986 and 248 jets were overhauled till May 2015, the official said. Overhaul of MiG-29 aircraft commenced in 1996. The upgradation of MiG-29 and repair and overhaul of Su-30 MKI aircraft is being undertaken at the depot, he said. The official said 11 BRD is the only agency to undertake overhaul of ejection seats and role equipment of Su- 30 MKI aircraft, both for the IAF and HAL. The first Su-30MKI overhauled by 11 BRD took off on April 24 and was tested for its airworthiness before being inducted for operational tasks in a flying squadron, the spokesperson said. (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) Israeli Defence Minister Avigdor Lieberman announced Friday he has selected Aviv Kochavi, a former military intelligence head, as the army's new chief of staff. Kochavi, who has served as deputy chief of staff since 2017, was picked after "consultations with dozens of people" including former premiers, Lieberman's office said. Kochavi would take up the post at the start of 2019, succeeding General Gadi Eisenkot whose term ends this year. The appointment must first be approved by a government committee due to meet on Sunday, before going before the cabinet. Kochavi has served as head of the army's northern command and as military intelligence chief during the 2014 war against the Palestinian Islamist movement Hamas in Gaza. Military commentators said Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu had disagreed with the choice of Kochavi, a graduate of Harvard University and Johns Hopkins University in the United States. (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu made a rare visit to Oman, an Arab state with which Israel has no diplomatic ties, and met with its leader Sultan Qaboos, the premier's office said Friday. The two discussed "ways to advance the Mideast peace process and other issues of shared interest", it said in a statement released after the premier returned from the first such visit since 1996. (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) The Jammu and Kashmir Pradesh Congress Committee Friday demanded a time bound high-level probe to book the culprits involved in "bungling" in Reliance General Insurance policy. The JKPCC welcomed Governor Satya Pal Malik's decision to immediately cancel the contract in view of the gross corruption. Malik Thursday cancelled the state government's tie up with Reliance General Insurance for providing the group mediclaim health insurance policy to employees as there was "some bungling" in it. The decision comes after the mandatory Reliance insurance for the state government employees and pensioners had sparked a row. JKPCC chief spokesperson Ravinder Sharma told reporters here the Congress demanded a time bound high-level probe to book the culprits involved in the bungling in the insurance policy and immediate arrest of those guilty involved in another big deal of Rs 100 crore in the construction of a dam, as stated by the governor. Since the governor has himself confirmed that huge corruption is involved in these two matters, it calls for immediate action against all those beneficiaries involved and culprits can't go scot free, Sharma said. He said the governor has vindicated the Congress charges led by Rahul Gandhi that undue favours have been extended to Anil Ambani's Reliance group. By flouting all norms, as in this case, gross violations of rules and blatant misuse of powers has been done, he said. The culprits should be immediately exposed and booked under law, he added. (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) YSR Congress president Jagan Mohan Reddy, who was injured in a knife attack at the Visakhapatnam airport, was discharged from a private hospital here Friday. Doctors attending him had said he received a lacerated injury on his shoulder and had to undergo a surgical procedure. Reddy, Leader of Opposition in the Andhra Pradesh Legislative Assembly, who checked into a private hospital in Hyderabad Thursday, was discharged in the afternoon, hospital sources said. YSR Congress sources said party leaders were holding a "threadbare discussion" here on the attack on Reddy, "the response of state (Andhra Pradesh) government" and related developments. Reddy was injured in a knife attack by a chef employed at a restaurant allegedly owned by a ruling TDP leader at the Visakhapatnam airport, police said. The YSR Congress leader escaped with a "deep" cut on his left shoulder. The attack took place when Reddy was leaving the VIP lounge to board a flight to Hyderabad. J Srinivasa Rao (30), the assailant, approached Reddy when he was leaving and requested for a 'selfie'. As an unsuspecting Reddy posed for the picture, the man pulled out a small knife generally used in cockfights and plunged it into his left shoulder. Rao was overpowered by CISF personnel guarding the airport and handed over to the state police which is now questioning him. "To everyone worried about my safety, Id like to inform you that I am safe. Gods grace and the love, concern and blessings of the people of Andhra Pradesh will protect me. Such cowardice will not dissuade me but only strengthen my resolve to work for the people of my state," Reddy had tweeted on his arrival in Hyderabad Thursday. (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) Migrant caravan. Photo: Pedro Pardo/AFP/Getty Images Its the optics that are fatal. The image of that caravan, crammed with thousands of desperate brown human beings, winding its way tortuously through Central America and Mexico, headed to a showdown at the U.S. border, is a white nationalists twisted fantasy. The question is not if George Soros funded it, but if Steve Bannon did (Im kidding, Im kidding). It reminds me of that infamous poster in the Brexit campaign which showed a long, packed line of migrants, in theory waiting to enter Britain, with the slogan: Breaking Point. And as my colleague Ed Kilgore noted earlier this week, it is also weirdly redolent of the racist 1973 French novel Camp of the Saints, where a mass of migrants from India suddenly decide its time to relocate to the West, jump on a big cruise ship and set course for Europe. The novels author, Jean Raspail, said he was inspired by a moment of revelation he had, gazing at an idyllic Mediterranean scene on the French southern coast. What if they were to come? I did not know who they were, but it seemed inevitable to me that the numberless disinherited people of the South would, like a tidal wave, set sail one day for this opulent shore, our fortunate countrys wide-gaping frontier. That, it seems to me, is the fevered, frightened vision now scrambling the brains and hearts of the Western publics. Its riddled with irrationality, of course. In the U.S., the immigration influx on the southern border is way down from its extraordinary peak at the turn of the century (although, for families with kids, its now rising again). The labor market is humming at home. Net Mexican migration is in reverse. The United States has long been a miraculous machine for immigrant assimilation. Which is why its easy to dismiss the appeal of anti-immigrant sentiment as nativist racism, waxing as it periodically does in America. It is especially easy to do so when the president himself can simply throw out the idea that the caravan is also made up of Middle Easterners, terrorists, and the like, offer no proof, and still gain some traction before the midterms. And thats why most Democrats, asked to respond to the issue, bob or weave or want it to go away, only to retreat to a condemnation of bigotry, or launch a vague appeal to our better natures. Beto ORourke, for example, condemned the paranoia about the caravan this week, said he didnt buy the rhetoric of crisis, called on Americans to be the big, bold confident country I know us to be, and wondered why the asylum claims had to take place at the border rather than in their countries of origin (you actually have to be physically in the U.S. or at the border to claim asylum). Many liberal and Democratic commentators have simply expressed anger that the mainstream media has covered this story at all. Photos on the front page of the New York Times two days in a row! Were back to Hillary email coverage as the midterms approach. I get all that. Im an immigrant myself. But it doesnt answer a simple question. What do we do when the caravan gets here? And more saliently: What do we do if many more caravans show up behind it? This is not an abstract question. Its a pressing, practical, and in some ways existential one. It cuts to the core of whether the United States has to choose between being inhumane to the point of betraying some core moral principles and remaining a sovereign nation in control of who joins its population. The problem the caravan presents, after all, is not the usual one. These migrants are not seeking to enter the U.S. illegally, by subterfuge. They are seeking entry legally by applying for asylum, as any noncitizen is entitled to do. It doesnt matter how many resources we throw at border enforcement because there is nothing here to enforce. The wall wont help either, even if it were miraculously effective. In fact, the wall could hurt: As the border becomes harder to cross, it makes more sense simply to show up and turn yourself in to the border cops as an asylum seeker when you get here. Its far cheaper than paying coyotes to get you across; and its much safer, especially in the numbers that the caravan has achieved. Thats why, as word about the caravan spread on social media, especially WhatsApp, so many impulsively decided to join. There was both strength in numbers and a real chance of legally getting in. As the Washington Posts invaluable Nick Miroff notes, this is the new way to come to America. For the most part, asylum seekers get a near-automatic entry into the U.S., temporarily in detention centers, eventually into the interior of the country, along with an ankle bracelet and a court date in the distant future. But nearly half of asylum seekers, especially those with weak cases, dont show up in court. They simply melt away into the general population. And the number of asylum seekers who get physically deported is minimal. The result is not formally one of open borders. But they sure are ajar. And increasingly, these incentives are encouraging unaccompanied kids and intact families to make the journey to the border. That was the rationale behind the Trump administrations horrifying policy of separating children from parents it was designed to discourage families with children from seeking entry to the U.S., as well as disincentivizing those trafficking kids and pretending to be families. Because children could only be detained for 21 days, and families were detained together, the catch and release policy was indeed a pretty big loophole for many to get a foothold in the U.S. And so the Trump administration made the fateful decision to enact hideous cruelty. It was and is indefensible, but it was not without a rationale. And since the policy of separating kids has been abandoned, the number of individuals arriving as family units at the border has soared in July, there were 9,247; in September, there were 16,658, an all-time high. So what is there to do? Part of the answer is what Attorney General Jeff Sessions has done: Hes tightened the criteria for asylum. The mere fact that a country may have problems effectively policing certain crimes such as domestic violence or gang violence or that certain populations are more likely to be victims of crime, cannot itself establish an asylum claim, he announced in June. Part should be a massive investment in immigration courts and judges, as well as family detention centers. Part should be aid and support for the very Central American countries we are now threatening foolishly to sanction. But none of this would actually solve the problem, just mitigate it slightly. In fact, if we sped up asylum cases, we could incentivize even more of them. And after a certain point, there is nothing to be done. As long as the U.S. remains more peaceful, prosperous, and free than much of the Western hemisphere, it will be a magnet. And as more and more people see on social media what life in America is really like, and feel so much closer to it, and as the cost of travel continues to drop, the logic of mass migration north is close to unassailable. The same goes for mass immigration into Europe. When you look at the huge demographic surges in Africa and the Middle East, and when you factor in the impact of climate change and civil unrest in forcing people to leave their homes, all of this will intensify. All of it is putting unprecedented strain on liberal democracy in the West itself. The connection between mass migration and the surge in far-right parties in Europe is now indisputable. Without this issue, Donald Trump would not be president. As we can see right now in front of our eyes, elections can turn on this. Which is why Trump is hyping this caravan story to the heavens and why, perhaps, the last few weeks have seemed less promising for a blue wave. David Frum is right: If liberals insist that only fascists will defend borders, then voters will hire fascists to do the job liberals will not do. And unless the Democrats get a grip on this question, and win back the trust of the voters on it, their chance of regaining the presidency is minimal. Until one Democratic candidate declares that he or she will end illegal immigration, period, shift legal immigration toward those with skills, invest in the immigration bureaucracy, and enforce the borders strongly but humanely, Trump will continue to own this defining policy issue in 2020. This is not a passing crisis. It is the new normal, and its optics do nothing but intensify the cultural panic that is turning much of the West to authoritarianism as a response. The porousness of the Wests borders are, in other words, becoming a guarantee of the Wests liberal democratic demise. This particular caravan will take a while to make it to the U.S. border, if it ever does. It will surely lose some followers on the way. It may peter out altogether. But the caravan as a symbol? Its days are just beginning. Title IX and Gender At one point, very early on in the campaign for marriage equality, in 1993, we had a breakthrough. It was in a court in Hawaii and it was a case, Baehr v. Miike, that upheld a right to civil marriage for gays on the grounds of sex discrimination. The argument was a simple one: If two women showed up for a civil marriage license, they would be denied one; but if one of the women were a man, they would receive one, no questions asked. Ergo: The plaintiff was discriminated against on the grounds of her sex, which was well-established as impermissible under the constitution of Hawaii (and those of countless other states). Whats not to like? We got same-sex marriage without even having to debate it! I was happy ecstatic, actually we had an actual case to point to, because until then most people had looked at us funny when we made the argument, as if we were somehow hallucinating. But I still felt very queasy about the reasoning. It seemed like a bit of a trick to me, a way of dodging the actual issue of homosexuality and civil marriage, and piggybacking gay rights onto womens rights, a separate issue entirely. I also didnt think the broader public would somehow discover that same-sex marriage was now legal, but wouldnt think it was that big a deal, since it was only really a case of sex discrimination, and wasnt breaking any new barriers. In fact, I thought that was absurd. The only way past this question, I believed, was through it, rather than somehow around it. Sure, that made things much, much harder and Baehr v. Miike jump-started the religious rights crusade against us, and led directly to the Defense of Marriage Act in 1996. It took another couple of decades to win across the country. But it was an honest campaign; it was real; it was direct; it was democratic in its critical early stages. If successful in this way, I believed, it could endure. And it did. I thought about that precedent while reading the rather breathless coverage of the Trump administrations leaked memo on whether to rescind a 2016 Obama administration guidance on the meaning of the word sex in Title IX. You would have thought there was a plan for trans genocide: Transgender Could Be Defined Out of Existence Under Trump Administration, bemoaned the New York Times. What happened here was that in May 2016, the Obama Justice Department added the following in a guidance on the scope of Title IX: Title IXs sex discrimination prohibition extends to claims of discrimination based on gender identity or failure to conform to stereotypical notions of masculinity or femininity. This was passed by no law; or even formulated as part of the regulatory rule-making process. It was just an executive fiat, and one that was clearly beyond the intent of those who passed the laws that gave us Title IX. What the guidance effectively did is to redefine sex as including gender identity. But if theres one thing I thought the transgender movement has always insisted on it is that sex is not gender. Thats why we have two separate words, right? Sex is what biology gave you; gender is how you express or understand and experience that sex. Someone who has male chromosomes, hormones, and sex organs can nonetheless rightly identify her gender as female, and present herself as such. Its trans-gender not trans-sexual, after all. And Title IX is quite clearly about sex. Heres the actual text from 1972: No person in the United States shall, on the basis of sex, be excluded from participation in, be denied the benefits of, or be subjected to discrimination under any education program or activity receiving Federal financial assistance. Theres no way that legislators in the early 1970s were talking about concepts of gender identity as we understand them today. More to the point, to smuggle in Title IX protections for trans people, not by proposing a change, debating it, or even God forbid legislating it, but by quietly reinterpreting the meaning of a word and issuing a bureaucratic rule is a classic case of anti-democratic liberalism. Its rule by the enlightened few, not the messy masses. Its an authoritarian move that, like other unconstitutional executive fiats from Obama (DACA comes to mind), is highly vulnerable to being reversed. And it is, of course, perfectly possible for Congress to pass a law granting trans people the same kind of constitutional and legal protection under Title IX that women (and men) have as a class. You can add gender to sex if you want. Id support and vote for such a change in a heartbeat. The trouble is that a law has not been passed. And simply returning to constitutional government after a couple of years is not the same thing as defining away an entire minority population. What Fresh Authoritarian Hell Is This? It is not news that this president despises the First Amendment. But the extent of his opposition is not to be underestimated. A proposed new rule was quietly issued by the National Parks Service last August concerning special events and demonstrations in the National Capital Region. The details of the regulations try reading the link do indeed make your eyes glaze over, which is perhaps the point, but in the fine print, its perfectly clear that Donald Trump is determined to restrict demonstrations as they have long been held around the White House and the Mall. The NPS now wants to charge people for costs associated with demonstrations, it wants to ban all protesters from the sidewalk outside the White House, and it wants to treat demonstrations as if they were special events which require permits (including fees) from the government to take place. One of the very first things that struck me as a new immigrant when I visited the Mall in D.C. was how democratically unruly the space was. There were tourists and loonies, frisbee players and site-seers, picnickers and lovers, volleyball players and cyclists and they could and would go anywhere on or around the Mall, as if they owned the place. To my British sensibility, there was shockingly little decorum or deference to these monuments that bore down all around us. It was such a stark difference from the parks in central London, far better tended, with railings and keep off the grass signs, indications that yes, this was still a monarchy, and yes, these parks were, first and foremost, her Majestys. There was always Trafalgar and Parliament Square, and Hyde Park, of course, but there was something just less kempt, more ornery, and carelessly chaotic about the American center, as if the people had owned it all along. Which, of course, they had. This was a space not for the government but for the people, and much of the city was, in fact, designed to host large gatherings, protests, inaugurations, and demonstrations. What else would it be for, after all? It was built on democracy, not industry. A huge amount of it was lost after 9/11, as the concrete barriers went up, traffic was cleared from crucial streets, and cops patrolled everywhere; but the security state didnt win entirely. There was something about knowing that the president might be able to hear and see you as you yelled or chanted outside on the sidewalk. And on some occasions, as with the showing of the AIDS quilt, or the Obama Inauguration, the place felt almost sacred in its openness. I will never forget the footage of an ACT-UP demonstrator throwing the ashes of his lover over the White House fence onto the lawn shocking on so many levels, but mostly for its its empowering assertion of owning the place, of always being able to get in the face of the powerful. I know why Trump hates all that. Its why I despise him. And why I hope these new restrictions on our freedoms will encounter a ferocious resistance. See you next Friday. American DJ David Morales was released from Japanese custody without charge Friday, his representative said, following the Grammy Award winner's arrest earlier this month on suspicion of drug smuggling. Morales, 56, was detained at Fukuoka airport after a customs officer found him in possession of a tiny portion of the drug MDMA, better known as ecstasy. "We're delighted to confirm that David Morales has been released without charge," a representative for the DJ in London said in a statement sent to AFP. "David is well and has asked that we pass on his love and gratitude to all those who have shown their support," the said, without giving details on why he was released or how many days he had been detained. Local police declined to confirm the release. Authorities allegedly found five granules of MDMA -- weighing 0.3 grammes -- in Morales' carry-on suitcase but he denied the allegations, according to local media. He was scheduled to perform at events in Fukuoka and Tokyo. Morales was an influential figure in the New York dance scene during the 1980s and 1990s. He has remixed and produced releases for artists including Aretha Franklin, Michael Jackson and Janet Jackson, according to his website. Morales was nominated for his first Grammy in 1995 as a producer for Mariah Carey's album "Daydream". Three years later, he won the Grammy for "Remixer of the Year." Japan has strict anti-drug laws where even possession of minute quantities can lead to jail sentences. Possession of ecstasy for personal use, however small the quantity, carries a maximum jail sentence of seven years and a three million yen (USD 26,000) fine. In arguably Japan's most infamous music drug bust, Paul McCartney spent nine days in a Tokyo jail in 1980 after being caught at the airport with a bag of marijuana in his suitcase. (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) A JNU professor, who was affected by polio at the age of three, has written a book critically examining the progress made in promoting teaching and research on disability studies. He said the UGC has not yet taken the initiative to constitute a model curriculum development committee on disability studies for its advancement. Gajendra Narayan Karna, a disability right activist, has penned the book titled Curriculum Development on Disability Studies. For the past 18 months, he has been struggling with cancer. The discipline of disability studies was granted recognition as an academic discipline by the Ministry of Human Resource Development in September 2005, he said. The University Grants Commission was directed to extend support to universities and colleges in setting up special department or centre on disability studies as also instituting Rajiv Gandhi Chair in Disability Studies in central universities, Karna added. It was further reinforced by the 11th five-year plan in Working Group on Disability. "Notwithstanding all these developments, the UGC has not taken as yet even the basic initiative of constituting a model curriculum development committee on disability studies (as has been done in the case of Gandhian studies, human rights, Dalit studies and other academic disciplines)," he claimed. Meanwhile, more than 17 universities/academic institutions (including TISS, IGNOU, JNU and DU) have moved towards launching disability studies programmes, though in a haphazard manner because of a lack of model curriculum, he claimed. He said his book is intended to examine critically the progress made with regard to promotion of teaching and research on disability studies, and thereby attempting to develop a model curriculum on disability studies for various programmes of studies being offered by Indian universities and academic institutions. (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) Congress workers Friday staged a protest in front of the CBI office here following the party's call for a nationwide agitation against the Centre's action to divest CBI Director Alok Verma of his powers and send him on leave. However, MLAs and corporators did not take part in the protest in the city though the party high command had directed legislators to participate in the agitation. The only prominent face was party's national general secretary and Karnataka in-charge K C Venugopal. Karnataka is ruled by the Congress-JD(S) coalition. Defending the absence of senior party functionaries, Congress spokesperson Subhash Agarwal told PTI the agitation was only symbolic and hence, the presence of MLAs and corporators did not matter much. "We only wanted to convey a message to the Centre, which we successfully did. The agitation started at about 11.30 am and went on for about one-and-half hours," he said. Meanwhile, former chief minister Siddaramaiah Friday hit out at Prime Minister Narendra Modi for turmoil in the CBI, alleging it was another manifestation of his "autocratic" rule. Running a sarcastic hashtag campaign "Modi Se CBI Bachao," Siddaramaiah tweeted, "The recent events related (to) #CBI is just another manifestation of @narendramodi's autocratic rule. @BJP4India feels that they are entitled to destroy the democratic pillars. Ppl (People) are just clueless about the lawlessness & have lost faith & confidence in the system. #ModiSeCBIBachao." Stepping in to tackle the unprecedented crisis in the CBI, the Centre had stripped Verma and Special Director Rakesh Asthana, who are locked in a bitter feud, of their powers and sent them on leave. (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) London Mayor Sadiq Khan warned EU negotiator Michel Barnier on Friday that a bad Brexit deal would see jobs flee Britain to the US and Asia rather than to Europe. "I made the point that a bad Brexit deal or even worse, no deal whatsoever, is bad for London, is bad for our country but is bad for the EU as well," Khan told Barnier after meeting Barnier in Brussels. "He gets that," he said, adding he spoke to him "in a courteous, polite and unpatronising way". Khan said he wanted to present views Barnier might not hear from British Prime Minister Theresa May's team which he said no longer has a viable plan just months before Brexit on March 29. "My concern is for those people in Paris, or Frankfurt or Madrid, who believe a bad brexit deal or no deal benefits them are mistaken," the mayor said. "Because the jobs won't flow to those cities. They will flow to New York, Singapore and Hong Kong," he added. After Britain voted to leave the EU in a June 2016 referendum, London experts feared they would lose hundreds of thousands of financial services jobs, but now expect the figure to be a few thousand. The British capital continues to vie with New York for the status of the world's financial top dog, coming ahead of the Asian centres of Hong Kong, Singapore, Shanghai and Tokyo in a ranking by Z/Yen, a commercial consultancy and think tank. But Christopher Hayward, chairman of the City of London's urban planning committee, told AFP this month that the post-Brexit challenge will not come from European centres but from cities like New York and Singapore. Khan's office said that almost 70 per cent of Londoners worried about the impact of skilled workers leaving the capital after Brexit. It added almost half of Londoners are worried about the impact of many of the estimated one million or so EU nationals leaving London. Khan also said he told Barnier he believes the British people should have a say on the outcome of the Brexit negotiations, "with the option of staying in the EU." He recalled that hundreds of thousands of people from all over Britain marched in London last week to make that point. May has ruled out a second referendum. The majority of Londoners voted to remain during the first vote. (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) The Kremlin said Friday that Russia believes Saudi royals were not involved in the murder of journalist Jamal Khashoggi after Russian President Vladimir Putin discussed it with Saudi King Salman. Asked by a journalist whether the Kremlin fully believes that the Saudi royal family played no part in the murder in Istanbul, Putin's spokesman Dmitry Peskov said that the question was "inappropriate." "There's an official statement from the king, there's an official statement from the Crown Prince (Mohammed bin Salman) and no one should have any grounds not to believe them," Peskov said. Putin spoke to the 82-year-old Saudi king by telephone on Thursday evening and they discussed "the situation around the case of Khashoggi," the Kremlin said in a statement. Khashoggi, a Washington Post contributing columnist who had criticised policies of powerful Prince Mohammed, had been self-exiled in the United States for about a year. He was killed on October 2 in the Saudi consulate in Istanbul, but his body has not been found. Turkish media have published details of his alleged torture and decapitation. Prince Mohammed, the kingdom's de facto ruler, this week denounced what he called the "repulsive murder" in his first public comments on the case. Asked about the prince's possible involvement in the killing, US President Donald Trump told the Wall Street Journal on Tuesday: "Well, the prince is running things over there... so if anybody were going to be, it would be him. (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) Union minister and RLSP president Upendra Kushwaha met RJD leader Tejashwi Yadav Friday, triggering speculation of discontent within NDA grouping in Bihar, hours after BJP chief Amit Shah announced a seat-sharing formula in the state for Lok Sabha elections. A picture from the meeting, that took place in Arwal district, of the two leaders was shared by the RJD on its WhatsApp group, prompting many to believe the RLSP chief was not happy within the BJP-led NDA, though his party downplayed it as a "courtesy call". "Public figures do meet each other often even if they do not happen to be allies," an RSLP functionary told PTI after the meeting. Kushwaha's RLSP is a part of the BJP-led NDA in Bihar whose other constituents are Nitish Kumar's JD(U) and Ramvilas Paswan's LJP. Kushwaha declined to comment on what transpired during the meeting. His meeting with the top leader of the NDA's rival party assumes significance as it came on a day Shah talked about a seat-sharing formula for the alliance and also said "all four parties will remain part of the NDA." On Shah's announcement of the BJP and the JD(U) contesting equal number of seats, Kushwaha said, "He has not stated any number of seats for any party." "it would not be proper for us to say anything on the matter until and unless...the number of seats assigned to each party is declared". Earlier in the day, in New Delhi Shah, joined by Nitish Kumar, announced the BJP and the JD(U) will contest equal number of Lok Sabha seats in the state. Shah's statement does not necessarily imply that it will be a loss for the RLSP, Kushwaha said. "Shah did not specify any number while saying the two parties would fight an equal number of seats." The RLSP dismissed speculations about discontent maintaining that the meeting - which took place shortly after BJP chief Amit Shah's press conference in Delhi - was "a courtesy call" by the RJD heir-apparent. "Kushwaha, in his capacity as a Union minister, had an engagement in Arwal. It was a coincidence that Tejashwi too had a political programme in the district and the two happened to be at the Circuit House at the same time," RLSP national general secretary and spokesman Madhaw Anand told PTI over phone. "I have spoken to Kushwaha after the meeting. He has categorically stated that no political meanings should be attached to the meeting. It was just a courtesy call. Public figures do meet each other often even if they do not happen to be allies," Anand said. He, however, added "we hope that we will be getting more than three seats, the number we had contested and won in 2014 since our support has widened in the last few years". Meanwhile, in a statement, RJD's national vice president Shivanand Tiwary said that by agreeing to an equal number of seats for both BJP and JD(U), Shah had shown "excessive generosity to Nitish Kumar while ignoring old allies". He also cryptically remarked, "Nitish is like a Brahmin who will first satiate himself and leave the crumbs for Shudras and Dalits." The comment by Tiwari, a former aide of Kumar, was an oblique reference to RLSP and Ram Vilas Paswan's LJP. The two smaller NDA allies are expected to be assigned a number of seats that may be less than what they had got in 2014. In 2014 general election, the NDA san JD(U) of Nitish Kumar had bagged 31 out of a total of 40 seats in Bihar. BJP had won 22 seats while its allies LJP and RLSP had registered victory on six and three seats respectively. The disintegration of the Grand Alliance last year and return of Nitish Kumar to the NDA fold, forced a fresh look at the seat arrangements in the ruling coalition for the crucial 2019 Parliamentary elections. JD(U) had won only two seats in 2014 when it had fought with the Left parties. But, all along this tussle over seat-sharing in the NDA, his party leaders had highlighted image of the Chief Minister Nitish Kumar in the state, which had in the past seen the coalition performing stupendously in Bihar, to demand bigger chunk of seats in the upcoming polls. Kushwaha, who owes his political prominence to Kumar, deserted him in run-up to the 2014 election and allied with BJP after forming RLSP. Kushwaha, who is Union Minister of State for HRD, is cut off with Kumar and in order to flex muscle has on numerous occasions either seen in company of Lalu Prasad's younger son Tejashwi Yadav and other RJD leaders or made comment like "Kheer" -- obliquely referring about Yadavs (the base vote of RJD) -- and rice (of Kushwaha caste, the base support of RLSP) -- to leave NDA leaders guessing. Besides Kushwaha's victory at Karakat, the RLSP had won from Jehanabad and Sitamarhi in last general election. However, Jehanabad MP Arun Kumar has rebelled against him and petitioned the Election Commission to recognise him as a separate lawmaker. (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) Union minister and Rashtriya Lok Samata Party (RLSP) president Upendra Kushwaha on Friday met RJD leader Tejashwi Yadav in Arwal district. The meeting assumes significance as earlier in the day BJP president Amit Shah and Bihar Chief Minister Nitish Kumar announced in the national capital that their parties will contest equal number of Lok Sabha seats in the state and the RLSP and LJP will remain with the NDA. A picture of Kushwaha and Tejashwi Yadav's meeting has been shared by the RJD on its mobile app. Though the details were not immediately available, Kushwaha meeting the top leader of rival combination on a day Shah talked about seat-sharing arrangements in the NDA assumes political significance. Shah told reporters in New Delhi that an announcement on the number of seats of NAD allies in Bihar, including Upendra Kushwaha's RLSP and Ram Vilas Paswan's LJP, will be declared in two-three days. To a question about whether Kushwaha, whose equation with Kumar is far from cordial, will remain a part of the NDA, Shah answered in affirmative and asserted the alliance will do better than the last polls when it had won 31 seats. "All four parties will remain part of the NDA," he said. (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) Sri Lankan President Maithripala Sirisena's party on Friday withdrew from the ruling coalition, a senior minister was quoted as saying by the media. The unity government of the Sri Lanka Freedom Party (SLFP) and the United National Party (UNP) was thrown into a crisis after former president Mahinda Rajapaksa's new party pulled off a stunning victory in local elections in February seen as a referendum on the ruling alliance. The United People's Freedom Alliance (UPFA) withdrew from the government, UPFA General Secretary Mahinda Amaraweera was quoted as saying by Daily Mirror "The UPFA left the coalition government," he said. Last week, it was reported that Sirisena accused his senior coalition partner the UNP of not taking seriously an alleged conspiracy to assassinate him and Gotabhaya Rajapaksa, the former top defence ministry bureaucrat and brother of ex-president Mahinda Rajapaksa. (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) Three labourers engaged in cleaning a manhole in an industrial area in Maharashtra's Thane district Friday died possibly after inhaling poisonous fumes. The incident happened in the MIDC area of Dombivli in the evening and the Kalyan-Dombivli fire brigade was summoned at around 4:15pm, an official said. Fire Officer Suresh Shinde of the Dombivli MIDC fire station told PTI that the deceased were part of a team of contract workers who were engaged in cleaning drains in the industrial area. The three entered the manhole one after the other in a space of few minutes and choked to death, he said. He identified the three dead persons as Devidas Pachge (30), Ghanshyam (40) and Mahadeo Zope (38). Tilak Nagar police in Dombivli is investigating the incident and an official said it would also probe possible safety regulation violations. (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) Mahindra group's real estate arm, Mahindra Lifespace Developers, Friday reported a two-fold increase in net profit for the quarter ended September at Rs 41.2 crore, despite a decline in revenues. The company had reported a profit of Rs 13.5 crore in the corresponding quarter last fiscal. It reported a total income of Rs 93.9 crore, against Rs 129.1 crore in the year-ago period, registering a decline of 27.26 per cent, the company said in a statement. The real estate firm attained a collection of Rs 249 crore during July to September quarter, it added. "The two launches namely Roots in Mumbai and Lakewoods in Mahindra World City, Chennai have contributed significantly to our sales numbers," said Sangeeta Prasad, managing director and chief executive officer, Mahindra Lifespace Developers. "The signing of definitive agreement for a land parcel of 8.4 lakh sq ft at Bhiwandi Kalyan Road targeting the affordable housing segment is indeed encouraging. We will continue our pursuit to drive momentum in our performance," she added. During the quarter, the company completed phase I of Windchimes, Bengaluru, having 4.4 lakh sq ft of saleable area and also achieved lease value of Rs 67.4 crore, it said. The firm also received a funding of around Rs 195 crore in Mahindra World City, Jaipur from International Finance Corporation (IFC), it added. The real estate firm's development footprint spans 23.8 million sq ft of completed, ongoing and forthcoming residential projects across seven cities in the country. It has over 5,000 acres of ongoing and forthcoming projects under development/management at its integrated developments/ industrial clusters in four cities. The company's stocks ended 3.12 per cent down at Rs 402.60 apiece on the BSE Friday, against 1.01 per cent decline in the benchmark. (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) Trump unveils his plan at the Department of Health and Human Services on October 25, 2018. Photo: NICHOLAS KAMM/AFP/Getty Images Donald Trump may be trying to direct voters attention to a migrant caravan in Central America, but he also knows its a health-care election. On Thursday, the president announced a plan to bring down drug costs for Medicare. The government intends to create an international pricing index, which would, the New York Times reported, use foreign drug prices as a reference or benchmark to judge prices in the United States. The idea isnt new, but it hasnt received much political traction, largely because drug companies themselves vehemently oppose it and have the money to make sure Congress heavily weights their concerns. Other portions of the proposal, which is the result of a drafting process HHS began earlier this year, would allow vendors to negotiate prices for certain medications covered under Medicare Part B. Not all drugs would be included in this test. CMS would focus on drugs made by just one company (which tend to be expensive) and biologic medicines, which make up a large share of Medicare Part B spending, Politico reported. The proposal would also allow HHS officials to charge a flat incentive fee for doctors who prescribe certain medications; currently, doctors can receive higher fees for more expensive drugs. The president is certainly right one about one thing: Drug prices are too damn high. But Trumps rhetoric on drug pricing sounds awfully similar to the rest of his nationalist message, and as a result, he fails to really address the problem he wants to solve. Americans pay more so that other countries can pay less, very simple, thats exactly what it is, he said. Its wrong, its unfair, its not surprising where its far more costly to us than even this and were changing them also. This isnt the first time Trump has blamed high drug prices on global freeloaders, and while theres some evidence that they are free-riding, as one economist put it to Vox, Trumps rhetoric ultimately amounts to misdirection. American pharmaceutical companies charge obscene amounts for drugs like insulin because they can get away with it. Prices are lower in other countries because those nations have structures in place that allow them to negotiate prices. If youre upset about high drug prices, blame Americas commitment to a relatively unrestrained free market, not, say, the policies of the U.K. Thursdays proposal is the latest in a series of Trump attempts to polish his partys health-care image. An HHS proposal to force pharmaceutical ads on television to list the prices of drugs that cost more than $35 for a 30-day supply probably wouldnt cause any harm, but there isnt a lot of evidence that it would do much good, either. If a patient needs a specific drug, they need a specific drug; knowing the drugs price changes nothing about their material circumstance. Another recent Trump policy appears more substantive: He signed a bill that bans gag clauses for pharmacists, which prohibit them from telling patients that a less expensive version of the drug is available. Right now, Trumps plan for cutting drug costs is just a proposal. As Politico explained, it still has to go through a federal rulemaking process, so even if the administrations policies are sound their consequences wont be felt for a while. Trumps announcement feels like a distraction at most which is exactly what Republicans need. In multiple midterm races, Republican incumbents have denied claims that they oppose protections for people with preexisting conditions. But it will be difficult for the party to escape its own health-care record. Since the Affordable Care Act came into effect, Republicans have been determined to strip away the laws most progressive proposals. The Justice Department has refused to defend the ACAs preexisting conditions protections against a lawsuit filed by 20 Republican state attorneys general. Had Republicans been able to enact the American Health Care Act in 2017, poor Americans would have borne the brunt of the costs; the version of AHCA passed by the House would have cut $880 billion from Medicaid. Trump himself called the bill mean, but not before hed spent weeks defending it from criticism. 2018 is the health-care midterm for a reason: Donald Trump and the rest of his party spent the last two years trying to advance policies that would deprive the most vulnerable Americans of access to health care. And as Politico notes, it appears most voters didnt even hear about the presidents cost-cutting promises. Trump can complain about high drug prices all he wants. But for many voters, the health-care moment they remember on November 6 will likely be the celebratory beers House Republicans brought into the Capitol after they voted for AHCA. A special court here Friday took strong note of absence of five out of seven accused in the 2008 Malegaon bomb blast case as the framing of charges had to be deferred to October 30. Judge Vinod Padalkar, presiding over the special National Investigation Agency (NIA) court that is handling the case, cautioned the accused against delaying the proceedings. He took a strong exception to the fact that only two of the seven accused, Lt Col Prasad Shrikant Purohit and Sameer Kulkarni, were present in the court. The court deferred the proceedings to October 30 and said this was the last chance for the accused to follow the court's order and remain present in court. Framing of charges is a process after which the trial in a criminal case starts. "It seems that the accused are intentionally avoiding coming to court. If they fail to remain present on the next date, appropriate orders will be passed against them," Judge Padalkar said. Meanwhile, a division bench of the Bombay High Court Friday admitted a plea filed by Purohit, challenging a lower court order on his prosecution under the Unlawful Activities (Prevention) Act (UAPA). The high court is likely to hear the plea on October 29. Six people were killed and over 100 injured when an explosive device strapped on a motorcycle went off near a mosque in Malegaon, a town about 200 km from here in North Maharashtra, on September 29, 2008. Those accused in the case were Purohit, Kulkarni, Pragya Singh Thakur, Major (Retd) Ramesh Upadhyay, Ajay Rahirkar, Sudhakar Dwivedi and Sudhakar Chaturvedi. All of them would face trial under the UAPA, an anti- terror law, and other sections of the Indian Penal Code, for murder and criminal conspiracy, among other charges. The special court had earlier this month rejected their pleas challenging the applicability of the UAPA against them. (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) A 45-year-old man in the UK has been arrested for attempting to steal the original Magna Carta from Salisbury Cathedral, according to a media report. The alarms at the cathedral went off after the suspect smashed the glass box on Thursday surrounding the original 1215 document, the BBC reported. The Magna Carta is a charter of rights agreed by King John of England in 1215. It is considered one of Britain's most influential legal documents. The suspect is said to have used a hammer in an attempt to smash the glass case surrounding the priceless document at the cathedral, the report said, adding that the man was a visitor who tried to break the protective case to get his hands on the historic deed. The Magna Carta has not been damaged and nobody was injured, police said. Officers added the suspect, who was not named, has been taken to the Melksham police station where he is being questioned. "We can confirm that at the end of the afternoon yesterday, a man attempted to break into the case which houses Magna Carta in the Cathedral's Chapter House," a spokeswoman for the cathedral was quoted as saying by the report. "He was arrested by police shortly afterwards and taken into custody. We are very relieved that no one was hurt during the incident and that the Magna Carta itself is undamaged." "We are very grateful to all who dealt with the situation so swiftly and effectively." She added that the Magna Carta would not be available to visitors but the cathedral aimed to have it back on display as soon as possible. The Salisbury copy went on display in 2015 in the 13th-century Chapter House at the cathedral. (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) Former prime minister Manmohan Singh Friday accused his successor Narendra Modi of failing the electorate and eroding voters' faith as he attacked him for his silence on incidents of communal violence, lynching and cow vigilantism in the country. He alleged that the environment in the country's universities and national institutions like the CBI have been vitiated under the Modi government. Singh was speaking at the launch of Congress leader Shashi Tharoor's book "The Paradoxical Prime Minister" here. "In 2014, Narendra Modi was elected 14th prime minister of India on the back of many lofty promises he made to the people of India. In the past four years, Modiji and his government have failed the electorate and eroded their voters' faith," he said. Citing the book, he said Modi is a paradoxical prime minister and Tharoor has demonstrated it in his "superbly written and devastatingly accurate book". "He (Modi) has spoken of being a prime minister for all Indians but he...presides over and has mostly been silent in the face of widespread communal violence, mob lynching and cow vigilantism," Singh said. "The environment in our universities and national institutions like the CBI is being vitiated," he also said, referring to the current crisis in the CBI where the top two bosses of the agency were divested of their powers and sent on leave. (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) To intensify ties with African countries, Vice President Venkaiah Naidu will embark on a three-nation tour from October 31 to November 6, the External Affairs Ministry said Friday. In his first leg of the visit, Naidu will be in Botswana from October 31 to November 2 during which he will meet Botswanian President Mokgweetsi Masisi, and hold talks with his counterpart Vice President Slumber Tsogwane. He will also meet the speaker of the National Assembly of Botswana. T S Tirumurti, secretary (Economic Relations) in the Ministry of External Affairs, said India and Botswana have shared shared a robust cooperation in the areas of defence, health, capacity building and trade. India imports nearly 26-27 per cent of its requirement of rough diamonds from Botswana, he said. The bilateral trade between the two countries saw a rise of 26 per cent and it currently stands at around USD 1.75 billion. Naidu, along with Tsogwane, will also inaugurate the 13th Annual Expo of Botswana and for the first time 25 Indian companies will participate in it. In the second leg, Naidu will be in Zimbabwe from November 2-4. The high-level visit is taking place after 26 years, Tirumurti said. Naidu will meet President Emmerson Mnangagwa and hold tete-a-tete with the vice president, followed by the delegation level talks. India will also undertake upgradation of Hwange thermal power station for USD 310 million Line of Credit, he said. Zimbabwe had backed India's candidature in the International Court of Justice election in 2017, Tirumurti said. Memorandums of Understanding (MoUs), including in the areas of mining, culture, information and communication technology and power are expected to be signed during the visit, Tirumurti said. In his last leg of his visit, the vice president will be in Malawi from November 4-5. During the visit, he will meet the Malawian President Peter Mutharika. He will also inaugurate the Jaipur foot camp there, an initiative started on the occasion of 150th anniversary of Mahatma Gandhi covering more than 18 countries. This event will be held under the India for Humanity initiative launched by External Affairs Minister Sushma Swaraj. He will inaugurate a bust of Mahatma Gandhi in Blantyre. A line of Credit of USD 216 million will be extended for 18 water projects in Malawi. Agreements on extradition, setting up of India-Africa Institute of Agriculture and Rural Development, Mahatma Gandhi Convention Centre and gifting of Bhabhtron Cancer Therapy Machine have been envisaged, Tirumurti added. (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) The Indian Navy's Boeing P-8i Long Range Maritime Reconnaissance Anti Submarine Warfare aircraft made its maiden landing at Car Nicobar, giving the force tactical advantage, the Navy said on Friday. This assumes significance as it comes amid the increasing movement of Chinese submarines in the Indian Ocean Region. "#IndianNavy P-8i makes a maiden landing at Car Nicobar, A&N Islands airport thereby increasing our reach & flexibility of Operations deep in our Area of Responsibility in Indian Ocean Region (IOR) @DEFENCEMININDIA @PMOIndia @SpokespersonMoD @IAF_MCC @adgpi @IndiaCoastGuard," the Indian Navy tweeted. The aircraft need not have to come to the mainland in case the Andaman airport is not operational and can land at Car Nicobar instead, which will give it an edge in conducing its operations The Andaman and Nicobar archipelago lies at a strategic location, just ahead of the mouth of the crucial Malacca Straits, one of the most important Sea Lanes of Communications (SLOCs). (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) Andhra Pradesh Chief Minister N Chandrababu Naidu Friday expressed apprehension that places of worship in Andhra Pradesh would be attacked in coming days as part of the BJP-led NDA government's conspiracy to "finish off" the state due to "personal vengeance" against him. A day after he accused the Centre of trying to destabilise his government, he alleged that "goondas" either from Bihar or other states would be brought to Andhra Pradesh to create law and order problem. CBI inquiry would be ordered and "we will not be allowed to move" in an attempt to prevent the Telugu Desam Party from retaining power in assembly polls, Naidu charged. He also accused the Centre of seeking to turn Hindus against his government by "whipping up sentiments." BJP termed the remarks "ludicrous" and said it exposed Naidu's "rabid paranoia." Hours after the attack on YSR Congress president Y S Jagan Mohan Reddy Thursday, Naidu had targeted the Centre and Telangana Rashtra Samithi, accusing both of "conspiring" against his government and trying to destabilise the state. The YSR congress leader was injured when he was attacked by a man with a small knife at the airport lounge in Visakhapatnam. Addressing the conference of district collectors here Friday, he said temples, churches and mosques in the state would be attacked in the coming days as part of the BJP-led NDA governments "conspiracy to finish off" Andhra Pradesh because of "personal vengeance against me." "Don't afraid or don't become panicky..." Naidu told top IAS and IPS officers and asked them to be "mentally prepared" as some more attacks could be in the offing. "If I dont speak all this, everyone will think I am scared. But, as the 'Team Leader' I want to assure you all that nobody can stop us. If truth is not established, unruly elements will take upper hand," he said. Continuing with his tirade against the Centre, he said "Political gain, economic gain, conspiracies or personal vengeance, what does the NDA government have against me... personal vengeance, as I did not surrender to them," Naidu said. He, however, said ultimately nothing would happen. "They are going to pay heavy price for all these things. As individuals, as government they are going to pay heavy price," he said. Referring to the recent row over ornaments at the Tirumala Venkateswara temple, Naidu alleged that the Centre tried to defame the state government. "Their effort was to tarnish our governments image, whip up sentiments in public so that Hindus turn against this government. Is it right," he asked. Without taking names, Naidu said anti-social elements would rise if "erratic" rulers assume power. "Such rulers will do things detrimental to public interest. In the country now, CBI is finished, ED is finished. Income Tax (Department) is gone. If at all, only the Supreme Court should protect us. We have come to that stage," he added. Reacting to the chief minister's remarks, BJP MP G V L Narasimha Rao said it exposed Naidu's "rabid paranoia." "TDP government is facing a severe backlash from people and experiencing their wrath and anger for running an unpopular and rottenly corrupt government. This seems to have taken a toll on the psychological condition of the chief minister. His ludicrous comments indicate that Naidu is exhibiting signs of rabid paranoia and schizophrenia," Rao said in a statement. (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) Financial Services Secretary Rajiv Kumar Friday said the government is not seeking relaxation in the RBI's Prompt Corrective Action (PCA) framework but emphasised the need to align banking regulations with best global practices. He also said that domestic regulation are more conservative and stringent as compared to international best practices. "Nobody can stand on its leg if you ease anything...Therefore what is being talked about is that it (our regulations) is aligned to best practices, which exist in the world. Take it from the best, align it to it, and don't keep it higher than that. So, no relaxation of any norm," he said when asked if the government has sought relaxation of PCA framework of RBI. PCA framework puts restrictions on financially weak with the objective to halt the deterioration and reverse the trend. As many as 11 out of 21 banks are under the RBI's watchlist. Of these, two banks, Dena Bank and Allahabad Bank, are facing restrictions on business expansion. Last month, state-run banks had requested the government for relaxation in PCA guidelines as these were indirectly impacting their lending ability. However, RBI Deputy Governor Viral V Acharya earlier this month said imposition of the PCA was essential for the revival of financially weak banks and deepening reforms in the banking space. The PCA framework is an essential element for safeguarding overall financial stability, he had said. Without giving details of discussion with the RBI on the PCA framework, Kumar said, "there is no easing that will be required, there is no case for easing of any norm what is being talked about...what is required is aligning it with best international practices". On the issue of liquidity crunch mostly for non-banking finance companies, Kumar said that government is concerned about both liquidity and asset quality concerns. "Very soon you will be hearing. Something is being worked out," he said on the sidelines of an event organised by SIDBI. On the issue of providing capital to state run lenders, Kumar noted that any decision will be taken after the second quarter results. "We will first assess the results and decide," he added. (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) The Punjab government will provide jobs to the eligible family members of those killed in the Amritsar rail tragedy here, Cabinet minister Navjot Singh Sidhu said Friday. At least 59 people were killed 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 in Amritsar. The people falling in the old age category would be given pension by the government, he said. Sidhu reiterated that he is committed to help the affected families monetarily and that the families would not be left in the lurch with the government standing shoulder-to-shoulder with them in their hour of need. "The state government will give jobs to the eligible family members of those killed in the rail tragedy," he told reporters here. The minister said that though many people are coming forward to adopt the children rendered orphan in the tragedy, the government would only allow the adoption to take place after the completion of formalities and procedures as per the law. The Local government minister handed over cheques of financial assistance to 5 more victim families of the recent rail tragedy. He said that till date 46 families have been provided with the financial assistance and the rest of the 13 cheques would also be given soon. Sidhu termed as "most unfortunate" that some elements are playing politics over the bodies of the people killed in the tragedy. He said the state government would do everything possible to help the affected families. (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) The Mizo National Front (MNF) Friday asserted that it would not form an alliance with the BJP in the event of a fractured verdict in the November 28 assembly elections even as Chief Minister Lal Thanhawla alleged that the two parties are working together for the polls. Addressing party workers here, Lal Thanhawla, who is also Congress president in Mizoram, said the MNF is a constituent of the BJP-led North East Democratic Alliance (NEDA) and it been working for the interest of the saffron party. His reaction came in response to MNF reiterating during the day that it would not form an alliance with the BJP even after the polls. MNF secretary for information and publicity Lalthanzuala Hnamte had clarified his party stand vis-a-vis BJP in the wake of a report that the BJP and the MNF have reached an agreement to forge an alliance. According to an online report, Tripura BJP general secretary Pratima Bhowmik has indicated that in a fractured post-poll scenario the opposition MNF may form a coalition with the BJP to form a government. Bhowmik was also quoted as saying that the MNF could not have a pre-poll alliance because of a genuine fear of backlash from the majority Mizo voters but when the question of government formation will come up there will be no difficulty in forming a post-poll alliance or coalition. "Distorting the statement of the Tripura BJP leader, people are spreading rumours to tarnish the image of the MNF, saying that the Mizo party and the BJP have reached an understanding in case of a hung assembly," Hnamte said. He said MNF president Zoramthanga had made it clear that the MNF would go alone and would not form any alliance with other political parties. BJP leaders Amit Shah and Ram Madhav (party in-charge of North-East), in Mizoram recently, had also clearly said that their party would not have any alliance with the MNF, he said. "The MNF and the BJP leadership had never met to deliberate on pre- or post-poll alliance for coming assembly polls," the MNF leader said adding, it was the ruling Congress which formed a coalition government with the BJP in Chakma Autonomous District Council. Lal Thanhawla, who is at the helm of affair in the state for the past 10 years and leading Congress efforts to hold the fort in Mizoram, the only state where Congress is in power at present, further alleged that the BJP would indulge in poaching of legislators after the state assembly polls. Mizoram BJP president John V Hluna, however, refuted the charges levelled against the saffron party by Lal Thanhawla saying that they had no intention to win the support of MLAs belonging to other parties and to poach legislators. He said the BJP would not use money power to win the coming elections in Mizoram but would ride on the development plank of Prime Minister Narendra Modi. Lal Thanhawala also announced the snapping of ties between the Congress and the BJP at the Chakma Autonomous District Council (CADC). He said the party had earlier agreed in May to have ties with the BJP members of district council (MDC) as they were all former Congressmen. He said that internal bickering among the BJP members of the district council with intention to overthrow chief executive member Shanti Jiban Chakma, who was inducted in the CADC top post May four, 2018, resulted in the failure of the coalition. The Congress and the BJP have joined hands to rule the Chakma Autonomous after the election threw a fractured mandate. (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) Normal life was disrupted on Friday at Konark town in Odisha's Puri district due to a 12-hour bandh called by BJP's Mahila Morcha, alleging police inaction in a gang-rape case of a woman from neighbouring West Bengal, an official said. A 25-year-old woman from West Bengal was allegedly held captive at a market complex in Puri and gangraped over a period of 10 days. She was rescued by the police on October 17 after raising an alarm from the roof of the building, where she was apparently detained for over a week. "As the shops remained shut and vehicles were off the roads, tourists failed to visit Sun Temple at Konark on Friday. Local people, too mostly confined themselves at home," the official said. Claiming that the police did not take "adequate action" in the case due to political pressure, BJP Mahila Morcha state president Prabhati Parida said the "main accused had links with the ruling BJD". "We demand that Konark be declared a safe place for women. The police did not take action against the kingpin in the gang rape case as it came under pressure from the ruling party," she contended. Six people have been arrested in the case so far, but the "main accused continues to roam scot-free", she added. In her statement, the 25-year-old woman had told the police that she was brought to Odisha on pretext of a job offer and then forced into flesh trade. (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) Before the 2020 campaign even forms, one potentially strong candidate seems to be heading for the sidelines. Photo: Alex Wong/Getty Images In a surprise move during a debate in Manhattan with her not-very-formidable Republican opponent Chele Farley, New York senator Kirsten Gillibrand took herself off the long list of 2020 Democratic presidential possibilities: The junior New York senator vowed Thursday that she will not mount a challenge against President Trump in the next general election if she wins her midterm race next month. I will serve my six-year term, Gillibrand, 51, said when asked about her presidential prospects during an at times heated debate in Manhattan against her GOP challenger Chele Farley. Farley had been criticizing Gillibrand for her recent out-of-state travel, presumably associated with presidential ambitions. Indeed, the Republican quickly said she didnt believe the new disclaimer. Gillibrand actually said she was ruling out a 2020 run in May of 2017, saying she was focused entirely on running for the Senate. But her recent trip to New Hampshire, combined with the money she seemed to be stockpiling, suggested otherwise to the New York Times: This year, she has invested zero dollars on television and has spent only a fraction of what she did in 2012. Ms. Gillibrand, a Democrat from New York, has instead methodically conserved her campaign cash, building a $10.7 million federal treasury that is among the largest in the country; a war chest that she could use to jump-start a bid for the White House in 2020. But the serve my six-year term formulation seems more definitive than the usual not thinking about it, so perhaps she means what she is saying. If so, its the first real withdrawal of a feasible candidate from a large 2020 Democratic field. Unlike some who were merely mentioned, moreover, Gillibrand had done a lot lately to make her attractive to Democrats wanting a tough-minded but mainstream opponent to Trump. Its worth noting that at about this same point in the 2008 presidential cycle another U.S. senator pledged to serve out his full Senate term at the cost of a run for the top job. His name was Barack Obama. The National Council of Science Museums and the Science Museum Group, UK will jointly hold exhibitions in the country to create awareness on antibiotic resistance. The exhibition - Superbugs: The Fight for Our Lives - will be held in four venues across the country, an NSCM statement said Thursday. The objective is to help address the lack of public awareness and understanding about antibiotic resistance, it said. The country-wide exhibition, part of an international tour of the Science Museum Group, UK, is expected to reach about one million people over a period of one year. The country-wide tour will begin in 2019. The NCSM statement said that Anti-microbial Resistance (AMR) occurs when microbes, including bacteria, viruses, fungi and parasites, no longer respond to the drugs used to treat them. Similar exhibitions will be held in four venues in China in partnership with the Guandong Science Center in Guangzhou, it said. (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) The Ordnance Factory Board (OFB) said on Friday that it has signed a contract with the Ministry of Defence for 'up-gunning' of 300 existing artillery guns that will enhance the Army's strategic capabilites in terms of range and lethality. The upgradation, involving the changing of the barrel, would mean an increase in the range of the guns. OFB will 'upgun' 300 existing 130 mm M-46 guns to 155 mm/45 calibre and will be required to deliver them within four years, Gagan Chaturvedi, deputy director general of OFB, said. "This up-gunning is a highly cost-effective solution to substantially enhance the strategic capabilities of the lndian Army in terms of range and lethality and artillery area coverage against the enemy," he said. OFB signed the contract on Thursday, he said. "The upgraded weapon system has been christened as 'Sharang', after the bow of Lord Vishnu, which was crafted by Lord Vishwakarma," Chaturvedi said. OFB competed with two foreign manufacturers and won the contract with a fully indigenous solution for up-gunning of the artillery guns, he said. Various performance parameters, including maximum range, direct fire, rate of fire, accuracy and consistency, were evaluated during evaluation trials through actual firing at the Pokhran range, Chaturvedi said. Stating that 'Sharang' was the only compliant gun after the completion of the trials, he said that the indigenously developed weapon is aimed at meeting the Army's requirement to replace the existing Russian-made 130 mm calibre M-46 towed guns, which have been in service since 1968. The range will increase from the existing 27 km to 39 km, lethality will increase from 130 mm ammunition to 155 mm ammunition, he said. The OFB official said that this will be a big step in the ongoing modernisation efforts of the Indian Army and "in the long run, the export potential of this gun can be profitably explored". Stating that Sharang has performed exceedingly well in accuracy and consistency trials, Chaturvedi said that design optimisation was done at Ordnance Development Centre at Kanpur and manufacturing of the guns at the Ordnance Factory there. Sharang weighs 8.4 tonnes, with an overall length and width of 11.84 m and 2.45 m respectively, he said adding that the barrel is approximately 7 m long and is equipped with a single baffle muzzle brake and horizontal sliding wedge breech block. (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) US authorities have charged a man with five federal crimes in connection with the series of explosives-laden suspicious packages sent to several present and former high-ranking officials. Cesar Sayoc, 56, was arrested Friday on charges of sending package bombs, which officials described as IEDs, to at least 10 present and former high-level government officials including former Barack Obama, former vice and former secretary of state "He (Sayoc) has been charged today with five federal crimes -- interstate transportation of an explosive, illegal mailing of explosives, threats against former presidents and certain other persons, threatening interstate communications, and assaulting current and former federal officers," US Attorney General Jeff Sessions told reporters in a nationally televised news conference. For these charges, Sayoc, who has a criminal history, faces up to 58 years in prison. FBI Director Christopher Wray said that the suspect was identified on the basis of finger prints from one of the 13 package bombs recovered so far, which was matched with the DNA samples. Wray described these explosives in the package bombs as IED (improvised explosive device), something which is normally used by terrorist groups in countries such as These package bombs were transported to the FBI lab in Quantico, "This is dangerous and highly skilled, specialised work that requires great care," Wray said. He, however, refused to disclose anything about Sayoc's background or motives observing that this is an ongoing investigation. Sessions said that over the past week, more than a dozen suspicious packages have been sent through the Postal Service to a media outlet, a Hollywood actor and at least seven high-ranking current and former political leaders in the Democratic Party. Since Monday, homemade bombs and other suspected explosive devices have been addressed to Obama, Clinton, Hollywood actor and a slew of figures disliked by the president's supporters. "This is utterly unacceptable," Sessions said. "Political violence or the threat of violence is antithetical to our vigorous system of self-government. It is a threat to that respect for law and process that allows our people to accept legislation, elections, court rulings with which they do not agree," he said. Wray told reporters that 13 IEDs were sent to various individuals across the country. Each device consisted of roughly six inches of PVC pipe, a small clock, a battery, some wiring and what is known as energetic material, which is essentially potential explosives and material that give off heat and through a reaction to heat, shock, or friction, he said. While FBI agencies are still analyzing the devices in its laboratory, Wray said these are not hoax devices. Giving details of the investigations so far, Wray said that based on their initial analysis, investigators uncovered a latent fingerprint from one of the envelopes containing an IED that had been sent to Congresswoman Maxine Waters. "We have confirmed this fingerprint is that of Cesar Sayoc. There is also a possible DNA connection between samples collected from pieces of two different IED's mailed in separate envelopes and a sample previously collected from Sayoc in connection with an earlier arrest down in Florida," he said. At the same time, Wray warned that there could be more such devices. "Today's arrest doesn't mean we're all out of the woods. There may be other packages in transit now," he said. For his part, Trump said he has instructed authorities to spare no resource or expense in finding those responsible, and bringing them to swift and certain justice. "And we will prosecute them, him, her -- whoever it may be to the fullest extent of the law," he said. Pakistan Army Chief General Qamar Javed Bajwa on Friday endorsed the death sentences of 14 "hardcore terrorists" who were convicted by special military courts. The military courts were set up soon after the Peshawar attack of December 2014 that killed nearly 150 schoolchildren for speedy trial of militants in Pakistan. The Army said Bajwa "confirmed death sentences awarded to 14 hardcore terrorists, who were involved in heinous offences related to terrorism". They were found guilty of attacking armed forces, law enforcing agencies, killing of innocent civilians and destruction of educational institutions. "On the whole, they were involved in killing of 22 persons including 3 civilians, 19 Armed Forces/Frontier Constabulary/ police officials and injuring 23 others," the Army said, adding arms and explosives were also recovered from their possession. These convicts were tried by special military courts but the dates and venues of the trial was not shared by the Army due to security reasons. Another eight persons were imprisoned for their involvement in militancy in the country. (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) Pakistan's iconic human rights activist and lawyer Asma Jahangir was posthumously awarded the 2018 UN Human Rights Prize. She was one of the four winners of the award which was announced by the United Nations on Thursday. The announcement was made through the Twitter account of the President of the UN General Assembly Maria Fernanda Espinosa Garces, Dawn reported. "Today I announced the 2018 winners of the UN Human Rights Prize," Garces said, before naming Jahangir and three other recipients -- Tanzanian activist Rebeca Gyumi, Brazil's first indigenous lawyer Joenia Wapichana and Ireland's human rights organisation Front Line Defenders -- as winners. "Your work is an inspiration to us," she said. Jahangir got the prize posthumously, the report added. The "United Nations Prize in the Field of Human Rights" is an honorary award given for outstanding achievement in human rights, the world body said. The award ceremony will take place in New York on December 10 on World Human Rights Day. Jahangir became the fourth Pakistani woman to be awarded the UN Human Rights Prize. Before her, Begum Ra'ana Liaquat Ali Khan (1978), Benazir Bhutto (2008) and Malala Yousufzai (2013) were accorded the honour. Sixty-six year-old Jahangir, who passed away on February 11 due to cardiac arrest, was known for her outspoken nature and unrelenting pursuit of human rights as well as for remaining undaunted in the face of extreme pressure and opposition. She was the first woman to serve as the president of Pakistan's Supreme Court Bar Association. She fought her battles on the streets and in the courts, opposed military strongmen and steadfastly championed the rights of women, minorities and LGBTs. From 1998-2000 Jahangir served as the Special Rapporteur of the UN Commission on Extrajudicial, Summary and Arbitrary Executions and was the Special Rapporteur on Freedom of Religion Or Belief of the UN Commission on Human Rights since 2004. (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) Punjab, Haryana and Chandigarh units of the Congress Friday held a protest near the CBI office here against the Centre's move to send agency director Alok Verma on leave after divesting him of powers and demanded an apology from Prime Minister Narendra Modi. Police said roads leading to the investigative agency's office in Sector 30 were barricaded and the traffic was suspended for over an hour in view of the protest. The police used water canons on the protestors but they continued to raise slogans against Modi and his government and later they dispersed from the site, they said. Punjab Congress president Sunil Jakhar was leading the group of protesters which included several prominent party leaders, including ministers in the Amarinder Singh-led government. Haryana CLP leader Kiran Choudhary and former railways minister Pawan Kumar Bansal were among the leaders from Haryana and Chandigarh participating in the agitation. Senior Congress leaders Asha Kumari and Harish Chaudhary also took part. Several ministers from Punjab were present on the occasion, including Vijay Inder Singla, Sukhjinder Singh Randhawa, Sadhu Singh Dharamsot, Sham Sunder Arora, besides Rana Gurjit Singh, Pargat Singh, Raj Kumar Verka, Vikram Chowdhary and Pradeep Chabbra. The Congress leaders demanded an apology from the prime minister and alleged that the "illegal, unconstitutional and illegitimate" removal of the CBI director had shamed India and its premier investigative agency. The protesters carried placards attacking the central government and the prime minister. Some of the signs said "stop interfering in CBI's functioning" and "respect the Constitution". Jakhar alleged that the Modi government's actions showed its autocratic behaviour. Pawan Kumar Bansal, a former MP from Chandigarh, claimed, "The Modi government did not seem happy when the CBI director worked as per his own independence and asserted himself." "The Congress demands the government should accept its folly and act of malfeasance in removing the CBI director and refer the matter to the committee set up for the purpose in which the leader of opposition is a member," Bansal said. Punjab Minister Vijay Inder Singla said Modi should apologise to the nation for the "unceremonial" removal of the CBI chief as it was constitutionally incorrect for the prime minister to remove him. He said the agency director was appointed by a committee of chief justice of India, the leader of opposition and the PM. "But the government took an unconstitutional and undemocratic step in removing him. When an inquiry regarding the Rafale deal was about to start, the PM removed the CBI director in the middle of night, which raises eyebrows," he said. Kiran Chowdhary said that for the first time in Indian history, institutions which were built over the years were being demolished by this government. "The BJP has politicised this august institution too If there was something against the CBI director, they could have called a meeting of the chief justice, leader of opposition and the PM. "The government which makes the law breaks it, so what is left? What is dangerous for this country is that we are going towards a banana republic because pillars of democracy are being demolished," Chowdhary claimed. The government Tuesday sent Verma and Special Director Rakesh Asthana, who accused each other of corruption, on leave. It also transferred several CBI officials and appointed M Nageswar Rao as the interim chief of the agency. (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) A PIL was on Friday moved in the Delhi High Court challenging the Centre's orders sending CBI Director Alok Kumar Verma and Special Director Rakesh Asthana on leave and appointing IPS officer M Nageshwar Rao as interim head of the agency, alleging that the decisions were "completely illegal". However, the high court declined to pass any orders in the matter saying the same issue was pending before the Supreme Court and it will await the top court's decision before taking a call on whether to hear the PIL. "The same issue is pending before the Supreme Court. It is seized of the matter. Let us see what the Supreme Court decides. Judicial propriety dictates that we should not intervene once the matter is in SC. It is not proper to run a parallel proceeding here," a bench of Chief Justice Rajendra Menon and Justice V K Rao said and listed the matter on November 14. The apex court on Friday set a deadline of two weeks for the Central Vigilance Commission (CVC) to complete the inquiry against Verma, who has been divested of his duties and sent on leave in view of the feud between him and Asthana. The top court also directed that the inquiry be conducted under the supervision of a retired Supreme Court judge and also barred Rao, who has been given interim charge of looking after the duties of the CBI Director, from taking any major or policy decision. In the petition filed in the high court, petitioner Sunklan Porwal has contended that the central government's October 23 orders were in violation of a apex court verdict laying down the tenure of a CBI chief, and various provisions of the Delhi Special Police Establishment (DSPE) Act under which the agency was set up and therefore, liable to be set aside. The petitioner, a lawyer by profession, has also challenged the other interim measures taken on October 23 by the Department of Personnel and Training (DOPT) and Central Vigilance Commission (CVC). The petition has contended that a bare reading of the provisions and the order of the apex court makes it clear that "the term of the Director CBI was for a fixed period of two years and no authority other than the Appointments Committee of the Cabinet could have curtailed the said term". The October 23 orders were issued by the central government after CBI on October 22 arrested DSP Devender Kumar in connection with bribery allegations involving the agency's second-in-command Asthana. Kumar, who was earlier the investigating officer in a case involving meat exporter Moin Qureshi, was arrested by the CBI on the allegations of forgery in recording the statement of businessman Sathish Sana, who had alleged to have paid bribe to get relief in the case. 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. Asthana, who was booked by the agency on bribery charges in an unprecedented action, had complained against CBI Director Verma on August 24, 2018. The CBI Special Director moved the high court on October 23 against the lodging of an FIR against him in a bribery case. The high court protected him from arrest in the case till October 29. (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) Prime Minister Narendra Modi Friday expressed confidence that farmers would pave the way for new technology to be imbibed and hoped better opportunities would be created in the agriculture sector. Addressing the three-day 'Krishi Kumbh' on its opening day here via video conferencing, Modi appreciated the UP government for its efforts in augmenting substantially, the procurement of foodgrains. He asserted that farmers are the ones who take the country forward. The prime minister reiterated the Centre's commitment to double the income of farmers by 2022. In this context, he mentioned the series of steps that the government is pursuing to reduce farm input costs and raise profits. He also mentioned that a large number of solar pumps will be installed in farms across the country in the near future. "The Government is working to deliver the benefits of science to agriculture," he said. Modi also said that the Rice Research Centre being set up in Varanasi, is a step in this direction. The Prime Minister spoke of the importance of value addition in farming and mentioned the steps being taken in the food processing sector. He said that after the Green Revolution, emphasis now is on milk production, honey production and also on poultry and fisheries. The PM called for discussions on matters such as judicious use of water resources, better technology for storage and use of latest technology in farming, during the Krishi Kumbh. Amid concerns over rising level of air pollution in the national capital, Modi emphasised on the need to evolve new technologies and ways that will help eliminate the need for farmers to burn crop stubble. Speaking on the occasion Union Agriculture minister Radhmohan Singh said, "Under the leadership of Prime Minister Narendra Modi, the country is transforming at a fast pace. With doubling of their income by 2022, the farmers of the country will be strengthened." The three-day Krishi Kumbh is a high profile conglomeration of farmers, scientists, industrialists, research institutions and policy makers to generate awareness among farmers, to define latest technologies and to showcase the business opportunities in agro processing for business houses. The event is spread in an area of over 13 hectares for showcasing the best agro practices in the country. It will provide an opportunity to the stakeholders to understand the requirements of each other for investment benefits. UP Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath said, "The production potential of our soil is that it can fulfill the food requirements of the entire world. However, it could not be realised primarily due to lack of techniques and awareness. If the farmers who have assembled at the Krishi Kumbh can gain knowledge from international experts, and implement them, then there is no doubt that the income of the farmers will be doubled by 2022." UP Agriculture minister Surya Pratap Shahi said nearly 2.5 crore farmers from UP are likely to be benfitted from the Krishi Kumbh. "Development of farmers in UP, will eventually result in development of farmers in the country," he said. (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) The West Bengal Police has filed a charge sheet against three persons in connection with the brutal gangrape of a woman in Jalpaiguri district, five days after the incident on October 20, a police officer said Friday. The 35-year-old woman was raped and an iron rod inserted in her private parts brought back memories of the ghastly Nirbhaya rape case of 2012. Police filed a charge sheet against the three accused Thursday, the police officer said. The accused have been charge-sheeted under Sections 376D (gangrape), 326 (causing grievous injury) and 307 (attempt to murder) of the Indian Penal Code. Under Section 326 the minimum punishment is 10 years and under Section 376 D it is 20 years. The maximum punishment under both these provisions is life term. Under Section 307 the maximum punishment is 10 years. While we have arrested two persons, one is still absconding, Superintendent of Police (SP) of Jalpaiguri Mitava Maity said. The incident had taken place near the victim's home at Niranjan Pat locality of Jalpaiguri district. The prime accused, a relative of the woman, had called her out of her home on the pretext of resolving a land dispute, the SP had earlier said. He then allegedly raped her and tortured her by inserting an iron rod in her private parts, the SP had said. Two other persons accompanied the accused, but they did not rape or torture her, the SP had said after he had spoken to the woman, following her operation, at the hospital. The accused relative and another person who allegedly helped him in the crime were arrested, but the third accused has been absconding. The tribal woman's husband, a labourer, was away from home during the incident. The woman has three children. A rickshaw-puller had found her and took her home. She was taken to Dhupguri hospital on October 21 morning and shifted to Jalpaiguri Sadar Hospital. Doctors operated on her at the Sadar Hospital here on that night and the woman was kept in the intensive care unit. She was administered blood as she had been bleeding profusely. "She is in a serious condition but is stable," doctors treating her had said Wednesday. She was shifted to the critical care unit (CCU) from the ICU on Thursday and doctors at the hospital said that her condition was stable, they said on Friday. (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) The West Bengal Police has filed a charge sheet against three persons in connection with the brutal gangrape of a woman in Jalpaiguri district on October 20, a police officer said on Friday. The 35-year-old woman was raped and an iron rod inserted in her private parts. The police filed a charge sheet against the three accused on Thursday, five days after the incident took place, a police officer said. The accused have been charge-sheeted under relevant sections of the IPC for gangrape, causing grievous injury and attempt to murder. While we have arrested two persons, one is still absconding, the Superintendent of Police (SP) of Jalpaiguri, Amitava Maity, said. The incident had taken place near the victim's home at Niranjan Pat locality of Jalpaiguri district. The prime accused, a relative of the woman, had called her out of her home on the pretext of resolving a land dispute, the SP had earlier said. He then allegedly raped her and tortured her by inserting an iron rod in her private parts, the SP had said. Two other persons accompanied the accused but they did not rape or torture her, the SP had said after he had spoken to the woman, after her operation, at the hospital. The accused relative and another person who allegedly helped him in the crime were arrested but the third accused has been absconding. The tribal woman's husband, a labourer, was away from home during the incident. The woman has three children. A rickshaw-puller had found her and took her home.She was taken to Dhupguri hospital on October 21 morning and shifted to Jalpaiguri Sadar Hospital. Doctors operated on her at the Sadar Hospital here on that night and the woman was kept in the intensive care unit. She was administered blood as she had been bleeding profusely. "She is a serious condition but is stable," doctors treating her had said Wednesday. She was shifted to the critical care unit (CCU) from the ICU on Thursday and doctors at the hospital said that her condition was stable, they said on Friday. The incident brought back memories of the ghastly Nirbhaya rape case of 2012 in which a woman was gang-raped 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.) Putin and Bolton shake hands during a meeting at the Kremlin on October 23, 2018. Photo: Alexei Nikolsky/Alexei Nikolsky/POOL/TASS Pretty much everyone agrees (well, except the Russians) that Moscow has violated the terms of the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty, by developing and testing prohibited tactical nuclear missiles since at least 2014. The treaty, which was signed by President Ronald Reagan and Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev in 1987, banned missiles with a range of 310 to 3,420 miles (the range either country would use to hit targets in Europe), and was the first nuclear arms-control treaty to result in missiles actually being removed from service and destroyed. Meanwhile, China, never bound by the treaty, has built up plenty of intermediate-range missiles of its own, deploying a new, more advanced system earlier this year. Last weekend, while heading home from a campaign rally in Nevada not an usual venue for momentous policy declarations by him President Trump announced that the U.S. is scrapping the INF Treaty. Were not going to let [Russia] violate a nuclear agreement and go out and do weapons, Trump told reporters on Saturday. And were not allowed to. Were the ones that have stayed in the agreement. And weve honored the agreement. But Russia has not, unfortunately, honored the agreement. So were going to terminate the agreement. Were going to pull out. The Trump administration has not yet begun the actual legal process of pulling the U.S. out of the agreement, but shortly after meeting with Russian president Vladimir Putin on Tuesday, National Security Advisor John Bolton confirmed the plan, while adding that Putin and Trump should first discuss the matter in person, noting that theyve expressed interest in holding direct talks in the coming months. It is the American position that Russia is in violation, Bolton told reporters. Russias position is that they arent. So one has to ask how to ask the Russians to come back into compliance with something they dont think theyre violating. Perhaps some tough love from the Trump administration announcing that the U.S. will abandon the treaty without yet taking the steps required to do so will yield results, where the Obama administrations varying tactics of pressure and persuasion did not. But dont count on it. The U.S.s abandonment of the INF Treaty at this time, under this administration will probably only weaken the international system meant to curb the dangers of nuclear weapons. Its not likely to result in stronger U.S. defenses over the long term, or even make U.S. military posture less expensive. But what good can a treaty do if at least one side isnt adhering to its terms? Quite a bit, it turns out. The impetus to negotiate the INF Treaty, back in the late 80s when the end of the Cold War did not seem imminent, was both strategic and political. It reduced the chances that an intermediate-range missile would be launched toward Europe, and thus of triggering an all-out nuclear exchange by Russia and the U.S., who might under the circumstances suspect that they themselves were under attack. It also reassured the nations of Europe that the superpowers were not structuring their armed forces to fight a nuclear war on that continent that would leave North America and the then-Soviet Union unscathed. 30 years later, much has changed, but the basics of geostrategy have not; influence in Europe, whether political, economic, or military, is the central point of competition and possibly even direct conflict between the U.S. and Russia. Washington is treaty-bound to take Europes safety into account, and even after two years of Trump denigrating the alliance, Europeans still expect Washington to keep its commitments. The INF Treaty isnt just reassuring to Europeans. It was part of a steady accumulation of nuclear arms-control treaties that seemed, ever so slowly, to be bringing every part of the superpowers arsenals under control. And that was part of what the rest of the world perceived as a global bargain. In the early 60s, pessimism abounded that every sizable power would follow the U.S., the U.S.S.R., the U.K., France, and China, and acquire nuclear weapons, making their eventualuse inevitable. But in 1968, almost all the nations of the world signed the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty. It acknowledged the nuclear weapons of those five states, which promised to work toward disarming themselves and help others acquire peaceful nuclear technology. In exchange, the other countries promised never to obtain nuclear weapons. 50 years later, this commitment has held up decently well only four states have acquired nuclear weapons. (Thats not ideal, of course, but imagine if only four countries had violated U.N. rules regarding genocide, slavery, or religious persecution during that time, and how much better the world would be.) After a post-Cold War decline, though, the nuclear states have made little or no progress toward disarmament. India, Pakistan, and China are all building more weapons, while Russia and the U.S. are modernizing theirs. This puts the core bargain in doubt and getting rid of one concrete limit on U.S. and Russian arsenals sends exactly the wrong signal. For 70 years, American strategists of both parties believed that constraining the U.S. a little bit in order to constrain other countries a lot was a good trade-off. But the Trump administration believes that there is no higher benefit in national security policy than being able to do whatever the U.S. wants, whenever it wants. (Thats why John Bolton has not yet met a treaty nor a U.N. rule that he likes.) With this mind-set, getting rid of the INF Treaty shows Russia that the U.S. is serious. It allows Washington to station more offensive weapons near Russias borders. And it lets Washington develop midrange missiles it can use, tipped with nuclear or conventional missiles, to counter Chinas pressure around East Asia. But other factors suggest that ditching the treaty wont play out as Trump officials hope. Its not clear that European or Asian countries will line up to host missiles that would make their territory a more likely target of an early Russian or Chinese attack in the event of a military conflict. Both Beijing and Moscow will be able to wield significant political pressure to prevent that. And in Asia, Washington already can and does put missiles on ships and submarines to achieve a similar result, with the added benefit of unpredictability. The Trump administration had a range of other means to address Russian cheating: it could have used its special relationship with Moscow to try to change its behavior; pressured Moscow to acknowledge its actions and leave the treaty itself; or approached China about renegotiating the treaty with three parties. Russia experts believe that Putins actions over the last decade have been aimed at goading the U.S. into exiting the treaty first, in order to make them look like a nuclear madman on the world stage. Mission accomplished. A day after an eight-year-old madrasa student died during a scuffle between two groups of minor boys in south Delhi, police held a peace meeting in the area to thwart attempts to communalise the situation, police said Friday. Police said attempts were being made to communalise the incident by spreading wrong facts and rumours. They denied any communal angle in the incident. They said it was a scuffle that broke out between two group of minors over playing on a vacant plot of land in front of madrasa in Malviya Nagar area leading to the death of Azim. Four juveniles who were allegedly involved in the case were apprehended, they said. A meeting of Peace (Aman) Committee Members of the area was held and they were briefed about the facts regarding the incident and police staff has been also been deployed in the area to avert any untoward incident, Deputy Commissioner of Police (south) Vijay Kumar said. Police have also cautioned the residents of the area to not pay any heed to any such rumours or fake and report the matter to them if anything comes to their notice, he said. On Thursday morning, the victim along with his four other friends was playing on an empty plot adjacent to the madrasa. In the meantime, four local boys, all resident of Valmiki Camp came there and one of them threw a stone over them, he added. The madrasa students asked the local boys to refrain. However, after some time, the accused boys threw fire cracker towards them and began abusing, the DCP said. Eventually, when the madrasa students objected, a scuffle broke out between the two groups. One of the students was roughed up and fell down on the ground. He sustained some severe internal injuries, Kumar said. The students immediately alerted the Maulana of the madrasa about the incident and one of the person named Rajesh, a resident of Valmiki Camp, brought the victim Azim in his lap inside madrasa in an unconscious state. The injured boy was immediately taken to Malviya Nagar Hospital by the Maulana, where he was declared dead, the senior officer said. The boy was a native of Mewat in Haryana and was studying in the madrasa since last Eid. Around 70 children, hailing from different places are studying in the madrasa, the officer added. During investigation, all evidences including CCTV footage were collected and statements of eye witnesses and relevant people recorded, the police officer said. All the four Juveniles, aged around 10-13, were apprehended after due compliance of legal procedure. Further investigation in the case is underway, he added. (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) The Odisha government on Friday launched a new web portal to promote Odia language and literature. Called Odia Virtual Academy, the portal www.ova.gov.in was inaugurated by Chief Minister Naveen Patnaik at the state secretariat on Friday. The Odia Virtual Academy has taken the responsibility for promotion, preservation and digitisation of the Odia language and literature, Patnaik said adding that the portal will be helpful for the promotion of Odia language at the international level, especially for the non resident Odias. Patnaik said that three memorandums have been signed with University of Chicago Library, C-DAC and Centre for Internet and Society, Bengaluru, respectively to expedite digitisation of Odia literature and development of software. This will certainly go a long way in enhancing the visibility of Odia language and literature in the digital space, Patnaik said. Around 170 books of Odia literature have been placed on the academy website. This apart, in a bid to check the pollution of water bodies and drainage problems in the state, Patnaik also inaugurated six Septage Treatment Plants (STPs) ealier on Friday. Patnaik inaugurated the facilities in six cities -- Bhubaneswar, Berhampur, Rourkela, Sambalpur, Dhenkanal and Puri -- through video conference at a National Workshop on Faecal Sludge and Septage Management. (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) Telecom regulator on Friday questioned mobile applications seeking permission to access data that are not required for their functioning and asked private firms to ensure that they do not misuse the data of customers. "There is an application which is actually a lighting application, a torch application. When you download the application, it asks for your contacts, camera and all of your peripherals. Why? For making your mobile phone a torch, why should it require access (to) all this?" Chairman R S Sharma said at the India Mobile here while expressing concern over data misuse by online players. He said people accept terms and conditions of online platforms without reading, which puts their privacy at risk. "If you have read agreements that many tech ask you to sign terms and conditions before you subscribe to their service... if you carefully read them, they are essentially saying that they will be able to do pretty much everything that they like to do with your data. Essentially, you have given away your privacy by subscribing to those platforms, unfortunately," Sharma said. Sharma, who played a key role in setting up of Aadhaar, said that the government's unique ID project had privacy protection built in by design since its inception and the same was acknowledged by the in its recent judgement. "Aadhaar is number. By looking at Aadhaar, you can't determine gender, age...In public things you must ensure security, huge amount of and privacy of data by design. In private, you must also protect individuals and customers from unnecessary and misuse of data," Sharma said. At the session, Telecommunication and Postal Services at Body of European Regulators for Electronic Communications (BEREC) Johannes Gungl said that he too has downloaded a lot of applications because services are extremely beneficial. "This is already time of monetisation. The services are always for free but there are no free lunches. We are the product. We get benefit and we give away data. This is reason we had to introduce privacy law in new form," Gungl said, referring to European Union's General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR). He said that European and all firms that are operating within EU are taking GDPR very seriously. "What GDPR is trying to achieve is give back control of data to people," Gungl said. Congress president Rahul Gandhi courted arrest on Friday after staging a protest outside the CBI headquarters against the move to divest CBI Director Alok Verma of his powers, saying Prime Minister Narendra Modi "stole" money from the country and can run but not hide from the truth. Reiterating his allegations against the prime minister on the Rafale fighter jet deal, Gandhi again called him "chowkidar" and said he had "deposited Rs 30,000 crore in Anil Ambani's pocket". "He has stolen money from the Indian Air Force and the youth, and the entire country understands this. The prime minister can run but he cannot hide from the truth," Gandhi told reporters after courting arrest at the Lodhi Colony police station. There were no immediate reactions from the Prime Minister's Office on Gandhi's allegations. While Ambani has been consistently denying the allegations, the BJP has accused Gandhi of manufacturing lies everyday on the Rafale deal. "The truth will come out," Gandhi said, adding that removing the CBI director will not impact the truth. Addressing the gathering of Congress protesters earlier in the day, Gandhi accused Modi of destroying institutions such as the CBI, the Election Commission and the Enforcement Directorate. Senior Congress leaders, including Ashok Gehlot, Ahmed Patel, Motilal Vora, Veerappa Moily and Anand Sharma, took part in the march that culminated in a demonstration ahead of the CBI headquarters. Loktantrik Janata Dal leader Sharad Yadav, CPI leader D Raja and TMC's Nadimul Haque joined the protest. The Congress' protests in the national capital were replicated in other parts of the country. State Congress leaders led demonstrations in their regions against what the Congress described as the "illegal, unconstitutional and illegitimate removal of the CBI director by the Modi-Shah duo". The apex court said former Supreme Court judge A K Patnaik will oversee a CVC inquiry into the allegations against Verma and the report has to be placed before it within two weeks. It directed that interim CBI chief M Nageswara Rao shall not take any major policy decisions. Decisions taken by him since October 23 till date shall not be implemented, it said. All decisions taken by Rao shall be placed before the apex court in a sealed cover. (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) Congress chief Rahul Gandhi courted arrest on Friday after leading hundreds of his party's workers in a march to the CBI headquarters against CBI Director Alok Verma being divested of his powers and to demand an apology from Prime Minister Narendra Modi. "Every institution in India being ruined by the prime minister," Gandhi said as the Congress took to the streets and marched from Dayal Singh College on Lodhi Road to the Central Bureau of Investigation headquarters about a kilometre away. The Congress president courted arrest along with senior leaders such as Ashok Gehlot and Bhupinder Singh Hooda. The Congress will not allow the "chowkidaar" (watchman) to do "chori" (theft), Gandhi said, reiterating his charges of corruption against the prime minister and saying he had "deposited Rs 30,000 crore in Anil Ambani's pocket". "He has stolen money from the Indian Air Force and the youth, and the entire country understands this. The prime minister can run but he cannot hide from the truth," Gandhi told reporters after courting arrest at the Lodhi Colony police station. There were no immediate reactions from the Prime Minister's Office on Gandhi's allegations. While Ambani has been consistently denying the allegations, the BJP has accused Gandhi of manufacturing lies everyday on the Rafale deal. "The truth will come out," Gandhi said, adding that removing the CBI director will not impact the truth. Addressing the gathering of Congress protesters earlier in the day, Gandhi accused Modi of destroying institutions such as the CBI, the Election Commission and the Enforcement Directorate. Senior Congress leaders, including Gehlot, Ahmed Patel, Motilal Vora, Veerappa Moily and Anand Sharma, took part in the march that culminated in a demonstration ahead of the CBI headquarters. Loktantrik Janata Dal leader Sharad Yadav, CPI leader D Raja and TMC's Nadimul Haque joined the protest. Carrying placards against the prime minister, the protesters walked the distance with scores of police personnel maintaining vigil and camera crews jostling with each other to capture the moment. One protester carried a placard depicting the CBI in a cage. Gandhi got on to a truck in front of the police barricades put up ahead of the CBI headquarters in the CGO complex to prevent the marchers from reaching the building. Gehlot said the decision to remove the CBI director was "illegal". "The chief justice of India, the leader of the opposition and the prime minister can together take a decision to remove him, but not the prime minister alone," he told reporters. "Our demand is to reinstate the CBI director...The prime minister should tender an apology to the nation for destroying the image of the premier investigating agency," Gehlot added. The government has strongly defended its decision, saying it was "absolutely essential" to maintain the CBI's institutional integrity and the move was based on recommendations by the Central Vigilance Commission. The Congress' protests in the national capital were replicated in other parts of the country. State Congress leaders led demonstrations in their regions against what the Congress described as the "illegal, unconstitutional and illegitimate removal of the CBI director by the Modi-Shah duo that has shamed India and its premier investigative agency". In Patna, for instance, Congress workers, including scores of women, sat on a dharna outside the gate of the CBI office at Bailey Road, carrying placards, reading 'Save CBI Save Democracy'. Alleging that the prime minister is experiencing 'Rafale-o-Phobia', the opposition party said the "demolition of the CBI" was prompted by fears that the director was going to conduct a probe into the fighter jet deal. Finance Minister Arun Jaitley has dismissed as "rubbish" the allegations by the Opposition that Verma was removed because he was collecting documents on the Rafale fighter jet deal. The government sent Verma and Special Director Rakesh Asthana, who have accused each other of corruption, on leave on Tuesday. It also transferred several CBI officials and appointed M Nageswar Rao as the interim chief of the agency. The Congress protest was held soon after the matter came up in the Supreme Court. The apex court said former Supreme Court judge A K Patnaik will oversee a CVC inquiry into the allegations and counter allegations and the report has to be placed before it within two weeks. It directed that interim CBI chief M Nageswar Rao shall not take any major policy decisions. Decisions taken by him since October 23 till date shall not be implemented, it said. All decisions taken by Rao shall be placed before the apex court in a sealed cover. The court sought a response from the CBI, the CVC and the Centre on Verma's plea challenging the government's decision to divest him of his duties. A bench headed by Chief Justice Ranjan Gogoi posted the next date of hearing on November 12. (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) The Reserve Bank on Friday said it will inject Rs 400 billion into the system in November through a purchase of as it looks to meet festive season demand for funds. For the month of October, the central bank has already injected Rs 360 billion into the system through (OMO). "Based on an assessment of the durable liquidity needs going forward, has decided to conduct the purchase of under OMOs for an aggregate amount of Rs 400 billion in the month of November 2018," the central bank said in a release. It further said the auction dates and the to be purchased in the respective auctions would be communicated in due course. "The OMO amount stated ... is indicative and retains the flexibility to change it, depending on the evolving liquidity and market conditions," it added. The (RBI) had earlier stated that the system liquidity will move into deficit in the second half of 2018-19 and the evolving liquidity conditions would determine its choice of instruments for both transient and durable liquidity management. Kerala Chief Minister Pinarayi Vijayan has called a meeting of Devaswom (religious institutions) ministers of the southern states, from where lakhs of devotees trek to the hill shrine of Lord Ayyappa at Sabarimala to offer prayers. The meeting will be held on October 31. It has been called to discuss the facilities to be made for the 'Mandalam Makaravillaku' season commencing from November 17 besides crowd management, the CMO sources said. The government is planning to introduce 'Tirupati model digital queue system' (where devotees book tickets online for darshan) at Sabarimala and this would also be discussed, they said. However, the Supreme Court verdict lifting the ban on entry of girls and women in the 10-50 age group at Sabarimala, would not come up for discussion, the sources told PTI. The state had witnessed massive protests from devotees at various places, including Sabarimala, Nilakkal and Pamba, against permitting women of all ages to enter the shrine, where the deity is 'Naishtika Brahmachari' (perennial celibate), when the temple was opened for monthly poojas from October 17-22. At least 12 women in the 'barred' age group had tried to trek the hills to offer prayers but had to retreat following widespread protests. The state government has made it clear that it had the constitutional responsibility to implement the verdict. Taking stringent action against the protesters, over 1400 persons were arrested in connection with the protests all over the state and 450 cases registered. Meanwhile, protesting the government action, BJP took out a march to the Pathanamthitta Superintendent's office Friday morning against the widespread arrests. The hill shrine is located in Pathanamthitta district. Opposition leader in the state assembly, Ramesh Chennithala also attacked the state government for its reported decision to appoint at least 1500 temporary hands, stated to be party sympathisers, at Sabarimala. Chennithala said the chief minister's move to deploy 'Pinarayi Sena' (Pinarayi army) at the hill shrine would be met by devotees themselves. The Travancore Devaswom Board, which has "failed totally", should be dissolved, he demanded. (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) Mumbai attack mastermind Hafiz Saeed-led Jamaat-ud-Dawa (JuD) and Falah-i-Insaniyat Foundation (FIF) are no longer on the list of banned outfits in Pakistan as the presidential ordinance that proscribed them under a UN resolution has lapsed, a media report said on Friday. In February this year, former president Mamnoon Hussain promulgated an ordinance amending the Anti-Terrorism Act, 1997 to declare JuD and FIF as proscribed groups. During a hearing on Thursday of a petition filed by Saeed, his counsel informed the Islamabad High Court (IHC) that the presidential ordinance had lapsed and it had never been extended, Dawn newspaper reported. The petitioner had challenged the ordinance under which his organisations had been banned for being on the watch list of the United Nations Security Council. Saeed contended in the petition that he established JuD in 2002 and cut off all ties with the banned Lashkar-i-Taiba, but India continued to malign the JuD for its past association with the banned outfit, the report said. The petitioner said he was kept in detention in 2009 and 2017 due to India's pressure. He said that the UN Security Council had passed a resolution against the JuD after which the government of Pakistan put it on the watch list, it said. India has been pushing Pakistan to bring to justice the planners of the November 2008 Mumbai attacks. Saeed is the co-founder of the Lashkar-e-Taiba, which was responsible for the attack in which 166 people were killed. Saeed's counsel Raja Rizwan Abbasi and Sohail Warraich appeared before Justice Aamer Farooq of the IHC. On a query, Saeed's counsel informed the court that the current government did not extend the ordinance or table it in parliament to convert it into an act. Deputy Attorney General Raja Khalid Mehmood Khan confirmed that the ordinance has lapsed. He, however, declined the request of advocate Abbasi for giving a statement on behalf of the interior ministry about the lapse of the ordinance. Khan told the court that since the petitioner did not cite the interior ministry as a respondent, he could not give a statement unless the petition was amended and the interior secretary added as a party in the petition. Justice Farooq held that the petition became infructuous since the ordinance challenged by the petitioner has lapsed. The judge disposed of the petition with an observation that in case the government renewed this ordinance, the petitioner was at liberty to file another petition against the promulgation of the law. The petitioner claimed that the promulgation of the ordinance was not only prejudicial to the sovereignty but also contradictory to the fundamental rights enshrined in the Constitution. He said that any law which was violative of constitutional provisions was liable to be struck down. According to a list updated on September 5 on the National Counter Terrorism Authority's website, 66 organisations have been banned in the Pakistan and the JuD and FIF are not among them. (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) Olympic medallist Indian shuttler Saina Nehwal's impressive run at the French Open ended with yet another loss to world no 1 Tai Tzu Ying, this time at the quarterfinals of the BWF World Tour Super 750 tournament here on Friday. Saina looked in good touch initially but couldn't match the pace of Tzu Ying later on to squander four game points and lose the opening game. She was no match to her rival in the second and eventually went down 20-22 11-21 in the quarterfinals here. It was Saina's 12th straight defeat to the Chinese Taipei shuttler, who showed incredible temperament and determination to seal the contest after being 9-16 and 16-20 down in the opening game. Saina yet again failed to crack the Tzu Ying code as she lost to the Chinese Taipei shuttler in the finals last week at Denmark Open. Tzu Ying now has an overwhelming 14-5 head-to-head record against Saina. Saina, who played a three-game match against Nozomi Okuhara on Thursday, looked determined initially as she delayed her strokes a bit, covered the net well and made good line judgements to held a five point advantage at the first interval. With soon to be husband Parupalli Kashyap guiding her from the back, Saina continued to play in the same rhythm to trouble Tzu Ying. The duo played some incredible rallies, despite the Taiwanese employing her deceptive strokes to make life difficult for the Indian. From 9-16 behind, Tzu Ying, however, managed to reduce the margin to 15-16 after upping her pace. Tzu Ying seemed to crumble under a series of unforced errors as she hit the shuttle long and wide to gift Saina four game points. However, the Indian couldn't make it count as Tzu Ying incredibly not only saved four game points but actually sealed the opening game with six straight points, breaking Saina's heart on the way. After the opening game reversal, Saina didn't seem to be the same player as she lagged 1-5 in the second game. The Indian tried to construct points and moved to 6-7 after her rival hit long twice. Saina tried to keep the shuttle at the back of the court but Tzu Ying rode on her stunning drop shots to enter the interval with a 11-6 advantage. After the breather, Tzu Ying continued to find points even as Saina crumbled, hitting wide and long. She seemed to have no answers to her rivals superior game, ending up giving 17-8 lead to Tzu Ying. In the end, Tzu Ying earned 11 match points after Saina found the net. The Indian saved two match points but the Taiwanese soon cemented her place in the semi-finals when Saina erred again. Earlier, Indian ace P V Sindhu advanced to the quarterfinals with a straight-game win over Japan's Sayaka Sato but B Sai Praneeth crashed out in men's singles on Thursday night. Sindhu, seeded third, dished out a compact game to outwit Sayaka 21-17 21-16 in a second round match on Thursday to set up a clash with seventh seeded Chinese He Bingjiao. However, Praneeth was no match for Asian Games champion Jonatan Christie of Indonesia, going down 16-21 14-21 in a men's singles match. The men's doubles pairs of Satwiksairaj Rankireddy and Chirag Shetty and Manu Attri and B Sumeeth Reddy too put up a good show, progressing to the quarterfinals with straight game wins. While Satwik and Chirag defeated China's He Jiting and Tan Qiang 21-13 21-19, Manu and Sumeeth stunned third seeded Chinese combination of Liu Cheng and Zhang Nan 21-14 21-16 in another match. However, it was curtains for Meghana Jakkampudi and Poorvisha S Ram as the duo went down 15-21 13-21 to fourth seeded Indonesian pair of Greysia Polii and Apriyani Rahayu. (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) Telecom equipment maker Samsung Friday said it will conduct 5G large-scale trials here in the first quarter of the next year, engaging closely with the Department of Telecommunications. "Right now, we are working very closely with the Department of Telecom. We expect to do the trial in the first quarter it will be in New Delhi...We will also work with many partners on use cases...We don't expect this trial to be something that will be done in two days... We will set it up and over a period of time (see) different use cases," Samsung India Senior Vice President and Head (Network Business) Srinivasan Sundararajan told reporters here. He added that 5G technology, apart from consumers, can have various use cases across sectors like healthcare, agriculture, smart cities and surveillance. Sundararajan pointed out that the amount of spectrum operators have will "dictate" the kind of use cases they can offer. He said Samsung is already working with telecom operators in the US and Korea for 5G deployment commercially and that the new-age technology holds huge potential for India from network and associated devices perspective. In India, Samsung is the telecom gear provider for Reliance Jio's pan-India 4G network. Asked if Jio's network could be upgraded to 5G, he said the network was built for 5G as it is a complete IP-network which makes it "much easier to adapt" to new technology that comes in with just "software upgrades". On its engagement with other operators for 5G deployment in India, Sundararajan said it is still early to talk about who their partners will be, but Reliance Jio will "always remain the prime partner". (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) 27 items in this article Photo-Illustration: Courtesy of the retailer As the air gets nippy and the leaves start to change, one of the things we look forward to most is the chance to don our autumnal best. For many of us, that means pulling on a pair of tried-and-true Chelsea boots, a staple shoe in the wardrobes of countless well-dressed people. Its easy to see why theyre so popular: The boots, which are typically characterized by their ankle height and elastic side panels, are streamlined, easy to slip on and off, and have been a classic since mods made them cool in 1960s Britain (though they were around long before that). To find the best Chelsea boots, we asked stylists, fashion bloggers, and all-around stylish women for their favorites, from sleek classic leather ones to chunky platforms and everything in between. Below, 27 foliage-stomping pairs, as recommended by our panel of cool people. Best classic Chelsea boots Dr. Martens Flora Smooth Chelsea Boot $150 Dr. Martens Flora boots came up more than any other Chelsea boots mentioned by our experts. For software engineer and self-proclaimed sewist Nozlee Samadzadeh, the Flora boots hit a sweet spot: I scoured stores for a Chelsea boot that isnt too sleek but isnt too chunky, and I am so happy with these, she says. The monochromatic boots are made from polished leather and have a lower-profile heel and opaque sole that Samadzadeh says make them different from other Docs (which typically have a chunkier, brown heel). The fact that the soles are no-skid makes these perfect for winter, too, Samadzadeh adds. Iva Dixit, a noted coat collector and an editor at The New York Times Magazine, also owns Floras (in burgundy) and agrees that the rubber sole which lacks the British shoemakers signature yellow stitching makes them feel a little more adult. She adds that these are an incredibly well-made shoe for the price. Dixit has had her pair for three years, saying they now look like theyve been worn, but not beaten up, and that the dark sheen patinas beautifully over time. The Floras are also among the favorite Chelsea boots of Coveteur senior beauty editor Hannah Baxter, who says that because their maker is British, she feels like theyre the real deal. $150 at Zappos Buy $150 at Dr. Martens Buy COS Chunky Leather Chelsea Boots $285 $285 A higher shaft elevates the classic Chelsea boot, both literally and figuratively. Most Chelsea boots stop right at the ankle, but these go two to three inches above the ankle, which really makes them unique and super-stylish, says Bee Stuart, personal stylist and founder of QueerYorker. Being able to have the option of either tucking a pair of jeans inside the boot or over the boot allows for maximum wear and is effortlessly stylish. If you have a wide calf, these have a stretch elastic panel on the back and pull tabs at the front and the back. They also feature the seasons trending lug sole, defined by the deep indentations in the rubber bottom, which Stuart says gives the boot this sort of edgy cool factor while still remaining very timelessly chic, without sacrificing comfort. I wore them every day while touring Paris back when traveling was a thing and they were exceptionally comfortable and supportive, she says. Chelsea boots can pretty much be worn with anything, but one of Stuarts favorite ways to style them is with leather pants. They look so sexy and badass. $285 at COS Buy Common Projects Chelsea Boots $672 Im very into Common Projects interpretation of the Chelsea boot, says Bryn Taylor, personal stylist and founder of Ouisa, a newly launched line of made-to-order minimalist clothing. She likes that theyre a little more rugged-looking than your classic Chelsea boot thanks to the grained leather and chunky lug sole. She first spotted the style in the mens suede version while shopping for a client and then hunted these down. Not only do they make for an interesting, subtle reinvention of the original, she says, but they are comfortable too. Theyre made of a more flexible pebbled leather and a lugged sole that cushions the walk, she adds. $672 at Revolve Clothing Buy $670 at 24 Sevres Buy Nisolo Chelsea Boot $200 Two more of our stylish women, Teat and Cossets Peggy Economou and Kate McLeod, a co-founder of her eponymous brand that makes all-natural lotion stones, recommend these everyday Chelsea boots from sustainable shoe company Nisolo. Economou loves that theyre understated and elegant, and McLeod says theyre quickly becoming my new shoe staple because they can be dressed up or down, slide right on, and fit snugly. Both women add that they appreciate Nisolos commitment to quality, ethical factories, and fair trade. Nisolo partners with Ecosphere to offset carbon emissions and ensures that their artisans have proper health care and are earning fair wages, explains McLeod. $200 at Nisolo Buy Blundstone 63 Womens Dress Chelsea Boots $195 Blundstones classic boots are a Strategist favorite for their durability and versatility especially for snowy weather. But sometimes you want to wear something thats not as utilitarian. Enter Blundstones Dress Chelsea Boots, which have the same look and reliability of its classic work boots, but are just a little, well, dressier. They really just go with anything and work for everything, says Strategist newsletter editor Mia Leimkuhler. I once took them as the only pair of shoes on a weekend trip to Portland that included both going to the ballet and on a hike up Multnomah Falls, and they were great for both. Nadine Abramcyk, a co-founder of salon Tenoverten, also prefers this style (but in a different finish) over the Australian brands popular work boot. Theyre utilitarian and can withstand heavy city walking while still looking feminine, she says. The water-resistant boots have a chiseled, square toe, a more streamlined profile, and a thinner, slip-resistant sole. $195 at Zappos Buy $195 at Blundstone Buy The Ainsley Chelsea Boot $198 Eva Lee, the head of newsroom operations at BuzzFeed, loves these low-heeled Chelsea boots from Madewell for their versatility. You can wear them with anything: cropped jeans, trousers, or with tights under a skirt, she says. She says the shape of the toe and the shaft height make them the perfect middle ground between casual but still feminine. The leather boots have covered elastic side panels that make them look a little sleeker, padded insoles, and are also available in a brown color called English saddle. $198 at Madewell Buy Daryl K Chelsea Girl Boot $450 Sea of Shoes blogger Jane Aldridge (who knows a lot about footwear) recommends these Chelsea boots by Daryl K. With their covered elastic panels and similarly shaped toe, you could call them the sophisticated big sister to the Madewell pair above. I always wear them a lot this time of year, she says. Theyre about as classic as it gets, and I always get compliments on them when I wear them. Aldridge adds that they make great travel boots, too. $450 at Daryl K Buy Frye Melissa Chelsea $298 $298 Celebrity stylist Tara Swennen, who is best known for dressing Kristen Stewart, recommends Fryes Melissa boot because it looks good and, importantly, holds up. This is a staple boot thats not only durable but also super-sleek, she explains. Made of polished Italian leather, they have an added bit of embellishment in the form of a button on the back pull tabs. $298 at Bloomingdales Buy $298 at Frye Buy Rachel Comey Thora Boot in Cherry Crinkle Patent $525 These Chelsea boots from Rachel Comey come recommended by fashion illustrator Annie Reeds, who likes how theyre narrower, dressier, and secretly weatherproof due to the patent leather. Perhaps because its been months since most people dressed up, she really appreciates a more formal shoe like this right now, adding that a shoe and a coat are the easiest way to trick an outfit into smartening up. When going to the grocery store is the only form of Being Seen, Reeds says having a slightly more pulled-together everyday boot like the low-heeled but slick Thora will ensure you get noticed. $525 at Rachel Comey Buy & Other Stories Square Toe Leather Chelsea Boots $149 $149 With their dainty toes, narrow body, and lower heels, these Chelsea boots look a lot like the Rachel Comey ones above but they cost a fraction of the price. They come recommended by mom of two and fashion buyer Grace Lim, who calls them a great affordable option. She says the squared toe gives the boots a polished and sleek look, adding that they pair well with a distressed skinny ankle jean and a fitted turtleneck. And even though theyre less expensive, these are still made of leather. $149 at & Other Stories Buy & Other Stories Almond Toe Leather Chelsea Boots $149 If youre not a huge fan of the square toe above, the & Other Stories boots also come in this classic rounded-almond-toe style that Taylor says is perfect for a Chelsea purist. They have a cleaner minimal vibe than some of the trendier lug-sole options out there, but she warns that the stiffer semi-gloss leather means they will be harder to break in. $149 at & Other Stories Buy Xena Omega Eh Safety Boot $180 If you need your Chelsea boots to take you from construction site straight to date night, look no further than these Xena boots. This workwear brand for and by women considers style and function in its designs. Chicago-based patternmaker Xochil Herrera Scheer introduced us to these and says, Even though I dont work in an environment that requires steel-toed boots, I really love the Chelsea boots by Xena Workwear. In addition to the steel toe, they are certified by the American Society for Testing and Materials and are made with electrical hazard protection. Thankfully, these additional features dont affect the wearability of the shoe. Scheer says theyre still comfortable, as they are made of flexible leather to make them easier to walk in. $180 at Xena Workwear Buy Best Chelsea boots with a lift For chunkier, almost oversize Chelsea boots, three of our cool women say you cant go wrong with a pair from Eytys. I love platforms, says Dixit, who owns the Ortegas in the sold out brown snake-embossed leather. But she warns that, with any platform Chelseas, you are (literally) walking a fine line: If theyre too high or too bulky, you look like a tween who just hit up Steve Madden at the suburban mall. Dixit says the Ortegas are hefty but still elegant, noting their thick sole is made of crepe and cork. While theyre not exactly lightweight, theyre also not like truck wheels either, according to her. Elizabeth Tamkin, a market editor at Repeller, also likes the Ortegas in black, agreeing that they are great for, as she puts it, clunking around in. She adds that, with them on, youll have warm feet and be two-inches taller. Aldridge, meanwhile, is a fan of Eytyss less expensive Nikita boots, saying, I love any boots with monstrous proportions, so these clunky Chelsea boots caught my eye immediately. The Nikitas, she adds, have a metal bumper on the toe that sets the tone. Dr. Martens Black 2976 Quad Platform Chelsea Boots $180 If youre looking for an even less expensive way to dip your toes into the world of platform Chelsea boots, these from Dr. Martens arguably the favorite brand among our experts for always cool, never-go-wrong Chelseas are one of your best bets. Tamkin told us about them, saying that she already owns some patent leather Docs but is hoping to upgrade to this elevated pair for the many wet days ahead. Theyre basically identical to the classic 2976 Docs near the top of the list, but have a thick 1.5-inch platform and a 2-inch heel. $180 at Urban Outfitters Buy $180 at Nordstrom Buy Stuart Weitzman Presley Ultralift Bootie $650 $650 These Stuart Weitzman boots combine the added shaft height and heel height that Bee Stuart loves. They hit at the mid-calf and are about two inches off the ground, but instead of a separate heel, its a platform. I love the idea of having added height and a heel, but having the comfortability of the platform as platform shoes are notoriously comfortable, says Stuart. You get the heel and height without the discomfort. If you have an odd foot, this might be a good option for you. It comes in medium, narrow, and wide widths and goes up to a size 12. $650 at Stuart Weitzman Buy H&M Platform Chelsea-style Boots $50 These H&M boots are less than 10 percent of the cost of those above but have a similar look. While they arent real leather and dont go as high up on the leg, they have a similar silhouette, elastic gusset, and chunky lug sole. These offer slightly more lift at 2.5 inches compared to the Stuart Weitzman two-inch heel. Personally, I love a Chelsea boot with more height because it makes any outfit look more elevated, says blogger and TikToker Nana Castro. Even more than the platform, she likes that they arent like the traditional Chelsea boot and these can be styled more casually but also still be dressed up. Castro says she found these boots to be very comfortable and would style them with another fall trend an oversize mens button-up with a sweater vest but the options are pretty endless. What I love about these boots is how versatile they are and that you can reuse them with practically any outfit. $50 at H&M Buy No.6 Pull On Crepe Sole Boot in Nero $360 $360 I love No. 6 shoes, but I am NOT a clog person, says Reeds of the brand synonymous with the clogs worn by a certain subset of cool women. But the rest of their stuff uses quality materials, in shapes that are interesting enough, but stay relevant in subsequent years. Thats why she likes these clunkier workhorse pull-on boots with a thicker sole and heel, noting that theyre good for clomping around in a wintry mix. [Editors note: These boots are currently sold out, but you can join the waitlist to get an email notification when theyre back in stock.] $360 at No. 6 Buy Churchs Shirley 55 Polished Fume Heeled Boot $995 If you want a Chelsea boot with a an even chunkier heel, art director Madelynn Furlong recommends this style from British heritage brand Churchs that has a glossy finish and a slightly pointed toe. In recommending them, Furlong told us that Celine once made the platonic ideal of the Chelsea boot and these are the closest dupe shes found for the now-discontinued Celine pair that she loves. $995 at Church's Buy Bottega Veneta Black The Lean Chelsea Boots $1,450 Another fully heeled Chelsea boot is this splurge-worthy pair from Bottega Veneta, a favorite designer among our cool people. If the lug sole is a bit much for you, this provides a much cleaner look. I love a chunky Chelsea, but sometimes a sleeker alternative is exactly what I need to quickly polish up a look while Im halfway out the door, says Taylor Tomasi Hill, creative and fashion director at The Yes. The angular heel and square toe on these give off a subtle western vibe (for obvious reasons that I love) that you can easily style back to just about anything. Youre getting just over two inches of lift here, and the layered outsole adds even more dramatic dimension. If youre looking for even more height, Bottega makes a 3.5-inch version as well. $1,450 at SSENSE Buy $1,450 at The YES Buy Best statement Chelsea boots For those who want an even more unique pair of Chelseas, our cool women told us about some white and embellished styles that command even more attention. Dixit owns these Labucq Chelsea boots in white. (The closest color to white they come in now is cream.) They have a rugged Vibram sole, making them great for wintry weather. I have very wide feet and very high arches, so I like a chunky boot that I can stomp on gross, wet, icy pavement with, she says. While theyll inevitably get dirty because of their color, she says theyre very easy to wipe clean. Tamkin is a fan of Labucqs Suba boots, too (she likes them in black). Like Furlong, Tamkin says these remind her of old Celine, noting that their chunky sole makes the boots perfect for wet slippery leaves. Free People Carmel Chelsea Boots $168 While Stuart loves the timeless look of a black Chelsea boot, the Carmel Chelsea boots from Free People are a gorgeous green, which is why I like them so much, she says. This green instantly makes me think of camo print and hiking, which are fall favorites. They have a chunky textured sole but resemble more of a classic Chelsea boot than the lug-sole style does if traditional is more your thing. Classic doesnt mean boring, though; it just adds to their versatility. They are the perfect ankle length, which complements all jeans and trouser-type pants, Stuart says. $168 at Free People Buy Bottega Veneta Tire $1,200 While the green above definitely makes a statement, its still pretty neutral. If you really want something that pops, these Bottega boots come in over ten super-saturated colors. Most of the boot is black, popping against the colored sole, which is what caught the eye of fashion designer Elle B. Mambetov of Elle B. Zhou. Being Muslim and being in modest fashion, one thing that I look for is ways to still express my love of fashion and my aesthetic through what Im wearing, she says. Sometimes people think Muslims just dress really plain, but I love to have colors popping out everywhere. Shes not even a fan of flat boots typically, but the peach and green versions of this one were enough to sell her. These really drew me in because theyre fun and funky, Mambetov says. Staying true to her style, she says she would find a way to dress it up: I would probably do a tool dress or something like that to have a little bit of fun and balance it out. $1,200 at Bottega Veneta Buy get the strategist newsletter Actually good deals, smart shopping advice, and exclusive discounts. Email This site is protected by reCAPTCHA and the Google Privacy Policy and Terms of Service apply. Terms & Privacy Notice By submitting your email, you agree to our Terms and Privacy Notice and to receive email correspondence from us. The Strategist is designed to surface the most useful, expert recommendations for things to buy across the vast e-commerce landscape. Some of our latest conquests include the best acne treatments, rolling luggage, pillows for side sleepers, natural anxiety remedies, and bath towels. We update links when possible, but note that deals can expire and all prices are subject to change. Every editorial product is independently selected. If you buy something through our links, New York may earn an affiliate commission. Saudi Arabia's chief prosecutor will visit Istanbul on Sunday for talks with Turkish authorities as part of the investigation into the murder of journalist Jamal Khashoggi, Turkey's president said Friday. "They (the Saudis) are sending the chief prosecutor on Sunday to Turkey," President Recep Tayyip Erdogan said, adding that Ankara had more evidence on the killing. (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) The on Friday grilled the Chief Financial Officer (CFO) and internal auditors of over diversion of home buyers' money and ordered that company's CMD as also its two other directors would remain under police surveillance at a hotel in Noida. The top court zeroed in on 23 "dummy companies", which the Group claimed to be created as special purpose vehicles (SPVs), and sought their details of incorporation and bank statements. It asked to handover all the laptops, computers and hard-drives used by the company since 2008 to the forensic auditors appointed by the court to audit the affairs of the embattled real-estate company. A bench of Justices Arun Mishra and U U Lalit, grilled CFO Chander Wadhwa, who earlier claimed to have had "memory failure" during questioning by the forensic auditors. It also asked the company's two internal auditors, Anil Mittal and Ravi Kapoor, to handover all the documents related to the Group, warning them of jail term for non-compliance. The court, directed the banks which have accounts of to release the statements of the 2008-2018 period, to be handed over to the forensic auditors in three days by the company. It directed the police to seize the documents related to group from the internal auditors of Amrapali Group in three days and hand them over to the two forensic auditors. "We request the police to collect the documents from Dhavan and Company and Anil Mittal and Company (internal auditors). In case the documents are not handed over to the police, this will be viewed very seriously and punishment will be imposed," the bench said in its order. At the outset, forensic auditor Pawan Kumar Aggarwal told the court that they have found diversion of money collected from by some of the group firms, and some shell were also created for this purpose. The top court, terming it as "sorry state of affairs", sought details of incorporation, financial details, including bank accounts of four -- GauriSuta Infrastructures Pvt Ltd, Mannat Buildcraft Pvt Ltd, Vidhyashree Buildcon Pvt Ltd and Jhamb Finance and Leasing Private Limited -- where around Rs 242.38 crore was diverted by the Group company. It noted that directors of GauriSuta Infrastructures, which was given an advance of Rs 90 crore, were Ashish Jain and Vivek Mittal, a nephew of the company's auditor Anil Mittal. With regard to company's CFO, the bench granted him one last opportunity to cooperate with the forensic auditors and come out clean and warned him of sending him to jail on the ground of professional misconduct. When the bench questioned Wadhwa, he revealed that he was a director in Amrapali Developer, a United Kingdom based company and in one Delhi based company. He also disclosed to the bench that his son Amit Wadhwa was also a director in a company associated with the Amrapali Group. The bench asked him to furnish the details of his salary, benefits he had obtained from the Amrapali Group and in how many company he is a directors and bank details. The court also pulled up the two internal auditors for overlooking the 'shady transactions' of the company and said it was not a fault but a "deliberate fraud" committed by not mentioning the diversion of funds in the audit report of the company. Senior advocate Geeta Luthra, appearing for Amrapali Group, sought relief for the directors including the Chief Managing Director Anil Sharma saying that since collating of documents has been completed, they should be now allowed to go home from the hotel. "No relief can be granted to them till all the documents are received to the satisfaction of forensic auditors. If their is non-compliance of court's order, we may send them to appropriate place. They are currently living in an honourable place in a hotel," the bench observed. Anil Sharma and two directors Shiv Priya and Ajay Kumar were earlier directed by the court to be kept in police surveillance round the clock and in the night they were to be taken to a hotel in Noida. Advocate M L Lahoty, appearing for said that company has deliberately not disclosed the names of all the directors as directed by the court and total of 86 names were given instead of 102 names. He said that names of four directors which include two daughters, wife and brother-in-law of Anil Sharma, were deliberately not given by the company. Earlier, the apex court had said that the Group has played a "big fraud" by diverting money collected from to other firms and the "big racket" behind this has to be unearthed. The top court had earlier fixed a 15-day limit for the forensic auditors to collect, collate and catalogue the documents from 2008 till now with regard to the 46 companies of the group from the nine properties situated in Noida, Greater Noida of Delhi-NCR and Rajgir and Buxar in Bihar. It had also initiated contempt proceedings against the group's Chairman and Managing Director (CMD) Anil Kumar Sharma and its directors Shiv Priya and Ajay Kumar for prima facie violating court's order and thwarting the course of justice. The court is seized of a batch of petitions filed by home buyers who are seeking possession of around 42,000 flats booked in projects of the Amrapali group. The Supreme Court Friday sought a response from the CBI, the CVC and the Centre on agency Director Alok Kumar Verma's plea challenging the government's decision to divest him of his duties and send him on leave. The apex court directed that interim CBI chief M Nageswara Rao shall not take any major policy decisions. Decisions taken by him since October 23 till date shall not be implemented, it said. All decisions taken by Rao shall be placed before the apex court in a sealed cover. The top court said former Supreme Court judge A K Patnaik will oversee a Central Vigilance Commission (CVC) inquiry into the allegations and counter allegations and the report has to be placed before it within two weeks. A bench headed by Chief Justice Ranjan Gogoi posted the next date of hearing on November 12. The bench, also comprising Justices S K Kaul and K M Joseph, issued notices on the petition filed by an NGO, Common Cause, which has sought a Special Investigation Team (SIT) probe against the CBI officers. CBI's Special Director Rakesh Asthana has also been named as one of the respondents in the NGO's petition. Verma and Asthana have made allegations of corruption against each other. During the brief hearing Friday, senior advocate F S Nariman advanced arguments on behalf of the CBI chief. He submitted that the CBI director was appointed with the approval of a selection panel having the Prime Minister, the Leader of Opposition and the Chief Justice of India. Nariman referred to the CVC and Centre's orders divesting Verma of his duty. He also cited the Vineet Narain judgment to support Verma's pleas. In the beginning, the apex court said the CVC inquiry on allegations and counter-allegations should be completed in 10 days under the supervision of this court. CVC submitted that 10 days for inquiry was not sufficient as it has to look into several documents. It said for the time being, no monitoring by anyone else should be allowed. The bench granted the CVC two weeks to conclude its probe. Verma has also sought a stay of the Centre's order asking him to proceed on leave and giving the interim charge of his post to Rao, a 1986 batch Odisha-cadre IPS officer. (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) The Supreme Court Friday set a two-week deadline for the Central Vigilance Commission (CVC) to complete its probe against CBI chief Alok Verma, who along with Special Director Rakesh Asthana was divested of duties and sent on leave following their bitter feud, and appointed a former apex court judge to monitor the inquiry. The direction by the top court that was welcomed by both the government and the opposition Congress came amid nationwide protests outside the CBI offices by Congress leaders led by party chief Rahul Gandhi against the order of the Government to strip Verma of his powers and sending him on leave. The Congress demanded "reinstatement" of Verma. Gandhi courted arrest after leading a protest of party workers outside the CBI headquarters in the national capital and was taken to nearby Lodhi Colony police station where he was detained for 30 minutes along with other party leaders before they were let off. Finance Minister Arun Jaitley said the apex court order was a "positive development." The court also observed it did not want the CBI issue before the court to linger on. "This is not in the interest of the country," it said. The internal crisis in the CBI was unprecedented in the 55-year history of the country's premier probe agency. The court made it clear the supervision of the probe by a former supreme court judge was a "one-time exception" given the "peculiar facts" of the case and does not cast reflection on any authority of the government. The bench headed by Chief Justice Ranjan Gogoi while directing that the CVC probe into the allegations made in the August 24 note/letter of the Cabinet Secretary with regard to Verma be conducted under the supervision of Justice(retd) A K Patnaik also barred IPS officer M Nageswara Rao from taking any policy decisions or any major decision. Rao was given interim charge of looking after the duties of the CBI Director. "We make it clear that entrustment of supervision of on-going enquiry by the CVC to a former judge of this court is a one-time exception which has been felt necessary by this court in the peculiar facts of this case and should not be understood to be casting any reflection on any authority of the Government of India," said the bench, also comprising Justices S K Kaul and K M Joseph. The CVC has the superintendent authority above the Central Bureau of Investigation(CBI). It further said that a list of all the decisions taken by Rao between October 23 and up to this hour including decisions with regard to transfer of investigations, change of investigating officer(s) etc will be furnished to the court in a sealed cover on or before November 12--the next date of hearing-- after which it would pass appropriate orders. Shortly after taking charge on the intervening night of Tuesday and Wednesday earlier this week, Rao effected transfers of 13 officers with most of them being considered close to Verma. The court made it clear that from now on Rao, who is a Joint Director of CBI, would only perform the routine tasks that are essential to keep the CBI functional. During the hearing, the court at first remarked that decisions taken by Rao since October 23 are not to be implemented but later it ordered that it would decide on that aspect only after perusing the decisions taken by him. The bench sought responses from the Centre and CVC on the plea of Verma who has also sought a stay on the Centre's order giving interim charge of his post to Rao. However, this prayer was not raised during the hearing. "The enquiry in respect of the allegations made in the note/letter of the Cabinet Secretary dated August 24, 2018 as regards the present Director, Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) Alok Verma shall be completed by the Central Vigilance Commission (CVC) within a period of two weeks from today," the bench noted in its order. Asthana has also moved the Supreme Court with a separate petition in the matter. Solicitor General Tushar Mehta, appearing for the CVC, said the commission was under the process of conducting inquiry and keeping in view the large number of documents involved, 10 days time would not be sufficient to complete the inquiry. Later, the court granted two weeks to the CVC to complete the inquiry. Senior advocate Fali S Nariman, appearing for Verma, said the CBI director was appointed for a two-year tenure with the approval of a selection panel comprising the Prime Minister, the Leader of Opposition and the Chief Justice of India. "The question is whether the tenure could be breached at any time?," Nariman asked. Gandhi repeated the allegations against the Modi government over the Rafale jet deal. He alleged that the action against Verma was linked to what it called his keenness to probe the jet contract, a charge firmly rejected by the government. Congress chief spokesperson Randeep Surjewala while hailing the court order said truth prevails in Supreme Court. Jaitley said that what has happened in the Supreme Court today is that it has further strengthened the fairness criteria. "They have fixed a time limit that this must be over in two weeks which is a positive development and in order to ensure that the highest standards of fairness are maintained even in the inquiries, they have appointed a retired judge as an oversight judge to ensure that the CVC inquiry is absolutely fair," he told reporters. (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) The Aam Aadmi Party welcomed the Supreme Court's directions in connection with the turmoil in the CBI Friday, claiming it had effectively checked the government's attempts to dismantle constitutional institutions. AAP convener and Delhi Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal said the "intervention" by the apex court over the turmoil at the CBI would expectedly uphold the institutional integrity of the investigating agency. "Welcome intervention by the hon'ble Supreme Court of India in the CBI matter," he tweeted. "In the interests of the nation, hope that institutional integrity of the CBI will be upheld and powers that be will understand that their illegal acts will not go unchallenged," he said. Senior AAP leader Sanjay Singh claimed the court's direction for supervision by a retired Supreme Court judge of a CVC probe against CBI director Alok Verma will check any plans to frame him. "The Supreme Court order today has effectively checked the Narendra Modi-led government from dismantling constitutional institutions in the country," he told reporters. The Rajya Sabha MP also alleged that Verma was removed "hurriedly" as he was supervising sensitive cases which "troubled" the government. An important thing is that the court did not extend any relief to CBI Special Director Rakesh Asthana, he said. "The government removed Verma in a hurry in order to save Rafale and Rakesh (Asthana)," he alleged. There were no immediate reaction of the ruling BJP on Singh's allegations. Singh who was slapped with a Rs 5000-crore defamation case by Anil Ambani's companies over his allegations regarding the Rafale deal, reiterated his charge that the fighter jet deal was a "scam". He alleged that a twelve-day-old company was made offset partner in "violation" of procurement policy norms. Singh also claimed that he along with other Rajya Sabha AAP MPs ND Gupta and Sushil Gupta, had lodged a complaint in connection with the deal in March this year by meeting the the CBI director and the CVC, and an investigation was likely. Ambani has been consistently denying the allegations about his company in connection with Rafale deal and has sued several politicians and media houses over the issue. (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) Markets regulator Sebi Friday imposed a penalty of Rs 5 lakh on debenture trustee Vistra ITCL India (formerly known as IL&FS Trust Company) for lapses in a fund raising case relating to Pincon group firm LRN Finance. In April 2016, Hongkong-based Vistra Group had acquired IL&FS Trust Company Ltd (ITCL), a subsidiary of IL&FS Group. The regulator in an order said, ITCL was appointed as debenture trustee for non-convertible debentures (NCDs) issued by the LRN and Rs 27 crore was raised from 4,178 investors in 2012 in a private placement. A debenture trustee, in market parlance, is a person or entity that serves as the holder of debenture stock for the benefit of another party. Debenture is a debt instrument that is not secured by physical assets or collateral. Sebi noted from the records that the LRN issued debentures all over the country and there is nothing demonstrated by the LRN or ITCL to substantiate that the issue was a private placement and invitation for subscription was made only to specific/predetermined persons. Besides, LRN did not prove that its offer was not open for subscription to public at large. On the contrary, ITCL on its own submission has mentioned that there was an advertisement on the website of LRN wherein it was seeking public subscription for fund raising and that too after the closure of the issue, regulator said. When it came to its notice that LRN was soliciting funds from general public to subscribe for NCDs, "ITCL did not take immediate step to stop such fund raising and bring to the notice of Sebi and other regulators," the market watchdog said. "ITCL as a debenture trustee failed to make efforts to protect the interest of debenture holders and fulfil its obligations in a prompt, ethical and professional manner. I also note that ITCL had failed to maintain high standards of integrity, dignity and fairness in the conduct of the business...," Sebi's Adjudicating officer Sahil Malik said. Accordingly, a fine of Rs 5 lakh was imposed on ITCL. In a separate order, Systematix Corporate Services settled a case with regulator Sebi regarding disclosure lapses after it paid Rs 5 lakh towards settlement charges. The entity had filed applications to settle the "proposed adjudication proceedings" for the delayed compliance of disclosure norms as required under SAST (Substantial Acquisition of Shares and Takeover) Regulations. (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) Markets regulator Sebi will auction as many as five properties of Aspen Projects India Ltd next month at a reserve price totalling over Rs 67 lakh. The move is part of an effort by Sebi to recover money that the Kolkata-based company had illegally mobilised from people. The auction of these land parcels, located in West Bengal, will be conducted on November 27, the Securities and Exchange Board of India (Sebi) said in a notice Friday. The reserve price of these properties amounts to Rs 67.24 lakh. Sebi has invited "bids for sale of properties in the Recovery proceedings against Aspen Projects and its promoters/directors, through e-auction platform". It has engaged SBI Capital Markets to assist it for sale of these properties. The interested candidates can inspect the properties on November 12, Sebi said, adding that bidders should make their own independent enquiries regarding the encumbrances, title of properties put on auction and claims, among others, prior to submitting their bids. After finding the company and its directors had illegally raising funds from the public, the watchdog in August, 2015 had directed them to refund the money. The regulator has has been auctioning the assets of those companies, which had illegally raised money from investors. (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) Pakistan's deposed prime minister Nawaz Sharif's lawyers on Friday urged an accountability court to take notice of Information Minister Fawad Chaudhry's statement claiming the PML-N party supremo will "definitely go to prison again". A top Pakistani court last month suspended the jail sentences of Sharif, his daughter Maryam and son-in-law Captain (retd) Mohammad Safdar in the Avenfield corruption case, one of the three corruption cases faced by the three-time prime minister. The trio were released from a jail following the court order. Sharif's lawyers Khawaja Haris and Zubair Khalid asked Accountability Judge Arshad Malik to take cognizance of Chaudhry's remarks on the Hill Metal Establishment case, in which the minister had stated that the former premier would go to prison again, Dawn newspaper reported. Haris said that the court should take action against "the minister giving statements about you [the court] and Nawaz Sharif's arrest. This falls in your jurisdiction and you should take action against it." "If action is not taken against this, it would create problems for the court," he said. To this, Judge Malik said: "Was Chaudhry's statement general or was it a statement specifically targeting the court?" He also told Haris and Khalid to file a written petition in court and attach a clipping of the report that contains the reported statement of Chaudhry. Speaking on Geo on Thursday, Chaudhry had said that everyone knows the facts of the Hill Metal Establishment case and that Sharif, chief of the Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz party, will "definitely go to prison again". After Haris and Khalid's remarks in court were reported, Chaudhry tweeted from his official account and said: "Had Khawaja Haris is a senior lawyer, and had he not taken millions in fees [from Nawaz Sharif's family] even he would have admitted that Nawaz Sharif should be punished. It is unfortunate that such fool-proof cases take years to be completed," the minister said. He added: "The Opposition neither has any leadership nor any vision, they are only playing politics to save their money and more than fifty of them will go to jail." On the orders of the Supreme Court, the National Accountability Bureau (NAB) filed three corruption cases against the 68-year-old Sharif. Apart from the Avenfield case, the Sharifs face jail terms if they are convicted in two more corruption cases related to the Al-Azizia and the Flagship Investment cases. The cases against the family stemmed from the Panama Papers case in April 2016. (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) The Congress Friday alleged that the BJP was keeping the people of Goa in dark about the health of Chief Minister Manohar Parrikar and sought "proof" that he is fit and fine. Talking to reporters here, Goa Congress spokesman Jitendra Deshprabhu said the ruling party has been repeatedly telling "lies" that the CM will soon join office. Deshprabhu said if needed his party will approach court, seeking directions to the government to release a health bulletin on Parrikar. The 62-year-old chief minister is suffering from a pancreatic ailment and is currently recuperating at his private residence near here after being discharged nearly two weeks ago from the All India Institute of Medical Sciences (AIIMS) in Delhi where he was admitted for a month. "Goa BJP chief Vinay Tendulkar has now said that he (Parrikar) will resume office in November. Since the month of March, the BJP has been saying he will resume office soon," Deshprabhu said. "What does this mean? Is he currently on leave or government has kept his post in abeyance for sometime?" he asked. The Congress leader said doctors from the state-run Goa Medical College and Hospital (GMCH) were regularly monitoring the health condition of Parrikar. "But despite this, people are kept in darkness about his health," said the former MLA from Pernem constituency. Health Minister Vishwajit Rane had Thursday declined to divulge details about the CM's medical condition, saying, "It is for the family members of Parrikar to speak about his health." Last week, the Congress sought an appointment to meet Parrikar in person or through video-conferencing. The Congress spokesman said the Bharatiya Janata Party-led government in the state should show "proof" through video-conferencing that the CM was fit and fine. "Everyone knows how the CM was discharged from the AIIMS. He was taken out on a stretcher on October 14 and after that no one knows what has happened," Deshprabhu said. "Don't misguide public... People have the right to know about the health condition of their CM," he added. The Congress spokesman said it was high time that the BJP made public details about Parrikar's health. "If required, the Congress will go to court pleading for directions to the government to release a health bulletin (on Parrikar)," Deshprabhu said. The GMCH has set up a makeshift facility at Parrikar's private residence to monitor his health and provide treatment. (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) Scientists have found evidence for a large number of double supermassive black holes, likely precursors of gigantic black hole merging events. The research, published in the journal Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society, confirms the current understanding of cosmological evolution -- that galaxies and their associated black holes merge over time, forming bigger and bigger galaxies and black holes. Astronomers from the University of Hertfordshire in the UK and colleagues looked at radio maps of powerful jet sources and found signs that would usually be present when looking at black holes that are closely orbiting each other. Before black holes merge they form a binary black hole, where the two black holes orbit around each other. Gravitational wave telescopes have been able to find evidence of the merging of smaller black holes since 2015, by measuring the strong bursts of gravitational waves that are emitted when binary black holes merge. However, current technology cannot be used to demonstrate the presence of supermassive binary black holes. Supermassive black holes emit powerful jets. When supermassive binary black holes orbit, it causes the jet emanating from the nucleus of a galaxy to periodically change its direction. Astronomers studied the direction that these jets are emitted in, and variances in these directions. They compared the direction of the jets with the one of the radio lobes (that store all the particles that ever went through the jet channels) to demonstrate that this method can be used to indicate the presence of supermassive binary black holes. "We have studied the jets in different conditions for a long time with computer simulations," said Martin Krause from the University of Hertfordshire. "In this first systematic comparison to high-resolution radio maps of the most powerful radio sources, we were astonished to find signatures that were compatible with jet precession in three quarters of the sources," Krause said. The fact that the most powerful jets are associated with binary black holes could have important consequences for the formation of stars in galaxies; stars form from cold gas, jets heat this gas and thus suppress the formation of stars. A jet that always heads in the same direction only heats a limited amount of gas in its vicinity, researchers said. However, jets from binary black holes change direction continuously. they said. They can heat much more gas, suppressing the formation of stars much more efficiently, and thus contributing towards keeping the number of stars in galaxies within the observed limits. (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) The yellow pot, in action. Photo: Courtesy Netflix In our advice column, Ask the Strategist, we take your most burning shopping questions and scour friends, call up experts, and draw from personal experience to answer them. As always, please comment with one of your own were here to help. Question: Where can I get the yellow pot that Samin uses in Salt, Fat, Acid, Heat? I need it! Samin Nosrat is a Berkeley-based chef and writer who wrote a cookbook last year called Salt, Fat, Acid, Heat, in which she broke down each of these four essential elements of cooking. The book was a hit, and won a James Beard Award, and it was developed into a four-part mini-series on Netflix. The show is part travelogue, in the cinematic style of Chefs Table, and part actually useful cooking show, with echos of Julia Child and Alton Brown. And though I drooled over the travel footage from Japan and Mexico and even Berkeley, the scenes of Nosrat in the kitchen are, to me, the heart of Salt, Fat, Acid, Heat because theyre the moments when basic knowledge of ingredients, learned in these far-off places, becomes handy technique that anyone can use in their own kitchens. But Id be lying if I didnt admit that much of my interest in the cooking scenes come from the fact that Nosrats kitchen is beautiful, with butchers blocks on seemingly every surface and a seeming rainbow of enameled cast-iron pots ready to go. Its there in her kitchen that we first spot the yellow pot, in the second episode, Salt. It sits on an open flame, filled with boiling water, into which four speckled brown eggs are gently dropped. It shows up again in that same episode, while boiling kombu for dashi, and makes its last appearance in the fourth episode Heat, when Nosrat makes beans for her friend and illustrator Wendy MacNaughton. A close-up of the yellow pot, from the second episode Salt. The pot looks almost like a precious, design-y thing, with spindly handles that look like they could snap off, but look a little longer, and youll notice that its actually made of enameled cast iron, with chips along the rim that prove its utility and endurance. Its slightly flared body contrasts with more familiar, perfectly round Dutch ovens from French brands Le Creuset or Staub, with their straight up-and-down sides. Its a Kobenstyle casserole pot from Dansk, an American kitchenware brand that was a pioneer of Scandinavian design in postwar America. First introduced in the mid-1950s, these Danish-designed pots eventually faded into obscurity, save for a handful of collectors, but in 2012, Lenox, the company that now owns Dansk, revitalized the brand and started making Kobenstyle cookware again. Dansk Kobenstyle Chili Red Casserole, 4-Quart $165 now 18% off $135 I reached out to Netflix, and a PR representative for the show was able to confirm with Nosrat that the yellow pot is, in fact, a four-quart Dansk Kobenstyle enameled cast-iron casserole. It turns out that Nosrat has gotten enough of these questions about her gear that shes created a shopping guide on her website, featuring most of the items that she uses in the kitchen in the series, and for what its worth, the Kobenstyle Dutch oven is not listed. However, I was pointed to this Amazon listing for the four-quart Kobenstyle casserole pot in red. $135 at Amazon Buy $165 at Bloomingdales Buy And though these Dansk Kobenstyle casserole pots are beautiful, I was on a hunt for a yellow Dansk Kobenstyle casserole pot exactly like Nosrats, not a rainbow of options. So I reached out to Lenox, the current keeper of the Kobenstyle, and it turns out that yellow Kobenstyle pots are not available at the moment. The color hasnt necessarily been discontinued, but the customer-service representative I emailed told me, We have no specific date when we will receive them. Dansk 10 Dutch Oven (No Lid) $40 That means to find a yellow Kobenstyle casserole to match Nosrats, youve got to go vintage. (And when I followed up with her rep, she was able to confirm that this yellow pot is, in fact, vintage, purchased on eBay.) Fortunately, enameled cast iron can last a very long time, and there are plenty of options on Etsy, though some are in slightly better condition than others. This yellow Kobenstyle Dutch oven, for instance, is in pretty good shape, but it is missing the distinctive lid. $40 at Etsy Buy get the strategist newsletter Actually good deals, smart shopping advice, and exclusive discounts. Email This site is protected by reCAPTCHA and the Google Privacy Policy and Terms of Service apply. Terms & Privacy Notice By submitting your email, you agree to our Terms and Privacy Notice and to receive email correspondence from us. The Strategist is designed to surface the most useful, expert recommendations for things to buy across the vast e-commerce landscape. Some of our latest conquests include the best acne treatments, rolling luggage, pillows for side sleepers, natural anxiety remedies, and bath towels. We update links when possible, but note that deals can expire and all prices are subject to change. Every editorial product is independently selected. If you buy something through our links, New York may earn an affiliate commission. Communications Minister Manoj Sinha met European Commission Vice President Andrus Ansip and discussed cooperation in areas of digital communications, digital economy and society, an official statement said Friday. "India and the EU will work together to develop joint plans of action in the agreed areas of cooperation such as future networks and emerging technologies, including 5G, IoT/M2M (Internet of Things, machine-to-machine communication), promoting Research and Development and innovation, network security, spectrum management, enhanced capacity development as well as policy and regulatory requirements among others," the statement said. Elaborating on the meeting between Sinha and Ansip, who is also the European Commissioner for Digital Single Market, the release said both noted that digital communications and technologies are crucial for all spheres of society, business and government. "The development and widespread adoption of new ICT (information and communication technology) services and networks have powerful effects on economic and social development, supporting sustainable growth and competitiveness and contributing to addressing global societal challenges," the release added. Both sides noted the importance of supporting global standards and welcomed the close technical cooperation between the Indian and European telecom standardisation development organisations. The European Union (EU) expressed interest in strengthening cooperation in the area of testing and certification by supporting the visit of Indian government experts to European testing and certification laboratories for telecom equipment, to explore the possibility of India recognising EU certifications. The EU side also discussed about basic custom duties on some ICT products, the statement added. The India-EU cooperation dialogue on digital communications will take place annually through appropriate mechanism within the existing framework of the India-EU Joint Working Group on ICTs which was set up in 2011. "Both sides agreed to hold the next India-EU dialogue on cooperation in the field of Digital Communications in the first half of 2019," the release stated. (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) Deputy Chief Minister Manish Sisodia Friday asked traders to click and send him photos of officials seeking money from them during the festive season for proper action. He also said written orders have been issued to the Department of Trade and Taxes that no raids should be conducted at the offices and business establishments of traders till Diwali. Sisodia said he had received complaints from some traders that a few officials sought money from them in the name of the ruling AAP in Delhi. "We do not need money for elections through raids on traders. Just click photos of such officials asking money from you and send them to me," the Deputy CM said addressing traders during a programme. Asserting that the government will not allow "exploitation" of traders in the name of Trade and Taxes surveys, Sisodia said 110 such surveys have been conducted in the current financial year and only one tax evasion of Rs 72 lakh was detected while there were minor amounts involved in other cases. "We have to collect taxes and stop tax evasion also but we do not want it at the cost of exploitation of traders." Directions have been issued to the department concerned not to conduct raids during the festive season as traders are busy, he said. (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) Special Director Rakesh Asthana, embroiled in an unprecedented feud with CBI Chief Alok Verma, moved the Supreme Court on Friday challenging the Centre's decision to divest him of duties and sending him on leave and claimed that he was a "whistle-blower". In his petition, Asthana has also sought the removal of the CBI director from his post. When a bench comprising Chief Justice Ranjan Gogoi and Justices S K Kaul and K M Joseph was hearing Verma's petition, the counsel appearing for Asthana drew the attention to the plea filed by him. However, the bench said that it cannot grant any hearing on the oral submission as Asthana's petition was not before it. "We cannot hear something which is not before us," the bench said. Senior advocate and former Attorney General Mukul Rohatgi, appearing for Asthana, submitted that the petition has been filed before the Registry and sought that it be listed on October 29. "We will see," the bench said. Rohatgi further said that Asthana has also been made a party in the PIL, filed by NGO 'Common Cause', seeking the court-monitored SIT probe into allegations of corruption against top offcials of the probe agency. Asthana, a 1986-batch Gujarat-cadre IPS officer who had probed the sensational fodder scam cases involving former Bihar chief minisiters Lalu Prasad and Jagnnath Mihsra, has sought setting aside of the October 23 decision of the Department of Personnel and Training (DoPT) to divest him of his power and sending him on leave. The petition, filed through lawyer Amit Anand Tiwari, referred to the sequence of events and said it was Asthana who has acted as whistle-blower by approaching the Central Vigilance Commission (CVC) on August 24, 2019 with the corruption complaint against the CBI Director. While the CBI Director was given opportunities to respond to the complaint before the CVC, Asthana was divested of his office without being granted any opportunity to respond. The Special Director's plea accused the Centre of siding with the corrupt CBI chief and alleged that he has been victimised for his bonafide actions. The action against him cannot be taken on the ground of parity, it added. Asthana had on August 24 had lodged a complaint to the Cabinet Secretary alleging misconduct by CBI Director and the matter was referred to the CVC for further action. The CBI Director, in turn, told the CVC that Asthana was facing probe in six cases of corruption. The probe agency then, on October 15, lodged the FIR with bribery allegations against Asthana, Deputy Superintendent of Police Devender Kumar, Dubai-based investment banker Manoj Prasad and his brother Somesh Prasad. Kumar is in the CBI custody. (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) With the Supreme Court asking the CVC to complete its inquiry against benched CBI chief Alok Verma within two weeks under a retired judge's supervision, a top government source said Friday the directions do not cast any "aspersion" on the vigilance authority. "The Supreme Court has not quashed the orders of the Central Vigilance Commission (CVC) and the central government divesting the powers of Verma and CBI's Special Director Rakesh Asthana and appointment of Nageshwar Rao as interim chief of the investigation agency," the source said. Explaining the order passed by a bench headed by Chief Justice of India Ranjan Gogoi, the source said the supervision of the inquiry by a retired judge of the apex court is without any aspersion on the CVC and it has been done keeping in mind the extraordinary circumstances in this case. "The orders of the CVC and the central government have not been quashed. The power of the CVC to enquire has been upheld. However, time limit of two weeks has been imposed," the source said. The court also did not set aside the appointment of interim Director M Nageshwar Rao, though he has been advised not to take any policy decision and to submit all his decisions to the apex court. "The intention of the central government was to create a conducive atmosphere to enable a fair enquiry into allegations and counter-allegations made by the Director and Special Director of the CBI against each other," the source said. The central government has made interim arrangements for day-to-day working of the CBI and this has also been allowed by the Supreme Court, the source said. The court order followed a plea filed by Verma before the Supreme Court against the government action. Asthana has also filed a separate petition. The court made it clear that from now on Rao, who is a Joint Director of CBI, would only perform routine tasks. During the hearing, the court at first remarked that decisions taken by Rao since October 23 are not be implemented but later it refrained and ordered that it would decide on that aspect only after perusing the decisions taken by him. The bench sought responses from the Centre and CVC on the plea of Verma who has also sought a stay on the Centre's order giving interim charge of his post to Rao. However, this prayer was not raised during the hearing. The bench also dealt with the separate plea by NGO, Common Cause, which has sought a probe by special investigation team against CBI officers including Asthana, and issued notices to the Centre, CBI, CVC, Asthana, Verma and Rao asking them to respond to it by November 12. Senior advocate Fali S Nariman, appearing for Verma, said that the CBI director was appointed for a two year tenure with the approval of a selection panel comprising the Prime Minister, the Leader of Opposition and the Chief Justice of India. (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) US authorities have arrested at least one person in Florida in connection with the series of explosives-laden suspicious packages sent to several present and former high-ranking officials, including former US president Barack Obama, former vice president Joe Biden and former secretary of state Hillary Clinton. Multiple outlets identified the suspect as Cesar Sayoc, 50, and a resident of Florida. The suspect is said to have a criminal history and ties to New York. President Donald Trump said at a White House event that law enforcement agencies have apprehended the suspect and taken him into custody. Since Monday, homemade bombs and other suspected explosive devices have been addressed to Obama, Clinton, Hollywood actor Robert De Niro and a slew of figures disliked by the president's supporters. "It's an incredible job by law enforcement. We've carried out a far-reaching federal, state and local investigation to find the person or persons responsible for these events. These terrorising acts are despicable, and have no place in our country. No place," Trump said. Trump said he has instructed authorities to spare no resource or expense in finding those responsible, and bringing them to swift and certain justice. "And we will prosecute them, him, her -- whoever it may be to the fullest extent of the law," he said. "We must never allow political violence to take root in America -- cannot let it happen, and I'm committed to doing everything in my power as president to stop it, and to stop it now, to stop it now," said the president. Trump said he just concluded a briefing with the Department of Justice following the apprehension of the suspect. He applauded the FBI, Secret Service, the justice department, US Attorney's Office for the Southern District of New York, the NYPD and all law enforcement throughout the country. "These people have worked so hard, and to have done it so quickly. It's looking like a needle in a haystack. How do you do this so quickly? They've done an incredible, incredible job, and I want to congratulate them," he said. "But the bottom line is that Americans must unify, and we must show the world that we are united together in peace and love and harmony as fellow American citizens. There is no country like our country, and every day, we are showing the world just how truly great we are," Trump said. Earlier, Trump tweeted that the bomb scare is having an adverse impact on the electoral prospects of his Republican party ahead of the November 6 mid-term polls. "Republicans are doing so well in early voting, and at the polls, and now this 'Bomb' stuff happens and the momentum greatly slows - not talking Very unfortunate, what is going on. Republicans, go out and vote!" Trump tweeted. (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) External Affairs Minister Sushma Swaraj will travel to Qatar and Kuwait from October 28 to 31 in pursuit of India's objective of enhanced engagement with the Gulf region. She will have engagements in Qatar on October 28 and 29 and Kuwait on October 30 and 31, the Ministry of External Affairs said in a statement. During her visit to Qatar, Swaraj will interact with her counterpart Sheikh Mohammed bin Abdulrahman Al Thani, who is also the Deputy Prime Minister. She will also call on Sheikh Tamim Bin Hamad Al-Thani, Emir of Qatar. During her visit, she will also interact with the Indian community in Doha, the MEA said. India and Qatar share millennia old historic multi-dimensional, relations. The bilateral visit of the Emir of Qatar in March 2015 and Prime Minister of Qatar to India in December 2016 and that of the visit of Prime Minister Narendra Modi to Qatar in June 2016 have further boosted traditionally cordial and close ties between the two countries, the MEA said. Qatar hosts about seven lakh Indians who form the largest expatriate community there. Qatar is a reliable energy partner, supplying more than 50 per cent of India's natural gas imports, it said. India's bilateral trade with Qatar in 2017-18 was USD 9.9 billion, the MEA said. The next leg of the visit would be to Kuwait, where Swaraj will hold a bilateral meeting with her counterpart Sheikh Sabah Al Khalid Al Sabah, Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Foreign Affairs of Kuwait. She will also call on the Emir of Kuwait Sheikh Sabah Al-Ahmad Al-Jaber Al-Sabah and interact with the Indian community. India and Kuwait have close and friendly bilateral relations. Kuwait is a reliable energy supplier to India and hosts about 10 lakh Indians forming the largest expatriate community. India's bilateral trade with Kuwait in 2017-18 was USD 8.5 billion, the MEA said. This will be Swaraj's first visit as External Affairs Minister to both the countries. The visit is in pursuit of India's objective of enhanced engagement with the Gulf region which is in India's extended neighbourhood. It will provide an opportunity to hold in-depth discussions with the political leadership on a wide range of global, regional and bilateral issues and will advance India's growing engagement with these countries in particular and the region in general, the MEA added. (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) Tata Motors is making a bold marketing move to grab more mind and wallet shares of the youth by tapping the 'white-space' of racing cars in association with a Tamil Nadu firm, under which they have launched the 'accessible performance' variants of Tiago and Tigor. Branded as Tiago JTP and Tigor JTP, these performance cars are built at Tata Motors' Sanand plant, with engineering and technical partnership with Jayem Automotives, which has recalibrated the engines to enhance the output and performance, Tata Motors said here Friday. The new cars, bookings for which are open now and deliveries begin next month, come with an introductory price tag of Rs 6.39 lakh for the hatchback Tiago JTP and Rs 7.49 lakh for sedan Tigor JTP (both ex-showroom, New Delhi). In comparison, the top-end Tiago comes at Rs 5.5 lakh and the top model of the Tigor carries a price tag of Rs 6.5 lakh, the company said. In fact, this is a white-space in the domestic automotive market as there is no racing car OEM now as the models available are "aftermarket accessorisation", it added. In March 2017, Tata Motors and the Coimbatore-based Jayem Automotives had formed an equal joint venture called JT Special Vehicles to offer the JTP (Jayem-Tata Performance) brand of performance vehicles in their bid to create a range of accessible racing cars. Mayank Pareek, president, passenger vehicles division, Tata Motors, told PTI that the objective is not to make money immediately or eye volumes. "JTP is not a product programme but more of a marketing programme. We are sure it will lend a huge support to the main Tata Motors brands. What we want is to create a range of accessible race cars, which can be used for daily commute as well, thus the focus on accessibility. "But what we are doing under this JV is offering ready-to-drive performance vehicles unlike the present system of getting it retrofitted and recalibreated by third-parties," he said. Launching the new cars here, Tata Motors managing director and chief executive Guenter Butschek said this is the company's first attempt at decommoditise car purchase by bringing in accessible racing cars. When asked about marketing the cars, Pareek said they have already identified 30 dealerships across the country for sales and marketing. "Jayem is known for its engineering prowess and they will recalibrate the engines, which are 1.2-litre turbocharged new generation Revotron petrol powertrains. Jayem is also known for its phototyping designs and concepts," he said. Asked about the performance car market, Pareek said there is no ready-made market per se and thus no competition to begin with. "But look at the compact SUV space today. A few years ago this was zero. But today, it is as big as 20 per cent of the total car volumes. So, there is a large market to be created. And we hope to do that with JTP and hope the JTP cars also makes a halo effect on the main Tiago and Tigor brands, he said. The Tiago JTP and Tigor JTP are powered with the 1.2 litre turbocharged new generation Revotron petrol engine, which are re-engineered to deliver 114 PS power and 150 Nm torque and will be enabled to drive in multi-dirve mode and can attain 0-100 kmph in flat 10 seconds. JT Special Vehicles chief executive Gubbi Nagbhushan said these cars basically offer three key benefits - sporty exterior and interiors, enhanced engine output and performance; and improved driving dynamics and aural experience. He said noted F1 racer Narain Karthikeyan and national award winning racer J Anand and other racers have been on board from the planning to execution level with him. The cars come with better torque as the powertrain is enhanced, and better suspension and sound with double barrel exhaust giving the special sound. Pareek said customers can book these cars from Friday at select 30 Tata Motors dealerships with a down payment of Rs 11,000 and deliveries from next month. The select dealerships are in Kolkata, Delhi, Gurugram, Chandigarh, Lucknow, Bengaluru, Chennai, Coimbatore, Hyderabad, Pune, Ahmedabad, Mumbai, Kannur, Thrissur, and Kochi. (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) : JT Special Vehicles Private Limited, a joint venture between automobile-maker Tata Motors and city-based Jayem Automotives, unveiled two performance cars here Friday. The Tiago JTP and Tigor JTP would be available at select dealership of Tata Motors early next month and can be booked at Rs 11,000, a press release from the company said. "The JTP range of cars has been designed and engineered to keep the excitement and passion of motoring alive. Customers can enjoy their city drive and experience the thrill of driving these cars," president of Tata Motors (passenger vehicles) Mayank Pareek said in the release. Tiago would be available at Rs 6.39 lakh and the Tigor at Rs 7.49 lakh (ex-showroom New Delhi). "We are excited to launch the first two cars of the JTP range. Targeted at the urban customers who are driving enthusiasts with a hidden streak of adventure, the Tiago and Tigor have been engineered to provide customers with the thrill of driving", chief executive officer of JTSV Gubbi Nagbhushan said in the release. The two cars are powered with 1.2 litre new-generation Revotron petrol engine and are equipped with multi-drive modes - city and sport. (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) : A team from technology giant Google called on Tamil Nadu minister of information technology M Manikandan and government officials at the Secretariat Friday. The meeting follows the minister's visit to the United States to invite Google to take part in the second edition of the global investors meet (GIM) scheduled for January 2019, an official press release here said. The first edition of the meet was held in 2015 when Tamil Nadu signed pacts with companies attracting investment of Rs 2.42 lakh crore. (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) Left-wing activists Arun Ferreira and Vernon Gonsalves, accused of having Maoist links, were taken into custody by Pune police Friday, hours after their bail pleas were rejected by a local court here, an official said. District and Sessions Judge (Special Judge) K D Vadane rejected the bail applications of Ferreira and Gonsalves along with that of Sudha Bharadwaj, observing that the material collected by the police, on the face of it, shows their alleged links with Maoists. Bharadwaj could be taken into custody tomorrow, the official said. All three are already under house arrest but the Pune police was not able to get their custody because of stay ordered by various courts. Following the rejection of their bail pleas, Pune police took Ferreira and Gonsalves into custody. The Pune police had arrested Ferreira, Gonsalves, Bharadwaj and two others -- Telugu poet Varavara Rao and activist Gautam Navlakha -- in August this year in connection with the probe into violence in Koregaon Bhima in Pune on Januuary 1 this year. The police had claimed to have seized emails exchanged between them and top Maoist leaders. Navlakha was later released by the Delhi high court. The Bombay High Court Friday extended interim protection from arrest granted to him till November 1, when his plea seeking guashing of FIR will be heard. District and Sessions Judge Vadane noted that it is not disputed that Bharadwaj is a professor at National Law University, Ferreira a lawyer and cartoonist working for human rights and Vernon a social activist, and they were working for the uplift of the marglialised. "However, under the pretext of doing social work, human rights work, they are doing work for a banned organization (CPI-Maoist) and (were) involved in the activities with intent to threaten unity, integrity, security, sovereignty of India," he said. "At this stage, on the basis of the material collected by the investigation officer, prima facie it reveals that there is a connection of the present accused with the banned organization (CPI-Maoist)," the judge said in Friday's order. "Moreover, the investigation is at a crucial stage," he said. The material collected by the police shows that the alleged crime was not merely about "disturbance of public order", the judge said. "Such anti-national activities throw a challenge to the very integrity and sovereignty of the country and its democratic policies," said the judge. The defence lawyers had argued that all the accused are human rights activists. The judge dismissed the defence's claims about procedural irregularities during the raids on the activists' houses. The court also rejected the defence's argument that right-wing leader Milind Ekbote, accused of instigating the violence at Koregaon Bhima in Pune district on January 1, had been granted bail and so the accused in the present case too should be released. The two cases are different, said the judge. After the bail pleas were rejected, the defence lawyers sought a week's stay on implementation of the order so that they could file an appeal in the High Court, but the judge did not grant a stay. Following this, police took Gonsalves and Ferreira into custody, said assistant commissioner of police Shivaji Pawar, who is the investigating officer. Police alleged that Maoists had supported the Elgar Parishad conclave in Pune on December 31 last year, which led to the violence. The accused were put under house arrest on Supreme Court's orders. (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) Updates about Olive Tree Genealogy website and other FREE genealogy records. Bringing you tutorials, genealogy book and app reviews, genealogy news, genealogy specials and more. Helping you find your family tree and ancestors. A founding member of the Trinamool Congress (TMC) Pankaj Bandyopadhyay passed away at a city hospital on Friday after a prolonged illness, family sources said. Bandyopadhyay, also former leader of the opposition in West Bengal assembly, was 72. He is survived by his wife and a daughter. "He was suffering from old age related ailments for quite sometime," a senior TMC leader said. Bandyopadhyay joined the Congress during late 1960s and became an MLA from Tollygunge constituency in 1972 and 1996. He switched over to the TMC when it was formed in 1998. One of the closest aides of TMC supremo Mamata Banerjee, Bandyopadhyay was elected from the same constituency in 2001. He was the chairman of the party's policy-making body for several years since the inception of the TMC. Bandyopadhyay was elected the leader of the opposition, a post he had held till 2006. However, he retired from active in that year. "Saddened at the passing away of one of Trinamool's founder members, Pankaj (da) Banerjee. My condolences to his family and admirers," West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee said in a tweet. Senior Congress leader Adhir Ranjan Chowdhury also condoled the passing away of Bandyopadhyay. Several TMC leaders went to the hospital to pay their last respects. West Bengal governor Keshari Nath Tripathi expressed his grief at the demise of Bandyopadhyay. (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) US President Donald Trump has imposed new sanctions targeting Lebanese militant group Hezbollah to isolate it from the international financial system, as his administration continues its all-out economic squeeze on the Iranian regime that allegedly backs it. Trump signed the Hezballah International Financing Prevention Amendments Act (HIPAA) of 2018 into law on the 35th anniversary of Hezbollah's 1983 truck bombing of the barracks in Beirut, which killed 241 US service members and 58 French peacekeepers. The legislation ramps up reporting requirements and places further financial and economic sanctions on the group. "The attack was carried out by Hezbollah, which Iran was instrumental in founding earlier to advance its radical agenda and remains its main patron today. And we're doing a big number on Iran today, in case you haven't noticed," Trump said. "Hezbollah has kidnapped, tortured, and murdered American citizens, including in its brutal attack in 1983 on our Marine Barracks in Beirut, Lebanon, which killed 241 American Marines, Sailors, and Soldiers, wounded 128 other American service members, and killed a Lebanese civilian. Another bombing against the French barracks killed 58 French peacekeepers and five Lebanese civilians," White House Press Secretary Sarah Sanders said. The legislation, Sanders said, will further isolate Hezbollah from the international financial system and reduce its funding. These sanctions will target foreign persons and government agencies that knowingly assist or support Hezbollah, and Hezbollah-affiliated networks that engage in drug trafficking or other transnational crime, she said. Trump said over the past year, his administration has levied the highest number of sanctions ever imposed on Hezbollah in a single year, by far. "Just a few moments ago I signed legislation imposing even more hard-hitting sanctions on Hezbollah to further starve them of them of their funds. And they are starving of funds," he said. "We will target, disrupt, and dismantle their operational and financing networks of which they had plenty. They don't have plenty now. And we will never forget what they did to our great Marines in Beirut. We will never forget," the US president said. The US has designated Hezbollah a terrorist organization that also plays a major political role in Lebanon. The bill Trump signed Thursday also expands the list of those who can be sanctioned for doing business with Hezbollah. Iran, Hezbollah's main sponsor, also has been targeted by US sanctions in recent months. Since May of this year when the U.S withdrew from the 2015 nuclear deal with Iran, the US has imposed a number of embargoes against Tehran. In August, the US re-imposed a set of sanctions prohibiting Iran's purchase of US dollars and precious metals, which is part of a larger US measure aimed at cutting the country off from the international financial system. A second round of US sanctions in November will target Iran's energy sector. (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) Having asked for deployment of military on the southern border with Mexico to stop thousands of people from entering the country illegally, US President Donald Trump said Friday that he wants people to come into the US on merit and legally. His statement came amid a caravan of people, estimated to be between 5,000 and 7,000 from three Latin American countries - El Salvador, Guatemala and Honduras, is headed for the US. It also includes some people from South Asia, according to some media reports. "I called up the military, we're not letting them in, they ought to go back now because do we want them to apply and come in legally? Absolutely," Trump said at a White House event. While the Caravan of illegal immigrants are moving towards the US, Trump said "millions of people right now are waiting and they've been working this process for in some cases 10 years". He asserted that his administration will not allow illegal immigrants to come in the country. "Not going to happen, it's not going to happen. "We also want people to come in on merit. We need people to help us with all the companies that are moving back to the United States. We have tremendous amounts of companies moving back in. We want people to come in on merit, not people that come in and have no chance of ever loving our country, loving our people," The President said. Trump said he wants people to come in and help US with those companies. "Because... we have the lowest employment rate we've had in 50 years, we want to be able to get great people to help those countries. We have tremendous opportunities, tremendous, big, powerful, beautiful companies moving in and coming back," he said. Trump said illegal immigration has been especially harmful to African-American communities and also to Hispanic American communities by depressing wages and replacing workers. "That's been happening, and it's been very unfair," he said. All Americans have the right to have their laws enforced and their borders protected. He alleged that for decades, policies advanced by Democrats have eliminated opportunity and wiped out good paying jobs and even great paying jobs for the black community. "Their policies are absolutely adverse to the black community," Trump added. (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) The Defence Ministry was Friday left red faced after its spokesperson "inadvertently" posted a tweet, criticising misuse of privileges by military officials, while responding to a comment by former Navy Chief Admiral (retd) Arun Prakash. As the tweet by Principal Spokesperson Swaranashree Rao Rajashekar drew angry reactions from military veterans, she deleted it saying, "The tweet was inadvertently done and the same is deeply regretted please." Earlier, Admiral Prakash retweeted a photograph showing a military flag on the bonnet of an official car of the Internal Financial Adviser to the Western Command of the Army. "Even if misuse of an Army Command's insignia by a civilian is not a cognizable offence, the person needs to be reprimanded by the GOC in C whose 'Financial Adviser' he is," Prakash tweeted. Responding to the former Navy Chief's comments, Rajashekar, tweeted, "What about misuse of jawans in your residence during an officer's tenure sir? And how about children being picked up and dropped to school in Fauji (military) gaadis (vehicles)? Not to forget Madam's shopping expedition on government vehicles. And endless parties...who pays for that?". Later, Rajashekar, an official from the Defence Accounts Service, deleted the tweet. Her response to 72-year-old Admiral Prakash, a war hero who was chief of Navy Staff between July 2004 and October 2006, drew sharp reactions from military veterans. Some of them even said the principal spokesperson's comments reflected the approach of the bureaucracy towards the armed forces. In a tweet, Retired Major General Harsha Kakar told Defence Minister Nirmala Sitharaman that the spokesperson's comments mirrored true colours of the ministry towards the three services. "Is this inadvertent. It shows the true colours of your MoD Madam. You are meant to protect the military, not insult it. Keeping this spokesperson is an insult to India, its armed forces and their sacrifices. It shows no respect for senior veterans. Your spokesperson is a disaster," he said. Retired Air Vice Marshal Manmohan Bahadur called the tweet to the former Navy chief by Rajashekar as "shameful". BJP MP Rajeev Chandrasekhar also took strong exception to the spokesperson's comments and demanded an inquiry into the matter. "Dear @DefenceMinIndia @DrSubhashMoS - who is this 'Defence spokesperson' who reprsnts MoD ie govt n talks like this. This is unacceptable conduct n I wud rqst an enquiry into this. This is unconscionable, disrespectful n arrogance tht behooves a response. @PMOIndia (sic)" he tweeted. Amid angry reactions by veterans, Admiral Prakash said there should be sober reflection on state of civil military relationship. "Rather than getting excited over indiscreet tweet of @SpokespersonMoD I would suggest sober reflection; (a) by MoD on state of civil-mil relations & (b) by Military Leadership on the aspersions cast by MoD (IDAS?) civil-servant on personal conduct of Service officers," he said. (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) Two people were killed and six others seriously injured in separate accidents here, police said on Friday. A resident of Fatehpur, Ravi (28), was killed on the spot and five others sustained serious injuries on Thursday night as three trucks collided near Durgapur crossing on Allahabad-Sultanpur National Highway, Piparpur police station SHO Shyam Sundar said. The injured were rushed to a hospital in Pratapgarh, he said. In the second accident, a man was killed and a woman seriously injured after the motorcycle they were riding was hit by a speeding truck near Amethi bypass on Thursday night, the police said. Mukesh Verma (25), who hailed from Gaderi village, succumbed to injuries. His cousin, Nisha Verma, who was riding pillion, is undergoing treatment at a hospital, Amethi police station SHO Rajesh Kumar Singh said. The truck driver fled from the spot after the accident and an investigation is underway, he said. (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) A high-level delegation of the UAE arrived in Pakistan on Friday to explore investment opportunities in the cash-strapped country. The delegation is headed by Dr Sultan Aljaber, Minister of State and CEO of Abu Dhabi National Oil Company (ADNOC), the Foreign Office (FO) said. It comprises CEOs and senior officials of major companies including Mobadla Petroleum, ADIA (Sovereign Wealth Funds), Etisalat, DP World, Dubai Investment Authority, Emaar Company, Aldahra Agriculture and Abu Dhabi Fund for Development. The visit follows Prime Minister Imran Khan's official visit to Abu Dhabi in September and his understanding with Crown Prince Muhammad Bin Zayed Al Nahyan "to forge closer economic, trade and investment relations between the two countries in all areas of common interest", the FO said. Pakistan hoped that the UAE will also announce an assistance package like Saudi Arabia and investment in various projects, officials sources said. The delegation met foreign minister Shah Mehmood Qureshi who said that the visit will increase the UAE's footprint in a number of sectors in Pakistan. Qureshi told media that he discussed about Pakistan's requirement of "oil on deferred payment" on the pattern of recent agreement with Saudi Arabia. "We want to benefit from the experience of the UAE in water desalination as they have immense experience in this sector," said the minister. The Prime Minister's Office said the delegation called on Khan who said the composition and important membership of this delegation reflected the UAE's seriousness about strengthening the historic relations with Pakistan. "The delegation conveys clear directions of Mohamed bin Zayed to elevate the UAE-Pakistan relationship to a long term strategic comprehensive economic partnership," the PMO said. Minister of State Dr Al Jaber conveyed the UAE's desire to elevate the relationship to a long term strategic economic partnership. (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) A micro-brewery in northern England on Friday confirmed that it was withdrawing 'Ganesh' as the brand name of a special beer it had brewed a few months ago. Wishbone Brewery Limited, based in West Yorkshire, had branded a lime, coriander, grape and camomile flavoured beer as 'Ganesh' to encapsulate its "Indian flavour profile" for a beer festival in Manchester last month. However, US-based president of the Universal Society of Hinduism, Rajan Zed, was among people who objected to the use of the Hindu deity's name as a beer brand. "We were completely unaware of the implications. We just used it as a word that represented India and the Indian flavour profile. Our intention was not to cause any offence and we certainly won't be using it," said Adrian Chapman, head brewer at Wishbone Brewery. He explained that the beer had been brewed as a limited run and was never intended to be bottled or canned to be sold widely. "As soon as we were made aware that the name could be seen as cultural appropriation, we looked into it and immediately took the decision that it would not be used in future," he said. Zed had issued a statement against the "highly inappropriate" use of the term 'Ganesh' for an alcoholic beverage. "In Hinduism, Lord Ganesh is worshipped as a god of wisdom and remover of obstacles and is invoked before the beginning of any major undertakingSymbols of any faith, larger or smaller, should not be mishandled," he had said. However, even before his statement earlier this week, the brewery had been alerted to potential objections to the name and it decided not to reuse the branding should a similar flavour beer be brewed in future. The latest beer branding controversy comes weeks after another UK brewery was forced to withdraw its branding of a variety of Indian Pale Ale (IPA) as 'Kalika IPA', alongside an image of the Goddess Kali. Tollgate Brewery, based in the small town of Ashby-de-la-Zouch in the English Midlands, had brewed Kalika IPA for a limited run and soon confirmed that it would not reuse the Hindu goddess-related branding in future. "Kalika is no longer brewed. We have no cask stocks at the brewery. There are no plans to brew it further," a Tollgate Brewery spokesperson said. (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) An eight-day event attracting paragliders from around the world begins Saturday in Himachal Pradesh's Kangra district against the backdrop of the deaths of two flyers this week. The competition for the Indian Open World Paragliding Cup-2018 will be held at Bir Billing, one of the top paragliding destinations in the world and the scene of the two deaths. Singapore's Kok Chang was killed Tuesday and Australia's Sanjay Kumar Ramdas Devarkonda died the next day in paragliding mishaps, an official said. The Singaporean had come to take part in the competition, organised by the Bir Billing Special Area Development Authority (SADA) in collaboration with the state's tourism department. It is not immediately clear if the other victim also was in Bir Billing for the event. Baijnath sub-divisional magistrate Vikas Shukla, who is the event coordinator, said both victims were free-flyers'. The qualified pilots usually free-fly while others paraglide in tandem with qualified licence-holder pilots. He said. Paragliding is an adventurous sport, adventure and accidents go side by side, he said, stressing that the rate of such mishaps was lower than road accidents. He said over 50,000 people, including about 4,000 foreigners, visit the Bir Billing village for paragliding every year. Shukla called the place amid the Dhauladhar range in the Himalayas the world's second-best paragliding site. He defended the decision to go-ahead with the event even after the two isolated accidents. Paragliding around Bir Billing was stopped for a day on Thursday and a session on safety conducted for the Indian Open participants. Shukla said all possible safety measures have been taken for the event. Army helicopters and seven rescue teams will remain on standby during the event, he added. (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) Cambodian film-maker praCh Ly Friday said uninterrupted artistic freedom in his country is still not a reality and people from the creative field are punished if they make anything critical of the government. Ly, who is currently based in the United States and also a well-known rapper, expressed his desire to go back to his home country. "Artistic freedom has improved a little bit since Khmer Rouge days. But it is definitely not in terms of full artistic freedom. I was banned to go back to Cambodia for few years as I had said few things through my music also," Ly said. Addressing a press conference after the India premiere of his latest movie 'In the Life of Music' at the ongoing 2nd Guwahati International Film Festival (GIFF), the musician-film-maker said lot of censorship still exists in Cambodia. "People are exiled and jailed if you do anything critical of the ruler. It is due to power grab at the top. When we have the prime minister for over 30 years, he does not like if anyone criticises him," Ly said. Following the Khmer Rouge period, many people had left Cambodia including him, Ly said. In the four years that the Khmer Rouge ruled Cambodia (1975-79), it was responsible for one of the worst mass killings that claimed the lives of up to two million people. "I am from generation 1.5 (a term used to describe people who arrived in the US as children and adolescents). We were born in Cambodia but raised somewhere else. I was brought up in the US. I am looking forward to go back to Cambodia," Ly said. When asked on a lighter note if he is more popular than Cambodian Prime Minister Hun Sen in his home nation, the film-maker said: "I will say no because I will be in problem otherwise. I do not like politics. I just want to make music and movies. I want to show them to the world". 'In the Life of Music' is an inter-generational tale that explores love, war and a family's relationship to 'Champa Battambang' -- a song made famous by Sinn Sisamouth. In the film, jointly produced by Ly, Neardey Trinh and Caylee So explored three different decades and depicted the lives of people, whose world was inevitably transformed by the emergence of the Khmer Rouge regime. This year, the ASEAN is the focus region of the 2nd GIFF with 14 films from 10 countries of the region are being shown. The segment began with showing of 'In the Life of Music', directed by Caylee So and Sok Visal. The Assam government-owned Jyoti Chitraban (Film Studio) Society is the organiser of the festival, which will be held from October 25 to 31, in association with Dr Bhupen Hazarika Regional Government Film and Television Institute. (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) US Consul General Patti Hoffman and Chief Minister Sarbananda Sonowal on Friday discussed a wide spectrum of issues concerning mutual interests of America and Assam. The duo discussed about mutual interests in the sectors like tourism, education, connectivity and bio-diversity. Hailing Assams prolific tea industry, immense tourism potential and bio-diversity, the US Consul General who called on Sonowal here, said that there are immense investment possibilities in these sectors. Hoffman stated that she would impress upon the US investors to invest in the sectors like tourism and hospitality industry, organic farming, Information Technology etc. where the scope of mutual reciprocity can be used to harness mutual benefits. The US Consul General hailed the state governments role in improving the security scenario in the state and assured to increase mutual reciprocity programme with Assam. Chief Minister Sonowal apprised Hoffman about the State governments ventures in strengthening connectivity and the steps taken by the government to make the state an ideal hub of investment. Referring to the Act East policy pursued by the Union government, Sonowal informed Hoffman that his government has taken series of initiatives to transform Guwahati into a Gateway to ASEAN and BBN countries. Principal Secretary to the Chief Minister Sanjay Lohiya, Principal Secretary to Health and Family Welfare Samir Sinha, Commissioner and Secretary to Transport Ashutosh Agnihotri were present in the interactive meeting. (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) US President Donald Trump has said all sanctions against Iran lifted by the 2015 nuclear deal will be back in "full force" from November 5 and promised more in the future to prevent Tehran from developing the world's deadliest weapons. In May, the Trump administration withdrew the US from the Iranian nuclear deal and reimposed a series of tough sanctions on Iran, citing the Islamic nation's 'malign activities'. While the first phase of sanctions is already in place, the sanctions would come into full force on November 4 and the US expects all countries, including India, to bring down their import of Iranian oil to zero by then or face secondary sanctions. To avoid this, India either needs a waiver from the US or has to bring down the purchase of Iranian oil to zero. "On November 5th, all US sanctions against Iran lifted by the nuclear deal will be back in full force, every sanction that we had on their originally, which would have -- if they would have just left it a little bit longer, would have been so much easier than what we've been through over the last number of years," Trump said at a White House event. His remarks came as he signed new sanctions on Thursday targeting the Iranian-funded Lebanese militant group Hezbollah, which is considered a terrorist organisation by the US. Trump said these sanctions will be followed up with even more sanctions to address the full range of Iran's "malign conduct". "We will not allow the world's leading sponsor of terror to develop the world's deadliest weapons. Will not happen," he said. The US government has made it clear that any country that continues to do business with Iran after November 4 will be blocked from accessing the American banking and financial system. Though India has already reduced its import, it has indicated that it is unlikely to go down to zero given its massive energy needs. India and the US are currently in talks on this issue. (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) The Maharashtra government used the term "drought-like" instead of "scarcity" to describe the situation in 180 talukas of the state as it did not want to "shy away" from the issue, Chief Minister Devendra Fadnavis said. He was speaking Thursday at a farmers' meet organised by Maharashtra Minister of State for Agriculture Sadabhau Khot in Kolhapur district. "Our government is sensitive to the issues of farmers. But why shy away from saying drought when the fact is most parts of the state are reeling under drought-like conditions. So, we changed a government resolution (GR) and declared drought-like situation instead of scarcity in 180 talukas," Fadnavis said. He said the government, after declaring drought-like conditions in these 180 talukas, has begun steps like providing drinking water and waiving off arrears in loans, power bills, educational fees etc. Prioritising work under the Employment Guarantee Scheme (EGS) has also begun in these areas, he said. Lashing out at the Congress, Fadnavis said it cannot digest the fact that his government was doing so much for farmers. (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) Expressing concern over farm populism during elections, Vice President Venkaiah Naidu Friday said crop loan waiver cannot be a permanent solution for problems in the agri sector and a long term plan needs to be put in place to tackle new challenges in the sector. His remarks come a day after the Congress reiterated its promise to waive all farm loans if the party came to power at the Centre in 2019. Naidu also stressed that Parliament, political parties, think-tank Niti Aayog and media should pay more attention to farmers' issues amid the rising challenges of climate change and degradation in view of growing food demand. "We have a clamour to populism to win over people during elections. That is not going to solve the problem (in agriculture sector). We have a clamour for free power. I am not in favour of free power. ...We also have the practice of asking for farm loan waiver. This cannot be a permanent solution," Naidu said at an event. Waiving crop loans for once will not solve the problem as farmers require credit every year. Political parties make promises during elections and some may fulfil it, but it is not a long-term solution, he said. "Are there banks which lend money and never ask for repayment? ...My point is we have to think long term. Loan waiver cannot be a permanent solution. Farmers, scientists and policy makers should think seriously on this matter," he added. On another populist measure of free power supply to farmers, Naidu said, "I am not in favour of free power. Free power means first low power and afterwards no power. No power means free power only. People want assured and quality power for 24X7. That is the need of the hour." The vice president was here at an event to give away the USD 1,00,000 World Agriculture prize -- instituted by private body ICFA -- to renowned farm scientist M S Swaminathan for his outstanding contribution in the field of agriculture. Yesterday, while addressing the All India Kishan Khet Mazdoor Congress' rally, Congress chief spokesperson Randeep Singh Surjewala had said: "If the Congress assumes power at the Centre then our first major work will be to waive farmers' loan. (Party president) Rahul Gandhi has already announced this." Emphasising the need to achieve the target of zero hunger by 2030, Naidu said the farm sector faces "new problems and challenges" in spite of best efforts by the governments in the last several years. "Agriculture needs a big push in India and other parts of the country. It is obvious that concerted and coordinated efforts are needed on number of issues that impact growth of agriculture sector and quality of life of people who depend primarily on this sector," he said. Lauding the contribution of Swaminathan to India's agriculture sector, Commerce Minister Suresh Prabhu said the country has come out of 'ship-to-mouth' situation and now become an exporter of agri-produce. An agri-export policy has been drafted and will soon seek the Cabinet approval, he said, adding that there is a need to make agriculture more economically viable for farmers. Therefore, the focus should be on growing more food in less area and with less water, he added. Kerala Governor Palanisamy Sathasivam, Haryana agriculture minister Om Prakash Dhankar, Indian Council of Agriculture Research Director Genera T Mohapatra were among others present at the event. (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) Vice President M Venkaiah Naidu Friday urged citizens to make the Swachh Bharat Mission a mass movement and be clean not only in body and mind but also in financial matters. Swachh Bharat Mission is not just a government programme or a political motive, he said, adding that every Indian should make it a mass movement. Naidu, who was speaking at the RBS Earth Heroes award ceremony here, also said it is the duty of every Indian to take care of mother earth, nurture it and leave a clean for the coming generations. While keeping oneself clean in body and mind is important, it is also important that one does not amass wealth thorough illegal means, evade taxes and run away from the country, he said. "'Tan' - body should be clean, 'mann' - mind should also be sound and clean....Accumulating black money, waiting for the income tax people to come and raid you, avoiding tax and evading arrest and running away from the country are all the forms of an ill mind," the Vice President said. Referring to Prime Minister Narendra Modi's 'reform, perform and transform' analogy, he said all the countrymen should become equal partners in this transformation. Naidu said earth has sustained life for more than 4.5 billion years and will be able to sustain people for many more millennia if people are careful and not exceedingly greedy. Pankaj Phatarphod, Managing Director and Country Head of Services and India Chairperson, RBS Foundation India, said, "The consequences of climate change and the planet's depleting natural resources are much closer. Solving these grave issues is not a question of legislation alone but of our positive actions. (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) Solar power solutions provider Waaree Energies Friday said it has bagged a contract to set up 60 megawatt (MW) ground mounted solar project in Vietnam. The project, which is being developed in association with a leading utility scale provider, on turnkey basis, will marks Waaree Energies' expansion to South East Asia market, the company said in a statement. Being developed in Khanh Hoa province of the country, the project has been approved by EVN (Vietnam Electricity) for 60 MW and is expected to generate 106,000 units per year, once commissioned, it added. The power generated will be used for feed-in tariff, which will further aid in adoption of solar energy in the country, which has set a target to set up 12,000 MW of solar power capacity, the statement said. "Waaree Energies has been a preferred EPC player in India, and is committed towards making solar energy affordable and accessible. We plan to extend this commitment globally and are actively looking at opportunities that aid transition to solar power," Sunil Rathi, director- sales and marketing, Waaree Energies. He said the company already have a pipeline of 100 MW to be executed in next six months internationally and 250 MW in the country. (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) Westlife Development, which owns Hardcastle Restaurants (HRPL), the master franchisee of McDonald's restaurants in west and south India, Friday reported over five-fold jump in net profit to Rs 7.9 crore in the quarter ended September. The net profit stood at Rs 1.2 crore in the same quarter last year. Revenues grew by 32.3 per cent to Rs 350.1 crore, compared with Rs 264.6 crore last year, the company said in a statement. It reported a strong same store sales growth (SSSG) of 25.7 per cent, posting positive growth for the 13th consecutive quarter, the statement added. Operating EBITDA grew by 40.9 per cent to Rs 28.56 crore and operating profit margins expanded by 50 basis points to 8.2 per cent, it said. During the quarter, the company launched the new rice platform and introduced two variants of rice meals. It aims to continue building on this platform, the statement said. It has also introduced whole wheat buns. "We made a bold move by launching the new rice platform in this quarter, which worked very well for us and has got tremendous response from our customers. This new platform has helped us expand our addressable market while adding to our range of nutritious and wholesome meal options," said Amit Jatia, vice-chairman of Westlife Development. "Our investments in brand extensions continue to reap results as both McCafe and McDelivery have become strategic levers for the company," he added. The company has added 14 new McCafes in the quarter, taking the total count to 170, it said. Jatia said McDelivery is significantly contributing to growth. It has been expanding its footprint through the mobile application and the website. The strategic partnerships with food aggregators to optimise the delivery process has expanded reach significantly. The company launched McBreakfast in the south market in this quarter. During the quarter, the company opened six new restaurants including the first restaurant at Kakinada in Andhra Pradesh, taking the total count to 287 restaurants across 39 cities. The company's stocks ended 0.09 per cent up at Rs 320.40 apiece at the BSE Thursday, against 1.01 per cent decline in the benchmark. (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) Asserting that the current situation at the World Trade Organization is no longer sustainable, the Ottawa Ministerial on WTO reform Thursday vowed to fight against protectionism. Among other things, the group comprising top trade officials of 12 countries and the European Union sought for urgent action to develop 21st century trade rules at the WTO. "The current situation at the WTO is no longer sustainable. Our resolve for change must be matched with action: we will continue to fight protectionism; and we are committed politically to moving forward urgently on transparency, dispute settlement and developing 21st century trade rules at the WTO," said a joint communique issued by Ottawa Ministerial on WTO Reform. Ministers and Heads of Delegation representing a dozen "like-minded" WTO members and the European Union met in Ottawa on October 24 and 25 to discuss ways to strengthen and modernise the world body, which of late has been at the receiving end of President Trump. The meeting was chaired by Jim Carr, Canada's Minister of International Trade Diversification. Other countries represented in the group were Australia, Brazil, Chile, Japan, Kenya, Korea, Mexico, New Zealand, Norway, Singapore and Switzerland. The group is scheduled to meet next in January 2019. India, China, and the US are not part of the meeting. Acknowledging that concerns that have been raised about the functioning of the dispute settlement system, the group said it is ready to work on solutions, while preserving the essential features of the system and of its Appellate Body. Asserting that WTO must reinvigorate its negotiating function, the group underscored the need to conclude negotiations on fisheries subsidies in 2019 consistent with instructions from WTO Ministers at the 11th ministerial conference (MC11) held last year in Buenos Aires. "Its rules must also be updated to reflect 21st century realities, such as the Sustainable Development Goals. Addressing modern economic and trade issues, and tackling pending and unfinished business is key to ensuring the relevance of the WTO," it said. Observing that development must remain an integral part of the WTO, the Ottawa Ministerial said the members need to explore how the development dimension, including special and differential treatment, can be best pursued in rule-making efforts. "We should strengthen the monitoring and transparency of members' trade policies which play a central role in ensuring WTO members understand the policy actions taken by their partners in a timely manner," the ministerial said. Expressing their concern with the overall record of compliance by WTO members with their notification obligations, the group agreed that improvements are required to ensure effective transparency and functioning of the relevant agreements. Reacting to the joint communique, House Ways and Means Committee Chairman Kevin Brady said the international body must take seriously President Donald Trump's longstanding call for reform. "The WTO urgently needs reform to keep the organisation well-functioning and viable, including with respect to negotiations toward new agreements as well as improving dispute resolution. Now that many of our key trading partners are focused, it is important that we address the full range of topics and confront longstanding issues," Brady said. One of the key enforcement reform, that the US would like to see is to establish meaningful consequences if WTO members continue to ignore their commitments to submit timely notifications as to their compliance with their obligations, he said. The top US lawmaker said the appellate body must be reformed so that it functions as designed and is accountable to WTO members. According to him, such reforms include procedural fixes to make sure the appellate body does not diverge from the timelines and procedures established by WTO members, as well as structural reforms to avoid troubling appellate body overreach and "gap-filling" that go beyond its mandate. (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) By Alasdair PalNEW DELHI (Reuters) - Prime Minister Narendra Modi helped a diamond merchant hand over hundreds of cars as gifts to his employees on Thursday.Six hundred employees of Hari Krishna Exporters, a diamond trading company run by Savji Dholakia, received cars made by Maruti Suzuki, while around a thousand more staff were offered gifts of cash deposits and apartments in a huge outdoor ceremony in Surat, Gujarat. Indians often give each other gifts in the run-up to Diwali, a major Hindu festival celebrating the triumph of good over evil that this year falls on Nov. 7.Modi addressed the ... By Jan Strupczewski and Francesco GuarascioBRUSSELS (Reuters) - Euro zone finance ministers will discuss Italy's 2019 draft budget at their next meeting, on Nov. 5, despite Italian requests to postpone the talks, a European Union official told Reuters on Friday.Yields on Italy's bonds have spiked since September, when the Italian eurosceptic government disclosed details of a free-spending budget that would breach EU fiscal rules and could increase the country's large debt.EU disapproval of Italy's plans has contributed to market jitters, and the Italian government wants to avoid the ... By Tom Polansek, Hallie Gu and Ana ManoBEIJING/CHICAGO/CARAMBEI, Brazil (Reuters) - Ken Maschhoff, chairman of the largest U.S. family-owned pork producer, has watched profits fall as trade tensions rise between the United States and China.His company, The Maschhoffs, has halted U.S. projects worth up to $30 million and may move some operations overseas. Investing in domestic operations now would be "ludicrous" as China and others retaliate against U.S. agricultural goods, Maschhoff said from the firm's Carlyle, Illinois headquarters.Across the globe, Chinese pig farmer Xie Yingqiang sent ... WASHINGTON (Reuters) - A prominent Republican on the U.S. Senate Agriculture Committee complained on Thursday about Chinese-owned Smithfield Foods Inc receiving aid from the U.S. Department of Agriculture meant to help American farmers hurt by China's trade tariffs."I don't understand why Chinese owned Smithfield qualifies for USDA $$ meant to help our farmers," Senator Charles Grassley of Iowa wrote on Twitter. Smithfield, the world's biggest pork processor, is a unit of Hong Kong-based WH Group Ltd.A spokeswoman for Smithfield rejected that it has applied for federal assistance, saying the ... LONDON (Reuters) - Rolls-Royce said it would deliver fewer of its new Trent 7000 engine that powers the Airbus A330neo jet than it planned, resulting in it likely missing its target of delivering about 550 large engines in 2018.Rolls-Royce's shares fell sharply earlier on Friday after Bloomberg reported the problem. The company, however, said it was not changing its guidance for 2018 profit and free cash flow as a result of the delay. (Reporting by Paul Sandle; editing by David Evans)(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) By Chris Thomas(Reuters) - Uncertainty around the succession plans for Yes Bank Ltd's chief executive and exposure to debt-laden Infrastructure Leasing and Financial Services (IL&FS) sent the lender's stock to a four-week low on Friday, a day after it reported a weaker-than-expected quarterly profit.Yes Bank shares plunged 15 percent to 168.60 rupees, while over 93 million shares changed hands, as of 0951 GMT, compared with their 30-day moving average of 64.6 million shares.The private sector bank posted its first drop in quarterly profit in at least three years on Thursday, as provisions for ... Financial markets have been whipsawed in recent sessions on concerns over global growth as investors fretted over Sino-US trade frictions, a mixed bag of US corporate earnings, Federal Reserve rate hikes and Italian budget woes. A slowdown in China has been particularly worrying for policy makers and investors, hitting asset markets from stocks to currencies and commodities. On Friday, Asian shares wobbled in early trade, struggling to shake off the previous days global markets rout, after weak results from tech giants Alphabet Inc and Amazon.com heightened concerns over world trade and economic growth. The shaky start for regional bourses came despite a bounce on Wall Street overnight, which was helped by bargain-hunting and positive earnings from Microsoft Corp. In Asia, MSCIs broadest index of Asia-Pacific shares outside Japan was flat after pushing slightly lower in the opening hour. The index has been bruised by a heavy sell-off in the past several days, tumbling more than 3 per cent this week. South Korea's Kospi was also down 0.6 per cent, and Australia's shares were hanging on to modest gains of 0.2 per cent. Japan's Nikkei stock index was the biggest gainer, up 0.5 per cent, though that only partially erased Thursday's 3.7 per cent slide. Back home, over 75 companies including ITC and Nestle India are scheduled to announce their Q2 earnings later in the day today. Meanwhile, sentiment might also be affected after Indias April-September fiscal deficit stood at Rs 5.95 trillion ($81.20 billion), or 95.3 perc ent of the budgeted target for current fiscal year, government data showed on Thursday. The figure compares to 91.3 per cent in the same period a year earlier. A day after Ruia family, the original Essar Steel promoters, made had a last ditch effort to save their crown jewel by offering to pay up Rs 54,389 crore to all creditors of the company, the Committee of Creditors accepted the joint offer made by ArcelorMittal and Japan's Nippon Steel. In a statement, ArcelorMittal said its resolution plan for Essar Steel, which the lenders auctioned to recover over Rs 49,000 crore of unpaid loans, includes "an upfront payment of Rs 42,000 crore" to settle debt and "a further Rs 8,000 crore of capital injection into the company to support operational improvement, increase production levels and deliver enhanced levels of profitability". The Lakshmi Mittal-owned global steel giant bagged the lenders' approval following a long legal battle with other players in the race for acquiring Essar Steel. ArcelorMittal, world's largest steel maker, had earlier agreed to pay Rs 7,469 crore to the creditors of Uttam Galva and KKS Petron to be eligible to acquire Essar Steel in line with the Supreme Court order. The Committee of Creditors have issued ArcelorMittal and its partner Japan's Nippon Steel & Sumitomo Metal Corp a Letter of Intent (LoI) declaring them as the "successful applicant". The development comes a day after promoters of Essar Steel offered to pay lenders Rs 54,389 crore, including Rs 47,507 crore upfront cash payment to clear all dues of lenders, and pull out the firm from insolvency proceedings. On Thursday, Ruia family, the original promoters made had a last ditch effort to save their crown jewel from being snatched away from them by offering to pay up Rs 54,389 crore to all creditors of the company to withdraw it from the ongoing insolvency and bankruptcy procedure. Essar Steel is believed to be making operational profit at a run rate of Rs 6,000 crore per annum on annual revenue of an estimated Rs 24,000 crore. The inaugural session of the India Mobile Congress 2018 on Thursday had the leaders of the telecom world presenting divergent narratives on the sector's health and future. Where Mukesh Ambani, who disrupted the industry with the launch of Reliance Jio Infocomm Ltd, focussed on the opportunity and potential aspects, the leadership of the older telcos reportedly put the spotlight on high taxes and tariffs. According to Bharti Airtel Chairman Sunil Mittal, consolidation in the Indian telecom industry hasn't happened in an orderly way and had come at a heavy price with a whopping $50 billion (over Rs 3.66 lakh crore) being wiped off from the sector, The Economic Times reported. The price wars unleashed by Reliance Jio not only eroded profitability but also forced smaller operators such as Aircel and Reliance Communications Ltd to shut down. Meanwhile, Tata Teleservices and Telenor were acquired by Bharti Airtel Ltd, and Vodafone India and Idea Cellular recently merged to give India's telecom sector a new top cat after around 15 years. The Cellular Operators Association of India's (COAI) annual report for FY18 noted that the telecom operators are in "severe financial distress" with a cumulative debt of Rs 7.7-lakh crore and revenue under Rs 2.5 lakh crore. Mittal added that the telecom sector was among "the most heavily taxed like the tobacco industry", and called for an early resolution both to this issue as well as to the spate of litigation between telcos and the government. Balesh Sharma who heads the country's largest telco, Vodafone Idea Ltd, reportedly took up a similar refrain and pointed out that the unaffordable tariffs meant that new services could not be launched. On the other hand, Ambani was a lot more upbeat and said that India had witnessed the "fastest transition" from 2G/3G services to 4G anywhere in the world. He also pointed out that India has moved from the 155th rank in mobile broadband penetration to being the number one nation in mobile data consumption in the world in less than two years. "By 2020, I believe that India will be a fully-4G country and ready for 5G ahead of others," he added. According to Mail Today, Ambani also spoke about Jio's new fibre-based broadband offering in his address, saying it will offer complete fixed-mobile convergence where Indians will travel seamlessly between mobile and fixed broadband networks 4G and 5G when on the move and Wi-Fi when indoors. He added that the move presents an opportunity to replicate India's success in mobile data consumption for fixed broadband as well. "I believe India will rise from a lowly 135th rank to be among the top three nations in fixed broadband at a pace that will surprise the world," the Reliance Industries Ltd (RIL) chairman said. He, however, sounded a word of caution on data usage. "We have to be mindful that data is the most important resource in this new world. And India and Indians will generate a humongous amount of data. It is important that we utilise this rich resource for the benefit of India and Indians, with adequate safeguards," said Ambani. Edited by Sushmita Choudhury Agarwal Eric Trappier, the CEO of Dassault Aviation, which has been embroiled in the row over the Rafale deal, has finally broken his silence on the topic in an attempt to clear the air. He has categorically denied all allegations of corruption, crony capitalism and inflated profits on the deal in a recent interview, which might pull the wind out of the Opposition parties' sails. According to him, Dassault had been in discussions with the "Ambani family" since 2012, so the deal predates Prime Minister Narendra Modi as well as former French President Francois Hollande, and is a clean one to boot. "We stick to the laws of France and laws of India and the law of the contract," Trappier told The Economic Times. "We are totally against corruption. If there is any investigation in France or India, we are not only open to the investigation, [but] it is our duty [to respond]. We will prove there is no corruption." He also rejected the contention that the Indian side had nudged him to give the offsets to Anil Ambani's Reliance Group. "It has been a long time since we are discussing with Reliance," said the CEO, referring to an agreement it inked with the Mukesh Ambani group to discharge offsets as part of an earlier deal for 126 jets that was being negotiated with the previous UPA regime. In June 2014, following the regime change at the Centre, the plan to partner with older sibling Mukesh Ambani seemed to fizzle out. "I want to be clear that Dassault is a partner as the Ambanis are a very respectable family," he said, adding that Dassault had already signed deals with 30 companies over the deal. Trappier also pointed out that Hollande's controversial statements to the French Media last month had already been addressed. "Mr Hollande has himself clarified it by saying that the two partners found themselves on their own. So, he has clarified as there was maybe a misunderstanding in his first declaration," he said. On September 21, Hollande added fuel to the already-controversial Rafale deal by telling the French media that that his government had not been given any choice in selecting a local partner for Dassault Aviation to fulfil offset obligations of the deal, basically suggesting that it was all done at the behest of New Delhi. The deal was signed with Modi during his term. This development had caught the government on the backfoot since it has been maintaining it was not officially aware of whom Dassault had selected. Hollande subsequently backtracked and told AFP news in Canada that he did not know whether the company was pressured by the Indian government to work with Reliance and "only Dassault can comment on this". The Congress has also gone to town alleging that the current regime is paying an inflated price for the Rafale fighter jets manufactured by Dassault, making Ambani's Reliance Defence a key beneficiary at the expense of the state-run Hindustan Aeronautics Limited (HAL). However, Trappier claimed that India had bagged a better deal for the 36 jets in 2016 compared to what it would have paid for the 18 that the previous government was pursuing as part of the 126-jet deal. "Compared to the same price, India brought down the cost by 9%. Where is the confusion?" he posed, adding that Reliance Defence will get only Rs 850 crore worth of offsets, not Rs 30,000 crore as is being tom-tommed. "The capital investment in the joint venture is Rs 70 crore. The JV is 51% with Reliance, so we have invested 49% of Rs 70 crore," Trappier clarified. "We will step by step increase the capital in the JV following the job we have to do. Our plan is to upgrade this figure to Rs 850 crore. So, my investment in this Rs 850 crore will over five years be 49% of this number, which is about Rs 425 crore. It has nothing to do with the big figures I have been hearing." Edited By Sushmita Choudhury Agarwal While the Indian government has given a nod to IIMs to enrol students with four-year Bachelor's degree in their PhD programme, they have also put up a caveat. The government has refused to permit completion of PhD within two years, which was one of the clauses of the proposal. In its refusal, the Human Resource Development (HRD) ministry cited the higher education rulebook of the University Grants Commission (UGC) as it wrote to the directors of all the IIMs. The ministry said that a two-year frame for PhD cannot be granted as doctoral courses cannot be completes in less than three years. The ministry added that students who enrol into PhD courses straight after a four-year's Bachelor's degree, must undergo a Doctoral programme of at least four years. IIM Ahmedabad, IIM Bengaluru, and IIM Vishakhapatnam had written to the Centre proposing direct entry to the PhD and MPhil programmes. They proposed that students with a four year's Bachelor's with an eight-point CGPA or a professional qualification like ICWA, CS, ICAI or CA could enrol to the programmes. They had also proposed a two-year minimum duration for the completion of their PhDs. UGC, on the other hand, prescribes minimum three years for the completion of a Doctoral degree following a Master's degree. The ministry's refusal came after consultations with the UGC and the All India Council for Technical Education (AICTE), as mentioned in a report in The Economic Times. The HRD ministry also kept in mind the format followed by IITs, which also refer to UGC's guidelines for PhD programmes. The daily quoted a source who said that it was felt that there should be parity among various institutes of national importance, and hence the degree granting criteria followed by IITs should be applicable to IIMs as well. Currently, there is a Fellow Programme in Management (FPM) that is equivalent to a PhD. With the IIMs Act, however, the colleges want PhD degrees instead of FPM. The Supreme Court has asked the government to clarify its stand on the matter of cryptocurrencies. While hearing petitions challenging a RBI circular prohibiting entities regulated by it from providing banking services to cryptocurency exchanges, the bench of Justices RF Nariman and Naveen Sinha asked the government to present its official stance on virtual currencies within two weeks. Although trade in cryptocurrencies is not illegal in India, the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) has discouraged their use. Representing the cryptocurrency exchanges, advocate Nakul Dewan stated that the government must give some finality on the issue. The central bank's advocate said that a policy decision on cryptocurrecies lies within the purview of the central government, and it has maintained in the past "We have got employees. There are jobs," Dewan said before the Supreme Court bench. Earlier this week, one of the co-founders of Unocoin, India's largest crypto-exchange, were arrested for installing an ATM for bitcoins, one of the popular cryptocurrencies. Recently, Nasscom president Debjani Ghosh said cryptocurrencies were illegal and asked players to obey the law and seek clarification from the government if they are unhappy with it. ""It is law of the land and hence, we have to work with it. If we do not agree, we have to go back to the government and speak about why cryptocurrencies aren't correct," Ghosh said. In late September the government had hiked import duties on several items, including gemstones, in an attempt to narrow the current account deficit. The duty on cut and polished diamonds was raised from 5% to 7.5% dealing another blow to the diamond trade already hurt by spiralling prices of rough diamonds and the depreciating rupee. Imports of cut and polished diamonds fell 31.83% to Rs 5,289.35 crore in the first six months of this financial year, from Rs 7,759.48 crore a year ago. Things are looking particularly dire in Surat, the world's largest diamond cutting and polishing hub. "The diamond trade in Surat could potentially lose one lakh jobs in the next two quarters due to the increase in duty, lack of ease of doing business and the liquidity crunch. A lot of diamonds which used to come to India for recutting are now being shipped to China and Thailand," Colin Shah, vice-chairman, Gem & Jewellery Export Promotion Council, told The Economic Times. Given that around five lakh people are engaged in the diamond trade in the country, as per industry estimates, one in 5 people in this industry are at risk of ending up jobless in the next six months. According to media reports, about eight Surat-based diamond polishers have committed suicide in the month so far. Diamond players are also reeling from curtailed bank lending, which kicked off in the wake of the Nirav Modi-PNB scam. "There is no respite from the liquidity crunch as collateral norms and rating norms have become harder. The ease of doing business, compared to our competing centres, is simply not there," said Shah, adding that the industry does not boast adequate finances to sustain the business. So the cutting and polishing units at Surat have already advanced their Diwali break by a fortnight to maintain profitability. Decreased diamond sales has only made matters worse - demand has dwindled courtesy factors like the Kerala floods and muted market sentiments. Edited by Sushmita Choudhury Agarwal The Bharti Airtel stock rose in trade today even as the telco reported a fall in consolidated net profit for the tenth straight quarter. The telecom stock rose up to 3.41% intra day to 305.95 level in trade today compared to its previous close of 295.85 on the BSE. The stock rose after brokerages remained upbeat about the share even after Q2 net profit plunged 65%. On the other hand, the large cap stock touched an intra day low of 287.20 down 2.92% from its previous close. The stock has gained 41.43% during the last one year and has fallen 43.51% since the beginning of this year. Net sales rose 1.71% to Rs 20,422.50 crore in the second quarter compared to Rs 20,080 crore in the first quarter of this fiscal. Consolidated net profit rose 22.10% to Rs 118.80 crore in the second quarter compared to Rs 97.30 crore in the first quarter of this fiscal. However, net profit fell 65% compared to Rs 343 crore in the year ago period as losses on mainstay India business widened due to pricing pressure from aggressive competition. The loss from India operations (before exceptional items) mounted to Rs 1646.4 crore in the second quarter of the current fiscal compared to about Rs 940 crore in the preceding three-month period. The company had clocked a net income of Rs 649.4 crore in the July-September quarter of 2017. Even as the firm posted losses in India business, brokerages remained optimistic on the prospects of the company. Nomura maintained a buy call on the Airtel stock with a target price of Rs 505. The brokerage was upbeat about the Africa business prospects, but said losses in India operations were worrisome. A drop in India mobile usage in terms of earnings before interest tax depreciation and amortisation caused the earnings miss, it said . Deutsche Bank raised the stock rating to buy from hold with a target price of Rs 425, saying the firm continues to execute well as underlined by robust growth in 4G subscriptions, data usage in India and continued improvement in Africa margins. It said stabilisation in India, Africa business continues to improve. It does not believe there has been any material change in competitive landscape and offers significant headroom forecast three -year CAGR in revenue and earnings before interest tax depreciation and amortisation at 8%/13% However, Credit Suisse maintained a neutral stance on the stock with a target price of Rs 400 and said it continues to believe that triple whammy of falling customer base, declining average revenue per user and higher network costs could lead to a sharp EBITDA decline. Bharti Airtel's consolidated revenues dipped about 6 per cent to Rs 20,422 crore for the just-ended quarter. The company said the exceptional gain during the quarter stood at Rs 1.013.7 crore (net of tax) "largely on account of creation of deferred tax asset in DTH partially offset by charge towards network refarming/ upgrade program during the quarter". Gopal Vittal, MD and CEO (India & South Asia), Bharti Airtel, said the average revenue per user (ARPU) decline has "moderated" this quarter driven by focus on quality customers through simplified pricing and content partnerships. "We remain focused on driving quality base growth with value adding propositions for our customers. We also remain committed to investing in enhanced capacities and have deployed 27000+ broadband sites during the quarter, enabling a 239 per cent YoY growth in mobile data volumes," Vittal added. The total revenues from India-South Asia operations at Rs 15,022.3 crore in July-September was lower than Rs 16,826.5 crore in the same period a year ago. The revenue from Africa business, however, rose to Rs 5,647.2 crore during September quarter from Rs 5,203 crore in the same period of the previous year. In a statement announcing the Q2 earnings, Airtel said the consolidated mobile data and voice traffic grew 225 per cent and 55 per cent respectively year-on-year. Overall, the customer base stood at 445 million across 16 countries, up 15 per cent year-on-year excluding divested units. Airtel said mobile 4G data customers jumped 132 per cent to 65.7 million from 28.3 million in the corresponding quarter of the last year. "In constant currency terms, Africa revenues grew by 10.8 per cent year on year led by strong growth in data and Airtel money transaction value," the statement added. Consolidated EBITDA at Rs 6,343 crore represented a drop of 20.7 per cent over the year ago period. Earnings before interest, tax, depreciation and amortization or EBITDA reflects a company's operating performance. The consolidated EBITDA margin fell to 31.1 per cent in September 2018 quarter from 36.8 per cent. Its consolidated net debt for the company increased to Rs 1,13,204 crore as compared to Rs 1,029,02.8 crore for the previous quarter. The company's board has declared an interim dividend of Rs 2.50 per equity share of Rs 5 each for the financial year 2018-19, Airtel said in a regulatory filing. On Thursday, the stock of Bharti Airtel closed at 295.85 apiece on the BSE, about 6.60 per cent lower than the previous close. The results were declared after market hours. The YES Bank stock slipped up to 15% in early trade a day after the private sector lender reported Q2 earnings which signalled weaker asset quality and higher provisions. Brokerages paring their target price also affected sentiment around the stock. At 10:46 am, the stock was trading 4.49% or 9 points lower to 189.45 on the BSE. Earlier, the stock fell to 168.60 intra day down 15% from its previous close of 198.35 on the BSE. The stock fell nearly 2 points short of reaching its 52-week low of 166.15 hit on September 28, 2018. 30 of 46 brokerages rate the stock "buy" or 'outperform', eleven "hold" and five "underperform" or "sell", according to analysts' recommendations tracked by Reuters. The stock has lost 40.06% since the beginning of this year and is down 43% during the last one year. It was the top gainer in terms of turnover with over 56 lakh shares changing hands in 43,021 trades amounting to a total turnover of Rs 10,551 lakh on the BSE. Concerned over the weaker asset quality and rising provisions, brokerages cut their target price on the stock. Credit Suisse reduced its target price to Rs 190 (from Rs 395) as it saw bank sharply slowing down its asset growth on concerns over capital and liquidity constraints. Given uncertainty on management change, capital raise may be pushed back, the brokerage said. The mid-sized private sector lender on Thursday reported a 3.8 per cent fall in September quarter net profit at Rs 964.7 crore, weighed down by a surge in investment provisions on corporate bond bets and worsening asset quality. Deutsche Bank said managing capital and liquidity was crucial due to weaker asset quality. It reiterated a buy call but cut its target price to Rs 270 from Rs 310. Net interest margins hold up well but credit costs may be higher in H2. The bank said overall provisions for the quarter shot up to Rs 940 crore which included Rs 409 crore for loan losses, Rs 344 crore for investment, including the one- time mark-to-market provisioning of Rs 252 crore and Rs 117 crore for standard assets. That apart there was a Rs 9.7-crore provisions for its asset reconstruction business. Jefferies maintained buy call on the stock but cut its target price to Rs 285 from Rs 365. The The net profit was below estimates due to higher provisions and growth has to slow down materially and revenue decline in H2. Gross NPA ratio moved up to 1.6 per cent on fresh slippages of Rs 1,631 crore which came from an account of a diversified company, while there were others like a cement account which also defaulted. CITI lowered its FY19E/FY20 estimates for profit after tax by 10%/7% after factoring in higher provisions and lower growth. Analysts also reduced their target price to Rs 215 from Rs 260, and said the provisions for the quarter were 44 percent higher than they expected. Overall provisions rose to Rs 940 crore which included Rs 409 crore for loan losses, Rs 344 crore for investment, including the one-time MTM provisioning of Rs 252 crore and Rs 117 crore for standard assets and Rs 9.7 crore for ARC. HSBC said 2QFY19 results disappointed on asset quality and capital (common equity tier 1 @ 9%) Due to constraints on capital raising, loan growth could slow down sharply (19% in FY19 vs 61% in Q2FY19). The brokerage cut target price to Rs 224. Senior group president for financial markets at the bank Rajat Monga said the bank expects reversal of an Rs 631-crore slippage to a single account in the next quarter. Monga, who is speculated to be among the internal candidates to succeed Rana Kapoor after the RBI refused to give him a fresh term, said the bank also had to set aside Rs 252 crore for mark-to-mark losses in its corporate bond portfolios. He, however, refused to answer any questions related to Kapoor's imminent departure or the way forward for the bank after the co-promoter's exit. Kapoor's term was curtailed by over two years by RBI for unspecified reasons and a bank request for extension of his term beyond January 31, 2019 was also rejected by the regulator. The RBI refusal came even after the appointment committee of the central bank had reportedly cleared his three year-term. The move followed a similar step at larger rival Axis Bank whose chief executive Shikha Sharma was also asked to go. Both Yes Bank and Axis Bank were found to have under-reported their stock of NPAs by Rs 10,000 crore each for two consecutive years. Monga said the bank is yet to receive the risk-based supervision from the regulator for FY18, in which the "divergences" are specified and have to be disclosed if they cross certain thresholds. Monga explained that the diversified account has already initiated sale of an asset, receivables of which will come to bank as repayment of loans, and expected a recovery in the next quarter. He further said a part payment has already been received in this case after September 30. Monga exuded confidence of achieving the credit cost guidance of 50-70 bps, saying it has touched 34 bps for the first half. The bank has an exposure of Rs 2,600 crore to the entities associated with the troubled IL&FS group but Monga said this is to special purpose vehicles lower down the order and the entire exposure is standard and has not made any provisions against it. The core net interest income rose 28.2 per cent to Rs 2,417 crore, largely helped by a 61 per cent loan growth and margins being stable at 3.3 per cent. The non-interest income grew 18 per cent to Rs 1,473 crore but was depressed by treasury performance, Monga said, adding the share of Casa deposits slipped to 33.8 per cent. The bank is awaiting clarity on various things and may look to bolster its capital adequacy later, he said, adding it already has an enabling resolution to raise $1 billion from the board and shareholders. In its endless obsession with bringing the Russian economy to its knees, the United States has deployed its latest weapon. CAATSA - or the Countering America's Adversaries Through Sanctions Act - allows the US to punish Moscow's military partners on the basis that their business dealings violate American law. As the largest user and buyer of Russian weapons, India is vulnerable to Section 231 of the new law, which imposes sanctions on individuals and countries that deal with Russia's intelligence and defence sectors. Days after India inked a $5.4 billion deal with Russia to buy the S-400 missile defence system, US President Donald Trump said India would "soon find out" whether the US was going to slap punitive sanctions. Asked when, he replied: "You will see. Sooner than you think." However, Trump's threats lacked the sting that was once typical of American presidents who looked at India through Cold War tinted lenses. Being a businessman, he's always looking for a deal. Soon enough, US officials are believed to have approached Defence Minister N. Sitharaman with an offer - New Delhi could avoid sanctions if it agrees to buy the F-16 fighter as a quid pro quo. Catch-22 for India Because CAATSA is an American law that prevents global free trade, it is patently illegal and can be challenged. Nevertheless, if enforced it could choke the supply of weapons from Russia and blow a gaping hole in India's war fighting capability. It will also earn India considerable hostility in Moscow and drive the Russians closer to Pakistan and China, creating a different set of complications. Secondly, any American interference in India's fiercely independent defence procurement policies will create a backlash in India and torpedo the growing strategic and defence partnership between New Delhi and Washington. India could thus end up in a Catch-22 situation in which it loses either way - whether the country abides by CAATSA or not. Sanctions under CAATSA would be triggered once Delhi makes a payment for the Russian equipment. The sanctions include blocking of licences and permissions for a US entity to export a significantly large number of items to India. The restrictions on this front would include any arms sale or the transfer of nuclear equipment or technology. What's at stake? Not even the most optimistic American hawks are expecting India to walk away from Russia immediately. As one of the biggest customers of the Russian armaments industry, India will have tremendous difficulty scaling down its ties with Moscow. More than 70 per cent of the weapons fielded by India's armed forces and 60 per cent of the country's defence imports are of Russian origin. Significant weapons deals such as the $6 billion Sukhoi Super 30 upgrade, the $5.4 billion S-400 deal, highly successful projects such as the BrahMos supersonic cruise missile, and secret collaboration in the area of nuclear powered submarines, miniature nuclear reactors and aircraft carriers, all point to the deep defence ties between Moscow and New Delhi dating back over 50 years. In this backdrop, nobody expects India to abandon its defence ties with Russia, even if economic and people to people ties have cooled considerably. The assessment is also shared by the Americans. The strain CAATSA could place on the resurgent India-US relationship was in focus at a hearing of the US Senate Armed Services Committee in March 2018. Admiral Harry Harris, the former commander of the US Pacific Command (now IndoPaCom), said: "Seventy per cent of their military hardware is Russian in origin. You can't expect India to go cold turkey on that. I think we ought to look at ways to have a glide path, so that we can continue to trade in arms within India." His comments were made in the context of US Secretary of Defence James Mattis seeking exemptions from Section 231 for a number of US partners and allies. India is believed to be part of this list. The general consensus in the US is that both houses of Congress would have to consider ways to give a waiver to India. The main reason why the US is going easy on India - at least for the moment - is that Washington and New Delhi are in the process of working out multiple nuclear power plant and arms sale projects. As Admiral Harris remarked, India is "a key partner and a great strategic opportunity". Translation: India has deep pockets and the US need the money to keep its factories running. Pissing off India isn't good politics. Simply put, applying CAATSA against India could put the US foreign policy and defence establishments in a bind and slow down their expanding cooperation with India. How can India respond? India isn't Saudi Arabia or Britain that the US can push around; it is poised to be the world's third largest economy. Due to India's large market and manpower, it is the US that needs India more than the other way round. Instead of getting into a heated diplomatic scrap, India should explore ways to sidestep CAATSA's punitive measures in a number of ways. 1. In the immediate term, one way to avoid secondary sanctions would be if the US determines that India is reducing its dependence on Russian arms. On paper at least it appears so - according to the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute, "Russian hardware represented 62 per cent of the country's total weapons imports during the past five years, compared with 79 per cent in 2008-2012." 2. India may seek an official declaration from the US, specifying that anti-Russian measures would not be used against Indian companies. 3. India should enact its own legislation which declares that decisions based on extraterritorial foreign laws that prevent free trade are unlawful and therefore not applicable to it. 4. New Delhi can complain at the World Trade Organization and threaten counter sanctions to protect its legitimate interests. 5. India's leverage as the world's second largest weapons importer needs to be communicated clearly to the Americans because clearly they keep forgetting this fact. Prime Minister Narendra Modi has an ambitious $250 billion plan to modernise India's military and a hefty chunk of that amount will go to buy advanced weapons. The US - which has been the biggest beneficiary of India's arms diversification programme in the past two decades - will end up as the biggest loser if it slaps sanctions. Sanctions: Silver lining In 1992 when India was facing difficulties in procuring Russian spares for its defence forces, Prime Minister P.V. Narasimha Rao dispatched Foreign Secretary Mani Dixit on a fact-finding mission to Moscow. However, the new Russian Foreign Minister Andrei Kozyrev refused to meet Dixit. The atmosphere was further aggravated by Kozyrev's statement that henceforth Moscow would have an "equidistant" policy in relations with India and Pakistan and that Russia would "stop looking at Pakistan through Indian goggles". This new stance was known as the Kozyrev Doctrine. It was this diplomatic snub that forced Rao to steer India towards the West and kickstart diversification - a process that has continued to this day. The moral of the story is that the Kozyrev Doctrine may have been a stab in the back by a trusted friend but it opened India's eyes to the dangers of dependence on one country for critical defence supplies. India has since stepped up the pace of both diversification and Make in India, resulting in impressive gains on both fronts. However, the pace of indigenisation hasn't been enough as the defence forces continue to depend on imports of advanced weapons. Similarly, CAATSA could be the much needed wakeup call India needs to fast-track Make in India. For, diversification has its limits. Even if India decides to spread its imports evenly between Russia, the US, Israel and Europe, the reality is that all four are interlinked. For instance, Israel is touted as a reliable arms supplier and also a country with shared strategic interests. However, a number of Israeli weapons systems such as the Green Pine radar incorporate American technology at some level. This gives the US leverage against Israel, which may be arm twisted to apply sanctions on India. Although Tel Aviv has always stood by India during wars, its future stance cannot be predicted with certainty. By fast tracking indigenisation, India can ensure self-sufficiency in defence and become immune from sanctions conjured out of thin air by policy wonks in the US State Department. Changing winds New geopolitical developments are also in India's favour. With the US creating a new Indian Ocean-Pacific Ocean command (the aforementioned IndoPaCom) to take on China's growing naval power, Washington needs India as a strategic partner. The new command replaces the Pacific Command, indicating the importance of having a larger US naval presence in the Indian Ocean. While Japan and Australia are the lynchpins of the American plan to contain China in the Pacific, in the Indian Ocean it is India that is the key to cornering the dragon. New Delhi should use this leverage to squeeze all the waivers it can to nullify CAATSA. If India plays its cards right, America's brand new weapon could simply fizzle out. The Indian IT sector has come a long way since the last year's ordeal of rampant job cuts, at least in terms of net employee addition. The top four information technology companies in the country managed to enhance their workforce more than three times by the end of first half of 2018-19 than they did in the entire last fiscal. The top four Indian IT firms by market capitalisation - Tata Consultancy Services (TCS), Infosys, Wipro and HCL Technologies - reported net employee addition of 32,502 employees during the second quarter of financial year 2018-19 after accounting for employees who have resigned. TCS added 10,227 employees in Q2 FY19, which is its highest in the last dozen quarter, the tech major mentioned in its financial results for the quarter. The second largest Indian tech Infosys added 7,834 employees in the September quarter. Spurring its employee addition, Wipro saw the highest net employee addition during the last quarter this fiscal at 10,687. HCL Technologies, on the other hand added 3,754 employees during the quarter ended September 30, 2018. In the first quarter of FY 2018-19, these four companies reported a cumulative net addition of 16,502 employees. TCS added 5,877 employees to its human capital in Q1 FY19, whereas Infosys brought in 5,798 new employees during this period. Wipro reported net employee addition of only 832 in the June quarter, and HCL Technologies' net recruitment was over 4,000 employees. This surge in employee addition in the IT sector was fuelled by rejuvenated demand in key segments like the banking, financial services and insurance (BFSI), an all-time low number of professionals available for newer projects, and spike in sub-contracting costs, a report by the Business Standard said. With new and digital opportunities picking up, and inflow of large deals, IT companies have decided to step up their pace of recruitment as they vie for the available talent. Last year, IT companies handed pink slips to a significant chunk of their workforce due to factors including value compression, automation of existing job profiles, migration to cloud technologies, among other reasons. TCS, Infosys, Wipro and HCL Technologies, according to numbers quoted by them, had added around 14,000 employees for the entirety of fiscal 2017-18. TCS was the biggest recruiter during FY18 as it hired 7,775 employees, whereas Infosys hired 3,743 employees. While Wipro's net employee addition slipped into the negative, HCL technologies added 4,108 employees. Edited by Vivek Punj The Tripoli-based head of Libya's sovereign wealth fund has urged Britain not to pursue a demand that some of its $67 billion worth of frozen assets be used to compensate past victims of Irish Republican Army (IRA) attacks. The plea was made by Ali Mahmoud Hassan Mohamed, the Chairman and Chief Executive of the Libyan Investment Authority (LIA) appointed by Libya's internationally recognized government, to Britain's Junior Foreign Minister Alistair Burt. "There is no lawful basis for the United Kingdom to seize or change ownership of the frozen LIA assets. These belong to the Libyan people," Mohamed said in a letter sent to Burt on Wednesday, a copy of which has been seen by Reuters. "The UN Security Council has likewise ruled that frozen assets, when released, must be used for the benefit of the Libyan people." Those behind a British parliamentary bill argue that the regime of former Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi supplied arms to the IRA during the 30-year conflict in Northern Ireland which saw over 3,600 people killed and thousands more injured. The LIA estimates some 9.5 billion pounds' worth of its assets are in the United Kingdom. Control over the LIA has long been contested by rival Libyan factions based in Tripoli and eastern Libya, and the fund was forced to move out of its offices in Libya's capital earlier this year because of militia pressure. (Reuters) Source: www.businessworld.ie Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe and his wife, Akie Abe, prepare to take off from Haneda Airport in Tokyo on Thursday. Photo: VCG The China-Japan relationship showed signs of thawing Friday as the countries agreed to increase bilateral economic cooperation and work to eliminate frictions. Chinese President Xi Jinping and Premier Li Keqiang met with visiting Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe in Beijing, touting warmer ties between the two countries. It is the first official visit to China by a Japanese prime minister in seven years and came as both nations face trade frictions with the United States. At a news conference after their meeting on Friday morning, Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe and Chinese Premier Li Keqiang announced that they had signed cooperation agreements and more than 500 business deals. Abe and Li also said they agreed to restart the China-Japan currency swap agreement, which was dropped in 2012, and to start talks on a communication channel on cutting-edge technology and intellectual property. They also agreed to establish a cooperation framework for managing maritime accidents. Li said the nations agreed that we do not threaten each other and do not direct aggression toward each other. We need to have constructive ways to eliminate any kind of frictions or conflicts between the two countries, he said. According to the South China Morning Post, Abe said the two countries put a new framework in place for cooperating on infrastructure projects in third countries. On Tuesday, the Japanese Foreign Ministry announced that Japan will end development assistance to China, making way for the two countries to create a framework for supporting third countries. The Japanese prime minister has been accompanied on his visit by a 500-strong business delegation that will participate in a forum with Chinese businesses on economic cooperation in third countries on Friday. Also on Friday, after visiting a forum on infrastructure projects and Peking University, Abe and Xi held talks and attended a dinner. During the meeting, Xi emphasized the interdependence between the two countries and pledged to enhance economic cooperation. The bilateral ties have returned to the right track and showed positive momentum. That is worth cherishing by both sides, said Xi, according to the official Xinhua News Agency. China and Japan should engage in more in-depth strategic dialogue, Xi said. Both sides should accurately grasp each others strategic intent and implement what was agreed that both sides will become partners, both sides will pose no threats to each other, he said. Abe said he expects the visit to carve out new areas of cooperation between the two countries and promote bilateral cooperation in broader areas, Xinhua reported. Abe is expected to invite the Chinese president to visit Japan next year, according to Japanese outlet Nikkei Inc. The last time a Japanese minister visited China was in 2011 and no Chinese president has visited the Asian neighbor since 2010. Bilateral relations have frayed over disputes over islands in the East China Sea in recent years, hitting a low in 2012. Many believe that the policies and rhetoric of U.S. President Donald Trump and increasing trade friction between Washington and Beijing have drawn Japan and China closer. Experts told Caixin that the visit likely will not resolve any concrete issues in the bilateral relationship, but a positive tone would help in moving negotiations forward. The story was updated with quotes from meeting between Xi and Abe. Contact reporter Ren Qiuyu (qiuyuren@caixin.com) Chinas banking and insurance regulator plans to further loosen restrictions on the equity investments insurance companies can make as part of the governments efforts to bolster the stock market. The China Banking and Insurance Regulatory Commission (CBIRC) is soliciting public feedback on a draft of new rules that would remove most limits on the equity sectors in which insurers can invest insurance funds. The regulator said Friday on its website that the change would be intended to further improve the economic efficiency of support from insurance industry capital for the real economy. The moves could clear the way for the insurance industry to pour trillions of yuan into stocks. Official data showed that at the end of 2017 the industry had combined assets totaling 16.8 trillion yuan ($2.7 trillion). Under the current rules, insurers can invest up to 30% of total assets in equities. As of the end of September, Chinese insurers invested 2.19 trillion yuan ($320 billion) in mutual funds and stocks, or 13.75% of their total assets, the highest level this year. Under current rules, equity investments by insurance funds are limited to insurance companies, non-insurance financial companies and equity in companies with pension, health-care and auto services businesses that are related to the insurance sector. The new draft would remove such restrictions but add that insurance funds should choose sectors and companies taking into consideration safety, liquidity and profitability. For insurers investments in equity funds targeting mergers and acquisitions, investments can include stocks of listed companies but are limited to non-transaction transfers, such as strategic investments, private placements and block trades. Such investments should account for no more than 20% of a funds total assets, according to the draft. The CBIRC will make separate rules for venture capital investments by insurance funds, as well as investments in key projects supported by national policy, debt-to-equity swaps and equity of small and medium-sized enterprises and technology companies. Since the beginning of last year, regulators increased scrutiny and curbs on takeovers of listed companies by insurers as stock volatility raised concerns about the security of policyholders funds. Under the tightened policy, takeovers of listed companies by insurers declined to eight in 2017 from 35 in 2015. But regulators have recently switched to encouraging insurers to invest in listed companies and help mitigate liquidity risks related to shares pledged as loan collateral as fears of slowing growth in the worlds second-largest economy have put pressure on domestic and global stock markets. On Thursday, the CBIRC issued rules clearing insurance funds to invest in stocks through specialized investment products. Such investments will not be subject to existing restrictions on the portion of assets that insurers can invest in stocks. The widening access for insurance funds to equity investments is expected to provide long-term, stable funding support for high-quality listed companies and help mitigate liquidity risks related to shares pledged as collateral for loans, the CBIRC said Thursday. There have been only five cases of acquisitions of more than 5% stakes in listed companies by insurers so far this year, according to data from the Insurance Association of China. Most the targets are industry leaders, and their controlling shareholders pledged a high percentage of their shares. Take refrigerator maker Guangdong Homa Alliances Co., for example, the refrigerator maker in which Tianan Life Insurance bought more than 5.9% in May. Homa Chairman Zhao Guodong, who owned a controlling interest in the company, had pledged nearly all his holdings, or about 17% of the companys total shares, for loans. 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ACT police were also operating under the minimum threshold at points in the 2017-18 financial year, according to data obtained through freedom of information laws. Internal documents revealed higher than expected attrition, demands for more recruits, serious staff fatigue issues and an understaffed command. In correspondence to the Australian Federal Police national staff manager Phillipa Crome in January, then-ACT chief police officer Justine Saunders revealed the extent of the staff shortages. "This is leading to a significant fatigue issue within the current workforce," Ms Saunders said. She also told Ms Crome regional transfers to the federal police would have to stop until more replacements could be brought in. The police union has said the documents backed up what they were hearing from members: they were over worked, over stressed and over stretched. Australian Federal Police Association acting president Graeme Cooper said the documents corroborated reports from police officers on the frontline. ACT police officers were working 16 to 18 hour days, or working on their days off to accommodate thin resources on the ground, he said. "There are not enough police officers in ACT Policing at the moment," Mr Cooper said. "For police to work effectively or to perform effectively when they're at work they need to have the opportunity to disengage from work." Ms Saunders asked for approval to run three recruitment courses in 2018 on top of the three already planned. According to an AFP finance committee report in August last year, police expected to be low on numbers all year. "[Ms Saunders] advised that the demand for ACT Policing members greatly outweighs the supply and recruitment is not meeting the backfill demand," the report said. ACT Policing had a budget to employ 857 full time staff in the 2018-19 financial year but in January this year were forecasting only 830 full time staff by the end of the 2017-18 financial year. Staff shortages are so bad, attrition rates so high and recruitment drives so limited ACT Policing does not expect to be fully staffed until the end of the 2020-21 financial year. The ACT Policing finance committee expected further stress on police in March and October this year when more officers transferred elsewhere within the AFP. It also said the then-approved number of recruitment courses would not be enough to sustain ACT Policing's capability. One of the internal documents notes ACT Policing had an obligation to sustain its staff numbers to service the ACT government and community. In a finance committee report from July last year, the committee noted the organisation's aging workforce would mean increased attrition over the next four years with 50 members 50 years old or older. The report also said despite three recruit courses the force would still not have enough police. ACT Policing received more than 100 requests from the federal police for officers in the past two financial years, with at least 132 requests for officers in the 2017-18 financial year, according to a finance committee report from January. At the time of the report, ACT Policing could only approve about 29 releases to the federal police last financial year, with only 18 officers paired with swaps from officers nationally. In a brief provided to the AFP staff manager Ms Crome, data showed ACT Policing was operating below its minimum threshold in December last year with 818 full time staff, 18 staff short of the minimum threshold. ACT Policing is aiming for an average of 854 full time staff with a top of 870, with the plan to fluctuate between the top and minimum thresholds throughout the year as recruits come in and others leave. The January brief forecast ACT police to be operating under the minimum threshold well into April this year before a recruitment intake in May. Mr Cooper said ACT police were in high demand across the federal organisation because of the range of experiences they had policing in the capital. "There's a lot of growth that comes out of that kind of stuff and the AFP more broadly see the value in it," Mr Cooper said. Mr Cooper said more recruitment would be the best solution to address the shortfall but pointed to an upcoming report Ms Saunders prepared for the ACT government which would outlay a vision for policing in Canberra. An ACT Policing spokesman said the current staffing levels as of October were within expectations and regional transfers were still ongoing but would not confirm if the additional three training courses had been approved. /images/transform/v1/crop/frm/silverstone-ct-migration/b82bda8e-89ed-4424-925e-f508748fb2e0/r0_133_2000_1263_w1200_h678_fmax.jpg news, latest-news The furore over the messy killing of journalist Jamal Khashoggi at the Saudi consulate in Istanbul on October 2 seems to have reached a tipping point where most nations are weighing interests over values in their relationship with Saudi Arabia - and looking for the best way out of a messy situation. The common excuse is to wait for more evidence to emerge from the investigation. No nation it seems, including Australia, wants to jeopardise important commercial interests by pursuing the moral issue to the point where it is prepared to cancel existing contracts, or push the Saudis to the point where they retaliate by terminating valuable financial relationships. Turkey which has a long-term regional agenda seems to be taking its foot off the pedal as it talks behind the scenes to Saudi Arabia. Turkish President Erdogans speech on October 23 that promised to bring forward new revelations was unexpectedly moderate, and Erdogans demand that 18 Saudis be sent to Turkey for trial was a throwaway comment because he knows it is not going to happen. In any case, since the purge of the judiciary in Turkey, its unlikely Turkey could mount a credible trial on that scale. It would also draw attention to the large number of journalists (over 200) jailed by Erdogan. Erdogan would like to see the downfall of ruthless Saudi crown prince, Mohammed bin Salman because he will be a formidable regional adversary if he remains in office, but Erdogan knows that Saudi Arabia has overcome worse setbacks in the past, including the fallout from 15 Saudis being involved in the 9/11 attack. The Trump Administration needs to have a strong Saudi Arabia for its anti-Iran policy to have much traction in the Middle East, and no doubt the Trump family is looking to its commercial interests going forward - so the US can be expected to assist Saudi Arabia with damage control behind the scenes. One lesson that nations should take away from this fiasco is that if you are going to eliminate someone on foreign soil, dont send a large team to do it. Far better to use a professional assassin to allow some distance to be kept between the contractor and the perpetrator. Being an investigative journalist, Khashoggi would have made many enemies, and while suspicion might have fallen on the Saudis, there would no doubt be others with a motivation to kill him - such as the Egyptians. When Russians eliminated prominent Chechen Sulim Yamadayev in Dubai on March 28, 2009, the single perpetrator managed to leave the country before the investigation could get under way. A week later, Dubai police accused Adam Delimkhanov of ordering the assassination. (Delimkhanov was a member of the Russian State Duma for the United Russia party.) Later, Interpol issued arrest warrants for seven Russian citizens in connection with the killing, but - as with subsequent Russian-organised assassinations - no one is likely to be arrested. Had the Saudis adopted a similar discreet approach, Khashoggi could have been eliminated and it would not have mattered much whether his body was disposed of or not. Removing someone from a city area, dead or alive, is always going to be difficult given the number of surveillance systems that can be used to track movement, particularly around diplomatic premises. The Israelis are far better at this sort of thing than Saudi Arabia. Even so, they badly underestimated the level of high-quality modern surveillance devices in-place when on January 19, 2010, Mossad deployed a 26-person hit team to eliminate Hamas official Mahmoud Al-Mabhouh in the five-star Al Bustan Rotana Hotel in Dubai. That oversight led to considerable embarrassment for Israel when all the team members were publicly identified from CCTV and electronic data, and it annoyed the US when some members of the Mossad team transited through the US. Australia became involved when it was discovered that some of the team used counterfeit or fraudulently obtained Australian passports. Soon after this occurred, Australia (under the Rudd government) abstained on a UN motion to investigate alleged Israeli war crimes committed during the Gaza War, a motion that Australia had previously opposed, and on May 24, 2010, the Australian government expelled an Israeli diplomat (the resident Mossad agent) after concluding that there was "no doubt Israel was behind the forgery of four Australian passports" related to the assassination. Turkey undoubtedly has other lurid details it could release or leak about the Khashoggi assassination, but further revelations might well jeopardise some of its intelligence collection methodologies and reduce its bargaining leverage with Saudi Arabia. Meanwhile, the Morrison government has refused to rule out an arms export ban to Saudi Arabia - but any punitive measures Australia takes will be down to political expediency, rather than moral outrage. Clive Williams is a visiting professor at the ANUs Centre for Military and Security Law and an adjunct professor at ADFA. /images/transform/v1/crop/frm/silverstone-ct-migration/05006815-a652-4fe1-8544-0ff7d18db4f6/r0_220_3756_2342_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. Care2 Stands With: humanitarians, animal lovers, feminists, rabble-rousers, nature-buffs, creatives, the naturally curious, and people who really love to do the right thing. You are our people. You Care. We Care2. West Bengal Postal Circle, India Post has released an employment notification calling out aspirants to apply for the post of Postman/Mail Guard. Those interested can check out the eligibility, salary scale, how to apply and the complete details of the government job here. The selection is through a written test for 100 marks. General knowledge, mathematics, English and regional language will be topics covered in the exam. Selected candidates can earn up to INR 36,100 per month. The last date to apply for this government job is Nov 24, 2018. SAIL Recruitment 2018 For 205 Vacancies West Bengal Postal Circle, India Post Recruitment 2018 Vacancy Details CRITERIA DETAILS Name Of The Posts Postman/Mail Guard Organisation West Bengal Postal Circle, India Post Educational Qualification Class 12 passout from a recognised board Experience Freshers can apply Skills Required Physical fitness Job Location West Bengal Salary Scale INR 21,700 to INR 36,100 per month Industry Postal Application Start Date October 25, 2018 Application End Date November 24, 2018 Age Limit: 18 to 27 years Also Read: Railway Jobs 2018: IRCON International Limited Is Hiring How To Apply For West Bengal Postal Circle, India Post Recruitment 2018 In order to apply for West Bengal Postal Circle, India Post Recruitment 2018, follow these steps: Step 1 Log on to the West Bengal Postal Circle, India Post section on the IBPS website. Step 2 Click on the registration button that reads, Click here for New Registration. Step 3 The registration form will open. Enter your details in the fields provided. Step 4 Enter the security code. Step 5 Click Save & Next and follow the subsequent pages to complete the registration process. Follow the link - http://www.westbengalpost.gov.in/docs/upload/e55ba9a1aa2a892d67ab983222be10f7.pdf to read the detailed official notification. Photo: The Canadian Press Conservative Leader Andrew Scheer The federal Opposition leader is suggesting the Liberals have no intention of beginning the Trans Mountain pipeline expansion before next year's election. Andrew Scheer likens it to Monty Python's dead parrot sketch because Prime Minister Justin Trudeau wants everyone to believe the Alberta-to-B.C. oil pipeline is still alive. Scheer made his remarks at the Energy Relaunch conference in Calgary. The Liberal government purchased the existing Trans Mountain pipeline from Kinder Morgan earlier this year for $4.5 billion after the U.S. firm became frustrated by political roadblocks. An expansion to nearly triple the line's capacity is in limbo following a Federal Court of Appeal ruling in August that requires more Indigenous consultation and research into increased tanker traffic. In his speech, Scheer accused Trudeau of being hostile to the energy sector and said a Conservative prime minister would get private companies to build market-opening pipelines. "I believe it is Justin Trudeau's strategy to not have this pipeline even started to be built by the next election. He just can't admit that it will be dead by the next election," Scheer said Thursday. "It's a little bit like the Monty Python dead parrot sketch. He just wants everyone to believe that it's not quite gone yet." Earlier in the day, Alberta's United Conservative Leader Jason Kenney told the crowd that if he becomes premier after next spring's election, he will set up a war room to take on critics of the province's energy industry. Kenney said his "fight-back strategy" would also include paying legal bills for Indigenous communities in favour of resource development and targeting charitable groups that want to shut down Alberta's energy industry. KHD wins German raw mill modernisation project 26 October 2018 Thomas Zement has awarded KHD Humboldt Wedag GmbH a brownfield EPC contract for upgrading its raw material grinding plant in Erwitte, Germany. This fast track project comprises: process-, mechanical-, electrical- and civil engineering service mechanical and electrical equipment supply with the following main machinery equipment: roller press for raw material grinding static V-separator SKS-high efficient dynamic separator KHD process fan type HKF structural steel supply erection and installation services for mechanical and electrical equipment as well as structural steel supervision services for erection, installation and commissioning. KHD is also responsible for the tie-in of the new equipment to the existing raw material- and product transport, as well as gas handling and treatment. The erection and installation of the new grinding plant will be carried out during operation of the production line followed by a minimal possible switch-over period. The Erwitte plant is located in the eastern part of Nordrhein-Westfalen in Germany. Taken over early 2018, the Erwitte plant represents the second cement production line of the Thomas group. Published under Cemex Latin American Holdings sees weak volumes ICR Newsroom By 26 October 2018 Cemex Latin American Holdings saw turnover for the first nine months decline by 8.6 per cent to US$848.5m and EBITDA fell by 22.3 per cent to US$187.7m, with the margin coming down from 26.1 to 22.1 per cent. The trading profit declined by 29.7 per cent to US$129.2m. After a 7.7 per cent reduction in financial expenses to US$42.9m and other items, the pretax profit came off by 26.1 per cent to US$96.2m. After tax and minorities, the net attributable profit was 33 per cent lower at US$53.3m. The net debt was 7.9 per cent lower at US$811m, giving a gearing level of 47.6 per cent compared with 56.8 per cent a year earlier, with 63 per cent of the debt being long term. The cement volume declined by 8.9 per cent to 4.97Mt and domestic deliveries of grey cement came off by 8.2 per cent to 4.37Mt. Aggregates shipments were 8.4 per cent lower at 4.79Mt and ready-mixed concrete deliveries were down by 11.5 per cent to 1.95Mm. The number of employees declined by 4.5 per cent to 4156. In Colombia, the biggest single market, turnover declined by 7.6 per cent to US$399.2m and EBITDA fell by 12.4 per cent to US$72.5m. Domestic cement deliveries were 10 per cent lower, while aggregates shipments and ready-mixed concrete deliveries both came down by 13 per cent. The price of cement recovered by three per cent in US dollar terms and by two per cent in the local currency, while aggregates prices were stable in dollar terms while ready-mixed concrete prices improved by two per cent. In Panama turnover declined by 20 per cent to US$169.4m and EBITDA fell by 41.5 per cent to US$51.24m. Domestic cement deliveries showed 20 per cent drop, but this turned into a 16 per cent reduction in the final quarter. The cement operations also had to deal with a notably lower levels of demand. Aggregates shipments declined by seven per cent over the period but fell by 13 per cent in the final quarter with prices little changed over the year. Ready-mixed concrete deliveries were 18 per cent lower over the period, but just nine per cent down in the final quarter with the average price being down by eight per cent. In Costa Rica the turnover eased by 1.6 per cent to US$111.9m while EBITDA declined by 8.1 per cent to US$36.8m and the margin declined from 35.2 to 32.9 per cent. Domestic cement deliveries recovered six per cent but came off by four per cent in the third quarter. The price in both US dollar terms and local currency was two per cent higher. Aggregates shipments rose by nine per cent over the period and by 18 per cent in the third quarter, while the average price declined by13 per cent, while ready-mixed concrete deliveries improved by 10 per cent and prices improved by two per cent. Elsewhere in the region, which includes Nicaragua, Guatemala and El Salvador, turnover was 4.8 per cent lower at US$180.1m and EBITDA came off by 17.1 per cent to US$56.2m. Cement volumes declined by three per cent, while prices were little changed. Aggregates volumes were six per cent higher over the period, but declined by 17 per cent in the third quarter and prices weakened, notably in dollar terms. Ready-mixed concrete volumes improved by five per cent, and by 12 per cent in the third quarter. Guatemala saw improved housing and shopping developments, but in Nicaragua business confidence still has to return. Published under Cemex's gearing continues to decline to 89% ICR Newsroom By 26 October 2018 During the first nine months of the year, Cemex cement shipments improved by 3.2 per cent to 52.69Mt, while ready-mixed concrete deliveries advanced by 3.7 per cent to 40.07Mm and aggregates shipments by two per cent to 112.59Mt. The companys turnover was seven per cent higher at US$10,933.1m, while EBITDA was a marginal 0.4 per cent ahead at US$1956m. The trading profit improved by one per cent to US$1330m, while the net interest charge dropped by 35.5 per cent to US$591m. The pretax profit improved by 11.6 per cent to US$804.2m. There was a US$186.8m tax charge, compared with a US$69.7m tax credit, leading to a net attributable profit 21.9 per cent lower at US$590.9m after minorities and discontinued items. The net debt at the end of September was seven per cent lower than a year earlier at US$10,332m, giving a gearing level of 89.4 per cent compared with the 122.2 per cent shown a year earlier and 163.9 per cent the year before that. Some 38 per cent of the debt is at variable rates, with the remainder being fixed and 66 per cent of the debt is in US$ and 27 per cent in euro. The number of employees at the end of September was 4.5 per cent higher at 40,263. In the full year, Cemex is expecting capital expenditure to reach around US$800m, of which some US$550m would be for maintenance. Mexico accounted for 23.1 per cent of turnover, compared with 22.6 per cent a year earlier and the Mexican share of EBITDA was 46.7 per cent compared with 41.1 per cent a year earlier. The United States represented 26 per cent (25.8 per cent in the year-ago period) of turnover and 24.3 per cent (21.1 per cent) of EBITDA. South and Central America produced 12.4 per cent (9M17: 14 per cent) of the turnover and 15.9 per cent (17.3 per cent) of EBITDA, while Europe represented 26.0 per cent (25.4 per cent) of turnover and for 14.1 per cent (12.5 per cent) of EBITDA. Asia and Africa contributed 9.9 per cent (9M17: 9.7 per cent) of turnover and 8.4 per cent (eight per cent) of EBITDA. The Mexican turnover was 9.2 per cent higher at US$2526.2m, a higher rate of improvement than the seven per cent seen in the previous year that reversed four successive years of decline. EBITDA improved by a further 5.1 per cent to US$913.3m. Domestic deliveries of grey cement recovered by three per cent and the third quarter showed a nine per cent advance. Cement prices improved by another three per cent in local currency and by one per cent in US dollar terms. The aggregates volume was 12 per cent higher, while average domestic prices improved by eight per cent, but by a more modest six per cent in US dollar terms. Ready-mixed concrete deliveries were ahead by 12 per cent while the local currency price improved by an average eight per cent and by seven per cent in US dollar terms. The US turnover improved by 7.4 per cent to US$2,843.1m while EBITDA improved by 6.5 per cent to US$476.2m. Housebuilding continued to be a positive factor and single-family housing starts increased by six per cent during the first nine months of the year. Industrial and commercial building activity improved by four per cent in the first eight months. Grey cement deliveries improved by seven per cent in the nine months, reversing a similar rate reduction the year before, while the average price improved by a further three per cent. Shipments of aggregates improved by four per cent over the period, and by three per cent in the third quarter. In ready-mixed concrete, delivery volumes were nine per cent higher over the period and by 10 per cent in the third quarter, with prices being ahead by two per cent over the period and by three per cent in the third quarter. The Cemex operations in South America, Central America and the Caribbean saw turnover decline by 3.3 per cent to US$1,357.9m while EBITDA was 15.5 per cent lower at US$311m. Cement volumes eased by two per cent over the period and by three per cent in the third quarter. Prices in local currency were ahead by two per cent as they were in US dollar terms. Aggregates volumes declined by nine per cent over the period and by 11 per cent in the third quarter while local prices eased by three per cent. In ready-mixed concrete, volumes fell by 12 per cent with prices being off by some two per cent. In Colombia, the biggest market, cement volumes declined by 10 per cent and local prices fell by 10 per cent. Aggregates volumes declined by 13 per cent though prices were only off by two per cent, while in ready-mixed concrete volumes were off by 13 per cent while prices were stable. In Panama cement volumes dropped by 20 per cent, with prices being one per cent weaker. Downstream, volumes were off by seven per cent in aggregates and by 18 per cent in ready-mixed concrete. Costa Rica saw volumes ahead by six per cent in for cement, by nine per cent in aggregates and by 10 per cent in ready-mixed concrete, and prices were ahead by two per cent, except for aggregates, which saw a 13 per cent reduction. Cemex' European turnover showed a 9.1 per cent advance to US$2844.1m, but EBITDA only improved by 4.2 per cent to US$276.2m while the trading profit was ahead by 2.5 per cent to US$123.1m. Deliveries of grey cement edged ahead by one per cent. Aggregates shipments across the region were off by one per cent and ready-mixed concrete deliveries were also one per cent lower. Cement deliveries declined by four per cent in Great Britain but rose by four per cent in Spain, by one per cent in Germany and by 8 per cent in Poland. Cement prices were three per cent weaker in Great Britain, but improved by six per cent in Poland, by four per cent in Spain and by two per cent in Germany. In aggregates, volumes were off by two per cent in Great Britain and in Germany but rose by 26 per cent in Spain, eight per cent in Poland and one per cent in France. Aggregates prices were one per cent weaker in Spain but improved immodestly in Great Britain, Germany and France and were ahead by 17 per cent in Poland. Ready-mixed concrete volumes were off by eight per cent Germany, by five per cent in Great Britain and by one per cent in France, but ahead by 27 per cent in Spain and by eight per cent in Poland. Ready-mixed concrete prices declined in Britain but improved elsewhere, notably in Poland. Asian and African turnover recovered by 8.9 per cent to US$1,087.2m but EBITDA declined by a further 3.7 per cent to US$163.6m. Domestic cement volumes improved by nine per cent across the region, with volumes improving by 11 per cent in Egypt and by 10 per cent in the Philippines. The average cement price in Egypt was 18 per cent ahead in US dollar terms, with prices weakening slightly in The Philippines. In aggregates volumes improved by one per cent and the average price was three per cent ahead, while in ready-mixed concrete, volumes were two per cent ahead and prices improved by five per cent. There are still no downstream operations in the Philippines. Published under 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. Let us make no bones about it; this so-called caravan is nothing more than a foreign invasion on American soil. It must be met with overwhelming force to stop the madness of this offensive swathe. If the United Nations will not enforce its own laws then the full might of our military and all other full time and part time policemen and women including auxiliary volunteers that are willing to stand up to this threat. All of those on the front lines must be given the weapons they need. Electric cattle fences, cattle prods and noise deterrents like those have been used in the past. Sound enhancement that cause all that proceed into this zone of caution and chaos. To lose control of all natural body functions post haste. I do not think it is necessary to describe what this mess would look and be like for all those that dared to proceed. I hope that this would give all of us--- the time we need to come to our senses --- for this will get out of hand very quick. I hope that no one will get physically hurt. For those lawbreakers who push their old and young alike up to the front in hope of creating sympathetic response - shame, shame on you! It would be the same as a parent telling their child that they can play in traffic if they want to and if those mean ole North American drivers happen to run over some of them, well it clearly is the drivers fault! Once again, I hope and pray no one is hurt. All the promoters that encouraged this invasion to include all family members inside the U.S. as co-conspirators in this attempt to invade our sovereign nation. They must be tried as traitors and dealt with as such. James A. Bolt * * * Mr. Bolt, I don't understand why all those people are trying to caravan to the U.S.A. My best guess is that the billionaires (Soros, Steyer, Bloomburg ) are financing them to undermine our country and building of the protective wall. I think that the wall is a good idea but it would not stop this amount of an invasion without some violence. Violence leads to collateral damage, always has and always will. I am clueless on how to handle this invasion, being a non-violent conservative Republican and Christian. But also being a patriot and Second Amendment advocate I will and have defended myself and my country. If someone tries to harm me or my family, God help them. The same goes for our country that so many have paid the ultimate sacrifice for and still are today. Jack Varner * * * The extreme, right-wing evangelicals that are labeling a migrant caravan as an invasion are feeding in to mass hysteria. Its a sad and terrible day when people in this country, who all come from immigrants and asylum seekers at some point in their bloodline, condemn immigration/asylum seekers and threaten to kill them. Unless you are verifiably 100 percent Native American, then guess what? You and your entire family are descendants of immigrants. Some came here legally, some just claimed land after getting off the boat, and some probably hopped a fence or two. This invasion as you are calling it is hardly that. An invasion requires some kind of war/killing implements, does it not? Guns, missiles, bombs, vehicles, troops, etc. All these migrants have are themselves, their children, and bags/backpacks, and suitcases. What are they to invade with? Are they going to throw their belongings? These people, who are fleeing horrific conditions of crime, disease, tyrannical governments, etc. are just wanting to try and garner safety and some shot at a better life. How Christian it is of people saying they should be shot or killed seem to forget that God, himself, commanded them not to murder. True Christians should be embarrassed and terrified by these false Christians that seem to be speaking for them as a whole. Also, read up on asylum seekers as it pertains to the law of our great country and remember Lady Libertys slogan. You have to be on U.S. soil to start the asylum process. How about we not feed into hysteria and fear? Just because these people have a different shade of skin color versus some of these super extreme, white-privileged, and superiority complex having right-wingers, it doesnt mean that they are coming to invade us and kill us or our families. Richard Smith * * * The caravan [somewhat poor description] of immigrants traveling from Central America to our border was lodged into the media until the discovery of mail bombs in the last two days. I totally agree with Mr. Smith regarding the ridiculous idea that these people should be harmed for approaching our border. I will have to point out that there are three primary definitions of the word "Invasion". The first and most prevalent is "an armed force". However, the second and third contain this phrasing: "An unwelcome intrusion into another's domain. Synonyms: Violation, infringement, interruption, encroachment, disruption, breach." The United States has laws. The approaching group has already forcibly broken the laws of several borders and have made the statement," Nothing will stop us but God". An interview of one of the group [with a translator] revealed that he had been "deported from the U.S. several times and the thing to do was to keep coming over and over." The question has been raised several times as to why the group does not seek asylum or immigration into Mexico. I believe the reason is either: 1. They know they do not have a valid reason for gaining asylum, 2. they have criminal records that would send them back to their home country, or 3. they know as soon as they step on American soil they will gain immediate support, and more than likely will be given a court date and released into the United States. Figures shift all the time as to how many actually honor their court date. I've seen everything from 3 percent to 30 percent that show up. The only way to force them into going through the proper process for entering the United States would be to have barriers that prevent them from stepping onto our soil. There are over 260 legal ports of entry along our southern border but they will not arrive at those ports. As long as "catch and release" is in place they will seek to avoid known entry points, cross the border and surrender to border personnel. This gives them a guaranteed pass and they know it. This loophole in our laws is going to continue to bring more and more caravans, individuals, etc. When illegal immigrants have the opportunity to gain access to the United States, they will continue coming in groups because they know that they are less likely to be raped, they can push their way through border crossings, and they will obtain their "dream" in the United States. They will head for the sanctuary cities and build their own welfare communities there. The United States cannot allow the unbridled formation of another welfare state. We simply cannot afford to absorb any and all groups of socially dependent individuals and families. In addition, it is a slap in the face of immigrants who are in line to legally attain citizen status. Its also a black mar against the homeless population and veterans who suffer from lack of medical care and housing. Finally, I am sick of hearing about the history of the United States being built on immigrants. That history was a different time, a different society, different immigrants, different laws, etc. The U.S. has never stopped receiving immigrants and reaching out to the world. Unfortunately, we can no longer be the savior of everyone. If we don't resolve our economy and social problems, we will collapse. Believe it or not, there are those in our world who have the destruction of the U.S. as a life goal. They desire globalization and the demise of world leaders with national ideologies. Ted Ladd A famed orchid grower in business at Signal Mountain since 1947 is moving further north on Waldens Ridge. Reed McCandless, whose son Scott is the fourth generation operator of Lines Orchids, said the operation will move to near Highway 111 and Jones Gap Road. Lines Orchids has sold its 23-acre property to LOP, LLC for $1,850,000. Mr. McCandless said the 1947 greenhouses "are somewhat obsolete" so they will be replaced with state-of-the-art greenhouses at the new location, which has 35 acres. He said construction on the new greenhouses is expected to start the first of March. Here is the history of Lines Orchids: We began bringing beautiful blooms into the lives of our customers starting in 1947 and continue today to grow and sell the highest quality orchid plants available in the southeast. We have 40,000 square feet of vintage glass greenhouses devoted to growing orchids, succulents, and various other plants. We invite you to come and experience the overwhelming beauty of the greenhouses the same beauty that has kept us in business for the past 64 years. We also deliver to Nashville, Atlanta and Birmingham on a regular basis. Please inquire HERE for florists in your area who carry our plants. Lines Orchids has recently embarked on a new retail venture in downtown Chattanooga. The store is located in the South Building of Warehouse Row located at 1110 Market Street Chattanooga, TN 37402 (next door to Public House). We are opened Monday- Friday from 10 a.m.-5 p.m. and on Saturday from 10 a.m.-4 p.m. HISTORY Joseph Chamberlain, who was Great Britains Secretary of State for the colonies in 1895, had a love of orchids- they provided solace from the highly public, often stressful life he lived. Mr. Chamberlain was never seen in public without an orchid in his lapel buttonhole. On a daily basis, orchids were shipped from London to his Highbury estate near Birmingham to ensure he always had the finest flowers available. Mr. Chamberlains son, Austen Chamberlain, who won the Nobel Peace Prize in 1925, and Neville Chamberlain had 13 greenhouses solely devoted to growing orchids. In 1898, at the ripe age of 14, Oliver Lines began growing orchid plants at Joseph Chamberlains estate. Olivers first job at the Chamberlain estate was to polish glass day in and day out. And, after serving in this role for some time, he was transferred to the greenhouse to serve as a water boy. After a period of apprenticeship, Oliver was promoted to be a grower assistant, a role where he found much joy and success. The head grower at the time, Mr. Smith, was transferred from Chamberlains estate to R.I. Measures estate just outside of London. Along with Mr. Smith, Oliver Lines was invited to work for R.I. Measures greenhouses. For the first time, Oliver left the comfort and familiarity of his family and friends in hopes of improving his orchid growing skills. The new job offer was full of opportunity as Mr. Measures, who manufactured steel for the construction of bridges, held one of the oldest and most respected orchid collections in England. Although it was a good opportunity to work for the Measures family, orchid growing proved quite difficult under the industrial conditions Oliver was in outside of London. Winter fog and pollution were less than desirable conditions for growing orchids, not to mention personal satisfaction. In 1906, Oliver happily returned to his roots in favor of a more peaceful and rural atmosphere. Oliver left Measures to work at the Westonbirt estate of Sir George Holford. At the time, Holfords orchid collection was overseen by H.G. Alexander, who is now revered as the most celebrated British orchid grower for the first half of the 20th century. In a 1957 letter, Mr. Alexander wrote, Oliver is an old and valued friend of mine. I well remember his joining the staff at Westonbirt- a position for which there was always a waiting list of ambitious young men- at a time when we were opening up and developing the collection towards its later peak of worldwide reputation. A range of new houses were erected away from the existing ones. Oliver was put in charge of this department as other houses were added to the block. It was here that he showed his aptitude and developing skills as a grower. He loved his plants and never stinted care and time on them. His intelligence and imaginative approach methods were evolving and his constant adherence to the highest standards of culture have made the sound basis of his successful career. I recall that at one of the Royal Horticultural Societies a few years ago, an American visitor remarked to me that Oliver Lines cattleyas were among the best, if not the best, grown in the United States. In 1910, Oliver was approached by a visiting American who offered him the opportunity to come to the United States to grow orchids. Oliver jumped at the opportunity and arrived at Ellis Island on February 13, 1910. He was only 25 years old. In the states, Oliver was hired as an orchid grower by John Sloane of W&J Sloane Company in NYC, one of the largest exclusive home furnishings businesses in the U.S. at the time. In 1914, Oliver moved to neighboring Pittsfield, Massachusetts to become a grower for Arthur N. Cooley who had a long time interest in horticulture. Cooley had the financial means to cultivate orchids on an extended scale which brought about exciting opportunities for Olivers career. With Olivers contacts in England and Cooleys financial backing, the Cooley collection of plants and greenhouses flourished. It was an exciting time of growth and experimentation Oliver had the resources he needed to make his hybridizing successful. In 1921, the American Orchid Society was formed and Oliver was named a trustee. He was the only estate grower that was chosen as a trustee on the board. And, in September 1921, the Massachusetts Horticultural Society held its first important orchid show and Oliver was awarded a gold medal for his superior cultivation of orchids. His hard work and creativity started to pay off. During difficult economic times, the Cooley collection of orchids were being sold off and eventually Oliver found himself without a job. Luckily, new doors opened in Larchmont, NY and Oliver moved with his wife and 2 children to serve with John J. Murdock, also an AOS (American Orchid Society) trustee, who was general manager for the B.F. Keith Vaudeville organization. Only a year after Oliver and his family moved to Larchmont, Murdock moved from NY to Beverly Hills and his orchid holdings were sold to none other than Joseph P. Kennedy father of John, Bobby and Ted. Again in need of a job, Mrs. W.K. DuPont asked Oliver to become her grower at Wilmington, but, only after six months time, Eleanor and Fitz Eugene Dixon were recruiting Oliver to rejoin his original Cooley collection which they had purchased in 1925 for their Ronaele Manor estate in Elkins Park, PA. Oliver eagerly jumped at the opportunity because he could return to the original collection he had been so instrumental in building. At the Worlds Fair in 1939, Oliver won three golds for Mrs. Dixon. He was even referred to as The Dean by many growers who sought his advice and counsel. In 1845, he was awarded the AOS gold medal of achievement for his skill in orchid culture. Harold Patterson, a well known orchidist at the time, wrote Many fine hybrids were produced at the Dixon estate by the hands and thinking of Oliver Lines. Many of these varieties were great and still are. They are components of countless fine new hybrids unfolding year after year. While working in Mrs. Dixons greenhouses, Oliver was not alone. He had a bright eyed, curious young son, John, who followed him around helping him water and pot the orchids, stoking the furnace when necessary. John was like a sponge, absorbing all the orchid knowledge he could from his father. During WWII, Oliver began selling the Dixon orchids commercially so the collection could survive the struggling economy. And in 1946, Mrs. Dixon decided to sell her large estate and consequently her fine collection of plants were sold off. Yet again, change was in the future for Oliver and his family. As a thank you for all of his hard work and success at the Dixon estate, Mrs. Dixon graciously gifted Oliver with plants from the Cooley collection as well as two greenhouses to use in the future establishment of Lines Orchids, which would be located in Signal Mountain, TN. Following in his fathers footsteps, John too had a passion for orchids and spending his days under glass- watering, potting and hybridizing orchids. Johns first job after high school graduation was with Frank and George Offs greenhouses of Brighton Hotel in Atlantic City, NJ. And, in 1943, Clint McDade, who was an AOS (American Orchid Society) trustee with Oliver asked him if he had any recommendations for a grower to help his expanding greenhouses on Signal Mountain, TN. Oliver recommended his son. And John got the job. Timing was everything and Johns new job at Rivermont Orchids on Signal Mountain provided him with a great opportunity to join a new firm, helping influence its future growth and development. Many great orchid crosses were made during Johns time at Rivermont. Due to some family conflicts at Rivermont, John approached his father, who was recently retired and living in New Jersey, to see if he would consider opening their own orchid business on Signal Mountain. Never seeming to outgrow change and opportunity, Oliver said yes. And, with a retirement check in hand, Oliver and John purchased a home with property on Signal Mountain in 1947. Two of the original greenhouses from Mrs. Dixons estate were dismantled and brought down to Signal Mountain, TN 1947, Lines Orchids was established. Originally, Lines Orchids began as a cut flower business supplemented by plant sales to walk-in customers. During the hard early years, the two worked closely together to ensure the companies success. There were difficult times but happily the business began to pick up and eventually it was flourishing thanks to the fashionable cattleya corsage that adorned womens outfits to special outings, events and Sunday church. The cut cattleya was the cornerstone of the business for many years. In 1962, John and his wife, Gladys, were given a private tour of the Truman Library in Independence, Missouri after naming an orchid for Mrs. Truman, C. Bess Truman. The orchid was originally meant to be names after President Truman but John asked if it could rather be named for Bess as President Truman had lots of things named for him. And so it was. John and Gladys kept themselves quite busy raising four children, tending to greenhouses, traveling the world to see various orchid collections and participating in orchid shows across the country. John and his father Oliver found much success at the shows for their beautiful hybridizations. Even today, the greenhouse shelves are filled with stacks of sliver pieces trays, candelabras, serving dishes that were awarded to Lines Orchids for their orchid crosses and hybridizations. After serving as an active trustee on the AOS for 31 years, longer than any other member, Oliver retired and was named an honorary vice president. Until his final days, Oliver joined John in the greenhouses, continuing to faithfully tend to the orchids he loved so dearly. Upon Olivers passing in 1965, John continued to run and expand the business, buying his former employer, Rivermont Orchids, in 1972. In the early 1980s the cut flower business began to fade and potted phaleanopsis orchid sales began to pick up dramatically. John adapted to the change in the industry, even though his true love always was for the cattleya. Johns phalaenopsis collection was an attractive potted plant available to the general public market. As the phalaenopsis plants bloomed, he hand selected some for his own hybridizing. Although white phalaeonopsis plants account for the majority of the sales at Lines Orchids, a number of Johns hybrids of other colors have been awarded AOS awards of merit. In the IPA (International Phalaenopsis Association) Journal, Tom Harper wrote John grows one of the biggest and strongest plants in the business. Many have commented on the quality of Lines Orchids plants upon visiting their greenhouses. Lee Universitys Department of Behavioral and Social Sciences will host guest lecturer Megan Kleeschulte, who is a doctorate student in the anthropology department at the University of Tennessee at Knoxville. The lecture, titled Forensic Anthropology: A Closer Look at the Fields Broad Impact, will take place Monday at 7 p.m. in the Humanities Building, Room 103. We are so fortunate to have a member of the forensic team from the UTK Forensic Anthropology Center on campus to present her research and also discuss the work at the center, said Dr. Murl Dirksen, professor of anthropology and sociology at Lee. Ms. Kleeschulte received her bachelors degree from Monmouth University with minors in archaeology, history, and geographic information systems. While attending Monmouth, she was awarded the 2016 Outstanding Undergraduate Scholar in Anthropology and also received the 2016 Wayne D. McMurray School of Humanities and Social Sciences Deans Award of Excellence. She attended two field schools during her time at Monmouth, the first being a residential exploration of Fort Charles, an abandoned British fort on the island of Nevis. Her second field school took her to Europe, where she had the opportunity to study the ancient city of Butrint in Albania. Ms. Kleeschultes research focuses on forensic anthropology, human identification in mass disasters or human rights investigations, the biomechanics of trauma, and GIS applications. Ms. Kleeschultes lecture is free and open to the public. For more information, call 614-8125 or email bss@leeuniversity.edu. Jeff Styles is a dinosaur. Im one too. He believes in speaking his mind and letting the chips fall where they may. Thats why hes had a successful talk show for many years. His voice has been a soothing vibration to the airwaves of Chattanooga for decades I cant tell you how many times Ive dragged myself back to town from parts unknown, from shocking year-long adventures that would make pirates applaud and church women cry, then pray ... and Id dial-up Styles on the radio and I knew I was back in a good place. Home. Recovery. Chatt-Town. He cares about the city. You could hear it plainly. The boys at Cumulus are blinded by political correctness. The spineless execs dont deserve his talent. One afternoon of mishaps, that only God knows how to deconstruct ... and Chattanooga lost something dear. Thats all you get these days. Jeff graciously plugged my family piano business, made a fabulous commercial for a drive-thru package store in the mid 80s - that was a riot which helped my gang stay in business longer allowing us to drink more of our profits. Gave my mom, J. Frances Alexander, an executive at Tn American Water Co, a voice to battle against the city and their quest to control the water company. Mom won both fights. (2-0) She also won a Peabody Award in the process. She loved Jeff Styles for his honesty, and his interest and fairness. I wonder what your water bill would be is she had lost. Yes, he has made enemies. But Chattanooga is a better place for it. Hes helped many people with his charity work, and supported businesses when they needed a little extra push. We all need a little extra sometimes. Dig? Thats what Cumulus Broadcasting had and they blew it. Doesnt surprise me one bit with these corporate hacks. Where is the charity and goodwill, when it counts, on their end? Some prominent businessman should get up out of his Lazyboy and give him a job. You couldnt find a better spokesperson in a century of online searches. Hed be as loyal as a purebred Labrador Retriever. You know Im right. He worked his butt off for years for a company that couldnt care less for human kind. You know Im right. Overlook the political correctness, and give a guy a break. I know what its like to be ruined. And I know what it feels like when people come and pick up the pieces. In return for their efforts, youll get a soldier who will go to war, gladly. Although Jeff and I are on opposite politically sides, his local politics were spot-on. The political left and right diatribes he had with my brother Rock were legendary. I once asked Rocky, I know yall are really getting into it on the show, and knowing you, its got to be driving you insane. But, be honest, do you like him as a man? He paused, and said, yup, I do. I said, I do too. Stacey Alexander Cleveland State Community College will be hosting a Nursing Information Session on Monday, Nov. 12 at 5 p.m. in the George R. Johnson Cultural Heritage Center Auditorium. Representatives from the CSCC Nursing Department, Financial Aid, Admissions and nursing students will be available during the session to answer questions about entering the nursing program. Prospective students will learn about admission testing, ways to deal with anxiety associated with test taking, the requirements to enter the nursing program and how to apply to the CSCC nursing program. The Associate of Applied Science Nursing degree sequence and courses will be highlighted. Anyone interested in learning more about nursing at Cleveland State is welcome to attend. These sessions are open to the public and not just Cleveland State students. We look forward to meeting anyone who is interested in becoming an RN, said Nancy Thomas, director of Nursing. For more information or to R.S.V.P. for the Nursing Information Session, visit mycs.cc/nursingsession. You can also visit the CSCC website for information on the Nursing department at www.clevelandstatecc.edu. A Search Advisory Committee has selected two finalists for the next president of the Tennessee College of Applied Technology at Knoxville. The candidates will visit the campus Nov. 7-8 to meet with faculty, staff and students the next step in the selection process. The finalists are: Kelli A. Chaney, dean of career education and workforce development at Big Sandy Community and Technical College, Prestonburg, Ky. Michael E. Ricketts, dean of the Tennessee College of Applied Technology Chattanooga The finalists resumes and other information about the presidency and search process are available on the Presidential/Executive Searches section of the Tennessee Board of Regents website at https://www.tbr.edu/hr/executivesearches/president-tennessee-college-applied-technology-knoxville. The president is the college's chief executive officer. President Dwight E. Murphy is resigning as president of TCAT Knoxville Dec. 31. He has served a dual role as president of TCAT Knoxville and TCAT Oneida/Huntsville for six years, and is resigning as president of TCAT Knoxville only, remaining head of the Scott County campuses. Mr. Ricketts is scheduled to visit the Knoxville campus Nov. 7, and Ms. Chaney on Nov. 8. After the campus visits, TBR Chancellor Flora W. Tydings will gather input from the campus community and further interview the candidates to select one for nomination to the full Board of Regents, which appoints presidents of all the colleges in the System. The goal is to have the next president in office Jan. 1. TCAT Knoxville enrolls more than 1,700 students per year, in about 20 technical training programs. Its main campus is on Liberty Street, west of downtown Knoxville, and it also offers programs at other teaching locations, including two new facilities under development in Anderson County and Blount County. The Board approved the criteria for the next president July 25 and appointed the Presidential Search Advisory Committee to review applicants, conduct interviews and recommend finalists to the chancellor. The committee was chaired by Regent Danni Varlan of Knoxville and included Regents Tom Griscom and Joey Hatch as members, along with representatives of the faculty, staff, students and alumni and the community. It met for the first time and held a public forum Sept. 5 at the college. For Subscribers Efforts are being made to protect farms as irrigation water disappears As irrigation water rights are sold off there are several agencies working to try to save Pueblo County's multi-million dollar ag industry. There may be more to Paytm blackmailing saga than meets the eye. Vijay Shekhar Sharma, the founder of India's largest e-wallet firm, said he believes his former secretary and corporate communications head Sonia Dhawan was used as a conduit of someone else's bigger plan. Sonia, her husband Rupak Jain, and another employee of Paytm administration department, Devendra Kumar, were sent to a 14-day judicial remand for allegedly trying to extort Rs 20 crore from the Paytm founder and his brother Ajay Shekhar Sharma. The fourth accused, Rohit Chomal, who allegedly made the extortion calls, is on the run. Sonia Dhawan allegedly hatched a plan to extort Rs 20 crore from the Paytm boss by threatening to leak his stolen personal data. Dhawan, a close confidant of Paytm chief, is accused of stealing 'personal data' from Sharma's laptop, phone and office desktop. During her ten-year stint with Paytm, Dhawan started off as secretary and went on to head the corporate communications of the company. But Sharma said he is shocked and surprised at the recent turn of events. "I don't know how many more people were involved in this sad conspiracy. I am shocked and surprised at things that happened and some claims or theories being pitched. I am sure with support of police and everyone involved we will uncover the details soon," Sharma told The Economic Times. According to Noida Police, it was her constant advice to "just pay up" the extortion money that raised Sharma's suspicion. Meanwhile, Dhawan's lawyer said that she's being framed due to "rivalry inside the company" and jealousy because of her promotion to vice president about a month ago. "The plot began after Dhawan was promoted as vice president of Paytm a month ago... There could be people around in the company or some (Sharma) family members who would not be happy about it," said Prashant Tripathi, Dhawan's advocate. Police had earlier said that Sonia Dhawan was planning to buy a property in the Delhi-NCR area for herself. However, her lawyer told the daily that a person who is earning in lakhs and crores in equity would not get into this to buy a house. "She could simply sell her equity to buy one," the lawyer added. On September 22, Dhawan had also filed an FIR alleging that she had got an extortion call for Rs 5 crore threatening harm to her family if she didn't pay up. "She is herself a victim of a similar phone call. Police did not take any action on her complaint and just lodged a non-cognisable report," her lawyer said. Calif. Philanthropy Donated Over $500,000 to Anti-Masterpiece Cakeshop Projects: Report 26 October, 2018 by Michael Gryboski , | A California-based philanthropy founded in 1953 has donated more than a half million dollars in grants to projects meant to undermine the religious freedom arguments of Jack Phillips. In June, the United States Supreme Court ruled 7-2 in Masterpiece Cakeshop v. Colorado Civil Rights Commission that a Christian baker named Jack Phillips was wrongly punished for refusing on religious grounds to make a wedding cake for a same-sex couple. In 2017 and this year, the Evelyn and Walter Haas, Jr. Fund, a progressive entitty headquartered in San Francisco, has given more than $500,000 to grants for projects opposed to Phillips. According to records on their website accessed Friday, in 2017 the Fund gave $200,000 to the National Center for Lesbian Rights to "execute a campaign to educate the LGBT community about the importance of the Masterpiece Supreme Court case." In the same year, the Movement Advancement Project, Equality Federation Institute, and the American Civil Liberties Union Foundation each received $100,000 for Masterpiece-related campaigns. For ACLU and the EFI, the grants were given for efforts to "to coordinate a public education campaign around the Masterpiece Cakeshop Supreme Court" and to "educate the LGBT community about the importance of the Masterpiece Supreme Court case." In 2018, the Fund gave $34,500 to the Horizons Foundation in order to "help LGBT leaders and organizations prepare for a unified response to the Masterpiece Supreme Court decision." Catholic News Agency broke the story about the grants on Thursday, describing the grants as coming from "opponents of broad religious freedom protections" and being part of a larger drive for funds. "The spending is among at least $2.4 million in new anti-religious freedom grants since October 2017, according to CNA's analysis," reported CNA, noting that additional grants may be revealed in subsequent documents. "Since 2014 at least $9.9 million in grants from multiple sources have been earmarked to oppose religious freedom protections. The grants generally come from backers of LGBT political causes, legal abortion and mandatory contraception coverage." In its June decision, the Supreme Court ruled that Colorado violated the First Amendment when it punished Phillips for refusing to bake a custom cake for the wedding of Dave Mullins and Charlie Craig in 2012 when same-sex marriage was illegal in Colorado. Justice Anthony Kennedy wrote the majority opinion, being joined by Justices Elena Kagan, Samuel Alito, Stephen Breyer, Clarence Thomas, Neil Gorsuch, and Chief Justice John Roberts. Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg wrote a dissent, which Justice Sonia Sotomayor joined. "When the Colorado Civil Rights Commission considered this case, it did not do so with the religious neutrality that the Constitution requires," wrote Kennedy. "Given all these considerations, it is proper to hold that whatever the outcome of some future controversy involving facts similar to these, the Commission's actions here violated the Free Exercise Clause; and its order must be set aside." However, soon after the decision was made, Phillips again found himself in legal trouble when a Colorado lawyer filed a complaint against him for refusing to make a gender transition-themed cake. As with the Supreme Court case, Phillips is being represented by the Alliance Defending Freedom, which in August filed a lawsuit against members of the Colorado Civil Rights Commission, Colorado Attorney General Cynthia Coffman, and Governor John Hickenlooper on the baker's behalf. Read more about Jack Phillips and Masterpiece Cakeshop on The Christian Post. Couples Who Live Together Before Marriage at Higher Risk of Divorce: Study Christian Post Reporter | 26 October, 2018 by Brandon Showalter Couples who live together before they get married are at greater risk of getting a divorce, a recently released study has found, supporting previous data. What is called the "premarital cohabitation effect" continues to be a real phenomenon, according to a study published last month in the Journal of Marriage and Family. This effect, long examined by social scientists, is that those who live together before getting married are more likely to struggle during marriage. The study, "Cohabitation Experience and Cohabitation's Association With Marital Dissolution," from authors Michael Rosenfeld and Katharina Roesler suggests that such struggles involve an increased risk of divorce and that previous research arguing the effect disappeared was biased toward short versus longer-term effects, as noted Wednesday by Scott Stanley and Galena Rhoades at The Institute for Family Studies in Charlottesville, Virginia. Those who say the negative effects of cohabiting disappeared simply did not have outcomes for divorce far enough out for those who had married in the recent cohorts that they examined, they explain. Rosenfeld and Roesler found that living together before marriage is linked with lower odds of divorce in the first year of marriage but the odds of divorce rise in every other year tested, a data point that holds across decades of research. For their research they used a harmonized data set of six waves of the retrospective National Surveys of Family Growth with 216,455 couple-years analyzing them with discrete time-event history methods to predict marital dissolution. The data was a nationally representative sample of women aged 44 years and younger in first marriages in the United States from 1970 to 2015. Recent scholarly papers that have asserted that the premarital cohabitation effect has gone away among people who got married in the past 10 to 15 years relied upon the notion that as living together before marriage became normalized it would cease to be tied to negative outcomes in marriage, perhaps because of less stigma among family and friends, Stanley and Rhoades explained. But Rosenfeld and Roesler's study disputes that theory, which also notes that the risks of living together before marriage were even higher among those who had cohabited with more partners than only their mate before marriage. Although precise causes are debated and difficult to pin down, couples who go straight into marriage without living together have a larger immediate shock to negotiate after marriage and thus have a short-term increased risk greater than those already living together, they argue. The study reaffirming the increased chances of divorce for couples who live together before marriage comes amid other data revealing that in the U.S., approximately 40 percent of births happen outside of marriage, a 10 percent increase from 1970, according to an annual U.N. Population Fund report released Wednesday. Read more about Couples Who Live Together Before Marriage at Higher Risk of Divorce: Study on The Christian Post. John MacArthur to Step Down as Master's University President; Transition Announced Christian Post Contributor | 26 October, 2018 by Samuel Smith Pastor and author John MacArthur has announced that he will no longer serve as president of The Master's University in California come May 2020. In a statement released by the school on Monday, MacArthur explained that "the time has come" for him to transition out of the university's presidency as the growth of the Santa Clarita-based institution demands "more leadership now and in the future." The 79-year-old MacArthur, who also pastors Grace Community Church of Sun Valley and also has a syndicated radio program, has been president of the university since 1985. He will transition out the role of university president over the next 18 months to allow the institution to find a new president. He will assume the role of university chancellor and will maintain his role as president of the institution's seminary. "For 33 years, since 1985, I have had the rare and enriching privilege of serving The Master's University and Seminary as president," MacArthur said in a statement. "I originally signed up for five years, thinking I would be able along with my pastoral ministry at Grace Community Church to help strengthen the university and seminary. I underestimated the hold that educating young Christians for Gospel influence on the world would have on me." MacArthur said that he found it "impossible" to let go of the opportunity to educate young minds. "I rejoice in the 91-year impact of this institution, because of its faithfulness to the Bible, to the glorious Gospel of the Lord Jesus Christ and His beloved Church," MacArthur added. "I am confident of the continuing influence of these schools for the Kingdom of our Lord and I look forward to continuing to serve The Master's University and Seminary in the years ahead." The decision was officially announced Friday in a press release explaining that the "board of directors determined that over the coming months, The Master's University and Seminary will enter a period of transition." "During this transition period, the future relationship of the two schools [university and seminary] will be clearly identified," the statement reads. "Moving into the future, TMU and TMS remain firmly committed to the authority of Scripture, the proclamation of the Gospel of Jesus Christ, and the mission of training men and women for Kingdom work." The statement praised MacArthur's leadership and explained that there will be staff meetings at both the university and seminary to answer questions about the transition. The Christian Post reached out to The Master's University for comment about why the decision was made. A response is pending. The decision comes after the university was put on probation earlier this year by the region's leading educational accrediting agencies, the Western Association of Schools and Colleges' Senior College and University Commission. Under the terms of the probation, the university will have two years to remedy its concerns while it maintains accreditation. The school was placed on probation due to several concerns about the school's personnel and management practices including lack of qualification for staff members in university leadership positions, questionable level of independence between the TMU board of trustees, operational integrity and a "climate of fear, intimidation, bullying" among faculty and staff. The commission expressed concern about the board's independence on grounds that "many members of the board are employed by the institution or another organization for which the president has authority." However, a university spokesperson assured The Christian Post that no board members are employed by MacArthur's Grace Community Church. The commission also referenced internal auditors comments about a contract the university held that benefited MacArthur's son-in-law, Kory Welch. The auditor's concerns were over the need for competitive bidding. That competitive bidding has since taken place by a third party, the spokesperson said. Last month, a report emerged with more detail of the alleged contract, stating that Welch's graphic design company, WeKreative, had been awarded an annual contract that paid $180,000 in 2016. KHTS reports that Welch was also a paid "consultant" for the school. Financial statements released by the university show that a "businesses owned by a family member of management for marketing, public relations and video production services" was awarded $392,900 and $137,071 in 2016 and 2017. University representatives who spoke with KHTS would not detail how much Welch received in compensation. In a statement, the university explained that WeKreative was paid $180,000 annually for 1,200 hours of work. "The company, in fact, has documentation to show they provided more than 3,000 billable hours of work for TMU," Brian Harr, TMU director of communications, wrote in the statement. "The school was not billed for the extra 1,800 hours. Read more about John MacArthur to Step Down as Master's University President on The Christian Post. Parents Outraged After Drag Queen 'L'Whor' Speaks to Kids at School; Principal Responds Christian Post Contributor | 26 October, 2018 by Stoyan Zaimov A number of parents in Colorado are outraged after a public school invited a drag queen to speak to children for a career day, prompting a partial apology from the principal. "I was pretty appalled. I was pretty surprised. It was a shock because no one was notified," parent Jen Payer told local news station KDVR. Parent Heather Rogers added: "This person is an adult entertainer and is talking to 12-year-old students about something that's adult nature." The drag queen, who goes by the stage name "Jessica L'Whor," made an introduction as "Ms. Jessica" to the students at Rocky Top Middle School during career day. Jessica was reportedly invited by a fan to attend career day, which is intended for speakers to explain how their job connects to literacy. Jessica said: "I had a couple kids that were like, 'I'm gay in school and I get bullied every week and I don't know what to do and just talking to you helped me realize that I can still be me and still be happy.'" Jessica further told CBS4 that most students were educated by the visit. "I went to four classes. In every class, one person asked me how to handle negativity and hate," the performer said. "There were a lot of kids interested in how I could have the confidence to go out looking the way I look." Jessica added: "I would tell the parents, 'I'm not telling your kid to go off and become a drag queen. I'm telling them to have the conversations. Because, it will come up in life." Rocky Top Principal Chelsea Behanna defended the event for highlighting the diverse community, but offered an apology for not warning parents ahead of time over the invited speakers. Behanna noted in a letter to parents that "a handful of people have expressed concern over the presence of a drag queen in our middle school." "Jessica, the drag queen, began her guest session with an explanation of her career as did all other guests. She explained that she is a performer who, though a man, portrays a woman for her performances. She detailed her background in the performing arts throughout middle and high school, talked about her dream of being a teacher, then explained how she earned a business degree from Colorado State University," she explained. "Jessica then read a great chapter from Horrible Harry in Room 2B by Suzy Kline. She used the text to illustrate the damage bullies can do, the need to always put kindness and acceptance at the forefront, and the shortsightedness of judging a book by its cover. Students were completely engaged and asked lots of great questions." Behanna took responsibility for failing to notify families ahead of time, and said that she apologizes "for any stress this has caused you and your child." "This year we used the same process as last year, sharing the schedule of speakers with staff so they could prepare students and plan for questions, but realize we cannot make it the students' responsibility to share that information at home," the principal added. "Moving forward, a prominent step in planning for next year will be to share the guest list for all families prior to the event. Should you feel like any of the sessions are not appropriate for your child, you'll be welcome to notify us and we'll make alternate arrangements for your child during that time." Parents across the country have spoken out against events allowing drag queens to speak to school children, such as "Drag Queen Story Time." Read more about Parents Outraged After Drag Queen 'L'Whor' Speaks to Kids at School on The Christian Post. Tim Keller: Christians Are Being Sucked Into Society's Demonizing, Mocking of Each Other Christian Post Contributor | 26 October, 2018 by Stoyan Zaimov Tim Keller, founding pastor of Redeemer Presbyterian Church in New York City, has warned that Christians are letting themselves be sucked into society's ongoing demonizing and mocking of groups. "We live in a world fragmented into various 'media bubbles,' in which you hear only news that confirms what you already believe. Anyone whose uses the internet and social media or who even watches most news channels today is being daily encouraged in a dozen ways to become like Jonah with regard to 'those people over there,'" Keller wrote on Twitter Wednesday, referring to the biblical figure. "Groups demonize and mock other groups. Each region of the country and political party finds reasons to despise the others. Christian believers today are being sucked into this maelstrom as much as, if not more than, anyone else," he added. "The book of Jonah is a shot across the bow. God asks, how can we look at anyone even those with deeply opposing beliefs and practices with no compassion?" he positioned. Keller linked to his new book, The Prodigal Prophet: Jonah and the Mystery of God's Mercy, which he said touches upon the divisions in society by exploring the biblical tale. In further tweets last week, the pastor said that years ago when he was preaching on Jonah, a listener explained his displeasure with him. "He did not feel I should have criticized Jonah. 'Jonah was just being a good patriot,' he told me. 'We should all be patriots,'" Keller revealed. "I answered him that while love of country and your people is a good thing, like any other love, it can become inordinate. If love for your country's interests leads you to exploit people, or in this case, to root for an entire class of people to be spiritually lost, then you love your nation more than God," he added. "That is idolatry by any definition." The best-selling author has been vocal about the importance of Christians resisting the polarization of American society, even as it continues to become more and more fragmented. In an op-ed for The New York Times at the end of September, he argued that historical Christian positions on controversial social issues do not align with the Republican-Democrat two-party system. Read more about Tim Keller: Christians Are Being Sucked Into Society's Demonizing, Mocking of Each Other on The Christian Post. Union Commerce Ministry will unveil a comprehensive state specific export strategy that will spell out country-specific, product-specific measures that will help boost Indian merchandise and service exports. An agri-export policy will also be in place soon. Commerce minister Suresh Prabhu said that that the strategy will be 'released in a few days'. Speaking at the Export Summit organised by industry chamber CII in Delhi on October 26, Prabhu said that the strategy has been prepared in taking inputs from sectoral ministries. Meetings with concerned ministries have already been held, where different ministries and stakeholders have been consulted, after which a matrix of specific action points have been prepared sector wise, commodity wise and territory wise, he explained. In a bid to boost service exports, government has identified 12 champion service sectors including IT, healthcare and tourism and set aside Rs 5000 crore to promote those sectors. The government is also revamping its project export strategy and preparing country and region specific export guidelines. The champion merchandise sectors that will get special support from the government include gems and jewellery, leather, textile and apparels. According to the minister, the government's export friendly measures have caused India's exports to grow by 9.8 per cent in financial year 2017-18. "This is exceptional in the light of huge decline in export growth in the previous years", he said. Further, the positive growth in exports happened at a time when there are a lot of negative headwinds globally, the minister added. Prabhu further stated that he is personally monitoring the progress and regular meetings are being held with sectoral ministries, export promotion councils and exporters. Certain issues which were affecting growth of exports have been specifically taken up with Department of Revenue and Ministry of Environment. Directorate General of Foreign Trade (DGFT), Alok Vardhan Chaturvedi, spoke about the recent initiatives taken by the Commerce Ministry to smoothen procedures for exporters. Most procedures are now online and hard copies of the documents are not required to be submitted. DGFT is also planning to have online export related courses to inform, train and facilitate first time exporters. The DGFT is also in the process of overhauling the IT network of the DGFT so that there is no wastage of time for online submission of documents. Scholars explain what is most discouraging and encouraging about Ligonier theology survey that found 3 out of 4 US evangelicals are Arians. | Image: Wikimedia Commons Members of the Council of Nicaea present their decision to Constantine. In this analysis, CT theology editor Caleb Lindgren compares Ligoniers 2018 theology survey to the 2016 version, followed by ten expert reactions to the overall results. Are American Christians really this bad at theology? Are we simply just a band of unwitting heretics? Ligonier Ministries and LifeWay Researchs recent State of Theology study seems to indicate that, yes, a large percentage of us are. While it may be tempting to declare a state of theological emergency, a further look at the groundbreaking survey, now in its third wave, shows room for optimism amid the concern. Clearly the theological acuity of Christians in the United States could improve. But the findings from Ligoniers study actually indicate that where instruction and education do occur, at least evangelicals can be remarkably orthodox. By comparing this years study and the previous one from 2016, we can gain a better idea of what these results say about how heretical we American Christians are. Lets focus on evangelicals by belief, as defined by the National Association of Evangelicals, and start with the questions that were reworded between the 2018 study and the 2016 study. In 2016, the survey phrased one question as, People have the ability to turn to God of their own initiative, and about 8 in 10 respondents agreed (82%). Compare that to this years wording: Only the power of God can cause people to trust Jesus Christ as their savior, which garnered an essentially identical agreement of 83 percent. So between 2016 and 2018, nearly the same percentage of evangelicals believed diametrically opposed positions on the very same issue. (To be fair, the Council of Orange in A.D. 529, which attempted to clarify this matter, struggled with just this question. But church leaders ultimately kept the initiative solely in Gods hands.) In a question on faith and works, the 2016 version states, My good deeds help me earn my place in heaven, to which 39 percent of evangelical respondents agreed. This years wording reverses the emphasis: God counts a person as righteous not because of one's works but only because of one's faith in Jesus, to which 91 percent agreed. Thats a 30 percentage point swing, when you account for the opposite wording. Again, different phrasing yields very differentand more orthodoxresults. One explanation: In both cases, the newer wording sounds much more like standard confessional statements evangelicals would be familiar with. Also, the 2018 versions allow respondents to agree with an orthodox statement rather than disagree with a heterodox one. As church history shows us again and again, its much easier to agree with orthodoxy than to identify heresy. Occasionally, the study used a clearer wording and yielded different results. For instance, the prosperity gospel saw an uptick in popularity of 9 percentage points off the back of more specific wording (additions in italics): God will always reward true faith with material blessings in this life (46% of respondents agreed). Likewise, there was a drop of 24 percentage points of people who think political engagement is a problem as long as it is Christians doing it, rather than the church. In cases where the wording remained the same, the study found slightly more evangelical respondents departing from the historic doctrines of Christianity than in 2016, but there were also a few new questions in this years survey that provide food for thought and even some encouragement. In the 2018 survey, high numbers affirmed that sex outside of marriage is a sin (89%), and abortion is a sin (88%). And though nearly all evangelicals (99%) agreed with the statement, God created male and female, 30 percent of evangelicals said that gender identity is a matter of choice. Likewise, while the majority of evangelicals hew to the traditionalist perspective on homosexuality, 1 in 5 agreed that the Bible's condemnation of homosexual behavior doesn't apply today. Yet all 581 of the evangelical respondents in the survey had to strongly agree that the Bible is the highest authority for what I believe to be classified as evangelical by belief. Another new question stated, the Holy Spirit can tell me to do something which is forbidden in the Bible, to which 21 percent of evangelicals agreed. Theologians weighed in on confusion about the Holy Spirit following the the 2016 study. Lastly, while hell and judgment are very unpopular in the general culture, evangelicals are sticking with Scripture: 93 percent believe that hell is a real place where certain people will be punished forever, and 98 percent agreed that there will be a time when Jesus Christ returns to judge all the people who have lived. CT also asked ten scholars to explain what they find most discouraging and encouraging about Ligoniers 2018 State of Theology survey: Timothy Larsen, professor of Christian thought, Wheaton College: I found these results encouraging. Most Americans often hold orthodox beliefs. Even the Arian heresy is just people wanting to praise Jesus and getting distracted by the superlative greatest. If asked, most would have agreed that Jesus is truly God. One piece of good news for evangelicals was that they were more likely than Catholics or mainline Protestants to disagree with, Worshiping alone or with ones family is a valid replacement for regularly attending church. The charge that individualism is a particular problem for evangelicalism has been overplayed. The black community is noticeably more orthodox, so clearly white believers need to start learning from African Americans how to do effective discipleship. Most surprising was that 18- to 24-year-olds are sometimes more conservative than those over 65, including on abortion, hell, and the priority of evangelism. One discouragement was that regular churchgoers were more likely to deny the personhood of the Holy Spirit. Many churches are doing a poor job of teaching pneumatology. Fred Sanders, professor, Torrey Honors Institute, Biola University: This survey indicates that what is at work in many Christians is zeal without knowledge. The dead giveaway is the number of people who agreed with the statement, Jesus is the first and greatest being created by God. To venture a guess at what was going through their minds, they heard positive, complimentary words about Jesus (Jesus first greatest God) and said a hearty Amen. I suspect they were trying to indicate a high opinion of him, and responding largely in terms of an attitude of general affirmation of anybody saying good things about Jesus. Its touching to see them try to praise Jesus this way. But its mostly disheartening, because it indicates such a low level of theological formation that they couldnt tell they were doing the opposite of what (if Im right) they intended. The need for some form, almost any form, of catechizing is acute. Kristen Deede Johnson, professor of theology and Christian formation, Western Theological Seminary: At first I was encouraged by the number of evangelicals who still believe that the cross of Christ is essential for addressing sin. Pondering it further, I realized that this finding highlights the troubling separations that exist between theology and discipleship. Comparing this finding to others in the survey on such things as how we understand the Holy Spirit and the importance of the local church, I was reminded that we as evangelicals often struggle to see how theology connects to our ongoing lives of discipleshipto everything that happens after our salvation. Thinking of my own story, while I am deeply grateful for the ways a local high school youth group invited me to encounter the saving grace of Christ, it took another 10 years for me to encounter theology and understand its significance for my daily life in Christ. Today when I teach courses on discipleship, I dedicate huge chunks of these classes to theology. I am continually amazed at what occurs: as the Holy Spirit refines our theological convictions in light of Scripture, we are drawn more deeply into the life-giving grace of our Triune God and prepared more fully to seek first His Kingdom and righteousness. John Stackhouse, professor of religious studies, Crandall University: The survey sounds a legitimate and important warning. If people fundamentally misunderstand basic Christian theology, they cannot convert to it or practice it but instead will be literally following a different religion. Strangely, however, the survey combines what would be globally, ecumenically understood as crucial doctrine with oddly put questions that may not be eliciting good data. For instance, faithful Christians actually disagree about the interplay of Gods finely grained guidance and human responsible freedom in day-to-day decisions. Does God really care what socks you wear or whether you order in Chinese or Thai food for supper? Maybe, maybe not. Does the smallest sin warrant eternal damnation? I cant think of a major theologian who speaks to that weird hypothetical when the overwhelming reality is that we all are sinful, and thats the reality the Bible does address. I can see even pretty orthodox people giving different answers here. In short, though, I agree that the teaching task remains critical. And those of us who teach the churchs teachers need to do a better job of helping pastors teach good doctrine, demonstrate that thats what the Bible teaches, and apply it to life so people can see why theology matters. Aida Besancon Spencer, professor of New Testament (retired), Gordon-Conwell Theological Seminary: I found it encouraging that about one-third of Americans exhibit some key evangelical beliefs with regards to faith, biblical accuracy, and the place of sex in marriage. Although the youth do hold some postmodern beliefs that are not biblical, they lead older adults in being evangelistic, not accepting all religions as true, seeing abortion as sin, all sin deserving punishment, and recognizing the Holy Spirit as the one who gives new birth. African Americans (as always) lead ethnic groups in agreeing with laudable biblical truths. I found discouraging that many youth want to be entertained in worship services (46%), that so many evangelicals (78%) think Jesus is the first and greatest being created by God, and that those who attend worship services at least once a month think that the Holy Spirit is a force, not a personal being (66%)as do many evangelicals (59%). I found it surprising that the very wealthy are so devout on many questions. Sung Wook Chung, professor of Christian theology, Denver Seminary: The most discouraging about these results is that 78 percent of Americans with evangelical beliefs agree that Jesus is the first and greatest being created by God, even though most responses agree that the God of Christianity is uniquely triune. These two beliefs are mutually exclusive. Arian heresy has returned! Another very discouraging aspect of the survey is that a majority of responses agree the Holy Spirit is an impersonal force and most people are good by nature. If most people are good, why do they need salvation? In contrast, the most encouraging part of the survey results is that 97 percent of Americans with evangelical beliefs agree that biblical accounts of the physical (bodily) resurrection of Jesus are completely accurate and this event actually occurred. This means that most evangelicals are still committed to the supernatural character of Christianity. As a corollary, most Americans with evangelical beliefs (83%) agree that Jesus is the only savior of sinners. This is encouraging! B. J. Oropeza, professor of biblical and religious studies, Azusa Pacific University: There is one true God in three persons (God the father, God the Son, and God the Holy Spirit) receives the best percentage with 97 percent of Americans with evangelical beliefs agreeing, in keeping with the early Christian creeds. It is ironic, then, that the Arian view that Jesus is the first and greatest being created by God, a view the writers of these same creeds opposed, also received the best percentage with 78 percent of Americans with evangelical beliefs agreeing. Moreover, 57 percent of evangelicals say that the Holy Spirit is a force but is not a personal being. How, then, could he be God and a person if an impersonal force? Obviously, quite a number of those surveyed do not fully understand what they think they believe. M. Sydney Park, associate professor of divinity, Beeson Divinity School: The troubling results of the survey only confirm what many have suspected for years as evangelical churches seek to mark their relevance for contemporary culture increasingly along the lines of sociology and psychology, rather than theology. Clearly, renewed commitment to teach Scripture will directly redress the various points of theological confusion; and with equal clarity, such theological reinforcement will result in rejection and dissociation for many. The results of the survey, however, call for a deeper self-analysis, which requires something more than simply robust pedagogy. In what significant ways does the evangelical church demonstrate the advantage of orthodoxy, particularly, in contrast to the prevalent culture of relativism and self-actualization? Resurgence of theological teaching alone cannot ultimately resolve the crisis. Without demonstrable evidence of the benefits and consequence of the cross, the testimony of evangelical churches remains emaciated, without power to effectively challenge the countervailing cultural trend and ethos. Elizabeth Rios, founder, the Passion Center; vice president, Plant4Harvest: What I see from this survey is that much of Bebbingtons four evangelical core convictions are still held on to on paper by American evangelicals. It is encouraging to read that in regards to biblicism, there is a high percentage of evangelicals who still believe in the final authority of the bible for how they believe and behave, yet confusing because of the way they actually are behaving in America. It is encouraging to read that there are still a high percentage of American evangelicals who believe in not staying silent when it comes to politics. But troubling because what some evangelicals are saying when they do speak up in politics is so antithetical to what Jesus actually modeled. And finally, it is discouraging to read that almost half of American evangelicals believe that God will always reward "true faith" with material blessings. Yet it explains why most white evangelicals are much more predisposed to believe it's your own fault if you're poor and support policies that further drive home this belief. On paper, everything looks normal but in the real world, we all can see that it is an entirely different reality. Christopher Hall, distinguished professor of theology emeritus, Eastern University: Ninety-three percent of evangelicals agreed that God is indeed triune in nature. However, my own experience when I taught theology at Eastern University, and often in evangelical churches, indicates that while evangelicals attest the doctrine of the Trinity to be true, they dont understand clearly what the doctrine teaches about God. I would estimate that 97 percent of my students were predictably heretical when they tried to explain the Trinity to me in such ways as, the Father is part of God, the Son is part of God, the Holy Spirit is part of God. Or I would run into illustrations of the Trinity where shamrocks or water, ice, and mist were used. Perhaps ironically, this problem relates to evangelicals being Bible people. They learn the Bible every Sundaysomething I encouragebut when they step out into what the Bible teaches about the Trinity or the Incarnation, most evangelicals end up stuck. They simply havent been catechized well. Most havent studied much church history or historical theology. In some ways, evangelical confusion on one question, Jesus is the first and greatest being created by God, illustrates my point. Seventy-eight percent agree with Ariusthe arch-heretic of the fourth century. Quite shocking. The church fathers wouldnt be pleased. I am encouraged by evangelical commitments to the Scripture, opposition to the taking of innocent life, and clarity on human sexuality issues. Given Christianitys precarious position in Silicon Valley, its hard to tell whod be more surprised to find the teachings of St. Benedict as the code of conduct for one of the most ubiquitous pieces of software on the planet: believers themselves or the crowd of digital programmers who recently balked at the divinely inspired guidelines. SQLitea database management engine used in most major browsers, smart phones, Adobe products, and Skypeadopted a code of ethics pulled directly from the biblical precepts set by the venerated sixth-century monk. This week, many programmers discovered SQLites unusually religious guidelines, which include the Great Commandment and the Ten Commandments, as well as teachings such as devote yourself frequently to prayer and prefer nothing more than the love of Christ. Founder D. Richard Hipp responded by defending and explaining the relevance of the historic monastic rule to this modern-day tech landscape. He said he found typical codes of conduct to be vapid. So when clients began to request one for SQLite, the Christian developer preferred to create something more substantial than trendy, feel-good statements. Hipp does not require users of the public domain software to follow Christian teachings, but instead pledged to govern their interactions with each other, with their clients, and with the larger SQLite user community in accordance with the instruments of good works from the fourth chapter of The Rule of St. Benedict, the codes introduction reads. This code of ethics has proven its mettle in thousands of diverse communities for over 1,500 years, and has served as a baseline for many civil law codes since the time of Charlemagne. All of SQLites developers agreed to follow the spirit of the Benedictine rule, enumerated in 72 points [see below]. I could have edited the list down to just those aspects that seem relevant to coding, Hipp told The Register, a tech news site. But that would put me in the position of editing and redacting Benedict of Nursia, as if I were wiser than he. And I considered that. But in the end, I thought it better to include the whole thing without change (other than translation into English). In the preface, I tried to make clear that the introspective aspects could be safely glossed over. St. Benedict is known as the father of Western monasticism, largely because of the community guidelines he established which balanced both compassion and discipline among monks. In drawing up these regulations, we hope to set down nothing harsh, nothing burdensome, he famously said. The good of all concerned, however, may prompt us to a little strictness in order to amend faults and to safeguard love. Lately, the open source software community has been considering whether improved codes of conduct could help curb harassment and other bad behavior; the Linux system recently updated its behavioral guidelines for developers after a controversy involving its founder. Though SQLite posted its Benedictine code of conduct back in February, it became a topic of discussion this week when it was brought up on the site Hacker News, a Reddit-type message board run by the creators of the prestigious entrepreneurship incubator, Y Combinator. My first reaction was that it was a satirical joke when I read it on Hacker News, Jeffrey Davis, a Christian who works as an engineering director for a tech company in Dallas, told CT. To be blunt, it was a relief to know such a statement was not being used in a mocking and satirical manner. You can read that thread to get a grasp on what its like as a Christian in the day-to-day SF/Valley Tech world. While plenty of commenters endorsed the spirit of the Rule of St. Benedict, or respected SQLites right to adopt whatever code it chooses, critics challenged it as evangelistic or exclusionary. Some of the teachings espoused in the ethical code resonate as universal calls to kindness and respect; others stand out as particularly unusual in the industry, including encouragement to pray, repent, Be a stranger to the world's ways, and Attribute to God, and not to self, whatever good you see in yourself. I am quite baffled by this, one commenter wrote in response. I mean this is some strange place to promote Christianity. Religious discrimination isnt ok, and being annoyed by it isnt blowing things out of proportion, wrote another. The criticism reflects an ongoing tension in the tech landscape: the sense that Christians will experience bias, or at least some social discomfort, in a largely secular, progressive community. Earlier this year, the HBO series Silicon Valley, known for its cringeworthy ability to capture the drama of startup culture, included a plot point where a CEO was accidentally outed for being Christian. According to one line in the episode, Here, you can be openly polyamorous, and people will call you brave. You can put micro doses of LSD in your cereal, and people will call you a pioneer. But the one thing you cannot be is a Christian. This discussion of faith and work is more relevant than ever, even if things arent as bad as the episode portrayed, concluded one Silicon Valley believer and venture fund associate, John Drexler, on the site Faith Driven Entrepreneur. If Silicon Valley is Nineveh, weve got a lot of Jonahs already hard at work. But due to social pressures, a lot of those Jonahs may remain behind the scenes when it comes to their faith. When reporting on believers in the Bay Area for CTs This Is Our City project, Andy Crouch observed that there were plenty of prominent Christians in startups, companies, and nonprofits, but they were more hesitant than sources in any other highlighted city to be publicly identified. SQLites Hippa 57-year-old living in Charlottehas been open about his Christian faith long before the code of conduct debacle. His Twitter bio reads, Christian, Creator of SQLite and Fossil-SCM. Often wrong but seldom in doubt, and his profile picture feaatures the Arabic letter n, a symbol of solidarity with the persecuted church in Iraq and Syria. Hipp has written his values directly into the source code for SQLite, which is accessible in the public domain. In the space where copyright notices typically appear, he included the line: The author disclaims copyright to this source code. In place of a legal notice, here is a blessing: May you do good and not evil. May you find forgiveness for yourself and forgive others. May you share freely, never taking more than you give. On the site RedGate hub, he explained: May you find forgiveness for yourself and forgive others is a loose interpretation of Matthew 6:12, part of what is commonly called the Lords Prayer and more recognizable as, Forgive us our debts as we forgive our debtors. The third sentence tries to capture the concept of paying debts forward. The never take more than you give part is a paraphrase of one of the lyrics from The Lion King. The first (hokey) sentence is there because it seemed like a good benediction needed three sentences. On his personal website, Hipp endorses the work of Wycliffe Bible Translators. His wife, Ginger G. Wyrick, is a church choir director, music ministry consultant, and member of the Fellowship of United Methodists in Music and Worship Arts. Hipp converted to Christianity while a freshman at Georgia Tech and attributes his success in the industry to the Lords work. Everything that I am is by Grace alone. The longer I live and the more I see, the more obvious this fact becomes, he said in a 2008 interview. There have been many times in the past (and, no doubt, there will be more occasions in the future) where I have looked upon my accomplishments with pride, thinking that I have done well. Such thinking is utter foolishness. I would be less than nothing but for the unmerited favor of God. When questioned on an SQLite message board this week, he stood firm: The values expressed by the current [code of conduct] have been unchanged for decades and will not be changing as we move forward. If some people are uncomfortable with those values, then I am very sorry for them, but that does not change the fact. Fellow believers in tech were pleased to see Hipp uphold scriptural teachings as the source of his values. As a Christian, I do believe that 1) while we shouldnt expect non-Christians to live like Christians, 2) when we live according to Gods design, it generally goes better for us (whether a person is a Christian or not), said Brian Seagraves, a software developer and Christian apologist. If we jettison God and his standard, were more likely to use software to exploit and people If companies and individuals followed even just the first 10 principles on The Rule, the industry and the world would be a better place. Here is the version of the Rule of St. Benedict, as listed in SQLites code. It follows a caveat: No one is required to follow The Rule, to know The Rule, or even to think that The Rule is a good idea. The Founder of SQLite believes that anyone who follows The Rule will live a happier and more productive life, but individuals are free to dispute or ignore that advice if they wish. Email Whatsapp Menu Whatsapp Google Reddit Digg Stumbleupon Linkedin Comment If you thought the conversations were being dominated by activist polarized whites, you were right. The N.Y. Times' David Brooks has written a piece entitled "The Rich White Civil War: A smarter look at America's divide" that's worth a read. Utilizing research results from "Hidden Tribes: A Study of America's Polarized Landscape," Brooks exposes what he describes as now "cultish" extremes in U.S. politics. According to this new study of the American electorate: There are about 8% of Americans in the extreme left camp all actively voting, all active on social media, all giving money and time to campaigns, all well-educated and almost all white (80%). Their collective voices dominate Democratic politics. There are about 6% in the extreme right camp all actively voting, all active on social media, all giving money and time to campaigns, all well-educated and almost all white (88%). Their collective voices dominate Republican politics. These two groups are opposed to one another on issues but also at a deeply personal level. They hold one another in actual contempt. They also have their own online and mainstream media sources which continually fuel their viewpoint and reinforce their views of those on the other side. They see themselves as good and evil, us and them. They do not meet in the middle and they do not respect those who are in the middle because they are fully convinced of the rightness of their position. Any and all who disagree or even get in the way are unfortunate casualties of what they see and engage in as war. The far left's 8% of the population are "Progressive Activists" who are "deeply concerned with ... equity, fairness ... They tend to be more secular, cosmopolitan, and highly engaged with social media." The far right's 6% of the population are "Devoted Conservatives" who feel that "America is embattled, and they perceive themselves as the last defenders of traditional values." This is confirmation of the worldview divide we often point to here on The Reconnect and on Connecting Faith. People at the extremes do not talk to or with each other but they often talk about one another in openly hostile, demeaning and pejorative terms. But note, together they only constitute 14% of the American electorate. That means that the majority the vast majority, 67% are not extreme, not highly polarized politically and basically stuck in the middle. And being in the middle of a cultural battlefield means the majority who are just trying to live in peace are often caught in the cross-fire. Let us then, not lose hope! It is significant to recognize that the overwhelming majority of Americans, a full two-thirds of us, identified as the "Exhausted Majority." And that very large majority of Americans desire something new. So, how do we fan the flame of the new thing? First, we lift up our drooping heads and strengthen our weak knees and learn again to stand, with heads held high not always ducking for cover. We re-engage the conversation with the full dignity of Ambassadors of the Kingdom of Heaven. We speak as those who have the authority given us by the risen Christ. We tell those who need to hear it to "Stop it." And we demonstrate what it looks like to talk with people who look, sound, dress and believe differently than we do. We take the earbuds out and put the phone away so we can look people in the eye and have real conversations about what's really going on in real people's lives all around us. We influence every conversation and every person we meet and slowly but surely we re-till the cultural soil of this land. We plant seeds. We pour out living water. We tend and feed and bind up and mend and we do not stop even when all around us rage. Here are a few places to start: The Dignity Revolution by Dan Darling: Connecting Faith 8-24-18 Christians in an Age of Outrage by Ed Stetzer: The Reconnect 5-23-16 Culture Care by Makoto Fujimura: Connecting Faith 10-15-18 and The Reconnect 5-16-17 Them: Why we hate each other by Ben Sasse Confident Pluralism by John Inazu: Connecting Faith 4-3-18 and The Reconnect 11-23-16 Originally posted at The Reconnect. Email Whatsapp Menu Whatsapp Google Reddit Digg Stumbleupon Linkedin Comment By the time you read this article, we may know the identity of the individual or group behind the spate of attempted bomb attacks on CNN, the Obamas, the Clintons, and others. What's clear right now is that we have been heading in this direction for many months now. The attempted bombings are just the manifestation of the tip of a very big iceberg. As for the bombs, there are several obvious possibilities. Were they the work of rightwing extremists? Was this a desperate, false flag tactic from the far left? Is this the work of someone who is simply mentally unstable? The product of outside terrorism? At this moment, we don't have answers to those questions. But what we do know is this: from Donald Trump to CNN and from leftwing radicals to the Hollywood elite, we have been on a collision course with extreme anger boiling over into violence. All are guilty, all are to blame, and all have a responsibility to speak responsibly. It's time to temper the rhetoric. Otherwise there will be blood on the streets. (This is not the first time I have said these things, and I'm hardly alone in airing these concerns.) Let's look at some of the main players involved, in the reverse order of my list. When we consider the rhetoric of the Hollywood elite, the big question is: Where do we start? Do we highlight Madonna's desire to blow up the White House, expressed at a women's rally immediately after the presidential elections? Or how about Bette Midler's recent tweet, comparing the president to "murderers and plunderers"? (For the record, this was in response to the report that the HHS was going to define "sex" based on biology. How dare they!) And in between these two statements, there was Kathy Griffin holding up the bloody, severed head of the president. Need I say more? Yet there is plenty more to say. A June article on The Hill also reminds us of "Johnny Depp saying it's time for another actor to assassinate the president, referencing John Wilkes Booth." The article also noted that, "Just days ago, the legendary Robert De Niro used his Tony Awards podium privilege to shout 'F--- Trump' while the industry crowd stood up and cheered." At this point, a whole book could be written on Hollywood's hatred of Trump. As for the radical voices on the left, where do we start? Is it the confrontational calls of politicians like Maxine Waters? Is it the violent incitement of groups like Antifa? A September editorial on Investor's Business Daily noted that, "Breitbart started collecting examples of attacks on Republicans and Trump supporters in recent months. Their list is now over 550." The op-ed also stated that, "MSNBC's Joe Scarborough used the 17th anniversary of 9/11 to declare President Trump a bigger threat to America than terrorists who killed 2,977 on that day to say nothing of the hundreds who died later from 9/11-related cancers. "Scarborough didn't come out and say that Trump should be killed like 9/11 mastermind Osama bin Laden. But what other implication are you supposed to draw? That he should be thrown in the prison at Guantanamo?" This kind of rhetoric is utterly irresponsible and can easily lead to violent actions, especially by unstable people with an ax to grind. Ironically, Alex Soros, the son of billionaire, leftwing financier George Soros, blamed today's hateful climate on President Trump, associating him with white supremacists and anti-Semites. (This was in response to the attempted bomb attack on a George Soros residence.) Yet it is George Soros whose funding has allegedly empowered so many on the radical left, including those espousing violence and hate. As for CNN, do I really need to document their incessant, often hysterical attacks on the president and those who stand with him? (See here and here and here for examples.) Does this constant drumbeat of Trump hatred produce no bad fruit at all? In the immediate aftermath of the bomb threat at CNN's New York City headquarters, CNN's president Jeff Zucker issued this statement: "There is a total and complete lack of understanding at the White House about the seriousness of their continued attacks on the media. The President, and especially the White House Press Secretary, should understand their words matter. Thus far, they have shown no comprehension of that." Again, at this point we do not know who is responsible for the bombs, but even if they are the work of misguided and demented Trump supporters, Zucker's statement is beyond ironic. Mr. Zucker, please reword your statement and apply it to your own network. Words do matter, and you are fueling the fires of anti-Trump hysteria on a daily basis. And that leads us back to President Trump himself. He certainly shares in the blame, from the campaign trail to today. Think back to his allegation that Rafael Cruz, the father of Ted Cruz, was involved in the assassination of JFK. (Perhaps you forgot that one, among many others?) Or consider that, within the last week, he praised a Republican congressman from Montana for body slamming a reporter, calling him a "tough cookie." (Eric Trump downplayed his father's comments as just having "fun." But surely, today, there are better ways to have fun.) Is it any surprise that, "President Trump's supporters chanted 'lock her up' ahead of his arrival at a rally in Mosinee, Wis., on Wednesday evening, just hours after the Secret Service said it found 'potential explosive devices' in mail sent to former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton at her home in Chappaqua, New York"? And if, in fact, the attack on CNN and others was the work of Trump loyalists, I wouldn't be that surprised: After all, we have been told, the leftwing media, especially CNN, is the enemy of the people. (In the same vein, I wouldn't be surprised if the bombing was the work of leftwing radicals, determined at any cost to make Trump look bad.) AP News reported that, "President Donald Trump has skipped some of his usual attack lines at a campaign rally in Wisconsin." Yes, "Trump opened the rally by calling for a new era of civility in politics following the attempted attacks on former President Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton, CNN and others. And he said those in the political arena must 'stop treating political opponents as being morally defective.'" Mr. President, I really appreciate you saying this, and it's certainly about time. I would simply ask you, sir, to set an example and lead the way. Have you not been guilty of these very things yourself? As I've said for more than three years, you can be a strong, forceful leader, a real fighter, and a champion of the people without getting in the gutter. And for each of us who post or write or speak out or have a platform, let's be careful. Our words can bring life or they can bring death (Proverbs 18;21). What will it be? Chinese cardinal in scathing attack on Pope Francis: 'He doesn't understand Communism' A Catholic cardinal and former Bishop of Hong Kong has warned that the deal struck between the Vatican and the Chinese government is a step towards the 'annihilation' of the Church in China. The agreement was aimed at relieving pressure on the 'unofficial' Church in exchange for a degree of state control over the appointment of bishops. Supporters argue that while bishops appointed illegally by the state have now had their excommunications lifted, the Vatican will have the final say in all future episcopal appointments. In an opinion piece for the New York Times, Cardinal Joseph Zen, a long-time opponent of compromise with the Chinese government, said Pope Francis 'doesn't seem to understand the Communists' because of his experience in South America where communists were defenders of the poor. 'Francis may have natural sympathy for Communists because for him, they are the persecuted. He doesn't know them as the persecutors they become once in power, like the Communists in China,' he said. Zen wrote of his experience of the Church during the Cutural Revolution, which was 'terrible beyond imagination'. 'We forget these things too easily. We also forget that you can never have a truly good agreement with a totalitarian regime,' he said. He outlined policy under previous Vatican diplomats, singling out what he said was an 'incredible error' in the translation of a document from Pope Benedict XVI in 2007 which appeared to encourage Chinese Catholics to join the official state-controlled Church; it was 'too important not to have been deliberate', he said. Francis, he said, was 'being encouraged to be optimistic about the Communists in China by cynics around him who know better'. Zen criticised Vatican secretary of state Cardinal Parolin, saying he 'cares less about the Church than about diplomatic success. His ultimate goal is the restoration of formal relations between the Vatican and Beijing.' He warned of increasing pressure on the Church in China, claiming priests were discouraging people from coming to mass to avoid arrest. He was scathing about the Vatican's 'final say' on bishops, saying: 'But what good is having the last word when China will have all the words before it? In theory the pope could veto the nomination of any bishop who seems unworthy. But how many times can he do that, really?' Zen said: 'If I were a cartoonist I would draw the Holy Father on his knees offering the keys of the kingdom of heaven to President Xi Jinping and saying, "Please recognize me as the pope."' He concluded: 'And yet, to the underground bishops and priests of China, I can only say this: Please don't start a revolution. They take away your churches? You can no longer officiate? Go home, and pray with your family. Till the soil. Wait for better times. Go back to the catacombs. Communism isn't eternal.' Learning disabled Pakistani Christian sentenced to life for blasphemy A young Pakistan Christian has been sentenced to life imprisonment for burning a booklet containing verses of the Quran. Yaqoob Bashir Masih, 25, was sentenced more than three years after he was first arrested in 2015. Yaqoob has a learning disability and was receiving treatment in a mental health facility in Hyderabad before the alleged incident, according to International Christian Concern (ICC). He was punished for using derogatory language against the prophet Mohammad, but found not guilty of desecrating the Quran. During the three years and three months of his imprisonment before his conviction, there were 96 hearings into his case, ICC said. He was attacked by fellow inmates on several occasions and his family has been targeted by extremists. His mother Kasur Bibi told ICC: 'My son is innocent. He did not insult or do blasphemy. He does not care much of these issues as his mind works differently than that of a normal person's.' Pakistan's notorious blasphemy law is frequently used against Christians and other minorities. 'The blasphemy laws need reform,' Imtiaz Amanat, legal aid coordinator at Catholic Commission for Justice and Peace, told ICC. 'There are a number of case studies where these laws have been misused against the most vulnerable segments of the society. Yet, these laws are mute about mentally disabled persons, children, and intention. Because of this, these laws have created an atmosphere of fear in Pakistan.. He concluded: 'Keeping mentally disabled persons in mind, the government should introduce amendments to these laws and extend relief to innocent citizens.' Mentally impaired Yaqoob Bashir Masih was only 20 years old when he was accused of committing blasphemy in June 2015. He has been in prison ever since, and now his hometown District and Sessions Court in Mirpur Khas, a small district in Pakistan's Sindh province, has sentenced him to life-long imprisonment for burning a booklet that contained verses of the Quran. According to International Christian Concern, two appeals from the family to release him on bail were filed, but the trial court and later the Sindh High Court rejected them. Masih, locally known by the name "Kala", is known to have learning difficulties. After he was charged, Mushtaq Masih*, Yaqoob's next-door neighbour in the Mehmoodabad area, told World Watch Monitor what happened: "It was around 7pm and I was sitting with my wife on our camel cart. We were discussing how earning our daily living had become so tough when we started hearing the noise of a group of a people. "I heard Yaqoob's elder brother asking him, 'Where is the copy of the Quran which the cleric gave you this morning?' "Yaqoob was not telling them, and he kept naming a few other neighbours. The mob were severely beating him, but Yaqoob did not tell them where the Quran was. In the end, some of them doused him with kerosene oil and told him that they would set him on fire if he would not tell them. Then he told them that he had burned it in the morning and then buried it." Some locals reported that "Yaqoob used to go to the cleric, who had told him that his mental condition would improve if he recited the Quran". Mushtaq Masih went on: "That morning Yaqoob requested the cleric to give him the copy of the Quran, saying that his two sisters would read it to him. But rather than bringing it home, he burned it." It was reported that a few students of a nearby madrassah (an Islamic seminary) had seen him burning the Quran, after which they informed a cleric. Mushtaq Masih explained: "About two years ago Yaqoob had started learning 'black magic' and, since then, he sometimes acted quite erratically. Most of the time he was fine but sometimes he behaved as if he had no control over himself. "For instance, his mother told the crowd that only three days before the incident, Yaqoob had torn the Bible into four pieces and thrown it on the floor. "The police were informed of Yaqoob's confession and they arrived to arrest him. But still a mob was gathering." In Pakistan, blasphemy against Islam is an extremely sensitive subject, with allegations often leading to mob violence. For this reason, even police officers fear reprisals for investigating blasphemy cases, or judges for finding in favour of those accused. Imtiaz Amanat, Legal Aid Coordinator at the Catholic Commission for Justice and Peace, told ICC that Pakistan's "blasphemy laws need reform. There are a number of case studies where these laws have been misused against the most vulnerable segments of the society." Following the conviction, a petition on Masih's behalf will be filed within a month in the Sindh High Court to challenge the decision. However, it will likely take years before his petition will be heard and he could be released. Asia Bibi, a Christian woman accused of blasphemy in 2009, was sentenced to death in 2010 and is still awaiting the outcome of her appeal. Muscular Christianity: When church leaders come to blows Today's church is not all sweetness and light, to put it mildly. In the US, liberals and conservatives don't have a good word to say for each other. In Ukraine, Orthodox Christians have fallen out in a turf war. The Church of England and the wider Anglican Communion are heading for meltdown over gay marriage. But it's rare that disagreement descends to actual fisticuffs nowadays (though it reportedly has in Ukraine already). In the olden days, it was much more common. Today, October 26, marks the victory in AD 366 of Pope Damasus over the forces of his rival Ursinus, who had attempted to usurp his position. During three days of fighting in which Ursinus' followers took refuge in a church, Damasus' fighters tore open the roof and threw tiles at those inside. Eventually they broke in and captured it, leaving 137 of their enemy dead. Damasus still faced opposition, and was forced to hire gladiators to protect himself. The argument went back to the Arian heresy (it's complicated), which also troubled St Nicholas, Bishop of Myra, the model for Father Christmas. At the Council of Nicea, 300 bishops came together to debate the nature of the Trinity. Arius, from Egypt, taught that Christ was not equal to his Father and was a created being. Outraged, Nicholas strode across the room and slapped him in the face. These examples pale beside the behaviour of Pope Urban VI, chosen in 1378 and precipitating the notorious Papal Schism, when there were rival popes in Rome and Avignon (the man elected as Anti-Pope Clement VII was Robert of Geneva, known as the 'Butcher of Cesena' because of a horrendous massacre there he had overseen). Urban, widely believed to be insane, would berate his cardinals, calling them half-wits, and had to be held back from striking the Cardinal of Limoges. Accusing them of plotting against him, he had six cardinals arrested and tortured; he walked up and down outside the window, reading his breviary while listening to their screams. In 1385 he was driven out of Naples, where he had settled, and ravaged Italy with an army of mercenaries, dragging the cardinals with him. When the horse of one of them went lame, he had him put to death and his corpse left by the roadside. He then executed four more of them. Only one, an Englishman, survived, thanks to the intercession of Richard II. The dreadful deeds of Urban and Clement inspired the great English Reformer John Wycliffe and the rise of Protestantism. Second evangelist detained in Turkey flies home after court ruling Evangelist David Byle, arrested in Turkey and given 15 days to leave the country, has flown out of Istanbul and returned to the United States. Byle was arrested the morning after US pastor Andrew Brunson was released and allowed to leave the country. He had spent 19 years in Turkey as an evangelist and had been arrested several times. Previous deportations had been stopped by court rulings. He and his German wife Ulrike had raised their five children, now aged 12 to 19, in the country. He was eventually expelled for overstaying his expired residence permit. He told World Watch Monitor that he was verbally informed by his interrogators that if he paid an over-stay fine when he left, he would not be issued a re-entry ban forbidding him to rejoin his family. He said he had been 'painful' for him and his family to face ongoing intimidation by the Turkish authorities because 'they keep insisting that I am a threat to Turkey's national security'. 'We long to stay in Turkey with the people we have grown to love here, but we are resigned to do whatever God wants,' he added. 'Nevertheless, I was happy to take the many opportunities that arose this time to explain the good news of Jesus to various policemen.' Travel companies and big data: the challenges and benefits specific to the industry * Partner Post Big data is far from just a buzzword for IT departments across the globe; it now affects practically every aspect of a business from product development to sales and marketing. The travel industry is no exception; just think how much data is generated every single day from customers taking flights and booking hotel rooms alone. So, what exactly does the rise of big data mean for those in the travel sector, and what are the challenges and advantages it poses? Big Data and the Travel Industry The amount of data generated by companies in the travel sector is huge; travel technology provider Amadeus, for example, carries out one billion transactions every single day, for things like flight purchases and hotel bookings. Not only this, but practically every step of a customer's journey is subject to some form of data generation, whether it's checking in for a flight, buying something at an airport, renting a hire car or using their phone in a new country. Then there's unstructured data; things like reviews and social media mentions that can also prove to be extremely useful when it comes to redeveloping products, altering strategies or even launching new products or services. With so much data available it's easier than ever before to gain a detailed view of your ideal customer, to target them effectively or even to just find new leads; if you're looking to target Italian companies for example all you have to do now is find a reputable Italy business email list, and you're good to go. Big Data Challenges in the Travel Industry However, with so much data available (and much of it complex in nature), there are also challenges facing companies in the travel sector when it comes to establishing insights from the datasets. While having data professionals in your company is a step in the right direction, ultimately ensuring big data is used effectively will require cross-departmental collaboration and a data-lead company culture. Bad Data This may seem like an obvious one, but it's worth stressing just how much of a negative impact that incorrect or incomplete data can have on your entire strategy, given the speed in which changes occur in the industry and the huge amounts of data added to your databases every single day. A lot of the time you'll have customer data in different systems and databases, and unifying all of this information in order to gain a whole picture can be a difficult issue to overcome. Using a data management platform is a good option to help deal with the challenge, but ultimately it needs to be based on high quality data. Using third-party sources such as a reputable company information database is often a good choice for the B2B sector, as well as having someone to oversee your data strategy and having all members of staff well versed in how to collect and handle data in a careful and efficient manner. Keeping Up Another challenge facing travel companies when it comes to dealing with big data is the speed in which it is generated. Nowadays consumers have come to expect their online experience to be incredibly quick, and this can be intense when it comes to things like responding to queries or bad reviews on social media. Furthermore, the speed at which word travels on sites like Twitter also poses a rather novel challenge for the travel industry; there have been instances during travel delays at airports where people have found out relevant information via social media before the gate agents have even had these details passed onto them - not a good way to provide a positive brand impression. The Internet of Things With an ever-increasing number of devices now being connected to the internet, even more data is available to provide insights into customer behaviour and preferences. Whether it's a laptop, a GPS system, or a watch, all of these devices can provide those in the travel industry with the potential for new ways to research and engage with audiences. The issue here is how to store and handle this massive amount of data. While it represents good opportunities to glean vital insights about your customers, ultimately it's not helpful until you're able to have the systems and technologies in place to spot trends and patterns. How Travel Companies Can Use Big Data While there may be some challenges involved in implementing big data into your strategy, there are big potential benefits if you choose to do so. These include: Increased Efficiency - There are a number of ways that big data analytics can prove useful for making your business more efficient. From using sensors to measure the performance of machines and employees, to looking at data to determine where time and money savings can be made; you can use the insights from big data to make more informed and accurate decisions. Better Marketing - Effective marketing is essential to the travel sector, and insights gleaned from big data can enable you to tailor your content and approach in a much more engaging way to your target audience. You can look at online behaviour, previous purchases as well as general demographic data in order to determine the types of products someone might be interested in, as well as the best channels to reach them. Improved Customer Experience - Big data allows you to remember customer preferences in order to provide a better buying experience for them in the future. For example, when someone books a stay at a hotel the staff can look at the type of room they booked previously, and if they had any specific requests. Using big data can also help you identify any potential issues that may arise based on previous customers' behaviour, and help you to be prepared to solve them. While there are always going to be challenges involved in using such large volumes of data, doing so can provide your travel company with new opportunities and see a great improvement in your overall strategy. With more and more data being generated every second, and more devices being connected to the internet, businesses that don't put the systems and tools in place to be able to process big data are likely to find themselves falling behind the competition. A man and woman were found dead in Yosemite National Park Thursday morning and appeared to have fallen from Taft Point. Rangers are recovering their bodies, according to a park statement. It's unknown when the incident occurred and the victims have yet to be identified. "We do have tragic falls in the park," says park spokesperson Jamie Richards. "We've had over 10 fatalities this year. We do not know the circumstances at this time. This is under investigation." (Note: Six of those deaths have been the result of falls.) Rising some 3,o00 feet above the touristy valley floor, Taft Point is a remote lookout spot known for its dizzying views that churn the stomachs of people who fear heights. Giant fissures in the granite rock drop directly down to the valley floor, and a granite ledge hanging over the valley is a favorite photo spot. A photo of a couple getting engaged at the point went viral in social media last week. The photographer tried to track down the couple but didn't find them. The Taft Point trailhead is located off Glacier Point Road, and it's a 1.1-mile hike mostly down hill to the lookout. "It's a popular hiking trail and destination for watching the sunrise and sunset," says Richards. "It's no more dangerous than Yosemite Falls." The location itself does have a deadly past. On May 16, 2015, two BASE jumpers died in a stunt off Taft Point. Dean Potter, 43, and Graham Hunt, 29, wore aerodynamic garments known as wingsuits that allow a person to fly like a diving bird. The sport is illegal in most parks, including Yosemite. On October 25, a surprising but pleasant news came from Bihar. All (willing) households in the state have electricity connections, irrespective of their location. The news has come two months before the deadline of December 31, which has been set for electrification of all Indian households under the Pradhan Mantri Sahaj Bijli Har Ghar Yojana (PMSBHGY), or Saubhagya. Power Minister R.K. Singh, a lawmaker from Arrah, Bihar, has been credited for this exercise. Though Singh's Bihar might have achieved the target, PM Narendra Modi's Uttar Pradesh (Varanasi is his Lok Sabha constituency) lags. Although UP has electrified 5.1 million homes so far, more than any other state, officials in New Delhi doubt it will achieve the target of full electrification by December 31. The state has completed only 38 per cent of the task, and still has to electrify 8.8 million homes in the next two months. Countrywide, 13.9 million households are still awaiting electrification; majority of these are in Uttar Pradesh. In his election campaign in 2014, PM Modi had wooed voters with a promise to bring electricity to every household. In March-April 2019, when he would seek re-election, his work will be judged on these statistics. While on-ground work so far may have been good, and electrification has been achieved in many households, Modi's poll managers worry that Uttar Pradesh might play spoilsport. Towards the end of September 2017, Modi had launched the ambitious electrification plan with a capital outlay of Rs 16,000 crore, to provide electricity to all households. Earlier in 2015, the government had also launched a scheme to provide continuous power supply to rural India. In May this year, DDUGJY completed the task. At that time, Bihar had electrified nearly 3.2 million homes, next only to Uttar Pradesh (with pending task of taking electricity to 13.9 million houses). Uttar Pradesh can follow Bihar's example. The solutions are not only technical, but also require political recourse. Bihar Chief Minister Nitish Kumar returned to the National Democratic Alliance in July 2017, and about a month later, after a Cabinet reshuffle, Singh took charge as Power Minister from Piyush Goyal. Electrification of all homes became a target for both Kumar and Singh. Taking electricity to every household is a complex matter in Uttar Pradesh. Many unelectrified homes are using electricity illegally. Along with this, all the five distribution companies in the state are battling huge aggregate technical and commercial (AT&C) losses of 37.92 per cent (AT&C is used to measure electricity use, and illegal and unbilled consumption can also be measured). The two distribution companies that are responsible for supplying electricity to southern and eastern parts of Uttar Pradesh, have nearly 40 per cent losses. Yogi Adityanath's government has cracked down on the illegal connections, but since transmission reforms are slow to take place and the mechanism to send bills and recover payments is also slow, full electrification of the state will take more time. Losses in Bihar, too, are high, nearly 40 per cent, but that is largely because of lack of billing the electricity consumption. Against the national average of above 1200 KwH per capita, electricity consumption in Bihar is 229 KwH. The state also requires an overhaul of the distribution and transmission network to ensure that all homes in the state are electrified. Other states, too, need to shape up, especially with elections coming up in 2019. This includes Assam (over 1.2 million unelectrified homes), Meghalaya (0.14 million), Tripura (94,478), Nagaland (86,821), Manipur (48,104), Arunachal Pradesh (78,003), BJP-ruled Uttarakhand (89,803), West Bengal under Trinamool Congress' Mamata Banerjee (169,893), and Odisha (0.94 million) under BJD's Naveen Patnaik. Power ministry officials say that it will be difficult for many states to meet the deadline but it is doable. But they, too, are worried about Uttar Pradesh. Green shoots are visible in Uttar Pradesh but the state requires more innovative ways to be able to achieve the electrification targets. This includes more expansion and acceptability of mini and off-grid systems, policy and regulatory clearances for more prepaid connections, transmission reforms and replacement of inefficient billing mechanism. The state may well be the next on Singh's list. A Texas Medical Center program focused on entrepreneurs, TMC Innovation, has been named to a list of top U.S. accelerators. Accelerators are programs designed to help businesses speed their growth. When following a stricter definition, these programs are supposed to have an application process, a precise time frame (TMCx, for instance, is 12 weeks), a curriculum of educational sessions and a public pitch day allowing entrepreneurs to address potential investors. One company's story: Startup aims to give back surgery a helping hand The term accelerator, however, has become quite the buzzword. And it's being used very loosely by a host of organizations striving to help startups. Seed Accelerator Rankings Project, now in its fifth year, created its list of top accelerator programs to help guide entrepreneurs in selecting the top ones. It lists programs in five categories: Platinum Plus, the best programs, then Platinum, Gold and Silver. TMC Innovation is among this year's Silver rankings. In a statement, TMC Innovation Director Erik Halvorsen said the TMCx accelerator has helped seven cohorts of entrepreneurs "develop products and apps that will solve critical health care problems." "TMC Innovation will continue to grow and expand as the ecosystem here becomes fully realized," he said. "My goal is to take advantage of the totality of the 700,000 square feet of space at our disposal. At the rate this facility has been growing, I have no doubt that this will be a reality sooner rather than later." Other TMC plans: TMC takes major step toward collaborative biomed facility The top accelerator programs in this year's rankings are: Platinum Plus: AngelPad, StartX and Y Combinator Platinum: Amplify.LA, Chicago New Venture Challenge, MuckerLab and Techstars Gold: Alchemist, Dreamit, 500 Startups, gener8tor, HAX, IndieBio, MassChallenge and SkyDeck Silver: Acceleprise, AlphaLab, Brandery, Capital Innovators, Healthbox, Health Wildcatters, Lighthouse Labs, Tech Wildcatters, TMCx and Zero to 510 Yael Hochberg, an entrepreneurship professor at Rice University's Jones Graduate School of Business, is among the team that compiled the list. "Our goal is to provide reliable information to entrepreneurs about the relative performance of accelerator programs," Hochberg said in a statement. "All of the spotlighted programs stand out from the pack, but it's important for entrepreneurs to do their own due diligence, as finding a strong fit is essential." OPEC signaled it could cut output in 2019 due to concerns about rising oil inventories and economic uncertainty, lurching away from a pledge made just days ago to pump flat out. The cartels vacillations came as the sizable crude-price gains of September vanished in an October rout. If the group follows through, it could change the outlook of the oil market and reignite the ire of U.S. President Donald Trump, who has repeatedly demanded that OPEC keep prices low. A committee of producers including Russia and Saudi Arabia highlighted on Thursday the need to prepare options for how much oil they should pump next year to prevent the market slipping back into imbalance. The group, which since May has been boosting production, said the rise in oil inventories in recent weeks coupled with fears about an economic slowdown may require changing course. EARLIER: Iraq's new oil minister has a top priority: Pump more oil That was the clearest sign yet they could resume output cuts and a jarring reversal from Saudi Energy Minister Khalid Al-Falihs observation on Tuesday that the cartel was in produce as much as you can mode. Competing Forces These gyrations reflect the proliferation of huge risks to both supply and demand: From the slump in global equity markets to signs of weakness in the global economy; from the collapse of Venezuelas oil industry to U.S. efforts to sanction Irans crude exports out of existence. Meanwhile, the worlds largest economy has ceased to be a pacifying influence on the market. As it wages trade wars, imposes sanctions and attempts to dictate what other producers do, the U.S. has become the main culprit for knocking the market off balance, according to Igor Sechin, Chief Executive Officer of Russias largest producer Rosneft PJSC. EARLIER: Saudi oil chief says OPECs in Produce as much as you can mode Key players in the market are now issuing contradictory warnings, with the International Energy Agency fearing a looming shortage as OPEC frets about a resurgent glut. Global oil markets are going through a very sensitive period -- global economic growth as well, IEA Executive Director Fatih Birol said in an interview in London Thursday. If the oil producers care about the health of the growth of the global economy, which I believe they do, they should take the steps to further comfort the market. Recent moves in Brent crude illustrate this contradiction. The international benchmark has declined more than 7 percent this month, almost perfectly retracing the rally in September. TOO MUCH MONEY: Drowning in cash, Big Oil's biggest challenge is how to spend it The uncertainty and volatility in the market prompted an abundance of caution from the first major oil producers to report third-quarter earnings. Norways Equinor ASAs kept its focus on continued spending restraint, even as profits jumped to a four-year high. ConocoPhillips, which posted an eightfold surge in earnings, allowed itself a 2 percent increase in capital expenditure. The outlook for next year is very unpredictable, according to Al-Falih. If the supply is too long, we should be able to cut, he said in an interview with Russias TASS news agency. If supply is short, we have to be able to respond. --With assistance from Helen Robertson, Dina Khrennikova and Elena Mazneva. 2018 Bloomberg L.P. Bill Arning, the colorful and fun-loving director of the Contemporary Arts Museum Houston, resigned abruptly Thursday. He broke the usual protocol by posting on Facebook Friday afternoon, somewhat cryptically, Loving the two hour gym sessions followed by long lunches that being between jobs allows me. His profile also read Former director Contemporary Arts Museum Houston. Arning had been absent since Wednesday, when he called in sick and did not attend the museums annual Gamson Artist Lecture featuring Lorna Simpson. Kent Michael Smith, the museums communication director, confirmed that Arning had resigned, effective immediately. Smith issued a statement late Friday, an hour before the museum was to open its doors for a 70th anniversary cocktail celebration with 100 top patrons. Arning did not return a call for comment. In an official statement issued late Friday, museum trustee chair Jereann Chaney said Arning had been a force. He brought vibrancy, energy and extraordinary vision to CAMH and in turn to Houston, she said. As he stated when he arrived here, Keeping the CAMH wild was a task I cherish, and he did just that. His leadership has been greatly appreciated and he will be missed. Reached via phone, Chaney declined to comment further. Arning, who joined the CAMH in 2009 from Massachusetts Institue of Technologys List Visual Arts Center, where he was a curator, is not the first director to leave the CAMH abruptly. The museums stated mission has long been to push boundaries and provoke conversation about contemporary art, but more than once they have hired directors with renegade spirits whose vision proved to be more than they bargained for. The first director, Sebastian Lefty Adler, infuriated the richest patrons with the show that inaugurated the CAMHs metal building at the corner of Montrose and Bissonnet in 1972 the most controversial of multiple troubling displays included a huge, multi-level cage with live cats, rats and cockroaches. Jim Harithas, a staunch champion of local artists, underdogs and politically-charged material, also left under pressure. He remained in Houston and co-founded the Art Car Museum and the Station Museum of Contemporary Art. Arning embraced the anarchic spirit. Welcome to the wildest gathering in Houston, he wrote on the directors page that is still live on the CAMHs website. In a city which has access to a lot of widely ratified artworks whose importance have been given the consensus of teachers, historians, curators and collectors CAMH gets to take chances in ways that true mavens of edgy art cherish, he wrote. It is understandable that some art viewers will leave in horror. Long-term board members have told me of friends and relatives who came to visit at their invitation once and have still not been forgiven. He also invoked Adlers opening show, saying that exhibition now enjoys renown status among scholars of the avant-garde. Fridays statement said the museum continues to be dedicated to presenting the Houston region with cutting-edge, world-class art. The leadership and community representatives are assembling a committee to begin a national search for Arnings replacement. Deputy director Christina Brungardt will serve as interim director, and shows that Arning was preparing for this season will be handled by the CAMHs curatorial staff, Smith said. molly.glentzer@chron.com A Friendswood mother is behind bars and her 11-month-old in the hospital after she allegedly drove drunk and crashed into a concrete barrier in a school zone on Hope Village Road, authorities said Friday afternoon. The woman, identified as 36-year-old Kira Vordebruegge, lost control of her vehicle around 12:30 p.m. near Clear Brook High School, striking some signs and driving off the road, ultimately striking a cement culvert, Harris County Sheriff Ed Gonzalez said. Houston's municipal courts department on Thursday announced an amnesty program that would discount delinquent cases over the next three weeks, according to a press release. Starting at 8 a.m. Friday and extending until midnight Nov. 17, defendants of delinquent cases dated before Sept. 1 can resolve their eligible cases and won't be subject to arrest if they voluntarily appear at any municipal court. A Spring man was arrested Wednesday after leaving his two children, one of whom is disabled, at home unsupervised. Michael Tirado, 24, was charged with the felony of abandoning a child with intent to return, according to a filed complaint obtained by the Houston Chronicle. BRIDGEPORT A 54-year-old Bridgeport woman has been identified as the pedestrian struck and killed by a dump truck that fled the scene Thursday night. She was identified as Maria Mendoza-Robles of North Avenue. According to the accident report by state police, Troop G in Bridgeport received numerous calls around 7:44 p.m. about a female attempting to cross the highway near Exit 5 on Route 8/25. The investigation found that an unknown tri-axle dump truck was traveling southbound on Route 8/25 in the left center lane of four, south of Exit 5 (Chopsey Hill Road/Boston Avenue). The truck was described as a having a red or orange motor unit and a gray dump bed. The pedestrian was attempting to cross the highway from the center median, south of Exit 5 in Bridgeport. She sustained fatal injuries as a result of the collision and was pronounce dead at the scene. The dump truck continued south on Route 8/25 and evaded the scene. State police from Troop G continued to investigate the fatal accident on the highway for several hours Thursday night. State police said the Collision Analysis Reconstruction Squad was also there investigating. The two left lanes of Route 8 south between Exits 5 and 3 were closed as crews investigated. After the initial 911 call came in at the state police Troop G, state police and Bridgeport officers rushed to Route 8 south and norths Exit 5 ramps at 8:12 p.m. to search for a possible victim, reports indicated. State and Bridgeport police personnel quickly checked the exit ramps and the wooded areas off the highway near the ramps. Mendoza-Robles was found at least 15 minutes after troopers and officers arrived, on the highway median. Bridgeport fire units headed out around 8:20 p.m. to help in the search for the victim, with their thermal imaging camera, but were sent back to their firehouse by 8:30 p.m. By 8:51 p.m., a description of the vehicle suspected in the hit-and-run was relayed to Bridgeport police and officers were told to be on the lookout. The investigation remains open. Anyone with information about the accident is asked to contact Troop G at 203-696-2500. DANBURY A plane that plummeted into the Atlantic Ocean last week killing all three people aboard, including Ridgefield attorney Richard Terbrusch, appeared to have an instrument failure shortly before the accident. But some experts believe, according to the available data, that it was pilot error that eventually caused the crash. One even compared it to John F. Kennedy Jr.s ill-fated 1999 flight when he became apparently disoriented and crashed his aircraft into the ocean. Munidat Raj Persaud, 41, of Waterbury, the owner of the Piper Seneca, was piloting the plane using visual flight rules when the aircraft encountered heavy cloud cover over Long Island on Oct. 13. But the attitude indicator a key instrument that helps orientate the pilot to his surroundings when visual cues arent available wasnt working, according to a preliminary report released Thursday by the National Transportation Safety Board. Its currently unreliable, Persaud can be heard telling air traffic controllers about the instrument in a recording of the flights final minutes. The air traffic controller shortly after declared an emergency and asked Persaud to use an alternate procedure to get his bearings while turning toward Westchester County Airport for an emergency landing. Rather than follow the advice, the report indicates, Persaud continued to climb to 19,000 feet in an apparent effort to get above the clouds. The pilot struggled to maintain (visual) conditions which was impossible and made a mistake that many pilots make and that was to press on, said Robert Katz, a commercial pilot and instructor who tracks plane accidents nationally. It was at that point that he should have turned around. It was about two minutes later when the plane appeared to be flying out of control. We are descending! were the last words from the pilot before radio communications were lost. NTSB report Saturday, Oct. 13 (time unknown)-Flight leaves from Waterbury-Oxford Airport with only pilot on board 10:25 a.m.- Departs Danbury Municipal Airport after two passengers are picked up Plane initially climbs to 8,500 feet and is warned to fly on instruments due to bad weather conditions 10:58 a.m.- Without switching to instrument-flying, the plane reaches 19,000 feet 11 a.m. - Plane goes into a nosedive and plummets into the water off Long Island's South Shore See More Collapse Witnesses reported seeing the plane spinning out of control and breaking apart into several pieces before smashing into the water, the report states. Persaud, along with Terbrusch and Jennifer Landrum, a 45-year-old special education teacher from Georgia, were killed in the crash. Katz said he continues to have lots of questions about the crash and the pilot and why it was logged as a training flight. In my opinion that wasnt an instructional flight ..., he said. Nobody takes a plane down to South Carolina for an instructional flight that costs $300 an hour to operate. Katz said he also believes the pilot likely wasnt proficient in maintaining a level aircraft without the use of an attitute indicator. Without it he would have had no sense of direction, Katz said. I believe he was struggling to maintain the flight conditions when he was swallowed by a cloud and couldnt find his way out. Thats when he probably became disoriented. The doomed flight began when Persaud flew the plane, based out of Waterbury-Oxford Airport, to Danbury airport to pick up Terbrusch and Landrum. No flight plan was filed for the instructional flight from Danbury Municipal Airport to Charleston, S.C., the report said. Andy Lucky, a longtime friend of Terbrusch, said the attorney had gotten his pilot license years ago, but let it lapse when he was going to law school. "He has been earning hours with the goal of getting his license back, Lucky said. Persaud had been been operating the Oxford Flight Training school since 2004. Persaud held a flight instructor certificate with ratings for single- and multi-engine, and instrument airplanes. He also held an airline transport pilot certificate with a rating for airplane single engine land, with commercial privileges for airplane multi-engine land and single engine sea. His most recent FAA third-class medical certificate was issued July 18, 2018, at which time he reported 4,000 total hours of flight experience. Terbrusch held a private pilot certificate with a rating for a single-engine airplane. His most recent FAA third-class medical certificate was issued Aug. 27, 1986, at which time he reported no flight experience. It could take up to a year before the NTSB will finalize its report. dperrefort@newstimes.com FIA established sub-offices in Greece-Iran RAWALPINDI: The Federal Investigation Agency (FIA) has established its sub-offices in Greece and Iran to check increasing activities of organised criminal networks and illegal movements of Pakistani migrants. A senior FIA official said that one sub-office each in Greece and Iran had been established and soon two deputy directors along with their subordinates would begin performing duties in these countries. The official said that one deputy director along with his subordinates would be posted in each country to check legal or illegal movements of Pakistani migrants and to look after their other issues. The FIA teams had already visited Turkey, Iran and Greece to finalise the setting up of sub-offices there. The plan to set up a sub-office in Turkey has been delayed due to financial difficulties. The decision to establish FIA offices abroad was taken after a smugglers boat with a majority of Pakistanis on board capsized off the coast of Libya on January 31 this year, leaving several people drowned. The FIA official said the sub-offices in Greece and Iran would specifically look into the issues of Pakistanis, including those languishing in detention centres. He said the most common land route chosen by human smugglers is from Pakistan to Turkey and then Greece. Iran and Turkey, he said, served as transit countries where a network of human smugglers had been actively working and they had been in contact with their agents in Balochistan and other parts of Pakistan. He said it was important to stop young people from going abroad, especially to Europe, by boat because sometimes their journey ends up in tragedy. The FIA official said a campaign should be launched to tell youths not to go abroad illegally. He said whenever illegal immigrants are caught and put in detention centres Pakistans embassies make arrangements for their deportation and provide them required documents. NORTH HAVEN Incumbent Republican David Yaccarino and challenging Democrat Theresa Ranciato-Viele shared their views and probed the thoughts of their opponent Thursday evening with a debate at North Haven Middle School. More often than not, the two candidates seeking to represent North Haven in the 87th District agreed on issues in a general sense. Both said they were in favor of enacting paid family leave; bolstering the use of renewable energy; cutting the income tax to a flat charge of approximately 5 percent; not raising taxes otherwise; creating an iron-clad lockbox for transportation funding; strong gun control; maintaining existing health care protections in Connecticut; net neutrality; and providing money to repair state infrastructure. Both, they said, valued bipartisanship, and would work or continue to work to represent the will of North Haven residents. The two differed in terms of specifics on some issues. For example, while both noted the need to repair the states infrastructure, Ranciato-Viele said she would be in favor of establishing tolls in Connecticut, as it has been a financial windfall for other states and would, under her proposal, provide money to repair roads and bridges. Yaccarino said hes against tolls. Connecticut receives millions in funding from the federal government for not having them, he said, and the vehicles that pass through the state pay for gasoline. Providing revenue for infrastructure is not the issue, he said, noting that the legislature put aside $250 million for the cause. During the debate, Yaccarino regularly noted he was proud of the bipartisan budget passed by the legislature, which, among other precepts, created bonding and volatility caps designed to limit and refocus state spending. Such limitations allowed for more productive spending, he said. Ranciato-Viele seized on past moments of dysfunction at the capital to argue that she would have been more aggressive in resolving issues. For example, Yaccarino noted he could not support a bill that would have created paid family medical leave, saying it would have been financially impractical, burdening companies in Connecticut with outsized costs Ranciato-Viele said she would have worked to fix the legislation. In their closing arguments, both noted their long-standing ties to the community and intentions to work in a bipartisan fashion. Yaccarino cited the strength of his record and experience; Ranciato-Viele her lack of ties to Hartford. I have a proven record. I fight for womens issues; I fight for pay equity; I fight for pre-existing conditions in statute and for people in general. Thats our job as legislators, said Yaccarino. Were charged to work for you. Were the stewards of your money, of our policies. I have a record, and I hope you would consider me in November. I am absolutely 120 percent committed to North Haven. You should know that, said Ranciato-Viele. I listen, I learn a lot, I sit here on boards every month, you sit there and you ask me for something. I have the ability and I have no problem saying yes or no depending on whether its a good idea for our town. I can go up to Hartford and I can do that for our state as well. The debate was taped for broadcast by NHTV.com and is expected to be available online. william.lambert@hearstmediact.com League City photographer Amanda Cortez specializes in kids photography but her Halloween photo shoots are what she is sought out for. Anyone who has seen some of her work where she transforms children into dark characters like Jack Skellington & Sally Stitches knows why. "Halloween has always been a big part of my childhood and it just stuck with me ever since," Cortez said. "I used to always dress up and it's just something that inspires me to just want to photograph." Cortez said the spirit of Halloween is what she tries to capture in her kids Halloween photo shoots that are sure to send a chill up your spine. Her Halloween shoots are custom works of art that she is involved in from start to finish - from the makeup, costumes and props to shooting to editing, Cortez is a one-woman show. "As my art and experience has increased, I've wanted to implement that in my childhood photography" Cortez said. "I've just been inspired to recreate some of the coolest and spookiest illusions of Halloween through my photography." Cortez said she spends 45 minutes to an hour editing one photo, which is why she only offers a few sessions throughout the beginning of October. HALLOWEEN FUN: 17 family-friendly events happening around the Houston area this weekend "Everything is hand edited, using just Photoshop," Cortez said. "I don't take very many (Halloween photo shoots) because it's so time consuming." Cortez said some might be surprised to find the easiest part of the shoots is simply working with the kids. "I just show them where to stand or sit but I don't ever tell them what to do. I just look at them and snap away and get what their expression is," Cortez said. "And it just comes out in their own essence. But they are so excited to get dressed up as monsters and act spooky." Cortez said the other popular photo shoots she does are for Easter and Christmas. Last year during the holidays she said she shot 400 families and has plans for a big Christmas shoot this year at Baybrook Mall. "I just enjoy having someone say this photo made my day - doing that is what I really love," she said. Cortez may be done with Halloween photo shoots for this year, but those interested in her work can find her here to schedule a shoot. Rebecca Hennes covers community news. Read her on our breaking news site, Chron.com, and on our subscriber site, houstonchronicle.com. | rebecca.hennes@chron.com | Text CHRON to 77453 to receive breaking news alerts by text message West University Place Police Department A man is free on $50,000 bond after being charged with super aggravated sexual assault in West University Place. According to a news release, on Aug. 25 the West University Place Police Department responded to a report of a sexual assault of a child. The chief executive for Houston-based Kirby Corp., the country's largest operator of tank barges, cheered another quarter of higher contract pricing as the industry continues "coming off of three years of bad times," he said Friday during the company's third-quarter conference call. "It still needs to go meaningfully higher," President and CEO David Grzebinski told investors."With the utilization where it's at, everything is set up to continue the price increase." At the end of the third quarter, use of Kirby's barges to move petroleum, petrochemical and other products inland along the Gulf Intracoastal Waterway and U.S. rivers was in the mid-90 percent range. The company attributed this, in part, to increased product quantities from petrochemical and black-oil customers. From Q2: Kirby Corp. earnings up 11% That helped increase pricing for short-term contracts by 3 percent to 5 percent compared with the second quarter of this year. It's up 20 percent "from the depths of last year," when some companies offered short-term contracts at prices below the cost of the service, Grzebinski said. Longer-term inland barge contracts also repriced higher. The company's business moving barges along the coast, which requires larger and more rugged equipment, has been slower to recover. But this sector has started "showing signs of life again," Grzebinski said. Its recovery could continue -- and be strengthened -- if the gap between lower-priced U.S.-produced crude and the European Brent benchmark keeps growing, meaning more American-built tankers will move U.S. crude around the country and stop competing with Kirby's coastal business moving petrochemical products and black oil. "I do feel more confident that we are seeing improvement in this business," Grzebinski said. Kirby Corp. reported third-quarter earnings of $41.8 million, up 46 percent from the same three-month period last year. Earnings per share were 70 cents, up from 52 cents last year. Oil tumbled toward a third weekly drop as crumbling equity markets across the globe stoked concern about a slowdown in energy demand growth. Futures fell as much as 1.7 percent in New York on Friday, on pace for the longest spell of weekly declines since August. Almost every stock in the S&P 500 was in retreat as a cavalcade of negative news killed investors' appetites for risk. A closely watched tally of U.S. rig activity indicated drillers intend to step up crude output. "Oil is dropping because of more concern about what's happening in the stock market," said Phil Flynn, an analyst at Price Futures Group. "The high volatility in the stock market and fear selling in other markets is spilling over into the oil complex." BIG BUCKS: Why don't Big Oil's CEOs want to spend their cash? Crude shed 8.3 percent of its value so far this month, wiping out all the gains of August and September. Faltering confidence in the strength of the global economy comes as swelling American oil stockpiles spark fears about a re-emergence of a price-killing glut. U.S. efforts to isolate Iran and its crude output, as well as spiraling Venezuelan production, haven't been enough to serve as a geopolitical counterweight to the selloff. "Equities have resumed their decline and that is dragging oil down again," said Giovanni Staunovo, an analyst at UBS Group AG. "The market is showing how much the sentiment has shifted once again. A month ago it was bullish, now it's bearish again." OPEC: OPEC goes from 'pump all you can' to mulling cuts West Texas Intermediate for December delivery rose 31 cents to $67.64 a barrel at 1:10 p.m. on the New York Mercantile Exchange after earlier dipping to $66.20. Brent for December settlement rose 54 cents to $77.43 on the London-based ICE Futures Europe exchange. Prices were down 3 percent for the week. The global benchmark crude traded at a $9.79 premium to WTI for the same month. --With assistance from Rakteem Katakey and Heesu Lee. 2018 Bloomberg L.P. Daniel Acker Phillips 66 reported higher earnings and revenue in the third quarter, with all of its major business segments posting stronger earnings. The Houston-based refiner on Friday reported nearly $1.5 billion in third-quarter earnings, up from $823 million last year. Revenue climbed from $25.6 billion to $29.8 billion during the same period. The northwest Houston community can get the Cajun experience, with a personal touch, at The Lost Cajun a fast-casual Cajun restaurant that opened this October in the Cypress area. Franchise owners Aaron Duhon and Renee Duhon decided to bring a taste of their home state of Louisiana to the Cypress area after finding a Lost Cajun while vacationing in Colorado. Aaron Duhon was impressed by the quality of the food in a location far away from Louisiana. Who makes Cajun food in the middle of a mountain? he said. The food was good. It was a lot like what my mom made if you think about it. I grew up in Louisiana and I knew the Cajun culture. After leaving the oil and gas industry, Duhon decided to become an owner of his own Lost Cajun, he said. Duhon spoke the founder of The Lost Cajun Restaurants, Raymond Griffin, and opened up his own location. Duhons location of The Lost Cajun has antiques and decorations he bought himself to personalize his location as a dedication to his home state. Instruments, festival posters, pictures and pieces of Louisiana history cover the walls of the restaurant. Ive got some unique stuff in here that people wont have, he said. Its like a memorial to my hometown. Popular dishes at The Lost Cajun include cat-touffee, fried catfish plates, seafood gumbo and more. Customers can order a birthday beignet a fried pastry with powdered sugar and have the sugar blown into their face. Many customers are Louisiana natives, Duhon explained, and this is one of the traditions. A lot of Louisiana people are coming because this is what their mother made, he said. Youve got your bisque, youve got your jambalaya, youve got your gumbos. It reminds them of home. ... They tell me, Oh, my grandma used to make that, or, Mom used to make that. The Lost Cajun will have a night dedicated to Cy-Hope, a local nonprofit organization, once a month with proceeds going toward the organization, Duhon said. The Lost Cajun also plans to add an oyster bar in the future and serve crawfish during crawfish season. chevall.pryce@chron.com Next week Rodney Crowell releases "Christmas Everywhere." The 68-year-old Houston native describes the album as the result of some sort of Scrooge/Grinch effect. "My childhood memories of Christmas aren't warm and fuzzy," he writes. One can read his memoir "Chinaberry Sidewalks" for background about growing up in a tumultuous household with parents Cauzette and J.W. Crowell describes Christmases with Lincoln logs and air rifles as well as others that were differently memorable: "There were also mornings when apples, oranges, hickory nuts and a hammer signified that year's bounty." A few years ago he says he'd "gone sour on all things related to Christmas." But a song by another local writer pulled him out of his funk. In 2011, Crowell heard "Grateful for Christmas," a song less about Christmas itself than about the passing of time, written by Hayes Carll, a native of The Woodlands. Crowell was sufficiently moved by the song to go on a family shopping spree. COMING TO HOUSTON: Ex Dire Straits singer sets a date He dug out some old, old holiday-related songs he'd written, from "All for Little Girls and Boys," which he'd written with his young daughters, and "Very Merry Christmas," which was meant as an aural Christmas card. Another, "Christmas Makes Me Sad," was written but never recorded. While working on "Kin," a record he made with Mary Karr, a poet and memoirist from east Texas, the two wrote "Christmas in Vidor. The song offers a pretty specific regional bent on the holiday song: "It's Christmas in Vidor," it begins, "88 degrees, the taco stand's padlocked." Crowell heard his young granddaughters plinking out an original piece of music on a piano two years ago, and that became the foundation for "Come Christmas." Around that time, an album began to take shape. "Christmas Everywhere" includes those older songs, a few new Crowell pieces, a collaboration with Brennen Leigh, and a second collaboration with Karr. All that was lacking was an introduction. So Crowell prefaces the album with "Clement's Lament (We'll See You in the Mall)" a tribute to Clement Moore and his ageless "The Night Before Christmas," which Crowell has read to his kids and grandkids for decades, whether he was feeling the holiday spirit or not. Friendswood police recently investigated various reports of vehicle burglaries in which stolen items included a bank bag, designer purses and credit cards. A vehicle burglary was reported Oct. 17 in the 2200 block of South Mission Circle, police said. The victim reportedly heard his truck alarm at 4 a.m. and turned on the outside light but didnt see anything. A short time later, he checked again and found the drivers-side window smashed, according to the report. Nothing was stolen, but the victim found a calculator in his front yard that had been removed from the vehicles center console. Two unlocked vehicles in the same driveway were broken into Oct. 17 in the 2200 block of Lakeway Drive, police said. Gift cards and a health insurance card allegedly were taken from one of the vehicles. The burglary of a third vehicle in the same block was captured on surveillance video at 4:02 a.m., according to the report. The passenger-side window was shattered and a bank bag taken, police said. The victim reportedly noticed a bank bag and receipts outside his vehicle. A wallet containing cash, credit cards and identification was reported stolen from an unlocked vehicle Oct. 18 at Stevenson Park, 1100 S. Friendswood Drive, police said. The victims debit card was used to make unauthorized purchases at a Kroger in League City, according to the report. Loose change, a swimming bag and a case containing about 120 CDs were reported stolen from a vehicle Oct. 19 in the 16400 block of Hibiscus Lane, police said. Police are investigating a burglary reported Oct. 20 in the 3000 block of Autumn Harvest Drive. The family returned home at 8:30 p.m. to find the rear glass door shattered and cash, jewelry, three Louis Vuitton purses and a Chanel purse stolen, police said. According to surveillance video from a neighbors camera system, two male suspects exited a black 2018 Ford Edge with Texas license plate JZY5532 at 7:24 p.m. and ran toward the fence at the burglarized home. Thirty-two minutes later, the video shows them returning to the vehicle and leaving. One of the suspects was carrying a lockbox, according to the report. The suspect vehicle is a rental vehicle, police said. Theft Purses and other items were reported stolen from a residence Oct. 15 in the 400 block of Live Oak Lane, police said. A bottle of Adderall was reported stolen from a home Oct. 19 in the 5300 block of Appleblossom Lane, police said. The victims wife told police she saw a white minivan backing out of her driveway as she arrived home, according to the report. A woman reported cash stolen from her purse Oct. 19, police said. She told police she thinks the purse fell out of her vehicle as she used the drive-thru at McDonalds, 100 W. Parkwood Ave. While filing a report, she received a call from the office of her previous apartment in Houston, which had just received the purse, police said. The drivers license in the purse reportedly had the womans prior address. Information about the person who turned in the purse was unavailable. A theft of tools was reported Oct. 22 in the 5200 block of Whittier Oaks Drive, police said. A Friendswood officer driving a police unit equipped with a license plate scanner identified a stolen vehicle and conducted a traffic stop Oct. 22 in the 3200 block of West Bay Area Boulevard, police said. The driver and passenger of the blue 2017 Nissan SUV reportedly told the officer they had rented the vehicle through Avis. The driver was not detained, and the SUV was towed and listed as a recovered stolen vehicle, according to the report. Fraud A Friendswood woman received a call from someone claiming to be with Apple tech support who said her accounts were about to be hacked, according to an Oct. 15 police report. The caller told her to get six $100 gift cards and provide her computers serial number, police said. She reportedly provided the gift card redemption numbers using her computers camera. When the caller told her the gift cards did not work and requested six more, the victim realized the call was a scam and hung up, police said. A Friendswood woman discovered fraudulent charges on her Valero gas card, according to an Oct. 16 police report. The card was used to purchase gasoline in Houston, Austin and Mount Calm, police said. Assault Police charged a Friendswood woman, 54, with assault, family violence after she allegedly hit her husband all over his body with her shoe Oct. 18 in the 2600 block of Tampa Street. She initially called police to ask for assistance in kicking her husband out of the house, according to the report. The officers told her they could not make him leave and asked about any physical disturbance. Thats when she told police she had hit her husband, according to the report. The husband confirmed the assault and added she kicked him while he was lying down, police said. Officers took the woman into custody, and bond was set at $1,500. Narcotics Police charged a Dickinson man, 39, with possession of a controlled substance after a traffic stop Oct. 15 in the 2900 block of FM 528. During the stop, the officer reportedly noticed tools and knives inside the vehicle, including a knife with the blade exposed at the mans feet. A vehicle search yielded a marijuana grinder and 3.8 grams of methamphetamine, police said. A League City man, 20, was charged with possession of drug paraphernalia after a traffic stop for failure to signal a turn Oct. 17 in the 3000 block of West Bay Area Boulevard, police said. He reportedly admitted to having marijuana in the vehicles center console, and the officer found marijuana, a grinder and pipes during a search, police said. The passenger, a 20-year-old Houston man, had an outstanding Seabrook warrant and was charged with possession of drug paraphernalia, according to the report. Police charged a Friendswood man, 38, with possession of a controlled substance after an officer found him asleep in the drivers seat of a vehicle Oct. 18 in the 1100 block of Hawkhill Drive. Another vehicle belonging to the man, in his driveway, reportedly had marijuana in plain view. The officer checked further and found Xanax, police said. Bond was set at $1,500. Police charged a 15-year-old student with possession of a controlled substance Oct. 19 at Friendswood High School, 702 Greenbriar Drive. School officials pulled the student from class after receiving a tip, but before leaving the classroom, the student allegedly placed a vape pen and THC oil in another students backpack, according to the report. The student also was found in possession of Adderall, police said. Officers processed the student at the Friendswood City Jail before providing transport to Galveston County Juvenile Detention. Driving while intoxicated Police charged a Houston man, 52, with DWI and resisting arrest after an officer reportedly found him asleep in his vehicle Oct. 19 in the 100 block of West Edgewood Drive. The mans hazard lights were activated, and his rear windshield was shattered, according to the report. He failed a field sobriety test and refused a breath or blood test, police said. The officer secured a warrant for a blood draw, but the man reportedly resisted. Bond was set at $2,500. A La Porte man, 35, was charged with DWI after he was observed stopped in an intersection Oct. 20 in the 3600 block of FM 538, police said. As the vehicle left the intersection, the driver allegedly crossed the dashed line into oncoming traffic. He failed a field sobriety test and agreed to provide a breath specimen. Bond was set at $1,500. Police charged an Alvin man, 20, with DWI after he reportedly was observed speeding and driving over the dashed lane line Oct. 21 in the 1100 block of West Parkwood Avenue. He failed a field sobriety test and agreed to provide a blood specimen, police said. Bond was set at $1,000. Weapons Police charged a 19-year-old Texas City man with unlawfully carrying a weapon Oct. 19 in the 2600 block of FM 528. He reportedly was found in possession of a handgun but not a drivers license. At the jail, an officer found him in possession of marijuana, police said. Traffic A 19-year-old Friendswood man was charged with minor in possession of alcohol, possession of drug paraphernalia and no front license plate after an officer observed him weaving outside his lane Oct. 16 in the 2900 block of West Bay Area Boulevard, police said. During the stop, the officer noted an ignition interlock device which requires the driver to blow into a mouthpiece before starting the vehicle and a bag of marijuana at the drivers feet, according to the report. A vehicle search allegedly yielded marijuana, cocaine and vodka. Police charged an Alvin man, 34, with driving while license invalid and marijuana possession after a traffic stop for a suspicious temporary license plate Oct. 19 in the 1400 block of Moore Road. The passenger, a 34-year-old Alvin woman, had a warrant, police said. The officer found two bags of marijuana, a pipe and rolling papers during a search, according to the report. The drivers bond was set at $2,000. Other events A man arrested after a six-hour SWAT standoff Sept. 26 returned to his home in the 1200 block of Piney Woods Drive in violation of a protective order, according to an Oct. 16 police report. Police conducting a welfare check at the residence reportedly found the 43-year-old man inside the residence. Officers took him into custody without incident, police said. A syringe, shears, bandages and torn clothing were found on the ground in the playground at Wedgewood Elementary School, 4000 Friendswood Link Road, according to an Oct. 21 police report. Humble City Council members sought public input on Oct. 25 for possible projects that could be funded with a $6.3 million grant from the federal government. The Community Development Block Grant-Disaster Relief funds allocated to Harris County from the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development could provide the $6.3 million grant. HUD has allocated $1.115 billion in CDBG-DR funds through the Texas General Land Office and developed a method of distribution to give funds to local cities to help recover from Hurricane Harvey. Humble officials explained to the council and Humble residents that the money received from HUD could be used to create a new fire station, a police training facility and to renovate the senior center. These are projects that are needed to assist with recovery within the city, Humble Mayor Merle Aaron said. Humble City Manager Jason Stuebe added that although these are not disaster recovery projects, these projects are eligible to be funded through the grant. We have a great need for a fire station at some point, and so this is an opportunity that we can (do) that, Aaron said. I was in a meeting today and we were talking about how (slow federal) money comes, and people are just getting paid for (Hurricane) Ike. This is not something well see happening tomorrow but it will be in the future if and when were approved. Council members also approved an Emergency Care Services Agreement with the Northeast Hospital Foundation to provide equipment and necessary services for emergency medical treatment of people involved in vehicular accidents. The city provided funds to the Northeast Hospital Foundation, about $300,000 in contributions, Stuebe said. Memorial Hermann never felt comfortable spending that money until they had a documented agreement in place, we just now got that agreement ironed out. This is not dedicating new funds this is merely just providing paperwork in depth and background support. Council members also approved the parade permit to the City of Humble Beautification Committee to host the citys annual Christmas parade on Dec. 4 from 3 to 10 p.m. kaila.contreras@chron.com Govt increase of electricity tariff by Rs 1.27 per unit ISLAMABAD: The federal government on Thursday announced an increase of Rs 1.27 per unit in the electricity tariff. Addressing media after a cabinet meeting chaired by Prime Minister Imran Khan, Finance Minister Asad Umar said electricity prices would not be increased for domestic consumers using 300 units or less in a month. However, households that consume between 300 and 700 units in a month would witness a rise in electricity prices of roughly 10 per cent, while a 15 per cent increase will be made for those consuming above 700 units in a month, the minister said, adding that 95 per cent of the consumers will not be affected by the move. For the industrial sector, an increase of only 75 paisa per unit would be applicable, whereas the old price would continue on use of electricity by schools and hospitals, the minister said, adding the subsidized rates of Rs 5.35 per unit for the agriculture sector will continue for the whole financial year. He said commercial consumers who consume less than 5KV of electricity, which he said comprise 95 per cent of overall commercial connections, will also remain unaffected. The minister revealed that the National Electric Power Regulatory Authority (NEPRA) had proposed a hike of Rs 3.82 per unit. However, after several considerations by the Economic Coordination Committee (ECC), the federal cabinet has given a go ahead to an increase of Rs 1.27 per unit. The reason behind the consistent delay in deciding the power tariffs by the government was because we could not want to put unjustified burden on the masses, he added. Quoting the figures of last year, the minister said a loss of Rs 453 billion was incurred by the government due to the power sector alone. He said Pakistans economy had weakened because of massive losses in the energy sector, and that the revised tariff was part of governments efforts to address the issue. He said the government has decided to install meters on transformers to identify power theft, adding that Rs 140 billion have been saved this year due to improvement in the electricity distribution system. To a question regarding criticism by the opposition parties for approaching the International Monetary Fund (IMF), Asad Umar remarked the previous government had brought the country on the brink of disaster and now the option of seeking monetary assistance from the IMF can only be avoided if the export sector is boosted enormously. He said the government was making efforts to give support to the exports industry to enhance its share in the national income. He said despite steady increase in oil prices worldwide, the prices of petroleum products in Pakistan have not been increased by the government. Speaking on the occasion, Minister for Power Umar Ayub said a campaign against power thieves will start from Saturday in Lahore and raids will be conducted at places where there are reports of power theft. He said those caught stealing power would be fined heavily. Speaking on the occasion, Information Minister Fawad Chaudhary said the cabinet has decided that first Pakistani will be sent to the space in 2022. An agreement has been signed to this effect between SUPARCO and its Chinese counterpart. He He said cabinet has accorded approval to appointment of Lt Gen Abdullah Dogar as chairman of the Heavy Industries Taxila. Some Katy ISD parents were shocked and disgusted over what some call a racially offensive Facebook post the police department made Thursday morning and now they want the district to hold the person who posted the photo responsible. The photo, which shows an over-crowded bus packed with children of Indian descent, was posted by Katy ISD Police as part of an awareness campaign for National School Bus Safety Week. "This post is completely offensive. Shame on you Katy ISD Police Department," a Katy ISD mom commented on the post before it was removed. "Your job is to remain neutral and offer protection to our students, staff and faculty, not post such racist memes. This is NOT representative of my support of the school district which is supposed to educate our children into world leaders. Shame!" Clint Proctor is the Katy ISD parent who saw the post and demanded it be removed. "It was clearly inappropriate and unfortunately, it's racist," Proctor said. CARAVAN CONTROVERSY: Trump says no proof of Middle Eastern immigrants in 'caravan' Proctor said he called the Police Department after seeing the post and spoke with Officer Robert Jinks, who posted the message. "He said there was nothing about that post that [was problematic] and that I don't know how to take a joke," Clint said. The Chronicle reached out to the district and asked to speak with Jinks, but requests for more information were declined. Clint said considering the climate of political and racial tension that Houston and the nation is experiencing right now, he thought Jink's actions were uncalled for. "There's a lot of people that look at that and say, he is mocking the caravan," Proctor said, referencing the controversial immigrant caravan heading for the U.S. border. "He shouldn't even go there, people shouldn't even be thinking about that for a post [about] children's bus safety. To say that is funny is not okay, it's unacceptable, it's disgusting." Other parents expressed different views on the post, showing support for the Katy ISD Police. "Y'all shouldn't have had to felt an apology was necessary. That is how people ride the bus in those regions. There's nothing wrong with it, just showing that here in America we have safety laws," Jonathon Zonneville commented on the department's apology post. "India is heavily populated so it's ubiquitous for people to transport like that. It was comical and not offensive to anybody. If you're offended by it you should write your letters to India and tell them you're offended." NOT IN THE STATUS QUO: 2 Houston area school districts buck national trend for low ACT scores The district administration issued the following statement about the post: "Katy ISD was made aware of a post placed on the Katy ISD Police Department Facebook page this morning. The post was not intended to offend anyone. It has since been removed. Here at Katy ISD we are committed to respecting all cultures and backgrounds. Our relationship with our students, parents and community is extremely important. We apologize and take full responsibility for this incident. We want our community to know that this issue is important to us and it will be dealt with in the appropriate manner." Proctor said he wants a more public apology to be made, and for Jinks to be reprimanded. "How many times is a person in power just gong to be slapped on the wrist for saying something offensive?" Proctor said. "The guy needs to have some type of sensitivity class. He needs to show his face." Rebecca Hennes covers community news. Read her on our breaking news site, Chron.com, and on our subscriber site, houstonchronicle.com. | rebecca.hennes@chron.com | Text CHRON to 77453 to receive breaking news alerts by text message The Federal Emergency Management Agency has awarded nearly $1.7 million to the St. Thomas Episcopal Church in Houston to construct a temporary school facility and to lease property for the facility following Hurricane Harvey. The facilitys 16 temporary classroom buildings and one bathroom building are anticipated to be used for two to three years until the St. Thomas Episcopal School facilities are refurbished. These buildings will be placed on a leased parking lot. The grant includes the monthly lease for restrooms and security services. 5 1 of 5 West University Place Police Department Show More Show Less 2 of 5 West University Place Police Department Show More Show Less 3 of 5 4 of 5 West University Place Police Department Show More Show Less 5 of 5 The West University Place Police Department is asking the public for help in identifying and locating a suspect in a car burglary. On Oct. 19, an unidentified man broke in to a vehicle in the 3000 block of Duke at Belmont. The suspect allegedly forced entry into the vehicle and removed a purse. A short time later, the victim's credit card was used at a nearby store for a large purchase. Cy-Fair ISDs student enrollment has risen this school year, which district officials suspect may be in part the result of Hurricane Harvey driving people to less flood-prone neighborhoods. Community members received an update on the status of the school district followed by school tours during the 2018 School Priority Day. Student enrollment Enrollment is at 116,249 students as of Sept. 17, according to the CFISD 2018-2019 State of the District document. Talking to my colleagues around the metropolitan area, their [enrollment] numbers this year are pretty staggering, said Mark Henry, superintendent of CFISD. I know that that has to be the effect of Harvey because people are moving to this part of the state. The document indicates that CFISD spent $210 million of their bond funds on renovating 19 campuses this past summer. District safety CFISD added two K-9 units to their police force, according to the district document. Henry said a third K-9 unit focused on bomb detection will arrive the beginning of November. CFISD has also formed two Mental Health Intervention Teams to offer help for students in crisis, and given a mental health assessment and crisis response training to all teachers and administrators. CFISD has fully implemented their clear backpack policy as well. Henry said both the clear backpack policy and mental health professionals have been received well. Ive actually had a lot of students that have said [clear backpacks] makes them feel a little better, he said. We know the number one way to prevent a tragedy from happening is establishing new relationships. Education opportunities CFISD offers dual credit programs and a College Academy program, where students can earn their associate degree alongside their high school diploma. Henry believes students who choose not to go to post-secondary institutions 32 percent of CFISD students, he said are not celebrated enough. I say one of the biggest mistakes weve made in education over the past 30 years is all we ever celebrated were those students going to college, he said. We didnt celebrate those students who had licenses and who went out into the work world and who have done great things. Our focus, certainly, is still on college but there are a lot of opportunities. CFISD was one of 49 school districts, out of a total of 1,031, to earn a 5-star accountability rating, according to the district document. Henry said CFISD wants to focus funding on students without overtaxing the community. According to Henry, only 1.8 percent of CFISDs operating budget is put toward administrative staff and approximately $7,914 is spent per student a year. Henry said the School Priority Day event is important for the community to view the progress CFISD is making within the district as a whole. Theres so many misconceptions about public education and whats going on, he said. Schools have changed and youll see some of that today. Youll see just a small sliver of that, but the opportunities provided to the students are tremendous. chevall.pryce@chron.com I have no clue as to how many trick-or-treaters to expect this year. At our old house it was easy to prepare. Wed get a big bag of miniature candy bars, and end up not having any kids show up. After living there for 23 years, Ill bet we averaged less than one kid per year. We wouldnt have averaged that high, but 10 kids were trucked on the Halloween of 97. This year will be the first Halloween in our new subdivision. Im pretty sure our one-year-old neighbor, Oliver, will show up. He may be dressed in Mollys unicorn outfit. Molly is the family dog. You may have seen the picture in a past article. Cute dog for anyone with blurred vision. To be honest, you could kill Halloween altogether and Id be good with it. I fully believe if you leave trick-or-treating alone, it will die within the next few years. People are just too scared nowadays, I cant imagine parents allowing their kids to accept candy from just anybody. It was Ronald Clark OBryan who put the skids on Trick or Treat for an entire nation. The guy gave his son and daughter and a few of the neighborhood kids some cyanide-laced Pixy Stix for Halloween. Pixy Stix? Straws containing a fruity-flavored sour powder that was not too unlike boxed Jell-O, just not quite as sweet. OBryan managed to kill his son, but no one else. The other kids had trouble opening the straws that OBryan had stapled shut. He had to help his son open the one he got. Did it for the insurance money. He did the deed in Deer Park in 74, and was executed in Huntsville in 84. Obviously, Trick or Treat did survive the Candy Man, but its somewhat more guarded nowadays. Our church is having one of those Trunk or Treats. People decorate their cars and trucks and handout candy to kiddos. Kay and I agreed to participate, but I refused to decorate the car. A man has to draw the line. So, Kay is going to be in charge of one of the inflatable bounce houses. I was supposed to help her, but was called off so I could emcee the Cake Walk. Im not a fan of cake walking. I dont know how they walk cakes today, but back then youd put out 12 chairs in circle and have 13 people walk around em while music was played. Once the music stops, everyone finds an empty seat. The one chairless person has to leave. Another chair is removed and the music starts again. Over the course of 11 such scenarios youre going to witness some serious elbowing, tripping and hair pulling. The last person sitting wins a cake. Yep, its the trunk or treat events that will kill trick or treat. Of course, Halloween will never die. Its got too much history. Our ancestors called it All Hallows Day which was the day before All Saints Day, which was the day people in Scotland, Ireland and Wales honored those who were proclaimed saints. On All Hallows Day, children would go from house to house and say prayers for dead kinfolk in exchange for soul cakes. The small cakes had a black cross etched on top that represented a spirit being freed from purgatory. But the cakes had to be eaten before the spirits were set free. Since this took place in the 11th century, I doubt soul cake would be that much of a draw for todays kids. - Hey, wheres the chocolate icing and creme filling? Thats what I wouldve said.. In the 1800s, kids quit with the prayers, and substituted jokes, poems and songs in return for fruit and money. Enough with the soul cake! Adults started carving faces into turnips to ward off bad spirits. When the Irish came to America they started carving faces on pumpkins, because they couldnt find enough turnips. It was here in America that the concept of tricking those who refused to offer treats first started. I dont know whos to blame for that. Im thinking St. Louis. If you saw the movie Meet me in St Louis you caught a hint of kids tricking, but no one offering them treats. Weirdest Halloween behavior Ive ever witnessed. Knocking on someones door and then hitting them in the face with flour and hollering that you hate them? Ive watched that scene at least a dozen times. Just as bizarre as it can be. And one of my favorite movies. Yep, Halloween has become quite the controversy. It carries a lot of baggage. You could kill it tomorrow and it wouldnt bither me a bot. However, it wouldnt keep me from having to emcee the Cake Walk. Our church is not calling our event Halloween. Were calling it Fall Festival. That name is without controversy until it develops a history. You can contact Mark at hayter.mark@gmail.com. The Summer of 1976 is still available on e-book at Amazon Books. In just four days of early voting in Montgomery County, voter turnout was a dramatic 275.6 percent higher than the last midterm election in 2014. Those numbers are putting Montgomery County on track to see one of its highest voting years with local party chairs Republican Dr. Wally Wilkerson and Democrat Marc Meyers agreeing residents are energized. From Monday through Thursday, 45,306 voters cast votes in the Nov. 6 general election, averaging more than 5,000 voters a day at the countys five early voting locations combined. The two voting locations in The Woodlands had the highest turnout with 18,589 ballots cast, of which 12,708 of those were at the South County Community Building. Across the county, Willis has seen 4,638 voters, Magnolia 5,526 voters, East County 4,645 voters, Montgomery 5,949 and Conroe with 5,835. Additionally, the county has logged 10,268 ballots by mail. There is plenty of interest and a number of issues, Wilkerson said of voter motivation. The Democrats have candidates for the first time in 25 years so that is a big deal for them. Wilkerson, who established the Republican party in the county more than 50 years ago, said he was happy to see the competitiveness of the party and the publics interest to get to the polls. I think the best thing for our country is to have two competitive political parties and they nominate their candidates and we nominate ours and then the people have a choice, Wilkerson said. Its better than where you have the same people all the time on the ballot. Meyers echoed Wilkerson in that this is the first time in years the Democrat ballot has a full slate of candidates. We havent had this many Democrat (candidates) since the Democrats ran the county back before 1990, Meyers said. There hasnt been a critical mass of Democratic candidates to run as a slate. While the Republican party has the advantage in Montgomery County based on numbers, Meyers said, the fracture in the party with different groups is creating some openings for the Democratic party. Its put some things up in the air, he said. There are some establishment Republican groups that are not as happy with what is going on with the Republican Party which may benefit some of our candidates. Early voting continues 7 a.m. to 7 p.m. Monday through Friday. Election day is Nov. 6. Early Voting Locations: Lee G. Alworth Building Montgomery County Administration Building Annex, 207 W. Phillips St. Conroe 77301 Magnolia Community Building 422 Melton St.,Magnolia 77354 East County Courthouse Annex 21130 U.S. Highway 59 S, New Caney 77357 South County Community Building 2235 Lake Robbins Drive, The Woodlands 77380 North Montgomery County Community Center 600 Gerald St., Willis 77378 Lone Star Community Center (This is not the Lone Star Convention Center in Conroe) 2500 Lone Star Parkway, Montgomery 77356 George and Cynthia Woods Mitchell Library 8125 Ashlane Way, The Woodlands 77382 cdominguez@hcnonline.com Johnson Development walked away with 14 trophies in the 2018 Houstons Best PRISM Awards hosted by the Greater Houston Builders Association more than any other competitor. Among the awards were two Grand Awards the highest honor given for Developer of the Year and Promotion of the Year. The developer was named a finalist in 14 other categories. In addition to the coveted Grand Awards, Johnsons Harvest Green in Richmond received a much sought-after honor, being named Master Planned Community of the Year. There are so many strong contenders in this category, many of which have been under development significantly longer than Harvest Green, said Marketing Director Haley Peck, who was named a finalist for 2018 Marketing Professional of the Year during the awards ceremony. Our farm-centric development and healthy, active lifestyle obviously resonated with the judges as much as they do with our home buyers. Harvest Green was named one of the nations best-selling master-planned communities in the 2018 mid-year report released by Robert Charles Lesser & Co. Harvest Green also won awards for Best Television/Video Promotion of the Year and the Farmhouse, the communitys recreation complex that opened earlier this year. Johnsons Grand Central Park in Conroe won four awards Billboard of the Year/Developer for its Bark in the Park event, Print Ad of the Year for Natures Best Medicine, and Marketing Campaign of the Year and Radio Commercial of the Year for its Jamboree Grand Opening. Jordan Ranch in Fulshear won awards for Signage of the Year, Billboard of the Year/Developer and Event of the Year/Developer for Crazy for Cars. Johnson Developments newest community Veranda in Richmond won Sales Brochure of the Year and Event of the Year/Community for its Star-Spangled Grand Opening. Woodforest in South Montgomery County, Sienna Plantation in Missouri City and Cross Creek Ranch in Fulshear were among the Johnson communities named finalists in the categories of Model Home Park of the Year, Marketing Campaign of the Year, Direct Mail Piece of the Year, Sales Brochure of the Year, Billboard of the Year and others. Ive never seen anything like this, said Christen Johnson, senior vice president of marketing for Johnson Development. Weve done well at PRISMS before, but this was astounding. The Houston-area residential real estate industry is so heavy with talent that to win two Grand Awards and so many others is rather humbling. Now in its 43rd year of development, Johnson Development has 17 active communities 14 in the Houston area, two in Dallas-Fort Worth and one in Atlanta. Visit www.johnsondevelopment.com for more information. A 65-year-old Houston area man is behind bars after flying to Kentucky to have sex with what he believed were two children under the age of 12, authorities announced this week. Instead, Gregory Lee Hruby of Brazoria was arrested by Kentucky State Police at the airport. Police said he traveled some 900 miles to be fooled by the sting. The Pasadena Chamber of Commerce wants to help prepare the next generation of business leaders in the rapidly evolving community with a new initiative. Partnering with the citys Pasadena Economic Development Corp, the chamber in January will launch its first Impact Pasadena program, an 18-month cohort-based workshop. The application deadline is Oct. 30. IMPACT Pasadena will open the door for the citys talented, diverse community to address real issues impacting Pasadena and lead the citys positive growth into the future. said Cristina Womack, the chambers president and CEO. This (IMPACT Pasadena) is a transformative leadership experience for Pasadenas business and community leaders, Womack said. Its designed to equip participants with interpersonal, leadership and communication skills while also learning the importance of economic, social and governmental forces and how they work together the impact it can have towards moving a community together. The project was a response to the call in the EDCs most recently completed strategic plan to create pipelines in the business and civic community to generate economic development and is intended to help stakeholders implement strategies to drive economic stability and growth. IMPACT Pasadena is expected to graduate its first class in January 2020. Participants will be trained in the John C. Maxwell-certified communication techniques, leadership and collaboration skills and will be mentored one-on-one by business leaders. Those who complete the course will receive a certificate of completion. Ultimately the chamber would like to see community leaders come together and experience personal and professional growth while addressing real issues impacting Pasadena, Womack said. Anyone who lives, works and conducts business in Pasadena is eligible to apply for the program. Applications will be reviewed by the chamber and the EDC, and thsoe chosen to participate will be announced at the Pasadena Chamber Gala on Dec. 13. The cost for the program is $3,000 to cover expenses such as curriculum, meals, transportation, travel and lodging, with scholarships available based on need. To submit an application, visit www.pasadenachamber.org/impact yorozco@hcnonline.com Officials from three local governments have come together to support possible federal or state funding for two projects that would join Pearland Parkway and Friendswood Lakes Boulevard as one route. The roads would connect at FM 2351 to provide a continuous thoroughfare across the communities, which local officials believe would ease congestion and spark commercial development. Pearland City Council in October sent letters in support of Brazoria Countys request to the Houston-Galveston Area Council that extension of the parkway be included in the regional organizations 2019-2022 Transportation Improvement Plan. Pearland also endorsed Friendswoods request for inclusion of work to extend the boulevard. Projects accepted in the TIP could receive 80 percent funding from federal or state sources. Each project would have be evaluated, meaning one or both could be accepted by H-GAC, a 13-county organization through which local governments consider issues and cooperate in solving area-wide problems, according to the councils website. H-GAC should announce its decision on projects to include in the plan by February or March, said Karen Mckinnon, assistant county engineer with Brazoria County. If the projects are selected, it would still be a few years to file all the necessary federal or state paperwork before design phases could begin. McKinnon is hopeful that both projects will accepted into the TIP. With those two projects together, it will score well, she said. Pearland Parkway would extend from Dixie Farm Road to FM 2351 as a four-lane, concrete curb-and-gutter roadway with raised a median and underground storm sewer system. The countys proposed plan is for a 1.85 mile extension of the parkway, which includes a 0.2 mile segment within the city limits, with the remainder within the extraterritorial jurisdiction, according to city documents. The project has an estimated cost of $17 million, Mckinnon said. If approved and included in H-GACs plan, Brazoria County would cover the 20 percent match, or $3.4 million. According to a Pearland city document, the parkway extension would help alleviate traffic on CR 129, Texas 35 and Hastings-Friendswood Road and boost access to Pearland Regional Airport. Future extensions would connect the corridor to Interstate 45 via League City Parkway. McKinnon said the parkway would remain on its long-term plan for completion regarding of if it is accepted into the H-GAC plan. In an Oct. 10 letter requesting Pearlands support for the proposed Friendswood project, Friendswood City Manager Morad Kabiri said, This extension will connect Friendswood Lakes Boulevard to Pearland Parkway, thereby linking League City Parkway to Pearland Parkway through the City of Friendswood, in Galveston County and through Brazoria County. The continuous linking of the roadways will address not only the needs of Friendswood, League City and Pearland but serve as a necessary connection through the region especially serving Galveston, Harris, and Brazoria counties. The extension of Friendswood Lakes Boulevard, an estimated $14 million project, would construct a four-lane, concrete curb-and-gutter boulevard from FM 528 to Friendswood city limits near FM 2351, according to Friendswood documents. Friendswood would be required to provide the local 20 percent funding match of $2.8 million. The expansion would improve accessibility and mobility for the city and region as well as serve as a regional thoroughfare and emergency evacuation route and create efficient traffic flow that will take congestion off FM 528, an important thoroughfare in the region, according to Friendswood city documents. With the heavy congestion on the Gulf Freeway and (Texas 35), the region needs an alternate route to move people commuting to work from the south to jobs further north, according to an Oct. 22 letter from Pearland city staff presented to Pearland Mayor Tom Reid for his signature to send to H-GAC. Additionally, once the connection is completed, it is certain this project will result in additional commercial development and new jobs along the route, the letter stated. jaimy.jones@chron.com Hamza Shahbaz asked Imran Khan about NRO for Sharif family LAHORE: Opposition Leader in the Punjab Assembly Hamza Shahbaz has asked Prime Minister Imran Khan to tell [us] who sought the National Reconciliation Ordinance (NRO) for the Sharif family. Niazi Sahib... who has sought NRO from you. From where you have got this news. Neither we have nor we will seek NRO, he said at a press conference here on Thursday. He said Imran Khan was biased against the Sharif's and he should stop threatening them. He said Shahbaz Sharif did not commit any illegality and he would be acquitted of all charges (in Ashiana housing scam). The National Accountability Bureau is playing in the hands of Imran Khan, he said and asked the premier to stop threatening them (Sharifs) as they were not afraid of arrest. Imran had got Shahbaz arrested. Today the Supreme Court judges are saying that NAB has been politicised, Hamza said and admitted that it was PML-Ns mistake that it could not do away with the NABs black law which was introduced by a dictator Musharraf. It was our mistake that we could not repeal the black law of NAB despite getting the opportunity. To a question whether the PML-N would participate in the multi-party conference being convened by Maulana Fazlur Rehman, Hamza said the party had not decided yet. Students and staff members got to put their mark on a beam that will be part of Spring ISDs middle school #8 on Thursday, Oct. 25. The beam signing ceremony celebrated the construction of the new school, which will be built next to Northgate Crossing Elementary School and is expected to be completed by August 2019. When we were planning for the bond program, we knew we needed something to help alleviate overcrowding in our middle schools, said Superintendent Rodney Watson. The new school is expected to house 725 students and may be expanded in the future. The SISD board of trustees approved $35 million in construction costs for the school. The district is also in the process of building a new Roberson Middle School as the former campus is scheduled to be converted into a ninth grade center. A new stadium is also in the works as part of the bond along with renovations to campuses and two additional ninth grade centers. The district completed renovations on the new police department building, located at 420 Lockhaven Drive in north Houston. Kimberly Culley, who will be the principal of middle school #8 when it opens, said she was looking forward to the start of the 2019-2020 school year. Truly, it takes a community. This is a community school and I am so excited to be the leader of this campus, she said. mayra.cruz@chron.com The Shenandoah City Council on Wednesday voted unanimously to support the annexation of the northern portion of Grogans Mill Road along the city limits, from Tiffany Green Boulevard to Vision Park Boulevard. The portion of the road north of Research Forest Drive is currently part of the city of Houstons extraterritorial jurisdiction, putting its maintenance and management under the jurisdiction of Montgomery County Precinct 2 Commissioner Charlie Riley. Most importantly, (Shenandoah annexation) would ensure that Grogans Mill never gets expanded to four lanes, said Mayor Ritch Wheeler said at the meeting. The annexation is unrelated to the proposed underpass project on Research Forest Drive at the intersection with Grogans Mill Road that has faced harsh opposition from Shenandoah residents who argue that a major road project at that location would decrease property values and increase noise and emissions pollution. The request by Shenandoah, rather, is being made to avoid any future widening projects along that mostly-residential stretch of Grogans Mill Road north of Research Forest that snakes through wooded neighborhoods and residential enclaves. Right now, we have verbal support from (Riley) saying they support not widening it, said City Administrator Kathie Reyer in an interview Thursday. But an election can change that. Should the city annex the road, they would control law enforcement, maintenance, signage and striping along the three-quarter-mile stretch. (It) Becomes our road to maintain, Council Member Mike McLeod said. I think that expense is well worth it. Reyer and Wheeler met with city of Houston planning and development officials in mid-October to determine the steps necessary to annex the road. From here, Reyer said, the issue goes to Montgomery County Commissioners Court on Nov. 13. Should the idea be approved there, the formal request would go through to Houston for final approval. Exercising control of the road, Wheeler said, is one more step in ensuring that the roads Shenandoah residents depend on remain up to standard. We dont know what a future council might do, Wheeler said. But at least from that point forward, it would be in the hands of the city and we would be able to determine that fate down the road. mrincon@chron.com For Dawn Candy, it was all a bit of a whirlwind. Candy, a local business owner, was appointed to the Oak Ridge North City Council on Oct. 11 by Mayor Jim Kuykendall after former council member Michelle Cassio resigned to expand her family jewelry business, Cassio Creations. Although she only moved to Oak Ridge North two years ago, Candy said she has a long history both in Montgomery County and in community involvement. The mother of three and grandmother of seven was born and raised in Texas and moved to the county 25 years ago. Along with her husband, Randy Lovelace, Candy has criss-crossed the county, settling first in New Caney, then in The Woodlands and finally drawn in by the accessibility and the larger lots for her grandchildren in Oak Ridge North in 2016. The whole way, she said, she has made sure to keep herself deeply involved in the community. Candy is set to be sworn in at the Nov. 12 City Council meeting. The Villager sat down with her to talk about how she ended up in Oak Ridge North and what brought her to the council chambers. Question: Tell me about your background. Candy: I lived on the east side of Houston all through high school, after high school I kind of migrated north and eventually landed in Montgomery County about 25 years ago. I went to Champions School of Real Estate to become a licensed realtor I did that for a little while, then I went back to them to become a loan officer. Ive always had some sort of sales or marketing position, so when I got out here to Montgomery County, I was in advertising and ended up at The Villager. Through that, I became involved with (The Woodlands Area Chamber of Commerce) and the community, and I just really fell in love with the community. I decided to put roots down here and Ive been here ever since. Question: And youve been in Oak Ridge North for a few years, right? Candy: Correct. When I first moved down here I lived between Porter and New Caney off of (FM) 4083, then I moved to The Woodlands maybe two or three years later. I lived there for four or five years, in that particular neighborhood, and I lived in Shenandoah for six years. In 2016, my husband and I bought a house in Oak Ridge North. I was very excited to find that type of neighborhood and accessibility and just being able to be close to everything that I was used to being close to. Finding that in the city of Oak Ridge North with bigger lots and trees and just the perfect neighborhood, it was great. I loved the feel of the neighborhood itself and it just seemed like a really good community for me. Even though I was a new resident, I felt like it was not unfamiliar to me because I have been involved in the community for so long, so I was very familiar with the things happening there I felt like it was a great place for us to put our roots down and purchase our forever home. Question: How did you go from being a new resident to a city council member in two years? Candy: Being on the City Council was not necessarily on my radar, but I knew I wanted to be involved in my community, especially as a new resident. I wanted to make sure I was involved and invested in what was happening. Within a few months of moving there, I got involved with the (citys Economic Development Corporation) board and had been on that board for about a year and a half or so, when the City Council position became available and (Mayor Jim Kuykendall) called and asked if I would be interested, if I would consider it. My husband has been very supportive, he knew it wouldnt be a strain or anything negative on our relationship. He said I should definitely go for this, hes so supportive on anything I attempt to do. Question: Between now and May, when youre seeking re-election, what do you plan to do in your city council position? Candy: First, Im going to discover the expectations and talk to other council members and find out what they do and how they do it, while adding my own style to it and try to move forward. Illl get to know some of the residents that I have not met. Since the announcement (of becoming a council member), Ive had quite a few friends reach out and show their support for me on the council. I also found out I have quite a few friends already living in the city of Oak Ridge North that I was not aware of, so I still have some friends in the neighborhood that I can reach out to and ask them to help in my campaign for re-election, to ask their friends to vote for me, but also make those introductions, because I do think that its really important that people get to know me and what my values are and what I plan to accomplish. But, its important for me to hear from them as well. Question: Should you be re-elected, what issues would you like to work on? Candy:It seems like we have a few that are very important to us right now were constantly looking at what the priorities should be. I know traffic is a huge issue weve got going on at the overpass and Robinson Road, that takes a lot of attention. I believe were on a good path there. I think mobility is a huge issue and thats definitely something I want to help continue to move forward, and making sure that our infrastructure is strong for this city. Coming from the EDC board, thats important to me as well attracting new businesses to our community, because that helps our residents keep our taxes low. mrincon@chron.com Federal authorities investigating a spate of pipe bombs sent this week to several prominent critics of President Donald Trump have turned their attention toward southern Florida, believing that a number of the explosive devices were mailed from the area, two people briefed on the matter said Thursday. The focus on Florida came as at least three more devices were found in Delaware and New York, the FBI said Thursday morning. Two were addressed to former Vice President Joe Biden, a Delaware resident, and a third to actor Robert De Niro, who lives and works in lower Manhattan. All 10 of the similar-looking packages discovered since Monday bore return addresses from Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz, D-Fla. The continuing wave of bombs has prompted an intense nationwide investigation into whether people who have criticized the president and been vilified by the right are being targeted. Investigators have started focusing on Florida because an analysis of information collected by the U.S. Postal Service indicated that many of the packages were mailed from the state and processed at postal facilities there, including one in Opa-locka. None of the devices has so far exploded on its own, and investigators have tried to determine whether the devices were even capable of detonating. But striking a note of caution at a news conference Thursday, the New York City police commissioner, James O'Neill, said the packages contained "live devices" that should be "treated with the utmost seriousness." "The devices should be considered dangerous," O'Neill said. A law enforcement official said the envelope and printed address labels on the packages sent to Biden and De Niro were similar to those sent to former President Barack Obama, former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and others. An X-ray showed the package sent to De Niro contained a device that, like the others, seemed to be a pipe bomb. "This appears to be from the same sender," the official said. Federal, state and local investigators in New York, Washington, Florida and Los Angeles have all joined forces in the rapidly widening case, which has not yet resulted in any injuries but has sent a shock through the nation's political and news media establishments. Postal officials in New York said that no more suspicious packages had been found after the ones discovered Thursday morning, leaving investigators to confront a lingering question: Were the bombs the work of one person or multiple people? Though investigators initially believed that some of the packages were delivered by hand or courier, they have now concluded that all 10 were likely sent through the mail, a person briefed on the matter said. The Postal Service records images of mail that comes into its system. As part of the inquiry, officials have searched those images in an effort to determine where the packages originated, as well as to identify and catch any other possible explosive devices by the bomber or bombers. In addition to conducting a forensic examination of the packages and explosive devices, federal authorities were seeking to determine where the envelopes, mailing labels and bomb components were purchased, using a range of investigative techniques. One technique, according to several law-enforcement officials, would likely be to obtain data from cell towers in the areas where they believe the various packages were mailed. The data from each area could then be cross-referenced to create lists of phone numbers and ultimately, phone users who were in the areas around the times the packages were mailed, the officials said. The devices sent to Biden were intercepted at a U.S. Postal Service facility in Delaware, a law enforcement official said. Similar to one that had been sent to Eric Holder Jr., the former attorney general, the envelopes were misaddressed and were redirected to Wasserman Schultz's return address. Another package was also discovered at the same facility, a law enforcement official said, but it was not immediately known to whom it was addressed. De Niro, like the other recipients of packages, has been a frequent critic of Trump. During the Tony Awards ceremony in June, he gave a speech in which he attacked the president with an obscenity, and a video of his comments was widely shared on social media. Mayor Bill de Blasio of New York said on Thursday that an "eagle-eyed security employee" at Tribeca Productions had noticed similarities between the package the company received and photos of envelopes that were discovered Wednesday. "There is somebody, by definition, who is a serial bomber, yes, and a terrorist," de Blasio said in an appearance on CNN, whose New York office also received an explosive device Wednesday. In anticipation of additional packages being found Thursday, the New York Police Department deployed additional officers outside news media companies and elected officials' offices, de Blasio said. The first bomb was found Monday at the Westchester County home of George Soros, the billionaire advocate of liberal causes. Soros has for years been a focus of right-wing vitriol and conspiracy theorists. In recent days, some have falsely speculated that he funded a caravan of migrants moving north from Honduras through Mexico. On Wednesday, several new bombs were discovered, one after the other in a rolling wave that continued throughout the day. First, there was word that the Secret Service had intercepted packages addressed to Clinton and Obama. Then a package addressed to John Brennan, a former CIA director, was found in the offices of CNN in midtown Manhattan, resulting in the extraordinary spectacle of the network's correspondents reporting live from the street outside. By the end of the day one package was discovered addressed to Holder, who recently said of opponents on the right, "When they go low, we kick them." Two other packages were sent to Rep. Maxine Waters, D-Calif., who has repeatedly traded barbs with Trump. All the packages were sent in manila envelopes lined with Bubble Wrap. They each were fixed with about a half-dozen first-class postage stamps and had return addresses with the name, misspelled, of Wasserman Schultz, who was once chairwoman of the Democratic National Committee. The mailing labels were printed on a computer. A white powder included in the package sent to CNN did not present a biological threat, the FBI said Thursday. CARBONDALE, Ill. (AP) Democrat Brendan Kelly listened as the people crowded inside a Southern Illinois University conference room talked about how trouble at the Carbondale campus has brought trouble for the whole region. Decreasing enrollment means jobs arent filled when employees quit or retire. A local furniture store that used to sell a truckload of mattresses to college students from its parking lot each August hasnt come close to that level of sales in years. A four-lane highway between St. Louis and Carbondale that people have been saying for a generation would attract more students has yet to be built. We cant sell our houses, retired university employee Susan Rehwaldt told Kelly during a town hall meeting Thursday night. You just can see the prices going down. Kelly, a prosecutor and Navy veteran, is trying to retake a House seat that Democrats held for more than 30 years before Republican state Rep. Mike Bost won it in 2014. Two years later the working-class corner of the state home to steelworkers and a once-thriving coal industry supported Donald Trump by 15 percentage points after twice backing Barack Obama for president. How Kelly and Democrats running in other largely rural, blue-collar districts fare in November could determine whether the party wins the 23 seats it needs to take control of the House next month. It could also signal whether the Democrats have any hope of winning back those voters in 2020. Kelly says its clear the last few years havent brought the kind of economic turnaround Illinois 12th Congressional District was hoping for. The issues are not left versus right. The issues here are up versus down, he says. And southern Illinois is still very much down. The district has a median household income of just under $50,000, and one-quarter of children live in poverty, according to the U.S. Census Bureau. The race has seen millions in outside spending from both sides, as well as attention from the president. Trump, who held an August rally with steelworkers in the district, will return Saturday to campaign with Bost in Murphysboro, the congressmans hometown just west of Carbondale. Bost, a union firefighter and grandson of a coal miner, says his election and Trumps appeal in the area are a continuation of something thats been happening slowly over the past few decades. When he was elected to the state Legislature in 1994, his was the most Democratic district in the state to elect a Republican to the Statehouse. Today, most of southern Illinois legislators, as well as many local elected officials, are Republicans. The reason, he says, is that people in southern Illinois voted Democratic when they believed the party represented working men and women. Many oppose abortion rights and support gun rights. Now they see Democrats putting job-killing regulations on the coal industry and talking about abolishing Immigration and Customs Enforcement. When you used to ask them why they were Democrats they said, Because Mom and Dad told me I was, or My union told me I needed to be, Bost says. That has come to the point where they hear whats happening on the national level and the state level, and they hear the ideas the Democrats are putting forward, and it doesnt fit the mold of what their mom and dads Democrat party was. Take Carol Green, who owns a Murphysboro antiques and collectibles store with her husband. She was raised in a family that always voted Democratic, and she did, too, because her father was a union ironworker and the party supported the unions. Ive often wondered what he would think if he was still alive, said Green, 70, who last voted for a Democrat for president in 1992. She and her husband say Democrats now seem more interested in taking money from working people to give to others. While she voted for longtime Democratic Rep. Jerry Costello until he left office in 2013, shes backed Bost since then, and plans to do so again this year. But Democrats also see signs that give them hope. Voters here backed Democrat Tammy Duckworth for Senate over incumbent GOP Sen. Mark Kirk in 2016, even as they overwhelmingly supported Trump. Kelly is seen as a strong candidate, one Democrats have tried to recruit for several election cycles because of his local roots and background as a veteran and prosecutor. Hes getting some help from Vice President Joe Biden, who plans to campaign with Kelly in East St. Louis on Wednesday. Hes also getting help from Democratic Rep. Cheri Bustos, whose western Illinois district supported Trump even as she won re-election by a roughly 20-point margin. Bustos is now overseeing heartland engagement for the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, working with candidates in the Midwest, as well as West Virginia and Pennsylvania, to flip GOP districts that resemble her own. She acknowledges the party hasnt done what it needs to in areas like these, where most towns might have no more than 1,000 residents. There are many Democrats who decided to write off those towns and the people in those towns, Bustos said. And that is a big, big mistake. The Democrats running this cycle are not letting that happen. Many of the issues theyre talking about are similar to other Democrats, such as how to reduce the cost of health care and ensure people with pre-existing conditions have insurance. There also are issues more specific to these mostly rural areas, such as improving infrastructure. Kelly is campaigning on what he calls his Save Southern Illinois plan, which touches on everything from improving bridges and water mains a broken pipe left thousands of people in nine counties without water last year to helping institutions like Southern Illinois University. He notes that in some towns, the police headquarters were built during Franklin D. Roosevelts administration. At one, sewage has leaked into the evidence room. Hes been in St. Clair County, the urban area east of St. Louis where hes states attorney, as well as towns like Ina population 881. What hes heard has been consistent: The stock market may be doing well, but voters arent reaping the benefits. Its just that the people at the top are doing really, really well, but its not trickling down here. Imran Khan chaired first NWC meeting ISLAMABAD: Prime Minister Imran Khan Thursday emphasised the need for following an integrated approach for conservation, storage, management and efficient utilisation of available water resources in the country. The prime minister expressed these views while chairing the first meeting of the National Water Council (NWC) at his office. Pointing out that no significant attention was paid to water-related issues in the past, he underscored the need for chalking out a comprehensive roadmap, in consultation with provinces and other stakeholders, for implementation of National Water Policy (NWP). He highlighted the issue of water scarcity to meet the growing demands of increasing population of the country. He observed that the NWC would serve as an effective platform to discuss and develop consensus among the stakeholders on all issues pertaining to water resource management. Water Resources Secretary Shamail Ahmad Khawaja briefed the meeting, in detail, about the contours of NWP and the strategic priorities set in the policy. He also apprised the meeting of the existing water availability and the planned future investments, especially towards enhancement of the storage capacity. The secretary also presented various proposals regarding the implementation of National Water Policy. The Water and Power Development Authority (WAPDA) chairman briefed the meeting about the progress on various projects of water storage and power generation. The prime minister said that the proposals should be analysed by the steering committee under minister for water resources. The steering committee would submit its recommendations in two weeks. Separately, Prime Minister Imran Khan Thursday said his government was committed to removing impediments in the way of doing business and making Pakistan an attractive place for investments, particularly by the foreign entrepreneurs. Addressing the inauguration of the $200 million Glass Manufacturing Complex to be built in Pakistan by Deli China & JW Sez Group, he said it was the first joint venture between the two countries under the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC). He stressed the importance of technology transfer and said in his forthcoming visit to China, a large business delegation would be accompanying him where they would discuss ways to further strengthen the CPEC and build robust business to business ties. He also mentioned the governments ambitious affordable housing project and said he would be discussing it with the Chinese authorities. The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints will be presenting a special presentation called Tools for Anxiety & Depression. The event will take place Nov. 3 from 10 a.m. to noon at The New Canaan Meeting House of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, at 682 South Ave., directly across from the entrance to Waveny Park in New Canaan. The event is open to all adults and youth 12 and up. Light refreshments will be served. The event will feature a presentation describing symptoms of anxiety and depression and how to manage these symptoms with some practical coping skills. The event will also feature a question-and-answer period with licensed professionals in the field of mental illness Amie Anger, founder of New England Child and Family Counseling; Matthew Perkins, medical director of The Division of Child and Family Services at The New York State Office of Mental Health; and Tory Perry, agency manager for LDS Family Services of New York. Anxiety and depression affect roughly 18 percent of all adults and costs over $42 billion a year. The church hopes this event will provide help, hope and some practical solutions for those who are suffering. Art For ALZ exhibit and sale opens Oct. 26 A special juried exhibit of art exploring the theme Love & Light will take place Oct. 26 through Nov. 3 at the Carriage Barn Arts Center, with proceeds from the sale of all works benefiting the Alzheimers Association of Connecticut. The 2018 Art For Alz exhibit and sale will also feature works by Rhode Island abstract expressionist painter Paul M. Cotee. Cotes work can be found in numerous public and private collections including the Smithsonian, Harvard University, Mass General Hospital and the Alzheimers Association. The artist has been raising funds for the Alzheimers Association with his Annual Driftwood Alzheimers Fundraiser for six years. Cote fuses art, music and dance to create a unique visual experience that raises awareness and hope for all those affected by the disease. The opening reception on Oct. 26 from 5 to 8 p.m. is open to the public. At 7 p.m., Cote will paint live to the sounds of DJ Chahkram. Exhibited work will include a one-of-a-kind Cote piece made up of 100 individual canvases (priced at $100 each and sold to benefit the Alzheimers Association). Guests can also bid on a custom painting by Cote during the auction. On Oct. 27 from 2 to 4 p.m., art appreciators, music fans, Alzheimers supporters, and people of all ages are invited to support the cause at a special gallery event where Cotee will perform and paint to the sounds of Raven King and auction of the newly completed performance pieces to benefiting the Alzheimers Association. On Oct. 28 at 4 p.m., there will be a free performance in the gallery by the New World Chorus, a Stamford- based community choir. Gallery hours are Wednesday through Saturday from 10 a.m. to 3 p.m., and Sunday from 1 to 5 p.m. Basic facts about natural gas With Eversource is bringing natural gas to New Canaan, the company wants to provide basic information about gas: Natural gas is a lighter than air gas. When released into the atmosphere it rises and dissipates. Propane is a heavier than air gas so it sinks when released. Both natural gas and propane have an odorant (ethyl mercaptan) added because in their natural states they are odorless, colorless and tasteless. That is the rotten egg odor we know as gas. As with propane, natural gas may be used to feed multiple household appliances (water heaters, stoves, pool heaters, fireplace logs, grills, furnaces, boilers, generators). Most propane equipment can be converted to use natural gas by licensed technicians. All gas installations, from the gas meter into the building, require a permit from the New Canaan Building Department and must be completed by licensed technicians. Eversource is responsible for all work from the street to the gas meter. If you smell gas (rotten egg smell), leave immediately, and call 911. The Fire Department has gas detecting equipment and if necessary, may turn off the gas supply. If desired, gas alarms are available to be installed in buildings where gas is in use. Be sure to follow manufacturers instructions for use and installation. The ongoing construction schedule is posted on the town website www.Newcanaan.info. For further information about natural gas, go to www.Eversource.com or contact the New Canaan Fire Marshals Office at 203-594-3030. New Canaan resident assumes chairman role at Spencer Stuart Spencer Stuart, a leading executive search and leadership advisory firm, is has announced Ben Williams and David Daniel assumed the roles of CEO and chairman, respectively, with the start of the firms fiscal year on Oct. 1, having been elected by the firms partners in May. Williams succeeds Kevin Connelly, who served two three-year terms as CEO after previously serving six years as Spencer Stuart chairman. Daniel succeeds Edward Speed, who served two three-year terms as chairman. Speed previously led Spencer Stuarts EMEA Board and CEO Practice, focusing on CEO search and succession. Prior to becoming CEO, Williams led Spencer Stuarts North American business and, before that, led its Financial Services Practice in North America. Before joining Spencer Stuart in 2010, Williams was president of the investment banking and capital markets broker-dealer of Wachovia, the nations fourth largest banking institution at the time. Daniel, of New Canaan, most recently served as head of Spencer Stuarts Private Equity Practice. He was CEO of the firm from 2001 to 2012, during which time he and the firms management team expanded Spencer Stuarts global presence and strengthened its position in board and CEO advisory and recruitment, including CEO succession planning, and board and executive assessment. Facebook removed fake accounts, groups and pages that originated in Iran, the latest effort by the company to clean up its social network ahead of midterm elections in the U.S. The Menlo Park, California-based company said it pulled 82 fake pages, groups and accounts "for coordinated inauthentic behavior that originated in Iran and targeted people in the U.S. and U.K.," according to a blog post Friday. Facebook stressed that it found no ties to the Iranian government and doesn't know for sure who is responsible. The activity happened on both Facebook and its Instagram service. The fake page administrators have been masquerading as Americans or U.K. citizens and posting about politically charged topics such as race relations, opposition to President Donald Trump and immigration, Facebook said. Facebook's threat intelligence team, part of its new election-focused War Room, first detected the activity a week ago. Given the imminent elections, the company said it took urgent action and shared the information with government officials from the U.S. and U.K. "This is when people or organizations create networks of accounts to mislead others about who they are or what they're doing," the company said. Facebook has been working to show it can help prevent interference in U.S. elections by other countries, after disclosing last year that Russia used its site to create political turmoil ahead of the 2016 presidential vote. Iran is the first country besides Russia that Facebook has said used similar tools. The company is stepping up election monitoring, increasing what it spends on security and running a hub called the War Room where teams scrutinize activity dashboards. So far, recent elections, like the one in Brazil, have still been plagued by misinformation. The company has said it is racing to keep up with the techniques of bad actors. Here are more details Facebook shared on Friday: --The company removed 33 Facebook accounts, 30 Facebook Pages and three Facebook groups, as well as 16 Instagram accounts. --More than 1 million accounts followed at least one of these Pages and about 25,000 accounts joined at least one of these groups. --More than 28,000 accounts followed the fake Instagram accounts. --The fraudulent accounts arranged seven events and spent less than $100 for ads on Facebook and Instagram, which were paid for in U.S. and Canadian dollars. The billionaire kingmaker of Georgia's politics is backing a woman to be the country's president for the first time when the Caucasus republic holds its last direct elections for head of state on Sunday. The ruling Georgian Dream party of former Prime Minister Bidzina Ivanishvili, the country's richest man, is urging voters to support Salome Zurabishvili, who would be the first woman elected as president in any former Soviet republic outside the Baltic states if she wins. Zurabishvili, 66, a former Georgian foreign minister who was born in France, stirred controversy in her campaign by blaming ex-President Mikheil Saakashvili for the country's 2008 war with Russia. She later clarified that she viewed Russia as the "aggressor," while accusing Saakashvili of giving in to provocations from Moscow in the conflict over the breakaway regions of Abkahzia and South Ossetia. Georgia has been a key battleground between Russia and the West since Saakashvili's 2003 Rose Revolution tilted the former Soviet republic toward closer ties with the European Union and the North Atlantic Treaty Organization. Ivanishvili sought to ease tensions with Russia, largely without success, after forming Georgian Dream to oust Saakashvili's party from power in 2012, while continuing the push to integrate with the West. Prime Minister Mamuka Bakhtadze said this month that EU and NATO membership remain the country's "top priority." Ivanishvili urged party supporters to vote for Zurabishvili, who's formally an independent candidate, at a rally in the capital, Tbilisi, on Thursday. "We really do have a good chance to win without a runoff," he said. Her principal rivals for the largely ceremonial post include Grigol Vashadze, 60, of the Strength in Unity grouping of opposition parties, who was foreign minister for four years to 2012, and Davit Bakradze, 46, of the European Georgia party, a former speaker of parliament who came second in the 2013 presidential election. A poll of 2,001 adults for Georgia's Rustavi 2 TV published Thursday found that 37 percent of those who intend to vote back Vashadze, 32 percent support Zurabishvili and 16 percent favor Bakradze. The survey by Edison Research was conducted Oct. 15-24 with a margin of error no greater than 3 percentage points. Vashadze's political grouping includes the remnants of Saakashvili's United National Movement after Bakradze and other leading members split from the party last year. The winner needs more than 50 percent of votes to avoid a runoff between the top two candidates. A record 25 challengers are competing to succeed incumbent Giorgi Margvelashvili, who isn't seeking a second term. The new president will serve a six-year term, instead of the present five, under constitutional changes approved by lawmakers last year that completed Georgia's shift to a parliamentary system of government. From 2024, the president will be chosen by a 300-member electoral college made up of members of parliament and local government representatives, with the term reverting to five years. Georgia has briefly had a woman as acting president twice. The then-speaker of parliament, Nino Burjanadze, took on the role for two months after the Rose Revolution, and again when Saakashvili stood down in November 2007 to call early presidential elections following a political crisis over a violent crackdown on opposition protesters. Imran Khan to visit China next week Prime Minister Imran Khan will visit China next week and meet President Xi Jinping, the Foreign Office said on Thursday. Imran Khan, accompanied by Foreign Minister Shah Mahmood Qureshi, will lead a delegation from Nov 2-5 which will sign several agreements on diverse fields, a statement by the Foreign Office said. He is also set to meet Chinese Premier Li Keqiang. Prime ministers visit is expected to provide further impetus to the existing strategic ties between Pakistan and China and break new grounds for broadening the bilateral partnership, the statement said. After visiting Beijing, Khan is set to be a key note speaker at the First China International Import Expo in Shanghai, it added. During the visit, the two sides will review the entire range of bilateral relations which have enjoyed a long history of mutual trust and cooperation. This will be Imran Khans first visit to China after assuming the office. The visit signifies the closeness and traditional warmth which characterises Pakistan-China all-weather strategic cooperative partnership, the statement said. Washington The chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee on Thursday referred a woman who accused Justice Brett Kavanaugh of sexual misconduct for criminal investigation, questioning whether she and her lawyer, Michael Avenatti, knowingly provided the committee with false information. In a letter to the attorney general and the FBI director, Sen. Charles Grassley, R-Iowa, detailed a series of apparent contradictions between sworn claims submitted to his committee and subsequent statements to the news media by Julie Swetnick and Avenatti, who could also be investigated. Grassley also said committee investigators had been able to find no information substantiating the claims and instead unearthed "substantial information calling into question her credibility." In a statement accompanying the letter, Grassley wrote, "I don't take lightly making a referral of this nature, but ignoring this behavior will just invite more of it in the future." Avenatti, who is better known for representing Stephanie Clifford, the pornographic film actress known as Stormy Daniels, who has taken on President Donald Trump, responded in a pair of tweets. He called Grassley's interest in investigating "ironic" but said he welcomed the inquiry as a means to "get to the bottom of Judge Kavanaugh's lies and conduct." He did not address Grassley's statement about apparent inconsistencies. As a caravan of Central American migrants creeps north through Mexico, dwindling in size as the weary and discouraged drop out, a small army of humanitarian workers is offering help along the way. The International Committee of the Red Cross is giving the migrants water, phones to call their families and medical care for their battered feet. Churches and recreation centers have opened their doors for them to sleep. The United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees is helping migrants fill out asylum applications. Governors of Mexican states are issuing messages to welcome them. On the U.S. side of the border, some shelters are overflowing already and have started looking for ways to expand the number of available cots. More than 1,000 miles ahead of them lies the United States, which the Trump administration insists they will not reach. The Pentagon is expected to dispatch 800 to 1,000 troops to support Border Patrol agents responsible for keeping the migrants from crossing the border. Most of migrants have some idea what lies ahead, having heard reports of President's Donald Trump's tweets asserting the caravan will not be allowed to cross. "But they're not coming because they think it will be easy," said Margaret Huang, executive director of Amnesty International, speaking on the phone after touring a migrant youth detention center in Texas. "They're coming because the alternative is unbearable. They're fearful of what they might end up facing here, but they're anticipating it has to be better than where they're coming from." History suggests that most of them may not make it to the U.S. border. After estimating the caravan size at 7,000 on Monday, the Mexican government counted 3,630 migrants in the caravan on Wednesday. "Conditions are very harsh," said Maria Rubi, a UNHCR official in southern Mexico with the caravan. "The blazing sun is very demanding. They've been walking for a long time, a long distance, with small children and people with disabilities. Some people are starting to ask how they can go back to their countries. The longer the journey goes on, it will happen more and more often." They will not be the last. Behind them, on the Guatemala side of the Mexican border, are more than 2,000 people. Other caravans are en route from Guatemala and El Salvador. The UNHCR was expecting to help migrants fill out 23,000 asylum applications this year, even before the latest caravan arrived. The Mexican government, under pressure from the Trump administration to stop the caravans from reaching the U.S. border, dispatched troops to the Guatemalan border to keep the caravan from crossing. They erected a fence, but thousands of migrants swam or took rafts across the river. Since then, the outgoing government has said it will adopt a more humanitarian attitude toward the migrants, while the incoming government has expressed a distaste for pursuing and detaining Central Americans fleeing misery and violence. Humanitarian groups started helping them before they departed. The International Committee of the Red Cross gives migrants leaflets advising them how to make the journey safer. They tell them what type of walking shoes to wear, suggest taking water-purification pills and to hydrate their children every two hours. They list assistance points where they can stop to get psychological support, make phone calls or send emails home and get help if they are mistreated or in danger. At least two dozen humanitarian groups, many of them faith-based, send representatives to "accompany" the caravans as they advance an average of 25 miles a day. Their mission is to provide support and witness their treatment, said Camilo Perez Bustillo, director of advocacy for the Hope Border Institute in El Paso. The situation is more uncertain closer to the U.S. border. The shelters in El Paso are full, Perez said. Facebook appeals have been launched to raise money. "There's an increasing impulse to prepare, on the Mexican side and the U.S. side," Perez said. "What spaces might be available? Where can we get mattresses? Who's going to staff it? Who will provide medical attention? There might be 2,000 or 3,000 people coming. We're beginning to get in preparation mode." Ruben Garcia, director of Annunciation House, an El Paso network of shelters with 1,300 beds, said they already are short of spaces to handle the routine number of migrants released every week because there is not enough room in the detention centers. If there are no beds in the temporary shelters, the migrants are released to the streets. "We are aware of the caravan," he said. "We're monitoring it. The mayor's office called to ask me, 'What are you doing?' I've been telling them it's premature to know what might happen." If the caravan splinters, as some reports suggest may already have happened, it is uncertain that any one location will get a wave of migrants. Father Pat Murphy, director of the Scalabrini Casa del Migrante shelter in Tijuana, recalled that a caravan in 2016 started out 2,000 strong but was just 250 by the time it arrived at the doorstep of the United States. "We've had meetings with the government and all the shelters," he said. "We have room for 600 people. If 4,000 come, it will be up to the government to be more prepared. Usually the caravans don't come to the shelters. They stay in the plaza trying to force the United States to open the doors." Caravans of migrants have been coming to Tijuana for months with less fanfare. Tijuana already has 2,000 people seeking asylum. Some have been waiting months to get an appointment with U.S. authorities. Murphy estimates 99 percent will not qualify. "All along the border, people are waiting for asylum," he said. "It's not anything new." WASHINGTON - In the final days before the special U.S. Senate election in Alabama last December, President Donald Trump turned to his favorite topic. "We're going to have borders on top of borders," he said. A few months later, before a special congressional election in Pennsylvania, he proclaimed, "The Democrats are the party of sanctuary cities. . . . They like to protect criminals." He turned to it again in August in Ohio, when he campaigned for a Republican running in a special House election. "A vote for . . . the Democrats is a vote to let criminals and drugs pour into our country," he said. Now, it's the caravan. During the final stretch of every campaign since his presidential effort began in 2015, Trump has always returned to the topic of immigration, launching an angry, nativist appeal at his core supporters. The current caravan has given him an evocative image of a group of immigrants slowly heading to the border. He has cast the crowd as containing Middle Easterners who are potential terrorists - later admitting there was "no proof" of that. On Thursday, his administration announced it was sending 800 troops to the border. The White House also was considering whether to shut the border and deny Central Americans in the caravan the opportunity to seek legal asylum in the United States. It's an attempt to dominate the conversation, to flood the airwaves in a way that connotes an immediate threat, even if the group of immigrants is still about 1,000 miles away from the U.S. border. The White House has begun a daily call about the caravan, according to people familiar with the call, with officials from both the administration and Congress. White House and Republican Party officials also are urging surrogates to go on TV and talk about it. The president himself has focused repeatedly on the caravan. "As we speak, the Democrat Party is openly encouraging caravan after caravan of illegal aliens to violate our laws and break into our country," Trump said Wednesday night during a rally in Wisconsin. He also claimed that unnamed American towns are being liberated from violent immigrants, and residents in those unnamed towns are gathering at their windows to applaud American immigration agents. "I'm telling you, it's like - like watching World War II movies," he said. "It's like watching documentaries on World War I and World War II. The occupations, they get them, they take them out, and the people are on their windows, they're clapping and screaming and they're happy." So far the president is fighting a one-sided battle. Most Democrats are choosing not to engage, keeping their focus instead on health care, an issue they believe is more important to voters. The Democratic group American Bridge sent an attention-seeking email Thursday with the subject line "Kanye Traveling to the Caravan." But the body of the email was about Republicans and preexisting health conditions. "I have to be honest. As an immigration advocate I think most Democrats are being smart not getting ensnared in Trump's frame and keeping true to the issue that's kicking [it] in race after race," said Frank Sharry, executive director of the pro-immigrant America's Voice. "In the crude calculus of the homestretch politics, do you want to be debating Trump on a caravan 1,000 miles away, or 130 million Americans with preexisting conditions who might lose their protections?" "You don't need to get into a deep immigration policy debate at this point, two weeks before the midterms," he added. "Trump just wants to demagogue the issue." Democrats and immigration advocates point to evidence of the limitations of Trump's base appeal. Many of the candidates he campaigned for during previous elections lost. During the 2017 gubernatorial race in Virginia, Republican nominee Ed Gillespie also turned toward immigration in the final weeks of the campaign, attempting to tie MS-13 gang violence to Democratic nominee Ralph Northam's vote against banning sanctuary cities. "We were a little frustrated with him," Sharry said of Northam. "'Why isn't he standing up and talking about immigration, dammit?' But he stood true to his 'I'm a doctor who cares about health care and I'm going to stick to that and be boring as possible.' " He won by 9 points. Trump has told White House advisers that immigration is an issue on which Democrats have "no message on whatsoever," in the words of one senior White House official. "It's a good message in there is a simple contrast," said the senior official. Republicans view the general immigration issue as one with potency across the country, which can motivate Trump supporters, particularly white men, and put fear into the minds of independents. They have run ads on sanctuary cities in Minnesota, Pennsylvania and California. In North Dakota, almost as far from the Mexican border as any other state, many of the Republican ads have been about sanctuary cities. "This is a big factor," said Matt Gorman, a spokesman for the National Republican Congressional Committee. "Immigration - even before the caravan - was an issue that was popping in districts for months, including ones not even near the border." In a national Washington Post-ABC News survey earlier this month, 16 percent of registered voters viewed immigration as one of the single most important issues in their vote; it trailed other issues such as the economy, health care and equal treatment of men and women. Those surveyed gave Democrats in Congress an 11-point advantage over Trump on who they trust more to handle immigration. But Trump does better when it comes to border security. A Washington Post-Schar School poll in July found that Americans trusted Trump over Democrats in Congress by an 8-point margin when asked which was better at border security. His advantage grew to 17 points in congressional battleground districts, which lean more Republican. "Border security is a real concern among voters, and the caravan elevates the issue at a pretty important point in time," said Neil Newhouse, a Republican pollster. "And it has an impact because border security is already an issue in this election." Republicans believe the argument resonates most in border states, including competitive contests in Texas and Arizona. In Indiana, Republican Mike Braun's campaign repeatedly refers to Sen. Joe Donnelly, D-Ind., as "Mexico Joe" - a reference to a family business that relies on Mexican labor - even when talking about health care, the economy, or the Iran nuclear deal. In Missouri, Republican candidate Josh Hawley has invoked the caravan as a way to paint Democratic Sen. Claire McCaskill as unwilling to enforce border controls. "This is the kind of weakness that invites this chaos, it invites this national security crisis, really," he said on Fox News. "That is what we cannot afford." Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, has gone a step further, joking that his Democratic opponent wants to be in charge of the caravan. "There's a caravan right now marching north," Cruz told supporters Saturday. "I'm just waiting to see Beto O'Rourke come down and start leading the caravan." O'Rourke on Wednesday denounced that sort of "paranoia and fear," saying that it was being spread just before the election by "an administration that's trying to make us scared of one another." "Do you want to be motivated by fear, paranoia - or are we the big, bold, confident country that I know us to be?" he said. In some blue and purple states, Democrats have used the president's focus on the caravan to go on offense. On Tuesday night, at the final debate in Colorado's race for governor, Democratic nominee Jared Polis took a question about the caravan as a chance to pivot to the Trump administration's unpopular policy of separating immigrant families at the border. "There is a national emergency, and it's an emergency of character," said Polis, a congressman from Boulder who had voted against the separation policy. "It's an emergency when a 2-year-old child is ripped from their mother's arms and sent thousands of miles away. It's not who we are as a nation." Republican nominee Walker Stapleton, asked if caravan members would be "welcome" in Colorado, said they wouldn't. But he said that he would not send the National Guard to the border if it meant separating families, and he signaled that he backed legal status for young immigrants brought to the United States by their parents. "We have lived in the state of Colorado with the federal government's failure to solve our immigration problems," Stapleton said. "I don't support separating families. I support 'dreamers.' I support those who contribute to the fabric of our state." Frank Luntz, a veteran Republican pollster who has run numerous focus groups with voters, said both parties misunderstand the nation's sentiments: Democrats underestimate the public's desire for enhanced border security, while Republicans underestimate its empathy for immigrants and their plight. "I think the Republicans made a mistake by not focusing on the economy, frankly," Luntz said. "It may not be as hot an issue but it has a greater impact on people's day-to-day lives. I think that any distraction of the economic success of the last two years is not good for Republicans. And that includes immigration and that includes the caravan." --- The Washington Post's David Weigel and Scott Clement contributed to this report. From Greg Swank, 12-4-2 You are about to read a list of 45 goals that found their way down the halls of our great Capitol back in 1963. As... Deputy Defense Secretary Patrick Shanahan said Friday that the Trump administration has instructed the Pentagon to prepare a $700 billion budget for 2020 - 4.5 percent less than the $733 billion that the Defense Department had planned. The decision means that the Defense Department is not exempt from Trump's call for federal departments to slash spending after a new Treasury Department report that showed a 17 percent rise in the national deficit. Trump said last week that the Pentagon budget would "probably be $700 billion," but considering his past stated interest in sustaining U.S. "peace through strength," some analysts questioned whether it ultimately would apply to the Defense Department. But Shanahan, speaking Friday to the Military Reporters and Editors Association, said that Mick Mulvaney, director of the Office of Management and Budget, called Shanahan and did indeed direct the Pentagon to build a $700 billion budget. "Here's the assignment," Shanahan said Mulvaney told him. "Let's get to work on it.'' The Pentagon is now preparing both a $700 billion and $733 billion budget, Shanahan said. The effort sets up a scenario where Congress could examine both, and potentially boost Defense Department spending over Trump's initial proposal. Trump's call to cut spending comes as defense officials say they are beginning to rebuild and fix the military after years of heavy use in Iraq, Afghanistan and Syria and congressionally mandated budget cuts known as sequestration. It also comes after Shanahan had said that the Pentagon's 2020 budget proposal would be a "masterpiece" that allowed Defense Secretary Jim Mattis to begin implementing major changes that are a part of his national defense strategy, which is focused most heavily on reorienting the military to prepare for "near-peer" threats posed by China and Russia. Congress in August finalized a $716 billion budget for 2019, and Mattis touted it as a show of the "deep and abiding bipartisan support our military enjoys." It authorized the Pentagon to increase its overall number of troops by 15,600 and boosted service member pay by 2.6 percent, the largest raise in nine years. It marked an $82 billion increase - something Mattis called "what we need to bring us back to a position of primacy." Mattis played a key role in securing $716 billion for the Pentagon in 2019, and the budget was seen as a victory for him over budget hawks such as Mulvaney. The defense chief identified the congressionally mandated cuts as a threat in January. "As hard as the last 16 years have been, no enemy in the field has done more to harm the readiness of the U.S. military than the combined impact of the Budget Control Act, defense spending cuts and operating in nine of the last 10 years under continuing resolutions," Mattis said. DARIEN With the election right around the corner unopposed Republican state Rep. Terrie Wood has one major priority. The budget, she said. Its the single most critical issue of this election. Putting the state back onto a path of fiscal sustainability is something the general assembly and the governor will have to solve over the next two years. One of the things that needs to be done to solve this is a restructuring of the underfunded pension liability, Wood said. Decades of governors in both parties underfunding this responsibility has led to the problem. I believe Its very important to recognize our obligation to state employees, she said. Wood represents the 141st House District, which covers parts of Norwalk and Darien. The renegotiation of the state union member benefits was also important. Through renegotiating they can start putting these benefits into statue instead of contract. Were one of the few states in the country that collectively bargain for benefits for our state employees, Wood said. The unions stronghold over the Democrats have hurt the state financially, she said. The benefits can be 30 to 40 percent more than any other state or private sector. Growing the economy is dependent to some degree, maybe even a large degree, on restructuring our pension liability and modifying our union benefit, Wood said. Through this companies will see the state is taking its fiscal situation seriously and is making positive steps forward. While Wood has big plans in Hartford she never forgets the district she represents. A longtime Darien resident she is actively involved in the community, which led to her being asked to run for the legislature 10 years ago. I love to work on land preservation and environmental efforts that creates environmental sustainability in Connecticut, Wood said. Ive also been a big proponent for kids with learning disabilities, particularly Dyslexia and mental health. Those three areas Ill continue to work on. Wood said through listening and honoring peoples feelings shes garnered support from Republicans and even Democrats. Ive had liberal Democrats say Terrie Im a liberal Democrat and Im 100 percent for what youre trying to do, Wood said. Even though shes unopposed she has not lost her passion. Wood said every morning she wakes up with a fire in her belly to work to change the fiscal situation in Connecticut. By helping the state were going to be able to help the people who need services that we should be providing, she said. Particularly the developmentally disabled, the kids with learning disabilities and the environment for example. She also has gone door knocking to hear from her constituents. Ive had more fun an engaging conversations this year than I ever had, Wood said. I want to hear what people are thinking. During her time in Hartford she co-chaired the mental health part of the gun safety bill that was passed after Sandy Hook, one of her proudest moments. I believe strongly in our social-emotional learning program and making sure people are able to access mental health care when they need it, Wood said. She also co-introduced with Marilyn Moore, state senator representative for the 22 district, legislation to protect the 10 essential health benefits for women and children. So if the affordable care act is repealed in Washington, Connecticut would still protect those benefits for women and children, Wood said. Focusing on the issues and what can be accomplished helps to minimize frustration. This is one of the reasons she works across the aisle. Wood credits her parents for teaching her the importance of listening to others. She said her experience outside of politics is what has helped her a lot. Back in 2000 she was a co-chair of the YES ... DHS Referendum Committee for a new Darien High School. She was one of the key members to persuade people in voting to fund the new building, leading to the largest voter turnout in the history of the town. I couldnt even tell you who was what party, Wood said. I come from a background on focusing on solutions rather than party politics. dj.simmons@ hearstmediact.com, 203-842-2568 A lone fingerprint and a set of misspellings helped point FBI agents to a Florida man with a long criminal record now charged with mailing homemade bombs to prominent critics of President Donald Trump - a politically charged case that has roiled the run-up to next month'scongressional elections. Cesar Sayoc, 56, a former pizza deliveryman, strip-club worker and virulently partisan supporter of the president, was arrested Friday and charged with a string of crimes in connection with thehomemade pipe bombs sent this weekto former president Barack Obama, former secretary of state Hillary Clinton and others. He was formally charged with sending 13 such devices, and a law enforcement official said he is likely to be charged with sending a 14th device to Tom Steyer, a major Democratic donor. That package was intercepted in California, officials said. The manhunt began Monday afternoon, when a pipe bomb was found inside a package delivered to billionaire activist George Soros, and ended less than 96 hours later with Sayoc's arrest outside an auto supply store in Plantation, Florida. Sayoc, who lives in nearby Aventura, was arrested near his vehicle: a white van festooned with political declarations echoing Trump rhetoric. Agents tried to question him immediately, according to one law enforcement official, under what's called the "public safety exception," which says police can interview a subject without first reading them their rights if authorities are seeking information about ongoing security threats. Sayoc did not want to talk and quickly demanded a lawyer, the official said. Trump told reporters later that he did not think he bears blame for the alleged crimes. "No, not at all," Trump said as he left the White House for a political rally in North Carolina. "There's no blame, there's no anything," Trump said, adding that the gunman who shot and badly wounded Rep. Steve Scalise, R-La., last year "was a supporter of a different party." That attack occurred in Alexandria, Virginia, as Republican lawmakers practiced for an annual Congressional Baseball Game. The nation's top law enforcement officials gathered at Justice Department headquarters in Washington on Friday afternoon to announce that the case that had put government officials and their agencies on high alert was solved. "We will not tolerate such lawlessness, especially not political violence,'' Attorney General Jeff Sessions said. "Let this be a lesson to anyone, regardless of their political beliefs, that we will bring the full force of law against anyone who attempts to use threats, intimidation and outright violence to further an agenda." Even as Sayoc was taken into custody, investigators across the country continued to chase potential bombs. Three such devices were discovered Friday - in Florida, New York and California - and officials warned there may be other, undiscovered packages in the mail system or a mailbox somewhere in the United States. "We need all hands on deck, we need to stay vigilant," said FBI Director Christopher Wray. He characterized the 13 explosive devices recovered so far as "IEDs," an abbreviation for improvised explosive devices. Wray said that investigators were able to pinpoint Sayoc after finding a fingerprint on an envelope containing a bomb sent to Rep. Maxine Waters, D-Calif., and that DNA found on two of the devices was a possible match to a sample previously taken from Sayoc during an earlier arrest in Florida. One law enforcement official said the fingerprint discovery was a major breakthrough. With that, authorities began zeroing in on Sayoc on Thursday, gathering cellphone records to track his past movements and conducting real-time surveillance of his location and activities, the official said. Wray declined to say whether the pipe-bomb devices could have detonated, noting that investigators are "still trying to determine whether or not they were functional." But he said they did contain potentially explosive material, adding: "These are not hoax devices." Sayoc, whose long criminal history includes a past arrest for making a bomb threat, was charged with five crimes that could send him to prison for decades: transporting explosives across state lines, illegally mailing explosives, threatening former presidents and others, threatening interstate communications and assaulting federal officials. Sayoc's lawyer Sarah Jane Baumgartel declined to comment on the case. Inside each of the packages sent to four of the potential targets - Obama, former CIA director John Brennan, Soros and Waters - was a picture of the individual with a red "X" mark, according to the 11-page complaint signed by FBI Special Agent David Brown. The complaint also included details suggesting Sayoc's antipathy toward the people and organizations targeted, including the news network CNN, where two of the packages were addressed. "The windows of Sayoc's van were covered with images including images critical of CNN," the complaint said. The complaint also identifies a Twitter account that law enforcement officials believe Sayoc used. Some of those postings included the same misspellings contained on some of the addresses on the pipe-bomb packages, including the last name of one of the recipients, Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz, a prominent Florida Democrat and former chairwoman of the Democratic National Committee. On both the packages and the social media posts, her name was spelled"Shultz," according to the complaint. The complaint also said one Twitter post made Wednesday criticized Soros, who has contributed to liberal causes and two days earlier had received an explosive device. Wray declined to say whether Sayoc is cooperating with investigators. When asked why Sayoc allegedly targeted Democrats, Sessions said he "appears to be a partisan, but that would be determined by the facts as the case goes forward." Sayoc's previous run-ins with law enforcement date back at least to an arrest for larceny when Sayoc was 29 years old, according to state records. Other charges of larceny, grand theft and fraud followed across the southern part of the state. In 2002, he was arrested for a bomb threat called in to Florida Power & Light, a power company. Sayoc pleaded guilty without trial and was sentenced to probation, the records show. Speaking Friday at the White House, Trump praised law enforcement's quick work and pledged to prosecute the individual "to the fullest extent of the law." Asked about pro-Trump stickers or signs on the van allegedly driven by the suspect, Trump said, "I did not see my face on the van. I don't know, I heard he was a person who preferred me over others." Photos of the van published Friday by The Washington Post and other news outlets show multiple images of Trump on the vehicle. Trump also said that coverage of the mail bombs had interfered with Republican "momentum" ahead of the Nov. 6 midterm elections. One of the bomber's potential targets, Wasserman Schultz, said the case had been "gut-wrenching" for her, and served as a warning to the entire nation against the kind of heated rhetoric used by the president. "We're all responsible for making sure that we act and speak civilly," she said. "When you raise the temperature, when you whip people into a frenzy, when you carelessly do not think about the impact of your words - particularly at the highest level of office in the country - then you are acting grossly irresponsible, and each of us has to make sure that we hold ourselves accountable." News of the arrest came as investigators continued to respond Friday to discoveries of explosive devices sent to Sen. Cory Booker, D-N.J., former director of national intelligence James Clapper Jr. and Sen. Kamala Harris, D-Calif. Booker and Harris are potential 2020 presidential candidates. The FBI said a package, "similar in appearance to the others" found this week, was addressed to Booker and located in Florida. A spokesman for Booker declined to comment and referred questions to law enforcement. A package recovered Friday at a Manhattan postal facility was addressed to Clapper, a CNN contributor. Just two days earlier, CNN's offices in New York were evacuated when the package for Brennan, addressed to him at the network, was found in the mailroom. Clapper appeared on CNN shortly after news broke a package was addressed to him, saying he felt relief no one was harmed by that device. "This is definitely domestic terrorism, no doubt about it in my mind," Clapper said on CNN, adding: "This is not going to silence the administration's critics." A package addressed to Harris found Friday at a Sacramento mail facility was the 13th such device officials said they had linked to Sayoc. Separately on Friday, Steyer, an outspoken Trump critic, said that a suspicious package mailed to him was intercepted in California, but this was not among the 13 listed in the federal complaint. Law enforcement officials, however, said they believed it was sent by Sayoc and it would likely be added to the charges against him. The only common thread between the people who were sent devices is that they are prominent figures - many current or former Democratic elected officials - who have publicly clashed with Trump. The list of possible targets began with Soros, then grew to include Obama, Clinton and former attorney general Eric Holder Jr. Then came the packages sent to Brennan and CNN, Waters, former vice president Joe Biden and actor Robert De Niro. According to the complaint, one of the Biden packages was addressed to an assisted-living facility, for reasons that were not immediately clear. The package addressed to Holder was recovered at a South Florida office of Wasserman Schultz because her name was listed as the return address on all of them. - - - The Washington Post's Julie Tate, Anne Gearan, Alice Crites, John Wagner, Seung Min Kim and Cleve R. Wootson Jr. contributed to this report. --- Video Embed Code Video: Authorities continue to investigate additional suspicious packages containing explosives that seem to target prominent liberal figures and Democratic politicians the week of Oct. 22.(Joyce Koh/The Washington Post) Embed code: New York There may soon come a time when Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand, D-N.Y., who is widely expected to run for president in 2020, takes on President Donald Trump in earnest. For now, she faces a more imminent challenge: her re-election, which is being opposed by Chele Farley, a Republican. But when Gillibrand and Farley met for their only debate Thursday, the rapid-fire encounter made clear just how much that future face-off may be on Gillibrand's mind. Farley, a private equity executive and first-time candidate, has tried to present herself as a New York-focused, compromise-amenable alternative to Gillibrand. But it quickly became apparent that Trump and both women's relationships to him would dominate the debate, with Gillibrand never missing an opportunity to denounce him, and Farley, whom Trump has endorsed, leaning into some of the same inflammatory rhetoric he often wields. Gillibrand responded to every question, except one, by invoking Trump: his stance on immigration, health care or climate change. The one answer in which she did not mention the president was when the WABC-TV anchor and debate moderator, Bill Ritter, asked if she was going to run for president. "I will serve my six-year term," she said. Still, several times, Gillibrand answered questions by saying what kind of president the country needed, before adding what kind of senator. "We need a president who cares about middle-class families," she said when criticizing last year's Republican tax plan, before adding that fighting giveaways to the wealthy was also "why we need to make sure we have representatives in Congress" who would support middle-class tax cuts. Farley, too, focused on the White House but in her case, to blast Gillibrand's perceived ambitions for it, as she has done throughout her campaign. "Honestly, I don't believe that," Farley said in response to Gillibrand's promise to stay in the Senate. She pointed to Gillibrand's extensive travel, including to early primary states such as New Hampshire. "This is the third day she's been in New York in the entire month of October." The 30-minute, midday livestreaming of the debate on a Thursday seemed to indicate the relatively little buzz the race has generated. Gillibrand, who won her 2012 campaign in a landslide, leads Farley by at least 25 points in public polls; New York has not elected a Republican to the Senate since Alfonse D'Amato lost his re-election bid in 1998. (The debate is set to air on television at 11 a.m. Sunday on WABC-TV.) Still, if the race is not highly contested, the topics they discussed were. Ritter guided the women through a dizzying survey of what he called the country's "hot-button issues," including health care reform, climate change and the confirmation of Brett Kavanaugh to the Supreme Court. (Farley said she would have voted for Kavanaugh.) Many of the women's answers included thoughtful, substantive policy proposals. Gillibrand described how she would pay for Medicare for all, and Farley outlined a plan to allow people to deduct rent just as homeowners can deduct mortgage interest. But they also readily fell back on rhetoric and talking points that seemed designed for sound bites. When Ritter asked about the pipe bombs sent to prominent Democrats, Gillibrand spoke of the need to have "a real model in the White House," and Farley of how Gillibrand's call to abolish Immigration and Customs Enforcement would cripple anti-terrorism efforts. When Ritter asked about the caravan of migrants headed from Honduras toward the United States, Gillibrand took the opportunity to blast family separations at the border, while Farley called the caravan an "invasion." "There could be members of ISIS," she said. "There could be members of MS-13." In repeatedly citing MS-13, the vicious international gang, to explain the need for tighter immigration control, Farley seemed to adopt much of Trump's rhetoric on the topic, even though she has said that she disagrees with the president on "the way he says things." At other times, Farley did allow for some areas of agreement with Gillibrand. She said she did not support separating immigrant children from their parents, and she applauded a bill Gillibrand had helped shepherd through Congress, to help Sept. 11 responders, as "fantastic." But she accused Gillibrand of being an ineffective legislator who had passed only one bill. Gillibrand shot back that Farley was misrepresenting the way Washington worked, and that the number of bills bearing a legislator's name said nothing about his or her efficacy. "Just ask Chris Collins," she said, in reference to a bill she helped author that banned insider trading. (Collins, a Republican congressman from upstate New York, was recently indicted on insider trading charges.) The debate was originally scheduled to be hosted by the network Spectrum News last Sunday, but Gillibrand withdrew from that debate two days before, citing a labor strike against Spectrum's parent company. Reader: Because I possess the type of soft skills our leadership values, I am increasingly tapped for those skills. This includes being given work others were hired to do because I'm trusted to handle the work and the people diplomatically and efficiently. Last year, I accepted an "in title only" promotion because management wasn't in a position to offer additional compensation at that time and because the title would give me the authority to get things done. Since then, the answer on a raise has been a hard "no." Although I'm interested in and challenged by the new work, I just don't have the bandwidth to take on much more in addition to my old responsibilities. I often tend to my old responsibilities from home, at night. When I made it clear to my division head that some of them were beginning to fall through the cracks, she suggested hiring an intern. It was a kind gesture, but my projects are too complex to involve an intern, and I don't have time to manage one. I've had to decline special requests to represent the division head on "high visibility" committees and projects, which has caused some tension. What else can I do to resolve this? We are interested in charcoal briquettes supply for export to Munchen, Germany on DAP or FCA terms. Considering offers with volume of supply, price and attached photos. I'm not on Facebook and do not post to Medium. Twitter has suspended me. I don't know why. mscriver@3rivers.net COMMENTS WELCOME unless they are anonymous. AUSTIN Attorney General Ken Paxton is launching an attack against Democratic challenger Justin Nelson after months of ignoring him and declining challenges to a debate. Nelson, an Austin lawyer with little name recognition in Texas politics, has made Paxtons indictment on security fraud charges a centerpiece of his campaign. Paxtons new ad contends Nelsons negative campaign is meant to hide an extreme liberal agenda that includes an open borders policy and refusal to deport undocumented immigrants in violent gangs. Nelson contends the ad is desperate and Paxtons campaign has resorted to bald-faced lying. See the ad here. Paxtons campaign did not respond to a request for comment Thursday. The shot at Nelson is the first salvo from Paxton, a Republican backed by the tea party who holds the third highest office in Texas state government. Aside from U.S. Sen. Ted Cruz, Paxton is the first high-ranking Texas Republican to go on the attack against his Democratic foe in a television ad. Cruz, too, has used the word extreme to describe his opponent, Beto ORourke. On HoustonChronicle.com: Texas Attorney Generals delayed fraud trial is now Exhibit A in re-election bid Paxton faces felony securities fraud charges and registration charges. He has yet to go to trial in state criminal court, although similar charges filed in federal civil court were dismissed. Paxton maintains he is the victim of a political witch hunt. Nelson has based his campaign on Paxtons indictment, saying the allegations against the states top lawyer are cause for voters to elect a new attorney general. President Donald Trumps administration is releasing thousands of Central American families after briefly detaining them at the border, overwhelming nonprofits from El Paso to San Diego who are suddenly scrambling to find them temporary housing and transportation to their final destination. The controlled release began earlier this month in Arizona, where nonprofits had to rent motel rooms to handle the influx. This week, federal officials asked Annunciation House, an El Paso shelter, to take in 1,300 adults and children with even more expected next week. In San Diego, Pastor Bill Jenkins said his church was told to anticipate as many as 150 migrants a day, double its usual intake. We are going to be slammed, he said. If they have to sleep on the pews, theyll sleep on the pews. The number of families coming here has steadily increased for months since the administration ended its controversial practice of family separation in June with a near-record 16,658 arriving in September, a 30 percent jump from August. The White House, which has pushed to change federal regulations to allow the indefinite detention of families until they can be deported, also blamed legal limits on the amount of time children can be held in processing facilities and family detention centers. After decades of inaction by Congress, the government remains severely constrained in its ability to detain and promptly remove families with no legal basis to remain in the U.S. As a result, family units continue to cross the border at high volumes, said Sarah Rodriguez, a spokeswoman for Immigration and Customs Enforcement, in a statement. To mitigate the risk of holding family units past the time frame allotted to the government, ICE began curtailing all reviews of post-release plans from families apprehended along the southwest border on Tuesday. Immigration agents often conducted such reviews that included confirming bus routes, coordinating with nonprofit groups and relatives, and ensuring that families had a means to reach their destination and were not simply left on the street. Usually migrant families apprehended at the border were processed and, if there was space, transferred to the three federal detention centers that hold immigrant families two outside San Antonio and one in Pennsylvania. The remainder were released, typically with GPS-enabled ankle monitors or other forms of supervision and provided notices to appear in the backlogged immigration courts. The agency no longer has the capacity to conduct the additional review procedure without risking the violation of how long minors can be detained, an ICE spokeswoman said in a statement. As a result, starting on Columbus Day weekend in Arizona, and now expanding to across the southern border, families are being freed en masse in greater numbers than before, with the burden of providing temporary shelter and travel coordination falling solely to nonprofits. White House officials have characterized the bottleneck at the border as the fault of too many families and not enough space to hold them. [F]irst and foremost, its just a lack of facilities, Homeland Security Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen told CNN earlier this month. Were out of space unfortunately, given all of the increase in numbers. Testifying in front of the Senate Homeland Security Committee, she said she would keep asking Congress to allow the agency to detain immigrant families until they are deported. But federal statistics show that the three family detention facilities are currently only at 54 percent capacity, dropping more than 400 detainees since Oct. 18. Only 1,977 beds are occupied out of a listed capacity of 3,654, according to Oct. 23 population counts ICE provided and total capacity numbers as of December 2017 that private prison companies filed with the government. The agencys current budget only funds 2,500 family detention beds a day, with additional space costing more, and the agency has been under scrutiny for transferring money from other agencies, including from the Federal Emergency Management Agency, to pay its bills. Family detention centers are never at 100 percent capacity because of restrictions on what genders and ages can be housed together. A spokeswoman for ICE also noted that the facilities have had similar population counts at other periods when the flow of families coming here was nearly as high. In December 2016, for instance, after about 15,590 families were apprehended in November, about 2,480 detention beds went filled. In a fact sheet the White House posted this week to illustrate the dire state of the crisis at our border, officials said immigration detention facilities were at 98 percent capacity, blaming families and unaccompanied children for taking up vital resources. Spokeswomen with ICE and the Department of Homeland Security did not respond to questions about which facilities that statistic referred to. Shelters for unaccompanied minors are at 88 percent capacity, with 13,350 migrant children in government care as of last week. A Homeland Security official, speaking on background because she was not authorized to discuss the matter, said the problem was not the available detention space but the length of time the government can hold families. The crisis isnt bed space, she wrote in an email. We cant hold family units throughout the pendency of immigration proceedings. A 1997 legal settlement known as Flores prevents the detention of minors for longer than 20 days and has forced the administration to release most parents with their children, a practice Trump has consistently railed against. Critics say many dont show at their later court hearings or if they do, they take months or years to conclude. The White House blamed the settlement for forcing it to separate families this summer and last month published a proposed regulation that would replace the agreement and allow the government to detain families for longer periods of time in facilities with lower standards than currently required. The Washington Post also reported this month that the administration is considering a binary choice proposal to have parents waive their rights under the Flores Settlement and stay in detention with their children until their deportation cases conclude. Otherwise, they would remain detained while their children go to a government shelter until they are placed with guardians in the United States. Bridget Cambria, an immigration attorney in Pennsylvania who often works in the Berks family detention center, said she views coordinated release this month as an attempt to pressure the undoing of the Flores Settlement. They see an emergency coming with the caravan and they have a narrative they want to use to make sure we continue much higher enforcement and the No. 1 target is obviously Flores, she said. If they can purport to have a surge they can use it as a reason to try get rid of it all together. In Arizona, Teresa Cavendish, director of operations for Catholic Community Services, a Tucson nonprofit that urgently arranged temporary housing for hundreds of migrant families in recent weeks, said she was surprised at the many vacant family detention beds. We thought they didnt have any more space to hold them, she said. She said temporary processing facilities at the border were certainly overwhelmed. Many families released this month in southern Arizona said they had been kept in holding cells for as long as 10 days, longer than the 72 hours children are usually allowed in such short-term detention facilities. Her organization was first informed about the pilot a day before federal officials dropped off about 450 migrants, mostly fathers and children from Guatemala, over the Columbus Day weekend. Since then, hundreds more families have been released in southern Arizona, she said, forcing advocacy groups and churches into overdrive. Its just incredibly labor intensive and financially intensive, so we just have to see what we can do next, knowing we have to do something, Cavendish said. Its just hard when we dont know if were responding to 200 people or responding to 500-plus people. She said immigrant advocates across the border are speculating about the timing of the releases, coming right before the mid-term elections and as the president is raging against a caravan of Central American migrants marching through southern Mexico in an attempt to reach the United States. Thursday Trump ordered 800 U.S. Army troops to the border, warning about a migrant onslaught. This is not an administration that is detention-adverse, Cavendish said. I think were all questioning whether this is an attempt to open space in order to allow for the caravan to come in or is this possibly an attempt to create additional tension at the border during an election time period. In McAllen, the nations busiest illegal border crossing, Brenda Riojas, a spokeswoman for the Sacred Heart migrant respite center, said this week the shelter was seeing 600 migrants a day, double that of last week. In El Paso, Ruben Garcia, director of the Annunciation House migrant shelter, said the organization rented out two motels to house the surplus of families. We are being asked to increased our capacity by several hundred a week, he said. How long can we keep going? It costs a lot of money. lomi.kriel@chron.com @lomikriel Around 20 to 25 Houston firefighters say they've been asked to cover their union and generic fire department shirts at some polling stations in Houston, despite the fact that their shirts didn't appear to violate election law, according to the Houston Professional Fire Fighters Association. This comes after the Harris County Clerk's Office earlier this week instructed poll workers to not allow people wearing shirts depicting the names of three progressive groups to cast ballots, earlier reports say. RELATED: Harris County Clerk's office singles out three progressive groups for scrutiny at polls Election officials have since instructed election workers to follow the letter of the law as it relates to both the progressive groups and firefighters wearing generic shirts. Section 61.003 of the Texas Election Code states that people are not allowed to loiter or promote any candidate, measure or political party within 100 feet of a polling station's outside door. Brian Wilcox, the fire association's Communications Director, told Chron.com on Thursday that some election workers interpreted the generic firefighter shirts as pro-Proposition B, which asks voters to give firefighters "pay parity" with Houston police officers. He said the association contacted numerous election judges to correct the issue. An election official not authorized to speak on the matter acknowledged that the generic shirts are allowed at polling sites. A statement from Harris County Elections Administrator Sonya Aston said they're also allowed to wear their uniforms. "Firefighters are requested to remove or cover up any t-shirt, buttons, hats, etc. that promote City of Houston Proposition B," according to the statement. "Any clothing that is part of their uniform is allowed to be worn into the polling area, just as any other emergency personnel may wear their uniform." Harris County Clerk Stan Stanart, the county's chief election official, told the Houston Chronicle earlier this week that the country was trying to avoid electioneering. "That's the whole goal," he said. "We're just upholding the law." FACT CHECK: A look at key claims in the Prop B Houston firefighter pay 'parity' debate Wilcox said that firefighters had been promoting Prop B outside polling stations, within the confines of the law. Some went inside to use the restroom or vote, and that's when election workers asked them to cover the generic shirts. "We spelled it out for our membership pretty clearly...and that was one of the things [we went over] was you cant wear anything pro-Prop B," Wilcox said. Fire association officials added that since the election office started reminding poll workers of the law, they have only heard about two isolated instances involving generic fire department t-shirts. One woman who is married to a Houston firefighter, Jillian Ostrewich, wrote a now viral Facebook post about her interaction with election workers who told her to cover her shirt. She said she complied with their request to turn her generic yellow "Houston Fire Fighters" shirt inside out. But when she learned that she was allowed to wear the shirt, she wanted to make the issue as public as possible. "I just pray that people vote with their hearts and just go out and do the right thing for the people that take care of them ... no matter how they vote on this [proposition]," Ostrewich said. 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 This year, Halloween is extra special with three frightful nights of spooktacular party fun: Friday, October 26, Saturday, October 27, and Wednesday, October 31. If you haven't made plans yet, there are plenty of opportunities to have a ghoulishly good time. Read on for a rundown of 12 enchanted Halloween happenings around town. White Night: Haunted By Hollywood Icons of the Past Where: Hotel ZaZa Museum District at 5701 Main Street; Hotel ZaZa Memorial City at 9787 Katy Freeway When: Friday; 10 pm to 2 am Cost: $75 per person. Click here to purchase for ZaZa Museum District, and click here to to purchase for Memorial City. Details: ZaZa doubles the fun with a Halloween bash at both of its Houston-area hotels. Two parties, one theme: "White Night: Haunted By Hollywood Icons of the Past." Break out your Audrey Hepburn, James Dean, Marilyn Monroe, and Charlie Chaplin outfits and enjoy a welcome cocktail, live entertainment, dancing, drink specials, and light bites. Midtown Spookfest Where: 2303 Smith Street When: Friday and Saturday and Wednesday; 7 pm to 10 pm Cost: $10 per person at the door Details: Midtown watering holes Irish Cowboy, 3rd Floor, and Pub Fiction co-host this blowout bash, spanning 40,000 square-feet of space both inside and outside. Expect DJ-spun tunes and a costume contest each day with $1,000 in cash prizes. Yelloween by Veuve Clicquot Where: a'Bouzy at 2300 Westheimer Road When: Saturday; 9 pm Cost: Free admission but table reservations are required. All to book: 713-722-6899. Details: Don your most creative costume and hit up upscale bistro a'Bouzy for a costume contest with a complimentary champagne dinner at stake. Although the festivities don't start until 9 pm, you can get the party started early with $49 per bottles of Veuve Clicquot Yellow Label available all day long. Halloween Eve Where: Le Colonial at 4444 Westheimer Road When: Saturday; 8 pm to 1 am Cost: Free admission Details: Le Colonial at River Oaks District, pulls out all the stops with its Halloween Eve party. Head to the second floor of two-story upscale Vietnamese restaurant for ghoulish celebration including a costume contest and DJ. Hollywood Villain Where: Brasserie 19 at 1962 West Gray Street When: Saturday; 9:30 pm Cost: Free admission Details: River Oaks hotspot Brasserie 19 celebrates the spooky occasion with a Hollywood Villain costume party. Groove to beats by DJ Cruise Control, pose for pics in a photo booth, and participate in a costume contest for prizes. Downtown Halloween Pub Crawl Where: Check-in is at El Big Bad at 419 Travis Street from 2 to 4 pm. When: Saturday; 3 pm to 9 pm Cost: $20 per person Details: Check in at this freestyle crawl, then make your way to participating bars at will, including El Big Bad, Batanga Houston, Bovine and Barley, The Cottonmouth Club, Dean's Downtown, Etro Lounge, Henke & Pillot, Lilly & Bloom, Local Foods Downtown, Molly's Pub, Okra Charity Saloon, and Shay Mcelroy's Irish Pub. Each will feature drink specials and giveaways. Costumes are encouraged. Saints and Sinners Halloween Soiree Where: Hotel Derek at 2525 West Loop South When: Saturday; 8 pm Cost: $35 per person for general admission and $65 per person for VIP tickets. Details: The Galleria-area's Hotel Derek presents the Saint and Sinners Halloween Soiree, featuring two parties under one roof, themed Heaven and Hell, respectively. Your general admission ticket gets you a complimentary signature cocktail, live music and dancing, hors d' oeuvres, a late night sweet fix, and cash bars. Spring for a VIP ticket and score access to a private seating area with bottle service and a private cash bar. Thriller Where: Julep at 1919 Washington Avenue When: Saturday; 4 pm to 2 am Cost: Free admission Details: Washington Avenue bar, Julep, brings Michael Jackson's iconic "Thriller" video to life, complete with parking lot zombies, DJ spins, and a $300 best MJ costume contest at midnight. Montrose Crawl Where: The Crawl begins at Brasil at 2604 Dunlavy Street When: Saturday; 6 pm Cost: Free admission Details: Go with the flow and move from bar to bar with the Montrose Crawl or post up at one spot along the way. The 10 total stops include: Brasil, Poison Girl, La Grange, Pistolero's, Boondocks, Stone's Throw, Catbirds, Present Company, Slick Willie's, and El Real Tex-Mex. Bonus: There's an after-party at The Burger Joint, and a portion of drink sales go to local nonprofit, Houston Area Women's Center. Holman's Halloween Haunt Where: Holman Draft Hall at 820 Holman Street When: Saturday; 7 pm to 2 am Cost: Free admission Details: Eat, drink, & be scary at Holman Draft Hall's Halloween Haunt. The evening features a DJ and costume contests for singles, couples, and groups. White Oak Creep Street Party Where: The party kicks off at Fitzgerald's at 2706 White Oak Drive. When: Saturday; 6 pm to 11 pm Cost: Free admission Details: Karbach Brewing Co., along with Bobcat Teddy's Ice House, Christian's Tailgate White Oak, Fitzgerald's, Little Woodrow's In The Heights, Onion Creek Cafe, and Public House Heights, are all haunts on this Halloween crawl, featuring brew specials and a costume contest hosted by Fitzgerald's at 10 pm. La Griglia Where: 2002 W Gray Street When: Wednesday; 7 pm Cost: Free admission. Details: Mingle with see-and-be-seen at River Oaks restaurant La Griglia's annual costume gathering that has become a Houston Halloween tradition. The restaurant turns nightclub for the evening with a DJ and extra bars set up throughout the venue for your drinking pleasure. 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 Ovide Duncantell, the founder of Houstons Black Heritage Society, has died. He was 82. Mayor Sylvestor Turner, who a city spokeswoman said learned of Duncantells death Thursday, lauded the civil rights activist as the force behind the Black Heritage Society and its Martin Luther King Jr. Day parade. He was 82. Ovide Duncantell and I ran for County Commissioner in 1984, and we both came up short. However, his commitment to the community and holding people accountable never waned, Turner wrote. The Houston Chronicle reported in July that Duncantell was in poor health and unable to attend a meeting about a longtime dispute between dueling MLK Jr. Day parades. The cause of Duncantells death was not immediately known. In 1978, Duncantell, who died Thursday afternoon, staged one of the first MLK Jr. Day parades in the nation in downtown Houston. Sylvester Brown Chief Operating Officer of the Black Heritage Society issued the following statement: We are deeply saddened by the loss of our founder, Mr. Ovide Duncantell who was a visionary and brave leader. He was committed to advocacy, activism and action for the community. Its because of him that the very first MLK Day parade in the nation was created. We are even more committed to honoring and continuing his and Dr. Kings legacy, and keeping the dream alive. We ask that our wishes for privacy and time to grieve are respected. nicole.hensley@chron.com @nkhensley The University of Texas Medical Branch at Galveston has formally signed a 15-year lease to take control of a Webster hospital that abruptly closed in May due to financial concerns, leading to 900 employees losing their jobs, the hospital system announced Thursday. The hospital system, one of the largest health care providers in the region, signed a letter of intent in August to complete negotiations, and on Thursday officially took control of the former Bay Area Regional Medical Center. UTMB expects to pay an estimated $210 million over the course of the lease for the 191-bed hospital. The facility will be renamed the UTMB Health Clear Lake Campus and is expected to open in the spring of 2019. It really allows us to expand and increase the services that we offer to our existing patients, and an opportunity to offer more clinical services to new patients, said Becky Korenek, senior vice president of strategic and business planning at UTMB. It allows us to increase the number of clinical training sites that we have, and also increase our clinical research programs which are all part of the UTMB mission. UTMB negotiated the lease directly with Carter Validus Mission Critical, a Florida-based real estate investment management company that in 2014 acquired a 60 percent interest in Bay Area Regional Medical Center and will continue to own the building. Carter Validus reportedly paid $119 million for the hospital and committed another $35 million for a future build-out. The propertys developer, an affiliate of Medistar Corp., retained the remaining 40 percent interest in the property. The Bay Area Regional Medical Center hospital closed on May 4 after opening four years earlier and spending $200 million in construction and operation. CEO Stephen K. Jones Jr. told employees in an email provided to the Houston Chronicle that the company was not able to overcome significant hurdles with managed-care companies. An estimated 900 employees immediately lost their jobs, but a hospital spokeswoman later said that 342 of the workers whose jobs were cut are now employed at other hospitals in the Houston area. Phased-in opening Korenek said that opening the Webster facility would be a phased-in process. Equipment at the hospital must be tested and recalibrated before opening, and the goal is to open the hospital at its previous capacity. Korenek added that she hoped the hospital would be able to re-hire many of the staff members that were laid off when Bay Area Regional Medical Center closed. . As that activity grows and we open additional beds, certainly we will be adding more staff, and certainly were looking forward to having the opportunity to hire back some of the people who previously worked at that facility, Korenek said. Former employees of Bay Area Regional Medical Center have a class action lawsuit pending against the hospital after the medical center announced its closure. The plaintiffs, Sandra Hood and Harry Bowers, allege that Bay Area Regional did not give employees proper notice that the company would be closing, qualifying them as aggrieved employees. The former hospital workers are seeking damages in the amount of 60 days pay, according to the lawsuit filed in the United States District Court for the Southern District of Texas. The suit alleges that Medistar Corp., the owner of Bay Area Regional, did not file a state-required WARN letter with the Texas Workforce Commission. The WARN letter, which stands for Worker Adjustment and Retraining Notification, is a requirement for companies employing 100 or more people. Any company that plans to lay off 50 or more people must submit this document to the appropriate state agency, per U.S. Department of Labor regulations. Employees lawsuit Stuart Miller, the attorney representing the plaintiffs in the lawsuit, could not be reached for comment on how the leasing agreement with UTMB affects the lawsuit. Korenek said that the lawsuit is totally separate from UTMBs leasing agreement with Carter Validus, and not part of our business opportunity going forward. At the time of the closing, a spokesman said Bay Area Regional tried for at least a year to get better reimbursement terms, but it did not have the backing of a major hospital system. Korenek said that by bringing the Webster hospital into the UTMB system, it could hopefully stave off the fate of many other hospitals in the region including East Houston Regional Medical Center, Memorial Hermann Health System and MD Anderson Cancer Center that have contracted or closed entirely. In fact, rather than cutting back on services or employees, UTMB is expanding its footprint across the region. In addition to the new hospital in Webster, UTMB will add 60 hospital beds to its League City hospital campus that already includes medical and surgery services for adults, an emergency room and a mother/baby unit. The university also has several clinics throughout Houston and Galveston, along with a hospital at its Angleton Danbury Campus in Brazoria County. nick.powell@chron.com The Archdiocese of San Antonio, now preparing to expose decades of sexual abuse accusations against its priests, revealed Friday it had removed one of them from ministry over a similar allegation involving an 11-year-old in the 1980s. The victim reported being abused between 1986 and 1988 by Father Edward Pavlicek, a priest who worked at a number of area parishes, the archdiocese said. The allegation arrived Aug. 29, two weeks after a Pennsylvania grand jury report shook the U.S. Catholic Church by documenting the sexual abuse of more than 1,000 minors by 300 priests in the past 75 years. The Archdiocese of San Antonio said this month it would prepare its own reckoning and would name, by the end of Janurary, all credibly accused priests in cases going back to 1950. The archdiocese said its Office for Victim Assistance and Safe Environment informed the Bexar County District Attorneys Special Crimes Division about the allegation against Pavlicek the day after learning of it. Bexar Country District Attorney Nico LaHood said his office could not pursue the case because it happened too long ago. The survivor, who has not been identified, was 11 at the time of the alleged abuse, LaHoods statement said. Unfortunately, since over 30 years have passed the District Attorneys Office is not allowed, by law, to investigate and prosecute this allegation, LaHoods statement said. The Archdiocesan Review Board conducted its own investigation and on Friday advised Archbishop Gustavo Garcia-Siller that there is sufficient evidence to refer Pavliceks case to the Vatican for possible laicization, the canonical term for removal from the priesthood, the archdiocese said in a press release. Pavlicek most recently served as pastor of St. Thomas the Apostle Church in Canyon Lake. His photo was still on the churchs website Friday afternoon. This was the first allegation of child sexual abuse involving Rev. Pavlicek that the Archdiocese has received, the press release stated. It said Garcia-Siller praised the survivors bravery in reporting it and hoped it would provide inspiration to other survivors of sexual abuse to report to the authorities these tragic incidents. The archdiocese statement said officials will reach out to parishioners in churches where Pavlicek served. It was unclear where he worked when the alleged abuse occurred. Archdiocesan spokesman Jordan McMorrough declined an interview request. Pavlicek had been at the Canyon Lake parish since July 1 and before that was pastor of the Church of the Good Shepherd in Schertz and its mission church, Immaculate Conception in Marion. He had worked at St. Marys Church in Somerset, St. Benedict Catholic Church in San Antonio, Sacred Heart Catholic Church in Floresville and St. Leo the Great Catholic Church and St. Anns Catholic Church in San Antonio. A call to Father Octavio Muguerza at the parish in Schertz was not returned Friday. Several church officials at St. Thomas the Apostle parish said they had only briefly known Pavlicek. He had been there for only a few months and had been on vacation for about a month, several said. One said he was caring for two relatives. Clifford Hall, a deacon at St. Thomas the Apostle, said he had served at Masses with Pavlicek but didnt know him well. Fridays statement by the archdiocese encouraged anyone who has been sexually abused to contact police, and for victims within the archdiocese also to call its Office for Victim Assistance and Safe Environment at (210) 734-7786. Father Martin Leopold oversees that office and is the archbishops special consultant on canon law, according to the archdioceses website. I pledge my commitment to continue to work toward making every Catholic Church, school and institution a safe harbor for all of our children, Garcia-Siller wrote in a letter to parishioners asking them to notify the Office of Victim Assistance if they had concerns about Pavlicek. Please join me in prayer as we reach out to any and all who may be victims of sexual abuse. In the wake of the Pennsylvania grand jury report, other states attorneys general have moved to open similar probes. The scale of the abuse described was far larger than the church acknowledged when U.S. Catholic bishops responded to reports of priestly misconduct at many dioceses in 2002. In recent weeks, bishops have been reviewing their procedures and announcing changes, including more transparency about prior cases. The Archdiocese of San Antonio on Oct. 10 promised to publicize a list of accused priests and handed records of about 150 cases to an independent commission that is auditing the review and whose findings also will be made public. The panel is headed by Catherine M. Stone, retired chief justice of the Texas Fourth Court of Appeals. In late August, the archdiocese said it learned from the Pennsylvania report about accusations of sexual assault involving Father David Connell, but said he had drawn no complaints of misconduct when he worked in San Antonio for almost 20 years after leaving Pennsylvania. But Garcia-Siller referred to the case against Connell as clear. The Pennsylvania report said Connell drugged and raped a minor on at least two occasions; sexually abused the minors brother; and attempted to have sex with another victim on a camping trip. Connell, who served as a principal of Antonian College Preparatory High School and pastor of St. Thomas More Catholic Church here, died in 1995. Pavlicek attended McLennan Community College in Waco from 1970 to 1972 and Baylor University from 1972 to 1975. He also attended Our Lady of the Lake University from 1977 to 1978. He went to Oblate School of Theology from 1978 to 1982 and Assumption Seminary from 1977 to 1983, the year he was ordained by Archbishop Patrick Flores at St. Philip of Jesus Catholic Church. In 2000, an Express-News story described a Christmastime project in which Pavlicek, an amateur photographer, gave disposable cameras to 12 of his eighth-grade religious education students at St. Benedict Catholic Church, asking them to photograph Gods presence around them. He sorted through the resulting images and enlarged and framed the best ones to be displayed near the church's manger scene during the Christmas season, the story said. Each picture was titled and served as the basis for (Pavliceks) Christmas homilies. A 1999 story cited Pavliceks work at St. Benedict to form a coalition with other parishes to bring awareness to the problems facing the working poor. An early version of the archdiocese statement about Pavlicek said the abuse allegedly occurred between 1994 and 1996, but a revised statement corrected it. | 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 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 U.S. Sen. Ted Cruz and Congressman Beto ORourke are both frustrated that their two debates have included little discussion of foreign policy. The two rivals in the hottest Senate race in the nation say voters need to know their vastly different approaches to key issues such as how the U.S. should respond to Russian aggression and American aid to Israel. Cruz says ORourke has repeatedly declined to hold Americas enemies accountable for rogue behavior. Consistently on foreign policy, hes at the extreme left of the Democratic caucus, Cruz said of ORourke during an interview in San Antonio. ORourke said Cruzs votes are unnecessarily putting Americas military in harms way. For subscribers: Forget about the hype, heres where Cruz and ORourke stand on the issues Ted Cruz, if he has his way, is going to push us towards war, ORourke said. Cruz, from Houston, and ORourke, from El Paso, have both been on Capitol Hill since 2012 and serve on key foreign relations related committees. Cruz, 47, is on the Senate Armed Services Committee and ORourke, 46, is on the House Armed Services Committee. With less than two weeks until Election Day, we look at how they differ on major foreign policy issues. Iran nuclear deal Maybe no foreign policy issue divides Cruz and ORourke more than the deal struck by six nations, led by the Obama administration, in 2015 that limited Irans nuclear capability in exchange for lifting international trade sanctions on the country. ORourke supported it; Cruz was a persistent critic. ORourke said he backed the nuclear deal because without firing a single shot, without sacrificing the life of a single U.S. service member, it was able to stop the country of Iran from pursuing nuclear weapons. Irans stockpiles of enriched uranium have been reduced under the terms, which also bar Iran from producing weapons-grade plutonium. For subscribers: Houston Chronicle 2018 Voter Guide For subscribers: San Antonio Express-News 2018 Voter Guide Trump withdrew the U.S. from the deal in May, but Iran continues to comply with restrictions and work with European nations to find ways around U.S. sanctions. ORourke said Trumps decision has weakened the U.S. and made conflict more likely in the future. The alternative to a peacefully negotiated resolution to the threat that Iran poses is war, ORourke said. Cruz says the accord was never going to work and Iran continues to develop nuclear weapons and missile technology despite it. The Obama Iran nuclear deal has proven a catastrophic failure, funneling billions of U.S. dollars to the world's leading state sponsor of terrorism, Cruz said earlier this year. Russian aggression In both televised debates between the two, ORourke took foreign policy shots at Cruz, accusing him of being too silent as President Trump seemed to embrace Russian leader Vladimir Putin. "On that stage in Helsinki, as he defended Vladimir Putin instead of the United States of America, that was collusion in action," O'Rourke said of Trump during the first senate debate in Dallas last month. ORourke was referring to a July summit in Finland in which Trump refused to condemn Russian meddling in the 2016 presidential election. U.S. intelligence agencies have been unequivocal in concluding that Russia attempted to sway the election that resulted in Trumps victory. Cruz has said Trump made a mistake with Putin in Finland, but he has not criticized the president further. Still, Cruz has made clear on the campaign trail that he views Putin as a KGB thug and said the U.S. needs to stand up to Russian aggression. Instead of going after Trump, Cruz blasts ORourke for being too soft on Russia. ORourke was one of two Democrats in the U.S. House in 2015 to vote in opposition to a bill condemning Russia's armed intervention in Ukraine and its illegal annexation of Crimea. The bill passed 399 to 19 with just two Democrats opposing ORourke and then-U.S. Rep. Alan Grayson, D-Florida. Congressman ORourke was one of the fringe on the far left who refused to condemn Russia for invading Ukraine, another sovereign nation, Cruz said. ORourke, a member of the House Armed Services Committee, defends the vote, saying he would not approve sending lethal aid to Ukraine and further involving the U.S. in another global conflict. It was us becoming a participant in yet another war, ORourke said listing the war in Afghanistan and Iraq, plus U.S. roles in conflicts in Syria, Libya, Somalia and Yemen. I dont know that deepening U.S. military involvement in Ukraine is going to solve that country's problems. Im not down with more war for the United States. Support for Israel Both Cruz and ORourke say they support Israel, but criticize each other for not doing enough. Cruz has been the most aggressive on this issue, telling audiences at rallies that ORourke has failed to back Israel at key moments. On Israel, he has the most anti-Israel record of any Democratic Senate nominee in the country, Cruz said at a rally in Katy earlier this month. In 2014, when Hamas was raining rockets down on Israel, Beto ORourke was one of eight members of the House of Representatives to vote against funding Israels Iron Dome missile defense system. But ORourke said he supports Israel and he has numerous other votes in which he voted to fund the Iron Dome and fully supports Israels ability to defend itself. The U.S. has a long history of supporting the Iron Dome program, which tracks incoming rockets that could hit population centers and fires interceptors to knock them down. Israel says the system has a 90-percent success rate. Prior to the August 2014 vote Cruz points to, Congress had already put about $700 million into the missile system and had just voted on a budget that would send another $351 million in October of 2014, according to the Congressional Research Service. ORourke had supported the $351 million funding. When conflict broke out again between Hamas and Israel in July 2014, Congress proposed sending the additional $225 million to Israel even though, according to some members of Congress, Israel still had unspent money from previous appropriations. When asked to add a supplemental quarter of a billion dollar appropriation to the Iron Dome without debate, without discussion, without any real information, I didnt feel that I could in good conscience vote to spend that money, ORourke said in an interview in Houston last month. ORourke said Cruz has also cast votes against funding the Iron Dome, but said hes not going to rail about those votes in public to make it look like Cruz doesnt support Israel. ORourke is referencing the National Defense Authorization Act of 2015 that Cruz voted against. It included $622 million for programs with Israel, including $351 million for Iron Dome. ORourke said he strongly supports the U.S.- Israel relationship and a two-state solution making sure that Israelis and Palestinians can live in peace and have security. The two-state solution in theory would create an independent state of Palestine alongside the state of Israel. There again shows another difference on Israel between the two men. Cruz has stopped well short of endorsing a two-state solution, saying on the presidential trail in 2016 that he does not want the U.S. to tell Israel how to solve its differences with the Palestinians. This matter is an internal one for Israel to decide Cruz said in a 2016 statement. ORourke and Cruz are also split on the U.S. moving its embassy to Jerusalem. Palestinians want to control East Jerusalem, which was captured by Israel during the Six-Day War in 1967. Israel views all of Jerusalem as its capital. Cruz traveled to Israel for a ceremony moving the embassy and has said he urged Trump to move the U.S. embassy there despite international pressure against the move. ORourke has opposed the move, calling Trumps decision absolutely unnecessarily provocative. AUSTIN Some straight-ticket voters have reported that voting machines recorded them selecting the candidate of another party for U.S. Senate, exposing a potential problem with the integrity of the states high-profile contest between U.S. Sen. Ted Cruz and Congressman Beto ORourke and leading good government groups to sound the alarm. Several Democratic voters, for example, have complained the voting system indicated they were about to cast a vote for Cruz, a Republican, instead of Democrat ORourke as they prepared to send it. Some said they were able to get help from staff at the polling place and change their votes back to what they intended before finalizing their ballots. Most of the 15 to 20 people who have complained to the state so far said that their straight-ticket ballot left their vote for U.S. Senate blank, according to Sam Taylor, communications director for the Secretary of State. A spokesman for the Texas Civil Rights Project said the group has received about a half dozen complaints, mostly of Democratic straight ticket voters whose ballots erroneously included a vote for Cruz, and one Republican straight ticket voter whose ballot tabulated a vote for ORourke. The problem occurs on the Hart eSlate voting machine when voters turn a selection dial and hit the enter button simultaneously, according to the state. Eighty-two of the 254 counties in Texas have these machines, although complaints have only come from Fort Bend, Harris, McLennan, Montgomery, Tarrant and Travis counties, according to Taylor The issue with the eSlate machine first surfaced in the 2016 presidential election. The Secretary of States office described it as user error at that time, and said the same of this years problems in an advisory sent to election workers issued this week. It does pop up from time to time, said Taylor. Voters should double and triple check and slow down before casting their ballots, he said. For subscribers: Texas GOP looks to ride out blue wave, with help from straight-ticket voters Although the state sent the advisory, the Civil Rights Project contends that more should be done to ensure voters understand the potential for wrongly recorded votes. The group is pushing the state to post advisories to inform voters at the polls about the problem, and how to detect it. This is not an isolated issue but a symptom of a wider breakdown in Texass election systems, said Beth Stevens, the organizations voting rights director. Texas voters should have full confidence that when they use a voting machine they are indeed casting their ballot of choice. The Hart eSlate voting machines in Texas were last certified in 2009, meaning most of this equipment is at least that old, Taylor said. Upgrading the machines is costly: $50 million would just cover costs to upgrade machines in Harris, Dallas and Tarrant Counties, he said. It wouldnt even put a dent in the cost of upgrading machines statewide, Taylor said. Harris County officials have echoed that the issue is a voter error and not a problem with the machines. Some voters who have tried to cast a straight ticket ballot for Republicans have also found the machine erased the vote for Cruz and records no selection for U.S. Senate. It reinforces how vital it is for every voter to carefully review their selections before casting the ballot to ensure it accurately reflects who you want to vote for, read a statement from the Texas Civil Rights Project on Thursday. Triple check your ballot before casting it. For subscribers: 2018 Houston Chronicle Voter Guide For subscribers: 2018 San Antonio Express-News Voter Guide Bexar County uses a different brand of voting machines, but complaints from concerned voters are still coming in amid concern for voting problems with the Hart eSlate machines, said elections administrator Jacque Callanen. When voters cast straight ticket ballots, the machines leave blank any race in which their favored party doesnt have a candidate, she said. Every time we have a straight party election, we have that confusion, said Callanen. This is the last major election Texans will have the choice to vote straight ticket. The Legislature opted to ban the practice beginning in the 2020 election. So far, only Germany wants to halt arms sales. For Trump, 110 billion dollars cannot be written off. In different ways Canada, Spain and France are doing the same. Italy is tongue-tied. On the horizon, China and Russia are ready to take over this growth market. Riyadh (AsiaNews) The Khashoggi affair and the shadows it has cast over Saudi leaders, especially Crown Prince Mohammad bin Salman (MbS), have put the spotlight back on a major issue of concern among Western leaders and NGOs: weapons sales. Since the murder of the US-based Saudi journalist, only Germany has announced plans to halt arms sales to Saudi Arabia. The reaction among other countries range from business as usual (United States) to some disingenuous or genuine sense of remorse in others (Canada). The US is one of the countries most keen on selling weapons. I don't like the concept of stopping an investment of 0 billion into the United States, said US President Donald Trump speaking on the matter. Likewise, Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez, whilst horrified by the brutal murder, said that If you ask me where I stand today, it is in the defence of the interests of Spain, of jobs in strategic sectors in areas badly affected by the drama that is unemployment. Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau said his government plans to evaluate whether or not to follow through with the most important Canadian weapons sale to Saudi Arabia, namely 742 light armoured vehicles. The Canadian leader said that all options will be examined but added that cancelling the contract would be very difficult. France said instead that it will decide only when responsibilities or guilt will be determined. Conversely, China and Russia are ready to step in a market worth billions of dollars. For many Western countries, the Saudi kingdom has been a privileged arms customer. Riyadh is in fact the second largest buyer of weapons after India for the period between 2013 and 2017. According to the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI), its weapons imports have increased by 225 per cent compared to 2008-2012. The United States and Great Britain are among Saudi Arabias main supplirs to Saudi Arabia, 61 and 23.5 per cent respectively. Italy and Spain also have a significant share of that market. In fact, the USA and European states remain the main arms exporters to the region and supplied over 98 percent of weapons imported by Saudi Arabia, said Pieter Wezeman, senior researcher with the SIPRI Arms and Military Expenditure Programme in a statement. Such a flourishing market has not lost any luster despite accusations by UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres against Saudi Arabia, which has been included in the UN blacklist of countries that violate children's rights in conflict areas. The main bone of contention, and a source of Saudi anger (supported by its US ally), is the victimisation of children in the ongoing Yemen war. In March 2018, the US State Department announced the sale of weapons to the Saudis worth around a billion dollars, including missiles, spare parts for tanks and US-made helicopters. This agreement was the result of a prior meeting between MbS and US Defence Secretary James Mattis, who rebooted the Washington-Riyadh axis against Iran. Italy, too, has a vested interest in the Saudi market, and so far, the Italian government has not made any official statement about the Khashoggi affair, fearing perhaps the reaction of its Saudi partner. In 2017 the kingdom bought about 45 million worth of Italian bombs (UN source) that were used in the Yemen war. This amount came on top of 245 million worth of fighter planes and spare parts already agreed upon in previous contracts. Regarding Trump nationalism translates to racism (Outlook, Wednesday), I watched Wolf Blitzer on CNN on Wednesday with a panel discussion over these horrid pipe bombs, and one of the panelist blamed President Donald Trump and his rhetoric and attacks on news media, especially CNN, for them. She went on to say that an attack on the news media is an attack on the Constitution and that a free press is essential to the balance of power. I confess that much, or maybe even most, of what Trump says or tweets is offensive to anyone with a measurable IQ. But we must all acknowledge that the alphabet news agencies and most papers are so far left that they shape their news to fit their agenda, as does Fox toward the far right. If news agencies want to be the eyes of the American people, report the news without bias and without an agenda. Americans are able to draw their own conclusions. We really dont need the Kardashians to tell us what it means to us. A prime example is the essay Trump nationalism translates to racism. Really? So who is trying to incite people? I feel the need to paraphrase Simon and Garfunkel: Where have you gone, Walter Cronkite? Jerry Steffens, Sugar Land Idealistic and unrealistic Regarding Trump nationalism translates to racism (Wednesday, page A17): Professor Benjamin Parks essay misses the mark entirely. His thesis that President Trumps idea of nationalism is a vision of a united and racist union set apart from the world is not only myopic a viewpoint clearly racist in itself but is clearly intended to perpetrate the idea that give us your tired, your poor is the appropriate moral and political policy for our government to adopt to deal with those who desire to cross our borders. What better way to denigrate a protective border policy than to call it racist. In that sense, every immigration policy except for totally open borders is racist, because every person desiring to enter the United States is racial white, black, brown, Spanish-speaking, Chinese-speaking, Arabic-speaking you get the idea. In a perfect world we would not need to have border security. There would be homes for everyone, jobs for everyone, insurance for everyone and medical care for everyone. And no one coming in would intend to do us harm. Alas, that is not the world we live in. So, limitations on immigration are essential. J.G. Roady, Sugar Land Express Entry streams among those in Ontario, PEI, BC and Saskatchewan that set new year-to-date invitation records Four of Canadas largest provincial immigration draws so far this year have happened in October Four of Canadas largest provincial immigration draws so far this year have happened in October Express Entry streams among those in Ontario, PEI, BC and Saskatchewan that set new year-to-date invitation records Four of Canadas largest provincial immigration draws so far this year have happened in October Express Entry streams among those in Ontario, PEI, BC and Saskatchewan that set new year-to-date invitation records Four of Canadas largest provincial immigration draws so far this year have happened in October Express Entry streams among those in Ontario, PEI, BC and Saskatchewan that set new year-to-date invitation records Stephen Smith Aa Accessibility Font Style Serif Sans Font Size A A Four new 2018 records have been set in October for the most invitations issued so far this year through provincial immigration streams in Prince Edward Island, Saskatchewan, Ontario and British Columbia. Many of the streams involved are linked to the federal Express Entry system, which manages the pool of candidates for Canadas three main economic immigration program the Federal Skilled Worker Class, Federal Skilled Trades Class and Canadian Experience Class. Most Canadian provinces and territories have a Provincial Nominee Program that allows them nominate a set number of immigrants for Canadian permanent residence each year. Each program has a number of immigration streams, some that are linked to Express Entry and others that are not. Express Entry candidates who receive a provincial nomination benefit from an additional 600 points toward their Comprehensive Ranking System (CRS) score, which determines their position in the Express Entry pool of candidates. The additional 600 points for a provincial nomination effectively guarantee Express Entry candidates an Invitation to Apply for Canadian permanent residence. Prince Edward Island The Atlantic Canada province of Prince Edward Island has an Express Entry-linked immigration stream that does not require candidates to have a job offer in the province. This popular stream was part of an October 18 draw by Prince Edward Islands Provincial Nominee Program that saw a 2018 high of 270 invitations issued, surpassing the previous high of 152 invitations set in April. Candidates in PEIs non-Express Entry Labour Impact categories were also issued invitations to apply in this draw. The PEI PNP employs an Expression of Interest (EOI) system typically requires interested candidates to submit a profile detailing their work experience, education, language skills and other factors. Profiles are given a score based on the details provided and eligible profiles are entered into the pool of candidates for the selected category. Candidates with the highest scores are invited to apply for a provincial nomination for permanent residence through monthly draws. Express Entry candidates may be invited to apply with or without a job in the province, and there have been cases when the PEI PNP will contact Express Entry candidates who have not submitted an EOI to the province but who may be a match for labour market needs in the province. To find out if you are eligible to enter the Express Entry pool, fill out a free assessment. Saskatchewan Another 2018 high was set this month in the Province of Saskatchewan, located in Canadas Prairie region, in a draw through one of its popular International Skilled Worker sub-categories. The draw, held October 10, issued 494 invitations to candidates in the Occupation In-Demand pool the most issued through the sub-category in a single draw since Saskatchewan switched it to an Expression of Interest system in July. Candidates are not required to have a job offer in Saskatchewan in order to be eligible for this stream, which is not aligned with Express Entry. Candidates are required to have work experience in one of the 20 occupations found on Saskatchewans In-Demand Occupations List, among other criteria. A parallel draw also held October 10 issued 359 invitations to candidates in the International Skilled Workers Express Entry sub-category, which also does not require a job offer in order to be eligible. Express Entry candidates must also have work experience in a high-skilled occupation thats considered in-demand in the province, among other criteria. Ontario One of Ontarios three Express Entry-linked streams also held its largest draw so far this year. Ontario is Canadas most populous province and its capital, Toronto, is Canadas largest and most culturally diverse city. The provinces booming tech industry is proving an increasingly popular draw for highly skilled workers, who have been targeted by Express Entry draws. On October 19, Ontarios Express Entry-aligned Skilled Trades Stream issued 439 invitations to apply for a provincial nomination for Canadian permanent residence on October 19. This was by far the most invitations issued in a single draw this year through the stream, which has now issued 1,445 invitations to apply for a provincial nomination from Ontario to Express Entry candidates in 2018. The Skilled Trades Stream allows Ontario to search the federal Express Entry system for candidates currently living in the province who meet the eligibility requirements for the Canadian Experience Class. Among other criteria, candidates must have a minimum of one year full-time work experience, or the equivalent in part-time work, in a skilled trade listed in Minor Group 633 or Major Group 72, 73, or 82 of Canadas National Occupational Classification (NOC). The Skilled Trades Stream does not require a minimum Express Entry CRS score. To find out if your eligible for any Canadian immigration programs, complete a free assessment. British Columbia On October 17, British Columbia held its largest draw so far this year, issuing 472 invitations to candidates in a number of its Skills Immigration and Express Entry categories. The British Columbia Provincial Nominee Program (BC PNP) holds draws approximately every two weeks for candidates in the Skilled Worker, International Graduate and Entry Level / Semi-Skilled categories of its Skills Immigration Stream. Most Skills Immigration and B.C. Express Entry categories require a valid job offer from an employer in the province in order to be eligible. Candidates in the Express Entry BC Skilled Worker and International Graduate categories are also invited through these bi-weekly draws. Anyone who would like to be considered by the BC PNP through these economic immigration programs must first register through the Skills Immigration Registration System (SIRS). The SIRS serves as an Expression of Interest system and issues a ranking score based on the BC PNPs unique points grid. Looking for more information on Canadas Provincial Nominee Programs? Use the new interactive Canada PNP Finder to explore programs, filter your search, and keep up to date on all PNP-related news. 2018 CICNews All rights Reserved At this weeks panel discussion in Brussels hosted by the Center for Democracy and Technology, I discussed the capacities and limitations of AI-driven content moderation techniques. Other panelists included Armineh Nourbakhsh now with S & P Global, who discussed the Tracer tool she helped develop while at Reuters and Emma Llanso with CDT, who discussed the recent paper she co-authored, Mixed Messages? The Limits of Automated Social Media Content Analysis. Prabhat Agarwal from the European Commission provided an insightful policymaker perspective. Platforms and other Internet participants use automated procedures to take action against illegal material on their systems such as hate speech or terrorist material. They also use the same techniques to enforce their own voluntary terms of service that they require of users in order to maintain stable and attractive online environments. Finally, there is an intermediate type of content which is not just unattractive and is not quite illegal in itself but which is harmful and needs to be controlled. Disinformation campaigns fall in this category. The government pressure to use automated systems is growing The reason for discussing automatic take downs of this material right now is not just technical. Policymakers are very concerned about the effectiveness of the systems used for content moderation and are pushing platforms to do increasingly more. Sometimes this spills over into regulatory requirements. The recently-announced EU proposed regulation to prevent terrorist content online is a good example. Much attention focused on its proposal to allow competent national authorities in the member states to require platforms to remove specific instances of terrorist content within an hour of being notified. But much more worrisome is its requirement that platforms put in place pro-active measures designed to prevent terrorist material from appearing on the systems in the first place. Since pro-active measures are automatic blocking systems for terrorist content, the proposed regulation explicitly creates a derogation from the current ecommerce directive to impose a duty to monitor systems for terrorist content. Still worse, if a company were to receive too many removal orders and could not reach agreement with the regulator on a design improvement, the company could be required to implement and maintain an automatic takedown system prescribed by the regulator. Protective measures are needed to make removal decisions fair There must be explicit standards used for the removal decision and those standards need to be transparent so that users can form expectations about what is out of bounds and what is acceptable. Moreover, there needs to be an explanation for the individual removal decisions that describes the specific features or aspect of the content that triggered the removal. Finally, because no system can be perfect, there needs to be a redress mechanism to allow material to be restored when it has been removed in error. As a model, look to the practices of the credit industry in the U.S., which has had these elements of transparent, explanation and redress for generations. For reasons that Emma Llanso outlined in her paper, it is a mistake to rely solely on automated systems for removals. The error rate is simply too high, and human review is always needed to ensure that the context and meaning of the content is fully considered prior to removal. There is an affirmative and useful role for these automated systems First, they can be used for very specific and valuable purposes. The Tracer system, developed by Reuters and described by Armineh, scanned Twitter to detect breaking news stories and passed them on to Reuters editors and journalists for review. It rejected most, but not all, of the false rumors and deliberate attempts to mislead and passed on only material highly likely to be newsworthy, thereby allowing journalists to do their job much more efficiently. Even here, however, protections are needed to avoid, for instance, profiling of particular sources or users. A second important use is screening material for possible removal. When systems operate at the scale of modern social networks, human review of all potentially harmful material is simply impossible. The automated systems can provide a manageable list of problematic content for human reviewer determination of removal. Finally, automatic systems can be very effective in preventing the uploading of material that has previously identified and removed. This model is effectively used for child pornography images and through an automated content ID system for preventing the unauthorized uploading of copyrighted material. The way forward is through public private partnerships The concerns about automatic takedowns are not meant to undermine the general thrust of the movement to remove dangerous material from online systems, which in light of the very serious challenges of terrorism, is a matter of the utmost urgency. However, we must look to the future as well as to our immediate needs and should be careful to build in safeguards that would prevent the abuse of any new regulatory authority in very different political circumstances, where the risk might be the overreach of government agencies. The way forward is to recognize that problem is larger than tech. Terrorist events emerge from underlying social, political and economic processes that the technology industry did not create and cannot on its own ameliorate. But their systems should not be used to make the problem worse and their removal efforts would benefit from public private partnerships that rely on government for information and referrals and for convening industry players to develop and implement industry-wide best practices. A significant danger, however, is that policymakers appear willing to disregard the real costs of errors, apparently thinking mistakes are worth it as long as we succeed in removal the dangerous material. After all, they seem to think, platforms can always restore material removed in error. This perspective ignores the timeliness of much online communication, where restoration weeks or even days later is pointless. Moreover, the scale of the errors involved can easily be underestimated. A small error rate among billions of uses can mean not hundreds, not thousands, but hundreds of millions of mistakes. Taken together and distributed over time, errors of this magnitude would undermine the credibility and legitimacy of these systems, losing their manifold benefits for legitimate political discourse. Almost every industry is looking at the impact artificial intelligence (AI) will have on it, but healthcare has been one of the most forward-looking because it has the potential of providing better patient care and can save lives. The intersection of healthcare and AI has tremendous potential, and its because there are well over 100 start-ups focused specifically on bringing AI to healthcare. Over the next several years, the innovation in this area will explode as the ecosystems of companies in this area grow. At Nvidias GPU Technology Conference (GTC) in Washington, D.C., this week, Ian Buck, general manager and vice president of accelerated computing at Nvidia, discussed how we just passed the big bang of modern AI where the technology will revolutionize the way we do things. For example, in healthcare, AI-based video analytics are helping radiologists find brain bleeds or tumors in MRIs that might be missed by the naked eye. This isnt being done everywhere yet, but it is one of the more widely used examples of AI in healthcare, as machines can see things at a more granular level. Modern AI takes the process to the next level. Buck showed a slide with a monochrome image of a chest x-ray. AI was then used to color the organs different colors and then the image was sharpened to make it look three dimensional. (See below.) This is a process that Buck called AI Super Resolution where a neural network can take a highly pixelated image and sharpen it. Buck showed another use case where an X-ray of a hand was taken and super-resolved, bringing forward elements of the image that were not visible before. Zeus Kerravala Precision healthcare enabled by AI Another example of modern AI in healthcare is precision treatments. With the medical industry today, patient treatments are given based on illness. Factors such as age, ethnicity, and body composition are not considered. With enough data, AI can be used to develop a treatment plan that is specific to the individual. Everyone is unique, but the process of creating a custom treatment plan is far too complex for a doctor to develop manually. AI is proving to be an excellent tool to enable patients to receive precise levels of medication. Predictive healthcare is coming AI can also be used to predict outcomes. In one of the sessions in the healthcare track, the panel discussed how a persons muscle-to-fat ratio is predictive of a wide range of medical outcomes, including surgical success and cancer prognosis. AI- based analytics can take CT scans that show body composition and instantly segment information, enabling datasets to be created for biomarker discovery. Clinicians can use this data to predict if a patient has a high likelihood of a particular illness or disease. Data quality and availability remains a significant problem Modern AI will transform healthcare faster than ever before. One challenge remains, though, and thats data. The medical industry shifted to electronic records years ago, but the data tends to live in silos. I recently interviewed a doctor from Boston-based Massachusetts General Hospital, one of the leading hospitals in the country, and he cant access some of his own records from his remote office in Waltham, Massachusetts. He routinely emails documents to himself or has patients hand carry printed paper records. There are hundreds, sometimes thousands, of datasets that exist in silos in every major hospital, so the inability to bring this information together will hold back modern AI in hospitals. GPU-based servers are widely available and AI algorithms have matured, but data availability remains healthcares biggest problem. I asked Neil Tenenholtz, senior machine learning scientist at the Mass General and Brigham and Womens Hospital Center for Clinical Data Science, about what can be done to improve the quality of data. He admitted its a big problem and recommended starting small with either the most important sets of data or with the systems that were already available hospital-wide. Thats a start, but eventually, data standards need to be put in place and information silos brought together. As an example, many clinical reports are nothing more than prose written by doctors with no common structure and format. This makes it very difficult for an AI to parse and to extract meaningful information. Advancements are being made in AI where natural language processing (NLP) can be used to better understand the reports, but creating a standardized structure would certainly help. Also, moving to centralized storage systems would be a significant improvement over storing electronic records on a local server that are found in remote offices. In my opinion, every individual should have their own personal health cloud where all pertinent records, test results, and other data can be stored. The patient can then decide who should be given access. This would enable AI algorithms to have access to all of a persons information instead of just a slice of it. Were likely years away from that, but in the meantime, CIOs in the healthcare vertical should be focused on data standardization and centralization because that will help advance the use of AI. New York City and New York state both suffer from very low voter turnout rates. New Yorks congressional primary this year saw just 11 percent of eligible primary voters participating. The lack of civic participation, a consequence of antiquated election laws that purposefully lead to voter suppression, has prompted countless calls to action from New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio and The New York Times editorial board. Recent news that de Blasio has filled the role of the citys first chief democracy officer, charged with overseeing civic engagement through voter registration drives, demonstrates both the need for innovation in solving New Yorks crisis of democracy and the lack thereof in the solutions currently being pursued, or even discussed. Appointing a cheerleader for voting misjudges the root cause of the problem. Ayirini Fonseca-Sabune, the newly appointed chief democracy officer, who has been tasked with increasing voter turnout by 1.5 million votes, will be committed to organizing civic lessons and citywide voter registration drives, a Band-Aid offering a temporary fix. At best, this will only move the needle incrementally. The problem isnt voter apathy. New Yorkers are some of the most politically engaged and educated American citizens. The problem rests with the inaccessible ballot, not with the voter. Good government reforms that are promoted by activists and influential voices such as the Times' editorial board, like early voting and automatic registration, recognize that reality and correctly seek to improve ballot access. But these proposals fail to address the crux of the problem, which Fonseca-Sabune noted when characterizing herself as a busy working parent who missed several elections trying to fit voting her schedule: Many New Yorkers are simply too inundated with their personal and work lives to find the time to vote in person. In light of that, a simpler and more forward-thinking solution to voter engagement is to invest in election technology and allow for mobile voting. E-voting would provide busy New Yorkers who cant afford the time to visit a polling site an opportunity to cast a ballot. Already, over 86.4 percent of adults in New York state have smart mobile devices or access to the internet at home not including at work and can pay credit card bills, trade stocks and purchase insurance on phones, tablets or their computers. Why cant another important decision be available at everyones fingertips? This would, like voting by mail, also be fully accessible to people with disabilities. And it would eliminate the arbitrary factors that often shape voter turnout, such as whether its raining or long lines at polling places. For voters without internet access, votes could be cast by mail, which is a system that has boosted turnout in states that have adopted it, such as Washington, Oregon and Colorado. Security is nearly always the counterargument. But the question is: secure relative to what? The current system of hanging chads, lost ballots, voter registrations? Purged voter registrations led to thousands of New Yorkers being told they were not on the voter rolls during the September statewide primary. Consider the mishandled paper trails, mistakes made by election officials, such as the infamous Palm Beach County butterfly ballot that may have cost Al Gore Florida in 2000, and the security risks and routine malfunctions of the electronic and mechanical machines that we currently use to count votes. Most alarmingly, the lever machines, which New York used for decades, have an error rate of 3 to 4 percent, while the optical scanners that replaced them still have a 1 to 2 percent error rate, according to a Rice University Study. Conversely, as Estonia enters its 14th year of online voting, not a single major security incident has been recorded. It is not without its threats, as the Baltic country has had to contend with Russian aggression. But it has demonstrated that internet voting can be secure, accurately counted and private. Here in the United States, many states have served as laboratories for democracy, entrusting digital means of civic engagement. Thirty-two states offer a voting by email, electronic fax, or an internet browser for absentee ballots cast from overseas. This past primary saw the first application of blockchain voting technology that creates a public ledger in a federal election as West Virginians abroad used facial recognition and scanned ID images to submit digital ballots through a mobile app. New York state already allows for voter registration online and much of the election process requires electronic systems, so why not move a step further? Whats more, the success of online voting for participatory budgeting provides a proof of concept for New York City. This past year, New Yorkers in council districts that opted to democratize budgeting decisions were able to do so not only at a polling place, but online. This method can and should extend to elections. An option to modernize and improve the citizen user experience by offering online registration and voting, ballot information, and schedules with reminders and alerts is possible if we plan for it. We should begin to imagine a balloting process where a voter can use voice or facial recognition to verify themselves, submit an encrypted ballot on a mobile app, and request a paper ballot or a receipt of their vote a voter-verified paper or digital trail accessible by only them, the voter. This is not a call to election officials to rush or act reckless, but instead it is a reminder to invest in the future of democratic processes. Election security and upgrades need to go hand in hand. We can be investing in securing newer technology rather than outdated technology, which is the current plan. The technology for online voting exists and will continue to improve to offer even greater security, anonymity and verifiability. After all, if we can build secure financial systems to protect trillions of dollars, we can engineer secure voting systems to protect millions of votes. It is very likely that in the near future New Yorkers will be casting ballots online or via mobile devices. So why not begin discussing, investing in, phasing in, implementing and securing an e-voting solution on a limited scale? The biggest impediment to internet voting isnt technological, but rather political. And the bigger threat to our democracy in New York isnt a Russian hacker, its voting accessibility. Seventeen days before the 2018 election, Massapequa Park Mayor Jeff Pravato, the Republican nominee to represent New Yorks 8th state Senate District, implored around 150 people in a half-full catering hall in Seaford to understand what was at stake in November. This election is the most important election in New York state history, this is it, this is it, he told the crowd to scattered applause. It will decide the balance of Albany between one-party rule, which we saw in '09 and '10, which was a bad movie, and protecting Long Island values the way that we learned we like to live our life on Long Island. Pravatos sense or urgency seemed sincere as he delivered his closing argument at a Women and Families for Jeff Pravato, Peter King and Julie Killian rally on that Saturday afternoon. As Republicans play defense in a slew of state Senate districts in Nassau and Suffolk counties, Pravatos attempt to unseat state Sen. John Brooks has become hugely important for the party. In an otherwise catastrophic year for Democrats, Brooks 300-vote win in 2016 was a welcome surprise for the party, even if intercine state Senate politics ensured his election didnt add up to Democratic control of the chamber. Republicans called the win a fluke, driven by the late-fall corruption indictment handed down to then-Oyster Bay Town Supervisor John Venditto, the father of Republican incumbent Michael Venditto. The 8th District sits on the south shore of Long Island, stretching from Roosevelt across the border between Nassau and Suffolk counties into Amityville and Farmingdale, and has experienced changing demographics and the tensions that accompany it.And so, even with a number of opportunities for Democrats to win a Republican-held seat and take a majority in the state Senate, Republicans are hoping to flip this district to help them prevent that. Enter Pravato, a former member of the Massapequa Village Board and the towns mayor since 2013. The 49-year-old Pravato, a former Wall Street trader who speaks with the stereotypical confidence and hand movements (occasionally rapping the table he was sitting at during an interview to emphasize points) of a lifelong Long Islander. Pravato told City & State that he feels his message is resonating in the borders of the 8th District. The energy I see on the Republican side, independent side, blanks, Conservatives, everyone is energized for me. We're knocking on a lot of doors, we're talking to a lot of people. People want to see me go up there, they see what I've done in my village, he said. He went on to question the effectiveness of the big government New York Rising program to help Massapequa Village residents continue to rebuild after Superstorm Sandy. Fear of big government is a message that could resonate in a district where Pravato said voters care about taxes, taxes, taxes. Hempstead Town Councilwoman Erin King Sweeney, acting as the rallys master of ceremonies, also hit that theme. She told City & State the voters in the 8th District valued safe streets, low taxes, someone who's accessible to the people and brings home money from Albany. And Alison Giangregorio, a rally attendee who gave poor marks to how Gov. Andrew Cuomo was handling the states Office for People With Developmental Disabilities, gave a similar answer before the rally started, saying that people in the district valued family. We need our taxes more reasonable, we need safe schools, she said. The talk of safety encompassed a couple of hot-button issues during speeches from Pravato and other Republicans during the rally. The governors decision to restore voting rights to felons, including sex offenders, was one of a few actions slammed as unbelievable by Pravato in asides during his speech. The presence of MS-13, whose gang murders have made a big enough impact to draw President Donald Trump to Bethpage to discuss efforts to fight the gang, was also a prominent theme. While Bethpage is not in the 8th District, murders in Massapequa Park and Roosevelt which are in the district have been linked to the gang, and they require a stronger response, according to Pravato. Pravatos commitment to limited government does not extend to crime. The governor needs to take the handcuffs off the cops and let them put the handcuffs on the bad guys, Pravato told City & State, in order to fight both MS-13 and the districts drug problem. His specific ideas for fighting the scourges of gangs and drugs include using money seized by police in drug raids to fund the effort to fight gangs and compelling insurance companies to cover drug rehabilitation stays for longer than 28 days. Pravato is an opponent of sanctuary policies for immigrants and he criticized Brooks for voting against a proposed bill that would have defunded cities that refuse to hand undocumented immigrants they arrest over to ICE. Asked if theres a conflict between wanting to work with immigrant communities, as he said he wants to on combating MS-13, and turning immigrants over to federal immigration officials, Pravato said that immigrant communities don't want (gang members) in their community, so we need to educate them, and work together. While endorsing nonpartisan ways of addressing the districts needs is good politics in an area where Democrats have about a 10,000-person registration advantage, the Republican rally to pump up voters for the likes of lieutenant governor candidate Julie Killian, Rep. Peter King, attorney general hopeful Keith Wofford and Pravato had its share of more partisan culture war rhetoric. Opening speaker Anthony D'Esposito, a member of the Hempstead Town Board, said it was nice to be in a room full of Americans standing for the Pledge of Allegiance and we need people in Albany, people in Washington who stand for our American values. King told the rally that the modern Democratic Party is not the party of John Kennedy, it's not the party of Bill Clinton even. It's a radical left-wing party that's been taken over by activists who think its OK to release cop killers, call ICE thugs, look the other way on MS-13. King also referred to former state Attorney General Eric Schneiderman as a child molester and pervert. (While Schneiderman was accused of violence and other egregious behavior by multiple women, he has not been accused of child molestation or anything directly related to it.) But feeding red meat to the base might also be part of a winning strategy for Republicans in a district that Hillary Clinton won by fewer than 3 percentage points in 2016 and that elected Republicans to the state Senate for decades before Brooks won. Beyond the energy in the room that afternoon, it was seen in the plethora of Pravato for state Senate signs in front of homes and all along the grassy medians of Sunrise Highway on the 3.5-mile stretch between Seafords Memorare Caterers and the Merrick LIRR train station, where John Brooks spoke to canvassers that afternoon. One house along the way did have signs for Brooks, Kings congressional opponent Liuba Grechen Shirley and state Sen. Carl Marcellinos Democratic challenger Jim Gaughran. Sitting on the stoop of the home was Gia Furfari, who said shed done some phone banking for local Democratic candidates. It seems like we have a chance, she said, when asked about the energy of Democratic voters in the district, though she said she was hopeful more voters in their 20s and 30s would show up at the polls. One factor that may help Brooks is Gov. Andrew Cuomos coattails. Cuomo beat Rob Astorino there in 2014 even while Venditto beat Democrat David Denenberg for the state Senate seat. Cuomos support for down-ballot Democrats on Long Island may help Brooks, but Cuomos turn leftward in his second term and in the 2018 campaign may dampen his popularity in the moderate suburbs. Recent polling put Cuomos lead in the suburbs at 52 percent to 45 percent over Republican Marc Molinaro, a small margin for a down-ballot candidate in an area prone to ticket splitting. Many voters who back Cuomo, in light of his moderate fiscal record, may prefer a Republican state Senate to act as a check on the Democratic Partys more progressive impulses. On the other hand, Democratic turnout in this years September state primary hit record levels as 1.5 million people voted in the contest between Cuomo and Cynthia Nixon, and the district skews less white than the rest of Long Island thanks to the inclusion of majority non-white and overwhelmingly Democratic cities like Freeport and Roosevelt. Photo by David Colon Brooks, a 68-year-old volunteer firefighter, former insurance executive and former risk manager for Nassau County, addressed a crew of canvassers along with Nassau County Executive Laura Curran and U.S. Rep. Kathleen Rice, both fellow Democrats. Speaking hoarsely, with a voice lost to what he ascribed to non-stop campaigning, Brooks told his canvassers the Republicans can't get over the fact that they lost. They're supposed to own this seat, it belongs to them. Turning the issue of high taxes against the Republicans, Brooks mentioned that the cap on SALT deductions in the GOPs new federal tax law would mean an $18 billion tax hike on New York and would be especially hard on Long Island. Unlike some Democrats, Brooks is happy to talk taxes, since that gives him an opportunity to bring up his bill that would decouple property taxes from school funding in areas where property taxes cover at least 50 percent of school aid. The new tax law basically says the way we do things as far as (the federal government) is concerned, is wrong, Brooks said, explaining that if the federal tax law isnt changed, the state would have to examine different ways of funding education starting with his bill. And a Democratic state Senate, Brooks said, gives his proposal the best chance of passing. Comparing the loud but fruitless post-budget session this year in which the GOP-controlled state Senate was a bottleneck for many initiatives passed by the Assembly and supported by Cuomo to a future Democratic state Senate, Brooks predicted that if (Democrats) get the majority, were going to start to get things done in January. Seemingly familiar with the Republican accusation that those things getting done would cater to the city, Brooks said that he has never met Mayor Bill de Blasio and that he wont tell me what to do, before the question of New York City even came up. Brooks also pointed to a family history of Long Island residence dating back to the 1600s as proof of his commitment to the island above everywhere else. While Pravato blankets all of Nassau County with an ad that starts de Blasio and his New York City allies, theyre never satisfied, they always want more, Democrats are insisting that if they win control of the state Senate, it wont open the floodgates to liberal legislation that favors the city over the suburbs. For us to achieve a majority, we're going to add members from the suburbs and upstate, it's a mathematical certainty, said state State Sen. Michael Gianaris, who is leading the Senate Democrats election efforts. Our leader is suburban, so I don't know why they might try to disrespect Andrea Stewart-Cousins by not recognizing her role as the leader, and the district she represents. To the suggestion that a Democratic majority wouldnt only focus on New York City, King Sweeney said, I'm not willing to take that risk. And for Republicans, who are clinging to the state Senate as their only statewide toehold, the hope is that Long Island voters will be unwilling to take that risk, either. Antonio Zappulla, chief operating officer of the Thomson Reuters Foundation, has been named as the number one LGBT+ senior executive in the charity and public sector in a list published yesterday. The LGBT+ Role Models 2018 lists were published yesterday afternoon by membership group Outstanding, in conjunction with the Financial Times. The 30 LGBT+ public sector executives 2018 list features seven individuals working in the UK charity sector. Antonio Zappulla, chief operating officer of the London-based charitable arm of Thomson Reuters, was named as the number one LGBT+ senior executive working globally in the public sector. Lee Marshall, co-founder and first treasurer of Stonewall, was listed at number five. He is currently chief of staff at the Church of England Pensions Board and is the chair of The Ben Cohen StandUp Foundation, an anti-bullying charity. Carole Anderson, head of strategy and performance at hospital charity Golden Jubilee Foundation was listed at number seven. Along with her work at the foundation, she helped organise the largest ever group of NHS staff to march in the Pride Glasgow 2018 parade. Tony Lloyd, chief executive of the Liverpool-based ADHD Foundation, was number 11. He has also worked as a consultant with Merseyside police on recruitment of LGBT+ officers, and has supported local HIV charity Sahir House for more than 20 years. Gemma Bull, funding strategy director at the Big Lottery Fund, was named 22nd; Ian Green, chief executive of the Terrence Higgins Trust, was 24th and Polly Shute, executive fundraising director at Together for Short Lives, was in 27th. The lists celebrate the work being done by LGBT+ and ally leaders across the globe in both the private and public sectors. They feature people from over 20 countries, working in 40 different sectors. This is the first time the public sector list has been expanded out to include 30 people. It was previously a top 20 list. The sixth annual Outstanding lists also cover the top 100 LGBT+ corporate executives; 50 ally executives and 50 LGBT+ future leaders. Zappulla said: I have been asked a few times about the need for such a list: Does an LGBT+ ranking really matter? The answer is that, yes, it does matter, and heres why. I grew up with no LGBT+ role models. I remember fearing the implications coming out might have on my career. This fear is still very much prevalent among young professionals. The Outstanding list is a significant step in the right direction towards encouraging widespread acceptance and inclusion. Last year, after being featured, I received hundreds of messages from people in Italy the country where I was born emphasising the positive impact my appearance on the list had had on them. It is for precisely this reason that lists such as this one matter. The full top 30 LGBT+ public sector list can be read here. The other lists can be read here. A charity set up by Philip Green, which organised an event to support women empowerment, was removed from the register of charities earlier this year. The Kahn Charitable Trust was registered with the Charity Commission in 1980 and was removed from the register in March this year because the charity had ceased to exist. In 2013 it announced it would hold a conference in Manchester where one of the key themes was women empowerment and Theresa May, then the Home Secretary was listed as a keynote speaker. Other topics on the proposed agenda were women and gender equality and "violence against women etc". The website for the conference said the charity and its co-sponsors Subsea7 Oil and Gas UK Ltd and McDonalds would pay for the costs of delegates attending. However it is unclear that the conference ever happened. Kahn Charitable Trust is a philanthropic initiative of Sir Philip Green which was registered on the 8th day of April 1980 with a vision of putting lost smiles back on the faces of less privileged persons across the globe, the conference website said. It said the charity's philosophy is to love one another. The website said the charity has awarded 2.6m across 125 grants since its inception. The charity appears that it has been dormant for some years. Its last significant income was in 2004, when it received 11,000. Green was named yesterday in Parliament as businessman who had used non-disclosure agreements and taken out an injunction to prevent the Telegraph from reporting accusations of sexual, racial harassment, and bullying. Lord Hain used parliamentary privilege to name him, saying it was clearly in the public interest. Green issued a statement "categorically and wholly" denying abuse allegations. A few months ago, as Jasmine Bager was reading Jamal Khashoggis opinion pieces in The Washington Post, she thought to herself, He is probably not planning to go back to Saudi. Like Khashoggi, Bager grew up in Saudi Arabia and was taught from an early age to dread the stern rule of the government. Fear was taught as part of the curriculum in our school, Bager, a freelancer who has written for The New York Times, HuffPost, and other publications, says. I always had a fear of speaking out and angering the authorities. Twenty-three days have passed since Khashoggi entered the Saudi consulate in Istanbul to complete paperwork required to marry his fiancee, who is Turkish. He never emerged, and his casenow accepted as a murderhas focused a spotlight on the difficulties of reporting on Saudi Arabia. Reporters say that its always been challenging to write from insideor even aboutthe kingdom, but Khashoggis death has globalized awareness of the risk, as reporters living outside Saudi Arabia are now saying theyre more apprehensive than ever about doing their jobs. Saudi Arabia has long had a history of abuse, arrests, and crackdown of voices that are critical of the ruling regime. Journalists who work there learn that sticking to the governments narrative is a part of the job; the alternative can be jail, a travel ban, or house arrest. In the past year especially, after Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman (MBS) consolidated power, the situation has grown worse; according to Reporters Without Borders, hundreds of activists have been arrested and nearly 15 journalists are currently in jail. In the summer of 2018, Sarah Aziza, a freelance writer, was in Saudi Arabia reporting on the government lifting its ban against womens driving. Aziza, who was working with the Pulitzer Center on Crisis Reporting, at first saw national euphoria, but then a sourcea woman who had sought driving rightswas told by authorities not to speak to the press. People I interviewed contacted me and requested to go off the record, she says. When Khashoggi went missing, she tried checking up on them. My sources have stopped replying to me on WhatsApp and their Twitter accounts have gone dark, she says. Even if theyre safely settled in America or elsewhere, she adds, nearly all of them have families back in the kingdom. Related: The challenge of reporting the Khashoggi story Sign up for CJR 's daily email There is a renewed sense of urgency among Saudi journalists to think through what Khashoggis killing will mean for practicing honest journalism in the Arab world. In the days following his disappearance, the Saudi government circulated a reminder of its law against cyber crime: sharing rumors, propaganda, or fake news could mean five years in prison and up to $800,000 in fines. Since MBS came into power, he has made it very clear that he will not accept any kind of independent thinking, Rami Khouri, a syndicated columnist and a professor of journalism at the American University in Beirut, says. It has never been this bad. Bager, who has been working in the US for six years, has never stopped being afraid. We dont have the luxury to just say whatever we want because there are consequences, real consequences for saying anything, she says. She tries to keep a low profile online because she feels thats whats best for her safety and that of her family, who still live in Saudi Arabia. Recently, however, she decided to publish a tribute to Khashoggi in Time magazine, writing Let us not allow Khashoggis life to end in vain. Although prompted by tragedy, dialogue is what I have wanted my whole life. She wrestled with her response, she says. I was afraid that my intentions and writing could be taken in a wrong sense. Afterward, she cancelled a planned trip home. Even though her article didnt go beyond what has been reported about the Khashoggi case by others, she says she believes that she has to take precautions if she wants to continue working as a journalist. I am at a risk of getting interrogated or stopped at the immigration, Bager says. I am trying to be smart and I need those extra layers of buffer in order to survive. Her fears were justifiedin response to her piece, she received several notes of support, but she also got a direct message on Twitter saying, You have to be careful, you can be next. Related: Why Trump doesnt care about Jamal Khashoggi Has America ever needed a media watchdog more than now? Help us by joining CJR today Zainab Sultan is a former CJR Delacorte Fellow. Follow her on Twitter @ZainabSultan. With its stock dropping and more lawsuits expected, Monsanto vowed Tuesday to press on with a nationwide legal defense of its best-selling weed killer Roundup after a San Francisco judge upheld a verdict alleging it causes cancer. Legal experts said the decision will have little value in courtrooms across the country where similar cases are pending, but it will likely lead to more lawsuits. Similar lawsuits doubled from 4,000 to 8,000 after a San Francisco jury awarded groundskeeper DeWayne Johnson $389 million in August. Monsantos lawyers said they will fight Johnson and every other lawsuit in the country alleging that the active ingredient in the worlds most popular herbicide glyphosate causes cancer. Johnsons lawsuit was the first lawsuit to go to trial, and several more appear ready to start early next year. Judge Suzanne Bolanos cut the jurys award for Johnson to $78 million on Monday but upheld its verdict against St. Louis-based Monsanto. She reduced punitive damages from $250 million to $39 million in a brief decision that stood in sharp contrast to an earlier tentative ruling saying she doubted Johnson should receive any such award. Bolanos previously said Johnsons attorneys failed to show Monsanto executives acted with malice, which is required for punitive damages. She didnt explain her change of mind. Several jurors wrote to the judge asking her to respect their verdict, but legal experts said that should not have influenced the judge. Monsantos lawyer said it would appeal the decision if Johnson accepts the award rather than asking for a new trial. He has until Dec. 7 to decide. Monsanto argues that numerous scientific studies and the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency have found glyphosate to be safe. Because of this, we will continue to vigorously defend our glyphosate-based products, company spokesman Daniel Childs said. Johnsons attorney argued that the World Health Organization in 2015 concluded otherwise. Legal experts say the San Francisco decision will have no immediate legal effect on the other lawsuits, especially since they predict months if not years of appeals. A San Francisco trial court decision also is not binding in any other court. California appeals court decisions are binding in California courts but not on state court actions elsewhere. Its just one early piece in a large, legal puzzle, said University of California, Hastings law professor David Levine. Levine said the company will not consider settling any lawsuit until enough trial court decisions pile up against it. There just arent enough data points to make a decision, he said. The German company Bayer Ag bought St. Louis-based Monsanto in August for $63 billion. Its stock price fell 8.6 percent per share Tuesday. Clearly this topic isnt going to go away, UBS analyst Michael Leuchten wrote in a note to investors Tuesday. Copyright 2021 Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed. AKRON, Ohio - The city of Akron and Summit County have partnered to create the Complete Count Committee, an effort designed to ensure everyone in Summit County is counted in the 2020 Census. The Complete Count Committee, whose members represent the government, business and nonprofit sectors, will roll out initiatives in stages over the next two years to all populations in Summit County, from immigrants to homeless residents, to encourage all residents to be counted during the census. We want to count everybody, Mayor Dan Horrigan said. When you have a growing immigrant community theres a lot of institutional fear of government and we want to make sure they dont feel that. At a kick-off on Friday at the Akron Civic Theatre, Horrigan and County Executive Ilene Shapiro were joined by state and local elected officials. State Reps. Emelia Sykes and Tavia Galonski; Akron City Council President Margo Sommerville; and Malcolm Costa, president & CEO of Community Action Akron Summit, a nonprofit serving low-income Summit County residents, all weighed in on the importance of an accurate census. Information collected through the census is used to guide distribution of more than $675 billion in federal funding each year, and is used to draw legislative districts, Shapiro said. In 2020, residents can be counted by responding in multiple languages online, by phone, or by mail, and census workers will also go door-to-door. The results of that important work will have an immense influence on our community, she said. According to a joint news release, the county and the city will share the cost of hiring a coordinator who will lead the committees activities. In December, U.S. Census Bureau officials will provide training for the committee and early next year, the committee will begin rolling out initiatives each month through 2020, said Greta Johnson, assistant chief of staff for the executives office. The goal is to disseminate accurate information about the census and dispel reservations residents might have about providing information to the census, officials said. For more information about the 2020 census and about the Complete Count Committee, visit the website. Want more Akron news? Sign up for cleveland.coms Rubber City Daily, an email newsletter delivered at 5:30 a.m. Monday through Friday. AKRON, Ohio - The Victim Assistance Program, a nonprofit that works with crime victims and people who have suffered trauma, will consolidate its staff through a move into downtown Akron. Victim Assistance's move from 150 Furnace St., its home for 46 years, to the third floor of the Delaware Building at 137 S. Main St. is planned for early January and comes at an opportune time for the nonprofit, and the community. Through a change in the 2018 Ohio Revised Code, Victim Assistance was recently designated the central organization in Summit County to work at public and private schools during emergencies to address mental health needs. Victim Assistance will work under the direction of the Emergency Management Agency of Summit County during natural disasters, civil unrest and situations involving mass casualties. To fulfill that role, the organization will soon reach out to the community for volunteers to create a crisis response team. About 100 residents will receive ongoing training to to assist victims during crises, said Victim Assistance Director of Advancement Kelly Kaufman. The crisis response team will be on call, and work with therapy dogs, such as those in Akron Children's Hospitals' Doggy Brigade, during critical incidents. The new 10,000 square-foot space will offer Victim Assistance the room to build and train that team, Kaufman said. For the first time since its inception, Victim Assistance will have its own training facilities, which will be named for the organization's founder: the Dr. Bob Denton Training Room. The training room will house the group's Summit Victim Assistance Academy, which will focus on education and training for the community, staff training and customized training for professional groups and victim advocates from around the country. The new space also will offer four dedicated areas for victims and advocate to meet, increasing confidentiality, Kaufman said. Security will be enhanced in the new location through video surveillance, key-card access, and controlled entrances and exits for visitors. The space is accessible to the disabled and situated on the bus line, making it more convenient for clients. It also is within walking distance of the Summit County Court of Common Pleas, Akron Municipal Court and the Akron Police Department, she said. "It's a beautiful space," Kaufman said. "It's for helping people, and this will allow us to help more people and help people more effectively. It's great seeing how this vision is coming to life." The Main Street offices also will bring together most of the more than 30 people employed by Victim Assistance, although some representatives will remain on site at the Akron Police Department and the Akron and Stow municipal buildings, Kaufman said. Since its launch in 1972, Victim Assistance has provided crisis intervention, advocacy and education in Summit County from 50 Furnace St. In 2017, Victim Assistance reports it provided more than 6,000 unique services to residents and employees across Summit County by phone, on site or from one of its five satellite offices. The organization operates 24/7 through its hotline, as well as through new texting services. 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. BEREA, Ohio -- Harassing communication, Greenfield Court: A Greenfield resident drove to the police station at about 11:50 p.m. Oct. 24 and said she had received a harassing letter, apparently from a neighbor. The letter said: "Neighbor, you & yours has managed to DeValue (sic) the whole street. Where were you as an adult when the circus was going on? You are not a positive influence on your family or your neighbors. What in the world are you thinking? or not?" The resident said several neighbors have been unkind to her and her family. She said a man in his late 40s or early 50s had threatened to shoot her dog. One neighbor was upset with the resident because of noise her young children made in the morning. The resident said she wanted to report the letter in case the situation escalated. Operating a vehicle under the influence-obstructing official business, Sheldon Road: A North Olmsted woman, 24, was arrested at about 4 a.m. Oct. 19 after she abandoned her Honda Civic along railroad tracks near Sheldon, then walked to a nearby Speedway for a doughnut. The car was left running and in drive. It wasn't moving because it was stuck on a concrete barrier. Police identified the driver through personal possessions in the car. While investigating the car, police were called to Speedway on North Rocky River Drive regarding a drunk woman. When police arrived, they saw the woman, who was the driver of the Civic, eating a doughnut in the store. Police asked the woman why she had abandoned her car. She was incoherent at first. Later, she said she had left a bar after drinking alcohol and had dropped off a friend. She believed a man from the bar was following her, so she left her car to look for help, she said. At the police station, the woman dropped to the floor and began yelling, spitting and rolling around. She was taken to Southwest General Health Center in Middleburg Heights for a psychological evaluation. Theft, West Bagley Road: Police are looking for two men who stole an iPhone XS Max at about 6:30 p.m. Oct. 23 from T-Mobile, 417 W. Bagley. Store workers said the two men walked into the store and talked to each other. Then one of the men approached a worker and expressed interest in changing his phone provider to T-Mobile. Meanwhile, the second man walked around the store, picking up phones connected to security displays. The second man then stepped toward the first man, shook his hand, walked around the store a few times and left. The first man left shortly afterward. About 20 minutes later, a T-Mobile worker noticed that a phone was missing. Workers said they had accidentally left a key to the security display in the display. Police searched the area but saw no one. A worker was able to identify the first man out of a photo lineup. Police were still trying to contact the man as of Oct. 23. Damaging public property, Riveredge Parkway: A Berea man, 22, faces criminal damaging charges after he etched his name in wet cement on a Riveredge sidewalk. Police saw the etched name at about 10 a.m. Oct. 24. They checked electronic criminal files, but the name did not come up. Then they searched YouTube and found a video by a rap artist with the same name as the one on the sidewalk. One of the rap artist's videos was shot in Dora Lee Payne Park off Riveredge. Police checked a vehicle parked illegally on the grass near the defaced sidewalk. The license plate belonged to a 52-year-old Riveredge woman, and had been used by a 22-year-old Riveredge man who was related to the woman. Photos of the Riveredge man and the rap artist matched. Operating a vehicle under the influence, Pulaski Street: A Berea man, 67, was arrested at about 12:30 a.m. Oct. 19 after police saw his Ford Taurus weaving and traveling slowly on North Rocky River Drive. Police stopped the car after it turned onto Pulaski. The man smelled like alcohol and he admitted drinking. He failed field sobriety tests. BROOK PARK, Ohio -- Disorderly conduct, Pickway Drive: A Pickway Drive woman, 36, was arrested at about 11:45 p.m. Oct. 10 after she blasted her garage radio at an unreasonable level, refused to turn it down and yelled at police. A neighbor had called police about the loud music. The woman was drunk. When police told the woman to reduce the volume, she said: "You are not going to tell me what to do on my property. Back off. Now." Police found a piece of wood with nails sticking out of it on the woman's property. Offensive contact, Brookpark Road: A 64-year-old Toledo man called police at about 12:45 p.m. Sept. 4 and said that a male driver from a local hotel had inappropriately touched his leg in a van outside Speedway, 17600 Brookpark. The man was a hotel guest. He said the driver used a napkin to brush crumbs off his lap. The driver said he only handed the napkin to the man. Police took statements from both men. Disorderly conduct, Siegler Drive: Someone called police at about 3:15 a.m. Oct. 7 and reported that a 42-year-old Sheffield Lake man and a 40-year-old Brook Park man were fighting in a driveway. One of the men was the ex-husband of the other man's wife. Possession of narcotic equipment, Holland Road: A North Ridgeville man, 37, was cited at about 9:30 a.m. Oct. 9 after police caught him with drug-abuse instruments, including a syringe, spoon and glass pipe. The man's coworker said he was driving the man to work when the man begged for a ride to Cleveland so that he could buy heroin. The coworker told the man to get out of his pickup truck, but the man refused. The coworker drove the man to the police station and reported the incident to police. Sudden illness, Snow Road: An Elyria man, 43, was arrested at about 3:30 p.m. Oct. 12 after police saw him driving an unsafe vehicle on Snow. Police discovered that the man was wanted in North Olmsted. He started complaining of chest pains and shortness of breath, so paramedics transported him to Southwest General Health Center in Middleburg Heights. Operating a vehicle under the influence, Brookpark Road: A Parma Heights woman, 28, was arrested at about 2:15 a.m. Oct. 14 after police saw her vehicle speeding and weaving on Brookpark near Holy Cross Cemetery. She was drunk. Theft, Westbrook Drive: Forty-two oxycodone tablets were stolen between 10:30 a.m. and 7 p.m. Oct. 11 from a hospice patient living on Westbrook. There were no signs of a break-in. Police suspect a family member struggling with drug addiction. AKRON -- FirstEnergy Corp Thursday said it lost $512 million, or $1.02 per share during the third quarter, mostly because of special charges associated with its settlement with bankrupt subsidiaries FirstEnergy Solutions and the FirstEnergy Nuclear Operating Co. Bankruptcy Judge Alan Koschik indicated at the conclusion of a Sept. 25 hearing that he would approve the settlement over the objections of environmental groups that argued FirstEnergy should remain financially responsible for the decommissioning of the companys nuclear reactors. The judge issued a written order on Sept. 26. Environmental groups vowed to appeal. Under that settlement, FirstEnergy agreed to make a cash payment of $225 million to FES and issue $628 million in notes for the subsidiary that will mature on Dec. 31, 2022. These are funds that would go to the FES estate, meaning money for its many creditors. FirstEnergy also agreed to continue providing back office "shared services" for its subsidiary and agreed to credit FES $112.5 million for these services through the end of the year. The settlement eliminated the threat of litigation between FES and its parent, as well as litigation brought by creditors. In a teleconference Friday morning, Charles Jones, CEO, told analysts that the company expects operating earnings to grow by 6 to 8 percent per year in the immediate future. Operating earnings do not include special items such as the payout to FES accounted for it the third quarter report. FirstEnergys third quarter financial report to investors, issued late Thursday, indicated FirstEnergys total sale revenues during the July-through-September timeframe were $3.1 billion, up slightly from a year ago due to hotter summer weather and an upturn in steel making and shale gas production and purification. For the July-August-September period a year ago, the company reported profits of $396 million, or 89 cents per share, on revenues of $2.9 billion. Our court-approved settlement agreement in the FES and FENOC bankruptcy proceedings is a key step in our exit from competitive generation, Jones said in a prepared statement accompanying the financial report. We also took important steps during the quarter to align our organization and cost structure to efficiently and effectively support our regulated business going forward. Jones told analysts Friday morning that FirstEnergy is now operating as a fully regulated company with predictable earnings that will continue to grow. A recording of the discussion is now available on the investor section of the companys website. Corrected by the author to correct an error regarding the bankruptcy courts order approving the agreement legally separating FirstEnergy Solutions and FirstEnergy Nuclear Operating Co. from FirstEnergy. CLEVELAND, Ohio Mayor Frank Jacksons administration suspended an unnamed city official following a security incident Thursday at Cleveland Hopkins International Airport. The incident involved two city officials, one of whom is now out of town, the Jackson administration said in a news release. Dan Williams, a spokesman for the mayor, would not reveal the names of the two officials. Nor did he provide details of what the incident involved. A spokeswoman for the airport declined comment, saying all information would be released through the mayors office. A spokeswoman for the Transportation Security Administration, which screens passengers and baggage at the airport, said TSA takes all violations of security protocols seriously. We will be working with the city and the airport to complete the investigation, she said. TSA did not divulge the names of either city official. Security and access to areas of the airport, though, is highly controlled. That means that even if airport staff have security clearance, they could not, for example, simply escort people around TSA security. In its statement, the administration said security clearances for the suspended official were revoked in accordance with airport and TSA policies. The second official may also face discipline. That persons status will be addressed upon returning to Cleveland. In the meantime, an investigation into the incident continues. CLEVELAND, Ohio -- A 10-year-old boy has been arrested in connection with the fatal shooting of his stepmother, police said. The boy was taken into custody in connection with the fatal shooting Shavonne Willis, 36, on Sept. 26 on East 121st Street near Luke Avenue, in the Mount Pleasant neighborhood. Willis was shot multiple times and died after an ambulance took her to University Hospitals, police said. The stepson was at the scene that day and was unharmed, police said at the time. The boys father brought him to the police station, where he was taken into custody. He is being held at the Cuyahoga County Juvenile Detention Center. Investigators initially said they were searching for a suspect in his 30s. They have not provided any information about what led to the boys arrest. This is a developing story that will be updated. To comment on this story, visit Fridays crime and courts comments page. CANTON, Ohio -- The Stark County sheriffs deputies arrested a man Friday in connection to a Thursday night killing in Waynesburg, Sheriff George Maier said. Gage Wood, 19, of Waynesburg, faces a first-degree felony charge of murder, Stark County Court of Common Pleas records show. Deputies responded about 10 p.m. Thursday to a shooting at Woods home on the 9100 block of James Street Southeast in Waynesburg village in Sandy Township, Maier said. When deputies arrived they found Jerry Hendershott, Jr., 32, of Carrollton, with a single gunshot wound. Hendershott died at the scene, Maier said. Deputies learned at the scene that Wood shot the victim one time and fled the scene, Maier said. Wood was later found in Malvern, Ohio, arrested and booked into the Stark County Jail. Canton Municipal Court Judge John A. Poulous set Woods bond Friday at $2 million. Wood also had a warrant for his arrest through the Stark County Sheriffs Office on a charge of obstructing official business, court records show. Wood is set to appear for status and preliminary hearings Wednesday and Thursday, respectively, court records show. The homicide remains under investigation, Maier said. Anyone with information is asked to call the Stark County Sheriffs Office at 330-430-3800. To comment on this story, visit Fridays crime and courts comment section. CLEVELAND, Ohio A Cleveland man is accused of shooting another man in both legs during a robbery in the citys Glenville neighborhood. DYhonqua J. Evans, 26, is charged with felonious assault in a Sept. 22 shooting on East 128th Street near Shaw Avenue, according to court records. Evans is not in custody but a warrant was issued Wednesday for his arrest. The man hurt in the shooting said he had seen Evans before but only knew by the name Quay, according to a police report. The man and his girlfriend drove to the neighborhood to meet their friends. When they arrived they saw Quay across the street. Quay walked over to their car and pointed a handgun at the mans head, the police report says. He told the man to empty his pockets and threatened to shoot him, the police report says. The man asked Quay to calm down, but Quay started shooting at the man, the police report says. They got out of the car and ran away as Quay continued shooting. One shot hit the man in the right calf and another hit him in the left thigh, the police report says. The man and his girlfriend ran to a nearby house and banged on the door. They got back into their car and drove to St. Vincent Charity Hospital before a resident called 911. Cleveland police officers found a trail of bleed from the residents home to the street. They soon learned the girlfriend drove the man to the hospital. The man and his girlfriend believed their cellphones had been stolen from the car, but investigators found the mans cellphone on the ground where the shooting occurred, the police report says. The mans wallet, a pair of Gucci shoes, and two Gucci belts were also missing. The man was later transferred to MetroHealth for treatment. Evans criminal history includes a 2017 conviction for assault. A Cuyahoga County judge sentenced him to two years on probation, according to court records. To comment on this story, visit Fridays crime and courts comments page. CLEVELAND, Ohio Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein appeared in Cleveland Friday alongside other state and federal law enforcement to formally announce a long-talked about strike force in the city to combat drug and violent crime. The strike force will consist of the U.S. Attorneys Office, Cleveland police, the Cuyahoga County Prosecutors Office, the FBI, DEA, IRS, and many other state and federal organizations. Many of the key participants will be housed in the same office. The mission of the more than 200 members is to investigate and prosecute violent gangs, along with that intersection of drugs either being made in Ohio or coming here from inside or outside the country. Other investigators and task forces handle similar cases, but officials said this group will benefit from more collaboration under the same roof. When asked at a news conference how the strike force will affect Cleveland, U.S. Attorney Justin Herdman said point-blank that it will reduce violent crime and drug overdose deaths. Rosenstein said that whatever we need to work our way up the chain to dismantle cartels and identify the kingpins, we have the resources to do that." Cleveland Mayor Frank Jackson and about two dozen law enforcement officials stood behind Rosenstein as he made his comments. Rosenstein did not attend the question-and-answer session led by Herdman immediately after the news conference. The deputy attorney general has almost become a household name due to his oversight of a special counsel probe into President Donald Trumps campaign and Russian interference in the 2016 election. However, he mostly stuck to the stated topic of the news conference. He did make a few brief comments about his travels to Columbus on Thursday and a Florida man charged with sending bombs to Democratic politicians and supporters. He said the strike force, which will receive Justice Department money under its Organized Crime Drug Enforcement Task Force program, will make Cleveland-area law enforcement better equipped than ever to take drug traffickers off our streets. The strike force has been in the works for some time. Then-acting U.S. Attorney David Sierleja told cleveland.com in May 2017 that his office applied for the designation with the Justice Department. Details of the strike force are still being ironed out. Herdman, who will chair the strike forces executive council, said officials have not yet determined how much money the Justice Department would send to pay for the operation or how many representatives from state and federal law enforcement would be in the same place. They are also still looking for a home base for the strike force. All of that is expected to be sorted out by mid-2019, according to a news release. Herdman said that agencies who signed up are already working together and sharing intelligence, and that investigators have already identified targets of criminal probes. CLEVELAND, Ohio - Cuyahoga Countys deputy chief information officer, whose $15,000 bonus became a source of controversy earlier this year, quit his $153,000-a-year job Thursday, a county spokeswoman said. James Hay was not immediately available for comment about his abrupt departure 19 months after being hired, but spokeswoman Mary Louise Madigan said he resigned for personal reasons. Hay is named in some of 14 subpoenas served on the county by public corruption investigators, who are looking into the countys troubled Information Technology Department. A subpoena issued in March sought written communications and other documents in the control of chief talent officer Doug Dykes reflecting any employment offers, moving expenses or bonuses made to Jim Hay or paid to Jim Hay. A subpoena issued in May sought all emails contained within the email accounts of Hay and other county employees, Scot Rourke, Emily McNeeley, Cindi Nappi, Debbie Davtovich, and Mike Young. Last month, Ohio Auditor Dave Yost requested emails from County Executive Armond Budish related to compensation and/or benefits for Hay. Yost took the unusual step of seeking the emails through a civil subpoena, a practice his office has said it has done in similar cases but has yet to provide cleveland.com with an example. At the time, Budish released a statement saying he believed Yost was interested in who authorized the bonus. "It is my understanding that the auditor is looking at whether I personally authorized the $15,000.00 bonus payment to James Hay. We informed the auditor's staff that I was not involved," Budish said in the statement. Bonuses and perks awarded by the Budish administration have been a source of controversy, as the county's internal auditor and the county prosecutor have concluded that the Budish administration had improperly awarded them. Hay has played a major role in the countys $25 million Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) project that seeks to tie together all county government computers and IT systems. The project has faced numerous delays, in some cases caused by a lack of central oversight and staff changes. County council this week approved an additional $3.2 million for the ERP to help cover costs associated with delays in its implementation. A council consultant said the project, which was supposed to be completed in two years, will require another year to finish. CLEVELAND, Ohio -- Pipe Bombs being sent to frequent targets and critics of President Trump is an act of domestic terror resulting from the toxic environment Trump has fomented. Divisive, Detonator Donald is an ignitor, not a uniter. To date, the pipe bomb hit list includes former Presidents Bill Clinton and Barack Obama, former Vice President Joe Biden (who was targeted twice) former First Lady and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, Rep Maxine Waters, Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz, former CIA Director John Brennan, former Attorney General Eric Holder, Robert DeNiro, George Soros and CNN. If the bombs were designed and intended to detonate, it would be the largest mass assassination attempt in the United States since John Wilkes Booth and his co-conspirators targeted President Abraham Lincoln and his cabinet. The gravity of the domestic terrorist attack on our Democracy has been lost on Commander-in-Chief Trump, his staff and state news network, Fox. Trump has yet to even reach out to his fellow presidents, Clinton and Obama, former Vice President Biden, or his former opponent Hillary Clinton. Reading from a monitor, the President had initially made a perfunctory statement denouncing political violence and calling for civility and unity. But Trump quickly proved his statement was disingenuous. At a later campaign rally, Trump joked about his acting nicer and more civil than he normally would. He was soon back to blaming a mutual target of the pipe bomber, like the press. It is at his campaign rallies where Trump has most often used incendiary, reckless rhetoric, poisoning the political climate to such an extent that his rhetorical targets are now being targeted with pipe bombs. Just prior to the pipe bombs being discovered, Trump was at rally cheering a reporter having been body-slammed by a Republican Congressmen. Trump's record of making inflammatory comments, encouraging incivility and physical violence is well documented. Up until now, history has shown national and international crisis impacting the U.S. usually has brought out the best in presidents. They have risen to the occasion, not lowered the office of the presidency. They've been able to unify the country, regardless of what their own job approval rating was. A good example of that was President George W. Bush's statement at ground zero following the 9/11 terror attack. The mailing of pipe bombs is another terror attack, regardless of if the sender is an angry right-winger or left-winger, regardless of if the bombs were intended to detonate or were dummies. In response to the attack, President Trump has been unaccountable for his own responsibility in fueling it. He's been derelict in his duty to make a sincere attempt to unify the country. Instead of being a leader, Trump has been loathsome. Contrast how Trump and his rally supporters responded to the attacks and how Joe Biden responded. Trump blamed the media. His rally attendees shouted "Lock Her Up" and "CNN Sucks." Biden, who was sent two pipe bombs, expressed concern for the safety of postal workers. Which one is acting like a President should, Trump or Biden? OREGON, Ohio -- Three police officers broke a glass panel in the door of a home in order to rescue an elderly woman who had been injured after falling. It's what the officers did after helping the woman that is gaining them extra praise. In a post on Facebook, Oregon Assistant Police Chief Paul Magdich details how Sgt. Ed Depinet and officers Ted Moore and Scott Wells above and beyond. All three responded to the woman's home after she hadn't been seen in four days. No one answered the door, so Wells decided to break a door window in order to get inside, Magdich says. The officers found the woman on the floor, semi-conscious, and called an ambulance for help. One medical workers arrived, the officers found a vacuum and cleaned up the glass from the broken window. Wells, who does home improvement as a side job, measured the glass and ordered a replacement piece cut to its dimensions. The department paid for the new glass, Depinet picked it up and Wells installed it. "Never even entered my mind that it's beyond the call of duty, I guess," Wells tells WTOL Channel 11. "That's not a phrase I think about a lot. We just show up and we do our jobs every day." Oregon is a suburb of Toledo in Northwest Ohio. To comment on this story, visit the crime and courts comments page. COLUMBUS, Ohio -- Federal agents arrested an Ohio man at John Glenn International Airport, saying he was planning to travel to Afghanistan so he could join ISIS. Naser Almadaoji, 19, an Iraqi-born naturalized U.S. citizen who lives in Beavercreek, Ohio, planned to travel to Astana, Kazakhstan, according to a news release from the U.S. Department of Justice. He then hoped to be smuggled into Afghanistan so that he could receive military training from ISIS, officials say. The release says Almadaoji traveled to Egypt and Jordan in February. In August, he began communicating online with a person he thought was connected with ISIS and said he tried to join a terrorist group during his earlier trip. Almadaoji is accused of pledging allegiance to ISIS and of telling a second contact that he planned to cause the collapse of the United States by starting a conflict between the United States Government and anti-government militias. If found guilty of attempting to provide material support and resources to a foreign terrorist organization, Almadaoji could be sentenced to up to 20 years in prison. To comment on this story, visit Thursday's crime and courts comments page. SPRINGBORO, Ohio -- A 17-year-old boy apparently determined to cheat on a test broke into his high school twice during the early-morning hours Thursday, according to reports. The boy was discovered in Springboro High School both times by custodians and ushered out, first around 1:15 a.m. and again at 2 a.m., WLWT Channel 5 reports. School staff wasn't notified until after 6 a.m., however, and the school was closed for the day because of security concerns, WCPO Channel 9 reports. Police did a sweep of the building and all of the locks were changed. "You had a student who was in the building, unattended, and was discovered, and we don't know what took place at that time. So, our immediate concern is the safety for our students and our staff," Scott Marshall, Springboro communications coordinator, tells WLWT. It was later learned the boy had stolen a key from a school staff member to gain entry into the building, WHIO Channel 7 reports. He told police his plan was to cheat on a test. The teen has been charged with breaking and entering, inducing panic, theft and criminal trespassing, reports say. Springboro is located in southwest Ohio, just south of Dayton. To comment on this story, visit Thursday's crime and courts comments page. WASHINGTON (AP) Federal authorities arrested a man in Florida on Friday in connection with the mail-bomb scare that widened to 12 suspicious packages, the Justice Department said. Law enforcement officers were seen on television examining a white van, its windows covered with an assortment of stickers, in the city of Plantation. They covered the vehicle with a blue tarp. The name of the man detained in connection with the pipe bomb scare is Cesar Sayoc, 56, of Aventura, Florida, according to law enforcement officials. Four officials familiar with the investigation identified the man to The Associated Press. They spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to discuss the matter on the record. It was not clear whether Sayoc had been formally charged in the rash of devices addressed in recent days to Democratic figures including former President Barack Obama, former Vice President Joe Biden and Hillary Clinton. According to court and other public records, Cesar Alteri Sayoc Jr., 56, has a lengthy criminal and court record in Florida. He has been convicted on theft, stolen property and traffic charges and in 2002 on a threat to "throw, place, project or discharge any destructive device." Sayoc is in custody in Florida in the mail bombs sent to prominent Democrats. He was born in New York. Sayoc was sentenced in August 2002 for threatening to throw a bomb in a conversation with a Florida utility representative, according to Ronald Lowy, a Miami attorney who represented him. Dade County court records showed Sayoc served a year's probation after a judge signed a discharge certificate in November 2002. Lowy told The Associated Press that Sayoc "made a verbal threat when he was frustrated at a lack of service." Lowy said Sayoc showed no ability at the time to back up his threat with bomb-making expertise. The lawyer said Sayoc was a bodybuilder then, and displayed no political leanings except for plastering a vehicle he owned with Native American signs. Court records also show that Sayoc was convicted in the 1990s in Broward County on grand theft and stolen property charges and in 2004 on a felony charge of fraudulent refunds and misdemeanor of tampering with physical evidence. The development came amid a coast-to-coast manhunt for the person responsible for a series of explosive devices addressed to Democrats including former President Barack Obama, former Vice President Joe Biden and Hillary Clinton. Law enforcement officials said they had intercepted a dozen packages in states across the country. None had exploded, and it wasn't immediately clear if they were intended to cause physical harm or simply sow fear and anxiety. Earlier Friday, authorities said suspicious packages addressed to New Jersey Sen. Cory Booker and former National Intelligence Director James Clapper both similar to those containing pipe bombs sent to other prominent critics of President Donald Trump had been intercepted. The discoveries making 12 so far further spurred a coast-to-coast investigation, as officials scrambled to locate a culprit and possible motive amid questions about whether new packages were being sent or simply surfacing after a period in mail system. The devices have targeted well-known Democrats including former President Barack Obama, former Vice President Joe Biden, Hillary Clinton and former Attorney General Eric Holder. The FBI said the package to Booker was intercepted in Florida. The one discovered at a Manhattan postal facility was addressed to Clapper at CNN's address. An earlier package had been sent to former Obama CIA Director John Brennan via CNN in New York. Attorney General Jeff Sessions said Friday the Justice Department was dedicating every available resource to the investigation "and I can tell you this: We will find the person or persons responsible. We will bring them to justice." Trump, on the other hand, complained that "this 'bomb' stuff" was taking attention away from the upcoming election and said critics were wrongly blaming him and his heated rhetoric. Investigators were analyzing the innards of the crude devices to reveal whether they were intended to detonate or simply sow fear just before Election Day. Law enforcement officials told The Associated Press that the devices, containing timers and batteries, were not rigged to explode upon opening. But they were uncertain whether the devices were poorly designed or never intended to cause physical harm. Homeland Security Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen, in an interview Thursday with Fox News Channel, acknowledged that some of packages originated in Florida. One official told AP that investigators are homing in on a postal facility in Opa-locka, Florida, where they believe some packages originated. The package addressed to Booker was found during an oversight search of that facility, according to a law enforcement official. The officials spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to discuss the ongoing investigation by name Most of those targeted were past or present U.S. officials, but one was sent to actor Robert De Niro and billionaire George Soros. The bombs have been sent across the country - from New York, Delaware and Washington, D.C., to Florida and California, where Rep. Maxine Waters was targeted. They bore the return address of Florida Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz, the former chairwoman of the Democratic National Committee. The common thread among the bomb targets was obvious: their critical words for Trump and his frequent, harsher criticism in return. Trump claimed Friday he was being blamed for the mail bombs, complaining in a tweet sent before dawn: "Funny how lowly rated CNN, and others, can criticize me at will, even blaming me for the current spate of Bombs and ridiculously comparing this to September 11th and the Oklahoma City bombing, yet when I criticize them they go wild and scream, 'it's just not Presidential!'" The package to Clapper was addressed to him at CNN's Midtown Manhattan address. Clapper, a frequent Trump critic, told CNN that he was not surprised he was targeted and that he considered the actions "definitely domestic terrorism." Jeff Zucker, the president of CNN Worldwide, said in a note to staff that all mail to CNN domestic offices was being screened at off-site facilities. He said there was no imminent danger to the Time Warner Center, where CNN's New York office is located. At a press conference Thursday, officials in New York would not discuss possible motives or details on how the packages found their way into the postal system. Nor would they say why the packages hadn't detonated, but they stressed they were still treating them as "live devices." The devices were packaged in manila envelopes and carried U.S. postage stamps. They were being examined by technicians at the FBI's forensic lab in Quantico, Virginia. The packages stoked nationwide tensions ahead of the Nov. 6 election to determine control of Congress a campaign both major political parties have described in near-apocalyptic terms. Politicians from both parties used the threats to decry a toxic political climate and lay blame. Trump, in a tweet Thursday, blamed the "Mainstream Media" for the anger in society. Brennan responded, tweeting that Trump should "Stop blaming others. Look in the mirror." The bombs are about 6 inches (15 centimeters) long and packed with powder and broken glass, according to a law enforcement official who viewed X-ray images. The official said the devices were made from PVC pipe and covered with black tape. The first bomb discovered was delivered Monday to the suburban New York compound of Soros, a major contributor to Democratic causes. Soros has called Trump's presidency "dangerous." ___ Associated Press writers Laurie Kellman, Ken Thomas, Jill Colvin and Chad Day in Washington and Jim Mustian, Deepti Hajela, Tom Hays and Michael R. Sisak in New York contributed to this report. CLEVELAND, Ohio - The Cleveland school district and Say Yes to Education took another incremental step this week toward launching the college scholarship and student support program in the city. But many major questions still remain unresolved about raising money to pay for the scholarships, how support services will be delivered to students and which charter schools in the city will be part of the program. School district CEO Eric Gordon said he hopes these will be largely resolved before the end of the year so that scholarships will be available to this years high school seniors. I dont want to lose another year of opportunity for our kids," Gordon told the Cleveland school board recently. Gordon and some other education advocates in the city view the N.Y.-based program as a potential game-changer for Clevelands children and economic future. Say Yes helps cities target social and education supports to students to prepare them for college. The communities, under Say Yes guidance, then offer scholarships to cover all college tuition costs after other financial aid is used. But he and others involved in the lengthy negotiations wont commit to any deadline while multiple parties - the district, Say Yes , the city, Cuyahoga County, the Cleveland Teachers Union, philanthropic foundations and multiple service agencies - gradually work out how to cooperate on a plan. The Cleveland school board took the latest step by accepting this week a basic operating structure for Say Yes efforts that makes them separate from the district, county and city. That avoids the work being dependent on the whims of any future superintendent or mayor. Though the district will have a representative on a still-unformed operating committee, the committee will be independent, as will a separate board overseeing the scholarships. The county, city and Cleveland Teachers Union are expected to approve this structure soon. Matt Carroll, chief economic growth and opportunity officer for the county, said it would likely be approved next week or the week after. He said a vote of the County Council is not needed. CTU President David Quolke said the unions executive committee would look at the agreement at its November meeting. The agreement also calls for the national Say Yes organization to hire and pay the salary of a locally-based director. Say Yes has begun advertising the position. Their notion is that this person can only be an honest broker with all the agencies if they dont work for any one of us," Gordon told the board. Raising money for the scholarships is a major remaining hurdle. Though Say Yes will contribute $15 million toward launching the effort, that cant be used for scholarships and Cleveland must raise an endowment fund to cover them. Based on targets in Buffalo, N.Y., a slightly smaller city already in the Say Yes program, that would need $120 million or more. The fund would cover scholarships for 25 years before exhausting the money, Gordon told his board, and the city would then have to decide whether to continue them. Officials involved in Say Yes planning here wont release a donation target, say how much they have raised so far or even announce any large donations that could spark more donors. They will only say that fundraising is going well. Planning for how social services will be provided in schools - like health and dental clinics in other Say Yes cities - has just started preliminary work, Carroll said. The county would be a major part of this plan by diverting existing social services into schools. Were kind of pre- that stage," Carroll said. "That really hasnt taken place yet. And committees working on scholarships still havent decided who will be eligible for them. Graduates of Cleveland school district high schools will be eligible, but rules are not set for how many years a student must attend district schools to qualify. Gordon told the board that varying levels of scholarship based on years spent at district schools is likely. There is also no decision, Gordon said, on what charter school students will be included. That has not been a major issue in other Say Yes cities, but many more students attend charters here. Gordon told the board that charter schools sponsored by the district will likely be included, as will those that have decided to be formal partners wit the district. But they could be added later, after Say Yes launches for just district students, Gordon said, while stressing that nothing has been officially decided. He also stressed that charters in the program would have to be part of the data-sharing network Say Yes is creating that combines academic and social service data to better help students. Alan Rosskamm, CEO of the Breakthrough charter schools that have long partnered with the district, said he is glad that there is a path for charters to be included. He said he wants to learn more about how that will work. From our point of view, given the opportunity, we want to be very much included," Rosskamm said. CLEVELAND, Ohio -- Billionaires often donate a chunk of their money to charity, but New York Times correspondent Anand Giridharadas believes that doesnt help solve economic problems. The amount of money the wealthy must donate showcases the economic inequality at the root of social problems. Giridharadas wrote a book on the subject, called Winners Take All: The Elite Charade of Changing the World." He is scheduled to discuss his thoughts on big philanthropy Friday at the City Club of Cleveland. Watch live in the video viewer at the top of this post at 12:30 p.m. Giridharadas insists that wealthy Americans donate large sums of money, but also reap massive tax breaks. Giridharadas, in an interview with New York Magazine, said those taxes could have been used to subsidize government and social programs. In that interview, he also claims the image of wealthy, benevolent liberal business owners think Bill and Melinda Gates or Mark Zuckerberg could have paved the way for Donald Trumps election to the presidency. By promulgating pseudo-change all these years, they staved off actual reform," he told New York Magazine. "It is certainly possible to imagine that if wed actually reformed trade and education and gone after the opioid crisis, Trump would not have been president. CLEVELAND, Ohio -- At this moment, many Republican officials are reluctant to publicly break with President Donald Trump, even when they may disagree with him. But that doesn't mean all Republicans are in lock-step with every move he makes, said Findlay Mayor Lydia Mihalik. "I just think we are in a different era of politics, and unfortunately, we are hesitant to be vocal about when we disagree with those in our own party because we're concerned about what impact that could potentially have on a re-election," Mihalik said in a recent podcast interview. "Or, it can just make our life miserable." Mihalik is this week's guest on Ohio Matters, cleveland.com's politics podcast. Each week, political reporters Andrew Tobias and Seth Richardson bring you interviews with Ohio's top political players and elections experts. Mihalik was elected mayor of Findlay, a Northwest Ohio city of about 41,000 people, in 2011 when she was 30. While she isn't well-known outside of Findlay, Mihalik now 38, is viewed as a rising star within Ohio Republican circles. She was considered for an appointment to the Ohio Senate earlier this year -- she declined to seek it -- and also was on the short list for multiple Republican governor campaigns as a possible lieutenant governor pick. She's raised her profile through her work with the Ohio Mayors Alliance, which has lobbied state government on behalf of local governments, and a national equivalent, the U.S. Conference of Mayors. She attracted wider attention a couple of times this year. First, in February when she opposed an activist group's legal threats over a mural containing a Bible verse in City Hall. (The mural is still there.) And second in June, when she traveled to the U.S.-Mexico border, along with about a dozen other U.S. mayors, to protest the Trump administration's policy of separating children from parents suspected of entering the country illegally. "I definitely recognized that going to the border... could have an impact on me," said Mihalik, who came to support Trump after supporting Gov. John Kasich earlier in the 2016 election. "But I was pleasantly surprised that 90 percent of the population that stood up for the right to have to have that mural... stood up for me to go to the border to advocate on behalf of children." Mihalik also discussed: - Ohio Gov. John Kasich's cuts to local government funding and other changes she said have hurt cities, counties and townships - How young people can and should get involved politically - Whether moderates have a place in today's political world - What a conservative approach to running a city looks like - How Trump's economic policies have affected Findlay and similar towns - Rich Cordray's jump shot Past episodes of Ohio Matters can be found here and include Lt. Gov Mary Taylor, Attorney General Mike DeWine and former Ohio Gov. Ted Strickland. SOLON, Ohio -- Criminal mischief, Cochran Road: At 4:30 p.m. Oct. 18, a man, 27, who works at Great Lakes Cold Storage, 6531 Cochran Road, reported that his former girlfriend had gone to his place of employment and removed the license plates from his car. The woman also scratched profanities into the car's paint. Police charged the woman, 26, of Lorain, with criminal mischief. OVI, Pettibone Road: At 2:35 a.m. Oct. 21, police stopped a car that was being driven with one non-working headlight. The officer noticed the odor of alcohol on the person of the driver, a Maple Heights woman, 36. The woman failed field sobriety tests and refused to take a breath test. She was charged with OVI and was cited for the headlight violation. OVI, Harper Road: At 3:10 a.m. Oct. 23, an officer stopped a car that was seen being driven erratically on U.S. 422, then failing to stop when making a right turn onto Harper Road. The driver, a Willoughby man, 26, smelled of alcohol and had bloodshot eyes. The man failed field sobriety tests and was found to have a blood-alcohol content of .168, above the state minimum for drunk driving of .08. In the man's car, officers discovered 48 grams of marijuana and a digital scale. The man was charged with OVI, prohibited blood-alcohol content, a red light violation, a marked lanes violation, drug possession and drug paraphernalia possession. Auto theft, Kruse Drive: At 10:15 a.m. Oct. 23, a representative of Davis Auto Group BMW, 6135 Kruse Drive, reported that, on Aug. 26, the dealership sold a 2013 BMW valued at $15,076 with a $1,500 down payment and an arrangement for financing. The dealership later learned that the buyer had falsified his application, and the loan was denied. The dealership's attempts to contact the buyer were unsuccessful. Police spoke with the man whose name was used to buy the car. The man knew the person who used his identity. The suspect is a Bedford man, 34, who was found to be in the Cuyahoga County jail on a similar, but unrelated offense. The suspect faces further charges in connection with the car theft. Abusing harmful intoxicants, Harper Road: Just before 8 a.m. Oct. 24, a representative of Bardons and Oliver Inc., 5800 Harper Road, reported that a male employee was in the business' parking lot sitting in his car huffing on something. Officers spoke with the employee, a Parma man, 39, who admitted to huffing on a can of compressed air. He was charged with abusing harmful intoxicants, a fifth-degree felony. OVI, Cochran Road: At 1:15 a.m. Oct. 25, police stopped a car that was being driven 78 mph in a 60 mph zone on U.S. 422. Police could smell the odor of alcohol on the person of the driver, a Cleveland woman, 35. The woman failed field sobriety tests and was found to have a blood-alcohol content of .092. Police charged the woman with OVI, prohibited BAC, speeding, showing expired plates and possession of an open container of alcohol. If you would like to discuss the police blotter, please visit our crime and courts comments page. CLEVELAND, Ohio The Iceland experiment at Cleveland Hopkins International Airport hit severe turbulence this month, with the announced departure of one carrier and service reduction of another. Within 48 hours last week: * Wow Air, one of two Iceland-based carriers to operate out of Cleveland this year, announced it would pull out of Hopkins and two other midsized, Midwest airports, Cincinnati and St. Louis. Wow service ended in Cleveland on Oct. 26, less than six months after starting the route. * Icelandair, which also started flying from Cleveland in May, announced a delay to its scheduled return to Cleveland next year after a winter hiatus, pushing back resumption of service from March until May. Last weeks developments raise the question: Was it ill-advised from the start to pit two Iceland-based carriers against each other at one midsized U.S. airport? What, if anything, went wrong? Cleveland airport officials declined to be interviewed for this story. And airline officials have been tight-lipped about their decision-making process. But this much is known: These two airlines, fierce competitors, are both facing significant financial stress, based partly on relentless growth in recent years. Rising fuel costs havent helped. Theres this double whammy all this additional capacity, which pushes down airfares, and also rising costs, said Seth Kaplan, managing partner of Airline Weekly. Its not a good recipe for profits. First, a bit of back story: Cleveland airport officials didnt seek, specifically, to land both Icelandair and Wow at the same time. Yes, they were pursuing both airlines as well as others, as is customary when both decided on Cleveland at the same time (in back-to-back announcements, just a day apart, in August 2017.) Related: How Cleveland Hopkins International Airport scored two routes to Iceland in one week At the time, the airlines decisions to both fly from Cleveland raised some eyebrows among industry observers. Although the carriers have different business strategies, they both use Keflavik International Airport, outside Reykjavik, as a hub to get passengers to Europe. It was fair to wonder even back then: Are there enough travelers in Cleveland interested in traveling to or through Iceland to make both Wow and Icelandair succeed? Wow pulls out of Cleveland Looking at raw numbers alone, Clevelanders appeared to enthusiastically embrace both new airlines. In June, the first full month of operation, more than 12,000 travelers flew the new Cleveland routes more than 400 per day. Airline May June July August September Total Icelandair 2,156 5,566 5,510 4,663 4,062 21,957 Wow Air 5,171 6,451 6,010 5,890 5,431 28,953 Total 7,327 12,017 11,520 10,553 9,493 50,910 Raw numbers, however, dont tell the full story. Cleveland officials, in announcing Wows decision to pull out of the airport last week, said that they were told by the carrier that the yields on the route werent high enough that is, the amount of money made per passenger. Wow, like other ultra-low-cost carriers, offers very low basic fares, then banks on travelers paying fees for many extras checked luggage, advanced seat assignments, food and beverage, and more. Industry observers agree that this business model isnt as effective for longer routes as it is for flights from Cleveland to Orlando, for example. Wow is the problem, not Cleveland, said aviation consultant Michael Boyd, president of Denver-based Boyd Group International. Their model didnt work. Period. It has nothing to do with the Cleveland market at all. Wows decision to pull out from three cities at once all places that Wow officials had previously said were performing well suggests a miscalculation on the airlines part, said Boyd. When you pull out of three markets like that, some part of their expectations and their planning didnt work out. In an interview with USA Today last week, Wow founder and CEO Skuli Mogensen would not say that the three axed routes were losing money. Instead, he said there are other routes that could make the airline more money. The airline appears to be banking much of its future on new flights to New Delhi, India, which begin in early December. In the USA Today interview, Mogensen said that there is strong demand between India and larger markets in the North America. This is driving some of the shifts that we are now discussing regarding next year, Mogensen said, because we see the demand from Delhi is going more toward the larger destinations that were already servicing (in North America). Earlier this week, less than a week after cutting Cleveland, Cincinnati and St. Louis, Wow announced new service from Vancouver, starting in June. Mogensen said the airline is looking to expand throughout Asia, as well. Kaplan, with Airline Weekly, said that Wows new focus on India is a risky strategy. Ultra-low-cost carriers like Wow typically have a harder time making money on long-haul routes. Thats because these carriers, including U.S. airlines Spirit and Frontier, are best able to decrease overhead costs by keeping their planes in near continuous use something thats much harder to do with long-haul travel. Theres a reason, he said, that Ryanair, perhaps the worlds best-known ultra-low-cost carrier, doesnt yet fly outside of Europe. And high fuel prices make everything more risky, said Kaplan. I think [Wow] is just trying something else because what they were doing wasnt working that well. Wow has made headlines in Iceland recently because of ongoing financial struggles. The airline last month issued $70 million in bonds to help refinance debt and fund future operations. Icelandair faces its own problems Icelandair, meanwhile, is facing challenges of its own. The airlines CEO stepped down in August, after a disappointing second-quarter financial report. He blamed fierce competition, coupled with an inability to raise fares, as among the reasons for the airlines struggles. Both Wow and Icelandair have been on growing sprees in recent years. Icelandair launched five new U.S. cities in 2018, including Cleveland; Wow started four new U.S. routes. Icelandair was intending to fly year-round from Cleveland until as recently as last month, when it abruptly announced it was canceling its late fall and winter flights, starting at the end of October. At the time, it said it would resume Cleveland service in late March. Last week, it pushed its return date back until the middle of May. Kaplan said the winter months are lean for any transatlantic service. Airlines need a financial cushion to withstand the slow period. Icelandair, he said, doesnt have that margin for error. Several years ago, he said, the carrier probably could have ridden out the lean months of winter. They must have decided: We just cant. We just cant do it. The downside of going to seasonal only service, however, is that the airline may alienate higher-paying business travelers, whose work schedules dont necessarily correlate to popular vacation times. If you want to be relevant to the corporate travel community, you kind of have to always be there. I think they understand that, said Kaplan. Right now, they just have bad options and worse options. John Luteran, vice president of finance for the Greater Cleveland Partnership, said hes unsure how many business travelers supported Icelandair during its first five months of operation. Business interest should continue to grow as more become familiar with the product, he said. This will support Icelandair extending the months it operates in the future. Icelandairs decision not to operate over the winter months is understandable in this first year of operation. In an interview in September, Egill Almar Agustsson, Icelandairs director of network planning, said the carrier still believes Cleveland can be a year-round destination. You build a base, you build awareness, he said. And then throughout the next year and years, you push it into the winter until we can make it a year-round route. In the meantime, both Wow and Icelandair finish up their 2018 service in Cleveland this week. The Iceland era continues next spring, albeit in reduced form. A hired hand feeds a sow which recently gave birth to a new litter at the Grand Canal Pig Farm in Jiaxing, in China's Zhejiang province. A member of the Rockefeller family is trying to bring four pigs from China to the U.S., The New York Times reported on Thursday. Abby Rockefeller, a great-granddaughter of America's first billionaire, John D. Rockefeller Sr., paid $1,400 in October for the pigs that are now at a farm in suburban Beijing, the newspaper reported. Rockefeller who owns a farm in Hudson, New York hopes to use them as breeding stock to restore a variety of swine, according to the report. "I would very much like to get these remarkable, unusual pigs that are now rare," Rockefeller told The Times. "These pigs matter to me, and they would be a symbol if I can get them to the United States." The farm where she bought the pigs from was told by the Chinese government to close as the country shuts down small farms in favor of large commercial facilities, the New York Times added. Called the People's Pig of the Northeast, the purebred pigs originated from Heilongjiang province in China. They are known for their virility, fatty meat and strong endurance to cold weather. There are only about 2,000 of purebred pigs left in China, as Western hog breeds have overtaken the local agriculture scene, said the newspaper. Rockefeller will now have to negotiate with the provincial government in order to export the pigs as they are on the country's list of protected animals. Read about the People's Pigs in The New York Times. WATCH: These are America's five richest presidents A health brand consultancy called Arcadia Group has teamed up with Amazon to sell a new brand of consumer-focused medical devices, including blood pressure cuffs and glucose monitors, exclusively on the e-commerce giant's marketplace. The move is part of Amazon's recent push to sell more exclusive brands on its website. It also dovetails with Amazon's increasing interest in health and wellness products and services, although Arcadia initiated this project. "I approached Amazon last year as they began to expand their health-care footprint," Arcadia CEO Bob Guest said in a phone interview. "I felt that something that was missing from their offerings was products for people with diabetes and other chronic disease states." Arcadia on Thursday announced that the brand for Amazon is called Choice, and that it sells things like blood pressure cuffs and glucose monitors for millions of people with hypertension and diabetes. In the U.S. alone, about 30 million people have been diagnosed with diabetes, and 1 in 3 have high blood pressure. Guest said his company will retain the brand but sell the products only on Amazon. Arcadia Group has developed similar health brands for Walmart and other companies. (It is not to be confused with the British fashion company of the same name.) "Choice is exclusive to Amazon but is not an Amazon private-label brand," an Amazon spokesperson told CNBC, explaining that the brand owner is in charge of the design and production. Guest also says he's hoping to incorporate the devices his company sells with Amazon's Echo home speaker devices in coming months, which would help users manage their disease with Amazon's voice assistant Alexa. Amazon is ramping up the health and wellness team within Alexa but has not yet updated the device to be in compliance with federal privacy policies that govern how health information is stored and shared, called HIPAA. Arcadia's Choice website also has a page where it asks people to vote on which health products it should offer next, with options such as heart rate monitors and insulin pens. Amazon has been ramping up its private label and exclusive business in recent years, and now has over 120 brands that sell exclusively on its marketplace, according to TJI Research. SunTrust Robinson Humphrey estimates Amazon increased the number of those brands by more than nine-fold since early 2016 and is on pace to generate $25 billion in sales by 2022, up from $7.5 billion in 2018. Amazon has been giving some private label products more exposure across its site. They now show up high in search results under a separate box titled "Top Rated from Our Brands." In recent months, Amazon has also been testing a feature that promotes its own private label brands at the bottom of its competitors' product listings. The company has also started selling more medical products on its marketplace, including hospital supplies and over-the-counter consumer health products. It has a business team dedicated to selling medical supplies to physician practices and hospitals, a health team within Alexa, an internal health R&D team called Grand Challenges and a pharmacy group under PillPack, which it acquired in June. It's also working with J.P. Morgan and Berkshire Hathaway to rethink health care for its own workers. Athenahealth is confident it can reach a deal with one of several bidders within two weeks, sources told CNBC. The company has received several bids, the sources said, and there is confidence they will get a deal done. Athenahealth has been exploring options since an unsolicited bid by activist hedge fund Elliott Management earlier this year. CNBC reported last month that interest was coming from two private equity firms and a strategic buyer, but the bids were not then far off the stock price at $131. Athenahealth's stock has fallen over the last month along with a broader market downturn, and is currently around $123. The shares were up more than 3 percent Friday. That might leave some room for a deal premium. China and Japan on Friday pledged to forge closer ties as both countries stood together at an "historic turning point", signing a broad range of agreements including a $30 billion currency swap pact, amid rising trade tensions with Washington. The pacts were reached on Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe's three-day visit to Beijing as the two neighbors looked to carve out new areas of cooperation and seek new ways to promote trust, which has been fragile at times since diplomatic relations resumed in 1972. Japanese firms including big auto companies like Toyota hope to see normalized ties with China so they can compete with U.S. and European rivals, while Beijing expects Tokyo's endorsement of its ambitious Belt and Road program, an initiative that Chinese President Xi Jinping hopes will further boost trade and transport links with other countries. Abe said on Friday that bilateral relations with China are at an "historic turning point" and that he expects new possibilities in industries such as infrastructure, logistics, healthcare and finance. He has held "frank" discussions with Chinese Premier Li Keqiang since arriving in Beijing on Thursday and is expected to meet with Xi later on Friday in the first full-scale Sino-Japanese summit since 2011. Efforts in advancing China-Japan ties should "persevere unremittingly to prevent the appearance of new twists and turns" so that previous efforts did not go to waste, said Li at a joint briefing with Abe on Friday. "The Chinese side is willing to work with the Japanese side to return to a normal track, and maintain the stable, sustained and healthy development of bilateral relations," he said, adding that he had held candid discussions with Abe since his arrival on matters of mutual concerns. They reached consensus, Li said, that safeguarding long-term healthy and stable China-Japan ties was in accordance with the interests of both countries and the region and the world. "From competition to co-existence, Japan and China bilateral relations have entered a new phase. Hand in hand with Premier Li, I would like to advance our ties forward," Abe said at the briefing. Ahead of the briefing, China and Japan signed an agreement to prepare yearly plans for talks, dialogues and exchanges, as well as a pact to step up cooperation in innovation. They also agreed to boost cooperation in the securities markets including the listing of exchange-trade funds (ETFs), and facilitate smoother customs clearance. Cesar Sayoc Jr. was charged Friday with five federal crimes related to at least 14 mail bombs sent to former President Barack Obama, the home of Bill and Hillary Clinton, and to other leading Democrats and their fellow critics of President Donald Trump. A latent fingerprint linked to the Aventura, Florida, resident Sayoc was found on one of two packages addressed to Rep. Maxine Waters, D-California, said FBI Director Chris Wray. DNA that could be linked to the avid Trump supporter Sayoc was recovered from the same package addressed to Waters as well as on the explosive device in the package addresed to Obama, according to the criminal complaint filed against him in U.S. District Court in Manhattan. Wray warned that other explosive devices still might be in transit now. Wray urged people to report any suspicious packages. None of the 14 devices sent in the spree detonated. Each of the bombs contained a 6-inch length of PVC pipe, a small clock, a battery, wiring, and "energetic material," or explosives. U.S. Attorney General Jeff Sessions speaks at a news conference with FBI Director Christopher Wray (L) on the arrest of Cesar Sayoc on federal charges of sending at least a dozen parcel bombs to Democratic politicians and high-profile critics of President Trump, at the Justice Department in Washington, U.S., October 26, 2018. Jonathan Ernst | Reuters Sayoc, a 56-year-old old with a lengthy criminal record, was taken into custody Friday morning near his white van, which was covered in political messages supportive of Trump and images critical of CNN, the news agency that the president often accuses of airing "fake news." CNN's New York headquarters, and the rest of the Time Warner Center in Manhattan, was evacuated Wednesday after a bomb was found in a package addressed to former CIA chief John Brennan in care of CNN. The complaint filed against Sayoc charges him with with interstate transportation of an explosive, illegal mailing of explosives, threats against former presidents and certain other persons, threatening interstate communications and assaulting current and former federal officers. He faces up to 48 years in prison if convicted. The complaint noted that his Twitter feed, which uses the name Cesar Altieri, contains posts with misspellings consistent with those found on the bombs' packages, such as "Hilary," for Hillary Clinton, and "Shultz," for Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz, D-Fla. Each of the packages used to send the bombs had the name and address of ex-Democratic National Committee chairwoman Schultz as the purported sender of the packages. Senior law enforcement sources told NBC News that Sayoc denied conducting the bomb campaign when he was initially questioned by law enforcement. He was spoken to under the national security exception, which allows authorities to ask questions of a person without notifying them of their Miranda rights. Sources said that once Sayoc was read his Miranda rights, he said he wanted a lawyer and refused to answer questions. "This is a law-and-order administration," Attorney General Jeff Sessions said at a press conference after the arrest. "We will not tolerate such lawlessness, especially not political violence." The Republican stranglehold on the Senate is showing few signs of slipping. The GOP has a clear advantage in the fight for control of the chamber 11 days before the Nov. 6 contests. The party has a clear edge in its defense of the chamber even as it appears likely to lose its House majority. If Republicans can keep or expand their 51-49 Senate majority, it has huge stakes for President Donald Trump's continued push to confirm conservative judges. If Democrats take the House, keeping the Senate will also help the GOP curb the opposing party's policy priorities. Here is how top forecasters viewed the fight for the Senate as of Friday: Democrats need to take two net Senate seats to flip control of the Senate. The odds are stacked against them. Democrats and independents who caucus with them defend 26 seats this year, while Republicans only have to run in nine states the GOP holds. Prognosticators generally consider 10 races the most competitive: Arizona, Florida, Indiana, Missouri, Montana, Nevada, North Dakota Tennessee, Texas and West Virginia. Democrats hold six of those seats, while Republicans have four. Some experts also consider contests such as races in New Jersey and Mississippi competitive. Data website FiveThirtyEight's forecast gives the GOP about an 82 percent chance of holding the Senate, up from 79 percent a week ago. The nonpartisan Cook Political Report currently favors the GOP to unseat Democratic Sen. Heidi Heitkamp in North Dakota. It lists nine races as toss-ups: Democratic-held Florida, Indiana, Missouri, Montana and New Jersey, as well as GOP-held Arizona, Nevada, Tennessee and Texas. If Heitkamp loses, Democrats would have to pull off the tough task of defending their five toss-up seats while winning three of the four GOP-held toss-up seats. The nonpartisan Sabato's Crystal Ball has a slightly different outlook, but still paints a dim picture for Democrats. It also favors GOP Rep. Kevin Cramer to beat Heitkamp. It considers only five states Arizona, Florida, Indiana, Missouri and Nevada toss-ups. It puts Texas and Tennessee in the lean Republican category. A few developments late this week could alter the outlook in key races. Cook moved its rating on the New Jersey Senate race into its "toss-up" category. Corruption charges against Sen. Bob Menendez which ended in a mistrial have dogged the lawmaker as Republican ex-pharmaceutical executive Bob Hugin piles millions of his own dollars into the race. Still, recent polls have showed a slight lead for Menendez. A huge cash infusion could also help Heitkamp in North Dakota. She raised more than $12 million from Oct. 1 through Oct. 17 in the wake of her vote against Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh, about 20 times what Cramer took in during that period. Still, she faces an uphill climb in a state President Donald Trump won by nearly 40 percentage points. Health and Human Services Secretary Alex Azar speaks during an interview with Reuters in Washington, U.S., August 17, 2018. Health and Human Services Secretary Alex Azar had a stern warning for the pharmaceutical industry on Friday, a day after the Trump administration proposed a plan to change the way Medicare pays for certain expensive drugs. Speaking from the Brookings Institution in Washington, Azar said Big Pharma cannot stand by and defend the status quo on drug pricing. "Change is coming," Azar told an audience at Brookings. "You can be a part of the solution in bringing market-based, competitive ways of compensating for drugs and lowering patient out-of-pocket costs, or you can put your head in the sand and pretend change is not coming and you'll get whatever comes at you." On Thursday, President Donald Trump outlined the new drug-pricing proposal, which would permit Medicare to create a new payment model that would bring drug prices in line with what other nations pay. Azar released a report earlier that day that said the U.S. pays 1.8 times more for some prescriptions covered by Medicare Part B than other countries. The proposal could save U.S. taxpayers billions of dollars. HHS estimates $17 billion in program savings over five years. The agency wants to issue a formal rule early next year, with the new payment model taking effect in 2020, HHS said. Ana Gupte, senior research analyst at Leerink Partners, told CNBC that Azar seems determined to implement the Medicare changes and drive down drug costs. "We also expect more reform changes including possible elimination of drug manufacturer rebates and price transparency," Gupte said. The SPDR S&P Pharmaceuticals index, which tracks drug stocks, was down more than 1 percent in intraday trading Friday. The Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America (PhRMA), the industry's main trade group, opposes Trump's plan, saying in part that the administration "is imposing foreign price controls from countries with socialized health care systems that deny their citizens access and discourage innovation." "These proposals are to the detriment of American patients," PhRMA president and CEO Stephen J. Ubl said in a statement. "The United States has a competitive marketplace that controls costs and provides patients with access to innovative medicines far earlier than in countries with price controls." Gupte said the proposed changes might actually benefit insurers like UnitedHealth Group and Humana by boosting more competitive drug prices across the industry. "This speech is in line with the Drug Pricing Blueprint announced in May which laid out ways to lower prices, increase negotiation, and improve competition," she said in a note earlier Friday. Local fisherman pack a fishing net as the sun sets on Baga beach in Bardez, Goa, India, on Mar. 9, 2016. Sanjit Das | Bloomberg | Getty Images Goa India's smallest state is about 300 miles south of Mumbai. A Portuguese colony until 1961, the coastal region is now known for its music, nightlife and beaches. Goa's beautiful coastline has been attracting visitors since the 1960s. In the last five years, however, the number of tourists coming to the holiday destination has almost tripled. This remarkable growth has drawn hoteliers and restaurateurs to its shores, and attracted businesses from all over India that are keen to invest in the tiny state. High season in Goa is between October and January. But if you don't like partying, and prefer deserted beaches, then the best time to visit is in the low season. While you may experience the occasional downpour between February and September, room rates will also be a lot cheaper. Goa is split into two distinctive districts: The north tends to attract a livelier crowd, while the south offers a slower pace of life. In both, there are beautiful golden sand beaches and roads that wind through leafy green hills. The best way to travel in Goa is on a scooter. To hire one for a day will cost around 300 rupees or less than $5. But if you're more adventurous and want to explore the rest of the state, head inland to Old Goa. Some of the region's most famous colonial architecture and Catholic cathedrals which capture the the area's distinctive Portuguese heritage can be found there. Goa has had many different rulers over the course of its history, but it's the Portuguese whose legacy still lives on. In their 450 years of reign, the Portuguese established hospitals and schools, and fervently converted the locals to Christianity. Through their colonial-era mansions, churches, cuisine and even their language, Portuguese rule has left a vivid historical mark here. Travelers partying on a beach in the Indian state of Goa. Ami Vitale | Getty Images News | Getty Images Pro-Taiwan independence activists call for the referendum on the streets in front of the headquarters of the ruling Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) during a demonstration in Taipei on October 20, 2018. Sam Yeh | AFP | Getty Images Chinese authorities hate the word "independence." But whether spoken by fringe figures in Hong Kong or marchers demonstrating in Taiwan, they are hearing it all the same. Compounding frustrations in Beijing have worsened ties with the United States, which sailed warships through the Taiwan Strait on Monday for the second time since July. International criticism has also mounted over a human rights crackdown on ethnic Uighurs in the western region of Xinjiang, whom authorities fear want to break away. "The main problem is that the Communist Party of China is paranoid about calls for separatism and independence and continually overreacts to them," Michael Kovrig, senior advisor for North East Asia at the International Crisis Group, told CNBC on Thursday in an email. China's foreign ministry did not immediately respond to CNBC's request for comment. But at a press briefing in August, the foreign ministry's Lu Kang reiterated Beijing's stance on Taiwan, saying: "There is only one China in the world. The government of the People's Republic of China is the sole legal government representing the whole (of) China. Taiwan is an inalienable part of China's territory." Trump may also be attempting to put more pressure on China on multiple fronts in order to gain negotiating leverage on trade. If so, this kind of linkage between issues is a risky tactic that could backfire by deepening the rift between the U.S. and China. Michael Kovrig senior advisor, International Crisis Group The United States and China are currently engaged in a tit-for-tat tariff war, and military tensions surrounding Taiwan could further complicate efforts at resolving the trade standoff. U.S. President Donald Trump "may also be attempting to put more pressure on China on multiple fronts in order to gain negotiating leverage on trade," Kovrig said. "If so, this kind of linkage between issues is a risky tactic that could backfire by deepening the rift between the U.S. and China." Kovrig said China's "heavy-handed" responses to Taiwan add to frustration among local independence advocates while eliciting stronger shows of support for the island from the U.S., potentially setting the stage for escalating tensions. "It would be better for China to take a more relaxed and confident approach, based on soft power and positive incentives, rather than threats and punishments," he said. One China policy Beijing regards Taiwan as a renegade province under its One China Policy, and opposes other countries pursuing diplomatic ties with the self-ruled island. China often backs anti-independence warnings with military threats, which it repeated Thursday. "If someone attempts to split Taiwan from China, the Chinese military will take any necessary actions at any cost," Defense Minister Wei Fenghe said at a military forum in Beijing, the state-run China Daily reported. Despite China's efforts to isolate Taiwan politically, Beijing has long courted Taipei's investments and their economic ties remain robust. Taiwanese technology giant Foxconn, which manufactures iPhones for Apple and Kindles for Amazon in factories in southern China, is a major job-provider. Discussions of independence in Taiwan, ruled separately from the mainland for nearly 70 years and possessing its own military, is a major issue over which China's response can drastically change. When the anti-independence Kuomintang, or Nationalist Party, was most recently in power from 2008-2016, the presidents of China and Taiwan held a historic summit in Singapore. But with the traditionally pro-independence Democratic Progressive Party now in control, Beijing's attitude has hardened, seen in more aggressive efforts to persuade countries to cut diplomatic relations with Taiwan, even as President Tsai Ing-wen takes a cautious stance towards China. Growing sense of siege Such pressure, as well as frustrations among independence supporters with Tsai's prudence, was one of the factors behind a demonstration last Saturday in Taipei calling for a referendum on the issue. Analysts say outright independence still lacks widespread support in Taiwan and crucially in Washington and such a plebiscite is unlikely anytime soon. But there is clearly a growing sense of siege. "The tightening of conditions in Hong Kong, in Xinjiang and in Chinese society more broadly, combined with China's military modernization and increasingly robust posture towards Taiwan, have convinced many Taiwanese that the status quo (of existing autonomy) is under threat," Jonathan Sullivan, director of China Programs at the University of Nottingham's Asia Research Institute, said in an email Thursday. Taiwan President Tsai Ing-wen waves to the supporters at the celebration of the 14th presidential inauguration on May 20, 2016 in Taipei, Taiwan. Ashley Pon | Getty Images News | Getty Images Neiman Marcus is known for its annual Christmas Book, a fantasy gift guide that includes over-the-top offerings like a 74-foot yacht for $7 million. This year, the fancy catalog also includes a $630,000 trip to Asia. What do you get for blowing more than half a mil on a vacation? The price buys a 30-day, all-inclusive trip for four to India, Nepal, Bhutan and the Maldives, with private air charters and premium accommodations, like villas and suites at five-star properties, as well as bespoke experiences, including a safari-style luxury pop-up camp in a remote area. First, India The first 14 days are spent in India, seeing places such as Delhi, Agra (home to the Taj Mahal), Ranthambore National Park and Jodhpur. "Many of the experiences within this trip you simply cannot access on your own," Tom Marchant, co-founder of bespoke luxury travel company Black Tomato, which arranges the trip, tells CNBC Make It. For instance, in Delhi, Buddhist scholar Shantum Seth and renowned historian and author William Dalrymple are the tour guides, and guests get a sunrise or sunset "after hours" tour of the Taj Mahal, before or after it opens to tourists, according to Black Tomato. There is a luxury glamping experience in the Indian desert and a safari with wild tigers in Ranthambore National Park too. Delhi, India. Black Tomato Guests stay in a villa at Oberoi Amarvilas, which has views of the Taj Mahal and is considered one of the best hotels in the world. There's also a stay at Ananda, a wellness retreat in the foothills of the Himalayas, where Oprah Winfrey and Melinda Gates have been guests. "It's the most authentic spa experience I've ever had," Winfrey wrote on her website. On to Nepal Days 14 to 18 are spent in Nepal, where there's a visit to the city of Kathmandu as well as villages and temples in the countryside. A highlight is a private helicopter ride over Gokyo Valley, an alpine valley, landing just above the Mount Everest Base Camp for breakfast and views. There's also a private worship ceremony with the Kumari, a young girl chosen to be the living goddess of Nepal, where guests kneel before her and are led in a prayer and blessing. Gokyo Valley in Nepal. Black Tomato Next, Bhutan Days 18 to 23 are spent traveling across Bhutan, visiting sacred temples. That includes a private helicopter flight to Tiger's Nest, a prominent Himalayan Buddhist temple built into a mountainside (average tourists have to hike two-and-a-half hours up the mountain to visit). Tiger's Nest in Bhutan. Black tomato Finish in the Maldives From keeping our smartphones switched on to powering electric vehicles, lithium-ion batteries have become an important source of power in the modern world. The U.S. Department of Energy cites their light weight, high energy density and ability to recharge as reasons for their growth in popularity. While popular, there are some challenges when it comes to lithium-ion batteries, and change could soon be afoot. "Lithium ion batteries of a conventional type still include liquids, and they are prone to spontaneous ignition," John Miles, a professor at the University of Cambridge's Department of Engineering, told CNBC's Sustainable Energy. "We're beginning to see solid state batteries coming onto the market now, with gels inside them and polymers instead of liquids," Miles added. "They are much less prone to those sorts of accidents so there's a natural progression in that direction." One Massachusetts firm is of a similar opinion and thinks that lithium-ion battery technology is "reaching its limits", with safety, energy density and cost representing "significant challenges" for today's generation of lithium-ion batteries. "Conventional batteries have three components an anode, a cathode and an electrolyte," Mike Zimmerman, CEO of Ionic Materials, told CNBC's Sustainable Energy. "The electrolyte is liquid, and that's where ions flow back and forth, from the anode to the cathode, to allow charging and discharging," he added. "We actually have a solid material which replaces the liquid," he added. "The problem with the liquid is it's very volatile and can catch on fire, and people have seen that with electric vehicles and smartphones." It's within this context that Ionic Materials has developed what it describes as a "novel solid polymer electrolyte material" that can conduct ions at room temperature. Zimmerman described it as the world's first polymer that can conduct lithium ions. "It's non-flammable and safe," he said. The business has big plans, and sees its technology being used in a range of ways. "Our technology will allow for much safer battery technology, so in smartphones there will not be any potential for fires and burning and injury to people," Zimmerman said. "It will also enable higher capacity batteries that last longer, so hopefully you can get two days on a charge as opposed to one day on a charge," he added. Looking ahead, Zimmerman said that Ionic Materials was "working with large battery manufacturers" to incorporate its material into cells for products such as wearable devices and eventually electric vehicles. These are expected to be on the market "in a couple of years." Russian court completes JFC Groups bankruptcy proceedings RIA Novosti 10:59 26/10/2018 MOSCOW, October 26 (RAPSI) The St. Petersburg Commercial Court has completed bankruptcy proceedings against JFC Group, head company for the largest importer of fruits to Russia of the same name, previously owned by businessman Vladimir Kekhman, the court ruling reads. In September 2015, the court found Kekhmans company bankrupt. In July 2016, Kekhman himself was found bankrupt under an application of Sberbank. On July 21 of the same year, a court in St. Petersburg dismissed a petition lodged by Kekhman seeking the recognition of Londons High Courts judgment declaring him bankrupt. Kekhmans financial executive Mikhail Bologov, Russias Federal Tax Service, Sberbank, Rosbank, Promsvyazbank, Raiffeisenbank, UniCredit Bank, Aquamarine Company and Pulkovo Trade Company are named as interested parties in the dispute. A representative of Kekhman claimed during bankruptcy hearings that the former head of JFC had no obligations before Sberbank because he had already been declared bankrupt by The High Court of Justice of England in 2012, and Sberbank received its share from sales of Kekhmans property. A representative of Sberbank, on the other hand, claimed that the bank was not involved in the process and did not receive any compensation. According to the Sberbanks representative, the bank had rulings of several Russian courts on debt recovery from Kekhman. Nevertheless, Kekhmans lawyer insisted that the ruling of The High Court of Justice of England had been recognized by Sberbank and was to be complied with in Russia. In its ruling, the court pointed out that in the absence of international treaties, entered into by the Russian Federation, decisions on bankruptcies taken in foreign jurisdictions were to be recognized in Russia only on the reciprocity basis unless otherwise stipulated by federal laws. At present, the court stressed, the Russian Federation was not a party in any international treaty on bankruptcy issues. In April 2017, the St. Petersburg Commercial Court dismissing a Sberbanks motion to impose subsidiary liability on Kekhman. During the audit of JFC its temporary manager found out that the company was unprofitable from 2012 to 2015. Kekhman, acting as CEO of JFC, allegedly conducted unprofitable business on purpose, abusing his power and causing damage to the company. This damage allegedly prevented JFC from repaying debts to creditors making Kekhman legible for being brought to subsidiary responsibility. Overall, the companys losses are estimated at 4 billion rubles ($69.5 million). Check out the companies making headlines before the bell: Amazon.com Amazon reported quarterly profit of $5.75 per share, well above the consensus estimate of $3.14 a share. The Street appears to be focusing on revenue that came in below forecasts, however, as well as disappointing fourth-quarter guidance. Alphabet Alphabet earned $13.06 per share for the third quarter, compared to the consensus estimate of $10.42 a share. But like Amazon the Google parent also reported revenue below analysts' projections, despite a 21 percent jump from a year earlier. Intel Intel beat forecasts by 25 cents a share, with adjusted quarterly profit of $1.40 per share. The chipmaker's revenue also beat estimates, and it raised its full-year forecast on the strength of demand in the personal computer and data center markets. Colgate-Palmolive The consumer products company matched estimates, with adjusted quarterly profit of 72 cents per share. Revenue came in slightly below Street forecasts, however. Colgate noted a difficult pricing environment and higher costs, and said it expects a single-digit sales decrease in the current quarter due to foreign exchange. Moody's The credit rating agency fell 9 cents a share short of estimates, with adjusted quarterly profit of $1.69 per share. Revenue also missed forecasts, and Moody's cut its full-year forecast due in part to a decline in corporate debt issuance. Chipotle Mexican Grill Chipotle reported adjusted quarterly profit of $2.16 per share, 16 cents a share above consensus forecasts. The restaurant chain's revenue was in line with Street forecasts. Comparable-store sales jumped 4.4 percent, although that was below the FactSet consensus estimate of a 5 percent rise. Expedia Expedia beat consensus forecasts by 53 cents a share, with adjusted quarterly earnings of $3.65 per share. The travel website operator's revenue missed forecasts. Expedia saw an 11 percent jump in gross bookings, with total lodging room nights rising 13 percent. Gilead Sciences Gilead reported adjusted quarterly profit of $1.84 per share, beating the consensus estimate of $1.63 per share. The drugmaker also raised its full-year revenue guidance. Snap Snap lost 12 cents per share, 2 cents a share less than forecasts, while the Snapchat parent's revenue beat estimates. The company reported a drop in daily active users, however, and Snap said it expects that to continue during the current quarter. Mattel Mattel missed estimates by 2 cents a share, with adjusted quarterly profit of 18 cents per share. The toymaker's revenue missed expectations, as well. Investors appear to be encouraged by stronger-than-expected North American sales, however. Western Digital Western Digital matched forecasts with adjusted quarterly profit of $3.04 per share, but the data storage company saw revenue come in below estimates and warned of a continued decline in flash memory pricing. Campbell Soup Campbell and its board were sued by Daniel Loeb's Third Point, which accuses the food company of distributing misleading and incomplete information to shareholders. Third Point is currently seeking to replace Campbell's entire board of directors. In a statement, the company said it was "vigorously contesting" the lawsuit. Charles Schwab Schwab authorized a new $1 billion stock repurchase program. The discount brokerage firm is replacing a prior program which had $596 million remaining. Mellanox Technologies Mellanox is working with an adviser on a potential sale, according to sources who spoke to CNBC. The computer hardware maker is said to have received takeover interest from at least two companies, but talks are at an early stage and a deal is not considered imminent. Summer Zervos during a news conference announcing the filing of a lawsuit against President-elect Donald Trump in Los Angeles, January 17, 2017. Summer Zervos, who has been pursuing a defamation case against President Donald Trump, is not entitled to information regarding other women's claims of misconduct, a judge in New York ruled on Friday. Trump's attorneys had argued that demands from the former "Apprentice" contestant for records related to other allegations of sexual misconduct against Trump were irrelevant. In a proceeding Friday, Judge Jennifer Schecter said the records Zervos requested were "factually completely unrelated to her and her claim," according to Courthouse News. Zervos was one of a dozen women who accused Trump of sexual misconduct during his bid for the presidency. She claims that in 2007, the president forced himself on her at the upscale Beverly Hills Hotel in Los Angeles. The president has denied all the claims against him, and has called the women "liars." Zervos' claims, the president said, are "all false stuff." The ruling Friday is a setback for Zervos, who until now had been racking up a string of victories in her legal proceeding. In contrast, the adult film star Stormy Daniels, who has also pursued a defamation case against the president, has been less successful. Daniels, whose real name is Stephanie Clifford, was ordered to pay Trump's attorneys' fees earlier this month after her defamation case was dismissed. Zervos did achieve a partial victory on Friday. Schecter ruled that Zervos is entitled to a narrow set of records, including Trump's calendars from the time of the incident. She is also entitled to his phone records. "Although the Court did not grant her motion in its entirety, Plaintiff believes this decision will permit her to obtain additional proof of her claim against Defendant," Zervos's attorney Mariann Wang said in a statement. "We look forward to proving her claim." Wang also said that she would be withdrawing Zervos' claims for lost earnings, and would only be seeking damages for emotional harm. In response to Wang's comments, the president's attorneys said they would be seeking Zervos' financial records, including her tax returns, according to multiple outlets present at the proceeding. Trump has repeatedly refused public calls to release his tax returns, and was the only Republican nominee for president in modern history not to do so. Attorneys for the president did not immediately respond to a request for comment. Now Tesla says it also provided information to the Department of Justice regarding Musk's public statements regarding production numbers of its Model 3 sedan. Tesla had previously said it provided documents to the Department of Justice regarding CEO Elon Musk's controversial take-private tweet a blunder that ultimately cost Tesla and Musk a combined $40 million in fraud settlement fees. The FBI is reviewing Tesla's Model 3 production numbers as part of an ongoing criminal probe into whether the company misled investors, according to a Wall Street Journal report published Friday. Tesla says the company has not received "a subpoena, a request for testimony, or any other formal process," but the Journal reported Friday that former Tesla employees have received subpoenas and requests for testimony. Tesla struggled to ramp up Model 3 production as promised, plagued by factory issues and reports of unfit working conditions. Musk set lofty goals and insisted on sticking to them, according to countless media reports. Federal agents are probing whether the company knowingly made public statements of impossible production goals, the Journal reported. Shares of Tesla took a significant leg lower immediately following the report, but rebounded to trade more than 3 percent up on the day. In response to the Wall Street Journal report, Tesla said in a statement: Earlier this year, Tesla received a voluntary request for documents from the Department of Justice about its public guidance for the Model 3 ramp and we were cooperative in responding to it. We have not received a subpoena, a request for testimony, or any other formal process, and there have been no additional document requests about this from the Department of Justice for months. When we started the Model 3 production ramp, we were transparent about how difficult it would be, openly explaining that we would only be able to go as fast as our least lucky or least successful supplier, and that we were entering 'production hell.' Ultimately, given difficulties that we did not foresee in this first-of-its-kind production ramp, it took us six months longer than we expected to meet our 5,000 unit per week guidance. Tesla's philosophy has always been to set truthful targets not sandbagged targets that we would definitely exceed and not unrealistic targets that we could never meet. While Tesla gets criticized when it is delayed in reaching a goal, it should not be forgotten that Tesla has achieved many goals that were doubted by most. We are enormously proud of the efforts of the whole company in making it through this difficult ramp and getting us to volume production. Watch: How taxpayers and government policies have helped Elon Musk and Tesla Aaron M. Sprecher | Bloomberg | Getty Images After a raft of mixed earnings reports by semiconductor companies and some gigantic stock declines, it's fair to ask: How bad is it? And given the chip industry's status as one of the anchors of business investment in the economy, is the string of weak news a sign the country as a whole is headed for slower growth? That question has loomed large in the stock market's gyrations this week. A market leader AMD stock dropped 21 percent on Wednesday night before a partial recovery Thursday, and Texas Instruments fell 8.8 percent after it reported that revenue was little changed in the third quarter as growth in its crucial auto segment slipped. The Philadelphia Semiconductor Index of 30 top chip companies is down 17 percent since Labor Day, including the biggest one-day drop in a decade on Wednesday. The picture isn't unambiguous: An earnings beat from Intel late Thursday is helping to offset bad news from AMD and TI, and rival chipmaker Xilinx also beat expectations as growth in chips for 5G wireless and cloud-computing data centers offset a drop in demand for chips used in industrial and aerospace/military applications. But slowing overall growth in chip sales and profits, albeit after a stellar 2017, has economists and market observers questioning whether technology investment is cresting which, if true, would mean that the 2017 corporate tax cut is falling short of one of its most important goals. "IT equipment and software investment is 28 percent of total nonresidential fixed investment," Moody's Analytics chief economist Mark Zandi said. "Real investment spending is on track to grow 8 percent annualized in the third quarter. This is similar to the growth in 2017. So no, I don't think the tax cuts have had any meaningful impact on IT investment." Another concern is the fallout effect on the sector amid the U.S.-China trade war and concerns around China's economic growth. The White House implemented 10 percent taxes on $200 billion worth of Chinese imports in September. Those tariffs are set to rise to 25 percent by Jan.1 and could affect products manufactured with semiconductors. For investors, one result of the chip slowdown has been falling prices for the nine major exchange-traded funds tied to semiconductor indices. The biggest, the $1.4 billion iShares PHLX Semiconductor ETF, fell 6.6 percent on Wednesday alone, according to ETF Database. The VanEck Vectors Semiconductor ETF, with $870 million in assets, posted its biggest downturn for the group since November 2008 on Wednesday. It had outflows of almost 40 percent of its assets last week. Each chip company is a little bit different, based on the end market it serves, CFRA Research analyst Angelo Zino said. Texas Instruments' bobble has raised concerns in part because of slowing growth in its automotive markets, raising concern that if automakers are buying fewer sensors for Internet connectivity in machines, they may be anticipating a slowdown in their own sales. "They tend to be a good barometer for the economy because their chips go into almost everything," said Zino. "Investors have to decide if it's a hard landing or a soft landing." For now, Zino said, he's betting that the chip industry and TI are in for more of a soft landing than a hard fall but that could change. The rub is that TI, in particular, attributed its revenue slowdown to customers building inventories more slowly, or even reducing them distributors, rather than companies that put chips into products, are slowing orders the most. That means the slowdown may just reflect more caution in the supply chain, rather than any major problem in markets for cars and cellphones, Zino said. On the other hand, the market is worried that the chip slowdown may be an early indicator of problems that Trump's tariff increases this year are causing, and of issues that plans to impose 25 percent levies on $200 billion of Chinese exports to the United States in January might cause later, he said. But over time, even that would be overcome by secular trends like the rise of cloud computing and the Internet of things, he added. AMD tanked because fourth-quarter guidance was 9 percent below consensus estimates and 18 percent lower than Goldman Sachs' prior expectation, Goldman analyst Toshiya Hari said in a note to clients. On big problem is the waning of the cryptocurrency craze, which cut into one high-profile market for AMD products, and the company isn't gaining market share in cloud-computing servers as fast as some investors expected. [Semiconductor stocks] tend to be a good barometer for the economy because their chips go into almost everything. Angelo Zino CFRA research analyst Activist investor Third Point sued Campbell Soup on Thursday, alleging the soup and snack maker's board misled investors about the competence of its directors and the way it carried out a recently completed strategic review. The lawsuit is the latest move in a bitter proxy contest in which billionaire investor Dan Loeb and his Third Point hedge fund wants to replace Campbell's 12-member board so it can appoint its own directors and try to revitalize the company's growth. In a lawsuit filed in state superior court in Camden, New Jersey, which is Campbell's home town, Third Point said Campbell and its board "breached their fiduciary duties to Campbell's stockholders by withholding material information critical to stockholders assessing how to vote at the company's annual meeting." It asked the court to prevent Campbell from holding its annual meeting on Nov. 29 until the board corrects what Third Point called its misstatements. Three heirs of condensed soup inventor John Dorrance, who ran the company a century ago, sit on the board and are seeking re-election. Together they control 37 percent of Campbell's stock. Third Point has asked the court to postpone shareholders' votes on the board until the company corrects what Third Point described as misinformation by the board. The lawsuit says the company failed to disclose critical information about its directors, including Dorrance's grandchild Bennett Dorrance. It accused the company of not making adequately clear what Dorrance's business ventures and investments were, among other things. Dorrance did not immediately respond to a telephone message seeking comment. Earlier on Thursday, Campbell's board chairman wrote a letter to investors saying that Third Point's proposed directors were not qualified to oversee the company and that Third Point had not presented any new ideas or specific strategic plan. "Third Point has, at best, a superficial understanding of the food industry and the company, as evidenced by its non-substantive plan filled with platitudes and business school buzzwords," the letter to shareholders said. Such lawsuits are not uncommon in proxy battles as both sides seek every advantage. Third Point said in the suit that it needs the court's help to wage a "meaningful proxy contest" and for investors to make fully informed decisions. Third Point says in its lawsuit that shareholders do not have enough information to assess the company's strategic plans, which includes selling some divisions and finding a permanent chief executive to replace Denise Morrison who left in May. "Without further information about its strategic plan that the board has withheld, and that is unknowable to stockholders without further disclosure, the Nov. 29 director election will be a sham," the lawsuit said. Third Point also said that investors are in the dark about the new CEO selection process. WATCH: How Campbell Soup fell off its perch There's a rising angst in foreign policy circles over the status of democracy around the world. In an era of "big personalities" or what many academics and historians prefer to call strongmen Council on Foreign Relations President Richard Haass believes this trend poses a direct risk to investors and proponents of civil liberties alike. "This is an authoritarian era, all things being equal. Democracy is in something of a recession," Haass told CNBC's Hadley Gamble in Paris on Friday. The veteran U.S. diplomat outlined why he was concerned about the direction of many governments today, and what it could portend for those engaged in the markets. "I don't see the people in place who are aware potentially of the consequences of what they're doing," he said, referring to leaders like Russian President Vladimir Putin and Saudi Arabia's crown prince, Mohammed bin Salman, as "strongmen." And this, he warned, could be irreversibly destabilizing to the global order that's been established since the end of the Second World War. "For 70, 75 years, we've had this rules-based international system, no great power wars, muted rivalries and now when I look at the world and the people running the world, it gives me pause. I'm worried that when historians look back on this moment, they're going to see this is the beginning of the unraveling." And investors should be worried, Haass warned particularly if they are thinking of long-term investments. "I think they have to assume that they can't assume things are going to be good, that all things being equal, going forward is going be less stable than going backwards." Haass, a highly awarded diplomat who served as director of policy planning for the U.S. State Department, U.S. coordinator for the future of Afghanistan, and U.S. special envoy for Northern Ireland, has spent decades witnessing and analyzing international political and economic trends. His assessment matches that of many other experts in his field. According to the Economist Intelligence Unit's Democracy Index report, out of the 167 countries ranked in 2018, 89 received lower scores than the previous year. The index ranks countries on a scale in the categories of electoral process and pluralism, civil liberties, government functionality, political participation, and political culture, with each category comprised of a range of concrete indicators. In 2017, the research group demoted the U.S. from a full democracy to a "flawed democracy," citing dwindling trust in government, elected representatives and political parties. It also noted that this decline was well underway before the election of President Donald Trump. A salad and drink are arranged for a photograph outside a Sweetgreen Inc. restaurant in San Francisco, California. Sweetgreen, a fast-casual food chain that focuses on salads, is aiming for a valuation that surpasses $1 billion in a new funding round, several people with knowledge of the matter said. Fidelity Investments is leading the round, which is close to being finalized, said the people, who asked not to be named discussing private information. Sweetgreen is seeking to raise about $200 million, one of the people said. Despite the public-market volatility, the private fundraising environment has shown little signs of slowing down. Venture capital investing is primed to top $100 billion in 2018, according to a recent report by PitchBook. As of the third quarter, the industry has deployed more capital than any other year since 2006, PitchBook said. Sweetgreen was founded in 2007 and has since attracted lunchtime lines for its unique salad offerings, with ingredients sourced from local farms. Some of Sweetgreen's menu changes seasonally. It currently includes options such as chicken and brussels sprouts, and curry cauliflower. According to Sweetgreen's website, there are nearly 90 stores open in California, Illinois, Massachusetts, Maryland, New York, Pennsylvania, Virginia and Washington, D.C. The co-founders, Nathaniel Ru, Nicolas Jammet and Jonathan Neman, started Sweetgreen while they were still in college at Georgetown University. They've sought to create a culture in addition to their restaurants called "The Sweet Life," which focuses on health and sustainability. Fidelity joins other notable investors, including T. Rowe Price and Steve Case's Revolution, which participated in earlier rounds. J.P. Morgan served as the private-placement agent for the round. Representatives from Sweetgreen, Fidelity and J.P. Morgan declined to comment. WATCH: How takeout took over America President Donald Trump on Friday called on Americans to come together shortly after a Florida man was arrested in connection with a dozen mail bombs sent to an array of the president's public foils. "The bottom line is that Americans must unify," Trump said. "We must show the world that we are united together in peace and love and harmony as fellow American citizens. There is no country like our country." Cesar Sayoc, 56, of Aventura, Florida, was taken into custody earlier in the day and is expected to face federal criminal charges in the matter, according to NBC News. The president said he instructed authorities to spare no expense in prosecuting "them, him, her, whoever it may be to the fullest extent of the law." The remark prompted laughter from the audience. "These terrorizing acts are despicable and have no place in our country," Trump said. The president did not mention Sayoc by name Friday. The Justice Department said that more information would be made available at an afternoon news conference. Trump congratulated law enforcement for doing an "incredible, incredible job." US President Donald Trump talks to reporters on the South Lawn of the White House as he boards Marine One on October 26, 2018 in Washington, DC. - Trump is traveling to North Carolina for a 'Make America Great Again' rally. President Donald Trump on Friday said he does not plan to call the two former presidents Barack Obama and Bill Clinton, who were targeted with pipe bombs this week. Speaking on the South Lawn as he prepared to depart for a campaign rally, Trump was asked if he planned to reach out to the two former presidents. "If they wanted me to, but I think we'll probably pass," Trump said. The comment came after authorities arrested Florida resident Cesar Sayoc on Friday and charged him with crimes related to 13 pipe bombs that were mailed to prominent Democrats and public figures who have been critical of Trump. To be sure, Trump is not required to call the two former presidents. But there is a long tradition of civility and communication among U.S. presidents and former presidents. Trump has largely eschewed this tradition, however. High-ranking prosecutor arrested on suspicion of corruption at attempt to leave Russia RIA Novosti, Yevgeniya Novozhenina 13:03 26/10/2018 MOSCOW, October 26 (RAPSI) First Deputy Prosecutor of Russias Republic of Bashkortostan Oleg Gorbunov suspected of taking bribes has been arrested while attempting to flee abroad from Moscows airport Sheremetyevo, the Investigative Committees press service reports. According to investigators, in 2017, Gorbunov and one more republics prosecution official Artur Sharetdinov received 10 million rubles (over $150,000) from a first deputy head of Ufa, the capital of Bashkiria, for repeal of an order on institution of a criminal case concerning a substandard housing resettlement program. Sharetdinov has been arrested as well. Charges are to be brought against the suspects soon, the Investigative Committees statement reads. Investigators will also motion for their detention. The U.K. government could announce as early as Monday extra spending plans a hope that has raised interest in the government's last draft budget before Brexit kicks in. Recent data from the Office for National Statistics has shown that in the first six months of the year, public sector borrowing stood at 19.9 billion which was 10.7 billion lower than the previous fiscal year. This means that the U.K.'s finance chief, Philip Hammond, has more room to announce higher spending without having to raise taxes. The budget plan, due on Monday, is set to mark what Prime Minister Theresa May described, earlier this month, as the end of austerity. However, analysts have told CNBC that the hype surrounding the next fiscal plan might be an overreaction. "There's too much excitement, I think," Karen Ward, chief market strategist at J.P. Morgan asset management, told CNBC over the phone this week. "The health of our finances depends on the Brexit deal," she said, adding that as a result next year's budget plan is likely to be more important, given that it will be clearer by then how the EU and the U.K. will work in the future. At the moment, Brexit negotiators have not yet reached a deal over how the U.K. will leave the EU in March. This has raised chances that the U.K. will leave the EU abruptly in five months' time and, at the same time, it does not allow the finance minister to have a clear economic picture of 2019 and the following years. Cesar Sayoc Jr., arrested Friday by the FBI in connection to a series of mail bombs addressed to prominent Democrats, has a lengthy criminal past, a van covered in stickers of Democrats' faces behind crosshairs and claims to be a choreographer at a male burlesque review similar to Chippendales. Sayoc, 56, is also an avid supporter of President Donald Trump, according to his social media activity. His Twitter posts are loaded with political memes as well as multiple photos and videos of himself attending at least one campaign-style rally in support of Trump. His online activity also appears to include threats against politicians and media figures, some of whom were targeted with mail bombs this week. Sayoc, a Brooklyn, New York, native, was arrested Friday morning outside of an auto parts store in Plantation, Florida. Attorney General Jeff Sessions announced Friday afternoon that Sayoc was charged with five criminal counts, including illegal mailing of explosives, threatening former president, and assaulting current and former federal officers. FBI investigate a van owned by a suspect who was arrested in relation to the a series of package bombs that were sent to leading democrats, in Plantation, Fla on Oct. 26th, 2018. Since Monday, law enforcement authorities intercepted more than a dozen explosive devices addressed to prominent Democrats, including former President Barack Obama, former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, Sens. Cory Booker of New Jersey and Kamala Harris of California, former Vice President Joe Biden, and billionaire political donor George Soros. The criminal complaint detailing the charges noted that "The windows of Sayoc's van were covered with images including images critical of CNN." In 2002, Sayoc was charged in Miami-Dade County with threatening to throw a bomb, though he only received a year on probation in that case and was not convicted. Visitors trying out new Huawei smartphones at an exhibition. China's foreign ministry has some suggestions for the Trump administration if it is worried about foreign eavesdropping on the U.S. president's iPhones: use a Huawei handset instead. Or just cut all forms of modern communication with the outside world. The riposte came after the New York Times reported that American intelligence reports indicated that Chinese and Russian spies often listen in on President Donald Trump when he uses his Apple cellphones to chat with old friends. Aides have repeatedly told him that his cellphone calls are not secure, but although the president has been persuaded to use his secure White House landline more often, he has refused to give up the phones, the Times said. Trump called the Times report incorrect on Thursday, and dismissed it as "long and boring." "I only use Government Phones, and have only one seldom used government cell phone. Story is soooo wrong!" Trump wrote on Twitter. Trump tweet: The so-called experts on Trump over at the New York Times wrote a long and boring article on my cellphone usage that is so incorrect I do not have time here to correct it. I only use Government Phones, and have only one seldom used government cell phone. Story is soooo wrong! In a later tweet, he said, "I rarely use a cellphone, & when I do it's government authorized. I like Hard Lines. Just more made up Fake News!" Chinese Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Hua Chunying also dismissed the Times story, calling such reports "evidence that the New York Times makes fake news." Speaking at a news conference on Thursday, she also offered two suggestions apparently aimed at the Trump administration. "If they are really very worried about Apple phones being bugged, then they can change to using Huawei," she said, referring to China's biggest telecommunications equipment maker. 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. Lisa Ballenger at a glance PERSONAL: Age 55. Married to Gary Ballenger. They have a blended family of four adult children, ages 22, 25, 28 and 32. They also have two granddaughters. PARTY AFFILIATION: Republican. ON THE WEB: ballengerforrecorder.com; Facebook. OCCUPATION: Deputy recorder of deeds. EDUCATION: Ridgeway High School. BACKGROUND: Has attended Woodcrest Church in Columbia since around 2001, nominated for Boone County Employee of the Quarter in 2015, has attended conferences over the years including the Recorders Association of Missouri, the Missouri Association of Counties and the International Association of Government Officials. Ex-Bolotnaya case defendant acquitted of murder RIA Novosti, Andrey Stenin 15:59 26/10/2018 MOSCOW, October 26 (RAPSI) Ex-defendant of the Bolotnaya Square riot case Richard Sobolev has been acquitted of murder upon the jury verdict, the Moscow City Courts press service has told RAPSI. The court has also declared Sobolevs right to rehabilitation and demand for moral damage compensation. According to investigation, in 2014, a group of people killed a citizen of Uzbekistan in Moscow. Sobolev was detained on November 30, 2016. The man has been charged with gang ethnic murder. He pleaded not guilty. Earlier, Sobolev, who was also charged with participation in the riots in central Moscow in 2012, was pardoned under an amnesty. Public protests erupted on Bolotnaya Square on the eve of Vladimir Putins inauguration for a third presidential term in May 2012. The rally culminated in clashes between protesters and the police. Over 400 people were arrested, and scores were injured when protesters briefly broke through police lines. Several criminal cases under Article 318 of the Criminal Code for using violence against officials were launched as a result. Riot organizers Leonid Razvozzhayev and Sergey Udaltsov were sentenced to 4.5 years in prison each. Other defendants in the case received prison terms ranging from suspended sentences to four years. Several defendants were pardoned; two activists were sent to compulsory mental treatment. Types of obituaries The Missourian publishes two types of obituaries family obituaries and life stories. A family obituary is the version submitted by a funeral home or family. Please see the submission form for details on cost and deadlines. Family obituaries A life story is a closer look at a person's life and involves a reporter contacting family and friends. Life stories are based on newsworthiness and consent of the family. Life stories. Apple has apparently been able to permanently block de-encryption technology from a mysterious Atlanta-based company whose blackbox device was embraced by government agencies to bypass iPhone passcodes. Atlanta-based Grayshift is one of two companies that claimed it could thwart Apple iPhone passcode security through brute-force attacks. The blackbox technology purportedly worked, as Grayshifts technology was snapped up by regional law enforcement and won contracts with Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and the U.S. Secret Service. Another vendor, Israel-based Cellebrite, also discovered a way to unlock encrypted iPhones running iOS 11 and marketed its product to law enforcement and private forensics firms around the world. According to a police warrant obtained by Forbes, the U.S. Department of Homeland Security tested the technology. Multiple sources familiar with the GrayKey have told Forbes that the device can no longer break the passcodes of any iPhone running iOS 12 or above. iOS 12 was released by Apple last month. All GrayShift customers sign very strict non-disclosure agreements, as any leaked information could help Apple close the vulnerabilities they are using, whether they find them themselves or buy zero-day flaws in Darknet, said Vladimir Katalov, CEO of Russian forensic tech provider ElcomSoft. GrayShift's technology the GrayKey blackbox seems to fully support devices running iOS up to 11.4.1, he said. "Honestly, we are not absolutely sure that the hole has been completely closed; or maybe they will still find a workaround, or develop/buy another way," Katalov said via email. "So that is [a] cat and mouse game that is still ongoing. Now..., GrayShift will probably spend even more efforts to hide their findings from the media. "That is probably good for law enforcement, but definitely bad for the community, as it leaves some doors still open," Katalov added. "That's only a question of time when GrayKey will become available to some criminals." Grayshift's GrayKey de-encrypting device a 4-in. x 4-in. box with two iPhone-compatible Lightning cables was first discovered by Motherboard; it reviewed police department public records and emails obtained from federal agencies that revealed purchases of the device. The GrayKey box could apparently unlock an iPhone in about two hours if the owner used a four-digit passcode and three days or longer if a six-digit passcode was used. Grayshift competitor Israel-based Cellebrite also sold its Universal Forensic Extraction Device (UFED) to law enforcement agencies as a service, including a $558,000 contract signed with ICE in August, according to a Freedom of Information Act request filed by the Electronic Privacy Information Center (EPIC). A request for comment today from Apple was not immediately returned. The UFED Cloud Analyzer tool can unlock, decrypt, and extract phone data, including real-time mobile data call logs, contacts, calendar, SMS, MMS, media files, apps data, chats, passwords, according to the FOIA request. The technology can also purportedly extract private information without a passcode from private cloud-based accounts, such as those used by Facebook, Gmail, iCloud, Dropbox, and WhatsApp. "I should note that Cellebrite... [has] about the same skills, but do not offer the product; [they] only provide the service authorized parties can send their devices to them and get them back unlocked (on success, of course; and after paying several thousand bucks)," Katalov said. "But there is another issue there whether you can trust them." In February, reports surfaced that Cellebrite had discovered a way to unlock encrypted iPhones running iOS 11 and was marketing the product to law enforcement and private forensics firms around the world. According to a police warrant obtained by Forbes, the U.S. Department of Homeland Security had been testing the technology. It was not immediately clear if the iOS 12 changes affect the Cellebrite technology. Earlier this year, Grayshift emerged as a different company that had developed an inexpensive black box that could unlock any iPhone; Motherboard reported that local and regional U.S. police departments and the federal government had been purchasing the technology. Grayshift reportedly hired a former Apple security engineer. If the devices didn't work, police wouldn't be buying them Nate Cardozo, a senior staff attorney with the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF), a non-profit digital rights group, said earlier this year he believed the reports that the iPhone's encryption had been cracked. Otherwise, law enforcement agencies wouldn't be purchasing the hacking technology. "The FBI huffed and puffed and said couldn't get into the iPhone, and then we found out that's not true...the literal night before the court hearing [to decide the case]," Cardozo said. He was referring to the investigation of San Bernardino gunman Syed Rizwan Farook. The FBI initially maintained it was unable to crack the passcode on an iPhone used by Farook. The Justice Department petitioned the courts to force Apple to comply with an order to unlock the device; a judge granted the request, but delayed making a final decision until hearing arguments from both sides. The evening before a court hearing to decide the matter, the agency announced it had gotten help from an outside group. The FBI's attempts to get Apple to help with unencrypting the iPhone were rebuffed. Apple maintained that to break into one iPhone would weaken security for all others. The news that two iPhone unencrypting methods were widely available to government agencies did not surprise analysts, who said it was inevitable. "Basically, this is a cat and mouse scenario, as is all security. Something gets broken, the vendor fixes it, then people learn how to break in again," said Jack Gold, principal analyst with J. Gold Associates. "I have no doubt that new techniques for breaking the encryption are already being worked on. "The idea is to make it as hard as possible by adding layers of encryption or long keys to encode, decode. But a determined decoder can crack it, given enough tools and enough time," Gold said. The GrayKey box retails for $15,000. That model is geofenced to a specific location, requiring an internet connection that enables up to 300 unlocks. There is also a $30,000 GrayKey model that can be used independent of internet connectivity and offers an unlimited number of device unlocks, according to Motherboard. Conversely, Cellebrite charges $5,000 to unlock a single iPhone, according to Malwarebytes. EFF's Cardozo said consumers shouldn't be overly concerned about iPhone-cracking technology because law enforcement agencies must still obtain a court-issued warrant to unlock a device. But those concerned about privacy rights should realize that once cracking technology becomes available, it's reasonable to believe law enforcement agencies won't be the only ones to gain access to it. If you believe the only people with access to GrayKey or Cellebrite are the cops, I've got a bridge to sell you," Cardozo said. Apple's early efforts to limit law enforcement access Apple took its own steps to further limit unauthorized access to locked iOS devices. In its beta release of iOS 11.3, Apple introduced a feature known as USB Restricted Mode. Security software vendor Elcomsoft first discovered the new feature, which was buried deep within the beta release documentation. The feature was apparently cut from iOS 11.3 before it was released publicly. The documentation described the new feature as a way "to improve security." "For a locked iOS device to communicate with USB accessories you must connect an accessory via Lightning connector to the device while unlocked or enter your device passcode while connected at least once a week." If an iOS device is not unlocked after seven days, an iPhone's or iPad's Lightning port turns into nothing more than a charging port, locking out any data connection at the USB-interface level, according to Elcomsoft's description. "Its effect on passcode unlocking techniques developed by Cellebrite and Grayshift is yet to be seen," Elcomsoft explained in its blog post. Just this week, Apple CEO Tim Cook reiterated the company's efforts to protect user privacy at a conference of European privacy commissioners in Brussels. Indian Cabinet approves formation of JWG for strengthening fintech cooperation with Singapore In another example of the close ties between India and Singapore, the Indian Cabinet approved a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) signed between the two countries to establish a joint working group (JWG) to strengthen bilateral cooperation in financial technologies (fintech). The meeting was chaired by Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi. The terms of the references of the JWG seek to promote cooperation between the financial technology industry in India and Singapore. It includes the exchange of best practices to improve regulatory connect, promote experience sharing on fintech policies and regulations, encourage the creation of standards on the use of data by fintech firms of both the countries. The terms of the references of the JWG seek to promote cooperation between the financial technology industry in India and Singapore. Photo: Connected to India Collaboration of India with Singapore will benefit both India and Singapore to excel in the fields of development of Application Programming Interfaces (APls), regulatory sandbox, security in payment and digital cash flow, integration of RuPay-Network for Electronic Transfers (NETS), UPI-FAST payment link, Aadhaar Stack and e-KYC in the ASEAN region and cooperation on regulations, solutions for financial markets, insurance sector and sandbox models," said the Indian government in a statement. Notably, the MoU was signed between Indias Department of Economic Affairs and the Monetary Authority of Singapore during Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modis visit to Singapore in June this year. It also needs to be mentioned that Singapore payment system operator NETS has partnered with National Payments Corporation of India (NOCI) to establish a cross-border payment linkage between Singapores PayNow and Indias Immediate Payment Service (IMPS). The JWG will also encourage cooperation between India and Singapore on digital governance, financial inclusion and partnership in the ASEAN Financial Innovation Network (AFIN) agenda, the statement added. Britain must be ready for French go slow on trade, warns Raab Brexit Secretary says UK will leave without deal if Brussels is intransigent The Times May delays plans to pitch Plan B to bitterly divided Cabinet The Sun Hannan says EU citizens will be given full voting rights The Guardian Foxs job becoming increasingly difficult due to uncertainty Daily Express Britain must be ready for a French go slow designed to cripple trade if negotiations with the EU fail, Dominic Raab warned today. The Brexit Secretary raised the prospect as he complained that the bloc was being deliberately intransigent in the talks. He also delivered a stark message to MPs against trying to wreck any package Theresa May does manage to bring home, and said the Irish authorities should be well aware of the consequences of refusing to compromise. The combative stance came as Mr Raab took questions in the Commons with the Brexit situation on a knife edge. The PM managed to quell restive Conservative MPs by delivering an emotional plea for support at what had been billed as a show trial meeting last night Meanwhile, the Cabinet is said to have signed off on triggering no-deal Brexit plans in three weeks time as negotiations with the EU remain deadlocked. Daily Mail More: Khan accused of ignoring London as he lobbies over Brexit The Sun Pro-EU MPs tell Barnier to prepare for u-turn The Scotsman Researcher claims Brexit could kill thousands by hiking cost of fruit and veg Daily Mail Unionists hold firm on Brexit in DUPs stronghold FT Argentinas plan to use no deal to pry Falklands from Britain Daily Mail Lords demand second referendum Daily Express >Today: ToryDiary: Hammond has one task only in next weeks Budget. To show that the Government is preparing for No Deal. as Morgan warns that May will be gone in months A former Tory Cabinet minister said Theresa May only has months left in power, despite receiving a warm reception from backbench MPs last night. Nicky Morgan said: I think well probably, in the course of the next 12 months, be looking for a new leader. Asked if Mrs May still had her backing, Ms Morgan told ITVs Peston: She has, absolutely, for now. It came as the Prime Minister faced down what was expected to be a show trial at the 1922 committee on Tory MPs on Wednesday. MPs said the event was more like a petting zoo than entering the lions den. Amber Rudd, the former Home Secretary, said she had won the room as MPs greeted her arrival by thumping desks and doors. However, some MPs demanded cast iron guarantees that Britain will leave the European Union and pressed Mrs May on what concessions she had secured from Brussels. Daily Telegraph Dual role for Prime Ministers appointee questioned FT >Today: Iain Dales column: What was hung around Mays neck in this weeks 1922 meeting wasa garland Nick Boles: Norway offers a way out of the Brexit maze arrangements while we finalise the details of our future relationship with Brussels. The Times The Cabinet are waking up to the disastrous implications of Mays deal Fraser Nelson, Daily Telegraph Brexit risks the integrity of the United Kingdom Guto Bebb, Times Red Box Why Labour should back Mays deal Philip Collins, The Times Protectionist car lobby should not be dictating the terms of Brexit Edgar Miller, Daily Telegraph A bandwagon has started rolling in Westminster and it is picking up speed. In recent days figures as significant as William Hague and Nicky Morgan have given it an almighty shove, and MPs as various as Tory Leaver Andrew Murrison and Labour Leaver Frank Field have joined Tory Remainer George Freeman and Labour Remainer Ivan Lewis on board. The bandwagon is called Norway for Now. It proposes that Britain should start its staged withdrawal from the European Union as a member of the common market binding Norway, Iceland and Liechtenstein with the EU the European Economic Area (EEA) and the European Free Trade Association (Efta). This new transition would replace the prime ministers never-ending implementation period and see Britain maintaining continuity in its customs >Yesterday: ToryDiary: Its time to study the map that leads from Norway to Canada Ministers 1) Williamson says all military roles are now open to women All roles in the military are now open to women, Defence Secretary Gavin Williamson has announced. The historic day was marked at a land power demonstration on Salisbury Plain, involving some of the first women to join the Royal Armoured Corps. Mr Williamson announced that, as of today, women already serving in the Army are able to transfer into infantry roles, including the Special Forces. Those not currently serving will be able to apply for infantry roles in December of this year, with new recruits starting basic training in April 2019. The Defence Secretary also confirmed that women are now able to apply to join the Royal Marines, with selection starting before the end of this year Tory MP Bob Stewart, 69, a former British Army officer who served in Northern Ireland and rose to become United Nations Commander during the Bosnian war, said the announcement is a great idea. Daily Mail Defence chiefs win 500 million from the Chancellor to stave off cuts The Sun Comment: Is this just a case of PC meddling? Tim Collins, Daily Mail >Yesterday: Henry Hills Red, White, and Blue column: Scores of Tory MPs and peers urge May to protect Ulster veterans Ministers 2) McVey accused of dismissing evidence of pain caused by Universal Credit growing number of Tory MPs have called for the Treasury to find up to 2 billion in additional funding to protect millions of families who will be up to 200 a month worse off when they move on to the new system. The Times Reform causing unacceptable hardship, MPs warn FT Forty per cent of claimants unable to pay bills The Sun Esther McVey, the work and pensions secretary, is today accused by MPs of presiding over a culture of indifference to the desperate hardship being caused by the universal credit policy. In a highly critical report the public accounts committee (PAC) will say Ms McVey and the Department of Work and Pensions persistently dismissed evidence of the unacceptable difficulties that the new benefits system was creating. It accuses the DWP of operating under a fortress mentality, dismissing the concerns of charities and local authorities who have had to deal with the consequences of the policy. The findings, from a cross-party group of MPs, will increase pressure on Ms McVey and the chancellor, Philip Hammond, in the run up to the budget next week. Labour and a Comment: The fortress mentality over Universal Credit needs to stop Bridget Phillipson, Times Red Box Ministers 3) Javid apologises for Home Office demanding DNA from gurkhas Sajid Javid today publicly apologised after the Home Office illegally demanded Afghan interpreters and the children of Gurkhas hand over their DNA to settle in Britain. The Home Secretary said many hundreds of people were caught up in the scandal after officials issued unclear or wrong guidance. Some 51 children of Gurkhas Nepalese natives who had served in the military and had been given the right to stay in the UK after a high-profile campaign led by Joanna Lumley were told to give their DNA. And the border authorities also demanded that every single Afghan interpreter and their families who wanted to move to the UK hand over their DNA. It remains unclear how many people were affected from Afghanistan, but it is thought to be at least a few hundred. Four siblings from the same Gurkha family were all denied the right to stay in Britain because they refused to hand over their DNA, Mr Javid admitted. Daily Mail Crime rise as stop-and-search falls The Times Editorial: Another fine mess at the Home Office Daily Telegraph Ministers 4) Hammond faces revolt over delays to betting machine curbs measure would be introduced, with the industry lobbying for a delay to allow it to adjust. Ministers at the Department for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport privately insisted that the reduction should come into force no later than April. They were backed by Matt Hancock, the culture secretary at the time. The Times Baker fears Treasury projections for Brexit are too gloomy Daily Telegraph Are high taxes killing the British High Street? FT Philip Hammond is facing a rebellion next week if he presses ahead in the budget with plans to delay a cut to the maximum stake on fixed-odds betting terminals (FOBTs). The Treasury has resisted the cut to 2 from the present 100 on the ground that it would cost about 400 million in lost revenue. It relented this spring after a cross-party campaign led by Iain Duncan Smith, the former Conservative Party leader, and Carolyn Harris, the Labour MP for Swansea East. The decision led to drops in the share price of bookmakers, who said that the move would lead to the closure of betting shops and the loss of up to 200,000 jobs. It later emerged that there was continuing uncertainty over when the Comment: Ministers must keep their promises on FOBTs Iain Duncan Smith and Carolyn Harris, The Times >Today: Joel Davidson and Amir Sadjady in Local Government: Bold measures are needed from Hammond next week to save our high streets >Yesterday: Will Tanner in Comment: The Budget choice on ending austerity. Raise taxes or ease up on deficit reduction. Ministers 5) Brokenshire defends Oxford-Cambridge homes plan A million new homes between Oxford and Cambridge would destroy an area of countryside larger than Birmingham, campaigners have warned. That is the number of homes the National Infrastructure Commission (NIC) has recommended by 2050 to boost economic growth in an area known as the Oxford-Cambridge Arc. The Campaign to Protect Rural England said this would result in the loss of 67,000 acres of greenfield farmland and woodland. It found that there was capacity for only 50,000 houses on previously developed land within the arc James Brokenshire, the communities secretary, said: Building the homes our country needs does not mean tearing up vast tracts of our countryside. The Oxford-Cambridge Arc is an opportunity to further strengthen rural economies, enhance the environment and benefit local communities. The Times Ministers under pressure over gap between planning permits and construction The Sun Rising sea levels threaten 1.5 million properties FT McDonnell claims landlord rules arent fit for purpose The Guardian Ministers 6) Hancock urges social media companies to enforce minimum age rules Northern Irish medical chief warns of 12-hour waits on trolleys Belfast Telegraph MPs call for Green to be stripped of knighthood Social media use has contributed to the rise in self-harm among teenage girls, the health secretary, Matt Hancock, has said, accusing big tech firms of doing nothing to enforce minimum age rules. Hancock, a keen user of social media who created his own app for constituents, has repeatedly warned of the dangers posed to teenagers by the influence of some sites and has said he does not let his own young children use them. His department is set to produce the first official guidelines on the maximum amount of time young people should spend on social media, as well as probing the links between excessive use of social media and child mental health problems. The health secretary said he believed social media has got a part to play in rising mental health problems for children and young people. The Guardian Sir Philip Green faced new calls to be stripped of his knighthood yesterday as he was outed as the businessman alleged to have gagged staff from speaking out about bullying and sexual harassment. The retail magnate was named in the House of Lords by the former Labour cabinet minister Lord Hain, despite a court order preventing details of the case from being made public. The collapse of the privacy injunction, which cost Sir Philip about 500,000 to secure, will renew controversy about how the law is being used by the wealthy to mask allegations of wrongdoing. It will also pile pressure on parliament to act against non-disclosure agreements, which critics fear have been used to cover up widespread misconduct. The House of Commons has spent more than 2.4 million since 2013 on staff settlements containing gagging clauses. The Times Hain defends his use of parliamentary privilege Daily Mail McDonnell faces backlash over multi-billion spending plans Opposition attack fall in spending on school buildings The Times Labour drops complaint over wreath-laying coverage John McDonnell faced a backlash today over his demand for a huge 108billion a year spending splurge to end austerity. The shadow chancellor was warned his plans would reverse eight years of work trying to balance the books, and allow the deficit to spiral once again. And he refused five times to rule out increasing fuel duty as part of efforts to drum up cash for a left-wing governments programme. The respected Institute for Fiscal Studies (IFS) think-tank said the spending platform set out by the Opposition at the election last year had been huge. But it pointed out that those proposals totalling 40billion a year in day-to-day outlay plus many times more in capital spend actually meant giving less to the NHS than the Tory government and did not cover the bill for reversing benefit cuts. In a speech ahead of Chancellor Philip Hammonds Budget due on Monday, Mr McDonnell suggested making good on Theresa Mays promise to end austerity meant reversing the cuts introduced since the coalition came to power in 2010. Daily Mail Labour has dropped its complaint against the Daily Mail over its coverage of Jeremy Corbyns visit to the cemetery where terror leaders linked to the Munich massacre are buried. The party complained to the Press regulator in August about several papers coverage of the 2014 event. Last night it emerged it had told the Independent Press Standards Organisation that it did not wish to take the case against the Mail any further. The decision will be seen as a vindication for the Mails original story, which concerned a photo, obtained by this paper, of Mr Corbyn holding a wreath only feet away from the graves of terror leaders linked to the 1972 killings. The picture was among a number taken during a service to honour Palestinian martyrs One picture placed Mr Corbyn close to the grave of another terrorist, Atef Bseiso, intelligence chief of the Palestine Liberation Organisation. Bseiso has also been linked to the Munich atrocity and was assassinated in Paris in 1992. Daily Mail Bercow could face inquiry Irish party sparks confusion over whether it is standing candidates in Northern Ireland John Bercow could finally face an inquiry into bullying claims against him for the first time after Parliament backed a damning report into harassment. Last night the House of Commons Commission said it was adopting all the main recommendations made by Dame Laura Coxs report. It means historic allegations can now be probed. Previous commitments to reform would only have covered new allegations of bad behaviour. The Commons Speaker has been accused of several cases of bullying and former official David Leakey, who was Parliaments Black Rod, has accused him of creating a climate of fear and intimidation. Mr Bercow denies the allegations against him. He insisted today he and other senior figures in Parliament had heard and are willing to change. The Speaker, who has been in post since 2009, struck a defiant tone in the Commons as he told MPs he wanted to see Parliament become a safe place, a haven for staff. Daily Mail Fianna Fail announced its first ever candidate to stand in an election in Northern Ireland and then promptly sparked confusion by claiming no decision had been made. Sorcha McAnespy is expected to stand in next Mays local election. Fianna Fail, currently the main opposition party in the Republic, is due to unveil a number of other candidates in the future. Ms McAnespy, a member of the partys national executive, is already an independent councillor for Fermanagh and Omagh District Council. She left Sinn Fein in 2016 after accusing the party of nepotism and misogyny. Party leader Micheal Martin, who has long pledged to contest elections north of the border, has informed her she will be a candidate next May. The move comes amid ongoing speculation that Fianna Fail might ultimately merge with the SDLP to run in future elections here. Belfast Telegraph News in Brief: The arrest came only hours after the mysterious spate of pipe bombs spread further as federal authorities said on Friday morning that they had found two more of the explosive devices: one addressed to Senator Cory Booker and the other to James R. Clapper Jr., the former director of national intelligence. Although no formal charges have been filed yet, two of the law enforcement officials said there was a high likelihood that Mr. Sayoc would be prosecuted at least in part in Federal District Court in Manhattan. The F.B.I.s New York office has been leading the investigation and five of the bombs sent this week fall under the jurisdiction of the United States attorneys office in Manhattan. The package addressed to Mr. Clapper was meant to be delivered to the New York offices of CNN, where he works as an analyst, but was intercepted at a mail facility in Midtown Manhattan, police officials in New York City said. The package addressed to Mr. Booker, a New Jersey Democrat, was found in Florida, which two people briefed on the matter have said has become a focus of the intense, nationwide investigation into the bombs. At a news conference on Friday morning, John Miller, the New York Police Departments deputy commissioner of intelligence and counterterrorism, said a postal worker at the mail facility on 52nd Street recognized the package addressed to Mr. Clapper as similar to other suspicious packages discovered this week and froze it in the system. Charlotte Woodworth is a Campaigns Director at 38 Degrees, running campaigns on issues chosen by more than two million members from social security to Brexit. Were all familiar with the pressures that Philip Hammond is under in the run up to the budget, from his party colleagues to the Prime Minister herself. The Chancellor faces a long and difficult to do list but fixing universal credit should be at the top of it. Analysis by 38 Degrees today reveals that, alongside the very real pain many families will experience as a result of the shift to universal credit, the Tory party itself is set to face a big political headache. Thats because in 39 Conservative seats the number of voters due to be enrolled on to Universal Credit is at least double the majority in that seat; in more than 20 of those, the ratio is five to one. It wont take many voters dismayed at their or their neighbours experience on Universal Credit switching party for seats to change hands. Big reductions in your monthly income have a way of focusing the mind. Ours is the latest in a long list of warnings around this flagship reform. Earlier this month, Sir John Major said the Universal Credit rollout could be the 21st Century Conservative partys equivalent of the Poll Tax. While sympathetic to the principle of Universal Credit, Major told the Today Programme he believed that there was a risk that Universal Credit as it stands with households potentially losing thousands of pounds in one stroke could see the Conservatives removed from the concept of fairness in the minds of the average Briton, spelling deep political trouble. Meanwhile Iain Duncan Smith, the original architect of Universal Credit, has urged the Chancellor to invest 2 billion more in the system in order to keep it afloat. Just last week it was reported some 40 Tory backbenchers have written to Phlip Hammond supporting his call, mindful perhaps of not just families feeling the pinch but also the political impact. Our analysis shows the electoral risk doesnt affect any one faction of the party in particular: Theresa Villiers is at risk, as is Anna Soubry, as is, ironically, Iain Duncan Smith himself. That is the basic political calculation for the Conservatives that Sir John Major warned of. Weve known for a long time that there are significant problems with how Universal Credit is being rolled out. Charities and others have long warned of the dangers to low income families up and down the country. 38 degrees members are, variously, calling for more money for the programme, for it to be paused while problems are addressed, and ultimately for it to be scrapped if it cant be fixed. The people emailing their MPs on this issue and signing petitions aimed at the Chancellor and Esther Mcvey, the Work and Pensions Secretary, come from all walks of life, from all parts of the country, and from all political backgrounds. Hundreds more people who are already worse off because of Universal Credit have used the 38 Degrees website to contact their MPs to tell their own personal stories. This is important because problems caused by the current implementation of this benefit are not fairy tales. Its causing real hardship among real people. Many have told us of their own experiences of the current system. One woman told us that after her husband died, she was left to live on Universal Credit of 317 per month, supplemented by a bereavement allowance which will finish in December, in the dead of winter. Meanwhile Debbie, a 33-year old working mother from Purley, is juggling not knowing how much money she will get each month. She told 38 Degrees: I used to receive Child Tax Credits and Working Tax Credits but was told in April that I had to move to Universal Credit. I understood that cuts would be made, as the Government needed to crack down and encourage some people back into work, but I was reassured I wouldnt be significantly impacted as a hard-working citizen. But since the changeover, my payments have been inconsistent and have left me much worse off from anywhere between 150-600 less a month! Its clear from what people are telling us that the system as it stands is not incentivising work, and is, in fact, punishing those who do try to work hard and raise their families aspirations we should hold dear. The Chancellor must heed the calls of the tens of thousands of 38 Degrees members demanding he urgently fills the 2 billion gap in funding for Universal Credit. Its not just the politically astute thing to do: its the right thing to do. Universal Credit is an appealing idea for the Conservatives. Its clean and simple, seemingly wiping away layers of bureaucracy in one stroke. It also incentivises work, or so goes the theory. But the plan of a streamlined benefits system is at risk of seriously backfiring on the Government if it is not backed up by compassion and much-needed money. 38 Degrees is a politically-independent campaign organisation representing two million people in the UK: from all backgrounds, ages and political outlooks. We campaign to support our NHS, to protect our countryside, to make sure peoples voices are heard throughout the Brexit process and on many other issues, local and national. We sign petitions and email our representatives, we crowdfund important research projects and meet our elected politicians face-to-face. We are a not for profit organisation, funded by thousands of donations. That Brexit dominates the political landscape is an unalterable fact. One might wish that it was otherwise. But there is no gain from yearning to be elsewhere. This is why we wrote off this years Conservative Party Conference, arguing that it was an exercise in suspended animation while further developments in the negotiation were awaited. Tory MPs and activists could thus throw caution to the winds. They could disagree with each other about the partys future direction over, say, economic policy without damaging Party unity further. At the same conference, Philip Hammond said, during his speech to it, that when the Prime Minister gets a deal agreedthere will be a boost to our economic growtha Deal Dividendwhich we will share, in line with our balanced approachbetween keeping taxes low; supporting public services; reducing the deficit; and investing in Britains future. But the same truth that applied to the Conservative Conference will apply to his Budget on Monday. As during the run-up to every Budget, the Chancellor has been lobbied energetically (including on this site by a columnist and contributors). Some want particular taxes cut; others action on housing; others still wider, capital spending; others, new fiscal rules. Others yet namely almost all of Hammonds ministerial colleagues want him to do for their budgets what he has already promised to do for the NHS: in other words, increase them further, given Theresa Mays own conference promise of an end to austerity. The Chancellor may be aided by a windfall of some 13 billion, we are told, wafted into the Treasury by higher-than-expected tax receipts despite Brexit, we cant help adding. That should enable him to meet help both meet the NHS bill which Downing Street has sent in his direction and bale out Universal Credit. And we can be sure that there will be some add-ons and twiddly bits for some of the sectors and interests he praised in his conference: artificial intelligence, self-driving cars, personalised medicine, virtual reality, advanced robotics. But the discomforting truth is that the Prime Minister may not get a Brexit deal at all and that, if she does, the Commons may vote it down, with uncertain consequences: there is really no way of knowing. That being so, there may no Deal Dividend at all; instead, there may be No Deal, with investors paying more money in rather than getting cash out, if a sudden gap opens up in the public finances. All that Hammond can be certain of on Monday is uncertainty. He thus has little option but to make a virtue of necessity. If he is wise, the Chancellor will set himself one task only next week: to persuade voters, business, Parliament and not least our EU interlocutors that Britain is doing all it can to be ready for No Deal. Dominic Raab is pressing his foot on the accelerator. He told the Cabinet this week that departments need to redouble their efforts. The Government is planning a wave of No Deal legislation next month. Next week, Hammond must provide the opener to this show. The Prime Minister once proclaimed that No Deal is better than a Bad Deal. We have heard rather less of that from her recently. But there was always doubt over whether she meant it: most of the key players in Downing Street are desperate for a deal, and Brussels knows it. The institutional Treasury and the Chancellor himself have been near the heart of the problem. If you think about it, his words in Birmingham were a vivid illustration of the issue: if you assure the world there will be a deal, after all, why should business prepare for No Deal? Hammond would have little room for manoeuvre in any event. He is in a weak position. Theresa May cut him out of her election campaign last year, and planned to ship him out of the Treasury. Backbenchers dynamited his first Budget, with its attempted national insurance hike. The DUP or the ERG could exploit any controversial measure by voting against it in the Finance Bill: threats to that effect have already been made. There have been better and worse Chancellors than Hammond and unluckier ones, too. But there can seldom have been one so vulnerable to known unknowns and unknown unknowns on this scale. He is the No Mans Land Chancellor, waiting for Brexit as those tramps waited for Godot (though admittedly they had no set date for his arrival). He will know that this could be his last Budget. He can use it to be neither Eeyore nor Tigger, but simply to play it straight. Will Heaven is Director of Policy and Head of Place at Policy Exchange, and Jack Airey is Research Fellow on Place and Prosperity. Why is there such a big gulf between the kinds of new homes people want to live in and near and the homes that actually get built? Most people dont like glassy high-rises, sprawling concrete estates or architects adventurous concepts. As polling shows, they want homes that are built in traditional styles: Georgian and Victorian-style terraced housing on tree-lined streets, for example. This is the puzzle that needs solving. Ugly building is a cause of Nimbyism a pejorative term for an entirely rational defence of an economic asset which stops developers building as many homes as they would like. It frustrates and slows them down, making their work riskier to take on and more expensive. So why dont they change the design and style of their homes to suit ordinary peoples tastes? Admittedly, making popular design and style central to the process of housebuilding will represent a significant cultural shift. For decades, developers have been guided by a single orthodoxy to add as much value to a plot of land as can be absorbed by the local housing market. This is rational economics, you might say and indeed it has made developers handsome profits. Yet where land values are high, as they are in the places homes are most needed, it has also meant new homes being squeezed together as closely as space will allow, and costs cut on design. Little attention is paid to whether new homes add value to the wider place. It is this that often leads to protest and confrontation between developers and local residents. But there is evidence that a cultural shift, at last, is beginning to happen. In July, a month after Policy Exchanges Building More, Building Beautiful report was published, the Government issued its revised National Planning Policy Framework. The document, which sets the rules for development control in England, now requires local planners to insist that new homes are built to a high design standard and encourages local authorities to produce design codes and style guides to define these standards. The framework clearly puts the issue of popular design and style at the heart of the Governments housing strategy. The creation of high quality buildings and places is fundamental to what the planning and development process should achieve, it says. Since this minor breakthrough, there has been evidence of a shift in practice as well. Planners are reportedly basing many more decisions on questions of design and aesthetics. They have much greater confidence, it seems, that central government will back them if the developer contests their decision. There has also been a change in tone from ministers. Rather than speaking almost entirely in terms of the number of houses built the aim remains 300,000 homes a year by the mid 2020s there is now an increasing focus on the quality of what is being built. In his speech to a room full of architects at the RIBA Stirling Prize award ceremony this month James Brokenshire, the Housing Secretary, talked of how he will pay special attention to the quality of design and style and of the need for homes which fit with the world around them. At Conservative Party Conference Kit Malthouse, the Housing Minister, urged developers to build the conservation areas of the future. Added to this is the forthcoming Letwin Review of Build Out. Commissioned by the Government, the review panels analysis is expected to advise radical measures on reforming the land market the high price of land, as we have said, has a significant impact on the way new homes are built. This is all very welcome. But theres much further to go, especially in parts of the housebuilding industry that tend to resist the idea that ordinary people should have a say over what new developments look like and, for example, whether they are built using local materials. Along with developers, this means architects, planners, landowners, and even civil servants will need to change their established ways of working. The practical and economic case for building beautiful must be made, not just the political one. In other words, there is a need for more research, open debate and fresh perspectives. Well be doing as much as we can to contribute at Policy Exchange. In November, we will be hosting three public events and publishing an essay collection as part of what we are calling Building Beautiful Month. With speakers and essayists including Brokenshire, Malthouse, the celebrated Syrian architect and author Marwa Al-Sabouni, the philosopher Sir Roger Scruton, and Ben Derbyshire, the President of RIBA, we will be asking what steps developers, architects, planners, and policymakers can take for housing development to be made more popular. None of this should mean a minister imposing their architectural tastes on the public. We wouldnt ask a politician for advice on how to dress, so neither should we ask them how exactly to design a house. But it does require the Government and the housebuilding industry working together to overcome the reasons why people object to homes being built in their backyard and for building beautiful to become the new orthodoxy. We are analyzing the site. Please wait a few seconds.. PRESS RELEASE 24 October, 2018 ON THE DELHI UNIVERSITy PROPOSAL TO REMOVE MY BOOKS FROM THE SYLLABUS The meeting of the Delhi University Standing Committee for Academic Affairs, according to media reports, in its meeting on 24 October, 2018 has recommended to drop teaching of my three books for M.A. Political Science course. The three books are aWhy I am not a Hindua, aGod as Political Philosopher: Buddhas Challenge to Brahminisma; and aPost-Hindu India: A Discourse in Dalit-Bahujan Socio-Spiritual and Scientific Revolutiona This is an unfortunate Anti-academic attempt, which is part of the larger RSS/BJPas agenda to not to allow plural ideas to be taught to the students in the universities. The right wing academicians who demanded for removing the books said ahis understanding of Hindu faith is wrong and there is no empirical data to establish his understanding. While saying so they have not shown the basic academic ethic of reading my books. God as Political Philosopher is my Ph.D. Thesis, which is heavily referenced. It has nothing to with Hindu faith. Post Hindu India is a book of massive data base from the village communitiesa production knowledge and scientific experimentation process of various productive communities. Those who do not have any understanding of village production relations hardly understand that book. Unless they get back to the village life and study the production relations and they say it is anti-something or the other does not make sense. It is published by Sage an internationally reputed publishers. They cannot rubbish my research work of 10 long years. Why I am Not a Hindu is known as a classic, being taught in many universities in the West and India. The Hindutva forces are opposing teaching and reading of this book in many countriesaincluding in the Columbia University US. Scholars such as Lise McKean, Linda Hess, Eliza Kent etc., recommend it as an introduction level reading material on Hinduism. The Hindutva forces opposed but they did not succeed in removing it. The same forces are trying once again in DU. The same forces are asking for inclusion of Savarkaras book a Hindutva-Who is a Hindu? and Golwalkaras book aBunch of Thoughtsa to be taught in the universities. Are these books referenced? Is there empirical data in these books? While their right to ask for what they want to teach is part of their academic freedom but asking for removal of other books that they do not agree with is Anti-academic and destructive. Universities are meant for teaching and debating diversified ideas, concepts. Hundreds of thoughts must clash there. Universities are not theological institutes where only one religious ideas are taught. The MHRD must not allow this kind of destructive un-academic processes to continue in DU and also in other universities. I appeal to the academic fraternity to fight this trend in the nation and protect the academic freedom and autonomy. Prof. Kancha Ilaiah Shepherd Director, Centre for the Study of Social Exclusion and Inclusive Policy, Maulana Azad National Urdu University, Gachibowli, Hyderabad-32 Ph.No.- 040 23008335 Mob - 9704444692 www.kanchailaiah.com The future of the cruise industry in Queensland, Australia, will come down to three key and current infrastructure projects. In Brisbane, a new terminal is on target for 2020 in partnership with Carnival Corporation; Ports North has plans for a massive overhaul of Cairns to accommodate larger vessels; and in Townsville, a big-budget plan will widen and deepen the ports access channel over the next five years to attract larger ships. Julie OBrien, cruise development leader tourism and events Queensland, said that the state offers 14 different ports and moorings for cruise ships. The most recently available statistics showed 29 percent growth season, with 468 vessel calls over the 2016-2017 season amounting to 815,706 guests. Among new ports in the region is Bundaberg, which received its first cruise call in June 2018 when the Silver Discoverer visited. The future may be pinned to a major homeport in Brisbane. "The facility is expected to be operational in early 2020 and will benefit local businesses, both tourism and other supply, with increased homeporting ensuring a substantial economic step change, said OBrien. Growth potential, especially for homeporting, is expected in the main ports of Brisbane and Cairns. Townsville will host its first partial-turnaround later this year, hopefully giving the cruise lines confidence that the region can provide these services in the future, she continued. Townsville also provides fuel and maintenance services, which makes it a particularly attractive call in the north. There is however, enormous transit call potential in Gladstone, Fraser Island, Port Douglas, Mooloolaba and the Whitsundays and a great deal of interest in the unique experiences of the Torres Strait. With an expansive coastline, its not uncommon for cruise ships to call on several ports in the state on the same itinerary. We specifically ensure diversity along the coast, optimizing each regions strengths and unique offerings to create an itinerary that is appealing, OBrien said. The recent visit from the Silver Discoverer took in seven Queensland destinations, and passengers could experience diversity each day, from world heritage listed Fraser Island, to the Great Barrier Reef, to the Outback (accessed from Townsville). Our point of difference is our variety thats our sales pitch. As the state attracts more calls, OBrien is mindful of the passenger experience ashore. We are putting a lot of effort into ensuring the volunteers meet the ships and that the communities understand the valuable economic contribution of this market sector, she added. BRIDGEPORT - A local man, who police said took a young girl into her home after her mother died, is then accused of repeatedly raping her. William Foster, 39, was charged Friday with first-degree sexual assault, second-degree sexual assault and risk of injury to a child. Superior Court Judge Tracy Lee Dayton ordered Foster, who is on probation for unrelated charges, held in lieu of $500,000 bond and continued the case to Nov. 6. Thank you, your honor, Foster said sarcastically as he was led away by judicial marshals. Police said the girl, now 16, was recently found to be pregnant with Fosters child. During a forensic interview, police said the girl told them that she had gone to live with Foster, a family friend, when she was 11. Soon after, Foster began raping her on a nightly basis, police said. Police said the girl told them she cried for Foster to stop, but it never works. She said Foster told her that having sex with him would make her do better in school. Police said Foster was arrested in Alabama after he fled there after learning police were looking for him. Cesar Sayoc, the Florida man arrested Friday in connection with the spate of explosive devices sent to Democratic politicians, liberal philanthropist George Soros and CNN, has connections to New York, according to his testimony in a recent lawsuit. ATF agents on Friday afternoon confirmed Sayoc, 56, as the man arrested Friday morning. In the April 2014 deposition, Sayoc testified that in the 1980s, he worked at a gentleman's club called String Fellas in New York for a man named Michael J. Peter, who according to Sayoc "invented" the gentleman's club and was at the time "semiretired" in Binghamton. Peter is a well-known strip joint owner in South Florida. Sayoc who said he was of Irish, Phillipine and Native American descent also worked at a number of strip clubs in Florida, where he said he was a dancer, manager, entertainer and owner. Federal agents confirmed that Sayoc also has connections to northern New Jersey and Brooklyn. Sayoc has an extensive criminal record in South Florida reaching back more than two decades, with charges ranging from drug possession to grand theft. He was convicted of making a bomb threat in 2002. Records also show he owns a dry cleaning business. In the 2014 deposition, Sayoc attributed his 2002 arrest to a bad joke as he attempted to get service from a business: "What do I have to do, blow up a building to talk to somebody?" he recalled saying. "Yeah, joking around ... and then the bomb squad showed up to my store and I'm like, are you kidding me, you know," he said in the deposition. Authorities on Monday impounded a white van that was reported to belong to Sayoc after covering it with a blue tarp. It was decorated with praise for Trump and Vice President Mike Pence as well as images of Trump opponents including Hillary Clinton, Jill Stein and Michael Moore with bullseyes over their faces. The Wall Street Journal reported that Sayoc first registered to vote in Florida in 2016 as a Republican. President Donald Trump's assault on international treaties and agreements is taking another victim: the Intermediate-range Nuclear Forces Treaty (INF). The Cold War-era treaty eliminated the deployment of all land-based U.S. and Russian nuclear and conventionally armed missiles (and their launchers) with a range between 311 miles and 3,420 miles. When signed by President Ronald Reagan and Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev in 1987, it was celebrated as one of the greatest arms-control achievements ever, because it eliminated a whole class of weapons from a continent ravaged by war in that century. Everyone - Americans, Russians, Europeans - was better off. Trump and his national security adviser John Bolton - the driver of this U.S. policy change - have decided that Reagan, Gorbachev and European leaders were wrong to want to decrease the number of deployed weapons, including nuclear-armed missiles, in Europe. Instead, Trump wants to restart an arms race with Russia. Trump officials also have cited China's land-based missiles as an additional justification for pulling out of the INF Treaty. So now we are embarking on an arms race with both Russia and China. It is true that Russia was violating the INF Treaty by developing a new cruise missile. Something had to be done to stop Vladimir Putin's bad behavior. And yes, China also needs to be deterred in Asia. The Trump decision to withdraw for the INF Treaty now, however, does little to achieve these U.S. security goals and much to undermine them. In Europe, we have now lost the diplomatic battle by appearing yet again as the wrecker of international agreements. European leaders should have done more to pressure Putin to stick to the treaty. But now the attention on bad behavior will swing back to us, not Moscow. That's a gift for Putin. And then what? Maybe secret plans have been drafted to enhance European deterrence without the INF Treaty. In public, however, the Trump administration has not outlined how it will use its freedom from the INF Treaty to deploy more intermediate-range missiles on land in Europe. Which missile? Which launcher? And most importantly, where will they be deployed? To be sure, Washington today has more options than Reagan did when he pushed ahead to deploy ground-launched cruise missiles and Pershing II missiles in Europe in the 1980s. But even if Poland or Estonia were to allow U.S. missile deployments in their countries, that would spark a major political conflict within NATO. That's a second gift for Putin. Also, consider why these weapons inspired such fear at the time. Compared to ICBMs, they decrease the time that leaders in Moscow and Washington have to respond to an attack, real or perceived, to as little as 10 minutes. That is destabilizing. And finally, the United States and our European allies already have tremendous deterrent capability against Russia in the field, including nuclear weapons and the means to deliver them, as well as sea- and air-based conventional missiles. We can additionally deter and counter Russia by increasing our air- and sea-based missiles in the region without deploying missiles of this range on land. In Asia, the United States and our allies also have many other means to deter China without deploying intermediate-range missiles on the ground. In a stroke of brilliance, the U.S. INF negotiators kept air- and sea-based missiles and launchers out of the 1987 treaty, a victory that played to the United States' comparative strengths. We still enjoy those comparative advantages in Asia. If we need to deploy more missiles to deter China, we can do so on air- and sea-based platforms without violating the INF Treaty. And our allies can deploy their own missiles on land if they want to do so. But do they want to do so? Has any U.S. ally in Asia applauded Trump's decision to withdraw from this treaty? Not yet. The Trump administration would do well to study the intense intra-alliance tensions over the Reagan administration deployments of the ground-launched cruise missiles and Pershing IIs before rushing into such dramas with our Asian allies. And ground-based deployments in Guam would be both remote and much more vulnerable than missiles deployed on ships or submarines. Instead of accelerating an arms race with China, we should pressure it to join a negotiation about a new arms-control regime in Asia or the world. Optimists are clinging to the hope that the Trump's withdrawal gambit is just a negotiating tactic - a move to get the Russians back to the negotiating table. I hope they're right, but I fear they're wrong. Putin is unlikely to be threatened into negotiating, especially when the new status quo serves Russian political and security interests. What's likely up next for the Trump/Bolton wrecking ball: New START. Bolton has never supported this treaty. If we pull out of it, get ready to spend hundreds of billions on more nuclear weapons of little strategic value (we can blow up the world right now with the 1,550 nuclear weapons allowed under New START) and tens of billions of dollars more to gather intelligence about Russia's nuclear deployments that can currently be collected through the verification and inspections procedures codified in New START. The nuclear arms race during the Cold War did not make the United States more secure. Neither will launching a new arms race with both Russia and China. - - - McFaul is director of the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies and a Hoover fellow at Stanford University and a contributing columnist to The Post. He is the author of "From Cold War to Hot Peace: An American Ambassador in Putin's Russia." As the Nov. 6 mid-term election approaches, credit unions have a lot at stake in the new Congress. The 115th Congress brought major wins for credit unions, and CUNA, leagues and credit unions are already focused on continuing the momentum in the next Congress. In addition to its normal advocacy and political activities, CUNA launched a new campaign under its Member Activation Program (MAP) this year, called Credit Unions Vote. The campaign includes a website, CreditUnionsVote.com, that allows members to check their registration status, register to vote, participate in early voting and find their polling place CUNA launched the campaign in September. Kyle Frick, vice president of marketing at Mid-Oregon CU, Bend, Ore., said the early timing was critical, since it allowed Mid Oregon to go out before the majority of election-related e-mails found their way into spam folders. Frick said Mid Oregon decided to combine the content from the Credit Unions Vote campaign and CUNAs Stop the Data Breaches campaign, and worked with CUNA to combine the two messages in a way that fit. Microsofts Office 365 provides unparalleled productivity for private users, students, and businesses alike. However, because its a relatively new product, some are reluctant to adopt it. Here are a few benefits of moving to Office 365. And before we go too far, lets get a few things straight. We dont condone moving to a platform just because its new, nor do we recommend rethinking business strategies every time a company releases a new product. In fact, we know that theres very little new about Office 365 in general, aside from an update to its business model. With that said, its time to take a real look at how you can benefit from moving to Microsofts Office 365. Simplified Licensing One of the things that Microsoft has dealt with over the years is in regard to licensing and version control. With different open volume enterprise licensing agreements comes different conditions, prices, and renewal commitments. With Office 365, Microsoft has done away with that. Instead of essentially selling different versions of the same product to different people, theyve moved to a per-user subscription model. Before, a credit union with 50 employees will have about 75 to 90 computers, all of which require their own Microsoft Office license. Thats a lot of money. It adds up. Currently, with Office 365, the credit union needs to buy only enough licenses to pay for each user rather than each computer. This means that credit unions can save a hefty chunk of change by buying licenses only for those who will use Office 365 devices, rather than for each computer that needs to run it. If an employee has a desktop, a laptop, and a home PC for work, thats only one license instead of three. Thats almost enough for an endorsement on its own from us. Support Heres what well say about support, though. Because Office 365 is cloud-based, and because it encompasses so many different things, including productivity software, Skype, email, and so on, you know its going to have basically the same accessibility and functionality it always has. However, if for any reason youre having trouble with your email, your teams, or your productivity, you can rest assured that Microsofts IT personnel will be there to assist you. Theyre always going to make sure that their product is functioning perfectly, and theyll always be ready to assist you if your version of their software isnt performing up to snuff. As a bonus, this will free up your own IT personnel to work on more pressing matters. Change is Inevitable Some things are just meant to be. Other things are more like the steamroller: we can see them coming from far off, but we cant quite get out of the way. We think those that allow progress to roll them over and crush them are being silly. At some point, all Microsoft Office licenses will be Office 365 licenses. We see no reason to prolong the inevitable. Its a good, stable platform. Your credit union might as well take advantage of that on your own terms, rather than when the steamroller finally arrives. Click here to learn more about the Microsoft Office 365 Solution at Ongoing Operations. Blockchain - The Netherlands Is Blazing A Trail The world is abuzz about blockchain, but not all nations are equally up to speed when it comes to their embrace and support of this important emerging technology. Some have focused on cracking down on potentially predatory behaviors, even at the cost of thwarting enterprises that could massively improve quality of life throughout society. But some countries have made it a point to dive head first into blockchain and show federal support and encouragement for blockchain innovation. The Netherlands has emerged as such a leader. In fact, it launched government-supported blockchain pilot projects, and pushes for new prototypes, project implementation, and international partnerships. Partners so far include the World Bank, the United Nations, and the EU Forum. The Netherlands also announced in May that the Ministry of Economic Affairs and Climate Policy created a special blockchain unit with a research agenda mainly focused on establishing if the trustless nature of blockchain is reliable, determining if blockchain is sustainable from the perspective of energy consumption, and discovering the best ways in which blockchain endeavors can be managed and governed. The Netherlands hosts one of the most passionate blockchain scenes in the world, said Emanuele Francioni, Tech Lead of Dusk Foundation, a Dutch non-profit creating a blockchain-based secure communication system, to protect the freedom of speech. Events are organized in multiple cities in the country and the turnout is great. Amsterdam, Berlin, and London form a strong co-located blockchain scene. We are seeing more homegrown projects in the Dutch space, and events are becoming more and more professional. Most of the early experimentation by the government was done with multinationals through consortia, often in the permissioned [private] space, Francioni continued. We are starting to see the first permissionless [public] initiatives getting more public traction, which is a very exciting area that should get a lot more attention. Dutch ventures are also making strides when it comes to crypto exchanges. If you want to acquire cryptocurrency tokens, you need to exchange fiat currencies (like dollars or euros) for your token of choice on a crypto exchange. Trading for and between cryptocurrencies is one of the industry's most emerging markets, but many of the exchange options out there are very problematic: theyre slow, charge high fees, upset currency pricing, and are vulnerable to hacks. Founded in 2014 by John Jansen, Dutch firm Deribit is a cryptocurrency exchange on which its possible to trade futures, options and other derivative products. The exchange keeps 95% of its bitcoin held in cold storage at all times. Its amazing that the Dutch government created a special blockchain unit with the goal of not just regulating the new technology but actively looking for opportunities, said Jansen, who comes from a background in options trading in the Amsterdam Options Exchange. This shows a positive attitude toward this technological development which benefits the blockchain ecosystem in the Netherlands. Furthermore, crypto is catching on with the Dutch people as well, Jansen continued. It was recently reported that in October of 2017, an estimated 135,000 Dutch people had invested in cryptocurrencies. But by February of this year, that number rose to 580,000 thats 430% growth in five months. We have every reason to expect that number to continue to rise. And not just the common folk, either. Even our royals get involved said Plamen Nedyalkov, CEO of Zoom. Prince Constantijn van Oranje has been attending blockchain conferences and hackathons across The Netherlands and is the chairman of StartUpFest Europe, which also works with Blockchain startups. Zoom is a blockchain-based hiring and work management system that shows companies and freelancers accurate work history, avoiding fraud through decentralized data hosting. It was founded in Amsterdam in 2017 by Nedyalkov. The inspiration came from the Nedyalkov family construction business, which for over 20 years built residences, hospitals and hotels, but always struggled to secure flexible, global outsourcing. Theres no doubt that the country's support has led to intense innovation in this burgeoning sphere already. From the looks of things, theres a lot more where that came from. Can Dutch regulation legislation keep up with the boom? Can crypto prices stabilize and continue to encourage growth and development? Well have to wait and see how these conditions turn out. Forbes: You Might Also Read: What Does Blockchain Mean To The EU? Rebranding the militia: This Pa. man wants to change your perception Dear Editor: The unfolding Brexit fiasco in the United Kingdom should give pause to anyone considering a vote to terminate Woodstocks library. Like the Brexit referendum, our own Librexit referendum, if passed, would mandate a purely destructive act terminating the Woodstock Library District, which is the sole institutional form of our beloved library, and providing no strategy for moving forward. As we witness now in the UK, Librexit would condemn the Woodstock Library to years of corrosive uncertainty about funding, governance and even its very existence, despite vague and demonstrably unfounded assurances from the library district terminators. New York state is not currently granting any new library charters. Even if this should change, who would be accountable for the years of negotiations, paperwork and legal business that such a process takes? Who would pay the inevitable lawyers fees? The library or the town? In either case, the taxpayers of Woodstock. Like the Brexiteers, the terminators make misleading claims that money would be saved, and sweep under the carpet the threat that Librexit would pose to services that many of the community, especially the less well-off, dependent on services ranging from interlibrary loan to public computers. Worst of all, the terminators, like the Brexiteers before them, have succeeded in hijacking the publics attention and energies away from addressing real and serious infrastructural problems. Already this referendum campaign has put on hold any further moves to remedy the poor state of our librarys physical facilities. A lame-duck Library Board would not be in a position to move forward on this increasingly urgent problem, leaving us back at square one for more years. Leading terminators see the Woodstock Library Board as a dragon to be slain. Once the dragon has been vanquished, they say, everything will be all right. Dont believe this fairy tale. Woodstock residents should vote no. Laurie Kirby Woodstock, N.Y. DOWNINGTOWN Five candidates attended the Downingtown-Thorndale Regional Chamber of Commerce October Networking luncheon Thursday at Victory Brewing Company in Downingtown to explain why they are seeking office. The Chambers Meet the Candidates luncheon included those running for congressional and state office in districts that are in the Chambers service area. Greg McCauley, a tax lawyer, is running for his first time ever, seeking Pennsylvanias 6th Congressional District in the U.S. House. He said he wants to offer new ideas and compassionate solutions to handle issues, such as the balancing the state budget, the opioid crisis, immigration and debt from student loans. Im really disgusted, just like you, with whats going in Congress, McCauley said. Its one crisis after another. These are simple issues for business people. You have an issue with your business, you deal with it and you move on. His opponent, Chrissy Houlahan, a Democrat, who is also a first-time candidate for public office, was unable to attend the luncheon. She is an Air Force veteran, an engineer, a businesswoman, and an educator. Congressman Ryan Costello, R-6, of West Chester, is not seeking re-election. The seat now encompasses all of Chester County, and a portion of southern Berks County. Dan Williams, pastor of New Life in Christ Fellowship in Coatesville said he is running for the Pennsylvania state representative seat in the 74th District because of his appreciation in serving people and because he sees firsthand how residents are struggling financially to afford their home and pay taxes. He wants to be a voice in Harrisburg for people. I want to continue to be there for you, Williams said. Williams, a Democrat, will face off against Amber Little-Turner, a Republican, in the Nov. 6 General Election. Little-Turner said she faced economic and emotional challenges that taught her about having a hard work ethic, self-discipline and self-responsibility. She has worked alongside incumbent state Rep. Harry Lewis Jr., R-74, of Caln, who announced his retirement and that he would not be seeking re-election after his two terms. I joke around and say that Im allowing his retirement, Little-Turner said. She notes that she has an advantage over her opponent because she sat in on meetings with Lewis and she understands issues in the Commonwealth. She said she also gained an understanding about the importance of public service, when she worked alongside Magisterial District Judge Gwenn Knapp in West Chester. As a mother, she believes that education is a top priority. If elected, she hopes to work on fair funding for schools so that they are properly funded. She hears from constituents that they cannot afford property taxes, which is another topic she hopes to address. State Rep. Becky Corbin, R-155, of East Brandywine, said she has been endorsed by the Pennsylvania Chamber of Commerce and the Chester County Chamber of Commerce and other businesses because of her pro-growth policies and voting record. She has also been involved in her community, such as her prior experience serving on the East Brandywine Township planning commission. Her opponent, Danielle Friel Otten, a Democrat, was unable to attend. On her website, she says she is a businesswoman and community leader who has spent the majority of her professional career in marketing and hospitality. State Rep. Eric Roe, R-158, of West Bradford, said he began his campaign because he wanted Pennsylvania to be the most business-friendly and family-friendly state. He also wants to continue focusing on education. Last year, we invested more in education than we ever have in the history of Pennsylvania and we did it without raising taxes, Roe said. Im very proud of that. His opponent, Democrat Christina Sappey, of West Bradford, was unable to attend. According to her website, if elected, she plans to ensure that education and environmental protection are properly funded and implemented. She described herself as having experience with business management and experience in government, serving alongside several state representatives. State Sen. John Rafferty, R-44 of Collegeville, and his opponent, Democrat Katie Muth, were unable to attend. WEST CHESTER The political organization that sent mailers to voters in the 157th Legislative District accusing the incumbent state representative there of misusing taxpayer dollars will have to halt future such mailings, and let those who received the mailings know that what was said was not true, a Chester County judge ruled Wednesday. Common Please Court President Judge Jacqueline Carroll Cody ruled that the assertion that the Pennsylvania Fund for Change made in three mailings that were sent this month and last stating that state Rep. Warren Kampf had been living large on thousands of dollars in per-diems, which are the taxpayer-funded payments state legislators can receive for each day they serve in the state Capital, was false. Mr. Kampf could have chosen to have received the per diem expense dollars, but he chose not to, Cody said at the conclusion of the three-hour long hearing on Kampfs request for an injunction against the group, which he asserts is made up of plaintiff attorneys in the workers compensation field angered at his support for reform of the states system. Cody said Kampfs decision to be paid only for legitimate expenses he had incurred, instead of a blanket payment, was appropriate. She said that the group would now have to send out mailings in the 157th District telling voters there what Republican Kampf had actually done. People need to be told the truth. (The mailings) were inaccurate, misleading to get people to not vote for Mr. Kampf. Kampfs attorney, Guy Donatelli of the West Chester firm of Lamb McErlane, expressed satisfaction with Codys ruling. Im delighted for Warren and for his campaign, Donatelli said outside Codys courtroom. And I am delighted for the people of the 157th District that they get to see what a great person their representative is. On the other hand, one of the attorneys for the Fund for Change group said that its position still hasnt changed that Kampf had received tens of thousands of dollars in reimbursements from state taxpayers during the four terms he has served in office, Those are the facts of the case, said attorney Shelly Chauncey of the West Conshohocken law firm of Lowey Dannenberg, representing the group. The matter is just a parsing of words. Indeed, the groups lead attorney, Gerald Lawrence, argued to Cody that the words per diem that were used in the mailings simply refer to the per day expense reimbursements that Kampf sought over the years. The rules are a per diem system, Lawrence said. But Cody agreed with Kampf that the words per diem in this context carry with them a pejorative meaning for those interested in politics in Harrisburg. They are regarded, Kampf testified, as evidence of corruption in the state capital, where legislators would in the past be paid daily for expenses they had not incurred, such as meals or lodging. We are talking about truth here, Cody said. On Friday, Kampf, of Tredyffrin, filed a petition seeking a restraining order against the Fund for Change. He asked the court to order the group to stop sending the mailings with accusations about per diem payments, to collect as much as it could those that had been sent, and to publish a retraction acknowledging that what it had stated was not true. In questioning by both Lawrence and Donatelli, Kampf was adamant that not only had he not taken the flat-rate per diem payments, but that he had campaigned on not doing so in an effort to provide a transparent face for his constituents. I made a very clear statement that I was not going to take them, he said in response to Donatellis questions. It was definitely something I told the people of the 157th I was not going to do. When Lawrence asked him how much he had been paid in per diem expenses during his four terms, Kampf corrected him. I never did it, and your client said I did, three times. Kampf also asserted that the perception that he had taken those questionable payments had had an impact on his campaign. People approached him on the street, he said, and expressed amazement at the amount of negative publicity they were hearing and reading about his work in Harrisburg. But he agreed with Lawrence that he had no tangible evidence how much the mailing had cost him in terms of voter support. No one had put the mailings in front of me and said, Did you do that? My constituents are actually quite nice to me. Lawrence had argued to Cody that Kampf had not met his burden as showing that he had suffered any irreparable harm from the mailings, and that his clients should not be forced to spend time and money to send out new mailings before the election, as Cody ruled. It was wrong, he said, to force a party to conform to speech they disagree with. Cody gave the two sides until Thursday to determine whether a follow-up hearing will be necessary to keep her from issuing a preliminary injunction. Kampf, in his petition, also contended that the mailings were sent with the knowledge of his opponent in the Nov. 6 election, Democrat Melisa Shusterman of Schuylkill, and were made in order to aid her campaign. The mailings do not mention her candidacy at all, although she is cited as Kampfs opponent on the Fund for Change website. On Wednesday, Shusterman, a first-time candidate for public office from Schuylkill, denied knowing what the mailings said before they went out. Im not a politician, she said in a statement. I am a first-time candidate and small business owner trying to fix the mess in Harrisburg. Im not a part of this group and I have no control over what this group does. What I do know is that Warren Kampf is the personification of money in politics and why Harrisburg does not work for us, she said. Pennsylvania voters deserve a real gubernatorial debate. Sure, there was that Alex Trebek-hosted spectacle. But with Trebek doing most of the talking (and getting several facts wrong) voters didnt learn much. With Gov. Tom Wolf refusing to debate again, there has been no serious discussion of the issues, only name-calling and personal attacks. Sen. Wagners Facebook threats and Wolfs attack ads, including a clever country music song, arent informing voters. Policies vital to our states future are being ignored by this sham campaign. Here are four major issues that arent getting the fair hearing they deserve. Educational Opportunity Contrary to a certain Jeopardy! hosts claims, Pennsylvania is a top ten education-spending state, at more than $17,000 per student. In fact, we beat the national average by $3,800. Despite spending a record $30.5 billion last year, 60 percent of Pennsylvania eighth-graders arent proficient in math or reading. In Philadelphia, fewer than 20 percent of students are hitting standards in reading or math but if youre watching election coverage, youd never know there was a problem. Educational opportunities like education savings accounts (ESAs), which have been so successful in states like Arizona and Florida, are being ignored. ESAs put parents in control, allowing them to customize their childrens education the antidote to our one-size-fits-all system. Pennsylvanias two tax credit scholarship programs, which help students attend schools that better fit their needs, illustrate parents pent-up demand for choice. Last year, nearly 53,000 scholarship applications were denied because of state-imposed program limits. Its unfortunate that policy reforms that could provide better schooling for students ensuring education quality isnt determined by a childs ZIP code dont merit debate in todays politics. Corporate Welfare Corporate welfare has also been a forgotten issue. Pennsylvania has led the nation in special tax breaks, handouts, and subsidies for big business since 2007. This year alone, Pennsylvania will spend $847 million playing favorites with politically-connected businesses. This total doesnt include the billions promised to Amazon if they locate their HQ2 in Pittsburgh or Philadelphia. We dont even know that total, as Wolf and local officials have sued to prevent voters from finding out how much taxpayers are on the hook for. The truth is, these backroom deals dont work. We may attract one business with an exclusive tax break. But favoring a select few with handouts while maintaining high taxes on millions of families and small businesses hurts overall economic growth. Voters care a lot about tax structures that unfairly favor big corporations. Shouldnt they hear Wolfs and Wagners views on the subject? Welfare Reform Speaking of what voters want: there is a huge disconnect between Harrisburg politicians and Pennsylvania voters on welfare spending. Welfare consumes nearly 40 percent of the total state budget, and increases outpace economic growth every year. We cannot avoid discussing our states biggest expenditure. Two-thirds of Pennsylvania voters support welfare reforms that require Medicaid and food stamps recipients to work. Yet in October, Wolf vetoed HB 2138, a work requirement bill that prioritized medical coverage for those who need it most including individuals with disabilities, parents of young children, and the elderly. Vetoing popular policies, then refusing to debate them is a disservice to voters. Worker Freedom Government employees are all too familiar with a lack of choice. After the Supreme Courts recent Janus v. AFSCME decision, 330,000 Pennsylvania public employees finally have the constitutional right to decide whether to pay for union representation. Yet Pennsylvania union leaders have done all they can to stop enforcement of the Janus decision and keep workers trapped. Legislation to notify workers of their constitutional rights and end taxpayer collection of political campaign contributions has been thwarted. These policies would protect the individual rights of government workers and ensure the integrity of our political system yet the lone gubernatorial debate didnt even address them. Wolf can breathe a sigh of relief. Hes dodged any questions that his opposition to labor reforms is tied to the $10 million in political support hes received from government unions. Its a shame that the long-standing traditional of reasoned debate has been broken in this years gubernatorial race. As Election Day fast approaches, its vital that Pennsylvanians get informed about these issues. Mark my words: they will shape the future of our state for decades to come. Nathan Benefield is vice president and COO for the Commonwealth Foundation (CommonwealthFoundation.org), Pennsylvanias free-market think tank. Voluntary public nudity is a strange phenomenon. Its keenest devotees always seem to be those who are most familiar with the thousands of natural shocks to which the flesh is heir, rather than ravishing Botticelli beauties or admirable beefcakers. Take naturists, for example, who are almost always grizzled ancients with purple sprouting knick-knackery bursting out of the most unlikely places. Or perhaps some misshapen ol' tufty, shuffling about like a half-finished project from the Build-A-Bear workshop. And the men are just as bad. Then we have nude charity calendars. Oh God, are they still a thing? I'm afraid they are. The going-naked-for-charity craze began with the Rylstone and District branch of the Women's Institute in 2000 and went on to conquer the country but why? The going-naked-for-charity craze began with the Rylstone and District branch of the Women's Institute in 2000 and went on to conquer the country but why? The British are supposed to be a nation of repressed, polite and shy creatures; a people who would take refuge in a cardigan or something showerproof and neatly quilted at the first sign of bad weather or impending orgy. However, the truth is that given the opportunity to de-breek or de-bra for a good cause, thousands upon thousands of Brits will whip off their pants quicker than Sergeant Wilson could say: 'Do you really think that's wise?' Every year rugby players get their kit off, along with firemen, knitting circles, university students, nurses, butchers, rowers, EastEnders actresses, you name it. While they all raise money for good causes, only some calendars are tasteful and well received. Others less so. Six years ago, a ladies' rugby club from Birmingham published one of the worst ever, showing them posing on pool tables and across sofas in a dingy local pub. It looked like the record of a crime scene, rather than a celebration of life and the female form. Voluntary public nudity is a strange phenomenon. Its keenest devotees always seem to be those who are most familiar with the thousands of natural shocks to which the flesh is heir Yet each autumn we must once more prepare ourselves for another onslaught of goose-pimped calendar nudity. We must get ready for the doughy yeoman buttocks and sun-starved thighs of do-gooders across the land as unimaginative societies strip off for charity. They mean well, of course, although I sometimes think it is much more fun for the exhibitionist participants than those of us who have to shell out for their chosen good cause. Indeed, sometimes I think they should be stopped altogether. Ban this strip filth! However, this year something special changed my mind. For 2019, there is at least one glorious exception in the field The Strong Soham Mums Calendar. This incredible publication, unveiled in the Mail yesterday, features cheeky snaps of 12 mothers who have a terrible common bond they have each lost a child. The bereaved women live in the Cambridgeshire town of Soham home of Holly Wells and Jessica Chapman, the ten-year-olds murdered by school caretaker Ian Huntley in 2002. Remarkably, Holly's mother Nicola, 51, is one of the women who posed for the calendar. She wanted to send a message to other mothers that even though you never get over losing a child, you don't have to turn your face to the wall for ever. The British are supposed to be a nation of repressed, polite and shy creatures; a people who would take refuge in a cardigan or something showerproof and neatly quilted at the first sign of bad weather or impending orgy 'It's all right to have a laugh,' she said. She is pictured naked (ish!) with her sister Lesley, 57, who was a huge support during the hunt for Holly, and the terrible years that came after. Now, by a gruesome twist of fate, Lesley is a bereaved mother herself. On Christmas Eve in 2012, her son Thomas, then 23, suffered a fatal head injury while driving home to see his family for the holidays. He died on Christmas Day. It seems unimaginably cruel that one family should have suffered not one but two of every parent's worst nightmares. And one set of grandparents had to see two of their grandchildren die in such horrendous circumstances. Every mother here has a heart-breaking tale to tell, even though they do not dwell on their sorrow. Among their lost loved ones are children who died of cancer, a rare immune condition, a motorbike accident, a brain seizure, at the hands of a drunk driver, the victim of a freak accident. The mothers don't think Soham, with its population of 10,000, has an unusually high child death rate, only that theirs is a close community where everyone knows each other. And for once, in nude calendar land, that is a message really worth hearing. And seeing. It is inspiring that these poor, blighted, bereaved mums have found comfort and strength in the company of each other. Some might think it weird to commemorate their wretched connection by posing for a nude charity calendar. And to be honest, it is a tiny bit odd, even if the proceeds are going to the Road Victims Trust and Addenbrooke's Charitable Trust. But it is also an inspiring show of strength, a small victory in the war of loss that the bereaved cannot ever win. There is a rare courage in these photographs of ordinary women, somehow coping with the worst life could throw at them, and still managing a smile. One festive group shot, with the bravest calendar girls draped in strategically placed tinsel, says more than words about the indomitability of the human spirit. It also shows other suffering mothers that there is life after losing a child. Even though that life may be different and bereft, and often filled with bouts of overwhelming sadness, it is still a life worth living. And for once, in nude calendar land, that is a message really worth hearing. And seeing. Eek! It's spooky how Sharon still shines Isn't it time to drop a deep curtsey and pay homage to Sharon Stone? Isn't it time to drop a deep curtsey and pay homage to Sharon Stone? How does this ageless goddess do it? The 60-year-old turned up looking fabulous at Halloween time; a master-class in Hollywood chic. She had sexy short hair, great jewels, a killer red lip. Most of all, I love the expression she wears, one that seems to say: 'Can you freakin' believe how fabulous I am?' Frankly, no. In his autobiography, Rupert Everett called her the kind of old-school diva who is as 'hard as nails and utterly unhinged'. What a fabulous compliment. Caine's movie minder Michael Caine has always taken his wife Shakira (seen with the actor in 2017) on film shoots, in case he is tempted to have an affair Throughout his career, Michael Caine has always taken his wife Shakira on film shoots, in case he is tempted to have an affair. If you put a bunch of wildly attractive people alone together on a far-flung location, the inevitable will often happen. Look at Rachel Weisz and Daniel Craig, both in long-term relationships when they met on set in snowy Ontario, but that's enough of my private pain. Michael's strategy makes sense, but only if you have a spouse whose existence is entirely subordinate to yours and doesn't mind trotting along, being the dull half-boiled egg while you bring home the bacon. He is 85 now, and has been married to Shakira for 45 years. What is amazing is that there has never been a Caine mutiny. A hair-raising apology Black activists have accused the magazine of copying afros and not 'using actual black models' American Vogue has been accused of cultural appropriation after styling the model Kendall Jenner with a tousled mop of hair. Black activists have accused the magazine of copying afros and not 'using actual black models'. I don't know where this leaves Edward Scissorhands, Brian May or Helena Bonham Carter, but it's not in a good place. Vogue apologised but said the look was, in fact, meant to be an update of sketches of 'the Gibson girl', an embodiment of the Edwardian feminine ideal. So why on earth did they say sorry? No delight at Debs First House of Fraser collapsed in August, and now Debenhams is on the brink. The High Street giant is understood to be considering closing 50 of its 166 stores in a radical overhaul to cope with record 500 million losses. Crippling business rates and the threat from online giants such as Amazon are taking their toll on these mid-market stores. And while I sympathise with their plight and that of their employees it's not hard to see why they are in such trouble. What are these old-fashioned, out-of-touch department stores for any more? Crippling business rates and the threat from online giants such as Amazon are taking their toll on these mid-market stores They don't make any commercial sense, they don't fit any consumer profile and they are difficult to navigate for busy shoppers. They have become mausoleums that customers walk past en route to Zara or Primark or Footlocker. Huge emporiums which sell only a select few items from large ranges and which don't have an identity of their own, unlike John Lewis, Selfridges or Harrods don't fit the needs of today's precision-honed savvy shoppers. From niche brand to big-name bargain, people know exactly what they want. And that they are not going to find it in Debenhams. A small tale of our times, which I want to relate to you without being accused of being racist, although there is scant hope of that. Somalia-born Hana Abdi Qahtan applied for UK asylum in 2006. She became a British citizen in 2013, and also got passports for her mother and her children. This week she was spared jail after being caught red-handed using two of these passports to bring distant relatives into Britain. Somalia-born Hana Abdi Qahtan applied for UK asylum in 2006. She became a British citizen in 2013 The judge in West London said that her acts were humanitarian rather than bad, and Hana was given community service instead. The two relatives she tried to smuggle in on bogus passports have now received full asylum. Despite living here for a dozen years, Hana still needed an Arabic translator in court. She cannot work much and receives NHS care for sciatica and depression. Still, that didn't stop her from travelling halfway around the world to smuggle two people she had never met into a country that had been so kind to her. What kind of message does that send to others who might be tempted to smuggle in relatives to be cared for by our creaking public services? A young dad has revealed how a simple nightly ritual with his family has helped him to heal following the heartbreaking loss of his son. Greg Hughes, 32, from Perth, who blogs under Dad Minus One, tragically lost his son Riley in 2015, He died a month after he was born due to complications arising from pneumonia. In the wake of his son's death, Mr Hughes revealed he was beset by feelings of negativity and despair - something he's had to work hard to change. 'Gayfuls Daddy?' Mr Hughes wrote on his blog. 'If I told you that request came from my two-year-old daughter and it was her actually asking to participate in our new nightly ritual you might give me a funny look and proceed to question my parenting,' he wrote. Greg Hughes (pictured) lost his son Riley when he was just four weeks old following complications arising from pneumonia Mr Hughes, who is also a dad to Olivia, aged six and two-year-old Lucy, said while he has always been 'more cynical and pessimistic', this way of thinking consumed him after the death of his son. 'The problem with this approach towards everything is that when you constantly dwell on the negative stuff whether it be the small or the large it becomes habitual and that habit can become toxic when the chips are really down. 'When we lost our son, it was like this type of thinking engrossed everything I did. 'I felt slighted because my coffee was too hot, the car in front of me in traffic was doing 10 kilometres under the speed limit just to spite me personally and the unexpected rainfall in the afternoon was 'the cherry on top' of everything that was terrible. 'When we lost our son, it was like this type of thinking engrossed everything I did,' he wrote. 'Without realizing I was unwittingly becoming the kind of person that wins the lottery and complains the 100 dollar notes aren't crisp enough,' he continued. 'It was toxic and it was starting to weigh me down.' Mr Hughes explained while his negativity appeared ingrained, a passing comment from Olivia who was aged four at the time, made him realise his attitude was starting to have an effect on those around him. 'Mum, can we have a play date with my friend. I'd ask Dad to come but I don't think he would like it. He doesn't really like new things. He doesn't like much things (sic),' he recalled his daughter saying. Mr Hughes said while he had always had a pessimistic and cynical outlook, this way of thinking consumed him after the death of his son 'I sat back and realised that I'd become so negative that my own daughter didn't want me taking her to a play date with her friend because she saw me as so negative that I'd just complain the whole time. Nice wake up call kid,' he added. 'Worst part was I'd noticed that some of this pessimism was starting to creep into her attitude and I didn't want that.' Taking time to be 'gayful': Mr Hughes (pictured with his daughter) revealed that the family take time every night to list three things they are grateful for After being struck by what she'd said, Mr Hughes told his wife he needed to take a different, more positive, approach to parenting. Part of that entailed putting in place a nightly gratitude routine. 'Every night at dinner time, we each take turns speaking about three things that we're grateful for and one thing we're looking forward to in the future,' he said. 'It doesn't matter how bad a day you've had, you're not allowed to leave that table until you speak up about what you're grateful for and what you're looking forward to.' Every night the family before dinner the family lists three things they are grateful for and one thing they are looking forward to Although the practice sounds simple enough, Mr Hughes said there have been time when it's been tough, especially when things aren't going right. Despite this, he maintains he now always finds something to be grateful for and he credits the practice for helping shift his attitude and improve his outlook. 'Not only that, but it's generated some really interesting conversations (particularly with my oldest daughter) about things like homelessness, poverty and why it's important to be gracious and humble for what we do have,' he said. No matter how difficult life is Mr Hughes stands by the belief that saying thank you make a difference (Riley and his sister Olivia pictured) Mr Hughes said the family's 'gayful' practice, as named by his two-year-old daughter, has enabled him to teach his children to notice the small things that make their lives great. 'I tell my girls, even if your grateful involves the fact that you simply got the chance to be together, to play outdoors and to just enjoy your time in the sun then you've had a better day than some people who were stuck inside in the rain,' he wrote. And he said the change in him has also been 'pretty profound'. 'So much so in fact that I have taken note after the fact when I've corrected myself for straying down that ultra negative path that's bleak and places me in a world where everyone's out to get me. 'Be thankful for what you do have and instead of looking over your neighbour's fence in envy of what he has try looking over to make sure he has enough.' A privileged 21-year-old is left in tears when she realises the amount she spends on a single meal out would be enough to pay for an entire month's worth of food for her cash-strapped host on Rich Kids Go Skint. Becca, who claims to be distantly related to royalty, divides her time between her plush Chelsea pad and her parents' palatial home in Wiltshire, and is perfectly at home shopping designer brands on London's upmarket King's Road. She explains in 5STAR's Rich Kids Go Skint that she lives off the 'bank of dad' and never has to worry about picking up the bill. She estimates her lavish summer holiday alone would have cost between 15,000 and 20,000. The life of excess is worlds away from that of single mother Nureen, 34, a struggling self-employed chef from Harlesden, London, who welcomes Becca into her home for three days so she can experience what it is like to live on the breadline. Nureen is left stunned when Becca presents her with a hamper from Fortnum & Mason and reveals it set her back 100, telling her pampered guest: 'Around 100 would feed my family for around three weeks.' Becca, 21, is reduced to tears when she realises that her cash-strapped host has just 150 to spend at the end of the month on Rich Kids Go Skint - and admits she'd splash the same amount on dinner Her host, single mother Nureen, 34, pictured, comforts Becca after she explains that she relies on the 'bank of dad' and never has to worry about money if she needs anything Nureen reveals her son spends much of his time with his father because she dedicates much of her time to running community cooking classes for those with even less than herself. She tells Becca that after rent and bills, she survives off a budget of just 150 a month. The revalation has a profound affect on Becca, who breaks down when she realises the cost of a single meal at her favourite expensive restaurant could provide food for Nureen and her son for the entire month. 'I'm not going to lie I do live on the bank of dad,' she tells Nureen. 'If I need something or in a situation where I need more money I will always be given it. 'I have a clothes allowance, on top of that I have a travel allowance. For example recently I went to South Africa and that whole trip was a lot of money. I would say my whole summer was 15,000- 20,000.' Stunned, Nureen responds: 'That could literally be an entire year's salary.' Privileged Becca swapped her luxurious designer lifestyle in Chelsea for Harlesden, north west London, living with struggling self-employed chef Nureen for a few days The rich kid confesses that she has a clothing and travel allowance from her father, and most recently splashed out on a lavish summer holiday to South Africa Becca spends her time travelling the world, pictured. When she isn't jet-setting, she divides her time between her Chelsea pad and her parents' Wiltshire property Becca quickly realises how lucky she is and how far the single mother's tiny budget has to stretch. 'I just feel really bad that I can just go and buy shoes or something which are obviously really expensive, and not have to think about it or anything that much, and I don't even work for it.' She adds: 'When she told me about how much money was left at the end of the month it really shocked me. 'I was like I can spend that money really quickly. It just really made me emotional and it made me think "gosh I have been so lucky", I have had so many privileges and it really touched me.' Nureen admits she was surprised at Becca's display of emotion: 'I think she realised how fortunate she is and also how hard I have had to work. 'The fact she doesn't have to work if she doesn't want to and she is starting to value money in a different light as well which is quite nice.' Wanting Becca to experience life in her area Nureen takes the 21-year-old on a nighttime stroll but it rattles the visitor, who feels a long way from her pampered and privileged life Jumping behind Nureen for protection from a drunken shouting woman, Becca says the experience is 'terrifying' and admits she didn't realise the rest of London wasn't like Chelsea From the moment she arrives, Becca is thrown in the deep-end by helping Nureen at one of her cooking workshops at her local community centre. Becca has to roll up her sleeves and get messy mixing ingredients to make doughnuts, while interacting with the children who have come to learn. She is inspired by Nureen's giving nature: 'Hearing that Nureen has been helping kids especially, what they should and shouldn't eat and teaching them, I think that is wonderful. I didn't even know that existed. This kind of community help. Bouncing back from her scary encounter, Becca is given the task of shopping in a local produce store to get ingredients to cook a Jamaican curry 'Nureen hasn't obviously been given everything on a plate so it makes me respect her even more, just seeing how much she wants to help people. It's just really humbling.' During a night time stroll they are accosted by a drunk woman flinging her handbag and shouting at the pair and their camera crew. The whole experience has Becca shaking with fear as she begs to return back to Nureen's small flat: 'It was absolutely terrifying, I didn't expect that to happen at all. This has been a different experience and I don't think I'd want to experience it again.' A shaken Becca later confesses: 'I thought I knew London. I thought my area was similar to most of London. I didn't know that these things happened.' Becca knuckles down to learn self-defence with Nureen, and shops for the ingredients to make one of Nureen's budget basics - Jamaican chicken curry. Nureen encourages Becca to try out a self-defence class and, after a wobble that she couldn't get the moves right, she reveals she thoroughly enjoyed herself Emotions run high for the pair as they bid their farewells, with Becca gifting Nureen with a cooking masterclass as a thank you for hosting her and a promise of meeting up after filming The 21-year-old is overwhelmed by the local produce shop - 'Chelsea definitely doesn't have shops like this, usually it's Waitrose, M&S, Whole Foods' - but Nureen is impressed when she completes the shopping list and cooks an edible meal for two. Emotions run high again when it's time for Becca to leave and she gifts Nureen a cooking master class as a thank you, which leads to the single mother breaking down in tears. Becca vows to meet Nureen as she leaves gushing: 'Everything Nureen has taught me has really changed my view on life, and it's made me really want to help the community more, I can see how much happiness and joy it brings. 'Nureen is an inspiration and she's shown me a different side of life that I have never seen before. 'I may live in a really nice place and be surrounded by a lot of expensive things but it just shows that at the end of the day she's happy and I am so lucky to know her and she is definitely going to be a friend for life.' Rich Kids Go Skint airs Monday on 5STAR at 9pm It's hard to make it in the modeling world well, if you're human. Since she started earning attention Instagram in 2016, Lil Miquela a computer-generated 'model' has booked fashion spreads, starred in a music video, and hung with celebrities. Now Lil Miquela, also known as Miquela Sousa, has booked a major fashion campaign, appearing in ads for Ugg. Big gig! Lil Miquela, also known as Miquela Sousa, has booked a major fashion campaign, appearing in ads for Ugg Not real: Miquela is a computer-generated model created by start-up tech firm Brud Recognizable: Ugg describes Miquela as a 'style icon, musician, and activist Miquela was announced last week as Ugg's final brand ambassador for their month-long 40th anniversary campaign. She joins human campaign stars, including model Adwoa Aboah, fashion designer Heron Preston and actor, model, and artistic director Luka Sabbat. The brand describes Miquela as a 'style icon, musician, and activist, writing: 'Provocative in her existence, she represents an entire generation that is revising identity, reality, and storytelling.' Miquela was officially shot by photographer and visual artist Erik Madigan Heck for the campaign though unlike the humans who actually posed for the camera, she was rendered by her creators. Earlier this year, start-up tech firm Brud owned up to being behind Miquela. The firm, which was founded by Trevor McFedries and Sara DeCou, came forward as the brains behind the viral sensation after months of speculation and mystery. Miquela already has the kind of modeling portfolio that many working, living, human models would kill for. Miquela was announced last week as Ugg's final brand ambassador for their month-long 40th anniversary campaign The voice: The CGI model has also conducted 'interviews' over email Lucky: Miquela already has the kind of modeling portfolio that many working, living, human models would kill for She's already appeared in big-name publications, including Vogue, Garage, and V magazines, and she has racked up 1.5 million followers on Instagram. She also appeared in the music video for Baauer for his song Hate Me. Despite not being a real person with a brain of her own, 'Miquela' as still answered some media questions in the past via email, of course. 'I think we are in an age where authenticity is getting harder to find,' she told V magazine. 'People can interpret and project whatever meaning they want onto the images they see on Instagram. But I will say, regardless of those differing interpretations, I have created real friendships and relationships with people online. 'The way we support and inspire each other is authentic and meaningful. When someone messages me about how I've helped them with their art or identity, that, of course, matters. One of the bunch: Balmain recently cast three computer-generated models in a campaign The others: Margot and Zhi are two of the faux-models who wore the brand's clothes Famous: One of the more well-known CGI models, Shudu, also appeared in the campaign 'I'm really optimistic about the power of social media. It's helped me form valuable friendships, gain self-confidence, and inspire people around the world,' she said. 'I want it to be used for good because, like it or not, its part of culture now and its not going anywhere.' Miquela isn't the only computer-generated model out there, either. There's also 'model' Shudu, a project from photographer Cameron James-Wilson. Shudu has modeled for Pat McGrath, Fenty, Cosmopolitan, and Vogue Australia. And in August, Balmain debuted a campaign starring three virtual models, including Shudu and two 'pals' Margot and Zhi. The brand wrote on Twitter: 'The new virtual troops reflect the same beautiful diverse mix, strong confidence and eagerness to explore new worlds.' While some people have criticized the use of digital models saying, for instance, that Balmain could have simply hired actually diverse models others point to how much money brands save by skipping pricey stars like Gigi and Bella Hadid. Global travel giant Lonely Planet has revealed its annual Best in Travel List for 2019, detailing a vast range of must-see sights, attractions and experiences for globe trotters to check off their bucket list in the coming year. Australia received a slew of special mentions across a diverse range of categories, including a luxurious Tasmanian heritage hotel which took ninth place in the Best Places to Stay section. The country's 'most extreme zip line' was named one of the world's 'Best Attractions' for children, while an award-winning restaurant just outside Melbourne ranked fourth for 'Best New Gourmet Experience'. The internationally respected guide also revealed the world's top 10 countries, cities and regions to visit over the next 12 months, with Australia's Red Centre coming in at number four in the Best Regions category. The Tasman (pictured), in the Tasmanian capital of Hobart, was recognised as one of the best new accommodations in the world; it is set to open on June 3 2019 BEST NEW PLACES TO STAY Nabbing ninth spot in the new accommodation feature, The Tasman boasts a fusion of contemporary design and historical elements, honouring both past and present with a plethora of rich artwork and cutting-edge glass and steel structures. Part of the international Marriott hotel chain, this luxurious accommodation is set among a group of Hobart's most valued heritage buildings including the Georgian era St Mary's Hospital built in the 1800s. The Tasman is set to open its doors to guests on June 3 2019, and according to Lonely Planet it will be 'worth the wait'. The venue boasts a fusion of contemporary design and historical elements The layout and architecture honours both past and present with a plethora of rich artwork and cutting-edge glass and steel structures According to Lonely Planet, next year's opening will be 'worth the wait' BEST NEW FOOD EXPERIENCE Falling just outside the top three in the Best New Food Experiences list, fine dining restaurant Laura on Victoria's Mornington Peninsula cinched fourth place thanks to its 'sophisticated merging of food, wine and art'. The exclusive eatery, located in the grounds of Point Leo Estate roughly an hours drive from Melbourne, enjoys incredible sunset views from all angles and a spectacular panorama across the sparkling Western Port Bay and its renowned sculpture park. Laura has received a slew of coveted accolades, including Gourmet Traveller's Best New Restaurant and Time Out's Best Regional Restaurant 2018. The critically acclaimed was also named New Restaurant of the Year for 2019 in the Good Food Guide Awards. Fine dining restaurant Laura on Victoria's Mornington Peninsula cinched fourth place in the Best New Food Experience category thanks to its 'sophisticated merging of food, wine and art' Laura has received a slew of coveted accolades, including Gourmet Traveller's Best New Restaurant and Time Out's Best Regional Restaurant 2018 BEST NEW ATTRACTION FOR KIDS Coming in at number two in the Best Children's Attraction category, Live Wire Park is a high ropes obstacle course two hours drive south of Melbourne along the Great Ocean Road. Billing itself as 'the ultimate in elevated adventure', the park is primarily geared towards children aged seven to 15, with courses including the Short Circuit which involves 26 exciting activities and suspended trails laid out through the treetops. And to keep the adults entertained, Live Wire also boasts 'Australia's most extreme zip line'. Live Wire Park (pictured) is a high ropes obstacle course two hours drive south of Melbourne along the Great Ocean Road, and took second prize for the Best Kids Attraction on earth The park offers suspended treetop walkways and Australia's 'most extreme zip line' Separately, Darwin's famed Royal Flying Doctor Service was recognised in the travel guide's Top Trends section on Augmented Attractions, an interactive experience where visitors can relive the 1942 bombing of Darwin Harbour which rocked Australia during World War II. Queensland's Electric Super Highway also received special mention as one of the world's 'great places for electric road tripping'. The Red Centre in the Alice Springs area of the Northern Territory was recognised for its otherworldly landscape of desert plains, mountain ranges and rocky gorges, as well as its spiritual connection to some of Aboriginal Australia's most sacred sites. Queensland's Electric Super Highway received special mention in the top trends section as one of the world's 'great places for electric road tripping' The Red Centre in the Northern Territory was awarded fourth best region in the world, thanks to its wealth of cultural and historical attractions including Uluru-Kata Tjuta (Ayers Rock, pictured) and the Watarrka National Park 'At the spiritual heart of Australia's Red Centre is the country's most recognised wonder, Uluru,' Lonely Planet said. 'In 2019 this sacred site is finally closing to climbers, almost 150 years after explorers decided to conquer the rock. 'Instead, visitors will find that this World Heritage site, renowned for its outstanding natural and cultural values, conquers them.' Top attractions in the Red Centre include Uluru-Kata Tjuta (Ayers Rock and the Olgas), Watarrka National Park and nearby Alice Springs. Also given a commendation was the Northern Territory's newly opened Litchfield National Park, which is the 'most visited park in Australia's Top End'. Each month people across the country are forking out thousands of dollars on takeaway meals. Now Australian food ordering platform Menulog has revealed their winners for the 2018 Winter Restaurant Awards. Five establishments have been recognised in the most popular categories for delivery. 'The Menulog Restaurant Awards are designed to recognise and reward the hard work of our restaurant partners, particularly those that have delivered an exceptional customer experience,' Menulog's Commercial Director Rory Murphy said. Five outstanding restaurants have been recognised in Australia's most popular categories for delivery Best Cheap Eat The Famished Wolf is a burger joint in Melbourne that has taken out the place for 'best cheap eat' thanks to its classic 'Cheesy' burger. It packs a tasty yet frugal punch at just $8.50, with layers of beef, cheese, lettuce, tomato and burger sauce. The overall rating of the establishment is five out of six stars after 359 people have reviewed it on Menulog. One reviewer went as far as to say it was 'the best burger we've had'. The Famished Wolf is a burger joint in Melbourne that has taken out the place for 'best cheap eat' Best Sharing Dish Gyros Fix in Five Dock, Sydney, took out this award due to its Greek feast. The 'platter for two' boasts a variety of meats, vegetables, tzatziki dips and pita bread for $37.50 and customers will be served lamb, chicken and pork. With 368 reviews, Gyros Fix has a five out of six star rating with people saying it is 'fabulous food at excellent value'. Gyros Fix in Five Dock, Sydney, took out this award due to its Greek feast 'Platter for two' Best Aussie Old School Dish Sometimes all people want is a classic Australian dish and a restaurant's home-made golden crumbed take on the popular 'Chicken Parmigiana' was given the title of 'best Aussie old school dish'. The meal from Smokin' Joe's Pizza & Grill in Richmond, Melbourne, has Napoli sauce, Virginian ham and mozzarella and will set customers back $29.90. After 262 reviews there is an overall rating of four and a half stars out of six. 'Chips are to die for and the Parma is huge!' One person said. Smokin' Joe's Pizza & Grill's home-made golden crumbed take on the popular 'Chicken Parmigiana' was named the 'best Aussie old school dish' Best Light Dish Oriental Healthy in Redfern, Sydney, have won this prize due to their Steamed Organic Quinoa, Brown Rice and Asian Greens. It is a meal packed with taste, healthy ingredients and customers have their choice of meat with the dish costing $13.90. The restaurant has almost a six star rating after 1,361 reviews, with one person saying they were 'falling in love' with the establishment. Oriental Healthy in Redfern, Sydney, have won this prize due to their Steamed Organic Quinoa Best Dessert Although The Schnitzel Kitchen in Concord, Sydney, is known for their chicken dishes it took out the top prize for 'best dessert'. This is thanks to their mouth-watering homemade Spanish Churros served with a thick decadent chocolate or caramel sauce for $7.90. Out of 575 reviews the German restaurant has almost five out of six stars. To avoid lines and wrinkles as we age, women are turning to eye creams as a way of hydrating their delicate skin. And New Zealand-based skincare brand Antipodes is ahead of the pack with their Kiwi Seed Oil eye cream, which normally retails for $56 a tub, and is bought every 15 minutes. The luxury cream is actually the second best-selling lotion in Australia for the fragile under-eye area, and it's easy to see why. New Zealand-based skincare brand Antipodes is ahead of the pack with their Kiwi Seed Oil eye cream, which normally retails for $56 a tub, and is bought every 15 minutes While it might be on the more expensive side, the cooling and soothing treatment packs a punch when it comes to making visible change While it might be on the more expensive side, the cooling and soothing treatment packs a punch when it comes to making visible change. Rich in vitamin C from the humble kiwifruit this product is scientifically proven to stimulate collagen production in skin cells by up to 82 per cent. It also has additional avocado and carrot seed oil to reduce lines that have already started to form. And customers can't stop raving about the organic salve. 'I love this eye cream! It's so beautiful to use and you only need the tiniest dab which goes a long way. I'm sure the first pot I had lasted me nearly six months. Money well spent,' one woman wrote on Adore Beauty. It also has additional avocado and carrot seed oil to reduce lines that have already started to form 'A fantastic hydrating eye cream with natural ingredients that does what it says - plumps and smoothes the delicate under eye skin,' another added 'A fantastic hydrating eye cream with natural ingredients that does what it says - plumps and smoothes the delicate under eye skin,' another added. The only slight issues reported where that the consistency might be a little bit thick in warmer climates, but for the vast majority of users it received five stars. With the rise of synthetic-free beauty now well documented, brands like Antipodes are being stocked in mainstream pharmacies like Priceline. And the chemist are currently selling the tub at a discount, with a sale price of $44.79 on the website. While on paper you might think that there is little in common between various royal women's style, in fact there is one secret footwear weapon they all swear by for important engagements. The Duchess of Cambridge, Queen Letizia of Spain, Crown Princess Mary and the Duchess of Sussex are just a few of the blue-blooded women who know the power of the nude stiletto. Kate Middleton has worn her go-to pair of LK Bennett stilettos with dozens of outfits, while Meghan Markle has donned the Manolo Blahnik style countless times since becoming a royal. The Duchess of Cambridge, Meghan Markle (pictured) and countless other royals swear by the power of nude stilettos Frequently since marrying Prince Harry, the Duchess of Sussex has turned to her trusty Manolo Blahnik BB pumps (pictured) The Duchess of Cambridge loves her LK Bennett nude pumps so much she has worn them with dozens of outfits (pictured) 'Every woman needs a pair of nude pumps in her life,' celebrity stylist Donny Galella told FEMAIL. 'They always elongate your legs and make you look taller and thinner.' The stylist said that the good thing about these shoes is that they are 'classic and timeless that pretty much go with everything in your wardrobe'. 'That's the reason why so many celebrities and royal women repeat them in their wardrobes.' Queen Letizia of Spain and Princess Mary are also fans of the style, and have wheeled them out on numerous occasions Crown Princess Victoria of Sweden (pictured) wore nude stilettos with her son Prince Oscar at the christening of Prince Alexander of Sweden Princess Charlene of Monaco opted for nude pumps (pictured) during the First Day of the 10th Anniversary of the Throne celebrations in 2015 Stylist Donny Galella (pictured) recommends you pick nude heels the same colour as your skin When it comes to shopping the perfect nude heel, for Donny, the first thing you need to think about is the colour of your skin. 'The trick to finding a good pair is finding one that matches your skin tone perfectly,' he said. 'There are so many different shades of nude, and no one size fits all. Always try them on and ensure they match your leg colour perfectly. 'This will help to make your legs look longer. And to look even taller, go for a nude shoe with a platform.' Donny said that you can get the look for less via nude pumps from Betts (left) and Novo (right) While the likes of Queen Letizia, the Duchess of Cambridge and the Duchess of Sussex favour shoes by the likes of Prada, LK Bennett and Manolo Blahnik, there are brands that stock a more affordable heel. 'Novo, Betts and brands like Verali and Billini have good affordable styles,' Donny highlighted - singling one Novo pair for $59.95 and another pair from Betts, that have been reduced to $62.99. The Iconic also have hundreds of different styles to browse through, in varying shades of nude. Advertisement Stephen and Nora Atkinson bought their humble home over a decade ago, and were captivated by the incredible views of the city skyline. In a bid to capitalise on there prized possession they decided to renovate the second and third floor of the Teneriffe-based homestead in Queensland, but left the exterior untouched. From the street passersby would never guess at the show-stopping designer pool and tent-shaped master bedroom that lays inside. In a bid to capitalise on there prized possession they decided to renovate the second and third floor of the Teneriffe-based homestead in Queensland, but left the exterior untouched (pictured) 'You get 270 degree views, from the airport control tower to the Story Bridge,' Mrs Atkinson told realestate.com.au. 'You feel like you're on top of Brisbane when you're on top of the roof deck.' The lower level of the house has retained its traditional features like polished timber floors, timber fretwork, arches and stained glass panels. From the street passersby would never guess at the show-stopping designer pool and tent-shaped master bedroom that lays inside (pictured) The lower level of the house has retained its traditional features like polished timber floors, timber fretwork, arches and stained glass panels 'You get 270 degree views, from the airport control tower to the Story Bridge,' Mrs Atkinson told realestate.com.au Whereas the mid-level is a stunning open-plan living area which includes a gas fireplace and views towards the sparkling pool outside. 'I practice my yoga or meditation in there, or the kids have music jam sessions up there,' Mrs Atkinson explained. 'We did have guests occasionally stay in there, it is extremely versatile'. Whereas the mid-level is a stunning open-plan living area which includes a gas fireplace and views towards the sparkling pool outside At present there is no selling price listed for the four-bedroom, three bathroom home which hit the market earlier this week It also easily connects to the master suite upstairs, which is complete with a walk-in-robe, ensuite, a practical kitchenette and a private deck with an elevated outlook that gives the viewer glimpses of the city. The stand-out feature of this property however is the rooftop terrace which provides a private escape for you and your family. At present there is no selling price listed for the four-bedroom, three bathroom home which hit the market earlier this week. All eyes were on the Duchess of Sussex's elegant Theia column gown when she stepped out in Tonga yesterday, but eagle-eyed royal fans couldn't help noticing how shiny Meghan's arms looked. Meghan's skin seemed to have a particularly glowing sheen, but it seems it was all part of the precautions pregnant Meghan is taking to protect herself against the Zika virus. According to Hello! magazine, Meghan is most likely wearing insect repellent on her skin to protect herself from mosquitoes. Dr Preethi Daniel, the Clinical Director at London Doctors Clinic said: 'She can protect these exposed areas by using mosquito repellant which is safe during pregnancy,' she explained. 'DEET is the most effective agent but natural eucalyptus oil could also do the trick, just not as well as DEET. A chemical call permethrin can be sprayed onto clothing, not directly onto the skin.' The Duchess of Sussex, 37, looked radiant in a Theia evening gown for a reception in Tonga last night, and it seemed her shining skin was all part of her efforts to protect against mosquito bites It's likely that pregnant Meghan was wearing insect repellent that left her arms looking shiny in order to guard against the Zika virus during her time in Fiji The Duchess has been opting for loose fitting clothing in light colours and long sleeves while out and about in Tonga and Fiji. Pictured: Meghan and Harry arrive for a meeting with Tonga's Prime Minister in Nuku'alofa A natural repellent such as citronella is also an option for the pregnant royal. On other occasions, the Duchess has opted for longer sleeves while out and about in Fiji, in order to prevent mosquito bites. She has also chosen lighter-coloured clothes in Fiji and Tonga compared to when in Australia, which experts say can also help as mosquitoes are attracted to dark clothing. It comes after Meghan has decided to visit Fiji and Tonga during their royal tour, despite travel advice for pregnant women to not travel to the countries due to the 'moderate risk' of catching the tropical disease, which can endanger unborn babies. The Duchess of Sussex, 37 - who is expecting her first child in the Spring - has worn long sleeves in Fiji in an apparent bid to protect herself from the Zika virus. She wore a printed wrap dress by Parisian brand Figue featuring balloon sleeves in Suva today Meghan wore a custom-made white Zimmermann dress, again featuring long sleeves, on arriving in Fiji on Tuesday (above). Experts say long sleeves will help prevent mosquito bites Kensington Palace said the couple had sought medical advice and decided to continue with their plans. Professor James G. Logan, Head of the Department of Disease Control at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, told People magazine: 'Wearing long sleeves and baggy clothes will help,' 'Mosquitoes can even bite through jeans so if the clothing is loose it's much harder for the mosquito to bite. 'Wearing light-colored clothing can help as these mosquitos are often attracted to dark clothing. It also helps you spot them, if you see a dark mosquito on a light piece of clothing.' Her outfit choices in Fiji and Tonga, particularly in the day-time, have been in contrast to her Australia wardrobe, where she bared her arms in sleeveless and strappy dresses. The Duchess of Sussex bared her arms in strappy dresses while in Australia, wearing a striped frock by Martin Grant while visiting Bondi beach in Sydney last week Meghan also wore darker colours while in Australia, including a navy sleeveless dress by Australian designer Dion Lee Meghan did show her arms in a stunning blue cape dress by SAFiYAA for a state dinner in Fiji on Tuesday night, although this was an indoor event at the Grand Pacific Hotel, where the risk of mosquitoes was likely to be lower Meghan also wore a lot of dark colours during her stay in Australia, including several navy dresses. After announcing that Meghan and Harry are expecting their first child together last week, Palace officials confirmed that no changes to the tour schedule would be made in light of the Zika threat. Zika can endanger unborn babies, with pregnant women being advised to avoid all travel to areas where cases of the mosquito-borne virus have been reported. The virus - which had an outbreak in Brazil in 2016 - can cause microcephaly for children in the womb, causing babies to be born with abnormally small skulls. The London-based National Travel Health Network and Centre advises pregnant women looking at visiting either Fiji or Tonga to 'consider postponing non-essential travel until after the pregnancy'. Official advice from the UK's Foreign and Commonwealth Office also tells couples visiting Zika areas to use condoms for sex to prevent transmission of the virus. Meghan has been given the nickname 'Di 2' by members of the royal household because of the similarities between her and Diana, sources say. An insider revealed that the nickname is used 'affectionately' for the Duchess of Sussex as 'they are rather alike'. It comes after Meghan, 37, has paid tribute to Prince Harry's late mother by wearing pieces from her jewellery collection during her first major royal tour. The Duchess wore Diana's aquamarine ring - which she also wore at her wedding reception - at an evening reception in Tonga on Thursday. Meghan has been given the nickname 'Di 2' by members of the royal household, sources say. Meghan is pictured wearing Diana's aquamarine ring at an evening reception in Tonga on Thursday night An insider revealed that the nickname is used 'affectionately' for the Duchess of Sussex because of the similarities between her and Diana. The Princess of Wales is pictured wearing her aquamarine ring in 1997 Meghan also wore a pair of butterfly earrings and gold bracelet that belonged to Diana on her first day in Sydney last week. Speaking to Vanity Fair, a source revealed: 'I've heard the duchess is referred to as Di 2, because of the similarities to Harry's mother. It's meant affectionately, and I think it's quite true - they are rather alike.' Veteran royal photographer a Mark Stewart has also commented on how he has noticed similarities between Meghan and the Diana during the tour. 'Meghan has the confidence in front of the camera that Diana had, and that same love of fashion and top-end designers, he told the publication. The Duchess of Sussex sported a pair of earrings that belonged to Princess Diana as she joined husband Prince Harry on the first day of their Australian royal tour in Sydney last week (left). Princess Diana first wore the earrings on her royal tour of Canada in May 1986 (right) The Duchess of Sussex also wore Diana's gold bracelet on the first day of her royal tour in Sydney (above) Diana wore the bracelet (pictured) in 1986, before passing on her jewellery to her sons' wives 'Diana loved Versace; Meghan loves Givenchy. Their style is quite similar: classic, elegant, and with lots of block colors.' It comes after eagle-eyed royal watchers noticed the similarity between Meghan's striped linen dress and Diana's famous semi-sheer skirt that she wore during the 1980s. The Duchess opted for a maxi dress with a thigh high split from LA brand Reformation priced at $305.91 (166.56, which many commentators dubbed her 'most daring' ensemble yet. Diana wore a white lace skirt that revealed her legs underneath as she was photographed with two children at the nursery she worked at in 1980. Meghan and Harry returned to Sydney on Friday night, following their visits to Fiji and Tonga. The couple are attending Australian Geographic Society Gala Awards tonight. The Duchess of Sussex, 37, appeared to have a 'Diana moment' when she wore a semi-sheer maxi dress with a thigh high split by LA brand Reformation A burns survivor who was scarred when her Halloween costume caught fire aged 13 has urged parents to be vigilant as the holiday approaches. Amy Meadows, now 25, from Manchester, suffered 'lifelong' injuries when her costume caught fire after brushing a candle on a low coffee table at a friend's party in 2006. She recalled her panic the moment she saw the flames, describing how she 'ripped the costume off screaming'. The business owner appeared on This Morning on Friday, where she explained how she has been undergoing surgery ever since the accident happened over a decade ago, along with regular physiotherapy. 'It's completely lifelong, as you grow skin grafted skin doesn't grow with you, so you have to have surgeries,' she told presenters Rylan Clark Neal and Amanda Holden. Amy Meadows, now 25, was 13 when she was left scarred for life when her Halloween costume was engulfed in flames after catching the flame of a candle at a friend's party The teenager's arm was left severely scarred with burns and has now spoken of her story in a bid to raise awareness about fire safety and what people can do to stay vigilant Amy's terrifying accident happened in 2006 and has had several surgeries on her arm since because she explained the grafted skin doesn't grow with her arm Amy said she almost didn't go to her friend's party but ended up going with another pal who had unexpectedly returned from holiday early. Her family had low coffee tables with candles all over them. They had just done it to create atmosphere. It was all really nice to be fair. We were sat on the sofa and I stood up to put a glass down in the kitchen as it was open plan but as I walked past my costume just caught on fire.' She said her immediate reaction was panic: 'I looked down and I saw the flame but before I could even do anything I remember screaming "its on my skin!" 'I ran for the front door - which is the wrong thing to do - and I ran into a corridor because it was an apartment. [I] ripped the costume off my head and stamping it on the floor and just screaming.' Amy said that the most important thing was to 'stop, drop and roll' and believes that the safety advice should be printed on costumes along with flammability warnings that are sold in stores. 'I think schools should also practice it, so that it is drilled into children and adults so that if you saw someone you could tell them to stop, drop and roll.' Several Halloween costumes went under rigorous testing by consumer magazine Which? finding that many on the market for sale do not pass the fire safety standards Claudia Winkelmann (left) was shocked when her daughter suffered burns from a costume. One of the offended costumes (right) is a witches outfit from B&M It comes after Which? revealed that several fancy dress costumes are still a fire risk despite safety measures brought in after Claudia Winklemans daughter suffered serious burns four years ago The Strictly Come Dancing presenters daughter Matilda suffered a leg injury when a supermarket witchs costume was set alight by a candle inside a pumpkin while she was out trick-or-treating. Following the accident to Matilda, then eight, the British Retail Consortium introduced a voluntary fire safety standard for fancy dress outfits, based on how long they take to catch fire. However, research by consumer group Which? suggests that some costumes fail to meet this standard and others fail even to abide by the legal minimum. Video shows that in tests one witch costume made from cheap polyester was engulfed in flames and effectively melted within seconds. Which? tested 20 outfits from online and high street retailers including Asda, Sainsburys, B&M, Wilko, Amazon and eBay. The two costumes that failed to meet the legal minimum were a werewolf mask for children as young as five that came as part of a 9.99 costume from B&M and a headpiece from a 11.99 Maleficent costume sold through eBay. Four failed to meet the tougher BRC standards, a 9.99 witch costume made of satin-like material from B&M, a 9.99 witch costume from eBay, a Rubies Ghostbusters outfit from Amazon at 19.98 which is marketed for children as young as three and the Maleficent witch outfit sold by eBay. Amy is urging people to be aware of procedures if you encounter any flames, practising the 'stop, drop and roll' safety technique to put out a fire on your person Amy's injuries have had a lifelong affect on her and has had to have physiotherapy and occupational therapy to keep her limb mobile Amy said of how the accident has affected her: 'It's completely lifelong, as you grow skin grafted skin doesn't grow with you so you have to have surgeries. 'There's a lot of physiotherapy and occupational therapy that goes along with it because you lose a lot of mobilisation of the limb. 'I just worry about small children. I have a lot of younger cousins myself and it doesnt stop with Halloween costumes its any fancy dress costumes. I think that's important to know, birthday candles if they lean over to blow that out, the front could go up.' She urged parents and people attending events to be vigilant of fire: 'It's easier said than done because it could be off a cigarette, it doesn't have to be an open flame. 'The thing is if you go to a big event you cannot guarantee there isn't going to be fireworks or anything like that. 'Mine was the exact same accident [to Claudia Winkleman's daughter] and you just cannot guarantee there isn't going to be a naked flame.' This Morning airs weekdays on ITV at 10.30am The Duchess of Sussex has pulled out all the stops this evening in her most glamorous, not to mention expensive, dress so far of the royal tour. Meghan, 37, looked stunning in a white tulle Oscar De La Renta gown embellished with black birds, custom made by embellishment designer Sarah Esmoingt. Her breathtaking choice of gown for the Australian Geographic Society gala awards at the Shangri-La hotel has already been hailed as 'the look of the tour' by royal fans on Twitter. It's part of Oscar De La Renta's pre-fall 2018 collection and the price is only available on application. Celebrity stylist and designer Lucas Armitage told Femail the gown is likely to have cost around 10,000. The Duchess of Sussex has pulled out all the stops this evening in her most glamorous, not to mention expensive, dress so far of the royal tour as she attended the Royal Geographical Society Awards in Sydney French embellishment designer Sarah Esmoingt who is based in New York designed the striking bird pattern for Meghan's Oscar De La Renta dress Harry was at the event in Sydney tonight with Meghan during their 16-day tour of Australasia As they left the ballroom , where the awards were taking place, to meet the winners, Meghan was clutching a toy wombat that she had been given for her unborn baby While another Oscar De La Renta dress which Sarah provided a starfish pattern for costs 5,000, Meghan's appears to be hand embellished with laser cut birds made from black bonded looped ribbon tweed. And it's likely the dress would have been customised to accommodate her growing baby bump, rather than being purchased off the rail. Royal watchers have compared the Duchess' look to the iconic style of Grace Kelly, and said the gown has definitely won the royal tour. 'Personally I think it's gone into my top three Meghan looks so far as Duchess,' another added. Meghan's dress is hand embellished with laser cut birds made from black bonded looped ribbon tweed For tonight's gala the Duchess teamed her dress with her trusty Aquazzura Deneuve Bow Pumps in black, and wore her brunette locks in loose waves around her shoulders. She kept her accessories to a minimum, leaving the striking gown to shine. The Duchess has sported designer ensembles to the value of almost 70,000 during the royal tour thus far, and this latest creation pushes the total up to almost 80,000. And it looks like the total worth of her wardrobe could hit the 100K mark by the time she flies home next week. Royal fans have hailed Meghan's Oscar De La Renta gown as the standout look of the royal tour of Australia and New Zealand Pregnant Meghan has been showcasing an array of glamorous looks by high end designers such as Jason Wu, Brandon Maxwell and Roksanda. That's not to mention pricey accessories such as a Gucci handbag and designer sunglasses with the Duchess sporting three pairs of shades worth 590 in as many days. Although some items such as shoes and accessories like her Birks sapphire and diamond earrings aren't new purchases, almost everything else the Duchess has worn is new for the tour. Nineties children are not impressed with news that a reboot of the cult classic Clueless is in the works. According to a report by Deadline Hollywood, Paramount Pictures has Girls Trip writer Tracy Oliver and Netflix's Glow writer Marquita Robinson attached to the script. But fans of the iconic 1995 flick have flooded social media with complaints insisting that it shouldn't be remade, with one calling the project 'yet another reboot noone asked for'. Others said they'd only grudgingly accept another version if the original cast - including Alicia Silverstone and Paul Rudd - returned. It was announced this week that Hollywood executives have a Clueless reboot in the works with Girls Trip writer Tracy Oliver attached to write the script, but fans of the original are less than impressed Fans of the original flooded social media with complaints about the plans for a remake but then 'Yet another reboot no-one asked for!' fumed one fan. Many tweeted an image of the scene Cher famously says 'ugh as if!' along with their complaints: 'Honestly Clueless does not need a reboot, it's perfect the way it was and ahead of its time actually!' 'So now there are talks of a #clueless reboot. Stop ruining my childhood! Have they really run out of original ideas??' asked another. One person said: 'I really hope they don't do a #clueless reboot because that film is perfect and nothing could match it. Unless Alicia Silverstone and Paul Rudd reprise their roles because they look exactly the same.' Another joked: 'I will only accept a CLUELESS remake if I can play Cher and Paul Rudd plays Josh.' Actor Devon Sawa, who appeared in nineties movies like Caspar and Final Destination, also hit out at the news. 'Clueless is about the 90s. It's ours. Leave it alone. Make a movie that today's teens can call their own. Stop being lazy,' he tweeted. Nineties actor Devon Sawa also chimed in with his own thoughts saying that it should be left alone and instead make a movie about the teenagers in the present Some fans suggested that they'd only accept a remake of Clueless if original castmembers like Alicia Silverstone and Paul Rudd reprised their roles The 1995 movie became iconic and it's famous quotes are still repeated regularly 23 years after it was first released with Stacey Dash, Alicia Silverstone, Brittany Murphy starring Many people were not on board with the news that the nineties classic is being remade, but some agreed it could be a good movie with Girls Trip writer Tracy Oliver working on the script According to Deadline the Clueless movie is in 'early development' so there are no details on the cast, storyline or direction. The movie most recently enjoyed success after it was made into an Off Broadway musical in the US. The original saw Alicia Silverstone star as Cher Horowitz and entitled but well-intentioned teen who wants to help give a makeover to the new girl in school while trying to find love. The movie also helped the careers of Paul Rudd, Breckin Meyer, Jeremy Sisto, Stacey Dash, and the late Brittany Murphy. Their weddings took place almost 40 years apart, but royal fans have spotted an uncanny similarity between Charles and Harry's wedding days. Recently unearthed footage from the Prince of Wales' big day in 1981 shows the heir to the throne nervously touching his face and wiping his eyes in a gesture mimicked by his youngest son 37 years later. The similarities were spotted by royal fan account @loveprincessdiana on Friday and quickly melted hearts on Instagram, racking up almost 40,000 views and hundreds of comments. Commenting on the footage, one fan wrote: 'He might have [acted like] Prince Charles does, but he looks like his Prince Philip when he was young.' Charles wed Lady Diana Spencer at St. Paul's Cathedral in a ceremony watched by millions all over the world, and the young prince couldn't hide his nerves as he met his bride at the altar. He could be seen nervously touching his nose and mouth with a gloved hand and appeared to be wiping away a tear as he stood beside Diana. The Prince and Princess of Wales' big day was watched by an estimated global audience of 750 million. On May 19 this year, an equally emotional Prince Harry appeared to try his eyes after meeting Meghan Markle at the altar inside St. George's Chapel, Windsor Castle. The Prince and Princess of Wales on the balcony of Buckingham Palace after their wedding on July 29 1981. Their big day was watched by an estimated global audience of 750 million The Duke and Duchess of Sussex share a kiss on the steps of St. George's Chapel, Windsor Castle on May 19 this year. The newlyweds are expecting their first child next spring Their wedding outfits are currently on display at Windsor Castle until January 2019. The couple had been engaged for just six months when they tied the knot earlier this year, and are expecting their first child next spring. The Duke and Duchess of Sussex are nearing the end of a 16-day royal tour which has seen them take in Australia, Fiji, Tonga and New Zealand. Meghan, 37, is estimated to have spent 80,000 on her royal tour wardrobe and counting. Hawaii-born actress Aulii Cravalho is encouraging Moana fans of all ages to dress up as the Polynesian princess for Halloween amid the ongoing debate about whether or not the costume is a form of cultural appropriation. The 17-year-old star, who made her acting debut as the voice of Moana in the Disney animated film, voiced her opinion about the costume after years of controversy surrounding it. 'I think its absolutely appropriate,' she told People. 'Its done in the spirit of love and for Disney and for the little ones who just want to dress up as their favorite heroine, Im all for it.' Stance: Aulii Cravalho, the Hawaii-born actress who is the voice of Moana in the Disney film, said it is 'absolutely appropriate' for kids to dress up as the Polynesian princess for Halloween Questions: Since the animated film's release in 2016, people have debated whether or not dressing up as Moana is cultural appropriation Not only does Cravalho believe its okay for children to dress as their favorite Disney Princess, but she is also encouraging adults to get their own Moana costumes. 'I would encourage anyone who wants to dress up as a wayfinder who journeys beyond her reef to figure out who she truly is, I totally support you. Go for it!' she said. 'Parents can dress up as Moana, too.' Since the release of the film in 2016, concerned parents have questioned whether or not it is culturally appropriate for their children to dress as Moana or her sidekick Maui. A few months before the movie hit the big screen, Disney pulled its Maui costume after it was deemed to be cultural appropriation. Maui, voiced by Dwayne 'The Rock' Johnson, is a Polynesian demigod in the film. The costume included brown fabric to signify the character's darker skin tone, leading some to label the look as brownface. Controversy: A few months before the movie hit the big screen, Disney pulled its Maui costume (pictured) and apologized after it was deemed to be cultural appropriation Stance: Several writers have advised parents to speak to their children about cultural appropriation and explain why it is racially insensitive for them to dress up as Moana Disney swiftly apologized for the costume, which it immediately stopped selling. 'The team behind Moana has taken great care to respect the cultures of the Pacific Islands that inspired the film, and we regret that the Maui costume has offended some,' Disney said in a statement. 'We sincerely apologize and are pulling the costume from our website and stores.' A year later, parenting blogger Sachi Feris wrote an essay for Raising Race Conscious Children about why she wouldn't let her white daughter dress up as Moana for Halloween, which went viral. In the post, titled 'Moana, Elsa, and Halloween,' the writer explained her reasoning for letting her then-five-year-old dress up as Elsa from the Disney hit Frozen but not Moana after discussing cultural appropriation with her little girl. 'Elsa is an imaginary or made-up character,' she wrote. 'Moana is based on real history and a real group of peopleif we are going to dress up a real person, we have to make sure we are doing it in a way that is respectful. Otherwise, it is like we are making fun of someone elses culture.' 'A child whose family is Polynesian could dress up using that type of traditional clothing, but Moanas culture is not our culture,' she told her daughter. Weighing in: With Halloween right around the corner, people continued the debate on Twitter this month Opinion: Some people feel their should be a distinction between mocking minorities and children dressing up as their favorite characters Genuine question: Some Twitter users asked whether or not it is racist to wear costumes of characters from other cultures Candid: One man noted that his three-year-old daughter has a Moana costume because she loves her Many people took to the comments section of the post to praise the mom for teaching her daughter about race and culture. 'I admire your perseverance in interacting with your daughter,' one woman wrote. 'I realize talking about race and culture is an ongoing deeply important conversation.' However, there were others who argued that children shouldn't be denied the joy of dressing up as the characters they admire. 'It is not racist to desire to portray someone you love in your own skin,' someone commented. The public conversation continued after Redbook published the article, 'Maybe Don't Dress Your Kid Up As Moana This Halloween?' last year. 'You can (and should) strive to be better than you were 10, 20, or 30 years ago,' the article stated. 'If you missed the mark when you were younger, maybe think about using this Halloween as an opportunity to teach your kids about the importance of cultural sensitivity. Argument: One woman advised children to 'cosplay your heart out' and dress as whoever they want on Halloween Distinction: This Twitter user argued that a four-year-old waning to be Moana is not the same thing as cultural appropriation Confused: One mom admitted she is struggling to figure out how to explain cultural appropriation to her three-year-old daughter, who wants to dress as Moana for Halloween 'If your child's dream costume feels questionable, don't just throw up your hands and hand over your credit card. You're the parent here, and the onus of what your child wears falls on you. If your kid wears a racist costume you're kind of wearing it too.' In the weeks leading up to Halloween, people have continued the debate on Twitter, with many admitting they're not sure what they should do. 'Shouldn't there be nuance and distinction between continuing or directly evoking the tradition of mocking black people with minstrelsy, and a child wearing a Black Panther or Moana costume?' one person asked. 'Ah Halloween, when I have to explain to white parents why moana costumes are indeed cultural appropriation,' someone else tweeted. And one mom admitted she is struggling to figure out how to explain cultural appropriation to her three-year-old daughter, who wants to dress as Moana for Halloween. 'I'm getting her PJ Masks costumes and hoping she'll forget about Moana. Wish me luck!' she tweeted. A 'trojan horse' antibiotic which can trick its way through a superbug's defences has been created by scientists. The drug, called cefiderocol, works by attaching itself on to iron molecules which bacteria need to live and grow. Once allowed inside the bacterial cell, it can destroy it from within, the researchers wrote in a prestigious medical journal. Experts hope it will be the first of a number of new drugs developed to replace the world's dwindling arsenal of antibiotics. Antibiotic resistance is increasingly seen as the biggest threat to modern medicine, with warnings that drug-resistant infections will kill more people than cancer and diabetes by the middle of the century. Scientists say a new antibiotic has proved effective against drug-resistant bacteria (stock) The overuse of antibiotics has seen bacteria evolve to fight off conventional drugs, causing many to lose their power against infections. Now scientists at Shionogi Inc, New Jersey, have developed cefiderocol, which is able to hijack the bacteria's defences and get inside the cell. It works by binding on to iron, which bacteria needs to survive, allowing the drug to pass through the bacteria's filter system and cell walls. Dr Simon Portsmouth, lead researcher of the trial, published in The Lancet, said: 'Cefiderocol acts as a trojan horse. WHAT IS ANTIBIOTIC RESISTANCE? Antibiotics have been doled out unnecessarily by GPs and hospital staff for decades, fueling once harmless bacteria to become superbugs. The World Health Organization (WHO) has previously warned if nothing is done the world is heading for a 'post-antibiotic' era. It claimed common infections, such as chlamydia, will become killers without immediate solutions to the growing crisis. Bacteria can become drug resistant when people take incorrect doses of antibiotics or if they are given out unnecessarily. Former chief medical officer Dame Sally Davies claimed in 2016 that the threat of antibiotic resistance is as severe as terrorism. Figures estimate that superbugs will kill 10 million people each year by 2050, with patients succumbing to once harmless bugs. Around 700,000 people already die yearly due to drug-resistant infections including tuberculosis (TB), HIV and malaria across the world. Concerns have repeatedly been raised that medicine will be taken back to the 'dark ages' if antibiotics are rendered ineffective in the coming years. In addition to existing drugs becoming less effective, there have only been one or two new antibiotics developed in the last 30 years. In September, the WHO warned antibiotics are 'running out' as a report found a 'serious lack' of new drugs in the development pipeline. Without antibiotics, C-sections, cancer treatments and hip replacements will become incredibly 'risky', it was said at the time. Advertisement 'The drug uses a novel mechanism of cell entry that takes advantage of the bacterias need for iron to survive. 'During an acute infection, one of our innate immune responses is to create an iron-poor environment. In response, bacteria increase their iron intake. 'Cefiderocol binds to irons and is transported through the extra outer membrane by the bacteriums own iron-transport system. 'These iron channels also enable the drug to bypass the bacterias porin channels and gain repeat entry even if the bacterium has evolved efflux pumps.' Trials were carried out on 452 hospital patients with severe infections over a fortnight. Two-thirds of patients were given cefiderocol three times a day, while the others received another strong antibiotic, called imipenem-cilastatin. The new treatment was just as effective as the strong antibiotic with similar side effects. Further research is now needed to test the medication against the most resistant superbugs, which even the last line of antibiotics are ineffective against. Earlier this week, a report warned superbugs will kill more people than cancer and diabetes combined by 2050 without urgent action. The more existing antibiotics are used, the more resistant bacteria become to them, with new drugs needed to turn the tide. Writing an accompanying piece, Angela Huttner from the Division of Infectious Diseases at Geneva University Hospitals, said the early signs were promising. She said: The bacterium not only greets its destroyer at the door, it actively carries it across the threshold. 'With such a clever entry design and an underlying mechanism of action that is tried and true, this new drug has generated enthusiasm.' Professor Graham Cooke, NIHR Research Professor Imperial College London, said the results were encouraging. 'We urgently need new classes of drugs, not just new drugs from the same family as existing ones. 'This will give us treatment options for the increasing numbers of patients we see with resistant infections, particularly from Gram negative bacteria.' The legalisation of medical cannabis next month will lead to a crisis of addiction and crime, leading experts have warned. Doctors will be able to dish out cannabis oils and other products as of November 1 in England, Scotland and Wales. However, in a scathing letter, 166 pain consultants from across the UK claim they risk 'becoming drug dealers inadvertently'. They warned people are already asking for cannabis from their doctors, and worry they will be exploited by drug dealing gangs if they're turned down by the NHS. In the letter, they said they support the law change - but wrote: 'We have suffered an opioid crisis and foresee history about to repeat itself. Medical cannabis will be available on prescription from the NHS from next Thursday, November 1, but experts say there is not enough evidence to support using it to treat pain conditions (stock image CBD oil, pictured, is already legal) 'We are concerned that in the interests of political expediency, this mandate to allow routine prescribing of cannabis for pain relief is premature. 'That cannabis is an effective treatment for chronic pain is not supported by the evidence and may be associated with significant harm.' The letter, signed by Dr Rajesh Munglani, a consultant in pain medicine who has a private practice in Cambridge and London, was sent to The Times. It warned there is not enough evidence cannabis is effective at treating pain and it could put patients at risk of mental health problems. But campaigners argue patients deserve the right to have medicinal cannabis as an option, as there is evidence in can combat pain. Dr Munglani, who organised the letter, told The Times: 'Patients are already demanding they are given medical cannabis. 'People are coming in and saying, "Im not interested in any other technique or drugs I just want the cannabis." 'We may end up becoming drug dealers inadvertently.' The experts wrote political convenience in the face of public pressure appears to be one of the main reasons for the law change. And they worry people may become addicted to cannabis-medicines in the same way the US is suffering an opioid crisis. Although marijuana is not known for being physically addictive like cigarettes or heroin, it can cause dependency and problem use, experts say. The doctors' concerns were echoed by the national body the Faculty of Pain Medicine. It said: 'The widespread use of high-dose opioids... over the last 20 years is already the cause of considerable concern, and it is not difficult to see potential parallels.' Campaign group End our Pain has accused doctors of a having a 'cultural objection' to the drug, and say patients have the right to have the option to use it. A Government said: 'Cannabis-based products for medicinal use will only be prescribed by specialist doctors where there is a clinical need which cannot be met by a licensed medicine. 'We understand the concerns of doctors who, with patients and families, may be considering the use of medicines which have not demonstrated the standards for safety and efficacy we rightly expect in the UK. 'Ultimately these are difficult decisions which can only be made by clinicians with patients.' Cannabis oil has been illegal until now because it contains the chemical THC, which makes people high and affects the brain. It is different to CBD oil, which is legal - and is sold on the high street - because it does not contain THC. The Government had a change of heart after landmark cases in which children with epilepsy found their conditions were improved by the medicines. Parents of those children most famously Alfie Dingley and Billy Caldwell were sourcing their children's medicines from abroad. The use of pork gelatine in vaccines and medicines is putting people off using them, vegetarians have claimed. Lynne Elliot, chief executive of the Vegetarian Society, said it was 'disappointing' so many still contain animal ingredients. She pointed to the rapid growth of vegetarian and vegan products - and added many would find it conflicting to have jabs. Gelatine is added as a stabiliser to many vaccines and medicines to prevent them degrading during transportation. The Vegetarian Society claimed it does not recommend people avoid vaccinations, unlike some religious groups. The Muslim Council of Britain told MailOnline: 'On the advice of Scholars, vaccines containing porcine are not permitted in Islam unless lives are at risk and there are no alternatives.' The use of pork gelatine in vaccines may put people off using them, vegetarians claim (stock) Ms Elliot said: 'When the demand for vegetarian and vegan products is growing so rapidly it is disappointing so many medicines and vaccines still use animal ingredients in their formulation. 'Many people will be conflicted about the idea of having to take non-vegetarian medicines and some will find it upsetting.' In the UK, the worst offenders are the nasal flu vaccine Fluenz Tetra, the shingles jab Zostavax and the MMR. Although alternative stabilisers exist, once one has been chosen, any change to a vaccine's recipe could require years of safety testing. Of the three worst offenders, only the MMR has a non-gelatine alternative. All are available on the NHS as part of the national immunisation programme. PHE has said developing a widely-used alternative to gelatine 'may never happen'. It added the pork product used is 'highly purified' and manufactured under 'strict hygiene and safety regulations'. Although a gelatine-free injectable flu jab is available, it is 'less effective' than the nasal vaccine, a PHE spokesperson told the BBC. This comes as poor vaccination rates are being blamed for the measles epidemic that is spreading throughout Europe. Ms Elliot argued jab uptake may increase if vaccines removed pork products from their formulations. Jewish groups have previously said the use of gelatine in medicines does not violate their religious beliefs because it is not ingested. WHO IS MOST AT RISK OF MEASLES? Everyone has a slight risk of developing measles because being vaccinated does not guarantee full immunity. However, unvaccinated young children are particularly at risk, as well as pregnant women who have not had the jab. Measles is common in many developing countries, particularly parts of Africa and Asia. More than 95 percent of measles deaths occur in countries with low average incomes. Outbreaks can be particularly life-threatening in countries experiencing or recovering from natural disasters or conflict. Damage to health services disrupts routine immunization, while overcrowding greatly increases the risk of infection. Source: World Health Organization Advertisement However, Public Health England admitted Muslim communities may not consider such medication to be halal, The Times reported. Dr Shuja Shafi, chairman of the The Muslim Council of Britain's research and documentation committee, said: 'More work towards an alternative would be useful. 'We should be trying to find a long-term solution where the needs of people are met. 'I advise anyone concerned about the use of gelatine in vaccines to consult a medical practitioner and make an informed decision.' Ms Elliot also stressed the Vegetarian Society does not recommend people avoid vaccinations. 'People should not put themselves at risk, and should take medicines and vaccines they need, even if there are no vegetarian alternatives,' she said. 'To ensure everyone has the best chance of staying healthy and feeling good about it, vegetarian and vegan versions of all medicines and vaccines are needed.' In Britain, the number of children getting the MMR has fallen for the fourth consecutive year. Some 828 measles cases were confirmed in England up to August 13, compared to 274 throughout 2017. To prevent a measles outbreak, it is recommended that 95 per cent of the population is immunised against the infection. Only 91.9 per cent of children were vaccinated against measles between 2015 and 2016 compared to 94.2 per cent in 2014/2015 and 94.3 per cent in 2013/2014, according to NHS immunisation statistics. Disgraced gastroenterologist Andrew Wakefield sparked fears of vaccines with his 1995 theory that the measles, mumps and rubella vaccine is linked to bowel disease and autism. His controversial views have since been widely discredited and Wakefield has been struck off. This comes after research released earlier this week suggested millennials are more likely to be sceptical about the importance of vaccines than their parents or grandparents. Those aged between 18 and 24 are a quarter less likely than the over-65s to believe vaccines are safe, according to a report by the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine. Scientists warned this could be because they have not been exposed to 'the reality of a number of diseases'. Customers are getting a shot of cannabidiol in their coffee instead of caramel at a new coffee shop with a twist. Bogarts CBD Coffee House on a busy high street in Swansea, Wales, is one of a growing number of businesses selling the completely legal products. CBD is a non-psychoactive cannabis plant extract which many believe can help with a variety of conditions from anxiety and depression to arthritis and fibromyalgia. The cafe adds shots to favourites such as pumpkin spice latte, hot chocolate and camomile tea for 1 extra. Whilst the Class B drug itself has not been recognised as having any benefits, and is still illegal to possess, government advisers at the Medicines and Healthcare Products Regulatory Agency for High-Street sale (MHRA) made it legal to buy cannabidiol (CBD) oil in 2016. 'The coffee wakes me up but the CBD oil helps to chill me out': Coffee shop owner, Mr Lang, is selling shots of CBD in his hot drinks This was after they admitted that it has a 'restoring, correcting or modifying' effect on humans. But The Welsh Government and the Royal Pharmaceutical Society (RPS) disagrees with evidence, and say there is no proven medical benefit. A Welsh Government spokesperson said: 'There is little robust evidence of any health benefits of CBD.' Shop owner Jeff Lang says increased competition suggests otherwise. 'I suffer from depression and anxiety,' Ms Bason told the BBC. 'Normally with my anxiety it's about having quite bad repetitive thoughts, but this just slows that down. Every day before work I come in here. 'The coffee wakes me up but the CBD oil helps to chill me out. It says to me "it's ok, you've got this". Jeff Lang, owner of Bogarts CBD Coffee House, says his customers range from age 18-80 years old, seeking CBD coffee for either anxiety or pain relief Jeff Lang, owner of Bogarts CBD Coffee House, says people think 'they're going to have a cup of coffee and float out of here, but obviously that's not the case at all'. He says 'People do come in here thinking it's an actual cannabis coffee shop, thinking they're going to have a cup of coffee and float out of here, but obviously that's not the case at all,' explained Mr Lang. He said his customers range in age from 18 up to 80 years old, with younger customers tending to use CBD for anxiety, while older people find it helps with painful conditions affecting their mobility such as arthritis and fibromyalgia. WHERE TO GET YOUR CBD FIX Cannabis culture is catching worldwide, with bars, cafes and beauty shops infusing with CBD oil. Its having a sophisticated rebrand, as shifting attitudes started in the US. Here, the FDA is yet to give its full approval. But certain states, such as New York, have opened it's first CBD cocktail bar, Adriaen Block, priced up to $15. The Green Goddess Cafe, in Vermont, says their most popular specialty drinks is the Jamaican Me Shake, a CBD smoothie with tropical fruit, spinach, avocado, organic apple juice and whipped cream. Young American, Chicago, which will sell CBD-infused drinks by the end of the year, aims to reflect youngsters who are 'brimming with energy and creativity'. In the UK, the concept is beginning to slowly sweep the nation. As well as coffee at Bogarts CBD Coffee House, The Brain Box Shop, in Swansea, sells hemp flowers and tea that can be used in baking, sold for around 7 to 11 a gram. London fitness studio Frame offers the greenest smoothie out there to its clientel, claiming its anti-inflammatory properties by. CHLOE, a trendy vegan cafe, has created a legal 'weed brownie' using CBD oil. It's part of an assortment of treats at their pop-ups in London branches until end of October. LDN CBD claims to be the 'UK's first CBD boutique'. It sells cannabis tinctures, oils and pills opened in north London. London bar Behind The Wall's newest beverage combines CBD oil and kombucha to make a healthy relaxing tonic. CBD gummies, skincare, perfume and even water are available to buy online at a hefty cost. Advertisement One customer commented on his Facebook post, 'I might make an appearance but also my granny!! uses CBD' (sic). 'I wouldn't say it's a meeting place for people with disorders, but people do talk about it,' Mr Lang added. London has also seen an increase in the cannabis-based products. Suppliers in England and Wales have to obtain a licence to sell it as a medicine, following the decision in October two years ago. Manufacturers are able to avoid the strict regulation by selling it as a food supplement - ignoring the lengthy process of gaining a medicinal licence. Typically, it's sold in the form of oils and capsules, but businesses are thriving on the idea of mixing it with food and drink. Fitness studio Frame is offering clients cannabis-spiked smoothies after classes, and the latest offering at Behind This Wall, a bar on Mare Street, contains CBD in it's alcohol-free mocktail alongside ginger and kombucha. 'Personally, I feel like CBD has a relaxant effect on the body,' founder Alex Harris, told Stylist. 'And a lot of the time, when people crave alcohol, that's the feeling they're chasing. It's a glass of red wine after work to mellow out.' Behind This Wall's Harris first came across mixologists experimenting with cannabis compounds while living and working in LA in 2015. In the US, the FDA is yet to approve any CBD products apart from an epilepsy drug called Epidiolex. However, state laws vary. New York City's first and only CBD cocktail bar has just opened, whereas the California Department of Public Health stopped the sale of CBD additives in food and drink until it receives full FDA approval. This year, Canada became the second country in the world to legalise the recreational use of cannabis. Behind The Wall, a bar in London, is now selling a alcohol-free cannabis infused cocktail, telling followers on Instagram to 'let that seep in' In the UK, medicinal cannabis oil, which is slightly different to CBD oil, will be available on prescription in November. Medicinal cannabis contains tetra-hydrocannabinol (THC), the mood- altering compound that causes a 'high'. 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 the Home Secretary, Sajid Javid. A recent opinion poll found that almost half of people support legalising the sale of cannabis through licensed shops. Polling company ORB, which surveyed 2,000 people, found that men (53 per cent) are more likely to back licensed sales of cannabis than women (41 per cent). Incredible pictures document the transformation of a woman who underwent four surgeries for her cleft lip after being tormented by bullies. Lauren Cross, 21, from Pontefract, West Yorkshire, was born with a cleft lip and palate, and underwent her first operation at just three months old. While at school, cruel bullies would call her 'scar face', with one even messaging her the day before her surgery sarcastically saying they hoped she didn't die during the operation. After enduring a bone graft from her hip to build her gums and a 'nose job' to help open up her nostrils in 2015, Miss Cross should never have to go under the knife again. Lauren Cross claims she overcame her condition by surrounding herself with 'positive vibes'. She even found being discharged bitter-sweet due to the friendships she made in hospital Lauren Cross has undergone a remarkable transformation after having four surgeries to correct her cleft lip and palate. Pictured at 21, Miss Cross had her final operation at 17. Before the procedure, a cruel bully sarcastically said they hoped she didn't die while under the knife After being born with a cleft lip and palate, Miss Cross had her first surgery at three months old At 17, Miss Cross had a rhinoplasty to open up her nostrils and make breathing easier. Pictured during her recovery, she was initially reluctant due to how it would change her appearance The radiographer assistant is speaking out to encourage other cleft sufferers to embrace their appearance. 'Never be ashamed of who you are, your scars are a part of you - be proud of them. And remember, you're never alone,' she said. Miss Cross was forced to go under the knife again at just three years old, before having a bone graft to her gums from her hip bone when she was 10. She had her final operation, to reconstruct her nose, at 17. 'I must admit it wasn't always easy - particularly the operations, countless hospital check-ups and having to wear braces for a long four years as part of my treatment,' Miss Cross said. WHAT IS A CLEFT LIP AND PALATE? A cleft lip or palate occurs when the parts of a baby's face do not join properly during its development in the womb. Around 1,200 babies are born with the condition every year in the UK. It affects approximately 4,440 annually in the US. Cleft lips can range from a small notch in part of the lip to complete separation of the upper lip up to the nose. This can also affect the gums where the teeth come from. A cleft palate is a gap in the roof of the mouth. If it affects the back of the palate towards the throat, it is called a soft palate. A hard palate affects the front of the palate towards the lips. Some babies with the condition may have smaller lower jaws, as well as possible breathing difficulties. It is unclear exactly what causes a baby to develop a cleft lip or palate. But it is thought to be a combination of genetic and environmental factors, such as taking certain medicines during pregnancy. Surgery is needed to close the gap left by the cleft, which usually takes place when the baby is under one-year-old. Treatment may also be required to aid speech, teeth growth and hearing. Source: Cleft Lip & Palate Association Advertisement 'The worst part was having to have time off school, as I hated missing out and not seeing my friends.' Miss Cross also struggled to pursue her passion of swimming as a result of the painful ear infections her cleft palate would often leave her battling. Although she had a lot of supportive friends growing up, going to secondary school was difficult. 'I got the impression people would talk about it behind my back so I couldn't stick up for myself and I received anonymous messages on social media,' she said. 'I remember a message on the day of my prom calling me scar face and saying that they hoped I didn't die when I had my next operation in a sarcastic way. 'I remember telling myself they're just cowards for not letting me know who they are in the first place. 'At high school and sixth form, I only had issues with older boys who I didn't know who would tease me and try to embarrass me. 'Back when I was in year seven, when one older boy shouted something about my nose, I actually chased him around the school and tried to find out his name and told the teacher.' Miss Cross also worried she may be defined by her condition. 'As a 13 and 14-year-old teenager it bothered me as I was worried that it would give people a false first impression of myself,' she said. 'For example, I didn't want people to just see my as, "the girl with the cleft", but just for who I am and my personality. Pictured after her second surgery at three years old, Miss Cross was forced to go under the knife again at 10 to take a bone graft from her hip to her gums to help her teeth grow properly Pictured at 21, Miss Cross hopes to be an example to other sufferers on how to overcome the condition and embrace their uniqueness. She is not due to have any more surgeries Pictured as a baby, Miss Cross does not remember her first two surgeries but knows they were a success. This meant she did not need any procedures between three and 10 years old Due to the success of her surgery as a toddler, Miss Cross was able to go seven years before her next operation. 'The biggest and most traumatic operation for me was my bone graft,' she said. 'This entails taking a piece of my hip bone and putting it in the gum where my cleft was to close the gap. That way, it would allow teeth to grow. 'However, it only partiality worked, one tooth grew, but I still had a big gap. 'I also got an infection, and became ill, so I had to stay in hospital an extra two weeks. 'It was a lot to go through at that age, so I didn't want to have it done again. I had a false tooth put in a few years later and I still have it to this day almost ten years later.' Due to the first three surgeries taking place while Miss Cross was a child, she remembers the rhinoplasty most vividly. 'I questioned whether I wanted rhinoplasty as it would change my nose slightly,' she said. 'However, I knew that it would also benefit my breathing, as it would help open up my nostril. 'I woke up with "packs" in each nostril and a splint held over my nose with tape. I had two weeks off college to recover. 'The most scary part was when I almost sneezed shortly after my surgery! 'I would sit and hold my breath, and grip on to things just so the sensation would ago away. Luckily it did and I was so relieved.' Miss Cross woke up from her rhinoplasty at 17 with 'packs' in each nostril and a splint held over her nose with tape. She was forced to take two weeks off college to recover Refusing to let her condition hold her back, Miss Cross has always enjoyed yoga, dancing, mountain biking, fishing and going to the gym. 'For me, it's all about surrounding yourself with positive vibes, whether that be people, places, or your jobs and career,' she said. 'I have always tried to be as honest, open and positive about having a cleft lip and palate so I can set a good example for any worried parents and other people with clefts. 'And they can always speak to me about it if they have any questions and feel comfortable talking to me about it. With no further surgeries on the horizon, Miss Cross even found being discharged in November 2015 strangely bitter-sweet. 'It was quite emotional after being on this journey for 19 years, she said. Miss Cross offers advice to others who might be struggling to come to terms with their cleft on Instagram. 'Social media is a fantastic way to raise awareness. By simply sharing a photo, and using hashtags, or visiting the CLAPA (Cleft Lip and Plate Association) website,' she said. 'Some amazing profiles on Instagram such as CleftClub are great where you can find many inspirational stories like mine.' Miss Cross has endured cruel comments from bullies throughout her life. On the day of her prom (pictured) someone even messaged her on social media calling her 'scar face'. She was also always aware of people gossiping about her behind her back at secondary school A premature baby has died from a suspected bacterial infection contracted in a New Jersey hospital, health officials reveal. At least four infants have contracted life-threatening Acinetobacter baumannii at University Hospital in Newark in the past month, officials reveal. But late last night Health Department officials one of those infants died at the end of September. Initial investigations reveal 'major infection control deficiencies' at the hospital. At least four infants have contracted life-threatening Acinetobacter baumannii at University Hospital in Newark in the past month, officials reveal Acinetobacter baumannii can cause pneumonia or serious blood or wound infections. The cases are not related to the virus which has infected 19 patients and killed seven at a pediatric rehabilitation center in New Jersey. The baby that died this week had the bacteria and was transferred to another facility, where they died. The department says the exact cause of death is under investigation because of compounding medical conditions. 'University Hospital takes patient safety, including infection control, very seriously,' a hospital spokesperson said. 'We have been in regular communication with the Department of Health and continue to work closely with them to address this issue as quickly as possible.' A girl had to have life-changing surgery to remove a facial tumour which became so big it was crushing her windpipe. Ignacia Sanmartin has a benign tumour around her chin and cheeks that made it hard for her to breathe and risking killing her. The girl, from Villa Alemana, Chile, had a 14-hour operation to remove the growth to stop it increasing in size even further. The tumour, made up of a lot of tiny cysts, may grow back in the future so medics will monitor the young girl in the hope that any reoccurrence will be small. Scroll down for video Ignacia Sanmartin, five, had to have surgery to remove a lympangioma a growth of cysts on her face and neck which had become so large it threatened to suffocate her Ignacia's mother, Danitza, said before the tumour was removed: 'When she gets sick or gets a cold she can't breathe properly. Sometimes the tumour hurts Ignacia when it grows. 'This gives her earache, she has problems with balance, and it also hurts her to chew and the base of her tongue hurts.' The growth known as a lymphangioma was caused by malfunctioning lymph vessels in her neck, which are a crucial part of the immune system. But the lymph vessels had become out-of-control and produced a tumour which wouldn't stop growing. Her father, Jonathan, added: 'The other day she came to me and said, 'Daddy, big, big.' So as she gets older, she's starting to realise her face is not the same as the other kids'. It worries us a lot.' However, Igancia's suffering may be brought to an end after recent drastic surgery to remove the tumour, performed by maxillofacial surgeon, Dr Gonzalo Rossel. Dr Rossel explained: 'Where there's a fault in the lymph ducts, they slowly start to produce a tumour that is more of a cystic origin, which can have small or large cysts that grow. 'In the future it's likely there [would] be an increase in compression and we could have problems with the operation of the airway. Ignacia's parents, Danitza and Jonathan, from Chile, found out she had the problem before she was born, but it grew out of control to the point where it was affecting her breathing The family say they had to put up with cruel comments as well as supportive ones, and doctors had been too nervous to operate on the growth because it was so large when it was eventually removed, part of it bled a lot because it was so well connected to blood vessels 'So it's really important that we remove the tumour now.' Lymphangiomas can happen anywhere on the body but are most commonly found in the head and neck. LYMPHANGIOMAS: THE FACTS Lymphatic malformations, sometimes called lymphangiomas, are growths that stem from cysts. The non-cancerous masses stem from abnormal development of the lymphatic system - part of the body's natural defences, experts believe. Children are born with them, however, they don't always display themselves until they grow older. Most often they strike patients in the neck or armpits, but can also be found in the mouth, arms, legs, stomach and even the lungs. They can appear as just a small spot on the skin, or can be instantly visible as a large mass. Treatment depends on the size, shape and location of the masses - but they have been known to regrow. Source: National Institutes of Health Advertisement They occur when lymph vessels fail to form correctly, which causes excess fluid to build up and results in a benign tumour-like swelling. They are usually present from birth, but the exact cause is not known. Ms Sanmartin was only three-and-a-half months pregnant when a scan revealed the serious problem. Since Igancia was born, the parents have been battling for someone to treat their daughter, and have had to endure stares and mean comments about her. Her mother said: 'The comments that I've had to listen to have come from both sides of the coin. 'Really tender ones, or I've heard them say, "Look at this girl coming over here doesn't she look ugly. She looks like a monster." 'She is not a freak, she's a normal girl who is sick.' Doctors had always been too nervous to operate on Ignacia because of the size of the tumour, but Dr Gonzalo finally agreed to do the surgery. The surgeon's main aim was to remove the tumour before it caused fatal damage to the five-year-old. The operation was high-risk and took a dangerous turn when, after most of the growth had been removed, a remaining part was so fused with blood vessels it quickly bled when it was cut, risking Ignacia's life. As Ignacia had grown older she'd begun to realise her face was different to other children's, her father said, and they worried it would upset her in the future Ignacia (pictured being shown her face by a psychiatrist for the first time after surgery) had the growth as part of a lymphatic malformation, which is when part of the immune system in the neck does not form properly and it causes fluid to build up The growth could come back in the future but Ignacia's surgeon, Dr Gonzalo Rossel, said he hopes anything that returns should be 'minimal' because he has removed most of the tumour The family are happy with the results and Ignacia's father, Jonathan, said: 'It's a drastic change to her face. You can tell that the surgeons and the whole medical team did an exceptional job with our girl' But 14 hours later, the operation was declared a success. Dr Gonzalo said: 'We'll have to work out how we can help her if it reappears. 'However, as we have removed the origin I'm hopeful that if there's something it'll be minimal.' Igancia's parents are overwhelmed with joy for their daughter and, despite some complications in her recovery, Ignacia is doing well. Her father said: 'It's a drastic change to her face. You can tell that the surgeons and the whole medical team did an exceptional job with our girl. So, it's great.' Igancia's story is featured on this week's Body Bizarre on TLC, alongside a story about 27-year-old Thomas who has a rare bone-eating disease which is destroying his torso, and teenager Harry who has Goldenhar Syndrome. Body Bizarre is on Saturdays at 10pm on TLC UK. A 22-year-old stroke victim has been left devastated after learning the NHS will not pay for a life-saving operation to stop her having another. Shannon Christie, from Willingham in Cambridgeshire, was told she was 'too young to have a stroke' when she suffered one in April. Doctors revealed it had been caused by a previously undiagnosed hole in her heart, called a patent foramen ovale. Then the teaching assistant was given the bombshell news that the NHS no longer funds the operation needed to repair her heart. Miss Christie, who is now desperately trying to raise 10,000 to undergo the surgery privately, said: 'I live everyday in fear. Shannon Christie, from Willingham in Cambridgeshire, was told she was 'too young to have a stroke' when she suffered one in April 'Until I have this operation because there is a chance that I might have another stroke. 'Having a stroke at 22 years old and finding out it was due to a hole in my heart was horrible. 'But finding out whilst sitting in hospital, after having numerous tests and procedures, the NHS no longer funds the heart surgery I need to close the hole was absolutely devastating. 'This is a matter that is happening every single day to thousands of people such as myself around the UK.' Miss Christie claimed she could feel her right hand 'going cold' when she suffered her stroke earlier this year. Her arm became 'paralysed', she claims, and described the sensation as being like 'pins and needles'. Doctors revealed it had been caused by a previously undiagnosed hole in her heart, called a patent foramen ovale Then the teaching assistant was given the bombshell news that the NHS no longer funds the operation needed to repair her heart (pictured in hospital for stroke treatment) Describing her ordeal as 'terrifying', she explained how the cold spread up to her face and rendered her unable to talk. Her stroke initially went undiagnosed because paramedics insisted she was 'too young' to have suffered one. Instead of waiting for an ambulance to rush her to hospital, she took herself to A&E at Addenbrooke's Hospital in Cambridge. However, medics ruled out a stroke once again and claimed her symptoms were likely down to a rare form of migraine. Medics only confirmed she had suffered a stroke after specialists became aware of her family history and checked scans taken of her brain. She added: 'When I called the ambulance on 999, they said I was too young to be having a stroke and said they'd call back later on with someone to speak to. 'An hour passed and I still hadn't had a call back. 'As I didn't want to wait, I got someone to drive me straight to A&E where they then again said I was too young to be having a stroke. 'They said I was just suffering with a hemiplegic migraine.' This form of migraine can cause paralysis on one side of the body. Miss Christie, who is now desperately trying to raise 10,000 to undergo the surgery privately, said: 'I live everyday in fear' Describing her ordeal as 'terrifying', she explained how the feeling of cold spread up to her face and rendered her unable to talk She was discharged but while at home she got a call from doctors saying she had actually suffered a stroke and had a heart defect. Despite being told she needed a procedure to close the hole in her heart to prevent further strokes, she was later informed it wouldn't be offered on the NHS. She was told she must stump up the cash herself to pay for the patent foramen ovale (PFO) surgery, which costs around 10,000. Miss Christie, who works at a school for children with autism, is now urging the NHS to re-think its funding policy. It is important to her, as her father Graham was left disabled from a stroke in 2010 at the age of 46, before he sadly died of cancer in 2016. The NHS Commissioning Board - which was later renamed NHS England - made the announcement in 2013. In its report, it said it would 'not routinely fund Percutaneous Patent Foramen Ovale (PFO) Closure for the prevention of stroke'. The body argued the evidence 'is not yet of sufficient quality' to say the operation is beneficial and of value to the NHS. Miss Christie, who works at a school for children with autism, is now urging the NHS to re-think its funding policy Miss Christie's mother Christine said: 'We know the effects and aftermath of a stroke having watched Shannon's dad have a major stroke' (pictured in hospital) Patent foramen ovale occurs in about 25 percent of people - but many with the condition never know they have it, according to Mayo Clinic. Miss Christie said she tries to 'stay positive' as she battles to help at-risk patients get access to PFO surgery by starting a petition. She said: 'I am hoping... the governments chief of health will see this and change the funding on this so that PFO closures are to be provided on the NHS once again.' Miss Christie's mother Christine said: 'We know the effects and aftermath of a stroke having watched Shannon's dad have a major stroke. 'We know the emotional and financial costs after a major stroke and if an operation can reduce the risk of someone ending up like this then it is something that should be offered. 'To watch my daughter worry about her future like this is unbearable.' Sara Betsworth, head of stroke support at the Stroke Association said: 'Many people think that strokes only happen to older people but it can happen to anyone, at any time, whatever their age. 'In fact, one in four strokes in the UK happen to people of a working age. 'We help tens of thousands of stroke survivors and their families through our range of services and free helpline. 'But we can only do this through the generosity of the public and inspirational people like Shannon who are raising awareness.' www.gofundme.com/shannon-christie039s-heart-surgery If you are currently a print subscriber but don't have an online account, select this option. You will need to use your 7 digit subscriber account number (with leading zeros) and your last name (in UPPERCASE). Cancer treatment centers are using testimonials from patients who made unusual recoveries to draw in new patients with false hope for longer survival times, a new report suggests. There are over 1,200 accredited cancer treatment centers in the US, and more than 1.7 million new cases diagnosed each year. Cancer patients - especially those facing grim prognoses - spend as much as $280,000 in the first five years after they are diagnosed, so cancer centers are as eager to draw in patients as patients are to find the best treatment. The Federal Trade Commission (FTC) requires that medical advertising set realistic expectations for treatment outcomes, but many advertisements do exactly the opposite, a new Truth in Advertising report has revealed. We can't help but be moved by stories of people who beat the odds - especially when their lives are at stake. Patient testimonial ads like Cancer Treatment Centers of America's, featuring a rare survivor of pancreatic cancer, are 'deceptive' and against the Federal Trade Commission's guidelines, a new report claims Stories of amazing recoveries are compelling, but even with the best, most cutting edge (and expensive treatments) for the most deadly cancers, these tales are hardly representative. But cancer centers offering these treatments would have you believe otherwise. The FTC's guidelines allow companies, including treatment centers, to use consumer (or, in this case, patient) testimonials or endorsements. It requires that these experiences either be representative of what a consumer or patient can generally expect. If the testimonial is exceptional, 'the advertisement should clearly and conspicuously disclose the generally expected performance,' the FTC's guidelines say. Truth In Advertising (TINA) investigated the advertisements of 50 highest-spending cancer centers of 2017 for their scathingly titled report, Cancer Care: The Deceptive Marketing of Hope. Cancer centers have in general been spending more and more on advertising in recent years. Since 2005, spending has increased from $54 million to $173 million. The top spender that TINA looked at was Cancer Treatment Centers of America (CTCA), which spent $69 million on ads in 2017 - nearly as much as the other 49 centers the organization assessed combined. And it was one of the 43 centers the TINA determined was deceptive in its marketing. For example, one of CTCA's 2013 commercials features Peggy Kessler, a 'five-year pancreatic cancer survivor.' She tearfully recounts the two-month prognosis she was given by doctors with 'no compassion.' MD Anderson's Instagram ad does not explain that the odds of a lung cancer patient being cured, as Mary Clark was, are very low, with only five percent of most patients living five years Then, she says, a CTCA oncologist told her 'you have no expiration date.' The words appear in bold across the screen. A narrator tells viewers that they can learn about treatments they 'may not even know exist' by calling CTCA. As Peggy begins her story, a toothless, but legible disclaimer is displayed at the top margin of the video: 'No case is typical. You should not expect to experience these results.' That might have made muster under the FTC's earlier guidelines, but doesn't cut it in light of the 2009 revisions, according to TINA's report. That these results can't be expected is an understatement, to say the least. The five-year survival rate for all stages of pancreatic cancer combined is just seven percent. But nowhere in CTCA's ad is that statistic mentioned. Ads like that one are 'a legal vehicle, however, if you are going to advertise direct-to-consumer, you have to take into account that you are marketing to an incredibly susceptible population,' TINA's executive director Bonnie Patten told Daily Mail Online. 'And [CTCA and other cancer centers] have not complied with the law in that matter.' Patten and TINA say that CTCA's ads, as well as those from many other cancer centers, fall short of the threshold for disclosures of what cancer patients can expect from treatments. 'They are marketing an atypical health journey and not clearly and conspicuously disclosing what a typical journey would be,' Patten said. Kirss Fierro 'beat back' stage four breast cancer, according to this Facebook post and video from Rutgers Cancer Institute. The ad does not clarify what beat back means, but only 22 percent of stage four breast cancer survivors live five years after diagnosis She says that facilities like CTCA could have chosen any number of ways to communicate realistic expectations to consumers, but 'it shouldn't be hiding in the fine print.' 'The consumer has to be able to see this necessary information very easily and readily.' All of the ads TINA assessed dealt with cancers for which the survival rate was under 50 percent, Patten explained. Rutgers Cancer Institute posted a video of Kriss Fierro who 'beat back' stage four breast cancer after her 2014 diagnosis. It's unclear what exactly 'beat back,' means, but Kriss is still alive. The five-year survival rate for her cancer is 22 percent. An Instagram post from MD Anderson Cancer Center features Mary Clark, whom it says is 'cancer free' after being treated there for lung cancer. The five-year survival rate for lung cancer patients diagnosed early is 56 percent. But only 16 percent of patients get diagnosed early, before lung cancer has spread. For everyone else, the five-year survival rate is just five percent. In total, TINA flagged 130 of CTCA's ads as guilty of deceptive marketing. CTCA did not respond to Daily Mail Online's request for comment, but TINA has filed a complaint against the cancer center with the FTC. 'Cancer centers are using these compelling testimonials to lure patients to their facilities,' said Patten. MOSCOW, MIDNIGHT by John Simpson (John Murray 20, 336 pp) MOSCOW, MIDNIGHT by John Simpson (John Murray 20, 336 pp) The BBCs distinguished world affairs editor may sometimes seem a touch pompous, but this engaging, rip-roaring story about a TV reporter who investigates the death of a government minister friend reveals Simpsons quirkier, more mischievous side. The hero, Jon Swift, is an old-style TV journalist, rather too fat, old and cantankerous for the new breed of sleek young people sweeping through the studios. But when his friend, MP Patrick Macready, is found dead in what appears to have been a sex game that went wrong, he smells a rat. When the MPs flat is burgled days after his death, the reporters instincts kick in. Swift then discovers that his friend had been looking into the deaths of Russian government figures who had been found in equally accidental circumstances. The reporter cross-examines his contacts from his days as Moscow correspondent and a nest of vipers emerges. Casting a cynical eye over TV news, the story is told with a wry, tongue-in-cheek style that delights. THE RECKONING THE RECKONING by John Grisham (Hodder 20, 432 pp) by John Grisham (Hodder 20, 432 pp) The master of the legal thriller, Grisham returns to Clanton, Mississippi, the site of his very first novel, A Time To Kill, published in 1989. It is October 1946 and we meet Pete Banning, one of Clantons most famous sons, who was missing, feared dead for three years after he surrendered to the Japanese in the Philippines in 1942. Miraculously, he survived and returned to his home a decorated war hero. However, not long after, he takes his Army-issued Colt .45, walks into the local Methodist church and coldly shoots the pastor three times, killing him instantly. Might it have something to do with his wife Lizas nervous breakdown? No one knows, and Banning goes to trial, facing the death penalty, repeating: I have nothing to say. Beautifully constructed, it captures the racial tensions of the Deep South and weaves a truly magical spell. LOST CHILDREN by Christopher Hart (Prospero 9.99, 444 pp) LOST CHILDREN by Christopher Hart (Prospero 9.99, 444 pp) Better known for historical novels written as William Napier, here Hart tackles a contemporary subject the idealism of youth and how it can evaporate. Four young medical students are in Central America, desperate to do good. The unnamed country (Guatemala?) is in the grip of drug wars, with street gangs and armed militias everywhere. The most idealistic of the four, Nicholas, lodges with a poor family and is transformed by the experience, especially his relationship with a little girl, Lala. Conditions worsen and Nicholass companions all decide to return home, but he refuses. Then Lala goes missing. Nicholas sets out to find her and purge his own bad childhood memories. Told with emotional intensity, it moves you to tears. A week of turmoil on global markets has resulted in more falls today as the FTSE 100 followed US and Asian indices with a dramatic slide in early trading on Friday, sinking to a level not seen for nearly two years. London's blue-chip index of leading shares was down 129.8 points or 1.9 per cent just before the close to 6,874.3 - surpassing the low of 6,921 hit in March this year. It has not been as low since November 2016. But at the bell, it recovered somewhat to finish down 64.54 at 6,939.56. Disappointing results from US tech giants Amazon and Google-parent Alphabet overnight helped trigger falls on Wall Street and in Asian markets overnight that triggered the London market's latest tumble. The FTSE 100 hit 6,920 shortly after markets opened after falling 1.2 per cent Both firms undershot sales forecasts and dropped sharply in the post-market session. This soured the mood on what had been a rebounding US session, and filtered through to Asian stock markets too. All of the FTSE's key sectors are currently in the red, not helped by a 5 per cent slide from Royal Bank of Scotland today after it booked a write-down of 100million to help deal with the more uncertain economic outlook in the UK. The latest falls cap a fortnight of extreme volatility across global markets and leave the Footsie more than 11 per cent down from its recent high of 7,776 in August. The Dow Jones also opened 442.3 points or 1.8 per cent down at 24,542.2 despite figures for gross domestic product the value of all goods and services produced in the U.S. marginally beating analyst estimates with a seasonally and inflation-adjusted annual rate of 3.5 per cent from July through September. A lethal cocktail of factors, including trade war tensions and the Italian budget, are taking their toll on investor sentiment in Europe. Today, the EU's rejection of Italy's budget is still weighing heavily on the Eurozone. The DAX has dropped 190 points, while the CAC shed 1.8 per cent. And SpreadEx analyst Connor Campbell warned that their may be worse still to come. It has been a volatile two weeks across global markets amid a dramatic sell-off 'Given that the slightest thing sets the markets off at the moment, it is going to be interesting to see how they deal with this afternoons first look at the US third quarter GDP figure,' he said. Analysts are expecting a slowdown from 4.2 per cent in the second quarter to 3.3 per cent in the last three months - a decline that Campbell said could cause further problems 'at the end of a tiring and tricky week'. Equity markets did bounce back yesterday as strong corporate earnings from Lloyds and UBS helped the UK index close above 7,000. Positive earnings stories from Twitter and Comcast helped buoy US markets after a choppy few days on Wall Street too. But the rallies were short lived. At time of writing the FTSE 100 was down 1.5 per cent at 6,898.70. Royal Bank of Scotland has reported a 14 per cent increase in profits during the third quarter today but shares in the part state-owned lender slid more than 4 per cent as the City was disappointed by the figures. The banks profits rose to 448million in the three months to end-of-September from 392million a year earlier. That was well below analysts estimates of 507million, and that saw RBS shares sold off - they were last trading 10.5p or 4.5 per cent down at 224.0p. The increase in profits came despite RBS, which is still 62 per cent taxpayer owned after being bailed out in the height of the financial crisis, setting aside 200million for payment protection insurance claims. In profit: Royal Bank of Scotland has reported a 14% increase in profits during the third quarter Its pre-tax operating profit also climbed 10 per cent to 961m, up from 871m 12 months ago. For the year to date pre-tax profits are 2.8billion. Revenue also grew 15.4 per cent year-on-year to 3.6bn for the quarter after the recovery of 272m in indemnity insurance recoveries. The bank said the latest provision reflected greater than predicted complaints volumes. In total it has set aside 5.3bn for PPI claims so far. In addition, it was hit with a 60m impairment charge for its Irish business. RBS was also forced to pay out 389m in third-quarter conduct and litigation costs. PPI claims against banks and other lenders have continued to flood in, exacerbated by the Financial Conduct Authoritys advertising campaign featuring Arnold Schwarzenegger aimed at encouraging people to come forward before the August 2019 deadline for final claims. Upbeat view: RBS chief executive Ross McEwan praised the bank's performance despite a highly competitive market and an uncertain economic outlook The bank has also set aside 100m to deal with the more uncertain economic outlook; the first bank to do so in anticipation of the UKs exit from the European Union (EU) next March. Chief executive Ross McEwan said: This is a good performance, set against a highly competitive market and an uncertain economic outlook. We are growing lending in our target markets and are in a strong position to support the economy. We're aware there is much more work to do and are fully focused on improving for our customers. RBS also revealed today that it has secured approval from Dutch regulators to serve EU clients out of Amsterdam post-Brexit. Earlier this month, RBS paid out its first dividend of 2p per share in 10 years after reaching a long-awaited $4.9bn (3.7bn) settlement with US regulators over claims that it mis-sold mortgages in the run-up to the financial crisis. The lender paid out 240m to around 190,000 shareholders, with UK Government Investments, the firm that manages the state's 62 per cent stake, pocketing 150m of that. It was considered the largest of a string of legacy issues that the bank is starting to put to rest a decade on from its bailout in 2008. The banks shares fell five per cent to 222.35p in morning trading. Advertisement February 17, 1978 was just like any other night inside the Manhattan studio Andy Warhol dubbed the Factory. The artist was in the middle of taking snaps of Liza Minnelli when John Lennon stopped by to hang out, and ended up having his ear licked by Warhols friend, Victor Hugo all of which was captured by Warhol in a series of photos. But those photos along with thousands of others Warhol captured went untouched for decades, until now. For the first time ever, Warhols 3,600 photographic contact sheets showing 130,000 images of his time with celebrities and politicians including Michael Jackson, John Lennon, Liza Minnelli, Debbie Harry, Dolly Parton, Nancy Reagan and Maria Shriver are now on display at the Cantor Arts Center at Stanford University for the exhibit titled Contact Warhol: Photography Without End. Speaking to DailyMail.com, Peggy Phelan, co-curator of the exhibition and professor and director of the Stanford Arts Institute, explained how this body of Warhols work sheds a new light on the artists social life and how he operated day-to-day during a period when he was viewed as one of the greatest artists in the world at the time. John Lennon dropped by Andy Warhol's Manhattan studio dubbed the Factory on February 17, 1978 while the pop artist was in the middle of taking snaps of Liza Minnelli. The Beatles' front man had his ear licked by Warhol's friend, Victor Hugo, (pictured) while everyone shared laughs during one of the many ordinary nights for the group of friends. The image above along with thousands of others captured by Warhol went untouched for decades, until now For the first time ever, Warhols 3,600 photographic contact sheets showing 130,000 images of his time with celebrities and politicians like Michael Jackson, John Lennon, Liza Minnelli, Debbie Harry, Dolly Parton, Nancy Reagan and Maria Shriver are now on display at the Cantor Arts Center at Stanford University for the exhibit titled Contact Warhol: Photography Without End. Warhol captured the above snap of Lennon aged 38 while inside his studio on February 17, 1978 Speaking to DailyMail.com, Peggy Phelan, co-curator of the exhibition and professor and director of the Stanford Arts Institute, explained how this body of Warhols work sheds a new light on his social life. Pictured above is the contact sheet from February 17, 1978 with images showing Lennon, Minnelli and Warhol In 1976, when he purchased his first single lens reflex camera - which made it possible for him to put a camera in his jacket pocket - he vowed that he would take at least one roll of film per day, Phelan stated. As we follow, we can trace Warhols practice between 1976 and 1987, which shows he becomes much more confident as an artist and as a photographer and he also increases the amount of photographs he took per day which is also interesting. 'So in the exhibition we wanted to show that the contact sheets have the capacity to illuminate his major body of work which is well known. The creation of a Warhol art piece can be traced from the contact sheets to the finished paintings. An example of that is Warhols Liza Minnelli from 1979, which is included in the exhibition in a room that specifically focuses on her. Phelan also said the contact sheets show how Warhol operated day-to-day during the 11-year period when he was viewed as one of the greatest artists in the world at the time. Pictured above left are images of Minnelli, center and right are images of Debbie Harry in 1980 The creation of a Warhol art piece can be traced from the contact sheets to the finished paintings. An example of that is Warhols iconic Liza Minnelli art piece from 1979, which is included in the exhibition in a room that specifically focuses on her. Pictured above are images of Warhol while capturing shots of Minnelli By the late 1970s, Minnelli, who is the daughter of actress Judy Garland and Vincente Minnelli, had won an Academy Award for Cabaret and was considered to be one of the best of the best in Hollywood. She is pictured above being photographed by Warhol in the Factory in 1978 Pictured above are images of Warhol while capturing shots of Minnelli. Phelan said: As we follow, we can trace Warhols practice between 1976 and 1987, which shows he becomes much more confident as an artist and as a photographer and he also increases the amount of photographs he took per day which is also interesting.' The 1977 image Warhol selected for the iconic acrylic and silkscreen ink on linen piece of Minnelli is pictured on the left while a photo of the art piece is on the right Warhol would mark an X or a circle on the printed contact sheets to indicate the images that were selected to print. Phelan added that the contact sheets also show a kind of carnival of what went into the making of these well-known pop portraits. We get to understand that something about more wholesome method was the social dimension of it, the kind of fun and the sort of performance spirit of the whole thing which you cannot necessarily tell from just looking at the portraits, Phelan said. Warhol viewed the aspect of taking photos as a kind of visual diary that would supplement or accompany his verbal diary, Phelan noted. Richard Meyer, co-curator of the exhibit and professor of art history, told DailyMail.com that the exhibit shows an unprecedented degree into Warhols social world, which was often dazzling. Phelan added: 'So in the exhibition we wanted to show that the contact sheets have the capacity to illuminate his major body of work which is well known. Pictured above is Warhol in a self-portrait during a photo shoot in 1981 where he is dressed in drag Warhol is pictured above during the same photo shoot wearing a different wig while in drag. Phelan said that the contact sheets also show a kind of carnival of what went into the making of these well-known pop portraits Warhol is pictured above left sitting in a chair with make-up on his face before putting on a wig during the drag queen photo shoot in 1981 At first it was a little overwhelming to be looking at all of these images which were the analogue to Warhol Diaries, they were the visual analogue, Meyer stated. [Andy] actually said I take pictures so that I know where I was every minute. 'But you know he does it in a way that doesnt look like anybody elses every minute. 'Thats partially because of the life he was living in the early 70s and 80s, which was extremely celebrity strewn and privileged. But its also because he looked at things that other people would overlook. Meyer noted that it was rare for a celebrity in the 1970s to show up to events with a camera and take photos instead of mingling among fellow A-listers, but that is how Warhol began operating. I think that was a way for Warhol to participate without having to fully engage for example conversationally, Meyer said. Phelan said: We get to understand that something about more wholesome method was the social dimension of it, the kind of fun and the sort of performance spirit of the whole thing which you cannot necessarily tell from just looking at the portraits. Warhol is pictured above sporting his signature white wig in 1986 - one year before his unexpected death It was a strategy for him to deal with the kind of going out every night that he did and I think he was also related to the possibilities of convincing wealthy people and celebrities to have their painted portrait done by Warhol, because that's how he was supporting the entire enterprise. Meyer shared that Phelan and he were able to connect certain contact sheets with Warhols diary to see exactly what was happening on specific days. One that I liked that he says a whole entry about John Travolta and it kind of traces a night at some party in Texas when Urban Cowboy opened and he talked about John Travolta being mobbed, Meyer stated. At the dinner for it, he says that John Travolta is the most famous person in the room and Warhol is the second like, I am the second most famous by a long distance. So he is very much calibrating who's most famous. Pictured above is the full contact sheet showing Warhol getting make-up applied and trying on different wigs during a drag queen photo shoot in 1981 Phelan said: In 1976, when he purchased his first single lens reflex camera - which made it possible for him to put a camera in his jacket pocket - he vowed that he would take at least one roll of film per day. Pictured above are a series of images Warhol captured of an unknown woman wearing a variety of masks Warhol viewed the aspect of taking photos as a kind of visual diary that would supplement or accompany his verbal diary, Phelan noted. Pictured above is a partial view of a contact sheet showing Andy Warhol, Bianca Jagger, Halston, Diane de Beauvau and Bethann Hardison in the back of a limo in 1976 Richard Meyer, co-curator of the exhibit and professor of art history, told DailyMail.com that the exhibit also shows an unprecedented degree into Warhols social world, which was often dazzling. Pictured above is the full contact sheet of images showing Warhol in 1986 Meyer shared that Phelan and he were able to connect certain contact sheets with Warhols diary to see exactly what was happening on specific days. Pictured above are the contact sheets for a photo shoot with artist Jean-Michel Basquiat that Warhol captured in 1982 Meyer said that Warhols contact sheets that are on display within the exhibit represent both popular culture while the artist was also a part of it. Pictured above is the contact sheet of images Warhol captured in 1982 showing fellow artist Jean-Michel Basquiat, Warhol selected the image above left of Basquiat from the contact sheet to create the art piece on pictured on the right - which he used acrylic, silkscreenink and urine on canvas in 1982 But what I felt was kind of funny is that in that same entry or another one, but he just thinks John Travolta is really cute and is this actor who is just beginning. Hes not yet a movie star. Meyer added that Warhols contact sheets that are on display within the exhibit represent both popular culture while the artist was also a part of it. Besides seeing images of Minnelli, Warhols contact sheets also include Jean-Michel Basquiat, Keith Haring, Blondie and Grace Jones and Bianca Jagger all hanging out together while heading to Studio 54 in New York City. Warhol, who died aged 58 in 1987, also documented the gay culture of the 1970s and 80s which the exhibit includes examples of the white wigged artist in complete drag make-up. The Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts in New York City gifted Cantor the contact sheets and negatives in exchange for digitizing the incredible archive and making it free and available online. It took archivist Amy DiPasquale three years to complete the project at cost of $1million. The exhibit, Contact Warhol: Photography Without End, ends on January, 6, 2019. Please be advised that the exhibition includes some images that may not be appropriate for young viewers. Besides seeing images of Minnelli, Warhols contact sheets also include pop-art and graffiti artist Keith Haring, who is pictured above with his boyfriend Juan Dubose in 1983 Pictured above is the full contact sheet showing several images Warhol captured of Haring and his boyfriend in different poses with each other in 1983 Warhols contact sheets also include a number of celebrities like Debbie Harry, who is pictured in the top two rows of the above contact sheet, all hanging out together while heading to Studio 54 in New York City Warhol, who died aged 58 in 1987, also documented the gay culture of the 1970s and 80s which the exhibit includes examples of the white wigged artist in complete drag make-up. Pictured above is a contact sheet showing an event Warhol attended The Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts in New York City gifted Cantor the contact sheets and negatives in exchange for digitizing the incredible archive and making it free and available online. It took archivist Amy DiPasquale three years to complete the project at cost of $1million The exhibit, Contact Warhol: Photography Without End, ends on January, 6, 2019. Pictured above is the contact sheet of two male models posing together that Warhol captured in 1982 Pictured above is an image Warhol captured in 1983 of a guy named John Sex walking with a snake outside of Warhol's studion in New York City The tax-free threshold would be scrapped, GST would rise 15 per cent, and Australians would pay tax on every dollar they earn under an ambitious tax reform plan. PricewaterhouseCoopers has announced a radical tax reform plan after revealing 90 per cent of revenue comes from just 10 of Australia's federal and state taxes. With UBS economists predicting a return to surplus by 2019-20, PwC argues now is the perfect time to shake up how Australia pays tax. 'The thing we know about tax reform is that the best time to do it is in times of surplus,' PwC Tax Partner Paul Abbey said in a video on the company website. The tax-free threshold would be scrapped, GST would rise 15 per cent, and Australians would pay tax on every dollar they earn under an ambitious tax reform 'We've got this moment where we're not just sitting on surplus, not just just paying back debt, and we should also think about investing ...to improve the tax system.' According to PwC, Australia has more than 125 taxes at a state and federal level, but 90 per cent of all revenue is raised through just 10 taxes. Business and financial commentator Peter Switzer told Daily Mail Australia: 'Australia is one of the highest income tax countries in the world, but we are one of the lowest indirect tax countries in the world.' Mr Switzer said the only way to reduce business and income taxes is to get money from indirect sources - goods and services taxes - and that's the driver of the reform. One of the most provocative changes identified in the proposed reform was to take away the tax free threshold, which Mr Switzer said many people think isn't possible. Under the PwC plan, every dollar earned would be taxed by eliminating the tax-free threshold for earnings under $20,000 and the revenue given to low income earners. The change would prevent high income earners - more than $100,000 a year - from benefiting from the threshold and targeting welfare payments to those who need it. 'The government would have to provide some kind of pension or subsidy to those people in low-income groups,' Mr Switzer explained. PricewaterhouseCoopers have revealed their tax plan, which they argue for the first time in a decade is probable given the way the budget is inching towards a surplus The second key takeaway point from the proposed plan was to increase the GST from 10 per cent to 15 per cent. 'The kiwis have a 15 per cent GST and accounting purists believe we should move to a 15 per cent on most goods and services with very few exemptions,' Mr Switzer said. 'This would bring a lot of money in and that would then permit a whole lot of tax cuts as well.' Another key tax change identified in the plan would be to introduce land taxes in place of stamp duty. Mr Switzer said in Australia, people are more scared of land taxes than they are of stamp duty - until they buy a house. According to PwC, Australia has more than 125 taxes at a state and federal level, but 90 per cent of revenue is raised through just 10 - prompting the restructure 'In this country we haven't got land taxes and that would be a bit of a shock to people.' The PwC plan also recommended the abolition of big tax brackets to be replaced with a system where someone's tax rate increases by a small amount every $1000. 'We're constantly wondering what the tax brackets should be - maybe we should move to a system that moves away from that fundamental battle,' Mr Abbey said. While some financial advisers have given the proposed plan a thumbs up, others have questioned which politicians could make it a reality. As Mr Abbey explained, the purpose of the PwC plan is to start a conversation about what kind of tax system Australia needs for the future as the population ages. 'These ideas are the start of the debate, they're designed to think outside the system - they're to challenge some of the fundamentals of the system.' Mr Abbey said the conversation will not only identify how Australia can improve the personal tax system better but also improve all aspects of the tax system. 'At this time when we've got some surplus, we've got some capacity to look at who are the winners and losers and ease them into change. 'It gives us the chance to improve it,' he said. Around 25 attacks on prison staff are recorded every day as record levels of violence sweep through jails in England and Wales. Official figures show assault and self-harm incidents behind bars have increased again to record levels. There were 9,485 assaults on staff in the 12 months to June 2018, up 27% from the previous year, a Ministry of Justice report showed. Around 25 attacks on prison staff are recorded every day as record levels of violence sweep through jails in England and Wales. Justice Secretary David Gauke said the Government has recruited 3,500 new prison officers over the last two years [File photo] Of those, 947 were classed as 'serious' such as those which require medical treatment or result in fractures, burns, or extensive bruising. The number of assaults on staff in the three months to June increased by 4% to a new record quarterly tally of 2,515 incidents. The Ministry of Justice report noted that there has been a change in how assaults on staff are recorded, which may have contributed to the increase. Prison staff at H.M.P Wandsworth in London gather outside after staging a 'walk-out' in September, demanding the government improve safety in jails. There were 9,485 assaults on staff in the 12 months to June 2018, up 27% from the previous year The Safety In Custody bulletin also revealed the total number of assaults jumped by 20% to 32,559 in the 12 months to June. It also revealed that there were 325 deaths in prison custody in the 12 months to September, up 8% from the previous year. Of these, five were homicides, up from three incidents in the previous year. Focus has intensified in recent months with the publication of a string of highly critical watchdog reports. Official figures show assault and self-harm incidents behind bars have increased again to record levels. The Ministry of Justice report noted that there has been a change in how assaults on staff are recorded, which may have contributed to the increase Chief Inspector of Prisons Peter Clarke has demanded urgent Government action at four establishments in less than a year. Peter Dawson, director of the Prison Reform Trust, said: 'Despite the unrelenting effort of many in the system, all of these indicators show that there is no end in sight to the catastrophe that has engulfed many of our prisons.' Justice Secretary David Gauke said: 'I have been clear in my absolute determination to bring down the unacceptable levels of violence in our prisons. Justice Secretary David Gauke, above, has said the government has doubled sentences for inmates who attack staff, and are rolling out body-worn cameras. Up to 947 assaults this year were classed as 'serious' such as those which require medical treatment or result in fractures, burns, or extensive bruising 'The safety of our dedicated prison officers is paramount, which is why we recently changed the law to double sentences for those who attack them, and are rolling out PAVA incapacitant spray, body-worn cameras and 'police style' handcuffs and restraints.' He said the Government has recruited 3,500 new prison officers over the last two years and is spending an extra 40 million to improve safety and tackle drugs. 'I know there is still more to do and we will continue our drive to tackle violence in prisons so they can be places where offenders can turn their lives around,' Mr Gauke added. With surging property prices in NSW, couple are roughly $8 million ahead Jointly owns five properties in Sydney and Bowral w ith partner Jackie Stricker Fresh from securing the Federal Parliament seat for Wentworth, Dr Kerryn Phelps' extensive property portfolio can now be revealed. With long-term partner Jackie Stricker, Dr Phelps owns five properties, including four in Sydney. The other is a stylish 'weekender' in Bowral, in the New South Wales Southern Highlands, and the five properties combined are worth $18million in total. The couple's portfolio includes two medical practices, two apartments with breathtaking views of Sydney Harbour as well as the country estate. Dr Kerryn Phelps (pictured left) with partner Jackie Stricker - together the couple boast a property portfolio worth $18million The property on Cooper St in Double Bay (pictured) Kerryn Phelps and Jackie Stricker purchased in 1998 - their property portfolio is now worth an estimated $18million The living room from the property in Bowral (pictured) which Dr Kerryn Phelps and her partner Jackie Stricker own - their portfolio is worth roughly $18million Recent figures suggest the couple are $8million in front after buying their initial property together in the affluent suburb Double Bay, in Sydney's east, in 1998. At the time the residence on Cooper St cost $1.6million - today it is worth $5.5million. The couple's most valuable property is a four-bedroom Potts Point unit, estimated to be worth $5.6million. They opted to recast their portfolio in March of 2015, selling a waterside home in Bundeena for $3.3million, which was $2.4million more than they originally paid for the premises. Phelps and Stricker went on to purchase a manor in Bowral for $2.4million and the site of a medical practice in Surry Hills for $2.55million. The couple have also been big financial winners on the Sydney real estate market. Property records show they nearly doubled their money on an Elizabeth Bay address, bought in 2002 for $1.8million. The Potts Point property on Tusculum St (pictured) owned by Dr Kerryn Phelps and her partner Jackie Stricker - the pair bought for $860,000 in 2013 - it is now worth $1.3million The Potts Point property (pictured) owned by Dr Kerryn Phelps and partner Jackie Stricker - it was purchased for $3.4 million in 2011, is now believed to be worth $5.6million The Bowral 'weekender' (pictured) owned by Dr Kerryn Phelps and her partner Jackie Stricker - it is now worth an estimated $2.4million Four years later it went under the hammer for $3.4million. In 2011, Phelps was appointed a Member of the Order of Australia for her services to medicine, particularly through leadership roles with the Australian Medical Association, education and community health. Last year Phelps resigned as deputy major of the City of Sydney of Council to be an independent politician. Community members and neighbors have mixed feelings about what should happen to the building Philadelphia has begun the process to auction off the site of a former clinic where now-imprisoned doctor Kermit Gosnell performed illegal late-term abortions. The city is seeking to use a sheriff's auction to recoup about $50,000 in delinquent taxes, with a sale possible as soon as early 2019, Philly.com reported Thursday. The proceedings were initiated earlier this year. Gosnell, who is serving a prison sentence of life without the possibility of parole, or someone on his behalf, will have the chance to object to the sale at a hearing Nov. 27. Community members and neighbors have mixed feelings about what should happen to the building, which stirs deep emotions in some who lived in the neighborhood when a 2010 raid shined a light on the doctor's practice. Philadelphia wants to auction off the site of the former abortion clinic where imprisoned Gosnell performed illegal late-term abortions Father-of-six Gosnell was convicted in 2013 of the murder of three babies who were born alive and the involuntary manslaughter of a patient who died during a botched abortion Some say it should be demolished to erase the physical reminders, while others say it should be saved because of architectural significance. Investigators acting on narcotics-related tips raided the west Philadelphia building in 2010. A grand jury produced a more than 200-page report on the horrors inside. Sedated women were found lying on dirty recliners covered in blood-stained blankets. A flea-ridden feral cat roamed the hallway where investigators stepped over animal feces to climb the stairs in the building. Gosnell agreed to a sentence of life without parole if prosecutors did not seek the death penalty Fetuses were found in containers all over the building, including some that investigators had determined had been viable births. Medical examiners said there were signs of incisions and severed spinal cords. Gosnell was charged with hundreds of counts of violating state requirements on abortion waiting periods and performing illegal late-term abortions. He was convicted of three first-degree murder charges and one manslaughter charge related to the deaths of one woman after a botched abortion and several of the viable fetuses. Gosnell had been a well-known physician, making house calls and opening a clinic where few physicians practiced. Authorities say Gosnell was known to perform procedures for immigrants and others who had issues getting access to abortions or who had passed the stage in their pregnancies where other doctors would perform the procedure. Some experts who deal with removing stigma from properties where crimes, deaths and suicides happen, said owners have an easier time selling and developing commercial properties because no one has to sleep there or live with the ghost of past events. Some community members, however, have their doubts the building's history can be erased. 'We have not had a true community engagement about that parcel yet, but one thing that I know needs to take place is healing,' said De'Wayne Drummond, president of the Mantua Civic Association, which has boundaries that fall just two blocks outside of where Gosnell's former clinic stands. 'You can destroy something, but don't be healed, and you can restore something and still don't be healed.' Hugh Jackman has taken on the role of a disgraced school superintendent who embezzled millions of dollars from a New York high school, as he was seen filming in behind-the-scenes footage obtained by DailyMailTV. The Australian actor, 50, was seen on Tuesday portraying Frank Tassone in the upcoming film Bad Education, starring alongside Allison Janney and Ray Romano. Tassone was jailed in 2006 for his part in a scheme that embezzled $11 million from Roslyn High School and splurging the stolen cash on a lavish lifestyle of gambling and luxurious vacations. Jackman was caught on camera dabbing his sweaty forehead as he attempted to defend himself in front of an angry crowd of actors who booed him and called him a crook. Hugh Jackman has taken on the role of a disgraced school superintendent who embezzled millions of dollars from a New York high school, seen in behind-the-scenes footage Jackman was filming the scene at a high school in the Bronx and while on set, lived up to his reputation as the friendly Hollywood movie star by cracking jokes in between takes Tassone was jailed in 2006 for his part in a scheme that embezzled $11 million from Roslyn High School and splurging the cash on a lavish lifestyle of gambling and luxurious vacations Jackman was filming the scene at a high school in the Bronx and while on set, lived up to his reputation as the friendly Hollywood movie star by cracking jokes in between takes. A source on set, who filmed the video and would like to remain anonymous, told DailyMailTV: 'He was very friendly with all of the extras and he was cracking jokes whenever filming stopped. 'We were there from six in the morning to six in the evening filming the pivotal scene. It's the climax where everybody realizes Jackman's character is a con.' Comedian Romano helped out by cracking jokes for the extras to keep them engaged. A source on set, who filmed the video, told DailyMailTV: 'He was very friendly with all of the extras and he was cracking jokes whenever filming stopped' The Australian actor will portray Frank Tassone in the upcoming film Bad Education, starring alongside Allison Janney and Ray Romano. Pictured: Jackman filming on October 18 The source said: 'Romano was telling jokes and fooling around to keep everyone awake. There was a great atmosphere on set.' Jackman was also filmed in another scene where his character is praised for turning around the fortunes of the high school. As the actor glides onto the stage of a high school auditorium in a suit, actors and extras cheer and chant for him. The film is written by a former Roslyn high school student Mike Makowsky and is currently in production. A release date has not yet been set. A Michigan Airport electrician, and longtime city councilman, is accused of choking a colleague who refused to cover his food while using the shared office microwave. James Trombley, 60, a Riverview City Council member, reportedly throttled a fellow Wayne County Airport Authority employee after a break room spat spiraled out of control, the News Herald reports. The other airport employee, a carpenter - who has not been named - had attempted to heat up his lunch at around 11.15am on October 2 when Trombley took issue with the fact the food was not covered, according to an airport report. James Trombley (pictured) is accused of assault after allegedly choking an airport worker When the carpenter refused, the argument quickly escalated and Trombley, a father and grandfather, who was sitting at the lunch room table with two other electricians, reportedly threatened to throw the food in the trash. The man, a carpenter, then told Trombley to 'mind (his) own business' and started the microwave. Trombley then rose from the table and approached his coworker and the microwave that he was using. Trombley reached to block him from using the appliance and the exchange between the men became physical. An eyewitness told how Trombley 'grabbed (the man) by the collar' before another eyewitness told them to stop. The man then said he had finished using the microwave after the man released him from his grip. Trombley became aggressive when an employee failed to cover his food in the microwave He then left the room without saying anything and Trombley sat back down. Police were subsequently contacted over the incident. An officer said the man 'showed visible signs of being choked' and requested the Detroit Metro Airport Fire Department to respond. The man received treatment at the scene. However it is understood he refused transport to the hospital and it is known if he did in fact get checked by medical staff. The airport worker refused to cover his food when confronted by Trombley in the canteen 'After my investigation, it was determined that (Trombley) was the aggressor in this case,' the officer wrote in his report. In response, Trombley said on Wednesday that the incident amounted to 'a pushing match lasting three seconds'. On Wednesday, a spokeswoman for the Wayne County Prosecutors Office said the case had not yet been presented to them. A Wayne County Airport Authority spokeswoman said they had no comment to make in relation to the incident. Riverview Mayor Andrew Swift said the city was aware of the matter. He also said there is an official process in place for handling citizen complaints against city officials, but there is no planned action at this time. The incident happened at Detroit Metropolitan Wayne County Airport where the men work The row happened over a microwave amongst workers at a canteen at Wayne County Airport It is uncertain at this point if Trombley will face any criminal charges or if the man has filed a complaint. The case has been described as a non-aggravated assault. According to an election questionnaire, Trombley, 60, is a lifetime Riverview resident, United States Navy Seabee veteran, and a senior electrician for the Wayne County Airport Authority. He is a father, grandfather and union official for AFSCME. An Australian diver helped rescue passengers after a plane crash in Micronesia before navy divers arrived to search the sinking aircraft. Air Niugini Flight 73 undershot the runway at Chuuk International Airport on the island of Weno by 145 metres and crashed into a lagoon on September 28. Adam Milburn, a former Australian Navy clearance diver who lives in Micronesia, was on board the plane when it went down, killing one passenger. Incredible footage shows sailors from the US Navy entering the Boeing 737, after Mr Milburn helped evacuate fellow passengers. Incredible footage shows sailors from the US Navy entering the sinking Boeing 737 aircraft Fisherman on the Micronesian island of Weno sprang into action when they saw the plane go down just off the coast Friday Mr Milburn bravely battled to save passengers on board the sinking plane, amid reports that Air Niugini crew panicked and failed to assist people off the aircraft. He also reentered the plane with the US Navy sailors to check for remaining survivors. The sailors swam through the length of the plane before deeming it to dangerous top remain in the aircraft's interior. 'I was like everyone, kind of floundering. 'How did we get here? What's happening? What are we doing right now in a plane that's floating on the water'?' Mr Milburn told ABC's 7.30. He claimed that following the crash, the crew instructed passengers to remain seated. However according to Mr Milburn, passengers received no further instruction, which was when he decided to grab his life jacket and start helping people. Mr Milburn also wondered if there was anything that he could have done to save the Indonesian man who died in the incident. 'I literally touched everyone that came out the exit door on the left-hand wing, either assisted them into the life raft or physically carried them into the life raft, so no one was coming out and falling off the wing and drowning, I'm absolutely confident of that.' US Navy Sailors from Underwater Construction Team (UCT) 2 assist local authorities in shuttling passengers to shore Mr Milburn also said that many suffered head or neck injuries from hitting the front of their seats on impact. He claimed he did not see a cabin crew member do a headcount or check names. An American journalist, Bill Jaynes, was a passenger on the Boeing 737 flight and has called Mr Milburn's actions heroic. 'I know Adam and I know he would be the last person to call himself anything like a hero, [but] considering there was a plane in the water I would call it heroic.' Air Niugini, Papua New Guinea's national airline, initially announced that all 35 passengers and 12 crew members were safely evacuated. However it later emerged that one passenger had died. Eko Cahyanto Singgih's body was recovered by US Navy divers from the aircraft, according to the Micronesian government. The Air Niugini plane landed in the ocean after it overshot a Micronesian runway, officials say The government said nine people were injured in the crash, four of them critically. The US Navy Seabees, who were in Chuuk for a construction project, entered the plane, which was half-submerged in water, to check for any remaining survivors. Fisherman on the Micronesian island of Weno also sprang into action when they saw the plane go down. Local men and women on the island jumped into their fishing boats and rowed out to the sinking plane to help rescue passengers before it went under. Some had begun to swim for their lives while others were standing on the wings of the rapidly-sinking jet when the flotilla of boats arrived. With help of US Navy sailors, locals used their small fishing boats to shuttle people from the plane to shore. The exact cause of the crash is under investigation. Air Niugini claims that reduced visibility due to heavy rain caused the pilot to miss the runway. Chuuk State (also known as Truk) is one of the four states of the Federated States of Micronesia, with 50,000 inhabitants on 46 square miles. The plane went down near Weno Island in Chuuk Lagoon, which is where most people live. Daily Mail Australia has contacted Air Niugini for comment. Peter Dutton has claimed Melbourne's African gang violence will turn deadly if the problem isn't addressed following the state's election next month. The Home Affairs Minister made the shock suggestion on radio station 2GB on Thursday, saying voters should take the issue into account when casting their vote. 'The Victorian justice system, the way in which the police are dealing with these criminals, the direction given to the police by the government, it all makes a mess,' he told the program. 'As this continues to elevate, you have large numbers of these gangs gathering, it's going to result in very serious outcomes or death.' Scroll down for audio and video Peter Dutton has claimed Melbourne's African gang violence will turn deadly if the problem isn't addressed following the state's election next month The comments follow Mr Dutton's criticisms of Victoria's approach to gang violence, including his claim that Melburnians were 'too scared to go out to restaurants' in fear of being attacked. He has also claimed the state was in a 'fairyland' when dealing with the violence, after he was accused of inciting racism. The one-time candidate for prime minister also said offenders who remain in Australia on visas 'do not belong in Australian society' and should be deported. While the extent of the crisis has been disputed by Victoria Police, the force admitted 'a core group of African youths are causing huge fear', earlier this year. Now Mr Dutton has once again hit back at the state's Labor government's handling of the situation. The comments follow Mr Dutton's criticisms of Victoria's approach to gang violence, including his claim that Melburnians were 'too scared to go out to restaurants' in fear of being attacked In light of the long-running scandal, the issue of youth violence has become a talking point for both major parties, ahead of the state election next month 'The reality is it's not Daniel Andrews, the Premier of Victoria, that's suffering here, it is the people that have their houses broken into,' he told 2GB. 'It's people assaulted on trains or in parks or in their own home. They are the true victims here, the ones we should be considering.' In light of the long-running scandal, the issue of youth violence has become a talking point for both major parties, ahead of the state election next month. While the Liberal Party say there should be a 'zero-tolerance for racism', former prime minister Malcolm Turnbull spoke earlier this year about the party's concern for street violence. 'There is certainly concern about street crime in Melbourne. There is real concern about Sudanese gangs,' he told 3AW. Meanwhile, Victorian Premier Daniel Andrews swiped back at Mr Dutton's commentary on Friday, saying his government is giving authorities 'every resource they need' to fight crime. '[Peter Dutton] is very good at talking down Melbourne from Sydney,' Mr Andrews said. 'I'm very proud of Victoria Police for the work they're doing. 'I think Mr Dutton might need to be briefed on what's going on in Victoria before he bags Victoria on Sydney radio, which seems to be very much the way he operates.' New York Senator Kirsten Gillibrand vowed to serve her full six-year term if she wins reelection in November, meaning she would not to challenge President Donald Trump in 2020. She has been mentioned a possible presidential contender, given her strength as a fundraiser and prominent perch in the Senate as a female lawmaker who represents an influential state. 'I will serve my six-year term,' Gillibrand said when asked about a presidential bid during a debate in Manhattan Thursday night against her GOP challenger Chele Farley. New York Senator Kirsten Gillibrand vowed to serve her full six-year term if she wins reelection in November, meaning she would not to challenge President Donald Trump in 2020 Gillibrand's GOP opponent Chele Farley said she didn't believe her 'Honestly, I don't believe that,' Farley said, 'considering the fact this is the third day she's been in New York in the entire month of October. When she's been in five other states, including New Hampshire, this month.' Gillibrand would not be the first presidential candidate to renege on such a pledge. Then Sen. Barack Obama pledged in January 2006 he would not run for president in 2008. By October of that year he was walking back his promise and ultimately won the White House. And her reelection bid looks like a lock. She is leading Farley by 25 points in the latest Quinnipac University poll. Farley was the one during the debate who charged Gillibrand with being more interested in a presidential bid than representing New York and used the possibility of a White House campaign repeatedly as a political weapon against the senator. 'She is spending a lot of time running around the country running for president,' Farley charged. Moderator Bill Ritter of WABC asked Gillibrand about reports she is considering a 2020 bid, asking her if she would pledge to serve her full six-year Senate term. 'I will,' Gillibrand vowed. She noted there was nothing wrong with going around the state and country campaigning for other candidates, particularly women. In the debate, the first and only between the two candidates, Gillibrand did slam Trump's 'divisive' style of politics and argued a role model is needed in the White House. 'I think we need to have a role model in the White House and I don't think we have that,' Gillibrand said. Barack Obama made a similar vow not to run for president before his 2018 bid President Trump is expected to seek reelection in 2020 In a recent CNN poll, Gillibrand received a scant 1 percent when Democrats were asked who they prefer as their 2020 nominee. She also paid a recent visit to New Hampshire, the state that hold the first presidential primary. And The New York Times suggested she was fundraising like a White House contender, noting in her 2018 reelection bid, the senator has invested zero dollars on television and has spent only a fraction of what she did in 2012. Gillibrand has over $10 million sitting in her campaign account. The queue waiting to enter Britain's busiest immigration tribunal centre is long in the early morning. Asylum seekers, illegal migrants and visa over-stayers of every nationality jostle with lawyers, carrying bulging briefcases of documents, who are about to fight for their right to live in this country. Here at Taylor House in Central London, tens of thousands of hearings a year are overseen by immigration judges, at huge cost to the taxpayer. James Hanratty, above, an immigration judge for 16 years, said crooked solicitors and legal advisers are helping their clients make up bogus tales of persecution. He says the immigration system is now a huge industry that has attracted 'bent legal advisers' chasing pots of gold Recently, one of those judges, who has now retired, blew the whistle on what goes on at some of those tribunals, accusing unscrupulous immigration lawyers of aiding and abetting foreign 'liars and chancers'. James Hanratty, an immigration judge for 16 years, said crooked solicitors and legal advisers are helping their clients make up bogus tales of persecution, torture or sexual violation and even supplying false documents to back up the stories. The respected former judge is not alone in raising the alarm. Mr Justice Green, a High Court judge, last year said immigration lawyers deliberately drag out cases for decades to stop clients even those with a dismal chance of staying being removed from Britain. A report last month from Migration Watch UK, which campaigns for tougher border controls, estimated that, every year, the illegal migrant population in the UK of visa over-stayers, clandestine arrivals and failed asylum seekers grows by 70,000 or more. French police continue to play cat and mouse with migrants, pictured near Calais. The Supreme Court this week ruled that the deportation of foreign criminals with British-born children is legal, which until now has been used to stop or delay deportations Former Home Office immigration chief David Wood told a House of Commons select committee last year that Britain now has one million illegals, acknowledging that huge numbers live 'under the radar'. He also said that few were ever likely to be sent home. For deportation is a difficult business, too. Home Office figures show that, of the 10,129 illegals, including foreign criminals released from UK prisons, ordered to be placed on deportation flights from January 2016 to May this year, 6,237 (or 61 per cent) were removed before take-off or at the 11th hour did not board. Many had made last-minute appeals using immigration lawyers to avoid removal. Only this month, a Somalian convicted gang rapist, Yaqub Ahmed, 29, escaped being thrown out. He was on a Turkish Airlines flight to Istanbul from Heathrow when passengers heckled the private security guards overseeing his deportation. 'They're separating him from his family!' one passenger shouted. Migrants in Caen continue to break into lorries bound for the UK using the Ouistreham ferry port to Portsmouth. Last year former immigration chief David Wood admitted huge numbers of illegal immigrants, up to a million of them, live 'under the radar' As a result, Ahmed, who has just completed a nine-year sentence for a sex attack on a 16-year-old girl in Crouch End, North London, was taken off the aircraft and sent back to an immigration detention centre. This week, the Supreme Court ruled that the deportation of foreign criminals with British-born children is legal. It's an historic ruling that will limit the power of lawyers to use the European Convention on Human Rights, which safeguards family life, as a legal loophole to let offenders stay here. Time will tell whether it will speed up deportations or reduce queues in our immigration courts. For years, I have reported on immigration hearings where foreigners, some of whom should never have come to Britain, or who should have left by now, try to convince judges they have the right to stay. Opposite are battle-weary Home Office officials who've heard many stories before. Armies of interpreters dance attendance, some on hundreds of pounds a day from the public purse. They have to be versed in tongues ranging from Pidgin English (spoken in remote areas of Africa and New Guinea), to Korean and Farsi. Overseeing this extraordinary scene are the well-meaning judges, bombarded daily with tales about the horrors the migrants will face if they are thrown out. There are no oaths sworn here, only a request from the judges that those in front of them tell the truth. For some begging to stay as I have seen it seems a lot to ask. During three days that I spent listening to immigration hearings at Taylor House, I watched a 46-year-old South African woman who has been in Britain illegally for nearly 20 years try to win asylum. A man waves the Union Jack flag in front of French anti-riot police during a march organised by human rights activists in support of migrants and refugees. A lawyer in a tribunal case said his client had learned to speak good English while in the UK which seemed debatable, given English was already her country's first language She said she could not go home because her family physically and verbally abused her for avoiding an arranged marriage in 1998, before she left for Britain on a two-year working visa, which she overstayed. The woman's lawyer produced one piece of evidence to back her story: a letter written in large handwriting some years ago on one page, from a friend in South Africa who said she wished to remain anonymous. The mystery writer said that the woman's family had fallen out with her when she was in her 20s. The letter did not mention rows over an arranged marriage. Yet the woman's lawyer argued that to return her would abuse her rights to a private life in the UK, although she is childless and has not married here. On several occasions, after failing to get a visa extension, she has asked the Home Office to be allowed to stay. This was refused, but she remained anyway. Shaking and crying, the woman, who now lives on the outskirts of London, told the court that she was in 'fear of [her] family' and admitted she was working illegally as a recruitment consultant and IT specialist in Britain. When asked by the Home Office official why she had not called friends in the UK to come to court to back up her lawyer's arguments, she said they were all at work. 'I am telling you the truth,' she said in a whisper. Asked by the woman judge why she hadn't sought asylum earlier, she said all the lawyers she consulted wanted 'money and more money and did nothing to help me'. At this, her current lawyer blushed, before blustering that his client had learned to speak good English while in the UK which seemed debatable, given that she apparently came from a sophisticated Asian community in Durban, South Africa, where English is the first language. Afghan aslyum seekers in the demolished jungle Calais, France, last year. Former Home Office immigration chief David Wood told a House of Commons select committee last year that Britain now has one million illegals In another, equally mystifying, case again with a paucity of evidence, but more tears a Bangladeshi man from East London begged to stay in Britain so that he could see his son. The boy, in his early teens, lives in London with the man's estranged wife, his cousin, whom he married before entering the UK illegally eight years ago at the age of 30. The Bangladeshi hoped to stay using European law enshrined in Britain by the Human Rights Act which gives the right to a family life. Yet the lawyer, from a thriving immigration practice in London, struggled to argue his case when it became clear that the man only sees his son occasionally on the street walking to school or at extended family gatherings at a mosque, when his wife is there with the boy. Putting his head in his hands and weeping, the father pleaded with the judge: 'I saw my son last week. He waved at me across the street as he went to school with a friend. My relationship is very good with him and he calls me Dad. He is my heart and soul.' However, the case began to unravel when the official for the Home Office began to ask why statements from his witnesses bore such a strong resemblance to each other. Sue Reid has been told by those working at immigration hearings that some more unscrupulous lawyers prepare country-by-country crib sheets for migrants to learn before a hearing [File photo] The wording in at least three cases was identical, raising the question as to whether they had been written by the witnesses. This did not seem to surprise the woman judge. She barely raised an eyebrow at the revelation that the evidence did not seem credible. For, time and again, it seems decisions at the hearings are based on questionable evidence. I have been told by those working at immigration hearings that some more unscrupulous lawyers prepare country-by-country crib sheets for migrants to learn before a hearing. For example, if you are from Ghana, you might be advised to say you are gay and deserve sanctuary because you come from a country that abhors homosexuality. Four years ago, a father of two escaped deportation moments before being put on a plane to Jamaica by declaring that he was homosexual. The 55-year-old was ordered to be sent back to his homeland after building up a criminal record that included thefts, drug possession and assaults. Yet, in handcuffs at Gatwick, he said he was gay and claimed he could not be sent home, as he faced discrimination there. The claim halted his deportation. Mr Justice Green, a High Court judge, above, last year said immigration lawyers deliberately drag out cases for decades to stop clients even those with a dismal chance of staying being removed from Britain And if, for instance, you say you are a Christian from Iran, you can argue you will face persecution or torture in a country ruled by Islamic hardliners. And so on. Of course, it's important to state that many of the 26,000 foreigners claiming asylum each year will be telling the truth and deserve our help. The problem for immigration judges who earn six-figure salaries in busy hearings is that they can struggle to uncover who is honest and who is not. An immigration solicitor was last year suspended indefinitely after making an application knowing that his client was lying. Mansoor Ali, a partner at a Manchester firm with a reputation for advising migrants, was told by his Pakistani client that he had cheated the system by saying he was in the UK as a student. In fact, a confession was recorded in Ali's files admitting the man had never been to college and had paid agents to get bogus certificates from UK education establishments. Yet Ali took a fee of 720 and appealed his client's case. No wonder that one QC versed in immigration law told me some time ago that some tales at the tribunals are 'seriously unbelievable'. Four years ago, a father of two escaped deportation moments before being put on a plane to Jamaica by declaring that he was homosexual. Yet, in handcuffs at Gatwick, he said he was gay and claimed he could not be sent home, as he faced discrimination there. The claim halted his deportation [File photo] James Hanratty who has written a book called The Making Of An Immigration Judge says the immigration system is now a huge industry that has attracted 'bent legal advisers' chasing pots of gold. 'So dishonesty and deception, some of it comical, are all too frequent, as I saw time and again.' Mr Hanratty has highlighted a case before him in which a lawyer falsified a statement for a Somali woman who claimed her life was in danger because she was from a minority clan. Her husband, she insisted, had had his throat cut by a rival warlord at their home in Mogadishu, forcing her to flee to England. Her story was backed by her lawyers. Yet the case crumbled when a Home Office official who had done his homework asked how her murdered husband had been able to claim asylum in Britain 18 months before. 'There was stunned silence because she had no answer and shouted at me,' said Mr Hanratty. 'The solicitors who had prepared her statement knew it was rubbish.' To make a bad situation worse, the hearings including those I witnessed at Taylor House are often shrouded in secrecy, with reporting restrictions (which can be applied for by downloading a form from a government website) becoming the norm. On one Tuesday during the week I was there, of the 64 hearings held, almost a quarter were covered by this rule. This is only part of a wider culture of secrecy. A 28-year-old man who is a French speaker of African descent (and a criminal who has just finished a prison sentence) was brought to court from an immigration deportation centre, asking for bail. His name was listed on the door of the hearing room. When, after the hearing, I asked his relative (who I told I was a journalist) to confirm the spelling of his name, the woman judge shouted across the room. She ordered the relative not to confirm the man's name because I was 'from the Daily Mail'. After another hearing, involving a claim to stay, I was chased down a corridor by a lawyer and told that I could not use any names I'd heard, not even his own firm's, even though there were no reporting restrictions. On a third occasion, five minutes after I entered a hearing, an immigration lawyer asked the judge to stop me reporting details of the case, on the grounds that it was confidential. In a welcome spark of common sense, the judge refused. To make a bad situation worse, the hearings including those Sue Reid witnessed at Taylor House are often shrouded in secrecy, with reporting restrictions becoming the norm [File photo] And so, relentlessly, the hearings went on. And there were yet more tears. In one, a 69-year-old Ukrainian grandmother dabbed her eyes with a tissue as she begged the judge to let her stay in the UK with her daughter, who has five children and is married to a British doctor who works in the NHS and runs a private health clinic. The grandmother, through an interpreter, said she had suffered marital violence in the Ukraine. She had also been frightened by unrest in her home country. She wanted to stay in Britain, said her lawyer, because she had depression and needed help dressing and even feeding herself. A medical report was produced to show she suffered failing health and was becoming forgetful. Yet this appeared to be tainted, as it had been written by a former associate of her doctor son-in-law. When the judge called the son-in-law to the hearing and asked why he had ordered the report and what he had said to his colleague, there was no proper answer. The judge asked to see the referral letter the doctor had sent to his associate, however it could not be found in the bundles of files brought to court by her lawyer. The hearing continued while the mystery of the letter remained unsolved. This may all have been innocent and the Ukrainian lady might well deserve to stay in Britain. But it's the sort of thing that makes you fear Mr Hanratty is right: that immigration tribunals are open to abuse at a time when our public services are groaning, our hospitals are full and we need millions of houses to be built to accommodate a ballooning population. My three days at Taylor House certainly did nothing to prove him wrong. Sarah Wellgreen, 46, (pictured) had moved back into her ex Ben Lacomba's 330,000 four-bedroom home in New Ash Green Police searching for missing mother of five Sarah Wellgreen have today revealed she was reported missing two days after her disappearance. Sarah, 46, was last seen on the evening of October 9 in the area of her home in New Ash Green and is thought to have vanished overnight between Tuesday October 9 and 10. But she was only reported missing on Thursday, October 11. Police are not revealing who reported her missing. Today officers in boiler suits stepped up their search for the only item missing from Miss Welgreen's home - her mobile phone. Police were seen in Dartford town centre searching for the black iPhone 4. They were also spotted digging at a vineyard which has been cordoned off since Wednesday evening. Police today conducted a search of Hythe Street in Dartford. Officers searched in drains and bins by All Night Cars, where Sarah Wellgreens former partner Brian Lacomba worked as a taxi driver. They also searched the garden at The Stage Door pub nearby telling bar staff they were looking for Sarahs phone. It comes after Neil James, the man claiming to be Miss Wellgreen's partner when she disappeared, claims he secured a mortgage to buy out her former partner as he and Miss Wellgreen planned to marry. Kent Police issued a missing persons appeal to find Sarah on October 12. Officers are today continuing their search of woodland near Fawkham, Kent around four miles from her home. Searches in Dartford town centre are also set to continue, thought to be for her missing black iPhone 4. Detectives have said they are treating Sarah's disappearance as suspicious and potentially a murder inquiry. Police are scouring Dartford in Kent as they search for the one item missing from Miss Wellgreen's home - her phone Neil James (right) claims he secured a mortgage to buy out Miss Wellgreen's former partner, Ben Lacomba (left) Police are searching in Kent for the only item that was missing from Miss Wellgreen's home -her mobile phone She has not been in contact with her family since and, significantly, she has missed one of her younger children's birthday since she disappeared. Miss Wellgreen had seen a number of mystery private clients on the day she disappeared, it has emerged. As well as working weekends at Puresun Health and Beauty in Portsmouth, she also took on private massage clients. And on the Tuesday she was last seen in New Ash Green, Kent, the 46-year-old saw several people for personal appointments. Kent Police have refused to confirm whether that is one of their lines of investigation, saying the inquiry is ongoing. Police are combing the streets in Dartford in Kent as they search for the mobile phone missing from Miss Wellgreen's home Officers are searching Dartford town centre for Miss Wellgreen's black iPhone 4 following the disappearance Officers are continuing to search the town centre today after the mother's mobile phone was the only thing found to be missing from her Kent home But Miss Wellgreens current partner, Neil James, 45, of Farnham, Surrey, said Sarah did have appointments that day, returning to the home she shared with ex Ben Lacomba, 38, at about 8.15pm. He said: 'Shes a massage therapist, beautician, that sort of thing. She has private clients. 'Shed just finished private clients on the Tuesday when she text me to say that she got home at 8.15pm.' Police officers were seen leaving a vineyard after they started digging at the site, which has been cordoned off since the disappearance was reported Searchers comb through bushes in Dartford, Kent, as they look for the black iPhone 4 missing from Miss Wellgreen's home Detective Superintendent Paul Fotheringham who is leading the investigation and search, said earlier this week: 'We are investigating the disappearance of Sarah. It is entirely out of character for her to go missing and having conducted extensive enquiries and searches, this case is now being treated as a potential murder. 'Sarah has disappeared without a trace, the only item missing from the home is her black iPhone 4. Sarah Wellgreen, 46, (pictured) had moved back into her ex Ben Lacomba's 330,000 four-bedroom home in New Ash Green Miss Wellgreen's new boyfriend Neil James, 45, spoke to her on the phone for 15 minutes when she was tucked up in bed on the night that she vanished. The pair pictured together above 'Officers have conducted extensive searches in New Ash Green and surrounding rural areas. 'While we continue our investigation and enquiries, I would urge anybody who saw anything suspicious in the New Ash Green area at around the time Sarah went missing, that is overnight from the evening of Tuesday October 9, into the morning of Wednesday 10 October, to contact us. 'We have experts with specialist technology and forensic scientists working with us to try and find Sarah. 'Residents, businesses and landowners in the rural areas around New Ash Green are asked to check their outhouses, and areas surrounding their properties. 'We are particularly interested to hear from anyone with fixed cctv cameras within a five mile radius of New Ash Green, whether this is residential or commercial cctv to come forward. 'Likewise, anyone who was out on the evening of the 9 October to the morning of 10 October in that five mile area who has dashcam in their vehicle, please contact us. 'We are also appealing to those living and working in the area bordered by the A2, M25, Meopham, Cobham, Horton Kirby and Darenth to check their sheds, outbuildings and areas of rough ground or woodland for any sign of Sarah. 'Dog walkers and anyone out in rural areas should also call us if they see anything that seems suspicious. 'If you think you may have seen Sarah or something suspicious but are not sure, please do not hesitate to call and let us know. 'I'd like to take this opportunity to thank those who have already called us, assisted with searches or sent messages of support to family who have been badly affected by Sarah's disappearance.' Miss Wellgreen also put her former partner at the top of an online 'hate list' two years ago, according the man claiming to be her boyfriend at the time of her disappearance. She had moved back into her ex Ben Lacomba's 330,000 four-bedroom home in New Ash Green, Kent with their three youngest children in recent months. But the romance had not rekindled, with friends telling how the former lovers had a hostile relationship after years of fighting for custody of their children. In a revealing Facebook post in the midst of the separation battle in 2016, the beautician put 'Ben' at the top of a list of things she hated, and 'Ben losing' on a list of things she loved to watch. Last night, a close friend claimed that Miss Wellgreen had been seeking legal advice in order to buy Mr Lacomba out of the house as recently as July. He says they were forced to end their relationship as she needed to live with Mr Larcomba but had reunited and planned to marry in Guildford, with another ceremony in Majorca. Mr James told The Sun: 'Sarah wanted the best for her children, which is why she was trying to buy the house. After we got back together she had a mortgage approved. She was going to give him 50k and he was going to vacate the house. We were going to get married.' Quizzed: Ben Larcomba with a Nerf gun Miss Wellgreen's new boyfriend Neil James, 45, says he spoke to her on the phone for 15 minutes when she was tucked up in bed on the night that she vanished. Detectives questioned taxi driver Lacomba for three days last week before releasing him pending further investigation. He has an obsession with Nerf guns, the children's toys that fire foam darts. Mr Lacomba's father Juan, 72, yesterday told The Times: 'He is not involved at all, he is a good man. It is all a shock. I think she has run away. There were other men, so who knows.' Police began a murder probe on Wednesday, more than two weeks after Miss Wellgreen disappeared 'without a trace' on October 9. Officers are investigating her apparently complex love life. Police are investigating why CCTV cameras at the home of a missing mother-of-five were turned off on the night she vanished. Her car was left outside her house, and Kent Police said there had been no activity on either her bank card or mobile phone. She has missed the birthday of one of her children. Miss Wellgreen's new boyfriend Neil James, 45, says he spoke to her on the phone for 15 minutes when she was tucked up in bed on the night that she vanished. Miss Wellgreen and Mr Lacomba had once owned a bar together while living in Spain before moving to the secluded village near Dartford. But friends said by 2014 the couple had split up, and the following years saw hostilities heat up as they argued over their three children a 12-year-old son and six-year-old twins and who owned the house. A close friend, who works in a Kent beauty salon and did not want to be named, said: 'Three years ago Sarah went through a very difficult time over the children. CCTV cameras near to the house where Sarah Wellgreen lived were disabled during her disappearance 'The pair had a volatile relationship and Sarah could be up and down very quickly. CCTV cameras near to the house where Sarah Wellgreen lived were reportedly disabled during her disappearance 'It is very unlike her to disappear like she has done, and even more out of character to miss one of her children's birthdays. The children mean everything to her.' In February 2016, Miss Wellgreen posted a list for 'a little fun' on social media, in which she wrote her likes and dislikes. Under the heading 'Four things I hate', she wrote 'Ben' at the top. Below 'Four things I love to watch', she put 'my children' at the top and 'Ben losing' at the bottom. However, Miss Wellgreen is understood to have recently moved back into the house, which was bought by Mr Lacomba for 175,000 in 2007. A friend told the Daily Telegraph that the relationship had grown increasingly 'fractious' since she moved back into the house, reportedly nicknaming Mr Lacomba 'Ben The T**t'. Her close friend Katharine Griffiths said she had last spoken to her in July. She said: 'She was her usual happy and bubbly self.' She said Miss Wellgreen had been frustrated over the house and was attempting to buy her former partner out. The distraught mother of a teen girl named one of seven patients who died after a 'severe outbreak' of adenovirus at a New Jersey pediatric care facility is demanding answers. Kristine Poulos said her 16-year-old daughter, Elizabeth Poulos, had been receiving medical treatment at the Wanaque Center for Nursing and Rehabilitation in Haskell, New Jersey for unrelated health issues when she suddenly fell ill with a fever at the start of October. That's when doctors learned she had contracted the life-threatening virus, which has caused a total of 19 infections as of Thursday, seven of which were fatal. The teen tragically passed away Tuesday. Her mother told WABC: 'I just want to know what happened... shes gone. I cant bring her back... shes not coming back. 'Im angry. I think what it is, I need to know more information. I like facts.' The New York woman said the hospital didn't report the incident to state officials until October 9, roughly five days after the family had been notified. Scroll down for video The mother said Elizabeth had been receiving medical treatment for unrelated health issues when she suddenly fell ill with a fever at the start of October 'I just want to know what happened... shes gone. I cant bring her back... shes not coming back,'Kristine Poulos said 'Why wouldn't you report it sooner?,' she added. On Sunday, health inspectors found 'minor handwashing deficiencies' and 'infection control issues' at the facility, which houses elderly people and children. Adenoviruses usually cause mild illnesses, but health officials say that outbreak is 'severe' because all of the infected children have compromised immune systems. Poulos posted a prayer for her ill daughter just days ago on her personal Facebook page. 'A prayer of love over my child. Dear Father, as a parent, you are the perfect example of love and how it gives. 'You gave your one and only son because you love the world. The depth of your love cannot be measured. The largeness of it cannot be sized. 'Will you help the one you've gifted to me to know the gift of your love? Will you help this child of mine know how much [she] is loved? 'May each opportunity to share your love be embraced to the fullest opportunity,' the post read. On Wednesday, it was revealed that a seventh child died following a 'severe outbreak' of adenovirus. 12 currently remain sickened. The news came a day after the New Jersey Department of Health announced that six children had died and 12 had fallen ill after contracting adenovirus at the Wanaque Center for Nursing and Rehabilitation in Haskell. Seven children with compromised immune systems are now confirmed dead and 12 are currently ill after contracting adenovirus at the Wanaque Center for Nursing and Rehabilitation in Haskell, New Jersey (pictured) According to a statement from the Department of Health, the Wanaque Center 'has been instructed not to admit any new patients until the outbreak ends and they are in full compliance.' The facility has been cited for numerous health code violations in the past. According to NBC News, citations were issued in 2016 and 2017 for handwashing deficiencies, not storing syringes properly, improperly disinfecting surfaces and syringes, and unsanitary storage of oxygen tank tubing. New Jersey Governor Phil Murphy said on Tuesday that 'the Department of Health has recommended vital measures to enhance protections against the further spread of infection and will continue its active on-site surveillance. 'I am confident that the steps being taken by state and local officials will minimize the impact to all those who remain at the facility, including patients and employees.' Adenoviruses are a group of viruses that infect the linings of the eyes, lungs, intestines, urinary tract, and nervous system. They are the cause of several infections including the common cold, respiratory tract infections, pink eye, diarrhea, bronchiolitis and pneumonia. Adenoviruses are responsible for about 10 percent of fever-related infections among US children, and most children will have at least one type of infection by age 10. Once exposed, there is an incubation period of two to 14 days before symptoms appear. Because they are highly contagious, adenoviruses are common among places with large groups of kids including hospitals, schools, camps and daycare centers. According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), adenoviruses can be spread by an infected person coughing or sneezing. Droplets fly through the air and land on surfaces. A child can catch the virus by touching an infected person, or if they touch the toy or an object of someone with the virus and then touch their face without washing their hands. In some cases, adenoviruses can be spread through the stool of an infected person, such as while changing a diaper. Adenoviruses are a group of viruses that infect the linings of the eyes, lungs, intestines, urinary tract, and nervous system. Pictured: Colorized transmission electron micrograph of adenovirus It's also possible to get sick by eating food prepared by somebody who did not wash their hands properly after using the bathroom. Those who have weakened immune systems are at an increased risk of developing a severe illness or neurological diseases from an adenovirus infection. The origin of the outbreak at the Wanaque Center remains unclear, but officials say the facility notified them of some respiratory illnesses on October 9. Nicole Kirgan, a spokeswoman for the health department, told Daily Mail Online in a statement that the outbreak was caused by adenovirus type 7. According to the CDC, type 7 is most commonly associated with acute respiratory disease. A vaccine has been approved for types 4 and 7 by the US Food and Drug Administration, but only for US military personnel at risk for infection. Kirgan added: 'The combination of a worse strain of adenovirus together with a fragile population has led to a more severe outbreak.' On Sunday, health inspectors found 'minor handwashing deficiencies' and 'infection control issues' at the facility, which houses elderly people and children. Pictured: Street view of the Wanaque Center The origin of the outbreak at the Wanaque Center remains unclear, but officials say the facility notified them of some respiratory illnesses on October 9. Pictured: Map showing the location of the outbreak The Wanaque Center says on its website that it is a for-profit facility that works with 'with medically fragile children' from newborn to 22 years old. It also offers an adult nursing home and rehabilitation center for either short-term or long-term care. In 2016, 23 children were infected with adenovirus after receiving eye exams at Children's Hospital of Philadelphia, resulting in the death of an infant. Staff attributed the outbreak to medical personnel not wearing gloves and not cleaning equipment properly. Philly.com reported in August that the parents of the infant who died, Melanie Sanders, are suing the hospital for negligence. An area of countryside the size of Birmingham will be lost under plans to build a million new homes on land between Oxford and Cambridge, campaigners have claimed. The National Infrastructure Commission has recommended the creation of new towns between the cities by 2050 in a 5.5billion development. The Campaign to Protect Rural England said it would mean the loss of 67,000 acres of farmland and woodland. The Government is expected to approve the scheme on Monday. The Campaign to Protect Rural England said it would mean the loss of 67,000 acres of farmland and woodland Analysis by the CPRE suggests there is capacity for just 50,000 houses on previously developed or brownfield land within the area known as the Oxford-Milton Keynes-Cambridge Corridor, also called the Growth Arc. There are some 230,000 homes currently proposed or being built across the swathe of land. To meet the one million target would require a huge boost to building most of which would be on open countryside. CPRE also said that just 2,200 affordable homes are being created each year in the area, despite local authorities identifying a need for 12,000 such properties. Paul Miner, of CPRE, said: If given the green light, this development will change the face of Englands countryside for ever. While there will be a need for genuine affordable housing to meet local need in the area, the scale of these proposals is completely unacceptable. He said no formal environmental assessment or public consultation had taken place around developing the Arc, although it will cost at least 5.5billion in public money. CPRE is demanding a public debate about whether spending huge sums on developing the area is right, given that it is already attractive to employers and has a buoyant housing market. Communities Secretary James Brokenshire (pictured) said: Building the homes our country needs does not mean tearing up vast tracts of our countryside.' It insisted the 3.5billion earmarked for the expressway to link the cities would be better spent on improving public transport and restoring the East-West rail line rather than relying on cars that pump out pollution. Mr Miner called for a strategic environmental assessment of the plans. He stressed: It must look at the impacts of both the proposed housing and transport development on the countryside, peoples health and well-being, and climate change in a holistic manner. Critically, we need much stronger commitments to protecting and improving the unique and precious rural landscapes in the Arc. Communities Secretary James Brokenshire said: Building the homes our country needs does not mean tearing up vast tracts of our countryside. The Oxford-Cambridge Arc is an opportunity to further strengthen rural economies, enhance the environment and benefit local communities. Our new planning rulebook strengthens protections for the Green Belt and we have set out our ambition to ensure housing projects are more environmentally friendly. Former Crimewatch presenter Nick Ross has become a German citizen 85 years after his Jewish family sought refuge from the Nazis in England. The broadcaster had no real awareness of his roots as a youngster but resolved to go back and learn after the fall of the Berlin Wall. He has now decided to reclaim his past after deciding the German people had faced up to the terrible deeds committed in their name during the Second World War. After recent visits to the country and more detailed research into his past, the 71-year-old applied for German citizenship under laws designed for wartime refugees and their descendants. Former Crimewatch presenter Nick Ross has become a German citizen 85 years after his Jewish family sought refuge from the Nazis in England The BBC broadcaster said: I know there are some descendants of Nazi victims who can never forgive what happened in Germanys darkest times, but I also know that virulent anti-Semitism was rife in many other countries too. I know the Germans perfected industrial mass murder, but throughout recorded history humankind has indulged in terrible bouts of slaughter, torture and wiping out whole populations. Yet I know of no other country whose people have faced up to their terrible deeds as have the vast majority of Germans. Ross admitted the Brexit vote may have tipped the scales in favour of him applying for a German citizenship, but said his decision predated the poll. After receiving his passport he sent a personal thank you to Angela Merkel praising her countrys astonishing moral resilience and said his citizenship was the ultimate proof of the failure and rejection of National Socialism. John Caryl Ross, formally Hans Rosenbluth, in British Army in April 1945 Days later he was startled to receive a message of personal thanks from the Chancellors top aide. The broadcaster, who grew up in Surrey and who presented Crimewatch for 23 years, does not appear to have openly spoken of his German heritage before. His relatives, including his father Hans and grandparents, fled Berlin after Hitler became Chancellor in 1933. Intimidated in Germany as Jews before the outbreak of war, they were then treated as dangerous aliens in Britain. A recent decision to delve deeper into his past proved the catalyst in his determination to reclaim his past. Ross retraced his roots to his grandfather Felix Rosenbluths home in the eastern town of Finow. There he was shown a memorial to First World War dead which had excluded the name of his great uncle Max because the Nazis had expunged the names of Jews. But new street signs now bear Jewish names or honouring those who defied the Nazis. I wished my father and grandmother could have seen them. Ross wrote in The Times. Roots: Nick Ross's grandparents Felix Ross and Anni pictured in January 1915 Further research revealed the familys woes had not ended once in the UK. In 1940 his father Hans was deemed a friendly alien and sent by ship to Australia in what became an infamous case of wartime maltreatment. Ross said: Initially only known Nazi sympathisers were interned, but in May 1940, with imminent risk of a German invasion, even so-called friendly aliens were rounded up including the 55,000 Jews who had fled from Nazi persecution. Even before it set sail it became clear that this was not to be a simple ferry ride. It was later called a floating concentration camp. Hans was held at a remote camp 250 miles north of Melbourne for ten months. He later changed his name to John Caryl Ross and enlisted in the British Army, insisting the internment incident was an aberration in the UKs otherwise fair treatment. Germanys Basic Law, approved in 1949, restores citizenship to those persecuted by the Nazis. Applications reportedly rose in the wake of the Brexit vote. Advertisement Prince Harry and Meghan Markle have dazzled fans across three nations during their whirlwind royal tour. But one Tongan schoolboy appeared unimpressed with the Duke and Duchess of Sussex as they arrived to meet the island nation's prime minister on Friday. The youngster took a nap on the floor, sprawled out among rows of well wishers waiting for a glimpse of the royal couple. The tiny tot took a nap on the floor, sprawled out among rows of well wishers waiting for a glimpse of the royal couple In their first engagement of the day, which included a meeting with Tonga's political leaders, Meghan and Prince Harry were greeted by excited locals donning traditional red dress The 37-year-old mother-to-be wore a striped olive green and white calf length dress by Australian-born fashion designer Martin Grant In their first engagement of the day, which included a meeting with Tonga's political leaders, Meghan and Prince Harry were greeted by excited locals in traditional dress. Two boys sat cross-legged and held a sign offering free hugs to the couple, who beamed as they made their way down the corridor. The sign was decorated with hand drawn red love hearts, a crown and traditional flower, as well as the names Malo, Lelei, Harry and Meghan. Two boys sat cross-legged and held a sign offering free hugs to the couple, who beamed as they made their way down the corridor When he woke up, he performed a cobra stretch with a smile plastered across his face, clearly rejuvenated and back on-task to win the hug he'd been angling for One of the pair eventually decided the event was too much for him, and scooted under the leafy barrier and layed face down on the floor Prince Harry and Meghan had just passed. When he woke up, he sat up with a smile plastered across his face,and set about getting a hug with Harry. And it appears he managed to win the royals over, with Harry kneeling to hug him as Meghan watched on with glee. The 37-year-old mother-to-be wore a striped olive green and white calf length dress by Australian-born fashion designer Martin Grant. The brand appears to be a firm favourite of the Duchess. It is the fourth time she has worn items from the Australian designer's collection on the royal tour so far. Labour has dropped its complaint against the Daily Mail over its coverage of Jeremy Corbyn's visit to the cemetery where terror leaders linked to the Munich massacre are buried. The party complained to the Press regulator in August about several papers' coverage of the 2014 event. Last night it emerged it had told the Independent Press Standards Organisation that it did not wish to take the case against the Mail any further. Mr Corbyn holding a wreath only feet away from the graves of terror leaders linked to the 1972 killings The decision will be seen as a vindication for the Mail's original story, which concerned a photo, obtained by this paper, of Mr Corbyn holding a wreath only feet away from the graves of terror leaders linked to the 1972 killings. The picture was among a number taken during a service to honour Palestinian 'martyrs'. Buried in the cemetery in Tunisia are members of Black September, the terror group which massacred 11 Israeli athletes. One picture placed Mr Corbyn close to the grave of another terrorist, Atef Bseiso, intelligence chief of the Palestine Liberation Organisation. Bseiso has also been linked to the Munich atrocity and was assassinated in Paris in 1992. Labour insisted Mr Corbyn had been at the cemetery to commemorate 47 Palestinians killed in an Israeli air strike on a Tunisian PLO base in 1985. But the Mail found that the monument to the air strike victims is 15 yards from where Mr Corbyn is pictured and in a different part of the complex. Instead he was in front of a plaque beside the graves of Black September members. For two days, Labour continued to insist that Mr Corbyn had attended a service to commemorate the 1985 victims. But Mr Corbyn then went on TV where he appeared to admit being present at a wreath-laying for Palestinian terrorists. Mr Corbyn said: 'A wreath was indeed laid by some of those who attended the conference to those that were killed in Paris in 1992. 'I was present when it was laid. I don't think I was actually involved in it. I was there because I wanted to see a fitting memorial to everyone who has died in every terrorist incident everywhere because we have to end it.' Less than six hours later, the Labour leader's office put out a further statement, this time with an unequivocal denial that Mr Corbyn had laid a wreath at the graves of those linked to the Munich Massacre. Later that week, Labour made a formal complaint against the Times, the Sun, the Mail, the Telegraph, the Express and Metro. According to a story in The Guardian, it told Ipso that several papers had misrepresented the event which the Labour leader attended. Last night a spokesman for the Labour Party said: 'Our view remains that the reporting we complained about seriously misrepresented the nature of what took place, those buried in the cemetery and the mainstream Palestinian leaders conducting the ceremony, and these inaccuracies breached the Ipso code. 'Regrettably, confidential communication with Ipso was leaked and it was unable to trace the source or assure us it would not recur, and we considered that the complaints process was unacceptably compromised. We therefore decided we would not be taking this Ipso complaint any further.' Mr Corbyn still faces an investigation into why he failed to register the Tunisian trip with the Parliamentary authorities. Labour says the trip was not declared in the Register of Members' Interests because the costs fell below the threshold for declarations, which was then 660. Mr Corbyn did not declare the trip despite staying at the five-star Le Palace hotel. Critics said it was 'inconceivable' that the stay plus flights could have cost less than 660. Thomas Markle has contacted the Archbishop of Canterbury in a bid for help healing his rift with Meghan and is allegedly considering a legal fight for access to his future grandchild. The Mexico-based former lighting technician has reportedly renewed his appeals to Kensington Palace and wants to fly out to London to meet his daughter after she returns from the royal trip to the South Pacific. The 74-year-old, who could not attend May's royal wedding due to heart palpitations, is also said to be asserting his 'rights' to see the future grandchild. Thomas Markle (left, on October 22) has reportedly renewed his appeals to Kensington Palace and wants to fly to London to meet his daughter (right, yesterday in Tonga) after she returns from the royal trip to the South Pacific 'Thomas says the Markle blood will be as much in the childs veins as the "blue blood" of the royals and he has "rights",' a source told The Mirror. 'He admits mistakes but with Meghan pregnant, he is desperate to heal the rift. 'Thomas has reached out to Kensington Palace more so since news of Meghans pregnancy broke, hoping the baby will be what finally breaks their estrangement.' Mr Markle has not spoken to his daughter since May and reportedly heard she was pregnant on the car radio. He hopes the child will be called Thomas if he is a boy, it is claimed. Markle Senior has been a frequent subject of controversy in recent months, beginning when he was caught out staging fake paparazzi photos around the time of the royal wedding. Meghan in Tonga. Her 74-year-old father is also said to be asserting his 'rights' to see his future grandchild This has since been followed by more lurid claims. In the latest story, published at the weekend by the U.S. website Radar Online, Meghan's half-brother reportedly claims to have witnessed Thomas Markle Senior using cocaine in the family home. '... I'd see lines of cocaine on the mirror. I'd see him do it,' Tom Junior, 52, is quoted as saying. He accused his father of staying out for days on drinking binges, then coming home 'a little wasted', during his first marriage, to his mother, Roslyn, and claimed his parents divorced because Mr Markle cheated on her. He also claimed to have smoked some of his father's marijuana. Mr Markle Senior strenuously denies the allegations, and is supported by his daughter, Samantha, 53, who dismisses her brother as a 'delusional alcoholic' who has been disowned by his father, and claims he was motivated by money and vengeance. Radio star Ray Hadley's policeman son was allegedly a repeat cocaine buyer who was being targeted by internal affairs when arrested with a bag of the drug at a Sydney pub. Senior Constable Daniel Hadley called himself 'Mick' when placing telephone orders for cocaine, according to a drug dealer's statement tendered to Parramatta Local Court. Details of Hadley's alleged cocaine habit emerged as dealer Shaquillie Sione Vaisiqine Laf Moubayed pleaded guilty to supplying him with the drug. The 22-year-old told police he had been in Baulkham Hills on Friday, August 3 when he received a call from a man he knew only as 'Mick'. Scroll down for video Senior Constable Daniel Hadley was targeted by a police internal affairs operation. He was arrested in August after allegedly buying cocaine from a dealer in a Sydney hotel car park Shaquillie Sione Vaisiqine Laf Moubayed has pleaded guilty to supplying former police officer Daniel Hadley with cocaine. Moubayed told police he knew the senior constable only as 'Mick' In recent months former cop Daniel Hadley (pictured with estranged wife Tahlee Anderson) has reportedly been suffering from a dislocated knee and was awaiting a hernia operation He had previously supplied Mick with cocaine and the pair arranged to meet in the car park of the Australian Hotel and Brewery at Rouse Hill, in the city's north-west. That night officers from the professional standards command were waiting to pounce as part of an internal operation code-named Resnova. 'Shortly after 8pm the subject officer, off-duty Senior Constable Daniel Hadley, left the hotel and walked through the car park towards a Honda sedan,' an agreed statement of facts said. 'Hadley entered the front passenger seat of the car which was being driven by the offender Shaquillie Moubayed. 'A few moments later Hadley got out of the car and walked back towards the hotel. The offender drove out of the car park.' According to the statement Hadley was arrested and found in possession of a resealable bag containing white powder. The day after his cop son's arrest Ray Hadley tearfully admitted during a press conference to feeling 'inadequate' as a parent for failing to notice Daniel's mental health problems Tests by the Forensic and Analytical Science Service found 0.66 grams of cocaine with a purity of 60 per cent. While Hadley was being arrested other officers were following Moubayed, who was pulled over at the intersection of Old Windsor Road and Mile End Road at nearby Kellyville. Moubayed told police he was carrying cocaine in his left pocket. Officers searched him and found a small black bag which contained another plastic bag. Inside that container were nine resealable bags later found to hold 6.10 grams of cocaine with a 62.5 per cent purity. Police then found a black Telstra phone in the front door of Moubayed's car and a silver iPhone 6 in the centre console. Moubayed was taken to Riverstone police station where he made a number of admissions in a recorded interview. 'He had been in Baulkham Hills when he received a call from a guy he knows as "Mick",' the statement of facts said. 'He had previously supplied "Mick" as a customer.' Radio star Ray Hadley's son Daniel will seek to have a cocaine possession charge dealt with under mental health provisions. He was admitted to a mental health clinic after his arrest The former Flemington markets worker told police he had sold Hadley - or 'Mick' - one bag of cocaine that night but could not remember if the policeman paid $200 or $250. The other cash in Moubayed's possession when he was arrested had come from previous deals. Moubayed admitted the Telstra phone was for drug dealing and that there were messages on it from other customers wanting to 'get on' in the Hills district. He told police he was unemployed and was selling cocaine to support himself and his mother. Moubayed, from Seven Hills, pleaded guilty on Wednesday to supplying a prohibited drug. A cocaine possession charge was withdraw and an offence of having goods in custody - related to the $500 found by police - will be taken into account upon sentencing. Shaquillie Moubayed told police Daniel Hadley was a repeat customer he knew only as 'Mick' Hadley was admitted to a mental health clinic after his arrest and he is seeking to have the cocaine possession against him dismissed under Section 32 of the Mental Health (Forensic Provisions) Act. In recent months he has reportedly been suffering from a dislocated knee and was awaiting a hernia operation. Police revealed in September that Hadley had resigned from the force. Hadley, who split from his wife of two years Tahlee Anderson earlier this year, has not appeared in court when his case has been mentioned. The day after his arrest his father tearfully admitted during a press conference to feeling 'inadequate' as a parent for failing to notice his son's mental health problems. Moubayed will face a sentencing hearing on December 12 when Hadley is also due in court. A baby girl who was found stabbed and burned at her grandmother's home was still alive when she was placed in an oven, an autopsy has revealed. Carolyn Jones, 48, is charged with first-degree murder after her granddaughter Royalty Marie Floyd's body was discovered at her home in Shaw, Mississippi last week. An autopsy report, obtained by the Bolivar Commercial, found that the 20-month-old-girl had died 'from sharp stab wounds and inhaling the heated air' - meaning she was still alive when she was placed inside the hot oven. Video courtesy of WREG Twenty-month-old Royalty Marie Floyd (left) was found dead in the oven at her grandmother Carolyn Jones' (right) home in Shaw, Mississippi last week The Shaw Police Department said that Jones' brother had made the gruesome discovery and called the police at around 7pm on October 15. Dozens of mourners held a vigil in honor of the girl on Monday in front of the Bolivar County Courthouse, where people 'shared lots of songs [and] lots of prayers' in her memory, WMC-TV reported. 'A family member (of the victim) came home and saw that something had happened,' said Sheriff Kelvin Williams. 'They found the child in the oven and called the Shaw Police Department who in turn contacted us to assist in a homicide investigation. When the sheriff's office arrived at the scene it was confirmed that a homicide had taken place inside the home.' Veronica Jones, the 20-month-old girl's mother, said that she is still coming to terms with the fact her own mother is allegedly responsible. 'Royalty Marie Floyd was the best thing that ever happened to me. She's my one and only daughter. My first love,' she said. Veronica said her daughter's death was 'the hardest thing that I ever had to go through in my life'. 'My heart has been ripped from my chest. 'I'm being told that my mother stabbed my daughter and baked her in the oven but my mother loved my daughter. She always treated Royalty like Royalty and everybody that knows us know that.' Authorities say the little girl had been living with her grandmother. Investigators are still trying to determine exactly when the girl died. Veronica Jones, (left) the 20-month-old girl's (right) mother, said she is still coming to terms with the fact her own mother is allegedly responsible The grieving mother said her 20-month-old daughter's death was 'the hardest thing that I ever had to go through in my life' 'I've been doing law enforcement for 25 or 26 years now. This is one of the most horrible things I've seen in doing law enforcement. The hardest part... is to see a child victim,' Williams said. Police said Jones was the only person in the home with Royalty at the time. Police tape surrounded part of the home in the days after Royalty's body was found. A stroller, high chair and a trash barrel of toys, including a scooter, sat near the curb in front of the house. Williams said those toys had belonged to Royalty. Authorities said they had no immediately information about the circumstances leading up to the child's death. 'That's hard to say,' Williams said. 'We don't know.' Royalty's toys, a discarded high chair and police evidence tape are part of the trash outside a home last week where she was found dead inside an oven Williams was asked if mental illness was a factor in the motive of the crime. He replied: 'We don't know any of that at this time and we are limited on what we can release'. Jones is being held on $500,000 bond. A GoFundMe page has been set up to help cover funeral costs and has exceeded $4,200. 'Royalty was so beautiful & I loved her more than anything in the world,' the toddler's mother Veronica Jones wrote on a GoFundMe campaign to raise money for her funeral. 'My daughter was stabbed and baked in the oven by her grandmother.' It is not the first death of a child inside an oven in the area. Dozens of mourners held a vigil in honor of the girl on Monday in front of the Bolivar County Courthouse and sang songs and said prayers in her memory People were visibly emotional as they prayed for the little girl and held hands in solidarity In 2012, a woman in Greenville, about 20 miles from Shaw, pleaded guilty to cooking her 3-year-old son to death in an oven. Terri Robinson, now 32, was sentenced to life in prison for the oven murder of Tristan Robinson. Washington County Coroner Methel Johnson said an autopsy found Robinson died from heat injuries sustained in the electric oven. An Uber driver accused of raping a teenage girl who fell asleep in his taxi has been frogmarched into court. Onur Dedeoglu, 37, is alleged to have sexually assaulted a 17-year-old girl in North Bondi in August. Serco guards escorted the man to Liverpool Local Court on Friday from Villawood Immigration Detention Centre, where he has been detained on bail since his arrest. Uber driver Onur Dedeoglu, 37, accused of raping a teenage girl who fell asleep in his taxi, was frogmarched into court this morning Dedeoglu refused to comment to reporters as he left the court and will reappear in Waverley Court in December, 9news reported. The Uber driver picked up the teenager with her friends after a night out in the Sydney CBD on August 26. He allegedly dropped off the girl's two friends at around 1.30 am in Bondi, after which the girl fell asleep in the back of his car. The victim allegedly awoke to find the accused sexually assaulting her in a car park in North Bondi. Serco guards escorted the man to Liverpool Local Court from Villawood Immigration Detention Centre where he has been detained on bail since his arrest in August The man's Uber account was frozen as soon as the ride-sharing company became aware of the incident. He is also no longer allowed to operate as a ride-share service driver for any other company. A vile paedophile who repeatedly raped his girlfriend's two-year-old daughter and filmed the sickening attacks has been jailed for 19 years. District Court Judge Leanne Clare sentenced Jason Daron Mizner, 44, on Friday, describing his offences as 'a different kind of evil'. Sentencing for the Queensland child rapist was earlier delayed because the judge was so shaken by video of the assaults she needed a break to ensure a fair sentence. Mizner has already pleaded guilty to more than 60 child sex offences relating to a two-year-old girl, from the early 2000s, including more than 30 counts of rape and videotaping the assaults. He has already spent 11 years in a Thai jail for unrelated child sex offences. He will be eligible for parole after serving 15 years of his latest sentence. Vile paedophile Jason Daron Mizner (pictured),who raped his Thai girlfriend's two-year-old daughter should have his sentence reduced because he suffered 'torture' the last time he was in prison, his lawyers argue Sentencing on Friday, District Court Judge Leanne Clare said there was no evidence Mizner had shown remorse for what he had done. She said: 'It was (the girl's mother) who found the recordings. That content would be excruciating for most people. 'I only watched a portion and it has been a battle to get the vision of your offending out of my head. I cannot imagine the horror of it for (the girl's) mother. Mizner must serve at least 15 years of his 19-year sentence, making him eligible for parole in 2031. In an earlier hearing at Brisbane District Court on Tuesday, Justice Clare said she had viewed a portion of one of the tapes and found it 'very confronting'. 'I think it would be best to put some distance between the viewing of that tape and the delivery of the judgment so that it does not overwhelm the sentence,' Justice Clare said, adjourning proceedings until Friday. The prosecution wanted the 44-year-old jailed for life. Sentencing for the Queensland child rapist has been delayed because the judge was so shaken by video of the assaults she needed a break to ensure a fair sentence Mizner's lawyers argued his years in prison in Thailand for a separate sexual assault of another young child there should be taken into account, because of the abuse he suffered at the hands of other inmates while incarcerated. 'He received beatings and other torture, partly in relation to (the Australian) offending,' Mizner's lawyer said. 'The Australian Federal Police gave evidence at the (Thai) hearing about the Australian offending, so it's not much of a stretch that inmates in Thailand would have known.' Justice Clare disputed that just because Mizner had a difficult time in a Thai jail did not mean he should have his potential sentence reduced. 'The report outlines deprivations and abuses that your client has described, but to say he's been tortured for 11 years is an overstatement of the material, frankly,' Justice Clare said. The court was told Mizner, who was 31 at the time of the assaults, formed a relationship with the Australian girl's mother, before committing the offences over a number of months. Mizner (pictured) allegedly committed the offences on a three-year-old in the Gold Coast between 2003 and 2005 While he was on a holiday in Thailand, the girl's mother found videos he had made and a range of other unrelated child exploitation material. Mizner stayed in Thailand, where he formed a relationship with a local woman before assaulting her young daughter and being arrested by Thai authorities. He served 11 years of a 35-year sentence and was deported when released on bail last year, with Australian authorities arresting him when he returned to Brisbane. It's the second time sentencing has been delayed, after a delay in September, when a doctor preparing a psychological report for the court suffered a heart attack. That report, the defence argued, showed that a motorcycle accident when Mizner was 21 left him with a brain injury, which 'uninhibited' him. Justice Clare said it also showed he had a 'predilection for babies' and had a medium-to-high chance of re-offending if not incarcerated. 'Even a low risk of re-offending when it comes to raping babies is a substantial risk to deal with. When it's a medium-to-high risk... it's alarming,' she said. The Time Warner Center, which houses CNN, in Manhattan was evacuated for a second time this week after police discovered 'two unattended packages' in the building. People were cleared from the area on Thursday night as the NYPD surrounded the scene. The police have been on high alert after pipe bombs were sent to a number of prominent liberal and liberal-leaning organisations - including CNN - in the past few days. No explosions were triggered and the FBI are investigating the devices. However, investigators found Thursday's packages, found on the third floor of the building, were harmless. Crowds gather outside after being evacuated from the Time Warner Center in Columbus Circle in the Manhattan borough of New York on Thursday night Members of the New York Police Department Bomb Squad are escorted into the Time Warner Center after evacuations were called in Columbus Circle Crude pipe bombs sent to George Soros, former President Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton, CNN, Representative Maxine Waters and former Attorney General Eric Holder. Two packages addressed to former Vice President Joe Biden bearing similarities to the other packages were recovered at two postal facilities in Delaware. Another was addressed to Robert De Niro and sent to his Manhattan restaurant. The packages, sent to prominent Democrats critical of President Donald Trump, heightened nationwide tensions and fears two weeks before major congressional midterm elections. The packages sent to Biden were found in New Castle and Wilmington. Police stand outside the Time Warner Center for a second day after the CNN headquarters is evacuated due to a suspicious package Staff and members of the public gather outside the Time Warner Center in Columbus Circle New York City Police gather outside the Time Warner Center after evacuations were called in Columbus Circle On Thursday, the FBI and ATF responded to the facilities as part of the ongoing investigation into the devices, with authorities believing these to be ninth and 10th packages tied to the case. Meanwhile police in Miami were assisting federal authorities in a search of a mail facility there that they believe may have been where some of the packages originated. Earlier Thursday during a news conference, John Miller, Deputy Commissioner of Intelligence and Counter-terrorism for the New York Police Department said that officials dont know if there are more packages out there, fearing there are some that have not yet arrived at their targets. Two packages which were also discovered Thursday and addressed to Biden, appeared to match others sent to targets. At least one was sent to an address in Wilmington, DE, but officials discovered them at post offices in Wilmington and New Castle. A package, addressed De Niro at Tribeca Productions in New York, was delivered Wednesday and reported to authorities early that same day. It reportedly made it into the seventh floor of the building. The NYPD bomb squad removed it from the scene. New York Mayor Bill de Blasio confirmed that a explosive device was found in the package at De Niros office but was removed from the office successfully and without injury. All devices are being sent to the FBI for examination, and all are being treated as potentially explosive devices. The discovery of pipe bombs targeting prominent Democratic politicians and CNN is raising the threat of election-season violence largely unknown in the US and prompting uncomfortable questions about the consequences of leaders' increasingly vitriolic rhetoric. Advertisement As Megyn Kelly is negotiating her exit from NBC, her doppelganger Charlize Theron has been spotted portraying the television host on set of the new Roger Ailes film. Photos obtained exclusively by DailyMail.com show Theron bearing a striking resemblance to Kelly on the same day the 47-year-old former Fox News host was ousted from NBC over her controversial remarks defending blackface on Today. Theron, 43, was seen all smiles Thursday while on set in Los Angeles as she left a trailer sporting Kelly's blonde locks in a white t-shirt and jeans. She then changed into one of Kelly's more conservative looks - a black dress with a much shorter hairdo. Meanwhile, the real Megyn Kelly was last spotted publicly Wednesday in New York City with a solemn demeanor as she suits up for a $69million battle with NBC and looks to enlist journalist Ronan Farrow when she begins her exit talks with the network as soon as Friday. Charlize Theron was pictured bearing a striking resemblance to Megyn Kelly in her portrayal fo the television host on set of the new Roger Ailes film Thursday Photos obtained exclusively by DailyMail.com show Theron sporting Kelly's blonde locks in casual and formal attire Kelly last was spotted in public on Wednesday, returning home to her Upper West Side apartment amid news she's being ousted by NBC The film titled Fair and Balanced, produced by BRON Studios, will center around the women at Fox News Channel who were sexually harassed by network chief Roger Ailes. John Lithgow will reportedly play Roger Ailes, while Nicole Kidman is set to play Gretchen Carlson. Margot Robbie will play FNC news producer Kayla Pospisil, Mark Duplass will play Megyn's husband Doug, while Alice Even will play Ainsley Earhardt. Allison Janney and Kate McKinnon are also slotted to star. The film was dropped by Annapurna Pictures earlier this month just weeks before filming began, which left producers scrambling to find financing and a distributor. Sources tell The Hollywood Reporter that Kelly's lawyer Byan Freedman will meet with NBC News executives as soon as Friday to discuss the terms of Kelly's status at the network. DailyMail.com has confirmed an earlier report from Page Six that Kelly is looking to have journalist Ronan Farrow join her when she begins her exit talks with the network. Kellys attorney asked NBC executives on Thursday if Farrow could attend the meeting according to an insider from Kellys camp, who also noted that the date and time for this meeting has still not been confirmed. Multiple sources confirmed to DailyMail.com earlier in the day that Megyn Kelly was out at NBC. That move comes just 48 hours after the embattled host made remarks in which she defended blackface on Today. The 43-year-old actress (left) is portraying Kelly (right) in the highly-anticipated new film about the downfall of Roger Ailes and his final days at Fox News Sources confirm to DailyMail.com that Megyn Kelly (above on Wednesday) wants Ronan Farrow to attend her exit talks with NBC, and her lawyer has put in that request The film, produced by BRON Studios, will center around the women at Fox News Channel who were sexually harassed by the network chief Kelly tried to deal with the scandal by delivering a tearful apology on-air and welcoming two black panelists to discuss the fraught and horrifying history of the practice, but it did no good. 'Megyn Kelly is done. She is not ever coming back,' said an NBC executive with knowledge of the situation. 'We are just working out timing of the announcement but mark my word she is gone and will never be seen on NBC live again.' The source then added: 'Heres the worst part her deal is a non-break deal so she walks away with all that money. Its disgusting and heads should roll here because of it.' A spokesperson for NBC declined to comment at this time. And it looks like Kelly could be heading for a homecoming of sorts. A network news insider tells DailyMail.com that there are tentative conversations underway about Kelly returning to Fox News or its new online venture Fox Nation, whose viewers despise what they perceive as 'political correctness' and would likely welcome her back with open arms. Kelly was not particularly popular when she left the network among the staff, but many of her biggest detractors have since left Fox News. A Fox News spokesperson responded to this by stating: 'We are extremely happy with our entire line-up.' Brexit brings a chance to strengthen ties between Argentina and the Falkland Islands, the country's foreign minister said yesterday. Jorge Faurie met with his counterpart Jeremy Hunt in London where the pair discussed increasing trade and travel links between the islands and South America. Afterwards Mr Faurie said: 'Our plan is to generate a greater link between the mainland and the insular part.' Rightly or wrongly, some interpreted his comments as part of a plot to use Brexit to ultimately take control of the islands. Jorge Faurie met with his counterpart Jeremy Hunt (pictured together on Thursday) in London where the pair discussed increasing trade and travel links between the islands and South America The Daily Telegraph said Mr Faurie is trying to 'exploit the situation to "enhance" efforts to pull the islands away from the UK.' The unofficial Falklands Islands twitter account, which has 70,000 followers, tweeted the Telegraph's story with the caption: 'Come and have a go if you think you're hard enough.' Brexit brings uncertainty for the Falklands because EU member states will no longer be obliged to help protect Britain's claims over sovereignty. This is because a treaty called the Duty of Sincere Cooperation - which includes a legal obligation for member states to assist each other over sovereignty - will no longer apply to Britain. Argentine President Mauricio Macri's previous foreign minister pointed to this when she said last year: 'When Brexit takes place, the EU could evaluate a decision on how to proceed and how to stand on these issues and there may be a change.' Stanley Harbour, Falklands Islands However, Mr Faurie's comments yesterday were conciliatory and emphasised co-operation between Britain and Argentina. He told Argentina's largest newspaper Clarin: 'We have a relationship with the British government, which includes the dialogue of those who live on the islands. 'Our relationship is to generate a greater link between the mainland and the insular part. 'That those who live in the islands feel that they can reach the continent to educate themselves, to take care of themselves in health issues and to do business. 'The way we can have dialogue with those arriving from the islands will only have a positive effect and faced with rationality. 'At this moment we are analyzing having a greater air connection, which facilitates the link between the continent and the islands. 'This will only help to create trust and better knowledge of one and other.' A statement released by Argentina's government said Mr Hunt and Mr Faurie agreed to 'strengthen bilateral work to achieve greater co-operation between governments and the private sector.' Some analysts say increased trade with Argentina and South America will be essential for the Falkands to survive after Brexit. The northeast coast of Pebble Island, Falkland Islands. Some analysts say increased trade with Argentina and South America will be essential for the Falkands to survive after Brexit This is because the islands currently rely heavily on tariff-free access to the EU single market where it sells meat, fish and other products, sales which generate 70 per cent of its GDP. The foreign ministers' meeting at the British Foreign Office comes before Theresa May is due to meet Argentina's president at the G20 in Buenos Aires on November 30. The Falkland Islands is a British overseas territory off the east coast of South American which is claimed by Argentina. In 2013, 99.8 per cent of its 3,398 inhabitants voted to remain British. They did not get to vote in the Brexit referendum. Mr Faurie arrived in London for a 48-hour visit to speak at the Latin American Conference at the think tank Chatham House. Australian tourists have been warned to research local laws before travelling as Dubai reveals new rules applying to tourists carrying prescription medication. The Ministry of Health in the United Arab Emirates (UAE) has issued a new law that means all visitors and residents must gain online approval to carry medication for personal use prior to entering the country. Travellers who fail to follow the rules will have their medication confiscated and could find themselves prosecuted. Australian tourists have been warned to research local laws before travelling as Dubai reveals new ruling for bringing prescription medication into the country A spokesperson for the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade told Daily Mail Australia that travel advisories are kept under close review, including for the UAE. 'We encourage all Australians to research local laws, including with respect to medication, before travelling,' the spokesperson said. The UAE is known for having strict, zero-tolerance laws when it comes to drugs and certain substances are banned from the country. These include medications that contain codeine or similar narcotic-like ingredients as well as anti-anxiety drugs such as diazepam and some over-the-counter cold remedies. The Ministry of Health in the United Arab Emirates (UAE) has issued a new law that means all visitors and residents entering the country must gain online approval to carry medication for personal use, prior to entering the country The new law states that if the medication is allowed to be taken into the country, visitors can take three months supply or only a month's supply if it is classed as a controlled substance. In the UK, the Foreign and Commonwealth Office updated its advice to Brits intending to travel to Dubai, urging them to make sure they fill out the electronic form if they need to take medication to the holiday hot spot. The government department said: 'Following changes in October 2018, the UAE Ministry of Health announced the requirement for all tourists and residents entering the UAE to complete an electronic form to obtain online approval to carry medication for personal use, prior to entering the country. 'The Ministry of Health has also published a user guide explaining how to complete the application and the supporting documents required. 'The British Embassy is currently requesting further information on this process and whether it is required for all types of medication.' Earlier this year a British man was arrested and later released in the United Arab Emirates after a customs officer refused to believe his prescribed anti-anxiety medication was for his own use. Perry Coppins, a former soldier, tried to explain to the officer at the port of Fujairah that he had to have enough to last him a six-month voyage at sea, but was arrested before the charges were dropped. Speaking at a meeting titled "CPTPP: Opportunities and Challenges for Vietnam" on Thursday in HCM City, Pham Quynh Mai, deputy head of the Ministry of Industry and Trade (MoIT)s Multilateral Trade Policy Department, said with its supporting industries remaining weak and rules of origin being strict in many countries, it is difficult for Vietnamese exporters to fully capitalise on the CPTPP. However, the clothing and leather and textile sectors, among others, would see the biggest growth under CPTPP, she said. Clothing and leather products, chemicals, plastic products, and transport equipment and machinery are expected to get an export boost while imports will grow in almost all sectors. The CPTPP will provide greater market access to Vietnamese firms but also open up the country to foreign products, increasing competition. Experts said industries such as automobile and agriculture would face intense competition. Tran Thi Thu Huyen, head of the Ministry of Finances International Cooperation Agency, said under the CPTPP average trade-weighted tariffs would drop from 1.7 percent to 0.2 percent for Vietnamese exporters. Non-tariff measures are predicted to reduce by 3.6 percentage points in terms of tariff equivalence, she said. As market access increases and tariff commitments take effect, sectors such as textiles, footwear, electronics, and equipment would have an opportunity to increase their exports to other member economies, she said. Trinh Thi Thu Hien of the MoITs Export-Import Department said with strict rules of origin, Vietnam would have to develop supporting industries to benefit from the trade deal. Tran Thi Thanh Thuy of the Multilateral Trade Policy Department said Vietnam planned to improve the investment environment and protect intellectual property rights to attract investors. Government institutions and administrative systems also needed to be reformed to take advantage of the CPTPP, she said. Experts said the effort could be expensive in the short term, but in the long run would help Vietnamese companies take full advantage of such trade agreements. It is also necessary for Vietnam to focus on small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) and reform State-owned companies. SMEs account for a majority of the economy and labour market, and the Government should support them if it wants the SMEs to align themselves further with the global supply chains. Vietnam is expected to fulfil its trade liberalisation commitments and ratify the CPTPP within this year. At the Vietnam Business Summit held last month, Prime Minister Nguyen Xuan Phuc had said his Government would summit the CPTPP to the National Assembly for approval this month. New Zealand ratified the CPTPP on Wednesday, taking to four the number of economies that have done so. New Zealand Minister for Trade and Export Growth David Parker said Japan, Mexico and Singapore had ratified the deal in July and Australia and Canada are expected to join very soon, which means the tariff reductions and increased exports would begin very early in 2019. The other signatories are Vietnam, Brunei, Chile, Malaysia, and Peru. The CPTPP would come into effect 60 days after at least six member countries ratify the trade pact. The trade agreement was signed last March following a period of turbulence caused by the departure of the US. It is designed as an open free trade agreement, enabling economies to join by accepting its standards and signing agreements with its member economies. Do they get the Parliamentary TV channel in Monte Carlo? If so, one shudders to think what happened on a certain gin-palace yacht at 2.43pm yesterday when Lord Hain (Lab) rose in the House of Lords. Under Parliamentary privilege ie, immunity from expensive lawyers he named Sir Philip Green as the businessman in the latest Press gagging scandal. Lord Hain felt it his duty to out Sir Philip, given that the media had been subject to an injunction silencing a story clearly in the public interest. Philip Green (pictured) was named in the latest press gagging scandal bu Lord Hain For the benefit of peers allergic to the public prints, he explained that it was about a powerful businessman using non-disclosure agreements and substantial payments to conceal the truth about serious and repeated sexual harassment and bullying which is compulsively continuing. Blimey. That must have elicited a few yelps of nautical language down by Monaco marina. Lets hope Long John Silver didnt hurl too many matelots overboard in the ensuing rages. One doubts Lord Hains remarks were greeted with relish in the swankier legal chambers off Chancery Lane, either. What is the point of having lovely illiberal defamation laws, all that jurisconsultational machinery? What is the point of all those wiggy fellows on winking terms with the top beaks, previously able to stop Grub Street oiks from printing and being damned, if a single parliamentarian can go and blurt out an injuncted name? Once that happens the rest of us are entitled, quite legally, to report what has been said, because the legislature is a public place. Injunctions not so super after all, mLud! As for Sir Philip, it must be galling, as a member of the perma-tan club, to be undone by Westminsters very own orange man, Peter Day-Glo Hain. What happened to the solidarity of the sunbeds? Eheu! Lord Hain made his remarks at the end of a session which, paradoxically, had seen the House of Lords at its worst: a stringy, whingey debate about how they nearly all wanted a second referendum on our membership of the EU. Lord Hain (pictured) made his remarks at the end of the session in parliament Ex-Whitehall poohbahs such as Lord Butler and Lord Kerslake piled in to take this view, their line being that the voters had not been clued-up enough to know that voting to leave the EU was a dreadful idea. Whitehalls hatred of Brexit is puzzling. Our looming independence from the EU will actually make the civil service more powerful because it will be able to make more decisions free from Brussels interference. Youd have thought they might like that. But the high point of the debate, at least in comedy terms, came not during speeches by grandees such as Ming Campbell or even ciggy-voice ex diplomat Lord Kerr of Kinlochard (he argued that nobody voted for the Brexit were going to get true, mate, because people like you have tried to muck it up!). No. The pinnacle of the days intellectual engagement, its Ciceronian oratory, its Noel Cowardesque sophistication, came when fighty bantam Lord Sugar (Crossbench) jumped to his size sixes to give us his, er, wisdom. After an opening in which he succinctly torpedoed the bad-losers nature of a second referendum, he proceeded to tangle himself in logic, rather as a kitten will become tied up in wool. He argued that Boris Johnson (pictured) and Michael Gove should have gone to prison for selling Brexit on a false prospectus He argued that Boris Johnson and Michael Gove should have gone to prison for selling Brexit on a false prospectus. Then he said that Brexit would possibly not have been voted for by 17.4million people had he, the mighty Sugarlump, only accepted David Camerons invitation to lead the Remain sides arguments in the referendum campaigns closing TV debate. I know that in my forceful manner, he jawed, Id have made Boris admit he was lying. Who knows, maybe that could have swung the vote. Ever the charmer, he also took a swipe at former Labour MP Gisela Stuart for supporting immigration-sceptic Leave. How dare she? She herself was merely a German immigrant! Lord Kerr, sitting beside not-so-sweet Sugar, was deliciously hard to read. This is the shocking moment a jewellery thief shoves an elderly woman to the ground during a brazen $100,000 heist. During the attack, an 82-year-old woman was shoved to the ground at Salera's Jewellmasters in Maribyrnong, in Melbourne's west, last Wednesday at 2:30pm. The thief launched himself over the counter, smashed a display cabinet and scooped $100,000 worth of diamond rings and bracelets into a bag. Scroll down for video The thief (pictured) launched over the counter, smashed a display cabinet and scooped $100,000 worth of jewellery into a bag The 89-year-old Italian company owner described the man as a wild bull rushing from his shop to a corridor before disappearing all in a matter of seconds. Staff members and customers of the store were filmed chasing the man, who was dressed in a white jumpsuit, orange hi-vis vest, cap and sunglasses. He fled in a white 1997 Honda Accord which has since been recovered by police. Paramedics were called to the scene to treat the elderly woman for head injuries. The brazen thief fled in a white 1997 Honda Accord which has since been recovered by police The woman was taken to the Epworth Hospital in Richmond for further observation and is recovering well but still has difficulty walking. A spokesperson from Salera's head office told Daily Mail Australia it is unlikely the goods will be recovered. Maribyrnong Crime Investigation Unit detectives are investigating the matter further and urge anyone with information to come forward. Smiling without a care in the world, a happy Toyah Cordingley is seen serving customers camel milk at a market. Hours later she would be dead. These are the final photos of the 24-year-old, taken the day before she went missing while walking her dog on Wangetti Beach, 40km north of Cairns. Her father found her body a day later after what police believe was a sexually-motivated murder. New photos of murdered 24-year-old dog walker Toyah Cordingley have been released Ms Cordingley (pictured) was killed in what is being treated as a 'sexually motivated' attack The new pictures of Ms Cordingley were taken only hours before she was found dead Police are treating Ms Cordingley's death as a 'sexually motivated' murder The photos were uploaded to Facebook by the Barr St Wholehealth Pharmacy and Healthfoods in Earville, about 45km of the beach where her body was found. The pharmacy shared the photo of Ms Cordingley in her green work uniform on Saturday afternoon, the day before she was last seen. Smiling as she poured camel milk into customers' tasting cups, the pictures were taken only hours before her death. She was killed on Sunday afternoon while walking her dog between 2pm and 2.30pm. She was reported missing at 11pm later that night. Her body was found the next morning in nearby sand dunes, riddled with 'visible and violent' injuries. More than 100 officers are currently working on the investigation, with forensic dogs and drones set to scour the scene of her death over the coming days. Her body was found on Wangetti Beach (pictured) with 'visible and violent' injuries inflicted An avid dog walker, Ms Cordingley was walking her dog when she was killed. Her dog was found nearby and was unharmed The new photos coincide with the police reiterating their plea for information from the public, regardless of how trivial it may seem. Crime Stoppers has received more than 240 reports, about a fifth of which are of interest to investigators. On Thursday, police began investigation into reports of a brazen pervert who was seen masturbating on Wangetti Beach six weeks before the attack. The bystander who took the photograph, told the Courier Mail: 'After we took some photos, we noticed him down on the beach, he was butt naked, just flogging himself off. 'Then he just kind of jumped up in the air and ran into the bushes, and that was the last we saw of him. 'We hopped back in the car and mum goes, "I can't believe that man", then I realised, hang on a minute, I've actually got a photo of him.' Police told Daily Mail Australia that it was one of the many leads they were currently following up. Reports of a public masturbator at the same beach Ms Cordingley (pictured) was murdered is one of the many leads police are working through to solve the case The young woman was a dog walker in far-north Queensland, found dead on Wangetti Beach Detective Inspector Sonia Smith held a media conference on Thursday and continued to appeal for any information from the public. 'Every piece of information is important to us,' Det. Inspector Smith said. 'So far we have had over 240 reports to Crime Stoppers and I thank the community for their efforts, that has generated over 50 lines of inquiry that police are following up.' 'We've been in the community talking to witnesses, we've also taken DNA from members of our community.' According to a police spokesperson, the DNA testing is a 'standard procedure' and form elimination purposes only. More than 100 officers are currently working on Ms Cordingley's (pictured) gruesome death Police have reiterated their plea for information on the public into the death of Ms Cordingley Det. Inspector Smith said there were a number of areas of interest for police including anyone who was at Rusty's Markets in Cairns on Sunday. 'Two particular areas of interest to police are between 12pm and 1pm on Sunday at Rusty's, we would like to speak to anyone who spoke to Toyah or sold goods to Toyah or had any dealings with Toyah at Rusty's,' she said. 'And we are also particularly interested in speaking to anybody who has been using the Wangetti beach area, either the southern car park or the northern car park.' She was reported missing at 11pm the night she disappeared and her body was found in sand dunes at the beach on Monday morning with 'visible and violent' injuries inflicted on it. Anyone with information is urged to contact Crime Stoppers on 1800 333 000. More than four million people living in Australian capital cities are not within walking distance of a bus or train. A new report by Infrastructure Australia has urged the government to shift their focus from building new networks to improving already established public transport. The report found the lack of public transport has a significant impact on people accessing jobs, education and 'their quality of life'. Infrastructure Australia director of policy and research Peter Colacino said the government should consider new and innovative ways to address the demand. More than four million people living in Australian capital cities are not within walking distance of a bus or train - but spending money on new networks isn't necessarily the answer Nearly half of the population of Australia's five largest cities live in the outer suburbs but these areas experience lower levels of service and access to transport 'While existing transport infrastructure serves inner city areas well, people living on the outskirts of our major cities are being disadvantaged by a lack of access to frequent public transport services,' Mr Colacino said. 'This impacts their ability to access jobs, education and other opportunities to improve their quality of life.' A key measure of the Outer Urban Public Transport report was whether someone lives within a 15-minute walk of public transport that provide four services an hour. Mr Colacino said close to half the population of our five largest cities live in the outer suburbs but these areas experience lower levels of service and access to transport. More than 1.4 million people fall into this category, with more than one million in Sydney and Brisbane, half a million people in Perth and 200,000 people in Adelaide. 'While costs of housing can be cheaper in outer suburbs, often they are less well-served by public transport,' he said. More than 1.4 million people fall into this category, with more than one million in Sydney and Brisbane, half a million people in Perth and 200,000 people in Adelaide On-demand buses are designed to complement existing public transport by covering gaps in networks, making it easier to travel to less serviced areas Without access to adequate transport, Mr Colacino said people are more reliant on cars - resulting in additional operating costs, leaving less money for other expenses. Instead of focusing on developing costly light rail systems, the report urged the government to improve services by incorporating emerging forms of transport. Delivering services that meet demand, coordinating timetables, integrating fares and embracing transport methods such as on-demand buses were all suggested. On-demand buses are designed to complement existing public transport by covering gaps in networks, making it easier to travel to less serviced areas. While public transport networks are typically more efficient in the CBD, Mr Colacino said these emerging delivery models offer an effective solution for commuters. He said it provides an immediate opportunity to confront challenges by increasing flexibility and reach of the network by serving a more diverse range of destinations. Mr Colacino said the report highlighted how governments can benefit from adopting these transport models as a way to meet the demands of the modern commuter. 'This report makes a clear case for governments to consider new models such as on-demand buses and ride-sharing to complement more traditional modes, like bus and rail,' he said. A plane travelling from South Carolina to the Bahamas has gone missing as rescuers search for its whereabouts. The Federal Aviation Administration confirmed that the Piper PA-31 aircraft went missing around 11.33am, 110 miles south-southeast of Charleston on Thursday. The plane departed from Robert F Swinnie Airport in Andrews and was en route to the Bahamas. The Piper PA-31 aircraft that went missing off the coast of South Carolina is similar to the one pictured Both US Coast Guard and the US Navy are searching the area. The Coast Guard said the Jacksonville Air Route Traffic Control Center received a report from the aircraft of an in-flight emergency, lost contact on radar and notified the Air Force Rescue Coordination Center. Coast Guard officials confirmed that they were responding to a downed aircraft. However they could not confirm the number of passengers or the crew complement until next of kin are notified. It is understood that the aircraft recorded 'an in-flight emergency, lost contact on radar and notified the [Air Force Rescue Coordination Center]'. The Coast Guard said in a tweet: Crews are responding to a downed civilian aircraft approximately 110 miles east of Charleston, SC. USCG has multiple assets searching the aircraft's last known location. The aircraft went missing around 11.33 am 110 miles south-southeast of Charleston According to reports, the aircraft lost contact on radar and notified the Air Force Rescue Coordination Centre. Several military aircraft and ships were also busy assisting with the search yesterday. The Piper PA-31 Navajo belongs to a family of small, cabin-class, twin-engined aircraft, whose popularity has fallen since the 1980s. Production of the Pa-31 model ceased in 1984 due to a fall in demand with this type of aircraft. The plane took off from Robert F Swinnie Airport which located two miles east of the central business district of Andrews Federal records show the missing PA-31 is registered to a company based in Delaware. It is unknown how many people were on board the plane, but a Piper PA-31 aircraft is capable of carrying up to nine passengers. It was scheduled to fly to Governors Harbour Airport on Eleuthera island in the Bahamas. The plane is believed to have crashed into the ocean. True, the women in question did not have to complete the gruelling selection; that would have been impossible. But there are other ways of joining the SAS, and whisper it quietly females have actually been doing so for 25 years now. I recall the first two to be badged as we call the process of enrolling an individual on to the formal strength of the Regiment when I was the Operations Officer at 22 SAS. They were selected from the ranks of what was to become the Surveillance and Reconnaissance Regiment then known just as The Det which carried out undercover surveillance operations. Royal Army Medical Cops medic Corporal Vicky Helsby (left), 29, from Runcorn, and Private Johnson in Salisbury today But these were no ordinary females. They had passed the extremely rigorous Surveillance Detachment selection designed to weed out anyone who would not be able to cope with the unique challenges of undercover operations. Both these women had served several tours of duty in Northern Ireland behind the lines as it were in the toughest parts of the province. Operating alone or in pairs, they knew that to be captured by the Republican movement ensured a hideous death. The senior of the two was a Warrant officer who had won a Queens Gallantry Medal before she was 21 and who also happened to be married to my Operations Warrant Officer himself an experienced Det operator as well as an SAS trooper of some standing. The reason for their recruitment into the SAS was simple operational needs. As well as in the Northern Ireland conflict, we were heavily involved in several complex operations against nascent Islamic subversive organisations, drug wars in Colombia, as well as the Bosnian Wars. Private Laura Docherty of the Royal Army Medical Corp pictured on patrol in Helmand province, Afghanistan Having female operators badged in the SAS gave us the flexibility to get close to targets who would have otherwise seen us coming a mile away. I remember one operation to track an extremely violent Republican killer operating overseas, in which two operatives posing as a husband and wife with a pushchair and with sub-machine guns within easy reach were able to sit beside him on a park bench. The key, as Ive said, was operational needs. But today, it seems, the Military has changed radically. The announcement by the Defence Secretary Gavin Williamson, that there are no roles in the military that women cannot do surely suggests that SAS selection will be opened up to them. This could mean one of two things: Women being allowed to attempt selection as it stands, which they will physically fail; or that selection will be somehow modified to accommodate them. If the latter is true, it would be utterly misguided because not only would it lower standards, it also is totally unnecessary. As Ive explained, women have been able to join the SAS in the past without going through traditional selection and this has been driven by operational need. My fear, however, is that the Defence Secretarys announcement is not driven by such a need, but by politics. The fact is that the men of the SAS are selected to be an elite. The physical expectation of them is fearsome. We can either abandon our ability to complete such operations in order to fall into line with political correctness or accept that there are some things females cannot do biologically. My fervent hope is that Gavin Williamson is doing this for all the right reasons and not because he has caved into the bankrupt military equality lobby which he so long resisted. President Trump is preparing an executive order to ban the caravan of Central American migrants from entering the United States. Trump's plan would block the migrants - who are still nearly a month away from reaching the border - from seeking asylum, according to Politico. Reports that the president plans to take executive action followed a tweet in which he told the caravan to 'turnaround' because border patrol agents would bar the migrants from entering the U.S. Thousands of migrants, including many women and young children, are seeking refuge from the violence that plagues Honduras. They are making the trek through Mexico to the United States in the caravan. Trump is preparing an executive order to ban the Central American migrants currently traveling in a caravan from entering the United States, sources familiar with the plan revealed News of the executive action broke just hours after Trump took to Twitter to tell the caravan to 'turn around' because border patrol agents would block them U.S. law permits foreigners who are fleeing persecution in their native countries to apply for asylum on US soil. Trump's executive order would suspend this statue for all Central Americans as a matter of 'national security'. A DHS official who had been briefed on the potential executive order told Politico it could still be abandoned or adjusted before the administration files it. Department of Homeland Security Department Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen said that 'everything is on the table'. 'If they come here illegally with no legitimate reason to stay, they absolutely will be apprehended and removed immediately,' she told Fox News on Thursday. 'They should be seeking refuge in Mexico. To ignore refuge and continue, in some cases, to come to the United States raises questions of what their real motives are.' 'This caravan cannot come to the United States,' she continued. 'They will not be allowed in. They will not be allowed to stay.' Trump's prospective executive order - much like his extreme vetting directive for foreign nationals from countries associated with terrorism - would rely on the law that allows a president to suspend entry of foreigners seen as 'detrimental to the interests of the United States.' The Supreme Court eventually upheld a version of Trump's travel ban, and DHS believes an order pertaining to the caravan would be upheld, too. 'I think the courts respected a thorough national security review that was undertaken,' one told Politico. 'Here you've got something that appears to be completely political and focused on a caravan of women and children.' Many have accused Trump of pushing his dialogue about the caravan in recent weeks as a way to rile up his base before the upcoming midterm elections. Trump claimed on Thursday that asylum seekers would be immediately and unequivocally denied at the border. 'To those in the Caravan, turnaround, we are not letting people into the United States illegally,' he tweeted. 'Go back to your Country and if you want, apply for citizenship like millions of others are doing!' The tweet followed a report that the Pentagon is finalizing a deployment of 1,000 troops to assist border agents with the expected influx. Trump has said repeatedly that he was mobilizing the military, and not the National Guard, in anticipation of the caravan, even though the deployment as he's described it would violate the Posse Comitatus Act. Around 2,000 members of the National Guard have already been deployed to the border since April. Many of the thousands who are in the caravan are women and young children seeking refuge from violence in Honduras. Pictured are migrants in the caravan on their way to Pijijiapan, Mexico on Thursday Many have accused Trump of pushing his dialogue about the caravan in recent weeks as a way to rile up his base before the upcoming midterm elections. Pictured is a Honduran child en route Mapastepec to Pijijiapan on Thursday The caravan still remains 1,000 miles south of the border and it is estimated it would take migrants another 25 days just to reach the US. Trump issued his latest declaration about the caravan on Thursday afternoon just before a call with Italian Prime Minister Giuseppe Conte. He says they spoke about the new leader's hard-line efforts to curb illegal immigration. 'I agree with their stance 100%, and the United States is likewise taking a very hard line on illegal immigration,' Trump tweeted. 'The Prime Minister is working very hard on the economy of Italy - he will be successful!' The Italian government is looking to drive out half a million unlawful migrants. Trump has pointed to Europe twice this week as he defended his immigration tactics, which he claims are necessary to keep criminals and 'Middle Easterners' from entering the country illegally as part of the caravan. 'For those who want and advocate for illegal immigration, just take a good look at what has happened to Europe over the last five years. A total mess! They only wish they had that decision to make over again,' he said on Wednesday. Trump has long claimed that terrorism on the continent is directly related to the European Union's free flow of people and and furthered by policies in Germany and other nations where migrants are welcomed with open arms. Trump issued his latest declaration about the caravan on Thursday afternoon just before a call with Italian Prime Minister Giuseppe Conte He says they spoke about the new leader's hard-line efforts to curb illegal immigration 'We are a great Sovereign Nation. We have Strong Borders and will never accept people coming into our Country illegally!' he declared on Wednesday, refusing to back down. At a rally on Wednesday evening, the president tamped down his rhetoric in response to a series of bombs that were sent to his political opponents. But he continued to claim - with no evidence - that Democrats were encouraging the caravan and want to open the illegal immigration floodgates. 'As we speak, the Democrat Party is openly encouraging caravan after caravan of illegal aliens to violate our laws and to break into our country,' Trump said of the border 'crisis' that has consumed his attention. President Trump invoked Europe twice this week while defending his hardline immigration tactics Trump also claimed this week that he's keeping criminals and Middle Easterners from entering the country illegally as part of a caravan Trump has made immigration his No. 1 campaign issue and deployed new rhetoric this week that there are 'tough criminal elements' in a caravan of Honduran migrants headed to the United States by way of Mexico He also claimed there 'could very well could be' Middle Easterners mixed in with the masses in a not-so-subtle suggestion that the group seeking refuge in the United States could be a Trojan Horse Trump has made immigration his top campaign issue and deployed new rhetoric this week that there are 'tough criminal elements' in the caravan. He also claimed there 'could very well could be' Middle Easterners mixed in with the masses in a not-so-subtle suggestion that the group seeking refuge in the United States could be a Trojan Horse. 'There's no proof of anything, there's no proof of anything but they very well could be,' Trump said, providing no evidence to back up his claims. He also called forward Vice President Mike Pence to talk about the caravan, who made unverified allegations that the migrants were formed by leftist groups and paid for by the government of Venezuelan leader Nicolas Maduro. President Donald Trump on Tuesday admitted he has no proof there are Middle Easterners in the caravan of migrants headed to the Unites States but said there 'could very well could be.' Vice President Mike Pence made the unverified allegation the migrants were formed by leftist groups and paid for by the government of Venezuelan leader Nicolas Maduro 'At the president's direction, I spoke to President Hernandez of Honduras. He told me that the caravan that is now making its way through Mexico, headed for the southern border was organized by leftist organizations and financed by Venezuela,' Pence claimed. Trump interrupted him to add that the Democrats were also to blame, an allegation he first made at his rally in Houston on Monday night. 'And the Democrats maybe? And the Democrats,' Trump said as some of the aides, staff, and lawmakers with him in the Oval Office for a bill signing laughed. 'Well,' Pence began but before he could finish a reporter asked Trump what proof he had Democrats were behind the mass migration. 'You know what?,' Trump responded, 'You're going to find out. And we're going to see. Maybe they made a bad mistake, too. We're going to find out about that.' Trump also argued that based on the size of the crowd of migrants, there was a 'very good chance' some Middle Easterner people were in it. 'I think there's a very good chance, honestly, that you have people in there,' he said. 'Certainly you have people coming up through the southern border, from the Middle East and other places that are not appropriate for our country. And I'm not letting them in. They're not coming in. All right? They're not coming in. We're going to do whatever we have to.' Trump has made the migrant caravan an election issue in the midterms Vice President Mike Pence defended President Donald Trump's claim there are Middle Easterners in the caravan of migrants headed to the United States from Central America, saying it's 'inconceivable' there wouldn't be Trump turned the conversation back over to Pence, who earlier in the day had defended Trump's claim there are Middle Easterners in the caravan, saying it's 'inconceivable' there wouldn't be. Pence repeated the same inconceivable line in the Oval Office. 'The United States of America intervenes and prevents 10 terrorists or suspected terrorists from coming into our country every day,' he said. 'So it is inconceivable that there would not be individuals from the Middle East as a part of this growing caravan.' He made a similar remark at an event held by the Washington Post earlier in the day, saying: 'It's inconceivable that there are not people of Middle Eastern descent in a crowd of more than 7,000 people advancing toward our border.' The group of migrants, which started in Honduras and has grown on its journey though Central America and into Mexico, is continuing their march with the United Nations estimating there are some 7,200 people in the crowd I dare you: President Donald Trump challenged a TV reporter on Monday to take his camera crew into the migrant caravan in southern Mexico and declared that they would find drug cartel gangsters and Middle Easterners mixed in with asylum-seekers from Central America But the statistic Pence used - claiming 10 suspects terrorists are apprehended per day - has come under doubt, with fact checkers and government reports saying that number applies to incidents at all US points of entry and not just the border with Mexico. Pence made a similar claim in February about how many suspected terrorists were being nabbed at the US-Mexico border, which he claimed was seven per day. The fact-checking website Politifact researched his assertion and rated it a 'Pants on Fire' - their worst rating. 'Nationally in 2017, the federal government says, Homeland Security stopped 2,554 individuals on its terrorist watch list from entering the country, which breaks out to seven people a day. Most of those individuals tried to enter by air, the government says,' the website noted. In June, Department of Homeland Security Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen defined the 10 number even further, saying they were people blocked from entering the United States, indicating it included individuals on the no-fly list and not merely those suspected of being a terrorist. 'The result is that we are identifying and stopping terror suspects who would otherwise have gone undetected. In fact, on average, my Department now blocks 10 known or suspected terrorists a day from traveling to or attempting to enter the United States,' she said. In a statement to The Post, Pence spokeswoman Alyssa Farah affirmed the number the vice president cited applies to all US points of entry. 'In 2017 alone the US apprehended on average between 10 suspected terrorists a day attempting to enter the country illegally. And those are just the ones that we catch. It's inconceivable that this caravan - which is being broadcast around the globe - hasn't already been infiltrated by individuals with ties to extremism,' she said. Meanwhile, The Washington Post's fact checker found that Trump's own State Department released a report in July 2017 that said there was 'no credible information that any member of a terrorist group has traveled through Mexico to gain access to the United States.' And still, the 10 terrorists a day stat continues to be used by the White House to back up the president's claim. On Monday, White House press secretary Sarah Sanders was asked if President Trump had 'credible evidence' there were Middle Easterners in the caravan. Honduran migrants taking part in a new caravan heading to the US, arrive to Chiquimula, Guatemala, on October 22 Honduran migrants taking part in a caravan heading to the U.S., rest at the main square in Tapachula, Chiapas state, Mexico, on October 21, 2018 She used the 10-terrorists a day number again although - unlike Pence - seemed to apply it to all points of entry in the US. 'Absolutely and we know this is a continual problem. It's not just in this. We have 10 individuals suspected or known to be terrorists trying to enter our country every day. This is a problem the president has been talking about a long time,' she said to reporters outside the White House. The group of migrants, which started in Honduras and has grown on its journey though Central America and into Mexico, is continuing their march with the United Nations estimating earlier this week that there are some 7,200 people in the crowd. On Wednesday Mexican authorities said the number has dropped significantly to around 3,630 people. A team of AP journalists traveling with the caravan for more than a week has spoken with Hondurans, Guatemalans and Salvadorans. They have not yet met any Middle Easterners. A jealous woman who caught her partner with his mistress and mowed the young rival down with her car has been sentenced to jail for three years. After Melbourne mother-of-one Elisha Browne, 40, spotted her then-boyfriend Ross Perrys with his other girlfriend Maria Tigler, 30, at a home in Clayton in Melbourne's south-east, she 'saw red'. Browne suspected Mr Perrys was with his younger girlfriend and once she found them, chased the pair in a jealous rage before she mowed down Ms Tigler, leaving her with a permanent limp and constant nightmares. When suspicions of her boyfriend's infidelity were confirmed mother-of-one Elisha Browne (pictured) 'saw red', sparking the wild car chase Ms Tigler (pictured) spent five months in hospital recovering from a fractured femur and broken ankle. and continues rehabilitation Reaching speeds of 130km/h she chased the lovers, slamming her Volvo into the back of their car. Browne then hit Ms Tigler, who fell partially underneath the vehicle and was dragged about 30 metres. The 40-year-old told police she saw Ms Tigler go under the car, but she got up and 'started wailing off with that trashy mouth of hers'. She then fled the scene, telling Mr Perrys on the phone a short time later that what happened was his fault. Browne, who has a history of drug use, assaults and making a threat to kill, was convicted of recklessly causing serious injury and must serve at least two years behind bars. She was also fined $500 and had her licence suspended for two years for driving offences. Ms Tigler spent five months in hospital recovering from a fractured femur and broken ankle. and continues rehabilitation. The 40-year-old spotted her then-boyfriend Ross Perrys (pictured) with his other girlfriend Maria Tigler Reaching speeds of 130km/h she chased the lovers, slamming her Volvo (pictured) into the back of their car A jealous woman who caught her partner with his mistress and mowed the young rival down with her car has been sentenced to jail for three years She has a permanent limp and has suffered nightmares. Both women initially believed Perrys was in a relationship with only them, but later found out he was two-timing them both. Judge Frank Gucciardo said Perrys, who had 'triumphantly' started his police interview with the words 'I have two girlfriends', may have shared some of the culpability. He said Mr Perrys must have understood his duplicitous behaviour might cause animosity, but added vigilantism for a 'crime passionnel' was not acceptable. Judge Gucciardo accepted the crime was driven by jealousy, stemming from Mr Perrys's 'betrayal'. But it was no excuse for Browne's actions, which put the community in danger as well as Ms Tigler's life. 'Jealousy is a beast,' he told Browne's plea hearing. 'She's lucky not to have killed (Ms Tigler). That's the bottom line.' A suspicious package was discovered at a building that houses Democratic Sen. Dianne Feinstein's West Los Angeles office early Thursday evening. Los Angeles Police Department officers were spotted at the scene located between Santa Monica and Sepulveda boulevards to investigate the parcel. Police later confirmed the manila enveloped contained a compact disc. On the front of the enveloped, was an incorrect spelling of Santa Monica. The envelope was not addressed to the senator. A bomb squad also confirmed following examination that the package did not include a explosive device and did not pose a threat, according to ABC 7. The squad has since departed the scene. A suspicious package was found at the building that houses California Sen. Dianne Feinstein state office in Los Angeles. Feinstein is pictured October 17, 2018 in San Francisco Police have not yet revealed what the package contained, nor if it was addressed to the senator A bomb squad, however, confirmed the package was not a explosive device and did not post a threat Aside from the West Los Angeles location, Feinstein has three other state offices in California - in Fresno, San Diego and San Francisco. The incident comes after 10 pipe bombs were mailed to the US addresses of elite liberals this week. Authorities have not yet given word on who the possible mailer(s) may be as closer investigation is underway. The FBI is working to track down information on where parts for the pipe bombs had been purchased, which is believed to be Florida. Meanwhile on Thursday, the Time Warner Center in Manhattan was evacuated for a second time this week after 'two unattended packages' with gift wrapping were found on the third floor. Meanwhile on Thursday, the Time Warner Center in Manhattan was evacuated for a second time after 'two unattended packages' with gift wrapping were found on the third floor NYPD clears the scene after a report of a possible suspicious package was called in at the Time Warner Center Thursday in New York After about one hour Thursday evening, police gave the all clear and deemed the incident a 'false alarm' The NYPD and its bomb squad tended to the building that houses the CNN offices. It has since reopened as police deemed the packages to be safe and called the incident a 'false alarm'. The Columbus Circle complex was evacuated Wednesday after a pipe bomb was mailed and addressed to former CIA director John Brennan. Earlier in the day, another explosive device was removed from Robert DiNiro's Tribeca Grill on Greenwich Street in Manhattan. Hours later in New Castle, Delaware, two suspicious packages with the same characteristics as the previous were found addressed to former vice president Joe Biden at mail facilities and removed. Earlier Thursday, another explosive device was removed from Robert DiNiro's Tribeca Grill A vile paedophile who filmed himself sexually assaulting his girlfriend's two-year-old daughter while she was still in nappies and muzzled her to stop her screaming has been jailed for 19 years. District Court Judge Leanne Clare sentenced Jason Daron Mizner, 44, on Friday, describing his offences as 'a different kind of evil'. Sentencing for the Queensland child rapist was earlier delayed because the judge was so shaken by video of the assaults she needed a break to ensure a fair sentence. Mizner had pleaded guilty to more than 60 child sex offences relating to a two-year-old girl, from the early 2000s, including more than 30 counts of rape and videotaping the assaults. Paedophile Jason Daron Mizner (pictured) who filmed himself sexually assaulting his girlfriend's two-year-old daughter while she was still in nappies and muzzled her to stop her screaming has been jailed for 19 years The yoga teacher from the Gold Coast was only caught when he went to Thailand and left a bag of his possessions at home - which the girl's mother found. Contained inside the bag were the recordings, handwritten notes detailing how to exploit children and a folder giving the names of children - including the victim. The bag also contained names of single mothers and their addresses as well as plans to organise a child-exploitation ring, the court heard. The judge told the court the recordings also showed the baby screaming, and that when Mizner could not calm the baby down he would muzzle her. Mizner had then started a relationship with another woman in Thailand - whose baby daughter he also started sexually assaulting, the Courier Mail reports. He has already spent 11 years in a Thai jail for the unrelated child sex offences. The 44-year-old will be eligible for parole after serving 15 years of his latest sentence. Sentencing on Friday, District Court Judge Leanne Clare said there was no evidence Mizner had shown remorse for what he had done. She said: 'It was (the girl's mother) who found the recordings. That content would be excruciating for most people. Sentencing for the Queensland child rapist had been delayed because the judge was so shaken by video of the assaults she needed a break to ensure a fair sentence 'I only watched a portion and it has been a battle to get the vision of your offending out of my head. I cannot imagine the horror of it for (the girl's) mother. Judge Clare said her struggle to cope with the footage came despite 30 years of experience dealing with extreme cases of child abuse. Mizner must serve at least 15 years of his 19-year sentence, making him eligible for parole in 2031. In an earlier hearing at Brisbane District Court on Tuesday, Justice Clare said she had viewed a portion of one of the tapes and found it 'very confronting'. 'I think it would be best to put some distance between the viewing of that tape and the delivery of the judgment so that it does not overwhelm the sentence,' Justice Clare said, adjourning proceedings until Friday. The prosecution wanted the 44-year-old jailed for life. Mizner's lawyers argued his years in prison in Thailand for a separate sexual assault of another young child there should be taken into account, because of the abuse he suffered at the hands of other inmates while incarcerated. 'He received beatings and other torture, partly in relation to (the Australian) offending,' Mizner's lawyer said. 'The Australian Federal Police gave evidence at the (Thai) hearing about the Australian offending, so it's not much of a stretch that inmates in Thailand would have known.' Justice Clare disputed that just because Mizner had a difficult time in a Thai jail did not mean he should have his potential sentence reduced. 'The report outlines deprivations and abuses that your client has described, but to say he's been tortured for 11 years is an overstatement of the material, frankly,' Justice Clare said. Mizner (pictured) had pleaded guilty to more than 60 child sex offences relating to a two-year-old girl, from the early 2000s, including more than 30 counts of rape and videotaping the assaults The court was told Mizner, who was 31 at the time of the assaults, formed a relationship with the Australian girl's mother, before committing the offences over a number of months. While he was on a holiday in Thailand, the girl's mother found videos he had made and a range of other unrelated child exploitation material. Mizner stayed in Thailand, where he formed a relationship with a local woman before assaulting her young daughter and being arrested by Thai authorities. He served 11 years of a 35-year sentence and was deported when released on bail last year, with Australian authorities arresting him when he returned to Brisbane. It's the second time sentencing has been delayed, after a delay in September, when a doctor preparing a psychological report for the court suffered a heart attack. That report, the defence argued, showed that a motorcycle accident when Mizner was 21 left him with a brain injury, which 'uninhibited' him. Justice Clare said it also showed he had a 'predilection for babies' and had a medium-to-high chance of re-offending if not incarcerated. 'Even a low risk of re-offending when it comes to raping babies is a substantial risk to deal with. When it's a medium-to-high risk... it's alarming,' she said. SINGAPORE 60's: ANDY's POP MUSIC INFLUENCE IS A PERSONAL MUSIC, MEMORY TRAIL. BLOGGER DOES NOT OWN THE RIGHTS TO VIDEOS, AUDIO TRACKS AND IMAGES. THEY ARE UPLOADED FOR FUN, EDUCATIONAL, ILLUSTRATIVE PURPOSES AND HAVE BEEN CREDITED. BLOG IS NOT SPONSORED IN ANY WAY WHATSOEVER. INFORM BLOGGER OF COPYRIGHT ISSUES AND POST WILL BE DELETED IMMEDIATELY. ANDY LIM LA (NOVEMBER, 2008) - () US officials could soon be bumping heads with former United Nations allies over human rights documents that use the word 'gender' - as Trump administration seeks to all but wipe transgender people from existence. Officials have been pushing for the rewriting of the UN's Third Committee general assembly policy statements, arguing that the language used is vague and politically correct. The committee works with issues concerned with 'social, humanitarian and cultural' rights. The officials from the United States are positing that the current conversation uses 'ideology' that isn't based in an unchangeable biological fact, the Guardian reports. US officials claim that the UN's Third Committee general assembly policy statements use 'ideology' that isn't based in an unchangeable biological fact (October 22 activist rally in DC) But while the personnel from Washington have been extremely vocal about wanting the changes, none of them are actually full-time UN diplomats. 'We are seeing this more and more coming up on the Third Committee, and this is going to be a battle in the coming weeks,' a UN diplomat stated. The European diplomat also noted that the US has added 'gender' on one occasion to policy language. In order to get the desired changes, the US officials will have to partner with countries that they wouldn't normally - including Russia and conservative Islamic states. Another UN diplomat added: 'If you only say violence against women, it doesn't really tell the whole story. We shouldn't be going along with encouraging their society to be regressive. A senior UN diplomat stated: 'If you only say violence against women, it doesn't really tell the whole story. We shouldn't be going along with encouraging their society to be regressive. 'And if that means a blazing row in the Third Committee, I would have a blazing row in committee because I think some things are worth cherishing and worth hanging on to.' A spokesperson with the US state department claimed that they were not trying to 'exclude the protection of transgendered persons' dictated in the UN resolution. 'When certain parts of resolutions explicitly refer to issues affecting 'women and girls', our negotiators have suggested in several instances to change 'gender' to 'women' and/or 'women and girls' to make the resolutions clearer, more specific, more accurate, and in our view, stronger in the Administration's efforts to empower women and girls,' the spokesperson stated. President Trump's administration is attempting to strip transgender people of official recognition by creating a narrow definition of gender as being only male or female and unchangeable once it is determined at birth The New York Times reported on Sunday that President Trump's administration is attempting to strip transgender people of official recognition by creating a narrow definition of gender as being only male or female and unchangeable once it is determined at birth. The Department of Health and Human Services has undertaken an effort across several government departments to establish a legal definition of sex under Title IX, the federal civil rights law that bans discrimination on the basis of sex, the Times said, citing a government memo that it obtained. That definition would be as either male or female, unchangeable, and determined by the genitals a person is born with, the Times reported. Any dispute about one's sex would have to be clarified through genetic testing, according to the Times' account of the memo. Such an interpretation would reverse the expansion of transgender rights that took place under the previous administration of President Barack Obama. It would also set back aspirations for tolerance and equality among the estimated 0.7 percent of the population that identifies as transgender. Most transgender people live with a profound sense that the gender assigned to them at birth was wrong and transition to the opposite sex, while others live a non-binary or gender fluid life. A senior member of the New South Wales Police force has been charged with child sex offences allegedly spanning more than a decade. Senior Constable Dean Perkins, 43, was arrested on Thursday, accused of twice having sex with a child aged between 10 and 14 years old. He is also charged with trying to have sex with a child under the age of 10, grooming a child for sex, two counts of aggravated indecent assault and other child sex offences. Senior Constable Dean Perkins (pictured) has been charged with a multitude of child sex offences The charges relate to a number of accusations made against the officer during his time serving in Western Sydney between 2007 and 2018. Before his suspension from the police, Perkins was an officer in the NSW Police specialist youth command. He would regularly give educational talks on cyber safety and bullying to students at schools in Sydney's west and south-east. According to the website of one of the schools he visited, the officer gave a speech on 'sexting' among other topics. The senior member of the police force was listed as the police liaison officer for the NSW Department of Education and would frequently give safety talks at Sydney schools Perkins is listed as the police liaison officer for the NSW Department of Education and Communities Anti-Bullying Plan. He has been suspended from a police specialist command and as been refused bail. He is due to appear at Penrith Local Court on Friday. New South Wales Police said in a statement: 'The current matters before the court are not related to the officer's employment.' A military dog shot five times while on duty in Afghanistan has become the first Australian dog to be awarded with the 'Victoria Cross' for animals. Kuga the Belgian Malinois became the first Australian dog to receive the Dickin Medal since World War II when he received it posthumously on Friday. Victoria Cross recipient and former military dog handler Mark Donaldson VC and his military dog Odin accepted the medal on behalf of Kuga, who died in July 2012. Kuga the Belgian Malinois (pictured) became the first Australian dog to receive the Dickin Medal since World War II on Friday Kuga (with special operations handler Sergeant J) was bestowed the award for his outstanding gallantry and devotion to duty in Afghanistan Mary Reilly from the People's Dispensary for Sick Animals - the company that bestows the medal - told ABC News the award was given to the bravest of animals. According to the PDSA Dickin Medal's website, the medal is the highest award any animal can receive while serving in military conflict. 'It acknowledges outstanding acts of bravery or devotion to duty displayed by animals serving with the Armed Forces or Civil Defence units,' the website stated. 'The reason he got the Dickin Medal was he just was so courageous. He saved the lives, without doubt I think, of that patrol,' Ms Reilly told ABC News. Kuga was bestowed the award for his outstanding gallantry and devotion to duty in Afghanistan as part of the Australian Special operations Task Group in 2011. After being choppered to a target compound, Kuga was sent forward to search for concealed insurgents or explosive devices next to a patrol line near a river. After being choppered to a target compound, Kuga (pictured) was sent forward to search for concealed insurgents or explosive devices next to a patrol line near a river While apprehending the insurgent, Kuga (pictured) was shot a total of five times: twice in the ear, one in the toe, once in the cheek, and once in the chest As he entered the water and swam across to the opposite side of the bank, he was intercepted by the enemy and shot multiple times. Undeterred by the close-range fire, Kuga continued swimming until he reached the other side and eventually helped his handler identify the enemy's location. While apprehending the insurgent, Kuga was shot a total of five times: twice in the ear, one in the toe, once in the cheek, and once in the chest. Despite his wounds, he bravely continued his mission and managed to swim back across the river to meet his handler who performed emergency first aid. Victoria Cross recipient and former military dog handler Mark Donaldson VC and his military dog Odin (pictured) accepted the medal on behalf of Kuga, who died in July 2012 According to the PDSA Dickin Medal's website, the medal (pictured) is the highest award any animal can receive while serving in military conflict Following the incident, he was rehabilitated at medical facilities in Afghanistan and Germany before returning to Australia - but sadly he died a short time later. It was later suggested Kuga died as a result of the significant stress placed upon his body from the injuries he sustained during the incident. When Mr Donaldson received the Dickin Medal, he told ABC News it was a great honour to accept the award on behalf of Kuga. He said there was no question that without the courageous efforts of Kuga, the mission wouldn't have been a success. 'If you take Kuga out of the equation with reasonable doubt they wouldn't have known the enemy was there,' Mr Donaldson said. Kuga's special operations handler, Sergeant J, said he was very proud of the way his former companion handled the Afghanistan mission in 2011. 'Ultimately that enabled me to come home to my family,' Sergeant J said. Officials say the bodies of two longtime teachers have been found at a home in suburban Indianapolis. Fishers police responding to a report Wednesday night of gunshots found the bodies of 52-year-old Frank Sergi II and 44-year-old Kristal Sergi. The causes of their deaths weren't immediately released. Sgt. Tom Weger said investigators don't believe anyone else is involved in the deaths. Police in Indiana found the bodies of 52-year-old Frank Sergi II (L) and 44-year-old Kristal Sergi (R) Wednesday. Investigators don't believe anyone else is involved in their deaths. The married couple were preparing to divorce, according to court records Courtesy of Fox 59 The Indianapolis Star reports court records show the two were divorcing. 'Theyre going through a divorce, and I know that can be really rough,' neighbor Michael Jenson said in a statement to Fox 59. 'But to see this, its like wow. How and why would it drive someone to do something so sad and tragic? Unbelievable.' Kristal Sergi taught classes at Hoosier Road Elementary School, which were cancelled Thursday and Friday Classes at Fall Creek Intermediate School, where Frank Sergi taught, were also cancelled The Hamilton Southeastern Schools described the couple as longtime teachers. They said classes at Hoosier Road Elementary School, where Kristal Sergi taught, and Fall Creek Intermediate School, where Frank Sergi taught, were canceled Thursday and Friday for grief counseling. A tweet from district Superintendent Allen Bourff said the district is 'mourning the loss of two beloved teachers.' Cooperative teamwork between a New Jersey police officer and a group of Good Samaritans led to the eventual rescue of two women who were stuck in their burning car after it crashed on Wednesday. Anthony Torres, a North Brunswick police officer, can be seen rushing to go help the women who are stuck along the side of Route 130 in Middlesex County. 'As soon as I got there, I knew I was going to have to go back and cut the seat belt,' he said to PIX11. Anthony Torres, a North Brunswick police officer, can be seen rushing to go help the women who are stuck along the side of Route 130 in Middlesex County 'As soon as I got there, I knew I was going to have to go back and cut the seat belt,' he said Torres used his cutter to snap the seat-belt off but the door was stuck shut. A fire can be seen growing under the vehicle's hood. The woman appears to be in a daze and the officer and the bystanders struggle getting her out of the vehicle. Her airbag has also already been deployed, adding to the hindrance. Torres can be heard asking the woman if she can get out but she doesn't respond. Joshua Sandoval - who lives near where the crash occurred - is one of the men in the video seen assisting Torres in pulling the door The two were eventually able to pull the driver out of her vehicle as the car continued to burn Another woman was also in the vehicle but she was alert and able to climb over the driver to get out of the car. Joshua Sandoval - who lives near where the crash occurred - is one of the men in the video seen assisting Torres in pulling the door. 'We just kept pulling, puling and pulling,' Sandoval said. 'I'm like come on, there is no excuse. At this point we have to get this open' 'We just kept pulling, puling and pulling,' Sandoval said. 'I'm like come on, there is no excuse. At this point we have to get this open.' The two were eventually able to pull the driver out of her vehicle as the car continued to burn. 'They're human beings,' Sandoval added. 'It's not a matter of thinking about it. It's a matter of getting the action done.' The cause of the accident is currently unknown. 'I'm just glad it worked out okay, that we were able to remove her from the vehicle and get her to safety,' said Officer Torres. Both women will make a full recovery. Some are left questioning why viewers should pay for a taxpayer-funded show The show is available for purchase on iTunes for $3.49 per 30 minute episode ABC was caught charging customers to watch its Hard Quiz show on iTunes The taxpayer-funded national broadcaster has been caught charging Australians via iTunes for a show which is otherwise accessible for free. The ABC show Hard Quiz is available on a pay-per-view basis on iTunes for $3.49 per 30-minute episode. The discovery has left some questioning why the channel would make viewers pay a second time to access something that they had already paid for once via taxes. ABC later confirmed to Daily Mail Australia that the confusion had arisen after the latest episode, episode 15, had been mistakenly uploaded to iTunes before it aired on TV. The channel reiterated that ABC Television content is available to all Australians free of charge. The taxpayer-funded national broadcaster has been caught charging Australians via iTunes for a show which is otherwise accessible for free The ABC show Hard Quiz is available on a pay-per-view basis on iTunes for $3.49 per 30-minute episode Some are even questioning if it could signal the beginning of the end for a free ABC. The show remains free to access on ABC's video on demand catch-up service, ABC iview. Some Australians took to Twitter to voice their outrage at the extra charge. 'I don't like the sound of this. Is this really happening?' one person wrote, suggesting the discovery could signal the end of a free ABC service. 'Is this a joke? Is it October Fools Day?' another person said. Others drew attention to the fact that the government-funded channel was supposed to serve the people of Australia, referring to it as 'our ABC'. 'What! Not OUR ABC surely?' said one angry Twitter user. Another simply said: 'This is outrageous #OurABC' Some Australians took to Twitter to voice their outrage at the extra charge 'I don't like the sound of this. Is this really happening?' one person wrote, suggesting the discovery could signal the end of a free ABC service 'What! Not OUR ABC surely?' said one angry Twitter user Another simply said: 'This is outrageous #OurABC' Others argued that charging for TV episodes via iTunes was nothing out of the ordinary. Some pointed out that the money was being charged by the channel for those who wanted to be able to re-watch episodes after they had disappeared from iview. An ABC spokesman told Daily Mail Australia that the confusion had arisen as episode 15 of the show had mistakenly been made available on iTunes before it had aired on TV. The spokesperson added: 'ABC Television content is available free of charge to all Australians, via our broadcast channels and iview, where viewers might enjoy watching episodes of Hard Quiz along with other recent programs for free. 'At the same time, the ABC consistently looks for opportunities to extend the life and relevance of our content, repackaging it and making it available for new audiences and to deliver revenue to reinvest in content. 'Thats why for many years we have made ABC content available for sale as DVDs or on iTunes, and in other forms such as CDs.' The ashes of Matthew Shepard, whose brutal murder in the 1990s became a rallying cry for the gay rights movement, will be laid to rest in Washington National Cathedral. Matthew's remains have been kept by his family in Wyoming, where the 21-year-old, gay college student was killed 20 years ago in 1998. His ashes will be interred in the Washington, DC, cathedral's crypt Friday morning, making him one of just 200 other Americans who have been given the honor of being laid to rest there. The remains of slain college student, Matthew Shepard, 21, will be finally laid to rest in the crypt at Washington National Cathedral Friday. He died after having been targeted and brutally beaten for being gay in October 1998 Matthew's parents, Judy and Dennis Shepard, have kept his cremated remains all this time because they said that they couldn't find a place to bury him where they thought that his grave would be safe from vandals. Judy told AFP that she and Dennis had 'given much thought to Matt's final resting place, and we found the Washington National Cathedral is an ideal choice, as Matt loved the Episcopal church and felt welcomed by his church in Wyoming.' She added that, 'It's reassuring to know he now will rest in a sacred spot where folks can come to reflect on creating a safer, kinder world.' Shepard's interment will be presided over by Gene Robinson, the first openly gay US bishop in the Episcopal Church. 'The kind of hate and violence that killed Matthew Shepard is alive and well and living in this country,' Robinson told WJLA. 'His parents were fearful that someone would try to desecrate his grave and we found the right place. We found the place where he will rest safely forever.' Matthew's brutal murder became a rallying cry for the gay rights movement (pictured in 1989) Matthew's parents, Judy and Phillip Shepard (in September 2008), had held on to his cremated remains in Wyoming, instead of burying them, fearing that his grave would be vandalized Matthew's attack drew national attention, leading politicians and activist to fight to expand the federal definition of hate crimes to include gay victims (Matthew in 1995, Dennis in 2018) Matthew will be one of 200 Americans given the honor of being interred at the Washington National Cathedral. He'll join notable individuals including Helen Keller and Woodrow Wilson Thursday night, mourners took to Washington's Dupont Circle for a candlelight vigil The interment ceremony is private and expected to be attended by his parents, family and close friends, among others. To mark the somber occasion, hundreds of mourners gathered in Washington, DC's Dupont Circle Thursday night. During the candlelight vigil, speakers addressed the fight for equal rights and noted that the LGBTQ community continues to face hate crime violence, CNN and WUSA9 reported. Matthew, a University of Wyoming student, was said to have been lured away from a bar in Laramie, Wyoming, by two men who were pretending to be gay on October 6, 1998. Authorities said that roofing workers Russell Henderson and Aaron McKinney who were 21 and 22, respectively, at the time drove Matthew to a remote location, then stripped, violently pistol-whipped, tortured, robbed and tied him to a fence, leaving him to die in near-freezing temperatures. An October 9, 1999, picture of a cross made of stones resting below the fence in Laramie, Wyoming, where Matthew Shepard was tied and pistol whipped into a coma Russell Henderson (left) and Aaron McKinney (center) in 1998. They were arrested and later convicted of first degree murder for brutalizing Matthew, leading to his death A bloodied and beaten Matthew wasn't found until 18 hours later, when a cyclist stumbled upon him, thinking at first that he was a scarecrow. Matthew, who was in a coma by then, was taken to the hospital. His skull was said to have been so badly smashed that doctors were unable to perform surgery on him. He died six days later, on October 12, 1998. Authorities said that Henderson and McKinney had targeted Matthew who was 5-foot-2 and 105 pounds because he was gay. Both men were later convicted of murder and each received two consecutive life sentences. Matthew's murder grabbed national headlines with the gruesome nature of the crime throwing a spotlight on the hatred, violence and discrimination endured by LGBTQ individuals and communities in towns and cities across America. In the wake of his death, politicians and activists fought to extend the definition of federal hate crime legislation to include gay victims, women and people with disabilities. Matthew's parents donated a variety of his personal effects to the Smithsonian's National Museum of American History on Thursday Among the items donated were his artwork, school homework, personal photos and awards Ten years after Matthew's death, President Obama signed a law bearing his name which expanded federal hate crime legislation to cover crimes sparked by sexual orientation Over 10 years later, in 2009, President Barack Obama signed the Matthew Shepard and James Byrd Jr. Hate Crimes Prevention Act, which was named for Matthew and Byrd, a black man who was dragged to death behind a pickup truck by white supremacists in Texas in 1998. The law expanded existing federal hate crimes law to include crimes which had been instigated by sexual orientation and gender identity. On Thursday, Matthew's parents donated a collection of his papers and personal effects to the Smithsonian's National Museum of American History. Among the items were mementos of his life, from elementary school through college, such as fair ribbons, notebooks and homework. Photographs, correspondence and notebooks were also donated. Shepard will be one of 200 people interred at the Cathedral, including deaf-blind activist Helen Keller and former US president Woodrow Wilson. Videos on a dead man's cellphone of him admitting to shooting girlfriend led authorities to an Arizona well where they found her body, according to local officials. Deputies from the Maricopa County Sheriff's Office found William 'Bill' Cahill, 45, dead inside his car in Rainbow Valley at around 1.45pm on October 21. A hose was said to have connected from the car's tailpipe into the vehicle, filling it with carbon monoxide. Carolyn Dahlgren, 37, was found in a well located near Queen Creek Road and 155th Avenue Deputies from the Maricopa County Sheriff's Office learned from videos on William Cahill's phone that he had killed his girlfriend and ditched her body in a well Multiple videos were on Cahill's phone where he admitted to shooting his girlfriend, 37-year-old Carolyn Dahlgren, twice. The man then claimed to have thrown 'Daisy's' body in a well in the desert, according to reports from AZ Family. Her body was found on Tuesday night in a well located near Queen Creek Road and 155th Avenue. The well is around 18 to 20 inches in diameter and is about 900ft deep. Dahlgren's body was found around 360ft down in the well The well is around 18 to 20 inches in diameter and is about 900ft deep. Dahlgren's body was found around 360ft down in the well. The investigation is still ongoing. It is unknown how the officers were able to find the specific location of the well. The woman appears to have children, based off her Facebook. A worker has been crushed by a one-tonne saw blade after it fell on his leg at the site of a major tunnel project. The 26-year-old man was rushed to hospital after sustaining the injuries at the NorthConnex worksite in West Pennant Hills, in Sydney, at 10am on Friday. The massive blade is believed to have weighed up to 1.5 tonnes, fell on the man's right leg, crushing it. Scroll down for video A worker has been crushed by a one-tonne saw blade after it fell on his leg at the site of the NorthConnex tunnel in Sydney's west Following the workplace accident, the man was carried from the scene via a tunnel and rushed to the Royal North Shore Hospital where he remains in a stable condition. Safework later confirmed the incident took place, revealing its inquiries were ongoing. 'SafeWork is investigating an incident on a worksite in West Pennant Hills,' a spokesperson said. NorthConnex will link the M1 Motorway at Wahroonga to the M2 Motorway at West Pennant Hills. The multi-billion project stretches for nine-kilometre is expected to be completed at the end of 2019. A Melbourne family has been left devastated after their four dogs were poisoned by robbers who wanted them to be quiet in order to steal some tools. Desiree Smith and her family were heartbroken when thieves broke into their Diamond Creek home in Melbourne's north east on October 23. One of the family's cars was stolen, while Ms Smith's son, Liam, had his car broken into, the mother told 3AW's Neil Mitchell. Gemma Pain (pictured) and her family were devastated to find out four of their dogs were poisoned, killing two A Melbourne family have been left devastated after their four dogs were poisoned by robbers who wanted them to be quiet in order to steal some tools (pictured, Sadie, who died) On Monday night, he noticed the dogs were barking aggressively and went outside to see why, before seeing someone run off in the dark. The next morning, Ms Smith got a frantic call from her daughter, Gemma Pain, who rushed two of the dogs, Sadie and Charlotte, to the vet. 'I raced to the vet, and they'd actually put Sadie to sleep because she wasn't going to come through,' Ms Smith said. Charlotte had to have her stomach pumped, but eventually began to recover. When Ms Smith and her daughter arrived home, they'd found out another dog had also died. The family didn't know Molly, the 14-year-old Jack Russel Terrier had eaten some of the poison. 'We didn't know she'd eaten anything,' she said. 'We lost two dogs. Sadie was a big special greyhound, so she was a great big gentle giant. The other one was a little old jack russel, 14 years old. It's beyond evil. Beyond evil.' Ms Smith got a frantic call from her daughter, Gemma Pain, who rushed two of the dogs, Sadie and Charlotte, to the vet Ms Smith said the family believes that the thieves were after his work tools and kept coming to collect new ones every time he'd replaced them. 'I feel like my heart is never going to stop aching I don't know how you get through this I feel like our family has been ripped apart,' she posted to Facebook. 'How dare they steal from innocent people but even worse kill beautiful harmless animals?' Ms Pain also posted a tribute to the dogs on Facebook, saying: 'My life will never feel whole again.' 'The way you and Molly left this world was cruel and gruesome,' she said. The compute and data moats are dead There is an odd belief perpetuated in the machine learning community that massive compute and "big data" represent obstacles that are nearly impossible to scale. They're not. We've defeated those obstacles time and time again. Over time the roaring waterfall fades back into a quiet stream. Headlines and hype misrepresent the true pace of progress. Numbers are thrown around either as vanity metrics or as a result of misunderstanding how efficiently a task might be solved. What is possible has not yet been well defined. Our community has an ongoing defeatist narrative whilst every year more and more David v Goliath stories are fought, won, and somehow promptly forgotten. Isolate what matters in the long term from what gets the spotlight at this moment. This is a good general life principle and an especially strong guiding principle for sanity in your own work when the field is full of question marks. Irrational courage is a skill worth cultivating. Why? It may be irrational in the face of the community yet entirely rational in reality. When I was at university neural networks themselves were dismissed as [insane, stupid, wasteful, fanciful, only capable of "local optimimums"] and should therefore be forgetten. Reality took a long time (and many courageous souls) before that perception was overturned. What else is left to discover on the discarded fringes of impossible adjacent? For machine learning, history has shown compute and data advantages rarely matter in the long run. The ongoing trends indicate this will only become more true over time than less. You can still contribute to this field with limited compute and even data. It is especially true that you can get almost all the advances of the field with limited compute and data. Those limits may even be to your advantage. Is this true for every application? No. Yet I genuinely believe it true in most cases. Note: If you're interested in following this line of thought my earlier article Backing off towards simplicity - why baselines need more love presents a process you can follow for research or implementation. Examples of perceived necessary compute falling rapidly Preface: None of what I note below means massive compute is bad, either in research or implementation. Massive compute frequently results in insight that feed our understanding of later techniques, showing either the full possibility or limits even at tremendous scale. Massive compute rarely results in efficiency gains by itself. Excess compute frequently ends up as a crutch, not a breakthrough. Over time the march of hardware, the march of techniques, and our improved understanding trim away the excess where it isn't needed. Adding ever more engines may help get the plane off the ground... but that's not the design planes are destined for. Two extremes of this trend to be considered: New York Times (2012): "How Many Computers to Identify a Cat? 16,000 (CPU cores)" One year later: "three servers each with two quad-core CPUs and four Nvidia GeForce GTX 680 GPUs" Neural Architecture Search: "32,400-43,200 GPU hours" Just over a year later: "single Nvidia GTX 1080Ti GPU, the search for architectures takes less than 16 hours" (1000x less) (paper) Whilst there are many many more examples of this trend I could note, a rule of thumb is: What may take a cluster to compute one year takes a consumer machine the next. Is this overly optimistic? Sure. I would argue that it is less wrong than "what took a cluster to compute one year takes a cluster to compute the next" however. Even if it's wrong it's better than our current thinking that may paralyze us with fear rather than exploring what is or isn't possible. Just like Moore's law it may prove a better target for progress than a fundamental law in and of itself. Reflecting on data There is a traditional notion that data moats are impossible to cross. In some fields data moats do indeed still hold strong yet the overall trend is that intelligently used small data is better than big data. Even better, the size requirement for annotated data is continuously falling, meaning annotated data moats are also falling away. The largest trend here is unsupervised sequence modeling. What went from an uncool and "useless" little task (language modeling) is now proving to be NLP's ImageNet moment. A similar trend is following in vision and many other domains. Understanding a smaller dataset in detail proves far more useful than a large dataset ("big data") with unintelligent methods. Quite literally, only two or so years ago, language modeling papers were a hard sell at conferences. Why? People beleived them to be of limited use and essentially an insular and unimpactful subcommunity. Time and the people within that silly little subfield proved the task's worth. I will give an example below but writing in more detail is beyond scope - mainly as I may never get this article out the door otherwise. If you're interested in my thoughts, message me, and I'll add it to my writing queue! Why is this important to me? Compute I have lost months of my life taunted and terrified by massive compute. Literally. They were the darkest days of my research career. A stage where I felt the walls closing in and the billions of FLoPs that I had access to but a tap trying to fill a river. My focus had been on language modeling. I'd published one strong paper on it - Pointer Sentinel Mixture Models - and a team at Facebook had developed a similar idea independently in parallel with a brilliant speed gain over my work! I was so happy. I was on the parallel cutting edge, exploring ideas that others found value in. Then Neural Architecture Search with Reinforcement Learning came out, blowing my results out of the water. I spent months trying to replicate the work. Part of the issue was missing details in the paper - but every paper has missing details. That's the standard life of a researcher. The other far more pressing issue was that I'd convinced myself that Neural Architecture Search and the many GPUs it used was necessary for that level of performance. This was not true. Under this misguided notion, I scaled my GPUs from the single GPU I had to many. Far too many. I eventually commanded an armada of 40 GPUs. I was trying to use them efficiently, believing there was a better and saner way to the same results, but I was met with obstacles at nearly every turn. I was sticky taping a distributed solution together that slowed my thinking down and distracted me from the core task. Whilst I gained many insights from that eventual work (mainly thanks to Martin Schrimpf for replacing the sticky tape with sound engineering), much of the work I put into the project proved an utter distraction for me. Upon submitting the paper I conceded defeat in my mind. I decided to move away from language modeling and try my hand elsewhere. My lovely subfield was going where I could not follow. As a swansong I decided to improve the PyTorch language modeling example. I always had a sweetspot for good tutorial code and it had proven helpful for my initial implementation. I wanted to give back and give anyone who followed me the best fighting chance possible. I decided to only improve the model in ways that were fast as the end user needed to be able to explore and tinker sanely on any GPU. To my surprise the simple improvement I made got the model to soar. I removed a small bit of cruft and found the aerodynamic drag disappeared. A single modest GPU was beating out all past work in hours. The side project of improving a tutorial ended up relighting my passion and confidence in competing in my own field. Brilliant colleagues joined me to bring the work from a surprise proof of concept to the final string of papers. In parallel and independently a brilliant team at DeepMind/University of Oxford realized many of the same efficiency gains (and a far more nuanced analysis) in On the State of the Art of Evaluation in Neural Language Models. I am glad for that. Even if I had conceded defeat and never discovered my flawed thinking by chance I would have when they finally published. By this stage I had lost months however - and nearly lost my internal drive. Google N-grams Before the new fangled neural language models or even the resurgence of the neural network era, my obsession was with n-grams. They're the simplest things in the world. Take N words - let's say these five words right here. That's a five-gram. Imagine seeing all the possible five-grams on earth. If you collect all the occurrences of these n-grams, you gain insight into how words are used. Working out the next word in The distance from Sydney to New ____ is easy - find all five grams starting with "from Sydney to New"! Want to know flavours are available? Find all the patterns where people are ordering ice cream and extract! The issue is that there are exponentially increasing n-grams as you increase the value of n. If you have a vocabulary of 10,000 then there are 10,000^2 potentially 2-grams, 10,000^3 potential 3-grams, and so on. You need ever more data to try to capture these patterns. Google released an n-gram dataset that was enormous at the time. 24 gigabytes compressed - oh geez! Solid state disks weren't a thing and RAM was, as ever, far too few, especially for holding a dataset of that size just for random access. I pondered how to attach dozens or hundreds of USBs - the only sanely cheap solid state disk at the time - through an ever growing vine of USB hubs. This taught me a great deal about the lower levels of compute and storage but it didn't help me solve the task itself. Today, with a tiny slither of the data used to produce n-grams or even store the original n-gram dataset, a single desktop computer can give you a richer representation in under an hour. How? More efficient usage of the data. That was the word2vec and eventually unsupervised language modeling path. Conclusion I don't want others to lose months of their time or neurons of their sanity like I have done in the past. It's not necessary. It's not productive. It's rarely what you need to achieve your aims or to help forge progress in our field. There's need for courage to push beyond what others tell you is possible. Most of the time what's possible hasn't been properly defined yet. A Rebels bikie father and son duo are behind bars after being charged with attempted murder over a car park shooting. Franc Nemcek, 56, and son Fabian 'Havoc' Nemcek, 26, fronted the Maroochydore Magistrates Court on Friday after being extradited over a Currimundi car park shooting on October 19. It is alleged the pair from Greenbank were involved in the daylight shooting and were allegedly seen leaving the car park in a sedan before being spotted in Melbourne. Franc Nemcek (left) and son Fabian 'Havoc' Nemcek (right) fronted the Maroochydore Magistrates Court on Friday after being extradited over a Currimundi car park shooting It is alleged the duo from Greenbank were involved in the shooting on October 19 and were seen leaving the car park in a sedan Earlier during the week, Victorian anti-gang Task Force Echo detectives raided a St Albans, Melbourne home and arrested the pair. Extradition orders were sought on Thursday by detectives from the Sunshine Coast Criminal Investigation Branch and Queensland anti-bikie Task Force Maxima. Mr Nemcek and his son were flown from Melbourne to the Sunshine Coast on Thursday accompanied by detectives. The charges include attempted murder, armed robbery with wounding and attempted robbery. The charges include attempted murder, armed robbery with wounding and attempted robbery The pair's attempt for bail has been adjourned to November 7. During the altercation, a group of men were allegedly fighting near the Reject Shop at Currimundi Market Place at 1:30pm. A 45-year-old man allegedly sustained a gunshot wound to the stomach. A short time later the injured man presented to a Battery Hill medical centre with a wound to the abdomen before being transported to the Sunshine Coast University Hospital. Franc Nemcek is the principal photographer & CEO of High Pix Photography. Fabian Nemcek is a professional featherweight mixed martial arts fighter as well as 'Chief Security Officer' of his father's business. The Ryanair passenger who racially abused a black woman has denied being a racist this morning. David Mesher, 70, shocked the nation when he was filmed calling 77-year-old Delsie Gayle an 'ugly black b******' aboard a plane in Barcelona. The Birmingham man has today denied being prejudiced after footage of his vile rant went viral and apologised for the outburst on the Stansted-bound flight. David Mesher, 70, shocked the nation when he was filmed calling 77-year-old Delsie Gayle an 'ugly black b******' Mrs Gayle (pictured says it will take a long time to forgive Mesher for his vile racist outburst on the plane He told Good Morning Britain: 'I'm not a racist person by any means and it was just a fit of bad temper at the time.' Addressing Mrs Gayle, he said: 'I apologise for all the distress you've had there and since.' He said he lost his temper as a result of Mrs Gayle not seeming to want to get up when he needed to reach the window seat. 'I said Ive got to get to the window seat and there didnt seem to be any response,' he said. 'And then I asked her again, I said I have to get to the window seat and she didnt seem to want to get up..or she didnt seem to ...then I probably lost my temper a bit and I ordered her to get up.' Mesher (pictured) has denied being a racist and apologised Windrush immigrant Mrs Gayle appeared on the show with daughter Carol and when asked if she accepted the apology, she responded 'I don't think so'. 'You must forget and forgive but it's going to take a long time,' she said. 'I was so depressed all I've been doing just crying i cant sleep.' Carol added: 'He wouldn't say words like that if he wasn't racist.' They accused the airline of trying to 'sweep it under the carpet', claimed to have had no contact from them and Carol says they are pursuing 'legal action'. As Mrs Gayle claimed 'nobody' helped her during the tirade, Carol added: 'More people could have intervened and especially the gentleman - the flight attendant. He (Mesher) should have been taken off the plane, or moved, something should have been done.' Ryanair today said that the airline only became aware of the incident the following day, when they saw the video. But in the clip a flight attendant can be seen near Mesher during the row. It also shared a letter and email addressed to Mrs Gayle apologising for the incident. Head of Communications Robin Kiely told MailOnline: 'We again extend our very sincere apologies to this passenger for the regrettable, and unacceptable remarks that were made to her by an adjacent passenger, and we believe that by reporting this matter immediately to the Essex Police and by apologising in writing to this customer early on Sunday morning, Ryanair treated it with the urgency and seriousness it warranted.' The airline has shared this letter, which apologises on behalf of the airline to Mrs Gayle following the incident Ryanair also shared this email, which it sent to Mrs Gayle in the aftermath of Mesher's racist rant on the flight Viewers took to Twitter to share their outrage over Mesher's apology and rubbished his claim that he isn't racist. One user wrote: 'Those phrases slipped out of his mouth too easily for someone who apparently isn't racist.' It comes two day after police questioned Mesher at his home after the incident aboard a plane but have not yet arrested him. Two uniformed officers turned up at his sheltered accommodation flat in the West Midlands after he was unmasked by MailOnline. Today the mother and daughter said that Mesher would not have said what he did if he was not a racist A spokesperson for the force said: 'We are assisting Essex Police over an alleged incident on a Ryanair flight but they are the primary investigators.' The spokesperson declined to say if the man would be arrested for formal questioning, saying: 'We cannot comment on that but our inquiries are ongoing.' An Essex Police spokesperson added: 'We have asked the local force in the west Midlands to assist us directly on this matter.' Former railway worker Mesher stayed behind closed doors at his first flat in Yardley Wood, declining to talk to the large media pack gathered outside. Mesher was identified by his neighbours and a former work colleague as the man at the centre of the shocking video. Delsie Gayle, 77, Mesher's victim, previously appeared on this Morning with her daughter where they said their family deserves a public apology Mesher unleashed a torrent of abuse at grandma Mrs Gayle, 77, calling her an 'ugly black b*****d' after they boarded a flight in Barcelona on Friday Police today questioned Ryanair passenger David Mesher at his home after an alleged racial abuse incident aboard a plane but have not yet arrested him Two uniformed officers turned up at the 70-year-old pensioner Mesher's sheltered accommodation flat in Birmingham after he was unmasked by MailOnline He also filmed shouting 'don't speak to me in a f****** foreign language' while on board the London bound jet last Friday. Ryanair has been criticised for its handling of the incident as Mesher was not kicked off the flight nor were the authorities in Spain informed about it. Instead, Mrs Gayle was moved to another aisle while Mesher continued to sit in his own seat. When confronted by MailOnline on Tuesday he refused to apologise for his reported vile rant towards the stunned woman, insisting: 'Go away, there's nothing I want to say.' Mesher was identified by his neighbours and a former work colleague as the man at the centre of the shocking video Neighbours at the block of flats described him as a 'weirdo' and a 'bully'. Until his retirement Mr Mesher worked as a train announcer for London Midland Railways. He had previously worked at London Waterloo train station in the main ticket office as an employee of British Rail. A former colleague told MailOnline he was stunned to recognise 70-year-old Mesher on the video that has been seen worldwide and condemned by MPs and Downing Street. The colleague said: 'It is 30 years since I last worked with David and he was not like the person you see on the video. 'He was in the ticket office at Waterloo station and was always so polite. He would not be rude to anyone, otherwise he would not have been dealing with the public. 'It was a real shock to see him and the vile language that the used. He should be condemned for that. It was awful. That isn't the David Mesher I remember when we worked together.' Mr Mesher also worked in Essex and lived with his elderly mother until her death. He has never married. The former colleague said Mesher would often attend musical concerts in London and was an avid collector of classical music. He said they lost contact when Mr Mesher moved to Birmingham from Barking in East London where he lived with his mother. Neighbours at his sheltered accommodation told MailOnline they were appalled by his abuse towards another passenger. One man said: 'He is a racist pig and bully and everyone here recognises his face from the TV news and papers. 'What he did was totally out order and he should be punished. I can't imagine he would have behaved that way to that lady if a man had been present with her. 'But he won't get arrested because it happened on Spanish soil.' His next door neighbour told how Mr Mesher, who lives alone in the self-contained flat, was 'a weirdo and a real nuisance'. 'No one really likes him. He keeps himself to himself and we don't know much about him but we all knew he was going off to Spain on holiday.' The resident revealed that Mr Mesher often showed 'no respect for other people.' He told how a few months ago how his neigbour was 'driving me mad by playing music loudly and continuously on a loop.' He explained: 'I banged on his door to ask him to turn it down and he wasn't even in. How inconsiderate is that? 'It was no annoying hearing the same old tune over and again that I pulled the emergency cord to alert staff to his flat and they managed to go in and sort it out in his absence.' Barcelona City Hall has joined the fight to make sure Mr Mesher is brought to justice. Officials vowed to report the sickening incident - which took place on a Ryanair plane leaving the Catalan capital for London Stansted - to Spanish prosecutors. The pledge came as Barcelona mayoress Ada Colau attacked Ryanair over their response to the racist attack and branded Mr Mesher as a 'swine'. The city's deputy mayor also appealed on Twitter for witnesses to come forward. Ada Colau wrote: 'Thank you, by the way, to the person who made the video, because it brought to public attention an event that can't go unpunished. 'As the mayor of a feminist city that fights against all forms of discrimination, the images in the video are unbearable to me. 'So I can't even imagine how the victim of this aggression felt. The flight was leaving Barcelona, and Barcelona isn't going to take something like this lying down.' A Muslim sheikh is urging his followers to avoid trying halal gravy at Red Rooster. The takeaway chicken chain last week confirmed to Daily Mail Australia that it had been experimenting with removing pork from the sauce at its Bass Hill outlet in south-west Sydney since early October. This didn't impress Wollongong-based Sunni sheikh Jamil El-Biza, who instructed Muslims to avoid eating the halal gravy after his friend Steve Dabliz told him staff there had 'no knowledge' of the trial. A Muslim sheikh Jamil El-Biza (pictured) is urging his followers to avoid a Red Rooster outlet that is trialling halal gravy 'Attention: To all my brothers and sisters in Sydney and lovers of gravy, especially with fresh hot chips,' he said. 'I have some news that you won't like. So until further clarification from Red Rooster Australia please stay away from the gravy.' Mr El-Biza, from the Ahlus Sunnah Wal Jamaah Association, has previously urged Muslims to avoid wishing Christians Merry Christmas so he wouldn't have to answer to Allah. The Sunni fundamentalist preacher last year in September described gay marriage as 'evil' and referred to homosexual men by the derogatory term 'f*****s' on Facebook. His latest public statement about halal gravy was made this week after Daily Mail Australia exclusively revealed a trial at been underway for two weeks at Bass Hill, where 28 per cent of its residents are Muslim. He used the hashtag '#NoGravyForYou' to make his point. Red Rooster has been trialling since early October a halal gravy at its Bass Hill store in south-west Sydney (pictured) The Wollongong-based Sunni fundamentalist urged Muslims to avoid trying the halal gravy after a friend Steve Dabliz told him staff at Bass Hill were unaware of the trial Red Rooster's traditional gravy sold at its 360 stores contains pork fat and has been a popular sauce to put on chicken and chips since the company began in 1972. Company spokeswoman Lisa Owen last week told Daily Mail Australia Red Rooster was reviewing its existing gravy containing pork. 'We have had requests from many people,' she said. The trial at the company-owned Bass Hill outlet, which isn't a franchise, would see whether a new gravy could be produced that was suitable for both Muslims and vegetarians. Red Rooster's traditional gravy sold at its 360 stores contains pork fat and has been popular sauce with a quarter chicken and chips since the company began in 1972 'This is a trial that will roll out across our stores,' Ms Owen said. 'It's a trial to see what the flavour base is like. 'It's a very long-winded process to bring a product to market.' Red Rooster continues to serve bacon in its burgers and doesn't pay third-party Muslim groups to certify that its products are halal. Should the trial prove successful after a year, Red Rooster would consider offering traditional gravy and halal gravy choices. The chicken chain's Bass Hill store (pictured) in south-west Sydney has been trailling halal gravy for two weeks - in a suburb where 28 per cent of residents are Muslim 'If the product is deemed successful it will be rolled out across the restaurant network,' Ms Owen said. In Sydney, Red Rooster's 20 stores are mainly scattered in suburbs with a higher proportion of migrants. The chain has a store at Lakemba, in south-west Sydney, where 59 per cent of residents are Muslim. A cleaver-wielding attacker injured 14 children at a kindergarten in China Friday morning, police reported. The suspect, 39-year-old Liu, chased and slashed the pupils as they returned to their classrooms from the playground at the school in Chongqing, south-west China. Liu was apprehended by the school's staff and security guards before the police arrived at the scene. Police confirmed to MailOnline that all victims were being treated at the hospital and there were no deaths reported. A cleaver-wielding woman today assaulted children at a kindergarten in China, leaving 14 injured (left). The suspect was apprehended by the school's staff and security guards (right) The children were going back to their classrooms from the playground at 9:30am when the attack took place. The police said the pupils had just finished their morning exercise session The suspect is under police control, but no motive for the assault was immediately publicised. The police report posted on the police force's microblog said the attack at the Xinshiji Kindergarten in the city's outskirts took place at 9:30 am after the children had finished their morning exercise session. It said all 14 injured pupil had been taken to the hospital and were receiving treatment. A doctor who answered the phone at the city's Banan People's Hospital confirmed the children were there but declined to give any details or his name, referring questions to the local government. According to Chongqing Evening News, six of them are seriously injured and one is in critical condition. No other information about the attacker was given, other than her surname, Liu. It remains unclear how she had entered the kindergarten. Footage posted on social media showed injured children walking to ambulances from the school gate, with some being placed on gurneys. The suspect has been taken in custody and no motive for the assault was immediately publicised. All injured pupils were taken to the hospital immediately and are being treated China has suffered a number of such incidents in recent years, blamed largely on the mentally ill or people bearing grudges. In June, a man used a kitchen knife to attack three boys and a mother near a school in Shanghai on Thursday, killing two of the children. Police said the assailant was unemployed and carried out the attack 'to take revenge on society.' In April, nine schoolchildren were killed and another dozen wounded after a man stabbed them with a knife outside their school in Mizhi County, north-west China's Shaanxi Province. Police deemed the attack a revenge attack and the criminal was given a death penalty and executed. Chinese law restricts the sale and possession of firearms, and mass attacks are generally carried out with knives or homemade explosives. Almost 20 children were killed in school attacks in 2010, prompting a response from top government officials and leading many schools to add gates and security guards. A driving assessor accepted bribes from candidates and arranged licences for people he had never seen drive, a court has heard. Jawad Joe Dimachki has pleaded guilty to a total 26 counts of dishonestly dealing with documents, accepting bribes and exercising power to secure benefit. Abdul Kajani and Ethan Quadros, who have admitted bribing him, faced the South Australian District Court for sentencing submissions on Friday. Jawad Joe Dimachki has pleaded guilty to a total 26 counts of dishonestly dealing with documents, accepting bribes and exercising power to secure benefit Abdul Kajani (pictured) and Ethan Quadros, who have admitted bribing him, faced the South Australian District Court for sentencing submissions on Friday Lawyers for Kajani said he became anxious about failing his driving test, shared his concerns with Quadros and the pair came up with a plan to engage Dimachki. The court heard a slip entitling Kajani to a licence was signed by Quadros, after he presented for the test, then taken to a Service SA centre by Kajani. Quadros did not realise the seriousness of the crime, his lawyer said, and was 'remorseful, fearful and genuinely contrite'. Prosecutors said mental health issues were not a significant factor and urged Judge Michael Boylan to record a conviction against the pair. 'This is a serious, arrogant and blatant example of offending,' Leah O'Donnell told the court. She said the Kajani and Quadros were the latest of several of Dimachki's clients to be dealt with by the courts and that other penalties had included fines. Lawyers for the pair said visa issues were at play and suggested a bond would be an appropriate punishment. Judge Boylan continued the bail of Quadros, Kajani and Dimachki to reappear before the court next month. A nurse who claims she was seriously injured while rendering aid to an obese mental health patient is suing the government for $700,000. Gold Coast nurse Katherine Brown has alleged that the Queensland Government was negligent of staff in its handling of a patient who weighed 126kg. The 44-year-old female patient was admitted to Robina Hospital in June 2015 under an 'involuntary treatment order', The Courier-Mail reported. Gold Coast nurse Katherine Brown (pictured) is suing the Queensland Government alleging that it was negligent of staff in its handling of a 126kg mental health patient Ms Brown's lawyers submitted a statement of claim to the Southport District Court which outlines the patient's admission in 2015 and subsequent transfer to the unit's rehabilitation section. Ms Brown alleged that is 'was not safe' for the female patient to be in the rehabilitation unit and instead should have been in 'acute or intensive psychiatric care'. She alleged she was exposed to 'foreseeable and unnecessary risk' as a result of the patient transfer. Ms Brown alleged she injured her back when coming to the aid of the patient in April 2016 who she said she found on the floor of her room in the middle of a seizure. After managing to turn the woman over into the recovery position Ms Brown alleges she began to feel an acute pain in her lower back. Ms Brown alleged that she suffered an 'annular disc tear' and psychiatric injuries from the incident. The foundation of Ms Brown's claim to the court is that the state government didn't provide her with a safe place to work and her complaints prior to the alleged incident were ignored. The patient continued to suffer from serious seizures and passed away in hospital just one month after the alleged incident. An 89-year-old man who was 'rejected' by the sex worker he regularly visited has admitted to shooting at her. Domenico Natale fired two shots at the woman in the driveway of Romantics brothel in Brunswick, Melbourne, in July 2017. At a Supreme Court hearing on Friday, Natale pleaded guilty to four offences including stalking, reckless conduct endangering life, being in possession of an unregistered gun and threatening to kill during a phone conversation, Nine News reported. At a committal hearing in May, Natale's lawyer Simon Moglia revealed his client was upset following the breakdown of their working relationship while the prosecution argued he was jealous of her other clients. Scroll down for video An 89-year-old man has admitted to shooting at a sex worker he regularly visited after he became jealous about her other clients Domenico Natale (pictured) fired two shots at the woman in the driveway of Romantics brothel in Brunswick, Melbourne, on July 21 2017 at about 10am 'There was a rejection and clearly Mr Natale was upset by it,' he said. 'There was clearly disagreement or a parting of ways between them.' Court documents said Natale was the woman's client for three-and-a-half years and his feelings for the sex worker intensified after his wife died. Natale would send the woman text messages, call her and wait outside the brothel. Text messages sent by Natale provided some insight into his mindset before the shooting. 'You dead, you dead,' one text message read. 'Remember you've destroyed my f*****g life'. Court documents said Natale was the woman's client for three-and-a-half years and his feelings for the sex worker intensified after his wife died On the day of the incident, Natale stepped out of his car and fired the shots at the sex worker but the first one hit a brick wall and the second was fired when she fled inside the brothel. He also shot himself in the stomach later that day but managed to survive. Natale, who is on bail, will return to court for a plea hearing on December 14. Romantics is a Melbourne adult business, located in the northern suburb of Brunswick. Advertisement A nineteenth century cannon sits at the entrance of a Pakistani village, the huge monument casts a striking silhouette against the dust and cobble alleyways of the small agricultural village. Nestled in the rocky hills of Punjab's salt ranges, blasted by heat in the summer, the village of Dulmial is a far cry from the freezing mud of the Flanders trenches. Locally, Dulmial is now known simply as the 'village with the gun' but when the man who uncovered the horrors, and heroics that the cannon symbolized, first saw it, it meant nothing to him, The Telegraph reports. This photograph was taken in 1925 as Dulmial was presented with a cannon in recognition of the villagers' Great War service. Dr Malik's great grandfathers were Captain Ghulam Mohammad (front row centre) and Subadar Mohammad Khan (second row second from the left) Dr Irfan Malik, pictured, has researched the contribution Dulmial made to the war effort and the lives of his great-grandfathers Dr Irfan Malik was only five when he first made the trip from his native Nottingham to his ancestral village. Years later, after a chance conversation with a patient, Dr Malik, a GP, decided to research the village's contribution to the Great War. What he found were the stories of the 460 soldiers, including his two great-grandfathers, the village sent to fight in the 1914-18 conflict - more than any other single village in what was then British India. Eight of them would never come home. Those that did, were rewarded with countless meddles. 'This was a massive contribution and almost every male in the village who was able to, joined the army,' Dr Malik, 49, says. 'They wouldn't have understood where or why they were going but they would have been loyal to their rulers.' The warriors of Dulmial, a predominantly Muslim village in what was then pre-partition India, fought all over the world. According to documents unearthed by Dr Malik, recruiters for the war effort arrived in the village in 1914 offering potential solders 30 - the equivalent of three years' net pay. The men could read and write in English, had a proud military history and were eager to sign up. The village, around 150 kilometres (90 miles) from Islamabad, have 460 soldiers to the war effort Locally, Dulmial is now known simply as the 'village with the gun' because of the nineteenth century cannon (pictured) sits at the entrance A Pakistani resident displays a photograph of veterans of WWI and WWII in the village of Dulmia Among them was a celebrated solider, already fitted with a chest of meddles for his involvement in 33rd Punjab Regiment on the frontiers of 1911. Subedar Mohammed Khan, Dr Malik's paternal great-grandfather, was still fit and ready to fight. His other great-grandfather was Captain Ghulam Mohammed, whose achievements are less known. Dr Malik knows that both of them signed up in 1914, and although they were old enough to be nearing the end of their careers they were both kept back in India. 'My parents always just told me they were tough men,' he recalls. 'Walking up to 60 miles in one go for them was no problem.' After the declaration of peace in 1918, the men of the Punjab Regiment and Dr Malik's great-grandfathers returned home to their families. Their contribution to the war effort was recognised with the historic 12-pounder artillery gun, which was made in Scotland In this photograph taken on October 29, 2014, village residents pray at the grave of Captain Malik Ghulam Muhammad, a veteran of WWI in the village of Dulmial in Chakwal district some Their contribution to the war effort was recognised with the historic 12-pounder artillery gun, which was made in Scotland and installed on a marble platform in 1925 as a memorial. It is kept in immaculate condition, shinning black against the fierce sun. Today, the Royal British Legion (RBL) launches its annual poppy appeal remembering the legacy of the Great War. Over 1.5 million Muslim, Sikh and Hindu men volunteered with the Indian Expeditionary Force and were awarded 13,000 gallantry medals, including 11 Victoria Crosses. British India sent 3.7milion tons of supplies, 40 field ambulances and nearly 4,5000 doctors. The contribution was essential to success and their sacrifice will be remembered with a special khadi poppy, made with the spun cotton cloth used by Gandhi. For Dr Malik, this commemoration, and acknowledgment of the shared history has connected the strings between his ancestral and native homes. 'Had I known this history as a kid I would have been more British and felt like I had more of a stake in Britain,' he says. 'We used to get abused by skinheads in the Seventies saying 'what have you done for our country?'. Our elders knew about this history but couldn't articulate it.' A Russian former general has warned that U.S. President Donald Trump could trigger a 'second Cuban Missile Crisis' if he makes good on his threat to pull out of a nuclear arms treaty with Russia. Evgeny Buzhinskiy, who served 41 years in the Russian military, said Trump is 'ruining' global stability and peace by wanting out of the 1987 Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty, which the U.S. and NATO claim Russia has violated. His concerns were echoed by Mikhail Gorbachev, the last leader of the Soviet Union, who said it would herald in a new arms race, increasing the risk of nuclear war. The U.S. accuses Russia of violating the 1987 Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty, which eliminates all ground-launched cruise and ballistic missiles with a range of 300-3,400 miles. Threats: Russian former general Evgeny Buzhinskiy said President Donald Trump is 'ruining' global stability by wanting out of the 1987 Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty Speaking to Daily Star Online, Buzhinskiy said that if the treaty collapses, the U.S. is likely to deploy nuclear-tipped missiles to European NATO bases. 'If, in the worst case scenario, they [U.S.] try to deploy nuclear-capable mid-range missiles, say, somewhere in Poland, it will be the second Cuban Missile Crisis,' Buzhinskiy said. 'I think Russia will have no other way out but to destroy these missiles,' he said. Gorbachev - who signed the treaty with Ronald Reagan - spoke in similar terms today, saying the U.S. move was 'a dire threat to peace' that he still hoped might be reversed through negotiations. Risk: Buzhinskiy, pictured in 2007, claimed the treaty falling apart would trigger a 'second Cuban Missile Crisis' 'I am being asked whether I feel bitter watching the demise of what I worked so hard to achieve,' he wrote in the New York Times. 'But this is not a personal matter. Much more is at stake. A new arms race has been announced.' If the United States made good on its pledge to leave the treaty, Gorbachev said he hoped that U.S. allies would refuse to be what he called launchpads for American missiles which Trump has spoken of developing. Gorbachev, 87, also accused Washington of destroying the 'system of international treaties and accords' that underpinned peace and security after World War Two. 'Yet I am convinced that those who hope to benefit from a global free-for-all are deeply mistaken. 'There will be no winner in a 'war of all against all' - particularly if it ends in a nuclear war. 'And that is a possibility that cannot be ruled out. An unrelenting arms race, international tensions, hostility and universal mistrust will only increase the risk.' Historic moment: Mikhail Gorbachev and President Ronald Reagan sign thee Intermediate Nuclear Forces Reduction Treaty in 1987 The threat of President Trump quitting the 1987 nuclear arms treaty could have drastic consequences, and NATO envoys reportedly urged U.S. officials at the meeting yesterday to instead work with Russia to bring it back into compliance. Diplomats present said Germany and other European allies called for a final effort on Washington's part to convince the Kremlin to stop what the West says are violations, or possibly renegotiate it to include China. 'Allies want to see a last-ditch effort to avoid a U.S. withdrawal,' one NATO diplomat said on condition of anonymity because of the classified nature of the meeting, which took place two days after senior U.S. official John Bolton informed Russian President Vladimir Putin of the plans in Moscow. 'Nobody takes issue with Russia's violation of the treaty, but a withdrawal would make it easy for Moscow to blame us for the end of this landmark agreement,' a second diplomat said. Here's to R-us: Russian President Vladimir Putin, foreground right, toasts with top military officers and law enforcement officials in the Kremlin in Moscow on Thursday NATO declined to comment on the details of the meeting but issued a statement saying that allies assessed 'the implications of Russia's destabilising behaviour on our security.' 'NATO allies will continue to consult on this important issue,' it added. Earlier this week, NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg laid the blame on Russia for violating the treaty by developing the SSC-8, a land-based, intermediate-range Cruise missile which also has the name of Novator 9M729. Russia denies any such violations. NATO allies including Belgium and the Netherlands, which host U.S. nuclear weapons facilities in Europe, warned in the North Atlantic Council, NATO's highest decision-making body, of a public outcry if the United States were to try to install medium-range nuclear weapons on their territory again. Stoltenberg said on Wednesday he did not think this would lead to reciprocal deployments of U.S. missiles in Europe as happened in the 1980s. European allies see the INF treaty as a pillar of arms control and, while accepting that Moscow is violating it by developing new weapons, are concerned its collapse could lead to a new arms race with possibly a new generation of U.S. nuclear missiles stationed on the continent. Diplomats said the U.S. officials did hold out the possibility that the United States may delay its formal withdrawal to after a planned meeting between Putin and Trump in Paris on November 11. The treaty foresees a six-month notification period for any withdrawal, also potentially giving Washington time to negotiate with Moscow before finally pulling out. The FBI has warned there could be more pipe bomb devices on their way to high-profile Trump critics as a sting of Hollywood A-listers have been put on alert. FBI Assistant Director William Sweeney warned the 'American public to remain vigilant as it does remain possible further packages have been or could be mailed.' 'These devices should be considered dangerous,' he added. It comes as it's revealed the crude bombs posted this week were sent through a major United States Postal Service mailing facility in South Florida. All ten bombs sent to the Clintons, former President Obama, CNN and other prominent Democrats are believed to have come through the Opa-Locka processing and distribution center. New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio said the city had already stepped up its police presence 'to show very vividly that New York City takes these issues seriously'. The crude bombs lacked a 'triggering mechanism' suggesting they were never meant to explode, experts who have seen photos of the devices claim An NYPD bomb squad vehicle leaves an area outside Time Warner Center on Wednesday where a suspicious package led to the evacuation of CNN's offices It's been revealed the bombs were sent through a major mail facility in Opa-locka, Florida, pictured Police are pictured outside the U.S. Post Office Royal Palm Processing & Distribution Center Thursday It was revealed last night that the device delivered to CNN's New York office was delivered by a courier, a law enforcement official told CNN. Billionaire investor George Soros, who has backed Democrats and was the first to be targed by what has been dubbed the MAGAbomber, also uses a courier service that picks up his mail at a post office before it is delivered to his home. On Monday the first pipe bomb was found in his mailbox at his Manhattan home. Since that discovery a further nine suspicious packages have been found at addresses linked to prominent Democrat politicians and supporters including Barack Obama, Joe Biden, the Clinton family, actor Robert De Niro and the CNN news network. Other Hollywood A-listers such as Arnold Schwarzenegger, Meryl Streep, Alec Baldwin, Cher and Ben Stiller, who have also spoken out about Trump's policies are said to have increased security over fears they could be targeted next. Figures such as Amazon owner Jeff Bezos and British Last Week Tonight on HBO host, John Oliver, are also on the list of potential targets who have been put on alert. When asked at a press conference last night whether there might be more bombs that have yet to be discovered, New York police commissioner, James O'Neill, said it was not known if more high-profile President Trump critics will be targeted. He said: 'With the postal services that are here, we're doing our best to make sure that if there are any out there we identify them quickly.' FBI and canine units were deployed to the facility Thursday as the search continues for the person or persons behind the bombs The bombs seized on Wednesday, each with a small battery, were about six inches long and packed with powder and broken glass, according to x-ray images (pictured above) New York City Police vehicles parked outside the office of the The New York Times yesterday where security was ramped up after explosive devices were sent to top Democratic politicians and the CNN headquarters Police investigate a suspicious package inside the Time Warner Center at Columbus Circle in New York The FBI called the packages 'potentially destructive devices' with what is believed to be pyrotechnic powder found. A law enforcement official familiar with the investigation told CNN a suspicious powder found in one parcel was tested and initially deemed not to be anthrax or another known toxic agent, but that the substance would undergo more testing. The FBI said on Wednesday the original packages were mailed in manila envelopes and covered in bubble wrap inside. A statement from the agency said: 'They were affixed with computer-printed address labels and six Forever stamps. All packages had a return address of "DEBBIE WASSERMAN SHULTZ" (sic) in Florida.' Wasserman Schultz, a Florida congresswoman, is the former chairwoman of the Democratic National Committee and often criticizes the president. The packages were taken to the FBI lab in Quantico, Virginia, for examination. FBI and canine units were deployed to the Opa-Locka mail facility yesterday as the search continues for the suspects behind the bombs, which is the main mailing facility in Miami-Dade County. Opa-Locka once had the highest rate of crime for any city in the US in 2004 and continued to deteriorate. While in the state of Florida there is a one in 232 chance of being a victim of a violent crime, in Opa-locka those chances increase to one in 44. A ranking from May showed the city in the top five of 'most dangerous' cities in the US, while East St Louis came in first. 'We are investigating all this with great precision. I can say with certainty that we will identify and arrest the person or people responsible for these acts,' New York police Commissioner James O'Neill said at a news conference Thursday. 'Law enforcement professionals do not care about the politics involved in these acts.' Another law enforcement official told CBC News: 'All arrows pointing to Florida.' Shortly before clearing the scene, New York City police officers block the escalator to the second floor as shoppers at the Time Warner Center Investigators swarmed two Delaware mail facilities on Thursday morning after intercepting packages addressed to former Vice President Joe Biden The building on Greenwich Street in Tribeca was evacuated after the suspicious package was found early Thursday. The building contains Robert De Niro's Tribeca Grill restaurant and his film production company Experts who have seen photos of the devices claim the crude bombs lacked a 'triggering mechanism' suggesting they were never meant to explode. There are no confirmed details yet on why none of the packages sent to the likes of the Clintons and Obamas exploded but the FBI had previously described them as 'potentially destructive devices'. Authorities described the devices as crude while security experts said their goal may have been to create fear rather than to kill. 'What they wanted to do was scare people, cause disruption, but not necessarily hurt anybody, because if they'd wanted to hurt people the bombs would have gone off,' Matthew Bradley, a former CIA agent, told Reuters. TIMELINE: Packages target prominent Democrats and Trump's foes Monday: George Soros Pipe bomb is found at George Soros' home in Katonah, New York on Monday. It was located in a mailbox outside the gates of the billionaire's compound. Tuesday : Hillary Clinton Suspicious package is discovered at Hillary and Bill Clinton's home in Chappaqua, New York, Tuesday night. The device addressed to Hillary was found during a routine mail screening. Bill was at the home but Hillary was campaigning for Democrats in Florida. Wednesday: Barack Obama Secret Service intercept a package en route to Obama's Washington D.C. residence early Wednesday. It was also discovered during routine mail screenings. Wednesday: CNN/John Brennan Suspicious package addressed to former CIA director John Brennan is found in the mail room of CNN's New York Bureau on Wednesday. CNN evacuated after a pipe bomb and an envelope of white powder was discovered. Brennan has worked as a television analyst. Wednesday: Eric Holder/Debbie Wasserman Schultz Bomb squad is called to Florida office of Congresswoman Debbie Wasserman Schultz on Wednesday after package is found. Packages that were intercepted all had Schultz's office listed as a return address. Package at her office was sent to former Attorney General Eric Holder but was mailed to the wrong address, so was returned to her instead. Wednesday: Maxine Waters Suspicious package addressed to California congresswoman Maxine Waters was intercepted Wednesday afternoon by Capitol Police. Another package was sent to Waters in California. Thursday : Joe Biden Authorities locate two suspicious packages addressed to the former VP at mail facilities in Delaware on Thursday. Thursday: Robert De Niro New York Police swarm a building associated with the Hollywood actor in Tribeca early Thursday after a suspicious package was found. Advertisement Investigators are trying to determine if the devices were intended to detonate or simply to sow fear. Officials told the AP that the devices were not rigged like a booby-trapped package bomb that would explode upon opening. They had timers and batteries but never went off. The officials were still uncertain whether the devices were poorly designed or never intended to cause physical harm. Experts who have seen photos of the devices say there isn't a triggering mechanism, but the presence of suspected pyrotechnic powder is one of the reasons they are considered 'potentially destructive devices', CNN reports. Explosives expert and University of Rhode Island chemistry professor Jimmie Oxley said: 'My personal feeling is that this is some kind of a wacko, rather than an organization trying to accomplish something. Evil, mad, has a grudge. A little mix of all of these.' The bombs seized on Wednesday, each with a small battery, were about six inches long and packed with powder and broken glass, according to a law enforcement official who viewed X-ray images. The devices were made from PVC pipe and covered with black tape. Initial analysis showed that white powder sent with some of the packages to New York was not a biological threat, according to FBI assistant director William Sweeney. Authorities are currently investigating whether the series of pipe bombs sent to prominent Democrats and Trump critics were mailed from Florida. A federal law enforcement source said investigators were focusing on leads the packages were sent from Florida as the FBI tries to determine where parts for the pipe bombs were purchased from. All the suspicious packages were believed to have gone through the U.S. Postal System at some point. The nationwide investigation widened on Thursday after three new packages addressed to Robert De Niro and Joe Biden were seized in New York and Delaware. The latest devices are similar to others found this week targeting prominent Democrats and some of Trump's biggest foes, including the Obamas, Clintons and CNN. Authorities were scrambling to find those responsible for the 10 devices that politicians on both sides of the aisle have branded terrorism as they warned that more packages could be out there. Former President Jimmy Carter has been told by law enforcement to remain on alert because he could be a target, ABC reports. Authorities have also been contacting other former officials warning them to be vigilant. The FBI is sharing very few details publicly about the investigation and have said nothing about possible motives or suspects. Ten packages have so far been seized in New York, Washington D.C., Florida and California. The pipe bomb sent to CNN featured an image of a parody ISIS flag popular on right-wing websites. Instead of featuring Arabic characters, the image contained the silhouette of three women, and comedian Larry the Cable Guy's catchphrase 'Get 'Er Done'. Investigators examining the explosive devices will be working to glean forensic clues to help identify who sent them, gathering fingerprints and DNA evidence while tracking the origin of the packages and the components used to make the bombs. New York City police investigate a suspicious package inside the Time Warner Center where a suspicious device was found A member of the Miami-Dade County Bomb Squad is shown outside a postal facility Thursday It's reported that all 10 of the mail bombs recently sent to former President Obama and others may have been sent through the facility Among the first steps for investigators will be retracing the path of the packages through the postal system or courier service used to deliver them. The U.S. Postal Service operates a sophisticated imaging system that photographs the outside of each piece of mail processed across the country and can be used to determine the specific location of where it was sent. New York Governor Andrew Cuomo told CNN some of the packages in his state were hand-delivered and that authorities were scrutinizing security camera videos for signs of the bomber. The packages discovered Thursday set off a new wave of alarm. A law enforcement official said a person working at Robert De Niro's Tribeca office called police after seeing images of a package bomb sent to CNN and recalled seeing a similar package addressed to the actor. De Niro's office is located in a building that also includes his upscale Tribeca Grill restaurant and his film production company. The packages addressed to Biden were intercepted just hours later at Delaware mail facilities in New Castle and Wilmington. In a similar pattern, both Biden and De Niro have been sharply critical of Trump. The actor dropped an expletive insult at Trump at this year's Tony Awards and also apologized to Canadians for the 'idiotic behavior of my president.' Biden said last week that Trump may not 'know what he's doing' and coddles dictators. All the people who have been targeted by the serial bomber are frequently maligned by right-wing critics, including Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton and Obama's Attorney General Eric Holder. Former CIA Director John Brennan, prominent billionaire Democratic Party donor George Soros and California Representative Maxine Waters, an outspoken critic of Trump, were also targets. The first crude bomb to be discovered was delivered Monday to the suburban New York compound of George Soros. The liberal billionaire and major contributor to Democratic causes has previously called Trump's presidency 'dangerous'. The US Secret Service intercepted packages addressed to Obama at his Washington home and to Hillary Clinton at her home in Chappaqua, New York where she lives with husband Bill. A member of the bomb squad investigates a suspicious package at a postal facility in New Castle, Delaware that was addressed to former Vice President Joe Biden The package to Clinton was found late on Tuesday and one addressed to Obama was recovered early on Wednesday. The Secret Service said both were intercepted during routine off-site mail screenings. They said Obama and Clinton were not at risk. The CNN bureau in New York received a package addressed to John Brennan, who has appeared as a CNN analyst, leading police to evacuate the Time Warner building in a busy Manhattan neighborhood near Central Park. Additional packages were sent to frequent Trump critics, California congresswoman Maxine Waters and former Attorney General Eric Holder. One package addressed to Waters was intercepted in Washington D.C., while the other was found at a mailing facility in Los Angeles where her office is located. The parcel intended for Holder ended up rerouted to the return address printed on all the packages - Schultz's office in Sunrise, Florida. As authorities continued the manhunt for those behind the attacks, experts speculated on the mastermind behind the pipe bombs. Oxley, the explosives expert from Rhode Island University, said she suspected a single bomber, whereas former CIA agent Bradley said multiple people were probably involved because 'it's hard to coordinate that mail delivery on your own'. Bradley ruled out a dedicated, smart and efficient killer such as Ted Kaczynski, the notorious Unabomber who killed three and injured 23 in a three-decade campaign using sophisticated devices sent through the mail. 'There's a little bit of disconnect, mentally for the person who's doing this, it doesn't sound like it's a cold calculating person like Ted Kaczynski,' Bradley said. 'This is more amateur than professional, but there's also professionals who could have wanted it to look that way.' In the most recent similar incident, five relatively advanced package bombs exploded in Austin, Texas, back in March. Most were sent through Federal Express and triggered by movement. The suspected serial bomber Mark Conditt, 23, later blew himself up. Police stand in front of the Time Warner building where an explosive device was found at the CNN's offices in New York on Wednesday The package sent to Hillary and Bill Clinton's property in Chappaqua, New York was found by an employee who screens their mail. Police guarded the property early Wednesday Experts said that in contrast to the Unabomber and Conditt, this week's would-be bomber used packages that were poorly designed and suspicious in appearance. The bombs seized this week, some of which were intercepted at U.S. Postal Service locations, were inside envelopes and were 6 to 8 inches long. 'The small size restricts what materials might actually function in it,' said Oxley, who has built 130 pipe bombs at the request of the FBI and the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives to aid investigators. The reported presence of polyvinyl chloride (PVC) in at least one of the devices led her to believe the bomb builder wrongly thought the relatively lightweight material would not be detected by X-ray. 'I would prefer to think this was a scare. But this has to be taken seriously,' she said. Larry Johnson, a former head of criminal investigations for the U.S. Secret Service who also served as a special agent in charge of the presidential protective detail, told the AP that bomb makers usually leave evidence behind. Even the most careful bomber is likely to leave behind genetic material that could be used to identify them, especially traces of sweat, saliva or skin cells. There may also be fingerprints or hair. A device addressed to former President Obama's home in Washington D.C. was intercepted by Secret Service. Law enforcement were spotted outside the home early Wednesday morning The bomb packages were sent as the nation prepared for the November 6 elections that will decide whether Democrats take control of one or both houses of Congress from Republicans and deny Trump the majority his party now holds in both chambers. Some top Democrats have called the threats a symptom of a coarsening brand of political rhetoric promoted by Trump, who also condemned the acts. As the scope of the attack became clearer on Wednesday, Trump decried political violence during a scripted event in the White House East Room as other members of the administration said it has no place in American society. 'Let's get along,' Trump said at a Wisconsin rally on Wednesday night. 'By the way, do you see how nice I'm behaving tonight? Have you ever seen this?' But in the same breath, he blamed the media and kept up the argument on Twitter on Thursday that the media plays a role. 'A very big part of the Anger we see today in our society is caused by the purposely false and inaccurate reporting of the Mainstream Media that I refer to as Fake News,' Trump wrote, without directly referencing the explosive devices. 'It has gotten so bad and hateful that it is beyond description. Mainstream Media must clean up its act, FAST!' Trump's tweet attacking the media comes just one day after he called for unity after the first devices were found. The U.S. Post Office Royal Palm Processing & Distribution Center is the largest mailing facility in Miami-Dade County New York Police blocked off streets in Tribeca early Thursday to haul away a suspected explosive device in a containment vessel (above) that had been sent to actor Robert De Niro Authorities removed a second suspicious package addressed to Biden after it was found at a mail facility in nearby Wilmington, Delaware 'I just want to tell you that in these times, we have to unify... we have to come together and send one very clear, strong, unmistakable message that acts or threats of political violence of any kind have no place in the Untied States of America,' he said. The hashtag #MAGAbomber became a top trending Twitter hashtag on Wednesday. White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders called it 'disgraceful' to suggest the president bears any responsibility for the packages sent to his opponents. She told reporters on Thursday that there was a big difference between 'comments made and actions taken'. Several politicians, including Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell and New York Mayor Bill de Blasio, described the serial bombs as an act of terrorism. 'Someone is trying to intimidate. Someone is trying to quash voices in this country using violence,' De Blasio said. 'I am confident that we will find the perpetrator or perpetrators.' Some leading Democrats were quick to accuse Trump himself of stoking the potential for political violence by frequently engaging in hyper-partisan, vitriolic rhetoric. Democratic party leaders in Congress said Trump's call for unity rang hollow because of his past statements condoning acts of violence. Last week, Trump, who has joined other Republicans in accusing Democrats of encouraging 'mob' tactics, heaped praise on a Montana congressman who assaulted a reporter in 2017. At an event in Texas on Wednesday, Brennan faulted Trump for frequent inflammatory rhetoric. Marc Fetzer wants his day in court. Yesterday, he and his attorney told a press conference they did not get it. Attorney George Castrataro hosted a forum to brief the community on a case he was handling for a Broward County school teacher, Marc Fetzer, who had sued the school district for claims of wrongful LGBT discrimination. Castrataro and his client held an informational session at the Pride Center at Equality Park to brief the community members about the status of Fetzer's case. Fetzer himself explained that his goal is to bring about change at the local level, in order for other LGBT people "to not experience discrimination in the workplace. Fetzer urged everyone "to know the importance of voting" in all local and national elections. Additionally, he asked for everyone to get involved with organizations "like Equality Florida; who stand and fight for the rights of all LGBT Florida residents." Marc Fetzers first claims against the school board were made in 2014, when he filed an Equal Employment Opportunity Commission complaint. While those did not prevail, he received a right to sue letter, eventually retaining George Castrataros firm as his counsel. On June 1, 2016, Castrataro filed against the School Board in Broward Circuit Court, alleging that Fetzer had been illegally discriminated against. Castrataros lawsuit alleged his client was bullied, amongst other things, with the school board not acting responsively or responsibly to protect him. In addition, Fetzers lawsuit alleged that he encountered inappropriate acts of discrimination against him that violated policies mandated within the Broward County School District. Over the years, the school district has heralded its own pro LGBT and anti-discrimination policies. Fetzers case, however, was dismissed earlier this year when lawyers for the school board successfully argued Florida state law does not recognize sexual orientation as a protected class. They won a pre trial motion known as 'summary judgment, claiming that Fetzers argument does not meet the legal threshold to proceed in court. "No Florida court has extended the protections under the Florida Civil Rights Act to sexual orientation, and the Legislature has repeatedly chosen not to extend workplace protection to the LGBTQ community, stated Eugene Pettis, one of the school boards attorneys. Castrataro disagreed, and said he is considering appealing the ruling. The legal issue being debated is whether the Florida Civil Rights Act applies to the teachers claim. We think it does, Castrataro said. The School Board prevailed, saying it does not. "Regretfully, the motion for summary judgment was granted, effectively ending the case with no argument as to the merits., Castrataro acknowledged, adding instead that We think that my client was wrongfully bullied and abused because of his LGBT status. We want the facts heard. Ultimately, Castrataro seeks a ruling on the merits of his claim, arguing that the circuit court made the wrong decision. First, he can ask for a rehearing of his arguments in Broward Circuit Court. After that, Castrataros next forum would be to take an appeal to the Fourth District Court of Appeal in West Palm Beach, which may review decisions of the circuit court. This is the hilarious moment a man with a megaphone shouts at pedestrians, drivers and cyclists and awards them points when crossing at a junction. Footage captured by an onlooker shows a man wearing a purple shirt as he studies the commuters' performance at a busy road in Blackfriars, central London. The eccentric man points out people for their behaviour and deducts or awards points from his fictitious 'social credit score'. He says: 'Well done for waiting plus two points for your fantastic behaviour.' A man in a purple shirt shouts through a megaphone at commuters on a busy junction in Blackfriars, central London When a silver car is caught stuck on a pedestrian crossing during a green man, he shouts through the megaphone: 'Oi! what are you doing you naughty car. 'Now how do you feel? stuck in there obstructing all the people trying to walk. Mr Toyota Prius you naughty boy.' The eccentric man then goes on to describe his social credit score system and how commuters can earn points for good behaviour. He says: 'Ladies and gentleman we're here just to remind you of the government's new scheme of social credit. He praises cyclists for their good behaviour when using the road and awards them 'social credit' points 'All you have to do is obey the little red man and you can get two points on your social credit score.' A pedestrian tries to make a quick dash to the other side of the road during a green light but the man spots him immediately. He says: 'If you do what this man has done which is just flagrantly disobey the red man and cross whenever he likes - unfortunately we'll have to deduct two points from his social credit score.' When a pedestrian tries to cross at a green light, the eccentric man berates them and deducts points He then praises well-behaved pedestrians and pokes fun at those who are desperate to cross the road by instructing them to 'breathe in and hold it for a few seconds.' He says: 'But as for the rest of you I'm really pleased with what your doing here, you seem to be quite relaxed and calm.' 'It's probably going to be another minute or so if you can hack it. If not maybe you can get some Valiums down you if have got any on you. 'Everyone just breathe nicely. I want to see you breathe in through your nose and hold it for a few seconds - unless you're a politician in which case just keep holding it.' Some 39 Tory MPs - including over a dozen ministers - could lose their seats over the controversial Universal Credit scheme, new research today suggests. Leading Conservatives including Amber Rudd and Iain Duncan Smith - the architect of the welfare shake-up - are on the at risk list. And ministers including Secretary of State for Wales Alun Cairns, Environment Minister George Eustice and Work and Pensions Minister Alok Sharma could also lose their seats. Analysis by 38 degrees, given exclusively to MailOnline, shows the Tory MPs have constituencies where the number of universal credit claimants is bigger than their majorities. The research comes amid dire warnings that poor families could lose up to 2,400 a year under the hugely controversial shake-up. Critics say families will be left relying on food banks, while ex Tory PM John Major said the change will be as unpopular as the poll tax, which sparked riots and helped topple Margaret Thatcher. Today's research piles yet more pressure on Chancellor Philip Hammond to find extra money in next week's Budget to bail out the scheme. Former ministers Anna Soubry (pictured left, at last week's People's Vote demonstration) and Amber Rudd (pictured right at the Tory party conference in October) could lose their seats amid the backlash Today's research piles yet more pressure on Chancellor Philip Hammond (pictured in Downing Street on Wednesday) to find extra money in next week's Budget to bail out the scheme Tory MPs Theresa Villiers (pictured left) and Iain Duncan Smith (pictured right) also have majorities which are dwarfed by the number of universal credit claimants living in their constituencies. Mr Duncan Smith is the architect of the welfare shake-up - but quit the Cabinet over welfare cuts and has demanded another 2billion be pumped into Universal Credit to make it work Charlotte Woodworth, Campaigns Director at 38 Degrees, said: 'Tens of thousands of people have called on the Chancellor to ease the pain of Universal Credit. 'And hundreds of 38 Degrees members affected by Universal Credit have emailed their MPs to share their fears. 'While the concern about its effects is widespread, this analysis shows the government also face a political cost. 'Our analysis found that in 22 Conservative-held constituencies, the number of people who could see their income reduced is five times greater than the majority of the current MP. 'Our calculations found that if just a fifth of those affected are Conservative voters who switch their vote, Theresa May's government could be in deep trouble. 'Our 38 degrees members are calling on the Chancellor to use his Budget to give more money to universal credit and so ease the pain families up and down the country are facing.' WHAT IS UNIVERSAL CREDIT? What is Universal Credit? A radical change to the benefits system which combines six payments including tax credits, housing benefit and income support into a single, means-tested payment. How does it work? A claimant's benefits should be adjusted automatically if their wages change. Benefits will gradually 'taper' off if a claimant finds work or earns more. What is the timetable? After teething troubles with the computer systems implementation has been hit by delays. There are currently around 610,000 on UC and this will go up by anther 12 million over the next five years. Why a five-week delay on payments? Controversially the benefit is paid five weeks in arrears - this is because it is based on your previous month's earnings. Critics say this delay pushed people into debt. Advertisement Universal Credit combines six benefits - jobseeker's allowance, tax credits, housing benefit, income support, child tax credits and employment and support allowance - into one monthly payment. It is designed to make the welfare system less complicated and ensure no-one faces a situation where they would be better off claiming benefits than working. But according to reports, millions of families could be left up to 200-a-month worse off when the new system is introduced in July. Theresa May is facing a massive Tory backlash over shake-up, and many leading Conservatives have demanded Mr Hammond find extra money to bail out the programme when he unveils his Budget on Monday. Sir John Major said Universal Credit could prove as unpopular as the poll tax which sparked riots, while Johnny Mercer - tipped as a possible future Tory leader - said he cannot support it. And Mr Duncan Smith - the architect of Universal Credit who quit the Cabinet over welfare cuts - said 2billion extra must be ploughed into the scheme for it to work well. Debbie Taylor, a nursery worker and mum of one, 33, from Croydon, in south London, said: 'I've always worked and now work part-time at a nursery to enable me to look after my son and avoid high childcare costs (as I'm a single mum). 'I used to receive Child Tax Credits and Working Tax Credits but was told in April that I had to move to Universal Credit. 'I understood that cuts would be made, as the Government needed to crack down and encourage some people back into work, but I was reassured I wouldn't be significantly impacted as a hard working citizen. 'However, since the changeover my payments have been inconsistent and have left me much worse off - from anywhere between 150-600 less a month. 'The Universal Credit team say this is due to an error in the system and while they, HMRC and Payroll wrangle over who is at fault, I remain the one out of pocket and the one who has to keep chasing this up - spending further time and money on stressful calls and emails and repeatedly providing bank statements, payslips and HMRC information to fight for what I'm due. Welsh Secretary Alun Cairns (pictured left at Tory Party conference earlier this month) is also vulnerable to being ousted over the policy, as is former Cabinet Minister Justine Greening (pictured right) 'I work hard and have always lived from pay cheque to pay cheque, budgeting wisely to make my money stretch for me and my son, but I've now been signed off work by my GP, due to stress. 'It's ironic that a system that is trying to get people back into work is actually pushing hard-working people like myself to the brink and out of work due to the mental strain of it all and not actually being able to afford to get there. 'I'm fearful about whether I'll have a roof over our heads next month, I've had to start to walk everywhere as cannot afford to travel and I've had to cut further back on food. I simply don't know what more I can do now.' Responding to previous criticism of Universal Credit, a Government spokesperson said: 'Universal Credit is based on the sound principles that work should always pay and those who need support receive it. 'We are listening to concerns about achieving these principles, improving the benefit, and targeting support to the most vulnerable - including for around 1 one million disabled people who will receive a higher award under Universal Credit. 'This is a far cry from the confusing, unreliable legacy system that failed to pay claimants their full entitlements and consigned people to a lifetime on benefits.' Hitman Kristopher Love, 34, has been found guilty of capital murder for shooting Kendra Hatcher in Dallas in 2015 A gun-for-hire has been found guilty of killing a dentist outside her apartment as part of a plot allegedly put together by her boyfriend's jealous ex. Kristopher Love, 34, was found guilty of capital murder in a Dallas courtroom on Thursday for shooting Kendra Hatcher, 35, in the head in September 2015. Jurors heard how Love was recruited for the killing, allegedly by 36-year-old Brenda Delgado who wanted revenge after Hatcher began dating her ex Ricardo Paniagua. The trial began on Monday with closing statements read on Thursday before jurors were sent out for deliberations, The Dallas Morning News reports. They took just three hours to return a guilty verdict for Love and prosecutors say they will now seek the death penalty. Hearings over the punishment will begin on Monday, with Love facing the prospect of becoming the first man sent to death row from Dallas county since 2013. The court heard how Delgado and Paniagua began dating in 2012 and were an item for two and a half years before Paniagua decided to break it off. Hatcher (left) was killed after she began dating Ricardo Paniagua (right) as part of a revenge plot allegedly cooked up by his ex-girlfriend But Delgado 'could not let go', prosecutors said, and began following Paniagua around. 'I would go running at the Katy Trail and sometimes when I was running she would be running the opposite direction,' Paniagua claimed. When Hatcher came on the scene in May 2015, Delgado's attentions focused on her instead. Paniagua told the court that their relationship progressed quickly and the pair had set up a wedding fund by August that year. That convinced Delgado that she had to kill her love rival, prosecutors argued. Ex Brenda Delgado (left) is now facing her own capital murder trial. Friend Crystal Cortes (right), who acted as the getaway driver, has already pleaded guilty to murder with 35 years in jail after agreeing to testify against Love and Delgado Prosecutors are now seeking the death penalty for Love, with hearings to begin on Monday Evidence showed that she shopped around for someone to kill Hatcher, before landing on Love and her friend Crystal Cortes, who was to act as the driver. Jurors heard how Cortes was given $500 while Love was paid in 'drugs and money' for the hit. The pair went to confront Hatcher at her apartment on September 2, 2015, the day before she was supposed to leave for a romantic getaway in Mexico with Paniagua. Lawyers said Love walked up to Hatcher and shot her in the head with a .40-caliber Smith & Wesson which was later found stashed in his car. Paniagua was waiting inside the apartment as she was killed. CCTV images show a black Jeep containing Love and Cortes which pulled into the parking lot of Hatcher's apartment building before she was killed During the trial, lawyers for Love tried to argue that he had only robbed Hatcher of her purse and that Cortes had been the one to pull the trigger. But jurors swept that argument aside and found him guilty of murder. Delgado fled to Mexico after the killing but was caught and returned to Texas, where she now faces trial for capital murder. Cortes was initially going to be tried for the same crime, but it was downgraded to murder and her sentence reduced to 35 years as part of a plea deal after she agreed to testify against Love and Delgado. Hatcher's mother, Bonnie Jamseon, cried in court after the verdict was read and hugged the Dallas homicide detective who investigated her daughter's death. A trial date has not been set for Delgado, but she will not be eligible for the death penalty as part of the extradition agreement with Mexico. Firms selling Remembrance Sunday themed jewellery have been found to not be donating proceeds from the sales back to the Royal British Legion. Some of the online outlets have even 'cashed in' on Poppy Day by brazenly mentioning the official campaign but still not donating profits, reveals the Sun. Official partner QVC has also been slammed for giving 'only a third' to the charity and concealing this information in the small print. Brighton based Scarlett Jewellery was revealed to sell a Poppy charm but the company is no longer a licenced partner of the British Legion and does not donate profits from sales Website Poppyshopliveon.org.uk also stocks Remembrance items but it is not clear how much, if any of the profits, actually go to the Royal British Legion appeal Legion supporter Ron Grenald, 58, from Hampshire, said: 'You would never know they gave that small an amount unless you looked for it. 'It's disgraceful. Big stores should donate all the profits, like Marks & Spencer does.' Brighton based company Scarlett Jewellery was revealed to sell an enamel poppy shaped charm which was described as 'symbol of remembrance, a symbol of the Royal British Legion to never forget those we lost.' However Scarlett are no longer a licensed partner of the Royal British Legion and profits from the charm are not donated back to the fundraiser. Website Shrieking Violet also has a collection of silver pendant necklaces, earrings, bracelets and brooches that are described as being 'perfect for remembrance.' Profits from these accessories are not given to the Royal British Legion however the company said they have donated in the past. Elizabeth Minder, 42, a Legion fundraiser and poppy seller, from Redhill in Surrey told the Sun: 'Profiteering from such an honourable cause is saddening. It's stooping low to earn from the dead.' Another firm Poppyshopliveon.org.uk sells a number of Remembrance themed items such as brooches showing soldiers boots and helmets next to a red poppy. TV channel QVC are an official partner of the Royal British Legion and donate a third of profits from their sales to the charity Dozens of items are included in the QVC Poppy Collection, including a sparkling brooch, but they have been slammed for saying that only 'a third' is donated in the small print This site's web address is even similar to the Legion's Poppyshop.org.uk. Its pages feature forces pictures and the slogan 'Lest we forget'. But customers who asked were just told it gave 'ten to 100 per cent' to good causes, with no confirmation any money went to the Legion, reports the Sun. The 'About' section online explains that: 'Even though we do contribute to charity we are in no way affiliated to the rbl' and it is unclear which causes they do give too. Official partner of the British Legion TV channel QVC was also rapped for giving just a third of proceeds and hiding that in small print. Items include a fabric brooch, beaded bracelets and poppy patterned umbrellas. A third of the profits from the sparkle brooch (right) sold by QVC will make its way back to the Legion's campaign however proceeds from the sale of the Scarlett Jewellery enamel charm (left) will not be donated In extra information about the item listing QVC explain what will happen with the sale and estimate that this years total donation for 2018 is expected to be 100,000. A spokesperson for Scarlett Jewellery said: 'We have worked with the British Legion for over ten years and it's very disappointing that our licence has now ended. 'The Legion now sells their own range of products and doesn't work with as many smaller businesses. 'We've now stopped selling the charm which we use to donate proceeds from.' Shrieking Violet said: 'We make jewellery with real flowers and have worked with the Legion in the past and offered discounted rates to them for our products. 'Last year we did a campaign for War Child and donated some of the proceeds. 'However it's difficult to reach the minimum donation required by the Legion to sell products for them and we would struggle to reach that this year.' A Royal British Legion spokesperson said: 'We are aware of non Legion sites such as PoppyShopLiveOn.org.uk, and are taking appropriate steps. Our legal team is also looking into the claims.' Poppyshopliveon.org.uk said they donate 'all proceeds' to the British Legion at the end of their campaign and 'RBL issues us a certificate of receipt which we email to all the people who ordered from us.' They added that customers who are 'uncomfortable' with this should order directly from poppyshop.org.uk. QVC have been contacted by MailOnline for comment. Parts of Queensland are suffering through a blistering 44 degree heatwave and it could get even hotter - as parts of the state recorded their hottest ever October temperatures. Experts said the sunshine state's hot streak heading into the weekend would hold out until Saturday before a cold front sweeps through the state on Sunday. The mercury in Brisbane hit 32 degrees on Friday, but it was western parts of the state that felt the brunt of the scorching weather. Scroll down for video Parts of Queensland are suffering through a blistering 44 degree heatwave and it could get even hotter - as parts of the state recorded their hottest ever October temperatures (pictured sun-seekers make the most of the rays on Friday at the South Bank Parklands, Brisbane) Crowds gathered to escape the heat at Streets Beach in the South Bank Parklands in Brisbane as the city sweated through temperatures around 32C on Friday And the Bureau of Meteorology warned said parts of the state could reach record temperatures over the weekend before the cooler front drifts in Weather stations in Birdsville, on the border with South Australia, recorded temperatures highs of 44.4 degrees - the hottest October day ever. Longreach in central Queensland, meanwhile, had temperatures of 42 degrees as the state's Rural Fire Service issued a severe fire warning for the Darling Downs region west of Brisbane. Weatherzone duty forecaster Tom Hough said western parts of the state would continue to see temperatures in the low 40s on Saturday - although Brisbane would likely cool down to around 36 degrees. And the Bureau of Meteorology warned said parts of the state could reach record temperatures over the weekend before the cooler front drifts in. Across the state, Queenslanders are sweltering through temperatures more than 10 degrees above the October average according to the BoM. Queensland Ambulance Service clinical quality and patient safety director Tony Hucker urged people to take precautions with temperatures set to remain high. Queensland Ambulance Service clinical quality and patient safety director Tony Hucker urged people to take precautions with temperatures set to remain high Across the state, Queenslanders are sweltering through temperatures more than 10 degrees above the October average according to the BoM South-east Queensland is experiencing unseasonably hot conditions for this time of year, with temperatures hitting the high thirties across the region He said: 'It's about making sure you stay inside when it's cool, wear loose-fitted clothing and keeping your fluids up. 'The people we're most concerned about when there's a heat event is the older folks, young kids and people who are sick at home.' The owner of the Birdcage Hotel in Longreach told ABC News although temperatures were expected to continue to soar most locals were accustomed to the heat. He said: 'It gets hard for the workers who work in it - the bricklayers, the chippies and the painters - they'll feel it this time of year.' Meanwhile, in New South Wales, rainy weather has cleared to make way for sunny skies and temperatures in the low to mid 20s. The thermostat in Sydney is expected to hover in the low 20s until Tuesday. Experts said the Sunshine State's hot streak heading into the weekend would hold out until Saturday before a cold front sweeps through the state on Sunday Meanwhile, in New South Wales, rainy weather has cleared to make way for sunny skies and temperatures in the low to mid 20s Brisbane and the Gold Coast (pictured) braced as temperatures across the Sunshine State reached the mid 30s - but it was the western towns of Longreach and Birdsville that saw the mercury rise the highest The scale of the housing crisis was laid bare today with figures showing a growing divide between 'haves' and 'have nots'. Home ownership has slumped among the poorest 60 per cent of households - with incomes of 30,000 or less - since 2010. But by the number of home owners in the top 40 per cent of incomes has actually risen by nearly 190,000. Shadow housing secretary John Healey, who unearthed the figures, told MailOnline they demonstrated the need for change in the Budget. He warned that the property market was only benefiting 'fat cats' and insisted local people should be given 'first dibs' on new homes in their areas. Mr Healey said the government's Help to Buy scheme - which underwrites loans and deposits for purchasers - was 'skewed' towards those on higher salaries. The number of home owners in the top 40 per cent of household incomes has risen by nearly 190,000 since 2010 The average household income of recipients in England is 51,000, and in London it is 69,000. Nearly 7,000 users of the scheme have had incomes over 100,000, while a fifth of those granted help are not first-time buyers. Chancellor Philip Hammond is expected to put housing at the heart of his financial package on Monday. Theresa May signalled at Tory conference earlier this month that councils will be freed to borrow more to leverage building in their areas. Overall homeownership is at a 30-year low after years of soaring prices - especially in London and the South East. There are growing concerns that the younger generation risk being shut out of the market altogether. According to the analysis by Mr Healey, in 2009-10 some 7,500,113 households with incomes up to around 30,000 a year owned homes. But by 2016-17 that had fallen to 7,233,639. But the picture for those in the top 40 per cent - with incomes of more than 30,000 was dramatically different. The number of households in that bracket who own properties rose from 7,024,508 to 7,210,419. Mr Healey said that had driven a significant increase in the number of working families renting from private landlords. One in four families with dependent children now rent privately a figure which has more than doubled over the past decade. Chancellor Philip Hammond (pictured delivering his Budget last year) is expected to put housing at the heart of his latest financial package on Monday Shadow housing secretary John Healey (pictured at party conference last month) said the government's Help to Buy scheme - which underwrites loans and deposits for purchasers - was 'skewed' towards those on higher salaries Mr Healey said: 'Conservative Ministers have given up on helping households on ordinary incomes get that first foot on the housing ladder. The gap between housing 'haves' and 'have-nots' is growing. 'England's real middle are the working people in decent jobs who still find sky-high house prices out of reach, and who need Government to back them to buy that special first home. These are the shop-workers, nurses, HGV drivers and joiners the backbone of the British economy and the heart of our public services. 'The next Labour Government will back first-time buyers with 'first dibs' on new homes built in their areas, and a new generation of FirstBuy homes, with prices discounted so month-to-month mortgage costs are only around a third of local average incomes. 'The last eight years have been boom-time for property fat-cats - the Chancellor should use this Budget to help England's real middle instead.' A fearless shopkeeper in south China has been hailed a hero for tackling and successfully disarming a knife-wielding robber. The man, surnamed Hong, was working behind the counter when the suspect pulled out a large blade on him on Thursday at about 1am in a village in Dongguan, Guandong province. Unfazed, Hong started wrestling with the robber and was eventually able to pin him on the ground. His wife immediately alerted police and the suspect has been detained. A shopkeeper in south China has been hailed a hero for tackling and successfully disarming a knife-wielding robber. The two struggled for nearly two minutes before police arrived Unfazed, Hong started wrestling with the robber and was able to pin him on the ground The owner fought back and attempted to disarm the robber with his bare hands Surveillance footage of the dramatic incident shows the robber looking at his mobile phone while pretending to purchase cigarettes and several cans of pop at the cashier. As soon as Hong had his back turned, the man pulled out a large knife from his pocket and threatened Hong with it. However, the owner fought back and attempted to disarm him with his bare hands. The pair struggled for nearly two minutes in the shop before the robber was eventually pinned to the ground. Hong is also seen punching and kicking the man in the face several times. Surveillance footage of the dramatic incident shows the robber looking at his mobile phone while pretending to purchase cigarettes and several cans of pop at the cashier As soon as Hong had his back turned, the man pulled out a large knife from his pocket. However, the owner fought back and attempted to disarm him with his bare hands Hong is also seen punching and kicking the robber in the face several times Both the shop owner and the robber were taken to hospital with minor injuries after police arrived on scene, according to Gaobu district police in a statement. Hong's actions were commended by officers who visited him at hospital on Thursday afternoon. The police said that he had shown 'remarkable courage' in the incident. The robber has been detained and the incident is being investigated. Both the shop owner and the robber were taken to hospital with minor injuries A boy of eight was repeatedly raped at a notorious children's home by his 'housefather' then branded a liar and forced to apologise to him, an inquiry heard yesterday. The Scottish Child Abuse Inquiry (SCAI) was told the Quarriers Village in Bridge of Weir, Renfrewshire was similar to a 'prison' - except that prisoners were treated more kindly than residents. A 67-year-old witness, using the name Troy, who was admitted to Quarriers aged seven, said the man in charge of the house where he lived was 'pure evil' and told the boys to call him 'father'. The witness described a chilling regime where children were forced to eat their food and if they were sick were even forced to eat their own vomit, while bed-wetters had to sleep on the floor. A 67-year-old witness, 'Troy', was admitted to Quarriers Village in Bridge of Weir, Renfrewshire (file image) aged seven. He told a hearing in Edinburgh that he was raped by his housefather while clearing up after dinner one evening - an attack that left him 'screaming in agony' Troy said children who ran away were beaten when they were returned, leaving them screaming and badly bruised, while physical 'punishments' were routinely meted out. He told the inquiry: 'You got punished not just one night or two nights, but many nights.' The pensioner broke down as he told a hearing in Edinburgh that he was raped by his housefather while clearing up after dinner one evening, an attack that left him 'screaming in agony' and was repeated a further three times over his years at Quarriers, robbing him of his 'dignity'. Troy told the inquiry: 'I was screaming, I was begging, I lost my religion through that.' After the attack, the rapist, who cannot be named for legal reasons, beat Troy with a belt and had his foot on Troy's back as he ordered him not to tell anyone about his ordeal. But Troy informed staff at the main office of the home and was told: 'You apologise to that man right now.' It was drummed into me, if anyone asked me, I had to tell them I fell out of a tree. There were many kids in that cottage who fell out of a tree 'Troy' Troy said he was taken back to the 'cottage' as the large Victorian properties where children lived were called and belted again. He said his abuser reminded him he had been told to keep quiet, and that he was a 'dirty child'. Troy said: 'It was drummed into me, if anyone asked me, I had to tell them I fell out of a tree. There were many kids in that cottage who fell out of a tree.' He said he told no-one else about the attack and 'kept it locked away', adding that in later life he 'lost count of the times I have tried to commit suicide'. Troy said he broke down when he found out at the SCAI that Quarriers had apologised to victims of abuse. He said: 'That was all I wanted; so many of us wanted that apology.' Troy left Quarriers when he was aged around nine or 10. The Scottish Child Abuse Inquiry (SCAI) was told Quarriers was similar to a 'prison' - except that prisoners were treated more kindly than residents. The inquiry, before Lady Smith (pictured), continues Another witness using the name Arthur, who was born in 1950 and was admitted to the home in 1957 when his mother became ill with tuberculosis, said he was forced to eat his own vomit. Children were strapped if they watched as other youngsters were physically disciplined as they had been told not to look. He said: 'You weren't treated well. Everyone seemed to be shouting at you; it was a very aggressive environment.' A third witness using the name Jenny, who was born in 1951 and was admitted to Quarriers in 1955, initially believed the home was 'like a Utopia'. But she discovered that a woman in her early twenties who cared for her was 'pure evil' and washed her mouth with carbolic soap, telling Jenny she would 'go to hell' and that she should be 'more grateful'. A PE teacher sexually abused Jenny when she was aged eight or nine, something which happened seven times over 18 months. Other girls were also sexually abused by him, but the teacher - who cannot be named for legal reasons - later moved to another school. In a statement read out to the inquiry, Jenny said she believed one girl at Quarriers had died of an epileptic fit and in another case a baby had choked to death in a cot, yet she claimed there was no record of these children's burials. She later found out that 80 headstones had 'gone missing' for children who died at Quarriers between the 1940s and 1960s, and Jenny and a friends had campaigned for the headstones to be replaced. Another witness using the name Louise, who was admitted to Quarriers aged one in 1955, said her housemother - who insisted the children call her 'Mummy' regularly set off a fire alarm to summon children to be strapped in her room late at night. Louise said was held down and force-fed, and was told: 'It was God that put that food down you eat it.' The inquiry, before Lady Smith, continues. Tommy Robinson has been invited to give an address in Washington by members of the US Congress, just weeks after being released from prison. The English Defence League founder, 35, was asked by the US think tank the Middle East Forum (MEF) and the David Horowitz Freedom Centre, a right-wing Conservative foundation to address members at a closed door meeting. Robinson, real name Stephen Yaxley-Lennon, remains on bail after being charged with contempt of court and has a string of previous criminal convictions. Tommy Robinson has been invited to give an address in Washington by members of the US Congress, just weeks after being released from prison. Robinson, real name Stephen Yaxley-Lennon, remains on bail after being charged with contempt of court and has a string of previous criminal convictions As a result, it is unclear whether he will be allowed to enter the country. The MEF said on its website that Republican Paul Gosar and six other members of Congress invited Robinson to speak to the Conservative Opportunity Society. This week Robinson was expected to face a hearing on allegations he broke reporting restrictions by broadcasting on social media from outside Leeds Crown Court during a child sex ring trial. What happens next? The Attorney General's office will now consider the evidence in the case and decide whether to take it forward. Tommy Robinson has denied the charges and asked to give evidence in person, while also being given an advocate. Should the office decide there is a case, a new hearing will take place at the High Court. It will take place before a judge, with the prosecution and defence presenting their arguments. Advertisement Judge Nicholas Hilliard said he was going to refer the case to the Attorney General. Judge Hilliard QC said he would ask the Attorney General to give the case "his most urgent consideration" but the case was adjourned for a future as-yet unknown date. Robinson was jailed for 13 months in May but he was freed on appeal in August after the Court of Appeal quashed the contempt of court finding Tommy Robinson posed for a picture on Instagram on his way to court yesterday, wearing a suit and tie and smiling broadly Others waved Union Jacks with the slogan #FreeTommy on as they protested the court case How sex gang trial led to Tommy Robinson's jailing A judge found that the Huddersfield grooming trials were put at risk by the antics of English Defence League founder Tommy Robinson (pictured when he was arrested). He flouted reporting restrictions designed to ensure the proceedings were fair. Reporting of the case was postponed because the defendants were being dealt with in separate trials. In such cases, reporting is sometimes postponed until the final case so jurors cannot be prejudiced by reading accounts of previous trials. Video footage showed him approaching defendants outside Leeds Crown Court. The video was viewed on social media 250,000 times within hours. Robinson was given a 13-month jail term by Judge Geoffrey Marson QC in May, but was released from HMP Onley in Rugby on August 1 after successfully challenging the contempt of court ruling. The ban on reporting has now been lifted and the 20 cases are no longer active. However, Robinson could be sent back to jail if a ruling of contempt of court is made at a fresh hearing, due to take place at the Old Bailey on October 23. Advertisement The eldest son of murdered Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi arrived in Washington with his family from Saudi Arabia on Thursday, according to two sources close to the family, after U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo pushed for his return. Salah Khashoggi, who holds dual U.S.-Saudi citizenship and had thus far been under a travel ban, departed Saudi Arabia on Wednesday. He and his family joined his mother and his three siblings in Washington, said the sources, both speaking on condition of anonymity. Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman meets relatives of murdered Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi on Tuesday Several hours after their arrival, State Department deputy spokesman Robert Palladino disclosed that Pompeo told Saudi leaders in Riyadh earlier this month that 'he wanted Salah Khashoggi returned to the United States.' 'We are pleased that is the case,' Palladino said, reiterating that the United States is continuing to press for 'all the relevant facts' in the killing of Khashoggi in the Saudi consulate in Istanbul on Oct. 2. His arrival came just days after Jamal Khashoggi's son glared at Saudi Prince Mohammed bin Salman during a meeting in Riyadh on Tuesday when he shared a stern handshake with the powerful heir at the city's Yamama Palace. King Salman was also present as the royals 'offered their condolences' to grieving family members, who included Salah's brother Sahel. A friend of the Khashoggi family said the government banned them from leaving the country last year in a bid to pressure the journalist to return home. Saudis close to the crown prince were among those who entered the Saudi consulate in Istanbul shortly before Khashoggi's killing, and international attention has focused on whether such an act could have been carried out without his knowledge. King Salman (right) was also present today as the royals 'offered their condolences' to grieving family members, who included Salah's brother Sahel Salah bin Jamal Khashoggi, a dual US-Saudi citizen, had his passport blocked last year because officials wanted to lure his dissident father home, it was reported. His travel ban was lifted and he flew to Washington DC with his family, Human Rights Watch was told by a friend. 'Salah and his family are on a plane to DC now,' said Sarah Leah Whitson, the group's executive director for the Middle East and North Africa said as he was en route. His arrival comes as skepticism intensified about Saudi Arabia's account that Khashoggi (pictured) died accidentally in its consulate in Istanbul There was no immediate comment from Saudi officials but Ms Whitson said the family were apparently allowed to leave after a travel ban on Salah was lifted. The move is the latest event in the saga of the Saudi writer and dissident whose macabre killing earlier this month at the Saudi consulate in Istanbul shocked the world. US state department spokesman Robert Palladino said Washington welcomed the decision to have Salah Khashoggi and his family leave Saudi Arabia. His destination has not been disclosed, but his late father lived in the Washington area. Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman meets relatives of murdered Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi on Tuesday A vigil for Jamal Khashoggi in Istanbul (AP) Mr Palladino said US secretary of state Mike Pompeo had discussed Jamal Khashoggi's son during his recent visit to Riyadh and 'made it clear' to Saudi leaders that Washington wanted him free to leave the kingdom. 'We are pleased that he is now able to do so,' Mr Palladino said. Saudi media had showed images of a meeting earlier this week between Mr Khashoggi's son and Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, who reportedly expressed his condolences. Mr Palladino also said Mr Pompeo attended a briefing on the former Washington Post writer's death by CIA director Gina Haspel, following her return from Turkey. Mr Khashoggi was killed in the Saudi consulate in Istanbul on October 2 (AP) The developments came after the kingdom cited evidence showing Mr Khashoggi's killing was premeditated, changing its story again to try to ease international outrage over the death of a prominent critic of Crown Prince Mohammed. The announcement contradicted an earlier Saudi assertion that rogue officials from the kingdom had killed Mr Khashoggi by mistake in a brawl inside their Istanbul consulate. That assertion, in turn, backtracked from an initial statement that Saudi authorities knew nothing about what happened to the columnist for The Washington Post, who vanished after entering the consulate October 2. The shifting explanations indicate Saudi Arabia is scrambling for a way out of the crisis that has enveloped the world's largest oil exporter and a major US ally in the Middle East. However, a solution seems a long way off, partly because of deepening scepticism in Turkey and elsewhere that the brazen crime could have been carried out without the knowledge of Prince Mohammed, the heir apparent to King Salman. Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman meets relatives of murdered Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi on Tuesday An activist wearing a mask depicting Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman (AP) At a conference in Riyadh, the crown prince said the killing was a 'heinous crime that cannot be justified' and warned against any efforts to 'manipulate' the crisis and drive a wedge between Saudi Arabia and Turkey, which are regional rivals but also diplomatic and business partners. On Thursday, Prince Mohammed attended the first meeting of a committee aiming to restructure the kingdom's intelligence services after the killing of Mr Khashoggi, the state-run Saudi Press Agency said. Mr Khashoggi's death has derailed the powerful prince's campaign to project a modern image of the ultra-conservative country, instead highlighting the brutal lengths to which some top officials in the government have gone to silence its critics. Mr Khashoggi, who lived in self-imposed exile in the United States for nearly a year before his death, had written critically of Prince Mohammed's crackdown on dissent. Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman (AP) A statement by Saudi attorney general Saud al-Mojeb attributed the latest findings of a joint Turkish-Saudi investigation to information from Turkish counterparts. The evidence of Turkish investigators 'indicates that the suspects in the incident had committed their act with a premeditated intention', the Saudi statement said. After the journalist disappeared, Saudi Arabia initially insisted Mr Khashoggi had walked out of the consulate after visiting the building. It later dropped that account for a new one, saying it had detained 18 people for what it described as an accidental killing during a 'fistfight'. What US president Donald Trump called 'one of the worst cover-ups in the history of cover-ups' was revealed to the world through information leaks from Turkey, including references to purported audio recordings of the killing and security camera footage of Saudi officials who were involved as they moved around Istanbul. Saudi officials said that the kingdom sent a team to Turkey which included a forensics expert and a member whose job was to dress in the 59-year-old writer's clothes and pretend to be him even though they were insisting as late as Tuesday that Mr Khashoggi's death was an accident. A Superman cape that was part of one of Matthew Shepards Halloween costume, a preschool diploma and a wedding ring are among the items that Dennis and Judy Shepard donated to the museum. They also donated thousands of letters they received after Matthew Shepards death. Each object and piece of paper forever serves as evidence of American lives and histories, said Susan Fruchter, the museums interim director, during a ceremony that Dennis and Judy Shepard attended. It is through these acts of memory that we find common ground, empathy and resolve. The objects being donated today will forever be part of the story of civil rights activism woven through our nations history. The Shepards worked with National Museum of American History Curator Katherine Ott and her colleague, archivist Franklin Robinson, Jr., to determine which of their sons papers and personal items they would donate. The Shepards did not choose to become part of history, said Ott during the ceremony. Certainly, they chose to be parents, they chose to live in Wyoming. They chose to be good neighbors, but they did not choose to have their lives overturned and to become continual public figures or to have their older son murdered and then scrutinized and then even sometimes blamed for his own killing. They chose none of that, she added. Matthew Shepard died on Oct. 12, 1998, after Aaron McKinney and Russell Henderson brutally beat him and left him tied to a fence in Laramie, Wyo. Dennis and Judy Shepard remain vocal LGBT advocates through their work with the Matthew Shepard Foundation, which they created after their sons murder. We didnt start off this way, said Dennis Shepard during the ceremony. We just thought wed have two great kids. Unfortunately, circumstances have brought us to honor Matt, which is to promote human rights and fight discrimination. Dennis Shepard: Trump prime example of online bullying Sheila Alexander-Reid, director of the D.C. Mayors Office of LGBTQ Affairs, and National LGBT Chamber of Commerce President Justin Nelson are among the more than 200 people who attended the ceremony that took place in the museums Hall of Music. Students from George Mason Universitys School of Theater performed excerpts of The Laramie Project during the ceremony. Harry Lewis, a graduate student at George Washington University, later interviewed Dennis and Judy Shepard. The Shepards reiterated their harsh criticism of President Trump. We have a prime example of online bullying every single day from a big white building, said Dennis Shepard in response to Lewis question about online bullying. The Shepards also discussed the work they said lays ahead for LGBT activists once the Trump administration leaves the White House. Number one it is going to get the rights and privileges that are being chipped away everyday by this administration, said Dennis Shepard. You have a cabinet, a complete cabinet of homophobes you know you have a struggle to start with and when you see the lack of civility they are portraying, you know you have work to do. The Shepards reiterated their support for a nationwide ban on discrimination based on sexual orientation and gender identity and called for less heated political rhetoric from Democrats and Republicans alike. The Shepards also praised students at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Fla., who have encouraged young people to register to vote after a gunman killed 17 of their classmates and teachers. Judy Shepard described the Womens March as the most amazing thing that Ive ever witnessed. It was the most joyous day for me, personally, she told Lewis, adding she and her husband support the #MeToo movement. It was everybody who had a voice and they were using their voice. Matthew Shepards ashes to be interred at National Cathedral A candlelight vigil to commemorate Matthew Shepards life the Dupont Festival has organized will take place tonight in Dupont Circle. Retired New Hampshire Bishop V. Gene Robinson, who in 2003 became the Episcopal Churchs first openly gay bishop, is among those scheduled to speak on Friday at the Washington National Cathedral before Matthew Shepards ashes are interred. Robinson attended Thursdays ceremony at the National Museum of American History. A woman has been detained after stabbing her ex-husband during a fight then posting a selfie posing with the blood-soaked man clearly visible. Olga Vaori, 25, from Surgut in Russia, told her friends: 'It looks like I am a beast.' She was later formally detained on suspicion of 'exceeding justifiable self-defence' after plunging a knife into Oleg Smirnov. She claimed that the man had 'attempted to strangle' her during a furious argument fuelled by alcohol. Olga Vaori, 25, from Russia, posted this selfie of herself posing with her blood-soaked ex-husband Oleg Smirnov in the background Smirnov sat covered in blood clutching his arm following the fight with his ex-wife Vaori Vaori picked up the knife and stabbed him. She received out patient treatment for minor injuries, it was reported. He required emergency surgery for a knife wound to his abdomen, it was reported. Vaori - who is allowed to serve her detention at home to care for the ex-couple's two year old child - posted to her friends: 'Guys, I stabbed my ex-husband with a knife. Vaori (pictured) bragged to her followers 'I am a beast' in the caption of the image which she posted to Instagram She was later formally detained on suspicion of 'exceeding justifiable self-defence' after plunging a knife into Smirnov (left) 'I was taken to accident and emergency for three hours. 'And only now have I cleaned up everything. 'It looks like I am a beast.' The woman has no previous criminal record, according to New Day media outlet. She claimed that the man had 'attempted to strangle' her during a furious argument fuelled by alcohol Vaori has no previous criminal record, according to New Day media outlet A law enforcement source said: 'The woman and her former husband were drunk. 'The injured man was hospitalised and underwent surgery. 'He survived.' Vaori has been forbidden from leaving her city during the criminal investigation. She can face a sentence for up to one year if convicted of using excessive force in self defence. Vaori has been allowed to serve her detention at home to care for the ex-couple's two year old child A British wife facing the death penalty for murdering her husband in their idyllic retirement villa in Malaysia has told police she stabbed him in the heart with a kitchen knife in self-defence after suffering years of violent beatings at his hands. Samantha Jones, 62, says husband John punched her in the face and kicked her in the stomach after a night of drinking on the tropical island of Langkawi and even goaded her to stab him when she grabbed a kitchen knife to hold him at bay. In interviews with Malaysian detectives, she says she fled to the bedroom and only thrust the knife into the chest of the burly retired fire-fighter when he chased after her and lunged at her in a renewed attack. After the stabbing, Samantha ran out of the villa and alerted an expatriate woman neighbour. When they tried to go to John's help as he lay stricken, he pointed at Samantha and said in his dying words: 'Stay away. You stabbed me, you stabbed me.' Samantha Jones (left), a British wife facing the death penalty for murdering her husband John (right) in their idyllic retirement villa in Malaysia has told police she stabbed him in the heart with a kitchen knife in self-defence after suffering years of violent beatings at his hands Recalling the moments leading up to her husband's death, Mrs Jones said she stabbed him through the heart at their home for 11 years in Malaysia (pictured) during a row about how late he had been out. She said he was goading her to stab him when she picked up the knife The single knife thrust pierced John's heart and he was dead by the time an ambulance crew arrived at the 200,000 villa where the couple had lived for 11 years in the early hours of October 18th. Petite Samantha, a former insurance clerk from Somerset, is expected to be charged with murder early next week and transferred from police cells in Langkawi to a prison on the Malaysian mainland as she awaits trial. She faces a mandatory sentence of death by hanging under Malaysian law if convicted of murder but the sentence could be reduced to a jail term if the court accepts her claims that she killed her husband, also 62, in self-defence. However, the island's police chief Superintendent Mohamed Iqbal told Mail Online a medical investigation of Samantha after the killing found no evidence of any injuries to support her claim John kicked and punched her. 'There were no injuries (to Samantha) at all,' he said. Dramatic details of the killing and Samantha's claims of abuse by her husband emerged in interviews with neighbours, friends, and police officers investigating case which has shocked the relatively crime-free island where there has been only one other murder this year. The single knife thrust pierced Harley Davison fan John's heart and he was dead by the time an ambulance crew arrived at the couple's 200,000 villa Petite Samantha, a former insurance clerk from Somerset (pictured being arrested) is expected to be charged with murder early next week and transferred from police cells in Langkawi to a prison on the Malaysian mainland as she awaits trial Samantha (pictured in a police van) faces a mandatory sentence of death by hanging under Malaysian law if convicted of murder but the sentence could be reduced to a jail term if the court accepts her claims that she killed her husband, also 62, in self-defence Samantha is being held in police cells on the island of Langkawi and is expected to be charged with murder next week The couple lived in a single-storey home with views over paddy fields in a tiny village two miles from the sea built 11 years ago under Malaysia's My Second Home programme which has seen hundreds of Britons gain residency on the island. Harley Davidson-riding John, who has two grown-up children from a previous marriage and four grandchildren, was a popular and gregarious figure on the island and a regular at bars and restaurants along the lively Centai Beach tourist strip. But despite their seemingly sunny lifestyle, Samantha has told police John was a heavy-drinking wife beater who she twice reported to police in the UK for assault before the couple emigrated to Langkawi. Friends say the couple temporarily split while in Malaysia because of his violent outbursts. John, from Stourport, Worcestershire, underwent treatment to control his temper and his drinking before they reconciled Friends say the couple separated temporarily while in Malaysia because of his violent outbursts. John, originally from Stourport in Worcestershire, underwent treatment to control his temper and his drinking before they reconciled. John, who was chief fire officer in Yeovil, Somerset, immediately before his retirement, had returned from a visit to his family in England shortly before his death. On the day of the murder, the couple went for sunset drinks together on Centai Beach, a popular area for expatriates to meet and drink out of sight of their teetotal local neighbours on the predominantly Muslim island. A close friend of the couple, who asked not to be named, said: 'Sam went home after a while because she wasn't feeling well and John told her he would be home by 9pm. 'He ended up in another bar drinking with a friend. She kept trying to contact him through a friend to tell him to come home he doesn't carry a mobile phone. John didn't go home until after midnight. I just wish I 'd been there to tell him it was time to go home.' A fierce row broke out when John returned home which Samantha claims escalated when John kicked her in the stomach and punched her in the face. A police source said: 'She went into the kitchen and took out a kitchen knife to hold him at bay but he reacted by goading her and pointing to his chest and saying 'Go on then, stab me'.' Detailing what happened that night, Samantha told police a fierce row broke out when John got home which escalated when John kicked her in the stomach and punched her in the face Samantha tells police she then went into the bedroom holding the knife and stabbed her husband once in the chest when he came after her and lunched towards her as she backed up against a wardrobe. She then ran to her neighbours for help and returned with the wife, a middle-aged British expatriate, who witnessed John's dying words as he lay on the villa floor. Looking ashen-faced and upset, the neighbour declined to comment when approached by Mail Online. Samantha's sister has flown from the UK to visit her in the Langkawi police cells where she is being held, say police. A British embassy official from Kuala Lumpur has also visited. Supt Iqbal said the police investigation was now complete and Samantha was expected to appear in court on the island early next week to be charged with murder. 'Samantha has given us good cooperation with our investigation,' he said. 'She said they had a quarrel and then there was a fight and she accidentally stabbed her husband. She has confessed.' Another expatriate friend of the couple, who also asked not to be named, said: 'John and Sam had had had problems in the past and separated for a while and that John went into rehab to get himself sorted out. 'But we thought they'd put all of that behind them. They were absolutely devoted to each other and John even had her name tattooed on the inside of his arm. 'Everyone is just trying to get their heads around what has happened. They were the nicest people you could meet. But who knows what goes on behind closed doors?' One of the couple's near neighbours, taxi driver Mohammed Kamal, 26, said: 'John was a very good guy and always had time for people. Everyone around here liked him. We are all very shocked at what has happened. 'We saw the ambulance arriving at 2.30 am in the morning and we heard John was ill. After five or 10 minutes it left already because John was already dead. Then police arrived at the scene.' Another neighbour, 70-year-old Talib, said John and Samantha had been the first westerners to build a home in their village. Since then, two more British families had built homes on adjoining plots. Mohammed Kamal, 26, (pictured), a neighbour of the couple, said that John was 'a very good guy'. He added: 'Everyone around here liked him. We are all very shocked at what has happened' 'When he first came here he shared our power supply and he was around here all the time,' said Talib. 'He was a good man and always very friendly.' In a tribute to John in his hometown newspaper, relatives said: 'John was a loving family man who thought the world of them. He moved to Malaysia after retiring but often returned to see his family. 'He even came back earlier this year to complete the Three Peaks Challenge, climbing Ben Nevis, Snowdon and Scafell, with his daughter. He spent his whole working life with the fire service and he will be greatly missed.' Although murder currently carries the death penalty in Malaysia, the government has announced it is preparing to change the law to abolish capital punishment. More than 1,200 people are currently on death row in the country. This is the adorable moment a six-month-old puppy took to the water to try out wakeboarding on a lake in Arizona. Labrador Sadie was captured on camera riding waves while attached to the back of a boat with her owner, Tyler. The pair were filmed climbing over the edge of the boat on Lake Powell - the pup's owner lifting her in the air as he settled on the wakeboard. Labrador puppy Sadie and her owner Tyler climb down from a boat onto a wakeboard on Lake Powell, Arizona The boat, which they were attached to by a sturdy rope, then began to travel across the water, causing small waves to break behind it. Sadie, who donned a bright pink life jacket, attempted to swim in the air before she was gently placed on the wakeboard. The pup then stood between Tyler's legs as he held onto the handle of the rope, looking out at the water as they moved across it. Her owner kept one hand on her life jacket to ensure she stayed in place as they rode the black and white board. Tyler holds the young pup in the air by her bright pink life jacket as he settles himself on the board Sadie is then placed between his legs as the boat begins to move, causing small waves to appear Sadie was then lifted into the air again as Tyler brought her back across to the boat, the pair both landing safely on deck. Caitlin Brown, who captured the footage of her husband, said: 'On our yearly trip to Lake Powell, my husband Tyler and my puppy Sadie, show off their skills!' Wakeboarding is a surface water sport in which a rider is towed across a body of water by a motorboat. A $1million reward has been offered for any information regarding the kidnapping and suspected murder of teenager Jessica Small. It has been exactly '21 heartbreaking years' since 15-year-old Jessica Small vanished while hitchhiking in country New South Wales, her mother Ricki told reporters on Friday. She has not been seen or heard from since. 'We know there are other people who know what happened to Jessica,' NSW Homicide Squad Commander, Detective Superintendent Scott Cook said. 'We know there are conversations about Jessica. We know that there are people who are still aware of what occurred. We know that there are people who weren't involved but know about it and haven't come forward.' Scroll down for video A $1million reward has been announced for the kidnapping and suspected murder of Bathurst teenager, Jessica Small (above) It has been exactly '21 heartbreaking years' since 15-year-old Jessica Small (left) vanished while hitchhiking in country NSW, her mother Ricki (right) told reporters 'There's a million reasons on the table for people to come forward.' Jessica was abducted by a man driving a white sedan in the early hours of October 26 1997 in Bathurst, who assaulted her and a friend who managed to escape. She had attended the 'Amuse Me' amusement centre on Russell Street, Bathurst, with a female friend and the pair were attempting to hitch-hike home when they entered a white-coloured sedan driven by an unknown man. Police were told the man stopped the car on Hereford Street, Bathurst, and turned off the headlights, and assaulted both girls, attempting to detain them in the vehicle. Jessica's friend was able to escape and alert nearby residents, but the car drove off with Jessica still inside. Jessica and a female friend were attempting to hitch-hike home when they entered a white-coloured sedan (pictured above) driven by an unknown man Investigators believe the last sighting of the vehicle was near Duramana Road and Willott Close, Eglinton, travelling toward Hill End. Jessica has not been seen or heard from since and a 2014 Coronial Inquest found that she had been murdered. Detectives from the Homicide Squad's Unsolved Homicide Unit are now re-investigating the cold case and the circumstances surrounding Jessica's abduction and suspected murder under Strike Force Carica II. The Minister for Police and Emergency Services, Troy Grant, announced the reward increase, saying: 'The NSW Government is committed to providing police with the resources they need to solve crimes and delivering justice for victims, and the rewards system is part of that commitment.' 'There's a million reasons on the table for people to come forward,' NSW Homicide Squad Commander, Detective Superintendent Scott Cook (pictured) said of the new incentive 'Last year, we worked with police to modernise the reward system, and today we've announced the fifth $1million reward. 'While 21 years have passed since Jessica Small was abducted, police have never given up on catching her abductor, and I know the community still want to see justice served.' Homicide Squad Commander, Detective Superintendent Scott Cook said a considerable effort had been put into locating the old white sedan that Jessica and her friend were picked up in. 'The vehicle itself was not overly distinct, but we know there were holes in the passenger-side foot-well Jessica's friend reported being able to see the road while they were driving,' he said. Jessica (above) has not been seen or heard from since and a 2014 Coronial Inquest found that she had been murdered. Detectives from the Homicide Squad's Unsolved Homicide Unit are now re-investigating the cold case 'We've forensically examined numerous vehicles similar to that described by witnesses, but we have yet to find the car. 'Investigators believe the Eglinton sighting is significant it's a fairly remote area and at that time, most of the roads weren't sealed, so we expect the driver had local knowledge.' Despite speaking with hundreds of people, detectives believe there could be someone else out there with new information that could assist the investigation. 'We hope by refreshing the case in people's memories and with this significant increase in the reward we get that missing piece of the puzzle; the information that leads to an arrest,' Det Supt Cook said. The reward can be provided to anyone who has information that leads to the arrest and conviction of the person/s responsible for Jessica's disappearance and murder. Former sea cadet Jane Kavanagh, 33, had been a full time carer to her 15 year old daughter who was autistic and suffered from the degenerative condition Cerebral Ataxia A single mother killed herself after struggling to care for her wheelchair-bound daughter without any support from her local council, an inquest heard. Jane Kavanagh, 33, had been a full time carer to her 15-year- old daughter who has autism and suffers from the degenerative condition cerebral ataxia, which affects muscle coordination. But despite living on her own with her two children, Miss Kavanagh had no care workers assigned to her, had no adaptations made to her house. Her house was previously deemed 'inadequate' by local authority officials in Rochdale, Greater Manchester, forcing the mother-of-two to move to another property described as 'appalling' by bereft family members. In a suicide note to her parents Alan and Irene Farrar, Miss Kavanagh wrote: 'I just can't find a way to drag myself out of this f****** s******* of a life, I hate myself. 'I want to die all the time, I have for a few months now, every day.' She was later found hanged from a balcony by neighbours at her home in Rochdale having earlier left the children with Mr and Mrs Farrar. It emerged just 24 hours before her death, on April 21 this year, Miss Kavanagh who was prescribed anti-depressants had called her local GP surgery and explained she had suicidal thoughts - but was only offered an appointment for 12 days later. After her death, an examination of her internet browser history showed she had researched ways to take her own life. At the Heywood hearing Mrs Farrar wept as she said: 'Jane was 19 when her first child was born and she had some difficulty with getting assistance from the authorities and she became her full time carer. 'Her eldest was diagnosed with autism but it took a few years for the authorities to accept that. 'She then started having trouble with her leg which got worse and worse and she was diagnosed with cerebellum ataxia in 2015 - she was just 12 and had lots of hospital appointments in Manchester and one in London. 'We helped when we could and they all used to live at our house, but they conducted a review and moved them out to a bungalow and her daughter moved to a specialist school. Her house was previously deemed 'inadequate' by local authority officials in Rochdale, Greater Manchester, forcing the mother-of-two to a another property described by family members as 'appalling' 'Jane wasn't getting assistance at weekends or evenings. She was offered no respite. Her other daughter had some assistance from her dad. 'She wanted help for in the mornings, getting them washed and dressed and ready for school. 'She was looking after two children essentially on her own and she struggled. At first she was staying with us and her two children and there were no adaptions to the house or anything. 'She then went to a rented bungalow, but there wasn't enough room for them all, so she was told to go to this new address as they said there was nothing else available. 'It was a mess, the walls were covered in nicotine, it was in an appalling state. She had to paint it and clean it herself. 'There was nothing there for her daughter, no adaptations to the bathroom, the bedrooms were upstairs, there wasn't even a grab rail for the stairs. 'She had to shuffle on her bum to get upstairs. She spent the last 15 months in that property. At the Heywood hearing Mrs Farrar wept as she said: 'Jane was 19 when her first child was born and she had some difficulty with getting assistance from the authorities and she became her full time carer 'She lost a lot of weight and she sometimes rang up distressed and said she felt she would end up in a psychiatric ward. 'We were concerned about her drinking, she was drinking a lot. She had financial issues too. 'On April 21st we had her daughter stay over on the Friday night, Jane then came over the Saturday morning to pick her up. 'She got her about lunch time and then came back at teatime. She told us she had eaten, so she had something. She seemed to be in a happy mood. 'Jane then asked to go to her friends and promised she would be back for 8pm. She didn't come back. We expected her to stay over. Her daughter rang her, but her phone was off. 'Now we now have the same problems Jane had. Her daughter can wheel herself around but she needs constant care 24/7.' It emerged just 24 hours before her death, on April 21 this year, Miss Kavanagh who was prescribed anti-depressants had called her local GP surgery and explained she had suicidal thoughts - but was only offered an appointment for 12 days later Mr Farrar said 'We were absolutely devastated. We knew she had financial difficulties but no idea how bad. I went to the bank the day after she died and found that she had been transferring money to different people over the previous six months.' Miss Kavanagh's GP Dr Ayman Ramadan said: 'In March 2018 she was talking about feeling depressed and her mother came with her. 'Although she seemed well, she was low in mood and was encouraged to self refer herself to 'Healthy Minds' so she could help herself. 'She rang the surgery on April 20 and wanted an appointment. The receptionist used the triage system and made the appointment for May 2nd. 'At the time there were no red flags with how she was behaving.' Recording a conclusion of suicide Coroner Nicholas Flanagan said: 'Jane struggled to obtain support and assistance in her care of her eldest daughter. 'She had significant help from her parents who lived close by and they provided a lot of assistance. 'They initially moved into a bungalow but they did not have the sufficient space as Jane did not have a bedroom. She was supplied with a property, which was not adequate. 'There was no mechanisms for her daughter to go downstairs, get into the bathroom or go to her bedroom. Nothing was adapted. The property was not in a good state of repair. Those found it difficult to live in there. 'This affected Jane's ability to care for her children and the cause of her stress was down to the care of her daughter. 'In December 2016 she presented to have gone through a mental health crisis and she was prescribed medication to alleviate the depression. 'There is no evidence her medicated was regulated or reviewed. She was advised to self refer herself to the appropriate services. 'On April 20th, Jane rang the GP again and she said she felt suicidal. She requested an appointment and was provided the next available date on May 2nd, some 12 days later. 'There was no evidence a GP or clinician considered Jane's case following the phone call. 'There is no evidence other organisations were being called in or were called by way of explanation for how Jane was feeling. I find Jane suffered from depressive conduct due to her being the primary carer. 'I am extremely concerned by all of the evidence I have heard about the non clinical staff at the GP surgery. 'There is a real pressing concern that someone can ring up in relation to an appointment and not be seen or considered by a clinic member of staff for a significant period of time. This is a real concern.' Mr Flanagan said he wanted hear from NHS officials over the possibility of a Prevention of Future Deaths report being produced. Speaking after the hearing, Mrs Farrar said: 'We feel like we've got no answers. We feel like we've got no closure. 'Our next step is to get the right adaptions into the house for our granddaughter. We understand what Jane had to do and how tough it was for her.' Rochdale Council told MailOnline: 'This is a tragic case and our sympathies are with Jane's family and friends at this difficult time. The council was in regular contact with Jane throughout and we offered her a care support package with our short break service and worked closely with Rochdale Boroughwide Housing, offering the necessary adaptations to her home or alternative accommodation. Along with our partner agencies will be reviewing if any lessons need to be learnt.' A couple who have had 28 of their car tyres slashed in a dozen attacks fear the vendetta was sparked by a row over a parking space nearly two years ago. Steve Parry, 56, and partner Trish Chaffey's cars have been attacked outside their home on 12 different occasions by the same perpetrator. The couple were first targeted two days after they had a run in with another motorist over a parking space outside a cinema in January 2017. Since then both his company car, a Vauxhall Zafira, and Miss Chaffey's Nissan Almera have been repeatedly vandalised by the offender who pierces the tyres through the sidewall with a knife or screwdriver. Steve Parry, 56, and Trish Chaffey (pictured) have had their car tyres slashed 28 times In a desperate attempt to catch the slasher the couple have set up CCTV footage outside their home and have finally caught him on film So far the attacks, which happen at night, have cost the couple and Mr Parry's company over 2,000 to replace the tyres. The latest incident was caught on CCTV cameras that police installed outside their home in Walkford, Christchurch, Dorset, in a bid to catch the attacker. The couple say they are living in fear and believe the culprit must be watching their home as their cars have been targeted even when they are parked on a different road. Mr Parry, who works in sales, said: 'We have had 28 tyres slashed on both mine and Trish's car, sometimes one, two or all four at once, in a dozen attacks. 'The only reason we can think why we are being targeted is because of a dispute we had over a parking space two days before the first attack. 'We were pulling into a car park for the cinema and we thought we were first to the space and so did another motorist. The couple believe that the attacks are the result of a run in with another motorist over a parking space outside a cinema in January 2017 The couple say they are living in fear and believe the culprit must be watching their home The couple live in Walkford, Dorset and believe they are being targeted by the man who comes at night 'There was some swearing as we pulled into the space first. 'But the cinema is about 15 miles from our house and it seems so bizarre that someone would follow us all the way home and go to this length to get retribution. 'Whoever it is is also clearly watching the house as our cars have still been targeted even when they are parked on another road.' The first attack took place in January 2017 after the dispute at a cinema complex in Poole with the most recent occurring at 4am on October 18. In the chilling footage, the culprit walks up to all four tyres on Mr Parry's car and slashes them before calmly walking away. The person, who is thought to be aged in his late 20s or early 30s, is of above average height and of slim build with facial hair. The couple and the company Mr Parry works for have spent 2,000 on replacing the tyres In the last attack he was wearing a hooded sailing-type jacket, shorts and trainers. Mr Parry said: 'He is very cool and calculating. 'It is always done in the early hours of the morning and because he makes tiny holes and slow punctures, we don't always know when we drive off to work that the pressure is going down. 'Someone must really hate us to keep this up for so long and we just can't get our heads round it. 'We often carry our grandchildren around in the cars so it could be really dangerous.' In the footage, the culprit walks up to all four tyres on Mr Parry's car and slashes them before calmly walking away The couple are appealing for anybody with information to come forward in a bid to identify their tormentor. Miss Chaffey, 55, a therapist, said: 'If anyone knows who this is or why this is being done to us then please tell the police because he is dangerous and needs to be caught. 'We are terrified and just want this to end.' Police Constable Jason Funnell, of Christchurch police, said: 'This repeated damage has caused the owners a great deal of inconvenience and expense. 'I am appealing to anyone who knows who is responsible for these offences to please come forward and contact Dorset Police.' Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi, who wrote critically of the kingdom's policies and Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, was killed in the Saudi Consulate in Istanbul. Turkish officials say a 15-men team tortured, killed and dismembered the writer, while Saudi Arabia says he died in a 'fistfight.' Here are some key moments in the slaying of the Washington Post columnist: BEFORE HIS DISAPPEARANCE September 2017: The Post publishes the first column by Khashoggi in its newspaper, in which the former royal court insider and longtime journalist writes about going into a self-imposed exile in the U.S. over the rise of Prince Mohammed. His following columns criticize the prince and the kingdom's direction. September 28, 2018: Over a year after the Post published his first column, Khashoggi visits the Saudi Consulate in Istanbul, seeking documents in order to get married. He's later told to return October 2, his fiancee Hatice Cengiz says. Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan says a plan or a 'road map' to kill Khashoggi was devised in Saudi Arabia during this time. September 29: Khashoggi travels to London and speaks at a conference. October 1: Khashoggi returns to Istanbul. At around 4.30pm, a three-person Saudi team arrives in Istanbul on a scheduled flight, checks in to their hotels then visits the consulate, according to Erdogan. The Turkish president says another group of officials from the consulate travel to a forest in Istanbul's outskirts and to the nearby city of Yalova on a 'reconnaissance' trip. Jamal Khashoggi (right) arriving at the Saudi Arabian consulate in Istanbul on October 2 THE DAY OF HIS DISAPPEARANCE 3.28am, October 2: A private jet arrives at Istanbul's Ataturk Airport carrying some members of what Turkish media will refer to as a 15-member Saudi 'assassination squad.' Other members of the team arrive by two commercial flights in the afternoon. Erdogan says the team includes Saudi security and intelligence officials and a forensics expert. They meet at the Saudi Consulate. One of the first things they do is to dismantle a hard disk connected to the consulate's camera system, the president says. 11.50am: Khashoggi is called to confirm his appointment at the consulate later that day, Erdogan says. 1.14pm: Surveillance footage later leaked to Turkish media shows Khashoggi walking into the main entrance of the Saudi Consulate. No footage made public ever shows him leaving. His fiancee waits outside, pacing for hours. 3.07pm: Surveillance footage shows vehicles with diplomatic license plates leaving the Saudi Consulate for the consul general's home some 2 kilometers (1.2 miles) away. 5.50pm: Khashoggi's fiancee alerts authorities, saying he may have been forcibly detained inside the consulate or that something bad may have happened to him, according to Erdogan. 7pm: A private plane from Saudi Arabia carries six members of the alleged Saudi squad from Istanbul to Cairo, the next day returning to Riyadh. 11pm: Seven members of the alleged Saudi squad leave on another private jet to Dubai, United Arab Emirates, which the next day returns to Riyadh. Two others leave by commercial flights. Erdogan confirms reports that a 'body double' - a man wearing Khashoggi's clothes, glasses and a beard - leaves the consulate building for Riyadh with another person on a scheduled flight later that day. CCTV images showed a a private jet alleged to have been used by a group of Saudi men suspected of being involved in Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi's death INITIAL REACTION October 3: Khashoggi's fiancee and the Post go public with his disappearance. Saudi Arabia says Khashoggi visited the consulate and exited shortly thereafter. Turkish officials suggest Khashoggi might still be in the consulate. 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 Khashoggi, headlined: 'A missing voice.' October 6: The Post, citing anonymous Turkish officials, reports Khashoggi may have been killed in the consulate in a 'preplanned murder' by a Saudi team. October 7: A friend of Khashoggi tells the AP that officials told him the writer was killed at the consulate. The consulate rejects what it calls 'baseless allegations.' October 8: Saudi Arabia's ambassador to Turkey is summoned over Khashoggi's disappearance and alleged killing. LEAKED FOOTAGE October 9: Turkey says it will search the Saudi Consulate as a picture of Khashoggi walking into the diplomatic post surfaces. October 10: Surveillance footage is leaked of Khashoggi and the alleged Saudi squad that killed him. Khashoggi's fiancee asks 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 an autopsy expert. Trump calls Khashoggi's disappearance a 'bad situation' and promises to get to the bottom of it. October 12: Trump again pledges to find out what happened to Khashoggi. October 13: A pro-government newspaper reports that Turkish officials have an audio recording of Khashoggi's alleged killing from his Apple Watch, but details in the report come into question. INTERNATIONAL UPROAR October 14: Trump says that 'we're 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 percent at one point. Khashoggi (pictured), went missing after entering the Saudi consulate in Istanbul October 15: A Turkish forensics team enters and searches the Saudi Consulate, an extraordinary development as such diplomatic posts are considered sovereign soil. Trump suggests after a call with Saudi King Salman that 'rogue killers' could be responsible for Khashoggi's alleged slaying. Trump says Secretary of State Mike Pompeo will travel to the Mideast over the case. Meanwhile, business leaders say they won't attend an economic summit in the kingdom that's the brainchild of Prince Mohammed. October 16: A high-level Turkish official tells the AP that 'certain evidence' was found in the Saudi Consulate proving Khashoggi was killed there. Pompeo arrives for meetings in Saudi Arabia with King Salman and Prince Mohammed. Meanwhile, Trump compares the case to the appointment of now-Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh during his confirmation hearing, saying: 'Here we go again with you're guilty until proven innocent.' October 17: Pompeo meets with Turkey's president and foreign minister in the Turkish capital, Ankara. Turkish police search the official residence of Saudi Arabia's consul general in Istanbul and conduct a second sweep of the consulate. October 18: A leaked surveillance photograph shows a member of Prince Mohammed's entourage walked into the consulate just before Khashoggi vanished there. October 20: Saudi Arabia for the first time acknowledges Khashoggi was killed in the consulate, claiming he was slain in a 'fistfight.' The claim draws immediate skepticism from the kingdom's Western allies, particularly in the U.S. Congress. October 22: A report says a member of Prince Mohammed's entourage made four calls to the royal's office around the time Khashoggi was killed. Police search a vehicle belonging to the Saudi consulate parked at an underground garage in Istanbul. CCTV emerges showing a Saudi intelligence officer dressed in a fake beard and Jamal Khashoggi's clothes and glasses on the day he went missing. October 23: Erdogan says Saudi officials murdered Khashoggi after plotting his death for days, demanding that Saudi Arabia reveal the identities of all involved. October 25: Changing their story again, Saudi prosecutors say Khashoggi's killing was a premeditated crime. November 2: Turkey's President Recep Tayyip Erdogan claims the order to kill Khashoggi came from the highest levels of the Saudi government. Earlier the same day, Yasin Aktay, a ruling party adviser to Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, said he believed the body had to have been dissolved in acid. November 4: Khashoggi's sons Salah and Abdullah Khashoggi issue appeal for his remains to be returned so that he may be buried in Saudi Arabia. November 10: President Erdogan says Turkey gave the audio recordings linked to the murder to 'Saudi Arabia, to Washington, to the Germans, to the French, to the British'. November 13: Turkish media reports that the luggage carried by the Saudi 'hit squad' included scissors, defibrillators and syringes that may have been used against Khashoggi. November 15: Saudi Arabia's public prosecutor announces that he is seeking the death penalty for five out of 11 suspects charged in the murder. Shalaan al-Shalaan said the person who had ordered the killing was the head of the negotiating team sent to repatriate him, and exonerated Crown Prince Mohammad bin Salman. On the same day, the U.S. Treasury announces sanctions against 17 Saudi officials, including the Consul General in Turkey, Mohammed Alotaibi. November 16: A CIA assessment reported in the Washington Post finds that Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman ordered the assassination. November 18: Germany bans 18 Saudi nationals believed to be connected to the murder from entering Europe's border-free Schengen zone. Berlin also announces it has as halted previously approved arms exports to Saudi Arabia amid the fallout. A man who posed as a dentist and performed surgery on patients has been forced to pay up $60,000. Majid Rahebi was convicted on Friday for falsely operating as a dentist outside of his business on Fairfield Road at Guildford in Sydney's west. Even though Rahebi had never registered as a dentist or other health practitioner in Australia, that didn't stop him from performing root canal treatments, crowns and tooth extractions. Majid Rahebi (pictured) was convicted on Friday for falsely operating as a dentist outside of his business on Fairfield Road at Guildford West, a western Sydney suburb The Australian Health Practitioner Regulation Agency (AHPRA) said he administered prescription medications and anesthetics. It also confirmed Rahebi had no formal dental qualifications. AHPRA went on to charge him with 44 counts of falsely representing he as a registered dentist and 31 counts of performing a restricted dental act earlier this year in May. While he had no qualifications in Australia, Nine News reported Rahebi was registered as a dental technician in Iran. He had previously employed Australia-qualified dentists when he settled in the country. NSW Health Care Complaints Commission had prohibited him from performing any paid or unpaid dental work since early October. While he had no qualifications in Australia, Nine News reported Rahebi was registered as a dental technician in Iran AHPRA chief executive Martin Fletcher told Fairfax Media it was a terrible example of malpractice. 'To represent that you are a registered dental practitioner, operate a business that supports that lie and carry out restricted dental acts that may endanger the public, is not behaviour that goes unchecked.' Rahebi pleaded guilty to all charges and ordered to pay $30,000. His company MJ Dental Care Pty Ltd was convicted and ordered to pay $11,250 for presenting Rahebi as a qualified dentist. Rahebi was also ordered to pay legal costs of almost $20,000. The White House has invited Russian President Vladimir Putin to visit Washington after the new year, setting up another high stakes summit days after President Trump's national security advisor said its interference didn't change the outcome of the election. National Security Advisor John Bolton said Friday the White House has formally invited Putin to visit returning to an idea that was put on hold in July amid anger in the U.S. over the prospect of such a summit. He spoke following his own visit to Moscow, where he said Russian election interference was 'objectionable' and had contributed to animosity in the bilateral relationship. The White House has invited Russian President Vladimir Putin to visit Washington after the new year 'What the meddling did was create distrust and animosity within the United States, and particularly made it almost impossible for two years for the United States and Russia to make any progress,' Bolton said. 'That's a huge loss for both countries, particularly for Russia,' he added. 'So it's a lesson I think: Don't mess with American elections.' Trump also said this week he would probably meet Putin in Paris next month. 'It's being discussed right now,' he said. But the certainty of the information was undercut when he inaccurately referred to Bolton as 'Mike Bolton' when discussing it. 'I think we probably will. It hasn't been set up yet but it probably will be,' he said. Such a meeting would occur at the 100th anniversary of the World War I armistice in Paris. President Trump suffered political blowback following his Helsinki summit with Putin in July Russian President Vladimir Putin, left, and U.S. National security adviser John Bolton shakes hands during their meeting in the Kremlin in Moscow, Russia, Tuesday, Oct. 23, 2018 The summit would put the two leaders together after the outcome of the 2018 midterm elections is determined, well into the second year of special counsel Robert Mueller's Russia probe, which has led to the indictment of 13 Russians accused of setting up cutouts, fake Facebook ads, spreading disinformation, and other efforts meant to sow divisions and interfere in the elections. U.S. Intelligence also included Russia's military intelligence hacked Democratic emails including those of Hillary Clinton's campaign chair, during the elections. Trump held a summit with Putin in Helsinki, the Finnish capital, and then issued Putin an invitation to visit Washington in the autumn. But that was postponed after Trump faced allegations of cozying up to the Kremlin. 'We have invited President Putin to Washington,' Bolton said at a news conference during a visit to ex-Soviet Georgia, days after meeting Putin and senior security officials in Moscow. Bolton said he gave Putin an invitation to visit next year during his trip to Moscow, U.S. broadcaster RFE/RL reported. It was not immediately clear if Putin had accepted the invitation. Putin last held a meeting with a U.S. president on American soil in 2015 when he met Barack Obama on the sidelines of a U.N. General Assembly. Trump's earlier invitation to Putin sparked an outcry in Washington, including from Republican lawmakers who argued that Putin was an adversary not worthy of a White House visit. Trump has said it is in U.S. interests to establish a solid working relationship with Putin. Bolton said that the Paris meeting would be brief. In his earlier comments in Moscow, Bolton argued that the effort to interfere on its own was problematic. its the effort alone to interfere in our elections that are objectionable. The fact was that the outcome would have been the same by all the evidence we have, Bolton said following talks with Putin. A male member of a secretive religious cult has reportedly attempted to kill himself in an incident that has 'shocked' other members. The 20-year-old man is a member of the Gloriavale Christian Community based at Haupiri on the West Coast of the South Island in New Zealand. Emergency services were called to the remote location on Tuesday evening and found a young man with life threatening injuries which are alleged to have been self inflicted. Sources from inside the cult said the community was left in shock by the alleged incident. 'I heard that he tried to kill himself, there is no suicide at Gloriavale, I'm pretty sure it hasn't happened before,' the source said. 'It's taught against - the belief is right against suicide, so to be able to do something like that you would have to be pretty depressed.' A male member of a secretive religious cult has reportedly attempted to kill himself in an incident that has 'shocked' other members (pictured are some Gloriavale members) He was airlifted to Grey Base Hospital with life threatening injuries, The New Zealand Herald reported. A spokesman for New Zealand Police said no further investigation was required. 'Police have completed the necessary inquiries to understand what occurred and there is no ongoing police involvement,' the spokesman said. The 20-year-old man was airlifted to Grey Base Hospital in New Zealand with life threatening injuries Sources from inside the cult also spoke with the Herald and said the community was left in shock by the alleged incident (a promotional shot of a Gloriavale baptisim) The same source has allegedly urged police to investigate the leadership of the cult to prevent any further incidents of this nature. 'That's the questions that need to be put to the leaders in there - what was this guy doing, who was involved, what support was he getting?' the source said. The Gloriavale Christian Community was first set up in New Zealand in 1969 and was embroiled in controversy in 1995 when their leader, Neville Cooper was jailed for 11 months for sexual abuse. Lifeline - 13 11 14 Two dogs abandoned by a roadside were in 'the worst state ever seen' by an animal rescue charity. The male Bichon Frise and female Pekingese were discovered in a wretched condition with horrendously matted hair in a lay-by near Swansea Airport on Fairwood Common on Wednesday. Their neglect also meant their feet had become virtually webbed. Their state was such that the sanctuary which has now homed them feared they might have had to be put down. A male Bichon Frise (above) and female Pekingese were found with horrendously matted hair in a lay-by near Swansea Airport on Fairwood Common on Wednesday The two dogs (above, the Pekingese) abandoned by a roadside were in 'the worst state ever seen' by an animal rescue charity. It is believed the animals were thrown from a car The pair are now undergoing attention from dog groomers who have provided their services for free, to groom them into a suitable condition so they can be treated by vets. Their new home is Woodfield Animal Sanctuary on Welsh Moor, near Llanrhidian on Gower. The sanctuary is is run by married couple David and Robbie Bartington. Robbie Bartington said: 'We were alerted to the abandoned dogs by a friend, and we hope to give them a home for the rest of their lives, but they were in a horrendous state. 'Their hair was matted for about a foot in length, and was so long I don't think a vet's clippers would have worked on them. The pair are now undergoing attention from dog groomers who have provided their services for free, to groom them into a suitable condition so they can be treated by vets. Their new home is Woodfield Animal Sanctuary on Welsh Moor, near Llanrhidian on Gower 'Fortunately, some dog-grooming friends of ours have kindly agreed to help them so we can get them into a condition where we can take them to a vet to be seen and get their vaccinations. 'Because of where we found them, we think they were probably thrown from a car, as they were right next to the road. 'We had to pursue them through a field to get to them because they were very agitated, very upset and very hungry. 'They were in the most horrific state I have ever seen.' Woodfield Animal Sanctuary currently looks after more than 60 horses, 15 dogs and 40 sheep. And it is welcoming the two latest additions to its home. Robbie Bartington, who co-runs the sanctuary said: 'I think the matting of their hair must gone back six or seven years. They may well have been kept in a shed, and the only care they received was food being thrown in for them, which we have seen before' Mr Bartington added: 'The pair are incredibly affectionate with each other, and seemed joined at the hip. 'He goes mad if you pick her up and starts screaming. She will have to be right next to him while they are being groomed. 'I have seen bad cases of dogs before, but this was definitely the worst I have seen in my whole life. 'I think the matting of their hair must gone back six or seven years. They may well have been kept in a shed, and the only care they received was food being thrown in for them, which we have seen before. 'We have been preparing for an open day next weekend, so all hands have been to the pump, but obviously we had to help these two when we heard about them. And they appear to be fine now, and seem quite happy.' Woodfield Animal Sanctuary host their open day on Saturday, October 27, between 11am and 4pm. Sadiq Khan warned the EU to brace for Brexit to be delayed today - as Theresa May put off a Cabinet showdown over her Irish border plan. The London Mayor told Michel Barnier to be ready to postpone the March deadline as he held talks with the negotiator in Brussels. He said an extension to the Article 50 process could well be needed while a second referendum or election is held. The intervention came as Remainers ramped up their campaign to block Brexit as negotiations reach crunch point. Sadiq Khan (left) told Michel Barnier (right) to be ready to postpone the March deadline as he held talks with the negotiator in Brussels The London Mayor was in Brussels for talks with the EU's chief negotiator and his team today The PM has been scrambling to break the deadlock in talks over the Irish border and future trade plans. The Cabinet had been expected to sign off on a new proposal to avoid a hard border between Northern Ireland and the Republic this week. Vince Cable says Brexit could hit Strictly Come Dancing cast Strictly Come Dancing yesterday emerged as Sir Vince Cable's latest weapon in the fight against Brexit. The Liberal Democrat leader criticised the state of the negotiations and warned that some of the show's cast could 'disappear' after Britain leaves the EU because they are from Europe. Sir Vince, an enthusiastic Remainer, insisted this was even more reason for a second referendum or People's Vote on the final deal brought back from Brussels by Theresa May. But his comments infuriated Brexiteers, who accused him of encouraging Brussels to offer Britain a bad deal. Sir Vince, who appeared on the Strictly Christmas special in 2010, said: 'The rate things are going with the negotiations, you can see half the Strictly cast disappearing after we leave, which would be a disaster. 'My dance partner was from New Zealand, but you've got the Europeans there. People weren't told about these things.' The current series of Strictly features dancers Graziano Di Prima and Giovanni Pernice, both from Italy, Gorka Marquez from Spain and Aljaz Skorjanec, who was born in Slovenia. Nadiya Bychkova is from Ukraine, which enjoys visa-free travel with the bloc. Sir Vince, danced the foxtrot with partner Erin Boag on the show. He performed well, scoring 36/40 from the judges. Advertisement But the decision has apparently been put off until after Chancellor Philip Hammond's financial package on Monday, with the details still needing to be finalised. Attorney General Geoffrey Cox is said to have warned that getting the backstop wrong could leave the UK in the 'first circle of Hell' after Brexit, lashed to EU rules without any of the benefits of leaving. In Brussels today, Mr Khan urged Michel Barnier that an extension to Article 50 would be in the interests of both sides to avert a 'political and economic crisis'. The visit comes after the EU negotiator hosted Lib Dem leader Vince Cable and SNP Westminster chief Ian Blackford yesterday. Mr Khan said after the talks: 'Productive meeting with @MichelBarnier this morning. Important he hears Londoners' concerns - including the one million EU citizens in our city - who are worried we are heading towards a bad Brexit deal, or no deal, which would be hugely damaging for London.' Speaking ahead of the meeting, Mr Khan said 'what happens over the coming weeks and months will have an enormous impact on London, the UK and all of Europe for many decades to come'. He said: 'It's now extremely likely that Parliament will vote down any bad deal negotiated by Theresa May, which means it will be in the best interests of both the UK and the EU to extend Article 50 in order to leave time for either a public vote or for a new government to reset the negotiations. 'London and Europe are inextricably linked. Europe's biggest businesses are huge investors in the UK economy, they depend heavily on the UK market and rely enormously on the strength of the City for financing. 'London's success has been good for the UK and good for Europe. 'With so much at stake for both the UK and the EU - and with the British Government heading towards a defeat in Parliament - I hope Michel Barnier and the EU will agree to start preparing now to extend Article 50 so that we can avert a political and economic crisis that could have enormous repercussions for all of Europe.' He is also due to visit Paris, Berlin and Dublin before the end of the year to promote London ahead of Brexit. Tories fear they will be wiped out in local elections as EU voters punish them for Brexit Tory MEPs fear that allowing EU citizens living in Britain to keep their rights to votes in local elections would push the 'self destruct button' on the party. They fear the Tories will face electoral wipeout in town hall elections as EU voters punish them for Brexit. Currently the 3.2million EU nationals living in Britain - apart from Irish and Maltese nationals - cannot vote in General Elections, but can elect local councilors. Tory MEP Daniel Hannan, a leading Brexiteer, claims he has seen a draft of the EU Withdrawal Bill which shows that the UK will pledge to protect these voting rights post Brexit. But a cache of WhatsApp messages leaked to The Daily Telegraph reveal that some Tory MEPs fear their party will be exiled from local government by European voters who will punish the party for Brexit. David Campbell-Bannerman, a former Ukip MEP who defected to the Tories, wrote: 'It's madness Dan. Are we intent on damaging our own party's vote?' Amjad Bashir, the MEP for Yorkshire and the Humber wrote: 'I think the party is pressing the self-destruct button. 'We've already lost the Commonwealth vote and won't win any votes from the new arrivals from the EU.' Mr Hannan told the newspaper: 'There is evidence that the enfranchisement of EU nationals has boosted the SNP in Scottish Parliament elections and Sinn Fein in Northern Ireland Assembly elections. 'It seems extraordinary that a Tory government is pushing for that right to be retained - not conceding it in return for something else, but actively pushing for it. From the start, these talks seem to have been led by Europhile officials rather than ministers.' Advertisement While in Brussels he is also due to meet EU vice presidents Valdis Dombrovskis and Maros Sefcovic and EU commissioner Sir Julian King 'to discuss London's needs from the Brexit negotiations'. London voted heavily in favour of Remain in the 2016 referendum. On Saturday, Mr Khan was among the politicians who attended a march by hundreds of thousands of people through the capital, thought to have been the biggest anti-Brexit demonstration since the referendum in 2016. But his overt backing for the second vote on whether to quit the EU has put him at odds with the Labour leadership. Various frontbenchers have insisted a second referendum should only happen if the Government fails to get a Brexit deal through Parliament and refuses to call a general election, and none of the shadow cabinet attended Saturday's demonstration. Meanwhile, it emerged today that Tory MEPs fear that allowing EU citizens living in Britain to keep their rights to votes in local elections would push the 'self destruct button' on the party. Currently the 3.2million EU nationals living in Britain - apart from Irish and Maltese nationals - cannot vote in General Elections, but can elect local councilors. Tory MEP Daniel Hannan , a leading Brexiteer, claims he has seen a draft of the EU Withdrawal Bill which shows that the UK will pledge to protect these voting rights post Brexit. But a cache of WhatsApp messages leaked to The Daily Telegraph reveal that some Tory MEPs fear their party will be exiled from local government by European voters who will punish the party for Brexit. David Campbell-Bannerman, a former Ukip MEP who defected to the Tories, wrote: 'It's madness Dan. Are we intent on damaging our own party's vote?' Amjad Bashir, the MEP for Yorkshire and the Humber wrote 'I think the party is pressing the self-destruct button. 'We've already lost the Commonwealth vote and won't win any votes from the new arrivals from the EU.' Mr Hannan told the newspaper: 'There is evidence that the enfranchisement of EU nationals has boosted the SNP in Scottish Parliament elections and Sinn Fein in Northern Ireland Assembly elections. 'It seems extraordinary that a Tory government is pushing for that right to be retained - not conceding it in return for something else, but actively pushing for it. From the start, these talks seem to have been led by Europhile officials rather than ministers.' Theresa May (pictured launching the Poppy appeal in Downing Street yesterday) has been scrambling to break the deadlock in talks over the Irish border and future trade plans A teacher cleared of sex crimes in Britain has been arrested in Germany after allegedly breaching a court ban by contacting a teenage former pupil he is accused of having an affair with, according to press reports in Spain. Married father-of-two Carlo Troiano, 41, moved to Spain after he was sacked by his Cheshire school despite being acquitted at a 2010 trial of engaging in sexual activity with a pupil half his age. He was arrested again in November 2016 on suspicion of sexually abusing a 15-year-old pupil at his new school in Almeria - and released on bail last December pending an ongoing court probe. Today he was reportedly back behind bars after German cops swooped on him at a railway station and held him on a European Arrest Warrant for allegedly seeing the youngster again and trying to cajole her into backtracking on her sex claims against him. Carlo Troiano, 41, has been arrested in Germany after allegedly breaching a ban imposed by Spanish courts for contacting a teenage former pupil he is accused of having an affair with Troiano, facing a probe by the Spanish legal authorities accused of a nine-month affair the girl's mother said started when the teenager was 14, now faces being hauled back to Spain and thrown in jail again until his trial. It is understood that IT teacher Troiano, from Wirral, is facing allegations that he took advantage of his December 2017 bail release to contact her on Instagram and get her to write a letter to give to his lawyer saying her sex claims against him were 'lies.' Today it emerged his mother Patrica Hale is also reportedly being investigated on suspicion of obstruction of justice for trying to get the teenager to change her story and write a letter exonerating her son. The married father-of-two moved to Spain after he was sacked by his Cheshire school despite being acquitted at a 2010 trial of engaging in sexual activity with a pupil half his age His current whereabouts is unknown, although he is expected to be flown back to Spain in the coming days unless he tries to delay extradition by fighting it. Troiano was found not guilty in January 2010 of three charges of causing or enticing sexual activity with a 16-year-old pupil in a classroom. A jury of seven women and five men unanimously cleared him after a four-day trial at Warrington Crown Court. He was arrested again in November 2016 on suspicion of sexually abusing a 15-year-old pupil at his new school in Almeria, St George's (pictured) They ruled after listening to the evidence that they did not believe the girl, 17 at the time of the trial, had been telling the truth. She had claimed he had asked her to perform sex acts on him. University-educated Troiano denied the allegations and his wife Jennifer and relatives sat in the dock as he gave evidence. St George's school in Almeria where Troiano is accused of meeting a young girl he had an inappropriate relationship with Governors at Bankfield High School, terminated his contract despite the acquittal. St George's British School of Almeria, part of a group of private schools throughout Spain which boasts of providing a world-class education, announced it had terminated Troiano's contact after his November 2016 arrest. He was held at Almeria's provincial prison el Acebuche before his lawyer managed to secure his conditional release. He has not yet been formally charged, as is normal in Spain where charges are only laid shortly before trial. A trial date has yet to be set. The age of consent was raised in Spain in 2015 from 13 to 16, bringing it into line with several other European countries. Under current Spanish law adult who engage in consenting sexual relationships with minors can be sentenced to up to six years in jail. Mr Troiano accused his old school of re-prosecuting him after his UK trial by terminating his contract and announced he would appeal. The sacking was the result of an internal investigation that followed the court case. Speaking after his trial acquittal he said: 'I feel very angry that someone could say these things that are not true. 'I absolutely love teaching. I think it's a brilliant job.' A man whose naked body was found after being dumped in a vacant lot in Sydney's west has been identified. A homicide task force has been established to find the killer after Jamie Phillips' body was found in bushland at the end of Englorie Park Drive in Rosemeadow, near Campbelltown, on Thursday afternoon. Local detectives and the homicide squad have established Strikeforce Hardey to piece together the 46-year-old's final movements before his death. An emotional exchange between Mr Phillips and a friend on his Facebook profile last year suggested he had been through a difficult break-up. Scroll down for video Crime manager Greg Inger said it is unclear how Mr Phillips (pictured) ended up dumped in the lot, which backs onto bushland Prior to his death, Mr Phillips had paid tribute to his two daughters Jordan, 22, (left) and Hannah Ruby, 17 (right) Having posted what appeared to be a jibe at an ex-partner in January 2017, Mr Phillips was told by a friend they were glad things were 'falling into place' and that she too had 'hit rock bottom before'. Crime manager Greg Inger said it is unclear how Mr Phillips ended up dumped in the lot, which backs onto bushland. 'It's not something police come across often, it's unusual,' he told reporters in Sydney on Friday. 'The nature of how he was found is forming part of our investigation.' Det Insp Inger added investigators were working with Mr Phillips' family to get a better picture of his him and his life. Mr Phillips had 'interacted with people' over the past two days, Det Insp Inger added, but police were still working to catalogue his movements in the last 48 hours of his life. Police said people had been known to frequent the area on the land backing onto the bushland and spend 'some time' there. Prior to his death, Mr Phillips had paid tribute to his two daughters Jordan, 22, and Hannah Ruby, 17, who he touted as 'Australia's next top models' on his Facebook page. A post-mortem examination will be conducted in the coming days to determine the cause of death. Mr Phillips was known to police but didn't have known organised crime or bikie gang links. Police are urging anyone who was travelling on Englorie Park Drive near Benvenuta Way to hand dashcam footage over to detectives. A gloating bystander was filmed taunting police after a marked car crashed into a wall while on a 999 emergency call out. The man, who has been slammed on social media, accusers the officers of 's***' driving as they try to deal with the aftermath of the crash in London. Brazenly the man begins to taunt and berate the officers who show restraint, despite the yobs actions. The man, who has been slammed on social media, accusers the officers of 's***' driving as they try to deal with the aftermath of the crash in London. Brazenly the man begins to taunt and berate the officers who show restraint, despite the yobs actions Police have confirmed that a marked car crashed during an emergency call in Kingston upon Thames on Tuesday lunchtime. A video, uploaded the following day, opens with two police officers and recovery driver standing by the wrecked car which has hit a wall, scattering bricks across the pavement. The man filming says gleefully: 'Look what I just found.' The man filming then goes around the police car, showing the extent of the damage, and over to a man in orange hi-vis and two police officers in discussion. He says: 'What happened officer? You got s*** drivers. What happened?' The camera again shows the car among the debris, and the man says: 'Crashed.' He then says, brazenly: 'That's why you lot never catch me. S*** drivers, ain't they mate?' The man filming then goes around the police car, showing the extent of the damage, and over to a man in orange hi-vis and two police officers in discussion. He says: 'What happened officer? You got s*** drivers. What happened?' One of the police officers, wearing glasses and holding a notebook in hand, finally has enough and tells the man: 'Shut up and go away.' The man responds: 'S*** driver, s*** driver.' The officer then looks straight at the man and the camera and says: 'Have you got nothing else to do with your life?' The man continues to say: 'S*** driver. That's why you never catch me.' The officer then explains that it wasn't him driving before turning round and saying: 'Go get a job. Go get a job, mate. Go on mate, go get a job.' The man continues: 'Look at you. Look at you. You little mug. Mugs.' The Met Police confirmed the incident happened at around 1.08pm on October 23 He finally begins to walk away and leaves the two officers there, before singing out loud: 'Old bill, old bill. They make me f****** ill.' Charlie Wilson wrote on social media: 'But you'd be the first to call them if your car got stolen, house got broken in (if you have one), assaulted, or even worse one of your children went missing.' Ivo Eniks commented: 'S*** happens. Police are human as well. You can film it but the comments. Really? I wonder what you will say when someone will rob your house and police will not do a thing just so they don't have an accident. Disgusting video to be honest.' The Met Police confirmed the incident happened at around 1.08pm on October 23. A spokeswoman added: 'A marked police car responding to an emergency call on blue lights collided with the central reservation on Horse Fair, Kingston. 'There were no reported injuries and the car has since been removed'. Mr Avogadri massaged shark's nose to put it in a trance-like state before attempt This is the incredible moment a fearless diver 'wrestled' with a shark as he attempted to remove fishing hooks caught in its mouth. Troy Illoski, 51, captured footage of the shark while visiting Grand Bahama, the northernmost island in the Bahamas. The clip followed the so-called 'shark whisperer' Riccardo Sturla Avogadri as he removed fish hooks from the shark's mouth and gills. Riccardo Sturla Avogadri removes metal fish hooks from a shark while visiting Grand Bahama, the northernmost island in the Bahamas He clung to the shark's body as he hunted for the metal objects, lifting the creature on its nose as he then attempted to remove them. The fish, which is believed to be a lemon shark, was then released by the diver after he successfully freed it of the hooks. Mr Illoski, an engineer and shark conservationist from Haskell, New Jersey, said: 'I frequently visit these waters around the Bahamas to film the sharks. 'Most of the sharks in the photos are lemon sharks and Caribbean reef sharks. 'When Riccardo spotted a shark with a fish hook, he lured him with a bait and then he started to massage the area around the nose.' The conservationist said that by massaging the shark's nose, Mr Avogadri was able to coax it into a trance-like state. Mr Avogadri approaches the shark after luring it over to him with bait. He then begins to massage the area around its nose One of the metal fishing hooks removed from the shark's mouth and gills by the pair of divers He said: 'This puts the shark in relaxed tonic mode [for] up to 15 minutes - the technique is used to [examine] the sharks without harming them. 'Some of the hooks are deeply embedded in the shark's mouth or the gills, and he has to stick the arm inside the mouth to remove the hooks, which appears that he is wrestling with the shark. 'Protecting and saving the sharks is very important part for a healthy ecosystem, since half of the oxygen on the earth comes from the ocean.' A high-profile sex worker has been ridiculed for parking in a disabled spot. Escort Lisa Lewis was abused online for parking in a disabled spot at an Auckland hotel but claims the venue would often provide reserved parking for VIP guests. The incident occurred on Sunday evening when disabled woman Fran Henricksen was frustrated to find a large black ute parked in a disability spot and a second one coned off at the ibis Ellerslie hotel in New Zealand. Ms Henricksen, who uses crutches for a spinal cord injury, said the last thing she wanted to do was 'haul a** across the car park'. Escort Lisa Lewis (pictured) was abused for parking in a disabled spot at an Auckland hotel but claims the venue would often provide reserved parking for VIP guests Ms Henricksen (pictured), who uses crutches for a spinal cord injury, said the last thing she wanted to do was 'haul arse across the car park' 'As a disabled customer I was unbelievably angry to hear that the customer who was illegally parked was a hotel VIP,' she wrote on Facebook. Lewis then decided to admit she was the 'hotel VIP' but was met with criticism from online trolls. The sex worker, who has been a regular guest at the venue for five years, told Daily Mail Australia she arrived at about 10am and the staff members who checked her in told her it was 'fine' to park in the 'Accor loyalty' spots that were in disabled spots. 'Over the last five years Novotel Ibis Greenlane Ellersliehas left reserved car park space for Accor loyalty's in, yes, the disabled car parks,' she said. Lewis said she received a 5pm phone call from a hotel manager who informed her to move her vehicle. Lewis moved her car and said the Accor signs had been taken away for the first time in five years. The incident has left the sex worker shaken as she has received online threats from people who said they would slit her tires, get her car towed and find out where she lived. The incident occurred on Sunday evening when disabled woman Fran Henricksen was frustrated to find a large black ute parked in a disability spot and a the second one coned off at the ibis Auckland Ellerslie hotel (pictured) The incident has left the sex worker shaken as she has received online threats from people who said they would slit her tires and find out where she lived 'I have been attacked, ridiculed and bullied which is not nice,' she said. 'I accept now no one should park in a disabled park unless you have a permit and I won't do it again unless I have a disability permit to park there.' Ms Henricksen said she had been contacted by the hotel but the the incident was unacceptable, NZ Herald reported. 'Regardless of whether the hotel allowed her to leave her car parked there, she chose to use a park she wasn't entitled to, and honestly it happens far too often for me to just not say anything about it - I have 'Stick to Your Guns' tattooed on my chest, and it would be irresponsible of me not to live those words if I expect other people to,' she said. Hotel general manager Jamie O'Donnell earlier said they were apologetic about the situation. Mr O'Donnell said the venue has reinforced their processes to ensure disabled parking spots are only used by those who need them. Ms Henricksen (pictured) said she had been contacted by the hotel but the the incident was unacceptable Lewis - who has been a stripper, top-price escort and topless TV presenter - famously streaked at an All Blacks rugby union game in 2006 wearing nothing but a bikini (pictured) Lewis - who has been a stripper, top-price escort and topless TV presenter - famously streaked at an All Blacks rugby union game in 2006 wearing nothing but a bikini. She later advertised the swimwear on auction website Trade Me in order to cover court costs for her disorderly behaviour. Lewis had a one night stand with All Blacks star Aaron Smith in 2014 while he had a girlfriend. She was then forced to deny allegations she was the woman he had sex with in a airport bathroom in a 2016 scandal. Axed NBC host Megyn Kelly has been branded a racist who made repeated racial comments by a frequent guest on her former Fox News show. Kirsten Powers, who often sparred with Kelly on her former Fox News show, said NBC should not have hired the controversial host due to her attitude towards the big race issues in America. Yesterday is was first revealed by DailyMail.com that Kelly was to be ousted from her NBC position just 48 hours after the host made remarks in which she defended wearing blackface during Halloween fancy dress. On her Today program, she also defended Real Housewives of New York cast member Luann de Lesseps, who had previously darkened her skin for a Diana Ross costume. She asked on Tuesday's show: 'But what is racist? Because you do get in trouble if you are a white person who puts on blackface on Halloween, or a black person who puts on whiteface for Halloween. Back when I was a kid that was OK, as long as you were dressing up as, like, a character.' Presenter Megyn Kelly and columnist Kirsten Powers (right) argue on Fox News about alleged voter intimidation by the New Black Panther Party Megyn Kelly defended Real Housewives of New York cast member Luann de Lesseps, who had previously darkened her skin for a Diana Ross costume Kirsten Powers slammed NBC for hiring Kelly who she says she had many run-ins with over race issues when being interviewed on Fox News Kelly left her prime-time job at Fox News in January last year to go to NBC with a $69 million contract. But writing in her USA Today column, Powers suggested Kelly regularly took racist stances and invited analysis on important issues from racists. Recounting some of her most memorable confrontations with Kelly, she described how she attacked the New Black Panther Party in Philadelphia during the 2008 presidential election between Barack Obama and John McCain. The group were accused of voter intimidation when a member was videoed by a Republican Party poll watcher standing outside a polling station holding a baton. The incident was seized upon as an example of elections being 'stolen' but the man pictured was not charged as he was not stopping people entering the building and left the area when asked to by police. On many occasions Powers claimed ex-LAPD cop Mark Fuhrman, who investigated the OJ Simpson case and was later recorded using racist language, was brought on the Fox how to analyze racial issues and police brutality cases. Powers said: 'The original sin was that Kelly was hired by NBC at all. Kelly had a long track record of racial demagoguery at Fox News before she ever set foot in the NBC studios. 'NBC hired an unrepentant Kelly, who spoke with pride of all her work at Fox News.' Kelly also 'made one racist claim after another', insisting Santa and Jesus were white on air. The Today host said it was acceptable to wear blackface 'as long as you were dressing up as a character' The former Fox News host then apologized in a tearful statement the next day and spoke the issues people of color faced in America Powers added: 'Kelly has made one racist claim after another: Jesus was white, Santa is white, a black teenager in a bathing suit pinned to the ground by a police officer was no saint, Sandra Bland would be alive if she had just complied with police orders. 'Kelly dismissed a Department of Justice report finding racial bias in the police department at Ferguson, Missouri, arguing that "there are very few companies in America [where] you won't find racist emails".' Powers also said the minor New Black Panther Party where a threat to 'good people everywhere'. She added: 'One of my craziest on-air experiences debating a conservative - a very high bar -involved Kelly yelling at me on live television for nearly 10 minutes for disagreeing that the New Black Panthers were a threat to Good People Everywhere. 'In another instance, there was an off-air disagreement about her show using a caption referring to Michelle Obama as Obamas Baby Mama. 'Kelly was outraged when I told her it was racist, passing it off as a stupid joke by a junior staffer for which Fox News apologized. I didnt get the joke. 'Her meteoric rise could not have happened without the complicity of a system that is far too comfortable with racism, especially when it comes in a pretty white package.' But despite the on-air arguments, Powers said she 'found her to be a smart and lively sparring partner during my time at Fox News'. Kirsten Powers said NBC should never have hired Kelly over her stance on race issues such as the New Black Panther Party Kelly was accused of being alowed to get away previous racist comments due to 'complicity of a system that is far too comfortable with racism' Kelly signed a $69 million, three-year contract with NBC in January last year after leaving her Fox News prime time slot In one exchange with Powers, Kelly also 'made one racist claim after another', insisting Santa and Jesus were white on air for Fox News Kelly is said to be entitled to receive all her $69 million three-year contract even if she is fired, unless her comments about blackface are deemed to violate a 'morality clause'. On Wednesday Kelly apologized for her remarks by tearfully reading a prepared statement in which she said sorry for her comments the previous day. Fighting back tears she said: 'I'm Megyn Kelly. And I want to begin with two words - I'm sorry. 'I have never been a PC kind of person. But I do understand the value in being sensitive to our history, particularly on race and ethnicity. 'This past year has been so painful for many people of color. The country feels so divided. And I have no wish to add to that pain and offense.' 'I believe this is a time for more understanding, more love, more sensitivity and honor. And I want to be part of that. Thank you for listening and for helping me listen, too.' Kelly then welcomed an all-black panel to discussion blackface, bringing on Roland Martin and frequent guest Amy Holmes. She was silent for almost all of the 15 minute segment, listening as her guests explained the state of racism in America and the workplace. Then, after a commercial break, it was all smiles and laughter for Kelly, who welcomed Gary Busey to the show. In one of her earliest controversies, Kelly invited conspiracy theorist, Alex Jones for an interview, just before she was set to host a gala for the parents of Sandy Hook victims. Jones has argued on his InfoWars channel many times that the shooting was staged with fake victims and actors playing the parts of grieving parents. Kelly took part in NBC's coverage of Brett Kavanaugh's hearing, and she was scheduled to help cover election night for the network on November 6. NBC sources said the network had no desire to go easy on their highest-paid host, who has condemned its own anchors - including Matt Lauer and Tom Brokaw - in her #MeToo coverage. There are rumors Kelly may return to Fox News or its new online venture Fox Nation. But on Friday an informed source told DailyMail.com she is not coming back to any Fox News platform. Dempsey Hawkins (pictured), 58, is searching online for a woman to date after spending 38 years in an American jail for murder. He moved to Cambridge following his release in 2017 and started working at a Mexican restaurant in the city A murderer who strangled his 14-year-old girlfriend before stuffing her lifeless body in an oil drum is searching online for women to date in London - after serving 38 years in an American jail. Dempsey Hawkins, 58, who was deported back to Britain following his time in jail, has been approaching women on the social networking site Meetup.com. One woman who was contacted by Hawkins under the alias Dempsey Louis, claims he was 'terribly forward' and did not mention his past conviction at all. Hawkins had been refused parole nine times before his release in 2017 but with help from campaigners secured his freedom on the ruling that he was shipped back to England. Now, one year after his arrival in the country private messages have revealed his new search for women. Speaking to the Evening Standard, a woman contacted by Hawkins said he was 'terribly forward' in an exchange and 'gave his number immediately'. She said: 'I thought it was an unusual name and he said he lived in Cambridge, so I googled him and there was a reference to the murderer Dempsey Hawkins. 'I compared their photographs and it was obviously the same man. I was horrified.' Hawkins strangled 14-year-old Susan Jacobson (pictured) to death on Staten Island, New York, in May 1976. Then aged 16, he also stuffed her lifeless body in an oil drum. It wasn't until two years after the murder that he was caught The woman, who is anonymous in the report, contacted police after finding out about his past. She said: 'I hope hes a contributing member of society but I think its important other females and males in his dating network know his face.' When contacted by the Evening Standard, Hawkins said he can understand why people find the conviction concerning. But he claimed his messages were not inappropriate, saying: 'I just asked would they like to go on a date. No? OK then, bye. Thats it.' London-born Hawkins, then aged 16, killed beau Susan Jacobson on Staten Island, New York, in May 1976. Dempsey Hawkins (pictured right during his arrest in 1978) did not confess to the killing until 20 years after the murder. During a phone interview from behind bars in 2011, he later admitted: 'With the arm of the shirt, I put it around her neck, as if to kiss her, and I just started squeezing it' Two years later, he was caught and sentenced to 22 years in prison. But It would be 20 years until he finally confessed to killing his victim. Hawkins had been dating Susan for about a year at the time of the attack, but she had been ordered to break the relationship off by her parents after she was forced to have an abortion. Her boyfriend could not dare to think of Susan being with someone else and decided that if he couldn't have her, no one else could either. During a phone interview from behind bars in 2011, he later admitted: 'It was a warm day. 'With the arm of the shirt, I put it around her neck, as if to kiss her, and I just started squeezing it. Her hands went up to the shirt and I just looked away and just kept squeezing the shirt.' When friends and family searched for the missing teen, Hawkins joined the party and misled loved ones every time they got close to the scene of her death. When Dempsey moved to Cambridge in 2017 following his deportation from the USA he started work at a Mexican restaurant (pictured) in the city Susan's sister Janice, told the New York Times, that he would often try and suggest she had fled to another state, like Florida or Chicago. She recalled: 'Every time we got close, he would come up with a story to take us to a different location.' Dempsey later moved to live with his father on an United States Air Force base in Joppa, Illinois and carried on with his high school education - as if nothing had happened. However, he was arrested after a young boy found what he thought were 'dog bones' in a barrel. After he was sentenced, it would be years until Dempsey finally admitted in a letter to Susan's family: 'Im terribly sorry for what Ive done, and I have been for a long time.' Dempsey is now enjoying a new life in Cambridge and working at a Mexican restaurant in the city. By day, 43-year-old Matt Buffalo is a theater instructor at Miamis New World School for the Arts. But, beginning next weekend, the Off-Broadway veteran will offer a first-hand lesson in acting at Island City Stage in Wilton Manors. Buffalo is starring in Jonathan Tolins hit one-man comedy, Buyer & Cellar, the story of a young out-of-work actor who lands a job managing the miniature shopping mall built below Barbra Streisands Malibu compound. I was living in New York when it was on Broadway. I wanted to see it and was never able. It closed before I was able to see it. I knew it was about Barbra Streisands basement and Michael Urie was in it and I should see it because it was a show I might be able to do in the future, Buffalo recalled. The actor got his chance, thanks to Island City Stages artistic director Andy Rogow, who noted Buffalo was absolutely perfect for the part during an event earlier this year announcing the companys upcoming season. I really feel like I am the lead character, Alex Moore. Ive always loved Barbara Streisand and her music. I had a great appreciation, but I was never a Barbra queen. In doing the research and re-watching her movies and concerts and the way she speaks and her interviews, my appreciation has grown and Im probably now a Barbra queen. The depth and precision and heart that she puts into everything is mind-boggling, Buffalo said. Throughout the 90-minute show, Buffalo must perform six characters, including Streisand. He explained, Shes the hardest one for me. Shes an icon and people have definite thoughts and opinions about how she should be portrayed. Again, because Im not becoming her, that relieves me of those expectation. The challenge is not to become a caricature and find the real person, the truth of what she wants. Its definitely not a comic role, but the challenge is always to let their truth be told and then let the audience take it from there. The biggest challenge for Buffalo is changing characters instantly, but hes aided, he says, by Tolins well-written dialogue. Its still a challenge because you have to know what your focus is and then respond as a different character in the next second, he said. Its like splitting your brain down the middle. Buffalo is most comfortable when he addresses the audience, breaking that fourth wall of traditional theater. They [the audience] are another character in the play. They dont respond back to me, but theyre my friends who Im sharing the story with throughout the show. They go along the journey with Alex Moore, Buffalo noted. Hes trying to find his place in the world and hopefully the audience will recognize the growth in him in the play. Matt Buffalo stars in Island City Stages production of Jonathan Tollins comedy Buyer & Cellar, Nov. 1 Dec. 2 at Wilton Theater Factory, 2304 N. Dixie Hwy. in Wilton Manors. Tickets are $35 at IslandCityStage.org. Philip Hammond is set to pump 500million into defence at next week's Budget after Tory anger erupted over cuts to the military. Defence Secretary Gavin Williamson has been in a long-running battle with the Treasury for more cash for Britain's Armed Forces. Many Tory MPs joined in demands for the Ministry of Defence to be given more money after a report warned it faces a 20billion funding blackhole over the next decade. The Chancellor will announce the major cash injection when he unveils his Budget in the House of Commons on Monday, sources told The Sun. He has come under to find the extra money after a major report by the National Audit Office (NAO) warned of the huge shortfall in the MoD's funding plan. Philip Hammond (pictured with his famous red box ahead of last year's Budget) is set to pump 500million into defence at next week's Budget after Tory anger erupted over cuts to the military, according to reports Defence Secretary Gavin Williamson (pictured yesterday talking to female troops in Salisbury) has been in a long-running battle with the Treasury for more cash for Britain's Armed Forces The report, published in January, said the MoD's spending plan 'is not affordable' and 'urgent action' must be taken to plug the gaping hole in the finances. The Treasury is under huge pressure to turn the spending taps on in next week's Budget after Theresa May used her party conference speech to vow and end to austerity. Dozens of Tory MPs could lose Commons seats amid backlash over Universal Credit, study warns Some 39 Tory MPs - including over a dozen ministers - could lose their seats over the controversial Universal Credit scheme, new research today suggests. Leading Conservatives including Amber Rudd and Iain Duncan Smith - the architect of the welfare shake-up - are on the at risk list. And ministers including Secretary of State for Wales Alun Cairns, Environment Minister George Eustice and Work and Pensions Minister Alok Sharma could also lose their seats. Analysis by 38 degrees, given exclusively to MailOnline, shows the Tory MPs have constituencies where the number of universal credit claimants is bigger than their majorities. The research comes amid dire warnings that poor families could lose up to 2,400 a year under the hugely controversial shake-up. Critics say families will be left relying on food banks, while ex Tory PM John Major said the change will be as unpopular as the poll tax, which sparked riots and helped topple Margaret Thatcher. Today's research piles yet more pressure on Chancellor Philip Hammond to find extra money in next week's Budget to bail out the scheme. Advertisement Mr Hammond has to find money to pay for the Government's commitment to pump an extra 20bn a year into the NHS over the next decade. While he is also under enormous pressure to find billions more to bail out the under-fire Universal Credit welfare shake-up. Poor families who lose out in the switch over face losing up to 2,4000 a year according to some analysis. And a Tory backlash has erupted over the policies - with many MPs breaking ranks to publicly call for more cash. Sir John Major has warned that the policy could be as unpopular as the poll tax, which sparked nationwide riots and helped topple Margaret Thatcher. While Ian Duncan Smith - the former Tory leader and architect of the scheme who quit the Cabinet over welfare cuts - has called for another 2bn to be pumped into UC for it to work properly. Analysis exclusively seen by MailOnline today reveals that 39 Tory MPs - including over a dozen ministers - could lose their seats over the controversial Universal Credit scheme. Leading Conservatives including Amber Rudd and Iain Duncan Smith - the architect of the welfare shake-up - are on the at risk list. And ministers including Secretary of State for Wales Alun Cairns, Environment Minister George Eustice and Work and Pensions Minister Alok Sharma could also lose their seats. Analysis by 38 degrees shows the Tory MPs all have constituencies where the number of universal credit claimants is bigger than their majorities. But Mr Hammond had some much-needed good news yesterday when new figures showed that wages are finally growing while the proportion of people in low paid jobs has fallen to its lowest level since records began. Income tax rises, pension tax relief cuts... What could be in the Budget 2018? Chancellor Philip Hammond is unveiling his Budget on Monday. Here is what the country may expect from the annual tax and spend review: Economy and borrowing: Britain's finances are in better shape than they have been since the 2008 crash. Official figures show Government borrowing below 40billion in 2017/18, having peaked at 153billion in 2009. Public Services: Experts at the Institute for Fiscal Studies calculate that just keeping spending on services in line with inflation, while funding generous rises promised for health, defence and aid, would cost the Chancellor 19billion. It remains to be seen how far the Chancellor will go to deliver the PM's pledge to 'end austerity'. Tax and benefits: There is strong speculation the level of income at which workers pay income tax could be frozen, despite a Tory election pledge at the 2017 election that the thresholds would rise to 12,500 by 2020. Fuel duty: Theresa May has promised to freeze fuel duty for the ninth year in a row. The Institute for Fiscal Studies think tank estimates that the policy costs the Treasury around 9billion a year. Advertisement The Office for National Statistics (ONS) said that full-time wages are growing at their fastest rate since the 2008 financial meltdown. While the proportion of low-paid employee jobs by hourly earnings fell to 17.8 per cent - the lowest since the series began in 1997. While Britain's finances are in better shape than they have been since the 2008 crash. Official figures show Government borrowing below 40billion in 2017/18, having peaked at 153billion in 2009. And it emerged this week that the pressure could have eased on the Chancellor to raise taxes to fund Tory pledges on the NHS and ending austerity. Reports said that stronger than expected tax receipts mean that the Office for Budget Responsibility's forecasts for the public finances were set to reduce the deficit for 2018-19 by around 13billion - a massive revision. That could help the Chancellor avoid unpopular tax increases to pay for Theresa May's pledge earlier this year to raise an additional 20billion a year for the NHS in England by 2023. One of the many things that Brexit makes awkward is economic forecasting: the Office for Budget Responsibility has its work cut out there. Experts at the Institute for Fiscal Studies calculate that just keeping spending on services in line with inflation, while funding generous rises promised for health, defence and aid, would cost the Chancellor 19billion. There is strong speculation the level of income at which workers pay income tax could be frozen by Mr Hammond next week. This risks sparking a backlash as a Tory election pledge at the 2017 election that the thresholds would rise to 12,500 by 2020. A doctor in north China was left with two broken ribs after being beaten up by a patient who did not agree with his diagnosis. The 36-year-old doctor, named Wu Guang, was on duty at the A&E department in Zhuozhou Hospital in Hubei province on July 16 when he treated the patient, Wang, who was involved in a car accident. Following a thorough checkup, an x-ray and a CT scan, Wu diagnosed Wang as having minor soft tissue damage and discharged the 57-year-old patient. However, Wang, reportedly hoping for a more serious diagnosis for insurance purposes, started arguing with the doctor before launching a violent assault on him. Surveillance footage shows a patient launching an assault on a doctor at the Zhuozhou Hospital's A&E reception in Hubei on July 16. The doctor suffered two broken ribs The 36-year-old doctor, named Wu Guang, was on duty at the A&E department when he treated the 57-year-old patient, Wang, who was involved in a car accident Wang arrived at the hospital at 9:40pm saying he had a headache and pain in his shoulder after being rear-ended in an accident on the night of July 16. Wu told Jinyun News in a detailed report on Saturday that Wang had left following treatment but returned to the hospital with more than 10 people at about 11.30pm. One man, presumably one of the patient's relatives, told the doctor that Wang wasn't feeling well and asked him to examine him again. After checking his blood pressure, Wu told Wang that there is nothing wrong with him and suggested that he rest outside in the lobby. Wang disagreed, insisting that Wu treat him right away. The doctor started arguing with him, telling him there are a lot of patients waiting to be treated at the A&E and asked him to see someone at the outpatient department. The doctor said as soon as he left the treatment room, Wang started to verbally abuse him in front of stunned patients - to which he responded: 'This is a hospital, what do you think you're doing?' This had apparently angered Wang and his family members, who rushed after the doctor in a rage. Two traffic police showed up at the scene and stopped the fight at the hospital However, being the only person on duty that night, Wu said he had to carry on treating patients despite feeling sharp pains in his ribs following the violent assault Shocking surveillance footage shows a group of men ganging up against the doctor and violently beating him up at the reception of the A&E department. Two traffic police showed up at the scene and stopped the fight. Being the only person on duty that night, Wu said he had to carry on treating patients despite feeling sharp pains in his ribs. A follow up CT scan showed that he suffered two broken ribs and had to be hospitalised. Although a police report has been filed, no penalties have been handed out to Wang and his family members for more than three months, according to the report. The incident gained mass media attention, prompting police to launch a thorough investigation. On Wednesday, Zhuozhou district police said in a statement that the main suspect, Wang, was under criminal detention while two other suspects were under administrative detention. The two suspects are believed to be Wang's son and son-in-law. They were each detained for 15 days and fined 500 yuan (56), the statement said, adding that a task force has been formed to further investigate the incident. On Wednesday, Zhuozhou district police said in a statement that the main suspect, Wang, is now under criminal detention while two other people are now under administrative detention This is the latest case of violence against medical professionals that has haunted China for the past decade as the country's healthcare system comes under increasing strain. Last month, a doctor in Beijing was beaten up by a man and his daughter after he refused to perform a C-section on his pregnant wife. In August, a pregnant nurse at a Sichuan hospital was seriously injured after an elderly woman whacked her with a metal pole for hurting her grandson while administering an IV drip. Zhao Xinbing, a 50-year-old doctor at the Jing County Hospital in Anhui province, was stabbed to death during a confrontation with a patient's husband in March. A total of 7,816 people have been prosecuted for intentionally injuring medical staff or inciting crowds at hospitals since 2016, the Supreme People's Procuratorate previously said. The Ministry of Public Security had previously said police have been carrying out a severe crackdown on hospital-related violent crimes. A professor was sacked from the Royal Academy of Music after three students complained she called violinists 'gypos' in a mass email to 800 pupils, an employment tribunal heard. Dr Francesca Carpos-Young, 59, was fired less than 24 hours after finding out the comments she made in her lecture notes had been shared on social media by students last November. The renowned bassoonist, who has played for some of the best orchestras in the world, told the central London tribunal that her notes were taken out of context. Dr Francesca Carpos-Young arriving at the Central London Employment Tribunal where she is contesting her dismissal from the Royal Academy of Music Dr Carpos-Young claimed she was raising awareness of inequality in her industry and accused the academy - which boasts Sir Elton John among its former students - of concealing discrimination within its ranks. The professor, who is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts, said the notes were referencing findings she had made interviewing more than 100 musicians for her PhD over discrimination in their industry. They were among a number of attachments sent in her email and read: 'Everyone knows that having a good reputation is important. But how do you get one? At the very least you need to consider the following tips: 'Be discreet; what's on tour stays on tour. 'Become familiar with shared understanding of anecdote, caricature, stereotype and jokes. Google them and look on YouTube if this is not your culture. For example, you may hear terms like this: 'Pond life = (string players) 'Gypos (short for gypsies) = violinists specifically.' Queen Elizabeth II meets Royal Harpist Clare Jones (L) as part of her visit to the Royal Academy of Music in central London The married professor told the tribunal: 'I was not giving advice to make it stop as such, I was bringing awareness. 'The public interest is always on my mind. I always think about issues of equality, always.' But she was sacked two months into her new job after bosses at the academy, whose patron is the Queen, found her guilty of gross misconduct by bringing the academy into disrepute. The presidency at the Royal Academy of Music is held by the Duchess of Gloucester and was formerly held by Princess Diana. She is claiming she was unfairly dismissed for making public interest disclosures, sexually discriminated against, suffered victimisation, breach of contract, and her right to be accompanied by a union representative at a disciplinary hearing was breached by the academy. Dr Carpos-Young said in a statement: 'My PhD, 'The prestige Economy of a London 'Orchestra', found discrimination in the orchestral world to be widespread. 'I interviewed more than one hundred professional musicians working in one symphony orchestra in London, and more than forty orchestral 'fixers' who engage them. Dr Carpos-Young arriving at the Central London Employment Tribunal after sending a controversial email on how to earn a good reputation to 800 student 'My email to the students on 30th October also included the notes for my Prestige lecture that had taken place on 12 October. 'There were my lectures notes about my PhD findings. It was not a formal handout. The notes contained some of the discriminatory language that my PhD research showed professional musicians had used. 'The terms illuminated ways that some individuals in the industry, and the organisations for which they work, engage in conduct which would in my view be unlawful because it is discriminatory.' She told the tribunal Deputy Principal Tim Jones had asked her to circulate her notes on September 22 and 'properly' to the whole student body on October 4 last year. But Dr Carpos-Young said Neil Heyde, the head of postgraduate programmes at the academy, said three students had emailed complaints about the notes the day after her email. She said : 'These notes were already in circulation amongst the student body and I circulated them to the students in line with Tim's request. 'I replied to say I was sorry to hear that and that I had hoped the notes would be helpful to the students. I didn't want to upset anyone. Queen Elizabeth II (R) listens to post-gradute violin student Giovanni Guzzo play a Stradivari Violin, as part of her visit to the Royal Academy of Music in central London 'He replied to say that I did not need to worry. He told me that the 'trigger' for a couple of the emails was 'the use of stereotypical language - gender and racial - in a document on orchestral networking and slang terms'. 'He finished his email by saying 'This is probably a question of framing more than anything else as we know the language exists'.' They met the next day and she added: 'He said one was a 'serial complainer'. He said I did not need to apologise as the students needed to know about the real world and that they were being over-sensitive. 'He described them as 'needing to get a thicker skin'.' Dr Carpos-Young emailed an apology to the student body that day, saying: 'The colloquial terms that were listed in the Network Pathway notes are current, and are used by those musicians. 'Without understanding the context of the list of terms I can say that these words may be perceived to be offensive. I certainly do not want to offend any of you as I am here to help!' But she was fired less than a day after becoming aware her notes had shared on Facebook and Twitter on the evening of November 2 and that 58 students had signed an open letter calling for the 'establishment of student-led working group on Equality and Diversity'. The bitter Brexit debate has been mercilessly ridiculed in a new Ladybird book on the issue. The 'Story of Brexit' sets out to explain the vexed process of leaving the EU in the style of the much-loved children's books. And it does not spare the blushes of either side. The book lampoons Remainers who suddenly realised after the referendum that they hate half of their fellow Britons. Brexiteers are also hammered for going on about how Britain 'stood alone' in the Second World War, and repeatedly trotting out the mantra that leaving is the 'will of the people'. The 'Story of Brexit' sets out to explain the vexed process of leaving the EU in the style of the much-loved children's books The hardback is the latest in the series of Ladybird-style volumes for grown ups that take on tricky subjects. The authors insisted it is not intended to be partisan - but merely expose the ineptitude of the process and the ludicrous nature of the arguments. Alongside one illustration of a woman reading a newspaper, it says: 'The day after the referendum, Helen woke to discover that she shared her country with millions of simply awful people she had never met who thought the exact opposite of her about most things.' The book, published this week, also highlights the bewildering new terminology that has arisen around Brexit. 'Brexit gave us lots of exciting new words like Brextremist, Remoaner, Bremoaner... ' it says. 'The new words make it harder for foreigners to understand what we are saying.' Turning its fire on jingoistic Eurosceptics, the book says:'When the Nazis flew over the white cliffs of Dover, Britain fought back bravely, with nobody to help except lots of pilots from Eastern Europe, Canada, Africa, the USA and the Caribbean.' 'We stood alone before. We can do it again - can't we?' Co-writer Jason Hazeley said: 'We were asked SO many times to write this book that we eventually concluded it was the will of the people.' The Ladybird for grown ups series has become a publishing phenomenon, selliong more than four million copies since first appearing three years ago. Other topics have included the shed and the hangover. Celebrities were pictured in an awkward situation after partying at a lavish bash in London last night thrown by two of Sir Philip Green's famous brands. The glitzy night out came just hours after he was revealed as the tycoon trying to stop bullying allegations against him being made public. Stars of The Only Way is Essex, Strictly Come Dancing and Made in Chelsea were spotted at the Boundary restaurant in Shoreditch to celebrate the launch of Dorothy Perkins and Burton's Christmas collections. Both brands are part of the Arcadia group owned by Sir Philip, worth around 4billion, and the news did not stop the celebrities smiling as they posed for pictures. Famous faces included actress and model Gemma Atkinson and her professional dancer partner Gorka Marquez, who met on Strictly Come Dancing last year. Celebrities were caught up in an awkward situation last night after attending a party thrown to celebrate Christmas collection launches for Arcadia's Burton and Dorothy Perkins brands just hours after allegations of bullying surfaced against Sir Philip Green. Pictured from left are TOWIE star Pete Wicks, Big Brother contestant turned professional male stripper Lotan Carter and model and actress Gemma Atkinson with Strictly dancer boyfriend Gorka Marquez Also at the ill-timed party were Made in Chelsea's Georgia Toffolo, left, and professional bikini model Georgia Simmons, right with bodybuilder partner Myles Leask They were joined by TOWIE star Pete Wicks and professional male stripper Lotan Carter, while Made in Chelsea's Georgia Toffolo was also seen beaming for the cameras. It comes as A list-celebrity friends of the businessman, including supermodels Kate Moss and Naomi Campbell, have remained silent on the matter almost 24 hours on after the revelation. Billionaire Sir Philip, 66, had attempted to ban newspapers from reporting bullying allegations using controversial non disclosure orders on five former employees. He obtained an injunction at the Court of Appeal but it was made redundant yesterday after Lord Hain used parliamentary privilege to name him in the House of Lords. Some MPs said he should lose his knighthood over the claims and today a spokeswoman for Theresa May said the committee responsible is 'continually reviewing evidence' in such cases but did not confirm whether it would be specifically probing Sir Philip. Calls have also been made to boycott his businesses on social media, although many have opposed this saying it would penalise his 'hard-working staff' rather than the billionaire. Gemma and Gorka, pictured, met on Strictly last year and confirmed their romance in February after being romantically linked for weeks Sir Philip Green has been named in Parliament as the businessman behind an injunction over reporting of sexual harassment and racial abuse allegations. It has calls for him to be stripped of his knighthood (pictured wearing it with his wife Tina in 2006) Sir Philip lives a glamorous lifestyle, mixing with the country's top models. There is no suggestion anyone pictured is involved in any of the allegations against him The accusations against the billionaire have not been proven in court or at a tribunal and in a statement issued last night, Sir Philip said: 'I am not commenting on anything that has happened in court or was said in Parliament today. 'To the extent that it is suggested that I have been guilty of unlawful sexual or racist behaviour, I categorically and wholly deny these allegations. 'Arcadia and I take accusations and grievances from employees very seriously and in the event that one is raised, it is thoroughly investigated. 'Arcadia employs more than 20,000 people and in common with many large businesses sometimes receives formal complaints from employees. 'In some cases these are settled with the agreement of all parties and their legal advisers. These settlements are confidential so I cannot comment further on them.' Green, pictured with disgraced Hollywood executive Harvey Weinstein in 2009. There is no suggestion Sir Philip is linked to any of the allegations made about Weinstein He is well known for mingling with celebrities and is pictured here left with Frozen star Kristen Bell and right with Rita Ora Plans for Britons to have to opt out of donating their organs when they die moved a step closer to becoming law as MPs backed the change today. Theresa May and Jeremy Corbyn have both backed moves to bring in a new 'opt out' system in Britain. And today a private member's bill to bring in the overhaul - which minsters estimate could save 700 lives a year - received the seal of approval from MPs. The proposed change is dubbed 'Max's Law' after 10 year-old Max Johnson, a heart transplant recipient who led a high-profile campaign to change the system. It means that it will be brought in as law if the House of Lords also back the change. Labour MP Dan Jarvis, who brought forward the Organ Donation (Deemed Consent) Bill, urged Parliament to seize the moment and back the law. Labour MP Dan Jarvis, who brought forward the Organ Donation (Deemed Consent) Bill, (pictured in the Commons today) urged Parliament to seize the moment and back the law Speaking in the Commons today, he said: 'Quite simply, we are here today to save lives. To save the lives of people like Max, but also the thousands of other people who will benefit from the change that this Bill will set out. 'We have a rare opportunity to take this opportunity to make this powerful and meaningful change.' He said that the law change will help save lives as thousands more people are likely to be placed on the register - helping to boost chances of a match. He said: 'This is a Bill which will save lives, but it is important to note that of all the people who died in the UK last year only about 1% died in circumstances that would have made a donation possible. 'This means that even though hundreds of thousands of people across the country are registered as potential donors, only a small handful will ever be in a situation that would allow a donation to take place. 'This is one of the main reasons why today in the UK there are thousands of people waiting for an organ donation and why every year hundreds of people will die waiting. 'This loss of life is devastating but it is not inevitable.' He added: 'I believe that moving to an opt-out system for organ donation, like the one they have in Wales, will add thousands of names to the donor register, meaning that once the Bill is passed hundreds of lives could be saved. 'This is not about the state taking control of people's organs or shaming people into donating. If people do want to opt-out that is absolutely fine and I am entirely respectful of any decision of any one for whatever reason so to do, no questions will be asked and there will be no hard feelings.' The Bill cleared the Commons after receiving its third reading and will undergo further scrutiny in the Lords at a later date. Many MPs (pictured today in the House of Commons Chamber) stood up to give their backing to the law change, which they voted through today The measures are expected to come into effect in England in spring 2020 - because the timetable for its introduction will allow for a year of 'transition' to the new law. The Government has said it would also encourage people to discuss, with their families, the issue of whether they would want to be a donor in the event of their death. Health minister Jackie Doyle-Price praised backbench MPs for bringing the legislation forward and said it was something 'that will save lives'. She said: 'I am so proud that I have been able to play my part in taking this Bill forward. 'It really has been a fantastic piece of cross-party working to be frank, it's made it quick and speedy as a consequence and we've all been focused on what we're trying to achieve here which is to save more lives.' She added that the measures would be in place 'very speedily' once the Bill had achieved Royal Assent. When asked if they would boycott Topshop shoppers said they were divided Furious shoppers are calling for a mass boycott of stores owned by Sir Philip Green after the fashion mogul was outed as the subject of sexual harassment claims. Calls for a boycott of the billionaires business, which includes Topshop and other brands owned by Arcadia, have gathered momentum as leading MPs also call for the business tycoon to be stripped of his knighthood, if the claims are proved to be true. The 66-year-old was named in parliament yesterday as the man at the centre of sexual harassment and racial abuse allegations, claims which he has categorically denied. Green has not been found guilty in a court or tribunal and the court order remains in place. Online #pinknotgreen spread across social networks as people called for a boycott of his stores. Shoppers outside Topshop's flagship Oxford Street store said they were 'disgusted' at the allegations involving Sir Philip Green but when asked if they would be boycotting his stories, opinions were divided. Mother of one Lindsey Thomas, 44, (left) and Hannah Dixon, 20, (right) outside the Topshop flagship store Mother of one Lindsey Thomas, 44, director of a plumbing company from Grimsby said: 'I think the me too movement will have an effect, or at least I'm hopeful. 'A lot of people will be put off going to Topshop, it certainly put me off. 'I'll be spending my money elsewhere.' Biochem student at Uni of Manchester Hannah Dixon, 20, from Barcelona, said: 'I'm disgusted and angry and won't be shopping at Topshop ever again. 'I don't see how you could walk in.' History student at Uni of Manchester Isabelle Parkin, 20, from North Yorkshire, said: 'I won't step foot in Topshop because it's important that we don't support these businesses. 'You might think you're just one person who isn't shopping there, but it does matter, to show resistance,' Another history student at Uni of Manchester Isabella Wood, 19, from Liverpool said she would also be boycotting. 'I'm trying to boycott Topshop, even after the issue with them removing the feminist don't wear pink display, I already wanted to,' she said. Isabelle Wood, 19, from Liverpool (left) and Isabelle Parkin, 20, from North Yorkshire 'But with this, it's only cemented that even further and I'll never shop at Topshop again.' But not everyone agreed that a boycott of the beloved store was the best way forward. Former Topshop worker Kat Diggins-Barns, a 35-year-old pet business owner from Camberley in Surrey said: 'I used to work for Topshop before all the horrible problems with BHS... From that and with this on top, I think he comes across as rude, insensitive and not a very nice person. 'He is obviously a very clever man because of his business accruement but I don't think he comes across very well. 'I don't buy much from the store anymore since I am in my mid-thirties and I can't get away with wearing their crop tops anymore, not because of him. 'I love Topshop and it would be a shame to see the shops take a hit from this because it is an amazing brand. Sir Philip Green has been named in Parliament as the businessman behind an injunction over reporting of sexual harassment and racial abuse allegations. It has calls for him to be stripped of his knighthood if the claims are proved true (pictured wearing it with his wife Tina in 2006) 'I would just hate for Topshop to be punished because of what he is doing.' Ola Savage, a 28-year-old international arbitration lawyer from Fitzrovia, central London, said she 'would probably still shop there.' 'They have nice clothes. 'I'm not shocked at the news but it is terrible.' Silvano Guadagno, a 24-year-old business development executive from Bow, east London, said: 'If the boss stays there, I probably wouldn't shop there anymore. 'I would avoid shops where there were issues with people high up to do with any allegations of mistreatment of staff, maternity, child labour etcetera.' The popular high street clothing store TopShop at Oxford Circus in London Andrea Smith, a 35-year-old from north London who works in advertising, said: 'I was then thinking about doing my winter shopping and thought I would come to Topshop to get some staple pieces for my winter wardrobe. 'If what they are saying is true, I would not want to support the brand so much. 'But right now, it seems more like a lot of allegations. 'I was surprised to hear that this 'un-freedom' of the press exists and I think it is right that he was outed. The public and people should know.' Journalist Adam Saban, 28, visiting from Australia said: 'It's not on really. I'm of the belief that if they aren't substantiated claims they shouldn't be made public.' Liz Lopez, a 32-year-old music accountant from Walthamstow in east London said: 'It would affect my opinion of Topshop if he was found guilty and then stayed.' 'I would try not want to shop there because of him, but if I was desperate and needed a new dress I would probably still take a look and buy from Topshop. The fashion chain tycoon was named in the House of Lords by former minister Lord Peter Hain 'They have an edge on style. 'I think the allegations will damage the reputation of the store but it is such a big brand that it would not affect it dramatically. 'I don't think it is going to disappear.' Luca Moore, 17, a sales assistant from Cardiff, said: 'Any money is too small a price to pay for being harassed or made to feel bullied at work. Many people who were asked near Topshops flagship store said they loved the brand but the allegations made them 'uncomfortable.' Caitlin Warren, 16, is a student from Cardiff said: 'I don't know if what he's alleged to have done will put me off shopping at Topshop, I like the clothes but it does make me feel uncomfortable with him being the man in charge. I wish that wasn't the case.' People walk past a Topshop store which is part of the Arcadia Group Sarah Davies, 21, is a retail supervisor from Bridgend agreed that she loved the brand. 'I love the brand and I shop at Topshop a lot. There are so many young women like me and my friends that go to the stores and have little or no awareness of what goes on at the top. 'If the decision makers are behaving so badly then are we safe as customers? It's a trickle down affect and it is telling about how they really feel about women. That does concern me.' Courtney Evans, 20, a barmaid from Mountain Ash, said: 'If people haven't heard of the allegations then it's not going to make a big difference to the sales. You can see people still want to shop there regardless. 'I don't think that what the big boss does will concern shoppers who want a new outfit. They want the clothes not a moral debate.' Jimi Miller, 22, is a student from Newport said: 'The difficulty with so many campaigns and information out there to do with the moral compass of big bosses is I feel like I don't know where to put my money any more. Sir Philip, pictured with Kate Moss, previously had trouble when in charge of discount retailer Amber Day in the early 1990s, which he resigned as chairman of after poor financial results Sir Philip lives a glamorous lifestyle, mixing with the country's top models. There is no suggestion anyone pictured is involved in any of the allegations against him 'Every business has done something wrong. Whether it's #MeToo or they are exploiting workers abroad. It's easier for people not to think about it and just shop where they always have.' Grace Hughes, 17, a student from Cardiff said: 'I do shop in Topshop but I find it expensive. I didn't know about the scandal and I don't think it affects me really. Maybe because I'm usually a River Island girl!' A worker at Topshop Cardiff who didn't want to be named said: 'We're been warned by management not to speak to the press but I want to say that we have been concerned about the fallout from this. 'I wondered if we'd have protesters outside the shop. I know that people are reacting badly online to the news about our big boss and it has the potential to be damaging. 'We are worried it will lose us customers and I'm personally uncomfortable.' James Rackover and his co-defendant Larry Dilione worked up big appetite by lap dancing for a woman on the night they allegedly murdered a Connecticut man and left his bloody body in the bathtub, a court heard Thursday. The DA's office confirmed a video showing men suggestively rubbing their bodies on a woman sat in a chair was from the same day Rackover, 27, and Dilione, 30, are said to have killed Joey Comunale, 26, after a boozy party. A clip filmed from an alcohol-filled table and accompanied by the sounds of Ginuwine's 1996 track Pony, reveals one of the men who is tattooed and shirtless, moving against the blonde female. In the video, a voice in the background makes reference to a scene from the movie Magic Mike, starring Channing Tatum, where the same tune is played. Later the fully dressed male in a gray T-shirt and blazer has his turn with a person near the camera saying: 'No one can know how embarrassing you are.' Scroll down for video Rackover (pictured in court in October 2017), 27, and former friend, Lawrence Dilione, 30, are accused of fatally stabbing Joey at an alcohol and cocaine-fueled party inside Rackover's luxury New York City apartment in November 2016 Katherine Conroy, Samantha Guardiola and Jenna Stisi testified Monday about their attendance that early morning. The court heard that the men competed to give Stisi lap dances, reported the Stamford Advocate. It's the same day suspects Rackover and Dilion are alleged to have ordered a whopping $78.82 worth of food according to a bill from Seamless.com from November 13, 2016. Assistant DA Rachel Ehrhardt read the order from Bareburger which shows the pair may have chowed down on 'Buffalo chicken bites' as well as a 'beef burger, medium rare,' on a brioche bun with county bacon in Rackover's blood-stained apartment. A second meal of another burger 'french fries, onion rings and sriracha pork belly Brussels sprouts' was also on the invoice time stamped around 4pm. Rackover and Dilion chomped on the delivered early dinner from the brand famous for serving up 'clean comfort food'. Prosecutors claim Rackover ordered more food the following morning at 9am and reported to work as usual after dumping the dead body in Oceanport, New Jersey. This time he sipped a French vanilla iced coffee, and devoured 'oatmeal, a western omelette and a side of Irish sausage,' the New York Post reports. The accused men allegedly ate a 'clean comfort food' - including a 'beef burger, medium rare, brioche bun' after they are said to have killed Joey Comunale, 26 A Seamless.com receipt shows 'Buffalo chicken bites' were delivered as well as french fries and onion rings as the dead body lay in a bathtub in the New York City apartment The following morning Rackover sipped a French vanilla iced coffee and devoured a meal including a western omelette and a side of Irish sausage as he resumed work Joey Comunale's mother Lisa appeared at the Rackover murder trial Thursday Lisa heard what happened on the day of her son's death and shortly afterwards The revelations came as Comunale's mother Lisa attended court for Rackover's murder trial. Rackover is said to be the 'surrogate son' of celebrity jeweler Jeffrey Rackover, who has designed baubles for the likes of Jennifer Lopez and was responsible for Melania Trump's $3million engagement ring. Max Gemma, 30, who was also said to have been at Rackover's apartment the night Comunale was killed, was charged with helping in the clean up attempt, but not for Comunale's murder. Jeffrey Rackover has since distanced himself from his 'adoptive' son, but was named in a lawsuit filed in June 2017 alleging he helped to cover up the murder. The victim's family claimed that Jeffrey provided cleaning supplies to Rackover and alleged that the pair were in a sexual relationship. The lawsuit also alleged that Jeffrey let Rackover borrow his Mercedes-Benz to dispose of the victim's dismembered remains behind a florist shop on the Jersey Shore. Previously jurors had shown the blood-stained clothes and bed sheets from the night Rackover allegedly stabbed 26-year-old Comunale to death during a party at his Grand Sutton luxury New York City apartment. The disturbing photos show a blood-splattered pair of pants, a strained dark brown pair of dress shoes and a once-white bedsheet, which had been dumped in the trash near the Manhattan party boy's home. Max Gemma, 30, who was also said to have been at Rackover's apartment the night Comunale was killed, was charged with helping in the clean up attempt, but not for Comunale's murder. Comunale was brutally killed at the alcohol and cocaine-fueled bash in an argument over cigarettes, authorities say. Rackover and former friend Dilione were arrested and charged with the murder. Rackover's trial began on Thursday October 18 and since then, jurors have been shown evidence discovered dumped in trash bags at the Grand Sutton on E. 59th Street in Manhattan, within two days of the murder. A once white bedsheet splattered with blood was also shown to the jurors on Tuesday. A gold chain necklace was caught inside the sheet. Joey's friend said he was wearing the chain the night he was killed Jurors at James Rackover's murder trial were shown the blood-stained clothes and shoes from the from the night he allegedly stabbed to death Joey Comunale. This photo shows pants recovered from the trash that had blood stains all over them This brown dress shoe is seen with blood smeared on the side On Tuesday, Michelle Gangi, a detective with the New York Police Department, showed jurors a gold chain necklace found inside the bloody bed sheet recovered from the garbage, according to the New York Daily News. Comunale's best friend previously said the victim was wearing the chain the night he died. The jury also saw the victim's bleach-stained clothes, including a gray sweatshirt that smelled strongly of bleach, his driver's license and college ID. Blood-stained towels and empty bottles of household cleaners were also seen in court. The victim's body was found three days after the gruesome murder. His body had been mutilated, burned and buried in a shallow grave in New Jersey, where Dilione lived. The evidence was found in the garbage (pictured) near Rackover's home in Manhattan Michelle Gangi, a detective with the New York Police Department, showed jurors a gray sweatshirt that smelled strongly of bleach. The sweatshirt had blood stains on the sleeves (bottom right) Empty bottles of household cleaners (pictured) were also seen by the jurors on Tuesday Last week, Joey's father, Patsy, was seen crying as he relived his last few interactions with his son. 'It would have been at my house,' Patsy said, noting that he knew his son intended to go out the night that he died. 'He wasn't feeling well. He went out anyway.' When horrific crime scene pictures were shown, revealing Joey's burned and mud-covered remains, both Patsy and Joey's mother, Lisa, were said to have struggled to keep their composure, according to the New York Daily News. At one point, Lisa was seen with Patsy's arm around her as she cried into her hands. Patsy, meanwhile, held back more tears. Comunale's (pictured) body was found three days after the gruesome murder. His body had been mutilated, burned and buried in a shallow grave in Oceanport, New Jersey, where Dilione lived Last Thursday, Patsy Comunale (pictured), Joey's father, was seen crying as he recounted his last interactions with his slain son during the first day of Rackover's murder trial Meanwhile, Rackover, dressed in a tailored three-piece suit, was said to have shown no emotion during Patsy's testimony and when the crime scene pictures were shown. During his opening statement, Assistant District Attorney Peter Casolaro said that Rackover 'lied to everyone who asked about what happened to' Joey while the Comunales were searching for him before his body was discovered. Casolaro also said that Comunale had no chance at defending himself against the attack that ended his life, due to how intoxicated he had been at the time, and said that Rackover was a killer with 'a monstrous indifference for human life'. Rackover's defense lawyer, Maurice Sercarz, asked no questions of Patsy while he was on the witness stand. 'I only have condolences,' Sercarz said. Sercarz, however, did take the opportunity to point the finger away from his client and towards Dilione, whom he suggested was the person who actually killed Comunale. Rackover's attorney noted that his client's part was just that he 'succumbed to the need to get that body out of the apartment and assisted in that endeavor,' according to the New York Post. Dilione's murder trial is expected to begin in January. Rackover has been charged of second-degree murder, hindering prosecution, tampering with evidence and concealing a human corpse. He faces up to life in prison for the murder charge, with additional possible sentences for the additional charges. The next generation of narco on the rise in Mexico is former policeman, Ruben Nemesio Oseguera 'El Mencho' Cervantes (pictured), one of the founders of the Jalisco New Generation Cartel After the arrest of the notorious cartel leader Joaquin 'El Chapo' Guzman, a new narco is poised to take up the void in the drug market - and he has his sights set on Australia. The next generation of narco on the rise in Mexico is former policeman, Ruben Nemesio Oseguera 'El Mencho' Cervantes, one of the founders of the Jalisco New Generation Cartel, News Corp reported. The Australian Federal Police have honed in on the new narco, who they allege has targeted the Australian drug market. 'Mexico has been a weakness for us in the past as we didn't have a presence there but since (October 2017) last year that changed when we opened up a post there as we saw what was happening,' a senior AFP law enforcer said. It's believed at the height of El Chapo's Sinaloa cartel's stranglehold on the drug trade, he had control of at least 60 per cent of the Australian market. It's believed at the height of Joaquin 'El Chapo' Guzman's (pictured) Sinaloa cartel's stranglehold on the drug trade he had control of at least 60 per cent of the Australian trade El Chapo left behind a void upon his re-arrest and subsequent extradition to the United States, which has already filled. AFP officials believe El Mencho could be responsible for as much as 75 per cent of all meth being trafficked into Australia. Now Colombian, Mexican and Australian authorities are working together to prevent El Mencho from gaining a stronger foothold. 'The comprehensive counter drug strategy has three pillars, harm reduction, supply reduction and demand reduction. Law enforcement is about supply reduction that's what we are responding to and working closely with overseas authorities, like in Mexico with the Mexican Federal Police,' the AFP spokesman said. 'It's complex. For us critically it's about sharing intelligence on the organised crime level to disrupt their criminal activities and that's already paying off.' Colombian, Mexican and Australian authorities are working together to prevent El Mencho from gaining a stronger foothold Australia presents an opportunity to the cartel because it is the second highest user of methamphetamine in the OECD (Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development) world. Australia is also one of the highest users of cocaine per capita. DEA and Mexican drug authorities said the rapid rise of the Jalisco New Generation Cartel was partly because of the drug trade in Australia. Despite this they said they were still shocked at how quickly El Mencho and his cartel were able to consolidate power, already building up a $20billion drug empire. In 2017 and 2018 alone, seizures of meth in Australia have tripled from previous years, with 3762kgs seized in the last year They also theorise that while US and Mexican authorities targeted El Chapo, El Mencho was able to move toward trafficking drugs into Australia while under the radar. In 2017 and 2018 alone, seizures of meth in Australia have tripled from previous years, with 3762kg seized in the last year. Authorities will continue to hunt El Mencho and his cartel, however his exact location is not known. It is believed he is holed up in the Mexican mountains of Michoacan. As a former police officer El Mencho knew the value of getting law enforcement on side and Mexican authorities allege he managed to bribe a number of officers and justice officials. It's believed at the height of El Chapo's Sinaloa cartel's stranglehold on the drug trade, El Chapo had control of at least 60 per cent of the Australian trade The United States is currently offering a US$10million reward for his capture. While Mexican authorities are offering MXN$30 million for any information that would lead to his capture. And in 2015 the United States Department of the Treasury's Office of Foreign Assets Control added El Mencho to the Foreign Narcotics Kingpin Designation Act, or 'Kingpin Act'. A White House statement outlined the 'Kingpin Act' as an effective tool against cartel leaders. 'Its purpose is to deny significant foreign narcotics traffickers, their related businesses, and their operatives access to the U.S. financial system and to prohibit all trade and transactions between the traffickers and U.S. companies and individuals,' the statement read. 'The Kingpin Act authorizes the President to take these actions when he determines that a foreign person plays a significant role in international narcotics trafficking.' Advertisement An 18-year-old who claims to be a former member of the feared Latin mafia MS-13 has backed President Trump's controversial claim that the migrant caravan contains gangsters and criminals. Trump has faced a barrage of criticism for insisting that the brutal Central American street gang's operatives are embedded in the sprawling human convoy. However the 18-year-old, an orphan who says he was lured into the gang at 16, told DailyMail.com he knows of at least ten of his former MS-13 cohorts who are hiding out in the mass of disheveled migrants marching north through Mexico. 'I don't agree with anything Donald Trump stands for but on this occasion the President is right,' he warned. 'People who deny there are criminals in the caravan are being naive. MS-13 are everywhere they contaminate everything.' The teen, who asked to be referred to by the street name 'Pepito' for fear of reprisals, said the majority of his former associates were trying to leave the gang life behind and turn their backs on violence. However he warned that MS-13 bosses treat deserters as enemies and will have operatives mingling with the crowds to try to spot them. The teenage former gang member, who asked to be referred to by the street name 'Pepito' (pictured) for fear of reprisals said: 'I don't agree with anything Donald Trump stands for but on this occasion the President is right. People who deny there are criminals in the caravan are being naive. MS-13 are everywhere they contaminate everything' The former member of the vicious MS-13 gang says he knows of at least ten of his former cohorts who are hiding out in the mass of disheveled migrants marching north through Mexico, he told DailyMail.com Pepito said the majority of his former associates were trying to leave the gang life behind and turn their backs on violence but MS-13 bosses treat deserters as enemies and will have people mingling with the crowds to try to spot them MS-13 is regarded as the most dangerous and prevalent street gang in Central America and has been implicated in a string of recent killings in the US. Pictured: A Honduran migrant taking part in a caravan heading to the US, gathering at the main square of Pijijiapan, Mexico on Thursday night In the 95 miles since the caravan burst through the border with Guatemala over the weekend, about 1,200 have left the caravan. An estimated 500 people have voluntarily accepted bus trips back to their home countries, and 1,700 have dropped out to apply for asylum in Mexico, officials in that country say He explained: 'My brother is still in MS-13 and he told me they have contacts looking for people right now in the caravan. 'It's a big deal if you try to leave. They can come after you and they can take your life for this.' MS-13 is regarded as the most dangerous and prevalent street gang in Central America and has been implicated in a string of recent killings in the US. Pepito said he joined at age 16 after growing up in an orphanage in the city of Usulutan, El Salvador which is plagued by poverty and gang violence. He ran errands and delivered backpacks full of drugs and weapons but decided he wanted to leave after bosses insisted he take part in brutal fights with rival gang, Mara 18. 'They were really nice to me, they gave me money. They started to ask me to do them favors but you never really had a choice,' he explained. 'They beat people up and you had to join in. They made me drive them around with big machine guns. 'If you passed a member of Mara 18 in the street you were expected to kill them.' Pepito decided to flee El Salvador when two of his best friends were shot dead. He traveled though Guatemala before rafting across the Suchiate River on August 23 - the same location where the migrant caravan poured into Mexico on Saturday. DailyMail.com was able to reach out to one of the individuals described as a recently active MS-13 gang member who is currently travelling with the caravan. He hung up the phone without responding to questions. Pictured: Three exhausted migrants rest as they stop for the night in Pijijiapan, Mexico on Thursday Many of the thousands who are in the caravan are women and young children seeking refuge from violence in Honduras. Pictured are migrants in the caravan on their way to Pijijiapan, Mexico on Thursday The sprawling caravan of migrants hoping to make their way to the United States set off again on Thursday, forming a column more than a mile long as the group trekked out of the town of Mapastepec in southern Mexico before dawn Many have accused Trump of pushing his dialogue about the caravan in recent weeks as a way to rile up his base before the upcoming midterm elections. Pictured is a Honduran child en route Mapastepec to Pijijiapan on Thursday A map shows the migrant caravan's progress and a regional overview of other migrant activity as of Friday morning Pepito was detained for a month at an immigration center in Tapachula, ten miles north of the border, when he handed himself in and asked for asylum. He was eventually issued with papers giving him 45 days to leave Mexico or apply for permanent refugees status. While the teen decided to stay and seek permission to work in Mexico, he said many of the former MS-13 associates he met in Tapachula decided to join the caravan. 'A bunch of people from MS-13 joined the previous caravan in April,' he said. 'Most of them ended up staying in Mexico. They robbed, they stole, some of them defected to other gangs. 'When I was in the detention center I heard many people talking about joining the next caravan. 'They said it was the best way to get to the US without being singled out and arrested by the police. 'I decided not to go with them because I want to try to stay in Mexico legally but I know of at least ten people who did.' DailyMail.com was able to reach out to one of the individuals described as a recently active MS-13 gang member who is currently travelling with the caravan. He hung up the phone without responding to questions. 'Of course they will not admit to you that they have been in gangs,' added Pepito. 'The bosses will kill them if they find them. 'Most of them are going to the US for the right reasons, they want to start new lives. But it won't be easy for them because MS-13 have people everywhere. 'I have to be just as careful in Mexico because Mara 18 control Tapachula. If they learn who I am they will kill me.' Trump is preparing an executive order to ban the Central American migrants currently traveling in a caravan from entering the United States, sources familiar with the plan revealed News of the executive action broke just hours after Trump took to Twitter to tell the caravan to 'turn around' because border patrol agents would block them The migrant caravan formed in Honduras on October 12 when it was erroneously reported on local TV that a radio host, Bartolo Fuentes, was willing to pay transportation costs for anyone travelling to the US. Around 150 migrants set off from the Honduran city of San Pedro Sula and by the time they crossed into Mexico one week later the column had swollen to 7,200 participants. Supporters say the migrants are fleeing persecution and banding together so they are not preyed upon by gangs. But in a series of tweets and media interviews this past week, President Trump has maintained the convoy contains 'criminals and unknown Middle Easterners' that pose a terror threat. The President plans to 'send as many troops as necessary' to the US border to dispel what he describes as an 'assault'. 'Go into the middle of the caravan. Take your cameras and search, okay?' he urged skeptical reporters Monday. 'Go into the middle and search. You're going to find MS-13. You're going to find Middle Eastern[ers]. 'You're going to find everything. And guess what? We're not allowing them in our country. We want safety. We want safety.' To date, however, not a single news organization has reported seeing someone of Middle Eastern description in the migrant caravan. Alt-right websites have seized upon a report from a Univision journalist who told viewers Saturday that a number of Bangladeshi nationals were detained crossing the El Carmen bridge at the Mexico-Guatemala border. DailyMail.com can reveal there is a small South Asian community in Tapachula with a handful of restaurants and hotels catering for migrants from Bangladesh, India, Pakistan and Sri Lanka. Juliano Dallagon, 37, (left) the manager of a budget restaurant popular with migrants, said: 'It's not unusual for Asians and Africans to come through this city to travel to the US.' Otoniel Hooking (right), a 26-year-old Nicaraguan who was detained for two months before being granted temporary asylum, said: 'There are some bad people in there and a lot of MS-13 members' Raul, 22, a Honduran migrant, part of a caravan trying to reach the U.S., holds a chicken before cooking it as he waits to crosses into Mexico to continue his trip, in Tecun Uman, Mexico on Thursday As night sets on, Central American migrants, fleeing poverty and violence, take a day of rest in Huixtla, Chiapas, Mexico, while making their way north Central American migrants sleep on and under playground equipment as a thousands-strong caravan slowly making its way toward the U.S. border stops for the night in Pijijiapan, Chiapas state, Mexico on Thursday But Juliano Dallagon, 37, the manager of a budget city center restaurant popular with migrants, said: 'It's not unusual for Asians and Africans to come through this city to travel to the US. 'It's cheaper to fly into South America. Tapachula is the logical place to enter Mexico. 'India, Sri Lanka, Pakistan, Bangladesh, India, Congo, Somalia, Cameroon I serve people from every corner of the world. 'But nobody wears robes or religious clothes, they just look poor. Terrorists are well financed, they have money for weapons and bombs. They don't need to walk across continents.' DailyMail.com contacted Mexico's Instituto Nacional De Migracion, which operates the immigration facility in Tapachula, to ask for a breakdown of the nationalities detained during Saturday's mass crossing. Authorities have yet to respond. Migrants seen leaving the facility this week told us they had encountered dozens of nationalities inside but nobody who had come from the caravan. Otoniel Hooking, a 26-year-old Nicaraguan who was detained for two months before being granted temporary asylum, said: 'There are some bad people in there and a lot of MS-13 members. 'I met a guy from Iraq who told me he killed seven people. I wouldn't want him in my country either but he came here before the caravan arrived, he is nothing to do with the Honduran migrants.' In many countries, especially in sub-Saharan Africa (SSA), women have less access to financial services compared to their male counterparts. There are a variety of factors that limit womens access to finance, which include womens lack of ownership over assets that financial institutions require as collateral for loan application processes. Secondly, most banks in SSA are confined to towns and cities, which reduces their accessibility for the rural population. Rural women often have limited ability to travel to the nearest town or city due to their household responsibilities, which means they have to leave their husbands to handle finances with the bank. Thirdly, cultural values tend to place men as the controllers of household financial issues, which further hinders women from accessing their own financial services. All three factors impede economic growth because, without access to finance, women cannot invest in their livelihood activities to improve their productivity and incomes. This gender inequality gap prevents the economic growth of households, communities and countries as a whole. One of the indicators of womens empowerment is their ability to access and control finances. When women have access to financial services it not only benefits their households, but the community as a whole. A financially empowered woman helps to break the belief that a man and a man alone is the voice that counts in the household. A financially empowered woman will help the community understand that a woman also has a role to play in development. The majority of women in SSA are involved in agricultural production, where they usually fail to graduate to higher levels of the value chain, such as processing, because they lack the financing which these stages of the value chain require. This speaks to why women-led agribusinesses are fewer compared to those run by men. Some argue that women are risk averse, which might be a contributing factor to the lower number of women-led businesses, but to a larger extent it is the environment that has not been conducive enough for women to access financing and establish their own businesses. The mushrooming of village savings and loans associations (VSLAs), which are mainly dominated by women, is a clear manifestation that women have the appetite for inclusive financing mechanisms. Women in the Kasekese farmers cooperative in Mchinji district, Malawi, have used the profits generated from VSLAs to begin value addition activities, including processing peanut butter and soya milk. This is a clear testimony that with greater access to finance, more women-led agribusinesses will emerge. The use of movable property for lending is another inclusive finance initiative, which addresses the issue that most women do not have ownership over fixed assets. However, this initiative does not yet seem to be yielding much because most financial institutions are still not comfortable accepting movable property, such as furniture, as collateral. Women who have access to formal financial services and are able to save in their bank account, stand a better chance of being connected to other opportunities, such as high-value markets for their products. Some banks, including multinationals like the pan-African ECO Bank, can advise their clients about the availability of commodity market opportunities in other countries where their sister banks are operating. Such market information can also promote the growth of women-led agribusinesses. The examples I have given above prove that inclusive finance mechanisms, whether from a lending perspective or from a savings angle, have positive effects on the growth of women-led agribusinesses. It is therefore important for financial institutions to tailor their products to address the mobility and collateral issues that exclude women from access to finance. Recognising movable property as collateral for loans and digital finance is one solution. Thirteen suspects in the brutal machete murder of 15-year-old Lesandro 'Junior' Guzman-Feliz (pictured) outside a Bronx bodega in June appeared in court for a pre-trial hearing on Thursday Thirteen suspects in the brutal machete murder of an innocent Bronx teen outside a bodega appeared in court for a pre-trial hearing on Thursday. Shocking surveillance video of 15-year-old Lesandro 'Junior' Guzman-Feliz being viciously beaten and slashed in the neck with a machete by suspected members of the Trinitarios gang on June 20 sparked terror within the small community and across the nation. Four months later, Kevin Alvarez, Jose Tavarez, Manuel Rivera, Danel Fernandez, Danilo Payamps Pacheco, Diego Suero, Gabriel Ramirez Concepcion, Ronald Urena, Jonaiki Martinez Estrella, Antonio Rodriguez Hernandez Santiago, Jose Muniz, Elvin Garcia and Luis Cabrera Santos faced a judge one by one on charges of murder, manslaughter and other related crimes. The 14th and final suspect Frederick Then did not appear because his attorney was unavailable. The emotional courtroom was packed with community members showing their support for Junior and calling for justice in the gruesome slaying. Among them was the teen's mother, Leandra Feliz, who had to be restrained by family members as she cried 'Asesino!', Spanish for assassin, at the defendants. Pictured in front of Judge Robert Neary in Bronx Supreme Court on Thursday are (clockwise from top left): Manuel Rivera, Jose Muniz, Gabriel Ramirez and Ronald Urena Pictured: (left to right) Elvin Garcia, Diego Suero and Danilo Pacheco appear in front of a judge Pictured: Luis Cabrera, Antonio Rodriguez Hernandez Santiago and Kevin Alvarez Jonaiki Martinez Estrella and Jose Tavarez (left and center in their mugshots) also faced the judge on Thursday. Frederick Then (right) did not appear because his attorney was unavailable Junior's mother Leandra Feliz addressed a crowd outside the courtroom, telling more than 100 supporters: 'This is a really ugly day, seeing face-to-face the killers of my son' Prosecutors requested that Judge Robert Neary allow for DNA samples to be taken from each of the accused killers to check for matches in the vehicles seen leaving the horrific scene. All but suspected ringleader Diego Suero agreed. The suspects are currently being held at different jails. Their next court appearance is scheduled for December 21. Shocking surveillance video of the brutal attack by suspected members of the Trinitarios gang on June 20 sparked terror within the small community and across the nation The video shows the men repeatedly striking and stabbing the teen before slashing a machete across his neck. Junior then stumbled to a local hospital, where he soon died During a break in the proceedings, Feliz gathered her composure before addressing supporters, about 100 of whom stood in the hallway at Bronx Supreme Court as the hearing room was full. 'This is a really ugly day, seeing face-to-face the killers of my son,' she said in a video obtained by Pix11. 'We hope for justice, and it will be done. 'Thank you so much for the support you are giving to me in this case.' After court adjourned the group marched to the bodega on Bathgate Avenue, where a memorial has been erected as a reminder of the gruesome slaying. 'This is not the kind of stuff that's going to happen in our communities,' one woman told ABC7. 'We're all going to stand together to prevent this, and we're breaking down gangs. They're not allowed.' Police believe Junior was targeted in a case of mistaken identity, alleging that the gang members were looking for a man who made a sex tape with one of their relatives. Surveillance video from outside the bodega shows the men repeatedly striking and stabbing the teen before slashing a machete across his neck. Junior then stumbled to a local hospital, where he soon died. The story made national headlines as the hashtag #JusticeForJunior went viral on social media. Junior's gruesome murder gripped the nation as the hashtag #JusticeForJunior went viral online. His mother Leandra Feliz is seen above addressing a crowd at wake for the slain teen Advertisement Public School Number Four has haunted Jacksonville, Florida for decades. First built in 1918 as Riverside Grammar School, it was later renamed as Annie Lytle Public School in 1950 after one of its principals, then permanently closed to the public in 1960. The title Public School Number Four is carved into the entrance of the building as it was Duval County's fourth public school house. The building was used for office storage and officially condemned in 1971. Upon closing, the elementary school was dubbed the 'Devil's School' citing chilling rumors about a cannibal janitor that once terrorized the academy and a fire that wiped out half the student body. Public School Number Four, also known as Annie Lytle Public School, has haunted Jacksonville, Florida for decades. The abandoned and crumbling exterior of the school pictured above The school is rumored to have once been run by a killer principal and cannibal staff, and pupils randomly went missing. The school was permanently closed to the public in 1960 and was soon overrun by drug addicts and vagrants Nearly every inch of the abandoned school is covered in graffiti. In the window on the right an upside down cross can be seen, even thought the photographer claimed there was no glass in the window and the bricks in the background did not depict the Satanic symbol An exterior shot of the building shows how the cement walls are crumbling and how graffiti artists have taken over Rumors say the building was rented by a Catholic School in the 1960s before it shut down, the school was run by a killer principal who called students to their office who were never seen again and the building's furnace exploded killing half of the student body. The broken and boarded up windows of a classroom pictured above A boys restroom is found in a state of complete ruin, with volunteers leaving piles of trash waiting to be taken away A look through the school's deserted and forsaken campus reveals every inch of the concrete E-shaped building is in a severe state of decay and covered in graffiti. Some of the eerie spray-painted messages include upside down crucifixes, alluding to the Satanic practices. Stories say the building was rented by a Catholic School in the 1960s before it shut down and the school was run by a killer principal who called students to their office who were never seen again. Another rumor says the building's furnace exploded and killed half of the student body. Yet another creepy myth says there was a cannibal janitor who preyed on pupils and tortured them in the boiler room. Although none of these tales have been proven true, the school became hotbed of crime after it was abandoned. An exterior shot of Public School Number Four shows how the windows are boarded up. In 2000 the City of Jacksonville designated the building as a historic landmark The school was first named Riverside Grammar School and was also known as Public School Number Four as it was Duval County's fourth public school house but the name was later changed Doors were ripped off, window glass broken, and floor boards torn apart in the eerie cement building in Jacksonville, Florida After the school was publicly closed vagrants and drug addicts moved in. Shortly after the building was condemned in 1971 a rape was reported at the site Drug addicts, vagrants, and vandals quickly moved into the vacated building. Soon after the school was condemned a rape was reported there and one room in the school has the phrase 'rape room' spray-painted on the wall. In 1995 vagrants set the auditorium on fire, causing half of the roof to collapse, according to Abandoned Southeast. The property, which is made completely of concrete as a fireproof measure, was purchased by Foundation Holding Inc in 1999 with plans to turn the school into a retirement facility named Lytle House Condominiums. A courtyard has become overrun with grass and weeds as its been neglected for decades since the school's closing The school will be hard to tear down as its made completely out of cement and bricks as a fire-safe measure A single beam of light shines in a dark, boarded up, and completely graffiti-covered abandoned classroom The floor of the school is completely gone and a once regal staircase now lays in ruins after decades of decay A menacing six-feet-tall barbed-wire fence surrounds the property to prevent trespassers from breaking in as volunteers continue to spruce up the building. An interior view of severely broken floors and a decaying hallway pictured above But construction never took place as the City of Jacksonville designated the school as a historic landmark in 2000 following pressure from the public. In 2005 the Annie Lytle Preservation Group was created be a group of volunteers to preserve and clean up the crumbing building. Another fire broke out in the building in 2012, collapsing the remaining part of the auditorium roof. Now a menacing six-feet-tall barbed-wire fence surrounds the property to prevent trespassers from breaking in as volunteers continue to spruce up the building. Seven members of a gang which used drones to airlift 500,000 worth of drugs into prisons have been given jail terms ranging from three to 10 years. A judge at Birmingham Crown Court - who handed suspended jail terms and a community order to six others involved in the plot - said deterrent sentences were 'essential' to help prevent similar offending. An earlier trial was told drone pilots, drivers and look-outs conspired with prisoners to smuggle drugs into seven jails, including HMP Birmingham and HMP Liverpool. Gang leader Lee Anslow, left, was found with 20,000 of cannabis and digital scales in his cell at HMP Henwell. The drugs were delivered by drone pilot Brandon Smith, right Police recovered this drone carrying drugs after it crashed during an attempt to fly into prison A total of 11 drones, including some which had crashed, were seized during police inquiries into flights which also targeted HMP Wymott in Lancashire, HMP Hewell, in Worcestershire, HMP Risley in Cheshire, and Oakwood and Featherstone jails in Staffordshire. Passing sentence on a total of 13 defendants convicted of conspiracy charges, Judge Simon Drew QC said: 'Each of you falls to be sentenced for your part in conveying controlled drugs, mobile phones and Sim cards into prisons up and down the country. 'The method you chose to do this was both carefully planned and executed. Each of you played a part in a wider conspiracy which resulted in approximately 100 separate deliveries. 'This was a sophisticated commercial operation and due to the high value placed on drugs and mobile phones in prisons, designed to make those of you who ran the operation hundreds of thousands of pounds in profit.' The gang are believed to have conducted 100 flights delivering contraband to prisons Judge Drew said drug and mobile phone use in prisons had caused heightened levels of violence, an increase in self-harm and deaths, as well as allowing witness intimidation and illegal financial transactions. The judge told the plotters: 'I have no doubt each one of you knew exactly what you were getting involved in.' Gang leader Lee Anslow, who was serving a sentence at HMP Hewell, was found with digital scales and 20,000 worth of cannabis in his cell after police smashed the network. The 31-year-old smiled at the public gallery after being jailed for 10 years, as the judge described him as 'effectively one of the key operation directors' involved in at least 23 drone flights despite being behind bars. Drone pilot Brandon Smith, 24, from Tipton was jailed for seven years, while 29-year-old Shane Hadlington, from Oldbury, was ordered to serve a 51-month sentence. Shane Hadlington, left, was handed a 51-month sentence while Paul Ferguson, who was already in jail, was given a further four years and nine months behind bars Stefan Rattray, left, who was a serving prisoner was jailed for four-and-a-half years while Paul Payne, right, was sentenced to 44 months Prison inmate Paul Ferguson, 38, was jailed for four years and nine months, while 28-year-old Stefan Rattray, also a serving prisoner, was jailed for four-and-a-half years. Paul Payne, 33, from Coseley, West Midlands, and Justin Millington, 24, of no fixed address, were given prison terms of 44 months and 40 months respectively. Millington was arrested outside HMP Hewell in January 2017 with a UAV carrying cannabis worth 3,000, cocaine hydrochloride and synthetic drugs valued at almost 10,000. Data recorded by the drones showed where and when they had been flown, allowing officers to link prison drops to same-day practice flights carried out near gang members' homes. Justin Millington, pictured, was jailed for 40 months after he was found with a drone carrying cocaine worth 3,000 and 10,000 of synthetic drugs outside HMP Hewell in January 2017 Mobile phone evidence also allowed detectives to piece together contact between conspirators receiving packages inside the jails and those orating drones nearby. Commenting after the case, Detective Inspector Gareth Williams, of West Midlands Police, said around 110,000 worth of drugs had been recovered from 11 drones. 'A modest estimate would be potentially 500,000 worth of drugs were flown into prisons.' Mr Williams said Anslow - the nephew of a drug dealer who escaped from a prison van in 2012 - and other senior members of the gang had regarded themselves as 'untouchable' as they orchestrated the drone drops. The officer said of Anslow: 'He was the key player in this. Not only was he organising drone flights into the prisons that he was in, he was also speaking to other prisoners, such as Paul Ferguson in HMP Risley, to organise flights there as well.' Almost 1kg of cannabis and 1.5kg of Spice or Mamba is believed to have been smuggled into jails by the drone gang - much of it hooked through cell windows using sticks. Drug packages also containing amphetamines, crack cocaine, heroin and steroids were suspended beneath drones with fishing wire during the 14-month plot, detectives said. DI Williams added: 'A drone flier, assisted by one or two others, would speak to an inmate on a contraband phone to guide a drone into prison where the attached parcel would be hooked off using sticks. 'The convictions come on the back of a very complex, detailed investigation and I'd like to praise the tenacity and determination of all our investigators, plus the analyst who interrogated large amounts of phone data, who played a part in this success.' Birmingham Crown Court was told that a phone alleged to belong to gang leader Lee Anslow sent a text to another conspirator reading: 'Make sure u got anuff line m8, don't 4get 2 put a weight 5 feet from the bag.' Prosecutor Michelle Heeley QC told jurors: 'That text say the Crown was an instruction on how to weight the fishing line and the bag dangling from the drone.' Although Anslow denied the phone was his, it was found to have been stationary at HMP Hewell for a month, and had been used to contact his partner 122 times and his brother 77 times within the space of a month. The 'snowflake' who promised to paint over a war memorial because it 'shows only white men' has been 'put on leave' from her 20,000-a-year students' union post. University of Southampton Students' Union president Emily Dawes provoked outrage when she branded the World War One Rotherstein Mural a 'mural of white men'. After a vice president of the union tweeted Dawes is 'on leave until further notice' controversial claims emerged that the then president had sent an unsolicited nude picture of herself to more than 200 students. Students allegedly complained after Dawes sent a naked photo to a group chat which was used for discussing coursework and making uni-related jokes. Emily Dawes (above) has enjoyed what many would describe a life of privilege. Her father Danny, a global director for US-based computer security company Symantec, took the family around the world - with Dawes being educated in the US and privately in London Her comments refer to this mural, which depicts an unknown soldier from the First World War being awarded a degree. Local history enthusiasts have asked that it not be damaged One student said that a class mate had gotten a new puppy so shared a picture of the pet with the group. Others then started sharing pictures of their pets before Dawes asked 'Does anyone want to see my cat?' and posted a picture of her vagina covered by a flower emoji. Dawes was quickly met with a chorus of backlash from her fellow classmates after she shared the naked photo of herself. A classmate told The Sun Online: 'At first I was confused and I was shocked that someone would actually do something like that. 'I just thought she was someone who wanted to start a fight. She knew the reaction she was going to get.' Emily Dawes, pictured, has been 'put on leave' from her 20,000-a-year post as president of University of Southampton's students' union after a row over a war memorial 'Now with her comments from this week I want people to know this isn't a one off thing. It is a pattern of behaviour.' Dawes become embroiled in controversy this week after she tweeted: 'Mark my words - we're taking down the mural of white men in the uni Senate room, even if I have to paint over it myself.' Today a vice president of the union tweeted Dawes is 'on leave until further notice' and 'will not be reachable for correspondence or for her day to day duties,' The Tab revealed. Both Dawes and the students' union have since apologised for her comments after she was accused of abusing the free speech the soldiers fought and died to protect. Emily Dawes (above) of Vienna, Virginia, earns $25,000 (20,000) a year as Students' Union president of the University of Southampton in England. She is pictured partying at a union event Today a spokeswoman for the Royal British Legion said the charity respects Ms Dawes' right to express her opinions. 'We believe the unique contribution of our Armed Forces should be remembered today, tomorrow and forever, however we respect the right of others to express their opinions within the law,' she said. 'Our Armed Forces community, past and present, have made sacrifices in defence of the freedoms we have today, including the freedom of speech.' The Rothenstein Mural was painted in 1916 'as a memorial to members of the British universities serving in the Great War'. The president also tweeted this picture, hinting that she had an understanding of the mural's meaning 'It depicts an academic procession and the conferring of a degree on an unknown soldier,' according to the university. Speaking yesterday, Lucy Carter, the granddaughter of mural artist Sir William Rothenstein, said of Ms Dawes's comments: 'I think it's very sad, people trying to change history. 'It's sad that people should be overtaken by these concerns. Painting over it would be unnecessary.' Southampton MP Royston Smith, who served in the RAF for ten years, said the SU president's tweet was 'disappointing' considering the soldiers were defending the free speech which she was exercising. He said: 'With freedom comes responsibility, and considering the President of the SU holds a position of authority she has clearly overstepped the mark. 'I hope she will reflect on what she has said and realise it has been conducted in poor taste. Those who know the history of our island are fully aware and appreciate the involvement of black and Asian soldiers against tyranny.' Pictures on Miss Dawes' Facebook account show her campaigning outside Westminster to 'stop bombing Syria' Pictures on her Facebook account show her camping on the street overnight to raise money for the homeless The university's Conservative Association called for Ms Dawes to face disciplinary action and said the mural should be protected from potential vandalism. After she was criticised today, Ms Dawes released a statement saying: 'Firstly, and most importantly, I would like to apologise for the offense and upset I have caused with what I have said. 'I never meant to the disrespect to anyone past, present and future. 'I had no intention of the tweet being taken literally, and upon reflection have realised how inappropriate it was. The physics student, pictured smiling at the Students Union, who was previously president of the university's Feminist Society, says her favourite thing about Southampton is the 'pretty dope' vegan food 'My intention was to promote strong, female leadership and not the eradication and disrespect of history. I do not believe that to make progress in the future, we should look to raise the past.' The controversial Twitter post was not the only tweet she aimed at the memorial. She had earlier tweeted a picture of the wall, with the expletive-ridden message: 'ONE OF THE WOMEN JUST SAID 'it's nearly armistice day so are we covering up this tapestry??' AND HOLY S***. F*** YES. GRL PWR #sotonsenatelive'. Ms Dawes, whose family live in Virginia in the US, previously attended the 5,000-a-term Northwood College for Girls in north London, according to her LinkedIn page. The controversial Crossrail project has been handed a 350million bail-out by the Government, ministers today announced. The troubled project - which has been beset by delays and rising costs - was given the cash in the form of a loan to London's City Hall. Transport Minister Jo Johnson said the cash will help inject some 'momentum' into the project. The announcement comes just two months after transport bosses revealed that opening of Crossrail's Elizabeth Line would be delayed by nine months. The move infuriated passengers and businesses who had expected the line to open this December - dramatically cutting journey times into the capital. A Whitehall source angrily blamed the Labour administration in City Hall for the surprise bill. The source told MailOnline: This government has had to dig deep to save the Crossrail project thanks to the mismanagement of money under Labour. 'If this can happen under Sadiq Khan, who is a moderate compared to other Labour members, then we dread to think what could happen under a Corbyn government. 'Weve even had to ensure theres an independent review into Crossrails business practices to keep the project on track. The controversial Crossrail project(pictured, work on the project, taken in September this year) has been handed a 350million bail-out by the Government, ministers today announced Announcing the new money today, Mr Johnson said that ministers have been in talks with Transport for London (TfL) - which owns the Crossrail project. He said: 'Discussions between TfL and government are underway as to how any additional funding will be provided, with London - as the primary beneficiary of Crossrail bearing any additional costs via a financing arrangement. 'TfL and the Department for Transport have commissioned an independent review of Crossrails governance and a separate review on Crossrails finance and commercial position. 'Today, as an interim measure, we are announcing that 350 million of short term repayable financing will be made available to the Mayor for the year 2018/19. 'This will ensure that full momentum is maintained behind Crossrail.' Transport Minister Jo Johnson (pictured at the Tory party conference earlier this month) said the cash injection will help inject some 'momentum' into the project The minister also rushed to defend the controversial project, which will create a new West to East railway line from Reading through London and tout to Shenfield. He insisted that when it opens it will 'transform' the transport system. Mr Johnson said that it will allow up to 200 million passengers a year, and help boost Britain economy by a staggering 42 billion. But the massive infrastructure project has seen costs rise from 14.8bn to 15.4bn. Business leaders and passengers erupted in fury when they heard, at the end of August, that the project would be delayed. Jace Tyrrell, the chief executive of the New West End Company - a group that represents hundreds of businesses in London - said the decision would put greater pressure on retailers. He said: 'We are disappointed that the opening of this major and vital piece of infrastructure is being delayed'. A number of Megyn Kelly's black colleagues at NBC are shocked that the host is fighting to receive a full payout of her contract after her comments defending blackface earlier in the week. DailyMail.com spoke to a number of employees whose feelings on the subject ran the gamut from 'deeply hurt' to outright 'appalled' at Kelly's behavior and reports that she might claim her coverage of the #MeToo movement played a role in her termination. On Tuesday, Kelly defended the practice of blackface during a roundtable discussion with an all-white panel where not one participant referenced the deeply racist and hurtful history of the practice in the United States. 'How dare she? Who the hell does she think she is?' said one NBC employee 'Her blackface comments were bad but falsely playing the #MeToo card is the worst form of white privilege I have ever seen.' And another employee remarked: 'She had no respect for the African American staff on her team and her apology was both fake and dismissive.' An insider at the network told DailyMail.com that after a meeting with Kelly and her staff on Wednesday, a number of employees of color on the show voiced their frustration and anger with the host to human resources. 'Lots of people were willing to give her a clean slate after the whole white Santa thing, but she showed her true colors this week,' said the insider. That insider also noted that what Kelly was doing was not only an affront to her black colleagues, but also the men and women of the #MeToo movement. NBC declined comment. Scroll down for video Troubled times: Some black employees at NBC are 'deeply hurt' and others 'appalled' at the way Megyn Kelly is handling her exit from the network after her blackface remarks (Kelly above on Wednesday with Roland Martin and Amy Holmes) Problematic panel: 'She had no respect for the African American staff on her team and her apology was both fake and dismissive,' said a second employee On Thursday, the National Association of Black Journalists responded to Kelly's comments in a statement. 'Megyn Kelly's flip comments on blackface were inexcusable. It is imperative that media organizations work to maintain the trust of audiences,' said Sarah Glover, the president of the organization who is also an NBC employee. 'The media industry has the power to inform, and an awesome responsibility to dispel ignorance and not encourage it.' If she wants Ronan [Farrow] in the room great, then NBC should have Al Sharpton handle the final negotiations with her. -NBC employee Kareem Abdul-Jabbar also weighed in with a piece that ran in The Hollywood Reporter. 'Shes an educated person with a news background, so theres no way she is not informed on the issue. Which means she deliberately, without regard to the harm she would inflict on people of color, chose to pull out this old controversy. Not quite a hate crime, but hate crime-adjacent,' wrote the NBA great and UCLA graduate. 'Should she be fired? In the best of all possible worlds, yes. Either she deliberately was racist in order to juice her flagging ratings, or she was too dumb to know it was racist, which is inexcusable for a newsperson.' Kelly's tearful apology was delivered live on-air Wednesday morning, and followed by another roundtable discussion, this time with an all-black panel who did speak about the history of blackface. 'If she truly had remorse and felt like she was wrong she should take no money and go into hiding. But shes greedy and entitled,' noted the first NBC employee who spoke to DailyMail.com. 'What the hell does she have to fight for? Shes been fired for being racist on national television. Shes not coming back and she needs to accept that.' Shes an educated person with a news background, so theres no way she is not informed on the issue. Which means she deliberately, without regard to the harm she would inflict on people of color, chose to pull out this old controversy. Not quite a hate crime, but hate crime-adjacent. -Kareem Abdul-Jabbar in The Hollywood Reporter The second employee seemed to think that Kelly's exit was a forgone conclusion long before the incident on Tuesday. 'We knew this was coming. It had been the talk of NBC for months that shed use the gender card to protect herself. She knew she was failing so she needed a fail safe plan - so pretending to be the #metoo champion who aggressively confronted the bad guys was all a ploy to ensure she was never fired,' noted that NBC worker. 'But her dark underbelly showed through and she did this to herself. Her passionate defense of Kavanaugh was the first stage of revealing her faux #metoo outrage as it reinforced what we all knew - the only woman she cared about was herself.' The first employee also spoke about the Kavanaugh hearing, and how uncomfortable NBC's on-air talent looked to be around Kelly. 'The only highlight of the Kavanaugh hearings was watching Chuck [Todd], Savannah [Guthrie], Lester [Holt]and Andrea [Mitchell's] body language every time Megyn opened her mouth to speak,' said that employee. 'If she wants Ronan [Farrow] in the room great, then NBC should have Al Sharpton handle the final negotiations with her.' Reunited: The two NBC employees who were ousted to make way for Kelly reunited on Thursday as Tamron Hall caught Al Roker in Waitress on Broadway (*above) Filming: Multiple sources at multiple networks told DailyMail.com on Wednesday that members of Kelly's team had been in contact about finding a new home for the Today host (Charlize Theron on set as Kelly on Friday) In the midst of all this, the two NBC employees who were ousted to make way for Kelly reunited on Thursday as Tamron Hall caught Al Roker in Waitress on Broadway, with the pair posing up for a photo after the performance. Kelly is suiting up for battle with NBC, and has gathered quite the cavalry to stand by her side. DailyMail.com has confirmed an earlier report from Page Six that Kelly is looking to have Ronan Farrow join her when she begins her exit talks with the network. Kellys attorney asked NBC executives on Thursday if Farrow could attend the meeting according to an insider from Kellys camp. Sources tell The Hollywood Reporter that meeting will be held on Friday and the publication also revealed late Wednesday that Kelly had obtained the services of Bryan Freedman while negotiating her exit from the network. We knew this was coming. It had been the talk of NBC for months that shed use the gender card to protect herself. She knew she was failing so she needed a fail safe plan - so pretending to be the #metoo champion who aggressively confronted the bad guys was all a ploy to ensure she was never fired. But her dark underbelly showed through and she did this to herself. Her passionate defense of Kavanaugh was the first stage of revealing her faux #metoo outrage as it reinforced what we all knew - the only woman she cared about was herself. -Second NBC employee The high-powered litigator made headlines earlier this year when he filed a gender bias claim against Paramount following the termination of executive Amy Powell. Powell had been fired for making racially insensitive remarks, but the case was ultimately settled for a reported $4 million in September. Powell said that there was no truth to the allegations against her, a luxury that Kelly will not have in her case as her defense of a racist practice happened live on air. Multiple sources confirmed to DailyMail.com on Thursday that Megyn Kelly was out at NBC. Kelly tried to deal with the scandal by delivering a tearful apology on-air and welcoming two black panelists to discuss the fraught and horrifying history of the practice, but it did no good. 'Megyn Kelly is done. She is not ever coming back,' said an NBC executive with knowledge of the situation. 'We are just working out timing of the announcement but mark my word she is gone and will never be seen on NBC live again.' The source then added: 'Heres the worst part her deal is a non-break deal so she walks away with all that money. Its disgusting and heads should roll here because of it.' Now, it looks like Kelly could be heading for a homecoming of sorts. A network news insider tells DailyMail.com that there are tentative conversations underway about Kelly returning to Fox News or its new online venture Fox Nation, whose viewers despise what they perceive as 'political correctness' and would likely welcome her back with open arms. Kelly was not particularly popular when she left the network among the staff, but many of her biggest detractors have since left Fox News. A Fox News spokesperson responded to this by stating: 'We are extremely happy with our entire line-up.' On Friday an informed source told DailyMail.com she is not coming back to any Fox News platform. History lesson: 'The fact is, while she apologized to the staff, she owes a bigger apology to folks of color around the country,' said Roker (right with Craig Melvin on left), who Kelly replaced at 9am on Today Backlash: NBC devoted considerable segments to the Kelly blackface scandal on Today and NBC Nightly News throughout the week (above on Tuesday night) Another NBC source with knowledge of the staff meeting that took place on Thursday said that the staff was told Monday's show would be live, but the host was still TBD. The staff got a chance to speak with human resources on Wednesday, and voice their concerns about the host of their show. An NBC insider tells DailyMail.com that employees on the show made it very clear that they were 'disgusted' by Kelly's blackface comments and 'didnt like her personally.' Staffers were also informed by NBC that they were members of the Today team at a time when there jobs appeared to be on the line. 'Given the circumstances, Megyn Kelly Today will be on tape the rest of the week,' said an NBC spokesperson. Megyn Kelly's flip comments on blackface were inexcusable. It is imperative that media organizations work to maintain the trust of audiences. The media industry has the power to inform, and an awesome responsibility to dispel ignorance and not encourage it. -Sarah Glover, president of the National Association of Black Journalists Kelly has made few friends and many enemies during her time on Today, angering a number of veteran employees with her segments about sexual misconduct allegations against Matt Lauer and Tom Brokaw. Kelly brought in an almost entirely new staff when she began on Today, including her own publicists and producers as well as a dedicated crew, when she started at the 9am hour in her brand new $10 million studio. Prior to that, the third hour was filmed in the same studio as the first two hours of the Today show, requiring little additional crew. Should the show return to that format, it would likely be difficult to keep all of the Megyn Kelly Today staff employed at the network, but NBC told staffers not to worry on Wednesday according to one person who was present at the meeting. It is not just employees who have grown tired of Kelly either, with one major executive also voicing his frustration with the embattled host on Wednesday. The Daily Beast obtained a transcript from a town hall that was held on Wednesday, in which NBC News Chairman Andy Lack did not hold back when going after Kelly. 'There is no other way to put this, but I condemn those remarks,' said Lack. 'There is no place on our air or in this workplace for them. Very unfortunate.' He went on to state: 'The team did an excellent job covering it properly. I thought Craig [Melvin] and Al [Roker] brought a thoughtfulness and a context to it that was sorely missing, and they really did this company and our audience a real public service.' Gone girl: 'Megyn Kelly is done. She is not ever coming back,' said an NBC executive with knowledge of the situation (Theron on Thursday) Oveer it: 'Now viewers get to witness the greatest example of white privilege on television. She defended blackface. I mean how is this acceptable in any way? She needs to go,' said one NBC employee Multiple sources at multiple networks told DailyMail.com on Wednesday that members of Kelly's team had been in contact about finding a new home for the Today host. Those networks were not biting though, with one executive at ABC saying: 'We wouldn't hire her in a million years. She's toxic and her personal brand is finished.' An insider at CAA - the agency that represented Kelly - confirmed that the calls to other networks and news organizations were indeed taking place, but claimed that it was all standard practice. 'There have been some preliminary discussions, but it is normal for agents to be aware of what's out there, but nothing significant yet,' said the insider. That individual then added: 'I wouldn't make too much of it.' When asked for comment, Kelly's publicist said that reports of any person on Kelly's team reaching out to other networks were 'absolutely false.' At the same, an NBC executive told DailyMail.com that Kelly will not be missed at the network. 'That hour used to be a ratings hit with Al Roker and Tamron Hall and it was relatively inexpensive to produce,' said the executive. 'Now viewers get to witness the greatest example of white privilege on television. She defended blackface. I mean how is this acceptable in any way? She needs to go.' That same executive was also critical of the decision to hire Kelly, questioning why Andy Lack and Noah Oppenheim had not already gotten rid of the $69 million woman. 'Andy and Noah need to own this mistake and fire her. There shouldn't be a place for someone with these views to remain on NBC News,' said that executive. 'Andy and Noah both should be held accountable too. They gave her the $69 million and all she has delivered is scandal after scandal. Add production costs and they are responsible for a $100 million dollar s*** show at 9am every morning.' Judge Nicholas Parfitt is pictured here at the Royal Courts of Justice Pensioners who cut back their wealthy neighbour's hedge without permission have been ordered to pay her more than 20,000 in damages. Robert and Jennifer Oldfield were taken to court after neighbour, Clare Pollock, objected to the decimation of the six-metre-high blackthorn and hazel hedge. The couple insisted it was on their land and they could do what they liked with it - but now a High Court judge has disagreed with them. That means the Oldfields must pay Ms Pollock 22,500 in compensation, and are also likely to face crushing lawyers' bills. Ms Pollock bought her home - 'Kahuna', in Vista Close, Lyme Regis - in 2014, London's High Court heard, and it is now worth almost 1 million. But, when she moved in, she was shocked to see that the hedge along her western boundary had been cut back to the earth bank on which it grew. She sued the Oldfields - of next door 'Rivendell' - seeking an injunction and damages, claiming that the hedge was on her land. Mr Oldfield, 67, accepted that he and another neighbour had cut back the hedge, but insisted it was on his side of the boundary. He and his 70-year-old wife said the boundary was to the east of the bank, whilst Ms Pollock argued it was to the west. The neighbours fought it out during a costly six-day trial in Central London County Court last year. Expert witnesses were deployed and Judge Nicholas Parfitt analysed legal documents and maps going back to the Victorian era. RAF aerial photographs of the hedge, dating back to the early days of flight in the 1930s, were pawed over in detail and the judge made a site visit. Judge Parfitt ruled in favour of the Oldfields, dismissing Ms Pollock's claim - but she appealed and has now emerged victorious. Mr Justice Arnold ruled it 'more probable than not' that the boundary had once been marked by a long disappeared stock-proof fence. That fence, he added, had probably run along the west of the bank - putting the boundary line where Ms Pollock said it was. 'It follows that the the boundary now lies to the west of the bank, as Ms Pollock contends, and not to the east of the bank, as the Oldfields contend' The judge concluded: 'The appeal is allowed. There will be judgment for Ms Pollock for damages in the sum of 22,500.' He said he would hear further argument from barristers on who should pay lawyers' bills run up during the dispute. Advertisement Federal authorities have made an arrest in connection with the mail bombing spree targeting critics of President Donald Trump. A male suspect in his 50s was taken into custody on Friday in South Florida in connection with the recent string of mailed pipe bombs. The suspect was arrested in front of an AutoZone store in Plantation, Florida a police source tells DailyMail.com. A witness who works at Marlins Insurance said dozens of police cars descended on the area around State Road 7 and SW 8th Street about 10am, a few feet away from her office. 'It's really bad,' the woman said by telephone. She declined to give her name. 'We heard a loud bang, like a bomb exploding. Police officers who told us to stay inside said they were arrested the guy who's been sending bombs all over the place. It's pretty scary but we're inside trying to get some work done.' The suspect is reportedly a former resident of New York who is living in Florida. The 12 mail bombs are all believed to have been handled by a regional mail sorting facility in southern Florida. The suspect is known to law enforcement, and has a history of making terroristic threats to judges, sources said. Heavy police activity was seen in Plantation, Florida, a town to the west of Fort Lauderdale and directly south of Sunrise, the location of Debbie Wasserman-Schultz's office, which the bombs listed as a return address. Police impounded a white panel van that is believed to be connected to the investigation. The Department of Justice announced a press conference for 2.30pm at which further details are expected to be available. Investigators are seen impounding a white panel van in Plantation, Florida on Friday in connection with an arrest Earlier in the day, the investigators said they had found two new packages believed to be part of the mail bombing spree, addressed to Senator Cory Booker and former Director of National Intelligence James Clapper. The package to Booker was found on Thursday night at a mail sorting facility in Florida, and the package addressed to Clapper was found at a postal facility in Manhattan on Friday. The two new packages marked the 11th and 12th suspected mail bombs in a spree that has targeted critics of Trump. Trump's first public response to the latest suspicious packages was a tweet at 10.19am reading: 'Republicans are doing so well in early voting, and at the polls, and now this 'Bomb' stuff happens and the momentum greatly slows - news not talking politics. Very unfortunate, what is going on. Republicans, go out and vote!' The FBI found two new packages believed to be part of the mail bombing spree, addressed to Senator Cory Booker (left) and former Director of National Intelligence James Clapper (right) The suspicious package (above) addressed to James Clapper at the Time Warner Center was intercepted by postal inspectors at a Manhattan sorting facility on Friday morning NYPD's Total Containment vessel arrives as law enforcement respond to the scene of a suspicious package at a postal facility on Friday in New York The Total Containment Vessel is used to transport explosive devices and is designed to contain powerful blasts The special NYPD vehicle is seen transporting the package addressed to James Clapper to a secure facility in the Bronx NYPD Deputy Commissioner Intelligence and Counterterrorism John Miller was on scene during an investigation of a bomb addressed to James Clapper at a US Post Office on W 52nd Street on Friday in Manhattan FDNY set up a command post at an investigation of a bomb at a postal sorting facility in Midtown Manhattan on Friday A police dog assists in a suspicious package response at a postal facility in Manhattan on Friday morning Postal workers stand on the street after evacuating a sorting facility during a report of a suspicious package in Manhattan Postal workers stand on the street after evacuating a Midtown Manhattan postal facility on Friday The facility was evacuated after inspectors intercepted a suspicious package addressed to James Clapper The map above shows the locations of 12 suspicious packages that have all been linked to a mail bombing spree The package to Clapper was addressed to CNN's headquarters in the Time Warner Center in Midtown Manhattan, but was intercepted before delivery. A photo of the package showed that it matched notable characteristics of the previous mail bombs, none of which have exploded. Clapper joined CNN as a contributor after stepping down as the nation's most senior intelligence official last year. 'At least they got the correct spelling of my name and they got the right network,' Clapper said in remarks to CNN, referring to a mail bomb sent to CNN earlier this week and addressed to 'John Brenan'. John Brennan, a former CIA director, is a contributor for MSNBC. 'This is definitely domestic terrorism, no question about it in my mind,' Clapper said in an interview with the cable network. 'This is not going to silence the administrations critics.' Clapper said that he had been on vacation with his wife, and had warned the neighbors who were collecting his mail to be on the lookout for suspicious packages as the mail bomb spree developed this week. Like the other targets in the mail bomb spree, Clapper has been harshly critical of Trump. In a speech last year, he said that Trump was guilty of 'ignorance or disrespect'. First respondents are seen on the scene where suspicious package was found in Midtown. There were no reports of injuries and the stretcher is believed to be a precaution Police respond to a report of a suspicious package at a postal facility in Midtown Manhattan on Friday morning Police respond to a report of a suspicious package in the Manhattan borough of New York Police swarmed the area outside a Manhattan postal facility after a package was found The package intercepted on Friday was addressed to Clapper care of CNN, but was spotted by postal inspectors at a sorting facility before delivery. The NYPD bomb squad was on scene at the postal facility at West 52nd Street and 8th Avenue on Friday morning. The NYPD's Total Containment Vessel was spotted at the scene by about 9.30am. Streets in the area were closed off and postal workers were seen waiting on the sidewalks after the facility was evacuated. The containment vehicle departed the area at 10am transporting the suspected bomb to a secure police facility in Rodman's Neck in the Bronx. Police respond to a report of a suspicious package addressed to James Clapper in Manhattan Streets were shut down and the facility evacuated after a suspicious package was found Police respond to a report of a suspicious package in the Manhattan borough of New York on Friday On Thursday, a local police bomb squad and canine units joined federal investigators to examine a sprawling U.S. mail distribution center at Opa-Locka, northwest of Miami, Miami-Dade County police said. Investigators believe that all of the suspicious packages were sorted at the facility, which processes mail regionally in South Florida. It was at the Opa-Locka facility that the 11th bomb was discovered, addressed to Senator Booker. Booker is a Democrat from New Jersey. Like Clapper and the other targets of the mail bombs in the recent spree, he is an outspoken critic of Trump. The identity and motives of the bomber have not been revealed, however, with the FBI saying it is pursuing the case as the agency's highest priority. No one has claimed responsibility for the bombs. A police car sits outside New Jersey Democratic Senator Cory Booker's office in Camden, New Jersey on Friday. The FBI says a suspicious package addressed to Booker has been recovered in Florida and is similar in appearance to recent mail bombs A police dog is loaded into an SUV outside New Jersey Democratic Senator Cory Booker's office in Camden, New Jersey A police officer and dog are shown outside a postal facility on Thursday in Opa-locka, Florida. The search uncovered a suspicious package addressed to Senator Cory Booker Senator Mark Warner, the top Democrat on the Senate Intelligence Committee, told MSNBC on Friday that the mail bombs were stoking fear across the county and that U.S. leaders, including Trump, must reassure the public. Elected officials and others need to say that this is not who we are as a country, Warner said. 'That would be a heck of a lot stronger if that message also came from the White House.' U.S. Homeland Security Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen said that Florida appeared to be the starting point for at least some of the bomb shipments. 'Some of the packages went through the mail. They originated, some of them, from Florida,' she said during an interview with Fox News Channel on Thursday. 'I am confident that this person or people will be brought to justice.' The autopsy of a woman found dead in a Sydney park has proved inconclusive, prompting more forensic tests to determine the cause of death. Nicole Cartwright, 32, was found dead by a council worker after she had been bound, beaten and dumped at Buffalo Creek Reserve in Hunters Hill on Sydney's lower north shore about 7.30am on October 3. The body had been partially concealed under a dark-coloured cloth, but beneath the covering the woman was semi-naked with a studded purple collar around her neck. Police previously released CCTV footage of the last time she was seen alive at Museum Railway Station at 9.30pm on September 30 three days before her body was found in the same clothes. Detectives have spoken with a large number of people and are able to account for Ms Cartwright's whereabouts for most of the weekend of September 28 to 30 but are still in the dark as to what happened afterwards. Scroll down for video Forensic police photograph the body of Nicole Cartwright, 32, who was discovered by a council worker in the early hours of October 3 at Buffalo Creek Reserve in Hunters Hill Nicole Cartwright, 32, (pictured) was discovered semi-naked and partially concealed under a dark-coloured cloth with a studded purple collar around her neck 'We are still waiting on some significant forensic material and analysis that will inform our steps in that investigation,' Homicide Squad Commander Scott Cook told reporters on Friday. 'We don't know the cause of death yet that's the issue we need to resolve in the first instance.' Forensic results can take months, depending on their complexity, Detective Superintendent Cook said. 'It's troubling but it's not the end of the world,' he said. 'We'll get through this, we've done it before, it doesn't matter how long it takes. 'We'll continue to investigate this and other murders to the fullest extent possible.' An autopsy revealed Ms Cartwright had been badly bashed, but did not die from those injuries. '(Ms Cartwright) had injuries consistent with an assault but those injuries did not kill her,' a police source said, adding that her cause of death was still unknown. Police previously released CCTV footage of the last time Ms Cartwright was seen alive at Museum Railway Station at 9.30pm on September 30 three days before her body was found Detectives found the 32-year-old's belongings at the park - but her mobile phone was notably missing. Police have sifted through her phone records and data, but have so far refused to reveal what they have found. Detective Superintendent Scott Cook said police were 'working through the vast amounts of information received' after appealing for public information. 'It is very clear that Nicole was a great friend and well-liked, and members of the community are providing whatever information they can to help us provide answers about her death to her family,' he told the publication. 'That said, we are still piecing her final movements together - and anyone who spoke with or saw Nicole over the long weekend is urged to get in touch with us as soon as possible.' Ms Cartwright stopped using social media for months before she died, deleting her Facebook account and not posting on Instagram since April 17. Ms Cartwright's family (pictured) said the 32-year-old had been a much loved and cherished member of the family Ms Cartwright's family said Nicole brightened their lives with a radiance that 'made you happy just being near her', in the statement on Thursday. She was 'kind and sweet but also bold and fun' with an infectious smile and contagious laughter. Ms Cartwright was farewelled at a funeral at Gledswood, in Sydney's southwest. Ms Cartwright's family said they were deeply touched by an emotional vigil held at the park after her death. 'It's lovely to know people do care about each other, even if they don't know them, and acknowledge the loss of a beautiful life,' her family said. 'While we are still struggling to comprehend how and why this happened, our family is finding comfort in focusing on what made Nicole special and treasuring her in our memories. 'It's hard to express in words how grateful we are for the love and support we've received from her friends and members of the community over the past few weeks.' Just minutes before a white gunman opened fire inside a Kroger supermarket in Kentucky, killing two African-Americans, police say he was caught on surveillance video trying to enter a predominantly black church. After releasing a photo of the suspect, 51-year-old Gregory Bush, authorities received a tip from an employee of the city of Jeffersontown who said he thought he saw the man outside the First Baptist Church prior to Wednesday's shooting, city police chief Sam Rogers said. The video confirmed Bush's presence 10-15 minutes before the supermarket shooting, Rogers said. The church is headed by a black pastor and has a large African-American membership. Gregory Bush (pictured) was arraigned on two counts of murder and 10 counts of wanton endangerment Thursday following his shooting spree at a Kroger grocery store Wednesday where police say he killed two African Americans About 10-15 minutes before Bush allegedly opened fire at the store, he wa seen trying to enter the First Baptist Church of Jeffersontown, but failed Had Bush come earlier, he would have walked in on a service attended by 70 people (stock image). First Baptist adopted security measures- including bolting doors, security surveillance and armed congregants- after white supremacist's mass killing in South Carolina church Bush appeared to try to gain access to the church, Rogers said, but was unsuccessful. Had he arrived just over an hour earlier, Bush would have walked in on a service attended by some 70 congregants. Church administrator Billy Williams told Live 5 News that First Baptist adopted security measures, including bolting doors, security surveillance and having armed congregants on the premises, after white supremacist Dylann Roof carried out a mass shooting at an African American church in Charleston, South Carolina, killing nine, in 2015. The information came as news media outlets reported that Bush made a racial comment after the shooting, telling a Caucasian bystander, whites dont shoot whites. Rogers said it was too soon, however, to say whether the shooting was racially motivated. 'I can't speculate on motive at this time,' the chief said at a news conference Thursday. 'We are pursuing all avenues of the investigation no matter where that takes us or what it involves.' The FBI announced that it "is evaluating the evidence to determine if there were any violations of federal law." Hate crimes are prosecuted under federal law. Bush, who has a history of mental illness and a criminal record that includes being charged with assault in the third degree, domestic violence and making terroristic threats in 2009, was booked into Metro Corrections early Thursday on two counts of murder and 10 counts of wanton endangerment Thursday afternoon Bush appeared in court for his arraignment and his bond was set at $10million. . Police identified the victims as 69-year-old Maurice Stallard and 67-year-old Vicki Lee Jones. There didn't appear to be any connection between Bush and the victims, or any link between Bush and the Kroger store. Bush killed one black female and one black male in Wednesday's incident. He also allegedly told a white concealed carry holder that 'whites don't shoot whites' Gregory Bush, 51, was arrested and charged with two counts of murder following Wednesday's shooting at a Kentucky grocery store Bush 'pulled a pistol from his waistband and shot (a man) in the rear of the head and again multiple times as he lay on the floor,' according to an arrest citation. He then allegedly walked out of the store and shot and killed a woman in the parking lot. A civilian with a conceal carry permit then 'challenged' Bush. Bush began 'firing wildly at the civilian throughout the parking lot', the citation states. One of the victims was identified to the Courier Journal as Maurice Stallard. Stallard had been shopping with his 12-year-old grandson. Stallard is the father of Mayor Greg Fischer's chief racial equity officer, Kellie Watson. Police have not officially identified Stallard or the woman who was killed outside. The woman was found dead in the parking lot after attempting to call 911 during the attack, according to Jeffersontown police. Ed Harrell said that he called out to ask the man what was going on as he 'nonchalantly' walked out of the store and he replied: 'Don't shoot me. I won't shoot you. Whites don't shoot whites.' Harrell said that he heard gunshots from outside his home on Wednesday and grabbed his revolver and crouched down next to his car. Moments later, he claimed that a man walked through the parking lot holding a gun by his side, when he pleaded with Harrell not to shoot him. Harrell alleged that as the gunman walked closer towards him he took cover behind a car and watched as the Bush got into another car and drove off. According to sources, the suspect shot Stallard while his 12-year-old grandson stood next to him in the store while they were stopping for poster board. Kroger employees hug each other in the aftermath of shooting that left two people dead. Bush (right) was booked into Metro Corrections Thursday Members of the Louisville Metro Police Department talk inside a Kroger grocery in following the shooting that left two people dead The young boy then reportedly sprinted out of the grocery store and asked to use a stranger's cellphone to make a call to his mother to tell her his granddad had been shot. Jeffersontown Mayor Bill Dieruf said the boy was physically unharmed, but most certainly traumatized, the mayor said, adding, 'He was there and cannot unsee what he has seen.' Stallard was the father of Kellie Watson, the chief racial equity officer for Louisville Mayor Greg Fischer. Eric Deacon, an emergency medical technician who was shopping at the store when gunfire broke out, said he heard a 'loud bang.' 'It almost sounded like a pallet hitting the floor,' he told WDRB-TV in Louisville. Deacon said he saw two men run out of the store into the parking lot, shooting at each other. He said he saw a woman in her mid-50s or early 60s get hit as he was calling 911, and he ran to help her. A gun lies on the ground inside a police barricade following the shooting A Kroger employee wipes away tears following a shooting that left two people dead, and the subject in custody Employees wait outside the entrance of a Kroger grocery following the shooting 'I looked at her and she was, she was gone,' he said. 'I knew there was nothing I could do.' As police officers swarmed the scene and blocked off the area with yellow crime tape, a man identified by the Louisville Courier Journal as Tim King stood in the parking lot waiting for his wife to come out. He said he drove to the store after she called him sobbing to tell him what had happened. 'I said, "What's wrong?"' King said in a video posted on the newspaper's website. 'And she said, "There's someone shooting up here."' King said his wife said she heard popping noises, then someone ran around a corner and said, 'Oh my God, he's killed her.' Customers were moved to the back of the store, she said. A police officer with the Louisville Metro Police Department interviews customers Two people have died - one inside the store and another outside 'It's just a very, very scary situation,' King said. 'We are shocked and saddened by the shooting incident that occurred around 2:30 pm today,' a statement from Kroger said. 'Thanks to the quick response of the local police department, the suspect was apprehended and our store is secure.' Authorities removed computers and cellphones from the house where Bush lived with his parents. Bush's criminal record shows he threatened his ex-wife and punched a deputy sheriff during a family court hearing years ago. He also was charged with assaulting his elderly parents in January 2009. An arrest citation said Bush's parents were punched and choked, and they told police they were 'terrified of (his) unpredictable behavior.' Bush is expected back in court on November 5th for a preliminary hearing. In the Caribbean, female farmers, agro-processors and crafters all face the same problem: accessing finance to start businesses and to purchase land or business premises. Since 2017, I have been the president of the Saint Lucia Network of Rural Women Producers, which is comprised of four clusters that manufacture a range of products, including gluten-free flour, breadfruit, dried fruits, chocolates, juices, jams, jellies, chutney and relishes. All of the clusters are in need of Hazard Analysis and Critical Control Points (HACCP)-certified processing facilities, but these come at a significant cost. While one of the four clusters is about to move to an HACCP-certified processing facility, as a result of an EU-funded government project, most producers have to try to raise their own financing to grow their businesses. This is a challenge because most of the women run their businesses from home and do not keep the kinds of detailed records that financial institutions expect when they are approached for a loan. Financial institutions requirement for collateral in the form of land ownership is also a problem, as most women either use family-owned land or squatted land. Women therefore need more support to access finance, as well as larger and more financially profitable markets. Gaining financing for my own fudge-making business, Fudgies, has been a challenge. Fudgies started in 2014 when I was asked by a shop owner to supply them with fudge. I did not have the money to purchase the ingredients, so the owner invested EC$500 (163) and I was able to deliver 50 boxes to her by the end of the week. While the initial loan helped to start the business, I needed a greater sum of money to make the business more profitable and sustainable. I approached five different financial agencies, which each said that they did not provide loans to start-ups. I then contacted a local financial institution, called Belfund, which supports local entrepreneurs and provides loans. As well as giving me a loan of EC$12,000 (3,800), Belfund visited me once a month to ensure that the financial side of my business was running well. They checked my record-keeping, and made sure that my accounts were balancing and that I was making a profit. The loan enabled me to refurbish my processing space, purchase equipment and open my first shop in Grand Riviere. I now produce about 250 boxes of fudge per month. I still face production challenges and have to manufacture my fudge by hand. Instead of seeking another loan I am looking for grants to purchase processing equipment. More programmes like Belfund are needed to help women business leaders to access loans and train them to keep the necessary financial records so that it is easier for them to acquire support from mainstream financial institutions. With more inclusive financing opportunities, more women like me will be able to scale up their production and reach higher value markets. Shannon R. Beran, 43, of Deville, Louisiana, faces a charge of possession of alcohol on public school property, according to the Rapides Parish Sheriff's Office An elementary school teacher has been arrested after allegedly being caught with wine in her classroom. Shannon R. Beran, 43, of Deville, Louisiana, faces a charge of possession of alcohol on public school property, according to the Rapides Parish Sheriff's Office. A school officer ended up responding to Buckeye Elementary school around 3:15pm Wednesday to assist the school administration. Witnesses said Beran had been displaying odd behavior during pickup duty and appeared to be moving slowly and awkwardly. Witnesses said Beran had been displaying odd behavior during pickup duty and appeared to be moving slowly and awkwardly but became defensive when confronted When she was confronted and asked about her condition, she said she wanted to leave and became defensive. A partially consumed bag of wine was found in her classroom, the sheriff's office said said. She was released on a $500 bond. Three people have been taken to hospital after a high-powered Ferrari crashed into a Toyota 4WD. The luxury car was destroyed after it slammed into the other vehicle in Greenslopes, Brisbane's south-east, at about midday on Friday. Police said the high performance car was travelling southbound on Logan Road when it collided with the station wagon. The 2016 model red Ferrari 488 GTB, worth roughly $468,000, rolled a number of times and came to a halt about 60 metres away from the point of impact. Three people have been taken to hospital after a high-powered Ferrari crashed into a Toyota 4WD The luxury car was destroyed after it slammed into the other vehicle in Greenslopes, Brisbane's south-east, at about midday on Friday The 37-year-old woman driving the station wagon sustained head, neck and leg injuries. She was transported to Princess Alexandra Hospital in a stable condition. The driver of the Ferrari, a 41-year-old man, and his 40-year-old male passenger sustained cuts and bruising. They were also transported to hospital for further treatment. Police said the high performance car was travelling southbound on Logan Road when it collided with the station wagon The Ferrari rolled a number of times and came to a halt about 60 metres away from the point of impact The 2016 model red Ferrari 488 GTB (pictured) is worth roughly $468,000 The road was closed for a few hours and reopened at about 4pm on Friday afternoon. The Forensic Crash Unit is investigating the crash. According to Carsales, the Ferrari has a top speed of 330km/h and can reach 200km/h from rest in 8.3 seconds. The road was closed for a few hours and reopened at about 4pm on Friday afternoon A white former Oklahoma volunteer deputy who fatally shot an unarmed black man says he's sorry for the man's family, but that the shooting also disrupted his own life. 'I feel very bad about it,' Robert Bates told KTUL-TV in his first public comments since the 2015 shooting that killed unarmed black man Eric Harris. 'It has been a very disruptive thing in my life. I feel sorry for his son, his ex-wife and family. It bothers me,' Bates said in the interview that aired Thursday. Video Courtesy of KTUL. Robert Bates, 77, gave his first interview since being locked up for fatally shooting unarmed black man Eric Harris during a 2015 arrest gone wrong in Tulsa, Oklahoma Bates (in 2016) was convicted of manslaughter and sentenced to four years in prison for Harris' death, but only served a year an a half of the sentence after being paroled for good behavior At the time of the shooting, Bates, now 77, was a millionaire insurance executive who worked as a reserve Tulsa County sheriff's deputy. Bates shot Harris, a 44-year-old father of one, on April 2, 2015, after Harris ran from Tulsa County sheriff officials who'd caught him in a gun-sale sting. Harris was already on the ground restrained by deputies when Bates, then 73, ran up and shot him in the armpit. Bates later said he had mistaken his gun for his taser. In a video of the incident, Bates is heard shouting 'Taser! Taser'!' He later says in the video: 'I shot him. I'm sorry'. At the time of the shooting, Bates (left) was 73 years old and a volunteer deputy with the Tulsa Sheriff's Office. Harris was in being arrested during a gun deal when Bates fatally shot him Bates completed nine months of parole after his release from prison. It was alleged that he violated the terms of his parole in May when he was caught allegedly drinking (pictured), but an investigation did not turn up any signs that he had been drinking Bates was convicted of second-degree manslaughter and sentenced to four years in prison the maximum for negligently killing an unarmed man for Harris' death. Meanwhile the city settled a lawsuit with Harris' family for $6million. However, Bates served less than half his sentence before being paroled for good behavior in October 2017. He has since completed his nine months of probation. Bates, who now lives in Florida, said he was surprised that he was sent to prison. 'What kind of purpose did it do to put me in prison? I mean it's the law, but, you know, I was rather surprised ... that I ended up in prison,' Bates told KTUL. 'I think I served more than enough time.' All told, Bates sent about a year and a half of his sentence. Forty-seven of those days were spent in Tulsa County Jail, where he was not allowed out of his cell, except for a 'couple of times a week for a shower, usually late at night.' He then spent the remaining portion of his time served in special lock up with the Department of Corrections. He was placed in protective custody and typically left in his cell 23 hours a day. Bodycam video released from the shooting show Harris fleeing from police in April 2015 Harris, who was not armed, was seen being held down by police when Bates approached and shot him in the armpit with his handgun. It did not appear that police realized he had been shot Bates also noted that 'They tried to make it into a racial issue, I am not the least bit racial,' and said that people have tried to run him and his wife off the road and also recorded their conversations. As a convicted felon who is unable to get a job, Bates said that he spends his down time walking his dog and also trying to help prisoners and their families financially. He also said that he's working on a book. In May 2018, while out on parole, Bates was seen allegedly drinking alcohol, which would have violated his parole and sent him back to jail. But, a state Department of Corrections spokesman, Matt Elliott, said an investigation found no evidence that Bates had been drinking. An attorney for Harris' family did not immediately return a Friday call seeking comment. In 2015, Harris' family claimed in a statement that Bates paid his way into the frontline by bestowing gifts on the Tulsa sheriff's office reportedly including cruises, fishing trips, cars and surveillance equipment. 'We do not believe that it is reasonable for a man who claims to have all the necessary training to mistake a pistol for a Taser,' Harris' family said in the statement. 'We do not believe it is reasonable for a 73-year-old insurance executive to be involved in a dangerous undercover sting operation. We do not believe it is reasonable or responsible for [the sheriff's office] to accept gifts from a wealthy citizen who wants to be [a] "pay to play" cop.' A Tulsa police spokesman confirmed that Bates had purchased cars and surveillance equipment for the sheriff's office's use. Police said that Bates was classified as an advanced deputy, meaning that he would've had to have performed a minimum of 320 hours of training and 25 hours of training each year. During the annual field training program, advanced deputies were said to be tested on how to use and identify lethal and non-lethal weapons. Body cam footage of the incident which was released showed Harris, who was being held down by his neck by the deputies, exclaiming: 'Oh my god, he shot me! He shot me! He shot me, man.' He then added: 'Oh, my god. I'm losing my breath.' Shockingly, one of the deputies replied: 'F*** your breath.' Another called Harris a 'motherf***er' and told him, 'You shouldn't have f***ing ran.' Following the incident, during which the deputies did not appear to realize Harris had been fatally injured, and even told him to 'shut the f*** up,' Harris was hospitalized. He died an hour later. A criminal lawyer facing fraud charges has a love child with a glamorous bikini model who was once engaged to one of his former clients. Adam Magill, 47, revealed to The Courier Mail that in 2016, he fathered a child with mens' magazine cover girl Natalie Lucas, 28, the former fiancee of Ivan Tesic, 45, an alleged bikie associate and accused drug trafficker. He and the South African-born beauty dated for almost two years while the Brisbane criminal lawyer was separated from his wife, although the married couple have since reconciled. It's been revealed that prominent Brisbane criminal lawyer Adam Magill fathered a child with South African-born beauty Natalie Lucas (pictured) Lucas' former fiance Ivan Tesic (pictured) has been behind bars since 2014 and will face trial in 2014 Brisbane lawyer Adam Magill (pictured) was granted bail when he appeared in court on Monday after he was charged with two counts of aggravated fraud, fraudulent falsification of records and aggravated money laundering Lucas, then known as Natalie Charalambous, told The Courier Mail he met Magill's then ex-wife while dating him, and claimed that her daughter wasn't an accident, despite the the pair having broken up by the time she found out she was pregnant. 'Adam and I were living together for close to two years, we were in a relationship,' she said. 'The week I found out I was pregnant ... I had moved out [of the home she and Magill shared].' The surprise revelations come after Magill, 47, was among six men charged a week ago following a 18-month Crime and Corruption Commission investigation into the dealings of a Brisbane law firm. Magill was charged with two counts of aggravated fraud, fraudulent falsification of records and aggravated money laundering, Nine News reported. The Crime and Corruption Commission will allege some of the men defrauded the taxpayer-funded Legal Aid service of $340,000 and also failed to deposit more than $765,000 into a separate trust account. South African-born beauty Natalie Lucas (pictured) dated lawyer Adam Magill for two years while he was separated from his wife Natalie Lucas was with accused drug kingpin and former bikie associate Ivan Tesic for five years before she dated lawyer Adam Magill 'The fact some of these allegations relate to individuals involved in the legal profession is concerning,' CCC chairman Alan MacSporran QC said in a statement. 'Any fraud committed on Legal Aid Queensland is in my view a fraud on Queensland tax-payers and it has the potential to interfere with the administration of justice.' Magill was granted bail when he appeared in court earlier this week, where he was banned from contacting Tesic and 54 other witnesses as part of his strict bail conditions. Magill will return to Brisbane Magistrates Court on November 26. Magill, a partner of Lawler Magill, briefly represented Tesic in 2014 in relation to his drug trafficking and possession charges, which Tesic will stand trial for in the Brisbane Supreme Court next February. Natalie Lucas, 28, has appeared in mens' magazines Maxim, Ralph, FHM and Zoo The lawyer described Natalie Lucas (pictured) as 'a wonderful mother' Magill told The Courier Mail he has not spoken to Tesic since 2014 and doesn't think his previous relationship with Lucas is to blame. Ms Lucas, 28, who has appeared in Maxim, Ralph, FHM and Zoo, claims Tesic threatened Magill after she called off their five year relationship while he was remanded in custody in 2014. 'Ivan thought that (my relationship with Magill) was going on beforehand,' Lucas said. A former Queensland police detective, Magill described Lucas as a 'wonderful mother' and claimed he pays a 'much higher than mandatory' child maintenance to ensure his daughter, now two, enjoyed the best quality of life. Allegedly linked with several bikie gangs, Tesic remains behind bars in relation to the 2014 drug trafficking and possession charges while he awaits trial. Ten students were injured when their school bus was smashed into by a lorry in the middle of a highway. The yellow bus was pulling out of a gas station in Bastrop near Austin, Texas, on Wednesday, in wet conditions at around 8am when a truck stuck the side of the vehicle. CCTV footage of the accident showed the bus pull out into the road then spin around as it was T-boned by the HGV 18-wheeler coming from the driver's left-hand side. The driver of the rig told police his breaks failed and he took evasive action to hit the hard shoulder but still collided with the bus. Police said ten of the 20 students on board were injured along with their school bus driver when the vehicle was broadsided on a Central Texas highway. The moment the school bus was hit by the lorry as it pulled out from a busy cross road on a green light The driver of the HGV said the breaks on his rig failed and he tried to hit the hard shoulder to avoid contact with the school bus Bastrop Independent School District (ISD) said eight children were taken to hospital by ambulance with minor injuries, including the bus driver, and two students were taken for treatment by their parents. A spokesman for the school administration tweeted from its official account: 'Before 8:00 this a.m., Bus 220 carrying students from CCHS, CCMS & CCIS was involved in an accident at Tucker Hill Ln & 71. 'Approx 20 students on board. 10 transported to Dell Childrens. Others taken to hospital by parents. Accident under investigation.' DPS Sgt Robbie Berrera says the trucker was not hurt in the accident as the bus was making a turn and was moving slowly. The truck driver told police he was clear to pass through the cross road as he was given a yellow light, but the video clips shows the bus had the green light. Berrera told KXAN: 'The driver advised that he had a yellow light, he attempted to stop and his 18-wheeler would not stop. He took evasive action, hit the shoulder and could not stop, colliding with the school bus.' An eyewitness on his way to work when the crash happened said he jumped into action to help the students and the truck driver. Jerimiah Owens told KVUE: 'Anyone who's a parent would understand that nature. It's just an instinct.' A statement from the school district said: 'This morning one of our buses was involved in an accident with an 18-wheeler. CCTV footage from a nearby gas station showed the moment the bus spun around after the collision Ten students and the bus driver were take to hospital after the accident in Bastrop near Austin, Texas 'We are grateful to report that all students who were transported to hospitals have been treated for minor injuries and released or are still being treated for minor injuries and expected to be released shortly. The bus driver was also transported to the hospital for evaluation and released. 'District staff were on hand at the scene and at the hospital to support students and their families, and we will continue to provide counseling and support upon students return to school. 'We would like to express our deep appreciation to first responders and law enforcement who were on the scene so quickly giving care to all those involved. 'We also appreciate the outpouring of support from our campuses, community members, and neighbors who have expressed their prayers and support this morning. 'The accident is currently under investigation by Texas DPS. Bastrop ISD and our transportation provider, GoldStar Transit, will cooperate fully with the investigation. ' The extent of the children's injuries are not known at this time and the accident remains under investigation by police. The socialite founder behind $100million clothing brand Kookai faces up to five years in jail over an alleged drunken hit-and-run. High-profile fashion queen Danielle Vagner was filmed navigating her mangled Range Rover 4WD down an alleyway, allegedly slamming into a South Yarra home and driving off in June this year. The 53-year-old mother-of-two allegedly continued to drive down the Melbourne alleyway with no front tyres and a badly damaged bumper, catching the attention of shocked bystanders. Ten charges have been filed against Ms Vagner, alleging her conduct endangered the lives of others, the Herald Sun reported. Scroll down for video Danielle Vagner (pictured), founder of Kookai, faces up to five years in jail over an alleged drunken hit-and-run The mother-of-two was filmed navigating her mangled Range Rover 4WD (pictured) down an alleyway, slamming into a South Yarra home and driving off in June this year Among the charges, police have also alleged she attempted to escape arrest, leading to a police pursuit on foot where she failed to tell officers her name and address. But Vagner, who co-owns the Kookai $100 million chain with her ex-husband Rob Cromb, claims she has no memory of her dangerous driving, after having been at the dentist earlier in the day and at a lunch where she had some drinks. 'Obviously we're very concerned and worried about her. I'm sure she's remorseful and disappointed,' Mr Cromb told 7 News. 'From my perspective it's pretty sad and we'll do everything we can to get her any help she needs.' Stunned passerby Jarryd Wittingslow recorded the unfolding incident on his phone as Vagner attempted to flee the area on the bare rims of the car's wheels as they scraped against the pavement. Vagner co-owns the Kookai $100 million fashion chain with her ex-husband Rob Cromb (stock image of Kookai model) When officers arrested Vagner she was accompanied back to the station and allegedly blew an alcohol reading of .099 - almost twice the legal limit Vagner, who co-owns the Kookai $100 million chain with her ex-husband Rob Cromb, claims she has no memory of her dangerous driving, after having been at the dentist earlier in the day and at a lunch where she had some drinks (stock image of Kookai model) 'You've got no wheels... no front tyres,' he told Vagner. 'Is there a reason you're photographing me,' she can be heard saying on the video as she opens the door of the beaten down vehicle. As she argued with onlookers, Vagner was far from the reputable creative visionary who in 25 years has grown one store to 39 boutiques across Australasia. 'She came around the corner and the tyre came off the rim and she parked and jumped out and put the tyre in the passenger seat,' Mr Wittingslow told 7 News. She was able to drive down the alleyway but the police were hot on her tail who were soon seen running after the vehicle. The homeowner, Elena Sender, whose front entrance had collapsed in the initial accident, was not home at the time. The damage bill to her residence was estimated at $200,000 They tracked her down by following the huge gouge marks the metal rims of the vehicle engraved in the asphalt. When officers arrested Vagner she was accompanied back to the station and allegedly blew an alcohol reading of .099 - almost twice the legal limit. The homeowner, Elena Sender, whose front entrance had collapsed in the initial accident, was not home at the time. Onlookers watched on as the Kookai owner navigated her wrecked vehicle down an alleyway (stock image of Kookai model) 'That's incredible, she just left it?' she said in shock when told the driver left the scene. 'She did not even make an attempt to check if someone was hurt. She only thought of herself,' Ms Sender told the Herald Sun. 'She lives in a different world. A person who crashes into a house, makes a huge amount of damage and may have been drunk is terribly shocking.' The damage bill to their residence has been estimated at $200,000 and Ms Sender said she will pursue the matter in court. Vagner will appear in the Melbourne Magistrates Court on December 12. A Mexican couple wailed in front of their cellphone cameras, sending out a desperate message to the men who kidnapped their seven-year-old daughter outside the family home. Little Seyni Camila Cobos Medina was trying lend her unemployed mother a helping hand, asking strangers for spare money in the city of Chihuahua on Wednesday afternoon. Gloria Cobos, 33, who at the time was bathing one of her seven children, rushed to the street when she heard her daughter's loud screams as her child was forcefully thrown into a white car with four men aboard as it then sped off. Seyni Camila Cobos Medina was kidnapped from her home Wednesday in the northern state of Chihuahua while standing outside the family home asking strangers for money Mexican authorities have released a composite sketch of one of the four kidnappers who forced a seven-year-old girl into a vehicle in front of her home Wednesday The mother tearfully begged the kidnappers for Seyni Camila's safe return while holding up a cellphone that featured a photo of her smiling daughter. 'She is an innocent girl who did not deserve to be done this. Please return her to me,' Gloria said in Spanish, in a video published by El Diario de Chihuahua. Seyni Camila, who is 3 feet, 9 inches tall and weighs 48 pounds, was last seen wearing a navy blue t-shirt with an image of Cinderella, navy blue leggings and a pair of white and navy blue sneakers with floral printing. Gloria Cobos issued a tearful plea to her daughter's kidnappers in the Mexican state of Chihuahua, begging them to safely return Seyni Camila Cobos Medina Ramon Lara says his kidnapped daughter, Seyni Camila Cobos Medina, 'is an innocent baby who does not owe anything to anyone' Seyni Camila Cobos Medina, a seven-year-old girl in Mexico, was kidnapped near her home at the intersection of Independencia and 20 de Noviembre avenues On Thursday afternoon, Mexican law enforcement authorities in the northern state of Chihuahua released a composite sketch of one of the kidnapping suspects who snatched Seyni Camila. As part of protocol, the government placed a nationwide Amber Alert and have been canvassing surveillance cameras in the immediate neighborhood for any clues to that could lead authorities to the abductors and Seyni Camila. Her father, Ramon Lara, joined his wife in issuing a plea to the men for the prompt release of the missing child. 'I beg the person who took my daughter to do us the favor of returning her to us. We love here. We adore her,' Lara said as he spoke directly into a camera. 'We do not want you to cause her any harm. We beg you.' She is an innocent baby who does not owe anything to anyone. She has never done any harm to any person.' Despite the terror that El Chapo is accused of unleashing upon Mexico, residents in a town recently affected by torrential rains apparently received some much needed aid that is being attributed to the jailed narco boss. And they thanked him in a 75-second video social media post just one month after a tropical depression roared up the Pacific coast and slammed the northwestern state of Sinaloa. A man could be seen walking along a dirt street in the town of Sanchez Celis, located in the municipality of El Dorado, where dozens of residents posed next to mattresses that carried a large-sized sticker containing the drug lord's initials, 'JGL', short for Joaquin Guzman Loera, according to ABC affiliate KSAT 12. Residents in the northwestern Mexican state of Sinaloa are thanking El Chapo after the received mattresses and electric stoves each carrying a sticker with his name's initials A September tropical depression caused life threatening floods in 43 towns and 31 communities in Sinaloa and forced almost 1,500 people to flee their homes and left three dead A box containing an electrical stove has a sticker with initials of the jailed leader of the Sinaloa Cartel. It's short for Joaquin Guzman Loera One one woman set her blessings to El Chapo, who is currently in a maximum-security jail in New York City awaiting trial, while another woman looked at the cell phone camera before blurting out, 'Thank you Chapo Guzman'. Another social media post contained a number of pictures of poor villagers in the town of La Platanera receiving electrical stoves that also had the same affixed sticker placed on top of yellow boxes, according to La Silla Rota. A picture of a truck carrying mattresses was also uploaded in the same message belonging to a Twitter registered under the handle, @gin02188. The Twitter user slammed the Sinaloa Secretary of Social Development [SEDESOL] agency for previously having donated mattresses that were allegedly pre-owned and 'filled with cockroaches'. 'The victims from the previous rain storm in La Platanera and who were 'aided' by @SEDESOL with old mattresses were not forgotten by Mister Joaquin,' the social media user wrote. The Twitter user applied a dateline of '22/10/18', which allegedly indicates the goods were delivered Monday in Sinaloa, once ruled by El Chapo at the rule of the Sinaloa Cartel. In September 2017, El Chapo's wife, Emma Coronel, came out in a social media video preparing boxes of non perishable goods for the victims of the Puebla earthquake El Chapo is currently being jailed at a maximum-facility center in New York City awaiting trial A woman in the village of Sanchez Celis, which was flooded in September, flashes a piece sign and thanks El Chapo for the alleged donation of a mattress and an electrical stove The tropical depression caused life threatening floods in 43 towns and 31 communities and forced almost 1,500 people to flee their homes and left three people dead. Villagers finally returned only to find their personal belongings and furniture destroyed by the storm. A woman in La Platanera, a town in Sinaloa affected by the flood waters brought on by a tropical depression in September, sent her blessings to El Chapo A truck in Sinaloa, Mexico is filled to the top with mattresses and electrical stoves that were allegedly attributed to El Chapo and handed out this week to residents affected by a flood It's not the first time the notorious cartel leader or those closest to him have allegedly extended their help to needy Mexican residents. His wife Emma Coronel last year appeared in a video where she and a host of other people were preparing boxes with non perishable goods for victims for the September 19, 2017 Puebla 7.1 earthquake that left 370 dead and injured more that 6,000 people. Coronel, 29, who married the 61-year-old cartel boss in 2007, has US nationality. Their daughters Maria and Emaly were born in the US but live in their father's home state of Sinaloa. Lately, the former beauty queen has flashed her riches on lavish purchases of Prada purses and held a Barbie-themed birthday bash for her seven-year-old daughters. DailyMail.com reached out the Sinaloa Secretary of Social Development for comment. Brazil's far-right presidential candidate Jair Bolsonaro looks set to soon become the country's next president Brazil's far-right presidential candidate Jair Bolsonaro looks set to soon become the country's next president, a new poll suggests. Although Bolsonaro's commanding lead over rival Fernando Haddad, 55, fell six percentage points in the past week he is still expected to win. In the Datafolha poll which was released on Thursday night, Bolsonaro took 56 per cent of voter intentions, compared to Haddad's 44 per cent. Mauro Paulino, the head of Datafolha polling institute, wrote in an analysis: 'It's impossible to say if there will be a continuous migration of votes (from Bolsonaro to Haddad) that would continue until the election on Sunday. He continued that the poll held on Sunday will given an indication as to whether former Sao Paulo Mayor Haddad's momentum has continued to gain steam. The leftist Workers Party's candidate appeared certain that it would be taking the win, writing on Twitter: 'I have some news for you... Bolsonaro said last Sunday that he was going to sweep away the opposition. Although Bolsonaro's commanding lead over rival Fernando Haddad (pictured), 55, fell six percentage points in the past week he is still expected to win 'Well, he's not going to have an opposition because he will not be governing. We're going to win this.' The 63-year-old, who has been nicknamed 'Trump of the Tropics', and his campaign have repeatedly railed against polling results - even when they show him with a solid lead - as being fraudulent and favouring leftist candidates. His backers have been so angered that Paulino has received thousands of threats of physical harm, mostly over social media, and has asked federal police to open an investigation. Flavio Bolsonaro (pictured), who won a seat in the Senate in the first-round ballot and is a close adviser of his father, dismissed the Datafolha institute's poll, saying 'our lead is far bigger!!!' Flavio Bolsonaro, who won a seat in the Senate in the first-round ballot and is a close adviser of his father, dismissed the Datafolha institute's poll, saying 'our lead is far bigger!!!' Bolsonaro's campaign has changed its tone in recent days, after an Ibope poll also showed his lead slipping. On Thursday, he made the surprise announcement that if elected, he would not pull Brazil out of the Paris climate agreement, after saying he would. A seven-term congressman, Bolsonaro, has successfully pitched himself as the anti-establishment candidate, appealing to voters fed up with political graft and violent crime. Casey Anthony's parents say they 'hope she does better this time' amid reports the woman once dubbed America's most hated mother is open to having more children. Father George told Dr Oz that he was over the moon after learning of Casey's first pregnancy with Caylee more than a decade ago, but struggles to feel excited now. Casey was put on trial for her daughter's murder in 2011 but was ultimately acquitted and now lives in Florida with a private investigator who worked on her case - though they are not thought to be romantically involved. However, George told Dr Oz that he believes she has found someone and that their relationship is 'very involved'. Cindy and George Anthony said they hope their daughter 'does better this time' amid rumors that she is open to having more children Despite Casey being acquitted, George holds her responsible for Caylee's death and believes she should have served jail time for it. But for all his misgivings about his daughter, he told Dr Oz: 'I hope whatever life she has left, that she makes something positive happen. 'If she is granted the chance to have another child I hope the child is strong and grows up to be a worthwhile part of society. 'I hope the person she has the child with, I hope they love her and the child immensely. 'Will I be part of that child's life? I don't think so. Me and Casey right now, we're like oil and water, one of us is floating and the other one is sinking and we're just not connected anymore. 'That hurts. I wish I could be part of her life but I never feel comfortable around her, I can't trust her.' Casey, who was acquitted of her daughter's murder in 2011, now lives in Florida with Pat McKenna (pictured) - a private investigator who worked on her case - though the two are not thought to be romantically involved However, George said he believes that Casey (pictured in Florida in August) has met someone and that their relationship is 'very involved', leading to speculations about children George told Dr Oz of his belief that Caylee was given medication that caused her to overdose before Casey panicked and hid her body, then lied about it for a month. Meanwhile mother Cindy, who also took part in the interview, said she believes the that Caylee fell into a pool and drowned but thinks there was someone else at the house who caused her to be distracted. Reports that Casey is open to the idea of having more children were first printed by People magazine, quoting anonymous friends of hers in Florida. It comes after an interview last year in which she said she would be 'dumb' to bring another child into the world, adding that she 'couldn't handle' another child being mean to hers. The friends did not explain what led to her change of heart, but said: 'For a long time she was like "no way." 'But time has changed that and shes now open to it in a way she hasnt been before.' Anthony lives with Pat McKenna, one of the investigators who worked on her defense team at her 2011 trial, in West Palm Beach, Florida. In her March 2017 interview with the AP, her only one since the trial, she said she was approached by men in bars often but they were scared off once they realized who she was. Caylee Anothony disappeared in June 2008 before skeletal remains were found in a nearby woodland and identified as hers Casey's lawyers argued in court that she had been subjected to decades of abuse by her father as a child and accused him of hiding her body after she drowned in the family pool In 2011, Anthony was sensationally acquitted after a dramatic, highly publicized murder trial. Her daughter Caylee was found dead in December 2008, six months after last being seen alive. Her skeletal remains were found in a trash bag behind the family home near Orlando. It was Casey's mother Cindy who eventually reported the child missing in July after not seeing her for weeks. She told police her daughter first gave explanations for where the child was then changed her story to say she had been kidnapped by a nanny. During the trial, the prosecution alleged, after finding traces of duct tape on Caylee's skull and chloroform in her mother's car, that Casey murdered her to get out of having to look after her. The defense said that the child drowned in the family pool and that Casey's father George disposed of the body. They tried to explain Casey's changing story by saying she had a dysfunctional childhood. At times, her lawyers suggested that she had been sexually abused by her own father and that was why she had mental health problems. George has always vehemently denied abusing her. Casey no longer speaks to her parents. After finishing third in a Billings trot this afternoon at Monticello Raceway Monica Banca then traveled 90 miles to compete in a NAADA trot at Yonkers Raceway which proved fruitful for the talented transplanted Norwegian when she guided Master of Excuses to a gate-to-wire 1:59.3 triumph over the Hilltop oval. In a field reduced to just five, Banca who started from the coveted pole position, sent her charge to the lead and had command in the :28.4 first quarter. Once clearly on top Banca tapped the brakes and eased her trotter past the halfway point in :59.3. Bob Davis, who also competed in the Billings at Monticello earlier in the day, was the first to challenge Banca and her charge when he moved Gianni off the pylons before the three quarters but Master Of Excuses wasn't having any part of it as the venerable trotter put together a :29.2 third quarter and opened up a three -length lead when the field rounded the final turn. As they headed for paydirt, Uriel and Annie Stoebe who were second with a covered trip, began to fade as the trailers moved forward. When the field straightened in the lane however, Master Of Excuses was still three lengths in front lead as Gianni and Davis were applying the pressure but they ran out of racetrack and had to settle for second money when Master Of Excuses tripped the final timer in 1:59.3 Third place went to Baltimor AS, driven by Bobby Ciavardini. Banca co-owns the winner with Rick Dane. Although it was only Banca's third winner this year, her eight seconds and four thirds in 23 starts boosted her seasonal UDR to .387. And it was the 25th winning drive for Banca since she joined the amateur movement in 2013. (NAADA) Devout Christian Nadia Eweida won a religious discrimination claim against BA in the European Court of Human Rights in 2013 after being sent home for wearing a silver crucifix around her neck A British Airways check-in worker who won a landmark legal battle over wearing a crucifix to work claims she was victimised and harassed for whistleblowing. Devout Christian Nadia Eweida won a religious discrimination claim against BA in the European Court of Human Rights in 2013 after being sent home for wearing a silver crucifix around her neck. In a personal statement for her fresh legal action today she said that her victory against the airline at the ECHR caused a continuing campaign against her. The 69-year-old is now alleging in a new employment tribunal claim that as punishment for whistleblowing, airline managers singled her out when she returned to work in 2007. She argued she was 'brow beaten' by airline bosses who 'forced' her to work when she was in pain from glaucoma and suffered detrimental' health problems including nose bleeds because of her treatment. Ms Eweida said she was denied a break after experiencing strain on her eyes in the wake of an operation and told to cover a flight gate. When she refused she was given a written warning by management. BA strongly denies the allegations. Ms Eweida, in her submission to Watford Employment Tribunal, said: 'I suffer from glaucoma and had selective laser trabeculoplasy surgery in 2013 and required a second glaucoma operation in 2014.' The 69-year-old is now alleging in a new employment tribunal claim that as punishment for whistleblowing, airline managers singled her out when she returned to work in 2007. Ms Eweida said of a particular incident: 'I had pain in my eyes and asked for a break. I was brow beaten and forced to work. 'On the 14 March 2017, I received an inappropriate informal warning as a disciplinary sanction from the respondent team. 'I suffered nose bleeds and I was made feel less than nothing. A nobody and broken and worthless. I contacted Safe Call and reported this to them. 'I took union advice and took out a grievance and was told that I had to wait for the outcome before I could take it any further. My grievance failed - I was depressed and subdued.' She continued: 'At the end of my tether decided to take legal advice and contacted Bindmanns and it was only then was I informed on the time limits - the union told me I was out of time. 'The whole proceedings from 2006 to date has been traumatic and harrowing. The Respondent's failure in their duty of care. 'I have suffered health detrimental nose bleeds throughout at work and high blood pressure at work.' A further uniform policy introduced in July 2017 required female staff to tuck their cravat in their blouse, meaning Ms Eweida had to wear her crucifix on top of her cravat - a move she claimed was designed to affect her. BA said the time limit of bringing this case has passed. But Ms Eweida of Twickenham, claims there was 'good reason' for this because she wanted to maintain a positive relationship with her employer. The hearing continues. Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi who was killed inside his country's consulate in Istanbul on October 2 French President Emmanuel Macron dismissed as 'demagoguery' the calls by several European countries to suspend arms sales to Saudi Arabia following the murder of journalist Jamal Khashoggi. 'What's the link between arms sales and Mr Khashoggi's murder?' Macron asked a news conference in Slovakia today, adding that one shouldn't 'mix up' the issues just to please the masses - who may not know always best. 'I understand the connection with what's happening in Yemen, but there is no link with Mister Khashoggi. That's pure demagoguery to say "we must stop arms sales". 'It's got nothing to do with Mr Khashoggi,' he added. Macron's comments could be perceived as a subtle dig at other EU countries that are reconsidering their own ties to Saudi Arabia in the face of mounting pressure at home. Germany has already said it will stop approving weapons exports to Saudi Arabia until the circumstances surrounding Khashoggi's death at the Saudi consulate in Istanbul are cleared up. French President Emmanuel Macron looks on during a joint press conference with Slovakia's Prime Minister at the Bratislava Castle in Slovakia on October 26, 2018 Austrian Foreign Minister Karin Kneissl told a German newspaper the European Union should halt arms sales to Saudi Arabia following the killing of Khashoggi, saying it could also help end 'the terrible war in Yemen'. Last week the shadow foreign secretary Emily Thornberry said Britain must apply the same standards to Saudi Arabia as it does to Russia over Khashoggi's death. Thornberry said the UK had a 'blind spot' on Saudi Arabia and needed to hold the Gulf Kingdom to account. Saudi Arabia's royal family including King Salman (L) and crown prince Muhammad bin Salman (R) have denied any involvement in the murder Theresa May is under pressure to put arms trading with the kingdom on ice, but Saudi Arabia is the UK's key ally in the region and also a significant trading partner. Foreign Secretary Jeremy Hunt is considering the 'next steps' in Britain's response to the case, having previously warned there would be 'consequences' for the UK's relationship with Saudi Arabia if Khashoggi was indeed murdered. Shadow international trade secretary Barry Gardiner told BBC Radio 4's 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'. 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 US President Donald Trump (R) shakes hands with Saudi Arabia's Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman in the Oval Office of the White House in Washington, DC '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 also heaped pressure on the Prime Minister, saying: '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.' However, US President Donald Trump has been careful to temper his language around the Khashoggi murder, and openly reluctant to alienate the world's No.1 oil exporter. 'I don't want to lose a million jobs,' he said Monday. 'I don't want to lose $110 billion dollars in terms of investment.' Khashoggi disappeared on October 2 and was last seen entering the consulate of Saudi Arabia in Istanbul. The Saudi national had been living in self-imposed exile in Virginia in the US, often writing columns scrutinizing the absolute power of crown prince Muhammad bin Salman. The Saudi national had been living in self-imposed exile in Virginia in the US, often writing columns scrutinizing the absolute power of crown prince Muhammad bin Salman The crown prince has taken over the day-to-day running of the Kingdom, though his 82-year-old father still King. King Salman and crown prince Muhammad have both denied playing any role in Khashoggi's death and following a telephone call with President Putin of Russia last night, the Saudi royals have the backing of the Kremlin. 'There's an official statement from the king, there's an official statement from the Crown Prince (Muhammed bin Salman) and no one should have any grounds not to believe them,' Putin's spokesman Dmitry Peskov said today. Khashoggi had reportedly refused multiple invitations, bribes and job offers to return to his homeland, and had only entered the consulate pick up some papers needed for his upcoming marriage to Turkish citizen Hatice Cengiz. Ms Cengiz today demanded punishment for on Friday for all those involved in the 'savagery' of Khashoggi's murder. In an interview on Turkish television channel HaberTurk, she said she has not received any condolence call from Saudi officials and continually asks herself questions the day that her fiance entered the consulate. She said: 'I found myself in a darkness I cannot express.' 'I demand that all those involved in this savagery from the highest to the lowest levels are punished and brought to justice,' she told the Haber Turk television station. She says she had asked U.S. Secretary of State Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, who called her about the case, whether he had any news that would make her happy. 'But he said he didn't,' she said. Thomas Whittaker leaves York Crown Court today after being cleared by the jury A 'virgin' university student wept in the dock yesterday after being cleared of sexually assaulting a fellow student after a drunken night out. 'Straight 'A's' chemistry student Thomas Whittaker, 19, was accused by the girl he believed was about to become his first lover. He broke down in tears after his nine-month ordeal was ended by a jury, who took just 60 minutes to reach a not guilty verdict following a two-day trial. A couple believed to be his parents sitting in the public gallery also sobbed and then held hands as the teenager was released from the dock to walk free. York Crown Court heard church-goer Mr Whittaker was a virgin and just starting his second term at York University when he met the girl on a student night out in January this year. They both drank shots of vodka in local bars before deciding to go to a night club. Bespectacled Mr Whittaker said: 'She kept hold of my hand throughout the night.' The girl, also 19, told police they had kissed on the dancefloor of Kuda nightclub in York before he told her she was drunk and he should take her home. They decided to get the bus back to her student accommodation and she led him by the hand to the bus stop where she sat on his knee, he said. The court heard she was wearing tight skinny jeans and black top with no bra during the night out on January 17. Mr Whittaker told her 'You could be the one to take my virginity,' the jury of six men and six women was told. He said after getting off the bus on campus in the early hours, she asked him: 'My place or yours?' He added: 'I thought she was joking. I asked if she was being serious? She said 'yes'.' He said that when they got back to her room, she led him in by the hand again and they sat on the bed and started kissing for five or 10 minutes. He then touched, kissed and bit her breasts, he said, adding: 'She seemed to be enjoying it.' He had drunk the equivalent of 12 shots but denied being out of control. He said he tried to undo her jeans but she said 'no', and he 'respected that' and stopped. 'She was putting her fingers though my hair and moaning my name,' he added. The girl later banged on a friend's door, suffering a panic attack and claiming she had been sexually assaulted. She claimed: 'He made me go back to my room. He took the key card from me and placed it in the lock. 'He pushed me. I fell on the bed. I hit my head on the wall. Because I was already drunk it made me go black. University student Thomas Whittaker leaves York Crown Court today after being cleared by the jury in just 60 minutes of a sexual assault against a fellow student 'The next thing I knew he was taking my top off and biting me and saying things like 'Daddy is going to make you pay for being a naughty girl'. 'I told him to stop because I knew what was going on and he was making it worse.' The girl wrote down an initial account of what she said happened for a female security guard early in the morning. In that version of events, she made no reference to digital penetration, saying she was too upset, but included the allegation in a subsequent statement. Mr Whittaker, from the middle class village of Barton, North Yorkshire, was described as a brilliant student. He had left Darlington Sixth Form with four three A grades and one A star. His initial marks at university put him on course for a first class degree, the court heard. He was also described as a brilliant student whose behaviour was exemplary according to his former A-level tutors. He blamed the crude remarks he had made to the girl on things he had heard on the internet. He denied sexual assault by penetration and was acquitted by unanimous verdict. The family declined to comment as they left court. A Miami prison has uncovered a corrections officer's alleged smuggling scheme in which inmates paid him for contraband including McDonald's hamburgers. Gary West Alford, a 23-year veteran of the Metro West Detention Center, was arrested on Thursday along with his wife and alleged accomplice Shantica Anastacia Alford, 31. Prosecutors say an inmate paid Shantica Alford $500 through a smartphone app in exchange for a delivery of McDonalds Quarter Pounder hamburgers and lemon-pepper chicken wings into the jail, according to the Miami Herald. Gary Alford is facing 14 charges of unlawful compensation and introducing contraband into a county detention facility, while his wife is facing seven counts of introducing contraband. They are both scheduled to appear in court on November 26. Corrections officer Gary West Alford and his wife Shantica Alford were arrested on Thursday and charged in connection with an alleged smuggling scheme at a Miami-area prison An inmate at Metro West Detention Center (above) submitted a tip about Gary Alford bringing contraband including McDonald's hamburgers, chicken wings and a cellphone into the jail Authorities set up a sting operation to catch Alford in the act after an inmate submitted a tip alleging that the officer had been smuggling contraband. According to an arrest warrant, that inmate offered to have his brother 'Pete' deliver a cellphone and $1,000 cash to Alford, who would keep the money and bring the phone into the jail. Undercover Miami-Dade Detective Dennis Delgado posed as Pete an arranged the hand-off with Alford, the warrant says. Gary Alford (pictured) has worked at the Metro West Detention Center for 23 years Delgado met both Gary and Shantica Alford at a Walmart in Hialeah to execute the exchange. Officials then tracked the phone to the detention center, where Alford gave it to the allied inmate. Alford also allegedly provided the inmate with a screwdriver so he could dig a hole in the wall to hide the phone, according to detectives. In a statement addressing Alford's arrest, the Miami-Dade Corrections and Rehabilitations department said: 'We are saddened that the actions of one employee could tarnish the good work of the proud men and women of MDCR who dedicate their lives to ensuring the safety of the public.' The department has attempted to crack down on smuggling following the deaths of three inmates who overdosed on contraband drugs earlier this year. Airport-style body scanners used to search inmates for contraband have been put in place at centers, however they cannot legally be used on corrections officers. Hundreds of migrants fleeing Honudras are gathering at the Guatemala-Mexico border, in what could be the making of a second massive caravan bound for the US. This new wave of men, women and children streaming into the busy border town of Tecun Uman, Guatemala, could number between 1,500 and 4,000 people before embarking on the arduous 1,000-mile journey to the United States. The first caravan numbering some 7,000 Central Americans had passed through the town square just five days prior. With the bridge linking Tecun Uman and Ciudad Hidalgo, Mexico, closed, the Honduran migrants are planning to cross the Suchiate River either on rafts, at the equivalent of $2.50 per person per crossing, or by wading through the waist-deep water. Scroll down for videos Central American migrants, part of a second caravan trying to reach the US, rest in a public square as they wait to regroup with more migrants, in Tecun Uman, Guatemala, on October 25 This new wave of men, women and children streaming into the border town of Tecun Uman could eventually number between 1,500 and 4,000 people With the bridge linking Tecun Uman and Ciudad Hidalgo, Mexico, closed, the Honduran migrants are planning to cross the Suchiate River on rafts People arriving at the border are fleeing crippling poverty and crime in their native Honduras On Saturday, people in the first caravan stormed the gates on the bridge to enter Mexico, where immigrant officers and federal police sprayed them with tear gas. Most of the people arriving at the border are fleeing crippling poverty and crime in their native Honduras. They choose to travel in caravans for greater safety reported USA Today. Mexican immigrations officials have issued a warning than anyone attempting to enter the country without valid border-crossing documents would be turned away. On Thursday, some 300 people, including young children, filled the town square in Tecun Uman, lying on the ground and on benches, and desperately trying to find refuge from the merciless sun and scorching heat. The migrants, many of them suffering from severe exhaustion and dehydration, have been relying on the kindness of local inhabitants and volunteers supplying them with food and medicine. A Honduran migrant heading in a caravan to the United States and wearing a Trump T-shirt and a US flag, flashes the V sign at the central park of Ciudad Tecun Uman Honduran migrants are planning to cross the Suchiate River (pictured) on rafts Migrants from Honduras, part of a caravan en route to the United States, rest at the shore of the Suchiate river, as they wait to reunite with more migrants, in Tecun Uman, Guatemala A Honduran migrant heading in a caravan to the United States performs at the central park of Ciudad Tecun Uman, Guatemala Some have resorted to begging for money and provisions on the streets. If they are able to enter Mexico, from there they will have to trek another 1,000 miles to the nearest Mexico-US border crossing in Texas, or 2,500 miles to a border crossing in San Diego, California. Such caravans have taken place regularly, if on a smaller scale, over the years, but . President Donald Trump has seized on this issue this year, arguing that it was a 'national emergency.' At recent rallies and on Twitter, Trump has been incessantly talking about the caravan and illegal immigration, which he has made his centerpiece issue ahead of the hotly contested November 6 midterm elections. Trump has tried to portray Democrats as pro-illegal immigration, even claiming, with no evidence, that Democrats had organised and paid for the caravan. President Trump has made the caravans a central issue of the midterm elections This morning, the president tweeted: 'Democrats must give us the votes to pass strong (but fair) laws. If not, we will be forced to play a much tougher hand.' Hours earlier, the president tweeted a direct message to the migrants, urging them to return home. 'To those in the Caravan, turnaround,' he wrote. 'We are not letting people into the United States illegally. Go back to your Country and if you want, apply for citizenship like millions of others are doing!' Trump previously claimed, without any apparent evidence, that 'Middle Easterners' had joined the first 7,000-strong caravan. He later acknowledged that his claim was only a hunch. 'They could very well be,' he said. 'There's no proof of anything. But there could very well be.' Central American migrants, part of a caravan trying to reach the US walk along the road as they continue their journey in Ciudad Hidalgo, Mexico, on Friday Asked if he was implying there were terrorists in the caravan, Trump said, 'There could very well be.' Tyler Houlton, a spokesman for Homeland Security, later tweeted that the department could confirm that gang members or serious criminals are in the caravan, but he didn't provide details. Defense Secretary Jim Mattis was expected to sign an order to send 800 or more additional active duty troops to the southern border to support the Border Patrol, according to a US official, who spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to speak publicly because details had not yet been finalized. The additional members of the military would assist the Border Patrol by providing things such as vehicles, tents and equipment. There are already about 2,000 National Guard troops there under a previous Pentagon arrangement. Homeland Security Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen on Thursday that that those troops 'do not have any intention right now to shoot at people,' but said they reserve the right to defend themselves if subjected to violence. Robert De Niro is calling on people to vote in light of the series of bombs addressed to critics of President Donald Trump. 'I thank God no one's been hurt, and I thank the brave and resourceful security and law enforcement people for protecting us,' De Niro said in the statement released on Friday through his publicist. 'There's something more powerful than bombs, and that's your vote. People MUST vote!' the actor said. De Niro called on people to vote in the statement released on Friday through his publicist. He is seen in June at the Tony Awards A suspicious package containing what authorities described as a crude pipe bomb was discovered at De Niro's New York City office on Thursday. De Niro says he is thankful no one was hurt. He also thanked 'the brave and resourceful security and law enforcement people for protecting us.' The Oscar-winner has been one of Trump's most vocal critics. He dropped an expletive insult at Trump at this year's Tony Awards and also apologizing to Canadians for the 'idiotic behavior of my president.' The package De Niro received was one of at least 12 targeting critics of Trump to be discovered this week. On Friday, police arrested a suspect in South Florida. An Ohio restaurant's grand opening got sabotaged by its own owner after he appeared to have slammed prospective patrons as 'liberal white c**nts' on Facebook. The name calling occurred after an article featuring an interview with Ciao Bistro owner Shawn Taylor, touting its impending opening, was posted on Cleveland Scene's Facebook page on October 23. In the comments on the weekly newspaper's post, two women had a brief back-and-forth about the restaurant's potential for success and name choice. Scroll down for video Ciao Bistro owner Shawn Taylor landed in hot water after he appeared to have called prospective patrons 'Liberal white c**ts' on Facebook, derailing his opening day plans Two women on Facebook were discussing the restaurant's prospects and name, when Taylor weighed in with a colorfully-worded retort 'We'll see, I'm calling it,' wrote Facebooker Rachel D. 'The name feels ironic but I hope I'm wrong,' replied Bailey Pfohl. Then, Taylor, using his personal Facebook account which has a baby as a profile picture, stepped in with the colorful response, 'Liberal white c**nts' a comment which has since been deleted. Taylor's comment quickly drew condemnation from other Cleveland area residents after Rachel D posted it on the Ohio City Community group's page. Others flocked to the newspaper's comments section to state that they would never patronize Ciao Bistro after Taylor's crudeness. They also took the opportunity to roast Taylor. 'This guy wont be getting any of our business. What a horrible thing to say to someone,' wrote Andy Ross. 'Omg - this guy just lost so much business in three words. Why would you post that on such a huge cleveland news source?' Annaka Whitehouse wrote. The interior of Ciao Bistro, which was expected to open this week, but remains shuttered Taylor posted a lengthy apology on Facebook under his own and the restaurant's accounts. Both social media pages have since been deleted The Cleveland Scene Facebook post that sparked Taylor's shocking comment. He has since claimed that his comment was accidentally posted by a friend who had access to Taylor's personal Facebook account 'Calls people "liberal white c-nts" in a liberal white c-nt area and expects to succeed. Mmm-kay. Great business plan,' Greg Afanador wrote. 'I'm disappointed it won't survive long enough for his angry responses to negative Yelp reviews,' commented Bakedcheeser. 'If he went this crazy on facebook before the place even opened, I can only dream of his responses when someone complained about the food.' On Thursday, Taylor posted an apology from both his own and Ciao Bistro's Facebook page also now deleted in which he blamed an unidentified friend for the unsavory words. He claimed this longtime pal was hired to handle the restaurant's social media. 'It has been an emotional day for all, as this is neither what I am about nor the restaurant,' Taylor wrote. 'I wanted to become a staple of your community and be a place where everyone felt comfortable going to.' He went on to say that he had 'let go' of the social media-managing friend after the posting kerfuffle. He also claimed that he had given this friend access to his personal Facebook account as well as the restaurant's and that the friend had 'accidentally' posted the comment. 'I cannot answer answer regarding their intentions but I can reassure you that language or use of terminology is not one that I support nor believe in. I am terribly sorry for all that were offended by what was said under my name but I can assure you that was not me,' he added. Taylor elaborated on how the shocking post from his personal Facebook account occurred Thursday, telling FOX 8 that his friend claimed to have been logged into Taylor's Facebook account at the time and been texting. 'He said, "Shawn I was texting and I don't know, somehow, some way it ended up on the magazine post,"' Taylor recounted. 'And my words to him I said, "We'll figure it out."' Taylor claimed that he and his family have been receiving threats since the post went up and admitted to deleting both his person and the restaurant's social media accounts. Despite this incident, he said that he still intends to open the restaurant. 'I'm not going to go down without fighting back,' he told FOX 8, going on to say, 'Give me a chance because I will make it right, that's what I plan to do.' Cleveland Scene reported Thursday that Ciao Bistro neighbors told them that they saw signs being taken down and furniture being removed from the restaurant's location. In his original interview with Cleveland Scene, Taylor had said that Ciao Bistro, which he described as being 'rustic Italian-Sicilian with a little Mediterranean flair' would be 'a whole new concept, a whole new everything' and that it was located 'at the right spot; its adorable, its cute, theres a lot of walk-up traffic.' 'Ive been doing this so many years,' he told the newspaper. 'I think every restaurant is driven by food and service. If the foods not good, youre not going to make it. If the service is not good, youre not going to make it. Day one will set your tone for the duration.' Darren Hefferman, pictured, was jailed for two years after being found guilty of grievous bodily harm having punched cyclist Gareth Marshall in the face A road rage driver who punched a cyclist into traffic was today jailed for two years. Darren Hefferman, 38, swung his car out to overtake Gareth Marshall's bike - but then stopped when the cyclist shouted in anger at his swerve. As the car passed, the passenger window was open and Mr Marshall called out: 'Give me a bit more room, mate'. A court heard Hefferman then punched Mr Marshall, 43, from his bike into the path of an oncoming van. Mr Marshall was left with a broken collar bone, broken ribs, a damaged lung, shattered pelvis and dislocated hip. Newport Crown Court heard the attack happened on Beaufort Hill in Ebbw Vale, Gwent, in January. Hefferman, of Ebbw Vale, Gwent, pleaded guilty to grievous bodily harm and was today sentenced to two years behind bars. Stephen Donoghue, prosecuting, said: 'In summary this was an offence of road rage whether the defendant ended up punching or pushing the victim causing catastrophic and life-changing injuries.' The court heard the incident took place on the afternoon of January 11 this year on Beaufort Hill road in Blaenau Gwent when Hefferman drove up behind Mr Marshall and attempted to pass him. 'Mr Marshall noticed that the engine of a car was revving behind him, trying to overtake him and prevented from doing so as there is oncoming traffic,' the prosecutor said. 'Eventually they did go past. As the car passed, the passenger window was open and Mr Marshall said 'Give me a bit more room, mate' because he had gone quite close. Cyclist Gareth Marshall and his wife Rebekah had been trying for a baby at the time of the incident Gareth Marshall had to learn how to walk again following the horrific incident. Pictured: Mr Marshall in May 2018 Mr Marshall suffered several broken bones following the road rage incident 'Whether it was that or some other reason, the defendant became angry. 'Not very far up the road the defendant stopped his car and when Mr Marshall went past the defendant punched him to the head or pushed him, in any event attacked him, and causing him to come off his bike and fall into the carriageway of the oncoming traffic.' Mr Marshall, who was wearing a cycle helmet, hit the bonnet of the Ford transit van and went under the wheels. Meanwhile, Hefferman remained at the scene and told police: 'I done it.' Jenny Yeo, defending, said that going to prison would be hard for Hefferman's family because he helps care for his sick mother and sister. 'He accepts responsibility and he tried to speak to Mr Marshall and his frustration led to the push, which led to devastating consequences but there was no intention to cause the injuries that were caused,' she said. Jailing him for two years on Friday, Judge Richard Williams said: 'Mr Marshall was concerned about how close you passed and called out that you should make more room for cyclists. Surgeons were forced to operate on Mr Marshall's shoulder, right, and his pelvis Mr Marshall suffered a devastating burn on his back after being trapped under the van Surgeons were forced to use metal pins in some of Mr Marshall's joints to stabilise the area Mr Marshall, pictured after his surgery, said he is pleased that Hefferman has been jailed 'You took exception to this and decided to do something about this. You pulled into the side of the road and waited for Mr Marshall and as he rode by you pushed him off his bike. 'Your behaviour was arrogant, stupid and dangerous and it shows a total lack of self-control. 'Mr Marshall suffered catastrophic injuries from what you did and will have to live with the consequences of your actions for the rest of his life. 'This incident arose because of your total lack of ability to control your temper and the consequences for Mr Marshall will be life-long. 'Confrontations between road users of this kind must be deterred and when they happen they must be dealt with severely.' Speaking afterwards Mr Marshall, who runs his own newsagent business in Ebbw Vale, said: 'I am pleased he has gone to prison but will it teach him a lesson? I doubt it very much. 'He knew what he was doing. To say it was a push is a joke and to say I abused his wife is total nonsense. 'He would say things like that because he didn't want to go to prison.' Mr Marshall, who is married to Rebecca, added: 'I am disappointed with the sentence he received and would have liked him to receive longer as a deterrent. 'If I wasn't so fit, I would have died. I appreciate life a lot more.' The fiancee of Jamal Khashoggi said today that she wants those responsible for his murder at the Saudi Arabian consulate in Istanbul to be punished for their 'savagery', adding that she has not received a condolence call from Saudi officials. In her first interview since Khashoggi's death, Hatice Cengiz, 38, told Turkish television channel HaberTurk that she continually asks herself questions about that day and the events leading up to their visit to the consulate. She recalled how Khashoggi handed her his two mobile phones before going inside to pick up papers needed for their upcoming marriage. She waited outside for him before raising the alarm when he failed to emerge. Scroll down for video Hatice Cengiz, fiancee of murdered Jamal Khashoggi demanded that 'those responsible are punished and brought to justice' in an emotional interview with Turkish TV channel Haberturk 'I found myself in a darkness I cannot express,' she told the broadcaster on Friday. 'I demand that all those involved in this savagery from the highest to the lowest levels are punished and brought to justice'. Cengiz, who is studying for a PhD in Istanbul, also said she declined an invitation to the US from President Donald Trump, a staunch defender of the Gulf kingdom. 'Trump invited me to the United States but I perceived it as a statement to win public favour,' she said, pausing at times during an interview and more than once breaking down in tears. Breaking down more than once during the interview, she told how she continually asks herself questions about October 2 - the day Khashoggi went to the consulate Trump and Prince Muhammad have a warm relationship, thanks to the billions of dollars the Saudis have pumped into the US. 'I don't want to lose a million jobs,' the President said on Monday. 'I don't want to lose $110 billion dollars in terms of investment.' However he later conceded that the crown prince bore ultimate responsibility for the operation against Khashoggi, saying: 'Well, the prince is running things over there... so if anybody were going to be, it would be him.' Trump also said Riyad had staged the 'worst cover-up ever' over the killing. Turkish officials suspect Saudi security agents killed Khashoggi, 59, inside the consulate and dismembered his body. Turkish sources say authorities have an audio recording purportedly documenting the murder She declined an invitation to from Trump to the United States but I perceived it as a statement to win public favour Cengiz also received a phone call from U.S. Secretary of State Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, and recalled asking whether he had any news that would make her happy. 'But he said he didn't,' she said. She also told how Khashoggi had had concerns that tensions would arise when he visited the consulate. The Saudi born journalist had been living in self-imposed exile in the US for over a year and written columns for the Washington Post criticizing prince Muhammad's autocratic leadership. However, he ultimately assumed he would not be arrested or harmed because he was in Turkey. The Turkish PhD student posted an emotional tribute on Twitter, saying Khashoggi's beautiful laugh will remain in her soul forever 'His local network in Turkey was very good as you know, his political network as well,' Cengiz said. 'He thought Turkey is a safe country and if he would be held or interrogated, this issue would be swiftly solved.' Riyadh says 18 people have been arrested and five senior government officials have been sacked as part of the investigation. Prince Mohammed, whose carefully cultivated image as a liberal reformer is now in tatters, has said the killers will be brought to justice. Saudi state television quoted the Saudi public prosecutor on Thursday as saying Riyadh was interrogating suspects on the basis of information given by a joint Saudi-Turkish task force. Turkey has since demanded the extradiction of the 18 officials accused of Khashoggi's murder. Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan said he had spoken with Prince Mohammed. 'I also told the crown prince. I said, 'You know how to make people talk. Whatever happened between these 18 people, this dodgy business is among them. If you are determined to lift suspicion, then the key point of our cooperation is these 18 people.'' How Western allies deal with Riyadh will hinge on the extent to which they believe responsibility for Khashoggi's death lies directly with Prince Mohammed and the Saudi authorities. She also told how Khashoggi, who had been living in the US for over a year and written columns for the Washington Post criticizing prince Muhammad's autocratic leadership, had had concerns that tensions would arise when he visited the consulate Saudi Arabia's crown prince Mohammad bin Salman has been on a charm offensive this year, meeting western leaders and spending millions on PR to boost his 'liberal credentials' The stakes are high. Saudi Arabia is the lynchpin of a U.S.-backed regional alliance against Iran but the outcry over the murder has strained Riyadh's relations with the West. Dozens of Western officials, bankers and executives boycotted a major investment conference in Riyadh this week. Erdogan also said Saudi Arabia's public prosecutor was due in Istanbul on Sunday to meets its regional chief prosecutor. 'Of course, we have other information; documents, but there is no need to be too hasty,' said Erdogan, who previously described Khashoggi's demise as a 'savage killing' and demanded Riyadh punish those responsible, no matter how highly placed. Turkish officials suspect Saudi security agents killed Khashoggi, 59, inside the consulate and dismembered his body. Turkish sources say authorities have an audio recording purportedly documenting the murder. U.S. CIA Director Gina Haspel heard the audio during a visit to Turkey this week, sources told Reuters, and has briefed Trump about Turkey's findings and her discussions. A wanted fly-tipper has finally been arrested after going on a yearlong diaper dumping spree across the state of New Jersey. William Friedman, 68, was caught dumping a load of used diapers at an intersection in Gloucester County, New York on Sunday morning at 3.15am - police said. Franklin Township Police said Freidman had evaded officers by varying his dumping grounds throughout the state and never sticking to the same day or time. William Frienman, 68, was said to have dumped heaps of dirty diapers across the state of New Jersey It was only due to a lucky Franklin officer's hunch that the 'diaper bandit' was eventually caught. According to police, the officer in question followed his nose after suspecting Friedman would strike at the precise intersection where he was eventually caught. Friedman was taken in for questioning and allegedly admitted to the offence. Police said Friedman claimed the diapers were his grandsons and described the serial dumping as a game he played by eluding officers. On June 24, a motorcycle slid on a plastic bag of soiled diapers left in the road and crashed, police said. Friedman was charged with interference with transportation on top of receiving numerous traffic tickets and township ordinances, police said. Joseph R. Carrubba, 60, of Oakfield, N.Y. died October 24, 2018 at Rochester General Hospital following a lengthy illness. He was born June 11, 1958, in Batavia, the son of the late Samuel and Patricia (Geitner) Carrubba. Carrubba was born into a harness racing family as his father Sam raced a stable at Batavia Downs. He got his first drivers license at age seventeen and made his first pari-mutuel starts in 1977. His brother Chris would also start to drive shortly after and it wasnt long before they both competed on the track regularly. For 39 years, Carrubba was a regular on the Western New York circuit along with occasionally shipping to race at other tracks in the state. Some of his early driving success and notoriety came while teaming pacers The Butler GB and Slickster, who both had a run of success in the early 1980s. He later went on to own, train or drive such horses as High Sticker, Pelham Midnight, Nialoma, Patty Spencer, Billy Yards, Red Whiz, Valley Duke, Wanna Rock N Roll and Sportsmuffler. Carrubba drove 223 career winners that earned $471,346 in purses. Turning mostly to training later in his career, he also conditioned another 229 victors who bankrolled $700,178 as well. Whether at the race track or away from racing, Mr. Carrubba always had a wonderful sense of humour and a deep love of his family. Surviving are his children, Michael (Amanda Benson) Carrubba, Erik Carrubba and Tiffany Carrubba; siblings, Christopher Carrubba, Mary (Denny) Bucceri, Rose (Steven Kiblin) Campbell and Georgeann Carrubba along with many aunts, uncles, nieces, nephews, great nieces, great nephews and cousins. The Carrubba family will be present from 1:00 to 5:00 p.m. on Sunday, Oct. 28, 2018 at the Michael S. Tomaszewski Funeral & Cremation Chapel, 4120 West Main Street Road Batavia, New York 14020 where a Service of Remembrance will begin at 5 p.m. Mr. Carrubba will be laid to rest in St. Josephs Cemetery in Batavia, NY. In lieu of flowers, memorials in his memory are suggested to the family. Please join Standardbred Canada in offering condolences to the family and friends of Joseph Carrubba. (with files from Batavia) This is the moment a beauty queen dramatically collapses in a heap on the floor on stage after she is announced as the winner of a pageant. Clara Sosa, 24, from Paraguay was crowned Miss Grand International 2018 after she won the contest at a plush ceremony in Yangon, in Myanmar. The clip shows the tense moment Ms Sosa stands on stage with the first runner-up, Miss Grand India Meenakshi Chaudhary Kumar, as they wait to see who will be crowned a winner. Ms Sosa stands on stage with the first runner-up was Miss Grand India Meenakshi Chaudhary Kumar as they wait to be crowned a winner Ms Sosa is seen wearing a sparkling white gown as she holds the hands of her rival for the crown. As the presenter builds the tension, Ms Sosa is closes her eyes in the anticipation while Ms Kumar looks down at her feet. The presenter teases the crowd and says: 'You guys have got to make some noise. 'The winner of Miss Grand International 2018 is...' Ms Sosa buckles at the knees and collapses in a heap on the floor as she is announced the winner The brunette is helped to get up after several people rush onstage to help her after the fall After a pause, he announces: 'Miss Grand Paraguay!' The stunning brunette looks pained by the announcement and as the Indian model steps forward to embrace her, Ms Sosa buckles at the knee and collapses to the floor in a heap. The cameras pan away as several people are seen rushing to the stage. However, all is well and the stunning Ms Sosa is helped to her feet ready to be crowned. The beauty queen was able to get up shortly afterwards and was crowned the winner of Miss Grand International 2018 She was able to was able to get up shortly afterwards and did her first walk as the winner. The ceremony was broadcast on Facebook Live and was watched by over a million people while 40,000 also shared it. The beauty pageant won after saying that she would visit US President Donald Trump and ask him to be 'an example of peace, love, and tolerance' to promote the contest's advocacy of ending war and violence. Miss Grand International 2018 had 78 candidates from around the globe, and one of the main goals of the contest is to promote world peace, local media reported. The winner from Paraguay was able to get up and do her first walk as the new winner Frenchman Alain Robert, 56, (pictured today) was arrested after he scaled London's Heron Tower yesterday and has been banned from climbing any other UK buildings A daredevil climber dubbed the 'French Spider-Man' who scaled the 662ft (202m) Heron Tower without safety equipment has been banned from climbing buildings in Britain. Frenchman Alain Robert, 56, climbed the skyscraper in the City yesterday but was arrested the moment he reached the top, which took just over half an hour. Robert, who is just 5ft 5in talls and weighs 7st 12lb (50kg), admitted a charge of causing a public nuisance at City of London Magistrates Court today after he spent last night behind bars. He was also handed a 20-week jail term, suspended for two years, and ordered to pay 5,500 compensation to the City of London police. The commercial cost of the disruption linked to the stunt, which prompted a 'large scale' emergency service response, was estimated to be 11,000. But Robert's solicitor said he found the climb 'very easy' and there was no risk he would fall onto onlookers. The climb came after Robert scaled London's Lloyd's building, in 2004 and 2009, but went unpunished. Daredevil Robert (pictured yesterday during his stunt) has to pay 5,500 compensation to the City of London police and was also handed a 20-week jail term, suspended for two years Robert earned the nickname 'the French Spider-Man' for his solo ascents without safety gear of huge skyscrapers across the globe. Chair of the bench Edward McMullan said: 'There was considerable disruption to the emergency services in particular, and also disruption to the owners and occupants of the building. 'The aggravating features of this offence are that you didn't seek permission, there was no real attempt to minimise disruption and you were fully aware from your previous experience of climbing the Lloyd's building this was an offence.' He said there was also a 'considerable amount of planning'. Imposing a restraining order Mr McMullan added: 'It will prohibit you from climbing up or down the outside of any building in the UK until further notice.' He was also told to pay 200 in costs. Robert appeared stressed throughout the hearing, which lasted more than an hour, and placed his fingers to his temples on several occasions. Dozens of people stopped to watch the daredevil scale the tallest tower in the City of London Robert, who is nicknamed the French Spider-Man, climbed the skyscraper in 30 minutes and without using any safety equipment but was arrested for causing a public nuisance He spoke only to confirm his name, date of birth and French nationality. Prosecutor Malachy Pakenham said police were first called to the tower at 1.25pm and the first officer arrived five minutes later, when Robert was 'about 100ft up.' He said: 'The defendant took about half an hour to actually reach the top of the building and at 2pm he acknowledged the presence of police on top of the roof. 'He was arrested at 2.07pm on suspicion of causing a public nuisance and he said to the officer, 'my passport is here and my lawyer's number is here'.' Robert then 'smiled and said nothing' when a policeman asked if the stunt was linked to a logo on his shirt. He wore a white jersey emblazoned with 'Dead Man's Fingers', a rum brand, during the climb. The building's general manager, Haydn Owen, said in a statement read to the court: 'At 1.20pm I could see large crowds of people gathering outside the building. I immediately went outside to investigate this. It was estimated that the commercial cost of Robert's scale up Heron Tower (pictured) was 11,000 as meetings had to be cancelled and a health and safety audit completed 'I got outside I could see a male on the south east corner of the exterior of the building and he had free-climbed approximately ten floors.' Nine building staff, including security, rushed outside to urge a growing crowd to back away from the building. Mr Pakenham said: 'Police then arrived, they had to close a loading bay that was part of the building that apparently cost 320. 'They then set up an operation to deal with the person on the building.' Mr Owen predicted the cost of a health and safety audit and cancelled meetings was 2,000. Public relations enquiries linked to the climb were said to cost 2,000. Other costs included more than 3,000 for cleaning and safety inspections. Mr Pakenham said: 'The whole figure was an estimated 11,000. If he fell off the building he could effectively land on people who were below.' Robert then answered no comment when quizzed at a police station. The prosecutor added: 'He was also asked about an incident in 2009 when he climbed a building in the City of London and police decided on that occasion to take no further action.' Representing Robert, Adeela Khan said he did not expect 'he would cause the amount of distraction that appears to have been caused.' She said: 'He's extremely remorseful there was such a significant disruption and that was not his intention. 'The location he chose to climb on the building, he specifically chose to climb from what he described as a small road to minimise disruption.' She described the estimated 11,000 cost as 'generous', adding: 'He is able to pay 5,500 today if he were to be sentenced or given a sentence that would allow him to leave the court today. Robert has also climbed the world's tallest building, the Burj Khalifa in Dubai, which is 2,717ft tall however he did use rope and a harness for this climb 'He has been climbing for 44 years, he's extremely experienced climber, he's one of the best in the world. 'He described this as a very easy climb. He perceived the risk to be either non-existent or very minimal.' Asked whether there was a 'commercial element' to the climb, Miss Khan said: 'Yes.' She said: 'He does climb professionally and that's how he makes a living but he also climbs to inspire other people who are watching him.' In 2011 Robert climbed the world's tallest building, the Burj Khalifa in Dubai, which is 2,717ft (828m) tall. He has also climbed several other buildings in London, including the 801ft One Canada Square building in Canary Wharf. Shocking evidence reveals how two girls, aged 11 and 12, wrote out their plan to murder 15 of their classmates and kill themselves afterwards in a notebook. The evil plot of two Bartow Middle School girls in Florida was foiled on Tuesday when school administrators found them skipping class and hiding out in the girls bathroom. They were armed with four knives, a pizza cutter, and a goblet from which they planned to drink their victims blood, cops say. 'They told us they were Satan worshipers. They did make comments that they were willing to drink blood and possibly eat flesh,' Bartow Police Chief Joe Hall said at a news conference on Wednesday. Shocking images reveal the two Bartow Middle School girls, aged 11 and 12, wrote 'go to kill in bathroom' in a notebook as they planned their attack on their classmates On Tuesday the two girls were arrested at their school in Bartow, Florida for attempting to murder their peers after they were found in the bathroom armed with knives, scissors and a pizza cutter on Tuesday. According to this note they may have been planning to mark their victims with these symbols A look at their notebook reveals the girls wrote about violence and hell in disturbing poems Authorities say the 11-year-old spent the weekend at the 12-year-old's home and on Sunday they hatched their plan while watching scary movies together. Cops obtained pages from a notebook that shows a scrawled map of the school and the message 'go to kill in bathroom'. One notebook page shows a list of a couple teachers and students and in another note the girls wrote 'Today is health lesson thank Satan we are doing this in bit'. Another note in red reveals signs the girls may have intended to etch onto their victim's eyes, nose and forehead. One note was an apology letter to a friend where one of the girls said she was hospitalized because 'I wanted badly to end my life'. They were found with four knives, two of which had blades that were five to six inches long The girls brought the weapons into school under their shirts on Tuesday afternoon The plan was to kill at least one student but were hoping to kill anywhere from 15-25 students, according to the arrest affidavit 'They told us they were Satan worshipers. They did make comments that they were willing to drink blood and possibly eat flesh,' police said The girls were busted when one of their parents received a call saying they were absent from class. She returned the call saying her child was at school, leading school officials to storm the bathroom School officials found the girls with a goblet, from which they allegedly planned to drink blood Police searched the girls' cell phones and found messages regarding the plot. One message said: 'We will leave body parts at the entrance and then we will kill ourselves.' Snapchat messages on their phone also said 'We shouldn't have met each other lol. Now Death is near' and 'I was thinking like stabbing ourselves in the neck', according to CNN. A search through their internet searches found they researched how to kill someone with a knife and looked up what type of wound would cause their victims to 'bleed out the fastest', according to the police report. Chilling photos of their weapons reveal they had two knives with blades at least five or six inches long, scissors, and a pizza cutter. They snuck in the weapons underneath their clothes, police said. The girls face multiple criminal charges including conspiracy to commit first-degree murder and possession of a weapon at school. They were taken to a juvenile detention facility as prosecutors are determining whether to charge the girls as adults. One of the disturbing notes the girls had was a list of teachers and select students Another was a letter to a friend saying 'I wanted badly to end my life' There were disturbing poems in the notebook seized by cops. One said: 'trying hard to leave. Stuck in a endless abyss. Claw a way out, now' Extra police officers were present at the school at the time due to swirling rumors on Monday of 'issues' at the school and after a student informed a teacher that 'something bad' was going to happen. When one of the girls' mothers received a robo-call saying her child was absent from her second period class, she called the school to say she believed she was still there, leading school staff to search the bathroom. 'The plan was to kill at least one student but were hoping to kill anywhere from 15-25 students,' the arrest affidavit said. 'Killing all of these students was in hopes it would make them worse sinners ensuring that after they committed suicide ... (they) would go to hell so they could be with satan.' Bartow Police Chief Joe Hall is seen above at a news conference in Bartow, Florida on Wednesday The two girls, ages 11 and 12, were armed with knives Tuesday at Bartow Middle School (above) before they were caught, according to arrest affidavits released by the Bartow Police Department The girls said they were waiting in the bathroom for the opportunity to find smaller kids to overpower to be their victims. 'As I sat there [and] watched these interviews, I do not believe this was a joke,' Bartow Police Chief Joe Hall said. On Wednesday Bartow Middle School released a statement to its 850 students announcing a team of counselors for students and increased police presence. Many parents withheld their kids from school the following day. 'I mean, how can this happen you know? We are afraid and she's afraid,' parent Mariana Loya whose daughter attends Bartow said to WFTS-TV. 'I kind of feel like maybe it might be a good idea just for some of these schools to maybe even put in metal detectors,' parent Kim Hancock said. Dawn Giannini, 49, a Palo Alto elementary school teacher faces 24 felony charges involving sexual misconduct with a minor A teacher from California who is the wife of a US Army Lt Col has been arrested and charged with incest after a pupil recognized the teacher as appearing in a video on a porn website. The student noticed the youngster in the clip was a classmate and as underage female family member, it is claimed. The teacher, who is a mother-of-two, Dawn Giannini, 49, from Palo Alto remains in custody while the investigation continues. The teen who spotted the teacher in the raunchy clip online had been looking at PornHub. They then alerted the school's principal, who called police, which resulted in Giannini's arrest. Giannini who is married to Thomas, a US Army Lieutenant Colonel, and one of the most senior positions in the Army, was a fourth grade teacher at St. Elizabeth Seton Catholic School in Palo Alto, in 2015. Dawn Giannini, 49, pictured with her husband, Thomas, a US Army Lieutenant Colonel, was booked into Redwood City jail Back in the good old days: Dawn is pictured with her husband, Thomas, a lifelong military man Before that, she was a special education assistant and substitute for the Redwood City School District. Redwood City School District Superintendent John Baker sent out an email to parents about Giannini and said while it is believed she did not assault a student, the information is still 'truly heartbreaking.' San Mateo County District Attorney Steve Wagstaffe would not identify how Giannini and the young girl, who was 14 at the time of the crimes, were related. Giannini is accused of having a sexual relationship with the underage family member from November 2014 until November 2015. Giannini is alleged to have recorded some of the sexual interactions, which were then later uploaded onto the PornHub website. Prosecutors believe the girl posted the video. Giannini is currently being held on $1.75m bond. The victim was not one of Giannini's students but a family member. She is pictured alongside husband Thomas, an Army Lt Col The allegations will have brought shame on the family of four which include the Giannini's two teenage children. Her husband, Thomas, is a high-ranking military officer who has had three overseas deployments to Iraq and Afghanistan. He also has proven leadership experience as a company commander, Battalion Operations Officer and most recently as an Area Office Officer-In-Charge coordinating several Afghanistan Infrastructure Projects in remote locations, while serving in an active combat zone. Investigators saw Giannini alongside a girl in a video that was uploaded online His wife now faces two dozen charges including seven counts of lewd act on a child, six counts of oral copulation on a child under 16 years old, six counts of sexual penetration with a foreign object, one count of showing porn to a child and one count of incest. 'We know the victim was sexually active, and there were a lot of videos that were uploaded,' DA Wagstaffe said. 'We know that this occurred in at least two counties. It occurred here in our county, in Redwood City and there was a trip down to Santa Cruz that she took with the victim and there was sexual activity there.' It is not believed that Giannini acted inappropriately with any of her students, however the DA is still investigating all aspects of the case. Giannini has since been fired from the Redwood City School District and will not be able to work at the district ever again. She appeared in court on Thursday and did not enter a plea, Wagstaffe said. She remains in jail in lieu of $1.75 million bail. If anyone has any information about the case, they are asked to call Redwood City Police Detective Ryan Kimber at (650) 780-7138. Maine is offering to help pay off the student loans of anyone who moves to the pine tree state. As part of a scheme to lure in young workers, state officials allow loan repayments to count as tax credits which can be deducted from state income taxes. For example, if somebody owed $2,000 in income tax this year but repaid $1,800 in loans, they would reduce their tax liabilities to $200. Maine is offering to deduct worker's student loan contributions from state income taxes in an effort to lure more young people to the area Most majors are allowed to use the scheme to reduce their income tax to zero, but STEM majors - science, technology and engineering - are actually able to get a payout from the government. In this case, if a STEM major owed $2,000 in tax but repaid $2,200 in student debt, they would be entitled to a $200 reimbursement from the state. The scheme has been open to those studying at Maine colleges since 2008, but employers pointed out that even if 100 per cent of college grads stayed in Maine, it wouldn't meet the workforce need. So to start attracting other graduates, the offer was recently thrown open to those arriving from out-of state as well. 'We need to import people,' Nate Wildes, who is leading efforts to draw people to Maine, said. 'We need to attract people from other states for our workforce. 'The message to employees is: We appreciate all you've done to invest in yourself, we'd like to put that talent to work and award you by not only giving you a job but by alleviating your student debt.' Maine currently has the oldest average age of any state in America at 44, which is five years older than the median age across the country as a whole. President Trump says he'll be 'forced to play a much tougher hand' if Democrats refuse to pass his initiatives to deter illegal immigration. Trump in a Friday morning tweet said, 'The United States has been spending Billions of Dollars a year on Illegal Immigration. This will not continue. Democrats must give us the votes to pass strong (but fair) laws. If not, we will be forced to play a much tougher hand.' The president has been railing for days about a caravan of migrants who are headed toward the southern border who he says could be criminals or terrorists, whom he warned to 'turnaround' this week, because they'll be denied entry into the United States. President Trump says he'll be 'forced to play a much tougher hand' if Democrats refuse to pass his initiatives to deter illegal immigration The president has been railing for days about a caravan of migrants who are headed toward the southern border who he says could be criminals or terrorists He was said on Friday to be considering an executive order that would allow the U.S. to deny asylum seekers' claims if they enter illegally as part of the caravan. U.S. law permits foreigners who are fleeing persecution in their native countries to apply for asylum on U.S. soil. But Trump's executive order would suspend this statue for Central Americans as a matter of 'national security' in response to his claims that the caravan could contain criminals and terrorists. Department of Homeland Security Department Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen said Thursday that 'everything is on the table' as she addressed the situation. 'If they come here illegally with no legitimate reason to stay, they absolutely will be apprehended and removed immediately,' she told Fox News. 'They should be seeking refuge in Mexico. To ignore refuge and continue, in some cases, to come to the United States raises questions of what their real motives are.' She said, 'This caravan cannot come to the United States...They will not be allowed in. They will not be allowed to stay. The Supreme Court eventually upheld a version of Trump's travel ban, and DHS believes an order pertaining to the caravan would be upheld, too. Trump claimed Thursday that asylum seekers' claims would be immediately and unequivocally be denied at the border in a tweet warning the migrants to stay away. 'To those in the Caravan, turnaround, we are not letting people into the United States illegally,' he wrote. 'Go back to your Country and if you want, apply for citizenship like millions of others are doing!' President Donald Trump said Thursday the the caravan of migrants might as well 'turnaround' because border patrol agents are going to block them from entering the United States HIT THE ROAD JACK: Trump claimed asylum seekers' claims would be immediately and unequivocally be denied at the border in a Thursday tweet warning the migrants to stay away DailyMail.com reached out to the Department of Homeland Security but did not immediately receive a response. The tweet followed a report that the Pentagon is finalizing a deployment to the border of 800 troops to assist border agents with the expected influx of migrants. Trump has said repeatedly that he was mobilizing the military, and not the National Guard, in anticipation of the caravan, even though the deployment as he's described it would violate the Posse Comitatus Act. Trump issued his latest declaration about the caravan on Thursday afternoon just before a call with Italian Prime Minister Giuseppe Conte. He says they spoke about the new leader's hard-line efforts to curb illegal immigration. 'I agree with their stance 100%, and the United States is likewise taking a very hard line on illegal immigration,' Trump tweeted. 'The Prime Minister is working very hard on the economy of Italy - he will be successful!' Trump issued his latest declaration about the caravan on Thursday afternoon just before a call with Italian Prime Minister Giuseppe Conte He says they spoke about the new leader's hard-line efforts to curb illegal immigration The Italian government is looking to drive out half a million unlawful migrants. President Donald Trump has pointed to Europe twice this week as he has defended his immigration tactics that he says are necessary to keep criminals and Middle Easterners from entering the country illegally as part of the caravan. 'For those who want and advocate for illegal immigration, just take a good look at what has happened to Europe over the last 5 years. A total mess! They only wish they had that decision to make over again,' he on Wednesday said. Trump has long claimed that terrorism on the continent is directly related to the European Union's free flow of people and and furthered by policies in Germany and other nations where migrants are welcomed with open arms. 'We are a great Sovereign Nation. We have Strong Borders and will never accept people coming into our Country illegally!' he declared on Wednesday, refusing to back down. At a rally on Wednesday evening, the president tamped down the rhetoric in response to a serious of bombs that were sent to his political opponents. But he continued to claim that Democrats were encouraging the caravan and want to open the illegal immigration floodgates. 'As we speak, the Democrat Party is openly encouraging caravan after caravan of illegal aliens to violate our laws and to break into our country,' Trump said of the border 'crisis' that has consumed his attention. President Trump invoked Europe twice this week while defending his hardline immigration tactics Trump also claimed this week that he's keeping criminals and Middle Easterners from entering the country illegally as part of a caravan Trump has made immigration his No. 1 campaign issue and deployed new rhetoric this week that there are 'tough criminal elements' in a caravan of Honduran migrants headed to the United States by way of Mexico He also claimed there 'could very well could be' Middle Easterners mixed in with the masses in a not-so-subtle suggestion that the group seeking refuge in the United States could be a Trojan Horse Trump has made immigration his No. 1 campaign issue and deployed new rhetoric this week that there are 'tough criminal elements' in a caravan of Honduran migrants headed to the United States by way of Mexico. He also claimed there 'could very well could be' Middle Easterners mixed in with the masses in a not-so-subtle suggestion that the group seeking refuge in the United States could be a Trojan Horse. 'There's no proof of anything, there's no proof of anything but they very well could be,' Trump said of his claim that Middle Easterners could have be hiding among the migrants at a bill signing on Tuesday in the Oval Office. He also called forward Vice President Mike Pence to talk about the caravan of over 7,000 migrants making their way from Central America, through Mexico and to the United States border. Pence made the unverified allegation the migrants were formed by leftist groups and paid for by the government of Venezuelan leader Nicolas Maduro, saying Honduran President Juan Hernandez told him so. President Donald Trump on Tuesday admitted he has no proof there are Middle Easterners in the caravan of migrants headed to the Unites States but said there 'could very well could be.' Vice President Mike Pence made the unverified allegation the migrants were formed by leftist groups and paid for by the government of Venezuelan leader Nicolas Maduro 'At the president's direction, I spoke to President Hernandez of Honduras. He told me that the caravan that is now making its way through Mexico, headed for the southern border was organized by leftist organizations and financed by Venezuela,' Pence said. Trump interrupted him to add the Democrats were also to blame, an allegation he first made at his rally in Houston on Monday night. 'And the Democrats maybe? And the Democrats,' Trump said as some of the aides, staff, and lawmakers with him in the Oval Office for the bill signing laughed. 'Well,' Pence began but before he could finish a reporter asked Trump what proof he had Democrats were behind the mass migration. 'You know what?,' Trump responded, 'You're going to find out. And we're going to see. Maybe they made a bad mistake, too. We're going to find out about that.' Trump also argued that based on the size of the crowd of migrants, there was a 'very good chance' some Middle Easterner people were in it. 'I think there's a very good chance, honestly, that you have people in there. I also think there is a very good chance that over a course of a period of time you have, or they don't necessarily have to be in that group. But certainly you have people coming up through the southern border, from the Middle East and other places that are not appropriate for our country. And I'm not letting them in. They're not coming in. All right? They're not coming in. We're going to do whatever we have to,' he said. Trump was signing Americas Water Infrastructure Act of 2018. Trump has made the migrant caravan an election issue in the midterms Vice President Mike Pence defended President Donald Trump's claim there are Middle Easterners in the caravan of migrants headed to the United States from Central America, saying it's 'inconceivable' there wouldn't be Lawmakers at the bill signing included Republican Sens. John Boozman and John Barrasso to the president's right and Democrat Sens. Tom Carper and Ben Cardin to his left. Further to his right were Republican Reps. Gregg Harper, Jeff Denham, Greg Walden, and on his left were also Rep. Garret Graves, representatives from the Army and the chief of the Army Corps of Engineers. Trump turned the conversation back over to Pence, who earlier in the day had defended Trump's claim there are Middle Easterners in the caravan of migrants headed to the United States from Central America, saying it's 'inconceivable' there wouldn't be. Pence repeated his inconceivable line in the Oval Office. 'The United States of America intervenes and prevents ten terrorists or suspected terrorists from coming into our country every day. So it is inconceivable that there would not be individuals from the Middle East as a part of this growing caravan,' the vice president said. He made a similar remark at an event held by the Washington Post earlier in the day: 'It's inconceivable that there are not people of Middle Eastern descent in a crowd of more than 7,000 people advancing toward our border.' Pence also cited a number at The Washington Post event that got some attention. 'There's statistics on this: in the last fiscal year we apprehended more than 10 terrorists or suspected terrorists per day in our Southern border from countries that are referred to in the lexicon as 'other than Mexico' - that means from the Middle East region,' he added. The group of migrants, which started in Honduras and has grown on its journey though Central America and into Mexico, is continuing their march with the United Nations estimating there are some 7,200 people in the crowd I dare you: President Donald Trump challenged a TV reporter on Monday to take his camera crew into the migrant caravan in southern Mexico and declared that they would find drug cartel gangsters and Middle Easterners mixed in with asylum-seekers from Central America Trump on Monday dared a TV reporter to go with his camera crew to southern Mexico, promising that they would find drug cartel gangsters and out-of-place Middle Easterners embedded in a massive column of migrants aiming to cross the border into the U.S. 'I have reports that they've got a lot of everybody in that group. It's a horrible thing,' Trump told journalists on the South Lawn of the White House as he left for a Texas campaign rally. Pence defended the claim, adding unverified allegations the migrants were formed by leftist groups and paid for by the government of Venezuelan leader Nicolas Maduro. 'The idea they would not be in this large throng that the president of Honduras told me was organized by leftist groups in Honduras, financed by Venezuela, and sent North to challenge our sovereignty and challenge our border. And now it's grown,' Pence said. 'We're going to do everything in our power to prevent this caravan from coming north and violating our border,' he said. But the statistic the vice president used - claiming 10 suspects terrorists are apprehended per day - has come under doubt, with fact checkers and government reports saying that number applies to incidents at all U.S. points of entry and not just the border with Mexico. Pence made a similar claim in February about how many suspected terrorists were being nabbed at the U.S.-Mexico border, which he claimed was seven per day. The fact-checking website Politifact researched his assertion and rated it a 'Pants on Fire' - their worst rating. 'Nationally in 2017, the federal government says, Homeland Security stopped 2,554 individuals on its terrorist watch list from entering the country, which breaks out to seven people a day. Most of those individuals tried to enter by air, the government says,' the website noted. In June, Department of Homeland Security Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen defined the 10 number even further, saying they were people blocked from entering the United States, indicating it included individuals on the no-fly list and not merely those suspected of being a terrorist. 'The result is that we are identifying and stopping terror suspects who would otherwise have gone undetected. In fact, on average, my Department now blocks 10 known or suspected terrorists a day from traveling to or attempting to enter the United States,' she said. In a statement to The Post, Pence spokeswoman Alyssa Farah noted the number the vice president cited applies to all U.S. points of entry. 'In 2017 alone the U.S. apprehended on average between 10 suspected terrorists a day attempting to enter the country illegally. And those are just the ones that we catch. It's inconceivable that this caravan - which is being broadcast around the globe - hasn't already been infiltrated by individuals with ties to extremism,' she said. And The Washington Post's fact checker found that Trump's own State Department released a report in July 2017 that said there was 'no credible information that any member of a terrorist group has traveled through Mexico to gain access to the United States.' The 10 terrorists a day stat has been used before by the White House to back up the president's claim. On Monday, White House press secretary Sarah Sanders was asked if President Trump had 'credible evidence' there were Middle Easterners in the caravan. Honduran migrants taking part in a new caravan heading to the US, arrive to Chiquimula, Guatemala, on October 22 Honduran migrants taking part in a caravan heading to the U.S., rest at the main square in Tapachula, Chiapas state, Mexico, on October 21, 2018 She used the 10-terrorists a day number but seemed to apply it to all points of entry in the U.S. 'Absolutely and we know this is a continual problem. It's not just in this. We have 10 individuals suspected or known to be terrorists trying to enter our country every day. This is a problem the president has been talking about a long time,' she said to reporters outside the White House. The group of migrants, which started in Honduras and has grown on its journey though Central America and into Mexico, is continuing their march with the United Nations estimating there are some 7,200 people in the crowd. However, they are still at least 1,140 miles from the nearest border crossing at McAllen, Texas, the Associated Press notes, and the length of their journey could more than double if they go to Tijuana-San Diego instead. 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, the wire service noted. However it also pointed out that more and more people join the march by the day. Most migrants leave Central American counties to flee poverty and persecution. Advertisement Cesar Altier Sayoc was taken into custody on Friday morning in Plantation, Florida in connection with the bombs A single fingerprint helped the FBI crack the mail bombing spree targeting critics of President Donald Trump and identify a suspect, officials have revealed. Cesar Altier Sayoc, 56, was taken into custody on Friday morning in Plantation, Florida in connection with the 14 suspicious packages that have been discovered this week. A business partner of the 'MAGAbomber' who toured with him as a stripper has revealed text messages showing Sayoc had an obsession with politics. Justin Humberger revealed to DailyMail.com numerous texts from Sayoc filled with political vitriol against the Democrats and conspiracy theories. The businessman has known Sayoc since 2015 when they toured around the US with a male stripper company. Sayoc, a former stripper, worked as the road manager, and Humberger as a dancer. This summer the two men started up an agriculture company. Sayoc was known to have worked as a male stripper himself who was hired to do shows in clubs around the country in the 1990s, the Washington Examiner reported. 'He really couldn't find his niche in life, and I guess he found it now,' Ohio-based event promoter Tony Valentine told the Examiner. 'Back in the '90s, he was running around from Minnesota to the Carolinas to Florida. 'He was like a gypsy.' Valentine said Sayoc did strip shows after failing to achieve his lifelong dream of becoming a professional wrestler. 'I would hire him to send him to do these shows,' Valentine said. 'He would just go do a strip show and leave. He was a stripper. 'He was dancing for a guy out in Oklahoma too.' Sayoc held jobs primarily at strip clubs in New York and Florida. He also worked for a time as a deliveryman for Papa John's, according to Vice News. On his LinkedIn page, he describes himself as a 'promoter, booking agent for live entertainment, owner and choreographer.' Cesar Altier Sayoc, 56, was taken into custody on Friday morning in Plantation, Florida in connection with the 14 suspicious packages that have been discovered this week FBI officers escort Sayoc into a waiting SUV at FBI headquarters after arresting him in Miramar, Florida on Friday Sayoc was known to have worked as a male stripper who was hired to do shows in clubs around the country in the 1990s Sayoc is alleged to have terrorized the Northeast United States in recent days by sending improvised bombs to a number of high-profile current and former Democratic leaders FBI and local police are seen above at the last registered home address of Sayoc in Aventura, Florida Sayoc's mother has been living in the condo in Aventura for decades, according to CBS Miami An FBI agent is seen using a camera to document the interior of a condo in the building that is believed to be the home of Sayoc's mother FBI agents were seen leaving an Aventura, Florida condo where Sayoc's mother, Madeline Giardello, has been living for decades FBI agents are seen walking along the balcony of the same condo building in Aventua, Florida on Friday Residents of the building, where Giardello serves as the president of the condo association, said they were shocked to learn of Sayoc's alleged involvement in the sending of parcel bombs. Sayoc (above) says he is Native American, and according to his social media he is a member of the Seminole Tribe of Florida Cesar Sayoc's van is seen in Boca Raton, Florida on October 18, 2018 in this picture obtained from social media Sayoc was living in the van at the time of his arrest, and it was festooned with stickers praising Trump A number of hats with the American flag, the University of North Carolina logo and Trump's Make America Great Again slogan could be seen on the dashboard of the van as it was transported away from the scene by law enforcement He posted a photograph of himself wearing a MAGA hat in front of the US Capitol in 2017 Federal investigators initially tied Sayoc to the bomb spree through a fingerprint on the package addressed to US Rep. Maxine Waters, a California Democrat. FBI Director Chris Wray said at a press conference on Friday afternoon that investigators subsequently recovered DNA from two other packages, which they linked to a sample taken from Sayoc in a prior arrest. Sayoc was convicted of a threat to 'throw, place, project or discharge any destructive device' in 2002 in Dade County, Florida, after he threatened to blow up a utility company for shutting off his electricity. He has other prior convictions on felony charges including grand theft and drug possession with intent to distribute, but has never served prison time. The packages sent to prominent Democrats this week contained pipe bombs, none of which detonated. Law enforcement sources believe they were where either ineptly constructed or not intended to detonate. Wray emphasized in a press conference that they were 'not hoax devices' and contained actual explosive material, however. Business partner Justin Humberger, a former stripper, revealed numerous texts to DailyMail.com exclusively from Cesar Altier Sayoc that were filled with vitriol Humberger said that Sayoc (above) had been under a lot of pressure, at one point slipping into $10,000 of debt from the failing stripper tour, but never thought he could 'snap'. Sayoc texted 'Democrats smear campaign backfired' when Judge Brett Kavanaugh was confirmed to US Supreme Court Sayoc is charged with five federal crimes, including interstate transportation of an explosive, illegal mailing of explosives, threats against a former president, threatening interstate communications, and assaulting current and former federal officers. Sayoc will face the charges in federal court in Manhattan after an initial court appearance in Florida. Five of the improvised devices involved in the case were recovered in the Southern District of New York. He faces up to 48 years in prison if convicted. According to Sayoc's Facebook page, he is a Trump fan who posted pictures and videos of himself at one of the President's rallies in October 2016. The 56-year-old Sayoc (left and right) is said to be obsessed with looking young and asked a lawyer about changing his legal age in court documents. He is a former bodybuilder and has worked in strip clubs Sayoc plastered his van windows (above) with stickers proclaiming support for Trump and attacking Democrats FBI Director Christopher Wray (right) joins US Attorney General Jeff Sessions (left) and delivers remarks on the apprehension and arrest of mail bomb suspect Cesar Sayoc during a press conference at the Department of Justice in Washington, DC Sayoc posted a photograph of himself wearing a MAGA hat in front of the US Capitol in 2017. He was a registered Republican and his politics appeared to revolve entirely around Trump, with no apparent political registration prior to the 2016 election. Cesar Sayoc's rap sheet and history 1962: Born in Brooklyn 1983-84: Attends the University of North Carolina in Charlotte September 1991: Grand Theft in Third Degree (12 months probation) July 1992: Petit Larceny April 1994: Domestic violence against grandmother (charges dropped) 1995: Moves to Minnesota 1995: Possession of crack cocaine and swindling over $500 (dropped) 1998: Moves to North Carolina 1999: Possession of a stolen vehicle (dismissed) 1999: Swindling of over $500 (dismissed) 2002: Returns to Florida August 2002: Making a bomb threat (12 months probation) February 2004: Possession of steroids intent to distribute (18 months probation) April 2004: Possession of steroids intent to distribute (18 months probation, concurrent with previous) 2006: Sayoc purchases a home in Fort Lauderdale 2012: Sayoc declares bankruptcy November 2013: Grand Theft in Third Degree (12 months probation) April 2014: Petit Larceny (12 months probation) January 2015: Grand Theft in Third Degree (12 months probation) February 2015: Petit Theft (12 months probation) May 2015: Petit Theft (12 months probation) May 2015: Second Petit Theft (12 months probation) August 2015: Petit Theft (12 months probation Advertisement A van believed to be Sayoc's which was impounded in Plantation, the site of his arrest, was covered densely with stickers expressing pro-Trump sentiments and denigrating prominent Democrats, including Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama, who were among those who had pipe bombs addressed to them this week. Another sticker proclaimed 'CNN Sucks.' The cable network had two of the suspicious packages addressed to its headquarters in Manhattan. Attorney General Jeff Sessions said at the press conference that Sayoc 'appears to be a partisan' but declined to comment further on a possible motive. 'This is a law and order administration. We will not tolerate such lawlessness, especially political violence,' Sessions said. Sayoc claims to be Native American and claims to be a member of the Seminole Tribe of Florida. Other information from his LinkedIn page suggests that Sayoc is Filipino. The Seminole Tribe denied he had ever been a member. 'There's no record of him being a member of the Tribe,' a spokesperson for the tribe said in a statement to Politico. 'He's not a member of the Seminole Tribe, has never been a member of the Seminole Tribe' His social media profiles include dubious claims that could not be immediately independently confirmed, including that Sayoc is a promoter for male striptease troupe Chippendales, and that he is enrolled in a veterinary medicine program. 'Career decision of becoming a Horse Doctor was always a love for animals, which were here first and never do anything to anyone. And respect all living things,' Sayoc wrote on the profile in a grammatical style that appears typical for him. 'My family very sound Sayoc name in Medical field.' A lawyer who previously represented Sayoc said he was obsessed with looking young and asked about having his age changed in court documents. At the time of his arrest, Sayoc had reportedly been kicked out of his parents' house and was living in the heavily festooned van. Sayoc lost his home in 2009 when IndyMac moved to foreclose on his south Florida property, according to Florida property and court records. IndyMac was a California-based bank that failed during the recession and was later purchased by a group of investors that included Treasury Secretary Steve Mnuchin. In a 2012 bankruptcy filing, Sayoc told the court that he lived with his mother and owned no furniture. FBI agents were seen leaving an Aventura, Florida condo where Sayoc's mother, Madeline Giardello, has been living for decades, according to CBS Miami. Residents of the building, where Giardello serves as the president of the condo association, said they were shocked to learn of Sayoc's alleged involvement in the sending of parcel bombs. 'She has served the Board of Directors well for the past 18 years and she is a nice woman,' Howard Fendell, a friend of Giardello, said of Sayoc's mother. 'It is amazing how these things just happen. It is crazy and unbelievable. I have not seen her son around her.' A woman who lives on the 20th floor of the condo said Giardello 'is a nice lady. She is very nice. She is perfect.' Sayoc was sentenced in August 2002 for threatening to throw a bomb in a conversation with a Florida utility representative, according to Ronald Lowy, a Miami attorney who represented him. Dade County court records showed Sayoc served a year's probation after a judge signed a discharge certificate in November 2002. Sayoc is seen at a Trump rally. He was arrested on Friday in connection with a string of bombs sent through the mail According to Sayoc's Facebook page, he is a Trump fan who posted pictures of himself wearing a 'MAGA' hat Sayoc is seen at an event supporting Trump and wearing a 'MAGA' hat in this photo posted to Facebook in October 2016 A driver snapped a photo of this van, believed to belong to Sayoc. The van is seen covered in stickers expressing support for Trump, and disdain for his liberal critics A driver snapped a photo of this van, believed to belong to Sayoc. The van is seen covered in stickers expressing support for Trump, and disdain for his liberal critics The van Sayoc was arrested in is seen covered in stickers expressing support for Trump, and disdain for his liberal critics The person who took the photos was not aware of the connection to the investigation, but noted the odd amount of stickers Lowy told The Associated Press that Sayoc 'made a verbal threat when he was frustrated at a lack of service' from the utility company. Lowy said Sayoc showed no ability at the time to back up his threat with bomb-making expertise. Sayoc is seen in a 2002 mugshot after threatening to blow up a utility company over a customer service complaint The lawyer said Sayoc was a bodybuilder then, and displayed no political leanings except for plastering a vehicle he owned with Native American signs. Among Sayoc's most serious criminal history includes a 1994 incident in which his grandmother Viola accused him of domestic violence. She sought a restraining order at the time but a judge then dropped the charges two weeks later for reasons that are unclear. In a Facebook post a year ago, Sayoc shared a photograph of Governor Rick Scott and Donald Trump, writing: 'The greatest Governor in Country Fla Rick Scott and great friend of We Unconquered Seminole Tribe . Trump Trump Trump' He shared bodybuilding pictures and appears to have worked in a strip club. He expressed his dislike of Hillary Clinton and posted stories about incidents of Islamic terrorism. Trump addressed the arrest in remarks at the White House, saying: 'We must never allow political violence to take root in America.' He promised 'swift and certain justice' and said the suspect would be prosecuted 'to the fullest extend of the law.' Sayoc posted many pictures of himself in strip clubs, and may have worked in one. He is seen with an unidentified woman Sayoc is seen with unidentified women left and right above. He appears to frequent strip clubs and may have worked at one According to employees at the Ultra Gentleman's Club in West Palm Beach, Florida, Sayoc worked as a disc jockey and floor bouncer at the establishment for two months A Twitter account that appears to belong to Sayoc includes repeated attacks on billionaire George Soros and praise for Trump and other Republicans. The tweets accuse Soros of paying off a victim from the Parkland mass shooting and accusing Florida gubernatorial candidate Andrew Gillum, a Democrat, of being a Soros puppet. The account includes anti-Gillum memes, with one including the caption '$500,000 SOROS PUPPET.' The Oct. 24 posting includes a photo of Soros doctored to look like he's holding a puppet meant to resemble Gillum. Sayoc was a prolific tweeter who repeatedly sent threats to celebrities and political figures like Joe Biden, Jim Carrey, and Ron Howard. Rochelle Ritchie, a Former Press Secretary for Congress, spoke on Fox News on October 11 and was harassed by Sayoc online afterwards. Under the Twitter handle @hardrock2016 he wrote: 'So you like make threats. We Unconquered Seminole Tribe will answer your threats. We have nice silent Air boat ride for u here on our land Everglades Swamp. We will see you 4 sure. Hug your loved ones real close every time you leave home.' Then he sent photos taken from her social media page and put it alongside horrific images of alligators eating humans. She reported him to Twitter but they said he didn't violate any rules or exhibit abusive behavior and did not penalize his account. Sayoc graduated 1980 from North Miami Beach Senior High, according to a yearbook entry. He is seen above in high school Judging from this photo from the North Miami Beach Senior High School Yearbook in 1980, Sayoc was a member of the school's soccer team Sayoc continued to play soccer after enrolling at Brevard College in Brevard, North Carolina. He is seen above (second from left) with teammates in 1982 Brevard is a small, private Methodist college in Western North Carolina. The photo above shows Sayoc fourth from right. It was taken in 1981 According to his LinkedIn page, Sayoc attended both UNC Charlotte and Brevard College between 1980 and 1984. He said he studied business, finance, economics and biology Sayoc is seen left and right in undated mugshots from prior arrests. He has a lengthy criminal history going back decades Sayoc graduated 1980 from North Miami Beach Senior High, according to a yearbook entry. His grandmother lived in Sheepshead Bay, Brooklyn, according to a 2006 obituary. Corporate records show Sayoc has owned companies called Native American Catering & Vending, as well as Proud Native America One Low Price Drycleaning. The suspect was arrested in front of an AutoZone store in Plantation, a police source tells DailyMail.com. Michelle Taylor, a nurse at the Senior Medical Associates clinic across the street from the AutoZone, saw police taking a vehicle believed to be Sayoc's into custody. 'We've been in the office for an hour and we're so nervous,' she said. 'The police were surrounding some kind of a van. Thank god we're done with our patients for the day and there's only two of us in here.' FBI agents search for clues and evidences at the AutoZone Store in Plantation on Friday after arresting Sayoc outside Members of the press crowd outside the AutoZone parts store where two FBI agents are interviewing a store employee in Plantation, Florida. A suspect was arrested in this store on in connection to the packages containing pipe bombs An FBI agent leaves the Auto Zone Store in Plantation, North of Miami, on Friday where a suspect was arrested in connection with the 14 pipe bombs and suspicious packages recently mailed to top Democrats The suspect Sayoc posted these photos of himself at the gym lifting weights. He appears to be a bodybuilder A witness who works at Marlins Insurance said dozens of police cars descended on the area around State Road 7 and SW 8th Street about 10am, a few feet away from her office. 'It's really bad,' the woman said by telephone. She declined to give her name. 'We heard a loud bang, like a bomb exploding. Police officers who told us to stay inside said they were arrested the guy who's been sending bombs all over the place. It's pretty scary but we're inside trying to get some work done.' The suspect is reportedly a former resident of New York who is living in Florida. The mail bombs are all believed to have been handled by a regional mail sorting facility in southern Florida. Heavy police activity was seen in Plantation, Florida, a town to the west of Fort Lauderdale and directly south of Sunrise, the location of Debbie Wasserman-Schultz's office, which the bombs listed as a return address. An FBI officer prepares a van to be towed in Plantation in connection with the 12 pipe bombs and suspicious packages FBI agents covering a van after the tarp fell off as it was transported from Plantation on Friday A van covered in blue tarp is towed by FBI investigators on Friday in Plantation in connection with the 12 pipe bombs Sayoc expressed an interest in bodybuilding and posted photos that appear to be from his youth Sayoc posted a number of memes to Facebook criticizing Obama and Hillary Clinton, who both had bombs addressed to them From Obama the Muslim to Hillary the ISIS gun trafficker: Inside the wild conspiracy theories in the 'MAGAbomber's' world Sayoc made a sport of attacking the then-democratic presidential candidate on every issue The man who was arrested in Florida this morning on suspicion of being the so-called MAGAbomber responsible for sending more than a dozen pipe bombs to Democratic leaders and critics of President Donald Trump has been using social media to promote wild conspiracy theories targeting the Clintons, former President Barack Obama and Muslims. A now-deleted Facebook page associated with Cesar Altieri Sayoc Jr, 56, had been dormant from October 13, 2016, when the user shared scores of cellphone videos and photos from a rally for then-presidential candidate Trump and other pro-Republican campaign events. In many of the pictures taken that day, the man accused of mailing explosives to Obama, Bill and Hillary Clinton, actor and outspoken Trump foe Robert de Niro and CNN , among other high-level targets, is seen sporting a red 'Make America Great Again.' A month before the election, Sayoc shared this item accusing Clinton without any evidence of supply the terrorist group with weapons In the run-up to the 2016 election, Sayoc, who goes by the last name Randazzo on his Facebook page, used the site to disseminate links to Fox News articles and videos lambasting Hillary Clinton and other top Democrats. In between, he also shared videos documenting his intense workouts at the gym and posing up with scantily clad women at a strip club where he apparently worked at one time. On multiple occasions, he shared content claiming without any evidence that Hillary was using a body double on the campaign trail because of her 'declining health.' 'The lord delivering death and America will celebrate,' Sayoc wrote in a status update about the former first lady. 'Clinton uses body double fool Americans into her health declines.' A day before attending the mid-October Trump rally, he shared a story from a right-wing site called WeaselZippers.us accusing President Clinton's former Vice President Al Gore of sexual assault and 'behaving like 'sex-crazed poodle.' His others posts that month included a report about Mrs Clinton's Benghazi emails, a right-wing site's story accusing the democratic candidate of selling weapons to ISIS and several other items warning about a looming ISIS attack on US soil. When taken as a whole, the contents of Sayoc's Facebook account paint a portrait of a man obsessed with the Clintons and espousing virulently anti-Muslim views. One meme he shared that September shows what looks like the mugshots of eight Middle Eastern-looking men, with a caption that reads: 'not all Muslims are terrorists! Some of them are paedophiles and rapists too.' Two days before his arrest, Sayoc in a tweet invoked the name of the billionaire democratic donor George Soros, who was among the first targets of the #MAGAbomber's plot Sayoc tweeted several images and posts propagating this old Clinton conspiracy theory Another meme in the same vain read: 'Islam: contributing not one damn thing to humanity for over 1400 years.' It appears from his posts that Sayoc subscribed to a false narrative promoted by extremists on the right that President Obama himself was secretly Muslim. Commenting on a story about a drug dealer who committed a murder after being released from prison, Sayoc wrote: 'Obama Muslim terrorist blood on his hands needs to be executed.' The 56-year-old Sayoc, a registered Republican with a lengthy criminal record living in Aventura, Florida, also aired some of his radical views on Twitter, which he used for the last time just two days before his arrest to send out memes accusing Florida Democratic gubernatorial candidate Andrew Gillum of corruption. Earlier that day, he invoked the name of the billionaire democratic donor George Soros, who was among the first targets of the #MAGAbomber's plot. Weeks prior, Sayoc tweeted several images and posts propagating an old conspiracy theory claiming that during his time as the governor of Arkansas in the 1980s, Bill Clinton covered up the murders of two teenage boys, Kevin Ives and Don Henry, who had accidentally stumbled upon an alleged drug trafficking scheme run by the CIA out of Mena, Arkansas. 'See Bill,Hil.forget about very close friends of ours Kevin Ives and Don Henry.Bill and Hilary will die had executed MENA, Ark,' Sayoc wrote in a rambling tweet. Sayoc describes himself on one of his Twitter feeds as a former professional soccer player, wrestler and cage fighter. On his LinkedIn profile, Sayoc claims to have attended Brevard College in North Carolina and the University of North Carolina at Charlotte and to have studied veterinary medicine. 'Career decision of becoming a Horse Doctor was always a love for animals, which were here first and never do anything to anyone,' his LinkedIn bio says. 'And respect all living things.' Sayoc makes repeated references to the Seminole Indian tribe on his Twitter feed but on his LinkedIn profile he mentions Filipino ancestry, saying his grandfather was a prominent surgeon in the Philippines. By Snejana Farberov Advertisement The number of suspicious packages tied to the case rose to 14 on Friday, with the discovery of four new packages. On Friday afternoon, postal officials in Burlingame, California intercepted a package addressed to billionaire liberal activist Tom Styer. A package addressed to Democrat Senator Kamala Harris was also intercepted in Sacramento, California. Earlier in the day, the investigators said they had found two new packages believed to be part of the mail bombing spree, addressed to Senator Cory Booker and former Director of National Intelligence James Clapper. The package to Booker was found on Thursday night at a mail sorting facility in Florida, and the package addressed to Clapper was found at a postal facility in Manhattan on Friday. The two new packages marked the 11th and 12th suspected mail bombs in a spree that has targeted critics of Trump. Trump's first public response to the latest suspicious packages was a tweet at 10.19am reading: 'Republicans are doing so well in early voting, and at the polls, and now this 'Bomb' stuff happens and the momentum greatly slows - news not talking politics. Very unfortunate, what is going on. Republicans, go out and vote!' The FBI found two new packages believed to be part of the mail bombing spree, addressed to Senator Cory Booker (left) and former Director of National Intelligence James Clapper (right) The suspicious package (above) addressed to James Clapper at the Time Warner Center was intercepted by postal inspectors at a Manhattan sorting facility on Friday morning NYPD's Total Containment vessel arrives as law enforcement respond to the scene of a suspicious package at a postal facility on Friday in New York The Total Containment Vessel is used to transport explosive devices and is designed to contain powerful blasts The special NYPD vehicle is seen transporting the package addressed to James Clapper to a secure facility in the Bronx NYPD Deputy Commissioner Intelligence and Counterterrorism John Miller was on scene during an investigation of a bomb addressed to James Clapper at a US Post Office on W 52nd Street on Friday in Manhattan FDNY set up a command post at an investigation of a bomb at a postal sorting facility in Midtown Manhattan on Friday A police dog assists in a suspicious package response at a postal facility in Manhattan on Friday morning Postal workers stand on the street after evacuating a sorting facility during a report of a suspicious package in Manhattan Postal workers stand on the street after evacuating a Midtown Manhattan postal facility on Friday The facility was evacuated after inspectors intercepted a suspicious package addressed to James Clapper The map above shows the locations of 12 suspicious packages that have all been linked to a mail bombing spree The package to Clapper was addressed to CNN's headquarters in the Time Warner Center in Midtown Manhattan, but was intercepted before delivery. A photo of the package showed that it matched notable characteristics of the previous mail bombs, none of which have exploded. Clapper joined CNN as a contributor after stepping down as the nation's most senior intelligence official last year. 'At least they got the correct spelling of my name and they got the right network,' Clapper said in remarks to CNN, referring to a mail bomb sent to CNN earlier this week and addressed to 'John Brenan'. John Brennan, a former CIA director, is a contributor for MSNBC. 'This is definitely domestic terrorism, no question about it in my mind,' Clapper said in an interview with the cable network. 'This is not going to silence the administrations critics.' Clapper said that he had been on vacation with his wife, and had warned the neighbors who were collecting his mail to be on the lookout for suspicious packages as the mail bomb spree developed this week. Like the other targets in the mail bomb spree, Clapper has been harshly critical of Trump. In a speech last year, he said that Trump was guilty of 'ignorance or disrespect'. First respondents are seen on the scene where suspicious package was found in Midtown. There were no reports of injuries and the stretcher is believed to be a precaution Police respond to a report of a suspicious package at a postal facility in Midtown Manhattan on Friday morning Police respond to a report of a suspicious package in the Manhattan borough of New York Police swarmed the area outside a Manhattan postal facility after a package was found The package intercepted on Friday was addressed to Clapper care of CNN, but was spotted by postal inspectors at a sorting facility before delivery. The NYPD bomb squad was on scene at the postal facility at West 52nd Street and 8th Avenue on Friday morning. The NYPD's Total Containment Vessel was spotted at the scene by about 9.30am. Streets in the area were closed off and postal workers were seen waiting on the sidewalks after the facility was evacuated. The containment vehicle departed the area at 10am transporting the suspected bomb to a secure police facility in Rodman's Neck in the Bronx. Police respond to a report of a suspicious package addressed to James Clapper in Manhattan Streets were shut down and the facility evacuated after a suspicious package was found Police respond to a report of a suspicious package in the Manhattan borough of New York on Friday On Thursday, a local police bomb squad and canine units joined federal investigators to examine a sprawling U.S. mail distribution center at Opa-Locka, northwest of Miami, Miami-Dade County police said. Investigators believe that all of the suspicious packages were sorted at the facility, which processes mail regionally in South Florida. It was at the Opa-Locka facility that the 11th bomb was discovered, addressed to Senator Booker. Booker is a Democrat from New Jersey. Like Clapper and the other targets of the mail bombs in the recent spree, he is an outspoken critic of Trump. A police car sits outside New Jersey Democratic Senator Cory Booker's office in Camden, New Jersey on Friday. The FBI says a suspicious package addressed to Booker has been recovered in Florida and is similar in appearance to recent mail bombs A police dog is loaded into an SUV outside New Jersey Democratic Senator Cory Booker's office in Camden, New Jersey A police officer and dog are shown outside a postal facility on Thursday in Opa-locka, Florida. The search uncovered a suspicious package addressed to Senator Cory Booker Senator Mark Warner, the top Democrat on the Senate Intelligence Committee, told MSNBC on Friday that the mail bombs were stoking fear across the county and that U.S. leaders, including Trump, must reassure the public. Elected officials and others need to say that this is not who we are as a country, Warner said. 'That would be a heck of a lot stronger if that message also came from the White House.' U.S. Homeland Security Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen said that Florida appeared to be the starting point for at least some of the bomb shipments. 'Some of the packages went through the mail. They originated, some of them, from Florida,' she said during an interview with Fox News Channel on Thursday. 'I am confident that this person or people will be brought to justice.' The Royal Hospital Chelsea is raising money to redesign its historic scarlet coat because Chelsea Pensioners can't cope with the blazing sun and soaring summer temperatures. Some of the elderly soldiers asked for a lighter design after complaining that the current coats, from an 18th century original design, are too heavy for comfort when temperatures soar. The hospital launched a 'Scarlets Appeal' to raise 30,000 for the new design, and the Chelsea Pensioners announced on Tuesday that half of that target has already been donated. Chelsea Pensioner Mike Hall said: 'The current Scarlet can be very uncomfortable to wear in the hotter weather. 'A new lightweight coat suitable for all weathers would enable us to carry out our public and charity work all year round.' The iconic Chelsea Pensioner red coat will be redesigned to keep veterans cool in warmer temperatures (pictured at Remembrance Sunday at the Cenotaph, Whitehall in 2016) Pictured: A Chelsea Pensioner high-fives US First Lady Melania Trump during a visit to the Royal Hospital Chelsea in London this July Chelsea Pensioners are residents at the Royal Hospital Chelsea, a home for former members of the British Army. It houses approximately 300 retired British soldiers, male and female, over age 65 who served for at least 12 years or have been awarded a disablement pension while serving. Monika Parrot, who became a Chelsea Pensioner two years ago, says a change would be welcome. She told Forces News: 'In July we went to the National Memorial Arboretum eight female pensioners went because they were rededicating an ATS statue. Everybody else there was in blouses or t-shirts and shorts - but we were sat there in this, sweltering. Pictured: A Chelsea Pensioner in northern France recalls the lives sacrificed on D-Day Chelsea Pensioner Tony Hunter (right) and Richard Hammond attend the Global Champions Tour at the Royal Hospital Chelsea on August 3 'More people were worried about us than they were about the presentation, because they could see we were getting hotter and hotter and we're not allowed to remove it in public. 'All these people knew that, so they were covering us with umbrellas, giving us water and stuff. It's very difficult to enjoy what you're doing. You are proud to be doing it, but you're too hot to be doing it.' Fellow pensioner Steve Lovelock said he would love to see a lighter scarlet coat for Wimbledon where 'sweat is just literally pouring out of you'. Mr Lovelock added that if he were to undo his top button an ex-general would say that the Chelsea Pensioner was improperly dressed. Allan McLaren, the hospital's corporate and business development manager, said the redesign will bear the pensioners complaints in mind when redesigning a lighter version of the heavy woollen coat. To donate to the Scarlets Appeal, visit the Chelsea Pensioners' website. BBC presenter Steph McGovern has revealed she had to laugh off Donald Trump 'creepily' telling her she was beautiful when she interviewed him. The BBC breakfast host interviewed Trump in 2012, grilling him about his bid for US presidency and career as a business tycoon. But she claims the President was more focused on her appearance, telling her: 'You're so beautiful, I'm going to leave the room to make myself look better, because if we do this interview now everyone is just going to be staring at you and not listening to me.' The presenter, 36, says she used her wit as a rebuff, telling Trump she had 'heard better' in Club Bongo - a nightclub in her home town of Middlesbrough. McGovern is pictured opposite Trump during their interview in 2012 BBC Breakfast host Steph McGovern, 36, revealed on Have I Got News For You how Donald Trump told her she was beautiful when she interviewed him in 2012 The journalist, then the BBC's business reporter, made the revelation as a guest host on this week's Have I Got News For You. She told the programme: 'Having once met Trump... Ah he's creepy, man.' Guest panellist Richard Osman asked: 'How was he? Did you talk to him?' McGovern said: 'Yeah I had to, I was interviewing him. Would have been a bit tricky if I hadn't!' The presenter pretended to gag, before adding: 'It's because he thought that would be the best way to disarm me. The business reporter interviewed Trump (pictured today at the White House) in 2012, grilling him about his bid for US presidency and career as a business tycoon The journalist (pictured centre) then the BBC's business reporter, made the revelation as a guest host on this week's Have I Got News For You (this week's panel pictured) 'He thought as a female journalist, he thought that was the best thing to say to me rather than: 'Oh, I watched your piece on mobile phone insurance last week.' She said she was unruffled by his comments, and had replied to him: 'Aye love, I've heard better lines than that down Club Bongo.' During the interview McGovern asked Trump whether he ever had time to relax, to which he replied: 'I'm relaxed now. I'm relaxed doing things that I like.' McGovern hosted the current affairs panel show for the first time alongside regular team captains Ian Hislop and Paul Merton and guest panellists Osman and broadcaster Dame Joan Bakewell. She has worked on business and financial news on the BBC's Today programme and Radio 5 Live and has been a regular on BBC Breakfast, replacing Alex Jones, since 2016. Have I Got News For You will air at 9pm tonight. A Pennsylvania teaching assistant has been charged with institutional sexual assault after admitting she enjoyed inappropriate relations with her daughter's underage friend, who she's also accused of plying with booze. Michele Maynard, 36, allegedly confessed to kissing and inappropriately touching the 17-year-old girl whose school she taught at, a minimum of three times between June 1 and September 22. The suspect was targeted after the teenager last month told her father about an incident that occurred during a sleepover at Maynard's house. Scroll down for video Michele Maynard, 36, (pictured left August 2016 and right December 2016) allegedly sexually assaulted a girl, 17, a minimum of three times between June and September Pennsylvania teaching assistant (pictured October 2013) was charged with institutional sexual assault after alleged incidents at her home and the Troy Fair Suspect and victim text details of the sexual relationship to Maynard's husband Curtis (pictured right in a Facebook image posted February 2015) Law enforcement also states the woman supplied beer to her 14-year-old daughter and the victim during the course of the summer. Maynard is also charged with corruption of minors plus she and the two students face charges for the Underage Alcohol Offense, reports Star Gazette. According to Bradford County court papers, the Asylum Township woman carried out the assaults at both her home and at the Troy Fair. WNEP.com reports the suspect and victim would text details of the sexual relationship to her husband and father of five children, Curtis Maynard. Towanda school district's superintendent said Maynard was suspended immediately and no longer works in the district Towanda School District's superintendent said Maynard was suspended immediately after they were notified about the allegations by Pennsylvania State Police and she no longer works in the district. Meanwhile disappointed students noted Maynard wasn't necessarily a figure of much authority at the school but was trusted nonetheless. 'She always seemed kind of off because she was more like our friend. More like a student than a teacher,' student Gabrail Maas said. 'At first it was extremely alarming to me because she had been my study hall teacher, and I mean, felt really bad for the daughter because I mean, of course, everyone is going to be talking about it.' 'You would never think that your mom's friend would be doing something like that, especially like, with a student at the school,' student Kylicia Darrow added. Maynard's 14-year-old daughter was friends with the student victim The Canadian Animal Health Surveillance System has reported a horse has tested positive for strangles in the township of North Grenville, Ontario. An eight-year-old unvaccinated (Strangles) Quarter Horse mare presented with clinical signs of coughing, lethargy and pyrexia on September 27, 2018. Samples were taken for Strangles PCR and results were received on October 3, 2018 that she tested positive for Strep equi (Strangles). The mare has been kept in a quarantined paddock since the identification of clinical signs. Treatment with anti-inflammatories and antibiotics was initiated and she is recovering well. At this time, no other cases have been identified. Strangles is a highly contagious bacterial disease of horses characterized by abscesses in the lymphoid tissue of the upper respiratory tract. The causative organism, Streptococcus equi subspecies equi, is highly host-adapted and generally produces clinical disease only in horses, donkeys, and mules. Strangles is an endemic disease in horses and circulates relatively commonly in the horse population. A significant number of affected premises in a relatively confined geographical area is a good reminder to horse owners and veterinarians to practise appropriate biosecurity procedures for horses and equipment coming on and off the farm AND infection control within the barn. Transmission occurs via fomites and direct contact with infectious exudates. Sharing of halters and brushes that may contact the fluid from draining abscesses can spread the disease. The source of Strangles on any of these premises could have been the entry of a new horse, contact with a carrier somewhere off the farm (e.g. at a show) or on the clothing, hands or equipment of a visitor (such as a feed supplier, farrier or veterinarian who had recent contact with an infected horse). Survival of the organism in the environment is dependent on temperature and humidity. Under ideal environmental circumstances, the organism can survive 7-9 weeks outside the host. Paddocks and barn facilities used by infected horses should be regarded as contaminated for about 2 months after resolution of an outbreak. Carrier animals are important for maintenance of the bacteria between epizootics and initiation of outbreaks on premises previously free of disease. Horse owners need to be aware that clinically recovered animals should have three negative nasopharyngeal swabs to be determined "Strangles-free". Recommendations regarding vaccination can be found in the OMAFRA disease factsheet. Strangles is a good opportunity to remind your clients that the best disease control is disease prevention. (with files from EDCC) President Trump called on country to unite against 'political violence' on Friday after a suspect was taken into custody for allegedly sending a dozen explosive devices to liberal politicians, pundits and activists. Trump celebrated the arrest at a White House event for young black conservatives that he arrived nearly an hour late to after a last-minute briefing on the bomb threat investigation from the Homeland Security department. 'The bottom line is that Americans must unify. And we must show the world that we are united together in peace and love and harmony as fellow American citizens,' Trump said in the East Room. 'There is no country like our country, and every day we are showing the world just how truly great we are.' President Trump called on country to unite against political violence on Friday after a suspect was taken into custody for allegedly sending a dozen explosive devices to liberal politicians, pundits and activists 'Globalists!' Trump said ointing a chuckling at an attendee who apparently said Trump's opponents' should be jailed minutes after the president's call for unity. 'Heh, heh. "Lock 'em up," ' Trump parroted The suspect in a mail bombing spree targeting critics of President Trump, including former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, had been identified minutes before. Police took Cesar Altier Sayoc into custody on Friday morning in Plantation, Florida in connection with the 12 suspicious packages that were sent to Clinton, former President Barack Obama, CNN and other political opponents of the president. According to Sayocs Facebook page, he is a Trump fan who posted pictures and videos of himself at one of the Presidents rallies in October 2016. He posted a photograph of himself wearing a MAGA hat in front of the US Capitol in 2017. Trump praised law enforcement for doing an 'incredible job' in catching the suspect at an early afternoon event at which he claimed he may be the most 'attacked' person in America and his 'America First' agenda is 'a movement of tolerance and unity and progress.' Cesar Altier Sayoc was taken into custody on Friday morning in Plantation, Florida in connection with the bombs He complained that his supporters are under 'attack' for their beliefs by liberals. 'Theyre attacking us because we are speaking the truth, changing people's minds and proving every day that our policies work and that we are really doing what's right and what's good,' he said. 'And I get attacked also. You get attached. I get attacked all the time. In fact, I'm just thinking, come to think of it, who gets attacked more than me?' he asked his Housing and Urban Development Secretary Ben Carson. 'I get attacked. I think I, maybe more. Maybe. Maybe more than anybody.' Trump defended 'America First' at the rally from liberal claims that the slogan is 'racist.' He told attendees he doesn't understand what's 'racist' about an agenda that advances American interests. The president argued that 'every citizen benefits when we stop foreign countries from cheating our workers' a policy position he claimed globalists support. 'Globalists!' he said he lampooned pointing a chuckling at an attendee who apparently said Trump's ideological opponents' should be jailed. 'Heh, heh. "Lock 'em up," ' Trump parroted. Sayoc posted a photograph of himself wearing a MAGA hat in front of the US Capitol in 2017 Trump celebrated the arrest at a White House event for young black conservatives that he arrived nearly an hour late to after a last-minute briefing on the bomb threat investigation from the Homeland Security department Trump complained that his supporters are under 'attack' for their beliefs by liberals at the event where he announced the arrest of a suspect targeting his political opponents Trump had refrained from leading a crowd on Wednesday night in Wisconsin in the refrain as the manhunt continued for the individual sending pipe bombs in the mail to Obama administration officials. Liberal activist George Soros, CNN and a restaurant owned by Robert DeNiro also received packages that law enforcement officials were treating like active explosive devices. He said that he was toning down his remarks in response to the bomb threats and following his own advice to be civil to one's political opponents. Trump got in a jab, however, at his critics in the media. He argued again that news outlets are inviting division the following morning in a tweet that doubling down on the comments. On Friday, as he complained about how often he believes he is 'attacked' Trump started to refer to media outlets whose coverage he disagrees with as fake news but stopped himself. 'I can do the greatest thing for our country and on the networks and on different things, it will show bad. They will take it back he goes "Fake news" but they will, no matter what, if it's, I won't use examples and today is just sort of a very special day because we caught somebody that hopefully that'll all pan out to be 100 percent but it probably will,' he said. 'But you know, we all get attacked, and we're smart and we understand where they're all coming from.' Roughly a half hour before news outlets began reporting an arrest in the case, the president opined on Twitter that the bomb threats were getting in the way of his election message and damaging Republicans' re-election odds. 'Republicans are doing so well in early voting, and at the polls, and now this Bomb stuff happens and the momentum greatly slows - news not talking politics,' he said. 'Very unfortunate, what is going on. Republicans, go out and vote!' FBI Director Christopher Wray said Friday that the explosive devices were not hoaxes, although it remained unclear after a news conference whether they could actually detonate. The tweet paired with his remarks at the White House event on Friday afternoon suggested that he was eager to return to the Democratic taunting his rallies are known for at an evening rally in Charlotte. Earlier on Friday police arrested a suspect in the bombing campaign who appeared to be a Trump supporter based on his footprint on social media. In a post a year ago, Sayoc shared a photograph of Governor Rick Scott and Donald Trump, writing: The greatest Governor in Country Fla Rick Scott and great friend of We Unconquered Seminole Tribe . Trump Trump Trump He expressed his dislike of Hillary Clinton and posted stories about incidents of Islamic terrorism. The suspect in his 50s was arrested in front of an AutoZone store in Plantation, a police source told DailyMail.com. Michelle Taylor, a nurse at the Senior Medical Associates clinic, saw police taking a vehicle believed to be Sayoc's into custody. 'We've been in the office for an hour and we're so nervous,' she said. 'The police were surrounding some kind of a van. Thank God we're done with our patients for the day and there's only two of us in here.' According to Sayocs Facebook page, he is a Trump fan who posted pictures of himself wearing a 'MAGA' hat Sayoc is seen at an event supporting Trump and wearing a 'MAGA' hat in this photo posted to Facebook in October 2016 A driver snapped a photo of this van, believed to belong to Sayoc. The van is seen covered in stickers expressing support for Trump, and disdain for his liberal critics The person who took the photos was not aware of the connection to the investigation, but noted the odd amount of stickers A witness who works at Marlins Insurance said dozens of police cars descended on the area around State Road 7 and SW 8th Street about 10am, a few feet away from her office. 'It's really bad,' the woman said by telephone. She declined to give her name. 'We heard a loud bang, like a bomb exploding. Police officers who told us to stay inside said they were arrested the guy who's been sending bombs all over the place. It's pretty scary but we're inside trying to get some work done.' The suspect is reportedly a former resident of New York who is living in Florida. The 12 mail bombs are all believed to have been handled by a regional mail sorting facility in southern Florida. The suspect is known to law enforcement, and has a history of making terrorist threats to judges, sources said. Heavy police activity was seen in Plantation, Florida, a town to the west of Fort Lauderdale and directly south of Sunrise, the location of Democratic Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz's office in the area. The bombs listed her office as their return address. Police impounded a white panel van that is believed to be connected to the investigation. Police impounded a white panel van (above) that is believed to be connected to the investigation Investigators are seen impounding a white panel van in Plantation, Florida on Friday in connection with an arrest The van as covered with a blue tarp and transported away by investigators after the arrest on Friday Earlier in the day, the investigators said they had found two new packages believed to be part of the mail bombing spree, addressed to Senator Cory Booker and former Director of National Intelligence James Clapper. Investigators said the package to Booker was discovered on Thursday night at a mail sorting facility in Florida, while the authorities said package addressed to Clapper, a CNN contributor, had been found at a postal facility in Manhattan on Friday. The two new packages marked the 11th and 12th suspected mail bombs in a spree that has targeted critics of Trump. The FBI found two new packages believed to be part of the mail bombing spree, addressed to Senator Cory Booker (left) and former Director of National Intelligence James Clapper (right) The suspicious package (above) addressed to James Clapper at the Time Warner Center was intercepted by postal inspectors at a Manhattan sorting facility on Friday morning NYPD's Total Containment vessel arrives as law enforcement respond to the scene of a suspicious package at a postal facility on Friday in New York The Total Containment Vessel is used to transport explosive devices and is designed to contain powerful blasts NYPD Deputy Commissioner Intelligence and Counterterrorism John Miller was on scene during an investigation of a bomb addressed to James Clapper at a US Post Office on W 52nd Street on Friday in Manhattan FDNY set up a command post at an investigation of a bomb at a postal sorting facility in Midtown Manhattan on Friday A police dog assists in a suspicious package response at a postal facility in Manhattan on Friday morning Postal workers stand on the street after evacuating a sorting facility during a report of a suspicious package in Manhattan Postal workers stand on the street after evacuating a Midtown Manhattan postal facility on Friday The facility was evacuated after inspectors intercepted a suspicious package addressed to James Clapper The map above shows the locations of 12 suspicious packages that have all been linked to a mail bombing spree The package to Clapper was addressed to CNN's headquarters in the Time Warner Center in Midtown Manhattan, but was intercepted before delivery. A photo of the package showed that it matched notable characteristics of the previous mail bombs, none of which have exploded. Clapper joined CNN as a contributor after stepping down as the nation's most senior intelligence official last year. 'At least they got the correct spelling of my name and they got the right network,' Clapper said in remarks to CNN, referring to a mail bomb sent to CNN earlier this week and addressed to John Brennan, a former CIA director, who is a contributor to MSNBC. 'This is definitely domestic terrorism, no question about it in my mind,' Clapper said in an interview with the cable network. 'This is not going to silence the administrations critics.' Clapper said that he had been on vacation with his wife, and had warned the neighbors who were collecting his mail to be on the lookout for suspicious packages as the mail bomb spree developed this week. Like the other targets in the mail bomb spree, Clapper has been harshly critical of Trump. In a speech last year, he said that Trump was guilty of 'ignorance or disrespect.' First respondents are seen on the scene where suspicious package was found in Midtown. There were no reports of injuries and the stretcher is believed to be a precaution Police respond to a report of a suspicious package at a postal facility in Midtown Manhattan on Friday morning Police respond to a report of a suspicious package in the Manhattan borough of New York Police swarmed the area outside a Manhattan postal facility after a package was found The package intercepted on Friday was addressed to Clapper care of CNN, but was spotted by postal inspectors at a sorting facility before delivery. The NYPD bomb squad was on scene at the postal facility at West 52nd Street and 8th Avenue on Friday morning. Streets in the area were closed off and postal workers were seen waiting on the sidewalks after the facility was evacuated. On Thursday, a local police bomb squad and canine units joined federal investigators to examine a sprawling U.S. mail distribution center at Opa-Locka, northwest of Miami, Miami-Dade County police said. Investigators believe that all of the suspicious packages were sorted at the facility, which processes mail regionally in South Florida. It was at the Opa-Locka facility that the 11th bomb was discovered, addressed to Senator Booker. Booker is a Democrat from New Jersey. He is a presumptive candidate for the Democratic nomination in 2020. The identity and motives of the bomber have not been revealed, however, with the FBI saying it is pursuing the case as the agency's highest priority. Senator Mark Warner, the top Democrat on the Senate Intelligence Committee, told MSNBC on Friday that the mail bombs were stoking fear across the county and that U.S. leaders, including Trump, must reassure the public. Elected officials and others need to say that this is not who we are as a country, Warner said. 'That would be a heck of a lot stronger if that message also came from the White House.' The man who was arrested in Florida this morning on suspicion of being the so-called #MAGAbomber responsible for sending a dozen pipe bombs to Democratic leaders and critics of President Donald Trump has been using social media to promote wild conspiracy theories targeting the Clintons, former President Barack Obama and Muslims. A now-deleted Facebook page associated with self-proclaimed member of the Seminole tribe Cesar Altieri Sayoc Jr, 56, had been dormant from October 13, 2016, when the user shared scores of cellphone videos and photos from a rally for then-presidential candidate Trump and other pro-Republican campaign events. In many of the pictures taken that day, the man accused of mailing explosives to Obama, Bill and Hillary Clinton, actor and outspoken Trump foe Robert de Niro and CNN, among other high-level targets, is seen sporting a red 'Make America Great Again.' Cesar Sayoc, 56, pictured in his booking photo on Friday, left, has been using social media to promote conspiracy theories targeting President Trump's political opponents. Pictured right: Sayoc in Washington DC in a MAGA hat. A now-deleted Facebook page associated with Cesar Sayoc was filled with memes calling Hillary Clinton a liar, and worse Sayoc made a sport of attacking the then-democratic presidential candidate on every issue Sayoc repeatedly shared news items and right-wing gossip tying Clinton to ISIS In the run-up to the 2016 election, Sayoc, who goes by the last name Randazzo on his Facebook page, used the site to disseminate links to Fox News articles and videos lambasting Hillary Clinton and other top Democrats. In between, he also shared videos documenting his intense workouts and posing up with scantily clad women at a strip club where he apparently worked at one time. On multiple occasions, he shared content claiming without any evidence that Hillary was using a body double on the campaign trail because of her declining health. The lord delivering death and America will celebrate, Sayoc wrote in a status update about the former first lady. Clinton uses body double fool Americans into her health declines. A month before the election, Sayoc shared this item accusing Clinton without any evidence of supply the terrorist group with weapons Sayoc tweeted several images and posts propagating this old Clinton conspiracy theory Sayoc also targeted other high-level Democrats, among them former VP Al Gore The 56-year-old Floridian repeatedly referred to President Obama as a Muslim terrorist and attacked his credibility Sayoc, who went online by various surenames, attacked Michelle Obama's looks A day before attending the mid-October Trump rally, he shared a story from a right-wing site called WeaselZippers.us accusing President Clinton's former Vice President Al Gore of sexual assault and 'behaving like 'sex-crazed poodle.' His others posts that month included a report about Mrs Clintons Benghazi emails, a right-wing site's story accusing the democratic candidate of selling weapons to ISIS and several other items warning about a looming ISIS attack on US soil. When taken as a whole, the contents of Sayoc's Facebook account paint a portrait of a man obsessed with the Clintons and espousing virulently anti-Muslim views. One meme he shared that September shows what looks like the mugshots of eight Middle Eastern-looking men, with a caption that reads: 'not all Muslims are terrorists! Some of them are paedophiles and rapists too.' Two days before his arrest, Sayoc in a tweet invoked the name of the billionaire democratic donor George Soros, who was among the first targets of the #MAGAbomber's plot Another meme in the same vain read: 'Islam: contributing not one damn thing to humanity for over 1400 years.' It appears from his posts that Sayoc subscribed to a false narrative promoted by extremists on the right that President Obama himself was secretly Muslim. Commenting on a story about a drug dealer who committed a murder after being released from prison, Sayoc wrote: 'Obama Muslim terrorist blood on his hands needs to be executed.' The 56-year-old Sayoc, a registered Republican with a lengthy criminal record living in Aventura, Florida, also aired some of his radical views on Twitter, which he used for the last time just two days before his arrest to send out memes accusing Florida Democratic gubernatorial candidate Andrew Gillum of corruption. Earlier that day, he invoked the name of the billionaire democratic donor George Soros, who was among the first targets of the #MAGAbomber's plot. Weeks prior, Sayoc tweeted several images and posts propagating an old conspiracy theory claiming that during his time as the governor of Arkansas in the 1980s, Bill Clinton covered up the murders of two teenage boys, Kevin Ives and Don Henry, who had accidentally stumbled upon an alleged drug trafficking scheme run by the CIA out of Mena, Arkansas. 'See Bill,Hil.forget about very close friends of ours Kevin Ives and Don Henry.Bill and Hilary will die had executed MENA, Ark,' Sayoc wrote in a rambling tweet. An AutoZone parts shop in Plantation, Florida where a white Van was taken away by police in connection with the arrest of Cesar Sayoc Friday In this still image taken from a video courtesy of television station WPLG, Sayoc's van plastered with pro-Trump stickers and images critical of Democrats and CNN is towed Friday Sayoc describes himself on one of his Twitter feeds as a former professional soccer player, wrestler and cage fighter. On his LinkedIn profile, Sayoc claims to have attended Brevard College in North Carolina and the University of North Carolina at Charlotte and to have studied veterinary medicine. 'Career decision of becoming a Horse Doctor was always a love for animals, which were here first and never do anything to anyone,' his LinkedIn bio says. 'And respect all living things.' Sayoc makes repeated references to the Seminole Indian tribe on his Twitter feed but on his LinkedIn profile he mentions Filipino ancestry, saying his grandfather was a prominent surgeon in the Philippines. Sophie Elms was pictured arriving at Swindon Crown Court today where she was charged with sexually assaulting two children A teenage nursery worker has become Britain's youngest named female convicted paedophile after admitting sixteen charges against young children. Sophie Elms, 18, plead guilty to the charges against two young children aged just three and two years old, during the trial at Swindon Crown Court. The charges including penetration, sexual assault, and taking and distributing indecent photographs of children. The teenager, from Wiltshire was 17-years-old at the time she committed the offences. Elms worked at a local nursery in Swindon, but police have confirmed that none of the alleged offences are said to have happened at the childcare facility. She admitted sexually assaulting a two-year-old and a three-year-old between December 1, 2016, and March 11, 2018. During the same dates, Elms also pleaded guilty to two counts of sexual assault - one against each of the youngsters - in which she intentionally indecently touched them. Also between December 1, 2016 and March 11, 2018, it was heard that Elms committed four offences of taking indecent photographs of children. These included two category A photographs, four category B photographs, and one category C photograph. Between January 1st, 2016, and March 11, 2018, Elms committed six offences of distributing indecent photographs of children. These included three category A photographs, four category B photographs, and three category C photographs. Elms also pleaded guilty to two counts of possessing extreme pornographic images of an animal, between January 1, 2016, and March 11, 2018. Sophie Elms was 17-years-old at the time of the offences Defending Elms, Mr Chris Smyth described the case as 'highly unusual', saying: 'Miss Elms was only 17 herself at the time when the offences occurred. Miss Elms was remanded in custody until her sentencing hearing. Judge Robert Pawson said: 'You have pleaded guilty to what I suspect you fully understand are extremely serious charges. 'I remand you into custody on the basis of fears for your own safety. Your sentencing will take place on January 4. 'Until that time, my strongest advice to you is that you avoid using social media for some time to come. 'You are very unlikely to make things better for your victims and their families by posting on social media, and you are very unlikely to make things better for yourself.' New Delhi's average air quality is almost seven times worse than in London during rush hour. The Indian capital's air quality has plummeted to the worst possible category, very severe, on Friday, with locals and visitors being advised to wear dust masks. New Delhi's average air pollution level (PM2.5 score) was a whopping 187, far from London's rush hour measure of 27, and Birmingham's rush-hour measure of just 15. Shoppers walk in a market, wearing face masks to fight the pollution, in New Delhi, India on Thursday this week. New Delhi's average air quality is almost seven times worse than in London during rush hour A PM2.5 pollution score is used to measure the amount of tiny particulate matter which can dangerously clog lungs. India's Central Pollution Control Board announced it would warn people to avoid jogging outdoors in the early morning and after sunset, and to keep medicine nearby if asthmatic. The most recent air pollution data from the World Health Organisation released in March said India was one of the world's 10 most polluted countries. India Gate monument during heavy smog conditions in New Delhi pictured earlier this week. The Indian capital's air quality has plummeted to the worst possible category A Supreme Court-appointed Environment Pollution Authority warned on Thursday that air pollution in the capital region is likely to peak from next week as toxic fumes from the burning of agricultural fields in the neighbouring northern states. Crop burning will be at its peak in the first week of November as farmers prepare their fields for sowing winter crops. They have been ignoring government warnings of a penalty, and some said they can't afford to buy harvesting machines costing up to 50,000 rupees (530) a piece. Indian laborers arrive for work at a building construction site earlier this week. India's Central Pollution Control Board announced it would warn people to avoid jogging outdoors in the early morning The court earlier this week ordered that firecrackers could be exploded between 8 p.m. and 10 p.m. on the festival night in two weeks and could not be sold online. It also said that only less polluting firecrackers could be manufactured and sold. Activist Saurabh Bhasin, one of the three advocates who brought the firecrackers case to the Indian Supreme Court, said the focus is now on finding ways to force implementation. He said: 'With air, while individuals can do their best, at the end of the day the solution does lie with the government and the authorities a lot more than with us. Indian labourers burn shrubs to clean the banks of the river Ganges for the upcoming Kumbh Mela festival. The most recent air pollution data from the World Health Organisation released in March said India was one of the world's 10 most polluted countries 'From an implementation perspective, frankly, now the ball really does shift to the government and local authorities.' Authorities also are trying to lower the amount of dust in the air by sprinkling water in many neighbourhoods and ordering builders to cover construction sites. The transport department is checking busses entering the region for valid emission papers and threatening to punish violators. The government has banned diesel vehicles that are more than 10 years old.' President Trump slapped back at critics of his 'America First' slogan on Friday, asking a summit of young black conservatives why his opponents believe it's 'racist' to pledge to put the nation first. People of all races 'have the right to live in a country that puts your needs first,' Trump said. 'I heard this one a couple of weeks ago. I said, "Give me a break!" They said, "America first! That could be racist!" I said, "Racist? Racist? Why is that racist?" Trump told attendees the White House event. 'I think, does everyone in this room agree? You're living in America. America first, right?' Trump has been taking flak this week for claiming that he's a 'nationalist' during a rally at which he slammed 'globalists' as people who don't care very much about the country. He claimed Tuesday that he has never been told the term has racist connotations. 'They like the globe. I like the globe too. I like the globe too. But we have to take care of our people,' Trump said Friday of the world view that runs counter to his own philosophy on governance. Donald Trump has been taking flak this week for claiming that he's a 'nationalist' during a rally at which he slammed 'globalists' as people who don't care very much about the country 'I heard this one a couple of weeks ago. I said, "Give me a break!" They said, "America first! That could be racist!" I said, "Racist? Racist? Why is that racist?" 'Trump asked at a White House event for young black conservatives 'WHY IS IT RACIST?' : People of all races 'have the right to live in a country that puts your needs first,' Trump said told the crowd The president argued that 'every citizen benefits when we stop foreign countries from cheating our workers' a policy position he claimed globalists support. 'Globalists!' he said, pointing a chuckling at an attendee who apparently said Trump's opponents' should be jailed. 'Heh, heh. "Lock 'em up," ' Trump parroted. Another attendee shouted, 'Thank you for being a nationalist.' The exchanges came within minutes of a presidential call for unity at the event where Trump announced that a suspect targeting his political opponents had been taken into custody in connection with a string of attempted bombings. 'We must never allow political violence to take root in America. Cannot let it happen. And I'm committed to doing everything in my power as president to stop it and to stop it now. To stop it now,' Trump said. He claimed shortly after that he was personally under 'attack' by Democrats and the media 'maybe more than anybody' as he declared his movement one of 'tolerance and unity and progress' in remarks at the event that was held at the White House. Trump's defensive comments suggested that a rally tonight in Charlotte could get testy after the president took a night off from castigating his political rivals in light of the bomb threats on Wednesday. 'Do you see how nice I'm behaving tonight?' the president repeatedly asked in Wisconsin. 'Globalists!' Trump said while pointing and a chuckling at an attendee who apparently claimed that Trump's opponents' should be jailed. 'Heh, heh. "Lock 'em up." ' Trump stuck around to sign hats after arriving at the Young Black Leadership Summit an hour late on Friday At the summit, the president said there could be three to four future presidents in the room At a rowdy rally on Monday night in Houston, Trump had declared himself a nationalist as he took aim at the usual suspects. He embraced the term again on Tuesday, telling a reporter: 'I love our country. And our country has taken second fiddle.' The president claimed in the Oval Office that he was unaware that the phrase's reputation among liberals as a racist dog-whistle. 'I've never even heard that. I cannot imagine that,' he proclaimed. 'I never heard that theory about being a nationalist. I've heard them all. But I'm somebody who loves our country, when I say a nationalist.' He said he was referring to wealth the United States passes on to countries that 'don't treat us properly' through trade deals and security organizations. 'I'm proud of our country, and I am a nationalist. It's a word that hasn't been used too much,' he said. 'I think it should be brought back.' President Trump said Tuesday that he does think of himself as a 'nationalist' in in that he's a patriot who's tired of seeing foreign nations take advantage of America Trump indicated that he was referring to American nationalism rather than white nationalism, which he and his followers have also been accused of promoting. Former President Barack Obama, for instance, suggested in a blistering September critique of his predecessor that Trump's policies 'appeal to racial nationalism that's barely veiled, if veiled at all' during a speech in which he claimed that over the last several decades ;the politics of division, of resentment and paranoia has unfortunately found a home in the Republican Party.' The nationalist label has also been used to describe former White House aide Steve Bannon, who was ousted as Trump came under scrutiny last year for claiming that 'both sides' were to blame for the violence that erupted at a race riot. Trump gave his supporters permission to use the term 'nationalist' to describe themselves at a Monday night rally. He dubbed himself a nationalist, too, in the remarks in which he contrasted his world view with so-called globalists like Obama. J Street, a liberal group that fights anti-Semitism and promotes policies that are pro-Israel, attacked Trump after the event as 'deploying intensely xenophobic rhetoric and imagery including anti-Semitic tropes in a transparent attempt' to rally the base before the mid-term elections. 'Like his credo America First, Trumps nationalism is clearly rooted in a long legacy of xenophobia on the American far right,' the group said in a statement. 'The term globalist is used constantly by the white nationalist alt-right as an anti-Semitic dog whistle against Jewish people.' Trump gave his supporters permission to use the term 'nationalist' to describe themselves at a Monday night rally. He dubbed himself a nationalist, too, in the remarks in which he contrasted his world view with so-called globalists like Obama Asked what he was trying to signal with his embrace of the term at Monday's rally, the president specifically pointed to international agreements that have long been derided as turning the United States into the world policeman. 'If you look at the trade deals, and nobody knows it better than me. I'm knocking out some of the worst deals I've ever seen. When we're giving all of our wealth, all of our money, to other countries,' Trump argued.'And then they don't treat us properly, where we're protecting other rich countries. Very, very rich countries.' He said that he considers Saudi Arabia to one of the countries that has taken advantage of American generosity, linking its contract for arms sales with American companies to it's admission that it was involved in the brutal murder of journalist Jamal Khashoggi. 'Immensely wealthy. And we're taking care of their military for a fraction of the cost. Not fair to us,' he said of the arms deal and American military assistance to its operation in Yemen. He said he was talking about 'other countries also' that he later identified as Germany and China. 'Immensely wealthy countries, and we have to get reimbursed for that. We should not be the world's policekeeper and not get reimbursed,' he stated. Trump claimed that other nations are not paying what he sees as their fair share because they've never been asked to by his predecessors. 'And by the way, when I bring up to the heads of countries like Japan, prime minister Abe, a friend of mine, I bring it up, he looks at me and he goes, I understand,' Trump said, retelling a story he's used to back up his position on the issue in the past. 'They understand it. Nobody's ever asked him. I said, have you ever asked -- I said, you ever been asked, like, you have to be, like, help out? Nobody's ever asked. So that's a pretty unfair thing,' Trump asserted. Coming back to the topic later, he professed: 'I am very proud of our country. We cannot continue to allow what's happened to our country to continue happening. We can't let it happen. 'I'm proud of our country, and I am a nationalist. It's a word that hasn't been used too much. Some people use it,' he acknowledged. 'But i'm very proud. I think it should be brought back. I'm somebody that wants to help other countries of the world, but I also have to take a -- we have to take care of our country. We cannot continue to allow ourselves to be duped on military and also duped on trade.' At his rally in Houston on Monday night, Trump had proudly declared himself to be a 'nationalist' - a descriptor that Democrats like Obama have 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, while he railed against 'globalists' that never put America first. 'Radical Democrats want to turn back the clock. Restore the rule of corrupt, power-hungry globalists,' he claimed. '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.' President Donald Trump suggested shortly after Friday's arrest of a suspect in the 'MAGAbomber' case that he's the most attacked person in the world. 'Who gets attacked more than me?' the president asked an audience of young black conservatives at the White House. Cesar Altier Sayoc, 56, was taken into custody hours earlier in Plantation, Florida in connection with 12 suspicious packages sent Trump's political enemies and the news outlet he hates most CNN. 'I get attacked all the time,' the president complained in the East Room of the White House. 'I get attacked, I think I, maybe more, maybe,' he added. 'Maybe more than anybody.' Trump did not mention CNN by name, but repeated his frequent complaint about political bias among reporters who cover him. President Donald Trump said shortly after the arrest Friday of suspected serial bomber Cesar Altier Sayoc that he's the most attacked person in America Sayoc was taken into custody on Friday morning in Plantation, Florida in connection with the attempted bombings; he posted a photograph of himself (right) wearing a MAGA hat in front of the U.S. Capitol in 2017 Trump also complained about his 'fake news' media coverage but made a rare exception and didn't name any media outlets Two of the bombs Sayoc is believed to have sent were addressed to former Obama administration officials at a CNN office in New York One of the suspicious packages was discovered at CNN's New York bureau, addressed to former CIA Director John Brennan there. Another, meant for former Director of National Intelligence James Clapper, was also sent to CNN in New York. 'I can do the greatest thing for our country, and on the networks and on different things, it will show bad,' Trump groused, stopping to chuckle at an interjection from an audience member. 'He goes, "Fake news!" Trump said. He told the gathering that he wouldn't cite 'examples' of news outlets he considers 'fake' because 'today is just sort of a very special day, because we caught somebody that hopefully that'll all pan out to be 100 per cent. But it probably will.' 'We all get attacked, and we're smart and we understand where they're all coming from.' While Trump was speaking, details emerged about the man journalists and socialmedia wags dubbed the MAGAbomber. According to Sayoc's Facebook page, he is a Trump supporter who posted pictures and videos of himself at one of the president's rallies in October 2016. He posted a photograph of himself wearing a MAGA hat in front of the U.S. Capitol in 2017. Sayoc is Native American, and according to social media posts, he is a member of the Seminole Tribe of Florida Sayoc is seen at a Trump rally. He was arrested on Friday in connection with a string of bombs sent through the mail A driver snapped a photo of this van, believed to belong to Sayoc. The van is seen covered in stickers expressing support for Trump, and disdain for his liberal critics Sayoc was convicted of a threat to 'throw, place, project or discharge any destructive device' in 2002 in Dade County, Florida, court records show. He claims to be Native American, and according to a picture posted on his social media page, he is a member of the Seminole Tribe of Florida. Other information from his LinkedIn page suggests that Sayoc is Filipino. In a post a year ago, Sayoc shared a photograph of Governor Rick Scott and Donald Trump, writing: 'The greatest Governor in Country Fla Rick Scott and great friend of We Unconquered Seminole Tribe . Trump Trump Trump' He shared bodybuilding pictures and appears to have worked in a strip club. He expressed his dislike of Hillary Clinton and posted stories about incidents of Islamic terrorism. Trump addressed the arrest in remarks at the White House, saying: 'We must never allow political violence to take root in America.' He promised 'swift and certain justice' and said the suspect would be prosecuted 'to the fullest extend of the law.' The suspect in his 50s was arrested in front of an AutoZone store in Plantation, a police source tells DailyMail.com. FBI agents search for clues and evidences at the AutoZone Store in Plantation on Friday after arresting Sayoc outside Members of the press crowd outside the Auto Zone parts store where two FBI agents are interviewing a store employee in Plantation, Florida. A suspect was arrested in this store on in connection to the packages containing pipe bombs Sayoc posted many pictures of himself in strip clubs, and may have worked in one. He is seen with an unidentified woman Sayoc is seen with unidentified women left and right above. He appears to frequent strip clubs and may have worked at one The suspect Sayoc posted these photos of himself at the gym lifting weights. He appears to be a bodybuilder Michelle Taylor, a nurse at the Senior Medical Associates clinic, saw police taking a vehicle believed to be Sayoc's into custody. 'We've been in the office for an hour and we're so nervous,' she said. 'The police were surrounding some kind of a van. Thank god we're done with our patients for the day and there's only two of us in here.' A witness who works at Marlins Insurance said dozens of police cars descended on the area around State Road 7 and SW 8th Street about 10am, a few feet away from her office. 'It's really bad,' the woman said by telephone. She declined to give her name. 'We heard a loud bang, like a bomb exploding. Police officers who told us to stay inside said they were arrested the guy who's been sending bombs all over the place. It's pretty scary but we're inside trying to get some work done.' The suspect is reportedly a former resident of New York who is living in Florida. The 12 mail bombs are all believed to have been handled by a regional mail sorting facility in southern Florida. Sayoc's grandmother lived in Sheepshead Bay, Brooklyn, according to a 2006 obituary. The suspect is known to law enforcement, and has a history of making terroristic threats to judges, sources said. An FBI officer prepares a van to be towed in Plantation in connection with the 12 pipe bombs and suspicious packages FBI agents covering a van after the tarp fell off as it was transported from Plantation on Friday A van covered in blue tarp is towed by FBI investigators on Friday in Plantation in connection with the 12 pipe bombs Sayoc expressed an interest in bodybuilding and posted photos that appear to be from his youth Sayoc posted a number of memes to Facebook criticizing Obama and Hillary Clinton, who both had bombs addressed to them Heavy police activity was seen in Plantation, Florida, a town to the west of Fort Lauderdale and directly south of Sunrise, the location of Debbie Wasserman-Schultz's office, which the bombs listed as a return address. Police impounded a white panel van that is believed to be connected to the investigation. Photos of the van show its windows plastered with stickers supporting Trump and denigrating prominent Democrats. One of the stickers reads 'CNN sucks'. The Department of Justice announced a press conference for 2.30pm at which further details are expected to be available. Earlier in the day, the investigators said they had found two new packages believed to be part of the mail bombing spree, addressed to Senator Cory Booker and former Director of National Intelligence James Clapper. The package to Booker was found on Thursday night at a mail sorting facility in Florida, and the package addressed to Clapper was found at a postal facility in Manhattan on Friday. The two new packages marked the 11th and 12th suspected mail bombs in a spree that has targeted critics of Trump. Trump's first public response to the latest suspicious packages was a tweet at 10.19am reading: 'Republicans are doing so well in early voting, and at the polls, and now this 'Bomb' stuff happens and the momentum greatly slows - news not talking politics. Very unfortunate, what is going on. Republicans, go out and vote!' The FBI found two new packages believed to be part of the mail bombing spree, addressed to Senator Cory Booker (left) and former Director of National Intelligence James Clapper (right) The suspicious package (above) addressed to James Clapper at the Time Warner Center was intercepted by postal inspectors at a Manhattan sorting facility on Friday morning NYPD's Total Containment vessel arrives as law enforcement respond to the scene of a suspicious package at a postal facility on Friday in New York The Total Containment Vessel is used to transport explosive devices and is designed to contain powerful blasts The special NYPD vehicle is seen transporting the package addressed to James Clapper to a secure facility in the Bronx NYPD Deputy Commissioner Intelligence and Counterterrorism John Miller was on scene during an investigation of a bomb addressed to James Clapper at a US Post Office on W 52nd Street on Friday in Manhattan FDNY set up a command post at an investigation of a bomb at a postal sorting facility in Midtown Manhattan on Friday A police dog assists in a suspicious package response at a postal facility in Manhattan on Friday morning Postal workers stand on the street after evacuating a sorting facility during a report of a suspicious package in Manhattan Postal workers stand on the street after evacuating a Midtown Manhattan postal facility on Friday The facility was evacuated after inspectors intercepted a suspicious package addressed to James Clapper The map above shows the locations of 12 suspicious packages that have all been linked to a mail bombing spree The package to Clapper was addressed to CNN's headquarters in the Time Warner Center in Midtown Manhattan, but was intercepted before delivery. A photo of the package showed that it matched notable characteristics of the previous mail bombs, none of which have exploded. Clapper joined CNN as a contributor after stepping down as the nation's most senior intelligence official last year. 'At least they got the correct spelling of my name and they got the right network,' Clapper said in remarks to CNN, referring to a mail bomb sent to CNN earlier this week and addressed to 'John Brenan'. John Brennan, a former CIA director, is a contributor for MSNBC. 'This is definitely domestic terrorism, no question about it in my mind,' Clapper said in an interview with the cable network. 'This is not going to silence the administrations critics.' Clapper said that he had been on vacation with his wife, and had warned the neighbors who were collecting his mail to be on the lookout for suspicious packages as the mail bomb spree developed this week. Like the other targets in the mail bomb spree, Clapper has been harshly critical of Trump. In a speech last year, he said that Trump was guilty of 'ignorance or disrespect'. First respondents are seen on the scene where suspicious package was found in Midtown. There were no reports of injuries and the stretcher is believed to be a precaution Police respond to a report of a suspicious package at a postal facility in Midtown Manhattan on Friday morning Police respond to a report of a suspicious package in the Manhattan borough of New York Police swarmed the area outside a Manhattan postal facility after a package was found The package intercepted on Friday was addressed to Clapper care of CNN, but was spotted by postal inspectors at a sorting facility before delivery. The NYPD bomb squad was on scene at the postal facility at West 52nd Street and 8th Avenue on Friday morning. The NYPD's Total Containment Vessel was spotted at the scene by about 9.30am. Streets in the area were closed off and postal workers were seen waiting on the sidewalks after the facility was evacuated. The containment vehicle departed the area at 10am transporting the suspected bomb to a secure police facility in Rodman's Neck in the Bronx. Police respond to a report of a suspicious package addressed to James Clapper in Manhattan Streets were shut down and the facility evacuated after a suspicious package was found Police respond to a report of a suspicious package in the Manhattan borough of New York on Friday On Thursday, a local police bomb squad and canine units joined federal investigators to examine a sprawling U.S. mail distribution center at Opa-Locka, northwest of Miami, Miami-Dade County police said. Investigators believe that all of the suspicious packages were sorted at the facility, which processes mail regionally in South Florida. It was at the Opa-Locka facility that the 11th bomb was discovered, addressed to Senator Booker. Booker is a Democrat from New Jersey. Like Clapper and the other targets of the mail bombs in the recent spree, he is an outspoken critic of Trump. The identity and motives of the bomber have not been revealed, however, with the FBI saying it is pursuing the case as the agency's highest priority. No one has claimed responsibility for the bombs. A police car sits outside New Jersey Democratic Senator Cory Booker's office in Camden, New Jersey on Friday. The FBI says a suspicious package addressed to Booker has been recovered in Florida and is similar in appearance to recent mail bombs A police dog is loaded into an SUV outside New Jersey Democratic Senator Cory Booker's office in Camden, New Jersey A police officer and dog are shown outside a postal facility on Thursday in Opa-locka, Florida. The search uncovered a suspicious package addressed to Senator Cory Booker Senator Mark Warner, the top Democrat on the Senate Intelligence Committee, told MSNBC on Friday that the mail bombs were stoking fear across the county and that U.S. leaders, including Trump, must reassure the public. Elected officials and others need to say that this is not who we are as a country, Warner said. 'That would be a heck of a lot stronger if that message also came from the White House.' U.S. Homeland Security Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen said that Florida appeared to be the starting point for at least some of the bomb shipments. 'Some of the packages went through the mail. They originated, some of them, from Florida,' she said during an interview with Fox News Channel on Thursday. 'I am confident that this person or people will be brought to justice.' The reward for information leading to the return of Jayme Closs has been doubled to $50,000 as, 12 days after the 13-year-old disappeared and her parents were killed. The teenager hasn't been seen since Monday, October 15 when her parents Denise, 46, and James, 56, were brutally gunned down in the family's home in Barron, Wisconsin. Investigators are no closer to naming either a suspect or a motive and Barron County Sheriff's Department first offered a reward of $25,000 on Wednesday when two of Jaymes' aunts made an emotional plea for the girl's safe return. Now Jennie O Turkey Factory where both Denise and James worked has contributed a further $25,000. Still missing: The reward for details on Jayme Closs' whereabouts has doubled to $50,000. The 13-year-old vanished moments after her parents were gunned down last week Now Jennie O Turkey Factory (pictured) where both Denise and James worked has contributed a further $25,000 Jennifer Smith and Suzy Allard - Denise Closs's sisters - thanked the public for their continued 'love and support' as they continue to hope for the safe return of their 'sweet Jayme' The FBI is expanding its search nationwide after placing Jayme atop its Missing Persons list Jennifer Smith and Suzy Allard - Denise Closs's sisters - thanked the public for their continued 'love and support' as they continue to hope for the safe return of their 'sweet Jayme.' Speaking directly to her missing niece, Smith continued, 'Jayme, not a moment goes by when we aren't thinking of you and praying for you. 'Your family and friends miss you so much - your sparkling eyes, your bright smile, your soft little giggles.' Allard did not speak but stood holding Jayme's dog Molly. Smith said, 'Your dog Molly is waiting for you. She is sleeping in one of your old sweatshirts and will only eat chicken. 'Grandpa needs new artwork on his fridge. Aunt Suzy wants to go jogging in the park with you and I want that girls' shopping date we planned. Smith described the 'hole in all their hearts' that cannot be filled until her Jayme is returned. She said, 'We all love you to the moon and back and we will never stop looking for you.' On Tuesday 2,000 volunteers joined law enforcement in an intensive ground search of a five and a half mile area around the crime scene. The family of Jayme Closs spoke out in a public appeal Wednesday in Wisconsin Officer Russell T Fell told DailyMail.com: 'It is not unusual, or unlikely, for guilty parties to try to stay close to the investigation just to know what's going on' Members of the search party were asked to register and have their driver's licenses scanned for safety and as an 'investigative tool' Searchers were instructed to hold the line and report any resistance or hostility they might encounter to law enforcement Barron County Sheriff Chris Fitzgerald was forced to deliver the dismaying news that nothing of evidentiary value had been found. And he admitted that they were no closer to identifying any suspects despite more than 200 officers working 24 hours, seven days a week on the case. On Tuesday, investigators shared images of two vehicles of interest - an orange or red Dodge Challenger and a black Ford Edge or Nissan Acura. Now in desperate bid to generate any new line of investigation he has appealed for anyone driving on Highway 8 on Monday 15 October between 12.30am and 1.30am to call the official tip line. Asked if he had any specific reason for believing that Jayme is still alive he re-iterated the phrase he has used at every media briefing, 'We believe Jayme's out there, she's endangered and we need to bring a 13-year-old girl home.' Anyone with information about Jayme's whereabouts is urged to call the Barron County Sheriff's Office at 1-855-744-3879, or contact their local FBI office A panicking plane passenger was almost 'sucked into a jet engine' after opening a cabin door just before take off. The panic stricken passenger, American Tommy Gray, of Centralia, Missouri, was on a Frontier Airlines plane to St Louis, Missouri, from Cancun, Mexico, when he became ill. In a shocking video, recorded by passenger Kathleen Ingram, the man is seen opening the cabin door in a panic while the powerful jet engines were running. Scroll down for video Desperate passengers and staff on board the plane tried to restrain him from leaping out of the plane's cabin door, and possibly into the powerful jet engines When the cabin door was opened, an emergency slide was also deployed. The aircraft has been taken out of service since the viral clip surfaced while an aircraft maintenance team investigates why the slide automatically deployed. Passengers claim Gray ran up to the cockpit and started pounding on the door. Cabin crew intervened and returned the man to his seat, but Gray then got up and opened the cabin door. Startled passengers and staff on board the plane tried to restrain him from leaping out of the plane, and possibly into the powerful jet engines. Mr Gray was on a flight with his father, and had been assaulted the previous night at his hotel in Mexico, Fox News reported. His mother said he had gone on a trip with his father to Cancun in Mexico. She also suggested his drink was spiked. The passenger was on a Frontier Airlines plane to St Louis, Missouri, from Cancun, Mexico , when he became ill The panic stricken passenger, left, was on a Frontier Airlines plane to St Louis, Missouri, from Cancun, Mexico, when he became ill. After banging on the cockpit door, he was returned to his seat by cabin crew, who are seen helping the man above Passengers try and restrain the man from jumping out of the cabin door and out onto the emergency slides, which almost resulted in him being sucked into the jet engines, one passenger claimed Police took Mr Gray from the aircraft and he later went to hospital The passenger who recorded the video, Ms Ingham, wrote on Facebook: 'Thank God for the brave men and women who held him in the plane or he for sure would have been sucked into the engine'. Police took Mr Gray from the aircraft and he later went to hospital. The plane was grounded and travellers were given other flights or hotel rooms. The incident took place on Monday, October 22 at around 2pm. The FBI is looking into a suspicious package sent to billionaire President Trump critic Tom Steyer a Democratic donor who has funded campaigns against the US leader. CNN reports Steyer, 61, was sent a package in his name that was intercepted in Burlingame, California. 'We're thankful that everyone we work with at NextGen America and Need to Impeach is safe - that's always our first priority, and will continue to be our first priority,' Steyer said in a statement. FBI is looking into a suspicious package sent to billionaire President Trump critic Tom Steyer (pictured January 2018) Friday 'We're thankful that everyone we work with at NextGen America and Need to Impeach is safe - that's always our first priority, and will continue to be our first priority,' Steyer said in statement A law enforcement source says they are investigating whether the package is similar to others that were mailed out before they brought the suspect in Friday morning. Explosives technicians were on scene on at a USPS location on Rollins Road but there is no threat to public safety it has been reported. It marked the 13th package of its kind to be found this week in connection with the pipe bombs scare. The suspect in the mail bombing spree targeting critics of President Donald Trump was identified as Cesar Altier Sayoc and faces up to 58 years in prison US Attorney General Jeff Sessions said during a press conference. 'We will not tolerate such lawlessness, especially political violence,' he said about the man charged with five federal crimes. Sayoc, 56, was taken into custody on Friday morning in Plantation, Florida in connection with the 12 suspicious packages that had so far been discovered at the time. The suspect was a prolific tweeter who repeatedly sent threats to celebrities and political figures like Joe Biden, Jim Carrey, and Ron Howard. According to Sayoc's Facebook page, he is a Trump fan who posted pictures and videos of himself at one of the President's rallies in October 2016. MSNC showed the scene as investigators looked into the suspected pipe bomb Friday Explosives technicians were on scene on at a USPS location on Rollins Road but there is no threat to public safety it has been reported A law enforcement source says they are investigating whether the package is similar to others that were mailed out before they brought the suspect in He posted a photograph of himself wearing a MAGA hat in front of the US Capitol in 2017. Sayoc was convicted of a threat to 'throw, place, project or discharge any destructive device' in 2002 in Dade County, Florida, court records show. He has other prior convictions on felony charges including grand theft and drug possession with intent to distribute, but has never served prison time. Cesar Altier Sayoc was taken into custody on Friday morning in Plantation, Florida in connection with the bombs He claims to be Native American, and according to a picture posted on his social media page, he is a member of the Seminole Tribe of Florida. Other information from his LinkedIn page suggests that Sayoc is Filipino. The profile includes dubious claims that could not be immediately independently confirmed, including that Sayoc is a promoter for male striptease troupe Chippendales, and that he is enrolled in a veterinary medicine program. 'Career decision of becoming a Horse Doctor was always a love for animals, which were here first and never do anything to anyone. And respect all living things,' Sayoc wrote on the profile in a grammatical style that appears typical for him. 'My family very sound Sayoc name in Medical field.' A van impounded in Paradise, believed to be Sayoc's, was covered densely with stickers expressing pro-Trump sentiments and denigrating prominent Democrats, including Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama, who were among those who had pipe bombs addressed to them this week. Another sticker proclaimed 'CNN Sucks.' The cable network had two of the suspicious packages addressed to its headquarters in Manhattan. He posted a photograph of himself wearing a MAGA hat in front of the US Capitol in 2017 Sayoc is Native American, and according to social media posts, he is a member of the Seminole Tribe of Florida Sayoc is seen at a Trump rally. He was arrested on Friday in connection with a string of bombs sent through the mail According to Sayoc's Facebook page, he is a Trump fan who posted pictures of himself wearing a 'MAGA' hat Sayoc is seen at an event supporting Trump and wearing a 'MAGA' hat in this photo posted to Facebook in October 2016 A driver snapped a photo of this van, believed to belong to Sayoc. The van is seen covered in stickers expressing support for Trump, and disdain for his liberal critics The person who took the photos was not aware of the connection to the investigation, but noted the odd amount of stickers In a Facebook post a year ago, Sayoc shared a photograph of Governor Rick Scott and Donald Trump, writing: 'The greatest Governor in Country Fla Rick Scott and great friend of We Unconquered Seminole Tribe . Trump Trump Trump' He shared bodybuilding pictures and appears to have worked in a strip club. 'MAGAbomber' suspect Cesar Sayoc rap sheet Cesar Altier Sayoc, 56, has a long rap sheet that goes back decades. 1991: Felony arrest that resulted in a two-year probation period after he entered a guilty plea to grand theft in the third degree. 1994: His grandmother Viola accused him of domestic violence. She sought a restraining order at the time but a judge then dropped the charges two weeks later for reasons that are unclear. 2004: Two arrests within five weeks of one another for possession of drugs with intent to distribute which he entered a guilty plea for and received 18 months probation. 2013: A second grand theft arrest, this time with battery as well, that resulted in a 12 month probation. 2014: A petty theft arrest which was a violation of his probation and got him another 12 months of probation. Not once was he sentenced to jail time for any of those incidents. Advertisement He expressed his dislike of Hillary Clinton and posted stories about incidents of Islamic terrorism. Trump addressed the arrest in remarks at the White House, saying: 'We must never allow political violence to take root in America.' He promised 'swift and certain justice' and said the suspect would be prosecuted 'to the fullest extend of the law.' A Twitter account that appears to belong to Sayoc includes repeated attacks on billionaire George Soros and praise for Trump and other Republicans. The tweets accuse Soros of paying off a victim from the Parkland mass shooting and accusing Florida gubernatorial candidate Andrew Gillum, a Democrat, of being a Soros puppet. The account includes anti-Gillum memes, with one including the caption '$500,000 SOROS PUPPET.' The Oct. 24 posting includes a photo of Soros doctored to look like he's holding a puppet meant to resemble Gillum. The suspect was arrested in front of an AutoZone store in Plantation, a police source tells DailyMail.com. Michelle Taylor, a nurse at the Senior Medical Associates clinic across the street from the AutoZone, saw police taking a vehicle believed to be Sayoc's into custody. 'We've been in the office for an hour and we're so nervous,' she said. 'The police were surrounding some kind of a van. Thank god we're done with our patients for the day and there's only two of us in here.' A witness who works at Marlins Insurance said dozens of police cars descended on the area around State Road 7 and SW 8th Street about 10am, a few feet away from her office. 'It's really bad,' the woman said by telephone. She declined to give her name. 'We heard a loud bang, like a bomb exploding. Police officers who told us to stay inside said they were arrested the guy who's been sending bombs all over the place. It's pretty scary but we're inside trying to get some work done.' The suspect is reportedly a former resident of New York who is living in Florida. The 12 mail bombs are all believed to have been handled by a regional mail sorting facility in southern Florida. FBI agents search for clues and evidences at the AutoZone Store in Plantation on Friday after arresting Sayoc outside Members of the press crowd outside the AutoZone parts store where two FBI agents are interviewing a store employee in Plantation, Florida. A suspect was arrested in this store on in connection to the packages containing pipe bombs Sayoc posted many pictures of himself in strip clubs, and may have worked in one. He is seen with an unidentified woman Sayoc is seen with unidentified women left and right above. He appears to frequent strip clubs and may have worked at one The suspect Sayoc posted these photos of himself at the gym lifting weights. He appears to be a bodybuilder Sayoc graduated 1980 from North Miami Beach Senior High, according to a yearbook entry. His grandmother lived in Sheepshead Bay, Brooklyn, according to a 2006 obituary. Among Sayoc's most serious criminal history includes a 1994 incident in which his grandmother Viola accused him of domestic violence. She sought a restraining order at the time but a judge then dropped the charges two weeks later for reasons that are unclear. The suspect is known to law enforcement, and has a history of making terroristic threats to judges, sources said. Heavy police activity was seen in Plantation, Florida, a town to the west of Fort Lauderdale and directly south of Sunrise, the location of Debbie Wasserman-Schultz's office, which the bombs listed as a return address. Police impounded a white panel van that is believed to be connected to the investigation. The Department of Justice announced a press conference for 2.30pm at which further details are expected to be available. An FBI officer prepares a van to be towed in Plantation in connection with the pipe bombs and suspicious packages FBI agents covering a van after the tarp fell off as it was transported from Plantation on Friday A van covered in blue tarp is towed by FBI investigators on Friday in Plantation in connection with the pipe bombs Sayoc expressed an interest in bodybuilding and posted photos that appear to be from his youth Sayoc posted a number of memes to Facebook criticizing Obama and Hillary Clinton, who both had bombs addressed to them Earlier in the day, the investigators said they had found two new packages believed to be part of the mail bombing spree, addressed to Senator Cory Booker and former Director of National Intelligence James Clapper. The package to Booker was found on Thursday night at a mail sorting facility in Florida, and the package addressed to Clapper was found at a postal facility in Manhattan on Friday. The two new packages marked the 11th and 12th suspected mail bombs in a spree that has targeted critics of Trump. Trump's first public response to the latest suspicious packages was a tweet at 10.19am reading: 'Republicans are doing so well in early voting, and at the polls, and now this 'Bomb' stuff happens and the momentum greatly slows - news not talking politics. Very unfortunate, what is going on. Republicans, go out and vote!' The FBI found two new packages believed to be part of the mail bombing spree, addressed to Senator Cory Booker (left) and former Director of National Intelligence James Clapper (right) The suspicious package (above) addressed to James Clapper at the Time Warner Center was intercepted by postal inspectors at a Manhattan sorting facility on Friday morning NYPD's Total Containment vessel arrives as law enforcement respond to the scene of a suspicious package at a postal facility on Friday in New York The Total Containment Vessel is used to transport explosive devices and is designed to contain powerful blasts The special NYPD vehicle is seen transporting the package addressed to James Clapper to a secure facility in the Bronx NYPD Deputy Commissioner Intelligence and Counterterrorism John Miller was on scene during an investigation of a bomb addressed to James Clapper at a US Post Office on W 52nd Street on Friday in Manhattan FDNY set up a command post at an investigation of a bomb at a postal sorting facility in Midtown Manhattan on Friday A police dog assists in a suspicious package response at a postal facility in Manhattan on Friday morning Postal workers stand on the street after evacuating a sorting facility during a report of a suspicious package in Manhattan Postal workers stand on the street after evacuating a Midtown Manhattan postal facility on Friday The facility was evacuated after inspectors intercepted a suspicious package addressed to James Clapper The map above shows the locations of 12 suspicious packages that have all been linked to a mail bombing spree The package to Clapper was addressed to CNN's headquarters in the Time Warner Center in Midtown Manhattan, but was intercepted before delivery. A photo of the package showed that it matched notable characteristics of the previous mail bombs, none of which have exploded. Clapper joined CNN as a contributor after stepping down as the nation's most senior intelligence official last year. 'At least they got the correct spelling of my name and they got the right network,' Clapper said in remarks to CNN, referring to a mail bomb sent to CNN earlier this week and addressed to 'John Brenan'. John Brennan, a former CIA director, is a contributor for MSNBC. 'This is definitely domestic terrorism, no question about it in my mind,' Clapper said in an interview with the cable network. 'This is not going to silence the administrations critics.' Clapper said that he had been on vacation with his wife, and had warned the neighbors who were collecting his mail to be on the lookout for suspicious packages as the mail bomb spree developed this week. Like the other targets in the mail bomb spree, Clapper has been harshly critical of Trump. In a speech last year, he said that Trump was guilty of 'ignorance or disrespect'. First respondents are seen on the scene where suspicious package was found in Midtown. There were no reports of injuries and the stretcher is believed to be a precaution Police respond to a report of a suspicious package at a postal facility in Midtown Manhattan on Friday morning Police respond to a report of a suspicious package in the Manhattan borough of New York Police swarmed the area outside a Manhattan postal facility after a package was found The package intercepted on Friday was addressed to Clapper care of CNN, but was spotted by postal inspectors at a sorting facility before delivery. The NYPD bomb squad was on scene at the postal facility at West 52nd Street and 8th Avenue on Friday morning. The NYPD's Total Containment Vessel was spotted at the scene by about 9.30am. Streets in the area were closed off and postal workers were seen waiting on the sidewalks after the facility was evacuated. The containment vehicle departed the area at 10am transporting the suspected bomb to a secure police facility in Rodman's Neck in the Bronx. Police respond to a report of a suspicious package addressed to James Clapper in Manhattan Streets were shut down and the facility evacuated after a suspicious package was found Police respond to a report of a suspicious package in the Manhattan borough of New York on Friday On Thursday, a local police bomb squad and canine units joined federal investigators to examine a sprawling U.S. mail distribution center at Opa-Locka, northwest of Miami, Miami-Dade County police said. Investigators believe that all of the suspicious packages were sorted at the facility, which processes mail regionally in South Florida. It was at the Opa-Locka facility that the 11th bomb was discovered, addressed to Senator Booker. Booker is a Democrat from New Jersey. Like Clapper and the other targets of the mail bombs in the recent spree, he is an outspoken critic of Trump. The identity and motives of the bomber have not been revealed, however, with the FBI saying it is pursuing the case as the agency's highest priority. No one has claimed responsibility for the bombs. A police car sits outside New Jersey Democratic Senator Cory Booker's office in Camden, New Jersey on Friday. The FBI says a suspicious package addressed to Booker has been recovered in Florida and is similar in appearance to recent mail bombs A police dog is loaded into an SUV outside New Jersey Democratic Senator Cory Booker's office in Camden, New Jersey A police officer and dog are shown outside a postal facility on Thursday in Opa-locka, Florida. The search uncovered a suspicious package addressed to Senator Cory Booker Senator Mark Warner, the top Democrat on the Senate Intelligence Committee, told MSNBC on Friday that the mail bombs were stoking fear across the county and that U.S. leaders, including Trump, must reassure the public. Elected officials and others need to say that this is not who we are as a country, Warner said. 'That would be a heck of a lot stronger if that message also came from the White House.' U.S. Homeland Security Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen said that Florida appeared to be the starting point for at least some of the bomb shipments. 'Some of the packages went through the mail. They originated, some of them, from Florida,' she said during an interview with Fox News Channel on Thursday. 'I am confident that this person or people will be brought to justice.' A teenage girl has died after a suspected drink driver rammed his van into a broken down car she was sat in. Georgia Mann was in the passenger seat of the black Audi A1 Sport on Wednesday when a white Volkswagen Caddy collided with it on a dual carriageway in Kent. The 15-year-old was rushed to King's College Hospital in London where doctors desperately tried to save her. Despite their best efforts, she passed away this morning. Georgia Mann was in the passenger seat of the broken down black Audi A1 Sport just before midnight on Wednesday when a white Volkswagen Caddy collided with it at speed The 15-year-old was rushed to King's College Hospital but despite doctor's best efforts, she passed away this morning A 42-year-old man from Sittingbourne, Kent, has since been arrested on suspicion of drink-driving and released pending further investigations. A 20-year-old woman, also in the car with Georgia, was critically injured but is in a stable condition in hospital. The driver of the Audi suffered chest injury during the collision. He had been standing beside the vehicle after it broke down on the A249 at Bobbing. He was discharged from hospital. Friends and family of Georgia have paid tributes to the 'popular' and 'enthusiastic' girl following her death. A GoFundMe page has been set up to raise money for funeral costs. More than 2,000 of the 10,000 target has been raised since it was set up by Georgia's sister, Sammy Louise Law. Georgia Mann was described as 'beautiful' by her sister Sammy Louise Law Ms Law described her sister as 'beautiful', adding: 'She is donating all the organs she can to help other children and families to not have the pain we are going through right now. '[I'm raising money to give her the best funeral we can and have some kind of memorial.' Georgia's head teacher, Simon Cox, said: ' thusiastic Year 11 students, who had the personality to fill any room. 'I have spoken to her mum and passed on our heartfelt condolences. Over the coming days we have agreed to meet to plan a celebration of Georgia's life.' The family of a murdered Toronto billionaire and his wife are offering a $10 million Canadian dollar ($7.6 million) reward for information that could lead police to their killer. Drug-company baron Barry Sherman and his wife, Honey, were found hanged from a railing next to their basement pool in their Toronto mansion last December. Police initially suspected a murder-suicide - something their family strongly disagreed with and the couple's four adult children hired their own team of investigators. Lawyer Brian Greenspan said Toronto police haven't properly handled the case of Barry and Honey Sherman (pictured together) A second autopsy revealed that both victims had narrow markings on their wrists. It implied that they had been bound at some point but there was no binding at the scene. Barry's leg were also found to be crossed in front of his body in a way that was too orderly for suicide. Police said six weeks later the couple was murdered. Now the family's lawyer, Brian Greenspan, is arguing Toronto police bungled the case and is offering $10 million Canadian dollars for information leading to the arrest and prosecution of a suspect. The billionaire's family has set up a tip line and is offering up to 10 million Canadian dollars ($7.6 million) for information leading to the arrest (pictured, the couple's children Jonathon Sherman abd his sister Lauren walk to the stage during a memorial service in Mississauga, Ontario) 'We're trying to light the fire,' Greenspan said. 'To provide new incentive for the members of the public to come forward with information but also to light the fire under the Toronto police service.' He also said he would like Toronto police to share information with his private investigators. 'Regrettably it has become clear to them that despite the active pursuit of search warrants and exploring other investigative avenues, police resources have neither been properly managed nor effectively utilized,' Greenspan said Friday, according to Bloomberg. The police pushed back against that narrative in their own briefing Friday. Sherman, the founder of generic drugmaker Apotex, and his wife were found dead by their basement pool in their Toronto mansion last December (pictured is their home a month after the murders) . Greenspan said they were seated next to each other with ligatures pulled up around their necks and wrapped around a railing located by their pool Greenspan said Toronto police made a litany of mistakes. 'They failed to recognize the suspicious and staged manner in which their bodies were situated,' Greenspan said. 'We're trying to light the fire,' Lawyer Brian Greenspan said. 'To provide new incentive for the members of the public to come forward with information but also to light the fire under the Toronto police service' The day after, some media outlets quoted unidentified police officials as saying the deaths appeared to be a murder-suicide, which the family believe could have delayed the homicide investigation. Kerry Winter, a cousin to the Canadian billionaire, rejected the findings made by the separate investigation. Winter shared with the Dailymail.com that Barry Sherman had twice asked him to arrange for his wife's murder saying: 'I want you to whack my wife.' Winter, 56, told DailyMailTV: 'My gut tells me he killed her. 'That's my feeling [and] I don't believe somebody out there is going to be found because Barry did the deed. Greenspan also said police did not properly check points of entry into the mansion or collect enough fingerprint and DNA evidence. He also said his team has recovered evidence, including 25 finger and palm prints, that Toronto police missed. And he said police didn't vacuum the area where the they were found, noting intruders might have left behind a small sample of hair. Sherman, 75, was known for litigiousness and aggressive businesses practices as he developed Apotex Inc., which has a global workforce of about 11,000. In 'Prescription Games,' a 2001 book about the industry, he mused that a rival might want to kill him Toronto police chief Mark Saunders later defended his officers and said they did not reach an early conclusion that it was a murder suicide. Saunders said over 50 officers have been involved in the case and the house was searched forensically for over six weeks. He also said over 200 people have been interviewed and said the investigation continues. 'The investigation was done well and continues to be done well,' Saunders said. Saunders said he supports the family's decision to put up the reward. Kerry Winter, a cousin to the Canadian billionaire, rejected the findings made by the separate investigation. Winter shared with the Dailymail.com that Barry Sherman had twice asked him to arrange for his wife's murder saying: 'I want you to whack my wife' 'The Sherman family is frustrated,' he said. 'We all have the same goals.' Saunders declined to release details of the investigation, noting he had no doubt the suspects were watching his press conference. Sherman, 75, the founder of generic drugmaker Apotex, was known for litigiousness and aggressive businesses practices as he developed Apotex Inc., which has a global workforce of about 11,000. Winter says that Sherman had 'many enemies' and that over the years people may have wanted him dead - but says the simplest explanation and the one he believes is that he did it himself In 'Prescription Games,' a 2001 book about the industry, he mused that a rival might want to kill him. Winter and his relatives are bitterly estranged after a long court battle between Winter and his siblings and their cousin Barry, who they accused of shutting them out of their rightful ownership of the family pharmaceutical company. Winter says that Sherman had 'many enemies' and that over the years people may have wanted him dead - but says the simplest explanation and the one he believes is that he did it himself. 'Is it plausible that somebody out there had an ax to grind and arranged for them to be targeted?' he told DailyMailTV. 'Absolutely, because of the manner in which he did business and the many enemies he had.' Sherman, whose estimated fortune of $3 billion saw him ranked the 12th richest man in Canada, was, Winter said 'ruthless and cunning.' He noted: 'Ethics and morals really didn't have much of a place in the way he did business. It is a point of view that sees Winter at odds with the Shermans' children - Lauren, 42, Jonathan, 34, Alexandra, 31 and Kaelen, 28 - who have always rejected talk of a murder-suicide 'You can go through life and not harm people, or you can go through life and leave carnage in your wake and you look behind my cousin, there were just bodies littered.' But for all the enemies which, Winter estimated, must run to the hundreds he still believes that Sherman killed Honey before killing himself. It is a point of view that sees Winter at odds with the Shermans' children - Lauren, 42, Jonathan, 34, Alexandra, 31 and Kaelen, 28 - who have always rejected talk of a murder-suicide. Sherman was honored in death by Justin Trudeau, who publicly mourned him at a memorial service and tweeted a tribute to the couple's 'vision and spirit' Winter admitted the feud might make some eye him as a prime suspect in his cousin's murder: 'I remember the day it happened and saying to some of my closest friends, "They're going to haul me in." 'Not to make me the fall guy but I have an ax to grind and I've been involved in this lawsuit and maybe I decided to take matters into my own hands.' Sherman was honored in death by Justin Trudeau, who publicly mourned him at a memorial service and tweeted a tribute to the couple's 'vision and spirit'. Former Deputy Commons Speaker Natascha Engel, who was appointed Shale Gas Commissioner by Theresa May two weeks ago Britains first Fracking Tsar yesterday moved to calm fears after operations were suspended at the UKs only active shale gas fracking site following an earthquake just a fortnight after it was given the go-ahead. Former Deputy Commons Speaker Natascha Engel, appointed Shale Gas Commissioner by Theresa May two weeks ago, said Britain had the strictest rules on fracking in the world. The decision by energy firm Cuadrilla to halt operations at its site near Blackpool after a tremor of 0.8 magnitude on the Richter Scale showed the safeguards were working, she said. The company said it planned to resume drilling for shale gas at the Preston New Road site in Little Plumpton, Lancashire, today. Fracking, which involves blasting water at high pressure underground to release gas, was stopped in Lancashire in 2011 after being linked with earthquakes. As a result, any tremor of 0.5 or above means fracking must be stopped while tests are carried out. Miss Engel, a former Labour MP, told the Daily Mail: This shows that the system is working. After the tremors in 2011, a very strict traffic light system was introduced far stricter than anywhere else in the world. The only other country as strict as we are has set the pause button at 1.5 because even that can hardly be felt on the surface. Environmental campaigners said yesterdays stoppage showed fracking was dangerous. However, fracking supporters say the 0.5 level can be triggered by a passing bus. In the US, the maximum fracking temor levels range from 2.7 to 4.5. Speaking a day earlier, Miss Engel used her first interview as Fracking Tsar to accuse anti-fracking protesters of trying to scare the living daylights out of people and criticised Friends of the Earth and Greenpeace. They paint themselves as being like local worried citizens, she said. In fact they are using anti- fracking campaigns to stifle rational debate and boost their profile and funds. An anti-fracking protester is led away by police at the Preston New Road site in Little Plumpton, Lancashire Protesters trying to stop a tanker lorry leaving the fracking site, where energy firm Cuadrilla have now halted operations Miss Engel, 51, who is paid 48,000 a year, said she hopes to counter disinformation about fracking. She plans to visit residents in areas where the controversial method of extracting shale gas is proposed and hold meetings in their homes away from the screaming and shouting at public meetings. Last week two people cemented their arms into a set of tyres in Little Plumpton to try to stop fracking. And three protesters jailed for climbing on lorries at the site were freed after a court quashed their sentences. Miss Engel says fracking could help meet our carbon reduction targets, create tens of thousands of jobs, solve Britains energy needs for 50 years and generate enough cash to solve the social care crisis and save the NHS on its own. She first investigated it when drilling was proposed in her former North East Derbyshire constituency. Mothers who had heard scare stories would be in my office weeping, saying their children were going to die, she said. Theyd been told flames would leap from kitchen taps, their houses would collapse in earthquakes. She was so alarmed at the level of fear that she set off to find a fracking site in Yorkshire. When I drove there I could see a huge steel rig and garish piping in the distance and thought, Blimey its massive, she said. It turned out to be Flamingo Land, a theme park! The rig was one of the biggest rides in Europe. The fracking site was so small I drove past it. The son of a frontbench Labour MP and close ally of Jeremy Corbyn has been convicted of possessing drugs at a music festival. Ishmael Osamor, 29, was caught with a 2,500 haul of ecstasy, cocaine, ketamine and cannabis by security staff at last year's Bestival event in Dorset. The serving Labour councillor, son of international development spokesman Kate Osamor, was arrested on September 8, two days before 25-year-old model Louella Michie died from a drugs overdose at the same festival. There is no suggestion the two events were linked. Ishmael Osamo (left) , 29, was caught with a 2,500 haul of ecstasy, cocaine, ketamine and cannabis by security staff at last year's Bestival event in Dorset. He is the son of Labour MP Kate Osamor (right) Osamor pleaded guilty to four drugs charges but managed to avoid a four-year prison sentence. A judge ordered him to carry out 200 hours of unpaid work instead. His mother the 50-year-old MP for Edmonton, North London is a member of Mr Corbyn's inner circle and a vocal social inequality campaigner who has spoken out about 'racist policing' and the Government's 'failed war on drugs'. Despite his conviction for serious drugs offences, Osamor has kept his taxpayer-funded job in the Commons, where he works as his mother's communications officer. He is listed as working for the MP in her most recent register of interests, updated on October 17. The pair live together in Tottenham, North London. He remains a serving Labour councillor in nearby Haringey having been elected in May in what critics denounced as an aggressive takeover of the council by Momentum-backed supporters of Mr Corbyn. The result triggered a nepotism row because Osamor was selected to stand for the position by his own mother, ousting two long-serving councillors including the former Haringey mayor. He was arrested on September 8, two days before 25-year-old model Louella Michie died from a drugs overdose at the same festival. Pictured is the police mugshot of Osamor issued by Dorset police after his arrest for drug offences Miss Osamor refused to comment on the criticism at the time. Her son was awaiting trial at the time of his selection in November last year and subsequent election win. It is not clear if he revealed details of his arrest to voters. His court case will cause great embarrassment to Miss Osamor, who was this week pictured with Mr Corbyn at a fundraising event. In March, she wrote in a policy paper that the Government's 'failed wars on terror and drugs' had 'diverted crucial resources away from people'. She said ministers should focus on issues such as 'gender-based violence and unsafe cities' instead. Her Edmonton constituency is one of many suburbs blighted by the county lines epidemic, where criminals recruit youngsters as drug mules to flood rural areas with heroin and crack cocaine. In April, Mahad Yusuf, 21, a gang member from Edmonton, was convicted of trafficking a 19-year-old girl from North London to Swansea, where he kept her prisoner for two weeks and forced her to sell cocaine. Drugs offences in Edmonton have increased over the last year. Osamor's court case will cause great embarrassment to Miss Osamor, who was this week pictured with Mr Corbyn at a fundraising event There were 517 reports of drug-related crime between August 2017 and September this year, with year-on-year increases recorded in every ward, according to police statistics. Osamor admitted three charges of possessing drugs with intent to supply and a fourth charge of possession in a hearing at Bournemouth Crown Court last Friday. He pleaded guilty after prosecutors accepted that he and his friends had clubbed together to buy the drugs and were not intending to sell them to other festival-goers. He was caught with 30.89g of ecstasy, 7.5g of cocaine, 5.7g of ketamine and 182mg of cannabis with a street value of between 1,690 and 2,500. The judge said Osamor would have faced up to four years in prison had prosecutors refused to accept his claim that the drugs were for his personal use, and not for profit. Osamor's barrister Mohsin Zaidi told the judge: 'He made a mistake, he knows he is very lucky.' Judge Stephen Climie told the court: 'I hope he appreciates he's very lucky. During unpaid work he will appreciate how privileged he is. 'He will end up rubbing shoulders with many who have serious addiction and drugs problems who will have had none of the opportunities he has had.' The judge told Osamor: 'If this had been a case where you had been found in possession of those drugs with intent to supply for profit, you would be looking at between three and four years in prison.' He sentenced Osamor to a two-year community order with 200 hours of unpaid work and up to 20 rehabilitation activity days. He also has to pay 400 prosecution costs. It is the latest controversy to hit the Osamor family. Two years ago, Miss Osamor claimed the 2011 riots were the result of 'justified' anger at racist policing. In May, it emerged she had copied large sections of Barack Obama's 2008 victory speech when addressing constituents after her re-election as MP. Last night a spokesman for Miss Osamor said: 'Ishmael has admitted what he did was wrong and apologised.' Osamor last night resigned his post as deputy cabinet member at Haringey Council but remains a councillor. Steam was spotted escaping a Washington nuclear plant on Friday morning, leading employees to 'take cover' as a precaution. The steam stirred alarm around 6am at the Hanford nuclear waste site that once produced plutonium for atomic weapons. Workers were told to take cover as the U.S. Department of Energy Richland Operations Office conducted an investigation. Steam was seen rising at the Hanford nuclear waste site in Washington leading the plant to issue a warning for workers to take cover The warning to take cover was lifted at 12.15pm as officials said 'there is no indication of a release of radiological release', in a message to employees on the plant's official website. Officials said that the steam was came from a tunnel where a curing process was taking place. The process generates heat and moisture. That heat combined with the cold morning are created the steam. The warning was lifted at 12.15pm as officials wrapped up an investigation and determined there was no 'radiological release' in the steam Crews in protective gear and masks that filtered air investigated the tunnel this morning with a team of power lights and cameras to test the conditions. The Hanford plant said: 'Over the next few days, crews will evaluate the covering of the opening in the structure, after which stabilization activities will continue.' 'Thank you to the crews involved in the response, as well as the employees who took cover,' the statement added. The head of the Electoral Commission has quit following a series of claims that the body has been biased against Brexit. Claire Bassett has resigned as chief executive of the elections watchdog, while three commissioners who publicly opposed leaving the European Union will also go. The commission has faced accusations of unfairness from Brexiteers, who claim it has focused on allegations of wrongdoing by the Leave side. But allies of Miss Bassett, who is joining the newly established UK Trade Remedies Authority (TRA), insist her move is unrelated to criticism of the commission. Claire Bassett (pictured) has resigned as chief executive of the elections watchdog Bridget Prentice, Lord Horam and Professor David Howarth, who sit on the watchdog's board, are all stepping down this month at the end of their four-year terms. The trio stirred controversy after it emerged that they had all voiced opposition to Brexit while in their posts. Professor Howarth, a former Lib Dem MP, suggested the 2016 result could not 'bind the young', as 'Leave's majority will have been reversed merely by the process of Leave voters dying and new Remain voters reaching the age of 18'. Former Labour MP Miss Prentice said Tony Blair's suggestion the referendum result could be overturned was 'spot on'. And Lord Horam has said in the Lords there would be 'great logic' in holding a second referendum. A Whitehall source said: 'Trust and confidence in the Electoral Commission has been undermined in recent years. New brooms are needed to get it to do its core job competently and efficiently.' Vote Leave, the lead organisation in the campaign to quit the EU, donated 625,000 to Be-Leave, another pro-Brexit group aimed at the youth vote In May, the elections watchdog was rebuked by ministers for setting aside 829,000 to spend on European Parliament elections next year. Chloe Smith, the constitution minister, questioned why a budget had been allocated despite the Government making clear the UK will not take part given that the country will leave the EU in March. Poll alert on EU nationals Letting European Union citizens vote in British elections will wipe the Tories out at the polls, senior politicians have warned. Conservative MEPs said giving voting rights to up to 3.2million Europeans who are expected to acquire the right to live in the UK after Brexit was pushing the 'self-destruct button'. They fear the party would face electoral wipeout in town hall elections as EU citizens punish them for Brexit. Most EU nationals living in Britain cannot vote in general elections but can elect local councillors. Tory MEP Daniel Hannan, a leading Brexiteer, says he has seen a draft of the EU Withdrawal Bill showing the UK will protect these voting rights post-Brexit. A Government spokesman said the issue was 'not within the scope of the Withdrawal Agreement' and bilateral deals would be struck over UK nationals living in the EU and UK nationals living in the EU. Advertisement The commission said it had ringfenced the sum as a 'precautionary measure, so that we have the necessary funds to deliver our functions at a European Parliamentary election, in the unlikely event that they do go ahead'. But in a letter to Sir John Holmes, the body's chairman, Miss Smith said: 'The Government has been clear that there will be no European elections next year.' In September the High Court ruled that the commission had misinterpreted election law in the run-up to the Brexit vote. Vote Leave, the lead organisation in the campaign to quit the EU, donated 625,000 to Be-Leave, another pro-Brexit group aimed at the youth vote. During the referendum the commission advised that such donations were permissible but later changed its mind, fining Vote Leave and referring the episode to the police.Miss Bassett will be chief at the TRA, which will take on powers from the EU to investigate unfair trade practices. In a statement announcing her departure, Miss Bassett said yesterday: 'I am extremely proud of the work the Electoral Commission has done over the last three years. 'We have made important steps towards being a modern regulator and this has only been possible because of the skills and hard work of the team I have been privileged to lead.' The three vacated spaces on the Electoral Commission board will be filled by Tory peer Lord Gilbert, former Labour MP Joan Walley and Alastair Ross, an ex-DUP minister in the Northern Ireland Executive. FBI director Christopher Wray has revealed that the bombs sent to prominent liberal targets each had the potential to explode. At a Friday afternoon press conference, Wray stressed that the devices, allegedly mailed out by 56-year-old Florida resident Cesar Sayoc Jr this week, were not hoaxes but contained 'explosive materials'. He said that while none of the 14 package bombs had exploded, the devices all had the potential of detonating in transit, or if shaken or exposed to a heat source. 'Though we are still analyzing the devices in our laboratory, these are not hoax devices,' he said. 'Each device consisted of roughly six inches of PVC pipe, a small clock, a battery, some wiring and what is known as energetic material, which is essentially potential explosive materials that give off heat and energy through a reaction to heat, shock or friction,' the head of FBI told the press. None of the 14 crude bombs sent to prominent Democrats and public figures detonated, possibly because they were poorly designed Each device consisted of roughly six inches of PVC pipe, a small clock, a battery, some wiring and what is known as energetic material Investigators swarmed two Delaware mail facilities on Thursday morning after intercepting packages addressed to former Vice President Joe Biden This map shows some of the locations where the suspicious packages were sent Law enforcement sources previously said they believe the pipe bombs were either ineptly constructed or not intended to blow up. But the FBI director's press conference, which gave the most detailed explanation of the investigation into the bombs yet, suggests they were a threat. None of the pipe bombs sent to Bill and Hillary Clinton, Barack Obama, George Soros, Robert de Niro, Joe Biden, Senator Cory Booker, CNN officers in New York City and others exploded. Sayoc, a registered Republican with a lengthy criminal record, has been charged with five federal crimes, including interstate transportation of an explosive, illegal mailing of explosives, threats against a former president, threatening interstate communications, and assaulting current and former federal officers. Suspect: Cesar Sayoc Jr, 56, an avid Trump supporter, was arrested on Friday and charged with five federal crimes, including interstate transportation of an explosive, illegal mailing of explosives, threats against a former president, threatening interstate communications, and assaulting current and former federal officers FBI Director Christopher Wray on Friday told reporters the pipe bombs were no fakes If convicted, Sayoc could face up to 48 years in prison. It is important to note that the suspected bomber was not charged with attempted murder or any related counts, giving a strong indication that the IEDs were not operational and posed no actual threat to the lives of their recipients. CHARGES AGAINST CESAR SAYOC: Interstate transportation of an explosive illegal mailing of explosives Threats against former presidents and certain other persons Threatening interstate communications Assaulting current and former federal officers Advertisement On a eve of Sayoc's arrest, a federal law enforcement official told Reuters that the culprit had found the design and instructions for building the bombs on the Internet. The instructions for such devices are widely available on websites and in propaganda distributed by Islamic militant groups including Al Qaeda and ISIS, said the official and a former federal government bomb expert. The federal official also said the designs could have been lifted from 'The Anarchist Cookbook,' a notorious bomb and hacker manual dating to the early 1970s. 'What they wanted to do was scare people, cause disruption, but not necessarily hurt anybody, because if they'd wanted to hurt people the bombs would have gone off,' said Matthew Bradley, a former CIA agent and current regional security director of International SOS and Control Risks. The bombs were all sent through the major United States Postal Service mailing facility in South Florida; Opa-locka processing and distribution center (pictured) Rhode Island chemistry professor Jimmie Oxley, an explosives expert, told the news agency that the PVC bombs were poorly designed. 'The small size restricts what materials might actually function in it,' said Oxley, who has built 130 pipe bombs at the request of the FBI and the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives to aid investigators. The presence of PVC in the devices led her to believe the bomb builder wrongly thought the relatively lightweight material would not be detected by X-ray. The US Postal Service operates a sophisticated imaging system that photographs the outside of each piece of mail processed across the country and can be used to determine the specific location of where it was sent. The bombs were all sent through the major United States Postal Service mailing facility in Opa-locka, Florida. Letting European Union citizens vote in British elections will wipe the Tories out at the polls, senior politicians have warned. Conservative MEPs said giving voting rights to up to 3.2million Europeans who are expected to acquire the right to live in the UK after Brexit was pushing the 'self-destruct button'. They fear the party would face electoral wipeout in town hall elections as EU citizens punish them for Brexit. Conservative MEPs said giving voting rights to up to 3.2million Europeans who are expected to acquire the right to live in the UK after Brexit was pushing the 'self-destruct button' Most EU nationals living in Britain cannot vote in general elections but can elect local councillors. Tory MEP Daniel Hannan, a leading Brexiteer, says he has seen a draft of the EU Withdrawal Bill showing the UK will protect these voting rights post-Brexit. A Government spokesman said the issue was 'not within the scope of the Withdrawal Agreement' and bilateral deals would be struck over UK nationals living in the EU and UK nationals living in the EU. Prince Charles and Camilla at St George's Chapel, Windsor, after a ceremony to bless their wedding Doing their bit to combat global warming, many people take care not to leave lights burning unnecessarily but Prince Charles has been known to take this to extremes. On one occasion, he drove out from Balmoral Castle with his usual entourage of policemen and ghillies, for a day in the Highlands. Once theyd reached their destination, however, Charles insisted on turning back. Why? Because hed just remembered that hed left his bathroom light on in the castle. It was a long drive back so his police protection officers sensibly suggested that they radio back to Balmoral instead and ask a housemaid to turn off the light. No, no, I cant do that, Charles insisted. I have a personal responsibility. The entire party turned their Range Rovers around and drove back just so the Prince could personally turn his bathroom light off. On another occasion, Charles advised Camilla to stop wasting energy during the winter by heating her swimming pool at Ray Mill, her house near the picturesque Wiltshire village of Lacock. She did as he suggested even though shed been advised by professionals to keep the heating on in order to avoid the pipes freezing and bursting and causing damage to the pump. And as theyd predicted, thats precisely what happened resulting in a repair bill for thousands of pounds. Seeds for breakfast, air force workouts and a crumpet for tea When he eventually ascends the throne, Charles will be the oldest person ever to become monarch. Those close to him say that time is already catching up with him. He sometimes finds himself exhausted by the early evening possibly, say aides, because he eats very little during the day. When he eventually ascends the throne, Charles will be the oldest person ever to become monarch Like his mother, he is up early, usually before 7am. To keep his back mobile, he begins each day by doing a series of exercises originally designed for Royal Canadian Air Force pilots. Then its on to breakfast, which always consists of a bowl of seed mixed in with a tiny amount of yoghurt. With Radio 4s Today programme on in the background, he starts reading the newspapers. From 8am, if he doesnt have any early engagements, he spends two hours poring over paperwork and making handwritten notes in black ink. Over the phone, he also chases up projects on anything from organic farming and architecture to the environment and interfaith relations. After that, he plunges into his royal engagements, of which there are about 25 a week. He never eats lunch while doing these, partly so he can pack as much into the day as possible. Years of experience have also taught him just how much water he needs to drink to keep himself hydrated, but not so much that he will need frequent loo stops. At teatime, he may occasionally have a slice of fruit cake or a crumpet but just the one. And he never misses having a good dinner, often preceded by a strong mixed martini or two. Despite this almost military regime, says a source close to the Prince, his workload sometimes does take its toll on him. He admits it himself, but he is a driven man and wants to do as much as he can with the time he is allotted to make a real difference. Sometimes he is so tired he almost falls asleep over his papers. But nobody can tell him to slow down not even the Duchess, who leaves him to do his thing. No one understands better than Charles that, when the time comes, his reign will probably be short. In the meantime, he intends to keep in the best possible shape, pack in as much work as he can and at least leave a lasting legacy as the Prince of Wales. During the later stages of his marriage to Princess Diana, Charles's temper was sometimes sorely tried. On one particular night in April 1988, they were to attend a state banquet held in honour of King Olav V of Norway. However, it wasn't yet time for them to leave Kensington Palace. Inspector Ken Wharfe, overseeing the couple's security, noticed that Diana was in an impatient mood, 'tutting loudly and tapping her feet'. Charles, for his part, was feeling extremely relaxed. Prince Charles and Princess Diana attending an evening function in Germany He knew that on state occasions, members of the Royal Family arrive at their destination in reverse order of rank. 'It may sound a little absurd,' Wharfe told me, 'but state banquets are when the business of royalty becomes very serious indeed. 'Diana did not quite see it like that. As far as she was concerned, a state banquet was just an irritation.' She asked Wharfe if she could head off early. The Scotland Yard officer explained that she couldn't yet leave because Princess Anne had got stuck in traffic. Diana snapped back: 'Ken, I know all about their bloody orders . . . I want to go now.' At this point, Charles appeared, tugging on his cuffs in a slightly nervous manner. He clearly sensed an impending tantrum from his wife. 'Are we ready to go, Ken?' he asked. There was a stony silence as the policeman again said it was not their slot yet. 'Have I got time for another martini, then?' the Prince asked politely. Wharfe, finding the situation and the Prince amusing, did his best not to laugh. It struck him as all rather absurd. The frost emanating from Diana became icier towards her policeman. 'Is anything the matter?' the Prince asked, not directing his question to anyone in particular. Diana was spoiling for a fight and he sensed it. 'Well, Charles, there is, actually. I want to go now. I don't want to hang around here. Why can't we go now?' Prince Charles and Diana at a photocall before their wedding (left) and at Buckingham Palace after the ceremony (right) 'Diana,' Charles replied reasonably, 'you know the system. We have to go at the set time, so that we arrive just before Her Majesty.' He took a measured step back as though preparing himself for an onslaught. Diana turned on him. 'But Charles, why can't you go on your own? I can get there earlier. Nobody will worry about me,' she said. Of course, she knew that if she turned up without her husband, the waiting media would plaster it all over the front pages, speculating, quite rightly, that the Prince and Princess of Wales had had yet another row. When Charles pointed this out to her, however, she became even more frustrated. Pacing like a caged animal, Diana shouted: 'Charles, I have really had enough of this. I'm off.' 'No, Diana, we really have to wait,' he insisted. Whereupon he ordered another martini from butler Harold Brown and retreated to his study. Wharfe let out a little chortle. 'Do you find my husband funny, Ken?' Diana snapped. 'Well, do you?' Wharfe replied: 'Well, actually, I do, ma'am. I think he has a great sense of humour. It's not too far removed from my own.' Clearly exasperated, Diana retorted curtly: 'So, what kind of humour is that?' For the rest of that night she said not one word to Wharfe. It was an amusing incident, but also a telling one. It demonstrated the extent to which the royal relationship had soured and how difficult it could be for anyone caught in the crossfire. The daughter of a British couple who died while on holiday in Egypt claims her parents' bodies were sent home with missing organs. John Cooper, 69, and his wife Susan, 63, died in August while in their hotel room at the Seigenberger Aqua Magic Hotel in the Red Sea resort of Hurghada. Their daughter Kelly Ormerod, 40, is now criticising UK test delays and claiming her parents are 'missing body parts'. This comes as new reports have emerged that another Brit, David Humphries, 62, had had his heart and kidneys removed, before his body was sent back to the UK.The S John and Susan Cooper (left) died in their hotel room while on holiday in Egypt. Their daughter Kelly Ormerod (right) says some of their organs are missing The Sun reported that Ms Ormeod said: 'I do think that my parents bodies are missing body parts but I am getting no answers. 'I have been led to believe certain organs are missing. 'I feel it is being covered up.' Egyptian authorities previously insisted that the deaths of the couple - who were on a Thomas Cook holiday in the country - were caused by E.Coli bacteria. The couple died at the Steigenberger Aqua Magic Hotel in the Red Sea resort of Hurghada Mr and Mrs Cooper, from Burnley, Lancashire, were the subjects of a UK inquest which opened last month. The Egyptian Public Prosecutor released parts of a coroner's report which blamed E.Coli bacteria for the couple's death, despite subsequent UK post mortems having been found 'inconclusive'. Ms Ormerod previously said she has 'no faith' in the Egyptian authorities, who claimed their examinations showed Mr Cooper suffered acute intestinal dysentery caused by E.coli, and Mrs Cooper, a Thomas Cook employee, suffered a complication linked to infection, likely to have been caused by E.coli. Earlier this year, and also in Hurghada David Humphries, 62, died after collapsing in the pool during a game with his grandchildren in the Red Sea resort. David Humphries, 62, and his wife Lynda, 59, were on holiday when David died. His vital organs were missing during a second post-mortem Mr Humphries and his wife of 39 years Lynda were on a two-week family holiday in September with their daughter and grandchildren when he fell ill. A UK coroner ordered a second post-mortem examination of his body and the shocking discovery was made that his heart and kidneys were missing. After five hours of interviews following his death the family was told an autopsy was being carried out against their wishes. David and his wife Lynda were married for 39 years when he fell ill in Egypt. Mrs Humphries is now asking for answers over his missing organs and his death They had requested this not be done but were told it was procedure because they raised concerns over the hospitals treatment. Anita added: We didnt trust anyone anymore but they told us it was a police inquiry. When the body arrived home we were told it was in no state to be seen. Thats when alarms started ringing. His heart is most likely the thing that will tell us how he died. Now well never know. In Egypt they believe that someone cant be laid to rest without their heart. So I just dont understand why they would do this to our family. Peninsula will look to win its third consecutive CIF-SS Open Division title Friday when it takes on Westlake, which beat the Panthers twice during the regular season. Tesla is facing a criminal investigation into whether the electric car-marker misled investors by overstating production forecasts for its Model Three Sedan. FBI agents examining whether Tesla misstated information about production of its Model 3 sedans and misled investors about the companys business going back to early 2017, the Wall Street Journal reported. Action in the criminal investigation, headed by the US attorneys office in San Francisco, intensified in recent weeks after the Securities and Exchange Commission settled separate civil charges with Tesla and Chief Executive Officer Elon Musk. Tesla faces allegations it knowingly overstated production numbers and misled investors In September, the Securities and Exchange Commission announced that it was suing Elon Musk for tweeting that he would take the company private - a blunder that cost Tesla and Musk a combined $40 million in fraud settlement fees. The Model Three is a key part of Tesla's plan to expand from a niche player in the luxury segment to a car maker with broader appeal. In early 2017, the Palo Alto -based company announced plans to produce up to 5,000 Model Three' s a week by the end of that year. It fell far short, making just 793 in the last week and 2,700 for all of 2017. Tesla struggled to ramp up Model Three production as promised, plagued by factory issues and reports of unfit working conditions. Musk set lofty goals and insisted on sticking to them but the company has not met its own targets, according to countless media reports. The Journal reported that the FBI is investigating whether the company made projections about its Model Three production knowing it would be impossible to meet those goals. However the company has defended its forecasts. Tesla officials were transparent about how difficult it would be to ramp up Model 3 production, said spokesman Kamran Mumtaz. A separate case taken by the SEC against Tesla CEO Elon Musk over a tweet has finished Ultimately, given difficulties that we did not foresee in this first-of-its-kind production ramp, it took us six months longer than we expected to meet our 5,000 unit per week guidance', he said. Last month, Tesla settled a civil lawsuit by the Securities and Exchange Commission over tweets by founder Elon Musk that funding was in place to take the company private. Tesla had disclosed on September 18 that it received a 'voluntary request' for documents from the Justice Department. This came ten days before the company and Musk struck a settlement with the SEC in a separate case involving controversial tweets from the CEO. Tesla struggled to ramp up Model Three production as promised amid factory issues Tesla has ambitious plans to produce 5,000 Model Three vehicles by the end of 2017 But it hasnt been previously reported that the Justice Department is focusing on Teslas Model Three production issues dating to early last year and that the criminal securities-fraud probe is intensifying. In a statement to the Wall Street Journal, Tesla said it had 'received a voluntary request for documents from the Department of Justice about its public guidance for the Model 3 ramp' earlier this year and was 'cooperative in responding to it'. The company said it hasnt received any further requests from the agency. It said 'it took us six months longer than we expected to meet our 5,000 unit per week guidance'. In recent weeks, FBI agents have contacted former Tesla employees asking them for testimony in the criminal case. Elon Musk got into hot water over a controversial tweet where he said he would take the company live Elon Musk incurred the wrath of the SEC when he tweeted his intention to take Tesla private The former employees received subpoenas earlier in the probe, and FBI agents recently have sought to interview a number of them, sources said. In July 2017, Musk said he was confident that Tesla would be producing 20,000 Model Three's a month in December 2017, in line with his previous pledge of having 5,000 vehicles a week by years end. However the company ended up producing 2,700 Model 3s for all of 2017, and 793 in the last week of 2017. The FBI is now comparing the companys statements with its production capability during 2017. Earlier this week, Tesla confounded critics by reporting healthy profits and significantly positive cash flow from July to September this year. The Model Three is a key part of Tesla's plan to expand from a niche player to a car maker with broader appeal For months critics have been warning that cash flow problems threatened the company's survival. Many experts were critical when CEO Elon Musk claimed back in April that he would deliver positive cash flowand profitsstarting in the third quarter of 2018. But results posted on Wednesday's showed that Tesla is not in danger of going bankrupt. Analysts thought Tesla was in trouble earlier this year because the company had been burning almost a billion dollars a quarter in late 2017 and early 2018. If a company's cash burn continues over an extended period of time, the company is operating on stockholder equity funds and borrowed capital. However the massive burn rate Tesla suffered in 2017 and early 2018 was a temporary situation associated with the ramp-up of Model 3 production. Tesla is now generating cash, not consuming it and has largely managed to silence critics for the time being. Tekashi 6ix9ine was affiliated in a shooting a few hours after he received just four years probation for posting footage of a 13-year-old girl performing sex acts at a party, and video of a man groping the young teen. The Brooklyn rapper, 22, was celebrating the lenient sentence at upscale restaurant Philippe Chow, near Madison Avenue and East 61 Street in Manhattan, at 6pm when a brawl broke out. Tekashi met up with his new manager for 10k Projects at the eatery, where the man had a security team present. One of the men supposedly barred Tekashi's bodyguard and his entourage from entering, according to TMZ. Tekashi's bodyguard began arguing with the security man over the matter, before a third party opened fire and struck the rapper's guard in the torso. Tekashi, whose real name is Daniel Hernandez, was reportedly not hurt but his bodyguard had been rushed to hospital in serious, but stable condition. No arrests have yet been made. Police temporarily shut down part of Madison Avenue at 6pm amid the shooting investigation. Scroll down for video Rapper Daniel Hernandez, aka Tekashi 6ix 9ine, celebrates after being sentenced to four years probation in Manhattan Supreme Court on Friday, October 26, 2018 The Brooklyn rapper was celebrating the lenient sentence with friends at upscale restaurant Philippe Chow, near Madison Avenue and East 61 St in Manhattan, at 6pm when a fight broke out. Pictured, police surround the restaurant after the shooting Police in New York were looking for a gunman after a shooting on the Upper East Side during rush hour Tekashi69 was reportedly not hurt but his bodyguard was rushed to hospital in a serious, but stable condition Just hours earlier, the rapper was seen grinning in court as he was sentenced to just four years probation for a 2015 child sex case in which he publicly posted a video of a 13-year-old girl performing sexual acts at a party. The hip hop star was pictured beaming from ear to ear Friday in Manhattan Supreme Court after he heard the verdict. Tekashi thanked the judge afterward and said: 'I have millions of youth that look at me as a role model and the last place I want to be is incarcerated, they dont deserve it. Thank you.' In the crude video taken in Harlem, the child, sans clothes, was 'engaging in oral intercourse' with Taquan Anderson, as the rapper made thrusting movements behind her. In a separate video, Taquan, also charged in the case, groped the girl's breasts as she sat on Tekashi's lap. The rapper was 18 at the time. Hernandez was convicted of using a minor female to perform sex acts in a video in 2015 The heavily-tattooed rapper appeared nervous as he awaited the verdict Friday in Manhattan Tekashi thanked the judge afterward and said: 'I have millions of youth that look at me as a role model and the last place I want to be is incarcerated, they dont deserve it. Thank you' Tekashi admitted to the child sex crime and pleaded guilty to one count of Use of a Child in a Sexual Performance in October 2015. The judge granted him a plea in exchange for his honesty, and two years of his sentence were deferred. He was credited for one year of the sentence, and will now technically serve only three. He will be required to complete 1,000 hours of community service and steer clear of trouble. In earlier photos captured by DailyMail.com Friday, the rapper was seen entering the courtroom alongside his enormous entourage. He will be required to complete 1,000 hours of community service and steer clear of involvement in gangs The judge granted him a plea in exchange for his honesty, and two years of his sentence were deferred The Gummo crooner's pals were spotted giving him a pep talk ahead of the anticipated sentencing. Tekashi appeared a tad more put together than usual, wearing a black suit, white dress shirt and orange and black striped tie. The heavily-tattooed rapper nervously placed his hand over his mouth and closed his eyes as he prepared to hear the verdict. Rapper Tekashi 6ix9ine arrives at New York State Supreme Court for sentencing on Friday, October 26, 2018 in New York In earlier photos captured by DailyMail.com Friday, the rapper was seen entering the courtroom alongside an enormous entourage Tekashi appeared a tad more put together than usual, wearing a black suit, white dress shirt and orange and black striped tie Tekashi has had numerous other run-ins with the law this year. He was arrested in August after he missed a court date for allegedly choking a 16-year-old fan who was trying to record him at a Houston mall. His arrest for the January altercation came after he landed back in New York City from a European tour. And in May, he was taken into custody for driving under a suspended license. He was also accused of assaulting a police officer in Brooklyn. His attorney, Lance Lazzaro, argued in court that his client's recent arrests happened well after the 2017 deadline for the plea deal. The four-year probation sentence for the child sex crime was what his team had been seeking all along. Whether or not retail tycoon Sir Philip Green is guilty of any illegal conduct in relation to the allegations now swirling around him, I do not know. But I am confident the truth will out. What I do know for certain is that Green treated both me and the head of The Pensions Regulator another woman in a menacing manner that was wholly unacceptable. For me this was first-hand experience of a man behaving in a way that I believe was more aggressive and more intrusive than if I had been another powerful man. In 2016, a few weeks before the high street fashion and homewares chain BHS went into administration, Green had contacted me on my personal mobile number with a torrent of cryptic and unpleasant texts. Baroness Altmann (pictured) said she received texts from Sir Philip Green around the time of the BHS crisis in 2015 I was Minister of State for Pensions at the time, and Green was the former owner of the struggling business which employed 11,000 people. He had famously sold it for 1 to City investors the year before. Sometimes the texts would arrive before daybreak, sometimes late at night, as Green tried to bully me into meeting with him. I asked my office to tell him that I could not help him in any way, especially if he was concerned about The Pensions Regulators ongoing investigations into the BHS pension scheme. The company had a 571million pension deficit and the Regulator was examining calls for Green, who had run BHS for 15 years, to contribute to the scheme (which he eventually did, to the tune of 363million, in February 2017). But Green refused to accept the response from my office, and continued to bombard me with texts and phone messages. Part of one such text, sent late at night on February 1 2016, read: ...I am happy to wait till wed night after which I will go where I have to go. This is not a threat but I have to look after our business I trust you will understand. As I have said you dont even know what I want to talk to you about. Look forward to your reply thankyou. I received another at 05:34 am on February 2 and several more that day, including the following at 20:34: Am I to take it there is no chance of a meeting if no I will have to do or go wherever u feel. Not looking to cause you any problems but u cant just do nothing. He simply would not take no for an answer. I asked him to put in writing what it was he wished to discuss. I asked him to explain why he needed to see me. But he refused to say and just replied in riddles. If I had been a man, I believe he would have replied more courteously and at the very least told me what he wished to talk about. He was playing games with me. He seemed to feel entitled to behave like this complaining that he was a big employer and hectoring me: This is crazy we need a solution. The pressure increased as he persuaded other people to call me to intervene on his behalf. I explained again that I would not break with protocol to meet him while he was under investigation. He then accused me of behaving exactly like the Regulator Lesley Titcomb and levelling accusations of incompetence against us both. To be treated like this was frightening and frustrating. Men who insult and demean women in this way need to realise that such behaviour is simply unacceptable. I was hugely grateful to my loyal officials who tried to protect me against Greens bullying tactics. When I left office in July 2016, the BHS saga was still rumbling on. It was after I gave evidence to the Parliamentary Committee investigation into the failure of the BHS pension scheme that the bullying began again. Green phoned me to warn me not to speak against him, that I should shut up and not talk about the situation. Again his threatening tone was deeply disturbing. Being subjected to such intimidating behaviour is a terrible strain on mental wellbeing. Green was pictured on the phone while walking through the Sabino Canyon recreation area on Friday Perhaps he would argue that he treats both men and women in this manner, but I do not believe that is true and even if it is, no woman should have to put up with this any more. Once, it was the norm for men to belittle women in the workplace. When I began my business career in the City of London in the early 1980s, it was a male-dominated bastion of testosterone-fuelled machismo. Lewd, crude comments, swearing and sexual innuendo were rife. Men would discuss their sexual exploits after business trips or weekends away. I felt uneasy much of the time. Nearly all female staff in those days were in secretarial or administrative roles and treated with disdain, regularly insulted and rudely criticised, both about their competence and their appearance. Professional women were few and far between, and I was often the only female in meetings, or in the Directors Dining Room, usually feeling uncomfortable at the conversation going on around me. I wish Id spoken up against this sooner and I am ashamed I was too intimidated to do so. The sad fact is that its very probable that nothing I said would have done any good. In those days, if you wanted to make a success of your career, you just had to put up with it. But as I became more senior, it became easier to tell colleagues this behaviour was unacceptable. And over time, things have definitely changed. Having more women in Parliament, as well as the promotion of more women into senior roles in the workplace has helped, while stronger legislation helps to protect us against misogyny, bullying and intimidation. Most men have accepted the new realities. However, there are still some who seem not to have moved with the times. In particular, there has been a noticeable increase recently in attempts to cover up sexual harassment, such as the use of non-disclosure agreements for female staff working at the now notorious Presidents Club men-only charity event in January this year, or financial payoffs by powerful men to silence women who say they experienced sexual or racist harassment. This would suggest there is a creeping danger of the bullying, macho, behaviour of yesteryear making a resurgence. These abuses must be rooted out and the perpetrators condemned. Women too often have been silenced and bullied into submission. I know what this feels like: it takes its toll on self-esteem and mental equilibrium. So I feel I must speak up for the sake of future generations of women. Let us be clear. It is not acceptable for powerful men to treat anyone rudely or with disdain. But it is certainly not acceptable for men to bully women and entirely wrong for men to try to buy womens silence. Many of us have fought hard for womens progress over the years. We know what it was like before and do not want to return to those times. If we do not call out the unacceptable behaviour now, there is a danger that it will become more widespread. Weve made enormous strides in achieving recognition and respect, in moving towards equality, but we cannot rest easy. Donald Trump quickly shifted gears Friday afternoon in an attempt to redirect the national discussion away from an amateur would-be bomber and back to the midterm elections. Speaking to reporters as he left the White House for a political rally in North Carolina, the president said it was time to get back to the business of boosting his party's chances of holding on to control of Congress. He said he hoped the national media would come along for the ride and avoid beating him up all the way to November 6. 'The Republicans had tremendous momentum, and, then of course, this happened where all that you people talk about was that,' Trump lamented, referring to the five days of panic over a series of improvised explosives sent through the mail, and Friday's capture of a suspect. 'It was a big thing,' he acknowledged. 'Rightfully so. But now we have to start the momentum again.' President Donald Trump had a North Carolina political rally Friday, just hours after the arrest of a politically motivated fan who sent pipe bombs to prominent Democrats The president insisted it's time to get back to pumping himself and other Republicans up, with just 11 days left to determine who will control Congress in 2019 and 2020 With Election Day just 11 days ahead, a White House official told DailyMail.com that the president wants to return to his 'Jobs not mobs' theme, but is concerned that directly criticizing some of the same liberal politicians who were targeted by Cesar Sayoc. Trump-supporting, bodybuilding Cesar Altier Sayoc, 56, was taken into custody on Friday morning in the case of improvised explosives sent to Demoratic politicians and CNN 'But he'll probably do it anyway,' the official said. 'He's good at changing the subject, and really good at refusing to take prisoners.' Trump told the press corps on the South Lawn in a brief rain-speckled appearance that he had no intention of toning down his rhetoric. 'I think I've been toned down, you want to know the truth. I could really tone it up,' he said. 'The media's been extremely unfair to me and to the Republican Party,' the president insisted, returning to a time-worn theme that seldom fails to energize his base. Trump has avoided taking direct aim at CNN all week. New York City police evacuated the network's bureau there on Wednesday after a suspected bomb was found there, in a padded envelope addressed to former CIA Director John Brennan. Trump hasn't directly bashed CNN since the arrival of a pipe bomb there, and its New York City bureau's evacuation, gave the network a likely temporary amnesty against presidential 'fake news' tongue-lashings His Wednesday night rally in Wisconsin was spirited and at times raucous but Trump supporters there knew not to chant 'CNN sucks!' as they normally do A similar package sent to former Director of National Intelligence James Clapper at the same CNN address was intercepted at a Florida mail-sorting facility. Clapper is a CNN contributor; Brennan is paid for his commentary by MSNBC. Neither is a network employee. Still, the bombs have afforded CNN an amnesty likely temporary from Trump's frequent tongue-lashings. At a Wednesday night rally in Wisconsin, the typical crowd chant 'CNN sucks!' never materialized. Even though he didn't single out CNN or call the network 'fake news' as he left Washington on Friday, he cast a broad net around all the reporters he loves to hate. 'I think the media's been very, very unfair in terms of the Republican Party and the way it's been covered,' he said, seemingly setting up a return to the media-bashing that fires up his base. 'Many of them admit that,' he claimed. 'But the media has been unbelievably unfair to Republicans, conservatives, and certainly to me.' 'But with all of that being said, we're winning. So I like that.' Cesar Sayoc, 56, the Florida man accused of mailing pipe bombs to high-profile Democrats including two former presidents, is a Trump-loving Republican with a long rap sheet that goes back decades. In 1994, his own grandmother, Viola Altieri, accused him of domestic violence. He was also arrested in 2002 for making a bomb threat during a conversation with a Florida utility representative. Ryanair has been accused of 'talking rubbish' over its claim it 'immediately' reported the footage of racist abuse aimed at a 77-year-old woman on one of its flights. Widow Delsie Gayle, was the victim of a tirade and called an 'ugly black b*****' on one of the budget airline's planes. One week after the incident, which occurred Friday 19 October, Ryanair issued a lengthy statement defending its handling of the matter after coming under criticism. David Lawrence had filmed the video of the incident on the Ryanair flight Despite admitting cabin crew were shown the video after landing at Stansted, Ryanair claimed it 'immediately' shared the footage with police two days later on Sunday morning. However, the passenger who took the video on the flight before it took off from Barcelona has blasted the airline. David Lawrence, 56, from Kent said: 'They are talking rubbish. Their statement is making a lot of people confused - it doesn't make sense.' David Lawrence (pictured) said the airline were 'talking rubbish' and that their statement was making people 'confused' Mr Lawrence said he showed the footage to flight attendants at the end of the flight as well as to Ryanair staff at the front desk. The airline issued the statement in an effort to dispel 'false claims' that it did not respond quickly. It said Ryanair 'only became aware of this video late on Saturday', before reporting it to Essex Police at 9am on Sunday. This is despite the fact that Mr Lawrence has claimed he showed it to both cabin crew and RyanAir staff on the ground. This came after the footage spread widely on social media, and they came under much criticism for failing to eject the passenger from flight FR9015 before take-off. The airline has not responded to repeated requests for comment on why staff did not raise the video with police after the flight. Ryanair's statement came as David Mesher, of Birmingham, publicly apologised for the first time over his treatment of Delsie Gayle, while he denied being a racist. David Mesher, 70, shocked the nation when he was filmed calling 77-year-old Delsie Gayle an 'ugly black b******' Mrs Gayle (pictured says it will take a long time to forgive Mesher for his vile racist outburst on the plane The Birmingham man has today denied being prejudiced after footage of his vile rant went viral and apologised for the outburst on the Stansted-bound flight. He told Good Morning Britain: 'I'm not a racist person by any means and it was just a fit of bad temper at the time.' Addressing Mrs Gayle, he said: 'I apologise for all the distress you've had there and since.' Mesher (pictured) has denied being a racist and apologised He said he lost his temper as a result of Mrs Gayle not seeming to want to get up when he needed to reach the window seat. 'I said Ive got to get to the window seat and there didnt seem to be any response,' he said. 'And then I asked her again, I said I have to get to the window seat and she didnt seem to want to get up..or she didnt seem to ...then I probably lost my temper a bit and I ordered her to get up.' Windrush immigrant Mrs Gayle appeared on the show with daughter Carol and when asked if she accepted the apology, she responded 'I don't think so'. 'You must forget and forgive but it's going to take a long time,' she said. 'I was so depressed all I've been doing just crying I cant sleep.' They accused the airline of trying to 'sweep it under the carpet' and claimed to have had no contact from them and Carol says they are pursuing 'legal action'. As Mrs Gayle claimed 'nobody' helped her during the tirade, Carol added: 'More people could have intervened and especially the gentleman - the flight attendant. He (Mesher) should have been taken off the plane, or moved, something should have been done.' The airline has shared this letter, which apologises on behalf of the airline to Mrs Gayle following the incident Ryanair also shared this email, which it sent to Mrs Gayle in the aftermath of Mesher's racist rant on the flight Ryanair today said that the airline only became aware of the incident the following day, when they saw the video. But in the clip a flight attendant can be seen near Mesher during the row. It also shared a letter and email addressed to Mrs Gayle apologising for the incident. Head of Communications Robin Kiely told MailOnline: 'We again extend our very sincere apologies to this passenger for the regrettable, and unacceptable remarks that were made to her by an adjacent passenger, and we believe that by reporting this matter immediately to the Essex Police and by apologising in writing to this customer early on Sunday morning, Ryanair treated it with the urgency and seriousness it warranted.' Viewers took to Twitter to share their outrage over Mesher's apology and rubbished his claim that he isn't racist. Today the mother and daughter said that Mesher would not have said what he did if he was not a racist One user wrote: 'Those phrases slipped out of his mouth too easily for someone who apparently isn't racist.' It comes two day after police questioned Mesher at his home after the incident aboard a plane but have not yet arrested him. Two uniformed officers turned up at his sheltered accommodation flat in the West Midlands after he was unmasked by MailOnline. A spokesperson for the force said: 'We are assisting Essex Police over an alleged incident on a Ryanair flight but they are the primary investigators.' The spokesperson declined to say if the man would be arrested for formal questioning, saying: 'We cannot comment on that but our inquiries are ongoing.' An Essex Police spokesperson added: 'We have asked the local force in the west Midlands to assist us directly on this matter.' Delsie Gayle, 77, Mesher's victim, previously appeared on this Morning with her daughter where they said their family deserves a public apology Former railway worker Mesher stayed behind closed doors at his first flat in Yardley Wood, declining to talk to the large media pack gathered outside. Mesher was identified by his neighbours and a former work colleague as the man at the centre of the shocking video. Mesher unleashed a torrent of abuse at grandma Mrs Gayle, 77, calling her an 'ugly black b*****d' after they boarded a flight in Barcelona on Friday Police today questioned Ryanair passenger David Mesher at his home after an alleged racial abuse incident aboard a plane but have not yet arrested him He also filmed shouting 'don't speak to me in a f****** foreign language' while on board the London bound jet last Friday. Ryanair has been criticised for its handling of the incident as Mesher was not kicked off the flight nor were the authorities in Spain informed about it. Instead, Mrs Gayle was moved to another aisle while Mesher continued to sit in his own seat. When confronted by MailOnline on Tuesday he refused to apologise for his reported vile rant towards the stunned woman, insisting: 'Go away, there's nothing I want to say.' Mesher was identified by his neighbours and a former work colleague as the man at the centre of the shocking video Neighbours at the block of flats described him as a 'weirdo' and a 'bully'. Until his retirement Mr Mesher worked as a train announcer for London Midland Railways. He had previously worked at London Waterloo train station in the main ticket office as an employee of British Rail. A former colleague told MailOnline he was stunned to recognise 70-year-old Mesher on the video that has been seen worldwide and condemned by MPs and Downing Street. The colleague said: 'It is 30 years since I last worked with David and he was not like the person you see on the video. 'He was in the ticket office at Waterloo station and was always so polite. He would not be rude to anyone, otherwise he would not have been dealing with the public. 'It was a real shock to see him and the vile language that the used. He should be condemned for that. It was awful. That isn't the David Mesher I remember when we worked together.' Mr Mesher also worked in Essex and lived with his elderly mother until her death. He has never married. Neighbours at his sheltered accommodation told MailOnline they were appalled by his abuse towards another passenger. One man said: 'He is a racist pig and bully and everyone here recognises his face from the TV news and papers. 'What he did was totally out order and he should be punished. I can't imagine he would have behaved that way to that lady if a man had been present with her. 'But he won't get arrested because it happened on Spanish soil.' Barcelona City Hall has joined the fight to make sure Mr Mesher is brought to justice. Officials vowed to report the sickening incident - which took place on a Ryanair plane leaving the Catalan capital for London Stansted - to Spanish prosecutors. The pledge came as Barcelona mayoress Ada Colau attacked Ryanair over their response to the racist attack and branded Mr Mesher as a 'swine'. The city's deputy mayor also appealed on Twitter for witnesses to come forward. Ada Colau wrote: 'Thank you, by the way, to the person who made the video, because it brought to public attention an event that can't go unpunished. 'As the mayor of a feminist city that fights against all forms of discrimination, the images in the video are unbearable to me. 'So I can't even imagine how the victim of this aggression felt. The flight was leaving Barcelona, and Barcelona isn't going to take something like this lying down.' Amber Yoon pictured) was allegedly subjected to bullying at school by her peers The parents of a child accused of bullying a little girl who was allegedly found with a makeshift noose around her throat have taken the girl's mother to court. Amber Yoon's mother, Belinda Yoon, was ordered to face court over a restraining order that has been placed on her by the alleged bully's parents, who believe their daughter has been the victim of trolling and online abuse. It stems from an alleged attack that took place at Queen of Apostles school in Riverton, in Perth's south, when ten-year-old Amber was allegedly found hanging from a tree with a noose made out of a skipping rope tied around her neck. Amber Yoon's mother, Belinda Yoon (pictured), was ordered to face court over a restraining order that has been placed on her by the alleged bully's parents The family of the girl accused of orchestrating the attack and incessantly bullying Amber, who has struggled with illness her entire life, argue Ms Yoon has 'driven past the family home in an agitated state'. In a tearful video uploaded to Facebook, Ms Yoon denied those allegations. She has since had a change of heart regarding the implications of the court appearance, telling 9News she would 'welcome it because the truth will come out'. 'I have nothing to hide. I'm just fighting for my little girl,' she said. Amber suffers from a slew of sicknesses and has been in and out of hospital since she was a little girl Ten year old Amber was allegedly found hanging from a tree with a noose made out of a skipping rope tied around her neck Belinda Yoon (pictured) told reporters she just wants to fight for her little girl as she transitions into a new school No charges were laid against the alleged bully, with police unable to determine beyond reasonable doubt that the perpetrator knew the consequences of their actions or acted with malicious intent. Ms Yoon described that moment as 'heartbreaking'. 'It is a very strange situation. I am not angry at the child who did this, I'm angry that a little girl was terrified and thought she was going to die and seemingly no one is accountable.' Ms Yoon said the incident has left Amber struggling to keep on top of her health. 'It looks like it has damaged her oesophagus and [with] the surgery she had done last year, she has started vomiting blood again,' Ms Yoon said. The magistrate set a hearing date of February 2019. A week has passed since Delsie Gayle's flight landed at London Stansted. She has unpacked, opened all her post, watered the plants and life should be returning to normal. Only the 77-year-old can't stop shaking and crying. She hasn't slept, she has barely eaten and seems far frailer than the plucky grandmother of 12 and great-grandmother of five who boarded the plane to spend four days on the Costa Brava nearly a fortnight ago. Her daughter Carol, 53, has barely left her mother's side. 'She didn't leave the house for five days,' she says. 'I haven't seen her smile. I keep telling her it wasn't her fault.' What Carol is referring to is an incident that happened on a Ryanair flight from Barcelona. Delsie was subjected to racist abuse from a British passenger that was recorded on a mobile phone and uploaded to the internet, where it went viral and made headlines worldwide. The victim of Ryanair racist David Mesher, 75, Delsie Gayle is pictured at her east London home with her daughter Carol, 53 Her abuser, 75-year-old David Mesher, a former railway worker living in Birmingham, became irate when Delsie, who has crippling arthritis and a double knee replacement and had been escorted onto the plane in a wheelchair, was unable to get up from her aisle seat quickly enough to let him past to the window. In a tirade watched nearly 1.5 million times online, Mr Mesher calls the placid, shocked old lady a 'stupid ugly cow' and an 'ugly black b******' as other passengers look on in shock. Yesterday, Mr Mesher appeared on TV denying that he was a racist and insisting he had simply 'lost his temper' with Delsie, to whom he apologised for any distress he had caused. Mesher (pictured on the plane) denied being a racist and apologised to Mrs Gayle Asked if she accepted his apology, she simply responded: 'I don't think so. You must forget and forgive but it's going to take a long time for me to get over what he has done to me.' Meanwhile, she says she has heard nothing not even a phone call from the company at the heart of all this. Yesterday, Ryanair, Michael O'Leary's budget airline, issued a statement extending its 'very sincere apologies to this passenger for the regrettable and unacceptable remarks that were made to her'. A spokesman added that, by reporting the matter to Essex police and apologising in writing to Delsie on Sunday morning (a claim she refutes), Ryanair treated the incident 'with the urgency and seriousness it warranted'. Back home in her neat, three-bedroom terrace house in Leyton, East London, where faces of youngsters in school uniform beam from photographs on her living room walls, Delsie still can't come to terms with what happened. The indignity of such an impersonal, anodyne response from Ryanair is yet another blow. 'They haven't been in contact with me,' she says in her soft Caribbean lilt. 'They owe me a proper apology. 'I don't know when I'll get over what he said. To call me that because of the colour of my skin. What is wrong with my colour? Why me? 'I would never speak to somebody like that. Oh Lord . . .' Her voice trails off. She wrings her hands. Delsie Gayle is pictured on her wedding day with her husband Austin in 1964 This man this foul-mouthed, ignorant individual whom she, ever polite, refers to as a 'gentleman' throughout our interview represents an attitude that saddens her deeply, and one she has never encountered before. For 55 years have passed since Delsie Gayle moved to this country from her native Jamaica. In that time, Mrs Gayle spent almost three decades working in care homes, devoting her life to looking after the elderly, while raising her four children three girls and a boy with her husband Austin. In the London community where she lives, everybody knows her name. She has travelled the world to Canada, America and across Europe and counts as friends people from different ethnicities and backgrounds. But never in all those years was she subjected to the sort of vile racist abuse she suffered from a stranger last week. This is not the Britain she knows and joyously calls home, and she is devastated by the cruel reminder that racism is alive in 2018. 'Why is it happening now?' she asks. 'Why is it OK for a man to talk to me like that? Why did nobody tell him off? 'If it was the other way round, I think I would have been arrested. It wasn't like this when I came to this country in the Sixties. I never suffered like I did on that plane.' The trip had been planned as a pick-me-up by Carol, her eldest daughter, a chef. It is almost a year since Austin, Delsie's beloved husband of 53 years, passed away, and Carol wanted to do something to lift her mother's spirits so she planned a four-day trip, just the two of them, to Spain. 'I was feeling very low,' says Delsie. 'I miss my husband. I think about him every day. Of course I thought about him on holiday, but it was nice. The hotel was lovely. We had a really good time.' Those happy memories were shattered on the journey home. In the video footage, Delsie appears stunned as her abuser launches into her and another passenger tries to intervene. Having asked the flight attendant if she could sit with her daughter, both she and Carol who had been in the lavatory during the incident and didn't know what had happened moved to the row behind. Mr Mesher was allowed to remain where he was, unchallenged and unpunished, despite others on the plane asking for him to be thrown off. Indeed, a flight attendant is heard on camera asking if he is all right. Delsie and Carol went on TV this week and said that Mesher would not have said what he did if he was not a racist Back in Britain, mother and daughter were ushered off the plane by cabin crew, who told them there was nothing they could do. They were eventually given a number for customer services and told to ring on the Monday morning. They went home in disgust. By Monday, of course, everyone had seen the video, with news outlets around the world reporting on it. Mrs Gayle's doorbell hasn't stopped ringing. Police who interviewed Mr Mesher this week came to take a statement on Thursday, and the Gayles are considering legal action for racial hatred and emotional abuse. It seems strange, and sad, that Delsie should have had her first taste of racism now. In Sixties Britain, when some 75,000 Commonwealth migrants were arriving every year, racism and discrimination were rife. But Delsie, who was born in a small town in Jamaica, says the UK made her feel welcome. 'I lived in Jamaica until my 20s,' she recalls. 'It was a happy place. But everyone I knew was coming to London. There was work and opportunity here. 'My cousins, my sister and then my husband we were still sweethearts then they all moved to England.' Austin, who worked as a builder and plasterer, came in 1960. He travelled by boat, just like the first Caribbean migrants of that generation, who arrived when the MV Empire Windrush docked in Essex in 1948. Ryanair victim: If I'd abused a white man, I would have been arrested The grandmother who was subjected to a torrent of racist abuse on a Ryanair flight yesterday revealed that the ordeal has left her feeling depressed. Delsie Gayle, 77, heaped criticism on the budget airline by questioning why they failed to remove the offending passenger despite watching him repeatedly abusing her. Mrs Gayle and her family were in a state of 'utter shock' last night as the Irish airline had still not contacted them, despite a public outcry over its handling of the incident. Delsie Gayle, 77, revealed that the ordeal on the plane has left her feeling depressed Speaking publicly for the first time, the pensioner part of the Windrush generation of immigrants accused Ryanair of being inadvertently racist, claiming they would have reacted differently if a white passenger had been abused. 'I feel really depressed about it,' she said. 'I go to bed and say what have I done? I haven't done anything to attack him. Because of the colour of my skin. I was abused like that. '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. 'Why [is] he treating me because the colour of my skin, that's how I look isn't it? Because if I had done that to him I'm sure they would have called the police.' Mrs Gayle, who came to Britain from the Caribbean in the 1960s, had been taken on holiday by her family to lift her morale ahead of the first anniversary of her husband Austin's death. As they prepared to fly back to London from Barcelona-El Prat Airport on Friday, they encountered a tirade of abuse from a white male passenger. The man, who has yet to be identified, became agitated at how long Mrs Gayle, who suffers from arthritis, took to move from her aisle seat as he tried to get to his window seat. Mrs Gayle said: 'He said to me, 'Can you get up and let me come in?', so I said: 'In a minute.' He said: 'When I say get up, I mean you ought to get up'. 'So I said to him, 'Don't point your hand in my face' and he said 'I do what I want to do'.' Airline staff then watched on without intervening as the abuser called Mrs Gayle a 'black b******' and threatened to push her off the row of seats they shared. Mrs Gayle accused Ryanair of being inadvertently racist, claiming they would have reacted differently if a white passenger had been abused During an emotional interview at her home in Leyton, East London, Mrs Gayle said: 'I know if I do it to him I know everyone on the plane would try to attack me. 'And because I'm black, I'm sad to say that, they didn't want to get involved with me.' Following the abuse, she was eventually moved to another seat while the man remained in his seat, refusing to apologise. 'I didn't want to sit there and for him to abuse me any more,' said Mrs Gayle, who had been seated apart from her family. 'It made me feel really angry.' Describing her frustration with Ryanair, she said: 'I decided I would not fly with that airline, because they don't treat you with respect.' Her daughter Carol, 53, who was also on the flight to Stansted, said: 'He should be moved or taken off the plane and nothing was done. '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 [the abuser] was the victim, the way that Ryanair were treating it. 'Nobody has apologised. We've not had nothing. We just want an open apology from Ryanair. I can't even watch the video any more. It's just so upsetting.' She said Ryanair staff refused to do anything, despite the family complaining that the abuser had used racist language, and said they were in a rush to board the next plane. 'I called the attendant and said, 'Look I told you to take him off, he's been shouting racial abuse',' she said. 'The flight attendant said he didn't hear any of that. 'He didn't hear any racial abuse. That's what he said. The captain or pilot came on and said there's nothing we can do now. We have got so many people that need to get on this plane.' Both Mrs Gayle and her husband Austin were originally from Jamaica. After moving to the UK in 1965, Mrs Gayle spent more than two decades working as a care assistant. The Ryanair incident happened at the end of a three-day trip to the Costa Brava planned by Carol, one of her three daughters, to help her over the grief of losing her husband a year ago. Advertisement Delsie came to Britain by air in December 1963. She wasn't afraid of the life that awaited, though there was one shock. 'I remember being very cold when I stepped off the plane,' she says. 'It was freezing. I didn't even have tights on. We didn't have temperatures like that in Jamaica. I was so cold I stayed inside for weeks.' Delsie and Austin married in March 1964, at the Baptist church in Stoke Newington. Afterwards, they moved into a shared house in East London. 'They were good people there,' she says. 'They knew my husband and they would say, 'You have a lovely wife.' It was a big community, lots of Jamaicans who were like family.' When she first arrived, Delsie worked in a shoe factory and then, after her four children were born, took a job as night manager at a care home for the elderly. In the late Seventies, she moved to her current house and transferred to a care home near by, where she stayed for 25 years. 'I liked caring for the elderly. They were very friendly. I loved being around their grandchildren. It was a lovely place to work.' And not once, she insists, in all those years, did she encounter racism in the UK. 'Are you joking?' she asks, at the very suggestion. 'Never. Sometimes the older people might say a word they didn't mean, but it was only when their minds were going and they would say sorry afterwards. But never from a stranger in the street.' Much of this she attributes to her husband, whom she describes as 'the kindest man', and who she believes protected her from any unpleasantness. 'With him around, people were always nice to him and to me,' Delsie says, with a deep sigh. 'He looked after me.' Carol adds: 'Dad was very friendly. He didn't let anything bother him and he got on with everybody. Anything bad, he let it go over his head. 'He was always smiling and joking. You knew him for five minutes and you felt like you'd known him all your life.' In his later years, Austin, who was 79 when he died last November, suffered from vascular dementia. He became ill and wheelchair-bound, and Delsie and her children cared for him at home until, ten days before he passed away, he had to go into a hospice. 'It was horrible,' says Carol, tears streaming down her cheeks. 'He was the centre of our world. Mum has been so low since losing him. That's why we had our little break I wanted to take her mind off it around the anniversary.' Carol found an online travel company offering a flight-and-hotel package to the Costa Brava. 'I went with Ryanair because the timing of the flights suited us,' she explains. 'I know they're often delayed and I didn't want Mum to be waiting around late at night.' The holiday itself was a success. Although the weather was 'terrible' they went on boat trips, ate nice meals and sat on the beach throwing bread to the seagulls. 'But now I can't think about it without thinking about that man,' says Delsie. Carol had booked aisle seats opposite one another for herself and her mother and paid for the privilege as well as pre-boarding assistance that meant Delsie, who often walks with a stick, was one of the first to be wheeled on. It was just after she had taken her seat that Mr Mesher got on board and the nightmare began. Carol witnessed the first exchange but, needing the toilet and believing it to be settled once Mr Mesher was in his seat, didn't see the rest. 'All I knew was that Mum was in a different seat when I came back,' she says. 'I asked her what happened and she just said she had wanted to move. So I swapped with someone in the row behind.' The plane took off and the two-hour flight passed without further incident. But Delsie's abuser remained in uncomfortably close proximity. 'When he was getting off he turned and looked at me again,' Delsie recalls. Carol realised someone David Lawrence, a 55-year-old charity worker had filmed Mr Mesher shouting at her mother initially, but didn't know he had continued recording. It wasn't until the plane landed that Mr Lawrence approached the Gayles and she saw the horrifying footage. Both she and her mother are grateful to him, and to the passenger in the row behind, for encouraging Ryanair to move Mr Mesher or throw him off the plane. Many of the other passengers were Spanish and didn't understand the gravity of the abuse. Their anger lies squarely with Ryanair: the flight attendants who witnessed what happened yet did nothing; the ground staff who hurried them off the plane; and those in charge who have failed to offer an adequate apology. A petition to boycott the airline has 250,000 signatures, and the two say they and their family will never fly with Ryanair again. 'All I want is a written apology so it doesn't happen to another person,' Delsie says. 'I don't want anyone to go through what I did.' Carol adds: 'The way they have handled this is disgusting. They're trying to sweep it under the carpet. It is unacceptable that they tolerate racism on their planes.' As for David Mesher, Delsie whose dignified composure falters at the mention of his name can't bear to think about him. Whether there is a case against him is to be decided by Essex police, while the deputy mayor of Barcelona has called for an investigation. 'I can't read the papers or look at the news,' says Delsie. 'I never want to see his face again.' Instead she is focusing on the support of family, friends and indeed strangers, whose warmth and generosity has buoyed her through this difficult week. Someone has offered to treat her to lunch at the Ritz in London; while Virgin Atlantic has offered her return flights to Florida, where she dreams of going to Disney World. She insists it isn't bravery that made her speak up about what happened. 'At first I was afraid of making a fuss,' she says. 'But he can't treat me that way. Nobody should speak to another person like that, whatever the colour of their skin.' And with that remark, Delsie Gayle, a kind-hearted, humble woman who has lived here most of her life, shows she is far more British, far more representative of this country and the values we hold dear, than her small-minded abuser could ever be. Charity shop staff have made a historic discovery dating back more than 200 years. Employees at a southern New Jersey branch of US chain Goodwill unearthed pages from 18th century 'rebel' newspaper, The Pennsylvania Journal and Weekly Advertiser, dating back to December 28, 1774. Impressively, the rare treasure features the iconic 'Unite or Die' design on the masthead - linked to Benjamin Franklin and considered America's first political cartoon. As a result, experts at New York auction house Cohasco estimate its value as between $6,000-$16,000 (4,600-12,500). Famed: The item features 'unite or die' logo, which was attributed to late Benjamin Franklin The document was dropped off in Woodbury, New Jersey, earlier this month. Employee Mike Storms did the detective work, guessing it was original given small keyholes at the inside edge of the pages that suggest they had once been bound by string. Whats more, the four pages were preserved in an old frame with glass on both sides. 'Its like a big treasure hunt, really, because you never know whats going to come through. Sometimes, the things take a lot of research,' says Heather Randall, e-commerce manager of the regional operation in Bellmawr. 'We got a Bill of Rights the other day, but it was (printed by) the Phillip Morris Tobacco Company,' she said Thursday. 'It looked good.' Unearthed: Heather Randall (L) and Mike Storms look over a Dec. 28, 1774 Pennsylvania Journal and the Weekly Advertiser at the Goodwill Industries in Bellmawr, N.J Rich pickings: Experts at New York auction house Cohasco estimate its value as between $6,000-$16,000 (4,600-12,500) It boasts three items signed by John Hancock, then president of the Provincial Congress Goodwill Industries plan to sell the find to funds its educational and job-training services. There are three other existing copies of the same weekly edition of the Pennsylvania Journal, all housed in university collections. Randall hopes this one will find a home in the Philadelphia area where the public can see it. Fund: Goodwill Industries hope to sell it to help funds its educational and job-training services Age-old: A jumble of small advertisements also offer rewards for a lost horse or runaway apprentice, while another insists the poster will no longer pay his 'misbehav(ing)' wifes debts The framed pages boast three items signed by John Hancock, then president of the Provincial Congress, who pleads for the Colonies - including Connecticut, Maryland, Massachusetts, New York, New Hampshire, Pennsylvania and Rhode Island - to fight against French and Indian 'enemies' trying to divide them. Small advertisements also offer rewards for a lost horse or runaway apprentice, while another insists the poster will no longer pay his 'misbehav(ing)' wifes debts. The discovery was first reported by NJ Pen, an online news site. NASA has revealed the latest progress in the hunt for alien life - and says its is closing in on planets capable of sustaining life. 'As we continue checking off items on the habitability list, we'll draw closer and closer to finding a world bearing recognizable signs of life,' the space agency said. It has already discovered a huge range of planets across the Milky Way, which it described as a 'motley, teeming multitude: hot Jupiters, gas giants, small, rocky worlds and mysterious planets larger than Earth and smaller than Neptune. Scroll down for video NASA has already discovered a huge range of planets across the Milky Way, which it described as a 'a motley, teeming multitude'. Pictured, a new artists concept of how rocky, potentially habitable worlds elsewhere in our galaxy might appear. 'As we prepare to add many thousands more to the thousands found already, the search goes on for evidence of life and for a world something like our own.' 'As our space telescopes and other instruments grow ever more sensitive, we're beginning to zero in.' The claims come as NASA plans its next generation telescopes that could hunt for more signs of habitability. It said discoveries so far 'inspire excitement and curiosity among scientists and the public.' The space agency has found rocky planets in Earth's size range, at the right distance from their parent stars to harbor liquid water - but has so far been unable to tell if they possess atmospheres or oceans. Antennas of CSIRO's Australian SKA Pathfinder with the Milky Way overhead, which are taking part in the hunt from Earth 'Future space telescopes will be able to analyze the light from some of these planets, searching for water or a mixture of gases that resembles our own atmosphere.' Among the most critical factors in the shaping and development of a habitable planet is the nature of its parent star. The star's mass, size and age determine the distance and extent of its 'habitable zone' the region around a star where the temperature potentially allows for liquid water to pool on a planet's surface. NASA also paid tribute to the European Space Agency's Gaia satellite, launched in 2013, describing it as 'one of history's greatest star mappers'. It relies on a suite of high-precision instruments to measure star brightness, distance, and composition, and is being used to create a three-dimensional map of our Milky Way galaxy. WHAT IS THE EUROPEAN SPACE AGENCY'S GAIA PROBE AND WHAT IS DESIGNED TO DO? Gaia is an ambitious mission to chart a three-dimensional map of our galaxy, the Milky Way, and in the process reveal its composition, formation and evolution. Gaia has been circling the sun nearly a million miles beyond Earth's orbit since its launch by the European Space Agency (ESA) in December 2013. On its journey, the probe has been discreetly snapping pictures of the Milky Way, identifying stars from smaller galaxies long ago swallowed up by our own. Tens of thousands of previously undetected objects are expected to be discovered by Gaia, including asteroids that may one day threaten Earth, planets circling nearby stars, and exploding supernovas. Artist's impression of Gaia mapping the stars of the Milky Way. Gaia maps the position of the Milky Way's stars in a couple of ways. It pinpoints the location of the stars but the probe can also plot their movement, by scanning each star about 70 times Astrophysicists also hope to learn more about the distribution of dark matter, the invisible substance thought to hold the observable universe together. They also plan to test Albert Einstein's general theory of relativity by watching how light is deflected by the sun and its planets. The satellite's billion-pixel camera, the largest ever in space, is so powerful it would be able to gauge the diameter of a human hair at a distance of 621 miles (1,000 km). This means nearby stars have been located with unprecedented accuracy. Gaia maps the position of the Milky Way's stars in a couple of ways. Gaias all-sky view of our Milky Way Galaxy and neighbouring galaxies, based on measurements of nearly 1.7 billion stars. The map shows the total brightness and colour of stars observed by the ESA satellite in each portion of the sky between July 2014 and May 2016. Brighter regions indicate denser concentrations of especially bright stars, while darker regions correspond to patches of the sky where fewer bright stars are observed. The colour representation is obtained by combining the total amount of light with the amount of blue and red light recorded by Gaia in each patch of the sky. It pinpoints the location of the stars but the probe can also plot their movement, by scanning each star about 70 times. This is what allows scientists to calculate the distance between Earth and each star, which is a crucial measure. In September 2016, ESA released the first batch of data collected by Gaia, which included information on the brightness and position of over a billion stars. In April 2018, this was expanded to high-precision measurements of almost 1.7 billion stars. Advertisement The chart so far includes the positions of about 1.7 billion stars, with distances for about 1.3 billion. That has prompted a reassessment of star sizes to learn whether some might be larger, smaller, dimmer or brighter than scientists had thought, NASA said. 'Gaia has improved distances and has improved assessments of how bright a star is, and how big a planet is,' said Eric Mamajek, the deputy program chief scientist for NASA's Exoplanet Exploration Program. 'The whole issue has always been, how well do we understand the star? This is just another chapter of that ongoing story.' The latest scientific data from the Gaia space probe also is prompting a reassessment of the most promising 'habitable zone' planets found by observatories around the world, as well as space-based instruments like NASA's Kepler. NASA'S KEPLER CRISIS Kepler has become the third NASA space telescope in as many weeks to hit major problems. Chandra and Hubble both malfunctioned earlier this month, putting themselves in 'sleep mode'. Now, NASA has revealed Kepler has done the same. Kepler has become the third NASA space telescope in as many weeks to hit major problems Following a successful return of data from the last observation campaign, the Kepler team commanded the spacecraft into position to begin collecting data for its next campaign. However, on Friday, 'during a regularly scheduled spacecraft contact using NASAs Deep Space Network, the team learned that the spacecraft had transitioned to its no-fuel-use sleep mode.' The Kepler team is currently assessing the cause and 'evaluating possible next steps.' Advertisement Of the 3,700 exoplanets planets around other stars confirmed by scientists so far, about 2,600 were found by the Kepler space telescope. Kepler hunts for the tiny eclipse, or dip in starlight, as a planet crosses the face of its star. The most recent analysis of Kepler's discoveries shows that 20 to 50 percent of the stars in the sky are likely to have small, potentially rocky planets in their habitable zones. Our initial estimate of near Earth-sized, habitable-zone planets from the Kepler spacecraft as of June 19, 2017, was 30. Preliminary analysis of newer data, on both those exoplanets and their host stars, shows that the number is likely smaller possibly between 2 and 12. Much more data are needed, including a better understanding of how a planet's size relates to its composition. 'We're still trying to figure out how big a planet can be and still be rocky,' said Jessie Dotson, an astrophysicist at NASA's Ames Research Center in California's Silicon Valley. She is also the project scientist for Kepler's current, extended mission, known as K2. That should put us on more solid ground for the coming torrent of exoplanet discoveries from TESS (the Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite), and future telescopes as well. It brings us one step closer in our search for a promising planet among a galaxy of stars. 'This is the exciting part of science,' Dotson said. 'So often, we're really portrayed as, 'Now we know this story.' But I have a theory: Scientists love it when we don't know something. It's the hunt that's so exciting.' Archaeologists have discovered a secret tunnel and a cavity hidden below an ancient pyramid in Mexico that is believed to have been dedicated to 'underworld' Toltec rituals. They believe the 'passageway to the underworld' could contained unexplained deformed skulls among other strange items. The stunning discoveries were found in the archaeological site of Teotihuacan northeast of Mexico City in Mexico. The Pyramid of the Moon is the second largest pyramid in Mexico after the Pyramid of the Sun and is believed to have existed prior to 200 AD. Scroll down for video Archaeologists have discovered a new tunnel and a cavity hidden below an ancient pyramid in Mexico that is believed to have been dedicated to 'underworld' Toltec rituals The discovery of the chamber and tunnel is a result of a initial study using electrical resistivity carried out around the Pyramid of the Moon in June 2017. The city of Teotihuacan is believed to have been established around 100 BCE and was built by the Toltec before the Aztecs arrived. Details about the discovery were given in a statement from the investigators of the National Institute of Anthropology and History. Veronica Ortega, the director of the Project of Integral Conservation of Plaza de la Luna, which is the central square in the complex, said that the investigation is focused on a ritual space linked to the 'underworld'. 'Previous explorations found skeletons of individuals with cranial deformation, as in the Mayan area, and diverse green stone objects (necklaces, anthropomorphic figures made with mosaics), so it is not difficult to think that something similar could be found in the subsoil,' he said. The newly found tunnel is located at a depth of eight meters. 'The tunnel is located to the south of the Plaza de la Luna, but it is likely that there is another entrance to the east side,' Ortega added. Researchers have discovered a new tunnel and a cavity hidden below an ancient pyramid in Mexico that is believed to have been dedicated to 'underworld' Toltec rituals Dr Ortega said that the investigation into the cavity, which is believed to have been used as a chamber, will allow them to determine the connections that this old metropolis had with other regions of Mesoamerica, where many civilisations shared a similar culture. 'What's found inside could help to unravel the relationships that this ancient metropolis had with other regions of Mesoamerica,' he said. Experts previously say the tunnels may be associated with sacred flows of water and the underworld. "The discovery would confirm that the inhabitants of Teotihuacan followed the same pattern in their large-scale temples, and that their function would be to emulate the underworld," said Ortega after a previous find. Electric resistivity methods are a form of geophysical surveying which help create an image of the subsurface. These methods utilise differences in electric potential to identify subsurface material. The cavity, which experts believe could have been dedicated to rituals, is 8 metres (26 feet) below the pyramid and is 15 metres (49 feet) in diameter The cavity, which experts believe could have been dedicated to rituals, is 8 metres (26 feet) below the pyramid and is 15 metres (49 feet) in diameter. The tunnel is located towards the south of the Plaza de la Luna and experts believe there could be another entry to the east. In research carried out in the late 1980s at the site archaeologists Ruben Cabrera and Saburo Sugiyama discovered skeletons with cranial deformations along with objects from green stone. Studies from 2017 gave an indication of the possible existence of a chamber and the archaeologists have now confirmed the existence of the chamber. 'The finding confirms that Teotihuacans reproduced the same pattern of tunnels associated with their great monuments, whose function had to be the emulation of the underworld,' said Dr Ortega last year. CT scans were made last June by a team of experts headed by Denisse Argote Espino, of the Directorate of Archaeological Studies of INAH. Studies from 2017 gave an indication of the possible existence of a chamber and the archaeologists have now confirmed the existence of the chamber CT scans were made last June by a team of experts headed by Denisse Argote Espino, of the Directorate of Archaeological Studies of INAH. He said the preliminary images suggest a straight cavity ten meters deep that would go from the center of the square to the Pyramid of the Moon. The second largest structure in the ancient city, the Pyramid of the Moon is elevated by the land at higher ground and is the highest point in the complex, looking over a plaza below. Here, researchers operate the CT scanning equipment THE PYRAMID OF THE MOON The Pyramid of the Moon was named by the Aztecs who discovered Teotihuacan centuries after the original inhabitants and builders had left the area. The second largest structure in the ancient city, the Pyramid of the Moon is elevated by the land at higher ground and is the highest point in the complex, looking over a plaza below. Twelve small pyramid platforms surround the Plaza of the Moon, believed to be to allow thousands of the early residences to witness sacrificial rituals. Twelve small pyramid platforms surround the Plaza of the Moon, believed to be to allow thousands of the early residences to witness sacrificial rituals. The newly tunnel runs from the center of the Plaza de la Luna to the Pyramid of the Moon, in the Teotihuacan. This image was taken from the top of the pyramid. Built between 1 and 350 AD through successive stages, the Pyramid grew to forty six meter (150 feet) high with a base of 168 meters (550 feet) square. The earliest human sacrifice appears to be around 200 AD. Tombs in the pyramid contain both animal and human sacrifice as well as grave objects made of obsidian and greenstone. A tomb marking the fourth construction stage held a single male buried alive- wounded with his hands tied behind his back and jaguar, wolf and puma skeletons and over 400 relics. It was dedicated to The Great Goddess, the ruler of water, earth, fertility and creation. The tomb marking the fifth stage of construction contains four human skeletons and other ritual offerings. Advertisement The Pyramid of the Moon, located at the northern mouth of the Calzada de los Muertos in the Archaeological Zone of Teotihuacan, was built in seven stages. The first began to be built in the year 100 BC and successively were made extensions until 450 AD that the last stage was built. Recent archaeological breakthroughs have revealed that the nearby ancient Mesoamerican city of Tlaxcallan had somewhat of a senate but, candidates running for the position would be subjected to starvation, fierce public beatings, and years of study. Tlaxcallan was built around the year 1250 CE near what's now Tlaxcala, Mexico, and had a 'senate' of roughly 100 men. Tombs in the pyramid contain both animal and human sacrifice as well as grave objects made of obsidian and greenstone. Built between 1 and 350 AD through successive stages, the Pyramid grew to forty six meter (150 feet) high with a base of 168 meters (550 feet) square. And, being appointed to political office was no small feat. Candidates were trained warriors, and would have to stand naked in a public plaza while a crowd of people punched and kicked him, according to Science. Then, they'd be held in a temple for up to 2 years to be starved, beaten with spiked whips when they fell asleep, subjected to bloodletting rituals, and drilled in moral and legal code by the city's priests. The gruelling process was documented by a Spanish priest in the 1500s, but since then, archaeological efforts led largely by Richard Blanton, of Purdue University and his mentee Lane Fargher have revealed even further evidence of a republic. While the society might not be considered a full democracy, the researchers found that the common people had a say in their government, Science reports. The Pyramid of the Moon, located at the northern mouth of the Calzada de los Muertos in the Archaeological Zone of Teotihuacan, was built in seven stages. Along with this, there were several rulers who shared power. Just a few decades ago, it was believed that these types of societies didn't exist in pre-Columbian Mesoamerica, as many were known to have been ruled by powerful kings. But some sites, including Tlaxcallan, lacked many of the common signs of an autocratic rule. The state and leaders relied on taxes rather than external wealth, and people from all classes could become a part of the governing council, instead of being born into power, according to Science. While several different ethnic groups lived in Tlaxcallan, with many coming as refugees, anyone could join the senate if they were a strong enough warrior, the researchers explained. An example of the city's collective organization appears in evidence of houses built near one of the city's largest public plazas 'Look where we are,' Fargher told Science. THE SENATE OF TLAXCALLAN Tlaxcallan was built around the year 1250 CE near what's now Tlaxcala, Mexico. The state and leaders relied on taxes rather than external wealth, and people from all classes could become a part of the governing council, instead of being born into power, according to Science. And, several different ethnic groups lived in Tlaxcallan, and anyone could join the senate if they were a strong enough warrior. Tlaxcallan was built around the year 1250 CE near what's now Tlaxcala, Mexico, and had a 'senate' of roughly 100 men. And, being appointed to political office was no small feat While these society might not be considered a full democracy, the researchers found that the common people had a say in their government, Science reports. According to the researchers, a grid-like setup could be seen throughout the city, with little signs of a clear hierarchy. Common houses, for example, were built alongside public plazas. Advertisement 'Right in front of a very public space. In any other Mesoamerican site, next to the principal plaza you'd have an enormous palace. 'Here we have a pretty humble house.' According to the researchers, a grid-like setup could be seen throughout the city, with little signs of a clear hierarchy unlike other Mesoamerican societies, which centered on massive monuments. But, a similar pattern in the nearby city Teotihuacan has archaeologists divided. Some say it likely had a strong rulership, as it has grand structures such as pyramids, while others suggest its grid layout was indicative of a focus on the collective. Still, the researchers say collective governments experienced pendulum-like cycles, which could be reflected in a city's architecture. 'Democracy isn't a one-shot deal that happened one time,' Blanton told Science. 'It comes and goes, and it's very difficult to sustain.' Ericsson announced it has started exporting 5G-ready telecom equipment from its manufacturing facility in Pune, Maharashtra to markets in Southeast Asia. The initial shipments consisting of Ericssons 5G-ready radio base stations and microwave equipment for 2G, 3G and 4G technologies have been delivered to Indonesia, Singapore and Thailand. Ericsson is looking to add more Southeast Asia markets to its list of countries to which its facility in India exports products from the Ericsson Radio System portfolio. The announcement was made in the presence of Shri Narendra Modi, Honble Prime Minister of India at the India Mobile Congress 2018. Nunzio Mirtillo, Head of Ericsson South East Asia, Oceania and India, said: Ericsson has been in India for well over 100 years and we were the first company to start manufacturing telecom equipment in the country in 1994. Our state-of-the-art facility will continue to cater to the domestic market even as we commence exports to other markets in Southeast Asia. We remain committed to the Governments Make in India program and strongly believe in the potential of the Indian market. Ericsson set up a state-of-art manufacturing facility in Chakan, Pune in 2016 with an initial investment of USD 20 million. This facility has been catering to the domestic demand so far and the company plans to ramp up capacity once the export volumes pick up. Technuter.com News Service Shellfish are showing long-term signs of contamination from toxic chemicals linked to fracking. Academics at Pennsylvania State University found strontium in the crustaceans' outer layers -seven years after authorities first banned the dumping of toxic wastewater into local rivers. The discovery is being touted as proof that the well-stimulation technique - which sources oil and gas by injecting liquid at high pressure into subterranean rocks - has a negative, long-term impact on the environment. Moreover, researchers believe the freshwater animals could be used to further monitor pollution levels caused by fracking. Scroll down for video Fracking: Critics say the well-stimulation technique - which sources oil and gas by injecting liquid at high pressure into subterranean rocks - has a negative, long-term impact on nature This is because shellfish naturally feed by filtering water, leaving a residue of pollutants in their hard shells. This, in turn, acts as proof of contaminants in the surrounds - which may also affect fish and various mammals that feed on them, including humans. 'Freshwater pollution is a major concern for both ecological and human health,' said Professor David Gillikin, co-author on the study. 'Developing ways to retroactively document this pollution is important to shed light on whats happening in our streams.' Before 2011, when local fracking companies were forced to recycle their waste, a whopping 2.9 billion litres of contaminated water were dumped into Pennsylvanias rivers. The findings were published in the journal Environmental Science and Technology, last month. It comes after a 2014 study suggested that people living near fracking sites are twice as likely to suffer from respiratory and skin problems. Health and environmental concerns: An anti-fracking sign is seen outside Cuadrilla's Preston New Road fracking site near Blackpool, UK Yale University researchers surveyed 492 people in 180 households with ground-fed water wells in southwestern Pennsylvania, where natural gas extraction activity is significant. Almost 40 per cent of people living less than two thirds of a mile (1km) from a natural gas well reported upper respiratory symptoms, compared to 18 per cent of people living over 1.5 miles (2km) away. There are 624 active natural gas wells in the survey area, 95 per cent of which produce gas via fracking, according to the study published in the journal Environmental Health Perspectives. The experts compared the proximity of gas wells to the frequency of self-reported skin, respiratory, gastrointestinal, cardiovascular, and neurological symptoms over the past year. CAN FRACKING CAUSE CANCER? A health watchdog said last November that while fracking is unlikely to cause cancer,more research is needed into its long-term effects. Public Health England (PHE) criticised a U.S. study, which claimed that residents living within half a mile of a site were slightly more likely to get cancer. Scientists in Colorado used a computer model to predict that there would be an extra ten cases of cancer for those living within half a mile radius of a fracking drilling well. The PHE dismissed the idea that people living near the sites will develop breathing difficulties and other medical problems, saying they know enough to allay fears for now - although they admitted that very little research has been carried out into potential harms of the process. Dr John Harrison, director of PHEs Centre for Radiation, Chemical and Environmental Hazards, insisted that as long as fracking was carried out properly, the potential risks to public health would be low. He said: The currently available evidence indicates that the potential risks to public health from exposure to emissions that are associated with shale gas extraction process are low if the operations are properly run and regulated. Advertisement Shale gas has been hailed a possible ingredient in the UK's future energy mix (a map of reserves is pictured), but new health scares could put a spanner in the works - at least in terms of public perception They found that the prevalence of skin and respiratory conditions were higher among residents living closer to natural gas wells, but they didn't find a significant increase in grouped neurological, cardiovascular, or gastrointestinal symptoms among those living in homes closer to natural gas wells. The study did not look at the likely cause of the problem, but one expert told MailOnline that the problem may lie in the construction of the wells, as they are not strictly regulated in the US. Our study suggests that natural gas drilling may increase the risk of health symptoms in people living near the wells, said the studys senior author Meredith Stowe, associate research scientist at the Yale Occupational and Environmental Medicine Program. We believe our findings support the need for further research into the health and environmental implications of this form of natural gas extraction. Dr Peter Rabinowitz, who is now at the University of Washingtons School of Public Health, said: The effect we found persisted in the analyses, even after adjusting for gender, age, educational level, smoking, and awareness of environmental risk factors. It's the biggest fish in the sea, often found roaming in warm waters around the globe with its huge mouth agape in search of dinner. Yet despite its hulking appearance, the whale shark is actually surprisingly docile. It's thanks to this docile nature that scientists in the Galapagos have been able to complete ultrasounds and take blood samples from the shark for the first time. The incredible results allowed them to see and identify reproductive organs, such as the ovaries, and even developing follicles. Researchers say the study could help unlock the mystery of breeding in the world's largest sharks. Researchers led by conservationists from the Galapagos Whale Shark Project looked at whale sharks near Darwin Island, in the far north of the Galapagos Archipelago. This remote volcanic island is one of the few places where huge adult female whale sharks, which are up to 14 m (45 ft) in length, are commonly seen each year. The main aim of the expedition was to assess the sharks' reproductive state. While they are comparable in size to whales, whale sharks are sharks. They typically grow to be bigger than a double-decker bus: between 6 to 16 meters (20 to 52 feet) and more than 20 tons. But as filter feeders, the enormous whale sharks are dangerous only to the plankton, fish eggs and tiny fish they chomp on. The gentle giants aren't particularly fast when compared to other sharks, but a simple wave of their tail propels them through the water faster than any human could ever swim. 'Almost nothing is known about the reproduction of these giant sharks', said Jonathan R. Green, the expedition leader and founder of the Galapagos Whale Shark Project. 'After I first saw these huge female whale sharks in the far north Galapagos, I realised that this was a great opportunity to learn more', said Dr Green. 'We've been able to put together an experienced team to research sharks in this remote area, one of the world's most isolated dive sites.' Whale shark breeding is still a mystery. It's the biggest shark in the sea, often found roaming in warm waters around the globe with its huge mouth agape in search of dinner. Yet despite its hulking appearance, the whale shark is actually incredible docile and only has tiny, almost useless teeth Researchers say the study could help unlock the mystery of breeding in the world's largest sharks. Pictured is an ultrasound No one knows how many whale sharks are left but rough estimates put their numbers somewhere in the tens of thousands worldwide. Pictured is an ultrasound It's thanks to its docile nature that scientists have been able to complete ultrasounds and take blood samples from these sharks in the Galapagos The incredible results allowed them to see and identify reproductive organs, such as the ovaries, and even developing follicles WHAT ARE WHALE SHARKS AND ARE THEY ENDANGERED? The number of whale sharks (Rhincodon typus) has more than halved over the last 75 years, with legal and illegal fishing, entrapment in fishing gear, and collisions with boats blamed for most deaths. No one knows how many are left but rough estimates put their numbers somewhere in the tens of thousands worldwide. Fishing for the large, slow-moving sharks is particularly prevalent in China and Oman, though the species is showing some recovery in the Western Hemisphere and in India, the Philippines and Taiwan, thanks to legal protections. While they are comparable in size to whales, whale sharks are sharks. They typically grow to be bigger than a double-decker bus: between 6 to 16 meters (20 to 52 feet) and more than 20 tons They feed by scooping huge amounts of tiny plankton and small fish from the water - particularly near the surface and in warm water. They typically grow to be bigger than a double-decker bus: between 6 to 16 meters (20 to 52 feet) and more than 20 tons. But as filter feeders, the enormous whale sharks are dangerous only to the plankton, fish eggs and tiny fish they chomp on. Advertisement 'Only one pregnant shark has been physically examined so far, back in 1995 in Taiwan', Dr Simon Pierce, an expedition member from the Marine Megafauna Foundation said. 'That 'megamamma' shark had 304 little whale shark eggs and pups inside, all less than 60cm in length.' The team conducted scans using a 17kg (38lbs) ultrasound system in a waterproofed case. Whale sharks have tough protective skin which is more than 20cm thick on some individuals, so the ultrasound system had to be incredibly powerful. Dr Matsumoto also had to use a propeller system mounted on his air-tank to keep up with the sharks. Researchers led by conservationists from the Galapagos Whale Shark Project looked at whale sharks near Darwin Island, in the far north of the Galapagos Archipelago This remote volcanic island is one of the few places where huge adult female whale sharks, which are up to 14 m (45 ft) in length, are commonly seen each year The main aim of the expedition was to assess the sharks' reproductive state. While they are comparable in size to whales, whale sharks are sharks They typically grow to be bigger than a double-decker bus: between 6 to 16 meters (20 to 52 feet) and more than 20 tons The initial results were promising: 'We confirmed the presence of follicles in the ovaries but none of the images captured embryos or egg capsules inside the uterus', said Dr Matsumoto. 'These adult female sharks we saw at Darwin Island might be on their way to mate further offshore. 'I am confident that we can judge the sexual maturity, and probably also determine the pregnancy of whale sharks in the field, using the underwater ultrasound'. Researchers attached satellite-linked tags to the sharks to track their onwards movements. 'We've tagged whale sharks in Galapagos before, but there are lots of predatory sharks at Darwin and they often try to eat the tags, which can rip them out of the whale sharks almost immediately', said Professor Alex Hearn from the University of San Francisco. To reduce early tag loss, researchers tried a different method on this trip, clamping the tags to the tip of the dorsal fins. The gentle giants aren't particularly fast when compared to other sharks, but a simple wave of their tail propels them through the water faster than any human could ever swim 'Almost nothing is known about the reproduction of these giant sharks', said Jonathan R. Green, the expedition leader and founder of the Galapagos Whale Shark Project 'After I first saw these huge female whale sharks in the far north Galapagos, I realised that this was a great opportunity to learn more', said Dr Green 'We've been able to put together an experienced team to research sharks in this remote area, one of the world's most isolated dive sites', Dr Green said 'All tags are transmitting well, so we should get great information on where these sharks swim over the months to come', said Professor Hearn Kiyomi Murakumo from Okinawa Churashima Foundation, successfully collected blood samples from six adult sharks 'All tags are transmitting well, so we should get great information on where these sharks swim over the months to come', said Professor Hearn. Kiyomi Murakumo from Okinawa Churashima Foundation, successfully collected blood samples from six adult sharks. 'Sex steroid hormone levels in the blood are an excellent way to monitor reproduction in individual sharks', Dr Murakumo said. 'This study measured levels of estradiol, progesterone and testosterone of wild, adult female whale sharks for the first time in the world. 'Estradiol could be associated with follicular development, and progesterone could be involved in ovulation and pregnancy. 'Over time, as we sample more whale sharks, we can build up a complete picture of their reproductive cycle by combining the blood sampling with the ultrasonography.' 'Sex steroid hormone levels in the blood are an excellent way to monitor reproduction in individual sharks', Dr Murakumo said 'This study measured levels of estradiol, progesterone and testosterone of wild, adult female whale sharks for the first time in the world' Whale sharks feed by scooping huge amounts of tiny plankton and small fish from the water - particularly near the surface and in warm water They typically grow to be bigger than a double-decker bus: between 6 to 16 meters (20 to 52 feet) and more than 20 tons The Spanish islands of Tenerife and Gran Canaria are moving closer together and will eventually collide, experts believe. The two tourist hotspots in the Canary Islands are nearly 40 miles (64 km) apart but a fault between the islands is believed to be bringing them nearer. GPS stations surrounding the island of Tenerife have taken millimetric values each year to measure their gradual convergence. GPS stations situated surrounding the island of Tenerife have taken millimetric values each year to measure their gradual convergence. Pictured: file photo of the beach of Los Cristianos on Tenerife in the Canary Islands A Global Navigation Satellite System was set up to issue volcanic alerts after a period of volcanic unrest on Tenerife in 2004. The network was used to measure ground displacement at 14 locations in Tenerife following the blasts. Cristina Torrecillas of the University of Seville: 'The values of interplate displacement detected between the island of Tenerife and Gran Canaria are millimetric.' 'Given the distance between the islands [it] would take millions of years until this coming together.' Researchers said: 'Volcanology is a complex and multidisciplinary science, but it is more than verified that surface deformation in active zones usually preceded seismic or volcanic events. 'This technique has been applied in the case of the recent eruption on the neighbouring island of El Hierro, but it was not until 2015 that a study was published in the review on predictive action with magmatic intrusions.' At the current rate of around one millimetre a year the two island are not expected to collide for millions of years. Scientists also found that a process known as 'isostatic adjustment' has taken place since volcanic blasts on Teide, a mountain in Tenerife, in 2004 Dr Jessica Johnson, Lecturer in Geophysics at the University of East Anglia, told MailOnline: 'This process is the rebounding of the Earth's crust from emplacement or removal of mass' A secondary fault around the Anaga mountain range in the central part of Tenerife may be causing further subsidence, experts believe. Experts from the University of Seville and the Laboratory of Astronomy, Geodesy and Cartography at the University of Cadiz carried out the research. Scientists also found that a process known as 'isostatic adjustment' has taken place since volcanic blasts on Teide, a mountain in Tenerife, in 2004. Dr Jessica Johnson, Lecturer in Geophysics at the University of East Anglia, told MailOnline: 'This process is the rebounding of the Earth's crust from emplacement or removal of mass. 'For example, the British Isles are currently rebounding from when the glaciers melted. 'When an eruption deposited extra mass on top of the island it will over time sink to adjust for that as the mass sits on top of a deforming mantle. 'It is like if an iceberg had a lot of weight added and removed would sink and rise accordingly.' The study is published in the Journal of Geodynamics. Annual horizontal interplate speeds (orange arrows) and annual vertical speeds (blue arrows) between 2005 and 2015. The orange arrows are as a result of a small fault between the islands on the same tectonic plate and the blue arrow are as a result of 'isostatic adjustment' The Spanish islands of Tenerife and Gran Canaria are moving closer together and will eventually collide, experts believe. The two tourist hotspots in the Canary Islands are nearly 40 miles apart but a fault between the islands is believed to be bringing them nearer An earthquake which killed 370 people in Mexico was so powerful that an entire tectonic plate was split apart, scientists believe. Scientists said they did not yet know exactly how the 8.2-magnitude quake ruptured both mantle and crust when it struck near the city of Puebla in September 2017. The Cocos plate cracked when it rapidly cooled after diving under the North American plate in what as known as a subduction zone. After rapidly cooling the young plate became brittle and the earthquake then 'broke through the entire width' of the plate, National Geographic reported. An 8.2-magnitude earthquake which killed 370 people in Mexico in September 17 was so powerful that an entire tectonic plate was split apart, scientists believe. Pictured: Rescue workers pull a man out of the rubble in Mexico City Scientists suggested that seawater infiltrated the plate and caused the submerged Cocos plate to cool rapidly. That could have made it more brittle and more susceptible to breaking, the researchers at the University of Oregon believe. If such water-driven cooling is possible, it could suggest other areas, especially Guatemala southward in Central America, and the US West Coast are susceptible to similar earthquakes. The Mexican quake generated a six-foot tsunami, which experts believe was limited in size by the angle of the continental plate which was overriding it. Such an event would usually occur around cooler tectonic plates with temperatures cooler than 648C (1,200F). But the earthquake in Mexico damaged a 'young and warm' plate at around 1,000C (1,830F), which 'really shouldn't be breaking', researchers said. The 25-million-year-old Cocos subduction zone is 600 miles (965 km) from the mid-ocean ridge. The area in Mexico where the devastating natural disaster struck last year had not had an earthquake of such magnitude since 1787, researchers said. Lead author Diego Melgar, of the University of Oregon, said: 'We don't yet have an explanation on how this was possible. Scientists said they did not yet know exactly how the 8.2-magnitude quake ruptured both mantle and crust when it struck near the city of Puebla in September 2017. The Cocos plate dived under the North American plate in what as known as a subduction zone 'We can only say that it contradicts the models that we have so far and indicates that we have to do more work to understand it. 'If you think of it as a huge slab of glass, this rupture made a big, gaping crack. 'If you bend an eraser, you can see the top half being extended and stretched, whereas the bottom bit is squashed and compressed.' The US Geological Survey (USGS) said the quake was centred near Puebla, about 76 miles southeast of the capital. Dozens of buildings collapsed into mounds of rubble or were severely damaged in densely populated parts of Mexico City and nearby states. Search teams were left digging through dangerous piles of rubble, hoping against the odds to find survivors. The quake struck on the 32nd anniversary of a 1985 tremor that is believed to have killed at least 5,000 people. Just hours before it hit, people around Mexico had held earthquake drills to mark the date. The research is published in Nature Geoscience. Scientists have developed a 3D organ on a chip that uses a sponge-like material to mimic real tissues in the human body. The new device allows cells to grow inside a 3D transistor, giving them a more true-to-life environment than the traditional two-dimensional setup of a petri dish. The breakthrough enables real-time continuous monitoring of human cells, and could help develop new, cutting-edge treatments for killer diseases while reducing the number of animals used in lab research. According to the team behind the research, it could be used to generate all sorts of organs in the lab to simulate how a treatment will affect the entire body. The team created a device based on a scaffold of a conducting polymer sponge in the form of an electrochemical transistor. The cells first grow inside the scaffold, before the entire device is placed inside a plastic tube where nutrients are channeled through Traditionally, biological studies have been performed in petri dishes, where specific types of cells are grown on a flat surface. While this has generated many medical advances since the 1950s, including the polio vaccine, but their 2-D nature can sometimes lead to misleading information and failures of drugs in trials. Two-dimensional cell models have served the scientific community well, but we now need to move to three-dimensional cell models in order to develop the next generation of therapies, said senior author Dr Roisin Owens, from the University of Cambridges Department of Chemical Engineering and Biotechnology. Three-dimensional cell cultures can help us identify new treatments and known which ones to avoid, if we can accurately monitor them, added Dr Charalampos Pitsalidis, a postdoctoral researcher in the Department of Chemical Engineering & Biotechnology. The researchers also believe it could be modified to generate other types of organs, such as a liver, heart or brain - and perhaps even an entire body on a chip. The future? The researchers believe their breakthrough could be modified to generate other types of organs, such as a liver, heart or brain - and perhaps even an entire body on a chip In the new effort, researchers from Cambridge and colleagues from France, Greece, and Saudi Arabia created a device based on a scaffold of a conducting polymer sponge in the form of an electrochemical transistor. The cells first grow inside the scaffold, before the entire device is placed inside a plastic tube where nutrients are channeled through. The majority of the cells in our body communicate with each other by electrical signals, so in order to monitor cell cultures in the lab, we need to attach electrodes to them, said Dr Owens. However, electrodes are pretty clunky and difficult to attach to cell cultures, so we decided to turn the whole thing on its head and put the cells inside the electrode. Scientists have developed a 3D organ on a chip that uses a sponge-like material to mimic real tissues in the human body. File photo of heart cells WHAT TYPES OF 'PHYSIOME ON A CHIP' DEVICES EXIST SO FAR? In a major step, researchers have successfully replicated a human intestinal lining using patient-derived cells to use to test gastrointestinal medications. Organs on chips could also overhaul the drug approvals market: 30 percent of drugs do not make it past trials because they are too risky to test in humans, but testing them on replica organs could bypass the ethical minefield of putting people through the toxic trial. The chip is made out of a flexible polymer that features tiny channels that can be lined with thousands of living human cells. Creating these disposable portals of patients' cells is as simple as drawing blood. Each cell was an exact mirror of the genetic fingerprint of the person that had donated it. By injecting fluid into the chips, it caused them to develop and grow. Testing it, it was identical genetically to the original donor. Pharmaceutical companies are now racing to get involved in the product. Advertisement While other organ-on-a-chip devices need to be dismantled to see how the cells inside are functioning, the new device allows for real-time continuous monitoring. This means researchers can study long-term treatment options without disrupting the experiment to check the progress. With this system, we can monitor the growth of the tissue, and its health in response to external drugs or toxins, said Pitsalidis. Apart from toxicology testing, we can also induce a particular disease in the tissue, and study the key mechanisms involved in that disease or discover the right treatments. Facebook said on Friday it had removed 82 pages, groups and accounts for coordinated inauthentic behavior that originated in Iran and targeted people in the UK and United States. It said the page administrators and account owners had represented themselves as US citizens, or in a few cases UK citizens and posted about politically charged topics including race relations, opposition to the President, and immigration. Groups included 'Wake Up America', 'Thirst for Truth' and 'No racism no war'. Accounts posed as UK or US citizens and posted about politically charged topics including race relations, opposition to the President, and immigration. WHAT DID FACEBOOK REMOVE? 30 Pages, 33 Facebook accounts, and 3 groups on Facebook, as well as 16 accounts on Instagram About 1.02 million accounts followed at least one of these Pages, about 25,000 accounts joined at least one of these groups, and more than 28,000 accounts followed at least one of these Instagram accounts Facebook found less than $100 in spending for ads on Facebook and Instagram across two ads paid for in US and Canadian dollars 7 events were hosted by the account organisers Advertisement 'Today we removed multiple Pages, groups and accounts that originated in Iran for engaging in coordinated inauthentic behavior on Facebook and Instagram,' Facebook said. 'This is when people or organizations create networks of accounts to mislead others about who they are, or what theyre doing. 'We prohibit coordinated inauthentic behavior on Facebook because we want people who use our services to be able to trust the connections they make.' About 1.02 million accounts followed at least one of these Pages, about 25,000 accounts joined at least one of these groups, and more than 28,000 accounts followed at least one of these Instagram accounts, the site said. 'We have found no ties to the Iranian government, we cant say for sure who is responsible,' the site said. However, it stated 'a manual review of these accounts linked their activity to Iran. 'We also identified some overlap with the Iranian accounts and Pages we removed in August.' Facebook earlier this month revealed a physical 'war room' at its California headquarters as part of its efforts to tackle election interference tactics. The ads released by Facebook from the accounts were designed to go viral 'As soon as we detected this activity, the teams in our elections war room worked quickly to investigate and remove these bad actors, Facebook said. In September, in the run-up to elections in both Brazil and the US, it created the physical room at its Menlo Park campus from where it says its elections interference prevention experts can work together. UK politicians including Prime Minister Theresa May and Jeremy Corbyn, leader of the Labour Party, were also targetted. Inside the secure room are dozens of employees staring intently at their monitors while data streams across giant dashboards. They are only allowed to leave the room for short bathroom breaks or to grab food to eat at their desks. On the walls are posters of the sort Facebook frequently uses to caution or exhort its employees. One reads, 'Nothing at Facebook is somebody else's problem.' Researchers in Hungary have detected what could be a pair of elusive dust clouds orbiting just 250,000 miles from Earth, putting to rest a long-running debate on their existence. The two pseudo-satellites were first reported in 1961 by Polish astronomer Kazimierz Kordylewski, but remained controversial because they are so difficult to spot. Now, scientists at a private observatory in Hungary say theyve finally found the faint objects, revealing they sit in a semi-stable points that forms a triangle with the Earth and Moon. Researchers in Hungary have detected what could be a pair of elusive dust clouds (illustrated in the graphic above) orbiting just 250,000 miles from Earth, putting to rest a long-running debate on their existence The Kordylewski clouds, named after the researcher that first reported their existence, were finally confirmed with the use of linearly polarizing filter system, fitting on a camera lens and CCD detector at the observatory. Polarizing filters transmit light with a particular direction. The clouds were said to sit in a region known as a Lagrange point, specifically in one dubbed L5. This is one of five points of stability in the Earth-Moon system, where gravitational forces lock objects in the vicinity in their relative position. Back in 1961, Kordylewski observed two faint clusters at L5 but, they havent been seen since. That is, until now. The Kordylewski clouds are two of the toughest objects to find, and though they are as close to Earth as the moon are largely overlooked by researchers in astronomy, says Judit Sliz-Balogh. It is intriguing to confirm that our planet has dusty pseudo-satellites in orbit alongside our lunar neighbour. The clouds were said to sit in a region known as a Lagrange point, specifically in one dubbed L5 (shown above). This is one of five points of stability in the Earth-Moon system, where gravitational forces lock objects in the vicinity in their relative position In the new study, researchers led by Gabor Horvath of Eotvos Lorand University modeled the clouds to hone in on the best way to find them. The team captured exposures of their purported location, revealing polarized light reflected from dust. According to the team, the patterns line up with their earlier predictions, and Kordylewskis initial observations. WHAT IS INTERSTELLAR DUST? We often think of the vast areas of space between the stars as being completely empty. But this is not the case. Much of the space between the stars is filled with atomic and molecular gas, primarily hydrogen and helium, and tiny pieces of solid particles or dust. The dust is composed mainly of carbon, silicon and oxygen. In some places this interstellar material is very dense, forming nebulas. This dust is made up of small solid particles, like fine sand, and has a major effect on the formation and evolution of galaxies. Interstellar dust is an important constituent of the galaxy. It obscures all but the relatively nearby regions in visual and ultraviolet wavelengths. It absorbs the photons in these wavelengths and reradiates the absorbed energy in the far-infrared part of the spectrum. This means it provides around 30 per cent of the total luminosity of the galaxy. Does interstellar dust exist from the start of the universe? The initial solids created at the start of the solar system consisted entirely of shapeless silicate, carbon and ices. This interstellar dust was mostly destroyed and then reworked by processes that led to the formation of planets. Surviving samples of this pre-solar dust are most likely to be preserved in comets that formed in the outer solar nebula, meaning they stayed clear of the destructive forces that created planets. These are tiny glassy grains called GEMS (glass embedded with metal and sulfides) that are typically only tens to hundreds of nanometers in diameter, or less than a hundredth of the thickness of a human hair. Researchers led by the University of Hawai'i at Manoa made maps of the element distributions using electron microscopes and found that the carbon in them decomposes when exposed to gentle heating. This suggests that these grains could not have formed in the hot inner solar nebula. Instead they are much more likely to have formed in a cold radiation-rich environment, such as the outer solar nebula or pre-solar molecular cloud. Advertisement After ruling out optical phenomena and other objects that could be mistaken for the clouds, the researchers say theyve finally confirmed their existence. The exact source of the dust clouds remains uncertain, though the experts suspect they are regions where interplanetary dust collects. L5 and its counterpart L4 are being eyed as possibly locations for orbiting space probes, given their stability. The new findings mean the dust will also have to be taken into consideration as these plans move forward, to determine whether the material poses a threat to equipment or astronauts. Advertisement In 1971, famed French diver-explorer Jacques Cousteau brought his research vessel Calypso 43 miles off the coast of Belize to explore the wondrous 1,000ft long sinkhole, the Blue Hole. Cousteau's team had discovered that the Blue Hole, the largest sea sinkhole in the world and one of Belize's main tourist attractions, was in fact a submerged cave that had formed over a period of tens of thousands of year. Now, almost 50 years later, Cousteau's grandson Fabien is returning to the site, a UNESCO World Heritage Site, alongside Richard Branson and a team of researchers to learn more about the mysterious sinkhole. The Blue Hole is about 400 feet deep, and while divers have reached the bottom previously, the total darkness and the difficult conditions limited their ability to collect scientific data WHAT IS A BLUE HOLE? The Great Blue Hole hole is circular in shape, over 300 metres (984 ft.) across and 125 metres (410 ft.) deep. The worlds largest natural formation of its kind, the Great Blue Hole is part of the larger Barrier Reef Reserve System, a UNESCO World Heritage Site. A blue hole is a marine sinkhole that extends well below sea level for most of its depth. The formations were created during past ice ages, when the sea level was as much as 100-120 meters lower than it is now. Over time, glacial runoff began dissolving the limestone ground, forming sinkholes with massive caverns below. The roofs of these caverns would eventually collapse, leaving deep holes in their wake. As the glaciers of the ice age steadily melted, the deep holes in the ground were filled with water, creating the blue holes we see today. Advertisement 'Geologically speaking, it's a really cool formation,' Fabien Cousteau told DailyMail.com. 'And it's an interesting phenomenon because they're very rare.' Fabien was taught to scuba dive by the age of four by his grandfather. And in 2014, he broke his grandfather's record by spending 31 days underwater filming and exploring as part of a saturation dive. The previous record held by Jacques was 30 days underwater. Now he is returning to the same site where his grandfather visited - though this time equipped with advanced technology that could shed more light on this oceanic marvel. The Blue Hole has never been fully explored. '[My grandfather] brought Calypso into the Blue Hole and sent divers and his submersible, but it was 1960s technology,' Fabien said. Now a team of divers and scientists will for the first time do a 3D scan of the tourist site, including a sonar scan of the interior using military-grade technology. The hope is that the information will shed more light on how climate change has impacted the planet over the course of millenia. The Blue Hole is about 400 feet deep, and while divers have reached the bottom, the total darkness and the difficult conditions limited their ability to collect scientific data. 'There's a lot of discoveries left to be had there, including finding the sediment, looking at the variations in the walls, the oxygen and CO2 content... there's a whole laundry list of things that we are going to be doing there that haven't been done,' Fabien said. 'Geologically speaking, it's a really cool formation,' Fabien Cousteau (left) told DailyMail.com. He will be joined on the expedition by Richard Branson The expedition will include the deployment of two three-man submersible submarines, which will enable Cousteau and Branson, who is a passionate ocean conservationist, to spend hours inside the Blue Hole. There will also be two large floating vessels to provide research and logistical support. During the expedition, there will be a livestreamed event where Branson and Cousteau will broadcast to millions from the bottom of the Blue Hole. Two divers investigating the Blue Hole national monument, former cave with enormous stlactites and stalgmites at a depth of 45m in Belize. UNESCO World Heritage Site Submersibles from Aquatica will enable the divers to spend more time at the bottom of the Blue Hole The explorers will also be keen on collecting data that could provide insight into the existence and demise of ancient Mayan civilization. Archaeologists say the Blue Hole could hold clues that reinforce scientists' suspicions that the downfall of the Maya could be attributed to climate disasters. But exploring the site comes with its own unique set of challenges for the divers, who will have to brave tough conditions. 'That's a very deep hole,' Cousteau said. 'You can't go that deep without very specialized equipment. The submersibles will enable the divers to spend more time at the bottom of the Blue Hole. The submersibles were manufactured by Aquatica, a Canadian company. The company's founder, Harvey Flemming, will also lead the expedition alongside Cousteau and Branson. The expedition will set out for Belize in December. Liquid metal robots that can change their form and repair from damage just like the androids of the Terminator films could soon become a reality. Researchers in China have developed a palm-sized prototype inspired by T-1000 from the science fiction franchise, albeit a lot less sinister. The small, shape-shifting robot could be used to access environments that would be difficult for a human or fixed-shape bot to navigate, such as disaster zones. Scroll down for video Liquid metal robots that can change their form and repair from damage just like the androids of the Terminator films could soon become a reality. Researchers in China have developed a palm-sized prototype inspired by T-1000 from the sci-fi franchise, albeit a lot less sinister The prototype, created by a team from the University of Science and Technology of China and the University of Wollongong in Australia is made up of a small plastic wheel, a lithium battery, and drops of gallium, a soft silvery metal, according to the South China Morning Post. According to the researchers, liquid metal alloys are uniquely suited for soft robots due to their high conductivity, controllable surface tension, and flexibility. This could prove useful for a wide range of applications, from military to medical. Tiny robots could be used, for example, to deliver drugs through the body and directly attack tumor cells, the researchers told SCMP. In the future, we expect to further develop soft robots incorporating liquid metal that could be used in special missions such as searching for and rescuing earthquake victims, since they can change shape to slide under doors or make it through spaces humans cant get into, Tang Shiyang, from the University of Wollongong, told SCMP. We think liquid metal alloys could help with the development of self-reconfiguring robots that can change their own shape, the researcher added. In the prototype, the liquid metal drop were sealed into a tube that changes shape based on the voltage applied to it. The small, shape-shifting robot could be used to access environments that would be difficult for a human or fixed-shape bot to navigate, such as disaster zones. The prototype is made up of a small plastic wheel, a lithium battery, and drops of gallium, a soft silvery metal COULD THIS TINY ROBOT SOME DAY BE USED TO DELIVER DRUGS INSIDE OUR BODIES? Scientists at Germany's Max Planck Institute for Intelligent Systems have developed a tiny robot that might be able to be used for medicinal purposes. The robot is about a seventh of an inch long, making it smaller than a penny. Called a 'millirobot,' it can walk, crawl and jump on land, as well as swim in water. Scientists modeled it after creatures like jellyfish, caterpillars and larva Without any legs, the robot is made of a soft, pliable rubber that's embedded with magnets The robot is controlled using a magnetic field The team hopes that the soft robot can be inserted in human bodies for targeted drug delivery It may also be used to improve minimally invasive surgical procedures The scientists could add a pocket to the tiny robot that can house drugs Advertisement This, in turn, alters the center of gravity, and turns the plastic wheel. The team published their work in the journal Advanced Materials this month, and is now planning to create a bot similar to Star Wars BB-8. Theyre also hoping to incorporate multiple wheels, and the ability to move in a three-dimensional environment, Tang told South China Morning Post. Advertisement Swapping standard night clubs for sand underfoot and the sea breeze in her hair, female DJ Lera Tarulina says spinning tracks in the Maldives is a dream come true. The 29-year-old, who is originally from the colder reaches of Belarus, landed a job at the luxury Lux South Ari Atoll resort, which is a haven for honeymooners, with romantic over-water villas, white beaches and a remote setting. Lera, known better as DJ Yara, says it took her a while to get used to living on a tiny island and learn about the Maldivian Muslim culture, but now she's fully embraced the tropical lifestyle. Lera Tarulina, who is originally from Belarus, landed a job as a DJ at the luxury Lux South Ari Atoll resort in the Maldives In-between playing sets, she enjoys the sunny weather and takes advantage of the glistening Indian Ocean on her doorstep. The outgoing blonde says her aim as a resort DJ is to 'get people in a good mood' and to 'help them celebrate life'. As she plays music outdoors, one her favourite times to DJ is during sunset, with the Maldives home to some stunning end-of-the-day skies, with oranges and pinks melting on the horizon into an ocean of endless blue. Lera says she feels like an 'international DJ' because she meets such a mix of people from different countries. She continues: 'Now I know what kind of music will give good power to British people and ignite some passion among the Spaniards. 'Being from Belarus, I understand what kind of music will get the Russians moving their bodies too.' Lera, who goes by the name DJ Yara , says it took her while to get used to living on a tiny island (the Lux resort pictured above) and learning about the Maldivian Muslim culture - but now she's fully embraced the tropical lifestyle The outgoing blonde says her aim as a resort DJ is to 'get people in a good mood' and to 'help them celebrate life' But Lera highlights that being a resort DJ isn't a walk in the park. She's required to play almost every day, with different types of music needed for different times of the day. She also has to be knowledgeable about all kinds of music from the '70s and 80s to what is popular now, even reggae and funk'. The music fanatic continues: 'To do the job I do, you need understand music psychology, what fits the time of day and the clients you're playing to, taking into account their nationalities and ages.' But Lera does admit the one thing that's easy in the Maldives when it comes to work is 'smiling 24 hours'. The Belarusian concludes, before heading off to spin another set: 'I'm on this island to help people celebrate life and be in a good mood, which isn't difficult at a place like this. 'The first time I came here and landed by seaplane it was one of the best moments of my life. My eyes were full of tears!' Advertisement Would you visit a chateau said to be haunted by a woman with holes in place of her eyes? If you don't fancy testing your nerve, you could always read about it instead, in a fascinating book called Haunted Places by historian Robert Grenville. It charts 150 of the world's most spine-chilling places including abandoned hospitals, graveyards and castles. Other spooky locations include a Canadian hotel that is said to be visited by a bride who died on her wedding day and the famous Island of the Dolls in Mexico City, where people leave toys dangling from trees. Some say they've heard the dolls talking to each other. Scroll down and prepare to be spooked by a selection of the creepy images from the tome... The entrance to Precious Blood Cemetery in Woonsocket, Rhode Island. In 1955, Tropical Storm Diane broke a nearby dam, causing a flood that washed 50 coffins from their graves and their corpses were left behind in the town as the waters subsided. Today, the site is renowned for its apparitions, floating orbs and strange noises, according to Mr Grenville Some years ago in the Xochimilco neighbourhood of Mexico City, Don Julian Santana Barrera found a young girl half-drowned in mysterious circumstances, but he was unable to save her life. He later found a doll floating in the water that he assumed belonged to the dead girl. To appease the dead girl's spirit, Barrera hung the doll in one of the trees. He hung more and more dolls in the trees, but began to feel that the dolls themselves were possessed by the spirits of young girls. In 2001, Barrera was found drowned in the same spot as the girl had been found some 50 years before. Since then the island has become notorious, attracting tourists who have brought their own dolls to hang in the trees. Some who have visited the island claim that they have heard the dolls talking to each other, and seen their heads moving The catacombs of Paris, pictured, hold the remains of countless millions of the dead, shovelled into the former quarries under the streets of the French capital when the old cemeteries could no longer cope. Access is now only permitted by tour, and many visitors have reported ghostly sightings, unexplained noises and temperature changes while visiting the limestone tunnels Built in 1793, Slater Mill, pictured, in Rhode Island was the first water-powered textile mill in America. In the early years of the mill, small children were used to clean or repair the machines while they were in operation, which could lead to injuries or death. Now an industrial museum, visitors have reported hearing the death cries and screams of these young children. Other buildings on the Slater Mill site are also said to be haunted, including some malevolent spirits who have been known to scratch visitors, an unknown male and female presence, and a little girl called 'Becca', who answers visitors' questions by divining rod One of the 'Magnificent Seven' cemeteries established to accommodate the rising numbers of Victorian London's dead, Highgate, pictured, saw tens of thousands buried in its 17 acres over approximately a century from the time it opened in 1839. It was effectively abandoned after World War II, and sightings began to increase as it became more unkempt, culminating in the 'Highgate Vampire' scare, which saw journalists and camera crews trying to spot the undead. In the 1980s, a group of volunteers began to restore the cemetery, and sightings became less frequent. However, many visitors claim to have seen the 'Mad Old Woman' who searches feverishly for the children she supposedly murdered. Another common sighting is the 'Shrouded Ghoul', who floats staring at the sky, but disappears if approached Originally intended as a place to reform young boys before they became criminals, the Ohio State Reformatory building was converted to a prison in the early 20th century before closing in 1990. Although no executions were held at the site, a number of inmates were unlawfully killed. Various movies have been filmed here, including The Shawshank Redemption. Helen, a warden's wife in the 1950s, accidentally shot herself with her husband's gun, and her spirit is said to haunt the old warden's office. Visitors to the cell blocks have reported feeling strong forces pushing them, while the figure of a young man has been sighted running away from anyone entering the basement The chapel on the island of Poveglia in the Venetian lagoon was once part of an asylum built in the early 20th century, and later abandoned. The doctor in charge is supposed to have thrown himself off the bell tower after being tortured by the island's many ghosts. The island was used in the 18th century as a quarantine station for ships arriving in Venice. Hundreds if not thousands died on the island of plague and other diseases, and many thousands more bodies of Venetian victims were buried there. In one plague outbreak alone in 1576, about 50,000 people one-third of the city's population died, and there were 21 other attacks of the plague, including one in 1630 to 1631 that killed 46,000. The island has a reputation for being full of restless souls, its soil more human remains than earth. The doctor who jumped is said to have survived thanks to a ghostly mist that rose from the ground, only for it to choke him to death Built in 1889, the Sterling Opera House in Derby, Connecticut, is no longer in use but has been the scene of several supernatural encounters, including doors closing by themselves and lights switching on and off. A ghost is said to often sit in one of the seats in the lower right of the photograph A 'Green Lady' is said to have haunted Chateau de Brissac in Angers, France, pictured left, since her murder in the 15th century. It is said Charlotte de Breze was caught cheating with her lover by her husband, Jacques. In a fit of rage, Jacques killed the pair of them. Charlotte is now seen dressed in her favourite green dress, but her face is that of a corpse, with holes in place of her eyes. Pictured right is a cell in the Eastern State Penitentiary in Philadephia, where each prisoner was to be kept in solitary confinement so that they could reflect upon their crime and truly repent. Famous former inmates include Al Capone and 'Slick' Willie Sutton. Although the Eastern State spawned many imitators, eventually the solitary confinement system fell out of favour and so the building was converted to a more conventional-style prison, until it was closed and abandoned in 1971. One tour guide has described how he was gripped by a negative energy in one cell as contorted faces appeared on the wall opposite him. Others report seeing figures and hearing footsteps, wails and screams Dating back to the 14th century, Chateau de Fougeret in Queaux, France, pictured, has become known for its supernatural occupants since new owners took over the building after it had stood empty for many years. Visitors who have stayed overnight with the family report seeing figures and hearing voices ordering them to leave. The family themselves have had many encounters with the supernatural, including hearing and smelling people eating, and seeing strange figures at the window when they leave. A small girl named 'Alice', supposedly a child who died in 1924, sings nursery rhymes. Another figure that has been sighted and even allegedly photographed is 'Felix', a man who died in 1898. The owners also claim that an unknown spirit, possibly with a dog, plays with their own pet dog. The building regularly hosts ghost hunters The inspiration for the character of Mrs Rochester in Charlotte Bronte's Jane Eyre, according to legend, is a mad woman was kept locked in this room at Norton Conyers in North Yorkshire during the 18th century. The spirit of 'Mad Mary' is supposedly still in residence The Lizzie Borden Bed and Breakfast in Fall River, Massachusetts. Lizzie Borden was the daughter of Andrew, a property developer who had remarried after her mother's death. On 4 August 1892, Andrew and his second wife were killed. Lizzie was a prime suspect, but was acquitted by a jury. It is thought by some that the spirits of Andrew and Abby, the two victims, remain in the house to this day Originally built by the French on the mouth of the Niagara River in the 18th century, Old Fort Niagara was later captured by the British and, later still, the Americans. Two French officers stationed at the fort competed for the attentions of a Native American woman. During a party, both being very drunk, they fought a duel and one killed the other. Realising he would be executed for murder, the victor cut off the head to make it look like a Native American attack before dropping the headless body down a well to hide it. According to legend, several weeks later noises were heard from the well, and the figure of a headless officer emerged. The next day the well was searched and the body found and the murderer was subsequently tried and hanged for his crime. It is said that the figure climbs from the well every full moon at midnight to search for his head A Benedictine abbey that dominates the surrounding countryside, Mont St Michel in Normandy, pictured, was the location of a bloody battle between the French garrison and an English army in 1434. The ghost of the French commander, Louis d'Estouteville, is reputed to guard the island to this day. Mont St Michel has seen several sieges and battles over the years, but it was also used as a prison by French monarchs, gaining it the nickname of the 'Bastille of the Seas', with political opponents kept in grim conditions. Later, opponents of the French Revolution were also kept there During the 17th century, the plague struck Mary King's Close below the City Chambers, which was inhabited by some of Edinburgh's poorest. It was later partly closed off, with victims' bodies allegedly still in place. In 1992, a Japanese psychic touring the close encountered 'Annie', a young girl supposedly left behind to die by her family, who tugged at her leg. Annie's room has since become a much-visited attraction The current building of the Banff Springs Hotel in Canada dates from the 1920s and has had many celebrity visitors, including Marilyn Monroe, who had a honeymoon there. A long-serving Scottish bellman called Sam MacAuley is supposed to have haunted the hotel since his death in the 1970s. One of the most famous ghostly residents is known as 'The Bride'. In the 1920s, a bride is supposed to have tripped on a staircase in her wedding dress, and fallen to her death, possibly also setting light to herself on a lit torch as she fell. She is said to appear on the staircase or in the hotel ballroom, waiting for her first dance Although St Augustine is the oldest city in America, the lighthouse is relatively modern, and was built in 1824. One of its keepers, Mr Andreu, was painting the tower when he fell to his death. Another keeper, Peter Rasmussen, was a regular cigar smoker, and his cigars can still reportedly be smelt by visitors today. In the late 1800s, Hezekiah Pity was hired to renovate the lighthouse. According to some guests the laughter of his two girls, who drowned in the bay while he was working, can still be heard A 'Black Monk' has been observed during services in the parish church at Binham Priory in Norfolk, which stands on the site of the old monastery. An old tunnel nearby is thought to be haunted by Jimmy Griggs, a fiddler who entered the tunnel with his dog. Only the dog re-emerged, but Jimmy's fiddle can still sometimes be heard Tui has threatened to slap a social media ban on a customer who repeatedly posted complaints online about 'cockroach sh**e' in his room and other travel horrors. Alastair Little took the travel firm to task over his four-star Moroccan hotel room, which he claimed was affected by smells, mould and insects. But the company decided to hit back after the Staffordshire County Councillor kept on berating them on Facebook. Alastair Little took the travel firm to task over his four-star Moroccan hotel room, which he claimed was affected by smells, mould and insects On a video tour around the hotel room Alastair points out everything that is wrong with the accommodation, which includes 'cockroach sh**e' Tui sent the 36-year-old a message, threatening that he would suffer 'restricted access' should he continue with his 'repetitive posts'. Alastair and his wife, Elizabeth, from Lichfield, paid 1,900 for a seven-night stay at the Riu Tikida Beach resort in Agadir, Morocco, earlier this month. Alastair first complained to Tui on its Facebook page whilst on holiday about the condition of their room. On a video tour around the hotel room Alastair points out everything that is wrong with the accommodation, which includes 'cockroach sh**e'. The couple got an upgrade, a free camel ride and a bottle of sparkling wine but were unhappy to receive no compensation. Alastair posted his video a total of three times, describing Tui as a 'sick business' to avoid. Alastair posted his video a total of three times, describing Tui as a 'sick business' to avoid Tui sent the 36-year-old a message, threatening that he would suffer 'restricted access' should he continue with his 'repetitive posts' Alastair received a nice automated welcome home message from Tui (left) but went on to receive his first warning on Wednesday (right) Alastair received his first warning on Wednesday. He was told: 'Hi Alastair, we advise to refrain from repetitive posting to avoid confusion and is against our house rules. 'I can see you have recently messaged us. We will continue to liaise via direct messenger to look into this for you.' But when he posted the video a third time, he got a second warning. The message said: 'Hi Alastair, this is the second warning we have had to issue in relation to repetitive posts you've made to our page. 'Going forward, should we have to advise of this again, then we will restrict your access. Alastair says he 'finds the threats quite humorous' and 'the video is accurate' Alastair and his wife, Elizabeth, got an upgrade, a free camel ride and a bottle of sparking wine but were unhappy to receive no compensation The Riu Tikida Beach resort in Agadir, Morocco, which Alastair booked through Tui 'Please adhere to the rules we have in place to avoid such action.' Alastair said: 'I find the threats quite humorous. The video is accurate and to try and silence negative videos shows even poorer customer service than already experienced. 'They only seem to want to hear praise or to have re-confirmed from others what they think of themselves. 'They are quick to promote anything positive said about them, but as soon as something negative appears they try to stop it. 'They are acting like a police state. It's false advertising if they don't want to listen to customers' complaints.' MailOnline Travel contacted Tui for a comment, with a UK spokesperson responding: 'We are sorry to hear about the issues Mr Little has faced. 'We are investigating this now and will be in contact with the customer to discuss his issues further.' She's rumoured to have started dating a business accused of killing a navy recruit since she left Love Island. And Rosie Williams has confirmed that she's in love with her new partner and already thinking about getting married and having babies, but she won't confirm his name. Rosie, 26, is said to be dating businessman Wayne Davies, 31, who is currently awaiting trial for causing the death of a navy recruit through careless driving. New romance: Love Island's Rosie Williams told MailOnline she is in LOVE and planning marriage after she was linked to man 'accused of killing navy recruit' Smitten: Rosie is reportedly dating businessman Wayne Davies who is reportedly awaiting trial for causing the death of a navy recruit through careless driving She told MailOnline: 'All I want to say is I have a boyfriend. I havent said to anyone who he is, I am happy and I have found love. 'Ive known him for about 18 months, so we knew each other before Love Island. When I went onto the show, he was no longer part of my life in a romantic way. 'I dont think he quite liked me being on the show. When I came back, it gave us a chance and we started dating again.' She told MailOnline: 'All I want to say is I have a boyfriend. I havent said to anyone who he is, I am happy and I have found love' Solicitor Rosie said things are going so well, she is already thinking about settling down. She said: 'I feel like you are just ready when you are with the right person. I am in the position I would like to get married first. 'Obviously Ive just entered this new crazy world so I want to push my career as much as possible for a couple of years and then hopefully look to settle down.' New beau: Rosie has not confirmed the name of her partner but she recently returned from a romantic break to Zante in Greece with the man in question According to The Sun, the Love Island's star new man currently faces charges of 'failing to stop after a road accident, failing to report an accident and possession of a class A drug'. They recently returned from a romantic break to Zante in Greece. Rosie also touched upon her ill-fated fling with Adam Collard during her time in the villa. In love: Championing her new romance, Rosie told fans alongside her loved-up holiday snaps: 'When you went on Love Island to find love without even realizing you already had it at home - everything happens for a reason & now I know what that reason was' After they got intimate with one another, Adam's head was turned by Zara McDermott, who he is now in a relationship with. Rosie appears to have now moved on, saying: 'Obviously, everyone went through an emotional rollercoaster with Adam. He was everything I didnt want out of a relationship. 'You just want something thats going to last a long time, not just a fling. What I went through with Adam, he just highlighted everything I didnt want with somebody. Adam helped me find what I did want. Live and learn.' New love: Reports surrounding finance director Davies come as Rosie was seen confirming her new relationship and gushing over her new beau on a romantic trip away to Zante However, it's clear that Rosie bears no ill-will towards the Adam and Zara as a couple. She said: 'I am friends with Zara, we have a friendship. They seem happy and it seems to be going well. I wouldnt want Adam to treat Zara how he treated me. 'I hope he changed for her because shes a good girl.' However, she did not sound surprised that some of the couples have split already. She said: 'In the villa you are in a bubble and you have to then come back to reality at some point with added pressure of being in the public eye, everybody watching what you are doing. 'Youve got to work really hard to make it work.' Katie Price crashed her 63,000 Ranger Rover while allegedly on her mobile phone - just two weeks before her arrest for drink driving, MailOnline can reveal. Marketing executive Katie Pugh, 23, said the troubled star rear ended her Mercedes as they were stuck in traffic on the A3 in Roehampton, Surrey. Pugh said she looked up into her rear view mirror and noticed Price appearing to be looking at her phone moments before the collision around 5.30pm on September 26. The crash,which has been reported to police,took place just days before 40-year-old Price was arrested on suspicion of drink driving. Speaking to MailOnline, Katie said: 'I was sat in a queue of traffic looking in the mirror and I saw the car behind going faster, not slowing down. Katie Price, pictured earlier this month, crashed her 63,000 Ranger Rover while allegedly on her mobile phone - just two weeks before her arrest for drink driving, MailOnline can reveal Marketing executive Katie Pugh, 23, (pictured) said the troubled star rear ended her Mercedes as they were stuck in traffic on the A3 in Roehampton, Surrey Price was said to have been driving this black Range Rover worth 63k given by her boyfriend, Essex businessman Alex Adderson when she was crashed into the back of Ms Pugh's car Miss Pugh claimed: 'The driver was hunched over, clearly looking at their phone and not looking at the road. 'I remember thinking that person isn't going to stop and then there was a bang and she had accelerated right into the back of me. 'I was in shock and upset because I'd never been in a crash before.' Katie said she got out of her car to inspect the damage and recognised the driver as the former glamour model. 'She was quite dismissive and didn't get out of her car, she said. 'She shouted, 'oh, don't worry about it, it's fine'. 'I said, 'it's not fine. Look at the damage to my car!' The reality star is then said to have told shaken Katie to drive to a garage 200 feet up the road to exchange details. Katie, a marketing executive, from Cobham, Surrey, went on: 'Again Katie wouldn't get out of the car. 'I was looking at the damage to my car as there was a dent in my back bumper and scratches to the paintwork. Former model Price's crash came two weeks before she was arrested for drink driving (pictured here with her ex-boyfriend Kris Boyson) following her release from police custody The star's pink Range Rover was pranged earlier this month when she was found by police in a damaged car stopped next to a parked car and a bush in Shooter's Hill, south London 'But she said, 'Can you hurry up because I am in a hurry', Ms Pugh claimed. 'She gave me her phone number and said she would take care of it for me. 'Naively, I didn't take any of her details like the car registration number or any photos of the damage to her car. 'I got in the car and we drove off.' Following the collision, Ms Pugh went to Epsom hospital where she was diagnosed with a whiplash injury. She was referred to her GP and underwent physiotherapy for the injury. She reported the accident police the next day. Her car had 5,000 damage and is undergoing repairs which, Ms Pugh said, are being met by Price's insurers. Katie added: 'I read a few days later that Katie had been given a new black Range Rover by her boyfriend that was worth 63,000 and as soon as I saw it, I thought, 'that's the car that crashed into me!' 'She was driving that car, not her usual pink one, which is why I didn't immediately recognise her. The accident is said to have taken place just days before Price was arrested on suspicion of drink driving. The former glamour model spent a night in the cells after being found by police in her garish pink 75,000 Range Rover in Woolwich, East London, and arrested on suspicion of drink driving. She had allegedly been partying with ex-boyfriend Kris Boyson helping him celebrate his 30th birthday when her car ended up in hitting a parked car. Price took a roadside breath test and was taken to Plumstead Police station where she was released after a night in the cells. Ms Pugh, a marketing executive, said she was left shaken and shocked by the incident in which she claims Price bumped into the back of her Mercedes leaving dents and scratches to the bumper The incident comes following a turbulent year for the star which has seen her marriage end, check into the Priory for PTSD and also stave of bankruptcy proceedings. She is trying to sell her 2m Sussex house and has been selling off farm machinery on her estate. Family members persuaded her to seek treatment after he behaviour spiralled out of control. While on a weekend break in Majorca she was filmed singing 'I love coke' and looked the worse for wear following days of partying. She checked into the Priory as a day patient to seek treatment for Post Traumatic Stress Disorder. Price also split with fitness instructor Boyson and was seen out on dates with Essex businessman Alex Adderson. That relationship was said to have ended after she attended Boyson's 30th and he picked her up from the police station after her arrest rather than 26-year-old Adderson Price's collision with Miss Pugh came a fortnight before she was arrested for drink driving following a night out at a Turkish restaurant in Bexleyheath with ex boyfriend Kris Boyson Price reportedly arrived at Boyson's birthday party (left) alone after an evening with her current boyfriend Alex Adderson. Shortly after leaving the party she was arrested on suspicion of drink driving Price has had several run ins with the law over her driving this year. In February, the 40-year-old was banned from driving for six months after being clocked doing 60mph on the 50mph A24. Then in July she was photographed getting behind the wheel of her car while still banned from the road. She took to Instagram, explaining she had been driving son Harvey to hospital and blamed an 'emotional roller coaster' for her decision to drive two weeks before her ban ended. Price was summoned to talk with police, but reportedly kept putting off the meeting. It is not known if she has made a statement to police over the error. Six years ago the mum of five was banned from driving after failing to respond to two speeding tickets, arguing that her mum handled her post. The Met Police confirmed a collision was reported on September 26. Price's spokeswoman declined to comment. She announced her surprise pregnancy on Monday. And on Thursday, Amy Schumer was beaming with a smile on her face as she commenced production on a commercial in New York. The pregnant comedian looked radiant in her navy tracksuit while walking through the streets of the Big Apple in a pair of white heeled boots and even letting a friend cradle her midsection. Acting silly on set: Amy Schumer shared quite the endearing moment with a friend during a commercial shoot in New York on Thursday The encounter appeared to have happened on set as her pal placed his hand around the funny woman's waist. The blonde beauty was joined by fellow comedian Bridget Everett at the occurrence in what appeared to be a promo for an upcoming project. For her second ensemble, Schumer rocked a navy top underneath her knee-length wool black coat. Her legs were kept warm in a pair of ankle-high pants while her accessories ranged from a French hat and reflective silver reflective sunglasses. Kiss kiss: The unidentified male pal cradled her midsection Not bothered by their surroundings: The Netflix star was in on the apparent prank In good spirits: It had been just days since Schumer had announced her pregnancy, but she looked cool and collected when she prepped for the promo shoot in the Big Apple The Netflix star's tresses were evenly parted to both sides of her shoulders as she continued filming scenes for the advert this time, with a bigger cast in tow. For the final ensemble, it appeared the Schumer didn't make much of an outfit change, having simply added a khaki baby blue coat to her attire. Her footwear made a slight change, though, sporting similar shoes but this time around, she had opted for blue patterns on them. Glow! Schumer's face appeared radiant as she prepared for the film shoot with her co-star Our commercial attire: The Critics' Choice MVP award winner couldn't contain her smile Beaming: The married and soon-to-be mother-of-one looked far from concerned over the rough week she was having just days prior The Trainwreck actress' baby bump seemed hidden underneath her attire on all three occurrences, giving fans far from a glimpse of what they would have wanted to see. On Monday, the 37-year-old had announced her pregnancy to husband Chris Fischer in a letter featured on former CNN White House correspondent Jessica Yellin's Instagram page. 'About to announce some exciting news on @jessicayellin insta page,' Schumer started off her caption with an alternated photo of her and Fischer pretending to be Meghan Markle and Prince Harry. Glad you came: Schumer was joined by her fellow comedian Bridget Everett at the occasion Similar: Onlookers caught the clan walking down the streets of the Big Apple while all five women appeared to be sporting apparel that was very much alike. 'Please follow her for up to the minute #newsnotnoise she breaks down what's really going on.' At the end of the Instagram Story note, the Thank You For Your Service starring lady wrote: 'I'm pregnant Amy Schumer.' And yet, despite having announced her pregnancy news, the funny woman has yet to share light on her baby's due date let alone its sex. A Royal event: The New Yorker posted this photo of herself earlier this week, which fans strongly implied was an indirect announcement that the blonde is pregnant Not doing too great: It wasn't all glitz and glam for the Emmy winner, who appeared to have been suffering from morning sickness during her pregnancy Despite her glowing appearance amid her commercial shoot in New York, however, the stand-up icon had been quite the opposite after having suffered several occasions of morning sickness. 'Today Markle is in Fiji #same,' Schumer wrote on her Instagram Story on Tuesday while showing a less-than-glamorous shot of herself kneeling in front of a toilet. 'Milf alert,' the bottom of her caption read. Five days before announcing their break-up, Jackie O shared a photo to Instagram of herself with husband Lee Henderson and their seven-year-old daughter Kitty. The now-bittersweet family snap gave no indication that they had separated months earlier and, in fact, presented them as a couple still very much in love. She simply captioned the snap, 'Family,' alongside a love heart emoji. The final photo: Jackie O's bittersweet last Instagram post (above) with her husband Lee Henderson and daughter Kitty offered no indication the couple had secretly split On Friday, the 43-year-old radio personality announced that she and Lee, who married in 2003, had been separated for 'some time'. 'After 18 years together, we have made the decision to separate. We do so amicably, sharing many incredible memories and remaining best friends,' Jackie said. 'Our focus for this next chapter is of course our wonderful daughter and continuing to provide her love and happiness, together.' Before the post from last weekend, Jackie's most recent Instagram photo featuring herself and Lee was shared back in July, when they were on holiday in Fiji. Make or break vacation? Before the post from last weekend, Jackie's most recent Instagram photo featuring herself and Lee was shared back in July, when they were on holiday in Fiji Last last month, the KIIS FM star took her daughter on a vacation to Los Angeles, where they visited Disneyland and Universal Studios. Lee appeared to have been absent from the holiday. 'Last week we had the best time hanging out with friends at Disneyland and Universal Studios,' she captioned one of their mother-daughter snaps. 'Here we are just about to go on the Harry Potter ride, needless to say Kitty and I were scared s**tless. #funtimes'. Girls' trip: Last month, Jackie took her daughter on a vacation to Los Angeles, where they visited Disneyland and Universal Studios. Lee appeared to have been absent from the holiday Speaking on The Kyle and Jackie O Show on Friday, the mother-of-one revealed her and Lee's split had been a long time coming. 'It's not a decision we took lightly at all,' she said. 'We've been separated for quite some time now. We talk every day on the phone, we all still hang out as a family. 'I'm really proud that weve managed to do this amicably.' She voted for Donald Trump in the 2016 presidential election. But on Thursday, in an opinion piece in The Washington Post, Caitlyn Jenner admitted she had been wrong to support the president, and hit out at him for 'insulting' the transgender community. 'He has ignored our humanity. He has insulted our dignity. He has made trans people into political pawns as he whips up animus against us in an attempt to energize the most right-wing segment of his party,' Jenner, 68, wrote. Speaking out: She voted for Donald Trump in the 2016 presidential election. But on Thursday, in an opinion piece, Caitlyn Jenner admitted she had been wrong, saying he had insulted the transgender community The reality star and Olympic gold medalist underwent a highly publicized transition from male to female in 2015. She had previously expressed hopes of working with Trump and Republican policymakers despite criticism from the lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) community. 'Sadly, I was wrong. The reality is that the trans community is being relentlessly attacked by this president,' she said. Change of heart: 'The reality is that the trans community is being relentlessly attacked by this president,' Jenner wrote in her opinion piece High profile trans star: The reality star and Olympic gold medalist underwent a highly publicized transition from male to female in 2015 The opinion piece was published after a report this week stated that the Trump administration was attempting to create a narrow definition of gender as being only male or female and unchangeable once it is determined at birth. 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 Trump administration has ferociously attacked my community again. Just as an FYI Mr. President the military is the single largest employer of trans people in the world,' Caitlyn said in a statement given to People. 'This leaked memo is an unacceptable attack on my community. We will not be erased!' Initially, the reality star supported Donald Trump's administration, given the new president promised to make LGBTQ rights a part of his platforms. But that soured in the months after he took office when he rolled back protections for trans-kids in schools and vowed to ban trans-people from the military. 'It is unacceptable, it is upsetting, and it has deeply, personally hurt me,' Jenner said. 'It's clear these policies have come directly from Trump,' she went on. 'I cannot support anyone who is working against our community. I do not support Trump. I must learn from my mistakes and move forward.' In acknowledging she had made a mistake in supporting Trump, Jenner explained that she realizes she needs to listen more to members of the transgender community and learn from them going forward. 'I am more determined than ever to find the best way to bring trans issues to the fore of our social and political conversation, domestically and abroad,' she wrote. 'I need to better use my voice, my privilege and my foundation to advocate for and support our community.' Influence: Jenner's former step-daughter Kim Kardashian met with Trump in the Oval Office in June to talk about great-grandmother Alice Johnson who was serving a life sentence for a nonviolent drug-related crime., A week later, Trump commuted Johnson's sentence Big fan: Kim's husband, rapper Kanye West, is a vocal supporter of Trump. The two also met in the Oval Office earlier this month surrounded by members of the media The New York Times reported on Sunday that President Trump's administration is attempting to strip transgender people of official recognition by creating a narrow definition of gender as being only male or female and unchangeable once it is determined at birth. The Department of Health and Human Services has undertaken an effort across several government departments to establish a legal definition of sex under Title IX, the federal civil rights law that bans discrimination on the basis of sex, the Times said, citing a government memo that it obtained. That definition would be as either male or female, unchangeable, and determined by the genitals a person is born with, the Times reported. Any dispute about one's sex would have to be clarified through genetic testing, according to the Times' account of the memo. Such an interpretation would reverse the expansion of transgender rights that took place under the previous administration of President Barack Obama. It would also set back aspirations for tolerance and equality among the estimated 0.7 percent of the population that identifies as transgender. Most transgender people live with a profound sense that the gender assigned to them at birth was wrong and transition to the opposite sex, while others live a non-binary or gender fluid life. A spokeswoman for the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) declined to comment on what she called 'allegedly leaked documents' but cited a ruling by a conservative U.S. district judge as a guide to transgender policy. Title IX is the federal civil rights law that bans discrimination on the basis of sex Ruling on a challenge to one aspect of the Affordable Care Act, U.S. District Judge Reed O'Connor in Texas found in 2016 that there was no protection against discrimination on the basis of gender identity. A leading transgender advocate called the government's reported action a 'super aggressive, dismissive, dangerous move.' 'They are saying we don't exist,' said Mara Keisling, director of the National Center for Transgender Rights, in an interview. The Obama administration enacted regulations and followed court rulings that protected transgender people from discrimination, upsetting religious conservatives. But a draft of the Trump administration memo says gender should be determined 'on a biological basis that is clear, grounded in science, objective and administrable,' the memo says, according to the Times. Medical science seeking to explain what makes people transgender is in its infancy. Psychiatrists no longer consider being transgender a disorder and several U.S. courts have found the Obama interpretation of protecting transgender people against discrimination as sound. But the Trump administration has chosen to abide by the ruling of O'Connor, the Times said. 'The court order remains in full force and effect today and HHS is abiding by it as we continue to review the issue,' Roger Severino, the director of the Office for Civil Rights at the Department of Health and Human Services, said in a statement. Jenner was previously married to Kris Jenner, the Keeping up With The Kardashians momager, with whom she shares daughters Kendall and Kylie. And the I Am Cait star's former step-daughter Kim Kardashian is married to vocal Trump supporter Kanye West. Back in June, Kim had a meeting with Trump in the Oval Office which led to the release from prison of great-grandmother Alice Johnson who had been handed a life sentence in 1997 for a nonviolent drug-related crime. In an interview with Richardson magazine published this week, she credited her husband's pro-Trump stance for helping make that happen. 'I am aware that Kanye speaking out in favor of Trump got me through the door got him to pick up my call,' Kim said. One week after her trip to the White House, Trump commuted Johnson's sentence. Earlier this month, Kanye was also in the Oval Office where he and the president conducted an on-camera meeting surrounded by the media in which the rapper went on a series of bizarre rants and likened his red MAGA hat to Superman's cape. Kiernan Shipka makes her debut Friday in the new Netflix reboot of Sabrina The Teenage Witch. And on Thursday, the original Sabrina Melissa Joan Hart and her co-stars posted a sweet video message of support for the series, shared via the streaming service's official Instagram page. 'So tomorrow, the Chilling Adventures of Sabrina drops on Netflix. And I just wanted to send my best witches to Kiernan Shipka, a.k.a the new Sabrina Spellman,' Hart, 42, said in the clip. Seal of approval: On Thursday, Melissa Joan Hart and her Sabrina the Teenage Witch co-stars shared a video of support for the Netflix reboot starring Kiernan Shipka that premieres Friday Generous: Hart, 42, played Sabrina for seven seasons from 1996 to 2003 and sent her best wishes to Shipka who stars in the Chilling Adventures of Sabrina The actress added a word of advice for Shipka in her new role: 'By the way, from one Sabrina to the other if you're ever given a choice between a broom and a vacuum, choose the vacuum.' Also appearing in the video were Hart's former colleagues Nate Richert, Beth Broderick and Caroline Rhea. Sabrina the Teenage Witch ran from 1996 to 2003. It's first four seasons aired on ABC and then a further three seasons were commission by The WB. Richert, 40, who played Sabrina's high school sweetheart Harvey Kinkle, gave a shout out to 'the new Harvey, Ross Lynch.' 'I hear the new Sabrina is scarier and pretty damn twisted. I'm rooting for you buddy. Stay alive!' he cautioned. Lessons learned: Hart added a word of advice for Shipka. 'By the way, from one Sabrina to the other if you're ever given a choice between a broom and a vacuum, choose the vacuum' Tip: Nate Richert, 40, who played Sabrina's high school sweetheart Harvey Kinkle, gave a shout out to 'the new Harvey, Ross Lynch.' ' I'm rooting for you buddy. Stay alive!' he cautioned Rhea, 54, who starred as Sabrina's Aunt Hilda, said she 'can't wait' to see the new show, while Broderick, 59, also said she was excited for the reboot. The Chilling Adventures Of Sabrina focuses on the teen trying to decide, as she's about to turn 16, between a life with her mortal friends or life as a witch. Her aunts this time around are played by Lucy Davis and Miranda Otto and the cast also includes Jaz Sinclair, Chance Perdomo, Michelle Gomez, Richard Coyle, and Tati Gabrielle. Original cast: Rhea, 54, who starred as Sabrina's Aunt Hilda, said she 'can't wait' to see the new show, while Broderick, 59, also said she was excited for the reboot Meanwhile, during an appearance on Late Night With Seth Myers this week, Shipka, who first found fame as Don and Betty Draper's daughter Sally on Mad Men, revealed that filming the series had proved more tricky than she'd anticipated. 'You know, one of the few actors that I've not gotten along with in my career is Salem the cat. Truly, it's just, I didn't expect to be allergic to cats,' Shipka, 18, explained. After doing a scene where she had to hold the black cat close to her face, she said, she broke out in hives. 'I mean, honestly, I - at this point, I, like, I should be sponsored by an antihistamine company,' she quipped. Not funny: On Late Night With Seth Myers this week (left), Shipka, 18, revealed she had turned out to be allergic to her black cat co-star during filming Advertisement Radio queen Jackie O may stand to part with some of her vast fortune should she divorce her estranged husband, Lee Henderson. The KIIS FM star, who earns upwards of $4 million a year, confirmed her separation from her husband of 15 years on Friday. Whilst the couple's split is said to be amicable, and it appears Jackie is still residing in the couple's $6.7 million marital home, the 43-year-old could be liable to pay child support and spousal maintenance to her spouse, who works as a photographer. A $6.7 million mansion, luxury cars and investments: A look at what Jackie O stands to gain and lose if she divorces her husband Lee Henderson, after the radio star confirmed their shock separation on Friday Speaking on her Kyle and Jackie O Show on Friday, Jackie revealed that she and Lee have been separated 'for some time now'. It's believed Jackie is the higher income earner of the two and could possibly be paying child support for the couple's seven-year-old daughter, Kitty. A family lawyer told Daily Mail Australia on Friday that any child support payments would 'depend on the current parenting arrangements and the division of nights that each parent is caring for the child.' Separation: Jackie and Lee were together for eighteen years. The former couple are pictured with their seven-year-old Kitty in a photo shared by the radio star earlier this week 'Breadwinner': It's believed Jackie is the higher income earner and could currently be paying child support for the couple's seven-year-old daughter, Kitty (pictured) In addition to any possible child support payments, Jackie may also have to pay Lee spousal maintenance. Should the couple divorce, the pair will have to negotiate a settlement if they did not sign a pre-nuptial agreement prior to their marriage in 2003. The lawyer told Daily Mail Australia: 'Unless Jackie and Lee have previously entered into an Agreement about their assets, they will have to engage in a property settlement.' Property includes real estate, motor vehicles, bank accounts, shares and superannuation. Peek inside: It's believed that Jackie is still residing in the couple's marital home, located in the affluent Sydney suburb of Vaucluse Marital home: The couple purchased the five-bedroom property in 2012 for the sum of $2.7 million, which they have since renovated The lawyer stated that: 'Property settlements in Australia are based on each parties' contributions, financial and non-financial, and then the Court may adjust any percentage split to account for a party's ongoing needs, for example one party having health issues, or primary care of a young child of the marriage.' The lawyer has no connection to either Jackie or Lee, and has no inside knowledge of their situation. According to the Sydney Morning Herald, Jackie and her radio co-star Kyle Sandilands signed five-year contracts with KIIS FM in 2016 worth at least $20 million each 'based on fees, incentives and revenue share'. Chic: Decorated in a French Provincial style, the light and airy home features wooden floorboards, open fireplaces and a large swimming pool Serene: Realestate.com.au estimates that Jackie and Lee's marital home is today worth between $5 and $6.7 million Meanwhile, it's believed that Jackie is still residing in the couple's marital home, located in the affluent Sydney suburb of Vaucluse. The couple purchased the five-bedroom property in 2012 for the sum of $2.7 million. Jackie and Lee have made extensive renovations to the 1920s home, with realestate.com.au estimating that the that it is today worth between $5 and $6.7 million. The radio star has given glimpses inside the luxury abode in Instagram posts shared across the past three years. Inside look: The radio star has given glimpses inside the luxury abode in Instagram posts shared across the past three years Fancy! Jackie shared this snap of her seven-year-daughter Kitty's spacious bedroom Decorated in a French Provincial style, the light and airy home features wooden floorboards, open fireplaces and a large swimming pool. One Instagram snap, shared in May of this year, shows Jackie inside her lavish walk-in wardrobe, which is chock full of designer clothes. The popular blonde has also uploaded photos of the property's spacious kitchen, which features a stunning marble bench top. Bon appetit! The popular blonde has also uploaded photos of the property's spacious kitchen, which features a stunning marble bench top They previously owned a home in Sydney's Paddington, as well as rural retreat located in the New South Wales town of Kangaroo Valley. Jackie and Lee sold the 42-hectare Kangaroo Valley property in 2012 for more than $ 2million. The couple also own luxury cars, including Jackie's sleek black Range Rover, and are believed to have investments. Daily Mail has reached out to Jackie's management for comment. They're planning a smouldering routine for this weekend's Strictly Come Dancing Halloween special. But rehearsals for Seann Walsh and Katya Jones' Viennese Waltz aren't exactly going to plan, as the comedian shared footage of a nasty tumble he took during Thursday's gruelling practice session. The couple are hoping to impress the public and judges with their routine to love song I Put A Spell On You after finding themselves in the bottom two last week. Tumble: Rehearsals for Seann Walsh and Katya Jones' Viennese Waltz aren't exactly going to plan, as the comedian shared footage of a nasty tumble he took during Thursday's practice Seann shared footage of the rehearsal on his Instagram stories, with the funnyman appearing to get dizzy during the dance's famously tricky twirls, stumbling as he tries to step up onto a small platform, before the prop collapses beneath him. Katya is seen standing over her dance partner as he lies in a heap on the floor. 'Following Darcey's advice, this week's goal was to be less clumsy,' Seann captioned the video, before quipping 'Typical,' after the clip. Twirling into next week? The couple are hoping to impress the public and judges with their routine to love song I Put A Spell On You after finding themselves in the bottom two last week Tricky routine: Seann shared footage of the rehearsal on his Instagram story, with the funnyman appearing to get dizzy during the dance's famously tricky twirls Oops! Seann stumbled as he tried to step up onto a small platform, before the prop collapsed beneath him Katya also shared the clip, captioning the repost with a deadpan 'Going well.' The pair were saved by judges following a dramatic dance-off against Vick Hope and Graziano Di Prima on Sunday's edition of Strictly Come Dancing. They were recently met with backlash as they were pictured passionately kissing on a night out, despite them both being in serious relationships at the time. Saved: The comedian, 32, and Russian pro, 29, were saved by judges following a dramatic dance-off on Sunday's edition of Strictly Come Dancing The pair's upcoming performance dispels claims of producers' attempts to avoid assigning the pair with a racy dance, as they're set to take to the stage to the lyrics: 'I love you, I don't care if you don't want me, I'm yours right now.' The Viennese Waltz is a genre of ballroom which sees two people spin around the dancefloor, and is commonly recognised as one of the more romantic versions of the Waltz. At the top of the leader board from last week, Danny John-Jules and Amy Dowden will follow up their jive with an American smooth to Spirit In The Sky, while favourites Ashley Roberts and Pasha Kovalev will take on the Charleston. Scandal: The pair were recently met with backlash as they were pictured passionately kissing on a night out, despite them both being in serious relationships at the time While BBC producers were accused of ruling out 'sexy' dances for the pair in wake of the kiss scandal, Seann and Katya have since performed the Quickstep and Charleston. I Put A Spell On You by Screamin Jay Hawkins - Lyrics Uuuuu spell, Uuuuu spell..... I put a spell on you Because you're mine Stop the things you do Watch out I ain't lyin', yeah I can't stand No runnin' around I can't stand I can't stand No put me down I put a spell on you Because you're mine (oh yeah) Stop the things you do Watch out, Watch out I ain't lyin' I love you I love you I love you, yeah... I don't care if you don't want me I'm yours right now I put a spell on you Because you're mine Advertisement On last week's edition of Strictly Come Dancing, fans accused the show of using a guitar to keep Seann and Katya apart during their Quickstep routine - gaining just 24 points out of 40. During a previous performance, the pair wowed the judges with a Matrix-themed Paso Doble during Movie Week. Many fans were adamant that Seann and Katya would be eliminated after their drunken night out earlier this month. The highly-publicised scandal with Katya, who is currently married to fellow dancer Neil Jones, led to Seann's split from former girlfriend Rebecca Humphries. On Strictly's sister show It Takes Two, the Russian pro apologised to 'everyone it hurt and involved', but said she and husband Neil were 'absolutely fine'. This comes after axed contestant Vick, 29, claimed head judge Shirley Ballas 'relished' in criticising her and dance partner Graziano, 24, routines in a no holds barred interview on Capital Breakfast on Monday. The broadcaster was sensationally booted off the BBC ballroom stalwart after head judge Shirley was given the deciding vote and opted to save Seann and Katya for another week. Since her shock departure, Vick has said that the ballroom expert was to rude to her and claimed that judges; Shirley, Darcy Bussell, Craig Revel Horwood and Alfonso Ribeiro spoke to producers before making their final decision. Vick then claimed that producers were drafted in to talk to the judges before they gave their final decisions on who to save following the dance-off. Competition: Seann and Katya were sent through to the next round, sending TV presenter Vick Hope and Graziano Di Prima home Toning it down: While BBC producers were accused of ruling out 'sexy' dances for the pair in wake of the kiss scandal, they have since performed the Quickstep and Charleston (pictured on October 13) Romance life: Russian pro dancer is currently married to fellow dancer Neil Jones Break-up: The highly-publicised scandal led to Seann's split from former girlfriend Rebecca Humphries Apology: On Strictly's sister show It Takes Two, Katya apologised to 'everyone it hurt and involved', but said she and husband Neil were 'absolutely fine' A spokesperson for Strictly Come Dancing told MailOnline: '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.' Reza Farahan received a cute kitten as a present two weeks after his beloved cat Buzzy died on Thursday's episode of Shahs Of Sunset. The 45-year-old real estate agent was shocked when Mike Shouhed, 40, presented him with purebred flat-faced Persian kitty Woody. 'What?!,' Reza exclaimed as Mike handed him the furry present. Furry friend: Reza Farahan rejoiced as he was gifted with a cute kitten on Thursday's episode of Shahs Of Sunset Reza explained that Buzzy had died two weeks earlier in late March after being the 'most special thing ever' in his life and the best 'sidekick'. 'Mike is an amazing guy. ...The beauty is that he gets it,' Reza said. Reza was given the feline present after a recent spat with Mike. 'Friendships are fragile,' Mike said during a confessional. Persian kitty: The 45-year-old real estate agent cuddled with purebred flat-faced Persian kitty Woody that he received as a gift from Mike Shouhed He also gifted the women with white roses as Mercedes 'MJ' Javid hosted a small gathering ahead of her wedding to Tommy Feight. Golnesa 'GG' Gharachedaghi after being needled for continuing to wear her wedding band tossed it in the pool at the party. Nema Vand during the pre-wedding bash confessed the obvious to GG and declared that he was 'insanely attracted' to her. Insanely attracted: Nema Vand admitted to Golnesa 'GG' Gharachedaghi that he was 'insanely attracted' to her GG told him that talk was cheap and so far she had only heard a 'lot of it' before sauntering away for a drink. The episode titled Vida Knows Best also featured MJ shopping for wedding flowers at a warehouse with her overbearing mother Vida. 'I hate it,' Vida said after MJ and her floral stylist praised the same flowers. Drink time: GG told Nema that 'talk was cheap' before she sauntered away for a drink Flower shopping: Mercedes 'MJ' Javid went shopping for wedding flowers with her mother Vida Strong opinion: Vida declared that she hated flowers that MJ and her floral stylist liked GG also was seen getting a lift from Shervin Roohparvar as she went to a downtown courthouse to finalize her divorce to Shalom. Reza's husband Adam Neely also met with former regular cast member Asa Soltan Rahmati, 42, at her boutique on Abbot Kinney Boulevard in the Venice area of Los Angeles. Adam complained that Reza was worried about budgeting for a family and Asa - who welcomed a son last year with Jermaine Jackson Jr. - advised him to talk to him about it. She's back: Asa Soltan Rahmati who was a regular cast member returned and chatted with Reza's husband Adam Neely Sage advice: The new mother advised Adam to talk to Reza to learn his true feelings about starting a family Divorce work: GG got a lift from Shervin Roohparvar as she went to a downtown courthouse to finalize her divorce to Shalom. She also gifted him a $700 blue blanket and an item for Reza. Adam then asked Reza if he wanted children and he said yes in about five years. 'We can't make decisions based on what Asa and Jermaine are doing,' Reza said. Baby talk: Adam confronted Reza over whether or not he wanted to have children Adam agreed and said he would stick to the plan and have the baby conversation with Reza after they renovated their house. The episode also showed MJ and Tommy moving forward with plans for in-vitro fertilization and finalizing their prenuptial agreement. Mike also was seen giving Reza a tour of residential property off Sunset Boulevard that he hoped to renovate as a source of income for him and his offspring. Shahs Of Sunset will return next week on Bravo in an episode called Bless This Mess. Prenuptial agreement: Tommy made MJ happy by signing a one-side prenuptial agreement Baby plans: MJ also was seen meeting with her fertility doctor as she and Tommy started moving forward with in-vitro fertilization plans Ronnie Ortiz-Magro got ditched by girlfriend Jen Harley as their tumultuous relationship worsened on Thursday's episode of Jersey Shore: Family Vacation. The 32-year-old reality star surprised his roommates by inviting Jen to a nightclub birthday celebration at Harrah's Resort Atlantic City, New Jersey. 'It's going to be a disaster,' predicted Jennifer 'JWoww' Farley, 32, ahead of Jen's arrival. Volatile relationship: Ronnie Ortiz-Magro watched as his girlfriend Jen Harley stormed out of a nightclub alone on Thursday's episode of Jersey Shore: Family Vacation She talked to Ronnie about her concerns beforehand and asked if it was 'cool to talk to her' after Jen had been arrested after an alleged domestic violence incident. Paul DelVecchio Jr., better known as DJ Pauly D, was worried that her presence would ruin his birthday DJing gig. 'I hope Ron and Jen drama doesn't mess this up,' Pauly D admitted. Ronnie was hoping to rehabilitate the couple's image with his roommates. Birthday bash: Jen and Ronnie argued during a birthday celebration that featured DJ Pauly D entertaining a packed club Spot on: Jennifer 'JWoww' Farley predicted that Jen's presence would lead to 'disaster' 'I want them to see Jen the way that I see Jen. A person who is funny and likes to have a good time,' Ronnie said. Pauly D admitted that he was scared of Jen and JWoww nervously played with her hair. 'I'm gonna throw up,' said Vinny Guadagnino, 30, as Deena Cortese, 31, announced that Ronnie and Jen were approaching their dinner table. Image rehab: Ronnie was hoping that by inviting Jen his friends would get to see her fun side Dinner time: Jen and Ronnie arrived for a group dinner before they went to the nightclub Stomach churning: Vinny Guadagnino admitted that he wanted to vomit seeing Jen 'Awkward,' whispered Angelina Pivarnick to her fiance Chris. JWoww stepped up and broke the ice. 'Your mugshot. You look hot,' JWoww told Jen. Ice breaker: JWoww broke the ice and told Jen that she looked 'hot' in her mugshot The mugshot: Jen is shown in her mugshot after being arrested for investigation of domestic battery in June in Las Vegas 'That escalated quickly,' remarked Mike 'The Situation' Sorrentino during the episode titled AWKWARD City. Jen laughed it off and told the group that she was being taunted and called 'The Incarceration'. She apologized to everyone for her behavior that landed in her jail. Escalated quickly: The Situation remarked on how quickly the conversation changed 'I know it all sounds so psycho and crazy,' said Jen who revealed the couple was undergoing anger management. Ronnie posted a photo on Instagram on Wednesday showing himself with a black eye and insinuating it was done by his baby mama. Jen and Ronnie welcomed baby Ariana in early April. Anger management: Jen revealed that she and Ronnie were taking anger management classes Black eye: Ronnie posted a photo on Instagram on Wednesday showing himself with a black eye and suggesting that Jen was responsible 'We want the best for the both of you,' The Situation told the couple during dinner. Ronnie proudly stated that Jen's apology 'shows character'. JWoww and Pauly D both said they wouldn't be forgetting Jen's rampage anytime soon. Long memory: Pauly D said that he wasn't going to forget about Jen's rampage in Las Vegas The group returned to the sweet suite that Pauly D got hooked up with at Harrah's Resort Atlantic City. A staffer with Caesars Group Hotel banged on the door and asked to speak separately with Ronnie and Jen. Hotel representative Brian explained that Ronnie and Jen's argument in Las Vegas was 'an issue'. An issue: Jen and Ronnie were called out by a hotel rep because Jen was banned from Planet Hollywood in Las Vegas after their big blowout Ronnie in a confessional explained that Harrah's is owned by the same company that owns Planet Hollywood in Las Vegas where Jen was banned after their blowout fight. 'There can't be an event like that in New Jersey,' Brian warned. Jen assured the hotel rep that they've been going to anger management classes and therapy on their own. Ronnie lied to the group when they asked about and said it was 'nothing' and that Jen forgot her ID. Identification issue: Ronnie lied when asked about it and said that Jen forgot her ID Pauly D was the main attraction as DJ at the club and said he felt like a boxer about to enter the ring. He gave a shout-out out to his 'number one supporter' Vanessa who regularly attends his shows. Deena wasn't drinking due to her pregnancy but had fun and noticed that Ron and Jennie were enjoying themselves dancing. Top supporter: Pauly D gave a shout-out to his 'number one supporter' Vanessa Ronnie during a confessional said that Jen doesn't know her limits when drinking. 'She doesn't know how to be rational when intoxicated,' he said. Jen asked JWoww if she wanted to take a shot and Ron stepped in to cut her off. Good times: Ronnie and Jen initially were having fun at the club Into it: Jen was getting into it as she danced around 'No more shots,' Ronnie said. 'One more shot,' Jen pleaded as Ronnie took her drink away. She pointed out that it was birthday party but Ronnie asked her politely to stop. No more: Ronnie told Jen that she couldn't have any more shots 'F*** off,' Jen told him. Ronnie tried to talk to her but Jen shut him down. 'You're f***ed up, Ron. Stop playing the f***ing victim,' she hissed at him. Cussed out: Jen cussed out Ronnie and told him to stop playing the 'f***ing victim' 'You're yelling and fighting with me for no reason,' Ronnie protested. Jen said she wanted to leave immediately, but Ronnie asked her to stay for an hour. 'Be my road dog,' he begged. Road dog: Ronnie pleaded with Jen to stay for an hour 'They pretended like everything was all right,' Deena said. Jen stormed away as Ronnie implored her to stay. 'You're on your own, b****,' Jen said. Taking off: Jen told Ronnie she was leaving and he was on his own The Situation informed Pauly D that Jen 'just bounced' as Ronnie looked distressed. 'Shout out to single Ronnie's in the building,' Pauly yelled to the wild crowd. The group went back to the suite where Ronnie and Vinny had a candid conversation. Major news: Pauly D reacted as The Situation told him that Jen 'bounced' 'She just gets in a mood where she's like uncontrollable,' Ronnie said. Vinny advised him to keep a 'tally' of Jen's behavior and when the negative 'outweighs' he should split with her. 'Yeah,' Ronnie weakly agreed. Taking off: A pair of girls that Pauly D and Vinny brought back departed after Pauly retired early The episode also showed the girls and guys separating in attempts to get to know each other better. Angelina for the first time opened up about her rough childhood and said that her father was abusive and a cheater. She revealed that her mother met her habitual criminal father in court and that he was in jail when she was born. Guys only: The guys hung out separately in order to catch up with each other Rough childhood: Angelina Pivarnick opened up about her rough childhood 'He only had me to have a lesser sentence. ...He told me that,' Angelina said. JWoww said that Angelina's 'daddy issues make sense' and explained why Angelina was 'very co-dependent'. 'I feel really bad for how I treated her,' JWoww said. Jersey Shore: Family Vacation will return next week on MTV. She is a reality star sensation. And Amber Turner looked absolutely smoking hot as she arrived at the Nivea Boo-Tique Halloween Party in London on Thursday night. The 25-year-old TOWIE star went for a sexy ensemble for the event, arriving in a plunging cut-out lace body, which displayed her surgically-enhanced cleavage Sizzling: Amber Turner looked absolutely smoking hot as she arrived at the Nivea Boo-Tique Halloween Party in London on Thursday night Amber oozed sex appeal as she went braless in the barely-there number which flattered her perfect frame. The star teamed the lingerie-inspired piece with slim-fitting high-waisted black trousers and a classic gold buckle Gucci belt. She boosted her height in a pair of perspex heels and toted her belongings in a shiny handbag. Glam: The 25-year-old TOWIE star went for a sexy ensemble for the event, arriving in a plunging cut-out lace body, which displayed her surgically-enhanced cleavag Sensational: Amber oozed sex appeal as she went braless in the barely-there number which flattered her perfect frame Amber kept her look glam, with just a flash of sparkles added to the side of her right eye, and a glossy purple lipstick. The star looked every inch the blonde bombshell as her locks were styled in gorgeous waves. The star was joined by Laura Anderson who looked glam in a sleeveless black top and snakeskin skirt. Glam: Amber kept her look glam, with just a flash of sparkles added to the side of her right eye, and a glossy purple lipstick - with Laura Anderson The Love Island beauty added to the look with a heavy smokey eyes, which complemented her dishevelled blonde locks. Montana Brown looked sensational as she joined her pals at the fun bash. She wrapped up warm with a brown shearling jacket atop an all black ensemble. Babe: Laura added to the look with a heavy smokey eyes, which complemented her dishevelled blonde locks Jenelle Evans is opening up about her experiences with domestic abuse. The Teen mom persona, 26, shared an intimate confessional video on Thursday, defending her husband David Eason against allegations he's been abusive. And while the MTV figure assured fans that her relationship with David is 'completely fine,' she admitted to being in abusive relationships in the past. Evan's video comes just 10 days after the reality star called the 911 regarding 'an assault' at her North Carolina home. Scroll down for video in his defense: Jenelle Evans defended her husband David Eason from previous allegations of domestic assault in a revealing video shared Thursday The 911 call was later released by TMZ. Jenelle is seen cloistered away in her closet so that her children couldn't hear her confessional recording. From the start she insists she's ok, telling fans: 'I just want to let you guys know that I am completely fine, I know everyones concerned about me. I know everyone wants to know, "Is she OK?" "How are the kids?" 'Everythings fine. Ive been in so many domestic violence situations in the past that I would not put up with it now. So I dont know why you guys would think that I would continue to say in this relationship if I was being abused.' Incident: Evan's video comes just 10 days after the reality star called the 911 regarding 'an assault' at her North Carolina home In the past: While the reality persona defended her husband, she said she has been in 'two or three relationships that [involved] domestic violence' in the past She continued, saying that she's been in 'two or three relationships that [involved] domestic violence' in the past. Though she didn't name names, it appeared that she was referring to ex-fiance Gary Head and ex-husband Cortland Rogers, both of whom she accused of abuse in her memoir Read Between The Lines. And Jenelle expressed frustration about how people have attacked her honesty, no matter what she claims. 'Every time I open up, you guys are like, "No, shes lying, shes putting him in jail, shes such a f***ing liar. Well, thats not the case. At all. I was always telling you the truth about everything that happened with every one of my relationships,' Evans continued. Bad history: It appeared that she was referring to ex-fiance Gary Head and ex-husband Cortland Rogers, above together in 2013, both of whom she accused of abuse in her memoir Read Between The Lines 'If you dont believe me, I dont know what to f***ing telling you. I really dont. I have always been an open book to every single one of my fans and my haters.' Earlier this month Jenelle was hospitalized after calling 911 and telling the operator she was assaulted by her husband. But shortly after the call was made public via TMZ, the reality star told E! said it was all a 'misunderstanding' during a chat with E! News shortly after the 911 audio was made public. 'It was a drunk and dramatic misunderstanding,' Janelle said, 'Everything is great. We are totally fine just taking time off social media, time to focus on ourselves and our family.' Disturbing: Jenelle Evans cries hysterically as she tells an 911 operator that her husband Dave Eason attacked her. The incident happened not long after she posted this picture on Saturday, which shows her recovering from a nose job with Eason by her side But things did not appear to be 'totally fine' in the 911 call, where Evans is heard crying hysterically and accusing her husband of breaking her collarbone. In the call Jenelle says Eason 'pinned her down on the ground' so hard she heard her 'collarbone crack.' She continued to tell the operator that she had no feeling in her arm because of the injuries. She also said that Eason was drunk and suggests that he flew into a rage because he was inebriated. When asked if he has 'weapons', Evans first tells the operator 'no' before clarifying 'I don't know what he has.' The incident happened while Jenelle was recovering from surgery to repair a deviated septum in her nose. She also revealed that the family's four children were in the house 'sleeping' at the time of the incident. Violent: In the call Jenelle claims Eason 'pinned her down on the ground' so hard she heard her 'collarbone crack.' She also said that Eason was drunk and suggests that he flew into a rage because he was inebriated. The pair are pictured here in 2017 A spokesperson for Jenelle tried to cover up the incident this week, insisting she had tripped and fallen into a bonfire while hosting friends at her home. But 'Family and friends' of the star 'hope she leaves' Eason, according to a source who spoke to Us Weekly. Others said they seriously fear for Evan's life because of David, with one telling Radar 'Jesus he's going to f***ing kill her. That man has the capacity to do that. I've seen with my own eyes. I don't want to be right about this.' Jenelle's mother Barbara has previously expressed fear over her daughter's well-being. Opening up on last season's Teen Mom 2 reunion Barbara said: 'I dont feel Jenelle is OK. David is going to hurt her. Bad feeling: Jenelle's mother Barbara (above in 2015 together) has expressed fear over her grandchildren's well-being, telling people at the Teen Mom reunion 'I dont feel Jenelle is OK. David is going to hurt her' The original incident took place this past Saturday when law enforcement responded to a 911 call alleging an assault had taken place at the North Carolina home that Evans and Eason share together. However, she ended up being taken to a medical facility by a private vehicle and a spokesperson for authorities in Columbus County, North Carolina, said no official incident report was taken. Reps for the MTV reality star told People Thursday that she had been injured when she 'had friends over Saturday night and they had a bonfire on her property.' 'Jenelle ended up tripping and falling by the fire,' they explained. She was not filming for her reality show, according to insiders. The reality star, 26, who lives in North Carolina, has sons Jace, eight, and Kaiser, four, with former partners and also a 21-month-old daughter Ensley with husband Dave Eason. David has a daughter from a previous relationship. Celebrated director Marianne Elliott the toast of the town thanks to her acclaimed reimagined version of musical Company is collaborating with the daughter of playwright Arthur Miller to direct his seminal play Death Of A Salesman with an all-black cast. It will be led by Wendell Pierce, the Juilliard-trained Hollywood actor who will play Millers decimated hero Willy Loman, one of the greatest roles in theatre. Pierce has appeared in countless films (including Selma) and television dramas. He played world-weary detective Bunk Moreland on The Wire; trombonist Antoine Batiste in Treme (set in his hometown of New Orleans); and law firm boss Robert Zane father of the character played by the former Meghan Markle (aka the Duchess of Sussex) in legal drama Suits. Wendell Pierce at 'Company' Press Night afterparty at The Prince of Wales Theatre, London The Olivier-award winning Sharon D. Clarke signed on yesterday to play Linda, the wife who understands how her husbands pursuit of the American dream has destroyed him. The play will run in the West End from May 2019, confirmed Chris Harper, Elliotts producing partner at Elliott & Harper Productions. They founded the company when they left the National Theatre, where Elliott directed a string of successes including War Horse and The Curious Incident Of The Dog In The Night-Time. The pair won Olivier and Tony awards this year for Elliotts acclaimed NT version of Tony Kushners epic Angels In America with Andrew Garfield. Wendell Pierce (as Robert Zane) starred alongside Meghan Markle (as Rachel Zane) in Suits Harper revealed that Elliott directed a private reading of Millers 1949 play two years ago, with the playwrights filmmaker daughter Rebecca Miller (who controls her fathers literary estate) in attendance. Harper said Miller couldnt have been more collaborative and keen. We did the reading and it worked completely, said Harper, who added that Pierce didnt participate in the workshop. When it was written, it was a totally modern play; and it has remained relevant, he observed. He added that presenting the drama with a black company allows you to see it through different eyes, without any of the text being changed. All of us know a Willy Loman. Hes the 63- year-old salesman, married with two sons and a house in Brooklyn (almost paid for) who has been shafted by his company. His clients have died off and hes working for commission only, driving 700-mile round trips to New England, returning with nothing to show for his efforts. Hes exhausted and ready to burst. His wife Linda famously squares up to their sons Biff and Happy, and tells them something awful is happening to their father. Hes a human being, and a terrible thing is happening to him. So attention must be paid. Hes not allowed to fall into his grave like an old dog. Attention, attention must be finally paid to such a person. Sharon D Clarke at The Olivier Awards, Arrivals, which was held at the Royal Albert Hall, London Clarke, who will utter those lines, is currently rehearsing musical Caroline, Or Change which will move into the Playhouse Theatre from November 20, after runs at Hampstead and Chichester Festival theatres. There have been productions of Death Of A Salesman with African-American casts before, though Miller was dismissive of one he saw in Baltimore in the Seventies, complaining that the actors werent that good. During a 1998 interview he added it had nothing to do with race. When the acting is terrific, the whole thing works. But thats true whether theyre white or black or Chinese. If you put on a lousy production with white actors, its lousy. Miller famously directed productions in China and Sweden. Elliott knows how to get the best out of great writing and top-of-the-line actors. Interestingly, Don Warrington is playing Loman, as part of a mixed company, at the Royal Exchange in Manchester. Meanwhile, Harper is negotiating with a West End theatre. Had an invigorating time (and some larks) on the British Film Institute London Film Festival competition jury, led by screenwriter Gonzalo Maza (A Fantastic Woman), Dominic Cooper (Mamma Mia!), producer Cairo Cannon (Out Of Blue), Emilia Clarke (Game Of Thrones), director Lenny Abrahamson (Room), and Andrea Riseborough (Birdman and Nancy . . . one of several pictures she has out this year). We watched ten films from around the world and gave the top prize to Sudabeh Mortezais powerful Joy, about trafficked Nigerian sex workers in Austria, and highly commended Colombian thriller Birds Of Passage. Eloquent speeches were made. But I wont forget Andreas comment about my Fortnum & Mason Orange Pekoe tea. Its the colour of my nans tights. The British Film Institute London Film Festival competition jury, led by screenwriter Gonzalo Maza (far left) The crack cast of Company, led by Rosalie Craig, Patti LuPone, Mel Giedroyc and Jonathan Bailey, will go into a studio next month to record the cast album for the gender-swapped production of the Stephen Sondheim and George Furth musical. Producers are negotiating with TV networks for rights to a documentary featuring footage of the two years it took to put the show together. Roxy Jacenko and husband Oliver Curtis recently splashed out $6.5million on a new home in Sydney's Vaucluse. And it appears the former investment banker, 32 is exercising his handyman skills by installing a makeup mirror for his publicist wife, 38. Taking to Instagram, the Sweaty Betty PR founder shared an image of the couple posing in front of the newly-installed vanity mirror at their office photo studio. What are husbands for? Oliver Curtis has installed a makeup mirror for his wife Roxy Jacenko Roxy wrote in the caption, 'In-house handyman - builds a new makeup mirror [for] Social Union,' referring to her new content creation and management agency. In the photo, she showed off her expensive jewellery while posing in a chic black dress. Meanwhile, Oliver cut a dapper figure in a navy sweater and matching trousers. Stunning: It comes after the couple purchased a sprawling, six-bedroom property in Vaucluse It comes after the couple purchased a sprawling, six-bedroom property in Vaucluse. The three-storey home boasts harbour views, an outdoor pool and a steam room, and cost them an eye-watering $6,515,000. Roxy told Daily Mail Australia last month that she planned to make several additions to the house, including installing a gym for herself and Oliver. Lifestyles of the rich and famous! The property boasts harbour views and a steam room The mother-of-two also wants to build a playroom for her two children - Pixie, seven, and Hunter, four - and a storage room dedicated to her collection of handbags. Roxy, who currently resides in Sydney's Bondi, added that she will be working with renowned interior designer Blainey North on improving her new home. 'I have a hair and makeup room going in, a full gym for Oli and I, a bigger cinema and a playroom for the kids,' she said. She spoke about gender equality and LGBTQ rights at the United Nations in Geneva, Switzerland, on Monday. And on Thursday, Amber Heard explained that a focus on helping others is one of the ways she is 'moving forward' following her acrimonious split from now ex-husband Johnny Depp. 'I am very happy that I have moved on with my life and keep moving on with my life,' the actress, 32, said in an interview with the Associated Press. 'I just keep wanting to do with my life that which makes it better for other people and myself.' Forward looking: Amber Heard said Thursday she's 'happy that I have moved on with my life and keep moving on with my life' following her acrimonious divorce from Johnny Depp Heard went on: 'And doing the right thing and moving forward and dedicating yourself to justice, truth, to doing what's right and helping others when you can - that's everything to me. That's all I'm interested in.' Heard accused Depp of domestic violence and in 2016 filed for a restraining order days after suing for divorce after 15 months of marriage. Depp has repeatedly denied the allegations. Ultimately, Heard got a $7 million settlement when the divorce was finalized in January 2017, which she pledged to donate to a pair of charities. While not specifically addressing her short-lived marriage or it's highly publicized end, she did say that she's using past experiences to help others. 'It's incredibly rewarding to be able to use what experience I've lived and endured, suffered, survived through,' she told the AP. 'It's amazing to be able to use one's experiences in life to help others, to help push the conversation forward, to change the conversation.' 'Doing what's right': The actress, 32, who spoke at the United Nations in Geneva on Monday, told the AP she's focused on 'helping others' and using her 'experiences' to help others Exes: Heard accused Depp of domestic violence and in 2016 filed for a restraining order after suing for divorce after 15 months of marriage. Depp has repeatedly denied the allegations In December, Heard will hit the big screen as Mera opposite Jason Momoa in the highly-anticipated Aquaman. Before that, a movie she actually made five years ago is set to be released in theatres. She made London Fields, based on a Martin Amis mystery, in 2013 but the project has been mired in legal issues until recently. The film was abruptly pulled from the Toronto International Film Festival in 2015 when director Matthew Cullen sued the producers over a dispute about payment and the final cut, which set off a string of countersuits. Producers also sued Heard for $10 million, which she countered with a suit that claimed the production had violated her nudity agreement by using a body double. A settlement was reached in September with the producers and the movie is set to debut in 600 theatres this weekend. Heard said it was 'unfortunate' and 'very wrong' that she was sued and is glad that they were able to settle and that she ultimately didn't have to pay any money. 'But it's very important for a female actress or any woman to be able to exercise her own control over her own body and her image,' Heard added. 'I'm glad that the version of the movie being released is supposedly respectful ... with regards specifically to nudity and my nudity agreement. But again, those issues are in the past.' Finally out: Heard stars in London Fields, based on a Martin Amis mystery, opening in theatres this weekend. She made the film in 2013 but it has been mired in legal issues until recently She came under fire last week after appearing in a Vogue photoshoot with short, curly hair that many labelled 'cultural appropriation'. However the backlash hasn't stopped Kendall Jenner from continuing to rock the boat, taking to social media on Thursday to share more sultry shots. The 22-year-old beauty posed for multiple photos while wearing a form-fitting red bodysuit. Scroll down for video Red hot: Kendall Jener set tongues wagging in her latest racy shoot over on social media on Thursday Kendall opted for the latex one piece that drew attention to her incredibly tiny waist and long lean legs. The beauty teamed the look with a pair of vintage Louis Vuitton stockings that made their runway debut back in 2008. She completed her sexy ensemble with black Jimmy Choo patent pumps. Hourglass curves: The 22-year-old beauty posed for multiple photos while wearing a form-fitting red bodysuit Raiding mom Kris Jenner's closet? The beauty teamed the look with a pair of vintage Louis Vuitton stockings that made their runway debut back in 2008 Kendall's hair was styled up into a voluminous updo with a long fringe framing her porcelain face. The reality star had a simple glam complete with contoured cheekbones and a nude plump pout. All shots taken by the popular KarJenner clan's photographer Sasha Samsonova with her tresses styled by Jen Atkin and makeup by Mary Phillips. Animal lover: Kendall was also seen posing with her Doberman Pinscher, the same dog that allegedly bit a child at a cafe back in August Tiny: Kendall opted for the latex one piece that drew attention to her incredibly tiny waist and long lean legs Sleek: She completed her sexy ensemble with black Jimmy Choo patent pumps Kendall was also seen posing with her Doberman Pinscher, the same dog that allegedly bit a child at a cafe back in August. The model's latest shots comes after Vogue shared an image of her with curly hair in what appeared to be of an 'afro' style. The publication released the photos as part of a series marking the 15th anniversary of the CFDA / Vogue Fashion Fund prize, which was created in 2003 to support emerging designers by awarding them cash prizes. Friendly pet: Kendall freuently takes to social media to share photos with her beloved Doberman She's back: The model's latest shots comes after Vogue shared an image of her with curly hair in what appeared to be of an 'afro' style But while Kendall posed in a variety of styles for the series, which was shot by Swedish photographer Mikael Jansson, two photos in particular have drawn the ire of social media users; one sees the model posing in a romantic floral prairie dress by Brock Collection, with her normally poker-straight hair arranged in an Afro hairstyle. Vogue told Fashionista in a statement: 'The image is meant to be an update of the romantic Edwardian / Gibson Girl hair which suits the period feel of the Brock Collection, and also the big hair of the 60s and the early 70s, that puffed-out, teased-out look of those eras. 'We apologise if it came across differently than intended, and did not mean to offend anyone by it.' Just a day after photos emerged of The Bachelor's Dasha Gaivoronski enjoying a beach date with The Bachelorette's Charlie Newling, the pair appear to be settling into a life of domestic bliss. On Friday, Dasha was seen carrying rolls of toilet paper and other household supplies into her new apartment in Sydney's Bondi. The 32-year-old reality star apparently chose the apartment to be closer to her new beau. Moving in: The Bachelor's Dasha Gaivoronski was seen carrying rolls of toilet paper and other household supplies into her new apartment in Sydney's Bondi Dasha, who was living in South Australia with her five-year-old son, Leon, recently relocated to Sydney, suggesting their relationship is more serious than first thought. Showing off her toned abs in a black cropped top, Dasha got to work moving into her apartment. She also wore a pair of baggy grey sweatpants and chunky white sneakers. Her long dark hair was parted in the middle and pulled back in a low ponytail. Inseparable: The 32-year-old reality star apparently chose the apartment to be closer to her new beau Getting serious: Dasha, who was living in South Australia with her five-year-old son, Leon, recently relocated to Sydney, suggesting their relationship is more serious than first thought In need of assistance? At one stage, the personal trainer appeared to have had her hands full, as she struggled to carry all of her household items inside At one stage, the personal trainer appeared to have had her hands full, as she struggled to carry all of her household items inside. Unfortunately Charlie wasn't around to lend a helping hand. The builder was spotted back at work on a construction site in Sydney. Sporty chic: The former reality star was dressed casually in a pair of baggy grey sweatpants and chunky white sneakers Ab fab: Showing off her toned abs in a black cropped top, Dasha got to work moving into her apartment Something in the hair: Her long dark hair was parted in the middle and pulled back in a low ponytail Charlie was seen talking into a two-way radio as he returned to normality after filming The Bachelorette. He was dressed in a pair of muddied black skinny jeans and tan-coloured workman boots. The self-professed 'gentleman' wore a charcoal grey fleece jacket underneath a Hi-Vis vest. Back on the job: Charlie Newling was spotted back at work on a construction site in Sydney after appearing on The Bachelorette Working hard: Charlie wore a safety hard hat as he chatted with other workmen on site after flaunting his relationship with Dasha just days earlier Taking care of business: Charlie was seen talking into a two-way radio as he returned to normality after filming The Bachelorette Easy to spot: The self-professed 'gentleman' wore a charcoal grey fleece jacket underneath a Hi-Vis vest He also wore a safety hard hat as he chatted with other workmen on site. Dasha was a contestant on Nick Cummins' latest season of The Bachelor, while Charlie is still vying for Ali Oetjen's heart on the current season of The Bachelorette. But their fledgling relationship hasn't been without complications for the clearly besotted couple. Workwear: He was dressed in a pair of muddied black skinny jeans and tan-coloured workman boots Trouble: It's believed Charlie is in breach of his contract with Network Ten, as he openly flaunts his relationship with Dasha, despite still appearing on The Bachelorette Giving it away... Insiders yesterday told Daily Mail Australia Charlie's tipped to make it to the show's finale, however it's apparent he doesn't win It's believed Charlie is in breach of his contract with Network Ten, as he openly flaunts his relationship with Dasha, despite still appearing on The Bachelorette. Insiders yesterday told Daily Mail Australia he's tipped to make it to the show's finale, however it's apparent he doesn't win. 'He's a major part of the show and is being edited as the winner, or at least final three. It's frankly unbelievable he's doing this,' revealed a source. 'He's trying to sabotage the whole show.' She's a top model and newly married. And on Thursday, Karlie Kloss took things in her stride as she stepped out in New York City wearing a cream blazer and black skinny jeans. The 26-year-old wore a pair of impossibly pointed toe heels and was perfectly coiffed. Newlywed: Karlie Kloss took things in her stride as she stepped out in New York City wearing a cream blazer and black skinny jeans a week after marrying beau Joshua Kushner Her jeans were cropped above the ankle and frayed at the edges. Karlie, 26, wore a white t-shirt under her jacket and sported large sunglasses. She accessorized with bejeweled earrings and was made up with scarlet red lip color. The beauty surprised a week ago by revealing via social media that she and longtime beau Joshua Kushner had tied the knot. Flawless: The model, 26, wore a pair of impossibly pointed toe heels and was perfectly coiffed Top model: She accessorized with bejeweled earrings and was made up with scarlet red lip color Karlie shared a picture from her and Joshua's big day, showing her in a white lace Dior wedding dress while holding a bouquet. She simply captioned the snap: '10.18.2018'. The couple held a Jewish ceremony in New York with fewer than 80 people in attendance and they're expected to have a larger event for friends and family next year. 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. 1968 was a year of intense change for the world. Anyone who lived it may have thought the world was being engulfed by the waters of revolution. Across the world, students took to the streets promising to destroy the political system. Paris was the symbol of that year. Twenty-two years after the liberation of France at the end of World War II, the streets of the French capital looked like a wartime scenario. What had begun as a student protest about dormitory accommodation issues quickly became a generalized movement for social strife. Barricades appeared in the streets and public order collapsed. The sons and daughters of the French bourgeoisie sought to destroy the bourgeois order. What would replace it? No one knew or seemed to care. They just knew it would be something much better. 1968 was also the year in which the modern history of the Catholic Church in Latin America began. The Second General Conference of the Latin American Episcopate in Medellin, Colombia, marked the birth of liberationist Catholicism as an official movement. As a result of that event, many Catholic bishops start using Marxist analysis and even employing Marxist rhetoric as they agitated for social, economic and political revolution. Among the participants at that conference was the still unknown Peruvian priest Gustavo Gutierrez. Two years later, he sought to integrate Marxism with the Catholic faith in his book, A Theology of Liberation. Thereafter known as the father of liberation theology, Gutierrezs ideas would be adopted by the then Franciscan friar and priest Leonardo Boff from Brazil and developed by him and others into a powerful political movement. To tell the history of the liberation theology in Brazil is to tell the story of Leonardo Boff. More than Gutierrez, he was very much the public face of liberation theory and Catholic dialogue with Marxism. In the 1970s, Boff, his brother Clodovis Boff and Carlos Alberto Libanio Christo, better known as Frei Betto, turned Brazilian Catholicism a kind of world epicenter for liberation theology. Leonardo Boff was a young priest recently returned from his studies in theology in Germany when he began the process of initiating a revolution that would change the religious and political history of Brazil. The fact that Boff studied theology in Germany matters. German universities were the home of the critical theory of the Frankfurt School and of Jacques Derridas deconstructionism. These ideas spread rapidly throughout German faculties of theology. Thus, as the Catholic historian Ralph M. Wiltgen writes, Germany became the motherland of a religious hermeneutic alien to the tradition and teaching of the Church. It was in this intellectual environment heavily marked by the neo-Marxism that Boff formed his thinking. This partly explains the criticism made in 1984 by that then-Cardinal Josef Ratzinger concerning the errors of Liberation Theology. For Ratzinger, this theology involved an entire reinterpretation of Catholic doctrine. What the liberation theologians created was a new hermeneutic, a hermeneutic based on historical materialism, or as Boff himself stated in an interview with the Jornal do Brasil in 1980: What we propose is not theology within Marxism, but Marxism (historical materialism) within Theology. This appeal to Marxist historical materialism resulted in what has been called the immanentization of the eschatological spirit: the idea that heaven can be realized on earth. Boff and his companions thus ended up creating a neo-Marxist political movement with a theological veneer. The Brazil of the 1970s was a very favorable environment for the development of this Christian Marxism. The new generation of clergy who took over the leadership of the Church in Brazil such as the Archbishop of Sao Paulo Dom Paulo Evaristo Arns as well as the brothers Dom Ivo and Dom Aloisio Lorscheider, both leaders of the National Conference of Bishops of Brazil, was theologically progressive, even radical. The left-wing Brazilian historian Elio Gaspari points out that many of these individuals had contacts with both the communist insurgents and Marxist intellectuals who came to dominate the Brazilian cultural scene. Shortly after the conclave that elected him in 1978, Pope John Paul I (whose papacy only lasted thirty-three days) had a meeting with twenty Latin American cardinals and observed that most of them ostensibly supported liberation theology. They informed him, on the occasion, that there were already more than 100,000 of what were called basic ecclesial communities. Many of these were actively involved in disseminating Marxist revolutionary propaganda throughout Latin America. Until then, John Paul I knew Liberation Theology only as theoretical speculation. He had not imagined that this doctrine could have become a political force of such dimensions. When Cardinal Ratzinger began to dismantle the theological arguments of liberation theology in the 1980s, many of the basic ecclesial communities had already helped to create and been absorbed by a mass political party, the Workers Party. Many of its members dont claim to be theologically sophisticated or even Christians but they invariably insist that Jesus Christ was socialist. Many of the basic ecclesial communities associated themselves with Communist and left-populist movements in Latin America. Some supported the terrorist Farc movement in Colombia. Others played a fundamental role in the rising of the late Colonel Hugo Chavez to power in Venezuela. According to Friar Betto, he himself participated in a meeting in Havana between Lula da Silva and Fidel Castro in 1991 that resulted in the creation of the Sao Paulo Forum an organization which brings together all left-wing organizations in Latin America with the primary objective of assuming political. A good example of this was the election of the Catholic bishop Fernando Lugo and liberationist sympathizer to the presidency of Paraguay. By 1990, many liberation theologians were no longer even pretending to be that serious about Catholicism. Friar Betto, for example, occupied positions in the Lula da Silva government from 2003 to 2004. As a policymaker, he turned out to be a failure. Leonardo Boff abandoned the priesthood and the Franciscan order in 1992. His brother, Clodovis Boff, renounced liberation theology a few years later and became a critic of it. Leonardo Boff continues to present himself as a kind of conscience of the Brazilian Catholic Church, but it is not clear that he is taken very seriously by many Catholics in Brazil today. Nowadays, his audience is mostly the left-wing academics and the followers of the Workers Party. In more recent years, Leonardo Boff seems to have embraced a type of eco-theology and announced that his mission is to save mother Earth. Much of the power of liberation theology in the Catholic Church in Brazil has faded. The strong association between liberationists and the Workers Party and the rise of a conservative political right vis-a-vis the growing unpopularity of the left led to a backlash against liberation theology within the Catholic Church itself. The loss of the intellectual prestige of liberationism also contributed to both the decline of this doctrine and the rise of theological conceptions more attuned to Catholic orthodoxy. Conservative Catholicism has been moving slowly toward the mainstream of Brazilian religious life, which will inevitably result in significant changes in the Brazilian Catholic Church. Featured photo: Escritor Leonardo Boff concede entrevista. Leonardo Boff, pseudonimo de Genezio Darci Boff, e um teologo brasileiro, escritor e professor universitario, expoente da Teologia da Libertacao no Brasil. Foto: Jane de Araujo/Agencia Senado. 2015. Wiki Commons. Paris Jackson celebrated 'throwback Thursday' with a racy Instagram snap. The daughter of the late King of Pop posted a photo of herself in which she's seen topless and planting a kiss on her dog's muzzle. She cradles the pet's head in her hands as she posed sideways to the camera. 'tbt': Paris Jackson posted a photo of herself to Instagram Thursday in which she's seen topless and planting a kiss on her dog's muzzle The 20-year-old flashed just a hint of her breast which was mostly hidden by her right arm. Her tattoos on her shoulders and arms were visible and she wore black undies and tan jeans. The picture appeared to have been taken in the back of a camper van with blankets pegged up as curtains on the windows. Paris posted a trio of snaps back in July showing her and the Boxer mix sleeping cuddled up to each other on a bed. Her buddy: Paris posted a trio of snaps back in July showing her and the Boxer mix sleeping cuddled up to each other on a bed She wrote in the caption: 'wrapped in your arms, head to your chest, there's no place i feel more loved or more safe (besides when koa is in my arms of course).' Koa is her other pet pooch who regularly accompanies her on outings and to events. Paris was spotted on Wednesday night as Jeremy Scott unveiled his latest Moschino x H&M collection in New York City. She wrote in the caption: 'wrapped in your arms, head to your chest, there's no place i feel more loved or more safe (besides when koa is in my arms of course)' She and Frances Bean Cobain were just two of the many celebrities who flocked to see the new line of apparel. Paris looked terrific in a shoulder-free leopard print dress, which had its zipper showcased on the front. The daughter of late pop superstar Michael Jackson also has been pursuing music and is part of the duo The Soundflowers. She recently told her followers she had suffered an 'emotional breakdown' by posting a candid snap of herself crying. But Iskra Lawrence put on a brave face as she joined Davina McCall Models 1's 50th anniversary party at Spring Studios in London. The model, 28, looked beautiful as she oozed glamour in a striped midi-dress with cut-out detail while mingling with a star-studded crowd at the Ciroc sponsored event. Bouncing back: Iskra Lawrence put on a brave face after her 'emotional breakdown' as she joined Davina McCall Models 1's 50th anniversary party at Spring Studios in London The social media influencer matched the asymmetric frock with nude stiletto heels, adding height to her 5ft 9 frame. Opting for a simple make-up look, the natural beauty wore black mascara and a pale pink lip. Davina, 51, stunned in a sleek all black ensemble as she posed with her hairdresser and long term-friend Michael Douglas. The fitness fanatic wore a full-length dress, with her well-toned arms on full display. Dressed to impress: The model, 28, looked beautiful as she oozed glamour in a striped midi-dress with cut-out detail while mingling with a star-studded crowd at the Ciroc sponsored event She's back! Opting for a simple make-up look, the natural beauty wore black mascara and a pale pink lip Pals: The social media influencer matched the asymmetric frock with nude stiletto heels, adding height to her 5ft 9 frame (pictured with Alexandra Watts and Carina Behrens) The TV presenter added a touch of glamour with a deep maroon lip and black eyeliner, while wearing her raven locks straight. Davina, who is no stranger to showing off her rippling abs and toned core on social media, has just launched a new fitness DVD set to come out on December 24. The former Big Brother personality said she wants to inspire other women that they can be 'fit and strong at any age'. Old friends: Davina, 51, stunned in a sleek all black ensemble as she posed with her hairdresser and long term-friend Michael Douglas The star, who has reigned over the fitness DVD charts since 2007, has stuck to her winning formula with Davina: Power Box and Tone, which focuses on boxing-style movements with sections on cardio, strength and movement. Davina said: 'I'm so proud of this DVD. It's a really upbeat workout which focusses on boxing style movements to build strength and tone. 'It works your whole body, but with an emphasis on building fitness and there are aerobic intervals in there too, to make sure there is some essential fat burning as well as toning up.' Queen of fitness: Davina, who is no stranger to showing off her rippling abs and toned core on social media, has just launched a new fitness DVD set to come out on December 24 Hard at work: Davina, who has reigned over the fitness DVD charts since 2007, has stuck to her winning formula with Davina: Power Box and Tone. Pictured with trainer Sarah Gorman 'I want to inspire other women that you can be fit and strong at any age. 'I have been that person who didn't love working out, so I do understand how hard it can be. 'But if you've never tried anything like this, I would urge you to give it a go. It could be life changing.' Also at the event was 80s model Yasmin Le Bon, who oozed glamour in high-waisted jeans and in a floral top with strappy heels. It was a family affair for the Le Bons, as Yasmin was joined by husband and former Duran Duran frontman Simon and their model daughter Amber. Age-defying: 80s model Yasmin Le Bon oozed glamour in high-waisted jeans, a floral top and towering strappy heels Family affair: It was a family affair for the Le Bons, as Yasmin was joined by husband and former Duran Duran frontman Simon and daughter Amber Amber looked chic in black velvet jacket over a sleek jumpsuit. The model, 29, paired the look with patent chunky black boots and a sparkly bag that was slung over her body. She wore a simple make-up look, pairing a clear lip gloss with a light foundation and a few simple jewellery touches. Model good looks: Amber, 29, looked chic in black velvet jacket over a sleek jumpsuit All together: Amber, Yasmin and Duncan Le Bon laughed and joked together at the exclusive party Meanwhile, Simon went for a casual look with jeans and a pair of navy converse trainers. He added a black t-shirt emblazoned with a bright green slogan and animal print, and finished off the look with a simple silver jacket. Models 1 is considered one of Europe's top modelling agencies, having launched the careers of numerous catwalk superstars, including Twiggy and Yasmin Le Bon. The agency originally started with only three models back in 1968, and now also features Talent, Digital Influencer, and Curve divisions. Mummy time: Amber and Yasmin looked like sisters as they danced together After leaving Weatherfield for Walford, she will be taking the reigns at EastEnders in February in a bid to boost the ratings over its continuing drama rivals. And controversial producer, Kate Oates, who left Coronation Street in June after two years, has been speaking about her plans as BBC One soap's new boss in 2019. The soap queen teased an 'issues led' storyline with a hard-hitting message, but admitted the thought of bringing it to life on the small screen is making her nervous. New role: Producer Kate Oates, 39, will be taking the reigns at EastEnders from February 2019 and is planning a huge 'issues led' storyline which is so hard-hitting, it's making her 'nervous' Kate, 39, told The Sun: 'I think anything important should be approached with a certain degree of nerves - if you're saying anything important you should care about it.' She added that she will be keeping the soap's iconic couple Mick and Linda Carter, played by Danny Dyer and Kellie Bright, praising the actors for their 'range'. Kate added: 'I don't have any kind of plans to shake that up. I'm a big fan of the Carters so no, no plans to get rid of them. And Danny's teaching me to speak cockney so...' Perfect pair: Kate is a big fan of Mick and Linda Carter, played by Danny Dyer and Kellie Bright, and reassured fans that the iconic couple will be staying in the Queen Vic for the time being Danny dialogue: Kate joked that Danny, who joined EastEnders in 2013, is teaching her how to speak Cockney, to make her feel at home on the BBC soap Kate is taking over on EastEnders from interim boss John Yorke, who replaced Sean O'Connor after he left in 2017. She quit her role on Coronation Street in April amid criticism about her controversial plot choices, and record numbers of Ofcom complaints. Kate is responsible for such storylines as David Platt's male rape ordeal, Pat Phelan's murderous spree and Bethany Platt's sex trafficking, all of which have earned ITV a barrage of official complaints from viewers. The producer, who was previously series producer at Emmerdale from 2012 to 2015, will also be working across Casualty and Holby City. Turning back to this year on Albert Square, some of the residents are set to get a blast from the past this Christmas when a familiar face returns to the Square. Dean Gaffney, who plays hapless Robbie Jackson on the show, revealed at the Inside Soap Awards in London on Monday that he is 'good friends' with the actor making a comeback to the BBC soap - but he was naming no names. And the mystery person won't just be lazing around eating mince pies, they will well and truly shake things up in a 'very interesting storyline'. Gaffney told Digital Spy: 'We've got a returnee coming back, which is exciting! There's certain people that come back to a show, they might not add to it, but this person definitely adds to it! 'It's good to have this person back. Their storyline at Christmas will be very interesting.' Great British Bake Off host Sandi Toksvig, 60, lifted the lid on the judges' plan to return for the third series of the Channel 4 show next year. The host's co-star Noel Fielding as well as judges Prue Leith and Paul Hollywood have agreed to appear for another year on the baking show. According to The Mirror, the mouth-watering show raked in 9.2 million viewers after it moved from BBC to Channel 4 last year. Big plans: Great British Bake Off host Sandi Toksvig, 60, lifted the lid on the judges' plan to return for the third series on Channel 4 next year (Noel Fielding, Paul Hollywood, Prue Leith) Asked whether Noel, Prue and Paul would return, Sandi told the publication: 'I think we are good to go.' Sandi will be showing off her own cooking finesse as she invited Noel, Prue and Paul over for a second Christmas this year. She explained to the newspaper: 'I shall be making dinner and Prue will come and tidy up the gravy at the very end.' Next week, Ruby Bhogal, Rahul Mandal and Kim-Joy will have an epic bake off in the first final filmed outside the tent. Baking up a storm: The host's co-star Noel as well as judges Prue and Paul (pictured together) have agreed to appear for another year on the baking show Research scientist Rahul was hit with cheating claims during the Great British Bake Off's semi final episode. However, Sandi defended the finalist against the accusations as she insisted she would hate for there to be 'backlash' for Rahul. Rahul was seen continuing to decorate his bakes after Sandi and her co-host Noel Fielding had called time during challenges on Tuesday's episode. But Sandi has called Rahul, who has made it through to next week's final along with Kim-Joy and Ruby Bhodal, an 'astonishing talent.' Defence: Great British Bake Off host Sandi has defended finalist Rahul after some viewers accused the research scientist of cheating during this week's semi final episode Speaking about the semi final incident, Sandi told Digital Spy: 'What you see is what you get with Rahul. He's a really charming man with very little self-confidence and an astonishing talent. 'The others all have talent, Briony is talented, Ruby is talented, Kim-Joy is talented but at the end of the day, it's that bake on that day. I'm sorry if there is a backlash. 'Everybody is doing their best. These are not telly people. These are people who have decided to put themselves forward to do something that they are passionate about. So, I would hate for there to be a backlash against anybody.' She appears to have lost 20lbs in recent months. And Ashley Graham looked incredible at Angeles Team Mentoring's 20th Annual Soiree at the Fairmont Miramar Hotel in Santa Monica, California on Thursday. The model, 30, displayed her noticeably slimmer waistline in her emerald green wrap around blouse and curve-hugging PVC skirt. Curves ahead: Ashley Graham exhibited her noticeably slimmer waistline in a curve-hugging PVC skirt as she joined youthful Jane Seymour at glitzy bash in Santa Monica on Thursday Drawing more attention to her curvy frame, the Harper's Bazaar cover girl wore her brunette locks in loose waves down to her cleavage. The Nebraska born beauty sauntered down the red carpet in her peep toe heels, which gave her some added height and a commanding presence. Jane Seymour, 67, also rubbed shoulders with the model as she arrived at the party in her slinky snakeskin number. The actress shimmered with her sparkling accessories and she added silver heels to bring a dazzling quality to her party look. Good pals: Jane Seymour also rubbed shoulders with the model as she arrived at the party in her slinky snakeskin number (pictured with Kathy Ireland and Ashley) The model always has an invite to the hottest parties of the day and she recently attended Karlie Kloss' star-studded wedding. Ashley's appearance at the glittering bash comes after she remarked supermodel Kendall Jenner was 'lucky' to be able to turn down jobs. She told Watch What Happens Live: 'Well, lucky for Kendall Jenner. I've never been so lucky. This t*ts and a** had to fight through and break down barriers every day.' Looking sensational! Drawing more attention to her curvy frame, the Harper's Bazaar cover girl wore her brunette locks in loose waves down to her cleavage Standing tall: The Nebraska born beauty sauntered down the red carpet in her peep toe heels, which gave her some added height and a commanding presence According to Hollywood Life, the Vogue cover girl is 'sick' of people commenting on her weight and her body despite her career as a model. The source dished to the publication: 'Ashley 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. '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.' They're old friends who founded the billion dollar Casamigos Tequila company together. And George Clooney enjoyed a night out with long-time pal Rande Gerber as the pair enjoyed dinner at Italian restaurant Madeo in Beverly Hills on Thursday. The actor, 57, looked suave in a simple black T-shirt and jeans with his trademark silver hair and designer stubble on display. Old friends: George Clooney enjoyed a night out with long-time pal Rande Gerber as the pair enjoyed dinner at Italian restaurant Madeo in Beverly Hills on Thursday The Academy Award winner teamed his low-key ensemble with grey suede shoes, while throwing a leather jacket over his arm. Rande, 56, looked smart in a black shirt and jeans, teamed with a simple silver chain. The businessman and former model - the husband of Cindy Crawford - wore his hair gelled back from his face as the friends enjoyed a boys' night out. The dinner comes as the business partners are no doubt in the midst of planning their legendary Casamigos Halloween parties. The first shindig on Friday will be held in Beverly Hills, while the second will take place in Las Vegas on Saturday. Suave: The businessman and former model, 56, looked smart in a black shirt and jeans, teamed with a simple silver chain The pair are famous for throwing the hottest bashes and last year their 70s-themed night on Sunset Strip was attended by the likes of Kim Kardashian West, Cindy Crawford and Sylvester Stallone. Clooney, Gerber and their partner Mike Meldman will be hosting the bash this October at Mike's house in Beverley Hills and the following night it will move to celebrity hot spot Catch in Sin City. George will likely bring wife Amal, 40, with whom he has twins Ella and Alexander, aged 15 months. Rande always takes along his supermodel wife Cindy Crawford, 52, as well as their model children Presley, 19, and Kaia, 17. An insider told the New York Post's Page Six column: 'It's coming home to Mike's house, where the first party took place, which means the party is going to be even more exclusive.' Party legends: The business partners are famous for throwing the hottest bashes (Rande pictured at last year's 1970s-themed bash with Amal Clooney, 40, and Cindy Crawford, 52) It's said to be the plan that the location of the party will move each year, with Nashville and Miami being talked about for 2019. The forthcoming Halloween shindig is to be the first since the pair agreed to sell the tequila brand for close to $1 billion. The duo decided to sell their stake in the firm last year to the alcoholic beverage company Diageo, which agreed to pay $700 million to assume control of the brand, with the potential for another $300 million based on its performance over the next decade. In a statement, George - who founded the firm alongside his partners Rande and Michael in 2013 - said: 'If you asked us four years ago if we had a billion dollar company, I don't think we would have said yes. 'This reflects Diageo's belief in our company and our belief in Diageo. But we're not going anywhere. We'll still be very much a part of Casamigos.' He never shies away from revealing exactly what he thinks as a judge on Strictly Come Dancing, with his harsh critique becoming a highlight of the show. But Craig Revel Horwood had nothing but kind words to say about head judge Shirley Ballas, 58, who joined the show in 2017 after Len Goodman stepped down. The TV personality, 53, who has been a judge since Strictly began in 2004, praised Shirley as 'phenomenal' and a 'fantastic' addition to the panel during an appearance on BBC Radio 2 on Friday morning. Mr. Nasty no more? Strictly Come Dancing's Craig Revel Horwood had nothing but kind words to say about head judge Shirley Ballas, 58, during a Radio 2 interview on Friday Making her mark: The TV personality, 53, who has been a judge since Strictly began in 2004, praised Shirley as 'phenomenal' and a 'fantastic' addition to the panel (pictured this month) He said: 'She is fantastic. Len Goodman was such a character and I think Shirley has made it completely her own. 'She is phenomenal in the Latin and ballroom world and she's just an incredible person. I'm really pleased she got the head judge role.' Craig arrived at the interview at the BBC studios in central London wearing a striking green shirt covered with images of Disney character Mickey Mouse. The shirt was tucked into his thin brown belt which he wore with matching green trousers that had a white stripe up the side of each leg. Taking the Mickey: Craig arrived at the interview at the BBC studios in central London wearing a striking green shirt covered with images of Disney character Mickey Mouse New addition: Shirley Ballas joined Darcey Bussell, Craig Revel Horwood and Bruno Tonioli on the Strictly Come Dancing judging panel in 2017 after Len Goodman quit the show The Australian-British dancer completed his look with a black Billionaire Boys Club bomber jacket and comfy grey and orange trainers. Craig also paid tribute to 'father figure' Sir Bruce Forsyth, who hosted Strictly with Tess Daly until 2013. The broadcasting legend passed away in August 2017 at the age of 89. 'He was like a father figure to me at work and he was amazing, and I think that's a side of him I think people don't know about,' Craig said. 'He helped me when I first came on the show and was catapulted into the world of celebrity which I was not used to. He does smile! The shirt was tucked into his thin brown belt which he wore with matching green trousers that had a white stripe up the side of each leg 'He was a great guy to go to for advice and I really miss him a lot. It was gentle advice, it was like a father would. He was a really, really lovely man.' The dancer's interview came after he claimed fellow judge Bruno Tonioli, 62, checks the scores Shirley plans to give the celebs during live shows before deciding on his. Craig told the Daily Mirror: 'Bruno sits next to Shirley and looks at what she is doing. They seem to have the same score all the time just one apart from one another.' The TV star recently criticised the backlash towards contestant Seann Walsh and professional partner Katya Jones over their shock kiss this month. 'A really lovely man': Craig also paid tribute to 'father figure' Sir Bruce Forsyth, who hosted Strictly with Tess Daly until 2013 (pictured in 2014) Speaking to The Sun, he said: 'I know it affected Seann and Katya a lot, that whole story, because it went global. 'For what reason, I have no clue because there have been a lot of pairings that have been absolutely gorgeous.' Seann and Katya issued emotional apologies after pictures of them kissing outside a London pub were released earlier this month, calling it a 'drunken mistake'. Seann was in a relationship with then-girlfriend of three years Rebecca Humphries while Jones has been married to fellow professional dancer Neil Jones since 2013. They faced the worst possible result when their renovated home failed to sell at the auction reserve price on last year's season of The Block. And now former The Block contestants Ronnie and Georgia have some advice for this year's crop of contestants, who will go to auction on their Gatwick hotel apartments on the weekend. Georgia insists that the teams should not budge on their asking price even if it takes time to sell. 'I get this anxious feeling in my tummy for them': Former The Block contestants Ronnie and Georgia (pictured) give advice to this year's teams as the auctions approach 'My advice to the Blockheads is if they feel like they're just going to meet reserve, pass it in,' she tells Nine Homes. She adds: 'Otherwise, you could end up in your worst-case scenario, where you make $5,000 or 10,000. You want to pass it in so you can negotiate with buyers in the coming weeks, and get more money.' Georgia and her husband Ronnie 'passed in' at an auction for their renovated Elsternwick, Melbourne home, pulling out of the auction when they failed to secure their reserve. Nice work: Georgia and her husband Ronnie 'passed in' at an auction for their renovated Elsternwick, Melbourne home (pictured) pulling out of the auction when they failed to secure their reserve. However they eventually sold the house for $2,781,000 However they eventually sold the house for $2,781,000, making a profit of $161,000 and coming in third on the show. Having been through all the tension of the big sale day, Georgia admits she feels nervous for this year's teams. 'I get this anxious feeling in my tummy for them already,' Georgia tells Nine Homes. Loss? The Block's latest project will lose millions, according to statements made by Kate Langbroek on The Hit Network's Hughesy and Kate radio program. Kate is pictured with co-star Dave Hughes (left) Wow! The Block renovation of The Gatwick hotel in Melbourne is said to have cost $25 million It comes after it was revealed that The Block's executive producer Julian Cress that he believes The Gatwick will lose money, according to statements made by Kate Langbroek on The Hit Network's Hughesy and Kate radio program. 'At one stage he said, 'I'm the dumbest property developer in Australia'. When he told us how much money they will lose doing this block, [it was] quite amazing,' Kate said on air Tuesday. Prompted to reveal hard figures by her co-host Dave Hughes, Kate went on: 'He said we bought it for 10 [million], we've spent 15 [million]. 'That Block is worth 25 million. He said, 'We're lucky we'll get 13 million back'. Then he went: 'I'm the stupidest property developer in Australia.'' The World's Hottest Grandma made international headlines when one of her nude photos was pulled from Instagram for violating the website's guidelines. And now Gina Stewart has risked another social media ban, this time by exposing her double-E cup breast implants in a sheer pink mini-dress. The racy ensemble, which was made of a crochet-style material, provided a generous glimpse at the 48-year-old's assets. Too hot for social media? The World's Hottest Grandma Gina Stewart, 48, risks another Instagram ban as she exposes her double-E cup breast implants in a sheer mini-dress Last month, the mother-of-four was left reeling after Instagram yanked down a nude photo that showed her reclining in an opulent chair with her hair and legs strategically placed to protect her modesty. Gina later claimed the image was no raunchier than those posted by other models on social media, adding that Instagram 'made a mistake' by taking it down. 'Carmen Electra has far more revealing photos from her recent photo shoot as well as many other women,' the mother-of-four told the Gold Coast Bulletin. Dare to bare! The racy ensemble, which was made of a crochet-style material, provided a generous glimpse at the 48-year-old's assets While Instagram was quick to delete it, the photo is still available to view on Gina's raunchy Twitter account. When contacted for comment by Daily Mail Australia, the grandmother said: 'Yes, Instagram removed it because it said it did not comply with their guidelines. 'But the guidelines say no nipple and nipples were not being shown in the picture, so I have asked Instagram to please re-post it. It's only a naked side shot and my hair is covering me.' Too hot! The blonde made worldwide headlines earlier this month when one of her nude photos was pulled from Instagram for violating the website's guidelines Gina also insisted that her photos are artistic and inoffensive, and should be allowed on Instagram as a legitimate form of self-expression. 'All my photos are tasteful and only implied nudity,' she explained. 'Instagram is a place for artistic self-expression and creativity. 'Like Dita Von Teese says, "Glamour isn't about age, shape, or size. You dont have to be pretty to have it. Anyone can create it."' Her thoughts: 'All my photos are tasteful and only implied nudity,' she told Daily Mail Australia. 'Instagram is a place for artistic self-expression and creativity' The Gold Coast grandmother is currently on a high after making it into Maxim Australia's annual Hot 100 list at No. 90. She's now competing in the Maxim Cover Girl Competition for a chance at landing an upcoming cover of the popular men's magazine. Gina is currently a single mother to children James, 27, Casey, 25, Cody, 22, and Summer, four. She recently set pulses racing with a sexy G-string snap. And Shauna Sexton once again showed ex Ben Affleck what he is missing as she rocked a seriously racy mini dress to party with pals at the Blind Dragon bar in Los Angeles on Thursday night. The Playboy model, 23, was no doubt on high alert to ensure she didn't flash her modesty as she the frock's daring thigh splits meant she had to boldly forgo her underwear. Dressed to impress: Shauna Sexton once again showed ex Ben Affleck what he is missing as she rocked a seriously racy mini dress to party with pals at the Blind Dragon bar in Los Angeles on Thursday night Up top, the design was relatively demure with long sleeves and a crew neckline - but it was a very different story in the lower section of the dress as risque cut-outs, connected only by criss-crossings of fabric, allowed the beauty to show off some serious skin. Upping the sex appeal, Shauna teamed the dress with thigh-high black boots that still allowed her to show off a glimpse of her toned legs. Letting her dress do the legwork, the beauty swept her blonde locks back into a chic low bun and opted for a neutral make-up palette. Sizzling: The Playboy model, 23, was no doubt on high alert to ensure she didn't flash her modesty as she the frock's daring thigh splits meant she had to boldly forgo her underwear Unique design: Up top, the design was relatively demure with long sleeves and a crew neckline Racy: Upping the sex appeal, Shauna teamed the dress with thigh-high black boots that still allowed her to show off a glimpse of her toned legs Despite splitting from Ben earlier this month, Shauna certainly didn't look broken-hearted as she partied into the early hours with her friends. Ben, 46 - who was previously married to fellow Hollywood star Jennifer Garner - and the model decided to go their separate ways after less than two months of dating, although an insider played down the significance of their split. The source told People: 'There was nothing to split from as it has been casual.' Effortless: Letting her dress do the legwork, the beauty swept her blonde locks back into a chic low bun and opted for a neutral make-up palette Raunchy: The Playboy model, 23, was no doubt on high alert to ensure she didn't flash her modesty as she the frock's daring thigh splits meant she had to boldly forgo her underwear As soon as he finished up his rehab stay, Ben and Shauna went on a romantic vacation to Montana together. But the actor - who checked himself into rehab in August, seeking treatment for alcohol addiction - is instead focused on his health and his three children, Violet, 12, Seraphina, nine, and Samuel, six. The friend added: 'Ben knew that the relationship wasnt right, so he ended it before it before it really got started. 'He enjoyed being with her but is working on himself, and being together with her at this time is not something that works. He will date in the future, but for now his focus is on his sobriety, family and his next project.' Priorities: Ben - who checked into rehab in August, seeking treatment for alcohol addiction - reportedly ended his romance with Shauna to focus on his health and three children `Why Barrister Mainul in jail?` Dr Kamal He says ruling party has gone crazy Jatiya Oikyafront convener Dr Kamal Hossain speaking at a discussion programme, organised by the Jatiya Ainjibi Oikyafront held at the Shahid Shafiur Rahman Auditorium of Supreme Court Bar Association on Thursday, presided over by Advocate Zainul Abedin, Staff Reporter : 'Jatiya Oikyafront's Convener Dr Kamal Hossain on Thursday said, "The ruling party has made the country a jungle. Even, worse than the jungle. They have gone crazy." Addressing the Law Minister, he said, "Barrister Mainul got bail from High Court. Then why he is in jail, why, why? We want answer from the Law Minister. In which ground he (Barrister Mainul) was sent to jail? You (Law Minister) speak about democracy, and now give us the answer. In a defamation case, we have got bail in three times. Then why he is in jai?" He was speaking as the chief guest at a general meeting of 'Jatiya Ainjibi Oikyafront' organized on the Supreme Court premises in Dhaka on Thursday. "There is no country in the world where a Prime Minister orders to file cases against a citizen of the country. We have passed 47 years of our independence. Never thought that I have to see such a situation in the country. It is a big punishment for me to see such a situation," the veteran politician said. "People of the country are now united against the injustice and in favour of justice. Lawyers are also united. Those who live in the fool's paradise don't see it," he said. He said, "We raised seven point demands including dissolving the Parliament before the election. The present Prime Minister also demanded these points in 2006. We are not asking anything out of it. Those are the precondition of a fair election." Jatiya Ainjibi Oikyafront's Convener and also the President of Supreme Court Bar Association (SCBA) Advocate Zainul Abedin presided over the meeting and Ainjibi Oikyafront's Member-Secretary and also SCBA's Secretary Barrister A M Mahbub Uddin Khokan conducted it. Barrister Moudud Ahmed, Advocate Khandker Mahbub Hossain, Advocate Subrata Chowdhury, Advocate Nitay Roy Chowdhury, Advocate Abdur Rezzak Khan, Advocate Moazzem Hossain Alal, Advocate Masud Ahmed Talukder, Advocate Sanaullah Miah, Advocate Golam Mostofa Khan, Bikalpa Dhara's Secretary Advocate Shah Mohammad Badol, Advocate S M Kamal Uddin, Dr Goribe Newaz, among others, gave speech at the meeting. Advocate Zainul Abedin announced some demands at the end of the meeting. These are-all political prisoners, including BNP Chairperson Khaleda Zia, should be released before the election schedule, the sentences against Tarique Rahman should be canceled, Barrister Mainul Hosein should be released, people will have to return the right to vote, an election-time neutral government should be formed after dissolving the Parliament and interference in the judiciary should be stopped. He said that they would form branch committees of 'Jatiya Ainjibi Oikyafront' in the district bars very soon and then they will organize a grand rally. Barrister Moudud Ahmed said, "The government is upset with the formation of Jatiya Oikayfront. Now their defeat in a fair election is inevitable. We needed a unity and that have been achieved." Advocate Khandker Mahbub Hossain said, "The government is sitting on the burning volcano. So, they do not know what they have to do. The people of the country are united with the leadership of Dr Kamal Hossain and we are ready to go even in jail." "After the Prime Minister's remarks, police arrested Barrister Mainul Hosein. He is kept in jail like an ordinary prisoner without division facility though he is the former President of the Supreme Court Bar Association and a former Member of the Parliament. He is sick in jail. We want justice of it," Khandker Mahbub also said. Advocate Subrata Chowdhury said, "The present government has made the judiciary into a loyal judiciary. We can't accept it. They have made the whole country a big prison." She's taken her new baby Santiago to Australia with her, while she's filming for her role in Dora the Explorer's live action remake. And Eva Longoria, 43, took a much deserved break as she headed to pamper herself at the Beauty Park Medical Spa in Brentwood, Perth on Thursday. The Desperate Housewives actress giggled on the phone as she prepared for a day of relaxation, wearing a striped blue and white shirt and white jeans. Giggles: Eva Longoria, 43, took a much deserved break as she headed to pamper herself at the Beauty Park Medical Spa in Brentwood, Perth on Thursday The mother-of-one paired the bright white trousers with box-fresh trainers and minimal jewellery. She clutched her car keys and opted for a low-key make-up look protecting her eyes from the Australian sun with a pair of dark sunglasses. Eva has been busy balancing her role in the live-action feature of Dora The Explorer and life as a new mum. Stylish: She clutched onto her car keys and opted for a low-key make-up look protecting her eyes from the Australian sun with a pair of dark sunglasses The Brooklyn Nine-Nine star is set to play Dora's mother Elena in the film based on the character from the popular Nickelodeon TV series. And Eva has been over the moon since giving birth to Santiago, and has been delighting fans with non-stop snaps of her firstborn child. The actress and her husband Jose Baston welcomed Santiago on June 19, 2018. Aww: Eva Longoria and her baby son Santiago wore matching black outfits on the set in Australia on Sunday Back in August, she gushed to E! News about her beau. 'Just going on a new journey with him and being a witness to his life is pretty exciting,' the Texan-born beauty said. On Sunday, she shared another heart-melting snap of life as a new mother as the pair wore matching black outfits. 'Wear Black to Work Day!' Eva captioned the sweet snap, along with a heart emoticon and the hashtag #BabyBaston. Throwback: On Thursday, Eva flashed back to her time on Desperate Housewives, which aired from 2004-2012, when she posted a cast photo on Instagram Last week, Eva flashed back to her years on Desperate Housewiveswhich aired from 2004 to 2012with an Instagram post. 'This picture means so much to me. It was the premiere party of Desperate Housewives. Season One. The beginning,' she wrote. 'I had no idea what a big deal this show would be. Of all the things that have happened in my life, this was one of the most memorable moments I will never forget. '(You can tell because I'm the one with the biggest, dorkiest smile while the others look calm and collected!)' For years, Eva has denied any rivalry between her and Teri, but the Texas native seemed to shade Hatcher when she refrained from tagging her in the post. 'You know, Teri was just a loner. I don't know. Me and Marcia [Cross] and Felicity [Huffman] were a lot closer because we are just girlie girls who like to be in each other's company. Teri didn't,' Longoria told OK! back in 2012. 'There was no bad blood, I think that was just the way it was.' Former Boyzone manager John Reynolds passed away suddenly at his home in Milltown, Dublin on Thursday night aged just 52. His family confirmed the sad news in a statement: 'It is with great sadness that the Reynolds family confirm the sudden death of John Reynolds of POD [nightclub] this evening. 'John aged 52 years, who was one of Ireland's leading independent festival and concert promoters, died suddenly at his home in Milltown, Dublin. Sad news: Former Boyzone manager John Reynolds died on Thursday night aged 52, his family confirmed in a statement on Friday 'Funeral arrangements will be announced in the coming days. The family requested privacy at this time. 'Metropolis Festival will go [ahead] this Saturday 27th and Sunday 28th October as scheduled in the RDS, Dublin.' John famously gave 10,000 towards Louis Walsh's project to create an Irish Take That, leading to the birth of Boyzone. Making a band: John famously gave 10,000 towards Louis Walsh's project to create an Irish Take That, leading to the birth of Boyzone (pictured with the late Stephen Gately in 2008) The Mirror also reports that he was also the name behind Tripod and Crawdaddy, as well as the Market Bar and the Idlewild Bar in Dublin, Ireland. The Irish Times paid tribute to Reynolds, writing: 'When it came to putting on shows, Reynolds was a visionary. 'Some of that vision was unique and ahead of its time; other aspects were the result of his keen eye, seeing what worked elsewhere and bringing it to Irish clubs and fields. Sorely missed: Tributes have poured in for John from a host of people including Stuart Flood and Steve Cummins 'The inspiration for Boyzone, for example, came after Reynolds and Louis Walsh saw Take That perform at the Point Depot, now 3Arena, in Dublin.' John was the nephew of the late Taoiseach Albert Reynolds, who died four years ago. Tributes have rolled in for John on Twitter. Stuart Flood wrote: 'Sad to hear of the sudden passing of John Reynolds. He changed the game for music clubs and festivals in this country and was still doing it with Metropolis and All Together Now. Irish music lovers thank you.' James Vincent McMorrow wrote: 'Just heard about John Reynolds, my condolences 2 his family & friends. U may not have heard of John before, but if u've been 2 Electric Picnic, Forbidden Fruit, shows at Pod Venues in dublin, then u know John's work. He gave me a lot of shows when i was starting out. So sad. RIP.' He brushed off rumours his marriage to wife Katya Jones is in trouble after she cheated with dance partner Seann Walsh earlier this month. And Neil Jones looked seriously upbeat as he toted a ginger wig, that was seemingly the making of a Halloween costume, and a rather large suitcase around London on Friday afternoon. As his wife Katya, 29, made a solo arrival at the Strictly rehearsal studios, Neil, 35, looked to be finalising his spooky get-up ahead of this weekend's Halloween spectacular. Flying solo: Neil and Katya Jones looked to be spending their days very differently as they stepped out in London on Friday Russian dancer Katya opted for a typically vibrant workout style in a cobalt blue padded jacket and mark blue leggings. Piling on the layers for Britain's sudden temperature drop, she finished her look with a white bodywarmer and trainers. Meanwhile, Neil certainly wasn't dressed for the dance floor as he stepped out in a stylish double denim ensemble. The Strictly pro teamed lighter jeans with a black jacket and finished his look with a classic black T-shirt. The choreographer appeared to be putting together the final preparations for his Halloween look as he carried a curly ginger wig in his hand. Trendy: Neil certainly wasn't dressed for the dance floor as he stepped out in a stylish double denim ensemble Getting wiggy with it! Neil toted a ginger wig, that was seemingly the making of a Halloween costume, and a rather large suitcase around the capital The Strictly stars will sport their eeries looks during this weekend's spooky extravaganza. Having eased up on the raunchiness of their routines in recent weeks, cheating dance partners Katya and Seann will return with a more romantic number on Saturday night. They will perform the Viennese Waltz to love song I Put A Spell On You after finding themselves in the bottom two last week. Monochrome: Nadiya Bychkova - who was partnered with Lee Ryan - headed to rehearsals in a stylish black jumper and ripped jeans The pair's highly-publicised scandal, which saw them passionately kiss during a night out in London earlier this month, resulted in Seann being dumped by girlfriend Rebecca Humphries. It also reportedly added strain onto Katya's marriage to Neil, but the dancer said her and her husband Neil were 'absolutely fine' when speaking on an episode of It Takes Two. Meanwhile, Katya and Neil failed to dance with each other once again on Sunday's results show two weeks after the kiss. She's no stranger to turning heads in attention-seeking ensembles. And Lady Victoria Hervey ensured all eyes were on her once again as she arrived at the Los Angeles premiere of new movie London Fields at The London West Hollywood Hotel on Thursday night. The socialite, 42, left little to the imagination as she went braless in a plunging silver chain-mail dress, which was entirely see-through. Dare to bare: Lady Victoria Hervey ensured all eyes were on her once again as she arrived at the Los Angeles premiere of London Fields at The London West Hollywood Hotel on Thursday The reality star teamed her daring outfit with nude underwear, while adding height to her frame with towering bejewelled silver strappy sandals. The model accentuated her features with heavy make-up and wore her blonde locks in lightly-teased waves. Lady Victoria accessorised with dramatic gold earrings and a chunky silver cuff as she took her turn on the red carpet. It was a star-studded night out, with the socialite joining the likes of Hollywood actresses Amber Heard and Michelle Rodriguez on the red carpet. Some front: The socialite, 42, left little to the imagination as she went braless in a plunging silver chain-mail dress, which was entirely see-through Show-stopping: The reality star teamed her daring outfit with nude underwear, while adding height to her frame with towering bejewelled silver strappy sandals Silver siren: Lady Victoria accessorised with dramatic gold earrings and a chunky silver cuff as she took her turn on the red carpet London Fields, directed by Matthew Cullen, follows the vampish clairvoyant Nicola Six who has a premonition of her own murder. Nicola then strikes up affairs with three men, one of whom she believes will eventually kill her. Cara Delevingne, Billy Bob Thronton, Theo James and Jim Sturgess also star in the forthcoming movie. Lady Victoria has previously defended her penchant for racy ensembles, claiming British women generally dress too conservatively. Vampish: London Fields star Amber Heard, who plays clairvoyant Nicola Six in the film, looked sensational on the red carpet in a sequinned black gown with a split up the thigh Confident in her risque style, she told the Daily Mail earlier this year: 'Women in London are too conservative and dont have the courage to wear sexy outfits. Its an English thing. 'I grew up in the South of France so I have a much more international approach. Its empowering to dress provocatively.' Despite her high-flying, jet-setting lifestyle, Lady Victoria plans to put down roots and become a mum. She revealed to The Mail On Sunday she started freezing her eggs in a fertility clinic - which cost her 11,000 - after letting years of partying slip away. Keeping it casual: Michelle Rodriguez was also at the screening, and dressed down in black leggings, a black velvet jacket and black tank top He's managed to keep his relationship with Phillipa Coan fairly low-key ever since embarking on a romance with her back in 2015. And Jude Law, 45, was spotted enjoying a rare night out with the 32-year-old beauty on Thursday, as they stepped out together to celebrate his daughter Iris' 18th birthday during a fun-filled family meal, held at Mayfair's Bagatelle London. Looking stylish in a navy suit with a brown wide-brimmed fedora, the actor appeared animated as he made his exit from the raucous celebration. Party: Jude Law and his girlfriend Phillipa Coan stepped out to celebrate his daughter Iris' 18th birthday during a fun-filled family meal, held at Mayfair's Bagatelle London on Thursday His partner Phillipa also turned heads for the occasion, stepping out in an all-black ensemble as she accompanied her beau to the dinner. Meanwhile, birthday girl Iris whose mother is actress Sadie Frost was the centre of attention in a leopard-print dress, which she teamed with black heavy duty boots. Also present for the outing was Iris' boyfriend Kelvin Bueno, as well as her model brother Rafferty, 22. Assisted: The 45-year-old actor was helped out of the building by an aide following the dinner Gift bags: The father-of-five was seen carrying gift bags as he climbed into the back of a cab Stylish: The star cut a stylish figure in a navy suit and grey T-shirt teamed with a brown fedora Black to basics: His partner Phillipa also turned heads for the occasion, stepping out in an all-black ensemble as she accompanied her beau to the dinner While Jude and Phillipa are often spotted in public, the couple have managed to keep their relationship fairly private over the years. Shes mine and no one elses. Im very, very happy,' The Holiday star previously told Modern Luxury of Phillipa. 'And our relationship is a very private thing, and I think part of the fact it works so well is exactly because of that.' Birthday girl: Iris Law looked every inch the supermodel as she celebrated her 18th birthday Having good times: The screen star appeared to have had a raucous night with his loved ones Low-key romance: He's managed to keep his relationship with Phillipa fairly low-key ever since embarking on a romance with her back in 2015 Daddy cool: While he shares no offspring with his current girlfriend, Jude is the doting father to his five children from his former relationships While he shares no offspring with his current girlfriend, Jude is the doting father to his five children from his former relationships. The Holiday star shares three children, sons Rafferty and 16-year-old Rudy as well as daughter Iris, with his ex-wife Sadie Frost. Jude raises his fourth child Sophia, nine, with American model Samantha Burke whom he enjoyed a brief romance with. The Hollywood movie star also shares three-year-old daughter Ada with former flame Catherine Harding. Proud: Dashing dad Jude who appeared to have enjoyed himself as he prepared to head home Animated: Jude looked extremely animated as he larked around in the back of the waiting cab Woah! The star certainly seemed to have had a good time in the restaurant as he headed out They are both no strangers to flaunting their surgically enhanced appearances. And Thursday night proved to be no different for Geordie Shore stars Abbie Holborn and Sophie Kasaei as they enjoyed a girls' night out in Liverpool. The glamorous duo made sure to catch the eye, as they both opted for very plunging ensembles that left their assets firmly on display. Glamorous: Geordie Shore stars Abbie Holborn and Sophie Kasaei made sure to catch the eye in plunging ensembles as they enjoyed a girls' night out in Liverpool on Thursday Abbie made a statement in a pillar-box red power suit that paired together tailored high-waisted trousers and an open blazer jacket. Underneath, she sported a sultry lace bodice that came complete with an extremely low-cut neckline, highlighting her cosmetically enhanced bust. The reality starlet, 21, looked sensational in her bright two-piece and chose to accentuate her waist with a Gucci belt, while standing tall in a pair of suede court heels. Abbie chose to leave her raven-hued tresses down in a perfectly blow-dried style and sported heavy make-up that favoured contoured cheeks and a plump glossy nude pout. Eye-catching: Abbie made a statement in a pillar-box red power suit that paired together tailored high-waisted trousers and an open blazer jacket The beauty has openly spoken of cosmetic work she has had done and admitted that she constantly finds herself in a 'battle not to go overboard' with it. Abbie first went under the knife, aged 18, for a boob job and has since indulged in 'lip fillers, Botox jaw filler, chin filler, veneers and her eyebrows tattooed'. She told The Sun: 'The annoying thing is, I get so many plastic surgery companies offering me procedures for free and it's hard to say no.' Abbie confessed that her role on Geordie Shore has swayed her decision to have more cosmetic surgery, as she immediately felt insecure around the other girls on the show. Racy! Underneath, she sported a sultry lace bodice that came complete with an extremely low-cut neckline, highlighting her cosmetically enhanced bust Chic: The reality starlet, 21, looked sensational in her bright two-piece and chose to accentuate her waist with a Gucci belt, while standing tall in a pair of suede court heels Busty: Abbie previously revealed she opted for a boob job when she was just 18 years old 'I remember going into the house and thinking, "Oh my god, the girls look so good," I had nothing done. I had a small bit of lip filler and that was it. 'There was all this talk about what they had done and what they were going to get done and when you're in that environment it's really hard... you feel so self-conscious.' Abbie was joined by her co-star Sophie in Liverpool, who has rejoined the Geordie Shore cast following her axing for 'offensive behaviour' in 2013 while filming for the show's seventh series. Sophie stunned in an all-black getup that paired together a velour jacket and dark skinny jeans. Pressure: The beauty has claimed being on Geordie Shore has swayed her decision to indulge in more cosmetic work, as being around her female co-stars made her feel 'self-conscious' Buxom: She was joined by her co-star and pal Sophie who teased a look at her ample assets underneath a velour jacket She purposely left several buttons undone to reveal the racy bralet she was wearing underneath - that perfectly framed her buxom bust. Sophie added a boost to her getup with suede boot heels and accessorised with a stylish Baker cap. She left her glossy dark locks down in a sleek and straight style and wasn't without her usual war paint and a slick of dark nude lipstick. Like Abbie, Sophie has been known to dabble in cosmetic work and recently revealed her plans to have more work done on her bust following her impressive weight loss. The star shed a huge four dress sizes, dropping from a size 16 to a size 8, and lost two stone in total, but has claimed her transformation has left her breasts 'saggy'. Cheeky: She purposely left several buttons undone to reveal the racy bralet she was wearing underneath - that perfectly framed her buxom bust Sophie told new! magazine: 'When I get to a weight I want to be at, I'd like a boob lift.' She shared the same sentiment in an interview with The Sun, where she revealed she had actually opted for a breast uplift four or five years ago. She explained she has always had 'big boobs' but chose to get a lift after noticing they had gone down. That was before her impressive weight loss, with Sophie adding: 'It was because I'd lost all the weight I had saggy boobs and there was nothing left.' Speaking exclusively to MailOnline, Sophie insisted that it is hard to maintain her slimmed-down figure while filming for MTV hit Geordie Shore - due to the show's excessive partying. Surgery plans: Sophie revealed she wants more work done on her bust following her impressive two stone weight loss, claiming that the transformation has left her boobs 'saggy' 'When I'm in Geordie Shore that's just a time where I have to accept I will put weight on. I have to admit it's not the healthiest thing for my weight to go up and down, but it's my job,' she said. Although, she admits she is still conscious of making the right choices, adding: 'For the couple of weeks I'm filming, obviously I don't eat as much as I used to after a night out, I will get chicken thighs instead of a pizza or kebab.' Sophie, meanwhile, is in the throes of a new romance after confirming her relationship with new boyfriend Jay Bigz. Loved-up: She is in the throes of a new romance after confirming her relationship with new boyfriend Jay Bigz (pictured above) The reality star had been mending her heartache after she was dumped by her boyfriend of six years Joel Corry over the phone, but is now loved-up once again with her new man. 'It's going really well,' she told us. 'It's early days. It's the first time I've been in a relationship in a year and a half now, I'm just enjoying it. I don't want to rush anything.' With that said, Sophie revealed she hasn't yet thought about Jay joining her on Geordie Shore, as often boyfriends and girlfriends make a cameo on the series. 'We haven't talked to each other about involving him in the series yet, I'm sure we will discuss it when the time comes,' she said, before jokingly added: 'I don't want to curse anything.' She's been busy preparing to move in with boyfriend Adam Collard, just months after striking up a romance on this year's Love Island. And Zara McDermott made it a real family affair as she brought her parents along to a breakfast to help her personal trainer beau celebrate his 23rd birthday at Healthy Roots cafe in Upminster, Essex, on Friday morning. The former government adviser, 21, looked worlds away from her glamorous TV appearances as she showed off her natural beauty by going make-up free. Family affair: Zara McDermott brought her parents along to a breakfast to help Adam Collard celebrate his 23rd birthday at Healthy Roots cafe in Upminster, Essex, on Friday morning The reality TV personality wore her ombre tresses in a quickly styled top knot. Zara kept her outfit as low-key as her appearance, keeping things casual in a baggy black hoodie and grey gym leggings. The Love Island star completed her ensemble with taupe Nike trainers, while carrying her purse and mobile phone in her hand. The couple - who found love in this year's series of the hugely-popular ITV2 reality show - were joined by Zara's mum and dad, who looked smart for the breakfast date. Loved up: The former government adviser, 21, looked worlds away from her glamorous TV appearances as she showed off her natural beauty by going make-up free Cute: The reality TV personality wore her ombre tresses in a quickly styled top knot as she shared a sweet cuddle with her personal trainer boyfriend Adam matched his girlfriend in baggy grey tracksuit bottoms and a black t-shirt as he sipped on a takeout coffee. The Geordie personal trainer showed off his heavily-inked arms with yellow and black top and grey and red Nike trainers. After the four enjoyed breakfast together Adam headed off with Zara's dad, while the girls headed to a local beauty salon for a manicure. Casual cool Zara looked worlds away from her usual red carpet attire (pictured, left, earlier this month), keeping things casual in a baggy black hoodie and grey gym leggings Spoilt: The breakfast outing comes after Zara took to Instagram to show off a lavish set up for her boyfriend, as she'd decorated her family's Essex home with cakes and balloons The breakfast outing comes after Zara took to Instagram to show off a lavish set up for her boyfriend, as she'd decorated her family's Essex home with cakes and balloons including six that read 'Adam 23'. She also told her one million Instagram followers she was taking Adam on a luxury getaway to Miami and the Bahamas for his birthday present. Writing on the photo-sharing site, she said: 'Happy birthday to my baby. I am taking him to Miami and the Bahamas next week!!! Was so hard keeping it a secret..' Romantic getaway: Zara also shared with her one million Instagram followers she was taking Adam to the Bahamas and Miami for his birthday present Jetting off: The pair's romantic getaway comes amid rumours ITV2 bosses are set to reunite the cast of Love Island for a Christmas special She also revealed a hand-written note that read: 'To my amazing boyfriend Adam. 'Pack your bags because on 5th November we are jetting off to MIAMI BEACH for a week, staying in the Fontainebleau hotel. Get ready to eat at Nobu, party and LIV and SO much more! 'Then on 12th November we are flying to the Bahamas for 5 days, staying at the Atlantis! We will be visiting hidden beaches on our own private boat, swimming with sharks, going to the water park and meeting the pigs in the Exuma Islands! 'HAPPY BIRTHDAY! I hope you're as excited as I am! Zara xxx' Family affair: After the four enjoyed breakfast together Adam headed off with Zara's dad, while the girls headed to a local beauty salon for a manicure Influencer: Zara also mocked her boyfriend for being a 'lightweight' on her Instagram story The pair's romantic getaway comes amid rumours ITV2 bosses are set to reunite the cast of Love Island for a Christmas special. The Sun report that producers are keen to reunite the cast at the Mallorca villa, in what could prove to be an awkward night as only four out of the series' nine couples are still together. An ITV source said: 'Bosses have been wanting to get the cast back together for a few years now but have finally been given the green light because of the success of this year's show. Girls time: Zara headed to the salon with her mother while Adam spent some bonding time with her dad Casual: The Love Island star completed her ensemble with taupe Nike trainers, while carrying her purse and mobile phone in her hand 'They know exactly the kind of drama that viewers want to see and getting together the couples who have split will certainly make for tense viewing. 'Producers are in the process of getting people to sign up and they are hoping that everybody agrees to it.' The reunion show will reportedly follow the format of the spin off After Sun and will take place back in the famous villa, while the insider adds that previous series contestants could also make an appearance. Going strong: Adam and Zara are still going strong, while five couples have split in the three months since the 2018 series ended Family affair: Zara had breakfast with her parents after lavishly gifting Adam a trip to the Bahamas A representative for Love Island has been contacted by MailOnline for comment. Series winners Jack Fincham and Dani Dyer are still going strong, along with Megan Barton Hanson and Wes Nelson and Josh Denzel and Kazimir Crossley. But the other five couples have split in the three months since the 2018 series ended. Meet the parents: Adam spent valuable bonding time with his girlfriend's parents 23 today! The breakfast outing was part of an array of a lavish gifts and surprises Zara treated her beau to for his special day Birthday kiss: Adam gave his girlfriend a peck on the forehead before she went to the salon with her mum Sam Bird and Georgia Steel, who chose to leave the villa to be together in a dramatic twist, were the latest to break up last week after Georgia spent time with her ex. The star hit headlines last week when her ex claimed he broke off his relationship with her after finding a secret selfie of her in bed with her ex-boyfriend - although she staunchly denied the shock claims. Last week, Sam claimed he broke off his relationship with Georgia after finding the selfie, as he claimed his suspicions were aroused after Georgia didn't return home from a PA, and went onto find secret messages to her ex on her phone. Samira Mighty and Frankie Foster were the first of the 2018 contestants to split, before Laura Anderson and Paul Knops, Jack Fowler and Laura Crane and Charlie Brake and Ellie Brown. Casual cool: The whole family looked casual as they enjoyed some bonding over breakfast In love: Zara and Adam are one of the last remaining Love Island couples, as more than half have broken up just a few months after the ITV2 show wrapped Courtney Green has revealed she became a shell of her former self during her toxic two-year relationship with Myles Barnett. The TOWIE beauty, 23, told MailOnline she 'forgot who she was' as she hit out at her ex-boyfriend, 24, for callously introducing his new girlfriend Kady McDermott to the show a mere three months after their break-up. After channelling her heartbreak into self-improvement, the reality star has shown off her new-found confidence in the QUIZ X TOWIE's Party Edit collection alongside cast members Chloe Lewis, Amber Turner and Pete Wicks. Lost confidence: Courtney Green revealed she became a shell of her former self during her toxic two-year relationship with Myles Barnett Myles and Courtney parted ways for good in July after she refused to go on a make-or-break holiday with him. 'I completely lost myself. When I was in a relationship with Myles I forgot who I was, the style I liked and I stopped making an effort,' she said. 'Now I love shopping, I go to the gym a lot more because I have a lot more free time on my hands. Its just crazy how when youre stuck in a relationship you think theres no light at the end of the tunnel but when youre out of it you feel amazing.' Too soon: The TOWIE beauty, 23, told MailOnline she 'forgot who she was' as she hit out at her ex-boyfriend, 24, for callously introducing his new girlfriend Kady McDermott to the show Gorgeous: After channelling her heartbreak into self-improvement, the reality star has shown off her new-found confidence in the QUIZ X TOWIE 's Party Edit collection Toxic relationship: 'I completely lost myself. When I was in a relationship with Myles I forgot who I was, the style I liked and I stopped making an effort,' she said. The exes were plagued with strife ever since he was accused of mentally abusing her for branding her 'f**king s**g' and a 'dirty dog' due to an alleged flirtation with newbie Jordan Wright. It was then revealed love rat Myles had cheated on Courtney, leaving her devastated. Just three months after the pair parted ways, the Essex native faced further heartbreak after Myles' new girlfriend Love Island star Kady, 23, made an explosive entrance to TOWIE, making a beeline for Courtney at a party. Shock: Just three months after the pair parted ways, Courtney faced further heartbreak after Myles' new girlfriend Love Island star Kady, 23, made an explosive entrance to TOWIE Bombshell: After an excruciatingly awkward introduction, Courtney ran off in tears. She said: 'I was so shocked, it was too soon' (posing here with Amber Turner) Cruel: She continued: 'I thought let me heal 100% before you start doing that. Its not her fault, shes just the other girl' After an excruciatingly awkward introduction, the brunette beauty ran off in tears as the shock of Kady's appearance became too much. She said: 'I was so shocked, it was too soon. Regardless if I had been talking to someone else or not, it was too soon to bring a new girl onto the show considering as Myles came onto the show as my boyfriend, for him to bring on his new girlfriend was a bit much. 'I thought let me heal 100% before you start doing that. Its not her fault, shes just the other girl. Better off without him: Myles and Courtney parted ways for good in July after she refused to go on a make-or-break holiday with him 'I wanted this series to be really positive and find myself again and when she came on I felt I didnt really hadnt have the chance.' The star also expressed her annoyance at Kady for trying to cause drama by revealing Courtney had text Myles. Hitting back, the former PA said: 'It was unnecessary. I was so drunk, this was months ago, someone was horrible to me in a club and I just sent an idiot drunk text. 'He moved on with her straight away, every girl texts their ex but I didnt have the chance because he was straight with her.' Ooh-la-la: Setting pulses racing, Courtney who wowed in a scanty sequin mini dress as she posed alongside Chloe who slipped into a velvet lace bodysuit and leather trousers Independent: Courtney, who dazzles in the smouldering Quiz photoshoot in a number of glittering dresses and sheer co-ords, added she is dating but wants to do her own thing Out now: QUIZ X TOWIE Party Edit collection - which also features an appearance from Lauren Pope - is available now Courtney, who dazzles in the smouldering Quiz photoshoot in a number of glittering dresses and sheer co-ords, added she is dating but wants to do her own thing after being in such a turbulent relationship. She said: 'I feel like because I was in a relationship for so long I just want to have fun and do my own thing and if I meet someone, I meet someone. I dont want to put any pressure on it. I need to fully be myself before Im with someone else.' Following Sunday night's show, Courtney alongside Chloe Meadows and Amber Turner found herself facing backlash from viewers after she made some unsavoury comments towards Kady's best friend Jodie. The trio, who had just been discussing Chloe's self-esteem issues, began dissecting Diag's date ensemble and called on the saying 'The bigger the hoops, the bigger the hoe'. Following the episode, Kady hit back on Instagram sharing a snap of her and Jodie, writing :'No one more real or genuine then @jodiecharles17 #BiggerTheHoopBetterTheGirl love you forever'. Clearing things up, she told MailOnline: 'I was talking about a pair of hoop earrings and it was a quote from Khloe Kardashian. 'I feel like its been taken out of context massively but obviously I am really sorry if it did upset people. Im not a horrible person at all. I wear big hoops. I didnt specifically call her a hoe, but I shouldnt quote Khloe Kardashian anymore thats for sure.' Former junior PA Courtney looked the picture of glamour in the TOWIE photoshoot for the Quiz clothing edit, as she modelled her favourite piece from the collection, a silver fringed minidress. The Essex native also sizzled in a burgundy bodycon dress for another outfit look, which featured floral lace sleeves, later slipping into a plunging playsuit with a gold sparkly bodice as she posed alongside her pals. QUIZ X TOWIE Party Edit collection - which also features an appearance from Lauren Pope - is available now. January 10 will mark three years since her husband, David Bowie, tragically passed away after a private battle with liver cancer just two days after his 69th birthday. And Iman Bowie, 63, has revealed in an interview with NET-A-PORTER's digital magazine PorterEdit that she has no plans to take a trip down the aisle again, as she still sees the late rock icon as her current husband. During her interview with the publication, the Somali-American beauty also revealed that her 1989 retirement from the modelling industry was brought about in large part by the rising popularity of Cindy Crawford and Naomi Campbell. Marriage: Iman Bowie has revealed in an interview with NET-A-PORTER's digital magazine PorterEdit that she has no plans to marry again after her husband David Bowie's 2016 death Speaking of her stance against exchanging nuptials with another man after her 24-year marriage to the legendary musician, whose name is etched into a gold pendant she wears, she said: 'I will never remarry. 'I mentioned my husband the other day with someone, and they said to me: "You mean your late husband?" I said, no, he is always going to be my husband.' 'I do feel very lonely,' admitted the mother-of-two. 'But do I want a relationship? I cant say never, but no, not now.' Soulmates: It's almost three years since Iman's beloved husband David passed away at the age of 69 on January 10 in 2016 after an 18-month battle with cancer. Pictured in May 2008 She also touched upon the real reasons behind her decision to walk away from her hugely successful modelling career at the end of the 1980s, conceding that the rise in popularity of other supermodels forced her to make the decision. When asked why she quit the industry, Iman replied: 'The philosophical answer is that I knew that there was no more that I could do, and I needed to walk away in order to start something new. 'The less philosophical truth was that I had Linda [Evangelista] and Naomi and Christy [Turlington] and Cindy behind me, and they were going to push me out anyway, so I had to leave with grace.' And while she has walked away from modelling, Iman is also intent on shielding her and David's 18-year-old daughter Alexandria from the industry particularly as so many in the fashion world have stepped forward with offers. Still married: Supermodel Iman said that she still sees herself as married to the legendary musician, to whom she was wed for 24 years at the time of his tragic passing 'Every agency, every designer, called me to say: "If she wants to, wed love for her to model for us,"' admitted Iman. 'I said: "No, she doesnt." I know why they wanted to her to model its because she is David Bowies daughter.' During her interview, Iman spoke candidly about the lack of diversity in the industry when she first started modelling back in 1976, and now black models were often pitted against each other as a result. She said: 'It was that old adage of divide and conquer. There was an unwritten rule of just having one black model shooting for [a publication] at a time. So, you would have to dethrone someone to get that job.' Instead of giving in to the pressures to compete in such a way, the star went on to become friends with her purported 'rivals', thus effecting change. Models: Iman also revealed that her 1989 retirement from modelling was brought about by rising popularity of Cindy Crawford, left, and Naomi Campbell, right. Pictured in 1990 Rise: Naomi and Cindy went on to define a new age of supermodels in the 1990s, alongside (L-R) Carla Bruni Claudia Schiffer and Helena Christensen. Pictured in September 2017 'We are not interchangeable,' she said. 'Once we understood that, we could get them [the agencies and publications] to as well, and we could all work at the same time.' And her efforts to make the industry a more fair place have continued since her retirement. In September 2013, she joined forces with Naomi Campbell and Bethann Hardison to write an open letter to the fashion powerhouses in London, New York, Paris and Milan to highlight the lack of models of colour on the runways. Out now: Read the full interview in the latest edition of PorterEdit, out now Enthralled that the tactic paid off, Iman said: 'It is remarkable. We are getting visible results. Not only on the runway, but where the spoils of war are: advertising. If you pick up the magazines and look at the ads, the change is visible.' Iman married English rocker David in a romantic ceremony in Lausanne, Switzerland, in April 1992 which was later formalised in a wedding hosted in Florence that June. They raised their daughter Alexandria. David had a son Duncan Jones from a previous marriage and Iman had daughter Zulekha Haywood with a former love. In April earlier this year, New York's Broadway Lafayette subway station was transformed into a tribute to the Ziggy Stardust hitmaker until May. The installation which is a collaboration between Brooklyn Museum and Spotify was built from printed quotes, fan-inspired art and maps of his NYC hangouts. To see the full interview with Iman read PorterEdit and/or download the Net-A-Porter app for iPhone, iPad and Android. Blanco Blanco stood out at the Suspiria premiere this week at the Arclight Hollywood Cinerama Dome in Los Angeles. The actress wore custom-made shoes that had five strands of pearls on them. They were created especially for the looker by Mme Weathersby. The brunette bombshell added a lovely off-the-shoulder dress by French designer Christophe Guillarme as she posed with her beau of 10 years John Savage, who is best known for the classic film The Deer Hunter. Famous faces: Hollywood A-lister Blanca Blanco ensured she didn't miss the once in a lifetime event The shoes had five strands of pearls The Washington state native ensured she didn't miss a beat on the red carpet. The beauty put on a showstopping display in an off-the-shoulder lace frock that featured tulle and pleats throughout. Her hair was pulled up with some curled strands running loose around her face. She added a large cocktail ring and diamond earrings for a very glam look overall. Savage looked ready to party in a floral print Chinese blazer over a red button down shirt. He can be seen in the upcoming film War Photographer with Vanessa Eichholz. Date night: Blanca was seen with her husband John Savage A true angel: The beauty put on a showstopping display in an off-the-shoulder lace frock that featured tulle and pleats throughout Blanca has been making strides in her acting career this year. She has already appeared in the films The Dog of Christmas, Fake News, and Torch.. And this year she has worked on The Fabulous Christmas Holudays, Betrayed, Woman On The Edge and Ovide And The Art Of Love. She got her start in 2010 with the movie The Las Chicana. Before coming to Hollywood she was a student that got two degrees: She graduated from Washington State University with a Bachelor of Science in Psychology and from Eastern Washington University with a Master of Social Work, in addition to studying Spanish in college. BRAC Bank, Bangladesh Tea Board sign agreement for tea licensing fee payment Bangladesh Tea Board (BTB) and BRAC Bank Limited signed an agreement for payment of tea licensing fee through online payment gateway on Wednesday. Bangladesh Tea Board (BTB) and BRAC Bank Limited signed an agreement for payment of Tea Licensing Fee through Online Payment Gateway on Wednesday, says a press release. Under this agreement, the customers of BRAC Bank will be able to pay Retail-wholesale tea business license application, Bidder License application, Blender license application, Broker license application, Registering tea sales directly from the garden, Register for tea export and Registration for tea import using their Visa / Mastercard Credit / Debit card. Mr. Nazmur Rahim, Head of Retail Banking, BRAC Bank, and Mr. Mohammad Nurullah Noori, Secretary, Bangladesh Tea Board, signed the agreement on behalf of their respective organisation in the presence of Major General Md Jahangir Al Mustahidur Rahman, PSC. Chairman, Bangladesh Tea Board, on Wednesday at Bangladesh Tea Board office in Nasirabad, Chattogram. Mr. Siraj Siddiquey (Shakil), Head of Digital Banking & E-commerce, BRAC Bank, and Mr. Md. Madhul Kabir Chowdhury, Deputy Director (Trade), Mr. Abul Bashar Siddiquei, Chief Accounts Officer, Mr. Md. Rajibul Hassan, Public Relations & Labor Welfare Officer, Mr. Ahsan Habib, Marketing Officer, Bangladesh Tea Board, were present on the occasion. In order to facilitate the service process, Bangladesh Tea Board introduced online tea licensing system for its customers on September 16, 2018. With that the customers can easily pay the fees to the Tea Board's bank account directly through mobile banking. With the Gateway Payment System, now it's more convenient to pay different types of fees related to the tea business & licensing through the debit/credit cards. Subscribers can also avail all the online services at www.teaboard.gov.bd or tealicense.com.bd Ferne McCann has appeared to confirm her romance with Love Island star Charlie Brake. The former TOWIE star, 28, has sparked speculation she and Charlie are now an item, after the pair were spotted putting on a very tactile display following a night of partying in London. Mother-of-one Ferne was seen holding hands with her new reality star beau, before snuggling up to him in a taxi as they headed home together. New flame: Ferne McCann has appeared to confirm her romance with Love Island star Charlie Brake, after putting on a tactile display with the hunk on a night out in London Ferne appeared enamoured with new boyfriend Charlie as she clutched onto his hand on their exit from The Box nightclub. They had enjoyed drinks at Sketch in Mayfair, before continuing the night on at the Soho hotspot. She looked sensational in an off-the-shoulder white mini dress that made sure to highlight her svelte frame and drew attention to her legs, thanks to its thigh-skimming hemline. Proving exactly why she has grabbed the Love Island hunk's eye, Ferne looked nothing short of glamorous as she stepped out in towering heels and flawless make-up. Close: She and Charlie were seen glued to each other on their boozy night out, before heading home together in a taxi Item? Ferne and Charlie were pictured holding hands as they left The Box nightclub in Soho Tactile: Ferne was seen holding hands with Charlie as they chatted outside the venue Discreet: The pair seemed keen to avoid photographers on their exit She wore her blonde tresses down in soft curls and seemed to be attached to Charlie's side throughout the evening. He, meanwhile, cut a dapper figure in a black shirt, tailored trousers and monochrome trainers. Ferne was seen chatting with Charlie and pals, as he enjoyed a cigarette, before then taking Ferne's head as they made their way home together. Rubbing shoulders: Ferne and Charlie were seen chatting with one another and group of pals Smile: Ferne seemed enamoured with her new beau as they spoke Content: The reality star seemed to be enjoying herself on her night out with Charlie Glamorous: Ferne was nothing short of glamorous for the evening in a white off-the-shoulder mini dress and towering metallic heels Stunner: The beauty wore her blonde locks down in soft curls and sported a glam make-up look As Ferne nestled into Charlie in the back of the vehicle, he seemed keen to avoid paparazzi and hid behind his hand, with Ferne soon following suit. MailOnline have contacted representatives for both Ferne and Charlie. Essex beauty Ferne's amorous display with Charlie is the first time she has been seen in public with a potential boyfriend since her split with acid attack ex, Arthur Collins. Ferne shares daughter Sunday, 11 months, with ex-boyfriend Arthur, who is currently serving a 20 year sentence for his involvement in an acid attack that took place in an East London nightclub. Relaxed: Charlie was seen enjoying a cigarette with his pals as Ferne watched on Heading home: Ferne and Charlie were seen getting into a taxi together at the end of the night More than friends: The pair seemed inseparable throughout their evening in the capital Snuggled up: Ferne was seen nestling into her beau as they cuddled up in the back of the cab Ever the gent: Charlie was seen waiting for Ferne to get into the cab before joining her Suave: The star, who is heir to a 400m fortune, cut a dapper figure in a black shirt, tailored trousers and monochrome trainers She was previously linked to an older man, whom she described had been a 'confidante' to her, back in March earlier this year, but a relationship never materialised. Charlie, meanwhile, found himself propelled into the spotlight after starring on Love Island's fourth series this summer. He seemed to find love with co-star Ellie Brown on the ITV2 dating show, but the pair split just two months after their villa exit. It was claimed Ellie had ended their relationship after pictures emerged of Charlie wining and dining another girl, but he has strongly denied any claims he 'cheated'. Moving on: He appears to have moved on from his romance with New Zealand billionaire Steve Owen's daughter Kimberley All over: Charlie had found love with Ellie Brown on ITV2's Love Island but the pair's relationship came to an end just two months after they left the villa New lady in his life: It seems the hunk is now taken with former TOWIE favourite Ferne An insider told The Sun Charlie has said he dumped Ellie after growing tired of their romance. They claimed: 'Charlie has told everyone he is the one who dumped Ellie because hed just had enough of her. He said it had been coming for weeks. 'He got tired of the way she spoke to him and said she would try and control him.' Ellie, meanwhile, was left devastated over their split - especially as Charlie was seen quickly moving on with New Zealand billionaire Steve Owen's daughter Kimberley. Tough time: Ferne was left devastated after finding out ex Arthur was involved in an acid attack that took place in an East London nightclub last year Single mother: She has since welcomed the ex-couple's child, daughter Sunday, and has been raising her alone Discreet: It seems she wants to keep her new romance under wraps, as she was seen covering her face on the journey home Low profile: Charlie was seen hiding his face behind his phone Ready for love: Ferne has since revealed she is 'ready' to start dating again and wants to find love with someone new Ellie told fans: 'By no means am I saying I was the perfect girlfriend but I adored Charlie from the bottom of my heart and he knows that.' Charlie, who is heir to a fortune due to his family's wealth after selling the Brakes Food Company for 400million, was quick to make his romance with Kimberley official on social media. Now it seems he only has eyes for Ferne, as Charlie has been seen liking several of the star's most recent posts on Instagram. Focusing on shots of just Ferne in her top six uploads - and not those she has posted with daughter Sunday - Charlie hasn't been shy when it comes to showing an appreciation for his new Essex-based flame. Ferne, meanwhile, declared she is ready to find love again. Speaking to OK! magazine, she confessed: 'I'm so ready to start dating, but I'm being very cautious for obvious reasons. 'I've still not had sex [since welcoming Sunday]. I really need to... it's not even that I want to, it's like I need to. 'I feel like I'm so ready for that now. I won't just do it with anyone, though, it has to be someone special.' Getting intimate: Ferne confessed in the same interview with OK! magazine that she 'wants to have sex', as she still hasn't been intimate with someone since welcoming Sunday Honest: She said, 'I've still not had sex [since welcoming Sunday]. I really need to... it's not even that I want to, it's like I need to' Holding out: The blonde added, 'I feel like I'm so ready for that now. I won't just do it with anyone, though, it has to be someone special' Romance: Ferne was previously linked to an older man, whom she described had been a 'confidante' to her, back in March earlier this year, but a relationship never materialised Megan McKenna posed completely naked on Instagram on Friday... to promote her lip kit range. The 26-year-old covered her modesty with some strategically placed yellow tape which had the words: 'Mouthy by Megan The Relaunch' emblazoned on it. She knelt against a purple wall for the smouldering snap, adding the caption: 'MOUTHY IS LIVE & BACK!@mouthybymegan Happy lip kit shopping!' Daring: Megan McKenna shared a completely NAKED image of herself on Instagram to promote her new relaunched lip kit range Megan showed off her sensational pout in the pictures, which was adorned with a slick of ruby red lipstick. Her hair was tousled as she looked at the camera in a seductive fashion. The post comes after she sizzled in a series of similar looking shots, in which she unveiled her brand new Studio Mouthy swimwear collection in pictures. The former TOWIE star posed up a storm in a sizzling new shoot, stripping down to a tiny yellow Aztec-print bikini and box-fresh white trainers. Sizzling: Megan proved to be her own best model as she unveiled her brand new Studio Mouthy swimwear collection exclusively to MailOnline last week The TV personality, who has designed the collection herself, showed off her gym-honed physique as she modeled eight different looks for StudioMouthy.co.uk. Speaking of the new collection, the reality star said: 'With girls travelling all year round I wanted to create a swimwear collection that would work for any occasion in any destination.' The Ex On The Beach alumni added: 'Whether you feel more comfortable in a one-piece or a bikini, my collection is designed with the option to ensure you feel glamorous whether you're wearing it poolside or to the beach.' Other looks see the former Celebrity Big Brother star dazzle in on-trend low scooped necklines and pretty floral and paisley prints. Washboard abs: The former TOWIE star posed up a storm in a sizzling new shoot, stripping down to a tiny floral bikini Flawless: The TV personality, who has designed the collection herself, showed off her gym-honed physique as she modeled eight different looks for StudioMouthy.co.uk The High Heeled Shoes hitmaker showed off a bouncy blowdry and flawlessly made-up visage, complete with thick strip lashes, an incredibly plump pout, and glowing tan. Megan made the most of her physique by flaunting her washboard abs in racy high-waisted bikini bottoms. The beauty's new collection comes a month after she addressed she had broken up from Mike Thalassitis for good, after the pair were spotted together in a make or break getaway in Dubai. 'Muggy' Mike confirmed their split in July after he was seen moving his belongings out of Megan's Essex home, before she deleted all trace of him on Instagram. Flawless: The reality TV star showed off a bouncy blow-dry and flawlessly made-up visage But the stars were later, spotted poolside in the luxurious Five Palm Hotel in Dubai. Megan said of the break: 'We went there because it was out of the public eye and it could be the two of us. But it hasn't worked. Sometimes it just can't happen. I'm just trying to move on with my life now.' Although insisting 'everything happens for a reason', the Mouthy author stressed she was keeping 'very busy' to help heal her heartache. Megan revealed she had been on holiday to Ibiza just shortly after the break up and she had been focusing on her music to 'clear' her head. Single and ready to mingle: Megan's new collection comes a month after she addressed she had broken up from Love Island's Mike Thalassitis for good She told Good Morning Britain: 'It's pretty awkward, I do think everything happens for a reason, I've been away, I've cleared my head, I'm very busy I'm doing my music. 'I'm working on an album. I just feel like everything does happen for a reason, the path I'm going on right now...' The reality star couple had been known for documenting their lavish holidays and romantic date nights together on social media. Sparks first started flying when they were dating in March, with their romance immediately taking off with a holiday to Barbados together. Woman of many talents: Megan looked every inch the cover girl as she posed up a storm in front of the camera However, two months later the pair had unfollowed each other on social media and they were seen in a fierce row in the street following a night out. Speaking to OK! magazine, the ITVBe regular, who dated Mike for seven months, explained that the pair were at different stages of their life and although they have called time on their romance, their break-up wasn't 'nasty or messy'. 'I can't even say why we split,' she said. 'I just feel like we're both at different point in our lives. We both respect each other and we didn't want it to get nasty or messy. 'There is only so much you can do in a relationship and when it's not working you've got to take separate routes. But I wish him all the luck in the world, he's not a nasty person. Everything happens for a reason.' All swimwear is available in sizes 6 to 14 and is available through Megan's e-tail offering www.studiomouthy.co.uk. She's currently in a bitter custody battle with her ex. But Bethenny Frankel looked no worse for wear as she was spotted happy and healthy in New York City on Friday. The 47-year-old Real Housewives of New York star was sophisticated chic in a white top and suede skirt heading into the Good Morning America studio. Stunner: Bethenny Frankel, 47, was spotted happy and healthy in New York City on Friday Daring to impress, the stunner looked every inch the Big Apple socialite with her luxury handbag and fashion forward red heels. Her trademark chestnut brown tresses were left long and loose as they cascaded down over her shoulders. She topped off the gorgeous look with a bright white winter coat. Meanwhile, the Skinnygirl mogul was seen out for the first time with rumored boyfriend Paul Bernon in New York City last week. Big Apple babe: The Real Housewives of New York star was sophisticated chic in a white top and suede skirt heading into the Good Morning America studio Impressive: Daring to impress, the stunner looked every inch the Big Apple socialite with her luxury handbag and fashion forward red heels Bethenny has been romantically linked to the Best Kept Secret producer since a People report last week. Bernon is a successful Boston-based real estate executive who began producing films since 2012 and has even won a Peabody Award. This comes a day after a report that a Manhattan judge has accused Frankel's ex-husband of taking advantage of the tragic death of her ex-boyfriend this summer. Jason Hoppy, who Bethenny shares daughter Bryn, eight, with, asked Manhattan Supreme Court Justice Michael Katz to order drug testing for Frankel after her on-off beau died of a suspected overdose in August. Top it off: She topped off the gorgeous look with a bright white winter coat 'There was a tragedy which I think you're trying to exploit to embarrass Ms. Frankel,' Katz told Hoppy as he denied the request for drug testing, Page Six reports. The Real Housewives of New York star is still embroiled in a bitter custody war over her only child with Hoppy. Frankel and Hoppy split in 2012 and finalized their divorce in 2016. They agreed to share parenting time with Bryn in 2016 but Frankel requested full custody last year after Hoppy was charged with stalking her after bombarding her with abuse on a 'daily basis' for years. The custody trial begins in March. Hair story: Her trademark chestnut brown tresses were left long and loose as they cascaded down over her shoulders She has reportedly split from her toyboy beau Ryan Mahoney after a whirlwind four month romance. And Kerry Katona appeared tense as she took a phone call outside the gym on Thursday. The former Atomic Kitten star, 38, looked stressed as she spoke on the phone, gesticulating animatedly as she conversed with the unknown person. Stress: Kerry Katona appeared tense as she took a phone call outside the gym on Thursday Focus: The former Atomic Kitten star, 38, looked stressed as she spoke on the phone, gesticulating animatedly as she conversed with the unknown person The star then pulled a defeated expression with her hand on her forehead as she intently listened during the call. Fresh from a gym session, the star was clad in a slate grey Los Angeles emblazoned hoodie, paired with tie dye leggings and neon green trainers. Her blonde tresses were pulled back into a ponytail and she looked fresh-faced for the work-out. Gesture: The star looked animated as she took the intense phone call Call: The star then pulled a defeated expression with her hand on her forehead as she intently listened during the call Work-out: Fresh from a gym session, the star was clad in a slate grey Los Angeles emblazoned hoodie, paired with tie dye leggings and neon green trainers Chat:The star was accompanied by her children Heidi, 11, Max, 10, and Dylan-Jorge, four Gym session: Her blonde tresses were pulled back into a ponytail and she looked fresh-faced for the work-out Tense: MailOnline has contacted Kerry's representative for comment The star was accompanied by her children Heidi, 11, Max, 10, and Dylan-Jorge, four. MailOnline has contacted Kerry's representative for comment. These pictures emerged after it was claimed she has split from her boyfriend Ryan, 29, following their make or break holiday in Thailand. On Wednesday, it appeared to be a little awkward for Kerry when hosts Eamonn Holmes and Ruth Langsford brought up a picture of her kissing him. Animated: Kerry appeared tense as she took the call with her children by her side Stroll: The star left the gym with daughter Heidi by her side She maintained a dignified silence as she glanced at the snap, during a debate on whether public displays of affection are appropriate. The topic came up after Prince Harry and Meghan's PDA during their world tour. Kerry said she was a big fan of their affectionate displays for one another and said: 'I watch them, and I think aww look! 'Millions of us tuned in to watch us them share their first kiss as a married couple. I think it would be something wrong if someone didnt want to hold my hand!' Emotional: The star covered her face with her hand in seeming exasperation When Eamonn and Ruth showed Kerry her own kissing picture, she said: 'I don't do that on purpose. That's in my private time. I love affection.' Following her words, Eamonn and Ruth had a playful row and in response, Kerry poked fun at her multiple marriages. She said: 'You need a good divorce lawyer, I know one, I should be a divorce lawyer myself!' One more thing: She pointed into the air as she spoke on the phone Kerry continued: 'It's nice to kiss! I look at them, and it gives me hope and a nice warm feeling, its about time we see the Royals show affection.' It was announced on Wednesday that Kerry and Ryan had split up after four months of dating. The TV personality first confirmed her romance with hunky personal trainer Ryan in the summer but their relationship appear to have fizzled out - despite being pictured together just the other night, all over one another. A Clueless reboot is in the works more than two decades after the original films premiere. Fans of the 1995 film were conflicted about the news for a multitude of reasons. Many are sick of seeing lackluster remakes of their favorite films, while others felt Clueless was just too rooted in 90s culture to exist in the same way in the present day. Whats good about Clueless is entirely tied to its era, its fashion, its playful dialogue with a youth culture that has now entirely shifted in tone. You may as well remake the Macarena, one Twitter user wrote. Paramount has announced plans to reboot Clueless, which originally came out in 1995 Another said: If there is a film that really doesnt need remake treatment it is Clueless. Although most Clueless fans werent ready to fully embrace a reboot, there is one thing most agreed about: Paul Rudd could and should reprise his role as Josh in the film. At least with a Clueless remake Paul Rudd can still play Josh, a Twitter user said. Clueless fans also seemed to share an anti-Stacey Dash sentiment in regards to the remake. I will only support a Clueless remake if it is called Erasing The Memory of Stacey Dash, a tweet read. Stacey has fallen out of favor with most of her old fans due to her conservative and controversial views. Want more information about the Clueless reboot? Heres what we know so far. Clueless remake Paramount announced the Clueless remake on Thursday, revealing that Girls Trip writer Tracy Oliver would be producing. Marquita Robinson, who writes for Netflixs Glow, will handle the script. It has yet to be revealed whether the film will be set in the 90s like the original or will be a fresh take, set in the current period. No casting news has been revealed either, so fans will have to wait to find out whether Alicia Silverstone, Paul Rudd, Stacey Dash and Donald Faison will be returning to the silver screen. A release date for the film has not yet been set. Clueless remake social media reactions What's good about Clueless is entirely tied to its era, its fashion, its playful dialogue with a youth culture that has now entirely shifted in tone. You may as well remake the Macarena. Guy Lodge (@GuyLodge) October 25, 2018 I was ready to dismiss this entire Clueless remake until I saw that Tracy Oliver is writing the script. Sylvia (@SylviaObell) October 25, 2018 A Clueless remake is in the works at Paramount pic.twitter.com/z99pUCLRQ2 Black Final Girl 101 (@AshleeTakesNote) October 25, 2018 There's a CLUELESS remake in early development at Paramount and I really think Paul Rudd could reprise his role as a college freshman since he hasn't aged a day. Jeff Sneider (@TheInSneider) October 25, 2018 As someone whose voicemail alert is Cher saying, Ugh! As if, Id like to note my opposition to the Clueless remake. Besides, my vegan sister @AliciaSilv & Paul Rudd still look exactly the same. pic.twitter.com/o7yljR136I Silver Shamryan (@ryandowney) October 25, 2018 no, traditional media, remaking everything that was once good and ruining all nostalgia will not save you from your impending doom. #clueless is good the way it is. Safiya Nygaard (@safiyajn) October 26, 2018 The one good thing about the Clueless remake is that they can cast Paul Rudd in the same role Phil de Semlyen (@PhildeSemlyen) October 26, 2018 How clueless do you have to be to remake Clueless Siri send tweet laura_studarus (@Laura_Studarus) October 25, 2018 I don't want a remake of Clueless. I want a SEQUEL to Clueless where everyone goes to Cher/Josh's wedding and kinda gives a weird grimace whenever the bride/stepsister and groom/stepbrother kiss.#Clueless pic.twitter.com/xUpI0XM1Tt Santa Claus, CEO (@SantaInc) October 25, 2018 I will only support a Clueless remake if it is called Erasing The Memory Of Stacey Dash. Louis Virtel (@louisvirtel) October 25, 2018 Clueless The Musical News of a Clueless film remake comes not long after it was announced that an off-Broadway musical was in the works. Dove Cameron has been selected to play Cher Horowitz in the theatrical version. She appears alongside Dave Thomas Brown as Josh; Ephie Aardema as Tai; and Zurin Villanueva as Dionne. Those roles were first played by Paul Rudd, Brittany Murphy and Stacey Dash. Previews for Clueless, The Musical begin on November 20. The play opens on December 11 and will run until January 12. The musical will be performed at The Alice Griffin Jewel Box Theatre at The Pershing Square Signature Center in New York City. Clueless The Musical tickets Tickets to Clueless, The Musical are going fast. Several shows are already sold out. Those who hope to be present for a showing of Clueless, The Musical can find tickets here. Tickets cost $40 for partial view seats, $95 for orchestra, balcony and wheelchair seats and $125 for premium. She is a globetrotting model and scion of celebrity. And Sofia Richie was in transit again by the end of this week, offering a glimpse of midriff beneath a black crop top as she strolled through LAX on Friday. The 20-year-old daughter of Lionel Richie held up her phone - and her background photo was of a man who looked as if he could be her 35-year-old beau Scott Disick. Globetrotter: Sofia Richie was in transit again by the end of this week, offering a glimpse of midriff beneath a black crop top as she strolled through LAX on Friday Sofia, who has been running around with her drastically older boyfriend for more than a year now, was airport casual when she was spotted Friday. She teamed her simple top with a loose-fitted pair of navy sweats, carrying her pearl grey sweater in her hand and slipping into black shoes. The show business legacy let her wavy hair down, accessorizing with a leather handbag, a jeweled bracelet and a glinting necklace. There were rumors this year that she and Scott had split, with some chatter that Lionel's disapproval played a part, but both Scott and Sofia denied the breakup. Sign of love?: The 20-year-old daughter of Lionel Richie held up her phone - and her background photo was of a man who looked as if he could be her 35-year-old beau Scott Disick On the move: Sofia, who has been running around with her drastically older boyfriend for more than a year now, was airport casual when she was spotted Friday The look: She teamed her simple top with a loose-fitted pair of navy sweats, carrying her pearl grey sweater in her hand and slipping into black shoes Scott has three children with reality star Kourtney Kardashian - eight-year-old son Mason, six-year-old daughter Penelope and three-year-old son Reign. Kourtney and Scott, who were introduced in 2006 by Girls Gone Wild founder Joe Francis in Mexico, last ended their romantic relationship in July of 2015. For a while, Kourtney was also dating an extravagantly younger man - 25-year-old Algerian model Younes Bendjima - but they broke up this year. Touch of glitz: The show business legacy let her wavy hair down, accessorizing with a leather handbag, a jeweled bracelet and a glinting necklace Jetting off: There were rumors this year that she and Scott had split, with some chatter that Lionel's disapproval played a part, but both Scott and Sofia denied the breakup Sofia's mother Diane Alexander was Lionel's second and most recent wife, marrying him in 1995 before splitting from him in 2003 and finalizing the divorce in 2004. Lionel also shares a 24-year-old son called Miles with Diane, as well as 37-year-old daughter Nicole Richie with his college sweetheart and first ex-wife Brenda Harvey. Brenda and Lionel adopted Nicole informally when she was two from a member of his band, before making the process official when she was nine. History: Sofia's mother Diane Alexander was Lionel's second and most recent wife, marrying him in 1995 before splitting from him in 2003 and finalizing the divorce in 2004 She recently signed up to play Dusty Springfield in the upcoming biopic So Much Love. And Gemma Arterton, 32, was spotted filming her next feature film, Summerland, in her home-town of Kent, on Friday. The British beauty was pictured in character, dressed in a white polka dot blouse and high-waisted cream trousers. In character: Gemma Arterton, 32, was spotted filming her next feature film, Summerland, in her home-town of Kent, on Friday Adopting a 1940s look, The Prince of Persia actress kept her brunette locks loose and tied her fringe back with a green headband. Adding to her statuesque figure, Gemma opted for a pair of brown boots as she chatted with the cast and crew in the Sussex location. Her character's ensemble was completed with a comfy-looking checkered coat, as she held what appeared to be a water bottle. Cosy: The British beauty was pictured in character, dressed in a white polka dot blouse and high-waisted cream trousers Filming: Adopting a 1940s look, The Prince of Persia actress kept her brunette locks loose and tied her fringe back with a green headband Gemma is currently filming Summerland, which centres around a woman called Alice during the Second World War. Alice's world is rocked when an evacuee boy arrives out of the blue and is placed in her care. But soon, she resolves to be rid of him. Yet, as the young boy opens her heart, allowing her to unlock the secrets of her past, Alice begins to realise that sometimes imagination really can set you free. Gemma is cast in the lead role of the directorial debut of Olivier Award-winning playwright Jessica Swale, who also penned the screenplay of the feature. On point: Adding to her statuesque figure, Gemma opted for a pair of brown boots as she chatted with the cast and crew in the Sussex location Speaking about the role, Gemma said: 'Jessica gave me a wonderful gift in the character of Nell Gwynn, and shes done it again with Alice in Summerland. 'Jessica is an exciting new voice in film and Im very privileged to be able to work with her as a director. She has impeccable instincts, a clear vision and inspires confidence in everyone around her.' Elsewhere, Gemma recently hit out at the sexist portrayal of her character in Quantum of Solace by rewriting the storyline in the wake of the #MeToo movement. Opinion: Elsewhere, Gemma recently hit out at the sexist portrayal of her character in Quantum of Solace by rewriting the storyline in the wake of the #MeToo movement The actress, who was just 22 when the 2008 film was released, portrayed Bond as a predator with a reputation who promises a young female agent he will help her career if she sleeps with him. She said: 'Ive written this short story which I could get in so much trouble for. Its called Woke [a term meaning new-found social awareness] Bond Woman and its about what my Bond girl should have done. It is also an apparent swipe at shamed movie mogul Harvey Weinstein, who is accused of sexually exploiting women in return for boosting their careers. She has penned a fictional diary entry in which she rejects womaniser Bond. It is published in new book Feminists Dont Wear Pink (And Other Lies). There were some tense moments on the set of Ford V. Ferrari in Los Angeles this week. Star Matt Damon, who plays automobile designer, entrepreneur and race car driver Carroll Shelby, was purposely set on fire for a scene in the upcoming action-biographical drama. The good news: all went as planned, and Matt is okay. For art's sake: Matt Damon was spotted filming a fiery scene for the upcoming film Ford V. Ferrari Get your mark: The scene was shot at a private airport out outside of Los Angeles where the production crew built a mock up race track For the fiery scene, the 48-year old actor was dressed in a flame retardant suit underneath a jumpsuit that was popular with race car drivers and mechanics in the 1960s. He was also adorned with a helmet, goggles and gloves. As the cameras rolled, Damon jumped out of a race car as his back and part of the car went up in flames. Crew members kept a keen eye on the star as he struggled with the fire for a few moments and eventually they stepped in and doused the flames with blankets and fire extinguishers. Action: Damon was engulfed in flames as he hopped out of a race car in the scene Rolling: Damon's character acted like he didn't know he was on fire at first A-lister: Damon eventually acted like he was struggling with the flames Tense moments: The scene lasted about 10 seconds Cut: Eventually the crew came in and doused the flames with blankets and fire extinguishers The stunt took place at a private airport out outside of Los Angeles where the production crew built a mock up race track. The film also stars Christian Bale, who plays Shelby's British driver Ken Miles, as well as Jon Bernthal and Caitriona Balfe. Directed by James Mangold, the story follows a team of American engineers and designers, led by Shelby and Miles. They are tasked by Henry Ford II and Lee Iacocca with the mission of building from scratch an entirely new automobile with the potential to finally defeat the perennially dominant Ferrari at the 1966 Le Mans in France. Mangold's credits include Walk The Line, 3:10 To Yuma, The Wolverine and Logan. Ford V. Ferrari is expected to hit theaters in the US June 28, 2019. Pumped: The 48-year old appeared to be full of adrenaline when the scene ended Perfectly planned: Damon was not hurt in the scene All good: Damon gave a thumbs up after the scene ended and the smoke had cleared He has made the Carters life a living hell after claiming to be shot by Mick. And EastEnders' Stuart Highway's final scenes look set to air in the coming weeks, as actor Ricky Champ was seen filming an explosive bridge showdown. The villainous character was nothing short of terrifying as he screamed in the face of rival Dylan Box in the extremely tense scenes, as his web of lies looks set to unravel in the wake of the self-inflicted shooting. Going? EastEnders' Stuart Highway's final scenes look set to air in the coming weeks, as actor Ricky Champ was seen filming an explosive bridge showdown Stuart has managed to worm his way into the Carter clan after getting Mick wrongfully imprisoned for his shooting, convincing Linda that her husband was the man behind the gun. Of course viewers know that Stuart orchestrated the shooting himself in a sick scheme to frame Mick for the crime. But these bridge filming snaps seem to hint that Stuart will finally get his comeuppance, coming face to face with Dylan who had imprisoned for historial sex offences over the summer. Tense: The villainous character (left) will finally come face to face with Dylan Box, who he had imprisoned for historical sex offences Dramatic: Stuart (played by Ricky Champ) has been the latest villain inhabiting Albert Square after he had Mick Carter imprisoned for shooting him Truth: The menacing character can be seen furiously screaming at rival Dylan in the showdown scenes, with were filmed in the precarious place on top of a bridge It wasn't me! Fans have seen that Stuart was actually responsibly for his own shooting, but framed Mick Carter to have him sent to prison While Stuart eventually retracted his statement against childhood friend Dylan, it seems he may still want revenge in the form of watching him perish. It also looks like the confrontation could turn violent as Stuart is also sporting a bloody wound on the side of his shaved head. And actor Ricky recently revealed that Stuart's tirade against the Carter clan won't be coming to an end anytime soon. Menacing: It also looks like the confrontation could turn violent as Stuart is also sporting a bloody wound on the side of his shaved head Terrifying: And actor Ricky recently revealed that Stuart's tirade against the Carter clan won't be coming to an end anytime soon Festive fear: Speaking at the Inside Soap Awards he explained that fans will see Stuart's reign play out in the lead up to Christmas Speaking at the Inside Soap Awards on Monday he explained that fans could see Stuart try to seduce Linda in Mick's absence, after she cut all ties with her husband under false belief that he actually was the shooter. He told The Sun: 'Mick and Linda are a partnership in every sense of the word. I am trying to break that up without a doubt. 'Stuart promised Mick in prison that he's going to take everything from him as he believes Mick took everything from him. 'I think there is a seed that was planted a good few years ago that never got ousted He has a focus about him that's unnerving about him.' EastEnders continues on Friday 26th October at 8pm on BBC One. He has been open about his drink and drug addictions in the past, revealing that he didnt get sober until after his third visit to rehab. And Matt Willis has admitted that he burned all of his and wife Emmas wedding photos because he looked like a sweaty, chubby, d*******, before beating his addictions. The Busted rocker, 35, has said he looked like a competition winner standing next to his glamorous Big Brother presenter wife, 42, on their big day in July 2008. Regrets: Matt Willis has admitted that he burned all of his and wife Emmas wedding photos because he looked like a sweaty, chubby, d*******. before beating his addictions (the pair pictured in August 2018) Speaking to The Mirror, Matt shared: I was a massive, bloated, wreck-head. A sweaty, chubby, d*******. I looked terrible. I've burnt the other ones. I looked like a competition winner stood next to Emma Willis. However the musician has revealed he redeemed himself on their 10th anniversary when they renewed their wedding vows. Take two: However the musician has revealed he redeemed himself on their 10th anniversary when they renewed their wedding vows Troubled: He has been open about his drink and drug addictions in the past, revealing that he didnt get sober until after his third visit to rehab (pictured in 2007, a year before his wedding) Emma and the female guests wore their wedding gowns to the ceremony which saw Matt finally get a good picture of himself and his wife. He explained: I redeemed myself. If I'm honest, that's why I said yes to the whole idea. I needed a good picture of me and Emma in that wedding dress, because she looks amazing. The couple, who started dating in 2005, renewed their vows at Rushton Hall in Northamptonshire. Candid: The Busted rocker, 35, has said he looked like a competition winner standing next to his glamorous Big Brother presenter wife, 42, on their big day in July 2008 (pictured seven months before their wedding) Britain's Got More Talent host Stephen Mulhern officiated the star-studded ceremony. The guest list included Rochelle and Marvin Humes, Stacey Solomon and Joe Swash, as well as Tom and Giovanna Fletcher. The pair have three children together, nine-year-old Isabelle, six-year-old Ace, and two-year-old Trixie. Arjun Sarja files Rs 5cr defamation suit against Sruthi Hariharan Actor Dhruva Sarja filed a Rs 5 crore defamation case against actor Sruthi Hariharan on behalf of his uncle Arjun Sarja at the Bengaluru City Civil Court on Thursday. The move came days after Sruthi had accused Arjun of misbehaving with her on the sets of Vismaya (2016). A suit was filed against Sruthi hours before the meeting at the Karnataka Film Chambers of Commerce on the matter. Senior actor Ambareesh along with other members of Kannada film fraternity met today to amicably solve the conflict between Sruthi and Arjun, which has been making national headlines for the last few days. Ambareesh individually met Sruthi and Arjun and heard their side of the story. But, he was unsuccessful in finding a solution today. He known for his roles as the honourable Ned Stark, once Lord of Winterfell, in the hit HBO series Games of Thrones, and Boromir in the Lord Of The Rings trilogy. But Sean Bean swapped the fantasy settings of his film work for a more casual affair, as he attended day two of Paris Games Week at Paris Expo in the French capital to promote his videogame Hitman 2. The actor, 59, cut a dapper figure in a navy blue suit as he spent the day walking around the event on Friday. Sharp(e): Sean Bean cut a dapper figure as he donned a navy blue suit while attending Paris Games Week on Friday as he took a break from filming Sky drama Curfew Sean teamed up his smart ensemble with a crisp white shirt and black shoes, making sure he looked smart as he explored the convention centre. The Frankenstein Chronicles star wore his brunette locks in a tousled hairstyle, and he sported a close-cropped beard. The actor has been busy filming on his new TV project, Curfew, which focuses on a group of amateur drivers who want to compete in an illegal night-time street race. Handsome: Sean teamed up his smart ensemble with a crisp white shirt and black shoes, making sure he looked smart as he explored the convention centre Challengers risk everything as they race through the night from London to northernmost Scotland in their pimped-out, weaponised vehicles to win the ultimate prize freedom from the totalitarian government curfew that controls their lives. Although it is not yet known who Sean will play in the upcoming series, he joins a star-studded cast including Rose Williams, Riviera's Adrian Lester, Peaky Blinders' Aimee-Ffion Edwards and Vikings' Elijah Rowen. Created by Matthew Read, the eight-part series is co-produced by Endemol Shines Tiger Aspect and Moonage. The show will air on Sky One and their streaming service NOW TV. Speaking of the new venture, Sky's head of drama Anne Mensah said: 'Funny, emotionally truthful, visceral and above all fast Curfew is the perfect Sky One show. 'Matthew Read has created fantastically memorable, sometimes shocking, always fascinating characters. Youll want every single one of them to win the race of their lives.' In March Sean was seen on set clad in a Barbour-style jacket while holding on to a pistol as shooting kicked-off for the new Sky drama. She was spotted jumping out of a black SUV in Midtown Manhattan in New York City on Friday morning. And Sandra Bullock looked like she was going to a business meeting as she was impeccably dressed. The 54-year-old Ocean's Eight star suited up in a blush pink jacket and pants that she teamed with a bright red blouse. This comes just one month after her father John Bullock passes away. Suited up: Sandra Bullock was impeccably dressed in a blush pink jacket and pants that she teamed with a bright red blouse when she was spotted out in in Midtown Manhattan on Friday The Hollywood A-Lister donned high-heeled red sandals that matched the vibrant color of her top. Sandra left her long, straight brunette tresses free to cascade over her shoulders. The Gravity star made her way across the sidewalk and disappeared into a building. Perfectly co-ordinated: The 54-year-old Hollywood A-Lister also donned a scarlet blouse and matching high-heeled red sandals Meanwhile the busy actress is reuniting with her Ocean's 8 co-star Sarah Paulson for the creepy new Netflix movie, Bird Box. It concerns a mysterious force that is decimating the worlds population, when only one thing is certain: if you see it, you take your life. Facing the unknown, Sandra's Malorie must flee with her two young children down a treacherous river to the one place left that may offer sanctuary. Gunning for it: The actress is starring in creepy Netflix movie, Bird Box, about a force that is decimating the worlds population, when only one thing is certain: if you see it, you die. It's due out on December 21. But to survive, they'll have to undertake the perilous two-day journey blindfolded. The Oscar winner leads an all-star cast that includes John Malkovich in the thriller from director Susanne Bier. Netflix released a thrilling three-minute trailer on Wednesday to build early anticipation for the movie, which is due out on December 21. Mourning: The Oscar winner looked stunning in a red and purple dress as she hugged her Ocean's Eight co-star Sarah Paulson at the 25th ELLE Women in Hollywood Celebration last week where she mentioned her dad The Oscar winner looked stunning in a red and purple dress as she hugged her Ocean's Eight co-star Sarah Paulson at the 25th ELLE Women in Hollywood Celebration last week where she mentioned her dad. 'I was going to write a nice speech about all the things I like about Sarah Paulson. Sarah Catharine Paulson, she likes when you use her middle name, or Powell-son, as my 5-year-old calls her,' she started. 'But it's been a crappy few weeks. My dad died, both of my dogs died. You turn on the television or computer and it's endless tragedies and it seems like more than ever now if you have a vagina, you have to be a fighter as well. So I don't feel nice. So I decided tonight I'm going to talk about all the things I don't like about Sarah.' TOWIE's Shelby Tribble was oozing sex appeal in a racy devil costume on Friday night, as she joined Clelia Theodorou for the KISS Haunted House Party in London's SSE Arena. The 25-year-old looked amazing in a red PVC look with matching wings and horns, while Clelia seemed to be dressed as a gothic Angel Of Death. Both Shelby and Clelia went for their Halloween best during the outing as they led the star-studded lineup, which also included Love Island's Laura Anderson and model Demi Rose. Scarily good: TOWIE's Shelby Tribble was oozing sex appeal in a racy devil costume on Friday night, as she joined Clelia Theodorou for the KISS Haunted House Party in London's SSE Arena Shelby had her jaw-dropping curves on full display as she sported the skintight red PVC playsuit with matching suede ankle boots, finishing her devil costume with furry wings and horns. The dark-haired beauty styled her glossy tresses into effortless waves as she sported matching red makeup and a cross on her forehead to complete the look. Meanwhile Clelia was also flaunting her curves in a tight black jumpsuit with lace-up boots, also sporting black furry wings and eery forehead cross. Busty: Shelby had her jaw-dropping curves on full display as she sported the skintight red PVC playsuit with matching suede ankle boots Straight from hell: The stunning star finished her revealing devil costume with furry wings and matching horns It comes after Shelby was seen having an explosive war of words with co-star Saffron Lempriere after Gemma Collins' BFF 's*****d off' the star to her ex Pete Wicks. In upcoming scenes ahead of Sunday's show, a fuming Shelby confronts Saffron after discovering the newbie had been maliciously talking behind her back with her former flame. 'You went to everyone else but me. You went to my ex-boyfriend,' she moans. 'Its unfair as youre judging me.' Sultry: The dark-haired beauty styled her glossy tresses into effortless waves as she sported matching red makeup and a cross on her forehead to complete the look Yet proving she's no push over, Saffron bites back asserting she has the right to speak her mind about what she thinks. 'I was asked what I thought of you and I said it,' she says with confidence. It is not made clear in the clip which of the TOWIE cast members Shelby failed to speak up for at the gathering. Saffron, who is the GC's best friend, has been on TOWIE all of five minutes and she has already found herself well and truly at the forefront of the drama. She's never far from her Love Island pals. And Samira Mighty proved she could be just as feisty as her co-stars as she attended the KISS Haunted House Party at the SSE Arena on Friday night. The 22-year-old West End performer commanded attention in a plunging zip up bandeau crop top which she teamed with bright red leather-look trousers. Red hot! Samira Mighty proved she could be just as feisty as her Love Island co-stars as she attended the KISS Haunted House Party at the SSE Arena on Friday night Showcasing her jaw-dropping figure, the Millennium Performing Arts trained star showed off her spooky fashion sense with fake tattoos. The TV personality opted for a daring makeup look as she went for a dark lip and a statement red eyeshadow palette. Nailing her devil ensemble, Samira completed the look with half broken horns shooting out her forehead. Wow! The 22-year-old West End performer commanded attention in a plunging zip up bandeau crop top which she teamed with bright red leather-look trousers Dressed-up: Showcasing her jaw-dropping figure, the Millennium Performing Arts trained star showed off her spooky fashion sense with fake tattoos She joined many stars who put on their Halloween best for the Wembley-based party, including fellow Love Island beauties Laura Anderson and Alexandra Cane. Leading the arrivals was Alexandra, 27, who pulled out all the stops for the annual bash, transforming into one of the most well-known sex symbols in animation: Jessica Rabbit, from the film 'Who Framed Roger Rabbit?' The Love Island stunner slipped into a sparkly strapless red dress, which allowed for an eyeful of her toned legs to be on display thanks to a daring split up one side. Nailing it: The TV personality opted for a daring makeup look as she went for a dark lip and a statement red eyeshadow palette Laura, 29, was almost unrecognisable, with a long silver wig and stunning mystical make-up transforming her into a ghostly mermaid princess. The reality beauty showcased her enviable body in a floor-length champagne skirt and seashell bralette, with sheer material and hanging beads adding to her mythical sea-creature costume. Meanwhile, Chris Pine, the Hollywood star who Samira claimed she enjoyed a date with, appeared to shrug off any talk about the reality star when quizzed about her in a red carpet interview. Chris was asked by The Metro if he had heard of the ITV2 dating series as his 'friend' Samira had appeared on it over the summer, but awkwardly acted like he didn't know who she was. Awkward: Chris Pine, 38, acted like he didn't know Love Island's Samira Mighty despite her claiming to have gone on a date with the Hollywood star She rarely looks anything short of incredible. And Sofia Vergara raised the style bar once again as she directed a photo shoot in New York City on Friday. The actress, 46, cut an effortlessly chic figure in her plunging black blouse, jeans, and platform black heels. Jean-ius! Sofia Vergara raised the style bar once again as she directed a photo shoot in New York City on Friday She wore her brunette tresses down in tumbling waves that cascaded down past her chest. The actress dressed up the look with a pair of silver hoop earrings and a number of bracelets. Not only did Sofia appear to be directing the shoot, but she also looked to be starring in it. Walking alongside her co-stars, Sofia couldn't have looked any happier as she enjoyed a day on the set. Let's go girls! Walking alongside her co-stars, Sofia couldn't have looked any happier as she enjoyed a day on the set Picture perfect! Behind the scenes, the actress was in high spirits as she appeared to direct the photographer The actress grinned from ear to ear as she strolled down the concrete, walking in the center of the girl group. Behind the scenes, Sofia was in high spirits as she appeared to direct the photographer. Sofia jetted into NYC just a few days ago, but by the looks of things the actress has hit the ground running. When in the city that never sleeps: The Modern Family actress jetted into NYC just a few days ago, but by the looks of things the actress has hit the ground running They're here! Not only was she working on a photo shoot on Friday, she also has been busy with her girlfriends Welcome to the Big Apple: She captioned the snap 'Llegaron a Ny,' which translates into 'They arrived in NY' in English Not only was she working on a photo shoot on Friday, she also has been busy with her girlfriends. On Thursday, she posted a snap of herself surrounded by her gal pals. She captioned the snap 'Llegaron a Ny,' which translates into 'They arrived in NY'. Sofia was recently named the world's highest-paid actress on television for the seventh year in a row, after raking in a cool $42.5 million. The actress topped the Forbes list of highest-paid TV actresses in 2018 thanks to her role on the hit ABC show Modern Family and her lucrative endorsement and licensing deals. The Netflix reboot of Sabrina the Teenage Witch premiered on Netflix on Friday, October 26, leaving some viewers nostalgic for the original. Many were curious about the shows original cast, specifically Melissa Joan Hart, who played Sabrina on the show from 1996 to 2000. The actress does not appear on the new series, but is grateful for the opportunity to play the part when she did. Every actor wants to play an iconic role that theyll be remembered for their whole lives, she told Business Insider. With the release of Netflix's Chilling Adventures of Sabrina, many Sabrina the Teenage Witch fans are wondering what original star Melissa Joan Hart is up to these days Melissa Joan Hart played Sabrina the Teenage Witch on ABC for seven years from 1996 to 2000 Melissa went on to say that she spent nearly her whole twenties being called Sabrina by fans. It wasnt until she did Dancing With the Stars that fans really got familiar with her as a person. About the same time I started playing Mel from Melissa and Joey. I went from being called on the street like, Sabrina! Sabrina! Hey Sabrina! To all of a sudden being called Melissa. And people started to know who I was, she said. Still, the 42-year-old actress said she had a wonderful experience playing Sabrina for so many years. Melissa and Joey was cancelled after four seasons. Melissa continues to pursue other avenues in the film and TV industry. According to Business Insider, she and her mother own a production company called Heartbreak Films. Together theyre working on a movie called Watcher in the Woods. She told the outlet: Its the first thing I directed that Im not in, and its just a beautiful movie. And its scary and its fun, and it was my favorite movie when I was a kid. So Im very excited to be a part of the re-imagining and to show it to a new audience. Want to know more about Melissa Joan Hart, the original Sabrina the Teenage Witch? Check it out. Who is Melissa Joan Hart? Melissa Joan Hart is an actress. She was born on April 18, 1976 in Smithtown, New York. She got her start as an actress in Clarissa Explains It All in 1991. Melissa went on to appear on Sabrina the Teenage Witch, which aired on ABC for seven years ending in 2000. Since then, Melissa has appeared in the TV movie Holiday in Handcuffs, Melissa and Joey and a season of Dancing With the Stars. Melissa has been married to Mark Wilkerson since 2003. They have three children: Mason, Braydon and Tucker. They currently live in Westport, Connecticut. Melissa Joan Hart net worth Melissa Joan Harts net worth is $14 million, according to Celebrity Net Worth. She has made the majority of her money as an actress, but has also enjoyed a career as a producer and director. Melissa Joan Hart Republican Melissa Joan Hart made waves during the 2016 election season when it was revealed that she is a moderate conservative. Per MassLive, she joined Libertarian Vice Presidential nominee Bill Weld at Faneuil Hall to urge people to cast their votes for him and Gary Johnson. Speaking at the event, she said: As a New Yorker and as a girl in Hollywood, a lot of people assume Im a liberal. But then I was always leaning to the right. And then Im also pro-choice, but Im for gun reform. And so I was trying to find somewhere I fit in, and it was really when I found the governors that I felt like there was a party I could get behind. Prior to settling for the Libertarian candidates, Melissa said she was likely going to write in Mickey Mouse or pick the lesser of two evils between Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton. Melissa previously told The Blaze Trump wasnt the Christian choice for her. Melissa Joan Hart Racist In May 2009, Melissa Joan Hart opened a candy store called SweetHarts in Sherman Oaks, California. The shop closed in 2011 after a lawsuit was brought against them by a former employee who alleged she had been wrongfully terminated and racially discriminated against. The lawsuit, obtained by E! News, was filed by former SweetHarts manager Shana Kharineh. She claimed she was paid just $450 a week, but was forced to work overtime with no extra pay or breaks. She also claimed she was told not to wear a black uniform because 'black on black' did not look appropriate. Shana claimed she was fired in August after her employer berated and humiliated her about her personality and other such things. Harts rep told SheKnows Shana was nothing more than a disgruntled employee. Her publicist, Marla Farrell, said in a statement: Melissa Joan Hart is the owner of Sweet Harts Sweets in Sherman Oaks, California. While the shop was her vision, Melissa does not currently function in a day-to-day operational capacity, and has never met Shana Kharineh. Sweet Harts Sweets is an equal opportunity employer, as is Melissa Joan Hart. Neither Sweet Harts Sweets nor Melissa engages in or condones any form of discrimination whatsoever. There is no basis whatsoever to these vicious allegations. Sabrina the Teenage Witch 2018 Netflix has rebooted Sabrina the Teenage Witch in a new series called The Chilling Adventures of Sabrina. The show is based on the Archie Comics series. Its about a young witch named Sabrina (Kiernan Shipka), who is approaching 16 years old. She must decide between the witch world her familys chosen to live in and the mortal world her friends live in. The show has already been renewed for season two. The Chilling Adventures of Sabrina, based on the Archie Comics, premiered on Netflix Friday Sabrina the Teenage Witch Netflix cast The Chilling Adventures of Sabrina stars Kiernan Shipka as Sabrina Spellman, Ross Lynch as Harvey Kinkle, Jaz Sinclair as Rosalind Walker, Lucy Davis as Hilda Spellman and Michelle Gomez as Madam Satan. She was seen handling work commitments in Brazil on Thursday, just one day after walking in Jeremy Scott's Moschino x H&M collection in New York. And on Friday, things remained busy for Gigi Hadid who continued a lengthy photo shoot in Rio de Janiero. This time, however, the 23-year-old made quite the stylish arrival after having flown in and getting dropped off by a helicopter. That's one way to make an entrance: Gigi Hadid took a helicopter to a photo shoot in Rio de Janiero on Friday Assistance: The blonde beauty was supported by a male companion as she made her exit Gigi seemed nowhere near ready for the photo shoot though. She exited the chopper wearing a bathrobe while her hair was kept in a simple ponytail, but interestingly enough the Tommy Hilfiger ambassador couldn't refuse to stepping out in a pair of black high heels. Gigi later resurfaced on a field as she prepped for the outdoor photo shoot. Additional accessory: A pair of oversized retro sunglasses were added to her ensemble Still able to crack a smile: Despite her hectic work schedule, Gigi remained in positive spirits The California native sported a hot pink crop top with matching pants of the same color while donning a stylish pair of oversized retro sunglasses as a collective group of individuals appeared to locate her to the standpoint. Her toned abs were peeking through her ensemble as she modeled the dress in a number of sultry poses. Earlier in the week she showed up to shoot on one of Rio's many famous beaches. Hard to miss! For the beachy environment, she donned a wild, turquoise-hued feathery number that fell all the way to the sand Colorful! The bizarre garment also featured a massively plunging neckline that offered up a glimpse of her bust Stunner! As she repositioned for different shots, she also exposed her famously long legs For the new environment, she donned a wild, turquoise-hued feathery number that fell all the way to the sand. The bizarre garment also featured a massively plunging neckline that offered up a glimpse of her bust. As she repositioned for different shots, she also exposed her famously long legs, and revealed a narrow black and white belt. While managing to get through the hectic week, Gigi seemed to have remained in a weary manner throughout the shoot, and it's not hard to see why. Where's the wind machine? A blowing fan sent Gigi's hair flying as she put on her best poses Snap snap! A photographer was seen clicking away as the Californian flaunted the ensemble in her best poses That's unique! Gigi is seen in a complete standstill while the photographer continues to snap away After having made an appearance on The Tonight Show with Jimmy Fallon on Tuesday, she embarked in another hectic day walking the runway for Moschino x H&M's fashion. Not long after leaving the fashion venue in the Big Apple was Gigi en route to catch her flight out to Rio de Janiero. On Thursday, the Reebok ambassador had gushed about her wonderful experience at the Moschino fashion occurrence, thanking her pal Jeremy Scott in the process. 'opened the @moschino x @hmshow last night. huge thanks to my amazing friend @itsjeremyscott,' she began her caption to a photo of herself from the show. Doing what she does best: The hectic week also saw Gigi walking the runway for Moschino x H&M's fashion show in New York on Wednesday 'it's been so fun to be a part of this project with you ! #HMOSCHINO' Earlier this week, it was claimed that Gigi will be taking part in this year's Victoria's Secret fashion show. While she has yet to confirm the news through a rep, it's needless to say that Gigi knows how to stay booked and busy. She insists her marriage to husband Neil Jones is 'fine' after she cheated with Strictly dance partner Seann Walsh earlier this month. And Katya Jones put on a loved up display as she was spotted walking arm-in-arm with her husband Neil in London, on Friday night. The 29-year-old Russian dancer was all smiles as she strolled along with her partner ahead of this weekend's Strictly Come Dancing Halloween spectacular. Together: Katya Jones put on a loved up display as she was spotted walking arm-in-arm with her husband Neil in London , on Friday night Katya donned typically vibrant training gear, with a bright blue padded jacket and matching leggings. Piling on the layers, the professional dancer finished her look with a white bodywarmer and trainers. Opting for a similarly low-key vibe, 35-year-old Neil stepped out in a stylish all black ensemble. Beaming: The 29-year-old Russian dancer was all smiles as she strolled along with her partner ahead of this weekend's Strictly Come Dancing Halloween spectacular Trendy: Katya donned typically vibrant training gear, with a bright blue padded jacket and matching leggings The Strictly pro teamed black tracksuit bottoms with a cosy jacket and finished his look with a classic black T-shirt. On Saturday, BBC1 viewers will be treated to a spooky extravaganza as the Strictly stars sport eerie looks for their Halloween routines. Having eased up on the raunchiness of their routines in recent weeks, cheating dance partners Katya and Seann will return with a more romantic number on Saturday night. Casual: Opting for a similarly low-key vibe, 35-year-old Neil stepped out in a stylish all black ensemble They will perform the Viennese Waltz to love song I Put A Spell On You after finding themselves in the bottom two last week. The pair's highly-publicised scandal, which saw them passionately kiss during a night out in London earlier this month, resulted in Seann being dumped by girlfriend Rebecca Humphries. It also reportedly added strain onto Katya's marriage to Neil, but the dancer said her and her husband Neil were 'absolutely fine' when speaking on an episode of It Takes Two. Meanwhile, Katya and Neil failed to dance with each other once again on Sunday's results show two weeks after the kiss. Saved: The comedian, 32, and Russian pro, 29, were saved by judges following a dramatic dance-off on Sunday's edition of Strictly Come Dancing She's been living back in Australia for six months, filming scenes for soap Home And Away. But former Bold And The Beautiful star Ashleigh Brewer has revealed that she's returning to Los Angeles on Sunday to chase her next big gig. Speaking to Confidential on Saturday, the 27-year-old said it's a great time for women in Hollywood. Scroll down for video 'I would hate to be a middle-aged white man in Hollywood': Ashleigh Brewer (pictured), 27, has said that it's a great time for women in film and can't wait to get back to Los Angeles to chase her next big gig 'I would hate to be a middle-aged white man in Hollywood at the moment. It really is a great time for women,' Ashleigh said. The blonde will fly back to Los Angeles on Sunday and is prepared to hustle for her next big gig. 'It is the centre of the industry,' Ashleigh said of Hollywood. 'It is where I feel I have worked to be.' The blonde will fly back to Los Angeles on Sunday and is prepared to hustle for her next big gig, telling Confidential on Saturday: 'It [LA] is the centre of the industry. It is where I feel I have worked to be' Ashleigh wrapped up filming scenes for Channel Seven soap Home And Away earlier this month. The Brisbane-born actress portrays feisty police officer Chelsea Campbell on the long-running drama. Prior to that, she signed a three-year contract in November 2013 with US soap The Bold And The Beautiful, playing the role of Ivy Forrester, the niece of Eric Forrester. Famous friends: In February 2018, Ashleigh revealed to the Herald Sun that she made the decision to quit US soap The Bold And The Beautiful with the help of pal Margot Robbie (left) However in February 2018, Ashleigh revealed to the Herald Sun that she made the decision with the help of pal Margot Robbie, to quit the soap. 'I'm doing the acting thing in LA, onwards and upwards,' Ashleigh told the publication. 'It's definitely time for me and I've had Margot encouraging me for so long [saying], "Just leave it and see what happens." So I'm throwing caution to the wind now and keeping myself open to new opportunities,' she added. Soap role: Ashleigh played the role of Ivy Forrester, the niece of Eric Forrester. Pictured in March 2017 Ashleigh shot to fame in 2009 on Australian screens playing Kate Ramsay on Network Ten soap Neighbours. She played the role for five years before her character was killed off in a dramatic shooting. Teresa Giudice has spoken out for the first time about husband Joe Giudice's jail woes. The Real Housewives Of New Jersey star, 46, has vowed to fight his recent deportation order in a new interview with ET published on Friday. Joe, who started his 41-month sentence at a Federal Correctional Institution in Fort Dix, New Jersey, in March 2016, has been ordered to leave the country once his fraud sentence ends. 'We're going to fight this': Teresa Giudice has opened up about husband Joe's recent deportation order in an interview released on Friday. Here they're seen outside a New Jersey court where they were convicted of fraud And he has less than 30 days to appeal the decision. 'I just take it day by day...were going to fight this,' she said, confirming that she and her husband of 19 years planned to appeal. Sources previously told ET that the reality star was 'devastated' by her Italian husband's deportation news. Holding hands: The couple were both sentenced to jail time - 15 months for Teresa and, 41 months for Joe. They are both 46 Joe was born in Saronno, Italy and brought to Paterson, New Jersey, by his parents when he was just a year old. Both he and Teresa pleaded guilty to multiple charges of mail, wire and bankruptcy fraud in Newark Federal Court in October 2014. They were allowed to serve their terms separately so their family of four girls wasn't broken up while their parents were in jail. Joe's girls: Audriana, nine; Milania, 13; Gabriella, 14, and Gia, 17 with their mom Teresa Teresa was released from a Federal Correctional Institution in Danbury, Connecticut, on December 23, 2015, after serving 11 months of a 15-month sentence. Joe surrendered himself on March 23, just three months later. The couple shares daughters Gia, 17; Gabriella, 14; Milania, 13, and nine-year-old Audriana. Bangladesh Sammilita Peshajibi Parishad formed a human chain in front of the Jatiya Press Club on Friday to meet its various demands including release of BNP Chief Begum Khaleda Zia. Danny Dyer has gone down a storm with viewers on this year's Celebrity Gogglebox, as he teamed up with daughter Dani for the Stand Up To Cancer special. The EastEnders star left fans in hysterics with his hilarious one-liners, with many taking to Twitter to brand him and the Love Island winner 'TV gold.' However some viewers also confessed they were constantly distracted by Danny's 'dirty feet' throughout the segment, as he ditched socks to prop his legs up on the coffee table during the segment. Hilarious: Danny Dyer has gone down a storm with viewers on this year's Celebrity Gogglebox, as he teamed up with daughter Dani for the Stand Up To Cancer special Appearing live from his house in Essex, Danny was seen enjoying the TV with Dani, watching programmes ranging from University Challenge to The Yorkshire Vet. Among some of the best lines were the actor explaining that 'sheep can't w*** 'cos they've got hooves' and joking that the child victim of The Haunting of Hill House 'will be fine 'cos he's got a torch.' Danny's hilarious lines went down a storm with viewers as they praised his hilarious banter with Dani, while they appeared in the charity special in honour of cancer research. Too funny: The ex-EastEnders star appeared alongside the Love Island winner for the charity special in aid of Stand Up To Cancer Dynamic: The pair were sat in Danny's Essex home as they watched all manner of TV from University Challenge to The Yorkshire Vet One posted: 'I've been watching Dani and Danny Dyer on TV for three minutes and now I never want to watch anything else ever again.' Another tweeted: 'Danny Dyer on #StandUpToCancer is one of the best bits of TV I've seen in a while.' A third added: 'Danny Dyer and his daughter Dani's relationship for some reason reminds me of me and my dad.' Funny: Danny's hilarious lines went down a storm with viewers as they praised his hilarious banter with Dani, with one of his best phrases being: 'sheep can't w*** 'cos they've got hooves' 'TV gold': Viewers praised the father-daughter pairing for their no-holds barred reactions to the shows But some other viewers also admitted that they were somewhat distracted by Danny's feet, which were on full display as he perched his feet on the coffee table. Viewers pointed out on Twitter that the 'dirty' soles were a draw away from the hilarious interactions between he and Dani. One tweeted: 'All I keep thinking is... Danny Dyer has dirty feet.' Another posted: 'Danny Dyer has moles on the soles of his feet. Or he hasn't vacuumed.' A third also wrote: 'Can Danny Dyer put his feet away please?' Pointing out: But some other viewers also admitted that they were somewhat distracted by Danny's feet, which were on full display as he perched his feet on the coffee table Ew! Viewers pointed out on Twitter that the 'dirty' soles were a draw away from the hilarious interactions between he and Dani Star-studded: Danny and Dani teamed up for the charity special along with several other stars. including Abbey Clancy and Peter Crouch Danny and Dani teamed up for the charity special along with several other stars. including Abbey Clancy, Peter Crouch, Liam Payne, Louis Tomlinson, Dele Alli and Eric Dier. The extended telethon also had segments such as a Carpool Karaoke with Michael Buble, Naked Attraction and mini Celebrity version of The Great British Bake Off. Present by Maya Jama, Alan Carr and Adam Hills, the special was in aid of raising funds for cancer research. Tomasz Wania was the seventh housemate to be evicted from the Big Brother house on Friday. The Polish cleaner said his goodbyes after receiving the most votes to evict against Akeem and Cian, in a show which saw many fans fume over the mystery surrounding Lewis' removal from the house earlier in the day. Lewis was ejected from the house on Friday after using 'unacceptable language,' but viewers only saw the moment he was removed rather than the incident in question. Gone: Tomasz Wania was the seventh housemate to be evicted from the Big Brother house on Friday Speaking to host Emma Willis with his signature 'shade fan' in hand, Tomasz gushed about how much he had enjoyed his Big Brother experience, adding that he thinks it has helped boost his confidence. He said: 'I just had trouble believing in myself sometimes, so i wanted to squeeze every week out of it as much as I could because it was the experience of a lifetime. 'It's OK because I'm on the show I'm living my dream and I'm just really happy. 'It was not seen to be a game player, obviously I was expecting that I wasn't doing myself any favours but I obviously couldn't do it any other way.' Sensational: With his signature 'shade fan' in hand the Polish cleaner made a dramatic exit after losing out to Cian and Akeem in the public vote Explosive: Speaking about his time in the house Tomasz gushed that he had loved every minute of the experience as a long-time fan, despite losing support due to his game playing And after seeing Cameron's devastation at losing two of his closest friends in one day - and on his birthday no less - Tomasz had nothing but kind words to say about the now 19-year-old video blogger. He said: 'I always felt very protective over him I didn't know why and obviously there was him coming out and I clocked him. I was very confused at first, but he's an 18 year old guy and we had a strong bond. 'It was just amazing because I've nearly been a witness to anyone coming out other than myself.' Sweet: Tomasz also had nothing but kind words to say about his close friend Cameron in the house, after witnessing the now 19-year-old come out as gay Cheeky! And the gender neutral cleaner couldn't shy away from talking about his hilarious friendship with Welsh hunk Akeem, who he constantly called 'Daddy' Tomasz also touched on his hilarious friendship with Welsh hunk Akeem, who he constantly called 'Daddy' throughout the series. He said: 'It took me three weeks for me to understand him. I didn't think about any other person in the house that way, just about him, I could just see him in his eyes.' And in a move that would surprise few, Tomasz made the final decision to donate his remaining 288 Big Coins to Cameron. Sweet gesture: And in a move that would surprise few, Tomasz made the final decision to donate his remaining 288 Big Coins to Cameron He's left: Tomasz' departure came as a devastating blow for many Big Brother fans, as they were already furious at Lewis' removal from the house earlier that day Tomasz' departure came as a devastating blow for many Big Brother fans, as they were already furious at Lewis' removal from the house earlier that day. At the top of the show Emma explained that he had been ejected for using 'unacceptable language,' with a clip showing him being called to the Diary Room to be told the news. Asked whether there was anything he'd like to say, the barman said: 'My bad language and misuse of certain words has exploded in my face. 'I never meant to upset anyone, hurt anyones feelings or disrespect any kind of background, sexuality, race, gender or religion. So yeah, Im sorry.' You're out! At the top of the show a clip was playing showing Lewis being told by Big Brother that he had been ejected because of his language, but the incident itself was not revealed What was it? Many viewers were furious that the actual language in question was not revealed, taking to Twitter to ask in unison what Lewis had said Many viewers were furious that the actual language in question was not revealed, taking to Twitter to ask in unison what Lewis had said. One tweeted: 'So I'm guessing they're not gonna tell us what Lewis said,' while another added: 'Have I missed part of tonight's show where we see what Lewis said that got him kicked out of the house?' It is expected that the incident that caused Lewis' removal will be seen during Sunday's highlights show, but this has not been confirmed. A spokesperson for the Channel 5 show said the fan-favourite housemate exited the Elstree house with immediate effect on Friday, but the statement did reveal why at the time. Despite numerous clashes with his fellow housemates Lewis had been a fan favourite thanks to his close friendship with Cameron, and despite surviving several evictions was the bookies favourite to win. The statement - which was also posted to the show's Twitter - said: 'Lewis has been removed from the Big Brother House for unacceptable language that contravenes the rules. Lewis has left the house with immediate effect.' MailOnline has contacted representatives for Big Brother for further comment. Gone: Lewis exit was revealed hours ahead of the eviction, to the devastation of many fans Out: A spokesperson for the Channel 5 show confirmed Lewis had exited the house just hours before the live eviction on Friday It comes just over a week before the last ever series was due to end, with the final scheduled for Monday 5th November. Lewis had remained a controversial figure throughout his time in the Big Brother house, coming to blows with many housemates including Lewis G and Hussain. On Thursday fans saw the hunk once again come to blows with Akeem, as they were trapped in a cell as part of the prison shopping task. Divisive: Lewis had remained a controversial figure throughout his time in the Big Brother house, coming to blows with many housemates including Lewis G and Hussain But he also formed a close friendship with 18-year-old Cameron, helping the video blogger in coming to terms with his sexuality, and supporting him in his decision to come out to the rest of the house. Before his departure Lewis had remained the bookies favourite to win, despite surviving eviction twice and being one of the most nominated housemates. Fans were always quick to support him when he spoke about his struggles with anxiety, especially at one point when he suffered a panic attack during the Big Brother airlines shopping task. It is now unclear whether this will affect the number of housemates who make it through to the final, as it seems too late to send in someone to replace Lewis. Big Brother: The Live Eviction airs on Friday 26th October at 10pm on Channel 5. Today's Birthday, October 25: Iconic Spanish artist Pablo Picasso (1881 - 1973) A master of painting, sculpting, ceramics and more, universally renowned Spanish artist Pablo Picasso earned himself a place in history as one of the greatest figures in 20th-century art. Widely known only by his surname, Picasso was born in Malaga, Spain in 1881. His painter, curator and academic father became Picasso's instructor from age seven, and was an influential figure in his formative painting years. By the time Picasso was 13, his skill had surpassed his father's. The young artist's life was rocked by tragedy when his younger sister Conchita died of diphtheria when he was a young teen. After the seven-year-old's death, the family relocated to Barcelona, where he swiftly won admittance into the city's prestigious School of Fine Arts. After a brief stint at the Royal Academy of San Fernando in Madrid, Picasso returned to Barcelona and began to frequent cafe Els Quatre Gats. It was here that he became friends with a number of other artists and intellectuals who inspired him to break from traditional classical methods in favour of innovation and experimentation. He moved to Paris around the turn of the century, roughly coinciding with what is considered to be the beginning of his adult career. Picasso is renowned for his remarkable ability to reinvent himself and his artistic style throughout his long career. He was a pioneer of cubism, before reverting back to realist and classical art for a period, before refocusing on the surrealism movement he helped create. Picasso's most famous surrealist work Guernica was deemed one of the greatest paintings of all time and heralded his increasing tendency for politics to influence his art. In the latter stages of his career, he reached international notoriety, and also joined the Communist Party. The pinnacle of his later work, titled Self Portrait Facing Death, was created in pencil and crayon a year before he died in 1973. Remembered as a revolutionary artistic genius, Picasso fathered four children from three relationships. For the first time, the peak body of Australian company directors has named climate change and renewable energy infrastructure as the number one issue it wants federal government to address. Thursday's release of the Australian Institute of Company Directors' bi-annual sentiment index shows renewable energy sources as the most important area for investment, with 50 per cent of directors including it in their top three responses, up from 42 per cent six months ago. This is followed by spending on regional infrastructure and roads. Generally, the institute's second-half 2018 survey shows confidence waning, with the nation's long-term growth prospects the main factor worrying company directors, while the poor quality of public discourse and evaporating community trust towards big business are also sapping boardroom morale. More than eight in 10 directors rate the current quality of public policy debate in Australia as poor, with 54 per cent saying the federal government's performance has a negative effect on their business decision making, and 79 per cent saying it has had a negative effect on consumer confidence. "Directors are concerned with the global environment, with rising global protectionism and global economic uncertainty rated as the top two economic challenges facing Australian business," said institute managing director and chief executive Angus Armour. "At home there's also increasing pessimism around Canberra's impact on business." The institute's survey was conducted with 1252 members between September 13 and 27, which was two to four weeks after Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull resigned from parliament. Sustainability and long-term growth prospects are the main issues keeping directors awake at night, followed by business reputation in the community and corporate culture. "Directors also nominate less focus on short-termism and fostering innovation as the measures most needed to boost productivity," the institute said in its release on Thursday. Directors also want federal government to address needs for an ageing population, energy policy, taxation reform and infrastructure. Police are on the hunt for a Queensland motorcyclist who mowed down a young boy outside a primary school south of Brisbane before riding off. The rider, on a red motorbike, ignored a red light and hit the five-year-old boy leaving him with a broken leg and a head injury. The incident occurred about 4.30pm on Tuesday near Kingston State School, south of Brisbane. In a post to the Crime Watch Logan Facebook page, the boy's mother said the motorcycle appeared to have a number plate "made from paper" and called on the rider to hand themselves in. "You will be caught and u (sic) will get karma!!!," the woman wrote. "He is an innocent little boy and did not deserve to get what you did to him." Police are urging anyone with information or dash cam vision of the area at the time of the incident to come forward. Extra detectives are flying to north Queensland as police continue to hunt for the killer of a young woman whose body was found on a remote beach north of Cairns. Toyah Cordingley's body was found on Monday in dunes at Wangetti Beach, 40km north of Cairns with reports of "visible, violent" injuries. Ms Cordingley had gone missing on Sunday after taking her dog for a walk on the isolated beach. A friend of Ms Cordingley, Megan Amour, published a tribute to her friend along with a Youtube video compilation of images of her and the 24-year-old. "I can't believe this, I refuse to believe this," Ms Amour wrote. "I wanted to be the gypsy soul you were. I wanted to be flawless and not just the beauty you had on the outside but the beauty you had on the inside." On Wednesday, police door-knocked homes near the beach and took DNA swabs from residents as their investigation into the death continued. Extra resources from Queensland's State Crime Command are being dispatched to the area as well. A family friend also used social media to describe the heartbreak of the discovery of Ms Cordingley's body. "That morning Kieran rang me his heart was broken because you were missing," Les Ley wrote on Facebook. "Then Kieran rang me back to say you were gone oh god I never cried so much when I heard what he told me and Kieran's heart was shattered to pieces that his little sister was gone." Douglas Shire Mayor Julia Leu issued a statement on Wednesday calling for public help to solve the crime. "This is a disgusting, horrific and fatal act of violence against a young woman who was enjoying what so many people do on a daily basis - walk along our beautiful beaches," Ms Leu said. "It is extremely chilling to think a murderer is out there." Ms Leu said she wants anyone with information to contact police immediately. Australian companies aiming to join the ranks of Apple and Google - who have reached 100 per cent renewable energy - will meet at an industry forum in Sydney. The RE100 global initiative brings together companies aiming for 100 per cent renewable energy, coordinating their investments to help drive demand for such sources. Head of RE100 Sam Kimmins says the more than 150 member companies have a total investment pool of more than $100 billion. Companies like IKEA, Google, Apple, H&M have experience navigating the renewable energy market and were now sharing the information with others, Mr Kimmins told AAP ahead of Thursday's industry forum. "Renewables are really cheap, the technology has now achieved the promise of the last few years." The cost of solar had gone down around 80 per cent in the past seven years and was trending lower, he added. "Companies like Mars in Australia are saying, 'we can get our power from a solar plant more cheaply than we can from the main utility, so let's do that.' "And that's what's happening around the world." Furniture company IKEA owns more wind turbines than stores and LEGO sources electricity from a windfarm off the coast of England, he added. Energy Minister Angus Taylor will on Thursday introduce a further mechanism to lower electricity prices, allowing customers to conduct meter self-reads to reduce the risk of inaccurately estimated bills. Under the existing rules, energy retailers can estimate a customer's bill in certain circumstances, but inaccurate overestimates of a customer's usage can lead to higher than expected bills," he said in a statement. "Disputes over inaccurate readings are one of the most frequent sources of customer complaint." Mr Taylor will meet with his state and territory counterparts in Sydney on Friday. Dams, rapid intercity rail and mobile connectivity are among the big-ticket items the NSW government wants to invest $4.2 billion of Snowy Hydro funds into. The funds from the sale of the state's share of the hydroelectric scheme to the federal government will be entirely spent on regional NSW, Deputy Premier John Barilaro has announced. He listed five priority areas for spending, including water security, eliminating mobile black spots statewide and faster road and rail options. Improving freight linkages through a possible international freight airport in rural NSW and establishing new economic "activation precincts" are also on the agenda. "Reducing travel time from Canberra to Sydney by rail to under three hours is a game changer," the Nationals leader said. "The Snowy Hydro Legacy Fund is an investment in our young people in the regions, building the business foundations that will provide a secure future for those who live and work in our regional towns for generations to come." More than half of the children held on Nauru have been flagged for urgent medical attention, refugee advocates say. About 50 children and 550 adults made up the asylum seeker and refugee population on the Pacific island on Thursday. They are not detained, are free to move about the 21-square-kilometre island and have 20-year visas, the government says. The Asylum Seeker Resource Centre says of the children left on the island, seven require urgent transfer to Australia and another 22 require an urgent independent medical review. ASRC also claims one in four children are acutely suicidal. Home Affairs chief medical officer Parbodh Gogna told a Senate estimates hearing there had been "an unprecedented jump" in people presenting to medical facilities on Nauru in the last couple of months. The federal government says 65 medical professionals, including 33 mental health workers, are contracted by the Nauru government to provide services to the 608 transferees. ASRC detention advocacy manager Natasha Blucher believes Medecins Sans Frontieres' expulsion from the island two weeks ago was a major factor in the situation worsening. She said the group had been working closely with scores of Iranians who were told earlier this year their applications to resettle in the US had been rejected. "The kids were left with an interminable future of nothing," Ms Blucher told AAP. "They don't have a future to grow up for." The Nauru government was scathing of MSF earlier in October, taking particular offence to their "beloved home" being labelled an "open-air prison". "It is only when advocates and organisations such as MSF irresponsibly incite false expectations they put the lives of people into trauma, tragedy and a sense of helplessness," the statement on October 12 read. National Children's Commissioner Megan Mitchell says the government should allow comprehensive assessments of all children on Nauru. Lifeline 13 11 14 beyondblue 1300 22 4636 Fallout from the banking royal commission and tightening lending regulations will extend the housing market slowdown in Melbourne and Sydney over the next three years, but Brisbane and Adelaide are primed for growth. The median house price in the Victorian and New South Wales capitals - the country's two largest property markets - is forecast to fall 2.5 and 1.2 per cent respectively by June 2021, while the data released by QBE Insurance on Thursday predicts the value of units to fall 2.1 per cent in Melbourne, and 3.1 per cent in Sydney. Houses in all other capital cities are forecast to increase in value, with the strongest growth expected in Adelaide and Brisbane, which are tipped to climb 12.4 and 11.3 per cent respectively. But QBE Lenders' Mortgage Insurance chief executive Paul White predicted a widespread downturn in fortunes for apartment owners, driven by weaker demand from investors and an increased supply of units. "We anticipate foreign investment will further dampen in coming years owing to a number of factors such as increased approval fees, stamp duty and land tax surcharges," Mr White said. "As well as tighter capital controls from foreign governments, most notably China, which have impacted how much money they can take out of their country." But strong population growth boosted by high overseas migration will limit the drop in prices, Mr White said. The gloomy projections for Australia's two largest cities is a snap back to reality following extreme growth between 2012 and 2017. Sydney house prices soared 84 per cent over the period before falling 7.6 per cent in 2018. The report says the prices will fall 4.2 per cent in 2019 and bottom out the year after that. The housing market in Sydney will then begin its climb back, with a predicted rise in 2021 by 2.3 per cent. The data, commissioned by BIS Oxford Economics, shows Canberra house prices will rise 10.4 per cent over the next three years. FBI focuses on Florida in hunt for sender of package bombs MIAMI (Reuters) : Federal authorities investigating the pipe bombs sent to prominent Democrats and critics of U.S. President Donald Trump are focusing on Florida, where they believe at least some of 10 packages originated. A police bomb squad and canine units joined federal investigators on Thursday to examine a sprawling U.S. mail distribution center at Opa-Locka, northwest of Miami, Miami-Dade County police said. Homeland Security Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen confirmed that Florida appeared to be the starting point for at least some of the bomb shipments. "Some of the packages went through the mail. They originated, some of them, from Florida," she said during an interview with Fox News Channel. "I am confident that this person or people will be brought to justice." All the targets were figures frequently maligned by right-wing critics. They included Democratic Party donor George Soros, former President Barack Obama, former Secretary of State and presidential candidate Hillary Clinton, former Attorney General Eric Holder, former CIA director John Brennan and California Representative Maxine Waters. Two packages were sent to her. The Federal Bureau of Investigation has said that at least five of the packages bore a return address for the Florida office of U.S. Representative Debbie Wasserman Schultz, a former chair of the Democratic National Committee. Holder's package ended up being rerouted and was delivered to the Wasserman Schultz return address. Brennan's package was sent in care of the Manhattan bureau of CNN, where he has appeared as an on-air analyst. On Thursday, the investigation widened with the discovery of three additional packages. Two were intended for former Vice President Joe Biden in his home state of Delaware and one for the actor Robert De Niro in Manhattan. Authorities believe the packages, which were intercepted before reaching their intended recipients, all went through the U.S. Postal Service at some point, a source said. None detonated and no one has been hurt. A federal law enforcement source told Reuters the devices were thought to have been fashioned from bomb-making designs widely available on the internet. Investigators are nevertheless treating the devices as "live" explosives, not a hoax, said James O'Neill, police commissioner of New York City, where two of the parcels have surfaced. Authorities have branded the parcel bombs an act of terrorism. They were sent less than two weeks before national elections that could alter the balance of power in Washington. "It does remain possible that further packages have been or could be mailed," William Sweeney, assistant director of the FBI, told a news conference in New York. Investigators have declined to say whether the devices were built to be functional. Bomb experts and security analysts say that based on their rudimentary construction it appeared they were more likely designed to sow fear rather than to kill. The parcels each consisted of a manila envelope with a bubble-wrap interior containing "potentially destructive devices," the FBI said. Each was affixed with a computer-printed address label and six "forever" postage stamps, the agency said. The episode sparked an outcry from Trump's critics, who charged that his inflammatory rhetoric against Democrats and the press was creating a climate for politically motivated violence. After first calling for "unity" and civil discourse on Wednesday, Trump lashed out again Thursday at the "hateful" media. His supporters accused Democrats of unfairly suggesting the president was to blame for the bomb scare. "Funny how lowly rated CNN, and others, can criticize me at will, even blaming me for the current spate of Bombs and ridiculously comparing this to September 11th and the Oklahoma City bombing, yet when I criticize them they go wild and scream, "it's just not Presidential!" Trump said on Twitter at about 3:15 a.m. EST on Friday. No one has claimed responsibility for the bombs, and the public was asked to report any tips. Relatives of a woman whose battered body was found in a Sydney park say they are still struggling to come to terms with what happened to her. Nicole Cartwright's body was found bound and beaten at Buffalo Creek Reserve in Hunters Hill on October 3. In a statement, her family said the 32-year-old had been a much loved and cherished member of the family, who had brightened their lives with a radiance that "made you happy just being near her". She was "kind and sweet, but also bold and fun", with an infectious smile and contagious laughter, the family said in the statement on Thursday. "While we are still struggling to comprehend how and why this happened, our family is finding comfort in focusing on what made Nicole special and treasuring her in our memories," the statement said. The family expressed gratitude for the support they've received since Ms Cartwright's death and said they were deeply touched by a community vigil held in the Buffalo Creek Reserve on October 11. Ms Cartwright was farewelled at a funeral at Gledswood on Wednesday. Police have issued another appeal for information on what happened to the Sydney woman. They have previously released CCTV footage of the last time she was seen, at Museum Railway Station at 9.30pm on September 30, three days before her body was found in the same clothes. Detectives have spoken with a large number of people and are able to account for Ms Cartwright's whereabouts for most of the long weekend of September 28-30, police said in a statement on Thursday. However, they still need information on what happened to Ms Cartwright after September 30. An autopsy has been inconclusive, but further tests are being conducted to try to determine how Ms Cartwright died. Australian skipper Aaron Finch says he deserves plenty of blame for a woeful T20 loss to Pakistan that he likened to a slow-motion car crash. Set a gettable target of 156 in Abu Dhabi, the tourists lost six wickets in what Finch described as a "horrific" powerplay on the way to being skittled for 89. Each of Australia's top four batsmen were bowled and Chris Lynn (14) was the only member of the top six to reach double digits in a 66-run defeat in which Australia posted their equal third-lowest total in a T20 international. Finch started the rot when he was clean-bowled by left-arm spinner Imad Wasim for a third-ball duck while leaning back into an attempted cut shot. "Opening the batting, it's my responsibility to get us off to a good start and set up the chase there," Finch said. "I take full responsibility for that. I think any time that you're chasing a total like that it's important you have a solid start and for me to get out in the first over and not give us that was not good enough. "That powerplay was horrific ... it was like a car crash in slow motion." Man of the match Imad also accounted for D'Arcy Short and Alex Carey, finishing with 3-20 in his first national outing in almost a year. Only a rearguard action led by tailender Nathan Coulter-Nile (34) saved Australia from what had threatened to be a record T20 loss. Test squad members Mitch Marsh, Nathan Lyon and Peter Siddle were all overlooked for the series-opener, along with Mitchell Starc who is nursing a tight hamstring and almost certain to miss the remainder of the series. Finch said changes had to be considered for Friday's second T20 in Dubai, which will also host the third and final game on Sunday. However, Marsh may well be the only inclusion given Australia's bowlers held up their end of the bargain in restricting Pakistan to 8-155. Ashton Agar went wicketless from two expensive overs and could be vulnerable should offspinner Lyon come into the frame for just his second T20 international. "Absolutely they'll be looking at changes," Finch said. "I think all in all, our bowling performance was pretty good. Our fielding was slightly sloppy, then the batting was awful. "Definitely when that happens, when you lose a game so badly, you have to look at everything." Two years after trying to ban greyhound racing, the NSW government's contribution to the industry is set to exceed $70 million. An amendment to the state's point of consumption tax laws, which passed late on Tuesday night, will result in a forecast extra $32 million flowing to the industry over the next four years. The extra cash is in addition to the $41 million promised to the industry earlier this year, taking the government contribution to the sport to $73 million. A spokesman for NSW Treasurer Dominic Perrottet defended the changes to the point of consumption tax, saying betting companies weren't currently paying their fair share in NSW. "Previously online betting operators based outside of NSW have exploited a loophole which allowed them to avoid paying tax here in NSW," the spokesman told AAP in a statement. But Greens MP Justin Field criticised the government for continuing to prop up what he described as a "cruel and dying industry". "The community continues to pay for the backflip by the government on greyhounds." Former premier Mike Baird in 2016 announced he was banning the industry following revelations of live baiting and mass greyhound graves, but backflipped on the decision within months. Qantas says a jump in forward bookings has helped offset rising fuel costs to see a 6.3 per cent rise in first-quarter revenue to $4.41 billion. The airliner said on Thursday the value of forward bookings was up eight per cent on flat capacity compared with same time last year, and 6.2 per cent up on the June quarter, with travel demand strong across the business and leisure markets. Revenue across Qantas and Jetstar's domestic operations was up 6.8 per cent while international group revenue rose by four per cent, which it said was supported by structural changes to the network, including the addition of direct flights from Perth to London. Chief executive Alan Joyce said he was confident forward bookings would help Qantas manage higher fuel costs, which are expected to hit $4.09 billion in FY19, compared with $3.23 billion for FY18. On Thursday the airliner also announced a multi-million dollar investment in a new First Lounge, as well as an expansion of its existing Business Lounge, at Singapore Changi Airport, which will increase Qantas' total lounge capacity at the airport by 60 per cent. Qantas shares were trading at $5.62 at 0844 AEDT, down from August's historic peak of $6.92. Jared Waerea-Hargreaves reckons if there's a zone that exists for rugby league props where everything comes easy, he's found it. Now he wants to stay there through New Zealand's three-Test series against England. The veteran Sydney Roosters front rower will be among the first names etched into Michael Maguire's team for the first Test in Hull on Sunday (AEDT). It would be impossible to ignore Waerea-Hargreaves' impact for the Sydney Roosters in his ninth season there, topped by an imposing performance in the grand final victory over Melbourne. He then backed it up when the Kiwis stunned the Kangaroos in Auckland two weeks ago, a triumph set up by the home pack's superiority. The 29-year-old accepts he's in close to career-best form with both club and country, to the point where it has become "just riding the wave". "(Against Australia) it felt like I was on auto pilot, I was pretty happy with the performance. "To be honest, I sort of know where I'm at and keep it simple. I feel like I've over-done myself in the past." Waerea-Hargreaves was the only Kiwis forward to start both of their Tests this year - the 36-18 loss to England in Denver and the 26-24 bounce back against Australia, an improvement he says can be explained by the growing belief Maguire has instilled. Consistency of starts has never been a hallmark of the Rotorua-born prop in his 24-Test career since 2009. In fact, he has often been accused of failing to match his club form when he pulled on the Kiwis jersey. It's why the upset at Mt Smart Stadium meant so much, particularly as it was his first defeat of Australia in nine attempts. "I'm really happy with the way that I'm travelling, we're travelling, but we've just got to work hard. I can't get complacent now." Leah Purcell is about to swap her dank Wentworth jail cell for glitzy Hollywood boardrooms. The award-winning actor-director-playwright will join a delegation of Australia's elite indigenous screen luminaries next month on a historic trip to Los Angeles for high-level meetings and networking opportunities. Warwick Thornton, winner of the the Special Jury Prize at last year's Venice Film Festival for Sweet Country, Mystery Road's Ivan Sen and Redfern Now producer Erica Glynn are also part of the delegation. Purcell and partner Bain Stewart will not be sightseeing or living it up on the Sunset Strip during the November 5 -10 visit. They have work to do. "I'll have my business hat on," Purcell, 48, who joined the cast of hit TV prison drama Wentworth for this year's sixth season, told AAP. Purcell and Stewart are focused on turning their award-winning Australian play, The Drover's Wife, into a feature film. The movie, to carry the title The Drover's Wife: Legend of Molly Johnson, is in the "very late stages of development" and they hope the LA meetings will lead to a US sales agent, distributor and add some extra funding. Penguin Random House has also commissioned Purcell to turn The Drover's Wife into a novel and there's a plan to make it into a TV series. Purcell knows there is international interest in the movie after they met with 12 international film distributors at this year's Cannes Film Festival and received an overwhelmingly positive response. "It feels great to be able to go to LA and do business," Purcell said. "It's the kind of dream you have when you are in this industry to test the waters there." Purcell doesn't rule out in the future pursuing directing and acting gigs in the US but her focus is on The Drover's Wife: Legend of Molly Johnson movie. The delegation is an extension of Screen Australia's Talent USA initiative and follows a grant from the Hollywood Foreign Press Association to the LA-based Australians in Film Foundation. State and territory education ministers are yet to ink their respective school funding deals with the federal government, a Senate estimates hearing has heard. The government's $4.6 billion peace deal - a figure reached through the Department of Education's modelling - offered to Catholic and independent educators threw a curveball at funding negotiations, with education ministers calling for an equal funding boost for government schools. Funding agreements were expected to be finalised by the end of the year, Department of Education deputy secretary Alex Gordon told Senators in Canberra on Thursday. The head of the competition watchdog says forcing energy providers to sell assets if they have too much market power is an "extreme step", but believes it is up to the federal government to decide whether it is good move. The coalition hopes to give the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission such divestment powers to be used when needed, as part of its effort to reduce power prices. The ACCC has stopped short of recommending the policy itself, with chairman Rod Sims telling a hearing in Canberra on Thursday it is "such an extreme step" that the authority found it difficult to make a judgment. Today's Birthday, October 26: Australian-raised country musician Keith Urban (1967 - ) Country music superstar Keith Urban will try his guitar-picking hand at hosting the ARIA Awards for the first time in November. The 51-year-old plans to make it a family affair for his first appearance at the annual music awards show since 2007, promising to bring along Hollywood actress and wife Nicole Kidman. Urban is currently travelling the globe on his Graffiti U world tour, with Australian shows scheduled for early next year. Born in Whangarei, New Zealand in 1967, Urban moved to Queensland with his family when he was two and grew up in Caboolture, north of Brisbane. His parents bought him a guitar when he was six and he had formed a band by the age of 12. Urban left school to pursue a music career three years later and signed a record deal in 1990, which saw the release of a self-titled solo album in 1991. A year later, Urban moved to American country music mecca Nashville and became the frontman of country outfit The Ranch. The group split in 1997 and a period of drug and alcohol abuse followed for Urban. Out of rehab, he relaunched his solo career with a second self-titled LP in 1999. Several of the album's singles became chart-toppers and Urban was named best new male vocalist at the 2001 Academy of Country Music Awards. Urban's next two feature forays Golden Road (2002) and Be Here (2004) were chart hits in the US and Australia, with the latter awarded Best Country Album at the 2005 ARIAs. It was a busy year for Urban in 2006. He married Kidman, released Love, Pain & The Whole Crazy Thing and checked himself into rehab as the album spawned several hit singles. Two years later, he released a best-of album and toured until the birth of his first child Sunday Rose. In 2010, Urban and Kidman welcomed their second child Faith Margaret, born to a surrogate mother. Urban has continued to rack up country music No.1s over the past decade with LPs Defying Gravity (2009), Get Closer (2010), Fuse (2013), Ripcord (2016) and Graffiti U (2018). He appeared as a judge on four seasons of American Idol until the popular singing show finished up in 2016. Banks who used the legal system as a weapon to drive customers into poverty must work hard to "regain the trust of the Australian people", Labor says. The party has run a series of meetings with banking victims around the country and heard from families who had been torn apart when banks sold their homes. "The legal system is being used as a weapon against us," one victim said. Labor's financial services spokeswoman Clare O'Neil said the stories were harrowing, as she released the party's interim report from the roundtable meetings. "I've spoken with people who have had their families torn apart, lost their homes, lost farms that have been in their family for more than 100 years, developed physical and mental illnesses, or attempted suicide," she said on Friday. "One of the clearest messages from our roundtables was that victims who are mistreated by their banks have the odds stacked against them if they make a complaint. "In some instances, I believe the way the banks have used the legal system against customers is an abuse of the law." Labor says dispute resolution systems aren't working, banks are using the legal system to overwhelm customers, and there was no accountability for banks who did the wrong thing. "Privately, the bank basically admitted they're wrong, but they say I'll have to take them to court if I want to do anything about it," one victim said. Ms O'Neil said even when an Ombudsman decision went in favour of a customer, banks could still find ways to rip them off. "These stories must be a part of our national conversation when we consider what our banks must do to regain the trust of the Australian people," she said. Labor wants the banking royal commission extended to hear more personal stories from the 10,000 submissions sent in. Only 27 case studies have been heard so far. Prime Minister Scott Morrison has repeatedly said royal commissioner Kenneth Hayne will be given more time if he asks for it, but so far it has not been deemed necessary. The royal commission's interim report was released in September, with the final report, with recommendations for changes to the sector, to be given to the government by February. China assures of coop to resolve Rohingya crisis Diplomatic Correspondent : China has assured Bangladesh of all cooperation to resolve the Rohingya crisis. China said it at a meeting participated by the high officials of the both countries at the Bangladesh Secretariat in the capital on Friday. Home Minister Asaduzzaman Khan Kamal led the meeting on behalf of Bangladesh and Chinese Public Security Minister Zhao Kezhi headed the delegation from China. "The top officials of the Chinese Government assured us that Rohingya crisis would be resolved soon. We also urged China to play an active role in resolving the Rohingya crisis," Asaduzzaman Khan Kamal said. Meanwhile, Bangladesh and China signed three documents on security cooperation at the Home Minister-level meeting. The documents were signed at a Home Minister-level meeting between the two countries, Asaduzzaman Khan Kamal said. Bangladesh side sought China's role to repatriate Rohingya people from Bangladesh to Myanmar, their ancestral land, said the Minister. The Chinese side has appreciated Bangladesh government support in protecting Chinese investment and for giving them safety,' the Minister added. More than 700,000 Rohingyas came to Bangladesh since Myanmar began a crackdown in August 2017. About 400,000 Rohingyas were already residing in Bangladesh from before the latest Myanmar atrocities. Myanmar has not taken any initiative to implement the Rohingya repatriation agreement it signed with Bangladesh. Bangladesh has been urging the international community to intensify pressure on Myanmar on the issue. The Rohingya issue was also discussed when the Chinese Public Security Minister called on Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina on Thursday during his three-day visit. There has been assurance from China to play a constructive role in resolving the Rohingya issue during the Minister's meeting with Hasina, according to Khan. China has realised that Bangladesh had been made a 'victim' of the Rohingya crisis. They also applauded Bangladesh for providing shelter to more than one million Rohingya refugees. Terrorism and cyber-crime prevention were also discussed in the meeting, Khan said. "We have discussed ways to prevent transnational crimes." China expressed interest in investing more in Bangladesh in future, the Home Minister said. The Chinese minister arrived Dhaka on Thursday on a three-day visit to attend the meeting. He met Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina on Thursday evening. This is the highest-level visit so far by Chinese team this year. The bilateral relations between Bangladesh and China elevated to the 'Strategic Partnership of Cooperation', which maintained a new momentum of cooperation between the armed forces of the two nations, said the Chinese side. A $5 billion fund to guard Australian farmers against future droughts will be at the heart of the government's plan to tackle barren conditions over the next decade. The Future Drought Fund will help primary producers, non-government organisations and communities prepare for and respond to the impact of drought. Prime Minister Scott Morrison will announce the fund, which will be underpinned by an initial $3.9 billion injection before growing to $5 billion in 2028, at Friday's national drought summit in Canberra. "This funding will support farmers and their local communities when it's not raining. It guarantees drought support for the men and women who drive our nation," Mr Morrison said. "The challenges of drought vary from farm to farm, district to district, town to town and we continually need to adapt and build capacity - the Future Drought Fund gives us this opportunity." It will be managed by the existing Future Fund board of guardians, who recently reported a 9.3 per cent return and a $145.8 billion balance in funds for 2017/18. From 2020, about $100 million per year will be available with payments starting from July that year. The money will be used to provide community services, research and assist in the adoption of technology. It will also pay for advice and infrastructure to support long-term sustainability when drought strikes. "Part of the earning in the fund will be used to fund important water infrastructure and drought resilience projects, while the balance is ploughed back into the fund, so it grows to $5 billion over the next decade," Mr Morrison said. Political and agricultural industry leaders will discuss the criteria for projects captured by the fund at the summit, sparked by the crippling drought sweeping eastern Australia. National Farmers' Federation president Fiona Simson said while government support for the current drought was important, farmers would be better served by a holistic plan for dry times. "I believe it is a well accepted view, from the prime minister down, that we can't afford to continue to be reactive in responding to drought," Ms Simson said. The NFF also wants a new agreement between commonwealth and state governments to provide a national approach to drought preparation, response and recovery. The Council of Australian Governments is set to consider a new agreement by the end of the year, underpinning a national drought strategy. Mr Morrison on Thursday announced a $15 million grant program for regional community groups, as part of $1.8 billion in assistance. An accused killer cried out "he made me do it" as a Melbourne surgeon fell to the ground unconscious after an alleged one-punch attack at the hospital where he worked, a jury has heard. Patrick Pritzwald-Stegmann, 41, suffered head injuries last May when he fell at Box Hill Hospital after allegedly being struck to the head by 24-year-old Joseph Esmaili. The surgeon's life support was turned off weeks later. Esmaili is on trial in the Supreme Court, having pleaded not guilty to manslaughter. Despite recanting his early claim he saw the doctor get punched and fall, Esmaili's friend Corey Rogers told the court he witnessed Esmaili's response. "Oh f***. He made me do it," he said Esmaili had yelled out, before jogging outside the hospital and running with his group toward Box Hill. Esmaili and Mr Rogers were smoking with a group of people in a non-smoking area outside the hospital when it's alleged Mr Pritzwald-Stegmann told them they couldn't smoke there. Mr Rogers said one of the group told the doctor to "f*** off" and Mr Pritzwald-Stegmann went inside to get security, following Esmaili. Receptionist Megan Brodersen said the pair were arguing while she called security for help. She said she heard Mr Pritzwald-Stegmann tell Esmaili "you can't talk to me like that" and repeatedly asking, "did you just spit on me?". Mr Rogers said at one point the doctor put down his bag and there was a physical interaction. "There was a push. The doctor pushed Joe. He reacted by punching (Mr Pritzwald-Stegmann)," he said. Administration worker Lucy Jackson said she saw the punch reflected through a window, but under cross-examination by Esmaili's barrister John Desmond, admitted she didn't see Esmaili's fist connect. Ms Brodersen said she didn't see the punch but heard a bang and raced over to find Mr Pritzwald-Stegmann unconscious and choking. Also a trained nurse, she put him in the recovery position. "He was very stiff, kind of convulsing. I put him in the recovery position and that's when the blood came out of his nose and mouth" she said. "It felt like forever but (help) came very quickly." The trial continues. Two men have been charged with attempted murder following the shooting of a man in the car park of a Sunshine Coast shopping centre. It will be alleged that an altercation in Currimundi between three men on October 19 ended with a 45-year-old man sustaining a gunshot wound to the stomach. With the help of Victoria Police, investigators searched a house in the Melbourne suburb of Saints Albans on Wednesday, where two men, aged aged 56 and 26, were taken into custody. They were subsequently extradited to Queensland by Sunshine Coast detectives. The men, both from Greenbank, have been charged with attempt to murder (serious organised crime), armed robbery in company with wounding (serious organised crime) and attempted robbery. They are due to appear in the Maroochydore Magistrates Court later on Friday. The gunshot victim remains in Sunshine Coast University Hospital in a stable condition. Federal Energy Minister Angus Taylor will put his plans to lower power prices on the agenda when he meets with his state and territory counterparts in Sydney. The energy ministers are meeting for the first time since Mr Taylor was appointed to the role in the Morrison government in late August. Reducing power prices while ensuring the reliability of the grid are his focuses, he says. "I look forward to a constructive and cooperative discussion on these key issues to help Australian families and businesses," he told AAP ahead of Friday's meeting. Mr Taylor this week announced plans to lower power bills for Australians, which are in line with recommendations from the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission's inquiry into retail power prices. The proposals include requiring power retailers to set their prices against a default market price, which could help households save hundreds of dollars, and businesses thousands. The Australian Energy Council was lukewarm to the idea, saying most customers wouldn't see the savings flagged by government. The government has also asked the Australian Energy Regulator to develop a reference bill for each network region, for electricity retailers to calculate and advertise their discounts using a common reference point. The Australian Energy Market Commission on Thursday launched a further mechanism to lower electricity prices, allowing customers to conduct meter self-reads to reduce the risk of inaccurately estimated bills. The Morrison government will move to draft federal laws if discussions with the states and territories fail. Shaun Marsh has the chance to silence the critics when he returns to the crease in Western Australia's Sheffield Shield clash with Tasmania at the WACA Ground. Marsh survived a nervy 18 minutes when he came out to bat for WA late on Thursday. The 35-year-old scored 10 runs off 14 deliveries, and will be aiming to build a big total when he returns to the crease on Friday. WA will resume on 2-69 in reply to Tasmania's 226, with Hilton Cartwright (28no) to join Marsh. Marsh's spot in the Test team hangs in the balance following his lean run with the bat. In the two-Test series against Pakistan, Marsh scored just 14 runs across four innings. And since scoring 156 against England in January at the SCG, Marsh has averaged just 13.42 across 12 innings in the Test arena. It means Marsh needs a big score for WA to shore up his Test spot. Marsh looked comfortable facing the Tigers' pace attack late on Thursday, but the green-tinged deck could prove troublesome to tame for a longer period. Alex Doolan (76) and Matthew Wade (66no) were the only Tigers batsmen who were able to flourish on Thursday, with Warriors pace duo Cam Green (6-30) and David Moody (3-39) wreaking havoc with the ball. Sydney teenager Sophia Skarparis has spent the year campaigning to ban plastic bags in NSW but she never thought her message would be heard by the Duke and Duchess of Sussex. The 15-year-old will on Friday be awarded the Young Conservationist of the Year at the Australian Geographic Society Awards in Sydney. She'll be receiving the award from Prince Harry's wife Meghan Markle. "Now I can spread my message to everyone - including Prince Harry and Meghan," she told AAP. The Monte Sant' Angelo Mercy College student started a petition in February as part of a school project to ban plastic bags in NSW. After discovering NSW uses three billion plastic bags each year, the project became personal. "Plastic bags need to be banned now. It can't wait," she said. "I want future generations to not be impacted by the decisions we make now." The petition has more than 12,000 signatures and was debated in NSW parliament on Thursday after it was tabled by Sophia's local member Premier Gladys Berejiklian in September. Sophia will be joined on Friday night by Jade Hameister who will be awarded the Young Adventurer of the Year after conquering a 650km, 37-day journey to the South Pole in January. The 16-year-old will be receiving her award from Prince Harry. "He's becoming an icon for young people ... it's nice to have someone like that to look up to," she told AAP. The Melbourne teenager became the youngest person and first Australian female to ski from the Amundsen Coast to the South Pole - unsupported and unassisted - and is the first female to set a new route through the Transantarctic Mountain Range. "We climbed a glacier that no human has ever stepped out on before," she told AAP. It wasn't the teenager's first epic adventure, having already become the youngest person to ski to the North Pole. For this feat she was named the Australian Geographic Society's 2016 Young Adventurer of the Year. She also became the youngest female to cross Greenland in 2017. The Haileybury student's adventures have made her the youngest person to complete the Polar Hat Trick. The Duke and Duchess will attend the awards, which recognise Australia's best adventurers and conservationists, after flying back to Sydney on Friday following four days in Fiji and Tonga. Their 16-day tour to Australia, New Zealand and the Pacific coincides with the Invictus Games in Sydney. Scott Morrison has sought to dismiss weeks of damaging blunders by his government, describing the string of incidents as mere "process issues" in Canberra. The Liberal Party has lost its blue ribbon seat of Wentworth, been plunged into minority government, and copped diplomatic blowback after announcing it may move the Israeli embassy to Jerusalem. Government senators also voted in favour of a white supremacy motion before reversing their position, and are facing immense pressure to get sick refugee children and their families off Nauru. Six months out from a federal election, the prime minister insists voters are not interested in these issues. "They're interested in lowering electricity prices, they're interested in addressing the drought," Mr Morrison told ABC radio on Friday. "This week we also had the apology to victims of child sexual abuse where we announced measures to ensure their stories will not be forgotten." Mr Morrison pointed out unemployment was also down in recent weeks, and his government had passed a new trade deal and small business tax cuts. "These are the things that are impacting on people's daily lives," the prime minister said. "People can talk about process issues in Canberra all they like, but what I'm doing is just getting stuff done." People in NSW will soon be able to go to a pharmacist instead of their GP to get a range of a vaccinations in addition to the flu jab. From January, those who complete an approved course will be able give diphtheria, tetanus, pertussis (dTpa) shots, whooping cough and measles, mumps and rubella to anyone over the age of 16. "People tell us access to a GP can be difficult at times whether you live in the city, country or on the coast, so expanding pharmacy vaccinations gives people more choice," Deputy NSW Premier John Barilaro said in a statement on Friday. The state government hopes it will mean more people get immunised before travelling overseas. But the move has been slammed by doctors, who have labelled it short-sighted. Australian Medical Association NSW president Kean-Seng Lim said vaccination was more than just about giving someone a needle. "Receiving a vaccine from a pharmacist might be convenient, but it's a lost opportunity for patients to discuss their health with their GP," Dr Lim said in a statement. "Men are particularly vulnerable, as they are less prone to be proactive about their health and more likely to reduce regular visits to the doctor." The AMA is encouraging people to go to a GP instead for their vaccinations for a "proper consultation". Shaun Marsh is set to bat again during the third day of the evenly poised Sheffield Shield contest between Western Australia and Tasmania at the WACA Ground. Under pressure Test batsman Marsh was impressive on Friday making 80 for WA having come into the day 10 not out overnight as he fights to save his Test career. That helped the Warriors to a 17-run first innings lead but things are delicately poised entering the third day action. Tasmania are 2-82 in their second innings with a lead of 65 with eight wickets in hand. Jordan Silk (46) and Jake Doran (13) are the not out batsmen with Alex Doolan (6) and Beau Webster (12) the men out. But with the experience of George Bailey and Matthew Wade still to come on Saturday, Tasmania will be confident of setting a good total for WA to chase and they will back pace bowlers Jackson Bird, Gabe Bell, Sam Rainbird and John Rogers to defend it. WA's run chase will provide Marsh with another opportunity to bat as he tries to continue his form from the first innings. The 35-year-old looked good making 80 from 140 deliveries with 17 boundaries in response to a poor series for Australia in the two Test series against Pakistan in the United Arab Emirates. But the 34-Test veteran impressed back on home soil looking composed at the crease with his straight and cover driving, and back foot play and square driving all on song. Another strong second innings showing will further entrench him in the Australian Test side against India starting in Adelaide December 6. Tito Mboweni is South Africa's fifth finance minister in three years South Africa's finance minister on Wednesday vowed to tackle debt and rebuild government institutions after the turbulent presidency of Jacob Zuma, as the ruling ANC prepares for next year's election. Tito Mboweni, delivering the medium-term budget statement to parliament, said South Africa "stood at a crossroads", facing rising public debt, low growth and record unemployment. "We cannot continue to borrow at this rate," he said. "We must choose to reduce the structural deficit." President Cyril Ramaphosa, who took power when Zuma was forced out over graft allegations in February, has pledged to revive the listless economy by attracting $100 billion in foreign investment and fighting corruption. A judicial inquiry is currently probing allegations that Zuma oversaw the systematic plunder of state coffers and of state-owned enterprises during his nine years in power. "We must repair damaged government institutions, as their failure impacts poorer households the most," Mboweni said. "There have been governance challenges at key state institutions. State institutions are being repaired and renewed, but serious governance problems exist." Mboweni is the country's fifth finance minister in three years after his respected predecessor Nhlanhla Nene resigned just two weeks ago. Nene stood down after admitting undisclosed meetings with the Gupta business family at the heart of graft allegations against Zuma. Mboweni on Wednesday slashed South Africa's 2018 growth forecast from 1.5 percent to 0.7 percent. "For ordinary South Africans, it has become a difficult time," he said. "Prices, such as electricity and fuel, have risen. Unemployment is unacceptably high. "Poor services and corruption have hit the poor the hardest." Maarten Ackerman, chief economist at Citadel, said rebuilding confidence would help "the big issue of how do we get investment back into the country". "This has been the underlying reason why for the past couple of years we haven't created any jobs in mining and manufacturing because investment dried up." - 'Money goes missing' - The country, Africa's most industrialised, is in recession, with voters buffeted by soaring fuel prices and a weak local currency. Unemployment is stubbornly high at about 28 percent -- rising to over 50 percent for young people. Mboweni is seen as a pro-business fiscal conservative whose appointment boosted investor support for Ramaphosa. But trade unions, which wield influence within the African National Congress (ANC), are staunchly opposed to austerity policies or government lay-offs. The National Union of Mine Workers called Mboweni "unlawful and reckless" this week for saying 30,000 job losses would be needed to rescue state electric utility Eskom. Mboweni, 59, sought to draw a line under the Zuma era. "Too much money goes missing... Money that leaks out of the system is no longer available to support our efforts to reduce poverty," he said. The ANC's shrinking popularity was highlighted at local polls in 2016 when it lost control of three key cities, including the capital Pretoria, and won its smallest ever share of the vote. The main opposition Democratic Alliance said the Mboweni had announced a "full-scale budget blowout" of indebtedness likely to force up taxes. Debt is forecast to stabilise in 2024 at 60 percent of GDP, with the budget deficit widening to 4.2 percent next year. Moody's, the only ratings agency that still has South Africa at investment grade, could soon review its position. "The conversation that has to take place with the ratings agencies has to be an honest one," Mboweni told journalists before his speech. Govt wants to cling to power by holding Jan 5-like polls: Fakhrul Staff Reporter : The BNP on Friday alleged that the government wants to cling to power by conducting January 5 of 2014 like election again. "The government is trying to restore one-party rule in the country by keeping opposition parties out of the next general election race. It wants to retain power by holding a lopsided election like the January 5 of 2014 keeping all the opposition parties out of the election race," said BNP Secretary General Mirza Fakhrul Islam Alamgir. He said this to journalists after placing wreaths at the grave of late President Ziaur Rahman along with leaders and activists of Jatiyatabadi Jubo Dal marking its 40th founding anniversary. "They kept BNP Chairperson Begum Khaleda Zia in jail with a false case, though she has wide contribution to democracy in the country. Their aim is clear, that is to hold one-sided polls again," Mirza Fakhrul said. The BNP leader said the people of Bangladesh will not accept any unilateral polls, and they will make their movement for restoration of democracy, and their voting and other rights a success through united movement. "The government is arresting not only BNP leaders and activists, but also those who speak in favour of democracy. They are filing false cases against pro-democratic people and sending them to jail," he said. Mirza Fakhrul said, "The current Election Commission is playing a subservient role. So, the next general election is not possible to hold in a fair and neutral manner under this commission." The BNP leader also said that they are now taking efforts to make the party's reformist leaders active to further strengthen the party. The reformist leaders had worked against the party during the 1/11 government in 2007. BNP Joint-Secretary General Syed Moazzem Hossain Alal, Juba Dal Senior Vice-President Mortazul Karim Badru and Acting General Secretary Nurul Islam Nayon, among others, were present. Thailand's far south is routinely hit by violence between the army and Muslim Malay insurgents Malaysia's new leader Mahathir Mohamad met his Thai counterpart on Wednesday in his first visit to his northern neighbour, pledging his help to bring peace in Thailand's violence-scarred south. Thailand's mainly Muslim southern region bordering Malaysia has been in the grips of a low-level but bloody insurgency for more than a decade, as ethnic Malay militants battle the Buddhist-majority state for greater autonomy. The insurgency has seen almost 7,000 people -- mostly civilians -- killed since 2004, although the death toll in 2017 was the lowest in 13 years amid a tighter security operation. Malaysia has long acted as a facilitator for brokering peace talks between the Thai government and Mara Patani, an umbrella group that claims to be the political wing of a shadowy network of rebel fighters clashing with state forces. But the talks have stalled in the past year, and both countries recently appointed new representatives to lead the delicate negotiation process. Mahathir met in the late afternoon with junta chief Prayut Chan-O-Cha in Bangkok, telling a press conference afterwards that working together to resolve the conflict was an "opportunity to display" the friendship between the neighbours. "We have pledged to help in whatever way possible to end this violence in the south," Mahathir said. Malaysia and Thailand's leaders say a resolution to the violence would be in the interests of both their countries Resolving the years-long conflict would be in the best interests for both countries, as well as for the region, Prayut told reporters. "The dialogue will resume immediately and Malaysia is the facilitator," Prayut said. "We both agree that this is Thailand's domestic problem. Malaysia is willing to help so that the problems will be solved faster," said Prayut. Neither party gave further details or a timeline for the process. Panitan Wattanayagorn, a security advisor to Thailand's deputy prime minister, told AFP on Tuesday that Malaysia's role was essential in ensuring peace and stability in the restive southern states. "This gives us hope to move the peace process forward," he said. "We need Malaysia as a facilitator." - Observers sceptical - But analysts of the Deep South conflict remain sceptical of moves to jumpstart fractious talks months before expected elections in February. "Mara Patani said they are not going to come to the table until there is a democratically elected government in Thailand," Don Pathan, a Thailand-based independent analyst, told AFP. "Most importantly, the BRN, the group that controls virtually all the combatants on the ground, are not part of the dialogue." The BRN, or Barisan Revolusi Nasional, is believed to oversee most fighters but has long refused to talk barring international mediation -- which the Thai government has consistently rejected. Thailand's three southernmost provinces were colonised over a century ago. But the majority Malay Muslim population have long chafed under Bangkok's rule. Rights groups have accused both both insurgents and security forces of widespread human rights abuses in the region. Both Thailand's military and the insurgents are accesed of widespread rights abuses How far talks go depends not on Malaysia, but on the Thai military which has "dragged its feet" on the process, said Paul Chambers, an expert on the conflict at Naresuan University. "The fact that the talks have fallen off could mean that the junta has seen them more as a public relations stunt than as a sincere endeavour." Mahathir's visit to Thailand is the first for the statesman since he swept to a surprise victory in the country's national poll in May. He will also meet with members of the Malaysian diaspora on Thursday, followed by a public lecture at Bangkok's Chulalongkorn University on the two countries' relationship. burs-dhc/joe/gle Iranian President Hassan Rouhani says Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi's "heinous murder" would have been unthinkable "without US backing" as he chairs a cabinet meeting in Tehran on October 24, 2018 Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi's "heinous murder" would have been unthinkable "without US backing," Iranian President Hassan Rouhani said on Wednesday. "I don't think that any country would dare do such a thing without US backing," Rouhani said in remarks to cabinet broadcast on state television. Rouhani said that before Khashoggi's murder "it would have been unthinkable that in this day and age we would witness such an organised felony. "It is extremely significant that an institution planned such a heinous murder. "The tribal group that is ruling that nation (Saudi Arabia) has a security margin. That security margin is that it relies on US backing. It is this superpower that is backing them." Khashoggi, a government critic who was living in self-imposed exile in the United States, was murdered inside the Saudi consulate in Istanbul on October 2 as he organised the paperwork for his marriage to his Turkish fiancee. The case has triggered an international outcry against Saudi Arabia. US President Donald Trump on Tuesday ridiculed Riyadh's response as "one of the worst cover-ups" in history. Iran had been silent about the Khashoggi case until Monday when its judiciary chief slammed Saudi Arabia over his death. "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 Saudi Crown Prince Mohammad bin Salman. - 'Child-killing regime' - Iran has closely followed the backlash faced by its regional rival Saudi Arabia over the Khashoggi murder. Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif on Wednesday lashed out at the US Treasury for sanctioning two Iranian Revolutionary Guard officers who allegedly provided training, financial and logistical support to Afghanistan's Taliban. "To deflect from headlines on Saudi brutality in Istanbul and across Yemen, US Treasury -- while in Saudi Arabia, no less -- sanctions Iran for 'supporting' anti-Iran Taliban," he tweeted. The sanctions were announced by the Riyadh-based Terrorist Financing Targeting Center on Tuesday. Separately Saudi Arabia and Bahrain also on Tuesday designated Iran's Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps and three of its officers, including Quds Force commander Major General Qasem Soleimani, as terrorist sponsors. "The House of Saud is seeking to divert international and regional public opinion away from the murder of Jamal Khashoggi," Brigadier General Esmail Kowsari of the Guards said, quoted by Mehr news agency. "Saudi Arabia is stuck in a quagmire they can't get out of," Kowsari said, adding that the designation was an attempt to utilise the tactic of attack being the best form of defence. "The murder of this journalist is one of the thousands of villainies committed by this child-killing regime, but they want to revolve the worlds attention away from themselves onto Iran," said Kowsari. A handout picture provided by the Saudi Royal Palace on October 23, 2018 shows Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman (centre) posing for a selfie near Saudi billionaire Prince Al-Walid bin Talal (right) during the Future Investment Initiative conference Delegates swooned as a band belted out "Hotel California" on the sidelines of a Saudi investment forum, with organisers projecting it as business as usual despite mass cancellations from global CEOs over critic Jamal Khashoggi's murder. Multi-billion dollar "mega deals" were declared and sumptuous buffet spreads laid out at the Future Investment Initiative in Riyadh, while delegates rushed to take selfies with Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman who received a standing ovation. But the flagship three-day conference that seeks to project the oil-rich desert kingdom as a lucrative business destination appeared to largely be a subdued affair after the Khashoggi murder pushed the world's top oil exporter into one of its worst crises. It especially paled in comparison to last year's inaugural FII. In 2017, Prince Mohammed dazzled investors with plans for the $500-billion (440-billion-euro) mega city NEOM billed as a regional Silicon Valley, and a talking robot named Sophia was declared a Saudi citizen. The forum was billed as an economic coming-out party after the prince, a self-styled reformer, won global plaudits for ending a decades-long ban on women drivers and his ambitious plans to modernise the ultraconservative kingdom. Participants listen at the start of a three-day conference called Future Investment Initiative (FII) in the Saudi capital Riyadh on October 23, 2018 But the star attractions of last year were missing as the event opened on Tuesday with British billionaire Richard Branson, SoftBank chief Masayoshi Son and Siemens chief executive Joe Kaeser among dozens of global business titans who shunned the event. The brightly lit booths of Western media outlets were gone, with star television anchors such as Fox News's Maria Bartiromo -- who moderated a panel with Prince Mohammed last year -- notably absent. - Shifting agenda - Organisers frequently changed the agenda of the event in a sign speakers were dropping out. They scrambled on Wednesday to replace the political no-shows with figures from regional allies, with Lebanese prime minister-designate Saad Hariri and the president of Senegal among the headliners. A Saudi man walks past a sign at the start of a three-day conference called Future Investment Initiative (FII) in the Saudi capital Riyadh on October 23, 2018 Saudi officials were still eager to project the kingdom's economic ambitions, with a Lucid electric car displayed outside the lunch venue and each delegate receiving a bulky hardcover book titled "A blueprint for the 22nd century". At a poolside gala dinner reception on Tuesday, Chico Bouchikhi, one of the founders of the Gipsy Kings, regaled participants with hit songs such as "Hotel California". The conference was largely filled with delegates from Arab nations, many from Saudi Arabia itself, and most of the Westerners present sought to maintain a low profile and some appeared unwilling to even share their business cards with journalists. But Saudi officials heaped praise on Western business figures such as the CEO of French energy giant Total, Patrick Pouyanne, for standing by Riyadh in this difficult period. - PR crisis - Khashoggi's murder has plunged the kingdom into what observers call an acute public relations crisis. The companies doing business with Saudi Arabia would have to "find a balance between maintaining a good PR image and their business considerations", said Tony Chan, president of Saudi Arabia's King Abdullah University of Science and Technology, who attended the forum. French-Moroccan businessman Richard Attias, Jordan's King Abdullah II, Saudi billionaire Prince Al-Walid bin Talal, and Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman check an installation during the Future Investment Initiative As delegates walked into the vast conference venue at the Ritz-Carlton hotel, bedecked with frescoed ceilings and glittering chandeliers, many feverishly checked their phones for new developments about Khashoggi's murder. Prince Mohammed, addressing the conference in his first public comments since Khashoggi's killing on October 2, denounced the "painful" murder and vowed that "justice will prevail". "The incident was very painful for all Saudis, it's a repulsive incident and no one can justify it," he said. Saudi officials at FII sought to defuse what they acknowledged as a "crisis". Prominent Saudi businesswoman Lubna Olayan described the murder as a terrible act "alien to our culture and DNA". "For a long time I introduced my country to outsiders by saying: 'I come from a country that doesn't allow women to drive'," said another Saudi businesswoman. "I thought we were moving forward, but this (crisis) has taken us far behind." Cameroonian lawyer and former vice president of Transparency International Akere Muna dropped out of the country's presidential race to help form an opposition coalition A Cameroon court has sentenced former opposition presidential candidate and anti-corruption campaigner Akere Muna to a three-year suspended sentence on forgery charges. His sentencing Tuesday came a day after the West African country's constitutional council announced the results of an election handing President Paul Biya a seventh term in power. The Yaounde tribunal sentenced Muna to three years in prison suspended for five years, in a case involving forgery of his family's inheritance, according to a copy of the ruling obtained on Wednesday. The verdict could still be overturned by an appeals court and by the Supreme Court. The judgement follows a case brought by Muna's younger sister and a former minister, Ama Tutu Muna, who accused him of mismanaging the family inheritance. Akere, a former senior lawyer and once vice president of anti-corruption watchdog Transparency International, this month withdraw his candidacy in the presidential election in favour of another contender, Maurice Kamto. Kamto came second in the presidential election with 14.23 percent of the vote. Nigeria ranks 180th out of 190 countries for women's representation in politics, according to a 2017 UN report When Ndi Kato decided to run for office in Nigeria, she found few models for young women who wanted to be in politics. "Women said, 'Don't get excited, the system will isolate you, you're a token'," Kato, 29, told AFP. "The future didn't look so bright." But she wanted to make a difference and in February kicked off her campaign for the House of Assembly in the northern state of Kaduna. From there, it was a constant battle against the patriarchy. "There is this condescension to a woman's candidacy," she said. "They'll tell you, 'Oh, wow! Cute, we're happy to see a beautiful woman but you're not going to win'." On the campaign trail, Kato was often the only woman in the room and said when she did speak up she was "hepeated" -- her suggestions were ignored until a man said it and was praised. She looked on as her male counterparts across the country received generous donations from political party elders that helped them secure their candidacies. Despite her best efforts, she didn't make it through the party primaries. - Poor ranking - Kato's experience is far from an isolated case in Africa's most populous nation and leading oil producer, home to more than 190 million people. In Nigeria's parliament, just seven out of the 109 members of the upper chamber, the Senate, are female. In the lower House of Assembly, women hold 19 of the 360 seats The West African giant ranks 180th out of 190 countries for women's representation in politics, according to a 2017 UN report. Women make up just 5.8 per cent of the ministers in President Muhammadu Buhari's 36-member cabinet. In parliament, just seven out of the 109 members of the upper chamber, the Senate, are female. In the lower House of Assembly, women hold 19 of the 360 seats. Those numbers are not expected to change dramatically as presidential, parliamentary and state elections approach in four months' time. Last week, the Daily Trust newspaper said only 31 women were running for parliament for the ruling All Progressives Congress (APC) and main opposition Peoples Democratic Party (PDP). High fees for nomination forms have been seen as a factor, even though the APC offered a half-price discount for female prospective candidates and the PDP made applications free. - 'Prehistoric times' - Poor female representation in Nigerian politics stands at odds with the situation elsewhere in Africa, notably Rwanda, where more than 60 percent of parliamentary deputies are women. Ethiopia's Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed this month appointed a new cabinet with half of all posts going to women, including defence, the latest move in his radical reform programme. - Nigeria's Buhari was criticised for saying alongside German Chancellor Angela Merkel in 2016 that his wife, Aisha, "belongs to my kitchen and my living room and the other room". Ayisha Osori, a Nigerian lawyer who ran for office in 2015, has written a book about her campaign, "Love Does Not Win Elections". In it she provides advice for anyone wanting to get elected, including providing "mint banknotes" for voters, and rails against an ossified system that serves only the elite. "Think about prehistoric times, the men hunted and the women cooked, that's where we are in Nigeria," she told AFP. "Many of the women who have won seats to the Senate are either wives or daughters of senators or governors. It's dishonest to say any representation is better than no representation." Most women in power are more interested in preserving the status quo than creating greater opportunities for others. "Women are just put in a ghetto" and pressured to conform to traditional gender norms centred on family and motherhood, she added. A recent women's conference for example was organised by the "Committee of Wives of Lagos State Officials". - 'Uphill battle' - Mulikat Akande-Adeola, 57, was the first female majority leader of the House of Representatives and knows she is an exception to the rule. In 2007, she watched as a female colleague was dumped as speaker after three rocky months. "They felt because you are a woman you can't be seen as controlling men," said Akande-Adeola, who is running for a Senate seat. No caption "The party structure gives only room for men." For the situation to change, female politicians want more financial support. Similarly, there are calls for changes to party organisation, including quotas, to make politics more inclusive. Despite losing out on her first try, Kato says she still wants a political career even if it is likely to be an "uphill battle. "If you believe in women candidates, you need to put your money where your mouth is," she said. New York State police and reporters stand outside actor Robert De Niro's Tribeca Grill restaurant after a bomb squad removed a suspicious package from the building in which it is housed Hollywood megastar Robert De Niro and former US vice president Joe Biden were the latest targets in a spree of 10 devices and pipe bombs sent to opponents of Donald Trump but a nationwide manhunt revealed no major public leads Thursday. Hundreds of agents from the FBI, US Secret Service and dozens of other agencies are searching round the clock for the culprit or culprits behind the 10 suspect packages that politicians on all sides have branded "terrorism." Since Monday crude, homemade bombs and other suspected explosive devices have been addressed to Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton, CNN, liberal billionaire donor George Soros other figures loathed by Trump supporters. Packages have been intercepted in New York, Maryland, Florida, Delaware and Los Angeles. "It does remain possible that further packages could or have been mailed," assistant FBI director William Sweeney said, confirming that "some" packages had been sent through the US postal system. So far, no one has been hurt. "We will identify and arrest the person or people responsible for these acts. Make no mistake," New York police chief James O'Neill told a news conference, refusing to divulge any leads investigators may have. "It's an ongoing thing. We are discovering things by the hour," he added. The US president on Thursday stepped up his attacks on the media, lashing out at the press for stirring up "anger". Democrats accuse the Republican leader of inciting violence that led to the attempted attacks. In the early hours of Thursday, a retired police detective called the bomb squad to remove a suspected explosive device sent to double Oscar-winner De Niro at his Tribeca Productions company in New York. The 75-year-old star used an expletive to condemn Trump at the televised Tony Awards last June, receiving a standing ovation. Two additional packages were addressed to Obama's former vice president, Joe Biden, often rumored as a potential Democratic presidential candidate for 2020, in Delaware, the FBI confirmed. - 'Media must clean up' - With the United States bitterly divided and crucial midterm elections on November 6, Trump reacted first by calling for unity and condemning "acts of political violence," before reverting to attacks on the media. "A very big part of the Anger we see today in our society is caused by the purposely false and inaccurate reporting of the Mainstream Media that I refer to as Fake News," Trump tweeted Thursday. The targets: former US President Barack Obama (top left), former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton (C), George Soros (R), the liberal billionaire Chairman of Soros Fund Management, Democratic lawmaker Debbie Wasserman Schultz (bottom left), former CIA director John Brennan (C) and California Democratic Representative Maxine Waters (R) "It has gotten so bad and hateful that it is beyond description. Mainstream Media must clean up its act, FAST!" The White House was forced to defend the president over accusations that he was not taking the attempted bombings seriously enough. "We condemn violence in all forms. This is a despicable act and certainly something that should never take place in America," Press Secretary Sarah Sanders told Fox News. Critics accuse Trump's rhetoric-laden "Make America Great Again" presidency of emboldening right-wing extremists. He recently endorsed the body-slamming of a reporter, routinely denounces the press as "fake news" and has leveled toxic remarks in the past against the pipe bomb targets. The packages were sent in manila envelopes with bubble wrap, marked with computer-printed address labels. Each listed Debbie Wasserman Schultz, former chairwoman of the Democratic National Committee, as the sender, including misspellings of her last name, the FBI said. All of them have been sent for analysis to the same FBI laboratory in Virginia, officials confirmed Thursday. US media report that at least some may have been sent from Florida, a battleground southern state home to Trump's lavish Mar-a-Lago estate that he dubbed the "Winter White House." "I believe there is someone by definition a serial bomber, yes, and a terrorist," New York Mayor Bill de Blasio told CNN. - 'Foreign or domestic' - "Person or people, foreign or domestic -- we don't know. And we don't know if they're here or elsewhere in the country." Two men look out the window of Robert de Niro's Tribeca Film Center, in New York City, which was among the latest targets of a wave of bomb alerts There has been no claim of responsibility and no known arrests. Former CIA director John Brennan, who was sent the pipe bomb care of CNN, assailed Trump for attacking the media. "Stop blaming others. Look in the mirror. Your inflammatory rhetoric, insults, lies, & encouragement of physical violence are disgraceful," he tweeted. "Your critics will not be intimidated into silence." Top Democrat lawmakers Nancy Pelosi and Chuck Schumer have accused Trump of condoning "physical violence and dividing Americans." CNN president Jeff Zucker, whose employees were forced to evacuate their New York bureau on Wednesday by the discovery of the pipe bomb, slammed the White House for its "complete lack of understanding" about "the seriousness of their continued attacks on the media." White powder also sent to CNN presented no biological threat, Sweeney said. Law enforcement agencies have called repeatedly on members of the public to come forward with any tips. They say calls to a hotline number are up 139 percent as the investigation proceeds. burs/jm/it Italy says Apple and Samsung have engaged in 'planned obsolescence' tricks Italy's competition authority on Wednesday said it was fining Apple and Samsung 10 and five million euros ($11.5 and $5.7 million) respectively for the so-called "planned obsolescence" of their smartphones. The ruling is believed to be the first against the manufacturers following accusations worldwide that they encourage operating system updates for older phones which slow them down, thereby encouraging the purchase of new phones. Two "complex investigations" by the anti-trust authority AGCM revealed that Apple and Samsung implemented unfair commercial practices, a statement said. "The two companies have induced consumers to install software updates that are not adequately supported by their devices, without adequately informing them, nor providing them an effective way to recover the full functionality of their devices," the AGCM said. Operating system updates "caused serious malfunctions and significantly reduced their performance, in this way speeding up their replacement with more recent products." Samsung "insistently suggested" to owners of its 2014 Note 4 phone to install a new version of Google's Android operating system intended for the more recent Note 7, the ACGM said. But that was "without informing them of the serious malfunctions that the new firmware could cause due to greater stress of device's hardware and asking a high repair cost for out-of-warranty repairs connected to such malfunctions". Likewise, Apple "insistently suggested" to iPhone 6 owners to install an operating system designed for the iPhone 7, "without warning consumers that its installation could reduce the speed of execution and functionality of devices". A Samsung statement said it would appeal the fine, because the company "did not issue any software update that reduced the Galaxy Note 4s performance. "In contrast, Samsung has always released software updates enabling our customers to have the best experience possible," it said. Samsung pledged nonetheless to cooperate with the Italian authorities. - 'No support' - The ACGM said that Apple "did not offer any specific support measures for iPhones that had experienced such operating problems and were no longer covered by the legal warranty; only in December 2017 Apple provided for the possibility to replace batteries at a discounted price". Apple was also found not to have told customers about "essential" characteristics of its phones' lithium batteries, "such as their average duration and deterioration factors, nor about the correct procedures to maintain, verify and replace batteries in order to preserve full functionality of devices". Both companies were fined the maximum possible, Apple paying double Samsung's five-million-euro fine because of its two contested practices. The Italian anti-trust authority opened its investigation in January following customer complaints. The US company was forced to admit last year that it intentionally slowed down older models of its iPhones over time, sparking concerns it was unfairly nudging consumers to upgrade. At first, Apple had denied it intentionally shortened the life on any of its products. It said it slowed models to extend the performance of the phone -- which uses less power when running at slower speeds -- and to prevent unexpected shutdowns. The California-based group also faces a class-action suit in the United States and a slew of lawsuits in Russia. The companies will be required to publish an "amending declaration" on their Italian websites with a link to the AGCM's ruling. There was no immediate reaction to the Italian decision from Apple. In neighbouring France, a prosecutor opened an investigation into Apple's practices at the same time as the Italian probe. In the US meanwhile, the Justice Department and stock exchange watchdog SEC are looking into whether the slowing down of Apple phones infringed stock exchange rules. With Islamic State having been forced out of former bastions such as Raqa (pictured) and many foreign fighters captured, France now has to decide what to do with the children of French jihadists France is seeking to repatriate some of the 150 children of French jihadists identified as being in Syria, as Western nations grapple with how to handle citizens who left to join extremists. A French official, speaking on condition of anonymity, said Paris would repatriate the children "as much as is possible, on the condition that the mother agrees". "We're starting to look at how this might work," the source added. French authorities only have a precise location for some of the children, making these the only viable cases for potential repatriation, the source said, declining to give figures. The cases of the 150 youngsters, some of whom are being held in camps in Kurdish-held northern Syria after the Islamic State group was driven from the area, were flagged up by authorities there or by their families in France. Most are under six years old and were born in Syria. The mothers of any repatriated children would be left in Syria, the source said. Like other Western nations reluctant to bring jihadists back onto their soil, France has so far ruled out repatriating men who left to fight alongside IS, or women who left to marry them. "Those who committed crimes in Iraq and Syria must be brought to justice in Iraq and Syria," the foreign ministry said. "Minors are the exception, and their situation will be examined on a case by case basis. We have a duty to protect children's interests." Yet bringing the children to France will be highly complicated, not least because Kurdish-held Syria is not a recognised state, and Paris has cut off diplomatic ties with Damascus. - 'Inhumane choice'? - The decision to leave French adults in the war zone has infuriated lawyers representing their families at home in France, who say their clients are being held in illegal detention in unsanitary conditions. "This is scandalous and hypocritical on the part of the French government," said Bruno Vinay, lawyer for the best-known French woman in Kurdish custody, Emilie Konig. "France is leaving these women alone faced with the inhumane choice of separating from their children," Vinay said. "Given that this is all they have left, it is possible that only a minority will accept to separate from them." In neighbouring Iraq, only three French jihadist families have been flagged to authorities. One of the mothers, Melina Boughedir, has agreed for her three of her children to be taken to France after Iraqi authorities sentenced her to life in jail for being an IS member. Of some 680 French jihadists who travelled to Iraq or Syria to fight, more than 300 are believed dead while a small number of others have travelled to other countries, including Afghanistan and in North Africa. Kurdish forces say they have more than 900 foreign IS fighters in custody coming from 44 countries, prompting a legal and ethical headache for the governments of their home nations. Kurdish authorities have asked governments to repatriate their nationals, but with a few exceptions such as Russia, Indonesia and Sudan, most have proved highly reluctant. Apple's boss praised EU data privacy laws Apple CEO Tim Cook on Wednesday said the United States needed a federal privacy law because personal information was being "weaponized" by companies against internet users to boost profits. "We at Apple are in full support of a comprehensive federal privacy law in the United States," Cook told a conference in Brussels. Gossip, he said, had become a lucrative trade for the internet giants. "Today that trade has exploded into a data industrial complex. Our own information, from the everyday to the deeply personal, is being weaponized against us with military efficiency," Cook said. "We shouldn't sugarcoat the consequences. This is surveillance," Cook said. "And these stockpiles of personal data serve only to enrich the companies that collect them." Unlike internet giants Facebook and Google, Apple's business model does not rely on the collection and commercial use of its users' personal data. The company mostly sells hardware, but also increasingly streaming, payment and storage services. Data protection has become a global concern following breaches of personal data from tens of millions of internet and social media users. Cook said a US privacy law should allow for personal data to be minimized and force companies to de-identify customer data or not collect this information in the first place. Users should also have the right to know what data are being collected and what for, and get to decide what collection is legitimate, and which is not. - 'Europe got it right'- "Anything less is a sham," Cook told the International Conference of Data Protection and Privacy Commissioners. He applauded European Union work on the protection of privacy, especially its General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) that took effect in May. "We should celebrate the transformative work of the European institutions tasked with the successful implementation of the GDPR," he said. "It is time for the rest of the world -- including my home country -- to follow your lead," Cook said. The European Commission welcomed Cook's remarks, saying they indicated that the EU was on the right track in terms of data protection. "If companies like Apple commit to taking data protection issues seriously and discovered this is something that also the consumer wants, then I think that this confirms once more that Europe got it right with the GDPR," Commission spokesman Margaritis Schinas told reporters. Speaking on video, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg told the conference his company had much work ahead to improve security following the Cambridge Analytica scandal. "We share the values behind GDPR," Zuckerberg said. "This year, we learned from issues we faced, and we dramatically restricted the information people can share with developers when they install apps," he added. "We've reduced the ways advertisers can target ads. And we're building a tool so people can clear their history of all browsing activity off Facebook." Facebook was hit early this year with a scandal over the harvesting of tens of millions of its users' data by Cambridge Analytica, a US-British political research firm, for the 2016 US presidential election. Another scandal followed months later. On October 3, in the first major test of the GDPR, Ireland's data protection authority launched a probe into a security breach at Facebook in September that exposed 50 million accounts. Meeting in the French city of Strasbourg, the European Parliament is due Thursday to vote a resolution urging Facebook to carry out a complete audit to evaluate data protection. US President Trump (L) at the swearing-in ceremony of Brett Kavanaugh (C) as associate justice of the US Supreme Court, a major landmark in Trump's drive to fill US courts with conservative judges President Donald Trump has stepped up his drive to fill courts across the United States with conservative judges in an effort to woo voters on the right ahead of the midterm congressional elections. Coming off his success in appointing two judges strongly aligned with Republican ideology to the Supreme Court, Trump is duplicating that move in federal circuit and district courts -- the next two levels in the US justice system. "I have been there less than two years and I have two of them," Trump boasted in an election rally on Monday in Texas, referring to Neil Gorsuch and Brett Kavanaugh, the conservative justices who have tilted the Supreme Court strongly toward the right. "We have a record number of circuit court judges for the time we have been in office," he added. "We expect to go to the all-time record." The US Constitution empowers the president to make lifetime appointments of judges to all three levels of federal courts, where nearly 900 judges serve. Each needs to be confirmed by the Senate, however. Since taking office in January 2017, Trump has obtained the confirmation of 84 federal judges, compared to 43 in the same period for his predecessor, Democrat Barack Obama. Trump has nominated some 50 more, who are awaiting the Senate's green light. Trump's former White House counsel Don McGahn said they have consciously chosen some of the most conservative people possible for the positions. "Some folks that are kind of too hot for prime-time," he described them. "The kind of people that make some people nervous." - Impact already felt - US Supreme Court justices Democrats are angry, but have been powerless to do anything about it because they are a minority in the Senate. The senior Democrat on the Judiciary Committee, Dianne Feinstein, pointed out that her committee was the only one holding hearings before the midterms. "Republicans are breaking every norm to stack the courts with young, ideological nominees who will undermine the rights and protections of all Americans for generations to come," she said. And Democratic Senator Kamala Harris said in a tweet, "The Trump Administration is trying to pack the courts for years to come. We will fight this." If Republicans retain control of the Senate in the November midterm elections as expected, Trump could have the opportunity to fill another 150 vacant posts over the next two years. The new judges are already having an impact on US society, for instance by shooting down a complaint on racial discrimination in the workplace, and supporting the removal of limits to election campaign donations, both positions backed by Republicans. "I think it's a huge thing," Attorney General Jeff Sessions said last week. "We can feel a difference in some of the circuits (appeals courts) already." Trump calls the effort a major achievements of his presidency. "These appointments are going to be one of the most important things, if not the most important thing, we do," he said. - Election issue - Ahead of the November 6 election -- in which Republicans are fighting to retain control of the two chambers of Congress -- Trump's judicial appointments are galvanizing conservative voters. Donald Trump a nomme deux des neuf juges de la Cour supreme des Etats-Unis Evangelical Christians and traditional conservatives were originally skeptical of billionaire Trump, given his record of political opportunism and seeming agnosticism. But he won their support in the 2016 presidential election by promising to appoint a committed conservative to the Supreme Court who would oppose abortion and support broad gun ownership rights. The opportunity to stack the courts with conservatives was greater than usual when he took office: for the previous two years, Republicans in Congress had blocked dozens of Obama's nominees, leaving 107 judgeships vacant. The Republican Senate quickly began confirming Trump's court picks. Even in their fervor, however, they did not get everyone through: one candidate withdrew when his legal shortcomings became evident; another was dropped after his former writings in support of the Ku Klux Klan were brought to light. - 'Unprecedented power grab' - With Republicans worried they could lose their majority in the November 6 vote, they have bent the rules in Congress to accelerate confirmations. Fifteen were approved in one day in mid-October just ahead of the Senate going on break. And even while it is officially in recess for the election, the Senate Judiciary Committee continues to hold confirmation hearings with nominees, angering Democrats. "It is an unprecedented power grab that flies in the face of Senators' constitutional duty to advise and consent on judicial nominees and makes a mockery of our Constitution and justice system," said Jill Dash, vice president of the liberal-leaning American Constitution Society. A US aircraft carrier is seen on its way to the Norwegian Coast to participate in the NATO exercise Trident Juncture -- the biggest movement of NATO personnel and vehicles since the Cold War The former commander of US Army forces in Europe warned on Wednesday of a "very strong likelihood" of an armed conflict between his country and China in the Pacific. "I think in 15 years, it's not inevitable, but it is a very strong likelihood that we will be at war with China," recently retired US Lieutenant General Ben Hodges told defence experts meeting at the Warsaw Security Forum in the Polish capital on Wednesday. Hodges served as US Army commander in Europe until last year and is now a strategic studies expert at the Washington-based Centre for European Policy Analysis (CEPA). "The United States does not have the capacity to do everything it has to do in Europe and in the Pacific to deal with the Chinese threat," he said, also describing the US commitment to NATO as "unshakeable". NATO manoeuvres at the end of October in Norway are intended as a show of force and unity in the face of an increasingly assertive Russia. Running from October 24-November 7, the Trident Juncture 18 exercise will draw in 45,000-50,000 troops -- the biggest movement of NATO personnel and vehicles since the Cold War. "It's in the American interest -- and the American leadership knows that -- to have a very strong European pillar. Even if not one European country is spending a euro on its own defence, stability and security in Europe is in the interest of the United States," Hodges later told AFP on the margins of the security forum. "The president (Donald Trump) knows that, Defence Secretary (James) Mattis knows that, so you're going to see us continue to invest here in Europe, continue to train, to practise rotational forces as well as permanently assign forces for the eventuality that in ten or 15 years we're going to be having to fight in the Pacific," Hodges added. NATO allies have beefed up their presence on the bloc's eastern flank over the past four years, operating rotating garrisons in eastern Europe and the Baltic states in a response to Russia's 2014 annexation of the Crimean peninsula. The US army also set up a new European headquarters in Poland in the spring of last year to command some 6,000 of its troops deployed in NATO and Pentagon operations across the alliance's eastern frontier. The move is one of the largest deployments of US forces in Europe since the Cold War. Cathay admitted data including passport numbers, identity card numbers, email addresses and credit card details was accessed Hong Kong flag carrier Cathay Pacific said Wednesday it had suffered a major data leak affecting up to 9.4 million passengers. The airline admitted data including passport numbers, identity card numbers, email addresses and credit card details was accessed. "We are in the process of contacting affected passengers, using multiple communications channels, and providing them with information on steps they can take to protect themselves," Cathay Pacific Chief Executive Officer Rupert Hogg said in a statement on the airline's website. "We have no evidence that any personal data has been misused." Cathay said it had launched an investigation and alerted the police after an ongoing IT operation revealed unauthorised access of systems containing the passenger data of up 9.4 million people. Hogg added: "The following personal data was accessed: passenger name, nationality, date of birth, phone number, email, address, passport number, identity card number, frequent flyer programme membership number, customer service remarks, and historical travel information." The CEO also revealed 403 expired credit card numbers and 27 credit card numbers with no CVV were accessed. "The combination of data accessed varies for each affected passenger," he said. The leak comes as the troubled airline battles to stem major losses as it comes under pressure from lower-cost Chinese carriers and Middle East rivals. It booked its first back-to-back annual loss in its seven-decade history in March, and has previously pledged to cut 600 staff including a quarter of its management as part of its biggest overhaul in years. Hogg did not mention financial compensation for passengers affected by the data leak, but British Airways pledged to compensate customers when the UK flag carrier suffered a data hack last month. BA revealed in September that personal and financial details of about 380,000 customers who booked flights on the group's website and mobile phone app over several weeks had been stolen. The revelation came just a few months after the European Union tightened data protection laws with the so-called General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR). CEO Alex Cruz said the firm had been the victim of a "malicious, criminal attack on our website". The airline took out full-page adverts in UK newspapers to apologise to customers, while the share price of parent group IAG was hit. Virginia has joined a number of US states who have opened investigations into abuse of children by Catholic priests Virginia authorities announced Wednesday they have opened an investigation into sexual abuse of children by Catholic clergy, the latest in a series of states to launch their own probes into pedophile priests. The state's attorney general, Mark Herring, launched a dedicated 24-hour hotline and web page to allow people who were victims of priests to report their experiences in support of the investigation. The move comes after similar probes were launched in Pennsylvania, Washington DC, New York and New Jersey in the wake of a Pennsylvania grand jury report documenting more than 300 "predator" priests accused of abusing over 1,000 children in the state over seven decades. The Virginia probe will examine the behavior of priests as well as whether the leaders of Catholic dioceses in the state abetted or covered up crimes. "Like so many Americans, I read the grand jury report on clergy abuse in the Catholic dioceses in Pennsylvania, and I felt sick," Herring said in a statement. "If there has been abuse or cover-up in Virginia like there was in Pennsylvania I want to know about it, I want to root it out, and I want to help survivors get justice and get on a path to healing," he said. The Pennsylvania grand jury report released in August sent a fresh shock through the US Catholic church. It led to the forced resignation of Washington DC archbishop and former bishop of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania Donald Wuerl, who was blamed for not doing enough to deal with pedophile priests. Other states, including Missouri, New Mexico and Nebraska have opened investigations into possible abuse by clergy in their Catholic institutions. A teenager was killed in clashes between opposition youth and the police in the capital Conakry on Tuesday At least 30 people were injured in clashes between opposition supporters and security forces in central Guinea, medical sources and witnesses said on Wednesday, after an opposition leader said his car was hit by gunfire a day earlier. Opposition leader Cellou Dalein Diallo, a chief rival of President Alpha Conde, on Tuesday said his vehicle was struck by a police bullet during a banned rally in the capital Conakry over disputed municipal elections. Police denied Diallo's allegations, but a teenager was later killed during clashes between opposition youths and police in the capital. His family said he had been shot by police. Protests erupted on Wednesday after a meeting of Diallo's UFDG party in Labe, his hometown and an opposition stronghold, 400 km (248 miles) north of Conakry, local party officials said. "There are at least 30 wounded among the demonstrators who we first received at the party headquarters before sending them to the regional hospital or private clinics," said Dr. Saliou Malal Barry, who runs a private clinic in the town. Youths set up barricades and burned tires on several main routes in Labe to protest what Diallo had called an attempt to assassinate him. "We are ready for everything," local UFDG representative Mamadou Dian Fadiga said. Local police official Amadou Camara said youths had taken to the streets, causing disturbances and forcing local businesses to shut down. "They were attacking everything close to them or anything appearing to be linked to the state and it took a massive deployment of security forces to calm the city centre," Camara said. Tensions have been high in the poor West African country since the death on October 16 of a protester during a two-day opposition campaign aimed at bringing Conakry to a standstill. The opposition claims Conde's government has reneged on a deal to install new officials elected in the contested February 4 municipal ballot, the first such vote since the end of a military dictatorship a decade ago. Authorities have started to install new municipal officials, with the opposition accusing the government of bribing some to keep control of local councils across the former French colony. The municipal elections had been repeatedly delayed because of political infighting and the Ebola crisis in 2013-16. Violence has intensified in the past year as US and Afghan forces step up ground and air offensives against Taliban and IS insurgents Afghan officials launched an investigation Wednesday into claims at least 14 civilians were killed in a military ground operation targeting the Islamic State group in their stronghold in eastern Afghanistan. Following Tuesday night's raid by Afghan special forces in Rodat district of Nangarhar province, scores of protesters temporarily blocked a major highway linking Afghanistan and Pakistan to demand action against those responsible for the attack. Sultan Mohammad, who was among the protesters, told AFP 14 people were killed in the operation and four others were wounded. Local elder Najibullah Amarkhil put the death toll slightly higher at 16, including women and children. "Government forces raided several houses -- they killed 14 people, including a six-month-old baby," Amarkhil told AFP, adding two more died from their wounds in hospital. "We demand the government punish those responsible." Afghan broadcaster Tolo News said the death toll was "at least 17". Images posted on Tolo's Twitter account purportedly showed dozens of men crowded around the bodies of victims under a tent next to the highway connecting the Nangarhar provincial capital of Jalalabad with Torkham, one of the major border crossings into Pakistan. Provincial governor spokesman Attaullah Khogyani confirmed there had been casualties in the operation and said an official probe was under way. "A delegation has been sent to the area to investigate the incident and report back to us," Khogyani told AFP. Ordinary Afghans have borne the brunt of the 17-year war, which is on track to be deadlier than Syria in 2018. Civilians continue to face "extreme levels of harm", a recent UN report said, with 8,050 people killed or wounded in the January to September period. Violence has intensified in the past year as US and Afghan forces step up ground and air offensives against Taliban and IS insurgents. IS, a smaller but potent rival of the Taliban, emerged in the region in 2014 and quickly established a heavy presence in Afghanistan's east before expanding north. Climate activists protested in early 2017 to support a New York investigation oil giant Exxon Mobil's climate disclosures, subject of a new lawsuit by the state New York state sued Exxon Mobil on Wednesday, alleging it defrauded investors by misrepresenting the costs that climate change legislation poses to the company. The suit, filed in New York Supreme Court, asserts the oil giant misled investors into believing the company was adequately accounting for potential climate change policy. The action accuses the company of misleading investors in its discussion of the "proxy cost" of climate mitigation, the additional spending that would be needed in the event governments moved ahead with aggressive action to limit emissions that make some oil projects uneconomical. While the state asserts Exxon Mobil publicly discussed one "proxy cost," it based business decisions either on a lower cost it used for internal planning, or did not factor in any costs for climate mitigation at all. The company's reassurances to investors that it faced little risk from more aggressive climate policies were "based on assumptions it knew to be unreasonable and unsupported," said the suit, which was filed by New York Attorney General Barbara Underwood. As a result, Exxon Mobil understated the costs connected with 14 oil projects in Canada by more than $25 billion, the suit said. The litigation follows a three-year-old investigation by former New York Attorney General Eric Schneiderman and continued by Underwood. Exxon Mobil dismissed the allegations as groundless and the product of "anti-fossil fuel activists," a spokesman said. "The New York Attorney General's office doubled down on its tainted, meritless investigation by filing a complaint against ExxonMobil," the spokesman said in a statement. "These baseless allegations are a product of closed-door lobbying by special interests, political opportunism and the attorney general's inability to admit that a three-year investigation has uncovered no wrongdoing." In July, a US judge dismissed another lawsuit by New York State seeking damages from Exxon Mobil and four other oil companies for contributing to climate change. In August, Exxon Mobil said it had been notified that the US Securities and Exchange Commission was ending a two-year probe into the oil giant's climate disclosures without taking action. President Donald Trump infamously took 48 hours to respond only to blame "both sides" despite overwhelming evidence that neo-Nazis were the principal source of violence Three members of a white supremacist group based in California have been arrested by the FBI for allegedly inciting riots at far right political rallies including the deadly march in Charlottesville, Virginia last year. Robert Rundo, who co-founded and led the Rise Above Movement, was arrested at Los Angeles International Airport, while two others, Robert Boman and Tyler Laube were arrested Wednesday morning, the FBI said. A fourth suspect, Aaron Eason, remains at large. "Throughout 2017, the defendants and other RAM members traveled to political rallies, including in Huntington Beach, California, on March 25, 2017, Berkeley, California, on April 15, 2017, San Bernardino, California, on June 20, 2017, and Charlottesville, Virginia, on August 11-12, 2017," an affidavit said. "RAM members violently attacked and assaulted counter-protesters at each of these events." According to the Los Angeles Times, Rundo was previously convicted for stabbing a member of a rival gang. A large portrait of Adolf Hitler was found during a search of his home, the Times said. Four other members of the same group were hit with similar charges earlier in the month after they were identified in photos and videos at the "Unite the Right" march in mid-August 2017 in Charlottesville. The event culminated in a man driving a car into a crowd of counter-protesters, killing a woman and injuring 19 other people. President Donald Trump infamously took 48 hours to respond only to blame "both sides" despite overwhelming evidence that neo-Nazis were the principal source of violence. A police bomb squad vehicle pictured outside the Time Warner Building housing the the New York bureau of CNN, which President Trump has labeled the leading purveyor of "fake news" The FBI is investigating mail bombs and suspicious packages that were sent to prominent Democratic critics of President Donald Trump. Here's what we know: - Who was targeted? - The first bomb was discovered Monday in a mailbox at the New York home of billionaire financier and Democratic Party supporter George Soros. Late Tuesday and early Wednesday, explosive devices were addressed to the New York residence of former Democratic presidential candidate and secretary of state Hillary Clinton; the Washington residence of former Democratic president Barack Obama; Eric Holder, the attorney general under Obama; and John Brennan, Obama's CIA director, sent care of the New York offices of CNN, where Brennan is a frequent guest commentator. Additionally, California Democratic Representative Maxine Waters said the FBI is investigating a suspicious package sent to her. The FBI did not confirm that. - What was in the packages? - The packages were sent to prominent Democrats and other critics of President Donald Trump The packages confirmed by the FBI were all similar and contained "potentially destructive devices," according to the bureau. All were wrapped in bubble wrap and placed inside manila envelopes with printed address labels. The envelopes had identical return addresses for Florida Democratic Congresswoman Debbie Wasserman Schultz, the former Democratic National Committee chairwoman. The devices insides, according to reports and a photograph of one, were small, crude but potentially lethal pipe bombs: usually a metal water pipe filled with explosive material and shrapnel, tightly sealed at the ends and detonated by a fuse inserted through a hole. New York police commissioner James O'Neill described the one sent to Brennan at CNN as appearing to be a "live explosive device." O'Neill said that package also contained an envelope of an unidentified white powder. In the case of Clinton and Obama, the US Secret Service said it identified the suspect packages during routine mail screening procedures it provides the former top politicians in facilities separate from their homes. The addressees "did not receive the packages nor were they at risk of receiving them," the Secret Service said. In the case of the package to Holder, it never reached his Washington office. The postal service sent it to the return address: the Florida office of Wasserman Schultz. - Who did it? - So far no suspects have been identified. The FBI said it has sent the packages to its laboratory in Quantico, Virginia for analysis. "It is possible that additional packages were mailed to other locations," the FBI warned. - What connects the targets? - The targets are all Democrats frequently attacked by Trump online and in speeches as he defends his 2016 election victory and policies he has implemented since coming to office in January 2017. Obama preceded him in the White House and Clinton was his 2016 election rival. Holder was attorney general in the last years of the Obama administration. Trump has labelled CNN the leading purveyor of "fake news" against him, and Brennan is perhaps his most damaging critic from the national security community. Trump often ridicules Waters, a senior African-American Democrat, as "low IQ" and has regularly assailed Wasserman Schultz, one of the most senior Democrats in the House of Representatives. Microsoft has transformed from a company focused on software installed on home and business computers to making money from services hosted on the internet and available from a broad array of devices Microsoft on Wednesday said its profit in the recently ended quarter soared on the back of revenue from services hosted in the internet cloud and its career-focused social network LinkedIn. The Redmond, Washington based technology giant reported net income of $8.8 billion on revenue of $29.1 billion in the quarter that ended on September 30, up 34 percent and 19 percent respectively from the same period a year earlier. Shares were up 1.6 percent to $104 in after-market trades that followed release of the earnings figures for the first quarter of its fiscal year. "We are off to a great start in fiscal 2019, a result of our innovation and the trust customers are placing in us to power their digital transformation," Microsoft chief executive Satya Nadella said in a release. "We're excited to help our customers build the digital capability they need to thrive and grow." Nadella has led a transformation at Microsoft from a company focused on software installed on machines in homes and businesses to making money from services hosted on the internet and available from a broad array of devices regardless of who makes them. "Our record results for Q1 reflect our commitment to long-term strategic investments and consistent execution to drive revenue growth and operating margin expansion," said chief financial officer Amy Hood. "We see continued demand for our cloud offerings, reflected in our commercial cloud revenue of $8.5 billion, up 47 percent year-over-year." Money taken in by a productivity and business processes unit rose to $9.8 billion, including strong growth in cloud-based Office productivity products aimed at consumers and companies, according to Microsoft. LinkedIn revenue grew 33 percent in the quarter, with the career-oriented networking service boasting record levels of engagement by users. - 'Eye-popping' beat - Microsoft's cloud platform Azure, which performs computing and storage for companies at online data centers, saw revenue grow 76 percent. Azure is part of a Microsoft "Intelligent Cloud" division that, overall, reported revenue up 24 percent to $8.6 billion. "Microsoft just delivered an eye-popping cloud beat and a performance that speaks to a secular cloud story which is still in the early innings of playing out," Wedbush analysts said in a note. It appeared that spending by companies on cloud is accelerating, with Microsoft and Amazon in a "two horse race" as leading platforms, according to Wedbush. Global Equities Research analyst Trip Chowdhry called the Microsoft earnings a "solid beat" of Wall Street expectations, projecting shares could climb to $120. While money from the Windows unit was up just a few percent, Microsoft chief financial officer Amy Hood said revenue there was expected to improve as consumers and businesses replace older machines with new hardware powered by the latest version of the operating system. Microsoft, maker of Xbox consoles, also saw revenue from gaming hardware, software and services jump 44 percent. Nadella said a keenly-anticipated "X Cloud" video game streaming service is in "early days" but he is excited by the prospect of a service that will let players access console-quality titles on all kinds of internet-linked devices. "Most critical is having a platform where gamers are already there," Nadella said of the project during an earnings call with analysts. "I am most excited about the core (Xbox) community and content we have; I think that is what even gives us permission to think about streaming." The company said it returned $6.1 billion to shareholders during the quarter in the form of dividends or share buy-backs. Japan's Prime Minister Shinzo Abe shake hands with China's President Xi Jinping on the sidelines of a summit last month, as ties between the world's second and third largest economies gradually thaw Japan's Shinzo Abe is due to arrive in China Thursday, the first visit to the Asian giant by a Japanese prime minister since relations between the two countries soured six years ago over a territorial row. Abe and Chinese president Xi Jinping are expected to discuss how to improve economic cooperation as the world's second and third largest economies prepare to weather a US onslaught of trade measures. Japanese business is eager for increased access to China's massive market, while Beijing is interested in Japanese technology and corporate knowhow. The visit is the first by a Japanese premier since 2011 and is part of a years-long process of repairing relations in the wake of a disastrous falling-out in 2012, when Tokyo "nationalised" disputed islands claimed by Beijing. The incident prompted anti-Japanese riots in China, and kicked off a frosty spell that has only recently begun to thaw. Since an awkward 2014 encounter between Abe and Xi on the sidelines of a summit, there have been ministerial visits by both sides and a softening of rhetoric. Abe's three-day trip to Beijing sets up the possibility that the Chinese leader will visit Japan next year. The two leaders are likely to focus on a range of potential deals, including joint investments in infrastructure in regional nations including Indonesia and the Philippines. They are also expected to discuss the territorial issue that put their relationship into a deep freeze. Just days before Abe's trip, Tokyo lodged an official complaint after Chinese ships cruised around the disputed islands that Tokyo calls the Senkaku and Beijing labels the Diaoyu islands. China has long denounced Japan for what it says is an insufficiently contrite attitude towards its role in the Second World War. But ahead of the trip, Beijing has taken a more cordial stance than it has in the past. During Abe's visit, the leaders will celebrate the 40th anniversary of the signing of a treaty between the two countries that was intended to set the tone for their relations following the Second World War. On Wednesday, Chinese spokeswoman Hua Chunying told a regular press briefing that China believes the countries are "duty-bound to strengthen communication and cooperation and jointly safeguard international rules and order to promote world peace and development with each undertaking its respective efforts". Japanese media have reported Abe is hoping the visit will produce a soft power win in the form of some panda diplomacy, with zoos in Sendai and Kobe apparently angling for new additions. We're always interested in hearing about news in our community. Let us know what's going on! Submit Former oil minister Adel Abdul Mahdi has support from both Tehran and Washington, a necessary consensus in a country caught between two major allies The Iraqi parliament approved 14 new cabinet ministers Thursday proposed by prime minister-designate Adel Abdel Mahdi, even as key portfolios such as defence and interior affairs remained unassigned, an official said. A total of 220 lawmakers out of 329 elected in May to a deeply divided parliament, approved Abdel Mahdi's 14 picks, including for the ministries of foreign affairs, finances, and oil. After elections in May, new President Barham Saleh handed Abdel Mahdi the task of forming a new government, with several coalitions jockeying for preeminence. A veteran of Iraqi politics and an economist by training, Abdel Mahdi, 76, is regarded as sufficiently independent to be able to assemble a government despite fractures in the ruling elites. The former oil minister has support from both Tehran and Washington, a necessary consensus in a country caught between two major allies, each the enemy of the other. Iraq has a proportional voting system designed to prevent a slide back into dictatorship following the 2003 ouster of late dictator Saddam Hussein. The largely ceremonial role of president, now held by the 58-year-old Saleh, has been reserved for the Kurds since Iraq's first multi-party elections in 2005. Under the power-sharing deal, the post of prime minister is held by a Shiite, while the speaker of parliament is Sunni Arab -- a post filled last month by Mohammed al-Halbusi. The new government faces an immense task in rebuilding a country ravaged by three years of Islamic State occupation and fierce fighting. It will also have to deal with the scourges of corruption, power shortages, and decaying public services. Among those given the green light on Thursday are Thamer Abbas Ghadbane in the crucial ministry of oil -- Iraq's only source of income. He previously held the portfolio in 2004 and 2005. In the finance seat is Fouad Hussein, who has close ties to the autonomous region of Kurdistan. Parliament will reconvene on November 6 to decide on the remaining ministries. For foreign affairs, Abdel Mahdi has proposed Mohammed Ali al-Hakim, a former ambassador to the UN, and for electricity, Louai al-Khatib, a respected researcher in the energy field. US Senator Joe Manchin is one of 10 Democrats running for re-election in states that voted for Donald Trump, and while Manchin is leading his Republican opponent in polls, a handful of his Democrat colleagues are not so lucky US Senator Joe Manchin bounded from one side of the homecoming parade to another, shaking hands and hoping voters in West Virginia -- deep Trump country -- will send the Democrat back to Washington. "We need you Joe!" shouted a woman on the 4th Avenue sidewalk where she watched parade floats roll through downtown Huntington last Thursday. Manchin, 71 but hustling like a politician half his age, pointed at the woman and jogged over. "I appreciate that." He needs her now more than ever, less than two weeks out from the intensely watched November 6 midterm elections in which the control of Congress by President Donald Trump's Republican Party could be at stake. The John E Amos power plant in Winfield, West Virginia forms a formidable backdrop for campaign signs, including one for Patrick Morrisey, the Republican challenging incumbent Senator Joe Manchin in the November 6 midterm elections Manchin is one of 10 Senate Democrats running for re-election in states won by Trump. Five are relatively safe, in states like Ohio, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin For the moment, Manchin is pulling off quite a feat: leading in his race in a state that voted more heavily for Trump in 2016 than any other except Wyoming. But four other Senate Democrats in Trump territory are facing grim prospects. North Dakota's Heidi Heitkamp, Claire McCaskill of Missouri, Joe Donnelly of Indiana, and Montana's Jon Tester are in peril. Like Manchin, they are candidates swimming upstream against a red tide that only grew stronger with Trump's candidacy. Manchin dismisses talk of Democrats struggling to hold the line, at least in West Virginia, "The Mountain State," where he served as governor before entering the Senate. "It's not who's a Democrat or who's a Republican, it's who do you trust?" Manchin told AFP in between hugs and selfies at the parade. "I've given everything I've got and I think people realize that." Manchin is keenly aware of the fine political line he must walk in order to survive. He supports coal miners and gun rights. The powerful National Rifle Association gives him a "D" rating this year but in 2012 the gun lobby endorsed him with an "A." And despite opposing recent legislation that would have denied federal tax dollars to women's healthcare provider Planned Parenthood, which offers abortions, he calls himself a pro-life Democrat. "Best undercover Republican in West Virginia," whispered one woman who did not give her name. - 'Hurting' over Kavanaugh vote - Gun-wearing firearms instructor Chad Mercer, behind the counter of a gun shop in White Sulphur Springs, West Virginia, says the Democratic Party "just straight left" West Virginia voters, who have steadily migrated to the Republican Party Manchin fiercely advocates for the working class, including preserving Social Security and expanding healthcare coverage. He blasts Republicans for wanting "to get rid of pre-existing conditions" protections. But the Appalachian state at the heart of American coal country is socially conservative, leading Manchin to his toughest vote in years this month: bucking his party and supporting Judge Brett Kavanaugh's confirmation to the US Supreme Court. "There's people that are hurting, sure. I understand that," he said of his vote for Trump's controversial nominee, who faced accusations that he sexually assaulted a woman when the two were teenagers. "But that wasn't a political vote," he said. "It was the facts. The facts weren't there." Manchin nonetheless waited until Kavanaugh's confirmation was assured before announcing his support, earning scorn from his Republican Senate challenger, state Attorney General Patrick Morrisey. Vice President Mike Pence also took a swipe. "That's Joe Manchin for you: always there when you don't need him," Pence told a Saturday rally for Morrisey in Bridgeport, West Virginia. Jennifer Duffy, who monitors US Senate races for the Cook Political Report, said Heitkamp's candidacy is in dire straits in North Dakota, which has shifted dramatically rightward in the past decade. "She's not a Republican, is really the problem there," Duffy said, expressing surprise that Democrats like Heitkamp and McCaskill have managed to hold on in states where they are the last remaining Democrats elected to statewide office. - 'Win-win situation' - Homecoming queens wave from a truck in a parade in Huntington, West Virginia, where US Senator Joe Manchin is fighting for his political life in the 2018 midterm elections in a state that voted overwhelmingly for Republican President Donald Trump in 2016 Manchin, too, is the lone Democratic holdout in statewide office. As recently as 2000, West Virginia's entire congressional delegation was all-Democrat. Unions dominated local politics, and there was a loyalty to the party of Franklin Roosevelt. But it has been a steady shift to the right this millennium. By 2014, after tough new Obama-era coal regulations began to hit the local economy, the bottom had fallen out for Democrats and they lost their decades-long majority in the legislature. "The party just straight left them," Chad Mercer, who wore a Glock 19 pistol on his hip as he worked behind the counter of a White Sulphur Springs gun shop, said of voters. The Democratic Party "abdicated their responsibilities" regarding guns and immigration, Mercer said, and failed to push back against a "war on coal" that devastated the industry. Manchin, if re-elected, would only perpetuate the sense of aggrievement, Mercer insisted. "There's a deep history here of always being taken advantage of," he said. Manchin said he will always reach across the political aisle to "work through our differences." He's confident he has enough support to win re-election. "But let's say, worst-case scenario it doesn't happen," Manchin poses. "I get to come home." Either way, he says, it's "a win-win situation." The US has insisted on maintaining stringent international sanctions on North Korea despite a diplomatic thaw between the two countries A North Korean official urged the United States on Thursday to immediately lift sanctions against his country, warning that the country's "confidence-destroying measures" would undermine denuclearisation talks. The US has insisted on maintaining stringent international sanctions on North Korea until it gives up its nuclear weapons, even as the two countries' leaders are expected to hold a second summit soon. "We think that sanctions and pressure do more harm than good," Song Il Hyok, deputy director general of the North Korean foreign ministry's Institute for Disarmament and Peace, said at a defence forum in Beijing. The sanctions, Song said, "are not at all" confidence-building measures "but confidence-destroying measures". At their first summit in Singapore in June, US President Donald Trump and North Korean leader Kim Jong Un signed a vaguely-worded pledge on denuclearisation, but little progress has been made since then as both sides spar over how to interpret the text. Song said Trump and Kim "recognised that the mutual confidence-building can promote the denuclearisation of the Korean peninsula" during their meeting in Singapore. He called on Washington to "lift immediately the sanctions and this hindrance" to confidence-building. Song spoke at the Xiangshan Forum, a regional defence dialogue hosted by China since 2006 as part of Beijing's efforts to step up its global influence. Also at the forum was North Korean Colonel General Kim Hyong Ryong, who said the North would uphold its side of the Singapore agreement. "It is our firm and unshakable position" to implement the joint statement with the US which will transform "the Korean Peninsula, once a hot spot in the world, into a peaceful and prosperous region," Kim told the conference. Turkish police are still searching for any trace of Khashoggi, as they press the Saudi authorities for the location of his body Turkey on Thursday urged Saudi Arabia to answer questions that remain over the murder of Riyadh critic Jamal Khashoggi, such as who ordered his killing and what happened to the body. Saudi authorities last week claimed Khashoggi, a Washington Post contributor, was killed during a "brawl", and arrested 18 Saudis in connection with his death. Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan earlier this week said the "savage" murder had been planned, while Turkish media have published gruesome details of Khashoggi's alleged torture and decapitation. The 59-year-old was killed on October 2 after a visit to the Saudi consulate in Istanbul to obtain paperwork ahead of marrying his Turkish fiancee. Turkish Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu said: "There are still questions that need answers" over the premeditated murder, demanding the Saudis explain why the 18 were arrested. "Who gave them the orders?" he asked, pointing out that Khashoggi's body had still not been found. "Where is (the body)? You admit they did it, but why are they not saying (where)?" Cavusoglu told a press conference in Ankara with Palestinian foreign minister Riyad al-Maliki. "His family also wants to know and pay their final tribute." The Turkish minister repeated Erdogan's demand that those involved in the murder should be legally tried in Turkey, adding that Ankara was willing to cooperate with everyone. Turkey did not have "any desire" to take the case to an international court, he added, but would be willing to share information and the outcomes of its investigation. CIA Director Gina Haspel visited Ankara on Tuesday for talks, with pro-government Turkish media claiming on Wednesday intelligence officials shared evidence with her. The officials provided Haspel with video images and audio tapes as well as evidence gathered from the consulate and the consul's residence during a briefing at the Turkish Intelligence Organisation (MIT), Sabah newspaper reported. Asked to confirm whether this was true, Cavusoglu said he could not provide an exact answer but Turkey would "share documents and evidence in our hands with countries and institutions which wanted it". Turkish state-run news agency Anadolu later on Thursday reported that 38 consulate employees had given testimony to prosecutors investigating the murder and five people had yet to give statements. Turkish investigators who had searched the consulate last week were not allowed to search a well, state broadcaster TRT said, but they did take water samples for investigation. They also took samples from the sewer system at the consulate, the Turkish channel said, adding that they asked for the blueprint of the system. Supporters of murdered Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi protest outside the Saudi Arabian consulate in Istanbul Saudi Arabia said Thursday the murder of journalist Jamal Khashoggi appeared to have been premeditated, based on information from Turkey, backing away from an earlier claim that he was killed in a brawl. It was the latest twist in the shifting official narrative of the October 2 killing inside the kingdom's consulate in Istanbul, which US President Donald Trump has derided as "one of the worst cover-ups" in history. Saudi Arabia has sought to draw a line under the crisis, and a rights group said Thursday that authorities had allowed Khashoggi's eldest son Salah and his family to leave the country after lifting a travel ban. But the kingdom still faces mounting pressure from sceptical world powers demanding answers and to know the whereabouts of Khashoggi's body. Khashoggi timeline: the diplomatic fallout The Saudi public prosecutor said he was making the latest assessment on the basis of evidence supplied by Turkey, which has been the source of a series of grisly revelations about the government critic's death. After first insisting Khashoggi left the consulate unharmed, Saudi authorities said he was killed in an argument that degenerated into a brawl before finally accepting what Turkey had said virtually from the start -- that he was killed in a premeditated hit. "Information from the Turkish authorities indicates that the act of the suspects in the Khashoggi case was premeditated," the office of public prosecutor Sheikh Saud al-Mojeb said in a statement carried by the state-run Saudi Press Agency. "The public prosecution continues its investigation with suspects... to complete the course of justice. Khashoggi was the victim of an "extrajudicial execution" committed by the Saudi state, UN expert Agnes Callamard said Thursday, calling for an international investigation. Separately, CIA Director Gina Haspel briefed Trump on the latest developments in the investigation of the killing after a fact-finding mission to Turkey. Saudi Arabia's powerful Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman has denounced the "repulsive" murder of Jamal Khashoggi and pledged that "justice will prevail" As the new Saudi admission came on Thursday, Turkish Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu said Riyadh still needed to provide answers to remaining questions, such as who ordered the hit and what happened to Khashoggi's body. "Where is (the body)? You admit they did it, but why are they not saying (where)?" Cavusoglu said at a press conference in Ankara. "His family also wants to know and pay their final tribute." - Slow drip of admissions - The slow drip of Saudi admissions cast a pall over a showcase three-day investment forum that ended on Thursday, with organisers putting a brave face on the array of no-shows among big-name guests. The Saudi energy minister said foreign companies which boycotted the Future Investment Forum (FII) had "apologised" and vowed to restore normal relations. Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman meets the family of slain journalist Jamal Khashoggi in Riyadh, shortly before lifting a travel ban and allowing them to leave Saudi Arabia "Some companies abstained from the conference due to political pressure as a result of an odious campaign directed from outside the kingdom which has failed," Khalid al-Falih told state-run Al-Ekhbariya news channel. "All the companies that abstained have been calling us during the past 48 hours to apologise," Falih said. A long list of investors and international policymakers declined to attend the conference, nicknamed "Davos in the desert", amid growing outrage over the Khashoggi murder. Siemens chief executive Joe Kaeser, corporate chiefs from JP Morgan, Ford and Uber, and media powerhouses like CNN and the Financial Times all scrapped plans to attend. Ministers from Britain, France and the United States also stayed away. - Travel ban lifted - In his first public comments on the case on Wednesday, Saudi Arabia's powerful Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman denounced the "repulsive" murder and pledged that "justice will prevail". The departure of Khashoggi's son, Salah, for Washington came after he was photographed on Tuesday with Prince Mohammed during a condolence visit, staring coldly as the pair shook hands. The photo went viral on social media, where rights activists demanded the immediate lifting of the travel ban. There was no immediate comment from Saudi officials, but Human Rights Watch Middle East director Sarah Leah Whitson told AFP they were apparently allowed to leave after the ban was lifted. Salah, a dual US-Saudi citizen, will be joined in the United States by his other siblings who are based there, friends of the family told AFP. "Jamal's family needs a place to be together where they feel safe to mourn their beloved one," said Randa Slim, director of conflict resolution at the Washington-based Middle East Institute, who knew the slain journalist personally. "It is tragic that it took his death to get the Saudi authorities to grant them the freedom to travel," Slim told AFP. An official in Washington said US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo had "raised the safety and security of the Khashoggi family members with the Saudi leadership", but declined to discuss the specifics of Salah's travel. Baradar was among several senior Taliban leaders freed this week, after the Taliban demanded their release in direct talks with a US envoy A top Taliban commander held in Pakistani detention for more than eight years has been freed, sources said Thursday, in an apparent move to aid tentative talks between the United States and the militant group. The release of Abdul Ghani Baradar -- the former right-hand man of Taliban founder Mullah Omar, who died in 2013 -- came less than two weeks after US envoy Zalmay Khalilzad met with the group's representatives in Qatar to discuss ending the Afghan conflict. Baradar was among several senior Taliban leaders freed this week, after the Taliban demanded their release in direct talks with Khalilzad on October 12, a senior Taliban leader told AFP on the condition of anonymity. "We believe that they were released at the US's request," the leader said. He said Baradar would likely stay in Pakistan and shuttle between the Taliban's Doha office, Kabul and Islamabad. "It was important for confidence building and all three will participate in the next round of talks with the US in Qatar," he added. Baradar was the most high-profile Afghan Taliban leader detained by Pakistan since the 9/11 attacks in 2001. He was arrested in the southern port city of Karachi in 2010, reportedly in an operation that was described as a huge blow to the militant group, which ruled Afghanistan from 1996-2001 when it was toppled by a US-led invasion. It was not clear what role, if any, he would play in peace talks. "Baradar was freed yesterday afternoon and he joined his family," Afghan Taliban spokesman Zabihullah Mujahid told AFP in a WhatsApp message. A Pakistani intelligence official also said Baradar was "released a couple of days ago". Baradar's release comes after the recent election of Pakistani Prime Minister Imran Khan, who has long advocated talks with the Taliban and other Islamist insurgents in the region to bring an end to years of fighting. Pakistan's Foreign Minister Shah Mehmood Qureshi earlier this month also pledged to support negotiations with the Taliban as the country lobbies the United States to restore military aid. The United States has long pressed Pakistan to crack down on the Taliban and other militant groups, which Washington says have safe havens in Pakistan's border areas and links to its shadowy military establishment -- charges Islamabad has repeatedly denied. Khalilzad met with Taliban representatives in Doha as part of a regional trip designed to coordinate efforts to convince the group to negotiate an end to the war. Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman at the Future Investment Initiative (FII) conference in the capital Riyadh The Saudi crown prince may have failed to quell international outrage over critic Jamal Khashoggi's murder, but a defiant speech has won him domestic plaudits even as sceptics fear the impact of geopolitics on the search for justice. After weeks of silence, Prince Mohammed bin Salman on Wednesday confronted the elephant in the room head on, denouncing the journalist's "repulsive" murder after he entered the Saudi consulate in Istanbul on October 2 and pledging that "justice will prevail". His first public comments on the case were met with claps and whistles in a packed ballroom at Riyadh's Ritz-Carlton hotel, and one Saudi woman listening to the prince was overheard saying the speech brought "tears to my eyes". That stands in contrast to the outrage that has been building globally, with US President Donald Trump describing the killing as "one of the worst" cover-ups in history and appearing to indicate in a media interview that the prince himself may be culpable. But the prince's swaggering demeanour at a glittering investment conference -- just after a phone call with Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan who earlier vowed to reveal the "naked truth" about the killing -- fuelled speculation about a possible behind-the-scenes deal. "It does definitely suggest that," said Hussein Ibish, a scholar at the Arab Gulf States Institute in Washington. "You want to look very carefully at Turkish rhetoric in the coming days, but it's entirely possible that the Saudi government was successful in reaching an accommodation with Erdogan, particularly with the support of the United States." The Saudi information ministry did not respond to requests for comment. - 'Cheque book diplomacy' - Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan speaks during his party's parliamentary group meeting at the Grand National Assembly of Turkey in Ankara, on October 23, 2018 Ankara's slow drip of salacious leaks about the Washington Post columnist's murder in Turkey -- the world's biggest jailer of journalists -- has kept the murder case in international headlines for weeks. But it is yet to produce a smoking gun despite claims by Turkish officials they have incriminating audio evidence. The growing international outcry may have allowed Erdogan to negotiate with the oil-rich Gulf kingdom "behind the scenes" as Turkey grapples with a looming economic crisis, said Bessma Momani, a professor at Canada's University of Waterloo. "Erdogan knows the Saudis -- and their Emirati allies -- are a potential source of sorely needed capital and investment opportunities," she said. The Saudis appear keen for "Turkish silence on who is really culpable in Khashoggi's murder", claimed Momani. The Turkish investigation appears to be ongoing, but Momani's view may chime with what analysts call Saudi Arabia's "cheque book diplomacy", which has helped Riyadh project strong support on the Khashoggi crisis from less wealthy Arab allies. - Shift on Qatar - In his speech, the prince projected strong relations with Turkey despite Ankara's leaks, saying those trying to drive a wedge between the two Muslim countries "will not succeed as long as there is a king named Salman and a crown prince named Mohammed bin Salman". Displaying their newfound cooperation, Saudi Arabia said Thursday that Khashoggi's murder was "premeditated" based on information supplied by Turkey, backing away from an earlier assertion that he was killed accidentally in a fist fight at the consulate. What further stoked speculation about a possible deal with Ankara was Prince Mohammed's surprisingly conciliatory tone on Qatar -- allied with Turkey -- after Saudi Arabia and its allies spent more than a year enforcing an embargo against the tiny gas-rich emirate. "Even Qatar, despite our differences with it, has a strong economy and it will be completely different in five years," the prince said in his speech on Wednesday. Analysts say that may well be the first step in acceding to Erdogan's wishes that Saudi Arabia end its crippling blockade on Qatar. "For Erdogan, restoring stability in the Gulf by patching up differences between Saudi Arabia and Qatar remains a key priority to his regional agenda," said Sigurd Neubauer, a Middle East analyst in Washington. - Justice for Khashoggi - Jordan's King Abdullah II (L) and Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman attend the Future Investment Initiative FII conference in the Saudi capital Riyadh on October 23, 2018 Wednesday's speech by Prince Mohammed, widely known as MBS, triggered the social media hashtag "Saudis stand behind their leaders". Many Saudis have privately expressed concern over how the crisis has severely tarnished the prince's reform credentials. But many Saudis also feel the crown prince's speech on Khashoggi looks to have taken the sting out of the crisis. International pressure, however, may not easily subside even if both Washington and Ankara want to "move past this", said Ibish. "Other countries and, in the United States at least, Congress and the media, will have their say as well and are not irrelevant factors," he said. France on Wednesday said it was ready to back "international sanctions" against those responsible for Khashoggi's murder, after President Emmanuel Macron spoke by telephone to King Salman. Despite Trump's repeated assertions that he does not want to jeopardise multi-billion dollar arms deals with the kingdom, the US has threatened sanctions if the Saudi leadership is linked to the murder. But justice for Khashoggi may still be a pipe dream. "Geopolitical considerations are taking priority over finding out who exactly is culpable for Khashoggi's murder," said Momani. "The US and other allies have large financial dealings and business contracts with the Saudis that leaders don't want to jeopardise to get Khashoggi justice", she argued. Students enrolling on the Harry Potter course at the National University of Juridical Sciences in Kolkata are expected to have read the J.K. Rowling series at least twice A die-hard Harry Potter fan has designed a spellbinding course for aspiring lawyers in India, offering classes on the legality of curses and ethics of house-elves at a top university. The course starting December at the National University of Juridical Sciences in Kolkata includes subjects such as 'Unbreakable Vows', 'Agents of Good or Servants of Evil' and 'Snape and the Order of the Phoenix'. The wizard behind it all, assistant law professor Shouvik Kumar Guha, expects students to have read the J.K. Rowling series at least twice -- or leave their wands in Diagon Alley. Guha said the university already offered more than 50 traditional law courses but felt the Potterverse inspired students to apply their wizardry knowledge to the everyday problems of India's muggles. "Somehow, I thought we were not encouraging out of box thinking," he told AFP on Thursday. "The Potterverse highlights the limits of laws. It talks about the problems when the judiciary is not independent and the media is reduced to a mouthpiece. "Our students are on the same page and believe the discrimination voiced in the Potterverse is wrong. But in real life there will be things that some see as discrimination and which others do not." Even Quidditch, which thrusts students on broomsticks from the four houses of Hogwarts into sky-high contests, features in the curriculum. The response has been overwhelming: the course titled "An interface between Fantasy Fiction Literature and Law: Special focus on Rowling's Potterverse" is already full. It is not the first time in India that a professor has bewitched law students with the Potterverse. In 2012, an elective law course based on The Boy Who Lived and his magical universe commenced at Jindal Law School on the outskirts of New Delhi. More than 400 million copies of the seven Harry Potter books have been sold worldwide and translated into nearly 68 languages, according to the publisher Scholastic. Saudi Arabia is a major client for western arms manufacturers such as McDonnell Douglas, which makes the F-15 fighter jet Across the West, governments face a difficult balancing act after the murder of journalist Jamal Khashoggi: pressuring Saudi Arabia over an appalling killing, while preserving their own economic and military interests. For the United States -- the source of around half of Saudi Arabia's massive annual arms imports -- the dilemma is particularly awkward. Washington has revoked the visas of several Saudis since Khashoggi, a US-based journalist and palace critic, was murdered inside Riyadh's Istanbul consulate three weeks ago. Yet President Donald Trump, while accusing Riyadh of "one of the worst in the history of cover-ups", has also made clear that a huge new weapons contract signed last year is not at risk. "They are spending $110 billion on military equipment and on things that create jobs," Trump said. Saudi Arabia is the world's second biggest arms importer behind India, according to the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute. If the US cuts off its arms supplies, Trump argued, the kingdom will simply "take that money and spend it in Russia or China or someplace else". - Jobs on the line - Other Western leaders have also struggled to reconcile lucrative arms contracts with a duty to defend the rule of law and punish an audacious extra-judicial killing. France has sold frigates such as the "Mecca" to Saudi Arabia in deals worth billions of dollars With a 1.8-billion-euro ($2 billion) deal to build five navy ships at stake, Spain's Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez admitted he was putting jobs first as his country emerges from a financial crisis. "The seriousness of these horrible events which I unequivocally condemn can not and should not prevent us from acting responsibly," he said. And Canada's Prime Minister Justin Trudeau has signalled he is unlikely to cancel a 2014 deal to supply armoured vehicles -- at Can$15 billion (US$11.5 billion), the largest arms deal in Canadian history. The deal was signed by the previous government and it would be "extremely difficult" to withdraw without paying "exorbitant penalties", he said. London has said it will revoke the visas of any Saudis suspected in the murder, while France has said it will take "punitive measures" -- if the Saudi government is proved to be responsible. - Enter China and Russia? - For now only Germany -- whose arms sales to Riyadh were in any case relatively modest -- has said it will not approve any further exports for the time being. It has called for other European countries to take a joint stance. "There won't be any positive effects if only we halt exports and then other countries fill the gap," said Economy Minister Peter Altmaier. Khashoggi's killing has thrown into sharp relief earlier ethical quandaries over Western arms supplies to Saudi Arabia given its role in Yemen's brutal conflict. NGOs have been calling for months for a freeze on arms sales due to rising civilian casualties from Saudi air strikes in a war that has killed some 10,000 people since 2015. Saudi Arabia has also purchased the Eurofighter Typhoon jet, developed by a European consortium that comprises BAE Systems of Britain, Italy's Finmeccanica and Franco-German civilian planemaker Airbus "Western governments must weigh up on one hand their commercial and strategic interests, and on the other, the ethical dimension -- notably the lack of certainty over how this equipment is being used," said Bruno Tertrais, deputy head of the Foundation for Strategic Research. Beyond the Khashoggi killing, a growing number of countries have been questioning more generally whether they should be selling to Saudi Arabia as well as the United Arab Emirates, also active in Yemen. "This debate has been very vocal in Germany, Sweden, Norway and Finland," said Tony Fortin of the Observatoire des Armements, a French research centre. "There have been legal cases filed against sales in Britain, Italy and the Netherlands," he added. "It has put our relations with Riyadh under the spotlight: can we allow ourselves to continue strategic relations with a regime which torments its opponents, starves civilians in Yemen and literally cut a journalist up into pieces?" Other countries -- particularly Russia and China -- would be delighted to replace Riyadh's Western suppliers should they cut off exports en masse, the Intelligence Online website pointed out. It predicted that Western outrage over the killing would speed up a warming of ties between Riyadh and other partners who have expressed no reproach. China, it noted, has been Saudi Arabia's most important energy client for two years -- and the two have already begun working more closely on defence, notably on drone sales. Donald Trump said the troops would help tackle a 'national emergency' as a migrant caravan mkes its way through Mexico to the US The Pentagon is expected to deploy about 800 troops to the US-Mexico border, two US officials told AFP on Thursday, after President Donald Trump said the military would help tackle a "national emergency" and called on a caravan of US-bound migrants to turn around. The active-duty troops would augment the 2,000 or so National Guardsmen already deployed to support operations on the border, and could come from multiple military bases around the US. Defense Secretary Jim Mattis was expected to sign orders either Thursday or Friday for the new deployment, one official said. The troops would include doctors and engineers and would be used mainly to provide logistical support including tents, vehicles and equipment. Many of the migrants are fleeing poverty and insecurity in Honduras, where powerful street gangs rule their turf with brutal violence. The official said the troops would satisfy elements of a "wish list" for military assistance sent to the Pentagon by the Department of Homeland Security, the US agency with responsibility for the border. Trump tweeted that "Democrat inspired" laws make it difficult to stop people at the border. "I am bringing out the military for this National Emergency. They will be stopped!" he said. In April, Trump said he would send thousands of National Guard troops to the southern border. That initial authorization allowed for about 4,000 guardsmen to be sent to the frontier, but only about half that number have been deployed. Those troops are mainly serving in a support role to help free up border patrol officers. Pentagon spokesman Navy Captain Bill Speaks said the Defense Department was currently working with the Department of Homeland Security "to determine the specifics of our support" to border authorities. - A long march north - Thursday's move comes as thousands of Central American migrants are crossing Mexico toward the United States in a slow-moving caravan. The issue has become a rallying cry for the US president, who has taken a hard line on illegal immigration and has repeatedly kept the story in the headlines in the run up to America's midterm congressional elections that could see the Democrats regain some degree of power. Four days after crossing into Mexico, the caravan is still more than 3,000 kilometers (1,860 miles) from the US border Many of the migrants are fleeing poverty and insecurity in Honduras, where powerful street gangs rule their turf with brutal violence. The New York Times reported Thursday night that Trump is considering issuing an executive order to block Central American migrants from crossing the border. It would invoke the same section of immigration law that Trump cited to back up his Muslim travel ban, the Times said. The order would also create new laws disqualifying migrants who cross the border in between ports of entry from claiming asylum, the Times said, quoting people familiar with the plan, although exceptions would be made for people facing torture at home. Altogether the order would prevent hundreds in the caravan from entering the US and asking for asylum, the newspaper said. "To those in the Caravan, turnaround, we are not letting people into the United States illegally," Trump tweeted Thursday afternoon. "Go back to your Country and if you want, apply for citizenship like millions of others are doing!" Trump had signaled his intention to send more troops last week, tweeting that unless Mexico stopped the "onslaught" of people from Guatemala, Honduras and El Salvador, he would "call up the U.S. Military and CLOSE OUR SOUTHERN BORDER!" He has also announced the US would start cutting aid to Guatemala, Honduras and El Salvador. Guatemalan Foreign Minister Sandra Jovel dismissed the threat as a posture adopted for the media, telling reporters that the country had received no official notice of the move. Early Thursday, the caravan set off from the town of Mapastepec in the southern Mexican state of Chiapas, moving on to the next stop in their long march north. Some rode on trucks but most made the trek to the town of Pijijiapan on foot. "Little by little, we are going to arrive," said Luis Alberto Adalberto, 21, one of the migrants. But four days after crossing into Mexico, the caravan is still more than 3,000 kilometers (1,860 miles) from the US border. "It's hard, and we know this country is dangerous too, but back in Honduras it's even more dangerous, they kill for nothing," said Josena Anibal Mejia, 27, as he walked with his daughter. The United Nations estimates that 7,000 people have joined the caravan since it set out from San Pedro Sula, Honduras, on October 13. October is Merlot Month, celebrating a Bordeaux grape that slowly has been rebuilding its reputation over the past decade after a combination of factors that diminished its appeal and value. An aerial view of the vineyard at Mt. Brave, part of the Mt. Veeder AVA. Established in 1993, it's the largest AVA in the Napa Valley. The mountain is 25 square miles, or 15,000 acres, stretching from the Carneros to Oakville, and down the grade to Glen Ellen. Still, it remains among the country's most planted grapes and one that continues to have a lot of fans internationally, both as a varietal and as part of a blended wine. There are many top-notch producers of Merlot around the country, among them Chris Carpenter, the winemaker for La Jota and Mt. Brave in California's Napa Valley. Carpenter has been working with Merlot since 1995 and today produces wines from the mountaintops of Mt. Veeder and Howell Mountain. He got his start in winemaking in Chicago, according to a story written by the Napa Valley Vintners group. "While studying for my MBA at the University of Chicago, I started exploring and discovering the great food and wine scene there," he told the website. "During a visit to Napa Valley, I discovered a lifestyle that combined my love of the sciences with my growing passion for culinary and wine pursuits -- a way to be challenged both intellectually and creatively. Soon after, I went to UC Davis, where I earned a master's degree in both viticulture and enology." An aspiring musician, he was asked what three people (living or dead) would he want to share a bottle of wine with. "My grandmother, John Belushi and Johnny Cash," he said. Here's some additional information that appears in his bio on the La Jota Vineyard Co. website. Thanks to the assistance of Colangelo and Partners and to Carpenter for taking the time to answer a few questions, here's a Q&A that covers a little ground on Merlot and his appreciation of it. Q, I once saw in an interview that your "a-ha" wine was a "1990 Groth Reserve CS in a small Italian joint in Chicago." Do you recall what the Italian place was? Mt. Brave Merlot A, It was a place that has two names. Tufano's is the restaurant portion and the bar is called the Vernon Street Tap. It's a classic Little Italy red and white-checkered tablecloth joint. One table would be filled with guys from the board of trade, another with cops, another with old Italians, and maybe Phil Jackson and some of the Bulls players at another. One of my buddies worked there. He was about three years ahead of us in wine knowledge and served us the bottle. We traditionally had ordered the basket bottle of chianti. This wine was transformative. Whether it was on the list or something he brought in I don't recall. The brotherhood of Chicago servers and bartenders usually kept these things aside for just such a visit as I was with several other bartenders with whom I used to explore the restaurant scene. I am sure we threw a lot of money on the table, tip-wise, at the end of the meal. Q, What are a couple things that you most appreciate about the Merlot grape and the wine it produces, maybe even a couple things consumers don't know about it? A, Merlot has complexity, it has depth, structure, length and can age much like Cabernet Sauvignon but in its own style. Imagine the difference between a guitarist like Stevie Ray Vaughn versus Eddie Van Halen. Both incredibly distinctive and both virtuosos. Merlot and Cabernet Sauvignon are much like this. Many people think Merlot is an easy grape to grow. From a pure plant development and fruit production angle it is, but really it is much more difficult to dial in the flavors within the grape. This is especially so at a high wine quality level. Q, Your first experiences drinking Merlot . . . anything you remember trying early in your career and your impressions of it? A, Some of the very first high quality Merlots I tasted, not too long after that bottle of Groth, were the Duckhorn Howell Mountain bottlings from then winemaker Tom Rinaldi. These wines solidified for me that California can produce exceptional quality wines in this variety. That experience with the Duckhorn wines has come full circle for me, as the fruit Tom used for these wines 20 years ago was from the old vine blocks at the W.S. Keyes Vineyard, which I now use for La Jota. Q, I've seen you refer to it as an underdog grape. Does that relate to whether people will drink it or just the price you can get for it? And how do you think we can change that perception? 2015 La Jota Merlot A, It's an underdog here mostly because of the perception that it is not being produced at a quality level that deserves buying and collecting it. The best way to change the perception is to taste some of the Merlots being produced these days, such as La Jota, Shafer, Pahlmeyer, Darioush to name only a few. Also, having people like yourself talk about it and having sommeliers at restaurants get behind Merlots from California will help consumers realizing that France and Italy do not own the only vineyards on the planet that can produce good Merlots. We have as many or more here in the states. Q, In your 20 years in the business, is the grape treated any differently in the vineyard now than when you started, in terms of farming? A, During the mid-90s it was a variety that was pursued as the possible next White Zinfandel, and as such it was planted in the wrong places and it was farmed for production and pushed out the door in vast volumes. Most of those vines and the strategic thinkers behind that experiment have moved on. The grape is now being grown in ideal places around Napa Valley and being cared for viticulturally to maximize its individuality and character. Q, How old are the vines you are growing the Merlot on and have you seen a difference in the nose and palate as those have aged? A, I work with vines planted across the spectrum, from old Merlot vines on Howell Mountain planted in 1986 to incredible Merlot vines on Mount Veeder and Spring Mountain planted in the late 1990s and throughout the 2000s. The old vines are great but the younger vines show their own tenacity of flavor. Again to use the guitar analogy, Jimmy Page is still a badass guitar player but I sure like listening to Kenny Wayne Shepperd as well. Q, How long do you like to see the Merlots you produce stay in the cellar? What are a couple things you have noticed as those wines age? A, My wines are from the mountains. They have a structural component from the mountain tannins that allows for a great deal of aging, 15 years easy. In fact, the La Jota W.S. Keyes Merlot is built to age, and like great Cabernet Sauvignons the nuance of flavor develops over the years as the tannins drop out. The fruit shines through for a very long time and the aged characters morph alongside it. -- A sampling of other interviews from the series of stories on national/international wineries. -- Figures targeted in the spree of US bomb alerts, top to bottom and left to right: Barack Obama, Joe Biden, Hillary Clinton, Eric Holder, John Brennan, Maxine Waters, Debbie Wasserman Schultz, George Soros, Robert De Niro Twelve pipe bombs and suspicious packages have been mailed to top Democrats including Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama, news channel CNN and other prominent critics of US President Donald Trump since Monday. All of the packages were intercepted before reaching their targets, all of whom Trump regularly singles out for attack in speeches and online. - George Soros - Hedge fund tycoon George Soros supported Trump's Democratic rival Hillary Clinton Hedge fund billionaire Soros was the target of the first bomb discovered, found Monday in a mailbox at his New York home. Trump and his supporters have frequently accused Soros of financing anti-administration activists, as well as sponsoring thousands of Central American migrants currently marching toward the US border. - Hillary Clinton - A package was sent to the home of Hillary and Bill Clinton On Tuesday, the Secret Service intercepted a package addressed to Clinton at the new York home she shares with her husband, former president Bill Clinton. Throughout his presidency, Trump has repeatedly targeted his election rival in Twitter tirades, branding her "Crooked Hillary," and entertaining his supporters at election rallies with chants to "lock her up." - Barack Obama - Former president Barack Obama recently returned to the political fray with a wide-ranging speech criticizing Trump Trump's predecessor in the White House, Barack Obama, was targeted by a bomb addressed to his Washington home. Trump has made reversing Obama's legacy a hallmark of his own administration. Last month, Obama returned to the political fray with a wide-ranging speech slamming Trump's divisive politics. - Eric Holder - Eric Holder served under Obama as the first African American US attorney general Eric Holder served under Obama as the first African American US attorney general. Holder grabbed headlines recently when he called for a new approach to battling Republicans: "When they go low, we kick them. That's what this new Democratic Party is about." A package addressed to his Washington office ended up going to the return address -- the Florida office of Democratic Congresswoman Debbie Wasserman Schultz. - John Brennan, care of CNN - Trump revoked former CIA director John Brennan's security clearance in August 2018 A package was posted to Obama's CIA director John Brennan, care of CNN. Trump makes clear on an almost daily basis his disdain for the cable news network, which is critical of his administration. Brennan, a frequent CNN commentator, has been a leader of criticism of Trump as an unqualified president who poorly represents US diplomatic and security interests. In retaliation, Trump revoked Brennan's security clearance in August. - Maxine Waters - Trump has branded California lawmaker Maxine Waters "crazy" and an "extraordinarily low IQ person" Senior Representative Maxine Waters, Trump who Trump brands "crazy" and an "extraordinarily low IQ person," was sent two bomb-laden packages. The California Democrat notably has urged her supporters to confront Trump administration officials in public, even in restaurants, to "tell them they're not welcome anymore, anywhere." - Robert De Niro - Robert De Niro has previously called Trump an "idiot" and "blatantly stupid" Oscar-winning actor Robert De Niro is one of Hollywood's loudest voices against Trump. In June, he received a standing ovation at the Tony Awards when he used an expletive to condemn the president. A bomb-laden package was intercepted on Thursday at his TriBeCa Productions in New York. - Joe Biden - Former Joe Biden is seen as a potential 2020 Democratic presidential candidate Two suspicious packages addressed to Obama's vice president Joe Biden -- a possible challenger to Trump in the 2020 election -- were intercepted at a Delaware postal facility on Thursday. Earlier this year, Biden suggested he would have "beat the hell out of" Trump if they were in high school, over the president's unsavory comments about women. - Cory Booker - New Jersey Democratic Senator Cory Booker Booker, a senator from New Jersey, has signaled his interest in running for president in 2020, putting him in Trump's sights. Booker was one of the leading opponents to Trump's Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh, which Trump said made him "really evil." - James Clapper - Former US Director of National Intelligence James Clapper James Clapper, the former director of national intelligence under Obama, was also sent a suspicious package care of CNN, where like Brennan he appears regularly as a critic of Trump's national security policy. The package was discovered Friday. Earlier this year, Clapper said Russian interference in the 2016 election was crucial in Trump's victory over Clinton. Is President Donald Trump a source of the toxic US political tone, or a victim of it? Gun violence against members of Congress, relentless personal invective from the US president, harassment of public officials. And now, multiple suspicious packages, some with explosives, targeting high-profile Democrats. With 12 days before hugely consequential midterm elections, US authorities have foiled mail bomb attacks against former president Barack Obama, President Donald Trump's 2016 rival Hillary Clinton, Hollywood star Robert de Niro, news giant CNN and others. Washington, and much of America, has been subjected to an increasingly toxic political climate. Who and what is to blame? - How did we get here? - American politics has been clogged with nastiness for 200 years -- four presidents were assassinated, after all. The Vietnam War and Watergate were flashpoints. Federal buildings have been bombed. Experts point to the 1990s as a modern-day marker, notably Bill Clinton's tumultuous eight-year presidency. "The impeachment of Bill Clinton while he was in the White House and what the Republicans did at that point really I think created this very, very vicious cycle that we are now in," Anita McBride, an assistant to president George W. Bush who is now an executive-in-residence at American University, told AFP. Adding to the toxicity: the controversial 2000 election recount that led to George W. Bush's presidency, and his post-9/11 Middle East incursions. Far from producing a post-racial America, Obama's presidency enflamed racial tensions. Trump cynically seized the moment, spreading the "birther" lie that Obama was born in Kenya. A Democratic congresswoman was shot in 2011, and while lawmakers united in the aftermath, the partisanship grew. "The political climate frankly in the country has really been deteriorating for some time... and I think even well before the 2016 election, although it was heightened in that period and going forward," McBride said. - Is Trump to blame? - The political temperature soared in the three years since Trump announced his candidacy. Republicans and President Donald Trump himself have cast the 2018 midterm elections as a battle between angry Democratic "mobs," and the president's strong economic performance "Trump bears much of the blame for the current climate," stated John Pitney, professor of American politics at Claremont McKenna College, adding that the brash billionaire "lives on the dark side" of the rhetorical line. As president he persistently harangues opponents ("Pocahontas" is his ethnic slur for Senator Elizabeth Warren), and uses dog-whistle language to energize his base. He has praised supporters who get violent at rallies, failed to swiftly condemn neo-Nazis who killed a counter-protester in Charlottesville in 2017, and calls journalists the "enemy of the people." When supporters chant "Lock her up!" about Clinton, Trump grins. Hollywood figures are also regularly the target of the president's barbs but often bite back, as when De Niro denounced Trump in an expletive-laden Tony Awards speech earlier this year. "Time and time again, the President has condoned physical violence and divided Americans with his words and his actions," Democratic leaders in Congress said Wednesday in a statement. With the midterms approaching, Trump's demagoguery has swelled, as he warned about "mobs" of Democrats and retweeted a Republican congressman saying, with no evidence, that philanthropist George Soros was funding a caravan of migrants bound for the US border. Some experts say Trump's influence on the caustic atmosphere is overblown. "He may be more of a symptom of the problem than its cause," associate professor Timothy Hagle of the University of Iowa said. Others say the blame starts with the president. "Words matter, particularly when they're spoken by those at the top of government," Republican Senator Jeff Flake told CNN, adding Trump should dial down his rhetoric. "People hear that and they follow it." - Aren't Democrats responsible too? - Some Democrats have urged aggressive action against Trump and his team. California congresswoman Maxine Waters -- one of the targets of the mail bomb attacks, framed by Trump as a "low IQ person" -- told supporters in June to "push back" on cabinet officials dining or shopping in public. Former CIA director John Brennan called Trump's behavior alongside Russian counterpart Vladimir Putin this year "nothing short of treasonous," outraging the White House. The intercepted mailings of suspected explosive devices to prominent US political figures including former president Barack Obama and 2016 presidential hopeful Hillary Clinton has heightened tensions days before the November 6, 2018 midterm elections Brennan was also among those threatened with suspicious packages. Obama's attorney general Eric Holder this month urged more forceful opposition to Republicans, saying "when they go low, we kick 'em." Trump hit back days later, telling Fox, "He better be careful what he's wishing for." A suspicious package to Holder was intercepted Wednesday. Gruesome violence has also erupted. Last year a man who worked for Bernie Sanders' 2016 presidential campaign opened fire on congressional Republicans, gravely wounding Representative Steve Scalise. Clinton herself stoked tensions this month when she said "civility can start again" when Democrats regain control of Congress. "There are too many Democratic politicians that are actively encouraging this," Republican Senator Ted Cruz told NBC. - Will this impact midterms? - The jury is still out. November 6 is days away, and Republicans are struggling to hold their congressional majorities. Trump, aiming to galvanize his base, is raising the alarm about the caravan. But the mail bombs pose a new conundrum. Conservatives in Trump's camp were already suggesting publicly that the mail bombs were part of a Democratic conspiracy to gain sympathy votes. Journalist Jumpei Yasuda has faced hostility from fellow Japanese since arriving back home after spending three years in captivity in the Middle East A Japanese journalist freed from Syria this week arrived home to overjoyed relatives and supporters, but also to vitriol from some who accuse him and other hostages of reckless behaviour. Jumpei Yasuda was kidnapped in Syria in 2015, and spent more than three years in conditions he described as "hell." He arrived back in Japan on Thursday night, greeted by his delighted wife and parents, who had brought him homemade Japanese food to celebrate. But even before Yasuda set foot on Japanese soil, he was the target of angry criticism -- mostly online -- ranging from accusations of recklessness to claims that he was not even Japanese. "He is disturbing society," wrote one Twitter user. "He's an anti-citizen," charged another. Perhaps anticipating the criticism, Yasuda's only statement upon arrival, read to reporters by his wife Myu, was dominated by an apology. "I apologise for causing such trouble and worry, but thanks to all of you, I was able to come home safely," he said. The anger directed at Yasuda -- author of books on the conflicts in Syria and Iraq, whose reporting has appeared on Japanese television -- is a far cry from the reception that journalism held hostage have received in other countries upon their release. When four French journalists held by the Islamic State group in Syria were released, then-French president Francois Hollande met the men as they arrived home. - 'It's your fault - But in Japan, freed hostages have often met a mixed reception, with critics suggesting victims were responsible for getting themselves kidnapped. "They are the victims, they haven't broken the law, but they have to apologise. It's strange, but it's the mentality of a part of Japanese society," said Toshiro Terada, a professor of philosophy at Sophia University in Tokyo. "The person is accused of having harmed society." In one of the more shocking examples of the reaction, three Japanese men held hostage in Iraq and freed in 2004 arrived home to find people at the airport holding up banners reading "It's your fault." Yasuda's parents welcomed their son with homemade food and open arms, but the reaction online in Japan has not been as positive Their kidnappers had threatened to burn them alive if Tokyo failed to withdraw non-combat troops stationed in southern Iraq. But then-prime minister Junichiro Koizumi refused the demands, and even declined to meet with the families of the hostages, a hardline position that was applauded in some quarters of Japanese society. The government itself, supported by right-wing media, described the men as "irresponsible youths" for having ignored warnings to avoid travel to Iraq, then an active war zone. One of the men, Noriaki Imai, said recently he received letters saying "die" or calling him "stupid." "Online, the bashing lasted ten years," he said. - 'Professional hostage' - Yasuda has faced similar criticism for venturing to Syria, a country where several Japanese citizens were kidnapped and eventually executed. Compounding the antagonism is the fact that Yasuda was kidnapped once before, in Iraq in 2004, prompting some to describe him as a "professional hostage." And detractors have claimed Yasuda is not even Japanese, partly as the result of a bizarre hostage video showing him and another captive in Syria that emerged in August. Despite speaking Japanese, he identified himself as a South Korean called "Omar", apparently after his kidnappers banned him from revealing his identity or nationality. In this picture, which emerged while Yasuda was in captivity, he holds a sign saying 'Help me please. This is my last chance' and showing his name "This guy isn't even Japanese," wrote one Twitter user. "He should go back to his country, South Korea," added another. A string of kidnappings of journalists in Syria at the height of the country's war exposed differences in how governments and publics responded. Some governments paid ransoms, while others refused, and while countries celebrated their journalists as heroes, others quietly criticised them for taking unnecessary risks. In Japan, mainstream media outlets and officials have largely avoided criticising Yasuda and other hostages, but the antipathy expressed online concerns journalists like Toru Tamakawa, a commentator for TV Asahi. "In the case of Yasuda particularly, the argument that 'it's his fault' must be firmly rejected," he said this week. "We need people who will risk their lives to go and get information on the ground." Syrian children play among bombed out buildings in the Eastern Ghouta town of Zabdin on October 8, 2018. Reconstruction has barely begun, six months after the government's recapture of the longtime rebel stronghold outside Damascus The destruction in Syria's Eastern Ghouta is overwhelming and the humanitarian needs huge, a top Red Cross official said Friday after visiting the former rebel stronghold outside Damascus. Dominik Stillhart, director of operations for the International Committee of the Red Cross, said the scope of the devastation was still emerging, six months after the fighting ended. "I was really overwhelmed by the level of destruction that we found in Eastern Ghouta. I've never seen anything like this ever before," he told journalists in Beirut. After retaking significant territory from the Islamic State group, the government set its sights on recapturing Eastern Ghouta earlier this year, viewing the rebel presence so close to the capital as an affront to its authority. It launched a massive Russian-backed offensive against the besieged rebel enclave that killed more than 1,700 civilians. Tens of thousands of people fled as the enclave's towns surrendered one after the other. The International Committee of the Red Cross's director of operations, Dominik Stillhart, says the scale of the destruction in the former rebel enclave of Eastern Ghouta outside Damascus is the worst he has seen Residents have been trickling back to the area but the lack of infrastructure, the fear of arrest and the risk posed by unexploded ordnance are preventing mass returns. "In some parts of Eastern of Ghouta like Harasta where we were, up to 90 percent of infrastructure is completely destroyed," Stillhart said. "It's really breathtaking the level of destruction there," he said after his first visit to the area. He said he saw a boy being given life-saving care by four people in a medical facility in the Eastern Ghouta town of Kafr Batna. "The only light they had was a flash light from a mobile phone," he said. "These are the kind of conditions you would expect to see during the conflict but not six months after the conflict." Hassan Diab, 64, was released earlier this year after French magistrates ruled evidence was "not convincing enough" to hold him A French court Friday ordered a new probe into evidence allegedly linking a Lebanese-Canadian academic to the 1980 deadly bombing of a Paris synagogue before deciding whether to put him on trial. The October 3, 1980, bombing of a synagogue on 24 Rue Copernic in Paris, which killed four people and injured 46, was the first fatal attack against Jews in France since the Nazi occupation in World War II. On Friday, the appeals court said it would grant an anti-terrorist investigating magistrate until February 15 to further analyse a handwritten hotel registration form, which prosecutors claim was filled out by Hassan Diab, the only identified suspect in the case. Diab, 64, was extradited from Canada to France in 2014, but then released earlier this year after French magistrates ruled evidence against him was "not convincing enough" to hold him. Prosecutors had appealed the decision and the Paris court had been expected to decide on Friday whether to drop all charges or proceed with a trial. Prosecutors and defence lawyers have already long haggled over results of previous handwriting analysis carried out on five words left on a hotel registration form. The form was filled out in the name of Alexander Panadriyu who, investigators believe, was a false identity used by Diab who is currently living in Canada. "The court still has a doubt (...) and it wants to close all loopholes before reaching a decision," Diab's lawyer William Bourdon said. Diab has always denied involvement, saying he was taking exams in Beirut at the time of the bombing. Diab, a former professor of sociology at Ottawa University, was accused of planting the bomb inside the saddle bag of a motorbike parked outside the packed synagogue close to the Champs-Elysees, where hundreds of people had gathered for Sabbath prayers. Evidence presented against him also included a sketch of the bomber which resembles Diab and the discovery of a passport in his name with entry and exit stamps from Spain, where the bomber is believed to have fled. There were also testimonies from witnesses that Diab was a member of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP) at the time of the bombing. Outgoing UN envoy to Syria Staffan de Mistura says Damascus has rejected a plan to draft a new constitution A United Nations plan to end the seven-year civil war in Syria has run aground after Damascus blocked the world body's proposal for a committee to draft a new constitution, provoking anger among western powers. UN special envoy Staffan de Mistura has been working since January on forming a group of 150 members to thrash out a new constitution, seen as a first step to winding down a conflict that has cost more than 360,000 lives. Under the UN plan, the Syrian regime would choose 50 of the committee members, the Syrian opposition another 50 and the UN would nominate the final 50, composed of representatives of civil society and technical experts. De Mistura, a veteran Italian-Swedish diplomat due to step down next month, said Friday that Foreign Minister Walid Muallem rejected the last list of UN-proposed names and suggested his own method to the final 50 members during talks in Damascus this week. "Walid Muallem didn't accept a role for the UN in identifying or selecting a third list," the envoy told the UN Security Council by video conference during an emergency session called by the United States. "Rather, Mr Muallem indicated that the governments of Syria and Russia had agreed recently that the three Astana guarantors (Iran, Russia and Turkey) and the Syrian government would in consultations among them prepare a proposal as regards the third list." De Mistura said withdrawing the UN list was only possible "if there was an agreement on a new credible, balanced and inclusive list" that complied with UN resolutions and commitments made in January talks in the Russian resort town of Sochi. - 'Unacceptable' for Washington - Unsurprisingly, the Syrian counter-proposal was met with widespread condemnation from western powers, led by Britain, France and the United States. "The United Nations has exclusive control over the committee's membership, schedule and scope of work -- as affirmed by the Russian Federation in its January 2018 Sochi Declaration," said Jonathan Cohen, the deputy US ambassador to the world body. "Further obstruction on the committee's formation is unacceptable," he added, calling for urgent action. French ambassador Francois Delattre warned that "the risk of new escalation cannot be ruled out. That can only be done through a solution that is politically credible and inclusive." "It is right that the UN is involved," in the political process, said Karen Pierce, the British ambassador to the UN, stressing the world body's deep engagement with issues of humanitarian aid, refugees and health. Nasr al-Hariri, the chief negotiator for the Syrian opposition, in Moscow in October 2018 Vassily Nebenzia, the ambassador of Russia, a key ally of the Syrian regime, was critical of the decision to hold the Security Council meeting. "We cannot go against the will of Syria," he said. "We will help Staffan de Mistura create this constitutional committee with respect for Syrian sovereignty." Nebenzia urged caution in the process and stressed that the outgoing diplomat, who already addressed the council last week, not make the issue his "political legacy." De Mistura said he would take part Saturday in a special summit in Istanbul bringing together leaders from France, Germany, Russia and Turkey. The Syrian summit will be followed on Monday by a meeting of the so-called "small group" of Britain, Egypt, France, Germany, Jordan, Saudi Arabia and the United States, a UN official said. De Mistura will then go on to Geneva to meet with the Astana accord guarantors Iran and Russia, which are backing the regime of President Bashar al-Assad, and Turkey, a major sponsor of anti-regime rebel groups. The UN's attempt to broker peace in Syria have largely been eclipsed by a parallel diplomatic initiative by Moscow, Tehran and Turkey. WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange seen at a window of Ecuador's embassy in London on February 5, 2016 WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange would end his five-year stay in Ecuador's London embassy and hand himself over to British authorities if given assurances he would not face extradition to the United States, his lawyer said Friday. Assange has been holed up at the embassy since 2012, concerned that a British arrest warrant would result in his extradition to the United States, where he could be tried for revealing state secrets. Assange would "face up" to surrendering to British authorities who want to arrest him for breaching bail conditions, said his lawyer Carlos Poveda. "In British justice, he could even be sentenced to three to six months' imprisonment," Poveda said. "But what is being requested from the legal team is that there is a necessary assurance that after that sentence he will not be extradited to the United States." This would be "an extremely important condition" for the 47-year-old Australian, the lawyer said. Ecuador gave Assange diplomatic protection in 2012 after a British judge ruled he should be extradited to Sweden to face allegations of sexual assault there. Sweden dropped its investigation last year, but British authorities say they still want to arrest him for breaching his bail conditions. Assange claims the accusations were politically motivated and could lead to him being extradited to the United States to face imprisonment over the release by WikiLeaks of secret US military documents and diplomatic cables in 2010. The Australian's relationship with his Ecuadoran hosts has steadily turned sour. Last week, he announced he was suing the Quito government, saying new rules imposed on his stay violated his rights to unfettered communications with the outside world. On Thursday, Eduador's attorney general Inigo Salvador told reporters that Quito has proposed that either Assange turn himself in to British justice, or continue to live in the embassy under strict rules. The Moroccan government said the country would "maintain summer time to avoid repeated changes during the year" as well as "repercussions at several levels" Morocco decided Friday to keep its clocks at summer time around the year, abandoning winter time which would have come into effect at the weekend. The government said Morocco would "maintain summer time to avoid repeated changes during the year and... repercussions at several levels", the official news agency MAP reported. A government official confirmed to AFP that the transition to winter time will not take place. The North African state was due to switch on Sunday, from its current time of GMT+1. Avoiding the switch saves "an hour of natural light" and reduces electricity consumption, said the administrative reform minister, Mohammed Ben Abdelkader, quoted by MAP. The European Union said at the end of August that it will recommend the bloc's member countries abolish the twice-yearly clock change. Austria's Foreign Minister Karin Kneissl, pictured August 2018, said that the "awful war in Yemen and the Qatar crisis should lead us to finally act in a united fashion as the European Union towards Saudi Arabia" Austrian Foreign Minister Karin Kneissl called in an interview with a German newspaper Friday for an EU embargo on weapons deliveries to Saudi Arabia. "Above all the awful war in Yemen and the Qatar crisis should lead us to finally act in a united fashion as the European Union towards Saudi Arabia," Kneissl told Die Welt. "If we as the whole EU stopped weapons deliveries to Saudi Arabia, that could be a contribution towards ending this conflict," she said. She added that Austria had not sent any military equipment to Saudi Arabia since the beginning of the war in Yemen in March 2015. She condemned the murder of journalist Jamal Khashoggi as "deeply shocking" and an "unprecedented crime" but said it was only "the worst example of the "horrors" committed by the Saudi government. The Austrian opposition accused the government of confusion in its policy after government MPs failed to support a motion in parliament on Thursday to ban weapons sales to Saudi Arabia. However, this was because the wording of that motion could have included small arms, whereas the government's position is to ban only exports of heavy weaponry for military use, foreign ministry spokesman Peter Guschelbauer told AFP. Kneissl told Die Welt that in her opinion the past two years had seen a "massive deterioration in the human rights situation in Saudi Arabia", pointing to a large rise in the number of political prisoners. She has cancelled a visit she was due to make to Saudi Arabia in December. Responding to opposition calls to close down a Saudi-backed centre for inter-religious dialogue in Vienna, Kneissl said on Thursday that she had shown the centre a "dark yellow card". She said that the KAICIID centre would have to implement reforms including decreasing its financial dependence on Riyadh. INDIANAPOLIS (AP) - In a story Oct. 23 about no charges being filed against the Indiana attorney general over groping allegations, The Associated Press reported erroneously in a headline that the inspector general called the actions 'creepy.' Witnesses used the term. A corrected version of the story is below: The Latest: Witnesses in report called Hill's actions 'creepy' Indiana Inspector General Lori Torres has released a 25-page report on Attorney General Curtis Hill and his staff that finds they didn't break any state ethics rules or misuse state property INDIANAPOLIS (AP) - The Latest on an investigation into allegations of groping made against Indiana Attorney General Curtis Hill (all times local): 6:47 p.m. Indiana Inspector General Lori Torres has released a 25-page report on Attorney General Curtis Hill and his staff that finds they didn't break any state ethics rules or misuse state property. However, Torres says eyewitnesses told investigators that Hill's behavior at a party where he's accused of drunkenly groping four women was inappropriate, "creepy" and made many of the women at the party uncomfortable. Torres says the four women indicated that Hill's actions caused emotional distress and anger, and at least one left the party in tears. Torres says all but one of the women who alleged Hill inappropriately touched them were in their 20s and new in their careers, and "that demonstrates the disparate power, influence, authority, and age that exists between Hill and the women." Torres' report came out after a special prosecutor announced that Hill won't face criminal charges. ___ 5:15 p.m. Republican Gov. Eric Holcomb says his position that Indiana Attorney General Curtis Hill should resign over allegations he drunkenly groped four women hasn't changed despite a special prosecutor's decision not to file criminal charges against Hill. Holcomb says he "believed the women who stepped forward to report sexual harassment" by Hill and that special prosecutor Daniel Sigler agreed. Holcomb says Sigler's "findings show a disregard of the executive branch zero tolerance harassment policy." Hill was elected separately from Holcomb and has rejected calls from Holcomb and legislative leaders for him to resign. ___ 1:15 p.m. Indiana Attorney General Curtis Hill's private attorneys are praising the news that Hill won't face criminal charges for allegedly drunkenly groping four women. Attorneys James Voyles and Jennifer Lukemeyer say in a statement that special prosecutor Daniel Sigler's investigation "exonerates and absolves Mr. Curtis Hill of any factual and legal criminal behavior." Sigler said Tuesday he believes the allegations from a state lawmaker and three legislative staffers that Hill groped them at a March party in Indianapolis, but he concluded it would be too difficult to prove a case against Hill. Hill's attorneys say he "will continue to serve the people of Indiana" in his elected post as attorney general. Hill has denied the women's allegations and rejected calls from Republican Gov. Eric Holcomb and legislative leaders for him to resign. __ 12:50 p.m. Attorneys for a state lawmaker and three legislative staffers who say Indiana Attorney General Curtis Hill drunkenly groped them at a party intend to file a civil suit against Hill. The planned legal action was announced Tuesday after a special prosecutor said that Hill would not face criminal charges for his alleged actions. Attorney Kimberly Jeselskis represents the four women, who accuse Hill of groping them at a March party. She and other attorneys for the women filed a tort claim Tuesday with the state of Indiana that's required before the state can be sued. Jeselskis says the women plan to sue Hill, the state of Indiana and Indiana's attorney general's office and the claims they intend to pursue include assault, battery, defamation and false imprisonment. __ 11:05 a.m. A special prosecutor says he believes the claims of the four women who accused Indiana's attorney general of groping them at a party, but that he doesn't have sufficient evidence to prosecute. In his review of the investigation into allegations against Curtis Hill stemming from an end-of-session event at an Indianapolis bar in March, Daniel Sigler said he "took the complaining witnesses claims as true and credible." In the report released Tuesday, Sigler says he found the accusers' motives sincere and that he believed Hill, a Republican, had "touched them in a way that was inappropriate." He says Hill hasn't denied the touching occurred, but that the attorney general said it was incidental in a crowded bar and "not intended to be disrespectful, sexual in nature or rude." ___ 10:40 a.m. A special prosecutor says it would've been difficult to prove any criminal charges against Indiana Attorney General Curtis Hill in the alleged drunken groping of a state lawmaker and three legislative staffers at a party in March. Special prosecutor Daniel Sigler said Tuesday that he considered misdemeanor battery charges against Hill, but witnesses gave varying accounts of what happened in the Indianapolis bar. Sigler says he believed Hill drank a "significant" amount of alcohol that night, but that prosecuting him would be tough because several weeks passed before the allegations were raised. Sigler said he didn't see a benefit to a potentially long and expensive prosecution of the Republican attorney general. Hill has denied the allegations and rejected calls to resign from Republican Gov. Eric Holcomb and legislative leaders. ___ 10:10 a.m. Indiana Attorney General Curtis Hill won't face criminal charges in the alleged drunken groping of a lawmaker and three legislative staffers at a party in March. Special prosecutor Daniel Sigler announced his decision Tuesday morning, saying the investigation into the allegations against Hill, a Republican, is closed. A confidential legislative memo leaked to the media alleges Hill groped the four women at the party in Indianapolis to mark the end of the legislative session. Three of the women later went public. Hill has denied the allegations and rejected calls to resign from Republican Gov. Eric Holcomb and legislative leaders. Sigler was appointed in July to review the state inspector general's findings from an investigation into the allegations against Hill and to determine whether he should be charged. ___ 8 a.m. A special prosecutor who helped investigate allegations that Indiana Attorney General Curtis Hill drunkenly groped a lawmaker and three legislative staffers is planning an announcement on that investigation. A confidential legislative memo leaked to the media alleges Hill groped the four women in Indianapolis during a March party that marked the end of the legislative session. Three of the women later went public. Hill has denied the allegations and rejected calls to resign from Republican Gov. Eric Holcomb and legislative leaders. A Marion County judge appointed Fort Wayne attorney Daniel Sigler in July to review the state inspector general's findings in a probe of the allegations against Hill and to determine whether the Republican officeholder should face criminal charges. Sigler has scheduled a Tuesday morning news conference in Indianapolis. SAN FRANCISCO (AP) - In a story Oct. 23 about noncitizens being allowed to vote in the upcoming San Francisco school board election, The Associated Press wrongly cited the annual budget of the San Francisco Unified School District. It is nearly $900 million. A corrected version of the story is below: San Francisco is allowing noncitizens to vote, but few will San Francisco has become the largest U.S. city to give people in the country illegally and other noncitizens the right to vote in a local election By OLGA R. RODRIGUEZ Associated Press SAN FRANCISCO (AP) - San Francisco has become the largest U.S. city to give people in the country illegally and other noncitizens the right to vote in a local election, but the possibility of the Trump administration learning their identities appears to have kept people away: only 35 noncitizens have registered. It is among a handful of cities nationwide to allow people who aren't citizens to vote, which is illegal in state and federal elections. In San Francisco, they can only participate in the school board race. Voters in 2016 approved a measure allowing parents or guardians of a child in San Francisco schools to have a say in their children's education by helping elect school board representatives regardless of their immigration status. In the same election, Donald Trump won the presidency and has since cracked down on illegal immigration and ramped up rhetoric against those living in the U.S. illegally. "We're in an unprecedented arena of animosity toward our immigrant community, and that has really stopped people from voting," said San Francisco Supervisor Sandra Fewer, a former member of the school board and a supporter of the noncitizen voting measure. Noncitizens must provide their address and date of birth to register. The number who had was low as of Monday, but people can still sign up and vote on Election Day. The Chinese American Voters Education Committee has been holding voter registration campaigns on college campuses, in low-income neighborhoods, at festivals and in Chinatown. Volunteers have not registered a single noncitizen, including a green-card holder, executive director David Lee said. "People are really fearful because the Trump administration is perceived to be very anti-immigrant," Lee said. "There is legitimate concern that their information may be turned over to the federal government and that they may end up being detained or deported." Lee and other community groups have been inviting prospective voters to register but also warning them of the risks. The city election department also has warnings on its registration form and on flyers saying voter information would be public and could be seen by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement and other agencies. San Francisco is a "sanctuary city" that otherwise limits cooperation with federal immigration officials. The city has not shied away from confronting the U.S. government on immigration, suing the Trump administration over sanctuary protections for people in the country illegally. Those who championed the voting ordinance say it aims to give immigrants a greater voice at the school board, which approves curriculum, hires staff and manages a nearly $900 million annual budget. The San Francisco School District does not keep a tally of its noncitizen parents or children but reports that 29 percent of its 54,000 students are English learners, with the majority listing Chinese or Spanish as their first language. At least 40,000 people in the city of 885,000 are in the country illegally, according to government estimates. Harmeet Dhillon, a San Francisco attorney and committeewoman for the National Republican Committee, said allowing noncitizens to cast ballots devalues the rights of citizens. "Voting is a sacred privilege and a sacred right of citizens. It should not be trivialized for political gain," she said. Dhillon, who handles election law cases, said she is not surprised that only a few noncitizens have registered because voting could jeopardize their chances of attaining citizenship in the future. "By voting people are taking a big legal risk, and for what return?" Dhillon asked. San Francisco is not the first place with such a measure. In Maryland, where an estimated 15 percent of residents are foreign-born, at least six cities allow noncitizens to vote in local elections. The measures have been in effect since the 1980s but not without controversy. In College Park, home to the University of Maryland, an amendment that would have allowed noncitizen voting failed last year. One reason so many cities in Maryland have enacted noncitizen voting laws is that municipalities are allowed to enact legislation and implement it right away, unlike other states, said Ron Hayduk, an associate professor of political science at San Francisco State University who studies noncitizen voting laws. In Massachusetts, the cities of Amherst, Cambridge, Newton and Brookline have advanced laws to allow noncitizen voting, but they cannot implement them because they need the approval of state lawmakers, who have not acted, Hayduk said. "Noncitizen voting is a very contentious issue, and that's in part why it's not more widespread," Hayduk said. In San Francisco, noncitizens who opt to vote will be listed on a separate roster from citizens and will get a ballot with just the school board contest, city elections chief John Arntz said. Norma Garcia, director of policy and advocacy for the Mission Economic Development Agency, which advocates for immigrant rights, said she hopes more noncitizens will vote if the political climate changes in the future. "The numbers are not what anyone would have wanted them to be, but we're confident there will be increased participation once the political tide shifts," Garcia said. ___ Associated Press writers Brian Witte in Annapolis, Maryland, and Bob Salsberg in Boston contributed to this report. A severe viral outbreak at a New Jersey rehabilitation center for "medically fragile children" has left six youngsters dead and 12 others sick, the state Health Department said Tuesday. There have been 18 cases of adenovirus at the Wanaque Center for Nursing and Rehabilitation in Haskell, about 30 miles (50 kilometers) northwest of New York, the New Jersey Health Department said in a statement. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said in an email that it is providing technical assistance to the state. In the past 10 years, cases of severe illness and death from the type of infection found at the facility have been reported in the United States, said CDC spokeswoman Kate Fowlie in an email, though it's unclear how many deaths there have been. The strain afflicting the children is usually associated with acute respiratory illness, according to the CDC, which on its website instructs health workers to report unusual clusters to state or local health departments. The Health Department didn't release the ages of the victims or address the severity of the illness in the other dozen cases. The six deaths happened this month, according to Health Department spokeswoman Donna Leusner. Police cruisers are seen parked near the entrance of the Wanaque Center For Nursing And Rehabilitation, where New Jersey state Health Department confirmed the 18 cases of adenovirus, Tuesday, Oct. 23, 2018, in Haskell, N.J. The outbreak has left six children dead and 12 others sick. The facility has been told it can't admit any new patients until the outbreak ends. Adenoviruses usually just cause mild illnesses. But officials say this outbreak is particularly severe because it's affecting medically fragile children with severely compromised immune systems. They also note this strain has been particularly associated with disease in communal living facilities. (AP Photo/Julio Cortez) The facility was instructed not to admit new patients until the outbreak ends, and the Health Department said the number of new cases appears to be decreasing. Dr. William Schaffner, an infectious disease professor at Vanderbilt University Medical Center, said these kinds of fatalities are not common, but they're known to happen. "Here I think you have this kind of nasty combination of very fragile children and this particularly aggressive virus," he said. The strain in the New Jersey outbreak is No. 7 and is affecting "medically fragile" children with severely compromised immune systems, according to the Health Department. It has been associated with communal living and can be more severe A scientific paper cited by the CDC reported that a 1998 outbreak of type 7 adenovirus at a pediatric chronic-care facility in Chicago claimed the lives of eight patients. The 2001 paper said civilian outbreaks of the type 7 infection had not been frequently reported because of a lack of lab resources, and that the full impact on chronic-care facilities and hospitals is likely underestimated. In New Jersey, a team was at the center Tuesday and Sunday and found "minor handwashing deficiencies," the Health Department said. "The Health Department is continuing to work closely with the facility on infection control issues," the department said in a statement. The center helps educate "medically fragile children," according to its website. Messages left with the center were not returned. Gov. Phil Murphy said in a statement that he was "heartbroken" about the deaths and that he had been briefed by the health commissioner, Dr. Shereef Elnahal, who told him that the department is on site and trying to prevent the virus from spreading further. "I am confident that the steps being taken by state and local officials will minimize the impact to all those who remain at the facility, including patients and employee," Murphy said. Adenoviruses often cause mild illness, particularly in young children, but people with weakened immune systems are at risk of getting severely sick, according to the CDC. SAN FRANCISCO (AP) - Tesla Motors delivered on CEO Elon Musk's promise to make money during its latest quarter after fulfilling his pledge to boost production of its first electric car designed for the mass market. The company earned $311.5 million during the three months ending in September, swinging from a loss of $619 million at the same time last year. It's only the third time that Tesla has posted a quarterly profit in its eight-year history as a public company and the first time in two years. A big jump in Tesla's output of its mass-market Model 3 car powered the breakthrough. The manufacturing increase and moneymaking quarter are two things that Musk promised would happen in early August. Revenue more than doubled from last year to $6.8 billion to easily top analyst estimates, just as the profit did. Tesla's stock soared 13 percent to $326.12 after the numbers came out. In a conference call with analysts late Wednesday, Musk predicted Tesla would remain profitable from this point onward. FILE- This Oct. 3, 2018, file photo shows the logo of Tesla model 3 at the Auto show in Paris. Tesla Inc. reports earnings on Wednesday, Oct. 24. (AP Photo/Christophe Ena, File) "This quarter was an important step toward that," Musk said after getting choked up talking about the support that Tesla's customers have shown the company. "I am incredibly excited about what lies ahead." If nothing else, the third-quarter performance should help restore some of the credibility that Musk lost after he followed up the bold profit prediction he made in August with a startling tweet informing the world that he had secured financing to pull off a buyout of Tesla. Musk later abandoned his plan and the Securities and Exchange Commission subsequently filed a lawsuit alleging that he had misled investors because he was never close to lining up the estimated $25 billion to $50 billion that it would have taken to pull of the deal he envisioned. After initially denying the SEC's accusations, Musk and Tesla agreed to pay a combined $40 million fine to resolve the case without acknowledging or denying wrongdoing. Musk also must step down as Tesla's chairman for at least three years as part of the settlement, though he can remain as CEO of the company that has become synonymous with him. In Wednesday's conference call, Musk brushed aside a question about the attributes that Tesla wants in its next chairman, who is supposed to be appointed by mid-November under the SEC settlement. He said he would only accept questions about Tesla's operations, squelching any potential questions about the buyout proposal that landed him into trouble. The usually freewheeling Musk was unusually restrained through most of the call with analysts, although he occasional broke into some braggadocio. "I think we may have the most exciting product roadmap of any company on earth, by far," Musk boasted at one point. For now, Tesla must focus on continuing to make money to stay afloat, with about $10 billion in debt that has been taken on while Musk has pursued his ambition to create a viable automaker that makes cars running on something besides gasoline. About $1.3 billion of that debt comes due by March, intensifying the pressure on Musk to stop the steady losses. While Tesla tries to shake up the industry, long-established automaker Ford Motor Co. reported a net profit decline of 37 percent in the third quarter as sales slowed in the U.S. and China. Investors have been calling on Ford to detail a promised $11 billion worth of cuts that were promised during the next five years as the company tries to right-size itself to better compete globally. For Tesla, turning a profit was not its only notable achievement in the third quarter; it also stopped burning through its cash. The company generated positive cash flow of $1.4 billion in the third quarter, compared to a negative $301 million at the same time last year. Musk also told analysts he expects Tesla to continue generating more cash than it uses in every future quarter, with the possible exceptions coming when Tesla has a major debt payment. One of those instances looms during next year's January-March period. Tesla ended September with $2.9 billion in cash, up from $2.2 billion in June. Despite the strong showing, doubts will still hang over Tesla until Musk can prove that the company can consistently make money and realize its production goals. "The results will boost Tesla's stock price, at least for a while, but investors will examine the results to see if they are sustainable or another rabbit Musk has pulled out of a hat using extreme measures that won't work as the company tries to grow," predicted Erik Gordon, a business professor at the University of Michigan. But at least one-time Tesla skeptic converted into a believer, even before the company released its results. Citron Research, which had bet against Tesla stock for years, wrote in a note posted on its website that the company is destroying the competition. It produced charts showing that the Model 3 was the top-selling U.S. luxury car during the first half of the year, more than doubling its closest competitor, the Mercedes C Class. It also maintained Tesla is siphoning sales from Toyota and Honda, too. "As much as you can't believe you are reading this, we can't believe we are writing this," Citron wrote. FILE- In this June 14, 2018, file photo, Tesla CEO and founder of the Boring Company Elon Musk speaks at a news conference in Chicago. Tesla Inc. reports earnings on Wednesday, Oct. 24. (AP Photo/Kiichiro Sato, File) FILE- In this July 6, 2018, file photo prospective customers confer with sales associates as a Model 3 sits on display in a Tesla showroom in the Cherry Creek Mall in Denver. Tesla Inc. reports earnings on Wednesday, Oct. 24. (AP Photo/David Zalubowski, File) FILE- In this Sept. 17, 2018, file photo Tesla CEO and SpaceX founder and chief executive Elon Musk speaks after announcing Japanese billionaire Yusaku Maezawa as the first private passenger on a trip around the moon in Hawthorne, Calif. Tesla Inc. reports earnings on Wednesday, Oct. 24. (AP Photo/Chris Carlson, File) MADISON, Wis. (AP) - President Donald Trump makes a campaign visit to Wisconsin with Republicans growing increasingly nervous about the prospects of holding onto the governor's office, let alone picking up a Senate seat held by a well-positioned Democratic incumbent. Trump on Wednesday will return to a rural part of the state he easily won by double digits in 2016. It is far from the conservative Milwaukee suburbs where his support is weaker, but it's in an area where Gov. Scott Walker and GOP Senate candidate Leah Vukmir will need to do well. The question is whether Trump's presence in the tiny central Wisconsin city of Mosinee (population 4,000) will provide enough of a boost to energize Republican voters to matter for Walker and Vukmir less than two weeks before the election. Vukmir is counting on it as she challenges Sen. Tammy Baldwin. "These are the people we want to be sure to come out to vote," Vukmir said in an interview Tuesday. Vukmir, who is from a conservative Milwaukee suburb in Waukesha County, said it was "far better" for Trump to campaign in central Wisconsin than her part of the state. Vukmir didn't do well in northern Wisconsin in her primary win, which was fueled by strong support in southeast Wisconsin. FILE - In this Oct. 19, 2018, file photo, Gov. Scott Walker, a Republican, speaks during a 10-minute media event before the start of their gubernatorial debate with Democratic Challenger Tony Evers in Madison, Wis. President Donald Trump makes a campaign visit to Wisconsin with Republicans growing increasingly nervous about the prospects of Walker winning a third term, let alone defeating well-positioned incumbent Democratic U.S. Sen. Tammy Baldwin. Trump returns Wednesday, Oct. 24, to a rural part of the state that he easily won by double digits in 2016. (Steve Apps/Wisconsin State Journal via AP, File) "This is the heart of Trump country," said Vukmir, who was campaigning in the area on Tuesday with Rep. Sean Duffy. "This is the part of the state, central Wisconsin and northern, that came through for him and advocates for him." Trump won Wisconsin by less than 1 percentage point, but he carried the county where he's appearing Wednesday 56 percent to 38 percent. He won the mostly rural congressional district by 21 points - the widest margin of any congressional district in the state. Getting out the GOP base in areas that went big for Trump will be important for both Vukmir and Walker. Polls show the race between Walker and Democratic challenger Tony Evers, the state schools superintendent, is a tossup. Baldwin, who is running for a second term, has consistently led Vukmir, a state senator, in fundraising and in polls. Walker on Tuesday released a new television ad attacking Evers over his support for in-state tuition for children of people living in the U.S. illegally and of issuing driver's licenses to immigrants here illegally. The spot ends with the line: "Tony Evers: special treatment for illegals, higher taxes for you." Evers decried the ad as a desperate move to mimic Trump, who has been using campaign rallies to increase his anti-immigrant rhetoric. Trump has a complicated history with both Walker and Vukmir. Walker ran against Trump for president, winning support from Vukmir and most other Wisconsin Republicans. Walker has since become a consistent Trump supporter, although not as vocal as Vukmir. "My relationship with the president is straightforward," Walker said this month. "When he does things that are good for the state of Wisconsin, I praise him for it. When he does things I disagree with, that I think are detrimental to the state of Wisconsin, I call him up or the vice president up or call someone else and do something about it." Trump has put Walker in difficult positions, including when he called for a boycott of Milwaukee-based motorcycle-maker Harley-Davidson amid a tariff dispute. But Walker has stood with Trump on some of his most divisive policies, including supporting building the Mexico-U.S. border wall. He ran ads on Facebook in support of sending National Guard troops to defend the southern border. Vukmir's GOP primary opponent called her loyalty to Trump into question after footage of Vukmir from 2016 emerged in which she said Trump is "offensive to everyone." Vukmir, who later was in a radio ad for Trump in the 2016 campaign, said there are no lingering questions about her support of Trump. "Oh goodness, no," she said. "There weren't even questions back then. It was kind of silly." As Trump heads to central Wisconsin, Democrats are focusing their efforts this week on Milwaukee, the state's largest city. Independent Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders attracted about 1,000 people to a Monday rally at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee, while former President Barack Obama is holding an event in the city Friday. While the Trump visit is designed to excite the Republican base, Democrats say it's also galvanizing their supporters. Trump's visit "just reinforces Walker's racist, sexist, xenophobic record," said Analiese Eicher, program director for the liberal group One Wisconsin Now. "It's doubling down on the policies that divide us." ___ Follow Scott Bauer on Twitter: https://twitter.com/sbauerAP ___ 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 PHILADELPHIA (AP) - Philadelphia has received a $4 million grant to continue lowering its jail population, and city officials said they will focus some of the funding on reducing racial and ethnic disparities in its criminal justice system. The John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation announced the winners Wednesday of the second round of its Safety and Justice Challenge grants, including the largest award to Philadelphia. In all, 13 cities and counties will receive between $350,000 and $4 million each to implement criminal justice reforms to reduce jail populations. Twelve others will receive $50,000 grants to start innovative programs aiming to do the same. Foundation leaders have held up Philadelphia- which received a $3.5 million grant during the first 2016 awards- as an example of success after it announced earlier this year that it had reduced the jail population by about 36 percent in less than three years. "Having all those stakeholders agreeing there's a problem and not just having people push on one part of a system ... is progress," said Laurie Garduque, director of the criminal justice program at the MacArthur Foundation. "It really has been Mayor (Jim Kenney) taking the leadership and pulling all the stakeholders together ... and everyone acknowledging that they still have a lot of work to do in tackling these disparities and engaging the community." City officials stressed the word "challenge" in the grant's name, saying the process has been a lot of continued work. The city spent months planning for the grant, bringing the different agencies- courts, the district attorney's office, public defenders, city departments including police- to the table to plan across the system changes that would decrease the jail population and the length of stay in the city's jails. One of the most successful changes has been the city's Early Bail Review program that promises to put nonviolent offenders facing cash bail of $50,000 or less in front of a judge within five days of arraignment. District Attorney Larry Krasner implemented changes when he took office that reduced the prosecution of certain criminal charges, so grant officials said they're looking at expanding that program to capture more defendants that don't pose a risk to the community. In this Tuesday, Oct. 23, 2018 photo, a guard opens a gate at the deactivated House of Correction in Philadelphia. Philadelphia, which has used previous John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation grants to reduce it's jail population by about 36 percent, will receive $4 million to continue its work. (AP Photo/Matt Rourke) The new funding will be used to continue reducing the population of 8,082 inmates, as of July 2015, by 50 percent by 2020. But the city's grant administrators said the additional funding will be used for much more. "While we have made significant reductions in our local jail population over the last three years, we have seen no measurable change in the representation of people of color in our jail population as compared to their white counterparts," said Rachael Frumin Eisenberg, project director for the grant. "There's a concerted effort by all the partners to really redouble our efforts around trying to reduce racial and ethnic disparities, target specific policy and practice changes that will drive down those disparities." The city will use the funding to expand community engagement, creating a $200,000 fund to award smaller grants to community-based organizations that serve those impacted by the criminal justice system. It will also form a community advisory committee to make sure the initiatives are meeting the community's needs. Additional implementation grants were awarded Wednesday, including to counties in Montana, North Carolina, New York and Missouri and to large cities such as San Francisco. In Allegheny County, Pennsylvania, home of Pittsburgh, officials plan to use $2 million in challenge funding for efforts including continuing a pilot program that provides public defenders to defendants during bail hearings. Erin Dalton, the county's deputy director at the Department of Human Services, said that just from the pilot program, the county has seen a 19 percent reduction in cash bond and an 18 percent decrease in jail bookings. The $50,000 innovation grants were also awarded to jurisdictions across the country from Baltimore to Long Beach, California, to implement programs that do a range of things from connecting re-entry populations to services in Camden County, New Jersey, to connecting female defendants with domestic violence help upon release in Cumberland County, Maine. Maine Pretrial Services in Cumberland County, which includes the city of Portland, works to secure pretrial release for defendants. Deputy Director Shawn LeGrega said women have access to domestic violence workers while in jail, but lose that connection when they are released. The grant will help continue access to domestic violence aid, such as harm reduction planning and help in filing protection orders. "We want to see if the additional connection to gender responsive resources will impact our appearance rate, and our violation rates- the bulk of which in pretrial are related to technical violations," LeGrega said. Garduque and others at the foundation hope programs like Philadelphia's and Cumberland County's are noticed by other municipalities. "What we're really doing is working locally on a national problem," she said. "We hope other jurisdictions can learn from the work that's being done to reduce mass incarceration and start a national movement." This Tuesday, Oct. 23, 2018 photo shows a deactivated House of Correction in Philadelphia. Philadelphia, which has used previous John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation grants to reduce it's jail population by about 36 percent, will receive $4 million to continue its work. (AP Photo/Matt Rourke) This Tuesday, Oct. 23, 2018 photo shows the center control rotunda area at the deactivated House of Correction in Philadelphia. Philadelphia, which has used previous John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation grants to reduce it's jail population by about 36 percent, will receive $4 million to continue its work. (AP Photo/Matt Rourke) In this Tuesday, Oct. 23, 2018 photo, phones hang at the deactivated House of Correction in Philadelphia. Philadelphia, which has used previous John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation grants to reduce it's jail population by about 36 percent, will receive $4 million to continue its work. (AP Photo/Matt Rourke) This Tuesday, Oct. 23, 2018 photo shows a cell at the deactivated House of Correction in Philadelphia. Philadelphia, which has used previous John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation grants to reduce it's jail population by about 36 percent, will receive $4 million to continue its work. (AP Photo/Matt Rourke) This Tuesday, Oct. 23, 2018 photo shows a cell block at the deactivated House of Correction in Philadelphia. Philadelphia, which has used previous John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation grants to reduce it's jail population by about 36 percent, will receive $4 million to continue its work. (AP Photo/Matt Rourke) This Tuesday, Oct. 23, 2018 photo shows a cell with three bunks at the deactivated House of Correction in Philadelphia. Philadelphia, which has used previous John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation grants to reduce it's jail population by about 36 percent, will receive $4 million to continue its work. (AP Photo/Matt Rourke) In this Tuesday, Oct. 23, 2018 photo tables sit in the mess hall at the deactivated House of Correction in Philadelphia. Philadelphia, which has used previous John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation grants to reduce it's jail population by about 36 percent, will receive $4 million to continue its work. (AP Photo/Matt Rourke) MILILANI, Hawaii (AP) - Val Okimoto, a mother of two, may be the Republican Party's best hope in Democrat-dominant Hawaii. The former special education teacher is spending long days knocking on doors in the suburban Honolulu town of Mililani, listening to voters fret about the high cost of living and their rising expenses. She believes they're ready to elect someone like her to the state House. "There's been a disconnect between the people who represent us and what I call 'us normal people' that live in the community," Okimoto said in a recent interview. The Republican Party currently has just five representatives in the 51-member state House. All 25 state senators are Democrats, as is the governor and the entire congressional delegation. Shirlene Ostrov, the party's chairwoman, is bringing in experienced staffers from the mainland to professionalize local campaigns, and is working to build its donor base and recruit candidates. There's still a long way to go. Republicans are contesting just 5 of the 13 state Senate seats next month and only 17 of the 51 House seats. Ostrov said the party is focusing on candidate quality, not quantity. "We targeted districts we could win and recruited candidates that would help us win some seats. We know that if we do that every time we can slowly increase our numbers," she said. The GOP in Hawaii has struggled since the 1950s, as labor unions increasingly organized workers in once numerous sugar and pineapple plantations. Democrats first swept into power that decade ushered in a minimum hourly wage and more spending on education. In later decades they pursued reforms that boosted middle class land ownership and mandates for employer-provided health insurance. In this Tuesday, Oct. 16, 2018 photo, Val Okimoto, a Republican candidate to represent the Honolulu suburb of Mililani in the state House, speaks to voter John Vannatta in Mililani, Hawaii. Hawaii's Republican Party has just five representatives in the 51-member state House. (AP Photo/Audrey McAvoy) The GOP became associated with an era before statehood when white plantation owners dominated Hawaii's economy and government. It was a time when the U.S. territory's mostly non-white workers struggled for fair wages, education and career opportunities and things like getting loans from banks. Of the seven governors elected since Hawaii became a state 1959, only one has been a Republican. In recent years, electoral losses and multiple defections by elected Republican lawmakers to the Democratic Party have whittled the party's numbers further. Last year, Republicans in the state House demanded the resignation of their minority leader, Beth Fukumoto, after she criticized misogynistic remarks by President Donald Trump. She quit the party soon after and joined the Democrats, leaving House Republicans with just five members. Neal Milner, a retired University of Hawaii professor of political science, said the party has multiple challenges, including finding candidates with significant political experience and name recognition. Bob McDermott, a Republican state representative from suburban Ewa Beach, says the future of the party lies in socially conservative voters in suburbs and rural areas west of Honolulu. But, he said, the party has to find candidates that match the demographics of their district. Ostrov said the party has pulled in a broad cross-section of Hawaii's people. "This is not your Hawaii Republican Party of yesterday. It's a very diverse party. It represents all demographics of our islands," said Ostrov, who is Filipino. She notes its 17-member executive committee includes a Native Hawaiian, Samoan, Filipino, Japanese, Korean, African-American and Caucasian. Okimoto, who is seeking a vacant state House seat, is part Filipino, Japanese and Caucasian. She grew up on the island of Kauai and believes her background as a teacher resonates with voters. Okimoto is opposed to "excessive taxation" and abortion. She supports the rights of gay people, but opposes redefining marriage. Hawaii was one of the first states to legalize abortion, in 1970, three years before Roe v. Wade. It legalized same-sex marriage in 2013. Fukumoto represented the area as both a Republican and then a Democrat. Okimoto's opponent, Marilyn Lee - a mother of four and a grandmother of eight - represented the area until Fukumoto ousted her in 2012. She said an Okimoto win would send "a very conservative woman" to the Legislature at a time when Republican control of the White House, potentially Congress and a new conservative majority on the U.S. Supreme Court may mean Hawaii will have to do more to protect women's access to health care. "Even though we have a Democratic majority, I think we need women who are really strongly willing to fight for these things," Lee said. Ostrov said the party's strategy toward winning is simply logical and pragmatic. "What the Republican Party is focused on is making incremental changes in order to provide the state of Hawaii a choice, in that we would provide a viable two-party system," Ostrov said. In this Tuesday, Oct. 16, 2018 photo, Val Okimoto, right, a candidate to represent the Honolulu suburb of Mililani in the state House, speaks to voter Corazon Faxon, middle, and Faxon's son Matthew Faxon, left, as she walks door-to-door in Mililani, Hawaii. Hawaii's Republican Party has just five representatives in the 51-member state House. (AP Photo/Audrey McAvoy) In this Tuesday, Oct. 16, 2018 photo, Val Okimoto, a Republican candidate to represent the Honolulu suburb of Mililani in the state House, walks door-to-door to speak to voters in Mililani, Hawaii. Hawaii's Republican Party has just five representatives in the 51-member state House. (AP Photo/Audrey McAvoy) NEW DELHI (AP) - The government of India placed the director of the federal investigative agency and his deputy on leave on Wednesday days after the agency filed a case against the deputy alleging that he took bribes to settle a money laundering case. A government appointment committee headed by Prime Minister Narendra Modi put out an order around 2 a.m. Wednesday sending the Central Bureau of Investigation's top two officials on leave and appointing a joint director as the interim head. India's Central Vigilance Commission, an autonomous anti-corruption body, had recommended the removal of director Alok Verma and special director Rakesh Asthana on Tuesday, Finance Minister Arun Jaitley said in a news conference Wednesday, calling it a "bizarre and unfortunate" situation. A feud between Verma and Ashthana had been simmering since before Asthana was promoted to the agency's second-highest post last year. Under Verma, the CBI filed a case against Asthana on allegations that he took bribes from a meat exporter the agency was investigating for money laundering. On Monday, the agency arrested its deputy superintendent of police - the lead in the money-laundering investigation - on forgery charges related to the allegations against Asthana. On Tuesday, Asthana asked the Delhi High Court to quash the case against him. The court has set a hearing for next week. A rickshaw puller pedals past outdoor broadcasting vans of various television channels lined up outside Central Bureau of Investigation headquarters in New Delhi, India, Wednesday, Oct. 24, 2018. The government of India placed the director of the federal investigative agency and his deputy on leave on Wednesday days after the agency filed a case against the deputy alleging that he took bribes to settle a money laundering case. (AP Photo/Altaf Qadri) The Supreme Court is set to hear Verma's challenge to his removal on Friday. SYDNEY (AP) - The wife of actor Geoffrey Rush cried as she told a Sydney court on Wednesday how he had wept and curled up in the fetal position following newspaper allegations he had behaved inappropriately toward a female co-star. Rush himself also admitted to the court he may have described the co-star, Eryn Jean Norvill, as "yummy," but denied this was accompanied by inappropriate hand gestures. Rush's wife, Jane Menelaus, who's also an actor, wept as she appeared in the witness box at Sydney's Federal Court, where her Oscar-winning husband is suing the publisher of Sydney's Daily Telegraph newspaper and its journalist Jonathon Moran for defamation. The Telegraph's articles last November referred to an allegation that Rush behaved inappropriately toward his co-star - later revealed to be Norvill - during the Sydney Theatre Company's production of King Lear in 2015 and 2016. Menelaus said Rush held her and cried after he saw the first of two Telegraph articles and said, "This has destroyed everything." He became uncharacteristically quiet, was "quite fetal at times on the bed," couldn't sleep and groaned every morning, Menelaus told the court. Australian actor Geoffrey Rush, left, and his wife Jane Menelaus leave the Federal Court in Sydney, Wednesday, Oct. 24, 2018. Rush is suing Nationwide News for defamation. Rush's wife has wept while telling a court how her husband cried and curled up in the fetal position after a newspaper alleged he'd behaved inappropriately toward a co-star. (Brendan Esposito/AAP Image via AP) "For 11 months we've been going round and round in circles, trying to understand why someone would hate us so much," she said on day 3 of the hearing. Rush, 67, denies the allegations against him, and argues the newspaper made him out to be a pervert and a sexual predator. The paper's publisher, Nationwide News, and Moran are pleading a defense of truth and Norvill - who didn't speak with Moran for the articles - has agreed to give evidence. Rush, during cross-examination earlier Wednesday, said he might have told Norvill she looked "yummy" during rehearsals but denied suggestions he'd done this while licking his lips, sticking out his tongue or making groping gestures toward her torso. "Yummy has a spirit to it because we are about to go into - most of our scenes together are going to be very dramatic and harrowing, this is a good start," Rush said in response to questions from defense lawyer Tom Blackburn. He denied suggestions he touched Norvill's lower back under her shirt backstage and deliberately touched or moved his fingers along her breast during a scene in which he carried her. Norvill played Cordelia, the daughter of Rush's titular character, and in that scene he was carrying her body after her death. Rush said he wanted in that moment to "feel the silhouette or the halo of her torso ... that she is no longer alive" but as he caressed down "it wasn't at breast level, it was down torso level." Menelaus said her husband had been "totally bamboozled" about what someone could have said about him when he learned the Telegraph would run their first story about the allegations. She said he was constantly scanning the internet for what people said about him, and worried his adult children believed the articles and didn't love him as much as before. The trial before Judge Michael Wigney is expected to last 13 days. BRUSSELS (AP) - A leading British Conservative in the European Parliament has come under a barrage of criticism after he compared current-day socialist parties with Nazism. Addressing socialist lawmakers in a debate Wednesday, Syed Kamall said "you have to remember that Nazis were National Socialists, a strain of socialism, so let's not pretend. It's a left-wing ideology." The remarks caused an immediate uproar and Kamall added "you don't like the truth, do you?" Kamall later said he "apologized directly & unreservedly" to the leader of the socialist group, but criticism was scathing. Socialists opposed Nazism and were among the early victims of the extreme-right ideologies of Adolf Hitler. EU Commission Vice President Frans Timmermans said that claims that Nazism is left-wing or socialist had been pushed by the extreme right on the internet for the past few years, but added "what is new to me is that the leader in this house of the party of Churchill and Thatcher would appropriate that narrative." FILE - In this Friday, June 24, 2016 file photo, Leader of the European Conservatives and Reformists Syed Kamall speaks in Brussels. A leading British Conservative in the European Parliament has come under a barrage of criticism after he compared current-day socialist parties with Nazism. Addressing socialist lawmakers in a debate Wednesday, Oct. 24, 2018 Syed Kamall said "you have to remember that Nazis were National Socialists, a strain of socialism." (AP Photo/Olivier Matthys, File) "What has happened to the Conservative Party?" he asked legislators. ALDE Liberal leader Guy Verhofstadt too was stunned. Kamall's words were "an insult to all the Social Democrats who fought against Nazism and died in concentration camps," Verhofstadt said. The S&D socialist group said socialists "throughout Europe resisted Hitler's regime and paid for it with their lives. With his disgusting comparison, Kamall has mocked these brave people." Kamall tweeted that it was not a comment aimed at anyone and "I have upmost respect for anyone who stood up & fought against Nazism, Communism & any other kinds of extremism." It's the second time this month that Conservatives in British Prime Minister Theresa May's party have gotten in hot water over a historical analogy. British Foreign Secretary Jeremy Hunt earlier compared the European Union to the Soviet Union. There was equal criticism across the EU of Hunt's comments, which caused particular offense in eastern EU nations that were under the control of Moscow for 40-plus years after World War II. BRUSSELS (AP) - NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg said Wednesday that allies blame Russia for violating an important Cold War-era missile treaty but he does not expect them to deploy more nuclear warheads in Europe in response. In Moscow, Russian President Vladimir Putin followed up on U.S. President Donald Trump's declared intention to pull out of the 1987 arms control pact by warning that if the U.S. deploys the now-banned missiles in Europe, Russia would target the nations hosting them. The European Union has described the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces (INF) Treaty as a cornerstone of European security and urged Russia and the United States to uphold it. But Stoltenberg did not encourage the U.S., the biggest and most influential member of NATO, to stay in the treaty. "I don't foresee that allies will deploy more nuclear weapons in Europe as a response to the new Russian missile," Stoltenberg told reporters at NATO headquarters in Brussels. However, he noted that the 29 allies were assessing "the implications of the new Russian missile for our security." Putin said he hoped the United States did not plan to put the kind of missiles the treaty banned in Europe, if it does withdraw from the pact. "If they are deployed in Europe, we will naturally have to respond in kind," Putin said at a news conference after talks with visiting Italian Prime Minister Giuseppe Conte. "The European nations that would agree to that should understand that they would expose their territory to the threat of a possible retaliatory strike." Emergency services attend the scene after four soldiers were injured during the NATO exercise Trident Juncture at Stuggusjoen in Tydal, Norway, Tuesday, Oct. 23, 2018. A report says multiple military vehicles were involved in the accident Tuesday in conjunction with exercise.(Ola Haakon Oestby / NTB scanpix via AP) The Russian leader strongly rejected U.S. and NATO allegations that Moscow has violated the treaty. He charged it was the U.S. that violated pact with missile defense facilities in Romania that could be used to hold cruise missiles in violation of the INF. With tensions over the treaty's possible unraveling mounting, NATO on Thursday officially launches its Trident Juncture war games in Norway, its biggest maneuvers since the Cold War. Russia, which shares a border with Norway, has been briefed by NATO on the exercises and invited to monitor them, but the move has still angered Moscow. Russia's defense minister warned that Moscow could be forced to respond to increased NATO military activities near its western border. "NATO's military activities near our borders have reached the highest level since the Cold War times," Russian Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu said, noting that the war games will be "simulating offensive military action." Speaking on a trip to Belarus, Shoigu also warned that Poland's plan to permanently host a U.S. army division would affect regional stability and trigger a Russian response. He said Moscow would have to "take retaliatory measures to neutralize possible military threats." The NATO maneuvers in Norway will involve around 50,000 personnel, 65 ships, 250 aircraft and 10,000 vehicles in a hypothetical scenario that involves restoring Norway's sovereignty after an attack by a "fictitious aggressor." The United States insists that a new Russian missile system - known as the 9M729 - contravenes the 1987 INF treaty. NATO allies agree that is probably the case. The pact between Moscow and Washington bans an entire class of weapons - all land-based cruise and ballistic missiles with a range from 500-5,500 kilometers (310-3,410 miles.) Experts say the Russian system would operate at lower altitudes, making it tough to detect and bring down. It could also reach targets across Europe and even the U.S. west coast if stationed in Siberia. Stoltenberg said he was concerned about the weapons, but did not expect a repeat of the so-called "Euromissiles crisis" in the 1980s. Back then, the United States deployed cruise missiles in Europe to counterbalance a perceived threat from Russia's SS-20 nuclear warheads. "The INF is a landmark treaty, but the problem is that no treaty can be effective, can work, if it's only respected by one" side, Stoltenberg said, adding that the "U.S. is in full compliance." He said, based on U.S. intelligence and Russia's reluctance to discuss the missile system with NATO, "the most plausible explanation is that Russia is in violation of the treaty." Asked whether he thought the United States should stick with it, Stoltenberg said: "The challenge, the problem, is the Russian behavior which we have seen over many years." In Berlin, Germany's foreign minister urged his Russian counterpart to do everything possible to preserve the treaty. The German Foreign Ministry said Heiko Maas told Russia's Sergey Lavrov on Wednesday that includes clearing up the allegations that Moscow has violated the pact. ___ Vladimir Isachenkov in Moscow and Geir Moulson in Berlin contributed to this report. NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg talks to journalists during a news conference at the NATO headquarters in Brussels, Wednesday, Oct. 24, 2018. Stoltenberg briefed reporters on alleged Russian breaches of the INF international missile agreement, and on the alliance's military exercises in Norway, its biggest since the Cold War. (AP Photo/Francisco Seco) NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg talks to journalists during a news conference at the NATO headquarters in Brussels, Wednesday, Oct. 24, 2018. Stoltenberg briefed reporters on alleged Russian breaches of the INF international missile agreement, and on the alliance's military exercises in Norway, its biggest since the Cold War. (AP Photo/Francisco Seco) Russian President Vladimir Putin, left, and U.S. National security adviser John Bolton shakes hands during their meeting in the Kremlin in Moscow, Russia, Tuesday, Oct. 23, 2018. Putin poked fun at the official seal of the United States while hosting U.S. President Donald Trump's national security adviser Tuesday, saying he wondered if the American eagle had plucked all the olives from the branch in its talon. (AP Photo/Alexander Zemlianichenko) Russian President Vladimir Putin, right, speaks with U.S. National security adviser John Bolton during their meeting in the Kremlin in Moscow, Russia, Tuesday, Oct. 23, 2018. (AP Photo/Alexander Zemlianichenko) NEW YORK (AP) - Former New York state Senate leader Dean Skelos was sentenced to four years and three months in prison Wednesday after his conviction on public corruption charges. U.S. District Judge Kimba M. Wood announced the penalty for the longtime Republican powerbroker, citing his health challenges at age 70 as reason to reduce his sentence from the five years she gave him previously. She said she would have given him only four years in prison, except he lied and distorted truth on the witness stand. The judge said Skelos had caused "immeasurable damage" to the respect New Yorkers have in their state government. She also cited a need to send a message to politicians who might contemplate illegally profiting from power. Skelos and his son Adam were convicted in July on charges of extortion, wire fraud and bribery. Their 2015 convictions were rejected on appeal after the U.S. Supreme Court narrowed public corruption law as it overturned the conviction of former Virginia Gov. Bob McDonnell. Prosecutors had urged at least 6 years in prison for the elder Skelos while his lawyers said he should get no more than two years. FILE - In this May 12, 2016 file photo, former New York state Senate leader Dean Skelos leaves court in New York. Skelos was sentenced to four years and three months in prison Wednesday, Oct. 24, 2018, after his conviction on public corruption charges. U.S. District Judge Kimba M. Wood announced the penalty for the longtime Republican powerbroker, citing his health challenges at age 70 as reason to reduce his sentence from the five years she gave him at a previous sentencing. (AP Photo/Seth Wenig, File) His son was sentenced Wednesday afternoon to four years in prison, 2 years less than he received after his original conviction. The strain of two trials caused a rift between the elder Skelos and his son that they both alluded to in their remarks. "My son Adam, I love him more today than yesterday," a choked-up Dean Skelos said. "Although our relationship is strained, I hope it will someday be restored." Later in the day, Adam Skelos said of his father: "We don't talk anymore. That's a loss I thought I would only experience in death." Adam Skelos said he was changed: "I don't remember the person I once was." Dean Skelos and his son were arrested in 2015 when prosecutors alleged that the father abused his public office by pressuring businesses that needed state help to give his son no-show jobs if they wanted to retain his political support. The men were convicted just weeks after Democrat Sheldon Silver - the former state Assembly Speaker - was convicted on corruption charges in a retrial that also came after the Supreme Court McDonnell ruling. Silver was sentenced in July to seven years in prison, considerably less than the dozen years he received after his 2015 conviction on charges he earned $4 million illegally in return for legislative favors for a cancer researcher and real estate developers. At trial, Dean Skelos testified there was never a quid pro quo expected when he reached out on behalf of Adam, 36. Silver and Skelos were among a trio dubbed the "three men in a room" in Albany, a nod to the longstanding practice of legislative leaders and the governor negotiating key bills behind closed doors. Skelos served in the Senate from 1985 to 2015 and became Senate leader in 2008. LONDON (AP) - Ireland's government has approved a forensic excavation of a Catholic-run orphanage where a mass grave containing the remains of hundreds of children was discovered. Children's Minister Katherine Zappone announced Tuesday the excavation and recovery of remains. There will be a respectful burial where possible, she said. The excavation, which will begin after legislation is passed, follows a report from a judge-led commission that confirmed last year that the former Bon Secours Mother and Baby Home in Tuam, County Galway, had an underground sewage structure divided into 20 chambers containing "significant quantities of human remains." Church-run homes in Ireland housed orphans, unmarried pregnant women and their babies for most of the 20th century. The institutions have been subject to intense public scrutiny since a local historian in 2014 tracked down death certificates for nearly 800 children who had died as residents of the facility - but could find a burial record for only one child. Investigators later found a mass grave containing remains of babies and young children from 35 weeks to 3-years-old on the grounds of the home, which closed in 1961. Zappone raised the mass grave scandal with Pope Francis when he visited Ireland in August, calling it a "shameful chapter of recent Irish history." The pope urged the Irish church to make reparations to the home's survivors for its role. SANAA, Yemen (AP) - The Saudi-led coalition has sent reinforcements to Yemen's west coast ahead of a fresh assault on the rebel-held port city of Hodeida, Yemeni officials said Wednesday. The city is a lifeline for international aid deliveries, and the battle to wrest it from the rebels has, like the rest of Yemen's war, fallen into a stalemate. The officials said the reinforcements arrived Wednesday in tanks and armored vehicles provided by the United Arab Emirates, a key member of the coalition that has been battling the Shiite rebels, known as Houthis, since 2015. Medical officials say that in the past 48 hours, at least 65 combatants have been killed and hundreds wounded in fighting around Hodeida and other parts of the country. Later on Wednesday, Yemeni security and medical officials said an airstrike by a Saudi-led coalition killed five civilians and wounded eight more just south of Hodeida. They said the victims worked at an outdoor fruit and vegetable market. FILE - In this Saturday, Sept. 29, 2018, file photo, a cargo ship is docked at the port, in Hodeida, Yemen. Yemeni officials said Wednesday, Oct. 24, 2018 that the Saudi-led coalition has sent reinforcements to Yemen's west coast ahead of a fresh assault on the rebel-held port city of Hodeida.(AP Photo/Hani Mohammed, File) The officials had no information on what the intended target was, but it has not been uncommon for coalition jet-fighters to hit civilian targets. Since the war began, they have hit wedding parties, funerals, residential homes and hospitals. Coalition officials often blame the rebels, accusing them of using civilians as human shields. All the officials spoke anonymously because they were not authorized to brief the media. BRUSSELS (AP) - The head of Apple on Wednesday endorsed tough privacy laws for both Europe and the U.S. and renewed the technology giant's commitment to protecting personal data, which he warned was being "weaponized" against users. Speaking at an international conference on data privacy, Apple CEO Tim Cook applauded European Union authorities for bringing in a strict new data privacy law in May and said the iPhone maker supports a U.S. federal privacy law . Cook's speech, along with video comments from Google and Facebook top bosses, in the European Union's home base in Brussels, underscores how the U.S. tech giants are jostling to curry favor in the region as regulators tighten their scrutiny. Data protection has become a major political issue worldwide, and European regulators have led the charge in setting new rules for the big internet companies. The EU's new General Data Protection Regulation, or GDPR, requires companies to change the way they do business in the region, and a number of headline-grabbing data breaches have raised public awareness of the issue. "In many jurisdictions, regulators are asking tough questions. It is time for rest of the world, including my home country, to follow your lead," Cook said. "We at Apple are in full support of a comprehensive federal privacy law in the United States," he said, to applause from hundreds of privacy officials from more than 70 countries. Apple CEO Tim Cook speaks during a data privacy conference at the European Parliament in Brussels, Wednesday, Oct. 24, 2018. (AP Photo/Virginia Mayo) In the U.S., California is moving to put in regulations similar to the EU's strict rules by 2020 and other states are mulling more aggressive laws. That's rattled the big tech companies, which are pushing for a federal law that would treat them more leniently. Cook warned that technology's promise to drive breakthroughs that benefit humanity is at risk of being overshadowed by the harm it can cause by deepening division and spreading false information. He said the trade in personal information "has exploded into a data industrial complex." "Our own information, from the everyday to the deeply personal, is being weaponized against us with military efficiency," he said. Scraps of personal data are collected for digital profiles that let businesses know users better than they know themselves and allow companies to offer users "increasingly extreme content" that hardens their convictions, Cook said. "This is surveillance. And these stockpiles of personal data serve only to enrich the companies that collect them," he said. "This should make us very uncomfortable. It should unsettle us." Cook's appearance was one-up on his tech rivals and showed off his company's credentials in data privacy, which has become a weak point for both Facebook and Google. That is facilitated also by the fact that Apple makes most of its money by selling hardware like iPhones instead of ads based on user data. "With the spotlight shining as directly as it is, Apple have the opportunity to show that they are the leading player and they are taking up the mantle," said Ben Robson, a lawyer at Oury Clark specializing in data privacy. Cook's appearance "is going to have good currency," with officials, he added. His speech comes a week after Apple unveiled expanded privacy protection measures for people in the U.S., Canada, Australia and New Zealand, including allowing them to download all personal data held by Apple. European users already had access to this feature after GDPR took effect. Apple plans to expand it worldwide. Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg and Google head Sundar Pichai sent brief video remarks to the annual meeting of global data privacy chiefs. Zuckerberg said the social network takes seriously its "basic ethical responsibility" to safeguard personal information but added that "the past year has shown we have a lot more work to do," referring to a big data breach and the scandal over the misuse of data by political consultancy Cambridge Analytica. He also said the company is investing in measures to beef up protection, including building a new tool to let users clear their browsing activity and deploying artificial intelligence to detect fake accounts and take down extremist content. They both said they supported regulation, with Pichai noting Google recently proposed a legislative framework that would build on GDPR and extend many of its principles to users globally. The International Conference of Data Protection and Privacy Commissioners , held in a different city every year, normally attracts little attention but its Brussels venue this year takes on symbolic meaning as EU officials ratchet up their tech regulation. The 28-nation EU took on global leadership of the issue when it launched GDPR. The new rules require companies to justify the collection and use of personal data gleaned from phones, apps and visited websites. They must also give EU users the ability to access and delete data, and to object to data use. GDPR also allows for big fines benchmarked to revenue, which for big tech companies could amount to billions of dollars. In the first big test of the new rules, Ireland's data protection commission, which is a lead authority for Europe as many big tech firms are based in the country, is investigating Facebook's data breach, which let hackers access 3 million EU accounts. Google, meanwhile, shut down its Plus social network this month after revealing it had a flaw that could have exposed personal information of up to half a million people. ___ Follow Kelvin Chan at www.twitter.com/chanman Apple CEO Tim Cook speaks during a data privacy conference at the European Parliament in Brussels, Wednesday, Oct. 24, 2018. (AP Photo/Virginia Mayo) Apple CEO Tim Cook holds up an iPhone as he speaks during a data privacy conference at the European Parliament in Brussels, Wednesday, Oct. 24, 2018. (AP Photo/Virginia Mayo) Apple CEO Tim Cook speaks during a data privacy conference at the European Parliament in Brussels, Wednesday, Oct. 24, 2018. (AP Photo/Virginia Mayo) Apple CEO Tim Cook applauds during a data privacy conference at the European Parliament in Brussels, Wednesday, Oct. 24, 2018. (AP Photo/Virginia Mayo) Creator of the World Wide Web Sir Tim Berners-Lee speaks during a data privacy conference at the European Parliament in Brussels, Wednesday, Oct. 24, 2018. (AP Photo/Virginia Mayo) European Data Protection Supervisor Giovanni Buttarelli, right, speaks during a data privacy conference at the European Parliament in Brussels, Wednesday, Oct. 24, 2018. (AP Photo/Virginia Mayo) European Data Protection Supervisor Giovanni Buttarelli, left, poses with Apple CEO Tim Cook, center, during a data privacy conference at the European Parliament in Brussels, Wednesday, Oct. 24, 2018. (AP Photo/Virginia Mayo) Apple CEO Tim Cook speaks during a data privacy conference at the European Parliament in Brussels, Wednesday, Oct. 24, 2018. (AP Photo/Virginia Mayo) Creator of the World Wide Web Sir Tim Berners-Lee speaks during a data privacy conference at the European Parliament in Brussels, Wednesday, Oct. 24, 2018. (AP Photo/Virginia Mayo) Apple CEO Tim Cook speaks during a data privacy conference at the European Parliament in Brussels, Wednesday, Oct. 24, 2018. (AP Photo/Virginia Mayo) ISLAMABAD (AP) - Prime Minister Imran Khan's decision to attend a Riyadh investment conference despite the outcry over the killing of a Saudi journalist has coincided with an agreement for a $6 billion assistance package from the oil-rich kingdom, a crucial infusion of cash as Pakistan grapples with a soaring deficit. Analysts say the Saudi infusion will allow Islamabad to breathe a little easier as it seeks a critical loan from the International Monetary Fund to address its $18 billion deficit. The deal was signed Tuesday by Pakistan's Finance Minister Asad Umar and his Saudi counterpart, Muhammad Abdullah Al-Jadaan, on the sidelines of the Saudi conference. The two countries have longstanding ties. Khan attended the high-profile conference despite calls from Pakistani rights activists to boycott it in protest at the killing of Jamal Khashoggi in the Saudi Consulate in Istanbul earlier this month. Several prominent Western executives and officials pulled out of the gathering, known as the Future Investment Initiative, which was the brainchild of Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman. Khan, who was elected earlier this year, inherited an economy in shambles, with foreign exchange reserves barely sufficient to cover a month's worth of the country's import bills. Pakistani Prime Minister Imran Khan, speaks in front of a screen displaying his national flag during the opening of the Future Investment Initiative conference, in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, Tuesday, Oct. 23, 2018. A high-profile economic forum in Saudi Arabia has begun in Riyadh, the kingdom's first major event on the world stage since the killing of writer Jamal Khashoggi at the Saudi Consulate in Istanbul earlier this month. (AP Photo/Amr Nabil) Local news organizations quoted Khan as saying that Pakistan could not afford to boycott the conference, although he did denounce the killing of Khashoggi. In a televised address Wednesday, Khan said he secured a "great package" from Saudi Arabia. He said Pakistan was at risk of going into default if it did not secure aid from friendly countries as well as the IMF, and that without the Saudi aid, the country would have had to seek a much larger bailout from the global lender. The Saudi financial infusion provides Pakistan with an immediate $3 billion to bolster its foreign exchange reserves, the Foreign Ministry said. Pakistan is to return the $3 billion after one year, but the terms are apparently negotiable. Pakistan is also to receive $3 billion in oil imports on a buy-now-pay-later basis under the Saudi deal. Currently, Pakistan imports more than 1 million barrels of Saudi oil a day at an annual cost of $3 billion. The assistance package will put Pakistan in a better bargaining position going into negotiations with the IMF, said Tariq Yousuf Khan, an economics professor in the southern port city of Karachi. Pakistan is seeking an $8 billion to $11 billion IMF bailout package. An IMF delegation is expected in Pakistan next month. ___ Associated Press Writer Kathy Gannon in Kabul, Afghanistan, contributed to this report. Pakistani Prime Minister Imran Khan prepares to speak at the opening of the Future Investment Initiative conference, in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, Tuesday, Oct. 23, 2018. The high-profile economic forum in Saudi Arabia is the kingdom's first major event on the world stage since the killing of writer Jamal Khashoggi at the Saudi Consulate in Istanbul earlier this month. (AP Photo/Amr Nabil) Pakistani Prime Minister Imran Khan, right and United Arab Emirates Prime Minister Sheikh Mohammad bin Rashed, attend the opening of the Future Investment Initiative conference, in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, Tuesday, Oct. 23, 2018. A high-profile economic forum in Saudi Arabia has begun in Riyadh, the kingdom's first major event on the world stage since the killing of writer Jamal Khashoggi at the Saudi Consulate in Istanbul earlier this month. (AP Photo/Amr Nabil) BERLIN (AP) - The killing of writer Jamal Khashoggi has prompted soul-searching in some European countries about their sale of arms to Saudi Arabia, long one of the biggest buyers of sophisticated Western weaponry. While the United States ranks first among Saudi's arms suppliers, Europe, too, has been selling billions of dollars' worth of weapons to the kingdom for decades. Appeals have mounted in recent days calling for such deals to be halted: On Sunday, German Chancellor Angela Merkel said that arms exports to Saudi Arabia "can't take place in the situation we're currently in," citing Khashoggi's death. But despite the outrage, no European country has yet taken concrete action to change how business is done. Spain's prime minister said Wednesday his government would fulfill past arms sales contracts with Saudi Arabia despite his "dismay" over the "terrible murder" of Khashoggi earlier this month in the Saudi Consulate in Istanbul. Pedro Sanchez told lawmakers that protecting jobs in southern Spain was central to his decision last month to go ahead with a controversial bomb shipment to Saudi Arabia. In London, British Prime Minister Theresa May also rebuffed a call from opposition lawmakers to end weapons sales to the Arab kingdom, telling Parliament on Wednesday that "the procedures we follow are among the strictest in the world." Activists holding banners in the shape of missiles reading in Spanish "Decisions that kill" protest against the sale of weapons to Saudi Arabia in front of the Spanish Parliament in Madrid, Wednesday, Oct. 24, 2018. Spain's prime minister says his government will fulfill past arms sales contracts with Saudi Arabia despite his "dismay" over the "terrible murder" of journalist Jamal Khashoggi. . (AP Photo/Andrea Comas) Spain, Germany, Italy and Switzerland each accounted for about two percent of Saudi Arabia's arms imports between 2013 and 2017, according to figures compiled by the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute, or SIPRI. France accounted for about 4 percent, while Britain took a 23 percent share of the business - behind the United States with 61 percent. Merkel's economy minister, Peter Altmaier, called Monday for a common European Union position on arms sales to Saudi Arabia, telling a public broadcaster that "only if all European countries agree would this make an impression on the government in Riyadh." Even if Germany were to stop the exports, "it will have no positive consequences ... if at the same time other countries fill this gap," he said. Slovakia's Foreign Ministry said Wednesday it was willing to discuss the German proposal. In neighboring Czech Republic, Foreign Minister Tomas Petricek said he also supported a discussion as he summoned the Saudi ambassador to Prague to tell him "any attacks on journalists are unacceptable." But Britain's foreign secretary highlighted the difficulty in agreeing on a common EU stance on Saudi arms exports when he pointed out last month that "With countries like Saudi Arabia, countries like China, the way you make the most progress is by talking to them in private." "If you talk about these things publicly you lose the access, they say 'we don't want to deal with you' and you put yourself in a position where you have no influence over what's happening," Jeremy Hunt told Sky News. Should Western nations halt their sales, one country that might step in is Russia. Russian and Saudi officials discussed possible arms sales including S-400 air defense systems during a landmark visit by King Salman last October, but no contract was signed. Saudi Arabia also has expressed interest in setting up production of Russian Kornet-EM anti-tank missiles, TOS-1A rocket launchers and AGS-30 automatic grenade launchers and the latest version of the Kalashnikov assault rifle in their country. It is unclear if any of those deals are nearing implementation. Russia's cautious stance on Khashoggi's murder could be changing that, experts say. Kirill Semenyov, a Middle East expert on the Foreign Affairs Council which advises the Kremlin, said the Saudis would be looking for alternatives like Russia if one of their key partners were to pull out of the deals. "If the U.S. or Britain were to renege on the contracts to supply fighter jets or other weapons like tanks, it would be a serious blow, that would push Saudi Arabia to buy arms from Russia like T-90 tanks or Su-35 planes," he said. A sizeable Russian business delegation on Tuesday descended on an investment conference in Riyadh to show that Moscow is unfazed by the accusations against the royal family. Kirill Dmitriev, chairman of the state-owned Russian Direct Investment Fund, told state-owned Rossiya 24 channel that "Saudi partners are appreciative of our balanced position." ''We continue to cooperate with Saudi Arabia's investment fund and other partners," he added. Dmitriev likened the investigation into Khashoggi's killing to recent accusations leveled against Russia over the poisoning of a former Russian spy in Britain and cyber-attacks around the world. "There's a lot of speculation and unverified information around," he said. French government spokesman Benjamin Griveaux said Wednesday that Paris will agree to sanctions against Saudi Arabia only if it's proven they are to blame in the journalist's killing. "As long as these facts are not corroborated by our intelligence services, we will withhold our response," Griveaux said. "But once the light is made, that these facts are corroborated by our services, and in the event that Saudi Arabia's responsibility is proven, then we will draw the consequences and we will take sanctions. And I will tell you something, it would not be just about weapons." Diederik Cops, a researcher at the Flemish Peace Institute in Belgium, suggested that the European focus on military goods would have been more appropriate years ago in reaction to the Yemen conflict, where Saudi relies heavily on foreign arms and equipment. It may have taken the Khashoggi killing to force a change, he said. "Most governments are threatening with arms and questioning arms exports because they know that is the most strong ... political pressure instrument they can use at this moment toward the Saudis," he said. But, he added, it's hard to tell if a global initiative on prohibiting arms exports to Saudi Arabia will take hold because of geopolitical and economic factors. Rights groups have long called unethical the multibillion-dollar U.S. and European arms sales to Saudi Arabia, for decades one of the world's largest buyers of weapons. They point to the growing number of civilian casualties in Yemen's ongoing civil war, in which the Saudis lead a mostly Arab coalition against Iranian-supported Shiite rebels known as the Houthis. Calls for the deals to be suspended have often surfaced in the wake of airstrikes by the U.S.-backed, Saudi-led coalition fighting against the Iranian-supported Shiite rebels in Yemen. The airstrikes have killed hundreds of Yemeni civilians, including women and children, since the commencement of the war in 2015. After an August airstrike hit a bus carrying Yemeni children on their way to school in the country's north, killing more than 40, Human Rights Watch said the incident highlighted the "callous indifference of the Western powers enthusiastically arming the Saudi-led coalition." On Wednesday, Spanish activists protested outside Parliament holding bomb-shaped signs reading "Decisions that kill." Haizam Amirah Fernandez, an expert at Madrid-based think-tank Elcano Royal Institute, said Saudi Arabia's current leadership "is aware that it has taken bold steps in the past three plus years with an absolute impunity" because the White House is its biggest backer. "Everybody else, including the Europeans, look at Washington to see what signals come out of the White House regarding support to the Saudi monarchy. And the signal so far has been of an unshakable support with timid criticism toward Saudi Arabia," said Amirah Fernandez. ___ Parra contributed from Madrid. Mark Carlson in Brussels, Samuel Petrequin, Jill Lawless in London, Colleen Barry in Milan, David Rising in Berlin, Karel Janicek in Prague and Nataliya Vasilyeva and Vladimir Isachenkov in Moscow, and Hamza Hendawi in Cairo contributed to this report. Activists holding banners in the shape of missiles and a banner reading in Spanish "Arms under control" protest against the sale of weapons to Saudi Arabia in front of the Spanish Parliament in Madrid, Wednesday, Oct. 24, 2018. Spain's prime minister says his government will fulfill past arms sales contracts with Saudi Arabia despite his "dismay" over the "terrible murder" of journalist Jamal Khashoggi. (AP Photo/Andrea Comas) Participants walk in front of a banner for the Future Investment Initiative conference, in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, Wednesday, Oct. 24, 2018. Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman on Wednesday will address an international investment summit in Riyadh, his first such comments since the killing earlier this month of Washington Post columnist Jamal Khashoggi at the Saudi Consulate in Istanbul. (AP Photo/Amr Nabil) An activist holds a banner in the shape of a missile reading in Spanish "Decisions that kill" protests against the sale of weapons to Saudi Arabia in front of the Spanish Parliament in Madrid, Wednesday, Oct. 24, 2018. Spain's prime minister says his government will fulfill past arms sales contracts with Saudi Arabia despite his "dismay" over the "terrible murder" of journalist Jamal Khashoggi. (AP Photo/Andrea Comas) KUALA LUMPUR, Malaysia (AP) - Malaysian's anti-graft agency said Wednesday that ex-Prime Minister Najib Razak, along with two former high-ranking officials, will face new charges of criminal breach of trust. The agency said Najib and former treasury chief Mohamad Irwan Serigar Abdullah will be charged together Thursday in "several cases of criminal breach of trust involving the use of Malaysian government funds." It didn't give details but media reports said the charges are linked to the multibillion-dollar looting of the 1MDB state investment fund. Separately, it said in a statement that Hasanah Abdul Hami, the former chief of the foreign intelligence agency that is now defunct, will also face similar charges in a separate case. Malaysia's new government has stepped up prosecution of Najib and other former officials over the 1MDB scandal and other alleged graft cases since its stunning electoral victory in May that led to the country's first change of power since independence from Britain in 1957. The new charges against Najib will be in addition to 32 earlier counts of corruption, breach of trust and money laundering linked to the 1MDB scandal that led to his coalition's ouster. His wife, Rosmah Mansor, was also separately charged with multiple counts of money laundering and tax evasion linked to 1MDB. They both pleaded not guilty and Najib's trial is to start next year. The 1MDB fund, set up by Najib, is being investigated in the U.S. and several other countries. U.S. investigators say Najib's associates stole and laundered $4.5 billion from the fund from 2009 to 2014, some of which landed in Najib's bank account. Najib's former deputy, Abdul Zahid Hamidi, who is now the opposition leader, has also been charged with multiple counts of corruption in a separate graft investigation involving millions of dollars. Najib has accused the government of seeking political vengeance against his family, but Prime Minister Mahathir Mohamad brushed off the accusations, saying anyone found guilty of misconduct will have to face the law. WASHINGTON (AP) - Federal immigration and health officials were blindsided by President Donald Trump's "zero tolerance" policy on migrants crossing the southwest border, triggering a cascade of problems as agencies struggled with the fallout from family separations, congressional investigators said in a critical report issued Wednesday. The investigation by the nonpartisan Government Accountability Office dissects the consequences of launching a major policy change without consulting with the agencies that have to carry it out. The report makes no recommendations as it reconstructs a turbulent episode for the Trump administration. With the White House considering tougher immigration measures as a caravan of migrants slowly heads north from Central America, the GAO report stands as a cautionary tale. "Officials told us that the agencies did not take specific planning steps because they did not have advance notice," the GAO found. "Officials we interviewed stated that they became aware of the April 2018 ('zero-tolerance') memo when it was announced publicly." On April 6, Trump issued an executive order directing an end to "catch and release" at the border, a practice whereby migrants could be admitted into the country temporarily while their immigration claims were pending. That day, Attorney General Jeff Sessions ordered federal prosecutors to adopt a "zero tolerance policy" for border crossers. Parents placed into criminal custody could not keep their children with them, so families were split. The report focuses on Homeland Security agencies such as Immigration and Customs Enforcement and the Border Patrol, part of U.S. Customs and Border Protection, along with the Health and Human Services Office of Refugee Resettlement, or ORR, which traditionally has had responsibility for providing shelter for unaccompanied minors detained at the border. FILE - In this June 22, 2018 file photo, President Donald Trump listens during an event on immigration alongside family members affected by crime committed by undocumented immigrants, at the South Court Auditorium on the White House complex in Washington. Federal immigration and health officials were blindsided by President Donald Trump's "zero tolerance" policy on migrants crossing the southwest border, triggering a cascade of problems as agencies struggled with the fallout from family separations, congressional investigators said in a critical report issued Wednesday. (AP Photo/Evan Vucci) The HHS agency had a far different task this time because the children were deemed "unaccompanied minors" after the government had separated them from their parents. Previously the refugee office was used to dealing with minors who arrived at the border alone. There was another important difference: Many children who were separated from their parents were considerably younger than the teens and pre-teens ORR normally attended to. "Shelters converted space previously used for classrooms for older children to be space for children under age 5, with one shelter adding cribs, smaller tables and chairs, and toys appropriate for younger children," the report noted. The GAO found at least 103 children under the age of 4. Under blistering political pressure, Trump ultimately rescinded family separation. A federal court ordered the government to reunite families and provide regular progress reports. But the agencies still had a problem: Their computer systems often did not flag when a child was separated from his or her parents. As a result, it wasn't always possible to verify that crucial fact. ORR said that Homeland Security sometimes did not provide the information. Before the agencies made changes "data systems did not include a designated field to indicate that a child was unaccompanied as a result of being separated from his or her parent," the GAO found. The GAO said administration officials as of Sept. 10 identified 2,654 children who were covered by the court order reuniting families. However, that number doesn't include all the children affected, because not all families were covered by the court order. The report found that 2,217 children who were part of the court case had been released from federal custody as of Sept. 10. About 90 percent of them reunited with a parent, although some were placed with sponsors. According to a recent report from the American Civil Liberties Union about 250 children are still in government custody. In a formal response to the GAO report, Homeland Security highlighted progress reuniting families, improvements to its computer systems and better coordination with health officials. HHS did not provide a formal response. Rep. Frank Pallone, D-N.J., who requested the GAO investigation, said in a statement that it paints a picture of chaos and lack of internal communication within the Republican president's administration. "The gross failures detailed in this report will be long remembered, but hopefully never repeated," Pallone said. ___ Online: GAO report: https://tinyurl.com/y87g4oam WASHINGTON (AP) - Large majorities of young Americans want to see an expansion of government services, including a single-payer health care program, according to a new poll by The Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research and MTV. According to the poll, 69 percent of young Americans between the ages of 15 and 34 favor a national health plan, known as a single-payer program. Eighty-eight percent of young Democrats and 40 percent of young Republicans favor a government-run health insurance program, according to the poll. Roughly two-thirds of young independents are in favor. Young Americans called health care a very important issue in deciding how to vote. Sixty-two percent of those who will be old enough to vote in the midterms rated it as such. That's the most who said the same of any issue in the poll, including immigration and the economy. Thirty-three-year-old Jasmine Miller, of Detroit, said that she pays $800 a month for health insurance to cover herself and her son. Miller, who describes herself as a humanitarian, said that health care is among the issues she cares about most. "It should be a universal standard for health care," said Miller, who prefers Democrats. "If we do have to pay deductibles, at least let our premiums be lower." Christopher Edwards, 28, of Columbia, Missouri, said health care was among the most important issues for him as he looks ahead to the midterms. FILE - In the April 26, 2017 file photo, supporters of single-payer health care march to the Capitol in Sacramento, Calif. Large majorities of young Americans want to see an expansion of government services, including a single-payer health care program, according to a new poll by The Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research and MTV. (AP Photo/Rich Pedroncelli) "People sometimes get sick, and sometimes medicine is what they need," said Edwards, who described himself as a moderate Democrat. Majorities of young Americans also favor other types of expansion of government service, including free public college and trade school. Sixty-six percent of young Americans say they support free public college tuition. Seventy-nine percent of young Democrats and 39 percent of young Republicans are in favor. Among independents, 72 percent said they supported free tuition. Younger people typically do not turn out for midterm elections in great numbers. According to the new poll, more than half of young voters say voting in the upcoming midterms is very important, but just 32 percent of those who will be old enough say they're certain to cast a ballot. Jannette Ramirez, 27, of Winter Haven, Florida, said she would "probably" vote in November's elections, but she was unsure how much impact her vote would have. "I can vote all day long, every day, 30 times a day and still my opinion wouldn't matter," said Ramirez, who described herself as a political moderate. Liberal Democrats are more excited than other young people about participating in the political process, according to the poll. Seventy-six percent said they are reading and watching news about November's elections, compared with 58 percent of young Americans overall. Similarly, 71 percent of liberal young Democrats called voting in the midterms very important, compared with 54 percent of young Americans overall. Miller, who is a tax preparer, said that while she will absolutely vote in November's election, she's frustrated by the tone of politics today. "It's more like a big high school argument," she said. ___ The AP-NORC and MTV poll of 1,052 young Americans age 15-34 was conducted Sept. 20 to Oct. 8, 2018. The poll was conducted using NORC's probability-based AmeriSpeak panel, designed to be representative of the U.S. population. The margin of sampling error for all respondents is plus or minus 4.3 percentage points. ___ Online: AP-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research: http://www.apnorc.org CHICAGO (AP) - A judge who was caught on video apparently dropping a handgun in a Chicago courthouse has been acquitted of carrying a concealed weapon in a prohibited area. Will County Circuit Judge Edward Burmila ruled Tuesday that it wasn't clear from the surveillance video that the object that fell from Cook County Judge Joseph Claps' jacket was a firearm. Two sheriff's deputies testified that they saw Claps drop and then pick up a gun in the lobby of the Leighton Criminal Court Building on July 3. Claps' attorney argued that neither deputy examined or confiscated the object that the judge dropped. The 70-year-old Claps has been on administrative duties since his arrest. Burmila handled the case due to Claps' relationship with other Cook County judges, who generally preside over Chicago cases. ATLANTA (AP) - The first debate between Democrat Stacey Abrams and Republican Brian Kemp in the race for Georgia governor was dominated by charges of voter suppression and counterclaims of encouraging illegal voting. Disputes over voting access took center stage Tuesday night, highlighting Abrams' historic bid to become the first black female governor in American history and the long-simmering politics of race in the Deep South. Kemp, who is white, fended off accusations that he's using his position as Georgia secretary of state to make it harder for minority voters to cast ballots. Abrams said Kemp's record as Georgia's top elections official "causes great concern." She pointed to the release of voter data under Kemp's watch and the state's "exact match" voter registration system, which has left tens of thousands of voter registrations "pending" due to inconsistencies. The Democrat said she takes voting rights "very seriously," noting that her own father had been arrested for trying to help people get registered. "Voter suppression isn't only about blocking the vote: It's also about creating an atmosphere of fear, making people worry that their votes won't count," Abrams said. Kemp said accusations that he's been suppressing the vote are "totally untrue." Democratic gubernatorial candidate for Georgia Stacey Abrams, left, speaks as her Republican opponent Secretary of State Brian Kemp looks on during a debate Tuesday, Oct. 23, 2018, in Atlanta. (AP Photo/John Bazemore, Pool) "I've staked the integrity of my whole career on the duty that I have as secretary of state. I have always fulfilled and followed the laws of our state and I'll continue to do that," Kemp said. Kemp said his record includes making it "easy to vote and hard to cheat" in Georgia, and he fired back by citing a recent video clip in which Abrams includes "undocumented" immigrants in a description of her coalition. "Why are you encouraging people to break the law to vote for you?" Kemp asked. Abrams denied that, saying Kemp was twisting her words and her record of fighting to make it easier for legal citizens to vote. Libertarian candidate Ted Metz also participated in the debate as Abrams and Kemp traded barbs over education and health care policy. Abrams repeatedly emphasized her plan to expand Medicaid in Georgia, calling it a "bipartisan solution" that even Vice President Mike Pence embraced when he was Indiana's Republican governor. Kemp said Abrams wants a "government takeover of health care" and will raise taxes to pay for it. The race is being watched as a barometer for the Democrats' success in the midterm elections, as they try to make gains in Congress and in state offices to counter President Donald Trump's agenda. Tensions escalated following a recent Associated Press report that more than 53,000 voter applications - nearly 70 percent of them from black applicants - were on hold with Kemp's office ahead of the election. Kemp vehemently denied suppressing votes, insisting that people on the "pending" list can still vote if they bring an approved ID that substantially matches registration information. Kemp also hit back hard at Abrams, saying she's "too extreme for Georgia." Two reports surfaced just before the debate that played into their competing narratives. The New York Times reported that a 1992 Atlanta Journal-Constitution story identified Abrams as participating in the burning of the Georgia flag to protest the prominent Confederate symbol that had been added in the 1950s as a rebuke of the civil rights movement. Abrams addressed the issue at the debate, saying: "Twenty-six years ago, as a college freshman, I along with many other Georgians, including the governor of Georgia, were deeply disturbed by the racial divisiveness that was embedded in the state flag with that Confederate symbol. I took an action of peaceful protest." Abrams also noted that Kemp was among the state lawmakers who voted to remove the divisive symbol after years of pressure. Kemp, meanwhile, was the focus of a report in Rolling Stone magazine, which said Kemp was secretly recorded telling supporters that he's worried about an "unprecedented" number of people "exercising their right to vote" with absentee ballot applications after Abrams' campaign focused on turning out its base. Kemp's campaign did not address the audio recording in a statement, but said it was fighting to stop Abrams and the "San Francisco socialists and liberal billionaires from New York" that back her. Abrams' campaign said the recording shows "Brian Kemp's contempt for democracy is now on full display as he flaunts his fear that his office's blatant efforts at voter suppression won't be sufficient to win this election for him." Both candidates have attracted national heavyweights in a sign of just how seriously the parties are taking the contest. Abrams' campaign has enlisted celebrities like recording artist John Legend, as well as politicians like U.S. Senators Corey Booker and Kamala Harris. She's also been endorsed by former president Barack Obama. Kemp, who earned President Trump's endorsement, saw visits from Donald Trump Jr., Vice President Mike Pence and U.S. Sen. Marco Rubio, among others. ___ AP national writer Bill Barrow contributed to this report. Democrat candidate for Georgia Governor Stacey Abrams, left, and Republican Secretary of State Brian Kemp greet each other before a debate Tuesday, Oct. 23, 2018, in Atlanta. (AP Photo/John Bazemore, Pool) Republican gubernatorial candidate for Georgia Secretary of State Brian Kemp, center, speaks as Democrat Stacey Abrams, left, and Libertarian Ted Metz look on during a debate Tuesday, Oct. 23, 2018, in Atlanta. (AP Photo/John Bazemore, Pool) Democratic gubernatorial candidate for Georgia Stacey Abrams, left, speaks as Republican Secretary of State Brian Kemp, and Libertarian Ted Metz, right, look on during a debate Tuesday, Oct. 23, 2018, in Atlanta. (AP Photo/John Bazemore, Pool) Gubernatorial candidates for Georgia, from left, Democrat Stacey Abrams, Republican Secretary of State Brian Kemp and Libertarian Ted Metz react as a fire alarm interrupts a debate Tuesday, Oct. 23, 2018, in Atlanta. (AP Photo/John Bazemore, Pool) Gubernatorial candidates for Georgia, from left, Democrat Stacey Abrams, Republican Secretary of State Brian Kemp, and Libertarian Ted Metz, right, wait as a stage crew member looks for the source of a fire alarm that sounded during a debate Tuesday, Oct. 23, 2018, in Atlanta. (AP Photo/John Bazemore, Pool) Democratic candidate for Georgia Governor Stacey Abrams, left, and Republican Brian Kemp greet each other as Libertarian Ted Metz, right, looks on before a debate Tuesday, Oct. 23, 2018, in Atlanta. (AP Photo/John Bazemore, Pool) WASHINGTON (AP) - President Donald Trump is tweeting about the caravan of Central American migrants moving toward the U.S. southern border, though his White House rejects the suggestion that he is fearmongering. Trump tweeted Wednesday that the U.S. "will never accept people coming into our Country illegally!" He also argued that Europe is a "total mess" due to illegal immigration. Trump has targeted the caravan to highlight his hardline immigration policies before the midterms. A day earlier Trump acknowledged there was "no proof" to back up a claim that people of Middle Eastern descent were in the group of migrants. He also denied he was using the caravan to stoke fear White House counselor Kellyanne Conway pushed back Wednesday on whether Trump was fearmongering, calling the caravan a "very serious issue." Marijuana legalization. An increase in the minimum wage. Expansion of Medicaid. Come Election Day, voters in a batch of Republican-dominated states will weigh in on these and other liberal or centrist proposals that reached the ballot after bypassing state legislatures. Pushed forward via signature-gathering campaigns, these measures offer a chance for voters to do things their GOP-run legislatures oppose. Many are considered to have a good chance of passage. In four of the states - Florida, Missouri, Montana and North Dakota - the ballot measures might have some effect on closely contested U.S. Senate races. Even a slight boost in turnout among liberal-leaning voters could help Bill Nelson, Claire McCaskill, Jon Tester and Heidi Heitkamp, the endangered Democratic incumbents in those states. Missouri is notable this year for having three left-leaning proposals on its ballot - raising the minimum wage, legalizing marijuana for medical purposes and changing the congressional redistricting process so that it is potentially less partisan. The minimum-wage measure might have special appeal to low-income voters from Kansas City and St. Louis, where efforts to raise pay locally were thwarted by the Legislature last year. Among those dismayed by the Legislature's move was the Rev. Starsky Wilson, who heads a social services foundation in St. Louis. He also co-chaired a commission that investigated economic and social inequality after the racial unrest provoked by the 2014 killing of Michael Brown by a police officer in Ferguson. FILE - In this Aug. 22, 2018 file photo, Amanda Cahill of the American Heart Association speaks to a rally in support of a ballot initiative to raise the state's tobacco taxes in Helena, Mont. A measure to raise tobacco taxes to extend an existing Medicaid expansion is on the November 2018 ballot. (AP Photo/Matt Volz, File) "When the Legislature pre-empted, it showed what lengths folks will go to thwart the will of the people," Wilson said. "These were unfortunate actions of some legislators who don't seem to care about the poor and also don't seem to care about democracy." Most of the financing for the minimum wage campaign has come from a Washington-based liberal organization, the Sixteen Thirty Fund, which has backed campaigns in other states. The wage increase is opposed by Associated Industries of Missouri and the Missouri Chamber of Commerce and Industry, which say it will raise the cost of doing business and possibly reduce the number of entry-level jobs. However, more than 350 Missouri businesses have announced support for the increase. The measure would gradually raise the state's $7.85 minimum wage to $12 an hour, starting with a boost to $8.60 in January. St. Louis Mayor Lyda Krewson said that the current wage is not high enough and that even the bump in January might not do much for many minimum-wage workers. "But it's a move in the right direction," she said. St. Louis had raised its minimum to $10 an hour before the legislature banned local governments from setting wages that were higher than the state's. Dave Robertson, a political science professor at the University of Missouri-St. Louis, said the ballot measures might have only a marginal effect on turnout. "That said, the marginal votes could make a huge difference in the Senate race because everyone expects it to be dead even," he said, referring to McCaskill's effort to repel a strong challenge from Republican Attorney General Josh Hawley. Aside from Missouri, other GOP-controlled states with liberal- or centrist-backed measures on the ballot include: - Arkansas, to raise the state minimum wage from $8.50 an hour to $11 by 2021. - Idaho, Nebraska and Utah, to expand Medicaid coverage to more residents. - Montana, to raise tobacco taxes to extend an existing Medicaid expansion. - North Dakota and Michigan, to legalize recreational use of marijuana, a step already taken by nine other states. - Utah, to legalize medical use of marijuana. - Michigan and Utah, to change the redistricting process, an issue also on the ballot in swing-state Colorado. - Florida, to restore the right to vote for most people with felony convictions upon completion of their sentences. The proposed constitutional amendment needs the support of 60 percent of voters to prevail; if that happens, an estimated 1.4 million Floridians could regain the right to vote. The Democrats in Florida's two highest-profile election contests support the amendment - gubernatorial candidate Andrew Gillum and Bill Nelson, who is seeking a fourth term in the U.S. Senate. Nelson's GOP opponent, Gov. Rick Scott, opposes the amendment, as does Ron DeSantis, the Republican seeking to succeed Scott as governor. Daniel Smith, a University of Florida political science professor, said public support for the amendment appears to be strong, possibly providing a modest boost to Gillum and Nelson. "It's not going to help the Republicans at all," Smith said. "Will it help the Democrats? It could, at the margins." The partisan pattern is reversed in two Democratic-leaning states, Oregon and Massachusetts, where conservatives are using the initiative process in a bid to overturn existing state policy. The target in Massachusetts is a 2016 law extending nondiscrimination protections to transgender people in their use of public accommodations. Conservatives in Oregon are targeting two policies - one that allows use of state funds to pay for low-income women's abortions, the other forbidding law enforcement agencies from using state resources or personnel to arrest people whose only crime is being in the U.S. illegally. Craig Burnett, a political science professor at Hofstra University, views the initiative process as a valuable tool for citizens disenchanted with their legislature. "If it's legislating much too far from where the people are in any direction - conservative or liberal - the initiative is one way to move it back to where the people are," he said. In all, there will be 157 measures on the Nov. 6 ballot in 37 states. As usual, most of the measures were placed on the ballot by state legislatures; there are 65 measures resulting from citizen campaigns. In some states, initiatives have met with strong resistance, either from the legislature or powerful interest groups. In Arizona, after a six-day strike by tens of thousands of teachers, they and their allies gathered enough signatures to place a measure on the ballot that would boost school funding by raising taxes on the wealthy. The Arizona Supreme Court blocked the initiative after the state's Chamber of Commerce and others said the tax hike would harm the economy. In South Dakota, voters decided in 2016 to create an independent government ethics commission. Lawmakers repealed the measure just months later, but supporters have come back this year with an even stronger measure on the ballot. ___ Follow David Crary at https://twitter.com/CraryAP FILE - In this July 5, 2018 file photo, volunteer Allie Christianson of Omaha sorts late-arriving signed petitions to be added to petitions in boxes, in background, in Lincoln, Neb. The group Insure the Good Life, seeking to expand Medicaid in Nebraska, announced it has gathered more than 133,000 signatures, well above the required minimum of 85,000 signatures to place the issue on the November general-election ballot. (AP Photo/Nati Harnik) FILE - In this Aug. 24, 2017 file photo, Gennice Mackey uses a bullhorn to lead a chant of "Save the Raise!" outside a McDonald's restaurant in St. Louis. Missouri is notable for having three left-leaning proposals on its 2018 ballot _ raising the minimum wage, legalizing marijuana for medical purposes and changing the congressional redistricting process so that it is potentially less partisan. (AP Photo/Jim Salter) FILE - In this Tuesday, Sept. 19, 2017 file photo, St. Louis Mayor Lyda Krewson holds a news conference at city hall in St. Louis. St. Louis had raised its minimum to $10 an hour before the legislature in August 2018 banned local governments from setting wages that were higher than the state's. Krewson said that the current wage is not high enough and that even the bump in January might not do much for many minimum-wage workers. "But it's a move in the right direction," she said. (David Carson/St. Louis Post-Dispatch via AP) FILE - In this Monday, Dec. 15, 2014 file photo, Ferguson Commission Co-Chair Rev. Starsky Wilson, second from the left, talks with from left, Shirlissa Pruitt, Anthony Levine, Tina Cramer and Amir Brandy during a break in the third Ferguson Commission meetings in St. Louis, at Il Monastero St. Louis University. Wilson heads a social services foundation in St. Louis and co-chaired the commission that investigated economic and social inequality after the racial unrest provoked by the 2014 killing of Michael Brown by a police officer in Ferguson. (David Carson/St. Louis Post-Dispatch via AP) Keeden Holzworth poses for a photo at his head shop in downtown Bismarck, North Dakota, on Thursday Aug. 30, 2018. Holzworth, owner of Pype Hipe, has distributed free T-Shirts to supporters of Measure 3, which seeks to legalize marijuana for people 21 and older. It also would seal the records of anyone convicted of a marijuana-related crime that would be made legal under the measure. North Dakota voters will decide the issue on Nov. 6. (AP Photo/James MacPherson) RAVENNA, Ohio (AP) - A 13-year-old boy has pleaded no contest to aggravated murder charges in juvenile court for fatally shooting his 11-year-old brother in the back at their home outside of Cleveland. The Kent-Ravenna Record-Courier reports family members watched Tuesday as a Portage County judge explained what sentences the boy might face next month after presentencing evaluations are completed. He could be incarcerated until age 21; until age 24 if a gun specification is added; or he could receive a blended sentence of 20 years to life in juvenile and adult prisons. It remains unclear what prompted the Streetsboro boy to shoot his brother, who was lying in bed, last April. Authorities have described the shooting as a premeditated act. A message seeking comment was left Wednesday morning with the boy's attorney. ___ Information from: Record-Courier, http://www.recordpub.com WASHINGTON (AP) - A man who broke into a news station in the nation's capital and was shot had previously sued the station, saying they had installed an "illegal nanochip" inside him. News outlets report 38-year-old George Odemns has filed a series of lawsuits since 2014 that allege a microchip was implanted in his head that controlled his thoughts and actions. The local Fox broadcast affiliate, WTTG-TV, says Odemns tried to break into the station Monday and was shot in the chest by a security guard. He was listed in stable condition as of Tuesday and is charged with second-degree burglary. The lawsuits charged various people and companies. They were all dismissed. Odemns also has sent rambling emails to the station and WTOP-FM about mind control and artificial intelligence. NEW YORK (AP) - In the closing stretch of the 2018 campaign, the question is no longer the size of the Democratic wave. It's whether there will be a wave at all. Top operatives in both political parties concede that Democrats' narrow path to the Senate majority has essentially disappeared, a casualty of surging Republican enthusiasm across GOP strongholds. At the same time, leading Democrats now fear the battle for the House majority will be decided by just a handful of seats. "It's always been an inside straight, and it still is," Democratic pollster Paul Maslin said of Democrats' outlook in the Senate, where they need to pick up two seats while holding on to several others in Republican-leaning states to seize the majority. "If it had been a different year, with a different map, we might have had a terrific sweep. That would be a long shot." While the trend may be troubling for Democrats, the evolving political landscape remains unsettled two weeks before Election Day, even with millions of votes already cast across 20 states. There are signs that the Democrats' position in the expanding House battlefield may actually be improving. Yet Republican candidates locked in tight races from New York to Nevada find themselves in stronger-than-expected positions because of a bump in President Donald Trump's popularity, the aftermath of a divisive Supreme Court fight and the sudden focus on a caravan of Latin American immigrants seeking asylum at the U.S. border. Democrats say they never assumed it would be easy. A voter arrives as a worker walks past during early voting at a polling place in Charlotte, N.C., Tuesday, Oct. 23, 2018. (AP Photo/Chuck Burton) "It's still much closer than people think, with a surprise or two in the wings," New York Sen. Chuck Schumer, the top Senate Democrat, told The Associated Press. The midterm elections will decide whether Republicans maintain control of Congress for the final two years of Trump's first term. Even if Democrats lose the Senate and win the House, they could block much of Trump's agenda and use subpoena power to investigate his many scandals. Some in the party's far-left wing have also vowed to impeach the president, while others promise to roll back the Republican tax overhaul and expand health care coverage for all Americans. Democrats have enjoyed an overwhelming enthusiasm advantage for much of the Trump era. They hope an explosion of early voting across states like Florida, Texas and Nevada is further proof of their enthusiasm gap. It took voters in the Houston area less than six hours Monday to set a new opening day record for early voting during a midterm election. And in some Florida counties, two and three times as many voters cast ballots on the first day of early voting Monday compared to four years ago. Public and private polling, however, suggests the GOP is getting more excited as Nov. 6 approaches. "Republican enthusiasm doesn't quite equal the white-hot enthusiasm of Democratic voters, but the Kavanaugh hearings got it pretty close," said GOP consultant Whit Ayres. He also attributes the party's strong position on an unusual Senate map. Democrats are defending 26 seats of the 35 seats in play, including 10 in states that Trump carried in 2016. Ayres calls it "maybe the most Republican-leaning map of our lifetimes." He expects the GOP to maintain the Senate majority, perhaps adding a seat or two to its current 51-49 edge. Others have begun to envision the GOP picking up as many as four or five new seats. Democrats, meanwhile, have effectively protected their Senate candidates in states across the Midwest - Ohio, Pennsylvania, Michigan and Wisconsin - that helped give Trump the presidency in 2016. They are increasingly pessimistic about picking up any seats, however. The Tennessee Senate contest, in particular, has shifted sharply in Republican Rep. Marsha Blackburn's direction in recent weeks, while Democratic pickup opportunities in Arizona and Nevada are now considered toss-ups. In a measure of the deep uncertainty that has defined the Trump era, only one Democratic incumbent - North Dakota's Heidi Heitkamp - is seen as most in danger of losing. After Heitkamp, Democrats facing the greatest risk of defeat are Joe Donnelly of Indiana, Claire McCaskill of Missouri, and perhaps Bill Nelson of Florida. Texas Democratic Senate candidate Beto O'Rourke has shattered fundraising records and developed a national following, but polls have consistently given Republican Sen. Ted Cruz a significant lead against him. In the race for the House, both sides acknowledge the prospect of a wipeout-style wave is shrinking. It's not that Democrats won't be able to wrestle the House majority. But Republican lawmakers are increasingly optimistic, in part because of Trump's recent performance as the GOP's campaigner in chief. Republicans say the often-volatile president has been surprisingly on-message during his campaign events, touting the strong economy and doubling down on the Kavanaugh fight to promote his efforts to fill courts with conservative jurists. And while Trump has been criticized by members of his own party for his handling of the case of the death of a Saudi journalist working for The Washington Post, operatives say the matter appears to be having little impact on voters. On a conference call last week, House Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy, R-Calif., urged rank-and-file lawmakers to pony up extra cash and help for tough races. They see hopeful signs in Iowa, Florida and Kansas. Rep. Tom Cole, R-Okla., emerged from the call saying it's going to be a "dogfight" to the finish. There are signs, however, that Democrats are expanding the House battlefield as Election Day approaches. Republicans in recent days have pumped new money into House districts held by Republicans in Florida, Georgia, Virginia and New York, suggesting they're on the defensive. Already, Democrats invested in nearly 80 races, including more than a dozen legitimate pickup opportunities in districts Trump carried by at least 9 points. Democrats need a net gain of 23 seats to claim the House majority. The massive battlefield remains a problem for Republicans, who have struggled to match Democratic fundraising and face several first-time candidates not yet tainted by Washington. Still, Dan Sena, the executive director of the House Democrats campaign arm, recently predicted Democrats would win the majority by only two seats. The Republican shift is not playing out as planned. The GOP hoped its tax cuts would fuel their midterm message. After they proved unpopular, Republicans largely abandoned their most significant policy achievement in the Trump era in favor of a more familiar message of anger and fear. The super PAC aligned with House Speaker Paul Ryan, which is expected to spend $100 million before Election Day - most of it on attack ads - highlighted the shifting landscape in a memo to donors. "The polling momentum that began with the Supreme Court confirmation hearings has continued, and the environment has continued to improve," wrote Corry Bliss, executive director of the Congressional Leadership Fund. Still, he wrote, "20 races that will decide the majority remain a coin-flip." ___ Beaumont reported from Des Moines, Iowa. Mascaro reported from Washington. AP writers Alan Fram and Julie Pace in Washington contributed to this report. Voters cast their ballots early for the midterm elections at the Government & Judicial Center in Noblesville, Ind., Tuesday, Oct. 23, 2018. (AP Photo/Michael Conroy) Signs for candidates in the upcoming Nov. 6 election fill flower beds outside an early voting center at the City County Building in Indianapolis, Tuesday, Oct. 23, 2018. (AP Photo/Michael Conroy) HIDDENITE, N.C. (AP) - A heist has wiped a North Carolina emerald mine out of an estimated $100,000 in rare precious gems and gold jewelry. An Alexander County Sheriff's Office release says thieves broke into, vandalized and robbed Emerald Hollow Mine on Saturday. Owner Jason Martin tells The Charlotte Observer the lapidary, where gems are cut and polished, was hit hardest. Martin says rare examples of hiddenite, a green gem "found nowhere else in the world" were taken. The most expensive loss was a $26,000 emerald pendant set with diamonds. Martin is worried the thieves might toss the rare gems, thinking only the gold settings are valuable. About 60 miles (96 kilometers) northwest of Charlotte, Emerald Hollow bills itself as the only emerald mine in the world allowing public prospecting, attracting 38,000 people annually. ___ Information from: The Charlotte Observer, http://www.charlotteobserver.com FRANKFURT, Germany (AP) - A court in Germany has ruled that Volkswagen's main stakeholder must pay 47 million euros ($54 million) in damages to investors for not making a timely disclosure of its scandal over cars rigged to cheat on diesel emissions tests. The dpa news agency reported that the Stuttgart court announced the verdict Wednesday against Porsche Automobil Holding SE, which holds 52 percent of the voting rights in Volkswagen. The company said it would appeal and called the claims "without merit." News of the scandal broke in September 2015 but the plaintiffs argued that Volkswagen's top management knew about the troubles earlier. Former Volkswagen CEO Martin Winterkorn exercised his legal right not to testify. The case comes in addition to investor suits against Porsche SE and Volkswagen before a court in Braunschweig, Germany. Porsche said it was "convinced that the rulings will not be sustained in a second-instance ruling." Porsche said higher courts had ruled that the Stuttgart court should have decided the case by its full chamber, not by a single judge. It cited what it said were existing rulings by other courts that proceedings should be stayed while a so-called model case is pending before the Braunschweig court to prevent conflicting decisions on the same issues. Porsche said that the actions "are without merit and the claims raised do not exist." German securities law requires companies to disclose information that could significantly affect the stock price so that investors can decide whether or not to sell their holdings. The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency issued a notice of violation on Sept. 18, 2015, saying Volkswagen had installed software that turned emissions controls on during testing and off during every day driving. Volkswagen has pleaded guilty to criminal charges in the United States and incurred more than 28 billion euros ($32 billion) in fines and penalties. Winterkorn and several other Volkswagen executives serving at the time face criminal charges in the U.S. but cannot be extradited; two Volkswagen executives were sent to prison. LINDEN, N.C. (AP) - A former soldier with post-traumatic stress disorder has pleaded guilty to killing his wife at their North Carolina home. The Fayetteville Observer reports 40-year-old Jesus Guillermo Mora will spend between 36 and 49 years in prison after pleading guilty to second-degree murder and first-degree sex offense Monday. Mary Louise Mora's body was found in February 2016 by deputies responding to Jesus Mora's call. An autopsy revealed she suffered bite marks and the partial detachment of her arms and neck, among other injuries. Jesus Mora told deputies something bad had happened, but he wasn't sure it was real. Court documents say was taking medication for PTSD after an Afghanistan deployment. District Attorney Bill West says PTSD and other mental health issues factored into the case. He says Mary Mora's family supported the sentence. ___ Information from: The Fayetteville Observer, http://www.fayobserver.com VIENNA (AP) - Three-time Formula One champion Niki Lauda has been released from a Vienna hospital nearly three months after undergoing a lung transplant. The Vienna General Hospital says the 69-year-old Lauda left on Wednesday "in good general condition." It says he must still spend several weeks in rehabilitation. Lauda received a new lung on Aug. 2. Lauda won the Formula One title in 1975, 1977 and 1984. He suffered serious burns in a crash at the German Grand Prix in 1976 and has twice undergone kidney transplants. Lauda was appointed as the Mercedes team's non-executive chairman in 2012 and was involved in signing Lewis Hamilton. ___ FILE - In this July 7, 2018 file photo former Formula One World Champion Niki Lauda of Austria walks in the paddock before the third free practice at the Silverstone racetrack, Silverstone, England. Lauda has been discharged from the hospital after a lung transplantation. (AP Photo/Luca Bruno, file) More AP sports: https://apnews.com/tag/apf-sports and https://twitter.com/AP_Sports JERUSALEM (AP) - China's vice president and Israel's prime minister on Wednesday co-hosted a high-profile trade and innovation conference and toured an exhibition of Israeli technology start-ups together as the two countries worked to cement their fast-growing trade ties. A quarter century after establishing diplomatic relations, Israel and China have become important trade partners, with China emerging as an eager customer of Israeli technology. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said that the Chinese government's choice to send Wang Qishan, a close confidant of President Xi Jinping, to co-chair this year's Israeli innovation summit "reflects the growing ties between our countries, our economies, our peoples." Wang praised Israel as an innovation hub that China hopes to learn from as it modernizes its fast-growing economy. "Israel leads the world in electronics, information technology, modern medicine, and agriculture," he said. "China is still striving to achieve modernization." China has become Israel's second largest trading partner, trailing only the U.S. Israel exported $2.8 billion to China in the first half of 2018, an 80 percent jump from the previous year. In the last two years, Israel and China have signed a breakthrough visa agreement, opened direct flights, and conducted hundreds of joint research projects. China's Vice President Wang Qishan, right, and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu tour the Israeli Innovation Summit in Jerusalem, Wednesday, Oct. 24, 2018. (AP Photo/Ariel Schalit, Pool) "Our bilateral relations are at a new height," Wang said in a speech at the summit's gala. "Our arms are wide open, for countries to innovate, to start businesses in China." Netanyahu announced that the two countries will complete a free trade agreement next year, and that China plans to invest heavily in Israeli infrastructure, including new ports and a light rail. "China and Israel are a perfect match," said Dale Aluf, the director of research for Sino-Israel Global Network & Academic Leadership, a think tank that promotes closer Israeli-Chinese relations. "China may be a huge market, but it has a lot of domestic problems--pollution, desertification, an aging population. Israel has the technology to solve those problems." Netanyahu also said he and Wang pledged to create professional training programs in agriculture, entrepreneurship and public health, allowing Israeli tech companies to penetrate the Chinese market. He stressed that China has made breakthroughs in intellectual property protection, likely attempting to assuage start-ups concerned about the risks of working in China. Wang called piracy worries "groundless," saying that China "has been working tirelessly to strengthen international protections." The leaders made no mention about Chinese trade policies that have created friction with the U.S. and Europe. Major trade partners have accused China of discriminating against foreign companies and forcing them to hand over crucial technology. Israeli defense experts also have expressed concerns that Chinese participation in massive national infrastructure projects may pose a security risk, given China's close relations with Israel's regional foes, such as Iran. "We have to be cautious about the types of things we sell to China," said Aluf. "Defense technology is off the table. But we can sell health care and sustainable development so there's no reason for America to be upset," he said. Wang is one of the most senior Chinese officials to visit Israel since the countries established diplomatic relations in 1992. Credited with orchestrating China's anti-corruption purge and shoring up support for the Communist party, he is widely considered to be the most powerful vice president in China. Netanyahu and Wang toured exhibits by high-tech Israeli startups focused on self-driving cars, health care and agriculture. They also attended an evening gala where former Google CEO Eric Schmidt spoke, touting Israel's innovative potential, and will open a new Israeli innovation center together Thursday. China's Vice President Wang Qishan, right, and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu tour the Israeli Innovation Summit in Jerusalem, Wednesday, Oct. 24, 2018. (AP Photo/Ariel Schalit, Pool) Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu avoids a toy car controlled by China's Vice President Wang Qishan as they tour the Israeli Innovation Summit in Jerusalem, Wednesday, Oct. 24, 2018. (AP Photo/Ariel Schalit, Pool) China's Vice President Wang Qishan, right, laughs as Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahumakes a face as they tour the Israeli Innovation Summit in Jerusalem, Wednesday, Oct. 24, 2018. (AP Photo/Ariel Schalit, Pool) China's Vice President Wang Qishan listens during a meeting with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in Jerusalem, Wednesday, Oct. 24, 2018. (AP Photo/Ariel Schalit, Pool) Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu talks during a meeting with China's Vice President Wang Qishan in Jerusalem, Wednesday, Oct. 24, 2018. (AP Photo/Ariel Schalit, Pool) WASHINGTON (AP) - President Donald Trump says the killing of a Saudi journalist was a botched operation and a "bad original concept" as his administration has taken its first steps in punishing the Saudis by deciding to revoke the visas of the suspects. Trump awaited a briefing Thursday from CIA Director Gina Haspel, who has been in Turkey. He had told reporters at the White House on Tuesday that the operation was a fiasco. "They had a very bad original concept," Trump said. "It was carried out poorly, and the cover-up was one of the worst cover-ups in the history of cover-ups. Somebody really messed up, and they had the worst cover-up ever." Even in the face of gruesome details of Jamal Khashoggi's slaying, Trump has resisted calls to cut off arms sales to the kingdom and has been reluctant to antagonize the Saudi rulers. Trump considers the Saudis vital allies in his Mideast agenda. Members of Congress have demanded that sanctions be imposed on Saudi Arabia over the killing of Khashoggi, who lived in self-imposed exile in the U.S. and wrote critically about Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman. The writer, who was a contributor to The Washington Post, vanished Oct. 2 after entering the Saudi consulate in Turkey, where he went to pick up documents for his marriage to his Turkish fiancee. Turkish police crime scene investigators, looking for possible clues into the killing of Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi, work in an underground car park, where authorities Monday found a vehicle belonging to the Saudi consulate, in Istanbul, Tuesday, Oct. 23, 2018. Saudi officials murdered Khashoggi in their Istanbul consulate after plotting his death for days, Turkey's President Recep Tayyip Erdogan said Tuesday, contradicting Saudi Arabia's explanation that the writer was accidentally killed. (AP Photo/Emrah Gurel) Turkish officials say that a Saudi team of 15 men tortured, killed and dismembered the writer and that Saudi officials had planned the killing for days. Saudi officials - after weeks of denials - now concede that he died, but they say it happened accidentally in a fight at the consulate. "It was a total fiasco," Trump said. "The process was no good. The execution was no good. And the cover-up, if you want to call it that, was certainly no good." Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said the move to revoke visas was just a first step. Visa records are confidential and Pompeo was not more specific about who the revocations would affect, but the State Department later said 21 "Saudi suspects" would have visas revoked or would be declared ineligible to enter the U.S. "These penalties will not be the last word on this matter," Pompeo told reporters at the State Department. The administration "will continue to hold those responsible accountable. We're making very clear that the United States does not tolerate this kind of ruthless action to silence Mr. Khashoggi, a journalist, with violence," he said. "Neither the president or I am happy with this situation." Still, Pompeo stressed the strategic importance of the U.S.-Saudi relationship. "We continue to view as achievable the twin imperative of protecting America and holding accountable those responsible for the killing of Mr. Khashoggi," Pompeo said. PORTLAND, Maine (AP) - Voters marking a single candidate on a ballot? That's so 20th century. A new way of voting in Maine allows people to rank candidates from best to worst with provisions for additional voting rounds, candidate eliminations and extra tabulations to ensure there's a consensus winner who collects a majority of the votes. The ranked-choice voting system will be used for the first time in history in U.S. House and Senate races in Maine on Election Day. Advocates hope the concept will spread to other states, providing more choices for restless voters and tempering hyper-partisan politics. "There's the saying, 'As Maine goes, so goes the nation,'" said Rob Richie, from electoral reform group FairVote, referring to the days when Maine's early election served as a national bellwether. "Other states will be looking to Maine's experience with interest." The system works like this: Voters rank candidates. A candidate garnering a majority of first-place votes is the winner. FILE - In this June 15, 2018 file photo, Maine election workers begin scanning and uploading election results trickling in from across the state, in Augusta, Maine. A new system known as ranked choice voting was used to decide results in the Democratic primary and also will be used in the November general election. (AP Photo/Marina Villeneuve, File) If there's no majority winner, the last-place candidate is eliminated and the losing candidate's second-place votes are reallocated for another voting round. The computerized tallies are repeated in a game of political survivor until someone captures a majority. Maine residents approved the system in 2016 after nine of the past 11 gubernatorial elections resulted in winners who had failed to get a majority of the vote. The current governor, tough-talking Republican Paul LePage, first won election with about 38 percent of the vote in 2010. In a twist of fate, the system won't be used for the governor's race or legislative races, which also are on the Nov. 6 ballot, because of concerns it runs afoul of the Maine Constitution. But it was used without any major problems in June's primary . And it will be used again in November's federal races. And the idea is gaining momentum in other states, including Massachusetts, Richie said. Cushing Samp, of Saco, said she began advocating for the new system after she volunteered for an independent candidate four years ago. Many voters told her they liked the independent but "didn't want to throw their vote away." Supporters say the system removes the "spoiler" effect and allows voters to cast tallies for a third-party or independent without fear of a wasted vote. That's because their second-choice would be counted if there's no majority winner. "It allows you to vote for the person who you really like regardless of what that person's chances of winning are," she said. The potential impact could be seen in the liberal, southern 1st Congressional District. Rep. Chellie Pingree, a Democrat, would be a shoo-in under traditional voting, but a three-way race with ranked-choice voting changes the calculus. Independent Marty Grohman sees a path to victory if Pingree fails to reach 50 percent of first-place votes and if he collects enough second-choice votes from supporters of Republican Mark Holbrook in the next round. To the north, Republican Rep. Bruce Poliquin's Democratic challenger, Jared Golden, could be aided by second-choice votes from two independents under a similar scenario in the more conservative 2nd Congressional District. For the system to work as intended, voters have to rank the candidates, but it's unclear how many will do so when they get to the polls. Both Poliquin and Pingree say they intend to cast a single vote for themselves, instead of ranking the candidates. Ranked-choice proponents say the system discourages candidates from making negative attacks for fear of alienating supporters of other candidates, thus shifting debate from political extremes to the political center. Critics say voters are not well served by homogenized campaigns and that fiery rhetoric is good for differentiating the candidates. Some, like Patty Keyes, of Belfast, said voting should be kept simple. The new system "just complicates things." Also called instant runoff, the system is used in 11 local jurisdictions across the country, including mayoral elections in Maine's largest city. But there's nothing instant about the process in Maine. If there's no first-round winner, then the ballots have to be shipped to the state capital and scanned into computers before additional tallies can be completed. It took eight days before the winners were announced in the ranked-choice primary elections in June in which extra rounds were necessary. No one challenged the outcome in the courts. But that remains a possibility if a loser decided to challenge a ranked-choice conclusion. Secretary of State Matthew Dunlap, a Democrat, was skeptical because the voter-approved referendum instituting ranked-choice voting didn't include any provisions for how such an election would be conducted. Election officials scrambled to put rules into place. Voters seemed to be patient about the delayed results. Dunlap is now a believer. "We had a lot of a success. We learned some lessons. We made some adjustments. Now we know what the blueprint looks like," he said. ___ Online: Ranked-choice voting in Maine: https://www.maine.gov/sos/cec/elec/upcoming/rcv.html FairVote https://www.fairvote.org/ FILE - In this June 15, 2018 file photo, Maine's election officials begin to collect the nation's first ranked-choice ballots in a statewide primary from across the state, in Augusta, Maine. The new system was used to decide results in the Democratic primary and also will be used in the November general election. (AP Photo/Marina Villeneuve, File) WARSAW, Poland (AP) - Poland's national airline LOT is cancelling some flights as crew members strike to protest layoffs and demand better pay and working conditions. A spokesman for LOT, Konrad Majszyk, said Wednesday that over a dozen international flights from Warsaw, including to Germany and Denmark, were cancelled. Flights were also cancelled on Monday and Tuesday. Almost 70 flight crew members have been fired for participating in the strike that started Thursday and that the management says is illegal. Trade union members are demanding the implementation of a cancelled 2013 pay and employment deal, the reinstatement of their fired leader and other colleagues, as well as more spending on flight security. They recently added a demand that some management resign. LOT's president, Rafal Milczarski, said he was ready for talks, but not with the union officials, saying they are causing the company millions of zlotys (euros) in losses. The company is rebooking passengers affected by cancellations and paying for accommodation, if needed. In this Sept. 30, 2018 photo people watch a landing Polish Airlines LOT jetliner at the Chopin airport in Warsaw, Poland. Poland's national airline LOT is cancelling some flights since Oct. 22, 2018, as some crew members don't show up for work as they are striking to protest layoffs and demand better working conditions. (AP Photo/Alik Keplicz) LOT was Europe's first airline to have Boeing 787 Dreamliner planes, in 2012. But the year also marked a downturn. State subsidies, spending cuts and layoffs have been needed to help the 89-year-old company avoid bankruptcy. Under Milczarski, LOT became profitable. Fully state-owned, it employs some 700 pilots and 1,300 air hostesses. BOSTON (AP) - Rachael Rollins shocked observers when she beat the candidate backed by the longtime incumbent and police groups to become the Democratic nominee for Boston's top prosecutor. Should she win again next month, Rollins, a black woman who vows to fight mass incarceration and racial disparities in the justice system, would be the first woman of color to become a district attorney in Massachusetts. And for the first time, along with the black sheriff and police commissioner , the top law enforcement officials in Boston would all be people of color, marking a new era for a city long dominated by white men and roiled by a racist past. "There's only ever been men looking at these issues and running this office. ... There's only ever been overwhelmingly one race or nationality," Rollins, a 47-year-old former federal prosecutor, said in an interview. "I'm excited about bringing a new lens to this role." Rollins hopes to follow in the footsteps of candidates like Larry Krasner in Philadelphia to be elected on the promise of criminal justice reform. She has pledged to push for ending cash bail, to hire a more diverse slate of prosecutors and to collect data to find potential biases among her staff. After defeating four Democratic opponents in the first contested race for Suffolk County district attorney in 16 years, Rollins is now seen as the favorite to win Nov. 6 with the backing of popular Democrats like U.S. Sen. Elizabeth Warren and Boston City Councilor Ayanna Pressley, who upset longtime U.S. Rep. Michael Capuano in a primary last month. In addition to Boston, Suffolk County includes the communities of Chelsea, Revere and Winthrop. But Rollins faces a challenge from independent defense attorney Michael Maloney, who has called her plan not to prosecute certain crimes "crazy" and accused her of playing the "race card" to distract from what he says is a lack of qualifications. FILE -- In this Tuesday, June 26, 2018 file photo Suffolk County District Attorney Democratic candidate Rachael Rollins, left, takes questions directly from inmates during a forum at the Suffolk County House of Correction at South Bay, in Boston. A victory for Rollins in November would be a significant move in a city long dominated by white men and roiled by a racist past. (AP Photo/Steven Senne, File) "I think we're really coming to a point where she is running a campaign on identity politics," said Maloney, 38, who is white. "Her play right now is to play the race card, not to focus on her experience," he said. Rollins' biggest test is convincing police that her plan to not prosecute more than a dozen offenses - including drug possession, trespassing and shoplifting - wouldn't give offenders a free pass to commit crimes. "I'm afraid if there are no consequences offenders will figure, why not resist?" Boston Police Patrolmen's Association President Michael Leary told WBZ-TV last month. Rollins says those charges would be outright dismissed or treated as civil infractions, although prosecutions could be brought in "exceptional circumstances." She says she wants to focus her resources on prosecuting killings, clear the courts of lower-level crimes committed overwhelmingly by the mentally ill, the poor and those struggling with addiction, and connect them with services. "We're sending them to jail, they're not getting any services for the root cause of whatever the problem is, and they're getting out, going back and doing the same thing," she said. Maloney has tried to capitalize on backlash to her plan, painting himself as the "responsible" reform candidate and filming a video with a store owner decrying shoplifting. But Maloney has also been under fire after The Boston Globe revealed that his then-wife in 2014 accused him of verbal abuse, pushing her and threatening to cut her father's throat. Maloney has apologized and said he never hit her. If Rollins wins, the optics of having people of color in charge of Boston's criminal justice system will be significant, black leaders say. Boston's racial tensions were thrown into national spotlight in the late 1970s when court-ordered desegregation of the public schools led to protests and riots. Decades later, many still view the city as unwelcoming to people of color. The new leadership will matter only if they implement policies that begin to dismantle longstanding injustices, said Rahsaan Hall, director of the racial justice program for the American Civil Liberties Union of Massachusetts. "If the policies and practices of the institutions don't do anything to minimize the impacts of racism, systemic and institutional racism, then we are no better off than we were before," Hall said. ___ Follow Alanna Durkin Richer on Twitter at http://twitter.com/aedurkinricher . PESHAWAR, Pakistan (AP) - Pakistani officials say a senior Taliban commander arrested in 2010 has been released from prison. Two intelligence officials said Wednesday that Mullah Abdul Ghani Baradar was released after high-level negotiations. They spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to speak to media. His release could be related to U.S. efforts to revive peace talks between the Afghan government and the Taliban, who have seized nearly half the country in recent years. Baradar's release came after a visit to Pakistan by the foreign minister of Qatar, where the Taliban maintain a political office. Baradar was a senior figure in the insurgent group and coordinated military operations in southern Afghanistan before his arrest eight years ago in the Pakistani city of Karachi. COLUMBUS, Neb. (AP) - A phone call to a wrong number in Nebraska delivered just what a man in pain needed: a ride to a hospital. Lisa Nagengast said a driver for a Jimmy John's sandwich shop rescued her brother, Greg Holeman, on Saturday night after he called her just as she arrived at the Tampa, Florida, airport. She had been in Nebraska to help Holeman get to his Columbus home after spinal fusion surgery three days earlier in Omaha. He called her in great pain and said he was oozing blood and his left leg had gone numb, Nagengast said. Her brother is a veteran living on disability and didn't have Department of Veterans Affairs' approval to call an ambulance, she said. He also couldn't afford a taxi to a hospital, she said. Nagengast was still in the Tampa airport when she tried to call his VA social worker but misdialed and reached what turned out to be a right number: the Jimmy John's in Columbus and its night manager, Jason Voss. She explained her problem. "She was a little panicky," Voss told the Omaha World-Herald on Tuesday. "At that point I figured I should take a minute to think about it. It was obviously not someone making something up; it was an actual situation going on." It took Nagengast a little while to realize she hadn't reached her brother's social worker. "I apologized profusely. I was really embarrassed," she told The Columbus Telegram. "I just told them, 'Never mind.' But somehow they found it in their hearts to help." Voss called delivery driver Zach Hillmer, who picked up Holeman and drove him to a hospital emergency room. Hillmer, a U.S. Navy veteran, said it was a privilege to help a fellow military man. Sam Nixon, operating partner of Columbus' Jimmy John's, said he was proud. "Those guys did that on their own accord, and that's what was so special about it," Nixon said. Nagengast said her brother is back at home and doing OK. WICHITA, Kan. (AP) - The Latest on a man convicted of first-degree murder in the killing of a 3-year-old Wichita boy (all times local): 12:35 p.m. The daughter of a man convicted of abusing and killing a 3-year-old Kansas boy says she felt compelled to testify about the abuse she also suffered. Samantha Johnson is the daughter of Stephen Bodine, who was found guilty Wednesday of first-degree murder in the May 2017 death of Evan Brewer. Evan's body was found encased in concrete at his Wichita home in September last year. Johnson says she endured abuse similar to that inflicted on Evan. She says testifying about it was difficult, but that she did it to honor Evan because he didn't get a chance to tell his story. FILE - This file photo provided by the Sedgwick County Sheriff's Office in Wichita, Kan., shows Stephen Bodine, of Wichita, who was convicted Wednesday, Oct. 24, 2018, of first-degree murder in the May 2017 killing of a 3-year-old Evan Brewer whose body was found encased in concrete in the laundry room of his home four months after his death. (Sedgwick County Sheriff's Office via AP, File) Johnson says she can now move on. Bodine will be sentenced Dec. 17. ___ 11:15 a.m. The father of a 3-year-old Kansas boy who died after enduring months of abuse says a guilty verdict against the man who killed his son is a weight off his shoulders. A Sedgwick County jury on Wednesday found Stephen Bodine of Wichita guilty of first-degree murder and other charges in the May 19, 2017, death of Evan Brewer. Evan's father, Carlo Brewer, says he feels a lot of sadness over what his son endured at the hand of Bodine, who was the live-in boyfriend of Evan's mother. Brewer says other children imagine monsters under their beds or in their closets, but that Evan "had real monsters." Brewer says he hopes Evan's death encourages other parents to reconsider how they discipline their children because child abuse "has to stop." ___ 10:40 a.m. A Kansas prosecutor is praising the jurors who sat through days of grisly testimony and evidence before finding a man guilty of abuse and first-degree murder in the death of a 3-year-old boy whose body was found encased in concrete. The jury found 41-year-old Stephen Bodine of Wichita guilty on Wednesday in the May 19, 2017, killing of Evan Brewer. Bodine will be sentenced Dec. 17. The weeklong trial included video and photos showing Evan being abused, including being chained naked in a basement, berated and forced to stand in a corner for hours. Sedgwick County District Attorney Marc Bennett says the jury performed an extraordinary service to the community while having to absorb more than 500 pieces of sometimes "wretched" evidence. Bennett says the overwhelming evidence contributed to the jury reaching a quick verdict. ___ 9:40 a.m. A Kansas man has been convicted of first-degree murder in the death of a 3-year-old boy whose body was found encased in concrete. The jury found 41-year-old Stephen Bodine of Wichita guilty on Wednesday in the May 19, 2017, killing of Evan Brewer. His body was found in September 2017. Prosecutors presented hundreds of pieces of evidence, including parts of Evan's concrete tomb found in the rental home where he lived with his mother, Miranda Miller, and Bodine. Miller is also charged with murder. Evan was the subject of a monthslong custody battle and at least six reports were made alleging he was being abused. Jurors saw photo and video evidence of that abuse, including images of him chained naked in a basement. ALBANY, N.Y. (AP) - Marc Molinaro did not want to run for governor. At least not at first. "It's just not the right time," he wrote in an email to supporters in January announcing he would stay out of the race. The 42-year-old moderate Republican cited his family and his current position as county executive in Dutchess County. He could have also listed a few other reasons not to run: Gov. Andrew Cuomo and his re-election war chest, and a Democratic base eager to punish Republicans for President Donald Trump. In less than two weeks Molinaro will find out whether his initial reluctance was well-founded, or whether he can buck the odds, the polls and an overwhelming financial disadvantage to take down a popular two-term Democratic incumbent in what many presume will be a Democratic year. "I'm running for governor of the state of New York because there are ordinary people who don't have a voice," Molinaro said during a campaign stop in Albany last week. "And the reason they don't have a voice is because this state government - and I blame both parties for generations - has ignored them and allowed government to be about them." Molinaro was the youngest mayor in the country when he was elected mayor of his hometown of Tivoli at age 19. He talks about growing up in a working-class family that relied on food stamps to get by. In person he's affable, with a telegenic young family. FILE - In this combination photo, New York Republican gubernatorial candidate Marc Molinaro, left, speaks at a news conference in New York on Sept. 14, 2018, and New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo, right, speaks a news conference in in Tarrytown; N.Y., on May 8, 2018. Cuomo and Molinaro are poised to debate Tuesday, Oct. 23, 2018 in New York City in their only showdown scheduled before the Nov. 6 election election. (AP Photos/Bebeto Matthews, left, and Julio Cortez, Files) For Republicans eager to win their first statewide office in New York in 16 years, Molinaro brings a lot of potential to the race. He's a former state lawmaker who has twice been elected leader of a county with more Democrats than Republicans. It's a recipe they hope he can replicate on a grander scale in a state where registered Democrats outnumber Republicans by more than 2 to 1. Enter Cuomo. The son of the late Gov. Mario Cuomo, he's also a former U.S. housing secretary and a former New York attorney general who doesn't exactly have to worry about name recognition. He's also a prodigious fundraiser who in September easily dispatched a spirited primary challenge from the left from former "Sex and the City" star Cynthia Nixon. While Molinaro sought to make the race about taxes, crumbling infrastructure and rampant corruption in Albany, Cuomo touted accomplishments such as same-sex marriage, gun control, paid family leave, free state tuition at public colleges and major renovations at New York City airports and rail stations. And he immediately tried to frame the race around the commander-in-chief, mocking Molinaro as a "Trump Mini-me" and linking him to the president's views on immigration, health care and women. "He is an extreme conservative," Cuomo said on New York City radio last week. "There is no substance from him. It's all ad hominem attacks, it's all nasty, and it's all this ultra-conservative diatribe. Anti-woman, anti-gay, anti-immigrant, anti-diversity." Molinaro says he didn't vote for Trump in 2016 and instead penciled in the name of Chris Gibson, a well-liked former congressman who many Republicans had hoped would challenge Cuomo this year. During a particularly nasty debate Tuesday, Cuomo demanded that Molinaro say whether he supports the president; Molinaro credited the president's handling of the economy but declined to answer Cuomo's question. He noted that Cuomo and Trump have known each other for decades, and that Trump donated to Cuomo's campaigns years ago. Polls suggest it's Cuomo's race to lose. A head-to-head Quinnipiac University survey released last week found the incumbent is beating Molinaro by 23 percentage points. A Siena College poll this month gave Cuomo a similar lead even when Libertarian Larry Sharpe, independent Stephanie Miner and Green Party nominee Howie Hawkins were included. The polls find that Cuomo leads among women, minorities, independents and, critically, residents in both New York City and its suburbs. Molinaro outperforms Cuomo when it comes to upstate voters. Molinaro's biggest challenge may be name recognition. The Quinnipiac poll found that 48 percent of likely voters surveyed haven't heard enough about him to form an opinion. "You can't win unless people know who you are," said Luke Perry, a professor and political scientist at Utica College who noted that's just one of the challenges facing Molinaro. "Cuomo has tried to nationalize the race and I think that's been effective. ... In another political climate his chances would be higher." New York Republican gubernatorial candidate Marc Molinaro speaks during the New York gubernatorial debate hosted by CBS 2 and WCBS Newsradio 880, Tuesday, Oct. 23, 2018, in New York. Molinaro debated two-term Gov. Andrew Cuomo with two weeks to go before the election. (AP Photo/Mary Altaffer, Pool) New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo, left, and Republican gubernatorial candidate Marc Molinaro, right, argue during the New York gubernatorial debate hosted by CBS 2 and WCBS Newsradio 880, Tuesday, Oct. 23, 2018, in New York. (AP Photo/Mary Altaffer, Pool) CHICAGO (AP) - The Latest on the hearings on a plan for reforming Chicago Police Department under court supervision (all times local): 11:40 a.m. A Chicago police union lawyer has urged a federal judge to reject a draft plan for reforming Chicago police under court supervision, saying it violates existing laws and would put officers at risk. Tim Grace spoke Wednesday during a two-day court hearing being held to give interest groups and members of the public a chance to comment before a federal judge decides whether to approve the 200-page proposal. It was drafted by the city and the Illinois' attorney general's office. Grace pointed to provisions that would allow complaints against police to be submitted anonymously and without supporting affidavits. Citing those and other provisions, Grace said that's "at odds with Illinois law." He said the plan may have been drafted with "good intentions" but that it's "going to put officers at risk and the public at risk." President Trump delivers remarks Monday, Oct. 8, 2018, at the International Association of Chiefs of Police, at the Orange County Convention Center, in Orlando, Fla. (Joe Burbank/Orlando Sentinel via AP) ___ 10:40 a.m. A federal judge says dozens of people will be allowed to speak about a plan for reforming the Chicago Police Department under court supervision. Judge Robert Dow Jr. told a packed Chicago courtroom on Wednesday that 76 people will each be allowed five minutes to express their views during the two-day hearing. The 200-page plan has drawn intense public interest. People began lining up outside the downtown Chicago courthouse early Wednesday morning to make sure they got a seat in the large courtroom where the hearing is taking place. Chicago and the Illinois attorney general's office hammered out the plan, which among other things calls for stricter rules on the use of force. The police union opposes the proposal, saying it'll deprive officers of flexibility they need. The Trump administration opposes the plan on similar grounds. ___ 4:55 a.m. A federal judge in Chicago begins two days of hearings to learn what members of the public think about a draft plan for reforming city police under court supervision. The hearings that start Wednesday are meant to help Judge Robert Dow Jr. decide whether to approve the more than 200-page plan. He could also require certain changes as a condition of his approval. Chicago and the Illinois attorney general's office hammered out the plan. Among other things, it calls for stricter rules on the use of force. The police union opposes it, saying it'll deprive officers of flexibility they need. The Trump administration has opposed it on similar grounds. The hearings will be in a ceremonial courtroom to accommodate what's expected to be a large turnout of speakers and spectators. RIO DE JANEIRO (AP) - The front-runner in Brazil's presidential race says he wants to liberalize a largely closed economy, so why is he being called a "populist"? His speeches are laden with references to violence, but does such language deserve to be described as "far-right"? And is Jair Bolsonaro being "fascist" when he makes derogatory comments about blacks, Indians and gays? What about when he says political opponents should be shot or waxes nostalgic about the 1964-1985 dictatorship? As Sunday's election approaches, the seven-term congressman is the focus of fierce debate in Brazil and beyond over how to describe a candidate whose eclectic mix of policies and harsh language thrills supporters and terrifies detractors. Bolsonaro's rise parallels that of other politicians worldwide who often employ similar rhetoric, including U.S. President Donald Trump, Philippines President Rodrigo Duterte and several leaders across Europe. His opponent, Fernando Haddad, frequently says Bolsonaro is "extreme" and represents "a risk" to democracy. Haddad's Workers' Party has gone so far as to liken Bolsonaro to Adolf Hitler and the Nazi Party in campaign videos. So what adjectives are appropriate for the former military man? Opinions abound. "The press insists on calling him a right-wing populist," Jesus Silva Herzog Marquez, a political consultant in Mexico, recently wrote in his blog. "He is not. He is a fascist, and it's important to make the distinction." FILE - In this Sept. 9, 2018 file photo, supporters of presidential frontrunner Jair Bolsonaro, exhibit a large, inflatable doll in his image as they march along Paulista Avenue to show support for him in Sao Paulo, Brazil. Bolsonaro's rise parallels that of other politicians worldwide who often employ hateful rhetoric, including U.S. President Donald Trump, Philippines President Rodrigo Duterte and several leaders across Europe. (AP Photo/Andre Penner, File) Bolsonaro "is not a fascist, but rather a pre-modern, conservative candidate from the 19th century," said Carlos Pereira, a political analyst with think tank Getulio Vargas Foundation in Rio de Janeiro. "He never modernized." The debate comes in part because Bolsonaro's policy positions are sometimes at odds with his public statements and with the narrative that he pushes about himself: that he is a tough, no-frills former army captain ready to annihilate criminals and corrupt politicians for the good of the nation. Take the term populist, which many local and foreign news agencies routinely use to describe him. Bolsonaro's rhetoric emphasizes "the people" against "the elite," words that encompass the most common definitions of the term. But experts note that what he has promised to do with the economy, the largest in Latin America, can hardly be called populist. He has said economic adviser Paulo Guedes, a University of Chicago-trained economist and banker, will as finance minister oversee a major overhaul, including reforming the pension system, sharply cutting spending and undertaking massive privatizations. Perhaps the biggest debates center around the terms "hard right," ''far right" or "extreme right." The candidate himself takes issue with these descriptions. "I'm not on the extreme right. Show me an act that makes me extreme right," said Bolsonaro earlier this month during an event in Rio de Janeiro. He apparently believes the description arises from his past statements on immigration. Bolsonaro has called immigrants from several poor countries "scum of the world" and said during the same event that Brazil cannot become a "country of open borders." "I'm an admirer of President Trump. He wants America to be great. I want Brazil to be great," he added. French congresswoman Marine Le Pen, who is described by many news organizations, including The Associated Press, as "far-right," said the term does not apply to Bolsonaro. "I don't see Mr. Bolsonaro as an extreme-right candidate," she said during an interview with station French 2 this month. "He says unpleasant things that would be unacceptable in France. The cultures are different." But news organizations, academics and political consultants defend their use of the terms based on Bolsonaro's statements that range from a denigration of blacks, gays and indigenous peoples to assertions that Workers' Party stalwarts should be shot. Folha de S. Paulo, one of Brazil's leading daily newspapers, put the debate front and center earlier this month when it publicly debated a memo that had been sent to the newsroom that said Bolsonaro could be described as "right-wing" but not "extreme right." The terms "extreme left" or "extreme right" are "for groups that practice or preach violence as a political method," the memo said. Letters-to-the-editor criticizing and supporting the decision poured in, and the paper's ombudsman reviewed the issue. Her take: the newspaper was wrong in not calling Bolsonaro "extreme right." Paula Cesarino Costa wrote that the term fit because Bolsonaro had explicitly defended the violation of human rights, questioned the rights of minorities and denied that the military government had been a dictatorship that used torture. Folha and other mainstays of the Brazilian press "don't seem interested in the historical dimension of this understanding," she said. The most controversial term sometimes used to describe Bolsonaro and his campaign is "fascist," and its use goes beyond opponents or social media trolls. On Sunday, former President Fernando Henrique Cardoso said comments by one of Bolsonaro's sons, a congressman and close adviser, "smelled of fascism." Video surfaced of Eduardo Bolsonaro arguing during a talk in July that the country's top court could be shut down with just a few soldiers if for any reason his father was not allowed to assume office. Bolsonaro advocates for strong, even authoritarian leadership and exalts the state over the individual, central tenants of fascism. His campaign motto is: "Brazil above all, God above everybody." But people who argue that the term does not apply note that it's a huge leap to talk about Bolsonaro in the same category as Italian strongman Benito Mussolini, the first to use the term in the early 20th century, or Hitler, who oversaw the extermination of millions of Jews. "We need to stay alert in the future," wrote Helio Gurovitz, a prominent blogger for Brazilian G1 news portal. "But today the generalizing of terms of precise historic significance, such as 'fascism' or 'Nazism,' is a categorical error that only serves to nourish (Bolsonaro's) campaign and obscure the real risks he represents." ___ Associated Press Writer Beatrice Christofaro in Rio de Janeiro contributed to this report. ___ Follow Peter Prengaman: www.twitter.com/peterprengaman FILE - In this Oct. 21, 2018 file photo, a supporter of presidential frontrunner Jair Bolsonaro holds up a bumper sticker promoting her candidate, during a campaign rally in Brasilia, Brazil. Perhaps the biggest debates on how to describe Bolsonaro center around the terms "hard right," "far right" or "extreme right." Bolsonaro takes issue with these descriptions. "I'm not on the extreme right. Show me an act that makes me extreme right," he said earlier this month during an event in Rio. (AP Photo/Eraldo Peres) FILE - In this April 19, 2018 file photo, presidential hopeful, conservative Brazilian lawmaker Jair Bolsonaro flashes two thumbs up as he poses for a photo with cadets during a ceremony marking Army Day, in Brasilia, Brazil. As Sunday's, Oct. 28 election approaches, fierce debates are unfolding in Brazil and beyond over how to describe Bolsonaro, a candidate whose eclectic mix of policies and harsh language thrills supporters and terrifies detractors. (AP Photo/Eraldo Peres, File) NEW BERN, N.C. (AP) - A Fort Bragg soldier charged with kidnapping a 12-year-old girl from her North Carolina home is being held on $750,000 bail. Craven County Sheriff's Office senior investigator Brian Peluso tells The Fayetteville Observer that bail was set for Pvt. 2nd Class James Peele at an appearance Tuesday. The 19-year-old from Chesterfield, South Carolina, is charged with kidnapping, burglary and statutory rape. His next court date is Friday. The sheriff's office said the girl's grandmother awoke Sunday to discover the girl missing and a ransom note on her bed. Investigators noted that Peele and the girl were Facebook friends and tracked them to Fort Bragg. Peele was arrested and the girl was reunited with her grandmother that night. Peele's attorney didn't immediately return a call from The Associated Press seeking comment. CHICAGO (AP) - The aunt of a man fatally shot by police and a nationally known civil rights leader were among dozens of people who offered opinions Wednesday on a draft plan to reform Chicago police to a federal judge who must decide soon whether to approve it. Several who stepped before Judge Robert Dow Jr. became emotional speaking about the over 200-page plan , which would be overseen by Dow. It would, among other things, tighten use-of-force rules and seek to improve officer training. Nearly 80 people were expected to speak during two days of hearings designed for him to gauge opinions as he mulls his decision on whether to give a thumbs up or down to the plan. The hearings began Wednesday morning and end Thursday afternoon. A majority of speakers Wednesday urged Dow to OK the proposed plan, also called a consent decree because it envisions close court supervision. "We need healing and hope in this city, and this consent decree will provide it," one speaker, Cook County Public Defender Amy Campanelli, told Dow. Another referred to how white police officer Jason Van Dyke shot black teenager Laquan McDonald 16 times in 2014, with officers involved accused later of trying to coordinate false reports to protect Van Dyke from legal scrutiny. FILE - In this Sept. 13, 2918, file photo, Illinois Attorney General Lisa Madigan, center, Chicago police Superintendent Eddie Johnson, right, and Mayor Rahm Emanuel hold up a copy of the proposed consent decree during a news conference in Chicago. A federal judge who will decide whether to approve a lengthy court-oversight plan to reform the Chicago Police Department started a highly anticipated two-day hearing Wednesday, Oct. 24, 2018, by saying he would allow dozens of people to voice their opinions on the proposal. The plan hammered out by city officials and the Illinois Attorney General's Office has widespread support in minority neighborhoods that have long been suspicious of police and complained about police misconduct. (Antonio Perez /Chicago Tribune via AP, File) "We learned about denials, we learned about lies as standard operating procedure (by police)," Craig Futterman, a University of Chicago law professor who helped push the city to release a video of the shooting in 2015. "We sorely need a consent decree in Chicago." The 2015 video, which showed the teen holding a knife and walking away from officers, prompted an investigation of the police department by the Justice Department, which found widespread abuses. Among those who waited in a long line outside the courtroom Wednesday for a chance to speak was civil rights leader the Rev. Jesse Jackson. He also alluded to the Van Dyke case, while emphasizing that problems in the police department go deeper. "One man cannot be the fall guy for this criminal justice collapse," he said. Arewa Karen Winters, whose nephew was fatally shot by Chicago police in 2016, told Dow the African-American community in the city was "crying tears of blood" from an extended legacy of mistreatment by police. Several police officers were among the speakers who described the plan as hopelessly flawed, urging Judge Dow to reject it. One, Michael Garza, singled out a provision that would require that officers file paperwork each time they point a gun, even if they don't shoot. "I believe it will tie the hands of officers," Garza said about the proposal. "I want my Chicago safe and this is not the way to do it." Yet another officer said solutions to any problems with policing are straightforward: When suspects are told by police to stop, John Catanzara told Judge Dow, they need to stop. "It's a simple command and it needs to be followed," he said. Those comments echo the criticism of Attorney General Jeff Sessions last week, who in Chicago speech warned the reforms could cause a surge in violent crime. He also argued that the recent murder conviction of the officer in the fatal shooting of Laquan McDonald demonstrated that police officers who break the law are already "punished and jailed." The draft plan stems from a lawsuit filed by Illinois Attorney General Lisa Madigan , one that was not opposed by Mayor Rahm Emanuel. It's the result of a year of negotiations. Another opponent of the consent decree, Willian Choslovsky, said it was inappropriate for the city to cede to a federal judge powers normally given to mayors and police chiefs to implement police reforms. He joked in remarks to Judge Dow: "We can add mayor and police chief to your already impressive resume." ___ AP Writer Don Babwin also contributed to this report. ___ Follow Michael Tarm on Twitter at http://twitter.com/mtarm BOISE, Idaho (AP) - Comedian Chelsea Handler endorsed Paulette Jordan, a Democrat and Native American woman running for governor of Idaho, in a Twitter post but included a photo of the wrong Native American. The photo in the tweet Wednesday showed Handler giving a thumbs-up next to Deb Haaland, a Democrat running in New Mexico to become the nation's first Native American woman in Congress. Within an hour, Handler deleted the tweet to her 8.4 million followers. Her publicist didn't immediately return a call to The Associated Press. Jordan is a member of Idaho's Coeur d'Alene Tribe and a former state representative vying to become Idaho's first female governor and first Native American governor. Haaland is a member of Laguna Pueblo. HADDONFIELD, N.J. (AP) - The woman who created a Thanksgiving staple enjoyed by millions - the green bean casserole - has died at age 92. Dorcas Reilly died on Oct. 15 of Alzheimer's disease, said Ken Tomlinson of the Hinski-Tomlinson Funeral Home in Haddonfield, New Jersey. Campbell Soup officials said the New Jersey resident was the driving force behind the popular dish, made with green beans and cream of mushroom soup and topped with crunchy fried onions. The company said it is the most popular recipe ever to come out of its corporate kitchen. The recipe's website got 2.7 million visits during last year's holidays, the company said. The original recipe card was donated to the National Inventors Hall of Fame in 2002. "Dorcas was an incredible woman, whose legacy will live on for years to come. She will be missed by her Campbell colleagues and all those who were impacted by her creativity and generous spirit," the company said in a statement. Reilly was a Campbell Soup kitchen supervisor in 1955 when she combined the ingredients of the now-legendary green bean casserole for an Associated Press feature. FILE - In this Nov. 15, 2005 file photo, a Green Bean Cassorole sits in the foreground as Dorcas Reilly prepares another at the Campbell Soup Co. corporate kitchen in Camden, N.J. Reilly died on Monday, Oct. 15, 2018 and her family will celebrate her life on Saturday, Oct. 27 in the town where she lived, Haddonfield, N.J. Reilly was a Campbell Soup kitchen supervisor in 1955 when she combined green beans and cream of mushroom soup, topped with crunchy fried onions, for an Associated Press feature. It is the most popular recipe ever to come out of the corporate kitchen at Campbell Soup. (AP Photo/Mel Evans, File) In a 2005 AP interview marking the recipe's 50th anniversary, Reilly said she didn't remember having a hand in it because the dish was among hundreds that were created during her time at Campbell's. She also helped create a tomato soup meatloaf, a tuna noodle casserole and Sloppy Joe-like "souperburgers." The recipe is still a fixture on soup-can labels and television commercials. And Reilly said she always kept the ingredients for the casserole on hand in her home - just in case someone asked her to whip one up. Reilly also noted whenever the company held recipe contests, she would typically see "homemade" variations of the soup-can recipe for the casserole. "It would be Aunt Suzy's or Grandma's," she said. Campbell's officials have said consumers often tell them practically anyone - even novices or bad cooks - can make a green bean casserole because it's so easy to prepare. Reilly worked for Campbell's on and off between the late 1940s and 1988, when she retired as manager of the Campbell's kitchen. She is survived by her husband of 59 years, Thomas, and a son and daughter. A service will be held Saturday in Haddonfield. ___ Associated Press writer Bruce Shipkowski in Trenton, N.J., contributed to this report. MOSCOW (AP) - Russian President Vladimir Putin warned Wednesday that if the United States deploys intermediate-range missiles in Europe, Russia will have to target the nations that would host them. The stern statement follows U.S. President Donald Trump's announcement over the weekend that he intends to opt out of a 1987 nuclear arms control pact over alleged Russian violations. Putin said he hoped the United States wouldn't follow up by positioning intermediate-range missiles in Europe. Such a move would be a repeat of a Cold War showdown in the 1980s, when the U.S. and the Soviet Union both deployed intermediate-range missiles on the continent, the Russian leader said. "If they are deployed in Europe, we will naturally have to respond in kind," Putin said at a news conference after talks with visiting Italian Prime Minister Giuseppe Conte. "The European nations that would agree to that should understand that they would expose their territory to the threat of a possible retaliatory strike. These are obvious things." He continued: "I don't understand why we should put Europe in such a grave danger." "I see no reason for that," Putin said. "I would like to repeat that it's not our choice. We don't want it." Russian President Vladimir Putin, left, and U.S. National security adviser John Bolton during their meeting in the Kremlin in Moscow, Russia, Tuesday, Oct. 23, 2018. (AP Photo/Alexander Zemlianichenko) NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg said Wednesday that the Western military alliance's members blame Russia for developing a new missile in violation of the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces (INF) Treaty, but he doesn't expect them to beef up nuclear arsenals in Europe in response. "I don't foresee that allies will deploy more nuclear weapons in Europe as a response to the new Russian missile," Stoltenberg told reporters at NATO headquarters in Brussels. Putin rejected Trump's claim that Russia has breached the INF treaty, alleging it was the United States that violated the pact. He charged that U.S. missile defense facilities in Romania hold intermediate-range cruise missiles with just a quick tweak in computer software. The Russian leader added that he hoped to discuss the issue with Trump in Paris when they both attend Nov. 11 events marking 100 years since Armistice Day. "We are ready to work together with our American partners without any hysteria," he said. "The important thing is what decisions will come next." The INF treaty signed in 1987 by U.S. President Ronald Reagan and Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev prohibited the U.S. and Russia from possessing, producing or test-flying ground-launched nuclear cruise and ballistic missiles with a range of 500 to 5,500 kilometers (300 to 3,400 miles.) The pact was lauded as a major safeguard for global security since they eliminated shorter-range missiles that take only a few minutes to reach their targets. Trump said he planned to pull the U.S. out of the treaty due to the alleged Russia violations and also because China, which wasn't part of the pact, has intermediate-range missile capability. Trump's national security adviser, John Bolton, spent two days in Moscow this week to discuss the move with Putin and his top lieutenants. Bolton said Washington hasn't served a formal withdrawal notice, but he voiced strong skepticism the treaty could be salvaged. Russian President Vladimir Putin listens to U.S. National security adviser John Bolton during their meeting in the Kremlin in Moscow, Russia, Tuesday, Oct. 23, 2018, with Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov at left. (AP Photo/Alexander Zemlianichenko) BEIRUT (AP) - Syrian state media and a war monitor say an airstrike on a pocket held by the Islamic State group in the country's east has killed several people. State news agency SANA said Wednesday's airstrike by the U.S.-led coalition killed several people without giving a breakdown. The Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said 16 people were killed including nine IS fighters. The Observatory said the airstrike in the village of Sousa struck near a mosque. The incident came days after the coalition said an airstrike on a mosque in the area targeted an insurgent command-and-control center killing a dozen fighters. The coalition said that while the law of war protects mosques, the use of the building as a headquarters by IS caused it to lose that protected status. WALKER, Mich. (AP) - A judge has put on hold the scheduled prison release of a former Michigan nursing home aide who pleaded guilty to smothering five patients in a pact with her lover. WOOD-TV reports that Kent County Judge Joseph Rossi issued a stay Tuesday. Catherine Wood was set to be released on Wednesday. The 57-year-old Wood has spent nearly 30 years in prison for second-degree murder in the 1987 slayings at a nursing home in Walker, near Grand Rapids. She was sentenced to 20 to 40 years. Attorney John Engman filed a petition to keep Wood in prison. Engman was a son-in-law to victim Mae Mason. WOOD-TV reports that Rossi has 28 days from the petition filing to make a final decision on Wood's release. Gwendolyn Graham was sentenced to life with no chance for parole. ___ Information from: WOOD-TV, http://www.woodtv.com CHICAGO (AP) - A federal judge says he will announce in December a trial date in the lawsuit challenging construction of the Obama Presidential Center in a Chicago park. The Chicago Tribune reports that at a hearing on Wednesday, U.S. District Judge John Robert Blakey told attorneys he won't let the case linger. But his comment that discovery in the case should continue during the next few months suggests that any trial is at the least several months away. He says he will announce a trial date on Dec. 5. In its lawsuit, an environmental group called Protect Our Parks contends that the center shouldn't be built in Jackson Park on the South Side because the transfer of parkland to a private entity violates state law. The city says there is no such violation. ST. LOUIS (AP) - The operator of a suburban St. Louis landfill where an underground fire smolders near illegally dumped radioactive waste is suing the drugmaker whose predecessor processed the Cold War-era nuclear material. Bridgeton Landfill LLC seeks help paying for the $205 cleanup of the Superfund site in the lawsuit filed Tuesday against Mallinckrodt LLC, the St. Louis Post-Dispatch reported . The suit says Mallinckrodt's predecessor, Mallinckrodt Chemical Works, refined uranium compounds that were used in the U.S. government's Manhattan Project decades ago at its factory north of downtown St. Louis. Later, leached barium sulfate from the weapons program was mixed with contaminated soil and used to cover trash at the West Lake Landfill, which is adjacent to the smoldering Bridgeton Landfill. Republic Services, which subsequently acquired both landfills through a merger, has spent millions of dollars to ensure that the fire and the nuclear waste don't meet. The Environmental Protection Agency's remedy calls for excavating about 70 percent of the landfill's radioactive waste and disposing of it out of state. The agency identified the landfill operator as one of three potentially responsible parties. Mallinckrodt was not among them, although it has been named in more than 140 federal lawsuits filed on behalf of north St. Louis County residents and heirs who claimed exposure to radioactive waste caused cancers and deaths. The suit says Mallinckrodt should have to pay the costs Bridgeton Landfill has incurred and will incur during the cleanup, including interest, in addition to attorneys' fees. It also seeks a declaratory judgment that the drug manufacturer is liable for future response costs or damages. Mallinckrodt said in a written statement that federal officials approached Mallinckrodt to refine uranium ore as part of America's nuclear program shortly after the attack on Pearl Harbor. The statement said the government "understands that Mallinckrodt did not send any residues or other materials associated with this government work to West Lake Landfill." LAGUNA NIGUEL, Calif. (AP) - Thirty years ago, California U.S. Rep. Dana Rohrabacher campaigned for Congress as the face of the Reagan revolution. The conservative campus activist and surfer known for his libertarian streak had worked for Ronald Reagan's presidential campaigns and later as a White House speechwriter. His posters displayed his image with the face of the 40th president. The 71-year-old still surfs, but the days of unabashedly proclaiming his Republican bona fides are gone. Locked in a tight race in a Southern California district much changed from the one that first sent him to Washington, even a Republican Party mailer makes no mention of Rohrabacher's party ties but refers to him as a "political maverick." "I'm taking on both parties," Rohrabacher proclaims in a campaign ad arguing for protecting health care for people with pre-existing conditions. At his side is his teenage daughter, who was diagnosed with leukemia when she was 8. It doesn't mention that Rohrabacher voted repeatedly to repeal former President Barack Obama's health care law and its safeguards for pre-existing conditions. His campaign said those votes were largely symbolic and intended to highlight problems with the law. In this Oct. 17, 2018 image, California U.S. Rep. Dana Rohrabacher looks on at party offices in Laguna Niguel, Calif. Thirty years ago, Rohrabacher campaigned for Congress as the face of the Reagan revolution. This year, locked in a tight race in a Southern California district much changed from the one where he first was elected, even a Republican Party mailer makes no mention of him being a Republican. (AP Photo/Gregory Bull) Through 15 consecutive elections, Rohrabacher never had much of a struggle in a district with devoted Republican voters that includes the wealthy enclaves of Newport Beach and Laguna Beach. But a wave of new and more diverse residents and divisions over President Donald Trump and the #MeToo movement against sexual misconduct have him in a toss-up race against Democrat Harley Rouda that could become a tipping point in the fight to control Congress. Democrats need to flip 23 seats nationwide, and Rohrabacher's district is one of four in Orange County that the party hopes to claim. His re-election fight is testing whether a congressman closely aligned with Trump can be re-elected in a district that has grown less white, more Democratic and went to Hillary Clinton in the 2016 presidential contest. Rohrabacher needs a strong Republican turnout while attracting middle-ground voters. His challenges include making his Reagan-era conservative views appealing to newer voters, while holding college-educated Republican women, who polls suggest are turned off by Trump and the nomination hearing for Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh. "You know who I am," Rohrabacher said, looking into the camera during a recent televised debate with Rouda. "You can trust me." California is a strongly Democratic state, but Rohrabacher's district falls entirely within Orange County, a place of marinas and country clubs known as a foundation block in the modern conservative movement. Reagan likened it to a Republican heaven, and its miles of suburban sprawl have been synonymous with Republican political strength for decades. Republicans hold a 10-point registration edge in the district, which Rohrabacher won by 17 points two years ago. While Trump's 2016 victory exposed Democratic vulnerabilities across America's Rust Belt, it reinforced how reliably Democratic California has become. Trump lost by more than 4 million votes, a shockingly high figure that accounted for Clinton's victory in the national vote count. Republicans have been losing ground in California for years, where Democrats hold every statewide office, both chambers of the Legislature and a 3.7 million edge in voter registrations. The last Republican presidential candidate to carry the state was George H.W. Bush in 1988, the same year Rohrabacher won his first term. Rohrabacher is a climate change skeptic, an outspoken opponent of illegal immigration and Russia's leading defender on Capitol Hill. His name has come up in the investigation into Russian meddling in the 2016 presidential election, though no criminal wrongdoing has been alleged and he denies any impropriety. The congressman has never been a cookie-cutter Republican: He supports legalized marijuana and voted against the Republican tax plan, saying it would hurt his district. In the June primary, Rohrabacher finished first in a crowded field but pulled in just 30 percent of the votes. Mary Kyle, a technical writer from Huntington Beach, is the kind of voter Rohrabacher needs to be concerned about. Though registered as a Democrat, she routinely splits her ticket and has voted for Rohrabacher. But she believes he's grown distant from the district and is uncomfortable with his views on immigration. This time, she's volunteering for Rouda. Kyle said a breaking point came during the Kavanaugh hearing. She was outraged. "It made me say, 'I'm going out every single day until the election,'" Kyle said at a recent organizing event for Rouda supporters, where she was preparing to head to a precinct to knock on voters' doors. But Rohrabacher is on firm ground with Jill Frost, a retired art gallery owner and Republican from Aliso Viejo, who was making phone calls on the congressman's behalf at a campaign office earlier this month. Frost also had a negative reaction to the Kavanaugh hearing but for a different reason than Kyle: She judged it a ridiculous witch hunt. She's concerned Democrats are trying to push the country too far left and blames "dirty politics" for the tough political climate for Republicans. The congressman, she says, "is a good guy." Rouda was at a Costa Mesa strip mall last weekend with a crowd of volunteers ranging from older people to the young, with some pushing baby carriages. To Rouda, a Republican-turned-Democrat real estate executive, voters have grown troubled with "a hard shift to the right" by leaders in the GOP. He's been critical of Rohrabacher's doubts about climate change and has depicted the congressman as a hardened partisan contributing to Washington gridlock. Given Rohrabacher's record in Congress, "he's everything but a maverick or an independent," Rouda said. In a tight race, he told his volunteers of the importance of "every door-knock, every phone call made, every social media tweet, every dollar raised, every postcard sent." Knocking on one more door, he said, "could be the difference between victory and failure." In this Oct. 17, 2018 image, California U.S. Rep. Dana Rohrabacher speaks to supporters at party offices in Laguna Niguel, Calif. Thirty years ago, Rohrabacher campaigned for Congress as the face of the Reagan revolution. This year, locked in a tight race in a Southern California district much changed from the one where he first was elected, even a Republican Party mailer makes no mention of him being a Republican. (AP Photo/Gregory Bull) In this Oct. 17, 2018 image, California U.S. Rep. Dana Rohrabacher, center, poses with supporters for a photo at party offices in Laguna Niguel, Calif. Thirty years ago, Rohrabacher campaigned for Congress as the face of the Reagan revolution. This year, locked in a tight race in a Southern California district much changed from the one where he first was elected, even a Republican Party mailer makes no mention of him being a Republican. (AP Photo/Gregory Bull) In this Oct. 17, 2018 image, California U.S. Rep. Dana Rohrabacher, center, greets supporters at party offices in Laguna Niguel, Calif. Thirty years ago, Rohrabacher campaigned for Congress as the face of the Reagan revolution. This year, locked in a tight race in a Southern California district much changed from the one where he first was elected, even a Republican Party mailer makes no mention of him being a Republican. (AP Photo/Gregory Bull) In this Oct. 17, 2018 image, California U.S. Rep. Dana Rohrabacher, right, speaks to supporters at party offices in Laguna Niguel, Calif. Thirty years ago, Rohrabacher campaigned for Congress as the face of the Reagan revolution. This year, locked in a tight race in a Southern California district much changed from the one where he first was elected, even a Republican Party mailer makes no mention of him being a Republican. (AP Photo/Gregory Bull) In this Saturday, Oct. 20,2018 photo Democratic congressional candidate Harley Rouda talks with a volunteer outside his Costa Mesa, Calif. campaign office. Rouda, a real estate executive, is trying to unseat 15-term Republican Rep. Dana Rohrabacher in the 48th District. (AP Photo/Michael R. Blood) In this Saturday, Oct. 20,2018 photo Harley Rouda volunteer Mary Kyle of Huntington Beach prepares to knock on doors on behalf of the Democratic candidate in Orange County's 48th Congressional District IN Costa Mesa, Calif. (AP Photo/Michael R. Blood) In this Oct. 17, 2018 image, supporters for California U.S. Rep. Dana Rohrabacher mingle near a cardboard cutout in the image of President Donald Trump at party offices in Laguna Niguel, Calif. Thirty years ago, Rohrabacher campaigned for Congress as the face of the Reagan revolution. This year, locked in a tight race in a Southern California district much changed from the one where he first was elected, even a Republican Party mailer makes no mention of him being a Republican. (AP Photo/Gregory Bull) TRENTON, N.J. (AP) - The Latest on a fatal viral outbreak in New Jersey (all times local): 6:45p.m. The New Jersey pediatric rehabilitation center where a severe viral outbreak resulted in the deaths of seven young people says it took "immediate and comprehensive" action to prevent infection. The Wanaque Center for Nursing and Rehabilitation said Wednesday that its top concern is for the "health and safety of its patients, their families and staff." State officials said Wednesday that seven people, mostly children, died from the adenovirus outbreak. Officials and Democratic Gov. Phil Murphy say a widespread public health crisis is unlikely since the young people with the virus are particularly at risk because they have weakened immune systems. A general look of the marquee outside of the Wanaque Center For Nursing And Rehabilitation, where New Jersey state Health Department confirmed the 18 cases of adenovirus, Tuesday, Oct. 23, 2018, in Haskell, N.J. The outbreak has left six children dead and 12 others sick. The facility has been told it can't admit any new patients until the outbreak ends. Adenoviruses usually just cause mild illnesses. But officials say this outbreak is particularly severe because it's affecting medically fragile children with severely compromised immune systems. They also note this strain has been particularly associated with disease in communal living facilities. (AP Photo/Julio Cortez) ___ 5:40 p.m. Health officials say the first symptoms associated with the deadly viral outbreak at nursing facility in northern New Jersey showed up Sept. 26, two weeks before the state was notified of an outbreak. State health officials were notified Oct. 9 of the adenovirus infections at the Wanaque Center for Nursing and Rehabilitation. But state health commissioner Dr. Shereef Elnahal told a news conference Wednesday that it's always difficult to know exactly when an actual outbreak begins. Seven patients, mostly children, have died this month as a result of being infected with the virus. Eleven others are recovering. The health commissioner says that all the infections occurred in the facility's respiratory, or ventilator unit. Some pediatric patients at the rehab center have been there most or all of their lives. ___ 4:50 p.m. The head of a New Jersey nurses union says staff nurses at a rehab center where a viral outbreak has killed seven patients complained about staffing shortages, which they say might lead to poor infection control. Deborah White is president of the Health Professionals and Allied Employees union. She says in a statement that the 70 nurses represented by the union are working to contain the spread of the adenovirus at the Wanaque Center for Nursing and Rehabilitation "under difficult circumstances." She notes what the nurses say are dangerous staffing shortages. At least 18 pediatric patients at the facility were infected with the adenovirus that as of Wednesday evening had killed seven people, including many children and at least one young adult. The facility's 2016 inspection noted a shortage of clinical nursing assistants that ranged from about 6 percent to 12 percent of the needed coverage during several days of monitoring in March. Later inspections did not note the problem. ___ 1:40 p.m. New Jersey's health commissioner says it's unlikely a viral outbreak at a pediatric rehabilitation center that left seven "medically fragile" people dead will pose a wider threat. Dr. Shereef Elnahal said in an interview with the Associated Press Wednesday he doesn't "see a major outbreak risk in the community." He says that's because the adenovirus that infected at least 18 pediatric patients at the Wanaque Center for Nursing and Rehabilitation, in Haskell, commonly results in only mild illnesses among people with healthy immune systems. The health department says most of those who died were under 18. At least one is a young adult. Health officials had been describing all those infected as children, which is the way the health facility describes its pediatric patients even though it says some are as old as 22. Federal inspectors over the past few years found isolated violations of rules governing infection control. ___ 9:30 a.m. Another child has died following a severe viral outbreak at a New Jersey rehabilitation center for "medically fragile children," bringing the death toll to seven. There have been 18 cases overall of adenovirus at the Wanaque Center for Nursing and Rehabilitation in Haskell, about 30 miles (50 kilometers) northwest of New York, the state Health Department said. The 227-bed, for-profit facility cares for children and elderly residents. The agency had said Tuesday that six children had died this month. But the center said it learned Tuesday night that another child had died. The strain afflicting the children is usually associated with acute respiratory illness, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, which on its website instructs health workers to report unusual clusters to state or local health departments. The Health Department hasn't released the names or the ages of the victims. Excerpts from recent editorials in the United States and abroad: ___ Oct. 22 The Washington Post says the death of journalist Jamal Khashoggi should trigger a recalibration of U.S. relations with Saudi Arabia: The murder of Jamal Khashoggi should spark a long-overdue recalibration of U.S. relations with Saudi Arabia and its reckless de facto leader, Mohammed bin Salman. In the past several years the crown prince has launched a series of foolhardy foreign policy initiatives that have damaged U.S. interests, including his rupturing of relations with Qatar and Canada and the kidnapping of the pro-American Lebanese prime minister. But the best place to start the U.S. readjustment is where Mohammed bin Salman himself began: with the disastrous war in Yemen. Saudi Arabia and its allies plowed into Yemen in 2015, after a northern rebel group, the Houthis, captured the capital and ousted a Saudi-backed government. Saudi officials confidently promised to make quick work of the Houthis. After more than three years of fighting, including a U.S.-backed bombing campaign that has killed thousands of civilians, the Saudi coalition, which includes the United Arab Emirates, has come nowhere near to achieving that objective. Instead it has triggered what the United Nations describes as the world's worst humanitarian crisis while committing atrocities that a U.N. investigative panel said were probable war crimes. Eight million Yemenis are in danger of starvation, and more than 1 million have contracted cholera - the worst such epidemic in modern history. Yet UAE forces, ignoring U.N. appeals, are besieging the port through which 70 percent of food and medicine supplies are imported. The Saudis keep dropping U.S.-supplied bombs on civilian targets: On Aug. 9, one struck a school bus, killing at least 51 people, including 40 children. The Saudis say they are countering Iran, which backs the Houthis. But the Houthis are an indigenous group with legitimate grievances, and the war has only enhanced Iranian influence. As has been obvious for some time, the only solution is a negotiated settlement. But the Saudis have done their best to sabotage a U.N.-led peace process. Talks planned for Geneva in September failed when Saudi leaders would not grant safe travel guarantees to Houthi leaders. Congressional concern about this strategic and humanitarian disaster has been mounting. In March, the Senate nearly approved a resolution cutting off U.S. aid, including refueling and targeting assistance. In August, Congress approved a defense bill that required the administration to certify that the Saudis were taking steps to minimize humanitarian casualties and facilitate humanitarian deliveries. Against overwhelming evidence to the contrary and the advice of State Department experts, the administration issued the certification last month. Mr. Khashoggi's death should resurface the issue, as senators from both parties are proposing. Sen. Robert Menendez (D-N.J.) has been holding up a Saudi request to purchase precision-guided munition kits for its bombs; that blockage should be formalized, along with a ban on all other aid to the Yemen war. Iran hawks will howl that the prohibition will work to Tehran's advantage. But the Trump administration's unquestioning support for what amounts to a sectarian crusade by Sunni Saudi Arabia against Shiite Iran needs an adjustment, too. Iran's attempt to establish itself as a regional hegemon should be resisted. But that can be achieved without buying into Mohammed bin Salman's own imperial - and unachievable - ambitions. Online: https://www.washingtonpost.com/ ___ Oct. 22 San Francisco Chronicle criticizes the definition of gender that the Trump administration is considering as an intrusive, anti-science attack on transgender Americans: The Trump administration is considering legally defining gender as a category determined by one's genitalia at birth, according to the New York Times. This radical change would essentially yank federal recognition from the estimated 1.4 million Americans who recognize themselves as a gender other than the one they were born into. It's by far the most obvious attack on transgender people from an administration that has already made it clear it doesn't appreciate their contributions to society. (The Trump administration has also tried to ban transgender people from serving in the military.) It's also intrusive (no one asked for the federal government's opinion on their genitalia) and anti-science to boot. The medical community interprets many aspects of an individual's physiology beyond genitalia to determine their sex. (The Trump administration would only allow genetic testing.) Some people are born with characteristics that don't fit the typical definitions of male or female. These communities have spent decades educating society about the long-term harm they've experienced when doctors have assigned them a gender. Now they have to fear the government is doing the same thing. The Trump administration's consideration of a fixed gender definition will lead to infinite legal, medical and social problems for transgender and intersex people. What it won't do is force them out of existence. Transgender and intersex people have always been part of the human race, and none of the Trump administration's cruelties will change that basic fact. Online: https://www.sfchronicle.com/ ___ Oct. 23 Deseret News urges compassion for the caravan of people approaching the U.S. border from Honduras: The United States has been a beacon of hope for people who are poor, mistreated or persecuted. That is a unique position on the world stage that must not be abdicated. Many Americans trace their roots to people who left harsh conditions in other countries in search of a better life in the United States, and their migration, despite often-harsh opposition, ultimately has blessed the nation and its economy. So the first reaction upon seeing thousands of people marching from Honduras and through Mexico with hopes of reaching the U.S. border should be compassion. Journalists interviewing these people have uncovered stories about families fleeing gang violence and seeking hope for children whose future looks bleak in a country where the World Bank estimates 66 percent of the people are in poverty. In rural Honduras, about 20 percent of the people live on less than $1.90 per day. The people who make up the caravan are suffering deprivations and health problems, including swollen feet, lacerations and infections, as the Red Cross told politico.com. People don't voluntarily endure such hardship unless their lives reach a critical level of desperation. They speak about the hope of a better life in the United States. The second reaction should be concern about the need to handle these people in an orderly and humane manner if they should make it to the U.S. border. For obvious reasons, the United States cannot allow thousands of people to storm their way in with no vetting. But the nation also should not cruelly separate families at the border, as it has in the past, while determining who stays and who is sent back. The long-term implications of such separations on the psyches of children and parents alike are likely to lead to many unintended consequences in the future. An asylum-vetting process already is in place. The truth is that most in the caravan are not likely to be granted their wish. Using statistics provided by the Syracuse University Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse, The New York Times earlier this year said 75 percent of asylum cases originating with nationals from El Salvador, Honduras and Guatemala were denied between 2012 and 2017. Despite President Trump's assertions that Democrats are behind the current wave, most of those years were during the Obama administration. Merely being impoverished or fearing for one's life is not an official reason to seek asylum. An immigrant must prove he or she is part of a persecuted group that is being targeted because of religion, race, nationality or as retaliation for political speech. That does not mean the nation should turn its back on those who are desperate. While the president obviously sees the emerging caravan as an opportunity for political gain ahead of midterm elections, his tweets, including unsubstantiated fears that the caravan is being infiltrated by international terrorists, are not helpful. However, his threats to withhold international aid to Honduras and other Central American countries come closer to a productive response. Those nations are rife with official corruption that makes life unbearable for many of their citizens. Pressure could spur substantive changes that might make migration unnecessary. Meanwhile, Congress and the president should lay politics aside and resume efforts to pass meaningful immigration law. That would include a guest-worker system and a more realistic, fair and compassionate asylum policy. Compassion for others and safety for all on both sides of the border should be the true measure of our nation's rich immigrant heritage. Online: https://www.deseretnews.com/ ___ Oct. 22 Tampa Bay Times on combatting climate change: The effects of climate change are coming harder and faster, according to a recent report by the United Nations' Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. In fact, a child born today - if greenhouse gas emissions aren't cut nearly in half before she's a teen - will live in a world on track to irreversible damage. That catastrophe would begin just as that same child is graduating from college in 2040, far sooner than previously expected, and at a lower increase in global temperature than earlier thought. Stalling is no longer a viable strategy. The report's authors say if greenhouse gases continue to pollute at the rate they do now, the atmosphere will warm up by as much as 2.7 degrees Fahrenheit above preindustrial levels in a generation. That would swamp coastlines, ruin crops, worsen droughts and increase the severity of hurricanes and wildfires. The report shows two things should happen: Renewable sources of energy would have to provide up to two-thirds of the world's electricity, and coal would have to fade from roughly 40 percent today to almost nothing by 2050. "There is no way to mitigate climate change without getting rid of coal," said Drew Shindell, an author of the report and a climate scientist at Duke University. Unfortunately, President Donald Trump mocks climate change - and as recently as his 60 Minutes interview this month, said he doubts people cause it - while planning to expand the use of coal and withdrawing from the Paris climate accords. While combatting climate change requires global leadership, local leaders are doing what they can in its absence. Two dozen local governments, stretching from Citrus to Manatee counties, have formed the Tampa Bay Regional Resiliency Coalition, to plan for and fight climate change. This is wise, as a 2014 federal report said Tampa Bay is one of the areas of Florida most vulnerable to rising seas. Officials will deal with real-world implications of changing climate and rising water. For example, how high must a bridge be built to be usable in 70 years? Should it be built at all? Where can seawalls stem the tide of rising water? As laudable as these local goals are, the best solution is to stop climate change before it's too late rather than simply reacting to its effects. The winners of this year's Nobel Prize in economics have worked on the answer. William Nordhaus of Yale has been called "the father of climate-change economics," and his solution is a universal tax on carbon. His research established a range of potential amounts. Such a tax would provide a marketplace incentive to cut pollution and stimulate innovation without a heavy hand from government. It also recognizes that pollution has a cost, and that the polluter should bear it. The Nobel co-winner, Paul Romer of New York University, has done research showing how governments can foster innovation. "Many people think that dealing with protecting the environment will be so costly and so hard that they just want to ignore the problem," he said. "They want to deny it exists; they can't deal with it." He is exactly right that it is time for governments at every level to step up. Solving the problem won't be cheap or easy, but it is possible. That child born today shouldn't be handed a past-due bill when she reaches adulthood. The price will only get higher the longer officials wait to act. Start paying now, or be prepared to pay a crushing price later. Online: https://www.tampabay.com/ ___ Oct. 19 The Orange County Register warns Wall Street against aligning with Democrats: In the Trump era, buttoned-down, straight-laced conservatism is widely seen to have been replaced by wild-eyed, open-throated populism. Yet Trump has worked closely with Congress to deliver economic policies that big-business Republicans have wanted for decades. In a strange and important way, however, those gains aren't translating to political support. Wall Street is going blue - and making a big mistake. At first blush, the statistics are surprising. New data from the Center for Responsive Politics shows that, for the first time since Barack Obama was elected, America's financial community is poised to dish out more cash to Democrats than Republicans. Given the way grassroots Democrats rail against corporate America, it's especially odd to see boardrooms sour on Republicans. Culturally, however, Wall Streeters have their reasons. On policy, they tend to talk a big game about the dangers of Trump's trade wars or the economic risks he runs by poor-mouthing the EU or rattling sabers in the Mideast and Asia. But it's domestic considerations that are likely deepening their hue of blue. The "boardroom liberalism" that grew up in the Obama years has kept right on going. More than ever, financial elites either embrace identity politics and progressive moralism out of principle or out of pragmatism. These days, the only sure-fire way to deflect populist backlash against "plutocrats" and "the 99 percent" is by making a huge show of one's personal or institutional "wokeness," spending big on progressive-approved causes, conspicuously advertising to groups with lots of political capital in liberal politics, and, well, giving money directly to incumbent Democrats and Democratic challengers. The epitome of this turn of events is Michael Bloomberg, who recently re-registered as a Democrat. He understands as well as anyone that, today, there are no lead roles reserved in American politics for people in the mushy middle. If you're a wealthy member of the elite, the fact is you face tremendous pressure, inside and out, to pledge your allegiance to the ideology of the Left. Nevertheless, if Wall Street thinks they can come out on top by aligning against Republicans, they're in for a harsh lesson. For one, California politics has starkly shown how the combination of big money and radical politics produces a huge backlash, not to mention a big raft of costly and ineffective policies that end up increasing inequality. Turning the country into California in that respect might be a progressive dream, but it will only alienate, outrage, and mobilize more and more Americans against the financial elite. Some Wall Streeters might think they've got a more clever rationale. Perhaps they could help move the Democrats to the center, staking out ground for a new moderate majority that sees big money as a big ballast for responsible governance. It's a nice thought, but it's irresponsibly off-base. The Obama years plainly showed that the progressive culture warriors who have captured the Democrats' agenda have no interest in being turned into squishy moderates. Certainly the wealthiest progressives, in Hollywood, Silicon Valley, and beyond, feel this way. For big finance, the best way to curb populist excess isn't to be found in throwing its weight behind party ideologues Left or Right. It might feel scary to risk the wrath of the progressives, but the real danger will come from losing even more support on Main Street. Online: https://www.ocregister.com/ ___ Oct. 21 China Daily says U.S. withdrawal from the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty with Russia would threaten the post-Cold War nuclear security framework: It is to be hoped that United States President Donald Trump's threat to withdraw from the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty is merely to woo votes in mid-term elections, or to exact concessions from Russia. For if he does dismantle the historic treaty, the US president will be removing a crucial cornerstone of post-Cold War nuclear security regime, and truly opening a Pandora's box of troubles. The 1987 treaty, which bans ground-launched nuclear missiles with ranges from 300 to 3,400 miles, put an end to a dangerous US-Russia nuclear standoff in Europe, and led to nearly 2,700 short- and medium-range missiles being eliminated. It has not only saved both signatories a costly and hazardous nuclear arms race, but offered reliable protection for the US and its allies in Europe and the Far East. That is why NATO defense ministers issued a joint statement that describes the INF as "crucial to Euro-Atlantic security", and reiterated they remain "fully committed" to the "landmark arms control treaty", despite their concerns about Russia's latest missile capabilities. That is also why some worried observers have called the prospect "the most severe crisis" in global nuclear arms control since the 1980s. Should Trump pull the US out of the treaty, doubts will naturally arise whether the other significant US-Russia nuclear arms reduction treaty, the 2010 New START, which limits the number of deployed strategic warheads, will survive when it expires in 2021. If the US withdraws from the INF, it will immediately reactivate a potentially lethal nuclear faceoff with Russia, with the US' NATO allies finding themselves again exposed to a direct nuclear threat from Russia. And the domino effect will not stop there. Despite it being a bilateral treaty, Trump cited China among the reasons he was pulling the US out of the agreement. The hostility he has adopted toward China means that it will also feel the need to enhance its missile deployment. Both Washington and Moscow have lodged similar complaints. Since both have questions about the other's honesty, they should resort to the inspection and verification procedures both had agreed to in the treaty and straighten things out. As to US security concerns involving China, Beijing, too, has a lot to discuss with Washington, especially under the current circumstances, with deepening and broadening mutual distrust. But that has nothing to do with the US-Russia INF Treaty, and should be handled independently. Mixing the two essentially unrelated matters will do nothing except worsen strategic mistrust and breathe further life into a new Cold War. Online: http://usa.chinadaily.com.cn/ AUSTIN, Texas (AP) - Texas Senate candidate Beto O'Rourke says "there's a lot of paranoia and fear" about a caravan of Central Americans walking toward the Mexico-U.S. border, and blamed the Trump administration for stoking those with Election Day looming. The Democratic congressman told reporters in Austin on Wednesday, "It may not be an accident that we're 13 days" from the Nov. 6 election. He said concerns about the caravan have come from "an administration that's trying to make us scared of one another." The caravan is in southern Mexico, far from the U.S. border. But O'Rourke's opponent, Republican Sen. Ted Cruz, has called it a "serious threat" and suggested deploying the National Guard. At a separate Austin stop, O'Rourke said of his opponent's assessment, "I just don't buy into the rhetoric." NEW YORK (AP) - As small business owners shop for 2019 health insurance, some will for the first time have the chance to join forces and buy cheaper insurance - depending on which state they're in. New rules that began going into effect last month allow sole proprietors and other business owners without employees to form what are known as association health plans, or AHPs. But while the Trump administration has touted the rules as a breakthrough, many owners will be disappointed to learn their states' insurance laws will limit their ability to join the plans. The rules issued by the Labor Department allow sole proprietors and partners to buy coverage that wasn't available to them under the Affordable Care Act. The rules also permit the plans to offer insurance that doesn't meet the health law's requirements for basic coverage. The catch for many businesses is the rules, unlike many other federal laws and regulations, don't supersede state requirements for health insurance, and states that heavily regulate insurance are expected to make it harder, if not impossible, for association health plans to be formed. Moreover, there are concerns that new association health plans could revive a problem from the past - plans that become insolvent or are scams. As owners research their options for 2019 health insurance, here's what they should know about AHPs: In this Wednesday, Oct. 17, 2018 photo, Melissa Perlman, owner of BlueIvy Communications, a public relations and communications agency, poses for a photo in Delray Beach, Fla. Perlman hasn't been able to afford insurance for her staffers since starting her public relations company, BlueIvy Communications, in 2011. She's interested in the potential association health plan, or AHP, being considered by the Greater Delray Beach Chamber of Commerce; the southern Florida group recently began surveying members about their interest in an AHP. (AP Photo/Wilfredo Lee) WHY THEY'RE APPEALING Association health plans have been around for decades; they've been legal if their members were in the same industry or profession, or in the same state. But under the Affordable Care Act, owners without employees had to buy individual coverage from a major carrier or from state exchanges. The Nebraska Farm Bureau announced its AHP soon after the new rules began taking effect. The bureau had been working on a plan for farmers, ranchers and agribusiness owners, but "the rules made it easier for sole proprietors to be involved," says Rob Robertson, the bureau's chief administrator. The Society of Collision Repair Specialists, which represents over 6,000 vehicle repair shops across the country, is developing an association health plan and hopes to be able to offer coverage during the first quarter of 2019, executive director Aaron Schulenburg says. Nearly three-quarters of the group's members have said they're interested, Schulenburg says. The organization is using a benefits consultant to find the best carrier for its plan, Schulenberg says. "We found examples of average savings in some of the already established networks reaching close to 20 percent," he says. Still, many owners know little about the plans. A survey of 1,000 owners by Bank of America found that 30 percent aren't familiar with them. The survey, taken between late August and early October, also found 35 percent were interested in offering coverage through an association health plan, and 35 percent weren't. CONCERNS AND OBSTACLES While many states have welcomed the new rules, 11 others and Washington, D.C., are suing the Trump administration, charging the rules allow insurance to be sold that offers less coverage and consumer protections than are required by law. Under the rules, association health plans are considered to be large group employers, and the Affordable Care Act doesn't require large groups to provide minimum essential, or basic, coverage. Among the benefits the ACA requires: prescription, pregnancy and wellness coverage. That may not worry some owners. Melissa Perlman hasn't been able to afford insurance for her staffers since starting her public relations company, BlueIvy Communications, in 2011. She's interested in the potential association health plan being considered by the Greater Delray Beach Chamber of Commerce. Perlman is aware coverage might not be as comprehensive as on the open market. But, she says, "whatever is offered would be an improvement from offering nothing." But the Labor Department rules have also raised concerns that some new association health plans might not be financially sound; if they became insolvent, as some mismanaged plans did in the past, policyholders could be stuck with medical bills. There are also fears that some new plans could be scams, repeating some unpleasant history. In 2004, the U.S. Government Accountability Office reported that there were 144 plans that weren't authorized to sell health insurance between 2000 and 2002; these scams covered 15,000 employers and more than 200,000 policyholders and left over $250 million in unpaid medical claims. Those scams are a key reason why Congress gave states broad powers to regulate association health plans, says Kevin Lucia, a professor at Georgetown University's Health Policy Institute. He noted that some states require association health plans to be in existence for two years before they can sell insurance, and some AHPs are required to be licensed as insurers. California recently enacted a law that prohibits sole proprietors and partners from participating in the plans. ADVICE AND CAVEATS Owners interested in association health plans should do plenty of research, starting with the laws of their states. "It could be a nonstarter depending on what state you're in," says James Schutzer, a vice president at insurance broker JDM Benefits in White Plains, New York. Like other brokers, Schutzer received a reminder in July from the state Department of Financial Services that New York law "strictly limits the associations or groups of employers that may sponsor a health insurance plan." Even states that don't currently have laws restricting association health plans could enact them, says Karen Pollitz, a senior fellow at the Kaiser Family Foundation. "They could pass rules saying you can't form an AHP just for the purpose of selling insurance," something that the rules permit, Pollitz says. The pending lawsuit is a red flag to employment attorney Lorie Maring, who notes that a successful challenge to the rules could put new association health plans in jeopardy. "I wouldn't recommend that anyone do anything until we have a better idea of where the litigation is headed," says Maring, who practices with Fisher Phillips in Atlanta. Conversations with reputable and knowledgeable professionals are a good start when doing research. For example, consult a human resources or benefits provider or a health insurance broker who can discuss the pros and cons of all the insurance options. A well-known trade or business group is also likely to have done due diligence before offering a plan. But if an owner hears someone touting a plan that's ready to provide low-cost insurance right now, and the plan sponsors aren't well-known, caution may be in order. "These are not quick-fix, short turnaround deals. They won't be ready until mid-2019 or even Jan. 1, 2020 when you're doing it right," says Michael Haffey, co-owner of Next Gen Ben, a benefit consultancy based in Indianapolis. _____ For more small business news, insights and inspiration, sign up for our free weekly newsletter here: http://discover.ap.org/ssb _____ Follow Joyce Rosenberg at www.twitter.com/JoyceMRosenberg . Her work can be found here: https://apnews.com/search/joyce%20rosenberg In this Wednesday, Oct. 17, 2018 photo, Melissa Perlman, owner of BlueIvy Communications, a public relations and communications agency, poses for a photo in Delray Beach, Fla. Perlman hasn't been able to afford insurance for her staffers since starting her public relations company, BlueIvy Communications, in 2011. She's interested in the potential association health plan, or AHP, being considered by the Greater Delray Beach Chamber of Commerce; the southern Florida group recently began surveying members about their interest in an AHP. (AP Photo/Wilfredo Lee) PARIS (AP) - The French president's office has confirmed that a new press room will be created outside the Elysee Presidential Palace in Paris despite protests from the media. The Elysee palace said Wednesday the new room will be finished by the end of the year to "offer improved working conditions to a greater number of journalists." France's Presidential Press Association had called on President Emmanuel Macron to reconsider his decision to close the press room inside the Elysee. But the president's office suggested it will be used as a meeting room for Elysee staff. His office said the new press room will accommodate 36 seated journalists, compared to just 16 now. A press room has been inside the Elysee Palace for more than 40 years. Critics say the new media center will reduce journalists' access to French government officials. French President Emmanuel Macron, center, with Defense Minister Florence Parly, second left, visits a stand at Euronaval, the world naval defence exhibition in Le Bourget near Paris, Tuesdsay, Oct. 23, 2018. (Benoit Tessier/Pool via AP) ATLANTA (AP) - Georgia election officials must stop rejecting absentee ballots and absentee ballot applications because of a mismatched signature without first giving voters a chance to fix the problem, a federal judge ruled Wednesday. U.S. District Judge Leigh May ordered the secretary of state's office to instruct county election officials to stop the practice for the November midterm elections. She outlined a procedure to allow voters to resolve alleged signature discrepancies. Two lawsuits filed earlier this month allege that election officials are improperly rejecting absentee ballots and applications in violation of their constitutional rights. The lawyers behind both lawsuits had filed emergency requests asking May to make certain immediate changes while the litigation is pending. May's order comes in the final weeks of Georgia's tight, nationally watched governor's race between Democrat Stacey Abrams, who's trying to become the country's first black woman governor, and Republican Secretary of State Brian Kemp. The two have fought for years over voting rights and ballot security measures, Abrams as a longtime legislative leader and Kemp as Georgia's chief elections official. Abrams has accused Kemp of using his office to make it harder for minority voters to cast ballots. He has denied it vehemently. FILE - In this Tuesday, Oct. 23, 2018 file photo, Democratic gubernatorial candidate for Georgia Stacey Abrams, left, speaks as her Republican opponent Secretary of State Brian Kemp looks on during a debate in Atlanta. A federal judge says Georgia election officials must stop rejecting absentee ballots and absentee ballot applications because of a mismatched signature without first giving voters a chance to fix the problem. U.S. District Judge Leigh May on Wednesday, Oct. 24, 2018 ordered the secretary of state's office to instruct county election officials to stop the practice for the November midterm elections. She outlined a procedure to allow voters to resolve alleged signature discrepancies.(AP Photo/John Bazemore, Pool, File) Georgia law allows voters to cast an absentee ballot before an election regardless of whether they are able to vote in person on Election Day. If the voter's signature on the absentee ballot envelope or absentee ballot application doesn't match the signature on the voter registration card, state law says it should be rejected. An absentee ballot can also be rejected if the voter signs in the wrong place or incorrectly fills out spaces designated for address and year of birth on the envelope. The law doesn't allow voters to contest the allegation of a mismatched signature or to confirm their identity before rejection. The law says voters are to be notified "promptly" of any rejection, but no time frame is provided. The lawsuits say that could result in voters being notified too late to fix the problem, jeopardizing their right to vote. May's order says that if there's a perceived signature mismatch on an absentee ballot, election officials must mark it as provisional. They must then send the voter a pre-rejection notice and allow the voter an opportunity to confirm his or her identity and have the vote counted no later than three days after the election, the order says. For an absentee ballot application with an apparent signature mismatch, election officials must send the voter a provisional ballot along with information explaining how the provisional ballot process works, the order says. The order applies for all absentee ballot applications and absentee ballots with apparent signature mismatches submitted for the Nov. 6 election, except in cases where voters have already remedied the problem by voting in person. May gave the parties until noon Thursday to comment on whether the language in her order is "confusing or will be unworkable" for election officials. One lawsuit was filed by the American Civil Liberties Union and its Georgia chapter on behalf of the Georgia Muslim Voter Project and Asian-Americans Advancing Justice-Atlanta. The other was filed by the Georgia Coalition for the People's Agenda and five individual voters, including two candidates for office. Lawyers for both groups applauded May's order. A spokeswoman for the Georgia attorney general's office, which represented the state, said she couldn't comment on active litigation. In addition to suing Kemp, both lawsuits also challenged populous Gwinnett County, saying state data showed that it accounts for a disproportionate number of the rejections and that those rejections disproportionately affect minorities. Both lawsuits challenge rejections based on a finding of a mismatched signature. The one filed by the Georgia Coalition for the People's Agenda and individual voters also challenges rejections based on what it calls technical errors, like writing the current year in a space designated for the voter's birth year or signing on the wrong line. May wrote that she was only addressing the signature mismatch issue. She had said during a hearing Tuesday that she was especially concerned about people whose signature doesn't match and who may not be able to vote in person if their absentee ballot is rejected. All other issues will be addressed later as the litigation continues, May wrote. Lawyers for state and county election officials had argued that procedural changes implemented with absentee voting already underway would be disruptive and could threaten the integrity of the process. May said she "does not understand how assuring that all eligible voters are permitted to vote undermines the integrity of the election process." She also noted that government lawyers had said signature mismatches are rare, which she said means her solution won't be overly burdensome. CHARLESTON, W.Va. (AP) - A Roman Catholic archdiocese in West Virginia announced Wednesday it plans to release the names of all priests and deacons who have been "credibly accused" of child sexual abuse since 1950. None of the individuals who will be listed are in active ministry, Archbishop William Lori of the Diocese of Wheeling-Charleston said in a news release. No timetable was given on when the list would be released. Lori said the list will include the accused priests' assignments in the diocese, whose records only go back to 1950. "The trust of the people has been badly damaged," Lori said. "Disclosing the names of all those credibly accused of abuse is a critical step toward repairing that broken trust. I pray this will lead toward healing and demonstrate the Diocese's firm commitment to transparency and accountability." Last month Pope Francis accepted the resignation of West Virginia Bishop Michael Bransfield and authorized an investigation into allegations he sexually harassed adults. Bransfield had been investigated for an alleged groping incident in 2007 and was implicated in court testimony in 2012 in an infamous Philadelphia priestly sex abuse case. He strongly denied ever abusing anyone and the diocese said it had disproved the claims. He continued with his ministry until he offered to retire, as required, when he turned 75 in September. In this March 28, 2017 photo Archbishop William Lori leads a funeral Mass for Cardinal William Keeler at the Cathedral of Mary Our Queen in Baltimore. Lori, of the Diocese of Wheeling-Charleston, announced in a news release Wednesday, Oct. 24, 2018 he plans to release the names of all priests and deacons who have been "credibly accused" of child sexual abuse since 1950. (AP Photo/Patrick Semansky) Lori, Bransfield's temporary replacement, set up a hotline for potential victims to call, said the Vatican had instructed him to make the investigation public, and had vowed to conduct a thorough study into what he said were "troubling" claims against Bransfield, who was a major fundraiser for the Vatican through the Pennsylvania-based Papal Foundation. The West Virginia diocese's delegate of administrative affairs, Bryan Minor, will oversee the process of reviewing files in preparation for the disclosure of the names of the accused. The list will be "as comprehensive as possible" and will be released after it has been reviewed and confirmed by a diocese review board, Minor said in the statement. Minor said the diocese will continue to support victims after the records are released. Zach Hiner, executive director of the Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests, said the group was pleased the diocese plans to release the names, "but the fact remains that if the lists are to carry any weight, they should be determined by independent investigators, not by church staff or church affiliated review boards. "Trained law enforcement professionals should be in charge of investigating who knew what, when they knew it, and what a credible accusation of abuse looks like." Curtis Johnson, a spokesman for West Virginia Attorney General Patrick Morrisey, on Wednesday referred to a statement Morrisey issued the day of Bransfield's resignation. That statement said Morrisey's office will be "closely reviewing this matter to determine how best we can protect West Virginians who might have been victims in this scandal. We have reached out to the Diocese and expect they will be fully cooperative in efforts to get to the bottom of these matters." Earlier this month the Archdiocese of Washington, D.C., released the names of more than two dozen clergy members it says have been "credibly accused" of sexually abusing minors. Diocese officials in Texas this month announced plans to release a similar list early next year. Lori also is the archbishop for the Baltimore archdiocese. On Monday, he announced Maryland's attorney general is delving into records of the Baltimore archdiocese as part of an investigation into child sex abuse. In August, a Pennsylvania grand jury released a report detailing decades of abuse and cover-up in six dioceses. PARKLAND, Fla. (AP) - Officials say the farm that employed a Florida woman fatally struck by lightning has been cited for failing to protect workers. A U.S. Department of Labor news release says Occupational Health and Safety Administration inspectors determined that C.W. Hendrix Farms exposed employees to lightning strikes as they picked vegetables in inclement weather. The company faces a penalty of $12,934, the maximum amount allowed. Authorities say 53-year-old Maria Francisco Pascual was working at the Parkland farm in May when a bolt of lightning killed her. Two others were reported injured. The Associated Press attempted to contact C.W. Hendrix Farms, but the voice mail memory was full. SAO PAULO (AP) - Brazil's biggest newspaper said Wednesday that it has asked federal police to investigate threats against a journalist whose story alleged backers of the front-running presidential candidate bankrolled a fake news campaign. The request comes amid an increasingly heated atmosphere ahead of Sunday's runoff between far-right candidate Jair Bolsonaro, who leads in opinion polls, and his leftist opponent, Fernando Haddad The newspaper Folha de S. Paulo last week ran a report by Patricia Campos Mello saying businessmen linked to right-wing candidate Jair Bolsonaro had paid to spread fake news on the WhatsApp messaging service to benefit his candidacy. It said a blast message campaign also was planned for this week. Bolsonaro denied the report. Haddad called on Brazil's electoral court to investigate. The newspaper said Wednesday that there are indications Bolsonaro's campaign is threatening freedom of the press. The paper said Campos Mello has received numerous threats via WhatsApp and email. "You should think about your son and his future. For your safety I would leave Brazil," read one of the threats contained in a document filed by the newspaper Tuesday requesting the investigation. Supporters of presidential candidate for the Workers Party Fernando Haddad, participate in a campaign rally in Brasilia, Brazil, Wednesday, Oct. 24, 2018. Brazilians return to the polls on Oct. 28 for the second round of voting. (AP Photo/Eraldo Peres) The Associated Press called Bolsonaro's campaign seeking comment about the newspaper's move, but no one answered. Bolsonaro has expressed antagonism toward Folha de S.Paulo, which he has called the "biggest provider of fake news in Brazil." Three days after Mello's report appeared, Bolsonaro told a large crowd of supporters in Sao Paulo "that the newspaper would not receive any advertising revenue from his government and promised to do away those red bandits from Brazil." Marcelo Rech, president of Brazil's National Newspaper Association, criticized those comments. "Coming from a presidential candidate, this kind of commentary is unfortunate, for it shows his incomprehension of the role journalism plays," Rech said. Reporters Without Borders also criticized Bolsonaro. "The attacks against Folha de S. Paulo made by candidate Jair Bolsonaro and his followers are unacceptable and unworthy of a party that wants to govern the country," Emmanuel Colombie, director of the organization's Latin American office, told the newspaper. MEXICO CITY (AP) - Although most of the 7,000 migrants in the caravan wending its way through far-southern Mexico are Hondurans, some Salvadorans have also joined. There is even a Facebook page and a WhatsApp chat encouraging Salvadorans to form a caravan of their own, though it is not yet known whether one will materialize. It's a small country both geographically and by population, home to 6.5 million inhabitants. The International Organization for Migration estimates that another 1.35 million Salvadorans live in the United States. El Salvador's government puts the figure at as many as 2.5 million - but either way, Salvadorans make up the biggest community of Central Americans living in the United States. El Salvador is the only country in the so-called Northern Triangle -which also includes Guatemala and Honduras -that experienced a reduction in migration in 2017, something that the government has noted in recent days in response to vows by U.S. President Donald Trump to cut U.S. aid to the region. Even so, Salvadorans continue to leave their country. Their tales of hardship back home are not dissimilar from those of their Honduran neighbors. Here's a look at what is driving those who migrate. ___ GANGS AND VIOLENCE FILE - In this May 28, 2015 file photo, suspected members of the 18th Street gang stand handcuffed in pairs at a police station in Panchimalco, near San Salvador, El Salvador. The gangs trace their origins to street life in cities such as Los Angeles, where many Salvadorans sought refuge during their country's 1980-1992 civil war. (AP Photo/Manu Brabo, File) El Salvador's homicide rate was 60 per 100,000 inhabitants last year, down from a grisly record of 102 homicides per 100,000 inhabitants in 2015 but still among the highest in the world. The two main street gangs, 18th Street and MS-13, are estimated to number around 70,000 and actively try to recruit new members. The gangs trace their origins to street life in cities such as Los Angeles, where many Salvadorans sought refuge during their country's 1980-1992 civil war. Salvadorans arrested for crimes in the U.S. were deported back home, bringing gang activity with them. The U.S. deported 1,241 Salvadorans for apparent gang activity in 2017, and 524 alleged gang members the previous year. Crime experts say today's gangs have ties to international drug trafficking networks. Trump frequently seizes on MS-13, or Mara Salvatrucha, as a reason to tighten immigration controls. A quarter of young Salvadorans who flee do so because they are threatened with or fear violence. Young women are pressured to be "girlfriends" of gang members and face rape or murder if they refuse, while young men are pressured to join the gangs or risk death if they don't. Two out of three Salvadorans never attend high school. Young women are particularly vulnerable. Murders of young women peaked at 574 in 2015. Salvadoran law forbids termination of pregnancies, even in the case of rape, and establishes long prison sentences for abortion. ___ POVERTY The International Organization for Migration says most Salvadorans migrate for economic reasons. Per capita income is $324 a month and nearly one in three Salvadorans lives in poverty, according to the World Bank, defined as less than $5.50 a day. Many rely on remittances from family members abroad. Salvadorans in the United States sent $5 billion back home last year, amounting to nearly 16 percent of gross domestic product. It's tough to make a go as a small business owner in the country and create jobs for others. The gangs extort local businesses with impunity, and corruption is rampant. President Salvador Sanchez Ceren's three predecessors were all prosecuted for alleged graft. "Migration problems are structural problems of the country," says Cesar Rios, director of the Salvadoran Migrant Institute. "If steady income is not guaranteed here - work and security - then people will continue to leave." FILE - In this May 27, 2015 file photo, relatives of a Mara Salvatrucha gang member retrieve his body from a steep gully after he was shot dead in a confrontation with police, in Olocuilta, El Salvador. Two bodies were found at the bottom of the gully following a shootout that began near an old cattle stable, which gang members had turned into a shooting range. El Salvador's homicide rate was 60 per 100,000 inhabitants last year, down from a grisly record of 102 homicides per 100,000 inhabitants in 2015 but still among the highest in the world. (AP Photo/Manu Brabo, File) FILE - This June 27, 2018 file photo in San Salvador, El Salvador's Zona Rosa neighborhood, where hundreds of corrugated metal roof homes are piled up in a community known as Las Palmas, a territory under the control of the Barrio 18 gang. El Salvador is a small country both geographically and by population, home to 6.5 million inhabitants. The International Organization for Migration estimates that another 1.35 million Salvadorans live in the United States. (AP Photo/Salvador Melendez) FILE - In this Aug. 18, 2018 file photo, commuters ride in the back of a pickup as night falls in San Miguel, El Salvador. It's a small country both geographically and by population, home to 6.5 million inhabitants. The International Organization for Migration estimates that another 1.35 million Salvadorans live in the United States. (AP Photo/Rebecca Blackwell, File) FILE - In this Aug. 19, 2018 file, a woman sells live baby chicks dyed in different colors in central San Salvador, El Salvador. The International Organization for Migration says most Salvadorans migrate for economic reasons. Per capita income is $324 a month and nearly one in three Salvadorans lives in poverty. (AP Photo/Rebecca Blackwell, File) ANNAPOLIS, Md. (AP) - A public defender representing the man accused of killing five employees at the Capital Gazette newspaper in Maryland may step aside due to health concerns. The director of victim services for the state's attorney's office told relatives of the five victims in an email Tuesday that recent delays in the case were due to health issues affecting the attorney. Bill Davis is representing Jarrod Ramos, who's been charged with murder. Heather Amador wrote future scheduling will be discussed in coming weeks, once the attorney knows his long-term prognosis. The Capital first reported on the email. On Tuesday, the judge extended a deadline for a possible plea of not guilty by reason of insanity for 60 days. Ramos pleaded not guilty in July. A hearing scheduled for Monday also was postponed. TUCSON, Ariz. (AP) - A U.S. Border Patrol agent was fed up with cross-border rock throwers when he deliberately shot at a Mexican teenager, a federal prosecutor said Wednesday as the agent's second trial began in the 2012 killing. Lonnie Swartz was acquitted of murder earlier this year in Arizona and now faces manslaughter and involuntary manslaughter charges in the death of 16-year-old Jose Antonio Elena Rodriguez, who was shot in the back multiple times. It is rare for a Border Patrol agent to be prosecuted on charges involving use of force. Swartz, who has pleaded not guilty, is being retried after the previous jury deadlocked on a manslaughter verdict. Assistant U.S. Attorney Wallace Kleindienst said in an opening statement that Swartz shot Elena Rodriguez after the teen and others threw rocks at agents who were chasing two drug smugglers on Oct. 10, 2012. Kleindienst said other agents and police retreated from the rock throwers at the time of the shooting but that Swartz had been involved in previous rock-throwing incidents and had gotten fed up with the tactic used by smugglers to distract agents. "There is no justification for what he did when took the life Jose Elena Rodriguez," Kleindienst said. FILE - In this Dec. 4, 2017, file photo, a portrait of 16-year-old Mexican youth Jose Antonio Elena Rodriguez, who was shot and killed in Nogales, Sonora, Mexico, is displayed on the Nogales street where he was killed that runs parallel with the U.S. border. A U.S. Border Patrol agent will face a second trial Tuesday, Oct. 23, 2018, in the killing of Elena Rodriguez across the international border. Lonnie Swartz was acquitted of second-degree murder in Tucson earlier in 2018 and now will be tried on voluntary and involuntary manslaughter charges. (AP Photo/Anita Snow, File) Defense attorney Sean Chapman said Swartz and other border agents and local police in Nogales, Arizona, were in serious danger. He said Swartz did the right thing by using lethal force because they could have been maimed or killed by the flying rocks. Chapman said Elena Rodriguez chose to help drug smugglers and endangered the lives of the agents and officers. "This was a smuggling operation. That's what this case is about," he said. In addition to the criminal charges, Swartz is facing a civil rights lawsuit from the American Civil Liberties Union on behalf of the teen's mother. The shooting sparked outrage and came at a time when the Border Patrol was increasingly under scrutiny for its use of force, especially in rock-throwing incidents. The agency has said rocks can be deadly. Chapman says the agency's training calls for use of deadly force when agents are attacked and believe they're in serious danger, even if it's from rocks. The prosecutor said Swartz didn't have to shoot the teen or move to another spot and keep firing for a total of 16 shots, 10 of which struck Elena Rodriguez in the back and head. The trial is expected to last up to a month. FILE - In this March 21, 2018, file photo, Border Patrol agent Lonnie Swartz, left, arrives at U.S. District Court in downtown Tucson, Ariz., where opening arguments began in his murder trial in Tucson. Swartz will face a second trial Tuesday, Oct. 23, 2018, in the killing of a 16-year-old Mexican teen across the international border. Swartz was acquitted of second-degree murder in Tucson earlier in the year and now will be tried on voluntary and involuntary manslaughter charges. (Ron Medvescek/Arizona Daily Star via AP, File) FILE - In this July 29, 2014, file photo, Araceli Rodriguez handles a rosary during a news conference in Nogales, Mexico, that belonged to her son Jose Antonio Elena Rodriguez, pictured behind her, who was shot and killed by a U.S. Border Patrol agent in October 2012. Border Patrol agent Lonnie Swartz will face a second trial Tuesday, Oct. 23, 2018, in the killing of 16-year-old Elena Rodriguez across the international border. Swartz was acquitted of second-degree murder in Tucson earlier in 2018 and now will be tried on voluntary and involuntary manslaughter charges. (Kelly Presnell/Arizona Daily Star via AP, File) A common virus blamed for a deadly outbreak at a New Jersey children's rehabilitation center usually poses little risk for healthy people but can lead to dangerous pneumonia in already frail patients. The patients, most younger than 18, were infected by a germ called adenovirus 7, a strain that is among the more potent of these types of viruses. While it usually causes cold or flu-like symptoms, it can sometimes cause more serious respiratory illness, particularly in people with weak immune systems or who have lung conditions. The patients at the New Jersey center were "medically fragile" according to a statement from the New Jersey health department. Authorities disclosed few details on the patients but the center advertises that it is equipped to handle children who require ventilators to breathe. Of the 18 patients sickened, seven have died, an extremely high rate - likely a result of the strain of adenovirus and the medical condition of the kids, said Dr. David van Duin, an infectious disease specialist at the University of North Carolina's school of medicine in Chapel Hill. "It's very alarming, very worrisome," van Duin said. He said death rates of under 20 percent have occurred in previous outbreaks, compared with almost half of patients affected this month at the Wanaque Nursing and Rehabilitation Center in Haskell, New Jersey. Strict infection control measures, including careful hand-washing and isolating infected patients, can usually contain outbreaks. This 1981 electron microscope image made available by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention shows a group of adenovirus virions. The adenovirus 7 strain, a common virus blamed for a deadly outbreak at a New Jersey children's rehabilitation center in October 2018, usually poses little risk for healthy people but can lead to dangerous pneumonia in already frail patients. (CDC via AP) Here are more details about adenoviruses and the New Jersey outbreak. Q: What are these germs? A: Adenoviruses are a group of common contagious bugs that typically cause mild cold or flu symptoms, including sore throats, fever, coughs and sneezes. Some strains also cause diarrhea and conjunctivitis or pink eye. These viruses spread through the air or from touching objects or surfaces used by an infected person. Unlike influenza, adenoviruses are not seasonal, and infections occur throughout the year. Q: Who usually gets sick? A: Healthy people usually aren't severely affected. Most U.S. adults have likely had cold or flu symptoms caused by an adenovirus infection but never knew it. Adenovirus is not a nationally notifiable disease in the United States, meaning doctors aren't required to test for or report cases to the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Q: What about the strain involved in the New Jersey outbreak? A: The CDC says adenovirus 7 has been associated with more severe outcomes - including deaths - than other strains. A few fatal outbreaks involving that strain have occurred in the United States over the past 20 years. Q: How do adenovirus infections become deadly? A: In vulnerable people, upper respiratory infections can worsen rapidly, spreading to the lungs and causing inflammation, severe pneumonia and ultimately respiratory failure, said Dr. Flor Munoz-Rivas, an infectious disease expert at Texas Children's Hospital in Houston. Q: Is the New jersey outbreak likely to spread to the community? A: No. Outbreaks typically occur among people living in close quarters - hospital patients, military recruits, kids at summer camp. Q: Can adenovirus infections be prevented or cured? A: Vigilant hand-washing can help prevent infections from spreading but there is no cure. Symptoms can be treated the way colds and flu are managed - with fluids and over-the-counter medicines, but most people recover quickly. While there is no vaccine available to the general public, an adenovirus vaccine was developed and approved for use in the U.S. military after adenovirus outbreaks including strain 7 illness infected recruits in the 1950s and 1960s. ___ Follow AP Medical Writer Lindsey Tanner at @LindseyTanner . Her work can be found here. ___ The Associated Press Health & Science Department receives support from the Howard Hughes Medical Institute's Department of Science Education. The AP is solely responsible for all content. NEW YORK (AP) - The Latest on the sentencing of former New York state Senate leader Dean Skelos and his son Adam. (all times local): 3:50 p.m. A federal judge has sentenced a son of former New York state Senate leader Dean Skelos (SKEH'-lohs) to four years in prison after both men were convicted in a political corruption case. U.S. District Judge Kimba Wood sentenced Adam Skelos on Wednesday, several hours after announcing that his father must serve four years and three months in prison. Both were convicted at a summer retrial. Prosecutors alleged that Dean Skelos, a Republican, paved the way for his son to receive hundreds of thousands of dollars by pressuring businessmen in return for legislative acts that helped them. Given a chance to talk, Adam Skelos said he and his father no longer speak. He says the loss of his relationship with his father was a loss he thought he'd only experience in death. ___ 12:30 p.m. Former New York state Senate leader Dean Skelos (SKEH'-lohs) has been sentenced to 4 years and 3 months in prison after his conviction on public corruption charges. Judge Kimba Wood announced the penalty for the longtime Republican powerbroker on Wednesday. Skelos and his son Adam were convicted in July for a second time on charges of extortion, wire fraud and bribery. Their first convictions were rejected on appeal after the U.S. Supreme Court narrowed public corruption law. Prosecutors had urged at least 6 years in prison for the 70-year-old grandfather while his lawyers said he should get no more than two years. His son is scheduled for sentencing on Wednesday afternoon. Lawyers said the strain of two trials had caused a rift between the elder Skelos and his son. PORTLAND, Maine (AP) - Horror writer Stephen King is giving a deal to student filmmakers at the Blaenau Gwent Film Academy in Wales. King sold them the movie rights to a short story, "Stationary Bike," for $1. Kevin Phillips, a tutor at the school, tells The Boston Globe the deal is "great for our students who are fans of his writing and a great scoop for the academy." The story is about a man who begins using a stationary bike after his doctor tells him to lose weight because of high cholesterol. He gets in shape but begins "having strange thoughts" about being followed on his daily rides. Marsha DeFilippo, King's assistant, said the Maine author has a program in which students receive permission to make a noncommercial film. ___ Information from: The Boston Globe, http://www.bostonglobe.com WICHITA, Kan. (AP) - A Kansas man has been found guilty of first-degree murder in the horrific abuse and slaying of a 3-year-old boy whose body was found encased in concrete in the laundry room of his home four months after his death. Stephen Bodine, 41, of Wichita, was convicted Wednesday in the May 2017 death of Evan Brewer. Bodine was also found guilty of child abuse, aggravated child endangerment and two counts of kidnapping. He will be sentenced December 17. Bodine faces a potential sentence of life in prison with parole eligibility after 25 years on just the murder conviction. But if the judge decides to run the sentences consecutively for all the crimes, he could potentially face 82 years in prison before becoming eligible for parole, according to the Sedgwick County district attorney's office. Prosecutors called dozens of witnesses and presented more than 550 pieces of evidence during six days of trial, including parts of the concrete tomb found in the rental home where the boy had lived with his mother, Miranda Miller, and Bodine. Jurors saw videos and photos showing Evan being abused, including footage of him chained and naked in a basement, being berated by Bodine and Miller, and forced to stand in a corner for hours. Carlo Brewer, Evan's father, celebrated the verdict but said his joy was tempered by sadness because of the cruelty his son had endured. Brewer had been fighting for custody of Evan in the months leading up to his death, and authorities had been alerted at least six times that Evan was being abused . "(Evan) didn't get to have the imagination like other children, where they think there's monsters in their closets or under their beds," Brewer said. "He had real monsters." Stephen Bodine looks at members of the jury Wednesday, Oct. 24, 2018, in Wichita, Kan., while it was announced he was guilty on all charges in connection with the murder of three-year-old Evan Brewer. (Travis Heying/The Wichita Eagle via AP) Miller is also charged with murder in her son's death. In exchange for testifying against Bodine, she will be allowed to plead guilty to a reduced charge of second-degree murder. Much of the evidence at trial came from a cache of 16,000 photos and video files collected by the couple's home surveillance system. In one video, Bodine and Miller are heard chastising Evan over the course of several hours, less than two months before he was killed. Sedgwick County District Attorney Marc Bennett said the jury performed an extraordinary service to the community for enduring the sometimes grisly testimony. "I can't really overstate what a difficult task it was to sit and absorb the kind of wretched details of how this little boy lost his life and the role this defendant had in it," Bennett said. Miller testified that Bodine had been punishing Evan for not eating on May 19, 2017, when he took the screaming boy into the bathroom. She said he soon came out with her son's wet and lifeless body in his arms. She said during a preliminary hearing that a few days later Bodine told her that he wanted "to take care of Evan before he started to smell." She said he mixed up several bags of concrete and buried the boy's body in it. Evan was discovered entombed in the concrete in early September, after Miller and Bodine had moved out of the property. An autopsy couldn't determine the cause and manner of Evan's death because his body was so badly decomposed by the time he was chipped out of the block of concrete. He had Benadryl in his system, and Miller said she thinks Bodine sickened him in the days leading up to his death by force-feeding him large amounts of salt. Bodine's own daughter, Samantha Johnson, also testified about the physical abuse she suffered from her father, saying her experience was similar to Evan's. Brewer said he hopes his son's death will lead to more efforts to confront child abuse. "Take a step back and question what you're doing as a parent, question if it's the right way to discipline or not or if it's abuse," Brewer said. "Because it's got to stop. It's got to stop." ___ The Latest on the trial of Stephen Bodine: https://bit.ly/2qav2bU FILE - This file photo provided by the Sedgwick County Sheriff's Office in Wichita, Kan., shows Stephen Bodine, of Wichita, who was convicted Wednesday, Oct. 24, 2018, of first-degree murder in the May 2017 killing of a 3-year-old Evan Brewer whose body was found encased in concrete in the laundry room of his home four months after his death. (Sedgwick County Sheriff's Office via AP, File) Carlo Brewer and his sisters Carol Brewer, left, Cheryl Brewer, center, embrace Samantha Johnson, the daughter of Steven Bodine. Bodine was convicted Wednesday, Oct. 24, 2018, in Wichita, Kan., in the murder of three-year-old Evan Brewer, Carlo's son. Johnson became connected with the Brewers after suffering child abuse at the hands of her father Steven Bodine. (Amy Leiker/The Wichita Eagle via AP) Carlo Brewer wipes away tears after Stephen Bodine was found guilty on all charges Wednesday, Oct. 24,, 2018, in Wichita, Kan., in connection with the murder of his three-year-old son Evan Brewer. (Travis Heying/The Wichita Eagle via AP) DEARBORN, Mich. (AP) - The Latest on Ford's third quarter earnings (all times local): 4:15 p.m. Ford Motor Co.'s net profit fell 37 percent in the third quarter as sales slowed in the U.S. and China. The company says it made $991 million from July through September, or 25 cents per share. Revenue was up 3 percent to $37.67 billion. Excluding one-time items, Ford says it made 29 cents per share. That beat Wall Street expectations. Analysts polled by FactSet expected 28 cents per share. Revenue fell slightly short of estimates. Chief Financial Officer Bob Shanks says the company wouldn't be releasing any further restructuring details on Wednesday, but would make them public when ready. He reaffirmed its full-year guidance of an adjusted $1.30 to $1.50 per share and said tariffs cost the company about $1 billion during the quarter. FILE- In this April 25, 2018, photo, visitors and journalists gather near a Ford Focus on display at the Ford exhibit during the media day for the China Auto Show in Beijing. Ford Motor Co. reports earnings Wednesday, Oct. 24. (AP Photo/Andy Wong, File) NEW YORK (AP) - The Latest on New York's lawsuit against Exxon Mobil (all times local): 4:15 p.m. Exxon Mobil is calling New York's lawsuit against the Texas energy giant baseless and meritless. New York Attorney General Barbara Underwood says Exxon Mobil misled investors about the risks that climate change poses to its operations. She says Exxon courted investors such as the state's public pension funds with inaccurate information. Spokesman Scott Silvestri said Wednesday Exxon Mobil looks forward to refuting the claims and getting the lawsuit dismissed. Silvestri says the allegations are a product of political opportunism and closed-door lobbying by special interests. FILE- This April 25, 2017, file photo, shows Exxon service station signs in Nashville, Tenn. New York's attorney general is suing Exxon Mobil saying the company misled investors about the risks climate change posed to its business. (AP Photo/Mark Humphrey, File) New York's lawsuit comes less than three months after the Securities and Exchange Commission dropped an investigation into the Texas energy giant along the same lines. ___ 2 p.m. New York's attorney general says Exxon Mobil misled investors about the risks that climate change poses to its operations. Attorney General Barbara Underwood said Wednesday that Exxon courted investors such as the state's public pension funds with inaccurate information. New York's lawsuit comes less than three months after the federal Securities and Exchange Commission dropped an investigation into the Texas energy giant along the same lines. Exxon Mobil did not immediately return a phone call seeking comment. WASHINGTON (AP) - The packages arrived in familiar manila envelopes affixed with lots of stamps, some bearing the American flag. But what was inside was alarming: crude pipe bombs wrapped in black tape, with wires sprouting from each end. None of the explosives detonated, and no one was hurt. But authorities quickly launched a wide-ranging investigation into the devices that targeted multiple Democrats - including two former presidents - and foes of President Donald Trump's administration ahead of the Nov. 6 midterm elections. Here's what we know: ___ HILLARY CLINTON AND TWO FORMER PRESIDENTS All the confirmed bombs appeared to come from the same person or persons, said John Miller, the New York Police Department's head of intelligence and counterterrorism, who briefed reporters in New York. NYPD officers depart from the Time Warner Center area on Wednesday, Oct. 24, 2018, in New York. A police bomb squad was sent to CNN's offices in New York City and the newsroom was evacuated because of a suspicious package. (AP Photo/Kevin Hagen) The Secret Service intercepted a bomb addressed to Hillary Clinton at the Chappaqua, New York, home she shares with former President Bill Clinton, and another that was sent to former President Obama at his home with Michelle Obama in Washington. Neither the Clintons nor the Obamas received the packages, and none had been at risk of receiving them because of screening procedures, the Secret Service said. ___ CNN A bomb squad removed another device from CNN's New York headquarters, which was evacuated. Overhead TV shots showed that device, which law enforcement officials said was linked to the other explosives, being driven away. The package contained a live explosive and an envelope with white powder, and the substance was being tested to see if it was dangerous, authorities said. Two law enforcement officials, speaking to The Associated Press on condition of anonymity to discuss an ongoing investigation, said the device was crude but operational. It was addressed to former CIA Director John Brennan, who regularly appears as a television contributor and who has publicly clashed with Trump. Trump and his aides routinely criticize CNN over its coverage, and the president calls the network an example of "fake news." ___ GEORGE SOROS A suspicious device was found Monday at the New York compound of billionaire George Soros, a major contributor to Democratic causes. A U.S. official told the AP that investigators believe the explosive discovered near the Clintons' home was linked to the one at the compound. ___ DEBBIE WASSERMAN SCHULTZ All of the envelopes listed Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz as the return address. The FBI also said it was responding to a report of a suspicious package at one of Schultz's offices in Florida. She is the former chairwoman of the Democratic National Committee who was accused by Clinton rivals of secretly boosting the former secretary of state to the party's 2016 presidential nomination. The envelopes, only a few inches long, had typed letters and six stamps that bore no cancellation mark. ___ MAXINE WATERS Rep. Maxine Waters said her Washington office was also the target of a suspicious package. It was not immediately clear if that package was related to the other devices. The outspoken Democrat is frequently criticized by Trump. He has called her "an extremely low IQ person" and has pegged her level of intellect as "somewhere in the mid-60s," which is considered the range for a mental disability. She has called him "the poster boy for what a mob protester looks like." ___ WHAT WE DON'T KNOW How dangerous the bombs were. It's unclear what, if anything, was inside the pipes. Also unclear is whether they were actually processed through the mail or delivered some other way. Officials on Wednesday did not know if there are other devices out there, undelivered. ___ "MOB" POLITICS The discovery of the devices comes at a tense time, with Republicans and Democrats casting each other as a "mob" that would do anything to win or keep control of Congress in two weeks. Trump has a history of advising supporters to "knock the hell out of" protesters and saying that he would like to see opponents carried out "on a stretcher." Last weekend, he said at a rally in Montana that a congressman who had body-slammed a reporter was his kind of guy. As the scope and targets of the device deliveries became clear, Trump called them "despicable acts." "Acts or threats of political violence of any kind have no place in the United States of America," he said Wednesday during an event at the White House. "This egregious conduct is abhorrent to everything we hold dear and sacred as Americans," he added. "We're extremely angry and upset and unhappy about what we witnessed this morning, and we will get to the bottom of it." ___ Associated Press writers Mike Balsamo and Colleen Long contributed to this report. An officer with the Uniform Division of the United States Secret Service uses his dog to search a checkpoint near the home of President Barack Obama, Wednesday, Oct. 24, 2018, in Washington. The U.S. Secret Service says agents have intercepted packages containing "possible explosive devices" addressed to former President Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton. (AP Photo/Alex Brandon) JEFFERSONTOWN, Ky. (AP) - The Latest on a shooting at a Kentucky grocery (all times local): 5:30 p.m. Police say two people have died in a shooting at a Kroger grocery store on the outskirts of Louisville, Kentucky. Jeffersontown Police Chief Sam Rogers confirmed the deaths at the store Wednesday. He said two people were dead - one inside the store and one outside. No further details were immediately available. __ 4:30 p.m. An emergency medical technician who happened to be at a Kentucky grocery when gunfire broke out says he saw a woman hit and went to help her but realized there was nothing that could be done. Eric Deacon told WDRB-TV in Louisville that he heard gunfire and saw two men run out of the Kroger into the parking lot Wednesday, shooting at each other. He said he saw a woman in her mid-50s or early 60s get hit as he was calling 911. Deacon said he went to the woman to start CPR on her but realized he couldn't help her. ___ 4:15 p.m. Police say multiple people have been shot inside a grocery store on the outskirts of Louisville, Kentucky. A dispatcher with the Jeffersontown Police Department said a suspect was detained following the shooting Wednesday afternoon at a Kroger store. The store is located on the eastern outskirts of Louisville. The dispatcher says officers remain at the scene. The extent of injuries isn't immediately known. NEW YORK (AP) - The Latest on Tesla's quarterly results (all times local): 4:57 p.m. Tesla Motors delivered on CEO Elon Musk's promise to make money during its latest quarter after fulfilling his pledge to boost production of its first electric car designed for the mass market. The company earned $311.5 million during the three months ending in September, swinging from a loss $619 million at the same time last year. It's only the third time that Tesla has posted a quarterly profit in its eight-year history as a public company and the first time in two years. A big jump in Tesla's output of its Model 3 car powered the breakthrough. The manufacturing increase and moneymaking quarter are two things that Musk promised would happen in early August. Tesla's stock soared 11 percent to $320.78 after the numbers came out Wednesday. FILE- This Oct. 3, 2018, file photo shows the logo of Tesla model 3 at the Auto show in Paris. Tesla Inc. reports earnings on Wednesday, Oct. 24. (AP Photo/Christophe Ena, File) ___ 12:05 a.m. Tesla is showing some promising signs that it will make money as advertised in the third quarter, but Wall Street isn't buying it. The electric car and solar panel maker delivered more than 80,000 vehicles from July through September, and Musk told employees late in the quarter that it was close to profitability. Still, of 15 analysts who follow the company, not one expects Tesla to make money. As a group, they expect a net loss of $173.8 million, or 95 cents per share. Tesla and Musk have defied odds before. Musk told employees in late September that the company was close to proving naysayers wrong. FILE- In this June 14, 2018, file photo, Tesla CEO and founder of the Boring Company Elon Musk speaks at a news conference in Chicago. Tesla Inc. reports earnings on Wednesday, Oct. 24. (AP Photo/Kiichiro Sato, File) FILE- In this July 6, 2018, file photo prospective customers confer with sales associates as a Model 3 sits on display in a Tesla showroom in the Cherry Creek Mall in Denver. Tesla Inc. reports earnings on Wednesday, Oct. 24. (AP Photo/David Zalubowski, File) FILE- In this Sept. 17, 2018, file photo Tesla CEO and SpaceX founder and chief executive Elon Musk speaks after announcing Japanese billionaire Yusaku Maezawa as the first private passenger on a trip around the moon in Hawthorne, Calif. Tesla Inc. reports earnings on Wednesday, Oct. 24. (AP Photo/Chris Carlson, File) NEW YORK (AP) - New York's attorney general on Wednesday sued Exxon Mobil, saying the Texas energy giant has misled investors about the risks that climate change poses to its operations. The lawsuit filed by Attorney General Barbara Underwood is the latest in a series of actions against the company claiming it has not been forthcoming with investors and the public about climate change. The complaint states Exxon courted investors such as the state's public pension funds with inaccurate information, assuring them it was accounting for the possibility of stricter regulations of greenhouse gas emission in its planning, when it was doing much less than it claimed. "Exxon built a facade to deceive investors into believing that the company was managing the risks of climate change regulation to its business when, in fact, it was intentionally and systematically underestimating or ignoring them, contrary to its public representations," Underwood said in a statement. Exxon Mobil looks forward to refuting the claims and getting the lawsuit dismissed, spokesman Scott Silvestri said Wednesday. "These baseless allegations are a product of closed-door lobbying by special interests, political opportunism and the attorney general's inability to admit that a three-year investigation has uncovered no wrongdoing," Silvestri said in an email. FILE- This April 25, 2017, file photo, shows Exxon service station signs in Nashville, Tenn. New York's attorney general is suing Exxon Mobil saying the company misled investors about the risks climate change posed to its business. (AP Photo/Mark Humphrey, File) The lawsuit follows a three-year investigation by Underwood's office and similar probe in Massachusetts. Exxon Mobil had sued the attorneys general of both states after they subpoenaed documents about Exxon's research into the role of fossil fuels in climate change, calling their investigations politically motivated and accusing them of trying to take away the company's right to free speech. A federal judge dismissed that lawsuit. The complaint asks for an order requiring Exxon to correct past misrepresentations and provide restitution to shareholders. Two of New York's public pension funds hold Exxon shares with a combined value of about $1.5 billion, Underwood said. Consumer and environmental groups hailed the lawsuit as a significant step in addressing what they called Exxon Mobil's deception around climate change. The lawsuit "opens a new front in the climate change fight, with the prospect of a judicial reckoning and severe financial penalties for one of the biggest fossil fuel companies in the world," Blair Horner, executive director of New York Public Interest Research Group, said in a statement. A federal judge in June dismissed lawsuits brought by San Francisco and Oakland, California, that sought to hold big oil companies including Exxon Mobil liable for climate change. New York's lawsuit comes less than three months after the Securities and Exchange Commission dropped a similar investigation. OKLAHOMA CITY (AP) - Water service was cut off to an estimated 1.4 million people living in more than a half-a-million American households that got behind on their bills two years ago, as some struggled to keep up with rising costs and governments didn't do enough to help, a group contends in a first-of-its-kind study released Wednesday. Food & Water Watch, a Washington-based nonprofit that advocates for affordable and safe food and water for everyone, made public requests for 2016 residential shut-off records from the two biggest water suppliers in each state and received the information from 73 of them. It found that among the cities with the highest rates, where at least 10 percent of residential customers had their water shut off for some period of time, were Detroit, New Orleans, Springdale, Arkansas, and Oklahoma's two largest cities, Oklahoma City and Tulsa. Poor people and cities with large minority populations frequently had higher shut-off rates, the study found. The author of the report, Mary Grant, noted that some poor households in New Orleans and Detroit that year paid more than $1,000 for water service, which amounted to about 9 percent of their household incomes. "Nine percent of your income just for your basic water service. That's, by any measure, unaffordable," Grant said. Jaime Moten, 41, of Oklahoma City, said her water was shut off for three days in 2016 after she lost her job as a grocery store manager. Relatives provided water that she and her children used to drink and brush their teeth, and the Salvation Army paid the $202 needed to turn her water back on. In this Oct. 23, 2018 photo, .Jamie Moten runs the water at the kitchen sink in her home in Oklahoma City. Moten said she had her water service turned off for about three days in 2016 after losing her job as a grocery store manager. A nonprofit says it has conducted a first-of-its-kind survey that shows more than a half-a-million American households lost water service two years ago because they couldn't pay. (AP Photo/Sue Ogrocki) "I was ashamed for a long time," Moten said. "You feel like you're sneaking water." Oklahoma City was listed as No. 1 for cutoff rates in the report, with about 23 percent of customers losing water in 2016. But Jennifer McClintock, a spokeswoman for the Oklahoma City Utilities Department, said that after providing the group with its figures, the utility realized that it had also included commercial accounts and that the number of residential cutoffs in the city would have been closer to 26,500. That lower figure would still amount to about 14 percent of its residential customers there and would place Oklahoma City among the cities with the highest shut-off rates. Tulsa ranked second on Food & Water Watch's list, with some 20 percent of its residential customers experiencing water shutoffs. That city's water and sewer manager, Eric Lee, welcomed Food & Water Watch's report, saying it's an issue that needs to be addressed. "I appreciate that this is actually happening," Lee said. "I don't think any city has solved that problem yet." A 2017 Michigan State University study that was funded by the National Science Foundation found that if water rates continue to climb as projected, nearly 36 percent of U.S. households will be unable to pay their bills by 2022. Among the reasons rates are going up quickly are aging infrastructure, climate change and declining populations. The Food & Water Watch report calls on the federal government to invest more to repair aging systems and calls on state governments to require all water utilities to report their shut-off numbers. But the group says local governments are closest to the customers and are best placed to make substantive improvements. Philadelphia had a 5-percent shut-off rate in 2016, which the report rated as average. But the nonprofit praises a program the city started last year that sets a cap on water bills for low-income households. "Local governments can make those policy decisions to be more lenient," Grant said. "They're small changes that can make a big difference in people's lives." Some communities, including Eau Claire, Wisconsin, and Leominster, Massachusetts, had zero-percent shut-off rates because they don't allow water service to be cut. Instead they place tax liens on properties that fall behind on bills, but Food & Water Watch considers that punitive for people who are too poor to pay for water. Oklahoma City's utilities department, like those in many other cities, asks customers to voluntarily pay extra on their monthly bills to help other customers who can't pay for their own water. The roughly $35,000 a year that customers contribute is then dispersed to the needy by The Salvation Army. The Salvation Army's social services director, Dee Watts, said that money paid monthly water bills for about 250 families in the past year, which was a drop in the bucket considering the cutoff rate was at least 1,000 times greater. Watts said reasons people can't pay vary widely, from losing a job to lack of knowledge on personal finance. "Some people had always lived in apartments, the water bill was paid as part of their rent, and now they have their own home and didn't take into account the cost of a monthly water bill," Watts said. In this Oct. 23, 2018 photo, Jamie Moten poses for a photo with her children at their home in Oklahoma City. Moten said she had her water service turned off for about three days in 2016 after losing her job as a grocery store manager. A nonprofit says it has conducted a first-of-its-kind survey that shows more than a half-a-million American households lost water service two years ago because they couldn't pay. (AP Photo/Sue Ogrocki) DENVER (AP) - Prosecutors have filed a second-degree assault charge against a Denver police officer accused of beating a 17-year-old suspect with a metal baton, breaking his nose and leg. Denver District Attorney Beth McCann's office formally filed the charge Wednesday against 50-year-old Sgt. Joseph Rodarte, who was arrested Thursday. Rodarte could not be reached Wednesday. It's not clear if he has an attorney to comment on the charge. Denver officials said he has been suspended without pay. Court records say Rodarte and other officers responded to an Aug. 22 complaint about a person yelling obscenities. The records say the teen was running from police when Rodarte struck him several times. The teen, who has not been named, faces charges of resisting and interfering with police. CLEVELAND (AP) - The Cleveland Orchestra says an independent investigation into sexual misconduct allegations has led to the firing of two prominent musicians. The orchestra on Wednesday announced the dismissals of concertmaster William Preucil and principal trombonist Massimo La Rosa. The orchestra says in a statement that the investigation was conducted after the publication of media reports in July detailing allegations of misconduct involving Preucil. The investigation was expanded after allegations were also made against La Rosa. The orchestra says investigators found that both men engaged in "sexual misconduct and sexually harassing behavior" with female students and colleagues over a number of years. Investigators were told the women felt intimidated and were afraid to take action. Preucil and La Rosa did not return The Plain Dealer newspaper's requests for comment. LITTLE ROCK, Ark. (AP) - Three more people alleged Wednesday they were targets of an unconstitutional drug raid conducted by Little Rock police and are joining a lawsuit against the department and the city. Juanglecio Boykins, Candice Caldwell and Derrick Davis said that police obtained "no-knock" warrants based on false information, echoing claims made last week by Roderick Talley. Police used explosives to enter residences for all four and search for drugs. Talley alleged that police lied on a search warrant affidavit, saying they witnessed an informant purchase cocaine from him. But Talley wasn't home at the time of the alleged drug purchase, and he had video evidence from a security camera, which he played to reporters, to show the informant lied. Police obtained a "no-knock" warrant and used explosives to blow up his door and search his apartment. They found no cocaine, but arrested him for a small amount of marijuana. After the charges were dropped, Talley brought the issue to Little Rock police's internal affairs department but they did nothing. He ultimately filed his own lawsuit against the city before finding legal representation in civil rights lawyers Ben Crump and Michael Laux. City attorney Tom Carpenter has said the department's policies comply with state and federal civil rights law, while a police spokesman has declined to comment. Boykins, Davis and Caldwell told similar stories to Talley's. Boykins said the police actually raided his mother's house, where he was sleeping for the night, although they arrested him for a small amount of marijuana and a gun. Boykins said he typically spent a night or two a week at his mother's house, but suspected that same informant in Talley's case only knew his mother's address, not his primary residence. After Davis was arrested, police mistook him for a fugitive from Texas - despite a decade or so age difference - and held him for more than two days before his wife brought his background check from work and cleared him. Like Talley, Caldwell had a security system which captured the raid. In a video shown to reporters, Caldwell, who said her mother had died only days before, hears explosives in the floor below and screams. She begs police not to shoot her dog as they enter her room. Later, she asks an officer who is guarding her why they used explosives. "I would have opened the door if you all had knocked," she says to the officer. "Right, but that's not exactly how a 'no-knock' search warrant goes," he responds. Caldwell said the officers were looking for methamphetamine and $100,000, neither of which they found. She and her lawyers say the officers did smash a thermostat - which she thinks they mistook for a camera - and caused about $7,000 in damage to the house she was renting. Her charges were eventually dropped as well. Attorneys Crump and Laux said they expect more people will come forward in the coming weeks NEW YORK (AP) - Tony Hoagland, a prize-winning poet admired for his candor and sharp, off-beat humor, has died at age 64. Jeff Shotts, executive editor of Graywolf Press, told The Associated Press that Hoagland died Tuesday at his home in Santa Fe, New Mexico. The cause was pancreatic cancer. A native of Fort Bragg, North Carolina, Hoagland published several works of poetry and essays about poetry. The titles helped sum up his take on life: "Unincorporated Persons in the Late Honda Dynasty," ''Application for Release from the Dream" and "Priest Turned Therapist Treats Fear of God," which came out in June. Three of his books had been released since 2015. "It was a long battle with cancer, and he cheated it a couple of times," Shotts said. "He was very productive near the end and I think the work helped keep him alive." His style could be off-hand and unpredictable. In the poem "A Color in the Sky," his thoughts wander from love and sex to a dogwood tree between a police station and liquor store that is "losing its mind." Hoagland was a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle award for his 2003 collection "What Narcissism Means to Me," and his other honors included the Jackson Prize, given to poets of "exceptional talent" who deserve greater attention. Prize judges called him a "poet of risk." "He risks wild laughter in poems that are totally heartfelt," the citation read, "poems you want to read out loud to anyone who needs to know the score and even more so to those who think they know the score." Hoagland attended several colleges and received an M.F.A. from the University of Arizona. He taught writing at the University of Houston and at Warren Wilson College outside of Asheville, North Carolina. He is survived by his wife, the writer Kathleen Lee, and a brother, Christopher. The poet reflected on mortality in the recent poem "I Have Good News," in which he confides his feelings about being sick for "the last time." "You will begin to see the plants and flowers of your youth, And they will look as new to you as they did back then?_? little lavender bouquets arranged in solar systems delicate beyond your comprehension" A set of three photos of injured federal police officers in Mexico were not taken after confrontations with migrants making their way in a caravan from Central America to the U.S., despite posts circulating on social media. In the most prominent photo, an officer is bleeding from a head wound. Gustavo Aguado Butanda, a local photographer in the Mexican state of Michoacan, told The Associated Press that he took the photo on Oct. 15, 2012, in Tiripetio. Butanda said that police had entered a school in the town during a clash involving "normalistas," a group of students protesting modernization of curriculums. His photo, along with two others, were miscaptioned to say that Mexican police were being brutalized by members of the migrant caravan. The number of migrants in the caravan, which has made its way to southern Mexico, has grown to more than 7,000 as they head to the U.S. border. In another photo, an officer attempts to pull himself up onto a sidewalk after being injured in a clash with protesters in Chilpancingo, a city in the state of Guerrero, ahead of a concert scheduled for that night. Cristopher Rogel Blanquet, who took the photo in December of 2014, said the concert was to honor 43 students who went missing that year. The students from a teacher training college in Ayotzinapa disappeared while on their way to a demonstration in Mexico City. In the third photo, a police officer is bleeding from his nose amid a group of other officers in riot gear. Associated Press photographer Luis Alberto Cruz was present during the confrontation on Feb. 15, 2011. Cruz said the officer was injured in a clash with teachers in Oaxaca, Mexico. He said the officer was injured as teachers attempted to push past the officers who were there to provide security in preparation for the visit by then-President of Felipe Calderon. Aguado Butanda's photo began circulating on social media Sunday and also appeared on 4Chan, a shadowy online forum known for spreading hoaxes. On Monday, Trump tweeted that Mexican authorities were unable to stop the caravan heading to the U.S. border. Mexican officials sent federal police officers to the border with Guatemala last week. This Oct. 2012 handout photo provided by Gustavo Aguado shows a bloodied federal police officer injured during an eviction of students, in Tiripetio, Mexico. This photo was not taken in confrontations with migrants making their way in a caravan from Central America to the U.S., despite a post circulating on social media. (Photo by Gustavo Aguado via AP) ___ This is part of The Associated Press' ongoing effort to fact-check misinformation that is shared widely online, including work with Facebook to identify and reduce the circulation of false stories on the platform. ___ Find all AP Fact Checks here: https://www.apnews.com/tag/APFactCheck ___ Follow @APFactCheck on Twitter: https://twitter.com/APFactCheck ST. PAUL, Minn. (AP) - Minnesota Public Radio is selling the century-old theater where Garrison Keillor's "A Prairie Home Companion" was based. MPR President and CEO John McTaggart announced Wednesday that the radio network is selling the 1,000-seat Fitzgerald Theater in St. Paul to Minneapolis nightclub First Avenue . MPR bought the theater in 1980 when it was named The World Theater. It was renamed in honor of Jazz Age author and St. Paul native F. Scott Fitzgerald and was home base for Keillor's public radio variety show. Keillor retired from the show in July 2016. Last November, MPR severed ties with Keillor over accusations he sexually harassed a woman who worked on his show. Keillor has portrayed his relationship with the woman as a mutual flirtation, which she disputes. MPR renamed the show "Live from Here." FILE - In this Friday, April 13, 2007 file photo, Garrison Keillor rehearses for "A Prairie Home Companion" at the Fitzgerald Theater in St. Paul, Minn. Minnesota Public Radio is selling the century-old theater where Garrison Keillor's "A Prairie Home Companion" was based. MPR president and chief executive John McTaggart announced Wednesday, Oct. 24, 2018 that the radio network is selling the century-old Fitzgerald Theater in downtown St. Paul to famed Minneapolis nightclub First Avenue. (AP Photo/Ann Heisenfelt, File) BAGHDAD (AP) - Iraq's parliament voted to confirm Prime Minister Adel Abdul-Mahdi's new government on Thursday while leaving key Cabinet posts unfilled. The legislature voted in an unruly session to confirm 14 of Abdul-Mahdi's 22 Cabinet nominees, enough to ratify a government. But lawmakers failed to vote on key appointments, including ministers of defense, justice and interior, underscoring the discord plaguing Iraqi politics. Lawmakers from the Islah bloc - the largest in Parliament - complained that they were not given enough time to review the nominees, named only hours before the vote. Lawmakers were handed one page resumes to review for each. "I'm voting for the ministers of Iraq and I don't know if their degrees are genuine? If they don't have a criminal record?" demanded lawmaker Sabah al-Saadi, who was cut off by Speaker Mohamed al-Halbousi in an attempt to keep order. But the rushed process gave lawmakers the cover to reject nominees for political reasons, said political analyst Hamza Mustafa. Prime Minister-designate Adel Abdul-Mahdi, center, arrives to the parliament building, in the heavily guarded Green Zone, in Baghdad, Iraq, Wednesday, Oct. 24, 2018. Iraq's parliament is convening to vote on Prime Minister-designate Adel Abdul-Mahdi's ministry appointments, and the parliament must confirm the appointments for the government to be sworn in. (AP Photo/Hadi Mizban) "It made them look like they were being objective, when in fact it was all about parties and deal-making," said Mustafa. Only 220 lawmakers attended the session, leaving more than 100 seats empty in the 329-seat body. Abdul-Mahdi, a former oil and finance minister, was designated prime minister on Oct. 3, promising to install a government of "technocrats" to reform the country's ailing public sector. Iraq is consistently ranked among the most corrupt countries globally, and frustration over chronic power cuts and water pollution sparked riots in the south this summer. With the new Cabinet, he has partially filled his promise. His electricity minister, Luay al-Khateeb, is the executive director of a respected energy policy institute, the Iraq Energy Institute. But other nominees had clear political ties. His nominee for Interior Ministry, Falih al-Fayadh, used to head the country's Iran-linked Popular Mobilization Forces militias before he was sacked from his position by the previous prime minister, Haidar al-Abadi. His appointment did not come up for a vote. Abdul-Mahdi nominated two women to his Cabinet. Lawmakers declined to vote on either. None of the appointments were known to have come from the online application portal opened by Abdul-Mahdi to bring new faces into government. His office received over 15,000 applications in the span of less than a week, earlier this month. Abdul-Mahdi will hold the portfolios of defense, justice, and others until parliament votes to approve his nominees. The lawmaking body is scheduled to reconvene on Nov. 6, though there is no constitutional deadline to confirm the appointments. Former Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki went without ministers of defense or interior for the whole of his second term, from 2010 to 2014. Abdul-Mahdi and the 14 confirmed ministers were sworn in immediately after the vote. ___ Associated Press producer Ahmed Sami contributed to this report. Prime Minister-designate Adel Abdul-Mahdi, center, arrives to the parliament building, in the heavily guarded Green Zone, in Baghdad, Iraq, Wednesday, Oct. 24, 2018. Iraq's parliament is convening to vote on Prime Minister-designate Adel Abdul-Mahdi's ministry appointments, and the parliament must confirm the appointments for the government to be sworn in. (AP Photo/Hadi Mizban) BISMARCK, N.D. (AP) - Musician Dave Matthews and actors Shailene Woodley and Mark Ruffalo are encouraging Native Americans to vote. The Stand-N-Vote campaign launched Wednesday features the actors and American Indian comedian Auntie Beachress announcing a concert Saturday by Matthews and Ruffalo on the Standing Rock reservation. Organizers say the effort is in response to a U.S. Supreme Court decision this month upholding North Dakota's voter ID law, which requires a street address to vote. Many living on reservations have post office boxes and argue the law discriminates against Native Americans. The concert will be livestreamed and tribal officials will be attending to provide required IDs. Organizers say additional events will be scheduled at other North Dakota reservations. Woodley, Ruffalo and Matthews each spent time two years ago protesting the Dakota Access oil pipeline. JEFFERSONTOWN, Ky. (AP) - A male suspect fatally shot a man and a woman at a Kroger grocery store on the outskirts of Louisville, Kentucky, on Wednesday, and then exchanged fire with an armed bystander before fleeing the scene, police said. He was captured shortly afterward. Both victims died at the store, said Jeffersontown Police Chief Sam Rogers. He did not say whether police had determined a motive. He also did not identify the suspect. Police received a call about 3 p.m. reporting the shooting, Rogers said. He said the suspect fired multiple rounds at the man inside the store, and shot the female victim multiple times out in the parking lot. A citizen armed with a gun engaged the shooter in the parking lot, but the suspect was able to flee before he was captured on a nearby road, Rogers said. Eric Deacon, who identified himself as an EMT, told The Associated Press that he was in the self-checkout lane of the store when he heard the first shot, in the pharmacy. He said a man came around the corner and "the look on his face, he looked like he just didn't care." Deacon said he saw another man in the store with a gun who appeared to be shooting at the suspect, trying to get him out of the store. Deacon went outside and saw a woman in her mid-50s or early 60s who had been hit, and tried to resuscitate her. A Kroger employee wipes away tears following a shooting that left two people dead, and the subject in custody, Wednesday, Oct. 24, 2018, in Jeffersontown, Ky. (AP Photo/Timothy D. Easley) "She was gone, there's nothing I could do," Deacon said. "I think she just got caught in the crossfire." As police officers swarmed the scene and blocked off the area with yellow crime tape, a man identified by the Louisville Courier Journal as Tim King stood in the parking lot waiting for his wife to come out. He said he drove to the store after she called him sobbing to tell him what had happened. "I said, 'What's wrong?'" King said in a video posted on the newspaper's website. "And she said, 'There's someone shooting up here.'" King said his wife said she heard popping noises, then someone ran around a corner and said, "Oh my God, he's killed her." Customers were moved to the back of the store, she said. "It's just a very, very scary situation," King said. The Kroger Co. issued a statement saying that company officials were "shocked and saddened by the shooting." "Thanks to the quick response of the local police department, the suspect was apprehended and our store is secure." The store was closed and will not reopen until the investigation is complete, the release said. Members of the Louisville Metro Police Department talk inside a Kroger grocery in Jeffersontown, Ky., following a shooting that left two people dead, Wednesday, Oct. 24, 2018. (AP Photo/Timothy D. Easley) Jeffersontown Police Chief Sam Rogers speaks to the media during a press conference, Wednesday, Oct. 24, 2018, in Jeffersontown, Ky. A shooting at a Kroger grocery left two people dead, and the suspect in custody. (AP Photo/Timothy D. Easley) JERUSALEM (AP) - Israel's military says a rocket was fired from the Gaza Strip toward southern Israel, the first since a missile hit a house in the city of Beersheba a week ago. Air raid sirens blared in southern Israel late Wednesday after a week of relative calm. The military said in a statement early Thursday that an Iron Dome interceptor missile attempted to down a rocket launched from Gaza but failed. The rocket attack came as Egypt and the United Nations are trying to mediate a long-term truce between Israel and Hamas, the Islamist militant group that rules the Gaza Strip. The two sides came to the brink of all-out conflict over the summer amid weekly border protests organized by Hamas since March aimed in part at easing a crippling Israeli-Egyptian blockade. WASHINGTON, N.C. (AP) - A pastor says the family of a black man fatally shot by a white police officer is awaiting an investigative report to decide whether to hire a lawyer. Pastor Marcus Miller of New Birth Christian Center in Washington said Cedric Pritchard's family is considering legal options but waiting for a pending State Bureau of Investigation report before deciding next steps. Miller, who spoke to Cedric Pritchard's mother Wednesday afternoon, said his body was released to the family Tuesday night. He said the community has been peaceful in the aftermath of the shooting. The Washington Police Department issued a statement saying Pritchard was shot Sunday afternoon during a traffic stop after he got out of his vehicle with a gun. North Carolina prison records show Pritchard had served time for felony robbery. BARTOW, Fla. (AP) - The attorney who defended George Zimmerman in the fatal shooting of Trayvon Martin has joined the legal team of a former Florida city commissioner charged with fatally shooting a man he accused of shoplifting. The Ledger reports that Mark O'Mara will join 47-year-old Michael Dunn's other attorney, Rusty Franklin, at a Thursday morning hearing seeking pretrial release from jail. Surveillance video released to the public shows Dunn shooting 50-year-old Cristobal Lopez on Oct. 3. Dunn was charged with second-degree murder last week and resigned Monday from the Lakeland City Commission. O'Mara represented Zimmerman after he fatally shot a teenage Martin in central Florida in 2012. Martin was black. Zimmerman identifies as Hispanic. He claimed self-defense and was acquitted. O'Mara went on to become a legal analyst for CNN. ___ Information from: The Ledger (Lakeland, Fla.), http://www.theledger.com INDIANOLA, Miss. (AP) - It's a beer run gone bad. A Mississippi Delta man was arrested Monday after police say he stole beer from a delivery truck and led police on a high-speed chase ending in a three-car wreck. The Delta Democrat-Times reports at least two people were injured. Indianola Police Chief Edrick Hall says police arrested Edwin Sims. Hall says Sims pulled alongside a truck and loaded cases of Corona, Budweiser and other beers into his Chevrolet Tahoe while a delivery driver was inside a store. Sims fled and was caught after slamming into two cars. The Indianola Fire Department was called for a possible fuel spill, but firefighters ultimately concluded the liquid was just beer. Police didn't immediately list charges against Sims, and it's unclear if he has a lawyer who could comment. ___ Information from: Delta Democrat-Times, http://www.ddtonline.com SAN ANTONIO (AP) - A grand jury in Texas indicted a San Antonio officer who was recorded on camera hitting a teenage girl during an altercation last year. Court records filed Tuesday show Officer Gary Tuli was indicted by a grand jury in Bexar County on one count of official oppression and a second count of false report to a peace officer. The teenage girl was arrested after the May 2017 encounter, which took place outside an event center and was captured on video. The indictment says Tuli knew arresting the teenager was unlawful. He also made a false statement when he reported the girl "took a bladed stance, balled her fist up and struck me in the face with a closed fist" and called him an expletive, according to the court document. In a video posted by the San Antonio Express-News , the officer is seen hitting the girl as she is forced backward toward a group of people. Police are then seen trying to control the teenager, who moves out of the video's frame. The paper reported that the supervisor for Tuli determined the officer had been justified in using force. In a written statement sent Wednesday, Police Chief William McManus said Tuli will be put on administrative duty. He said an excessive force complaint "was deemed to be inconclusive." LITTLE ROCK, Ark. (AP) - A Washington-based group says it's spent $1.1 million so far this fall on mailers and TV ads in the race to oust a Supreme Court justice in Arkansas, including a new spot similar to one by another group that a state judge temporarily blocked from airing earlier this year. The Republican State Leadership Committee's Judicial Fairness Initiative this week began airing television ads criticizing Justice Courtney Goodson over campaign contributions and gifts from trial attorneys. Goodson is running against David Sterling, an attorney for the Department of Human Services in next month's election. "Reject scandal. Reject Courtney Goodson," the group's 15-second spot says. RSLC has also been running 15-second and 30-second ads promoting Sterling as someone who "shares President Trump and Gov. (Asa) Hutchinson's conservative agenda." A spokesman for the group said the $1.1 million is in addition to nearly $745,000 RSLC spent ahead of the May 22 judicial election between Goodson, Sterling and state Appeals Judge Kenneth Hixson. Next month's election is a runoff between Goodson and Sterling. A state judge in May ordered several Arkansas television stations to temporarily stop running an ad by another group, the Judicial Crisis Network, that also criticized Goodson over donors' gifts. Both ads cite a $50,000 trip to Italy Goodson received in 2012 from W.H. Taylor, an attorney and friend of her husband's. Goodson has recused herself from any cases involving her husband, Taylor or Tyson Foods Inc., a company Taylor has represented. The ruling blocking the ad was criticized by First Amendment advocates as an unconstitutional restriction on free speech. One of the TV stations has appealed the judge's order, which prevented the ads running through the state's May 22 judicial election. Goodson criticized the latest ad and Sterling for not denouncing the group's involvement in the race. Goodson has called the outside group spending an attack on the judiciary's independence. "That makes me wonder how a man who's afraid to stand up to dark money can stand up for the people of Arkansas when it counts," Goodson said. Sterling said he's had nothing to do with the outside involvement and said he's focused on his own campaign. "I don't think voters should be distracted by this little sideshow that's going on, this dispute between my opponent and these third-party groups she picked a fight with," Sterling said. Judicial Crisis Network, which doesn't disclose its donors, hasn't run any ads in the race since the spring. RSLC, which launched its initiative focused on state court races in 2014, has been supported in the past financially by the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, tobacco company Reynolds America, Bentonville-based Wal-Mart Stores and other major corporations. Supreme Court campaigns in Arkansas and several other states have become increasingly negative and partisan, with outside groups spending big to reshape state courts that will decide cases on redistricting, voting rights and other issues. RSLC is also running ads supporting a congressman and former state House speaker running for a pair of state Supreme Court seats in West Virginia. Four justices in the state were impeached by the Republican-led House following questions about costly renovations that evolved into accusations of corruption, incompetence and neglect of duty. In North Carolina, a Republican state Supreme Court justice seeking re-election is running an ad warning about "out of control liberal judges allowing sanctuary cities" for immigrants in the country illegally. ___ This version of the story corrects the date of the trip to Italy to 2012. ___ Follow Andrew DeMillo on Twitter at www.twitter.com/ademillo PROVO, Utah (AP) - A Utah man accused of helping a teenage girl kill herself and filming the act because he was fascinated with death has pleaded guilty to child abuse homicide. In accepting a plea deal Tuesday in a Provo court, prosecutors say, 19-year-old Tyerell Joe Przybycien of Spanish Fork avoided a possible murder conviction that could have brought a sentence of 15 years to life in prison. Przybycien faces a prison term of at least five years when he's sentenced Dec. 7 and could still get a life sentence. He acknowledged filming 16-year-old Jchandra Brown's 2017 suicide in Payson Canyon after buying rope, tying the noose and speaking to her as she passed out and died. Prosecutors dismissed charges of failure to report a dead body and witness tampering. For other uses, see Deceiver The Deceivers is a 1988 adventure film directed by Nicholas Meyer, starring Pierce Brosnan and Saeed Jaffrey. The film is based on the 1952 John Masters novel of the same name regarding the murderous Thuggee of India. Plot [ edit ] The film takes place in 1825 India. The country is being ravaged by Thuggees, a Kali-worshiping cult also known as "Deceivers," who commit robbery and ritualistic murder. Appalled by their activities, English Captain William Savage undertakes a dangerous mission in which he disguises himself, and infiltrates the Thugee cult. At constant risk of betrayal and vengeance, Captain Savage undergoes a disturbing psychological transformation, experiencing the cult's insatiable bloodlust for himself. The film was shot in various locations around the arid steppe region in northwestern India. Cast [ edit ] Production [ edit ] Development [ edit ] The producer Ismail Merchant first approached writer and director Nicholas Meyerfresh off his work on Volunteers and Star Trek IV: The Voyage Homethrough Meyer's agent about directing The Deceivers. Meyer reportedly agreed to a substantial pay cut in order to direct the film, remarking, "Hollywood is making films I have no interest in seeing, machined tooled, packaged, with a lot of numbers after their names. The studios don't just want home runs. They want grand slams. Anything less than $100 million is not interesting to them." [1] PHOENIX (AP) - The nation's largest provider of shelters for immigrant children has surrendered two of its licenses in Arizona following a state investigation that found the organization didn't have fingerprint records for some employees. In an agreement announced Wednesday, Southwest Key surrendered its licenses for shelters in Phoenix and Youngtown and will pay a $73,000 fine. The Texas-based organization has 13 licenses to operate shelters in Arizona. Southwest Key also will stop admitting new immigrant children in its Arizona facilities unless the health department approves them. The investigation by the Arizona Department of Health began this summer when several reports of abuse at shelters in the state became public. Last month, the health department issued notices of intent to revoke the organization's licenses when Southwest Key missed a deadline to update it on fingerprint clearance cards, which are part of the background check process. Under the agreement, Southwest Key will hire a third-party health care consultant to evaluate the company's quality-management practices and systems, hire an on-site state-approved "evaluator" at each of its 11 other facilities for at least a year and allow the health department to inspect its facilities without notice. "We will fully and completely comply with this agreement," Southwest Key spokesman Jeff Eller said in a statement. "We are committed to making the improvements that are spelled out and we look forward to building on these changes for the future." "This agreement, coupled with continued cooperation from our federal partners, will build a solid framework that provides a safe and therapeutic environment for children under Southwest Key's care," health department spokeswoman Melissa Blasius-Nuanez said in a statement. Arizona has seen numerous allegations of sexual abuse at its many shelters for immigrant children, including one made by the government of El Salvador, which said it received reports of three children, 12 to 17, who were sexually abused at unnamed shelters in Arizona. Last month, a former youth care worker was convicted of sexually abusing seven teenage boys at a Phoenix-area shelter for immigrant children. In August, authorities arrested a 32-year-old man on allegations that he had molested a 14-year-old girl at a Southwest Key facility the previous month. It's unclear how many children are being held in the facilities that are being shut down because the government doesn't allow Southwest Key to talk about the number of children in its care. The facilities being shut down, Casa Phoenix and Hacienda del Sol, are licensed for 420 children and 139 children, respectively. Eller, the Southwest Key spokesman, said officials are working out the details of when those facilities will be cleared out. BARTOW, Fla. (AP) - Two middle-school girls in central Florida brought knives to school in a foiled plot to kill classmates, cut them up and drink their blood before killing themselves, police officials said Wednesday. The two girls, ages 11 and 12, were armed with knives Tuesday at Bartow Middle School before they were caught, according to arrest affidavits released by the Bartow Police Department. No one was hurt. The girls face charges of conspiracy to commit first-degree murder and possession of a weapon at school, among other charges. It will be up to prosecutors to decide whether the girls will be charged formally as juveniles or adults, Deputy Police Chief Bryan Dorman said in an email. After their arrest, the girls were sent to a juvenile detention facility. Bartow is located in the heart of Florida's citrus belt. The girls planned to stake out a school bathroom and wait for smaller students to enter, according to the police affidavit. They planned to cut their victims' throats, cut up their bodies, eat the flesh and drink their victims' blood, authorities said. The students then planned to fatally stab themselves. "The plan was to kill at least 1 student but were hoping to kill anywhere from 15-25 students," the affidavit said. "Killing all of these students was in hopes it would make them worse sinners ensuring that after they committed suicide ... (they) would go to hell so they could be with satan." Detectives said the girls devised the plot while watching "scary" movies at one of their houses over the weekend. The alleged plot was foiled when administrators searched for them after they didn't show up for class Tuesday. The administrators found them in a bathroom stall and brought them back to their offices where they found the girls in possession of four knives, a pizza cutter and a knife sharpener, police said. Officials with Polk County Schools said that extra police officers and guidance counselors would be at the school this week. "School staff quickly responded to a report of suspicious behavior; the students were taken into custody, and no one was harmed," school officials said in a tweet. MONTGOMERY, Ala. (AP) - Alabama health officials announced Wednesday that a study did not find evidence of an eye cancer cluster at Auburn University, despite a rash of reported cases of the rare and deadly cancer that drew national attention earlier this year. The Alabama Department of Public Health said the study "based on the best available information" did not find higher than expected rates of uveal melanoma among former students and university employees. The study conducted with Auburn University came after a number of cases of the rare cancer were reported among former students. Justin T. George, director of cancer epidemiology, said the study looked at identified cases among people who attended or worked at Auburn since 1980. Allyson Allred, who has been battling the cancer since 2001, has worked to connect other survivors who lived in Auburn. "The fact that Auburn University and the Alabama Department of Health are not calling (it) a cluster doesn't change the fact that too many people are dying from this disease and we must find the cause so we can find the cure," Allred said. From 2006 through 2015, there were 316 cases of uveal melanoma among Alabama residents for an average of 31.6 new cases each year, the department said. A limitation of the Auburn study is that cancer registries across the country do not capture where a person attended college. Researchers used a list of Auburn University students and employees that had reported being diagnosed with this disease. Allred said a task force submitted about three dozen names. The health department said 17 people met the criteria to be included in the study. George said researchers remain comfortable in the finding. He said the cancer would have to occur in substantially higher numbers to qualify as a cluster. SEOUL, South Korea (AP) - The rival Koreas and the U.S.-led U.N. Command finished removing firearms and troops from a jointly controlled area at a border village on Thursday, as part of agreements to reduce decades-long animosity on the Korean Peninsula. South Korea separately announced that its troops found what it believes are Korean War remains in another front-line area where they have been clearing land mines with North Korean soldiers. The rival Koreas plan their first-ever joint searches for war dead there after their demining work is done. Disarming the Joint Security Area at the border village of Panmunjom and the joint searches are among a package of deals the Koreas' defense ministers struck on the sidelines of their leaders' summit last month. Other steps include creating buffer zones along their land and sea boundaries and a no-fly zone above the border, as well as removing some of their front-line guard posts. On Thursday, the Koreas and the U.N. Command completed a removal of weapons, ammunition and soldiers manning guard posts at Panmunjom's Joint Security Area, Seoul's Defense Ministry said in a statement. The three sides earlier finished removing mines from the village. The three sides will jointly verify their disarmament work on Friday and Saturday. Under the September deals, the two Koreas are to let 35 "unarmed personnel" from each side guard the Joint Security Area and let tourists freely move around there. The area symbolizes the Koreas' seven decades of division. It's where an armistice was signed at the end of the 1950-53 Korean War. Rival soldiers have faced each other only meters (feet) apart in the zone, which has been the scene of numerous incidents of bloodshed and violence. It is also a venue for talks and a popular tourist destination. Members of South Korea's Defense Ministry recovery team cover a coffin containing a piece of bone believed to be the remains of an unidentified South Korean soldier killed in the Korean War with the national flag in the Demilitarized Zone (DMZ) dividing the two Koreas in Cheorwon, northeast of Seoul, Thursday, Oct. 25, 2018. The excavation project is part of a comprehensive military agreement that the two Koreas' defense ministers signed last month after the third summit between South Korean President Moon Jae-in and North Korean leader Kim Jong Un in Pyongyang. (Jung Yeon-je/Pool Photo via AP) Soldiers and visitors were previously allowed to move freely inside the area, but the 1976 ax-killing of two American troops by North Korea at Panmunjom led to the creation of ankle-high concrete slabs that mark the border there. The Koreas are split along the 248-kilometer (155-mile) -long, 4-kilometer (2.5-mile) -wide border called the Demilitarized Zone that was originally created as a buffer. But unlike its name, the DMZ is now the world's most heavily fortified border. An estimated 2 million mines are peppered inside and near the DMZ, which is also guarded by barbed wire fences, tank traps and combat troops on both sides. Officially, the entire DMZ area, including Panmunjom, is jointly overseen by North Korea and the U.N. Command. About 28,500 U.S. troops are deployed in South Korea to deter possible aggression from North Korea. The Defense Ministry said earlier Thursday that its troops found what they believe are two sets of human remains at another DMZ spot. It was the first such discovery since South Korea began the joint demining work with North Korea on Oct. 1 at a place where one of the heaviest Korean War battles took place. According to the ministry, a bayonet, bullets and a South Korean army identification tag with the name "Pak Je Kwon" were found along with the remains. Military records show Pak was a sergeant first class who died in a battle in 1953 in the final weeks of the Korean War. Pak has two surviving sisters and authorities will take their DNA samples to find out if parts of the bones belong to him. During a media visit to the site, South Korean soldiers wrapped a piece of bone in white paper and put it into a wooden box. They later wrapped the box with a national flag, placed it on a small table and offered a shot of liquor before they paid a silent tribute. "Sgt. 1st Class Pak Je Kwon has come back to us. It's been 65 years since he died in battle. Now, we can offer up a shot of soju (Korean liquor)" to him, South Korean President Moon Jae-in tweeted. The area, known as Arrowhead Hill, is where South Korean and U.S.-led U.N. troops repelled a series of Chinese attacks to secure a strategically important hilltop position. South Korea said the remains of an estimated 300 South Korean, French and U.S. soldiers are believed to be in the area. The remains of a large number of Chinese and North Korean soldiers are also likely there. The Korean War left millions dead or missing, and Seoul officials believe the remains of about 10,000 South Korean soldiers alone are still inside the DMZ. September's agreements received strong criticism from conservatives in South Korea that Moon's government made too many concessions that will eventually weaken the country's military strength at a time when North Korea's nuclear threat remains unchanged. Moon, a liberal who wants greater ties with North Korea, has facilitated a series of high-profile U.S.-North Korean talks, including a June summit between North Korean leader Kim Jong Un and President Donald Trump, to address the standoff over Kim's nuclear program. ___ Associated Press video journalist Yong Jun Chang at Arrowhead Hill in Cheorwon, South Korea, contributed to this report. In this photo provided by South Korea Defense Ministry, South Korean army soldiers work before leaving from the border village of Panmunjom, South Korea, Thursday, Oct. 25, 2018. The rival Koreas and the U.S.-led U.N. Command completed withdrawing firearms and troops from a jointly controlled area at the Koreas' border village on Thursday as part of their sweeping agreements to reduce decades-long military animosities on the Korean Peninsula. (South Korea Defense Ministry via AP). In this photo provided by South Korea Defense Ministry, a U.S. and a South Korean army soldiers stand before leaving from the border village of Panmunjom, South Korea, Thursday, Oct. 25, 2018. The rival Koreas and the U.S.-led U.N. Command completed withdrawing firearms and troops from a jointly controlled area at the Koreas' border village on Thursday as part of their sweeping agreements to reduce decades-long military animosities on the Korean Peninsula. (South Korea Defense Ministry via AP). Visitors walk near the wire fence decorated with ribbons carrying messages wishing the reunification and peace of the two Koreas at the Imjingak Pavilion in Paju, South Korea, Thursday, Oct. 25, 2018. Since the Korean War's end, the Koreas remain split along the 248-kilometer (155-mile) -long border, called the DMZ. An estimated 2 million mines are peppered inside and near the DMZ, which is also guarded by barbed wire fences, tank traps and combat troops on both sides. (AP Photo/Lee Jin-man) A man watches the North side from the unification observatory in Paju, South Korea, Thursday, Oct. 25, 2018. Since the Korean War's end, the Koreas remain split along the 248-kilometer (155-mile) -long border, called the DMZ. An estimated 2 million mines are peppered inside and near the DMZ, which is also guarded by barbed wire fences, tank traps and combat troops on both sides. (AP Photo/Lee Jin-man) Visitors use binoculars to see the North Korea side from the unification observatory in Paju, South Korea, Thursday, Oct. 25, 2018. Since the Korean War's end, the Koreas remain split along the 248-kilometer (155-mile) -long border, called the DMZ. An estimated 2 million mines are peppered inside and near the DMZ, which is also guarded by barbed wire fences, tank traps and combat troops on both sides. (AP Photo/Lee Jin-man) North Korea's Kaepoong town is seen behind a North Korean military guard post, bottom, from the unification observatory in Paju, South Korea, Thursday, Oct. 25, 2018. Since the Korean War's end, the Koreas remain split along the 248-kilometer (155-mile) -long border, called the DMZ. An estimated 2 million mines are peppered inside and near the DMZ, which is also guarded by barbed wire fences, tank traps and combat troops on both sides. (AP Photo/Lee Jin-man) Members of South Korea's Defense Ministry recovery team work on recovering the remains of soldiers killed in the Korean War in the Demilitarized Zone (DMZ) dividing the two Koreas in Cheorwon, northeast of Seoul, Thursday, Oct. 25, 2018. The excavation project is part of a comprehensive military agreement that the two Koreas' defense ministers signed last month after the third summit between South Korean President Moon Jae-in and North Korean leader Kim Jong Un in Pyongyang. (Jung Yeon-je/Pool Photo via AP) A South Korean soldier carries a coffin containing a piece of bone believed to be the remains of an unidentified South Korean soldier killed in the Korean War in the Demilitarized Zone (DMZ) dividing the two Koreas in Cheorwon, northeast of Seoul, Thursday, Oct. 25, 2018. The excavation project is part of a comprehensive military agreement that the two Koreas' defense ministers signed last month after the third summit between South Korean President Moon Jae-in and North Korean leader Kim Jong Un in Pyongyang. (Jung Yeon-je/Pool Photo via AP) South Korean soldiers pay tribute in front of a coffin containing a piece of bone believed to be the remains of an unidentified South Korean soldier killed in the Korean War in the Demilitarized Zone (DMZ) dividing the two Koreas in Cheorwon, northeast of Seoul, Thursday, Oct. 25, 2018. The excavation project is part of a comprehensive military agreement that the two Koreas' defense ministers signed last month after the third summit between South Korean President Moon Jae-in and North Korean leader Kim Jong Un in Pyongyang. (Jung Yeon-je/Pool Photo via AP) MEXICO CITY (AP) - The future of Mexico City's new airport, already about a third completed, comes down to a public vote this week in a political high-wire act by the president-elect that could shut down the country's largest infrastructure project in recent memory. After his election, Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador said Mexico's people should decide the fate of the $13 billion airport designed in collaboration with celebrated architect Norman Foster. He had promised during his campaign to cancel it if elected. Over four days beginning Thursday, citizens will cast ballots on whether to continue with the new airport or update Mexico City's existing one and another airport two hours away in Toluca, while building two new runways at a military base that would be converted to commercial use. Supporters of the new airport say it is needed because Mexico City's Benito Juarez International Airport handles more traffic than its designed capacity and a solution is urgently needed to satisfy growing demand. Surrounded by residential neighborhoods, the old airport has no room to add new runways. And supporters point to a study by U.S. corporation Mitre saying that while the alternative plan is technically feasible, it presents important logistical problems and overall is unviable. Opponents counter that not only is the new airport a potential sinkhole of corruption, but it is an environmental disaster, threatening a decades-old effort to restore the lakes that originally covered the valley in which the capital sits. Locals also say they were not consulted. This Oct. 17, 2018 photo, a shows the construction of new airport in Texcoco, Mexico. The future of Mexico City's new airport, already about a third completed, comes down to a public vote this week in a political high-wire act by the country's president-elect that could shut down Mexico's largest infrastructure project in recent memory. (AP Photo/Miguel Tovar) Lopez Obrador has said he wants to remain impartial, but he and his Cabinet picks consistently make the case against the new airport, characterizing it as too expensive and a windfall for corrupt interests. Last week, he said the second option could save $5 billion. He hasn't said, though, what will be done with the skeletal remains of new airport if it loses. About $6 billion has already been poured into the site northeast of Mexico City. "Corruption is over, influence is over, impunity is over," Lopez Obrador said in a recorded message this month. "We're going to resolve this issue in the way that best suits Mexico, the national interest, and what the people decide." Ivonne Acuna Murillo, a professor in the political science department at Iberoamericana University in Mexico City, said Lopez Obrador has continually said he wants to govern with and for the people. He won 53 percent of the votes in July's election and takes office Dec. 1. "He understands very well where his strength lies," she said. Still, Acuna believes Lopez Obrador is playing a bit of a "cat and mouse" game trying to pressure Mexico's business elite into footing the bill for the airport. It could be working. On Tuesday, the current tourism minister, Enrique de la Madrid, said on a local radio show the new airport is such a good business that it could be paid for without public funds. Lopez Obrador cast his own ballot Thursday morning amid a mob of news cameras in the southern Mexico City borough of Tlalpan, at one of more than 1,000 voting stations in the capital. At one station about a dozen people were in line at midmorning. Cynthia Riverol, 65, said she voted for the airport to proceed. "I believe that even though this referendum is not the wisest thing to do, because we're missing a lot of technical information, we have a more-or-less educated opinion," Riverol said. "And I believe that, financially and technically, the current construction must go on." The nationwide "consultation," as the vote is being called, is not being conducted by the governmental National Electoral Institute. Lawmakers from Lopez Obrador's Morena party have put up the money to hold it and volunteers are staffing the polling stations. The vote count will be conducted by the Arturo Rosenblueth Foundation, an academic institution. On a recent morning, Lopez Obrador's pick for transportation minister stood above an open pit mine as trucks dumped muddy sediment from the new airport site about 10 miles (16 kilometers) away. Surrounded by residents of communities near the project, Javier Jimenez Espriu said he was gathering information and helping to inform citizens about the project and its impact. His talk was interrupted by Felipe Alvarez Hernandez, a member of Peoples in Defense of the Earth Front, a group that has been fighting proposed airports in the area for nearly two decades. "If the (vote) is going to say that it should continue, then you are violating our rights with the query," Alvarez said, holding a machete aloft. Jimenez asked the crowd what they wanted. "That it's canceled, that's all," Alvarez said. A previous attempt to build a replacement airport in San Salvador Atenco in 2002 was canceled due to local opposition. In San Nicolas Tlaminca, where Alvarez was talking, residents worry the mud being dumped is toxic and will contaminate their ground water. Residents of other nearby towns say the project requires so much basalt and another reddish volcanic rock that mines are altering their landscape. At the site of the new airport, work continues full-steam ahead. The schedule calls for construction to wrap up toward the end of 2021. The site was a hive of activity on a recent morning. Fifteen of the 21 massive "funnels" that will support the terminal were under construction beneath more than a dozen cranes. An army of ironworkers positioned rebar for the ground transportation center next to the terminal. Two floors of the control tower rise at the center of the more than 12,000-acre site - more than six times the area covered by the capital's existing airport. "The risk of the (vote) is that the result may not reflect the level of technical decision the project deserves," said Salvador Mora Velazquez, a political science professor at Mexico's National Autonomous University. Lopez Obrador has been labeled both a leftist populist and authoritarian. Letting the public decide the airport's fate would seem to lean toward populism, but Mora sees something else at work. "Political decisions taken through popular consultation or with the population's opinion have a feel of legitimizing a decision already taken," he said, adding that the way the questions are asked can steer the result. A poll published this week by the newspaper El Financiero seemed to reflect this view. Using the official ballot question, a majority of those polled said the new airport should be canceled. Asked another way, a majority voted to continue it. Carlos Slim, one of the world's richest men, is pushing the new airport. His construction company is part of the consortium building the terminal and he believes the airport would have a wide-ranging impact on economic development. According to Lopez Obrador, Slim has indicated that he and others involved in the project could help lower costs and possibly finance construction without public money. The details of that proposal have not emerged, but it could be a way for the project to continue even with a negative referendum result. "We understand the great pressure he's under," airport opponent Ignacio del Valle said of Lopez Obrador. "But we won't accept that this project will be finished." In this Oct. 12, 2018 photo, Atenco residents a protest at a highway toll booth against the construction of the new Mexico City airport near their community, near Texcoco, Mexico. Opponents of the airport counter that not only is the new airport a potential sinkhole of corruption, but it would be an environmental disaster, threatening a decades-old effort to restore the lakes that originally covered the valley in which the capital is located. Locals also claim they were not consulted about the project. (AP Photo/Marco Ugarte) In this Oct. 10, 2018 photo, a resident of San Nicolas Tlaminca holds a machete aloft as he protests the dumping of rubble from the construction of Mexico City's new airport, in San Nicolas Tlaminca, Mexico. residents worry the mud being dumped is toxic and will contaminate their ground water. (AP Photo / Marco Ugarte) In this Oct. 12, 2018 photo, Atenco residents protest against the construction of the new Mexico City airport near their community, at a highway toll booth, in Mexico. Over four days beginning Thursday, Oct. 25, citizens will cast ballots asking whether to continue with the new airport or update Mexico City's existing one and another airport two hours away in Toluca, while building two new runways at a military base that would be converted to commercial use. (AP Photo/Marco Ugarte) In this Oct. 10, 2018 photo, residents of San Nicolas Tlaminca are seen through a spider's web as they protest the dumping of rubble from the construction site of Mexico City's new airport, in their community in San Nicolas Tlaminca, Mexico. Residents worry the mud being dumped is toxic and will contaminate their ground water. (AP Photo / Marco Ugarte) In this Oct. 10, 2018 photo, the new Secretary of Communications and Transport of the government of President-Elect Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador, Javier Jimenez Espriu, talks to residents of San Nicolas Tlaminca as they protest against the construction of Mexico City's new airport near their community, in San Nicolas Tlaminca, Mexico. Jimenez Espriu said he was gathering information and helping to inform citizens about the project and its impact. (AP Photo/Marco Ugarte) This Oct. 17, 2018 photo, a shows the construction of Mexico City's new airport in Texcoco, Mexico. About $6 billion have already been poured into the site northeast of Mexico City. (AP Photo/Miguel Tovar) In this Oct. 17, 2018 photo, work continues on one of the runways of Mexico City's new airport, on Lake Texcoco's dry lake bed, Mexico. Like much of Mexico City, the new airport is being built on an ancient lakebed. That particular area has not been home to a lake in decades, but the ground is soft and damp. Extensive site preparation was necessary to compact the ground, about 6 feet, and squeeze out the water like pressing on a sponge. Pumps run around the clock moving water to a reservoir across the highway. (AP Photo/Marco Ugarte) In this Oct. 12, 2018 photo, Ignacio del Valle protests against the construction of Mexico City's new airport near their community, on Texcoco's dry lake bed, in Mexico. A previous attempt to build a replacement Mexico City airport in San Salvador Atenco in 2002 was canceled due to local opposition. (AP Photo/Marco Ugarte) In this Oct. 17, 2018 photo, work continues on a landing strip of Mexico City's new airport, in Lake Texcoco's dry lake bed, Mexico. Like much of Mexico City, the new airport is being built on an ancient lakebed. That particular area has not been home to a lake in decades, but the ground is soft and damp. Extensive site preparation was necessary to compact the ground, about 6 feet, and squeeze out the water like pressing on a sponge. Pumps run around the clock moving water to a reservoir across the highway. (AP Photo/Marco Ugarte) This Oct. 17, 2018 photo, shows the advances in the construction of Mexico City's new airport in Texcoco, Mexico. At the site of the new airport work continues full-steam head. Construction is expected to wrap up toward the end of 2021. (AP Photo/Miguel Tovar) This Oct. 17, 2018 photo, shows the advances in the construction of new airport in Texcoco, Mexico. The site is a hive of activity. Twenty one massive "funnels" that will support the terminal were under construction beneath more than a dozen cranes. (AP Photo/Miguel Tovar) This Oct. 17, 2018 photo, shows the advances in the construction of new Mexico City airport in Texcoco, Mexico. Opponents of the new airport counter that not only that it is a potential sinkhole of corruption, but it would be an environmental disaster, threatening a decades-old effort to restore the lakes that originally covered the valley in which the capital is located. (AP Photo/Miguel Tovar) This Oct. 17, 2018 photo, shows the advances in the construction of new Mexico City airport in Texcoco, Mexico. The future of the new airport, already about a third completed, comes down to a public vote this week in a political high-wire act by the country's president-elect that could shut down Mexico's largest infrastructure project in recent memory. (AP Photo/Miguel Tovar) This Oct. 17, 2018 photo, shows the advances in the construction of new Mexico City airport in Texcoco, Mexico. An army of ironworkers positioned rebar for the ground transportation center next to the terminal. (AP Photo/Miguel Tovar) In this Oct. 10, 2018 photo, a resident of San Nicolas Tlaminca points with a machete the location of the construction site of Mexico City's new airport in Texcoco, Mexico. Supporters of the new airport say it is needed because Mexico City's Benito Juarez International Airport handles more traffic than its designed capacity and a solution is urgently needed to satisfy growing demand. (AP Photo/Marco Ugarte) In this Oct. 17, 2018 photo, dump trucks dispose of excavated dirt and mud from the construction site of Mexico City's new airport , in San Nicolas Tlaminca, Mexico. Residents worry the mud being dumped is toxic and will contaminate their ground water. (AP Photo/Marco Ugarte) In this Oct. 17, 2018 photo, men work on the site of Mexico City's new airport, on Lake Texcoco's dry lake bed, Mexico. A previous attempt to build a replacement Mexico City airport in San Salvador Atenco in 2002 was canceled due to local opposition.(AP Photo/Marco Ugarte) In this Oct. 17, 2018 photo, dump trucks line up at the site of Mexico City's new airport on Lake Texcoco's dry lake bed, Mexico. At the site work continues full-steam head. Construction is expected to wrap up toward the end of 2021. (AP Photo/Marco Ugarte) In this Oct. 17, 2018 photo, men work on the construction of Mexico City's New airport, on Lake Texcoco's dry lake bed, Mexico. A previous attempt to build a replacement Mexico City airport in San Salvador Atenco in 2002 was canceled due to local opposition. (AP Photo/Marco Ugarte) In this Oct. 17, 2018 photo, men work in the construction of the terminal building of Mexico City's new airport, on Lake Texcoco's dry lake bed, Mexico. Twenty one of the massive "funnels" that will support the terminal are under construction beneath more than a dozen cranes. (AP Photo/Marco Ugarte) In this Oct. 17, 2018 photo, a jetliner flies away as construction cranes work on Mexico City's new airport, on Lake Texcoco's dry lake bed, Mexico. Supporters of the new airport say it is needed because Mexico City's Benito Juarez International Airport handles more traffic than its designed capacity and a solution is urgently needed to satisfy growing demand. Surrounded by densely packed residential neighborhoods, the old airport has no room to add new runways. (AP Photo/Marco Ugarte) In this Oct. 17, 2018 photo, a man works on the construction site of Mexico City's new airport, in Lake Texcoco's dry lake bed, Mexico. Residents of nearby towns say the airport project requires so much basalt and another reddish volcanic rock that mines are altering their landscape. (AP Photo/Marco Ugarte) In this Feb.1, 2017 photo, workers install the fence of Mexico City's new airport, in Lake Texcoco's dry lake bed, Mexico. Carlos Slim, one of the world's richest men, is pushing the new airport. His construction company is part of the consortium building the terminal and he believes it would have a wide-ranging impact on economic development. (AP Photo/Marco Ugarte) In this Feb. 1, 2017 photo, Eric Peralta loads stalks of harvested corn on his wagon in San Salvador Atenco, Mexico. Peralta's land is right next to Mexico City's future airport which is expected to be ready by the end of 2021. (AP Photo/Marco Ugarte) CHICAGO (AP) - The head of Chicago's police union urged a federal judge Thursday to reject a draft plan that envisions sweeping reforms of the police department under close court supervision, saying the proposal is unnecessary and could alienate officers. Kevin Graham spoke during a hearing in Chicago that offered the public the opportunity to comment on the plan before U.S. District Judge Robert Dow Jr. decides whether to approve the more than 200-page proposal. Most of the nearly 80 people who spoke during the two-day hearing, which began Wednesday , urged approval. Many described the plan as the best hope for long-overdue reforms after decades of abuses by police. Graham conceded that officers "aren't perfect," but he said the hearings had been full of "misstatements" and "half-truths" about police. He argued that reform plans overseen by courts, called consent decrees, often don't work. He also said one wasn't needed for Chicago. "If the officers don't believe they are being treated fairly, I don't see how they are going to buy into changes," he said. The plan stems from a 2017 lawsuit file by Illinois Attorney General Lisa Madigan, and her office worked with the city to create the proposal. Graham argued that city and state officials wrote provisions into the plan that should have been left to the union and the city in collective bargaining. Among the proposed requirements criticized by the union is that officers must record each time they point their guns, even if they don't shoot. FILE - In this Sept. 13, 2918, file photo, Illinois Attorney General Lisa Madigan, center, Chicago police Superintendent Eddie Johnson, right, and Mayor Rahm Emanuel hold up a copy of the proposed consent decree during a news conference in Chicago. A federal judge who will decide whether to approve a lengthy court-oversight plan to reform the Chicago Police Department started a highly anticipated two-day hearing Wednesday, Oct. 24, 2018, by saying he would allow dozens of people to voice their opinions on the proposal. The plan hammered out by city officials and the Illinois Attorney General's Office has widespread support in minority neighborhoods that have long been suspicious of police and complained about police misconduct. (Antonio Perez /Chicago Tribune via AP, File) The union leader said concessions only the union has the right to make are instead left to Dow, the judge mulling whether to approve the plan. Graham asked Dow: "Are you going to give us a 30 percent raise?" That prompted a rare interruption by the normally soft-spoken Dow. "I'm only going to do what the law permits me to do," the judge said. BEIJING (AP) - A top North Korean general said Thursday that his country seeks a "stable peace" and wants to turn the Korean Peninsula into "the cradle of peace and prosperity," furthering a departure from the bellicose language of the past. Vice Minister of the People's Armed Forces, Col. Gen. Kim Hyong Ryong, told a defense forum in Beijing that Pyongyang wanted to "contribute to the security of Asia and the globe." "It is our unwavering stand to lead the current state of tension ... into stable peace and turn the Korean Peninsula that was once the hottest spot in the globe into the cradle of peace and prosperity," Kim told participants at the opening session of the Xiangshan Forum hosted by China. Kim said North Korea was following through on agreements reached with South Korea and the U.S., including the consensus reached with U.S. President Donald Trump at a June summit in Singapore. North Korean leader Kim Jong Un has this year taken some steps to ease tensions, including dismantling a nuclear testing site. However, the United States and its allies are reluctant to ease sanctions pressure unless the country takes significant disarmament steps. While the Singapore declaration has been criticized as vague, tensions along the North and South Korean border have dropped, as witnessed by a joint effort to remove mines from one of the heaviest Korean War battle sites at their border. North Korean Vice Minister of the People's Armed Forces, Col. General Kim Hyong Ryong, center, gestures as he chats with South Korean delegations during a tea break for the Xiangshan Forum, a gathering of the region's security officials, in Beijing, Thursday, Oct. 25, 2018. The top North Korean general says his country wants to turn the Korean Peninsula into "the cradle of peace and prosperity." (AP Photo/Andy Wong) That is among a package of agreements the Koreas' defense ministers struck on the sidelines of their leaders' summit last month. Kim Hyong Ryong met Thursday with South Korean Vice Defense Minister Suh Choo-suk at the forum. During their 10-minute encounter, the two reconfirmed their countries' plans to quickly carry out the agreements reached last month, Seoul's Defense Ministry said in a statement. Trump raised hopes at the United Nations last month that a second summit with Kim Jong Un could occur "quite soon," striking a conciliatory tone one year after he used his debut at the U.N. to deride the autocrat as "Little Rocket Man" and threaten to "totally destroy North Korea." Pyongyang responded with its own insults and renewed threats of retaliation for any attacks. At a later discussion at the forum, a North Korean official said progress on reducing tensions merited the cancellation of United Nations sanctions and other forms of pressure on his country. "We think that sanctions and pressure do more harm than good," said Song Il Hyok, deputy director general of the Institute for Disarmament and Peace under North Korea's Ministry of Foreign Affairs. Also addressing Thursday's forum, Chinese Defense Minister Wei Fenghe lashed out at the U.S. over a recent speech by Vice President Mike Pence accusing China of seeking to interfere in the upcoming midterm elections. "The Chinese side expresses strong condemnation and firm opposition. We strongly urge the U.S. to correct its wrongful statement and refrain from harming bilateral relations," Wei said. Pence's speech came amid what many are calling the most marked deterioration of China-U.S. ties since the end of the Cold War. Both sides have imposed increased tariffs on billions of dollars of imports, sparked by U.S. accusations of unfair Chinese trading practices and demands by Beijing that foreign firms hand over technology as part of a plan to make China a global leader in areas such as robotics and artificial intelligence. Wei also reiterated China's warnings over support for Taiwan, the self-governing island democracy that it claims as its own territory. While the U.S. has no formal ties with Taiwan in deference to China's demands, it retains strong diplomatic and military relations with Taipei and recently approved a major arms package to bolster its defenses against a threatened Chinese attack. "The Taiwan question concerns China's sovereignty and territorial integrity," Wei said, calling that "a matter of our core interests." "It is extremely dangerous to repeatedly challenge China's bottom line on this question," he said. "If anyone ever tries to separate Taiwan from China, the Chinese military will take resolute action, and we will pay whatever price that has to be paid." Wei also touched on recent frictions with the U.S. over the South China Sea, which China claims virtually in its entirety despite counterclaims from multiple other nations. Destroyers of the two navies came perilously close to colliding late last month and the former commander of the U.S. Army in Europe warned Wednesday that it's very likely the United States will be at war with China in 15 years. Wei said U.S. actions in the crucial waterway through which $5 trillion in annual trade passes were "provocative and will only aggravate tensions." "The islands in the South China Sea have long been China's territory. They're the legacy of our ancestors, and we can't afford to lose a single inch of them," Wei said. The Xiangshan Forum is a multilateral defense meeting that Beijing has promoted in an effort to boost its regional influence. Organizers said more than 500 representatives from 67 countries and seven organizations were attending the three-day gathering. ___ This story corrects the spelling of the Chinese defense minister's name to Wei Fenghe, not We Fenghe. North Korean Vice Minister of the People's Armed Forces, Col. General Kim Hyong Ryong speaks during the Xiangshan Forum, a gathering of the region's security officials, in Beijing, Thursday, Oct. 25, 2018. The top North Korean general says his country wants to turn the Korean Peninsula into "the cradle of peace and prosperity." (AP Photo/Andy Wong) North Korean Vice Minister of the People's Armed Forces, Col. General Kim Hyong Ryong, right, gestures as he chats with a South Korean delegation member during a tea break for the Xiangshan Forum, a gathering of the region's security officials, in Beijing, Thursday, Oct. 25, 2018. The top North Korean general says his country wants to turn the Korean Peninsula into "the cradle of peace and prosperity." (AP Photo/Andy Wong) North Korean Vice Minister of the People's Armed Forces, Col. General Kim Hyong Ryong walks by U.S. military delegates during a break for the Xiangshan Forum, a gathering of the region's security officials, in Beijing, Thursday, Oct. 25, 2018. The top North Korean general says his country wants to turn the Korean Peninsula into "the cradle of peace and prosperity." (AP Photo/Andy Wong) Delegates take smartphone photos of North Korean Vice Minister of the People's Armed Forces, Col. General Kim Hyong Ryong, center, during a tea break for the Xiangshan Forum, a gathering of the region's security officials, in Beijing, Thursday, Oct. 25, 2018. The top North Korean general says his country wants to turn the Korean Peninsula into "the cradle of peace and prosperity." (AP Photo/Andy Wong) North Korean Vice Minister of the People's Armed Forces, Col. General Kim Hyong Ryong, center left, and his delegation chat with South Korean counterpart during a tea break for the Xiangshan Forum, a gathering of the region's security officials, in Beijing, Thursday, Oct. 25, 2018. The top North Korean general says his country wants to turn the Korean Peninsula into "the cradle of peace and prosperity." (AP Photo/Andy Wong) North Korean Vice Minister of the People's Armed Forces, Col. General Kim Hyong Ryong, center, prepares to leave the stage after delivering a speech for the Xiangshan Forum, a gathering of the region's security officials, in Beijing, Thursday, Oct. 25, 2018. The top North Korean general says his country wants to turn the Korean Peninsula into "the cradle of peace and prosperity." (AP Photo/Andy Wong) Malaysia's Defense Minister Mohamad Sabu speaks on stage during the Xiangshan Forum, a gathering of the region's security officials, in Beijing, Thursday, Oct. 25, 2018. (AP Photo/Andy Wong) Singapore's Defense Minister Ng Eng Hen speaks on stage during the Xiangshan Forum, a gathering of the region's security officials, in Beijing, Thursday, Oct. 25, 2018. (AP Photo/Andy Wong) WASHINGTON (AP) - George Papadopoulos made his first appearance Thursday before congressional investigators, part of an effort to clear his name after pleading guilty in special counsel Robert Mueller's Russia probe. Papadopoulos, who admitted lying to the FBI and was sentenced in September to two weeks in prison, met behind closed doors with two GOP-led House committees for roughly seven hours. Republicans leaving the meeting said it raised more questions about the start of the FBI's Russia investigation in 2016, further fueling their suspicions that there was bias against then-candidate Donald Trump at former President Barack Obama's Justice Department. Papadopoulos spoke briefly to reporters as he left. "I answered as truthfully as I possibly could," he said. The interview is one of several the GOP-led House Judiciary and Oversight and Government Reform panels are conducting as part of their investigation into the Justice Department. Democrats say the investigation is an attempt to undermine Mueller, who was appointed last year to take over the FBI probe into Russian interference in the 2016 election. "I see this whole thing as a footnote to a sideshow of a wild goose chase," said Democratic Rep. Jamie Raskin of Maryland, who attended the interview. Papadopoulos pleaded guilty to lying to the FBI about his contacts with Russian intermediaries during the 2016 campaign. Since he was sentenced, he has been eager to talk publicly. He has spent many nights on Twitter, along with his wife, venting anger with the FBI and implying that he was set up in the investigation. George Papadopoulos, the former Trump campaign adviser who triggered the Russia investigation, arrives for his first appearance before congressional investigators, on Capitol Hill in Washington, Thursday, Oct. 25, 2018. (AP Photo/Carolyn Kaster) He tweeted before the interview that he would like to talk to Congress about his "suspicious encounters" with an Australian diplomat and a professor who were links to his case. His lawyer sent a letter to the committees this week in which he listed nine people related to his case that he wanted to discuss, including both of those men. Neither Papadopoulos nor lawmakers leaving Thursday's interview would say what was discussed, citing committee rules on confidentiality. Republicans said they learned new facts from Papadopoulos but wouldn't detail what they learned. They repeated their claims, echoed by Trump, that the Justice Department made mistakes in 2016 as it cleared Democrat Hillary Clinton in an investigation of her emails and started a probe of Trump's Russia ties. "These facts continue to lend themselves to the narrative that there were folks in the Obama FBI and Justice Department that prejudged Hillary Clinton's innocence, and prejudged Donald Trump's guilt or involvement with the Russian government and potential collusion," said Texas Rep. John Ratcliffe. Papadopoulos, who served as a foreign policy adviser to Trump's campaign, has been a central figure in the probe dating back before Mueller's May 2017 appointment. He was the first person to plead guilty in Mueller's probe and the first Trump campaign adviser to be sentenced. His case was also the first to detail a member of the Trump campaign having knowledge of Russian efforts to interfere in the 2016 presidential election while it was ongoing. According to a sweeping indictment, Russian intelligence had stolen emails from Hillary Clinton's campaign and other Democratic groups by April 2016, the same month Papadopoulos was told by the professor, Joseph Mifsud, that Russian officials had told him they had "dirt" on Clinton in the form of "thousands of emails." According to a New York Times report last year, Papadopoulos then told the Australian diplomat, Alexander Downer, who tipped off the FBI. It was that tip that triggered the FBI's Russia investigation. Papadopoulos later lied about those contacts. He told a judge during sentencing that he was "deeply embarrassed and ashamed" of his lies. The interview was sparsely attended by lawmakers, who are on recess in the weeks before the November election. Republican and Democratic staffers were in the room. Papadopoulos has also said he wants to talk to the Senate Intelligence Committee, which is investigating Russian interference in the 2016 election. A House Intelligence Committee investigation wrapped up earlier this year, with Republicans saying that there was no evidence of collusion between Russia and President Donald Trump's campaign. George Papadopoulos, the former Trump campaign adviser who triggered the Russia investigation, arrives for his first appearance before congressional investigators, on Capitol Hill in Washington, Thursday, Oct. 25, 2018. (AP Photo/Carolyn Kaster) George Papadopoulos, the former Trump campaign adviser who triggered the Russia investigation, arrives for his first appearance before congressional investigators, on Capitol Hill in Washington, Thursday, Oct. 25, 2018. (AP Photo/Carolyn Kaster) George Papadopoulos, the former Trump campaign adviser who triggered the Russia investigation, took to media as he arrives for his first appearance before congressional investigators, on Capitol Hill in Washington, Thursday, Oct. 25, 2018. (AP Photo/Carolyn Kaster) YANJI, China (AP) - At the end of a street of newly built high-rises in the northern Chinese city of Yanji stands an exposed cliff face, where paleontologists scrape away 100 million-year-old rock in search of prehistoric bones. Like many fossil excavation sites in China, this one was discovered by accident. China's rapid city building has churned up a motherlode of dinosaur fossils. While bulldozers have unearthed prehistoric sites in many countries, the scale and speed of China's urbanization is unprecedented, according to the United Nations Development Program. Perhaps no one has seized the scientific opportunity more than Xu Xing, a diligent and unassuming standard-bearer for China's new prominence in paleontology. The energetic researcher has named more dinosaur species than any living paleontologist, racing between dig sites to collect specimens and further scientists' understanding of how birds evolved from dinosaurs. Matthew Lamanna, a curator at the Carnegie Museum of Natural History in Pittsburgh, said Xu is "widely regarded as one of the foremost, if not the foremost, dinosaur paleontologist working in China today." "Xu Xing is A-M-A-Z-I-N-G," Kristina Curry Rogers, a paleontologist at Macalester College in St. Paul, Minnesota, wrote in an email. In this Sept. 13, 2018, photo, paleontologist Xu Xing brushes away sediment to examine fossils recovered from a dig site in Yanji, China. The excavation, led by Xu, begun after construction crews erecting new apartment buildings accidentally uncovered dinosaur bones and other fossils, dating back 100 million years. (AP Photo/Christina Larson) Two years ago, Xu's colleague at the Chinese Academy of Sciences in Beijing, Jin Changzhu, was visiting family in Yanji when he heard talk of fossils uncovered at a construction site. A preliminary inspection yielded what appeared to be a dinosaur shoulder bone. Less than an hour's drive from the North Korean border, the midsize city has been erecting residential blocks quickly. Seen from a plane, Yanji looks like a Legoland of new pink- and blue-roofed buildings, but there's one long empty lot of exposed rocky hillside - the excavation site. When Xu arrived at Yanji, he recognized the site could fill gaps in the fossil record, noting the relative paucity of bones recovered from the late Cretaceous period, which was around 100 million years ago. An analysis of the layers of volcanic ash revealed the site's age. Xu is now overseeing a team of scientists using picks, chisels and steel needles to study the exposed hillside, where geologic layers resemble a red and gray layer-cake. The site has yielded partial skeletons of three ancient crocodiles and one sauropod, the giant plant-eating dinosaurs that included some of the world's largest land animals. "This is a major feature of paleontology here in China - lots of construction really helps the scientists to find new fossils," said Xu as he used a needle to remove debris from a partially exposed crocodile skull. Born in 1969 in China's western Xinjiang region, Xu did not choose to study dinosaurs. Like most university students of his era, he was assigned a major. His love for the field grew in graduate school in the 1990s, as feathered dinosaurs recovered from ancient Chinese lakebeds drew global attention. When Xu and Jin discovered fossils in Yanji in 2016, city authorities halted construction on adjacent high-rise buildings, in accordance with a national law. "The developer was really not happy with me," said Xu, but the local government has since embraced its newfound claim to fame. The city is now facilitating Xu's work, and even built an on-site police station to guard the fossils from theft. Once the excavation is complete, a museum is planned, to display recovered fossils and photos of Xu's team at work. It's not the first museum to commemorate Xu, whose prodigious fieldwork has taken him across China and resulted in a flurry of articles in top scientific journals. Toru Sekiyu, a paleontologist from the Fukui Prefectural Dinosaur Museum in Japan who assisted on the Yanji dig, called his Chinese colleague "a superstar paleontologist." But Xu is quick to point out the role that good fortune has played in his career. "To publish papers and discover new species, you need new data - you need new fossils," he said, adding that finding new species isn't something a scientist can plan. "My experience tells me that you really need luck, besides your hard work. Then you can make some important discoveries." With digs in Inner Mongolia, Liaoning, Yunnan and other Chinese provinces, Xu patiently oversees excavations, sometimes chiseling for years before he knows their ultimate significance. While his finds are wide-ranging, much of his career has focused on understanding how dinosaurs evolved into modern birds. China is an ideal location for that study. Two decades ago, rare dinosaur fossils that preserved traces of feathers were found in ancient lakebeds of northeastern China. This discovery, which helped scientists demonstrate that birds descended from dinosaurs, was possible because the mixture of volcanic ash and fine-grained shale in the lakebeds had preserved bits of soft tissue, including feathers - unlike the majority of dinosaur fossils, which contain only bone. Since then, a flood of new dinosaur bones unearthed in China has helped scientists rewrite their understanding of the tree of life in various ways. Xu has been at the forefront of research into how dinosaurs evolved feathers and flight. In 2000, he described a curious pigeon-sized dinosaur with four feathered limbs, apparently early wings that allowed the animal to either fly or glide. In 2012, he detailed a carnivorous tyrannosaur , which also had plumage - raising questions about feathers' original purpose. Xu now believes that early dinosaur plumage may have played a role in insulation and in mating displays, even before flight feathers evolved. He co-authored a 2010 paper that examined fossilized melanosomes - pigment packets that give rise to color in modern bird feathers - to deduce the likely colors of dinosaur feathers. Some species likely sported rings of white and brown tail feathers; others had bright red plumage on their heads. Embracing new technology, his team also uses CT scanners to study the interior of fossils and builds 3-D computer simulations to make inferences about what range of motions a dinosaur may have had. One of the fossils Xu is now examining, found at a construction site in Jiangxi province, will shed light on how modern birds' reproductive systems evolved from dinosaurs, he says. In addition to professional accolades, Xu's work has attracted attention from schoolchildren in multiple countries, who mail him handwritten notes and crayon drawings of dinosaurs, several of which hang in his Beijing office. Xu replies to every letter, email and text message with a question about dinosaurs. "I feel it would be weird or impolite not to," he said. But in an era of social media, Xu has refrained from signing up for WeChat, the dominant messaging platform in China, because "I don't think I could find time for all the new messages." Back at the site in Yanji, a colleague brings him a large rock with an exposed sauropod vertebrae to examine. The bone has a spongey texture, which Xu says is a result of the animal's respiratory system. Like modern birds, he believes sauropods breathed using both lungs and distributed air sacs, which can leave an impression in the bones. Xu uses a brush to flick away dirt to inspect the fossil more closely. "Basically we are reconstructing the evolutionary tree of life," he said. "If you have more species to study, you have more branches on that tree, more information about the history of life on Earth." ___ The Associated Press Health & Science Department receives support from the Howard Hughes Medical Institute's Department of Science Education. The AP is solely responsible for all content. In this Sept. 12, 2018, photo, paleontologist Xu Xing examines an ancient crocodile skull and teeth, recovered from a dig site in Yanji, China. The excavation was begun after construction crews erecting new apartment buildings accidentally uncovered dinosaur bones and other fossils, dating back 100 million years. (AP Photo/Christina Larson) In this Sept. 12, 2018, photo, paleontologist Xu Xing stands in front of a dig site in Yanji, China. The excavation was begun after construction crews erecting new apartment buildings, visible in the background, accidentally uncovered dinosaur bones and other fossils, dating back 100 million years. (AP Photo/Christina Larson) In this Sept. 12, 2018, photo, paleontologist Xu Xing leads a dig site, foreground, next to new apartments being constructed in Yanji, China. The excavation was begun after construction crews uncovered dinosaur bones and other fossils, dating back 100 million years. (AP Photo/Christina Larson) In this Sept. 12, 2018, photo, a dinosaur model stands near the site of a future dinosaur museum in Yanji, China. Paleontologist Xu Xing opened a dig site in Yanji after construction crews erecting new apartment buildings accidentally uncovered dinosaur bones and other fossils, dating back 100 million years. (AP Photo/Christina Larson) In this Sept. 13, 2018, photo, workers excavate a dinosaur dig site in Yanji, China. The excavation, led by paleontologist Xu Xin, begun after construction crews erecting new apartment buildings accidentally uncovered dinosaur bones and other fossils, dating back 100 million years. (AP Photo/Sam McNeil) This Oct. 1, 2018, photo shows a jaw bone fossil of a dinosaur in the office of Chinese paleontologist Xu Xing in Beijing. China's rapid city building has churned up a motherlode of new dinosaur fossils, and no one has seized the scientific opportunity more than one paleontologist. (AP Photo/Sam McNeil) In this Sept. 13, 2018, photo, Japanese paleontologists Masateru Shibata, left, and Toru Sekiyu carefully excavate an ancient crocodile skull from a dig site in Yanji, China. China's rapid city building has churned up a motherlode of new dinosaur fossils, and no one has seized the scientific opportunity more than one paleontologist. (AP Photo/Sam McNeil) In this Sept. 13, 2018, photo, Japanese paleontologist Masateru Shibata uses tools like a brush, a pick axe and super glue to slowly excavate an ancient crocodile skull in Yanji, China. China's rapid city building has churned up a motherlode of new dinosaur fossils, and no one has seized the scientific opportunity more than one paleontologist. (AP Photo/Sam McNeil) In this Sept. 13, 2018, photo, paleontologist Xu Xing holds a recently discovered tooth fossil from an ancient crocodile in Yanji, China. China's rapid city building has churned up a motherlode of new dinosaur fossils, and no one has seized the scientific opportunity more than one paleontologist. (AP Photo/Sam McNeil) In this Oct. 1, 2018, photo, paleontologist Xu Xing holds in his Beijing office a modern bird feather above a dinosaur fossil to show the evolutionary theory linking the two animals. China's rapid city building has churned up a motherlode of new dinosaur fossils, and no one has seized the scientific opportunity more than one paleontologist. (AP Photo/Sam McNeil) This Oct. 1, 2018, photo shows a casting of a microraptor in the office of Chinese paleontologist Xu Xing in Beijing. China's rapid city building has churned up a motherlode of new dinosaur fossils, and no one has seized the scientific opportunity more than one paleontologist. (AP Photo/Sam McNeil) NAIROBI, Kenya (AP) - The Kenyatta National Hospital is east Africa's biggest medical institution, home to more than a dozen donor-funded projects with international partners - a "Center of Excellence," says the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. The hospital's website proudly proclaims its motto - "We Listen ... We Care" - along with photos of smiling doctors, a vaccination campaign and staffers holding aloft a gold trophy at an awards ceremony. But there are no pictures of Robert Wanyonyi, shot and paralyzed in a robbery more than a year ago. Kenyatta will not allow him to leave the hospital because he cannot pay his bill of nearly 4 million Kenyan shillings ($39,570). He is trapped in his fourth-floor bed, unable to go to India, where he believes doctors might help him. ___ EDITOR'S NOTE: First in a two-part series on hospitals that detain patients if they cannot pay their bills. ___ Margaret Oliele, former detained patient, poses for a portrait in her home in Nairobi, Kenya. During a botched cesarean section in 2010, doctors left a pair of surgical scissors inside her stomach; a second surgery was needed to remove the scissors and she later suffered a ruptured bladder and a blood infection. When she couldn't pay her hospital fees, Oliele was taken to a detention ward. "I tried to escape, but when I got to the main gate, I was taken by the security guards." (AP Photo/Bram Janssen) At Kenyatta National Hospital and at an astonishing number of other hospitals around the world, if you don't pay up, you don't go home. The hospitals often illegally detain patients long after they should be medically discharged, using armed guards, locked doors and even chains to hold those who have not settled their accounts. Mothers and babies are sometimes separated. Even death does not guarantee release: Kenyan hospitals and morgues are holding hundreds of bodies until families can pay their loved ones' bills, government officials say. Dozens of doctors, nurses, health experts, patients and administrators told The Associated Press of imprisonments in hospitals in at least 30 other countries, including Nigeria and the Democratic Republic of the Congo, China and Thailand, Lithuania and Bulgaria, and others in Latin America and the Middle East. The AP investigation built on a report last year by the British think-tank Chatham House; its experts found more than 60 press reports of patient detention in 14 countries in Asia and sub-Saharan Africa. "What's striking about this issue is that the more we look for this, the more we find it," said Dr. Ashish Jha, director of the Harvard Global Health Institute, who was not involved in the British research. "It's probably hundreds of thousands if not millions of people that this affects worldwide. It is not something that is only happening in a small number of countries, but the problem is that nobody is looking at this and it is way off the public health radar." Some examples: -In the Philippines, Annalyn Manalo was held at Mount Carmel Diocesan General Hospital in Lucena City for 1 months starting last December following treatment for heart problems. Administrators refused initially to allow her family to pay in installments - and the cost of each extra day in detention was added to the bill. "We were treated like criminals," said Manalo's husband, Sigfredo. "The security guards would come and check on us all the time." -In Congo's second city of Lubumbashi, the AP visited more than 20 hospitals and clinics and found that all but one routinely detained patients who failed to pay, even though the practice is illegal there. -In Bangalore, India, Emmanuel Malagi was detained in a private hospital for three months after he was treated for a spinal tumor, according to his brother, Christanand. Prevented from seeing him, his family scrambled unsuccessfully to pay his nearly 1.4 lakh rupees ($19,281) bill - and when he died, the hospital demanded another 10 lakh ($13,771) to release the body. -In Malaysia, a medical student from the Netherlands on a diving trip got the bends. He couldn't afford his decompression treatment; the hospital locked him in a room for four days, with no food or drink, until he was able to get the money, according to Saskia Mostert, a Dutch academic who has researched hospital detentions. -In Bolivia, a government ombudsman reported that 49 patients were detained in hospitals or clinics in the last two years because they couldn't pay, despite a law that prohibits the practice. During several August visits to Kenyatta National Hospital, The Associated Press witnessed armed guards in military fatigues standing watch over patients, and saw where detainees slept on bedsheets on the floor in cordoned-off rooms. Guards prevented one worried father from seeing his detained toddler. All despite a court ruling years ago that found the detentions were illegal. Health experts decry hospital imprisonment as a human rights violation. Yet the United Nations, U.S. and international health agencies, donors and charities all have remained silent while pumping billions of dollars into these countries to support splintered health systems or to fight outbreaks of diseases including AIDS and malaria. "It's the dirty underbelly of global health that nobody wants to talk about," said Sophie Harman, a health academic at Queen Mary University of London. "People know patients are being held prisoner, but they probably think they have bigger battles in public health to fight, so they just have to let this go." ___ Hospital detentions, some experts argue, can be traced to policies pushed decades ago by the World Bank, the World Health Organization, UNICEF and others who made loans to developing countries on condition that they charge patients fees for medical services. Without explicit protections in place to protect the poor, they say, the policies gave countries the freedom to extract health care payments however they saw fit - including detaining patients. The practice appears to be most prevalent in countries with fragile, underfunded health systems where there is little government accountability. But the problem has also surfaced in wealthier countries, with patients being detained in hospitals in countries including India, Thailand, China and Iran. In many countries when patients cannot afford to pay for health care, they are usually either sent to a public hospital where treatment is covered by the state or refused help altogether. In some hospitals in Cameroon and elsewhere, for example, the problem of patient imprisonment was solved by some institutions by simply demanding payment upfront. Where patients are imprisoned, hospitals acknowledge it is not necessarily profitable. But many say it often leads at least to partial payment and serves as a deterrent. Unlike many hospitals in developed countries, African hospitals don't always provide food, clothing or bedding for patients, so holding onto them does not necessarily incur a significant cost. Detained patients typically rely on relatives to bring them food while those without obliging family members resort to begging for help from staff or other patients. Dr. Festus Njuguna, a pediatric oncologist at the Moi Teaching and Referral Hospital in Eldoret, about 300 kilometers northwest of Nairobi, said the institution regularly holds children with cancer who have finished their treatment, but whose parents cannot pay. The children are typically left on the wards for weeks and months at a time, long after their treatment has ended. "It's not a very good feeling for the doctors and nurses who have treated these patients, to see them kept like this," Njuguna said. Still, some officials openly defend the practice. "We can't just let people leave if they don't pay," said Leedy Nyembo-Mugalu administrator of Congo's Katuba Reference Hospital. He said holding patients wasn't an issue of human rights, but simply a way to conduct business: "No one ever comes back to pay their bill a month or two later." At many Kenyan hospitals, including Kenyatta, officials armed with rifles patrol the hallways and guard the hospital's gates. Patients must show hospital guards a discharge form to prove they're allowed to leave and even visitors must sometimes surrender their identification cards before seeing patients. In its 2016 financial report, Kenyatta's auditor-general said the hospital lost more than $470,000 in fees from patients who "absconded" without paying. That year, the hospital reported total revenue of more than $115 million. Patient detentions at Kenyatta have been flagged for years, among other concerns. In January, demonstrators called for an investigation into allegations of rape and sexual harassment of patients at the hospital. Kenya's Human Rights Commission attempted to conduct an audit of Kenyatta, but officials refused to cooperate and have ignored all requests for information about detained patients. "This is something that hospital authorities have been trying to keep under wraps," said George Morara, vice chairperson of the country's national commission on human rights. He said the number of Kenyans imprisoned in hospitals is "disturbingly high" and that the practice is "ubiquitous in public and private hospitals." He said patients have been held at Kenyatta for up to two years, and it was reasonable to suspect that hundreds of patients could be detained there at any time. Kenya's ministry of health and Kenyatta canceled several scheduled interviews with the AP and declined to respond to repeated requests for comment. After she was elected to Kenya's Parliament, Esther Passaris visited Kenyatta last December to check on supporters who were injured in election violence. She was stunned to find that patients were incarcerated. "There was one lady I met in the corridor and she was crying, 'please let me go home,'" Passaris said. The woman had hurt her back and hip. She had been medically cleared to leave, but wasn't allowed to go home because she hadn't paid her bill. "I just thought, 'Oh my goodness, it's almost Christmas, how can these people not go back to their families?'" Passaris started an online campaign to have the patients released. Just before the holidays, Kenyatta let more than 450 leave - a victory, Passaris says, though the problem remains. "Unfortunately," she said, "you can't get water from a rock, so some of these patients stay for a year because they don't have the money." ___ Foreign agencies and companies that operate where patients are held hostage typically have very little to say about it. Some experts said the international health community's failure to address the issue has undermined its own goals. "Aid money becomes ineffective and useless in an environment where people are terrified they're going to be locked up," said Robert Yates, a health policy expert at Chatham House, the British think tank that reported on imprisoned patients. "It's very embarrassing for the global health community that these detentions have become so embedded into countries that they seem normal, and so the whistle needs blowing on all of us." Said Harvard's Jha: "There are basic human rights abuses that we cannot ignore in the 21st century. It is not too much to ask that when private companies like pharmaceuticals or federal agencies like the CDC become aware that their partners engage in such a fundamental violation of human rights, that they hold them accountable and work to end these practices." The CDC provides about $1.5 million every year to Kenyatta and Pumwani Maternity Hospital, via funding from the President's Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief, or PEPFAR. At Kenyatta, the CDC covers treatment costs for patients with HIV and tuberculosis, trains health workers and helps with HIV testing, among other programs. The agency declined to comment on whether it was aware that patients were regularly detained at Kenyatta and Pumwani or if the agency condones the practice. Among its other partnerships, Kenyatta has been working with the University of Washington for more than 30 years. Dr. Carey Farquhar, director of the university's Kenya Research and Training Center, said she didn't recall seeing any detained patients at Kenyatta, though was not surprised that it happened - she knew of no hospitals there that did not detain patients. "It does make me uncomfortable," she said. Farquhar said the issue "doesn't cross our radar as much" since her university is focused on medical research, rather than patient care. She added that she might raise the issue with her colleagues at Kenyatta but that "the solution has to come from within." The drugmaker Novartis also partnered with Kenyatta for several years, helping pay for some of its doctors to study kidney transplant techniques at a Barcelona hospital. Novartis declined to comment on whether its staffers had seen detained patients at Kenyatta or whether it approved of the practice. Dr. Agnes Soucat of WHO said the U.N. agency was aware of hospital detentions and confirmed they happened "quite frequently." "We do not support this in any way, but the problem has been documenting where it happens," said Soucat, director of WHO's department of health systems, financing and governance. To date, WHO has made no attempt to collect data on hospital detentions and says such information is hard to find. The AP obtained patient lists, records and bills from about a dozen hospitals in Congo detailing imprisonment practices. And though WHO has issued hundreds of health recommendations - from treating AIDS to Zika - the agency has never published any guidance advising countries not to imprison people in their hospitals. Soucat said WHO officials in more than a dozen countries had expressed their concerns about detained patients to ministers of health, but that those discussions were private. ___ One international organization did fight publicly for detained patients. Researchers for the Center for Reproductive Rights, which acts to support women's health around the world, were conducting a study of maternal health care in Kenya in early 2012 when they learned of the cases of Maimuna Awuor Omuya and Margaret Oliele. Unable to pay her bill at Pumwani Maternity Hospital after the delivery of her sixth child, Omuya and her baby were imprisoned along with more than 60 other women in a damp ward, in September 2010. She often slept on the wet ground next to a flooded toilet. Mother and child were released after nearly a month, but only when one of Omuya's friends appealed to the mayor to intervene. Two months later, Oliele arrived at Pumwani. During a botched cesarean section, doctors left a pair of surgical scissors inside Oliele's stomach; a second surgery was needed to remove the scissors and she later suffered a ruptured bladder and a blood infection. When she couldn't pay her hospital fees, Oliele was taken to a detention ward. "I tried to escape, but when I got to the main gate, I was taken by the security guards," Oliele told AP. "I had no clothes on and still had the catheter in my stomach. The guards then forcefully took me back to the hospital where they handcuffed me to a bed, while claiming that I had gone mad." She was held for six days. Center for Reproductive Rights lawyers resolved to take up the cause of detained patients, bringing suit on behalf of Omuya and Oliele. "These were two very appalling cases and their treatment was very degrading," said Evelyne Opondo, a senior regional director at the center who oversaw the case. They won. In September 2015, Kenya's High Court ruled the women's detention violated numerous human rights enshrined in the constitution and was therefore illegal. The High Court described the women's detention as "cruel, inhuman and degrading." The court further ordered the Kenyan government to "take the necessary steps to protect all patients from arbitrary detention in health care facilities." But three years later, it appears little has changed. "People are still being detained," Oliele said. "They should stop treating people like animals and treat them as fellow human beings." Opondo said detentions continue because nobody has asked hospitals "to provide answers, because they've not been held accountable." She estimated there could be many thousands of people across the country detained, based on information received by the center and news reports. Although the court instructed the government to produce guidelines on how hospitals should waive fees for patients unable to pay, Opondo said the proposed fixes have not gone far enough. A program that provides free maternity care is only available at a select number of private hospitals and does not include post-delivery care. Earlier this month, Kenya's High Court ruled again that imprisoning patients "is not one of the acceptable avenues (for hospitals) to recover debt." The case involved a man detained at Nairobi Women's Hospital since June 25; the judge ordered his immediate release despite the outstanding bill. Kenyan politicians also will soon debate a proposed amendment to the country's health law that will explicitly make patient detentions illegal. The latest amendment was submitted by MP Jared Okelo, a member of Parliament who described the imprisonment of mothers as "rampant." Omuya is still scarred by her detention at Pumwani. She says she developed chronic pneumonia after being held in the damp, cold conditions there and has not been able to work full-time since. Neither Omuya nor Oliele have been paid the damages awarded to them by the court: Omuya was to receive 1,500,000 shillings ($14,842) from the hospital while Oliele was to receive 500,000 shillings ($4,948). And Omuya's family has had another run-in with a Nairobi hospital. Several months ago, Omuya's youngest brother was admitted to Mbagathi District Hospital after falling ill and collapsing. "We don't know what it was, but the doctors told us he needed many medications to treat, that it was a poisoning," she said. Doctors completed their treatment and presented her brother with a bill of about 134,000 shillings ($1,326). When Omuya and her family were unable to raise the necessary funds, the situation took an unwelcome but familiar turn: her brother was imprisoned. Hospital managers asked the family to pay at least half the outstanding amount, but after about a month and a half, they had only scraped together about $120. Omuya said her brother was freed only when his doctor negotiated his release. "Detentions still go on because there are no rights here," she said. "What I suffered, I want no one else to suffer." ___ Desmond Tiro in Nairobi and Paola Flores in La Paz, Bolivia contributed to this report. ___ Online: A selection of some of the hospital detention records obtained by the AP: https://www.documentcloud.org/search/projectid:41082-Hospital-Hostages Detained patient Robert Wanyonyi lies on a bed in the Kenyatta National Hospital in Nairobi, Kenya on Saturday, Aug. 11, 2018. He was shot and paralyzed in a robbery more than a year earlier, but the hospital will not allow him to leave because he cannot pay his bill of nearly 4 million Kenyan shillings ($39,570). He is trapped in his fourth-floor bed, unable to go to India, where he believes doctors might help him. (AP Photo/Desmond Tiro) Maimuna Awuor Omuya stands outside her home in Nairobi, Kenya on Aug. 9, 2018. In September 2010, unable to pay her bill at Pumwani Maternity Hospital after the delivery of her sixth child, Omuya and her baby were imprisoned along with more than 60 other women in a damp ward. She often slept on the wet ground next to a flooded toilet. Mother and child were released after nearly a month, but only when one of Omuya's friends appealed to the mayor to intervene. (AP Photo/Bram Janssen) LONDON (AP) - British regulators slapped Facebook on Thursday with a fine of 500,000 pounds ($644,000) - the maximum possible - for failing to protect the privacy of its users in the Cambridge Analytica scandal. At the same time, European Union lawmakers demanded an audit of Facebook to better understand how it handles information, reinforcing how regulators in the region are taking a tougher stance on data privacy compared with U.S. authorities. Britain's Information Commissioner Office found that between 2007 and 2014, Facebook processed the personal information of users unfairly by giving app developers access to their information without informed consent. The failings meant the data of some 87 million people was used without their knowledge. "Facebook failed to sufficiently protect the privacy of its users before, during and after the unlawful processing of this data," said Elizabeth Denham, the information commissioner. "A company of its size and expertise should have known better and it should have done better." The ICO said a subset of the data was later shared with other organizations, including SCL Group, the parent company of political consultancy Cambridge Analytica, which counted U.S. President Donald Trump's 2016 election campaign among its clients. News that the consultancy had used data from tens of millions of Facebook accounts to profile voters ignited a global scandal on data rights. The fine amounts to a speck on Facebook's finances. In the second quarter, the company generated revenue at a rate of nearly $100,000 per minute. That means it will take less than seven minutes for Facebook to bring in enough money to pay for the fine. FILE- In this April 12, 2016, file photo, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg talks about the company's 10-year roadmap during the keynote address at the F8 Facebook Developer Conference in San Francisco. Instagram along with Messenger and WhatsApp are serving as the social media giant's insurance policy for a future that might not be dominated by its flagship service. (AP Photo/Eric Risberg, File) But it's the maximum penalty allowed under the law at the time the breach occurred. Had the scandal taken place after new EU data protection rules went into effect this year, the amount would have been far higher - including maximum fines of 17 million pounds or 4 percent of global revenue, whichever is higher. Under that standard, Facebook would have been required to pay at least $1.6 billion, which is 4 percent of its revenue last year. The data rules are tougher than the ones in the United States, and a debate is ongoing on how the U.S. should respond. California is moving to put in regulations similar to the EU's strict rules by 2020 and other states are mulling more aggressive laws. That's rattled the big tech companies, which are pushing for a federal law that would treat them more leniently. Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg said in a video message to a big data privacy conference in Brussels this week that "we have a lot more work to do" to safeguard personal data. About the U.K. fine, Facebook responded in a statement that it is reviewing the decision. "While we respectfully disagree with some of their findings, we have said before that we should have done more to investigate claims about Cambridge Analytica and taken action in 2015. We are grateful that the ICO has acknowledged our full cooperation throughout their investigation." Facebook also took solace in the fact that the ICO did not definitively assert that U.K. users had their data shared for campaigning. But the commissioner noted in her statement that "even if Facebook's assertion is correct," U.S. residents would have used the site while visiting the U.K. EU lawmakers had summoned Zuckerberg in May to testify about the Cambridge Analytica scandal. In their vote on Thursday, they said Facebook should agree to a full audit by Europe's cyber security agency and data protection authority "to assess data protection and security of users' personal data." The EU lawmakers also call for new electoral safeguards online, a ban on profiling for electoral purposes and moves to make it easier to recognize paid political advertisements and their financial backers. TOKYO (AP) - The Latest on the return home of a Japanese journalist freed from more than three years of captivity in Syria (all times local): 9:45 p.m. The wife of a Japanese journalist freed from captivity in Syria says her husband is "blank" about his future plans, including the possibly of reporting again from conflict zones. Jumpei Yasuda returned to Japan on Thursday after being released from more than three years of captivity under severe conditions in Syria, where he was kidnapped by an al-Qaida group in 2015. His wife Myu, who briefly met him at the airport, asked him if he wants to resume war zone reporting, and said he replied that he is "blank" and not thinking about anything. Yasuda earlier told Japan's NHK television that he wants to stay in Japan for a while and work on something related to his country. Japanese journalist Jumpei Yasuda, center, is driven out of the immigration center in Antakya, Turkey, Wednesday, Oct. 24, 2018. Yasuda was freed after more than three years of captivity in Syria Wednesday. (Yosuke Mizuno/Kyodo News via AP) 8 p.m. The wife of a Japanese journalist freed from captivity in Syria says her husband's first meal after arriving in Japan will be his mother's hand-made rice balls. Jumpei Yasuda, kidnapped in 2015 by al-Quaida's branch in Syria, returned to Tokyo on Thursday after being freed and taken to Turkey earlier this week. His wife Myu said she hugged him after he arrived at the airport, in their first reunion in more than three years. Myu had only 15 minutes to talk with Yasuda and hand him the rice balls before Japanese officials escorted him out of the airport without talking to reporters. ___ 6:35 p.m. A Japanese journalist who was kidnapped in Syria has returned to Japan after more than three years of captivity. Jumpei Yasuda, who was kidnapped in 2015 by al-Qaida's branch in Syria, was freed and taken to Turkey on Tuesday. He arrived in Tokyo on Thursday night. Yasuda, in interviews with Japanese media on board the plane, described his 40 months in captivity as "hell" both physically and mentally. Yasuda is a respected journalist known for his coverage of conflict zones. ___ 2 p.m. A Japanese journalist freed from captivity in Syria has said he is happy to go home after living in "hell" for more than three years. Kidnapped in 2015 by al-Qaida's branch in Syria, Jumpei Yasuda was expected to return home Thursday after he was released and taken to Turkey. Yasuda described his 40 months in captivity as "hell" both physically and mentally. He was kept in a tiny cell and tortured. Yasuda told Japan's NHK television on a flight from Antakya in southern Turkey to Istanbul that he is happy to be going home, but feels as if he'd fallen behind the rest of the world and was uncertain how to catch up. Yasuda is a respected journalist known for his coverage of conflict zones. BEIJING (AP) - China said Thursday it is working with the Pentagon on arranging a visit to the U.S. by Defense Minister Wei Fenghe that has been sidelined by a spike in tensions. Defense Ministry spokesman Wu Qian told reporters the sides were communicating closely on a visit and that Beijing hopes the U.S. will work with it to strengthen cooperation, boost mutual trust and "control risks." "Chinese and U.S. defense establishments are working closely on a visit," Wu said. U.S. Defense Secretary Jim Mattis met Thursday with Wei on the sidelines of an Asian security conference in Singapore. While that meeting produced no new agreements, U.S. officials said they sense military relations may be stabilizing after a rocky few months, highlighted by a near-collision between Chinese and American destroyers in the South China Sea. China has also been angered by closer U.S. relations with Taiwan, including arms sales. China claims the self-governing island as its own territory and Wu said the Chinese military's "determination to safeguard national sovereignty and development interests is rock solid." TOKYO (AP) - A Japanese journalist returned to Tokyo on Thursday after being freed from more than three years of captivity in Syria, and was greeted at the airport with hugs from his wife and his favorite handmade rice balls from his mother. Jumpei Yasuda was released in Syria on Tuesday and taken to neighboring Turkey. Yasuda, wearing a black T-shirt, was escorted from his plane at Tokyo's airport by Japanese officials and ushered into a black van. He left without talking to a large group of reporters who had waited for his arrival. He briefly met his wife and parents and enjoyed his mother's handmade rice balls - his first meal after returning to Japan. In a short message released by his wife Myu, Yasuda said he was grateful that he could return home safely and promised to explain his experiences at a later date. On an earlier flight from the southern Turkish town of Antakya to Istanbul, Yasuda said he was happy to be going home after living in "hell" for more than three years, but was worried about how he would catch up with a changed world. Japanese journalist Jumpei Yasuda is interviewed in a flight from Turkey to Japan Oct. 25, 2018. Yasuda returned to Tokyo on Thursday after being freed from more than three years of captivity in Syria. (Kyodo News via AP) "I'm so happy to be free," he told Japan's NHK television on a flight from Antakya in southern Turkey to Istanbul. "But I'm a bit worried about what will happen to me or what I should do from now on." Yasuda, 44, who was kidnapped in 2015 by al-Qaida's branch in Syria, said he felt as if he'd fallen behind the rest of the world. He described his 40 months in captivity as "hell" both physically and mentally. He said he was kept in a tiny cell and tortured. There was a time when he was not allowed to bathe for eight months, he said. "Day after day, I thought 'Oh I can't go home again,' and the thought took over my head and gradually made it difficult for me to control myself," he said. Yasuda was kidnapped by a group known at the time as Nusra Front. A war monitoring group said he was most recently held by a Syrian commander with the Turkistan Islamic Party, which mostly comprises Chinese jihadis in Syria. Yasuda said he believes he was moved several times during his captivity but stayed in Syria's northwestern province of Idlib, where he sometimes heard distant firebombing. "I was living in endless fear that I may never get out of it or could even be killed," Yasuda told another Japanese broadcaster, TBS. He said he gradually became pessimistic about his fate because his captors kept breaking their promises to release him. His release Tuesday came suddenly when his captors drove him to the border with Turkey and dropped him off and handed him over to Turkish authorities, he said. Japanese officials say Qatar and Turkey helped in the efforts for Yasuda's release, though their exact roles were not clear. While the public generally welcomed Yasuda's safe return, some criticized him as a troublemaker in a country where those who act independently are often considered selfish and receive little sympathy when they fail. Some tweets demanded that Yasuda apologize for causing trouble for the government. Past hostages who returned have faced similar criticism. Yasuda, a respected journalist who began his career at a local newspaper, started reporting on the Middle East in the early 2000s and went to Afghanistan and Iraq. He was taken hostage in Iraq in 2004 with three other Japanese, but was freed after Islamic clerics negotiated his release. He worked as a cook in Iraq for nearly a year as part of his research for a 2010 book about laborers in war zones. He also wrote articles about his 2004 captivity. But this time, his captors took away all his reporting equipment including his camera, depriving him of any tangible records. "I was robbed of all my luggage, and that made me so angry," Yasuda said. "I couldn't do any of my work for 40 months." His last work in Syria involved reporting on his friend Kenji Goto, a Japanese journalist who was taken hostage and killed by the Islamic State group. Syria has been one of the most dangerous places for journalists since the conflict there began in March 2011, with dozens killed or kidnapped. Several journalists are still missing in Syria and their fates are unknown. ___ Follow Mari Yamaguchi on Twitter at https://www.twitter.com/mariyamaguchi Japanese journalist Jumpei Yasuda, center, is escorted by staff upon his arrival at Narita International Airport in Narita, north of Tokyo Thursday, Oct. 25, 2018. Yasuda returned to Tokyo on Thursday after being freed from more than three years of captivity in Syria. (AP Photo/Eugene Hoshiko) Japanese journalist Jumpei Yasuda, center, is escorted by staff upon his arrival at Narita International Airport in Narita, north of Tokyo Thursday, Oct. 25, 2018. Yasuda returned to Tokyo on Thursday after being freed from more than three years of captivity in Syria. (AP Photo/Eugene Hoshiko) A van carrying Japanese journalist Jumpei Yasuda leaves the tarmac upon his arrival at Narita International Airport in Narita, north of Tokyo Thursday, Oct. 25, 2018. Yasuda returned to Tokyo on Thursday after being freed from more than three years of captivity in Syria. (AP Photo/Eugene Hoshiko) BRUSSELS (AP) - The European Union on Thursday awarded its top human rights prize to Oleg Sentsov, a Ukrainian filmmaker imprisoned in Russia accused of plotting acts of terrorism, calling him a symbol of all political prisoners being held there. Sentsov was sentenced to 20 years in prison in 2015 for conspiring to commit acts of terrorism, charges he denies. He has been one of the most vocal opponents of Russia's annexation in 2014 of his native Crimea region of Ukraine. The 42-year-old director staged a hunger strike for 144 days to protest the incarceration of dozens of Ukrainians in Russia. He ended it earlier this month, faced with the prospect of being force-fed. European Parliament President Antonio Tajani, announcing the decision in Strasbourg, France, said that Sentsov was awarded the Sakharov Prize "because of his courage, his determination." "We call upon the authorities to release him immediately," Tajani said, adding that this is urgent due to Sentsov's poor health since the hunger strike. In Moscow, Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova said the decision to award Sentsov was "absolutely politicized." The European Parliament's rapporteur on Ukraine, Michael Gahler, noted that throughout his time in jail "Sentsov has not demanded his own release. He has become the voice of around 70 other innocent individuals perishing in inhumane conditions in Russian jails scattered around the vast country." File - In this Aug.25, 2015 file photo, Oleg Sentsov listens to a verdict as he stands at a cage in a court room in Rostov-on-Don, Russia. The EU has awarded the Sakharov Prize for human rights to jailed Ukrainian filmmaker Oleg Sentsov, it was announced on Thursday, Oct. 25 2018. ((AP Photo, File) "By awarding him this prize, we are bearing testimony to the fact that they are not forgotten," Gahler added. Liberal group leader Guy Verhofstadt welcomed the decision and said he hopes it "will help Sentsov and all Ukrainians arrested or convicted in Russia on politically-motivated grounds to be free again and able to return to their home country." Sentsov has described his prosecution as a political vendetta. Prominent political and cultural figures around the world have campaigned for his release. Tanya Lokshina, associate director for Human Rights Watch's Europe and Central Asia division, hailed the decision to award Sentsov, saying it would help attract global attention to his case and raise pressure on the Russian authorities to release him. "Sentsov has not perpetrated any crimes, it's one of the key cases of political manipulation of justice in Russia today," she said. "We really do hope that this award is going to help mobilize international pressure, and is going to push the Russian government to finally release Sentsov, who is behind bars for politically motivated reasons, who is behind bars solely because he objected to Russia's occupation of Crimea." On Tuesday, Poland bestowed its eighth annual Pro Dignitate Humana (For Human Dignity) award on Sentsov, saying that his activity "deserves the highest respect." The EU award, named after Soviet dissident Andrei Sakharov, was created in 1988 to honor individuals or groups who defend human rights and fundamental freedoms. A group of non-governmental organizations saving migrants in the Mediterranean Sea and Moroccan political activist Nasser Zefzafi were also shortlisted as finalists. The prize will be presented in a ceremony in Strasbourg on Dec. 12. ___ Vladimir Isachenkov and Francesca Ebel in Moscow contributed to this report. FILE - In this handout file photo taken on Friday, Sept. 28, 2018 and released by Russian Federal Penitentiary Service, a doctor examines imprisoned Ukrainian filmmaker Oleg Sentsov in the hospital in Labytnangi, Yamalo-Nenets region, Russia. The EU has awarded the Sakharov Prize for human rights to jailed Ukrainian filmmaker Oleg Sentsov, it was announced on Thursday, Oct. 25 2018. ( (Russian Federal Penitentiary Service via AP, File) FILE - In this Aug. 28, 2018 file photo, people hold up portraits of Ukrainian filmmaker Oleg Sentsov, in front of the Embassy of the Russian Federation in Prague, Czech Republic. The EU has awarded the Sakharov Prize for human rights to jailed Ukrainian filmmaker Oleg Sentsov, it was announced on Thursday, Oct. 25 2018. ( (AP Photo/Petr David Josek, File) FILE - In this June 10, 2018 file photo, protesters hold a poster with the image of political prisoner Oleg Sentsov during an opposition rally organised by 'Free Russia' in Moscow, Russia. The EU has awarded the Sakharov Prize for human rights to jailed Ukrainian filmmaker Oleg Sentsov, it was announced on Thursday, Oct. 25 2018. ( (AP Photo/Evgeny Feldman, File) ANKARA, Turkey (AP) - The economy ministers of Turkey and Germany vowed to expand trade ties Thursday as the two nations work to mend severely strained relations. German Economy Minister Peter Altmaier is paying a two-day visit to Turkey with a 30-person business delegation. Germany is a top trading partner for Turkey. "In the past years, the two countries suffered difficulties in relations, but we are determined to develop bilateral ties," Altmaier said at a joint news conference with his Turkish counterpart. Turkish Treasury and Finance Minister Berat Albayrak said Turkey wanted to strengthen cooperation with Germany by capitalizing on a "recent positive atmosphere" for their relations. Turkey has clashed with its NATO allies over numerous issues in recent years, including Turkey's jailing of German journalists. Last year, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan accused German officials of acting like Nazis after Turkish politicians were barred from holding election campaign rallies in Germany. Altmaier's visit also comes months after Turkey faced financial turmoil with a decline in the value of the Turkish currency. German Economy Minister Peter Altmaier poses in front of the mausoleum of modern Turkey's founder Mustafa Kemal Ataturk in Ankara, Turkey, during a visit , Thursday, Oct. 25, 2018. Altmaier is visiting Turkey accompanied by a 30-person business delegation with the goal of intensifying ties between the two countries.(AP Photo/Ali Unal) "Germany has an interest in a stable and dynamic economic relationship with Turkey," Altmaier said ahead of the trip. Altmaier and Turkish Trade Minister Ruhsar Peskan were scheduled to convene for the first time a joint commission seeking ways to improve trade, industry, tourism and infrastructure projects between the two countries. Altmaier on Friday is scheduled to open the second session of the German-Turkish Energy Forum with Turkish Energy Minister Fatih Donmez. Germany's Economy Minister Peter Altmaier, centre, walks during a visit at the mausoleum of modern Turkey's founder Mustafa Kemal Ataturk in Ankara, Turkey, Thursday, Oct. 25, 2018. Altmaier is visiting Turkey accompanied by a 30-person business delegation with the goal of intensifying ties between the two countries.(AP Photo/Ali Unal) People visit the mausoleum of modern Turkey's founder Mustafa Kemal Ataturk in Ankara, Turkey, Thursday, Oct. 25, 2018. (AP Photo/Ali Unal) German Economy Minister Peter Altmaier, left, shakes hands with Turkey's Finance and Treasury Minister Berat Albayrak prior to their meeting in Ankara, Turkey, Thursday, Oct. 25, 2018. Altmaier is visiting Turkey accompanied by a 30-person business delegation with the goal of intensifying ties between the two countries.(AP Photo/Ali Unal) German Economy Minister Peter Altmaier, left, walks with Turkey's Finance and Treasury Minister Berat Albayrak prior to their meeting in Ankara, Turkey, Thursday, Oct. 25, 2018. Altmaier is visiting Turkey accompanied by a 30-person business delegation with the goal of intensifying ties between the two countries.(AP Photo/Ali Unal) NAIROBI, Kenya (AP) - Doctors at Nairobi's Kenyatta National Hospital have told Robert Wanyonyi there's nothing more they can do for him. Yet more than a year after he first arrived, shot and paralyzed in a robbery, the ex-shopkeeper remains trapped in the hospital. Because Wanyonyi cannot pay his bill of nearly 4 million Kenyan shillings ($39,570), administrators are refusing to let him leave his fourth-floor bed. At Kenyatta National Hospital and at an astonishing number of hospitals around the world, if you don't pay up, you don't go home. ___ EDITOR'S NOTE: First in a two-part series on hospitals that detain patients if they cannot pay their bills. ___ Margaret Oliele, former detained patient, poses for a portrait in her home in Nairobi, Kenya. During a botched cesarean section in 2010, doctors left a pair of surgical scissors inside her stomach; a second surgery was needed to remove the scissors and she later suffered a ruptured bladder and a blood infection. When she couldn't pay her hospital fees, Oliele was taken to a detention ward. "I tried to escape, but when I got to the main gate, I was taken by the security guards." (AP Photo/Bram Janssen) The hospitals often illegally detain patients long after they should be medically discharged, using armed guards, locked doors and even chains to hold those who have not settled their accounts. Even death does not guarantee release: Kenyan hospitals and morgues are holding hundreds of bodies until families can pay their loved ones' bills, government officials say. An Associated Press investigation has found evidence of hospital imprisonments in more than 30 countries worldwide, according to hospital records, patient lists and interviews with dozens of doctors, nurses, health academics, patients and administrators. The detentions were found in countries including the Philippines, India, China, Thailand, Lithuania, Bulgaria, Bolivia and Iran. Of more than 20 hospitals visited by the AP in Congo, only one did not detain patients. "What's striking about this issue is that the more we look for this, the more we find it," said Dr. Ashish Jha, director of the Harvard Global Health Institute. "It's probably hundreds of thousands, if not millions of people, that this affects worldwide." During several August visits to Kenyatta National Hospital - a major medical institution designated a Center of Excellence by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention - the AP witnessed armed guards in military fatigues standing watch over patients. Detainees slept on bedsheets on the floor in cordoned-off rooms. Guards prevented one worried father from seeing his detained toddler. Kenya's ministry of health and Kenyatta canceled several scheduled interviews with the AP and declined to respond to repeated requests for comment. Health experts decry hospital imprisonment as a human rights violation. Yet the United Nations, U.S. and international health agencies, donors and charities have all remained silent while pumping billions of dollars into these countries to support their splintered health systems or to fight outbreaks of diseases including AIDS and malaria. "People know patients are being held prisoner, but they probably think they have bigger battles in public health to fight, so they just have to let this go," said Sophie Harman, a global health expert at Queen Mary University of London. Hospitals often acknowledge detaining patients isn't profitable, but many say it can sometimes result in a partial payment and serves as a deterrent. Festus Njuguna, an oncologist at the Moi Teaching and Referral Hospital in Eldoret, about 300 kilometres northwest of Nairobi, said the institution regularly detains children with cancer who have finished their treatment, but whose parents cannot pay. "It's not a very good feeling for the doctors and nurses who have treated these patients, to see them kept like this," Njuguna said. Still, many officials openly defend the practice. "We can't just let people leave if they don't pay," said Leedy Nyembo-Mugalu, administrator of Congo's Katuba Reference Hospital. He said holding patients wasn't an issue of human rights, but simply a way to conduct business: "No one ever comes back to pay their bill a month or two later." Global health agencies and companies that operate where patients are held hostage often have very little to say about it. The CDC provides about $1.5 million every year to Kenyatta National Hospital and Pumwani Maternity Hospital, helping to cover treatment costs for patients with HIV and tuberculosis, among other programs. The CDC declined to comment on whether it was aware that patients were regularly detained at the two hospitals or if it condones the practice. Dr. Agnes Soucat of the World Health Organization said it does not support patient detentions, but has been unable to document where it happens. And while WHO has issued hundreds of health recommendations on issues from AIDS to Zika virus, the agency has never published any guidance advising countries not to imprison people in their hospitals. Many Kenyan human rights advocates lament that hospitals continue to hold patients despite what was seen as a landmark judgment in 2015. Back then, the High Court ruled that the detention of two women at Pumwani who couldn't pay their delivery fees - Maimuna Omuya and Margaret Oliele - was "cruel, inhuman and degrading." Omuya and her newborn were held for almost a month next to a flooded toilet while Oliele was handcuffed to her bed after trying to escape. Earlier this month, the High Court ruled again that imprisoning patients "is not one of the acceptable avenues (for hospitals) to recover debt." Omuya said she is still psychologically scarred by her detention at Pumwani, especially after another recent run-in with a Nairobi hospital. Several months ago, her youngest brother was treated for a suspected poisoning. When Omuya and her family were unable to pay the bill, the situation took a familiar but unwelcome turn: he was imprisoned. Her brother was only freed after his doctor intervened. "Detentions still go on because there are no rights here," Omuya said. "What I suffered, I want no one else to suffer." ____ Desmond Tiro in Nairobi contributed to this report. Detained patient Robert Wanyonyi lies on a bed in the Kenyatta National Hospital in Nairobi, Kenya on Saturday, Aug. 11, 2018. He was shot and paralyzed in a robbery more than a year earlier, but the hospital will not allow him to leave because he cannot pay his bill of nearly 4 million Kenyan shillings ($39,570). He is trapped in his fourth-floor bed, unable to go to India, where he believes doctors might help him. (AP Photo/Desmond Tiro) Maimuna Awuor Omuya stands outside her home in Nairobi, Kenya on Aug. 9, 2018. In September 2010, unable to pay her bill at Pumwani Maternity Hospital after the delivery of her sixth child, Omuya and her baby were imprisoned along with more than 60 other women in a damp ward. She often slept on the wet ground next to a flooded toilet. Mother and child were released after nearly a month, but only when one of Omuya's friends appealed to the mayor to intervene. (AP Photo/Bram Janssen) CHARLESTON, W.Va. (AP) - A West Virginia man has been sentenced to jail for hanging a pit bull from a tree near a set of railroad tracks in Charleston. The Charleston Gazette-Mail reports that 23-year-old John D. Copening Jr. was sentenced Wednesday to one to five years in jail, with an additional six months. Prosecutors say Copening admitted to beating the female dog in April until it defecated on itself before hanging it with a logging chain. He then fled to Florida but surrendered to police that month. Kanawha Circuit Judge Carrie Webster says violence to animals is often a precursor to violence against people. Copening pleaded guilty last month to animal cruelty and was credited the roughly 200 days he already spent in jail. ___ Information from: The Charleston Gazette-Mail, http://wvgazettemail.com. BUDAPEST, Hungary (AP) - Academic freedom in Hungary came under question Thursday as Central European University said it will move its U.S.-accredited programs from Budapest to the Austrian capital of Vienna because of the "uncertain" academic environment in Hungary. The government called the university's announcement "a political ploy" to discredit the nation. The university's fate is seen as collateral damage from the ideological struggle between Prime Minister Viktor Orban's nationalistic, anti-immigrant government and the founder of CEU, Hungarian-American billionaire and philanthropist George Soros. Orban's government has conducted massive billboard and media campaigns against Soros and his "Open Society" pro-democratic stance, blaming him for Europe's migrant crisis, a charge that Soros denies. The 88-year-old Soros has also been criticized by U.S. President Donald Trump and vilified by right-wing conspiracy theorists. On Monday, a bomb was found in a mailbox at Soros' suburban New York home. Central European University, which Soros founded in 1991, has said for months that it has complied with a host of new requirements for it to remain in Budapest. But the university said Thursday it has been kept in "legal limbo" by Orban's government, which has refused to sign an agreement needed for CEU to remain in Hungary. FILE - In this April 9, 2017 file photo demonstrators hold posters as they protest against the efforts to close Central European University, as part of Prime Minister Viktor Orban's plan to transform Hungary in Budapest, Hungary. Central European University says it will move its U.S.-accredited programs from Hungary's capital of Budapest to the Austrian capital of Vienna because of uncertainty over its academic freedom. (Janos Marjai/MTI via AP, file) Changes to Hungary's higher education law in 2017 were seen as mainly targeting CEU, which is chartered in New York State but did not conduct educational activities there, one of the new requirements. CEU has since established educational programs with New York's Bard College. "Nonetheless, the Hungarian authorities have indicated that they would not sign the New York State agreement," the university said Thursday in a statement. "All attempts to find a solution that would enable CEU to remain as a U.S. degree-granting institution in Budapest have failed." Incoming students in CEU's masters and doctoral programs will start studying at the Vienna campus in the 2019-2020 academic year, while students already enrolled may remain in Budapest to complete their degrees. Orban's government derided the announcement as "a Soros-style political ploy." "Up to now, CEU has operated here, it does so now, and we think that it will continue to do so in the future," said a statement from Orban's Cabinet office. "The Hungarian government does not concern itself with Soros's political ploys." CEU students, meanwhile, were dismayed by the development. "I think (CEU) has actually added value to Hungary," said finance major Alexandra Ivanova from Ukraine. "I think Vienna is going to be way more expensive for students and I think not that many students will be applying there, just because they can't afford living in the city." The university's board of trustees authorized the move as of Dec. 1, 2018, which CEU President and Rector Michael Ignatieff said meant there's still time to reach a last-minute deal. "Even at this late hour, we are still seeking a solution that allows us to remain in Budapest as a free institution," Ignatieff told reporters. David Cornstein, the U.S. Ambassador to Hungary, who has been talking with the Hungarian government to try to finalize the agreement, made CEU the destination of one of his first official visits after arriving in Hungary this summer. He the CEU was a "priority" for the U.S. government. "I understand CEU's position - prolonged uncertainty is not sustainable for an academic institution," Cornstein said in a statement. "I am working with both parties to continue the negotiations and find an acceptable resolution before Dec. 1." Orban's enmity toward Soros comes even after he himself received a scholarship from Soros in the late 1980s. Orban's Fidesz party also received aid from Soros' foundations before the end of communism in Hungary in 1990. MAPASTEPEC, Mexico (AP) - The Latest on the caravan of Central American migrants hoping to travel through Mexico to the U.S. (all times local): 3:00 p.m. Mexican immigration officials appear to be intervening more aggressively with the movements of Central American migrants trying to make their way through Mexico and to the U.S. via a sprawling caravan. A taxi driver in the southern Mexico town of Mapastepec recounted Thursday having seen immigration agents force migrant passengers out of cabs at a checkpoint. Later, hundreds of migrants were given free passage at the same checkpoint as Mexican officials watched. An official from Mexico's Human Rights Commission said migrants can go through if they are in vans or trucks that offered them rides for free. But if they paid fares, they must get out because of insurance regulations. Migrants may also walk through the checkpoint. The human rights official, who was in uniform, said he was not authorized to speak about the matter and did not give his name. Cesar Antonio Perez Rodriguez, a migrant from El Salvador, said Mexican immigration agents had forced him, his pregnant wife Delmy Roxana Martinez and their 3-year-old son out of a van on Wednesday. They were brought to a room inside an immigration office that eventually filled with more than 30 migrants. Central American migrants traveling with a caravan to the U.S. receive donated food outside the Catholic Church in Mapastepec, Mexico, Wednesday, Oct. 24, 2018. Thousands of Central American migrants renewed their hoped-for march to the United States on Wednesday, setting out before dawn with plans to travel another 45 miles (75 kilometers) of the more than 1,000 miles that still lie before them. (AP Photo/Rodrigo Abd) Hours passed with no explanation for the detentions. Several in the group became agitated and pushed their way free through a door, he said. In the commotion Perez said he grabbed his bag but left his wife and child behind. As he ran he looked back to see his wife blocked by agents wielding batons, holding their son and crying. Perez made his way Thursday to an internet cafe in Mapastepec, where he desperately tried to contact his wife's relatives via Facebook to find out if they had heard from her. He had no money and his wife had their only cell phone, a Mexican number he didn't know. "I don't want to lose my son," Perez said, choking back tears. ___ 7:35 a.m. The sprawling caravan of migrants hoping to make their way to the United States has set off again, forming a column more than a mile long as the group treks out of the town of Mapastepec in southern Mexico before dawn. Most had spent the rainy night on the town square where the municipality of some 45,000 people joined churches and volunteers in setting up portable tents offering some medicines and donated baby bottles, clothing and showers. The caravan swelled dramatically soon after crossing the border on Oct. 19, but little by little, sickness, fear and police harassment are whittling down the numbers. Many of the 4,000 to 5,000 migrants camped overnight under plastic sheeting complained of exhaustion. Since entering Mexico at its southernmost tip, the group has advanced roughly 95 miles (150 kilometers) as the crow flies - a sliver of the more than 1,000 miles to the U.S. border. The next planned stop is Pijijiapan, about 25 miles (40 kilometers) up the road. Under rain, people take cover at a makeshift camp set up by a caravan of Central American migrants traveling to the U.S, in Mapastepec, Mexico, Wednesday, Oct. 24, 2018. Thousands of Central American migrants renewed their march to the United States on Wednesday, setting out before dawn with more than 1,000 miles still before them. (AP Photo/Rodrigo Abd) Central American migrants rests inside a commercial space, after a heavy rain in Mapastepec, Mexico, Wednesday, Oct. 24, 2018. Thousands of Central American migrants renewed their hoped-for march to the United States on Wednesday, setting out before dawn with more than 1,000 miles still before them. (AP Photo/Rodrigo Abd) NEW DELHI (AP) - India's economic intelligence agency has accused an opposition Indian National Congress party leader of conspiring with a Mauritius-based firm to illegally obtain money for his son's company while serving as the country's finance minister in 2006. Judge O.P. Saini on Thursday said he would rule on Nov. 26 whether to formally charge P. Chidambaram in the case. His son, Karti Chidambaram, has already been named a defendant in the money-laundering case involving 11.6 million rupees ($157,750). Chidambaram denies the allegation and accuses Prime Minister Narendra Modi's government of pursuing a political vendetta. Modi's Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party came to power after defeating a Congress party government in 2014. Corruption in business deals is rampant in India. FILE- In this Feb. 17, 2014 file photo, the then Indian Finance Minister P. Chidambaram shows a briefcase containing interim budget for the fiscal year 2014-15 as he arrives at parliament in New Delhi, India. India's economic intelligence agency has accused the opposition Indian National Congress party leader of conspiring with a Mauritius-based firm to illegally obtain money for his son's company while he was the country's finance minister in 2006. Chidambaram denies the allegation and accuses Prime Minister Narendra Modi's government of pursuing a political vendetta. (AP Photo/Manish Swarup, file) The Enforcement Directorate filed a report to the court marking the completion of its investigation of the senior Chidambaram. It accused him of exceeding his powers as finance minister by approving an $800 million investment proposal by the Mauritius-based company. It said he should have sought the approval of the Cabinet Committee on Economic Affairs because rules only permitted him to approve investments of up to $80 million. HOUSTON (AP) - Authorities have ruled the death of a 3-year-old boy who was found in a hot van outside a Houston day care a homicide and are forwarding the case to a grand jury for review. The Harris County medical examiner's office said Tuesday that Raymond Pryer Jr. died of hyperthermia. Harris County Precinct 1 constable officials say the boy was found unresponsive in the van at Discovering Me Academy in July when his father arrived to pick him up. Authorities have said the child was in the van for 3 hours and that its interior was 113 degrees (45 Celsius). The state revoked the day care center's permit last month, forcing it to close. Houston police told KTRK-TV that the case will now go before a grand jury. In this Tuesday, Aug. 14, 2018 photo, Raymond Pryer wipes away tears while talking about his son with wife Dikeisha Whitlock-Pryer and their lawyer, Larry Wilson in Houston. Authorities have ruled the death of the couple's 3-year-old son, Raymond Pryer Jr. , who was found in a hot van outside a Houston daycare, a homicide and are forwarding the case to a grand jury for review. (Elizabeth Conley/Houston Chronicle via AP) In this Tuesday, Aug. 14, 2018 photo taken in Houston, a pin on the lapel of Dikeisha Whitlock-Pryer's jacket shows a photo of her son, Raymond Pryer Jr., who died after he was left in a bus for hours after it had returned from a field trip to a daycare. Authorities have ruled Pryer's death a homicide and are forwarding the case to a grand jury for review. (Elizabeth Conley/Houston Chronicle via AP) ROME (AP) - Italian police have detained three suspects, all immigrants, in the slaying of a teenage girl who was drugged, gang-raped and left in an abandoned building in Rome known as a drug den. The case has drawn outrage over the degradation in parts of the Italian capital that have been taken over by gangs and drug dealers. The suspects, two Senegalese citizens and one Nigerian, were being held on suspicion of murder, group sexual assault and distributing drugs in the death last week of 16-year-old Desiree Mariottini, Italian authorities said Thursday. Reports that two of the subjects were in the country illegally and that a residency permit for the third had expired have fueled Italy's already-fierce debate about immigration. Some have demanded that the Italian government accelerate expulsions of immigrants who are in the country illegally, as promised by the League party during the election campaign. Hard-line Interior Minister Matteo Salvini said a fourth suspect would be quickly apprehended. "The worms of this horror will pay to the end, without a break, for their infamy," Salvini pledged. Flowers lie by a writing on a door reading in Italian "Justice for Desiree", outside the abandoned building where a 16-year-old girl was murdered, in Rome, Thursday, Oct. 25, 2018. Italian police have detained three suspects, all immigrants, in the slaying of a teenage girl who was drugged, gang-raped and left in an abandoned building known as a center for drug dealing in Rome. Authorities said Thursday that the three suspects, two Senegalese citizens and one Nigerian, were being held on suspicion of murder, group sexual assault and handing out drugs in the death late last week of 16-year-old Desiree Mariottini. (AP Photo/Gregorio Borgia) Italian Premier Giuseppe Conte said "we cannot tolerate that spaces free from laws can be created within the urban environment." Residents of the San Lorenzo neighborhood where the slaying occurred, near Rome's main Termini train station, demanded that authorities intervene to take back control of the neighborhood. Local businesses closed for one day in protest. "The lack of control by public institutions, which should allow us to maintain order, and the failure to clean up by the city's garbage collection company, create a situation that favors the proliferation of criminal activities," said Chiara Simeoni, a member of the San Lorenzo neighborhood watch. The brutality of the Mariottini's death drew comparisons with the murder and rape of 18-year-old Pamela Mastropietro, whose body was found last winter in pieces in a suitcase in the central Italian city of Macerata. News that a Nigerian suspect had been arrested last February triggered an Italian man with extreme right-wing views to open fire on African residents, injuring six. The shooting spree affected Italy's national election, which was won by two populist parties, the 5-Star Movement and the League. Newspaper reports indicated Mariottini had told her family that she had missed the bus to her town outside of Rome and she would stay at a friend's house the night she disappeared. A lawyer for the family denied reports that she had a drug problem. "She was a normal 16-year-old girl," the family's lawyer, Valerio Masci, told RAI state TV. "A very naive girl. Maybe recently she could be a little exuberant, but to speak of serious drug problems, frankly, I don't think so." Masci did say the family had seen some changes in Mariottini in the last month, noting she "was much more nervous, a little more introverted." A picture of 16-year-old Desiree Mariottini hangs from a wall of the abandoned building where she was murdered, in Rome, Thursday, Oct. 25, 2018. Italian police have detained three suspects, all immigrants, in the slaying of a teenage girl who was drugged, gang-raped and left in an abandoned building known as a center for drug dealing in Rome. Authorities said Thursday that the three suspects, two Senegalese citizens and one Nigerian, were being held on suspicion of murder, group sexual assault and handing out drugs in the death late last week of 16-year-old Desiree Mariottini. (AP Photo/Gregorio Borgia) A picture of 16-year-old Desiree Mariottini hangs from a wall of the abandoned building where she was murdered, in Rome, Thursday, Oct. 25, 2018. Italian police have detained three suspects, all immigrants, in the slaying of a teenage girl who was drugged, gang-raped and left in an abandoned building known as a center for drug dealing in Rome. Authorities said Thursday that the three suspects, two Senegalese citizens and one Nigerian, were being held on suspicion of murder, group sexual assault and handing out drugs in the death late last week of 16-year-old Desiree Mariottini. (AP Photo/Gregorio Borgia) PARIS (AP) - A group representing France's presidential reporters has criticized the president's office "for trampling a tradition of transparency" in its refusal to reconsider its plans to move the press room outside the Elysee Presidential Palace in Paris. The Presidential Press Association said Thursday it "notes with gravity" an Elysee statement that the new press room will be finished by year's end and "offer improved working conditions to a greater number of journalists." The group said it doesn't "understand why the non-intrusive presence of journalists in the heart of the palace disturbs." It compared the decision by President Emmanuel Macron to U.S. President Donald Trump, who it says "tried to kick journalists out of the White House." A press room has been inside the Elysee Palace for over 40 years. Critics say the new location will reduce journalists' access to government officials. Macron's office announced plans earlier this year to move journalists to a new site outside the palace with less access to presidential activity. He also recently revamped his communication strategy and team. FILE - In this Wednesday, Oct. 17, 2018 file photo, French President Emmanuel Macron speaks with the press as he arrives for an EU summit in Brussels. France's Presidential Press Association has called on President Emmanuel Macron to reconsider his decision to close the press room inside the presidential palace. In a statement Tuesday, Oct, 23 the association that represents French and foreign media accredited with the presidency said the press room's closure would be "a lockdown of the Elysee Palace and a decision prejudicial to journalists' freedom to inform and to work." (AP Photo/Francisco Seco, file) The Associated Press is one of the accredited news outlets that would be required to move out the presidential palace, along with other world news agencies. Macron's office said the new press room will accommodate 36 seated journalists, compared to just 16 now. FILE - This Feb.19, 2018 file photo shows the Presidential press rom inside the Elysee Palace, in Paris. France's Presidential Press Association has called Tuesday Oct.23, 2018 on President Emmanuel Macron to reconsider his decision to close the press room inside the presidential palace, an action that comes as the French leader faces declining popularity. (AP Photo/Francois Mori, File) ATLANTA (AP) - Republican nominee for Georgia governor Brian Kemp is mischaracterizing his opponent's position in saying that Democrat Stacey Abrams wants immigrants without legal status to cast ballots for her in the Nov. 6 election. Kemp is Georgia's secretary of state and oversees voter registration and elections in the state. A look at Kemp's claim in Tuesday night's gubernatorial debate : KEMP: "Ms. Abrams, as you know, in a recent video you called on illegals to vote for you in this election. I was actually shocked; I had to watch that video twice. It clearly shows that you were asking for 'undocumented and documented' folks to be part of your winning strategy. So my question is why are you encouraging people to break the law for you in this election?" -- Oct. 23, 2018 THE FACTS: Kemp's claim is inaccurate. While it's is true that Abrams' described "those who are documented and undocumented" as part of the "blue wave" earlier this month, in the context of her full remarks it's a mischaracterization to say she asked people to break the law to cast ballots for her. Kemp points to an Oct. 9 campaign speech Abrams gave in Jonesboro, Georgia, to support his claim. Democratic gubernatorial candidate for Georgia Stacey Abrams, left, speaks as her Republican opponent Secretary of State Brian Kemp looks on during a debate Tuesday, Oct. 23, 2018, in Atlanta. (AP Photo/John Bazemore, Pool) During the event, Abrams said: "But the thing of it is, the blue wave is African-American. It's white, it's Latino, it's Asian-Pacific Islander. It is disabled. It is differently-abled. It is LGBTQ. It is law enforcement. It is veterans. It is made up of those who have been told they are not worthy of being here. It is comprised of those who are documented and undocumented. It is comprised of those who have been told they're successful and those who have been left behind. But the real wave is when we come together and we tell Georgia: we're here and we're not going anywhere." Abrams said during the debate that Kemp was mischaracterizing her remarks and that she has only ever advocated for eligible voters to cast ballots. ___ Find AP Fact Checks at http://apne.ws/2kbx8bd Follow @APFactCheck on Twitter at https://twitter.com/APFactCheck RIYADH, Saudi Arabia (AP) - A defiant message delivered by Saudi Arabia's crown prince to investors gathered in Riyadh may not be enough to repair the damage inflicted to his global standing as he faces continued international pressure over the killing of Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi. Participants of the high-profile investment forum Thursday were taking stock of the outcome of his first public remarks on the killing, in which the crown prince appeared unwavering and fiery, calling it a "heinous" and "painful" act before warning anyone against trying to "manipulate" the crisis. Khashoggi, a Washington Post columnist who was critical of the crown prince, was killed Oct. 2 when he entered the Saudi consulate in Istanbul by Saudi agents, including reportedly a member of the crown prince's entourage on trips abroad. The killing has marred Prince Mohammed's standing, with critics suspecting he ordered the high-profile operation or at least knew about it. On Thursday, Saudi Arabia said initial Turkish investigations revealed the killing was "premeditated." The acknowledgement comes after varying Saudi accounts of the incident, including initially saying that Khashoggi had walked out of their consulate alive. Global outcry over the writer's disappearance saw more than 100 participants, including numerous CEOs of major U.S. corporations and Western officials, cancel their participation in the three-day investment forum, which concluded on Thursday. Last year, the forum debuted with the crown prince wowing an international crowd of global business titans with his vision of reforming and modernizing Saudi Arabia both socially and economically. The kingdom is seeking trillions of dollars in new investment to create millions of jobs for young Saudis entering the workforce. Saudi Crown Prince, Mohammed bin Salman attends the second day of the Future Investment Initiative conference, in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, Wednesday, Oct. 24, 2018. The powerful crown prince spoke at the Riyadh investment forum clouded by Jamal Khashoggi's killing. (AP Photo/Amr Nabil) David Hamod, president and CEO of the National U.S.-Arab Chamber of Commerce, was among the thousands inside the ornate hall Wednesday evening when Prince Mohammed gave his remarks. He said the showing by the 33-year-old heir to the throne "was electrifying" and "lit up the hall." "I believe it gave the Saudis a great deal of confidence, hearing what the crown prince had to say," Hamod said. "Having said that I think a lot of U.S. companies are still on pause. They're on a wait-and-see mode." Rather than cancel their participation altogether, some companies sent mid-level executives to keep lines of communication and business open with Saudi Arabia. Several participants in attendance from the U.S. declined to speak with the AP at the forum, reflecting a general nervousness among the Americans in attendance. Saudi Arabia's sovereign wealth fund, which Prince Mohammed oversees, was the organizer of the event. Some of the Public Investment Fund's biggest partners - including the CEOs of U.S. private equity fund Blackstone and Japan's technology giant Softbank - were among those who backed out of the forum, even as PIF has invested billions of dollars in both. As he walked through the marbled reception area of the Ritz-Carlton where the event was held, the head of the PIF, Yasir Al-Rumayyan, declined on Thursday to answer questions from an AP reporter about whether he saw this year's forum as a success. As Western companies pulled back, the summit drew support from Prince Mohammed's allies across the region. Jordan's king, Dubai's ruler, Pakistan's prime minister and Bahrain's crown prince were among the heads of state who attended. Lebanon's premier, whose party is backed by Saudi Arabia, was also in attendance.. Russian and Asian investors were also present. The forum saw some $55 billion in investments signed, mostly in Saudi Arabia's lucrative energy market. However, the crown prince is looking for investments that shift the kingdom's economy away from its reliance on oil. Hamod said it was regrettable that numerous U.S. companies did not have a seat at the table at this year's summit. "But I certainly understand why. They have stakeholders. They have institutional shareholders to which they're held accountable, so we'll have to wait and see whether their position in the aftermath of yesterday's speech changes," he said. ___ Associated Press writer Malak Harb contributed from Riyadh. Senegalese President Macky Sall, is greeted by Saudi billionaire Prince Alwaleed bin Talal, during the second day of the Future Investment Initiative conference, in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, Wednesday, Oct. 24, 2018. The Crown Prince addressed the summit on Wednesday, his first such comments since the killing earlier this month of Washington Post columnist Jamal Khashoggi at the Saudi Consulate in Istanbul. (AP Photo/Amr Nabil) In this photo released by Saudi Press Agency, SPA, Saudi Crown Prince, Mohammed bin Salman addresses the Future Investment Initiative conference, in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, Wednesday, Oct. 24, 2018. The Crown Prince addressed the summit on Wednesday, his first such comments since the killing earlier this month of Washington Post columnist Jamal Khashoggi at the Saudi Consulate in Istanbul. (Saudi Press Agency via AP) In this photo released by Saudi Press Agency, SPA, Saudi Crown Prince, Mohammed bin Salman addresses the Future Investment Initiative conference, in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, Wednesday, Oct. 24, 2018. The Crown Prince addressed the summit on Wednesday, his first such comments since the killing earlier this month of Washington Post columnist Jamal Khashoggi at the Saudi Consulate in Istanbul. (Saudi Press Agency via AP) In this photo released by Saudi Press Agency, SPA, Saudi Crown Prince, Mohammed bin Salman, right, Lebanese Prime Minister, Saad Hariri, second right, and Bahrain's Crown Prince Salman bin Hamad Al Khalifa, second left, attend the Future Investment Initiative conference, in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, Wednesday, Oct. 24, 2018. Salman addressed the summit on Wednesday, his first such comments since the killing earlier this month of journalist Jamal Khashoggi at the Saudi Consulate in Istanbul. (Saudi Press Agency via AP) Saudi billionaire Prince Alwaleed bin Talal, speaks on his mobile phone as he attends the second day of the Future Investment Initiative conference, in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, Wednesday, Oct. 24, 2018. The Crown Prince addressed the summit on Wednesday, his first such comments since the killing earlier this month of Washington Post columnist Jamal Khashoggi at the Saudi Consulate in Istanbul. (AP Photo/Amr Nabil) Lebanese Prime Minister Saad Hariri, left, and United Arab Emirates Prime Minister Sheikh Mohammad bin Rashed, right, attend the second day of the Future Investment Initiative conference, in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, Wednesday, Oct. 24, 2018. The Crown Prince addressed the summit on Wednesday, his first such comments since the killing earlier this month of Washington Post columnist Jamal Khashoggi at the Saudi Consulate in Istanbul. (AP Photo/Amr Nabil) Saudi Crown Prince, Mohammed bin Salman, attends second day of Future Investment Initiative conference, in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, Wednesday, Oct. 24, 2018. The Crown Prince addressed the summit on Wednesday, his first such comments since the killing earlier this month of Washington Post columnist Jamal Khashoggi at the Saudi Consulate in Istanbul. He said Jamal Khashoggi killing will not 'drive wedge' between kingdom, Turkey. (AP Photo/Amr Nabil) VIAN, Okla. (AP) - A northeastern Oklahoma school district has reversed its graduation dress code policy to allow Cherokee students to wear eagle feathers at the ceremonies, after the state suggested a ban restricts religious freedom. Federal law restricts the possession of eagle feathers but allows tribal members to use them for religious or spiritual purposes. Cherokee citizens must receive special tribal approval to legally possess feathers, officials said. Oklahoma Attorney General Mike Hunter wrote to Vian Public Schools Tuesday urging officials to allow student Natalie Briggs to wear a ceremonial eagle feather to her graduation in May 2019. "Based on my understanding of Cherokee spiritual practices, prohibiting students from wearing ceremonial eagle feathers on their graduation caps would substantially burden their free exercise of religion under (the Oklahoma Religious Freedom Act)," he said. Vian is 90 miles (145 kilometers) southeast of Tulsa. The school district declined a similar request in May from William Christie, Briggs' brother. The district's policy prohibits students from altering their graduation caps, according to high school Principal John Brockman. The Cherokee Nation this month asked board members to grant a religious exemption for students who want to practice traditional Cherokee spirituality. Hunter's letter arrived as school officials were considering the request. Superintendent Victor Salcedo said the district will follow Hunter's advice. "Students are what we're all about here," Salcedo said. "We're always willing to sit down with students and respect their opinions." Christie said the decision "means a lot." "I'm happy for my sister and other native students who want to wear an eagle feather at graduation," he said. "Hopefully other schools will follow." ___ Information from: Tulsa World, http://www.tulsaworld.com YEREVAN, Armenia (AP) - U.S. National Security Adviser John Bolton said Thursday that Russian arms supplies to both Azerbaijan and Armenia have hampered the settlement of their conflict over the region of Nagorno-Karabakh. Speaking on a visit to the Armenian capital, Bolton told reporters that Russian arms sales to both countries have "clearly not contributed to the resolution of the dispute because of the enormous leverage it gives Russia over both parties." Nagorno-Karabakh is a region of Azerbaijan that has been under the control of ethnic Armenian forces backed by Armenia since a war there ended in 1994. International efforts to settle the conflict have stalled. Russia has sought to maintain friendly ties with both Azerbaijan and Armenia, which remain locked in a conflict over Nagorno-Karabakh. Russia has a military base in Armenia and provided the overwhelming bulk of its weapons, but it also has been the principal arms supplier for Azerbaijan. Asked if the United States would review a ban on selling arms to the two countries, Bolton said Washington will consider the issue. "We are Americans. We believe in competition as a spur to improvement," he said. "Our military equipment is better than the Russian in all cases. So I think this is something we should consider consistent with our statutory framework." U.S. National security adviser John Bolton gestures as he speaks to the media after his talks with Russian President Vladimir Putin in Moscow, Russia, Tuesday, Oct. 23, 2018. Bolton said that Russia has hurt itself by meddling in the U.S. elections, effectively blocking the prospects for improving U.S.-Russia ties. (AP Photo/Alexander Zemlianichenko) Russia, the U.S. and France have co-chaired the so-called Minsk Group of the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe that has attempted to broker a peaceful Nagorno-Karabakh settlement. Before traveling to Armenia, Bolton visited Russia and Azerbaijan this week. WASHINGTON (AP) - The Trump administration is planning to dispatch at least 800 active duty troops to the southern border at the direction of a president who has sought to transform fears about immigration into electoral gains in the midterms as a caravan of thousands of migrants makes its way through Mexico. Defense Secretary Jim Mattis is expected to sign an order sending the troops to the border, bolstering National Guard forces already there, an official said Thursday. The action comes as President Donald Trump has spent recent days calling attention to the caravan of Central Americans slowly making their way by foot into southern Mexico, but still more than 1,000 miles from U.S. soil. Trump, who made fear about immigrants a major theme of his 2016 election campaign, has been eager to make it a top issue heading into the Nov. 6 midterm elections, which will determine control of Congress. The president and senior White House officials have long believed the issue is key to turning out his base of supporters. The additional troops would provide logistical and other support to the Border Patrol, said the U.S. official, who spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss a plan that had not been finalized and formally announced. It's not unusual for the National Guard to help with border security. Active duty troops, however, are rarely deployed within the United States except for domestic emergencies like hurricanes or floods. Fears of militarizing the border were fanned by a May 1997 incident in which a Marine on a counter-narcotics mission shot to death an 18-year-old who was herding goats in Redford, Texas. Troops being sent at Trump's direction would not be on armed security missions. They would assist the Border Patrol by providing things such as vehicles, tents and equipment. There already are about 2,000 National Guard members there under a previous Pentagon arrangement. Central American migrants traveling with a caravan to the U.S. make their way to Pijijiapan, Mexico, Thursday, Oct. 25, 2018. The sprawling caravan of migrants hoping to make their way to the United States set off again, forming a column more than a mile long as the group trekked out of the town of Mapastepec in southern Mexico before dawn. (AP Photo/Rodrigo Abd) Trump has used the caravan to bolster his election-season warnings that the U.S. is being infiltrated by illegal immigrants "pouring across the border," whom he has painted with a sinister brush. He has claimed, without any apparent basis in fact, that "Middle Easterners" were among the group. At rallies and on Twitter, Trump has tried to portray the Democrats as pro-illegal immigration, even claiming, with no evidence, that Democrats organized the caravan. He tweeted Thursday that, "Democrat inspired laws make it tough for us to stop people at the border" and said he was using the military to respond to what he called a "National Emergency." The migrants in the sprawling caravan - once estimated by the United Nations to number more than 7,000 - are hoping to make it to the United States. Most are Hondurans, seeking to escape poverty and violence, and include families with children. The caravan swelled dramatically soon after crossing the Mexican border on Oct. 19, but sickness, fear and police harassment have whittled down its numbers. Trump tweeted a direct message to the migrants Thursday, urging them to return home. "To those in the Caravan, turnaround," he wrote. "We are not letting people into the United States illegally. Go back to your Country and if you want, apply for citizenship like millions of others are doing!" The migrants have largely been disconnected from news reports about them. When asked about Trump's tweets, they have generally responded that he should stop attacking them and said they would keep heading north. Candy Guillermo, a 37-year-old migrant in the caravan who had heard about the plan to deploy troops, was surprised she and the children in group would be considered a threat. "Trump should be more humanitarian," she said. "We only want to give our kids a better future." Migrants who do reach the U.S. border can claim asylum under U.S. and international law. Those who clear an initial screening are often released until their cases are decided in immigration court, which can take several years. The U.S. had 331,700 asylum claims in 2017, more than any country in the world, according to the U.N. Refugee Agency. That's nearly double the asylum claims the U.S. fielded in 2015 and nearly quadruple the claims in 2013. Trump ordered the deployment of the National Guard earlier this year to respond to a spike in illegal crossings. Those troops are under the control of state governors and are limited to support roles such as providing surveillance. The planned deployment of active duty troops is in response to a request from the Department of Homeland Security, which manages the Border Patrol, a U.S. official said. DHS asked for help in various forms, the official said, including air transport and other logistical assistance. It was not immediately clear why active duty forces were sought because National Guard troops can perform the same functions. Earlier this year Mattis authorized Pentagon funding for up to 4,000 National Guard troops on the border and thus far only a little over 2,000 have been used. Federal law prohibits the use of active duty service members for law enforcement inside the U.S. unless specifically authorized by Congress. Trump seemed to hint at the troop announcement to a rally in Wisconsin on Wednesday. "Wait'll you see what happens over the next couple of weeks. You're going to see a very secure border," he said. "You just watch." __ Associated Press writers Elliot Spagat in San Diego and Julie Watson, in Pijijiapan, Mexico, contributed to this report. In this Oct. 23, 2018 image, a woman holds the book of numbers and names as she calls those that will be allowed to cross the border and request asylum in the United States, in Tijuana, Mexico. The first obstacle that migrants in a giant caravan may face if they reach the US border is a long wait in Mexico. To enter through San Diego, the wait in Mexico is a month or longer, spawning an unusual numbering system. (AP Photo/Gregory Bull) SACRAMENTO, Calif. (AP) - California Gov. Jerry Brown on Thursday criticized the Trump administration's plans to exit an arms treaty with Russia and called out "bipartisan blindness" toward global nuclear threats after he was named executive chairman of the organization that sets the "Doomsday Clock" measuring threats to humanity. "When humankind has in its hands the technology to absolutely destroy all of civilization there is nothing so important it ought to prevent dialogue and deep discussion," Brown said in an interview with The Associated Press. Brown's new role with the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists will ensure he stays relevant on the global topics he cares most about when he leaves office in January after two separate stints as California governor starting in the 1970s. The Chicago-based Bulletin was founded in 1945 after the creation of the atomic bomb and in the decades since has expanded its mission to a broader discussion of threats to human survival, including climate change, one of Brown's signature issues. The Doomsday Clock, moved to two minutes from midnight in January, is a visual representation of how close the Bulletin believes the world is to catastrophe. Brown, known for thinking big and talking bluntly about threats to human existence, has taken on an outsize role on the global stage as President Donald Trump recedes from U.S. commitments on climate change and, most recently, the nuclear treaty with Russia. FILE - In this Sept. 10, 2018 file photo, Gov. Jerry Brown speaks during an interview with The Associated Press, in Sacramento, Calif. Brown has been named executive chairman of the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, a group that measures manmade threats to human existence. The group manages the Doomsday Clock, a visual representation of how close the Bulletin believes the world is to catastrophe brought on by nuclear weapons, climate change and new technologies. The group announced Thursday, Oct. 25 that the Democratic governor leaving office in January will take over leadership of the Bulletin. (AP Photo/Rich Pedroncelli, File) The president announced the U.S. will leave the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces signed in 1987 with the former Soviet Union. It bans the two countries from making or possessing certain types of nuclear missiles. Trump said Russia has violated the treaty, which Russia denies. Brown said tearing up the treaty is "not only wrong, it's dangerous - not to say stupid." Brown has had his own discussions with Russian ambassadors to the United States and the United Nations about the dangers of nuclear proliferation, most recently after a commemoration this month for a historic cemetery in Northern California rich in Russian history, he said. Nuclear threats and climate change are topics Brown frequently raises with foreign leaders who stop by his office while in California. "I'm not here to represent the U.S. government, that's the president's job, but I am as a citizen of the country, of California, of the world, concerned that these very powerful technologies are not being managed with wisdom," he said. He also sits on the board of the Nuclear Threat Initiative and attended meetings of the group in Washington, D.C., this week. While there, he met with U.S. Defense Secretary Jim Mattis. Brown spokesman Evan Westrup declined to provide specifics on the conversation. Even though the diplomatic relationship between the United States and Russia is frayed, Brown said, focusing on containing and reducing nuclear threats should be a priority. Neither political party seems to view it as one, he said. "We still ought to realize that ending civilization is a bigger problem than any of the other problems we have with Russia," he said. As executive chairman of the Bulletin, Brown will preside over the group's three boards - a governing board, a science and security board and an editorial board. It's a new role created just for Brown, and he'll focus on generating global urgency around nuclear and other threats. Brown's interest in the topic harkens back to the 1970s and 1980s when he was running for president. "We really see him as a global ambassador for the issues that we work on - manmade existential threats, nuclear, climate, disruptive technology," said Rachel Bronson, the group's president and chief executive. __ This story and headline have been corrected to show Brown is joining the organization, not leading it. NEW ORLEANS (AP) - The New Orleans Museum of Art is winding up the city's tricentennial with an exhibition of dozens of paintings collected by the man the city is named for: Philippe II, Duke of Orleans. He was King Louis XIV's nephew and regent of France for eight years, ruling for the boy king Louis XV. The duke owned 772 paintings when he died in 1723 - a collection rivaling that of his uncle Louis XIV in an era when art collections were symbols of power. It was both extensive and varied, with art from many countries and schools, including "artists not collected as much before him," said Vanessa Schmid, the New Orleans museum's senior research curator for European art. Now 30 of those paintings are together for the first time in centuries, loaned by museums across the United States and Europe. After a patrons' preview Thursday evening, the exhibit will be open to the public Friday through Jan. 27. "It's really a special experience to have these works from all over ... because of their connections to one collector after whom the city is named," said Mimi Hellman, art history department chair at Skidmore College in Saratoga Springs, New York. Hellman, who wasn't involved with the exhibit, said she thinks the show and its 288-page catalog will attract considerable interest in the art world. A number of paintings from the Orleans Collection were sold in the decade after the duke's death. But his grandson, called "Philippe Egalite" (Philippe Equality) sold most of them in the early 1790s to help finance the French Revolution and pay some of his own debts. London art dealers re-sold the paintings, first putting them on public exhibition. In this Oct. 24, 2018 photo, a bust of the man New Orleans is named for, Philippe II, duke of Orleans, and several of the paintings in a new exhibit of work collected by the duke are displayed at the New Orleans Museum of Art in New Orleans. About 30 items from the duke's collection are together for the first time in centuries thanks to loans from dozens of museums across the United States and Europe. The exhibit, part of New Orleans' tricentennial celebrations, will be open to the public from Oct. 26 through Jan. 27, 2019. (AP Photo/New Orleans) Most art collectors of the time were royal or noble, their holdings seen only by the elite admitted into their castles and estates. The Orleans Collection displays were the first blockbuster art exhibits, drawing crowds for months and exposing a wider public to great art, Schmid said. "For the first time in the history of Western culture, people were coming to look at paintings that would have been hidden away in royal palaces," Schmid said. Six of The National Gallery of London's first 38 paintings were originally from the duke's collection, she noted. A painting bought in 1999 by that museum, illustrating a story about Alexander the Great, is among those lent for the New Orleans exhibit. The climax of the New Orleans exhibit, Schmid said, is a Rembrandt painting called The Mill, lent by the National Gallery of Art in Washington. "The Rembrandt's one of America's greatest treasures," she said. Schmid said the exhibit is divided into four general areas. The first is about the duke's Paris residence, the Palais Royal, "setting the scene for the court coming back from Versailles ... and the palace as setting for the collection." That includes court painter Antoine Coypel's oil "sketch" for the great gallery's ceiling. It seems to open into the heavens, with mythological figures around the painted opening and winged figures flying up toward clouds. Lent by the Musee des Beaux Arts in Angers, France, it's more than 6 feet (nearly 2 meters) wide. "The ceiling itself was destroyed," Schmid said. "That painting has never left France before." The next section has several areas focusing on different aspects of the duke as a collector. "He's acquiring some of these really, really, really prestige collections. ... In this world of the 18th century, art is about power. It's not only showing your wealth and your taste and building a legacy, but also in a very public way competing with other rulers of the past and present," said Hellman. The next section discusses Philippe II's collection in light of his age's theories about art. "That's a section I'm quite proud of - one of many aspects showing a more in-depth approach to the duke and the creative ways he thought about his collection," Schmid said. The show ends with a review of the sales and dispersal of the Orleans Collection, showing its effect on 19th century British art and on public museums. That's where the Rembrandt is shown. ___ Online: The Orleans Collection: https://noma.org/exhibitions/the-orleans-collection/ In this Oct. 24, 2018 photo, New Orleans Museum of Art curator Vanessa Schmid describes "The Mill" by Rembrandt van Rijn, as one of America's great treasures and the climax to an exhibition of paintings collected by the man New Orleans was named after, Philippe II, duke of Orleans at the New Orleans Museum of Art in New Orleans. The collected works by the duke from Oct. 26 through Jan. 27, 2019, as part of the city's tricentennial celebrations. (AP Photo/Janet McConnaughey) MANASSAS, Va. (AP) - A Virginia jury spared the life of an Army staff sergeant convicted of fatally shooting his wife and a rookie police officer after deadlocking Thursday on whether he should be executed. The jury sent a note Thursday morning after 12 hours of deliberation over three days saying that it was split 6-6 on whether Ronald Hamilton, 34, of Woodbridge should be executed. Under Virginia law, a life sentence without possibility of parole is imposed any time jurors are not unanimous for execution. "The jury is the voice of the community. Obviously in this case the community is split right down the middle," Prince William County Commonwealth's Attorney Paul Ebert said. No jury in Virginia has imposed a death sentence since 2011. Hamilton had already been convicted of capital murder for the deaths of his wife, Crystal Hamilton, and Officer Ashley Guindon, who was working her first shift after being sworn in. Hamilton shot and killed his wife in the family's Woodbridge home in 2016. He then shot three police officers who responded. Guindon died. The other officers suffered serious injuries but survived. Prosecutors had urged the jury of 10 women and two men to "put him in the grave" for his actions. The two officers who survived the shooting, Jesse Hempen and David McKeown, were among those who testified during the two-month trial. FILE - In this February 2016 photo provided by the Prince William County, Va. Police shows Ronald Hamilton. A jury has spared the life of Hamilton, convicted of fatally shooting his wife and a rookie police officer who responded to her call for help. The decision Thursday, Oct. 25, 2018, by the jury in Manassas means that Hamilton will serve life in prison without possibility of parole for the deaths of his wife, Crystal Hamilton, and Officer Ashley Guindon, who was working her first shift after being sworn in. (Prince William County Police via AP, File) McKeown testified that he kicked in the door to check on Crystal Hamilton's welfare after Ronald Hamilton denied the officers entry. He then saw a crouched Hamilton wielding a military rifle. He said he saw the flash of the muzzle but didn't remember hearing the shots. "I started feeling the impacts on my body," McKeown said. "I tried to draw my gun, but my arm stopped working." Hempen testified that after being shot, he could see Guindon, eyes open and lying face down on the front lawn. "I felt bad that I didn't know her name," he said. "I was calling out, 'Hang in there, new girl. Hang in there, new girl.'" Defense attorneys urged the jury to show Hamilton mercy. They emphasized Hamilton's military service, which included two tours in Iraq. They put on testimony during the trial's sentencing phase that Hamilton turned his life around in the Army, evolving from an unruly soldier into one who earned the admiration of his peers. "He went from being a screwup soldier to a model soldier," defense attorney Ed Ungvarsky said. "He showed the potential for change, the potential for growth." After the trial concluded, Ungvarsky said he and the other defense lawyers "are obviously happy that the jury was able to look within its own humanity and find the humanity within" Hamilton and spare his life. After the jury indicated it was split, prosecutors asked the judge to instruct the jury to keep deliberating and try to reach a unanimous verdict. Defense lawyers said that such an instruction, which is common in many criminal cases, is inappropriate in a death penalty case. Virginia law is explicit that a life sentence should be imposed when a jury does not unanimously vote for death. Judge Steven Smith opted against pressing the jurors for unanimity. "The jury has given me clarity," Smith said, noting the 6-6 split. "The jury is deadlocked." Guindon's mother, Sharon Guindon, said after the verdict that "the jury got it wrong." She said she had a feeling that the jury was struggling with its deliberations and that perhaps one or two holdouts were seeking a life sentence, and that she was surpised by the even split. She said she had hoped for a death penalty to send a message: "If you kill a police officer, you are going to get death." Hamilton showed little reaction as it became clear that his life was spared. Family members seated behind him wept. Outside the courtroom, some of the victims' family members wept in one another's arms. Ebert, who has served as the county's top prosecutor for 50 years, has sent 10 people to Virginia's death chamber, more than any other prosecutor. Michael Stone, executive director of Virginians for Alternatives to the Death Penalty, said the jury's decision to spare Hamilton is significant, especially considering the fact that it came from Prince William County, which has sent so many people to death row during Ebert's tenure. "I really am wondering if this marks the beginning of the end of the death penalty in Virginia," Stone said. CONCORD, N.H. (AP) - The first time Safiya Wazir saw the New Hampshire Statehouse, she and her parents were trying to get home from a church where they had taken their first English lesson. It was cold, and they were confused. "We had a hard time finding our way. That's where we ended up going - the Statehouse - and standing right in front of it so the bus could pick us up," she said. Just over a decade later, the former refugee from Afghanistan is hoping to earn a spot inside the building, filling one of 400 seats in the New Hampshire House, the largest such chamber in any state and fourth largest legislative body in the English-speaking world. Wazir defeated four-term incumbent Dick Patten in the Sept. 11 Democratic primary in Concord's Ward 8, a blue-collar corner of the capital city. It was a surprising victory for a young, female candidate new to both politics and, compared with her opponent, the country. "Take that, Donald Trump!" crowed Democratic National Committeewoman Kathy Sullivan in presenting Wazir with a "Courage in Leadership" award this month. Wazir was 6 when her family fled the Taliban in 1997, and she spent 10 years in Uzbekistan before moving to Concord in 2007. She started high school at age 16, studying the dictionary at night and working jobs at Walmart and Goodwill, became a U.S. citizen in 2013, and earned a business degree from Concord's community college. She and her husband have two daughters and another baby due in January. In this Tuesday, Oct. 9, 2018 photo, Safiya Wazir holds her daughter, Aaliyah, behind one of her campaign signs in Concord, N.H. Wazir, a Democrat and former refugee from Afghanistan, is running for the 400-member New Hampshire House after an upset win over the incumbent during the primary. (AP Photo/Holly Ramer) In contrast with her cold introduction to the Statehouse, Wazir launched her campaign during the heat of summer, which coincided with the first trimester of her pregnancy. "I would come back home as a cooked tomato with my face being red, trying to cool down myself," said Wazir, now 27. "I did see all those hardships, but it pays off because the more hard work you do, the more people like you. The more energy that you put in, people really see that somebody is actually working for them." Patten did not return calls seeking comment but complained to the Concord Monitor that minorities who "have just moved into the city" were "getting everything" over longtime residents. In an interview, Wazir's Republican opponent, Dennis Soucy, said he has been unfairly labeled as sexist and racist. He described growing up so poor in Manchester that he washed the family's clothes in the polluted Merrimack River and got his first job at age 11. "I'm the victim here," he said. "We struggled, and here we are - everyone is jumping all over her for doing absolutely nothing, for being a refugee." A veteran and cancer survivor who retired from work in transportation and surveillance, Soucy said he is running to improve services for veterans and to address the state's opioid crisis. "We have to take care of our own," he said. "We have to make America what it was." Wazir, who serves on the board of a social services agency and volunteers with Head Start, said her priorities include improving school safety and education overall, implementing paid family medical leave, expanding access to affordable health care, and making housing more affordable, particularly for young people. She dismissed her opponents' criticism, saying that she has withstood bullying in the past and that New Hampshire should welcome diversity. "Our state is aging, and we need younger people to stay in the state in order for us to move forward," Wazir said. "Immigrants or refugees have ideas that they could contribute into this state because every bit of new blood brings new ideas to the state." Knocking on doors one recent morning, Wazir chatted with Trilly and George Lewis, both of whom said they would vote for her Nov. 6. "Dick Patten has done a lot of good things over the years, but it's time for him to gracefully move on," said George Lewis, 83. "I believe that Safiya is the kind of person that we need representing us." In this Tuesday, Oct. 9, 2018 photo, Safiya Wazir leaves a campaign flyer at a home in Concord, N.H. Wazir, a Democrat and former refugee from Afghanistan, is running for the 400-member New Hampshire House after an upset win over the incumbent during the primary. (AP Photo/Holly Ramer) In this Tuesday, Oct. 9, 2018 photo, Trilly and George Lewis greet Safiya Wazir, front, as she campaigns with her daughter Aaliyah in Concord, N.H. Wazir, a Democrat and former refugee from Afghanistan, is running for the 400-member New Hampshire House after an upset win over the incumbent during the primary. (AP Photo/Holly Ramer) INDEPENDENCE, Ore. (AP) - Delmiro Trevino, a U.S. citizen born in Texas, was waiting for a meal in a restaurant in Independence, Oregon, in 1977 when three sheriff's deputies and a policewoman demanded he show documents proving he was an American. "I was ashamed. It wasn't right, what they were doing," Trevino, now 67 with gray hair, said in an exclusive interview with The Associated Press. The incident of racial profiling led to Oregon becoming America's first sanctuary state. But now, Oregonians are deciding in the Nov. 6 election whether to repeal the law, even as some other states, such as Vermont, have adopted sanctuary policies and others, like Texas, have banned towns from approving them. Measure 105 in Oregon has become the most contentious ballot measure facing voters in the mostly Democratic state. Rep. Sal Esquivel, one of three Republican state lawmakers who sponsored Measure 105, said states should help enforce federal law. "Our nation cannot remain sovereign without laws that regulate which foreign nationals come here, when, and in what numbers," Esquivel wrote in the voters' pamphlet. In this Oct. 23, 2018 photo, Delmiro Trevino and his wife Oralia pose in front of a building in Independence, Ore., where the Hi-Ho restaurant used to be located. It was in that restaurant, in 1977, that Delmiro Trevino was in when three sheriff's deputies and a policewoman came in and demanded he show documents proving he was American. The racial profiling of Trevino, an American born in Texas, led to Oregon becoming America's first sanctuary state. Now, Oregonians are deciding in the Nov. 6 election whether to repeal the law, even as some other states, like Vermont, have adopted sanctuary policies and others, like Texas, have banned towns from adopting them. (AP Photo/Andrew Selsky) But among people of color - U.S. citizens and people in the country illegally - it has triggered memories of times when immigration roundups were common and raised fears that they'll be stopped by police. The measure has split law enforcement. Sheriff Thomas Bergin of Clatsop County, along Oregon's northern coast, said in a public letter that the sanctuary law "tells illegal immigrants that Oregon considers immigration law violations so inconsequential as to be unworthy of police and sheriffs' attention." Fifteen sheriffs added their names to the letter. Twenty did not. Law enforcement officers who oppose the repeal effort, such as Sheriff Pat Garrett of Washington County near Portland, said they need to direct their resources elsewhere instead of going after migrants, and that erasing the sanctuary law would make migrants afraid to report crimes when they're victims or witnesses. "Throwing out the law would open the door to racial profiling, and would degrade community trust in law enforcement," state Rep. Diego Hernandez, a Portland Democrat, said in an email. Latinos remember what it was like before the sanctuary law went on the books. "The culture in the mid-20th century was, 'You can work here, but don't start looking at our girls or going to our churches,'" said Rocky Barilla, the first Latino elected to the Oregon Legislature. "Police were knocking on doors of apartment buildings. They set up roadblocks on Highway 99 and stopped people, especially if they were brown or Latino." One winter night in 1977, three Polk County deputies and an Independence policewoman went into the Hi-Ho restaurant in the picturesque riverside city and confronted Trevino. Born in Weslaco, Texas, the soft-spoken Trevino had moved to Oregon with his family as a boy. He worked in a plywood mill. One of the deputies grabbed Trevino by the arm, forcing him to stand as customers looked on. Like most Americans, Trevino didn't routinely carry a birth certificate or other proof of citizenship. "They asked me if I am an American, and asked me if I had a passport," Trevino recalled. The officers, acting on behalf of federal immigration agents, let him go after the policewoman said she recognized Trevino as a long-term local. Still, a deputy accosted him later. Trevino was so bothered that he and his wife Oralia went to a legal aid group. There, they found Barilla, who suggested Trevino sue the law officers and the Immigration and Naturalization Service. Trevino felt queasy about taking that step. "I told my wife, I have to be strong because of what I was going to do, because this was the government. It's not a game," Barilla remembered while sitting in his house in Independence on a recent afternoon. The lawsuit was settled in federal court in 1978, with the immigration service saying it would not encourage local law enforcement to make arrests on immigration violations, Barilla said. Still, raids persisted in the state. In the 1980s, Barilla was elected to the Legislature, with the Trevino case strong on his mind. It prompted the Democratic representative to write the sanctuary state bill, which passed with bipartisan support in 1987. "I worked with Republicans, who wanted a stable labor force," Barilla said in a telephone interview from Belmont, California, where he now lives. "The left saw it as an end to racial profiling. Law enforcement saw it as controlling their own goals and funds." Barilla said Trevino played a key role in the issue. "He's the real Rosa Parks of the Oregon sanctuary movement," Barilla said, comparing him to the African-American civil rights icon who refused to sit in the back of a bus in Alabama. "He said 'No mas, ya basta,' meaning 'no more, enough.'" "He used a couple other colorful words," Barilla added with a laugh. ___ Follow Andrew Selsky on Twitter at https://twitter.com/andrewselsky In this Oct. 23, 2018 photo signs in a farm field outside Independence, Ore., urge voters to say "no" to a ballot measure aimed at repealing a 1987 law that made Oregon the first sanctuary state in America. (AP Photo/Andrew Selsky) BOSTON (AP) - The family of a teen killed when a series of natural gas explosions and explosions rocked communities north of Boston plans to file a wrongful death lawsuit against the utility company. Attorney Doug Sheff told reporters Thursday that Columbia Gas was reckless and should have to pay for last month's death of Leonel Rondon. The high school junior died after the chimney of an exploding house crashed into his car and crushed him. He had received his driver's license just hours earlier. Sheff says Rondon's family "wants justice." He says the complaint will be filed at a later date. The National Transportation Safety Board says over-pressurized gas lines caused the explosions. A Columbia Gas spokesman said the company won't comment on the litigation, but said their "hearts go out to the Rondon family." Doug Sheff, right, an attorney for the family of Leonel Rondon, pictured at left, faces reporters during a news conference, Thursday, Oct. 25, 2018, in Boston. Rondon died in September when dozens of gas explosions ripped through three Massachusetts communities. Sheff told reporters Columbia Gas was reckless and should have to pay for Rondon's death, saying the complaint will be filed at a later date. (AP Photo/Steven Senne) FILE - In this Thursday, Sept. 13, 2018 file photo, a collapsed home and car sit damaged on Chickering Street in Lawrence, Mass., after a series of gas explosions in several communities north of Boston. Authorities said Leonel Rondon died after the chimney toppled by the exploding house crashed into his car in the driveway. The family of Rondon, 18, plans to file a wrongful death lawsuit against Columbia Gas. (Carl Russo/The Eagle-Tribune via AP, File) BAGHDAD (AP) - Iraq's new prime minister began moving his offices out of Baghdad's highly secure Green Zone on the first day of his term Thursday, saying he wanted to bring his government closer to the people. Adel Abdul-Mahdi held his first news conference in a rehabilitated government compound opposite Baghdad's iconic central railway station, near the city center. He said he wanted to provide security, water and electricity for all Iraqis during his term. "We want to consider all of Iraq a Green Zone," said Abdul-Mahdi. The U.S. established the Green Zone in 2003 to secure its embassy and Iraqi government institutions. But the zone has become a symbol of the country's aggressive inequality and fueled the perception among Iraqis that their government is out of touch. The new location, approximately 2 miles (3.2 kilometers) from the Green Zone, used to contain the offices of Parliament under the late dictator Saddam Hussein. Access is tightly controlled by security forces, who guard the main gate with armored vehicles Prime Minister-designate Adel Abdul-Mahdi, center, arrives to the parliament building, in the heavily guarded Green Zone, in Baghdad, Iraq, Wednesday, Oct. 24, 2018. Iraq's parliament is convening to vote on Prime Minister-designate Adel Abdul-Mahdi's ministry appointments, and the parliament must confirm the appointments for the government to be sworn in. (AP Photo/Hadi Mizban) Abdul-Mahdi begins his tenure facing a raft of challenges including high unemployment, widespread corruption, dilapidated public services and poor security. Frustration over chronic power cuts and water pollution sparked riots in Iraq's southern provinces in the summer. A former oil and finance minister and an ex-vice president, the 76-year-old Abdul-Mahdi is seen as a political independent and is Iraq's first prime minister from outside the Dawa party in 12 years. But he begins his term with a hobbled government after lawmakers in an unruly session of Parliament on Wednesday night refused to vote on eight of his Cabinet nominees. Abdul-Mahdi was left without ministers for key ministries including Defense, Justice and the Interior. One of his first challenges will be to develop a coherent Iraqi position on tight U.S. sanctions on neighboring Iran, which will go into effect Nov. 2. The sanctions prohibit any businesses from doing commerce with both the U.S. and Iran. Abdul-Mahdi's predecessor, Haidar al-Abadi, sought a waiver from the U.S. government to exempt Iraqi companies from the rules. Abdul-Mahdi said he would balance Iraq's own interests and independence against the tugs of the economic war between Washington and Tehran. "Iraq is not part of the sanctions system," he said. "We want to secure Iraq from any interference in (its) issues and affairs." WILMINGTON, Del. (AP) - A former law school applicant has pleaded guilty to cyberstalking an alumnus who interviewed him. The News Journal reports a federal judge called 28-year-old Ho Ka Terence Yung's harassment and intimidation "a disturbing mix of violence and sexual degradation that actually resulted in complete strangers approaching the victim's home." A U.S. attorney's office release says Yung's parents live in Wilmington, Delaware, where he met the victim during an admissions process interview for "a top national law school." Prosecutors say Yung performed poorly and was rejected a week later. Yung embarked on an 18-month cyberstalking campaign, including publishing online ads directing people interested in violent sexual activity to the victim's house. Yung was arrested in Austin, Texas, in February 2017. He pleaded guilty Tuesday. TIJUANA, Mexico (AP) - A woman arrived just after sunrise at the Mexican entrance to the busiest border crossing into the U.S. and was quickly surrounded by nearly 100 migrants. She opened a tattered, hardcover notebook bound with silver duct tape and began shouting out numbers from a handwritten list. Migrants came forward when their numbers were called, the signal that they could proceed to San Diego on the American side and ask for asylum in the United States. Most of them had been waiting more than a month in Tijuana for that moment to come. "We are nervous but happy because - so many days waiting," said an overjoyed 22-year-old Maria Yuliza Soreque, whose turn came on Tuesday after she and her mother and 2-year-old daughter had bided their time in this city for five weeks. Soreque abandoned the family store in the Mexican state of Michoacan to escape violence and hoped to settle with a friend in Florida, where she has a restaurant job waiting. It's a waiting game that plays out each day in Tijuana, giving a glimpse of what the thousands of Central American migrants in the giant caravan now moving through Mexico could face if they reach the U.S. border, probably weeks from now at the earliest. While it is not clear exactly where or how the migrants intend to come across, they are certain to encounter an immigration system already strained by a surge of families arriving at the U.S. border in recent months. At border crossings in Texas, asylum seekers camp at the midpoints of bridges connecting the two countries, waiting for days for U.S. border inspectors to say their turn has come. At Tijuana, the wait is more than a month, giving rise to an informal take-a-number system apparently run by volunteers who are themselves asylum seekers. The system spares migrants from having to wait in line or sleep out in the open. In this Oct. 23, 2018 image, Ana Delia Soto Duarte, who seeks asylum in the United States from her home in Guerrero, Mexico, waits in hopes of hearing her number called to cross the border in Tijuana, Mexico. The first obstacle that migrants in a giant caravan may face if they reach the U.S. border is a long wait in Mexico. To enter through San Diego, the wait in Mexico is a month or longer, spawning an unusual numbering system. (AP Photo/Gregory Bull) New arrivals in Tijuana give their names to the keeper of the notebook and are issued numbers. Then they wait in the city's migrant shelters or other places in town, returning every morning to hear the day's numbers read off when it looks as if their turn is near. Those seeking asylum in the U.S. undergo an initial interview on the American side in which they try to show they have a "credible fear" of harm in their home countries. Seventy-seven percent of migrants passed their credible-fear screenings between September 2017 and last June, the latest figures available. After that, asylum seekers may be held in immigration jails until their cases are decided by an immigration judge, which can take as little as a month or two. Many other immigrants are released into the U.S., often with ankle-monitoring bracelets, while they await a ruling that can take years - a practice the Trump administration has condemned as "catch and release." The odds of ultimate success for the caravan members appear slim. Mexicans fared worst among the 10 countries that sent the largest numbers of asylum seekers from 2012 to 2017, with a denial rate of 88 percent, according to an analysis of public records by Syracuse University's Transactional Records Action Clearinghouse. El Salvadorans were close behind with a 79 percent denial rate, followed by Hondurans at 78 percent and Guatemalans at 75 percent. On top of that, Attorney General Jeff Sessions ruled in June that fleeing gang or domestic violence is generally not considered grounds for asylum. On Tuesday, Paula Cabrera, 22, had been in Tijuana for three weeks while she waited for the opportunity to apply for asylum along with her grandmother and 3-month-old daughter. She came every morning to check her status. Cabrera, who abandoned the family ranch in Michoacan because of threats from a gang and hoped to settle with an uncle in Palo Alto, California, said the shelter where she was staying was overcrowded and she was anxious to move on. The keeper of the notebook announced there was room for 19 people to claim asylum that morning. An hour later, after speaking with Mexican immigration officials in a white pickup truck nearby, she told the crowd that 40 more could go that afternoon. Sila Noemi Felix, 45, took a bus from Guatemala with her 13-year-old son, a U.S. citizen who threatened to make the journey on his own if she didn't join him. A Tijuana couple let her stay in their home in exchange for paying a share of the utility bills. After she had spent more than four weeks in Tijuana, her number was called. She hopes to join family in Rogers, Kansas, and eventually raise enough money to bring her two older sons, also U.S. citizens, from Guatemala. "I want a better future for them," she said. In this Oct. 23, 2018 image, a woman hands over her documents as her number is called to cross the border and request asylum in the United States, in Tijuana, Mexico. The first obstacle that migrants in a giant caravan may face if they reach the U.S. border is a long wait in Mexico. To enter through San Diego, the wait in Mexico is a month or longer. (AP Photo/Gregory Bull) In this Oct. 23, 2018 image, a woman holds the book of numbers and names as she calls those that will be allowed to cross the border and request asylum in the United States, in Tijuana, Mexico. The first obstacle that migrants in a giant caravan may face if they reach the US border is a long wait in Mexico. To enter through San Diego, the wait in Mexico is a month or longer, spawning an unusual numbering system. (AP Photo/Gregory Bull) In this Oct. 23, 2018 image, people seeking asylum in the United States wait to receive a number at the border in Tijuana, Mexico. The first obstacle that migrants in a giant caravan may face if they reach the US border is a long wait in Mexico. To enter through San Diego, the wait in Mexico is a month or longer. (AP Photo/Gregory Bull) In this Oct. 23, 2018 image, Maria Yuliza Soreque, center, checks in with her two-year-old daughter, after her number was called, signaling her chance to cross into the United States to request asylum, in Tijuana, Mexico. The first obstacle that migrants in a giant caravan may face if they reach the U.S. border is a long wait in Mexico. To enter through San Diego, the wait in Mexico is a month or longer, spawning an unusual numbering system. (AP Photo/Gregory Bull) In this Oct. 23, 2018 image, women look on as numbers and names are called to cross the border and request asylum in the United States, in Tijuana, Mexico. The first obstacle that migrants in a giant caravan may face if they reach the U.S. border is a long wait in Mexico. To enter through San Diego, the wait in Mexico is a month or longer, spawning an unusual numbering system. (AP Photo/Gregory Bull) In this Oct. 23, 2018 image, Maria Yuliza Soreque, center, uses her phone after her number was called, signaling her chance to cross into the United States to request asylum, in Tijuana, Mexico. The first obstacle that migrants in a giant caravan may face if they reach the U.S. border is a long wait in Mexico. To enter through San Diego, the wait in Mexico is a month or longer, spawning an unusual numbering system. (AP Photo/Gregory Bull) In this Oct. 23, 2018 image, a woman from Guerrero, Mexico, who did not give her name reacts as she hears about the wait time for her chance to request asylum in the United States, in Tijuana, Mexico. The first obstacle that migrants in a giant caravan may face if they reach the US border is a long wait in Mexico. To enter through San Diego, the wait in Mexico is a month or longer. (AP Photo/Gregory Bull) TRENTON, N.J. (AP) - New Jersey health officials said Thursday tests confirmed a 19th patient has been infected in a viral outbreak at a pediatric rehabilitation center that has killed seven people. The unidentified person had already been ill so the diagnosis does not necessarily mean the virus is still spreading, according to Health Department spokeswoman Donna Leusner. The outbreak won't be declared over until the Wanaque Center for Nursing and Rehabilitation can go four weeks without any new cases of people being infected with a type of germ called adenovirus 7, Health Commissioner Dr. Shereef Elnahal said this week . The seven people who died this month were children and at least one young adult, all in a respiratory unit where patients receive long-term help with breathing. The identities of those who died and the affected patients have not been disclosed. Adenovirus usually poses little risk for healthy people and typically causes mild cold or flu symptoms, including sore throats, fever, coughs and sneezes. Some strains also cause diarrhea and conjunctivitis. New Jersey Department of Health Commissioner Dr. Shereef Elnahal, left, speaks about the adenovirus outbreak as New Jersey Gov. Phil Murphy looks on during a press conference at the The Wanaque Center for Nursing and Rehabilitation on Wednesday, Oct. 24, 2018 in Wanaque, N.J. There have been 18 cases overall at the Wanaque Center for Nursing and Rehabilitation in Haskell, about 30 miles (50 kilometers) northwest of New York, officials said. The 227-bed, for-profit facility has a pediatric unit but also cares for elderly residents. (Michael Karas/The Record via AP) The strain found in the rehab center outbreak is among the more potent types. It sometimes causes more serious respiratory illness, especially among those with weak immune systems. Many of the children at the facility require ventilators for breathing, and some have spent all or most of their lives there, the commissioner said. He described the patients as "fragile." It's unlikely that there's a broader threat, he said. Rowena Bautista, the center's administrator, said Thursday in a statement the community "feels a tremendous sense of loss." She also said the center is working with the state Health Department and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in addition to offering professional grief counselors and setting up a 24-7 hotline. The number is being shared with families, but not the public. Elnahal said the first symptoms showed up Sept. 26, and the state was notified of an outbreak Oct. 9. The center did not provide new details on the timeline of the events at the center, including how and when families were notified. Health officials said they have teams at the facility monitoring the infection, and the center has closed to new patients. The 227-bed for-profit facility has a pediatric center and also cares for elderly residents. New Jersey Governor Phil Murphy speaks about the adenovirus outbreak as New Jersey Department of Health Commissioner Dr. Shereef Elnahal looks during a press conference at the The Wanaque Center for Nursing and Rehabilitation on Wednesday, Oct. 24, 2018 in Wanaque, N.J. There have been 18 cases overall at the Wanaque Center for Nursing and Rehabilitation in Haskell, about 30 miles (50 kilometers) northwest of New York, officials said. The 227-bed, for-profit facility has a pediatric unit but also cares for elderly residents. (Michael Karas/The Record via AP) New Jersey Governor Phil Murphy speaks about the adenovirus outbreak as New Jersey Department of Health Commissioner Dr. Shereef Elnahal looks during a press conference at the The Wanaque Center for Nursing and Rehabilitation on Wednesday, Oct. 24, 2018 in Wanaque, N.J. There have been 18 cases overall at the Wanaque Center for Nursing and Rehabilitation in Haskell, about 30 miles (50 kilometers) northwest of New York, officials said. The 227-bed, for-profit facility has a pediatric unit but also cares for elderly residents. (Michael Karas/The Record via AP) MILWAUKEE (AP) - Former President Barack Obama plans to visit one of Milwaukee's most impoverished black neighborhoods Friday to campaign for Wisconsin Democrats, underlining his party's efforts to encourage African-Americans to vote. African-Americans traditionally vote Democrat, so low black voter turnout in Milwaukee in 2016 proved costly for Hillary Clinton. She narrowly lost Wisconsin, which was among a handful of states that helped determine the presidency. When Obama won Wisconsin in 2012, black voter turnout was at 74 percent, but that number plummeted to 55 percent in 2016, according to the liberal Center for American Progress. The group's analysis concluded that Clinton would have narrowly won Wisconsin if black turnout had remained at 2012 levels. "We're excited to have him here to energize that base and to really amplify the candidates that we're trying to elect in two weeks," said Angela Lang, the executive director of Black Leaders Organizing for Communities. The group formed after the 2016 election with the goal of engaging and building trust with black voters in Wisconsin. The overall number of people who voted in Milwaukee declined by 41,000 votes in 2016 compared to 2012 - a drop the city's election chief said was likely caused by tighter voter ID restrictions in Wisconsin. Democrats saw black voter turnout fall elsewhere in 2016. In Detroit - a majority-black Democratic stronghold - turnout also dropped by 41,000 votes, or 14 percent, from Obama's 2012 re-election. That was also a factor in Clinton's narrow loss to President Donald Trump in Michigan. FILE - In this Oct. 22, 2018 file photo, former President Barack Obama speaks at a rally in support of candidate for Senate Jacky Rosen and other Nevada Democrats, in Las Vegas. Obama is visiting one of Milwaukee's most impoverished black neighborhoods Friday, Oct. 26, 2018, to campaign for Wisconsin Democrats, signaling his party's effort to encourage African-Americans to vote and avoid the low turnout that proved costly for Hillary Clinton in 2016. (AP Photo/John Locher) Emboldened by higher turnout in the Michigan primary, Democrats are confident about November but say they are not taking anything for granted. After campaigning in Milwaukee, Obama will head to Detroit later on Friday to stump for Democratic candidates at a high school. African-Americans make up 6.7 percent of Wisconsin's 5.8 million residents. But in Milwaukee, a city of nearly 600,000, blacks comprise 40 percent of the population. The vast majority live north of downtown in neighborhoods hardest hit by poverty and crime. The setting for Obama's rally is a high school in a ZIP code where nearly half the residents live below the poverty level, 21.6 percent are unemployed, and a quarter of the housing units are vacant, according to 2016 census estimates . "What we are talking about is a plan to actually improve the lives of people across the state - whether it's better-paying jobs, access to affordable health care, criminal justice reform, investments in schools. Those are motivating factors to get people to vote," said Mandela Barnes, who is trying to become the state's first African-American lieutenant governor and only the second black person in Wisconsin's 170-year history to hold statewide office. "We got Barack Obama and people felt like, 'Oh, we've got black voters, younger voters locked down forever,'" Barnes said. "That's just not the case. We learned a hard lesson." Obama will also be stumping for Democratic U.S. Sen. Tammy Baldwin and congressional candidates Randy Bryce and Dan Kohl. He didn't campaign for Clinton in Milwaukee and the last time he visited the city for a political event was to celebrate Affordable Care Act enrollments in March 2016. BLOC staffers have been visiting black neighborhoods on Milwaukee's west side, to encourage people to take part in the Nov. 6 midterms. "If we don't vote, we're only hurting ourselves and our community," BLOC staffer Tony Horton said during one such visit. One retiree, 67-year-old Charles King, told Horton that he felt Obama was stifled in Congress and that fewer African-Americans voted in 2016 "because they lost hope." King said he's confident he will benefit from Social Security and Medicare, but that he worries about the next generation. Democrats have been warning voters that Republicans will gut entitlement programs to pay for the new GOP tax law. Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell said last week that entitlement spending is contributing to the rising federal deficit. King said the reason African-Americans in Milwaukee should vote on Nov. 6 is simple: "They don't get off their ass now, I pity their future." ___ Associated Press writer David Eggert in Lansing, Michigan, contributed to this report. ___ Find Ivan Moreno on Twitter: https://twitter.com/1TrueIvan ___ 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 BERLIN (AP) - A Norwegian pension fund is doubling down on its criticism of German utility firm RWE over the power company's long-term plans to use coal. The chief executive of Storebrand, Jan Erik Saugestad, said Thursday that "continued expansion of coal mines and support of coal-fired power has no future" if the world wants to limit global warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius . Saugestad, whose company manages assets worth $85 billion, had called earlier this week for investors to sell their shares in RWE because of its plans to expand a coal mine by chopping down Germany's ancient Hambach forest . RWE hit back Wednesday, saying "everybody needs to do their part" and coal-fired plants are needed to ensure stable power supplies in Germany following the country's decision to phase out nuclear plants. In this Wednesday evening, Oct. 24, 2018 photo an activist is carried away when police clear a protest camp against lignite coal mining near the Hambach Forest in Kerpen, western Germany. Christophe Gateau/dpa via AP) In this Wednesday evening, Oct. 24, 2018 photo an activist stands in the rain when police clear a protest camp against lignite coal mining near the Hambach Forest in Kerpen, western Germany. Christophe Gateau/dpa via AP) In this Wednesday evening, Oct. 24, 2018 photo an activist is carried away when police clear a protest camp against lignite coal mining near the Hambach Forest in Kerpen, western Germany. Christophe Gateau/dpa via AP) The final stretch of the midterm campaign is increasingly dominated by debate over one of the most sensitive issues in American culture: race. In Florida, accusations of racism are playing a central role in the hotly contested campaign for governor. Ron DeSantis, a Republican former congressman, chafed at questions about his ties to supporters who have made inflammatory comments. "How the hell am I supposed to know every single statement somebody makes?" DeSantis said during a debate Wednesday. "I am not going to bow down to the altar of political correctness." His Democratic opponent, Tallahassee Mayor Andrew Gillum, could become the state's first black governor. Gillum went on offense at the debate, blaming DeSantis for fostering an environment that promotes racism. "I'm not calling Mr. DeSantis a racist - I'm simply saying the racists believe he's a racist," Gillum said during a debate. The exchange is a snapshot of how candidates from both parties are grappling with race less than two weeks before the midterms. From New York to Florida, dog-whistle politics are showing up in ads and attacks from outside groups and, in some cases, GOP candidates. It's playing out against the backdrop of President Donald Trump, who has tapped into racial anxiety with warnings of rampant violence in urban areas, voter fraud, a caravan of migrants and unknown "Middle Easterners" threatening the U.S. southern border. IN this Oct. 24, 2018, photo, Florida gubernatorial candidates, Republican Ron DeSantis, left, and Democrat Andrew Gillum fist bump after a debate at Broward College in Davie, Fla. The final stretch of the midterm campaign is increasingly dominated by debate over one of the most sensitive issues in American political culture: Race. In Florida, accusations of racism are playing a central role in the hotly-contested campaign for governor. DeSantis chafed at questions about his ties to supporters who have made inflammatory comments. (AP Photo/Wilfredo Lee, Pool) Democrats argue the GOP is using racially charged appeals to boost turnout among white voters. "If you believe the midterms are about base turnout, then from a strategic standpoint you get why they're trying to throw the best red meat to their base: tribalism," said Democratic pollster Cornell Belcher. "It's all about fear. Fear of the other, fear of losing their country. That wasn't by accident, and this is part and parcel of that." Republican strategist Brian Robinson dismissed such arguments as part of "the silly season." "In the final days, you throw out stuff that you had, that you weren't sure how it would work, that may be inflammatory," he said. Robinson argued that Democrats are more likely to use race as a motivating factor. "Republicans are very sensitive about being called racist," Robinson said. "The standards applied to Republicans are much stricter. We're not allowed to discuss race, so we tiptoe around it, and our own desire not to be called a racist keeps us in line." Still, the racial dynamics of the campaign have been on display this week. On Tuesday, some Florida voters received a robocall appearing to mock Gillum, featuring a voice claiming to be the nominee, speaking in a demeaning minstrel dialect that sounds nothing like him. DeSantis denounced the call. In a telephone interview, Gillum said he listened to the beginning of the audio but didn't play all of it. "These things are also not only designed to go after their base of voters who they think is going to be motivated by these kinds of things, but there's also a little bit of an effort to throw me off my game," Gillum said. "If they can get me angry, catch me with an angry outburst, maybe they can make the case, 'The guy's unstable, you never know what he just might do.'" In Georgia, reports have surfaced over Democrat Stacey Abrams' involvement in a protest more than 25 years ago in which the old state flag - which contained a Confederate symbol at the time - was burned. Abrams is seeking to become the first black woman governor in America, and her opponent, Georgia Secretary of State Brian Kemp, has labeled her "too extreme for Georgia." Abrams responded to The New York Times report during a gubernatorial debate Tuesday, saying: "Twenty-six years ago, as a college freshman, I, along with many other Georgians, including the governor of Georgia, were deeply disturbed by the racial divisiveness that was embedded in the state flag with that Confederate symbol. I took an action of peaceful protest." In upstate New York, an ad released last month by the Republican National Congressional Committee showed clips of Antonio Delgado, a Democratic nominee for the U.S. House, performing songs from his 2006 rap album under his stage name, A.D. The Voice. Delgado, a Rhodes scholar and Harvard Law School graduate, said his opponent, Rep. John Faso, is using racial attacks to alienate him, a black first-time candidate in a district that is more than 90 percent white. On the stump and on Twitter, Trump continued to hammer the theme of immigration. This week, he told reporters that there "very well could be" people in the migrant caravan from the Middle East - a veiled nod to a possible terrorist threat - mixed in with migrants fleeing violence and seeking asylum. Mexican officials say nearly 1,700 people have dropped out of the caravan to apply for asylum in the country. Sickness, fear and police harassment could further whittle down the group, estimated to be about 4,000 to 5,000, which is more than 1,000 miles (1,600 kilometers) from the U.S. border. Immigration was also a theme in Texas, where Trump started the week at a rally to boost former rival Sen. Ted Cruz's numbers in the state. The president also labeled himself a "nationalist," sticking to his "America First" mantra, though some pointed to history and questioned whether the title had racial overtones. "They wait until the last two or three weeks, especially when the enthusiasm gap was so large," said Democratic strategist Donna Brazile. "Every button is being pushed . it's like every ember of the racial fire is being stoked. It's going to get dirtier." ___ Associated Press writer Terry Spencer in Davie, Fla., contributed to this report. ___ Whack is The Associated Press' national writer on race and ethnicity. Follow her work on Twitter at http://www.twitter.com/emarvelous. Florida gubernatorial candidates, Republican Ron DeSantis, left, and Democrat Andrew Gillum debate, Wednesday, Oct. 24, 2018, at Broward College in Davie, Fla. (AP Photo/Wilfredo Lee, Pool) MADRID (AP) - Hundreds of protesters in Madrid are urging Spanish government and Catholic church authorities to prevent the remains of 20th-century dictator Francisco Franco from ending up in the city's cathedral. Spain's center-left government has promised to exhume the general's body from a glorifying mausoleum he had built. Franco's heirs have proposed reinterring the remains in a family crypt below Almudena Cathedral, a move that would thwart the government's purpose for digging them up. Protesters on Thursday marched from a square in the Spanish capital to the cathedral crypt. They held signs with photos of Franco and Adolf Hitler and shouted, "Franco, criminal, out of the cathedral." The government says it can remove Franco's remains from the Valley of the Fallen, but can't legally stop his heirs from reburying them in a church. Protesters march behind a banner reading 'Franco Dictator' in Madrid, Spain, Thursday Oct. 25, 2018.Hundreds of protesters in Madrid are urging government and Catholic church authorities to prevent the remains of the country's 20th century dictator from ending in the city's cathedral. Spain's center-left government has promised to exhume this year Gen. Francisco Franco from a glorifying mausoleum, but the late dictator's heirs have defied the plans by proposing for his remains to be relocated to a family crypt under the cathedral. (AP Photo/Paul White) The Franco family burial space is adorned with flowers in the Almudena Crypt, a cavernous late-19th century Catholic temple under Madrid's Almudena cathedral, in central Madrid, Spain, Thursday Oct. 25, 2018. Hundreds of protesters in Madrid are urging government and Catholic church authorities to prevent the remains of the country's 20th century dictator from ending in the city's cathedral. Spain's center-left government has promised to exhume this year Gen. Francisco Franco from a glorifying mausoleum, but the late dictator's heirs have defied the plans by proposing for his remains to be relocated to a family crypt under the cathedral. (AP Photo/Paul White) A tourist walks in front of the Almudena cathedral in Madrid, Spain, Thursday, Oct. 25, 2018. Hundreds of protesters in Madrid are urging government and Catholic church authorities to prevent the remains of the country's 20th century dictator from ending in the city's cathedral. Spain's center-left government has promised to exhume this year Gen. Francisco Franco from a glorifying mausoleum, but the late dictator's heirs have defied the plans by proposing for his remains to be relocated to a family crypt under the cathedral. (AP Photo/Paul White) A tourist walks in front of the Almudena cathedral in Madrid, Spain, Thursday, Oct. 25, 2018. Hundreds of protesters in Madrid are urging government and Catholic church authorities to prevent the remains of the country's 20th century dictator from ending in the city's cathedral. Spain's center-left government has promised to exhume this year Gen. Francisco Franco from a glorifying mausoleum, but the late dictator's heirs have defied the plans by proposing for his remains to be relocated to a family crypt under the cathedral.(AP Photo/Paul White) Protesters march in Madrid, Spain, Thursday Oct. 25, 2018. Hundreds of protesters in Madrid are urging government and Catholic church authorities to prevent the remains of the country's 20th century dictator from ending in the city's cathedral. Spain's center-left government has promised to exhume this year Gen. Francisco Franco from a glorifying mausoleum, but the late dictator's heirs have defied the plans by proposing for his remains to be relocated to a family crypt under the cathedral.Banner reads ' Madrid without Franco or Francoism'. (AP Photo/Paul White) A person walks by the Franco family burial space adorned with flowers in the Almudena Crypt, a cavernous late-19th century Catholic temple under Madrid's Almudena cathedral, in central Madrid, Spain, Thursday Oct. 25, 2018.Hundreds of protesters in Madrid are urging government and Catholic church authorities to prevent the remains of the country's 20th century dictator from ending in the city's cathedral. Spain's center-left government has promised to exhume this year Gen. Francisco Franco from a glorifying mausoleum, but the late dictator's heirs have defied the plans by proposing for his remains to be relocated to a family crypt under the cathedral. (AP Photo/Paul White) SAO PAULO (AP) - Fernando Haddad is making a last-ditch effort ahead of Sunday's runoff election to win over Brazilians who in previous elections cast ballots for former President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva. The left-leaning Haddad announced Thursday he will visit three states in Brazil's impoverished northeast, which is a stronghold for his Workers' Party, and finish on Saturday with a rally in a Sao Paulo slum. Polls say far-right congressman Jair Bolsonaro leads Haddad by more than 10 percentage points - aided by some voters who once were supporters of da Silva. The northeast might be Haddad's best bet for making up lost ground. The region is home to almost 40 million of Brazil's 147 million voters, and is the only place where Haddad leads Bolsonaro. Sao Paulo slums also backed da Silva in previous elections. "It is important to have a connection with the poor," Haddad said at a news conference. Employees of the Regional Electoral Tribunal carry boxes containing electronic voting machines that will be used in the second round of the Brazilian elections, at an electoral control center, in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, Thursday, Oct. 25, 2018. Brazilians return to the polls on Oct. 28 for the second round of voting. (AP Photo/Silvia Izquierdo) Haddad, hand-picked by the jailed da Silva as the Workers' Party candidate, will visit three northeastern states governed by allies. Campaign manager Emidio de Souza said Haddad will also try to lure moderate and evangelical voters in the final days before the election. "Many voters decide in the last few days, and they see the risks of a violent, authoritarian Bolsonaro administration. There is still time," de Souza said. Earlier, Haddad met with members of a mission from the Organization of American States that is observing Brazil's elections. Former Costa Rican President Laura Chinchilla, who heads the mission, said the spread of false news via the WhatsApp messaging service during Brazil's campaign is unprecedented. "It is the first time in a democracy that we are observing the use of WhatsApp for massive sharing of fake news," she said. Haddad has repeatedly accused Bolsonaro of bankrolling a fake news campaign against him. Chinchilla said the front-runner has yet to accept an invitation to discuss Brazil's election with the OAS mission. "We want to stress the importance that the vote in the runoff be rational, informed and not moved by many of the feelings coming from false news," Chinchilla said. On Thursday, a Datafolha poll said Haddad had gained a little ground against Bolsonaro, though he still trailed by double digits. Haddad's support rose to 44 percent from 41 percent last week. Support for Bolsonaro declined to 56 percent from 59 percent. Datafolha interviewed 9,173 voters Wednesday and Thursday. The margin of error was two percentage points. At a Thursday news conference, Bolsonaro backed off his pledge to take Brazil out of the Paris climate accord if he wins the presidency. He said he could discuss terms if Brazil's sovereignty is assured. Asked which terms of the agreement could hurt Brazil's sovereignty, Bolsonaro said: "This is information that I have and that are real. Obviously, for how big they are, they are not revealed." A TV debate that had been scheduled for Friday was cancelled after Bolsonaro declined to take part, as he has done since he was stabbed at a campaign rally Sept.6. Gen. Augusto Heleno, an ally of Bolsonaro, said in a video that the decision was due to a "terrorist plot" against the candidate, though he gave no evidence. Brazil's presidential candidate for the Workers Party Fernando Haddad, listens to a question during a press conference after meeting with Laura Chinchilla, Head of the OAS Electoral Observation Mission and Former President of Costa Rica, in Sao Paulo, Brazil, Thursday, Oct. 25, 2018. Haddad will face Jair Bolsonaro, the far-right congressman in a presidential runoff on Oct. 28. (AP Photo/Andre Penner) Presidential candidate Jair Bolsonaro, of the far-right Social Liberal Party, speaks during a press conference in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, Thursday, Oct. 25, 2018. Bolsonaro will face Fernando Haddad, Brazil's presidential candidate for the Workers' Party in a presidential runoff on Sunday. (AP Photo/Leo Correa) Laura Chinchilla, head of the OAS Electoral Observation Mission and former President of Costa Rica, stands stands outside a hotel after meeting with Workers' Party presidential candidate Fernando Haddad, in Sao Paulo, Brazil, Thursday, Oct. 25, 2018. Haddad will face frontrunner Jair Bolsonaro in a runoff on Sunday. (AP Photo/Andre Penner) An electoral employee works in the sealing process of the electronic voting machines that will be used in the second round of the Brazilian elections, at an electoral control center, in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, Thursday, Oct. 25, 2018. Brazilians return to the polls on Oct. 28 for the second round of voting. (AP Photo/Silvia Izquierdo) Presidential candidate Jair Bolsonaro, of the far-right Social Liberal Party smiles after receiving a honorary black belt from Jiu-Jitsu masters Robson Gracie, right, and Joao Carlos Austregesilo Athayde, in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, Friday, Oct. 26, 2018. Bolsonaro was awarded the honorary black belt out a respect for surviving a recent knife attack where he was wounded in the abdomen by a crazed attacker. Bolsonaro will face Fernando Haddad, Brazil's presidential candidate for the Workers' Party in a presidential runoff on Sunday. (AP Photo/Leo Correa) Laura Chinchilla, head of the OAS Electoral Observation Mission and former President of Costa Rica, shakes hands with Workers' Party presidential candidate Fernando Haddad, in Sao Paulo, Brazil, Thursday, Oct. 25, 2018. Haddad will face presidential frontrunner Jair Bolsonaro in a runoff on Sunday. (AP Photo/Andre Penner) An Electoral employee holds an electronic voting machine that will be used in the second round of the Brazilian elections, at an electoral control center, in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, Thursday, Oct. 25, 2018. Brazilians return to the polls on Oct. 28 for the second round of voting. (AP Photo/Silvia Izquierdo) TOPEKA, Kan. (AP) - Kansas election officials are reviewing text messages claiming to be from President Donald Trump and telling residents that their early votes hadn't been recorded, as Democratic leaders were quick Thursday to worry that they were part of efforts to "steal" a close governor's race. State Elections Director Bryan Caskey said the Kansas secretary of state's office received 50 or 60 calls about the texts Wednesday, mostly from the northeastern part of the state. Caskey said the office is trying to determine whether the texts broke a law before determining what to do next. One text says "Your absentee ballot is ready. Remember to vote for Pres. Trump's allies." A follow-up text says, "This is President Trump. Your early vote has NOT been RECORDED on Kansas's roster." It urges the voter to confirm his or her polling place. Kansas Senate Minority Leader Anthony Hensley, a Topeka Democrat, and Kansas House Minority Leader Jim Ward, a Wichita Democrat, said during a Statehouse news conference that they worry the texts are confusing voters because at least a few Democrats received them. Ward said some new voters may conclude that the voting process is too complicated and give up. "The whole purpose of sending it out is to sow confusion," Ward said. "Remember, we're talking about an election that can be determined by 300 or 400 votes. So, 50 here, 50 there, 50 there, pretty soon, you've stolen an election." While one state GOP official said the texts appeared to signal a get-out-the-vote operation, Democrats are on edge because Kansas Secretary of State Kris Kobach, the state's top elections official, is a Trump ally and the Republican nominee for governor. He's in a dead heat with Democratic state Sen. Laura Kelly after defeating GOP Gov. Jeff Colyer in the August primary by only 343 votes out of more than 317,000 cast. Kansas Senate Minority Leader Anthony Hensley, left, D-Topeka, holds up a copy of texts to Kansas voters as House Minority Leader Jim Ward, right, D-Wichita, watches during a news conference, Thursday, Oct. 25, 2018, at the Statehouse in Topeka, Kan. The texts claim to be from the Republican National Committee and President Donald Trump and the Democratic leaders fear they are confusing voters. (AP Photo/John Hanna) The Democratic leaders also said the potential confusion caused by the texts comes after other issues, such as local officials providing only one polling place for the Dodge City, the iconic cowtown of 27,000 residents in southwestern Kansas. And, in June a federal judge struck down a state law requiring new voters to provide papers documenting their U.S. citizenship when registering, deeming it an infringement on voting rights. Kobach championed the law as an anti-fraud measure but critics believe it suppresses turnout. Ward and Hensley called on Kobach and his chief deputy, Eric Rucker, to step aside from administering elections so that final decisions in the secretary of state's office are left to Caskey. Kobach spokeswoman Danedri Herbert said he does not plan to step aside because he has a responsibility under the state constitution to oversee elections. She noted that most states, including Kansas, give the job to an elected official. As for the top Democrats, she said, "Their claims are ridiculous." County election officials handle the actual counting of votes. The job is overseen by an elected clerk in 101 of 105 counties. Election commissioners appointed by Kobach are in charge in the state's four most populous counties, which are home to almost half of the state's more than 1.8 million registered voters. Ward and Hensley sent an open records request Thursday to Kobach demanding copies of all written and electronic communications between him, his employees and his county election officials since the Aug. 7 primary. "We're not trying to cause chaos. We're trying to make sure they know we're watching and we're not going to let them steal an election, OK?" Ward said. "This is an incredibly close election and any mistake or any action that diminishes or suppresses the vote could swing an election." The texts to voters link to a website for the Republican National Committee, and Kansas Republican Party Chairman Kelly Arnold said he suspects that's who sent the messages. He said the texts didn't come from state party officials. The RNC didn't respond by Thursday evening to an email seeking comment. But Arnold said the texts appeared to be part of a get-out-the-vote effort. He said party officials pay for regular updates on who has requested and returned advance ballots or voted early in person, though that information can sometimes be slightly outdated. "We are trying to get out as much information to our voters as possible," Arnold said. Caskey said voters should only trust voting information that comes from state or local election officials. He added that this is the first time the state has received a complaint about the content of a text, which campaigns have increasingly used this election cycle. Lyon County Clerk Tammy Vopat, a Republican, said she spoke to one man who received one of the texts after voting early and assured him that his vote would be tabulated on election night. She said the texts, which she described as "bogus" were discussed Wednesday during a routine weekly phone call with state and county election officials. "It worries me that information like this is being sent out that puts doubt in our voters' minds," Vopat said. ___ Hollingsworth reported from Kansas City, Missouri. ___ Follow John Hanna on Twitter: https://twitter.com/apjdhanna . This photo shows a copy of text messages to an unidentified voter released by top Kansas Democrats during a news conference, Thursday, Oct. 25, 2018, at the Statehouse in Topeka, Kan. Democratic leaders say at least a few Democratic voters got the pro-Republican texts, and they worry that the texts are confusing voters. (AP Photo/John Hanna) FILE - In this Jan. 17, 2917, file photo, Kansas Secretary of State Kris Kobach, right, confers with his elections director Bryan Caskey in Topeka, Kan. Kansas election officials are reviewing text messages claiming to be from President Donald Trump and telling residents that their early votes hadn't been recorded as top Democrats worried that they are part of efforts to "steal" a close governor's race. Democrats are on edge because Kobach, the state's top elections official, is a Trump ally and the Republican nominee for governor. (AP Photo/John Hanna, File) LOS ANGELES (AP) - Actress Amber Heard has a movie coming out this weekend that will be new to theaters and mass audiences, but for her it's actually quite old. "London Fields," an adaptation of a 1989 Martin Amis mystery, has been in some stage of development for almost 20 years. Heard didn't get involved until 2013, with music video director Matthew Cullen at the helm, but the roadblocks and behind the scenes drama had only just begun. The film was abruptly pulled from the Toronto International Film Festival in 2015 (after some critics had already seen it) when Cullen sued the producers over a dispute about payment and the final cut, which set off a string of countersuits. Producers even sued Heard for $10 million, which she countered with a suit that claimed the production had violated her nudity agreement by using a body double. It would take until September, five years after cameras started rolling, for the producers to settle, and now the film is finally preparing to debut this weekend in 600 theaters. "Can you imagine what it would be like for you to talk about an article that you wrote or a piece you did five years ago?" Heard, 32, said, laughing via phone from London this week. She can barely relate to the person who did this a half decade ago, when she was in her 20s and newly married to her now ex-husband Johnny Depp, who has a small role in the film. FILE - In this Oct. 9, 2018 file photo, actress Amber Heard arrives at the American Music Awards in Los Angeles. Heard plays the femme fatale Nicola Six in the film "London Fields" which has been tied up in legal battles for five years and will finally open in 600 theaters this weekend. (Photo by Jordan Strauss/Invision/AP, File) "All of those factors have changed," she said. "It's been so long." She can't quite recall which version she's last seen of the movie which co-stars Billy Bob Thornton, Theo James and Jim Sturgess, although she does still find her character Nicola Six interesting. "You can make different cases for her being empowered or disempowered," Heard said of the clairvoyant femme fatale who's also trapped by an idea that, "death is preferable to the decline of youthful female sexuality." Overall, Heard is happy that "London Fields" is finally coming out and says that the issues that have kept it out of theaters "are behind us now," but that she would have been, "Much happier had the film come out three years ago." She said it was "unfortunate" and "very wrong" that she was sued and is glad that they were able to settle and that she ultimately didn't have to pay any money. "But it's very important for a female actress or any woman to be able to exercise her own control over her own body and her image," Heard added. "I'm glad that the version of the movie being released is supposedly respectful ... with regards specifically to nudity and my nudity agreement. But again, those issues are in the past." "In the past" is a phrase that Heard repeats often and the release of "London Fields" helps to close a chapter in her life, and allows her to focus on the future, her humanitarian work and the December release of her most high-profile film to date, the DC comic book movie "Aquaman" in which she stars opposite Jason Momoa as Mera, a sea queen with Little Mermaid-red hair (she was introduced in a small appearance in "Justice League"). It took some convincing for her to make that uncharacteristic leap. "I'm not that kind of girl," Heard remembered telling the producers. "There's a reason I've done probably a lot of bad things in my life with regard to films," she said. "I've struggled and tried to make my way through this business and I haven't had the luxury to be picky, like most people who start off in the figurative mail room, but there's one thing I've avoided, and it's being relegated to the archetypal, reactionary woman ... I've never been a rom-com princess." She even remembered rolling her eyes when the producers described Mera as a "badass," but she decided to read a comic book (her first ever) to see what the fuss was about, and found in Mera an unapologetic warrior queen who she was actually interested in. Lately, Heard has been throwing herself into her humanitarian work and activism. She went to Washington D.C. to show her support for survivors on the day Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavagnaugh was confirmed in October and recently finished up a stretch speaking at the One Young World Summit in The Hague. "It's incredibly rewarding to be able to use what experience I've lived and endured, suffered, survived through," she said. "It's amazing to be able to use one's experiences in life to help others, to help push the conversation forward, to change the conversation." Heard won't get very specific with her own past as it relates to Depp, even declining to talk about this year's Comic-Con, where the fact that she and Depp were both in San Diego promoting projects at the same studio presentation provoked a fair amount of internet outrage and even a People Magazine article explaining that "the two were not seen crossing paths... there was at least an hour separating their appearances." Heard accused Depp of domestic violence and in 2016 filed for a restraining order days after filing for divorce after 15 months of marriage. Depp has repeatedly denied the allegations, and police officers called to their apartment after a fight between the couple said they found no evidence of a crime. Ultimately, Heard got a $7 million settlement when the divorce was finalized in January 2017, which she pledged to donate to a pair of charities. When asked if she has felt supported and listened to in the past few years, and in light of the #MeToo movement, Heard again looked to the future. "I am very happy that I have moved on with my life and keep moving on with my life," she said. "I just keep wanting to do with my life that which makes it better for other people and myself. And doing the right thing and moving forward and dedicating yourself to justice, truth, to doing what's right and helping others when you can - that's everything to me. That's all I'm interested in." ___ Follow AP Film Writer Lindsey Bahr on Twitter: www.twitter.com/ldbahr FILE - In this Sept. 9, 2018 file photo, actress Amber Heard, a cast member in "Her Smell," poses at the premiere of the film during the Toronto International Film Festival in Toronto. Heard plays the femme fatale Nicola Six in the film "London Fields" which has been tied up in legal battles for five years and will finally open in 600 theaters this weekend. (Photo by Chris Pizzello/Invision/AP, File) ABOARD THE USS JASON DUNHAM, Persian Gulf (AP) - The huge pile of rusting AK-47 assault rifles is tucked into a corner below the deck of the USS Jason Dunham, serving as a grim reminder of how hard it is to catch weapons smugglers believed to be trafficking arms into Yemen. On Thursday U.N. inspectors boarded the American guided-missile destroyer, to examine the more than 2,500 guns the crew seized in late August and determine if suspicions are true that the weapons originated in Iran. U.S. officials have long accused Iran of smuggling arms across the waters to Yemen's Shiite Houthi rebels, who have held Yemen's capital, Sanaa, since September 2014. But they have only managed to seize a handful of weapons caches in recent years, underscoring the difficulties in tracking down arms smugglers working the vast waters around Yemen. "It's one big traffic corridor," Vice Adm. Scott Stearney, commander of U.S. 5th Fleet, told reporters Thursday. "It's not blocked, and it's not just lines on a map that people don't penetrate." Stearney declined to say if he thought Iran was responsible for the shipment, but he said the U.N. inspectors were experts on illicit weapons from Iran, Yemen and Somalia. The USS Jason Dunham on patrol in the region noticed large bags being transferred from a dhow about 70 miles off the coast of Yemen and into a smaller skiff. A dhow is a traditional ship that commonly sails the waters of the Persian Gulf region. The Navy ship intercepted the skiff and, after talking to the crew on board, determined they were smuggling weapons. A pile of assault weapons sits jammed into a corner below the deck of the guided-missile destroyer USS Jason Dunham on Wednesday, Oct. 24, 2018. The weapons, seized at the end of August, were inspected by U.N. officials Thursday, Oct. 25, to determine what country they came from. (AP Photo/Lolita Baldor) The rifles, in bundles of four or five, were wrapped in plastic, then wrapped in Styrofoam and hidden in green burlap bags, according to Navy Cmdr. John Hamilton, commander of the Dunham. On Wednesday, a small number of reporters were allowed to see the assault rifles, which were stained with rust after nearly two months at sea. The weapons had been unpacked and piled up, and were ready to be inspected the following day by the U.N. team. Hamilton said the crew on the dhow initially told them they were carrying flour and wheat, but there was none of either on board. Navy Capt. Adan Cruz, commodore of U.S. Naval Forces Central Command, said it was likely the weapons were being shipped from Somalia to Yemen, but that's still not proven. The U.N. inspectors, he said, will determine the guns' origin and "see first-hand the weapons flowing into the region. The U.S. has repeatedly condemned Iran for arming the Houthis, a claim Tehran denies. Last December U.N. Ambassador Nikki Haley displayed missile remnants recovered in Yemen at a military base in Maryland, saying they were "undeniable evidence" of Iran's illicit activity. One large segment, she said, was launched at the international airport in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia Since 2015 Saudi Arabia has led a coalition of Arab nations backing the Yemeni government against the Iran-aligned Houthi rebels. Saudi-led airstrikes have hit schools, hospitals and wedding parties and killed thousands of Yemeni civilians. The Houthis have fired long-range missiles into Saudi Arabia and targeted vessels in the Red Sea. MEXICO CITY (AP) - A sound technician for a radio and television group in southern Mexico has been killed after the van he was riding in came under gun fire. Gabriel Soriano, 40, was killed upon leaving an event with local government officials late Wednesday near the Acapulco International Airport, in the violence-stricken state of Guerrero. The van that was shot up was clearly marked with the RTG logo, indicating it belongs to state broadcaster Radio Television de Guerrero. State security spokesman Roberto Alvarez Heredia said the homicide is under investigation. At least 10 journalists have been killed in Mexico this year while more than 30 have been killed under the rule of President Enrique Pena Nieto, whose six-year administration ends on December 1. SACRAMENTO, Calif. (AP) - The Latest on California Gov. Jerry Brown's appointment to a group focused on nuclear threats (all times local): 1:15 p.m. California Gov. Jerry Brown says the Trump administration's plan to withdraw from a nuclear arms agreement with Russia is wrong, dangerous and stupid. Brown's comments to The Associated Press came Thursday after he was announced as the new executive chairman of the Bulletin of Atomic Scientists which manages the Doomsday Clock. President Donald Trump recently announced the United States will leave the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces treaty signed in 1987 with the former Soviet Union. Trump says Russia has violated the terms of the treaty, which Russia denies. FILE - In this Sept. 10, 2018 file photo, Gov. Jerry Brown speaks during an interview with The Associated Press, in Sacramento, Calif. Brown has been named executive chairman of the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, a group that measures manmade threats to human existence. The group manages the Doomsday Clock, a visual representation of how close the Bulletin believes the world is to catastrophe brought on by nuclear weapons, climate change and new technologies. The group announced Thursday, Oct. 25 that the Democratic governor leaving office in January will take over leadership of the Bulletin. (AP Photo/Rich Pedroncelli, File) Brown says there is "bipartisan blindness" toward the need for a better dialogue with Russia on nuclear nonproliferation. He says he has discussed the topic with Russian ambassadors to the U.S. and United Nations. He says "ending civilization is a bigger problem than any of the other problems we have with Russia." __ 8 a.m. California Gov. Jerry Brown has been named executive chairman of the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, a group that measures manmade threats to human existence. The group manages the Doomsday Clock. It's a visual representation of how close the Bulletin believes the world is to catastrophe brought on by nuclear weapons, climate change and new technologies. The Chicago-based group announced Brown's appointment as executive chairman Thursday. Brown leaves office in January. It says Brown and group members will generate information "to reduce manmade existential threats." Brown says in a statement provided by the group that the planet is in one of its most dangerous eras since the atomic bomb was dropped. He says it is "crucial to wake people up to the dangers that still persist." __ This story and headline has been corrected to show Brown is joining the organization, not leading it. TRENTON, N.J. (AP) - In some versions of a story Oct. 25 about a viral outbreak, The Associated Press misspelled the name of the New Jersey health commissioner. He is Dr. Shereef Elnahal, not Shereer. A corrected version of the story is below: The Latest: Pediatric center says it's providing counseling The pediatric center where a severe viral outbreak left seven young people dead says it's offering grief counseling and a round-the-clock hotline for those affected TRENTON, N.J. (AP) - The Latest on a viral outbreak at a pediatric center that killed seven people (all times local): 4:45 p.m. The pediatric center where a severe viral outbreak left seven young people dead says it's offering grief counseling and a round-the-clock hotline for those affected. Rowena Bautista, the administrator of the Wanaque Center for Nursing and Rehabilitation, said Thursday in a statement the community "feels a tremendous sense of loss." She also said the center is working with the state Health Department and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in addition to offering professional grief counselors and setting up a 24/7 hotline. The number is being shared with families, but not the public. There have been 19 cases of adenovirus at the center. Health Commissioner Dr. Shereef Elnahal said the first symptoms showed up Sept. 26, and the state was notified of an outbreak Oct. 9. The center did not provide any new details on the timeline of the events at the center, including how and when families were notified. ___ 1:40 p.m. New Jersey health officials say tests have confirmed a 19th patient has been infected in a viral outbreak at a pediatric rehabilitation center that has killed seven people. Health Department spokeswoman Donna Leusner said Thursday the person had already been ill so the diagnosis does not necessarily mean the virus is still spreading. State officials say the outbreak won't be declared over until the Wanaque Center for Nursing and Rehabilitation can go four weeks without any new cases of people being infected with a germ called adenovirus 7. The seven who died this month were children and at least one young adult, all in a respiratory unit where patients receive long-term help with breathing. Adenovirus usually poses little risk for healthy people. The for-profit facility has a pediatric center and also cares for elderly residents. DETROIT (AP) - A former Michigan state trooper whose use of a Taser preceded the death of a 15-year-old black Detroit boy told jurors Thursday that he "absolutely" believed the teen was armed and was "shocked" to learn there was no gun. Mark Bessner, who is white, testified in his own defense at his second-degree murder trial. He insisted that he believed Damon Grimes was reaching for a gun in his waist while he and a state police partner pursued the boy's all-terrain vehicle on a Detroit street in 2017. Grimes crashed the ATV and died after he was twice struck by Bessner's Taser, which is fired like a gun and is intended to immobilize people. Bessner fired from the passenger seat of his moving patrol car after Grimes had slowed down. "It was a terrible tragedy," said Bessner, his voice breaking, "and all I could think of was that this family had lost their son. All I could think of was my daughter, and what they must be going through." Prosecutors said Bessner, who quit the state police after the incident, created a very high risk of death with the Taser. State police officials supported the second-degree murder charge, saying Grimes' death was a crime. Grimes' only offense appeared to be driving an ATV on a city street . Bessner's partner made a U-turn and began pursuing him when the ATV veered toward their car. Former Michigan State Police trooper Mark Bessner testifies, Thursday, Oct. 25, 2018 at the Frank Murphy Hall of Justice in Detroit. Bessner whose use of a Taser preceded the death of a 15-year-old Detroit boy says he "absolutely" believed the teen was armed and was "shocked" to learn there was no gun. . (John T. Greilick/Detroit News via AP) "He had slowed down and he had looked back several times," Bessner testified. "There was one very, very crystallizing moment where his left hand reached down towards his waist." He later said he "absolutely" believed Grimes had a gun and that his life was in jeopardy. "It was a deadly force situation, is what I thought, and I used the tool I had available to me," Bessner said. After Grimes crashed the ATV, Bessner said he and his partner tried to help the teen. He also searched the victim for a gun. "I was shocked that he didn't have a weapon. I was shocked at the magnitude of what had happened," Bessner testified. Closing arguments are set for Monday in Wayne County court. Assistant prosecutor Matthew Penney acts like he's pulling the trigger of a taser as he faces the jury during his opening statement Tuesday, Oct, 23, 2018, in Detroit, Mich., during the trial of former Michigan state trooper Mark Bessner. A prosecutor has told jurors that a Michigan state trooper used unreasonable force when he fired a Taser at a Detroit teenager who then crashed an all-terrain vehicle and died. Trial opened Tuesday for Bessner, who is charged with second-degree murder in the death of 15-year-old Damon Grimes. (Todd McInturf /Detroit News via AP) Michigan State Patrol troopers pull up next to teenager Damon Grimes as he rides his ATV as seen on this in-car video during court Tuesday, Oct. 23, 2018, in Detroit, Mich. A prosecutor has told jurors that a Michigan state trooper used unreasonable force when he fired a Taser at a Detroit teenager who then crashed an all-terrain vehicle and died. Trial opened Tuesday for Bessner, who is charged with second-degree murder in the death of 15-year-old Damon Grimes. (Todd McInturf /Detroit News via AP) Defendant Mark Bessner turns around before the jury enters the courtroom Tuesday, Oct. 23, 2018, in Detroit, Mich. A prosecutor has told jurors that a Michigan state trooper used unreasonable force when he fired a Taser at a Detroit teenager who then crashed an all-terrain vehicle and died. Trial opened Tuesday for Bessner, who is charged with second-degree murder in the death of 15-year-old Damon Grimes. (Todd McInturf /Detroit News via AP) LITTLE ROCK, Ark. (AP) - An Arkansas Supreme Court justice seeking re-election sued Thursday to block a Washington-based conservative group's attack ads and mailers, months after a state judge ordered several television stations to stop airing ads from another outside group targeting the justice. Justice Courtney Goodson asked a Pulaski County judge to order the Republican State Leadership Committee's Judicial Fairness Initiative to halt its ads and mailers against her. Goodson is running against David Sterling, an attorney for the state Department of Human Services, in next month's election. The Republican State Leadership Committee says it's spent $1.1 million so far this fall on the high court race. "Without hyperbole and with the evidence supported by this complaint, all must be concerned about the future for judicial independence and the public's confidence in its integrity if this complaint is denied," Goodson's lawsuit said. A 15-second ad launched by the group this week and a mailer it sent out cite a $50,000 trip to Italy Goodson received in 2012 from W.H. Taylor, an attorney and friend of her husband's. Goodson has recused herself from any cases involving her husband, Taylor or Tyson Foods Inc., a company Taylor has represented. A spokesman for the group accused Goodson of "shamefully using an Arkansas court to silence any criticism against her." The group spent nearly $745,000 in the spring ahead of the May 22 judicial election between Goodson, Sterling and state Appeals Judge Kenneth Hixson. Next month's election is a runoff between Goodson and Sterling. "Truth is an absolute defense, and Courtney Goodson can't change her record of taking a $50,000 trip to Italy on a donor's yacht, and hundreds of thousands in contributions from law firms who go before her court," RSLC spokesman David James said. FILE - In this Friday, May 18, 2018, file photo, Arkansas Supreme Court Justice Courtney Goodson speaks to reporters at the Pulaski County Courthouse in Little Rock, Ark. Justice Goodson seeking re-election, is suing to block a Washington-based group's attack ads and mailers months after a state judge ordered television stations to stop airing ads targeting the justice from another outside group. Goodson on Thursday, Oct. 25, 2018, asked a Pulaski County judge to order the Republican State Leadership Committee to halt its ads and mailers against her. (AP Photo/Andrew DeMillo, File) James also accused Goodson of violating a judicial ethics rule prohibiting use of court facilities for campaigns by filming an ad in the state Supreme Court chamber. Goodson has defended the filming and said the chamber is open to the general public. A state judge in May ordered several Arkansas television stations to temporarily stop running an ad by another group, the Judicial Crisis Network, that also criticized Goodson over donors' gifts. That ad and an RSLC mailer also criticize Goodson over a pay raise the court received last year. Goodson's lawsuits over that ad were against the television airing them, not Judicial Crisis. Her latest lawsuit is against RSLC, not media outlets airing the group's ad. The ruling blocking the Judicial Crisis ad was criticized by First Amendment advocates as an unconstitutional restriction on free speech. One of the TV stations has appealed the judge's order, which prevented the ads running through the state's May 22 judicial election. Goodson lost her bid for chief justice two years ago after facing similar attacks, and she's portrayed her re-election bid as a referendum on outside groups getting involved in judicial races. Arkansas is one of several states where high court races have become more partisan and negative, with groups spending heavily to reshape courts. RSLC has also been airing 15-second and 30-second television ads in support of Sterling. Judicial Crisis Network, which doesn't disclose its donors, hasn't run ads in the race since the spring. RSLC, which launched its initiative focused on state court races in 2014, has been supported in the past financially by the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, tobacco company Reynolds America, Bentonville-based Wal-Mart Stores and other major corporations. ___ Follow Andrew DeMillo on Twitter at www.twitter.com/ademillo CHEBOYGAN, Mich. (AP) - A Michigan man accused of killing his wife 43 years ago has waived extradition and will voluntarily return to Wisconsin to face charges. The Cheboygan Daily Tribune reports 82-year-old Richard Gale Pierce of Cheboygan signed the waiver of extradition during a court hearing Thursday. He's being held at Cheboygan County Jail pending his return to Wisconsin. Pierce's attorney, Joe Kwiatkowski, says his client has known about the Wisconsin investigation for years and has cooperated with authorities. Pierce faces one count of first-degree murder and one count of disinterment of the dead in connection with the death of his wife, 35-year-old Carol Jean Pierce . She disappeared from the couple's trailer home in Sturgeon Bay, Wisconsin, in September 1975. Her body has never been found. GULFPORT, Miss. (AP) - Ivanka Trump says 1 in 3 American families spend at least 20 percent of their household income on child care. President Donald Trump's daughter, who's also a White House adviser, was in Mississippi on Thursday, discussing ways to improve access to affordable, high-quality care. She and Patricia Greene, who heads the Labor Department's Women's Bureau, were among a dozen people taking part in a panel discussion at the Lynn Meadows Discovery Center in Gulfport. Others came from business, child care, education and government. Trump said Mississippi has some of the lowest child care costs in the United States. She also says tax credits are helping make care more affordable. Greene says quality care is important for young children's brain development and for keeping parents in the workforce. Ivanka Trump visits with children at Lynn Meadows Discovery Center in Gulfport, Miss., Thursday, Oct. 25, 2018. She was in Mississippi to talk about affordable child care options for women in the workforce. Ivanka Trump says 1 in 3 American families spend at least 20 percent of their household income on child care. (Amanda McCoy/The Sun Herald via AP) WASHINGTON (AP) - It didn't last. With the country on edge over a widening pipe-bomb scare, talk of national unity quickly gave way to finger-pointing Thursday. President Donald Trump cast blame on the media for fomenting anger in society, while candidates across the country traded partisan broadsides. Less than two weeks before midterm elections, the discovery of pipe bombs sent to prominent Democrats - an episode that might have prompted national reflection in another era - hardly made a ripple on the campaign trail. Attack ads remained on the air. Attack lines stayed in stump speeches. The president did not deliver a speech from the Oval Office or reach out to his predecessor, one of the targets of the threat. He did return to his favorite punching bag. "A very big part of the Anger we see today in our society is caused by the purposely false and inaccurate reporting of the Mainstream Media that I refer to as Fake News," Trump wrote on Twitter. "It has gotten so bad and hateful that it is beyond description. Mainstream Media must clean up its act, FAST!" The reaction was more evidence of the new politics of the Trump era, where unity is overrated, a news cycle moves on fast and there seems to be little incentive for either party to seize the high road. Instead, what might have been a moment for a deeply divided country to come together becomes the latest fodder for Democrats and Republicans to blame each other for America's shortcomings. Aides at the national Democratic and Republican Senate campaign arms said they were seeing nothing to suggest candidates were adjusting their messages or schedules because of the explosives scare. But many candidates were beginning to move into their closing election messages, which are typically more positive. President Donald Trump arrives to speak at a rally at Central Wisconsin Airport in Mosinee, Wis., Wednesday, Oct. 24, 2018. (AP Photo/Susan Walsh) Indiana Republican Senate candidate Mike Braun was airing a new ad equating Democratic Sen. Joe Donnelly to one of the inflatable dancing devices used to attract attention at car dealerships, describing him as a "say-anything, do-nothing senator." Other candidates, such as Wisconsin's Republican Senate candidate Leah Vukmir and the Democratic senator she's trying to unseat, Tammy Baldwin, were plowing ahead as well. Vukmir linked Baldwin to Hillary Clinton on Wednesday amid chants of "Lock her up!" at an evening rally with Trump. Baldwin was planning to go ahead with an event Friday with former President Barack Obama in Milwaukee. Some Trump critics have blamed him for setting a harsh tone and not taking responsibility for contributing to the poisonous political atmosphere. "Nobody else is being as divisive and inciteful as Donald Trump and so to suggest otherwise is completely wrong," said former Housing and Urban Development Secretary Julian Castro, who is considering a 2020 Democratic presidential campaign. "We wouldn't even be having this conversation with any other president, Republican or Democrat, because they would be big enough to avoid this kind of hateful and inciteful rhetoric." Trump on Thursday had yet to call Obama or Clinton about the packages sent their way, but he had spoken to Democratic Gov. Andrew Cuomo of New York, the state where many of the packages were delivered. Trump has insisted that those on the right have been victims of harassment as well, pointing to high-profile incidents in which conservatives have been accosted in restaurants and public spaces by political critics. A number of his allies, including his eldest son, Donald Jr., and conservative commentator Lou Dobbs, have used social media to promote the idea that the bombs may be a Democrat-run hoax. Republican Sen. Lindsey Graham of South Carolina tweeted in Trump's defense: "I didn't blame Bernie Sanders when a Bernie supporter shot Congressman Steve Scalise. And I'm not going to blame President @realDonaldTrump for this nut job." That was a reference to the 2017 shooting that badly injured Scalise and others. The gunman, James Hodgkinson, had posted social media messages suggesting he targeted Republicans. White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders called it "disgraceful" to suggest the president bears any responsibility for the packages sent to his opponents. She told reporters Thursday that there's a big difference between "comments made and actions taken." She, too, cited the Scalise shooting. Asked whether the president intended to tone down his rhetoric and personal attacks, she said the president would "continue to lay out the case in the differences between Democrats and Republicans" ahead of the midterm elections next month. ___ Associated Press writers Jill Colvin and Juana Summers in Washington, Thomas Beaumont in Des Moines, Iowa, Brian Slodysko in Indianapolis and Brendan Farrington in Tallahassee, Fla., contributed to this report. ___ Follow Lemire on Twitter at http://twitter.com/@JonLemire and Thomas at http://twitter.com/@KThomasDC President Donald Trump speaks at a rally at Central Wisconsin Airport in Mosinee, Wis., Wednesday, Oct. 24, 2018. (AP Photo/Susan Walsh) President Donald Trump speaks at a rally at Central Wisconsin Airport in Mosinee, Wis., Wednesday, Oct. 24, 2018. (AP Photo/Susan Walsh) President Donald Trump speaks at a rally at Central Wisconsin Airport in Mosinee, Wis., Wednesday, Oct. 24, 2018. (AP Photo/Susan Walsh) President Donald Trump and Republican Senate candidate Leah Vukmir gives a thumbs up on stage during a rally at Central Wisconsin Airport in Mosinee, Wis., Wednesday, Oct. 24, 2018. (AP Photo/Susan Walsh) President Donald Trump speaks at a rally at Central Wisconsin Airport in Mosinee, Wis., Wednesday, Oct. 24, 2018. (AP Photo/Susan Walsh) People listen as President Donald Trump speaks at a rally at Central Wisconsin Airport in Mosinee, Wis., Wednesday, Oct. 24, 2018. (AP Photo/Susan Walsh) President Donald Trump, right, listens as Republican Senate candidate Leah Vukmir, left, speaks during a rally at Central Wisconsin Airport in Mosinee, Wis., Wednesday, Oct. 24, 2018. (AP Photo/Susan Walsh) President Donald Trump arrives to speak at a rally at Central Wisconsin Airport in Mosinee, Wis., Wednesday, Oct. 24, 2018. (AP Photo/Susan Walsh) People watch as President Donald Trump arrives to speak at a rally at Central Wisconsin Airport in Mosinee, Wis., Wednesday, Oct. 24, 2018. (AP Photo/Susan Walsh) Rep. Sean Duffy, R-Wis., listens as President Donald Trump speaks at a rally at Central Wisconsin Airport in Mosinee, Wis., Wednesday, Oct. 24, 2018. (AP Photo/Susan Walsh) People listen as President Donald Trump speaks at a rally at Central Wisconsin Airport in Mosinee, Wis., Wednesday, Oct. 24, 2018. (AP Photo/Susan Walsh) ATHENS, Greece (AP) - Schools were closed and officials surveyed damage on the Greek island of Zakynthos Friday after a powerful earthquake that was felt as far as Libya jolted western Greece. The magnitude-6.5 undersea quake overnight forced many island residents to spend the night in their cars and triggered a tsunami warning that ended several hours later. No serious damage or injuries were reported, although the main harbor for the island of Zakynthos in the Ionian Sea was damaged, and the sidewalk near moored boats cracked and warped. More than 35 aftershocks were recorded by 8 a.m. local time (0500 GMT), about six hours after the quake occurred, the country's civil protection agency said. Of those, 10 were of a magnitude greater than 4.0, and one was of magnitude 5.1. "It was a powerful and shallow earthquake that was felt throughout western Greece, up to Athens, the Western Balkans, even in Italy and Libya," said seismologist Gerasimos Papadopoulos of the Geodynamic Institute in Athens. Power was lost in the island capital and main town, also called Zakynthos, for several hours and outages were also reported elsewhere. "We're checking out the villages on the island, where there are several older buildings," civil protection agency press spokesman Spyros Georgiou told The Associated Press. "The lack of electricity is a problem, but technicians are trying to restore power." A woman with a boy walk at the main harbour of Zakynthos island, western Greece, as the sidewalk next to moored boats is cracked and warped after an earthquake on Friday, Oct. 26, 2018. The magnitude-6.5 undersea quake overnight caused many island residents to spend the night in their cars and triggered a tsunami warning that ended several hours later. No serious damage or injuries were reported. (Yannis Liakos/InTime News via AP) The fire service said rockfalls were reported in another part of the island, and part of a church wall collapsed on the mainland town of Pyrgos, in the southern Peloponnese area. Two people were treated for minor injuries. Zakynthos mayor Pavlos Kolokotsas told local media that damage had been reported in some houses, where plaster had cracked and fallen off of walls. He said engineers were checking all reports. The quake rattled the whole of western Greece and was strongly felt in the capital, 280 kilometers (174 miles) to the northeast of Zakynthos. The U.S. Geological Survey said the undersea quake was magnitude 6.8 and its epicenter was 33 kilometers (20 miles) southwest of Mouzaki in the southern part of the island. It had a depth of 14 kilometers and struck just before 2 a.m. local time (2300 GMT Thursday). Greece's main earthquake monitoring center, the Geodynamic Institute, measured the magnitude at 6.5, and said it had a depth of 5 kilometers. Measurements of quake strength can vary due to the equipment each institution uses and other factors. The village of Mouzaki is near the popular tourist resort of Laganas. Greece lies in one of the world's most earthquake-prone regions, with thousands of quakes recorded every year. But few cause injuries or significant damage. In 1999, a magnitude 5.9 quake on the outskirts of Athens killed 143 people. Zakynthos has had severe earthquakes in the past, and as a result has a strict building safety code. __ Derek Gatopoulos in Athens contributed. A worker stands over the cracked and warped sidewalk after an earthquake at the main harbor of Zakynthos island, western Greece, on Friday, Oct. 26, 2018. The magnitude-6.5 undersea quake overnight caused many island residents to spend the night in their cars and triggered a tsunami warning that ended several hours later. No serious damage or injuries were reported. (Yannis Liakos/InTime News via AP) Damages are seen at the port of the western island of Zakynthos, Greece, Friday, Oct. 26, 2018. A strong pre-dawn earthquake with magnitude 6.8 has struck off the western Greek tourist island of Zakynthos in the Ionian Sea, and was felt as far away as Athens, but authorities say there have been no immediate reports of major damage or injuries.(imerazante.gr via AP) Damages are seen at the port of the western island of Zakynthos, Greece, Friday, Oct. 26, 2018. A strong earthquake off a western Greek tourist island early Friday morning was felt as far away as Athens, but no major damage or injuries were immediately reported.(imerazante.gr via AP) SEOUL, South Korea (AP) - The North and South Korean militaries agreed Friday to completely destroy 22 front-line guard posts by the end of November as they discussed their next steps in implementing a wide-ranging military agreement signed last month to reduce tensions. They also agreed to conduct a joint survey early next month of a 70-kilometer (43-mile) -long waterway near their western border where civilian vessels from both countries eventually will be allowed to pass freely, according to a statement released after the general-level talks at the border village of Panmunjom. The plans to remove the guard posts and jointly use the Han River estuary were among the commitments spelled out in the military agreement reached last month on the sidelines of a summit between North Korean leader Kim Jong Un and South Korean President Moon Jae-in. Friday's talks came a day after the Koreas and the U.S.-led U.N. Command completed removing firearms and troops from a jointly controlled area at the border village. The Koreas have also been clearing mines from front-line areas and plan to start their first-ever joint search for remains of soldiers killed during the 1950-53 Korean War in April. South Korea confirmed on Thursday that its soldiers had found war remains in a different front-line area. According to the statement provided by South Korea's Defense Ministry, the Koreas agreed to complete the withdrawal of personnel, firearms and equipment and the destruction of the 11 guard posts from each side by the end of November. They plan to jointly verify the results in December. South Korean Maj. Gen. Kim Do-gyun, right, shakes hands with his North Korean counterpart Lt. Gen. An Ik San during a meeting at the border village of Panmunjom, North Korea, Friday, Oct. 26, 2018. North and South Korea are holding military talks on their border to discuss implementing a broad-reaching military agreement last month to reduce tensions. (Korea Pool/Yonhap via AP) In the September agreement, the Koreas pledged to eventually withdraw all guard posts within the heavily armed Demilitarized Zone between them. The Koreas did not produce a timetable on Friday for setting up a joint military committee to maintain communication and avoid crises and accidental clashes, but agreed it should be established "soon." The Koreas also agreed last month to create buffer zones along their land and sea boundaries, as well as a no-fly zone above the border. Moon has described the military agreement as an important trust-building step that will reduce border tensions and create more space for larger U.S.-led negotiations on denuclearizing North Korea. Some experts say South Korea risks conceding its conventional military strength before North Korea takes any concrete steps toward relinquishing its nuclear weapons. South Korean Maj. Gen. Kim Do-gyun, right, talks with his North Korean counterpart Lt. Gen. An Ik San during a meeting at the border village of Panmunjom, North Korea, Friday, Oct. 26, 2018. North and South Korea are holding military talks on their border to discuss implementing a broad-reaching military agreement last month to reduce tensions. (Korea Pool/Yonhap via AP) South Korean Maj. Gen. Kim Do-gyun, left, shakes hands with his North Korean counterpart Lt. Gen. An Ik San upon his arrival at the border village of Panmunjom, North Korea, Friday, Oct. 26, 2018. North and South Korea are holding military talks on their border to discuss implementing a broad-reaching military agreement last month to reduce tensions. (Korea Pool/Yonhap via AP) In this photo provided by South Korea Defense Ministry, a U.S. and a South Korean army soldiers stand before leaving from the border village of Panmunjom, South Korea, Thursday, Oct. 25, 2018. The rival Koreas and the U.S.-led U.N. Command completed withdrawing firearms and troops from a jointly controlled area at the Koreas' border village on Thursday as part of their sweeping agreements to reduce decades-long military animosities on the Korean Peninsula. (South Korea Defense Ministry via AP). Visitors walk near the wire fence decorated with ribbons carrying messages wishing the reunification and peace of the two Koreas at the Imjingak Pavilion in Paju, South Korea, Thursday, Oct. 25, 2018. Since the Korean War's end, the Koreas remain split along the 248-kilometer (155-mile) -long border, called the DMZ. An estimated 2 million mines are peppered inside and near the DMZ, which is also guarded by barbed wire fences, tank traps and combat troops on both sides. (AP Photo/Lee Jin-man) Visitors use binoculars to see the North Korea side from the unification observatory in Paju, South Korea, Thursday, Oct. 25, 2018. Since the Korean War's end, the Koreas remain split along the 248-kilometer (155-mile) -long border, called the DMZ. An estimated 2 million mines are peppered inside and near the DMZ, which is also guarded by barbed wire fences, tank traps and combat troops on both sides. (AP Photo/Lee Jin-man) North Korea's Kaepoong town is seen behind a North Korean military guard post, bottom, from the unification observatory in Paju, South Korea, Thursday, Oct. 25, 2018. Since the Korean War's end, the Koreas remain split along the 248-kilometer (155-mile) -long border, called the DMZ. An estimated 2 million mines are peppered inside and near the DMZ, which is also guarded by barbed wire fences, tank traps and combat troops on both sides. (AP Photo/Lee Jin-man) BEIJING (AP) - Shared trade friction with the U.S. appears to be drawing longtime Asian rivals China and Japan closer, with Chinese President Xi Jinping telling Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe on Friday that the two countries are "sharing more common interests and concerns." China-Japan relations have undergone turbulence but are now "back to a normal track," Xi told Abe during the first formal visit to Beijing by a Japanese leader in nearly seven years. "Under the new situation, our interdependence with each other has deepened. Also, we are sharing more common interests and concerns in multilateral and wider areas," Xi said. Abe's visit highlights the improvement in ties after they hit a low in 2012 during a dispute over East China Sea islands controlled by key U.S. ally Japan but claimed by China. While that feud remains unresolved, trade and investment have recovered and companies from the two sides are exploring joint investments in third countries such as Thailand. China has come under increasing pressure from U.S. President Donald Trump's move to impose punitive tariffs on $250 billion in Chinese products and attempt to limit Chinese access to American technology. Beijing has responded with tariffs of its own on U.S. goods such as soybeans, and no swift resolution to the standoff appears likely. Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, left, poses with Chinese President Xi Jinping for a photo before a meeting at the Diaoyutai State Guesthouse in Beijing Friday, Oct. 26, 2018. (Kyodo News via AP) Trump has also raised tariffs on imports of steel and aluminum from Japan and other countries, and is threatening tariffs on Japanese autos and auto parts. That seems to be prompting both countries to look for alternative markets and cooperate on foreign investments where their interests converge, despite their longstanding disagreements. "In the past several years, the China-Japan relationship has experienced ups and downs. With the efforts made by both parties, our relationship has been straightened out and come back to a normal track," Xi said. Abe responded that Japan believes the two countries should take a free and fair trade system to "a new level." "Based on these principles, Japan and China need to work together and contribute to what the world in a sense expects of us, toward the peace and stability of the region, and that of the world," Abe said. Prior to meeting Xi, Abe met twice with Chinese Premier Li Keqiang to discuss issues ranging from the East China Sea dispute to trade cooperation and human rights, according to Abe spokesman Takeshi Osuga. Speaking to reporters afterward, Li said 500 business agreements worth $18 billion had been signed between Chinese and Japanese companies during the visit, displaying the "bright future" for cooperation between the sides. Osuga said he could not confirm that figure, saying they were purely commercial arrangements reached by the companies involved. Abe, who has been accompanied on his visit by a 500-strong business delegation, expressed hopes for closer ties and a shift in relations from "competition to cooperation," an apparent reference to the rifts that until recently have muted Japanese business interests in China. The visit, which featured Japanese flags hung in the heart of Beijing, marks a dramatic outward improvement in ties from six years ago. Anti-Japanese riots broke out in China after Tokyo nationalized the islands, called Senkaku by Japan and Diaoyu by China, and Beijing froze high-level contacts. Tourism, trade and investment dropped off and Japanese-brand vehicles and other products were vandalized or destroyed. Ties have also been dogged by enduring Chinese resentment over Japan's invasion and occupation last century and a political, military and economic rivalry for influence in Asia and beyond. Speaking at a briefing for reporters, Osuga said ties had recovered from what had been "not normal relations with a neighboring country," but said differences remained. That is particularly true in the East China Sea, where in addition to the islands, China and Japan are at odds over the exploitation of natural gas and other resources. "Prime Minister Abe reiterated his view that, without stability in the East China Sea, there will not be a true improvement of the relationship," Osuga said. "The two leaders shared the view that there needs to be concrete progress in the field of maritime domain as balancing the security field, to build a constructive relationship and to get rid of the mutual distrust between the people of the two countries," he said. To further that, the sides agreed to hold a meeting by the end of the year to discuss ways to avoid confrontations in the air and at sea, and also signed an agreement on search and rescue cooperation, Osuga said. He declined to give details about the leaders' discussions on the territorial dispute, human rights and other sensitive issues. Japan this year terminated four decades of government assistance to China, considered by some as a type of reparations for the damage caused during its invasion and occupation. As China's economy surged past Japan's to become the world's second largest, such assistance appeared increasingly anachronistic, although Japan had continued to provide funds for problems such as health and air pollution that affect the region as a whole. For now, however, Asia's two largest economies appear to have shelved differences in favor of business ties. China is already Japan's largest trading partner and Japanese companies from carmakers to department stores play a major role in the Chinese economy. Abe, who also attended a third-country investment conference and met with students at elite Peking University, is to return to Japan on Saturday. The last such visit was in late 2011. Xi is expected to visit Japan next year, with Abe returning to China to attend a trilateral summit of the leaders of China, Japan and South Korea. Members of a Chinese honor guard is covered with red flags as they wait for the arrival of Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe during a welcome ceremony outside the Great Hall of the People in Beijing, Friday, Oct. 26, 2018. (AP Photo/Andy Wong) Members of an honor guard hold flags as they wait for the arrival of visiting Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe during a welcome ceremony outside the Great Hall of the People in Beijing, Friday, Oct. 26, 2018. (AP Photo/Andy Wong) A member of a Chinese honor guard is partially covered with red flags as he waits for the arrival of Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe during a welcome ceremony outside the Great Hall of the People in Beijing, Friday, Oct. 26, 2018. (AP Photo/Andy Wong) Members of an honor guard shout as they march in formation during a welcome ceremony for Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe outside the Great Hall of the People in Beijing, Friday, Oct. 26, 2018. (AP Photo/Andy Wong) A music drum reflects a Japanese flag fluttering outside the Great Hall of the People as members of military music band prepare for a welcome ceremony for visiting Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe in Beijing, Friday, Oct. 26, 2018. (AP Photo/Andy Wong) A Japanese flag fluttering is reflected on a music instrument outside the Great Hall of the People as members of military music band prepare for a welcome ceremony for visiting Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe in Beijing, Friday, Oct. 26, 2018. (AP Photo/Andy Wong) Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, right, and Chinese Premier Li Keqiang review an honor guard during a welcome ceremony at the Great Hall of the People in Beijing, Friday, Oct. 26, 2018.(AP Photo/Andy Wong) Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe speaks during a joint press conference with Chinese Premier Li Keqiang at the Great Hall of the People in Beijing, Friday, Oct. 26, 2018. (AP Photo/Andy Wong) Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, left, speaks during a joint press conference with Chinese Premier Li Keqiang at the Great Hall of the People in Beijing, Friday, Oct. 26, 2018. (AP Photo/Andy Wong) Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, center left, and Chinese Premier Li Keqiang, center right, attend the signing ceremony at the Great Hall of the People in Beijing, Friday, Oct. 26, 2018. (AP Photo/Andy Wong) Chinese Premier Li Keqiang, right, speaks next to Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe during a joint press conference at the Great Hall of the People in Beijing, Friday, Oct. 26, 2018. (AP Photo/Andy Wong) Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, left, shakes hands with Chinese Premier Li Keqiang after their joint press conference at the Great Hall of the People in Beijing, Friday, Oct. 26, 2018. (AP Photo/Andy Wong) Japan's Foreign Minister Taro Kono, foreground left, shakes hands with his Chinese counterpart Wang Yi as Chinese Premier Li Keqiang and Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe attend the signing ceremony at the Great Hall of the People in Beijing, Friday, Oct. 26, 2018. Prime Minister Abe has held a second meeting with his Chinese counterpart Li during the first formal visit to Beijing by a Japanese leader in nearly seven years.(AP Photo/Andy Wong) Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, left, speaks next to Chinese Premier Li Keqiang during a joint press conference at the Great Hall of the People in Beijing, Friday, Oct. 26, 2018. Prime Minister Abe has held a second meeting with his Chinese counterpart Li Keqiang during the first formal visit to Beijing by a Japanese leader in nearly seven years. (AP Photo/Andy Wong) Chinese Premier Li Keqiang, right, gestures next to Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe as they arrive to attend a signing ceremony at the Great Hall of the People in Beijing, Friday, Oct. 26, 2018. Prime Minister Abe is in Beijing as both countries try to repair ties that have been riven by disputes over territory, military expansion in the Pacific and World War II history. (AP Photo/Andy Wong) Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, left, is shown the way by Chinese Premier Li Keqiang as he arrives to a welcome ceremony at the Great Hall of the People in Beijing, Friday, Oct. 26, 2018. (AP Photo/Andy Wong) Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, left, walks with Chinese Premier Li Keqiang during a welcome ceremony at the Great Hall of the People in Beijing, Friday, Oct. 26, 2018.(AP Photo/Andy Wong) Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, left, walks with Chinese Premier Li Keqiang during a welcome ceremony at the Great Hall of the People in Beijing, Friday, Oct. 26, 2018. (AP Photo/Andy Wong) Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, center, shakes hands with Chinese Premier Li Keqiang as he arrives to a welcome ceremony at the Great Hall of the People in Beijing, Friday, Oct. 26, 2018. (AP Photo/Andy Wong) Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, right, and Chinese Premier Li Keqiang review an honor guard during a welcome ceremony at the Great Hall of the People in Beijing, Friday, Oct. 26, 2018. (AP Photo/Andy Wong) Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, foreground, walks with Chinese Premier Li Keqiang during a welcome ceremony at the Great Hall of the People in Beijing, Friday, Oct. 26, 2018. (AP Photo/Andy Wong) Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, left, walks with Chinese Premier Li Keqiang during a welcome ceremony at the Great Hall of the People in Beijing, Friday, Oct. 26, 2018. (AP Photo/Andy Wong) Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, right, looks as he and Chinese Premier Li Keqiang attend a welcome ceremony at the Great Hall of the People in Beijing, Friday, Oct. 26, 2018. (AP Photo/Andy Wong) Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, right, and Chinese Premier Li Keqiang review an honor guard during a welcome ceremony at the Great Hall of the People in Beijing, Friday, Oct. 26, 2018. (AP Photo/Andy Wong) Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, right, and Chinese Premier Li Keqiang reviews an honor guard during a welcome ceremony at the Great Hall of the People in Beijing, Friday, Oct. 26, 2018. (AP Photo/Andy Wong) Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, right, and Chinese Premier Li Keqiang review an honor guard during a welcome ceremony at the Great Hall of the People in Beijing, Friday, Oct. 26, 2018. (AP Photo/Andy Wong) BEIRUT (AP) - Giant posters on the streets of Beirut's southern Shiite suburbs display an armed Hezbollah fighter in uniform, holding the group's yellow banner and Lebanon's national flag, along with phone numbers where supporters can make donations to the Shiite guerrilla force. "He who equips a warrior is part of the battle," the posters declare, quoting a saying from Islam's Prophet Muhammad. Hezbollah's calls for donations have intensified in past months as the group and its main backer Iran come under increasing financial pressure under sanctions from the Trump administration. Washington has imposed sanctions on the militant group for decades. But a new wave this year appears to be more serious about targeting Hezbollah's top leadership as well as businessmen and companies that Washington says are funding the group. On Thursday, President Donald Trump signed legislation imposing new sanctions against Hezbollah at a White House event marking the 35th anniversary of the Beirut barracks bombing that killed 241 Marines. The bill expands the list of those who can be sanctioned for doing business with Hezbollah. On Oct. 15, U.S. Attorney General Jeff Sessions designated Hezbollah as one of five groups considered top transnational organized crime threats. In this January 19, 2018 photo, billboards from Hezbollah's committee for the support of the Islamic resistance, that shows a Hezbollah fighter while holding the group's yellow banner and the Lebanon's national flag, are displayed on the Beirut airport highway, in southern Beirut, Lebanon. The Trump administration will resume crushing oil sanctions on Iran in early November, 208, a step that aims to strain Tehran's funding of its regional allies. Arabic on the poster reads, "A project to equip a holy warrior, top, He who equips an invader is part of the battle (a saying from Islam's Prophet Muhammad), center, we thank you for your contribution, bottom." (AP Photo/Hussein Malla) Iran, facing its own financial crises, has also reportedly cut back on funding for Hezbollah and Shiite militias it supports in Iraq. Iran touts itself as the leader of the so-called "Axis of Resistance," grouping the Syrian government of President Bashar Assad, Shiite militias in Iraq, Hezbollah in Lebanon and Shiite gunmen in Yemen known as the Houthis. The U.S. State Department said in July that Iran has spent over $16 billion since 2012 supporting Assad and its proxies in Iraq and in Yemen, and it also gives $700 million a year to Hezbollah. It has also given the Syrian government $4 billion in lines of credit, it says. Hezbollah's budget has already been hurt ever since it became heavily involved in Syria's civil war in 2013, sending fighters to back Assad's forces and helping turn the conflict in his favor. An estimated 2,000 of its fighters have been killed and thousands more wounded, some with permanent disabilities. That only adds to the costs, since the group pays stipends to families of "martyrs" and provides health care for fighters. Recently, its leadership started to publicly acknowledge the strain. "I won't say that the sanctions will not have an effect ... They will have an effect for sure," Hezbollah leader Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah said in a speech in August. He vowed the sanctions won't diminish the group's power. "We have the strength, infrastructure and human resources to get through these difficulties, God willing," he said. In a closed meeting around the same time, he told Hezbollah cadres, "We have to tighten belts a bit," according to Ibrahim Bayram, an expert on Shiite affairs who writes about Hezbollah for Lebanon's An-Nahar newspaper and was informed about the meeting. The group is taking measures to reduce expenses, such as bringing down the number of fighters in Syria, especially now that Assad's military has taken back greater territory from his opponents, Bayram told The Associated Press. But he said it was not cutting back on stipends for families, medical care and retirement payments. A Lebanese citizen who has relatives in the group said it has pulled back some fighters in Syria, though it maintains its presence in eastern Deir el-Zour province and in the south, where fighting continues with the Islamic State group, and in Quseir, a town near the border with Lebanon that has been a Hezbollah stronghold for five years. It has also asked some full-time fighters to spend more time at home when there is no need for them and has reduced movements of vehicles to cut transportation costs, he said. He spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss the group's internal activities. Despite the tightening, the group hardly seems to be diminished from its status as the strongest fighting force in Lebanon - and one of the strongest in Syria - boasting an arsenal of rockets and a powerful political structure. Even if other funding streams are under strain, Hezbollah can still count on public contributions, which stream in through tens of thousands of metal donation boxes placed in shops, streets, mosques and schools in predominantly Shiite areas of Lebanon. Its patron Iran, meanwhile, is facing deep economic woes. Trump withdrew the United States from the nuclear accord with Iran, although the United Nations has repeatedly acknowledged Tehran was living up to the terms of the deal. Trump said he wanted stricter terms to limit Iran's ballistic missile program, curtail its regional influence and forever limit its nuclear activities. Crushing U.S. oil sanctions on Iran will resume in early November and already, American allies in Asia are cutting back on their purchases of Iranian crude. While European nations say they want the deal to continue, U.S. clout in global financial markets led oil companies and airplane manufacturers to withdraw from working in Iran. Iran's currency, the rial, has plummeted in value, and the downturn has sparked protests. Another ally of Iran, the Yemeni rebels known as the Houthis, are also preparing for difficult times, especially as their opponents, a Saudi-led coalition, besieges the port of Hodeida, a major source of income for the group. The rebels have sharply increased taxes on merchants and businesses. Iranian-backed militias in Iraq are buffered to an extent from any financial crunch because they also get funding from the Baghdad government, which is nominally a U.S. ally. The militias are part of the government-sanctioned paramilitary group known as the Popular Mobilization Forces, with some 100,000 fighters, who get salaries and equipment from the state. Many of the militias also profit from businesses they run on the side. An official with Iraq's Kataib Hezbollah, one of the main groups backed by Tehran, even said his group could help Hezbollah financially if need be. He spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss the internal workings. "We can last this way for three years," he said. ___ Abdul-Zahra reported from Baghdad. In this January 21, 2016 photo, a piggy bank with a photo of Hezbollah leader, Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah, is displayed to collect money for the militant group, in the southern Lebanese village of Kfar Rumman, Lebanon. The Trump administration will resume crushing oil sanctions on Iran in Nov. 2018, a step that aims to strain Tehran's funding of its regional allies. Already, Lebanon's powerful guerrilla force Hezbollah is starting to feel financial strains, stepping up its calls for donations from its Shiite followers. (AP Photo/Bilal Hussein) FILE -- In this April 20, 2017 file photo, a Hezbollah fighter patrols in an orange grove, in the coastal border town of Naqoura, south Lebanon. The Trump administration will resume crushing oil sanctions on Iran in Nov. 2018, a step that aims to strain Tehran's funding of its regional allies. Already, Lebanon's powerful guerrilla force Hezbollah is starting to feel financial strains, stepping up its calls for donations from its Shiite followers. (AP Photo/Hussein Malla, File) In this June 8, 2018 file photo, Iraqi Popular Mobilization Forces march as they hold their flag and posters of Iraqi and Iranian Shiites spiritual leaders during "al-Quds" or Jerusalem Day, in Baghdad, Iraq. The Trump administration will resume crushing oil sanctions on Iran in Nov. 2018, a step that aims to strain Tehran's funding of its regional allies. Iranian-backed militias in Iraq are buffered to an extent from any financial crunch because they also get funding from the Baghdad government, which is nominally a U.S. ally. (AP Photo/Hadi Mizban, File) ARRIAGA, Mexico (AP) - Kenia Yoselin Gutierrez had long thought about migrating from her native Honduras to the United States, but stories of others who made the trip scared her off: migrants being raped or disappearing, children stolen. When she heard about the caravan that has now grown into several thousand people traveling through southern Mexico, she saw her chance. Her 5-year-old daughter, sister and niece joined her. "It's not so easy to walk this road alone and with children," the 23-year-old said, sitting with her sister and their daughters under a tarp near the main square in the southern Mexican town of Pijijiapan. "But while we are accompanied like this, it's not so dangerous." The tropical sun may be hot, the road long and Mexican authorities unhelpful and even harassing, but many in the caravan say traveling in a large group helps safeguard them from the dangers that plague the trail northward. It's also a relatively inexpensive way to make the trip, as intensified U.S. efforts to seal the border have driven the price smugglers charge as high as $12,000 - a sum those fleeing poverty and violence can ill afford. At the same time, kidnapping and extorting money from migrants has become big business for Mexican criminal organizations, especially near the U.S. border, making it more difficult for people to attempt crossings on their own. A woman holds her baby as she waits in hopes of a ride among other Central Americans participating in the thousands-strong caravan of Central American slowly making its way toward the U.S. border, outside Pijijiapan, Mexico, before dawn on Friday, Oct. 26, 2018. Many migrants said they felt safer traveling and sleeping with several thousand strangers in unknown towns than hiring a smuggler or trying to make the trip alone.(AP Photo/Rebecca Blackwell) The result has been caravans like this one and the camaraderie that comes amid thousands of strangers who all share a common history and goal. "We are from the same country," said Harlin Sandoval, who was waiting with several hundred others on the highway outside Pijijiapan, hoping to hitch a ride from passing trucks. "And I feel more protected." On Friday, the caravan made its most ambitious single-day trek since the migrants crossed into the southern Mexican state of Chiapas a week ago, a 60-mile (100-kilometer) hike up the coast from Pijijiapan to the town of Arriaga. The group has thinned considerably from exhaustion and illness, and was about 4,000-strong compared with its peak of more than 7,000. Still 1,000 miles from the nearest U.S. border crossing at McAllen, Texas, the journey could be twice as long if the group heads for the Tijuana-San Diego frontier, as another caravan did earlier this year. Only about 200 in that group made it to the border. While such migrant caravans have taken place regularly over the years, passing largely unnoticed, they have received widespread attention this year after fierce opposition from U.S. President Donald Trump. On Friday, the Pentagon approved a request for additional troops at the southern border, likely to total several hundred, to help the U.S. Border Patrol as Trump seeks to transform fears about immigration and the caravan into electoral gains in the Nov. 6 midterms. Defense Secretary Jim Mattis signed off on the request for help from the Department of Homeland Security and authorized the military staff to work out details such as the size, composition and estimated cost of the deployments, according to a U.S. official who spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss planning that has not yet been publicly announced. Stoking fears about the caravan and illegal immigration to rally his Republican base, the president has insinuated that gang members and "Middle Easterners" are mixed in the group, though he later acknowledged there was no proof of that. On Friday, President Enrique Pena Nieto announced the launch of what he called the "You are at home" plan, offering shelter, medical attention, schooling and jobs to Central Americans in the southern states of Chiapas and Oaxaca if they apply for refuge. Pena Nieto said the plan "is only for those who fulfill Mexican laws" and is a first step toward permanent refuge status. In the evening, in Arriaga's central plaza after the walking was done, the migrants rejected the proposal in a show of hands and boisterous voice vote. "Gracias!" they yelled, but then "No, we're heading north!" A coordinator of the caravan said they would strike out again before dawn for Tapanatepec, about 29 miles (46 kilometers) away across the Oaxaca state line. Even before the announcement, authorities said more than 1,700 of the migrants had applied for refugee status, while hundreds of others had accepted bus rides home. Mexico's government has allowed the migrants to make their way on foot, but has not provided them with food, shelter or bathrooms, reserving any aid for those who turn themselves in. Police have also been ejecting paid migrant passengers off buses, enforcing an obscure road insurance regulation to make it tougher for them to travel that way. Authorities were also cracking down on smaller groups trying to catch up with the main caravan, detaining about 300 Hondurans and Guatemalans as they walked along a highway after crossing the Mexico border illegally, said an official with the national immigration authority. Migrants, who enter Mexico illegally every day, usually ride in smugglers' trucks or buses, or walk at night to avoid detection. The fact that this group was walking in broad daylight suggests they were adopting the tactics of the caravan, which is large enough to be out in the open without fear of mass detentions. However, it now appears such smaller groups will be picked off by immigration authorities, keeping them from swelling the caravan's ranks. For Jenifer Ramirez, traveling with her 5-month-old daughter in her arms as her husband and two other children, 3 and 5, trudged alongside them, the caravan was a stroke of good fortune. Forced to leave Honduras in a hurry after her husband, a bus driver, was warned by gang members he would be killed if he didn't agree to transport drugs on his vehicle, the family had no money to pay a smuggler. "In a group we receive help," said Ramirez, 24, referring to the food and donations provided by local communities at every stop along the way. "If you don't have money you get food, clothing ... to be able to continue." Gutierrez, the young woman traveling with her daughter, sister and niece, said she had never before slept in a park or on a sidewalk. She hopes that all the hardship may someday become "a pretty memory" for herself and her daughter, if they make it to the U.S. "I would like her to remember that I am doing this to give her a better life, to give good schooling, to give her what I never had in my childhood," Gutierrez said. "And may she never end up like me, having to emigrate far away." ___ Associated Press writers Mark Stevenson and Peter Orsi in Mexico City contributed to this report. ___ This story corrects town to Tapanatepec. Scores of Central American migrants waiting for rides rest along the highway as they travel with a thousands-strong caravan slowly making its way toward the U.S. border, in Pijijiapan, Mexico, before dawn on Friday, Oct. 26, 2018. Many migrants said they felt safer traveling and sleeping with several thousand strangers in unknown towns than hiring a smuggler or trying to make the trip alone.(AP Photo/Rebecca Blackwell) Central American migrants waiting for rides along the highway are lit by the lights of police cars providing security for them, as part of a thousands-strong caravan slowly making its way toward the U.S. border, in Pijijiapan, before dawn on Friday, Oct. 26, 2018. Many migrants said they felt safer traveling and sleeping with several thousand strangers in unknown towns than hiring a smuggler or trying to make the trip alone.(AP Photo/Rebecca Blackwell) A man makes announcements about lost valuables and people separated from their loved ones over a megaphone as thousands-strong caravan of Central American migrants heading for the U.S. sets up camp for the night in Pijijiapan, Mexico, Thursday, Oct. 25, 2018. Many migrants said they felt safer traveling and sleeping with several thousand strangers in unknown towns than hiring a smuggler or trying to make the trip alone.(AP Photo/Rebecca Blackwell) Scores of Central American migrants waiting for rides rest along the highway as they travel with a thousands-strong caravan slowly making its way toward the U.S. border, in Pijijiapan, Mexico, before dawn on Friday, Oct. 26, 2018. Many migrants said they felt safer traveling and sleeping with several thousand strangers in unknown towns than hiring a smuggler or trying to make the trip alone.(AP Photo/Rebecca Blackwell) Men wait in line to receive food from the local community, as a thousands-strong caravan of Central American migrants heading for the U.S. sets up camp for the night in Pijijiapan, Mexico, Thursday, Oct. 25, 2018. Many migrants said they felt safer traveling and sleeping with several thousand strangers in unknown towns than hiring a smuggler or trying to make the trip alone.(AP Photo/Rebecca Blackwell) Men pass up water to Central Americans riding on the back of a truck while other migrants wait for rides, as a thousands-strong caravan of Central American makes its way toward the U.S. border, north of Pijijiapan, Mexico, at dawn on Friday, Oct. 26, 2018. Many migrants said they felt safer traveling and sleeping with several thousand strangers in unknown towns than hiring a smuggler or trying to make the trip alone.(AP Photo/Rebecca Blackwell) Central American migrants look through a pile of donated clothes, as a thousands-strong caravan of migrants prepares to camp out for the night in Pijijiapan, Mexico, on their journey toward the U.S. border, Thursday, Oct. 25, 2018. Many migrants said they felt safer traveling and sleeping with several thousand strangers in unknown towns than hiring a smuggler or trying to make the trip alone.(AP Photo/Rebecca Blackwell) Migrants travel on a cattle truck, as a thousands-strong caravan of Central American migrants slowly makes its way toward the U.S. border, between Pijijiapan and Arriaga, Mexico, Friday, Oct. 26, 2018. Many migrants said they felt safer traveling and sleeping with several thousand strangers in unknown towns than hiring a smuggler or trying to make the trip alone. (AP Photo/Rodrigo Abd) SRINAGAR, India (AP) - Eight rebels and two Indian soldiers were killed in gunbattles in disputed Kashmir that sparked violent anti-India protests by residents seeking an end to Indian rule in the region, officials said Friday. Indian troops laid siege to a village in northwestern Sopore area on Friday, leading to an exchange of gunfire in which two militants and a soldier were killed, police said. Government forces engaged militants at two places in the contested region on Thursday after troops launched counterinsurgency operations resulting in the death of six militants, the Indian military said. One soldier was wounded in the fighting. The gunbattles triggered large anti-India protests and clashes as thousands of people marched near the sites of the fighting in solidarity with rebels for a second day Friday amid funerals of the rebels attended by tens of thousands of people. Government forces fired warning shots, shotgun pellets and tear gas at the stone-throwing protesters, injuring at least a dozen people. Militants also attacked an army camp in southern Tral area, killing a soldier and wounding another late Thursday. Kashmiri villagers carry body of rebel Sahir Ahmed, during his funeral procession in Arwani, 55 kilometers (35 miles) south of Srinagar, Indian controlled Kashmir, Friday, Oct. 26, 2018. Officials say eight rebels and two Indian soldiers have been killed in gunbattles in disputed Kashmir that sparked violent anti-India protests by residents seeking an end to Indian rule in the region. (AP Photo/Dar Yasin) Violence has escalated in the region since last week, with daily fighting between Kashmiri rebels and Indian troops that triggered protests and clashes against Indian rule. Anger exploded in the region after the killing on Sunday of seven civilians in an explosion after three rebels died in a gunfight in the southern Kulgam area. 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. Kashmiri villagers shout pro freedom slogans during the funeral of rebel Sahir Ahmed in Arwani, 55 kilometers (35 miles) south of Srinagar, Indian controlled Kashmir, Friday, Oct. 26, 2018. Officials say eight rebels and two Indian soldiers have been killed in gunbattles in disputed Kashmir that sparked violent anti-India protests by residents seeking an end to Indian rule in the region. (AP Photo/Dar Yasin) Kashmiri villagers displaying the body of Sahir Ahmed, a rebel is seen through the leaves of a Chinar tree during his funeral in Arwani, 55 kilometers (35 miles) south of Srinagar, Indian controlled Kashmir, Friday, Oct. 26, 2018. Officials say eight rebels and two Indian soldiers have been killed in gunbattles in disputed Kashmir that sparked violent anti-India protests by residents seeking an end to Indian rule in the region.(AP Photo/Dar Yasin) Kashmiri villagers women watch as body of Sahir Ahmed, a rebel is displayed during his funeral in Arwani, 55 kilometers (35 miles) south of Srinagar, Indian controlled Kashmir, Friday, Oct. 26, 2018. Officials say eight rebels and two Indian soldiers have been killed in gunbattles in disputed Kashmir that sparked violent anti-India protests by residents seeking an end to Indian rule in the region. (AP Photo/Dar Yasin) Kashmiri villagers shout pro freedom slogans as they participate in the funeral of rebel Sahir Ahmed, in Arwani, 55 kilometers (35 miles) south of Srinagar, Indian controlled Kashmir, Friday, Oct. 26, 2018. Officials say eight rebels and two Indian soldiers have been killed in gunbattles in disputed Kashmir that sparked violent anti-India protests by residents seeking an end to Indian rule in the region. (AP Photo/Dar Yasin) Just over four in ten mothers are still breastfeeding their babies when they are six weeks old, new figures show. Only 42.7% of mothers were breastfeeding their babies six to eight weeks after birth, according to Public Health England (PHE) data for 2017/18 in England. In 2016/17 the figure stood at 44.4%, according to PHE. Data from NHS England show that the rate was 43.1% in 2015/16, and 43.8% for 2014/15. Breastfeeding rates also varied significantly by region. Eight in 10 babies were being breastfed at this age in Tower Hamlets in London compared to less than one in five (18.9%) in Knowsley, Merseyside. New figures have shown that breastfeeding rates in England have fallen (PA) The World Health Organisation recommends that mothers should exclusively breastfeed their babies for the first six months of life. After babies start eating solid foods at six months of age, officials suggest continued breastfeeding up to the age of two and beyond. Meanwhile the NHS Start for Life website adds that there are many advantages of breastfeeding, including health benefits for both babies and mothers. Breast milk protects babies from infections and provides a perfect balance of vitamins and nutrition for infants, according to the website. Breastfed babies have a lower chance of cot death and childhood leukaemia, they also have a lower risk of allergies and are less likely to develop diabetes or become overweight when they are older. Benefits for women include reducing their risk of breast cancer, ovarian cancer, osteoporosis, diabetes and cardiovascular disease. Previous research has estimated that 5% of breast cancer cases in the UK are caused by not breastfeeding. Professor Viv Bennett, chief nurse at Public Health England, said: Breastfeeding provides the best nutritional start in life and is something that mothers and babies learn together. We know some mothers may need support and encouragement to help them start and continue with breastfeeding. Thats why we offer trusted advice to parents through our Start4Life campaign resources and to midwives and health visitors through professional guidance. Carmel Lloyd, head of education at the Royal College of Midwives, said: These latest annual statistics suggest England could be doing better when it comes breastfeeding. Typically the number of women who start breastfeeding in the UK is at around 80%, but unfortunately after a couple of weeks this number falls dramatically. Low breastfeeding rates in parts of the UK unfortunately indicate a much bigger social and cultural problem that needs to be tackled. There are some areas where many generations of women havent been given the example of breastfeeding or offered the right support to enable them to initiate and sustain breastfeeding if they choose to breastfeed. For women who choose to breastfeed it is so important that they feel supported not only by midwives, but by their family, friends and wider society too, particularly when it comes to breastfeeding public. What the RCM would like to see is an investment in high-quality postnatal support and infant feeding specialists to help women initiate and sustain breastfeeding if that is the way they have chosen to feed their baby. The disappearance of mother-of-five Sarah Wellgreen is being treated as a potential murder, according to police. The 46-year-old was last seen in the Bazes Shaw area of New Ash Green, Kent, where she lives, on October 9 and she has not been in contact her family since. Her car was at her home address and there have been no transactions on her bank or credit cards, Kent Police said. A man in his 30s was arrested on October 16 and was released on bail pending further inquiries until November 16. Our officers in the Kent and Essex Serious Crime Directorate are investigating the disappearance of 46-year-old Sarah Wellgreen as a potential murder enquiry. Please visit our website for more information >> https://t.co/cd73Gen0TG pic.twitter.com/ebgtlTyHBi Kent Police (UK) (@kent_police) October 24, 2018 Detective Superintendent Paul Fotheringham said: We are investigating the disappearance of Sarah. It is entirely out of character for her to go missing and, having conducted extensive inquiries and searches, this case is now being treated as a potential murder. Sarah Wellgreen (Kent Police/PA) Sarah has disappeared without a trace, the only item missing from the home is her black iPhone 4. Officers have conducted extensive searches in New Ash Green and surrounding rural areas. While we continue our investigation and inquiries, I would urge anybody who saw anything suspicious in the New Ash Green area at around the time Sarah went missing, that is overnight from the evening of Tuesday 9 October into the morning of Wednesday 10 October, to contact us. In Bazes Shaw an area of woodland was cordoned off and police helicopters could be seen overhead. Residents said Ms Wellgreen was seen regularly around the Bazes Shaw area with her young children but commuted to Portsmouth where she is believed to work in a beauty salon. One resident said there had been a large police presence in the area and estimated there had been at least 100 officers around the village alongside local search parties. About 200 people volunteered to help police carry out searches in the area near Ms Wellgreens home over the weekend. Mr Fotheringham said: We have experts with specialist technology and forensic scientists working with us to try and find Sarah. Residents, businesses and landowners in the rural areas around New Ash Green are asked to check their outhouses, and areas surrounding their properties. We are particularly interested to hear from anyone with fixed CCTV cameras within a five-mile radius of New Ash Green, whether this is residential or commercial CCTV, to come forward. Likewise, anyone who was out on the evening of 9 October to the morning of 10 October in that five-mile area who has dashcam in their vehicle, please contact us. We are also appealing to those living and working in the area bordered by the A2, M25, Meopham, Cobham, Horton Kirby and Darenth to check their sheds, outbuildings and areas of rough ground or woodland for any sign of Sarah. Dog walkers and anyone out in rural areas should also call us if they see anything that seems suspicious. If you think you may have seen Sarah or something suspicious but are not sure, please do not hesitate to call and let us know. Id like to take this opportunity to thank those who have already called us, assisted with searches or sent messages of support to family who have been badly affected by Sarahs disappearance. She is white, around 5ft 7in tall, of medium build, with green eyes and straight brown shoulder-length hair. Information should be provided to Kent Police on 0207 158 0011, freephone 0800 056 0154 quoting 11-0423, or anonymously to Crimestoppers on 0800 555111. CCTV or dashcam footage should be uploaded to https://mipp.police.uk/ A senior Conservative MEP has been forced to apologise after comparing Socialists in the European Parliament to Nazis. Syed Kamall, who leads the European Conservatives and Reformists Group to which Theresa Mays party belongs, backed down after his remarks caused outrage in the chamber and a rebuke from the parliaments president Antonio Tajani. Mr Tajani was then embroiled in a row with Nigel Farage after accusing the Ukip MEP of being nostalgic for dictatorships and suggesting the European Union should take the credit for ridding the continent of Nazism and Communism. Mr Farage branded his reading of history laughable and said his claim was deeply insulting to the US and UK troops who fought in two world wars. The row kicked off as the parliament sat in Strasbourg, when Mr Kamall took offence at a warning from Udo Bullmann, the German leader of the Socialists and Democrats Group, of the rise in extremist movements which he labelled right-wing. It was not a personal comment aimed at any MEPs. I've apologised directly & unreservedly to Mr. Bullman for any offence caused. I have upmost respect for anyone who stood up & fought against Nazism, Communism & any other kinds of extremism, regardless of political affiliation. Syed Kamall (@SyedKamall) October 24, 2018 Mr Kamall retorted: I would remind you, when you talk about right-wing extremists, we have to remember that the Nazis were National Socialists. It is a strain of socialism. Lets not pretend. As MEPs responded with cries of Rubbish and The first ones who were killed were Socialists, you idiot, Mr Kamall retorted: Its a left-wing ideology. They wanted the same things as you, lets be clear. You dont like the truth, do you? Mr Bullman denounced his comments as a political outrage and demanded an apology, citing the German Social Democrats record of voting against Adolf Hitlers regime and falling victim in their hundreds of thousands to its terror. Syed Kamall was addressing the European Parliament in Strasbourg (European Parliament) The Tory MEPs comments were denounced by Liberal leader Guy Verhofstadt as an insult to all the Social Democrats who fought against Nazism and died in concentration camps. Mr Kamall responded: I get tired of people saying Nazism is a right-wing ideology. I believe in freedom of speech, but if I have offended you and clearly I have I apologise unreservedly. I strongly condemn the political derailment of Syed Kamall, who associated Social Democrats with Nazis in #EPlenary. It was the Social Democrats who stood up against fascism!#EUCO Udo Bullmann (@UdoBullmann) October 24, 2018 Seeking to calm the waters, Italian Mr Tajani provoked snorts of laughter from Mr Farage as he described Nazism and Soviet Communism as two ghastly and terrible systems which caused terrible wounds for Europe, adding: Thank God these two dictatorships are vanished, thanks to the European Union. Telling Mr Farage that laughter is the last refuge of the stupid, Mr Tajani added: You seem to be someone who is nostalgic for dictatorship if you dont respect other people. You have no right not to respect other people so please keep quiet. Mr Farage said he would make no response to the personally insulting comments, but added: We do seem to be struggling just a little bit with our history today. Nigel Farage (Aaron Chown/PA) To claim that the European Union brought about the downfall of Nazism and Soviet Communism is not only laughable, it is very ungracious and deeply insulting to the United States of America, who made massive sacrifices so that Europe could be free twice in the 20th century, and to a slightly lesser extent the United Kingdom, as 30,000 British dead in Italy will attest. You can claim what you want for the European Union, but please dont rewrite history. Mr Tajani replied: Seventy years of peace have existed in Europe since the two horrible dictatorships and that is due to the European Union, so perhaps you should be a bit more careful in your reading of history. The head of the Civil Service, Sir Jeremy Heywood, has announced his retirement in order to concentrate on his recovery from cancer. Prime Minister Theresa May has appointed acting Cabinet Secretary Sir Mark Sedwill, who has been standing in for Sir Jeremy since he took leave of absence in June to receive treatment, to take over the role on a permanent basis. Sir Jeremy, 56, has been Cabinet Secretary since 2012 and head of the home Civil Service since 2014. He previously served as principal private secretary to prime ministers Tony Blair and Gordon Brown, chief of staff to Mr Brown and Downing Street permanent secretary to David Cameron. His position as one of Whitehalls most senior mandarins under four successive prime ministers has led him to be regarded as a key behind-the-scenes influence in the shaping of modern Britain. He revealed earlier this year that he had been diagnosed with cancer in June 2017, but remained in post during a summer of political upheaval triggered by the shock general election result. In a personal statement, Sir Jeremy said: Thirty-five years ago, I joined the Civil Service as an enthusiastic young economist in the Health and Safety Executive, full of ideas and keen to make change happen. Sir Jeremy Heywood is to step down from the civil service (PA) Today, I still have all that desire to serve my country and to make a positive difference. It is with great sadness therefore that, on medical advice, I must now retire. Mrs May paid tribute, saying: Jeremy has given exemplary service to the public in his Civil Service career. He has worked constantly to improve our countrys future and to deliver for the public, serving prime ministers and ministers of all parties with distinction in the finest traditions of the Civil Service. I am personally grateful to him for the support he has given me as Prime Minister. He has made an enormous contribution to public life in our country and will be sorely missed. In recognition of his distinguished service to public life, the Prime Minister has nominated Sir Jeremy for a life peerage. Sir Mark, 54, who served as Mrs Mays national security adviser before taking on the Cabinet Secretary role on a temporary basis, said: The whole public service will want to thank Jeremy for his tireless and outstanding service to our nation, and for the values he exemplifies. He has had a profound, positive and lasting impact and will be greatly missed. Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn praised Sir Jeremy as an impressive, well-informed and dedicated public servant. At Prime Ministers Questions in the Commons, Mr Corbyn said: I really do hope he gets through this very difficult condition he is in at the present time. In a joint statement, former cabinet secretaries Lord ODonnell, Lord Turnbull, Lord Wilson, Lord Butler and Lord Armstrong praised Sir Jeremy. They said: Jeremy has been an enormous credit to the civil service and has served many prime ministers and chancellors of the exchequer with great distinction. The fact that he is trusted across the political spectrum shows his commitment to the civil services values of honesty, objectivity, integrity and impartiality. Jeremy has also been valued by civil service colleagues, ministers and special advisers alike for his willingness to challenge assumptions, make change happen and create alignment even on controversial issues. He will be much missed, particularly at the current time. UK detectives are investigating an allegedly racially aggravated incident after a man was filmed verbally abusing an elderly woman on a Ryanair flight. Footage posted on social media appeared to show plane passenger David Mesher calling Delsie Gayle an ugly black bastard and telling her: Dont speak to me in a foreign language, you stupid ugly cow. The incident is believed to have taken place on Ryanair flight FR015 at Barcelona Airport on October 19, before it left for London Stansted. Essex Police said on Wednesday: Essex Police was contacted on Sunday October 21, about a racially aggravated incident happening on a Ryanair plane while on the tarmac at Barcelona Airport. This incident took place on Friday October 19, a video of which has been widely circulated on social media and covered by media both here and abroad. Since the report was made to us our officers have identified both parties involved and are progressing a number of inquiries. A Ryanair plane (Peter Byrne/PA) There are agreed national protocols to follow when incidents are reported to have happened in another country. As such, we will be conducting an investigation to submit to the Spanish authorities in due course. The Press Association understands Spanish police are not investigating, as when an incident happens on a plane, it is investigated by authorities at the flights destination. Mr Mesher, who lives in a sheltered retirement housing block in a leafy area of Yardley Wood, Birmingham, has declined to comment to reporters outside his home. Only a small number of residents left or entered the building, which is run by housing provider Optivo, on Wednesday morning. A spokeswoman for Optivo said: We do not condone abusive behaviour in any form. As this matter is now being handled by the police we are unable to make any further comment at this stage. Ms Gayle said she felt very low about the incident and it had discouraged her from flying with the low-cost airline in future. She told ITV News: I feel really depressed about it. I go to bed and say, What have I done?. I havent done anything to attack him, its because of the colour of my skin I was abused like that. Two officers from West Midlands Police entered the building on Wednesday afternoon after the entrance had been guarded by a security guard. Police spent just under an hour at the property before leaving without Mr Mesher. When questioned on why their officers had attended the premises, a spokeswoman for West Midlands Police said: West Midlands Police officers are assisting Essex Police who have the primary investigation. Anyone suspected of involvement in the killing of Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi will be barred from entering the UK, Theresa May has said. The Prime Minister said if any of the suspects had a visa it would be revoked as she demanded the Saudi authorities provide a full explanation of how the Washington Post columnist died at the Gulf kingdoms consulate in Istanbul. Mrs May told MPs at Prime Ministers Questions that she would speak to Saudi Arabias King Salman on Wednesday. Turkish officials say Mr Khashoggi was killed on October 2 by a 15-man Saudi hit squad that included a member of Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salmans entourage on overseas trips. The Prime Minister rejected the Saudi claim that Mr Khashoggi died after a fight at the consulate. She said: We condemn the killing of the journalist Jamal Khashoggi in the strongest possible terms and after his disappearance we made clear that Saudi Arabia must co-operate with Turkey and conduct a full and credible investigation. The claim that has been made that Mr Khashoggi died in a fight does not amount to a credible explanation so there does remain an urgent need to establish what has happened in relation to this. Mrs May added that Home Secretary Sajid Javid is taking action against all suspects to prevent them entering the UK. If these individuals currently have visas, those visas will be revoked today, she told MPs. The announcement on the visas follows similar measures taken by the United States. Jamal Khashoggi (Johnny Green/PA) The UK Government has come under pressure to go further and suspend arms sales to Saudi Arabia, a key trading partner. SNP Westminster leader Ian Blackford said the killing had all the hallmarks of being a premeditated murder and urged Mrs May to follow Germany in announcing that it would not approve new arms sales. That is moral leadership, the UK Government must take decisive action, he said. Words of condemnation will not do. Former deputy prime minister Lord Heseltine also urged Western powers to take a stand over the killing. But while he said that Britain should be prepared, if necessary, to halt arms sales to the Saudis, he warned that such measures would lead to a loss of UK influence in Riyadh. SNP Westminster Leader @IanBlackfordMP calls on Theresa May to finally end UK government arms sales to Saudi Arabia following its appalling record of human rights abuses #JamalKhashoggi #Yemen #PMQs pic.twitter.com/5nnKC5wEuH Tom French (@tomfrench85) October 24, 2018 In deciding what action to take, he said, the Government also needs to take account of the important stabilising role which Saudi Arabia has played in the Middle East. In this particular case I havent the slightest doubt that the Western allies have got to take a stand over the butchering of Mr Khashoggi, Lord Heseltine told BBC Radio 4s Today programme. He said that while Britain should be prepared to take action against the Saudis, the Government must think through the consequences. The problem with stopping selling arms is that it doesnt have any effect on the ability of these countries to behave in the way that they want to because there are plenty of other sources of arms procurement, he said. What it does mean is that you lose any influence in those countries. A 50,000 fund has been announced to help boost the number of men working in childcare. Around 4% of the current workforce for childrens daycare across Scotland are men. The Scottish Governments new Men in Early Years Challenge Fund will be split into two awards of 25,000 and given to two colleges to run pilot projects which support men in childcare. Colleges across the country will be able to make bids for the cash, which will be administered by the Scottish Funding Council (SFC). The money is aimed at increasing the number of men enrolling on NC and HNC Childhood Practice courses. Just 4.18% of the 1,793 students enrolled in the latter course in 2016/17 were men. Children and Early Years Minister Maree Todd with a worker and pupil at the nursery (Scottish Government/PA) Children and Young People Minister Maree Todd announced the fund while meeting male workers at Highland Fling Nursery in Portobello. She said: This is a fantastic opportunity for colleges to test out new ways of getting men into the early learning and childcare workforce, supporting our work to diversify the sector and recruit more people than ever to deliver quality early learning. Increasing the number of men in childcare means children will benefit from different perspectives and have more male role models to look up to. SFC Interim Chief Executive John Kemp said it is important caring is not viewed as an exclusively female role. He added: Scotlands colleges are uniquely positioned to have a positive impact on redressing the current gender imbalance in this workforce, and we look forward to receiving innovative bids from the sector. Universal free meals for infants should be scrapped to help the undue funding pressures facing schools, a Tory backbencher has suggested. Anne Main argued her partys decision to drop its manifesto commitment was misguided and the party should have investigated that further. The St Albans MP added it was crazy to ring-fence huge sums of money for foreign aid when the education budget lacked funding. She said parliamentarians should have chance to debate this misplaced policy. Speaking during her Westminster Hall debate on school funding, she said: Just like I dont want to see any budgets that should be used for pupils who are at the poorest end of the margins taken away, I dont want to see wealthier parents being cross-subsidised when they dont need it. Mrs Main added: Im a great supporter of good aid projects that have been done across the world but it seems crazy to me that we ring-fence huge sums of money for foreign aid when vital public services such as our education budget lack funding. The aid budget should be under the same scrutiny and pressures as other departments budgets because effectively were shovelling money out the door to meet arbitrary targets set in law. Mrs Main said it did not seem right that more and more schools were having to go cap in hand to parents for even the most basic provisions such as text books. She warned schools were not were not feeling the effects of record levels of funding and disappointed head teachers were calling for more resources to help meet the ever-rising costs and additional financial burdens being placed upon them, such as bigger National Insurance contributions. Fellow Conservative and former education minister Tim Loughton spoke of a sense of deja vu as he called for greater clarity over real-terms funding. He warned staffing costs in some of his schools had reached 90% of their budget, becoming unsustainable. Mr Loughton said the shortfall is a false economy. The MP for East Worthing and Shoreham said counselling levels had fallen due to cutbacks, adding: (This is) not scaremongering, this is going on now. Schools Minister Nick Gibb has introduced a new funding formula (PA) Lib Dem Layla Moran (Oxford West and Abingdon) cautioned of a paring down in the breadth of the curriculum due to a lack of funding. Labours Rachael Maskell (York Central) said outcomes were being impacted by the crisis in funding. Shadow schools minister Mike Kane urged ministers to remove their heads from the sand. He added: The 1.3 billion additional funding announced by the Secretary of State is nowhere near enough to reverse the 2.8 billion that has been cut since 2015. Schools minister Nick Gibb said the introduction of the national funding formula meant that for the first time this year cash was distributed to local authorities based on the individual needs and characteristics of every school in the country. The historic reform was the biggest improvement to school funding for a decade and it was directing resources where they are needed most, he said. Mr Gibb said: We are determined to create an education system that offers opportunity to everyone no matter what their circumstances or where they live. And thats why we have delivered on our promise to reform the unfair opaque and outdated school funding system by introducing the national funding formula for schools, something that previous Governments have shied away from including the previous Labour Government. Finance Secretary Derek Mackay has said his door is open for other parties to discuss the upcoming budget, with the Scottish Greens threatening to vote it down. Issues including local government taxation, proposals to implement a tourist tax and resolving a dispute over plans to replace Air Passenger Duty (APD) have been contested in the lead up to the budget announcement on December 12. The minority SNP administration needs to secure the backing of at least one other party in the Scottish Parliament if its budget is to be passed. The Greens have been supportive of the budget in recent years, however the partys co-convener Patrick Harvie urged the Scottish Government to revisit local government taxation and back a tourist tax in exchange for their votes. The Scottish Conservatives also suggested they could offer their support for the budget, but only if plans for a second independence referendum are dropped. Speaking as he announced the Scottish Governments Economic Action Plan, Mr Mackay said he was open to working with other parties, although would not agree to reducing taxes for some of Scotlands top earners following the publication of the Tories proposals. The minority SNP administration needs to secure the backing of at least one other party (Andrew Milligan/PA) He said: My door is open to any party as a minority government to ensure that the budget gets through. I think people would welcome a pragmatic, consensual approach to the budget. Recognising were a minority government, I have to find the consensus from the Scottish Parliament. I do have to say though that on first reading the first part of the Tories proposition, it does appear to be focused on tax cuts for the richest which is not the place that we would go to right now. Cutting APD was also included in the Tories proposals, something which Mr Mackay said could be resolved if Scottish Conservative MPs applied pressure on the UK Government. Under current plans, ADP would be replaced by an Air Departure Tax (ADT), though the Scottish Government insists an exemption on the tax must be given to the Highlands and Islands before it is passed over fears it would damage the economy of the region. Ministers earlier this year put plans to cut air tax on hold, saying exemptions afforded to the Highlands and Islands would need to be assessed by the European Commission, under EU State Aid rules. Mr Mackay said: We believe it would have economic benefits if the rate was reduced so it can happen now by the UK government, weve made that point, airlines have made that point too. There are 13 Tory MPs, Parliamentary arithmetic in Westminster is quite precarious. I think Theresa May is looking for support from wherever she can get it right now so if the Scottish Tories wanted to apply real pressure on her on that, they could fix this issue and then allow us to switch on the tax and do what we want to do with it. The Finance Secretary added that although there are currently no plans for introducing a tourist tax, as called for by the Greens, the Scottish Government are willing to engage on the matter. He said: Ill engage with that right up to and beyond the budget. I want to get a budget passed some parties are making their position public and Ill set out the Scottish budget on 12th of December. Im open to talks with any party in the Scottish Parliament. A play highlighting the dangers of knife crime will tour 95 schools and a young offenders institute, reaching 25,000 young people over the next six months. Titled Balisong, the play charts the journey of three friends in the final weeks of school who are facing a dilemma as they wonder what to do now that one of their friends has started carrying a knife. The play, which is a No Knives Better Lives (NKBL) project, aims to build on the success of the first Balisong play and tour last year, which was performed in 17 councils to 12,200 pupils. Along with the play, a post-performance workshop will draw out key themes from the work and ask the audience to reflect on the central question: what would you do if someone you knew was carrying a knife. Emily Beever, National Co-ordinator for NKBL at YouthLink Scotland said: In the last decade, the level of knife crime in Scotland has drastically reduced, but one incident is still one too many. Work with young people is key to continuing to prevent knife crime. Balisong has given us an exciting new way to talk to all young people about their role in preventing knife carrying through peer support. The play charts the journey of three pupils facing a dilemma as one of their friends has started carrying a knife (Andy Catlin/PA) The feedback has shown that already more than 12,000 young people will think twice before picking up a knife. The play has been created using a peer-theatre approach which engages directly with young peoples ideas, opinions and experiences of knife crime and uses their daily experience as the catalyst and inspiration for the story. Produced by Fast Forward in association with YouthLink Scotland, the national agency for youth work, Balisong has been written by Jennifer Adam and directed by Steve Small of Strange Town. Justice Secretary Humza Yousaf MSP, said: I am pleased to say the Scottish Government is providing an additional 25,000 to YouthLink Scotland this year to ensure that Balisong will be seen in every local authority throughout 2018/19, including a showing in HM Young Offenders Institution Polmont. Real pleasure watching #Balisong - it did almost have me greetin'! Powerful, hard-hitting and communicates such an important msg for our young ppl on the dangers of carrying a knife. Well done to the actors, production team and amazingly talented @RubiedMoon who wrote it! https://t.co/wIgXKd5ahK Humza Yousaf (@HumzaYousaf) October 24, 2018 Mr Yousaf tweeted the play almost had him crying after watching it at Stewarton Academy in Ayrshire on Wednesday. He tweeted: Real pleasure watching #Balisong it did almost have me greetin! Powerful, hard-hitting and communicates such an important msg for our young ppl on the dangers of carrying a knife. Well done to the actors, production team and amazingly talented @RubiedMoon who wrote it! To develop the schools tour further, NKBL has created a new lesson plan for secondary schools based on Balisong. It aims to help young people understand why it is important to do something if they know that someone else is carrying a knife. The resource will be given to each school on the tour and is also available to download for free via the NKBL website. A replica Commonwealth War Graves Commission cemetery has been installed at Cardiff Castle to mark the centenary of Armistice. The 330 headstones placed in the courtyard represent the more than 30,000 Welsh men and women who gave their lives during the First World War. Each wooden headstone, signifying 100 Welsh war casualties, features an inscription and badge to show the various regiments and divisions of soldiers who did not return home. A replica Stone of Remembrance Sir Edwin Lutyens contribution to CWGC cemeteries stands at the head of the replica cemetery. The installation aims to give visitors an insight into some of the 23,000 CWGC sites around the world. Each wooden headstone signifies 100 Welsh casualties in the First World War (Ben Birchall/PA) Dr Glyn Prysor, chief historian at CWGC, said: There arent many big war cemeteries here in the UK. People are often surprised that there are war graves at all but actually we have thousands and thousands of war graves tucked away in churchyards and local town cemeteries, often on your doorstep. You are never more than a few miles away from a war grave. But its very rare for people to see a big war cemetery with lots of graves together. He added: I think this really gives people a feeling of what you see when you go to the battlefields and see those thousands of headstones. This is representative of all those from Wales who lost their lives. As many as 40,000 people left Wales to serve and never came home. The headstones each feature an inscription and badge to show the divisions and regiments of soldiers who never returned from the frontline (Ben Birchall/PA) Welsh Culture Minister Lord Dafydd Elis-Thomas opened the replica cemetery at the castle on Wednesday morning. The replica cemetery is accompanied by an exhibition, Shaping Remembrance, at the castles Firing Line Museum. This includes a letter from the father of poet Hedd Wyn, which has not been on public display before. Wyn died in the first day of fighting on Pilckem Ridge during the Battle of Passchendaele and is buried at CWGCs Artillery Wood Cemetery in Belgium. It is estimated well over 30,000 Welsh men and women died during the First World War, though an exact figure is impossible to calculate. CWGC commemorates more than 27,000 war casualties from Welsh regiments. Thousands more died while serving in other units. Leading Brexiteer Nigel Farage denounced the UKs negotiation team as the enemy within as he warned Britain faces humiliation unless Theresa May is removed as Prime Minister. His comments to the European Parliament came as Mrs May prepares to face Conservative MPs amid growing unrest over her Brexit plans. The number of Tory MPs publicly committed to oppose her Chequers blueprint for leaving the European Union has now reached 50. The Prime Minister will meet critics at the backbench 1922 Committee in Parliament just days after one anonymous opponent suggested she should bring her own noose to the gathering. The meeting follows fresh revelations about the Governments plans for a no-deal Brexit, with alternative measures to secure supplies of food and medicines from the continent being investigated in case of chaos on the English Channel crossing. In developments that will cause further unease among Tory Brexiteers, leaked Cabinet papers obtained by The Times indicated the transition period during which the UK will remain tied to Brussels could turn into a long-running arrangement lasting years. But Mrs May firmly rejected reports the Government was willing to agree the European Court of Justice should be the final arbiter in most disputes arising from Brexit. Theresa May responds to a question from Jacob Rees-Mogg in the House of Commons (UK Parliament) Challenged in the House of Commons by arch-Brexiteer Jacob Rees-Mogg, Mrs May said: I havent seen those particular reports but if they are as he has suggested then they are wrong. We have been very clear in the work that we have been doing about ensuring that in the future the European Court of Justice does not have jurisdiction in the UK. The option of extending the transition period has been put forward as a way of resolving the impasse over the Irish border by giving extra time to find a mechanism to avoid a hard border. European Council president Donald Tusk told MEPs in Strasbourg that Mrs May had raised the prospect of an extension at last weeks Brussels summit. He added If the UK decided that such an extension would be helpful to reach a deal, Im sure that the leaders would be ready to consider it positively. Mr Tusk also said he was ready to convene a special Brexit summit if negotiator Michel Barnier reported decisive progress had been made in talks but made clear this was not yet the case. Olly Robbins and the British Civil Service are the enemy within, they signed up to the European dream many years ago and want to sabotage Brexit. pic.twitter.com/sIW7NMoYpQ Nigel Farage (@Nigel_Farage) October 24, 2018 Mr Farage said agreement was being delayed by a rogue element in these negotiations, a group of people who dont wish to see a solution, who put up a brick wall to stop us breaking free. He added: It is not your chief negotiator Michel Barnier, it is actually the British civil service, Olly Robbins team. They signed up years ago to the European dream. They have been happy to take their orders from Brussels, they are now out to sabotage Brexit. They are indeed the enemy within. Unless the Conservative Party comes to its senses and gets rid of a leader who clearly is being led by the nose, we will head to the December summit, we will head to a humiliating sell-out and we will head to the UK being trapped in EU rules for many, many years to come. Very pleased to announce that @EdwardLeighMP for #Gainsborough & #Horncastle, has pledged to #StandUp4Brexit, taking our pledged number of MPs to 50 Thanks so much Edward! If your MP hasnt pledged yet please email them an ask them to #ChuckChequers: https://t.co/B6iqjMkeEU pic.twitter.com/OzRafsySDS #StandUp4Brexit (@StandUp4Brexit) October 23, 2018 Confirmation of Mrs Mays attendance at the 1922 Committee comes amid speculation the number of Conservative MPs submitting letters calling for her removal is approaching the 48 needed to trigger a no-confidence vote in her leadership. The scale of opposition her Brexit plans face was made clear as the Stand Up 4 Brexit campaign, which has received high-profile support from former foreign secretary Boris Johnson, said Sir Edward Leigh had become its 50th backer. Meanwhile, the Governments contingency preparations for a no-deal Brexit were mocked following reports ships may have to be chartered by Whitehall to ensure vital supplies reach the UK. The Financial Times said Transport Secretary Chris Grayling had discussed the possibility of hiring entire vessels, or securing space in ships, to bring food, medicines and other supplies in through alternative ports. A Department for Transport spokesman said: We remain confident of reaching an agreement with the EU, but it is only sensible for government and industry to prepare for a range of scenarios. We are continuing to work closely with partners on contingency plans to ensure that trade can continue to move as freely as possible between the UK and Europe. European Parliament Brexit negotiator Guy Verhofstadt meanwhile urged EU negotiators to offer a right to unhindered onward movement for UK nationals living in the EU, allowing them to move home and work between the 27 states in return for a right of lifelong return for EU citizens currently in Britain who move away from the country in future. I was in Downing Street and they are ready to go for such a trade-off, Mr Verhofstadt told the Parliament. If the council were to push for such a solution, it is a trade-off that is possible. The German government is putting pressure on the countrys car manufacturers to fix their diesel vehicles that have excessive emissions. Chancellor Angela Merkels cabinet has agreed on a series of measures that includes upgrades for older vehicles affected by the diesel scandal, preventing them from being subjected to diesel driving bans in cities such as Hamburg, Berlin, Stuttgart and Frankfurt. Its not acceptable that that the auto industry is paying a lot of money in America , but makes a huge fuss over a few hundred euros here, Mrs Merkel said at an election rally in the state of Hesse. She was calling on car makers to stop penny-pinching when it comes to fixing the vehicles they sold to consumers with misleading emissions claims. The German transport ministry has said it believes about 2.2 million vehicles need upgrades. Mrs Merkels unusually harsh words toward Germanys powerful auto industry came the day before a court in nearby Mainz considered whether a ban on diesel-powered cars is permissible to prevent air pollution in the city. German Chancellor Angela Merkel (AP Photo/Markus Schreiber) Diesel vehicles are a significant source of nitrogen oxides, or NOx, which can be harmful to human health. The Mainz administrative court decided that the city would have to prepare to implement a ban on older diesel vehicles by September 1 2019, if NOx levels cannot be reduced by then. The newly-announced measures by Mrs Merkels cabinet will apply to 15 German cities that significantly exceed the European Unions limit of 40 micrograms of NOx per cubic metre. Another 50 cities in the country are just above the EU threshold. Mrs Merkels party and her coalition allies, the Social Democrats, are projected to face steep losses in the Hesse state election on Sunday, while the environmentalist Green party has seen a surge in opinion polls in recent weeks. Ferdinand Dudenhoeffer, one of Germanys best-known auto industry analysts, called the governments new measures a transparent election campaign manoeuvre for the Hesse vote. He told the daily Rheinische Post that Mrs Merkel had known about the problem of excessively high NOx emissions since 2010, but refrained from doing anything about it. A functional explosive device has been found at Hillary and Bill Clintons suburban New York home, US officials say. The official says investigators believe the explosive is linked to one found on Monday at the compound of billionaire philanthropist George Soros. BREAKING: Secret Service intercepts suspicious packages addressed to the residences of former President Obama and former First Lady Hillary Clinton. Working with our law enforcement partners on the investigation. Our Statement: https://t.co/lJdTn04KmI U.S. Secret Service (@SecretService) October 24, 2018 The device was discovered early on Wednesday morning at the Clintons home in Chappaqua, New York. Police in New Castle, New York who cover Chappaqua say they assisted the FBI, Secret Service and Westchester County authorities in the investigation of a suspicious package. A woman who travelled outside Northern Ireland for an abortion after being told her unborn child could not survive after birth has won the right to challenge the regions laws on terminations. Sarah Ewart has been granted leave to judicially review the current prohibition on abortions in cases of fatal fetal abnormalities. The substantive case, which is due to be heard in the coming months, will test whether the regime is incompatible with human rights law. Five years ago, Ms Ewart travelled from Northern Ireland for a termination in England after a 20-week scan revealed her baby had anencephaly, which meant its brain and skull had not developed and it would either die before being born or shortly afterwards. Ms Ewart has become a high-profile advocate for law reform and has been involved in previous legal hearings on the emotive issue. I hope this means the beginning of the end to the trauma Ive been through constantly going through the court system and having to re-tell and re-live my experience is exhausting, she said. It will be worth it if this case pushes forward reform so that no more women are affected and hurt by the current law. Sarah Ewart (centre) outside the Supreme Court in Westminster (Stefan Rousseau/PA) Abortions in Northern Ireland are illegal in all but exceptional medical and mental health circumstances. The Government has resisted calls to step in to legislate for reform in the wake of a recent Supreme Court judgment that found the current legal framework incompatible with human rights laws. In June, a majority of Supreme Court judges said the ban on terminations in cases of rape, incest or fatal fetal abnormality needed radical reconsideration. But the Supreme Court dismissed the legal challenge by the Northern Ireland Human Rights Commission by a narrow majority, explaining that it had no jurisdiction to consider the case because there was no actual or potential victim of an unlawful act involved in it. Ms Ewart has put herself forward as such an individual impacted by the law for the renewed legal bid. She was granted permission to take a case against Stormonts departments of health and justice, though not the UK government. Amnesty International is supporting her challenge. Grainne Teggart from Amnesty said: A huge amount rests on this case for women in Northern Ireland. If the court rules that the UK is violating its human rights obligations by allowing women to suffer under the abortion law in Northern Ireland, the UK Government will have no choice but to respond. However, women should not be forced through the courts to have their rights realised. The US Secret Service says agents have intercepted packages containing possible explosive devices addressed to former president Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton. The agency says neither Mrs Clinton nor Mr Obama received the packages, and neither was at risk of receiving them because of screening procedures. BREAKING: Secret Service intercepts suspicious packages addressed to the residences of former President Obama and former First Lady Hillary Clinton. Working with our law enforcement partners on the investigation. Our Statement: https://t.co/lJdTn04KmI U.S. Secret Service (@SecretService) October 24, 2018 It says the devices were discovered late on Tuesday and early on Wednesday. A US official tells The Associated Press that a functional explosive device was found during screening at Bill and Hillary Clintons suburban New York home. The official says investigators believe the explosive is linked to one found on Monday at the compound of billionaire philanthropist George Soros. The Secret Service says a second package was addressed to Mr Obama and was intercepted in Washington. Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton (Wesley Johnson/PA) The White House condemned the attempted attacks against the former presidents and former first lady. White House spokeswoman Sarah Huckabee Sanders said: These terrorising acts are despicable, and anyone responsible will be held accountable to the fullest extent of the law. She continued: The United States Secret Service and other law enforcement agencies are investigating and will take all appropriate actions to protect anyone threatened by these cowards. US news channel CNN says its offices in New York have been evacuated because of a suspicious package. The news network reported on Wednesday morning that a police bomb squad was at its offices. WATCH: CNN had to abruptly stop broadcasting from its studio in NYC while covering a story about bombs being sent to the Clintons and Obamas because an alarm suddenly went off about a "suspicious device" in the building. Scary stuff. pic.twitter.com/BKVnkdYpbZ Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) October 24, 2018 Law enforcement officials say the CNN package was discovered in the post room. Mrs Clinton was campaigning for Democrats in Florida and was not at the familys suburban New York residence when the suspicious package addressed to her was seized. Mr Clinton was at the familys Chappaqua, New York, home when the package was intercepted at a facility in Westchester County, New York. Mrs Clinton is headlining a fundraiser on Wednesday for Florida congressional candidate Donna Shalala. A no-deal Brexit may be the most likely outcome of the UKs negotiations with the EU, Scotlands First Minister Nicola Sturgeon has told MSPs. The Prime Minister said that while the terms of Britains withdrawal from the bloc are 95% agreed, there remains an impasse over the issue of the Irish border. Ms Sturgeon said she was increasingly concerned about the prospect of leaving without an agreement, adding that the UK Government was shutting down negotiating space with EU leaders. Speaking to Holyroods committee conveners, she said: Almost with every day that passes right now, instead of the UK Government opening up negotiating space that increases the possibility of reaching a deal that then can attract political support, they seem to be closing down that negotiating space and digging themselves deeper into the hole theyve got themselves in. I am increasingly concerned, literally with every day that passes right now, that the prospect of a no deal is becoming ever greater. As things stand just now I think no deal may actually be the most likely outcome, and that is deeply concerning. First Minister Nicola Sturgeon says a no-deal Brexit may be "most likely" (Jane Barlow/PA) Given that we are two years on from the vote, five months away from exit, it is staggering incompetence that the Government has allowed the situation to get to this stage. I think Brexit is frankly shaping up to be the biggest failure of government policy and handling of a situation that any of us have ever seen perhaps in our entire lifetimes. Ms Sturgeon said the UK was getting into territory where the extension of Article 50 couldnt and shouldnt be ruled out. The UK is due to leave the EU in March, with Theresa May under increasing pressure to find a breakthrough in time after a lack of progress at last weeks summit with European leaders. The two sides have been unable to agree on the so-called Northern Ireland backstop, intended to guarantee there is no return to a hard border with the Republic of Ireland. Meanwhile there have been new revelations about the Governments plans for a no-deal Brexit, with alternative measures to secure supplies of food and medicines from the continent being investigated in case of chaos on the English Channel crossing. Scottish Conservative constitution spokesman Adam Tomkins said: Nicola Sturgeons interventions on Brexit are entirely predictable. She doesnt want it to happen or be a success, and will do everything she can to be an obstacle. It wouldnt matter how much Scotland stood to benefit from the UK leaving the EU, the First Minister would still stand in the way. The first signs of winter are coming with overnight frosts and ice in places and even snow on hills in Scotland, Northern Ireland and possibly the north of England. Pointing out that a marked change is expected this weekend from the current mild weather, the Met Office tweeted: The clocks will be going back this weekend, but so are the temperatures!! The clocks will be going back this weekend, but so are the temperatures!! Today - warm westerlies Saturday - cold northerlies pic.twitter.com/CqbOLHF5xD Met Office (@metoffice) October 24, 2018 Met Office chief meteorologist Laura Paterson said: It will feel very cold this weekend, with strong winds bringing heavy showers to many parts. Northern-facing coastal areas will see the most frequent showers, whilst elsewhere will see more in the way of sunshine. These showers could contain hail and turn to snow on the high ground, mainly Scotland, Northern Ireland and perhaps northern England. Met Office meteorologist John West described it as a real change in feel from the rather mild weather due to high pressure in the UK and replaced by a strong northerly flow from the Arctic. Frost covered leaves in Winchesters North Walls Recreation Ground as temperatures drop. Today is the last of the warmer days, with temperatures taking a tumble from tomorrow!! #cold #turningcolder pic.twitter.com/ETMlLbcnQN Met Office (@metoffice) October 24, 2018 Wednesday is the last of the warmer days, with temperatures taking a tumble from tomorrow!! according to the Met Office. Temperatures of 16C in Aberdeen and 19C in Southampton on Wednesday will respectively fall to 12C and 13C on Thursday, 7C and 10C on Friday and 6C and 8C on Saturday. Mr West said: While the thermometers will be maxing out at about 6C it will feel colder in that strong northerly wind. The difference will be felt in daytime temperatures, with westerly winds on Wednesday compared to northerly winds on Saturday. It looks like Saturday will be the coldest day, with temperatures recovering slightly for Sunday and showers becoming more confined to eastern areas. Stein Connelly, of Transport Scotland, said: Snow, sleet and ice look set to move into parts of Scotland at the end of this week, particularly over higher routes. Our operating companies have already started their winter services and will closely monitor the trunk road network, providing appropriate treatments where necessary. As always, we encourage motorists to plan their journeys ahead of time, follow police travel advice and drive to the conditions. Eurostar is to increase its London to Amsterdam services to cope with demand. A third train will operate on the route every day from next June. There are currently two daily trains on weekdays, and one on Saturdays and Sundays. Services run from London St Pancras International to the Dutch capital via Brussels and Rotterdam. More than 130,000 passengers have used the trains since the route was launched in April. Although passengers are able to travel direct from London to Amsterdam, journeys in the opposite direction involve a change of trains in Brussels for passport checks and security screening. Eurostar has described this as a temporary measure while the UK and Dutch governments complete an agreement to allow border screening on departure in Amsterdam, as happens in Paris and Brussels. The fastest trains from London to Amsterdam take three hours and 41 minutes (Eurostar/PA) This is expected to be in place by the end of next year. The cross-Channel rail operator said it will add a fourth daily service once the agreement is reached, with ambitions for a fifth. Train journeys from London to Rotterdam take three hours and one minute, with Amsterdam reached in three hours and 41 minutes. Trips in the opposite direction take almost an hour longer due to the change of trains in Brussels. Dutch transport secretary Stientje van Veldhoven told Rotterdam-based newspaper Algemeen Dagblad: I want to get as many passengers as possible to choose the train over the plane for short distances within Europe. I want to do everything I can to make Eurostars plan possible. Eurostar says its city centre to city centre service is attracting passengers who prefer high-speed rail over flying. Airlines offer London to Amsterdam flights which last as little as one hour. Ministers have denied using underhand tactics to block attempts to reform abortion and marriage laws in Northern Ireland. Government whips were accused of using technical parliamentary procedure in a bid to prevent a Commons vote which, if successful, would require ministers to seek to make reforms to the regions strict abortion laws and ban on same-sex marriage. Northern Ireland Secretary Karen Bradley denied this was the case and told MPs the emergency legislation making its way through Westminster, in response to the regions powersharing crisis, was following standard procedure. Labour MP Stella Creasy, who has campaigned for reform, argued the framing of the legislation meant the Commons would be denied debate on an important issue. Appeal to all MPs - if govt can play these kind of procedural games once, it will become their answer to all issues. Please vote for todays manuscript amendment to programme motion for NI Bill to show should be parliament not a back room deal that decides legislation! #fairplay stellacreasy (@stellacreasy) October 24, 2018 She said: We understand that this is emergency legislation, we have no desire to delay this important legislation through the House, but because it is emergency legislation it is all the more important that where there are concerns about what it may include or may not include, the House is able to take a view and that members are able to decide. To see the programme motion today and discover that a crucial element of a programme motion, one that is in most other bills that we have, is missing is a concern to us. I am sure that this is an error thats been simply overlooked rather than a deliberate intent by the whips to deny a debate. She went on: Whatever you think of the amendments tabled for today, to cross this Rubicon and decide that there are some matters on which the House should not be paramount is a dangerous move to make. Ms Bradley responded: Its exactly the same as the programme motion that was tabled for the Budget Bill that we did earlier this year, it is the standard programme motion used for these kind of emergency pieces of legislation, the Government is not trying to do anything underhand at all. The legislation will give civil servants greater clarity over what decisions they can take in the ongoing absence of ministers; enable UK Government ministers to make a number of stalled public appointments; and remove a standing obligation on Mrs Bradley to call another snap Assembly election. While the Northern Ireland (Executive Formation and Exercise of Functions) Bill is designed to partly address the governance vacuum created by the collapse of powersharing, and provide breathing space for the regions rowing politicians to resume negotiations, Ms Creasy and Labour colleague Conor McGinn are hoping to use it as a vehicle to deliver wider social change. Conor McGinn (Jonathan Brady/PA) Their amendment seeks to force the Government, in the absence of devolved ministers, to act to reform Northern Irelands strict abortion laws and end the ban on same-sex marriage, insisting both run contrary to the human rights of local people. Tory MP Anne Main (St Albans) criticised attempts to bolt-on abortion legislation within the proposals, adding: We really, really should not be using this Bill for the vehicle to do such matters. Ms Bradley noted there were amendments on several matters but said: This is not the Bill in which this should take place. This is a Bill to enable civil servants to take the decisions that are necessary to enable public services to continue to be run. Officials wont take major policy decisions as a result of this Bill but they will act in the public interest. DUP MP Sammy Wilson (East Antrim), intervening, added: Does she accept that while there may be some grandstanding by some members of the House today to try to force on to this Bill their particular policies theyd like to see implemented in Northern Ireland against the wishes of the people of Northern Ireland, that this Bill will not enable any public official to pursue that policy regardless of whether or not the amendment goes on to the Bill. Ms Bradley said the Bill enables civil servants to act within the law as it stands today and does not give them the ability to change the law. The US Secret Service has intercepted a bomb that was addressed to Hillary Clinton and also discovered a possible explosive that was sent to former president Barack Obama. A police bomb squad was also sent to TV new channel CNNs offices in New York City and the newsroom was evacuated because of a suspicious package. A US official told The Associated Press that investigators believe the explosive that was discovered near the Clintons home in Chappaqua, New York, is linked to one found on Monday at the compound of billionaire philantrhopist George Soros. BREAKING: Secret Service intercepts suspicious packages addressed to the residences of former President Obama and former First Lady Hillary Clinton. Working with our law enforcement partners on the investigation. Our Statement: https://t.co/lJdTn04KmI U.S. Secret Service (@SecretService) October 24, 2018 The official said one of the packages had the return address of US representative Deborah Wasserman Schultz, the former chairwoman of the Democratic National Committee. The package addressed to Mr Obama was intercepted on Wednesday by Secret Service agents in Washington. Neither Mrs Clinton nor Mr Obama received the packages, and neither was at risk of receiving them because of screening procedures, the Secret Service said. Former US president Barack Obama and former first lady Hillary Clinton (Wesley Johnson/PA) The White House condemned the attempted violent attacks recently made against President Obama, President Clinton, Secretary Clinton, and other public figures. Press secretary Sarah Sanders said: These terrorising acts are despicable, and anyone responsible will be held accountable to the fullest extent of the law. Mrs Clinton was attending campaign events for Democrats in Florida on Tuesday and Wednesday and was not at the familys New York residence at the time. She is headlining a fundraising reception on Wednesday for former health and human services secretary Donna Shalala, who is running for Congress in South Florida. Mr Clinton was at the familys Chappaqua home at the time the package was intercepted at a Westchester County facility. The device was screened at the facility not in proximity to their residence and never reached the Clintons home. Bill and Hillary Clinton in the driveway of their home in Chappaqua in 2000 (AP) A law enforcement official told the AP that the package discovered at Mr Soros home appeared to be a pipe bomb and was in a package placed in a post box outside the gates of the compound. An employee for Mr Soros opened it just inside the gates, not near Mr Soros quarters. The Secret Service said media reports that it has intercepted a suspicious package bound for the White House are incorrect. We condemn the attempted attacks against fmr Pres Obama, the Clintons, @CNN & others. These cowardly actions are despicable & have no place in this Country. Grateful for swift response of @SecretService, @FBI & local law enforcement. Those responsible will be brought to justice. Vice President Mike Pence Archived (@VP45) October 24, 2018 The agency tasked with protecting the president and other dignitaries says it has intercepted two packages in Washington and New York. The packages were respectively addressed to the residences of Mr Obama in Washington and Mrs Clinton in Chappaqua. Vice president Mike Pence tweeted: These cowardly actions are despicable & have no place in this Country. He thanked law enforcement and added: Those responsible will be brought to justice. Law enforcement officials said the CNN bomb was crude but operational and was addressed to former CIA director John Brennan, a CNN contributor. Saudi Arabias powerful crown prince has called the killing of journalist Jamal Khashoggi a heinous crime that cannot be justified. Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman separately said that the killing of the Washington Post columnist will not drive a wedge between Turkey and Saudi Arabia. His comments came at the Future Investment Initiative. Jamal Khashoggi was critical of Prince Mohammed bin Salman (AP Photo/Hasan Jamali, File) This years summit has been overshadowed by the killing on October 2 of Mr Khashoggi. Turkish officials say a 15-man Saudi team killed the writer at the Saudi Consulate in Istanbul. A member of Prince Mohammeds entourage was allegedly at the consulate at the time. International business leaders have pulled out from attending the summit over the killing. The Saudi prince said his war is restoring the Middle East to its past glory. He did not mention Saudi Arabias conflict with Yemen. Prince Mohammed received a standing ovation for the comment. Over 10,000 people have been killed in Yemens civil war, which has displaced 2 million more and helped spawn a cholera epidemic. Saudi-led air strikes have struck medical clinics and markets, killing large numbers of civilians and damaging vital infrastructure. Earlier, Turkeys president kept up pressure on Saudi Arabia over Mr Khashoggis killing at the Saudi Consulate in Istanbul. Recep Tayyip Erdogan reportedly spoke by phone with Prince Mohammed just before he arrived with other Arab leaders at the investment summit in Riyadh. Prince Mohammed immediately addressed the killing after taking to the stage at the event. The crime was really painful to all Saudis. I believe it is painful for every human in the world, he said. It is a heinous crime that cannot be justified. He continued: We know that many are trying to use this painful thing to create a kind of wedge between Saudi Arabia and Turkey. I want to send them a message: They will not be able to do that as long as there is king called King Salman bin Abdul Aziz and a crown prince called Mohammed bin Salman in Saudi Arabia. Mr Erdogan focused in again on Mr Khashoggis death. We are determined not to allow the murder to be covered up and for those responsible from the person who gave the order to those who executed it not to escape justice, he said in the capital, Ankara. NHS chiefs have still to make a final decision on the preferred option for replacing a highly valued hospital, MSPs have been told. Bosses at NHS Lanarkshire are looking to either replace or refurbish Monklands Hospital in Airdrie which is more than 40 years old with a new facility at Gartcosh having emerged as the leading option. But more than 5,000 people have signed a petition calling for any new hospital to be built on the existing site, Scottish Labour leader Richard Leonard said, as he demanded ministers must now make this happen. He called on the Scottish Government to step in to stop this closure before it is too late, before a great injustice is committed before a grave error is made. Mr Leonard argued: If we can build the new Queen Elizabeth Hospital in Glasgow on the existing site of the Southern General Hospital in Glasgow, then why on earth cant we build the new Monklands Hospital on the site of the old Monklands Hospital? The Health Board accepts that this is possible. The people now want them to make it happen. A consultation on the future of the hospital has closed (Danny Lawson/PA) Today well force a vote in the Scottish Parliament to keep the Monklands in the Monklands. Read more here https://t.co/swcVCpM02V pic.twitter.com/EB2lNmUciH Scottish Labour (@ScottishLabour) October 24, 2018 Speaking for the government, mental health minister Clare Haughey, said this was one of the options being examined by NHS Lanarkshire, along with a new building at Gartcosh, or refurbishing the current hospital building. She told MSPs: I recognise there is a strength of feeling in the Airdrie community about the future access to and provision of hospital service. And I want to make one point absolutely clear to members and to local people who use the highly valued services at Monklands Hospital no final decision has been taken by the NHS board on the preferred option for a new or refurbished Monklands Hospital. She said there had been significant investment in Monklands over the years with the SNP government having retained A&E facilities there after these were earmarked for closure by the previous Labour led Scottish Executive. But Ms Haughey, said the current facilities dont have the right lay out to ensure an ideal model of care in line with best modern clinical practice. She stated: That is why the government has been clear we support NHS Lanarkshire in bringing forward proposals to replace or refurbish Monklands Hospital for the benefit of local people. Access to a new University Hospital Monklands is crucial part of current public consultation on hospital's future. Bus services, community transport, drive times to the alternative locations - check out info in our travel & transport report https://t.co/CKgIUwHAqR #newmonklands NHS Lanarkshire (@NHSLanarkshire) October 13, 2018 She also insisted NHS Lanarkshire had assured ministers they will carefully consider all the responses to the consultation and rigorously evaluate all the options before making a final decision. Conservative health spokesman Miles Briggs said it was vital local people back the decision on where a replacement facility should be built. He stressed: We need to get the location of the new Monklands right and above all, we need to make sure that the needs and interests of all the people of Lanarkshire are put at the heart of this decision. Green MSP Alison Johnstone said a total rebuild of the hospital was needed to provide the high quality facilities people deserve. She added: It would be unthinkable for people to lose such quality of service. Westminster needs to take action on some Northern Irish affairs in the absence of an administration, MPs have heard. Secretary of State Karen Bradley moved emergency legislation aiming to bring a measure of stability to Northern Irelands rudderless public services. But there were calls during the Commons debate for her to go further, with shadow Northern Ireland secretary Tony Lloyd highlighting the issue of waiting times as a crisis. Mr Lloyd said there was a desperate need to act on waiting times longer than a year. The Northern Ireland health service is in a very bad state, he said. The number of people waiting more than a year in England is 1,500 people but in Northern Ireland the number of people waiting more than a year is 64,000. Shadow Northern Ireland secretary Tony Lloyd highlighted the issue of waiting times as a `crisis (Lynne Cameron/PA) I can almost not find the right word to describe that, because it is so grossly unfair as to challenge all our imaginations. You simply cannot say its OK to wait to see reform. The Labour MP for Rochdale called for immediate action on specific areas such as waiting times, which he said would not amount to direct rule. He said: In the past, previous Northern Ireland secretaries have taken specific action from Westminster not direct rule, but specific actions in areas of great urgency. One, for example, has been social care in the past. I think looking for specific action now would show some sense that we are taking these constitutional issues seriously and this human crisis seriously. I hope she will reflect long and hard. Tory chairman of the Northern Ireland Affairs Committee Dr Andrew Murrison agreed Northern Ireland was lagging well behind where it should be and increasingly so. Speaking about his visit to a hospital in Belfast and praising the deeply committed and dedicated staff, he said: I came away deeply depressed because its very clear that Northern Ireland is not getting what it deserves, in comparison with the population of the UK key healthcare indicators are lagging significantly behind. That morning we heard from service users particularly in the fields of mental health and cancer care, key areas of healthcare. Were their experiences to be replicated in our constituencies I think we would be very upset indeed. The absence of ministers capable of taking decisions for nearly two years was, he said, a significant part of that piece. The DUPs Gavin Robinson (Belfast East) went further, saying the Bill was an opportunity missed as it failed to compel decision-making in Northern Ireland. He told the Commons: Its not ambitious, it doesnt deliver good governance in Northern Ireland, it doesnt compel decision-making in Northern Ireland, it provides no legislative vehicle for issues that require legislation in Northern Ireland. But we do understand and accept the position that the Secretary of State finds herself in the constitutional barrier that she is wrestling with but she knows that we are of the view that this place should be taking a much more interventionist approach into the affairs of Northern Ireland and that in that sense this Bill is an opportunity missed. Counter-terrorism police and the security services are running a record high of more than 700 live investigations, MPs have heard. Assistant Commissioner Neil Basu told the Home Affairs Select Committee that around 80% of the inquiries related to Islamist plots, while the remainder included extreme right-wing conspiracies. He said that his greatest concern remained simple attacks on softer targets that are cheap to mount, easy to disguise and therefore harder to see and stop. Police and the security services have stopped 17 terror attacks since March last year 13 Islamist and four extreme right-wing. Mr Basu, who is head of counter-terror policing in the UK, said the attacks in London and Manchester last year marked a permanent shift in the threat to the country. He told the committee: Those attacks were not a temporary escalation of the threat, they are a sustained shift in that threat. The UK CT (counter-terrorism) machine to this day continues to run red hot. Calling for longer-term funding to be put in place for the fight against terrorism, he said the battle was entirely dependent on well-resourced local police forces. It is extremely difficult for CT policing when we are constantly working to short-term funding arrangements. A longer-term funding settlement would greatly assist. He said: I would like to tell you that we are matched to the current threat, but the reality is we are not. We start from a position of strength: we have a national police, security service and government tripartite approach to countering terrorism honed over decades. It is world-class. But, matching the new threat requires new ways of working and for us to maintain our resources. We are working closely with the Home Office who have been supportive. Mr Basu was asked about preacher Anjem Choudary, pictured here outside a bail hostel after his release from Belmarsh Prison (David Mirzoeff/PA) Mr Basu described how perverse Islamist and right-wing ideologies were feeding each other. He said that while the overriding threat to the UK was from Daesh also known as Islamic State and al-Qaida-inspired activity, the extreme far-right danger was growing. Asked about Anjem Choudary, who was released from prison last week, Mr Basu refused to refer to the preacher by name. The officer said: Every minute that we spend having to look at somebody like that is a minute taken away from a priority operation. So it is not a great position to be in. Choudary was jailed in 2016 after he was convicted of inviting support for Islamic State. In other comments, Mr Basu told the committee there was no doubt that the interaction between Border Force, security services, counter-terrorism and wider policing had to be as tight as possible. He said: Is it perfect? No its not. It needs work. It probably needs resourcing and there are a lot of reasons why that needs to improve rapidly. Referring to the case of Manchester bomber Salman Abedi, who had previously travelled to Libya, Mr Basu told the committee: It was a matter of policy that he was not watchlisted when he went to Libya. That was a policy decision that was taken at the time. Whether or not that was the correct policy decision, it was a decision that was rationalised against that policy. The policy has since changed, the Assistant Commissioner added. The committee also heard from Sara Khan, who was appointed in January by the Government to lead the newly created Commission for Countering Extremism. She said: The aim of the commission is to help everyone do more to challenge extremism. I believe that extremism is a whole society problem, it therefore requires a whole society response. People in this country are deeply concerned about what they perceive to be rising extremism. The European Parliament has overwhelmingly backed a wide-ranging ban on single-use plastics to counter pollution in seas, fields and waterways. The ban would affect a range of products for which valid alternatives are available from plastic straws to earbuds and plates as of 2021 and would make sure that plastic bottles are 90% recycled by 2025. New EU rules, adopted by MEPs on 24 October, tackle lost fishing gear and the 10 single-use plastic products most widely found on European shores. Together these two groups account for 70% of marine litter. https://t.co/MuxLbTd02b pic.twitter.com/et1jCsuUcT European Parliament (@Europarl_EN) October 24, 2018 Under the plan, fishing nets, which are now a key pollutant in the EUs Mediterranean sea and Atlantic ocean, will have to be produced differently, too. The parliament backed the proposals with a 571-53 majority. With the vote, the parliament, the EU Commission and the member states will now enter negotiations in the weeks to come to make it binding legislation. Rapper Tinie Tempah has described as pivotal the contribution Britons of West African descent have made to the UK as the Prince of Wales celebrated their achievements. Charles and the Duchess of Cornwall invited dozens of famous faces of Ghanaian, Gambian or Nigerian heritage to St Jamess Palace ahead of their tour of the three West African nations, to highlight the region. Ruti Olajugbagbe, winner of The Voice, mens fashion designer Ozwald Boateng and rapper Lethal Bizzle were just some of the individuals from the worlds of media, sport, fashion and the arts at the reception. Tempah, whose real name is Patrick Okogwu and is of Nigerian descent, said: I think the West African diaspora has played a very pivotal role in the growth and development of Britain over the past 50 years to even longer. Charles with Lethal Bizzle at St Jamess Palace (Tim Whitby/PA) He added: Its nice we can have this direct one-on-one conversation with the prince and duchess to be able to tell them our experience and, more importantly, to tell them how amazing Africa is. West Africa especially is the place to be right now in terms of culture, in terms of music, in terms of fashion, in terms of art. I cant get enough of it, as a British-born young man Im spending a lot of my time in Nigeria at the moment. Camilla shares a laugh with Tinie Tempah (Tim Whitby/PA) Charles is expected to acknowledge the slavery past of a historic African fort when his nine-day trip to the continent with his wife begins on October 31. In Ghana, the heir to the throne will visit the 17th-century Christiansborg Castle, once a Danish slave fort and later owned by Britain. The couples visit comes hard on the heels of the Prime Ministers high-profile visit to the continent just a few months ago. Edward Enninful chats to Charles (Tim Whitby/PA) Edward Enninful, editor-in-chief of British Vogue and of Ghanaian heritage, echoed the words of Tempah, saying: I think its really great how the prince has invited people from the West African diaspora here, hes always so supportive of the Commonwealth. Speaking about the impact Britons from West Africa have made, he added: Its a great contribution its Great Britain, weve all grown up in this amazing country and are happy to contribute what we can in our different fields. The King and Queen of the Netherlands watched a dramatic anti-terrorism display inches from their vantage point on a warship on the final day of their state visit. King Willem-Alexander and Queen Maxima saw a suspect apprehended by service personnel in front of them as they stood on the deck of the vessel. They were joined by the Earl and Countess of Wessex during the exercise carried out in the shadow of HMS Belfast. During the mock terrorist incident staged by the Royal Netherlands Marine Corps and the Royal Marines, inflatable ribs sped across the water as shots could be heard. (left to right) King Willem-Alexander and Queen Maxima of the Netherlands with the Countess and Earl of Wessex (Victoria Jones/PA) Then the forces stormed a passenger vessel that had apparently been taken over by the terrorists before detaining the man in front of the royals. The foreign head of state and his wife later visited Pop Brixton, a temporary project that has turned disused land into a creative space for local, independent businesses. A Scottish Conservative MSP has defended welfare reforms, claiming those who do not work cannot have as many children as they like. Michelle Ballantyne also told the Scottish Parliaments chamber that Universal Credit was a key part of reducing inequality in this country. She said the six-in-one benefit payment was working for the many, with any issues almost wholly operational. Scotlands First Minister Nicola Sturgeon described its roll-out as an unfolding disaster. Universal Credit was introduced as part of the UK Governments overhaul of the welfare system. However critics say cuts to payments and widespread problems with its implementation have led to many people falling into hardship or dropping out of the benefit system altogether. Michelle Ballantyne defended the UK Governments welfare reforms (Scottish Parliament/PA) The introduction of the two-child benefit cap, limiting tax credits and Universal Credit to a familys first two children has also been attacked. Highlights from @MBallantyneMSP speech: The 2 child cap is fair Poor people should keep their legs shut Benefit recipients are largely fraudsters Tax credits got people in debt + Universal Credit will fix it Concludes: Nothing to see here, except the same old Tories Kezia Dugdale (@kezdugdale) October 24, 2018 Ms Ballantyne said: The two-child limit is about fairness. It is fair that people on benefit cannot have as many children as they like while people who work and pay their way and dont claim benefits have to make decisions about the number of children they can have. Universal Credit may have its flaws, but the thinking behind the system is sound. It is about making it better to be in work than not to be in work. Regardless of what others may say, its a fact that universal credit is working for the many, as are many UK Government employment policies. Actually, I am proud to be associated with a welfare change which is genuinely designed to tackle poverty and inequality. SNP MSP Tom Arthur said it was one of the most disgraceful speeches I have ever heard in his time at Holyrood. Six minutes of pompous Victorian moralising that would have been better suited to the pages of a Dickens novel, he said. And to suggest that poverty should be a barrier to a family, that people who are poor are not entitled to any more than two children what an absolutely disgraceful position. And she should be utterly, utterly ashamed of herself. Responding to the Tory MSP, Alison Johnstone of the Greens said the two-child limit is not fair, and its certainly not fair to the third child in a family. Earlier in the debate, Scottish Labour MSP Elaine Smith said: There is no clearer illustration of (the UK Governments) contempt for those in need of a hand than the way in which Universal Credit has been rolled out across the country. Case after case demonstrates the devastating impact of the punitive way in which Universal Credit has been introduced. Meanwhile, addressing a meeting of Holyroods committee conveners, Ms Sturgeon said the roll-out was an unfolding disaster, that is bringing and will continue to bring misery to an awful lot of families across the country. She stressed her concerns about UK ministers plans for a transitional protection scheme, aimed at ensuring existing claimants do not lose money when they are transferred onto the new benefit. She said: Weve got real concerns about the process for migration and transition in particular. I honestly cant stress strongly enough how concerned I am about Universal Credit. Glasgow is obviously about to go through the full roll-out, and the impact of this on already vulnerable people is going to be severe. I think the sooner this whole system gets stopped in its tracks, the better. A spokeswoman for the Department for Work and Pensions said: Universal Credit replaces an out-of-date, complex benefits system with cliff edges that often trapped people in unemployment. Under UC, evidence shows people are moving into work faster and staying in work longer. We brought in improvements which include increasing advances to 100%, removing the seven-day waiting period and paying peoples Housing Benefit for two weeks while they wait for the first UC payment. Brexit is the elephant in the room which is prolonging the political vacuum in Northern Ireland, an SNP MP has said. Northern Ireland spokesman Gavin Newlands argued the broader instability caused by Brexit is a central reason why it has proven so difficult to restore the devolved institutions. Theresa Mays Government, he said, has become totally distracted by Brexit and internal party infighting. Speaking during the second reading of the Northern Ireland (Executive Formation and Exercise of Functions) Bill, the MP for Paisley and Renfrewshire North said such legislation had sadly become necessary, but added a political vacuum must not become the new normal in Northern Ireland. He said Northern Ireland is the central conversation in the Brexit talks and therefore it is vital that its voice is heard. As the shambolic Brexit process is a central reason for the ongoing crisis, this Government has a responsibility to ensure talks progress swiftly, he said. Brexit, he warned, is wreaking havoc on every aspect of politics in these islands, adding: The broader instability caused by Brexit is a central reason why its proven so difficult to restore the devolved institutions in Northern Ireland. There are many reasons why the Executive and Assembly collapsed, but it is the elephant in the room Brexit which is prolonging the concerning political vacuum. Gavin Newlands is the SNPs spokesman on Northern Ireland (PA) He went on: March is quickly approaching and we still have no confirmation of plans to extend the period for withdrawal, the threat of a new border becomes closer by the minute. Northern Ireland is the central conversation in the Brexit talks, therefore it is vital that its voice is heard. Mr Newlands said Northern Ireland voted by 56% to remain in the EU, just as 62% of Scots did, and he urged the Government to pursue a policy of staying within the single market and customs union. He said: The Government continues trying to ignore Scotland, well they also ignore the people of Northern Ireland, and if the UK Government ploughs on with a no-deal hard Brexit, it will wreak further havoc on the businesses, public services and entire economies of all within the UK, and that is nothing short of economic vandalism of the highest order. Fine speech by @theSNP Northern Ireland Spokesperson @GavNewlandsSNP reminding UK Govt to listen to the people of the north the majority of whom voted #Remain but whose voice is not heard in @HouseofCommons #NorthernIrelandBill #Brexit Joanna Cherry QC (@joannaccherry) October 24, 2018 Referring to the European Research Group (ERG), he said, its entirely regressive aims are not the public interest. Leading Tory Brexiteer Steve Baker earlier announced he was withdrawing amendments to the Northern Ireland Bill intended to prevent the backstop being implemented. Northern Ireland Secretary Karen Bradley intervened, saying: He (Mr Baker) withdrew those amendments because he recognised the necessity of this Bill for the people of Northern Ireland, and I do want to thank him for having done so. Withdrawing those amendments because it has meant that the people of Northern Ireland who need their public services to continue to be delivered will be able to have that, because this Bill will not have been affected by amendments that would have served to wreck the Bill. The cost to the economy from leaving the EU could potentially outweigh any Brexit dividend from halting payments to Brussels, the head of the Treasury has said. Treasury permanent secretary Sir Tom Scholar said the economic impact of Brexit would depend upon what sort of future relationship Britain was able to negotiate with the bloc. Theresa May has said a Brexit dividend for the public finances after Britain has stopped paying into the EU budget will help pay for a 20 billion funding increase for the NHS in England by 2023. Theresa May has said the Brexit dividend will help pay for a funding increase for the NHS (Stefan Rousseau/PA) Chancellor Philip Hammond is expected to set out further details when he delivers his Budget statement in the Commons on Monday. However, giving evidence to the Commons Treasury Committee, Sir Tom said it was impossible at this stage to say how much such a dividend would be. Nobody knows and nobody can know until we know what the future relationship is, he said. He added: It is certainly the case that as a matter of arithmetic that once the UK is no longer making net contribution to the EU that is a call on the public purse that will be available for other purposes. At the same time, it is also true that, depending on what the future relationship is and how different it is from the current relationship and what the economic impact is, there will be an impact on the economy and the fiscal receipts which is potentially greater than that. Labour committee member Catherine McKinnell said his comments called into question the Prime Ministers previous commitments on future NHS funding. It makes the pledge that some of the 20 billion for the NHS will come from the Brexit dividend quite a difficult assertion to stand up, she said. Sir Tom said the Government did not have an estimate of what the economic impact of the 2016 referendum vote had been. He said a warning by the Institute for Fiscal Studies that there was no Brexit dividend and the public finances would be 15 billion worse off depended on the view they took of how well the economy would have performed if the country had voted to remain in the EU. That can only be a guess. It cant be scientific, he said. Saudi Arabias crown prince has called the killing of journalist Jamal Khashoggi a heinous crime that cannot be justified. Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, addressing the Future Investment Initiative in Riyadh, said separately that the killing will not drive a wedge between the kingdom and Turkey. This years summit has been overshadowed by the killing on October 2. Turkish officials say a 15-man Saudi team killed the writer at the Saudi Consulate in Istanbul. A member of Prince Mohammeds entourage was allegedly at the consulate at the time. International business leaders have pulled out from attending the summit over the killing.Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan reportedly spoke by phone with Prince Mohammed just before he arrived with other Arab leaders at the summit. Prince Mohammed immediately addressed the killing after taking to the stage. Jamal Khashoggi was critical of Prince Mohammed bin Salman (AP Photo/Hasan Jamali, File) The crime was really painful to all Saudis. I believe it is painful for every human in the world, he said. It is a heinous crime that cannot be justified. He also promised Saudi-Turkish relations would not be hurt. We know that many are trying to use this painful thing to create a kind of wedge between Saudi Arabia and Turkey, he said. I want to send them a message: They will not be able to do that as long as there is king called King Salman bin Abdul Aziz and a crown prince called Mohammed bin Salman in Saudi Arabia. Mr Erdogan focused in again on Wednesday on Mr Khashoggis death. We are determined not to allow the murder to be covered up and for those responsible from the person who gave the order to those who executed it not to escape justice, he said in the capital, Ankara. The announcement of the call came just before Prince Mohammed, Bahrains crown prince and Lebanese Prime Minister Saad Hariri walked into the Riyadh summit. Prince, Mohammed talks to Jordans King Abdullah II at the Future Investment Initiative summit (AP Photo/Amr Nabil) Mr Erdogan has said that 15 Saudi officials arrived in Istanbul shortly before Mr Khashoggis death and that a man, apparently dressed in the writers clothes, acted as a possible decoy by walking out of the consulate on the day of the disappearance. Turkish officials say the 15 men comprised a Saudi hit squad that included a member of Prince Mohammeds entourage on overseas trips. Saudi Arabia has suggested, without offering evidence, that the team went rogue. With the crown princes standing marred, his ability to draw needed investment to the kingdom could be affected. Economists say Saudi Arabia will need trillions of dollars in investments to create millions of new jobs for young Saudis entering the workforce in coming years. The investment forum is aimed at attracting investors to help underwrite that effort. The events first day saw several speakers acknowledge the killing of the Saudi writer whose columns criticized the crown princes crackdown on dissent. Dozens of Saudi activists, writers, clerics and even women who were behind calls for the right to drive have been detained. At one summit session, Saudi energy minister Khalid Al-Falih described Mr Khashoggis slaying as abhorrent. Former Tory minister Mike Penning has said he will not support legislation to give civil servants in Northern Ireland the power to make decisions. The Tory MP raised concern that the emergency legislation, being pushed through Parliament in the absence of an Executive in Northern Ireland, could impose changes which encroach on the devolution settlement. Mr Penning, a former Northern Ireland minister, pointed to amendments by Labour MP Stella Creasy which could force the Government to act to reform Northern Irelands strict abortion laws and end the ban on same-sex marriage. He said: The Bill worries me, it worries me how amendable it is, it could impose things on Northern Ireland which are devolved matters. I, in a perfect world, would never like to see abortion, but we dont live in a perfect world, we have abortion legislation here. I personally think it should happen in Northern Ireland, it should, but that is for the politicians that were duly elected in Northern Ireland. Mike Penning said the emergency legislation must not encroach on the devolution settlement (PA) I think it will cause chaos and real division in Northern Ireland should the amendment be passed today, I will vote against the amendment if its brought forth. Mr Penning, who served with the Army in Northern Ireland in the 1970s, went on to hit out at ministers for not including provisions to protect veterans from prosecution in the Bill. The former minister, in referencing the work of the Historical Investigations Unit which was set up in 2014 to review killings where there had been no prosecutions, said: I find it inconceivable that a British Conservative Government is dealing with British ex-servicemen years and years and years after we served, after the investigation had taken place, are being treated like we were terrorists and that is the way we feel. He added that protections should be in this Bill. Plane passenger David Mesher has been spoken to by police investigating the racial abuse of an elderly woman on a Ryanair flight. Officers from West Midlands Police said they were assisting Essex Police, who are leading the investigation, when they attended the sheltered accommodation where Mr Mesher lives on Thursday. Footage posted on social media appeared to show a man, believed to be Mr Mesher, calling Delsie Gayle an ugly black bastard and telling her dont speak to me in a foreign language, you stupid ugly cow. The incident is believed to have taken place on Ryanair flight FR015 at Barcelona Airport on October 19, before it left for London Stansted. Essex Police said on Wednesday: Essex Police was contacted on Sunday, October 21, about a racially-aggravated incident happening on a Ryanair plane while on the tarmac at Barcelona Airport. This incident took place on Friday, October 19. A video of which has been widely circulated on social media and covered by media both here and abroad. Since the report was made to us, our officers have identified both parties involved and are progressing a number of inquiries. They added: There are agreed national protocols to follow when incidents are reported to have happened in another country. As such, we will be conducting an investigation to submit to the Spanish authorities in due course. The sheltered retirement housing block in Yardley Wood, Birmingham where David Mesher lives (Aaron Chown/PA) Mr Mesher, who lives in a sheltered retirement housing block in Yardley Wood, Birmingham, declined to comment to reporters outside his home. A spokeswoman for Optivo, which runs the sheltered accommodation, said: We do not condone abusive behaviour in any form. As this matter is now being handled by the police we are unable to make any further comment at this stage. Two officers from the West Midlands force spent just under an hour at the housing block before leaving without Mr Mesher. When asked why officers had attended the premises, a spokeswoman for the West Midlands force said: West Midlands Police officers are assisting Essex Police who have the primary investigation. Carol Gayle (right) appearing on This Morning, with her mother Delsie Gayle (ITV/PA) Ms Gayle, who was subject to the abuse said she felt very low about the incident and it had discouraged her from flying with the low-cost airline in future. She told ITV News: I feel really depressed about it. I go to bed and say: what have I done? I havent done anything to attack him, its because of the colour of my skin I was abused like that. A Manchester woman whose sister vanished from a mother and baby home in Ireland said she is confident the remains of children buried there can be exhumed and identified. Annette McKays mother, Maggie OConnor from Co Galway, was sent to the mother and baby home in Tuam when she was 17. Ms McKay, 64, who did not know about her oldest sister for years, believes she could be among the 800 babies and infants thought to be buried in a septic tank after dying at the home which was run by the Bon Secours, a Roman Catholic religious order. Its understood that her sister, named Mary Margaret OConnor, died in the Tuam facility in 1943 from natural causes. It was announced on Tuesday that the remains of children found buried at the Bon Secours home will be exhumed, identified if possible, and then reburied. Childrens Minister Katherine Zappone announcing the forensic excavation of the site (Niall Carson/PA) Ms McKay said that she couldnt believe the announcement. I had to read it about three times. But there are some caveats as it states that they will investigate available space, so we dont know what that means, she said. It will be an interesting discussion about what the available space actually means and covers because if they are going into that first chamber and find three bodies or 30 bodies and people ask where the rest of the remains are. That will bring up a lot of unanswered questions. Once it starts they will have to commit to it, they cant leave behind bodies. The cost of the operation has been estimated between 6 million euros and and 13 million euros, and the Bon Secours have offered the Government 2.5 million euro towards the bill. Ms McKay said the cost should be equally shared between both State and the Catholic Church as they are both to blame. The mass burial site at Tuam in Co Galway (PA) We just want them to get on with it as soon as possible. We know this will be complicated and difficult but we just need to see a timetable and a plan, she added. I think once they make the first dig they cannot go back. They couldnt do a half job. On Wednesday, Irish premier Leo Varadkar said the excavation of the mass grave will be slow and painstaking. Mr Varadkar said the Government would implement a multidisciplinary framework and the action being taken will be phased. The recovery of remains will be conducted by systematic ground-truthing and forensic analysis. Im not sure if anyone knows what were getting into, but it was the right decision, Mr Varadkar added. Minister for Children Katherine Zappone said every effort will be made to identify the remains at the site through sophisticated DNA testing. It is only by taking the right actions now can we truly demonstrate our compassion and commitment to work towards justice, truth and healing for what happened in our past and, most especially, for those who were previously abandoned. @KZapponeTD pic.twitter.com/os7O0joyI1 MerrionStreet.ie (@merrionstreet) October 23, 2018 Ms McKay said she has placed her confidence in a number of experts. The experts say that DNA testing has moved on and its far more sophisticated and comprehensive than the Government realise, she added. We will continue to hold the Irish government to account. This is the first step and we are not going to sit back and say thats everything accomplished because it isnt. Ms McKay said if her sister is identified among the remains, she will have her buried beside their mother who died two years ago. My mother, at 92, deserves to have her baby back with her. Thats the only decent, compassionate thing they could do for the family, she added. Nicola Sturgeon has contacted the Spanish prime minister in a bid to ensure police and prosecutors are being given the necessary resources to investigate the death of Scottish holidaymaker Kirsty Maxwell. The Scottish First Minister met Mrs Maxwells family in August, and wrote to Spanish leader Pedro Sanchez at their request. Her intervention was revealed by Scottish Justice Secretary Humza Yousaf after the case was raised in Holyrood on Wednesday. Mrs Maxwell, 27, from Livingston in West Lothian, died during a hen trip to the popular tourist resort of Benidorm in April last year after falling from the 10th floor of the Apartmentos Payma hotel. Since then her husband Adam Maxwell and her parents Brian and Denise Curry have been on an arduous and anguished quest for justice, local MSP Angela Constance said. Good luck to all family's and everyone else participating and attending this debate in Scottish Parliament.#KirstyMaxwell Support For Victims & Families Of Loved Ones #KilledAbroad Justice (@Justicebefound) October 24, 2018 Mr Yousaf paid tribute to her family for their tenacity and what they are doing on behalf of Kirstys legacy. He added: It is important that a light is shone on these issues, which ask questions which need answers to. The Maxwell family, who were in the Scottish Parliament for the debate, have not been satisfied with their experience of dealing with the Spanish authorities, Mr Yousaf added. He said: I recognise the very strong view of the family that mistakes have been made from the earliest point in this process. Almond Valley MSP Angela Constance (Jane Barlow/PA) He told MSPs that Ms Sturgeon had met with Kirstys family in August and she heard their concerns first-hand, and since then has taken forward a number of actions. As part of this, he said: The Scottish Government has pressed the Foreign and Commonwealth Office to fully support the family in its efforts to secure justice through the Spanish legal systems. At the familys request, the First Minister also wrote to the Spanish prime minister seeking reassurance that the necessary resources have been deployed to allow the Spanish police and prosecutors to carry out a full and thorough investigation into Kirstys death. Crude pipe bombs targeting former US president Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton and CNN have been intercepted amid a spate of attacks aimed at prominent Democrats and a cable news network often criticised by political conservatives. The FBI also said it was responding to a report of a suspicious package at a Florida office of Representative Deborah Wasserman Schultz. New York governor Andrew Cuomo said his office received a similar package but police officials said the office was cleared and no device was found. A similar device was found on Monday at the New York compound of liberal billionaire George Soros, a major contributor to Democratic causes. There were no explosions and no reports of injuries. The bombs were intercepted two weeks before nationwide elections that could reshape Congress and serve as a referendum on the first two years of Donald Trumps presidency. The events quickly overtook other campaign news in an already tense political season which has included pitched fights over immigration, the Supreme Court and sexual violence against women. Former US president Barack Obama and former first lady Hillary Clinton (Wesley Johnson/PA) The White House quickly condemned the attacks aimed at Democrats and perceived foes of the administration. Acts or threats of political violence have no place in the United States, Mr Trump said. This egregious conduct is abhorrent. Thats a very bipartisan statement, he said. All the confirmed bombs appeared to come from the same person or persons, said John Miller, the New York Police Departments head of intelligence and counter-terrorism. The US Secret Service intercepted a bomb that was addressed to Mrs Clinton at the home in Chappaqua, New York, she shares with former president Bill Clinton, and another that was sent to Mr Obama at his home with Michelle Obama in Washington. Bill and Hillary Clinton in the driveway of their home in Chappaqua in 2000 (AP) A police bomb squad removed another one from CNNs New York headquarters, which was evacuated. Overhead TV shots showed a truck carrying that device, which law enforcement officials said was linked to the other explosives, being driven away. The package sent to CNN contained a live explosive and envelope with white powder, and officials said the substance was being tested to see if it was dangerous. NYPD officers in the Time Warner Centre area (Kevin Hagen/AP) Mr Cuomo said at a briefing that we will not allow these terrorist thugs to change the way we live our lives. A US official told the Associated Press that investigators believe the explosive that was discovered near the Clintons home was linked to one found on Monday at the Soros compound. The entrance to a house owned by philanthropist George Soros in a suburb of New York City (Seth Wenig/AP) The official noted that one of the packages had the return address of Mrs Schultz, an ironic reference to the former chairwoman of the Democratic National Committee who was accused by Clinton rivals of secretly helping the partys eventual presidential nominee. Neither Mrs Clinton nor Mr Obama received the packages and neither was at risk of receiving them because of screening procedures, the Secret Service said. White House press secretary Sarah Sanders said in a statement: These terrorising acts are despicable, and anyone responsible will be held accountable to the fullest extent of the law. Two law enforcement officials said the pipe bomb at CNN was crude but operational and was addressed to former CIA director John Brennan, who regularly appears as a television contributor and who has publicly clashed with Mr Trump. They said it was similar to other explosives discovered in the past few days. We condemn the attempted attacks against fmr Pres Obama, the Clintons, @CNN & others. These cowardly actions are despicable & have no place in this Country. Grateful for swift response of @SecretService, @FBI & local law enforcement. Those responsible will be brought to justice. Vice President Mike Pence Archived (@VP45) October 24, 2018 Mrs Clinton was attending campaign events for Democrats in Florida on Tuesday and Wednesday and was not at the familys New York residence at the time. She said we are fine and thanked the Secret Service for intercepting the package long before it made its way to our home. The former secretary of state said her family was grateful for the Secret Services service and commitment and obviously never more than today. Mr Clinton was at the familys Chappaqua home at the time the package was intercepted on Tuesday night at a Westchester County facility, said a person familiar with his schedule. They said the device was screened at the facility not in proximity to their residence and never reached the Clintons home. A law enforcement official told the AP that the package discovered at Mr Soross home appeared to be a pipe bomb and was in a package placed in a postbox outside the gates of the compound. A Soros employee opened it just inside the gates, the official said. Theresa May has delivered an emotional address to backbench Tory MPs following talk of attempts to oust her as Prime Minister. Mrs May won the room and secured her position with a heartfelt speech to the backbench 1922 committee, former home secretary Amber Rudd said. Leave-backing MP Michael Fabricant called the gathering a love-in for Mrs May. The PMs address came after a torrid week in which an anonymous MP was quoted as saying Mrs May should bring her own noose to the meeting. The Brexit talks are not about my interests. They are about the national interest and the interests of the whole of our United Kingdom. pic.twitter.com/V7wkOiyu47 Theresa May (@theresa_may) October 23, 2018 Ms Rudd praised the PM, saying: She got a warm welcome, she talked quite emotionally about why she was doing this for the good of the country and how it was important that the public and our party members realise that we are behind her and that we all wanted the same thing which is to lead in the best interests of the country. Asked if the PM looked emotional, Ms Rudd said: Well she looked like she really minded it wasnt reading from a script. She was talking frankly and honestly from the heart about why she was doing this and why it mattered. Ms Rudd said a lot of MPs condemned the really nasty language that had been used in the run-up to the meeting. Amid claims that the number of letters to the chairman of the 1922 committee from MPs calling for a vote of no confidence in the PM was close to the 48 level needed to trigger a ballot, Ms Rudd insisted Mrs Mays position was now safe. (PA Graphics) Ms Rudd said: She was able to win the room and deliver something quite personal and emotional about why she was committed to doing it, despite being quite frank about the difficulties that were still there. People spoke very freely about their concerns but they came back to the fact that they backed her in delivering for the country and the Government. Mr Fabricant said: It wasnt Daniella in the lions den it was a petting zoo. However, pro-Europe ex-Cabinet minister Nicky Morgan said the Tories would have a new leader within a year. Asked if the PM had her backing, she told ITVs Peston: She has, absolutely, for now. But, I think, well probably, in the course of the next 12 months, well be looking for a new leader. The meeting came after fresh revelations about the Governments plans for a no-deal Brexit, with alternative measures to secure supplies of food and medicines from the continent being investigated in case of chaos on the English Channel crossing. Secretary of State for Housing, Communities and Local Government James Brokenshire defended the move. He told ITVs Peston: I think thats what governments should be doing in preparation in terms of dealing with the issues that could arise. It is not a situation that we want to get into. The Prime Minister remains focused on negotiating that right outcome which is the deal. But, ultimately, yes, of course, we dont want to end up in a situation, but we must be ready. We need to be prepared. In developments that will cause further unease among Tory Brexiteers, leaked Cabinet papers obtained by The Times indicated the transition period during which the UK will remain tied to Brussels could turn into a long-running arrangement lasting years. But Mrs May firmly rejected reports the Government was willing to agree that the European Court of Justice should be the final arbiter in most disputes arising from Brexit. Theresa May responds to a question from Jacob Rees-Mogg in the House of Commons (UK Parliament) European Council president Donald Tusk told MEPs in Strasbourg that Mrs May had raised the prospect of an extension at last weeks Brussels summit. He added If the UK decided that such an extension would be helpful to reach a deal, Im sure that the leaders would be ready to consider it positively. Mr Tusk also said he was ready to convene a special Brexit summit if negotiator Michel Barnier reported decisive progress had been made in talks but made clear this was not yet the case. Theresa May has told the king of Saudi Arabia that the countrys explanation regarding the murder of journalist Jamal Khashoggi lacks credibility. The Prime Minister spoke by telephone with the Middle East ruler on Wednesday to convey Britains concerns about the situation. A Downing Street spokeswoman said: The Prime Minister spoke to King Salman today to reiterate the UKs grave concerns about the murder of Jamal Khashoggi in the Saudi consulate in Istanbul. The Prime Minister said the current explanation lacks credibility so there remains an urgent need to establish exactly what happened. She strongly urged Saudi Arabia to co-operate with the Turkish investigation and to be transparent about the results. It is important that the full facts are established. The Prime Minister also reiterated that all individuals bearing responsibility for the killing of Mr Khashoggi must be properly held to account. Turkish officials say Jamal Khashoggi was killed on October 2 by a 15-man Saudi hit squad (PA) She said the Home Secretary is taking action against all suspects in the murder of Mr Khashoggi to prevent them entering the UK. If these individuals have visas, they are being revoked. Turkish officials say Mr Khashoggi was killed on October 2 by a 15-man Saudi hit squad that included a member of Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salmans entourage on overseas trips. The Prime Minister has rejected the Saudi claim that Mr Khashoggi died after a fight at the consulate. She told MPs: We condemn the killing of the journalist Jamal Khashoggi in the strongest possible terms and after his disappearance we made clear that Saudi Arabia must co-operate with Turkey and conduct a full and credible investigation. The claim that has been made that Mr Khashoggi died in a fight does not amount to a credible explanation so there does remain an urgent need to establish what has happened in relation to this. The announcement on the visas followed similar measures taken by the United States. The UK Government has come under pressure to go further and suspend arms sales to Saudi Arabia, a key trading partner. SNP Westminster leader Ian Blackford said the killing had all the hallmarks of being a premeditated murder, and he urged Mrs May to follow Germany in announcing that it would not approve new arms sales. That is moral leadership, the UK Government must take decisive action, he said. Words of condemnation will not do. Former deputy prime minister Lord Heseltine also urged Western powers to take a stand over the killing. But while he said that Britain should be prepared, if necessary, to halt arms sales to the Saudis, he warned such measures would lead to a loss of UK influence in Riyadh. SNP Westminster Leader @IanBlackfordMP calls on Theresa May to finally end UK government arms sales to Saudi Arabia following its appalling record of human rights abuses #JamalKhashoggi #Yemen #PMQs pic.twitter.com/5nnKC5wEuH Tom French (@tomfrench85) October 24, 2018 In deciding what action to take, he said, the Government also needs to take account of the important stabilising role which Saudi Arabia has played in the Middle East. In this particular case I havent the slightest doubt that the Western allies have got to take a stand over the butchering of Mr Khashoggi, Lord Heseltine told the BBC. He said that while Britain should be prepared to take action against the Saudis, the Government must think through the consequences. The problem with stopping selling arms is that it doesnt have any effect on the ability of these countries to behave in the way that they want to because there are plenty of other sources of arms procurement, he said. What it does mean is that you lose any influence in those countries. Baltimore The after effects of a school shooting involve more than the recovery of students and the healing of a community, especially when that shooting is of the scale to draw the attention of international news media, Broward County, Fla., Superintendent Robert Runcie said in a panel discussion here Thursday. In clawing their way back to a new normal, school and district leaders must also deal with the logistical and political concerns and confront the overwhelming task of communicating, not only with the local community, but with a curious and concerned world, he said. And that process starts the moment leaders learn a gun has been fired in one of their buildings. Runcie learned this firsthand after 17 students and staff members were killed Feb. 14 at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School, in the Broward County community of Parkland, starting anew combative debates about school safety and gun laws and sparking a new youth political movement. But as the national audience became focused on those larger stories, the district has had to face challenges Runcie says no one can be totally prepared for: how to reunite families immediately after the shooting, how to coordinate with law enforcement in investigation and response, how to handle the overwhelming public demand for infomation, how to respond to the anger and hurt of a grieving community, and how to navigate its role as the focus of a massive political conversation. You have to be proximate and visible in these kinds of events. You cant run away from the media, Runcie told fellow education leaders gathered at a conference held by the Council of the Great City Schools. Theres a media frenzy, and you have to fill that with as much information as you have when you have it. The Council of the Great City Schools is a coalition of 70 urban school districts that trade ideas and share strategies. Runcie spoke as part of a panel that addressed responding to school crises. The day of the Parkland shooting On the day of the shooting, Runcie was at another high school in the district, presenting a teacher of the year with the keys to a Toyota Camry. Earlier in the day, hed visited some other schools to chat with students and recognize volunteers. As he stepped out of the event, he recieved a text message from his chief of staff: There were reports of a shooting at Stoneman Douglas. District leaders regularly receive word of possible criminal activity around schools or threats that are later determined to be unfounded, but it didnt take long to learn this one was real. The team immediately headed for Parkland. Runcie got on the phone with Broward County Sheriff Scott Israel, who described the most horrific scene hed seen in his entire life. Law enforcement still didnt have a count of fatalities but, at that point, Israel thought it might be more than 20. In Parkland, the district team was met with swarms of emergency vehicles from as far away as Miami surrounding the school and limiting access to nearby roads. They immediately worked to coordinate information for families, what little information they had at that point, and to set up a place for them to reunite with their children in a nearby hotel. It wasnt until 9 p.m., more than six hours after the shootings, that officials had a confirmed count of the dead and injured. And it wasnt until 3 a.m. that they had cleared out the reunion point to go home for the night. They would face a crush of international media the next day. Camera crews had already started trickling in that afternoon. Folks are, at that point, running on adrenaline, Runcie said. And it had turned into a massive, international media event. It really became what I consider a 9/11 type moment for us in public education because of some of the ripple effects that came out of it. Theres no way for communications teams to be completely prepared for an emergency event, especially a mass shooting, said Tracy Clark, the chief information officer of Broward County schools. Districts should incorporate communications into their emergency response plans, she said, and first responders need to coordinate with media relations staff to quickly release accurate information in an environment where rumors spread quickly. Misinformation spread on social media the night of the attack, students quickly shared photos and videos from inside their classrooms, and some staff even tried to access and leak the gunmans educational records. Its easy to criticize that work but theres no way any district in this country is staffed and organized to support a crisis of this magnitude, Runcie said. Broward leaders consulted with other districts about how they had responded to various crises, and some other school systems even loaned them communications personnel to handle the media calls. Clark said she still receives at least one media request a day about the shooting, and she still cries at least daily as she thinks about what occurred. I dont know at what point youre healed. I dont know at what point youre recovered. I know I probably cry everyday, and have from the moment we got the information, Clark said. The shooter has not even gone on trial yet. I cant imagine how thats going to be for our community. Politics swirl The shooting, combined with previous mass shootings, moved Runcie to speak out about what he sees as a need for common sense gun laws through statements at press conferences as early as the morning after the attack. Under pressure from Parkland students and victims families, the Florida legislature passed a comprehensive school safety bill less than a month after the shooting. That bill called for increased school security and mental health services, and it included new gun restrictions like a waiting period for firearms purchases, raising the minimum age for rifle sales, and a provision that allows law enforcement to restrict a persons access to guns if he or she is deemed a threat. Runcie has also supported Parkland students whove pushed for new gun laws. As a leader, you cant sit there and not take a position about what you believe on gun violence, he said. And when you do that, you might as well say hello to the NRA. They are going to show up and criticize everything you do, to discredit you and the district. NRA leaders have criticized Runcie, Israel, and other local leaders, claiming they didnt respond properly to concerns about the gunman during his time as a Broward County student. The gun rights organization and right-wing media outlets also criticized the districts discipline program that replaced arrests with educational programs for some student behaviors. Runcie stands by that program. In his talk to fellow district leaders on Thursday, Runcie did not address other criticism hes received from local families, including many victims families, who have criticized the districts response to the shooting. Among other things, those families have criticized how the district administered a bond program , some of which was targeted at improving safety measures in its buildings. Some parents have called on the school board to fire Runcie. Those tensions were evident later Thursday evening when word spread online that the Council for the Great City Schools gave Runcie a Crisis and Courage Award. Victims relatives slammed the move on social media , and some called on Runcie to return the award. The district also got in a legal tangle with the Sun-Sentinel newspaper after district officials improperly redacted information about the shooters educational history from an investigation it had commissioned from a consultant. That allowed reporters to access the whole document, which the district had released under court order. That investigation concluded the district had mishandled the gunmans request to return to special education programs after he had opted out. Ongoing work Runcie did say he saw support from the greater community for the districts direction. He cited voter approval of a property tax increase for teachers salaries and security officers in the most recent school board election as a sign of their support. No matter what you do, no matter how much you do to support families and the community, you will be criticized, Runcie said. It is never going to be enough because the grief, the hurt, and the anger is just unbearable for some. Stoneman Douglas is now home to counseling programs and dozens of therapy dogs who help students with the everyday bravery it takes to go to school while healing from trauma. Every month brings new milestones: prom, graduation, school resuming after a summer of grief. The district has restricted media access to the building and to events to give students space and privacy, Clark said. That move has drawn pushback from some media, but officials want to protect students who are trying to get used to a new normal, she said. The district, like others in Florida, is also working to comply with new safety mandates, like adding an armed officer or security guard to every buliding. It has also added more security cameras and upgraded the system they feed into, Runcie said. Some of those changes can make recovery seem difficult, he said. Under a new state mandate, for example, the district must perform 10 shooter drills a year. Combined with fire drills, thats a big loss of instructional time. And students at Stoneman Douglas, who were evacuating school for a fire alarm at the time of the shooting, have been re-traumatized by the exercises, Runcie and Clark said. Clark compared the overwhelming task of communicating with the public with drinking the ocean. There is nothing that you can put on paper, I believe, that can prepare you, she said. I would encourage every [district] to at least start the conversation of what if. Photo: Broward County Schools Superintendent Robert Runcie speaks during a news conference on Feb. 15, near Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Fla., where 17 people were killed the day before in a mass shooting. --Amy Beth Bennett/Sun Sentinel/TNS Related reading about responding to school shootings, emergencies: Follow @evieblad on Twitter or subscribe to Rules for Engagement to get blog posts delivered directly to your inbox. The sextoy market is growing quite rapidly in India right now. Although it is not a big trend, it is a hot topic on the internet as it is secretly expanding its market. In this article, we will focus on sextoy and introduce recommended sextoy for Indian beginners of sextoy by gender. India, the birthplace of the Kama Sutra, is very strict about sex. Also, premarital sex is basically not allowed. Therefore, there are many people who are sexually restricted. But what happens when you continue to be sexually restricted? Frustration may build up and you may end up taking your sexual stress out on your partner. If you are able to adopt sextoy in a timely manner, you can get rid of those problems. I want to have more exciting sex than Im having now. I want more variation in masturbation I want to get even stronger pleasure than I do on my own. If you have any of these problems, please stay with me until the end. What is sex toys for Indian? Sextoy, as the name implies, is a toy used during sex and masturbation. It is a generic term for vibrators, Egg-vibrators, Electric massagers, dildo, handcuffs and condoms. They are used to make regular sex more exciting or to make masturbation more pleasurable. Because sextoy is very stimulating, it can help you to get rid of the problems and frustrations of being in a rut of sex with your partner for a long time, or if you are unhappy with the lack of pleasure in sex with your partner. The ability to satisfy your desires with movement, texture, and size, which cannot be done by a normal human being, can help you to be satisfied with sex and, as a result, improve your relationship with your partner. It is also said to help improve sexual dysfunction (inability to get an erection or ejaculate) and difficulty in feeling during sex (insensitivity), which is attracting more attention than in the past. In recent years, the demand for sextoy has increased due to the spread of smartphones and the Internet and the increasing number of people using online shopping. Even those who are concerned about the appearance of sextoy (and find it difficult to purchase) can now easily obtain it by using mail order. In the case of online shopping, most of the stores have taken steps to ensure that the contents of the products delivered to you are not revealed, so you can purchase them without your family members knowing. Until a while ago, you had to go to the store where the adult goods were sold to buy them, so it was quite a hurdle to overcome. Also, many people may have an image that sextoy is somehow embarrassing to own. But nowadays, some of them are so stylish and cute that you cant believe they are sextoy at a glance. More and more people are using them for travel and outdoor use because they are not too bulky and are suitable for carrying around. Sextoy situation in India Before introducing the recommended sextoy for Indians, lets talk about one of the sextoy situations in India in recent years. In India, due to the high concentration of population, the following six cities have particularly high sales of sextoy in India. Mumbai Kolkata Bangalore Delhi Chennai Hyderabad These cities account for roughly 70 percent of sextoy sales in India. In the future, the percentage of sextoy use will gradually increase in other cities in India as well. If you never talk about sextoy publicly, that girl in your neighborhood might be a sextoy user too. If you are interested in sextoy, you dont have to suppress your desire for it. What are Sextoys for beginner? Among all sextoys, sextoy for beginners are vibrators, dildo, masturbators, Sex Lubricants, and condoms. Sex Lubricants and condoms, which are familiar to people who have had sex, are also a great beginners sextoy. I will explain the details of each toy later, but there are many sextoy products that are painful to use and can only be used after some anal expansion. I assume that the Indian readers of this article are people who have not had much experience with sextoy. If such people use professional sextoy suddenly, they are at risk of injury or trauma. Therefore, to introduce sextoy, you need to start with a beginners version and gradually become familiar with it. Advantages of using sextoy for Indians There are three advantages of using sextoy for Indians You can masturbate in a wide variety of ways. Can have stimulating sex Can develop new sexual zones If you try to masturbate with your own fingers or hands, it tends to be a pattern. However, with sextoy, you can easily masturbate in a variety of ways. You will definitely be fascinated by the attraction of new stimulation. Also, your daily sex life will be more exciting than ever. There are many things in sextoy that are visually stimulating and give you a strong and intense feeling of pleasure. This allows you to see your partners promiscuity in a way that you wouldnt normally see it. When you are in a relationship, sex with your partner may become a pattern, but it can also eliminate these problems. It can also lead to the development of new sexual zones (which is the training of sexual stimulation to allow you to feel orgasms). For more information on the development of new sexual zones, see the following articles [Women's Erogenous Zone]How to find and develop, 7 hidden sexual zones !![In India] In this issue, we will dissect the female erogenous zone! ..." Many of you may be like that. Men, in particular, shou... Thus, the use of sextoy can only be a good thing for the men and women of India. Sextoy for beginner men in India So, lets continue with the recommended goods for Indian sextoy beginners. For ease of understanding, we will introduce them by gender. Lets start with the men! The following five goods are recommended for novice Indian sextoy men Masturbator Cock rings Love Doll Sex Lubricants Toys for the prostate Lets check each one in detail. Masturbator The masturbator is a sextoy for men that elaborately reproduces a womans vagina, mouth, and anus, and is one of the most popular sextoy products. It is used by men to masturbate, and it is popular because it provides stronger stimulation and pleasure more easily than using hands. Most are made of good quality silicone, and their softness is something that cannot be achieved with ones own hands. They can provide stronger pleasure than a real womans vagina, so be careful not to overuse them. (You wont be able to have an orgasm in a womans vagina anymore.) Again Male masturbators are a wonderful toy. I do not need any favourite timing, bothersome bargaining. You do not have to worry too much. Revolutionize your masturbation time! ! ! Made in Japan is a wonderful kinky toy.#sextoysindia #SexToyIndia #Japanhttps://t.co/4k70QGzoTP pic.twitter.com/tRVdxTKPpa SEXToys India PR (@SextoysIndia) November 12, 2018 Some of them are disposable, while others can be washed and used over and over again, so its fun to buy a few to use depending on your mood. If you want to know more about masturbator, please click here Really pleasant male masturbation and how to do it Are you in a rut with your daily masturbation routine? I'm going to show you five ways men masturbate that you might ... [For Beginners] How to choose and use a male masturbator without fail Gentlemen.Have you ever used a masturbator? The person who sees this article is probably the one who has not experien... Cock Ring A cock ring is literally a ring-shaped sextoy that is worn on a mans penis. It maintains an erection by binding the penis with a ring of rubber and blocking blood flow. It is sometimes used as an accessory to be worn on the penis, and may be made of metal or plastic as well as rubber. In some cases, cock rings have parts or vibrators attached to them that stimulate the vagina, so they kill two birds with one stone, giving a woman pleasure while maintaining an erection. Cock rings are also sometimes used to treat erectile dysfunction. It can help with erectile dysfunction, where the penis doesnt get hard when you get an erection or doesnt last long when you try to insert it. Men who are prone to breakage or who are unsure of the hardness and size of their erections can use a cock ring to increase the size of their penis and maintain an erection for a longer period of time. Cock rings vary in price from around RS700 to over RS2000 with a vibrator function. Some of them do not fit your penis, so you should check the size of the cock ring before you buy. You should know the size of your partners or your own penis when it is erect. [Penis enlargement] What is a cock ring? Types and usage Cock rings can make your penis bigger and harder. It also makes sex with women more fulfilling and increases your sat... Love Doll Love dolls, also known as Dutchwives, are dolls with the appearance of a woman who can experience simulated sex. There are dolls that look like a woman, but they have no face and only have their breasts and lower torso cut off, and some dolls are so realistic that they can actually be mistaken for real women. Some expensive dolls can cost more than 1 million yen, and the quality of the doll is easily influenced by the price. The higher the price, the higher the quality of the doll will be, the closer it will be to the real woman, and the cheaper the doll will be, the less elaborate it will be, making it look like a real doll! Something is wrong! That is also true. You cant go wrong if you choose a balance between price and taste. There are stores that allow you to make custom-made love dolls, so you can create a girl of your choice. You can make a girl of your choice. You can start with inexpensive love dolls at first, and once you get used to it, you can try custom-made love dolls. If you want to know more about Love doll, please click here Thorough explanation of the charm of sex dolls! Have you ever heard of sex dolls that are used primarily for pseudo-sex purposes? It is a doll that is quite close to... Sex lubricants Sex lubricants are used as a substitute for lubricating fluid during sex or as a lubricant for men to use masturbator rules. It is not uncommon for women to have difficulty getting wet, depending on their physical condition, or to have difficulty getting wet due to their constitution. Forcing the penis into the vagina at such times can cause painful intercourse. There are various types of Sex Lubricants, some with a warming effect, some with a cooling effect, and some with a scent. Changing the Sex Lubricant used during play is recommended as a good sex accent. If you want to learn more about Sex Lubricants, click here. What is sex lubricant?Explain the difference and usage of each ingredient The word "sex toy" may seem like a hurdle to overcome, but lotion is actually one of the most familiar sex toys. Many... Toys for the Prostate Another sextoy for men is prostate toys. The most famous prostate toys include Enemagra, which was originally a prostate massager developed by an American urologist to treat an enlarged prostate line. Modern prostate toys are imitations of Enemagra that have spread as sextoy for men. Many people think of prostate toys as being used by gay men, but in fact they are often used by straight men. What is the prostate? The prostate is an organ found only in men. It is a walnut-sized organ located deep in the pelvis, just below the bladder, and its primary role is to protect and nourish sperm. You cannot touch the prostate gland from outside the body, but you can touch it by inserting a finger or sextoy through the anus. By inserting a finger or sextoy through the anus and touching the prostate and developing it, you can feel intense orgasms. Orgasms felt in the prostate are mainly dry orgasms, which are orgasms that do not involve ejaculation. (You can also feel orgasms with ejaculation through prostate stimulation.) The prostate is called the male G-spot, and dry orgasms can be much more intense than ejaculation. Therefore, men who are able to develop a prostate can become addicted to the pleasure. sextoy for beinner women in India The following are the recommended goods for Indian women who are new to sextoy. The following three are recommended for use by women who are new to sextoy. Vibrator. Dildo Electric Masserger Lets check out what each one is in detail. If you want to check out womens toys, click here. [BEST25]Sex Toys for Women in IndiaThat Can Help You Have an Orgasm There are many women who pretend to feel orgasm during sex. But don't worry, you don't have to pretend to feel orgasm... Vibrators A vibrator is a sextoy that vibrates with an Egg-Vibrator to provide stimulation and is often referred to simply as a vibrator. Some vibrate as well as rotate, and there are many variations of sextoy. It is quite a popular sextoy, and is well recognized by people who do not know much about sextoy. Its usage is similar to that of a massager, but it is more compact and easier to carry than a massager, and many of them look as cute as a lipstick or a macaroon, so they are popular among women. For a while, a famous influencer on twitter said, This is good! You may have heard of the topic of this article by introducing the recommended vibrators. Vibrators are great for women to use on their own, but they are also recommended for men who have difficulty satisfying women with sex. Since it is powered by electricity, it is far less tiring than moving your hands by yourself. This makes it easier to satisfy a woman with sex because you can caress her for longer than usual. Vibrators are mainly used on the female side, but they can also be used on men. When used on men, they are used to attack the nipples and glans, and in both cases it is recommended to wear a condom for hygiene reasons. Introducing how to use the vibrator, its purpose, and how to choose it! Vibrator uses the vibrations caused by the rotation of the motor to provide stimulation. It is one or two of the most... Dildo A dildo is a model sextoy made to mimic a male penis. It can be made of silicone, elastomer (think of it as a material similar to PVC), metal or glass. A dildo can be used by a man for his female partner during sex, or by a woman for masturbation to get pleasure from it. They are mainly inserted into women, but some can be used in the male anus as well. It is sometimes used synonymously with vibrators, but the vibrator is not the same thing as a vibrating device. A model of a penis that does not vibrate is a dildo. Some of them have suction cups that can be attached to the floor or wall so that you can enjoy realistic masturbation without using your hands. For fun, there is a dildo made in the shape of your partners penis. This one is also popular as a gift, and if youve been together for a long time and are having trouble finding a gift for your partner, you might want to pick one. To learn more about dildo, please click here. What is Dildo: Orgasms with Dildos for Men and Women A dildo is a model of a male organ that is used by women for masturbation and by men to stimulate the prostate gland. Th... Electric Masserger A Electric Masserger is a hand-held electric massager, also known as a handheld massager, and can usually be purchased at electronics stores. It was originally designed to relieve stiff shoulders and back pain, so the hurdle of buying one in a physical store is quite low. Many people may have seen or used it in some form or another, as it is often installed in leisure hotels. Such a massager is highly recommended for beginners because it is easy for women to get pleasure from it when they use it during masturbation. It is larger than Egg-Vibrator and vibrations are stronger than those of Egg-Vibrators and vibrators, so even just hitting the clitoris can give you a great deal of pleasure. For those women who have never had an orgasm during sex with their man, the massager may be a good way to get a feel for what it feels like to have an orgasm. It looks and feels like an electric massager, so you wont have to feel awkward if your roommate finds out. If you are in a rut of having sex with your partner, if you want to feel an orgasm through masturbation, or if you are thinking of using a sextoy, why dont you try it from a simple massager? To learn more about Electric Masserger, click here. What is a massager? Introducing types, selection methods, and usage Originally, the Magic-wand vibrator and the massage machine were sold as a home massage machine used for the back and th... How to choose a sextoy for Indian Now that weve covered the different types of sextoy, heres how to choose one. Especially if you are trying sextoy for the first time, pay attention to the following three points: Does the size fit you (the partner)? Does the size fit you (your partner)? Is the environment able to produce sound without problems? Price range First of all, the choice of size is quite important. Most sextoy are used against or inserted into the genitals, but the genitals are very delicate organs for both men and women. For this reason, using an inappropriate size may cause damage. Secondly, the environment should be able to produce sound without problems. Some sextoys not only wear, but also rotate and vibrate. Its easier to get pleasure from something that moves than something that doesnt, but the fact that it moves means that the internal rotors make some noise. If you live in a house with thin walls or if you have roommates, you may not be able to concentrate because of the noise, so it is best to choose one that is silent or has a low noise level. Especially in India, where many people live with their families, it is very important that you dont have to worry about sound when you use it. Finally, there is the price range. The price range of sextoy ranges widely, from around RS500 at the cheapest to RS10,000 or more at the highest. Its good to consider how much money you can afford and how much you want to buy. Do you want your family to not find out about sextoy? I live with my family and want to use sextoy without them finding out! If you are a man, you should buy a camouflage sextoy that does not look like a sextoy at first glance. For men, there are many masturbators that do not look like a sextoy, and for women, there are vibrators that only look like cosmetics. If you choose such a type, youll be safe in case your family members find out. How to buy sextoys in India The best way to purchase sextoy is through online shopping. For more information on how to purchase sextoy, please see the article below. Sextoy is one of them. Therefore, you can easily get sextoy in India by using online shopping. SexToysINDIA is a long established and stable sextoy store and you can have sextoy delivered to any place in India. They also offer cash on delivery, so those who are worried about shopping with a credit card do not have to worry. Of course, the latest security is in place, so your information will not be taken out when you use your credit card. To begin with, many people may be concerned about whether they are legally allowed to purchase sextoy. ikmAs it turns out, its not illegal. Right now, it is not open to the public because the Indian adult market is still in the development stage, but it will gradually spread from now on. Take advantage of sextoy and open the door to new pleasures and culture. Cautions for Indians using sextoy When using sextoy, keep the following three things in mind Keep sex toys clean Watch out for electrical leakage Beware of the heat generated by the body while using a sex toy As I mentioned earlier, many sextoy products are used for the delicate zone. Therefore, it is most important to keep the sextoy itself clean. It is very important to keep the sextoy itself clean, because if a slight scratch is created by friction, bacteria can enter and breed there. It is safe to wear a condom when using the masturbator, just in case. In addition, many sextoy devices are powered by a power source, so if they are not waterproof, there is a possibility of electric shock or malfunction due to wetness. Some may even develop heat during continuous use. If the fever becomes too much, you may get burned, so be careful. If you get a fever during use, stop driving the sextoy immediately and refrain from using it. You will enjoy sex more if you keep it safe and use it correctly. Summary What did you think? In this article, we have introduced the recommended sextoy for the beginners of sextoy in India. The sextoy market is growing rapidly in India and it will continue to grow steadily in the future. As India is a rather closed-minded country, it can be difficult to be open about ones sexual habits and values. However, being faithful to ones desires by properly dissolving ones sexual desire is very effective for ones physical and mental health. If this is your first time to learn about sextoy, or if you are interested in using sextoy, why not give it a try? Indian Sextoys for ur best! will introduce you to sextoy and other trivia about sextoy, sexuality, and sexuality for men and women. I want to read more! If you think its a great idea, please bookmark it. Horror writer Stephen King has struck a deal with student filmmakers in Wales. King sold the movie rights to a short story, Stationary Bike, to Blaenau Gwent Film Academy for one dollar. Kevin Phillips, a tutor at the school, told The Boston Globe the deal is great for our students who are fans of his writing and a great scoop for the academy. The story is about a man who begins using a stationary bike after his doctor tells him to lose weight because of high cholesterol. He gets fit but begins having strange thoughts about being followed on his daily rides. Marsha DeFilippo, Kings assistant, said the Maine author has a programme in which students receive permission to make a non-commercial film. Fiery words have been exchanged between the Irish presidential candidates and the hosts of the final live TV debate of the campaign. Five of the six candidates vying for the highest office in the land participated in a special Tonight Show election programme on Virgin Media One on Wednesday. Joan on #TonightVMT debate: What does the world think of Ireland? Where the theme & culture of the Presidency is mental health & well-being? What a fabulous legacy for Ireland #Aras18 #VoteJoan Joan Freeman (@SenJoanFreeman) October 24, 2018 Co-hosts Ivan Yates and Matt Cooper dismissed the campaign as bland and boring, to which Senator Joan Freeman replied: I agree. The candidates Ms Freeman, Sinn Fein MEP Liadh Ni Riada and businessmen Sean Gallagher, Peter Casey and Gavin Duffy were grilled for more than an hour. Incumbent President Michael D Higgins, who is running for a second term in office, declined to take part. "I am going to be a strong, outspoken President standing up for ordinary people. I will lead a discussion on a United Ireland." #Aras18 #LiadhForPresident #ANewIreland #TonightVMT Liadh Ni Riada (@LiadhNiRiada) October 24, 2018 Mr Duffy, a former investor on Irelands Dragons Den TV programme, said it was ironic that the candidates were being asked whether they were wasting their time given Mr Higginss absence. Debate hosts Matt Cooper and Ivan Yates (both centre) with the candidates (Brian McEvoy/PA) Im certainly not wasting my time turning up here, Mr Duffy said. I think people do want a change. Mr Casey hit the headlines last week over controversial comments he made about the Traveller community, but when asked whether he had dragged the campaign into the gutter, he said he had only pointed out divides that already exist. Im not afraid to speak out and say what others are thinking, I say what people are too afraid to say. #Aras18 #PeterForPresident #TonightVMT Peter Casey (@CaseyPeterJ) October 24, 2018 He faced calls to withdraw from the race after he said Travellers were simply people camping on someone elses land and that recognition of them as members of an ethnic minority was a load of nonsense. He said during Wednesdays debate that the role of president is to be a voice for the people who need to be heard. Middle Ireland needs to be heard, he said. Mr Cooper accused Mr Casey of pulling a stunt when he announced last weekend that he was taking time to consider whether to continue to run for the presidency. For people watching tonight, their children will not be as relatively well off as their parents were. There are seismic challenges facing Ireland. I believe I am the right candidate to meet those challenges head on as president #TonightVMT #Aras18 #GavinForPresident Gavin Duffy (@GavinDuffy) October 24, 2018 The debate was the last chance for the public to see the candidates questioned before polling day on Friday. The strength of the vote is the strength of the mandate says Michael D Higgins in Bundoran, addressing supporters, encouraging everyone to get out and vote on Friday #aras18 #MichaelDForPresident pic.twitter.com/irPmx9Gh04 Michael D Higgins (@MichaelDHiggins) October 24, 2018 Mr Higgins is favourite to retain the presidency. Rafinha returned to haunt Inter Milan as Barcelona eased past the Italians in the Champions League to tighten their grip on Group B. Ernesto Valverdes side remain top of the group with a 100 per cent record after Jordi Alba wrapped up a 2-0 win late on. Rafinha netted his first Barcelona goal since February 2017 after he spent the second half of last season on loan at Inter. Inter, the 2010 winners, struggled all game and are three points behind in second with Tottenham who drew 2-2 with PSV a further five back. Without Lionel Messi, sidelined with a broken arm, Barca lacked their usual ingenuity and Inter conjured the first opening. Ivan Perisic fired a dangerous low ball in and Mauro Icardi steered it over with Marc-Andre ter Stegen putting him under pressure. Barcelonas Jordi Alba wrapped up a 2-0 win over Inter Milan (Mike Egerton/PA) But, slowly, the hosts built momentum and two tame Rafinha efforts were comfortably saved by Samir Handanovic and Clement Lenglet who had already had a header well stopped nodded a corner over after half an hour. But two minutes later Rafinha broke the deadlock when he latched onto Luis Suarezs classy cross to volley in from six yards. The midfielder did not celebrate but it was a deserved lead and Barca almost grabbed a second just before the break when Milan Skriniar brought down Philippe Coutinho on the edge of the box. The Brazil internationals free-kick hit Miranda to drop inches wide of the wrong-footed Handanovics post. But Inter almost levelled five minutes after the restart when Ter Stegen was forced to make a vital save from Matteo Politanos dangerous cross. Handanovic then had to stop Suarez making it 2-0 as Barca rediscovered their stride after the former Liverpool striker cut into the area. Lenglet was denied again before the hosts came inches from doubling their lead with 19 minutes remaining. First, Suarezs header was parried and, when Ivan Rakitic miscontrolled, Coutinho could only hammer the loose ball against the bar from seven yards. But Alba did seal the points with eight minutes remaining when he raced onto Rakitics excellent through ball and drilled into the corner before Suarez shot straight at Handanovic a minute from time. Fiery words have been exchanged between the Irish presidential candidates and the hosts of the final live TV debate of the campaign. Five of the six candidates vying for the highest office in the land participated in a special Tonight Show election programme on Virgin Media One on Wednesday. Co-hosts Ivan Yates and Matt Cooper dismissed the campaign as bland and boring, to which Senator Joan Freeman replied: I agree. Mr Yates, a former Fine Gael minister, described the campaign as inept and said it demonstrated that the candidates did not understand the knock-down, drag-out nature of politics. The candidates Ms Freeman, Sinn Fein MEP Liadh Ni Riada and businessmen Sean Gallagher, Peter Casey and Gavin Duffy were grilled for almost one hour. Joan on #TonightVMT debate: What does the world think of Ireland? Where the theme & culture of the Presidency is mental health & well-being? What a fabulous legacy for Ireland #Aras18 #VoteJoan Joan Freeman (@SenJoanFreeman) October 24, 2018 Incumbent President Michael D Higgins, who is running for a second term in office, declined to take part. Election preparations (Brian Lawless/PA) They were asked whether they were all just wasting their time running for the presidency. Mr Duffy, a former investor on Irelands Dragons Den TV programme, said it was ironic that they were being asked whether they were wasting their time given Mr Higginss absence. Im certainly not wasting my time turning up here, Mr Duffy said. I think people do want a change. Mr Casey hit the headlines last week over controversial comments he made about the Traveller community, but when asked whether he had dragged the campaign into the gutter, he said he had only pointed out divides that already exist. He faced calls to withdraw from the race after he said Travellers were simply people camping on someone elses land and that recognition of them as members of an ethnic minority was a load of nonsense. Mr Casey said during Wednesdays debate that the role of president is to be a voice for the people who need to be heard. Im not afraid to speak out and say what others are thinking, I say what people are too afraid to say. #Aras18 #PeterForPresident #TonightVMT Peter Casey (@CaseyPeterJ) October 24, 2018 Mr Cooper went on to accuse Mr Casey of pulling a stunt when he announced last weekend that he was taking time to consider whether to continue to run for the presidency because of the controversy. The businessman, who has lived in the US and Australia for most of his life, faced accusations that he was employing Trump-like tactics. You have engaged in the kind of tactics of which Donald Trump would be proud, Mr Cooper said. Mr Casey responded: Ive been shooting up the polls every day this week. Asked about alleged abuse victim Mairia Cahills account, Ms Ni Riada said: Mairia Cahill, what was done to her was wrong. No apology will ever undo what was done to her. Ive always said that what was done to Mairia Cahill was wrong and Ive apologised profusely about that and it wont undo it. Ms Ni Riada added she would be more than happy to meet with Ms Cahill. I hope she does get closure on it and she deserves that closure, she added. Ms Cahill, a grand-niece of prominent Belfast republican Joe Cahill, claimed she was sexually abused as a 16-year-old by an alleged IRA member. The Sinn Fein candidate was also asked about her unvouched expenses as an MEP. "I am going to be a strong, outspoken President standing up for ordinary people. I will lead a discussion on a United Ireland." #Aras18 #LiadhForPresident #ANewIreland #TonightVMT Liadh Ni Riada (@LiadhNiRiada) October 24, 2018 Ms Freeman, founder of suicide prevention charity Pieta House, said the debate seven years ago had been dominated by financial concerns and that nothing seemed to have changed. She said more than 3,200 people had died by suicide and yet the discussion was still centring on money. We need to focus on mental health, she said. She admitted she found the campaign difficult, adding: I had a ball of fear nearly every time I came to do a debate. Ms Freeman, who has spent her life campaigning on mental health issues, made the unusual admission to the panel that: Yes, Im a one-trick pony but what a very important trick. She said Ireland would be a better place in seven years time if the theme of the presidency is culture and mental health. The fact that three of the six presidential hopefuls have been panellists in the Irish version of Dragons Den was noted, with one of the dragons, Mr Duffy, admitting: Three of us from the one TV programme is bizarre. For people watching tonight, their children will not be as relatively well off as their parents were. There are seismic challenges facing Ireland. I believe I am the right candidate to meet those challenges head on as president #TonightVMT #Aras18 #GavinForPresident Gavin Duffy (@GavinDuffy) October 24, 2018 Asked whether all three businessmen were egomaniacs, Mr Duffy said it was a perfectly legitimate issue to raise. He added: Definitely there should not have been three from (Dragons Den). Were just splitting the vote, and I thought it was lowering the tone of the election. Ms Ni Riada said: This is becoming a bit of an all-boys club here again. Joan and I have to fight tooth and nail to get heard. I would like to transform the Presidency, work tirelessly and enhance the lives of the people of Ireland #Aras18 #TimeForChange #Rtept Sean Gallagher (@seangallagher1) October 23, 2018 The mood of the debate became more light-hearted as it progressed, with the panellists erupting into laughter over the price of a litre of milk. Ms Ni Riada said it depended on whether the candidates shopped in Lidl or Tesco. The debate was the last chance for the public to see the candidates questioned before polling day on Friday. The strength of the vote is the strength of the mandate says Michael D Higgins in Bundoran, addressing supporters, encouraging everyone to get out and vote on Friday #aras18 #MichaelDForPresident pic.twitter.com/irPmx9Gh04 Michael D Higgins (@MichaelDHiggins) October 24, 2018 Mr Higgins, who is running for a second seven-year term, is favourite to win the presidency. Theresa May is pushing ahead with her Brexit agenda after facing down critics with an emotional address to Tory backbenchers. The Prime Minister appeared to steady her position after she delivered a heartfelt appeal for Conservative MPs to stand firm as EU withdrawal negotiations enter their frantic final phase. The move came as the Government prepared to unveil parliamentary preparations for a no-deal Brexit in less than three weeks time, according to The Times. A raft of legislation intended to deal with the consequences of the UK exiting the EU without an agreement will be launched in the second week of November, the newspaper reported. Despite Mrs May seeming to dampen speculation of an imminent bid to oust her with a well-received address to a meeting of the 1922 Committee of backbenchers, former Cabinet minister Nicky Morgan predicted the PM only had months left in power. Asked if Mrs May had her backing, Ms Morgan told ITVs Peston: She has, absolutely, for now. But I think well probably, in the course of the next 12 months, well be looking for a new leader. Prime Minister Theresa May delivered a `heartfelt appeal (Stefan Rousseau/PA) The comments came after former home secretary Amber Rudd said that Mrs May had won the room with an emotion-tinged speech to the 1922 Committee. And Leave-backing MP Michael Fabricant called the gathering a love-in for Mrs May. The PMs address came after a torrid week in which an anonymous MP was quoted as saying Mrs May should bring her own noose to the meeting. Ms Rudd praised the PM, saying: She got a warm welcome, she talked quite emotionally about why she was doing this for the good of the country and how it was important that the public and our party members realise that we are behind her and that we all wanted the same thing which is to lead in the best interests of the country. Asked if the PM looked emotional, Ms Rudd said: Well she looked like she really minded it wasnt reading from a script. She was talking frankly and honestly from the heart about why she was doing this and why it mattered. Ms Rudd said a lot of MPs condemned the really nasty language that had been used in the run-up to the meeting. Amid claims that the number of letters to the chairman of the 1922 Committee from MPs calling for a vote of no confidence in the PM was close to the 48 level needed to trigger a ballot, Ms Rudd insisted Mrs Mays position was now safe. Ms Rudd said: She was able to win the room and deliver something quite personal and emotional about why she was committed to doing it, despite being quite frank about the difficulties that were still there. Mr Fabricant said: It wasnt Daniella in the lions den it was a petting zoo. The meeting came after fresh revelations about the Governments plans for a no-deal Brexit, with alternative measures to secure supplies of food and medicines from the continent being investigated in case of chaos on the English Channel crossing. Secretary of State for Housing, Communities and Local Government James Brokenshire defended the move. He told ITVs Peston: I think thats what governments should be doing in preparation in terms of dealing with the issues that could arise. It is not a situation that we want to get into. The Prime Minister remains focused on negotiating that right outcome which is the deal. But, ultimately, yes, of course, we dont want to end up in a situation, but we must be ready. We need to be prepared. Education Secretary John Swinney is to set out his intentions on the controversial use of testing for primary one (P1) pupils. The Deputy First Minister will make a statement on standardised national assessments after MSPs narrowly vote against using them to measure the development of four and five-year-olds. When that vote took place in September, Mr Swinney pledged to consider the result but in October he told the SNP conference in Glasgow he was looking at ways to reassure critics. Teaching unions have claimed some P1 youngsters have been reduced to tears as a result of the tests, which were brought in by the Scottish Government as part of its efforts to close the attainment gap in schools. The Conservatives, Labour, Greens and Liberal Democrats in Holyrood all oppose the use of tests in P1, with opposition parties stepping up calls for Mr Swinney to scrap them. Conservative education spokeswoman Liz Smith (Scottish Parliament/PA) Tory education spokeswoman Liz Smith stated: The SNP is always telling us that the will of the Scottish Parliament should be paramount. This is John Swinneys chance to prove that. The Parliament was quite clear when it voted to halt the tests in Primary 1. This was based on the growing concerns among P1 teachers that these tests were inappropriate for five-year-olds and were not providing any added value when it came to assessing very young children. Since that time, public opinion has expressed the same concern, as have a number of local authorities across Scotland. Labour education spokesman Iain Gray said: The question is no longer whether these tests should be allowed to continue, or how they will be reformed it is when will the SNP government finally listen to teachers, parents and parliament and get rid of them completely. Enough class time and resources have already been wasted and it is high time John Swinney admitted his mistake. Mr Gray said the statement to MSPs gave the Education Secretary the perfect opportunity to set things right and ditch the assessments. Anything else will be disregarding the views of teachers, parents and the will of the Scottish Parliament, he added. Meanwhile Green education spokesman Ross Greer said: John Swinney would do well cut his losses and do away with these tests for four and five-year-olds once and for all. What teachers really want to hear is how they can be supported in their overworked job and how the government will restore the value of teachers pay to tackle the recruitment and retention crisis. Mr Swinney has accused his rivals of political opportunism, saying their opposition to the tests is easily the worst example of the tribal, SNP-bad politics of the unionist parties I have seen in years. And he insisted politicians from other parties had no right to play politics with the education of Scotlands children and young people. A Scottish Government spokesman said: We have made clear that assessment has long been an important part of the improvement agenda, and teachers with experience of using the assessments have spoken of how useful they are as one of a range of ways to gauge a pupils progression. We have considered the motion that Parliament has agreed and discussed with local authority partners. The DFM will update Parliament tomorrow. More than 2,000 GP surgeries, clinics and hospitals are in areas which breach safe pollution limits, with people breathing toxic air as they seek medical care, analysis suggests. Some 2,220 GP practices and 248 hospitals across Britain are in areas where average levels of tiny particle pollution known as particulate matter or PM2.5 are above limits recommended by the World Health Organisation. These particles, the majority of which come from road transport in urban areas, are linked to causing and worsening diseases including asthma, coronary heart disease, stroke, and lung cancer. And evidence is emerging of impacts on low birth weight, diabetes, Alzheimers and Parkinsons, the study by the British Lung Foundation and Cambridge Environmental Research Consultants (CERC) said. Dangerously dirty air around health centres is a problem in the biggest cities such as London and Birmingham, but also in places ranging from Barrow-in-Furness, Cumbria, to Penzance, Cornwall. Major childrens hospitals Great Ormond Street in London, and Birminghams Children Hospital are in dangerously polluted areas. Thousands of health centres across Britain are in areas with unsafe levels of pollution (Nick Ansell/PA) In England, one in three GP practices and one in four hospitals are located in areas that exceed the safe levels, according to the study, which analysed the postcodes of 9,988 NHS health centres against data for PM2.5 levels. In Wales, 54 GP surgeries and three hospitals are in polluted areas, with Cardiff seeing the highest levels of PM2.5, and in Scotland three healthcare sites are above the recommended limit, in Aberdeen, Falkirk and Berwickshire. The British Lung Foundation (BLF) warned that air pollution is an urgent threat for the 12 million people in the UK with lung conditions such as asthma, and called on the Government to take swift action. BLF director of policy Alison Cook said: Its unacceptable that vulnerable people with NHS appointments are being exposed to toxic air that could make their health worse. The UK currently meets legal limits for PM2.5 but these are more than twice as high as the recommended ceiling from the WHO. The Government should put the WHO limit for PM2.5 into UK law in the forthcoming Environment Bill, the charity urged. Charging clean air zones should be brought into cities and towns with the dirtiest air to curb polluting traffic, where possible including hospital and other health centres. And there should be greater investment in air quality monitoring for places where vulnerable groups gather, such as hospitals. Reducing pollution levels would save hundreds of millions of pounds for the NHS and social care budgets and avoid thousands of cases of asthma, lung cancer and chronic obstructive pulmonary disease. Ms Cook said: It cant be right that hospital staff and GPs must care for people in environments that could worsen their symptoms and could be putting them at risk of a whole range of health problems further down the line. She said patients are being let down, and it is not the fault of healthcare professionals. The ball is now in the Governments court; we want them to adopt WHOs limit and ensure we meet it. Dr Maria Neira, from WHO, said: Hospitals and GP surgeries are the lungs and hearts of our health systems. No-one should have to be exposed to dirty air when visiting them. A spokesman for the Environment Department (Defra) said: Air pollution is the top environmental risk to human health in the UK, and while air quality has improved significantly since 2010, we recognise there is more to do. This is why we are taking comprehensive action through our 3.5 billion plan to reduce harmful emissions and our ambitious new Clean Air Strategy which has been welcomed by the WHO (World Health Organisation). And he said: The forthcoming Environment Bill will include provisions to improve air quality and ensure we leave our precious environment in a better state than we found it. Community nurses are concerned about people in their care being vulnerable to financial scammers and want to be better prepared to deal with problems. A survey conducted by the Queens Nursing Institute Scotland (QNIS) found 91% of those asked believed some or many of their patients were at risk of being defrauded. Only 8% believed they were already fully equipped to help prevent financial scams, with 93% of nurses saying they wanted to be better informed and more prepared. The figures, contained in a survey of 289 community nurses, come ahead of an event in Edinburgh looking at safeguarding those at risk of financial abuse. Representatives from Police Scotland, Age Scotland, Action on Elder Abuse and Trading Standards are among the speakers at the safeguarding seminar in the Grassmarket Centre on Thursday. Professor Keith Brown, director of the National Centre for Post Qualifying Social Work, said: It is clear that criminals are increasingly targeting lonely elderly citizens to financially scam. Community nurses want to be able to better help elderly patients avoid financial scams (Jane Barlow/PA) These are yours and my relatives and neighbours and the impact of being scammed is devastating for these victims. Community nurses are critical in this area as they are often the only formal professionals visiting the elderly in the community. The training resources we are launching today are designed to help community nurses spot and identify those at risk of being scammed and to ensure they know what steps and actions to take to support their clients. With 10 billion of fraud committed per year in the UK we simply cannot ignore this problem it is of a vast scale often hidden away but has devastating consequences. Clare Cable, chief executive and nurse director of QNIS, said: Most victims of financial abuse can ill-afford the monetary loss, and this can mean insufficient money for rent, food, bills and other necessities. These losses can adversely affect physical and mental health. Community nurses can identify the early warning signals of financial abuse and explore whats true with the people in their care. They may either signpost sources of help, or (if warranted) alert safeguarding teams, the police, and trading standards. Nurses are well-placed to help people whose wellbeing has been harmed by scamming. The new Fisheries Bill will create a sustainable, profitable fishing industry for all of the UK, the Environment Secretary has said. Michael Gove described the Bill as a major milestone which he said will create more powers for the Scottish Government and the other devolved administrations. The Scottish Government has called on the UK Government to respect the devolved settlement and wants full powers transferred over all fishing policy after Brexit. The Bill is to be introduced to the UK Parliament on Thursday and will enable the UK to control who may fish in our waters and on what terms for the first time since 1973, the Department for Environment and Rural Affairs (Defra) said. The Bill also gives the UK the power to implement new deals negotiated with the EU and with other coastal states. Defra said the Scottish Government will receive new powers to regulate its sea fisheries resources to preserve the marine environment, and powers to tackle aquatic animal diseases more quickly. A new Fisheries Bill will be introduced to the UK parliament on Thursday (David Cheskin/PA) Mr Gove said: The fishing industry is of vital importance to Scotland and that is why the Fisheries Bill, combined with our withdrawal from the EU, will give more decision-making powers to the Scottish Government. This new Fisheries Bill will allow us to create a sustainable, profitable fishing industry for all of the UK. It will regenerate coastal communities, take back control of our waters and, through better conservation measures, allow our precious marine environment to thrive. The Common Fisheries Policy has damaged the UKs fishing industry and our precious fish stocks. The Bill will deliver a sustainable fishing industry, with healthy seas and a fair deal for UK fishermen. Scotlands Fisheries Secretary Fergus Ewing said: Let me be clear fisheries is already a devolved matter and must remain so. I want the UK Government to be absolutely clear that Scotland should continue to be responsible for current decisions relating to fishermen, and that future policies are decided upon in Scotland. That is the best and only acceptable solution for the industry in Scotland. Nonetheless both myself and my officials will continue to work to seek a constructive set of solutions and will urge the UK Government to provide justification for its assertions. Bertie Armstrong, chief executive of the Scottish Fishermens Federation, said: This is a necessary piece of legislation that sets a completely new framework for fisheries management outside the universally detested Common Fisheries Policy. Control of UK waters will no longer be exercised by the dead hand of EU bureaucracy but by our governments at Westminster and Holyrood, which we trust will work together in harmony to seize the sea of opportunity that stretches out before us. The Scottish Governments own figures suggest that this could be worth an additional 540 million per year to the seafood industry plus a total of 5,000 new jobs. And it is accessible through an effective and reactive fisheries management regime that avoids placing unnecessary constraints on skippers and crew doing a difficult job at sea. Policing is at risk of becoming irrelevant as neighbourhood presences are stripped back and vast numbers of crimes go unsolved, a major new report warns. Forces in England and Wales are struggling to cope and there will be dire consequences for public safety unless they are provided with additional funding, according to the Commons Home Affairs Committee, which also accused the Home Office of a complete failure of leadership. Its inquiry found volume offences including robbery and vehicle-related theft are increasing at an alarmingly steep rate. While recorded crime is up by nearly a third (32%) in three years, charges or summonses have fallen by 26% and the number of arrests is also down, according to the assessment. It said data suggests forces have lost at least a fifth of their neighbourhood policing capacity on average since 2010. Flagging up the role played by neighbourhood teams in tackling terrorism and gang crime, the report said: It is absolutely vital that this cornerstone of British policing is reaffirmed throughout the country, to ensure that trust and legitimacy is maintained. This is particularly important in communities in which distrust of the police and in public authorities more widely is rife, and in which those local links are all the more important. Nevertheless, in all neighbourhoods, without local engagement, policing is at risk of becoming irrelevant to most people, particularly in the context of low rates of investigation for many crimes. The wide-ranging review also found: Only a tiny proportion of online fraud cases are ever investigated and the police response needs a fundamental overhaul; Forces are woefully under-resourced for the volume of online child sexual abuse investigations they must carry out; Forces are failing to meet the challenges of the digital age, with investment in and adoption of new technology a complete and utter mess. Labour MP Yvette Cooper, who chairs the committee, said: Police officers across the country are performing a remarkable public service in increasingly difficult circumstances, but forces are badly overstretched. Crime is up, charges and arrests are down, and the police service is struggling to respond effectively to emerging and growing challenges, such as online fraud and online child abuse. Policing urgently needs more money. Internet child sexual abuse is reaching epidemic levels, with law enforcement estimates suggesting 80,000 people may present some form of sexual threat to children online, the committee found. Police are struggling to deal with `epidemic levels of online child abuse, the report warned (PA) Its report warned the proportion of fraud cases investigated is shockingly low in the context of 1.7 million offences a year, saying: It appears highly unlikely that more than one in 200 victims ever sees their perpetrator convicted. MPs also called for the private sector to do much more to reduce the demand on policing from the two crime types. The committee concluded policing is suffering from a complete failure of leadership from the Home Office, saying: As the lead department for policing, it cannot continue to stand back while crime patterns change so fast that the police struggle to respond. Urging ministers to prioritise policing in the Autumn Budget, the report said: Without additional funding for policing, we have no doubt that there will be dire consequences for public safety, criminal justice, community cohesion and public confidence. Policing is struggling to cope in the face of changing and rising crimes, as a result of falling staff numbers, outdated technology, capabilities and structures, and fragmented leadership and direction. The findings chime with a recent warning from Whitehalls spending watchdog, while earlier this month a chief constable warned policing has reached its tipping point. A Home Office spokesman said: The Home Secretary has already been clear that he will prioritise funding for the police. We have been on the front foot in engaging with police. The policing minister has spoken to leaders in every force in England and Wales to better understand the demand and changing nature of crime faced by forces. We are now working closely with the police to gather the evidence to ensure they continue to receive the resources they need at the next spending review. The department added that the Government had delivered a 460 million increase in overall police funding in 2018/19, including increased funding for local policing through council tax. National Police Chiefs Council chairwoman Sara Thornton said the report rightly recognises that forces and officers have come under serious strain and concludes that forces are badly overstretched as they deal with rising crime and demand that is more complex. She added: It demonstrates that the threats and challenges we face require a response across the whole system and cannot be developed by institutions acting alone. Police Federation of England and Wales vice-chairman Che Donald said: If Government dont listen now, they cant say they havent been warned. They need to recognise the true cost of policing, or else the police will not be able to fulfil their duties and keep the public safe. Lef:A section of those who attended the Business Luncheon. Right:Saboto Caesar, Minister of Agriculture, addressing a recent Chamber of Commerce Luncheon on the issue of the medical cannabis industry. by Kenville Horne Minister of Agriculture Saboto Caesar, during the Chamber and Commerce Luncheon on Friday 5th October, made known his governments intention with respect to the proposed easing of restrictions as it relates to cannabis (marijuana). As it stands, three Bills pertaining to the cultivation and use of cannabis here, have been referred to Special Committee (of Parliament). The Bills provide for the framework for developing/nurturing a modern medicinal cannabis industry; permits the use of cannabis for religious purposes, as per the Rastafarian faith; offers a period of amnesty to those who currently cultivate cannabis, to become legitimate stakeholders in the medical cannabis industry. Land use According to Caesar, government recognizes that the agriculture sector in SVG has always been in transition and continues to transit. The government of SVG intends to create a diversified production platform upon which all the traditional agricultural produce and cannabis can participate, Caesar said. According to the Minister, the country has 18,000 acres of land left for agriculture. "It means that going forward we have to create a programme and an approach to ensure that food security remains paramount, while we have lands for open field cultivation for cannabis. . we dont want the production of any commodity to infringe on our food security and food sovereignty, he said. Those investors looking to acquire lands for cannabis cultivation can expect lands lease holdings arrangement, and would be encouraged to enter into joint ventures. Impact on local economy Among the advantages of the medical cannabis industry, as envisioned by the Minister, and by extension his government, is a boom in construction, since companies coming to invest from outside of St. Vincent would be constructing, among other requisite structures, green houses for controlled cultivation of the commodity. Additionally, Caesar pointed out that the industry will require specialized vehicles for the transportation of the cannabis. Also the need for internationally accredited laboratories, seed to sale tracking systems and other facilities will offer opportunities to the private sector. Caesar made it known that no one will be able to use their own security for their cultivation. He cited, "There will be a need for a list of approved security companies for (use by) persons who have invested in cannabis. And given that any new industry will require workers, "I can already envision a significant cadre of persons who are returning with their degrees and other qualifications being able to enter the value chain and obtain further training, so that they can bring service to the emerging industry, declared Caesar. He said the international narcotic conventions that the country are signatory to, clearly note that cannabis must only be used for medicinal purposes or scientific research. Caesar admitted, though, that if there is one area of challenge that the medical cannabis industry will face, it lies with the banking process that will serve it. With most banks here having international corresponding relations with banks in the USA where cultivation and possession of cannabis remains a federal offence, those banks (USA) have indicated that they would not be facilitating any processes that have to do with proceeds arising from involvement with cannabis. "Plans are being put in place to deal with that, Caesar assured. Optimism Notwithstanding that all of the cannabis grown for use in the medical industry will be exported, or so said the Minister of Agriculture, there will be a need for a local authority to govern the cannabis space. This authority will not be the Ministry of Agriculture, he promised. "It is going to be run by an independent body established by the state. Buoyed especially by information from Invest SVG, that persons are willing to pay up to US$1 million for a cultivators licence because of the anticipated low cost of production and advantage of climate, Caesar declared: "We have a history of growing cannabis.. so we wont be starting from ground zero. I am happy to be a part of the championing of this important cause. Original scripts from TV drama Taggart have been donated to a university to help the next generation of screen writers. Blythe Duff, who played Jackie Reid in the famous police drama, has handed her scripts from 95 episodes to the archives at Glasgow Caledonian University (GCU), along with memorabilia including books, press cuttings, photographs and awards. Students from GCUs course in TV fiction writing will now use the scripts as part of their studies but the archive will also be open to the public to take a look at the scripts, some of which had to be rewritten after the death of Mark McManus who played Taggart. Duff made her first on-screen appearance in the episode Death Comes Softly in 1990 and was part of the final cast in the last episode screened by STV, called Ends of Justice in 2010. She said: The archive is open to everyone. The public can come in and spend an afternoon browsing through the scripts. There is a real warmth towards Taggart among the public and a fondness for Mark McManus, in particular. There are landmark episodes in there, such as the 50th and 100th Taggart, but also ones that had to be rewritten after Mark passed away. Everyone has a Taggart story, whether its their aunties house being used to film in or their street being featured in an episode, and its not just in Glasgow, we filmed all over Scotland. It would be great, in the future, if the public could add their own papers and photographs to the archive, to collate more evidence of the show. The donation comes as the university marks the tenth anniversary of its MA TV Fiction Writing course. Graduates from the course have worked on shows, including EastEnders, Casualty and Holby City, while Lorna Martin recently became the first graduate to devise and write her own series, Women on the Verge, screened on channel W. Blythe Duff and John Michie were among the leading stars in Taggart (GCU/PA) Duff was joined by Taggart co-star John Michie at the handover of the Taggart collection. She added: The old studios used to be up in Port Dundas, which is close to GCU, so it seems fitting that the archive will be here. The fact that students from the MA TV Fiction Writing course will also be able to benefit from having access to the scripts is brilliant. TV is changing so quickly and, as everything goes digital, its important to retain a link with the past. Carole McCallum, GCUs archivist, added: The collection tells the story of Taggart but it also tells the story of Blythe Duff, of a female breaking into a male-dominated industry. Taggart and Glasgow go hand in hand. Having the archive here brings the scripts to life and returns the show to the people. The opening of aerospace giant Boeings first ever European manufacturing plant in Sheffield has been hailed as hugely significant for South Yorkshire, the North of England and the UK as a whole. The 66,736.24 sq ft (6,200 sq m) facility is making components for Boeings 737 and 767 jets. The 40 million investment has launched with 52 staff, including experienced engineers and more than 20 apprentices, the company said. Stay tuned as we celebrate the opening of #BoeingSheffield this week, which will make parts for our 737 & 767 aircraft pic.twitter.com/7RmRYuVFDL Boeing UK & Ireland (@BoeingUK) October 24, 2018 Sheffield City Region Mayor Dan Jarvis said: This opening of this new facility is hugely significant for South Yorkshire, the wider Northern Powerhouse and, indeed, for the UK. Mr Jarvis said: Boeings choice of location is a strong sign of confidence in our advanced engineering excellence, confidence in our workforce and strong manufacturing heritage, and confidence in the cutting-edge collaborations between university and business that enable us to lead the world. Boeing Sheffield manufactures more than 100 different high-tech actuation components for the 737 and 767 wing trailing edge, the company said. Boeings first ever European manufacturing plant which has opened in Sheffield (Dave Higgens/PA) Actuation systems move the flaps at the back of the wing to provide extra lift at low speeds during take-off and landing. From concept to reality: Boeings first manufacturing facility in Europe will open this week! #BoeingSheffield pic.twitter.com/cYC4rd9ASj Boeing UK & Ireland (@BoeingUK) October 24, 2018 The firm said that, at full capacity, Boeing Sheffield will produce thousands of parts each month, which will be shipped to the US for assembly at Boeings plant in Portland, Oregon. Jenette Ramos, Boeing senior vice president of Manufacturing, Supply Chain and Operations, said: We appreciate all the community support for Boeings new advanced manufacturing factory in the UK. This is a fabulous example of how we are engaging global talent to provide greater value to our customers. In Boeing Sheffield, we are building on longstanding relationships and the regions manufacturing expertise to enhance our production system and continue to connect, protect, explore and inspire aerospace innovation. Boeing said the components manufactured at Boeing Sheffield are made from raw materials sourced from UK suppliers. These include Aeromet International Ltd, a Worcester-based supplier of advanced aluminium and magnesium cast parts, and Liberty Speciality Steels, located three miles from the new factory. Business Secretary Greg Clark said: Boeing choosing the heart of South Yorkshire as its first European home is testament to our capabilities, talent pool and strong manufacturing supply chains which are vital to job creation and creating value for local economies. We are leading the world in UK aerospace manufacturing and through our modern Industrial Strategy, we, along with industry, have committed to invest 3.9 billion in aerospace. The new plant is situated alongside the University of Sheffields Factory 2050, part of the Advanced Manufacturing Research Centre (AMRC), and builds on a 17-year relationship between the aerospace giant and the university at the centre. It is on the site of the defunct Sheffield City Airport and next to the former site of the Orgreave coking plant, where violent clashes took place during the 1984-85 miners strike. Councils in the UK have been accused of buying homecare services for older people on the cheap. The United Kingdom Homecare Association (UKHCA) said its report exposes the scale of underfunding of the sector and is calling on the Government to fund care at a more sustainable level in the forthcoming Budget. It claims councils in Great Britain and Northern Irelands Health and Social Care Trusts are continuing to exploit their dominant purchasing power, leaving many older and disabled people without the support they need to remain independent. Using data obtained through Freedom of Information requests, it found the average prices paid for homecare in the UK is just 16.12 an hour almost 2 an hour less than UKHCAs Minimum Price for Homecare of 18.01. UKHCA, the professional association for homecare providers, said it calculated that the sector needs at least 402 million a year to ensure that homecare workers receive the statutory National Living Wage, while also ensuring that homecare providers can meet their statutory obligations. This would mean the size of the deficit this year would be 921 million if national governments and local councils were to commit to raising the status of the homecare workforce to at least the independently calculated Real Living Wage. A report by the UK Homecare Association claims that councils are buying homecare services for older people on the cheap (Joe Giddens/PA) And neither of these figures account for the additional costs of people currently going without care and support, it said. More than 850,000 people are supported so they can live independently in the UK, with homecare services making a major contribution to the well-being and safety of older and disabled people, UKHCA said. New: The prices councils in England, Wales & Scotland and HSC trusts in Northern Ireland pay for older peoples homecare. UK average is almost 2/hour below full costs. The Homecare Deficit 2018 published today: https://t.co/iPvcpBtiVa pic.twitter.com/oW6TRKdlSA Homecare Association (@homecareassn) October 25, 2018 It calculated the average prices paid for care in all of Englands nine government regions and in Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland, and found the South East and South West were the only areas to pay more than its minimum price, at 18.20 an hour. The figure plummeted to just 13.70 an hour in Northern Ireland. The lowest paid in England was 14.15 in the North East, followed by 14.60 in the North West. The average amount paid an hour in Wales was 16.78, while it was 16.54 in Scotland and 15.75 in Greater London. The reports author, UKHCA policy director Colin Angel, said: Rates paid by the majority of authorities do not cover adequate wages for our vital homecare workforce and the costs of running safe and effective services. These rates also illustrate why homecare providers are increasingly left with no choice but to refuse to take on, or hand back, care to authorities. State-funded homecare is also being rationed by councils in a way which leaves many older and disabled people without the support they need to remain independent. The governments of each of the four UK nations need to look at our findings and fund care properly. Continuing to muddle on as they have done for a decade is not sustainable. Ian Hudspeth, chairman of the Local Government Associations Community Wellbeing Board, said: This is another valuable report showing the unsustainable level of pressure on vital homecare providers that are essential to helping people remain independent at home, as well as getting people out of hospital and back home with their loved ones. With people living longer, increases in costs and decreases in funding, adult social care is at breaking point. Councils, care providers, charities and the NHS are all united around the need for central government to fully fund adult social care. This is essential if we are to move away from just trying to keep people alive to ensuring they can live independent, fulfilling lives, as well as alleviating the pressure on the NHS. Saudi prosecutors have said the killing of journalist Jamal Khashoggi was a premeditated crime. Saudi Attorney General Saud al-Mojeb said that investigators came to that conclusion after evidence presented by Turkish officials as part of the two nations probe into the killing. Mr Khashoggi was killed on October 2 at the Saudi Consulate in Istanbul. It has emerged that Mr Khashoggis son has left Saudi Arabia and is on his way to the United States. Sarah Leah Whitson, the executive director of Human Rights Watchs Middle East and North Africa division, said that Salah Khashoggi and his family left the Saudi capital of Riyadh on Thursday after a travel ban on him was lifted. Saudi Arabia had insisted for weeks that the journalist walked out of the consulate, before changing their account to say he died in a brawl. Barriers block the road leading to Saudi Arabias consulate in Istanbul (AP) A member of Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salmans entourage on foreign trips was seen at the consulate before the Washington Post columnists death. Meanwhile, the crown prince has attended the first meeting of a committee aiming to restructure the kingdoms intelligence services after the killing of Mr Khashoggi. The kingdom announced over the weekend that 18 Saudis have been arrested over the killing while four senior intelligence officials and an adviser to the crown prince have been fired. On Wednesday, the prince called the killing heinous and painful to all Saudis in his first extensive public remarks on the topic. New York police have recovered a suspicious package addressed to actor Robert De Niro which may contain a device similar to others sent to leading Democrats, officials said. Security personnel at Tribeca Productions summoned police at around 5am on Thursday and the bomb squad removed the package and took it away for investigation. Police said it appears to be from the same sender. The Hollywood star has been an outspoken critic of President Donald Trump. A police officer blocks off an area in Tribeca (Ron DePasquale/AP) A package addressed to former vice president Joe Biden is also being investigated after it was intercepted at a Delaware mail centre. Police said the item found in New Castle appeared similar to other packages containing bombs. The discovery came after a series of glass-filled pipe bombs targeting Hillary Clinton, former president Barack Obama, other prominent Democrats and CNN were thwarted without injury. None of the bombs detonated as law enforcement took them away for examination and disposal. The first crude bomb to be discovered had been delivered on Monday to the New York compound of George Soros, a liberal billionaire and major contributor to Democratic causes. The FBI said an additional package was intended for former Attorney General Eric Holder, but that one ended up at a Florida office of Democratic Representative Debbie Wasserman Schultz, whose return address was on it. Later on Wednesday, the FBI said two additional packages addressed for Democrat Representative Maxine Waters had been intercepted that were similar in appearance to five others. The targets of the bombs were some of the figures most frequently criticised by Mr Trump. He accuses Mr Soros of paying protesters and singles out cable news network CNN as he rails against the fake news media. Statement on the FBIs Investigation of Suspicious Packages https://t.co/wwXDpyNt3A pic.twitter.com/rXu1wBAQHj FBI (@FBI) October 24, 2018 The attacks overtook other news in an already-tense political season that could reshape Congress and serve as a referendum on the first two years of Mr Trumps presidency. The actions, which caused panicked building evacuations and reports of additional explosives that later proved unfounded, are bound to add to fears that overheated rhetoric could lead to deadly violence as the parties engage in bitter fights over immigration, the Supreme Court and the treatment of women. The White House condemned the attacks aimed at Democrats and other perceived foes of the administration. Acts or threats of political violence have no place in the United States, Mr Trump said. This egregious conduct is abhorrent. Other Republican leaders said the same. But Democratic Senate and House leaders Chuck Schumer of New York and Nancy Pelosi of California said such words ring hollow when coming from Mr Trump. Law enforcement officials said all the packages were similar: manila envelopes with bubble-wrap interior bearing six stamps and the return address of Florida Representative Schultz. A member of the FBI Weapons of Mass Destruction team works outside the Time Warner Center, in New York, the offices of CNN (Richard Drew/AP) She is the former chairwoman of the Democratic National Committee who was accused by Clinton rivals of secretly helping the partys eventual presidential nominee. The pipe bombs were packed with powder and shards of glass. The devices, each with a small battery, were made from PVC pipe about six inches long and covered with black tape, said a law enforcement official who viewed X-ray images. The devices all were sent to an FBI lab in Virginia to be studied. Officials provided no details on a possible suspect or motive. Suffice it to say, it appears an individual or individuals sent out multiple, similar packages, said John Miller, the New York Police Departments head of intelligence and counter-terrorism. The US Secret Service intercepted a bomb that was addressed to Hillary Clinton at the New York home she shares with former president Bill Clinton, and another that was sent to Mr Obama at his home in Washington. A police bomb squad removed still another from CNNs New York office, which was evacuated. The CNN package was addressed to former CIA Director John Brennan, who has publicly clashed with Mr Trump and is a regular television contributor. Speaking at an event in Austin, Texas, Mr Brennan called the spate of pipe bombs an unfortunate turn of events. Unfortunately, I think Donald Trump, too often, has helped to incite some of these feelings of anger, if not violence, when he points to acts of violence or also talks about swinging at somebody from the press, the media, he said. The package sent to CNN contained a live explosive, with wires and a black pipe, and an envelope with white powder, officials said. The powder was tested and determined to have been harmless, according to a law enforcement official. New York City Police Commissioner James ONeill says investigators are reviewing security video to see if they can identify a courier believed to have delivered the pipe bomb package to CNNs office. Mr ONeill said in an appearance on CNN that he was pretty sure those images will be caught on video and well be able to find out where that person came from before they entered the building and where they went to after. New York Governor Andrew Cuomo said his office received a similar package, but New York police officials said the office was cleared and no device was found. Neither Mrs Clinton nor Mr Obama received the packages sent to them, and neither was at risk because of screening procedures, the Secret Service said. White House press secretary Sarah Sanders said in a statement: These terrorising acts are despicable, and anyone responsible will be held accountable to the fullest extent of the law. The parents of a young woman who killed herself in jail after enduring horrific experiences have called for a review of Scotlands prison system. Katie Allans family said on Thursday they wanted a meeting with Justice Secretary Humza Yousaf as they launched a campaign calling for change. The 21-year-old geography student was convicted at Paisley Sheriff Court in March for a drink-driving offence which saw her injure a pedestrian and sentenced to 16 months in jail. Stuart and Linda Allan say their daughter was bullied in Polmont Young Offenders Institution near Falkirk and lost more than 80% of her hair due to the state of her mental health. Katie had told the University of Glasgow chaplain Stuart McQuarrie of her distress over repeated strip searches. Staff also allegedly failed to act on warnings from her family that she was vulnerable and had a history of self-harm. She died at Polmont in June. Linda Allan accepted that her daughter deserved some form of punishment, but a custodial sentence went too far (Jane Barlow/PA) Her mother Linda Allan said: Katie absolutely broke the law, that is not in dispute Katie pleaded guilty and fully accepted she should be punished, that also is not in dispute. What we didnt realise is that one impulsive decision would ultimately cost Katie her life. The hardest thing for us to accept is how devastatingly Katie was let down by those that were ultimately responsible for her care. Some may say that Katie deserved what happened. She certainly deserved punishment. But this is Scotland, this is the 21st century what Katie did not deserve was the horrific experiences she endured daily at the hands of the Scottish Prison Service. Katie Allan was 21 when she killed herself (Allan Family) The review would cover the prison service, women in custody and the provision of mental health services. It would also look how to reform the Fatal Accident Inquiry system, which the family say is no longer fit for purpose as they can take years to complete. Their lawyer, Aamer Anwar, added: This is an issue not just to the families of the deceased, but prison staff who do not have the resources to deal with mental health provision as well as the aftermath of a suicide. The Allans like many other families before them have seen a culture of secrecy and defensiveness which is not interested in learning the lessons or accepting responsibility. Mr and Mrs Allan with their lawyer Aamer Anwar, centre (Jane Barlow/PA) Relatives of the drink-driving victim had urged the courts not to impose a custodial sentence. They have been in contact with Katies family since her death and were at the campaign launch to offer their support. Figures released by the campaign show there have been 130 deaths in Scottish prisons since 2014. A spokeswoman for the the Scottish Prison Service said: This is of course a set of very tragic circumstances and our sympathies are with all who have been affected by this sad death. All deaths that occur in Scottish prisons are subject to a Fatal Accident Inquiry and as such it would be inappropriate to comment further until this takes place. A Scottish Government spokesman said: Our thoughts and condolences are with the family and friends of Katie Allan. We recognise the importance of providing a safe and secure environment for those in custody and an FAI is mandatory where someone has died in legal custody. It would not be appropriate to comment on the circumstances of this case pending the independent investigation which is being undertaken by the Crown and ahead of an FAI, which is an independent, judicial process that can help provide more information for families. Mr Yousaf is happy to meet with the family to listen to their concerns. The First Minister has given a formal apology on behalf of the Scottish Government to thousands of women across the country who suffered from mesh implants. Scottish Conservative deputy leader Jackson Carlaw used his first appearance at First Ministers Questions standing in for party leader Ruth Davidson while she is on maternity leave to call on the Government to say sorry. Transvaginal mesh implants were linked to the death of a 75-year-old woman earlier this year and have left many of those fitted with the devices with painful and debilitating conditions. Mr Carlaw said campaigners against the use of mesh implants are heroes. Campaigners included sufferer Elaine Holmes, who was in the public gallery. She first raised the issue in parliament through a public petition along with Olive McIlroy. This has surely been the greatest self-inflicted health scandal since thalidomide in the 1960s, he said. Ms Sturgeon spoke following a question on the matter by Jackson Carlaw (Stefan Rousseau/PA) First Minister, during our October recess the Australian government issued a full and formal apology to all those whose lives have been compromised by mesh, he added. Will the First Minister follow suit and on behalf of the Scottish Government today match that apology to all the women in Scotland who have suffered? He also asked her to commit to publishing a review by Professor Alison Britton into a previous review on mesh use seen as a whitewash and to modify the disabled blue badge parking scheme to enable those affected by mesh to use it. He said his party would support Scottish Government representations to the UK Government regarding the UK regulatory body which controls mesh. Nicola Sturgeon said: Let me say today on behalf of the Scottish Government I apologise unreservedly to any woman who has suffered because of mesh procedures. She said she has previously offered her apologies, as have the current and former health secretaries. Ms Sturgeon added: In terms of the women affected, I have deep and very profound sympathy for what they have gone through and the position that they have found themselves in. I cant begin to imagine the pain and suffering that many of them have experienced. Thats why, of course, the Scottish Government has acted, through the setting up of the review and the work that has flowed from that review. And of course in her first few weeks as health secretary Jeane Freeman announced what is effectively a ban, a temporary halt for all mesh procedures, and that will be lifted only when a new restricted use protocol is put in place. That will ensure that procedures are only carried out in future in the most exceptional of circumstances and subject to a very robust process of approval and fully informed consent. She said ministers have recently been given the Britton review which would be published and pledged to accept its recommendations or give reasons for not doing so. The First Minister said she would ask Society Security Secretary Shirley-Anne Somerville to look at extending the blue badge parking scheme. Irelands premier has claimed that parts of the British establishment expected Ireland to fall into line after the Brexit referendum. Taoiseach Leo Varadkar said that some people in Britain failed to consider the impact of Brexit on Ireland before the vote in June 2016. Speaking at the Getting Ireland Brexit Ready workshop at the Convention Centre in Dublin, Mr Varadkar admitted that relations between Ireland and the United Kingdom were strained because of Brexit. Mr Varadkar (left) and Mr Coveney at the Convention Centre (Brian Lawless/PA) Addressing an audience of business leaders on how to prepare for Brexit, Mr Varadkar and Foreign Affairs Minister Simon Coveney spoke of the ongoing struggle to push for a breakthrough in negotiations. Mr Varadkar said: I think there are different strains in Britain and a lot of people in Britain have great affection for Ireland and they understand our concerns and they did think of the impact in Ireland before the referendum. But quite frankly there are others who didnt and you do come across people in the British establishment who cant believe we wont fall into line. They thought sure youll be leaving too, wont you and the fact that we arent and the fact we stood up for ourselves has made some of them quite annoyed, but so be it. Thats elements of the establishment. Youd swear we created the problem. Mr Varadkar (left) and Mr Coveney on stage at the Convention Centre (Brian Lawless/PA) He said that while his personal relationship with Prime Minister Theresa May was very good, relations in the wider sense were strained. They are strained because of Brexit which has created a disturbance in the force, he added. He rejected suggestions from some that the Irish government was using the Northern Ireland peace process to force through a Brexit deal, saying it was not part of any wider agenda. We think the rules we have had up until now worked reasonably well and we are trying to protect the gains of the peace process and protect the relative prosperity we have enjoyed in the last couple of decades, he continued. Tanaiste Simon Coveney said he believed securing a Brexit deal was still a very likely outcome even in the face of growing pessimism. The truth is that the withdrawal agreement is the only agreement thats needed before they leave, he said. We are not talking about a detailed future relationship agreement for at least another two years. That withdrawal agreement is 95% agreed and written, so its the detail work around how we protect Ireland, the island of Ireland as a whole and the border issue and I believe there is a landing zone we can work towards that Britain can live with and we can accept. Mr Varadkar recalled how German Chancellor Angela Merkel told him during the European Summit in Salzburg that he would never feel such European solidarity on this issue as you ever will again. I thought it was very reassuring but also a bit ominous, he said in jest. Turning to the Irish border, Mr Varadkar said if the UK decided to stay in the Customs Union it would help matters on Northern Ireland and in relation to east/west trade. But I dont think thats quite what they are proposing. They are proposing that for a temporary period they would sort of stay in customs union and that falls short for two reasons, he added. First of all it is temporary and the backstop can be temporary but it cant have an expiry date, it can be temporary until we have a better arrangement. Sajid Javid has been forced to apologise to MPs after it emerged that the Home Office has been illegally requiring immigrants to provide DNA samples as part of their visa applications. The Home Secretary revealed the children of Gurkhas, who were offered the right to settle in the UK under previous Government schemes, were among those affected. The law states the provision of DNA evidence should always be voluntary and never mandatory, yet the Home Office said in nearly 450 cases immigrants were told they must provide samples. Opposition MPs branded the Home Office out of control and said the scandal revealed that the hostile environment lives on. Mr Javid apologised to the Commons and told MPs that the practice was unacceptable. He added: I am determined to get to the bottom of how and why, in some cases, people were compelled to provide DNA in the first place. Across our immigration system, no-one should face a demand to supply DNA evidence and no-one should have been penalised for not providing it. The Home Office said that 398 applicants were told they must give DNA as part of a 2016 operation investigating fraud, with 13 subsequent refusals linked to DNA provision and seven of those solely because DNA was not provided. A further 51 relatives of Gurkhas had to give DNA and pay for their own testing, with four refusals for not providing DNA, although all four have now had that decision overturned. A number of Afghan translators offered the right to settle in the UK were also included in a mandatory DNA testing scheme. The Cabinet minister made clear to MPs that this should not have happened and apologised specifically to Gurkha and Afghan families. He said: In particular I would like to apologise to those Gurkha and Afghans who have been affected. I am sorry that demands were made of them which never should have been. Yvette Cooper branded the contents of the Home Secretarys statement `shocking (Joe Giddens/PA) Prime Minister Theresa Mays official spokesman said that Mr Javid was right to apologise on behalf of the whole Government. The spokesman added: There is nothing to suggest that the PM was aware of the use of mandatory DNA testing. The Home Secretary said he wants an immigration system that provides control and which is also fair. That is the view of the whole Government. Its right that structures and processes are reviewed to ensure they are effective and fair. Labour MP Yvette Cooper, who chairs the Commons Home Affairs Committee, said: The contents of the Home Secretarys statement are shocking and may have had a devastating impact on the lives of families. Given that this comes after the Windrush crisis, he will recognise this means things have gone badly wrong in the Home Office. SNP frontbencher Patrick Grady said: Its another example of the Home Office being out of control and a result of a migration target that theyre still completely obsessed with, and more evidence that the hostile environment lives on. Mr Javid told MPs that those affected would be reimbursed and announced that he had set up a task force to investigate any further breaches. He also said he would be reviewing the immigration system to ensure it was fair and humane. The review will be informed by Wendy Williams, who investigated the Windrush scandal. The second trial of a convicted sex predator for the murders of two nine-year-old girls 32 years ago has been hit by delay due to legal issues. Russell Bishop, 52, is accused of sexually assaulting and strangling Nicola Fellows and Karen Hadaway in a Brighton park in October 1986. An Old Bailey jury sat for four days as the prosecution case was opened and they visited the scene of the girls deaths. Karen Hadaway and Nicola Fellows (PA) The case was adjourned last Friday for legal issues in the absence of the jury. On Thursday, Mr Justice Sweeney told jurors it was taking longer than expected. The judge said: Sadly, do not get too comfortable in your seats. You remember that I told you when we parted that I had some legal issues to deal with, and as I explained to you before, they are legal matters I deal with in your absence. It is unfortunately taking considerably longer than I anticipated. Its no-ones fault. The trial has previously heard how Nicola and Karen went missing while out playing together in Wild Park after school. Following a search by police and volunteers, the girls were found dead in a wooded den near a landmark called Jacobs Ladder the next day. The Court of Appeal ordered a fresh trial in light of new DNA evidence after Bishop was cleared of the murders in 1987. Three years after his acquittal, Bishop was convicted of the kidnap, indecent assault and attempted murder of a seven-year-old girl at Devils Dyke on the South Downs. Bishop, formerly from Brighton, denies two charges of murder Homicide #26 Alvin Antrobus, a 32 years old Farmer of Green Hill, is this countrys 26th homicide victim for the year. Antrobus, according to a police release, was shot about his body at Green Hill by masked Gun men, October 20. He was pronounced dead at the Milton Cato Memorial Hospital. Hot goods, Hot hands Police arrested and charged Evol Richardson, 62 years old businesswoman of Glen, with the offence of handling stolen goods. According to investigations, between 7:15am on the 09.10.2018 and 9:00am on the 18.10.2018, in Kingstown, Richardson allegedly received for her own benefit one (1) 750ml bottle of Sheffield Sherry value EC$28.00EC, one (1) bottle of sparkling wine value EC$35.00, one (1) bottle of Black Label Whiskey value EC$126.00, one (1) bottle of Ciroc Vodka Red Berry value EC$138.00, and one (1) bottle of Bollinger Champagne value EC$150.76. Domestic affair? Police arrested and charged Evadnee Phillips, 39 years old self-employed of Edinboro with the Offence of Damage to property. According to investigations, Phillips damaged one (1) Black TCL LED Television value EC$2,277.00 by pulling it to the ground, causing it to sustain damage, the property of a 49 years old contractor of Green Hill. The incident occurred on the 02.08.2018 about 7:30pm, at Redemption Sharpes. Getting it out of the way Police arrested and charged Kayjae Cruickshank, 23-year-old Security Guard of Redemption Sharpes, with the offence of damage to property. The incident occurred at Bay Street on the 13.10.2018 about 5:35pm. Police investigations revealed that Cruickshank, without lawful excuse, allegedly destroyed one (1) glass door value EC$540, by smashing same with hands, the property of Coreas Mini Mart. Crime against the elderly Police arrested and charged Danroy Warner, 23 years old Tattoo Artist of Fair Hall, Abdool Nanton, 23 years old Labourer of Glen, and Chez Creese, 18 years old Labourer of Glen with the offence of Aggravated Burglary. According to investigations, on 15.04.18 about 4:30am, the three (3) men allegedly entered the dwelling house of a 70-year-old retired Businessman of Ratho Mill, and stole a quantity of items value, EC$2394.00. The Burglars at the time of the incident had in their possession a piece of metal. You want me shoot you? Police arrested and charged Avandale Gerald, 33 years old Chauffeur of Park Hill with the offence of Criminal Assault, on 17.10.18. According to investigations, on 22.09.18 about 5:50 a.m. at Park Hill, the accused allegedly assaulted a 55-year-old Labourer of the same address by pointing a gun at him. Nicola Sturgeon has defended the creation of a legally binding 12-week treatment time guarantee for NHS patients but conceded this has been broken more than 100,000 times. Scottish Liberal Democrat leader Willie Rennie told the First Minister that if a member of the public had broken the law as often as this one had been breached they would be put behind bars in Glasgows Barlinnie Prison. He pressed the SNP leader on the issue at First Ministers Questions after a new action plan to cut NHS waiting times unveiled by Health Secretary Jeane Freeman on Tuesday revealed the 12-week treatment time guarantee was not expected to be fully met until 2021. The guarantee was introduced by the SNP in 2012, when Ms Sturgeon was the health secretary, and set out in law that patients should wait no more than 12 weeks for either inpatient or day surgery. But in the the period of April to June this year, it was met for just less than three quarters (74.6%) of patients, official figures showed. The Scottish Government's flagship treatment time guarantee is embedded in law, yet they've broken it more than 100,000 times. Any member of the public who broke that law that many times would be doing time in Barlinnie. Scottish Lib Dems (@scotlibdems) October 25, 2018 Mr Rennie hit out: The law states that patients will be guaranteed NHS treatment within 12 weeks. This is the First Ministers law, from when she was health secretary. Nicola Sturgeon defended the legally binding treatement time guarantee for NHS patients. (Peter Byrne/PA) It was an SNP flagship law that helped them take power in 2007. And it is a law that the SNP Government has broken over 100,000 times. But on Tuesday the Government said they would keep on breaking the law for another three years. He added: If a member of the public was to break the law this many times, they would serve time in Barlinnie. Why is it when the SNP Government breaks the law they think they can get away Scot free? FM: There are now fewer people waiting 12 weeks for medical treatment, than there were when this government took office in 2007. #FMQs The SNP (@theSNP) October 25, 2018 Ms Sturgeon said: The 12-week treatment guarantee, yes it has not been adhered to more than 100,000 times, but 1.6 million patients have been treated within that, patients that might have waited over 12 weeks without that guarantee. She continued: There are now fewer people waiting more than 12 weeks for treatment than was the case when this government came to office. Meanwhile, the Scottish Government has committed to invest 850 million in efforts to cut waiting times, with Ms Sturgeon insisting the proposals will substantially and sustainably reduce waiting times. While she stated the vast majority of patients are seen within waiting times targets, the First Minister added: Demand on our NHS is rising. That is largely because of the ageing profile of our population, and that is putting enormous pressure on waiting times. So what the Health Secretary did this week is be utterly transparent about those challenges, the impact they are having right now and what the funded plans are that we have in place to address those challenges and to substantially and sustainably reduce waiting times. I think that is the right way to go. She continued: I think it is important and right for us to be fully frank, honest and transparent with parliament about the nature and scale of the challenge we are facing, so the Parliament can hold us to account as we work through this plan in the years ahead. MPs have written to Northern Irelands health chief to express concerns that cancer services in the region are falling behind the rest of the UK. Members of the Northern Ireland Affairs Committee said they were concerned about screening services, waiting times and the lack of an up-to-date cancer strategy. Committee chair Dr Andrew Murrison has written to the senior civil servant in charge of the Department of Health, Richard Pengelly, on the issues. Dr Murrison has expressed concern that the region is falling behind the rest of the UK for cancer care (PA) In the absence of a health minister due to the powersharing crisis at Stormont, departmental permanent secretary Mr Pengelly is effectively in charge of the regions health service. The committee is currently holding an inquiry into health funding in Northern Ireland and has heard evidence from patients, carers and charities. The committee noted: Northern Irelands cancer strategy has not been updated since 2008. It is the only region in the UK that does not have an updated cancer strategy in place and, without a sitting Assembly, has currently no means of creating one. Northern Ireland is the only part of the UK not committing to guidance from the UK National Screening Committee on screenings for bowel and cervical cancer. As a consequence, patients in the region are unable to avail of certain early detection tests available in Great Britain. Waiting times are exceeding Stormont targets. Only 75% of patients receive treatment within 62 days of an urgent GP referral for suspect cancer well short of the target of 95%. Members also expressed concern that some patients have to travel long distances to receive cancer treatment, at times as far as England. Mr Pengelly is currently in charge of health services in the region (Liam McBurney/PA) Dr Murrison said: Northern Ireland is lagging behind the rest of the UK in its cancer screening and care. Northern Ireland is the only region in the UK that does not carry out the recommended FIT (faecal immunochemical testing) screenings for bowel cancer and HPV (Human Papillomavirus) tests for cervical cancer. Additionally, patients in Northern Ireland face severe delays in receiving diagnosis and treatment, and some patients are expected to finance the up-front costs of their own travel to England for specialist treatment. In the absence of a devolved Assembly, there is a risk that Northern Irelands now out-of-date cancer strategy will not be comprehensively updated. Given that cancer is the leading cause of death in Northern Ireland, it is vital that the department acknowledges these shortfalls in cancer care and develops a strategy for addressing them. The US mail bomb scare has widened as police seized three more suspicious packages two addressed to former vice president Joe Biden and one to actor Robert De Niro. Officers said the items were similar to crude pipe bombs sent to former president Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton and CNN. None of the devices exploded and no one was injured but the packages sent to prominent Democrats critical of President Donald Trump heightened nationwide tensions two weeks before congressional mid-term elections. A police officer blocks off an area in Tribeca (Ron DePasquale/AP) As everyone condemned the unknown sender and Mr Trump decried political violence, blame flew for the corrosive nature of Americas political debate. A very big part of the Anger we see today in our society is caused by the purposely false and inaccurate reporting of the Mainstream Media that I refer to as Fake News, Mr Trump said in a morning tweet. It has gotten so bad and hateful that it is beyond description. Mainstream Media must clean up its act, FAST! Former CIA director John Brennan, the target of one package sent to CNN where he has been a contributor, fired back. Stop blaming others. Look in the mirror, Mr Brennan tweeted. Your inflammatory rhetoric, insults, lies, & encouragement of physical violence are disgraceful. Clean up your act.try to act Presidential. Stop blaming others. Look in the mirror. Your inflammatory rhetoric, insults, lies, & encouragement of physical violence are disgraceful. Clean up your act....try to act Presidential. The American people deserve much better. BTW, your critics will not be intimidated into silence. https://t.co/cS5qNiuU7o John O. Brennan (@JohnBrennan) October 25, 2018 Police said the package recovered in Manhattan addressed to De Niro, who insulted Mr Trump at this years Tony Awards, was similar to other pipe bombs recovered this week. De Niro also apologised to Canadians for the idiotic behaviour of my president. Mr Biden has also criticised Mr Trump, as recently as last week, saying he may not know what hes doing and coddles dictators. A law enforcement official said the packages addressed to Mr Biden were intercepted at Delaware mail facilities in New Castle and Wilmington and were similar to the others. Recovery of the packages to Mr Biden and De Niro came after others were received by prominent Democrats and CNN. Police tape cordons off a post office in Wilmington, Delaware (Matt Rourke/AP) The first crude bomb to be discovered had been delivered on Monday to the suburban New York compound of George Soros, a liberal billionaire and major contributor to Democratic causes. Mr Soros has called Mr Trumps presidency dangerous. Similar packages were addressed to Hillary Clinton and former president Barack Obama. The Secret Service said neither package reached their recipients. More were sent to frequent Trump critics Democrats Maxine Waters and former attorney general Eric Holder. His ended up at the Florida office of fellow Democrat Debbie Wasserman Schultz, who was listed as the return address. The #FBI has confirmed three additional packages, similar in appearance to the others one in New York addressed to Robert DeNiro, and two in Delaware addressed to former Vice President Joseph Biden. FBI (@FBI) October 25, 2018 A police bomb squad removed the package addressed to Mr Brennan from CNNs New York office, which was evacuated. The bombs seized on Wednesday, each with a small battery, were about six inches long and packed with powder and broken glass, said a law enforcement official who viewed X-ray images. The official said the devices were made from PVC pipe and covered with black tape. The devices all were sent to an FBI lab in Virginia to be studied. Suffice it to say, it appears an individual or individuals sent out multiple, similar packages, said John Miller, the New York Police Departments head of intelligence and counter-terrorism, who briefed reporters. As the scope of the attack became clearer on Wednesday, Mr Trump decried political violence during a scripted event in the White House East Room and other members of the administration said it has no place in American society. Later at a rally in Wisconsin, he urged unity. Lets get along, he said. By the way, do you see how nice Im behaving tonight? Have you ever seen this? But at the same event, he blamed the media and on Twitter kept up the argument that the media plays a role. Acts or threats of political violence have no place in the United States, Mr Trump said. This egregious conduct is abhorrent. Other Republican leaders said the same but Democratic Senate and House leaders Chuck Schumer of New York and Nancy Pelosi of California said such words ring hollow when coming from Mr Trump. They noted the presidents recent praise of a congressman who body-slammed a Guardian reporter. Irelands last king has been laid to rest by scores of people whose lives he touched. Tory Island, off the coast of Co Donegal, was flooded with visitors for the funeral of its king, Patsy Dan Rodgers. The musician and artist became the tiny settlements best-known resident, regularly greeting visitors off the ferry and campaigning on behalf of the island. Irelands last king, Patsy Dan Rodgers, is buried in the grounds of St Colmcilles Church (Niall Carson/PA) Flags on the island flew at half mast, while an extra ferry crossing was put on to accommodate the number of visitors travelling from across Ireland and also the United Kingdom to attend the funeral. Many alighted the boat carrying bouquets of flowers and musical instruments. The visitors included Colonel Liam Condon, Aide de Camp to the President of Ireland, Michael D Higgins. There was a steady flow of people visiting Mr Rodgers distinctive house on the brow of a hill overlooking the main settlement on the island, where the gates read Teach An Ri, which translates as House of the King. The funeral procession started from the house, led by one of his daughters carrying a cross ahead of her fathers coffin which was followed by more than 100 mourners for the short distance to St Colmcilles Church. A cross in front of the coffin (Niall Carson/PA) Father Sean Gallagher led the celebration of Requiem Mass, which was conducted in the Irish language and included musical tributes. Following the service, Mr Rodgers was laid to rest in the church graveyard. Among the visitors was Gerard Magee, from Antrim, who said it had felt strange to arrive at the island and not be greeted by Mr Rodgers. Over the years from 1997 to the mid 00s, I got to know Patsy Dan very well, he told Press Association. I first met him as a visitor coming off the boat, it was always a nice thing for visitors to be greeted by the king, and as time went on, I got to know him and developed a rapport. He was a regular visitor to Culturlann [an Irish language centre] in Belfast, and a great man for traditional music and art. That was the first thing I noticed arriving at the island this time, the king was not there to meet us. Overall, he was a great ambassador for this island. Patsy Dan Rodgers died on Friday (Julien Behal/PA) Christy Keeney, from Letterkenny, paid tribute to Mr Rodgers as encouraging a generation and making Tory Island the St Ives of Ireland for artists. He described how Mr Rodgers had brought together a group of artists and brought out their skills, adding he was a loss to the world of art as well as to Tory Island. It is the end of an era for Tory islanders, he said. He was a great promoter of the island, many came because they wanted to meet him. Mr Rodgers was born in Dublin, but was adopted and brought to the island as a young child. He was asked to become King of Toraigh in the 1990s. He died at the age of 74 last Friday at a hospital in Dublin following an illness. A skyscraper climber dubbed the French Spiderman has been arrested in pursuit of his latest challenge scaling one of Londons tallest buildings. Alain Robert, whose feats have included climbing Dubais 2,717ft (828m) Burj Khalifa, was seen tackling the Heron Tower in the City of London. The ascent of the 662ft (202m) tower now known as the Salesforce Tower is with no safety gear, without a rope and using only his hands. City of London Police confirmed they had arrested a 56-year-old man for causing public nuisance. Uniformed officers arrived at 1.37pm, set up a taped cordon stopping traffic around the building and ushered the growing crowd to move back and keep out of the road. Commander Karen Baxter condemned the stunt, accusing the daredevil of diverting resources. She said: The incident this afternoon has had a considerable impact on police, other emergency services and the local community. Our officers, the London Fire Brigade and the London Ambulance Service all attended this incident taking them away from genuine emergencies. Road closures meant a significant disturbance to local transport and businesses and their staff located in the building were also considerably affected. While the incident has caused immense disruption to everyday business in the City of London it also posed a significant level of risk to the safety of people in and around Heron Tower at the time. He remains in police custody, according to the force. Robert had earlier spoken to the press about his climb. He said: I fully feel alive when my life is at stake. It may sound a bit scary and crazy but this is the way it is. As with other unlawful climbs, he is as always carrying his passport in a chalk bag because it is very reassuring for the authorities when he is arrested. Chalk slightly improves the friction between his skin and the building but he also tapes his fingers and wears wafer-thin gloves to try to stop them being shredded by the aggressive building. It is believed he only decided which building he was going to tackle from a three-strong shortlist on Monday. Spectators take photographs as daredevil climber Alain Robert, dubbed the French Spiderman, scales the outside of the Heron Tower in London (Kirsty OConnor/PA) He said: I saw it. I touched it a bit. I tried it just a tiny bit. I am not really knowing much. It is only really when I start climbing that I know. I need to feel it. There has been 44 years in which I have been climbing. This is what I know as a way of living and expressing myself and living my dreams, my passion and living my life as fully as I can. Definitely it it dangerous. I have a certain knowledge. I have a solid background. Daredevil climber Alain Robert, dubbed the French Spiderman, scales the outside of the Heron Tower in London (Kirsty OConnor/PA) None of this is easy for his family and there are many members of the public worldwide who condemn him. He said: It is never easy for family having a dad who is doing that kind of stuff but they are used to it. They never asked me to change my lifestyle. They trust me. They think I am capable to succeed each time I am doing something, but at the end of the day it is still a bit scary for sure. They are proud. If you knew the number of people who are happy to meet me. The Heron Tower is 662ft tall (Kirsty OConnor/PA) For most of the people I am an inspiring person. I am receiving a lot of messages saying I am such a legend. There are a number of people who really think that what I am doing is crazy but in a nice way. I am really inspiring a generation. The talented rock climber turned his attention to skyscrapers in the mid-1990s and has now done up to 160 of these ascents to date, according to his manager. Landmarks tackled include the Taiwans Taipei 101 and the Lloyds building in London. Asked if what Robert was doing was actually a little barmy and just plain dangerous rather than a daring adventure, his manager, Bryan Yeubrey, said: I just have to accept that. I can not argue against it, can I? Alain is an adventurer. He wants to climb buildings. He is incredible. He is good at it and has been doing it for many years. Spectators watch as Alain Robert climbs the Heron Tower (Victoria Jones/PA) The crowd, pushed back to about 150m away from the building, burst into cheers when Robert waved from about three-quarters of the way up the skyscraper at 1.59pm. Robert raised his arms to cheers as he reached the top at 2.14pm. From the ground, he appeared as just a speck against the clear blue sky and seemed to move calmly away from view. Alain Robert reaches the top of the Heron Tower (Kirsty OConnor/PA) After the climb, which lasted about 40 minutes, Mr Yeubrey said: I am really glad. I think it would have been a much tougher climb than he thought. I am always glad when he is safe after these things. Now he will be arrested and go to court. Hopefully they will not be too hard on him because actually he is a really good guy. Defence Secretary Jim Mattis is set to sign an order sending at least 800 troops to the US-Mexico border, officials said. Mr Mattis is responding to a request from President Donald Trump, who said he is bringing out the military to address what he called a national emergency. The additional troops are to provide what one official described as logistical support to the Border Patrol. This would include a variety of things such as vehicles, tents and equipment. There are already about 2,000 National Guard troops assisting at the border under a previous Pentagon arrangement. The move comes as thousands of Central American migrants make their way through Mexico in the hope of reaching the US. Mr Trump said that those trying to enter the US will be stopped. President Donald Trump has asked Defence Secretary Jim Mattis for more troops to go to the border (Manuel Balce Ceneta/AP) He told a rally in Wisconsin on Wednesday that the military was all set. The presidents tweets reflect an effort to thrust immigration into the national debate in the closing weeks of the congressional election campaign. He and his senior aides have long believed the issue which was a centrepiece of his winning presidential campaign is key to revving up his base and motivating Republican voters to turn out in November. Offenders convicted of crimes involving violence or knives will generally no longer be able to serve part of their sentence at home on an electronic tag curfew. Justice Secretary Humza Yousaf announced the change in a statement at Holyrood on reviews of the curfew commissioned following the murder of father-of-three Craig McClelland, from Paisley. He was stabbed to death in July 2017 by James Wright, who was at the time unlawfully at large while on home detention curfew. Craig McClelland died after being stabbed in Paisley (Police Scotland/PA) In addition to the presumption against home detention curfews for offenders convicted of violent or knife crimes, the Government will also attempt to bring in new legislation to make remaining unlawfully at large a specific offence, giving police powers of arrest and forced entry which they currently do not have for situations like these. Mr Yousaf paid tribute to Mr McClellands family, saying: It is through their tenacity and tireless campaigning of behalf of Craig that we have got to this point. I want to thank them sincerely for their efforts as their campaigning means we will have a stronger, more robust home detention curfew regime. Mr Yousaf said it is nonsense to say Mr McClelland was at the wrong place at the wrong time. He said: James Wright was in the wrong place at the wrong time. Craig had every right to go from his house to his mothers house and expect to get there safely. I would like to express my sympathies once again to the McClelland family and put on record my admiration for their tireless campaigning in the face of such a tragedy. Link to full reports can be found on @hmipscot & @hmics twitter feeds. Humza Yousaf (@HumzaYousaf) October 25, 2018 He said the Scottish Government, Scottish Prison Service and Police Scotland all accept all 37 recommendations made by HM Inspectorate of Prisons in Scotland (HMIPS) and HM Inspectorate of Constabulary in Scotland (HMICS) in their reviews. He said these made clear improvements are needed, particularly regarding information sharing between the police and prison service and more robust assessment. The reviews found the prison service correctly followed guidance in place regarding the curfews during Wrights release from prison and the police delivered briefings and updated their systems appropriately once his order for recall was issued. However, HMICS found officers were unable to demonstrate that a professional level of inquiry was carried out once Wright had breached his curfew due to non-recording of activity undertaken to trace the offender. The watchdog also found that as of June 29 2018, 44 offenders released from Scottish prisons on the curfews were recorded by the service as unlawfully at large, and more than half, 24, had been so for more than four years. The vast majority, 38, were not recorded as unlawfully at large on police systems. Scottish Conservative justice spokesman Liam Kerr said it beggars belief information on these offenders was not being shared between the services. Labours Daniel Johnson said Mr McClellands murder shouldnt have been possible. He added: My concern is the multiple failings detailed point to the much larger and widespread issues within the agencies themselves. They point to competence and capacity issues at these agencies, not just how they work together. Mr Yousaf said he plans a six-month review of the recommendations to address competency and capacity concerns. HMICSs Gill Imery offered condolences to Mr McClellands family and said: Effective data exchange between the two organisations is fundamental to the successful management of offenders. The processes around home detention curfew, revocations and cancellation of revocation notices require to be significantly improved. The first votes have been cast in Irelands presidential election. Ballot boxes were delivered to 11 islands off the coast of counties Donegal, Mayo and Galway on Thursday morning. The island with the largest number of registered voters is Inis Mor, Co Galway, where 666 people were able to cast ballots. There are five islands in Co Donegal where voting took place, including the largest, Arainn Mhor. The ballot box is taken to Tory Island, off the coast of Co Donegal (Niall Carson/PA) The ballot boxes were brought to some of the islands by ferry and to others by helicopter by the Irish Defence Forces. At Inishbofin off the coast of Co Donegal, the ballot box arrived by helicopter before being carried by a Garda officer accompanied by local presiding officer Carmel McBride to a community centre to allow islanders their chance for a say in who will become the next president of Ireland. There was a similar procedure on Tory Island where a Garda officer carried a ballot box to a school and voting was opened to the public at 11am. The ballot boxes were then collected on Thursday afternoon from the islands following voting. Islanders traditionally vote a day before the rest of the country to ensure there is no delay in transferring the ballot boxes to the mainland in time for the count. Voting on the mainland will take place on Friday. Some 2,601 islanders are eligible to vote in this years election. Ballot boxes were taken to some islands by helicopter (Niall Carson/PA) About 460 live on islands off the coast of Cork, but they will have to wait until Friday to vote, like the rest of the country. Fianna Fails Eamon O Cuiv said islanders are at a disadvantage under the current process. The Galway West TD said he is confident this election will be the last time those living off the coast have to vote on a different day. As a consequence of transport difficulties and the impact of adverse weather on these services, islanders have historically cast their vote up to three days ahead of the general populace, Mr O Cuiv said. However, we have improved transport services and therefore this is no longer a valid reason for non-polling day voting. Islanders traditionally vote the day before polling day on the mainland (Niall Carson/PA) He added the arrangement has proved very unfair to residents because it means they typically miss out on the final days of election campaigns. Six candidates are vying for the highest office in the state. They are incumbent President Michael D Higgins, Senator Joan Freeman, Sinn Fein MEP Liadh Ni Riada, and three businessmen Sean Gallagher, Gavin Duffy and Peter Casey. The electorate will also be asked on the ballot paper whether they want to remove the word blasphemous from the constitution. Intensive work is under way to prepare Scotland for a no-deal Brexit scenario, the Scottish Constitutional Relations Secretary Mike Russell has announced. In a speech to Holyrood, the Argyll and Bute MSP said that the momentum of negotiations appeared to indicate that the UK was heading out of the EU without a deal in place. It follows comments by Nicola Sturgeon that a no-deal Brexit may be the most likely outcome. Prime Minister Theresa May stated this week that a Brexit deal is 95% agreed, although described the Irish Border issue as being a considerable sticking point and said that she is prepared to explore every possible option to break the deadlock in talks. However, Mr Russell said that UK Government ministers are incapable of reaching an agreement. He urged the UK Government to revise its negotiating position and ensure that the whole of the UK remains within the single market and the customs union. Mike Russell says it appears that the UK Government is heading for a no-deal Brexit (Jane Barlow/PA) He said: The fact that they are talking of hiring boats, packing motorways with lorries and stockpiling medicines illustrates the vacuum in leadership in the UK, which is resulting in measures unprecedented in peacetime. That cannot be willed away by any of us. A decision to maintain membership of the European Single Market and Customs Union would both secure a withdrawal agreement and provide the clarity needed on the future relationship. If the UK Government put this option on the table then we will commit ourselves to support it. But without such a proposal we will reject every other option short of staying in the EU as all deliver not progress but a succession of unacceptable and damaging bad deals, or ultimately no deal at all. Scottish Conservative MSP Murdo Fraser said that the statement by the cabinet secretary provided nothing new. He said: All todays statement appears to be is another opportunity for yet more grandstanding and grievance from a minister whos become a minister in both. Bosses at a Scottish firm which sparked protests after bidding to harvest kelp from the seabed have urged naturalist Sir David Attenborough to meet them to discuss their proposals. David Mackie, the co-founder of MBL (Marine Biopolymers Ltd), insisted their proposals would see the plant removed in a sustainable manner. He called on the Blue Planet broadcaster to meet him after Sir David insisted it was absolutely imperative that action was taken to protect kelp in Scotlands waters. Sir David, who is the vice president of the conservation group Fauna and Flora International (FFI), claimed that dredging the plant would be a wholly short-sighted measure that risks the wholesale devastation of our kelp beds. But Mr Mackie said the veteran broadcaster had been badly briefed and misinformed on MBLs plans. As a result he said the firm would welcome the opportunity to meet and engage with him directly on our proposal. Bosses at MBL want to meet Sir David Attenborough to explain their plans to remove kelp `in a sustainable manner. (Andy Jackson/Subsea TV/Press Association Images) The Ayr-based firm believes there is a growing global demand for natural materials that can be extracted from seaweeds, stressing their use is both safe and effective. The company submitted an application, which was the first of its kind in Scotland, to harvest kelp using specially adapted boats in the waters off the countrys west coast More than 14,000 people signed a petition against that, while the Help the Kelp campaign was established by the Sustainable Inshore Fisheries Trust (SIFT). Mr Mackie said: Like most people who have a love of the sea, everyone at our company very much supports Sir David Attenboroughs position in relation to the environment, sustainability and the protection of Scotlands kelp and marine habitats. However, it is clear that he has been badly briefed and misinformed on MBLs plans and we would welcome the opportunity to meet and engage with him directly to discuss our proposal. He continued: We are not involved in dredging as has been constantly suggested by our critics. Instead, the kelp is removed in a sustainable manner. We remove the fully-grown kelp, in the same way as happens naturally, because this is the best way to allow new plants to grow and continue the regeneration of these important kelp forests. Meet the Experts @NtlMuseumsScot Pupils finding out about benefits of seaweed with Kirsty Black Marine Biopolymers pic.twitter.com/bh60wohMXf Eilidh Christie (@EilidhC52) November 3, 2016 Mr Mackie said: MBL is a serious company with a big role to play in the development of the circular economy, which has the potential to deliver a global, environmentally-sound and sustainable industry for Scotland, with dozens of high quality jobs. Sir David spoke out as MSPs in the Scottish Parliament prepare to vote on new legislation, which if passed, would ban dredging for kelp in Scottish waters. Green MSP Mark Ruskell successfully amended the Scottish Crown Estate Bill to ban the removal of entire kelp plants, allowing harvesting only where the plant could recover. The legislation is due to come before Holyrood for approval in November, with Sir David having urged decision makers to take the necessary action to protect these vital, and globally important, habitats. Gerard PORTER, is this years recipient of the coveted Prime Minister Award for outstanding performance at the Caribbean Advanced Proficiency Examination (CAPE). He is currently enrolled at the prestigious Harvard University in the USA and therefore, was not on hand last Monday at Victoria Park, to accept his award in person. That was left to his father, Bishop Gilbert Porter. The Prime Ministers Award affords Gerard a five-year scholarship. A former Division of Arts, Sciences and General Studies student at the SVG Community College, Gerard snatched Grade Ones in Pure Mathematics, Chemistry, Biology, Physics, Communication Studies and Caribbean Studies. He picked up a gold medal, and $10,000 extra. Excellence in the academic field is something of the expected as far as Gerard is concerned. At the graduation exercise for the St. Vincent Grammar School June 2016, Porter received $500 from the New Montrose Clinic for being the Most Outstanding Science student. Two years later, Porter was the valedictorian at the graduation ceremony held of the SVG Community College. Like Gerard, a number of other youngsters joined the honours list. They were rewarded for their accomplishments at this years Schools Independence Rally held last Monday, at Victoria Park. (WKA) An independent review of national testing for primary one pupils has been announced by Education Secretary John Swinney. It comes after the Scottish Parliament voted last month against the use of standardised national assessments to measure the development of four- and five-year-olds. Mr Swinney said the review would be led by the evidence, and could conclude the testing regime should be reformed or scrapped altogether. He said schools should continue with the tests this year to avoid uncertainty and confusion. Opposition parties accused Mr Swinney of failing to respect the will of Parliament. The Scottish National Standardised Assessments (SNSA) were introduced last year by the Scottish Government as part of its efforts to close the attainment gap in schools. However, teaching unions claimed some P1 youngsters have been reduced to tears as a result of the tests, and argued the regime does not provide teachers with useful data. The Conservatives, Labour, Greens and Liberal Democrats united in Holyrood against the assessments. Mr Swinney said the review will consider and provide recommendations on the compatibility of the assessments with the play-based approach to early levels of Curriculum for Excellence (CfE), the usefulness of the data provided to teachers, and the future of the assessments, including whether they should be substantially modified or stopped. The assessments for four- and five-year-olds have proven controversial (Ian West/PA) Her Majestys Inspectorate of Education (HMIe) will be consulted on who should carry out the review, with its conclusions expected by the end of May next year. It is important to further evaluate how the assessments are working which is why I have decided to commission an independent review of P1 assessments to reconsider the evidence, Mr Swinney said. While an independent, evidence-based review could conclude that P1 assessment should be reformed, the review could also recommend a halt to the assessments. He continued: To properly inform it, the review will clearly need to see the assessments in operation, so I reiterate my previous advice that schools should continue with their existing plans in relation to the implementation of SNSA in 2018/19. By proceeding with the assessments this year, we will generate a larger evidence base to see how the improvements we have already introduced are working, and what other changes could be made. To do otherwise would simply generate uncertainty and confusion during the school year. Responding to the announcement, Labours Iain Gray said: The intent of the motion, and the will of this Parliament could not be clearer it is that the national tests stop for Primary 1. This whole statement is his justification for refusing to respect the motion and defying this parliament. Conservative MSP Liz Smith said: If he is now agreeing that there is need for an independent review, exactly what evidence was it that convinced him that four- and five-year-olds in Scotland needed to be tested in this way, when many high-performing education systems dont consider such tests as either necessary or educationally beneficial? Green MSP Ross Greer said: This was a missed opportunity for a government whose approach to education is not working. The father of a 20-year-old student who died after drinking excessively during an initiation event has said his family have been left utterly underwhelmed by Newcastle Universitys response to the tragedy. Ed Farmer, a first-year economics student at the university, died following an Agricultural Society event in December 2016. He was found unresponsive in a hallway following the outing, which involved attendees drinking vodka from a pigs head, bobbing apples from a bucket of urine and having their heads shaved, an inquest heard. Speaking after a coroner ruled his sons death resulted from the toxic effects of excessive drinking, Jeremy Farmer said the four-day inquest at Newcastle Civic Centre had been a difficult and testing process to navigate. He said his family had been left utterly underwhelmed and frustrated by the apparent inactivity of Newcastle University and its student union to get to the heart of the problem of student initiations. He added: Eds is not the first utterly needless and wasteful death to come about through this potentially fatal practice. We heard in evidence how initiations have been ongoing at Newcastle University in excess of 10 years, possibly even 30 to 40 years, despite such events being apparently banned by the university and student union. We recognise this problem is not unique to Newcastle University. During the inquest, a coroner heard how those attending the event went on a bar crawl around the city centre, with older students ordering a round of 100 triple vodkas to be shared between the attendees. Mr Farmer was a first-year economics student at Newcastle University (PA) The court heard Mr Farmer, who witnesses described as being nervous about attending, then had to be carried to a nearby Metro station in order to attend the next leg of the event, which took place at a second-year students home. The coroner told how the student, of Leicester, was monitored by four older members of the group, who were falsely reassured by his snoring and believed he was sleeping off his drunkenness. At around 4.43am, it was discovered Mr Farmer had stopped breathing, and he was rushed to the nearby Royal Victoria Infirmary, but he was declared dead at around 5.30am on December 13, 2016. Recording a narrative conclusion at his inquest on Thursday, coroner Karen Dilks ruled: Ed died due to the toxic effects of an excessive amount of alcohol in a short period of time and in part because the inherent risks of doing so were not known. Adding that a copy of her report would be made available to Newcastle University, it students union, Universities UK, the Department for Education, the National Union of Students and the Department of Health, she called for first-year students to be given better teaching on the dangers of binge drinking. Speaking outside court, Dr John Hogan, the registrar at Newcastle University, said Mr Farmers death had prompted a disciplinary investigation which found a breach of university rules by a number of students. He said: Since Eds death, we have already made a number of changes to the way we raise awareness among our students about the risks of alcohol and how they keep themselves and their fellow students safe. However having listened to the evidence, we will be reflecting carefully on all that we have learnt at the inquest and looking at whether there are areas where we can improve on what we do. Union and council leaders in Glasgow say they have had a positive and constructive meeting following a two-day strike over equal pay. Hundreds of schools were closed and care services affected when more than 8,000 members of the Unison and GMB unions walked out on Tuesday for the 48-hour strike believed to be the biggest of its kind. Around 12,500 workers, mostly women, are proceeding with claims against the council following a Court of Session ruling last year. Glasgow City Council said the strike was unnecessary as it hopes to reach a settlement in the coming months and start paying out in the next financial year. Both sides met on Thursday after the strike. A council spokeswoman described the meeting as constructive and said talks would continue. Thousands of people joined a march during the strike action in Glasgow (Andrew Milligan/PA) GMB Scotland organiser Hazel Nolan said: Todays meeting was positive and constructive. Next week the joint claimant organisations will enter into what we expect will be meaningful negotiations with Glasgow City Council. Our members and their families can take great pride that the sacrifice and solidarity they have shown has returned their employer to the negotiating table. Equal pay justice hasnt been won today, we still have plenty hard work ahead of us, but we will move forward in good faith and with optimism. It is now in everyones interests to move at pace and deliver fair and full equal pay settlements. Thats what our women expect and thats what the city expects. Women will be able to join the SAS for the first time under measures announced by Defence Secretary Gavin Williamson. All roles within the military will now be open for women to join, including Special Forces and the Royal Marines. But Colonel Richard Kemp, a retired former Army commander in Afghanistan, said the decision would cost lives and branded it political correctness. Gavin Williamson speaking to Royal Wessex Yeomanry Tank Gunner reservist Lance Corporal Kat Dixon (Ben Birchall/PA) Mr Williamson made the announcement after watching a demonstration on Salisbury Plain, Wiltshire, involving some of the first women to join the Royal Armoured Corps. Women have been involved in frontline activity in so many ways for so long. We have seen women serving side by side with men in Afghanistan and Iraq for quite a long time, he said. The idea that we are excluding half the population from some of these most vital roles potentially holds our armed forces back. Women will make an enormous impact in terms of what our armed forces do. But Col Kemp said very few women would pass infantry training and it would lead to lower standards. My experience is if you have a team of men, even with one or two women, it could lead to divisiveness, he said. I am not blaming women, but anything that undermines that teamwork will cost lives. This new policy will cost lives. He added: Very few women will want to join the infantry, and there will be very few who get through the selection there are very few men who get through. Royal Army Veterinary Corps Dog Handler Private Beth Johnson, centre, with Csillag during a land combat demonstration (Ben Birchall/PA) The Army will be determined to do what its told and that will lead to lower standards. But he warned: Their bodies will be subjected to years of severe physical stress. Even in the regular military, women suffer twice as many injuries as men. We will end up with many damaged women. And we as taxpayers will end up paying a lot of compensation. I am not at all opposed to equality wherever possible, but we need to be careful not to let political correctness override ability in combat. Women in the Army make a major contribution. The Defence Secretary said women had an important role to play on the front line and did not rule out women-only units, such as the elite Norwegian Hunter Troop. Royal Army Medical Corps medic Corporal Vicky Helsby (Ben Birchall/PA) I cannot see why in the future our armed forces wont be far more reflective of the gender split that is in the country, he said. We want more women to be part of our armed forces because they make a massive impact. A ban on women serving in close combat units in the British military was lifted in 2016. The Royal Armoured Corps was the first ground close combat branch to open its doors in November 2016 to female soldiers and officers, followed by the RAF Regiment in September 2017. The announcement means that women already serving in the Army are able to transfer into infantry roles, including the Special Forces. Those not currently serving will be able to apply for infantry roles in December of this year, with new recruits starting basic training in April 2019. Women are also now able to apply to join the Royal Marines, with selection starting before the end of this year. Dog handler Private Beth Johnson said that being a woman made no difference to her job. The 19-year-old, from Bridgwater, Somerset, joined the Royal Army Veterinary Corps 18 months ago. We are treated equally. I wouldnt say that men are tougher than women or women are tougher than men, she said. I would say it all depends on the individual person, it doesnt matter about the gender. Private Beth Johnson during the Land Combat demonstration on Salisbury Plain (Ben Birchall/PA) Pte Johnson was taking part in exercises on Salisbury Plain with a five-year-old German Shepherd dog called Scillag in which they detained a suspect after entering a building. I joined straight from college at 17 as it was something I always wanted to do and work with dogs. So why not do something that is challenging and will make a difference, she said. We do obedience, we do agility and because I am a protection dog handler we do bite work. Private Beth Johnson was taking part in exercises with five-year-old German Shepherd dog Scillag (Ben Birchall/PA) As a protection dog handler I am here to detain, deter and detect. I can use the dog as crowd control or a visual deterrent. My dog can chase and detain an intruder and can also detect someone from 300 metres away. Pte Johnson added: The best thing about what I do is working with my dog. I love being a protection dog handler. Meanwhile Corporal Vicky Helsby is looking forward to training to be a nurse after serving on the frontline as a combat medical technician with the Royal Army Medical Corps. Corporal Vicky Helsby served as a combat medical technician (Ben Birchall/PA) The 29-year-old, from Runcorn, Cheshire, joined the Army eight-and-a-half-years ago and has served on operations in Afghanistan. I am treated just like one of the guys to be honest with you, she said. I am set to be a nurse but even if I didnt transfer I would be happy to be a medic because I get the best out of both worlds. Lance Corporal Anna Stanley, a close protection officer with the Royal Military Police, is part of a team looking after diplomats, generals and VIPs. The close protection unit is like a family and once you passed that course you are part of that close protection family, the 24-year-old, from Chepstow, South Wales, said. I am part of the team and the guys think that as well and they dont see me any differently. To join the unit, L/Cpl Stanley had to pass an eight-week course, which she described as physically and mentally demanding. We all have our strengths and weaknesses and people bring different things to the team, whether you are male or female, she said. I enjoy it and each day is challenging and something different. She joined the Army four years ago and has served in Afghanistan. Lieutenant Maddie Hudson has recently joined the 26 Engineer Regiment after graduating from Sandhurst but does not plan to switch to an infantry role. She is in charge of 30 soldiers and said there was no difference between commanding men or women. You spend a whole year at Sandhurst training and what you have to look forward to is a cap badge and you look at that and think that is my family, she said. I absolutely fell in love with the Engineers and wanted to do that. I think it is really exciting that they are opening up these opportunities to women but I have found my home. Whats exciting is that future women are going to find theirs and thats really important. Lt Hudson added: To get into the infantry there is a whole load of tests and they are very vigorous and difficult to pass. If a woman can pass them then I feel there is no difference between a man and woman. Delays and failures in the roll-out of a new IT system for Disclosure Scotland have been criticised by the Scottish Tories. The new system for the body which vets applications from people working with children and vulnerable adults was partially introduced in June and is processing some applications, the Tories said. However, FOI responses and a letter obtained by the Scottish Conservatives showed that the suppliers would not have the system ready by the end of August as planned. Instead of using the new IT system in full, Disclosure Scotland had to renew its old BT contract on two days notice at an additional cost of 4.4 million, just two months after terminating the contract, the Tories said. In a letter to Deputy First Minister John Swinney and Children and Young Peoples Minister Maree Todd dated August 20, Disclosure Scotland chief executive Lorna Gibbs outlined concerns about what might have happened if the new system had become fully operational when intended in August. She wrote that in a worst case scenario: Some employers might start new employees in regulated work without the benefit of disclosure. The Scottish Tories have raised concerns about delays to the new Disclosure Scotland IT system (Dominic Lipinski/PA) This might allow unsuitable people unacceptable access to children or to vulnerable adults. Ms Gibbs also said that key roles in the NHS and schools would not be filled in the worst case scenario. The FOI responses obtained by the Tories also revealed a number of security risks that have been identified relating to the disclosure system. Theoretical risks identified included risks that could delay basic and standard disclosures and the possibility of a hardware failure with the BT data centre. The Tories said the Scottish Government has spent more than five years and at least 21 million on the new Disclosure Scotland IT system which is vital to prevent unsuitable adults from working in schools and care homes. Disclosure Scotland said it identifies theoretical risk as a responsible organisation and that investment in IT development will lead to major benefits. Liam Kerr, Scottish Conservative justice spokesman, said: This is yet another botched IT project from the SNP at a huge cost to the Scottish taxpayer. It is absolutely crucial that this system works in order to keep our children and vulnerable adults safe. Any disruption to the vetting process could mean staffing problems for the NHS and schools, compounding the increasing number of vacancies already affecting these services. The SNP must now reassure Scots that this new IT system can be implemented successfully. This is astonishing mismanagement of an essential IT service and just exactly what we have come to expect from the SNP. A spokesman for Disclosure Scotland said: Our priority is protecting vulnerable people in Scotland, including children. Our new system started processing cases in June and we have continued our relationship with BT in order to finalise critical aspects, to allow for a safer transition from the old to new IT system. In the meantime, we have maintained a normal service to all our customers. Our investment in IT development will lead to major benefits, improvements and efficiencies in our service in the years ahead. Like any responsible organisation, Disclosure Scotland identifies theoretical risks in order to prepare and plan for all eventualities. The identification of possible risks does not mean that these will, or have, transpired. Two visitors to the Yosemite National Park in California have died in a fall from a popular overlook, a park official has said. Spokesman Scott Gediman said park rangers are trying to recover the bodies of a man and a woman. He did not say when the couple fell from Taft Point, which is at an elevation of 7,500 feet (2,285 metres). A male and female visitor died in an apparent fall from Taft Point in Yosemite National Park. Park rangers are recovering the bodies this morning. This incident is under investigation and no further details are available. https://t.co/wTm1IadB79 Yosemite National Park (@YosemiteNPS) October 25, 2018 Mr Gediman says the deaths are being investigated and offered no other information. Last month, an Israeli teenager visiting the park fell hundreds of feet to his death while hiking near the top of 600-foot-tall Nevada Fall. The Mariposa County coroners office said 18-year-old Tomer Frankfurters death was considered an accident. A stuntman dubbed the French Spiderman has been banned from climbing any building in the UK after scaling one of Londons tallest structures. Alain Robert ascended the outside of Heron Tower in the City of London with no safety gear. The 56-year-old reached the top of the 662ft (202m) building, now known as the Salesforce Tower, in around 45 minutes. The father of three, who is a French national, pleaded guilty to causing a public nuisance when he appeared at City of London Magistrates Court on Friday. Daredevil climber Alain Robert, dubbed the French Spiderman, reflected in a window as he scales the outside of the Heron Tower in London (@RazlilNicky/Twitter/PA) He was sentenced to 20 weeks imprisonment suspended for two years, ordered to pay 5,500 compensation to the City of London Police and banned from climbing the outside of any building in the UK. Chairman of the bench Edward McMullan said: You are demonstrably an accomplished climber but there is always the danger that your actions could be imitated by those less proficient, with potentially fatal consequences. Prosecutor Malachy Pakenham described the incident as a publicity stunt and said Robert appeared to have been sponsored, as he was wearing a T-shirt emblazoned with a company logo. He said the cost of the disruption to the buildings owner totalled thousands of pounds and it had also put a burden on the emergency services. Police, fire and ambulance crews attended the scene at around 1.40pm on Thursday. Alain Robert outside City of London Magistrates Court (Stefan Rousseau/PA) When Robert was arrested at the top of the tower by City of London Police on Thursday, he immediately handed officers his passport and the number of his lawyer, the court was told. Officers set up a taped cordon stopping traffic around the building and ushered the growing crowd to move back and keep out of the road. Police were concerned about the climbers safety and if he fell off the building, whether he could fall on persons below, Mr Pakenham said. Defence lawyer Adeela Khan said Robert, who has also tackled Dubais 2,717ft (828m) Burj Khalifa, had no intention or foresight of the disruption he could cause. He has been climbing for 44 years and is an extremely experienced climber, one of the best in the world, she added. He has won awards for this sort of climbing he perceived the risk of falling to be either non-existent or very minimal. Spectators watch as daredevil climber Alain Robert, dubbed the French Spiderman, scales the outside of the Heron Tower (Victoria Jones/PA) She said it was not just a publicity stunt and that Robert feels that he is seen as an inspiration. The general reaction of the public was extremely positive, she continued. There were lots of people outside taking photographs and watching the ascent, all the people watching it were inspired by Mr Roberts action and felt it was something they enjoyed watching. She admitted that there was some commercial motivation and said there was a particular T-shirt he was wearing. Robert was arrested and released without charge in 2009 after climbing the Lloyds building in London. Speaking outside court Robert said that waiting to be sentenced was quite scary and he was worried he would be sent to prison. For me now Im really done in the UK, he added. He said he does not know how much he will be paid for the stunt. Turnout in the Irish presidential election appears to be low in many areas of the country as voters continue to cast their ballots. There were reports that polling stations in many places were relatively quiet through the morning and across the afternoon, especially in comparison to the abortion referendum early this year. Traditionally stations are busier during the evening period with people choosing to vote after leaving work. All six candidates in the running for the highest office in the state voted before noon. Outgoing president Michael D Higgins attended a polling station in St Marys Hospital, Phoenix Park, Dublin, along with his wife Sabina. The 77-year old is running for a second seven-year term. Irish President Michael D Higgins and his wife Sabina cast their vote (Niall Carson/PA) Sean Gallagher, who is also running for a second time after a failed attempt in 2011, attended a polling station in Greystones, Co Wicklow, with his wife Trish at 8.30am. In north Co Donegal, independent candidate Peter Casey, voted in Greencastle. The Londonderry-born businessman arrived at Greencastle National School polling station with his wife Helen at 9.20am. The former Irelands Dragons Den star has a home in the coastal village as well as Atlanta. Sean Gallagher, with his wife Trish and children, arrives at a polling station in Wicklow (Aoife Moore/PA) He chuckled when a local man asked him: Peter, who are you going to vote for? Gavin Duffy voted in Julianstown, Co Meath, alongside his wife Orla and family. Sinn Fein MEP Liadh Ni Riada voted in Baile Bhuirne in her native county of Cork, with her husband Nicky by her side, while Senator Joan Freeman and her husband Patrick cast their votes in Lucan, Co Dublin. Sinn Fein MEP and presidential candidate Liadh Ni Riada casts her vote in Cork (Aoife Moore/PA) Polling stations opened at 7am and will remain open until 10pm. Turnout is not expected to be as strong as it was for the abortion referendum earlier this year but it is thought it may be in line with the 2011 presidential election when 56% of the electorate turned out. More than 3.2 million people are entitled to vote in 40 constituencies. Presiding officer Carmel McBride, Garda Sgt John Gallagher and Irish Air Corp helicopter crewman Craig Cullen deliver a ballot box to Inishbofin Island off County Galway (Niall Carson/PA) In addition to voting on the next president, the electorate are being asked on the ballot paper whether they want to remove the offence of blasphemy from the Irish constitution. The constituency with the single largest electorate in the country is Donegal, with more than 116,000 people registered to vote. This is closely followed by Tipperary with some 110,000, and Wexford with more than 108,000. In Dublin, more than 560,000 people are eligible to cast their ballot in the capitals 11 constituencies. Election warehouse manager Michael Leonard checks the seals on ballot boxes in Dublin (Brian Lawless/PA) The constituency with the smallest electorate is Dublin Central with 40,000 voters. Most islanders have already had their say as voting got under way on 12 islands off the coast of counties Donegal, Mayo and Galway on Thursday, a day ahead of the rest of the country. Some 2,601 islanders are eligible to vote in this years election. Douglas Hyde became Irelands first president in 1938. Mr Higgins is the countrys ninth president. He was elected in 2011. A ballot box arrives on Tory Island, off the coast of County Donegal (Niall Carson/PA) Four presidents have served for two terms, or 14 years in total. They were Sean T OKelly, Eamon de Valera, Patrick Hillery and Mary McAleese. Count staff will begin sorting and collating the ballot papers at centres across the country from 9am on Saturday. A result is expected by Saturday evening, or by early Sunday at the latest. The polls have closed across Ireland in the presidential election. There were reports earlier in the day of a low turnout at many polling stations, which closed their doors at 10pm, but they are traditionally busier in the evening as people wait until they have finished work to cast their ballots. Turnout was not expected to be as strong as it was for the abortion referendum in May, but it was hoped it could be in line with the 2011 presidential election when 56% of the electorate turned out. More than 3.2 million people were entitled to vote in 40 constituencies. As well as deciding who they would like to see in Aras an Uachtarain for the next seven years, the electorate was also asked whether they wanted to remove the offence of blasphemy from the Irish constitution. All six candidates in the running for the highest office in the state voted before noon. Incumbent president Michael D Higgins attended a polling station in St Marys Hospital, Phoenix Park, Dublin, along with his wife Sabina. The 77-year old, who was elected in 2011, is running for a second seven-year term. Sean Gallagher, who is also running for a second time after a failed attempt in 2011, attended a polling station in Greystones, Co Wicklow, with his wife Trish. In north Co Donegal, independent candidate Peter Casey voted in Greencastle with his wife Helen. Incumbent Michael D Higgins cast his vote alongside his wife Sabina (Niall Carson/PA) The former Irish Dragons Den star has a home in the coastal village as well as in Atlanta. He chuckled when a local man asked him: Peter, who are you going to vote for? Gavin Duffy voted in Julianstown, Co Meath, alongside his wife Orla and family. Sinn Fein MEP Liadh Ni Riada voted in Baile Bhuirne in her native county of Cork, with her husband Nicky by her side, while Senator Joan Freeman and her husband Patrick cast their votes in Lucan, Co Dublin. In Dublin, more than 560,000 people were eligible to cast their ballot in the capitals 11 constituencies. Sinn Fein candidate Liadh Ni Riada voted in her native Cork (Aoife Moore/PA) The constituency with the single largest electorate in the country is Donegal, with more than 116,000 people registered to vote. This is closely followed by Tipperary with some 110,000, and Wexford with more than 108,000 voters. The constituency with the smallest electorate is Dublin Central with 40,000 voters. Some 2,601 islanders were eligible to vote in this years election. Joan Freeman, centre, was accompanied by her family to the polling station in Lucan, Co Dublin (Cate McCurry/PA) Those living on 12 islands off the coast of counties Donegal, Mayo and Galway had the opportunity to have their say on Thursday, a day ahead of the rest of the country. Count staff will begin sorting and collating the ballot papers at centres across the country from 9am on Saturday. A result is expected by Saturday evening, or by early Sunday at the latest. This shot by Steve Wallace, professional videographer, captures the extent of last Sundays incident at the Jacks property in Ratho Mill. "There is nothing to suggest that the structural integrity of the remaining section of the wall on the Jacks property at Ratho Mill is unsound. Minister of Transport and Works, Senator Julian Francis, told THE VINCENTIAN on Wednesday that the assessment was made following an inspection of the area on Monday. He confirmed that the section of the wall that collapsed on Sunday night was part of the original design. It formed part of the wall that lined the roadway into the actual property, and not along the main public road. In September 2008, a section of the originally designed wall collapsed following rainy conditions similar to that of last week, killing Patricia Jack-Bowman. The Ministry of Transport and Works supervised the construction of the new wall, with technical guidance from the Engineering Department at the University of the West Indies, following that event. The main road was closed on Sunday night. According to Francis, this was done primarily as a safety precaution. "We werent sure of the extent of the collapse, he said. A physical examination of the wall was conducted, and this revealed no evidence of changes in the structure or movement of the new wall, Francis said. The road was re-opened immediately thereafter. Even though he has confidence in the structural soundness of the section of the wall that was replaced and that augurs well for the safety of motorists, Francis expressed regret that the entire wall was not redone. "The entire section will have to be removed, he said. The Minister was expected to meet with the owners of the property and other Ministry officials at the site yesterday (Thursday) to discuss the way forward. On October 28, Brazil will hold its second and final round of elections for the Presidents office. The election outcome is being watched anxiously, as the front runner for the presidency is Jair Bolsonaro, a far-right candidate with notoriety similar to US President Donald Trump. Many political observers argue that the wave of right-wing populism marked by xenophobia, authoritarianism and misogyny that continues to dominate the United States and much of Europe, is now ready to engulf Latin Americas most prized democracy. Far right: Jair Bolsonaro, a non-influential lawmaker with no visible record of public service, has been able to win a massive 46% of total votes. (Photo: Reuters/file) This may be true, given that Bolsonaro, a non-influential lawmaker with no visible record of public service, has been able to win a massive 46% of total votes some 50 million Brazilians have endorsed his candidature. His closest rival Fernando Haddad, of the popular but jailed ex-president Luiz Lula da Silvas Workers Party (PT), is a distant second, with 29% votes. The 63-year old Bolsonaros relatively obscure Social Liberal Party has captured 16 of the 26 states of Brazil, and has won 60% votes in Rio de Janeiro and the countrys national capital territory, Brasilia. A strong wave of anti-establishment politics swept away more than two-thirds of incumbents. What makes this election so interesting is the fact that Bolsonaro has been able to achieve this feat despite being completely outspent by rival candidates from mainstream parties. In terms of resources and traditional modes of campaign, the far right candidate is nowhere near his rivals. Bolsonaro is the front-runner despite being completely outspent by rival candidates from mainstream parties. (Photo: Reuters) For instance, Geraldo Alckmin, the candidate from Party of Brazilian Social Democracy (PSDB), got 40 times more free television advertising time than Bolsonaro. Bolsonaros party, too, is much smaller than the two mainstream parties. Yet, like Trumps campaign style, Bolsonaro has launched an effective social media campaign to reach out to ordinary Brazilians. By casting himself as a law and order candidate and by offering the police a free hand to kill criminals similar to what the Philippines president Duterte has been doing the far right candidate has evoked the interests of common citizens fed up with growing crimes and lawlessness. Whats fueling right-wing populism in Brazil? Very few people in Brazil had ever thought that an extreme far right candidate would emerge as the front runner for the countrys highest office. Whats driving Brazils much-matured voters to elect a right wing, authoritarian and misogynist candidate? Bolsonaro was stabbed in September, winning him sympathy votes. Photo: Reuters/file) While conceding sympathy votes for Bolsonaro over the attack on his life weeks before the elections, and the rejection of ex-president Lulas nomination adding up to his spectacular late surge, a number of factors have produced this worrisome spectacle threatening the very base of Brazils liberal democratic order. First, like the trends in the US and Europe, the average citizen in Latin America is unhappy with the state of politics, and politicians from mainstream parties. This is because, in the past few years, Brazils political scene has witnessed significant upheavals, or indeed, what many analysts call political circuses the dramatic impeachment of Dilma Rousseff of the popular Workers Party, sensational indictment and subsequent imprisonment of Lula over corruption, and the indictment of top politicians from nearly all major parties over the Lava Jato (Operation Car Wash) investigations involving bribes of several billion dollars. Thus, the average electorate in Brazil seems to have grown cynical of mainstream politicians. A recent survey by not-profit Latinoborometro found that only 13% Brazilians are satisfied with democracy, and a vast majority feels that politicians get elected only to make money. Bolsonaro is using Operation Car Wash masterfully to paint the entire political class as corrupt, venal and self-serving. Brazil's mainstream politics has been rocked by scandals, such as the dramatic impeachment of Dilma Rousseff. (Photo: Reuters/File) The second and most important driver for polarisation is growing economic uncertainty. It should be noted that Brazil, which witnessed breakneck growth a few years ago largely owing to strong global demand for natural resources, is today experiencing its worst-ever recession. Latin Americas biggest economy is today facing one of the highest unemployment rates and the quality of life has deteriorated rapidly over the past few years. With this, there is a high degree of inequality, as the six richest men have more wealth than the wealth of 50 percent of the poorest population in the country. Third, on his part, the far-right candidate has cultivated an image of a former army man, an outsider determined to take on rampant corruption, and the culture of sleaze and patronage that have become synonymous with political office. Bolsonaro has made effective use of social media in his campaigns, like Donald Trump before him. (Photo: AP) What has helped his cause is the quick reinvention of his image as an economic liberal committed to reform the countrys bloated pension system, which has been manipulated by elites, and offer attractive incentives for foreign investors to create jobs. What, however, caught the attention of most citizens is his populist promises to ease environmental restrictions cracking down on rising crimes. He has proposed to loosen gun control laws to allow ordinary citizens to acquire their own arms, and pull out his country from the Paris Treaty on climate change something he has generously borrowed from Trumps playbook. This has won him many supporters, especially the private business and traders, and also won him support from educated, rich and older white men. In short, the once diverse and centre-right Brazilian society is witnessing unprecedented polarisation at all levels politics, society and civic spheres. The Bolsonaro phenomenon is an outcome of this sharp divide. Things that once looked totally unacceptable in mainstream society now seem all fine. In earlier decades, no front-runner for the presidents office could dare to make insensitive remarks against racial minorities, LGBT communities and immigrantsbut Bolsonaro could do this and still be on the verge of making it to Brasilia. The costs of this are very high for the democratic system and society at large, and no one in Brazil has a clue about what might stop this phenomenon. However, many feel this might be an aberration, and Brazilian society is resilient enough to face this up. Their hope rests on structural constraints placed via the Congress and its governing coalition system, to act against any kind of authoritarianism. Also read: Why I ran for a seat in the Afghan Parliament I have had the occasion to meet Abhijit Iyer-Mitra a few times in Delhi. I remember one conversation with Abhijit almost a year ago, where we discussed Indian history and history writing. I recall him passionately talking about how the rich history of Odisha, among others, hasnt been given its due share in our textbooks. Today, I watch with despair the high drama of him being arrested and denied bail for insulting Odisha for a year-old light-hearted Twitter conversation over the origin of rosogolla. There is no such thing as a Odia roshogolla Abhijit Iyer-Mitra (@Iyervval) November 16, 2017 The furore was triggered by his recent video at the Konark temple where he, in his trademark satirical manner, took a potshot at the orthodoxy which today abhors individual freedom and discussions on sexuality, while blaming every ill on foreign invasions. The video might be stupid, as he himself said before the House Committee of the Odisha Legislative Assembly, but it was neither malicious, nor had the intent to hurt the sentiments of anybody. But the issue has been blown out of proportion by making it an issue of Odia pride and religious sentiments and it has baffled everyone as to why the whole might of the state machinery and a political party would be brought upon one of the best defence analysts of India? What is it all about really? Rosogolla? Or Rafale? (Photo: India Today) Is it because he has staunchly defended the Rafale deal, calling the bluff of those alleging scam and spreading falsehood? Or, is it because of some political vendetta where he is being used as just a pawn, as alleged by the opposition party? Whatever be the reason, the hounding of the carefree and kind-hearted Abhijit will go down as one of the most shameful episodes in the legal and judicial history of India. Let me say here that the judiciary too has failed to safeguard an individual from the excesses of the executive. The same judiciary, which time and again came to the rescue of those accused of far more serious crimes, even waging war against the state in the name of dissent and freedom of expressions (FoE), has refused to grant bail to Abhijit. Whats more, the Supreme Court made a worrying remark, while denying him bail, reportedly saying that, If your life is in danger, what better place to stay than jail? This inadvertently gave a free hand to the police and the lower court, which allowed the Odisha police to take Abhijit in on a four-day remand. One wonders what exactly they want to interrogate him for? He has already clarified and apologised for the video. Or, do they want him to make some confessions, which may be useful to the political bosses, as several commentators have pointed out? We must also reflect on the actions of the peoples representative who deemed his comments so serious as to constitute an entire House committee for a trial. Does it behove the dignity of a legislative Assembly to go after an individual, who is in no position to harm the Assembly or lower its prestige, not by a long shot? This entre episode was uncalled-for especially after he unconditionally apologised for all his comments. Forcing him to come to Odisha after the media ran a demonising campaign raises concerns for his safety. Now, the legislative Assembly and the police must ensure his safety and take a benign look at the matter as well. For I dont think that his stray comments lowered the prestige of the Assembly or violated its privileges. But such an action against him is doing exactly that now. A kind-hearted and affable soul, Abhijit Iyer-Mitra does not warrant such harsh treatment. (Photo: India Today) I am not a believer in absolute freedom of expression, nor do I base my defence of Abhijit at the altar of liberty. Absolute liberty and absolute freedom of expression are a route to anarchy. My contention is that such executive excesses are also a route to anarchy and ultimately cause collapse of the system. Regional parties in India have time and again proven themselves to be highly intolerant formations running small fiefdoms, while looking for such issues to bolster their public appeal by playing on regional sentiments. They have no concern for the collateral damage done in their political manoeuvres. Here, Abhijit is that collateral damage. Apart from making some unguarded comments, Abhijit has done nothing to warrant his arrest and trial. Many such cases are registered on a regular basis against several people across the country on flimsy grounds. They hardly ever deserve such harsh action like in this case. One can only hope that the Chief Minister of Odisha, the state legislature and the judiciary will reconsider their positions and put an end to this matter, which has become an embarrassment to the Indian political, legal and judicial system and, of course, to democracy itself. Once the people and political class rose to the occasion and made imposition of Emergency on flimsy grounds impossible. Now, they are called upon to amend these colonial-era laws to make such future arrests and hounding of citizens impossible, because their current form means that the common people of India live under a permanent state of Emergency. Also Read: #IStandWithAbhijit: You dont have to agree with his views to defend Abhijit Iyer Mitras right to free speech NRI billionaire Lakshmi Mittal-led ArcelorMittal on Friday said it had won a bid to acquire debt-laden Essar Steel for over Rs 42,000 crore, a deal that will help fulfill the worlds largest steel makers long-time ambition of having an India mill. A committee of Essar Steel creditors picked ArcelorMittal on October 25, a day when the Ruia family offered to pay lenders Rs 54,389 crore including Rs 47,507 crore in upfront cash to clear all their dues in a last-ditch effort to avert losing their flagship company. In a statement, Arcelor-Mittal said its resolution plan for Essar Steel, which the lenders auctioned to recover over Rs 49,000 crore of unpaid loans, included an upfront payment of over Rs 42,000 crore to settle debt and a further Rs 8,000 crore of capital injection into the company to support operational improvement, increase production levels and deliver enhanced levels of profitability. Subsequent to being declared the highest bidder on October 19, the Committee of Creditors (CoC) has issued ArcelorMittal a Letter of Intent (LoI) declaring them as successful applicant. Essar Steel promoters, however, wanted the CoC to consider their offer as it offered maximum value to all stakeholders, saying it could not be ignored citing some process lacunae. A company spokesperson said the offer was superior to ArcelorMittals bid as it provided 100 per cent repayment to lenders and met the objectives of maximisation of value and protection of the interest of all stakeholders. It cannot be ignored just because the offer to pull out the company out of bankruptcy was not made before CoC called bids. He said Section 12A of the Insolvency and Bankruptcy Code (IBC) that allowed withdrawal of insolvency proceedings subject to approval by 90 per cent of the creditors and the National Company Law Tribunal (NCLT), was introduced in June 2018, much after the EoI in case of Essar Steel was floated on October 20, 2017. It wasnt immediately clear if lenders even considered offer of Essar Steel promoters. In a separate statement, Nippon Steel & Sumitomo Metal Corporation said it had been engaged in, together with ArcelorMittal, acquisition procedures aiming at jointly acquiring and managing Essar Steel. On October 25, Arcelor-Mittal India Pvt Ltd, a subsidiary of ArcelorMittal and the resolution applicant, has been declared the successful applicant by Essar Steels CoC. The acquisition will be implemented subject to the approvals of Indian National Company Law Tribunal and other relevant authorities, it said. The announcement comes a day after founders of Essar Steel made a surprise offer to pay Rs 54,389 crore to creditors to settle claims and allow the company to exit the bankruptcy process. But many saw it as being violative of Section 12A of the IBC since the bid process is now over and Ruias havent offered to clear dues of group firms which total to around Rs 80,000 crore. ArcelorMittal said Essar Steel was an integrated flat steel producer with annualised crude steel production of 6.5 million tonnes. It also has iron ore pellet facilities in the east of India, with a current annual capacity of 14 million tonnes per annum. ArcelorMittal intends to raise Essar Steels finished steel shipments to 8.5 million tonnes over the medium-term by completing the ongoing capital expenditure project and infusing expertise. In the long-term, it wants to increase finished steel shipments to between 12 and 15 million tonnes through the addition of new iron and steelmaking assets, the company statement said expecting the deal to close before the end of 2018. After completion, ArcelorMittal will jointly own and operate Essar Steel in partnership with Nippon Steel and Sumitomo Metal Corporation (NSSMC), the Japans largest steel producer and the third largest steel producer in the world. ArcelorMittal and NSSMC expect to finance the joint venture through a combination of partnership equity (one-third) and debt (two-thirds), and ArcelorMittal anticipates that its investment in the joint venture will be equity accounted, the statement said. The NSSMC said India was one of the most promising markets in the world with significant growth potential in the medium and long-term. In order to further expand and strengthen our global business, NSSMC has been seeking opportunities to engage in integrated steel production in India to steadily capture the growing demand for steel products, which is expected to increase along with the development of infrastructure, the company said, adding it along with ArcelorMittal will be able to turn around Essar Steel to be a competitive steel manufacturer. In its offer, ArcelorMittal has proposed to pay Rs 41,987 crore to financial creditors and Rs 214 crore to operational creditors and employees. Essar Steel founders the Ruia family first attempted to maintain a toe-hold in the company through a minority stake in VTB-led consortium Numetal, which was among the three bidders putting in offers. But they exited NuMetal when the eligibility was questioned as IBC does not allow delinquent promoters to bid. On Thursday, the Ruia family made a last-ditch effort through an independent offer. Mining baron Anil Agarwals Vedanta was the third bidder. The very fact that voting took place and that a large number of women queued up for parliamentary elections in Afghanistan represents a triumph of democracy in face of formidable odds It is easy to run down the elections to Afghanistans 250-member Wolesi Jirga, the lower House of its bicameral National Assembly, on October 20 and 21. There were technical and administrative glitches. Many polling centres opened late on October 20. Consequently, the Independent Election Commission, holding the elections, declared that these would remain open until 8 p.m. against the original deadline of 4 p.m. Those that did not open until 1 p.m. would remain open on October 21 as well. Besides, while the deployment of over 70,000 security personnel ensured that security was, on the whole, reasonably good in Kabul and the cities, violent attacks by the Taliban either disrupted or prevented polling in outlying districts like Roghistan and Imam Saheb in Badakhshan and Kunduz Provinces respectively. Trouble has also been reported from districts in the Maidan Wardak, Logar, Paktia and Taghar Provinces. It remains to be seen how the elections in Kandahar Province, postponed to October 27, are held. No date has been announced for elections in Ghazni Province which have also been postponed. As officially indicated, it will not be held this year. Article 104 of Afghanistans electoral law lays down, When security situations, natural disasters and other similar conditions make the principle of general and fair representation impossible to uphold and undermine the credibility of the electoral process, the latter should be postponed from the specified date for a period of up to four months. It adds, The postponement or suspension is proposed by the IEC and approved by a committee, which should comprise head and members of the National Security Council, speakers of the two Houses of the Parliament, Chief Justice, and chair of the Independent Commission of Oversight of Implementation of the Constitution of Afghanistan. It further states, If the situation mentioned above which led to postponement or suspension of the elections does not improve within the period of four months, the committee may extend the postponement or suspension of elections for a period of another four months. The fact, however, is that elections have been held in 32 of Afghanistans 34 Provinces and four million out of the 8.8 million registered voters have voted. Despite the killing of 10 candidates in the violence preceding the elections, the rest of the 2,500 candidates, including 400 women, remained in the field. And all this despite the fact that, stating that the elections were a project of the invading Americans, the Taliban had declared that resisting these was a religious duty. Announcing that they would do everything possible to prevent the elections, they had asked candidates to withdraw and had warned people against venturing out on the polling day as they would then risk being killed or hurt. Not only that, their violent attacks had killed hundreds in the weeks prior to the elections. Significantly, the postponement of the elections in both Kandahar and Ghazni Provinces were due to violence unleashed by the Taliban. The latter has claimed responsibility for the terrorist attack in Kandahar on October 18, that killed General Abdul Raziq, the police chief of Kandahar and one of Afghanistans most powerful and important security officials, the provincial Governor, Zalmay Wesa, and intelligence chief, Abdul Mohmin and two policemen. The Taliban further claimed that the targets of the attack shooting by one of Raziqs own elite guards were General Raziq as well as NATO-led Resolute Support Mission Commander General Austin Scott Miller. The elections in Ghazni have been postponed because of two reasons. The first is a volatile security situation. The Taliban occupied the provincial capital of Ghazni on August 10 and were ousted, after fierce fighting, on August 15-16 by teams of United States Special Forces operating with Afghan commandos, and military and police personnel, and with air support. They, however, have continued to be strongly entrenched in the countryside which has, according to the authorities, remained too disturbed to hold elections. The other factor behind the decision to postpone the elections was a dispute over ethnic representation among Hazaras, Pashtuns, Tajiks and Sayyeds. The Pashtuns, particularly, demanded the division of the Province into smaller units to ensure balanced ethnic representation. On June 25, 2018, the IEC decided to split the Province into three separate electoral constituencies for the parliamentary elections. Tensions, however, continue as the feeling persists among sections that the splitting has not been fair to all the ethnic groups. The attacks in these two Provinces are a part of the roll of violence unleashed by the Taliban over the years from their sanctuaries in Pakistans tribal territories. The situation had been made worse by competitive violence by the Islamic State which sought to establish a base in the country. The combination of the two largely accounted for the surge of insurgent/terrorist attacks in the country during February-March this year. The Islamic States challenge seems to have receded, but Pakistan-backed Taliban violence has continued to escalate, United States President Donald Trumps repeated warnings to Islamabad notwithstanding. In this context, the targeting of General Miller in the Kandahar attack was significant. Metaphorically, it would have been tantamount to slapping President Trump on the face had it succeeded. Indeed, the very fact that it was not only undertaken but announced was clearly meant to deliver to him and the US the message that the Taliban thought nothing of trying to administer humiliating blows to their respective faces in public. Since the Taliban could not have done this without at least Pakistans approval if not at its behest the entire attack reflected the Imran Khan Governments message to Washington, DC, that it would teach the Trump Administration a lesson for effecting the aid cuts it had imposed on Islamabad for not doing enough to combat the terrorist groups operating from its soil. It remains to be seen how the Trump Administration sorts this out or if it can at all do so. Meanwhile, the escalating level of violence, which prevented the elections to the Wolesi Jirga, due in 2015, from being held till now, continues. The very fact that voting has taken place, many of the candidates have been young men and women, and a large number of women queued up to vote, is significant. It clearly shows that Afghans want democracy and not the retrograde, medieval theocracy of Pakistan-backed Taliban that would reduce women to, at best, domestic slavery. (The writer is Consultant Editor, The Pioneer, and an author) Although fertility rates have fallen, even now, inability to engage men effectively in family planning and deep-rooted economic, social and gender inequality continues In September 1994, India was among the 179 countries that signed the first international agreement recognising the right to sexual and reproductive health at the International Conference on Population and Development (ICPD) in Cairo. This meant that India agreed that couples and individuals had the right to decide whether, when or how many children they wanted to have. With 2019 being the 25th anniversary of the historic ICPD Programme of Action, how far has this right been realised in India? How many women are empowered to make their own choice and be in control of their bodies? More specifically, since the burden of planning families is on women, have they been able to exercise their reproductive rights? Has there been an enabling environment to facilitate womens autonomy in reproductive decisions? Many of the answers to these questions lie in the Governments population policies and its skewed implementation. One of the biggest barriers to realising reproductive rights has been the inherent gender discrimination embedded in its approach to family planning. The push for female sterilisation by Government family planning programmes has undermined womens autonomy. There has not been any major shift in the Government thinking although terminologies have changed. Even though it is claimed that the population policy is no longer target-oriented and offers contraceptive choices, female sterilisation remains high and the most popular form of contraception. The 2005-06 National Family Health Survey (NFHS 3) had found that 77 per cent of women had not used any other method of contraception before accepting sterilisation. Not much has changed since then. Ninety three per cent of the total 14,73,418 sterilisation procedures between 2017-18 were conducted on women, according to a June 2018 report by the Governments National Health Mission. Only 6.8 per cent were performed on men. In fact, there has been a decline in male sterilisation from an already low 1.0 per cent in 2005-06 (NFHS 3) to 0.3 per cent in 2015-16 (NFHS 4). It is not surprising that the percentage of male sterilisation (0.3) in urban and rural areas is exactly the same. Further, drop in the prevalence of contraception, from 56.3 per cent in 2005-06 to 53.5 per cent in 2014-15 (NFHS 4), means the onus of controlling fertility has continued to remain on women. That men are disinclined to take responsibility has been corroborated by NFHS 4 which clearly states that female sterilisation remains the most popular modern contraceptive method, even though compensation in high focus States is higher for vasectomy (Rs 2,000) than for tubectomy (sterilisation for women), which is Rs 1,400. While much of the female sterilisations stem from entrenched patriarchal beliefs that males would lose their virility and masculinity if they opted for vasectomy, womens lack of sexual and reproductive health knowledge about appropriate and available contraceptive methods and, their limited access to services has increased their vulnerability. Women have been given little or no information and counselling on contraception and that has prevented them from knowing its benefits and side effects. This could be why one of three women had not given informed consent before undergoing sterilisation, according to a Population Research Institute study. For many women, this ignorance has had fatal consequences. In the last five years, approximately 1,000 women have died following sterilisation procedures. Government sterilisation camps were banned in 2016 by the Supreme Court following the death of 363 women during or after sterilisation conducted in such camps between 2010 and 2013. In Andhra Pradesh, the fall out of the focus on female sterilisations as a means of family planning and fertility control has been the onset of early menopause. The State has the highest proportion of women aged 30-49 who are in menopause in the country at 31.4 per cent. Bihar comes second with 27.1 per cent. This high menopause in Andhra Pradesh is due to the numerous hysterectomies (surgical removal of uterus) conducted with the simultaneous removal of the ovaries. Removal of ovaries is the biological equivalent of castration and results in the immediate and sudden onset of menopause, in contrast to natural menopause which is a gradual process. Hysterectomies have been driven by sterilisations for a long time in Andhra Pradesh, the fifth most populous State in India. Female sterilisation accounts for 98 per cent of contraceptive method use according to NFHS 4. Its a vicious circle sterilisations conducted under unhygienic conditions have led to medical conditions prompting many women to opt for hysterectomies to end its debilitating after effects. Eighty-two per cent of the women who opted for hysterectomies had undergone a family planning operation prior to it, found a 2009 study by an autonomous institution in the State. India had committed to enabling its people to make informed sexual and reproductive health choices as a matter of their fundamental human rights at the 1994 ICPD. But it hasnt been able to fulfill its promise entirely. Although fertility rates have fallen, it is varied. Even now, inability to engage men effectively in family planning and, deep-rooted economic, social and gender inequality continue to deny women the power of choice. As the United Nations Population Fund 2018 State of the World Population report points out, fertility transitions can be sustained only when reproductive health services are universally accessible and women are empowered to take decisions. Only then will women be able to avert unplanned pregnancies, unwanted fertility and unnecessary abortions and, be free of coercive sterilisations. (The writer is a senior journalist) Rohan Mehra stayed away from Bollywood for most part of his life and the debutante says it is one of the reasons he discovered his father, actor Vinod Mehra quite late. Rohan, who makes his Hindi film debut with "Baazaar", says he does not feel pressured by the comparisons drawn between him and his father, who passed away before his birth in 1990. "Comparisons will be made. I don't feel the pressure. It doesn't annoy me. All the more, I'm flattered. This is all very surreal to me. I'm discovering this man really late in my life. "I started discovering him when I was 21. I never knew him. My mother was four months pregnant with me when he passed away," the actor told PTI in an interview here. He grew up in Kenya's Mombasa with his mother, Kiran, sister Soniya and grandparents. "For the first 21 years of my life, I was away from Bollywood and Bombay. I don't think anyone in Mombasa personally could say they knew Vinod Mehra. Had I lived in Bombay, there would have been that pressure," he says. Rohan says he strives to be like his father, Vinod Mehra who has films such as "Anuraag", "Nagin", "Jaani Dushman" and "Ghar", among others to his credit. "He was such a charismatic, handsome and great actor. Those are the qualities I look to be. I want to be more like him. I appreciate that he has diehard fans. I will give them a little reminder," he says. The actor says he read some tweets where people said he does not resemble his father who was "well-built" and clarifies he lost weight for his role as stock market greenhorn, Rizwan Ahmed. "It would be silly to see someone with a huge chest walk into the stock market to get a job from Shakun Kothari (played by Saif Ali Khan)," he adds. Rohan, 27, says he is glad that unlike other star kids, he had to fight for people's interest. "I wanted to have some leverage before I could speak to people and they could speak about you. You need that. You have to have something to show for what you're doing. I think that's the way it should be." The film, directed by Gauravv Chawla, was earlier aiming for a December 2017 release. The actor says the delay cast a shadow of doubt on his Bollywood entry but patience carried him through. "There were times I wondered 'What's going on? When is the film going to release?' I have already waited for so long. "With the little bit struggle that I did in landing a job in Bollywood, I think you develop some more patience. You start trusting the process more. Also I had a great mentor in producer Nikkhil Advani. I knew if he wasn't worrying, I shouldn't." Also featuring Chitrangda Singh and Radhika Apte, "Baazaar" releases Friday. The 11 Base Repair Depot (BRD), the only fighter aircraft repair depot of the Indian Air Force, on Friday handed over the indigenously overhauled Su-30 MKI aircraft to the South Western Air Command at an impressive ceremony held at Ojhar in Nashik district in north Maharashtra. In a formal ceremony, Air Marshal Hemant Sharma Ati Vishisht Seva Medal, Vishisht Seva Medal Air Officer Commanding-in-Chief of Maintenance Command gave possession of the indigenously overhauled Su 30 MKI aircraft to Air Marshal HS Arora Ati Vishisht Seva Medal Air Officer Commanding-in-Chief of South Western Air Command at an impressive ceremony held at Air Force Station at Ojhar. The 11 BRD is the only fighter aircraft repair depot of the Indian Air Force and undertakes repair and overhaul of frontline fighters such as MIG-29 and Sukhoi 30 MKI. Established on 29 Apr 1974 and subsequently renamed as 11 Base Repair Depot on 01 Jan 1975, the BRD progressively built and improved the technical expertise and infrastructure over the years and by 1983 it had overhauled 100 Su-7 aircraft. From 1983 to 1988, the depot also undertook overhaul of MIG-21 and 28 aircraft were produced. Later, overhaul facility for MIG-23 aircraft was set up in 1986 and 248 aircraft were overhauled till May 2015. Overhaul of MIG-29 aircraft commenced in the year 1996. Currently, the Up gradation of MIG-29 and Repair & Overhaul (ROH) at Su-30 MKI aircraft is being undertaken at the depot. In addition, the 11 BRD is the only agency to undertake overhaul of ejection seats and role equipment of Su-30 MKI aircraft, both for IAF and Hindustan Aeronatic Limited (HAL). Earlier, the first Su-30 MKI overhauled by this Depot successfully took off on 24 Apr 2018 and has been flight tested for its airworthiness, before inducting it for operational tasks at a flying squadron. Among those present on the occasion were a large number of senior Air Force dignitaries form Air Head Quarters New Delhi, Head Quarters Maintenance Command, Nagpur, South Western Air Command, Gandhinagar, Gujarat, Senior officers of HAL (Nasik Division), DRDO and DGAQA. During the function, the Air Officer Commanding-in-Chief of Maintenance Command and South Western Air Command applauded relentless efforts put in by personnel of Air Force Station Ojhar. Air Cmde Samir V Borade Vishisht Seva Medal Air Officer Commanding, Air Force Station Ojhar, thanked all the air warriors and personnel of HAL (Nasik Division) for their active involvement and support in achieving this important milestone for the depot and Indian Air Force. Borade said that with this capability, 11 Base Repair Depot had exhibited what the unit was capable of and was ever ready for meeting the new challenges. Three soldiers and two ultras were killed in three separate terror related incidents in Kashmir Valley, officials said. One of the soldiers died due to fatal injury in a stone-pelting incident in south Kashmir. Sources said that unidentified terrorists attacked an Army formation near Lorgam village in south Kashmirs Tral sub-district late on Thursday evening. In the heavy exchange of fire, two soldiers of 42 Rashtriya were injured. They said both the injured were shifted to Armys 92 Base Hospital at XV Corps headquarters for treatment. However, one among the injured soldiers succumbed to his injuries. Army officials said Sepoy Ngamsiamliana from Mizoram was killed in an attack on an Army camp in south Kashmirs Lurgam village in Tral. They said another Armyman injured in the attack is under treatment at Military Hospital. Pakistan-based Jaish-e-Muhammad claimed responsibility for the attack and they said it was to avenge the killing of seven civilians and three ultras at Laroo Kulgam area in south Kashmir last Sunday. Army official said Sepoy Rajendra Singh from Uttarakhand was fatally injured during stone-pelting in Arwani area of Anantnag on Thursday evening. He succumbed to his injury on Friday in Military Hospital. Four local terrorists were killed in the Thursday encounter. In another incident, Lance Naik Brajesh Kumar from Himachal Pradesh sustained splinter injuries during a fierce operation in Behrampora Sopore in north Kashmir on Friday. He later succumbed in Military Hospital. Two unidentified ultras, suspected to be Lashkar-e-Tayyeba (LeT) cadre were killed in the anti-terrorist operation that was launched early on Friday morning. Meanwhile, the normal life in downtown parts of Srinagar remained affected due to restrictions imposed in areas under five police stations in old Srinagar city. This was done in view of protest call of separatist amalgam Joint Resistance Leadership comprising Syed Ali Geelani, Mirwaiz Umar Farooq and Yasin Malik. Both Geelani and Mirwaiz remained under house detention while Yasin Malik is in preventive custody for the last several days. The educational institutions in several areas in north and south Kashmir region remained closed on the directions of authorities to prevent student protests or any law and order situation. Train services also remained affected across Kashmir. The internet services also remained partially affected in North and South Kashmir districts as a preventive security measure. Defence Ministry (MoD) official spokesperson Swaranshree Rajashekhar was sent on indefinite leave on Friday hours after she posted a tweet criticising the alleged misuse of privileges by military officials leading to an outcry among the veterans. She later deleted the tweet saying it was inadvertently done and the same is deeply regretted. The Ministry later in the day said Army Public Relations Officer (PRO) Colonel Aman Anand will be acting spokesperson as the MoD spokesperson proceeds on leave. The twitter controversy began after she responded to a comment by former Navy Chief Admiral Arun Prakash. He had re-tweeted a photograph showing a military flag on the bonnet of an official car of the Internal Financial Adviser to the Western Command of the Army in Chandimandir in Haryanas Panchkula district. The officer is a civilian and is not allowed to use flags on his vehicle, a right reserved for armed forces officers. Even if misuse of an Army Commands insignia by a civilian is not a cognisable offence, the person needs to be reprimanded by the GOC in C whose Financial Adviser he is, Prakash had tweeted. Responding to his comments, Rajashekar, tweeted, What about misuse of jawans in your residence during an officers tenure sir? And how about children being picked up and dropped to school in Fauji (military) gaadis (vehicles)? Not to forget Madams shopping expedition on Government vehicles. And endless parties...Who pays for that? Her response to 72-year-old Prakash, a war hero who was Navy chief between July 2004 and October 2006, drew sharp reactions from military veterans. Some of them even said the principal spokespersons comments reflected the approach of the bureaucracy towards the armed forces. In a tweet, Major General (retired) Harsha Kakar told Defence Minister Nirmala Sitharaman that the spokespersons comments mirrored true colours of the Ministry towards the three services. Is this inadvertent. It shows the true colours of your MoD Madam. You are meant to protect the military, not insult it. Keeping this spokesperson is an insult to India, its armed forces and their sacrifices. It shows no respect for senior veterans. Your spokesperson is a disaster, he said. Retired Air Vice Marshal Manmohan Bahadur called the tweet to the former Navy chief by Rajashekar as shameful. BJP MP Rajeev Chandrasekhar also took strong exception to the spokespersons comments and demanded an inquiry into the matter. Dear @DefenceMinIndia @DrSubhashMoS - who is this Defence spokesperson who reprsnts MoD ie Govt n talks like this. This is unacceptable conduct n I wud rqst an enquiry into this. This is unconscionable, disrespectful n arrogance tht behooves a response. @PMOIndia (sic) he tweeted. Amid angry reactions by veterans, Admiral Prakash said there should be sober reflection on state of civil military relationship. Rather than getting excited over indiscreet tweet of @SpokespersonMoD I would suggest sober reflection; (a) by MoD on state of civil-mil relations & (b) by Military Leadership on the aspersions cast by MoD (IDAS?) civil-servant on personal conduct of Service officers, he said. The Congress on Friday staged a day-long countrywide protest in front of CBI offices across the country led by its party chief Rahul Gandhi against the Centres order to send CBI Director Alok Verma on forced leave. Congress workers led by Rahul took to the streets in New Delhis Lodi Road area, where the CBI headquarters is located, and demanded an apology from the PM. He alleged that the PM stole money from the country and can run but not hide from the truth. Rahul courted arrest at Lodhi Road police station. Delhi-type protests were replicated in other parts of the country where State Congress leaders led demonstrations in their regions against what the Congress described as the illegal, unconstitutional and illegitimate removal of the CBI director by the Modi that has shamed India and its premier investigative agency. TMC Rajya Sabha member Nadimul Haque, CPI leader and Upper House member D Raja, and Loktantrik Janata Dal leader Sharad Yadav too joined the Congress in the protest against the Modi Governments CBI decisions. Massive protests were reported from all States, including large participation by party workers in Punjab, Haryana, Karnataka, Assam, Maharashtra and Gujarat. Senior Congress leaders, including Ashok Gehlot, Ahmed Patel, Motilal Vora, Veerappa Moily and Anand Sharma took part in the march, along with Sharad Yadav, D Raja and Nadimul Haque. Rahul said people are on the streets to show the PM the mirror of reality. No matter how hard the Government tries, it will not be able to cage the truth, he tweeted. The Mumbai Congress workers staged a demonstration outside the CBI office in Bandra led by City Congress president Sanjay Nirupam. The protesting Congress workers also raised slogans against the PM. The Opposition party has alleged that the demolition of the CBI was prompted by fears that Verma was going to conduct a probe into the Rafale deal. Nirav Modi and Mehul Choksi ran away after taking Rs 35,000 crore. Vijay Mallya ran away with 9,000 crore. Lalit Modi, too, ran away. Maybe Anil Ambani will also run away. But the reality is that the PM has indulged in corruption and helped Anil, Rahul alleged in his brief interaction with the media. He accused Modi of destroying institutions such as the CBI, the Election Commission and the Enforcement Directorate. Hundreds of Congress workers along with their leaders in Bihar, Jharkahdn and Odisha staged demonstration as part of the partys nation-wide protest. The demonstrators, including scores of women, sat on a dharna outside the gate of the CBI office at Bailey Road, carrying placards reading Save CBI Save Democracy and raised slogans amid a heavy contingent of police. RJD too claimed to extend full moral support to Congress. Demonstrators, led by Odisha Pradesh Congress Committee President Niranjan Patnaik, raised slogans against the Centre in Bhubneshwar, alleging that Verma was sent on leave to stall investigation into charges of corruption in Rafale jet deal. Punjab, Haryana and Chandigarh units of the Congress too held protest near the CBI office amidst heavy security and police used water cannons on the protesters. Punjab Congress president Sunil Jakhar was leading the group of protesters which included several prominent party leaders, including Ministers in the Amarinder Singh-led Government. Haryana CLP leader Kiran Choudhary and former Railways Minister Pawan Kumar Bansal were among the leaders from Haryana and Chandigarh participating in the agitation. Protests by Congress activists were also taken in southern States of Karnataka, Tamil Nadu, Andhra Pradesh and Kerala. Former Karnataka Chief Minister Siddaramaiah hit out at Modi for turmoil in the CBI, alleging it was another manifestation of his autocratic rule. Over 40 Congress workers and leaders from Gujarat, including eight MLAs and former State unit chief, were detained for protesting outside the CBI office in Gandhinagar. Before their detention, Congressmen took out a one km-long march - from a church to the CBI office located in sector 10 of the state capital- to protest against the move to divest CBI Director Verma of his powers. Activists and leaders of Assam Pradesh Congress Committee (APCC) staged a dharna outside the CBI office led by APCC president Ripun Bora who also sent a memorandum to President of India Ram Nath Kovind requesting for immediate reinstatement of Verma. ACThose selected to serve on the Executive of the St Vincent and the Grenadines Restorative Practices Committee have been named. They are: Ann Hamilton-Dopwell, Lecturer Division of Teacher Education at the SVG Community College; Netta Thoms, Education Officer, Special Needs; Leonora Ackie-Ambris, Guidance Counsellor, Dr JP Eustace Secondary School; Patsy-Ann Garraway, Counsellor CW Prescod Primary School; Suzette Cupid-Ferdinand, Principal Dr JP Eustace Secondary and Chesley Ferdinand. Restorative practices constitute, a social science that studies how to improve and repair relationships between people and communities, with the purpose of building healthy communities, increasing social capital, decreasing crime and antisocial behavior, repairing harm and restore relationships. In essence, the aim is to increase and strengthen alternatives for the settlement of disputes using mediation, restorative justice and community-based peace building services. The Project The Restorative Practices Project is spearheaded by IMPACT Justice, which is a project funded by the Canadian Government, and is being implemented by the University of the West Indies Cave Hill Campus throughout 13 CARICOM territories, including SVG. Speaking at the official launch on October 13 at the Blue Lagoon, Hamilton-Dopwell said that the launching of the local committee was indeed an achievement. She said that since 2015, over 70 Vincentians with varying backgrounds were trained in restorative practices. "The idea of having a committee and by extension an avenue, where people that possess the skill set can meet on common ground and channel their energies into thinking of ways in which we can use our training to make a positive and indelible mark on the nations children, teachers and society as a whole, cannot be over- emphasized, she said. "We need to be able to transform our country so (that) we have a tolerant society, Hamilton-Dopwell continued. Among the first tasks of the committee will be to partner with the Ministry of Education to arrive at the best way to implement restorative practices into the school climate. Other departments and society as a whole are expected to be part of the project. The practices at work Suzette Cupid-Ferdinand spoke first- hand of the experiences she gathered from a restorative practice project at the Dr J.P Eustace Secondary School. She said that the school was the first from this country and the second in the region to be selected for the pilot project, which involved 26 students, ranging in ages 13 to 16, who demonstrated a range of behavioural issues. Cupid-Ferdinand explained that the sessions were conducted in 8 modules, including conflict resolution and anger management, and that the students enjoyed each session. Each session gave the participants the opportunity to speak out on what was going on in their environment. This, according to the principal, brought out a number of issues that were affecting the students. Following on the project, she said that she has seen a change in the attitude and behavior of the students. She issued a word of caution when she admitted that the students did not suddenly all become "angels, and advised that teachers taking the time to interact meaningfully with students using the restorative practices, could have a positive impact on students lives. Trainers to sustain project Over 867 individuals across the region, including 63 from SVG, have been trained in utilizing restorative practices, Professor Velma Newton, Regional Director, IMPACT Justice Project disclosed. She noted that she was pleased with the outcome of the project, and has seen the setting up of committees and networks in neighbouring territories. "It is our hope, based on the calibre of persons who are going to form these committees, that they will contribute towards peace-making in our schools, she said. The sustainability of the project lies in the hands of the group of trainers, who were also recognized for their achievement. Those now certified as trainers under the Restorative Practices Project are Julia Edey (Barbados), Ann Hamilton-Dopwell (SVG), Ken Layne (Barbados), Gloria Lewis (Barbados). Suzette Cupid-Ferdinand (SVG), and Patricia Warner (Barbados). (DD) In a bid to save the ailing power companies, the State Bank of India (SBI) has approached the Supreme Court looking into the implementation of recommendation of a committee which suggested a tariff increase or waiver of a portion of the loan owed to the bank by these companies. As per the SBIs affidavit, the three power companies belong to Adani, Tata and Essar Groups and are operating in Gujarat and owe more than Rs 35,000 crore to it. The Supreme Court in April 2017 had disallowed the power generating firms from increasing their tariff and ordered them to stick to promised tariff in the agreement with the State Government. The SBI was roped in to save the loss of power companies, which were barred by the SC in increasing tariff. The companies had demanded permission to hike tariff citing problems and change of rule in Indonesia and claiming that the coal import had become costly and this scenario must be treated as an unforeseen. Rejecting all these arguments, the apex court said the companies must supply power in the tariff specified in their agreements with the States. After the SC order, the Gujarat Government formed a Study Committee headed by retired Judge Justice RK Agrawal to look into the crisis in power sector. In September, after consulting all stakeholders and the bankers, the committee recommended that the ailing power firms can be saved either by increasing the tariff or by asking the banks to take haircut on the loan given by them to these firms. Sources said the Agrawal Committee has noted that the bankers were willing to take a haircut considering the existing scenario in the power sector. It is interesting to note that at present the SBI is facing more than Rs 2.3 lakh crore bad debts. In its affidavit to the Supreme Court, the SBI said Adani Power in Mundra owes them Rs 19,127 crore and Essar Power Gujarat Ltd owes Rs 4,214 crore and Tata Groups Costal Gujarat Power Ltd owes Rs 10,159 crore to them. It is relevant to point out that the entire net worth of the three power producers has almost eroded. The monies lent and advanced by the SBI and other banks are at serious and imminent risk. So far as Essar Power Gujarat Ltd is concerned, it is already NPA. The other two companies (Adani & Tata) are servicing their debt but have been addressing letters that they would be constrained to stop operation since they cannot continue to run the plants at loss, said SBI in its affidavit to the SC. That these issues with regard to the tariff have been pending for a long time and banks have reached a stage that they are facing huge risk of the public monies advanced to the power projects, said the SBI. This move of SBI is seen as trial balloons to know the mood of apex court. If the apex court agrees to the SBIs prayer, many PSU banks might approach the court with similar petitions to favour the power firms across India. The SBI in its affidavits said they have got clearance from Finance Ministry in a meeting chaired by Finance Minister Arun Jaitley with all stakeholders and other lender bankers also. The Enforcement Directorate on Thursday chargesheeted former Finance Minister P Chidambaram as an accused for conspiring with foreign investors in the Aircel-Maxis scam and engaging in money laundering. The agency also named Chidambaram familys chartered accountant Bhaskararaman, Maxis CEO and Malaysian citizen Ralph Marshal and former CEO of Aircel V Srinivasan in the chargesheet. Maxis groups four subsidiary firms were also indicted as accused for money laundering and routing kickbacks. The ED had already chargesheeted Chidambarams son Karti and nephew Palaniyappan and their firms as accused on June 13. After hearing prosecutors preliminary arguments, Judge OP Saini has fixed November 26 for consideration for the chargesheet. The nine people and firms indicted are charged for money laundering of Rs 1.16 crore. This was a bribe for facilitating through Chidambaram grant of Foreign Investment Promotion Board (FIPB) approval to Malaysian firm Maxis to take over Aircel in March 2006. The ED also said further proceeds of crime were tracked down and attached the Rs 55 crore worth properties and farm houses of Karti in Delhi, Ooty, London and Spain. The ED has said the FIPB approval was given to the foreign investor Global Communication and Services Holdings Limited, Mauritius in violation of the various rules and regulations governing the FDI policy in India. As per rules and FDI policy of Government of India in 2006, Chidambaram, the then Finance Minister was empowered to give approval of the foreign investment to the proposals involving foreign investment up to Rs 600 crore only. The foreign investment proposal of Global Communication and Services Holdings Limited was of USD 800 million which amounts to Rs 3,560 crore approximately (when 1 USD was Rs 44.5). The foreign investment proposal of Global Communication and Services Holdings Limited should have been referred to Cabinet Committee on Economic Affairs (CCEA) but it was not done and approved by Chidambaram under a conspiracy, said the ED, filing the second supplementary charge sheet frilled on Thursday. The ED has charged the accused under sections 3 and 4 of the Prevention of Money Laundering Act and if found guilty, they would be liable to a jail term of up to seven years along with fine. The agency said the charge sheet is based on adequate material evidences which are in the form of email communications retrieved from the seized digital devices from Karti and his associates. The material evidences reveal routing of proceeds of crime in the guise of bonafide business deals by the beneficiaries of illegal FIPB approval in the companies of Karti. The investigation has revealed the financial linkage of Karti Chidambaram and P Chidambaram with these companies, said EDs prosecutors. There are contradictory and evasive responses, in spite of that ED has collected materials that is corroboratory statements recorded under Section 50 of the PMLA from various persons during the investigation to substantiate the offence of money laundering, the ED said. Advocates NK Matta and Nitesh Rana appeared for the ED in the court. The CBI had already chargesheeted Chidambaram and son along with four IAS officers and Maxis owners on July 19. The Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) has made Bhagirathi Kunjwal its candidate for the post of the district panchayat president of Chamoli. The election has been necessitated by the resignation of Munni Devi following her election as MLA from Tharali Assembly constituency. The State BJP media in-charge, Devendra Bhasin said that the decision has been taken by the State party president Ajay Bhatt on Friday. He said that the Chamoli district party president has been asked to take necessary steps for nomination of Kunjwal. The party has appointed Tharali MLA Munni Devi as in-charge of the party for this election while Manoj Bhandari has been made as convenor of the election. The by-election for the vacant post of the president of the district panchayat of Chamoli would be held on November 5 and the counting of the votes and declaration of result would be done on the same day. The candidates would file nomination on November 1 and the scrutiny of nomination papers would be done on November 1 itself. The candidates can withdraw their nomination papers on November 3. The by-election for the coveted post of the three-tier panchayati raj system has been necessitated by the resignation of Munni Devi Shah from the post. She had been elected as the president of Chamoli district panchayat in 2013. She had been later elected to the Assembly from Tharali constituency through by-election after her husband Magan Lal Shah who was BJP MLA had died of dengue in January this year. However, even after her election as MLA, Munni Devi had initially refused to resign from the post of the president of district panchayat. She had quit after the district panchayat vice-president Lakhpat Butola moved High Court (HC) on the plea that she could not simultaneously hold both the posts. Under Sanjha Vikas programme, the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) on Friday had a discussion with media persons of the capital at State BJP Office Ekatma Parisar and took their views for preparing the Sankalpa Patra (Election Manifesto) for the Assembly polls. Speaking on the occasion, BJP National General Secretary and Chhattisgarh In-charge Dr Anil Kumar Jain said the suggestions of journalists and other intellectuals would be valuable for the party. Apart from other citizens, the journalists too could suggest important suggestions as they know the actual mindset of the people because of being in the field. Media is the fourth pillar of democracy and their suggestions are important for solidarity of democracy, Jain said. The Convenor of BJP election Manifesto Committee Minister for Agriculture and Water Resources, Brijmohan Agrawal said that the party had given the manifesto the name of Sankalpa as it has pledged to do more development work in coming five years after forming the government for the fourth consecutive time. We have done honest attempt of fulfilling the 99 per cent promises made in previous elections manifesto and are once again promising in such a way that it could be fulfilled and not turned to be hollow, he said. Agrawal further apprised that the party has received 5000 suggestions to be included in the manifesto and it is committed to fulfill what it will promise. Following directives of All India Congress Committee (AICC), Chhattisgarh Pradesh Congress Committee (CGPCC) office-bearers and workers staged a protest before State office of Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) here demanding reinstating the CBI Director Alok Verma in national capital who was sent on long leave. The activists of party led by former Union Minister Charandas Mahant and former Minister Satyanarayan Sharma also staged sit-in and when the district administration denied permission for protest, the senior leaders while lodging a token protest returned . The district administration had denied permission citing the reason that Section 144 was imposed in the state. Later Youth Congress activists led by their Working Presidents Koko Padhi and Mahendra Gangotri staged a gherao of the CBI office and were court arrested by the police. A dance instructor in his 20s was shot dead allegedly by an unidentified man after the victim made fun of his dance moves during a Valmiki Jayanti procession near Mandir Marg in national Capital. According to Madhur Verma, Deputy Commissioner of Police (DCP), New Delhi district, the deceased was identified as Avinash Sangwan. The incident took place on Wednesday night when Sangwan, along with his friends, was dancing during the Valmiki Jayanti procession when Sangwan got into an argument with the accused after he made fun of his dance moves. Following the argument the accused took out a pistol and shot at Sangwan, who died on the spot, said the DCP. A case was registered in the matter and a probe was underway, Deputy Commissioner of Police (New Delhi) Madhur Verma said. Police said Sangwan was also carrying a knife with him. A video of the incident shot by one of the persons at the procession shows the victim dancing at the event. In the video, Sangwan is seen removing his T-shirt before falling down. Later, people around him noticed a bullet injury on his chest. The victim was rushed to a nearby hospital, where he was declared brought dead, the DCP said. Based on the video, police have received the images of the accused. However, the accused was yet to identified and arrested in connection with the incident, the officer said. Sangwans friends are being questioned by police to establish the sequence of events, he added. BJPs State spokesman Praveen Prabhakar on Friday claimed that JMM supremo Shibu Soren is familiar with the deceitful methods of the Congress party adding that is why he has often cautioned his party leaders to be wary of it. The BJP leader statement came days after Soren stated that JMM should not go for an alliance with the congress party in the coming Parliamentary and the state elections. The agony Shibu Soren faced while in alliance with the congress party in the past often surfaces in his speeches, Prabhakar said. He added the JMM leader has experienced the negative attitude of congress and other opposition parties very closely. Prabhakar claimed that JMM working president Hemant Soren was supporting an opposition alliance despite being humiliated by the congress party in the recent past. Recently Rahul Gandhi met JVM (Prajatantrik) supremo Babulal Marandi and Geeta Koda in Delhi but did not have time for Hemant Soren. Hemant wants to come back in power at any cost, he said. He mentioned that it was not the first time that the JMM supremo has cautioned his son Hemant to be cautious of the congress party. The JMM could even break into two groups if Hemant insists on an alliance with the congress. The opposition parties are pulling apart even before the Mahagathbandhan visualised by them could materialize, he said. The BJP spokesman opined the JMM supremo has lost his battles both within and outside his party. Even though he spent entire life building the JMM, Shibu Soren lost from assembly seat while he was CM of the state. He may also remember the days when neither his son nor the daughter-in-law was ready to vacate a seat for him assembly elections, he stated. Six students of class VI- VII of DPS Ranchi named Archita Jain, Aditya Ranjan, Adhvik Mishra, Advika Singh, Asmi Anmol Homkar and Tejas Tanay got an unique opportunity to be a part of a student exchange programme with a school in France for 10 days. According to a DPS release, the students visited Lycee Jean Moilin school in the Lille city of France and were welcomed by the French students with great warmth. Several activities were conducted in the school like cultural programmes, collage making Yoga etc. Interaction between the students of two nations was the highlight of this programme which they would cherish forever. These students got a once in a life time opportunity to visit EU Parliament at Brussels and interacted with the officers there who enlightened the students about the role and functioning of European Union. Entry to the well of this Parliament was a prestigious moment for the students. A visit to the largest aquarium of Europe, Nausicaa and a mesmerizing view of the English Channel added to this wonderful experience. Students were also taken to Paris where they learnt about the history of beautiful French monuments and climbed the great Eiffel Tower. Seine river cruise was an amazing experience for these young children. This exchange programme was a result of the vision and efforts of Principal Dr Ram Singh for giving exposure to the students of DPS Ranchi to opportunities of global education and learning from their international experiments. He expressed his great pleasure and congratulated the students at the successful completion of this exchange program. He hoped that this great learning experience would prove to be helpful in shaping their future, the release said. Cyber crime of the Bhopal police cell has nabbed an engineering student on the charge of blackmailing a girl using obscene photographs; accused created a fake Instagram profile. Police said that the victim girl was blackmailed by the accused identified as Rajeev Choubey (30) of Parshav Dham colony Bhanpur road; accused made her friend earlier and obtained obscene photographs by making fake facebook profile and later used the photographs to blackmail her. The victim lodged a complaint with the Cyber crime cell regarding the accused who developed friendship with her by creating a fake facebook profile Arpita few years ago and obtained obscene photographs. Few months ago he created a fake Instagram profile in the name of Shivani Thakur and started to blackmail her on the basis of earlier obtained photographs. She provided Rs 3000 and later accused demanded big amount after which the victim decided to lodge a complaint. The victim was afraid of the threat given by accused to make her photographs public. Based on the details police tracked the miscreant and found that the fake profile was operated from Bhanpur area and later nabbed the accused and recovered a mobile phone and SIM card used in the crime. After the preliminary investigation the police have registered a case under sections 66 E and 67 of the IT Act and sections 384 and 469 of the IPC against the accused. The details of crimes by the accused would be investigated. The series of events that temporarily elicit our focus, appreciation, outrage or nothing-depending on ones perception- seem to continue as in the past without much benefit to society. At the national level, the politicians and media- especially the television news channels focused dramatically for some time on the unfortunate death of 61 people caused by their suicidal folly of congregating on a railway track in Amritsar. Even as the issue of Sabarimala intensified on ground and regained space on television and social media debates involving panelists and social media users parroting concepts of equality with little knowledge of the shrine, deity and reasons for restrictions traditionally imposed there among other concepts, the Supreme Court ordered restrictions on bursting of firecrackers on Diwali. Though one dislikes the manner in which fireworks are used and most of their effects, somehow, the public doesnt seem to be bothered about this order probably because they do not imagine it will be enforced as directed. However, with the advent of winter, the Delhi-centric focus once again shifted to air pollution with temperature, wind and other climatic factors also being blamed for making the people breathe in the toxics they themselves are generating. Meanwhile, the recent happenings in the Central Bureau of Investigation presented an unprecedented scenario and refueled political drama, debate anchors and panelists supporting different sides to once again holler their points of view. One would rather refrain from mentioning the various other issues being debated and incidents likely to fuel more media debates in the coming days. The more real world exists outside the television and social media and even there issues are being debated. The difference is that the format, intensity and frequency of such debates differ from debates on the television and social media. Sadly, it seems that in both types of debates, the exercise appears to have become one focused on proving points which are rarely proved and acknowledged by both sides. Even in cases where facts are acknowledged by both sides, the resultant knowledge doesnt seem to encourage the necessary actions needed to make corrections and improvements. Phenomena like the inability of the Government and public to send the toxics they generate, higher up the atmosphere during the winters in the national capital region continues to fuel such repetitive debates and some actions which rarely seem to achieve the required results. When it comes to Uttarakhand, one may experience disappointment when one sees the effects of such disastrous apathy and stupidity slowly but surely causing damage that becomes harder and costlier to rectify with each passing day. Two important orders of the High Court of Uttarakhand and their effect in the State, environment and society will suffice as examples. Nearly two years ago, the High Court had ordered a complete ban on polythene in the State. Later, the Chief Minister directed strict enforcement of the ban from August this year. The usual official activities purportedly for raising public awareness and penalising those violating the ban were undertaken for some months. It is another thing that there was little or no action to prevent people from bringing the banned items into the State for personal or commercial use. Recently, a fellow journalist visited the sacred and ancient shrine of Tungnath reached after trekking a few kilometres through beautiful dense forests to the top of the mountain. Apart from being one of the Panch Kedar shrines, Tungnath is also a place often advertised by the Government as one of the scenic treks in the State. But, the journo recalled that the route was littered with empty liquor bottles, empty fast food packets and polythene waste. Though such waste might not be present along every step of the way, it is alarming enough that garbage including the banned polythene continue to contaminate sacred and environmentally rich areas too. More recently, in June this year, the High Court had directed the State Government to ensure that no loudspeaker or public address system is used by any person including religious bodies in temples, mosques and gurudwaras without written permission of the authority even during day time, that too, by getting an undertaking that the noise level shall not exceed more than five decibles (dBA) peripheral noise levels. The Government was also directed to ensure that such sound amplification during the night time is not done anywhere except in auditoria, conference rooms, community halls, banquet halls as per norms laid down under the Noise Pollution (Regulation and Control) Rules. On cultural or religious festive occasions, such noise is allowed up to midnight for maximum 15 days in a year and then too the noise level shall not exceed 10 decibles above the ambient noise standards of the area. Not surprisingly, the use of sound amplification to vulgar and damaging levels has continued even during late nights. In both the cases-polythene ban and restrictions on noise generation, the prevailing situation exhibits a disturbing tendency in both the general public and the Government. When confronted by such scenarios, one either becomes desensitised, makes compromises or becomes disturbed and complains to the authorities concerned. Complaining to the police or other authorities concerned is the logical step since it is inherently futile talking sense to people who spend thousands of rupees to generate noise pollution that may damage their own hearing too in the name of religious or celebratory reasons. Here one encounters the undesirable tendency of the authorities-of ignoring the blatant violation of the law. If the police patrol as they claim to during the night, they would obviously hear noise amplified far beyond permissible levels and act to stop such violation of the law. Same goes for other authorities concerned when it comes to violation of the polythene ban. But the authorities seldom act effectively in either case. When the public loses sense of proportion and indulges in behaviour which is detrimental to society and environment, the Government should do its bit to discontinue such unhealthy practices in public interest. But then who will make the Government realise this? Suffering in the traffic jams caused recently by mayoral candidates of the two national parties filing their nomination in Dehradun, one wonders whether one can expect insensitive politicians to become public representatives who genuinely work in public interest. A few months later after the new mayors and other public representatives in local bodies are elected one might get a better idea of whether the situation will improve or worsen. It is not just about the polythene ban and noise pollution but about most aspects which affect the environment along with social, individual and professional life in the State. Going by past experience one hopes that unlike the humans, god will save the abode of the gods that Uttarakhand is known to be. The Fire Department of the Royal SVG Police Force (RSVGPF) is working with the Central Water and Sewerage Authority (CWSA) towards increasing the number of fire hydrants in the capital, and the constituency of Central Kingstown is expected to benefit from this collaboration. This was disclosed by Prime Minister Dr. Ralph Gonsalves as he responded to a question by Parliamentary Representative for Central Kingstown, Major St Clair Leacock, during a Sitting of Parliament on October 18. Leacocks question was related to the RSVGPF Fire Departments capacity to deal with fires. Dr Ralph Gonsalves said in Parliament on October 18 that an inventory had been done to determine the number of existing hydrants. As far as Central Kingstown was concerned, this revealed that there were fire hydrants in Largo Heights, in the vicinity of the official residence of the Prime Minister, and another located by the Montrose Police Station and Nurses Training School; two in Kingstown Park and one in Lodge Village. There were none in Redemption Sharpes or Green Hill but Dr. Gonsalves assured that discussions were ongoing towards have hydrants installed at those locations. All existing hydrants were in good working order and the water capacity was good, the Prime Minister added. (DD) Haryana Roadways employees continued their strike on Friday for the eleventh consecutive day, with hundreds of employees from various government departments going on mass causal leave to express solidarity with them. The employees affiliated to Sarv Karamchari Sangh in Haryana and other trade unions went on a mass casual leave on Friday in support of ongoing strike by roadways employees. Defying the Essential Services Maintenance Act (ESMA) being in force, the employees went on strike on October 16 and have extended their strike four times, announcing to continue it till October 29 against the State Governments decision to hire 700 private buses in the state. Lakhs of employees went on mass casual leave as a result of which work in various government departments was badly hit. Among the departments where work was affected included the School Education Department, the Power Department, municipalities, the PWD (B&R), the Public Health Department and the Rural Development and Panchayats Department, claimed the roadways union. Roadways union leaders claimed that these employees also joined the transport workers at dharna at various places across the state. As per the attendance status in Elementary Education Department, an overall attendance of only 19.75 percent was recorded. Out of 2079 DEE/DEEOs/BEEOs in the Education Department, 719 were present in the office on Friday, as per governments record. Subhash Lamba, general secretary of the Sarv Karamchari Sangh, Haryana, said that a large number of employees from the Tourism Department, besides Boards and Corporations also went on mass casual leave. However, the emergency and essential services were attended by the employees who were on casual leave, he said. The State Government should immediately rollback its decision to run 700 private buses, take back cases registered against the striking transport workers under the Essential Services Maintenance Act or else we will be forced to take some big step, he added. Meanwhile, the State Government claimed that 2165 buses plied on Haryana roads on Friday. The government has ordered recruitment of 905 conductors under the part II of its outsourcing policy. The Haryana Roadways employees had on Thursday announced to extend their ongoing strike till October 29 as their fresh round of talks with the State Government had failed to make any headway on Wednesday. A day before, Chief Minister Manohar Lal had said that the work of employees unions should be to raise the issues and concerns pertaining to the welfare of employees. The policy decision are not under their purview and should be left to the government, he had said. Manohar Lal had also made it clear that 700 private buses will be hired by the government as per a previous cabinet decision. In a meeting with agitating employees, the State Government had offered to reconsider its on 190 private buses as the tenders for the same were yet to be finalised, but remained firm on 510 buses, saying it cannot be reworked as the Cabinet had already decided on this matter and signed an agreement to this effect. The employees' union, however, has remained adamant on their demand that the tenders issued until now be cancelled under the kilometre scheme. There are about 19,000 employees in the Haryana Roadways. The roadways, having a fleet of 4,100 buses, cater to about 12 lakh passengers daily. Police nabs 12 persons with arms Indore : Police arrested 12 persons in Indore city of Madhya Pradesh Thursday and seized firearms from their possession during a special drive ahead of the next month's elections. Deputy Inspector General of police Harinarayanachari Mishra told reporters that those arrested included two alleged arms dealers. They were identified as Amarjit Singh Bhatia, resident of Dhar, and Virendra Singh, resident of Barwani. The other accused were allegedly trying to buy firearms from the duo, he said. Police recovered 19 firearms including country-made revolvers and pistols besides cartridges, he said, adding that further probe was on. Mine caves in, causes 4 deaths Chhindwara : Four persons were Thursday on killed in Chhindwara district when the roof of a Western Coalfields Limited mine caved in. The incident was reported at around 2pm in Neharia underground coal mine situated in Parasia in Pench region, 35 kms from Chhindwara, Parasia Sub Divisional Officer of Police (SDOP) Ashok Ghanghoria told. He identified the dead as WCL maintenance manager Rajesh (40), operators Rafiq (45) and Ramprasad (48), and labourer Ravishanker (40). A labourer, Ramlal, who was injured in the incident, has been admitted in a nearby hospital, he added. Cops seize fake currency worth Rs 87,200 Jabalpur : Fake currency notes with the face value of Rs 87,200 were seized from three persons in Madhya Pradesh's Jabalpur district. While one of the accused, identified as Sachin Chakraborty, was arrested from Chandan forest area Wednesday night, two of his accomplices--Santosh Pandey and Kaushal Upadhya--were picked up from Shahdol and Rewa, respectively. He said Chakraborty had brought the counterfeit notes, in denominations of Rs 2000, Rs 500 and Rs 100, from West Bengal. Chakraborty also told police that he and his accomplices paid Rs 36,000 to procure fake currency with face value of Rs one lakh. 3 Children die of dengue Gwalior : Three children hailing from Morena district died of dengue in the last one week and more than 90 others were suffering from the vector-borne disease. An eight-year-old girl and a 10-year-old boy died while undergoing treatment at different hospitals in Delhi. Besides, a 15-year-old boy succumbed at a medical facility at Mathura in Uttar Pradesh, Morena district malaria officer Dr Harendra Singh said. He said over 90 people tested positive for the virus in Morena since October 1. Of them, 50 were undergoing treatment at different hospitals outside the district. Family members were rushing patients to private hospitals following a decline in their blood platelets count, he said. Singh said mosquito fogging was being done in areas where dengue cases had come to light and adequate arrangements were made at government-run hospitals in the district to treat the patients. Besides, people were also being made aware of measures to be taken prevent the vector-borne diseases. Syndicate Bank organises blood donation camp Bhopal : Blood is unique gift of God that has no other substitute and used for saving lives said RM Regional Office Kulwinder Singh on the occasion of 93rd establishment day of Syndicate Bank. Blood donation camp was organised on the 93rd establishment day of Syndicate Bank on Wednesday, 2018 at Bansal hospital. Regional Manager Bhopal Kulwinder Singh and Assistant Regional Manager Bhag Chand inaugurated the camp. The technical officer at Bansal hospital Vivek Gupta emphasized on the importance of blood donation and appealed to donate blood. He requested media to publicize programs with noble cause benefitting society and saving lives. After the extended date to fill forms of the Mains for the 6th Civil Services the Jharkhand Public Service Commission (JPSC) is readying itself to hold the examination. Top sources with the Commission quipped that as per plans the second stage test would be conducted around December-January. The admission is a big relief for the nearly 40,000 aspirants who are waiting for a sort of clarity from the JPSC in the light of latest court orders and grievances of those who could not quality the preliminary test. The Mains examination is expected in December-January. We are in touch with examination centers at district levels for their availability. As soon as that is done the dates would be finalised and are likely to be announced by November, JPSC Secretary Jagjit Singh informed The Pioneer on Thursday. The Commission had published revised result of the preliminary examination following the State Cabinet decision and declared about 34,000 more aspirants qualified for the Mains examination taking the total number to around 40,000. There result through came to glare again after a candidate approached the High Court and later Supreme Court from where a decision was passed directing the JPSC to induct him into the list of the qualified candidates. The decision had feared that other candidates may also approach the court seeking similar relief. That is an ongoing activity here. People keep approaching the court. As of now we are not worried about that. If any direction from courts comes it would be looked into as per the merit. Our next aim is to hold Mains examination smoothly, said the Secretary. He at the same time also snubbed reports about a change proposed into the examination patterns of the Mains. Some unconfirmed reports suggested that the Commission is mulling to switch from present descriptive-cum-objective pattern to completely objective type exam citing time constraints. These are nothing but just rumors. No proposal from our part has been moved to the Government. As of now I also not aware of any such proposal coming from the Government side either. The Commission is going ahead with declared examination pattern which is a mix of objective and descriptive type of questions, said Jagjit Singh. The Konark police in Puri district took Delhi-based scribe Abhijit Iyer Mitra on a four-day remand amid tight security on Thursday. The police took Mitra from the Bhubaneswar Jharpada jail to Konark to question him over his derogatory remarks against the Konark Sun Temple and about his air trip over the Sun Temple and the Puri Jagannath Temple. The controversial scribe was earlier arrested by the Saheed Nagar police in connection with a case filed under Sections 294, 295A, 153A, 500, 506 of IPC and Section 67 of the Information Technology (IT) Act. Meanwhile, Mitras lawyer Nikhil Mehra said that he would apply for his bail after the completion of his remand. The Sub-Divisional Judicial Magistrate (SDJM) Court here on Wednesday had granted permission to the Konark police to take Mitra on remand for interrogation. On Tuesday night, Mitra had been lodged in the Jharpada jail after the court rejected his bail plea and sent him to a 14-day judicial custody. The representatives of Lok Sabha are mostly drawn from political parties playing a major role in the governance of the country. During last 70 years, there have been changes in the participation of political parties in elections and voting behaviour of the citizens of the country. In the context, it is important to look into our electoral system and representation of political parties. The first general election of 1951- 1952 witnessed participation of 54 political parties and subsequently, the number of political parties kept increasing so that it reached 464 in last 2014 elections out of total 1,687 registered parties in the country including six national parties, 47 State parties and 1,634 unrecognized parties. The lowest number of participation was in 1957, i.e., only 16 parties and subsequently in 1962 (28). In 1967, it was 26, 1971 (44), 1977 (54), 1980 (38), 1984 (37), 1989 (115), 1991 (147), 1996 (211), 1998 (178), 1999 (171), 2004 (215) and 2009 election, the number was 363 out of 1,060 registered parties. Since 1991 the emergence of coalition and alliance politics has facilitated for a strong presence of State/regional parties. The most important observation of election results shows that no single party has got more than 50 per cent of vote share of the total polled votes though they got more than 50 per cent of the seats. The coalition politics of last 20 years have provided a stable Government both by the UPA and the NDA. Though the reasons of growth of number of political parties are many but this has contributed to fractured mandate under the Fist Past the Post (FPTP) electoral system where parties with less than 50 per cent of vote share formed the Government. A major national ruling party such as Congress has never achieved 50 per cent of the vote share since 1952 but the only exception was in 1984 when it got the all-time high per cent which is just close to 50. The Congress has governed the country for maximum time consecutively in 1952, 1957, 1962, 1967 and 1971 for five times but the partys vote share was always below 50 per cent even during Jawaharlal Nehrus period. It was 45.7 per cent, 47.8 per cent, 44.7per cent, 40.8 per cent and 43.7 per cent respectively. The vote share of Congress has reduced to below 35 per cent in 1977, but again increased to 43 per cent in 1980. It further increased to all time maximum 48.1 per cent in 1984 and again it was reduced to 39.5 per cent in 1989. In the 1991 general election the vote share of the party was 36.4 per cent. The vote share of 1996 election was 28.3 per cent and 1998 it was reduced to 25.8 per cent. The vote share of 2004 election was 26.5 per cent, in 2009 it was 28.55 per cent and in 2014 it was 19.31 per cent which is all time low with only 44 seats. Many historical political factors have influenced the voters in different time to cast their vote in favour of the Congress. The vote share of Bharatiya Jana Sangh founded by Shyama Prasad Mukherjee in 1951 was only 3.06 per cent of vote with 3 seats in 1952 election. Later, the vote share of BJP (Jan Sangh became BJP later) was 20 per cent in 1991, 20.3 per cent in 1996, 25.6 per cent in 1998, 23.8 per cent in 1999 and 22.2 per cent in 2004, 18.80 per cent in 2009 and 31 per cent in 2014 which is all time high and captured 52 per cent of the total seats. Dr BR Ambedkers Sc heduled Castes Federation and later Republican Party of India (RPI) got 2.38 per cent of vote share with 2 seats in 1952. The BSP has emerged as a national party under the leadership of Kanshi Ram in 1984 and became the third largest national party of the country in terms of percentage of votes polled in last elections. The party polled 4.14 per cent of vote in the last 2014 general election but got no seats in the Lok Sabha. In 2004, the party polled 5.33 per cent of votes with 19 MPs and in 2009 election the party got 6.17 per cent votes with all time high of 21 MPs in the Lok Sabha. Even in the last 2017 Uttar Pradesh State election, the BSP emerged as second largest party in terms of vote share of 22.24 per cent votes but winning only 19 seats in the State Assembly. The Communist Party of India (CPI) with 3.29 per cent of vote share won 16 seats in 1952 election and was the main Opposition led by Shripad Amrit Dange, elected from Mumbai, in the first Lok Sabha of India. The other parties such as Forward Block and RSP got 0.9 and 0.44 per cent of vote share with 1 and 3 seats respectively in 1952. The vote share of CPI is 0.65 per cent in the last general election of 2014. Coming to the participation of voters of the country, the trend shows that in spite of voter awareness programme the voting percentage has not increased substantially. The voter turnout was 61.16 per cent in the first general election and it increased to 63.73 per cent in 1957 and again decreased to 55.42 per cent in 1962. During last three elections of 2004, 2009 and 2014, the voter turnout has been 58.7, 58.21 and 66.40 per cent respectively. The voter turnout of 2014 election is all time high but on an average about 35 to 45 per cent of voters did not cast their vote between 1952 and 2014. The important concern has been the participation of women in governance as the trend shows women have been under represented in political parties and also governance. A report of the Election Commission of India on voter turnout shows that the female voter percentage is less than male voters. The under representation of women and inadequate participation has its ramifications over the social and political system which violates gender justice and dignity of women as equal partners of democracy and inclusive growth. It is also reported that during elections there has been violence and discrimination being practiced against the poor and marginalised sections and minorities who are being forced to vote against their free choice. The communal and casteist forces engineered violence before the poll to terrorize the voters. Usually women do not come out during poll violence. The participation of political parties and voters is important for strengthening democracy and an inclusive and transparent governance in a country like India with presence of huge diversity among voters based on caste, ethnicity, religious identities and socio-economic and educational status. In order to ensure representation of political parties in governance as per their vote share, Propositional Representation Electoral System has been proposed as an alternative for a long time. But the party list PR system needs State funding and a transparent inter-party democracy system in practice to give representation to all and to counter the hegemony of family rule, caste and religious biases and the direct influence of funding by corporates to political parties. Because, baring a few exceptions, a majority of the political parties are being funded by the corporates, particularly to fight elections, many deserving and well-meaning candidates are being silently pushed out of politics because of lack of resources to meet the election expenses. (manasbbsr15@gmail.com) Launching the Skill India Rozgar Mela, Union Home Minister Rajnath Singh said that this training was making youths self-reliant and opening doors of opportunity for them, which in turn would help in reviving grassroot economy. Singh inaugurated the Skill India Rozgar Mela at Jai Narain PG College at Charbagh here on Friday. The three-day Rozgar Mela has been organised by National Skill Development Corporation (NSDC) It provides a platform to the aspiring candidates to interact with potential employers and learn more about vocational training, employment and entrepreneurship opportunities available in various sectors, Singh said. Talking about the importance of skill development for youths, the Union Home Minister said: The government along with the NSDC is empowering youths with skill to make them self-reliant and confident. As Lucknow is my parliamentary constituency, I urge youths to come and participate in this Rozgar Mela and learn more about job prospects and entrepreneurship opportunities that would help them transform their lives towards a better tomorrow. This is a platform that will not only provide a glimpse into the potential employment opportunities but also connect aspirants to recruiters and training providers. Besides offering youths a chance to understand the dynamics of the industry of their interest and explore the employment possibilities, the Rozgar Mela would provide a network of corporates at one location, Singh said, adding that the successful candidates would be given employment offer at the venue itself. About 80 leading companies from diverse sectors are participating in the event, including Airtel, HDFC, KFC, Karvy Consultants among others. The Rozgar Mela will bring skilled candidates closer to realising their dreams by providing them an opportunity to reach out to recruiters, human resource (HR) managers, admission officers and advisory bodies/training providers, Singh said. Police arrested two dreaded criminals following an encounter near Kanamana village under the Chamakhandi police station in Ganjam district late on Thursday night. The arrestees were identified as Manoj Sahu of Polasara and Biswajit Barik alias Munna of Kaipadar village in Khordha district. Police seized two pistols, four live bullets, Rs 1.5 lakh cash and a car from their possession. Later, the duo who suffered bullet injuries in their legs was rushed to the MKCG Medical College Hospital. Sources said acting on a tipoff , the police intercepted Manoj and Biswajit near Kanamana village. Spotting the police, the two opened fire in a bid to escape from the spot. However, the cops retaliated and managed to overpower and nab the duo. Green Dot Corp. operates as a financial technology leader and bank holding company, which engages in the provision of modern banking and money movement accessible for all. It operates through the following segments: Account Services; Processing and Settlement Services; and Corporate and Other. The Account Services segment consists of revenues and expenses derived from deposit account programs, such as prepaid cards, debit cards, consumer and small business checking accounts, secured credit cards, payroll debit cards, and gift cards. The Processing and Settlement Services segment comprises of products and services that specialize in facilitating the movement of funds on behalf of consumers and businesses. The Corporate and Other segment represents eliminations of intersegment revenues and expenses, unallocated corporate expenses, depreciation and amortization, and other costs that are not considered when management evaluates segment performance. The company was founded by Steven W. Streit in October 1, 1999 and is headquartered in Pasadena, CA. Read More The main opposition New Democratic Party (NDP) has called for an urgent audit of the countrys diplomatic missions abroad, saying that, while the Ralph Gonsalves-led Unity Labor Party (ULP) administration has presented argument for belt-tightening to nationals, "it has not followed its own advice. Senator Kay Bacchus-Baptiste, a veteran Vincentian lawyer, charged at an NDP town hall meeting, at the Friends of Crown Heights Educational Center in Brooklyn, New York that the government has failed to minimize "the cost of operating what I would describe as St. Vincent and the Grenadines largest non-productive and low yielding bureaucratic investment outside of the country. "For years, we have been told how crucial it is to maintain diplomatic facilities abroad, said Bacchus-Baptiste, speaking on the same platform as NDP President and Opposition Leader Dr. Goodwin Friday, Vice President St. Clair "Major Leacock and opposition lawyer Israel Bruce. "However, when one looks at the astronomical cost of maintaining our missions and consulates, including how little we have benefited from their operations over the last 17 years, the inconvenient truth is exposed, she continued. "Not only are these foreign installations bankrupting our country but also their primary purpose may in fact be nothing more than a clever back-door opening that has allowed the ULP to award lucrative jobs and contracts to selected persons within the echelon or their political party, Bacchus-Baptiste said. She said the NDP believes that Vincentians are "truly concerned about where the bulk of the islands scarce resources are being spent. Bacchus-Baptiste said the cost of "official travel and subsistence expenses by government ministers and their entourages currently totals millions of dollars annually. She also said the cost of personal housing for ambassadors and other heads of St. Vincent and the Grenadines missions and consulates stand at "tens of thousands of dollars monthly. In addition, the opposition Member of Parliament said "the large salaries and personnel allowances that they receive, including chauffeur-driven cars, have seldom been a topic of discussion by government officials back home. "The long-standing decision of the Government of St. Vincent and the Grenadines to opt for prime real estate on which to house our missions and consulates remains a subject that the Government of St. Vincent and the Grenadines is unable to adequately justify as a poor and struggling nation, she said. "In this (these) very difficult economic times, in which we are living, and in which the average Vincentian can hardly put bread on their table, the NDP insists that St. Vincent and the Grenadines cannot continue to waste large sums of money on foreign missions and consulates, most of which, in terms of performance, have not produced economic benefit for the island, Bacchus-Baptiste added. She, therefore, said a way must be found "to restructure our entire operations abroad immediately and to usher in a modern system of diplomacy that produces trained diplomats, whose primary focus is not on attaching themselves to ULP interests only but who are capable of using their positions for attracting jobs to our shores and for operating our foreign facilities cost-effectively. The NDP senator said her party has "plans that will result in millions of dollars of savings, which can then be channeled back into the island for economic reconstruction. She said an NDP Government will "tap into the vast network of Vincentian students studying abroad in fields, such as international relations and international business and marketing, who are capable of being utilized in our missions and consulates on a voluntary or internship basis. Bacchus-Baptiste charged that the "ULPs failed missions abroad is compounded by nepotism, as cushy jobs are given to Ralph (Gonsalves), Jimmy Prince (Education Minister) and (former Education Minister) Girlyn Miguels daughter. "How bold face! Bacchus-Baptiste exclaimed. "Can the expense in vying for a seat on the United Nation Security Council justify cost? she asked. "Isnt this more for personal satisfaction of the prime minister? "Now, the high cost of operating the St. Vincent and the Grenadines embassies and consulates abroad, at a time when the country is in dire financial straits, must be taken seriously by the people of St. Vincent and the Grenadines, she continued. Bacchus-Baptiste said the ULP administration, "which has been entrusted with public resources, must be answerable to you the people for fiscal, as well as social responsibilities. "There must be transparency and accountability, she said. "Accountability is a fundamental of good governance, and transparency is the bedrock of democracy. The lawyer said no public accounts have been audited in St. Vincent and the Grenadines since 2012, stating that the 2012 accounts reports was only laid in Parliament in mid-2018. It is "unacceptable, Bacchus-Baptiste declared. Cantel Medical Corp. provides infection prevention and control products and services for the healthcare market. The company's Medical segment offers automated endoscope reprocessing systems; disinfectants and sterilants; detergents; leak testing and manual cleaning products; storage cabinets and transport systems; manual cleaning products; endoscope process tracking products; other consumables, accessories, and supplies for use in disinfect rigid endoscopes, flexible endoscopes, and other instrumentation; and technical maintenance services. Its Life Sciences segment provides dialysis water purification and bicarbonate mixing systems; hollow fiber filters, and other filtration and separation products; liquid disinfectants and cold sterilization products; dry fog products; room temperature sterilization equipment and services; and clean-room certification and decontamination services for the dialysis and other healthcare, research laboratories, food and beverage, and commercial industrial customers, as well as microbiological testing services. The company's Dental segment offers hand and powered dental instruments, instrument reprocessing and sterility assurance products, towels, bibs, tray liners, sponges, nitrous oxide/oxygen sedation equipment and related single-use disposable nasal masks, face masks, and shields. It also provides hand sanitizers, germicidal wipes, disinfectants, surface disinfectants, waterline treatment products, saliva ejectors, evacuator tips, plastic cups, prophy angles, and prophy paste. The company's Dialysis segment provides hemodialysis concentrates and other ancillary supplies; medical device reprocessing systems; and sterilants and disinfectants. The company sells its products through its direct distribution network in the United States; and directly or under various third-party distribution agreements internationally. Cantel Medical Corp. was founded in 1963 and is headquartered in Little Falls, New Jersey. Read More Banco Bilbao Vizcaya Argentaria SA engages in the traditional banking businesses of retail banking, asset management, private banking, and wholesale banking. It operates through the following segments: Spain, the United States, Mexico, Turkey, South America, and Rest of Eurasia. The Spain segment includes mainly the banking and insurance business that the group carries out in Spain. The United States segment consists of the financial business activity of BBVA USA in the country and the activity of the branch of BBVA SA in New York. The Mexico segment refers to banking and insurance businesses in this country as well as the activity of its branch in Houston. The Turkey segment reports the activity of Garanti BBVA group that is mainly carried out in this country and, to a lesser extent, in Romania and the Netherlands. The South America segment comprises of operations in n Argentina, Colombia, Peru, Uruguay, and Venezuela. The Rest of Eurasia segment includes the banking business activity carried out by the group in Europe and Asia, excluding Spain. The company was founded in 1857 and is headquartered in Madrid, Spain. Read More The following companies are subsidiares of Barclays: Adler Toy Holding Sarl, Aequor Investments Limited, Alymere Investments Limited, Alynore Investments Limited Partnership, Analog Analytics, Analog Analytics Inc, Analytical Trade Holdings LLC, Analytical Trade Investments LLC, Analytical Trade UK Limited, Archstone Equity Holdings Inc, Ardencroft Investments Limited, B D & B Investments Limited, B.P.B. (Holdings) Limited, BB Client Nominees Limited, BBAIL SAS, BCAP LLC, BIFML PTC Limited, BMBF (No.24) Limited, BMI (No.9) Limited, BNC Brazil Consultoria Empresarial Ltda, BNRI ENG 2013 Limited Partnership, BNRI ENG 2014 Limited Partnership, BNRI ENG GP LLP, BNRI England 2010 Limited Partnership, BNRI England 2011 Limited Partnership, BNRI England 2012 Limited Partnership, BNRI Limehouse No.1 Sarl, BNRI PIA Scot GP Limited, BNRI Scots GP LLP, BPB Holdings SA, BVP Galvani Global S.A.U., Barafor Limited, Barclay Leasing Limited, Barclaycard Funding PLC, Barclaycard International Payments Limited, Barclays (Barley) Limited, Barclays Aldersgate Investments Limited, Barclays Alzin Investments S.a r.l., Barclays Asia Limited, Barclays Asset Management Limited, Barclays BR Investments S.a r.l., Barclays BWA Inc., Barclays Bank (Suisse) S.A., Barclays Bank Delaware, Barclays Bank Ireland PLC, Barclays Bank Ireland Public Limited Company, Barclays Bank Mexico S.A., Barclays Bank PLC, Barclays Bank UK PLC, Barclays Bayard Investments S.a r.l., Barclays Bedivere Investments S.a r.l., Barclays Bordang Investments S.a r.l., Barclays Brasil Assessoria Financeira Ltda., Barclays CCP Funding LLC, Barclays Cantal Investments S.a r.l., Barclays Capital (Cayman) Limited, Barclays Capital Asia Holdings Limited, Barclays Capital Asia Limited, Barclays Capital Canada Inc., Barclays Capital Casa de Bolsa S.A. de C.V., Barclays Capital Derivatives Funding LLC, Barclays Capital Effekten GmbH, Barclays Capital Energy Inc., Barclays Capital Equities Trading GP, Barclays Capital Finance Limited, Barclays Capital Futures (Singapore) Private Limited, Barclays Capital Holdings (Singapore) Private Limited, Barclays Capital Holdings Inc., Barclays Capital Inc., Barclays Capital Japan Securities Holdings Limited, Barclays Capital Luxembourg S.a r.l., Barclays Capital Mauritius Limited, Barclays Capital Nominees (No.2) Limited, Barclays Capital Nominees (No.3) Limited, Barclays Capital Nominees Limited, Barclays Capital Principal Investments Limited, Barclays Capital Real Estate Finance Inc., Barclays Capital Real Estate Holdings Inc., Barclays Capital Real Estate Inc., Barclays Capital Securities Client Nominee Limited, Barclays Capital Securities Limited, Barclays Capital Securities Mauritius Limited, Barclays Capital Trading Luxembourg S.a r.l., Barclays Claudas Investments Partnership, Barclays Claudas Investments S.a r.l., Barclays Commercial Mortgage Securities LLC, Barclays Converted Investments (No.2) Limited, Barclays Corporation Limited, Barclays Direct Investing Nominees Limited, Barclays Directors Limited, Barclays Dryrock Funding LLC, Barclays Electronic Commerce Holdings Inc., Barclays Equity Holdings Limited, Barclays Equity Index Investments S.a r.l., Barclays Europe Client Nominees Designated Activity Company, Barclays Europe Firm Nominees Designated Activity Company, Barclays Europe Nominees Designated Activity Company, Barclays Executive Schemes Trustees Limited, Barclays Financial LLC, Barclays Financial Planning Nominee Company Limited, Barclays Funds Investments Limited, Barclays Funds and Advisory Japan Limited, Barclays Global Service Centre Private Limited, Barclays Global Shareplans Nominee Limited, Barclays Group Holdings Limited, Barclays Group Operations Limited, Barclays Group US Inc., Barclays Index Finance Trust, Barclays Industrial Development Limited, Barclays Industrial Investments Limited, Barclays Insurance Guernsey PCC Limited, Barclays Insurance Services Company Limited, Barclays Insurance U.S. Inc., Barclays International Luxembourg Dollar Holdings S.a r.l., Barclays Investment Management Limited, Barclays Investment Solutions Limited, Barclays Investments & Loans (India) Limited, Barclays Korea GP Limited, Barclays Lamorak Investments S.a r.l., Barclays Leasing (No.9) Limited, Barclays Leto Investments S.a r.l., Barclays Long Island Limited, Barclays Luxembourg EUR Holdings S.a r.l, Barclays Luxembourg Finance S.a r.l., Barclays Luxembourg GBP Holdings S.a r.l., Barclays Luxembourg Global Funding S.a r.l., Barclays Luxembourg Holdings S.a r.l., Barclays Luxembourg Holdings SSC B, Barclays Marlist Limited, Barclays Mauritius Overseas Holdings Limited, Barclays Mercantile Business Finance Limited, Barclays Merchant Bank (Singapore) Ltd., Barclays Nominees (George Yard) Limited, Barclays Nominees (Guernsey) Limited, Barclays Nominees (Jersey) Limited, Barclays Nominees (Manx) Limited, Barclays Oversight Management Inc., Barclays Payment Solutions Inc., Barclays Pelleas Investments Limited Partnership, Barclays Pelleas Investments S.a r.l., Barclays Pension Funds Trustees Limited, Barclays Principal Investments Limited, Barclays Private Asset Management (Monaco) S.A.M, Barclays Private Bank, Barclays Private Clients International Limited, Barclays Receivables LLC, Barclays SAMS Limited, Barclays Securities (India) Private Limited, Barclays Securities Japan Limited, Barclays Security Trustee Limited, Barclays Services (Japan) Limited, Barclays Services Corporation, Barclays Services Jersey Limited, Barclays Services LLC, Barclays Services Limited, Barclays Shea Limited, Barclays Singapore Global Shareplans Nominee Limited, Barclays Switzerland Services SA, Barclays Tenedora De Immuebles SL., Barclays Term Funding Limited Liability Partnership, Barclays UK Investments Limited, Barclays US CCP Funding LLC, Barclays US Funding LLC, Barclays US GPF Inc., Barclays US Investments Inc., Barclays US LLC, Barclays Unquoted Investments Limited, Barclays Unquoted Property Investments Limited, Barclays Wealth Management Jersey Limited, Barclays Wealth Nominees Limited, Barclays Wealth Services Limited, Barclays Wealth Trustees (India) Private Limited, Barclayshare Nominees Limited, Barclaytrust Channel Islands Limited, Barcosec Limited, Barsec Nominees Limited, Blossom Finance General Partnership, Branchcall Computers (Pvt) Limited, Braven Investments No.1 Limited, CP Flower Guaranteeco (UK) Limited, CP Newco 1 Limited, CP Newco2 Limited, CP Newco3 Limited, CP Propco 1 Limited, CP Propco 2 Limited, CP Topco Limited, CPIA Canada Holdings, CPIA England 2008 Limited Partnership, CPIA England 2009 Limited Partnership, CPIA England No.2 Limited Partnership, CPIA Investments No.1 Limited, CPIA Investments No.2 Limited, CRE Diversified Holdings LLC, CREW Tahoe Holdings LLC, CREW Tahoe LLC, Calthorpe Investments Limited, Capton Investments Limited, Carnegie Holdings Limited, Central Platte Valley Management LLC, Chapelcrest Investments Limited, Charles Schwab Europe, Claudas Investments Limited, Claudas Investments Two Limited, Clydesdale Financial Services Limited, Cobalt Investments Limited, Compania Regional del Sur S.A., Compania Sudamerica S.A., Condor No.1 Limited Partnership, Cornwall Homes Loans Limited, Crescent Crown Land Holding SPV LLC, Crescent Legacy LLC, Crescent Plaza Residential L.P., Crescent Plaza Residential LLC, Crescent Plaza Residential LP LLC, Crescent Real Estate Member LLC, Crescent Resort Development LLC, Crescent TRS Holdings LLC, Crescent Tower Residences GP LLC, Crescent Tower Residences L.P., Curve Investments GP, DBL Texas Holdings LLC, DMW Realty Limited, Desert Mountain Development LLC, Desert Mountain Properties Limited Partnership, Develop Training Group Limited, Dorset Home Loans Limited, Durlacher Nominees Limited, EWRD Summit LLC, Eagle Financial and Leasing Services (UK) Limited, East West Resort Development V L.P. L.L.L.P., East West Resort Development VII LLC, Equity Limited Partnership, Equity Value Investments No.1 Limited, Equity Value Investments No.2 Limited, Erimon Home Loans Ireland Limited, Expobank, FIRSTPLUS Financial Group Limited, Finpart Nominees Limited, First Assurance, Foltus Investments Limited, Full House Holdings Limited, Gallen Investments Limited, Global Dynasty Natural Resource Private, Globe Nominees Limited, Gracechurch Services Corporation, Grays Station LLC, Grupo Financiero Barclays Mexico S.A. de C.V., Hawkins Funding Limited, Heraldglen Limited, Holding Stuttgarter Strae GmbH, Hurley Investments No.1 Limited, Imalivest Mineral Resources LP, Investors In Infrastructure Limited, J.V. Estates Limited, JV Assets Limited, Kirsche Investments Limited, LTDL Holdings LLC, La Torretta Beverages LLC, La Torretta Hospitality LLC, La Torretta Operations LLC, Lagalla Investments LLC, Leonis Investments LLP, Liability Partnership, Long Island Assets Limited, Long Island Holding A LLC, Long Island Holding B Limited, MK Opportunities GP Ltd, MK Opportunities LP, MVWP Investors LLC, Maloney Investments Limited, Marbury Holdings LLC, Menlo Investments Limited, Mercantile Credit Company Limited, Mercantile Leasing Company (No.132) Limited, Meridian (SPV-AMC) Corporation, Mintaka Investments No. 4 Limited, Mira Vista Development LLC, Mira Vista Golf Club L.C., Mountainside Partners LLC, Murray House Investment Management Limited, Naxos Investments Limited, Nile Bank, North Colonnade Investments Limited, Northstar Mountain Properties LLC, Northstar Trailside Townhomes LLC, Northstar Village Townhomes LLC, Northwharf Investments Limited, Northwharf Nominees Limited, OGP Leasing Limited, Oakes Millers Ltd, Ownership Trustee Limited, PIA England No.2 Limited Partnership, Palomino Limited, Pecan Aggregator LP, Pelleas Investments Limited, Pelleas Investments Two Limited, Pippin Island Investments Limited, Preferred Liquidity LLC, Preferred Liquidity Limited Partnership, Procella Investments LLC, Procella Investments No.1 LLC, Procella Investments No.2 LLC, Procella Investments No.3 LLC, Protium Finance I LLC, Protium Master Grantor Trust, Protium Master Mortgage LP, Protium REO I LP, R.C. Grieg Nominees Limited, RVH Limited, RVT CLO Investments LLP, Razzoli Investments Limited, Real Estate Participation Management Limited, Real Estate Participation Services Limited, Relative Value Holdings LLC, Relative Value Investments UK Limited, Relative Value Trading Limited, Roder Investments No. 1 Limited, Roder Investments No. 2 Limited, Ruthenium Investments Limited, SPM GP Limited, Securitized Asset Backed Receivables LLC, Servicios Barclays S.A. de C.V., Societe Civile Immobiliere 31 Avenue de la Costa, Solution Personal Finance Limited, Southern Peaks Mining LP, Standard Life Aberdeen, Surety Trust Limited, Surrey Funding Corporation, Sussex Purchasing Corporation, Sutton Funding LLC, Swan Lane Investments Limited, TPLL LLC, TPProperty LLC, Tahoe Club Company LLC, Tahoe Club Employee Company, The Logic Group Enterprises Limited, The Logic Group Holdings Limited, Third Energy Holdings Limited, US Real Estate Holdings No. 2 Limited, US Real Estate Holdings No.1 Limited, US Real Estate Holdings No.3 Limited, US Secured Investments LLC, Union Center LLC, United Counties Bank, Verain Investments LLC, Walbrook Group Ltd, Wedd Jefferson (Nominees) Limited, Wessex Investments Limited, Westferry Investments Limited, Wilmington Riverfront Receivables LLC, Woolwich Homes Limited, Woolwich Plan Managers Limited, Woolwich Qualifying Employee Share, Woolwich Surveying Services Limited, Woori BC Pegasus Securitization Specialty Co. Limited, and Zeban Nominees Limited. The Boeing Co. is an aerospace company, which engages in the manufacture of commercial jetliners and defense, space and security systems. It operates through the following segments: Commercial Airplanes; Defense, Space and Security; Global Services; and Boeing Capital. The Commercial Airplanes segment includes the development, production, and market of commercial jet aircraft and provides fleet support services, principally to the commercial airline industry worldwide. The Defense, Space and Security segment refers to the research, development, production and modification of manned and unmanned military aircraft and weapons systems for global strike, including fighter and combat rotorcraft aircraft and missile systems; global mobility, including tanker, rotorcraft and tilt-rotor aircraft; and airborne surveillance and reconnaissance, including command and control, battle management and airborne anti-submarine aircraft. The Global Services segment provides services to commercial and defense customers. The Boeing Capital segment seeks to ensure that Boeing customers have the financing they need to buy and take delivery of their Boeing product and manages overall financing exposure. T Read More iShares Russell 2000 Growth ETF's stock was trading at $170.68 on March 11th, 2020 when Coronavirus (COVID-19) reached pandemic status according to the World Health Organization. Since then, IWO shares have increased by 84.6% and is now trading at $315.16. View which stocks have been most impacted by COVID-19. Hannover RAck SE, together with its subsidiaries, provides reinsurance products and services worldwide. It operates through Property & Casualty Reinsurance, and Life & Health Reinsurance segments. The Property & Casualty Reinsurance segment offers specialty lines comprising marine, aviation, facultative and direct business, credit, surety, and political risks reinsurance products; and treaty, catastrophe XL, and structured reinsurance, as well as insurance-linked securities. This segment also provides risk solutions for agricultural, livestock, and bloodstock businesses; aviation and space business; and marine and offshore energy business. The Life & Health Reinsurance segment offers group and individual credit life, enhanced annuities, group life and health, and Sharia-compliant Takaful reinsurance products. This segment also provides risk solutions in the areas of critical illness, disability, health, longevity, long term care, and mortality and morbidity, as well as underwriting services. In addition, it offers various financial solutions, including new-business financing; monetization of embedded value; reserve and solvency relief; and divestiture of non-core businesses. The company was formerly known as Hannover RAckversicherung AG and changed its name to Hannover RAck SE in March 2013. The company was founded in 1966 and is headquartered in Hanover, Germany. Hannover RAck SE is a subsidiary of Talanx AG. Read More Left:Colin John, Commissioner of Police (Ag) has denied that the police beat Ettian Charles. Right:Ettian Charles had fingered CoP Colin John as having beat him with a baton. There will be no investigation into the allegations made against Commissioner of Police (Ag) Colin John by suspended police officer Ettian Charles, who has been charged with a number of criminal acts. Prime Minister and Minister of National Security, Dr Ralph Gonsalves, told Parliament last Thursday that he was not aware if a formal criminal complaint had been made by Charles. He assured, however, that if one was done then it will be investigated and the findings presented to the Director of Public Prosecutions, who will then decide if there is sufficient evidence to make a case. "But there is nothing before me to suggest that there should be an investigation, he said in response to a question by Opposition Senator Marcia Barnwell. Charles, a Constable, was placed on suspension in July 2017 after being charged for burglary and corruption. More recently, he was arrested and charged for his involvement in the robbery of Reisha Twana Browne-Caesar, wife of Saboto Caesar at their home. While in custody on that charge, he was charged, along with three others, for the murder of security guard Rodney Georgeney George. Charles told the court after having his application for bail denied, that he had been beaten by the police and indicated that John had beaten him with a baton. He also told the court that John had beaten him the most, but the CoP (Ag) denied the allegations saying that he never saw anyone beat Charles, did not see him with an injury, and that no one complained that he had been beaten. Gonsalves said that he upholds the fundamental rights and freedoms of each individual, "but those who want to believe persons in those circumstances and not believe the Commissioner, believe in what you want but do not make it look like its the truth. The following companies are subsidiares of Ingersoll Rand: 211 E. Russell Road LLC, Air-Relief, Belliss & Morcom Brasil, Belliss and Morcom, Boardwalk Enterprises, Charm Merger Sub Inc., CompAir, CompAir (Hankook) Korea Co. Ltd., CompAir Acquisition (No. 2) Ltd., CompAir Acquisition Ltd., CompAir BroomWade Ltd., CompAir Canada, CompAir Finance Ltd., CompAir GmbH, CompAir Holdings Limited, CompAir Holman Ltd, CompAir International Trading (Shanghai) Co Ltd, CompAir Korea Ltd, CompAir South Africa (SA) (Pty) Ltd., CompAir UK Ltd, CompAir USA, Consolidated Distribution Holdings Ltd., DV Systems Inc., Emco Wheaton, Emco Wheaton GmbH Branch, Emco Wheaton Gmbh, Emco Wheaton UK, Emco Wheaton USA Inc, Enza Air Propriety Limited (South Africa), GD Aria Holdings #2 Limited, GD Aria Holdings Limited, GD Aria Investments Limited, GD First UK Ltd, GD German Holdings GmbH, GD German Holdings I Gmbh, GD German Holdings II GmbH, GD German Investments GmbH, GD Global Holdings, GD Global Holdings II, GD Global Holdings UK II Ltd., GD Global Ventures I B.V., GD Global Ventures II B.V., GD Global Ventures III B.V., GD Industrial Products Malaysia SDN. BHD., GD Investment KY, GD UK Finance Ltd., Gardner Denver (Thailand) Co. Ltd., Gardner Denver Austria GmbH, Gardner Denver Bad Neustadt Real Estate GmbH & Co KG, Gardner Denver Belgium NV, Gardner Denver Brasil Industria E Comercio de Maquinas Ltda., Gardner Denver CZ + SK sro, Gardner Denver Canada Corp, Gardner Denver Cyprus Investments II Ltd., Gardner Denver Cyprus Investments II Ltd. - US Branch, Gardner Denver Cyprus Investments Ltd., Gardner Denver Cyprus Investments Ltd. - US Branch, Gardner Denver Deutschland GmbH, Gardner Denver Engineered Products India Private Limited, Gardner Denver FZE, Gardner Denver Finance II LLC, Gardner Denver Finance Inc & Co KG, Gardner Denver France SA, Gardner Denver France SAS, Gardner Denver Group Services Ltd, Gardner Denver Group Svcs Ltd, Gardner Denver Hoffman, Gardner Denver Holdings, Gardner Denver Holdings Limited, Gardner Denver Hong Kong Investments Limited, Gardner Denver Hong Kong Ltd, Gardner Denver Iberica, Gardner Denver Industries Ltd., Gardner Denver Industries Pty Ltd., Gardner Denver Industries Pty Ltd. Branch, Gardner Denver International, Gardner Denver International Ltd., Gardner Denver Intl Ltd Middle East Regional Rep Office, Gardner Denver Investments, Gardner Denver Italy Holdings S.r.L., Gardner Denver Japan, Gardner Denver Kirchhain Real Estate GmbH & Co KG, Gardner Denver Korea, Gardner Denver Korea Ltd, Gardner Denver Ltd, Gardner Denver Ltd South Africa, Gardner Denver Ltd., Gardner Denver Ltd. Branch (Ireland), Gardner Denver Machinery (Shanghai) Co, Gardner Denver Machinery (Shanghai) Co., Gardner Denver Nash Brasil Industria E Comercio De Bombas Ltda, Gardner Denver Nash Deutschland GmbH, Gardner Denver Nash LLC, Gardner Denver Nash Machinery Ltd, Gardner Denver Nash Machinery Ltd., Gardner Denver Nederland BV, Gardner Denver Nederland Investments B.V., Gardner Denver Oberdorfer Pumps, Gardner Denver Oy, Gardner Denver Petroleum Pumps, Gardner Denver Polska Sp z.o.o., Gardner Denver Pte Ltd., Gardner Denver S.r.l., Gardner Denver Schopfheim GmbH, Gardner Denver Schopfheim Real Estate GmbH & Co KG, Gardner Denver Schweiz AG, Gardner Denver Slovakia, Gardner Denver SudAmerica S.r.l., Gardner Denver Sweden AB, Gardner Denver Taiwan Ltd., Gardner Denver Thomas, Gardner Denver Thomas GmbH, Gardner Denver Thomas Pneumatic Systems (Wuxi) Co., Gardner Denver Thomas Real Estate GmbH & Co KG, Gardner Denver UK, Gardner Denver Water Jetting Systems, Garo Dott. Ing. Roberto Gabbioneta S.r.l., Hamworthy Belliss & Morcom, ILMVAC (UK) Ltd., ILS Innovative Labor Systeme, ILS Inovative Laborsysteme GmbH, Indonesia Foreign Trade Representative Office, LeROI, LeRoi International Inc, MP Pumps Inc., Mako Compressors, Nash, Nash Elmo, Oina VV, Oina VV Aktiebolag, Robuschi, Rotary Compression Technologies, Runtech Systems, Runtech Systems (Shanghai) Co. Ltd., Runtech Systems Inc., Runtech Systems OY, Shanghai CompAir Compressors Co Ltd, Shanghai Compressors & Blowers Ltd., Syltone, TCM Investments, TIWR Real Estate GmbH & Co. KG, TODO AB, Tamrotor Marine Compressors AS, Thomas Industries, Thomas Industries Inc., Tri-Continent Scientific, Welch Vacuum Equipment (Shanghai) Co. Ltd., Zinsser Analytic, Zinsser Analytik GmbH, and Zinsser NA. Nevsun Resources Ltd. engages in the mining and development of mineral properties in Europe, Africa, and North America. It explores for gold, copper, zinc, and silver deposits. The company's principal assets include Timok project, a copper-gold development project in Serbia; and Bisha copper- zinc mine in Eritrea. It also holds exploration licenses and permits in Serbia and Macedonia, as well as in the Bisha mining district. The company was incorporated in 1965 and is headquartered in Vancouver, Canada. As of January 7, 2019, Nevsun Resources Ltd. operates as a subsidiary of Zijin Mining Group Company Limited. Read More Nuveen Tax-Advantaged Total Return Strategy Fund is a closed-ended balanced mutual fund launched by Nuveen Investments, Inc. The fund is co-managed by Nuveen Fund Advisors, LLC, NWQ Investment Management Company, LLC, and Symphony Asset Management LLC. It invests in the public equity and fixed income markets of the United States. The fund seeks to invest in securities of companies operating across diversified sectors. It primarily invests in dividend paying value stocks of companies that pay dividends which may be eligible for favorable federal income taxation, as well as in secured and unsecured senior loans, corporate bonds, notes and debentures, convertible debt securities, and other similar types of corporate instruments, including high-yield debt securities. The fund employs fundamental analysis with a bottom-up security selection approach, focusing on factors like balance sheet and cash flow statements to create its portfolio. It benchmarks the performance of its portfolio against the S&P 500 Index and a blended benchmark comprised of 56% Russell 3000 Value Index, 16% MSCI EAFE ex-Japan Value Index, 8% Merrill Lynch DRD (dividends received deduction) Preferred Index, and 20% CSFB Leveraged Loan Index. Nuveen Tax-Advantaged Total Return Strategy Fund was formed on January 27, 2004 and is domiciled in the United States. Read More Phoenix Group Holdings plc engages in the long-term savings and retirement busines in Europe. The company operates through UK Heritage, UK Open, Europe, ReAssure, and Management Services segments. It engages in the management of insurance policies, which include active and closed life insurance products. The company also provides workplace pensions, and customer savings and investments products under the Standard Life brand. Its retirement solutions business includes vesting annuities and bulk purchase annuity business, where it acquires annuities and deliver the financial stability for secure pensions. The company also offers a range of financial products for the over 50s market under the SunLife brand, which cover life cover, equity release, funeral plans, and home insurance. Phoenix Group Holdings plc has a strategic partnership with Standard Life Aberdeen plc. The company was formerly known as Pearl Group and changed its name to Phoenix Group Holdings plc in March 2010. Phoenix Group Holdings plc was founded in 1782 and is based in London, the United Kingdom. Read More 2 hours ago Ready to Retire? 3 Simple Financial Signs for Anyone (at Any Age!) In 2016, the average retirement age in the United States was 65 for men and 63 for women, according to Annuity.org, despite the designation of 67 as the "official retirement age" (for those born after Read Article Two teenaged boys, including a student, shocked the Kingstown Magistrates Court last Tuesday when they pleaded guilty to burglarising the Georgetown Police Station. They will know their fate on Monday. Kevin Stapleton, 16-year-old fourth former of Bishops College Kingstown, and Shemor James, 17, unemployed, both of Georgetown, admitted they entered the Georgetown Police Station last Monday as trespassers, and stole two motorcycles and a bicycle from the exhibit room, at a total value of $2,900. Prosecutor Curlene Samuel told the Court that around 2 a.m. on the date in question, a police officer on duty at the station as an orderly, made checks and ensured everything was intact. The officer made another check around 5:45 a.m., and discovered that the lock on the door of the exhibit room was damaged and the items in question missing. An official report was made, the police carried out investigations, and the items were recovered in possession of the defendants. The visibly shocked Senior Magistrate, Rickie Burnett, recalled that James was recently convicted for burglarizing the same police station. "Something has to be wrong for the 17-year-old boy to be burglarizing the police station as if he owns the station, the Magistrate remarked, and questioned, "Where are the policemen and women when this is happening? Burnett described the situation as embarrassing. "I have never seen this in my life. In any part of the world, this is embarrassing, the Magistrate lamented. "When you broke into the police station, where were the police? he asked James, who replied, "I dont know. Prosecutor Samuel told the Court that the 16-year-old is living with the nuns at Georgetown. "So already you cant live with your mother, Burnett told the student, and expressed the view that when the nuns think the boy is inside, he is not. "It takes a special mind to break a police station, the Magistrate opined. Responding to questions from the Magistrate, Stapleton said, "I went by the station and slide up the window. I carry out a motor bike first then come back for the other motor bike. When Burnett asked him if he looked out for the police, in carrying out the act, he said, "No. James said, "Me and he go down by de police station. Me been right by the door. He push de window. De window look like e been break all ting. He went in de room, me push one de bike and he push one. James had received a one-year suspended sentence July 15 this year for burglarizing the same police station. "The whole world is going to know how slack the Georgetown Police Station is. This is shocking. The guys were not even looking for the police, Burnett said. When asked for his input, Senior Prosecutor Adolphus Delpleche told the Magistrate that to penetrate the security of a police station is a very serious thing. But while the prosecutor is aware of the seriousness of the crime for which both individuals should be punished, he expressed concern that sending the student to jail would bring his schooling to an end and change him forever. Stressing that the issue was complex, Delpleche recommended that the Magistrate reserve sentencing so as to consider what is best for the student, weighing that with what is best for the crime. Burnett agreed and adjourned the matter to Monday, October 29. He indicated that he wanted the Principal of the Bishops College Kingstown, to be present at the sentencing. Meanwhile, the boys will remain in custody. The following companies are subsidiares of Teledyne Technologies: Alia Corporation Inc, Bolt Technology Corp, Bowtech Products, CARIS, CDL do Brasil Equipamentos e Servicos Submarinos Sociedade Empresaria Ltda., CETAC Technologies, DALSA, Demo Systems, Detcon Holdco Inc., Ensambles de Precision S.A. de C.V., Falcon Analytical, Frontline Test Equipment, GMI Group Holdings Limited, Hafmynd ehf, Hanson Research Corp, IST Oldham Instruments India Private Limited, Industrial Control Machines, Intelek, Intelek Limited, Intelek Pension Trustees Limited, Intelek Properties Limited, LeCroy (Beijing) Trading Co. Ltd., LeCroy Corporation, Lidar Aviation Services Inc., Maple Imaging LLC, Micralyne Inc, Ocean Design Ltda., Oldham Instrument (Shanghai) Co. Ltd., Oldham Simtronics SAS, Oldham-Winter GmbH, PDM Neptec, Reynolds Industries Limited, Rhombi Canada LP, Rhombi Holdings Limited, Rhombi Netherlands B.V., Rockwell Scientific Company, Simtronics AS, TDY Jersey Limited, Teledyne Advanced Pollution Instrumentation, Teledyne Australia Pty Ltd, Teledyne BlueView, Teledyne Bogatin Enterprises LLC, Teledyne Bowtech Limited, Teledyne Brown Engineering Inc., Teledyne C.M.L. Group Limited, Teledyne CARIS B.V., Teledyne CARIS Inc., Teledyne CARIS UK Ltd., Teledyne CARIS USA Inc., Teledyne CDL Inc., Teledyne CDL Limited, Teledyne Catalyst Enterprises Inc., Teledyne Computer Access Technology Corporation, Teledyne Controls LLC, Teledyne Cougar, Teledyne Czech s.r.o., Teledyne DALSA (Shanghai) Trading Co. Ltd., Teledyne DALSA Asia-Pacific Ltd., Teledyne DALSA B.V., Teledyne DALSA GmbH, Teledyne DALSA Inc., Teledyne DALSA Industrial Products Inc., Teledyne DALSA K.K., Teledyne DALSA Semiconductor Inc., Teledyne Dalsa, Teledyne Defense Electronics LLC, Teledyne Denmark A/S, Teledyne Detcon Inc., Teledyne Digital Imaging Inc., Teledyne Digital Imaging US Inc., Teledyne Energy Systems Inc., Teledyne Europe Holdings C.V., Teledyne France, Teledyne France SAS, Teledyne Gas Measurement Instruments Limited, Teledyne Gavia ehf., Teledyne Germany GmbH, Teledyne Hanson Research Inc., Teledyne ICM SA, Teledyne ICM SPRL, Teledyne Innovaciones Microelectronics S.L.U., Teledyne Instruments Inc., Teledyne Instruments Malaysia Sdn. Bhd., Teledyne Japan Corporation, Teledyne Korea Ltd., Teledyne Labtech Limited, Teledyne LeCroy AB, Teledyne LeCroy Delaware LLC, Teledyne LeCroy GmbH, Teledyne LeCroy Inc., Teledyne LeCroy India Trading Private Ltd., Teledyne LeCroy Japan Corporation, Teledyne LeCroy Korea Ltd., Teledyne LeCroy OakGate Inc., Teledyne LeCroy S.A.R.L., Teledyne LeCroy S.R.L., Teledyne LeCroy SA, Teledyne LeCroy Singapore Pte. Ltd., Teledyne Limited, Teledyne Micralyne Inc., Teledyne Monitor Labs, Teledyne Monitor Labs P.R. Inc., Teledyne Netherlands B.V., Teledyne ODI, Teledyne Optech Inc., Teledyne Paradise Datacom Limited, Teledyne RD Instruments, Teledyne RD Technologies (Shanghai) Co. Ltd., Teledyne RESON, Teledyne RESON A/S, Teledyne RESON B.V., Teledyne RESON GmbH, Teledyne RESON Holding B.V., Teledyne RESON Inc., Teledyne RESON Pte. Ltd., Teledyne RESON UK Limited, Teledyne RISI Inc., Teledyne Rad-icon Imaging Corp., Teledyne Redlake MASD LLC, Teledyne Reynolds Inc., Teledyne SG Brown Limited, Teledyne Scientific & Imaging LLC, Teledyne Scientific Imaging GmbH, Teledyne Scientific Imaging Limited, Teledyne Signal Processing Devices Sweden AB, Teledyne Singapore Private Limited, Teledyne TSS Limited, Teledyne Taiwan Company, Teledyne Technologies (Bermuda) Limited, Teledyne Technologies (Shanghai) Co. Ltd., Teledyne Technologies International Corp., Teledyne Technologies Israel Ltd., Teledyne Tekmar Company, Teledyne UK Limited, Teledyne VariSystems, Teledyne VariSystems Inc., Teledyne Wireless LLC, Teledyne e2v, Teledyne e2v (Beijing) Co. Ltd., Teledyne e2v (Overseas) Holdings Limited, Teledyne e2v Asia Pacific Limited, Teledyne e2v Limited, Teledyne e2v Semiconductors SAS, and The Oceanscience Group Ltd.. MAXIMUS, Inc. engages in the operation of government and human services programs. It operates through the following segments: U.S. Services; U.S. Federal Services; and Outside the U.S. The U.S. Services segment offers a variety of business process services, and appeals and assessments for state, provincial and national government programs. The U.S. Federal Services segment includes process solutions, program management, as well as system and software development, and maintenance services for various United States federal civilian programs. The Outside the U.S segment comprises of national, state, and county human services agencies with a variety of business process services, and related consulting services for welfare-to-work, child support, higher education institutions, and other human services programs. The company was founded by David V. Mastran in 1975 and is headquartered in Reston, VA. Read More The following companies are subsidiares of Banco Santander: 2 & 3 Triton Limited, A & L CF (Guernsey) Limited (f), A & L CF June (2) Limited, A & L CF June (3) Limited, A & L CF March (5) Limited, A & L CF September (4) Limited, AFB SAM Holdings S.L., ALIL Services Limited (b), AN (123) Limited, ANITCO Limited, Abbey Business Services (India) Private Limited, Abbey Covered Bonds (LM) Limited, Abbey National, Abbey National Beta Investments Limited, Abbey National Business Office Equipment Leasing Limited, Abbey National International Limited, Abbey National Nominees Limited, Abbey National PLP (UK) Limited, Abbey National Property Investments, Abbey National Treasury Services Investments Limited, Abbey National Treasury Services Overseas Holdings, Abbey National UK Investments, Abbey Stockbrokers (Nominees) Limited, Abbey Stockbrokers Limited, Ablasa Participaciones S.L., Administracion de Bancos Latinoamericanos Santander S.L., Aduro S.A., Aevis Europa S.L., Afisa S.A., Albert., Aljardi SGPS Lda., Alliance & Leicester, Alliance & Leicester Cash Solutions Limited, Alliance & Leicester Commercial Bank Limited, Alliance & Leicester Investments (Derivatives) Limited, Alliance & Leicester Investments (No.2) Limited, Alliance & Leicester Investments Limited, Alliance & Leicester Limited, Alliance & Leicester Personal Finance Limited, Altamira Santander Real Estate S.A., Alternative Leasing FIL, Amazonia Trade Limited, Amherst Pierpont, Andaluza de Inversiones S.A., Aquanima Brasil Ltda., Aquanima Chile S.A., Aquanima Mexico S. de R.L. de C.V., Aquanima S.A., Arcaz - Sociedade Imobiliaria Portuguesa Lda., Argenline S.A. (b), Asto Digital Limited, Athena Corporation Limited, Atual - Fundo de Invest Multimercado Credito Privado Investimento no Exterior, Atual Servicos de Recuperacao de Creditos e Meios Digitais S.A., Autodescuento S.L., Autohaus24 GmbH, Auttar HUT Processamento de Dados Ltda., Aviacion Antares A.I.E., Aviacion Britanica A.I.E., Aviacion Centaurus A.I.E., Aviacion Comillas S.L. Unipersonal, Aviacion Intercontinental A.I.E., Aviacion Laredo S.L., Aviacion Oyambre S.L. Unipersonal, Aviacion Real A.I.E., Aviacion Santillana S.L., Aviacion Suances S.L., Aviacion Triton A.I.E., Aymore Credito Financiamento e Investimento S.A., BEN Beneficios e Servicos S.A., BRS Investments S.A., BZW Bank, Banca PSA Italia S.p.A., Banco Bandepe S.A., Banco Madesant - Sociedade Unipessoal S.A., Banco PSA Finance Brasil S.A., Banco Popular, Banco Santander (Brasil) S.A., Banco Santander (Mexico) S.A. Institucion de Banca Multiple Grupo Financiero Santander Mexico como Fiduciaria del Fideicomiso 100740, Banco Santander (Mexico) S.A. Institucion de Banca Multiple Grupo Financiero Santander Mexico como Fiduciaria del Fideicomiso 2002114, Banco Santander (Mexico) S.A. Institucion de Banca Multiple Grupo Financiero Santander Mexico como Fiduciaria del Fideicomiso GFSSLPT, Banco Santander - Chile, Banco Santander Consumer Portugal S.A., Banco Santander International, Banco Santander International SA, Banco Santander Mexico S.A. Institucion de Banca Multiple Grupo Financiero Santander Mexico, Banco Santander Peru S.A., Banco Santander Rio S.A., Banco Santander S.A., Banco Santander Totta S.A., Banco Santander de Negocios Colombia S.A., Banco de Albacete S.A., Bansa Santander S.A., CCAP Auto Lease Ltd., Canyon Multifamily Impact Fund IV LLC, Capital Street Delaware LP, Capital Street Holdings LLC, Capital Street REIT Holdings LLC, Capital Street S.A., Carfax (Guernsey) Limited (f), Carfinco Financial Group, Carfinco Financial Group Inc., Carfinco Inc., Casa de Bolsa Santander S.A. de C.V. Grupo Financiero Santander Mexico, Cater Allen Holdings Limited, Cater Allen International Limited, Cater Allen Limited, Cater Allen Lloyd's Holdings Limited, Cater Allen Syndicate Management Limited, Centro de Capacitacion Santander A.C., Certidesa S.L., Chrysler Capital Auto Funding I LLC, Chrysler Capital Auto Funding II LLC, Chrysler Capital Auto Receivables LLC, Chrysler Capital Master Auto Receivables Funding 2 LLC, Chrysler Capital Master Auto Receivables Funding 4 LLC, Chrysler Capital Master Auto Receivables Funding LLC, Cobranza Amigable S.A.P.I. de C.V., Community Development and Affordable Housing Fund LLC (g), Compagnie Generale de Credit Aux Particuliers - Credipar S.A., Compagnie Pour la Location de Vehicules - CLV, Comunidad Laboral Trabajando Argentina S.A., Comunidad Laboral Trabajando Iberica S.L. Unipersonal en liquidacion (b), Consulteam Consultores de Gestao Lda., Consumer Lending Receivables LLC, Crawfall S.A. (b), Cantabra de Inversiones S.A., Cantabro Catalana de Inversiones S.A., Darep Designated Activity Company, Decarome S.A.P.I. de C.V., Deva Capital Advisory Company S.L., Deva Capital Holding Company S.L., Deva Capital Investment Company S.L., Deva Capital Management Company S.L., Deva Capital Servicer Company S.L., Digital Procurement Holdings N.V., Diners Club Spain S.A., Direccion Estratega S.C., Dirgenfin S.L. en liquidacion (b), Ebury, El Corte Ingles, Elavon Mexico, Electrolyser S.A. de C.V., Entidad de Desarrollo a la Pequena y Micro Empresa Santander Consumo Peru S.A., Erestone S.A.S., Esfera Fidelidade S.A., Evidence Previdencia S.A., Financeira El Corte Ingles Portugal S.F.C. S.A., Financiera El Corte Ingles E.F.C. S.A., Finsantusa S.L. Unipersonal, First National Motor Business Limited, First National Motor Contracts Limited, First National Motor Facilities Limited, First National Motor Finance Limited, First National Motor Leasing Limited, First National Motor plc, First National Tricity Finance Limited, Fondos Santander S.A. Administradora de Fondos de Inversion (en liquidacion) (b), Fortensky Trading Ltd., Fosse Funding (No.1) Limited, Fosse Master Issuer plc, Fosse Trustee (UK) Limited, GTS El Centro Equity Holdings LLC, GTS El Centro Project Holdings LLC, Gamma Sociedade Financeira de Titularizacao de Creditos S.A., Gesban Mexico Servicios Administrativos Globales S.A. de C.V., Gesban Santander Servicios Profesionales Contables Limitada, Gesban Servicios Administrativos Globales S.L., Gesban UK Limited, Gestion de Instalaciones Fotovoltaicas S.L. Unipersonal, Gestion de Inversiones JILT S.A., Gestora de Procesos S.A. en liquidacion (b), Getnet Adquirencia e Servicos para Meios de Pagamento S.A., Global Vosgos S.L. Unipersonal, Grupo Empresarial Santander S.L., Grupo Financiero Santander Mexico S.A. de C.V., Grupo Financiero Santander SAB de CV, Guaranty Car S.A. Unipersonal, HQ Mobile Limited, Hispamer Renting S.A. Unipersonal, Holbah II Limited, Holbah Santander S.L. Unipersonal, Holmes Funding Limited, Holmes Master Issuer plc, Holmes Trustees Limited, Hyundai Capital Bank Europe GmbH, Iberica de Compras Corporativas S.L., Independence Community Bank Corp., Insurance Funding Solutions Limited, Interfinance Holanda B.V., Inversiones Capital Global S.A. Unipersonal, Inversiones Maritimas del Mediterraneo S.A., Isla de los Buques S.A., Klare Corredora de Seguros S.A., Landcompany 2020 S.L., Langton Funding (No.1) Limited, Langton Mortgages Trustee (UK) Limited, Langton Securities (2008-1) plc, Langton Securities (2010-1) PLC, Langton Securities (2010-2) PLC, Laparanza S.A., Liquidity Limited, Luri 1 S.A. en liquidacion (b) (e), Luri 6 S.A. Unipersonal, Master Red Europa S.L., Mata Alta S.L., Merciver S.L., Mercury TFS, Mercury Trade Finance Solutions S.A. de C.V., Mercury Trade Finance Solutions S.L., Mercury Trade Finance Solutions S.p.A., Moneybit S.L., Mortgage Engine Limited, Motor 2016-1 PLC, Motor 2017-1 PLC, Mouro Capital I LP, Multiplica SpA, NW Services CO., Naviera Mirambel S.L., Naviera Trans Gas A.I.E., Naviera Trans Iron S.L., Naviera Trans Ore A.I.E., Naviera Trans Wind S.L. (b), Naviera Transcantabrica S.L., Naviera Transchem S.L. Unipersonal, NeoAuto S.A.C., Norbest AS, Novimovest Fundo de Investimento Imobiliario, Open Bank Argentina S.A., Open Bank S.A., Open Digital Market S.L., Open Digital Services S.L., Operadora de Carteras Gamma S.A.P.I. de C.V., Optimal Investment Services SA, Optimal Multiadvisors Ireland Plc / Optimal Strategic US Equity Ireland Euro Fund, Optimal Multiadvisors Ireland Plc / Optimal Strategic US Equity Ireland US Dollar Fund, PBE Companies LLC, PECOH Limited, PI Distribuidora de Titulos e Valores Mobiliarios S.A., PSA Bank Deutschland GmbH, PSA Banque France, PSA Finance UK Limited, PSA Financial Services Nederland B.V., PSA Financial Services Spain E.F.C. S.A., PSA Renting Italia S.p.A., PagoFX Europe S.A., PagoFX HoldCo S.L., PagoFX UK Ltd, PagoNxt Merchant Solutions S.L., PagoNxt S.L., Parasant SA, Patagon.com, Pereda Gestion S.A., Pingham International S.A., Popular Spain Holding de Inversiones S.L.U., Portal Universia Argentina S.A., Portal Universia Portugal Prestacao de Servicos de Informatica S.A., Prime 16 Fundo de Investimentos Imobiliario, Punta Lima LLC, Punta Lima Wind Farm LLC, Retop S.A., Return Capital Servicos de Recuperacao de Creditos S.A., Return Gestao de Recursos S.A., Riobank International (Uruguay) SAIFE (b), Rojo Entretenimento S.A., SAM Asset Management S.A. de C.V. Sociedad Operadora de Fondos de Inversion, SAM Investment Holdings S.L., SAM UK Investment Holdings Limited (b), SANB Promotora de Vendas e Cobranca Ltda., SCF Eastside Locks GP Limited, SDMX Superdigital S.A. de C.V., SMPS Merchant Platform Solutions Mexico S.A de C.V, Sancap Investimentos e Participacoes S.A., Santander (CF Trustee Property Nominee) Limited, Santander (UK) Group Pension Schemes Trustees Limited, Santander Ahorro Inmobiliario 1 S.A., Santander Ahorro Inmobiliario 2 S.A., Santander Alternatives SICAV RAIF, Santander Asesorias Financieras Limitada, Santander Asset Finance (December) Limited, Santander Asset Finance plc, Santander Asset Management - S.G.O.I.C. S.A., Santander Asset Management Chile S.A., Santander Asset Management LLC, Santander Asset Management Luxembourg S.A., Santander Asset Management S.A. Administradora General de Fondos, Santander Asset Management S.A. S.G.I.I.C., Santander Asset Management UK Holdings Limited, Santander Asset Management UK Limited, Santander Back-Offices Globales Mayoristas S.A., Santander Banca de Inversion Colombia S.A.S., Santander Bank & Trust Ltd., Santander Bank National Association, Santander Bank Polska S.A., Santander Brasil Administradora de Consorcio Ltda., Santander Brasil Gestao de Recursos Ltda., Santander Brasil Tecnologia S.A., Santander Capital Desarrollo SGEIC S.A. Unipersonal, Santander Capital Structuring S.A. de C.V., Santander Capitalizacao S.A., Santander Cards Ireland Limited, Santander Cards Limited, Santander Cards UK Limited, Santander Chile Holding S.A., Santander Consulting (Beijing) Co. Ltd., Santander Consumer (UK) plc, Santander Consumer Auto Receivables Funding 2013-B2 LLC, Santander Consumer Auto Receivables Funding 2013-B3 LLC, Santander Consumer Auto Receivables Funding 2018-L1 LLC, Santander Consumer Auto Receivables Funding 2018-L3 LLC, Santander Consumer Auto Receivables Funding 2018-L4 LLC, Santander Consumer Auto Receivables Funding 2018-L5 LLC, Santander Consumer Auto Receivables Funding 2019-B1 LLC, Santander Consumer Auto Receivables Funding 2019-L2 LLC, Santander Consumer Auto Receivables Funding 2019-L3 LLC, Santander Consumer Auto Receivables Funding 2020-B1 LLC, Santander Consumer Auto Receivables Funding 2020-L1 LLC, Santander Consumer Auto Receivables Funding 2020-L2 LLC, Santander Consumer Bank, Santander Consumer Bank AG, Santander Consumer Bank GmbH, Santander Consumer Bank S.A., Santander Consumer Bank S.p.A., Santander Consumer Banque S.A., Santander Consumer Credit Services Limited, Santander Consumer Finance Benelux B.V., Santander Consumer Finance Global Services S.L., Santander Consumer Finance Oy, Santander Consumer Finance S.A., Santander Consumer Finance Schweiz AG, Santander Consumer Financial Solutions Sp. z o.o., Santander Consumer Finanse Sp. z o.o. (b), Santander Consumer Holding Austria GmbH, Santander Consumer Holding GmbH, Santander Consumer International Puerto Rico LLC, Santander Consumer Leasing GmbH, Santander Consumer Mediacion Operador de Banca-Seguros Vinculado S.L., Santander Consumer Multirent Sp. z o.o., Santander Consumer Operations Services GmbH, Santander Consumer Receivables 10 LLC, Santander Consumer Receivables 11 LLC, Santander Consumer Receivables 3 LLC, Santander Consumer Receivables 7 LLC, Santander Consumer Receivables Funding LLC, Santander Consumer Renting S.L., Santander Consumer S.A., Santander Consumer S.A.S., Santander Consumer Services GmbH, Santander Consumer Services S.A., Santander Consumer Technology Services GmbH, Santander Consumer USA Holdings Inc., Santander Consumer USA Inc., Santander Consumo S.A. de C.V. S.O.F.O.M. E.R. Grupo Financiero Santander Mexico, Santander Corredora de Seguros Limitada, Santander Corredores de Bolsa Limitada, Santander Corretora de Cambio e Valores Mobiliarios S.A., Santander Corretora de Seguros Investimentos e Servicos S.A., Santander Customer Voice S.A., Santander Digital Assets S.L., Santander Drive Auto Receivables LLC, Santander Equity Investments Limited, Santander Espana Merchant Services Entidad de Pago S.L. Unipersonal, Santander Espana Servicios Legales y de Cumplimiento S.L., Santander Estates Limited, Santander F24 S.A., Santander Facility Management Espana S.L., Santander Factoring S.A., Santander Factoring Sp. z o.o., Santander Factoring y Confirming S.A. E.F.C., Santander Finance 2012-1 LLC, Santander Financial Exchanges Limited, Santander Financial Services Inc., Santander Financial Services plc, Santander Finanse Sp. z o.o., Santander Fintech Holdings S.L., Santander Fintech Limited, Santander Fundo de Investimento SBAC Referenciado di Credito Privado, Santander Gestion de Recaudacion y Cobranzas Ltda., Santander Global Consumer Finance Limited, Santander Global Facilities S.A. de C.V., Santander Global Facilities S.L., Santander Global Operations S.A., Santander Global Services S.A. (b), Santander Global Sport S.A., Santander Global Technology Brasil Ltda., Santander Global Technology Chile Limitada, Santander Global Technology S.L., Santander Global Trade Platform Solutions S.L., Santander Guarantee Company, Santander Holding Imobiliaria S.A., Santander Holding Internacional S.A., Santander Holdings USA Inc., Santander ISA Managers Limited, Santander Inclusion Financiera S.A. de C.V. S.O.F.O.M. E.R. Grupo Financiero Santander Mexico, Santander Insurance Agency U.S. LLC, Santander Insurance Services UK Limited, Santander Intermediacion Correduria de Seguros S.A., Santander International Products Plc. (d), Santander Inversiones S.A., Santander Investment Bank Limited, Santander Investment Chile Limitada, Santander Investment I S.A., Santander Investment S.A., Santander Investment Securities Inc., Santander Investments GP 1 S.a.r.l., Santander Inwestycje Sp. z o.o., Santander Lease S.A. E.F.C., Santander Leasing LLC, Santander Leasing S.A., Santander Leasing S.A. Arrendamento Mercantil, Santander Lending Limited, Santander Mediacion Operador de Banca-Seguros Vinculado S.A., Santander Merchant Platform Operations S.A. de C.V., Santander Merchant Platform Services S.A. de C.V., Santander Merchant Platform Solutions Mexico S.A. de C.V., Santander Merchant Platform Solutions S.A., Santander Merchant Platform Solutions Uruguay S.A., Santander Merchant Platform SolucoesTecnologicas Brasil Ltda., Santander Merchant S.A., Santander Mortgage Holdings Limited, Santander Paraty Qif PLC, Santander Pensiones S.A. E.G.F.P., Santander Pensoes - Sociedade Gestora de Fundos de Pensoes S.A., Santander Private Banking Gestion S.A. S.G.I.I.C., Santander Private Banking UK Limited, Santander Private Banking s.p.a. in Liquidazione (b), Santander Private Real Estate Advisory & Management S.A., Santander Private Real Estate Advisory S.A., Santander Real Estate S.A., Santander Retail Auto Lease Funding LLC, Santander Rio Asset Management Gerente de Fondos Comunes de Inversion S.A., Santander Rio Trust S.A., Santander Rio Valores S.A., Santander S.A. Sociedad Securitizadora, Santander Secretariat Services Limited, Santander Securities LLC, Santander Seguros y Reaseguros Compania Aseguradora S.A., Santander Servicios Corporativos S.A. de C.V., Santander Servicios Especializados S.A. de C.V., Santander Technology USA LLC, Santander Tecnologia e Inovacao Ltda., Santander Tecnologia Argentina S.A., Santander Tecnologia Espana S.L.U., Santander Tecnologia Mexico S.A. de C.V., Santander Totta SGPS S.A., Santander Totta Seguros Companhia de Seguros de Vida S.A., Santander Towarzystwo Funduszy Inwestycyjnych S.A., Santander Trade Services Limited, Santander UK Group Holdings plc, Santander UK Investments, Santander UK Operations Limited, Santander UK Plc, Santander UK Technology Limited, Santander Wealth Management International SA, Santander de Titulizacion S.G.F.T. S.A., Santusa Holding S.L., Services and Promotions Delaware Corp., Services and Promotions Miami LLC, Servicio de Alarmas Controladas por Ordenador S.A., Servicios de Cobranza Recuperacion y Seguimiento S.A. De C.V., Sheppards Moneybrokers Limited, Shiloh III Wind Project LLC, Sociedad Integral de Valoraciones Automatizadas S.A., Sociedad Operadora de Tarjetas de Pago Santander Getnet Chile S.A., Socur S.A., Sol Orchard Imperial 1 LLC, Solarlaser Limited, Sovereign Community Development Company, Sovereign Delaware Investment Corporation, Sovereign Lease Holdings LLC, Sovereign REIT Holdings Inc., Sovereign Spirit Limited (f), Sterrebeeck B.V., Suleyado 2003 S.L. Unipersonal, Summer Empreendimentos Ltda., Super Pagamentos e Administracao de Meios Eletronicos S.A., Superdigital Argentina S.A.U., Superdigital Colombia S.A.S., Superdigital Holding Company S.L., Superdigital Peru S.A.C., Suzuki Servicios Financieros S.L., Swesant SA, TIMFin S.p.A., TOPSAM S.A de C.V., Taxagest Sociedade Gestora de Participacoes Sociais S.A., Teatinos Siglo XXI Inversiones S.A., The Alliance & Leicester Corporation Limited, The Best Specialty Coffee S.L. Unipersonal, Time Retail Finance Limited (b), Tonopah Solar I LLC, Toque Fale Servicos de Telemarketing Ltda., Tornquist Asesores de Seguros S.A. (b), Totta (Ireland) PLC, Totta Urbe - Empresa de Administracao e Construcoes S.A., Trabajando.com Mexico S.A. de C.V. en liquidacion (b), Trabajando.com Peru S.A.C., Trans Rotor Limited (b), Transolver Finance EFC S.A., Tresmares Growth Fund Santander SCR S.A., Tresmares Santander Direct Lending SICC S.A., Tuttle and Son Limited, Universia Brasil S.A., Universia Chile S.A., Universia Colombia S.A.S., Universia Espana Red de Universidades S.A., Universia Holding S.L., Universia Mexico S.A. de C.V., Universia Peru S.A., Universia Uruguay S.A., Uro Property Holdings SOCIMI S.A., WIM Servicios Corporativos S.A. de C.V., WTW Shipping Designated Activity Company, Wallcesa S.A., Wave Holdco S.L., Waypoint Insurance Group Inc., and Wirecard (Technological Assets). The following companies are subsidiares of BP: 200 PS Overseas Holdings Inc., 563916 Alberta Ltd., ACP (Malaysia) Inc., AE Cedar Creek Holdings LLC, AE Goshen II Holdings LLC, AE Goshen II Wind Farm LLC, AE Power Services LLC, AE Wind PartsCo LLC, AM/PM International Inc., ARCO, ARCO British International, ARCO British Limited, ARCO Coal Australia Inc., ARCO El-Djazair Holdings Inc., ARCO Environmental Remediation L.L.C., ARCO Exploration Inc., ARCO Gaviota Company, ARCO International Investments Inc., ARCO International Services Inc., ARCO Midcon LLC, ARCO Oil Company Nigeria Unlimited, ARCO Oman Inc, ARCO Resources Limited, ARCO Trinidad Exploration and Production Company Limited, ARCO Unimar Holdings LLC, Actomat B.V., Advance Petroleum Holdings Pty Ltd, Advance Petroleum Pty Ltd, Air BP Albania SHA, Air BP Brasil Ltda., Air BP Canada LLC, Air BP Croatia d.o.o., Air BP Finland Oy, Air BP Iceland, Air BP Limited, Air BP Norway AS, Air BP Sales Romania S.R.L., Air BP Sweden AB, Air Refuel Pty Ltd, Allgreen Pty Ltd, AmProp Finance Company, American Oil Company, Amoco (Fiddich) Limited, Amoco (U.K.) Exploration Company LLC., Amoco Bolivia Petroleum Company, Amoco Bolivia Services Company Inc., Amoco Canada International Holdings B.V., Amoco Capline Pipeline Company, Amoco Chemical (Europe) S.A., Amoco Chemicals (FSC) B.V., Amoco Cypress Pipeline Company, Amoco Destin Pipeline Company, Amoco Environmental Services Company, Amoco Exploration Holdings B.V., Amoco Guatemala Petroleum Company, Amoco International Finance Corporation, Amoco International Petroleum Company, Amoco Leasing Corporation, Amoco Louisiana Fractionator Company, Amoco MB Fractionation Company, Amoco MBF Company, Amoco Main Pass Gathering Company, Amoco Marketing Environmental Services Company, Amoco Netherlands Petroleum Company, Amoco Nigeria Exploration Company Limited, Amoco Nigeria Oil Company Limited, Amoco Nigeria Petroleum Company, Amoco Nigeria Petroleum Company Limited, Amoco Norway Oil Company, Amoco Oil Holding Company, Amoco Olefins Corporation, Amoco Overseas Exploration Company, Amoco Pipeline Asset Company, Amoco Pipeline Holding Company, Amoco Properties Incorporated, Amoco Remediation Management Services Corporation, Amoco Research Operating Company, Amoco Rio Grande Pipeline Company, Amoco Somalia Petroleum Company, Amoco Sulfur Recovery Company, Amoco Tri-States NGL Pipeline Company, Amoco Trinidad Gas B.V., Amoco U.K. Petroleum Limited, Amprop Illinois I Limited, Amprop Inc., Anaconda Arizona Inc., Arabian Production And Marketing Lubricants, Aral Aktiengesellschaft, Aral Luxembourg S.A., Aral Services Luxembourg Sarl, Aral Tankstellen Services Sarl, Arco Mediterraneo Inversiones S.L., Areas Noriega S.L., Areas Singulares Reyes S.L., Aspac Lubricants (Malaysia) Sdn. Bhd., Atlantic 2/3 UK Holdings Limited, Atlantic Richfield Company, Atlantic Richfield Companyd, Autino Holdings Limited, Autino Limited, Auwahi Wind Energy Holdings LLC, B2Mobility GmbH, BASS Management Pty Ltd, BP (Abu Dhabi) Limited, BP (Barbados) Holding SRL, BP (Barbican) Limited, BP (China) Holdings Limited, BP (China) Industrial Lubricants Limited, BP (GTA Mauritania) Finance Limited, BP (GTA Senegal) Finance Limited, BP (Gibraltar) Limited, BP (Guangzhou) Advanced Mobility Limited, BP (Hunan) Petroleum Company Limited, BP (Indian Agencies) Limited, BP (Shandong) Petroleum Co. Ltd, BP (Shanghai) Trading Limited, BP - Castrol (Thailand) Limited, BP AMI Leasing Inc., BP Absheron Limited, BP Advanced Mobility Limited, BP Africa Limited, BP Africa Oil Limited, BP Akaryakit Ortakligi, BP Alaska LNG LLC, BP Alternative Energy Holdings Limited, BP Alternative Energy Investments Limited, BP Alternative Energy North America Inc., BP Alternative Energy Trinidad and Tobago Limited, BP America Chembel Holding LLC, BP America Chemicals Company, BP America Foreign Investments Inc., BP America Inc, BP America Inc., BP America Limited, BP America Production Company, BP Amoco Chemical Company, BP Amoco Chemical Holding Company, BP Amoco Chemical Indonesia Limited, BP Amoco Chemical Malaysia Holding Company, BP Amoco Exploration (Faroes) Limited, BP Amoco Exploration (In Amenas) Limited, BP Andaman II Ltd, BP Angola (Block 18) B.V., BP Argentina Exploration Company, BP Argentina Holdings LLC, BP Aromatics Holdings Limited, BP Aromatics Limited, BP Asia Limited, BP Asia Pacific (Malaysia) Sdn. Bhd., BP Asia Pacific Holdings Limited, BP Asia Pacific Pte Ltd, BP Australia Capital Markets Limited, BP Australia Employee Share Plan Proprietary Limited, BP Australia Group Pty Ltde, BP Australia Investments Pty Ltd, BP Australia Nominees Proprietary Limited, BP Australia Pty Ltd, BP Australia Shipping Pty Ltd, BP Australia Swaps Management Limited, BP Aviation A/S, BP Benevolent Fund Trustees Limited, BP Berau Ltd., BP Biocombustiveis S.A., BP Bioenergia Campina Verde Ltda., BP Bioenergia Ituiutaba Ltda., BP Bioenergia Itumbiara S.A., BP Bioenergia Tropical S.A., BP Biofuels Advanced Technology Inc., BP Biofuels Brazil Investments Limited, BP Biofuels Louisiana LLC, BP Biofuels North America LLC, BP Biofuels Trading Comercio Exportacao Ltda., BP Bomberai Ltd., BP Brasil Ltda., BP Brazil Tracking L.L.C., BP Bulwer Island Pty Ltd, BP Business Service Centre Asia Sdn Bhd, BP Business Service Centre KFT, BP CIV Pty Ltd, BP Canada Energy Development Company, BP Canada Energy Group ULC, BP Canada Energy Marketing Corp., BP Canada International Holdings B.V., BP Canada Investments Inc., BP Capellen Sarl, BP Capital Markets, BP Capital Markets America, BP Capital Markets America Inc., BP Capital Markets p.l.c., BP Car Fleet Limited, BP Caribbean Company, BP Castrol KK, BP Castrol Lubricants (Malaysia) Sdn. Bhd., BP Central Pipelines LLC, BP Chembel, BP Chemicals (Korea) Limited, BP Chemicals East China Investments Limited, BP Chemicals Investments Limited, BP Chemicals Limited, BP China Exploration and Production Company, BP Comercializadora de Energia Ltda., BP Commodities Trading Limited, BP Commodity Supply B.V., BP Company North America, BP Company North America Inc., BP Containment Response Limited, BP Containment Response System Holdings LLC, BP Continental Holdings Limited, BP Corporate Holdings, BP Corporate Holdings Limited, BP Corporation North America, BP Corporation North America Inc., BP D-B Pipeline Company LLC, BP D230 Limited, BP Danmark A/S, BP Developments Australia Pty. Ltd., BP Dogal Gaz Ticaret Anonim Sirketi, BP East Kalimantan CBM Limited, BP Eastern Mediterranean Limited, BP Egypt Company, BP Egypt East Delta Marine Corporation, BP Egypt East Tanka B.V., BP Egypt Production B.V., BP Egypt Ras El Barr B.V., BP Egypt West Mediterranean (Block B) B.V., BP Energy Asia Pte. Limited, BP Energy Colombia Limited, BP Energy Company, BP Energy Europe Limited, BP Energy Solutions B.V., BP Energy do Brasil Ltda., BP Energia Mexico S. de R.L. de C.V., BP Espana S.A. Unipersonal, BP Estaciones y Servicios Energeticos Sociedad Anonima de Capital Variable, BP Europa SE, BP Exploracion de Venezuela S.A., BP Exploration & Production Inc., BP Exploration (Absheron) Limited, BP Exploration (Alaska), BP Exploration (Alaska) Inc., BP Exploration (Algeria) Limited, BP Exploration (Alpha), BP Exploration (Alpha) Limited, BP Exploration (Angola), BP Exploration (Angola) Limited, BP Exploration (Azerbaijan), BP Exploration (Azerbaijan) Limited, BP Exploration (Canada) Limited, BP Exploration (Caspian Sea), BP Exploration (Caspian Sea) Limited, BP Exploration (D230) Limited, BP Exploration (Delta), BP Exploration (Delta) Limited, BP Exploration (El Djazair) Limited, BP Exploration (Epsilon) Limited, BP Exploration (Gambia) Limited, BP Exploration (Greenland) Limited, BP Exploration (Madagascar) Limited, BP Exploration (Morocco) Limited, BP Exploration (Namibia) Limited, BP Exploration (Nigeria Finance) Limited, BP Exploration (Nigeria) Limited, BP Exploration (Psi) Limited, BP Exploration (STP) Limited, BP Exploration (Shafag-Asiman) Limited, BP Exploration (Shah Deniz) Limited, BP Exploration (South Atlantic) Limited, BP Exploration (Xazar) Pte. Ltd., BP Exploration Angola (Kwanza Benguela) Limited, BP Exploration Argentina Limited, BP Exploration Australia Pty Ltd Level 15, BP Exploration Beta Limited, BP Exploration China Limited, BP Exploration Company (Middle East) Limited, BP Exploration Company Limited, BP Exploration Indonesia Limited, BP Exploration Libya Limited, BP Exploration Mexico Limited, BP Exploration Mexico S.A. De C.V., BP Exploration North Africa Limited, BP Exploration Operating Company, BP Exploration Operating Company Limited, BP Exploration Orinoco Limited, BP Exploration Personnel Company Limited, BP Exploration Peru Limited, BP Express Shopping Limited, BP Finance Australia Pty Ltd, BP Finance p.l.c., BP Foundation Incorporated, BP France, BP Fuels & Lubricants AS, BP Fuels Deutschland GmbH, BP GOM Logistics LLC, BP Gas & Power Investments Limited, BP Gas Europe S.A.U., BP Gas Marketing Limited, BP Gas Supply (Angola) LLC, BP Ghana Limited, BP Global Investments, BP Global Investments Limited, BP Global Investments Salalah & Co LLC, BP Global West Africa Limited, BP Greece Limited, BP Guangdong Limited, BP High Density Polyethylene - France, BP Holdings (Thailand) Limited, BP Holdings B.V., BP Holdings Canada, BP Holdings Canada Limited, BP Holdings International B.V., BP Holdings North America, BP Holdings North America Limited, BP Hong Kong Limited, BP India Private Limited, BP Indonesia Investment Limited, BP International, BP International Limited, BP International Services Company, BP Investment Management Limited, BP Investments Asia Limited, BP Iran Limited, BP Iraq N.V., BP Italia SpA, BP Japan K.K., BP Korea Limited, BP Kuwait Limited, BP LNG Shipping Limited, BP Latin America LLC, BP Latin America Upstream Services Inc., BP Lubricants KK, BP Lubricants USA Inc., BP Luxembourg S.A., BP Malaysia Holdings Sdn. Bhd., BP Management International B.V., BP Management Netherlands B.V., BP Marine Limited, BP Mariner Holding Company LLC, BP Maritime Services (Singapore) Pte. Limited, BP Marketing Egypt LLC, BP Mauritania Investments Limited, BP Mauritius Limited (in liquidation), BP Middle East Enterprises Corporation, BP Middle East LLC, BP Middle East Limited, BP Midstream Partners GP LLC, BP Midstream Partners Holdings LLC, BP Midstream Partners LP, BP Midwest Product Pipelines Holdings LLC, BP Mocambique Limitada, BP Mocambique Limited, BP Muturi Holdings B.V., BP Nederland Holdings BV, BP Netherlands Upstream B.V., BP New Ventures Middle East Limited, BP New Zealand Holdings Limited, BP New Zealand Share Scheme Limited, BP Nutrition Inc., BP Offshore Gathering Systems Inc., BP Offshore Pipelines Company LLC, BP Offshore Response Company LLC, BP Oil (Thailand) Limited, BP Oil Australia Pty Ltd, BP Oil Espana S.A., BP Oil Hellenic S.A., BP Oil International, BP Oil International Limited, BP Oil Kent Refinery Limited (in liquidation), BP Oil Llandarcy Refinery Limited, BP Oil Logistics UK Limited, BP Oil New Zealand Limited, BP Oil Pipeline Company, BP Oil Senegal S.A., BP Oil Shipping Company, BP Oil UK Limited, BP Oil Venezuela Limited, BP Oil Vietnam Limited, BP Oil Yemen Limited, BP Olex Fanal Mineralol GmbH, BP One Pipeline Company LLC, BP Pacific Investments Ltd, BP Pakistan (Badin) Inc., BP Pakistan Exploration and Production Inc., BP Pension Escrow Limited, BP Pension Trustees Limited, BP Pensions (Overseas) Limited, BP Pensions Limited, BP Petrochemicals India Investments Limited, BP Petroleo y Gas S.A., BP Petrolleri Anonim Sirketi, BP Pipelines (Alaska) Inc., BP Pipelines (BTC) Limited, BP Pipelines (North America) Inc., BP Pipelines (SCP) Limited, BP Pipelines (TANAP) Limited, BP Pipelines TAP Limited, BP Polska Services Sp. z o.o. Ul., BP Portugal -Comercio de Combustiveis e Lubrificantes SA, BP Poseidon Limited, BP Products North America, BP Products North America Inc., BP Properties Limited, BP Raffinaderij Rotterdam B.V., BP Refinery (Kwinana) Proprietary Limited, BP Regional Australasia Holdings Pty Ltd, BP River Rouge Pipeline Company LLC, BP Russian Investments Limited, BP Russian Ventures Limited, BP SC Holdings LLC, BP Scale Up Factory Limited, BP Senegal Investments Limited, BP Services International Limited, BP Servicios de Combustibles S.A. de C.V., BP Servicios territoriales S.A., BP Shafag-Asiman Limited, BP Shipping Limited, BP Singapore Pte. Limited, BP Solar Energy North America LLC, BP Solar Espana S.A., BP Solar International Inc., BP Solar Pty Ltd, BP South America Holdings Ltd, BP Southern Africa Proprietary Limited, BP Southern Cone Company, BP Subsea Well Response (Brazil) Limited, BP Subsea Well Response Limited, BP Taiwan Marketing Limited, BP Technology Ventures Inc., BP Technology Ventures Limited, BP Train 2/3 Holding SRL, BP Transportation (Alaska) Inc., BP Trinidad Processing Limited, BP Trinidad and Tobago, BP Trinidad and Tobago LLC, BP Turkey Refining Limited, BP Two Pipeline Company LLC, BP UK Retained Holdings Limited, BP Venezuela Investments B.V., BP West Aru I Limited, BP West Aru II Limited, BP West Papua I Limited, BP West Papua III Limited, BP Wind Energy North America Inc., BP Wiriagar Ltd., BP World-Wide Technical Services Limited, BP Zhuhai Chemical Company Limited, BP+Amoco International Limited, BP-AIOC Exploration (TISA) LLC, BPA Investment Holding Company, BPNE International B.V., BPRY Caribbean Ventures LLC, BPX (Eagle Ford) Gathering LLC, BPX (KCS Resources) LLC, BPX (Karnes) Gathering LLC, BPX (Permian) Gathering LLC, BPX (WSF Operating) Inc., BPX Energy Inc., BPX Midstream LLC, BPX Operating Company, BPX Production Company, BPX Properties (GP) LLC, BPX Properties (LP) LLC, BPX Properties (NA) LP, BTC Pipeline Holding Company Limited, BXL Plastics Limitedv, Bahia de Bizkaia Electridad S.L., Baltimore Ennis Land Company Inc., Black Lake Pipe Line Company, Brian Jasper Nominees Pty Ltd, Britannic Energy Trading Limited, Britannic Investments Iraq Limited, Britannic Marketing Limited, Britannic Strategies Limited, Britannic Trading Limited, Britoil Limited, Burmah Castrol, Burmah Castrol Australia Pty Ltd, Burmah Castrol Holdings Inc., Burmah Castrol PLC, Burmah Castrol South Africa (Pty) Limited, Burmah Chile SpA, Butamax Advanced Biofuels, CASTROL Austria GmbHb, CH-Twenty Inc., CNAA, Cadman DBP Limited, Casitas Pipeline Company, Castrol (China) Limited, Castrol (Ireland) Limited, Castrol (Shanghai) Management Co. Ltd., Castrol (Shenzhen) Company Limited, Castrol (Tianjin) Lubricants Co. Ltd., Castrol (U.K.) Limited, Castrol Australia Pty. Limited, Castrol B.V., Castrol BP Petco Limited Liability Company, Castrol Brasil Ltda., Castrol Caribbean & Central America Inc., Castrol Colombia Ltda., Castrol Del Peru S.A., Castrol Egypt Lubricants S.A.E., Castrol India Limited, Castrol Industrie und Service GmbH, Castrol KK, Castrol Limited, Castrol Lubricants RO S.R.L, Castrol Mexico S.A., Castrol Namibia (Pty) Limited, Castrol Offshore Limited, Castrol Pakistan (Private) Limited, Castrol Philippines Inc., Castrol Servicos Ltda., Castrol Ukraine LLC, Castrol Zimbabwe (Private) Limited, Centrel Pty Ltd, Charge Your Car Limitedc, Chargemaster, Chargemaster (Europe) GmbH, Chargemaster Limited, Charging Solutions Limited, Clarisse Holdings Pty Ltd, Coastwise Trading Company Inc., Consolidada de Energia y Lubricantes (CENERLUB) C.A., Conti Cross Keys Inn Inc., Coro Trading NZ Limited, Cuyama Pipeline Company, DHC Solvent Chemie GmbH, Dermody Developments Pty Ltd, Dermody Holdings Pty Ltd, Dermody Investments Pty Ltd, Dermody Petroleum Pty. Ltd., Dome Beaufort Petroleum Limited, Dome Wallis (1980) Limited Partnership, ECM Markets SA (Pty) Ltd, Elektromotive Limited, Elite Customer Solutions Pty Ltd, Elm Holdings Inc., Energy Global Investments (USA) Inc., Enstar LLC, Estacion de Servicio Alto Campoo S.L., Estacion de Servicio Ganzo 10 S.L., Estacion de Servicio Reocin 9 S.L., Estacion de Servicio Santillana II S.L., Estacion de Servicio Sardinero S.L., Estonian Aviation Fuelling Services, Europa Oil NZ Limited, Exomet Inc., Expandite Contract Services Limited, Exploration (Luderitz Basin) Limited, Exploration Service Company Limited, FWK (2017) Limited, FWK Holdings (2017) LTD, Finite Carbon, Flat Ridge 2 Holdings LLC, Flat Ridge Wind Energy LLC, Foseco Holding Inc., Foseco Holding International B.V., Foseco Inc., Fosroc Expandite Limited, Fotech Solutions Ltd, Fowler Ridge Holdings LLC, Fowler Ridge I Land Investments LLC, Fowler Ridge II Holdings LLC, Fowler Ridge III Wind Farm LLC, FreeBees B.V., Fuel & Retail Aviat ion Sweden AB, Fuelplane- Sociedade Abastecedora De Aeronaves Unipessoal Lda, GOAM 1 C.I S. A .S, Gardena Holdings Inc., Gelsenkirchen Raffinerie Netz GmbH, Grampian Aviation Fuelling Services Limited, Guangdong Investments Limited, Highlands Ethanol LLC, Hosteleria Noriega S.L., IGI Resources Inc., Insight Analytics Solutions Holdings Limited, Insight Analytics Solutions Limited, Insight Analytics Solutions USA Inc., International Bunker Supplies Pty Ltd, Iraq Petroleum Company Limited, Jupiter Insurance Limited, Ken-Chas Reserve Company, Kenilworth Oil Company Limited, Kingbook Inversiones Socimi S.A., Latin Energy Argentina S.A., Lebanese Aviation Technical Services S.A.L., Limited Liability Company BP Toplivnaya Kompania, Limited liability company Setra Lubricants, Lubricants UK Limited, Lytt Limited, Manormaker (Nominee No. 1) Limited, Manormaker (Nominee No. 2) Limited, Manormaker GP Limited (99.90%) 11 Black Horse Lane, Mardi Gras Transportation System Company LLC, Markoil S.A., Masana Petroleum Solutions (Pty) Ltd, Mayaro Initiative for Private Enterprise Development, Mehoopany Holdings LLC, Mes Tecnologia En Servicios Y Energia S.A., Minza Pty. Ltd., Mountain City Remediation LLC, No. 1 Riverside Quay Proprietary Limited, Nordic Lubricants A/S, Nordic Lubricants AB, North America Funding Company, OMD87 Inc., OOO BP STL, Omega Oil Company, OnSight Analytics Solutions India Private Ltd., Orion Delaware Mountain Wind Farm LP, Orion Energy Holdings LLC, Orion Energy L.L.C.b, Orion Post Land Investments LLC, Oyambre 1 S.L., PRODUITS METALLURGIE DOITTAU, PT BP Petrochemicals, PT Castrol Indonesia, PT Castrol Manufacturing Indonesia, PT Jasatama Petroindo, Pacroy (Thailand) Co. Ltd., Peaks America Inc., Pearl River Delta Investments Limited, Petrocorner Retail S.L.U., Phoenix Petroleum Services Limited, Pozuelo 4 S.L., Prospect International C.A. (In liquidation), Puente Arce 4 S.L., Remediation Management Services Company, Richfield Oil Corporation, Rio Corvo 2 S.L., Rolling Thunder I Power Partners LLC, Romax Insight Korea Ltd., Ropemaker Deansgate Limited, Ropemaker Properties Limited, Ruhr Oel GmbH, Rusdene GSS Limited, SOFAST Limited, SRHP, Saturn Insurance Inc., Sherbino I Holdings LLC, Sherbino Mesa I Land Investments LLC, Sociedade de Promocao Imobiliaria Quinta do Loureiro SA, Societe de Gestion de Depots d'Hydrocarbures - GDH, South Texas Shale LLC, Southeast Texas Biofuels LLC, Southern Ridge Pipeline Holding Company, Southern Ridge Pipeline LP LLC, Sp/f Decision3 (GreenSteam) Company, Standard Oil Company, Standard Oil Company Inc., Standard Oil of Ohio, Stryde Limited, Sunrise Oil Sands Partnership, TISA Education Complex LLC, TJKK, Taradadis Pty. Ltd., Telcom General Corporation, Terre de Grace Partnership, The Anaconda Company, The BP Share Plans Trustees Limited, The Burmah Oil Company (Pakistan Trading) Limited, The Standard Oil Company, Toledo Refinery Holding Company LLC, Torrelavega 7 S.L., Union Texas International Corporation, Vastar Pipeline LLC, Veba Oel AG Veba Oel, Verenium, Viceroy Investments Limited, Villacarriedo 8 S.L., Warrenville Development Limited, Water Way Trading and Petroleum Services LLC, Welchem Inc., West Kimberley Fuels Pty Ltd, Westlake Houston Development LLC, Whiting Clean Energy Inc., Windpark Energy Nederland B.V., and Winwell Resources L.L.C. A blog for the Bloomingdale neighborhood in Washington, DC. Most of those involved in the last Monday Meeting of LIAT Shareholders, Board/Staff members, reps. of regional organisations. Shareholder governments of regional airline LIAT meeting in St. Vincent and the Grenadines on Monday to discuss the future of the airline, endorsed the recommendation that the restructuring of the airline was the best option going forward. In attendance at the meeting held at the Conference Room of the Argyle International Airport, were the Prime Ministers of three of the four major shareholder government: Gaston Browne Antigua; Mia Mottley Barbados; Dr. Ralph Gonsalves SVG. Dominicas Roosevelt Skerrit did not attend. Also in attendance were the Prime Ministers of St. Lucia and Grenada, President and Vice President of the Caribbean Development Bank (CDB), Secretary General of CARICOM, the Director General of the OECS, Chairman of the Board of Directors of LIAT, CEO of LIAT, representation from the Union representing LIAT workers. Dr. Gonsalves, Chairman of the Shareholder Governments, addressed a press conference following the meeting. In prefacing the setting out of the preferred course of action going forward, he warned that if those concerned did not seek to enhance the strengths and possibilities of the airline and simply decided to get rid of the weakness and limitations, "we are not likely to have something which is sustainable. Dr. Gonsalves reviewed the shareholders decision to establish a Technical Committee to advise on a strategic plan for LIAT. Pivotal to the work of the Committee was the role of the Caribbean Development Bank. The Chairman confirmed receipt and the shareholders endorsement of the recommendations of the Committee. But in accepting the recommendations, the shareholder governments sought to study them and weigh them in terms of their practicality and the extent to which they could realize the goal of attaining sustainability for the airline. One of the recommendations/options stood out. "That was a restructuring option, that is to say an option other than an option for a private sector take over, which is not realistic in the circumstances, Dr. Gonsalves asserted. The second recommendation made by the committee was to close down the airline and start a new one. According to the shareholders, that option felt like it had some challanges since LIAT was in a transitional period. The third option included opening the way for private sector involvement. However, this was considered immature at this point in time when St. Lucia and Grenada seemed poised to make a renewed commitment to the regional airline, provided the restructuring was carried out in a different manner and with a degree of seriousness, which would merit the support of their parliament and their country, Gonsalves explained . The CDB was also of that view, Gonsalves said. "The conclusion was whatever we do, it cannot be any business as usual and it has to be a quantum leap change alterations in governance arrangements, internal issues and of course everybody on board which includes the unions, and the workers and all of us have to recognise our responsibilities, said the Prime Minister. TC Energy Corporation operates as an energy infrastructure company in North America. It operates through Canadian Natural Gas Pipelines, U.S. Natural Gas Pipelines, Mexico Natural Gas Pipelines, Liquids Pipelines, and Power and Storage segments. The company builds and operates 93,400 km network of natural gas pipelines, which transports natural gas from supply basins to local distribution companies, power generation plants, industrial facilities, interconnecting pipelines, LNG export terminals, and other businesses. It also has regulated natural gas storage facilities with a total working gas capacity of 535 billion cubic feet. In addition, it has approximately 4,900 km liquids pipeline system that connects Alberta crude oil supplies to refining markets in Illinois, Oklahoma, Texas, and the U.S. Gulf Coast. Further, the company owns or has interests in seven power generation facilities with a combined capacity of approximately 4,200 megawatts that are powered by natural gas and nuclear fuel sources located in Alberta, Ontario, QuAbec, and New Brunswick; and owns and operates approximately 118 billion cubic feet of non-regulated natural gas storage capacity in Alberta. The company was formerly known as TransCanada Corporation and changed its name to TC Energy Corporation in May 2019. TC Energy Corporation was incorporated in 1951 and is headquartered in Calgary, Canada. 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.. 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 Magna International Inc. designs, engineers, and manufactures components, assemblies, systems, subsystems, and modules for original equipment manufacturers of vehicles and light trucks worldwide. The company operates through four segments: Body Exteriors & Structures, Power & Vision, Seating Systems, and Complete Vehicles. Its Body Exteriors & Structures segment provides body and chassis systems, as well as engineering and testing services; exterior systems, including fascia and trims, front end modules, front integration panels, liftgate modules, active aerodynamics, engineered glass, running boards, truck bed access products, and side doors; and roof systems, such as modular and textile folding roofs, and hard and soft tops. The company's Power & Vision segment offers dedicated hybrid, dual and e-clutch, and manual transmissions; engine drive plates and accessories; AWD/4WD products, rear drive modules, and hybrid and battery electric drive systems; transmission, engine, and driveline components; advanced driver assistance systems, camera systems, ultrasonic sensors, and electronic controllers; interior and exterior mirrors, actuators, door handles, overhead consoles, and camera monitoring systems; head, tail, and fog lamps; signal and other lighting products; and latching systems, door modules, window systems, power closure systems, hinges and wire forming, and handle assemblies. Its Seating Systems segment provides seat structures, mechanism and hardware solutions, and foam and trim products. The company's Complete Vehicles segment offers vehicle manufacturing and engineering services. It also designs, engineers, and manufactures tooling products. Magna International Inc. was founded in 1957 and is headquartered in Aurora, Canada. Read More Prime Minister Dr. Ralph Gonsalves and His Excellency Ambassador Calvin Ho stand together symbolising the bonds of friendship that exist between SVG and Taiwan. Relations between St. Vincent and the Grenadines and the Republic of China on Taiwan will continue. And His Excellency Ambassador Calvin C. H. Ho, who assumed duties here in April this year, is grateful for the friendship. He thanked the government and people of this nation and expressed the wish for a long and cherished friendship. Ambassador Hos remarks came Monday, October 8, at a function held at the Methodist Church Hall, to mark Taiwans 107th Anniversary of its National Day. The actual day is October 10. The Church Hall was decorated with flags of both nations, and posters and banners of Taiwanese heritage adorned the entrance. Videos featuring Taiwans accomplishments and attractions flashed across screens, accompanied by strains of Taiwanese music. These occupied the attention of invited guests. Among the guests were Governor General Sir Frederick Ballantyne, Prime Minister Dr Ralph Gonsalves, and Justice Brian Cottle. Speaker of the House Jomo Thomas and a number of Parliamentarians were also in attendance. Taiwans Accomplishments Ambassador Ho addressed the ceremony and highlighted his countrys economic progress. He pointed to economic growth of nearly 3 percent in 2017, and indicated that average wages were at an "historical high. The action government has taken, "has left economic stagnation behind, he said. Taiwans current administration has been working on increasing earnings for farmers, providing housing, helping elderly people, and connecting the people and country to technology, e.g. the use of smart machinery. Bio-medical research continues as a plank of Taiwans advancement. Judicial reform is ongoing and Ambassador Ho alluded to efforts aimed at fighting corruption. He outlined that, "Justice is served, and that "peoples rights were protected. International Relations Strengthening international relations/ties is a focus of the administration. Ambassador Ho called for his countrys inclusion in the United Nations and posited that "Taiwan can help. The Ambassador was grateful for this countrys support for his countrys efforts to gain membership to UN agencies, support that came as recent as September, in the Prime Ministers address to the UN General Assembly. Ho expressed regret that his country was unable to attend the World Health Assembly of the World Health Organisation, and thanked Vincentian Health Minister Luke Browne for promoting the Taiwanese cause. Taiwans Assistance to SVG Ambassador Ho rehashed the partnership between the two countries since 1981, referring to mutual cooperation in areas like Human Resource Development, Information Technology and Education. He recalled the opening of the Argyle International Airport in February 2017 and repeated that his country was "pleased and honoured to be associated with the terminal building. He regarded the Taiwan-funded Rabacca Bridge as a symbol of friendship between the peoples of both countries. Opportunities for education at universities in Taiwan were also highlighted by the Ambassador and he referred to Taiwan financing the SET and YES programmes as meaningful to the young people especially. This countrys health services have also benefitted from Taiwans injection through annual Medical Missions by Taiwans specialists, training programmes at the Milton Cato Memorial Hospital and measures aimed at preventing and controlling diabetes here. The Taiwanese have also been engaged in agricultural and Information Communication Technology services. And Ambassador Hos sentiments of mutual respect and support were endorsed by Prime Minister Gonsalves when he addressed the ceremony. Vanguard High Dividend Yield ETF's stock was trading at $75.66 on March 11th, 2020 when Coronavirus reached pandemic status according to the World Health Organization. Since then, VYM stock has increased by 45.2% and is now trading at $109.85. View which stocks have been most impacted by COVID-19. The following companies are subsidiares of Quaker Chemical: AC Products Inc., Applied Surface Concepts Holdings Ltd. , Binol AB, Binol Biosafe OY, Commonwealth Oil Corporation, DA Stuart India Private Limited, DA Stuart Shanghai Co, ECLI Products LLC, EFHCO LLC, Engineered Custom Lubricants, Engineered Custom Lubricants GmbH, Epmar Corporation, G.W. Smith and Sons, GH Holdings Inc., GHG Lubricants Holdings Limited, GHGL London Ltd., GHI Asia Pacific Pte. Ltd., Global Houghton Ltd., Houghton (Shanghai) Specialty Industrial Fluids Co. Ltd, Houghton Argentina S.A., Houghton Asia Pacific Co. Limited, Houghton Australia Pty. Ltd., Houghton Benelux BV, Houghton CZ s.r.o, Houghton Canada Inc., Houghton Denmark AS, Houghton Deutschland GmbH, Houghton Europe BV, Houghton Holdings Limited, Houghton Iberica S.A. , Houghton International, Houghton International Inc., Houghton Italia S.p.A., Houghton Japan Co. Ltd., Houghton Kimya Sanayi AS, Houghton Magyarorszag Kft, Houghton Mexico S.A. de C.V., Houghton Oil (Malaysia) Sdn Bhd., Houghton Polska Sp. Zo.o., Houghton Romania S.R.L., Houghton S.A.S., Houghton Sverige AB, Houghton Taiwan Co. Limited, Houghton Technical Corp., Houghton Ukraine ToV, Houghton do Brazil Ltda., Houghton plc, Internationale Metall Impragnier GmbH, Lubricor Inc, Lubricor Inc., Lubricor Mexicana S.A. de C.V., Lubricor USA Inc., MIH Acquisition Company LLC, MX Systems International Ltd, Maldaner GmbH, NP Coil Dexter Industries, New Houghton Brazil Inc., Norman Hay Engineering Ltd., QH Chemical Limited, QH Europe BV, QH Holdings Limited, QH International Limited, Quaker (Thailand) Ltd., Quaker Australia Holdings Pty. Limited, Quaker Chemical (Australasia) Pty. Limited, Quaker Chemical (China) Co. Ltd., Quaker Chemical B.V., Quaker Chemical CV, Quaker Chemical Canada Holdings Inc., Quaker Chemical Canada Limited, Quaker Chemical Europe B.V., Quaker Chemical Holdings South Africa (Pty) Limited, Quaker Chemical India Private Limited, Quaker Chemical Industria e Comercio Ltda., Quaker Chemical Investment Management (Shanghai) Co. Ltd., Quaker Chemical Limited, Quaker Chemical MEA FZE, Quaker Chemical Operacoes Ltda., Quaker Chemical Participacoes Ltda., Quaker Chemical S.A., Quaker Chemical S.r.l., Quaker Chemical Services EURL, Quaker Chemical South Africa (Pty.) Limited, Quaker China Holdings B.V., Quaker Denmark ApS, Quaker Houghton (Finco) Ltd., Quaker Houghton Holdings Limited, Quaker Houghton Holdings Ltd., Quaker Houghton International LP, Quaker Houghton Ltd., Quaker International Holdings LLC, Quaker Italia S.r.l., Quaker Russia B.V., Quaker Sales Europe BV, Quaker Shanghai Trading Company Limited, Quaker Spain Holding SLU, Quaker Specialty Chemicals (UK) Limited, SB Decking Inc., SIFCO Applied Surface Concepts (UK) Ltd, SIFCO Applied Surface Concepts LLC, SIFCO Concepts Sarl, SIFCO Concepts Sweden, Sterr & Eder Industrieservice GmbH, Summit Lubricants Inc, Summit Lubricants Inc., Surface Technology (Coventry) Ltd, Surface Technology (Dalian) Co Ltd, Surface Technology (East Kilbride) Ltd., Surface Technology (Leeds) Ltd, Surface Technology Aberdeen Ltd, Surface Technology Australia, Surface Technology Holdings Ltd., TecniQuimia Mexicana, Tecniquimia Mexicana S.A. de C.V., Thai Houghton 1993 Co. Ltd., Ultraseal Asia Limited, Ultraseal Chongqing Limited, Ultraseal Germany GmbH, Ultraseal International Group Ltd, Ultraseal Machinery Dongguan Ltd, Ultraseal Shanghai Limited, Ultraseal USA Inc., Unitek Servicios De Asesoria Especializad S.A de C.V., Verkol S.A.U., Verkol SAU, Wallover Enterprises Inc., Wallover Oil Company Incorporated, Wallover Oil Hamilton Inc., and Wuhan Quaker Technology Co. Ltd. Smart & Final Stores, Inc. operates as a food retailer in the United States. It operates in two segments, Smart & Final and Smart Foodservice. The company's stores offer fresh perishables and everyday grocery items, such as produce, meat and deli, dairy and cheese, grocery, and beverage products, as well as paper and packaging, and restaurant equipment and janitorial supplies. It also provides various private label products under the First Street, Sun Harvest, Simply Value, La Romanella, Montecito, Iris, and Ambiance brands. The company sells its products to household and business customers; restaurants; caterers; and various other foodservice businesses, such as food trucks and coffee houses through vendors and suppliers. As of December 30, 2018, it operated 326 grocery and foodservice stores, including 59 Smart & Final stores, 201 Smart & Final Extra! stores, and 66 Smart Foodservice Warehouse stores located in California, Oregon, Washington, Arizona, Nevada, Idaho, Montana, and Utah, as well as 15 stores in Northwestern Mexico operated through a joint venture. Smart & Final Stores, Inc. was founded in 1871 and is headquartered in Commerce, California. Read More The following companies are subsidiares of Prudential Financial: 210-220 E. 22nd Street SSGA Owner LLC, AIG Edison, AIG Star, AREF Cayman Co Ltd., AREF GP II Pte. Ltd., AREF GP Ltd., ASPF II - Feeder Fund GmbH, ASPF II - Verwaltungs - GmbH & Co. KG, ASPF II Management GmbH, ASPF III (Scots) L.P., ASSURANCE, AST Investment Services Inc., Adlerwerke CB Investment LLC, Administradora de Fondos de Pensiones Habitat S.A., Administradora de Inversiones Previsionales SpA, Aoba Life Insurance Company, Asia Property Fund III GP S.a.r.l., Assurance IQ LLC, Assurance Intelligence LLC, BSC CP LP, Braeloch Holdings Inc., Braeloch Successor Corporation, Brazilian Capital Fund GP Limited, Broad Street Global Advisors LLC, Broome Street Holdings LLC, CB German Retail LLC, CLIS Co. Ltd., COLICO INC., Campus Drive LLC, Capital Agricultural Property Services Inc., Chadwick Boulevard Investment Holdings Co. LLC, Cibecue LLC, Coconino LLC, Colico II Inc., Columbus Drive Partners L.P., Commerce Street Holdings LLC, Commerce Street Investments LLC, Coolidge LLC, Coral Reef GP, Coral Reef L.P., Coral Reef Unit Trust, Cottage Street Investments LLC, Cottage Street Orbit Acquisition LLC, DHFL PRAMERICA LIFE INSURANCE COMPANY LIMITED, DICKENS AVENUE HOLDINGS VI LLC, DICKENS AVENUE PARTNERS VI (Ireland) L.P., DICKENS AVENUE PARTNERS VI (US) L.P., Don Cesar Investor LLC, Dryden Arizona Reinsurance Term Company, Dryden Finance II LLC, EVP II GP S.a r.l., EVP II Sweden Resi I GP S.a r.l., Edison Place Senior Note LLC, Essex LLC, EuroCore GP S.a r.l., European Value Partners GP S.a.r.l., Everbright PGIM Fund Management Co. Ltd., Flagstaff LLC, GA 1600 Commons LLC, GA 333 Hennepin Investor LLC, GA BV LLC, GA Bay Area GP LLC, GA Bay Area Investor LLC, GA Belden LLC, GA CLARENDON LLC, GA Cal Crossings LLC, GA Collins LLC, GA E. 22nd Street Apartments Holdings LLC, GA East 86 Street LLC, GA JHCII LLC, GA MENLO PARK INVESTOR LLC, GA Manor at Harbour Island LLC, GA Metro LLC, GA Mission LLC, GA TRITON INVESTOR LLC, GA W Paces LLC, GA/MDI 333 Hennepin Associates LLC, GIBRALTAR BSN HOLDINGS SDN BHD, GIBRALTAR INDIA SOLUTIONS LLP, Gateway Holdings II LLC, Gateway Holdings LLC, German Retail Income CP LP, Gibraltar BSN Life Berhad, Gibraltar International Insurance Services Company Inc., Gibraltar International Service LLC, Gibraltar Reinsurance Company Ltd., Gibraltar Universal Life Reinsurance Company, Glenealy International Limited, Global Portfolio Strategies Inc., Gold GP Limited, Gold II L.P., Gold L.P., Graham Resources Inc., Graham Royalty Ltd., Green Tree GP, Green Tree L.P., Greenlee LLC, Halsey Street Investments LLC, Hirakata LLC, IVP Fund GP LLC, Impact Investments Bridges UK S.a.r.l, Inter-Atlantic G Fund L.P., Inversiones Previsionales Chile SpA, Inversiones Previsionales Dos SpA, Ironbound Fund LLC, Jennison Associates LLC, Kyarra S.a r.l., Kyoei Annuity Home Co. Ltd., LINEUP LLC, Lake Street Partners IV L.P., MC GA COLLINS HOLDINGS LLC, MC GA COLLINS REALTY LLC, MC Insurance Agency Services LLC, Manor at Harbour Island LLC, Marble Canyon LLC, Maricopa LLC, Market Street Holdings IV LLC, Morenci LLC, Mulberry Street Holdings LLC, Mulberry Street Investment L.P., Mulberry Street Partners LLC, Mullin TBG Insurance Agency Services LLC, MullinTBG Insurance Agency Services, National Family Assurance Group LLC, New Savanna, Orchard Street Acres Inc., PAI Bay Farm LLC, PAI Bayrock Groves LLC, PAI Belvidere Farms LLC, PAI Big Cypress Farm LLC, PAI Corcoran 640 Ranch LLC, PAI DeKalb Farm LLC, PAI Delano 1500 Ranches LLC, PAI Flicker Orchard LLC, PAI Good Hope Farm LLC, PAI Hawk Creek Ranch LLC, PAI Hills Valley Ranches LLC, PAI Holly Hill Groves LLC, PAI Hunt Farm LLC, PAI Jackson Bayou Farm LLC, PAI Lake Placid Groves LLC, PAI Wallula Gap Vineyard LLC, PCP V Cayman AIV GP L.P., PEREF II Co-Invest 1 GP S.a r.l., PEREF II GP S.a r.l., PEREF II PV S.r.l, PFI EM-Tech Fund I LLC, PG Business Service Co. Ltd, PG Collection Service Co. Ltd., PGA Asian Retail Limited, PGA European Limited, PGI Co. Ltd, PGIM (Australia) Pty Ltd, PGIM (Hong Kong) Ltd., PGIM (Scots) Limited, PGIM (Shanghai) Company Ltd., PGIM (Singapore) Pte. Ltd., PGIM AVP IV GP S.a r.l., PGIM Advisory (Shanghai) Co. Ltd., PGIM Agricultural Investments GP LLC, PGIM Agricultural Investors LP, PGIM Broad Market High Yield Bond Fund L.P., PGIM Broad Market High Yield Bond Partners LLC, PGIM Capital Partners Management (Feeder) VI LLC, PGIM Capital Partners Management Fund VI L.P., PGIM European Financing Limited, PGIM European Services Limited, PGIM Financial Limited, PGIM Fixed Income Alternatives Fund II L.P., PGIM Fixed Income Alternatives Fund L.P., PGIM Fixed Income Alternatives GP LLC, PGIM Fixed Income Alternatives II GP LLC, PGIM Foreign Investments Inc., PGIM Holding Company LLC, PGIM INDIA ASSET MANAGEMENT PRIVATE LIMITED, PGIM INDIA TRUSTEES PRIVATE LIMITED, PGIM Inc., PGIM International Financing Inc., PGIM Investments LLC, PGIM Japan Co. Ltd., PGIM Korea Inc., PGIM LTIF Berlin GP S.a r.l., PGIM LTIF Berlin MLP S.ar.l., PGIM LTIF GP S.a.r.l., PGIM Limited, PGIM Loan Originator Manager Limited, PGIM M Campus GP S.a r.l., PGIM Management Partner Limited, PGIM MetaProp Investor LP LLC, PGIM Netherlands B.V., PGIM Overseas Investment Fund Management (Shanghai) Company Ltd, PGIM Private Capital (Ireland) Limited, PGIM Private Capital Limited, PGIM Private Placement Investors Inc., PGIM Private Placement Investors L.P., PGIM REF EUROPE SCSp, PGIM REF Europe GP S.a r.l., PGIM REF Europe Member LLC, PGIM REF Intermediary Services Inc., PGIM Real Estate (Japan) Ltd., PGIM Real Estate (UK) Limited, PGIM Real Estate CD S.a.r.l., PGIM Real Estate Capital VII GP S.a r.l., PGIM Real Estate Carry & Co-Invest GP LLC, PGIM Real Estate Carry & Co-Invest GP S.a r.l., PGIM Real Estate Carry & Co-Invest L.P., PGIM Real Estate Carry & Co-Invest SCSp, PGIM Real Estate Co-Invest Holdings LLC, PGIM Real Estate Debt GmbH, PGIM Real Estate Finance Holding Company, PGIM Real Estate Finance LLC, PGIM Real Estate France SAS, PGIM Real Estate Germany AG, PGIM Real Estate Global Debt GP LLC, PGIM Real Estate Inmuebles S. de R.L. de C.V, PGIM Real Estate Italy S.r.l., PGIM Real Estate Loan Services Inc., PGIM Real Estate Luxembourg S.A., PGIM Real Estate MVP Administradora IV S. de R.L. de C.V., PGIM Real Estate MVP Administradora V S. de R.L. de C.V., PGIM Real Estate MVP Inmuebles IV S. de R.L. de C.V., PGIM Real Estate MVP Inmuebles V S. de R.L. de C.V., PGIM Real Estate Management Luxembourg S.a.r.l., PGIM Real Estate Mexico S.C., PGIM Real Estate S. de R.L. de C.V., PGIM Real Estate U.S. Debt Fund GP LLC, PGIM Senior Loan Opportunities Management (Feeder) I LLC, PGIM Senior Loan Opportunities Management Fund I L.P., PGIM Strategic Financing LLC, PGIM Strategic Investments Inc., PGIM USPF VI Manager LLC, PGIM Warehouse Inc., PGLH of Delaware Inc., PIFM Holdco LLC, PIIC Limited, PIISC Holdings (UK) Limited, PIM KF Blocker Holdings LLC, PIM KF Blocker V Holdings LLC, PIM USPF V Manager LLC, PLA Administradora Industrial SRL, PLA Administradora LLC, PLA Administradora S. de R.L. de C.V., PLA Asesoria Profesional II S. de R.L. de C.V., PLA Asesoria Profesional S.de R.L. de C.V., PLA Co-Investor LLC, PLA Mexico Industrial Manager I LLC, PLA Mexico Industrial Manager II LLC, PLA Mexico Residential Manager I LLC, PLA Residential Fund III Aggregating Manager LLC, PLA Residential Fund III Limited Manager LLC, PLA Residential Fund III Manager LLC, PLA Residential Fund IV Aggregating Manager LLC, PLA Residential Fund IV Manager LLC, PLA Retail Fund I Blue LP, PLA Retail Fund I LP, PLA Retail Fund I Manager LLC, PLA Retail Fund I Red LP, PLA Retail Fund II Aggregating Manager LLC, PLA Retail Fund II LLC, PLA Retail Fund II LP, PLA Retail Fund II Manager LLC, PLA Retail Fund II U.S. Carry/Co-Invest LP, PLA Services Manager Mexico LLC, PLAI Limited, PMCF Holdings LLC, PMCF Properties LLC, PPPF General Partner LLP, PR GA SCP Apartments LLC, PRAMERICA PRECAP VI GP (SCOTS FEEDER) LLP, PRAMERICA PRECAP VI GP LLP, PRECO ACCOUNT III LLC, PRECO ACCOUNT PARTNERSHIP III LP, PRECO Account IV LLC, PRECO Account Partnership IV LP, PRECO III GP LLP, PREFG Hanwha Manager LLC, PREI Acquisition I Inc., PREI Acquisition II Inc., PREI Acquisition LLC, PREI HYDG LLC, PREI International Inc., PRIAC Property Acquisitions LLC, PRICOA Management Partner Limited, PRISA Fund Manager LLC, PRISA II Fund Manager LLC, PRISA II Pooled Manager LLC, PRISA III Fund GP LLC, PRISA III Fund PIM LLC, PRREF II Fund Manager LLC, PRU 3XSquare LLC, PRUCO LLC, PRUDENTIAL CAPITAL ENERGY PARTNERS MANAGEMENT (FEEDER) LLC, PRUDENTIAL MORTGAGE SKP MEMBER LLC, PRUDENTIAL MORTGAGE SKP REIT LLC, PRUDENTIAL MORTGAGE SKP VENTURE 2 LLC, PRUDENTIAL MORTGAGE SKP VENTURE LLC, PT PFI Mega Life Insurance, Passaic Fund LLC, Pine Tree GP, Pine Tree L.P., Platinum GP Limited, Platinum II L.P., Platinum L.P., Pramerica (Hong Kong) Holdings Limited, Pramerica (Luxembourg) CP GP S.a.r.l., Pramerica (Scots) CP GP LLP, Pramerica Business Consulting (Shanghai) Company Limited, Pramerica EVP CP LP, Pramerica Financial Asia Headquarters Pte. Ltd., Pramerica Financial Asia Limited, Pramerica Fixed Income Funds Management Limited, Pramerica Fosun Life Insurance Co. Ltd., Pramerica General Partner LLP, Pramerica Holdings Ltd, Pramerica Insurance Agency (China) Company Ltd., Pramerica PRECAP I GP LLP, Pramerica PRECAP II GP LLP, Pramerica PRECAP III GP LLP, Pramerica PRECAP IV GP LLP, Pramerica Pan European Real Estate (Scots) LP, Pramerica Property Partners Fund (Scotland) Limited Partnership, Pramerica Real Estate Capital I (Scotland) Limited Partnership, Pramerica Real Estate Capital I GP (Scots Feeder) LLP, Pramerica Real Estate Capital II (Scots) Limited Partnership, Pramerica Real Estate Capital III (Scots) Limited Partnership, Pramerica Real Estate Capital IV (Scots) Limited Partnership, Pramerica Real Estate Capital IV GP (Scots Feeder) LLP, Pramerica Real Estate Capital IV GP Limited, Pramerica Real Estate Capital V (Netherlands) GP LLP, Pramerica Real Estate Capital V (Scots) Limited Partnership, Pramerica Real Estate Capital VI (Scots) Limited Partnership, Pramerica SGR S.p.A, Pramerica Systems Ireland Limited, Preco III (Scotland) Limited Partnership, Pru 101 Wood LLC, Pru Alpha Partners I LLC, Pru Fixed Income Emerging Markets Partners I LLC, PruVen Capital Partners Fund I L.P., Pruco Assignment Corporation, Pruco Life Insurance Company, Pruco Life Insurance Company of New Jersey, Pruco Securities LLC, Prudential 900 Aviation Boulevard LLC, Prudential Affordable Mortgage Company LLC, Prudential Agricultural Property Holding Company LLC, Prudential Annuities Distributors Inc., Prudential Annuities Holding Company Inc., Prudential Annuities Inc., Prudential Annuities Information Services & Technology Corporation, Prudential Annuities Life Assurance Corporation, Prudential Arizona Reinsurance Captive Company, Prudential Arizona Reinsurance Term Company, Prudential Arizona Reinsurance Universal Company, Prudential Bank & Trust FSB, Prudential Capital Energy Opportunity Fund L.P., Prudential Capital Energy Partners L.P., Prudential Capital Energy Partners Management Fund L.P., Prudential Capital Partners Management Fund IV L.P., Prudential Capital and Investment Services LLC, Prudential Chile II SpA, Prudential Chile SpA, Prudential Commercial Property Holding Company LLC, Prudential Customer Solutions LLC, Prudential Equity Group LLC, Prudential Financial Securities Investment Trust Enterprise, Prudential Fixed Income Global Liquidity Relative Value Partners LLC, Prudential Fixed Income U.S. Relative Value Partners LLC, Prudential Funding LLC, Prudential General Services of Japan Y.K., Prudential Gibraltar Agency Co. Ltd., Prudential Global Funding LLC, Prudential Holdings of Japan Inc., Prudential Huntoon Paige Associates LLC, Prudential IBH Holdco Inc., Prudential Impact Investments Mortgage Loans LLC, Prudential Impact Investments Private Debt LLC, Prudential Impact Investments Private Equity LLC, Prudential Industrial Properties LLC, Prudential Insurance Agency LLC, Prudential International Insurance Holdings Ltd., Prudential International Insurance Service Company L.L.C., Prudential International Investments Advisers LLC, Prudential International Investments Company LLC, Prudential International Investments LLC, Prudential Investment Management Services LLC, Prudential Japan Holdings LLC, Prudential Legacy Insurance Company of New Jersey, Prudential Life Insurance Company of Taiwan Inc., Prudential Mortgage Asset Holdings 1 Japan Investment Business Limited Partnership, Prudential Mortgage Asset Holdings 2 Japan Investment Business Limited Partnership, Prudential Mortgage Capital Asset Holding Company LLC, Prudential Mortgage Capital Funding LLC, Prudential Mortgage Capital Holdings LLC, Prudential Multifamily Mortgage LLC, Prudential Mutual Fund Services LLC, Prudential Newark Realty LLC, Prudential QOZ Investment Fund 1 LLC, Prudential Realty Securities Inc., Prudential Retirement Financial Services Holding LLC, Prudential Retirement Holdings LLC, Prudential Retirement Insurance and Annuity Company, Prudential Securities Secured Financing Corporation, Prudential Securities Structured Assets Inc., Prudential Seguros Mexico S.A. de C.V., Prudential Seguros S.A., Prudential Servicios S. de R.L. de C.V., Prudential Structured Settlement Company, Prudential Systems Japan Limited, Prudential Term Reinsurance Company, Prudential Trust Co. Ltd., Prudential Trust Company, Prudential Universal Reinsurance Company, Prudential Workplace Solutions Group Services LLC, Prudential do Brasil Seguros de Vida S.A., Prudential do Brasil Vida em Grupo S.A., Prudential/TMW Real Estate Group LLC, Pruservicos Participacoes Ltda., QMA JP EM All Cap Equity Partners LLC, QMA LLC, QMA Wadhwani LLP, Quartzsite LLC, Residential Services Corporation of America LLC, Rio CP LP, Rock European Real Estate Holdings S.ar.l., Rock Global Real Estate LLC, Rock Kensington Limited, Rock Marty GP S.a r.l., Rock Oxford S.a r.l., Rock UK Real Estate Holdings S.ar.l., Rock UK Real Estate II S.a.r.l., Rockstone Co. Ltd., Rosado Grande LLC, Ross Avenue Energy Fund Holdings LLC, Ross Avenue Minerals 2012 LLC, SCP Apartments LLC, SENIOR HOUSING PARTNERS VI GP LLC, SENIOR HOUSING PARTNERSHIP FUND VI GP LLC, SHP IV Carried Interest LP, SHP V Carried Interest L.P., SMP Holdings Inc., SVIIT Holdings Inc., Sanei Collection Service Co. Ltd. (Kabushiki Kaisha Sanei Shuuno Service), Senior Housing Partners IV L.L.C., Senior Housing Partners V LLC, Senior Housing Partnership Fund IV L.L.C., Senior Housing Partnership Fund V LLC, Sterling Private Placement Management LLP, Stetson Street Partners L.P., Strand Investments Limited, TBG Insurance Services Corporation, TENSATOR HOLDINGS LTD, TF Proveedora S.C., TMW ASPF I Verwaltungs GmbH & Co. KG, TMW ASPF Management GmbH, TMW Management LLC, TMW Real Estate Group LLC, TMW Realty Advisors LLC, TMW USPF Verwaltungs GmbH, TRGOAG Company Inc., The Gibraltar Life Insurance Co. Ltd., The Keynes Dynamic Beta Strategy (US) Fund GP LLC, The Prudential Assigned Settlement Services Corp., The Prudential Brazilian Capital Fund LP, The Prudential Gibraltar Financial Life Insurance Co. Ltd., The Prudential Home Mortgage Company Inc., The Prudential Insurance Company of America, The Prudential Life Insurance Company Ltd., The Prudential Real Estate Financial Services of America Inc., The WMF Group, Thurloe Commercial Guernsey Limited, Times Square Center Associates, USPF V - Verwaltungs - GmbH & Co. KG, USPF V Carry LLC, USPF V Co-Invest LLC, USPF V Investment LP, United States Property Fund VI GP S.a r.l., Vailsburg Fund LLC, Vantage Casualty Insurance Company, Wabash Avenue Holdings V LLC, Wabash Avenue Partners V L.P., Wadhwani Capital Limited, Waveland Avenue Holdings I LLC, Waveland Avenue Partners I (Ireland) L.P., Waveland Avenue Partners I (US) L.P., Wellness Services Ecossistema De Bem Estar Ltda., Wellness Services SRL, Yamato Life, and Yavapai LLC. The following companies are subsidiares of Bristol-Myers Squibb: 1096271 B.C. ULC, 345 Park LLC, A.G. Medical Services P.A., AHI Investment LLC, AbVitro LLC, Abraxis BioScience Australia Pty Ltd., Abraxis BioScience Inc., Abraxis BioScience International Holding Company Inc., Abraxis BioScience LLC, Abraxis BioScience Puerto Rico LLC, Acetylon Pharmaceuticals Inc., Adnexus, Adnexus a Bristol-Myers Squibb R&D Company, Allard Labs Acquisition G.P., Amira Pharmaceuticals, Amira Pharmaceuticals Inc., Amylin Pharmaceuticals, Apothecon LLC, B-MS Generx Unlimited Company, BMS Benelux Holdings B.V., BMS Bermuda Nominees L.L.C., BMS Data Acquisition Company LLC, BMS Forex Company, BMS Holdings Sarl, BMS Holdings Spain S.L., BMS International Insurance Designated Activity Company, BMS Investco SAS, BMS Korea Holdings L.L.C., BMS Latin American Nominees L.L.C., BMS Luxembourg Partners L.L.C., BMS Omega Bermuda Holdings Finance Ltd., BMS Pharmaceutical Korea Limited, BMS Pharmaceuticals Germany Holdings B.V., BMS Pharmaceuticals International Holdings Netherlands B.V., BMS Pharmaceuticals Korea Holdings B.V., BMS Pharmaceuticals Mexico Holdings B.V., BMS Pharmaceuticals Netherlands Holdings B.V., BMS Real Estate LLC, BMS Spain Investments LLC, BMS Strategic Portfolio Investments Holdings Inc., Blisa Acquisition G.P., Bristol (Iran) S.A., Bristol Iran Private Company Limited, Bristol Laboratories Inc., Bristol Laboratories International S.A., Bristol Laboratories Medical Information Systems Inc., Bristol-Myers (Andes) L.L.C., Bristol-Myers (Private) Limited, Bristol-Myers Middle East S.A.L., Bristol-Myers Overseas Corporation, Bristol-Myers Squibb (China) Investment Co. Ltd., Bristol-Myers Squibb (China) Pharmaceuticals Co. Ltd., Bristol-Myers Squibb (Israel) Ltd., Bristol-Myers Squibb (NZ) Limited, Bristol-Myers Squibb (Proprietary) Limited, Bristol-Myers Squibb (Shanghai) Trading Co. Ltd., Bristol-Myers Squibb (Singapore) Pte. Limited, Bristol-Myers Squibb (Taiwan) Ltd., Bristol-Myers Squibb (West Indies) Ltd., Bristol-Myers Squibb A.E., Bristol-Myers Squibb Aktiebolag, Bristol-Myers Squibb Argentina S. R. L., Bristol-Myers Squibb Australia Pty. Ltd., Bristol-Myers Squibb Axia Limited, Bristol-Myers Squibb B.V., Bristol-Myers Squibb Belgium S.A., Bristol-Myers Squibb Business Services Limited, Bristol-Myers Squibb Canada Co., Bristol-Myers Squibb Canada International Limited, Bristol-Myers Squibb Delta Company Limited, Bristol-Myers Squibb Denmark Filial of Bristol-Myers Squibb AB, Bristol-Myers Squibb EMEA Sarl, Bristol-Myers Squibb Egypt LLC, Bristol-Myers Squibb Epsilon Holdings Unlimited Company, Bristol-Myers Squibb Farmaceutica Ltda., Bristol-Myers Squibb Farmaceutica Portuguesa S.A., Bristol-Myers Squibb GesmbH, Bristol-Myers Squibb GmbH & Co. KGaA, Bristol-Myers Squibb Holding Germany GmbH & Co. KG, Bristol-Myers Squibb Holdings 2002 Limited, Bristol-Myers Squibb Holdings Germany Verwaltungs GmbH, Bristol-Myers Squibb Holdings Ireland Unlimited Company, Bristol-Myers Squibb Holdings Limited, Bristol-Myers Squibb Holdings Pharma Ltd. Liability Company, Bristol-Myers Squibb Ilaclari Inc., Bristol-Myers Squibb India Pvt. Limited, Bristol-Myers Squibb International Company Unlimited Company, Bristol-Myers Squibb International Corporation, Bristol-Myers Squibb Investco L.L.C., Bristol-Myers Squibb K.K., Bristol-Myers Squibb Kft., Bristol-Myers Squibb Luxembourg International S.C.A., Bristol-Myers Squibb Luxembourg S.a.r.l., Bristol-Myers Squibb MEA GmbH, Bristol-Myers Squibb Manufacturing Company, Bristol-Myers Squibb Marketing Services S.R.L., Bristol-Myers Squibb Middle East & Africa FZ-LLC, Bristol-Myers Squibb Norway Ltd., Bristol-Myers Squibb Nutricionales de Mexico S. de R.L. de C.V., Bristol-Myers Squibb Peru S.A., Bristol-Myers Squibb Pharma (HK) Ltd, Bristol-Myers Squibb Pharma (Thailand) Limited, Bristol-Myers Squibb Pharma Company, Bristol-Myers Squibb Pharma EEIG, Bristol-Myers Squibb Pharma Holding Company LLC, Bristol-Myers Squibb Pharma Ventures Corporation, Bristol-Myers Squibb Pharmaceuticals Limited, Bristol-Myers Squibb Pharmaceuticals Unlimited Company, Bristol-Myers Squibb Polska Sp. z o.o., Bristol-Myers Squibb Products SA, Bristol-Myers Squibb Puerto Rico Inc., Bristol-Myers Squibb Puerto Rico/Sanofi Pharmaceutical Partnership Puerto Rico, Bristol-Myers Squibb Romania S.R.L., Bristol-Myers Squibb S.A.U., Bristol-Myers Squibb S.r.l., Bristol-Myers Squibb SA, Bristol-Myers Squibb Sanofi Pharmaceuticals Holding Partnership, Bristol-Myers Squibb Sarl, Bristol-Myers Squibb Service Ltd., Bristol-Myers Squibb Services Sp. z o.o., Bristol-Myers Squibb Spol. s r.o., Bristol-Myers Squibb Theta Finance Ltd., Bristol-Myers Squibb Trustees Limited, Bristol-Myers Squibb Verwaltungs GmbH, Bristol-Myers Squibb de Colombia S.A., Bristol-Myers Squibb de Costa Rica Sociedad Anonima, Bristol-Myers Squibb de Guatemala S.A., Bristol-Myers Squibb de Mexico S. de R.L. de C.V., Bristol-Myers Squibb/Astrazeneca EEIG, Bristol-Myers Squibb/Pfizer EEIG, Bristol-Myers Squibb/Sanofi Pharmaceuticals Partnership, Bristol-Myers de Venezuela S.C.A., CHT I LLC, CHT II LLC, CHT III LLC, CHT IV LLC, CR Finance Company LLC, Cardioxyl Pharmaceuticals, Cardioxyl Pharmaceuticals Inc., Celem LLC, Celem Ltd., Celgene, Celgene A.B., Celgene AS, Celgene Ab (Finland), Celgene Alpine Investment Co. II LLC, Celgene Alpine Investment Co. III LLC, Celgene Alpine Investment Co. LLC, Celgene ApS, Celgene B.V., Celgene BVBA, Celgene Brasil Produtos Farmaceuticos Ltda., Celgene CAR LLC, Celgene CAR Ltd., Celgene Chemicals Sarl, Celgene China Holdings LLC, Celgene Co., Celgene Corporation, Celgene Distribution B.V., Celgene EngMab GmbH, Celgene Europe B.V., Celgene Europe Limited, Celgene European Investment Company LLC, Celgene Financing Company LLC, Celgene Global Holdings Sarl, Celgene GmbH [Austria], Celgene GmbH [Germany], Celgene GmbH [Switzerland], Celgene Holdings East Corporation, Celgene Holdings II Sarl, Celgene Holdings III Sarl, Celgene Ilac Pazarlama ve Ticaret Limited Sirketi, Celgene Inc., Celgene International Holdings Corporation, Celgene International II Sarl, Celgene International III Sarl, Celgene International Inc., Celgene International Sarl, Celgene K.K., Celgene Kft., Celgene Limited [Hong Kong], Celgene Limited [Ireland], Celgene Limited [New Zealand], Celgene Limited [Taiwan], Celgene Limited [UK], Celgene Logistics Sarl, Celgene Ltd, Celgene Luxembourg Sarl, Celgene Management Sarl, Celgene NJ Investment Co, Celgene Netherlands B.V., Celgene Netherlands Investment B.V., Celgene Pharmaceutical (Shanghai) Co. Ltd., Celgene Pte. Ltd., Celgene Pty Ltd, Celgene Puerto Rico Distribution LLC, Celgene Quanticel Research Inc, Celgene R&D Sarl, Celgene RIVOT LLC, Celgene RIVOT Ltd., Celgene RIVOT SRL, Celgene Receptos Limited, Celgene Receptos Sarl, Celgene Research Incubator At Summit West LLC, Celgene Research S.L.U., Celgene Research and Development Company LLC, Celgene Research and Development I ULC, Celgene Research and Development II LLC, Celgene Research and Investment Company II LLC, Celgene S. de R.L. de C.V., Celgene S.L.U., Celgene S.R.L., Celgene SAS, Celgene Sarl AU, Celgene Sdn Bhd, Celgene Services Sarl, Celgene Sociedade Unipessoal Lda, Celgene Sp. Z.o.o., Celgene Sro [Czech Republic], Celgene Summit Investment Co, Celgene Switzerland Holding Sarl, Celgene Switzerland II LLC, Celgene Switzerland Investment Sarl, Celgene Switzerland LLC, Celgene Switzerland Sarl, Celgene Tri A Holdings Ltd., Celgene Tri Sarl, Celgene UK Distribution Limited, Celgene UK Holdings Limited, Celgene UK Manufacturing II Limited, Celgene UK Manufacturing III Limited, Celgene UK Manufacturing Limited, Celgene d.o.o., Celgene sro [Slovakia], Celmed LLC, Celmed Ltd., ConvaTec Divestiture, Cormorant Pharmaceuticals, Cormorant Pharmaceuticals AB, Crosp Ltd., Delinia Inc., Deuteria Pharmaceuticals Inc., DuPont Pharmaceuticals, E. R. Squibb & Sons Inter-American Corporation, E. R. Squibb & Sons L.L.C., E. R. Squibb & Sons Limited, EWI Corporation, EngMab Sarl, F-star Alpha, FermaVir Pharmaceuticals L.L.C., FermaVir Research L.L.C., Flexus Biosciences, Flexus Biosciences Inc., Forbius, Galecto Biotech, GenPharm International L.L.C., Gloucester Pharmaceuticals LLC, Grove Insurance Company Ltd., Heyden Farmaceutica Portuguesa Limitada, IFM Therapeutics, Impact Biomedicines Inc., Inhibitex, Inhibitex L.L.C., Innate Tumor Immunity Inc., JuMP Holdings LLC, Juno Therapeutics GmbH, Juno Therapeutics Inc., Kosan Biosciences, Kosan Biosciences Incorporated, Linson Investments Limited, Mead Johnson (Manufacturing) Jamaica Limited, Mead Johnson Jamaica Ltd., Medarex, Morris Avenue Investment II LLC, Morris Avenue Investment LLC, MyoKardia, O.o.o. Bristol-Myers Squibb, Oy Bristol-Myers Squibb (Finland) AB, Padlock Therapeutics, Padlock Therapeutics Inc., Pharmion LLC, Princeton Pharmaceutical Products Inc., Receptos LLC, Receptos Services LLC, RedoxTherapies Inc., Route 22 Real Estate Holding Corporation, SPV A Holdings ULC, Seamair Insurance DAC, Signal Pharmaceuticals LLC, Sino-American Shanghai Squibb Pharmaceuticals Limited, Societe Francaise de Complements Alimentaires(S.O.F.C.A.), Squibb Middle East S.A., Summit West Celgene LLC, Swords Laboratories, VentiRx Pharmaceuticals Inc., Westwood-Intrafin SA, Westwood-Squibb Pharmaceuticals Inc., X-Body Inc., ZymoGenetics, ZymoGenetics Inc., ZymoGenetics LLC, ZymoGenetics Paymaster LLC, iPierian, and iPierian Inc.. Daimler AG, together its subsidiaries, develops and manufactures passenger cars, trucks, vans, and buses in Germany and internationally. It operates through Mercedes-Benz Cars & Vans, Daimler Trucks and Buses, and Daimler Mobility segments. The Mercedes-Benz Cars segment offers premium and luxury vehicles of the Mercedes-Benz brand, including the Mercedes-AMG, Mercedes-Maybach, and Mercedes-EQ brands; small cars under the smart brand name; and ecosystem of Mercedes-Benz under the Mercedes me brand, as well as vans and related services under the Mercedes-Benz and Freightliner brands. Daimler Trucks and Buses segment offers its trucks and special vehicles under the Mercedes-Benz, Freightliner, Western Star, FUSO, and BharatBenz brands; and buses under the Mercedes-Benz, Setra, Thomas Built Buses, and FU brands, as well as bus chassis. The Daimler Mobility segment provides financing and leasing packages for end-customers and dealers; and automotive insurance brokerage, banking, investment, and fleet management services under the Athlon brand. It also sells vehicle related spare parts and accessories. Daimler AG was founded in 1886 and is headquartered in Stuttgart, Germany Read More By Trend OPEC+ has achieved a conformity level of 111% in September 2018, according to the Joint Ministerial Monitoring Committee (JMMC). The Joint Ministerial Monitoring Committee (JMMC) reviewed the monthly report prepared by its Joint Technical Committee (JTC), including the overall conformity levels of the countries participating in the Declaration of Cooperation, during the month of September 2018, as well as the short-term prospects of the global oil market, said a message from OPEC. The JMMC noted that countries participating in the Declaration of Cooperation achieved a conformity level of 111 percent in September 2018, which shows significant progress towards the goal set at the 4th OPEC and non-OPEC Ministerial Meeting of 23 June 2018. The Committee expressed overall satisfaction with the collective performance of Member Countries in the month of September. The Committee also reviewed recent market fundamentals, which showed a very comfortable supply level relative to demand. The committee however expressed concerns about rising inventories in recent weeks and also noted looming macro-economic uncertainties which may require changing course. The JMMC directed the JTC to continue to monitor oil fundamentals and market conditions as well as conformity levels in its efforts to maintain market balance. It further directed the JTC to continue to study the 2019 outlook and present options on 2019 production levels to prevent reemergence of a market imbalance. The next meeting of the JMMC is scheduled to take place on 11 November 2018 in Abu Dhabi, UAE. Earlier, OPEC and several other non-OPEC producers reached an agreement to extend the production deal for a further nine months. This would shift the expiration date of the agreement from March to the end of 2018. The agreement is on the same terms as those agreed in November last year. The following companies are subsidiares of Deutsche Bank Aktiengesellschaft: 87 Leonard Development LLC, ABFS I Incorporated, ABS MB Ltd., Acacia (Luxembourg) S.a r.l., Accounting Solutions Holding Company Inc, Alex. Brown Financial Services Incorporated, Alex. Brown Investments Incorporated, Alfred Herrhausen Gesellschaft mbH, Amber Investments S.a r.l., Ambidexter GmbH, Ambidexter GmbH i.L., Argent Incorporated, BHW - Gesellschaft fur Wohnungswirtschaft mbH, BHW Bausparkasse Aktiengesellschaft, BHW Holding GmbH, BHW Kreditservice GmbH, BNA Nominees Pty Limited, BT Globenet Nominees Limited, BTAS Cayman GP, BTD Nominees Pty Limited, Baincor Nominees Pty Limited, Bainpro Nominees Pty Ltd, Baldur Mortgages Limited, Bankers Trust Investments Limited, Barkly Investments Ltd., Bayan Delinquent Loan Recovery 1 (SPV-AMC) Inc, Bayan Delinquent Loan Recovery 1 (SPV-AMC) Inc., Berkshire Mortgage Finance, Betriebs-Center fur Banken AG, Biomass Holdings S.a r.l., Birch (Luxembourg) S.a r.l., Blue Cork Inc, Blue Cork Inc., Borfield Sociedad Anonima, Breaking Wave DB Limited, Cape Acquisition Corp., CapeSuccess Inc., CapeSuccess LLC, Cardales UK Limited, Cardea Real Estate S.r.l., Career Blazers LLC, Career Blazers Management Company Inc, Career Blazers Management Company Inc., Career Blazers Personnel Services Inc, Career Blazers Personnel Services Inc., Career Blazers Personnel Services of Washington D.C. Inc. Washington D.C., Caribbean Resort Holdings Inc, Caribbean Resort Holdings Inc., Carpathian Investments Designated Activity Company, Cathay Advisory (Beijing) Co. Ltd., Cathay Advisory (Beijing) Co. Ltd., Cathay Asset Management Company Limited, Cathay Capital Company (No 2) Limited, Cedar (Luxembourg) S.a r.l., Centennial River 2 Inc., Centennial River Corporation, Chapel Funding, Charlton (Delaware) Inc, China Recovery Fund LLC, China Recovery Fund LLC, Cinda - DB NPL Securitization Trust 2003-1, City Leasing (Thameside) Limited, City Leasing Limited, Consumo S.p.A., Consumo Srl in Liquidazione, Cyrus J. Lawrence Capital Holdings Inc., Cyrus J. Lawrence Capital Holdings Inc., D B Investments (GB) Limited, D&M Turnaround Partners Godo Kaisha, D.B. International Delaware Inc., D.B. International Delaware Inc., DAHOC (UK) Limited (in members' voluntary liquidation), DAHOC Beteiligungsgesellschaft mbH, DB (Barbados) SRL, DB (Malaysia) Nominee (Asing) Sdn. Bhd., DB (Malaysia) Nominee (Tempatan) Sendirian Berhad, DB (Pacific) Limited, DB (Pacific) Limited New York, DB (Pacific) Limited New York, DB Abalone LLC, DB Alex. Brown Holdings Incorporated, DB Alps Corporation, DB Aotearoa Investments Limited, DB Asia Pacific Holdings Limited (in voluntary liquidation), DB Asset Finance I S.a r.l., DB Asset Finance II S.a r.l., DB Aster II LLC, DB Aster III LLC, DB Aster Inc., DB Aster LLC, DB Beteiligungs-Holding GmbH, DB Boracay LLC, DB Capital Investments Sarl, DB Capital Markets (Deutschland) GmbH, DB Capital Partners Inc., DB Capital Partners Inc., DB Cartera de Inmuebles 1 S.A.U., DB Cartera de Inmuebles 1 S.A.U., DB Chestnut Holdings Limited, DB Commodity Services LLC, DB Consorzio S. Cons. a r. l., DB Corporate Advisory (Malaysia) Sdn. Bhd., DB Covered Bond S.r.l., DB Credit Investments S.a r.l., DB Delaware Holdings (Europe) Limited, DB Direkt GmbH, DB Elara LLC, DB Energy Commodities Limited (in members' voluntary liquidation), DB Energy Trading LLC, DB Enfield Infrastructure Holdings Limited, DB Equipment Leasing Inc., DB Equipment Leasing Inc., DB Equity Limited, DB Finance (Delaware) LLC, DB Finance (Delaware) LLC, DB Finance International GmbH, DB Ganymede 2006 L.P., DB Global Markets Multi-Strategy Fund I Ltd., DB Global Technology Inc., DB Global Technology Inc., DB Global Technology SRL, DB Group Services (UK) Limited, DB HR Solutions GmbH, DB Holding Fundo de Investimento Multimercado Investimento no Exterior Credito Privado, DB Holdings (New York) Inc., DB Holdings (New York) Inc., DB Holdings (South America) Limited, DB IROC Leasing Corp., DB Immobilienfonds 1 Wieland KG, DB Immobilienfonds 2 KG i.L., DB Immobilienfonds 4 KG i.L., DB Immobilienfonds 5 Wieland KG, DB Impact Investment (GP) Limited, DB Impact Investment Fund I L.P., DB Impact Investment Fund I L.P., DB Industrial Holdings Beteiligungs GmbH & Co. KG, DB Industrial Holdings GmbH, DB Intermezzo LLC, DB International (Asia) Limited, DB International Investments Limited, DB International Trust (Singapore) Limited, DB Investment Managers Inc., DB Investment Managers Inc., DB Investment Partners Inc., DB Investment Partners Inc., DB Investment Resources (US) Corporation, DB Investment Resources Holdings Corp., DB Investment Services GmbH, DB Io LP, DB Litigation Fee LLC, DB London (Investor Services) Nominees Limited, DB Management Support GmbH, DB Managers LLC, DB Municipal Holdings LLC, DB Nexus American Investments (UK) Limited (in members'voluntary liquidation), DB Nexus Investments (UK) Limited (in members' voluntary liquidation), DB Nominees (Hong Kong) Limited, DB Nominees (Singapore) Pte Ltd, DB Omega BTV S.C.S., DB Omega Holdings LLC, DB Omega Ltd., DB Omega S.C.S., DB Operaciones y Servicios Interactivos Agrupacion de Interes Economico, DB Overseas Finance Delaware Inc., DB Overseas Finance Delaware Inc., DB Overseas Holdings Limited, DB PWM, DB Portfolio Southwest Inc., DB Print GmbH, DB Privat- und Firmenkundenbank AG, DB Private Clients Corp., DB Private Wealth Mortgage Ltd., DB RC Holdings LLC, DB Re S.A., DB Service Centre Limited, DB Service Uruguay S.A., DB Services Americas Inc., DB Services Americas Inc., DB Servizi Amministrativi S.r.l., DB Strategic Advisors Inc., DB Strategic Advisors Inc., DB Structured Derivative Products LLC, DB Structured Derivative Products LLC, DB Structured Finance 1 Designated Activity Company, DB Structured Finance 2 Designated Activity Company, DB Structured Holdings Luxembourg S.a r.l., DB Structured Products Inc., DB Structured Products Inc., DB Trustee Services Limited, DB Trustees (Hong Kong) Limited, DB U.S. Financial Markets Holding Corporation, DB UK Bank Limited, DB UK Holdings Limited, DB UK PCAM Holdings Limited, DB USA Core Corporation, DB USA Corporation, DB Valoren S.a r.l., DB Value S.a r.l., DB VersicherungsManager GmbH, DB Vita S.A., DBAB Wall Street LLC, DBAH Capital LLC, DBAH Capital LLC, DBCIBZ1, DBCIBZ2, DBFIC Inc., DBFIC Inc., DBNZ Overseas Investments (No.1) Limited, DBOI Global Services (UK) Limited, DBOI Global Services Private Limited, DBR Investments Co. Limited, DBRE Global Real Estate Management IA Ltd., DBRE Global Real Estate Management IB Ltd., DBRE Global Real Estate Management IB Ltd., DBRE Global Real Estate Management US IB L.L.C., DBRMS4, DBRMSGP1, DBUK PCAM Limited, DBUKH No. 2 Limited, DBUSBZ1 LLC, DBUSBZ1 LLC, DBUSBZ2 S.a r.l., DBUSBZ2 S.a r.l., DBX Advisors LLC, DBX ETF Trust, DBX Strategic Advisors LLC, DBO Vermogensverwertung GmbH, DEBEKO Immobilien GmbH & Co Grundbesitz OHG, DEE Deutsche Erneuerbare Energien GmbH, DEUFRAN Beteiligungs GmbH, DEUKONA Versicherungs-Vermittlungs-GmbH, DEUTSCHE BANK A.S., DG China Clean Tech Partners, DI Deutsche Immobilien Treuhandgesellschaft mbH, DIB-Consult Deutsche Immobilien- und BeteiligungsBeratungsgesellschaft mbH i.L., DISCA Beteiligungsgesellschaft mbH, DNU Nominees Pty Limited, DSL Portfolio GmbH & Co. KG, DSL Portfolio Verwaltungs GmbH, DTS Nominees Pty Limited, DWS Alternatives France, DWS Alternatives Global Limited, DWS Alternatives GmbH, DWS Asset Management (Korea) Company Limited, DWS Beteiligungs GmbH, DWS CH AG, DWS Distributors Inc., DWS Distributors Inc., DWS Far Eastern Investments Limited, DWS Group GmbH & Co. KGaA, DWS Group Services UK Limited, DWS Grundbesitz GmbH, DWS International GmbH, DWS Investment GmbH, DWS Investment Management Americas Inc., DWS Investment Management Americas Inc., DWS Investment S.A., DWS Investments Australia Limited, DWS Investments Hong Kong Limited, DWS Investments Japan Limited, DWS Investments Shanghai Limited, DWS Investments Singapore Limited, DWS Investments UK Limited, DWS Management GmbH, DWS Real Estate GmbH, DWS Service Company, DWS Trust Company, DWS USA Corporation, De Heng Asset Management Company Limited, De Meng Innovative (Beijing) Consulting Company Limited, DeAM Infrastructure Limited, Deloraine Spain S.L., Delowrezham de Mexico S. de R.L. de C.V., Deposit Solutions, Deutsche (Aotearoa) Capital Holdings New Zealand, Deutsche (Aotearoa) Foreign Investments New Zealand, Deutsche (Mauritius) Limited Port, Deutsche (New Munster) Holdings New Zealand Limited, Deutsche Access Investments Limited, Deutsche Aeolia Power Production Societe Anonyme, Deutsche Alt-A Securities Inc., Deutsche Alt-A Securities Inc., Deutsche Alternative Asset Management (France) SAS, Deutsche Alternative Asset Management (UK) Limited, Deutsche Asia Pacific Holdings Pte Ltd, Deutsche Asset Management (India) Private Limited, Deutsche Asset Management (Japan) Limited, Deutsche Asset Management (Korea) Company Limited, Deutsche Asset Management S.A., Deutsche Asset Management S.G.I.I.C. S.A., Deutsche Australia Limited, Deutsche Bank (Cayman) Limited, Deutsche Bank (Chile), Deutsche Bank (China) Co. Ltd., Deutsche Bank (China) Co. Ltd., Deutsche Bank (Malaysia) Berhad, Deutsche Bank (Suisse) SA, Deutsche Bank (Uruguay) Sociedad Anonima Institucion Financiera Externa, Deutsche Bank Aktiengesellschaft, Deutsche Bank Americas Holding Corp., Deutsche Bank Bauspar-Aktiengesellschaft, Deutsche Bank Capital Finance LLC I, Deutsche Bank Capital Finance Trust I, Deutsche Bank Europe GmbH, Deutsche Bank Financial Company, Deutsche Bank Holdings Inc., Deutsche Bank Holdings Inc., Deutsche Bank Insurance Agency Incorporated, Deutsche Bank Insurance Agency of Delaware, Deutsche Bank International Limited, Deutsche Bank Investments (Guernsey) Limited, Deutsche Bank Luxembourg S.A., Deutsche Bank Luxembourg S.A. - Fiduciary Deposits, Deutsche Bank Luxembourg S.A. - Fiduciary Note Programme, Deutsche Bank Mutui S.p.A., Deutsche Bank Mexico S.A. Institucion de Banca Multiple, Deutsche Bank Mexico S.A. Institucion de Banca Multiple, Deutsche Bank National Trust Company, Deutsche Bank National Trust Company Los, Deutsche Bank Nominees (Guernsey) Limited, Deutsche Bank Nominees (Jersey) Limited, Deutsche Bank Polska Spolka Akcyjna, Deutsche Bank Representative Office Nigeria Limited, Deutsche Bank S.A. - Banco Alemao, Deutsche Bank S.A. - Banco Alemao Sao, Deutsche Bank SPEARs/LIFERs Series DBE-8011 Trust, Deutsche Bank Securities Inc., Deutsche Bank Securities Limited, Deutsche Bank Services (Jersey) Limited, Deutsche Bank Sociedad Anonima Espanola, Deutsche Bank Sociedad Anonima Espanola, Deutsche Bank Societa per Azioni, Deutsche Bank Trust Company Americas, Deutsche Bank Trust Company Delaware, Deutsche Bank Trust Company National Association, Deutsche Bank Trust Company National Association, Deutsche Bank Trust Corporation, Deutsche CIB Centre Private Limited, Deutsche Capital Finance (2000) Limited, Deutsche Capital Hong Kong Limited, Deutsche Capital Management Limited, Deutsche Capital Markets Australia Limited, Deutsche Capital Partners China Limited, Deutsche Cayman Ltd., Deutsche Colombia S.A.S., Deutsche Custody N.V., Deutsche Domus New Zealand Limited, Deutsche Equities India Private Limited, Deutsche Finance Co 1 Pty Limited, Deutsche Finance Co 2 Pty Limited, Deutsche Finance Co 3 Pty Limited, Deutsche Finance Co 4 Pty Limited, Deutsche Finance No. 2 Limited, Deutsche Foras New Zealand Limited, Deutsche Gesellschaft fur Immobilien-Leasing mit beschrankter Haftung, Deutsche Gesellschaft fur Immobilien-Leasing mit beschrankterHaftung, Deutsche Global Markets Limited, Deutsche Group Holdings (SA) Proprietary Limited, Deutsche Group Services Pty Limited, Deutsche Grundbesitz Beteiligungsgesellschaft mbH, Deutsche Grundbesitz Beteiligungsgesellschaft mbH i.L., Deutsche Grundbesitz-Anlagegesellschaft mit beschrankter Haftung, Deutsche Holdings (BTI) Limited, Deutsche Holdings (Grand Duchy), Deutsche Holdings (Luxembourg) S.a r.l., Deutsche Holdings (Malta) Ltd., Deutsche Holdings Limited, Deutsche Holdings No. 2 Limited, Deutsche Holdings No. 3 Limited, Deutsche Holdings No. 4 Limited, Deutsche Immobilien Leasing GmbH, Deutsche India Holdings Private Limited, Deutsche International Corporate Services (Ireland) Limited, Deutsche International Corporate Services Limited, Deutsche International Custodial Services Limited, Deutsche Inversiones Dos S.A., Deutsche Inversiones Limitada, Deutsche Investments (Netherlands) N.V., Deutsche Investments India Private Limited, Deutsche Investor Services Private Limited, Deutsche Knowledge Services Pte. Ltd., Deutsche Leasing New York Corp., Deutsche Mandatos S.A., Deutsche Master Funding Corporation, Deutsche Mexico Holdings S.a r.l., Deutsche Morgan Grenfell Group Limited, Deutsche Morgan Grenfell Group Public Limited Company, Deutsche Mortgage & Asset Receiving Corporation, Deutsche Mortgage Securities Inc., Deutsche Mortgage Securities Inc., Deutsche Nederland N.V., Deutsche New Zealand Limited, Deutsche Nominees Limited, Deutsche Oppenheim Family Office AG, Deutsche Overseas Issuance New Zealand Limited, Deutsche Postbank, Deutsche Postbank Finance Center Objekt GmbH, Deutsche Postbank Funding LLC I, Deutsche Postbank Funding LLC II, Deutsche Postbank Funding LLC III, Deutsche Private Asset Management Limited, Deutsche Securities (India) Private Limited, Deutsche Securities (Proprietary) Limited, Deutsche Securities (SA) (Proprietary) Limited, Deutsche Securities Asia Limited, Deutsche Securities Australia Limited, Deutsche Securities Inc., Deutsche Securities Israel Ltd., Deutsche Securities Korea Co., Deutsche Securities Mauritius Limited, Deutsche Securities Menkul Degerler A.S., Deutsche Securities S.A., Deutsche Securities S.A. de C.V. Casa de Bolsa, Deutsche Securities S.A. de C.V. Casa de Bolsa, Deutsche Securities Saudi Arabia, Deutsche Securities SpA, Deutsche Securities Venezuela S.A., Deutsche Securitisation Australia Pty Limited, Deutsche Services Polska Sp. z o.o., Deutsche StiftungsTrust GmbH, Deutsche Strategic Investment Holdings Yugen Kaisha, Deutsche Trust Company Limited Japan, Deutsche Trustee Company Limited, Deutsche Trustee Services (India) Private Limited, Deutsche Trustees Malaysia Berhad, Deutsche Wealth Management S.G.I.I.C. S.A., Deutsches Institut fur Altersvorsorge GmbH, Durian (Luxembourg) S.a r.l., EC EUROPA IMMOBILIEN FONDS NR. 3 GmbH & CO. KG i.I., Elba Finance GmbH, Elizabethan Holdings Limited, Elizabethan Management Limited, Emerald Asset Repackaging Designated Activity Company, Erste Frankfurter Hoist GmbH, European Value Added I (Alternate G.P.) LLP, Exinor SA, FARAMIR Beteiligungs- und Verwaltungs GmbH, FRANKFURT CONSULT GmbH, Fiduciaria Sant' Andrea S.r.L., Finanzberatungsgesellschaft mbH der Deutschen Bank, Franz Urbig- und Oscar Schlitter-Stiftung Gesellschaft mit beschrankter Haftung, Freddie Mac Class A Taxable Multifamily M Certificates Series M-037, Freddie Mac Class A Taxable Multifamily M Certificates Series M-039, Freddie Mac Class A Taxable Multifamily M Certificates Series M-040, Freddie Mac Class A Taxable Multifamily M Certificates Series M-041, Freddie Mac Class A Taxable Multifamily M Certificates Series M-043, Freddie Mac Class A Taxable Multifamily M Certificates Series M-044, Freddie Mac Class A Taxable Multifamily M Certificates Series M-047, Funfte SAB Treuhand und Verwaltung GmbH & Co. Suhl "Rimbachzentrum" KG, G Finance Holding Corp., G.O. IB-US Management L.L.C., G918 Corp., GAC-HEL Inc., GWC-GAC Corp., Galene S.a r.l., Gemini Technology Services Inc., German American Capital, German American Capital Corporation, Gladyr Spain S.L., Global Markets Fundo de Investimento Multimercado, Global Markets III Fundo de Investimento Multimercado - Credito, Greenwood Properties Corp., Grundstucksgesellschaft Frankfurt Bockenheimer Landstrae GbR, Grundstucksgesellschaft Kerpen-Sindorf Vogelrutherfeld GbR, Grundstucksgesellschaft Leipzig Petersstrae GbR, Grundstucksgesellschaft Wiesbaden Luisenstrae/Kirchgasse GbR, HTB Spezial GmbH & Co. KG, Hollandsche Bank-Unie, IOS Finance EFC S.A., ISTRON Beteiligungs- und Verwaltungs-GmbH, IVAF I Manager S.a r.l., IVAF I Manager S.a r.l., Immobilienfonds Buro-Center Erfurt am Flughafen Bindersleben I GbR, Immobilienfonds Buro-Center Erfurt am Flughafen Bindersleben II GbR, Immobilienfonds Mietwohnhauser Quadrath-Ichendorf GbR, Immobilienfonds Wohn- und Geschaftshaus Koln-Blumenberg V GbR, J R Nominees (Pty) Ltd, Joint Stock Company Deutsche Bank DBU, Jyogashima Godo Kaisha, KEBA Gesellschaft fur interne Services mbH, Kidson Pte Ltd, Konsul Inkasso GmbH, Kradavimd UK Lease Holdings Limited, LA Water Holdings Limited, LAWL Pte. Ltd., Latitude Australia Secured Personal Loans Trust, Leasing Verwaltungsgesellschaft Waltersdorf mbH, Leonardo III Initial GP Limited, Lindsell Finance Limited, London Industrial Leasing Limited, MEF I Manager S. a r.l., MEF I Manager S. a r.l., MHL Reinsurance Ltd., MIT Holdings Inc., MIT Holdings Inc., MPP Beteiligungsgesellschaft mbH, Maher Terminals Holdings (Toronto) Limited, Morgan Grenfell & Company, MortgageIT, MortgageIT Inc., MortgageIT Inc., MortgageIT Securities Corp., Motion Picture Productions One GmbH & Co. KG, NCW Holding Inc., Navegator - SGFTC S.A., Navegator - SGFTC S.A., New 87 Leonard LLC, Nordwestdeutscher Wohnungsbautrager Gesellschaft mit beschrankter Haftung, OOO "Deutsche Bank TechCentre", OOO "Deutsche Bank", OPB Verwaltungs- und Beteiligungs-GmbH, OPB Verwaltungs- und Treuhand GmbH, OPB-Holding GmbH, OPB-Nona GmbH, OPB-Oktava GmbH, OPB-Quarta GmbH, OPB-Quinta GmbH, OPB-Septima GmbH, OPPENHEIM Capital Advisory GmbH, OPPENHEIM Flottenfonds V GmbH & Co. KG, OPPENHEIM PRIVATE EQUITY Manager GmbH, OPPENHEIM PRIVATE EQUITY Verwaltungsgesellschaft mbH, OPS Nominees Pty Limited, OVT Trust 1 GmbH, OVV Beteiligungs GmbH, Opal Funds (Ireland) Public Limited Company, PADUS Grundstucks-Vermietungsgesellschaft mbH, PARTS Funding LLC., PB Factoring GmbH, PB Firmenkunden AG, PB International S.A., PB Spezial-Investmentaktiengesellschaft mit Teilgesellschaftsvermogen, PBC Banking Services GmbH, PCC Services GmbH der Deutschen Bank, PT Deutsche Sekuritas Indonesia, PT. Deutsche Verdhana Sekuritas Indonesia, Pan Australian Nominees Pty Ltd, Peruda Leasing Limited, Plantation Bay Inc., Plantation Bay Inc., Postbank Akademie und Service GmbH, Postbank Beteiligungen GmbH, Postbank Direkt GmbH, Postbank Filialvertrieb AG, Postbank Finanzberatung AG, Postbank Immobilien GmbH, Postbank Immobilien und Baumanagement GmbH, Postbank Immobilien und Baumanagement GmbH & Co. Objekt Leipzig KG, Postbank Leasing GmbH, Postbank Service GmbH, Postbank Systems AG, QR Tower 2 LLC, Quantiguous, R.B.M. Nominees Pty Ltd, REO Properties Corporation, RREEF, RREEF America L.L.C., RREEF China REIT Management Limited, RREEF European Value Added I (G.P.) Limited, RREEF Fund Holding Co., RREEF India Advisors Private Limited, RREEF Management L.L.C., RTS Nominees Pty Limited, Reference Capital Investments Limited, RoPro U.S. Holding Inc., RoPro U.S. Holding Inc., Route 28 Receivables LLC, Route 28 Receivables LLC, SAB Real Estate Verwaltungs GmbH, SAGITA Grundstucks-Vermietungsgesellschaft mbH, SAPIO Grundstucks-Vermietungsgesellschaft mbH, SCUDO Grundstucks-Vermietungsgesellschaft mbH i.L., SEDO Grundstucks-Vermietungsgesellschaft mbH i.L., SENA Grundstucks-Vermietungsgesellschaft mbH & Co. Objekt Kamenz KG, SIFA Grundstucks-Vermietungsgesellschaft mbH, SOLIDO Grundstucks-Vermietungsgesellschaft mbH, SP Mortgage Trust, SPINO Grundstucks-Vermietungsgesellschaft mbH i.L., SPV I Sociedad Anonima Cerrada, SPV II Sociedad Anonima Cerrada, STATOR Heizkraftwerk Frankfurt (Oder) Beteiligungsgesellschaft mbH, Sal. Oppenheim, Sal. Oppenheim Alternative Investments GmbH, Sal. Oppenheim jr. & Cie. AG & Co. Kommanditgesellschaft auf Aktien, Sal. Oppenheim jr. & Cie. Beteiligungs GmbH, Sal. Oppenheim jr. & Cie. Komplementar AG, Sechste Salomon Beteiligungs- und Verwaltungsgesellschaft mbH, Sechste Salomon Beteiligungs- und Verwaltungsgesellschaft mbH i.L., Service Company Four Limited, Sharps SP I LLC, Singer Island Tower Suite LLC, Somkid Immobiliare S.r.l., Stelvio Immobiliare S.r.l., Structured Finance Americas LLC, Structured Finance Americas LLC, Swabia 1. Vermogensbesitz-GmbH, Suddeutsche Vermogensverwaltung Gesellschaft mit beschrankter Haftung, TAKIR Grundstucks-Vermietungsgesellschaft mbH, TELO Beteiligungsgesellschaft mbH, TEMATIS Grundstucks-Vermietungsgesellschaft mbH i.L., TERRUS Grundstucks-Vermietungsgesellschaft mbH i.L., TESATUR Beteiligungsgesellschaft mbH & Co. Objekt Halle I KG i.L., TESATUR Beteiligungsgesellschaft mbH & Co. Objekt Nordhausen I KG i.L., TOSSA Grundstucks-Vermietungsgesellschaft mbH, TRIPLA Grundstucks-Vermietungsgesellschaft mbH, TRS Aria LLC, TRS Leda LLC, TRS Maple II LTD, TRS Oak II LTD, TRS SVCO LLC, TRS Scorpio LLC, TRS Tupelo II LTD, TRS Venor LLC, TRS Walnut II LTD, Tagus - Sociedade de Titularizacao de Creditos S.A., Tasfiye Halinde Deutsche Securities Menkul Degerler A.S., Tempurrite Leasing Limited, Thai Asset Enforcement and Recovery Asset Management Company Limited, Tianjin Deutsche AM Fund Management Co. Ltd., Treuinvest Service GmbH, Triplereason Limited, UKE Beteiligungs-GmbH, UKE Grundstucksgesellschaft mbH, UKE s.r.o., Ullmann - Esch Grundstucksgesellschaft Kirchnerstrae GbR, Ullmann - Esch Grundstucksverwaltungsgesellschaft Disternich GbR, Ullmann Ullmann Krockow Krockow Esch GbR, VCJ Lease S.a r.l., Vesta Real Estate S.r.l., VOB-ZVD Processing GmbH, WEPLA Beteiligungsgesellschaft mbH, WEPLABeteiligungsgesellschaftmbH, Wealthspur Investment Ltd., Whale Holdings S.a r.l., World Trading (Delaware) Inc., World Trading(Delaware)Inc., Zumirez Drive LLC, db PBC, and norisbank GmbH. iShares MSCI Canada ETF's stock was trading at $23.42 on March 11th, 2020 when Coronavirus (COVID-19) reached pandemic status according to the World Health Organization. Since then, EWC shares have increased by 69.2% and is now trading at $39.63. View which stocks have been most impacted by COVID-19. Fielmann Aktiengesellschaft engages in the investment in and operation of optical and hearing aid businesses. The company manufactures and sells visual aids and other optical products, including glasses, frames, lenses, sunglasses, contact lenses and accessories, and various merchandise, as well as hearing aids and accessories. As of December 31, 2020, it operated 870 stores, including 605 in Germany, 43 in Switzerland, 38 Austria, 3 in Luxembourg, 33 in Italy, 25 in Poland, 80 in Spain, 28 in Slovenia, and 15 in the rest of Europe. The company also 79 smaller locations in Eastern Europe. Fielmann Aktiengesellschaft also offers its products through online stores. The company was founded in 1972 and is headquartered in Hamburg, Germany. Fielmann Aktiengesellschaft is a subsidiary of Korva SE. Read More By Trend Foreign Minister Elmar Mammadyarov met with the President of the Inter-Parliamentary Union Gabriela Cuevas Barron, the Azerbaijani Foreign Ministry said in a statement Oct. 25. At the meeting the sides underlined their confidence that the Fifth IPU Global Conference of Young Parliamentarians to be held in Baku in December 2018 will give an impetus to further development of cooperation between Azerbaijan and the IPU. It was especially emphasized that young parliamentarians from 178 countries around the world will have an opportunity to get acquainted more closely with development processes in Azerbaijan. Minister E.Mammadyarov and President of the Inter-Parliamentary Union Gabriela Cuevas Barron who is at the same time a Mexican MP exchanged their views on the bilateral relations of Azerbaijan and Mexico. Underlining that there is a huge potential for the development of relations, the sides noted that the mutual exchange of high level visits will give an impetus to further development of cooperation relations. During the meeting the sides exchanged their views on the cooperation issues in other spheres as well. GlaxoSmithKline Plc is a healthcare company, which engages in the research, development, and manufacture of pharmaceutical medicines, vaccines, and consumer healthcare products. It operates through the following segments: Pharmaceuticals; Pharmaceuticals R&D; Vaccines and Consumer Healthcare. The Pharmaceuticals segment focuses on developing medicines in respiratory and infectious diseases, oncology, and immuno-inflammation. The Pharmaceuticals R&D segment focuses on science related to the immune system, the use of human genetics and advanced technologies, and is driven by the multiplier effect of Science x Technology x Culture. The Vaccines segment produces pediatric and adult vaccines to prevent a range of infectious diseases including, hepatitis A and B, diphtheria, tetanus and whooping cough, measles, mumps and rubella, polio, typhoid, influenza, and bacterial meningitis. The Consumer Healthcare segment develops and markets brands in the oral health, pain relief, respiratory, nutrition and gastro intestinal, and skin health categories. The company was founded in 1715 and is headquartered in Middlesex, the United Kingdom. Read More Augusta Gold Corp., a junior exploration company, engages in the acquisition and exploration of mineral properties in the United States. It primarily explores for gold, silver, and other metals. The company holds interests in the Bullfrog gold project located in the north-west of Las Vegas, Nevada. It also owns, controls, or has acquired mineral rights on Federal patented and unpatented mining claims in the state of Nevada for the purpose of exploration and potential development of metals on a total of approximately 7,800 acres of land. The company was formerly known as Bullfrog Gold Corp. and changed its name to Augusta Gold Corp. in January 2021. Augusta Gold Corp. was incorporated in 2007 and is headquartered in Vancouver, Canada. Read More SPDR Gold Shares' stock was trading at $153.93 on March 11th, 2020 when Coronavirus reached pandemic status according to the World Health Organization (WHO). Since then, GLD shares have increased by 13.0% and is now trading at $173.94. View which stocks have been most impacted by COVID-19. Sabic, a global leader in diversified chemicals, has signed two agreements worth a total of SR5.6 billion ($1.5 billion) to enable sustainable growth of downstream industries and developing national industry in support of Saudi 2030. The memorandums of understanding (MoUs) were signed during the 2nd annual Future Investment Initiative conference (FII) held in Riyadh from October 23 to 25. The MoUs were signed with the German Schmid and the Riwaq Industrial Development to establish state-of-the-art plants in Jubail Industrial City, producing silicon for semiconductors, electronics and solar cells, in additional to the batteries. The SR1.6 billion project will use Sabic materials to localize the technology for the first time in the Kingdom, and will provide 1,000 direct jobs. Sabic also committed to a SR4 billion project providing part of the raw materials needed under a project agreement with Pan Asia PET. The project will be launched in Jazan Industrial City by the Chinese company. Yousef Al-Benyan, Sabic vice chairman and CEO, said: "This is part of Sabic's commitment to localizing knowledge, technology and industry, maximizing local content and attracting foreign investment, under its role to enabling Saudi 2030." He was optimistic about the expected economic impact of these projects on the GDP and job creation in the Kingdom. "Sabic has aligned all its strategies to serve the growth and transformation programs to achieve national development priorities. We are proud to contribute to the success of the Future Investment Initiative, which is an effective hub that affirms the Kingdom's global standing as an economic powerhouse and a creator of growth opportunities in various fields around the world. Al-Benyan said. Relying on technical and cognitive data, we will achieve economic prosperity based on cooperation and integration with everyone, he added. Al-Benyan also stressed that Sabic had contributed to this step through its international partnerships, and that the company will continue to supply these projects with raw materials and logistical support, and facilitate all procedures to ensure the development of technical and operational experiences for all parties in a stimulating investment environment. For these projects, Sabic will provide coordination, logistical support, materials and products, as well as technical support, under its national initiative "Nusaned. These efforts will generate new jobs, transfer technology and promote the kingdoms national economy. The projects in Jubail will also act as a strategic nucleus for integrated silicon downstream industries that are involved in industrial areas such as transport, energy and defence systems. They will enable support industries that generate large investments and create a large number of high and medium jobs. The implementation program of the two projects includes preparing, qualifying and training Saudi youth of both sexes on these techniques to manage and operate these new plants. The commitments reinforced the companys push to enable Saudi Vision 2030 through its long-held expertise in supporting local content through localizing industry and attracting foreign investment to the Kingdom. Sabic is a strategic partner of FII, hosted under the leadership of HRH Prince Mohammad bin Salman bin Abdulaziz Al-Saud, Crown Prince, Chairman of the Council for Economic and Development Affairs and Chairman of the Public Investment Fund (PIF). The event brings together international business and investment trailblazers to exchange ideas on the future of human development and explore investment opportunities. TradeArabia News Service Yext, Inc. is an emerging growth company engages in software development. It offers a cloud-based digital knowledge platform, which allows businesses manage their digital knowledge in the cloud such as financial information, resources and performance of these resources on a consolidated basis and sync it to other application such as Apple Maps, Bing, Cortana, Facebook, Google, Google Maps, Instagram, Siri and Yelp. It offers the Yext Knowledge Engine package on subscription basis, which has an access to Listings, Pages, Reviews and other features. The Listing feature provides customers with control over their digital presence, including their location and other related attributes published on the used third-party applications. The Pages feature allows customers to establish landing pages on their own websites and to manage digital content on those sites, including calls to action. The Reviews presence enables customers to encourage and facilitate reviews from end consumers. The company was founded by Howard Lerman, Brent Metz, and Brian Distelburger in 2006 and is headquartered in New York, NY. Read More 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.. Inter Pipeline Ltd. engages in the petroleum transportation and storage, and natural gas liquids (NGL) processing businesses in Canada and Europe. The company operates through four segments: Oil Sands Transportation; Conventional Oil Pipelines; NGL Processing; and Bulk Liquid Storage. The Oil Sands Transportation segment transports petroleum products through Cold Lake, Corridor, and Polaris pipeline systems covering approximately 3,300 kilometers of pipeline and 3.8 million barrels of storage capacity; and related blending and handling services. The Conventional Oil Pipelines segment is involved in the transportation of crude oil through Bow River, Central Alberta, and Mid-Saskatchewan pipeline systems covering approximately 3,900 kilometers of pipeline and 1,635,000 barrels of storage capacity; and related blending, handling, and marketing activities. The NGL Processing segment processes pipeline natural gas to extract NGL, including ethane, propane, butane, and pentanes-plus; and fractionates NGL stream to produce ethane products and propane plus. These NGLs are used as energy products; and as a feedstock for the petrochemical and crude oil refining industries. The Bulk Liquid Storage segment engages in the storage and handling of bulk liquid products. This segment operates 8 bulk liquid storage terminals and approximately 19 million barrels of storage capacity. Inter Pipeline Ltd. was founded in 1997 and is headquartered in Calgary, Canada. Read More More than 220 delegates attended the recent TMS Tanker Conference, following its move to The Atlantis Dubai, in Dubai, UAE. The visitor numbers jumped 90 per cent, officials said. Trevor Pereira, managing director, TMS, said: We moved the conference to The Atlantis to ensure not only that we could meet growing demand from the market, but also that the venue was really upmarket as is befitting for such an elite group of tanker industry professionals. The big rise in delegate numbers shows this was the right strategy, but also how topical and relevant the topics on the agenda were in taking the event to a whole new level, he said. This was the third annual tanker conference staged by The Maritime Standard and took as its theme Getting the most out of more positive markets. Clive Woodbridge, conference editor, said: Despite well-documented politico-economic concerns, there are some cautiously optimistic signs that the tanker trades are in recovery mode. Delegates were able to hear from a wide range of top quality speakers, with expertise in different aspects of the market, who suggested some interesting future-looking strategies designed to overcome any obstacles and ensure that all available opportunities in a market upturn are fully grasped, he added. Keynote addresses were given by Sheikh Talal Al Khaled Al Sabah, chief executive of the Kuwait Oil Tanker Company and Dr Nikolas Tsakos, chairman of Intertanko. In addition, Shahab Al Jassmi of DP World stepped into give the keynote address for Abdullah Bin Damithan, chief commercial officer, DP World, UAE Region. The case for a more optimistic assessment of the tanker business was persuasively made by some of the most influential and expert figures in the business. These included Captain Abdulkareem Al Masabi, chief executive officer, Adnoc Logistics & Services; Captain Anoop Kumar Sharma, chairman and managing director, Shipping Corporation of India; Tarik Al Junaidi, chief executive, Oman Shipping Company; Khamis Juma Buamim, managing director and group chief executive, Gulf Navigation Holding; and Chris Peters, chief executive, E Ships. Other speakers who made a big impact, in discussing support infrastructure and services, included Petros Doukas, chairman, Capital Partners; Rajiv Agarwal, managing director and chief executive, Essar Ports; Tim Smith, director, Maritime Strategies International; and Gaurav Moolwaney, executive director, Standard Chartered. This session was chaired by Captain Jitendra Misra, from Emarat Maritime. Environmental regulations, safety and security remain hot topics for the industry and the third and final session kept people in their seats. Chaired by Ibrahim Fahmy, Adnoc Offshore, speakers included Captain Stephen Bligh, DNV GL; Waleed Al Tamimi, chief operating officer, Tasneef; June Manoharan, regional director, Lukoil Marine Lubricants; Captain Tony Field, Lloyds Register; Peter Sahlen, R&D manager, and Roger Harfouche, regional director, Marlink. Woodbridge added: The feedback we received from this year's conference was overwhelmingly favourable, and there was a great atmosphere in the ballroom with lot of interaction between panellists and audience. We are pleased that the conference strengthened its reputation as the leading meeting place for senior figures from the tanker industry and provided such a vibrant opportunity to exchange information and market insights, he concluded. TradeArabia News Service Keyera Corp. engages in the energy infrastructure business in Canada. It operates through Gathering and Processing, Liquids Infrastructure, and Marketing segments. The company's Gathering and Processing segment owns and operates raw gas gathering pipelines and processing plants, which collect and process raw natural gas, remove waste products, and separate the economic components primarily natural gas liquids; and provides condensate handling services. It has approximately 4,400 kilometers of gathering pipelines; and holds interests in 14 active gas plants in Alberta. The company's Liquids Infrastructure segment provides processing, fractionation, storage, transportation, liquids blending, and terminalling services for natural gas liquids (NGLs) and crude oil through a network of facilities that include underground NGL storage caverns, above ground storage tanks, NGL fractionation and de-ethanization facilities, pipelines, rail and truck terminals, liquids blending facilities, and the Alberta EnviroFuels facility. It also produces iso-octane. The company's Marketing segment engages in the marketing of propane, butane, condensate and iso-octane, as well as liquid blending activities. The company was formerly known as Keyera Facilities Income Fund and changed its name to Keyera Corp. in January 2011. Keyera Corp. was founded in 2003 and is headquartered in Calgary, Canada. Read More Koninklijke Philips N.V. is the Netherlands-based health technology company. The Company's segments include Personal Health businesses, Diagnosis & Treatment businesses, Connected Care & Health Informatics businesses, HealthTech Other and Legacy Items. The Personal Health businesses segment is engaged in the health continuum, delivering integrated, connected solutions that support healthier lifestyles and those living with chronic disease. The Diagnosis & Treatment businesses segment delivers precision medicine and treatment, and therapy. The Connected Care & Health Informatics businesses segment provides consumers, care givers and clinicians with digital solutions that facilitate care by enabling precision medicine and population health management. The HealthTech Other segment comprises such items, as innovation, emerging businesses, royalties, among others. The Legacy Items segment consists mainly of separation costs, legacy legal items, legacy pension costs, among others. Read More HINDSIGHT - WRITE SOMETHING WORTH READING ABOUT OR DO SOMETHING WORTH WRITING ABOUT 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 Surge Energy Inc. explores for, develops, and produces oil and gas in western Canada. The company holds interest in the Greater Sawn Lake assets located in Northern Alberta; Valhalla/Wembley property located in northwestern Alberta; Sparky assets located between Provost and Wainwright in eastern Alberta and western Saskatchewan; and Shaunavon properties located to the southwest of Swift Current, Saskatchewan. It holds an average working interest of approximately 83% in approximately 109,941 net developed acres and approximately 92% in approximately 152,344 net undeveloped acres in Greater Sawn area; approximately 70% in approximately 16,032 net developed acres and approximately 74% in approximately 8,208 net undeveloped acres in Valhalla area; and approximately 76% in approximately 80,213 net developed acres and 96% in approximately 58,598 net undeveloped acres in Sparky area; and approximately 61% in approximately 88,178 net developed acres and approximately 39% in approximately 10,483 net undeveloped acres in Edmonton and other minor areas. As of December 31, 2020, it held interests in 316 net oil and 13 net gas wells in Greater Sawn area; 56 net oil and 4 net gas wells in Valhalla area; 466 net oil and 10 net gas wells in Sparky area; 176 net oil wells, as well as an average working interest of approximately 100% in approximately 23,409 net developed acres and 13,698 net undeveloped acres in the Shaunavon properties; and 28 net oil wells and 7 net gas wells in Edmonton and other minor areas. The company was formerly known as Zapata Energy Corporation and changed its name to Surge Energy Inc. in June 2010. Surge Energy Inc. was incorporated in 1998 and is headquartered in Calgary, Canada. Read More ONEOK, Inc. engages in gathering, processing, fractionating, transporting, storing and marketing of natural gas. It operates through the following segments: Natural Gas Gathering and Processing, Natural Gas Liquids and Natural Gas Pipelines. The Natural Gas Gathering and Processing segment offers midstream services to producers in North Dakota, Montana, Wyoming, Kansas and Oklahoma. The Natural Gas Liquids segment owns and operates facilities that gather, fractionate, treat and distribute NGLs and store NGL products, in Oklahoma, Kansas, Texas, New Mexico and the Rocky Mountain region, which includes the Williston, Powder River and DJ Basins, where it provides midstream services to producers of NGLs and deliver those products to the two market centers, one in the Mid-Continent in Conway, Kansas and the other in the Gulf Coast in Mont Belvieu, Texas. The Natural Gas Pipelines segment provides transportation and storage services to end users. The company was founded in 1906 and is headquartered in Tulsa, OK. Read More The following companies are subsidiares of Pentair: Aplex Industries Inc., Aqua Membranes Inc. , Aquion, Aquion (Xi'an) Water Treatment Equipment Co. Ltd., Aquion Hong Kong Limited, Aquion Inc., Be the Change Labs Inc., Bylin Engineered Systems Inc, Century Mfg. Co., Chansuba Pumps Private Limited , Clean Process Technologies, ClearWater Tech L.L.C., ETE Coliban Pty Limited, Enviro Water Solutions LLC, Epps Ltd., Erico Global, Everpure Japan Kabushiki Kaisha, FARADYNE Motors (Suzhou) Co. Ltd , Faradyne Motors LLC , FilterSoft LLC, Fleck Controls Inc., Goyen Controls Co. Pty. Limited, Goyen Valve LLC, Greenspan Environmental Technology Pty Ltd, Haffmans B.V., Haffmans North America Inc., Hawley Group Canada Limited, Holding Nijhuis Pompen B.V., Hypro EU Limited, Infinite Water Solutions Private Limited, Jung Pumpen GmbH, Ken's Beverage, Lincoln Automotive Company, MECAIR S.r.L., McNeil (Ohio) Corporation, Milperra Developments Pty Limited, Mobile Pool Builder Inc., Moraine Properties LLC, Nano Terra Inc., Nijhuis Pompen B.V., Nuheat, PES Pty Ltd, PFAM Inc., PTG Accessories Corp., Panthro Acquisition Co., Pelican Holding Corporation, Pentair (NZ) Limited, Pentair Aquatic Eco-Systems Inc., Pentair Australia Holdings Pty Limited, Pentair Canada Inc., Pentair Clean Process Technologies India Private Limited, Pentair Denmark Holding ApS, Pentair Environmental Systems Limited, Pentair Epsilon Limited, Pentair Federal Pump LLC, Pentair Filtration Sales & Service Company LLC, Pentair Filtration Solutions LLC, Pentair Finance Group GmbH, Pentair Finance Holding GmbH, Pentair Finance S.a.r.l., Pentair Flow Control International Pty Limited, Pentair Flow Services AG, Pentair Flow Technologies LLC, Pentair Flow Technologies Pacific Pty Ltd, Pentair Flow Technologies de Mexico S. de R.L. de C.V., Pentair France SARL, Pentair Germany GmbH, Pentair Global Holdings B.V., Pentair Global S.a.r.l., Pentair Group (Thailand) Limited , Pentair Holdings Inc., Pentair Holdings S.a.r.l., Pentair Housing Inc., Pentair Housing LP, Pentair Inc., Pentair International (UK) Ltd, Pentair International Holding S.a.r.l., Pentair International Sarl, Pentair Investments Switzerland GmbH, Pentair Ireland Limited, Pentair Janus Holding LLC, Pentair Janus Holdings, Pentair Kenya Limited, Pentair Luxembourg S.a.r.l., Pentair Management Company, Pentair Manufacturing Belgium BV, Pentair Manufacturing Italy S.r.L., Pentair Middle East FZE, Pentair Nanosoft US Holdings LLC, Pentair Netherlands Euro Finance B.V., Pentair Netherlands Finance B.V., Pentair Netherlands Holding B.V., Pentair Pacific Rim (Water) Limited, Pentair Pacific Rim Limited, Pentair Philippines Inc., Pentair Residential Filtration LLC, Pentair Sales LLC, Pentair Services France S.A.S., Pentair Sudmo GmbH, Pentair Tamimi LLC, Pentair Trading (Shanghai) Co. Ltd., Pentair Transport Inc., Pentair Tubing Limited, Pentair UK Group Limited, Pentair UK Holdings Limited, Pentair US LLC 1, Pentair US LLC 2, Pentair US LP, Pentair Valves & Controls del Uruguay S.A., Pentair Water (Suzhou) Company Ltd., Pentair Water Asia Pacific Pte. Ltd., Pentair Water Australia Pty Ltd, Pentair Water Belgium BV, Pentair Water Brazil LLC, Pentair Water France SAS, Pentair Water Group Inc., Pentair Water Holdings LLC, Pentair Water India Private Limited, Pentair Water Italy S.r.l., Pentair Water LLC, Pentair Water Latinamerica S.A., Pentair Water Operations Australia Pty Ltd, Pentair Water Polska Sp.zoo, Pentair Water Pool and Spa Inc., Pentair Water Proces Technologie Holding B.V., Pentair Water Process Technology B.V., Pentair Water Purification Systems (Shanghai) Co. Ltd., Pentair Water Spain S.L., Pentair Water Treatment (OH) Company, Pentair Water Treatment Company, Pentair Water Treatment Private Limited, Pentair Water do Brasil Ltda., Pentair Water-Mexico S. de R.L. de C.V., Penwald Insurance Company, Pigeon Point Systems Inc., Plymouth Products Inc., Porous Media Corp., Procam Controls Inc., Rocean, Seneca Enterprises Co., Sta-Rite Industries LLC, Sta-Rite de Mexico S.A. de C.V., Sta-Rite de Puerto Rico Inc., Surface Logix LLC, Tupelo Real Estate LLC, Tyco Flow Control, Union Engineering (NingBo) Co. Ltd., Union Engineering A/S, Union Engineering Holding II A/S, Union Engineering Holding LLC, Union Engineering Latam Ltda, Union Engineering North America LLC, Urban Organics Pentair Group LLC, Urban Organics Schmidt Real Estate Group LLC, Urban Organics St. Paul LLC, Voltea Ltd., Water Ingenuity Holdings Corp., Webster Electric Company LLC, Wicor Industries (Australia) Pty. Ltd., and X-Flow B.V.. TCN News Today 26th October 2018 completes 18 years of injustice for the riot affected victims of Malegaon. 18 years back on 26th October 2001 it was a Friday and after the Jummah namaz at the Jama Masjid in Central Market, communal riots took place. Support TwoCircles But the police who tried to control the riots fired only on Muslim crowds killing 10 more persons and not on the Hindu crowds that were vandalising Muslim properties. Despite being a majority the Muslims in Malegaon were the ones who suffered more there were rapes of Muslim women, mosques were damaged and nearly 100 crore worth business was lost. The Hindus who are a minority are economically strong and had planned these riots in advance. The Patil commission that was formed by the State Government of Maharashtra to investigate the communal riots prepared their report and submitted to the Government. The report of the concerned citizens however brought to light the horrific crimes committed against the Muslims and the apathy of the Police force. But so far the victims have not been delivered justice either in the times of the previous government that claimed to be secular or the present Government which is aligned with the right winged Hindutva forces. Raymond James Financial, Inc., a financial holding company, through its subsidiaries, engages in the underwriting, distribution, trading, and brokerage of equity and debt securities, and the sale of mutual funds and other investment products in the United States, Canada, Europe, and internationally. The company operates through Private Client Group, Capital Markets, Asset Management, RJ Bank, and Other segments. The Private Client Group segment provides securities brokerage services, including the sale of equities, mutual funds, fixed income products, and insurance products to their individual clients; and borrowing and lending of securities to and from other broker-dealers, financial institutions, and other counterparties. The Capital Markets segment offers securities brokerage, trading, and research services to institutions with a focus on sale of the United States and Canadian equities and fixed income products; and manages and participates in underwritings, merger and acquisition services, and public finance activities. The Asset Management segment engages in the operations of Eagle, the Eagle Family of Funds, Cougar, the asset management operations of Raymond James & Associates, trust services of Raymond James Trust, and other fee-based asset management programs. The RJ Bank segment provides corporate loans, SBL, tax-exempt loans, and residential loans. The Other segment engages in private equity activities, including various direct and third party private equity investments; and private equity funds. Raymond James Financial, Inc. was founded in 1962 and is based in St. Petersburg, Florida. Read More Sprint Corporation, together with its subsidiaries, provides various wireless and wireline communications products and services to consumers, businesses, government subscribers, and resellers in the United States, Puerto Rico, and the United States Virgin Islands. It operates in two segments, Wireless and Wireline. The Wireless segment offers wireless data communication services, including mobile productivity applications, such as Internet access, messaging, and email services; wireless photo and video offerings; location-based capabilities comprising asset and fleet management, dispatch services, and navigation tools; and mobile entertainment applications. It also provides wireless voice communications services that include local and long-distance wireless voice services, as well as voicemail, call waiting, three-way calling, caller identification, and call forwarding services. In addition, this segment offers voice and data services internationally through roaming arrangements; and customized wireless services to large companies and government agencies, as well as sells handsets, tablets, and hotspots. The Wireline segment provides wireline voice and data communications, which comprises domestic and international data communications using various protocols, including multiprotocol label switching technologies, Internet protocol (IP), managed network services, Voice over IP, session initiated protocol, and traditional voice services to other communications companies and targeted business subscribers. Sprint Corporation offers its services under the Sprint, Boost Mobile, Virgin Mobile, and Assurance Wireless brands. The company was founded in 1899 and is headquartered in Overland Park, Kansas. Sprint Corporation is a subsidiary of SoftBank Group Corp. Read More The following companies are subsidiares of Sherwin-Williams: Acquire Sourcing LLC, CTS National Corporation, Comex North America Inc., Compania Sherwin-Williams S.A. de C.V., Contract Transportation Systems Co., Dongguan Lilly Paint Industries Ltd, Duron, EPS (Shanghai) Trading Co. Ltd., EPS B.V., Geocel Holdings, Geocel Limited, Guangdong Valspar Paints Manufacturing Co Ltd., Inver East Med S.A., Inver France SAS, Inver GmbH, Inver Industrial Coating SRL, Inver Polska Spoka Z O.O, Inver Spa, Invercolor Bologna Srl, Invercolor Ltd, Invercolor Roma Srl, Invercolor Torino Srl, Invercolor Toscana Srl, Isocoat Tintas e Vernizes Ltda, Isva Vernici Srl, Leighs Paints, M.A. Bruder & Sons, Omega Specialty Products & Services LLC, Oy Sherwin-Williams Finland Ab, PT Sherwin-Williams Indonesia, PT Valspar Indonesia, Paint Sundry Brands, Pinturas Condor S.A., Pinturas Industriales S.A., Piton Paints Limited, Plasti-Kote Co. Inc., Plasti-kote Limited, Productos Quimicos y Pinturas S.A. de C.V., Quest Automotive Products UK Limited, Quetzal Pinturas S.A. de C.V., Ronseal (Ireland) Limited, SWIMC LLC, SWIPCO Sherwin Williams do Brasil Propriedade Intelectual Ltda, Sherwin Williams Colombia S.A.S., Sherwin-Williams (Australia) Pty. Ltd., Sherwin-Williams (Belize) Limited, Sherwin-Williams (Caribbean) N.V., Sherwin-Williams (Ireland) Limited, Sherwin-Williams (Malaysia) Sdn. Bhd., Sherwin-Williams (Nantong) Coatings Technology Co. Ltd., Sherwin-Williams (Nantong) Company Limited, Sherwin-Williams (S) Pte. Ltd., Sherwin-Williams (Shanghai) Limited, Sherwin-Williams (Thailand) Co. Ltd., Sherwin-Williams (Vietnam) Limited, Sherwin-Williams (West Indies) Limited, Sherwin-Williams Argentina I.y C.S.A., Sherwin-Williams Aruba VBA, Sherwin-Williams Automotive Mexico S.de R.L.de C.V., Sherwin-Williams Balkan S.R.L., Sherwin-Williams Bel Unitary Enterprise, Sherwin-Williams Benelux NV, Sherwin-Williams Canada Inc., Sherwin-Williams Cayman Islands Limited, Sherwin-Williams Chile S.A., Sherwin-Williams Coatings India Private Limited, Sherwin-Williams Coatings S.a r.l., Sherwin-Williams Czech Republic spol. s r.o, Sherwin-Williams Denmark A/S, Sherwin-Williams Deutschland GmbH, Sherwin-Williams Diversified Brands Limited, Sherwin-Williams France Finishes SAS, Sherwin-Williams Italy S.r.l., Sherwin-Williams Norway AS, Sherwin-Williams Paints Limited Liability Company, Sherwin-Williams Peru S.R.L., Sherwin-Williams Pinturas de Venezuela S.A., Sherwin-Williams Poland Sp. z o.o, Sherwin-Williams Protective & Marine Coatings, Sherwin-Williams Realty Holdings Inc., Sherwin-Williams Services (Malaysia) Sdn. Bhd., Sherwin-Williams Spain Coatings S.L., Sherwin-Williams Sweden AB, Sherwin-Williams UK Coatings Limited, Sherwin-Williams do Brasil Industria e Comercio Ltda., Spanyc Paints Joint Stock Company, Syntema I Vaggeryd AB, Taiwan Valspar Co. Ltd., The Sherwin-Williams Acceptance Corporation, The Sherwin-Williams Headquarters Company, The Sherwin-Williams Manufacturing Company, The Sherwin-Williams US Licensing Company, The Valspar (Asia) Corporation Limited, The Valspar (Australia) Corporation Pty. Ltd., The Valspar (Finland) Corporation Oy, The Valspar (France) Corporation S.A.S., The Valspar (France) Research Corporation SAS, The Valspar (Malaysia) Corporation Sdn Bhd, The Valspar (Nantes) Corporation S.A.S., The Valspar (Singapore) Corporation Pte. Ltd, The Valspar (South Africa) Corporation (Pty) Ltd, The Valspar (Spain) Corporation S.R.L., The Valspar (Switzerland) Corporation AG, The Valspar (Thailand) Corporation Ltd., The Valspar (UK) Corporation Limited, The Valspar (Vietnam) Corporation Ltd., The Valspar Corporation, The Valspar Corporation Limitada, UAB Sherwin-Williams Baltic, Valspar (India) Coatings Corporation Private Limited, Valspar (Shanghai) Management Co. Ltd., Valspar (Uruguay) Corporation S.A., Valspar (WPC) Pty Ltd, Valspar Aries Coatings S. de R.L. de C.V., Valspar Automotive (UK) Corporation Limited, Valspar Automotive Australia Pty Limited, Valspar B.V., Valspar Coatings (Guangdong) Co. Ltd., Valspar Coatings (Shanghai) Co. Ltd., Valspar Coatings (Tianjin) Co. Ltd, Valspar D.o.o Beograd, Valspar Industries (Ireland) Ltd., Valspar Industries (Italy) S.r.l., Valspar Industries GmbH, Valspar LLC, Valspar Mexicana S.A. de C.V., Valspar Paint (Australia) Pty Ltd, Valspar Paint (NZ) Limited, Valspar Powder Coatings Limited, Valspar Rock Company Limited (Japan), Valspar Specialty Paints LLC, and ZAO Sherwin-Williams. C&C Group has only been the subject of 2 research reports in the past 90 days. According to analysts' consensus price target of GBX 289.50, C&C Group has a forecasted upside of 18.0% from its current price of GBX 245.40. C&C Group has received a consensus rating of Buy. The company's average rating score is 2.67, and is based on 2 buy ratings, 1 hold rating, and no sell ratings. 4.5 Community Rank Outperform Votes C&C Group has received 103 outperform votes. (Add your outperform vote.) Underperform Votes C&C Group has received 50 underperform votes. (Add your underperform vote.) Community Sentiment C&C Group has received 67.32% outperform votes from our community. MarketBeat's community ratings are surveys of what our community members think about C&C Group and other stocks. Vote Outperform if you believe CCR will outperform the S&P 500 over the long term. Vote Underperform if you believe CCR will underperform the S&P 500 over the long term. You may vote once every thirty days. Previous Next The following companies are subsidiares of Franklin Resources: AdvisorEngine, AdvisorEngine Inc., Alumcreek Holdings LLC, Athena Capital Advisors, Balanced Equity Management, Balanced Equity Management Pty. Limited, Benefit Street Partners, Bissett & Associates Investment Management, Brandywine Global Investment Management Europe Limited, CCPF GP Holdco No.2 Limited, CCPF No.2 (GP) Limited, CCPF No.2 LP, CP Industrial Management LLC, CP Intermediate Holdco Inc., CRM Software LLC, Clarion Gramercy (Deutschland) GmbH, Clarion Gramercy (UK) Limited, Clarion Gramercy Limited, Clarion Partners Europe Ltd., Clarion Partners Holdings LLC, Clarion Partners LLC, Clarion Partners Securities LLC, Clarion REIM South America Holdings LLC, Clarion REIM South America Invsetimentos Imobiliarios Ltda, ClearBridge RARE Infrastructure (North America) Pty Limited, ClearBridge RARE Infrastructure International Pty Limited, Darby - Hana Infrastructure Fund Management Co. Ltd., Edinburgh Partners, FT FinTech Holdings LLC, FT Opportunistic Distressed Fund Ltd., FTC Investor Services Inc., FTCI (Cayman) Ltd., FTPE Advisers LLC, Fiduciary International Holding Inc., Fiduciary Investment Management International Inc., Fiduciary Trust (International) Sarl, Fiduciary Trust Company International, Fiduciary Trust Company International of Pennsylvania, Fiduciary Trust Company of Canada, Fiduciary Trust International LLC, Fiduciary Trust International of California, Fiduciary Trust International of Delaware, Fiduciary Trust International of the South, Franklin Advisers GP LLC, Franklin Advisers Inc., Franklin Advisory Services LLC, Franklin Marketplace Loan GP LLC, Franklin Mutual Advisers LLC, Franklin SystematiQ Advisers LLC, Franklin Templeton Alternative Investments (India) Private Limited, Franklin Templeton Asset Management (India) Private Limited, Franklin Templeton Asset Management (Malaysia) Sdn. Bhd., Franklin Templeton Asset Management Mexico S.A. de C.V. Sociedad Operadora de Fondos de Inversion, Franklin Templeton Austria GmbH, Franklin Templeton Capital Holdings Private Limited, Franklin Templeton Chile SpA. V., Franklin Templeton Companies LLC, Franklin Templeton Digital Advisory Services GmbH, Franklin Templeton Fund Management Limited, Franklin Templeton GSC Asset Management Sdn. Bhd., Franklin Templeton Global Investors Limited, Franklin Templeton Holding Limited, Franklin Templeton International Services (India) Private Limited, Franklin Templeton International Services S.a r.l., Franklin Templeton Investment Management (Shanghai) Limited, Franklin Templeton Investment Management Limited, Franklin Templeton Investment Services GmbH, Franklin Templeton Investment Services Mexico S. de R.L., Franklin Templeton Investment Trust Management Co. Ltd., Franklin Templeton Investments (Asia) Limited, Franklin Templeton Investments (ME) Limited, Franklin Templeton Investments Australia Limited, Franklin Templeton Investments Corp., Franklin Templeton Investments Japan Limited, Franklin Templeton Investments Poland sp. z o.o., Franklin Templeton Investments South Africa (Pty) Ltd, Franklin Templeton Investor Services LLC, Franklin Templeton Investimentos (Brasil) Ltda., Franklin Templeton Luxembourg S.A., Franklin Templeton Magyarorszag Kft., Franklin Templeton Management Luxembourg S.A., Franklin Templeton Overseas Investment Fund Management (Shanghai) Co. Limited, Franklin Templeton Private Equity LLC, Franklin Templeton Services (India) Private Limited, Franklin Templeton Services LLC, Franklin Templeton Servicios de Asesoria Mexico S. de R.L. de C.V., Franklin Templeton Slovakia s.r.o., Franklin Templeton Social Infrastructure GP S.a r.l., Franklin Templeton Strategic Investments Ltd., Franklin Templeton Switzerland Ltd., Franklin Templeton Trustee Services Private Limited, Franklin Templeton Turkey Advisory Services A.S., Franklin Templeton Uruguay S.A., Franklin Venture Partners (Talos Cayman GP) LLC, Franklin Venture Partners LLC, Franklin/Templeton Distributors Inc., ITI Capital Markets Limited, K2 Advisors, LM (BVI) Limited, LM Holdings 2 Limited, LM Holdings Limited, LM International Holding LP, Legg Mason & Co (UK) Limited, Legg Mason & Co. LLC, Legg Mason (Chile) Inversiones Holdings Limitada, Legg Mason Asset Management Australia Limited, Legg Mason Asset Management Hong Kong Limited, Legg Mason Asset Management Singapore Pte. Limited, Legg Mason Australia Holdings Pty Limited, Legg Mason Holding (Switzerland) GmbH, Legg Mason Inc., Legg Mason Investment Funds Limited, Legg Mason Investments (Europe) Limited, Legg Mason Investments (Switzerland) GmbH, Legg Mason Overseas Investment Fund Management (Shanghai) Co. Ltd., Legg Mason Partners Fund Advisor LLC, Legg Mason Royce Holdings LLC, Onsa Inc., RARE IP Trust, RARE Infrastructure Limited, REDROSE Caesar S.a r.l., Random Forest Capital, Random Forest Capital LLC, Rensburg Sheppards plc, Riva Financial Systems Limited, Royce & Associates GP LLC, Royce & Associates LP, Royce Fund Services LLC, Royce Management Company LLC, TSEMF III (Jersey) Limited, TSEMF IV (Jersey) Limited, Templeton Asset Management (Labuan) Limited, Templeton Asset Management (Poland) TFI S.A., Templeton Asset Management Ltd., Templeton Global Advisors Limited, Templeton Global Holdings Ltd., Templeton International Inc., Templeton Investment Counsel LLC, Templeton Restructured Investments III Ltd., Templeton Restructured Investments IV Ltd., Templeton Restructured Investments L.L.C., Templeton Turkey Fund GP Ltd., Templeton Worldwide Inc., Templeton do Brasil Ltda., Templeton/Franklin Investment Services Inc., WHITEROSE Caesar S.a r.l., Western Asset Holdings (Australia) Pty Ltd, Western Asset Management (Brazil) Holdings Limitada, Western Asset Management (Cayman) Holdings Limited, Western Asset Management Company Distribuidora de Titulos e Valores Mobiliarios Limitada, Western Asset Management Company LLC, Western Asset Management Company Limited, Western Asset Management Company Pte Ltd., Western Asset Management Company Pty Ltd, and Winfield & Company. Suburban Propane Partners LP engages in the business of liquefied petroleum gas business. It operates through the following business segments: Propane; Fuel Oil and Refined Fuels; Natural Gas and Electricity; and All Other. The Propane segment engages in natural gas processing and petroleum refining. It also used in residential and commercial applications, industrial applications and agriculture. The Fuel Oil and Refined Fuels segment refers to the marketing and distribution of fuel oil, kerosene, diesel fuel and gasoline primarily to the northeast region of the United States. The Natural Gas and Electricity segment pertains to the generation, transmission, and distribution of natural gas and electricity among residential and small commercial customers. The All Other segment include the sale, installation and service of whole-house heating products, air cleaners, humidifiers, and space heaters to the customer who uses propane, fuel oil, natural gas and electricity businesses. The company was founded by Mark Anton in 1928 and is headquartered in Whippany, NJ. Read More 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. SunTrust Banks, Inc. operates as the holding company for SunTrust Bank that provides various financial services for consumers, businesses, corporations, institutions, and not-for-profit entities in the United States. It operates in two segments, Consumer and Wholesale. The Consumer segment provides deposits and payments; home equity and personal credit lines; auto, student, and other lending products; credit cards; discount/online and full-service brokerage products; professional investment advisory products and services; and trust services, as well as family office solutions. This segment also offers residential mortgage products in the secondary market. The Wholesale segment provides capital markets solutions, including advisory, capital raising, and financial risk management; asset-based financing solutions, such as securitizations, asset-based lending, equipment financing, and structured real estate arrangements; cash management services and auto dealer financing solutions; investment banking solutions; and credit and deposit, fee-based product offering, multi-family agency lending, advisory, commercial mortgage brokerage, and tailored financing and equity investment solutions. This segment also offers treasury and payment solutions, such as operating various electronic and paper payment types, which comprise card, wire transfer, automated clearing house, check, and cash; and provides services clients to manage their accounts online. The company offers its products and services through a network of traditional and in-store branches, automated teller machines, Internet, mobile, and telephone banking channels. As of December 31, 2018, it operated 1,218 full-service banking offices located in Florida, Georgia, Virginia, North Carolina, Tennessee, Maryland, South Carolina, and the District of Columbia. SunTrust Banks, Inc. was founded in 1891 and is headquartered in Atlanta, Georgia. Read More The following companies are subsidiares of Sysco: 2234829 Alberta ULC, 2234842 Alberta ULC, A. M. Briggs Inc., A.M. Briggs, Almacen Fiscal Frionet Caldera S.A., Almacen Fiscal Frionet Limon S.A., Appert's Foodservice, Arnotts (Fruit) Limited, Asian Foods, Bahamas Food Holdings Limited, Bahamas Food Services Limited, Brake Bros, Brake Bros Foodservice Ireland Limited, Brake Bros. Foodservice Limited, Brake Bros. Holding I Limited, Brake Bros. Ltd., Brakes Foodservice NI Limited, Buchy Food Service, Buckhead Beef Co., Buckhead Meat & Seafood of Houston Inc., Buckhead Meat Company, Buckhead Meat Midwest Inc., Buckhead Meat of Dallas Inc., Buckhead Meat of Denver Inc., Buckhead Meat of San Antonio LP, Buzztable Inc., CAKE Corporation, Central Seafood Co., Christys Wine & Spirits Limited, Clafra Aktiebolag, Colorado Boxed Beef Co - Specialty meat-cutting division, Corporacion Frionet Sociedad Anonima, Crossgar Foodservice, Crossgar Foodservice Limited, Crown I Enterprises Inc., Cucina Acquisitions (UK) Limited, Cucina Finance (UK) Limited, Cucina French Holdings Limited, Cucina Fresh Finance Limited, Cucina Fresh Investments Limited, Cucina Lux Investments Limited, Curleys Quality Foods Limited (Third Party), Davigel Belgilux S.A., Davigel Espana S.A., Desert Meats & Provisions, Distagro, Doerle Food Service, Doughtie's Foods Inc., Dust Bowl City LLC, Eko Fagel Fisk o mittemellan AB, Enclave Insurance Company, Enclave Parkway Association Inc., Enclave Properties LLC, European Imports, European Imports Inc., Figg Inc., Freedman Meats, Freedman Meats Inc., Freedman-KB Inc., Fresh Direct (UK) Limited, Fresh Direct Group Limited, Fresh Direct Limited, Fresh Holdings Limited, FreshPoint, FreshPoint Arizona Inc., FreshPoint Atlanta Inc., FreshPoint California Inc., FreshPoint Central California Inc., FreshPoint Central Florida Inc., FreshPoint Connecticut LLC, FreshPoint Dallas Inc., FreshPoint Denver Inc., FreshPoint Hawaii LLC, FreshPoint Inc., FreshPoint Las Vegas Inc., FreshPoint North Carolina Inc., FreshPoint North Florida Inc., FreshPoint Oklahoma City LLC, FreshPoint Pompano Real Estate LLC, FreshPoint Puerto Rico LLC, FreshPoint San Francisco Inc., FreshPoint South Florida Inc., FreshPoint South Texas Inc., FreshPoint Southern California Inc., FreshPoint Tomato LLC, FreshPoint Vancouver Ltd., Freshfayre Limited, Fruktservice i Helsingborg AB, GHS Classic Drinks Limited, Gilchrist & Soames Inc., Gilchrist & Soames UK Limited, Guest Packaging LLC, Guest Supply, Guest Supply Asia Limited, Guest Supply Singapore Pte. Ltd., International Food Group, Isakssons Frukt & Gront AB, J & M Wholesale Meats, J. Kings Food Service Professionals, J. Kings Food Service Professionals Inc., Kent Frozen Foods, Les Ateliers Du Gout, Liquid Assets Limited, M&J Seafood Holdings Limited, M&J Seafood Limited, Manchester Mills LLC, Mayca Autoservicio S.A., Mayca Distribuidores S.A., Menigo Foodservice AB, Mitshim Etatu Supply LP, Newport Meat Company, Newport Meat Northern California Inc., Newport Meat Pacific Northwest Inc., Newport Meat Southern California Inc., Newport Meat of Nevada Inc., North Star Holding Corporation, North Star Seafood, North Star Seafood Acquisition Corporation, North Star Seafood LLC, PFS de Mexico S.A. de C.V., Palisades Ranch Inc., Pallas Foods, Pallas Foods Farm Fresh Unlimited Company, Pallas Foods Unlimited Company, Pauleys Produce Limited, Promotora del Servicios S.A. de C.V., Restaurangakdemien AB, Restaurant of Tomorrow Inc., Rohan Viandes Elaboration SAS, SMS Bermuda Holdings, SMS GPC International Limited, SMS GPC International Resources Limited, SMS Global Holdings S.a.r.l., SMS International Resources Ireland Unlimited Company, SMS Lux Holdings LLC, SOTF LLC, SYY Netherlands C.V., SYY Panama S. de R.L., Serca Foodservice, Servicestyckarna I Johannes AB, Servicios Ameriserve S.A. de C.V., Shenzhen Guest Supply Trading Co. Limited, Societe Civile Immobiliere (SCI) Bianchi Montegut, Societe Civile Immobiliere (SCI) De Boiseau, Societe Civile Immobiliere (SCI) De Garcelles, Societe Civile Immobiliere (SCI) J.D. Lanjouan, Societe Civile Immobiliere (SCI) Le Dauphin, Specialty Meat Holdings LLC, Stockflag Limited, Stockholms Fiskauktion AB, Supplies on the Fly, Sysco Albany LLC, Sysco Asian Foods Inc., Sysco Atlanta LLC, Sysco Autoservicio S.A., Sysco Baltimore LLC, Sysco Baraboo LLC, Sysco Bermuda Partners L.P., Sysco Boston LLC, Sysco Canada Holdings S.a.r.l., Sysco Canada Inc., Sysco Central Alabama LLC, Sysco Central California Inc., Sysco Central Florida Inc., Sysco Central Illinois Inc., Sysco Central Pennsylvania LLC, Sysco Charlotte LLC, Sysco Chicago Inc., Sysco Cincinnati LLC, Sysco Cleveland Inc., Sysco Columbia LLC, Sysco Connecticut LLC, Sysco Corporation, Sysco Corporation Director's Deferred Compensation Plan Trust, Sysco Corporation Employee's 401(k) Plan Trust, Sysco Corporation Executive Deferred Compensation Plan Trust, Sysco Corporation Good Government Committee Inc., Sysco Corporation Retirement Trust, Sysco Corporation Supplemental Executive Retirement Trust, Sysco Corporation Supplemental Unemployment Benefits Plan Trust, Sysco Detroit LLC, Sysco Disaster Relief Foundation Inc., Sysco EI VI S. s.r.l., Sysco EU II S.a.r.l., Sysco EU III S.a.r.l., Sysco EU IV Capital Unlimited Company, Sysco EU IV S. s.r.l.., Sysco EU V S. s.r.l., Sysco Eastern Maryland LLC, Sysco Eastern Wisconsin LLC, Sysco Foundation Inc., Sysco France Holding SAS, Sysco France SAS, Sysco George Town II LLC, Sysco George Town Limited S. s.r.l.., Sysco Global Finance LLC, Sysco Global Finance LLP, Sysco Global Holdings B.V., Sysco Global Resources LLC, Sysco Global Services LLC, Sysco Grand Cayman Company, Sysco Grand Cayman II Company, Sysco Grand Cayman III Company, Sysco Grand Rapids LLC, Sysco Guernsey Limited, Sysco Guest Supply Canada Inc., Sysco Guest Supply Europe Goods Wholesalers LLC, Sysco Guest Supply Europe Limited, Sysco Guest Supply LLC, Sysco Gulf Coast LLC, Sysco Hampton Roads Inc., Sysco Hawaii Inc., Sysco Holdings II LLC, Sysco Holdings LLC, Sysco Indianapolis LLC, Sysco International Food Group Inc., Sysco International Inc., Sysco Iowa Inc., Sysco Jackson LLC, Sysco Jacksonville Inc., Sysco Kansas City Inc., Sysco Knoxville LLC, Sysco Labs Europe Limited, Sysco Labs Pvt. Ltd., Sysco Leasing LLC, Sysco Lincoln Inc., Sysco Lincoln Transportation Company Inc., Sysco Long Island LLC, Sysco Los Angeles Inc., Sysco Louisville Inc., Sysco Memphis LLC, Sysco Merchandising and Supply Chain Services Canada Inc., Sysco Merchandising and Supply Chain Services Inc., Sysco Metro New York LLC, Sysco Minnesota Inc., Sysco Montana Inc., Sysco Nashville LLC, Sysco Netherlands Partners LLC, Sysco North Central Florida Inc., Sysco North Dakota Inc., Sysco Northern New England Inc., Sysco Philadelphia LLC, Sysco Pittsburgh LLC, Sysco Portland Inc., Sysco Raleigh LLC, Sysco Resources Services LLC, Sysco Riverside Inc., Sysco Sacramento Inc., Sysco San Diego Inc., Sysco San Francisco Inc., Sysco Seattle Inc., Sysco South Florida Inc., Sysco Southeast Florida LLC, Sysco Spain Holdings SLU, Sysco Spokane Inc., Sysco St. Louis LLC, Sysco Syracuse LLC, Sysco Technologies Cayman Ltd., Sysco Technologies LLC, Sysco UK Holdings Limited, Sysco UK Limited, Sysco UK Partners LLP, Sysco USA I Inc., Sysco USA II LLC, Sysco USA III LLC, Sysco Ventura Inc., Sysco Ventures Inc., Sysco Virginia LLC, Sysco West Coast Florida Inc., Sysco Western Minnesota Inc., The SYGMA Network Inc., Upsys, Victua SAS, Walker Foods Inc., Waugh Foods, and Wild Harvest Limited. In a major revelation, the Russian MoD has announced it has solved the mystery of the drone attacks ostensibly carried out by Syrian terrorists. It was the US reconnaissance aircraft that had coordinated a massive drone attack on Russias Hmeymim air base in Syria, Deputy Defense Minister Aleksandr Fomin said. The military remembers that the attack was carried out by 13 drones, that were controlled by a common signal. At that time, an American P-8A Poseidon patrol plane was making a reconnaissance flight over the Mediterranean Sea for 8 hours, Fomin said in a speech to Beijing. Drones can operate either autonomously or controlled by an operator when faced with radioelectronic warfare. According to the Russian deputy minister, it was an American Poseidon with modern equipment that carried out the control of the drones in that case. As they faced radio-electronic warfare systems, the drones retreated to receive new signals: They began to be controlled from space and to receive information about the so-called holes they eventually penetrated and then were destroyed, Fomin concluded. The Russian Defense Ministry did not specify when exactly the attack occurred. Drone attacks in Syria Terrorists in Syria are often using unmanned flying vehicles to launch attacks, including at Russias Hmeymims base. Only in August of this year, the bases anti-air defense systems downed 47 drones. The Russian Ministry of Defense has repeatedly stressed that, despite their simple appearance, terrorist drones are built with modern technologies: navigation, control and explosive release systems. For the Russian military, this shows that a party that owns technologies for producing such vehicles has handed over its expertise to international terrorist groups. This comes as unmanned aerial vehicles of Syrian terrorists were displayed during a meeting of representatives of the Ministries of Defense of the countries of the Commonwealth of Independent States, joining 11 former Soviet republics. The exhibition has drones of illegal armed formations that are operating in Syria, said the Russian General Staff representative, Major-General Aleksandr Novikov. @RIA_Worldnews , . Twitter Ads info and privacy At the meeting, questions were raised on the use of non-guided aviation and drone combat, with the participation of representatives of the Armed Forces of Armenia, Belarus, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Russia and Tajikistan. River to Sea 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. The standard variant of the D-Max V-Cross at regular dealers is available at a price of Rs 14.82 lakh while the new High variant is priced at Rs 16.32 lakh (both prices, ex-showroom Delhi). The Isuzu D-Max V-Cross will now be sold via the Canteen Stores Department (CSD) at special prices which can only be availed by armed forces personnel, ex-servicemen and their family members. Currently, only the standard variant will be offered from CSD and not the feature-rich High variant, which was launched earlier this year . The High variant packs features like Electronic Stability Control (ESC), Traction Control System (TCS), LED daytime running lights (DRLs), LED taillamps, cruise control, a 6-way power adjustable drivers seat, and more. The Isuzu D-Max V-Cross is powered by a 2.5-litre turbo-diesel with a power output of 134PS and 320Nm of peak torque. It also gets shift-on-the-fly 4WD with a 5-speed manual transmission. The standard variant of the D-Max V-Cross at regular dealers is available at a price of Rs 14.82 lakh while the new High variant is priced at Rs 16.32 lakh (both prices, ex-showroom Delhi). For more details, check out Isuzu Indias official statement below. Press Release: Indias First Adventure Utility Vehicle, ISUZU D-MAX V-Cross now available at Canteen Stores Department (CSD) outlets V-Cross (Standard variant) will be available at an exclusive price package for armed forces personnel 25 October 2018, New Delhi : Lifestyle and Adventure Pick-up, ISUZU D-MAX V-Cross, is now available through the Canteen Stores Department (CSD) at an exclusive price for the armed forces personnel, ex-servicemen and their families. Currently, the standard variant of the V-Cross will be sold at the CSD outlets across the country. The ISUZU D-MAX V-Cross is Indias First Adventure Utility Vehicle, catering to those SUV buyers who seek adventure and want to stand out among their peers. The V-Cross comes with a highly capable 4WD, modern SUV features and a large deck. Awarded as the Lifestyle Vehicle of the Year by BBC TopGear and CNBC-TV18 Overdrive magazines, the V-Cross has carved a niche in the Indian utility vehicle space. Commenting on the development, Mr. Ken Takashima, Deputy Managing Director, Isuzu Motors India, said, We are extremely pleased to sell the V-Cross at CSD outlets to meet the expectations and growing need expressed by the armed forces & their families. This tie-up with CSD gives us an opportunity to serve them with their preferred choice of vehicle that complements their lifestyle. The V-Cross is available in exciting colour options Ruby Red, Orchid Brown, Cosmic Black, Titanium Silver, Obsidian Grey and Splash White. Customers can visit the nearest CSD outlet for further information and booking. Disclaimer: This article has not been edited by Deccan Chronicle and is taken from a syndicated feed. Photos: CarDekho. The government of India and automobile manufacturers in the country had filed a plea a couple of months ago to extend the deadline for the implementation of BSVI norms. The Supreme Court has delivered its final verdict on the implementation of BSVI emission norms across the country. In its judgement, the court has stated that vehicles that do not conform to BSVI norms cannot be sold in India from 1 April, 2020. The government of India and automobile manufacturers in the country had filed a plea a couple of months ago to extend the deadline for the implementation of BSVI norms. They had argued that manufacturers will need time to clear their stocks once the norms comes into effect. However, with the court refusing to extend the deadline, manufacturers will now have to offer huge discounts on their vehicles to clear their inventory before 1 April, 2020, just like in 2017 when BSIV norms were made mandatory pan India. The apex court refused to extend the deadline saying that public health has to be held in a higher regard than the profit of automobile manufacturers. Stating that enough time had been given to the manufacturers to shift from BSIV technology to BSVI technology, the Supreme Court did not see a valid reason to grant an extension on the April 2020 deadline. Previously in 2016, the government of India had decided to skip BSV emission norms altogether and go straight to BSVI in 2020. The Supreme Courts decision is binding on all vehicles that are sold in India, including two-wheelers, four-wheeler and commercial vehicles. Disclaimer: This article has not been edited by Deccan Chronicle and is taken from a syndicated feed. Photos: CarDekho. Chinese authorities will hold a meeting in Nov with Indian exporters to address their concerns relating to market access and trade regulations. New Delhi: Indias trade minister Suresh Prabhu said on Friday that China has agreed to increase its imports from the country. Global disruptions offer a chance to increase Indian exports, Prabhu said at an event organised by the Confederation of Indian Industries (CII). Prabhu said Chinese authorities will hold a meeting in November specifically with Indian exporters to address their concerns relating to market access and trade regulations. Indias trade deficit with China is its widest with any country, with large amounts of electronics and other items flowing across the border with its northern neighbour. The Indian government said on Thursday it is set to boost exports of rice and rapeseed to China to try to narrow this gap. Generally, Telugu filmmakers dont release their films for Deepavali, while Tamil filmmakers consider the festival auspicious. So Tamil superstar Vijay will be releasing his forthcoming film, Sarkar, on November 6 for Deepavali. Directed by A.R. Murugudoss, the Telugu distribution rights were acquired by Vallabhaneni Ashok for a whopping price. The recently released trailer and the dialogues have become a big hit on the social media. We are planning to do a pre-release event here in Hyderabad and Vijay is going to attend it, says Vallabhaneni. Keerthy Suresh and Varalakshmi Sarath Kumar are the two female leads. It is interesting to see how Murugudoss has shaped the film, given that it has a few political dialogues as well. The director had earlier delivered a big dud in Spyder with Telugu superstar Mahesh Babu. There are many political films that have been released recently and how Murugudoss has made his film differently as compared to them is a big question, says a source. HT04 He announced the campaign on social media; where he urged people to wear Indian Ethnic wear on all 5 special days of Diwali. Indian skipper, Virat Kohli recently spoke about his favourite looks for the festive season as he launched a Diwali campaign called India Ethnic Week by Manyavar. While talking about his Diwali experiences and love for the festival, Indian skipper Virat Kohli said, I have very fond memories of spending the entire Diwali week, from Dhanteras to Bhai Dooj, with friends and family. And I love to don ethnic attire the entire week of celebrations, as I strongly believe that it adds to the festive wali feel! While shooting for the campaign my personal favorite look was the Diwali look in a royal blue kurta jacket with golden work. I liked my Choti Diwali look too as it was an offbeat jacket! He announced the campaign on social media; where he urged people to wear Indian Ethnic wear on all 5 special days of Diwali, which comprise the days of the India Ethnic Week as well Dhanteras, Choti Diwali, Diwali, Milni and Bhai Dooj! Virat Kohli dons a bright look for Manyavar's India Ethnic Week' campaign. Speaking further about India Ethnic Week, he said, When Manyavar shared their idea of creating an India Ethnic Week urging people to wear Indian ethnic wear throughout the Diwali week I instantly loved it and connected with it. I think the youth will also resonate with this idea of celebrating the entire week in ethnic wear for a change and make India Ethnic Week a grand success! The thought behind India ethnic Week is rooted in the fact that Diwali isnt just a day-long affair; preparations start in advance. The festivities also begin two days before Diwali, from Dhanteras onward and go on till two days after Diwali, till Bhai Dooj. Kohli takes the trend-o-meter a nitch higher with asymmetrical cuts for Manyavar's 'India Ethnic Week' campaign for festive season. Each day has its own set of religious rituals, social customs, traditions and fun; being dressed in ethnic wear, adds to the #FestiveWaaliFeeling. In the campaign film, Virat puts it aptly when he says, Diwali ka asli mazaa toh ethnic mein hi aata hai! Manyavar has planned a multi-media campaign to amplify India Ethnic Week. It plans to scale up India Ethnic Week celebrations over the years to come. Turns out, sunbathing every other day boost melanin levels, a chemical that gives skin colour, the Daily Mail reported. Giving skin tissue a day to recover from the rays helps give the skin the most colour. You tan when your skin is exposed to ultraviolet light produced by the sun and other visible light. High-energy radiation has an impact on skin cells in two ways: - The immune system triggers a response that repairs damage done to DNA and protects the unguarded layers by multiplying the skin cells. - The second way is to produce a brown-to-black pigment, which is melanin in the hair, eyes and it tans the skin. Researchers recently learned the benefits of giving your skin a break from the strong rays, after studying human skin cells and mice exposed to ultraviolet light for different amounts of time. "The damaging effects of high doses of ultraviolet rays are known, but we were curious to see the effect of exposure frequency on skin," senior author Professor Carmit Levy, a molecular geneticist at Tel Aviv University, told the Daily Mail. Adding, It turns out that, if you are going out daily to the beach, you might be interfering with the natural scheduling and synchronising of the skin protection systems." So before you right out to get a sunbath, think about if you should wait a day. The findings were originally published in the journal Molecular Cell. Britain's Prince Harry and Meghan, Duchess of Sussex wear a ta'ovala, a traditional Tongan dress wrapped around the waist, at the Fa'onelua Convention Centre in Nuku'alofa, Tonga, Friday, Oct. 26, 2018. (Photo: AP) Prince Harry and his wife Meghan have put on a lot PDA displays while on their first international tour. The Duke and Duchess of Sussex took to the water to watch the @InvictusSydney Elliott 7 Team final congratulations @AussieInvictus on your gold medal! #IG2018 pic.twitter.com/isFFzBeUYj Kensington Palace (@KensingtonRoyal) October 21, 2018 The Duke and Duchess of Sussex have seldom left each others side while making several public appearances during their 16-day tour of the South Pacific. Good morning Bondi Beach! The Duke and Duchess of Sussex are joining a OneWave Fluro Friday Sunrise session #OneRoyalFluroWave #RoyalVisitAustralia pic.twitter.com/ln5lDjAxkV Kensington Palace (@KensingtonRoyal) October 18, 2018 However, royal watchers have noticed that even while their holding hands, Harry walks a little ahead of his pregnant wife. The Duke and Duchess of Sussex arrive for a dinner with His Majesty King Tupou VI and Queen Nanasipauu #RoyalVisitTonga pic.twitter.com/qRlDjwDJum Kensington Palace (@KensingtonRoyal) October 25, 2018 Etiquette expert William Hanson reveals it is a show of respect for the monarchy. Hanson told the Daily Mail: "It is standard practice for British royalty to allow the 'blood royal' to walk or stand a few paces in front of the royalty who has married in to the family, as with HM The Queen and HRH The Duke of Edinburgh and TRH The Duke and Duchess of Sussex. At @UniSouthPacific, The Duke and Duchess caught up with Elisha Azeemah Bano, one of The #QueensYoungLeaders, who founded the Act It Network. #RoyalVisitFiji pic.twitter.com/kVD4Utq9WA Kensington Palace (@KensingtonRoyal) October 24, 2018 "Even though TRH the Duke and Duchess of Sussex are currently presenting their own, informal, tactile interpretation of British monarchy, they are still adhering to the precedent with Meghan knowing she, as a non-blood royal, should defer to born royalty." The couple, who are currently in Australia, will finish their trip with a four-day visit to New Zealand. The Koramangala police have registered a case and have arrested all the three accused for their involvement in the crime. (Representional Image) Bengaluru: The Koramangala police have arrested three people including an accountant who had siphoned off Rs 10 lakh from the salary of 20 employees from the same private firm. The accused have been identified as Prashanth Kumar K, 24, Prashanth Ramu, 33, and Syed Suleman, 21. The police said that the accused, Syed was working as an accountant in AGM Teamlease Service Limited. He had collected the bank credentials of employees and later to siphon off money, he allegedly updated it as a friend's account. According to the police, Sayed had started working in the firm recently and within three months of joining, collected bank account numbers of the employees to commit the crime. Even after committing the crime, he continued to work in the same firm so that the others would not suspect him. The employees shared their new email IDs which were given by the company and also shared their bank details with him to update their profile when Sayed, saved their passwords. Sayed made it look genuine and shared email and password details with the other two accused and sent an email to the employees requesting them to change the bank salary account details. The salary of as many as 20 employees was credited to other accounts in the month of May. The employees immediately brought the issue to the notice of their higher-ups. During the audit, they found out about the money being transferred to other accounts and filed a complaint with the Koramangala police station in July. During the probe, they found out that Syed had saved the email IDs and passwords of the employees and emails were sent by his friends. The police suspected Syed's involvement and immediately took him into custody for questioning where he confessed to the crime. The Koramangala police have registered a case and have arrested all the three accused for their involvement in the crime. Bengaluru: Days after actress Sruthi Hariharan accused him of behaving in an "unprofessional" manner, South Indian actor Arjun Sarja Thursday filed a Rs five crore defamation suit against her. The actor's manager Shivarjun also lodged a complaint against the actress at the Cyber Crime police station. Attempts by the Karnataka Film Chambers of Commerce to bring about a rapprochement between the two failed as they stuck to their respective stands. Five days after actress Sruthi Hariharan joined the '#MeToo campaign against sexual abuse, accusing star actor Arjun Sarja of harassing her, all eyes were on the Karnataka Film Chamber of Commerce (KFCC) in the hope that it will arrive at an amicable solution. However, a meeting chaired by veteran actor- politician M.H. Ambareesh on the row on Thursday remained inconclusive with both the accuser and accused standing firm on their decisions. After presenting his version at the KFCC meet, actor Arjun Sarja who appeared before the media for the first time after being accused of sexual harassment, made it clear that he will not compromise at any cost. It is the saddest day in my life, I am deeply pained, and it is only I who know the amount of damage it has cost me at the personal level. I have come here because as an artist for over 34 years, my entire family including my father have always treated the chamber with utmost respect, he said. Time will reveal the truth. As it is right before the court, I cannot talk much about it but soon the real culprits who are behind all this will be soon unmasked through an investigation, he added making it clear that he will not compromise at any cost. Speaking on similar lines after expressing her opinion before the KFCC, actress Sruthi remarked that it is always the woman who is victimised after she raises her voice. After being called by the chamber to present my case, I am withholding my decision to file a complaint in the matter. It is because I immensely respect the body. However, I have come to know that two separate cases have been filed against me, one before the court and another before the police. In fact, I am glad that he (Arjun) wants to fight it out in court, said Sruthi, adding that there is no question of apologising and more so when she is the victim. She made it clear that she will wait till Friday for the final decision of the chamber, after which she will take further action on fighting it out legally, Actor-politician mbareesh said that since the matter has reached the court, he has advised both of them to think about it and arrive at a decision by Friday. It is a sensitive matter. Both have expressed their pain and anguish. We had hoped that the matter would end here but I could not succeed, said Ambareesh. When asked about the formation of an Internal Complaints Committee (ICC), he said that the chamber is in the process of doing this. Bengaluru: Having tried various ways to prevent people from dumping garbage in the open in the city and failed, the BBMP now plans to post retired army personnel, who will be known as Clean-Up Marshals, from January next year to keep a watch on public places and penalise those dumping garbage in them. The decision was taken at a recent meeting of the Mayor, BBMP Commissioner, corporators and officials. The marshals posted at prominent places and in areas where garbage dumping is rampant, will be authorised to not only penalise the offenders, but also file a criminal case against them. A senior officer of the BBMPs Solid Waste Management department says the plan is to recruit the retired army personnel by January 2019. They will be given a salary, uniform and fuel and their mobile phone bills will be paid. Once they are recruited they will be trained on how to tackle the public and deal with the situation. In the first phase around 250 will be recruited and their numbers will be gradually increased, he reveals. Posted in the 198 wards across the city, the marshals will be on duty from 5 am to 1 am, patrolling their given areas, and keeping a watch near bus stops, parks, storm water drains, vacant sites and playgrounds. For a first offence, they will fine people Rs 100 and for the second, Rs 200. If anyone tries to misbehave with them, the marshals can with the help of the BBMP lodge a police complaint, according to the officer. The civic agency plans to soon submit a detailed project report to the government on the scheme. We have informed the government about the plan verbally and it is okay with it , but has asked for the details. We are planning to introduce the new system in January 2019 and expect it to cost around Rs 80 crore. The role and functions of the marshals is also being finalised, another officer of the department explains, adding that with the garbage crisis getting out of hand, it is time for the people to be educated about the effects of dumping rubbish in public places. On a complaint by a woman disciple, a case of rape and unnatural sex was filed against Daati Maharaj, his three brothers and a woman at Fatehpur Beri Police Station in South Delhi. (Photo: File | ANI) New Delhi: The CBI has booked self-styled preacher Daati Maharaj, who runs a temple in South Delhi, for allegedly raping and having unnatural sex with an inmate of his ashram, officials said on Friday. The agency had taken over the investigation in the case on the instructions of the Delhi High Court, they said. On a complaint by a woman disciple, a case of rape and unnatural sex was filed against Daati Maharaj, his three brothers and a woman at Fatehpur Beri Police Station in South Delhi. On June 22, the police had questioned Daati Maharaj also known as Daati Madanlal, who was charged with rape of a disciple at his ashrams in Delhi and Rajasthan. The accused had claimed he was being framed in the case. A bench of Chief Justice Rajendra Menon and Justice V K Rao had allowed the complainant woman's plea to transfer the matter to the CBI, saying the manner in which the Delhi police carried out the probe "casts a shadow on the investigation". It is possibly the first case registered by the agency after a midnight drama in which its Director Alok Verma and Special Director Rakesh Asthana were divested of all powers by the government on the recommendation of Central Vigilance Commission. In an unprecedented shake-up in the CBI's 55-year-history, both Alok Verma and his deputy were divested of their powers and sent on leave in a dramatic overnight action by the government Tuesday night. (Photo: File | PTI) New Delhi: The CBI on Thursday rejected a report that files related to several crucial cases, including that of the Rafale fighter aircraft deal, was under the consideration of its Director Alok Verma when he was divested of his powers by the centre. In an unprecedented shake-up in the CBI's 55-year-history, both Alok Verma and his deputy, Special Director Rakesh Asthana, were divested of their powers and sent on leave in a dramatic overnight action by the government Tuesday night. A news report has claimed that several crucial files, including the one related to the Rafale fighter jet deal, was under the consideration of Alok Verma when the Centre divested him of his powers in a midnight order. In a statement, CBI spokesperson Abhishek Dayal termed the news report as false. "This is being manufactured by vested interests. Every file in the CBI at each level is accounted for," he said. Activist lawyer Prashant Bhushan and former Union minister Arun Shourie had submitted a detailed complaint to Alok Verma on October 4 regarding alleged corruption in the deal signed with France's Dassault Aviation to buy 36 Rafale aircraft. They also submitted documents buttressing their argument for the need of probe. Alleging that the offset contract for Rafale aircraft was actually a commission to a private company, they had asked Alok Verma to take the government's permission to initiate a probe in accordance with the law. "Apart from protecting Asthana (Special Director) from investigation, the Rafale complaint by Shourie, Sinha and myself, entertained by the CBI Director, must be another reason for the Govt to remove him with such alacrity by this midnight order," Bhushan had tweeted yesterday. CBI Director Alok Verma petition has challenged the decision of the Centre to divest him of his duties and sending him on leave. (Photo: PTI) New Delhi: The Supreme Court has ruled that the Central Vigilance Commission inquiry into exiled CBI chief Alok Verma be completed in two weeks under the supervision of an apex court judge. The apex court also ruled that interim CBI chief M Nageswara Rao cannot take any policy decisions and will look after routine affairs only. Alok Verma had challenged in the Supreme Court the validity of the governments role in divesting his powers and sending him on forced administrative leave late Tuesday. The government did so after bribery charges and counter charges flew thick between Verma and CBI deputy Rakesh Asthana, after which the CVC stepped in to probe charges against Alok Verma. The government soon sent both on leave. Verma challenged this decision, since the CBI chief is appointed for two years by a selection panel headed by the Prime Minister, the Leader of the Opposition and the Chief Justice of India. Opposition leader Mallikarjun Kharge has termed the governments move as illegal and malafide as no one -- neither you (government) nor the CVC enjoys the requisite authority to interfere with the Terms of Service vested in the Director. Here are updates from the Supreme Court: 02:55 pm: "PM Modi can run, he can hide but in the end, truth will be revealed. Removing CBI Director will not help. The PM acted against CBI Director; it was an act out of panic," Congress President Rahul Gandhi after leaving Lodhi Colony police station in Delhi. (Photo: Twitter | ANI) 02:34 pm: Congress President Rahul Gandhi inside Lodhi Colony Police Station in Delhi after being detained during protest over removal of CBI Director Alok Verma. Delhi: Congress President Rahul Gandhi inside Lodhi Colony Police Station after being reportedly detained during #CBI protests. pic.twitter.com/l3hDq10Wv4 ANI (@ANI) October 26, 2018 01:58 pm: Congress President Rahul Gandhi and other leaders who were protesting near CBI headquarters in Delhi have been arrested. Congress President Rahul Gandhi and other leaders of the Congress Party detained during the protests at the CBI Headquarters in Delhi: Congress pic.twitter.com/f4pt4XeHdY ANI (@ANI) October 26, 2018 01:47 pm: "All officers of the CBI, particularly the top two officers like Caesar's wife must be beyond suspicion," Finance Minister Arun Jaitley said. #WATCH: FM Arun Jaitley says,"All officers of the CBI, particularly the top two officers like Caesar's wife must be beyond suspicion." pic.twitter.com/qlA1eLOCtH ANI (@ANI) October 26, 2018 01:33 pm: "Recent developments had eroded the credibility of CBI. CVC in the interest of fairness passed an order that till investigations are pending against two top officers of CBI, they must step aside and recuse themselves from CBI functioning till inquiry is over," Finance Minister Arun Jaitley said. 01:32 pm: "Today Supreme Court has further strengthened the fairness criteria. They fixed a time limit and in order to ensure that highest standard of fairness are maintained even in the inquiry they have appointed a retired judge to ensure that the CVC inquiry is extremely fair," Finance Minister Arun Jaitley said. 01:29 pm: "The current CBI controversy is an extremely positive development. Government has no interest for or against any individual. Government is interested in maintaining professionalism, image and constitutional integrity of CBI," Finance Minister Arun Jaitley said. 01:18 pm: Congress workers detained by police during protests near CBI headquarters in Delhi. #Visuals of Congress workers being detained by police during protests near #CBI headquarters in Delhi. pic.twitter.com/17TpXm6rte ANI (@ANI) October 26, 2018 01:13 pm: Congress workers in Telangana stage protest near CBI Office in Hyderabad against the removal of CBI Chief Alok Verma. Telangana: Congress workers stage protest near CBI Office in Hyderabad against the removal of CBI Chief Alok Verma. pic.twitter.com/ZQmkU0UodR ANI (@ANI) October 26, 2018 01:11 pm: Congress workers in Delhi stage protest against removal of CBI chief Alok Verma. #WATCH: Congress workers stage protest against the removal of CBI Chief Alok Verma in #Delhi. pic.twitter.com/BRk8Vvwvgv ANI (@ANI) October 26, 2018 12:45 pm: Police used water cannon at Congress workers protesting in Chandigarh against removal of CBI Director Alok Verma. Chandigarh: Police use water cannon at Congress workers who are protesting against the removal of CBI Director Alok Verma pic.twitter.com/SXwR3AgGRq ANI (@ANI) October 26, 2018 12:42 pm: "Congress doesn't have any people's issues to raise that is why they are taking up these non-issues. We should wait for the investigation report," Home Minister Rajnath Singh said. 12:35 pm: Congress President Rahul Gandhi and party leader Ashok Gehlot lead the protest march to CBI headquarters against the removal of CBI Director Alok Verma. 11:44 am: Congress workers held protest outside the CBI office in Lucknow against removal of CBI Director Alok Verma. 11:41 am: Decisions taken by Rao from October 23 till date shall not be implemented, said the Supreme Court. 11:34 am: "CVC will carry on probe in 10 days under the supervision of a judge of this court. M Nageswara Rao shall perform only routine task. Change of investigating officer by CBI will be furnished in sealed cover on November 12 before SC," said CJI Ranjan Gogoi. 11: 32 am: CJI Gogoi in his order stated, "Inquiry in respect of the allegation made in the note of the Secretariat as regards the present CBI Director Alok Verma shall be completed by the CVC within a period of 2 weeks from today." 11:29 am: The CVC inquiry to be conducted under supervision of retired Supreme Court judge AK Patnaik, orders Supreme Court. 11:28 am: Solicitor General Tushar Mehta said "10 days may not be enough to complete the inquiry and opposes supervision of CVC inquiry by SC judge." 11:25 am: Mukul Rohatgi appeared for Rakesh Asthana. CJI Gogoi told Rohatagi, "You file a separate writ". Rohatgi said, "I have, please keep my writ on Monday." 11:25 am: CJI Ranjan Gogoi asked Attorney General that inquiry will be conducted by sitting or former judge of Supreme Court. M Nageswara Rao will not take any policy decisions. 11:22 am: CJI Ranjan Gogoi says will examine the matter. 11:21 am: CJI Ranjan Gogoi remarks that enquiry by CVC should be completed in ten days and should be under supervision of a Supreme Court judge. 11:20 am: Fali Nariman cites to amendment to Delhi Special Police Establishment Act. 11:18 am: Fali Nariman who is representing Alok Verma submits, "Present case is concerned with whether his tenure of two years could be breached at any time." 11:17 am: Senior jurist Fali Nariman who is represting CBI Director Alok Verma cited Vineet Narain judgment and the 2-year statutory protection. 11:15 am: Hearing commences in Supreme Court, Senior jurist Fali S Nariman arguing for CBI Director Alok Verma. 11:12 am: Rakesh Asthana's was filed through advocate Amit Anand Tiwari a few minutes back. Amit Anand Tiwari has been CBI's lawyer in the Supreme Court. 11:10 am: CBI Special Director Rakesh Asthana moves the Supreme Court against the Centre's leave order. 11:04 am: Congress workers in Karnataka held protest outside the CBI office in Bengaluru against the removal of CBI Director Alok Verma. (Photo: Twitter | ANI) 10:31 am: Security tightened and barricading outside CBI headquarters ahead of Congress protest against the removal of CBI Director Alok Verma. 10:30 am: "It is just one more case. What is big about it? It is not as important as you think it is," Former Attorney General and senior advocate Mukul Rohatgi said. Also Read: CBI vs CBI crucial hearing: Alok Verma to challenge forced leave in SC today 10:20 am: Former Attorney General and senior advocate Mukul Rohatgi leave for the Supreme Court. He will be representing CBI Special Director Rakesh Asthana. (Photo: Twitter | ANI) 10:10 am: TMC MP Nadeem Ul Haq will join the Congress protest led by Rahul Gandhi at Central Bureau of Investigation HQ against the removal of CBI Director Alok Verma. 10:06 am: CBI Special Director Rakesh Asthana outside former Attorney General and senior advocate Mukul Rohatgi's residence in Delhi: news agency ANI. (Photo: Twitter | ANI) 10:05 am: Congress President Rahul Gandhi tweets on protests: 09:55 am: Security deployed outside CBI office in Lucknow ahead of the Congress protest against the removal of CBI Director Alok Verma. 09:45 am: Trinamool Congress to join the Congress party protest led by Rahul Gandhi at Central Bureau of Investigation headquarters against the removal of CBI Director Alok Verma. 09:43 am: Visuals from outside CBI headquarters in Delhi. 09:30 am: M Nageswar Rao is only holding charge as interim director until the Central Vigilance Commission looks into the allegations and counter allegations: CBI spokesperson Abhishek Dayal. 09:29 am: Alok Verma continues to remain director of CBI, Asthana remains special director: CBI spokesperson Abhishek Dayal. Mumbai: In the run-up to the 2019 General Elections, Bharatiya Janata Party President Amit Shah on Friday announced that the BJP and Janta Dal United will contest the 2019 Lok Sabha elections on an equal number of seats in Bihar. Addressing a press conference, Shah said, "It has been decided that the BJP and JD(U) will fight on equal number of seats for Lok Sabha Elections 2019 in Bihar. Numbers will be announced in a few days." Other NDA allies, including the LJP and the RLSP, will get due representation in the seat sharing formula, Shah said He added, "Lok Janshakti Party chief Ram Vilas Paswan and Rashtriya Lok Samta Party (RLSP) leader Upendra Khushwaha are firmly with the NDA and their parties will get due representation in seat sharing." The announcement followed a meeting Kumar had with Prime Minister Narendra Modi at the latter's residence earlier in the day. It marks a climbdown by the BJP, which had contested 30 of the state's 40 seats in the 2014 general elections and won 22, while its two other then allies, LJP and RLSP, had won six and two seats respectively out of seven and three they had fought. Sources in the National Democratic Alliance (NDA), which includes the BJP and its partners, said the BJP and the JD(U) may contest 16 seats each, with six and two to be left for parties led by Paswan and Kushwaha respectively. Shah made it clear that the number of seats of all NDA parties in Bihar will come down to accommodate the Janata Dal (United), which had joined the alliance last year after severing ties with the Congress and the Lalu Prasad-led Rashtriya Janata Dal. The JD(U) had fought the 2014 Lok Sabha polls on its own. To a question about whether Kushwaha, whose equation with Kumar is far from cordial, will remain a part of the NDA, Shah answered in affirmative and asserted that the alliance will do better than the last polls when it had won 31 seats. "All four parties will remain part of the NDA," he said. Kumar said talks with two other allies are in the last stage and an announcement about the exact number of seats will be made soon. The JD(U) had won only two seats in 2014, and the BJP's decision to cede many of its winning seats to give it an equal weightage underscores Kumar's indispensability to it against the RJD-led opposition. Since the JD(U) joined hands with the BJP, the regional party had been asserting its senior status in the state citing Kumar's leadership and its better show than the saffron party in the 2015 assembly polls. Many BJP leaders were of the view that Kumar was no longer the same force while the BJP had emerged much stronger, a claim which also strained their ties before intervention by the top BJP brass repaired the damage. In the 2009 Lok Sabha polls, when Kumar was a BJP ally the JD(U) had contested 25 seats and the former 15. Shah said Kumar, Paswan and BJP leader and Bihar's Deputy Chief Minister Sushil Kumar Modi will lead the alliance's campaign in the state. He accused the opposition of running a disinformation campaign against the NDA, and claimed rival parties had no base in Bihar. Kumar said he also discussed drought conditions in his state and its development issues with Modi. (With inputs from PTI) Bengaluru: The Cyber Crime police on Thursday registered an FIR against actress, Sruthi Hariharan after actor, Arjun Sarja sent a complaint to city police commissioner, T Suneel Kumar accusing her of defaming him and his family intentionally along with others. The actor's cousin, Shiva Arjun Sarja along with his manager, met the city police commissioner and filed the complaint on his behalf. Acting on the commissioner's instructions, the complaint was immediately transferred to the cyber crime police station and by evening, the FIR was registered against the actress, Sruthi Hariharan and others. The police said that a case has been registered under section 66 of Information Technology act-2000 (Computer related offences) naming Sruthi Hariharan as the prime accused. In the complaint, Arjun Sarja has alleged that Shruthi along with others had conspired against Arjun and his family to tarnish his image adding that she also entered into a criminal conspiracy to malign the image of the actor using social networking sites such as Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, WhatsApp and others with an intention to extort money. He also alleged that fake accounts were created in social media using his personnel information and by uploading derogatory posts. Meanwhile, Arjun Sarjas advocate filed an injunction application before the court and a defamation case with the city civil court on Thursday, seeking an injunction against Sruthi Hariharan to restrain her from posting or making any defamatory statements against him. The judge reserved the order on prohibiting Sruthi from posting any statements against Sarja for Friday. The coast of Odisha is the largest mass nesting site for the Olive Ridley turtles in the world and is unique in the sense that the newborn turtles come back to the same place for breeding after attaining adulthood. Visakhapatnam: Indian Coast Guard has launched Operation Olivia to support the efforts of forest officials under provisions of the Marine Fishing Regulatory Act of Odisha. The operation will commence from November 1 and continue to May 31, 2019 in order to reduce a major threat to the Olive Ridley turtles posed by fishing activity along the coast of Odisha. These operations have been undertaken since the past 20 years by the ICG to prevent death of Olive Ridley turtles along the coast by illegal, unregulated and unreported fishing without using Turtle Excluder Device and laying gill nets under its mandate for preservation and protection of marine environment. The coast of Odisha is the largest mass nesting site for the Olive Ridley turtles in the world and is unique in the sense that the newborn turtles come back to the same place for breeding after attaining adulthood. The Olive Ridley turtles arrive at beaches of Odisha coast annually between November and December and stay on till April and May for nesting. The turtles choose the narrow beaches near estuaries and bays for laying their eggs in Gahirmatha Sanctuary at the same place every year. Each adult female lays approximately 100 to 140 eggs at a time. Headquarters, Eastern Seaboard in a statement said that the during last years Operation Olivia 2017, the Indian Coast Guard's ship efforts stood at 191 ship days and fishing community were sensitised about preserving the species through community interaction programme undertaken by ICG along with marine police, fisheries and forest department. KAKINADA: With fishing folks objecting to the allocation of a 47 acre area of land at Parolopet, a fishermen locality here, for construction of houses for the poor under Housing For All' scheme, the issue has become controversial. The fishermen argue that the area belongs to their community where around 17 acres is being uses by them as their burial ground. They alleged that the Kakinada Municipal Corporation (KMC) authorities were encroaching on the site including the burial ground to construct houses adding that the fishermen were not being allocated house sites in this proposal. According to sources, the KMC has decided to construct 10,800 houses under a G+2 set up in three phases. The first phase construction was to be taken up on the officially identified 47 acres of land belonging to AP State Ports where 3,600 houses would come up. However, port employees have been appealing to the state government to allocate the site for them for housing purpose. The issue is pending with the government. Meanwhile, the KMC authorities want to acquire land through the Revenue Department for construction of the houses. It is said that the district officials have given the land to the KMC with 'advance possession' to expedite the implementation of the scheme. There are, however, aound 150 families that have constructed temporary houses on the land by the roadside and residing there. Several attempts were made over the last few months to get the houses in the area vacated to start the construction work by the KMC and Revenue. The fishermen did not accept their initiative. KMC authorities have asked the fishermen to vacate the site on or before October 26. "We welcome the move of constructing houses for poor but we oppose the demolition of existing houses in the area. The 47 acres of site belongs to the fishermen community of which 17 acres is `fishermen burial' ground. The area has been in possession of the fishermen for past 300 years. Now the authorities are trying to remove the burial ground for construction of houses," said the 12th Division Corporator Tummala Sunitha. She said that the fishermen strongly oppose the levelling of the burial ground for construction of houses. The KMC City Planner Mr Kalesh said that the Director of Town and Country Planning approved the plan for construction of houses through Andhra Pradesh Township and Infrastructure Development Corporation. The Revenue Department has given advance possession to the KMC for housing purpose. However, sources said that three acres of land has been identified and approved by the DTCP for the purpose of burial ground. The revenue officials have, however, not identified the site for the purpose, he added . Senior Congress leaders, including Ashok Gehlot, Ahmed Patel, Motilal Vora, Veerappa Moily and Anand Sharma, took part in march that culminated in demonstration ahead of CBI headquarters. (Photo: PTI) New Delhi: Congress workers led by their president Rahul Gandhi took to the streets on Friday against the move to divest CBI Director Alok Verma of his powers and send him on leave, and to demand an apology from Prime Minister Narendra Modi. The Congress, which marched from Dayal Singh College on Lodhi Road to the CBI headquarters about a kilometre away, has termed the move against Verma "illegal and unconstitutional". Senior Congress leaders, including Ashok Gehlot, Ahmed Patel, Motilal Vora, Veerappa Moily and Anand Sharma, took part in the march that culminated in a demonstration ahead of the CBI headquarters. Loktantrik Janata Dal leader Sharad Yadav, CPI leader D Raja and TMC's Nadimul Haque joined the protest. Carrying placards against the Prime Minister, the protesters walked the distance with scores of police personnel maintaining vigil and camera crews jostling with each other to capture the moment. One of the protesters was carrying a placard depicting the Central Bureau of Investigation in a cage. Gandhi got on to a truck in front of the police barricades put up ahead of the CBI headquarters in the CGO complex to prevent the protesters from reaching the building. Gehlot said the decision to remove CBI director Alok Verma was "illegal". "The chief justice of India, the leader of the opposition and the prime minister can together take a decision to remove him, but not the prime minister alone," he told reporters. "Our demand is to reinstate the CBI director. As per the law, he can be transferred only with the consent of the appointing authority (comprising Chief Justice of India, the prime minister and the leader of the opposition). The Prime Minister should tender an apology to the nation for destroying the image of the premier investigating agency," Gehlot added. The government has strongly defended its decision, saying it was "absolutely essential" to maintain the CBI's institutional integrity and the move was based on recommendations by the Central Vigilance Commissioner. The Congress' protests in the national capital were replicated in other parts of the country. State Congress leaders led demonstrations in their regions against what the Congress described as the "illegal, unconstitutional and illegitimate removal of the CBI director by the Modi-Shah duo that has shamed India and its premier investigative agency". Alleging that the Prime Minister is experiencing 'Rafale-o-Phobia', the opposition party said the "demolition of the CBI" was prompted by fears that the director was going to conduct a probe into the fighter jet deal. #WATCH Congress President Rahul Gandhi and Ashok Gehlot lead the protest march to CBI HQ against the removal of CBI Chief Alok Verma. pic.twitter.com/7FNkhoWQCb ANI (@ANI) October 26, 2018 The government sent Verma and Special Director Rakesh Asthana, who have accused each other of corruption, on leave on Tuesday. It also transferred several CBI officials and appointed M Nageswar Rao as the interim chief of the agency. The Congress protest was held soon after the matter came up in the Supreme Court. The apex court said former Supreme Court judge A K Patnaik will oversee a CVC inquiry into the allegations and counter allegations and the report has to be placed before it within two weeks. It directed that interim CBI chief M Nageswara Rao shall not take any major policy decisions. Decisions taken by him since October 23 till date shall not be implemented, it said. All decisions taken by Rao shall be placed before the apex court in a sealed cover. The court sought a response from the CBI, the CVC and the Centre on Verma's plea challenging the government's decision to divest him of his duties. A bench headed by Chief Justice Ranjan Gogoi posted the next date of hearing on November 12. Rajahmundry sub collector C.M. Sai Kanth Varma held a meeting with traders and officials from revenue, police, fire, power and municipal corporation here on Thursday. Rajahmundry: Fireworks traders have been asked to obtain temporary licence from the revenue authorities for sale of crackers to customers at select locations for the ensuing Diwali festival in the city. Rajahmundry sub collector C.M. Sai Kanth Varma held a meeting with traders and officials from revenue, police, fire, power and municipal corporation here on Thursday. Speaking on the occasion, he stressed the need for traders to obtain temporary licence from the sub collector's office who would be issuing such licences from October 29 to 31 between 10.00 am and 5.00 pm. He asked the traders to obtain the licence by paying the fee so that they could be given permission to sell the fireworks from November 1. He said that permission to sell the fireworks was being given at 12 selected locations in the city. The sub collector asked the officials from revenue, police, fire, power and municipal corporation to carry out joint inspection at the selected places to ensure that they were safe for sale of fireworks and would not likely be a cause for concern of an untoward incident to the public and asked them to submit a report. Municipal commissioner Sumit Kumar Gandhi underlined the importance on the part of officials to keep close vigil on sale of fireworks and instructed the traders to strictly comply with the safety norms during sale of fireworks. The business would be permitted at selected places and felt the need to ensure safety of the general public and local residents. Bengaluru: Even as the Karnataka Film Chamber of Commerce (KFCC) was hearing actress Sruthi's '#MeToo case on Thursday evening, high drama prevailed outside the premises of the chamber with Prashanth Sambargi, a close associate of Arjun Sarja making a startling revelation while claiming that two senior male actors are also involved in defaming Arjun Sarja. However, he did not name them saying that in the complaint filed before the police, which has been transferred to the cyber department, they have provided the documentary evidence which runs into 400 pages. Further accusing the actress, Mr. Sambargi said that she had paid for a social media campaign to defame Arjun Sarja at the international level. He added that they have come to know that her social media accounts were being operated from abroad. He also claims that Communists/Leftists are behind this controversy and are misusing the #MeToo campaign through Sruthi Hariharan. It is being done to hurt Hindu sentiments, as Arjun Sarja is working on an ambitious project to build a Lord Hanuman temple near Chennai at a cost of Rs 25 crores, he said. Further, Sambargi said that two more people are gearing up to file a defamation case against Sruthi for misusing the '#MeToo movement to defame the actor. TD activist S. Chaitanya receives treatment for the burns he suffered during the protest, in Guntur on Thursday. (DC) Vijayawada: A Telugu Desam activist suffered burn injuries when he came too close to a burning effigy of Prime Minister Narendra Modi in Guntur on Thursday. TD activists had staged a rally in the city and later gathered at Lodge Centre, protesting against the intervention of the Central government into CBI affairs. They poured petrol on an effigy of the PM and lit it. However, Telugu Yuvatha member S. Chaitanya came too close to the effigy and his clothes caught fire. His fellow protesters put out the fire, but not before he received burn injuries and was shifted to a hospital for treatment. During the protest, Guntur district TD chief and Vinukonda MLA G.V. Anjaneyulu alleged that the NDA government was ordering I-T raids targeting TD leaders in the state to tarnish the partys image. He said that the PM was using CBI for political mileage and to harass his political rivals. Mr Anjaneyulu recalled that earlier Modi had ordered similar raids and checks in Tamil Nadu and was now targeting AP to destabilise TD government. The applicants desirous of possessing and selling crackers on a temporary basis within the jurisdiction of the Hyderabad city police are required to obtain licence under the Explosives Act of 1884 and Rules, 1983 (as amended 2008), from the DCP of the Zones concerned. (Representional Image) Hyderabad: The vendors and dealers possessing and selling firecrackers this Diwali are requested to obtain licences from the Zonal Police Deputy Commissioners before November 1 and those failing to do so will be punished accordingly, warns Hyderabad Police Commissioner, Anjani Kumar. The applicants desirous of possessing and selling crackers on a temporary basis within the jurisdiction of the Hyderabad city police are required to obtain licence under the Explosives Act of 1884 and Rules, 1983 (as amended 2008), from the DCP of the Zones concerned. Any contravention would attract penal provisions and other action as stipulated under the Act and the Rules, said the Police Commissioner. The applicants are required to apply for temporary licence in Form AE-5 of the Explosives Rules. They may collect the application form, if needed from the Zonal DCP for necessary action before November 1 and the applications submitted thereafter will not be accepted. The application should enclose the following documents along with the duly filled in application form. Applications received without the following documents will be summarily rejected. NOC from Divisional Fire Officer. Land permission issued by the MCH authorities in case of Government land. NOC/ agreement from the owner of the land/ premises in case of private land. Copy of licence issued in previous year.NOC from neighbours in case of single shop located in a pucca structure. Site plan of the shop (blueprint copy). Original licence fee receipt for Rs. 500 paid in the SBI, Gunfoundry, Hyderabad under the following Head of Accounts. Hyderabad: The director and commissioner of school education has started sensitising district education officers and deputy education officers to implementing the provisions of GO MS 36 on child safety in schools. They have been asked to create more awareness among schools to implement the government order. Strict action will be taken against managements if schools dont follow the instructions. Mr T. Vijay Kumar, commissioner of school education, said the department had conducted workshops for district education officers and other officers. The DEOs would conduct workshops in all the schools regularly and inspect the premises schools later. We have instructed schools to appoint a woman employee near the girls toilets. Women staff have to be appointed in school buses as well, he said. He said the department had decided to sensitise schools instead of penalising them rightaway for shortcomings. Mr Srinivas Reddy, president of the Telangana Recognised Private School Managements Association, said the body was also creating awareness regarding GO MS 36. Mr Sheik Shabbir Ali, state president of the Telangana Private Teachers Forum appreciated the campaign to make schools safe. KHAMMAM: The state governments new initiative to plant a nursery in each gram panchayat has begun in the district. The District Rural Development Authority (DRDA), forest and municipalities have been monitoring the nurseries in their respective areas. Land documentation process has begun and the departments concerned are entering into agreements with the farmers. The officials have identified lands in 584 gram panchayats and farmers, who had give their lands, will be paid Rs 3,000 per acre per month. It has been decided to raise 3.95 crore plants that will be required for the next phase of Haritha Haram. Many farmers have shown interest in giving their lands for setting up nurseries. A farmer will get Rs 36,000 per year as lease amount. A lease agreement is needed between the government and the farmers concerned for this. The DRDA is taking a lead role in raising the nurseries and it will take up the responsibility of 508 gram panchayats. It will have to raise 2.08 crore saplings. The forest department will raise 87 lakh saplings in 65 gram panchayats. Municipalities and Nagar panchayats such as Kothagudem, Paloncha, Madhira, Sathupalli, Wyra, Yellandu, Manuguru and Khammam Municipal Corporation will raise 1.60 lakh saplings in their respective areas. Unlike earlier, the officials have been asked to raise more horticulture crops in these nurseries. The concept of this programme is to encourage people to raise saplings on the premises of their houses. Families will prefer to raise fruit saplings. In every 100 saplings, around 40 saplings will be horticulture plants. It is the village secretarys responsibility to look after the planting of saplings on hillocks, government lands and other areas in the village area with the cooperation of other departments concerned. People will also be included in increasing the green areas. Committees, comprising the village secretary and other elders of the village, will be held responsible for protecting the plants. ADILABAD: The Grand Alliance is averse to using the current caretaker Chief Ministers home, Pragati Bhavan, as the new Chief Ministers home as they consider it a symbol of the feudal penchant for grand buildings. Telangana Jana Samiti (TJS) president Prof. M. Kodandaram said in a recent Facebook live interaction with the public that Pragati Bhavan will be converted into a government hospital or state museum after consulting with other parties, should the alliance come to power. Congress president Rahul Gandhi, too, had questioned the need for K. Chandrasekhar Rao to spend Rs 300 crore on his home, Pragati Bhavan, when he had no money to revive the Nizam Sugar Factory. In fact, all Opposition parties are targeting the palatial Pragati Bhavan in their election campaign. They claim that ordinary people have no access to the Chief Ministers home, with police turning it and its surroundings into a prohibited area. Many protesters have been unable to reach the building to register their protests against government policies. The TJS, CPI, TD and Congress, which are in the grand alliance, are seriously considering opening up Dharana Chowk in Hyderabad for public protests, an old tradition that the TRS had banned. There had been vociferous protests when this was done and the Chief Minister and his government were accused of suppressing the right to free speech. Much is being said about the feudal attitude of the TRS which the alliance says it wants to abolish. Hyderabad: YSRC president Y.S. Jagan Mohan Reddy has refused to give his statement to the AP police, who reached the hospital in the city on Friday morning. Initially, a team of AO police officers informed senior party members that Mr Reddy had turned down their request to record his statement regarding Thursdays attack on him at the Visakhapatnam airport. However, the YSRC president reportedly called them inside his room at the and spoke to them informally as they had travelled so far. He insisted that it shouldnt be considered as his statement. Senior party members alleged that the top brass of the AP police was biased in the investigation into the incident, and Mr Reddy giving his statement would make no difference. We demand that the investigation be handed over to an independent agency for unbiased inquiry. Party leaders held a meeting regarding the investigation and decided to write to the President, Vice-President and Governor to hand over the case to another investigating body, a party leader said. Mr Reddy was later discharged from the hospital and was advised three days of rest. The ongoing padayatra of the YSRC chief has been consequently put on hold. Ballari: Former Chief Minister Siddaramaiah has reportedly set a target for the six Congress MLAs in by-poll bound Ballari district. Anyone of you who gets more votes than the BJP in this by-poll for our candidate V.S. Ugrappa will be considered for a ministerial post in the next cabinet expansion, Mr Siddaramaiah reportedly said. Sources in the party said, Mr Siddaramaiah held a meeting with the six Congress legislators from the district - Mr P.T. Parameshwar Naik, Mr B Nagendra, Mr E Tukaram, Mr Bhima Naik, Mr Anand Singh and Mr J.N. Ganesh in a resort in the outskirts of Hosapete town. He reportedly told each Congress MLA to get lead of 30,000 votes more than the BJP candidate adding that the one who gets the most votes will be considered for the minister's post. In other circumstances, seniority and capacity would have been the criteria for the minister's post. But, winning this bypoll is very important in view of the upcoming Lok Sabha general election. Otherwise, it will send a wrong signal across the country about the JDS-Congress coalition. Hence, whoever gets more votes for the Congress candidate will be considered for the minister post", he reportedly said. At present, none of the six Congress legislators have been accommodated in the state cabinet as there was no 'consensus' candidate. Water resources minister Mr D.K. Shivakumar is now Ballari district in-charge minister. In the 2014 Lok Sabha election, BJP candidate Mr Sriramulu had won by a margin of 85,144 votes. Sriramulu had secured 5,34,406, while Congress candidate Justice N.Y. Hanumanthappa had obtained 4,49,262 votes. Hyderabad: MIM president Asaduddin Owaisi advised party cadre to work to improve the poll percentage. He told primary members of the party in the Karwan Assembly constituency that they should motivate the electorate to cast their votes. He instructed the party cadre not to worry about the propaganda of Opposition parties. It is observed in our constituencies the poll percentage is lower than the average, he said. Mr Owaisi stressed the importance of making the people aware of the development works carried out in the constituency since 2014, which was worth more than Rs 200 crore. Mr Owaisi asked the cadre to focus on their particular area and work together with the Dalit party workers. He asked party workers to reach every house in the constituency. He instructed them to help the voter in getting their voter identity cards, corrections in their names or addresses. This week, in Kremlin, Vladimir Putin met with the chairman of the Council of Ministers of Italy, Giuseppe Conte, who came with an official visit to Russia. They discussed the situation in Syria and Libya, cooperation in the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE), which Italy chairs this year. Conte said that he came to Moscow to study the possibilities of the development of our cooperation and relations. According to Putin, Italy has somewhat lost its position in the Russian market as an economic partner, however, the volume of trade and economic relations remains very high. Italy is now ranked 6th in terms of turnover in the Russian Federation. In 2017, the mutual trade increased by 21% to $ 24 billion; in January August of this year, another 15 percent were added. The volume of direct investment from Italy is about $ 5 billion. About 500 Italian companies are represented on the Russian market. Many of them have their own production on the territory of Russia; they seek to increase industrial cooperation, to create industrial alliances. The Made with Italy brand is gaining popularity in Russia. Putin and Conte met with the representatives of the business community and opened a plant for the production of high-voltage AC motors and generators in the Stankomash industrial park in Chelyabinsk, which will provide a full localization of production in Russia. The volume of production will be up to 300 units of the electric motors per year. They will be used primarily for pumping units of main oil pipelines. This innovative full-cycle enterprise is built on Italian technology and will produce the high-voltage electrical power units that meet advanced standards of energy efficiency and safety. The project was the result of the partnership of the Russian companies Transneft and Konar with the world leader in the field of industrial energy systems - the Italian company Nidec. The engines are supposed to be used primarily in the field of oil pumping and petroleum products production. They are in demand by the domestic fuel and energy complex and will no doubt be in demand in the markets of the third countries. In the future, the electric motors are planned to be installed on the Arctic class vessels for the Northern Sea Route and used at the natural gas liquefaction lines at the Arctic LNG-2, Baltic LNG, Vladivostok LNG projects, for the needs of the metallurgical and mining sector, the railway transport and wind generation. The new enterprise became the 5th with the Italian participation on the territory of the Chelyabinsk industrial park Stankomash. In fact, Italians helped to create a whole industrial cluster, where the important high-tech industries are located. Meanwhile, Italy remains the second West European consumer of Russian gas after Germany. Moreover, cooperation in the energy sector is not limited to the fuel supplies - the Russian oil and gas companies Rosneft, NOVATEK, LUKOIL and the Italian ENI are developing the hydrocarbon fields. Concern Maire Tecnimont is involved in the construction of the Amur Gas Processing Plant, the second largest in the world. This enterprise will become Russia's largest gas processing facility and one of the key industrial infrastructure facilities being built around the Power of Siberia gas pipeline for supplying blue fuel to China. As Xinhua writes in the article Italy, Russia add new chapter to history with visit by Conte, the long history between Italy and Russia added a new chapter Wednesday when Italian Prime Minister Giuseppe Conte and Russian President Vladimir Putin met for the first time, vowing to strengthen trade ties. Since 2014, Western countries including the United States and the EU have imposed a range of economic sanctions on Russia. Since the Conte government was installed on June 1, Italy has been the leading European Union voice calling for the sanctions to be lifted. A week ago, Italian Interior Minister Matteo Salvini made his own trip to Moscow, where he called the current sanctions "madness." On his visit, Conte took a more nuanced view, saying that, "For Italy, sanctions are never an end, but instead an instrument that must be overcome as soon as possible." Conte did not say whether Italy would use its veto power to block the sanctions, which must be renewed. According to Andrea Giannotti, a historian specializing in Italy-Russia ties at both Italy's University of Pisa and at the Moscow State Institute for International Relations, Italy finds itself in a difficult position on the topic of Russian ties with Europe. "Italy really has two priorities," Giannotti told Xinhua. "One is the European Union and the Atlantic alliance, and the other involves its long historical ties with Russia." Giannotti said ties between the two territories dates to the 13th century. The strong ties continued until modern times. According to Eleonora Tafuro, a researcher focusing on Russia for the Italian Institute for International Political Studies, Italian carmaker Fiat was among the first major companies to start production in the USSR when it opened a factory in Tolyatti in 1970. Starting in the 1990s, former Italian prime ministers Silvio Berlusconi and Romani Prodi both visited Russia and prioritized the ties between the countries. Today, despite the sanctions Italy gets nearly half its energy from Russian sources, Tafuro said in an interview. "It is not a surprise Italy has been an advocate for Russia in the European Union," Tafuro said. "The ties are so deep and varied, whether it's through classical music or energy or political interests. It's a very important factor." In confirmation of her words, after the talks, Putin and Conte watched the new Russian-Italian film Sin, directed by Andrei Konchalovsky, telling about several years of life of the Italian artist, sculptor Michelangelo, when, in particular, he was painting the Sistine Chapel and creating the sculpture of David in Florence. Hyderabad: An 11-page letter that the Andhra Pradesh police said was found in the pocket of YSRC president Y.S. Jagan Mohan Reddys attacker, Janipalli Srinivasa Rao, has sparked a controversy. Sajjala Rama Krishna Reddy, YSRC general secretary, told this newspaper, When party members searched the man upside down, they found nothing except for the knife. The AP police at around 8 pm the same day released the letter stating that they found it in the attackers pocket. Then, within a short period of the attack, Andhra Pradeshs Director General of Police, R.P. Thakur, held a press conference, even before the investigation is completed, and declared Janipalli Srinivasa Rao is a fan of Jagan and claimed he had a letter in his pocket to prove it, but by then the accused was in the custody of the Central Industrial Security Force. How could the top cop know about these details even before the CISF handed over Srinivasa Rao to the Andhra Pradesh Police? He added, The police claimed that the man wrote a lengthy letter over days page by page, but going by what the Andhra Pradesh police released to the public, the letter looked like it was written on the same day as it had no stains, wasnt crumpled, and the handwriting was mismatched. Srinivasa blamed Andhra Pradesh Chief Minister N. Chandrababu Naidu for the troubles of the people of Andhra Pradesh and said that he had high regard for the late Dr Y.S. Rajasekhar Reddy. He said that he did not want any post or status through the act. If something happened to him, his organs must be donated, he urged. DGP, Andhra Pradesh police, R P Thakur was unavailable for comment. YSRC chief Y.S. Jagan Mohan Reddy meets his followers after getting discharged from a private hospital in Banjara Hills on Friday. (Photo:Gandhi) Hyderabad: An 11-page letter that the Andhra Pradesh police said was found in the pocket of YSRC president Y.S. Jagan Mohan Reddys attacker, Janipalli Srinivasa Rao, has sparked a controversy. Except for the last page, the first 10 pages do not appear to be folded or crumpled though Srinivasa Rao was roughed up by YSRC men at Vizag airport following the attack. Most importantly, YSRC partymen claim that only a handkerchief was found on the attacker. The handwriting is also said to be different in the first 10 pages and the last one. The attack on Mr Reddy took place between 12.30 pm and 1 pm on Thursday, at Visakhapatnam airport. YSRC partymen who were accompanying Mr Reddy searched the man thoroughly before handing him over to the police. The contents of the 11-page letter, addressed to Mr Reddy, were just suggestions made to the YSRCP chief regarding what he must do if he comes to power. Sajjala Rama Krishna Reddy, YSRC general secretary, told this newspaper, When party members searched the man upside down, they found nothing except for the knife. Hyderabad: State Congress president N. Uttam Kumar Reddy on Friday alleged that caretaker Chief Minister K. Chandrasekhar Rao had distributed Rs 5 crore to each of the TRS candidates to win the elections. The TPCC chief levelled the charge during a meeting at Gandhi Bhavan to welcome Osmania University Joint Action Committee leader Srihari Naik into the party. The JAC leader joined the Congress along with hundreds of his followers on Friday. Mr Uttam Kumar Reddy said, KCR had utilised the services of the Osmania University students during the Telangana movement and but did not even give an appointment to meet the same students after assuming the power. This shows how KCR cheated the students who sacrificed everything for statehood. He pointed out that Mr Rao had not visited the university after becoming Chief Minister. KCR said he cannot provide proper security in the university because of which the prestigious Indian Science Congress was shifted. The government has also stopped Congress president Rahul Gandhi from going to the university, Mr Uttam Kumar Reddy said. He said, KCR and his son K.T. Rama Rao are the most corrupt people in the country. Both father and son fear the Prajakutami. The family has occupied thousands of acres of land in and around Hyderabad. The information Techno-logy Investment Region, which is sanctioned by the Congress government, was cancelled by Mr Rao and Prime Minister Narendra Modi, he said. He said Mr Rao had initially said that allowance for the unemployed was not possible, but now promised to pay them Rs 3,016. He should feel ashamed, he said. Hyderabad: Andhra Pradesh Chief Minister N. Chandrababu Naidus flip-flop on the common capital Hyderabad is surprising. Mr Naidu strongly criticised Opposition leader Y.S. Jagan Mohan Reddy for going to Hyderabad for treatment after he was attacked at Vizag airport on Thursday. He had said that Mr Reddy should have approached the Andhra Pradesh police first because how can the AP police investigate a case in another state? Since Hyderabad is the common capital for both TS and AP for 10 years from the time of bifurcation, politicians and officials wonder what is wrong with Mr Reddy being treated in Hyderabad. They see no problem for the AP police investigation on account of this. They also point out that Mr Naidu has been claiming AP's right to Hyderabad as a common capital all these years, and why do this if he thinks that Hyderabad belongs to TS only? A few days ago, reacting to the alleged tapping of his phone by the Telangana government, Mr Naidu had said that he has equal rights on Hyderabad. He also said, I also have Anti Corruption Bureau (ACB) and I also have police in Hyderabad. In fact, there are some AP government offices running out of Hyderabad still. Some departments are working from the Secretariat. YSRC MLA Ijaiah said that According to the AP Bifurcation Act, Hyderabad is the common capital for both Telugu states for 10 years, and Naidu is forgetting this. He said Mr Naidu and Telugu Desam leaders stating that Mr Reddy has left for the neighbouring state after the stabbing incident is surprising. Police officers from one state often pursue investigations in other states if required and even arrest accused persons in other states. They said they see no problem in AP police investigating a case in Telangana State. A retired police officer commented that According to Andhra Pradesh Chief Ministers argument, if an accused belonging to AP goes to any other state, he will be safe and AP police cannot do anything about him. Hyderabad: The TRS has been facing the heat of castes which lost Backward Classes status, during the ongoing campaigning for Assembly polls. The TRS government had deleted 26 castes from the BCs list soon after coming to power in 2014 on the ground that they had migrated from north Andhra and Odisha and were not native to the new state. The TRS government has issued a GO on March 11, 2015, de-listing 26 castes from the list of BCs. Lakhs of these voters, mostly engaged in labour and construction activities, suffered as their children lost reservation benefits. They are now being wooed by Opposition parties. These voters play a decisive role in the winning prospects of parties in Assembly seats in Hyderabad, Ranga Reddy and Khammam districts. TRS candidates too are urging party president and Chief Minister K. Chandrasekhar Rao to re-include these castes in BC list. These castes enjoyed reservation benefits for 30 years in undivided AP. TRS candidates contesting from Quthbullapur, Serilingampally, Jubilee Hills, Uppal etc have represented to party chief and caretaker Chief Minister K. Chandrasekhar Rao to include this issue in the party's soon-to-be-released manifesto promising re-inclusion of these castes in the list of BCs. TRS candidates are pointing out that over 20 lakh voters from these castes are residing in GHMC limits alone and the party's vote bank will be affected if these sections vote against the party. During campaigning, the TRS candidates are facing the ire of voters from members of these castes, who are complaining about how the government had denied them the benefits of BC status, that they were enjoying since 1970 on the basis of the recommendations of the Anantharaman commission in undivided AP. Major castes that were affected badly after TRS came to power include Koppulavelama, Kalinga, Toorpu Kapu, Gavara, Setti Balija etc. These castes were classified under BC-D category due to which their children were eligible for government fee reimbursement scheme to pursue higher education and professional courses, scholarships, reservations in education and jobs. Some of the voters are complaining that they had to discontinue the studies of their children midway in engineering and other professional colleges as they were denied fee reimbursement. They are expressing anger at the TRS candidates saying that they will teach a fitting lesson in the ensuing elections if their issue is not addressed. Hyderabad: TD president and AP Chief Minister N. Chandrababu Naidu, who had lost ground in Telangana state, has suddenly turned into a key player in the upcoming Assembly elections, all thanks to the Prajakutami and, ironically, the TRS. After state bifurcation, several TD MLAs and prominent leaders defected to the TRS. Mr Naidu shifted the AP administration to Amaravati and lost his grip on Telangana affairs. For the past two years, the TD did not have much of a voice in TS. Its fortunes have suddenly revived with the formation of the Prajakutami. Ironically, the TD was stronger in the Telangana region of undivided AP than in Seemandhra but after shifting to Amaravati, Mr Naidu confined himself to AP. He met TD leaders mostly only when he came to Hyderabad. Some of this began showing on the party. It won only one seat in the GHMC election. With the Prajakutami, Mr Naidu has turned into a lightning rod. TRS leaders are concentrating more on Mr Naidu than on the main opposition Congress. In fact, they are projecting Mr Naidu as a Chief Minister candidate though he is not even a voter in Telangana state. TRS main campaigners, Mr K.T. Rama Rao and Mr T. Harish Rao, over the past week have been targeting only Mr Naidu. Mr Rama Rao says if the Prajakutami cames to power, TS would go into the hands of Mr Naidu. Mr Harish Rao is asking voters to decide who they should support Chief Minister K. Chandrasekhar Rao or Mr Naidu. Sources in the TRS said the reason for targeting Mr Naidu was to consolidate the Telangana vote with the TRS. There is no leader in the Opposition to match Mr Chandrasekhar Rao. Mr Naidu has a image in some parts of Telangana state which will help Prajakutami. Fracas over #MeToo allegations against Union minister of state M.J. Akbar was hardly gone when a simmering turf war in the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) exploded between director Alok Verma and his deputy Rakesh Asthana. In a post-midnight swoop, the government sent both on leave, handing the CBI to someone with own probity issues and mainly displacing Mr Vermas aides. The matter is now before the Supreme Court. The court will examine why the agency repeatedly runs into controversy despite court-devised transparency with appointment of director and security of tenure. Two immediate predecessors of Mr Verma are facing serious charges. The problem is both systemic and political. First, the responsibilities of the CBI are today too wide, ranging from drastic crimes, particularly white-collar and cyber crimes as the economy has grown, terrorism, corruption by politicians and civil servants, extradition requests, international cooperation via Interpol, etc. Complicating matters are salient other agencies conducting parallel investigations into fiscal crimes, etc. Does the CBI have the wherewithal to handle these? Second, is the secondary role of prosecutors in the Indian legal system. Director prosecution in the CBI gets swallowed in the shadow of director or other smart Charlies like Mr Asthana with suspected access to powerful politicians. In the United States and most Western nations, particularly those with French civil law tradition, the prosecuting attorney balances the investigative power of the police force. India has prominent lawyers in private practice, including at the Union level as attorney general and solicitor general. At the state level there is a paucity of junior attorneys like Preet Bharara or his predecessors at southern district of New York who closely watch the global financial centre and prosecute infractions. The New York Times called that office one of New York Citys most powerful clubs, with dozens of former assistant US attorneys rising in legal practice and politics. With prosecutors kowtowing to investigators, the system of checks and balances disappears. The present crisis has political roots too as the government, after failing to keep Mr Asthana as acting director and forced to appoint a senior full-time chief, allowed Mr Asthana to linger, believing he was de facto boss. Mr Verma resisted this as any self-respecting officer would. Complicating the scenario further are the approaching state and Lok Sabha elections. There is a clutch of cases that the government wants or does not want the agency to pursue. Controlling the CBI via a favourite officer could only work if he could carry the director along or if the director accepted, despite his de jure superior position, a subservient role. That obviously did not happen. The Supreme Court needs to confront that procedural fixing will not work unless some constant oversight of a Lokpal is available in both appointing officers to the CBI and assessing their performance. The experience of US Federal Bureau of Investigation is instructive. It was set up by President Theodore Roosevelt in 1908 at a time of global uncertainty, inequities created by industrial revolution, unfettered capitalism and urbanisation and immigration leading to increased crime in cities, etc. The new agency, called the Bureau of Investigation, was to be within the department of justice and report only to attorney general and was to fight plutocrats and anarchists. Plunder of oil, coal, minerals and timbre on federal land appalled President Roosevelt, and he wanted it all checked. Over the last century, the agency has had ups and downs. At times its role expanded exponentially, to fight the Bolshevik danger to the US as the Russian revolution unfolded, then to fight suspected German subversion during World War I, followed in 1920s and 1930s by the danger of communism and trade unionism as indeed criminal gangs led by powerful gangsters. But the agency overreached depending on the proclivities of US President. It episodically made mass arrests to fight real and imagined enemies of the US. Chief Federal Prosecutor in Philadelphia resigned in 1919 saying, I am strongly opposed to the wholesale raiding of aliens (The policy) is generally unwise and very apt to result in injustice. The Trump administration has reverted to it. Next year in Boston, Federal Judge George W. Anderson opined, familiar to Indian ears today, that As an aftermath of our war to make the world safe for democracy real democracy now seems unsafe in America. He added later, A mob is a mob whether made up of government officials acting under instructions from the department of justice or of criminals, loafers and the vicious classes. President Warren G. Harding entering White House in March 1921 ignored this warning. He brought to Washington crooked supporters from his time as small-town newspaper publisher. The FBI loved the new freedom to pursue enemies, backing barons against unions. By 1923, political espionage was rampant against US senators and congressmen. Harding died in 1923 and his upright successor, Calvin Coolidge, began fixing the FBI decay. Today Robert Mueller, who headed the FBI from 2001-13 (two years beyond the mandated 10-year term), is special prosecutor looking into Russian interference in US presidential election. That President Donald Trump is unable to fire him, despite his unhappiness, indicates Mr Muellers stature earned as assistant US attorney in San Francisco before heading the FBI. Compare that to the travails of last three directors of the CBI. Another former director, having exonerated then chief minister Narendra Modi in Godhra riots inquiry, is today a high commissioner abroad. Thus, in conclusion, the CBI director should be selected from a pool that goes beyond senior policemen; chief vigilance officer cannot overlook the CBIs functioning as he is invariably a former bureaucrat handpicked by the government and subjected to pressure. Any agency will degrade if the government is led by Harding-like provincial minds with IOUs to undesirable characters. H10 Over 700,000 people marching through central London last Saturday demanding a peoples vote on any agreement reached in Brussels adds one more element which Theresa May has to keep in mind while firming up a Brexit deal with Brussels. The London mayor, Sadiq Khan, has joined the chorus for a second referendum. The Prime Minister is clearly embarked on a high-wire act. From that elevation she is not speaking to be or not to be in soliloquy, but singing it in high-pitch soprano. The British, compulsive grumblers, are on sixes and sevens over Brexit. They would be relieved if they craned their necks and looked across the channel at the spectre of fascism, populism, left-radicalism in a toxic mix spreading across Europe and beyond. The latest vote in Bavaria has weakened the centre in Germany but the relative spread of green is heartening. The rise of the fascist right everywhere is the real danger. Just consider the Far Right leader of Italys ruling coalition, Matteo Salvini of the Northern League for instance: His earliest act as deputy prime minister was to order a boat full of North African migrants to be allowed to drift towards Spain. Whether they drown or touch shore was not his concern. For this he is rising on the popularity charts. He is much the most popular leader in Italy with his anti-immigrant rantings. To firm up ideological bonds, Marine Le Pen of Frances National Rally, visited Mr Salvini recently. If this was not a sufficient shot in the arm for Italian fascists, white supremacist, once President Trumps soulmate, Steve Bannon, arrived to give a fillip to his plot Brothers of Italy, they are called. Mr Bannon calls it the movement. Bannon is here frequently to confer with Salvini and meet some of us says Francesco Galieti, journalist who also advises investors. Mr Bannon is the spider in the web wherever ultra-nationalism, illiberal economics, leavened with dollops of racism rears its head. On Brexit too, he is putting in his mite to accelerate the break with EU. Just as committed on the other side of the debate is the even more powerful, anti-Brexit billionaire, George Soros. They are both in convulsions to save the world from the curse of anti-capitalist headwinds. There is a common anxiety but with distinct prescriptions. The desperation of this lot is manifest even as far as Brazil. Jair Bolsonaro, who romanticises the likes of Pinochet, has support from the same interests who are stitching together fascism in Europe. Mr Bannon has been advising Bolsonaros media team. His appearance on a Nigel Farage radio show created a minor storm. Mr Farage, of the former Independence Party, leads the anti-Brexit movement with a self-explanatory title Leave Means Leave. Removed from anti-Brexit extremism are countries like Austria, Poland, Hungary and the Nordic north, which are anti-migrant, on occasion anti-Semitic but not anti-EU. Mr Bannon has no interests here; Mr Soros has. Against this broad canvas of despairing gloom, I would like to state, on the pain of being repetitive, that Britain provides relief. For many in Britain, this relief is mingled with fear because the right wing media has painted Jeremy Corbyn in lurid colours. The Conservative Party is in desperate straits over both Brexit and Mr Corbyn. Prime Minister Theresa May is looking at the Exit door in a sort of daze. She does not quite know how to handle the several balls up in the air. A break with EU will prompt Scotland to sew up its own deal with Brussels. Also, since this will entail the border between Belfast and Dublin demanding visa clearances, the Democratic Unionist leader, Arlene Foster will break with Ms May, bringing down her government. The whole point about Unionism in Ulster is to be exactly like the rest of Britain, says Ms Foster. Any arrangement exclusive to Northern Ireland will not be acceptable to the Unionists. Meanwhile, the right wing of the conservatives, say, former foreign secretary, Boris Johnson and his cohorts are threatening to throw a ginger fit if Brexit is softened a means of placating the urge to remain, which is noticeable on both sides of the aisle. By consistently painting him as an ogre, the British right has conferred a sort of charisma on Mr Corbyn who has emerged even more firmly in control after the annual Party conference in Liverpool in September. During his speech, Mr Corbyn made an offer to Ms May. Labour MPs would vote for a soft Brexit deal which keeps Britain in the Customs Union with the EU. What would be the Labour Partys position on a growing demand for a fresh referendum on Brexit? I had put this question to Mr Corbyn two months ago. His response was very political. The people have voted for Brexit in a referendum. Let the government negotiate a deal with Brussels which is acceptable to the British public. Clearly, this position is negotiable. Witness Labours Mr Khan demanding another referendum during the peoples march. With Mr Corbyn as Prime Minister looming large on the horizon, the media, which has placed him consistently in a negative searchlight, has a huge challenge on its hands: How to begin to adjust to the reality of Mr Corbyn? He continues to say things, which make those elements of the Conservative Party who are wrapped in an Anglaise-Britishness, very uncomfortable. For instance, he would like schools to have in the text books those aspects of British history which also illuminate negative parts of colonialism. This when the centenary of the Jallianwala Bagh massacre in April 2019 may well be a high profile event during the Indian election season. Little wonder a magazine like the Economist still makes Mr Corbyn look like Che Guevara, a beret and the revolutionary leaders trademark beard et al. H11 The Finnish firm, which also reported a drop in quarterly profit, said it was targeting annual cost savings of 700 million euros (USD 799 million) by the end of 2020. Telecom network equipment maker Nokia kicked off a new cost-cutting program on Thursday and repeated an ambitious profit forecast, saying operators demand for next-generation 5G networks would pick up the pace in the remainder of the year. The networks industry - dominated by Nokia, Swedens Ericsson and Chinas Huawei - has been battered by years of slowing demand for existing 4G networks and mounting investor doubts over whether 5G contracts can begin to boost profitability this year. The Finnish firm, which also reported a drop in quarterly profit, said it was targeting annual cost savings of 700 million euros (USD 799 million) by the end of 2020, without elaborating on the scale of expected job reductions. It is yet to complete its previous 1.2 billion euro cost cuts, launched after its 2016 acquisition of Franco-American Alcatel-Lucent. We are making progress but still have more work to do get our network margins where we would like them to be, Chief Executive Rajeev Suri told a conference call. He reaffirmed an outlook for Nokias networks business to deliver a full-year operating margin of 6-9 per cent. The margin for the first nine months is only 2.6 per cent. Despite some risks related to short-term delays in project timing and product deliveries, we remain on track to deliver on our full-year guidance, he added. As evidence of the 5G cycle taking root, Nokia in July signed a USD 3.5 billion deal to supply US mobile carrier T-Mobile with new network gear. Nokias operating profit in the third quarter fell 27 per cent from a year ago to 487 million euros broadly in line with analysts mean forecast in a Reuters poll of 492 million euros. The year-ago profit figure was boosted by a catch-up licensing payment. More than half of the earnings were generated by Nokias highly profitable patent business, a legacy of Nokias history as the market-leading mobile phone maker. Nokia also announced an extension to its patent license deal with Samsung on Thursday. Shares in the company fell 1 per cent in early trade. Networks business sales are growing, which indicates that the market is picking up... I believe Q4 will be very strong, said Mikael Rautanen, an analyst at Inderes Equity Research, which has an accumulate rating on the stock. But there is a small risk of a profit warning for the remainder of the year. 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. British regulators slapped Facebook on October 25 with a fine of 500,000 pounds ($644,000) the maximum possible for failing to protect the privacy of its users in the Cambridge Analytica scandal. At the same time, European Union lawmakers demanded an audit of Facebook to better understand how it handles information, reinforcing how regulators in the region are taking a tougher stance on data privacy compared with U.S. authorities. Britains Information Commissioner Office found that between 2007 and 2014, Facebook processed the personal information of users unfairly by giving app developers access to their information without informed consent. The failings meant the data of some 87 million people was used without their knowledge. Facebook failed to sufficiently protect the privacy of its users before, during and after the unlawful processing of this data, said Elizabeth Denham, the information commissioner. A company of its size and expertise should have known better and it should have done better. The ICO said a subset of the data was later shared with other organizations, including SCL Group, the parent company of political consultancy Cambridge Analytica, which counted US President Donald Trumps 2016 election campaign among its clients. News that the consultancy had used data from tens of millions of Facebook accounts to profile voters ignited a global scandal on data rights. The fine amounts to a speck on Facebooks finances. In the second quarter, the company generated revenue at a rate of nearly $100,000 per minute. That means it will take less than seven minutes for Facebook to bring in enough money to pay for the fine. But its the maximum penalty allowed under the law at the time the breach occurred. Had the scandal taken place after new EU data protection rules went into effect this year, the amount would have been far higher including maximum fines of 17 million pounds or 4 per cent of global revenue, whichever is higher. Under that standard, Facebook would have been required to pay at least $1.6 billion, which is 4 per cent of its revenue last year. The data rules are tougher than the ones in the United States, and a debate is ongoing on how the US should respond. California is moving to put in regulations similar to the EUs strict rules by 2020 and other states are mulling more aggressive laws. Thats rattled the big tech companies, which are pushing for a federal law that would treat them more leniently. Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg said in a video message to a big data privacy conference in Brussels this week that we have a lot more work to do to safeguard personal data. About the UK fine, Facebook responded in a statement that it is reviewing the decision. While we respectfully disagree with some of their findings, we have said before that we should have done more to investigate claims about Cambridge Analytica and taken action in 2015. We are grateful that the ICO has acknowledged our full cooperation throughout their investigation. Facebook also took solace in the fact that the ICO did not definitively assert that UK users had their data shared for campaigning. But the commissioner noted in her statement that even if Facebooks assertion is correct, US residents would have used the site while visiting the UK. EU lawmakers had summoned Zuckerberg in May to testify about the Cambridge Analytica scandal. In their vote, they said Facebook should agree to a full audit by Europes cyber security agency and data protection authority to assess data protection and security of users personal data. The EU lawmakers also call for new electoral safeguards online, a ban on profiling for electoral purposes and moves to make it easier to recognize paid political advertisements and their financial backers. 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. The official return of former Georgian Prime Minister Bidzina Ivanishvili to the mainstream politics this spring did not become a sensation. Numerous political scientists and experts are convinced that since his abdication of the premiership, Ivanishvili has not quitted the governing of the country and remained the grey eminence of the Georgian politics. However, now the positions of the party he created are noticeably inferior to those that the Georgian Dream (GM) had in 2012. In the upcoming presidential elections on Sunday, the GM party supports Salome Zurabishvili being sure that she will win. Though he left politics, Ivanishvili retained his authority. Overcoming the crisis of the ruling party would be impossible without a significant political figure. Perhaps it was the crisis in the ranks of the ruling party that forced Ivanishvili to get out of the shadows. However, according to the opinion polls, about 20% of the population will not participate in the elections, because they do not see the new leaders, and another 15% have not decided who to vote for. What can be the consequences of Ivanishvilis activism in politics? He is first and foremost a person of business, therefore his second coming may mean the implementation of the new economic projects. In the coming years, an increase in hydrocarbon supplies is expected across the Transcaucasus. The agreed status of the Caspian Sea has opened doors for the sale of Turkmen gas and oil, which will flow through a future underwater pipeline. This will strengthen the oil and gas sector of Azerbaijan, which can significantly expand Georgias transit capacity. Meanwhile, any increase in the gas transit to Turkey is considered a successful solution for Georgia. An increase in the transit of Azerbaijani gas by 2020 as a part of the Southern Gas Corridor project will allow Tbilisi to receive the significant volumes of gas as a payment for the transit of fuel. Perhaps Ivanishvili will try to find a common language with Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan, if he succeeds in taking the post of Prime Minister of Armenia on legitimate grounds in the snap parliamentary elections. The former Armenian administration did not consider Ivanishvili as a business partner, fearing to annoy its closest ally Russia. However, the rapprochement with Ivanishvili can play into the hands of Pashinyan - the Georgian billionaire is familiar to the European political establishment, while Pashinyan is still being examined in Europe. Armenia, which is now embraced by the reform ideas, may well benefit from the experience of Georgia. Finally, Ivanishvili can offer Pashinyan to use the joint potential for the implementation of joint projects in the field of transport and logistics, the use of Black Sea ports, which is vital for Armenia in the context of the chronic transport isolation. As for Russia, taking advantage of the political tension between the West and Moscow, Ivanishvili can offer a phased discharge of relations. Most likely, Salome Zurabishvili will be responsible for this. Her diplomatic experience will help to establish a real dialogue between Moscow and Tbilisi. Ivanishvili believes that the current situation in the South Caucasus is not the most favorable for Russia, so Moscow is interested in a rapprochement with Tbilisi, given the uncertainty in the Russian-Armenian relations. As other mints and fintech startups race to set up similar products, it could squander the chances of Britains Mint leading the field to build gold into a multi-billion dollar digital asset class. Britains Royal Mint has frozen plans to launch a digital gold token after a partnership with US exchange group CME failed and the government vetoed a plan to have the tokens trade on a cryptocurrency exchange, three sources told Reuters. The demise of the potentially ground-breaking project, named Royal Mint Gold (RMG), highlights the wariness of governments to become involved in the largely unregulated world of cryptocurrencies, which exploded into the public eye last year with the stellar rise of bitcoin. As other mints and fintech startups race to set up similar products, it could squander the chances of Britains Mint leading the field to build gold into a multi-billion dollar digital asset class. It also reflects a cooling of enthusiasm towards digital assets at the CME, three sources said. The project would have been the first time a government of a developed economy had become directly involved with a cryptocurrency exchange, analysts and traders said. The 1,100-year old Mint announced its plan to issue tokens worth up to USD 1 billion on a blockchain-based trading platform run by CME in 2016, saying they would give investors an easy way to buy and trade physical gold held in its vaults. Royal Mint Gold was to launch in the autumn of 2017, but CME decided at the last minute to pull out, leaving the Mint without a trading venue, sources said. CMEs management changed, and they walked away, didnt want to get involved, one of the sources said. When a blindsided Mint sought to save the project by partnering with a cryptocurrency exchange, Britains finance ministry in early 2018 refused to permit it, seeing the union as too big a gamble with the reputation of the government and the Mint, the sources added. The Mint is 100 per cent owned by the government. Asked for comment, the Mint said its digital gold had been due to launch in spring this year. Sadly, due to market conditions this did not prove possible at this time, but we will revisit this if and when market conditions are right, it said. A Treasury spokesman referred Reuters questions to the Mint. CME said it was continuing to assess client demand with our partner and have nothing new to report at this time. Governments are wary of cryptocurrencies, and few international standards have emerged to tame extreme price volatility, regular thefts from exchanges and the risk that digital currencies could be used to launder money or finance terrorism. In Britain, cryptocurrency exchanges remain unregulated. Its finance ministry, central bank and financial watchdog are looking at whether rules are needed for cryptocurrencies and the use of blockchain technology in finance. Gold is seen as a natural fit with cryptocurrencies because both assets attract investors looking for alternatives to state-sponsored monetary systems which they distrust. The Mints plan was similar to a type of digital money known as stable coins that are pegged to major currencies or other assets to avoid the volatility suffered by bitcoin and others. The Mint had hoped to appeal to investors wanting digital assets but with the reassurance of a trusted issuer and to create a new revenue stream as the use of mass circulation coins, its core business for more than a millennium, dwindles. Royal Mint Gold also fit into a push by CME to develop digital asset classes and blockchain technologies. CME launched bitcoin futures contracts last year, one of the first to do so, and has invested in digital technology startups through a ventures arm. But CMEs priorities shifted after CEO Phupinder Gill retired in late 2016 and Sandra Ro, CMEs head of digitization, left in July 2017, sources said. There was a change in strategy, said one source, adding that digitization was de-emphasised. Asked to comment, CME said: It is not correct to say we have de-emphasised digitization and remain committed to pursuing our digitization strategy. After the government vetoed the plan to trade Royal Mint Gold on a crypto exchange, the Mints new chief executive Anne Jessop, appointed in February 2018, decided to shut the project down, the sources said. Around four staff in London were fired in March and a further 7-8 were made redundant in Wales, where the Mint is also based, in May. The project is now frozen, the sources said. Meanwhile, others are launching rival products. Australias Perth Mint and the Royal Canadian Mint are involved with digital gold products that launched this year and trade using technology supplied by fintech startups. Both mints declined to say how much gold had been bought through these platforms. Gold-backed cryptocurrencies have also proliferated, though none has yet achieved the success of cryptos such as bitcoin, Etherium and Ripple, which have attracted hundreds of billions of dollars in investment. 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. Two skulls were also recovered but it was not clear if that meant two more victims, or if the skulls belonged to people already declared dead. (Photo: AFP) Mexico City: At least 19 bodies have been discovered in a field in Mexico's western state of Jalisco, scene of some of the worst violence in the country, local prosecutors said Thursday. The corpses have been identified as belonging to 16 men and three women, who are believed to have been killed about four months ago, the officials said. Two skulls were also recovered but it was not clear if that meant two more victims, or if the skulls belonged to people already declared dead. The number of murder victims in Mexico has exploded in recent years in spiralling violence linked to the country's powerful drug cartels. The first human remains were found on Monday in Lagos de Moreno, a part of Jalisco state near the border with Guanajuato state. Investigators then pursued a search in the area on Tuesday and Wednesday, allowing prosecutors to announce the final tally. Authorities said they could not say if the victims were local residents, where several disappearances had been recorded in recent months, or if their bodies had been relocated from elsewhere. Just over a week ago, 16 bodies were found in an unmarked grave outside Guadalajara, the state capital of Jalisco and the country's second-most populous city. Since the government deployed the army to fight the country's powerful drug cartels in 2006, Mexico has been hit by a wave of violence including more than 200,000 murders. Last year, the country registered a record 28,702 homicides. Mass graves are regularly discovered containing dozens or even hundreds of unidentified bodies. Nearly 4,000 such corpses have been found since 2007, according to the National Human Rights Commission. Violence in Guadalajara has skyrocketed since March 2017, when a power struggle erupted at the heart of the brutal Jalisco New Generation Cartel. In late September, authorities found the remains of 278 murder victims in a refrigerated truck in Guadalajara, after the city's morgues overflowed. In a news report, The Washington Post said that Haspel listened to the audio tape. (Photo: AFP) Washington: CIA Director Gina Haspel on Thursday briefed President Donald Trump on the investigations related to US-based journalist Jamal Khashoggi, who was brutally killed inside Saudi Arabia's Istanbul Consulate, the White House said. "The president received a briefing from director Haspel this morning following her return from Turkey. She briefed the president on their findings and her discussions," White House Press Secretary Sarah Sanders said. The White House did not provide any other details of the meeting. Haspel returned from Turkey last night. In Turkey, she met with officials involved in the investigations of the murder of the Saudi journalist Khashoggi. Turkish officials say they have audio of the proof of the murder. In a news report, The Washington Post said that Haspel listened to the audio tape. A person familiar with the audio said it was "compelling" and could put more pressure on the US to hold the kingdom accountable for the death of Khashoggi, the daily reported. Khashoggi was a contributing columnist for The Washington Post. "This puts the ball firmly in Washington's court," Bruce Riedel, a former CIA official and scholar at the Brookings Institution, told The Washington Post. "Not only will there be more pressure now from the media but Congress will say, 'Gina, we would love to have you come visit and you can tell us exactly what you heard'," he told the daily. Haspel's briefing to Trump comes amidst latest change in Saudi stance in which it acknowledged that Khashoggi was murdered by its officials in a "premeditated" operation. Meanwhile, Senator Jack Reed, Ranking Member of the Senate Armed Services Committee, alleged that the Saudis are still engaged in cover up. "In the face of mounting evidence, the Saudis now admit Khashoggi's torture and murder was premeditated. But they are still engaged in a cover up," Reed said. "The Saudi Crown Prince must direct those responsible to produce Khashoggi's body immediately so that an autopsy may be conducted and his family can have a proper burial. If the Crown Prince is unable or unwilling to do so, then it will become clear that he is complicit in the cover up," he said. Reed alleged that Trump's feeble response to the brutal torture, murder, and apparent dismemberment of a journalist who was legally living in the United States shows a stunning lack of leadership. "The Saudis ever-changing story underscores the need for an independent and credible international investigation of what happened to Khashoggi," he said. "If President Trump abdicates his responsibility to hold the Saudis accountable then Congress must go it alone. Congress must follow the facts and act in a responsible, bipartisan manner to hold the killers, and those who ordered the killing, accountable," Reed said. Senator Bernie Sanders said the brutal murder of Khashoggi demands that the US make clear that its support for Saudi Arabia is not unconditional. Saudi Arabia initially denied all knowledge of Khashoggis disappearance inside their consulate in Istanbul on October 2. (Photo: File) Washington: The son of murdered Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi arrived in the US after leaving Riyadh with his family, a source told CNN on Thursday. According to the report, Salah bin Jamal Khashoggi, a US-Saudi citizen, had previously been unable to leave Riyadh after his passport was restricted by the Kingdom a few months ago. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo urged the Saudis to release Jamals son Salah. Deputy spokesman Robert Palladino said the US was pleased and he was allowed to leave the Kingdom. During Mike Pompeos visit to Saudi, he met Khashoggis son and made it clear to Saudi leaders that Washington wanted the son to return to the United States. Salah Khashoggi is the eldest son of the journalist who Saudi official now admit was killed in a pre-meditated murder. It was executed by a squad of men with close ties to Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman. Saudi Arabia initially denied all knowledge of Khashoggis disappearance inside their consulate in Istanbul on October 2. Later, they announce that they had identified 18 men involved in the operation. Salahs departure came hours after the public prosecutors office admitted that the killing of the journalist had been planned in advance and added that those responsible for the crime would be punished. Salvador said Ecuador passed on the UK's response to Assange's lawyers, but noted that if Assange stayed in the embassy Ecuador would put new conditions on his stay. (Photo: File) Quito: The United Kingdom told Ecuador in August that WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange would not be extradited if he left the country's London embassy, where he has lived under asylum since 2012, Ecuador's top government attorney said on Thursday. In a written response to queries from Ecuador, the UK explained that it had not received any extradition request, and said Assange's jail time in the UK for violating bail terms by seeking refuge in the embassy would not exceed six months, Inigo Salvador, who represents the Ecuadorean government in court proceedings, told reporters. Salvador said Ecuador passed on the UK's response to Assange's lawyers, but noted that if Assange stayed in the embassy Ecuador would put new conditions on his stay. "Assange had a choice between turning himself in to British authorities with those assurances, or staying in the embassy of Ecuador, but given that the asylum had lasted six years with no signs of immediate resolution we were going to place certain rules," Salvador said at a news conference. It was unclear if the UK's assurances were still valid. Assange's legal team did not immediately respond to a request for comment. The UK Foreign & Commonwealth Office referred to Foreign Office Minister Alan Duncan's June statement that Assange would be treated "humanely and properly" if he left the embassy. Assange took refuge in the embassy after British courts ordered his extradition to Sweden to face questioning in a sexual molestation case. That case has been dropped, but supporters have said that Assange fears he could be extradited to the United States if he leaves the embassy. WikiLeaks, which published US diplomatic and military secrets when Assange ran the operation, faces a US grand jury investigation. The relationship between Assange and Ecuador has grown increasingly tense in the past year. Assange filed a lawsuit in an Ecuadorean court last week claiming the new asylum terms, which require him to pay for medical bills and telephone calls and to clean up after his pet cat, violate his rights. Ecuador says the rules are consistent with international asylum standards. Ecuador's foreign minister, Valencia, told Reuters earlier this week that he was "frustrated" by Assange's decision to file suit, and said the South American country would no longer intervene on his behalf in talks with Britain over his situation, a break from previous practice. On Thursday, Salvador refuted Assange's claims in the suit that Ecuador prevented him from receiving visitors, denied him counsel and cut off access to communications, noting that he received 62 visits between July and October, including some from his lawyers. An initial hearing in the case had been scheduled for Thursday, but the presiding judge suspended it after the video conference that was supposed to beam Assange into the courtroom faltered. Trump remarks came as he signed new sanctions on Thursday targeting the Iranian-funded Lebanese militant group Hezbollah, which is considered a terrorist organisation by the US. (Photo: AFP) Washington: US President Donald Trump has said all sanctions against Iran lifted by the 2015 nuclear deal will be back in "full force" from November 5 and promised more in the future to prevent Tehran from developing the world's deadliest weapons. In May, the Trump administration withdrew the US from the Iranian nuclear deal and reimposed a series of tough sanctions on Iran, citing the Islamic nation's 'malign activities'. While the first phase of sanctions is already in place, the sanctions would come into full force on November 4 and the US expects all countries, including India, to bring down their import of Iranian oil to zero by then or face secondary sanctions. To avoid this, India either needs a waiver from the US or has to bring down the purchase of Iranian oil to zero. "On November 5th, all US sanctions against Iran lifted by the nuclear deal will be back in full force, every sanction that we had on their originally, which would have -- if they would have just left it a little bit longer, would have been so much easier than what we've been through over the last number of years," Trump said at a White House event. His remarks came as he signed new sanctions on Thursday targeting the Iranian-funded Lebanese militant group Hezbollah, which is considered a terrorist organisation by the US. Trump said these sanctions will be followed up with even more sanctions to address the full range of Iran's "malign conduct". "We will not allow the world's leading sponsor of terror to develop the world's deadliest weapons. Will not happen," he said. The US government has made it clear that any country that continues to do business with Iran after November 4 will be blocked from accessing the American banking and financial system. Though India has already reduced its import, it has indicated that it is unlikely to go down to zero given its massive energy needs. India and the US are currently in talks on this issue. Gen Bajwa made the remarks during a visit to Sarpir and Pandu Sectors at the Line of Control where he interacted with the Pakistani troops, the Inter-Services Public Relations (ISPR) - the media wing of the army - said in a statement. (Photo: AP) Islamabad: Pakistan Army chief General Qamar Javed Bajwa on Thursday said the Kashmir issue continues to be a "core unresolved agenda" and warned against "misadventure" against his country. Gen Bajwa made the remarks during a visit to Sarpir and Pandu Sectors at the Line of Control where he interacted with the Pakistani troops, the Inter-Services Public Relations (ISPR) - the media wing of the army - said in a statement. He appreciated the "operational readiness and high morale" of troops and said the Pakistan Army is "fully invested in peace and stability of the region". "However, we are ready and resolute in defending the motherland against any misadventure," Gen Bajwa was quoted as saying by the statement. The army chief said the Kashmir issue continues to be a "core unresolved agenda" and reiterated his support for the right to self-determination of Kashmiris. The ties between India and Pakistan remains strained after the terror attacks by Pakistan-based groups in 2016 and India's surgical strikes inside Pakistan-occupied Kashmir. After assuming power in August, Prime Minister Imran Khan wrote to Prime Minister Narendra Modi suggesting a meeting between the two countries' foreign ministers on the margins of the UN General Assembly in September. India accepted the proposal but, within hours of its acceptance, terrorists killed three policemen in Jammu and Kashmir, prompting New Delhi to cancel the foreign ministers' meeting on the sidelines of the UNGA. Baradars release comes after the recent election of Pakistani Prime Minister Imran Khan, who has long advocated talks with the Taliban and other Islamist insurgents in the region to bring an end to years of fighting. (Photo: AP) Islamabad: A top Taliban commander held in Pakistani detention for more than eight years has been freed, sources said Thursday, in an apparent move to aid tentative talks between the United States and the militant group. The release of Abdul Ghani Baradar -- the former right-hand man of Taliban founder Mullah Omar, who died in 2013 -- came less than two weeks after US envoy Zalmay Khalilzad met with the groups representatives in Qatar to discuss ending the Afghan conflict. Baradar was among several senior Taliban leaders freed this week, after the Taliban demanded their release in direct talks with Khalilzad on October 12, a senior Taliban leader told AFP on the condition of anonymity. We believe that they were released at the USs request, the leader said. He said Baradar would likely stay in Pakistan and shuttle between the Talibans Doha office, Kabul and Islamabad. It was important for confidence building and all three will participate in the next round of talks with the US in Qatar, he added. Baradar was the most high-profile Afghan Taliban leader detained by Pakistan since the 9/11 attacks in 2001. He was arrested in the southern port city of Karachi in 2010, reportedly in an operation that was described as a huge blow to the militant group, which ruled Afghanistan from 1996-2001 when it was toppled by a US-led invasion. It was not clear what role, if any, he would play in peace talks. Baradar was freed yesterday afternoon and he joined his family, Afghan Taliban spokesman Zabihullah Mujahid told AFP in a WhatsApp message. A Pakistani intelligence official also said Baradar was released a couple of days ago. Baradars release comes after the recent election of Pakistani Prime Minister Imran Khan, who has long advocated talks with the Taliban and other Islamist insurgents in the region to bring an end to years of fighting. Pakistans Foreign Minister Shah Mehmood Qureshi earlier this month also pledged to support negotiations with the Taliban as the country lobbies the United States to restore military aid. The United States has long pressed Pakistan to crack down on the Taliban and other militant groups, which Washington says have safe havens in Pakistans border areas and links to its shadowy military establishment -- charges Islamabad has repeatedly denied. Khalilzad met with Taliban representatives in Doha as part of a regional trip designed to coordinate efforts to convince the group to negotiate an end to the war. Pakistan's first space mission has been planned for 2022 and the federal Cabinet meeting chaired by Imran Khan approved the plan on Thursday, the minister was quoted as saying by Pakistani newspaper 'The News'. (Photo: File) Islamabad: Pakistan would send a human to space for the first time in 2022 with China's help, Information Minister Fawad Chaudhry announced on Thursday, ahead of Prime Minister Imran Khan's maiden visit to Beijing. Pakistan's first space mission has been planned for 2022 and the federal Cabinet meeting chaired by Imran Khan approved the plan on Thursday, the minister was quoted as saying by Pakistani newspaper 'The News'. An agreement between Pakistan Space and Upper Atmosphere Research Commission (SUPARCO) and a Chinese company has already been signed, the minister said. Pakistan and China already have robust defence ties and Islamabad is one of the top buyers of Chinese military hardware. Earlier this year, Pakistan launched two satellites into orbit, using a Chinese launch vehicle. The Pakistani satellites were launched onboard a Chinese Long March (LM-2C) rocket from the Jiuquan Satellite Launch Centre located at the Gobi desert, China. One of the satellites launched was a remote sensing satellite (PRSS1) - a dual-purpose Earth observational and optical satellite. The second test satellite launched was a PAK-TES-1A, developed by Space and Upper Atmospheric Research Commission (SUPARCO) to enhance satellite manufacture capabilities in the country which would help end Pakistan's dependency on commercial satellites for information related to weather, environment and agriculture. The satellites had to be transported to China as Pakistan lacks the infrastructure to launch objects to space. Imran Khan will head to China on his first official visit to Beijing on November 3 and will hold meetings with Chinese President Xi Jinping and Premier Li Keqiang, Pakistan's Geo News quoted their Foreign Office as saying. Interestingly, Pakistan's plan to send a human to space is aimed for the same year that India plans to launch its own manned human space mission - the difference being, ISRO's mission will be their own, while Pakistan will do so with China's help. In his Independence Day address, Prime Minister Narendra Modi announced an ambitious mission of sending an Indian astronaut to space by 2022, which would make India the fourth nation in the world to do so. "We have resolved that by 2022, when India celebrates 75 years of Independence or maybe even before that, certainly some of our young boys and girls will unfurl the Tricolour in space," PM Modi had said from the ramparts of the Red Fort on the 72nd Independence Day earlier this year. China had launched its first manned space mission in 2003, becoming the third country in the world to independently develop a manned spaceflight, after Russia and the United States. The UK's Information Commissioner's Office (ICO) on Thursday fined Facebook 500,000 pounds for serious breaches of data protection law, the maximum amount it is authorised to issue. The fine by the country's independent data watchdog related to the American social media giant's role in the Cambridge Analytica data scandal, which hit the headlines earlier this year. The ICO said its investigation found that between 2007 and 2014, Facebook processed the personal information of users unfairly by allowing application developers access to their information without sufficiently clear and informed consent, and allowing access even if users had not downloaded the app, but were simply "friends" with people who had. "Facebook failed to sufficiently protect the privacy of its users before, during and after the unlawful processing of this data. A company of its size and expertise should have known better and it should have done better," said Information Commissioner Elizabeth Denham. The fine has been served under the UK's Data Protection Act 1998, which has since been replaced by the new Data Protection Act 2018 in May, alongside the European Union's General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR). The new rules provide a range of new enforcement tools for the ICO, including maximum fines of 17 million pounds or 4 per cent of global turnover. Denham said, "We considered these contraventions to be so serious we imposed the maximum penalty under the previous legislation. The fine would inevitably have been significantly higher under the GDPR. One of our main motivations for taking enforcement action is to drive meaningful change in how organisations handle people's personal data". "Our work is continuing. There are still bigger questions to be asked and broader conversations to be had about how technology and democracy interact and whether the legal, ethical and regulatory frameworks we have in place are adequate to protect the principles on which our society is based," she said. The ICO concluded that Facebook failed to keep the personal information secure because it failed to make suitable checks on apps and developers using its platform. These failings meant one developer, Aleksandr Kogan and his company GSR, harvested the Facebook data of up to 87 million people worldwide, without their knowledge. A subset of this data was later shared with other organisations, including SCL Group, the parent company of Cambridge Analytica who were involved in political campaigning in the US. Even after the misuse of the data was discovered in December 2015, Facebook did not do enough to ensure those who continued to hold it had taken adequate and timely remedial action, including deletion. In the case of SCL Group, Facebook did not suspend the company from its platform until 2018. The ICO found that the personal information of at least a million UK users was among the harvested data and consequently put at risk of further misuse. SCL Group, a private British behavioural research and strategic communication company, had announced its closure in May in the wake of the scandal. The group's activities are spread across the world, including India, where the company reportedly did some data analysis work during election campaigns. The ICO is still investigating how data analytics is used for political purposes, with its chief set to provide an update to the UK parliament's Department for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport (DCMS) select committee next month. President Trump's steel tariffs have caused a drop in U.S. imports, which could give the Trump administration leverage in its upcoming trade talks with the European Union. As Washington Examiner writes in the article Trump's tariffs flood Europe with cheap steel, overseas steelmakers who are locked out of the U.S. markets are dumping their excess capacity in Europe at bargain prices, creating trouble for Europe's main domestic producers that are struggling to compete. The American Iron and Steel Institute reported Wednesday that the U.S. imported a total of 2.2 million net tons of steel in September 2018, a 26 percent decline from the previous month. The same day, the European steel association Eurofer said steel consumption on the continent had risen by just 0.6 percent, but imports increased by 10 percent over last year. That's the result of countries like Russia and other Asian nations dropping prices to sell in Europe because the 25 percent U.S. tariff imposed by the Trump administration made it impossible to sell there. "'Trade deflection' is often observed for standardized commodities, like steel. This is a big instance, and indeed it does give the Trump team more leverage. The EU might limit imports from China, but it will be reluctant to limit imports from Korea, Japan, or Turkey because of existing free trade agreements," said Gary Hufbauer, a nonresident senior fellow at the Peterson Institute for International Economics. U.S. and European Union trade negotiators are meeting in Washington, D.C., this week to get started on talks first started back in July to reduce nontariff barriers between the continents. The U.S. steel tariffs are expected to be among the issues discussed, the EU keen to get an exemption to them. Trump openly conceded in an an interview with the Wall Street Journal Tuesday that the tariffs are mainly a tool to wring concessions out of trade partners. "Im using tariffs to negotiate," he said, pointing to the recent U.S.-Mexico-Canada Agreement on trade as proof. I could never have done it without tariffs." Backers of the administration's trade policies say the turnabout is good news. "The U.S. had the job of eating global steel overcapacity for many years. [Trump's] tariffs meant we quit that job. EU, Canada, and India now are candidates for that job. They dont want that job. EU and Canada are now using measures to keep out global overproduction," said Michael Stumo, CEO for the Coalition for a Prosperous America, a business-labor coalition that backs Trump's trade policies. The countdown has begun for 'Aero India 2019,' the biennial international aerospace exhibition scheduled to come alive at the Yelahanka Air Force Station from February 20 to 24. On Thursday, T M Vijay Bhaskar, the Chief Secretary, held a preparatory meeting with top defence ministry officials and Hindustan Aeronautics Limited (HAL) chairman and managing director R Madhavan. The state government is keen to ensure that the country's premier aerospace exposition, held once in every two years in the city since 1996, is a grand success. The 2019 show had come under a cloud with talk of the event being shifted to Lucknow. The defence ministry later announced that the show would be held in the city again. Meanwhile, 95 exhibitors, including 29 international and 65 Indian firms, have registered to participate in the show. Among the foreign exhibitors are Israel Aerospace Industries (IAI), Airbus, Boeing, Swedish firm SAAB AB, French missile firm MBDA and other global defence and aerospace companies. About 500 companies are expected to participate in the airshow. Exhibitors from 22 countries had taken part in Aero India 2017. Six global companies that have responded to Indian Air Force (IAF)'s Request for Information on 110 multi-role fighter jets, will showcase their aircraft at the show. Ethiopia on Thursday appointed a woman to the largely ceremonial position of president for the first time, further increasing female representation in the government of Africa's second most populous nation. In a unanimous vote, Ethiopian lawmakers picked career diplomat Sahle-Work Zewde, 68, to replace Mulatu Teshome who resigned in unclear circumstances. Ethiopia's reformist Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed last week appointed a slimline 20-person cabinet in which half the posts are held by women. They include defence minister Aisha Mohammed and Muferiat Kamil who leads the newly-created Ministry of Peace, responsible for police and domestic intelligence agencies. "If the current change in Ethiopia is headed equally by both men and women, it can sustain its momentum and realise a prosperous Ethiopia free of religious, ethnic and gender discrimination," Sahle-Work said Thursday. Sahle-Work, who was born in the capital Addis Ababa and attended university in France, has been Ethiopia's ambassador to France, Djibouti, Senegal and the regional bloc, the Intergovernmental Authority on Development (IGAD). Just prior to her appointment as president she was the UN's top official at the African Union. She is fluent in English and French as well as Amharic, Ethiopia's main language. As president she is expected to serve two six-year terms. The European Union hailed Sahle-Work as "a highly accomplished diplomat" calling her appointment "another sign of Ethiopia's path towards reform and internal cohesion," the spokesperson for the EU's external action service said in a statement. "Mulatu has shown us the way for change and hope, he has shown life continues before and after leaving power. I call on others to heed his example and be ready for change," said Sahle-Work in a speech to parliament. Political power in Ethiopia is wielded by the prime minister with the president's role restricted to attending ceremonies and functions. Nevertheless, Sahle-Work's position carries important symbolic weight and social influence. "Government and opposition parties have to understand we are living in a common house and focus on things that unite us, not what divides us, to create a country and generation that will make all of us proud," she said. "The absence of peace victimises firstly women, so during my tenure I will emphasise women's roles in ensuring peace and the dividends of peace for women." Sahle-Work becomes Africa's only serving female head of state, albeit in a ceremonial role. A handful of African countries have in the recent past been led by female presidents with executive powers, including Ellen Johnson Sirleaf in Liberia (2006-18) and Joyce Banda in Malawi (2012-14). Banda was elevated to the presidency following the death in office of Bingu wa Mutharika, while Sirleaf won two elections before standing down earlier this year at the end of her constitutionally mandated terms. A top Sri Lankan police official was arrested on Thursday, over a suspected plot to kill President Maithripala Sirisena, police a spokesman said. The alleged plot briefly threatened to cause tension between Sri Lanka and India, after an Indian newspaper reported that Sirisena had accused India's intelligence services of involvement a claim that New Delhi and Colombo have both denied. "The Criminal Investigation Division of police on Thursday arrested Nalaka De Silva, after five days of questioning him," police spokesman Ruwan Gunasekara said. Gunasekara said Silva was charged with plotting to kill the president, several senior police officials and a former defence secretary. Magistrates ordered Silva, a Deputy Inspector General of Police, to be detained until November 7. A police informant made the allegations against Silva in a news conference. Investigators are seeking access to the deleted data from the informant's mobile phone, with the help of Huawei, after a court granted permission to request the company's help. Silva's lawyers were not immediately available for comment. The first overhauled Su-30 MKI was handed over to the operational squadron of the Indian Air Force by the 11 Base Repair Depot at Ojhar in Nashik district on Friday. In a landmark event, Air Marshal Hemant Sharma, Air Officer Commanding-in-Chief of Maintenance Command handed over the indigenously overhauled Su 30 MKI aircraft to Air Marshal HS Arora, Air Officer Commanding-in-Chief of South Western Air Command at an impressive ceremony held at Air Force Station, Ojhar. It was established on 29th April 1974 and subsequently renamed as 11 Base Repair Depot on 1st January 1975. The depot progressively built and improved the technical expertise and infrastructure over the years and by 1983 it had overhauled 100 Su-7 aircraft. The 11 BRD is the only fighter aircraft repair depot of the Indian Air Force and undertakes repair and overhaul of frontline fighters such as MIG-29 and Sukhoi 30 MKI. The 11 BRD is the only fighter aircraft repair depot of the Indian Air Force and undertakes repair and overhaul of frontline fighters such as MIG-29 and Sukhoi 30 MKI. From 1983 to 1988, the depot also undertook the overhaul of MIG-21 and 28 aircraft. Later, the overhaul facility for MIG-23 aircraft was set up in 1986 and 248 aircraft were overhauled till May 2015. Overhaul of MIG-29 aircraft commenced in the year 1996 and presently, the Up-gradation of MIG-29 and Repair & Overhaul (ROH) of Su-30 MKI aircraft is being undertaken at the depot. In addition, 11 BRD is the only agency to undertake the overhaul of ejection seats and role equipment of Su-30 MKI aircraft, both for IAF and HAL. Earlier, the first Su-30 MKI overhauled by this depot successfully took off on 24 April 2018 and has been flight tested for its airworthiness, before inducting it for operational tasks at a flying squadron. Air Marshal Hemant Sharma, Air Officer Commanding-in-Chief of Maintenance Command handed over the indigenously overhauled Su 30 MKI aircraft to Air Marshal HS Arora, Air Officer Commanding-in-Chief of South Western Air Command. The handing/taking over function was witnessed by a large number of senior Air Force dignitaries from Air Head Quarters New Delhi, Head Quarters Maintenance Command, Nagpur, South Western Air Command, Gandhinagar, Gujarat, Senior officers of HAL (Nasik Division), DRDO and DGAQA. During the function, the Air Officer Commanding-in-Chief of Maintenance Command and South Western Air Command applauded the relentless effort put in by personnel of Air Force Station Ojhar. Air Cmde Samir V Borade Vishisht Seva Medal Air Officer Commanding, Air Force Station Ojhar, thanked all the air warriors and personnel of HAL (Nasik Division) for their active involvement and support in achieving this important milestone for the depot and Indian Air Force. He expressed that with this capability, 11 Base Repair Depot has exhibited what the unit is capable of and is ever ready for meeting the new challenges. It all began almost 200 years ago trying to explain the perturbations in the orbit of Uranus. The discovery of Neptune, which also marked a triumph of Newtonian mechanics, ushered in a new era. More and more minor planets were discovered, touching a million mark in all now. The fact that Pluto had so many siblings led to a new class of objects called the dwarf planets. The role of small bodies in the formation of the solar system is being seen in a new light now. It is now generally believed that the solar system was formed from a protoplanetary disk consisting of gas and dust. Since the cumulative mass of all objects beyond Neptune is much smaller than expected, it should also be noted that these bodies have mostly inclined, eccentric orbits. The big question is, what is the process that restructured the outer solar system after its formation? This has led to several interesting studies. One of them pointed to a massive planet beyond Neptune. Simulations with such a massive body in an elliptical orbit provided convincing answers to the orbits and so the argument favoured a ninth planet yet to be discovered. Quite interestingly, the researchers called this body as a perturber. The word Planet Nine was coined subsequently for this body as massive as Neptune or slightly less. Its orbit is believed to be highly eccentric. Thus its closest approach itself can be at a distance which is 20 times the orbit of Neptune. That makes it orbit the Sun once in about 10,000 years! Another recent study involved a close fly-by of a neighbouring star. This can simultaneously lead to the observed lower mass density in the outer part of the solar system and excite the bodies there onto eccentric, inclined orbits. Their numerical simulations show that many additional bodies at high inclinations still await discovery. This does not rule out a Planet X out there. This stellar encounter billions of years ago was effective in the outer parts of the solar system, not the inner regions. Our solar system was born out of a collapsing cloud of gas and dust. In the process that is well understood, a flat disk was formed creating large planets and smaller objects like the asteroids and dwarf planets. The flatness of the disk leads to the argument that the planets ought to orbit in a single plane unless something dramatic happened afterwards. The dwarf planet Sedna, with an inclined, highly eccentric orbit and so far outside, posed the puzzle Could it be because of a planet there? Or something more? The clue was provided by the mass distribution. The cumulative mass of all the objects dramatically drops by almost three orders of magnitude at a distance just outside the orbit of Neptune. The idea of a star approaching the Sun just when the planets were forming must have altered the composition and dynamics of the outer material. This can also explain the inclined and eccentric orbits of the bodies there. Computer simulations offer the perturbations by a star of the same mass as the Sun or half of it approaching at a distance three times the distance of Neptune. These simulations provide answers to several other questions on the mass ratio of Uranus and Neptune and two distinct populations of the bodies beyond Neptune. However, the unfavourable situation is the probability of such an encounter which is very rare. That takes us to another question was the situation same four billion years ago? Thus we move from one puzzle to another. Is it the ninth planet? Or the stellar encounter? Or yet another brewing hypothesis? In the absence of any proof of the stellar fly-by, we have to revise our approach for a very simple explanation and the best fit for observable parameters. (The writer is visiting scientist, Jawaharlal Nehru Planetarium, Bengaluru) As a fall back arrangement, Karnataka has decided to import coal to tide over the prevailing crisis. Chief Minister H D Kumaraswamy on Thursday said that a decision had been taken to import 5 lakh MT of coal. He was addressing the media after chairing a review meeting with Energy department officials and also the Karnataka Power Corporation Ltd (KPCL) on the power situation. A decision to import coal was taken during the KPCL board meeting on Thursday. The government has also decided to float short-term tenders to purchase coal till April, he added. Officials, however, told DH that the said quantum of coal would in no way be sufficient to make up for the severe shortage of the fossil fuel. The state requires at least 15 lakh Metric Tonne (MT) of coal a month to fire up the three thermal stations - Raichur Thermal Power Station (RTPS), Bellary Thermal Power Station (BTPS) and Yeramarus Thermal Power Station (YTPS). There was no need to import the said quantum (5 lakh MT) of coal at this juncture, as it will not even bring temporary reprieve. For, even if the tenders are floated at the earliest, we will receive the supply in the next two months. Moreover, the imported coal will have to be blended with the domestic coal, said officials. The department will be floating global tenders by next week. Karnataka receives coal from three Coal India Ltd (CIL) companies - Western Coalfields Ltd (WCL), Singareni Collieries Coalfields Ltd (SCCL) and Mahanadi Coalfields Ltd (MCL). However, for the past several months, the state has not been receiving the required quantity of coal from WCL, which had hit the RTPS badly. Reiterating that there would be no load shedding owing to coal shortage, Kumaraswamy said that he had given strict orders to the Escoms not to resort to power cuts. He, however, admitted that there was a shortfall of around 400 MW. During the day, there is no problem. But between 5 pm to 10 pm, there is a shortfall of 300 to 400 MW. We have taken alternative remedies to ensure that the consumer is not inconvenienced, he added. Kumaraswamy said that the Centre had assured to allocate coal as per the agreement. A letter has been sent to Union Coal Minister Piyush Goyal in this regard and Chief Secretary is in constant touch with the officials at the Ministry of Coal. The Ministry has promised to provide coal as soon as possible, he said. The chief minister also said that the government was in talks with the Railway Ministry to ensure timely supply of coal to the state. Multi-lingual actor Arjun Sarjas cousin filed a complaint against Sruthi Hariharan accusing her of conspiring with others to tarnish his and his familys image. Shiva Arjun Sarja, cousin of Arjun, also accused her of creating a fake Facebook account of Arjun. He also filed an application seeking injunction restraining Sruthi from speaking anything against Arjun. Shiva Arjun Sarja met city police commissioner T Suneel Kumar on Thursday and on his instructions, the cyber crime police lodged an FIR against Sruthi and others. Shiva, in the complaint alleged that Sruthi, along with others, entered into a criminal conspiracy with others to malign the image of the actor on social networking sites like Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and WhatsApp with an intention to extort money. He also alleged that fake accounts were created in the social media by using Arjuns personal information and uploading derogatory posts. The FIR has been registered against Sruthi and others under 120b (criminal conspiracy), 385 (putting person in fear of injury in order to commit extortion), 34 (acts done by several persons in furtherance of common intention), 109 (punishment of abetment if the act abetted is committed in consequence and where no express provision is made for its punishment) 419 (punishment for cheating by personation) 114 (abettor present when offence is committed), 420 (cheating and dishonestly inducing delivery of property) of IPC. She was also booked under the Information Technology Act 2000. She was booked on the series of incidents reported between October 20 to 25. Arjun also filed an application seeking the injunction against Sruthi restraining her from speaking anything against Sarja. The matter is likely to come up for hearing before the city civil and sessions court on Friday. However, Sruthi refused to reply to repeated calls and messages by the DH. Gombe National Park is the second smallest national park in Tanzania and its name is closely associated with the pioneering research work conducted by primatologist Jane Goodall for decades. It is located 16 km north of Kigoma town in the northwestern part of Tanzania. Situated by Lake Tanganyika, the second largest lake in the world, Gombe National Park is spread across 52 sq km and can be accessed only by a boat. Meet & greet My family and I were very excited but wary on our way to the park, which is home to three chimpanzee communities Mituba, Kasekela and Bwavi. After a two-hour flight from Dar es Salaam to Kigoma, we drove to the shores of Tanganyika. My first thought on seeing the rickety chartered boat was worry peppered with some regret. As we all hopped onto the boat, my fears mounted as the boat engine gave out a disconcerting roar. To make it worse, the lake was choppy, which made the ride bouncier. We reached Gombe National Park in the evening. We checked into our rooms after completing the formalities at the Tanzania National Park Authority office. A view of Gombe National Park from Jane Peak The serene atmosphere transported us to a different world with its lush green background and the melody of the splashing waves of the lake and the occasional howls from monkeys and the chirping of birds. After swimming in the crystal-clear waters of the lake and enjoying a beautiful sunset, we retired to our rooms. Next day, as we were getting ready for the chimpanzee trail, a shock awaited us. Hearing a gentle knock on the door, I opened it only to see a huge baboon ready to raid the room. I screamed and shut the door immediately. That was our first encounter with a wild monkey. Thankfully, our frequent encounters with different kinds of monkeys in the next two days were incident-free. At 8 am, our guide Issaya Paul, who has been closely tracking chimpanzees for nearly nine years, was ready. The briefing was impressive and to the point. Do not be scared on seeing chimps and monkeys. They will not harm you. Make way for them if you come across them. Do not stare into their eyes. They feel threatened. If you are close to chimps, wear a mask as they may contract infections from human beings. He mimicked as to how chimps react to different situations and send danger signals to the rest of the community. He said that the park had over 95 chimps, and the youngest was about eight months old. A twig snake in Gombe National Park As we walked, he explained about the history of Gombe, which became a national park in 1978. He said that the Kiha tribes called the area Gombe, meaning cave. Our first stop was Chimps Feeding Station, where the original thatched hut has been replaced by a metal structure. Two boxes used for feeding chimps with bananas are still in the station. The display boards here give details as to how Jane used bananas to habituate chimps. They also explain how chimps tried to outwit researchers when they changed their tactics to prevent fighting among them. One of the boards said, Chimps born after 2000 have not seen bananas at all! Though bananas are available in plenty in Tanzania, they are not grown in Gombe National Park. As we were busy reading the boards at the Chimps Feeding Station, we heard strange sounds only to learn later that our guide was trying to ascertain from a tracker where the chimps were visible. We realised that the park had no mobile connectivity and vehicles and guides depend on age-old communication methods. We sauntered down the hill and he showed us a big chimp with an infant enjoying a slow meal atop a tree. Issaya identified her as Gremlin, the oldest female in the park at the age of 58, and her three-year-old son, Grendel. Have patience and wait for them to climb down, was his instruction. Soon, the two climbed down the tree and ambled along the foot track. They decided to groom each other. Wild, wild times After this, we hiked up to Kakombe Waterfalls to see milky white water cascading down from a height of 60 feet. The guide goaded us to visit Jane Peak. It turned out to be an adventurous one, though Jane had hiked it countless times during her work in Gombe. The track was slippery because of dry leaves and loose gravel, and at times, very steep. We had to latch on to trees or vines for support. It was great fun when we reached the peak, and it was time to take snaps and selfies seated on two small rocks called Janes seat. She had spent days together at that place watching chimps, and once had to spend 10 nights at a stretch. During that stay, it is said that she protected herself from a leopard by hiding under her blanket. The trail on the second day also proved lucky as we came across Samson and Gremlins daughter Gaia with her two children. Gabo, at eight months, was suckling his mother and was refusing to leave her while her older child, Google, was on his own jumping from tree to tree in search of delicious food. Issaya was very good at spotting snakes in the forest. As it was slightly hot, not many reptiles were on the ground or hanging from tree branches. We almost fainted when he pulled us aside near a bush. He wanted us to observe something. None of us could spot it until he carefully pointed out the head of a highly venomous twig snake. Barring the triangular head with some stripes on it, it looked exactly like a plant twig and was very well camouflaged. Besides chimps, we saw baboons, red-tailed monkeys, blue monkeys and red colobus monkeys. We also came across wild fruits, pepper, nutmeg, robusta coffee and several kinds of flowers. The park is visited by 1,000 tourists a year. As the boat left for Kigoma, we wished goodbye with fond and fantastic memories and tons of photos. Delivery of Russian anti-aircraft missile systems S-400 to Turkey will begin in October of 2019, Russian and Turkish news agencies report, citing Turkish Defense Minister Hulusi Akar. Preparation for deliveries will begin from the beginning of 2019. "As of now we're selecting personnel that will be trained in Russia. Upon completion of their training, they will manage these air defense systems," Akar said. Turkey and Russia signed a loan agreement on S-400 in December of 2017 and agreed on technological cooperation in the development of production of complexes in Turkey. Vitaly Naumkin, scientific director of the Institute of Oriental Studies of the Russian Academy of Sciences, believes that Russian-Turkish relations are developing rapidly today: I would describe them as complex with asymmetric elements. This asymmetry is currently dealt with, but some problems still remain. Our relations are influenced by all sorts of regional and global factors, since both Russia and Turkey are global players. Turkey is one of the most important partners of Russia, and Russian-Turkish partnership will greatly influence not only regional problems, but also situation in the world. According to Naumkin, the Kurdish factor is one of the biggest problems in relations between Moscow and Ankara: Influence of this factor on our relations today has greatly diminished. It longer divides us. This is very important, since it also applies to Syria, where we managed to reach an agreement, overcoming the most difficult issues. As for other problems, associated with Syrian settlement, Naumkin considers situation in Idlib and creation of commission on constitution the most important: Regarding both of these problems, we have already begun to overcome differences and develop cooperation. Russian-Turkish relations depend on humanitarian cooperation, relations between peoples of Russia and Turkey, as well as on strong economic cooperation. After all, economic interdependence means that both states are interested in each others' security, stability and prosperity. Russia has been interested in Turkey when it comes to these three areas for many years. I think that Turkey is also interested in this. Schools are teaching our children and grandchildren a different set of ABCs than we learned. Now they are learning A = avoid, B = barricade and C = confront. This is how students and teachers are being taught they should react in the event of an active shooter in their school. Avoid by running and hiding, barricade school rooms with all available locks and furniture and, as a very last resort, confront the shooter by throwing things at him or advancing en masse to disarm him (knowing, of course, that some are going to die). What an ugly picture! But such drills and plans are necessary, and our educators, police, first responders and students themselves are devoting a great deal of their time and energy and our public money to this. Just in the last two weeks, the Upper Darby School Board began a debate on whether it should start arming some of its security guards, an active shooter drill took place at Monsignor Bonner-Archbishop Prendergast Catholic High School and District Attorney Katayoun M. Copeland hosted a countywide summit on school safety attended by more than 200 school administrators and law enforcement personnel. In the meantime, school districts all over the state are rushing to meet various deadlines to apply for a pot of $60 million in state money Act 44 that the Legislature approved last June to provide school safety programs to public and private schools. On Feb.14, 2018, a gunman opened fire at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Fla., killing 17 students and staff members and injuring 17 others. Now we are experiencing the educational equivalent of Lets roll! Parkland seemed to be a tipping point in the debate over school violence and mass shootings, the point at which a whole lot of people throughout this country finally said, We have to do something about this. The subsequent March for Our Lives, the student activists who are still touring the country even as they try to get on with their own lives, the formation of new citizen groups and the outpouring of new energy in established gun safety groups all of that is due to the shooting in Parkland. It is reassuring and downright amazing what is already being done here in Delaware County to prevent a mass shooting in our schools. In some districts, perhaps all, every school door is locked and secured and visitors must be buzzed in, surveillance cameras are ubiquitous and many districts are developing a close personal relationship with local police. Every school is equipped with a panic button linked to the county emergency response 911 system. Pushing the button summons police who are now being trained and equipped to go in immediately to stop a shooter in his tracks. No dithering outside while children die. Hospitals, EMTs and local fire departments are all coordinated and first responders are being retrained in measures to control bleeding. The county is handing out tourniquets! The schools are not neglecting the mental diseases that spark a desire to go down in history as the killer of the most humans in a single mass shooting, though that is a much harder issue to come to grips with. Wallingford-Swarthmore School Superintendent Lisa Palmer explained at a recent symposium that her educators closely observe Strath Haven high school students for signs of depression, bullying, stress and the mental illnesses that usually dont emerge until late adolescence. But she says, the great unsolved piece of the puzzle is that even when troubled teens are identified, our county lacks the professionals to provide care and support for them and the facilities to take in children in crisis. See something, say something led to the arrest of an exchange student at Bonner-Prendie who was amassing weapons and ammunition and told another student he was going to carry out a mass shooting. Thankfully, well never know how many deaths that student may have averted by saying something. Timothy Boyce, the director of emergency services for Delaware County, explained at the same symposium that it is the potential mass shooter that keeps him up at night. It may take only two or three minutes for police to get to a school under attack and go in, he explained, but a determined shooter can cause great destruction in that two to three minutes. The engine that drives all of this is our American gun culture, the ubiquity of guns, the easy access to guns, even by the most psychopathic in our society, the mindless worship of guns and the archaic Second Amendment. Now year after year Pennsylvanians must spend $60 million, money that could have gone to education, to prevent something that may never happen at all because it so easily could. The ABC drills, are reminiscent of the Cold War nuclear attack drills get under your desks, cover your heads (and, most of us added, kiss your butts goodbye). In the event of a nuclear attack, those drills would have been useless, but they are indelibly etched on the psyches of entire generations. Some parents fear psychological damage will be done to their kindergarteners and first graders who are instructed to participate in active shooter drills, even if they are not told thats what they are doing. That probably cannot be helped. Even very young children know the score. In 1985 I was a parent chaperone of first graders on a trip to the zoo. The route took us within sight of Osage Avenue in West Philadelphia only a week or so after the city bombed the group MOVE and burned down the entire block. Every child rushed to that side of the bus to see the damage and chattered excitedly among themselves about the bombing. They all knew five children had died there. Seeing 17 of their classmates slaughtered probably did great psychological damage to the Parkland students, and that is what it took to get students all over the country up and working toward preventing school gun violence. Maybe a little psychological damage is a good thing. It beats being shot to death. The installation of Russian S-400 surface-to-air missile systems in Turkey will begin in October 2019, state-owned Anadolu news agency on Thursday quoted Turkish Defence Minister Hulusi Akar as saying. Reuters in the article Turkey says Russian S-400 systems installation to begin October 2019: Anadolu writes that Turkeys purchase of the S-400 systems, which are not compatible with NATO defenses, has unnerved the United States and NATO member countries, which are already wary of Russias presence in the Middle East. Akar told Anadolu that selected personnel would be sent to Russia to receive training and return to work in Turkey, according to Hurriyet. It was not clear where he was speaking. The United States has warned Turkey that going through with the purchase of S-400s could result in Washington imposing sanctions and halting other existing procurements, but Ankara has pressed on with the deal. Turkey has said that its Western allies, namely the United States, have failed to cooperate with it in its efforts to boost its defense capabilities, and that Ankara has had to look outside of the NATO to meet its needs. While pursuing S-400 project, President Tayyip Erdogan has said Turkeys ties with NATO remain strong, and Ankara has sought to secure defense deals with other countries as well. Last year, Turkey signed a letter of intent with France and Italy to strengthen cooperation on joint defense projects. As a first step, the Franco-Italian EUROSAM consortium and Turkish companies will look into a system based on the SAMP-T missile systems. Turkey is also buying Lockheed Martin F-35 Joint Strike Fighter jets from the United States, but United States has warned that their purchase could be jeopardized if it does not drop the S-400 purchase plan. There were some issues stemming from the S-400s, political and judicial developments, but the political and military conditions we have now do not cause concerns, Akar told Anadolu. Akar said the F-35 program was continuing as planned, with the third and fourth jets to be delivered in March next year. Erdogan has previously said that Turkey would continue to pay its installments to procure the jets, but that it would look elsewhere if Washington decided to halt the delivery. Turkey and the United States have also held talks on the possible sale of a Raytheon Co Patriot missile defense systems as an alternative to the S-400 systems. Cookie banner We use cookies and other tracking technologies to improve your browsing experience on our site, show personalized content and targeted ads, analyze site traffic, and understand where our audiences come from. To learn more or opt-out, read our Cookie Policy. Please also read our Privacy Notice and Terms of Use, which became effective December 20, 2019. By choosing I Accept, you consent to our use of cookies and other tracking technologies. JOHNNY ENGLISH STRIKES AGAIN 2 stars Rowan Atkinson, Olga Kurylenko, Michael Gambon, Ben Miller, Emma Thompson; PG (some action violence, rude humor, language and brief nudity); in general release Johnny English Strikes Again has just enough potential to make you wish it were better, but in the end, David Kerrs film settles into forgettable sequel territory. This is the third movie in the Johnny English franchise, which stars veteran British comedian Rowan Atkinson as a bumbling, wide-eyed James Bond parody. This time around, English gets called out of retirement to track down a cyberterrorist who has been hacking his way through Britains infrastructure. The film opens as the hacker penetrates the MI7 mainframe and exposes Britains entire spy community, leaving the prime minister (Emma Thompson) with no choice but to call retired agents into action. This brings her to English, who has been secretly teaching grade-school children the tricks of the spy trade while posing as a geography teacher. Because of the hackers technological prowess, the prime minister opts for a more analog approach to her counter-operation, which suits the old-fashioned English just fine. English recruits his sidekick Bough (Ben Miller), tosses his MI7-issued smartphone for a suitcase full of old-school spy gadgets and sneers his way past a fleet of government hybrids to get behind the wheel of a classic red Aston Martin Vantage. During this same scene, English also has to convince MI7 to issue him a gun which seems odd for a spy agency. The whole sequence feels designed to draw a contrast between Englishs old-school style and our modern world, but like much of the film, it just feels too underdeveloped to really make sense. The bulk of the plot sends English and Bough careening from one set piece to another, designed to let Atkinson do his comic thing. Along the way they run into the genres requisite femme fatale, a Russian agent named Ophelia (Olga Kurylenko), while in the meantime, the prime minister courts the services of a transparently suspicious Silicon Valley guru named Jason (Jake Lacy). It isnt difficult to see where things are going, and the old-school vs. tech-future themes are never quite explored to satisfaction, but none of that is the point. Johnny English is about Atkinson getting laughs, and thats where Kerrs effort sadly falls short. Anyone familiar with Atkinsons work as Mr. Bean or in The Black Adder TV series knows the man has singular comic talent. Unfortunately, Strikes Again's script and execution has a way of undermining the comedic potential of Atkinsons set pieces, unlike the way, say, the Naked Gun movies served Leslie Nielsen. For example, when English and Bough jump into the Aston Martin to chase down Ophelia who is driving an electric BMW Bough asks if they shouldnt find a more fuel-efficient vehicle for the chase. English replies that the Vantage is surprisingly thrifty with fuel, so its readily obvious that at some point in the chase, the car is going to run out of gas. Too often the gag setups are so transparent and the execution is so clunky that the payoff just feels overplayed and falls flat. But there are a few bits that work, like a sequence where English has to give chase from the instructor seat of a drivers ed car (all the classic auto stuff is especially fun when you understand that Atkinson is a known car guy), but the little successes just leave you wishing more time had been spent on the rest of the film. As a forgettable pass-the-time kind of comedy, Johnny English Strikes Again fills its 88-minute run time, but for fans in the know, youll wish Atkinson had been given more to work with. Johnny English Strikes Again is rated PG for some action violence, rude humor, language and brief nudity; running time: 88 minutes. OGDEN Joseph Kerry was astonished as he examined the items a woman had just dropped off at his law office. From a cardboard box he removed four thick, weathered Bibles and stacked them on a table. As a small group of curious people watched, Kerry opened the first Bible and began flipping its fragile pages, looking for evidence of family history. It didn't take long to find a page containing names, births and deaths, even handwritten letters and some portraits. "Look at this treasure trove," Kerry said. "This is extremely rare. A lot of our Bibles come from after the Civil War. These dates go back to 1817, 1820. ... I'm like a kid at Christmas now." Such donations and discoveries are typical for Kerry since he founded Bible Rescue, a nonprofit organization dedicated to finding family Bibles that contain genealogy and returning them to the original family. In the last five years, Kerry has found more than 1,000 Bibles. It's said to be one of the largest private collections of family Bibles in the country, although he's quick to point out he's not collecting, just rescuing. His work is also nondenominational with a greater focus on family, not a particular religion. "Each Bible truly is irreplaceable," Kerry said. "There's not another Bible like it on the planet. When that Bible disappears, all the information leaves the planet." Kerry hosted an open house at this 25th Street law office last weekend to give people a chance to scope out his long shelves of Bibles, each one identified with a white slip of paper and a name. Kerry wondered how many would people would come on a nice fall Saturday but was happy with the turnout. Many expressed appreciation for his efforts to reunite Bibles with their original families, he said. "When you give a family Bible to that next generation, or maybe two generations down, and they're able to see the photos and touch the handwriting of a great-great grandparent, there's something magical and amazing about that experience," Kerry said. Kerry's mission to rescue family Bibles began about five years ago when he noticed one at a yard sale. Among the old religious book's pages he found a wealth of genealogical information. When it started to rain, Kerry decided to buy the book and protect it from the elements and further neglect. Soon Kerry was finding similar Bibles at other yard sales and thrift stores. In the pages between the Old Testament and New Testament, he almost always found births and deaths, prime family history details. This led him to start Bible Rescue. "My kids hate it," Kerry said. "Whenever I pass a Deseret Industries, we have to stop and I go in, even when it's 'No Dad, don't, we're on vacation.'" As his supply of Bibles grew and the word got out, people started to send Kerry Bibles because they felt guilty throwing them out, he said. Each Bible has a unique story. He has one Bible from the 1700s. Another one contains rare photos of slaves. One tiny Bible was carried by a Union soldier at the 1862 Battle of Shiloh. Others were found to contain locks of hair, flowers and other small items in the pages. Kerry has a "heart shield Bible." It's a small, pocket-sized New Testament with a heavy piece of metal over the cover usually worn over the heart. Engraved on the metal are the words, "May this keep you safe from harm." It belonged to a serviceman during World War II. Along with each book's historic value, it's been most rewarding to see a Bible reunited with its original family, Kerry said. He told of sending one Bible to a woman in North Carolina who wrote back that she never thought her great-grandmother loved her. "I don't know what the story was there, but there was something she saw in that family Bible that gave her assurance that she was loved by her great-grandmother," Kerry said. "That's what makes the work worth the effort." Collector Brent Ashworth added to Kerry's open house by displaying some of the famous Bibles from American and world history, including Joseph and Emma Smith's family Bible, the William Bradford Bible from the Mayflower, along with Bibles belonging to the Queen Elizabeth I of England, filmmaker Cecil B. DeMille, Helen Keller and a Union soldier that died in the Confederate prison camp at Andersonville, Georgia. "I've been thrilled to follow what Joe's doing," Ashworth said. "People have lost track of their family and some of their records and so they've lost their family heritage. ... That's why Bibles and genealogy are so important." Scott Campbell, of Provo, came to the open house hoping to learn more about a family Bible that has been in his family for more than 100 years. He said the large, thick book was miraculously preserved in a flood. While looking through it Saturday, Campbell found tender words his mother had written before her death. She had even pricked her finger and left a few drops of her blood on the page. "I hadn't been aware of that. We found it today. It was a wonderful, spiritual moment in finding this deep and meaningful thing from my mom. It gives us an opportunity to look into her heart and see how she felt," Campbell said. "Things were strained between us. But when you see something like that, it enables me to see her with more empathy and compassion, everything I had for her before. It was just wonderful thing to discover." Katrina Cortright and her mother, Linda Hutchins, both from Ogden, enjoyed seeing all of Kerry's family Bibles but the experience also left them somewhat disappointed. "Why wouldn't a family want to keep a Bible with so much family history?" said Cortright, who cherishes the possession of her grandfather's scriptures. "Look how old these are? There are so many. All this information is just sitting here." John Pulver, of West Jordan, has a passion for genealogy and wanted to help reunite Bibles with their families. "It would be fascinating to take the older books and match them with genealogical needs of families," Pulver said. "I could get into some volunteer work like that." Kerry welcomes volunteers. To learn more about Bible Rescue, visit www.biblerescue.org. SALT LAKE CITY Still searching for a spooky Halloween costume? Try reading the Bible for inspiration. Old and New Testament stories describe sea monsters, giants and avenging spirits that are just as scary as the vampires or zombies we see on TV, according to religion scholars. People of faith just don't retell these tales very often, preferring more comforting religious messages. "A lot of people don't have a way of knowing that there are monsters throughout the Bible because so many of them have been tamed or domesticated," said Esther J. Hamori, an associate professor of the Hebrew Bible at Union Theological Seminary in New York City. Take cherubim, for example. Today, we think of them as "happy, fat angel babies," but in the Bible they're winged guardians who sometimes have the body of a lion, Hamori noted. "That's always a slight shock to my students," she said. By redesigning or ignoring biblical monsters, we miss out on more than great costume ideas, Hamori and others explained. We miss a chance to have deeper conversations about why bad things happen and how God wants us to respond. "There's so much disorder and instability in our lives and experiences. I think religion speaks to that, not just in terms of controlling it or putting it down, but reflecting it," said Timothy Beal, a professor in and chair of the religious studies department at Case Western Reserve University. The Bible's monsters Beal credits enthusiastic students with deepening his interest in biblical monsters. Class discussions nearly two decades ago helped him see that God's connection to murderous creatures is more complicated than most people assume. "Sometimes, monsters are the enemies of God, but, other times, God identifies with them, even when they're dangerous and chaotic and deadly," he said. Beal offered an excerpt from the Old Testament book of Job to support this claim. From chapters 40 to 42, God boasts about some of his most threatening creations, praising Behemoth, an undefeatable ox-like beast, and Leviathan, which has "terror all around its teeth" and "laughs at the rattle of javelins." Similarly, the Bible includes tales of angels sent on search-and-destroy missions, causing chaos instead of offering comfort, Hamori noted. 2 Kings 19:35 reads, "That very night the angel of the Lord set out and struck down 185,000 in the camp of the Assyrians; when morning dawned, they were all dead bodies." In the Old Testament, Satan is an angel. "In the Bible, monsters are part of God's entourage," said Hamori, who is working on a book about biblical monsters. Since the earliest days of Christianity, the Bible's darkest scenes have caused tension. Some early church leaders wanted to preach that there were two separate gods: one with monsters in his employ and one who is the essence of love, said Jess Peacock, a graduate student in religion who writes a column on theology and horror for Rue Morgue magazine. "The dark side of the divine was an issue for early church fathers," he said. Over the centuries, Bible-linked faith communities typically have chosen to downplay the monstrous aspects of their religious texts, and so pop culture became the place to grapple with scary concepts, Peacock said. The Bible's confusing or disturbing parts have "bubbled up through horror narratives," he said. For example, one of the earliest gothic novels, "The Castle of Otranto," asked whether future generations should be punished for their forefathers' sins, drawing inspiration from biblical teachings. And famous zombie or vampire stories, like Bram Stoker's "Dracula," deal with the promise of eternal life, playing with the idea that eternal beings might get bored, depressed or violent. The religious themes underlying many horror books and movies might surprise some conservative religious leaders, who sometimes discourage church members from reading or watching horror books and movies or even celebrating Halloween, Peacock said. "Within religious circles, horror has a bad reputation. It's seen as sinful or something that will warp people's minds," he said. Embracing scary stories People who love studying religion and monsters can empathize with those who don't. Reading about deadly angels or sea monsters controlled by God isn't as soothing as reading about Jesus Christ healing the sick. "What people want from religion is certainty, comfort and stability. It's not comforting to think that God is taking sides with the monstrous over against us," said Beal, who published "Religion and Its Monsters" in 2001. However, Beal and others still advocate for deeper engagement with the Bible's scariest stories. It can be empowering to study how the people described in religious texts responded to unexpected monster encounters and good to be reminded that God is more complex than we can ever imagine, Beal said. "We can go more honestly into chaotic and disorienting experiences if we're open to those kinds of insights from the Bible," he said, noting that he's taught Sunday School classes on monsters at his Presbyterian church. Exploring the dark parts of the Bible can lead to a more challenging, and rewarding, religious experience. "I love that the monsters of the Bible raise hard questions. I love that we can't read what are essentially horror stories in the Bible and come away with easy answers," said Hamori, who is Jewish. And they also really do make for great costumes, she added. "If people want to be terrifying, they could dress up as angels for Halloween," she said. SALT LAKE CITY EnergySolutions was denied an exemption to bury thousands of tons of depleted uranium munitions at its site in Clive, Tooele County, after the Utah Solid Waste and Radiation Control Board panned the proposal. The unanimous vote Thursday came after hours of presentations by expert consultants, Utah Department of Environmental Quality staff, EnergySolutions' regulatory chief, advocacy organizations and staff. With the exception of the EnergySolutions employee, all commentators said the idea of storing depleted uranium metal munitions in Tooele County is a bad one. "What's the rush? Why hurry?" questioned Tooele County resident Matt McCurdy. "It is in the public's best interest to see through a very detailed risk assessment on this." EnergySolutions wanted regulatory approval to avoid a lengthy performance assessment so it could competitively bid on a U.S. Department of Defense contract for the munitions disposal. The 5,000 cubic yards of the 30 mm bullets are at Tooele Army Depot and a military installation in Indiana. Don Verbica, with the radiation control division, said he didn't believe previous assessments done at the Clive facility addressed the risks posed by depleted uranium metal. "They have to demonstrate that (disposal of the material) will not result in an undue hazard to public health, safety and the environment," Verbica said. Verbica added that depleted uranium metal is chemically unstable, relatively mobile and pyrophoric, or able to ignite spontaneously. The staff's presentation showed a corroded depleted uranium munition after three years to underscore what they assert is the specific unsafe nature of the radioactive material. Verbica added that it was both the recommendation of the division director, Scott Anderson, and the opinion of the agency's expert consultants that too many signficant questions remain unanswered, and therefore EnergySolutions' request should be denied. Dan Shrum, EnergySolutions' vice president of environmental compliance and permitting, said the company has already safely stored 49,000 tons of depleted uranium without serious incident. The company had argued it should be exempt from a law requiring a performance assessment be completed before it can accept depleted uranium in excess of one ton. On Thursday, Shrum also asserted that previous performance assessments done over the years addressed the regulatory requirements for safely storing this kind of depleted uranium. The board, however, disagreed. Representatives from HEAL Utah and the Sierra Club attended the Thursday meeting, noting afterward that board members made the right decision. Allowing this exemption would have created a dangerous precedent that business interests can sidestep Utahs public health policies, said Dr. Scott Williams, executive director of HEAL Utah. We applaud both the board on their decision and the Utahns who spoke out on this issue to ensure that public safety prevails over private interests of multimillion-dollar companies. SALT LAKE CITY Before she was gunned down on campus by a bitter ex-boyfriend, the man's manipulations had led Lauren McCluskey to believe that despite his lies, harassing text messages and efforts to extort money from her, she wasn't in danger. And even after receiving multiple reports about what was going on, University of Utah police determined that while they would investigate the harassment, Melvin Rowland, a convicted sex offender, didn't appear to pose a physical threat to the student who was almost two decades his junior. That's according to a shocking timeline of moments leading up to McCluskey's murder, presented Thursday by U. police and university officials. The startling report also revealed Rowland had looked for McCluskey on campus for days, embedded himself among her friends in her dorm building, and posed as a police officer to try and lure her out into the open. And just minutes after shooting and killing McCluskey, 21, with a borrowed gun, Rowland called a woman he'd recently met on a dating website to pick him up and take him to dinner. "This was another person Rowland had duped into thinking he was a great guy and he could do no wrong," said U. Police Chief Dale Brophy during a news conference Thursday at Rice-Eccles Stadium. "And immediately after shooting and killing his girlfriend, (he) was able to go to dinner, go to the Capitol and go to (the woman's) house as if nothing was amiss." U. President Ruth Watkins said two independent investigations will review the school's campus safety efforts, and the police department's handling of McCluskey's complaints against Rowland before he killed her. Brophy emphasized the review of the police department will look into the agency's protocols and not the actions of individual officers. "We're committed to doing what we need to do to make sure that everything on this campus is as safe as possible," Brophy said, adding that he welcomes the investigation and is open to making improvements. More information about how and when the reviews will be conducted will be released as it becomes available, Watkins said. McCluskey first met Rowland in September at a local bar where he worked as a bouncer. The two quickly began a relationship. "He visited her often at the residence hall and built friendships with other students in the building," Brophy said. But after dating him for about a month, McCluskey learned that 37-year-old Rowland a parolee who had served time in prison for forcible sexual abuse and enticing a minor over the internet had lied about his age and his criminal past. When McCluskey confronted him in her dorm room on Oct. 9, Rowland owned up to his sex offender status but claimed to be 30 years old, Brophy said. McCluskey went through with the breakup, but allowed Rowland to spend the night in her dorm. She even loaned him her car to run errands the next day, Brophy said. That next day, McCluskey's mother called campus police and asked for officers to help her daughter pick up the car, Brophy said. When dispatchers called McCluskey, she refused the help at first, saying that "she didn't feel uncomfortable with Rowland coming up to her apartment," police said. He was going to drop the car off at her dorm building and McCluskey said she would reach out to police if she did become worried. McCluskey later called police back and requested a ride to her car, which had been dropped off in the parking lot of Rice-Eccles Stadium. Within two days of the breakup, McCluskey began receiving suspicious emails that she believed came from Rowland's friends. The Oct. 12 emails said Rowland had died and blamed her for his death, the police chief said, though his social media posts earlier that day suggested otherwise. McCluskey told police she did not feel physically threatened but believed Rowland's friends were trying to "lure her somewhere," Brophy said. The next day, she began receiving text messages from different numbers, threatening to post compromising photos of McCluskey and Rowland on the internet if she did not pay the sender. McCluskey told police she sent $1,000 to an account "in hopes of keeping these photos off the internet," Brophy said. Police took a report and the case was assigned to a detective to screen for sexual extortion charges. But a formal investigation didn't begin until Oct. 19 due to the department's case load, he said. At that point, detectives began trying to "identify all suspects involved," as police did not know which of Rowland's friends, if any, aided in the extortion. Investigators now believe Rowland had been working alone all along, using manipulation tactics to make it look like some of his friends were involved in the extortion. He used multiple cellphones, email accounts and spoofing apps to mask his phone number, according to Brophy. The chief acknowledged that while officers had begun looking into the harassment and extortion, on the day that McCluskey was killed his agency had not yet reached a point in its investigation where it would contact other law enforcement agencies including Adult Probation and Parole. He said at that point they were not aware of a physical threat to McCluskey. "We did believe that Rowland and/or his associates both were threatening her financially and reputationally. But there was no indication from Lauren to us at any point in this investigation that he was threatening physical harm. He was very, very good at getting people to trust him, and Lauren was no different," Brophy said. While officers knew Rowland was a registered sex offender, Brophy said he did not know if the department was aware that he was on parole at the time. Meanwhile, Rowland was moving in on McCluskey. Brophy said that from Oct. 19 until the day of McCluskey's death, security camera footage shows Rowland around campus, "looking for Lauren without her knowledge." On Oct. 22, McCluskey again reached out to police after she received a text from a number she did not recognize. The person who sent the text claimed to be the department's deputy chief, Rick Mclenon, and requested she come to the police station. Brophy said investigators now believe the text came from her killer. "We later discovered that Rowland was outside of her dorm room at that time appearing to be looking around waiting for her, and that was his attempt to get her to leave her room." Rowland spent the afternoon in the residence hall waiting for McCluskey with some of her friends, whom he had gotten to know while dating McCluskey. "He was very manipulative, very good at manipulating people, and he became friends with many of them. This allowed him to contact people and allow him into their dorms at any time, because they were friends at this point in time," Brophy said. At 8:20 p.m., Rowland "confronted" McCluskey, who was on the phone with her mother in the parking lot outside her dorm building. She dropped her cellphone and belongings. Her mother, Jill McCluskey, said she heard her daughter yell, "No, no, no!" and within three minutes her father, Matt McCluskey, was on the phone with campus police reporting that his daughter was in trouble. Meanwhile, Rowland "dragged Lauren to a different spot in the parking lot, where he forced her in the back seat of a car that he had driven to campus, and he shot her in the car multiple times," Brophy said. About an hour and 20 minutes later, after searching McCluskey's apartment and nearby buildings, police found the woman's body in the back seat of the car, and a lockdown was ordered as police searched the campus for Rowland. The search eventually spread off campus, and at 12:46 a.m., Salt Lake police found and pursued Rowland on foot. He entered Trinity A.M.E. Church, 239 Martin Luther King Jr. Blvd. (600 South), and fatally shot himself as police entered the building, Brophy said. McCluskey's murder has left many with questions, including where Rowland got the gun and whether more could have been done to protect her. "Rowland, like I said, was a manipulator. If his lips were moving, he was lying. I don't think he told the truth to anybody based on our investigation and based on everybody we've talked to," the chief said. He borrowed the gun from a friend under the pretense that he wanted to take his girlfriend target shooting, according to Brophy. That friend called police and told them about the gun Rowland had taken. Brophy said charges are not pending against the friend, or the woman who picked Rowland up after the shooting. Both are cooperating with police. McCluskey, of Pullman, Washington, was a senior at the U. and a member of the university's track team. Watkins said McCluskey's parents were presented Thursday with the bachelor's degree in communication that their daughter had been pursuing. They will also receive a framed jersey. "We are all too aware that there is no degree that can adequately acknowledge the outstanding contributions that Lauren made to our campus and to this university and to her field of study," Watkins said. She said McCluskey's murder "has been one of the most tragic events in the history of our campus" and promised that her legacy will not be forgotten. Almost 1,500 people are involved in dealing with the aftermath of heavy rains and floods that hit south Russias Krasnodar region earlier this week, rescuers said. "As of 21:00 Moscow time, 1,846 households which are home to 5,379 people remain flooded in three municipalities," the press office of the regional rescue service said in a statement. "377 people, including 186 children, have been evacuated. The effort to clear the aftermath of the disaster involves 1,460 people and 330 pieces of construction hardware and special equipment, including three emergency response and recovery trains." Heavy rains in the Krasnodar Region had previously flooded railway lines, delayed trains and destroyed a bridge on the Tuapse-Maikop highway. All services are operating on a round-the-clock basis. Local officials said that two people were killed, two were injured, and one person is missing as a result of the floods. Earlier, the Emergencies Ministry issued an emergency warning about floods with thunderstorms, hail and winds on the regions territory on October 25 and 26. A state of emergency has been declared in the region. In addition, communication with the resort city of Sochi through the federal highway was disrupted after a bridge on the Makopse River was damaged and a 200-meter section of a motorway leading to it had been destroyed early on Thursday. Besides, rail traffic along the only railway leading to Sochi also stopped, as the tracks were flooded or damaged by landslides in some areas. Sochi mayor Anatoly Pakhomov said, however, that traffic via the Makopse bridge is expected to resume at 10:00 a.m. Moscow time on Saturday. He also said that although weather in the region remains far from normal early on Friday,the emergency warning of downpours, hailstorms and strong winds so far proves to be wrong. "The situation is normal, todays rains cannot be compared to yesterdays, they are relatively harmless. Of course, we have deployed police patrols and volunteers, put rescue services on standby and alerted the population," he said, TASS reported. Meanwhile, residents have already started to return to Kransnodar regions Apsheron district, deputy head of the local administration, Andrei Klishchenko, said. "About 900 people were evacuated [on Thursday] morning, but water started to subside very quickly, so people have begun returning to their homes. About 200-250 people remain in temporary shelters, but their number is constantly changing," he said. SALT LAKE CITY Utah's social services community cannot afford to neglect economic arguments in favor of additional affordable housing for low-income families, more than 500 providers were told Thursday at the state's 15th annual homelessness summit. Presenting homelessness and a lack of affordable housing solely as moral issues can only take advocates so far in garnering the political will necessary to increase the flow of public resources, said Diane Yentel, president and CEO of the National Low Income Housing Coalition, a policy advocacy organization based in Washington. "I think we've gotten everybody we're going to get with that message, and it's not enough," said Yentel, the summit's keynote speaker. "And I think that's where starting to talk about the economic benefit (helps)." Yentel said social services providers will find different emphases work in different communities. Some policymakers, she said, will be most persuaded by the argument that improved affordable housing is an investment in local health care outcomes, while others may be more interested in learning how it is positively associated with higher educational attainment, or higher household earnings over a lifetime. But regardless of "what really draws them in," Yentel said, "on all of those we have the data to make that argument." The daylong summit, held by state Department of Workforce Services, also included workshops for approximately 570 homelessness and social services providers on the topics of domestic violence, helping those who have experienced trauma, working with affordable housing landlords, mental illness, avoiding providing burnout and more. Yentel identified the Great Recession as a significant turning point in changes to the affordability of rental housing nationwide, which she said has disproportionately impacted poor families. As many millennials coming of age started choosing to delay home ownership until later in life and some baby boomers began downsizing to the rental market, "millions of homeowners who lost their homes" in the crisis also began renting, she said. "All of this happened at more or less the same time. The demand was outpacing the supply, and so costs were increasing dramatically and that was squeezing the most the lowest income people." Yentel said that since then, the increasing number of apartments has not made a substantial difference for low-income families unless targeted specifically for them. "Sometimes the response is, 'Well, if you just build more housing period, more apartments at any level of income, that will help solve the crisis,'" she said. "And there's some truth to, when we build apartments at the luxury level, that there's a little bit of a filtering down (of availability) for high-income renters. But the affordability never filters down to the lowest income people." A comprehensive Utah Department of Workforce Services report on affordable housing in Utah in 2017 explains that such housing is federally defined as "any housing unit whose gross monthly costs, including utilities, are equal to no more than 30 percent of a household's gross monthly income." Jonathan Hardy, director of the Housing and Community Development Division for the Department of Workforce Services, told providers that "there's going to be a bill drafted to address affordable housing in the state" in the upcoming legislative session. He said it will first be heard in the Economic Development and Workforce Services Interim Committee's next meeting Nov. 14. "I'll just summarize it by saying there will be a request for funding as part of that," he said. Hardy said the concept of single-room occupancy or dormitory-style housing will be "at the forefront of that particular bill and request." He also said the department is focusing on "providing incentives to communities to participate in doing their part in creating affordable housing." Lt. Gov. Spencer Cox told summitgoers that "this next legislative session is going to be a very important one for affordable housing." He also said Utah's affordable housing predicament is "unsustainable" and has state policymakers "extremely concerned." "Its bad for our economy, its bad for our citizens, and it's especially bad for our citizens living on the margin right now," Cox said. SALT LAKE CITY There was one last controversy at the final meeting of the current Utah Transit Authority trustees Thursday, over how much money to pay the three full-time appointees replacing the board. Before voting 7-2 to advance a $454 million budget for 2019 that would pay the maximum $150,000 salary allowed under the law, trustee Toby Mileski said that gave him "a lot of heartburn." Another trustee, Bret Millburn, also questioned whether the outgoing board should be involved with the salaries, since the overhaul of the transit agency approved by the 2018 Legislature also created a new advisory board with that responsibility. "I'm not sure why we need to go ahead and set it at the maximum now whereas we could have that advisory board meet, make the recommendation and make adjustments to the budget," Millburn said before leaving for another meeting. But Steve Meyer, UTA's interim executive director, said he felt the amount was "appropriate at this time," until job descriptions and a compensation study are completed by the advisory board, expected to meet for the first time Nov. 14. Other questions were raised about the cost of the new oversight structure. This year's budget for the 14-member board eliminated under the new law is nearly $488,000, but nearly $1.4 million is proposed for the full-time board, a 175 percent increase. Meyer said the bigger budget reflects trustee benefits as well as boosting the board staff from two to eight people, including an aide for each new trustee. He said employees were being moved to the new jobs from other areas of UTA. Trustee Babs De Lay said she expects to hear questions about the increased budget from the public. She and Mileski voted against adopting the tentative budget. Millburn, who was also opposed, left before the vote was taken. It will be up to the new trustees, nominated by local governments and appointed by Gov. Gary Herbert, to give final approval to the budget. A public hearing is planned for Nov. 14. Two trustees are ready to start work next week Carlton Christensen and Beth Holbrook. The governor has rejected nominations for the third trustee, who will represent Utah and Tooele counties. Christensen, a former Salt Lake City councilman, will fill the Salt Lake County seat. Holbrook resigned from the Bountiful City Council to take the seat representing Davis, Weber and Box Elder counties. The new governance structure is the result of sweeping legislation to address concerns with UTA, including critical legislative audits and an ongoing federal investigation into transit development deals. The transit agency has a nonprosecution agreement with the U.S. Attorney's Office in exchange for cooperating with the investigation and agreeing to three years of federal monitoring. Before adjourning for the last time, the board also approved other spending, including to begin drawing up plans for a new bus rapid transit project that will connect south Davis County with downtown Salt Lake City. The project, anticipated to cost as much as $85 million, will take five to eight years to complete. About half of the nearly 12-mile route will be along dedicated bus lanes and an extension to the University of Utah is possible. One of the exiting trustees, Necia Christensen, became emotional at the end of the meeting while talking about her 19 years on the board. She revealed what she called a secret, a massive TRAX power failure at the close of the 2002 Winter Games. The outage occurred during the closing ceremonies at the University of Utah's Rice-Eccles Stadium, Christensen said, and it took all hands on deck, making repairs and "whatever they had to do, in order to make the trains run that night." She said that was an example of the "love and passion" within the transit agency. "UTA has been in excellent hands. The board has done its best," Christensen said, but has been maligned in the media. She spoke of the pride felt seeing a bus or a train and concluded, "I am so proud that we are UTA strong." Greg Bell, chairman of the outgoing board, said while "it's regretful we've had crises and some media flare-ups about this and that. I think at the end of the day we're still strong and very functional." Bell thanked UTA employees "who have put their heads down in uncertainty and many disheartening moments. I know many felt criticized and wrongly blamed, but we pulled together. There's a bright future. We have able people coming in." SALT LAKE CITY The Utah Legislature is back to talking about importing certain prescription drugs from Canada to save Utah patients money. "There are 30 million Canadians and 300 million citizens in the United States. There's not enough drugs sitting on shelves in Canada to supply all of the United States, but there's plenty to service 3 million Utahns," said Rep. Norm Thurston, R-Provo, who is seeing through a provision he passed earlier this year. HB163 required the Utah Department of Health to study the idea and return to the state's Health Reform Task Force on Thursday to discuss various issues related to implementing an importation program in Utah. "I suspect there are around 20 to 25 drugs where it makes sense to do this," Thurston said. "There are a lot of drugs where you wouldn't want to, because there is no cost advantage." He believes there's enough of a markup on some drugs that the program costs would be covered. Dr. Marc Babitz, deputy director at the health department, told lawmakers that Canadian importation would mean a lot of new responsibilities for Utah, including possible creation of an agency or office to oversee, administer and distribute imported drugs. He also said the state would have to prove there is a market for it, that enough people would save enough money. "We have to show that the price the consumer gets in Utah is significantly lower than before," he said. Utah officials, Babitz continued, would have to find a wholesaler to bring the drugs across the border but also audit the process to ensure safety. Additionally, the drugs would have to be repackaged according to FDA standards. "All these middlemen would have to be put in place and it is hard to know whether that will result in savings," he said. There are licensing issues and a question of whether Medicaid patients would be able to reap the savings, as the government program already negotiates rebates and discounts for patients. Babitz is also concerned because Utah is the first state to try and import prescription drugs from Canada, though Vermont is pursuing similar prospects. "It's a very complex system, with all these different players. Each requires oversight and safety, tracking and a cut of the money," he said. Not to mention, pharmaceutical companies in the country are not fans of the proposal and already foughtagainst Thurston's first bill. Thurston said that while the to-do list is long, items can be "tackled one at a time." "And none are that hard or undoable," he said. Utah lawmakers would need to get approval from governments in both countries to legally implement the program, and, with the current conservative leadership, "there is a higher probability," according to Jane Horvath, senior policy fellow with the National Academy for State Health Policy. The infrastructure, she said, is already in place. "You could likely get it done with contracting," Horvath said. "There is no way they'll allow this to happen," said Sen. Gene Davis, D-Salt Lake City, who questioned Thurston repeatedly on the matter. Thurston said the bar is high, but, "they get that we're paying more for drugs in the U.S. than they are in other countries." He said he'll have a bill ready in January to help further the discussion. Drug manufacturers in the United States follow strict regulations of the Food and Drug Administration, tracking all ingredients and processes to ensure safety and quality, said Dana Malick, senior director of health policy for the Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America, a trade association representing 38 biopharmaceutical research and biotechnology companies in the country. "We certainly understand the need for affordable pharmaceuticals, but we support making medicines more affordable and not opening up the very closed supply chain that is regulated by the FDA," Malick said, adding that equipment and ingredients to make medications comes from regularly inspected facilities and anything else would be questionable. "It is unclear, even if you're getting drugs that are approved in Canada, that the active ingredient might not have started in our FDA's closed supply chain," she said. Consumers, Malick said, often only see a drug's sticker price, but that isn't usually what they end up paying, depending on insurance coverage and other negotiated discounts. She agreed that the end goal should be lower cost to patients, but that operationalizing drug importation might not be the most ethical route. Babitz said there are other things underway aiming to reduce drug costs, including recent development of a generic drug company that will be based in Salt Lake City. The announcement comes from a group of health care providers, including Intermountain Healthcare, that plan to team up and manufacture generic drugs in short supply and available only at high cost. "Pharmacy costs have been increasing at double digits," Babitz said. "The U.S. sells to other countries at cheaper costs making us believe we ought to pursue Canadian importation. "We have to save money," he said. SALT LAKE CITY Republican U.S. Senate candidate Mitt Romney reported income totaling $83.8 million on his federal tax returns for the past three years, according to documents his campaign released Thursday. In making public his 2015, 2016 and 2017 personal tax filings, Romney said he was keeping a promise he made in March when he released his federal financial disclosure information. Romney and his wife, Ann, filed joint tax returns. The returns show Romney's gross income was $41.5 million in 2015, $20 million in 2016 and $22.3 million last year. Combined taxes and charitable contributions reported over the three years totaled 42.9 percent of his income. Federal taxes reported on his forms came to $18.1 million, while state income tax and real estate taxes totaled $6.7 million. Charitable donations totaled $11.1 million. Romney's personal tax filings include income from his family trusts because they were originally established as "grantor trusts," meaning the law requires him to include the income in his individual tax filings, and he must also personally pay taxes due from the trusts, according to his campaign. Of the $11.1 million of charitable contributions, $9.4 million was made directly by Romney and was reported on his personal income tax filings, according to his campaign. Another $1.7 million was made by his charitable foundation and was reported on the foundation's tax returns. Romney faced criticism during the 2012 presidential race for his reluctance to release some of his tax records. In March, Romney filed federal financial disclosure forms as part of his Senate campaign showing he has a net worth of up to $270 million, mostly investments. That also included co-ownership of apartment buildings in Silver Spring, Maryland, and Wichita, Kansas, with his combined stake worth up to $6 million. He also reported owning up to $500,000 in gold. The former Massachusetts governor grew his fortune running Bain Capital in Boston. Romney faces Democratic Salt Lake County Councilwoman Jenny Wilson in the race to replace retiring GOP Sen. Orrin Hatch. Wilson has reported about $73,000 in income, primarily from her council job, and assets worth up to $2 million. SALT LAKE CITY Police on Thursday afternoon arrested a man who allegedly "fired at least one shot" at another driver in a road rage incident in Parleys Canyon, officials said. Grant Newman Gutierrez, 23, of Park City, was arrested for investigation of felony aggravated assault, discharge of a firearm, driving under the influence, carrying a restricted firearm while driving under the influence, possession of a firearm by a restricted person and possession of a controlled substance. The Utah Highway Patrol said Gutierrez fired his weapon while driving down Parleys Canyon. No one was injured. Additional details about the road rage incident that led up to the shooting were not immediately available. Officials stopped Gutierrez near Foothill Drive and Sunnyside Avenue, the UHP said. Editor's note: Deseret News staff writer Tad Walch, together with Church News Editor Sarah Weaver, is chronicling the South American ministry of President Russell M. Nelson of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints and the impact the church is having in various countries. He reports today from Uruguay. MONTEVIDEO, Uruguay More than 4,500 people completely filled a massive tent here on Thursday night to listen to President Russell M. Nelson of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. "I can hardly believe what I'm seeing, hundreds and hundreds of Latter-day Saints who have transformed this tent into a chapel," he said. Buses and cars delivered them to the dirt and grass fields of the Landia complex in Franklin Delano Roosevelt Park, where they sat below a canvas supported by 10 towering tent poles, but it is a fact of President Nelson's entire five-nation South American trip that they were just the tip of an iceberg of Uruguayans who would have come to see their prophet if there were space enough for them. "My heart exploded with happiness to see him," said Janaina Silva De de Molla, 36, a mother of three who is a staff corporal in Uruguay's army, runs a budding side business built on a loan from the Perpetual Education Fund loan and serves as first counselor in a Montevideo stake Relief Society presidency. "I have no doubt that he is a prophet of God," she said. "He was super humble, clear in his words and full of love. Personally, I am full of energy and eager to continue in this wonderful work. It was a unique experience for me and my family." The Molla family is among of tens of thousands who have attended events with the church president in four countries so far or watched via in-country broadcasts. In Peru more than 6,000 packed an arena while about 35,000 more watched a video feed. In Bolivia another 9,000 filled an arena nearly to the rafters while 15,000 watched the broadcast. In Paraguay on Thursday, 3,467 spilled out of a convention center and onto chairs on the concourse, while nearly 35,000 watched a feed. Early estimates are that another 7,400 in Uruguay watched via broadcast and Internet feeds, while 6,000 missionaries have attended or watched three mission meetings on the trip, which ends this weekend when President Nelson will hold a youth devotional and dedicate the Concepcion Chile Temple. President Nelson, 94, said earlier this week that he, too, would like to meet directly with more church members. The message "We're a bit frustrated because we want to go to every country," he said. "We'll have meetings in five countries in South America. That means all the others are left out. But hopefully, little by little, year by year, we'll be able to reach a larger number of people, but we'll still speak directly to a small fraction of the 16 million (members) of the church." On Thursday night he spoke in Spanish, as he has done previously on this trip, sharing his message that parents should teach their children about the Atonement of Jesus Christ and opposition. "The Lord's way will bring them joy," he said, "and the Satan's way will bring them misery." He also stressed the importance of prayer, Sabbath observance, tithing, ordinances and temple covenants. "Our message is the same," he said at a news conference in Paraguay, "whether it's in one country or another or to whatever age: Choose to follow the Lord, and you'll find happiness. Follow the Lord and keep his commandments and you'll have joy not only here but hereafter. It's simple. It's not a complicated message." Sister Helen Romero of Choluteca, Honduras, and her missionary companion, Sister Asia Kehl, 20, of Sandy, Utah traveled nine hours from the city of Artigas on a bus rented by the Uruguay Montevideo Mission to attend Thursday's mission meeting with President Nelson and his wife, Sister Wendy Nelson, Elder Gary E. Stevenson of the Quorum of the Twelve and his wife, Sister Lesa Stevenson. They said they were thrilled to shake a prophet's hand and hear his voice in person. "I saw the light and love of God through him," Romero said. "When I saw him and shook his hand, I felt close to Christ and I knew he sent him here to Uruguay." Like Romero, it was Kehl's first experience being in the same room with a prophet. The feeling she had surprised her. "When he came in and shook our hand one at a time, it felt like 3 Nephi, where the Savior ministered one by one," Kehl said. "I expected a different feeling, like 'boom,' but it was more like love love and peace and it confirmed that he's a prophet of God. I saw the love he has for every one of us, and that he is a representative of Christ to us today. I didn't want him to ever leave. "It's a great blessing to have the prophet come here. Uruguay is a very blessed place today." A natural need Elder Stevenson said the urge to gather around President Nelson is natural. "People want to gather in the latter days to hear a prophet speak," he said in a news conference Thursday night after the devotional. "Imagine if you had the chance to gather in the Kirtland Temple to hear Joseph Smith speak or in the Salt Lake Tabernacle to hear Brigham Young or John Taylor. I would not miss that for the world. "I think we see that with President Nelson and the Latter-day Saints wherever we go." At each stop, church members have lined up hours before the devotional. "It's probably what it was like before King Benjamin spoke," Elder Stevenson said. "People came early to pitch their tents. The same thing is happening now." Romero, the missionary from Honduras, said Thursday's mission meeting with President Nelson provided her with answers to her prayers. "He is the person the Lord sent because he loves us so much, to help us be with him again," she said. "I still can't believe it just happened. "I cannot imagine how hard life would be to live in these days without a prophet." While Latter-day Saint revelation points to perilous times, a living prophet is a feature of what church doctrine also calls the fulness of times, Elder Stevenson said. "The Lord knew these perilous times needed to have a counterbalance," he said. "I think of the fulness of times offsetting the perilous times. ... We have a prophet giving specific revelation for the days in which we live." Changing lives Janaina Silva de Molla said she feels blessed by the church each day. Two years ago, she determined that she needed to earn money to help her family, but wanted to work in her home so she could be with her sons, 19 and 18 as they finish high school and her 10-year-old daughter. As she took the church's self-reliance course "Education for Better Work," she realized her dream was to start a business baking for weddings and parties. She applied for a low-cost Perpetual Education Loan and received nearly $3,800 to attend a professional school. She is one of 520 Uruguayans to receive a PEF loan since 2001, said Melissa Riley, senior manager of strategic initiatives for the church. Now Janaina's tiny stove in Air Force housing her husband, Jose, is an Air Force trainer is on for hours at a time as she bakes three-layer wedding cakes that sell for $125 or sugar cookies for birthday parties. Her business, "Delicias De Mama" ("Mama's Delights"), is a family project. Jose and Elias, their oldest son, help bake cakes, while Jose Aaron, the middle child, does many of the dishes. "It is very messy and the dishes pile up," he said with a smile. "I have to wash a lot of dishes." "The business is part of our lifestyle now," his father said. "It's a way of developing our family. Janaina is making something she loves, and our whole family enjoys what she is doing and helping her." The family is now working to become debt free and save money to expand the business and buy a home in five years. "The self-reliance classes were the first step to starting my dream," Janaina said. "Really, without the help of the church it would have been extremely difficult if not impossible. I am extremely grateful." Mercedes Perez has been the stake self-reliance specialist. She said dozens of church members have launched businesses since 2014 because of the church's self-reliance program. "I've seen a lot of people improve their lives," she said. "I've seen a big change in Janaina and others, in their self-confidence." For the church in Uruguay and elsewhere, its teachings about self-reliance and lifting the poor are inseparable from its doctrine. Since 2015, the church has helped 1,500 Uruguayans start businesses, find better jobs or obtain additional education pursuits or take finance courses, Riley said. Additionally, LDS Charities, sponsored by the church, has helped more than 450,000 Uruguayans with health services, emergency response, wheelchair donations and vision care since 1985. The church had 105,239 members in Uruguay as of April 1. It has 55 congregations in Montevideo, home to more than one-third of Uruguay's 3.3 million people. Is there any reason to have faith in the future of the world where societies across the globe celebrate the secular and shun faith in the public square? Many argue that there is little faith left in the world. I disagree completely. While faith is generally described as a belief in something not seen, I have seen faith in the world this week in South America. Traveling with Russell M. Nelson, president and prophet of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints on his global ministry tour to Peru, Bolivia, Paraguay, Uruguay and Chile, I have witnessed faith in the world, and that gives me faith in the future of the world. I have also seen faith in the world in Californias Silicon Valley, not exactly a burgeoning bastion of religiosity. Salesforce.com has discovered the power of faith in the lives and performance of its employees beginning with one woman of faith who was willing to ask, Would anyone like to pray with me? Sue Warnke, director of infrastructure documentation at Salesforce, is part of the Faithforce group. What started as a few people praying has blossomed into a group that includes employees from around the world and across the religious spectrum. Warnke said, I can bring my whole, authentic self, the most important parts of that self, to work. What a remarkable thing: to allow faith at work! I recently interviewed my friend Arthur Brooks, economist and president of American Enterprise Institute. Arthur once asked His Holiness, the Dalai Lama, how to deal with the anger and contempt that seem to be manifest in the angry and divisive rhetoric of the day. The Dalai Lama replied, The answer to contempt is warm heartedness. From a tiny and oppressed country, this man of faith influences people the world over because he believes in the goodness of people and has faith that faith can influence everyone, including the leaders of nations and everyday citizens everywhere. In Bolivia, I saw more than one hundred buses and an array of vehicles, many which would not be street legal anywhere else on the planet, that carried thousands of faith-filled people for many hours and countless, rugged miles to be nourished by a prophet and the good word of God. Most arrived four, five or six hours early so they could be in place for the devotionals. In order to be on time, two young missionaries, who serve in a remote village of Paraguay, embarked on an adventure that took them 38 hours by boat and another 10 hours by bus. They did it because of their belief. When asked following the meeting if such travel was worth it just to meet and hear President Nelson, one companion replied, Yes! We would do it all again! To which his companion quipped, Yes. Well, we are going to have to do it again. They were ready to travel another 48 hours back to their area in faith and with faith that they can make a difference. Their faith personified the words of Robert Frost, I have promises to keep and miles to go before I sleep. Neighbors helping a neighbor in need, a friend serving a friend, communities coming together to strengthen the weak and the weary is reason to have faith and hope in a better world. Such faith in the world isnt limited to South America. In the past six months alone people of faith have gathered around the world. In one of the seemingly most secular and least religious cities in America, Seattle, Washington, more than 50,000 crowded into Safeco Field to hear their prophet speak. Groups of the faithful have assembled in places like Bangkok, Hong Kong, London, Jerusalem, Africa and in several cities across Canada. More important than the manifestation of faith required to travel to be in the presence of a world religious leader are the lives these people of faith actually live because of their faith. In Uruguay, I had the opportunity to ask a question of Sergio Rubin, the biographer of Pope Francis, who had just finished interviewing President Nelson as a world religious leader. I asked Rubin about his interaction with Mother Theresa and how her faith became such a powerful force and influence in the world. Rubin responded, Words are carried by the wind. Mother Theresa was a woman of action. Mother Theresa developed deep faith, spoke little, acted always and as a result the lives of many were blessed, and faith in the world increased. Elder Gary E. Stevenson, a member of the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles, and his wife Lesa are also traveling alongside President Nelson and his wife Wendy on the global ministry tour. In talking about how faith is manifest in the world, Elder Stevenson recently said, Whenever our neighbors are in distress temporally or spiritually, we run to their aid. We bear one anothers burdens that they may be light. We mourn with those who mourn. We comfort those who stand in need of comfort. The Lord lovingly expects this of us. And the day will come when we will be held accountable for the care we take in ministering to his flock. Neighbors helping a neighbor in need, a friend serving a friend, communities coming together to strengthen the weak and the weary is reason to have faith and hope in a better world. People of faith, regardless of sect or denomination, are blessed with an anchor in their lives. During difficult days or trying times, faith enables individuals to stand strong and ultimately move forward. The Book of Mormon, a book of scripture translated by Joseph Smith Jr. through whom the Church of Jesus Christ was restored, contains the words of a prophet named Ether who lived in the ancient Americas. He wrote, Wherefore, whoso believeth in God might with surety hope for a better world, yea, even a place at the right hand of God, which hope cometh of faith, maketh an anchor to the souls of men, which would make them sure and steadfast, always abounding in good works, being led to glorify God (Ether 12:4). That anchor of faith leads to lives of certainty, resiliency, upward mobility and desires to abound in good works through service to others. Across South America, the church has seen many manifestations emanating from its members faith impacting the world in which they live. The nearly 600,000 members living in Chile have been part of that manifestation of faith. The church and its members have rallied, served and lifted their fellow citizens of all faiths, and of no faith, during times of earthquake, tsunami and flood, while continually working to alleviate the plight of the poor, strengthening families, improving communities and providing sustenance to the suffering. These are acts of living faith. The global ministry tour appropriately concludes in Concepcion, Chile, on Sunday with the dedication of a new temple a holy place set aside for the highest and holiest expressions of faith. The temple will bless the country and provide an anchor to the people in a challenging, confusing and chaotic society. The temple and the members who will worship there will be witnesses that faith in the future of the world begins with faith being present and flourishing in the world. MURRAY The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints donated $1.5 million to the American Red Cross on Friday for 10 new emergency response vehicles, including one based in Salt Lake City. "This gift is a testament to our great trust and respect for the American Red Cross," Bishop Dean M. Davies, first counselor in the church's Presiding Bishopric, said at a news conference at a Red Cross blood donation center. The Red Cross and the church also renewed a three-year memorandum of understanding to extend their partnership to provide disaster relief. The working relationship between the two organizations dates back to World War I. "I cannot thank you enough for this gift. It means all the world to us," said American Red Cross CEO Cliff Holtz. The new state-of-art emergency response vehicles will be deployed coast to coast as part of a Red Cross fleet numbering about 400 around the country. They will replace old, rundown trucks that have been heavily used over the years. "These vehicles will be the first line of defense for the Red Cross to provide mobile feeding and mobile distribution of critical supplies in times of disaster," Holtz said. Bishop Davies and Holtz said the church and the Red Cross have shared missions to alleviate suffering for people in need. "It's in our DNA. It's in their DNA," the bishop said. Holtz said the longstanding partnership with the church covers all of the services Red Cross delivers, including disaster support, money, donations of time and organizing blood drives. Red Cross and church volunteers often find themselves arriving at the site of disasters and emergencies not far apart, most recently in the aftermath of hurricanes Florence and Michael in the Southeast. "We are almost always at the same place at the same time because our missions are so similar, and the best thing about this is because we work in partnership with each other, we can take our resources and multiply the effects of both," Holtz said. "By ourselves, we would be a one. By itself, the church would be a one. Together we're a three." The Red Cross has 100 memorandums of understanding with faith-based and community organizations and other groups around the nation. Holtz said the partnership with The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints is unique. Bishop Davies said it feels "really, really good" to renew the agreement. "We're thrilled because these people do this because they care, it's not because they're trying to draw any attention to themselves," he said. "It's all about getting the services to people in need." SALT LAKE CITY As part of a push to reduce opioid addiction, federal and state officials are encouraging Utahns to dispose of their expired or unused drugs on National Prescription DrugTake BackDay on Saturday. Forty-five extra prescription drug drop-off sites will be made available in Utah, in addition to 133 such locations accessible year-round, in a blitz coordinated by the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration to get people to rid their homes of unused pills that can, among other things, serve as fodder for painkiller addictions. Utah health authorities ask that old prescription medications be disposed of at drop-off locations because flushing them down the toilet can harm the environment, and pills thrown in the garbage sometimes still end up within reach of someone who is addicted. "People know to look in garbages, especially if it's still intact in a bottle with a label that says oxycodone," according to Angela Stander, prescription drug overdose prevention coordinator with the state Department of Health. She said at-home disposal should only be considered when significant precautions are used, such as including medications with an undesirable item such as a used diaper, and should never be thrown away inside the bottle they were stored in. The extra number of drop-off sites that will be available Saturday include grocery stores, city halls, and police departments and precinct offices. Many police agencies in Utah also have drop-offs available year-round. The biannual push for a massive drop-off of medication is designed largely to increase awareness about the importance of not leaving unused pills sitting around at home, said Diana Graalum, clinical pharmacy manager for MedSavvy, a pharmaceuticals consumer's guide based in Oregon. "What we have is some evidence that medications that are being held such as these have been used by family or friends maybe not with the knowledge of the person who had that medicine in their cabinet," Graalum told the Deseret News. In fact, 2014 data from the Utah Department of Health shows that 74 percent of Utahns "who are misusing or abusing opioids stated they got them through a family member or friend," Stander said. State health officials are pushing to reduce excessive opioid prescriptions, she said, but patients must play a part by being responsible with what they do take home. "Part of that solution to the overprescribing problem is getting rid of them," Stander said of unused opioids. In addition to putting addicted people at risk, unused opioids sitting in an unsafe location at home can also be a risk to unaware children or curious teenagers, Graalum said. Graalum added that unused nonpainkiller prescription medications also provide unforeseen dangers. For example, expired blood pressure or heart medication may confuse a patient as to which pills they already have or have not taken, she said. Graalum said people's tendency to save old medications may arise from a desire to "not to throw things away, not to waste," but that "what in other situations might be a good habit" is, in fact, unsafe with medicine. Stander said some like to hold on to unused medications, "fearful of rainy days," but "the fear (of) addiction and overdose should be bigger." "We know statistically that that's a higher risk than relapsing into pain and not having something (for it)," she said. Lisa Nichols, executive director of community health for Intermountain Healthcare, said for opioids that must be kept in the home due to active use, theft is best guarded against by storing them in a locked cabinet and keeping an inventory of how much medication is on hand. Intermountain, which has created 25 year-round drop-off locations at pharmacies around the state, as well as 14 at other locations with various partners, has collected 22,000 pounds of prescription drugs dropped off in the last 18 months, Nichols said. In Utah, Nichols said, "I think there really is a growing awareness of the danger of prescription opioids and the need to safely store and dispose of prescription medications." The U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration is coordinating National Prescription Drug Takeback Day, held each April and October, as part of its larger 360 Strategy initiative a campaign with a goal to confront opioid addiction by focusing on "law enforcement, diversion and community outreach." The agency says 6.2 million Americans misused prescription drugs in 2016. "(We've) had a substantial amount of pills that have been brought back" on designated takeback days, said Ciara Gregovich, a community outreach coordinator for the Drug Enforcement Administration. Utah Lt. Gov. Spencer Cox announced this month that there were 237 prescription overdose deaths in the state in 2017, though that number has declined for three consecutive years. Additionally, there were 159 fatal overdose deaths connected to heroin in Utah in 2017, representing the first decrease in those types fatalities in the state in seven years. Utah was one of just nine states where overall opioid overdose deaths declined from 2016 to 2017. Those who want to locate a prescription drug drop-off site, regardless of whether it is available year-round or only this coming Saturday, can do so at www.utahtakeback.org/collection.php. Editor's note: Deseret News staff writer Tad Walch, together with Church News Editor Sarah Weaver and photojournalist Jeff Allred, is chronicling the South American ministry of President Russell M. Nelson of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints and the impact the church is having in various countries. He reports today from Uruguay. MONTEVIDEO, Uruguay President Russell M. Nelson condemned religious violence during a wide-ranging interview of the Latter-day Saint leader conducted here Friday by the biographer of Pope Francis. "The Catholics and the members of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, we need to work together to stem the tide of violence," President Nelson told Sergio Rubin, author of the international bestselling authorized biography, "Pope Francis: Conversations with Jorge Bergoglio." "The teachings of the Lord are clear," President Nelson said after Rubin asked him about extremists whose violence is motivated by religion. "There is to be no contention, no disputation." He has repeated that phrase several times on this five-nation tour of South America, teaching the church's missionaries here that Jesus Christ's first sermon in the Americas included seven injunctions against contention and disputation. "We should love one another," he told Rubin on Friday. "So violence has no place in society." Rubin asked him how he managed to cope with reports of violence. "That is incomprehensible," President Nelson said. "Hatred, violence, murder: All are against the teachings of the Lord." He also called mass shootings "a great offense to God." He also said that Muslims unfairly suffer discrimination for the bad actions of radicalized Muslims. "They are our brothers and sisters," President Nelson said, "and we dont like adversarial proceedings between them or us." Rubin, a high-profile Argentine journalist with dual Italian citizenship, spent 50 minutes asking President Nelson a broad array of questions ranging from immigration to the church's new temple in Rome and from abortion to the faith's growth in South America. Rome Temple On immigration, President Nelson said, "We teach that we should build projects of cooperation instead of fences of opposition," adding, "I don't like fences." The Catholic Church did not block the Latter-day Saints from building a temple in Rome, the heart of Catholicism. "We appreciate the kindness of the pope, the Vatican," President Nelson said. "They have been most gracious and welcoming to us." The temple will open in March, and Rubin called it an exercise in interfaith coexistence. As a Jesuit, his biographer said Pope Francis comes from a tradition of establishing bridges with other faiths and cultures and had a good relationship with other Christian religions and faiths in Argentina. President Nelson agreed with Rubin's suggestion that the two faiths are working closer together than ever and invited Rubin to the temple open house in January or February. Rubin asked whether the U.S. Supreme Court might reverse abortion laws, but President Nelson said it appears to be settled law. "I don't see that as a very likely possibility," he said, "but nonetheless we teach our people to have respect for human life from conception to the grave. It's a sacred matter and people offend the Creator when they interfere with his plans, so we strongly support the sacredness of the body. Unfortunately, we're a minority, so... ." Rubin referred to President Nelson multiple times as Dr. Russell or Dr. Nelson, and when he followed up with a second abortion question, the heart surgeon in President Nelson surfaced. "We teach them each body is a temple of God," he said. "As a doctor, I know that little fetus has life. About two weeks after conception, a little heart starts to beat. For us, that's a very sacred thought." President Nelson expressed optimism when the journalist said religion is under retreat in many nations. "Generally speaking, the family is under attack and religion is under attack," President Nelson said, "but we are confident the family will prevail and religion will prevail." Rubin asked him if he'd seen material wealth lead people to think they can do with out religion. "I've seen that shift," President Nelson said. "Now the center of gravity has moved to the southern hemisphere. South America and Africa are strong in their faith." He said the church is expanding in South America because people here feel a closeness to the people of the Book of Mormon, and that he undertook his five-nation trip on the continent to visit some of the church's members here. More than 120,000 South American Latter-day Saints have turned out to see him in person and via video feeds to meetinghouses. "When I was born in 1924, there were zero members in South America," he said. Now there are 3 million-plus." After the interview, Rubin said he enjoyed his interview with President Nelson. "I think he's very warm, very nice," Rubin said. "He's a man of faith, hes a man of the spiritual world, and this means that he conveys at a very special frequency very human and way beyond the human way. It's always nice to talk to a person like that. Like every church, The Church of Jesus Christ has its peculiarities and differences but the truth is, at the core, all religions have the same teachings. Religions teach peace, brotherhood. Its good that The Church of Jesus Christ wants to spread spirituality to the world. The church shows characteristics of solidarity." Rubin said he would use portions of his interview with President Nelson in Clarin, the newspaper he works for in Buenos Aires. It's possible he discuss it on his radio, show, too. He said a lack of media coverage and resulting ignorance leads Latter-day Saints to experience some prejudice as a minority in South America. "(The church has) to work every day to be better known," Rubin said. "I had the privilege to speak face to face with the leader of the church, but not everybody has this opportunity. But by using the media and, if possible, personal contact with members of the church, knowledge will help reduce prejudice." Ten Syrians have been injured as a result of militants mortar fire in the city of Aleppo, the head of the Russian Center for Syrian reconciliation said, Sputnik reported. "As a result of the mortar fire of the residential areas of the city of Aleppo, 10 civilians have been injured," Lt. Gen. Vladimir Savchenko said at a press briefing. He pointed out that illegal armed groups operating in the rebel-held province of Idlib continued to violate the ceasefire regime despite the agreements on the cessation of hostilities. "Over the past day, terrorists attacked Ikko, Jubb al-Zarur (three times) and Jubb-al-Ahmar in the Latakia province, western outskirts and the Al-Khalidiyah district of Aleppo and Tall-Bazam in the Hama province Besides, there was a shelling attack against Tadef, Aleppo province, from illegal armed formations seizing positions near the town of al-Bab," Savchenko noted. The official called on commanders of illegal armed formations to stop armed provocations and join the settlement process. After a year-long hiatus, Lenovo has finally started launching smartphones unders its own brand name, instead of Moto. The company recently launched the Lenovo K9 and A5 budget smartphones in India and is now readying to launch the Z5 Pro in China. The smartphones launch is slated for November 1 and an image of the same was teased by Lenovo VP, Chang Cheng on Weibo, revealing the phones slide-out camera design, similar to the Xiaomi Mi Mix 3 and Oppo Find X. Looks like slide-out cameras are the next big design trend for smartphone manufacturers gunning for bezel-less displays without a notch. Samsung, on the other hand, is moving towards holes in the display to embed camera sensors and go around the infamous notch. Coming back to the teased Lenovo Z5 Pro, the phone can be seen with a slider display which slides to reveal the front facing cameras. It is not clear whether the slider will be electronic or manual. Rumour has it that the Z5 Pro will also feature four cameras at the back with 2x telephoto zoom. No other details have leaked about the phone so far, but now that the teaser is outed, that might change. The Lenovo Z5 Pro will first launch in Beijing, China and there is no word on its global unveil yet. Apple launched three flagship smartphones this year and even though they come bearing a super premium price tag, none of the new iPhones are 5G ready. The current crop of iPhones - iPhone XS, iPhone XS Max and iPhone XR - may not be future-proof for when 5G networks actually start rolling out sometime in 2020, but Samsungs next set of flagship devices surely will. A new report by Bloomberg reveals that the South Korean electronics giant may launch three flagship smartphones next year - one 5G-ready premium flagship, one cheaper flagship and a foldable smartphone which has been rumoured for over three years now. This, according to Bloomberg, is Samsungs strategy to take on rival Apple in the premium smartphone segment. The report claims that Samsung is in talks with Verizon in the US to launch the Galaxy S10 with a fifth-generation wireless chipset. Samsungs goal is to choose the biggest wireless carrier in the US to support its 5G technology. In India, Samsung is expected to bring 5G support to the said 2019 flagship smartphones in partnership with Reliance Jio. At the ongoing India Mobile Congress (IMC), Samsung announced its plan for Indias first large-scale 5G trial, scheduled to take place in the first quarter of 2019. Our partnership with Reliance Jio has empowered millions, making their everyday lives better. Our roadmap for 5G showcases our strong commitment to India. We will continue to be a partner in Government of India's Digital India mission, said HC Hong, President and CEO, Samsung Electronics SouthWest Asia at the sidelines of IMC 2018. The Bloomberg report goes on to say that the Galaxy S10 (codenamed Beyond) will come with a 5.8-inch OLED display curved on both sides and an in-display fingerprint sensor, confirming multiple leaks and rumours which also predict the same. Further revealing the smartphones specs, the report states that the S10 will sport a triple camera setup on the back, while the front cameras will be embedded within the display. This sounds about right since Samsung recently revealed its smartphone design roadmap for 2019 which showcased in-display cameras to avoid the notch. The company also teased the Galaxy A8s with holes in the display to house the front camera, instead of a notch, signalling that the company is ready with the technology. While the premium 5G-enabled version of the S10 could come in two sizes - regular and plus - the cheaper version will shed Samsungs signature dual-curved display. The Galaxy S10 will launch with Android Pie on board and Samsung is also experimenting with the idea of removing the headphone jack just like Apple and other flagship-makers like OnePlus. The third upcoming flagship device from Samsung would be the foldable phone which is said to be codenamed Winner and come without a fingerprint sensor. Samsung is debating between two prototypes in the final stretch: one longer horizontally and the other vertically when unfolded, while both open from side and side, states the report. The phone may also allow users to check their messages and notifications without flipping the phone open. Bloomberg says that the prototype weighs more than 200 grams and its hinge has recently completed internal tests of folding more than 200,000 times. Since the report describes the prototype of the foldable Samsung phone in a lot of detail, we feel that the publication got to see it. This discredits previous reports of the said device launching next month given that the company is at the prototyping stage right now. Armed with these unique flagships, Samsung could have a strong opening to 2019 as the Galaxy S10 flagships are expected to be launched at MWC in February. These premium smartphones, combined with the companies assertive push to combat Chinese players in the budget and mid-range smartphone categories, makes Samsung a company to watch out for in 2019. Walking around at the Indian Mobile Congress 2018, one cant help but feel optimistic about the future of connectivity. India is evolving rapidly with a growing digital footprint thats spanning the length and breadth of the subcontinent. Key industry partners like Huawei, Nokia, Qualcomm, Samsung and a lot more are ready to bring in their technology breakthroughs to support the ongoing digital revolution. Reliance Jio already paved the way for high-speed internet and crystal-clear voice calls with its LTE networks, and now, its time for 5G. The next generation of wireless communications technology has been much talked about. When it arrives, it will bring high speed, instantaneous connectivity with ultra-low latency along with high capacity and massive coverage. Thats the promise the 5G future holds, but do we really need such high speeds when the country seems to be doing just fine with 4G speeds? I mean, I can see people merrily streaming videos on the way to their work, speaking endlessly on their phones and speaking to smart speakers. Why 5G, then? Thats just what the delegates and exhibitors at the Indian Mobile Congress are trying to address. The four halls of the venue off New Delhis Aerocity is packed with service providers, OEMs, infrastructure organisations, policymakers, etc. They are all deliberating on how the transformative technology of 5G should be put in use. Most of the booths here at IMC 2018, as a result are showcasing the various scenarios and use-cases and scenarios where 5G will play a key role. For instance, Samsungs booth has an interesting showcase of an agricultural drone. The drone has a UHD 4K camera attached to it and provided a farmer is rich enough, he can fly the drone to inspect the crop health on a macro level and even spray fertilisers without having to go around the entire field manually. The drone works on 5G to leverage the lower latency, making the controls almost seamless for the farmer. It also leverages 5Gs beam forming ability to stay connected in real time while in air. There are also temperature and soil sensors that work as narrow-band IoT (NB-IoT) devices. Samsung also has demos of a giant blimp that stay stationary up in the air and can do a lot of things. One of the key use-cases of the blimp is for surveillance. It has multiple cameras attached to it that run facial recognition algorithms to detect wrongdoings in a public place. It can also be used to beam connectivity down in crowded places and also double up as a streaming device for a sporting event in a stadium. All this powered by the high-speed connectivity of 5G. Moving ahead, you find Huaweis booth where the company showcased some really cool use-cases of 5G. Primary among them is an augmented-reality based holographic communication. Thanks to the low-latencies of less than 1ms 5G promises to bring forth, communicating with a life-sized hologram could finally be a reality. Straight out a sci-fi novel, into the hands of the people. Huawei is already collaborating with operators like Airtel to lay down the infrastructure for 5G. At its booth, it has demos of assistive learning, gaming, broadcasting live events, etc. All these requires end-to-end network support with low latency and high volumes of data transfer at super high speeds. Intels booth located right across the isle has a more focused approach to 5G. The company has solutions for almost every step of 5Gfying the country, right down from the cloud, to the core network, the access network, the wireless technology itself as well as the smart devices that will eventually leverage 5G. The company also has reference designs for 5G infrastructure including the 5G NR (new radio) and an unique implementation of using high-tension power lines to deliver 5G connectivity. Furthermore, Intel has solutions to make 5G an alternative to fiber optics. In places where fiber cant reach, 5G radios can be used to achieve similar speeds. The most interesting demo in Intels booth is something that the company claims is already in use. Its a smart classroom, in a school in Bengaluru where a camera studies the actions of every student in the classroom to know if they are paying attention, if they are sitting, standing, raising their hand, etc. The cameras run facial recognition algos to detect the actions and transmit to either the teacher or even the parents. According to Intel, it helps make the job of a teacher easier. Honestly though, putting an end to cheating in exams is the only real use of the application I could think of. Nokia has been at the forefront of Indias ongoing LTE revolution. The company, along with Ericsson and Huawei are the principal proponents of the network infrastructure for high-speed internet. At its booth in IMC 2018, Nokia is showcasing a 5G-ready network with live speeds of over 5 Gbps and around 1.28ms latency. Using the network, Nokia is showcasing live use cases of VR gaming, an industrial robot for balancing a ball, as well as a concept of a smart ambulance and a smart rural health camp. The latter scenario is tailor-made for India as most of the rural hospitals remain understaffed. With the use of high-definition cameras and super-fast connectivity, Nokia believes it can stream footage from the camp to a doctor sitting in a city hospital who can then take stock of the vital stats and other information and provide remote treatment. The ambulance is also doing something similar. To make use of the critical golden hour at the time of an accident, the ambulance will stream information to a doctor at the hospital who can then start the treament immediately upon the patients arrival. Qualcomms use-cases are the most practical and somewhat more realistic. At a roundtable in its booth, Qualcomm showed its 5G reference design for smartphones. The design supports both 4G and 5G (both sub-6 and mmWave bands) to make them versatile enough to work in any environment. Then it has the small cells that are basically miniaturised versions of large base stations that can be installed both indoors and outdoors to increase capacity and coverage. The US-based chipset company has designed chips for mesh-network routers as well (Nest, Netgear Orby) where Rajen Vagadia, Qualcomms Country Head for India and SAARC told Digit it has taken learnings from cellular networks to make home Wi-Fi networks smoother and seamless. Airtel and Vodafone too have their own visions of a 5G-ready future. Airtel has a 5G-ready home powered by its 1Gbps V-fibre where a host of IoT devices are installed to demonstrate how a smart home will look like and function. Its something that the company also demonstrated at MWC 2018 in Barcelona earlier this year. Vodafone too has similar solutions but according to a statement by Vodafone-Idea, the focus right now is consolidating the networks is top priority after the merger both the companies recently underwent. Finally, theres the elephant in the room Reliance Jio. Its the reason for the surge in the industrys interest in 5G. The company is the only one to have a network infrastructure that is already 5G ready and in its booth at IMC 2018, Jio is showcasing a diverse range of use-cases. Theres applications for just about every sector from the smart home where Jio-fiber powered smart TVs allow TV-to-TV calling, smart hospitals, classrooms, police stations and what not. The most intriguing is the deployment of facial recognition tech that Jio is pioneering in collaboration with Cisco and Radisys. It is poised to go live in four of the smart cities that Jio has bidded for to develop and will use multiple cameras to keep an eye on people in public places. Thats a step further than what Samsung has demonstrated in the form of the blimp and can be used as an all-round surveillance tech. Combined with databases of peoples faces and names (read: Aadhaar), the cameras can identify the person it sees and even warn authorities of any wrongdoing. Based on the demos and showcases by the telecom industry at the Indian Mobile Congress, one thing is pretty clear the 5G future is going to be exciting. Machines will talk to other machines, automated vehicles, smart everything (homes, hospitals, police stations and what not), creepy surveillance tech and of course, super-high speeds. Whats not clear is when these technology will actually come into play and become mainstream. Deliberations are on to start field testing of 5G by the first half of 2019 and industry partners are hopeful that at least the smartphones and laptops will be 5G-ready by 2020. In India though, telecom companies are in a bit of a fix. Apart from Jio, nobody else is really making any money as data costs have come crashing down for the consumer ever since Ambani opened the floodgates to 4G. There is a spectrum auction early next year, but analysts and observers are skeptical whether it will have much impact since most telecom companies have crippling debt. Nevertheless, IMC 2018 is proving to be all about preparing India for the 5G future with the hope of generating enough demand so that the companies have enough incentive to build, develop and deploy the next generation wireless technology soon enough in India. Bharti Airtel Q2 net down 65% at Rs119 cr; revenue falls 6.2% to Rs20,422.5 cr Telecom major Bharti Airtel has reported a net profit of Rs118.8 crore in the fiscal second quarter ended 30 September 2018, registering a 65.4 per cent decline from the Rs343 crore net profit of the corresponding quarter of the previous year. Revenue for the quarter was 6.2 per cent lower at Rs20,422.5 crore compared to the Rs21,776.9 crore in the year-ago quarter, on the back of falling revenue per user. While its domestic average revenue per user (ARPU) fell 28.8 per cent to Rs101 during the quarter, ARPU from African operations dropped to $3 from $3.2 last year. Led by our focus on quality customers through simplified pricing and content partnerships, ARPU decline has moderated in this quarter. We remain focused on driving quality base growth with value adding propositions for our customers," said Gopal Vittal, MD and CEO, India & South Asia, Bharti Airtel. The earnings report comes a day after the company announced that six global investors, including Warburg Pincus, Temasek, Singtel and SoftBank Group International, had agreed to invest $1.25 billion in Airtel Africa through a primary equity issuance. The investment would be used to reduce Airtel Africa's existing debt of approximately $5 billion and for growth of its African operations, the company had said on Wednesday. Net revenue from its Africa business grew 13.2 per cent year-on-year in the quarter ended 30 September 2018, the company said. Bharti Airtel, till recently the countrys top telecom company, has been relegated to second position after the second and third larges telcos Vodafone India and Idea Cellular merged their operatios to form Indias largest telecom operator. We will reinforce the party with new people in a year,- former Prime Minister Bidzina Ivanishvili said during his meeting with journalists on Friday, InterPressNews reported. According to him, his return to power has two goals : the first goal is to destroy the illusion that anybody can blackmail the government and the second one is to improve the management of the party. We will the party with people in one year. I will reinforce it with powerful people and will improve the management. It will destroy the illusion that anybody can overturn the state easily, Bidzina Ivanishvili said. The chairman of the ruling Georgian Dream party also slammed the members of the National Movement and Mikheil Saakashvili for using insulting words about ruling party-backed presidential candidate Salome Zurabishvili. Govt working on new agri export policy to boost farmer's income: Suresh Prabhu The centre is working on a new Agriculture Export Policy as part of its efforts to double farmers income, minister of commerce and industry and civil aviation Suresh Prabhu said in New Delhi on Thursday. The government, he said, is preparing agro specific zones under the new Agriculture Export Policy which will be unveiled soon. The minister was speaking at the inauguration of Biofach India, which is the worlds largest event on organic industry. The event is jointly organised by Agricultural and Processed Food Products Export Development Authority (APEDA) and Indo-German Chamber of Commerce. India produces nearly 600 million tonnes of agri products, including horticultural produce, but most of it is wasted at present. He said the strategy is to increase farmers income by doubling it and reducing wastage of food products to the bare minimum. Alongside, the government is also focusing on exporting agricultural products. The ideal way to boost farm exports, Prabhu said, is to cater to the niche market of organic food. India is bestowed with the potential to produce all varieties of organic produce due to the countrys varied agro climatic regions. India also has the added advantage of inheriting a tradition of organic farming. It is a great advantage for organic producers to tap the market, which is growing steadily in both domestic and export markets. India ranks first in terms of total number of organic producers and 9th in terms of worlds organic agricultural land. The government, he said, has implemented the National Programme for Organic Production (NPOP) which is certified by the European Commission and United States Department of Agriculture (USDA). Due to these certifications Indias organic products are accepted by importing countries. In 2017-18 India produced around 1.70 million tonnes of certified organic products, which includes all varieties of food products like oilseeds, sugarcane, cereals and millets, cotton, pulses, medicinal plants, tea, fruits, spices, dry fruits, vegetables and coffee. Total volume of organic exports during 2017-18 was 4.58 lakh tonnes and brought in $515.44 million. Indias organic products are exported to the USA, EU, Canada, Switzerland, Australia, Israel, South Korea, Vietnam, New Zealand and Japan. Buyers from 15 countries are participating in the3-day event being held from 25 to 27 October 2018 in New Delhi. This event showcases products like organic aqua culture, cashew, coconuts, tea and cocoa and oil seeds. Buyer-seller meets and an international conference are also being held alongside the main event. Please allow ads as they help fund our trusted local news content. Kindly add us to your ad blocker whitelist. If you want further access to Ireland's best local journalism, consider subscribing to our ePaper and/or free daily Newsletter . Support our mission and join our community now. Voters in Donegal are going to the polls across Donegal this Friday morning in the presidential election and constitutional referendum. In the Donegal constituency 119,318 people are registered to vote with a further 4,000 or so Donegal voters registered to vote in Sligo-Leitrim. Voting on Donegals island took place on Thursday while polling stations will be open today from 7am to 10pm. The referendum is on the Thirty-seventh Amendment of the Constitution (Repeal of offence of publication or utterance of blasphemous matter) Bill 2018. The counting of ballot papers for Donegal Constituency will begin at 9am sharp at The Aura Leisure Centre, Letterkenny on Saturday. A low turnout is expected as turnouts at Irish presidential elections are lower than general election turnouts. Voters are advised that ballot papers for the presidential election are white in colour and will feature the name and photo of each of the six candidates which should be numbered in order of preference. The six candidates in the presidential election are Peter Casey, Gavin Duffy, Joan Freeman, Sean Gallagher, the incumbent Michael D Higgins and Liadh Ni Riada. The ballot papers for the blasphemy referendum are green in colour with voters being asked clearly indicate their preference by marking the yes or no box. In terms of this, voters are being asked whether to remove or retain Article 40.6 of the Constitution which makes blasphemy an offence. There is no obligation on people to cast votes in both the presidential election and referendum and they are free to vote in just one if they wish. World Spina Bifida and Hydrocephalus day took place on Thursday. The aim of the day was to raise awareness and understanding about the conditions of Spina Bifida and Hydrocephalus. A Donegal man, Frank Larkin, has shared his inspirational story with us to inspire others with a disability. Go for it, follow the career dream you are after, encourages 47-year-old Frank Larkin who lives with Spina Bifida and is from Letterkenny in Donegal. I would never have dreamed I would be in front of groups of people delivering disability training but here I am, and I love it. My career guidance teacher in school, who was only able to see my wheelchair and my disability, said that I would be able to get a job at a desk working on a computer, Frank recalls. That was the height of the career advice I received. At the time, I hated computers and I wanted nothing to do with a job like that. My advice to anyone is to have an idea in your head as to what you want to do, do not let anyone else push an idea on you, especially if you are not interested in it. Rather than settling for second best, go for what you want and dont forget to look outside the box. For a couple of years after he completed his secondary education, Frank says that it was quite difficult for him to find his feet and it took him a while to find his first job. He then got a job operating the base in a taxi company and he was there for more than 10 years. It was shift work and it was good to be working and it was good to have money coming in. It was steady work and everyday was different. As well as answering the phone and dealing with customers, I also dealt with the taxi drivers and the payments they had to make to the taxi company, he says. My wife Pauline and I married in 2002 and while we were on honeymoon I expressed my feelings of how I had been unhappy in the job for a while. It was going nowhere, there was no progression. I wanted to do something completely different. Okay, it was a big risk to take as I had only just gotten married, but I decided to go to college at night time. I did a Frontline Management Diploma and I really enjoyed it. While working in the taxi company, I had done a couple of interviews for jobs in the disability sector. They were supervisory roles and I was always being told that the stumbling block was my lack of qualifications. In a couple of interviews, I came quite close to being successful but fell down on the qualifications. So, I decided to take on the course through the National College of Ireland at Letterkenny IT. It was brilliant, I really enjoyed it and it opened up a number of avenues for me. I was able to apply for jobs at a level I would never have dreamed of. I got a job in Buncrana as Development Officer with Cneasta, the Irish Council for training, development, and employment for persons with disabilities, continues Frank. This was initially a one-year contract and Frank had the brief of trying to source funding to keep the role going. That is where the difficulty lay. The job went well for the year, I got great feedback from the board, but I was just not able to source funding to continue on with the role. Frank then undertook a course in the IWA on disability awareness training and since then he has always considered himself as a disability awareness trainer. I then got a great opportunity about four years ago to do a course through the Donegal Centre for Independent Living on Disability Studies. This was a Level 7 qualification through Maynooth University my wife Pauline also holds this qualification. I am still doing disability training and I am now in the process of making it more structured and making it an actual business. I have someone working with me as a business partner who comes from a business and IT background, he says. We have been looking for funding, but the stumbling block is that a lot of funding streams require matching funding. So, we are now in the process of just going ahead to start delivering training to get an income stream which will then allow us to come up with matching funding. We will be delivering training to people with disabilities, to people working in disability, and to companies wishing to improve their customer experience for people with disabilities. Businesses in the private sector who provide disability training to staff can get a grant of 90% of the cost up to 20,000 in the first year and up to 80% in every subsequent year from the Department of Social Protection, he explains. Voluntary work Frank has also undertaken a lot of voluntary work with Donegal Centre for Independent Living he is currently delivering their Schools Awareness Programme to Transition Year students in Donegal and with Spina Bifida Hydrocephalus Ireland both locally and nationally. Frank accepts that working life can present challenges for a person with a disability, however, they can be overcome with a resilient and determined attitude. I would have had problems, not often thankfully, but there were periods where I was not well. Particularly in my early years after school I was in hospital a lot, that impacts on your ability to look for work and on your confidence I did not know if I could hold any job down, he admits. It can be difficult for a person with a disability and there will be problems with work, but you just have to keep pushing on and dont give up. *For more information on the Donegal Branch of SBHI contact Caroline Lafferty on 087-2325659. A Queens University student from Dungloe has won the first 'Almac McKervey Award' for Excellence in Organic Chemistry. The award, a commemoration to the life and work of one of Ireland's most distinguished scientists, Professor Tony McKervey, who passed away in June 2017, was made to Queen's University Belfast Medicinal Chemistry student, Eilish Bonner. The award was initiated by Almac Group, the global contract pharmaceutical development and manufacturing organisation. Eilish, who is originally from Dungloe in County Donegal, was presented with the award by Dr Stephen Barr, Managing Director, Almac Sciences. She also received a 1,500 bursary towards her tuition fees and a 12 month placement with Almac to gain industry experience and mentorship. Eilish commented: "I am delighted and honoured to accept this prestigious award - particularly in its first year. I have enjoyed my degree at Queen's thus far and am excited to be gaining hands on experience during my placement at Almac and working alongside so many chemistry experts. Professor McKervey was such an inspiration to students and I am humbled to receive an award in his name." Professor McKervey was an esteemed academic and an industry expert, having received the ASTRA Award of the Royal Dublin Society in 1986 and the Boyle-Higgins Gold Medal of the Institute of Chemistry of Ireland in 1993. He also authored over 270 published research papers in world-renowned journals. Dr Barr said: "We chose to name an award after our esteemed colleague and friend, Tony, as a fitting tribute to someone whose leadership, exemplary work ethic and kind demeanour inspired many of us during his long service with Almac. "It is lovely to see an outstanding student like Eilish be recognised for her achievements through the generosity of this award, given in the honour of one of our most renowned graduates in the sciences. The stars of the past are helping to shine a light on the stars of the future, commented Professor Mark Price, Pro-vice Chancellor for the Faculty of Engineering and Physical Sciences. - T. S. Eliot Thoughts After Lambeth "The World is trying the experiment of attempting to form a civilized but non-Christian mentality. The experiment will fail; but we must be very patient in awaiting its collapse; meanwhile redeeming the time: so that the Faith may be preserved alive through the dark ages before us; to renew and rebuild civilization, and save the World from suicide." Dates for North Korean leader Kim Jong-uns visit to Russia are under consideration, Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Igor Morgulov told reporters on Friday, TASS reported. "Dates for the visit are under consideration, work on the matter continues," he said in response to a question concerning Kim Jong-uns visit to Russia. According to the Russian deputy foreign minister, he will hold a meeting with his North Korean counterpart Sin Hong-chol in Moscow next week. "Consultations on bilateral relations will be held. This is a planned meeting included in the two ministries consultations schedule. I expect to discuss the entire range of bilateral issues with my counterpart," Morgulov added. Dundalk for Change, a "non-partisan, community group who focus on issues that affect Dundalk people locally and nationally", have hit out at Independent TD Peter Fitzpatrick's stance on abortion legislation and urged the TD not to "use this bill for his election campaign as an Independent". Deputy Fitzpatrick Louth TD said that he was "alarmed" by some of the proposals laid out in the abortion bill and has said that TD's are "being rushed to vote on this legislation, with very little time being given to debating its contents." The Dundalk for Change group The Abortion Bill was passed in the Dail last Tuesday, October 23. 102 TD's voted in favour and 12 voted against, with seven TDs abstaining. The legislation was drawn up after a Referendum held in May which approved the removal of the constitutional ban on abortion in Ireland. In response to the local TD's comments, Syd Delz, and Philip Corrway, the chairpersons of Dundalk for Change said: "Peter Fitzpatrick claims the public was not visited for said legislation. The bill was published before the vote and we were constantly told by said Deputy that this will be what will happen if we vote against his wishes to not Repeal the eighth amendment. "Dundalk for change, formerly known as Dundalk for choice has sent Deputy Fitzpatrick several questions on this, he doesn't answer to, yet claims to speak for the broad public." "We harshly disagree with Deputy Fitzpatrick on his claim that the public is against this bill. Not once in the entire campaign was he willing to engage with parents who sought terminations due to fatal fetal abnormalities, instead, he walked out and refused to listen. "Not once was he willing to engage with the side canvassing for a yes vote or actually went to see his constituents at the door as multiple councillors and TDs did during the campaign. We strongly urge Deputy Fitzpatrick to not use this bill for his election campaign as an Independent. We are willing to discuss this matter with him as we always have been. 102 TDs also representatives of the public he speaks off voted for the bill in the Dail. He forgets to mention that only 12 didn't." The spokespersons for Dundalk for Change added: "Abortion has to be accessible. It is fundamentally wrong to allow healthcare professionals to not refer to colleagues that will provide them with the necessary care arrangements to get an abortion. "A regime like Italy will lead to people having to travel again for abortion care if they can't access it in a reasonable distance. Not referring means vital medical information of the person will not be available to GPs providing then for the patient. This will discriminate against disabled people, people in precarious domestic violence situations who simply don't have the means and time to travel as well as migrant and ethnic minorities in direct provision." Pro-Choice Dundalk was set up in 2017 to contribute towards the national abortion rights campaigns to canvas for the referendum in Ireland, and overturn the 8th amendment. The group transformed to Dundalk For Choice, before joining the national Together For Yes campaign, and then reverted back to Dundalk For Choice after the referendum. In September 2018, the group reverted their name to Dundalk For Change. They describe themselves as a "non-partisan, community group, and plan to focus on issues that affect us locally and nationally the housing crisis, ending direct provision, and many more." The threat of a strike by lecturers and staff is looking more likely at Dundalk Institute of Technology, following confirmation that members of the Dundalk IT Branch of the TUI are currently balloting for industrial action. The Dundalk Democrat contacted the chairperson of the Dundalk IT Branch of the TUI, Kenneth Sloane, to find out why the trade union is taking this route. Mr Sloane confirmed that the union has been in discussions with Institute management, in an attempt to "resolve serious difficulties arising from understaffing." He said, "We have repeatedly asked management to plan for and conduct staff recruitment to replace members leaving service due to retirement or maternity leave and other factors, since last May. "These requests for staff recruitment have not been meet with appropriate and timely action from Dundalk IT Senior Management, and have resulted in serious disruption to the delivery of modules to students this semester, which include classes not being delivered for weeks in certain modules due to the failure to replace staff in specific skills areas. "The failure to recruit necessary staff has also lead to overcrowding in practical classes which denies students access to learning resources and equipment. Mr Sloane continued, "In order to protect the academic quality of the programmes delivered in DkIT, of which staff are extremely proud and have maintained to a high standards despite years of under resourcing, members of the DkIT Branch of the TUI are currently balloting for industrial action, up to and including strike action, on the issue of the failure of DkIT Senior Management to plan and conduct the necessary recruitment to ensure programmes can be delivered fully and students get the compete education to which they are entitled." The Dundalk Democrat contacted the Institute for a comment on the TUI decision to ballot for industrial action. The response from DkIT was as follows: We can confirm that the Institute remains firmly committed to the delivery of the highest quality of education to our students at undergraduate and postgraduate level. "We continue to work together as an Institute to ensure that the welfare and success of our students and staff is prioritised at all times. "This is central to our core mission to support the continued economic, social and cultural development of the North Leinster-South Ulster region on the Belfast-Dublin corridor. The Students Union at DkIT was also contacted to find out if it would be supporting the industrial action by the TUI members but the SU is yet to reply. With the ever-increasing access to information at work, getting your message across, even internally, can be complicated. Business systems particularly those that focus on communication are pretty archaic and have been limited to email. Yet digital tools and platforms have revolutionisedthe way we communicate in our everyday lives, leading to shadow IT and many consumer-focused products being in the workplace. So what can businesses do to pivot, get ahead of the curve and create an environment that fosters communication and collaboration? Internal comms is no longer a nice-to-have, its a necessity The need for a tool to help teams and organisations communicate is a particular challenge faced by internal communication teams across Australia. The need for robust comms tools to keep up with the changing work environment, and the new generation of tech savvy professionals who have grown up using digital platforms, has never been more important. Yet there are still an alarming number of workplaces holding onto legacy communication systems instead of embracing more contemporary alternatives, often at enormous cost to bottom lines and corporate culture. For example, we still see large companies with severely outdated systems. In some businesses, their idea of internal comms is emailing all the managers in the business a PDF, asking the managers to print it off, hang it in the break room and ask all the employees to initial thepaper once theyve read it. There is a better way. And now were beginning to see a shift in strategy that encourages meaningful dialogue within companies and gives a voice to everyone in the company. Top down and bottom up Today, organisations are becoming increasingly conscious of the fact conventional communications tools and methods often lend themselves to top down bureaucratic styles of communication. As the corporate culture of communications becomes more connection driven, organisations are recognising the value of building communities from within the company and empowering employees to connect with one another regardless of their seniority. The next CEO of your company could be one of your frontline workers dont you want to hear what they have to say? At Facebook we understand the benefits of connecting individuals and communities alike and created Workplace by Facebook (Workplace) to help employers service that challenge. Now that employees are not tied to geographical locations, companies need a contemporary communications platforms that help colleagues connect across office locations, help parents stay connected whilst on parental leave, and ensure that employees on flexible workplace arrangementsarent forgotten. In turn companies see higher employee retention, happier staff, a more transparent culture and a sharing of ideas across all layers and levels of the company. Many companies are realising that by adopting robust and contemporary internal communications platforms, they can overcome some of their most burdensome communication challenges, while reinvigorating company culture and supporting a more efficient and productive workforce. What to look for in an internal communications tool Communication professionals have been calling out for platforms that can deliver content across a variety of mediums and spare our inboxes more emails. Current IT teams are looking for a best of breed solution focused on apps and services that are mobile-first. The diversity in communications needs to transcend text, instant messaging, live video, chat groups and much more. This is how individuals choose to consume information at home so it makes sense that the most effective internal communications strategies at work, are those that align with these existing preferences. One of the key benefits of Workplace is that many users are already incredibly familiar with Facebook. They know how it works and as result they dont need to learn a whole new platform, and businesses can save time and money on extensive on boarding and training. The way forward At Workplace by Facebook we believe organisations which are given the right communications tools, are empowered to create positive change at all levels of the business. This is why we have built a robust and versatile platform that can effectively respond to modernorganisations evolving communications strategies. Whether the objective is to increase productivity and efficiency, to improve corporate culture or the bottom line, Workplace by Facebook supports the constantly evolving communications needs oftodays businesses now and will continue to do so well into the future. Justice for the Khojaly Tragedy can be achieved if work in this direction continues, head of the Russia-Azerbaijan inter-parliamentary friendship group, the Russian State Duma deputy, Dmitry Savelyev, said today in an interview with Vestnik Kavkaza on the sidelines of the VI International Humanitarian Forum in Baku. I believe that justice in this issue can be achieved. 10 countries have already recognized this terrible tragedy as genocide. I'm confident that with joint efforts, with everyone's help, with help of Baku activists at various international platforms, we will be able to achieve world-wide recognition of this tragedy as genocide of the Azerbaijani people. This work is currently underway, we must continue it, Dmitry Savelyev urged. Just recently we attended the opening of a monument Turkey's Kayseri, dedicated to innocent victims of Khojaly. I said there, speaking to foreign students who study at Kayseri universities, among other people, that when they return to their countries, they should open the eyes of their politicians on what happened in Khojaly. I urged them to help us to achieve recognition of this tragedy as genocide of the Azerbaijani people, he said. He noted that this tragedy had such a huge scale that it cannot be forgotten, no matter how much time passes. Everyone knows about the tragedy in Belarusian village of Khatyn, when 139 people were burned in their own houses. Everyone remembers these 139 victims. 613 people were killed in Khojaly. It's impossible to calmly look at photos of this terrible tragedy," he concluded. Euro area net saving increased to 800 billion in the four quarters to the second quarter of 2018, compared with 765 billion in the four quarters to the previous quarter. Euro area net non-financial investment increased slightly to 407 billion, as increased investments by households and reduced disinvestments by government were only partly offset by decreased investment of corporations. Euro area net lending to the rest of the world increased to 400 billion in line with an increase of net saving which exceeded that of net non-financial investments. Household debt was lower at the end of the second quarter of 2018 compared to a year ago, both with respect to GDP and disposable income (the respective ratios stand at 57.9% and to 93.7%). Non-financial corporation debt declined to 136.5% of GDP, from 138.0% one year ago. Total euro area economy Euro area net saving increased to 800 billion (8.6% of euro area net disposable income) in the four quarters to the second quarter of 2018 compared with 765 billion in the four quarters to the previous quarter. Euro area net non-financial investment increased to 407 billion (4.4% of net disposable income), as increased investments by households and less negative net investment by government were partly offset by decreased investment of corporations. Euro area net lending to the rest of the world increased to 400 billion (4.3% of net disposable income) from 374 billion previously, reflecting the increase in net saving above that of net non-financial investments. Net lending of non-financial corporations increased from 231 billion to 235 billion (2.5% of net disposable income) while net lending by financial corporations decreased from 15 billion to 4 billion. Net lending by households remained unchanged at 215 billion (2.3% of net disposable income). In addition to the increased net lending by the total private sector, the increase of euro are net lending was also supported by the decreased net borrowing by the government sector (-0.6% of net disposable income, after -0.9% previously). Chart 1. Euro area saving, investment and net lending to the rest of the world (EUR billions, four-quarter sums) * Net saving minus net capital transfers to the rest of the world (equals change in net worth due to transactions). Households The annual growth rate of household financial investment stood at an unchanged rate of 1.9% in the second quarter of 2018. Households were net sellers of listed shares. They reduced their holdings of listed shares issued by OFIs and NFCs, while net purchases of shares issued by other sectors and the rest of the world were broadly stable. Households continued to sell debt securities in net terms in particular due to a reduction of household holdings of debt securities issued by MFIs (see Table 1 below and Table 2.2. in the Annex). The household debt-to-income ratio[1] continued to decrease, to 93.7% in the first quarter of 2018 from 94.0% in the first quarter of 2017, as disposable income grew faster than the outstanding amount of loans to households. Similarly the household debt-to-GDP ratio decreased, to 57.9% in the first quarter of 2018 from 58.5% in the first quarter of 2017 (see Chart 2). Table 1. Financial investment and financing of households, main items (annual growth rates) Financial transactions 2017 Q2 2017 Q3 2017 Q4 2018 Q1 2018 Q2 Financial investment* 1.8 1.9 1.9 1.9 1.9 Currency and deposits 3.8 3.7 3.3 3.3 3.8 Debt securities -12.0 -11.7 -11.9 -12.2 -8.7 Shares and other equity 1.5 1.7 1.8 2.0 1.1 Investment fund shares 5.1 5.3 6.7 6.1 3.9 Life insurance and pension schemes 2.2 2.1 2.2 2.2 2.2 Financing** 2.8 3.1 3.3 3.2 3.5 Loans 2.7 2.8 2.9 2.9 3.1 * Items not shown include: loans granted, prepayments of insurance premiums and reserves for outstanding claims and other accounts receivable.** Items not shown include: financial derivative's net liabilities, pension schemes and other accounts payable. Chart 2. Debt ratios of households and non-financial corporations (debt as a percentage of GDP) * Outstanding amount of loans, debt securities, trade credits and pension scheme liabilities. ** Outstanding amount of loan liabilities. Non-financial corporations In the second quarter of 2018 financing of non-financial corporations growth at a broadly unchanged rate, compared with the previous quarter, of 1.5% (see Table 2). Non-financial corporations' debt-to-GDP ratio stood at to 136.5% at the end of the second quarter of 2018, compared with 138.0% at the end of the second quarter of 2017 (see Chart 2). Table 2. Financial investment and financing of non-financial corporations, main items (annual growth rates) Financial transactions 2017 Q2 2017 Q3 2017 Q4 2018 Q1 2018 Q2 Financing* 2.5 2.3 1.8 1.4 1.5 Debt securities 9.5 6.9 5.2 5.1 5.0 Loans 1.6 1.9 2.6 2.1 2.2 Shares and other equity 2.2 1.7 0.7 0.7 0.6 Trade credits and advances 5.9 6.7 5.3 4.6 5.5 Financial investment** 4.3 4.0 3.5 3.0 3.2 Currency and deposits 6.4 5.7 7.4 4.6 5.3 Debt securities -15.8 -15.1 -6.1 -13.7 -6.9 Loans 4.6 5.3 3.9 3.5 2.4 Shares and other equity 3.6 2.3 1.4 1.7 2.1 * Items not shown include: pension schemes, other accounts payable, financial derivative's net liabilities and deposits.** Items not shown include: other accounts receivable and prepayments of insurance premiums and reserves for outstanding claims.. Annexes For media queries, please contact Stefan Ruhkamp, tel.: +49 69 1344 5057. Notes B2B Lead Generation Service Reach key decision makers with sales-ready leads that shorten your sales process. Move the needle by delivering funnel qualified leads to your sales team. Learn more. Jon Ferrara is the founder and CEO of Nimble, a social sales and marketing CRM company based in Santa Monica, California. Nimble helps companies identify the right people for their businesses, with the goal of turning conversations into measurable outcomes. Its vision is to make the job of all customer-facing team members easier and more effective. In this exclusive interview, Ferrara offers his insights on the latest developments and trends in CRM. Jon Ferrara CEO Nimble CRM Buyer: Why is social context important in CRM? Jon Ferrara: The reality of relationships is that people buy from people they like, know and trust. In the old days, before we ever engaged in selling, we made a connection by looking at books, things on the shelves, that kind of thing. Today, we're doing that more and more electronically. Social is the perfect way to know more about somebody, and that's actually your job. You should do that before every call -- you should prep by getting to know someone. Social context helps you do that. CRM Buyer: What's the most useful kind of social context? Ferrara: People connect through family, friends, food, fun and fellowship. If you find a place of connectivity, you can share that with the person. For instance, I had a meeting with someone, and before that meeting, I learned that he was an assistant scoutmaster in the Boy Scouts. Anyone who has done that knows it's an important experience. Knowing that about him gave us instant camaraderie. In many cases in business people put up walls, and you have to earn their trust. LinkedIn is like walking into my lobby. You'll learn about my business persona and know more about another human being. But people buy from people, not from businesses. This is what Dale Carnegie taught, and today we're just doing it in a new way, in the digital era. Another example is today, before you meet with someone, you typically google them. That's you working for your CRM, and it's a waste of time. Most people work for their CRM -- it doesn't work for them. That's the biggest cause of failure for CRM. Even when you do google someone, things change, and that information might be old. Your CRM should work for you and work with you wherever you're working. CRM Buyer: Why is mobile connectivity important for CRM? Ferrara: It's not just the mobile phone. Most CRM is not really designed for relationships, but for reporting. If they aren't forced to use CRM, most people wouldn't. When I think of mobile, I think of portability. You enrich it with email data, and have a plug-in on your browser so you can use it wherever you are. That gives you contacts and insights. Who are they and what is their business? If you have contacts and insights, you'll be more connected. The ability to have that mobile context wherever you are gives you the insights you need to make connections. Your CRM should work for you. That is the future of CRM. You don't have to go to it to use it. Instead, it will go anywhere you are, where you are connecting and engaging. CRM Buyer: What role does artificial intelligence play in CRM? How is that role evolving? Ferrara: You need to enrich the data and then use AI to surface opportunities and engagement. Most people have thousands of connections, and you need AI to listen to signals and surface the ones that matter, and then you need a nudge on your shoulder to follow through and connect and reconnect with people. AI is like a second brain that helps you follow through and stay in touch with the right people at the right time and the right place. CRM Buyer: What's the key to effectively enriching data? Ferrara: You need to be able to take any disparate piece of information and derive additional information. Most sales people are googling people and then logging that information into their CRM. Even if they do that, however, the data changes so rapidly that it decays. We use dozens of external databases on a business and personal level to enable connections and engagement. The age of cold calling has transitioned from "bag 'em and tag 'em" to establishing yourself as a trusted advisor, and to do that you need to use content to inspire and educate. CRM Buyer: Why are automatic updates important in managing a CRM system? Ferrara: People change, and companies change. One of the biggest struggles that salespeople have is creating records and updating records. If you can take away the mundane things that computers should be doing, it will free the sales reps up for things that only they can do, like logging a note or scheduling a task or connecting on social in a relevant and authentic way. That's what computers are for. They were designed to automate all of this. CRM Buyer: How is CRM changing? What's in the future for it? Ferrara: One of the biggest causes of CRM failure is that businesses just give it to their salespeople. It is not just for salespeople. It should be used by everybody in the company. The first step to success is to have a unified relationship platform that's cross-departmental. Today you have sales, marketing, customer service, accounting -- and Nimble can co-exist with those by unifying contacts and working back inside them, as well. It can be used across departments, so you can see the history of interactions. CRM is going to evolve to be a company-wide relationship record, and in the future it will be used by all the different team members. It will evolve to become a platform that works with you in any place you are engaging. That will cause it to be used more often. A lot of people see CRM as a beast and a burden that they have to nurture and feed, but imagine if it actually helped that business' people and the people they're connecting to. CRM will evolve to be used by outside constituencies as well. Most companies have CRM for salespeople, but other departments use spreadsheets. That's really problematic. CRM will evolve from being a platform used just by salespeople to become a platform used by the entire team. Vivian Wagner has been an ECT News Network reporter since 2008. Her main areas of focus are technology, business, CRM, e-commerce, privacy, security, arts, culture and diversity. She has extensive experience reporting on business and technology for a variety of outlets, including The Atlantic, The Establishment and O, The Oprah Magazine. She holds a PhD in English with a specialty in modern American literature and culture. She received a first-place feature reporting award from the Ohio Society of Professional Journalists. Email Vivian. Earlier in the day, Saudi Prosecutor General Saud Mujib said that the suspects in the murder of Jamal Khashoggi had committed the crime deliberately, adding that the whole incident was premeditated. "The leaders exchanged views on the Syrian crisis settlement and the current state of affairs in the Middle East region as a whole," the Kremlin press service said in a statement, adding that the situation around the murder of journalist Jamal Khashoggi was also on the discussion agenda. King Salman bin Abdulaziz Al Saud confirmed that Riyadh had invited Russian President Vladimir Putin to visit Saudi Arabia. According to the statement, the sides thoroughly discussed the issues of further development of multi-sided bilateral cooperation, including in the energy sector, Sputnik reports. Meanwhile, the governmental Saudi Press Agency reported that King Salman briefed Putin, during their phone talks, on the investigative measures taken to uncover all the circumstances of Khashoggi's murder and also on the effort that the Saudi government was making toward bringing those responsible to justice. Since October, residents of Porter Ranch, California, have been exposed to dangerous contaminants from a massive natural gas leak that continues to seep into the air, causing a catastrophe the scale of which has not been seen since the 2010 BP oil spill. After only a week of visiting families in Porter Ranch, I am already experiencing the headaches, nausea and congestion that have plagued this community living at the center of one of the most significant environmental disasters in recent history. Porter Ranch resident Michelle Theriault takes part in a press conference on a gas leak in Porter Ranch after a regular Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors meeting in this Tuesday, Nov. 24. SoCal Gas was ordered to provide free temporary relocation for affected residents by the Los Angeles County Department of Public Health. Photo credit: Maya Sugarman / KPCC Southern California Gas Co. or SoCalGas, has essentially ignored the impact to victims and its actions have instead added to their suffering. The company has refused to release air quality data that could be used to protect its residents, it has made relocation very difficult and it has forged ahead with plans to expand its facility before the leak has even been contained. The enormity of the Aliso Canyon gas leak cannot be overstated. Gas is escaping through a ruptured pipe more than 8,000 feet underground and it shows no sign of stopping. As the pressure from weight on top of the pipe causes the gas to diffuse, it only continues to dissipate across a wider and wider area. According to tests conducted in November by the California Air Resources Board, the leak is spewing 50,000 kilograms of gas per hourthe equivalent to the strength of a volcanic eruption. At this rate, in just one month, the leak will have accounted for one-quarter of the total estimated methane emissions in the state of California. An infrared, time-lapse video of the natural gas leak in Porter Ranch, California. Photo credit: MSNBC / YouTube screenshot So it is no surprise that residents here feel sick. While I can escape to my home to recover from my symptoms, this community wakes up to conditions that cause vomiting, nosebleeds and serious respiratory issues daily. And no one really knows the potential long-term side effects of benzene and radon, the carcinogens that are commonly found in natural gas. This dangerous environment is why the Los Angeles Unified School District unanimously voted last week to close two Porter Ranch schools and relocate their nearly 1,900 students and staff to protect their safety. SoCalGas response to this disaster is almost as alarming as the impact on the community. The company has offered some assistance in relocating residents in the affected area, but those efforts are woefully inadequate. People have been told they have to wait, they are 300th in line and that they will not be able to relocate before Christmas. Many residents simply cannot afford pay for a hotel or apartment while continuing to cover home costs. SoCalGas does not even know exactly how long it will take to fix the leak, but the companys CEO has said it will be at least another three to four months. Curiously, despite this admission, SoCalGas is only offering three months of relocation to those fortunate enough to receive a return call. The company has also refused to release the data from air quality monitoring it has conducted in the community, despite numerous requests from the public. The company is withholding vital information about the exact composition of the airinformation that is critical for the thousands of residents who want to understand why they are so sick. That is why I have been out in the community distributing canisters that we hope will provide an independent verification of the toxicity in the air. And while Porter Ranch continues to suffer, SoCalGas is moving ahead with a project to expand the Aliso Canyon facility, even though the company still has no idea how the gas leak there started and is unsure of how to fix it. The company hasnt even established any risk management or emergency response plans in the event of another leak. That is why I am working with the law firm Weitz and Luxenberg to seek justice for Porter Ranch and hold SoCalGas accountable for the physical and emotional damage they have caused and to ensure that something like this never happens again. This community should not have to wait any longer to receive the justice and fair treatment it deserves. The situation Porter Ranch residents are facing today is unacceptable. It is time for SoCalGas to acknowledge this fact, gather whatever resources are necessary to help every resident now and provide answers about the health impacts to residents who have suffered for too long. YOU MIGHT ALSO LIKE 3 Communities Transition Away From Fossil Fuels to Run on 100% Renewables 4,000 Bottles of Fresh Air Shipped to China, Company Struggling to Keep Up With Demand Moving Beyond Coal: Major Global Grassroots Fights of 2015 Wife Dies of Cancer, Widowed Father Wages War on Chemical Industry (Photo: Peter Kenny / Ecumenical News)Rev. Olav Fykse Tveit, general secretary of the World Council Churches (L) and World Evangelical Aalliance general secretary, Bishop Efraim Tendero taking notes during a Nov. 4, 2015 meeting in Tirana, Albania. For some European alliances, Evangelical-Catholic unity is going too far, getting too ecumenical for them. Last month, the national evangelical alliances of Italy, Spain, and Malta - all members of the World Evangelical Alliance - wrote an eight-page open letter, Christianity Today reported Jan. 30. In the letter they charged their parent organization with "moving away from its historic position" of holding the line against Catholic and liberal Protestant theology. "In recent years we have sensed that the leadership of WEA has moved away from the outlined historic position of the Alliance on unity by endorsing a more 'ecumenical' attitude," the three alliances stated in December, in the year that the 500th anniversary of the Reformation was commemorated. On October 31, Radio Vatican had noted the date marked the 500th anniversary of the day on which German theologian Martin Luther published his 95 theses, "setting in motion the events of the Protestant Reformation." To mark the occasion, the Vatican's Pontifical Council for Promoting Christian Unity and the Lutheran World Federation issued a joint statement, "giving thanks for the spiritual and theological gifts received through the Reformation and recalling the commemorative events that have taken place over the past year." But the LWF is not part of the WEA alliance, and its member churches are often viewed as traditional or "mainline" Protestants. 'UNITY A BLURRED TERM' The Italian, Spanish and Maltese evangelicals wrote in their open letter, "Unity has become a blurred term to refer to any relationship even beyond the principles that have always characterized evangelicals. "Leaders have become less cautious in talking about unity with the Catholic Church as such and have tended to bypass the historic boundaries." Christianity Today said in its report that "during last year's 500th anniversary of the Reformation, many groups examined or asked: Is it over?" The paper noted, "The loudest "no" has come from the conservative Protestants closest to Rome." The growing closeness of the WEA and the Catholic Church - emphasized by a joint Reformation commemoration in 2016 that Thomas Shirrmacher, chair of the European Evangelical Alliance's theological commission, called a sort of "peace treaty" between Catholics and Lutherans - has caused "growing concern," the Spanish alliance stated. "It seems, therefore, that WEA is about to sign a statement with the WCC (World Council of Churches) and the Roman Catholic Church on unity, even on 'great oneness'!" the December letter from the three European alliances stated. "We are puzzled by what is happening. We see a radical shift taking place." "We therefore plead with you to stop the process," the alliances wrote. "Doing so will cause immense damage in the evangelical constituency worldwide." The WEA responded to the charges of the three European member bodies that it has an "ecumenical agenda" inconsistent with its historic evangelical roots in a statement it posted on its website. The statement placed on the WEA's website followed meetings between its secretary general Bishop Efraim Tendero and the alliances of Italy and Spain, Christian Today reported. WEA says: "Although we have not resolved our disagreements, we have achieved greater understanding through this interaction." 'WEA HAS WORKED CLOSELY WITH POPE FRANCIS' It says, "The WEA has worked closely with Pope Francis and the Vatican on many issues, such as responses to the worldwide persecution of Christians. "We do not believe that we have changed, betrayed, or compromised the WEA's theological principles in doing so. However, we acknowledge the deep concerns expressed by these and other evangelicals from Catholic-majority countries." WEA says, "We recognize that evangelical-Catholic relations are a highly sensitive issue for evangelicals in many parts of the world, especially those with majority Catholic populations. "We know that our evangelical brothers and sisters in Italy, Spain, Malta, and elsewhere have had difficult and at times painful experiences in their interactions with the RCC. These realities are not overlooked in our ongoing discussions with the Vatican." Christian Today said in its Jan. 17 story, "Conservative evangelicals have long been suspicious of anything that looks like too-close engagement with the WCC (World CCouncil of Churches) and the Roman Catholic Church by the WEA and mainstream Protestants. "A new evangelical grouping, Covenant Christian Coalition, is seeking to position itself as a conservative alternative umbrella group for evangelicals globally." (Photo: LWF/Albin Hillert)Reformation 500th anniversary commemoration service held by Namibian Lutheran churches hosting the Lutheran World Federation 12th anniversary in the Katutura quarter of Windhoek on May 14, 2017. More than half of Germany's 16 federal states have now declared Reformation Day a public holiday. The North German states of Bremen, Hamburg, Lower Saxony and Schleswig-Holstein have Wednesday, October 31, a new public holiday, bringing the number of states making it a day off to nine, the Lutheran World Federation reported. Last year, October 31 was proclaimed a public holiday across the whole of Germany to mark the 500th anniversary of the Reformation. In Brandenburg, Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania, Saxony, Saxony-Anhalt and Thuringia, people have for years had October 31 off. In the run-up to this decision, initiated by state government policy-makers, there were lively and sometimes heated discussions in the church and society about the significance of such a public holiday. Celebrations in Reformation anniversary year 2017 increased the awareness for ecumenical and interreligious cooperation among church leaders. Ralf Meister, bishop of the Evangelical Lutheran Church of Hanover, commented said in a report in May, "The Day of the Reformation is a day on which we will seek to promote tolerant relations among religions, confessions and worldviews, based on dialogue." He said celebrating Reformation Day should certainly not be a "Martin Luther commemoration day". The events planned for Reformation Day 2018 reflect this approach, said the LWF. The Evangelical Lutheran Church in Brunswick is expecting the new Catholic Bishop of Hildesheim diocese, Heiner Wilmer SCJ, at its service in the cathedral. "That is a wonderful ecumenical symbol and underlines the good cooperation between Christians in Lower Saxony," Bishop Christoph Meyns said. In Hamburg, Bishop Kirsten Fehrs from the Evangelical Lutheran Church in Northern Germany, Canon Peter Mies, the Catholic dean for Hamburg, and Rev. Uwe Onnen, chair of the Council of Christian Churches in Hamburg, will hold a joint service. Bishop Fehrs said, "I am very happy that we will celebrate this day in ecumenical unity and cultural openness and not separately in our denominations." In Wittenberg in the east of Germany, from where the Reformation started in 1517 with Martin Luther's posting of his 95 theses of protest, there is already an established tradition of numerous events around October 31. The program features a town festival, guided tours through the historical sites, concerts and lectures. Wewahitchka, Fla. Jim Norton picked his way through the damp floor at Wewahitchka High School, where Hurricane Michaels winds had spirited away part of the schools roof, leaving behind exposed wires, a mushy mix of white ceiling tiles on the dark carpet, and a clear view of the sky above. A dozen workers in red shirts were trying to sweep up the mess. But despite the best intentions, crisis-response experts deployed here to help with the recovery advised against the instinct to launch a quick cleanup effort at that site. There is no point in them being here, Jaime Torrens, the chief facilities officer for the Miami-Dade County school system, told Norton, the superintendent of the Gulf County school system in Floridas Panhandle, who was seeing the hurricane-damaged high school for the first time since the storm hit on Oct. 10. Instead, Torrens advised Norton, put a temporary tarp on the building and move the cleanup crew to the towns elementary school, which the superintendent had already decided would open within a few days for both secondary school and elementary students. The elementary school still had broken glass in a classroom, ceiling insulation on the floor, and a damaged perimeter fence that had collapsed under the weight of two pine trees. But it had an intact roof, was dry and it was relatively unscathed compared to the high school. For districts slammed by natural disasters, getting schools ready to reopen is a mammoth undertaking, filled with a series of seemingly minute decisions and steps that can make all the difference between a seamless reopening and one filled with recriminations, finger-pointing, and regrets. Theres the risk of moving too fast, of opening before all the conditions are ideal. New Orleans schools faced that in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, when officials in that city opened some buildings with too few teachers and staff and served students partially frozen sandwiches for lunch. But the act of children waking up in the morning and going to school is one of the most fundamental things in life, and restoring that routine is essential to regaining a sense of normalcy in communities struck by disaster. Thats why reopening schools is one of the first jobs officials tackle after disasters. Responding to Disaster: Five Critical Steps for District Leaders Activate emergency-response plan A plan that spells out who the critical partners will be, how the district will work with other agencies, and how damage assessments will be coordinated should be ready and up-to-date. It should include prestorm preparation to secure and safeguard the districts buildings and assets. Ensure reliable communication for key staffin Miami-Dade County, Fla., for example, principals have two-way radios that work even if local communication systems are downand an easy way to report damages. Principals there can report initial damages through an automated damage-assessment system that also allows them to upload pictures from their buildings. That helps the district quickly understand where the most significant damages are and how to deploy resources. Assign command team This team should take the lead in assessing damage and guiding the districts response, reopening, and recovery efforts. It should include the superintendent or the superintendents chief of staff, the director of teaching and learning, the chief financial officer, and the heads of maintenance, facilities, transportation, food, technology, and mental health or counseling. Since electricity is often the biggest challenge districts face when deciding when to reopen schools, its helpful to have representatives from the power company and the municipality on the team. Have bids and contracts in place To avoid competing for access to in-demand contractors, have contracts already in place for things that could be damaged in a storm or services that the district would need, including electricity, plumbing, HVAC systems, and debris removal. Set up a disaster or emergency spending fund before the storm that staff can tap into to make purchases as necessary without having to seek approval for individual purchases. Have a plan for resuming student learning Students can be out of school for long periods, so a district should plan for how it intends to continue the academic program, whether it will be through online classes, ad-hoc sessions at community centers or shelters, or adding longer school days when students return. Dont forget the humans While thinking about the physical tasks of recovering, remember that students, teachers, and staff members just experienced a traumatic event. Make plans for counselors and mental-health support for staff and students, who can carry the scars from what theyve lived through long after buildings are restored. Recognize that the district may also have to direct more mental-health support to specific geographic areas that were particularly hard-hit or where there may have been fatalities. Source: Education Week But very few people leading school districts have had the experience of doing just that. Its a job that requires superintendents and other district leaders to be equal parts educators, managers, and politicians. For Norton, an elected superintendent whose background is in banking, the recovery efforts in the days since Hurricane Michael slammed into the Panhandle was a baptism by fire. In his seven years as schools chief, hes had to deal with a viral-meningitis outbreak, student expulsions, and labor negotiations. But those experiences in a district of 1,900 students dont come close to the scale and complexity of Hurricane Michael. How do you eat a whale? Norton asked rhetorically about the task ahead of him. One bite at a time. Relying on Experts Torrens and his colleague from Miami, Mark Zaher, that districts director of school operations, are veterans at disaster recovery. Both men have helped several districts and municipalities figure out the tough logistics of getting back to normal after hurricanes and earthquakes. Both spent time in Puerto Rico last year after Hurricane Maria, and Biloxi, Miss., after Hurricane Katrina. Zaher worked in Haiti after a devastating 7.0 magnitude earthquake in 2010 left more than 200,000 people dead and the countrys infrastructure in shambles. Teams that report to Torrens and Zaher also have been dispatched to various places after hurricanes. A Miami-Dade maintenance crew helped repair buildings in Floridas Charlotte County district after Hurricane Charley in 2004, as well as schools damaged in Hurricane Ivan, which struck the Panhandle region in 2004. On the homefront, theyve also had to weather hurricanes Andrew, Katrina, and most recently Hurricane Irma last year. It was that experience that led Florida education Commissioner Pam Stewart to connect the leaders from the two school systems after she saw the devastation in Gulf County. Thats how Torrens and Zaher found themselves driving from Miami to Port St. Joea nearly 10-hour driveseven days after the hurricane. Most of the area still had no power. Torrens and Zahers plan was to inspect the districts four schools and other facilities and help Norton come up with a plan to open as quickly as possible. They were not there to take over but to provide guidance, Zaher said. The intent, Torrens said, was to provide Norton and his team with an extra set of experienced hands from people who had been through this before, to guide him along and make sure he was asking the right questions, and if the answers he was getting werent quite the right answers, then to ask another more probing question. In their more than 48 hours there, they poked around with flashlights, climbed atop school roofs, inspected broken windows, and made detailed notes of what the district needed to do to meet Nortons aggressive opening date of less than two weeks after the hurricane. They found the most extensive damage at Port St. Joe High School, where the wind ripped off a huge portion of the roof and loose ceiling tiles fell into a lab. A skylight had disappeared, and water leaked near the buildings entrance with no discernible point of origin. But the inventory was incomplete because the campus was still being used by dozens of response workers and volunteers, including some from the Federal Emergency Management Agency, Duke Energy, and police departments from across the state. The pair had already arranged to ship 13 sets of stop signs from the Miami-Dade district to replace the ones on the Gulf County school buses that were damaged. Theyd also connected Gulf Countys food services and transportation directors with their counterparts in Miami-Dade to get advice. We have had to rely on them to do it; weve been that swamped, said Norton, whose ringing cellphone frequently cut his sentences short. You asked what they were going to do? You cant be in but one place at one time, Norton continued. Theyve done this before, and its nice to have them. When Norton woke up on Friday morning, there were two major problems to solve to get schools open the following week. The city of Wewahitchka still did not have electricitythough the power company had promised that power would return in time for reopening, five days later. He took the utilitys word for it. And district officials still could not reach their food vendor, which is based in Panama City, where the storm flattened buildings and left most of the city without water and electricity and with spotty cellphone coverage and internet access. Then there was the actual task of cleaning up the elementary schools in Port St. Joe and Wewahitchka, which had minor damage but still needed to be made safe for both elementary and high school students. Norton and his team had decided to have high school students use the elementary schools, at least until portable classrooms arrived. That meant splitting the days in half, so that younger students would be in class in the mornings and secondary students would come in later in the day. At the same time, Norton had to deal with the damage to his home, where the storm surge swept several feet of water and mud into the house hes lived in his entire life and destroyed almost everything on the first floor. Two family cottages in Mexico Beach, Fla., were damaged as well, along with his wifes business. Norton arrived at Wewahitchka Elementary around 10 a.m. Friday to find a worker slicing into the trunks of two pine trees with a small chain saw. On their way down, the trees took out a canopy over a walkway and bus shelter where students get dropped off in the morning and picked up in the afternoon. A section of the gray fence that surrounded the low-slung brick building also collapsed under the falling trees. Some half a dozen maintenance workers, along with their boss, Woody Borders, had already been working four hours, hauling away pieces of metal and fence posts before the Florida sun got too hot. While Norton observed the cleanup, Robin Safley, the executive director of Feeding Florida, a network of food banks, approached him to ask if she and her team could use the school to set up a feeding site for residents in Wewahitchka, where stores were closed and gas unavailable for miles. Norton was ambivalent; he was more interested in ensuring that his students had food when they came back to class in a few days. Still, he directed Safley to work with Lori Price, the assistant superintendent for instructional services, to hammer out something. But Torrens and Zaher, who were already at the site and hauling away pieces of fence, spotted a solution. They told Norton that Safleys proposal could work in the districts favor if officials couldnt reach the regular food vendor. The Miami-Dade pair already thinking about Plan B, including possibly trucking in food from Tallahassee, about two hours away. But if the local food bank network was allowed to set up in the elementary school, the district could guarantee food was available as students returned to the community to check in personally with school officials and showed up for the first day of classes. It turned out they didnt need any backup plan. Later that same day, Norton got a text message from Bill Carr, the assistant superintendent for business and human resources. Carr had found the vendor. Food would be provided at both campuses to feed students and staff, within three days. I have to admit I was sweating this one, Carr texted. Norton sent him a thumbs-up. Again, Field of Dreams, Norton said. Build it, and theyll come. We are counting on a lot. I am not going to tell you everything comes together just like we planned it, but it came together on that one. Countdown Is On With the county still in the dark, Torrens got on the phone with the disaster company overseeing the districts repairs to arrange for a generator at the elementary school. Crews needed power to run the vacuum cleaners and test the air conditioning units. The elementary school staff would also be able to use the generators for lighting when they were cleaning up, Torrens said. I need all focus on Wewa Elementary School, Norton said to the representative on the phone. I need everybody in the elementary and focus there. All the structural stuff, all the limbs, make sure there are no widow makers. You do what you got to do. And so it went during the day: Norton and his staff would frequently turn to the Miami-Dade team to ask a version of, What do we do? or How would you do this? Either Torrens or Zaher would answer, or one them would get on the phone with whomever Norton had on the line. Norton had his first meal of the day, an MRE lunch of spaghettithe self-contained meals used widely in the military during combat operationsearly in the afternoon, after taking a break from work to meet with the insurance adjuster at his home. Like many of his neighbors in Port St. Joe, the contents of Nortons homeincluding a sofa, chairs, and a container in which Halloween decorations had been storedwere scattered on the front lawn. Mud and leaves caked the floors inside. A yellow line showed where the water had crested. Amid all the preparation of returning to school, Norton also met with two members of CongressU.S. Reps. Neal Patrick Dunn, R-Florida who represents a portion of the Panhandle ,and Steve Scalise, a Louisiana Republican, to discuss federal assistance to the community. He stopped by the Centennial Building, a Port St. Joe venue typically used for weddings and other celebrations, where teachers and former teachers had set up a site to receive and distribute donated clothing, toiletries, diapers and wipes, and canned food. Zaher said it was the most organized distribution center hed seen. If the community were to ever find itself in the same situation, residents would not have to wait for help, he said. They were now the experts. The teachers who ran the distribution centerand others who showed up to pick up supplieswere a little wary about returning to school so soon. But they said they were anxious to see their students and make sure they were OK. In a small school system like Gulf Countys, teachers had one-on-one contact with every student and could see for themselves how students were coping, they said. Joni White, a 6th grade teacher was a lucky one. Remarkably, her home and property were perfect, and without any storm damage, she said. She felt ready to go back to school and to reassure her students, but she also knew that so many other teachers were not as lucky as she was. On the personal side, I know that there are a lot of teachers that arent ready themselves to come back, White said. But on the teacher side of it, I cant wait to see my kids and make sure they are safe and that they are taken care of. One of her students homes burned during the storm, White said. I have no idea how to help her other than just to be there for her, she said. Lee Anna Parrish, a 5th and 6th grade special education teacher at Port St. Joe Elementary School, was rescued by fellow teachers, but was also determined to get back to school as soon as possible. Parrish, who was housing six family friends in the home her family shares with her mother a week after the storm, said the damage to the house from a storm surge was minimal, but the family would have to get rid of furniture and other personal effects that her husbands late mother had left them. After hearing that Parrish had to be rescued, one of her students sent his mother over with dinner to cheer her up. Thats why she had to go back, she said. My kids need me, Parrish said, her voice cracking with emotion. They need me, and I need them. Thats just how it goes. Ill go back, and well be happy again. They need normalcy. ...They need a routine, and they need to know there is life after this. Thats what I want to show them. For Norton, the most challenging part of his job right now is not fitting together the tiny pieces of the puzzle to reopen the schools. Its the fact that I dont have a home to bring my wife, and kids, and my 85-year-old dad back to, and have some semblance of what I had two weeks ago, he said. Im working hard to get there, and by the grace of God, I will get there. Norton remains grateful for the outpouring of supportfrom Gov. Rick Scotts visits to the county; his direct access to Commissioner Stewart, who he said is now like family; residents who are themselves trying to rebuild their own lives, and private companies that have reached out to him and his team with offers of help. This is a beautiful situation, he said. I pray for strength, I pray for guidance, wisdom to guide me, and so far Ive been blessed because where I have found myself weak or deficient, others around me have stepped up with their A-game. Imagine a school system where some of our countrys most underserved students have limited access to grade-level math and science courses, pass rates for those classes are significantly lower than those of their peers in nearby schools, and accurate enrollment information is only available for a fraction of eligible youths. And in that system, 44 percent of youths are black. This describes the education system experienced by students attending school while incarcerated in juvenile facilities across the country. Data collected by the federal office for civil rights and analyzed by Bellwether Education Partners reveal huge gaps in the information available about education for youths involved with the juvenile-justice system. The available information confirms what many have long believed: These schools are not meeting students needs or preparing them for lifelong success. A recent analysis by Connecticuts Juvenile Justice Policy and Oversight Committee found that the states education of youths in the juvenile-justice system was fragmented and expensive. Lacking quality standards, monitoring, accountability, specialization, and expertise, their system let youth slip during transitions, the JJPOC concluded. The national data show that Connecticut is not alone. This new analysis comes at a time when many states are making wide-ranging changes to their juvenile-justice systems. Many are trying to keep more young people of out the system entirely, moving away from institutional placements and toward community-based care, and trying to tackle the racial and ethnic disparities pervasive throughout juvenile-justice involvement, from arrest to incarceration. These documented failures and the ongoing lack of accountability of juvenile-justice-based education bolster locally driven calls to keep young people in their communities. It is now clear that on the whole, juvenile-justice schools do not serve kids as well as local school districts, and they should not be considered sufficient substitutes for attending a community school. We already know that approximately six out of 10 students who attend school in a juvenile facility will never re-enroll in school upon release, according to the Federal Interagency Reentry Council. And of those who do successfully re-enroll, far fewer of them will go on to graduate from high school. Now we know more about why: When kids are locked up, they have less access to educational opportunities than their peers. Controlling for incomplete data reporting, Bellwether found that students in juvenile-justice facilities have less access to higher-level math classes than their peers in traditional high schools, and they are less likely to pass the courses that they do enroll in. For example, access to math classes in juvenile-justice facilities varies significantly by state, and those gaps grow as students progress into higher-level courses. In community schools, 96 percent of students have access to an Algebra 1 class; juvenile-justice facilities lag behind with an average of 82 percent of students having access to Algebra 1. For geometry, the gap is larger: 95 percent of students in community schools have access, but only 67 percent of students in juvenile-justice facilities do. By the time students progress to Algebra 2, 92 percent of students in communities have access to courses but only 55 percent of incarcerated students do. Even when students in the juvenile-justice system have access to courses, the chances of them passing vary widely and, on average, are lower than their peers in community schools. Only 61 percent of incarcerated students who enroll in Algebra 1 go on to pass it. For their peers in community schools, 95 percent will pass. They also have less access to credit-recovery opportunitieschances to quickly complete missing coursework for classes previously attemptedthan their peers in community schools, even though they are likely to need them most. On average, nearly three-quarters of students in community schools have access to these credit-recovery programs but less than half of students in juvenile-justice facilities do. Although this analysis does not include comparison data for students by race or ethnicity, we know that given the overall makeup of the juvenile-justice system, students of colorand particularly black studentsare more likely to feel the impact of this inequity more seriously and more frequently than white students. This is because, in every state except Hawaii, black children are more likelysometimes up to 10 times more likelyto be committed to juvenile facilities than white children. The evidence is clear that states must improve education opportunities for youths who are in their care or under their supervision, whether those youths are in the remaining incarceration facilities or in community-based programs. They can do this by ensuring that youths experience as little disruption as possible, have access to any special education and other services to which they are entitled, receive full credit for all coursework, and have fully qualified teachers and access to the most challenging coursework they can successfully complete, including adequate preparation for higher education. The Legal Center for Youth Justice and Educations Blueprint for Change provides additional guidance on implementing many of these recommendations. In order to ensure that these changes are happening and to inform their direction, we need to require juvenile-justice systems and schools to collect and share more valid and reliable data about school quality and student achievement. We also need data on youths who are processed into adult justice systems. Generally these young people are entitled to receive full education opportunities until their states age of compulsory education (or older, if they have identified special education needs and havent yet received a diploma). However, there is currently no expectation that adult criminal justice systems even collect education data, much less report the information. While OCRs data on education and juvenile justice, and Bellwethers new analysis, raise more questions than they answers, they ultimately point us to an inescapable conclusion: Without immediate and dramatic change to our juvenile-justice education programs, these systems will not serve students as well as their community schools would. And these impacts are felt disproportionately by youths of color. This is strong evidence to further support the work of advocates, policymakers, and juvenile-justice agency officials who are working to reduce the number of young people incarcerated and provide more and better support in communities. Police have detained a young man for murdering an 8-year-old girl in Gori town, - Deputy Interior Minister Kakha Sabanadze said, InterPressNews reported. I offer my condolences to the family, this is a great tragedy for Georgia. A special investigation team of the Interior Ministry and the representatives of Shida Kartli District Police have identified the person, I.N., who has committed this crime. As a result of operative measures and the obtained evidence I.N. is detained, the Interior Minister said. According to him, the investigation is in progress. The detainee is a 33-year-old man. Havana, Oct 25 (epa-efe).- The economic embargo imposed by the United States on Cuba makes it hard for farmers to keep up with market demands, forcing the island to rely on imported goods to feed its population. "We are looking for a partner," Jose Pinero, head of production at state-owned Citricos Cieba, the main fruit producer in Havana, told EFE. "The problem is finding a partner willing to face international law and share production both in the good times and the bad." Delkis Campos, who is in charge of the company's citric fruits department, said that the US-imposed embargo obstructs the purchase of "fertilizers and the various other chemicals and weed killers" needed to grow Cuba's crops. Food production is one of the main challenges facing the Cuban government, which every year spends some $2.5 billion on imported food. Transportation is another serious problem. The company has a fleet of 13 rundown trucks that seem ready for the junkyard, while its 47 drivers - most of whom are very old - strive to continue providing Havana with fruits and vegetables. "We try to avoid fruit waste at all costs," Angel Alfredo Mesa, the company's technical director, said. "We have to use all our vehicles on the field because we cannot afford to lose production." Like his colleagues, Mesa blames the embargo for the company's ills, as it forbids the purchase of US-made equipment and hinders the acquisition of commercial goods and financial services from other countries, which translates to an inability to buy spare parts, among other things. Citricos Ceiba's team of mechanics and fitters have no other choice than to "make do" with the materials at hand to fix and patch up their vehicles, most of which are more than three decades old. The company plans to distribute as many as 2,600 tons of food this year, most of which will go to the domestic market, while only 40 tons of avocados and 20 of chili peppers will be marked for exportation. "The percentage is small," Pinero said. "We want to make it grow to export more produce and counteract the country's money shortage." Bogota, Oct 26 (EFE).- Russian composer Igor Stravinsky's "Petrushka," a work that broke with the artistic conventions of the early 20th century, will be given a fresh look thanks to Spanish puppet company Per Poc's involvement in two performances of the ballet this weekend in the Colombian capital. "Producing this ballet is a dream come true" for the company since "it was originally performed with puppets," Per Poc co-director Anna Rodriguez told EFE ahead of the performance of the ballet on Saturday and Sunday at Bogota's Teatro Mayor Julio Mario Santo Domingo. "Petrushka" is a ballet composed in 1911 by Stravinsky (1882-1971) that tells a story of love, jealousy and rage involving three puppets - Petrushka, the Ballerina and the Moor. It is set in Russia in the 1830s at the time of an armed rebellion in partitioned Poland against the Russian Empire. The first act takes place in Saint Petersburg's Admiralty Square, where a magician attracts an audience and gives life to the three puppets. The problems start when the puppets come to life and acquire human traits and positive and negative emotions, said Rodriguez. "This is an inspiring and beautiful play that was challenging for us, but at the same time we're excited to present it," she added. This version of the ballet burlesque will have four puppeteers on stage, a realistic set design based on the Russia of Stravinsky's youth and music for four-hands piano (as the composer originally intended) featuring Russian pianist Sergey Sichkov and the Bulgarian pianist Radostina Petkova. "We took on a big challenge for the version we'll present in Bogota. Stravinsky signified a big step forward for music and 20th-century ballet, and we're pleased to put on this presentation," Rodriguez added. The company hopes to see a "full house" for this weekend's performances and that theater-goers "enjoy what we've created with all our heart," Rodriguez said. Relacionados Aparece un nuevo audio entre el fiscal general de Peru y exjuez fugado a Espana Havana, Oct 25 (efe-epa).- Cuban President Miguel Diaz-Canel and his Salvadoran counterpart, Salvador Sanchez Ceren, affirmed in Havana on Thursday their mutual objective of promoting the bilateral economic relationship with a new trade accord. Diaz-Canel welcomed Sanchez Ceren at the Palace of Revolution four days after the Salvadoran president arrived in Cuba leading a delegation including five Cabinet ministers. On Thursday, Salvadoran Economy Minister Luz Estrella Rodriguez and Cuba's minister of External Trade and Foreign Investment, Rodrigo Malmierca, signed the first additional protocol to the 2012 bilateral trade pact known as the AAP. Rodriguez said that with the updated accord there will be increased trade between the two nations, with 110 products from each country now included on the list of exports that will have tariff preferences. Among the main products that Cuba imports from El Salvador are concrete poles, cardboard boxes and medicine, to name a few. Meanwhile, El Salvador receives medical equipment, supplies and ingredients for the chemical-pharmaceutical sector and tobacco from the Caribbean island. The AAP also includes a commitment to promote the training of specialists, the exchange of information and experiences on scientific research in areas such as biotechnology, genetic engineering and medicine and mutual assistance for technological development and productivity. In the last five years, trade between Cuba and El Salvador has reached an estimated $5 million, according to official figures. Startup Monitor Berlin No Longer Number 1 26. Oktober 2018, 10:06 Uhr | dpa, Markt&Technik The German start-up scene is changing: more and more start-ups are being founded outside the hotspot Berlin. However, the search for skilled workers is presenting more and more start-ups with problems. According to a recent survey, North Rhine-Westphalia has displaced Berlin from the top position as a location for start-ups in Germany. According to the Startup Monitor published by the Federal Association of German Startups and the management consultancy KPMG, around 19 percent of all such young companies (previous year: 14.4 percent) are now located in the most populous federal state. According to the survey, Berlin, the leader until now, only accounts for 15.8 percent of the total. Baden-Wurttemberg (12.6 percent) and Bavaria (12.3 percent) follow in the next places of the nationwide ranking. The new federal states - excluding Berlin - together have a share of 11.2 percent. According to the study, the startups are concentrated in the major cities. In addition to Berlin, above all, the Rhine-Ruhr metropolitan region, Hamburg, the Stuttgart/Karlsruhe metropolitan area, and Munich are attracting start-ups. However, the growing shortage of skilled workers in Germany is now proving to be an increasing challenge for start-ups. Three out of four start-ups reported having difficulties in finding IT specialists. According to the study, the young companies could not offer the same wages and security as established companies. The start-up scene is still dominated by men. According to the survey, the proportion of female founders is 15 percent. The average age of the founders is 35 years. Most of them have studied economics, mathematics, engineering, natural sciences, or technology. According to their own figures, the founders work an average of 56 hours a week. Nevertheless, around two thirds of them are satisfied with their work-life balance. The Startup Monitor analyses the data of 1550 startups throughout Germany with 3763 founders and 17 647 employees. The survey is not representative, but is considered the most comprehensive survey of the start-up scene in Germany. ZF acquires a stake in ASAP-Holding GmbH, Gaimersheim, Germany. ZF Friedrichshafen acquires 35 percent of the shares of the development service provider ASAP in order to obtain further resources for the expansion of its own activities in the fields of autonomous driving and electric mobility. The automotive supplier ZF Friedrichshafen AG acquires 35 percent of the shares in ASAP Holding GmbH in Gaimersheim near Ingolstadt. The development service provider ASAP employs more than 1100 people at eleven locations and offers engineering services with a focus on e-mobility, autonomous driving, and networking. As an established development partner, the ASAP Group has extensive know-how in the areas of autonomous driving, e-mobility, networking, and vehicle software, explains Torsten Gollewski, Managing Director of Zukunft Ventures GmbH and Head of Advanced Development for the ZF Group. With this involvement, we gain access to the human resources of an outstanding engineering service provider with extensive industry experience and special expertise in testing and validation. Together with its employees, we are looking forward to developing future-oriented mobility solutions and bringing them to series production readiness. Michael Neisen, CEO of the ASAP Group, comments on ZF's entry: Autonomous driving and e-mobility are the dominant trends in the automotive industry to which we have devoted intensive attention in recent years. With ZF Friedrichshafen AG, one of the world's largest automotive suppliers, we have a partner at our side with whom we will further advance these future-oriented technologies. By establishing strategic partnerships and equity interests - bundled under the umbrella of Zukunft Ventures GmbH - ZF has significantly expanded its development capacities in the area of autonomous driving in recent years. The investment also follows ZF's strategy of significantly strengthening the Group's electromobility and autonomous driving divisions and expanding them to include software and validation. ZF CEO Wolf-Henning Scheider recently announced at the IAA Commercial Vehicles trade show that ZF will invest around twelve billion euros in these two areas alone over the next five years. Both partners have agreed not to disclose the price of ZF's 35 percent stake in ASAP. Moscow is not refusing dialogue with NATO and it will seek expansion of military contracts within the NATO-Russia Council, RussianDeputy Foreign Minister Alexander Grushko said on Friday, UrduPoint reported. "We do not rule out dialogue at all, as we believe that, given the conditions of increased military activity in Europe, there is certainly a necessity of dialogue in order to seek de-escalation, in order to prevent dangerous military incidents, and in order to avoid misunderstanding of intentions," Grushko said in an interview for Russian tv channel Rossiya 24. "Within the NATO-Russia council, we will seek resuming military sphere-related dialogue, as NATOkeeps saying: "Let us work together." But while military contracts are frozen, we should develop mechanisms for avoiding dangerous military incidents so that there is no escalation, as if it is not done, we will not manage to do anything," Grushko added. Russian actor Nikolai Karachentsov passed away in Moscow, a day before his 74th birthday, his son, Andrei Karachentsov, announced. "Yes, we confirm this information. It happened in intensive care unit of Moscow's 62nd hospital, at 8:50 AM," he told TASS. Wife of the actor, Lyudmila Porgina, also confirmed her husband's death, adding that date of his funeral will be announced later. Nikolai Karachentsov was born on October 27, 1944 in Moscow. In 1963, Nikolai entered the Moscow Art Theatre School (course of Viktor Monyukov), which he graduated with honors in 1967. His role in the student performances "Snowstorm" and "Ivan Vasilyevich" received a high professional assessment. Usually school graduates were automatically "distributed" to the Moscow Art Theater, but in 1967 at the Lenkom Theatre, in connection with the departure from the post of the main director Anatoly Efros, there was a catastrophic situation of shortage of actors, and Karachentsov among the top ten students assigned to this theater. Among the first works of Nikolai were the plays staged by Efros: performances "104 pages about love", "My poor Marat", "The movie is being shot", "Fear and despair in the third empire", "Farewell to arms!". Other popular productions with his participation were "Optimistic tragedy", "Dictatorship of conscience", "School for emigrants", "Sorry", "Czech photo". Among the last theatrical roles of the actor were prince Alexander Menshikov in "Balakirev the Buffoon" and Domenico Soriano in the "City of Millionaires". Nikolai Karachentsov began to act in cinema in 1967: the first films with his participation were "Strokes to the portrait of Vladimir Lenin", "And again May." But the actor began to play actively in film only after the triumph of "Till". He also worked on dubbing foreign films, for example he voiced in Russian the roles of French actor Jean-Paul Belmondo. In addition, he took part in voicing many cartoons and worked extensively on television and radio. Bottom Line: A combined evaluation of common variants with small effects and rare predisposing mutations among young female childhood cancer survivors may further stratify this high-risk population for subsequent breast cancer risk. Journal in Which the Study was Published: Clinical Cancer Research, a journal of the American Association for Cancer Research Author: Zhaoming Wang, PhD, associate member in the Department of Epidemiology and Cancer Control at the St. Jude Children's Research Hospital in Memphis Background: Female childhood cancer survivors have an increased risk of developing subsequent breast cancer compared with the general population. This increased risk has largely been attributed to cancer treatment regimens, such as chest irradiation and/or exposure to high-dose chemotherapeutic agents. Current screening of this population relies on treatments and doses used to treat childhood cancer, Wang explained. Wang previously found that survivors of childhood cancer have an increased risk of subsequent breast cancer if the survivors carry pathogenic or likely pathogenic (P/LP) mutations, such as mutations to the BRCA1 gene. "Our current study attempts to investigate the contributions to the risk of subsequent breast cancer by considering the full picture of breast cancer genetic susceptibility, which includes common genetic variants with small effects (polygenic determinants) in addition to P/LP mutations (monogenic determinants)," said Wang. How the Study Was Conducted: Wang and colleagues utilized information from the St. Jude Lifetime Cohort Study (SJLIFE) by analyzing whole-genome sequencing data for 1,133 female cancer survivors of European ancestry. Of these survivors, 47 developed one or more subsequent breast cancers. The researchers constructed a polygenic risk score (PRS) for individual survivors by calculating the weighted sum of 170 common breast cancer risk alleles present in each survivor's genome. The researchers also evaluated the presence of P/LP mutations in 11 breast cancer predisposition genes. Relative rates of subsequent breast cancer incidence were estimated. Results: Following multivariable analysis, the researchers found that survivors in the highest PRS quintile had 2.7 times the risk of subsequent breast cancer compared to survivors in the lowest quintile. Survivors treated with chest irradiation had even higher risk; those in the highest PRS quintile treated with radiation had three times the risk of subsequent cancer compared to those in lowest quintile treated with radiation. Survivors who carried P/LP mutations had 21.8 times increased risk for subsequent breast cancer compared with those who didn't have P/LP mutations. Survivors treated with chest irradiation and who carried P/LP mutations had 10.3 times increased risk for subsequent breast cancer compared with those who didn't have P/LP mutations treated with chest irradiation. "The PRS can identify individuals with high breast cancer risk that do not carry known pathogenic mutations," Wang said. "Our results indicate that both polygenic determinants and large-effect rare mutations (monogenic determinants) contribute to the risk of subsequent breast cancer independently." Notably, PRS was significantly associated with risk of subsequent breast cancer only in women less than 45 years old. "Our data supports the hypothesis that genetic risk factors play a more important role in the development of subsequent breast cancers in younger women," Wang said. "However, this observed age-specific association could be partly due to the smaller sample size of older survivors in our study." P/LP mutations were defined as mutations to the following breast cancer predisposition genes: BRCA1, BRCA2, TP53, PTEN, CDH1, STK11, NF1, PALB2, ATM, CHEK2, and NBN. Author's Comments: "Our findings suggest that polygenic screening can inform personalized breast cancer surveillance in female childhood cancer survivors," said Wang. "This method can be utilized in the clinical setting to enhance the identification of high-risk survivors to enable the early detection and potential prevention of subsequent breast cancer." Wang also said, "Our results indicate that personalized breast cancer surveillance strategies for survivors should incorporate prior exposure to specific anti-cancer treatments, the presence of P/LP mutations, and the cumulative presence of small-effect common variants, as represented by a polygenic risk score." ### Study Limitations: Limitations of the study include a relatively young cohort of childhood cancer survivors. Additionally, analysis was restricted to survivors of European ancestry; follow-up studies should be conducted within other non-European ethnic groups. Funding & Disclosures: This study was supported by funding from the American Lebanese Syrian Associated Charities and by grants from the National Institutes of Health. Wang declares no conflict of interest. New Orleans (October 26, 2018)--Natural variation may help decide which rainbow trout strains are likely to survive worldwide global warming, according to a new study. The findings will be presented today at the American Physiological Society's (APS) Comparative Physiology: Complexity and Integration conference in New Orleans. The increasing temperatures and resulting lower underwater oxygen levels linked to climate change will likely affect the habitats of cold-water fish such as rainbow trout. The resilience of this species to changes in its environment will ultimately help it survive the significant warming of its home tributaries. Researchers from the University of British Columbia studied three strains of rainbow trout, one that originated in California and two native to Canada. They found that young fish (called "fry") from California were able to tolerate higher water temperatures and low-oxygen environments better than fry from Canada. There was no noticeable difference in tolerance levels as a whole among adult fish of the same strains. However, individual adult fish from all strains had varying heat and oxygen tolerance levels, with some individuals being hardier and others more vulnerable to climate stressors. "These differences represent naturally occurring variation," said Nicholas Strowbridge, first author of the study. The hardier fish "are just a bit more able to handle high temperatures and low oxygen," Strowbridge explained. Taking advantage of the natural variation in individual rainbow trout constitution can serve two beneficial purposes. Singling out the stronger fish in hatcheries may help preserve rainbow trout species and also support the global recreational fishing industry as warming trends continue. ### Nicholas Strowbridge, of University of British Columbia, will present "Intraspecific variation in thermal, hypoxia and acute high pH tolerance in rainbow trout" in a poster session on Friday, October 26, at the Astor Crowne Plaza-New Orleans French Quarter. NOTE TO JOURNALISTS: The Comparative Physiology: Complexity and Integration conference will be held October 25-28 in New Orleans. To schedule an interview with a member of the research team, please contact the communications@the-aps.org APS Communications Office or 301-634-7314. Find more research highlights in the APS Press Room. Physiology is the study of how molecules, cells, tissues and organs function in health and disease. Established in 1887, the American Physiological Society (APS) was the first U.S. society in the biomedical sciences field. The Society represents more than 10,000 members and publishes 15 peer-reviewed journals with a worldwide readership. Highlights From 1995 to 2014, patient survival after kidney transplantation improved overall for pediatric recipients in the United States; however, racial/ethnic disparities in long-term survival worsened over time. Results from the study will be presented at ASN Kidney Week 2018 October 23-October 28 at the San Diego Convention Center. San Diego, CA (October 25, 2018) -- Although there have been considerable reductions in disparities in adult kidney transplant outcomes in the United States, a new study found that disparities in long-term patient survival among pediatric kidney transplant recipients have worsened. The findings will be presented at ASN Kidney Week 2018 October 23-October 28 at the San Diego Convention Center. For the study, Tanjala Purnell, MPH, PhD (Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine) and her colleagues examined information on 3,295 White, 2,049 Black, and 2,073 Hispanic children who received a kidney transplant in the United States between January 1, 1995 and December 31, 2014. From 1995 to 2014, patient survival after transplantation improved for all recipients; however, racial/ethnic disparities in long-term survival worsened over time. In 1995, compared with White kidney transplant recipients, Black and Hispanic recipients had 11% and 49% reduced risks of death, respectively. In 2014, compared with White recipients, Black recipients had an 84% higher risk and Hispanics had a 29% lower risk. "In this national study of pediatric kidney transplant recipients, we found that while survival after KT improved overall, disparities in long-term patient survival worsened from 1995 to 2014. ?In stark contrast to prior study findings of reduced racial/ethnic disparities in outcomes for adult kidney transplant recipients, we found that disparities in long-term survival worsened over the last two decades for Black children in the United States," said Dr. Purnell. "Our findings suggest that national strategies to elucidate and intervene on mechanisms driving disparities among pediatric kidney transplant recipients are needed." ### Study: "Racial and Ethnic Disparities in Pediatric Kidney Transplant Outcomes in the United States: Have We Made Any Progress Over the Last Twenty Years?" ASN Kidney Week 2018, the largest nephrology meeting of its kind, will provide a forum for more than 13,000 professionals to discuss the latest findings in kidney health research and engage in educational sessions related to advances in the care of patients with kidney and related disorders. Kidney Week 2018 will take place October 23 - October 28 at the San Diego Convention Center. Since 1966, ASN has been leading the fight to prevent, treat, and cure kidney diseases throughout the world by educating health professionals and scientists, advancing research and innovation, communicating new knowledge, and advocating for the highest quality care for patients. ASN has more than 20,000 members representing 131 countries. For more information, please visit http://www.asn-online.org. The Baycrest study, published in the journal Neuropsychologia, found that among older adults, there is a much weaker relationship between what their eyes see and their brain activity. Forgetfulness and age-related memory lapses are a common complaint for many older adults, but what is still not understood is what causes these changes. Recent research published by scientists at Baycrest's Rotman Research Institute (RRI) brings us a step closer to uncovering the answer, which could help with distinguishing signs of dementia earlier. The study, published in the journal Neuropsychologia, found that among older adults, there is a much weaker relationship between what their eyes see and their brain activity. "Eye movements are important for gathering information from the world and the memory centre of the brain - the hippocampus - is important for binding this data together to form a memory of what our eyes see," says Dr. Jennifer Ryan, RRI senior scientist and Reva James Leeds Chair in Neuroscience and Research Leadership. "But we found that older adults are not building up the memory in the same way as younger adults. Something is falling apart somewhere along the path of taking in visual information through the eyes and storing what is seen into a memory." Previously, Baycrest researchers had identified a connection between what we see and how we remember - when the eyes view and process more details of an object in front of them, there is more brain activity in the memory centre of the brain. When the object is seen multiple times, there is a progressive drop in hippocampus activity, indicating that what is seen is no longer new information. But this doesn't happen with older adults. In the latest study, researchers found that older adults exhibited greater eye movements, but there isn't a corresponding pattern in brain activity. "These findings demonstrate that the eyes and brain are taking in information from their surroundings, but the linkage aspect of creating a memory appears to be broken," adds Dr. Ryan, who is also a psychology professor at the University of Toronto. "When the memory isn't being created, the object continues to remain unfamiliar to a person, even when they have seen it multiple times." The study was conducted with 21 older adults (between the ages of 64 and 79) and 20 younger adults (between the ages of 19 and 28). Research participants were briefly shown faces on a screen where some of the images were displayed multiple times. Researchers analyzed the eye movements and brain scans of individuals as they looked at and analyzed the pictures. As next steps, researchers will continue exploring the triggers of eye movements and related activity in the brain, which could be used to help predict earlier cognitive decline in Alzheimer's disease or other related dementias. This study was conducted with support from the Canadian Institutes of Health Research, Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council and the Canada Research Chairs Program. With additional funding, scientists could continue research that would inform the development of an eye-tracking cognitive assessment that could one day help doctors evaluate cognitive decline in clients. ### About Baycrest Now in its 100th year, Baycrest is a global leader in geriatric residential living, healthcare, research, innovation and education, with a special focus on brain health and aging. Fully affiliated with the University of Toronto, Baycrest provides excellent care for older adults combined with an extensive clinical training program for the next generation of healthcare professionals and one of the world's top research institutes in cognitive neuroscience, the Rotman Research Institute. Baycrest is home to the federally and provincially-funded Centre for Aging and Brain Health Innovation, a solution accelerator focused on driving innovation in the aging and brain health sector, and is the developer of Cogniciti - a free online memory assessment for Canadians 40+ who are concerned about their memory. Founded in 1918 as the Jewish Home for Aged, Baycrest continues to embrace the long-standing tradition of all great Jewish healthcare institutions to improve the well-being of people in their local communities and around the globe. For more information please visit: http://www.baycrest.org About Baycrest's Rotman Research Institute The Rotman Research Institute at Baycrest is a premier international centre for the study of human brain function. Through generous support from private donors and funding agencies, the institute is helping to illuminate the causes of cognitive decline in seniors, identify promising approaches to treatment, and lifestyle practices that will protect brain health longer in the lifespan. For media inquiries: Michelle Petch Gotuzzo Baycrest 416-785-2500 ext. 6932 mpetchgotuzzo@baycrest.org Josephine Lim Baycrest 416-785-2500 ext. 6127 jlim@baycrest.org A study conducted in Brazil shows that flour made from roasted jackfruit seeds can replace cocoa powder in a mixture of milk and coffee used to make cappuccino. Cappuccino made with jackfruit instead of cocoa powder. According to a new study, roasted jackfruit seeds can replace between 50% and 75% of the cocoa that is blended with milk and coffee to make cappuccino without impairing flavor or aroma. "Flour made from roasted jackfruit seeds naturally releases a mild chocolate aroma," said food scientist Fernanda Papa Spada , a recipient of a scholarship, from Sao Paulo Research Foundation - FAPESP, who performed the study at the University of Sao Paulo's Luiz de Queiroz College of Agriculture (ESALQ-USP) in Brazil. Her supervisor was Solange Guidolin Canniatti-Brazaca, a professor at the same institution in the Department of Agroindustry, Food and Nutrition. The search for a cocoa substitute was motivated by the rise in international demand for cocoa, Spada told. This rise in turn is due to the growing demand for chocolate without a corresponding growth in supply, as cocoa-producing countries fail to boost their output. Many Chinese and Indian consumers can afford chocolate for the first time. The world cocoa production has not kept up, and the commodity is increasingly scarce as a result. According to the International Cocoa Organization, 4.568 million metric tons of cocoa beans were processed in the 2017-18 crop year. This was almost the same as the total world production (4.645 million mt). The leading producer in 2017-18 was Ivory Coast, which accounted for approximately 40% of the total, followed by Ghana, Indonesia, Ecuador, Cameroon, Nigeria and Brazil. Brazilian law requires milk chocolate drinks and other chocolate preparations to contain at least 25% cocoa powder in their formulation. Even premium products typically contain less than 30% cocoa powder, the exceptions being dark and semi-dark chocolate (35%). Chocolate powder contains 30%-50% cocoa powder and cocoa butter. Dairy ingredients such as dried milk, butter, sugar and flavoring make up the rest. Canniatti-Brazaca stressed that the rising demand for cocoa and stagnant supply pose major challenges for the food industry, which is, therefore, investing heavily in the search for new cocoa substitutes for use in chocolate and chocolate products. At ESALQ-USP, jackfruit seeds were first identified as a chocolate-flavored ingredient in a project conducted between 2010 and 2013 by Canniatti-Brazaca's group and Miriam Coelho de Souza, a researcher at Piracicaba Methodist University (UNIMEP) in Sao Paulo State. "The findings showed that the seeds of the hard jackfruit (Artocarpus heterophyllus), among other varieties analyzed, released intense chocolate-like aromas," Canniatti-Brazaca said. Spada recalled that the discovery was accidental and occurred during a class led by Souza. "They were working on the development of food products based on waste left over from fruit processing," she said. "A student baked a loaf of bread made from jackfruit seed flour, and it smelled strongly of chocolate." After the accidental discovery, several studies were performed at ESALQ-USP, and an article was published in PLOS ONE demonstrating the feasibility of using flour made from roasted dry or fermented seeds of hard jackfruit to obtain an aroma similar to that of chocolate in cappuccino. Cappuccino is now available as an instant powder containing coffee with milk and chocolate. The quality and amount of chocolate vary according to the manufacturer. "The more upmarket products use chocolate powder, but many use artificial flavoring," Spada said. Coffee and chocolate alike have a unique flavor and aroma owing to the presence of volatile compounds derived from roasting and fermentation. The challenge faced by these researchers was to determine the ideal conditions for roasting and fermenting jackfruit seeds to obtain a flour with a chocolate-like aroma of optimal intensity without impairing or even altering the coffee flavor of cappuccino. Jackfruit is a large fruit with edible pulp and seeds. The interior consists of bulbs of sticky yellow flesh with a strong sweet aroma, and each bulb encloses a seed. The seeds are an agroindustrial byproduct. They can be consumed but must first be boiled or roasted. Spada and her group analyzed the chemical composition of jackfruit seed flour. "It has no flavor but releases a chocolate aroma after roasting," Spada said. "It has to be fermented first. Without fermentation, jackfruit seed flour does not release this chocolate aroma. We analyzed 33 seed prototypes with varying degrees of roast to determine which had the strongest chocolate aroma." Sensory analysis A key part of the study funded by FAPESP consisted of asking volunteers to rank the sensory attributes of the different prototypes of cappuccino comprising varying amounts of flour made from dry or fermented jackfruit seeds. "Initially, we performed a sensory analysis with 20 volunteers by recording their impressions of aroma, flavor and color," Spada said. They sampled cappuccino prototypes with 25%, 50%, 75% and 100% substitution of jackfruit flour for chocolate powder. The final test involved 12 volunteers who reached a consensus on the prototypes considered most similar or identical to conventional cappuccino." The results showed that dry jackfruit seed flour can be incorporated as an ingredient in cappuccino formulations. The substitution of jackfruit flour for chocolate powder at 50%-75% was considered ideal because the acceptability and sensory characteristics were not altered. "According to the participants in the tests, the aroma of the cappuccino preparations made with dry jackfruit seeds resembled cappuccino, chocolate, cinnamon and coffee, with cappuccino and chocolate flavors," Spada said. A. heterophyllus is native to India, where it was domesticated more than 3,000 years ago. Jackfruit is an important part of Indian cuisine and Southeast Asian cooking. The plant was introduced to Brazil by the Portuguese. It flourished so successfully here that it soon grew abundantly, for example, in the Atlantic Rainforest and is still found in the remnants of the biome. ### About Sao Paulo Research Foundation (FAPESP) The Sao Paulo Research Foundation (FAPESP) is a public institution with the mission of supporting scientific research in all fields of knowledge by awarding scholarships, fellowships and grants to investigators linked with higher education and research institutions in the State of Sao Paulo, Brazil. FAPESP is aware that the very best research can only be done by working with the best researchers internationally. Therefore, it has established partnerships with funding agencies, higher education, private companies, and research organizations in other countries known for the quality of their research and has been encouraging scientists funded by its grants to further develop their international collaboration. For more information: http://www.fapesp.br/en. CPE is the official academic journal of the European Association of Clinical Psychology and Psychological Treatment (EACLIPT) with an editorial board of internationally recognized experts in clinical psychology. CPE's Editor-in-Chief, Winfried Rief, says: "CPE is the first and only European journal covering the entire spectrum of clinical psychology. Due to its affiliation with EACLIPT it will be a unique outlet for publishing current research in clinical psychology and psychological treatment." All contributions published in CPE will be accessible free of charge (open access), thus maximizing their visibility for both academics and practitioners. The journal welcomes research conducted both in and outside of Europe covering multiple approaches, topics and conceptual views that contribute to advances in clinical psychological science. This can include stimulating papers that foster clinical psychology research, papers reporting advancements in diagnostics, classification, or treatment approaches as well as updates on state-of-the-art topics. CPE will present the wide range of clinical psychological research and thus will offer insights and practical advice on health care issues and approaches in the field of clinical psychology. CPE publishes original research articles, review studies and meta-analyses. To further enhance quality and replicability in clinical psychology, CPE also accepts registered reports for confirmatory research as well as properly conducted replication studies. Striving for providing readers with the most up-to-date and cutting-edge advances in clinical psychology, CPE also welcomes submissions of scientific updates and short reports on the latest developments in the field. CPE also offers a platform to communicate about legal issues on psychology and psychological treatment, training curricula, or political news of relevance for clinical psychology. Submit your research to Clinical Psychology in Europe! Publishing with CPE will make your research visible for leading experts of clinical psychology. To submit your manuscript, please visit Clinical Psychology in Europe (CPE) at its website cpe.psychopen.eu. CPE is provided by PsychOpen GOLD, The European Open-Access Publishing Platform for Psychology, a project by the Leibniz Institute for Psychology Information (ZPID), Trier, Germany. "We at ZPID are delighted to have become the preferred partner for publishing CPE. The timeliness of our new PsychOpen GOLD platform in combination with the proven experience of our publication production team have convinced the prestigious international editorial board to make ZPID their first choice", says ZPID Director Michael Bosnjak. "Besides PSYNDEX, PubPsych and ZPID's test archive, which are all intensively used by CPE's target groups, the journal serves as an additional rich resource for high-quality research findings." ### Experts from the HSE Centre for Business Tendency Studies (CBTS) analysed for the first time the growth of the manufacturing industry in CIS countries between 2004 and 2016. It was conducted within the framework of a regional project of the United Nations Industrial Development Organization (UNIDO) "Improvement of industrial statistics and development of indicators of industrial performance for policy-relevant analysis in CIS countries". The CBTS analysis, which covered the trends and scale of this growth, demonstrated a global slowdown in the long-term macroeconomic development of the region. During the period under review, CIS countries were not able to take advantage of various economic growth opportunities to boost their industrial potential. The results of the study were presented in the UNIDO report Industrial Development in CIS Countries: Are There Conditions for Re-Industrialization Capacity Building? This research was conducted by CBTS Deputy Director and UNIDO Consultant Liudmila Kitrar jointly with Georgy Ostapkovich, CBTS Director, and experts Tamara Lipkind, Irina Kulikova and Dmitry Chusovlyanov. Experts from HSE CBTS compared metrics on the manufacturing industries of CIS countries between 2004 and 2016. This approach allowed them not only to analyse the industrial development of CIS countries together, but also to see the role of each country reviewed in the project. The results showed a global macroeconomic slowdown as concerns long-term steady growth in all countries. Additionally, CBTS experts saw evidence of a recession in the cyclical development of most economies in the region. Experts believe price shocks on oil markets made the situation even worse for oil-exporting nations. For importers, oil revenues were partially neutralised by a deficit on the domestic market, as well as by the side effects of Russia's recession. Practically all countries boosted value added of trade and services over the decade under review. This occurred alongside a drop in the size of the industrial market. This premature deindustrialisation, particularly under conditions of unstable revenues, made it impossible to maintain adequate economic growth rates. This also limited the number of new technologies that could be introduced. The industrial markets of most CIS countries traditionally relied on low-tech production, while imports largely met domestic needs for high-tech products. It was harder for the majority of countries in the region to produce high-tech products due to labour-intensive assembly processes. At the same time, exports from the region mostly consisted of resource- and labour-intensive products, which were greatly exposed to external shocks. Over the decade, a cluster of countries with solid industrialisation, high production and export potential, and regional influence of manufacturing had formed in the CIS. These countries include Russia, Kazakhstan, Ukraine, and Belarus. Azerbaijan and Armenia were catching up in terms of development and industrialization. Kyrgyzstan, Moldova, and Tajikistan continued expanding the large-scale processing of resources-based and low-tech production. The region did not experience a noticeable growth in employment in the formal sector of the manufacturing industry, and it was shown that this sector was not a critical source of new jobs. Only Russia, Belarus, and Ukraine demonstrated a high level of industrial employment (over 18% of those employed in these countries worked in manufacturing) as a sign of real and timely industrialization. ### * Several industrial development estimates came from research conducted as part of the HSE Basic Research Programme and government support for leading Russian universities in the 5-100 programme. A team of Hungarian astronomers and physicists may have confirmed two elusive clouds of dust, in semi-stable points just 400,000 kilometres from Earth. The clouds, first reported by and named for Polish astronomer Kazimierz Kordylewski in 1961, are exceptionally faint, so their existence is controversial. The new work appears in the journal Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society. The Earth-Moon system has five points of stability where gravitational forces maintain the relative position of objects located there. Two of these so-called Lagrange points, L4 and L5, form an equal-sided triangle with the Earth and Moon, and move around the Earth as the Moon moves along its orbit. L4 and L5 are not completely stable, as they are disturbed by the gravitational pull of the Sun. Nonetheless they are thought to be locations where interplanetary dust might collect, at least temporarily. Kordylewski observed two nearby clusters of dust at L5 in 1961, with various reports since then, but their extreme faintness makes them difficult to detect and many scientists doubted their existence. In a paper earlier this year the Hungarian team, led by Gabor Horvath of Eotvos Lorand University, modelled the Kordylewski clouds to assess how they form and how they might be detected. The researchers were interested in their appearance using polarising filters, which transmit light with a particular direction of oscillation, similar to those found on some types of sunglasses. Scattered or reflected light is always more or less polarised, depending on the angle of scattering or reflection. They then set out to find the dust clouds. With a linearly polarising filter system attached to a camera lens and CCD detector at Judit Sliz-Balogh's private observatory in Hungary (Badacsonytordemic), the scientists took exposures of the purported location of the Kordylewski cloud at the L5 point. The images they obtained show polarised light reflected from dust, extending well outside the field of view of the camera lens. The observed pattern matches predictions made by the same group of researchers in an earlier paper and is consistent with the earliest observations of the Kordylewski clouds six decades ago. Horvath's group were able to rule out optical artefacts and other effects, meaning that the presence of the dust cloud is confirmed. Judit Sliz-Balogh comments on their discovery comments on their discovery: "The Kordylewski clouds are two of the toughest objects to find, and though they are as close to Earth as the Moon are largely overlooked by researchers in astronomy. It is intriguing to confirm that our planet has dusty pseudo-satellites in orbit alongside our lunar neighbour." Given their stability, the L4 and L5 points are seen as potential sites for orbiting space probes, and as transfer stations for missions exploring the wider Solar System. There are also proposals to store pollutants at the two points. Future research will look at L4 and L5, and the associated Kordylewski clouds, to understand how stable they really are, and whether their dust presents any kind of threat to equipment and future astronauts alike. ### Media contacts Dr Robert Massey Royal Astronomical Society Tel: +44 (0)20 7292 3979 Mob: +44 (0)7802 877 699 press@ras.ac.uk Dr Morgan Hollis Royal Astronomical Society Tel: +44 (0)20 7292 3977 Mob: +44 (0)7802 877 700 press@ras.ac.uk Science contacts Mrs Judit Sliz-Balogh Department of Astronomy / Department of Biological Physics / Environmental Optics Laboratory Eotvos Lorand University Hungary judit.sliz@gmail.com Dr Andras Barta Estrato Research and Development Ltd Hungary bartaandras@gmail.com Prof. Gabor Horvath Department of Biological Physics / Environmental Optics Laboratory Eotvos Lorand University Hungary gh@arago.elte.hu Images and captions https://ras.ac.uk/sites/default/files/kordylewski_cloud-text.jpg Artist's impression of the Kordylewski cloud in the night sky (with its brightness greatly enhanced) at the time of the observations. Credit: G. Horvath https://ras.ac.uk/sites/default/files/2018-10/L5_polarization.jpg Pattern of the angle of polarization of the sky around the L5 Lagrange point of the Earth-Moon system, measured by imaging polarimetry in the green (550 nm) spectral range at 01:14:15 UT on 19 August 2017. The position of the L5 point is shown by a white dot. In this picture the central region of the Kordylewski dust cloud is visible (bright red pixels). The straight tilted lines are traces of satellites. Credit: J. Sliz-Balogh https://ras.ac.uk/sites/default/files/l5_polarization-mosaic.jpg Mosaic pattern of the angle of polarization around the L5 point (white dot) of the Earth-Moon system. The five rectangular windows correspond to the fields of view of the imaging polarimetric telescope with which the polarization patterns of the Kordylewski dust cloud were measured. Credit: J. Sliz-Balogh Further information The new work appears in two papers: https://doi.org/10.1093/mnras/sty2049 "Celestial mechanics and polarization optics of the Kordylewski dust cloud in the Earth-Moon Lagrange point L5 - Part I. Three-dimensional celestial mechanical modelling of dust cloud formation",J. Sliz-Balogh, A. Barta and G. Horvath, Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society (2018), 480 (4): 5550-5559 (DOI: 10.1093/mnras/sty2049). https://doi.org/10.1093/mnras/sty2630 "Celestial mechanics and polarization optics of the Kordylewski dust cloud in the Earth-Moon Lagrange point L5. Part II. Imaging polarimetric observation: new evidence for the existence of Kordylewski dust cloud", J. Sliz-Balogh, A. Barta and G. Horvath, Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society (2018), in press (DOI: 10.1093/mnras/sty2630). Notes for editors The Royal Astronomical Society (RAS, http://www.ras.ac.uk), founded in 1820, encourages and promotes the study of astronomy, solar-system science, geophysics and closely related branches of science. The RAS organises scientific meetings, publishes international research and review journals, recognises outstanding achievements by the award of medals and prizes, maintains an extensive library, supports education through grants and outreach activities and represents UK astronomy nationally and internationally. Its more than 4,000 members (Fellows), a third based overseas, include scientific researchers in universities, observatories and laboratories as well as historians of astronomy and others. The RAS accepts papers for its journals based on the principle of peer review, in which fellow experts on the editorial boards accept the paper as worth considering. The Society issues press releases based on a similar principle, but the organisations and scientists concerned have overall responsibility for their content. Twitter: https://twitter.com/royalastrosoc Facebook: https://facebook.com/royalastrosoc Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/royalastrosoc/ YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/user/RoyalAstroSoc/feed Azerbaijani Foreign Minister Elmar Mammadyarov met Deputy Director General of UNESCO Xing Qu on the margins of the VI Baku Humanitarian Forum, the Azerbaijani Foreign Ministry said in a statement Oct. 25, Trend reports. Minister Mammadyarov highly praised UNESCOs role in development of science, education and intercultural dialogue and stressed the successful cooperation of Azerbaijan with the organization. Conveying the best regards of the Director General Audrey Azoulay, the Deputy Director General underlined the importance given by UNESCO to the Baku Humanitarian Forum. He referred with satisfaction to the high level cooperation between UNESCO and Azerbaijan and the projects implemented by both sides. The sides underlined the significant role of the World Heritage Conference to be organized next year in Azerbaijan in further development of relations. Both sides stressed the importance of increasing the efforts for implementation of 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development Goals. The sides also had exchange of views over other issues of mutual interest. A cutting-edge material, inspired by nature, that can regulate its own temperature and could equally be used to treat burns and help space capsules withstand atmospheric forces is under development at the University of Nottingham. The research paper, Temperature - dependent polymer absorber as a switchable state NIR reactor, is published in the journal Scientific Reports today (Friday 26 October). "A major challenge in material science is to work out how to regulate man-made material temperature as the human body can do in relationship to its environment," explains lead author Dr Mark Alston, Assistant Professor in Environmental Design, from the Faculty of Engineering. The research used a network of multiple microchannels with active flowing fluids (fluidics) as a method and proof of concept to develop a thermally-functional material made of a synthetic polymer. The material is enhanced with precise control measures that can switch conductive states to manage its own temperature in relationship to its environment. "This bio-inspired engineering approach advances the structural assembly of polymers for use in advanced materials. Nature uses fluidics to regulate and manage temperature in mammals and in plants to absorb solar radiation though photosynthesis and this research used a leaf-like model to mimic this function in the polymer." Dr Alston adds: "This approach will result in an advanced material that can absorb high solar radiation, as the human body can do, to cool itself autonomously whatever the environment it is placed in. A thermally-functional material could be used as a heat regulation system for burn injuries to cool skin surface temperature and monitor and improve healing." This kind of heat flow management could also prove invaluable in space flight where high solar loads can cause thermal stresses on the structural integrity of space capsules. By regulation of the structural material temperature of the vehicle, this will not only advance structural properties but could also generate useful power. This thermal energy could be removed from the re-circulated fluid system to be stored in a reservoir tank on board the capsule. Once captured, the energy could be converted into electrical energy or to heat water for use by the crew. The experimental side of this research is laboratory-based and has been developed in collaboration with UK Government research institute: Scientific Research Facilities Council (SRFC). The next steps for the research are to secure funding for a demonstrator scale-up to present to aerospace manufacturing and to identify an industrial partner. ### More information is available from Dr Mark Alston, Faculty of Engineering, on 0115 7487170 or mark.alston@nottingham.ac.uk or Emma Lowry, Media Relations Manager (Engineering) on 0115 8467156 or emma.lowry@nottingham.ac.uk Our academics can now be interviewed for broadcast via our Media Hub, which offers a Globelynx fixed camera and ISDN line facilities at University Park campus. For further information please contact a member of the Communications team on +44 (0)115 951 5798, email pressoffice@nottingham.ac.uk or see the Globelynx website for how to register for this service. For up to the minute media alerts, follow us on Twitter Notes to editors: The University of Nottingham is a research-intensive university with a proud heritage, consistently ranked among the world's top 100. Studying at the University of Nottingham is a life-changing experience and we pride ourselves on unlocking the potential of our 44,000 students - Nottingham was named both Sports and International University of the Year in the 2019 Times and Sunday Times Good University Guide, was awarded gold in the TEF 2017 and features in the top 20 of all three major UK rankings. We have a pioneering spirit, expressed in the vision of our founder Sir Jesse Boot, which has seen us lead the way in establishing campuses in China and Malaysia - part of a globally connected network of education, research and industrial engagement. We are ranked eighth for research power in the UK according to REF 2014. We have six beacons of research excellence helping to transform lives and change the world; we are also a major employer and industry partner - locally and globally. More news... Impacts of environmental toxins may be missed when researchers fail to compare effects on men and women, according to a study by UNC-Chapel Hill scientists CHAPEL HILL, NC - Exposure to wood smoke can have different effects on the respiratory immune systems of men and women - effects that may be obscured when data from men and women are lumped together, according to a study published today in the American Journal of Respiratory and Critical Care Medicine by scientists at the UNC School of Medicine and the UNC Gillings School of Global Public Health. The scientists exposed men and women volunteers to wood smoke or filtered air prior to inoculating them with a standard dose of the live-attenuated influenza virus vaccine, which causes a natural, yet mild, immune response in the nasal passages. They then later discovered that the men exposed to wood smoke had significantly higher markers of an inflammatory response in cells that line the nasal passages relative to men exposed to filtered air. By contrast, for women, the wood smoke exposure appeared to lower markers of the inflammatory response. When the researchers averaged out the data from men and women, as these sorts of exposure studies typically do, the analysis gave the false impression that the wood smoke had almost no effect on the immune response to the live-attenuated influenza virus vaccine. "The upshot is that we really need to consider sex-specific effects when studying wood smoke and other environmental pollutants that threaten public health," said senior author Ilona Jaspers, PhD, a professor of pediatrics in the UNC School of Medicine and director of UNC-Chapel Hill's Curriculum in Toxicology & Environmental Medicine. Wood smoke is among the most ancient environmental pollutants, and is still considered a significant cause of sickness and death today. Researchers estimate that about 40 percent of the modern human population, roughly 3 billion people, are chronically exposed to smoke from burning wood and related "biomass" combustibles, such as leaves, crop stalks, and dung. Wood smoke contains dozens of known toxins, and epidemiological studies have linked biomass exposures to chronic obstructive pulmonary disorder (COPD) in women who have never smoked and lung cancer in male firefighters. Wood smoke exposure is also expected to become more common as the frequency of wildfires increases. Epidemiological studies have suggested that wood smoke impairs normal lung functions and the ability of the human airway to defend itself against respiratory infections. But controlled exposure studies directly linking wood smoke exposure and altered responses to respiratory infections had not been completed. In 2014, Jaspers and colleagues designed their study to explore that impact on airway immune defense. They recruited 39 healthy, young, nonsmoking adults and randomly assigned them to sit for two hours in a chamber filled with dense wood smoke (500 g/cm3 wood smoke particle concentration) or in a chamber filled with clean, filtered air. At the end of the two hours, each group received a standard dose of a live-attenuated influenza virus vaccine (FluMist), delivered in a squirt up the nose, to model an ordinary community-acquired respiratory virus infection. Before the wood smoke exposure, on the day after, and on the day after that, the researchers washed airway-lining cells from the noses of the subjects and measured the expression levels of key inflammatory genes and proteins in the cells. The main goal was to see if the wood smoke-exposed subjects had signs of an altered inflammatory response, compared to the filtered-air group. The researchers unexpectedly found high variability in the data; for some wood smoke-exposed subjects the inflammatory response was greater, while for others it was lower. On average there appeared to be almost no significant difference in response compared to the filtered-air group--as if the wood smoke on balance had done virtually nothing to change airway antiviral defenses. "We were very discouraged by these results and had a difficult time understanding the variability in the effects of wood smoke among the subjects" Jaspers said. A few years later, Jaspers hired postdoctoral researcher Meghan Rebuli, PhD, who has a background in the sex-specific toxicity of endocrine-disrupting compounds, like bisphenol A (BPA). Rebuli, the first author of the current study, re-examined the data and identified a key source of the high variability in the data: sex. Specifically, the wood smoke exposure resulted in higher inflammatory markers for the male subjects and lower inflammatory markers for the female subjects. The effects, which hint at milder responses to viral infection for wood smoke-exposed women compared to wood smoke-exposed men, were so consistently opposite that combining them, without regard to sex, gave the misleading appearance of almost no effect overall. The scientists aren't yet sure why men and women would differ so starkly in their immunological responses to wood smoke. One possibility is that women and men over thousands of generations have had different evolutionary histories of wood smoke exposure, leading to different evolutionary adaptations. Women, for example, might have had greater and more chronic exposure to smoke from cooking fires, compared to men. Other factors that may have influenced the sex-specific responses include differences in male and female hormone profiles and genetics. "We wonder if a greater wood smoke exposure has led to evolutionary pressure on women to have a more blunted inflammatory response, which would probably result in less damage to the airway during respiratory virus infection," Jaspers said. Regardless, this study suggests that any research on environmental exposures should take potential sex differences into account. "Many researchers still do not treat sex as a factor in their analyses, and this can mask effects like the ones we found," Rebuli said. "This is very important to consider in future clinical studies, as we are just beginning to understand how differently men and women can respond to a variety of exposures." ### Other authors, all at UNC-Chapel Hill when these studies were conducted, include Adam Speen, PhD, Elizabeth Martin, PhD, Kezia Addo, Erica Pawlak, PhD, Ellen Glista-Baker, PhD, Carole Robinette, Haibo Zhou, PhD, and Terry Noah, MD Ilona Jaspers is also deputy director of the UNC Center for Environmental Medicine, Asthma and Lung Biology and has a joint appointment in the UNC Gillings School of Public Health. Funding for this research came from the National Institutes of Health, a Leon and Bertha Golberg Postdoctoral Fellowship, and through a cooperative agreement with the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, but this study has not been subjected to review and does not necessarily reflect EPA policy. University of Oklahoma professors, Karl D. Hambright and Lee R. Krumholz, will lead a global research team to study one of the most common environmental problems--freshwater toxic cyanobacteria (bluegreen algae) blooms, which threaten freshwater lakes and pose substantial health risks to humans, pets, livestock and wildlife. The group will address the fundamental interactions between cyanobacteria and other bacteria co-occurring with the blooms. "By testing the hypothesis that cyanobacteria are supported through a mutually-beneficial relationship with a mixture of other species of bacteria, we hope to discover new avenues of bloom mitigation," said Hambright, professor in the Department of Biology, and director of Environmental Studies; and Krumholz, professor in the Department of Microbiology and Plant Biology. Both departments are part of the OU College of Arts and Sciences. Hambright and Krumholz will address the harmful outbreaks of toxic cyanobacteria that have reached new levels in water bodies around the world with team members: Hans W. Paerl, the University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill; Alan E. Wilson, Auburn University; and Morgan M. Steffen Wurch, James Madison University. Researchers from Australia, Canada, China, France, Germany, Hungary, Israel and New Zealand will assist in developing an enhanced understanding of interactions between cyanobacteria and associated bacteria. The team will focus on a concept based idea that these blooms constitute complex interactions of cyanobacteria and associated bacteria that co-evolve to form a community of synergistic species, each with a unique metabolic capability critical to the growth, maintenance and demise of the bloom. The team will use: (1) a global genomic survey of cyanobacterial blooms throughout all phases of the bloom; (2) a targeted series of metagenomic and metatranscriptomic surveys; and (3) experimental work focused on interactome species comparison and gene expression in the lab and field sites in China and North America. The team also will explore the roles of nutrient inputs, nutrient ratios and various forms of nitrogen on the function and species composition of the bloom. This research aims to understand the unique roles of specific bacterial species on metabolic processes within the bloom and to identify potential new approaches for mitigating harmful cyanobacterial blooms by using a realistic approach based on ecology and evolutionary biology. The $2 million, five-year project, "Cyanobacterial Bloom Microbial Interactome as a Model for Understanding Biogeographical and Seasonal Patterns in Functional Biodiversity," is supported by the National Science Foundation. ### For more information, contact Dave Hambright at dhambright@ou.edu or Lee R. Krumholz at krumholz@ou.edu. Substance in young mouse tears reduces female interest in sex, may have future applications for rodent control A substance in young mice's tears makes female mice more likely to reject male sexual advances. This research is part of ongoing efforts at the University of Tokyo to understand how animals communicate using chemicals called pheromones. Direct connections between human and mouse behavior cannot be made because pheromones are highly species specific. "If humans can detect anything in tears, we won't use the same pheromone signal or receptor as mice. But we are investigating if species share the basic neurocircuitry of how the brain processes an olfactory signal to affect behavior," said Professor Kazushige Touhara, leader of the research project. Pheromone population control Researchers hope to use the tear pheromone as a natural mouse birth control to reduce mouse populations in the future. "It is unlikely that other animals would be affected because pheromones are so species specific. The sex-rejecting behavior is an innate instinct, so it's also unlikely that the mice will learn to change their behavior or ignore the artificial pheromone," said Touhara. Only juvenile mice aged one to three weeks produce the pheromone, called exocrine gland-secreting peptide 22 (ESP22). ESP22 is not airborne and lacks a noticeable odor, but the pheromone spreads around the territory as mothers and young mice wipe tears while grooming. Both mothers and virgin female mice reject male sexual advances after exposure to ESP22. Less female interest in sex would theoretically benefit juvenile mice by reducing the number of younger siblings competing for resources. "ESP22 is difficult to artificially synthesize, so we want to find a smaller portion of the pheromone molecule that could be added to mouse drinking water. This could prevent mice breeding in areas where they are pests," said Touhara. Specific receptors ESP1 is an adult male pheromone that Touhara's research group has previously studied for its role in enhancing female acceptance of sex. In this new study, researchers tracked how ESP22 and ESP1 are received and processed by the adult female mouse brain. Pheromone signals from young mice overrode the signals from adult males. Virgin female mice rejected male advances when they were exposed to the sex-rejecting ESP22 even after being exposed to the sex-accepting ESP1. Both sex-rejecting ESP22 and sex-accepting ESP1 pheromones are recognized by single, dedicated receptors in the nose. Specific neurons send the different pheromone signals to the brain. The presence of similar but specific ESP1 and ESP22 receptors helps reveal how animals evolved the ability to detect and interpret pheromone signals. "The discovery of only one receptor for each pheromone shows us that single molecules can drastically affect animal behavior," said Touhara. Pheromones in the brain Pheromone signals are routed to the medial amygdala, a small group of neurons in the brain. "The medial amygdala is like a hub to receive and reroute pheromone signals," said Kentaro Ishii, a co-first author of the research paper and fifth-year doctoral student working with Touhara. ESP22 and ESP1 signals travel separately but in parallel until reaching the medial amygdala. After that point, the pheromones affect different neurocircuitry in the brain to create different behaviors. Ongoing research in the laboratory will explore pheromone-related neurocircuitry beyond the medial amygdala hub. "The medial amygdala is still very mysterious, so we are excited to discover more details about how pheromone signals are sorted and routed after they are received there," said Ishii. "Additionally, we want to understand the complexity of how the brain computes and sorts olfactory signals in a natural environment, where animals are simultaneously exposed to many different pheromones and other chemical signals all the time," said Ishii. ### The paper is published by Nature Communications. Collaborators at RIKEN Center for Brain Science in Japan and Harvard Medical School in the U.S. also contributed to the research. Journal Article Takuya Osakada, Kentaro K. Ishii, Hiromi Mori, Ryo Eguchi, David M. Ferrero, Yoshihiro Yoshihara, Stephen D. Liberles, Kazunari Miyamichi, and Kazushige Touhara. 2018. Sexual rejection via a vomeronasal receptor-triggered limbic circuit. Nature Communications. DOI: 10.1038/s41467-018-07003-5. Related Links Graduate School of Agricultural and Life Sciences, The University of Tokyo website: http://www.a.u-tokyo.ac.jp/english/index.html Kazushige Touhara website: http://park.itc.u-tokyo.ac.jp/biological-chemistry/profile_english/index.html Research Contact Professor Kazushige Touhara Laboratory of Biological Chemistry, Department of Applied Biological Chemistry, Graduate School of Agricultural and Life Sciences, The University of Tokyo, 1-1-1 Yayoi, Bunkyo-ku, Tokyo, 113-8657 Tel: +81-(0)3-5841-5109 E-mail: ktouhara@mail.ecc.u-tokyo.ac.jp Press Contacts Ms. Caitlin Devor Division for Strategic Public Relations, The University of Tokyo, 7-3-1 Hongo, Bunkyo-ku, Tokyo 113-8654, JAPAN Tel: +81-3-5841-0876 Email: press-releases.adm@mail.u-tokyo.ac.jp About the University of Tokyo The University of Tokyo is Japan's leading university and one of the world's top research universities. The vast research output of some 6,000 researchers is published in the world's top journals across the arts and sciences. Our vibrant student body of around 15,000 undergraduate and 15,000 graduate students includes over 2,000 international students. Find out more at http://www.u-tokyo.ac.jp/en/ or follow us on Twitter at @UTokyo_News_en. SPOKANE, Wash. - Washington State University will lead the establishment of a new center to advance research on Alzheimer's disease and related dementias in Native populations across the United States. Funding for the new Native Alzheimer's Disease-Related Resource Center in Minority Aging comes from a recently awarded $2.8 million five-year grant from the National Institute on Aging, a component of the National Institutes of Health. The center will be a collaboration between WSU, the University of Colorado Denver and Stanford University, with additional expertise drawn from faculty at other institutions. Alzheimer's dementia currently affects an estimated 5.7 million Americans, a number that is projected to rise to nearly 14 million by 2050, according to the Alzheimer's Association. It is estimated that one in 10 people age 65 and older has the disease, and its impact on American Indian, Alaska Native, Native Hawaiian, and Pacific Islander communities is of growing concern. "Native people have made major advances in longevity over the past 50 years, which has tripled their population share among people aged 65," said Dedra Buchwald, MD, director of the WSU Initiative for Research and Education to Advance Community Health (IREACH) and a professor in the Elson S. Floyd College of Medicine, who leads the new center. "This will likely increase the prevalence of Alzheimer's disease in Native people. At the same time, there is very little recognition in Native communities of Alzheimer's disease and its impact, along with a shortage of resources to effectively diagnose and treat the disease." To address these health disparities, the new center will recruit, train and mentor junior and midlevel scientists interested in pursuing research on Alzheimer's disease in Native populations, with a special focus on American Indian, Alaska Native, Native Hawaiian and Pacific Islander investigators, and others from underrepresented minority groups. With guidance from a mentorship team, these scientists will participate in an 18-month training program intended to hone their research skills. The center also will provide funding for each of the investigators to conduct a pilot research study. These pilot projects will provide data to support proposals for larger research projects that the researchers will write at the conclusion of their training. "By expanding the scientific workforce in this area, we can start to fill in the gaps in knowledge related to Alzheimer's disease in Native populations," Buchwald said. "This will ultimately help us reduce Alzheimer's disease-related health disparities, promote prevention and treatment, and improve the health of Native people." The center builds on previous collaborative research on Native elders and Alzheimer's disease conducted by Buchwald and her team at IREACH with colleagues elsewhere. This includes the Center for American Indian and Alaska Native Health Disparities co-led by WSU and the University of Colorado Denver; the Native Elder Research Center co-led by the University of Colorado Denver and WSU; and the Alzheimer's Disease Research Center at the University of Washington, where Buchwald is a member of the core leadership group. In addition, it draws on an extensive network of more than 160 partnerships IREACH has developed with tribes, tribal organizations and community-based programs in 15 states. ### Over the past seven and a half decades, Blue Star has served several industries in India and abroad with its wide range of products and services. On completing 75 years, the brand released an ad campaign essaying how people and industries have come to depend on Blue Star for a variety of needs over the years, and it is perhaps this trust that has turned a modest enterprise into a global entity. The ad campaign has been conceptualized by FCB Interface. B Thiagarajan, Joint Managing Director, Blue Star Limited and Robby Mathew, Chief Creative Officer, FCB Interface, chatted with exchange4media on how the communication has evolved over time, how the brand ensured its communication doesn't echo other players in the category and more. Thiagarajan shared, We commenced our 75th year celebration in the month of April. The fact that the brand is into many segments and product offerings might not be known to many consumers. And that were a 75-year-old company might also not be known to many, which was the reason we rolled out this communication. The Joint MD signalled that he was clear that he didnt want the communication to be a boring documentary. We wanted to differentiate ourselves with the advantage of the consumer feedback that we have got. So we used the leaning man as the hook, he said. He also revealed that the brands penetration is high even in tier 3-5 towns. Therefore, even for our communication, we wanted not just city-centric comprehension but towns too. The ad shows people from different homes and companies leaning on the brand. Mathew said that the line of thought that they wanted to trigger was that people from different industries all use and rely on Bluestar. The CCO said that the task was to bring the fact alive that so many people rely on the brands expertise and engineering but dont know about it. Mathew also admitted that the communication in the category can be otherwise boring but the team honed on the creative device that people lean on Blue Star for all their services and expertise. We wanted to show that in many ways, Bluestar is the unseen guy you are leaning on. That is what we visualized. Thiagaranjan revealed that the brand has been a reasonably good spender in the digital space. As for this campaign too, there will be adequate amplification in the digital space," he stated. The TVC: Read more news about (internet advertising India, internet advertising, advertising India, digital advertising India, media advertising India) Privacy Settings This site uses functional cookies and external scripts to improve your experience. Which cookies and scripts are used and how they impact your visit is specified on the left. You may change your settings at any time. Your choices will not impact your visit. NOTE: These settings will only apply to the browser and device you are currently using. Welcome to the News Release Wire Selection Control Panel. Instant News Wire Friday, October 26, 2018 CONTACT: Pamela D. Wilson 303-810-1816 Email: Pamela@PamelaDWilson.com Golden, Colorado, October 26, 2018. The National Veterans Memorial and Museum is opening in Columbus, Ohio. My father, John Anthony Dombrowski, was a WWI Veteran who served in the Solomon Islands. His father served in the Polish Army. Living World War II veterans are becoming a rarity: "According to the US Department of Veterans Affairs, 496,777 of the 16 million Americans who served in World War II are alive in 2018." Veterans who dedicated their lives to service continue to dedicate their lives to the care of aging spouses. My father, cared for my mother, who predeceased him. In my experience as a caregiving advocate, male World War II veterans are staunch caregivers for their wives to the point of being plain stubborn and refusing help from others. I am an avid reader and have a love for the military because of my father. A book, Extreme Ownership: How U.S. Navy Seals Lead and Win written by two navy seals talks about combat leadership. My father, like most WWII veterans talked little about the horrors of war. His character, work ethic, and loyalty to family were the results of military life. I see this same character in WWII male caregivers. The dedication and loyalty to care for aging and frail wives is relentless. Veteran caergivers never give up. Talking a veteran into accepting help feels like a battle for their adult children who are concerned their father will wear out. The idea of "leave no man behind" applies in these situations. Male WWI veterans who are caregivers will not leave their aging wives who need care. They remain until the end. While the horrors of war cannot be compared to the stress of caregiving, the skills learned through service to our country, transfer to male veteran caregivers who are committed to care for their wives. The duty of spouses as caregivers can be significantly difficult, and benefits from skills learned in combat. Caring for a spouse diagnosed with Alzheimer's disease is challenging and requires different skills. Commanding or ordering is not effective. Leadership skills may apply when attempting to marshall physicians and care providers down the same path for care. Extreme ownership does apply. Concerns about running out of money and using Medicaid to pay for care exist. While many spouses consider divorce, to protect assets from Medicaid, war time veterans have the opportunity to access Aid & Attendance (A&A) and Attendance, a benefit not well publicized. Aid and attendance is a VA program. Benefits include assistance in the home and payments to support assisted living care. Veterans service officers can provide information on this program and support exists at VA offices to complete the applications. Honoring our veterans is important. Supporting them at the end of life when care or caregiving becomes a role is our duty. Pamela's book, The Caregiving Trap: Solutions for Life's Unexpected Changes offers rare experience and practical tips that support caregiving ownership and not leaving family members behind. Want more articles and information like this? Subscribe to Pamela's FREE newsletter for caregivers. At Holt Cats San Antonio headquarters Thursday, Texas Comptroller Glenn Hegar and company president and chief administrative officer Corinna Holt Richter discussed women in the states workforce, some of the obstacles they face and advice for young people. I see how our employees, and our female employees, are challenged, just in the sense that they dont have many peers that they can relate to, Richter said. There are not a lot of women in our heavy equipment and construction industry, so they just arent around women that often. ... That support group isnt there. We are trying to develop and encourage that so people have those opportunities and also those peers they can lean on for help and support, she added. Hegar visited the company for the latest edition of his Good for Texas Tour, which focuses on women in different industries and their effect on the states economy. He said he decided to launch the tour after a conversation with his oldest daughter about role models. I thought that it was really important to highlight women in the workforce, not just for his daughter but for other young women as well, Hegar said. Women hold nearly half of Texas 12.4 million jobs, and the number of women-owned businesses has increased by 146 percent in the past two decades, according to a study by the comptrollers office. Texas women hold 40 percent of jobs in the trade, transportation and utilities industry, which Holt Cat is part of. In 2016, the sector contributed more than $317 billion to the states gross domestic product. Richter and brother Peter J. Holt, who serves as CEO and general manager, took over the reins of the company this year. Holt Cat runs the largest Caterpillar dealership network in the country and employs more than 2,200 people in its Texas operations. Related: Texas Power Brokers: Holt siblings, now in control of family company, setting off on own path When it comes to balancing a career with parenthood, and the obstacles working parents face, both mothers and fathers should be treated equally, Richter said. Were asking both parents to be there for their children, so why not treat them both the same in terms of the workforce and our demands on their time? she said. One of the reasons Richter said she comes to work every day is because she wants her children to take over the company one day, too. I see myself as a steward, she said. Im here to maintain the culture and the values and to put my mark on it and to grow it if I can. Asked what advice she would give to young people, particularly young women, Richter said she would emphasize the career opportunities that are out there. Finding out about them ahead of time when youre in high school and even in middle school is crucial, because if you can start there and really prepare yourself for those roles at an early age, youre going to be more successful right out of the gate, she said. Finding a company that aligns with a persons values is also important, she added. We spend so much time at work, you might as well be doing something you love and youre passionate about and aligned with, Richter said. madison.iszler@express-news.net | @madisoniszler Q: My wife died in January 2018. I have asked many county and city offices what I need to do to have her name removed from the deed for our house, the title to our car and other jointly owned properties. The answer is, I cant tell you. Why not? Is it too complicated for me? They tell me I need to hire an attorney. Why is it not as simple as sending a death certificate to the proper government office? A: What you are trying to do is a bit like calling a hospital switchboard to schedule your own MRI so that you can figure out why your knee hurts. The phone operators are going to say, I cant do that. You need to see a doctor. Only a doctor can order the MRI and then interpret the results and advise you as to the best course of medical treatment. Its not that the people at the government offices dont want to help you. The issue is that each estate is unique. For instance, when a person dies, it can be complicated to figure out who inherits the property of that persons estate. You may not be the only beneficiary of your wifes estate. In fact, you may not even be a beneficiary of her estate. There are also different types of probates that can be instituted, and there is no way the person on the phone would be able to tell you which option is best. Plus, if the people at the government offices did start answering your questions, they would then arguably be practicing law without a license. You didnt mention whether your wife died with or without a will. That makes a huge difference regarding what you must do for the probate. Also, the steps that must be taken are highly dependent on the types of assets your wife owned, what sorts of debts she had, how much she was worth, and who she named as beneficiaries. Under Texas law, if your wife died with a will, the will must be proven to be valid in a court of law. You cant just send a copy of the will (or a death certificate) to a court clerk and then go claim the property. A death certificate doesnt determine who inherits property. If your wife died without a will, then there are a handful of other types of probates available, but figuring out which way is best can be tricky. The bottom line is that you cant simply mail a death certificate to a government office. You can try to figure out how to handle the probate on your own, and as long as you are the sole beneficiary of your wifes estate, most courts will let you represent yourself. (Unlike the field of medicine, you dont need a license to represent yourself in court.) But as you have found out, navigating the system is not easy. You will not get answers simply by phoning people at the courthouse. Where should you go for advice on how to proceed? To an estate planning attorney who handles probates for a living. The information in this column is intended to provide a general understanding of the law, not legal advice. Readers with legal problems, including those whose questions are addressed here, should consult attorneys for advice on their particular circumstances. Ronald Lipman of the Houston law firm Lipman & Associates is board-certified in estate planning and probate law by the Texas Board of Legal Specialization. Email questions to stateyourcase@lipmanpc.com. FREDERICKSBURG In the former church that now houses the Gillespie County Historical Society, wine fans ranging from curious retirees to a master sommelier swirled glasses and sniffed deeply for notes like honeysuckle, blackberry or citrus. They defended taste judgments as disparate as silver or gold to disjointed and overstimulated. It was the faux wine competition at Texas first Camp Vino, a two-day event meant to simulate the annual Houston Livestock Show and Rodeo wine competition. Put on by Texas A&M University and the University of Texas at Austins Foodways Texas and sponsored by H-E-B, Camp Vino was a crash course of everything Texas wine. Its aim: educating while promoting a wine industry that has become as much a draw to this Hill Country town as schnitzel and peach stands. A bus took participants 10 miles east on U.S. 290 to Messina Hofs Hill Country winery, where patriarch Paul Bonarrigo hosted a toast of sparkling wine from the states oldest vineyard of muscat canelli. Texas will never be California in terms of wine production, Bonarrigo said, but in the past 40 years the Lone Star State has gained ground. California, meanwhile, has gotten distinctly commercial, he said. Now when you go, you get the distinct feeling that youre on an assembly line and that sense of hospitality is kind of gone, he said. Texas means friendly. ... Almost every Texas winery is a family-owned operation, its not a major corporation. Texas now ranks fifth in U.S. wine production; in 1980 it was 48th. The Texas Hill Country now ranks second in wine tourism after Napa. The annual wine festival in Grapevine draws more attendees than the Sonoma County Fair. Still, Texas wines command only 4.2 percent of the U.S. market. And unlike states with more aggressive and, in some cases government-funded marketing, theres little distribution outside Texas. Virginia pays out $1.8 million to help get its labels on wine lists in chic restaurants in Washington, D.C., and New York. The Texas Legislature allocates its much larger wine industry about $250,000. Wine grapes were being grown in Texas long before they were in California, albeit in 1-acre plots that provided just enough for the padres running the Spanish missions. The Val Verde Winery in Del Rio is the states oldest, established in 1883. By temporarily switching from wine to table grapes it became the only Texas winery to survive Prohibition. The European wine industry might not have survived without Texas. In the late 19th century, European vineyards were nearly wiped out by a microscopic pest called phylloxera. T.V. Munson, a horticulturalist who was breeding grapes in Texas, was awarded the French Legion of Honor for discovering that plants grafted on Texas root stock were resistant to the plague. The birth of the modern Texas wine industry otherwise dates to the 1960s and 1970s, when pioneers such as Bonarrigo and A&M horticulturalist George Ray McEachern set out to find grape varieties that could survive in the Texas terroir. That turned out to be just about every grape. But what works in the coastal desert of the Rio Grande Valley where at least one vineyard grows in the no-mans land south of the U.S.-Mexico border fence and north of the Rio Grande will be different from what grows in the Hill Country or Galveston area or High Plains. Due to factors like cool nights and winds that quickly dry soils and prevent fungal growth, the High Plains is home to 85 percent of the states grape production, with growers increasingly finding it more lucrative than cotton. The Hill Country, meanwhile, is 85 percent of the commerce. People say, Why? Because its such a great place to grow? No, Bonnarigo said. Wineries exist because of population centers. Vineyards exist because of great growing conditions. Texas cultural emergence from Prohibition was painfully slow, McEachern said. In 1973, he won what at the time was a gigantic $500 grant to plant 12 test vineyards and ultimately determine that, despite prevailing thought, the vinifera that is the base of the European grape family could grow in Texas. But the wine course he started a few years later had to be taught at a Catholic church off campus, and when a Houston radio station asked him to do a call-in radio show on the A&M wine program the rejection came from on high. I said, Well, Ill ask my department head; I dont know, thats a real touchy deal, McEarchern remembered. He called the dean, who called the president. And guess what he told me? No. Texas A&M cannot talk about wine on the radio. He eventually was able to move the class to the horticulture building and, once Kyle Field started selling alcohol, store the wine in the stadium. It wasnt until fairly recently that the campus legal department gave him the OK to store wine in a double-locked closet in the horticulture department. All along, amazing things were happening in the wine world where validation is everything. Our big challenge from Day One was confidence, McEachern said. We assumed we were bad. The 1976 Judgment of Paris shocked the world. A California wine was judged superior to a French. In the early 1990s, McEachern took a group of Texas winemakers, including Bonnarigo, to a Texas-French Wine Shootout. Bonnarigo remembers a chateau owner consoling him before the competition with the reminder that the French had been making wines for many, many years. When Bonnarigos wine won and the Frenchmans came in third, Bonnarigo replied, Although weve been making wines in Texas for a very short period of time, we learn very quickly. It was a small world in those days, A&M horticulturalist Jim Kamas said, and while everybody knew everybody, it was with a sense of competition. Pierces disease, a native bacterium spread by leaf-hopping insects known as sharpshooters, was the great equalizer. Everybody realized that their business was at risk unless they shared information collectively, and so things changed, he said. The disease came and went over the years, but a 1996 outbreak hit every vineyard in the Hill Country. The growers were up in arms, Kamas said. They came to A&M and said, We have to do something. We didnt have any money, so we got together, we formed a little informal task force, we started asking the right questions, and we started chasing money. Over time it turned into a $1.5 million-a-year state and federal battle that resulted in identifying at least 32 insect vectors and workable management techniques. There are all sorts of other challenges: root rot, spring freezes, withering heat and years of drought interrupted by flood. One of the things about the vineyard is, thats where the heartache is, said Julie Kuhlken, a second-generation winemaker with Pedernales Cellars. On top of some disease pressure, weve had two years in a row when we had hail that just knocked us out to the point where we called it our hailstorm. Literally, if nothing else, it just went back and forth across the vineyard several times. And thats just heartache, because then you have nothing to work with. The flip side are the bumper harvests and accolades contributing to an industry with an economic impact valued at $13.1 billion. Each winery has its story. Kuhlkens parents, engineers, saw the Hill Country as their retreat from the corporate world. At the time it was the mid-90s, she said. There were two things to choose: emus and grapes. They chose grapes. Bonnarigo was a physical therapist from the Bronx with a five-generation history of Sicilian winemaking. His wife, Merrill, had a great-grandfather from Hof, Germany, who used his masonry skills to build some of the Hill Countrys 19th-century courthouses. I think the compassion of being a therapist helped me to be compassionate with the vineyards and to be compassionate with my growers, he said. And theres an inverse relationship between the two. ... Youre only as good as your grapes. Raymond Haak of Haak Vineyards and Winery in Galveston County took training from a 30-year electrical engineering career to solving problems in the vineyard. The coastal moisture that might have spoiled most varieties proved perfect for blanc du bois, of which he fashions seven different wines. Dabs Holliman of 1851 Vineyards in Fredericksburg returned to the family ranch after a teaching career. The land, purchased by her grandparents in 1964, was the site of Pioneer Four Mills founder C.H. Guenthers 1851-built flour mill. Guenther relocated to San Antonio after rains twice washed away the flour mill. Holliman got her enology certification through Texas Tech University and with a mentor opened the winery doors in 2016. She and her family have so far successfully cultivated varieties that include chardonnay, petite syrah, malbec, cabernet sauvignon, tempranillo and albarino. We were lucky enough to have a mention in the November 2017 Wine Enthusiast, she said. It was very humbling to be included, we were still so young. She expects this years harvest to produce 9,000 cases, which she sells directly to Cabernet Grill, a Fredericksburg restaurant that sells exclusively Texas wines, and to consumers visiting the winerys tasting rooms. The biggest challenge for the industry is marketing both within and beyond Texas. Price point is a problem; few Texas wineries generate the volume to compete with the under-$10 California chardonnays or Argentinian malbecs found on supermarket shelves. The Texas image has been both a blessing and a curse. In 1991, when then-U.S. House Agriculture Committee Chairman Kika de La Garza of Mercedes decided Texas wines should have an appearance at Vin Italy, the Bonnarigos went along. They set up a booth with a banner showing the silhouette of a cowboy on a horse against a setting sun, Merrill Bonarrigo remembered. There was another booth that was a California booth, which was their typical large fruit and, you know, their vision, Merrill Bonnarigo remembered. Well, the Italians did not know about California or Napa Valley or that perception of what American wine was. ... They look to the right, they see a cowboy on a horse. And they look to the left and they see something about Napa Valley. And they go to the cowboy because they all know Texas and cowboys and horses. That just spoke to the power of the image of Texas internationally. Still, it was a fight to launch one of the successful Texas winemarketing events around: the Houston Rodeos wine competition. The big guys at the top said, Were rodeo guys, we drink beer, we drink bourbon, we drink Crown Royal, we have maybe some of these chard-own-ays every now and then, said Tamara Atkins, a longtime volunteer at the show. And then we blew the doors out. The wine auction last year raised $2.4 million. There are wineries in California and New Zealand that proudly display saddles and belt buckles awarded at the Houston show. A 9-liter bottle of Messina Hof Solera Texas Sherry in 2012 auctioned for $105,000, and winning wines since then have commanded six-figure bids. Theyre starting to sell for almost as much as those big damn steers, and they dont even poop on the stage, Atkins said. While retailers such as H-E-B, Total Wine & More and Specs have embraced Texas wines, restauranteurs dont see the cachet. My grapes are sought after by a number of wineries, but to go into a restaurant and try to get a glass of Texas wine is like pulling teeth, said Guy Stout, a distributor with Souther Glazers Wine & Spirits who is one of the worlds fewer than 300 master sommeliers. Theyll buy their lettuce from this place nearby and say, All of our peaches come from Fredericksburg, but they wont put Texas wine on the menu. Jessica Dupuy, a cookbook author who writes about wine for Texas Monthly, said the only Texas restaurant besides Cabernet Grill to offer a Texas-only wine list was Dai Due in Austin. But things have come a long way, she said, from when an editor assigned her to figure out if Texas wines were any good. Ten years ago I was nervous to put out a list of 20 that I like. and this year Im at 50, she said. Thats super fun. The quality just continues to get better, and thats awesome. lbrezosky@express-news.net Alvin V. Snogas weekend cookouts were so popular in his Southeast Side neighborhood that the World War II veteran and career electrician was persuaded to open a restaurant in 1975 on Fairlawn Drive with his wife, Bernice. In 1985, he moved Snogas Bar-B-Q into an old lumberyard space on Goliad Road, just off Interstate 37, where it has continued to feed the neighborhood for 33 years as a family-run operation. The Snogas raised nine children. Daughter Alva Stanush now runs the day-to-day kitchen operation, and son Gary Snoga smokes the meats on mesquite wood. Snogas is very much a barbecue restaurant, but it also offer some daily comfort food specials: chicken and dumplings, sauerkraut and sausage, chili, chicken fried steak, meat loaf, beef stew and catfish. That was Bernices idea. Though she died 20 years ago, and Alvin passed away just last July, the restaurant remains a time capsule containing their original vision. Snogas Bar-B-Q Location and hours: 2567 Goliad Road, 210-333-6162. Hours: 11 a.m. to 8 p.m. Mondays through Saturdays, 11 a.m. to 3 p.m. Sundays. No online presence. Rating: Once was enough See More Collapse Grand champion: I like to call white meat chicken quarters ($6.95) the Russian roulette of barbecue, because they can transform from moist yardbird into a mouthful of sawdust in a moments notice. Poultry was Snogas strength, with notes of a salty brine bath and skin that took on a golden hue and a light, peppery bite. The trinity: Two types of sausage are available, but go with the massive country-style links (made with a beef and pork mixture) sourced from Dziuks Meat Market in Castroville over the everyday Kiolbassa links. They are cut to order, with a snappy casing that seals in the juices. Snogas serves the food cafeteria style, and that created some serious dryness issues with pork spare ribs ($12.25 per pound) and brisket (listed as boneless beef on the menu), both of which had overstayed their welcome in the warming pans and were completely sapped of smoke. More from the pit: The ham ($12.25 per pound) is sliced after ordering and is a nice curve ball on the menu, but it could use a flavor boost with some added dry rub or a basting sauce. I would be tempted to try it again as a ham and cheese sandwich ($4.80). Sides: Sides (starting at $1.75) are a strength, with more than 10 daily options that can range from fresh fruit salad to mashed potatoes and gravy and a lineup of hot vegetables that includes carrots, beets and corn. Standouts included the pickled green beans, served cold with hints of onion and red pepper, and a simple take on hash browns. Sauce: The house sauce, a secret family recipe thats served warm, is a tasty addition to a lineup of meats that needed a little help. Caramelized chunks of onion add an extra layer of flavor to the punchy ketchup and vinegar blend. Maverick: The daily lineup of comfort specials adds the twist to Snogas that makes it original. A piping hot bowl of beef stew ($3.75) with a palm-sized piece of fresh corn bread was an unexpected reward on a rainy Thursday. And theres no denying the appeal of a classic Thanksgiving turkey and dressing meal, served every Wednesday, Friday and Sunday for $7.85. cblount@express-news.net A jury Thursday watched a man tell a detective he shot his father in self-defense because the man pointed a gun in his face, then threatened his younger stepsisters. Jesse David Vasquez III, 24, is accused of shooting his father, Jesse David Vasquez Jr., 44, after the men fought April 17, 2016, at a home in the 2500 block of Saunders on the near West Side. He is charged with murder. Before the state rested its case Thursday, jurors watched a nearly two-hour interview of the defendant conducted by police Detective Rachel Barnes. Through tears, Vasquez said that after a day of escalating aggression, his father grabbed him by the neck, put a gun to his face and told him, Ill do it, Ill do it. That was it for me, the defendant said, his voice cracking. Vasquez said he moved in with his father and stepmother about three weeks before the shooting. He said his father had a history of aggression and violence and hit his mother and stepsisters. In a new marriage, he said, his father began abusing his stepmother and that his stepsisters were terrified of him. Everything Ive seen him do, Ive seen it before, he told the detective. Ive seen him hit my mom, my older sisters, my younger sisters. He was with my mom for 15 years. Ive seen it all. Vasquez said that the day of the shooting, his father argued with him and his stepsisters and drove off with a gun and the defendants dog. When his father returned, the pet was not with him. The younger Vasquez was unclear about what happened to his dog. He said his father sold methamphetamine and smoked it. The elder Vasquez would get angry, the defendant said, and kick things in the yard and inside the home. The day of the shooting, he said, he heard his father load a shotgun and argue with his stepdaughters. The younger Vasquez said that at some point, his father went into his bedroom and smoked methamphetamine. When he came back out, he came back a totally different level of pissed off, Vasquez told the detective. He called his stepmother, Ann Vasquez, to come home because his father began fighting with her daughters. The younger Vasquez began packing his things and told his stepsisters, then 15 and 17, that they should go with him because he didnt think they would be safe there. When one of the girls told the elder Vasquez that she was going to go with her stepbrother, he grabbed her, cocked his fist back like he was going to punch her, the younger Vasquez told the detective. The defendant said he pushed his father, who fell, then got up, went toward him and put his hand in his back pocket, where he usually kept a gun, Vasquez said on the video. I shot him once. ... I was supposed to meet my kids today, he said through tears. I feared for my life, my sisters, my stepmoms life. It was self-defense. On direct questioning from prosecutor Josh Sandoval, Detective Barnes testified that she did not feel the defendant was totally honest in his responses and at times changed his story, at one point saying he walked toward his father before he shot and another time saying he rushed him. She also pointed out that no gun was found on the elder Vasquez. Barnes testified that the son had other options to shooting, including calling police or leaving the house. In the video, the defendant said that if he hadnt shot his father, someone else would, Barnes said, calling it strange to hear, because you dont hear that with self-defense. The defense is expected to begin presenting witnesses Friday morning in the 187th state District Court, with Judge Joey Contreras presiding. If convicted, Vasquez faces up to life in prison. Elizabeth Zavala is a courts and crime reporter in the San Antonio and Bexar County area. Read her on our free site, mySA.com, and on our subscriber site, ExpressNews.com. | ezavala@express-news.net | Twitter: @elizabeth2863 A San Antonio man who claimed he killed his father in self-defense was found guilty of murder Friday. Jesse David Vasquez III, 24, faces life in prison without parole in the April 17, 2016, death of his father, David Vasquez Jr. In his closing statement, prosecutor Josh Sandoval told the jury the younger Vasquez had talked about wanting to kill his father in the days leading to the shooting. He said Vasquez showed no remorse after his father was killed. All the facts point to murder, Sandoval said. The defendants story doesnt add up. Testimony earlier in the week showed the father and son had a rocky relationship. The victims wife testified that her husband hit her, and on the day of the shooting, he had struck one of her daughters. The younger Vasquez told a detective after the shooting that he had shot his father after the elder Vasquez had pointed a gun in his face, then threatened his younger stepsisters. Through tears, Vasquez said that after a day of escalating aggression, his father grabbed him by the neck, put a gun to his face and told him, Ill do it, Ill do it. That was it for me, the defendant said, his voice cracking. Its been hard for David, his defense attorney, Jessica Gonzales, said Friday. No one ever wants to lose a parent. No one ever wants to make that choice: Is it my life or his? Prosecutors, though, said the shooting clearly wasnt an act of self-defense. Sandoval said the elder Vasquez did not have a gun on him at the time of the shooting. He said the younger Vasquez had other options after his father became aggressive, like calling the police. A life is a life. We dont deny that the victim did some bad things, Sandoval said, referencing the elder Vasquezs aggression and illegal drug use. That doesnt forgive what the suspect did. Sentencing will proceed Monday in the 187th state District Court, with Judge Joey Contreras presiding. Emilie Eaton is a criminal justice reporter in the San Antonio and Bexar County area. Read her on our free site, mySA.com, and on our subscriber site, ExpressNews.com. | eeaton@express-news.net | Twitter: @emilieeaton AUSTIN After threat of lawsuit, Hays County Commissioners decided Friday to add early voting locations in three of the four precincts, including at Texas State University, on Nov. 1 and 2 next week. The County Commissioners said they must wait until Nov. 1 to reopen the polls because of a requirement that they give notice of early voting sites before opening them. The action came a day after voting rights groups demanded Hays County officials reopen the early voting site at Texas State University in San Marcos, threatening legal action if officials didnt comply by Friday afternoon. University students waited in long lines at the temporary polling site on Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday before it closed, said Beth Stevens of the Texas Civil Rights Project in a letter to county officials. In an emergency meeting Friday, county officials said lines had been long at early polling places across the board. By Wednesday, 18 percent of registered voters in Hays County had already cast ballots in the election. Stevens working on behalf of two students and two other voting groups had called for the campus polling location to remain open through the rest of early voting. County commissioners said they would also place an election day polling site at the university, which has 40,000 students, agreeing to another of the groups requests. For subscribers: San Antonio Express-News 2018 Voter Guide For subscribers: Houston Chronicle 2018 Voter Guide The burdens imposed by closing the on-campus early voting location fall particularly and disproportionately on the countys young voters, who are significantly more likely to live on or near campus and are less likely to have easy, immediate access to reliable transportation to vote off-campus, Stevens said in the letter. By Wednesday, nearly 18 percent of registered voters in the county had already cast a ballot, according to the secretary of states office. This story will be updated. Who knew that the most contentious election battle in San Antonio during the first week of early voting would be between Joaquin Castro and the San Antonio Police Officers Association? It all started Monday, when Castro, the three-term Democratic congressman, expressed concern in a Monday tweet about seeing two police officers patrolling the polling site at Las Palmas Library. Castro urged his Twitter followers to let him know if any other uniformed law enforcement is present at the polls. Two days later, Police Chief William McManus responded, via an email from Assistant Chief James Flavin, by instructing police officers to refrain from patrolling through or parking in close proximity to polling locations in the city. Castros tweet and McManuss directive set off a chain of angry reactions from the police union, talk-radio listeners and social-media trolls. Mike Helle, SAPOAs president, accused McManus of knuckling under to political pressure. Related: Large voting turnout in San Antonio causes lines, delays but officials pleased to see locals out in force In a Wednesday statement, Helle said it was very sad that instead of standing up for his officers, Chief McManus essentially agrees with Rep. Castro that police officers are people to be feared and reported on for doing their duty. Without a doubt, Castro overreacted. The police officers patrolling at Las Palmas were doing elections administrators a favor. They werent thwarting the election process, they were facilitating it. Over the years, Las Palmas has caused headaches for election officials because campaign workers tend to fill the area with so many yard signs that the line of sight gets blocked for entering and exiting drivers. For that reason, police officers have routinely given special attention to this West Side polling place, to help traffic flow and prevent accidents. They (the police officers) are there in their capacity for protecting the citizens, said Jacque Callanen, Bexar County elections administrator. Were having larger crowds come (this year), parking is an issue at some of our sites, and theyre there to assist anyone. Thats the bottom line. Its easy to understand Castros concern, however, because he wasnt viewing the situation in the context of Las Palmas chronic traffic problems, but in the context of this countrys chronic voter-suppression problems. He was mindful of the fact that bigoted political officials in the Jim Crow South often used police officers to scare African Americans away from voting. These kinds of abuses didnt end, but merely became more insidious, after the passage of the 1965 Voting Rights Act. Related: Which Bexar County voting sites are drawing the most and fewest people For example, in 1981, the Republican National Committee hired off-duty cops to patrol polling places in African American and Latino neighborhoods in Trenton and Newark, New Jersey, and warn voters about the criminal penalties they could face for committing voter fraud. There was also the case of the 2003 mayoral election in Orlando, Florida, in which plain-clothes officers from the Florida Department of Law Enforcement showed up at the homes of elderly African American voters and questioned them. In-person voter fraud is a rare thing. A 2014 study by the Washington Post, covering elections from 2000-14, found less than one credible claim of fraud per 300 million ballots cast. Its rare because going into a polling site and pretending to be someone else is an easy way to get busted and a supremely inefficient way to steal an election. The integrity of the voting process is meant to be protected by elections administrators, not police officers. But that didnt stop Donald Trump, during an August 2016 presidential campaign rally in Altoona, Pennsylvania, from nudging election oversight into the realm of police work. The only way we can lose ... is if cheating goes on, Trump said. We have to call up law enforcement. And we have to have the sheriff and the police chief and everybody watching. Last Saturday, as an intense midterm election cycle approached its home stretch, Trump again tried to bring cops into the voting process. All levels of government and Law Enforcement are watching carefully for VOTER FRAUD, including during EARLY VOTING, Trump tweeted. Cheat at your own peril. Violators will be subject to maximum penalties, both civil and criminal! Related: Undocumented immigrant voted in Bexar County for more than 20 years What, you might ask, is the problem with that threat? After all, Trump is only warning cheaters, not those who vote legally, right? The problem is that the voting process is too precious and elemental to our society to allow it to take place in a climate of fear and intimidation. With that in mind, if a police officer crosses the line at a polling place, immediate action should be taken against them. But nothing like that happened this week in San Antonio. Now, the tension has become so thick that every time a local cop parks at a polling site, theyre liable to face suspicious looks. Law enforcement overreach is something we need to guard against. The same goes for political overreach. @gilgamesh470 Gilbert Garcia is a columnist covering the San Antonio and Bexar County area. Read him on our free site, mySA.com, and on our subscriber site, ExpressNews.com. | ggarcia@express-news.net | Twitter: @gilgamesh470 There is only one correctional institution in the State of Connecticut exclusively for women, the York Correctional Institution in Niantic. The facility houses a maximum of 1,500 inmates with the average age of 35. I had the privilege of visiting last Saturday. I say privilege first, because not just anyone can get into a correctional facility. Second, because what I experienced was extremely uplifting and life-changing, not only for the inmates, but also for the volunteers who worked with them for a week, as well as the guests who attended a closing ceremony for the Kairos Prison Ministry Program. The United States leads the world in incarceration rates, with 716 prisoners per 100,000 people. Kairos is a ministry based on the words of Jesus, I was in prison, and you came to visit me. Kairos Prison Ministry reaches out to as many incarcerated as possible. Kairos volunteers strive to bring Gods light into the darkness of the prison through a three day program that aims at transforming the participants through Gods love, light and grace. Where Kairos has been offered, correctional institutes have experienced as low as 10 percent recidivism as compared to 23 percent of nonparticipants. Something is working. Tears came to my eye as Jill gave her testimony of what Kairos has done for her life. I am serving a 35-year sentence. When I was an adolescent, my life began spiraling out of control, and I got deeper and deeper into bad things. I ended up making very bad decisions, which eventually lead me to do something I had never even contemplated. I ended up here, down and out. A total of 75 inmates applied to the Kairos program, but only some 40 were received last week. The rest remained with the earnest desire. Perhaps in the future. Jill went on to explain how Kairos had changed her life from the inside out: This is my ninth time participating in the Kairos program. ... It has given me a new purpose. I didnt know God. I have come to know and love him. I try to show his love to others. She has become an angel for her sisters who are participating for the first time. Another prisoner, Ann, gave her testimony before she received her certificate of participation at the closing ceremony. I know that next month when I walk out that front door, I will be a changed person. My mission will be to bring the love of God to everyone. Families experience big changes in their members who have been released from prison. They begin to model their new lifestyle without crime with a new and positive behavior. Communities are made safer because former inmates make life-changing decisions from a foundation of ongoing Prayer and Share meetings. Sandra expressed her experience with this simple phrase: Everything minus God equals NOTHING. Nothing plus God equals EVERYTHING. The inmates received their diploma, a certificate of completion, from the moderator of the three-day session. As their names were called, they came forward with an enthusiastic round of applause by all present; participants, volunteers and guests. The ladies did not want their three days to end. Many gladly expressed that they would like to return. They vowed to go back to the compound to help change other womens lives for the better through their example. They left with a secret: They completed the Kairos Experience and now they were members of the Kairos Family. When they see each other around the compound, they recognize each other with a nod or some other sign of their new found friendship in God. They were once broken. Now they were on their way to healing. They will one day be reunited with their outside family with more hope for the future. The mission statement of Kairos Ministries is: Changing Hearts, Transforming Lives, Impacting the World. I could clearly see that, during my short stay of a little more than one hour; this is possible from inside-out within the only all-female correctional institution in the state. The Rev. Arthur Mollenhauer is the former pastor at St. Rochs Parish. VanEck Vectors Poland ETF's stock was trading at $17.00 on March 11th, 2020 when Coronavirus reached pandemic status according to the World Health Organization. Since then, PLND stock has increased by 0.0% and is now trading at $17.00. View which stocks have been most impacted by COVID-19. iShares MSCI Netherlands ETF's stock was trading at $27.57 on March 11th, 2020 when COVID-19 reached pandemic status according to the World Health Organization (WHO). Since then, EWN stock has increased by 92.1% and is now trading at $52.97. View which stocks have been most impacted by COVID-19. iShares MSCI Chile ETF's stock was trading at $25.05 on March 11th, 2020 when COVID-19 (Coronavirus) reached pandemic status according to the World Health Organization (WHO). Since then, ECH stock has decreased by 0.7% and is now trading at $24.88. View which stocks have been most impacted by COVID-19. by Blaine Blontz | Colts Correspondent | Thu, Oct 25th 1:28pm EDT Marlon Mack missed Thursday's practice as he continues to recover from an ankle injury. (Mike Chappell on Twitter) Fantasy Impact: Mack is going the wrong direction as he was limited during Thursday's practice. It's not a good sign for his availability this weekend against the Raiders in what should be a prime matchup for the RB. While Mack has flashed upside during his time in the league, he's also been frustrating to own given his injury issues. Owners will need to continue to monitor his status and hope for an early determination given the team's 4:05 pm EST start Sunday against Oakland. The Government's Autumn Budget is unlikely to deliver tax concessions to the rural sector given the looming EU exit cost, according to financial experts. Chartered accounts, Saffery Champness, has given their expert opinion on what the Budget will have in store for the rural sector. The Budget, to be announced on Monday 29 October, will be light on giveaways and heavy on any measures that can scrape more into the Treasury coffers, particularly with the cost of Brexit and possibly with an additional year of payments to the EU looming, which is already estimated at costing every UK household some 870 per annum. There may be a few measures that will directly affect the rural economy, and others where the rural economy, whilst not directly in the firing line, will feel the impact. A number of proposals have been given airtime. A fuel duty freeze for the ninth year in succession would be broadly welcomed. An increase in Stamp Duty Land Tax (SDLT) for overseas buyers might have some consequences for the landed estates and country homes market, although, at the top end, such additional penalties should be no disincentive for those with significant, available funds to buy. The prospect of a capital gains tax (CGT) dispensation, either a reduction or total get out, for landlords selling to long-term tenants may prompt some release of property. It is suspected that for rural landlords, unless they are looking to cash in for other reasons, would rather keep their portfolio intact until the uncertainty surrounding Brexit and its impact on the property market has become better understood. A number of options are available to the Chancellor needing to scoop more into the tax coffers and one cannot overlook some that have been circulating to date: a penny on income tax, an increase in Capital Gains Tax rates and charging National Insurance on the earnings of those who continue to work after retirement age would all be radical. Richard Cartwright, Partner, Saffery Champness commented: "What we badly need in these uncertain times are measures that encourage business development, promote business growth, and ease business succession from one generation to the next, although one has to consider any giveaways on these fronts are unlikely in such uncertain times and even though an end to austerity is now being claimed." MEPs have backed plans to halt the spread of antibiotic resistance from livestock to humans in new legislation to come into force in 2022. The plans, approved by the European Parliament, aim to curb use of antibiotics on farms to keep drug-resistant bacteria out of food. Estimates suggest that in Europe two thirds of antibiotics are used on livestock animals. The overuse of antibiotics has become a growing concern as there is strong evidence to suggest that it has contributed to an increase in the development of antibiotic-resistant bacteria, which can spread to people, rendering antibiotics ineffective for both humans and animals. According to the latest estimates, 73% of the worlds antibiotics are used in farming and the EUs position on farm antibiotic use is now largely consistent with that of the World Health Organisation (WHO), which last year produced guidelines on farm antibiotic use. According to the new EU law, veterinary medicines must not serve to improve the performance or compensate for poor animal husbandry. The law will limit the use of antimicrobials as a preventive measure, in the absence of clinical signs of infection (known as prophylactic use) to single animals and not groups. Drugs can be used only when fully justified by a veterinarian in cases where there is a high risk of infection. Metaphylactic use (treating a group of animals when one shows signs of infection) should be a "last resort", the law states, and only occur once a veterinarian has diagnosed infection and prescribed the antimicrobials. The landmark legislation still needs to be formally approved by the Council of Ministers, but provisional approval by the Council was given earlier this year. The law will only come into force in 2022, post-Brexit, and Defra Secretary Michael Gove said that during the negotiations over the regulations, the UK did voice concerns about the restriction of prophylaxis to individual animals. The Government says it intends to implement the provisions of the new legislation, but refuses to accept that the EU legislation bans preventative group treatment. Farmers joined in on a "flash" event outside the European Parliament in a bid to highlight unfair trading practices by retail giants. MEPs joined farmers and producers' groups in Strasbourg ahead of a key vote on Thursday (25 October) on proposals to deliver a fairer deal for farmers and protection from bullying by major supermarket chains. Copa Cogeca, the European farmers' and co-operatives trade body, organised the event which saw tractors parked outside the parliament building with a message "#CutTheUnfair". West Midlands MEP, Anthea McIntyre, Conservative agriculture spokesperson, also attended the event. Miss McIntyre has played a key role in aiming to protect farmers and suppliers from sharp practice, including late payments and last-minute cancellation of contracts for fresh produce. One of her proposals draws on the experience of the UK's Groceries Code Adjudicator (GCA), a position created in 2013 to re-evaluate the relationship between supermarkets and their suppliers. After the event, Miss McIntyre said: "We were aiming to send a clear message to any wavering MEPs that farmers and growers are not seeking special status - just respect and fairness from the businesses which ultimately depend on them. "It would be good if this could happen everywhere without the intervention of politicians or regulation, but sadly there a some big businesses out there that will seek to take unfair advantage from what they see as a one-sided relationship. She added: "I am pleased that the UK has taken a lead in providing a solution and set the course for the rest of Europe." The European Parliament approved its negotiating mandate for a new law to do away with unfair trading in the food supply chain, approved by 428 votes in favour to 170 against and 18 abstentions. UK and EU farm leaders have urged Brexit negotiators to reach a deal which benefits the industry as many farmers currently operate "without certainty". Farming leaders from Europe and the UK came together in London on Thursday morning (25 October) to call upon policymakers to recognise the "strategic importance" of food and farming businesses in the Brexit negotiations. The conference was jointly hosted by the NFU, AHDB, German Farming Union (DBV), French Farming Union (FNSEA), Irish Farming Association, Dutch Farming Union (LTO Nederland) and Danish Agriculture and Food Council. In a joint plea to Brexit negotiators, the leaders highlighted how securing a Brexit withdrawal agreement is "crucial" to providing "much-needed" clarity for farming businesses in the UK and in the EU. Farmers and growers in the UK and in Europe are currently operating without any certainty on a future trading relationship or how they will recruit a reliable workforce for their businesses. For both UK and EU farming businesses, uncertainty over the post-Brexit trading environment is a cause for concern. Looking beyond March 2019, the conference explored how the agri-food industry across Europe can find shared solutions to work together post-Brexit. NFU President, Minette Batters said of the conference: It could not be plainer that our shared best interests lie in the successful conclusion of a Brexit agreement. The organisations here today are making the case for food and farming in every capital in Europe and calling for the building blocks to be put in place for our future. Other representatives of the host organisations also commented. Tom Hind, Chief Strategy Officer of AHDB said: The prospects for UK agriculture hinge significantly on whether there is an orderly or disorderly Brexit. However, all scenarios imply change, including the restructuring of farming businesses. Therefore preparation is key and our ability to work together will be vital. President of the DBV, Joachim Rukwied, added that the EU and the UK should conclude a deal that will avoid trade disruptions while maintaining the integrity of the European single market, while Arnold Puech dAlissac, member of France's FNSEA, said a "smooth evolution" between full membership in the EU and a strong third country relationship is now needed for the UK. Top row (L-R): Joe Healy, IFA President; Marc Calon, LTO Nederland President; Arnold Puech dAlissac, FNSEA, Member of the Bureau. Bottom row (L-R): Lone Anderson, Danish Agriculture and Food Council Vice President; Minette Batters, NFU President; Tom Hind, AHDB Chief Strategy Officer President of the Irish Farmers Association, Joe Healy added: I am heartened to see strong solidarity from farming unions across the EU for the position adopted by IFA for full access and frictionless trade both North-South and East-West between Ireland and Britain, while retaining the full value of the UK market. Vice-President of the Danish Agriculture and Food Council, Lone Anderson said: It is important that the future relationship between EU and the UK remains open and farmers on both sides of the channel have a level playing field. The value chain between the EU and the UK has been built up over so many years. Consumers have come to expect and cherish the high quality of our produce. This welfare and long term prosperity of the agri-food sector must be protected, he said. Concluding the event, Marc Calon, President of Dutch farming union, LTO Nederland said: Maintaining common standards and a level playing field is essential to ensure the significant trade between the EU and UK. Regardless of the outcome of the negotiations, keeping an open dialogue is important for our continued close cooperation. 2020 was a year marked by hardships and challenges, but the Fauquier community has proven resilient. The Fauquier Times is honored to serve as your community companion. To say thank you for your continued support, wed like to offer all our subscribers -- new or returning -- 4 WEEKS FREE DIGITAL AND PRINT ACCESS. We understand the importance of working to keep our community strong and connected. As we move forward together into 2021, it will take commitment, communication, creativity, and a strong connection with those who are most affected by the stories we cover. We are dedicated to providing the reliable, local journalism you have come to expect. We are committed to serving you with renewed energy and growing resources. Let the Fauquier Times be your community companion throughout 2021, and for many years to come. 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 critic's rating: 2.5/5 Trailer : Hunter Killer Hunter Killer is an adaptation of the novel Firing Point by George Wallace and Don Keith. The plot concerns an underwater gunfight between Russian and American submarines, while on the surface a coup takes place and the Russian President is dethroned by his defence minister. The Americans, which have eyes everywhere, take the absurd decision of rescuing the Russian President and send a black ops crew comprising Toby Stephens, Michael Trucco, Ryan McPartlin and Zane Holt to do the work on ground while an American submarine and it's crew is ordered to approach the Russian shores and aid the rescue team and the President in escaping.The commander of the American submarine Joe Glass (Gerard Butler) is something of a maverick who doesn't believe in sticking to the book. In fact, he has a tendency to go rogue whenever he feels like, trusting his instincts rather than military training. It's the reason he rescues a Russian submarine captain Andropov (Michael Nyqvist), from his drowned submarine, who later helps him navigate the underwater defences of the Russian fjord. To cut a long story short, the Russians and the Americans help each other out despite their differences and stop World War III from happening. It's Michael Nyqvists last leading role before he passed away and the film is partly dedicated to him.Hunter Killer is filled with an ensemble cast which mostly looks the part. Rogue Russian defence minister Durov is played with a mad intensity by Michael Gor, Russian President Zakarin is infused with a rugged masculinity by Alexander Diachenko, perhaps Common looks surprised to play Rear Adm. Fisk but is nevertheless impressive in uniform. Gary Oldman is having the time of his life as the passive aggressive US Joint Chiefs of Staff. The naval details are authentic and the undersea battles and escape is captivating but it's no Hunt For Red October, mind you, and resembles a slick video game most times.The problem is that every war film trope is thrown in the film. A rogue commander is saddled with a stickler for the rules second-in-command, the guy with his girls photo in the wallet gets shot, the tough-as-boots commando is revealed to have a heart of gold, the naval commander seems to have supernatural intuition and so on. The plot is full of absurdities. If the Americans have video evidence of a coup, why didn't they share it with the world instead of undertaking a silly covert operation which can very well result in the Russian leader getting killed? The other problem is that the film's leading man Gerard Butler, who was in the thick of thinotherng American Presidents in both Olympus Has Fallen and London Has Fallen is reduced to giving obscure commands inside a submarine. We like to see him using his fist and not his jaw and feel kind of cheated when we don't see him in real action. He's one of the producers of the film and hence this reluctance to take on a more physical role is even more puzzling.Watch the film if you like underwater action as some of the scenes are really immersive, otherwise the film has nothing new to offer. Gerard Butler fans would be disappointed for sure. Rani Mukerji made a tremendous comeback to acting after motherhood with her super-hit and acclaimed film Hichki. The film, that features her as a determined teacher who changes lives of innocent students from economically backward strata for the better while dealing with her own nervous system disorder Tourette Syndrome, is a blockbuster in China with it racing past the 100 crore mark! As of 2nd week (till 25th October) Hichki in China has made - US$ 14 Mn (INR 102.5 Cr). Audiences in the country have loved Rani's exceptional acting and it has been recording extremely strong collections since its release! "Good cinema has no language barriers and it connects with the hearts and minds of the audience. The success of Hichki in China proves just that. We knew we had made a special film but for it to get so much love and acclaim from audiences across the globe is an extremely proud and humbling moment for all of us. I congratulate my producer Maneesh Sharma and my director Siddharth P. Malhotra for creating a gem of a film whose universal message of love has been melting the hearts of audiences in China now," says Rani on Hichki's success in China. When Kamal Haasan Told Rani Mukerji To Wash Off Her Make-up & She Was Left Stunned! Hichki has been titled 'Teacher with Hiccup' for its Chinese release that happened on October 12. Making a special effort to ensure that this film with its universal theme and an extremely positive message resonates with Chinese audiences, Rani promoted the film extensively across leading Chinese cities like Beijing, Shanghai, Shenzhen, Guangzhou and Chengdu. The film is riding high on great reviews and extraordinary word of mouth and is set to have a solid third weekend too. Rani's brilliant performance has seen her sweep awards and accolades in India this year. Hichki has also been receiving worldwide acclaim and honours ever since its release. It received a standing ovation at the Shanghai International Film Festival (SIFF) and then at the Indian Film Festival of Melbourne (IFFM) where Rani was also bestowed the Best Actress award. Aamir Khan Called Rani Mukerji A 'Buddhi' After Watching Hichki & Here's How She Reacted More Number Of Witnesses Will Be Recorded By The Police! "The statements of those named in the FIR will also be recorded once the investigation progresses and videos of what happened behind the scenes will be recovered," Mumbai Mirror quoted a source. CINTAA Provides Full Support Towards The Case CINTAA general secretary Sushant Singh said during the press conference that the organisation is providing full support towards the case. "We are looking into the cases of Nana Patekar-Tanushree Dutta, Alok Nath-Vinta Nanda and Flora Saini-Gaurang Doshi cases and we are co-operating with police. We are taking legal advice to decide our plan of action in the coming days. We hope that in the end truth will prevail." Tanushree Dutta Had Lashed Out Against CINTAA Previously Just a week ago, Tanushree Dutta had lashed out against CINTAA for "all talk, no action" and stated that they talk about justice and law in front of the cameras, but when the cameras are off, they sit on the file and do nothing. Nana Patekar To Land In Prison? Tanushree Dutta's lawyer Nitin Satpute had said earlier said that if the police finds supporting evidence from the witness statements against Nana Patekar, he will soon land up in jail. Rating: 3.0 /5 Star Cast: Saif Ali Khan, Chitrangada Singh, Rohan Mehra, Radhika Apte, Sai Gundewar Director: Gauravv K Chawla Baazaar PUBLIC REVIEW: Saif Ali Khan | Radhika Apte | Chitrangdha Singh | FilmiBeat 'Paisa uska joh dhanda jaanta ho, aur main hoon dhando no gando chokro'. That's Shakun Kothari (Saif Ali Khan) for you! A self-made Gujarati billionaire who is shrewd, manipulative and unscrupulous. In what is one of the most powerful scenes of the film, during a religious ceremony in an auditorium, Shakun stages a hostile takeover on an established business family as chants of repetance resonate in the hall. The man is revered and loathed in equal measures. While Shakun is busy playing dirty in the world of stock trading in Mumbai, elsewhere in Allahabad is a young stock broker Rizwan Ahmed (Rohan Mehra) who worships Batra and aspires to be like him. He believes that his small-town mentality' can't keep him from making it big like his idol. Soon, Rizwan lands in Mumbai. But his motto is clear. He's here not to struggle, but to settle. With the help of his colleague and lady love Priya (Radhika Apte) who also happens to be a seasoned stock broker, Rizwan comes under Shakun's radar and manages to win him over. Both the men are different as chalk and cheese. Shakun notably mentions at one point, "Tu emotions pe chalta hain, main maths par." But that doesn't stop these two from joining hands. Slowly as events unfold, Rizwan realizes that his appetite to rise above the rest comes with a cost. While Baazaar borrows heavily from the 1987 Michael Douglas-Charlie Sheen film, 'Wall Street', Gauravv K. Chawl adds a local flavour to it to cater to our very own Dalal Street. The movie comes with its own shares of ups and downs. The first half of the film is a total crackler. However post interval, things take a convenient turn before it plummets towards the climax. Unlike the sensex, you can easily predict the twists coming in your way. Nevertheless, Saif gets to mouth some whistleworthy dialogues. Baazaar is Saif Ali Khan's show all the way. As someone who has a voracious appetite for power, the actor brings in the right amount of ruthlessness and craftiness. Debutant Rohan Mehra still has a long way to go. But, the young lad proves why he is no 'one film wonder'. Speaking about the girl power, Radhika Apte gets to flirt with different shades in her character and emerges victorious. Chitrangda Singh as the trophy wife does what's expected of her. Shruti Gupte's production design is slick and perfectly captures the familiar Mumbai milieu. Swapnil Sonawan's lens work wonders. The editing sails with the narrative. In the music department, barring 'Kem Cho', none of the songs stay with you and instead takes away the intense built-up of a scene. At one point in the film, Saif's character Shakun says, "Haar aur jeet mein ek hi pharak hota hain, bhook." The same holds true for Baazaar. While Gauravv K. Chawl's hunger to dabble with an exciting topic of stock trading is evident, the film misses hitting the bullseye by a whisker. But, it still manages to hold your attention for 140 minutes and the credit largely goes to Saif's streaks of grey. I am going with 3 stars here. Earlier this month, television actor Alok Nath was accused of rape and sexual harassment by television producer and writer Vinita Nanda. Following the accusations made against Alok Nath, his wife had requested for a injunction order against Vinita Nanda. Today, Mumbai's Dindoshi Sessions Court rejected the application by Alok Nath's wife. The court stated that it can't pass an injunction order against Vinita Nanda at this stage. Previously, Alok Nath had fled a civil defamation suit against Vinita after she accused him of rape and sexual harassment. He had asked for a written apology and compensation of Rs 1. He had also applied for restraining order against Nanda. MOST READ : Aamir Khan Graces KBC, But Fails To Do This In The Presence Of His Favourite Star Amitabh Bachchan When the ongoing #MeToo movement began to create a buzz following Nana Patekar-Tanushree Dutta case, television producer and writer Vinita Nanda who produced the 90s show Tara, took to her Facebook handle and wrote a long post, in which she accused the Sansakari Babuji of rape and sexual harassment. Several women later shared their traumatic experiences with Alok Nath. {document1} The Pomerantz Firm, with offices in New York, Chicago, Los Angeles, and Paris, is acknowledged as one of the premier firms in the areas of corporate, securities, and antitrust class litigation. Founded by the late Abraham L. Pomerantz, known as the dean of the class action bar, the Pomerantz Firm pioneered the field of securities class actions. Today, more than 80 years later, the Pomerantz Firm continues in the tradition he established, fighting for the rights of the victims of securities fraud, breaches of fiduciary duty, and corporate misconduct. The Firm has recovered numerous multimillion-dollar damages awards on behalf of class members. See www.pomerantzlaw.com. Werbehinweise: Die Billigung des Basisprospekts durch die BaFin ist nicht als ihre Befurwortung der angebotenen Wertpapiere zu verstehen. Wir empfehlen Interessenten und potenziellen Anlegern den Basisprospekt und die Endgultigen Bedingungen zu lesen, bevor sie eine Anlageentscheidung treffen, um sich moglichst umfassend zu informieren, insbesondere uber die potenziellen Risiken und Chancen des Wertpapiers. Sie sind im Begriff, ein Produkt zu erwerben, das nicht einfach ist und schwer zu verstehen sein kann. LONDON and HATFIELD, England, October 26, 2018 /PRNewswire/ -- Funding to target 1,000km of new high capacity fibre routes across the UK New link across the Severn from Bristol to Newport to open access to ultrafast fibre broadband to over 4,000 small businesses between South Wales and Southwest England Nextgenaccess Ltd, a developer of ultrafast wholesale and custom fibre broadband infrastructure in England and Wales ("NGA", the "Company"), has secured 22 million of investment from the National Digital Infrastructure Fund ("NDIF"). NGA has successfully built an independent network across the UK with over 100 Points of Presence ("PoPs") in ten different local authority areas, whereby small businesses in otherwise underserved areas can connect directly to wholesale fibre-to-the-premise ("FTTP") broadband at speeds of up to 10Gbps. NDIF will acquire a substantial minority shareholding in NGA and provide capital facilities to support NGA's growth. NDIF's funding will help finance a major expansion of this network, with plans to deploy over 1,000km of new high capacity fibre routes across the UK by the end of 2020. As part of that plan, NGA is today announcing the construction of a new 80km high capacity fibre route connecting the City of Bristol directly to Europe's largest data centre located in Newport with a 4km connection across the Severn Bridge. The link is being developed in partnership with hyperscale data centre operator, Next Generation Data ("NGD"), and will open up ultrafast connectivity to over 4,000 underserved small businesses along the route from South Wales to Southwest England. The UK Government's recent Future Telecoms Infrastructure Review ("FTIR") called for substantial investment into the UK's fibre infrastructure to support the rollout of 5G and enhance the UK's mobile and fibre-to-the-premise ("FTTP") connectivity. NDIF is a commercial fund established in 2017 by Amber Infrastructure Group ("Amber") to invest in the next generation of digital infrastructure in the UK. It is supported by cornerstone investments from the UK Government through its Digital Infrastructure Investment Fund ("DIIF") and International Public Partnerships ("INPP"), a leading listed infrastructure investment company. Mark Weller, Managing Director, Nextgenaccess Ltd, said: "NDIF's investment will allow us to accelerate scale deployment of our independent ultrafast network across the UK, particularly to underserved areas where we can provide small businesses with unique access to truly next generation full-fibre broadband at a proven lower cost than traditional telecoms operators." Khalid Naqib, Senior Investment Director, Amber Infrastructure, said: "Widescale FTTP and 5G rollout will make increasing demands on the capacity of the UK's existing network infrastructure. Deploying wholesale access fibre quickly and effectively is key to bringing forward the next generation of connectivity for homes and businesses. With the backing of NDIF as a long-term, responsible partner, NGA will help to future-proof the UK's fibre infrastructure and accelerate the ambitious transition to a gigabit future." Simon Bearne, Commercial Director, Next Generation Data, said: "We are excited to be working with NGA on this project to bring ultrafast connectivity to thousands of under-served businesses in South Wales, and through NGD's existing direct connections to cloud Infrastructure enable high speed access to services such as Microsoft Azure. At the same time it allows NGD customers to enjoy the benefits of NGA's nationwide fibre network." Matthew Vickerstaff, Deputy Chief Executive, Infrastructure and Projects Authority, said: "Today's announcement is a great example of government and industry partnership in action. Our cornerstone investment alongside Amber Infrastructure Group, through the Digital Infrastructure Investment Fund, is helping to catalyse the roll out of full-fibre networks for people and businesses in Wales and South West England." " Amber is an established partner of central government and local authorities across the UK, pioneering new ways to mobilise and deploy capital on a commercial basis into vital and often underserved public infrastructure; such as energy efficiency and urban regeneration, as well as more mainstream economic infrastructure in the education, health, transport and utilities sectors. In April 2018, NDIF led 25 million of investment into Community Fibre, an ultrafast, full-fibre internet service provider to fund the rollout of full-fibre connectivity to a further 100,000 homes in London. In July 2018, NDIF injected up to 16 million of new funding into Airband Community Internet Ltd, a rural broadband provider using a hybrid fibre/wireless solution to improve connectivity for thousands of rural homes and businesses in some of the hardest to reach areas in Devon, Shropshire, Wales and the Midlands. Notes to Editors The National Digital Infrastructure Fund (NDIF) is managed by Amber Infrastructure Group (Amber), and targets investments in core digital infrastructure in the UK on a fully commercial basis. NDIF benefits from a cornerstone commitment from the UK Government's Digital Infrastructure Investment Fund (DIIF) initiative, match-funded by private investors. NDIF reached its first close in July 2017, with further fundraising expected later this year. NDIF forms part of the UK Government's landmark DIIF, a 400m government initiative to accelerate investment into fibre-optic based broadband networks and related businesses to build the next generation of digital networks and accelerate the rollout of ultrafast connectivity across the UK. http://www.amberinfrastructure.com/our-funds/national-digital-infrastructure-fund Amber Infrastructure Group (Amber) is a leading international infrastructure specialist, providing asset management and investment advisory services in respect of over 8 billion of assets in the UK, Europe, Australia and North America. Amber's core business focuses on sourcing, developing, advising on, investing in and managing infrastructure assets within the utilities, PPP, transport, renewable energy and regeneration sectors. Amber provides investment advisory services to International Public Partnerships Limited as well as private investment funds, specialising in infrastructure, urban regeneration and energy efficiency. Amber is headquartered in London with offices in Munich, Sydney, Melbourne and San Francisco and employs over 100 people, making it one of the largest international infrastructure specialists. http://www.amberinfrastructure.com Nextgenaccess Ltd, is a developer of ultrafast wholesale and custom fibre broadband infrastructure in England and Wales. Its core business is to deliver next generation, high speed connectivity products to allow organisations of all sizes to realise the commercial and operational benefits of cloud-based services, mobility and unified communications. http://www.nextgenaccess.com NGD Europe is a purpose-built carrier-neutral Tier 3 facility based in Cardiff, Wales. It is Europe's largest data centre offering 750,000 sq feet (gross internal area) of highly secure and cost-effective space housing up to 22,000 racks. http://www.ngd.co.uk SYDNEY, AUSTRALIA / ACCESSWIRE / October 26, 2018 / Sydney CySEC regulated CFD broker EuropeFX (europfx.com) announced the addition of cryptocurrencies to their award-winning MetaTrader platform. The move comes as a direct response to client requests for a smoother entry in the world of cryptocurrency trading. The broker's home regulator CySEC (Cyprus Securities & Exchange Commission) had taken a very cautious stance on allowing brokers regulated in Cyprus to add cryptocurrencies to their list of tradable assets pending decisions from other Euro regulatory bodies as well. The addition of cryptos was eventually cleared. EuropeFX however didn't immediately add the asset to their product lineup. As company CEO Joseph Gafni explained "just because something becomes popular, it doesn't necessarily mean it will be a good fit for our clients or even for a retail environment. We never add any features or products until these have been found to meet the particular needs of our client base and only after the technology has undergone exhaustive testing." The company now supports trading in several cryptocurrencies, including Bitcoin, Ethereum, Litecoin, Ripple and Dashcoin. All trading is carried out on the MT4 platform, without the need for any external crypto exchange accounts. The asset is supported on all the various platform versions offered by EuropeFX including desktop and mobile devices. The latest move from European regulators and in particular ESMA (The European Securities and Markets Authority) included wide-ranging new provisions for the maximum leverage limits for CFD trading. These provisions were aimed at limiting potential downside on trades. The new provision for leverage on cryptocurrencies was set at a maximum of 2:1. Results of a client survey carried out by EuropeFX across multiple regions, pointed to general support for the new ESMA guidelines, particularly where cryptocurrencies were concerned. Given the often extreme volatility seen around these particular assets, the company went even further and set their leverage limits on cryptocurrencies at 1:1, a move seen as an additional safeguard to client best interests. For clients wishing to retain their current trading conditions and margin levels, EuropeFX established a reclassification process, in-line with the ESMA MiFID (Market In Financial Instruments Directive) recommendations for client classification. This rigorous process requires detailed information and demonstrable proof of ability, experience and financial standing. This reclassification is strictly by client request and is only open to existing clients. "This is an important milestone in the development of retail trading" said Gafni, "The best interests of our clients demand we implement the ESMA recommendations for cryptocurrencies and all our trading products by extension." To know more, visit: https://europefx.com/ Contact email: contact@fxhealth.com SOURCE: EuropeFX View source version on accesswire.com:https://www.accesswire.com/526407/EuropeFX-Now-Offering-Cryptocurrency-Trading-ON-MT4 26 October, 2018 U.S. Oil & Gas Plc. ("U.S. Oil" or the "Company") OPERATIONS UPDATE Highlights: In preliminary testing, Eblana-3 well flowed light crude oil to the surface Six zones and subzones perforated and swabbed, zone 5 most promising. Loose volcanic ash and tuff believed repeatedly blocking zone 5 perforations and inhibiting flow Clearing zone 5 by extended pumping to commence AGM date to be announced shortly Ebana-3 During drilling operations at the Eblana-3 well in April 2018, multiple potential hydrocarbon-bearing zones were identified from cutting samples, mud logs, and processed wire-line logging data. After a review of all available data, six zones indicating a higher potential for hydrocarbons were selected for perforation. Downhole operations, including perforating selected formations, were conducted between June 18 and June 30, 2018 using a workover rig, and continued between 12 August and 19 August after the granting of additional regulatory permissions. Preliminary testing The purpose of the preliminary testing was to determine which if any of the identified and perforated zones were suitable for production testing and to prepare the selected zone or zones by clearing formation debris. Possible formation damage would also be assessed and additional perforations carried out. When the well was reopened on 22 August, light crude oil flowed to the surface. The well was subsequently shut in until the following day, when oil was again observed to flow. Samples were taken at the wellhead by the Company and by the Bureau of Land Management. After isolating the zones deemed most likely to have yielded the oil (zones 5 and 6), a jack pump was installed, but sustained pumping failed to produce a consistent flow. Five additional perforations (two reperforated) were carried out on Zones 1, 2 and 5 between October 10 and October 16, including three additional subzones in zone 5. On testing, zone 1 produced oily water and showed either low permeability or possibly a plugged formation. Zone 2 and zone 4A produced limited fluids. And while zone 3 showed high potential for hydrocarbons, only asphaltene and other heavy components were observed. Zone 5 was considered the most likely to produce commercial flow. Three perforation zones were swabbed and tested in zone 5. Of these, the perforation zone containing a fault produced fluids strongly associated with hydrocarbon accumulations, flowing low pH formation water with dissolved hydrocarbons. It appears that the perforations may be being intermittently blocked by volcanic ash, with volcanic tuff occluding the flow of discrete hydrocarbons from the volcaniclastic matrix. Whether or not this is the case can be tested by extended pumping. Current operations Workover rig operations were terminated and the rig stood down on October 24. A jack pump was then set to pump monitored fluids for an extended period with the objective of clearing the zone 5 formation and allowing oil to flow. If the well flows, extended production testing will be carried out. If pumping fails to clear the formation but the data continues to support the belief that a viable reservoir is present and that local permeability is preventing commercial flow, then alternative methods will be examined, including hydraulic fracturing of the formation. Additional acreage acquired On the basis of the initially encouraging results from the Eblana-3 drill and the flowing of high quality oil to the surface, in June and July 2018 the Company bid for further Hot Creek Valley leases in auctions held by the Bureau of Land Management (BLM). The award of those leases has now been confirmed and the total acreage position of the Company is 73,725 acres. Based on gravity survey data, at least three large potential hydrocarbon-bearing structures exist within the new acreage. The total annual lease cost to the company of the additional lands is $78,070. Given the strong oil shows, the data collected during the Eblana-3 drill, and the consensus amongst the technical team that a major oil system is present in Hot Creek Valley, the Board believes that the decision to acquire further leases was correct in the context. AGM The Company intends to hold its AGM as soon as possible. Shareholders will be advised of the details as soon as arrangements can be finalised. At the meeting, a detailed account of Eblana-3 operations will be given and the Board will present a plan for the next stage in the Company's exploration of Hot Creek Valley, along with an outline of potential funding requirements. Brian McDonnell, US Oil CEO said: "High quality light oil has flowed to the surface from Eblana-3, and our preliminary testing has identified a highly promising and potentially productive zone. However, the nature of the Hot Creek Valley geology is posing challenges, and before any production testing can be carried out, we need to determine how best to deal with volcanic ash and tuff. At the forthcoming AGM, the Board will be presenting to shareholders a full account of how drilling and testing was conducted and an update regarding ongoing operations." FORWARD-LOOKING STATEMENTS The statements in this communication reflect the current thinking of the Board and the Company's present plans. The Company reserves the right to alter plans in the light of developing knowledge and circumstances. Shareholders' attention is drawn to the note below concerning Forward-looking Statements. This press release contains certain "forward-looking statements" and "forward-looking information". Forward-looking statements and forward-looking information include, but are not limited to, statements with respect to: business plans and strategies of US Oil and Gas; operating or technical difficulties in connection with drilling or development activities; availability and costs associated with inputs and labour; drilling and exploration costs; the speculative nature of oil exploration and development; diminishing quantities or quality of reserves; synergies and financial impact of completed acquisitions; the benefits of the acquisitions and the development potential of properties of US Oil and Gas; the future price of oil; supply and demand for oil; the estimation of reserves; the realization of reserve estimates; costs of production and projections of costs; success of exploration activities; capital expenditure programs and the timing and method of financing thereof; the ability of US Oil and Gas to achieve drilling success consistent with management's expectations; net present values of future net revenues from reserves; expected levels of royalty rates, operating costs, general and administrative costs, costs of services and other costs and expenses; expectations regarding the ability to raise capital and to add to reserves through acquisitions, assessments of the value of acquisitions and exploration and development programs; geological, technical, drilling and processing problems; treatment under governmental regulatory regimes and tax laws. All statements other than statements of historical fact are forward-looking statements THE DIRECTORS OF THE COMPANY ACCEPT RESPONSIBILITY FOR THE CONTENTS OF THIS ANNOUNCEMENT Neither this announcement nor the information contained herein constitutes an offer or solicitation by U.S. Oil and Gas Plc for the purchase or sale of any securities nor does it constitute a solicitation to any person in any jurisdiction where solicitation would be unlawful. For further information contact: Brian McDonnell, Chief Executive Officer +353 (1) 631 9022 About U.S. Oil & Gas: U.S. Oil & Gas plc is an oil and gas exploration company with a strategy to identify and acquire oil and gas assets in the early phase of the upstream life-cycle and mature them. The Company's main asset is in Nye County, Nevada where it holds the entire share capital of US-based company, Major Oil International LLC ("Major Oil"). Major Oil has acquired rights to exploration and development acreage in Hot Creek Valley, Nye County, adjacent to the oil and gas rich Railroad Valley area of Nevada, both of which are part of the Sevier Thrust of central Nevada and western Utah, USA. (Florianopolis/Oslo, 26 October 2018) Statkraft has signed an agreement with EDP Energias do Brasil to acquire a cluster of eight operational hydropower plants in the state of Espirito Santo in Brazil. The portfolio has a total installed capacity of 131.9 MW and will expand Statkraft's operations in Brazil. "This acquisition is a good fit with our strategy to build scale profitably in the markets where we are already present. It also positions Statkraft well for further development in Brazil, a key growth market for Statkraft," says Statkraft's Executive Vice President Jurgen Tzschoppe. Statkraft is Europe's largest producer of renewable energy and has an ambition to grow further within hydropower, wind and solar power, as well as market operations in Europe, India and South-America. In Brazil, the ambition is to grow by acquiring and improving assets in operation and by developing new generation capacity in hydropower, wind and solar power. In Brazil Statkraft owns 81 per cent of Statkraft Energias Renovaveis (SKER) with the Brazilian pension fund FUNCEF owning the remaining 19 per cent. The generation portfolio consists of six hydropower plants and four wind farms. In addition, Statkraft has a minority ownership in four other hydropower plants. In total the portfolio is 318 MW, while the acquisition of the eight hydropower plants will bring Statkraft's fleet in Brazil to around 450 MW. Under the agreement Statkraft Energias Renovaveis (SKER) will take over 100 per cent of EDP Energias do Brasil's shares in EDP PCH (owner of 7 operational hydropower plants) and Santa Fe Energia (owner of 1 operational hydropower plant). The transaction is subject to regulatory approvals. About Statkraft Statkraft is a leading company in hydropower internationally and Europe's largest generator of renewable energy. The Group produces hydropower, wind power, solar power, gas-fired power and supplies district heating. Statkraft is a global company in energy market operations. Statkraft has 3500 employees in 17 countries. www.statkraft.com (http://www.statkraft.com) For further information: Torbjrn Steen, VP Communications Statkraft AS, Tel: +47 911 66 888, torbjorn.steen@statkraft.com Lars Magnus Gunther, Acting SVP Corporate Communications Statkraft AS, Tel: +47 912 41 636, lars.gunther@statkraft.com This announcement is distributed by West Corporation on behalf of West Corporation clients. The issuer of this announcement warrants that they are solely responsible for the content, accuracy and originality of the information contained therein. Source: Statkraft AS via Globenewswire Enfo Q3: Transition ongoing, significant improvement compared to last year, monthly volatility still challenging Key points of the interim report Turnover was EUR 27.6 (28.8) million in July-September and EUR 92.3 (95.9) million for the period January-September. Focus for whole year 2018 has been on building a sustainable business foundation and profitability after a challenging year in 2017. This shift is advancing well in offering, leadership culture and structure, but monthly profitability development is still volatile. EBITDA was EUR 1.0 (-0.2) million in July-September and EUR 3.0 (1.4) million since the start of the year. Operating profit (EBIT) was EUR 0.0 (-1.4) million in July-September. EBITDA is expected to improve in Q4. Profit for the review period was EUR -0.3 (-1.8) million in July-September and EUR -1.8 (-3.5) million for January-September (2017 figures not including divested business). Earnings per share were EUR -0.5 (-3.2) in July-September and EUR -4.3 (-7.7) in January-September (2017 figures not including divested business). Cash flow from operating activities totaled EUR -0.1 (-0.4) million in July-September and EUR 1.5 (-1.4) million in January-September. At the end of September, Enfo Group employed a total of 882 (910) people. In Q3, Enfo implemented a revised management structure. The new structure supports Enfo's offering in enabling data-driven business transformation. The development of competence management advanced during the period and the competence acquisition team reached full operational capacity. Operational efficiency improved year-on-year, but the progress was not completely satisfactory throughout the period. Outlook for 2018 The Group's EBITDA is expected to increase in 2018 compared to 2017. The improvement is based on the enhancement of competence acquisition and management, development of offering, deepening of customer relations, as well as operational efficiency. Risks and uncertainties Competition for experts is a major factor in terms of growth, and the main short-term risks are related to recruiting and efficient onboarding of employees. The internal capability to develop competence management, advance tools for maneuverability, and continue to execute renewed story, offering and structure is essential in the short-term. Enfo's growth in the long-term will be impacted by the markets' moves towards bringing together data assets, as well as the pace of the shift towards cloud. CEO's review Seppo Kuula, Enfo Group's CEO, comments on the review period: "In Q3 we implemented a new structure to be better equipped to support our customers' data-driven business transformation. Our four business areas - Data platforms, Information management, Applications and Care - respond to a market where connectivity is business-critical, cross-platform and omni-channel. This structural change followed the measures taken in H1 to strengthen our unified culture as well as evolve our shared story and offering towards competitive positioning. The business area Data platforms, headed by Nina Annila, provides the cross-platforms backbone for the management of data: data center, hybrid and public cloud platforms. Information management, headed by Sami Kahkonen, provides a holistic approach to managing and creating value from data in real-time intelligent ecosystems and handling exponentially increasing amounts of data. Applications, headed by Hans Sollerman, provides applications, digital services and integration with all leading technologies. Care, headed by Lars Aabol, is responsible for our care operations with top-notch customer support 24/7/365 irrespective of platform. In addition, a Tiger team, headed by Erik Brugge, works together with business areas as well as account management and sales to support data-driven digital solution creation, the cloud journey, co-creational business relations transformation as well as the humanization of technology. During the period, we, together with our partly-owned subsidiary Zuite Business Consulting, investigated the possibilities of aligning our offerings around SAP on cloud. The cloud movement is massive: we see that in five years' time three to four out of five business-critical applications will be in the cloud and the rest in data centers, the ratio being the opposite today. What is more: the heart of data - enterprise resource planning (ERP) systems - will move to the cloud and here we want to be at the forefront enabling our customers' data-driven success. Only in the cloud can ecosystem data genuinely be brought together for business value. We also started the process of bringing our financial processes and tools back in-house. This is a step towards common tools and processes throughout Enfo for a better navigation system to increase maneuverability. In Q4, tools to increase forward-looking transparency will be our focus. During the past quarter we have seen that although we are well on track with regards to a sustainable business foundation when it comes to offering, leadership culture and structure, monthly profitability development is still erratic. Crucial for maneuverability is competence management. We are developing a competence management solution for aligning sales, business management, competence acquisition, and competence development. When ready, it will give us transparency to manage our business and competence acquisition based on market demand, providing operational excellence and competitive advantage. The development of competence management advanced during the period and will continue in Q4. Our competence acquisition team is now fully operational and part of our People operations. In a challenging talent acquisition market, we have managed well to recruit experts. In addition, I am pleased to see that our indicators for both employee satisfaction as well as employee turnover are developing in the right direction. Operational efficiency for the period improved year-on-year, however the progress was not completely satisfactory throughout the period. To correct this we need better alignment between sales and business areas as well as improved financial tools for forward-looking transparency supporting proactivity. Towards the end of the year we will continue to focus on profitability, giving high priority to the development of tools and utilization rates. We will take measures to strengthen sales and business area alignment. We will also continue to work on our must-win battles towards 2020: a workplace to love; collaborative, integrated value creation; and to be the trusted partner." Turnover and result In the period July-September, Enfo Group's turnover decreased by 4.3%, compared to the corresponding period last year, to EUR 27.6 (28.8) million. The turnover for the period January-September was EUR 92.3 (95.9) million. EUR 12.3 million of the turnover for July-September was accrued in Finland and EUR 15.2 million in Sweden. EBITDA was EUR 1.0 (-0.2) million in July-September and EUR 3.0 (1.4) million in January-September. The operating profit for the period July-September was EUR 0.0 (-1.4) million, representing -0.1% (-5.0%) of turnover. The corresponding figure since the start of the year was EUR 0.0 (-2.5) million, representing -0.1% (-2.6%) of turnover. Profit before taxes was EUR 0.0 (-1.7) million in July-September and EUR -1.3 (-3.4) million in January-September. The Group's net financing costs amounted to EUR 0.0 (0.3) million during Q3 and EUR 1.3 (0.9) million in January-September. Profit for the review period for continuing operations was EUR -0.3 (-1.8) million in July-September and EUR -1.8 (-3.5) million in January-September. Earnings per share were EUR -0.5 (-3.2) in July-September and EUR -4.3 (-7.7) in January-September for continuing operations. Financing and investments Enfo's net investments totaled EUR 1.0 (0.7) million in July-September and EUR 1.9 (1.7) million in January-September. The company's equity ratio was 46.0% (47.2%) at the end of the review period. Interest-bearing net liabilities at the end of September amounted to EUR 31.9 (31.3) million and net gearing was 65.1% (55.7%). The Group is in breach of one of the covenants of its financiers' agreement requiring the Group's interest-bearing net liabilities/EBITDA to be less than 4.5, and thus the Group has classified the loans covered by the covenant as current liabilities in the Q3 interim report. The Group has received approval from its financiers for the covenant breach. Changes in the management team Nina Annila was appointed EVP, Data platforms, and member of the management team in August. Members of Enfo's management team at the end of the period were Seppo Kuula (CEO), Lars Aabol (EVP, Care), Nina Annila (EVP, Data platforms), Erik Brugge (EVP, Tiger team), Antti Hemmila (General Counsel), Christian Homen (CFO), Sami Kahkonen (EVP, Information management), Henrik Norell (SVP, People operations), Hans Sollerman (EVP, Applications), Lina Tjerneld (EVP, Marketing and communications), and Andreas Wickell (EVP, Sales). Personnel In July-September, Enfo Group employed an average of 885 (920) personnel, the corresponding figure for January-September being 885 (919). At the end of September, the Group employed a total of 882 (910) personnel. During the period July-September, Enfo employed an average of 335 (323) people in Finland and 550 (596) in Sweden. Shares On September 30, 2018, Enfo Oyj had a total of 679,251 shares, of which Enfo held 13,386 treasury shares. The company has one series of shares, which has been incorporated to the book-entry account system maintained by Euroclear Finland Oy. The company's ten largest shareholders at the end of the period were: Osuuskunta KPY, Ilmarinen Mutual Pension Insurance Company, Rongo Cap Oy, the Gosta Serlachius Fine Arts Foundation, Seppo Kuula, Keskisuomalainen Oyj, Einari Vidgren Oy, Lululemon Oy, Hannu Isotalo Oy and Kallax Oy. Osuuskunta KPY holds 83.56% of Enfo Oyj's shares. Timetable for financial reporting in 2018 The interim report for Q3 is published on October 26, 2018. The financial statement bulletin for 2018 will be published on February, 27, 2019 and the Annual Report for 2018 on March 6, 2019. Accounting principles This interim report has been prepared using the same measurement and accrual principles as in the annual financial statements, but this interim report has not been prepared according to the IAS 34 standard. Turnover as well as materials and services are adjusted (decreased) by applying IFRS 15 standards. The effects introduced by IFRS 15 were applied retrospectively. The effect in Q3//2017 was EUR 0.2 million and for the full year 2017 EUR 1.2 million. The figures in the tables have been rounded to the nearest million euros so they may not add up to precise totals. The figures presented in the tables are unaudited. The complete Interim Report with tables: enfogroup.com/Investor-relations Additional information Seppo Kuula, CEO +358 40 370 0032 Christian Homen, CFO +358 40 750 6902 Enfo Data-driven business transformation Enfo is a Nordic IT service company enabling its customers' data-driven business transformation. With our niched expertise in managing hybrid platforms, business applications and new digital services, we bring together relevant data for more intelligent operations. In an increasingly complex data environment, we integrate data on- and off-premises, in public and private cloud. We both build and run digital solutions - supporting our customers in mastering the complexity. We are over 900 niched experts working for a more intelligent world, with technology empowering people, businesses and societies. enfogroup.com LISBON, Portugal, October 26, 2018 /PRNewswire/ -- Futerra and The Consumer Goods Forum today launch The Honest Product Guide, revealing new rewards for product transparency on social, health, environmental and safety issues Today, The Consumer Goods Forum and the global change agency Futerra launch The Honest Product Guide, exploring breakthroughs in what experts and consumers agree is the most important aspect of transparency: the honesty of products themselves. (Logo: http://mma.prnewswire.com/media/556222/The_Consumer_Goods_Forum_Logo.jpg ) Grounded in new global market research, The Honest Product Guide reveals that global consumers are hungry for more transparency about the social, health, environment, and safety credentials of the products they buy (70%), rather than the companies that made them (30%). Consumers across the world say they are most likely to look for information about the social, health, environmental and safety impact of brands in one place: on product labels (36%). Transparency is a hot topic for business. Members of both The Consumer Goods Forum and the Chartered Institute of Marketing agreed that consumers are more interested in transparency on social, health, environmental and safety issues than they were five years ago (90%); and that consumer interest in transparency about these issues will increase in the future (95%). The guide also explores how transparency is changing in the era of low consumer trust, and that breakthrough brands are being transparent in radically new ways, replicating the psychology of human honesty. Launching The Honest Product Guide at The Consumer Goods Forum's Sustainable Retail Summit, Solitaire Townsend, Co-founder of Futerra, said: "Over the past decades, we've seen a significant shift in trust: away from institutions and brands, and towards family, friends and tribes online. The new breakthrough brands understand this and have made product honesty core to their business. Honesty is the human form of transparency- it's harder, but the rewards are far greater. And it all comes down to the product in your consumer's hand; that's what she wants to know about." Peter Freedman, Managing Director of The Consumer Goods Forum, said: "Every retailer and branded manufacturer today knows that transparency is essential to build the trust of their consumers and support sustainable growth. But in a world of transformed consumer expectations, social media and other new technologies, we are all having to completely re-learn what transparency means and how to deliver it to shoppers. The Honest Product Guide provides the industry with a much-needed framework, drawn from the practices of the very brands that are now capturing much of the growth in the industry." Chris Daly, CEO of the Chartered Institute of Marketing, said: "Historically, some marketers have focused solely on profit. But control has now shifted to consumers, who can swap suppliers more easily than ever. The landscape of transparency is moving control further into consumers' hands. The Honest Product Guide has shown that consumers want evidence and consistent results. You don't do this for a single marketing campaign - it's all about gaining trust and loyalty over the long term." The study also revealed that while today's consumer goods companies understand the importance of product-level transparency, they overestimate the success of their current efforts. While 73% of the corporate experts surveyed (representing over 70 consumer goods companies) agree that consumers are most interested in the social, health, environmental and safety impact of the product they are buying (as opposed to brand or corporate-level transparency), 86% believe consumers are 'very satisfied' or 'quite satisfied' with the level of product transparency they currently share - compared to just 41% of consumers who agree that products provide the right amount of information. The Honest Product Guide was authored by The Consumer Goods Forum and Futerra, with the support of the Chartered Institute of Marketing as a survey partner. The result is a guide designed for business leaders, brand owners, marketers, experts and changemakers seeking to solve the crisis of trust between companies and the consumers they serve. The Honest Product Guide includes: New insights on what today's consumers expect their products to communicate about their social, health, environment, and safety credentials, and where they expect to see them. Case studies and examples showcasing how leaders in radical transparency are leveraging product transparency to build trust. Practical tools including the Honest Product Test, a checklist for 'human-level' communications such as: 'Does the product answer real consumer questions to help them make decisions or is what's shared just what the company wants to tell?'. The report can be downloaded at: bit.ly/thehonestproduct The Consumer Goods Forum and Futerra, with the support of the Chartered Institute of Marketing commissioned an online survey of 130 corporate experts from over 70 companies in 26 countries, and market research including 3,621 people in seven countries. About The Consumer Goods Forum The Consumer Goods Forum ("CGF") is a global, parity-based industry network that is driven by its members to encourage the global adoption of practices and standards that serves the consumer goods industry worldwide. It brings together the CEOs and senior management of some 400 retailers, manufacturers, service providers, and other stakeholders across 70 countries, and it reflects the diversity of the industry in geography, size, product category and format. Its member companies have combined sales of EUR 3.5 trillion and directly employ nearly 10 million people, with a further 90 million related jobs estimated along the value chain. It is governed by its Board of Directors, which comprises more than 50 manufacturer and retailer CEOs. For more information, please visit: http://www.theconsumergoodsforum.com . About Futerra Futerra is a global change agency with offices in New York, London, Stockholm and Mexico City. Established in 2001, Futerra works with the world's largest brands, breakthrough entrepreneurs and national governments on the logic of sustainability strategy and magic of creative ideas. Futerra believes that, in order to build a better world, we must first imagine one. The company is majority female owned and a certified BCorp. http://www.wearefuterra.com About the Charted Institute of Marketing The Chartered Institute of Marketing (CIM) is the world's leading marketing body, with over 28,000 members worldwide, of which there are over 3,000 Chartered Marketers. CIM's mission is create marketing advantage for the benefit of professionals, business and society with a focus on export, data and skills. It believes marketing is the critical factor in driving long term organisational performance. For more than 100 years, CIM has supported, represented and developed marketers, teams, leaders and the profession as a whole. There are 130 CIM study centres in 36 countries and exam centres in 132 countries worldwide. In the last year, over 7,500 people registered at over 230 UK CIM events. Find out more about CIM by visiting http://www.cim.co.uk. OSLO, Norway, Oct. 26, 2018 /PRNewswire/ -- Targovax ASA (OSE: TRVX, Targovax), a clinical stage biotechnology company developing immune activators to target hard-to-treat solid tumors, will announce its third quarter 2018 results on Thursday, 1 November 2018 at 07:00 CET. The results report, and the presentation will be available at www.targovax.com in the investors section from 07:00 CET. ystein Soug, Chief Executive Officer of Targovax, will host an online presentation for investors, analysts and the press at 08:45 CET. The presentation can be followed here, or at: https://www.facebook.com/AXExposure/videos/279295392691286/ For an elaborate presentation of the Targovax strategy, please visit targovax.com for a replay of the 15 October 2018 Capital Markets Day. For further information, please contact: Renate Birkeli, Investor Relations Phone: +47-922-61-624 Email: renate.birkeli@targovax.com Media and IR enquires: Andreas Tinglum - Corporate Communications (Norway) Phone: +47-9300-1773 Email: andreas.tinglum@corpcom.no Simon Conway/Stephanie Cuthbert - FTI Consulting (International) Phone: +44-20-3727-1000 Email: Targovax@fticonsulting.com This information was brought to you by Cision http://news.cision.com http://news.cision.com/targovax/r/targovax-asa--announcement-of-third-quarter-2018-financial-results,c2656119 CITS American Express Global Business Travel 2018 China Business Travel Barometer indicates business travel growth in, and around, tier two and tier three cities a key growth area American Express Global Business Travel's enhanced solution for reducing meetings and events risk now available in China SHANGHAI, Oct. 26, 2018 /PRNewswire/ -- CITS American Express Global Business Travel, a joint venture between American Express Global Business Travel and China International Travel Service, today released the 2018 China Business Travel Survey (the Barometer). The Barometer has revealed that 45% of Chinese companies expect business travel spending to increase over the next 12 months. Despite volatility and uncertainty in the global economy, the outlook reported by Chinese companies is one of the strongest indicators of corporate confidence that has been reported by the Barometer since its launch 14 years ago. The portion of business travel expenditure allocated to domestic China (versus international) trips has increased by 18%, compared with last year's Barometer. This indicates that the level of business activity within tier two and tier three cities in Mainland China is rising. Research conducted by the Economist Intelligence Unit (EIU) has revealed that inland and emerging cities within China are set to outpace top tier cities in annual GDP growth over the next three years*, creating attractive new business opportunities for Chinese firms. "An interesting dynamic is emerging when it comes to business activity in China - in addition to domestic growth, China's outbound direct investment is once again growing**, indicating a focus on international business activity," said Kevin Tan, Vice President of CITS American Express Global Business Travel. "Travel managers now need to ensure travel programs and policies adequately cover the needs of travelers and companies in these new geographies. Emerging cities often lack the same level of infrastructure as more developed cities, creating a need to focus on spend categories that may have received a smaller budget allocation in the past, such as ground transportation. They should also ensure Chinese business travelers are sufficiently trained and educated in the nuances of travelling in different environments." The Barometer also revealed that 'cost savings' (62%) and 'compliance' (57%) are the top priorities for the travel programs of Chinese companies, whereas 'safety and security' has slightly dropped from the top priority in 2017. In line with prior year results, the top three concerns on the minds of Chinese business travelers, according to the Barometer, remain: the travel reimbursement processes being too complex (49%), pre-trip validation processes being too complex (37%), and travel conditions too strict in general (37%). "These figures highlight a clear and exciting opportunity to develop simpler and leaner processes to increase business traveler satisfaction and boost efficiency within the company. If a company's travelers cannot understand or effectively navigate their company travel processes, there will be decreased compliance, leading to greater costs," continued Kevin Tan. Considering the significant amount of change occurring in China's travel industry, both in terms of supply and demand, it's worth noting that the Barometer revealed 45% of Chinese travel managers believe they have limited knowledge on how to manage a travel program in current business conditions. Kevin Tan said: "Traditionally for many companies in China, travel budgets have focused primarily on travel servicing rather than strategic travel management. However, as we celebrate the 40th anniversary of China's Reform and Opening this year, cost-savings, governance and business efficiency, have become a greater focus for Chinese companies. It's critical that companies engage the right partners for their businesses in order create a travel program that meets their evolving needs. "This could range from intelligence on where China's high-speed rail can prove more efficient for domestic travel than air, as well as international guidance on visas, safety & security, and access to global travel cost-savings. For travel managers without experience in these areas, the learning curve can be steep, so it's important to know when to outsource key business requirements." American Express Global Business Travel's enhanced solution for reducing Meetings & Events risk now available in China Also announced today is the launch of an enhanced solution in China from American Express Meetings & Events, a division of American Express Global Business Travel, designed to help protect meetings organizers against risks relating to operating meetings and events. Meetings organizers globally are under increasing pressure to ensure that all meetings activity remains compliant with local laws and regulations. To support this need, the new solution has been fast-tracked for countries with surging demand for meetings & events activity such as China. The new solution is designed to maximize controls throughout the end-to-end meetings process. It will help mitigate key compliance risks associated with global meetings activity such as bribery, fraudulent activities and receipts, and third-party money funneling. Milton Rivera, Vice President, Global Business Development, American Express Meetings & Events, said: "As one of the fastest growing economies in the world, business in China is a necessity for almost all global companies. This enhanced solution provides companies peace-of-mind that their meetings activity is compliant both within China, and throughout the world wherever they have a need." American Express Meetings & Events enhanced solution provides an integrated technology solution that has a unique workflow for meetings, supporting a 360-degree compliance process and capturing comprehensive documentation throughout the process. Itemized invoices and receipts, as well as supporting paperwork on client requests, approvals, and supplier engagements are captured, and enable cross-departmental communications to identify and address any perceived risks as soon as possible. Launch of preferred partnership with Enterprise Holdings for ground transportation in China American Express Global Business Travel also announced today a new partnership with the world's largest car rental provider Enterprise Holdings, and China-based eHi Car Services, to deliver car and driver ground transportation within China via the GBT Ground Transport Platform. GBT travelers to China can now book the National Car and Driver service, which is a partnership between Enterprise Holdings' National Car Rental brand and eHi, the leading provider of car-plus-driver rentals in China with locations in more than 200 cities. Globally, GBT's ground transport platform offers access to more than 750 ground operators in more than 2,000 cities in 19 countries. Integrated options include black cars, taxis, limos, airport express trains, shuttles and ridesharing. The platform equips GBT's clients with a solution that seamlessly captures and manages ground bookings in one place regardless of whether the booking was made online, offline or via mobile app. About the Barometer The Barometer is an annual report created by CITS American Express Global Business Travel. It details the status of, as well as forecasts for, China business travel. The 2018 Barometer surveyed executives from over 100 companies in China, ranging from small enterprises with less than 200 employees to large companies with well above 500 staff. The organizations are in major economic areas, such as Shanghai, Beijing, Guangzhou, as well as tier two and tier three cities. About CITS American Express Global Business Travel Established by American Express and China International Travel Service (CITS) in 2002, CITS American Express Business Travel was the first Sino-US business travel joint venture in the People's Republic of China. With offices in Beijing, Shanghai and Guangzhou, the joint venture provides a wide range of business travel management services to optimize business travel investments for multi-national corporations and regional, and domestic companies throughout the People's Republic of China. Learn more at www.citsgbt.com. CITS American Express Global Business Travel (GBT) is a joint venture that is not wholly owned by American Express Company or any of its subsidiaries (American Express). "American Express Global Business Travel", "American Express" and the American Express logo are trademarks of American Express, and are used under limited license. About American Express Global Business Travel American Express Global Business Travel (GBT) is the world's leading business partner for managed travel. We help companies and their employees prosper by making sure travelers are present where and when it matters. We keep global business moving with the powerful backing of 16,000 travel professionals in more than 140 countries. Companies of all sizes, and in all places, rely on GBT to provide travel management services, organize meetings and events, and deliver business travel consulting. Learn more at amexglobalbusinesstravel.com twitter.com/amexgbt linkedin.com/company/american-express-global-business-travel/ "American Express Meetings and Events" is a service provided by American Express Global Business Travel (GBT). American Express Global Business Travel (GBT) is a joint venture that is not wholly owned by American Express Company or any of its subsidiaries (American Express). "American Express Global Business Travel," "American Express" and the American Express logo are trademarks of American Express and are used under limited license. Sources for figures in release: CITS American Express Global Business Travel 2018 China Business Travel Survey (the Barometer). * Economist Intelligence Unit data, 2018 ** Economist Intelligence Unit data, 2018 Photo - https://mma.prnewswire.com/media/775374/CITS_kick_off.jpg Photo - https://mma.prnewswire.com/media/775375/CITS_kevin_tan.jpg Libourne - 18 October 2018 - Fermentalg (Euronext - FALG), a French market leader in microalgae, presents its financial results for the third quarter of 2018. Philippe Lavielle, Fermentalg Chairman and CEO, made the following comments: "During the third quarter, we made considerable headway in developing our first platform fully dedicated to Omega 3. In just a few weeks, we signed our first sales contract with global market leader DSM and expanded our production capacity via our new manufacturing partner, ADL. In line with our commitments, DHA ORIGINS 550 is expected to start selling by the end of the year, with ramp-up already scheduled for 2019. Let me once again thank all our teams for their valiant efforts. This is a major success, but it's only the start." Market launch of DHA ORIGINS On 18 September 2018, Fermentalg announced the signing of an initial agreement with DSM Nutritional Products, a Royal DSM subsidiary, in the field of ultra-concentrated DHA oils. Under this five-year contract, Fermentalg will sell DSM its flagship product, the ORIGINS DHA 550 microalgae oil, the first algal oil with a minimum natural concentration of 550 mg/g. By signing this agreement, Fermentalg has granted DSM Nutritional Products exclusivity limited to certain market segments. Meanwhile, Fermentalg will continue to promote its ORIGINS DHA offering through its existing distributor network comprising IMCD in Europe, a leader in the sale, marketing and distribution of specialty chemicals and nutritional ingredients, and STAUBER, a leading US supplier of specialty ingredients. Production of DHA ORIGINS In order to secure large-scale industrial capacity, on 26 September 2018 Fermentalg announced the signing of a long-term DHA algal oil production agreement with ADL BioPharma, the European specialist in industrial fermentation. ADL BioPharma and Fermentalg plan to complete the technological approval and transfer phase by the end of 2018. Once this phase is complete, ADL BioPharma will reserve part of its fermentation capacity (total installed capacity of 2,400 m3) for Fermentalg products, ultimately allowing the Group to supply several hundred tons of DHA ORIGINS 550. New agreements with SUEZ to promote development of the algal biofilter Meanwhile, Fermentalg and the SUEZ Group have signed new agreements to develop the algal biofilter (former "carbon sink"). Since 2015, the two groups have been working together to exploit the exceptional capacity of microalgae to capture CO2 from the atmosphere in urban areas and smoke emissions from industrial complexes. Following an initial test phase that confirmed this technology's potential, Fermentalg and the SUEZ Group have signed an exclusive 8-year partnership agreement covering the technological development and industrialisation phases of the algal biofilter. A three-year marketing agreement was also signed, setting out the commercial offering for urban and industrial air purification. Cash assets of 15.2 million at 30 September 2018 Q3 2018 revenues, that do not yet include revenues from the DSM sales contract, amounted to 117,000[1]. This figure mainly corresponds to services and initial sales of DHA oil in commercial launch and sample volumes. At 30 September, gross cash amounted to 15.2 million, down from 17.4 million at 30 June 2018 but in line with cash burn recorded in the first half. About Fermentalg: An expert in research and bio-industrial use of microalgae, Fermentalg seeks to provide sustainable solutions and innovative products that contribute towards the creation of natural, healthy and effective products. Our business: the development, production and sale of active ingredients extracted from microalgae for the health and nutrition sectors. Natural nutritional oils, pigments and antioxidants, as well as specialty proteins, comprise our present and future offering. Fermentalg shares are listed on Euronext in Paris (FR0011271600 - FALG). For more information, visit: www.fermentalg.com Contact - Journalists: Contact - Investors: ACTUS finance & communication Alexandra PRISA Tel: +33 (0)1 53 67 36 90 aprisa@actus.fr ACTUS finance & communication Jerome FABREGUETTES-LEIB Tel: +33 (0)1 53 67 36 78 jfl@actus.fr [1] No income was recorded in Q3 2017. ------------------------ 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-0-55717-fermentalg-cp-if-t3-2018-vdfuk.pdf NET ASSET VALUE BLACKROCK COMMODITIES INCOME INVESTMENT TRUST PLC 54930040ALEAVPMMDC31 The unaudited net asset values for BlackRock Commodities Income Investment Trust plc at close of business on 25 October 2018 were: 76.64p Capital only 77.62p Including current year income Notes: 1. Investments have been valued on a bid price basis. 2. Revenue items included in net asset value, with dividends payable deducted on the ex-dividend date. 3. Following the Buyback of 37,897 ordinary shares on 22 October 2018, the Company now has 116,126,515 Ordinary Shares in issue (excluding 2,839,485 Ordinary Shares which are held in Treasury). 4. For the latest daily net asset value, previous month end performance statistics, asset allocation and ten largest holdings of the BlackRock managed Investment Trusts; see BLRKINDEX on Reuters or page 8800 on ICB (Topic 3). NET ASSET VALUE BLACKROCK GREATER EUROPE INVESTMENT TRUST PLC 5493003R8FJ6I76ZUW55 The unaudited net asset values for BlackRock Greater Europe Investment Trust plc at close of business on 25 October 2018 were: 338.17p Capital only (undiluted) 338.17p Capital only (Diluted for treasury shares) 342.24p Including current year income (undiluted) 342.24p Including current year income (Diluted for treasury shares) Notes: 1. Investments have been valued on a bid price basis. 2. Revenue items included in net asset value, with dividends payable deducted on the ex-dividend date. 3. Following the Tender Offer of 2,317,172 ordinary shares on 01 June 2018, the Company now has 86,459,691 Ordinary Shares in issue (excluding 23,869,247 Ordinary Shares which are held in Treasury). 4. For the latest daily net asset value, previous month end performance statistics, asset allocation and ten largest holdings of the BlackRock managed Investment Trusts; see BLRKINDEX on Reuters or page 8800 on ICB (Topic 3). NET ASSET VALUE BLACKROCK WORLD MINING TRUST PLC LNFFPBEUZJBOSR6PW155 The unaudited net asset values for BlackRock World Mining Trust plc at close of business on 25 October 2018 were: 382.92p Capital only (undiluted) 393.30p Including current year income (undiluted) Notes: 1. Revenue items included in net asset value, with dividends payable deducted on the ex-dividend date. 2. Following the buyback of 25,000 ordinary shares on 23 October 2018, the Company has 176,330,242 ordinary shares in issue, excluding 16,681,600 which are held in treasury. 3. For the latest daily net asset value, previous month end performance statistics, asset allocation and ten largest holdings of the BlackRock managed Investment Trusts; see BLRKINDEX on Reuters or page 8800 on ICB (Topic 3). 4. Investments have been valued on a bid price basis. NET ASSET VALUE BLACKROCK THROGMORTON TRUST PLC 5493003B7ETS1JEDPF59 The unaudited net asset values for BlackRock Throgmorton Trust plc at close of business on 25 October 2018 were: 518.23p Capital only 526.20p Including current year income 518.23p Capital only (adjusted for treasury shares) 526.20p Including current year income (adjusted for treasury shares) Notes: 1. Investments have been valued on a bid price basis. 2. The Company's issued share capital comprises 73,130,326 Ordinary Shares and 7,400,000 Treasury Shares. 3. Revenue items included in net asset value, with dividends payable deducted on the ex-dividend date. NET ASSET VALUE BLACKROCK EMERGING EUROPE PLC 549300OGTQA24Y3KMI14 The unaudited net asset values for BlackRock Emerging Europe plc at close of business on 25 October 2018 were: 410.70c per share (US cents) - Capital only 320.51p per share (pence sterling) - Capital only 422.50c per share (US cents) - Including current year income 329.72p per share (pence sterling) - Including current year income Notes: 1. Investments have been valued on a bid price basis. 2. Revenue items included in net asset value. 3. Following the cancellation of 400,000 treasury shares on 17 February 2017, the Company's share capital consists of 35,916,028 Ordinary shares (excluding 5,000,000 ordinary shares held in treasury) carrying one vote each. 4. As announced on 17 August 2018, the Company intends to put forward proposals which will result in the liquidation of the Company's assets. Effective 17 August 2018 the daily valuation includes an accrual in respect of expected costs associated with the liquidation. This accrual accounts for costs directly attributable to the liquidation. It is expected disposal costs will also be encountered while selling down the portfolio however such costs cannot be reliably estimated until the sale is executed. Consequently disposal costs have not been accrued in the valuation at this point." NET ASSET VALUE BLACKROCK NORTH AMERICAN INCOME TRUST PLC 549300WWOCXSC241W468 The unaudited net asset values for BlackRock North American Income Trust plc at close of business on 25 October 2018 were: 172.23p Capital only 173.56p Including current year income Notes: 1. Investments have been valued on a bid price basis. 2. Revenue items included in net asset value, with dividends payable deducted on the ex-dividend date. 3. Following the buyback of 75,000 ordinary shares on 14 June 2017, the Company has 68,874,044 ordinary shares in issue, excluding 31,487,261 which are held in treasury. NET ASSET VALUE BLACKROCK LATIN AMERICAN INVESTMENT TRUST PLC UK9OG5Q0CYUDFGRX4151 The unaudited net asset values for BlackRock Latin American Investment Trust plc at close of business on 25 October 2018 were: 667.08c per share (US cents) - Capital only 667.08c per share (US cents) - Including current year income XD 520.59p per share (pence sterling) Capital only 520.59p per share (pence sterling) - Including current year income XD Notes: 1. Investments have been valued on a bid price basis. 2. Revenue items included in net asset value, with dividends payable deducted on the ex-dividend date. 3. Following the Buyback of 20,000 ordinary shares on 24 May 2018, the Company now has 39,259,620 Ordinary Shares in issue (excluding 2,181,662 Ordinary Shares which are held in Treasury). 4. For the latest daily net asset value, previous month end performance statistics, asset allocation and ten largest holdings of the BlackRock managed Investment Trusts; see BLRKINDEX on Reuters or page 8800 on ICB (Topic 3). NET ASSET VALUE BLACKROCK INCOME AND GROWTH INVESTMENT TRUST PLC 5493003YBY59H9EJLJ16 The unaudited net asset values for BlackRock Income and Growth Investment Trust plc at close of business on 25 October 2018 were: 186.28p Capital only (undiluted) 190.93p Including current year income (undiluted) Notes: 1. Following the buyback of 41,500 ordinary shares on 08 October 2018, the Company has 24,059,668 ordinary shares in issue excluding 8,874,264 shares in treasury. 2. Investments have been valued on a bid price basis, with the exception of the holding in Patisserie Valerie which has been valued at a directors' valuation following its suspension from trading on AIM on 10 Oct. The portfolio's holding in Patisserie Valerie at 25 October 2018 represents 0.16% of the Company's total portfolio following this revaluation 3. Revenue items included in net asset value, with dividends payable deducted on the ex-dividend date. NET ASSET VALUE BLACKROCK SMALLER COMPANIES TRUST PLC 549300MS535KC2WH4082 The unaudited net asset values for BlackRock Smaller Companies Trust plc at close of business on 25 October 2018 were: 1391.93p Capital only and including debt at par value 1385.14p Capital only and including debt at fair value 1417.90p Including current year income and debt at par value 1411.11p Including current year income and debt at fair value Notes: 1. Investments have been valued on a bid price basis. 2. The total number of ordinary shares in issue excluding treasury shares is 47,879,792. The total amount of ordinary shares held in treasury is 2,113,731. 3. For the latest daily net asset value, previous month end performance statistics, asset allocation and ten largest holdings of the BlackRock managed Investment Trusts; see BLRKINDEX on Reuters or page 8800 on ICB (Topic 3). NET ASSET VALUE BLACKROCK FRONTIERS INVESTMENT TRUST PLC 5493003K5E043LHLO706 The unaudited net asset values for the ordinary shares of BlackRock Frontiers Investment Trust plc at close of business on 25 October 2018 were: 162.57c Capital only USD (cents) 126.87p Capital only Sterling (pence) 169.65c Including current year income USD (cents) 132.40p Including current year income Sterling (pence) Notes: 1. Investments have been valued on a bid price basis. 2. Revenue items included in net asset value, with dividends payable deducted on the ex-dividend date. 3. Following the share issuance of 250,000 ordinary shares on 16th October 2018, the Company has 203,491,108 ordinary shares in issue. Vancouver, British Columbia--(Newsfile Corp. - October 26, 2018) - Orestone Mining Corp. (TSXV: ORS) (WKN: A2DWW7) (the "Company") Orestone Mining is pleased to provide a progress report of the Company's restructuring; management, capital structure, assets and exploration plans. Over the last year the Company's Board of Directors, capital structure and asset mix have been optimized to create shareowner wealth going forward. We have worked diligently to add depth and strength to the Board: Julia Aspillaga and Patrick Daniels bring large project exploration and development experience in Chile. We have completed a share consolidation of 5 old for 1 new and completed initial funding: resulting in a tight share structure with strong management and insider holdings. We have diversified and strengthened the asset base with the acquisition of the Resguardo (copper/gold) project in Chile. The Company now controls two large, well defined and drill ready porphyry targets, one in British Columbia, Canada (gold/copper) and one in Region III, Chile (copper/gold). Resguardo Copper-Gold Porphyry Project The Resguardo project is located 90 kilometres NE of the City of Copiapo in Region III, Chile, covers 2,905 hectares of mining concessions and can be explored year around. The project geology is of the same Middle Tertiary porphyry copper belt as CODELCO's El Salvador and Potrerillos mines 80 kilometres to the north. The project is located along the north/south Domeyko Fault System which hosts some of the largest copper deposits in the world and the confluence of regional fault systems coming out of the Maricunga Gold Belt which host numerous multi-million ounce gold and gold-copper deposits containing up to 25 million ounces gold. Copper and gold mineralization (oxides and sulphides) have been discovered along two parallel 1000 metre structures featuring fracture-controlled chimney, manto and skarn style deposition. The structures are approximately 80 metres apart, up to 50 metres wide with grades from 0.40 to 7% copper and up to 0.60 g/t gold. Near-surface oxide copper grading 1% to 7% was mined intermittently from pits and tunnels and sold to ENAMI in Copiapo for processing. The surface mineralization at Resguardo is surrounded by a large hydrothermally altered zone of clay and silica covering over one square kilometre and is underlain by a large IP (induced polarization) chargeability anomaly measuring 450m x 1000m. The IP anomaly indicates the probable source of surface copper mineralization and a large undiscovered sulphide copper porphyry may lie at depth. Previous exploration conducted to outline the porphyry target consisted of structural mapping, alteration mapping, geochemical sampling, geophysical surveys (ground magnetometer, IP and Resistivity) and 514 metres of reverse circulation drilling. Future exploration will consist of a moderate program of geophysics followed by RC drilling. The Captain Project The Captain Project hosts several porphyry targets with the most advanced being the Admiral target. The last hole drilled on the Admiral target in 2013, Hole C13-03, intersected three metres of highly potassic-sericite altered monzonite porphyry which assays 0.226% copper and 1.90 g/t gold within an otherwise unaltered and un-mineralized post mineral alkali gabbro dyke (PMD). The three-metre xenolith or rafted block is believed to have been transported from immediately adjacent rocks, it contains abundant sulphides and has a "strong Induced Polarization (IP) signature" associated with it while the unaltered and un-mineralized post mineral dyke has few sulphides or a "weak IP signature". Detailed geophysics consisting of ground magnetometer, IP and resistivity have outlined the Admiral target and the PMD can also be spatially located within it. The Admiral target is an intense IP anomaly measuring up to 25 mV/V covering an area of 1000 metres x 2000 metres open in all directions. The gold to copper ratio observed from mineralized intervals observed on the property to date indicate a gold rich alkaline porphyry system which may be similar to the Cadia-Ridgeway Porphyry system of Newcrest Gold in New South Wales, Australia and indicate a potential porphyry system where copper grades of 0.2-0.3% and gold grades from 2-6 g/t are possible - a highly favorable and economic drill target. Future exploration will consist of diamond drilling. In summary, the Company has been optimized to create shareowner wealth going forward: a tight share structure; highly geared asset base; a strong Board and a management team focused on success. We are currently in the process of financing and once complete we will announce further exploration detail. If you would like to follow along and keep informed on what we are doing, please click here to provide consent and receive news, updates and important information on the company as we move our projects forward. Mr. Gary Nordin PGeo, BC has reviewed the technical information on the project and visited the project. Orestone Mining Corp. is a Canadian based company that owns a 100% percent interest in the Captain gold - copper project located approximately 30 kilometres south of the Mt. Milligan Mine in British Columbia and has an option to purchase a 100% interest in the Resguardo copper project in Chile. For more information please visit: www.orestone.ca ON BEHALF OF ORESTONE MINING CORP. "David Hottman" President and CEO For further information contact: David Hottman 604-629-1929 info@orestone.ca Neither TSX Venture Exchange nor its Regulation Services Provider (as that term is defined in policies of the TSX Venture Exchange) accepts responsibility for the adequacy or accuracy of this news release. Werbehinweise: Die Billigung des Basisprospekts durch die BaFin ist nicht als ihre Befurwortung der angebotenen Wertpapiere zu verstehen. Wir empfehlen Interessenten und potenziellen Anlegern den Basisprospekt und die Endgultigen Bedingungen zu lesen, bevor sie eine Anlageentscheidung treffen, um sich moglichst umfassend zu informieren, insbesondere uber die potenziellen Risiken und Chancen des Wertpapiers. Sie sind im Begriff, ein Produkt zu erwerben, das nicht einfach ist und schwer zu verstehen sein kann. CHICAGO, October 26, 2018 /PRNewswire/ -- According to the new market research report "Collaborative Robot Market by Payload Capacity (Up to 5 Kg, Between 5 and 10 Kg, Above 10 Kg), Industry (Automotive, Electronics, Metals & Machining, Plastics & Polymers, Food & Beverages, Healthcare), Application, and Geography - Global Forecast to 2025", published by MarketsandMarkets, the Collaborative Robot Market is expected to grow from USD 710 million in 2018 to USD 12,303 million by 2025, at a CAGR of 50.31% during the forecast period. The multifold growth is attributed to the high RoI and low price of collaborative robots, which result in the growing adoption of co-bots by small- and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs), rising investments in automation by industries to support the evolution of Industry 4.0, improving human-machine interface (HMI), and increasing capability of AI to imitate human behavior. (Logo: https://mma.prnewswire.com/media/660509/MarketsandMarkets_Logo.jpg ) Don't miss out on business opportunities in Collaborative Robot Market. Speak to Our Analyst and gain crucial industry insights that will help your business grow: https://www.marketsandmarkets.com/speaktoanalyst.asp?id=194541294 Market for collaborative robots with a payload capacity between 5 and 10 kg expected to grow at highest CAGR during forecast period The market for collaborative robots having a payload capacity between 5 and 10 kg is expected to grow at the highest CAGR from 2018 to 2025. This growth is mainly attributed to the expected demand for collaborative robots with medium payload capacity in industries such as automotive, furniture and equipment, and metals and machining. Collaborative robots having a payload capacity between 5 and 10 kg are the safest co-bots for a majority of factory automation tasks. These robots can perform all the collaborative operations that can be performed by robots having a payload capacity up to 5 kg robots. A few major companies that provide these robots are Universal Robots A/S (Denmark) - UR10 (10 kg), KUKA AG (Germany) - LBR iiwa 7 R800 (7 kg), MABI AG (Switzerland) - Speedy6 (6 kg), FANUC Corporation (Japan) - CR 7iA (7 kg), Quanta Storage Inc. (Taiwan) - TM5-700 (6 kg), and Yaskawa Motoman (US) - HC10 (10 kg). A significant surge in demand for co-bots having a payload capacity between 5 and 10kg is observed during the past few years; as well as many new companies have emerged offering robots having this payload capacity range. The strong demand for co-bots for assembly and material handling applications is expected to drive this market growth further. Pick and place application accounted for largest market share in 2017 The pick and place application accounted for the largest share of the global collaborative robot market in 2017. Majority of the low-payload capacity co-bots, i.e., co-bots having a payload capacity of less than 5 kg are used for pick and place tasks. However, the market for the assembly application is expected to grow at the highest rate during the forecast period. Assembly operations have a huge scope in the manufacturing industry for collaborative robots as these robots allow the new user to grasp the basics of working easily. Collaborative robots are known for the reduced time of assembly, accuracy, speed, reach, and any material handling capacity. Benefits offered by collaborative robots include greater precision than that of special-purpose instruments. They can be easily deployed and sometimes need only reprogramming to resume working on another assembly line. Growing demand from automotive, food & beverages, and furniture and equipment industries is fueling the demand for co-bots for assembly applications. Browse in-depth TOC on"Collaborative Robot Market" 66- Tables 39- Figures 169- Pages APAC to grow at highest rate in collaborative robot market Europe accounted for the largest market share in 2017, closely followed by APAC and North America. The growth of the market in Europe was driven by strong government support to promote factory automation solutions, thereby supporting the evolution of Industry 4.0. However, the market in APAC is expected to surpass Europe by 2025. This growth can be attributed to the increasing demand for collaborative robots in China, Japan, and South Korea, especially by industries such as electronics, automotive, and metals and machining. Ask for PDF @https://www.marketsandmarkets.com/pdfdownload.asp?id=194541294 Major players in the global collaborative robot market include Universal Robots A/S (Denmark), Rethink Robotics (US), ABB (Switzerland), KUKA AG (Germany), FANUC Corporation (Japan), Robert Bosch GmbH (Germany), MRK-Systeme GmbH (Germany), Precise Automation, Inc. (US), Energid Technologies Corporation (US), F&P Robotics AG (Switzerland), MABI AG (Switzerland), Techman Robot by Quanta Storage, Inc. (Taiwan), Franka Emika GmbH (Germany), AUBO Robotics Inc. (US), YASKAWA Electric Corporation (Japan), Comau S.p.A. (Italy), and KAWADA Robotics Corp. (Japan). Please explore relevant report "Artificial Intelligence (AI) Robots Market"also. About MarketsandMarkets MarketsandMarkets provides quantified B2B research on 30,000 high growth niche opportunities/threats which will impact 70% to 80% of worldwide companies' revenues. Currently servicing 7500 customers worldwide including 80% of global Fortune 1000 companies as clients. Almost 75,000 top officers across eight industries worldwide approach MarketsandMarkets for their painpoints around revenues decisions. Our 850 fulltime analyst and SMEs at MarketsandMarkets are tracking global high growth markets following the "Growth Engagement Model - GEM". The GEM aims at proactive collaboration with the clients to identify new opportunities, identify most important customers, write "Attack, avoid and defend" strategies, identify sources of incremental revenues for both the company and its competitors. MarketsandMarkets now coming up with 1,500 MicroQuadrants (Positioning top players across leaders, emerging companies, innovators, strategic players) annually in high growth emerging segments. MarketsandMarkets is determined to benefit more than 10,000 companies this year for their revenue planning and help them take their innovations/disruptions early to the market by providing them research ahead of the curve. MarketsandMarkets's flagship competitive intelligence and market research platform, "Knowledge Store" connects over 200,000 markets and entire value chains for deeper understanding of the unmet insights along with market sizing and forecasts of niche markets. Contact: Mr. Shelly Singh MarketsandMarkets INC. 630 Dundee Road Suite 430 Northbrook, IL 60062 USA: +1-888-600-6441 Email: sales@marketsandmarkets.com Research Insight: https://www.marketsandmarkets.com/ResearchInsight/collaborative-robot-market.asp Visit Our Web Site: https://www.marketsandmarkets.com GUANGZHOU, China, Oct. 26, 2018 /PRNewswire/ -- On October 23, 2018, the 124th China Import and Export Fair 2018 for Complex Trade Show (short for 2018 Autumn Canton Fair) was held at China Import and Export Fair Pazhou Complex, Guangzhou, China. 7,561 enterprises participated in the fair, exhibiting various kinds of products such as daily consumer goods and household goods. The 2018 Autumn Canton Fair lasted for five days, mainly exhibiting daily consumer goods, gifts and souvenirs and household goods. MINISO, the famous Japanese designer brand also took part in the fair, which attracted great attention from merchants and became one of the most popular exhibitors at the fair. By concluding the experience of attending the Canton Fair, MINISO brought brand new products to the fair this time while still sticking to the principle of returning to nature. At the same time, it also optimized the decoration of the exhibition area so as to present better visual experience to visitors. At the fair, MINISO displayed numerous new products launched this year, such as storage bags, notebooks and power banks that collaborated with PANTONE, the world's renowned color authority, and Hello Kitty, Cinnamoroll derivative products collaborated with Sanrio, as well as iF Red Dot Prize winners. MINISO attaches great importance to product details, and is strict to product design, which have made it a representative brand of New Retail in recent years. While developing new products, MINISO also concerned about environmental protection issues, stays true to its principle of returning to nature and reverting to the essence of the product itself, which is well received by merchants both at home and abroad. Photo - https://mma.prnewswire.com/media/775361/MINISO_booth_merchants.jpg Acreage Holdings ForecastOne of the most intriguing new plays to hit the marijuana market in the near future is Acreage Holdings. The company has, without a doubt, the strongest board of directors on a marijuana company in the world, recently adding former Canadian prime minister Brian Mulroney. Soon the company will be available to the public via an Acreage Holdings reverse takeover, so in this piece we'll examine the Acreage Holdings forecast in preparation of its public debut.First, however, let's dive a little more into what Acreage Holdings is.The marijuana company is among the largest in the U.S., operating in 15 states and with what the CEO Kevin. Werbehinweise: Die Billigung des Basisprospekts durch die BaFin ist nicht als ihre Befurwortung der angebotenen Wertpapiere zu verstehen. Wir empfehlen Interessenten und potenziellen Anlegern den Basisprospekt und die Endgultigen Bedingungen zu lesen, bevor sie eine Anlageentscheidung treffen, um sich moglichst umfassend zu informieren, insbesondere uber die potenziellen Risiken und Chancen des Wertpapiers. Sie sind im Begriff, ein Produkt zu erwerben, das nicht einfach ist und schwer zu verstehen sein kann. *Handley Page Hampden TB Mk.I P1344, under restoration for the past decade or so at Royal Air Force Museum Cosford, is making huge steps towards becoming a complete aircraft again. As one of the Museums longest-running conservation projects, the aircraft has undergone a major transformation; for the first time since the mid-1940s you can see a complete fuselage for a Hampden in the UK. And it wont be long before aviation fans can catch another glimpse of the Hampden. She goes on show during the Museums Conservation Center Open Week taking place from November 12th through the 18th. All four of the aircrafts primary fuselage sections are now fully assembled and re-attached. Museum conservators have repainted the Hampden with her original 144 Squadron color scheme and serial number. Its been a labor of love for the Museums skilled Aircraft Technicians. While the airframe is substantially original, some components have had to be rebuilt from scratch using measurements taken from badly damaged surviving parts and original Handley Page pre-production drawings dating from the late 1930s. The Museums Hampden, serial number P1344, is one of only three substantive examples of the type remaining. Her last flight took place during the night of September 4/5, 1942. She was part of a flight of 32 Hampdens which took off from RAF Sumburgh in the Shetland Islands heading to northern Russia to provide protection for the Arctic Convoys supplying the Allied war effort on the Eastern Front. Eight other Hampdens failed to survive that flight; a costly night in terms of both human and aircraft losses. Three of the five men aboard P1344 died when the aircraft was shot down, with the two survivors becoming prisoners of war. P1344s wreckage lay on the Kola Peninsula, in northern Russia for the next half century. With the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989, a spate of recoveries of WWII aircraft took place across the former Soviet Bloc countries, and Russia was no different. A recovery team salvaged the Hampdens remains during 1989. Jeet Mahal imported P1344 into the UK during 1991, with the RAF Museum eventually acquiring the her in August, 1992. Her airframe was considerably battered, and missing substantial components, especially from the right wing, so it took a few years before the RAF Museum decided how to go about her restoration/preservation. But now the British twin-engined medium bomber is being lovingly brought back to life, and she should be complete once again sometime in the next decade. Since members of the public last had the opportunity to view P1344 roughly a year ago, the restoration of her badly damaged airframe has advanced considerably, with the unmistakable shape of the Hampdens silhouette now being clearly evident. While much of the original airframe material has been successfully incorporated into the project, the tail boom was structurally too badly damaged to re-use, so museum technicians built a new one for the project. Within the last few weeks, the Museums Surface Finish Technician has repainted this newly constructed section, which is now also re-attached to the original rear fuselage (which still bears bullet hole scars from the night of the aircrafts fatal shoot-down on September 4th, 1942. Adding the tail-plane, which is 30-40% original, and the newly constructed forward fuselage, the RAF Museum Cosford aircraft is one of only two substantially intact-looking Hampdens worldwide, with the other, P5436, on display at the Canadian Museum of Flight, near Vancouver, British Columbia. The Lincolnshire Aviation Heritage Center in East Kirkby, England, is also working on the restoration of Hampden TB Mk.I AE436. Date: 12-18 November 2018 Time: 10.15am-1.00pm Cost: 5.00 per person RAF Museum Conservation Center Manager, Darren Priday said: Were delighted with how the Hampden, a lesser known aircraft of the RAF inventory, is finally coming together after all these years. We are currently trying to source an original rear undercarriage and tail wheel, but if one cant be found it will be replicated and made in the Centre. The aircraft has been populated internally with items from the Museums reserve collection and the next twelve months will see work commence on manufacturing flying control wires to enable the elevator and rudder to move as well as fabricating new bomb bay doors. Hampdens, along with Wellingtons, which we also have here at the Center, bared the brunt of the early bombing campaign over Europe. They played a vital role in the RAF and our nations history and Im confident this rare example will be warmly received by visitors at our Open Week next month. Aviation fans will be able to view the newly painted fuselage from 12-18 November when the Michael Beetham Conservation Centre opens its doors to visitors, giving behind the scenes access to aircraft conservation projects and the chance to speak with the team that makes them happen. Other projects on view will include Westland Lysander Mk.III R9215, Vickers Wellington Mk.X MF628, Range Safety Launch, sole surviving Dornier Do 17 wk.nr.1160 and an original German LVG C.VI reconnaissance biplane dating from WWI. Museum Technicians, Apprentices and Volunteers will be available throughout the week to speak with visitors about their work and answer any questions they may have. The Conservation Center will be open to the public from 10.15am to 1.00pm each day between November 12th through the 18th. Admission is 5.00 per person (children under 16 are free, but must be accompanied by an adult). The Museums other hangars will be open from 10am until 4pm every day, with entry to the main Museum being free of charge. For further information, please visit the RAF Museums website www.rafmuseum.org/cosford. Visitors attending the Open Week on Saturday November 17th may also be interested in attending a lecture entitled The Glider Pilot Regiment and the RAF which will take place at 2.00pm in the Museums Conference Room located in the Visitor Centre. Chaired by the Glider Pilot Regiment Society Chairperson, Jane Barkway-Harney, the presentation will discuss the Regiments genesis, the selection and training of its volunteers, and the role that the RAF played in preparing these Army soldiers to take to the skies. The talk will also focus on the 75th Anniversary of the Invasion of Sicily, the longest military glider tow in history, and Operation Varsity the largest single Airborne lift and final operation of the Glider Pilot Regiment during Second World War. This operation saw RAF crews seconded to the Glider Pilot Regiment as glider pilots to make up for previous losses. The talk will last approximately 1hr 15 minutes and costs 5 per person. Further details can be found on the Museums website. *This article is adapted from an RAF Museum press release ZURICH, SWITZERLAND / ACCESSWIRE / October 26, 2018 / And the winner of Best ICO Award at ICO Grand Slam is. Aargos. These words were much awaited during the World Blockchain Summit hosted by Trescon, Dubai. The declaration was followed by an award of $100,000 to the Aargos Team in prize money from Evan Luthra, Founder of Almora Crypto Investment Bank. The award was given as a result of the Best ICO at ICO Grand Slam organized by World Blockchain Summit where several gurus and technology players in this space including emerging startups connects - with regional businesses, government authorities, IT leaders, tech entrepreneurs, investors and blockchain developers including but not limited to H.E. KHURRAM SHROFF , NICK SPANOS , GREGORY LANDEGGER, MICHAEL BUCELLA, DAVID DRAKE, JAN BRZEZEK and more. The summit features enterprise use-cases, government use-cases, inspirational keynotes, panel discussions, tech-talks, blockchain exhibition, startup pitch competitions, and a host of networking opportunities. Among the participants of the competition, the finalists were invited to World Blockchain Summit by Trescon in Dubai to pitch their projects in person to a panel of blockchain experts and investors. The main criteria for judgment were the business model, proof of concept, team strength & and token model. The judges while declaring the prize mentioned that Aargos were able to present a strong case based on every criterion. The Best ICO Award from World Blockchain Summit is a highly coveted award due to the amount and investor recognition that comes along with it. With this win, Aargos announced a collaboration with Inqube which is an award-winning creative & strategy firm that builds the brand of tomorrow with their world-class talent they engineer some of the best digital projects and build the technology of the future. They definitely understand the difference between breaking into markets and creating new ones. ABOUT AARGOS Aargos brings the global real estate to the blockchain platform by introducing a diversified real estate portfolio to back the security tokens. Their advanced programming converts & securitizes the real estate assets into globally traded tokens via smart contracts on ethereum. The Marvel of blockchain Technology enables tokenization of real estate where properties can be registered, tracked & traded on a shared database. These tokens will facilitate fractional or partial ownership of real estate for every individual. The underlying smart contracts can ensure complete security for the investors & property owners. They provide excellent liquidity and micro investment opportunity that never existed in the real estate industry until now. The Aargos team is working very hard along with their mission lines of bringing global real estate to the blockchain. They plan to launch their STO very soon. Aargos is raising 1 Billion Euros via a regulated security token offering. ABOUT WORLD BLOCKCHAIN SUMMIT BY TRESCON, DUBAI EDITION World Blockchain Summit Dubai edition gathered global blockchain entrepreneurs, experts and solution providers under one roof, to expose the regional blockchain market within UAE, as well as the Asian continent in its entirety, to the world! Media Contact Email: media@aargos.io SOURCE: Aargos View source version on accesswire.com:https://www.accesswire.com/526419/Aargos-Wins-Receives-100000-at-the-World-Blockchain-Summit-for-Best-ICO-by-Evan-Luthra Vancouver, British Columbia--(Newsfile Corp. - October 26, 2018) - Southern Arc Minerals Inc. (TSXV: SA) ("Southern Arc" or the "Company") is pleased to announce that the Company has received aggregate funds of US$1,250,000, US$750,000 of which represents final payment from a prominent Indonesian businessman for the Company's previously announced sale of the Taliwang project. The balance of the funds (US$500,000) represent the consideration paid to Southern Arc for selling and assigning its 5.0% net smelter return interest in the Taliwang project to Kratos Limited, a British Virgin Islands company, pursuant to a royalty purchase and assignment agreement. "The funds from the final payment for the Taliwang asset and the associated royalty sale allow Southern Arc the ability to continue to participate in equity financings offered by its current portfolio of investee companies and to consider new investment opportunities." said John Proust, Chairman & CEO of Southern Arc. About Southern Arc Southern Arc is a Canadian company focused on enhancing shareholder value through strategic investments in mineral resource companies with a focus on gold and copper-gold. Southern Arc's management team identifies highly prospective assets in politically safe jurisdictions and seeks to unlock their value by providing strategic investments, proven technical skills, global knowledge, and increased access to industry relationships. More information is available at www.southernarcminerals.com or by email at info@southernarcminerals.com. On behalf of the Board of Southern Arc Minerals Inc. "John Proust" Chairman & CEO Southern Arc Contact John Proust Chairman & CEO Phone: 778-725-1490 Email: info@southernarcminerals.com Neither the TSX Venture Exchange nor its Regulation Services Provider (as such term is defined in the policies of the TSX Venture Exchange) accepts responsibility for the adequacy or accuracy of this release. New York, New York--(Newsfile Corp. - October 26, 2018) - CannabisNewsAudio announces the Audio Press Release (APR) titled "Changing Attitudes in Washington Offer Promise for Hemp and Cannabis Market," featuring Marijuana Company of America, Inc. (OTC Pink: MCOA). To hear the CannabisNewsAudio version, visit: http://cnw.fm/2Abq0 To read the full editorial, visit: http://cnw.fm/2Fhng MCOA illustrates the variety of ways in which companies are now engaging in the cannabis sector. Rather than producing medical or recreational cannabis, the company has focused on varied uses of industrial hemp, a form of cannabis without the psychoactive qualities. Derivatives of hemp can be used in food, textiles, construction and medicines, making it a versatile and valuable crop. Hemp is a form of cannabis that contains only a minimal level of tetrahydrocannabinol (THC), the chemical that gets cannabis consumers high. Before the general prohibition on cannabis cultivation, hemp was largely used in producing rope and textiles. Now this space is seeing a resurgence thanks to changes in cannabis legislation. MCOA is involved in growing hemp through businesses such as its New Brunswick Hemp Project, one of many companies exploring hemp's potential. About Marijuana Company of America Inc. MCOA is a corporation which participates in: (1) product research and development of legal hemp-based consumer products under the brand name "hempSMART," that targets general health and well-being; (2) an affiliate marketing program to promote and sell its legal hemp-based consumer products containing CBD; (3) leasing of real property to separate business entities engaged in the growth and sale of cannabis in those states and jurisdictions where cannabis has been legalized and properly regulated for medicinal and recreational use; and, (4) the expansion of its business into ancillary areas of the legalized cannabis and hemp industry, as the legalized markets and opportunities in this segment mature and develop. For more information, visit the company's website at www.MarijuanaCompanyofAmerica.com About CannabisNewsWire (CNW) CannabisNewsWire ("CNW") is a specialized information service that (1) aggregates cannabis news, (2) provides CannabisNewsBreaks that quickly updates investors in the space, (3) enhances corporate press releases, (4) helps companies with distribution and optimization of social media, and (5) delivers comprehensive corporate communication solutions. CNW is uniquely positioned in the cannabis market with a strong team of journalists and writers who can help private and public companies reach a wide audience of investors, consumers, journalists and the general public through our ever-growing dissemination network of more than 5,000 key syndication outlets. CNW is bringing unparalleled visibility, recognition and content to the cannabis industry. For more information please visit https://wwwCannabisNewsWire.com Please see full terms of use and disclaimers on the CannabisNewsWire website applicable to all content provided by CNW, wherever published or re-published: http://CNW.fm/Disclaimer Forward-Looking Statements This release contains forward-looking statements within the meaning of Section 27A of the Securities Act of 1933, as amended and Section 21E of the Securities Exchange Act of 1934, as amended. All forward-looking statements are inherently uncertain as they are based on current expectations and assumptions concerning future events or future performance of the company. Readers are cautioned not to place undue reliance on these forward-looking statements, which are only predictions and speak only as of the date hereof. In evaluating such statements, prospective investors should review carefully various risks and uncertainties identified in this release and matters set in the company's SEC filings. These risks and uncertainties could cause the company's actual results to differ materially from those indicated in the forward-looking statements. CNW Corporate Communications Contact: CannabisNewsWire (CNW) Denver, Colorado www.CannabisNewsWire.com 303.498.7722 Office Editor@CannabisNewsWire.net ATLANTA, GA / ACCESSWIRE / October 26, 2018 / Findit, Inc. (OTC PINK: FDIT) a Nevada Corporation has been engaged by Freedom Loan Resolution, a student debt counseling company in California, to assist in their online marketing campaign. The overall objective of this campaign is to help Freedom Loan Resolution increase organic search results and improve indexing and visibility in organic search engines such as Google, Yahoo, and Bing as well as on social media sites such as Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn and Google +. Freedom Loan Resolution provides student debt counseling to help students apply for various loan forgiveness programs in select states, but also nationwide. Students have the ability to apply for student loan forgiveness, income based payment plans, and federal student loan consolidation. Many students that are struggling to make ends meet do not know these programs are available, how to apply for these programs, or which programs they are eligible for. Freedom Loan Resolution helps students identify the best course of action for their student debt so they can get the financial relief they deserve. What Findit Does For Freedom Loan Resolution: Findit was hired to help Freedom Loan Resolution get more exposure online under the keywords that describe the services that they provide. Findit's strategy to help Freedom Loan Resolution improve their overall online presence and brand image started with identifying the services that Freedom Loan Resolution wanted to show up for organically in search engines such as Google, Yahoo, and Bing. Freedom Loan Resolution's main goal was to index for 'student loan debt solution' in several key states: California, New York, Texas, Ohio, Michigan, and Pennsylvania. Because of this, part of their campaign on Findit included the setup of their very own unique Findit URL, which is an extension of Findit.com. Freedom's unique URL is www.findit.com/student-loan-debt-solution. The above screen shot shows Freedom Loan Resolution Search Result on page 1 of Google in the #2 Spot under a .gov website. Freedom Loan Resolutions unique URL on Findit is its own site within Findit.com, As part of their campaign, Findit sets up a photo gallery within their Findit site that includes photos titled and captioned around the services that they offer, which index in Findit and are crawled by Google, Yahoo, and Bing. Having pictures properly titled increases the likelihood of indexing those images on the first page of Google search results when the title of the picture matches to what the person is searching, all of which leads to more conversions. Once the Findit site is set up within the URL, content is created in the Right Now Feed. The Right Now Feed allows members to post updates that can include unlimited text in the text field, unlimited photos in the photo section, a link to a video, an audio file and a press release. As part of Freedom Loan Resolution's marketing campaign, Right Now Posts were created within this URL, targeting the specific services that they offered in the key states they provided us, helping to increase organic search results for the keyword search or searches done in Google that match the content created on Findit. In addition to marketing content created on Findit, these status updates and photos are shared to their Facebook Page, which we manage, as well as their Google + account and Google My Business Account. These efforts help increase overall indexing online in search and create more visibility in more places for people who have not yet heard of Freedom Loan Resolution. Visitors to Findit and other members on Findit also have the ability to share content from Freedom Loan Resolution's Right Now Feed to their own social networks, furthering the reach of Freedom's content. Another component of Freedom Loan Resolution's marketing campaign was the creation of 6 location pages on their website, FreedomLRS.com. The 6 location pages,correspond to the 6 states that Freedom Loan Resolution wanted to increase organic search results in for student debt counseling and student loan debt resolution. Each location page is titled the name of the state and includes information on the three major debt relief programs available to students: student loan forgiveness, income based payment plans, and loan consolidation. Each page is SEOed to match the services provided to give a clear picture to search engines what the page is about. Moreover, these location pages enhance Freedom Loan Resolution's overall website, providing more information to readers and gives us more places to link to on Findit to drive traffic to their website. The above screen shot shows Freedom Loan Resolution Search Result on page 1 of Google in the #2 Spot. Raymond Lee Marketing Coordinator at Freedom Loan Resolution stated " We selected Findit to assist us to reach as many people as possible that we can assist with our services. So many people are struggling with Student Loan debt and are unfamiliar on how to navigate with programs that are available to assist them in possibly reducing their payments or their overall debt. By selecting Findit we truly hope we can assist more people through these very tough times." Other Debt Counselors Can Hire Findit Too One of the most unique aspects about Findit, aside from giving its members the ability to share any content from any account to their respective social sites, is that it is truly useful and beneficial to anyone and everyone. Peter Tosto of Findit stated, "Student debt counselors, debt relief lawyers, or other financial service oriented businesses can use Findit to improve their online presence and garner more business from the web. Findit was set up to help those that use it make their presence known, and it works really well for those that have a specific set of services in specific locations. When people do not have a referral, they turn to the web to find the person or company they need. If you are showing up on page one for those services, there is a pretty good chance you will start capturing more business." All content on Findit can be crawled by Google, Yahoo and Bing and members of Findit as well as visitors to Findit can share content to their own social networking sites. This is a very important distinction from other social networking sites - when you post on closed platforms like Facebook, your content can't be shared outside of Facebook. However, when you post on Findit, you are not limiting who can see your posts and you are not limited to where you can share your posts to. Starting Your Very Own Marketing Campaign with Findit: Findit is free to join and members can run their own online marketing campaigns using the Findit social networking content management platform. Outside online marketing firms can also run campaigns for their clients using all of the tools Findit offers. Clients that want to engage Findit can do so. Findit campaigns start at $1,000 per month, on a month to month basis. The minimum campaign includes a minimum of 84 pieces of content that the Findit marketing team creates. Clark St. Amant of Findit stated, "When we take on a new client at this price point, we will not take on another client in the same area as you that provides the same service. Because Freedom Loan Resolution has an ongoing marketing campaign with us, Findit will not take on another student debt counseling firm to do their marketing on their behalf in the same locations for the same services." https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hftQ0pouXyM&t=11s To set up your very own marketing campaign with Findit, please call 404-443-3224. About Freedom Loan Resolution: Freedom Loan Resolution Services provides student debt relief to students that are struggling to make ends meet. Along with housing payments, car loans, and other mandatory expenses, your student loans can be overwhelming. When you contact our student loan loan counselors, you access more than answers and sound advice-you gain an advocate. Our goals are to ensure your rights as a borrower are respected. If you have Federal Student Loans you may qualify for any of the student loan forgiveness programs that are available to borrowers. You may be eligible for principal reduction, loan forgiveness, or a complete loan discharge depending on your individual circumstance. Call Freedom Loan Resolution at 888-780-6225 to discuss your student loan debt needs. We understand the situation you are in and it can be stressful when you don't know where to turn. About Findit, Inc. Findit, Inc., (OTC Pinksheets FDIT) owns Findit.com which is a Social Media Content Management Platform that provides an interactive search engine for all content posted in Findit to appear in Findit search. The site is an open platform that provides access to Google, Yahoo, Bing and other search engines access to its content posted to Findit so it can be indexed in these search engines as well. Findit provides Members the ability to post, share and manage their content. Once they have posted in Findit, we ensure the content gets indexed in Findit Search results. Findit provides an option for anyone to submit URLs that they want indexed in Findit search result, along with posting status updates through Findit Right Now. Status Updates posted in Findit can be crawled by outside search engines which can result in additional organic indexing. All posts on Findit can be shared to other social and bookmarking sites by members and non-members. Findit provides Real Estate Agents the ability to create their own Findit Site where they can pull in their listing and others through their IDX account. Findit offers News and Press Release Distribution. Findit, Inc., is focused on the development of monetized Internet-based web products that can provide an increased brand awareness of our members. Findit, Inc., trades under the stock symbol FDIT on the OTCPinksheets. Safe Harbor: This press release contains forward-looking information within the meaning of Section 21E of the Securities Exchange Act of 1934, as amended (the "Exchange Act"), including statements regarding potential sales, the success of the company's business, as well as statements that include the word believe or similar expressions. Such forward-looking statements involve known and unknown risks, uncertainties and other factors that may cause the actual results, performance or achievements of Findit, Inc. to differ materially from those implied or expressed by such forward-looking statements. This press release speaks as of the date first set forth above, and Findit, Inc. assumes no responsibility to update the information included herein for events occurring after the date hereof. Actual results could differ materially from those anticipated due to factors such as the lack of capital, timely development of products, inability to deliver products when ordered, inability of potential customers to pay for ordered products, and political and economic risks inherent in international trade. Contact: Peter Tosto Phone 404-443-3224 SOURCE: Findit, Inc. View source version on accesswire.com:https://www.accesswire.com/526420/Freedom-Loan-Resolution-Selected-Findit-To-Improve-Their-Online-Presence-And-Brand-Identity PORTLAND, Oregon, October 26, 2018 /PRNewswire/ -- High prevalence of allergens, increased penetration of internet, and rise in awareness among patients regarding food allergies are expected to boost the growth of the global allergy treatment market Allied Market Research recently published a report, titled, "Allergy Treatment Market by Type (Eye Allergy, Rhinitis, Asthma, Skin Allergy, and Other Allergies), Treatment (Anti-Allergy Medicine and Immunotherapy) and End User (Hospital, Clinics, Pharmacy, and Others) - Global Opportunity Analysis and Industry Forecast, 2018-2025". The report presents comprehensive analyses of the global market by analyzing the market dynamics, top investment pockets, key player positioning, and competitive landscape. According to the report, the global allergy treatment market garnered $24.65 billion in 2017 and is expected to reach $40.36 billion by 2025, registering CAGR of 6.3% from 2018 to 2025. (Logo: https://mma.prnewswire.com/media/636519/Allied_Market_Research_Logo.jpg ) Increased prevalence of allergens and high consumption of tobacco that can induce several allergies drive the growth of the global allergy treatment market. However, patent expiries, competition from generic drugs, and availability of alternative and complementary therapy hamper the market growth. On the contrary, rise in awareness among patients regarding food allergies is expected to create lucrative opportunities for the market players in the next few years. Request Sample Report at:https://www.alliedmarketresearch.com/request-sample/3541 Food allergy segment to manifest fastest growth The food allergy segment is expected to grow at the fastest CAGR of 8.3% during the forecast period, owing to rise in awareness among patients regarding food allergies. However, increased prevalence of allergic rhinitis across the globe helped rhinitis segment to garner largest market share in 2017, contributing about 40% of the total market share. The other segments analyzed in the report include asthma, skin allergy, food allergy, and others. Anti-allergy drugs treatment segment to lead the global market In 2017, the anti-allergy segment reaped about 89% share of the market, owing to the increasing inclination toward over the counter drugs (OTC) for the treatment of allergy diseases. In addition, the segment is expected to continue its dominance over the market. However, the immunotherapy treatment segment is expected to register the fastest CAGR of 8.5% during the forecast period, owing to increasing awareness among medical professionals regarding the use of immunotherapy for allergy treatment. Intranasal spray segment to witness the fastest growth The intranasal spray segment is estimated to register the fastest CAGR of 7.0% during the study period as intranasal sprays offer more promising approach to treat various allergic conditions. However, the oral drugs segment held the largest market share in 2017, contributing about 40% share of the total revenue, as oral drugs offer the convenience of self-administration, compactness, and ease of manufacturing. The other dosage form analyzed in the report include inhalers. For Purchase Enquiry:https://www.alliedmarketresearch.com/purchase-enquiry/3541 Major distribution channel in the market The global allergy treatment market report includes several prominent distribution channels such as hospital pharmacies, retail pharmacies, and online pharmacies. In 2017, the retail pharmacies segment garnered about half of the total share of the market and is expected to continue its dominance throughout the market period. However, the online pharmacies segment would manifest the fastest CAGR of 7.9% from 2018 to 2025, owing to increased penetration of internet and surge in sales of medicines for the treat allergic reactions through online retailers. In addition, the hospital pharmacies segment would witness gradual growth in the region. North America to hold largest share North America contributed about one-third share of the total market revenue in 2017. It is estimated to lead the market throughout the forecast period, owing to the well-established healthcare infrastructure and increase in adoption in immunotherapy solutions to treat allergic diseases. However, Asia-Pacific region would portray the fastest CAGR of 7.5% through 2025, owing to rise in prevalence of various allergic diseases such as asthma and rhinitis in the region. The other regions analyzed in the report are Europe and Latin America, Middle East and Africa (LAMEA). Key market players The global allergy treatment market report includes various leading companies in the market such as GlaxoSmithKline, Allergopharma, Allergan, Inc., Schering-Plough Corporation, Collegium Pharmaceutical, Inc., Allergy therapeutics, Allergon, Genentech Inc., McNeil Consumer Healthcare, and Meda Pharmaceuticals, Inc. The market players have adopted several strategies including partnerships, collaboration, mergers & acquisitions, and new product launch to maintain its leadership in the market. Clients & Testimonials: https://www.alliedmarketresearch.com/testimonials Access KNOWLEDGE TREE (Premium on-demand, subscription-based pricing model) at:https://www.alliedmarketresearch.com/knowledgetree Knowledge tree is a cloud-based intelligence platform that offers more than 2,000 selective, off-the-shelf reports on niche markets to enable our clients gain deep insights on the latest trends, dynamic technologies, and emerging application areas. Similar Reports: Immunotherapy Drugs Market - Global Opportunity Analysis and Industry Forecast, 2017 - 2023 Allergic Rhinitis Market - Global Opportunity Analysis and Industry Forecast, 2017 - 2023 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. Initial 2500-Meter Auger Drilling Results Identify Five New Gold Targets Including Extensions of the Mansounia South Prospect to Over 5-Kilometers in Strike and the Existing Mansounia Resource by up to 1-Kilometer Mansounia South Gold Prospect strike doubled from 2.5km to over 5km in length Extension of existing Mansounia deposit by up to 1km Auger drilling across the Northern and Eastern portions of the concession returned highly anomalous results of up to 1526 ppb gold Five additional targets identified - none of which have ever been previously drilled Vancouver, British Columbia--(Newsfile Corp. - October 26, 2018) - Blox, Inc. (OTCQB: BLXX) ("Blox" or the "Company") is pleased to announce that results received from its auger drilling campaign at Mansounia have identified five additional targets including doubling the strike of the Mansounia South Prospect to over 5km long. Mansounia Gold Project The Mansounia Gold Project is a 145km2 concession located 4km south of the Kiniero Gold Mine. Kiniero has historically produced over 288K oz Gold and is currently in care and maintenance with a CIL plant on site (see Figure 4). Mansounia contains a current JORC Compliant resource* of 1.29-million ounces at a pre-feasibility stage. The project is located in the highly prospective Siguiri Basin region of Eastern Guinea. Figure 1: Location Plan of Mansounia Gold Project, Guinea, West Africa. To view an enhanced version of Figure 1, please visit: https://orders.newsfilecorp.com/files/5997/40625_9405a71574e7fada_001full.jpg Mansounia South Target Extended to 5 Kilometers The previously identified (announced July 6, 2018) 2.5km long gold in soil anomaly target (Target C) at the south eastern comer of the Mansounia property has been extended to over 5km by HIGH QUALITY "in-situ" auger drilling. This Mansounia South target has NEVER had modern drilling completed. The 5km anomaly remains untested and open to the north and south (Figure 2 below). Blox will continue to explore the strike extensions with auger drilling to refine targets to enable resource drilling to follow up. Figure 2: Mansounia Gold Project - Strike extension of the newly identified Mansounia Gold-in-Soil anomaly planned auger drilling program, auger anomaly occurrences and historical drill collars. To view an enhanced version of Figure 2, please visit: https://orders.newsfilecorp.com/files/5997/40625_9405a71574e7fada_002full.jpg New Targets Identified Extensional soil and auger drilling completed to the south west of the existing 1.29-million ounce resource*. This program has identified highly anomalous gold contiguous with current drilling. The targets A, B, C, D and E in Figure 1 and below have NEVER BEEN DRILLED. Target A is an extension to the current resource and is open to the south. Targets B, C, D and E are open to the north and south. Additional auger drilling will be completed in the hope of further extending these targets. In total, 184 auger drill samples were taken from the planned 400-hole program. The laterite cap was in excess of 10m deep in most drill locations, instead of the 5m cover anticipated. As a result, it was not possible to complete all 400 planned holes before the onset of the wet season made further drilling impossible. Despite the slightly truncated program, positive drill results were returned from every line drilled. Blox will consider extensional resource drilling at targets A and B below following the closure of the West African wet season. Figure 3: Mansounia Gold Project - Auger results show extensions of the resource to the south (Targets A and B). To view an enhanced version of Figure 3, please visit: https://orders.newsfilecorp.com/files/5997/40625_9405a71574e7fada_003full.jpg "I am excited about the new drill targets identified and the extensions of the drill ready targets unveiled by the auger drilling. Anomalies were revealed in every drill line commenced, which is a very positive sign. These results have given us confidence to move forward with our plans to raise capital to complete the current auger program and then plan high quality resource extensional drilling. We are also well advanced towards the submission of our Mining License application for the Mansounia Gold Project." On behalf of the Board of Directors, Mr. Trevor Pickett Chief Executive Officer For further information, please contact: tpickett@bloxinc.com Figure 4: Mansounia Gold Project - showing current resource, new target areas and proximity to historical Kiniero Mine. To view an enhanced version of Figure 4, please visit: https://orders.newsfilecorp.com/files/5997/40625_9405a71574e7fada_004full.jpg Cautionary Note Regarding Forward-Looking Information Forward Looking Statement Disclaimer. This press release may present "forward-looking statements" within the meaning of applicable securities legislation that involve inherent risks and uncertainties. Forward-looking statements include, but are not limited to, statements with respect continuing the economic re-assessment of our assets in Guinea and Ghana, or potentially moving into production in the medium term. Generally, these 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", "potential", "anticipates" or "does not anticipate", or "believes", or variations of such words and phrases or state that certain actions, events or results "may", "could", "would", "might" or "will be taken", "occur" or "be achieved". Forward-looking 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 Blox, Inc. or the combined company to be materially different from those expressed or implied by such forward looking statements, including but not limited to: risks related to international operations, risks related to the integration of acquisitions; risks related to joint venture operations; actual results of current or future exploration activities; the ability to continue with exploration activities, actual results of current or future reclamation activities; conclusions of economic evaluations; changes in project parameters as plans continue to be refined; future prices of gold and other minerals and metals; possible variations in ore reserves, grade or recovery rates; failure of equipment or processes to operate as anticipated; accidents, labour disputes and other risks of the mining industry; and delays in obtaining governmental approvals or financing or in the completion of development or construction activities. Although the management and officers of Blox, Inc. believe that the expectations reflected in such forward- looking statements are based upon reasonable assumptions and have 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. Blox Inc. does not undertake to update any forward-looking statements that are incorporated by reference herein, except in accordance with applicable securities laws. Competent Persons Statement The information in this report that relates to the Exploration Results is based on information compiled by Mr. Seth Henry Okyere, who is a member of the Australian Institute of Geoscientist. Seth Okyere has more than 5-years' experience relevant to the style of mineralization and type of deposit under consideration and to the activity being undertaken to qualify as a Competent Person as defined in JORC Code 2012 and is qualified person by the NI43-101 instrument. Mr. Seth Okyere is a full-time consulting geologist of Blox, Inc. Mr. Seth Okyere holds stocks in Blox, Inc. and consents to the inclusion of information in this report, based in the form and context in which it appears.*Aspects pertaining to historical Mineral Resource Estimates on Northern Mansounia were prepared and first disclosed under the JORC Code 2004 by Runge Consultants 2009. Runge also prepared Mineral Resource Estimates for Southern Mansounia in 2012. Except where noted, it has not been updated since to comply with the JORC Code 2012 on the basis that the information has not materially changed since it was last reported. Vancouver, British Columbia--(Newsfile Corp. - October 26, 2018) - Ely Gold Royalties Inc. (TSXV: ELY) (OTCQB: ELYGF) ("Ely Gold" or the "Company") is pleased to announce that through its wholly-owned subsidiary, Nevada Select Royalty, Inc. ("Nevada Select") it has acquired three new strategic properties. Ely Gold is a growing royalty company with over 77 projects in play or optioned, primarily in Nevada and the north western United States. The Company's portfolio currently consists of 27 deeded royalties, 24 properties optioned to third parties, all of which are being explored or developed by partners, the Company also has 26 properties for sale. Ely Gold's partners include major mining companies, mid-tier producers and junior exploration companies. Rodeo Creek Rodeo Creek consists of 31 claims that Ely Gold acquired in September 2018, through staking, in Elko County, Nevada and are approximately 48 km northwest of Carlin, Nevada. The claims are adjacent to the Barrick Gold and Premier Gold Mines (see Figure 1). In a separate transaction with an unnamed private party, The Company acquired the complete data base on the Rodeo Creek claims. The claims were previously held by the same party for over 40 years before becoming available on September 1, 2018. Musgrove Creek Musgrove Creek, an advanced gold exploration project ,consists of 18 unpatented claims that Ely Gold acquired in September 2018, through staking, in Lemhi County, Idaho, and are located approximately 24 km southwest of Revival Gold's Beartrack gold deposit. Geologically, Musgrove Creek may have the potential to host a large, low-grade gold deposit. The property is one of many mineral deposits that occur along the Panther Creek fault system within the major northeast-trending Trans-Challis structural zone. These deposits include the Beartrack Mine, the Grouse Creek Mine and other past producers to the northeast and southwest (see Figure 2). The dominant host rock at Musgrove is metamorphosed fine-grained sediments of the Precambrian age Apple Creek Formation. Gold mineralization is associated with quartz veining, sericite alteration, brecciation, and structural preparation. Idaho State Lease Ely Gold has been granted an Idaho State Lease consisting of 551 acres in Owyhee County, Idaho. This property is located in the Delamar District currently being explored by Integra Resources. The ground was previously explored by War Eagle Mining in the 1980s and by Agnico Eagle in the 1990s (see Figure 3). The leased claims may have the potential for high grade vein targets and bulk tonnage targets. Stephen Kenwood, P. Geo, is a director of the Company and a Qualified Person as defined by NI 43-101. Mr. Kenwood has reviewed and approved the technical information in this press release. About Ely Gold Ely Gold Royalties Inc. is a Vancouver based, emerging royalty company with development assets focused in Nevada and the Western US. Its current portfolio includes 26 Deeded Royalties and 24 properties optioned to third parties. Ely Gold's royalty portfolio includes fully permitted mines, mines under construction and development projects that are being permitted for mine construction. The Company is actively purchasing existing third-party royalties for its portfolio and all the Company's Option Properties will produce royalties, if exercised. The royalty and option portfolios are currently generating significant revenue. Ely Gold is well positioned with its current portfolio of over 20 available properties to generate additional operating revenue through option and sale transactions. The Company has a proven track record of maximizing the value of its properties through claim consolidation and advancement using its extensive, proprietary data base. All portfolio properties are sold or optioned on a 100% basis, while the Company retains net smelter royalty interests. Management believes that due to the Company's ability to generate royalty transactions, its successful strategy of organically creating royalties, its equity portfolio and its current low valuation, Ely Gold offers shareholders a low-risk leverage to the current price of gold and low-cost access to long-term mineral royalties. On Behalf of the Board of Directors Signed "Trey Wasser" Trey Wasser, President & CEO For further information, please contact: Trey Wasser, President & CEO trey@elygoldinc.com 972-803-3087 Joanne Jobin, Investor Relations Officer jjobin@elygoldinc.com 604-488-1104 Neither the TSX Venture Exchange nor its Regulation Services Provider (as that term is defined in the policies of the TSX Venture Exchange) accepts responsibility for the adequacy or accuracy of this release. Disclaimer: This press release contains certain "forward-looking statements" within the meaning of Canadian securities legislation, including statements regarding the Company's contemplated acquisition of the Royalty relating to GORO's Fenelon Property, and GORO's stated plans for further near-term exploration and development of the Fenelon Property. Although the Company believes that such statements are reasonable, it can give no assurance that such expectations will prove to be correct. Forward-looking statements are statements that are not historical facts; 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, or are those statements, which, by their nature, refer to future events. The Company cautions that 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. Consequently, there can be no assurances that such statements will prove to be accurate and actual results and future events could differ materially from those anticipated in such statements. Except to the extent required by applicable securities laws and the policies of the TSX Venture Exchange, the Company undertakes no obligation to update these forward-looking statements if management's beliefs, estimates or opinions, or other factors, should change. Factors that could cause future results to differ materially from those anticipated in these forward-looking statements include the risk of accidents and other risks associated with GORO's mineral exploration, development and extraction operations, the risk that GORO will encounter unanticipated geological factors, or the possibility that GORO may not be able to secure permitting and other governmental clearances, necessary to carry out its stated plans for the Fenelon Property, the Company's inability to secure the required TSXV acceptance required for the Transaction, and the risk of political uncertainties and regulatory or legal disputes or changes in the jurisdictions where the Company carries on its business that might interfere with the Company's business and prospects. The reader is urged to refer to the Company's reports, publicly available through the Canadian Securities Administrators' System for Electronic Document Analysis and Retrieval (SEDAR) at www.sedar.com for a more complete discussion of such risk factors and their potential effects Figure1 Rodeo Creek Location Map To view an enhanced version of Figure 1, please visit: https://orders.newsfilecorp.com/files/4181/40637_6b270a794425daea_001full.jpg Figure 2 Musgrove Creek Regional Structure Map To view an enhanced version of Figure 2, please visit: https://orders.newsfilecorp.com/files/4181/40637_6b270a794425daea_002afull.jpg Figure 3 War Eagle Mining State Lease Location Map To view an enhanced version of Figure 3, please visit: https://orders.newsfilecorp.com/files/4181/40637_6b270a794425daea_003afull.jpg The iconic hotel on the Atlantic coast will become the third hotel in France under The Unbound Collection by Hyatt Hyatt Hotels Corporation (NYSE:H) has announced today that a Hyatt affiliate has entered into a management agreement with Socomix for the Hotel du Palais in Biarritz, France. This historic, luxury palace will be the third property in France to join The Unbound Collection by Hyatt brand, alongside Hotel du Louvre in Paris and Hotel Martinez in Cannes. This press release features multimedia. View the full release here: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20181026005329/en/ As the sixth property in The Unbound Collection by Hyatt in Europe, the 142-room hotel will mark a significant milestone for the brand's growth. In addition to Hotel du Palais, Great Scotland Yard Hotel in London and Parisi Udvar Hotel in Budapest are expected to open under this brand before the end of 2019. As a living memory of the Biarritz history, the "Villa Eugenie", now Hotel du Palais, was built in 1855 by Napoleon III for his wife Eugenie de Montijo. With its captivating past, its exclusive, prime location facing the Atlantic ocean and its famous architecture and design, Hotel du Palais will deliver on the brand's promise to create story-worthy and shareable experiences for the modern traveler, making it a natural addition to The Unbound Collection by Hyatt portfolio. Guests will be able to follow in the footsteps of global celebrities who indulged in the alluring French glamour of this property, one of France's prestigious palace hotels. The hotel will be fully renovated by renowned design companies, including Atelier COS, honoring traditional French luxury and the hotel's rich heritage. A partial reopening is set to take place between July and October 2019, and final renovations are scheduled to be complete for a full reopening in June 2020. New features will include renovated guestrooms, two revitalized signature restaurants, a new lounge and bar, as well as restored public areas to create a lively local atmosphere for guests. "Hotel du Palais provides Hyatt with a unique opportunity to take on a property steeped in rich national history, significantly strengthening our European resort offering for Hyatt overall and The Unbound Collection by Hyatt brand in particular," said Guido Fredrich, regional vice president, development Europe. "We have seen some significant additions to the brand throughout the course of this year and our priority remains expanding its footprint in a meaningful way. Hotel du Palais, with its exclusive location, elegant design and unique story, is a perfect fit for The Unbound Collection by Hyatt brand." "We are delighted to work with Hyatt to convert this landmark building. The iconic Hotel du Palais will be a great addition to The Unbound Collection by Hyatt due to its rich history and personality," said Michel Veunac, president at Socomix. "The renovation will maintain the Second Empire style which defines Biarritz and assures its reputation as a refined sea resort." There are currently eight other Hyatt properties open in France, including the new Hyatt Centric La Rosiere, Hotel Martinez in Cannes, Hyatt Paris Madeleine, Hyatt Regency Nice Palais de la Mediterranee, Hyatt Regency Paris Charles de Gaulle, Hyatt Regency Paris Etoile and Park Hyatt Paris-Vendome. Hotel du Louvre is currently under renovation and Hyatt Regency Chantilly is scheduled to open in late 2018 along with three additional hotels expected to open under Hyatt's select service portfolio in the coming years: Hyatt Place and Hyatt House Charles De Gaulle Airport and Hyatt Place Rouen. For more information, please visit https://unboundcollection.hyatt.com/en/unbound.html The term "Hyatt" is used in this release for convenience to refer to Hyatt Hotels Corporation and/or one or more of its affiliates. About Hyatt Hotels Corporation Hyatt Hotels Corporation, headquartered in Chicago, is a leading global hospitality company with a portfolio of 14 premier brands. As of June 30, 2018, the Company's portfolio included more than 750 properties in more than 55 countries across six continents. The Company's purpose to care for people so they can be their best informs its business decisions and growth strategy and is intended to attract and retain top colleagues, build relationships with guests and create value for shareholders. The Company's subsidiaries develop, own, operate, manage, franchise, license or provide services to hotels, resorts, branded residences, vacation ownership properties, and fitness and spa locations, including under the Park Hyatt, Miraval, Grand Hyatt, Hyatt Regency, Hyatt, Andaz, Hyatt Centric, The Unbound Collection by Hyatt, Hyatt Place, Hyatt House, Hyatt Ziva, Hyatt Zilara, Hyatt Residence Club and Exhale brand names. For more information, please visit www.hyatt.com About Hyatt Unbound Collection The Unbound Collection by Hyatt brand is a portfolio of new and existing upper-upscale hotel properties, ranging from historic urban gems to contemporary trend-setters, boutique properties to resorts and private home accommodations. Whether it is a fascinating past, an exclusive location, famous architecture and design, or an award-winning dining experience, the properties in the collection provide guests with "social currency" and allow them the freedom to be extraordinary. Current hotel properties include Royal Palms Resort and Spa in Phoenix; The Confidante in Miami Beach, Fla.; Ocean Resort Casino in Atlantic City, N.J., The Eliza Jane in New Orleans; The Bellevue Hotel in Philadelphia; Holston House in Nashville, Tenn.; The Driskill in Austin, Texas; Spirit Ridge in Osoyoos, British Columbia; Hotel Martinez in Cannes, France; Hotel du Louvre in Paris (under renovation); Jinmao Hotel Lijiang in Lijiang, China; Nish Palas in Istanbul, and Carmelo Resort Spa in Uruguay. For more information, please visit unboundcollection.hyatt.com. Follow @UnboundxHyatt on Facebook and Instagram FORWARD-LOOKING STATEMENTS Forward-Looking Statements in this press release, which are not historical facts, are forward-looking statements within the meaning of the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. Our actual results, performance or achievements may differ materially from those expressed or implied by these forward-looking statements. In some cases, you can identify forward-looking statements by the use of words such as "may," "could," "expect," "intend," "plan," "seek," "anticipate," "believe," "estimate," "predict," "potential," "continue," "likely," "will," "would" and variations of these terms and similar expressions, or the negative of these terms or similar expressions. Such forward-looking statements are necessarily based upon estimates and assumptions that, while considered reasonable by us and our management, are inherently uncertain. Factors that may cause our actual results, performance or achievements to differ materially from current expectations include, among others, the rate and pace of economic recovery following economic downturns; levels of spending in business and leisure segments as well as consumer confidence; declines in occupancy and average daily rate; the financial condition of, and our relationships with, third-party property owners, franchisees and hospitality venture partners; the possible inability of third-party owners, franchisees or development partners to access the capital necessary to fund current operations or implement our plans for growth; risks associated with potential acquisitions and dispositions and the introduction of new brand concepts; failure to successfully complete proposed transactions (including the failure to satisfy closing conditions or obtain required approvals); changes in the competitive environment in our industry, including as a result of industry consolidation, and the markets where we operate; general volatility of the capital markets and our ability to access such markets; and other risks discussed in the Company's filings with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission, including our Annual Report on Form 10-K, which filings are available from the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission. These factors are not necessarily all of the important factors that could cause our actual results, performance or achievements to differ materially from those expressed in or implied by any of our forward-looking statements. We caution you not to place undue reliance on any forward-looking statements, which are made only as of the date of this press release. We undertake no obligation to update publicly any of these forward-looking statements to reflect actual results, new information or future events, changes in assumptions or changes in other factors affecting forward-looking statements, except to the extent required by applicable law. If we update one or more forward-looking statements, no inference should be drawn that we will make additional updates with respect to those or other forward-looking statements. View source version on businesswire.com: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20181026005329/en/ Contacts: MEDIA CONTACT: Simone Loretan Hyatt Europe, Africa and the Middle East +41 44-279-1226 simone.loretan@hyatt.com or Gloria Kennett Hyatt 312-780-5506 gloria.kennett@hyatt.com During 3Q 2018 Revenue was S/ 653 million (+1.4% YoY). EBITDA was S/ 76 million with a margin of 11.6%, while in 9M 2018 reached S/ 254 million (+56.1% YoY). Additionally, Net Profit reached S/ 33 million and Net Margin was 5.0%, and Net Debt / EBITDA ratio reached 1.7x as of Sep, 2018 LIMA, PERU / ACCESSWIRE / October 26, 2018 / Corporacion Aceros Arequipa S.A. ("The Company" or "Aceros Arequipa") (BVL: CORAREC1; BVL: CORAREI1) announced today its unaudited financial results corresponding to the Third Quarter ("3Q 2018") and first nine-months ("9M 2018") periods ended September 30, 2018. Financial figures are reported on a consolidated and individual basis in nominal Peruvian Soles (S/) and are in accordance with International Financial Reporting Standards ("IFRS"). The following individual statements should be read in conjunction with the Financial Statements and Notes published at the Peruvian Securities and Exchange Commission (Superintendencia del Mercado de Valores - SMV). Revenue reached S/ 1,965.9 million (+13.9% YoY) as of 9M 2018 and S/ 653.2 million (+1.4% YoY) for 3Q 2018. Both results were driven by price recovery. reached S/ 1,965.9 million (+13.9% YoY) as of 9M 2018 and S/ 653.2 million (+1.4% YoY) for 3Q 2018. Both results were driven by price recovery. Gross Profit registered S/ 311.6 million (+41.0% YoY) as of 9M 2018. During 3Q 2018 the result was S/ 97.2 (-9.2% YoY). Gross Margin reached 15.9% (+ 3.0 p.p. YoY) as of 9M 2018. During 3Q 2018 the result was 14.9% (- 1.7 p.p. YoY). registered S/ 311.6 million (+41.0% YoY) as of 9M 2018. During 3Q 2018 the result was S/ 97.2 (-9.2% YoY). reached 15.9% (+ 3.0 p.p. YoY) as of 9M 2018. During 3Q 2018 the result was 14.9% (- 1.7 p.p. YoY). As of 9M 2018, EBITDA reached S/ 253.7 million (+56.1% YoY). For 3Q 2018 the result was S/ 75.9 million (-11.3% YoY). As of 9M 2018, EBITDA Margin was 12.9% (+ 3.5 p.p. YoY). For 3Q 18 the result was 11.6% (- 1.7 p.p. YoY). reached S/ 253.7 million (+56.1% YoY). For 3Q 2018 the result was S/ 75.9 million (-11.3% YoY). As of 9M 2018, EBITDA Margin was 12.9% (+ 3.5 p.p. YoY). For 3Q 18 the result was 11.6% (- 1.7 p.p. YoY). As of September 2018, Gross Financial Debt amounted S/ 817.7 million which culminated in a Net Debt / EBITDA ratio of 1.68x. amounted S/ 817.7 million which culminated in a Net Debt / EBITDA ratio of 1.68x. On September Aceros Arequipa successfully acquired an additional 66.4% stake in Comercial del Acero S.A. 1 and reached 100% of ownership. and reached 100% of ownership. On October 25 of 2018, the Board of Directors approved a dividend of S/ 22.6 million (+41.5% YoY). For a full version of Aceros Arequipa's Third Quarter 2018 Earnings Release, please visit: http://www.acerosarequipa.com/third-quarter-2018-earnings-conference-call.html Conference Call Information Corporacion Aceros Arequipa S.A. cordially invites you to participate in its Third Quarter 2018 Earnings Conference Call Date: Monday, October 29, 2018 Time: 12:30 pm ET / 11:30 am Lima Time 1 For further information about Comercial del Acero S.A. please take a look at section V. Dial in numbers: From the U.S.: 1-877-830-2576 International: 1-785-424-1726 Passcode: AASA To access the live webcast presentation, visit: https://webcasts.eqs.com/aceros20181029 About CORPORACION ACEROS AREQUIPA S.A. CORPORACION ACEROS AREQUIPA S.A., founded in 1964, is the leading Peruvian Company in production and commercialization of steel products, with exports to Bolivia and other countries in the region. Its core products are rebars and wire rod and other products for the construction industry as well as merchant bars & profiles and flat steel products. The Company has an industrial facility located in Pisco, Peru with an average per-year capacity of 850 thousand tons for its melt shop and 1,250 thousand tons in steel rolling mill. Aceros Arequipa employs over 1,100 people across its operations in Peru and subsidiaries. The Company's common and investment (non-voting) shares are listed on the Lima Stock Exchange under the ticker symbols CORAREC1 and CORAREI1, respectively. For more information, please contact: Ricardo Guzman, CFO & IRO Email: accionistas@aasa.com.pe Tel: (511) 517-1800 Ext: 3202 In New York Rafael Borja i-advize Corporate Communications, Inc. Email: rborja@i-advize.com Tel: 212-406-3693 SOURCE: Corporacion Aceros Arequipa S.A. View source version on accesswire.com:https://www.accesswire.com/526426/Corporacin-Aceros-Arequipa-SA-Announces-Results-for-the-Third-Quarter-2018 Attendance up 14.5% and Exhibit Space up 15% ROSEMONT, IL / ACCESSWIRE / October 26, 2018 / The 6th Annual ASSEMBLY Show closed its annual Conference and Expo at the Donald E. Stephens Convention Center in Rosemont, IL with over 9,000 registered attendees. BNP Media, publishers of ASSEMBLY Magazine and producers of the event announced growth in all areas at the recent trade show and conference. The three-day event offered a dynamic educational program, the largest exhibit hall in the history of the event offering hundreds of new products and several exciting networking events all with the focus on the future of manufacturing. "We thank our exhibitors, sponsors, speakers, attendees, advisory board, media partners, and supporting organizations who helped to make the 6th Annual ASSEMBLY Show a huge success. We received such positive feedback on the quality of the audience, the content in the education sessions, and the top-level thought leaders from across the industry who all shared important insight and ideas on continuing to move the industry forward," said Tom Esposito, Publisher, ASSEMBLY Magazine. Highlights of the event, included: The ASSEMBLY Show experienced an 14.5% increase in total registrations with over 9,000 industry professionals from all 50 states and 42 countries registered to attend. Attendees represented companies including 3M, The Boeing Company, Caterpillar, Danfoss, Ford Motor Company, GE Appliances, John Deere, Kohler, Whirlpool, and hundreds of others. The exhibit hall floor had 318 exhibitors occupying 88,000 net square feet, a 15% increase over the 2017 event. Exhibitors responded enthusiastically with over 75% of the 2018 show exhibitors renewing booth space on-site for the 2019 Show. Over 400 people attended the two pre-show workshops on "Automated Assembly Systems," and "Robotic Assembly." Learning Theater Presentations offered a unique opportunity for exhibitors to demonstrate their company's expertise in areas related to the latest technological advances in assembly. Eric Pope , Vice President of Operations , US Synthetic Corp . talked about Culture by Design during The ASSEMBLY Show keynote address. Pope talked to the executives in the audience about how the "shop floor is a reflection of leadership and how great people are out performing poor processes." Vice President of Operations talked about Culture by Design during The ASSEMBLY Show keynote address. Pope talked to the executives in the audience about how the "shop floor is a reflection of leadership and how great people are out performing poor processes." Preceding the keynote was the Presentation of the Plant of the Year Award to Ford Motor Co.'s Van Dyke facility in Sterling Heights, MI. Attendees gathered for the Taste of Rosemont sponsored by SCHUNK and Pub Night sponsored by Festo networking events to share ideas. Congratulations to Cincinnati Test Systems for winning 1 st Place in the New Product Awards for their QualityWorX CTS DataHub a system that collects leak testing data. 2 nd place was presented to DEPRAG for their Adaptive DFS, an automated system which installs flow-drill screws; and 3 rd place to Nordson EFD for their Film-Pak, a collapsible adhesive cartridge which reduces waste. The 12 products were chosen by the editors of ASSEMBLY magazine and voted on by the attendees at the Show. for winning 1 Place in the New Product Awards for their QualityWorX CTS DataHub a system that collects leak testing data. 2 place was presented to for their Adaptive DFS, an automated system which installs flow-drill screws; and 3 place to for their Film-Pak, a collapsible adhesive cartridge which reduces waste. The 12 products were chosen by the editors of ASSEMBLY magazine and voted on by the attendees at the Show. High school students from FIRST (For Inspiration and Recognition of Science and Technology) Illinois Robotics programs demonstrated the robots they have built which use technology that is applicable for assembly manufacturing. Editors from ASSEMBLY Magazine led four guided tours for dozens of attendees. The tours were focused on Adhesives, Conveyors, Robotics and Fastening Tools. Watch video segments about sessions, exclusive interviews, workshops, daily highlights and so much more on TAS TV. Sponsors of the event included Gold Sponsor PROMESS; Silver Sponsors FESTO and SCHUNK; and Bronze Sponsors, Kistler, Orbitform, Schmidt Technology, as well as dozens of charter exhibitors who have been part of the show since its inception in 2013. The 2019 ASSEMBLY Show will be held October 22-24, 2019 at the Donald E. Stephens Convention Center in Rosemont, IL. The ASSEMBLY Show is sponsored by ASSEMBLY ( www.assemblymag.com ), a monthly trade magazine read by 56,000 engineers and managers responsible for manufacturing and designing cars, computers, catheters, coffee makers, etc. ASSEMBLY covers the processes, technologies and strategies for joining discrete parts into finished products. The event is produced by BNP Media ( www.bnpmedia.com ), one of the country's leading business-to-business media companies serving professionals across 50+ industries. For more information, visit www.theassemblyshow.com. CONTACT: For further information, contact: Amy Riemer, Media Relations 978-475-4441(office) or 978-502-4895 (cell) amy@riemercommunications.com SOURCE: The ASSEMBLY Show View source version on accesswire.com:https://www.accesswire.com/526425/The-6th-Annual-ASSEMBLY-Show-Concludes-in-Rosemont-IL-with-Over-9000-Registered-Industry-Leading-Manufacturing-Professionals past daily news Sep 13 (1) Sep 09 (15) Sep 06 (12) Sep 04 (10) Sep 03 (10) Aug 31 (17) Aug 29 (14) Aug 26 (13) Aug 22 (11) Aug 21 (12) Aug 19 (21) Aug 14 (6) Aug 13 (10) Aug 10 (10) Aug 08 (9) Aug 07 (10) Aug 06 (10) Aug 05 (8) Aug 03 (8) Aug 02 (7) Aug 01 (7) Jul 31 (14) Jul 29 (1) Jul 27 (7) Jul 25 (5) Jul 24 (10) Jul 22 (11) Jul 19 (16) Jul 17 (6) Jul 16 (10) Jul 15 (13) Jul 12 (7) Jul 11 (5) Jul 10 (8) Jul 08 (8) Jul 07 (3) Jul 06 (5) Jul 05 (8) Jul 04 (11) Jul 03 (8) Jul 02 (7) Jul 01 (5) Jun 30 (8) Jun 28 (7) Jun 27 (8) Jun 26 (7) Jun 25 (8) Jun 24 (6) Jun 23 (6) Jun 22 (9) Jun 20 (5) Jun 19 (9) Jun 18 (8) Jun 15 (9) 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23 (21) Nov 22 (21) Nov 21 (24) Nov 20 (20) Nov 19 (23) Nov 18 (17) Nov 17 (17) Nov 16 (34) Nov 15 (25) Nov 14 (17) Nov 13 (21) Nov 12 (18) Nov 11 (9) Nov 10 (15) Nov 09 (9) Nov 08 (9) Nov 07 (12) Nov 06 (8) Nov 05 (4) Oct 29 (1) Oct 01 (1) Jul 29 (1) May 11 (1) Jul 11 (1) Vancouver, British Columbia--(Newsfile Corp. - October 26, 2018) - Cardero Resource Corp. (TSXV: CDU) (FSE: CR51) ("Cardero" or the "Company") reports that, pursuant to amending agreements dated September 14, 2017, January 8, 2018 and July 31, 2018 (the "Amending Agreements"), in relation to the option agreement dated August 27, 2015 (the "Option Agreement"), as amended between the Company and Redstone Resources Corporation ("Redstone"), they have further amended the agreement dated October 3, 2018, which allows Redstone to convert $500,000USD of the final payment into shares at a price equal to the 15 day volume weight average price of the shares at the time of the issuance a notice to convert. Redstone has sent notice as required to convert the $500,000USD into 6,179,099 shares and the Company will proceed with that conversion subject to receipt of TSXV approval. Pursuant to the Option Agreement, the Company was granted the right to acquire up to a 100% interest in the Zonia Copper-Oxide deposit in consideration of, among other things, the aggregate cash payment of US$2,225,000 in cash and issuance of an aggregate of 16,500,000 common shares over a three-year period. The total of 16,500,000 shares will be issued by October 31, 2018 as required by the option agreement and the Company will seek TSX Venture Exchange approval for the additional issuance of 6,179,099 shares under the conversion. With this conversion of $500,000USD by Redstone the final payment due on the option agreement is $573,000USD and with that being made on October 31, 2018 the obligations of the Company under the option agreement will be complete and the Company will own a 100% interest in the Zonia project The Company has an 18 hole drill program planned and has permits from BLM to proceed with that drill program, it will test an anomaly north east of the existing ore body. That anomaly is described in a press release dated April 12, 2018. ABOUT CARDERO RESOURCE CORP. Cardero Resource Corp., headquartered in Vancouver, is a resource company focussed on building a minerals exploration and development company. Cardero has the exclusive option to acquire up to a 100% interest in the Zonia Copper Oxide Project, located in Arizona. Zonia is a near-surface copper-oxide resource and a brownfields site having already been mined in the late 1960s and '70s. The entire resource (NI 43-101 as amended and dated October, 2017), as currently defined, is located on private land and Cardero has now completed a Preliminary Economic Assessment which has been announced in a news release NR 18-04 dated March 6, 2018. The Company also has two option agreements covering five nickel-cobalt properties in south eastern British Columbia the, Kootenay Project totalling approximately 8,000 hectares. The Project is within the prospective Lardeau Group, which hosts numerous volcanogenic massive sulphide deposits, including the past-producing Goldstream mine located north of Revelstoke. Detailed information is available at the Company's web site at www.cardero.com. The common shares of the Company are currently listed on the TSX Venture Exchange (symbol CDU), the Frankfurt Stock Exchange (symbol CR5) and OTCBB (symbol CDYCF). For further details on the Company readers are referred to the Company's web site (www.cardero.com), Canadian regulatory filings on SEDAR at www.sedar.com. On Behalf of the Board of Directors of CARDERO RESOURCE CORP. "Stuart R. Ross" (signed) Stuart R. Ross, CEO and President Contact Information: Stuart Ross or Marla Ritchie 604 408 7488 General Contact: Email: info@cardero.com Toll Free: 1-888-770-7488 Tel: 604 408-7488 Fax: 604 408-7499 Cautionary Note Regarding Forward-Looking Statements Forward Looking Information: This news release includes certain information that may be deemed "forward looking information". Forward-looking information can generally be identified by the use of forward-looking terminology such as "may", "will", "expect", "intend", "estimate", "anticipate", "believe", "continue", "plans" or similar terminology. All information in this release, other than information of historical facts, including, without limitation, the potential of Zonia general future plans and objectives for the Zonia project, the completion of the Plan and receipt of shareholder and regulatory approval therefore, the likelihood of receipt of value from the Retained Right, the availability of financing to the Company and the Company's plan in relation to its listing review are forward-looking information that involve various risks and uncertainties. Although the Company believes that the expectations expressed in such forward-looking information are based on reasonable assumptions, such expectations are not guarantees of future performance and actual results or developments may differ materially from those in the forward-looking information. Forward-looking information is based on a number of material factors and assumptions. Factors that could cause actual results to differ materially from the forward-looking information include changes in project parameters as plans continue to be refined, future metal prices, availability of capital and financing on acceptable terms, general economic, market or business conditions, regulatory changes, delays in receiving approvals, and other risks detailed herein and from time to time in the filings made by the Company with securities regulatory authorities in Canada. Mineral exploration and development of mines is an inherently risky business. Accordingly, actual events may differ materially from those projected in the forward-looking information. For more information on the Company and the risks and challenges of our business, investors should review our continuous disclosure filings which are available at www.sedar.com. Readers are cautioned not to place undue reliance on forward-looking information. The Company does not undertake to update any forward looking information, except in accordance with applicable securities laws. 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. Cautionary Note to US Investors Regarding References to Resources and Reserves National Instrument 43 101 - Standards of Disclosure for Mineral Projects ("NI 43-101") is a rule developed by the Canadian Securities Administrators which establishes standards for all public disclosure an issuer makes of scientific and technical information concerning mineral projects. Unless otherwise indicated, all resource estimates contained in or incorporated by reference in this press release have been prepared in accordance with NI 43-101 and the guidelines set out in the Canadian Institute of Mining, Metallurgy and Petroleum (the "CIM") Standards on Mineral Resource and Mineral Reserves, adopted by the CIM Council on November 14, 2004 (the "CIM Standards") as they may be amended from time to time by the CIM. United States shareholders are cautioned that the requirements and terminology of NI 43-101 and the CIM Standards differ significantly from the requirements and terminology of the SEC set forth in the SEC's Industry Guide 7 ("SEC Industry Guide 7"). Accordingly, the Company's disclosures regarding mineralization may not be comparable to similar information disclosed by companies subject to SEC Industry Guide 7. Without limiting the foregoing, while the terms "mineral resources", "inferred mineral resources", "indicated mineral resources" and "measured mineral resources" are recognized and required by NI 43-101 and the CIM Standards, they are not recognized by the SEC and are not permitted to be used in documents filed with the SEC by companies subject to SEC Industry Guide 7. Mineral resources which are not mineral reserves do not have demonstrated economic viability, and US investors are cautioned not to assume that all or any part of a mineral resource will ever be converted into reserves. Further, inferred resources have a great amount of uncertainty as to their existence and as to whether they can be mined legally or economically. It cannot be assumed that all or any part of the inferred resources will ever be upgraded to a higher resource category. Under Canadian rules, estimates of inferred mineral resources may not form the basis of a feasibility study or prefeasibility study, except in rare cases. The SEC normally only permits issuers to report mineralization that does not constitute SEC Industry Guide 7 compliant "reserves" as in-place tonnage and grade without reference to unit amounts. The term "contained ounces" is not permitted under the rules of SEC Industry Guide 7. In addition, the NI 43-101 and CIM Standards definition of a "reserve" differs from the definition in SEC Industry Guide 7. In SEC Industry Guide 7, a mineral reserve is defined as a part of a mineral deposit which could be economically and legally extracted or produced at the time the mineral reserve determination is made, and a "final" or "bankable" feasibility study is required to report reserves, the three-year historical price is used in any reserve or cash flow analysis of designated reserves and the primary environmental analysis or report must be filed with the appropriate governmental authority. VANCOUVER, BC / ACCESSWIRE / October 26, 2018 / Primary Energy Metals Inc. (CSE - Prim FSE - 1WZ:GR) ("Primary" or the "Company") is pleased to announce it has signed an arm's length acquisition agreement (the "Purchase Agreement") with the shareholders of 1177527 B.C. Ltd. ("1177527"). Pursuant to the terms of the Purchase Agreement, the Company will acquire all of the outstanding share capital of 1177527. In consideration for the acquisition, the Company will make a series of cash payments totaling $250,000 and will issue 20,000,000 common shares to the existing shareholders of 1177527. The Company will also assume a 2.0% net smelter returns ("NSR") royalty on commercial production from the properties held by 1177527. The NSR is owing to Contigo Resources Ltd., and one-half of it may be purchased at any given time in consideration for a cash payment of $1,000,000. 1177527 holds the rights to 39 mineral claims in various locations in the Province of Quebec totalling approximately 985.41 hectares (the "Hardy Project"). The claims comprise a number of independent projects, as follows: The Hardy and Nico Cobalt project claims are located approximately 250 km northwest of Baie Comeau, Quebec. Cobalt grades of 0.41%, 0.40%, 0.34%, 0.33%. The Kwai, Coudon, and Boudrias Cobalt project claims are located in the Godbout, Quebec. Cobalt grades up to 0.084%. The Muskrat and Perobonca - Begin Cobalt project claim are in the Lac Saint Jean area. Cobalt grades of 0.1022%, 0.1739%, 0.1408% Champ Cobalt project is located Sherbrooke, Quebec. Several showings were identified with up to 10% sulphides and coincident magnetic anomalies. These provided results of up to 2.5% combined Cu + Ni, with showing #5 grading 1.93% Cu and 0.60% Ni. These grades are from selected samples and may not be representative of the mineralization hosted on the properties. Patrick Morris, CEO and President stated, "we consider the Hardy Project in Quebec as a strategic investment that is the focus of management to enhance the value of the company for our shareholders. Primary will use its geotechnical team to assess historic data in developing an exploration plan that can effectively and efficiently define a potential resource. There is a massive demand for cobalt and the dynamics of sourcing an ethical supply is growing rapidly driven by the surge in the production of EV's." THE GREEN ECONOMY RUNS ON COBALT There are many types of lithium-ion batteries, but the vast majority of li-ions sold today use cobalt in some capacity. In fact, by 2020 it is expected that 75% of lithium-ion batteries will contain cobalt. Why? It's because cobalt is the most important metal for increasing the energy density of lithium-ion cathodes. Green uses such as EVs are driving the upwards trajectory of cobalt demand. By 2020, almost 1/5 of cobalt demand will stem from electric vehicles. Total refined cobalt demand: Year 2010 2015 2020e Demand 64,000 95,000 124,000 % xEV batteries <1% 6% 17% % Electronics batteries 30% 36% 31% Source: CRU "Cobalt's demand growth profile remains one of the best among industrial metals peers. Its exposure to rechargeable batteries continues to play a crucial role." - Macquarie Supply can tighten Chemical cobalt - the kind used in batteries, is expected to fall into a growing deficit over the next few years. By 2020, CRU expects that deficit to be at least 12,000 tonnes. Cobalt prices have been rising, but they are nowhere near all-time highs yet. All-time highs for cobalt prices happened in 2008, after the DRC government placed restrictions on export of ores and concentrates. For a brief stint, cobalt prices even exceeded $50/lb. The current price? Roughly $26.06/lb. "With this growth will come further disruption to the traditional market structures that have developed in cobalt over the last 30 years. In short, a new, more secure supply chain for the modern era will need to be created, a task that includes new mines, new refineries, and a more transparent supply chain." - Andrew Miller, Benchmark Minerals Completion of the transaction with 1177527 is subject to completion of filings with the Canadian Securities Exchange, and confirmation as to title to the Hardy Project. The technical information contained in this news release has been reviewed and approved by Thomas Clarke P.Geo., Pr.Sci.Nat. who is a Qualified Person with respect to Primary's "The Hardy Project" as defined under National Instrument 43-101. About Primary PRIMARY ENERGY METALS INC. (CSE: PRIM FSE: 1WZ:GR) is a listed junior exploration and development company and is engaged in the business of acquiring, exploring and developing ethically sourced Vanadium, Cobalt, Copper, Nickel, and Uranium focussed mineral resource properties to create value for its shareholders. ACQUISITION FOCUS - Other projects Primary is investigating are in the clean energy sector. In this sector, the Company is focused specifically upon exploration opportunities to source green energy power minerals for use in battery production. Primary's interests in this sector are guided by the following: Identifying opportunities in regions that are conducive to mining due to the regulatory nature of the government with existing infrastructure. Identifying opportunities in geographical locations that provide easy access large markets for these metals. Identifying opportunities with locations with existing mine shafts. ON BEHALF OF THE BOARD OF DIRECTORS Patrick Morris CEO and President Telephone: +1 778-735-1000 E-mail: info@primaryenergymetals.com Neither the Canadian Securities Exchange nor its Regulation Services Provider (as that term is defined in the policies of the Canadian Securities Exchange) accepts responsibility for the adequacy or accuracy of this release. Forward Looking Statements Certain information set forth in this news release may contain forward-looking statements that involve substantial known and unknown risks and uncertainties. All statements other than statements of historical fact are forward- looking statements, including, without limitation, statements regarding future financial position, business strategy, use of proceeds, corporate vision, proposed acquisitions, partnerships, joint-ventures and strategic alliances and co- operations, budgets, cost and plans and objectives of or involving the Company. Such forward-looking information reflects management's current beliefs and is based on information currently available to management. Often, but not always, forward-looking statements can be identified by the use of words such as "plans", "expects", "is expected", "budget", "scheduled", "estimates", "forecasts", "predicts", "intends", "targets", "aims", "anticipates" or "believes" or variations (including negative variations) of such words and phrases or may be identified by statements to the effect that certain actions "may", "could", "should", "would", "might" or "will" be taken, occur or be achieved. A number of known and unknown risks, uncertainties and other factors may cause the actual results or performance to materially differ from any future results or performance expressed or implied by the forward-looking information. These forward-looking statements are 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 statements. The Company does not assume any obligation to update or revise its forward-looking statements, whether as a result of new information, future events, or otherwise, except as required by securities laws. SOURCE: Primary Energy Metals Inc. View source version on accesswire.com:https://www.accesswire.com/526435/Primary-Energy-Metals-Announces-Acquisition-of-100-Interest-in-39-Cobalt-Nickel-Copper-Claims-in-Quebec Air India earlier used to fly to JFK through New Delhi, which was discontinued later. Mumbai: National carrier Air India will connect the city with a direct daily flight to JFK airport in New York, starting December, an airline official said Thursday. The airline currently flies a daily service to Newark's Liberty Airport from the city. "We will launch our air services to JFK airport from Mumbai from 7 December, where we already operate from New Delhi. The flight will be operated three times per week to begin," the official told PTI. The airline earlier used to fly to JFK through New Delhi, which was discontinued later. "Now we will be for the first time providing direct connectivity to New York from Mumbai with this new flight," the official said.' This is the second international flight that Air India will be launching from Mumbai this year. It resumed services to Frankfurt from the city on 16 October. The Mumbai-New York route will be catered by a Boeing B777-300 ER plane, the official said. At present, the government-run airline flies to New York, Washington, San Francisco from New Delhi; Chicago from Hyderabad through New Delhi, besides to Newark from Mumbai. Currently, it flies nine times per week to San Francisco, seven times a week to Chicago, Newark and JFK and three weekly services to Washington. Following the launch of the new flights, Air India will be offering a total of 36 weekly flights to the US cities from New Delhi, Mumbai and Hyderabad, as per the official. The world's largest steelmaker ArcelorMittal on Friday said it has been chosen by the lenders to takeover debt-laden Essar Steel India Ltd for about Rs 42,000 crore. New Delhi: The world's largest steelmaker ArcelorMittal on Friday said it has been chosen by the lenders to takeover debt-laden Essar Steel India Ltd for about Rs 42,000 crore. In a statement, ArcelorMittal said its resolution plan for Essar Steel, which the lenders auctioned to recover over Rs 49,000 crore of unpaid loans, includes "an upfront payment of Rs 42,000 crore" to settle debt and "a further Rs 8,000 crore of capital injection into the company to support operational improvement, increase production levels and deliver enhanced levels of profitability". The Committee of Creditors have issued ArcelorMittal and its partner Japan's Nippon Steel & Sumitomo Metal Corp a Letter of Intent (LoI) declaring them as the "successful applicant". The development comes a day after the promoters of Essar Steel offered to pay lenders Rs 54,389 crore, including Rs 47,507 crore upfront cash payment to clear all dues and pull out the firm from insolvency proceedings. Ruias offer to pay Rs 54,389-cr dues Essar Steel promoters, the Ruias , on Thursday offered to pay lenders of Essar Steel Rs 54,389 crore including Rs 47,507 crore upfront cash payment to clear all dues and pull out the firm from insolvency proceedings. The offer was better than Rs 42,202 crore offered by the world's largest steel producer ArcelorMittal to take over Essar Steel, which lenders are auctioning to recover their unpaid dues of over Rs 49,000 crore. "The shareholders of Essar Steel have today (Thursday) submitted a proposal to the Committee of Creditors (CoC) for full settlement of the entire admitted claims of the financial creditors, operational creditors, and workmen and employees of Essar Steel India Ltd (ESIL), aggregating Rs 54,389 crore, under Section 12A of the Insolvency and Bankruptcy Code," the company said in a statement. ArcelorMittal's proposal Following the 4 October Supreme Court order linking its eligibility to bid for Essar Steel through bankruptcy courts, ArcelorMittal has said it would pay Rs 7,469 crore to the financial creditors Uttam Galva and KSS Petron, the two domestic subsidiaries from which it had claimed to have exited. The NRI Laxmi Mittal-owned company, which is the world's largest steelmaker, has been on a murky legal battle with other bidders, especially the Russian VTB Bank-promoted NuMetal and had on 2 April submitted a proposal to take over Essar Steel. Of the Rs 7,469 crore payment, around 80 percent will be used to settle the dues of Uttam Galva and the rest 20 percent for KSS Petron, the company said. ArcelorMittal has reportedly submitted Rs 42,000 crore to the 10-million-tonne alloy mill in Gujarat, which is one of the newest steel mills set up by Essar Steel, which owes over Rs 45,000 crore to a clutch of lenders. "Our board believes that Essar Steel represents a unique and compelling opportunity for us to establish a significant footprint, with substantial expansion potential, in the high-growth Indian steel market. Given the significant benefits that Essar Steel would bring to ArcelorMittal, making this payment is an appropriate course of action under the circumstances," ArcelorMittal said in a statement. As per the Supreme Court ruling, Essar Steel creditors now have an eight-week period to accept what it considers to be the best resolution plan from eligible applicants. ArcelorMittal had said Numetal, which was initially promoted by Revant Ruia's shell company and subsequently exited and taken over by the Russian lender VTB Bank and some others, have been in a bitter court battle to establish their eligibility to bid for the steel plant. After losing their case in NCLT and NCLAT, they had moved the Supreme Court, which on 4 October had allowed them to bid provided they cleared their dues to their lenders. ArcelorMittal is the world's leading steel and mining company, with a presence in 60 countries and an industrial footprint in 18 countries. When it comes to coal mining, it is the fifth largest globally. In 2017, ArcelorMittal had revenue of $68.7 billion and crude steel production of 93.1 million tonnes, while own iron ore production stood at 57.4 million tonnes. ArcelorMittal is listed on the stock exchanges of New York, Amsterdam, Paris, Luxembourg apart from the Spanish stock exchanges of Barcelona, Bilbao, Madrid and Valencia. --With PTI inputs Jet Airways has been reducing staff since it announced the second consecutive quarterly loss in August. Job cuts stopped in September for a while, but have come back again this month Mumbai: Naresh Goyal-promoted Jet Airways has given pink slips to 20 employees, including some senior-level executives, who were working in the airline's crucial in-flight services department, to curtail costs amid the severe cash crunch, an airline source said on Friday. The employees received their job termination notices this month, the source said. It can be noted that the airline reportedly had recently asked 15 managerial level employees from various departments including engineering, security and sales, to leave the company. The full-service carrier, which is partially-owned by Abu Dhabi-based Etihad Airways, has delayed payment of salaries to its senior management, pilots and engineers due to its deteriorating financial health. Jet Airways has been reducing staff since it announced the second consecutive quarterly loss in August. Job cuts stopped in September for a while, but have come back again this month. The source alleged that the airline is asking people to leave but in small batches to escape attention. "Around 20 employees from the in-flight services department including assistant managers, managers, senior manager, among others, have been sacked this month alone. And most of these people are from Mumbai," the source said. Significantly, a decade back, Jet Airways had announced sacking of 1,900 employees, including 800 unconfirmed and under-probation employees, across all operations. This led to an uproar and chairman Goyal was not only forced to take back all the sacked employees overnight, but also had to apologise. When contacted, a Jet Airways spokesperson evaded a direct response to the queries on the issue but said, "Given the challenging macroeconomic conditions, Jet Airways continues to evaluate all initiatives including payroll optimisation, to achieve greater business efficiencies." "At the same time, the organisation respects the personal decisions of a few of its executives to pursue opportunities outside the organisation," the spokesperson added. The airline also said that as part of the routine course of business, it has a well-defined succession plan in place and is committed to create a competitive cost structure that ensures a sustainable future for itself and its stakeholders. Jet Airways group posted a net loss of Rs 1,326 crore in the three months ended June, compared with a net profit of Rs 58 crore in the year-ago period. Along with the June quarter results, the airline's board, during its meeting on 27 August, had also considered various cost-cutting measures, debt reduction and funding options. Dholakia is famous across India for giving lavish gifts to his employees at Diwali, including hundreds of apartments in 2016s ceremony. Prime Minister Narendra Modi helped a diamond merchant hand over hundreds of cars as gifts to his employees on Thursday. Six hundred employees of Hari Krishna Exporters, a diamond trading company run by Savji Dholakia, received cars made by Indian manufacturer Maruti Suzuki, while around a thousand more staff were offered gifts of cash deposits and apartments in a huge outdoor ceremony in Surat, Gujarat. Indians often give each other gifts in the run-up to Diwali, a major Hindu festival celebrating the triumph of good over evil that this year falls on 7 November. Modi addressed the prize-giving in his home state of Gujarat via video link, as well as presenting some of the employees with car keys in the capital New Delhi. Dholakia is famous across India for giving lavish gifts to his employees at Diwali, including hundreds of apartments in 2016s ceremony. The showroom value of the 600 cars would be more than $2 million. Gift-giving in the latter part of the year when several Hindu festivals are celebrated provides a major boost to Indias economy. The gifts were part of a program targeting staff who have given loyal service to the diamond trader. The aim of this program was to reward employees loyalty and dedication towards the company, Dholakia said in a Facebook post. The sharp fall in these stocks came amid the RBI reiterating that their small finance banks should be listed within three years from the date of commencement of operations. New Delhi: Shares of Equitas Holdings and Ujjivan Financial Services suffered massive selling pressure Friday, tumbling up to 23 percent. The sharp fall in these stocks came amid the RBI reiterating that their small finance banks should be listed within three years from the date of commencement of operations. Shares of Equitas Holdings cracked 23.34 percent to settle at Rs 99.05 on BSE. Intra-day, the stock slumped 39.62 percent to Rs 78 -- its 52-week low. The scrip of Ujjivan Financial Services also tanked 17.62 percent to end at Rs 181.15. During the day, it nosedived 24.14 percent to Rs 166.80 -- its one-year low level. As per a BSE filing by Equitas Holdings Thursday, the RBI while granting approval to the company to establish a small finance bank, vide its letter dated June 30, 2016, had stipulated that the bank should be listed within three years from the date of commencement of operations. "In our instance, the shares of company's wholly owned subsidiary company viz Equitas Small Finance Bank Limited (ESFBL) are required to be listed with stock exchanges by 4 September, 2019," it said. ESFBL has received a letter dated 24 October, 2018 from RBI wherein the central bank has advised it to comply with all the requirements of the guidelines for licensing of small finance banks. Also, it is required to maintain the promoter shareholding in the bank to at least 40 percent for a period of five years from the date of commencement of business, that is by 4 September, 2021. Boards of Equitas Holdings and Equitas Small Finance Bank (ESFBL) will meet next month to finalise steps for listing of the lender to meet the RBI regulations. They will also decide on approaching the RBI for an approval to merge Equitas Holdings with the bank at an appropriate time, post the lock-in period, it said. Meanwhile, Ujjivan Financial Services, in a regulatory filing, said it too would consider all appropriate measures to ensure the timely compliance of RBI directives regarding Ujjivan Small Finance Bank, which has to get listed by 31 January, 2020. In absolute terms, Indian Overseas Bank's gross NPAs rose to Rs 37,109.96 crore as on 30 September, 2018 from Rs 34,708.59 crore by September 2017 New Delhi: State-owned Indian Overseas Bank (IOB) on Friday reported narrowing of its net loss to Rs 487.26 crore in the second quarter ended September 2018 on lower provisioning. The bank had registered a net loss of Rs 1,222.50 crore in the year-ago period. Sequentially also, its net loss narrowed from Rs 919.44 crore in the first quarter ended June of the current fiscal. "Net loss is due to provisions on bad debts and investment and not due to operations," the bank said in a release. Total income fell to Rs 5,348.35 crore during July-September 2018-19 from Rs 5,610.35 crore in same period a year ago, IOB said in a regulatory filing. Bank's asset quality deteriorated with the gross non-performing assets (NPAs) rising to 24.73 percent of gross loans by the end of the second quarter as against 22.73 percent as on end-September 2017. Though it was down when compared sequentially from 25.64 percent at end-June. Net NPAs also rose year-on-year to 14.34 percent from 13.86 percent, sequentially down from 15.10 percent. In absolute terms, gross NPAs were Rs 37,109.96 crore as on 30 September, 2018 from Rs 34,708.59 crore by September 2017. Net NPAs or bad loans were Rs 18,876.05 crore as against Rs 18,949.55 crore. Provisions for bad loans and contingencies came down to Rs 2,016.60 crore for the reported quarter from Rs 2,238.09 crore. IOB said it received government capital infusion of Rs 2,157 crore on 23 July against preferential allotment of equity shares and has added the same as tier I equity capital. The provision coverage ratio of the bank as on 30 September stood at 61.97 percent. Deposits as on 30 September, 2018 stood at Rs 2.23 lakh crore and advances were Rs 1.50 lakh crore. Total business registered an increase of 3.12 percent and stood at Rs 3.73 lakh crore by the end of September 2018 against Rs 3.62 lakh crore as on June 30, 2018. IOB said its total recovery registered an increase of 12.53 percent to Rs 4,462 crore for quarter ended September as against the recovery of Rs 3,965 crore a year ago. The total fresh slippage for quarter ended stood at Rs 884 crore from slippage of Rs 2,693 crore a year ago. "Recovery achieved is substantially higher than slippages during the quarter mainly due to focused efforts towards recovery and containment of NPAs (fresh slippage and other debits in existing NPA accounts)," it said. Further, the bank has recovered Rs 247 crore in six NCLT accounts during the September quarter and expects further recovery aggregating Rs 802 crore in the third quarter in two NCLT accounts where resolution is at an advanced stage. Stock of IOB closed 6.95 percent up at Rs 14 apiece on the BSE. Maruti Suzuki retails models like Swift, Virata Brezza and Dzire from the Arena channel New Delhi: Maruti Suzuki India (MSI) on Friday said it has roped in Bollywood star Varun Dhawan as brand ambassador for its Arena sales channel. The company retails models like Swift, Virata Brezza and Dzire from the Arena channel while others like Baleno, Ciaz and S-Cross are sold from the Nexa dealerships. MSI is currently working on transformation of its retail network across the country under the Arena label. "Varun exemplifies the evolving Indian youth who is trendy, social and confident and like to be connected at all times," MSI Senior Director Marketing & Sales RS Kalsi said in a statement. Over 100 new Maruti Arena showrooms are already operational in just one year of launch of the initiative, MSI said. BigBasket is hoping that the segment will account for at least 10 percent of the companys total revenue Leading online grocer BigBasket which recently entered the morning milk-delivery segment is expecting the division to grow ten times by March, according to a media report. BigBasket is hoping that the segment will account for at least 10 percent of the companys total revenue, Hari Menon, the company's chief executive told The Economic Times. Menon told the newspaper that morning deliveries are currently available on a separate app and the company is planning to integrate this service into the main BigBasket app. Last week, BigBasket acquired subscription-based e-grocery startup RainCan in order to strengthen its micro-delivery operations, VCCircle reported. BigBasket rebranded the RainCan app as BBdaily. Apart from milk, the company will also launch a subscription-based service enabling early morning delivery bread, fruits and vegetables etc, the report said. In February this year, BigBasket raised $300 million from Chinese e-commerce giant Alibaba and other investors. "The funds will be directed towards improving our technological, analytical and infrastructural abilities, all of which enable the company to grow," the company's CEO and co-founder Hari Menon had said in a statement. Currently, BigBasket operates in 30 cities in the country, with its headquarters in Bengaluru. The online grocer claims to have over 8 million customers, registering a revenue of up to Rs 200 crore per month. BigBasket had a total revenue of Rs 1,410 crore for 2016-17. The retail market in India is estimated to be worth over $900 billion, out of which grocery shopping is said to account for an estimated $600 billion. --With inputs from IANS The key growth areas in the startup sector were enterprise software, fintech, healthtech marketplace and edutech. Bengaluru: Startups in India saw a 108 percent growth in total funding from $2 billion in 2017 to $4.2 billion this year, National Association of Software and Services Companies (NASSCOM) said Thursday. The worrying factor, however, was the decline in funding for companies at the seed stage, NASSCOM said. India is becoming a startup hub. Opportunity for growth is enormous, which we had never seen in our lifetime. Challenge is how fast a company wants to transform, NASSCOM president Debjani Ghosh said. She was speaking to reporters at the launch of NASSCOM report on the Indian Start-Up ecosystem Approaching Escape Velocity on the sidelines of the 15th-anniversary edition ofNASSCOMs Product Enclave-2018 in the city. More than 1,200 startups came up in 2018, including eight unicorns, taking the total number to 7,200 startups, NASSCOM reported. However, the seed stage funding of Indian startups has declined from $191 million in 2017 to $151 million in 2018. In terms of overall funding, it is a good story. However, we are seeing a continuous decline in seed stage funding of startup companies. If you fall at the seed stage, innovation is hit. It is the area, which needs protection, Ghosh said. The report said there was a 50 percent increase in a number of advanced tech startups since 2017. According to it, the startup ecosystem has regained momentum after the slowdown in 2016-17. These companies created 40,000 new direct jobs while there was three-fold increase in indirect jobs. Post 2017, investment in to startups has increased by over 100 percent, from $2.03 billion in 2017 to $4.2 billion in 2018. The total number of startup funding deals, especially in the late stages, witnessed a massive growth of around 250 percent from $847 million in 2017 to $3 billion in 2018, the report said. The key growth drivers were enterprise software, fintech, healthtech marketplace and edutech. Data analytics, Artificial Intelligence and IoT startups have been witnessing fastest adoption across industry verticals. There was 120 percent funding growth for AI startups with $150 million investments made in this field in 2018. The report said more than 400 plus startups expanded globally including travel and hospitality company Oyo, cab aggregator Ola, edutech Byjus, Zomato and Wittyfeed. Paytm, whose investors include Chinas Alibaba Group and Japans SoftBank Group Corp, has declined to say how the stolen material would have allowed the blackmail of its founder, but added that only his personal data was taken. Paytm founder Vijay Shekhar Sharma has said that his secretary Sonia Dhawan, arrested for blackmailing and making extortion bid on the e-wallet giant's CEO, might just be a conduit of someone elses bigger plan, a media report said. Dhawan, along with two others, was arrested and remanded to 14-days judicial custody on Tuesday by the magistrate court in Gautam Buddh Nagar, Uttar Pradesh officials said. Noida Police had Monday arrested Dhawan (32), her husband Roopak Jain (38) and another company employee Devendra Kumar (30) for allegedly stealing personal information and confidential data and threatening to leak it. I dont know how many more people were involved in this sad conspiracy. I am shocked and surprised at things that happened and some claims or theories being pitched. I am sure with support of police and everyone involved we will uncover the details soon, Sharma was quoted as saying by The Economic Times. Sharma told the newspaper that the revelation has 'shocked and surprised' him. Sharma told Business Standard that Dhawan should help the police and added that the company is on her side, "but we have to help the investigation. When I spoke to her last, I asked her to help me. The fourth accused in the case Rohit Chomal, who lives in Kolkata, is still absconding, according to the police. The police on Tuesday carried out searches at the residences of the three arrested and recovered a pen drive containing crucial information and call records along with a hard disk which has some personal and confidential data of the company, according to officials. During the probe, it came to light that being a long-time secretary of the CEO, Dhawan had access to all documents and data of the company, they said. "Since Dhawan's husband Jain was jobless at the time and had suffered major loss in real estate business, so a plan was hatched that she would steal data and give it to Kumar, who works in the administration department of the company, and he would further pass it on to his friend Rohit in Kolkata," the officials said. Senior Superintendent of Police (SSP) Ajay Pal Sharma said Dhawan had around 10 months ago conveyed to her boss that she wanted to buy a property for herself in the National Capital Region (NCR). "When she did not see her communication getting materialised she perhaps opted for this route to make quick money," the SSP told PTI. He said when the first extortion call was made to the Paytm founder's brother Ajay Shekhar Sharma in September, the amount was decided to be Rs 30 crore which came down to Rs 19 crore after multiple rounds of negotiations. "When they first made the call on September 20, they demanded Rs 30 crore but later came down to Rs 20 crore. It was much later with a couple of rounds of negotiations that the accused settled for Rs 10 crore," the SSP said. According to police officials, the accused had even got Rs 2.67 lakh as initial instalments by Sharma, who then approached police and got an FIR registered on 21 October. The incident threatens to embarrass the company, synonymous with taking digital payments mainstream in India after the governments controversial currency note ban of late 2016, as well as its billionaire founder. Paytm, whose investors include Chinas Alibaba Group and Japans SoftBank Group Corp, has declined to say how the stolen material would have allowed the blackmail of its founder, but added that only his personal data was taken. In August, Berkshire Hathaway Inc picked up a Rs 2500 crore ($356 million) stake in the parent of digital payments firm Paytm. Paytm would like to reiterate that all our consumer data is protected with the highest and most impenetrable levels of security, it told Reuters in a statement, declining further comment until the results of the police investigation are known. --With inputs from agencies State Bank of India chairman Rajnish Kumar said Indias newly minted Insolvency and Bankruptcy Code is the reform with maximum bite among many groundbreaking economic reforms that have unfolded under the Modi government. New York: State Bank of India chairman Rajnish Kumar said Indias newly minted Insolvency and Bankruptcy Code (IBC) is the reform with maximum bite among many groundbreaking economic shifts that have unfolded under the Narendra Modi government. Weve seen the best results in the steel sector, he said, speaking at an hour-long fireside with Columbia University professor Suresh Sundaresan as part of the New India lecture series at the Indian consulate in New York in uptown Manhattan. Kumar spoke about the effect of US Federal Reserve decisions and oil prices on India's capital flow, the weakening rupee, IL&FS, the risks of shadow banking and opportunities for collaboration with fintech companies "because they have the innovation and we have the scale". Kumar, who took over as SBI boss exactly a year ago, is currently traveling in the US East Coast. Below, we bring you excerpts from the Q and A: Suresh Sundaresan: The US Fed Reserve is on course to increasing the policy rate, there's been pressure on US treasury...10 year yield going above 3.2% which is an all time high. How does US Fed policy influence the Indian economy and SBIs outlook? Rajnish Kumar: Rise in US yield has created some reverse flow of capital and that has affected exchange rates in India and the yields there, automatically. Couple this with oil prices increases have been pretty sharp - these two major global factor are impacting the flow of capital into India. RBI has taken some measures to keep the market attractive for foreign , relaxation in FDI guidelines, investment in bonds and norms for external commercial borrowings too. This is a global pheomena, India is no exception, its also nothing new. Sundaresan: Now that the rupee is weakening, what is the extent of worry about how ECBs are hedged? IS there a worry that corporates who have borrowed in Euros and USD may struggle to repay? Kumar: As far as the hedging is concerned, almost 5 years ago, the onus was shifted on the banks. We became responsible for corporates hedging their currency and if they didn't, it fell on us to make additional provisions. Automatically, when the banks became exposed to a cost if corporates did not hedge, corporates were forced to hedge at least to the extent of 80% if not a full 100%. So, it's not a big concern right now. Even for ECBs, maturity has been 5 years and above - all with an eye to managing external debt. Pressure from corporates external debt can hurt any economy and weve all learnt from the past. So, were in a much better position to handle the risks of current movement in the exchange rate on account of movement in oil prices. Sundaresan: In the US, bank lending to corporate sector accounts for only 20% of corporate borrowing. IL &FS recently had serious problems and the government had to intervene. How could trouble in the the shadow banking sector in India potentially affect the economy? Kumar: This is the hottest topic right now in the Indian banking and financial system. IL&FS was a unique institution in that they were in infrastructure financing and construction. It is an EPC contractor, holds the assets and finances - a 3 in 1 combination business. Any bank or institution in infrastructure finance has trouble in India. Infrastructure, particularly the BOT model, has caused a lot of trouble even to us. Also because it is an NBFC, it has had a contagion effect. Because of the IL&FS default, theres pressure on mutual funds. The corporates who were providing liquid funds to mutual funds have taken a step back, the MFs have become cautious about their investments. Many companies where there is a lightest doubts about credit quality - they are having trouble. I believe it is a matter of time - a couple of weeks before things return to normal. Were not making any direct purchases from ILFS. We are mostly making purchases from NBFCs who are mostly into retail. Priority sector is preferred but we are open to buying even non-priority loan portfolio In terms of size, this is just 2% of SBI advances, its not a big number. Sundaresan: Reform of the insolvency code has given significant power to the creditor. In effect, it is empowering banks who are creditors to corporate borrowers. How has this evolved? Kumar: Insolvency code, introduced in 2016 - I consider it the most significant reform that the current government has carried out. Its a new law, a new process, so obviously, there are some issues around how the provisions of the code are interpreted. The existing promoters - it is very hard for them to believe that there is a law and a real threat of them losing control of the business. Its never happened before. Thats where the fight is, but this was all very badly needed. Many in the first set of 12 cases have been resolved. Our biggest case is under resolution as we speak. Only today, the letter of intent has been issued by the committee of creditors. For the steel sector, it has worked very well for the bigger plants where lenders have been able to recover a good amount of money. This was helped by two factors - theres a turnaround in the Indian steel sector and the quality of the plant, machinery and infrastructure was of a very good quality and thats how it has generated a lot of interest among potential buyers. There have been amendments in the IBC. It will take a little time before the law gets settled. Going forward, the litigation will come down and the resolution will happen within the given time frame of 180-270 days. There were many chronic cases that got referred. For this process to succeed, it is important that these cases are referred at the earliest sign of trouble. Definitely theres a paradigm shift in the creditor-debtor relationship in India. Sundaresan: When the creditors hands are strengthened, behaviour of the borrowers would change. Are you seeing that? Kumar: It has already happened. Before the code came into being, borrowers would say this is your NP - that sentence has disappeared. Once an account became NP, borrowers would behave like it was the banks problem but that has changed. Now, borrowers are coming forward and trying to resolve. As a potential weapon it (the IBC) works very well but we have to be careful in using it as such. The threat works much better than the actual resolution. Asserting that the current situation at the World Trade Organisation is no longer sustainable, the Ottawa Ministerial on WTO reform Thursday vowed to fight against protectionism. Washington: Asserting that the current situation at the World Trade Organisation (WTO) is no longer sustainable, the Ottawa Ministerial on WTO reform Thursday vowed to fight against protectionism. Among other things, the group comprising top trade officials of 12 countries and the European Union sought urgent action to develop 21st-century trade rules at the WTO. "The current situation at the WTO is no longer sustainable. Our resolve for change must be matched with action: We will continue to fight protectionism; and we are committed politically to moving forward urgently on transparency, dispute settlement and developing 21st-century trade rules at the WTO," said a joint communique issued by Ottawa Ministerial on WTO Reform. The ministers and heads of delegation representing a dozen "like-minded" WTO members and the European Union met in Ottawa on 24-25 October to discuss ways to strengthen and modernise the world body, which of late has been at the receiving end of President Donald Trump. The meeting was chaired by Jim Carr, Canada's Minister of International Trade Diversification. Other countries represented in the group were Australia, Brazil, Chile, Japan, Kenya, Korea, Mexico, New Zealand, Norway, Singapore and Switzerland. The group is scheduled to meet next in January 2019. India, China, and the US are not part of the meeting. Acknowledging that concerns that have been raised about the functioning of the dispute settlement system, the group said it is ready to work on solutions while preserving the essential features of the system and of its Appellate Body. Asserting that WTO must reinvigorate its negotiating function, the group underscored the need to conclude negotiations on fisheries subsidies in 2019 consistent with instructions from WTO Ministers at the 11th ministerial conference (MC11) held last year in Buenos Aires. "Its rules must also be updated to reflect 21st-century realities, such as the sustainable development goals. Addressing modern economic and trade issues, and tackling pending and unfinished business is key to ensuring the relevance of the WTO," it said. Observing that development must remain an integral part of the WTO, the Ottawa Ministerial said the members need to explore how the development dimension, including special and differential treatment, can be best pursued in rule-making efforts. "We should strengthen the monitoring and transparency of members' trade policies which play a central role in ensuring WTO members understand the policy actions taken by their partners in a timely manner," the ministerial said. Expressing their concern with the overall record of compliance by WTO members with their notification obligations, the group agreed that improvements are required to ensure effective transparency and functioning of the relevant agreements. Reacting to the joint communique, House Ways and Means Committee Chairman Kevin Brady said the international body must take seriously President Donald Trump's longstanding call for reform. "The WTO urgently needs reform to keep the organisation well-functioning and viable, including with respect to negotiations toward new agreements as well as improving dispute resolution. Now that many of our key trading partners are focused, it is important that we address the full range of topics and confront longstanding issues," Brady said. One of the key enforcement reform, that the US would like to see is to establish meaningful consequences if WTO members continue to ignore their commitments to submit timely notifications as to their compliance with their obligations, he said. The top US lawmaker said the appellate body must be reformed so that it functions as designed and is accountable to WTO members. According to him, such reforms include procedural fixes to make sure the appellate body does not diverge from the timelines and procedures established by WTO members, as well as structural reforms to avoid troubling appellate body overreach and "gap-filling" that go beyond its mandate. After a weak opening, shares of the Yes Bank further tanked 14.99 percent to Rs 168.60 on BSE. It later recovered most of its sharp early losses and was trading at Rs 186.55, a fall of 5.95 percent. New Delhi: Shares of Yes Bank on Friday cracked 15 percent after the company reported a decline of 3.8 percent in net profit for the second quarter ended 30 September, 2018. After a weak opening, shares of the company further tanked 14.99 percent to Rs 168.60 on BSE. It later recovered most of its sharp early losses and was trading at Rs 186.55, a fall of 5.95 percent. At NSE, shares of the company slumped 14.99 percent to Rs 168.60. The stock was the worst hit among the blue chips on both the key indices during the morning trade. Yes Bank on Thursday reported a decline of 3.8 percent in net profit to Rs 964.7 crore for the second quarter ended September 2018. The private sector lender had posted a net profit of Rs 1,002.73 crore in the year-ago period. Recently, the Reserve Bank refused to extend the tenure of the lender's long-serving MD and CEO Rana Kapoor beyond 31 January, 2019. The bank's gross Non-Performing Assets (NPA) reduced to 1.60 percent of its total assets at the end of September. In the comparable period, the same was at 1.82 percent. Thanga Tamilselvan, one of the disqualified MLAs and a staunch supporter of sidelined AIADMK leader TTV Dhinakaran, said the decision was 'unanimous' and accepted with 'joy' by all the 18 MLAs. The decision was taken after a discussion between the disqualified legislators and Dhinakaran in Madurai. Undaunted by the Madras High Court verdict which upheld the Tamil Nadu Speaker's decision to disqualify them as MLAs under the anti-defection law for having sided with expelled leader and AMMK chief TTV Dhinakaran, the former 18 AIADMK MLAs have on Friday decided to approach the Supreme Court to try and regain their status. Thanga Tamilselvan, one of the disqualified MLAs and a staunch supporter of sidelined AIADMK leader TTV Dhinakaran, said the decision was "unanimous" and accepted with "joy" by all the 18 MLAs. The decision was taken after a discussion between the disqualified legislators and Dhinakaran in Madurai. "It has been decided that we will go in for an appeal to show to the world that what the Speaker has done is a mistake. We are going to appeal in the Supreme Court," he told reporters. In September 2017, Tamil Nadu Assembly Speaker P Dhanapal disqualified 18 AIADMK MLAs under the 1986 Tamil Nadu Assembly Members Party Defection Law triggering a political crisis in the state after they announced their support for rebel Dhinakaran. Post their disqualification, the lawmakers then met the then governor C Vidyasagar Rao, expressing no confidence in Chief Minister Edappadi K Palaniswami, and asked for his removal. Alleging mala fide intention by the Speaker, the rebel MLAs had moved the Madras High Court to reinstate them. While the ruling AIADMK hailed the verdict as a "good" one, its rival DMK urged the Election Commission to immediately kick-start the process for holding by-polls. Dhinakaran, though at the receiving end of the verdict, denied it was a setback to his camp and termed it as an 'experience,' which was lampooned by chief minister K Palaniswami. "It is a good verdict, secured with the blessings of our leaders, MGR (the late MG Ramachandran) and Amma (J Jayalalithaa)," Palaniswami, also the AIADMK Joint Coordinator said. Dhinakaran, on his part, said: "We expected a favourable verdict but it is not a setback. I will consult the 18 MLAs on whether to file an appeal in the Supreme Court. Personally, my feeling is we should go for by-elections." Dhinakaran asserted his loyalists will sweep the bypolls. "The court's judgment is different and people's judgment is different," he said, claiming his party and those loyal to it will emerge stronger after the verdict. The chief minister said the ruling party was prepared to face elections. "The 18 seats have now fallen vacant. AIADMK will contest and win all of them," he said. Asked about Dhinakaran's contention that Thursday's verdict was an 'experience' for him, Palaniswami shot back saying, "I don't know what kind of experience is this." A division bench of the court comprising Banerjee and Justice M Sundar had delivered a split verdict on 14 June. Banerjee had upheld Speaker P Dhanapal's order disqualifying them, while Sundar had passed a dissenting judgement. The Supreme Court had then appointed Justice M Sathyanarayanan to hear the matter. Justice Sathyanarayanan on Thursday said there was no infirmity in Dhanapal's order which was upheld by Banerjee. "All the material that was available at the time of the passing of the order by the Speaker alone have been taken into consideration and this court cannot go into the subsequent events," the judge observed, upholding the disqualification. The judge said he had delivered his "independent view" on the matter and not gone by those expressed by the two judges who heard it earlier. With inputs from PTI Notably, Justice Patnaik was part of the inhouse committee which was formed by the former Chief Justice of India KG Balakrishnan to probe into the allegations of corruption against Justice Soumitra Sen of the Calcutta High Court. The Supreme Court on Friday ordered the Central Vigilance Commission (CVC) to complete its inquiry into allegations raised against Alok Verma within two weeks after the sidelined CBI Director challenged the government's decision to force him to go on leave and appointed M Nageshwar Rao as the interim director. Though the CVC had requested the court to allow it to conduct the inquiry without monitoring, the court appointed retired Justice Ananga Kumar Patnaik to oversee the inquiry. Patnaik is a former judge of the apex court and was appointed by the then President Pratibha Patil in November 2009. Justice Patnaik retired from the Supreme Court on 2 June 2014. Justice Patnaik had enrolled with the State Bar Council of Orissa on 28 March 1974 and was elevated to the position of an Additional Judge of the Orissa High Court on 13 January 1994. He was later transferred to the Guwahati High Court on 7 February 1994. In 1995, Patnaik became a permanent judge of the Guwahati High Court. After eight years, he assumed charge as a judge in Orissa High Court on 15 April 2002. After his stint as a high court judge in Orissa, Patnaik was appointed as the Chief Justice of the High Court of Chhattisgarh on 14 March 2005 and on transfer, he assumed charge as Chief Justice of the Madhya Pradesh High Court on 2 October 2005. In 2011, Justice Patnaik was part of the in-house committee which was formed by the then Chief Justice of India KG Balakrishnan to probe into the allegations of corruption against Justice Soumitra Sen. The committee had found Justice Sen guilty of misbehaviour and called for proceedings for his removal. After the committee concluded its findings, the Rajya Sabha had approved the motion of impeachment. But Justice Sen resigned before the impeachment motion could be passed by the Lok Sabha. In February 2012, Patnaik was also part of a three-member Supreme Court bench which had directed the Centre to implement the interlinking of rivers project on time and without further delays, The Times of India had reported. According to India Today, in March 2012, Patnaik joined a two-judge special bench constituted by the then Chief Justice SH Kapadia to hear all cases arising out of the 2G Spectrum Scam. Supreme Court of India was hearing a petition filed by the 'ousted' CBI chief challenging the governments decision to send him on 'leave' On Friday morning, the Opposition, led by the Congress, organised a protest rally in the National Capital and other parts of the country against the alleged interference by the Narendra Modi government in the workings of the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI), and demanded the 'reinstatement' of CBI director Alok Verma, who was sent on forced 'leave' along with his deputy, this week. At the same time, the Supreme Court of India was hearing a petition filed by the 'ousted' CBI chief challenging the governments decision to send him on 'leave'. Fali Nariman, who was representing Verma, argued before the court and cited important sections of the Delhi Special Police Establishment (DSPE) Act and various judgments to highlight the 'safeguard of tenure' provided by the law to the CBI chief. He argued that the CBI director's tenure lasts two years and any change in this tenure, for whatever reason, requires the approval of the panel that appoints it. However, the court, while not ordering Verma's 'reinstatement', assured that it will examine the matter and ordered an inquiry into the entire episode under the supervision of a retired Supreme Court judge. The bench headed by Chief Justice Ranjan Gogoi held that at the present stage, what is necessary is an inquiry to find out whether there is a prima facie case. While Congress leaders started sloganeering against the prime minister, the Supreme Court in the presence of such veterans as Nariman and Solicitor-General of India Tushar Mehta gave a clear order that can summarised in three points: 1) The incumbent CBI director M Nageshwar Rao to remain CBI 'interim' chief, but will not take policy decisions. 2) Also, all decisions taken by Rao, after he assumed the office of 'interim' director on 23 October, have to be submitted to the Supreme Court on 12 November. 3) Further, the apex court ordered that the Central Vigilance Commission has to complete the inquiry against Verma in two weeks under the supervision of former Supreme Court judge AK Patnaik, who will ensure the timely conclusion of the inquiry. The Supreme Court has fixed the next date of hearing as 12 November. And amidst all this, the Opposition continued with its protest. Following the rejection of their bail pleas, Pune Police took Arun Ferreira and Vernon Gonsalves into custody. Pune: Left-wing activists Arun Ferreira and Vernon Gonsalves, accused of having Maoist links, were taken into custody by Pune police on Friday, hours after their bail pleas were rejected by a local court in Pune, an official said. District and Sessions Judge (Special Judge) KD Vadane rejected the bail applications of Ferreira and Gonsalves along with that of Sudha Bharadwaj, observing that the material collected by the police, on the face of it, shows their alleged links with Maoists. Bharadwaj could be taken into custody on Sautrday, the official said. All three are already under house arrest but the Pune police was not able to get their custody because of stay ordered by various courts. Following the rejection of their bail pleas, Pune police took Ferreira and Gonsalves into custody. The Pune police had arrested Ferreira, Gonsalves, Bharadwaj and two others Telugu poet Varavara Rao and activist Gautam Navlakha in August this year in connection with the probe into violence in Koregaon Bhima in Pune on 1 January this year. The police had claimed to have seized emails exchanged between them and top Maoist leaders. Navlakha was later released by the Delhi high court. The Bombay High Court Friday extended interim protection from arrest granted to him till 1 November, when his plea seeking guashing of FIR will be heard. District and Sessions Judge Vadane noted that it is not disputed that Bharadwaj is a professor at National Law University, Ferreira a lawyer and cartoonist working for human rights and Vernon a social activist, and they were working for the uplift of the marglialised. "However, under the pretext of doing social work, human rights work, they are doing work for a banned organization (CPI-Maoist) and (were) involved in the activities with intent to threaten unity, integrity, security, sovereignty of India," he said. "At this stage, on the basis of the material collected by the investigation officer, prima facie it reveals that there is a connection of the present accused with the banned organization (CPI-Maoist)," the judge said in Friday's order. "Moreover, the investigation is at a crucial stage," he said. The material collected by the police shows that the alleged crime was not merely about "disturbance of public order", the judge said. "Such anti-national activities throw a challenge to the very integrity and sovereignty of the country and its democratic policies," said the judge. The defence lawyers had argued that all the accused are human rights activists. The judge dismissed the defence's claims about procedural irregularities during the raids on the activists' houses. The court also rejected the defence's argument that right-wing leader Milind Ekbote, accused of instigating the violence at Koregaon Bhima in Pune district on 1 January, had been granted bail and so the accused in the present case too should be released. The two cases are different, said the judge. After the bail pleas were rejected, the defence lawyers sought a week's stay on implementation of the order so that they could file an appeal in the High Court, but the judge did not grant a stay. Following this, police took Gonsalves and Ferreira into custody, said assistant commissioner of police Shivaji Pawar, who is the investigating officer. Police alleged that Maoists had supported the Elgar Parishad conclave in Pune on 31 December last year, which led to the violence. The accused were put under house arrest on Supreme Court's orders. Pune Sessions Court rejected the bail plea of activists Sudha Bharadwaj, Vernon Gonsalves and Arun Ferreira who are three of the five activists arrested on 28 August in the Bhima Koregaon violence case Pune Sessions Court rejected the bail plea of activists Sudha Bharadwaj, Vernon Gonsalves and Arun Ferreira who are three of the five activists arrested on 28 August in the Bhima Koregaon violence case. All three are presently under house arrest which was supposed to end today (Friday, 26 October, 2018), reported ANI. Earlier this week on Wednesday, the Supreme Court declined to hold an urgent hearing of a review petition filed by historian Romila Thapar against the apex court's verdict that refused a Special Investigation Team (SIT)-led investigation into house arrests of the five activists in the case. Thapar along with four others had earlier filed the petition in the top court against the house arrest of the activists. The court, in its verdict, had also allowed Maharashtra Police to continue with the investigation. On 28 September, the Supreme Court, then headed by Chief Justice Dipak Misra, had turned down the request of the petitioners to set up a SIT to probe into the case and extended the activists' house arrest for four weeks. The five activists - Varavara Rao, Bharadwaj, Ferreira, Gonsalves and Gautam Navlakha, have been under house arrest since 29 August for their alleged involvement in the violence which took place on 1 January. The five accused were arrested from various cities for their alleged involvement in the violence during the 200th anniversary of the Bhima Koregaon battle. One person was killed and many were injured in the clashes. On a complaint by a woman disciple, a case of rape and unnatural sex was filed against Daati Maharaj, his three brothers and a woman. New Delhi: The Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) has booked self-styled preacher Daati Maharaj, who runs a temple in South Delhi, for allegedly raping and having unnatural sex with an inmate of his ashram, officials said on Friday. The agency had taken over investigation in the case on the instructions of the Delhi High Court, they said. On a complaint by a woman disciple, a case of rape and unnatural sex was filed against Daati Maharaj, his three brothers and a woman at Fatehpur Beri Police Station in South Delhi. On 22 June, the police had questioned Daati Maharaj also known as Daati Madanlal, who was charged with rape of a disciple at his ashrams in Delhi and Rajasthan. The accused had claimed he was being framed in the case. A bench of Chief Justice Rajendra Menon and Justice VK Rao had allowed the complainant woman's plea to transfer the matter to the CBI, saying the manner in which the Delhi Police carried out the probe "casts a shadow on the investigation". It is possibly the first case registered by the agency after a midnight drama in which its Director Alok Verma and Special Director Rakesh Asthana were divested of all powers by the government on the recommendation of Central Vigilance Commission. Special Director Rakesh Asthana, embroiled in an unprecedented feud with CBI chief Alok Verma, moved the Supreme Court on Friday challenging the Centre's decision to divest him of duties. New Delhi: Special Director Rakesh Asthana, embroiled in an unprecedented feud with CBI chief Alok Verma, moved the Supreme Court on Friday challenging the Centre's decision to divest him of duties and send him on leave, and claimed that he was a "whistleblower". In his petition, Asthana has also sought the removal of the CBI director from his post. When a bench comprising Chief Justice Ranjan Gogoi and Justices SK Kaul and KM Joseph was hearing Verma's petition, the counsel appearing for Asthana drew the attention to the plea filed by him. However, the bench said that it cannot grant any hearing on the oral submission as Asthana's petition was not before it. "We cannot hear something which is not before us," the bench said. Senior advocate and former Attorney General Mukul Rohatgi, appearing for Asthana, submitted that the petition has been filed before the Registry and sought that it be listed on 29 October. "We will see," the bench said. Rohatgi further said that Asthana has also been made a party in the PIL, filed by NGO 'Common Cause', seeking the court-monitored SIT probe into allegations of corruption against top officials of the probe agency. Asthana, a 1986-batch Gujarat-cadre IPS officer who had probed the sensational fodder scam cases involving former Bihar chief ministers Lalu Prasad and Jagnnath Mishra, has sought setting aside of the 23 October decision of the Department of Personnel and Training (DoPT) to divest him of his power and sending him on leave. The petition, filed through lawyer Amit Anand Tiwari, referred to the sequence of events and said it was Asthana who has acted as whistle-blower by approaching the Central Vigilance Commission (CVC) on 24 August with the corruption complaint against the CBI director. While the CBI Director was given opportunities to respond to the complaint before the CVC, Asthana was divested of his office without being granted any opportunity to respond. The Special Director's plea accused the Centre of siding with the corrupt CBI chief and alleged that he has been victimised for his bonafide actions. The action against him cannot be taken on the ground of parity, it added. Asthana had on 24 August had lodged a complaint to the Cabinet Secretary alleging misconduct by CBI Director and the matter was referred to the CVC for further action. The CBI Director, in turn, told the CVC that Asthana was facing probe in six cases of corruption. The probe agency then, on 15 October, lodged the FIR with bribery allegations against Asthana, Deputy Superintendent of Police Devender Kumar, Dubai-based investment banker Manoj Prasad and his brother Somesh Prasad. Kumar is in the CBI custody. Supreme Court will hear CBI chief Alok Verma's plea against the government order sending him on leave, Rahul Gandhi will lead Congress protests outside CBI office today to demand Alok Verma's reinstatement, Pune court will hear the bail plea of 3 activists in the Bhima Koregaon case - day's top stories Supreme Court to hear CBI chief Alok Verma's plea against govt order As the CBI deals with an unprecedented internal crisis, all eyes are on the Supreme Court on Friday when former director Alok Verma's plea against the Centre's order divesting him of duties and sending him on leave is slated to come up. On Thursday, there was high drama over the presence of Intelligence Bureau officers allegedly "snooping" outside Verma's official residence in Delhi. Ahead of the hearing in the Supreme Court, the CBI clarified that Verma and special director Rakesh Asthana, who are locked in a bitter feud that triggered this crisis, will remain its director and special director, in a bid to stress they were not removed from their posts. Both Verma and Astana were stripped of their powers and sent on leave by the Centre on the intervening night of Wednesday and Thursday. In his legal challenge before the apex court, Verma also sought stay on the Centre's order asking him to proceed on leave and giving interim charge of his post to Rao, a 1986 batch Odisha-cadre IPS officer. Verma's petition is listed for hearing before a bench comprising Chief Justice Ranjan Gogoi and Justices SK Kaul and KM Joseph. It will come up along with the petition filed by 'Common Cause'. The CBI chief contended that the decision taken "overnight" by the Centre and the CVC to divest him of his role as the head of the probe agency was "patently illegal" and such interference "erodes" the independence and autonomy of the institution. Rahul Gandhi to lead Congress protests outside CBI officeagainst Alok Verma's removal Congress president Rahul Gandhi will lead the party as Congress workers will stages protests outside all Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) offices across the country on Friday, demanding the reinstatement of CBI director Alok Verma and seeking apology from Prime Minister Narendra Modi for "destroying" the image of the premier investigating the agency. In a letter to all Congress general secretaries, state unit chiefs and legislature party leaders, AICC General Secretary Ashok Gehlot asked them to hold demonstrations against the BJP government outside all CBI offices across the country. Senior Congress leaders will participate in the protest outside the CBI headquarters in the national capital, while state leaders will lead the demonstrations in their regions, Congress chief spokesperson Randeep Surjewala said. Gehlot in his letter said, "An illegal, unconstitutional and illegitimate removal of the CBI director by the Modi-Shah duo has shamed India and its premier investigative agency." Bhima Koregaon case: Pune court to hear bail plea of 3 activists, Bombay HC to hear petition of Gautam Navlakha, Anand Teltumbde A Pune special court will pronounce its order on the bail application of human rights activists Sudha Bhardwaj, Arun Ferreira and Vernon Gonsalves on Friday. Meanwhile, the Bombay High Court will also hear the petitions of Gautam Navlakha and Anand Teltumbde. The two activists filed petitions to quash the FIR and criminal proceedings initiated against them after the violence at Bhima-Koregaon. Navlakha, Varavara Rao, Ferreira, Gonsalves, Bharadwaj were arrested on 28 August for allegedly having Maoist links. In the FIR filed against them, it is alleged that they, along with Anand Teltumbde were responsible for violence at Bhima Koregaon earlier this year. Sensex plummets Sensex slumped about 344 points on Thursday to settle at 33,690.09 on across-the-board selling on prevailing liquidity crunch and fresh weakness in the rupee amid a global sell-off. October futures and options (F&O) expiry added to the woes as investors offloaded their long bets instead of carrying them forward to the next series for November, brokers said. During October F&O series, the BSE Sensex dropped 2,634.08 points, or over 7 percent while the NSE Nifty lost 852.65 points, or almost 8 percent. Rocket Launch: Northrop Grumman Pegasus XL ICON The Ionospheric Connection Explorer (ICON) will launch aboard a Northrop Grumman Pegasus XL rocket. ICON will explore a zone in our atmosphere where Earth weather and space weather meet. Radio communications and GPS signals travel in this zone, so variations in the areas gasses can impact our reliance on technology. ICON will help NASA understand what causes the variations. ICON, aboard the Pegasus XL rocket, will launch from an in-flight Northrop Grumman L-1011 Stargazer aircraft. The aircraft will carry the rocket over the Atlantic Ocean, where it will launch into orbit. India Mobile Congress - Day 2 While Day 1 was all about setting the roadmap for 5G in India, Day 2 is expected to bring us more on India-centric use case scenarios of 5G. Ericsson and Reliance Jio will be holding a briefing tomorrow at noon to discuss the 5G network in India. Sectors such as Internet of Things (IoT), Artificial Intelligence (AI), Smart Cities, Start-ups in the technology space and other allied industry sectors will also be talked on by leading professionals. #MeToo movement has given voice to years of anger: Anurag Kashyap Filmmaker Anurag Kashyap, who is embroiled in a legal battle with his former partner and director Vikas Bahl, on Thursday said the #MeToo movement has given voice to years of anger. Bahl has been accused of sexual harassment by an employee of the now-dissolved Phantom Films, the company that was founded by Kashyap, Bahl, Vikramaditya Motwane and Madhu Mantena. Kashyap and director Motwane have been under fire for the alleged inaction in the sexual harassment allegations against Bahl. Both Kashyap and Motwane have denied the charge. Kashyap, in an interview to PTI, said there is a need to understand and grow up to the movement, which has taken the industry by storm. A day after an eight-year-old madrasa student died during a scuffle between two groups of minor boys in south Delhi, police held a peace meeting in the area to thwart attempts to communalise the situation. New Delhi: A day after an eight-year-old madrasa student died during a scuffle between two groups of minor boys in south Delhi, police held a peace meeting in the area to thwart attempts to communalise the situation, police said on Friday. Police said attempts were being made to communalise the incident by spreading wrong facts and rumours. They denied any communal angle in the incident. They said it was a scuffle that broke out between two groups of minors over playing on a vacant plot of land in front of madrasa in Malviya Nagar area leading to the death of Azim. Four juveniles who were allegedly involved in the case were apprehended, they said. A meeting of Peace (Aman) Committee Members of the area was held and they were briefed about the facts regarding the incident and police staff has been also been deployed in the area to avert any untoward incident, Deputy Commissioner of Police (south) Vijay Kumar said. Police have also cautioned the residents of the area to not pay any heed to any such rumours or fake news and report the matter to them if anything comes to their notice, he said. On Thursday morning, the victim along with his four other friends was playing on an empty plot adjacent to the madrasa. In the meantime, four local boys, all resident of Valmiki Camp came there and one of them threw a stone over them, he added. The madrasa students asked the local boys to refrain. However, after some time, the accused boys threw fire cracker towards them and began abusing, the DCP said. Eventually, when the madrasa students objected, a scuffle broke out between the two groups. One of the students was roughed up and fell down on the ground. He sustained some severe internal injuries, Kumar said. The students immediately alerted the Maulana of the madrasa about the incident and one of the person named Rajesh, a resident of Valmiki Camp, brought the victim Azim in his lap inside madrasa in an unconscious state. The injured boy was immediately taken to Malviya Nagar Hospital by the Maulana, where he was declared dead, the senior officer said. The boy was a native of Mewat in Haryana and was studying in the madrasa since last Eid. Around 70 children, hailing from different places are studying in the madrasa, the officer added. During investigation, all evidences including CCTV footage were collected and statements of eye witnesses and relevant people recorded, the police officer said. All the four Juveniles, aged around 10-13, were apprehended after due compliance of legal procedure. Further investigation in the case is underway, he added. The latest Enforcement Directorate (ED) raids at the India office of Amnesty International in Bengaluru on Thursday has brought back questions related to the Narendra Modi government's handling of NGOs run by international bodies or funded by them in India. The latest Enforcement Directorate (ED) raids at the India office of Amnesty International in Bengaluru on Thursday has brought back questions related to the Narendra Modi government's handling of NGOs run by international bodies or funded by them in India. According to reports, the ED searched the human rights body Amnesty International India's headquarters in Bengaluru for remittances from abroad allegedly in violation of FDI guidelines. "We have been conducting searches at Amnesty's office in Bengaluru and its director's (Aakar Patel) residence in the city since (Thursday) afternoon," an ED source told reporters. Firstpost reviewed the documents, which claimed that the Amnesty's Indian arm came under the scanner for alleged violation of Foreign Exchange Management Act (FEMA) after security agencies is learnt to have detected that Amnesty International (UK) has been remitting huge amount of foreign contribution through its four Indian entities, which did not have either license or prior permission to receive foreign contributions. The security agencies alleged that modus operandi of using FDI route to funnel the foreign fund was carried out in a bid to evade Foreign Contribution Regulation Act (FCRA) that monitors receipt and expenditure of donations moving into NGOs operating in India from foreign sources. The human rights watchdog alleged that the government is instilling fear among civil society organisations by conducting such raids. "...We reiterate, our structure is compliant with Indian laws," Amnesty India said in a tweet. After a crackdown on a no. of NGOs, Enforcement Directorate hits at Amnesty. The 10 hour long raid conducted at our Bengaluru office ended at midnight. Our staff fully cooperated with officials. We reiterate, our structure is compliant with Indian laws. #CrackdownOnAmnesty Amnesty India (@AIIndia) October 25, 2018 ED raid on Amnesty India shows a disturbing pattern of the government silencing organisations that question power. It is clear that the government wants to instill fear among Civil Society Organisations. #CrackdownOnAmnesty Amnesty India (@AIIndia) October 25, 2018 Over 5 ED officials raided Amnestys Bengaluru office. Ordered employees to not leave, shut their laptops and searched their desks. Employees were not allowed to use their phones to call friends and families. #CrackdownOnAmnesty Amnesty India (@AIIndia) October 25, 2018 This is not the first time that Amnesty India has come under government scanner. The Centre has maintained a very strict vigil on the kind of monetary funding that non-governmental organisations (NGOs)functioning in India have been recieving. In July this year, in a closed-door, high-level meeting, Prime Minister Narendra Modi had asked top security officials to work with the state police to monitor how NGOs and groups suspected to be involved in anti-national activities are funded. Top sources said Modi recently expressed concerned over the subject, and that the Ministry of Home Affairs will engage with states to deal with the matter. FCRA and FEMA A transaction under FEMA is called a fee or a salary while the same under FCRA is called a grant or a contribution. The major disruption came in 2016, when the home ministry headed by Rajnath Singh told the finance ministry (headed by Arun Jaitley) to surrender its powers to monitor NGOs under FEMA. The idea was to bring all NGOs, which receive foreign contributions, under one umbrella for better monitoring and regulation, MHA official was then quoted as saying by several media reports. The MHA also wanted to ensure only one custodian to monitor flow of foreign funds to these organisations. To make its case, the home ministry had drawn up (in 2016) a list of 67 NGOs which were found violating the FCRA but tried to escape penalty by invoking their FEMA registration. Since it came to power in May 2014 till December 2016, the Centre cancelled the FCRA licenses of at least 20,000 NGOs across the country. The home ministry, which took the action, justified the decision by saying these organisations were technically violating various provisions of the Act. Cancelling FCRA license means that these NGOs would no longer be eligible to receive foreign funds. It should be noted that several of these NGOs are involved in rights-based advocacy work, especially working in the domain of human rights. Speaking to Livemint, president and co-founder for PRS Legislative Research MR Madhavan had said, "FCRA is a product of the Emergency era, much like the predecessor of Fema the Foreign Exchange (Regulation) Act, 1973 (FERA). So if the law for commercial transactions (FEMA) can be adapted to current-day requirements, why cant the regulations governing grants?" Nearly 5,000 NGOs were barred by the government from receiving foreign funding after cancellation of their licences since April 2017, the Lok Sabha was informed on March 20 this year. Union Minister of State for Home Kiren Rijiju said the registration of the NGOs under the Foreign Contribution Regulation Act (FCRA) was cancelled after they were found to be violating the laws. "Close to 5,000 FCRA registrations have been cancelled since 1 April, 2017," he said in a written reply. Rijiju said one time opportunity to upload pending annual returns from 2010-11 onwards without depositing any penalty was provided to all the defaulting NGOs from 14 May, 2017 to 15 June, 2017. Replying to another question, the Minister said during the last five financial years, Directorate of Enforcement has registered cases against 2,745 companies under the provisions of Foreign Exchange Management Act (FEMA), 1999, out of which 537 cases have been closed and 183 show cause notices have been issued. The FCRA is an intimidating law, argued this Firstpost article, especially since the original Act came into force in 1976 during the Emergency by the Indira Gandhi-led government. The Act, at that time, prohibited MPs, electoral candidates, political parties, judges from accepting foreign contributions. The new FCRA, amended by the Finance Bill 2016, has many changes that render it more severe than its predecessor. For one, the registration under the previous FCRA was permanent; the present law has altered this, mandating that FCRA licences would expire after five years. A renewal process would mean that prescribed authorities, that is the State, would have arbitrary power to decide whether an NGO can renew its licence afresh. The new law also puts a 50 percent restriction on the proportion of foreign funds, thereby controlling the way an NGO spends its money. Is FCRA really misused? Lack of clarity on what the law entails under FEMA and FCRA adds to the confusion. Journalist, political activist, Praful Bidwai wrote for South Asia Citizens Web that India has a complex "maze of laws and rules" which gives "arbitary powers to the state" and according to him FCRA falls under that category. He traces the origins of the law to 1975-1977 emergency imposed during Indira Gandhi's rule "partly out of her paranoid conviction that foreign powers were out to destabilise her by instigating domestic political groups. The FCRA originally banned funding for political parties, election candidates, trade unions, the media, etc. All applicants for a permit to receive funding would have to be registered for at least three years and be closely screened by the intelligence bureau, no less." According to a report by Institute of Rural Management Anand (IRMA), the FCRA should focus on "on devising a proper mechanism to identify and curb such malpractices rather than penalising genuine organisations." Others echo similar sentiments. An article in The Dialogue noted that the FCRA is "highly ambiguous" and "gives the government free reign to influence work of NGOs." FCRA bars entities that are of "political nature" or those that are likely to "prejudicially" affect public interest. As many as 20,000 FCRA licences cancelled since May 2014 In 2016, senior advocate and former additional solicitor-general (ASG) Indira Jaising's NGO, Lawyers Collective (LC) was served a notice suspending its FCRA registration for six months. Jaising had slammed the government and termed the move as an "intimidating tactic by the government" to clamp down on her NGO. She further said that LC has not yet received a formal notice from the Centre, and that it has only been released to the press. She also pointed out that the first time the notice was mentioned in the press was the day Amit Shah had to appear in court in the Sohrabuddin murder case. In 2015, the BJP government at the Centre cancelled Greenpeace's registration under Foreign Contribution Regulations Act (FCRA) for allegedly working against the country's economic progress. The decision of the home ministry came five months after it suspended its licence under FCRA for 180 days. It had also frozen its seven bank accounts, alleging that the environmental group was working against the country's economic progress and public interest. The government had cited alleged violation of norms by the NGO by opening five accounts to use foreign donations without informing the authorities concerned. In April 2015, the government placed the Ford Foundation, an American charitable organisation on a watch list saying it was funding groups which acted against the national interest. "Among the violations noticed, it was found that the Ford Foundation had been involved in funding non-FCRA registered entities which amounts to serious violation of the FCRA 2010 law," a home ministry spokesperson was quoted as saying. On 15 April, the Gujarat government sought a probe into the role of activist Teesta Setalvad's NGO alleging that it misused funds received from Ford Foundation to create 'communal disharmony'. "We learnt that the funds which they received, especially from the (US-based) Ford Foundation, were actually used for disturbing the communal harmony and carrying out anti-national propaganda against India in foreign countries," Gujarat Minister of State for Home Rajnikant Patel told PTI. "We have written a letter to Union Home Minister Rajnath Singh seeking probe into the role of Setalvad's NGO (Sabrang Trust) after we found out funds given to the NGO were misused." Around the same time, the government placed the Catholic charity Caritas on a government watch list. The group has been operating in India for more than 50 years and works on health, education and poverty-related issues. A home ministry official told AFP that Caritas had violated India's foreign funding laws by financing groups that were working "against the country". With inputs from agencies Badaun Senior Superintendent of Police Ashok Kumar said that the incident happened around 4.00 pm in a licensed firecracker factory in Rasulpur village under Civil Lines police station. Badaun (Uttar Pradesh): At least eight persons were killed and three others seriously injured on Friday in an explosion at a firecracker factory in Badaun, police said. "At around 4.00 pm, there was an explosion in a licensed firecracker factory in Rasulpur village under Civil Lines police station," Badaun Senior Superintendent of Police (SSP) Ashok Kumar said. "Seven persons died on the spot, while one person succumbed to his injuries in hospital. Three injured persons have been admitted to the district hospital. Their condition is serious," he said. "The intensity of the blast was so strong that people sitting in an adjacent cycle shop and some passersby were injured in the incident," the SSP said. "Two passersby were among those killed," he added. The district administration had pressed excavators and fire brigades into service for rescue work. Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath took immediate cognizance of the explosion and directed the district magistrate of Badaun to take all necessary steps to provide relief to the injured. A 24-year-old MTech student of IIT Kharagpur was found hanging from the ceiling fan of his hostel room, the police said. A 24-year-old MTech student of IIT Kharagpur was found hanging from the ceiling fan of his hostel room, the police said. G Amini Reddy, hailing from a farmer's family of Andhra Pradesh, used to share the room with another student who could not find him for a long time and alerted the security on Wednesday night, Superintendent of police Alok Rajoria said. As the police was informed, they broke open the door and found Reddy, a final year student of electrical engineering, hanging from the ceiling fan of his room which was locked from inside. An autopsy was conducted on Thursday, he said. A probe has been launched by the police, reported Hindustan Times. Primary investigation points at suicide though it can be confirmed only after the post-mortem examination is conducted, he said. India and Myanmar agreed on providing security cooperation and facilitate movement of people and trade across the International Border. New Delhi: India and Myanmar have agreed to fight insurgent groups operating along the border between the two countries and check smuggling of wildlife and narcotic drugs. It was agreed upon at the 22nd homeland security meeting between India and Myanmar held on Thursday and Friday. "During the meeting, both the sides agreed to take action against insurgent groups operating within their territories," a Home Ministry statement said. The two countries agreed on providing security cooperation and facilitate movement of people and trade across the International Border. "It was also agreed to cooperate in preventing smuggling of wildlife and narcotic drugs and to strengthen cooperation on the international border management, including construction of subsidiary pillars to better demarcate the border," the statement said. The Indian delegation was led by Union Home Secretary Rajiv Gauba and the Myanmar delegation by Major General Aung Thu, Deputy Minister, Ministry of Home Affairs, Myanmar. An Indian Army soldier in Jammu and Kashmir has died in a stone-pelting incident Srinagar: An Army jawan died at a hospital in Srinagar on Friday after he sustained head injuries during stone-pelting by a group of youths, an official said. "Sepoy Rajendra Singh was part of a quick reaction team which was providing security to a Border Roads Organisation (BRO) convoy on Thursday. At around 1800 hrs, when the convoy was passing through the Anantnag bypass tri-junction near NH-44, few youths hurled stones at the vehicle and Singh was injured after being hit by a stone directly on the head," the Army official said. He said Singh was provided immediate first aid and evacuated to 92 Base Hospital where the soldier succumbed to injuries. A resident of Uttarakhand's Badena village, Singh had joined the Army in 2016 and is survived by his parents. The Army on Friday paid tributes to him and two other jawans Lance Naik Brajesh Kumar, Sepoy Ngamsiamliana who were killed in separate anti-militancy operations in Kashmir valley. "In a solemn ceremony at Badamibagh cantonment here, General Officer Commanding of Chinar Corps of the Army Lt Gen AK Bhatt and all ranks paid homage to the martyrs on behalf of a proud nation," the official said. Director General of Jammu and Kashmir Police Dilbag Singh and representatives from various security agencies also joined in paying the last respects to the soldiers, he said. Kumar (32) sustained splinter injuries during a fierce operation against militants in Baramulla district's Sopore area on Friday. Two militants were also killed in the operation, the official said. A native of Himachal Pradesh's Nanawin village, Kumar had joined the Army in 2004. He is survived by his wife and a daughter, he added. Ngamsiamliana was killed on Thursday during an attack on an Army camp in Luragam village of Tral in Pulwama district. He hailed from village Rengtekawn in Mizoram and had joined the Army in 2013. He is survived by his parents, the official said. "The mortal remains of the martyrs were flown for last rites to their native places, where they would be laid to rest with full military honours. In this hour of grief, the Army stands in solidarity with the families of the bravehearts and remains committed to their dignity and well being," the official said. The police are frequently putting the separatists under house detention and are even registering cases against the leaders for being a threat to peace. On 23 September, early in the morning, a large number of policemen cordoned off the house of Ghulam Ahmad Gulzar, a close aide of Hurriyat (G) chairman Syed Ali Shah Geelani. Gulzar, chairman, Jammu and Kashmir Insaf Party, cut short his prayers to see who was banging on his door at Ganbugh, Hyderpora. He was whisked to Shergadi Police Station where he remained lodged for several days before being shifted to the Kotbalwal prison in Jammu. Gulzar was detained under the Public Safety Act (PSA) by Srinagar's deputy commissioner: a recourse taken rarely as PSA is an administrative order that is meant to deny people bail. The PSA against the separatist leader came nearly a month after Governor Satya Pal Malik assumed office and replaced NN Vohra. That too at a time when authorities were gearing up for the four-phase municipal polls. The Chief Electoral Officer (CEO) opened the civic polls for nominations. The first phase of polling were held on 8 October and the results were announced on 20 October. Though the polls remained largely peaceful, the turnout was an abysmal 3 to 4 percent, a record low in the state history. Gulzar's arrest was a display of Malik's hardline approach, a stark contrast to the policy of PDP president Mehbooba Mufti, who during her tenure as chief minister was accused by political parties, including her own coalition partner BJP, and Congress for being soft on separatists. The BJP withdrew support to Mehbooba for "being unable to tackle the Kashmir unrest". In September Mehbooba said separatists and businessmen who have faced raids by the National Investigation Agency (NIA) for supporting the freedom to Kashmir are feeling harassed. Malik has not only detained the separatists under the PSA, but has got them frequently lodged at police stations. The Hurriyat Conference perceives this as an aggressive policy of BJP towards Kashmiris. Like Gulzar, top separatist leader and Hurriyat (M) executive member Masroor Abbas was picked up from his Safakdal residence days ahead of the polls and released on October 17, after elections ended. I was picked up on 12 October and lodged at the Safakadal police station for three days and was later shifted to Srinagar's Central Jail. The police raided my house, which lies near the Safakdal Police Station, late in the evening, said Masroor. Now, as the state is preparing for the Panchayat polls, most separatist leaders either remain in police custody or under house arrest to ensure smooth polls. In the PSA order issued against Gulzar, authorities said that his detention was necessary as he has figured adversely in police records. He has actively participated in 2008, 2010 and 2016 unrests by way of provoking the youth to indulge in illegal activities aimed to disrupt the public tranquility, peace and order, read the PSA order. Gulzars wife Hafeeza Begum said his health has deteriorated and despite that we are not allowed to meet him at the Kotbalwal jail. Earlier, my husband was detained at Shergadi Police Station for four days. He was later shifted to Kotbalwal prison in Jammu, where he remains lodged. We were told by the police that he was detained for his anti-election activities, she said. My husband has a back ache problem and he has been advised complete bed rest, but that has not prevented the authorities from detaining him. The police are frequently putting the separatists under house detention and are even registering cases against the leaders for being a threat to peace. Both Geelani and Hurriyat (M) chairman Mirwaiz Umer Farooq remain under house arrest. Umer has even been disallowed from leading Friday prayers at the historic Jamia Masjid in Srinagar on several occasions. On 7 October, after his house arrest, Umer tweeted, Under #House Arrest! peculiar democratic process of elections gearing up as huge deployment of forces, PSAs, incarcerations, house arrests, raids, internet bans gather momentum! Not to mention the unknown contestants and amused public! What mockery of democracy is at display! Jammu and Kashmir Liberation Front (JKLF) vice chairman Bashir Ahmad Bhat said senior separatist leader and the front chairman Yaseen Malik has been detained frequently by the police. Yaseen was detained earlier this month for many days and later released. Now, he has been again detained by police and remains in police custody, he said. Separatists have termed the government's policy as an aggressive policy and approach of New Delhi towards the people of Kashmir. The approach is becoming more brutal almost every day, said Hurriyat (M) in a statement recently. The world community, including the United Nations (UN), Organisation of Islamic Countries (OIC) and other organisations should take a serious note of unabated human rights violations, killing, maiming and thrashing of youth, men and women and the arrest of resistance leaders and slapping them with the draconian PSA in Valley, the statement added. Authorities also jailed Islamic Students League founder Shakeel Bakshi under the Public Safety Act. Shakeel's brother Showkat said he was lodged at a jail in Jammu for over a month. The Maharashtra government on Friday constituted a three-member committee to examine if any of the cases registered during the protests after the Bhima Koregaon violence and the Maratha quota agitation are fit for withdrawal. Mumbai: The Maharashtra government on Friday constituted a three-member committee to examine if any of the cases registered during the protests after the Bhima Koregaon violence and the Maratha quota agitation are fit for withdrawal. No deadline has been set for the committee to submit its report. Violent protests were witnessed in many places in Maharashtra in January this year after the Dalits visiting a war memorial at Bhima Koregaon in Pune district came under attack. Similarly, the Maratha community's agitation for quota in jobs and education turned violent in July and August this year. There was a demand from Maratha outfits and other organisations that the cases registered against activists during these two periods be withdrawn. The three-member committee will be headed by Additional Director General of Police (Law and Order) and will have two Inspector Generals of Police (IGPs) as its members. As per the committee's terms of reference, the cases where the damage to the public or private property is not more than Rs 10 lakh, where there has been no loss of life, and where there was no direct attack on police shall be considered for withdrawal. The committee will also consider withdrawal of cases where the accused are ready to pay the cost for the damage caused. CCTV footage will be examined to ascertain the extent of damage and whether the accused had assaulted police. The committee will submit its report with recommendations to the home department, which will place it before a cabinet sub-committee for its decision. In an interview with Firstpost, N Murali, the Madras Music Academys president, spoke about the decision to drop seven musicians from the Margazhi line-up in the wake of #MeToo allegations In a quick, proactive response to #Metoo allegations in the field of Carnatic music, the Madras Music Academy has debarred seven musicians from performing in the upcoming December (Margazhi) season in the wake of alleged sexual harassment charges against them. The musicians included the acclaimed Chitravina N Ravikiran (also the Sangeetha Kalanidhi awardee last year), vocalist OS Thyagarajan, violinist Nagai Sriram, mridhangam players Mannargudi A Easwaran, Srimushnam V Raja Rao, R Ramesh and Thiruvarur Vaidyanathan. Read on Firstpost: Madras Music Academy drops seven artists from Margazhi lineup following #MeToo allegations This is not the first time the Academy had positively responded to allegations of sexual misconduct. When Raya Sarkar's List of Sexual Harassers in Academia surfaced last year, Academys secretary Pappu Venugopala Rao whose name had appeared on the list stepped down. The Academy had also followed it up by setting up a Internal Committee. In an interview with Firstpost, N Murali, the Academys president, spoke about the decision to drop the musicians and the likely repercussions. Murali also expressed hope that other institutions would follow suit. Edited excerpts: The ripples of this ongoing #MeTooIndia movement have been felt in the world of Carnatic music as well. Is this the first time that allegations of this sort, against noted musicians, are being given a hearing in the community? I think this is the first time that the #MeToo movement in India has given voice to the victims who have been unable to speak up all along over the years to articulate their trauma and suffering. It is virtually a #MeToo storm that is blowing across Carnatic music because many musicians have been called out on social media. Overall, it is a good thing because at least these women have now been able to speak up. As an institution, Music Academy experienced some of it last year. When one of our secretaries was named in Rayar Sarkar's list, he was made to resign. After that the Academy had its own Prevention of Sexual Harassment Policy and Internal Committee. But it applies only to a workplace under the act. But we, as an institution, cannot be blind to what is happening around us. We also wanted to express our solidarity with the victims. We also wanted to uphold the credibility of Music Academy, a 90-year-old pre-eminent institution and a premier cultural institution in the city. Could you please tell us a little about how this decision was taken? What were some of the considerations on the Academy's mind while the situation was being evaluated? Merely naming was not sufficient for us. We broadly worked out some criteria. We looked into incidents of a serious nature and the descriptions given normally more than one. We also spoke to some people in the industry who were unbiased and then decided to drop the seven musicians from the December festival. We applied the same yardstick to all the seven musicians dropped even if they were big, eminent, well-known musicians. Chitravina N Ravikiran, for instance, was our Sangeetha Kalanidhi awardee last year. But by the same yardstick, he was dropped this year. We have taken a lead. Now other institutions have to follow. We also hope it will be a deterrent against such acts in future. The Music Academy has a right to feature a musician or not in the festival, so we exercise it. This is not a legal process. These are allegations and we are not judging them guilty. Has the Academy been approached by any of the survivors who have made these allegations against the artists? Or was the Academy taking cognisance of news reports and the stories being shared on social media? We took cognisance of the exposes. We took our own decisions and we are not part of any committees or any sabha. We took our independent decision which we thought in our view we thought is fair. Did the individual artists who were dropped from the December season share any response with the Academy? We communicated our decision officially with them. And some of them not all have not responded. Some have denied those allegations. They are expected to deny (these allegations). Chitravina N Ravikiran, who was the Sangeetha Kalanidhi award recipient for 2017, was expected to be on stage this year as per tradition when the new Sangeetha Kalanidhi would be named... Do you foresee any issues arising from his name being dropped from the line-up? It is not automatic that previous year's Sangeetha Kalanidhi is on stage when the new awardee is announced. On many occasions, some of them were not available on those days. What we have done is, his performance will not be there. I presume otherwise he may not want to come. So the issue doesnt arise. What is the way forward for the Carnatic music community? How do we ensure that the issues/problems highlighted in this wave of the #MeToo movement are acted upon, and rooted out? See if actions such as what we have taken are taken by many others, hopefully that will be a deterrent for future behaviour of that kind. These women have been given a voice to speak up, they may do so in future. It is very difficult for anybody an alleged harasser to do what he has allegedly done and get away with it. It is no longer the situation. Any redressal mechanism that you would suggest for the community? No mechanism has been set up for grievances or complaints so far. But as far as the Madras Music Academy is concerned, if some musician is harassed within our premises, in our workplace, they can complain to us. At that time our mechanism will apply. But if something happens outside, under the law we cant do anything. As far as we are concerned, all that we have is the power to do is whether or not to feature them in the Margazhi season. That is what we have done now. Initially the reports said that the boat, MRM1, capsized off the coast of Mumbai after it hit a submerged rock while making its way towards the Shivaji memorial site, but eye witness accounts and further investigation revealed several other lapses behind the tragedy. One person drowned after a boat carrying 25 people, including a couple of Maharashtra government officials, capsized in the Arabian Sea off the Mumbai coast on Wednesday. The boat was heading towards the proposed site for the Shivaji memorial. Initially, reports said that the boat, MRM1, capsized as it hit an underwater rock while making its way towards the Shivaji memorial site, but some other theories have been floated: Mumbai Mirror correspondent Yogesh Naik, who was on the boat belonging to West Coast Marine Yacht Services India, said the boat was overloaded beyond its capacity of 20 persons. In his account, Naik said despite the captains refusal to ferry, some political workers convinced him once six people got off. The boat was still over capacity and as it made its way towards the site, it hit a submerged rock. As water gushed in and passengers panicked, the crew ran out of safety jackets. When a rescue boat arrived, panicked passengers rushed to one side, tilting the boat which eventually capsized. While many who were thrown into the sea were rescued by the crew and the response teams, Naik said Pawar got trapped in the cabin. By the time authorities reached, it was too late. According to NDTV, two rescue boats had been dispatched to reach MRM1 but confusion prevailed as there was no list of crew or passengers available and it was not clear if passengers on board were wearing safety jackets. Some eye-witnesses also claimed that before it hit a submerged rock, the pilot of the boat had lost the way and it had been drifting for more than an hour. Chairperson of the Shivaji memorial committee Vinayak Mete, who was on the other boat in the entourage, told NDTV the boat was owned by the Maharashtra government. However according to Hindustan Times, it was a private speedboat arranged at the last moment that was used to ferry the political workers and media personnel to the memorial site. An official of the Mumbai Port Trust, which issues permissions for boats and ferries to operate from Gateway of India, was quoted by the newspaper as saying MRM1 was not given permission to sail. The official further added that the capsized boat did not have the vessel traffic system (VPS), which helps it to be located in the sea. Another senior MbPT official told Hindustan Times the driver of the capsized boat should not have avoided the route near the Prongs Reef, which is generally rocky and demarcated route should have been followed. DNA quoted a senior Public Works Department official who admitted that despite there being a government function, a recce of the venue was not done and trials supervised by officers and personnel from the Coast Guard and Indian Navy were not conducted. According to the newspaper, the captain of the boat was not qualified and had also compromised with the navigation plan. A retired Coast Guard officer was quoted as saying that the programme should not have been organised during low tide. Mid-Day reported that MLC Jayant Patil, whose shipping company sent its boats to rescue and ferry passengers of MRM1, questioned the use of a fibre boat to wade through rocky waters. He asserted that fibre boats can be used in creeks but stronger boats are required for tougher waterways. Besides permission and safety issues with the boat and the, there was confusion over distress calls and emergency protocol at sea. The Indian Express reported that the Coast Guard received its first alert from a journalist on board the vessel and the authority was not aware if the boat had relevant transmission system to alert its distress and be seen on their systems. There was no clarity on which vessel needed assistance and a clear picture emerged later when Chetak helicopters were dispatched and they then sent images of the vessel to the Coast Guard. During the course of the rescue operation, the Coast Guard prematurely announced that all passengers were safe and it was later learnt that a passenger, Siddharth Pawar, was missing. According to The Indian Express, there is no clarity among most authorities involved regarding the who sent the distress call and when it was received. India's resource constraints, political climate at home and chronic inability to keep its end of the bargain on projects hamper its rising economic profile and interfere with the nature of its strategic partnerships with like-minded powers. The real juice in bilateral ties lies elsewhere, but the bullet train has inadvertently become the focal point of all attention around India and Japans strategic friendship, the latest iteration of which will be on display when Prime Minister Narendra Modi lands in Tokyo for a two-day visit from Sunday. This will be his third trip to Japan marking the fifth annual summit meeting between the two sides and the 12th meeting between Modi and Japanese prime minister Shinzo Abe. In some ways, the brouhaha around the $17 billion-project is understandable. The bullet train, based on Japans Shinkansen technology, was supposed to be the symbol of deepening bilateral engagement and a successful marriage between Indias need for world-class infrastructure and Japans willingness to provide it through a considerate and transparent mechanism. Instead, Modi and Abes flagship project linking Mumbai and Ahmedabad through a 316-mile line has become a hot button political issue after running into land acquisition problems. No surprises there. Latest media reports indicate that another set of deadlines are about to be missed in an already delayed start. Around 1,000 farmers from Gujarat have approached the state high court, claiming that they are unwilling to part with their land for the project citing unhappiness with compensation. They have threatened to move the Supreme Court. The project, which spans over 300 villages, has run into similar issues in neighbouring Maharashtra, and state officials have warned in a report that the December 2018 deadline for completion of survey and acquisition will face imminent delay due to inability of the NHSRCL (National High Speed Rail Corporation Limited) to acquire private plots. Meanwhile, Japan, which is supposed to fund 81 percent of the estimated project cost through a 50-year soft loan at 0.1 percent rate of interest, has already released the first instalment of Rs 5,500 crore through Japan International Cooperation Agency (JICA). What we see here, therefore, is a good example of the issues that other countries face in partnering with India on infrastructure and connectivity projects. For instance, the 1,700 km-Trilateral Highway one of Indias main connectivity projects with the ASEAN connecting India, Myanmar and Thailand was scheduled to be completed by 2016 but after repeated delays, the deadline has been pushed back to 2020. In contrast, China finishes its projects well ahead of schedule. For key maritime powers in the Indo-Pacific who look upon India as a geopolitical balancer, New Delhis resource constraints, political climate at home and chronic inability to keep its end of the bargain on projects hamper its rising economic profile and interfere with the nature of its strategic partnerships with like-minded powers despite shared interests and concerns on Chinas rise. These delays have consequences in strategic partnerships. Japan is rapidly scaling up its ties with India and the cooperation is attaining a deeper and sharper edge across various domains. Abe recognises the centrality of Indias position in his free and open Indo-Pacific concept but what these hurdles do is place a spanner in the scope of strategic coordination. Not that Japan is likely to air its anxiety. But in the words of Kenji Hiramatsu, the Japanese ambassador to India, there was a subtle stress on the importance of meeting deadlines. Calling the bullet train project symbolic and very important, Hiramatsu during a recent Brookings India briefing in New Delhi hoped that Indian government will find a way to ensure this land acquisition issue is amicably and mutually settled. As mentioned before, it is rather unfortunate that the high-speed railway project has monopolised the discussion because real juice in the burgeoning India-Japan ties lies in the close strategic embrace that is becoming progressively dynamic leaving aside an indifferent past. Modi and Abe must be complimented for bringing ties out of cold storage and engineering a dovetailing of interest in Japans FOIP (free and open Indo-Pacific) strategy and Indias Act East policy, but there is still immense room for strategic collaboration between both sides. For India, at least, it is probably the only strategic relationship that comes unattached with political baggage at home. The two nations have no strategic conflicts, share complementary interests and while Modi has called Japan the cornerstone of Indias Act East policy, Abe has been vocal about how a strong and capable India is in Japans interest and how New Delhi may play a pivotal role in securing supply chains and ensuring fair access to resources in Indo-Pacific. The trust is mutual. As Tan Ming Hui and Nazia Hussain write in The Diplomat, Japan is the only country New Delhi has allowed to tread in the politically sensitive region of northeastern India Tokyo has been providing official development assistance (ODA) loans in the fields of energy, water supply, forestry, and urban development in Indias northeast since 1981. Also, New Delhi has for the first time allowed for foreign investment in the strategically critical Andaman and Nicobar Islands." While much of the recent collaboration in areas of defence and security has been caused by strategic anxiety over Chinas rise, it will be unfair to case the partnership only in a reactionary mould. Modi-Abes personal chemistry has played a big part in cementing the ties both strong and popular leaders who have a clear idea about the trajectory of ties. Abe is laying out the red carpet for Modi as he arrives in Tokyo on Sunday. Media reports indicate that the Japanese prime minister will host a private dinner for his Indian counterpart at his holiday home in the picturesque Yamanashi prefecture, which is home to Mount Fuji, in a rare gesture. Apart from the symbolism, regional security will be high on agenda when Modi meets Abe. The buzz about an impending military logistics pact between India and Japan have grown in recent times to complement the growing military cooperation and intelligence exchanges between both nations. Called the Acquisition and Cross Servicing Agreement (ACSA), the agreement is expected to make it easier for both militaries to share their naval bases for refuelling, replenishment and supplies. A close synergy between the two navies may allow Indian warships, operating off the coast of China, to access Japanese facilities while Japanese ships may access major Indian naval bases including the Andaman and Nicobar islands that lies proximate to the Malacca Straits (the route for Japan and Chinas trade and fuel imports). If ACSA is indeed signed during Modis visit it is not a conclusive decision but still a matter of negotiation then India would have added Japan to its list of countries with whom it has signed similar LSA (logistics support agreement) pacts such as the US, France and Singapore. India and Japan may also sign (or at least initiate discussion on signing a Maritime Domain Awareness agreement that will facilitate information exchange between both navies. This has huge implications for both countries that are grappling with Chinas hegemonic behaviour in the maritime domain. As Ajai Shukla writes in Business Standard on the importance of MDA, If a Japanese P-1 maritime patrol aircraft detects a Chinese submarine in the Indian Ocean, it would pass on the information to the Indian Navy. An MDA agreement puts more eyes on the job of monitoring an oceanic area of interest. China remains the elephant in the room no matter where Abe or Modi decides to meet. Significantly, the Japanese prime minister is paying a rare visit to China and will return just in time to host the Indian prime minister. India is adamant that Abes China visit the first by a Japanese leader to Beijing in 11 years wont impact bilateral ties. Not only will there be no impact of (Abes China) visit, but India welcomes the improvement in ties between China and Japan, because an Indo-Pacific that is inclusive and brings every country on board is something Prime Minister Modi has spoken off, foreign secretary Vijay Gokhale told reporters on Thursday. Yet the hedging strategy would have missed no one necessitated as much by Chinas revanchist behaviour as the uncertainty ushered in by Donald Trumps protectionist policies. India, which engineered a reset with China in Wuhan has been trying in its own way to navigate the choppy geopolitical waters in the neighbourhood. Yet the larger strategic logic of a closer India-Japan embrace remains imperative if only to ensure as Brahma Chellaney writes in Japan Times, that Abe-Modi summit contributes to the larger U.S.-initiated effort to build strategic equilibrium, power stability and maritime security in the Indo-Pacific. When Modi lands in Tokyo, he will be aware that the levers of Asias most important strategic partnership are in his, and Abes hands. Addressing an LDF meeting in Kottayam, Chief Minister Pinarayi Vijayan asserted the state government would implement the Supreme Court order permitting entry of all women into the Sabarimala temple. Thiruvananthapuram/Kottayam: Cracking the whip, Police have arrested 1400 people, who took part in demonstrations across Kerala against entry of women in the 10-50 age group into the Lord Ayyappa temple at Sabarimala. State police chief Loknath Behera Thursday said the arrests were made in the last two days and 440 cases registered in connection with violent incidents following the Supreme Court verdict allowing women of menstrual age to offer prayers at the hill temple. Kerala Governor P Sathasivam on Thursday met Union Home minister Rajnath Singh at New Delhi and apprised him of the law and order situation and the recent events in and around the shrine following the top court verdict. Addressing an Left Democratic Front (LDF) meeting in Kottayam, Chief Minister Pinarayi Vijayan asserted the state government would implement the Supreme Court order permitting entry of all women into the Lord Ayyappa temple. He said the Travancore Devaswom Board (TDB) that manages the shrine would evolve a new system to prevent stay of "criminals" at Sabarimala Sannidhanam (temple complex). He condemned activist Rahul Easwar's statement that they had a contingency plan to force the closure of the temple by spilling blood on its premises by some devotees in case any woman in the 'barred' age group managed to reach it. Without naming Easwar, he questioned the intention of "the leader of the protesters" opposing implementation of the Supreme Court order. He alleged that Congress and RSS were leading agitations against the constitution bench of the supreme Court. Meanwhile, BJP alleged that efforts were made to violate the temple customs by facilitating darshan of women having Maoist links at the temple when it was opened for the monthly pooja last week. Police have released photographs of over 200 people suspected to have been involved in the protests at Sabarimala to prevent the entry of women of menstrual age into the shrine last week. Special teams would be formed in all districts to identify the suspects whose photographs were released on Wednesday, police sources said. Pathnamthitta district police chief T Narayanan said a list of 210 people, who are suspected to have taken part in the protests and their photographs have been been sent to Superintendents of Police of various districts for identification. As part of steps to beef up security at the 'Sannidhanam' (temple complex), it has been decided to deploy 5,000 additional police personnel during the three-month-long 'mandalam-makaravillaku' season starting on 17 November. The number of police personnel at Sannidhanam, Pamba and Nilakkal would also be increased and more CCTV cameras would be installed, a police press note said. The temple had witnessed high drama recently with around a dozen women in the 10-50 age group being prevented by protesting devotees from entering it after the doors were opened for all women following the apex court verdict. Kerala Devaswom Minister Kadakkampally Surendran Thursday claimed that effective police intervention had foiled the protesters' bid to "desecrate" the Ayyappa temple by spilling blood in the premises if women devotees in the 10-50 age group offered prayers. He said the "conspiracy" of the devotees was made clear by Ayyappa Dharma Sena president Rahul Easwar, who had said the faithful had plans to make the Lord Ayyappa shrine "impure" by spilling blood on its premises, forcing its closure if young girls and women devotees tried to enter the shrine. "This was a planned attempt to desecrate the holy temple, but effective police intervention defeated their efforts," Surendran told reporters. Easwar, who belongs to the Thazhamon family of Sabarimala tantris (priests), had said they had drawn up a contingency plan to force the closure of the temple in case young devotees in the "barred" age group managed to reach the shrine for darshan. The minister said this disclosure showed that there was a well-conceived plan, similar to that followed by nations to attack their enemies and added that this attempt was not only seditious, but also against the interest of devotees. Rahul Easwar had said the faithful were prepared to inflict knife injuries on themselves on the temple premises, which would have forced the priests to close the gates. The Kerala High Court on Thursday dismissed a Public Interest Litigation seeking barring of entry of women in the menstrual age group into the Sabarimala hill shrine till additional facilities were set up for them, and said the petitioner can approach the Supreme Court. In a related development, a meeting of Tantris (priests) held at Kochi accused the chief minister of making statements humiliating the temple priests in the state. They also condemned his reported remarks against the chief priest of Sabarimala. On Monday evening, Modi and Abe will hold wide-ranging talks with a focus on bilateral, regional and global issues of mutual concerns which will include exploring ways to deepen cooperation in the Indo-Pacific region. New Delhi: In a special gesture, Prime Minister Narendra Modi will be hosted by his Japanese counterpart Shinzo Abe for a private dinner at his holiday home in the picturesque Yamanashi prefecture on 28 October, perhaps the first such reception being extended to a foreign leader. Modi will pay a two-day visit to Japan from 28-29 October to hold the annual India-Japan summit with Abe. The focus of the visit will be to further expand cooperation in the Indo-Pacific region, carry out joint infrastructure projects in third countries and further boost ties key sectors like defence and trade. Foreign Secretary Vijay Gokhale, briefing reporters on Modi's visit, said Abe will take his Indian counterpart to his personal home in Yamanashi for a private dinner on Sunday following which both the leaders will travel to Tokyo by train. Yamanashi, at a distance of around 110 km from Tokyo, is surrounded by several mountains including Mount Fuji - the country's tallest peak at around 3,776 metres. "This is very special gesture the Japanese prime minister is making. We believe this is the first time a foreign leader is visiting Abe's holiday home," Gokhale said, referring to the dinner for Modi. In the afternoon of Sunday, Abe will host an informal lunch for Modi at a hotel, with view of Mount Fuji, and both the leaders will take a stroll at the grounds of the hotel. "Then they will visit a company which is a leading manufacturer of factory automation," Gokhale said, adding Abe has taken personal interests in working out the programme for Modi's visit. On Monday evening, Modi and Abe will hold wide-ranging talks with a focus on bilateral, regional and global issues of mutual concerns which will include exploring ways to deepen cooperation in the Indo-Pacific region, boosting defence and security ties and undertaking infrastructure projects in Asia and Africa in a trilateral framework. "It goes without saying that Indo-Pacific will be major topic for discussion between both the leaders," said the foreign secretary. He said there will be discussions on how the two countries can collaborate in the context of the Indo-Pacific in Asia and Africa on capacity building and on infra projects in a trilateral manner. "In other words it will be India, Japan plus one." He said there are commonalities between vision by Modi and Abe on the Indo-Pacific. Gokhale said the two leaders are expected to deliberate on regional security issues, situation Korean peninsula and that India will raise its concerns over terrorism. He said the two leaders are also likely to deliberate on implementation of the dedicated freight corridor, the Delhi Mumbai industrial corridor, Mumbai-Ahmedabad high speed rail project. "One of the agreements expected to be signed is for second tranche of the official development assistance (ODA) by Japan for the Mumbai-Ahmedabad high speed rail project," said the foreign secretary. On Monday morning, the prime minister will address the Indian community in Tokyo. A number of Japanese leaders including Foreign Minister Taro Kono will also call on the prime minister. "Then Modi will participate in a series of business events which will include meeting with top executives of Japanese venture capital companies and attending launch of a grand start-up challenge, a new programme which encourages Indian and Japanese startups," said Gokhale. Modi will also meet the India-Japan business leaders' forum and address the honchos of top companies. "The visit is characterised both by the special strategic and global partnership that we established with Japan and by the personal relationship the prime minister has evolved with his counterpart Prime Minister Shinzo Abe," said Gokhale. He said the focus of the visit will be to how India leverage Japan as a development partner for its economic modernisation and flagship development projects. After talks between the two sides, Abe will host a state banquet in honour of Modi. The prime minster will leave for India after the banquet. Japanese emperor Akihito will not be in Tokyo during Modi's visit and that is why there would be no meeting between the two. Security forces launched a cordon and search operation in Pazalpora village of Dangiwacha Sopore in the north Kashmir district this morning after receiving specific information about the presence of militants in the area. Srinagar: Two militants and an Army jawan were killed during an encounter between militants and security forces in Sopore area of Baramulla district of Jammu and Kashmir Friday, officials said. "Two militants have been killed in the Sopore operation," Srinagar-based Defence Spokesman Col Rajesh Kalia said. He said the identity and group affiliation of the slain militants is being ascertained. The defence spokesman said a soldier also lost his life in the gunbattle. Security forces launched a cordon and search operation in Pazalpora village of Dangiwacha Sopore in the north Kashmir district this morning after receiving specific information about the presence of militants in the area. The search operation turned into an encounter after the militants fired upon the search party of the forces, who retaliated. The operation is in progress, Col Kalia said, adding further details were awaited. Supreme Court hearing in CBI Director Alok Verma's petition LIVE updates: Rahul Gandhi was released from the Lodhi Colony Police Station soon after his detention. Coming out of the station, Congress chief said that the prime minister cannot flee from the truth. Prime Minister Narendra Modi panicked and the current CBI unrest is due to that, Rahul told reporters outside the police station. Auto refresh feeds As the CBI deals with an unprecedented internal crisis, all eyes are on the Supreme Court on Friday when its Director Alok Verma's plea against the Centre's order divesting him of duties and sending him on leave is slated to come up, amid high drama Thursday over the presence of Intelligence Bureau officers outside his official residence in New Delhi. Senior BJP leader Prakash Javadekar rejected as "manufactured lie" Gandhi's charge that government panicked over the possibility of him investigating the Rafale deal. Addressing a poll rally in Rajasthan and a news conference later in Delhi, Rahul said forcing Verma to go on indefinite leave was "illegal" and alleged it was done as the government "panicked" over the possibility of him investigating the controversial Rafale jet deal. The statement by a CBI spokesman in which it was also said appointment of Joint Director M Nageshwar Rao to discharge the duties of the agency director was only an interim arrangement came amid an escalating attack by Congress president Rahul Gandhi on the Modi government over the crisis in the country's premier probe agency. Forcing Alok Verma to go on indefinite leave was 'illegal', says Rahul: Congress plans protests across India today Alok Verma has alleged in his petition in Supreme Court that Special Director Rakesh Asthana stymied decisions which were crucial to the investigation of certain cases. In his petition , Verma has alleged that Asthana had concocted evidence to impugn his reputation, whereupon an FIR was registered against the latter, After Asthana had challenged the same in Delhi High Court yesterday, a few hours later, a decision was taken by the central government to send Verma on leave. Verma added that there are occasions when certain investigations into high functionaries do not take the direction that may be desirable to the government. In his petition, Verma also stated that he is a senior member of Indian Police Service with an unblemished record and an experience of over 35 years. In light of the same, he was appointed Director of CBI in January 2017 for a statutory two-year term. Verma has sought to have quashed the orders of the DoPT and CVC divesting him of his duties at the CBI, which he has referred to as "impugned orders" throughout his Supreme Court petition. "It is submitted that the impugned orders are manifestly arbitrary, sans natural justice and without due process," the CBI chief said. Referring to Asthana in his petition, without naming him, Verma said the "hurdles" the special director has posed at the CBI "have now been compounded by his complicity in concocting evidence to impugn" his reputation. "Over the recent past, although all functionaries within the CBI... have agreed on a certain course of action, the special director has been of a different view." 'Hurdles' the special director has posed at CBI 'have now been compounded by his complicity in concocting evidence to impugn' his reputation: Alok Verma As Newslaundry pointed out, "given this last-minute unprecedented development, Vermas petition challenging the government decision to take away his powers and send him on forced leave sounds paradoxical; how can a petition be heard against the government for removing the CBI chief when the CBI itself has come out on the front-foot and announced that Alok Verma will still be heading the countrys central investigating agency?" CBI, meanwhile, seems to have pulled off a move thereby which Alok Verma's plea in Supreme Court might not hold water in the courtroom. On Thursday, CBI announced that Verma - irrespective of the fact that he has been stripped off his powers and been sent on forced leave since 23 October - will still retain the position of Director in the CBI. At the same time, his deputy Rakesh Asthana, who was also sent on leave along with his boss, would retain his post of Special Director. In a strongly-worded letter to the prime minister, Kharge accused him of acting "arbitrarily" and creating a "false equivalence of charges" between the CBI director and his deputy Rakesh Asthana. Leader of the Congress party in Lok Sabha Mallikarjun Kharge has demanded answers from Prime Minister Narendra Modi over the action against CBI director Alok Verma without consulting other members of the panel that selected him. He said that "no meeting of the selection committee was convened to deliberate on this issue as prescribed under law". Kharge also accused Modi and his government of resorting to "snooping" on Verma to "cover-up" the Rafale 'scam'. Mallikarjun Kharge is part of a three-member panel headed by Prime Minister Narendra Modi that had selected Alok Verma last year to head the CBI. The then Chief Justice of India Jagdish Singh Khehar was the other member of the selection committee. No meeting of the selection committee was convened to deliberate Alok Verma's removal as prescribed under law: Kharge Rahul tweeted he will lead the party's protests outside the CBI headquarters in CGO complex in the national capital. Congress president Rahul Gandhi will lead the party as it stages protests outside all CBI offices across the country on Friday, demanding reinstatement of CBI director Alok Verma, who has been sent on leave, and seeking an apology from Prime Minister Narendra Modi for "destroying" the image of the premier investigating agency. According to latest reports, senior advocate Fali S Nariman will represent CBI director Alok Verma in court, meanwhile, the CVC will be represented by Solicitor General of India, Tushar Mehta. Advocates Mukul Rohtagi and Amrendra Sharan are appearing for Special Director of CBI, Rakesh Asthana. A three-judge bench consisting of Chief Justice of India Ranjan Gogoi and Justices Sanjay Kishan Kaul and KM Joseph is set to hear a petition filed by CBI Director Alok Kumar Verma challenging order of the CVC divesting him of the functions, duties and powers of CBI director. The same bench will also hear PIL filed by an NGO Common Cause through advocate Prashant Bhushan, challenging the legality pf government order sidelining the CBI chief. "Alok Verma continues to remain the Director of the CBI, Rakesh Asthana remains as Special Director and M Nageshwar Rao is looking after duties and functions of the Director in the interim period till the time CVC looks into allegations and counter allegations," the spokesperson told reporters. The Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) on Thursday said Alok Verma, who has been divested of his powers, will remain its director and the agency's number two Rakesh Asthana will continue as the special director, while M Nageshwar Rao has been given interim charge of the agency. The Tribune reported that there are speculations that lawyers could use the governments action against CBI Director Alok Verma and Special Director Rakesh Asthana in response to charges of corruption against each other as a proof of state of affairs in the agency to make cases of these economic offenders stronger. Even as the Centre tried to justify its move to shake things up in the CBI in its fight against corruption, there seem to be worries over its impact in international courts where India is seeking extradition of economic fugitives, including Mehul Choksi, Nirav Modi and Vijay Malaya. It is "false news. This is being manufactured by vested interest. Every file in CBI at each level is accounted for. These news stories appearing in the media will have an adverse impact on the credibility of the agency. The CBI is fighting cases internationally. Credibility shouldn't suffer," the spokesperson said. The CBI spokesperson described as "false" news report that appeared in a section of media suggesting that seven files were removed. He, however, rubbished media reports suggesting that a possible probe in Rafale deal was the cause behind Alok Verma being sidelined as CBI chief. The CBI spokesperson sought to allay fears of the agency's image crumbling down in international arena as the spat between CBI's number one and number two officials have reached the Supreme Court. He said that the bureau continues to function normally, under the interim chief M Nageshwar Rao, and set aside apprehensions that the agency's image will be tarnished. As CBI feud becomes public knowledge, bureau claims it's functioning normally, image will not be tarnished Party leader Nadeem-ul Haq is expected to remain present outside the CBI headquarters in New Delhi. The Trinamool Congress has decided to join the Congress-led protests outside all CBI offices today. Party chief Mamata Banerjee said that the CBI has unfortunately turned into BBI (BJP Bureau of Investigation) and announced that the party will support the protests against government's bid to destroy the institution of India's highest investigative agency. Senior advocates Fali S Nariman and Sanjay Hegde will represent Director of Central bureau of Investigation, ALok Kumar Verma in the Supreme Court Today. Verma had moved the apex court against government order to send him on leave, alleging tacit interference in the agency's functioning. The hearing is set to begin shortly. "Given this last-minute unprecedented development, Vermas petition challenging the government decision to take away his powers and send him on forced leave sounds paradoxical; how can a petition be heard against the government for removing the CBI chief when the CBI itself has come out on the front-foot and announced that Alok Verma will still be heading the countrys central investigating agency?," the report argues. According to a report in Newslaundry , CBI's recent statement, reiterating that both Alok Verma and Rakesh Asthana continue to hold their posts seems to have dampened Verma's arguments challenging government's decision to send him on leave. CBI reiterating that Alok Verma remains its chief may tilt scales against him in SC today Legal experts refer to Section 4B(2) of the DSPE Act, which mandates that the CBI Director cannot be transferred without the previous consent of a high-power committee chaired by the Prime Minister. They say that since the CBI Director is appointed on the recommendation of this committee which has the Leader of the Opposition and the Chief Justice of India as members. Relieving the CBI chief of his post would, as a natural corollary, require taking the consent of this committee. However, according to a report in The Hindu , legal experts opine that the CBI director cannot be transfered or stripped of his powers unilaterally by the CVC. The Supreme Court will examine today that whether the government and the Central Vigilance Commission (CVC) were right in unilaterally forcing the CBI Director on leave, even if they acted under the assumption that the move will restore public faith in the countrys premier investigative agency. The security outside CBI headquarters in New Delhi has been beefed up ahead of the Congress-led protests. The Delhi Police has deployed additional forces and water canons for mob control. All the roads leading to the agency's headquarters have also been blocked, India Today reported. Congress president Rahul Gandhi has urged people to join him in protesting against the prime minister's isgraceful and unconstitutional attempt' to block investigation into what he alleges is the Rafale scam. He will be leading the Congress party's march to the CBI headquarters from Lodhi road. Trinamool Congress will join the Congress party protest led by Rahul Gandhi at Central Bureau of Investigation headquarters against the removal of CBI Director Alok Verma; Visuals from outside CBI headquarters in Delhi. Party leader Nadeem-ul Haq will join the Congress protest as TMC representative. As political as the discussion relating to the CBI shake-up may have become, the Supreme court of India is set to decide upon the technicalities of procedures laid down in appointment of the CBI director. The apex court will decide whether the government followed all laid-down procedure when they sent Alok verma on leave. The court is also likely to take note of allegations of corruption against senior ranking officials. Advocate Prashant Bhushan has sought a SIT monitored probe against all corrupt officials, including Rakesh Asthana. Former Attorney General and senior advocate Mukul Rohatgi, who is representing Special Director Rakesh Asthana, said: "It is just one more case. What is big about it? It is not as important as you think it is." Now, as the fight reaches to the Supreme Court, it will also witness the clash of legal luminaries. The fact that Alok Verma is represented by Indias towering jurist and legal luminary Fali S Nariman, while Rakesh Astahan will be represented with former Attorney General and Senior Supreme Court Lawyer Mukul Rohatgi, one can expect enough heat in the courtroom. As the battle between the warring Number 1 and Number 2 of the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) reaches to the Supreme Court, the feud has now assumed an important constitutional question: Whether procedures were followed by the CVC when it unilaterally divested Alok Verma of his powers. Apart from Delhi Police, CISF personnel have also been deployed outside the agency's office. The police has barricaded the entrance to the CBI's office and has kept ambulances, riot control teams on standby. The security outside CBI headquarters in New Delhi has been beefed up ahead of the Congress-led protests. The Delhi Police has deployed additional forces and water canons for mob control. All the roads leading to the agency's headquarters have also been blocked, India Today reported. CNN-News18 reported that the Congress march to the CBI headquarter will be blocked just before it reaches the agency's office. The police sources told the news channel that the protesters will be stopped just before they approach CBI headquarters. Meanwhile, the Congress party vowed to continue its protest despite all resistance. The Supreme Court has extended the time span to submit the report on CVC enquiry against Alok Verma to two weeks. The Chief Justice, however, denied a similar request to extend the time span to three weeks. CJI Ranjan Gogoi said that the CVC probe wil be monitered by retired Supreme Court judge AK Patnaik. Meanwhile, the Supreme Court has ruled that the CBI interim chief Nageswara Rao will not take any decision on policy matter. CJI Ranjan Gogoi said that Rao may only undertake the agency's routine work in his capacity as interim chief, adding that the court can't allow this matter to prolong in the interest of country. The Supreme Court, in a bid to find a solution to the current impasse at CBI, has ordered a time bound Supreme COurt monitored probe against both Astahan and Verma. The court, however, said that at this stage, the enquiry will be only to find out whether there is a prima facie case of corruption against the CBI officials. Court monitored SC probe to have restricted scope, will only explore prima facie case of wrong doing Apart from limiting CBI's interim director from taking any policy decisions, the Supreme Court also ruled that all decisions taken by M Nageshwar Rao since 23 October should be submitted to the Supreme Court in a sealed envelop. All decisions of interim chief to be submitted in sealed cover to SC; next hearing on 12 Nov As the Supreme Court heard petitions filed by Alok Verma and Prashant Bhushan, the Congress launched its protest near all offices of CBI across the country. In New delhi, the party started off its march from Lodhi Road. Senior Congress leaders including Ahmed Patel, Ambika Soni and Anand Sharma arrived at Delhi's Deen Dayal Upadhyay College, the starting point of the Congress protest march. Expelled JD(U) leader Sharad Yadav has also joined the Congress protest. Congress president Rahul Gandhi led the party as it staged a protest march from Delhi's Dayal Singh college. The party is demanding reinstatement of CBI director Alok Verma, who has been sent on leave, and an apology from Prime Minister Narendra Modi for "destroying" the image of the premier investigating agency. As Rahul Gandhi lead Congress protest march against removal of CBI director, the Delhi Police stopped the protesters just ahead of the CBI headquarters. The road leading up to the CBI HQ was heavily barricaded. The protesters were stopped barely 200 metres before the CBI headquarter. Police use water cannon at Congress workers who are protesting against the removal of CBI Director Alok Verma in Chandigarh. Rahul Gandhi got on to a truck in front of the police barricades put up outside the CBI headquarters to prevent the protesters from reaching the building. Top Congress leaders took part in the march that culminated in a demonstration outside the CBI headquarters. Leaders of other parties also joined the protest as a mark of solidarity. Loktantrik Janata Dal leader Sharad Yadav, CPI leader D Raja and TMC's Nadimul Haque joined the Congress protest that started from outside Dayal Singh College on Lodhi Road. Congress president Rahul Gandhi has also climbed atop a bus parked in front of the barricade and is sitting there. A huge mob of protesters has gathered just 200 metres away from the CBI headquarters. A show-down of sorts seems to be developing between the cops and protesters in the heart of the national capital as some of the protesters are trying to break through the barricades set up by the police. The tension seems to be rising as the police waits for the protests to precipitate. Meanwhile, the mob too has refused to budge. Watch: Showdown in heart of Delhi as police detains Congress workers trying to breach barricade outside CBI HQ Finance Minister Arun jaitley said the Supreme Court order on the CBI is a positive development. He said: "The current CBI controversy is an extremely positive development. Government has no interest for or against any individual. The Centre is interested in maintaining professionalism, image and constitutional integrity of CBI." Congress president Rahul Gandhi and several top Congress leaders have courted arrest barely 200 metres from the CBI headquarters. Dramatic visuals played out in the high security area of national capital as Opposition protesters jostled with policemen and tried to breach the barricade. Meanwhile, Rahul courted arrests amid chants of 'Chowkidar Chor hai'. Congress workers, who were holding a sit-in dharna outside the CBI office in Lucknow, under the leadership of state Congress committee president Raj Babbar have been detained. Babbar was also taken into custody. He accused the central government of dividing society and destroying constitutional institutions. The CBI has been dragged into the controversy to suppress the corruption by the Prime Minister and his cronies, he added. "This is Modi's jugaad to save himself," he said. Congress president Rahul Gandhi, along with senior party leaders Ashok Gehlot, Pramod Tiwari and Ahmed Patel are being taken to the Lodhi Road police station. They were detained after they refused to turn back the procession they were trying to lead to the CBI headquarters. The leaders, instead parked themselves merely 200 metres from the CBI HQ. Live protest visuals show that Congress workers have surrounded the police vehicle carrying senior Congress leaders, including Rahul Gandhi. The police van, which was reportedly taking the leaders to Lodhi road police station, has not been able to budge forward from the protest site. "Congress president Rahul Gandhi and other leaders who were protesting near CBI headquarters have been arrested," says party leader Randeep Surjewala. "Welcome intervention by the hon'ble Supreme Court of India in the CBI matter. In the interests of the nation, hope that institutional integrity of CBI will be upheld & powers that be will understand that their illegal acts will not go un-challanged (sic)," Kejriwal tweeted. Delhi Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal Friday welcomed the "intervention" by the Supreme Court in the turmoil at the CBI and hoped the institutional integrity of the investigating agency will be upheld. Congress president Rahul Gandhi was detained and taken to the Lodhi Colony Police Station. The Congress president was leading a protest march against the CBI row. At least, 50 Congress workers, along with state chief Raj Babbar have been detained by the Uttar Pradesh police. They had earlier tried to storm the barricades. Thirunavukkarasar accused the Centre of removing Alok Verma to disrupt investigations into the Rafale deal. The move was made without consulting the opposition and disrespects the Supreme Court, he said. Modi has destroyed CBI's credibility, he added. The protestors were later arrested by the police. Tamil Nadu Congress Committee leaders protested against the dismissal of CBI chief in front of Shashtri Bhavan in Nungambakkam, which hosts several union government offices. State unit head S Thirunavukkarasar headed the protest that was attended by former state chief Kumari Ananthan, Thangabalu and other Congress MLAs. Rahul Gandhi was released from the Lodhi Colony Police Station soon after his detention. Coming out of the station, Congress chief said that the prime minister cannot flee from the truth. Prime Minister Narendra Modi panicked and the current CBI unrest is due to that, Rahul told reporters outside the police station. "PM can run, he can hide but in the end, truth will be revealed. Removing CBI Director will not help. PM acted against CBI Director; it was an act out of panic," Rahul said. PM can run and hide but at the end truth will be revealed: Rahul Gandhi The demonstrators, led by Odisha Pradesh Congress Committee President Niranjan Patnaik, raised slogans against the Centre, alleging that Verma was sent on leave to stall investigation into charges of "corruption" in Rafale jet deal. Hundreds of Congress activists and leaders staged a demonstration outside CBI office here on Friday, as part of the party's nationwide protest against the decision of the Centre to send the probe agency's director, Alok Verma, on leave. Thirunavukkarasar accused the Centre of removing Alok Verma to disrupt investigations into the Rafale deal. The move was made without consulting the opposition and disrespects the Supreme Court, he said. Modi has destroyed CBI's credibility, he added. The protestors were later arrested by the police. Tamil Nadu Congress Committee leaders protested against the dismissal of CBI chief in front of Shashtri Bhavan in Nungambakkam, which hosts several union government offices. State unit head S Thirunavukkarasar headed the protest that was attended by former state chief Kumari Ananthan, Thangabalu and other Congress MLAs. PM can run, he can hide but in the end, truth will be revealed. Removing #CBI Director will not help. PM acted against CBI Director; it was an act out of panic: Congress President Rahul Gandhi after leaving Lodhi Colony police station in Delhi pic.twitter.com/w5QJfREUMm Rahul Gandhi was released from the Lodhi Colony Police Station soon after his detention. Coming out of the station, Congress chief said that the prime minister cannot flee from the truth. Prime Minister Narendra Modi panicked and the current CBI unrest is due to that, Rahul told reporters outside the police station. "PM can run, he can hide but in the end, truth will be revealed. Removing CBI Director will not help. PM acted against CBI Director; it was an act out of panic," Rahul said. PM can run and hide but at the end truth will be revealed: Rahul Gandhi Speaking to reporters outside the Lodhi Colony police station, senior Congress leaders like Ashok Gehlot and Anand Sharma said that it should be clear that the protests are being held against Narendra Modi's interference in key institutes in India. We are not protesting against CBI, we are protesting against Narendra Modi's interference: Anand Sharma The demonstrators, led by Odisha Pradesh Congress Committee President Niranjan Patnaik, raised slogans against the Centre, alleging that Verma was sent on leave to stall investigation into charges of "corruption" in Rafale jet deal. Hundreds of Congress activists and leaders staged a demonstration outside CBI office here on Friday, as part of the party's nationwide protest against the decision of the Centre to send the probe agency's director, Alok Verma, on leave. Defending the absence of senior party functionaries, Congress spokesperson Subhash Agarwal told PTI the agitation was only symbolic and hence, the presence of MLAs and corporators did not matter much. PTI However, MLAs and corporators did not take part in the protest in the city, though the party high command had directed legislators to participate in the agitation. Karnataka Congress workers staged a protest in front of the CBI office in Bengaluru following the party's call for a nationwide agitation. "Eight leaders and 150 workers were detained for 20 minutes and then released," ANI quoted DCP South Vijay Kumar as saying on the Congress protests outside the CBI headquarters in New Delhi. "We are protesting against Modi's disgraceful attempt to prevent an investigation into the Rafale scam by removing CBI chief Alok Verma," he said. PTI Slamming Prime Minister Narendra Modi for allegedly "degrading the autonomy of the nation's top investigating agency", APCC president Ripun Bora, who led the demonstrators, said Verma was divested of powers to "stifle probe into allegations of corruption in Rafale jet deal". Activists and leaders of Assam Pradesh Congress Committee (APCC) staged a dharna outside the CBI office in Guwahati, as part of the party's nationwide protest. Supreme Court hearing Alok Verma plea LATEST updates: Rahul Gandhi has tweeted saying that the government cannot imprison the truth. Rahul Gandhi was released from the Lodhi Colony Police Station soon after his detention. Coming out of the station, Congress chief said that the prime minister cannot flee from the truth. Prime Minister Narendra Modi panicked and the current CBI unrest is due to that, Rahul told reporters outside the police station. "PM can run, he can hide but in the end, truth will be revealed. Removing CBI Director will not help. PM acted against CBI Director; it was an act out of panic," Rahul said. As many as 50 Congress leaders, including, state chief Raj Babbar have been detained by the Uttar Pradesh police. They had earlier tried to storm the barricades. Congress President Rahul Gandhi Friday courted arrest after staging a protest outside the CBI headquarters against the move to divest CBI Director Alok Verma of his powers and send him on leave. He has arrived at the Lodhi Colony Police Station in New Delhi along with a huge congregation of Congress supporters. Congress president Rahul Gandhi and several top Congress leaders have courted arrest barely 200 metres from the CBI headquarters. Dramatic visuals played out in the high security area of national capital as Opposition protesters jostled with policemen and tried to breach the barricade. A huge mob of protesters has gathered just 200 metres away from the CBI headquarters. A show-down of sorts seems to be developing between the cops and protesters in the heart of the national capital as some of the protesters are trying to break through the barricades set up by the police. The tension seems to be rising as the police waits for the protests to precipitate. Meanwhile, the mob too has refused to budge. Congress president Rahul Gandhi led the party as it staged a protest march from Delhi's Dayal Singh college. The party is demanding reinstatement of CBI director Alok Verma, who has been sent on leave, and an apology from Prime Minister Narendra Modi for "destroying" the image of the premier investigating agency. The Supreme Court Friday sought a response from the CBI, the CVC and the Centre on agency Director Alok Kumar Verma's plea challenging the government's decision to divest him of his duties and send him on leave. Apart from limiting CBI's interim director from taking any policy decisions, the Supreme Court also ruled that all decisions taken by M Nageshwar Rao since 23 October should be submitted to the Supreme Court in a sealed envelop. Meanwhile, the Supreme Court has ruled that the CBI interim chief Nageswara Rao will not take any decision on policy matter. CJI Ranjan Gogoi said that Rao may only undertake the agency's routine work in his capacity as interim chief, adding that the court can't allow this matter to prolong in the interest of country. CBI Special Director Rakesh Asthana has moved the Supreme Court challenging the order by the Central government to send him on leave, Bar and Bench reported. CBI's recent statement, reiterating that both Alok Verma and Rakesh Asthana continue to hold their posts seems to have dampened Verma's arguments challenging government's decision to send him on leave. "Given this last-minute unprecedented development, Vermas petition challenging the government decision to take away his powers and send him on forced leave sounds paradoxical; how can a petition be heard against the government for removing the CBI chief when the CBI itself has come out on the front-foot and announced that Alok Verma will still be heading the countrys central investigating agency?," the report argues Former Attorney General and senior advocate Mukul Rohatgi, who is representing Special Director Rakesh Asthana, said: "It is just one more case. What is big about it? It is not as important as you think it is." Congress president Rahul Gandhi has urged people to join him in protesting against the prime minister's isgraceful and unconstitutional attempt' to block investigation into what he alleges is the Rafale scam. He will be leading the Congress party's march to the CBI headquarters from Lodhi road. The security outside CBI headquarters in New Delhi has been beefed up ahead of the Congress-led protests. The Delhi Police has deployed additional forces and water canons for mob control. All the roads leading to the agency's headquarters have also been blocked, India Today reported. The Trinamool Congress has decided to join the Congress-led protests outside all CBI offices today. Party chief Mamata Banerjee said that the CBI has unfortunately turned into BBI (BJP Bureau of Investigation) and announced that the party will support the protests against government's bid to destroy the institution of India's highest investigative agency. TrinaA three-judge bench consisting of Chief Justice of Indian Ranjan Gogoi and Justices Sanjay Kishan Kaul and KM Joseph is set to hear a petition filed by CBI Director Alok Kumar Verma challenging order of the CVC divesting him of the functions, duties and powers of CBI director. The same bench will also hear PIL filed by an NGO Common Cause through advocate Prashant Bhushan, challenging the legality pf government order sidelining the CBI chief. According to latest reports, senior advocate Fali S Nariman will represent CBI director Alok Verma in court, meanwhile, the CVC will be represented by Solicitor General of India, Tushar Mehta. Advocates Mukul Rohtagi and Amrendra Sharan are appearing for Special Director of CBI, Rakesh Asthana. Leader of the Congress party in Lok Sabha Mallikarjun Kharge has demanded answers from Prime Minister Narendra Modi over the action against CBI director Alok Verma without consulting other members of the panel that selected him. In a strongly-worded letter to the prime minister, Kharge accused him of acting "arbitrarily" and creating a "false equivalence of charges" between the CBI director and his deputy Rakesh Asthana. Kharge was part of a three-member panel headed by Modi that had selected Verma last year to head the CBI. The then Chief Justice of India Jagdish Singh Khehar was the other member of the selection committee. CBI, meanwhile, seems to have pulled off a move thereby which Alok Verma's plea in Supreme Court might not hold water in the courtroom. On Thursday, CBI announced that Verma - irrespective of the fact that he has been stripped off his powers and been sent on forced leave since 23 October - will still retain the position of Director in the CBI. At the same time, his deputy Rakesh Asthana, who was also sent on leave along with his boss, would retain his post of Special Director. As reports pointed out, "given this last-minute unprecedented development, Vermas petition challenging the government decision to take away his powers and send him on forced leave sounds paradoxical; how can a petition be heard against the government for removing the CBI chief when the CBI itself has come out on the front-foot and announced that Alok Verma will still be heading the countrys central investigating agency?" As the CBI deals with an unprecedented internal crisis, all eyes are on the Supreme Court on Friday when its Director Alok Verma's plea against the Centre's order divesting him of duties and sending him on leave is slated to come up, amid high drama Thursday over the presence of Intelligence Bureau officers outside his official residence in New Delhi. Ahead of the hearing in the apex court, the CBI clarified Verma and Rakesh Asthana, who are locked in a bitter feud that triggered the crisis, will remain its Director and Special Director, in a bid to stress they were not removed from their posts. Both Verma and Astana were stripped of their powers and sent on leave by the Centre on the intervening night of Wednesday and Thursday. The statement by a CBI spokesman in which it was also said appointment of Joint Director M Nageshwar Rao to discharge the duties of the agency director was only an interim arrangement came amid an escalating attack by Congress president Rahul Gandhi on the Modi government over the crisis in the country's premier probe agency. The spokesman said the arrangement will continue until the Central Vigilance Commission(CVC) decides on its probe into graft allegations against the CBI's top two officers. Addressing a poll rally in Rajasthan and a news conference later in Delhi, Gandhi said forcing Verma to go on indefinite leave was "illegal" and alleged it was done as the government "panicked" over the possibility of him investigating the controversial Rafale jet deal. Senior BJP leader Prakash Javadekar rejected as "manufactured lie" Gandhi's charge that government panicked over the possibility of him investigating the Rafale deal. At a news conference, the union minister also emphatically said that the CBI chief was not removed and only sent on leave. In a veiled reference to Nageswara Rao, Gandhi also alleged that the interim charge of the agency has been given to a person who has cases against him so that the prime minister can control him. In a related development, the Supreme Court said it would consider according urgent hearing to a PIL seeking court-monitored SIT probe into the allegations of corruption against various CBI officials, including Asthana. A bench headed by Chief Justice Ranjan Gogoi considered the submission of lawyer Prashant Bhushan, appearing for NGO 'Common Cause' that there were wider issues of corruption affecting the probe agency and the PIL needed to be heard urgently. In his legal challenge before the apex court, Verma also sought stay of the Centre's order asking him to proceed on leave and giving interim charge of his post to Rao, a 1986 batch Odisha-cadre IPS officer. Verma's petition is listed for hearing before a bench comprising Chief Justice Ranjan Gogoi and Justices S K Kaul and K M Joseph. It will come up along with the petition filed by 'Common Cause'. The CBI chief contended that the decision taken "overnight" by the Centre and the CVC to divest him of his role as the head of the probe agency was "patently illegal" and such interference "erodes" the independence and autonomy of the institution. A row also broke out after four men belonging to the Intelligence Bureau(IB) were picked up outside Verma's official residence. While Home Ministry officials said the four men were on "routine, covert" duties in the high security area outside Verma's 2 Janpath residence, sources said they were taken away by police and questioned. The IB is entrusted with the responsibility of collecting intelligence on situations that may affect public order and internal security. Among other things, its units are "routinely" deployed in "sensitive areas", a Home Ministry official said. At times, this is done in association with local law enforcement agencies, and at other times, a surprise element is built in, he added. This also enables law enforcement agencies to respond immediately to developing situations. The officials carry their identity cards since they are on "routine duties", he explained. "This is unlike surveillance, which is done without any visible appurtenances. One unit, in the early hours of today, halted at Janpath where there was an unusual collection of people," the official said. This was with a view to check why people had collected at the location. "This is a high security zone where several protectees reside. Unfortunately, their presence was projected otherwise," another official said. Though police sources said the men were being interrogated, Deputy Commissioner of Police (New Delhi) Madhur Verma denied that police detained and questioned them. The CBI which refused to comment on the question about the status of Verma and Asthana Wednesday issued a clarification saying, "Alok Verma continues to remain Director of CBI, Asthana remains Special Director." "M Nageswar Rao is looking after duties and functions of the Director in the interim period till the time CVC looks into allegations and counter allegations," CBI Spokesperson said in a statement The CBI also rubbished as false a news report that files related to several crucial cases, including that of the Rafale fighter aircraft deal, was under the consideration of Verma when he was divested of his powers by the Centre in a midnight order. This is being manufactured by vested interests. Every file in the CBI at each level is accounted for, he added.x The incident had taken place near the victim's home at Niranjan Pat locality of Jalpaiguri district. Jalpaiguri (West Bengal): The West Bengal Police has filed a chargesheet against three persons in connection with the brutal rape of a woman in Jalpaiguri district, five days after the incident on 20 October, a police officer said Friday. The 35-year-old woman was raped and an iron rod inserted in her private parts brought back memories of the ghastly 2012 Jyoti Singh rape case in New Delhi "Police filed a charge sheet against the three accused on Thursday," the police officer said. The accused have been charge-sheeted under Sections 376D (gangrape), 326 (causing grievous injury) and 307 (attempt to murder) of the Indian Penal Code. Under Section 326 the minimum punishment is 10 years and under Section 376 D it is 20 years. The maximum punishment under both these provisions is life term. Under Section 307 the maximum punishment is 10 years. "While we have arrested two persons, one is still absconding," Superintendent of Police (SP) of Jalpaiguri Mitava Maity said. The incident had taken place near the victim's home at Niranjan Pat locality of Jalpaiguri district. "The prime accused, a relative of the woman, had called her out of her home on the pretext of resolving a land dispute," the SP had earlier said. "He then allegedly raped her and tortured her by inserting an iron rod in her private parts," the SP had said. "Two other persons accompanied the accused, but they did not rape or torture her," the SP had said after he had spoken to the woman, following her operation, at the hospital. The accused relative and another person who allegedly helped him in the crime were arrested, but the third accused has been absconding. The tribal woman's husband, a labourer, was away from home during the incident. The woman has three children. A rickshaw-puller had found her and took her home. She was taken to Dhupguri hospital on 22 October morning and shifted to Jalpaiguri Sadar Hospital. Doctors operated on her at the Sadar Hospital on that night and the woman was kept in the intensive care unit. She was administered blood as she had been bleeding profusely. "She is in a serious condition but is stable," doctors treating her had said Wednesday. She was shifted to the critical care unit (CCU) from the ICU on Thursday and doctors at the hospital said that her condition was stable, they said on Friday. iStock/Thinkstock(NEW YORK) -- The first "painting" produced by artificial intelligence to sell at a major auction house fetched nearly half a million dollars on Thursday. The portrait of 'Edmond De Belamy' sold for $432,500, or 43.5 times the upper range of the estimated price, Christie's said in a statement. The new owner is an anonymous phone bidder, who won the computer-generated print after "a battle between three phone bidders, an online participant in France and one gentleman in the room," the statement continued. A Picasso print in the same auction sold for the same price but had been estimated to go for $200,000 to 300,000. The Old Masters-like portrait, a blurry face of a European man of indistinct origin, is the brainchild of the Paris-based Obvious Collective -- and an algorithm. Obvious is a trio of 25-year old friends who live and work together. One of the members, Hugo Caselles-Dupre, discovered the Generative Adversarial Network (GAN) class of algorithms while working on his Ph.D. in machine learning. After the astonishing sale, Obvious released a statement: "We would like to thank the A.I. community, especially to those who have been pioneering the use of this new technology, including Ian Goodfellow, the creator of the GAN algorithm, who inspired the name of the Famille de Belamy series, and artist Robbie Barrat." Collective member Pierre Fautrel spoke with ABC News on Tuesday ahead of the auction. We are really fascinated by the power of algorithms. We begin to discuss, if you create art like this, is this art?" Fautrel said. Obvious used the GAN algorithm -- who "signed" the portrait -- to create portraits of the 11-person Belamy family. Edmond was created by inputting 15,000 portraits scanning the 14th to the 20th centuries through the algorithms. The last sale of a Belamy family member was less dramatic. In February, a French collector, Nicolas Laugero-Lasserre, bought the portrait of the Belamy family patriarch, Le Comte de Belamy, aka The Count of Belamy, for 10,000 euros ($11,430), hence the guidance for the Christie's auction. Although at least two more Belamy portraits are spoken for, the rest are still for sale on the Obvious website, with a listed price of 10,000 euros. "Well, I guess it's making history," said English painter Jonathan Huxley, in response to the news of the sale. "It's a gas." "There's no financial expert or analyst in the world that can tell me my income for the next 10 years," Huxley, who teaches at the Royal Academy of Arts, said. "There's no way to price art, any art dealer will tell you, especially contemporary art. It's alchemy." Copyright 2018, ABC Radio. All rights reserved. The attack on Jagan Mohan Reddy, instead of raising security concerns, soon assumed political colours, with the TDP and the YSR Congress trading charges. An ugly political war has erupted over the attack on YS Jagan Mohan Reddy on Thursday. The incident, instead of raising security concerns, soon assumed political colours, with both the TDP and the YSR Congress accusing each other of hatching a conspiracy to gain political mileage. The Opposition YSR Congress president YS Jagan Mohan Reddy sustained an injury when a waiter at a restaurant stabbed him with a small knife at the VIP lounge of the Visakhapatnam airport on Thursday. The government has announced the setting up of a special investigation team (SIT) to probe the incident. However, even before the probe began, the state chief minister held a press conference to dismiss the incident as a propaganda strategy by the Opposition leader. N Chandrababu Naidu, in a hurriedly called late night press conference, said that the accused has confessed that he is an admirer of Reddy and that he carried out such an attack only to ensure sympathy for his idol. Interestingly, Naidu also made a reference to the so-called Operation Garuda, in which actor Sivaji said that the BJP-led central government is hatching a conspiracy to destabilise the TDP government. In his claim, Sivaji had said that a non-lethal attack on Reddy would take place and subsequently, the state would witness disturbances and rioting engineered by north Indian gangs. He had further predicted that the Centre would dismiss the Naidu government for its failure to control the riots. The chief minister, in his press conference on Thursday, said that if one looks at the sequence of events, everything is happening as Sivaji has predicted. He also alleged that the BJP scripted this attack as he has been fighting against the injustice meted out by the Centre to Andhra Pradesh. It was surprising that Naidu gave credence to such unsubstantiated claims from a person who is neither an expert on security nor on politics. Why did the state government not take precautionary measures, if it really believed the story? Why did the police and intelligence officials fail to procure more details from Sivaji? The chief minister and his cabinet colleagues have no answers. TDP leaders have termed the incident a cheap tactic adopted by the YSR Congress to generate sympathy for its leader ahead of polls. On the other hand, YSR Congress leaders have described the incident as a conspiracy that the state government failed to check. The TDP explained that the incident occurred at an airport, the security of which is the responsibility of the Central Industrial Security Force (CISF) which is under the Union government. The state DGP RP Thakur also clarified that the state police has nothing to do with airport security. Surprisingly, the state police chief also joined the political cacophony by corroborating the TDPs allegations. The police hastily concluded that the accused is an admirer of Reddy. Mahendra Patrudu, additional deputy commissioner of police, Visakhapatnam said that the alleged attacker, J Srinivasa Rao, is a fan of Reddy. L Arjun, assistant commissioner of police, west zone, also made the same statement, and said that the accused committed the act for publicity. Ambati Rambabu, spokesperson of the YSR Congress, said that the SIT would also end up stating what the police and the ruling political establishment have already been saying. The YSR Congress has already approached the high court seeking an independent investigation. The YSR Congress has described the attack as an attempt to murder its leader. It has also described the incident as an abject failure of the Naidu government. Naidu, on his part, has not put forward any concrete evidence to substantiate his allegations against the BJP. Meanwhile, the BJP, which has of late taken a strident anti-TDP position, seems to be coming to the rescue of the YSR Congress. The saffron party has called for the dismissal of the Chandrababu Naidu government. The BJP's remarks have only provided ammunition to the claims of Naidu and the so-called revelations on Operation Garuda, about the central government conspiring against Andhra Pradesh and its government. The Telugu media, known for its political partisanship, joined the preposterous battle by giving disproportionate coverage to the claims and counter-claims. The social media networks of both parties plunged into action, adding fuel to the fire. The democratic discourse, which is crucial during the election season, seems to have become a casualty. The polarisation between two parties and individuals does not, in any way, serve the cause of the people, as their issues are relegated to the back burner. Elections to the 40-member Mizoram Assembly are scheduled for November 28. Agartala: The BJP has entrusted its Tripura unit with the responsibility of wooing Chakma and Bru voters in five Assembly constituencies of Mizoram, dominated by people belonging to the two ethnic communities, a senior party leader said. The five Mizoram Assembly constituencies have been identified as West Tuipui, Mamit, Tuichawng, Hachhek and , vice-president of BJP's Tripura unit, Pratima Bhowmick, said on Friday. Elections to the 40-member Mizoram Assembly are scheduled for November 28. "We have been given the responsibility of the overall campaign in the five constituencies where the maximum voters are from Chakma and Bru communities. We are hopeful of winning all the five seats," Bhowmick told PTI. Tripura Chief Minister Biplab Kumar Deb, Social Welfare Minister Santana Chakma, state BJP vice-president Pratima Bhowmick and MLAs Sambhu Lal Chakma and Promod Reang on Tuesday began their campaign in Mizoram for the Assembly elections. Biplab Kumar Deb, Santana Chakma and Sambhu Lal Chakma addressed a poll rally at Kamalanagar, the headquarter of the Chakma Autonomus District Council. The Tripura Chief Minister has been given special responsibility to campaign for the Mizoram elections, Bhowmick said. "We conducted the first round of campaign at Kamalanagar and other constituencies and received overwhelming response from voters there. People of the Chakma community gathered in large numbers at the helipad to receive us. We found Santana Chakma and our chief minister to be very popular among them," Bhowmick said. Bhowmick, along with MLA Dilip Das on Friday left for refugee camps in North Tripura district, where at least 35,000 Bru inmates are sheltered. "We will campaign among the Bru inmates there, because they are voters in Mizoram. Many refugee leaders are now campaigning for us in Bru compact areas in the state," she told PTI before leaving for the refugee camps. Bhowmick said 96 percent of the population in the Chakma district council area in Mizoram are from the Chakma community. About 50 percent voters in Mamit are from the Bru community and 5 per cent from the Chakma community. In Hachhek constituency, the Brus constitute 68 percent of the total voters, in Thorang constituency Chakmas constitute 30 percent and Brus represent 27 percent and in West Tuipui, the Chakmas constitute 80 percent of the voters, Bhowmick said. Ninety-eight percent of the voters in Tuichawng seat belong to the Chakma community, she said. BJP spokesperson Subrata Chakraborty said, chief ministers of many northeastern states will campaign for the Mizoram Assembly elections, including Assam Chief Minister Sarbananda Sonowal. BJP president Amit Shah had visited Aizawl on October 17 to kick off the partys election campaign. The announcement by the BJP and JD(U) comes a day after a show of Opposition unity in Bihar ahead of the Lok Sabha polls. The Bharatiya Janata Party and Janata Dal (United) announced that they will fight an equal number of seats from Bihar in the 2019 Lok Sabha election. BJP president Amit Shah and JD(U) chief Nitish Kumar made this announcement in a brief interaction with the media on Friday. Shah also assured that Upendra Kushwaha and Ram Vilas Paswan will remain a part of the alliance in 2019. The BJP chief also said that apart from the saffron party and the JD(U), other members of the alliance will also get a respectable seat share, and the numbers will be announced in a few days. Sources in the National Democratic Alliance (NDA), which includes the BJP and its partners, said the BJP and the JD(U) may contest 16 seats each, with six and two to be left for parties led by Paswan and Kushwaha respectively. The announcement followed a meeting Kumar had with Prime Minister Narendra Modi at the latter's residence earlier in the day. It marks a climbdown by the Bharatiya Janata Party, which had contested 30 of the state's 40 seats in the 2014 general elections and won 22, while its two other then allies, LJP and RLSP, had won six and three seats respectively out of seven and three they had fought. Shah made it clear that the number of seats of all NDA parties in Bihar will come down to accommodate the Janata Dal (United), which had joined the alliance last year after severing ties with the Congress and the Lalu Prasad-led Rashtriya Janata Dal. The JD(U) had fought the 2014 Lok Sabha polls on its own Earlier, there were reports that Upendra Kushwaha's RLSP was unhappy with the BJP's seat-sharing formula for the polls in Bihar. The announcement by the BJP and JD(U) comes a day after a show of Opposition unity in Bihar ahead of the Lok Sabha polls. This was at a rally in Patna, which was attended by the CPI, Congress, CPM, NCP and Loktantrik Janata Dal. With inputs from PTI The seat-sharing talks between them have apparently hit a roadblock, as both are keen on contesting election from Kukshi seat in western Madhya Pradesh, currently held by the Congress. The JAYS wants to field its candidate from Kukshi, although the Congress says it does not want to part with this seat as it has been its traditional stronghold. Bhopal: An Assembly constituency in Dhar district of Madhya Pradesh has become a bone of contention between the Congress and Jai Adivasi Yuva Shakti (JAYS), a fledgling tribal political outfit, which are currently engaged in alliance talks for the next month's state polls. The seat-sharing talks between them have apparently hit a roadblock, as both are keen on contesting election from Kukshi seat in western Madhya Pradesh, currently held by the Congress. The JAYS wants to field its candidate from Kukshi, although the Congress says it does not want to part with this seat as it has been its traditional stronghold. The opposition party has been winning this seat since 1972, except losing it only twice- in 1990 assembly elections and 2012 bypoll. Talking to PTI on Friday, JAYS convener Dr Hiralal Alawa said, "Our seat-sharing talks with the Congress are underway. We want to contest the upcoming election from 40 assembly constituencies. Fighting from Kukshi due to our strong presence there is top on our agenda." Another JAYS leader said, "We have categorically told the Congress that we want to contest from Kukshi. The fate of alliance depends on this seat. If the Congress is adamant for this seat, then the alliance talks might even fail." "We have already demonstrated our strength in Kukshi by organising Kisan Panchayat programme held on 2 October. Over one lakh tribal youths had taken part in the event," he added. Kukshi seat is currently held by Congress' Surendra Singh Baghel, a supporter of senior party leader Digvijay Singh. Baghel said he was all set to contest the upcoming polls from this seat, and also expressed confidence that he would win it with a huge margin. Another Congress leader said, "Kukshi is our traditional seat and we can't let it go so easily." The JAYS has made its presence felt in 22 tribal seats spread across Alirajpur, Ratlam, Jhabua, Dhar, Khargone, Burhanpur, Khandwa, Dewas and Barwani districts in Malwa-Nimar region of western MP, which has a sizable tribal population. Of these 22 constituencies reserved for tribals, the Congress currently holds five seats. The state leadership of the Congress is keen on joining hands with the JAYS in Malwa-Nimar region that comprises 66 assembly seats. The Congress does not have a strong presence in this region. Currently, the Congress only has nine MLAs as against the ruling BJP's 56 legislators in the region. Besides, this time the Congress is treading cautiously as it seems to have learnt a lesson from its disastrous defeat in the 2003 state elections when a tribal political outfit Gondwana Gantantra Party (GGP) in eastern MP had eaten into its vote bank. Although the GGP managed to win only three seats in eastern MP in 2003, it had nibbled into a major share of the Congress' traditional tribal vote bank. The GGP had won 5,17,270 votes, especially in the tribal-dominated areas. The Congress had managed to win only 38 assembly seats out of all the 230 constituencies in the state, whereas the BJP had won 173 seats in the 2003 polls. The opposition party, which has been out of power in MP since the last 15 years, had earlier tried to stitch an alliance with the BSP for the upcoming elections, although it failed to work out. The state is going to polls on 28 November. Manmohan Singh alleged that Modi presides over a 'fearful population, an economy that has been set back by foolhardy initiatives and a painful lack of jobs. New Delhi: In one of his sharpest attacks yet on Narendra Modi, former prime minister Manmohan Singh said his successor's rule has not been good for India as he "failed" the electorate and led a government that was "mostly silent" on incidents of communal violence, mob lynching and cow vigilantism. Singh, while speaking at the launch of Congress leader Shashi Tharoor's new book, alleged that under the present dispensation the environment in universities and national institutions like the CBI was being vitiated and dissent stifled. His remarks came amid the current crisis in the CBI, whose top two bosses were divested of their powers and sent on leave by the government. In a scathing criticism of Modi, Singh said he was elected as the 14th prime minister of India on the back of many lofty promises, but in the past four years, he and his government "failed" their electorate and eroded the voters' faith. He said Modi is a "paradoxical prime minister" and Tharoor has demonstrated this through his "superbly written and devastatingly accurate book". Tharoor's book is titled "The Paradoxical Prime Minister: Narendra Modi and His India". "He (Modi) has spoken of being a prime minister for all Indians but the government he presides over has been mostly silent in the face of widespread communal violence, mob lynching and cow vigilantism. "At the same time, academic freedoms are being sought to be curbed. The environment in our universities and national institutions like the CBI is being vitiated and dissent stifled," Singh alleged. His criticism of the government's economic policies was even more severe as the former prime minister said nothing concrete had been done to bring back the "promised billions of dollars" allegedly held abroad as black money. The "hastily-implemented" demonetisation and GST have proved to be "disastrous" for the economy, Singh said. Petrol and diesel prices are at a "historic high" despite the fall in international crude oil prices because the Modi government chose to levy excessive excise duties instead of passing the benefits of low prices to the people of India, he said, adding that Modi, instead, has thought it fit to "punish our people". Singh also alleged that Modi presides over a "fearful population, an economy that has been set back by foolhardy initiatives, painful lack of jobs, the growing distress among India's farming communities, a devastating number of farmer suicides, insecure borders, instability in Kashmir, and the palpable failure in implementation of even laudable initiatives like Swachch Bharat, Skill Development, Make in India and Beti Bachao, Beti Padhao". "This is what he presides over, and not a secular, plural, free and equal society that was... envisioned and built in its six and a half decades as a free nation," he added. Modi's rule has "not been good" for India and it all arises from the Modi paradox that Tharoor has shown in his book, he said. "Much of what the Modi government is all about has turned out to be little more than a series of empty gestures...with very little substance having been achieved on the ground," he said. Former prime minister Manmohan Singh on Friday accused his successor Narendra Modi of failing the electorate and eroding voters' faith. New Delhi: Former prime minister Manmohan Singh on Friday accused his successor Narendra Modi of failing the electorate and eroding voters' faith as he attacked him for his alleged silence on incidents of communal violence, lynching and cow vigilantism in the country. He alleged that the environment in the country's universities and national institutions like the CBI have been vitiated under the Modi government. Singh was speaking at the launch of Congress leader Shashi Tharoor's book The Paradoxical Prime Minister in New Delhi. "In 2014, Narendra Modi was elected 14th prime minister of India on the back of many lofty promises he made to the people of India. In the past four years, Modiji and his government have failed the electorate and eroded their voters' faith," he said. Citing the book, he said Modi is a paradoxical prime minister and Tharoor has demonstrated it in his "superbly written and devastatingly accurate book". "He (Modi) has spoken of being a prime minister for all Indians but the government he presides over has been mostly silent in the face of widespread communal violence, mob lynching and cow vigilantism," Singh said. "The environment in our universities and national institutions like the CBI is being vitiated," he also said, referring to the current crisis in the CBI where the top two bosses of the agency were divested of their powers and sent on leave. As the controversy over CBI chief Alok Verma snowballed, Congress President Rahul Gandhi on Thursday sharpened his attack on Prime Minister Narendra Modi, saying he was 'removed in panic' midnight because Verma was going to begin a probe into the controversial Rafale deal that would have been 'suicidal' for Modi. As the controversy over CBI chief Alok Verma snowballed, Congress President Rahul Gandhi on Thursday sharpened his attack on Prime Minister Narendra Modi, saying he was "removed in panic" midnight because Verma was going to begin a probe into the controversial Rafale deal that would have been "suicidal" for Modi. He also said the stripping of the powers of the CBI chief was "illegal, criminal and unconstitutional" and was an insult to the Chief Justice of India, Leader of Opposition and the people of India as the CBI Director cannot be removed or appointed without the approval of the three member committee of Prime Minister, CJI and LOP. "It is an open and shut case, the moment the CBI inquiry begins, the Prime Minister is finished. It was suicidal for the PM to allow an inquiry. So to prevent the suicide he has removed CBI chief. The fight is on to reinstate him (Verma). You have to notice throughout all this, the Prime Minister has not said a single word," he told reporters at a special briefing at the party headquarters flanked among others by Leader of the Congress in the Lok Sabha Mallikarjun Kharge and General Secretary Ashok Gehlot. "I will come before you and you ask me various questions. Ask the Prime Minister three to four questions on Rafale. He would not be able to sit and he will run away," he said, adding that the first question to the PM should be about the Rs 30,000 crore given to Anil Ambani. Recalling the developments, Gandhi said that the CBI Director was removed at 2 a.m. in the night. He could have been removed at 9 or 10 a.m. in the morning. But the main reason for his removal was that the CBI was going to probe the role of the Prime Minister in the Rafale deal. "The main reason was that the CBI was going to begin the investigation about the role of Prime Minister and the corruption carried out by him in the Rafale deal. In panic at 2 a.m. he removed CBI Director. If probe was ordered truth would have come out and the country would have known that Prime Minister has done corruption in the Rafale," he said. He said that Verma's room was sealed and incriminating documents were taken away. That is why he was removed at 2 am in the morning. "He was not just removed but the evidence was destroyed. This is the reason for his removal which is illegal," he said. Gandhi accused Modi of destroying the CBI and attacked him over the appointment of M. Nageshwar Rao as the interim CBI Chief. "He (Rao) is facing several charges. He has appointed a person who can be controlled by the Prime Minister. Prime Minister does not want an inquiry in Rafale that is why he has got a vulnerable officer. Will do what the Prime Minister wants him to do to hide the facts. "Now every single institution is going to protect Prime Minister about Rafale. No institution Prime Minister is going to leave to save himself. He will attack every institution to save himself. He will do everything to save himself. But people will find out the truth," he said. Asked about how he knew that Verma was going to order a probe into the Rafale deal, the Congress chief said the whole nation knew that the CBI probe was going to take place. "it is a simple issue after Yashwant Sinha and Arun Shourie (former BJP Ministers) had given a complaint to the CBI Director and it was a logical conclusion," he said. "The question is not how Rahul Gandhi knew. The youth of the country knew that the corruption of Rs 30,000 crore has been done in the Rafale deal," he said. "You understand the mental state of the Prime Minister. He told the country that he wants to be the watchman of the country and even he had an image of a watchman. But the Prime Minister has done corruption in the Rafale deal. Not only Rafale, the Prime Minister knows that the day CBI action begins that day he will be finished. This reaction of the PM was in panic due to fear and out of restlessness. It was an irrational reaction," he said. To hide one crime they are doing number of crimes. But however much you may try to hide and run away, the country will catch you. It is made of clever and honest people. He said the opposition was doing its work and will continue to do that. "We respect courts, they are also doing their work. Whereas Prime Minister is doing corruption. So we have to tell people that the PM has taken away Rs 30,000 crore." Asked about Finance Minister Arun Jaitley referring to CVC recommendation that formed the basis for the action against Verma, Gandhi hit back saying, "When the Congress dem Congress President Rahul Gandhi on Friday hit the streets in the capital along with leaders of his party and its allies on the Rafale issue demanding 'reinstatement' of CBI Director Alok Verma and courted arrest after dubbing Prime Minister Narendra Modi as a 'chor' (thief). Congress president Rahul Gandhi on Friday hit the streets in the capital along with leaders of his party and its allies on the Rafale issue demanding "reinstatement" of CBI Director Alok Verma and courted arrest after dubbing Prime Minister Narendra Modi as a "chor" (thief). "Prime Minister Narendra Modi is finishing every institution of the country because he wants to hide the corruption in the Rafale deal. He is attacking the CBI, Election Commission and other institutions. Chowkidar chor hai (Watchman is a thief)," he said in a brief address to a crowd of Congress workers outside the CBI headquarters in Lodhi Road area in south Delhi. Linking the government's action of divesting CBI Director Alok Verma of his powers, duties and functions with the controversy over the Rafale contract, the Congress president alleged that the prime minister had benefited a businessman to the tune of Rs 30,000 crore through this deal. "The Congress will not allow the 'chowkidar' to commit this theft. The Opposition parties will not allow the 'chowkidar' to commit the theft," Rahul said amid frenzied slogan shouting by party supporters. Rahul got on to a truck in front of the police barricades put up ahead of the CBI headquarters in the CGO complex to prevent the protesters from reaching the building. Standing atop the vehicle, Rahul shouted "chowkidhar chor hai". The crowd roared as it repeated the slogan in unison before courting arrest. Rahul was leading a noisy protest over the government's action in CBI. He was flanked by party leaders Bhupinder Hooda, Ahmed Patel, Ashok Gehlot and Randeep Singh Surjewala as well as Opposition leaders Nadeemul Haque (Trinamool Congress), D Raja (CPI) and Sharad Yadav (Loktantrik Janata Dal). Carrying placards against the prime minister, the protesters walked the distance with scores of police personnel maintaining vigil and camera crews jostling with each other to capture the moment. Later, Rahul and other leaders were taken to the Lodhi Colony police station in a police bus and Surjewala tweeted that Rahul and other leaders have been arrested. "Rahul Gandhi's arrest by an autocratic Modi government won't deter or cow down millions of Congress workers from exposing the dismantling of the CBI to hide the Rafale scam," he said. Gehlot said the Congress was staging protests outside CBI offices throughout the country with the demand that Verma be reinstated. "We want the reinstatement of Alok Verma. He can be transferred only by the collegium of Prime Minister, Chief Justice of India and Leader of Opposition. The Prime Minister should tender an apology to the nation for destroying the image of CBI," he said. Later, the leaders were let off. "The prime minister can run and run but cannot hide from the truth. The truth will come out. The prime minister acted out of fear and panic (on the issue). The prime minister cannot give a rupee in waiver for farmers. Nirav Modi, Vijay Mallya, Mehul Choksi, Lalit Modi all fled. Anil Ambani will also flee. The reality is that the prime minister has indulged in corruption. Chowkidhar chor hai," he roared. Earlier, Rahul led a short march from Dayal Singh College to the CBI headquarters along with opposition leaders. Hundreds of Congress activists took part in the protest, shouting slogans against Modi. The government has strongly defended its decision, saying it was "absolutely essential" to maintain the CBI's institutional integrity and the move was based on recommendations by the Central Vigilance Commissioner. The Congress' protests in the national capital were replicated in other parts of the country. State Congress leaders led demonstrations in their regions against what the Congress described as the "illegal, unconstitutional and illegitimate removal of the CBI director by the Modi-Shah duo that has shamed India and its premier investigative agency". Alleging that the prime minister is experiencing 'Rafale-o-Phobia', the opposition party said the "demolition of the CBI" was prompted by fears that the director was going to conduct a probe into the fighter jet deal. The government sent Verma and Special Director Rakesh Asthana, who have accused each other of corruption, on leave on Tuesday. It also transferred several CBI officials and appointed M Nageswar Rao as the interim chief of the agency. The Congress protest was held soon after the matter came up in the Supreme Court. The apex court said former Supreme Court judge AK Patnaik will oversee a CVC inquiry into the allegations and counter allegations and the report has to be placed before it within two weeks. It directed that interim CBI chief M Nageswara Rao shall not take any major policy decisions. Decisions taken by him since 23 October till date shall not be implemented, it said. All decisions taken by Rao shall be placed before the apex court in a sealed cover. The court sought a response from the CBI, the CVC and the Centre on Verma's plea challenging the government's decision to divest him of his duties. A bench headed by Chief Justice Ranjan Gogoi posted the next date of hearing on 12 November. With inputs from agencies With party president Rahul Gandhi leading from the front, the Congress appears to have rediscovered its qualities in protesting. With party president Rahul Gandhi leading from the front, the Congress appears to have rediscovered its qualities in protesting. The Rafale deal and the in-house factional fight within the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) have allowed the party to spring back into an aggressive mode. For the first time after the defeat of 2014, the party is getting even with the BJP. It has also managed to put Prime Minister Narendra Modi in a spot of bother. It can only be good news for the dispirited cadre ahead of the elections of 2019. As Rahul courted arrest on Friday over affairs in the country's premier investigating agency after a street protest, what mattered more was the optics, not the content. It appeared to be a strategy to hog the limelight. But he has been scoring several points through such protests. Attempt to dent Modis incorruptible image By keeping the Rafale heat on, Rahul is denting the image of incorruptibility of the prime minister. The prime minister till date enjoys an impeccable image, with high personal integrity. Whether in poll campaigns or public rallies or press conferences, the Congress president has continuously been dubbing Modi as chor (thief). Along with the Rafale issue, the fresh CBI fiasco has been added to Congress ammunition against Modi and the NDA government. After taking a short march on Friday from Dayal Singh College to CBI headquarters, Rahul addressed a crowd comprising party workers and public at Lodhi Road area in New Delhi, and said, Prime Minister Narendra Modi is finishing every institution of the country because he wants to hide the corruption in the Rafale deal. He is attacking the CBI, Election Commission and other institutions. Chowkidar chor hai (the watchman is a thief)The Congress wont allow the chowkidar to commit this theft." Hitting out at Modis good governance claim By highlighting the fracas in the CBI through a pan-India protest, Rahul has been hitting out at the good governance claim of Modi. The infighting and mudslinging between the agency director Alok Verma and his deputy Rakesh Asthana has caused enough embarrassment for the government. As a result, both have been asked to go on leave. , | | pic.twitter.com/AAE06H0790 Rahul Gandhi (@RahulGandhi) October 26, 2018 Congress, by repeatedly picking up issues like statements made by Union ministers on Rafale, bank scams related to Vijay Mallya, Nirav Modi and Mehul Chowksi or the latest CBI incident, has been trying to weave a narrative of poor governance of Modi government ahead of the upcoming Assembly polls this year and 2019 Lok Sabha election. Rahul Gandhi burnishing his image Through constant protests, Rahul is in fact burnishing his own image as a leader. Right from staging an aggressive protest demonstration against the government on street to courting arrest, he has tried to give a public message that the voters can depend on him and his party. His moves are likely to enthuse the cadre, which had seen no street action from a top leader for a long time. Whether it was on the streets of Bhopal or Hyderabad or elsewhere, the state Congress leaders and workers replicated Rahul in their respective domains. Rahul has managed to keep BJP on the back foot Not long ago, all BJP leaders were dismissive of Rahul, taking his acumen as a leader lightly. Now, he is taking the battle directly to the BJP camp. While he has been raising issues of farmers and other disprivileged groups in rallies in BJP-ruled states, he has also been trying to depict the prime minister in poor light. His assertiveness has put the BJP in a spot of trouble. In the face of uncomfortable truths, they can no more lampoon him. And they know no other way to handle him. Rahul is also drawing positive response from the crowds. Mocking Rahul as pappu may boomerang for the BJP. Then and now On 6 May, 2016, former prime minister Manmohan Singh, the then Congress president Sonia Gandhi and Rahul Gandhi had courted arrest at Parliament Street police station after Congress Save Democracy rally, which was led by the party president. Like on Friday, the Congress had charged Modi with pursuing a strategy to destroy Congress. Besides raking up the issue of AgustaWestland and raising slogans on streets, the Congress had referred to the toppling of its governments in Arunachal Pradesh and Uttarakhand as murder of democracy. However, unlike Fridays street rally and the eventual arrests of Congress leaders, the 2016 protest was more personalised, more restricted to the partys own position. Today, the amplifying effect was more as people on the streets could easily connect with the CBI issue. The word CBI and corruption issues related to this premier investigative agency are anyway catchier than issues related to AgustaWestland or even the Rafale Deal for a common man. The repeated slogan of Rahul chowkidar chor hai has found a strong resonance with the common man. The detention of the Congress president today attracted more eyeballs than in 2016, which was tepid and less aggressive. There would be 100 percent fee reimbursement for students belonging to the SC, ST, Backward Classes and minority communities, a Congress party release said. Hyderabad: The Congress on Wednesday said it would rejuvenate the entire education system within 100 days of coming to power in Telangana, if elected after the 7 December Assembly polls, by strengthening government institutions and extending all support to managements of private institutions. Alleging that the TRS government had ruined the careers of lakhs of students by not clearing fee reimbursement dues, a senior party leader promised that the next Congress government (if voted to power), would pay fee reimbursement amount every year in two instalments. There would be 100 percent fee reimbursement for students belonging to Scheduled Castes, Scheduled Tribes, Backward Classes and minority communities, a party release quoted Telangana Pradesh Congress Committee President N Uttam Kumar Reddy as saying. He said 20,000 teachers would be recruited within 100 days. Accusing the TRS government of doing nothing to control the 'exorbitant' fee structure of corporate institutions, Reddy also assured that steps would be taken to regulate corporate schools and colleges. He assured managements of private educational institutions and their association that the Grand Alliance of Congress, TDP and other parties would include their issue in the Common Agenda and resolve them on a priority basis after coming to power in the next assembly elections. Addressing a meeting organised by the 'KG to PG Educational Institutions Joint Action Committee' here, Reddy accused caretaker Chief Minister K Chandrasekhar Rao of cheating the people of Telangana on the promise of free education from Kindergarten to Post graduate level. There are nearly 85 lakh students across Telangana in various classes from KG to PG who expected that KCR's (as Rao is popularly known as) scheme would benefit them, he said. "However, by setting up a few residential schools which cater to not more than one lakh students, KCR thinks he fulfilled the promise of KG to PG free education," he said. Reddy said over 12,000 schools, about 2,000 junior colleges, nearly 1,000 degree colleges, 200 PG colleges, 600 professional colleges and 500 B.Ed. and D.Ed. colleges with a combined strength of 46 lakh students were being run by private managements. They also provide employment to nearly five lakh people, including teaching and non teaching staff. He said they had also played a major role, not only in the formation of Telangana, but in formation of the TRS government in the state. However, KCR 'humiliated' them on multiple occasions and denied appointment even to discuss their problems, he alleged. Reddy said TRS leaders have been getting 'nightmares' of a humiliating defeat ever since Congress decided to form a Grand Alliance with the TDP, CPI and TJS. Reuters International Airlines Group said an investigation into the theft of customers data at its British Airways unit showed hackers may have stolen the personal information of a further 1,85,000 customers. British Airways apologized in September after the credit card details of hundreds of thousands of its customers were stolen over a two-week period in the most serious attack on its website and app. On 25 October British Airways said that it was notifying the holders of another 77,000 payment cards that the name, billing address, email address, card, payment information including card number, expiry date and security codes had potentially been compromised, and a further 1,08,000 without the security code. British Airways also revised down its original estimate of 3,80,000 cards compromised, saying only 2,44,000 of those were affected. This takes the total number of payment cards potentially affected by the hack to 4,29,000. However, British Airways confirmed that it had no verified cases of fraud since the announcement on 6 September, adding that potentially impacted customers were only those making reward bookings between 21 April and 28 July and who used a payment card. A British Airways spokeswoman told Reuters the airline would reimburse customers who suffered financial losses as a direct result of the data theft. The attack came 15 months after the carrier suffered a computer system failure at Londons Heathrow airport, which stranded 75,000 customers over a holiday weekend. International Airlines Group were up 2.8 percent at 581.4 pence by 1515 GMT. Reuters Chinas foreign ministry has some suggestions for the Trump administration if it is worried about foreign eavesdropping on the US presidents iPhones: use a Huawei handset instead. Or just cut all forms of modern communication with the outside world. The riposte came after the New York Times reported that American intelligence reports indicated that Chinese and Russian spies often listen in on President Donald Trump when he uses his Apple cellphones to chat with old friends. Aides have repeatedly told him that his cell phone calls are not secure, but although the president has been persuaded to use his secure White House landline more often, he has refused to give up the phones, the Times said. Trump called the Times report incorrect on 25 October, and dismissed it as long and boring. I only use Government Phones and have only one seldom used government cell phone. Story is soooo wrong! Trump wrote on Twitter. In a later tweet, he said, I rarely use a cell phone, and when I do its government authorized. I like Hard Lines. Just more made up Fake News! Chinese Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Hua Chunying also dismissed the Times story, calling such reports evidence that the New York Times makes fake news. Speaking at a news conference on Thursday, she also offered two suggestions apparently aimed at the Trump administration. The New York Times has a new Fake Story that now the Russians and Chinese (glad they finally added China) are listening to all of my calls on cellphones. Except that I rarely use a cellphone, & when I do its government authorized. I like Hard Lines. Just more made up Fake News! Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) October 25, 2018 If they are really very worried about Apple phones being bugged, then they can change to using Huawei, she said, referring to Chinas biggest telecommunications equipment maker. If they are still not at ease, then in order to have an entirely secure device, they can stop using all forms of modern communication devices and cut off all ties with the outside world. The Times cited current and former US officials as saying China has a sophisticated approach toward the intercepted presidential phone calls and is seeking to use them to determine what Trump thinks, whom he listens to and how best to sway him. In particular, it is trying to use what it learns to prevent the current trade war between the two countries from escalating further, the Times said. While Chinas recommendation of Huawei phones may have been tongue-in-cheek, Huawei Technologies Co Ltd has come under scrutiny in the United States. Intelligence agency leaders and others have said they are concerned that Huawei and other Chinese companies may be beholden to the Chinese government or ruling Communist Party, raising the risk of espionage. The US Democratic National Committee warned party candidates running in November elections not to use devices from Huawei or ZTE, another major Chinese telecoms gear maker. Concerns have been raised on several occasions this year about cellphone surveillance activity in the Washington area. The Department of Homeland Security said in a letter to several senators in March that it had observed activity in Washington consistent with mobile subscriber identity catchers. Trump repeatedly excoriated his Democratic rival in the 2016 presidential campaign, Hillary Clinton, on the issue of secure communications, rebuking her for her use of a private email address and server while she was secretary of state. Akriti Gaur In a bid to curb fake news, Indian lawmakers are debating regulatory measures to make digital platforms more accountable. This has been spurred by numerous instances of incendiary messages being circulated through WhatsApp and social media posts inciting mob violence. Further, with the 2019 elections looming large, political parties and propagandists have begun smear campaigns on social media and messaging platforms. In this scenario, the extent of responsibility of platforms which serve as a medium for such information needs to be examined closely. The Information Technology Act, 2000, defines an intermediary as an entity who on behalf of another entity receives, stores or transmits an electronic message or provides services in relation to it. Certain social media applications and instant messaging platforms, although not explicitly included in this definition, may be interpreted as intermediaries under the law. They are exempted from liability if their role is limited to being a medium for information, i.e. if they do not initiate, modify or select the receiver of the information, if they have complied with the due-diligence obligations laid down in subordinate legislation, and if they do not possess actual knowledge of any unlawful content being hosted by them. It is important to understand that digital platforms such as social media websites, chat-rooms, instant messaging applications are content aggregators and not publishers, i.e. they do not exercise any editorial control over the content being shared on their platform. Accordingly, the liability of any digital intermediary should be limited to its minimum role in being a mere channel for communication. Further, any legislative or policy intervention should not transgress the fundamental right to free speech and privacy of individuals. Stringent regulations and sanctions will push platforms to self-censor. For instance, Germany has enacted the Network Enforcement Act which requires social media platforms to remove patently illegal content from their websites within 24 hours of receiving a notification. Non-compliance may lead to penalties which can run into millions of dollars. This has led to a situation where intermediaries are over-cautious and users posting content are afraid to publish information that may run the risk of being taken down. Imposing a general obligation on intermediaries to monitor, edit or takedown content on their platform, including private communications, will amount to censorship and political misuse. In cases where instant messaging platforms such as WhatsApp are being misused by individuals to further their own political agenda or incite violence, it will be impossible to impose an obligation on the platform to monitor person-to-person communication or communication that takes place on WhatsApp groups. Further, any regulatory solution proposed by the Government must not discount critical technological features of some of these platforms such as end-to-end encryption of messages and other privacy-enhancing tools. The spread of misinformation and hatred on the internet is a collective failure of society. Regulatory measures to curb it should take into account the roles and responsibilities of individuals creating content, intermediaries hosting such content and/or aggressively propagating it, advertisers and third parties supporting such initiatives, and ultimately, the consumers of the content. The law must be careful in imposing obligations which are proportionate to the role of passive intermediaries such as social media websites and instant messaging platforms. To this effect, policy measures to promote accountability of platforms may be considered. For instance, ensuring that individuals using platforms such as Twitter, Facebook and WhatsApp are not operating through fake accounts, providing more accessible options to individuals using WhatsApp to flag or report messages which are incendiary or fake, generating widespread awareness campaigns to educate individuals about the repercussions of fake news and incendiary messages. Some of these measures are already being implemented in India. Combating the rising instances of fake news on the internet has emerged as a significant challenge for governments and regulators across the world. Tim Berners Lee, the founder of the World Wide Web, is of the opinion the tech giants of today are not programmed to maximise social good. He is hopeful that a legal or regulatory system which is cognisant of social objectives will go a long way in ensuring ethical and accountable participation of the tech giants in a digital society. The author is a lawyer working with the Vidhi Centre for Legal Policy, New Delhi Nandini Yadav The second day of India Mobile Congress (IMC) 2018 was more demonstration-centric, hence the day was more interactive. One of the most interesting bits of the event was the use-case demo by Reliance Jio and Ericsson, to show off 5Gs contribution to autonomous vehicle technology. Essentially, the use-case demo was divided between two places. One, at the Aerocity venue, where there was a simulator setup, which had a screen that was displaying the visuals from the camera that was attached to a driverless car in IIT Delhi. Thats about 10 km apart. What we saw was a person in Aerocity, controlling the driverless car in IIT Delhi, via the video being streamed from there through 5G. Basically, this demonstrates the low latency and efficiency of 5G that has the potential to seamlessly connect you in real time, regardless of the distance. There was another demonstration which was streamed live from the Jio city in Navi Mumbai, which showed a bus, with all its glasses cover in dark black sheets so you cant see anything through it, with the way ahead of the bus live streamed to the driver via virtual reality headsets. These are very simple use cases of the technology, however, if everything goes as planned, this kind of connectivity, could be great in remotely handling cases. For instance, doctors could attend to patients and perform robotic surgery without geography being a handicap. At this point, you are likely to ask, if and when this will become reality. We asked Jio and Ericsson representatives the same question. We were told, that the Jio 5G ecosystem, which is basically consists of chipsets, devices and peripherals that are compatible with 5G, will be available by end of 2019, or early 2020. However, affordable 5G products will be available only by 2021. Having said that, Ericsson says that most 4G products can pretty much be used for 5G tech as well, so in a way, the company is already manufacturing 5G-compatible devices at its factory in Pune, India. Disclaimer: Reliance Industries Ltd. is the sole beneficiary of Independent Media Trust which controls Network18 Media & Investments Ltd. tech2 News Staff There was a time when the Google hardware event and the Pixel launches would pretty much conclude the smartphone announcements for the year. But if the last year is any indication, it looks like smartphone makers want to have a new launch every few weeks, even as we approach the holiday season. New ideas in smartphone design language quickly become trends. After Oppo Find X showed the world that a smartphone can have the front and rear camera module in a mechanical slider, it looks like other Android smartphone makers have wisened up to that idea as well. On 25 October we saw the Xiaomi Mi Mix 3 with an impressive 93.8 percent screen-to-body ratio and pop-out camera. Now it looks Lenovo is following suit with its upcoming flagship Lenovo Z5 Pro. We all remember what happened when the Chinese smartphone maker announced the Z5 smartphone two months ago. The teased schematics of the phone showed a completely bezel-less smartphone, but when it was launched we saw a big notch at the top with a sizeable chin at the bottom. Needless to say, people were disappointed with Lenovo's marketing strategy, which almost amounted to lying outright. Lenovo looks to be redeeming itself this time with the Z5 Pro. Lenovo VP Chang Chen has confirmed on his Weibo page that the phone will be launching the device on 1 November at an event in Beijing, China. Leaked information about the phone includes a possible in-display fingerprint reader and also a quad-camera setup at the back. We can also expect flagship grade hardware such as the Snapdragon 845 chipset and up to 8 GB of RAM. Other details about the phone are scarce, but we are sure to know more in the upcoming days. Reuters Google Inc Chief Executive Sundar Pichai said on Thursday the company had fired 48 employees for sexual harassment over the past two years. Pichai sent an email to Google employees in response to a New York Times story that was published earlier in the day. The report said the search engine giant protected three senior executives from allegations of sexual misconduct by offering them payouts. The email, a copy of which was seen by Reuters, said of the 48 that were fired, 13 were senior managers or held more senior posts. However, Pichai said none of those employees received an exit package. The email, which was also signed by Googles vice president of people operations Eileen Naughton, said that company employees could use internal tools to report cases of inappropriate behavior anonymously. It also said that Google has updated its policy to require all vice presidents and senior vice presidents to disclose any relationship with a co-worker regardless of reporting line or presence of conflict. We are committed to ensuring that Google is a workplace where you can feel safe to do your best work, and where there are serious consequences for anyone who behaves inappropriately, the email said. tech2 News Staff The Supreme Court passed its landmark judgment making Aadhaar not compulsory for mobile service providers and banks in September. But there are still some leading telcos that are using Aadhaar-based eKYC for issuing SIM cards. This information comes from a report by the Times of India, whose sources said that there have been no specific instructions from the DoT to discontinue Aadhaar for eKYC. "We will wait for a specific instruction from the department of telecom on the matter before discontinuing the facility," said a top industry official in an interview with TOI. UIDAI on the other has reportedly said that they have escalated the matter to the DoT and that "the matter has to be dealt with". For those who are unaware, the Supreme Court found both, Rule 9 of the Prevention of Money Laundering (Maintenance of Records) Rules, 2005 and notifications issued under it, and the Department of Telecommunications 23 March 2017 circular, mandating the linking of Aadhaar to an individuals bank accounts and mobile numbers, respectively, to be unconstitutional. (Also Read: Can voluntary Aadhaar-based eKYC be legalised through a new law, after striking down Section 57?) The court upheld the constitutional validity of Section 139AA of the Income Tax Act, 1961. This means that it will continue to be compulsory to provide an Aadhaar/enrolment number while applying for a Permanent Account Number, and while filing income tax returns. There was a report earlier this month speculating now that Aadhaar based eKYC was not needed, all SIM cards authenticated with that method would be discontinued. The Centre dismissed that news report claiming around 50 crore mobile phone numbers were at risk of disconnection, saying it was "completely untrue and imaginary". (Corrects price paid by China Three Gorges for Brazil dams in paragraph 33 to 13.8 billion reais not 4.8 billion reais.) By Jake Spring BRASILIA (Reuters) - The Chinese government is trying to make peace with Brazil's leading presidential candidate, Jair Bolsonaro, whose China-bashing threatens to chill a profitable trading relationship that has benefited both countries. Chinese diplomats based in Brasilia have met twice with top Bolsonaro advisors in recent weeks, according to participants in the meetings. Their aim is to highlight cooperation with Latin America's largest country, whose grain and minerals have fuelled China's rise while lifting millions of Brazilians from poverty in the resulting commodities boom. (Corrects price paid by China Three Gorges for Brazil dams in paragraph 33 to 13.8 billion reais not 4.8 billion reais.) By Jake Spring BRASILIA (Reuters) - The Chinese government is trying to make peace with Brazil's leading presidential candidate, Jair Bolsonaro, whose China-bashing threatens to chill a profitable trading relationship that has benefited both countries. Chinese diplomats based in Brasilia have met twice with top Bolsonaro advisors in recent weeks, according to participants in the meetings. Their aim is to highlight cooperation with Latin America's largest country, whose grain and minerals have fuelled China's rise while lifting millions of Brazilians from poverty in the resulting commodities boom. Graphic - Brazil's growing relationship with China: https://tmsnrt.rs/2Jfk8dI Bolsonaro has portrayed China, its largest trading partner, as a predator looking to dominate key sectors of its economy. With its own economy slowing, China cannot afford to become embroiled in another costly trade war like that which has erupted between Beijing and Washington. Two-way trade between China and Brazil stood at $75 billion last year, according to Brazilian government statistics. China has invested $124 billion in Brazil since 2003, mostly in the oil, mining and energy sectors. China is eager to bankroll railway, port and other infrastructure projects here to speed the movement of its Brazilian grain. But the far-right Bolsonaro, much like U.S. President Donald Trump, has criticized China repeatedly on the campaign trail, saying the Chinese should not be allowed to own Brazilian land or control key industries. An ardent nationalist, Bolsonaro is expected to win a landslide victory in balloting this Sunday. "The Chinese are not buying in Brazil. They are buying Brazil," Bolsonaro has warned repeatedly. Companies in the crosshairs include China Molybdenum Co Ltd, which bought a $1.7 billion niobium mine in 2016 that Bolsonaro says Brazil should develop itself. Niobium is used as an additive to steel to make it stronger and lighter. It is used in cars, buildings, jet engines and a host of other applications. Brazil controls about 85 percent of the world's supply and Bolsonaro wants his nation to reap the benefits. Bolsonaro is also on record opposing a planned privatisation of some assets of state-owned utility Centrais Eletricas Brasileiras SA (Eletrobras) on concerns that Chinese buyers would win the bid. Officials at China Molybdenum declined requests for comment. But six senior executives at Chinese companies operating in Brazil told Reuters they were watching Bolsonaro's remarks with varying degrees of concern. "We are worrying a bit about some of his extreme views," one Chinese infrastructure executive told Reuters. "He is on guard against China." Bolsonaro's friendly leanings toward Taiwan are likewise vexing to Beijing, which considers Taiwan a renegade province. Bolsonaro in February became the first Brazilian presidential candidate to visit Taiwan since Brazil recognised Beijing as the sole Chinese government under the One China policy in the 1970s. The Chinese embassy in Brazil issued a letter condemning Bolsonaro's Taiwan trip as an "affront to the sovereignty and territorial integrity of China." Bolsonaro's combative stance is in stark contrast to the rest of Latin America, whose leaders have welcomed Chinese investment, loans and commodities purchases. And it could eventually put him at odds with Brazil's powerful farm and mining industries, for whom China is an indispensable customer. Shares of Brazilian miner Vale SA, for example, the world's largest iron ore producer, hit an all-time high last month on strong Chinese demand for its high-quality ore. Brazil's farm sector, meanwhile, has reaped the benefit of China's feud with Trump. Beijing has sharply reduced purchases of American soybeans, filling the gap with Brazilian grain. Brazilian exports of soy to China are up 22 percent by value this year with about 80 percent of its soy shipments now destined there. The U.S.-China trade war has given Brazil leverage for now. But Jorge Arbache, former secretary for international affairs at Brazil's planning ministry, said Brazil would do well not to overplay its hand. Brazil "does not have the luxury of giving up its biggest trade and investment partner," Arbache said. "There's not one economy in the world that can occupy the space China occupies." PRIVATE MEETINGS Chinese diplomats met with Bolsonaro's top economic advisor Paulo Guedes in early September to discuss the importance of the bilateral relationship, Qu Yuhui, Chinese Minister-Counselor at the embassy in Brasilia, told Reuters on Monday. The Chinese team portrayed their nation as a partner that does not compete with Brazil economically, according to Qu, who attended the meeting, and one other person familiar with the matter. Guedes was offered a trip to China to strengthen his knowledge of the world's second-largest economy, Qu said. He said Chinese diplomats made it clear they would like to meet Bolsonaro in person, although no meeting has been set. "Regardless of right- or left-wing, we want to talk and advance the smooth development of China-Brazil relations, which we believe benefits both countries," Qu said. "We have confidence that whoever is Brazil's president will improve China-Brazil relations." Guedes did not respond to requests for comment. Last week Reuters spotted Qu and another Chinese diplomat entering the offices of Congressman Onyx Lorenzoni, Bolsonaro's campaign manager, proposed chief of staff and the organizer of the candidate's Taiwan trip. Qu declined to comment on the matter. Lorenzoni said he met with two Chinese diplomats and that there would be further talks after the election. He said China is a vital partner and the two countries would maintain good relations. If elected, Bolsonaro's first major meeting with the Chinese would come early in his presidency. Brazil hosts the BRICS summit in 2019, an event that Chinese President Xi Jinping is likely to attend. 'BUYING BRAZIL' Bolsonaro is content with China purchasing commodities. But the former Army captain is wary of the Asian nation's recent shopping spree in Brazil's energy and infrastructure sectors. China Three Gorges Corp paid 4.8 billion reais ($1.48 billion) in 2016 to operate two of Brazil's largest dams. Last year, State Grid Corp of China bought a controlling stake in Sao Paulo's CPFL Energia SA and a subsidiary for 17.36 billion reais ($4.90 billion), while China's HNA Airport Holding Group Co Ltd bought a controlling stake in Brazil's second-busiest airport. Brazil is now expected to put a number of government concessions and assets up for bid next year, including railways and state-held energy assets. The outgoing administration of Brazilian President Michel Temer has attempted to privatise state-controlled energy company Eletrobras, a move which requires congressional approval. Bolsonaro has said he is against selling Eletrobras generation assets because it would "leave Brazil in Chinese hands." The Chinese infrastructure executive said his company was worried that Bolsonaro might change the government auction rules to disadvantage Chinese bidders. He and other Chinese executives who spoke to Reuters declined to be identified. To date, Bolsonaro has been vague about how he would carry out actions to stop Chinese investment he sees as undesirable. Brazil has no equivalent of the U.S. Committee on Foreign Investment, which reviews the national security implications of foreign investment in American companies. Bolsonaro also needs to tread carefully with the huge agribusiness caucus that controls more than 40 percent of seats in Brazil's Congress. The nation's farmers are overwhelmingly supportive of Bolsonaro, but have made clear that maintaining good relations with China, their largest export customer, is paramount. "The economy is much more important than propaganda to get votes," said an executive at an agricultural company who declined to be identified. "You can't change it that easily without severe repercussions." (Reporting by Jake Spring; Additional reporting by Marcela Ayers, Anthony Boadle and Maria Carolina Marcello in Brasilia, Rodrigo Viga Gaier and Marta Nogueira in Rio de Janeiro; Editing by Marla Dickerson) This story has not been edited by Firstpost staff and is generated by auto-feed. Federal authorities arrested a man in Florida on Friday in connection with the mail-bomb scare that widened to 12 suspicious packages sent to prominent Donald Trump critics, the US Justice Department said. Washington: America's federal authorities arrested a man named Cesar Sayoc, 56, of Aventura, Florida on Friday in connection with the mail-bomb scare that widened to 12 suspicious packages sent to prominent Donald Trump critics, the US Justice Department said. Law enforcement officers were seen on television examining a white van, its windows covered with an assortment of stickers, in the city of Plantation. They covered the vehicle with a blue tarp. The stickers included images of American flags, and what appeared to be logos of the Republican National Committee and CNN, though the writing surrounding those images was unclear. Department spokeswoman Sarah Isgur Flores said authorities planned to announce more information at a press conference. The development came amid a coast-to-coast manhunt for the person responsible for a series of explosive devices addressed to Democrats including former President Barack Obama, former Vice President Joe Biden and Hillary Clinton. Law enforcement officials said they had intercepted a dozen packages in states across the country. None had exploded, and it wasn't immediately clear if they were intended to cause physical harm or simply sow fear and anxiety. Earlier Friday, authorities said suspicious packages addressed to New Jersey Sen. Cory Booker and former National Intelligence Director James Clapper both similar to those containing pipe bombs sent to other prominent critics of President Donald Trump had been intercepted. The discoveries making 12 so far further spurred a coast-to-coast investigation, as officials scrambled to locate a culprit and possible motive amid questions about whether new packages were being sent or simply surfacing after a period in mail system. The devices have targeted well-known Democrats including former President Barack Obama, former Vice President Joe Biden, Hillary Clinton and former Attorney General Eric Holder. The FBI said the package to Booker was intercepted in Florida. The one discovered at a Manhattan postal facility was addressed to Clapper at CNN's address. An earlier package had been sent to former Obama CIA Director John Brennan via CNN in New York. Attorney General Jeff Sessions said Friday the Justice Department was dedicating every available resource to the investigation "and I can tell you this: We will find the person or persons responsible. We will bring them to justice." Trump, on the other hand, complained that "this 'bomb' stuff" was taking attention away from the upcoming election and said critics were wrongly blaming him and his heated rhetoric. Investigators were analyzing the innards of the crude devices to reveal whether they were intended to detonate or simply sow fear just before Election Day. Law enforcement officials told The Associated Press that the devices, containing timers and batteries, were not rigged to explode upon opening. But they were uncertain whether the devices were poorly designed or never intended to cause physical harm. Homeland Security Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen, in an interview Thursday with Fox News Channel, acknowledged that some of packages originated in Florida. One official told AP that investigators are homing in on a postal facility in Opa-locka, Florida, where they believe some packages originated. The package addressed to Booker was found during an oversight search of that facility, according to a law enforcement official. The officials spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to discuss the ongoing investigation by name. Most of those targeted were past or present U.S. officials, but one was sent to actor Robert De Niro and billionaire George Soros. The bombs have been sent across the country - from New York, Delaware and Washington, D.C., to Florida and California, where Rep. Maxine Waters was targeted. They bore the return address of Florida Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz, the former chairwoman of the Democratic National Committee. The common thread among the bomb targets was obvious: their critical words for Trump and his frequent, harsher criticism in return. Trump claimed Friday he was being blamed for the mail bombs, complaining in a tweet sent before dawn: "Funny how lowly rated CNN, and others, can criticize me at will, even blaming me for the current spate of Bombs and ridiculously comparing this to September 11th and the Oklahoma City bombing, yet when I criticize them they go wild and scream, 'it's just not Presidential!'" The package to Clapper was addressed to him at CNN's Midtown Manhattan address. Clapper, a frequent Trump critic, told CNN that he was not surprised he was targeted and that he considered the actions "definitely domestic terrorism." Jeff Zucker, the president of CNN Worldwide, said in a note to staff that all mail to CNN domestic offices was being screened at off-site facilities. He said there was no imminent danger to the Time Warner Center, where CNN's New York office is located. At a press conference Thursday, officials in New York would not discuss possible motives or details on how the packages found their way into the postal system. Nor would they say why the packages hadn't detonated, but they stressed they were still treating them as "live devices." The devices were packaged in manila envelopes and carried U.S. postage stamps. They were being examined by technicians at the FBI's forensic lab in Quantico, Virginia. The packages stoked nationwide tensions ahead of the Nov. 6 election to determine control of Congress a campaign both major political parties have described in near-apocalyptic terms. Politicians from both parties used the threats to decry a toxic political climate and lay blame. Trump, in a tweet Thursday, blamed the "Mainstream Media" for the anger in society. Brennan responded, tweeting that Trump should "Stop blaming others. Look in the mirror." The bombs are about 6 inches (15 centimeters) long and packed with powder and broken glass, according to a law enforcement official who viewed X-ray images. The official said the devices were made from PVC pipe and covered with black tape. The first bomb discovered was delivered Monday to the suburban New York compound of Soros, a major contributor to Democratic causes. Soros has called Trump's presidency "dangerous." The swearing-in of former president Mahinda Rajapaksa as Sri Lanka's new prime minister is 'illegal and unconstitutional', Ranil Wickremesinghe asserted. Colombo: The swearing-in of former president Mahinda Rajapaksa as Sri Lanka's new prime minister is "illegal and unconstitutional", sacked premier Ranil Wickremesinghe asserted on Friday. In a dramatic turn of events, President Maithripala Sirisena's Sri Lanka Freedom Party withdrew from the ruling coalition and then sacked Wickremesinghe. In a telephonic conversation with a TV station, Wickremesinghe said, "I will continue to be the prime minister. Mahinda Rajapaksa's appointment is unconstitutional." Similarly, Finance Minister Mangala Samaraweera tweeted that "the appointment of Mahinda Rajapaksa as the Prime Minister is unconstitutional and illegal. This is an anti-democratic coup". Mahinda Amaraweera, agriculture minister and the general secretary of the United People's Freedom Alliance (UPFA), told reporters that the UPFA decision has been conveyed to Parliament. Within minutes of the statement, Rajapaksa was invited by Sirisena to take oath as the prime minister. The unity government was formed in 2015 when Sirisena was elected president with Wickremesinghe's support. Sirisena, who was Rajapaksa's minister of health, broke away from him to contest the presidential elections. Political analysts said Sirisena's move to install Rajapaksa as the prime minister could lead to a constitutional crisis as the 19th amendment to the Constitution would not allow the sacking of Wickremesinghe as the premier without a majority. Rajapaksa and Sirisena combine has only 95 seats and is short of a simple majority. Wickremesinghe's UNP has 106 seats on its own with just seven short of the majority. Pakistan's first space mission has been planned for 2022 and the federal Cabinet meeting chaired by Prime Minister Imran Khan approved the plan on Thursday, ahead of his maiden visit to Beijing from 3 November. An agreement between Pakistan Space and Upper Atmosphere Research Commission (SUPARCO) and a Chinese company has already been signed, Chaudhry said. Islamabad: Pakistan will send a human to space for the first time in 2022 with China's help, Information Minister Fawad Chaudhry announced on Thursday, the same year India plans to launch its manned space mission. Pakistan's first space mission has been planned for 2022 and the federal Cabinet meeting chaired by Prime Minister Imran Khan approved the plan on Thursday, ahead of his maiden visit to Beijing from 3 November. An agreement between Pakistan Space and Upper Atmosphere Research Commission (SUPARCO) and a Chinese company has already been signed, Chaudhry said. In his Independence Day address, Prime Minister Narendra Modi announced an ambitious mission of sending an Indian astronaut to space by 2022, which would make India the fourth nation in the world to do so. "We have resolved that by 2022, when India celebrates 75 years of Independence or maybe even before that, certainly some of our young boys and girls will unfurl the Tricolour in space," Modi said from the ramparts of the Red Fort on the 72nd Independence Day. Pakistan and China already have robust defence ties and Islamabad is one of the top buyers of Chinese military hardware. Earlier this year, Pakistan launched two indigenously built satellites into orbit, using a Chinese launch vehicle. The satellites were launched onboard a Chinese Long March (LM-2C) rocket from the Jiuquan Satellite Launch Centre located at the Gobi desert, China. One of the satellites launched was a remote sensing satellite (PRSS1) a dual-purpose Earth observational and optical satellite. The second test satellite launched was a PAK-TES-1A, developed by Space and Upper Atmospheric Research Commission (Suparco) to enhance satellite manufacture capabilities in the country which would help end Pakistan's dependency on commercial satellites for information related to weather, environment and agriculture. The satellites were transported to China as Pakistan lacks the infrastructure to launch objects, the Express Tribune quoted an official as saying. China launched its first manned space mission in 2003, becoming the third country in the world to independently develop manned spaceflight, after Russia and the United States. Khan is embarking on his first visit to China on 3 November and will hold meetings with Chinese president Xi Jinping and Premier Li Keqiang, Geo News quoted the Foreign Office as saying. During the visit the two sides will review the entire range of bilateral relations which have enjoyed a long history of mutual trust and mutual support. The two sides will also sign several agreements in diverse fields, the Foreign Office statement added. This will be the premier's first official visit to China after assuming office in August. The visit signifies the closeness and traditional warmth which characterises Pakistan-China all weather strategic cooperative partnership, the statement added. After his visit to Beijing, Khan will visit Shanghai to participate in First China International Import Expo in Shanghai. The premier will be a key note speaker at the inauguration of the expo. He will be accompanied by a high-level delegation, including Foreign Minister Shah Mehmood Qureshi. State Department spokesman Robert Palladino said Washington welcomes the decision to have Salah Khashoggi and his family leave Saudi Arabia. His US destination was not immediately known but his late father lived in the Washington area. Istanbul: The son of slain journalist Jamal Khashoggi has left Saudi Arabia after the kingdom revoked a travel ban, allowing him to come to the United States the latest in the saga of the Saudi writer and dissident whose macabre killing earlier this month at the Saudi Consulate in Istanbul shocked the world. State Department spokesman Robert Palladino said Washington welcomes the decision to have Salah Khashoggi and his family leave Saudi Arabia. His US destination was not immediately known but his late father lived in the Washington area. Palladino said on Thursday that US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo had discussed Jamal Khashoggi's son during his recent visit to Riyadh and "made it clear" to Saudi leaders that Washington wanted him free to leave the kingdom. "We are pleased that he is now able to do so," Palladino said. Saudi media had showed Khashoggi's son meeting Tuesday with the crown prince, who reportedly expressed his condolences. Palladino also said Pompeo attended a briefing on the former Washington Post writer's death by CIA Director Gina Haspel, following her return from Turkey. The White House did not release any details of their meeting. The developments came after the kingdom on Thursday cited evidence showing Khashoggi's killing was premeditated, changing its story again to try to ease international outrage over the slaying of a prominent critic of Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman. The announcement contradicted an earlier Saudi assertion that rogue officials from the kingdom had killed Khashoggi by mistake in a brawl inside their Istanbul consulate. That assertion, in turn, backtracked from an initial statement that Saudi authorities knew nothing about what happened to the columnist for The Washington Post, who vanished after entering the consulate on 2 October. The shifting explanations indicate Saudi Arabia is scrambling for a way out of the crisis that has enveloped the world's largest oil exporter and a major US ally in the Middle East. But a solution seems a long way off, partly because of deepening skepticism in Turkey and elsewhere that the brazen crime could have been carried out without the knowledge of Prince Mohammed, the kingdom's heir apparent. At a conference in Riyadh on Wednesday, the crown prince said the killing was a "heinous crime that cannot be justified" and warned against any efforts to "manipulate" the crisis and drive a wedge between Saudi Arabia and Turkey, which are regional rivals but also diplomatic and business partners. On Thursday, Prince Mohammed attended the first meeting of a committee aiming to restructure the kingdom's intelligence services after the killing of Khashoggi, the state-run Saudi Press Agency said. Khashoggi's death has derailed the powerful prince's campaign to project a modern image of the ultraconservative country, instead highlighting the brutal lengths to which some top officials in the government have gone to silence its critics. Khashoggi, who lived in self-imposed exile in the United States for nearly a year before his death, had written critically of Prince Mohammed's crackdown on dissent. A statement by Saudi Attorney General Saud al-Mojeb attributed the latest findings of a joint Turkish-Saudi investigation to information from Turkish counterparts. The evidence of Turkish investigators "indicates that the suspects in the incident had committed their act with a premeditated intention," the Saudi statement said. After the journalist disappeared, Saudi Arabia initially insisted Khashoggi had walked out of the consulate after visiting the building. It later dropped that account for a new one, saying it had detained 18 people for what it described as an accidental killing during a "fistfight". What president Donald Trump called "one of the worst cover-ups in the history of cover-ups" was revealed to the world by Turkish leaks of information, including references to purported audio recordings of the killing, and security camera footage of the Saudi officials who were involved as they moved around Istanbul. Saudi officials told The Associated Press this week that the kingdom sent a team to Turkey that included a forensics expert and a member whose job was to dress in the 59-year-old writer's clothes and pretend to be him though they were insisting as late as Tuesday that his death was an accident. United Nations designated terrorist and 26/11 Mumbai Attacks mastermind Hafiz Saeed's Jamaat-ud-Dawa (JuD) and Falah-i-Insaniyat Foundation (FIF) are no longer mentioned in the list of banned outfits after a presidential ordinance that prohibited them under a UN resolution lapsed Islamabad: United Nations designated terrorist and 26/11 Mumbai Attacks mastermind Hafiz Saeed's Jamaat-ud-Dawa (JuD) and Falah-i-Insaniyat Foundation (FIF) are no longer mentioned in the list of banned outfits after a presidential ordinance that prohibited them under a UN resolution lapsed. In February, former Pakistan president Mamnoon Hussain promulgated an ordinance amending the Anti-Terrorism Act 1997, thereby banning terrorist individuals and organisations that were listed by the UN Security Council. The JuD and FIF were proscribed under this ordinance. According to a petition filed by Saeed, his counsel Raja Rizwan Abbasi and Sohail Warraich told the Islamabad High Court (IHC) on Thursday that the ordinance had lapsed and was never extended by the Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) government, The Dawn reported. The globally designated terrorist challenged the ordinance under which his organisations, the JuD and FIF, were blacklisted for being on the watch list of the UN Security Council. In his plea, Saeed had claimed that the ordinance issued was against the sovereignty and the Constitution of Pakistan. The counsel informed Justice Aamer Farooq of the IHC that the ordinance was neither extended by the current government nor it was tabled in the Pakistan Parliament to convert it into an act. Subsequently, the judge said that Saeed's plea was no longer effective as the ordinance was not extended by the government. The Pakistan government had banned terror organisations and individuals from making donations to JuD, FIF, and others on the UN Security Council sanctions list. The UNSC sanctions list includes the names of terror organisations such as al-Qaeda, Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan, Lashkar-e-Jhangvi, JuD, FIF, and Lashkar-e-Taiba. By Delphine Schrank PIJIJIAPAN, Mexico (Reuters) - Mexico on Friday offered temporary identification papers and jobs to migrants who register for asylum in the country, stepping up efforts to halt the advance of a U.S.-bound Central American caravan that has angered Washington. By Delphine Schrank PIJIJIAPAN, Mexico (Reuters) - Mexico on Friday offered temporary identification papers and jobs to migrants who register for asylum in the country, stepping up efforts to halt the advance of a U.S.-bound Central American caravan that has angered Washington. U.S. President Donald Trump has threatened to close the U.S.-Mexico border and cut aid to Central America to try to stop the caravan of several thousand people. U.S. officials have said that up to 1,000 troops may be sent to the U.S. southern border to prevent the migrants from crossing. Making reference to the caravan, Mexican President Enrique Pena Nieto said that migrants wishing to obtain temporary identification documents, jobs or education for their children could do so by registering for asylum in southern Mexico. "This plan is only for those who comply with Mexican laws, and it's a first step towards a permanent solution for those who are granted refugee status in Mexico," Pena Nieto said in a pre-recorded address broadcast on Friday afternoon. To qualify for the scheme he called "Estas en Tu Casa" ('Make Yourself at Home') migrants had to be in the southern states of Chiapas and Oaxaca, Pena Nieto said. Temporary work in the states would be extended so as also to benefit Mexicans, said Pena Nieto, who leaves office on Nov. 30. The caravan, which is moving through Chiapas on the border of Guatemala, has enabled Trump to campaign hard on illegal immigration ahead of midterm congressional elections on Nov. 6, in which Republicans are battling to keep control of Congress. Mexican officials have said those migrants who do not qualify for refugee status are liable to be deported. Mexico's government has said that more than 1,700 people in the convoy have registered for asylum, while others have returned home. Estimates on the size of the group vary. Alden Rivera, the Honduran ambassador to Mexico, told Mexican radio on Friday that the caravan could reach Mexico City by next Friday. He put an "official" headcount at 3,500, estimating that at least two-thirds of them were Hondurans. The caravan set off in Honduras nearly two weeks ago, and has picked up other Central Americans en route. Alexander Fernandez, a Honduran travelling in the caravan, said people began leaving the town of Pijijiapan at about 3 a.m. to head for Arriaga, a town in the west of Chiapas. A banner hanging over a bridge on the migrants' path read: "Your hearts are brave, don't give up." Tens of thousands of Central Americans set off for the United States every year, looking to escape violence and poverty. Hondurans, Guatemalans and Salvadorans make up the bulk of illegal immigrants apprehended at the U.S. border. On Thursday night, thousands of people took refuge under small tents or teepees made from garbage bags in Pijijiapan's town square. Many people rushed to a nearby river in the afternoon to wash off the sweat of travel and extreme heat. A White House official said on Thursday that "a wide range of administrative, legal and legislative options" were being considered regarding the migrants. (Additional reporting by Veronica Gomez in Mexico City; Editing by Dave Graham and Tom Brown) This story has not been edited by Firstpost staff and is generated by auto-feed. The Pakistan Army said Bajwa 'confirmed death sentences awarded to 14 hardcore terrorists, who were involved in heinous offences related to terrorism'. Islamabad: Pakistan Army Chief General Qamar Javed Bajwa on Friday endorsed the death sentences of 14 "hardcore terrorists" who were convicted by special military courts. The military courts were set up soon after the Peshawar attack of December 2014 that killed nearly 150 schoolchildren for speedy trial of militants in Pakistan. The Army said Bajwa "confirmed death sentences awarded to 14 hardcore terrorists, who were involved in heinous offences related to terrorism". They were found guilty of attacking armed forces, law enforcing agencies, killing of innocent civilians and destruction of educational institutions. "On the whole, they were involved in killing of 22 persons including 3 civilians, 19 armed forces/frontier constabulary/ police officials and injuring 23 others," the army said, adding arms and explosives were also recovered from their possession. These convicts were tried by special military courts but the dates and venues of the trial was not shared by the army due to security reasons. Another eight persons were imprisoned for their involvement in militancy in the country. Premier Li Keqiang greeted Abe as Japan's flag flew outside the opulent Great Hall of the People across from Tiananmen Square, and they reviewed an honour guard before going inside for talks. Relations between Asia's two biggest economies have improved in recent years after they sunk to new lows in 2012 when Tokyo 'nationalised' disputed islands claimed by Beijing. Beijing: Japan's Shinzo Abe inspected troops off Beijing's Tiananmen Square Friday during a rare visit to China as ties further improve and the two countries face trade challenges from US President Donald Trump. Premier Li Keqiang greeted Abe as Japan's flag flew outside the opulent Great Hall of the People across from Tiananmen Square, and they reviewed an honour guard before going inside for talks. Relations between Asia's two biggest economies have improved in recent years after they sunk to new lows in 2012 when Tokyo "nationalised" disputed islands claimed by Beijing. The relationship has rapidly warmed up as Trump has slapped massive tariffs on China while also targeting Japanese exports in his effort to cut US trade deficits, despite touting his personal bonds with Abe and Chinese President Xi Jinping. Abe and Xi are expected to discuss how to boost economic cooperation between the world's second and third largest economies when they meet later Friday. Abe brought along delegates from 500 Japanese companies, which are eager for increased access to China's massive market, while Beijing is interested in Japanese technology and corporate know-how. "Though the US is quite an influential factor in China-Japan ties, the effect is limited," China's nationalistic Global Times said in an editorial. "If Beijing and Tokyo intend to plan their future bilateral relationship based on Washington's attitude, they will only get lost," the state-run daily said. Abe and Xi are likely to focus on a range of potential deals, including joint investments in infrastructure in regional nations including Indonesia and the Philippines. The last official visit to Beijing by a Japanese prime minister was in 2011. Since an awkward 2014 encounter between Abe and Xi on the sidelines of a summit, there have been ministerial visits by both sides and a softening of rhetoric. Li visited Tokyo in May. Abe's three-day trip, which began Thursday, sets up the possibility that Xi will visit Japan next year. Abe and Li already met on Thursday during a reception to celebrate the signing of the treaty that put Japanese and Chinese relations back on track after World War II. At the event, Li called for the countries to "jointly promote regional peace" and "safeguard multilateralism and free trade," according to state broadcaster CCTV. For his part, Abe said: "Japan and China play an irreplaceable role in the economic development of Asia and even the world" and both sides should work together to "promote world peace and prosperity", according to CCTV. Before heading to Beijing, Abe said he would also discuss North Korea and territorial frictions calling to make "the East China Sea a sea of peace, friendship and cooperation." Just days before Abe's trip, Tokyo lodged an official complaint after Chinese ships cruised around the disputed islands that Tokyo calls the Senkaku and Beijing labels the Diaoyu islands. China has long denounced Japan for what it says is an insufficiently contrite attitude towards its role in World War II. But ahead of the trip, Beijing has taken a more cordial stance than it has in the past. Japanese media have reported Abe is hoping the visit will produce a soft power win in the form of some panda diplomacy, with zoos in Sendai and Kobe apparently angling for new additions. A private television network loyal to Rajapaksa televised him being sworn in as the new prime minister, replacing Wickremesinghe. Colombo: President Maithripala Sirisena Friday sacked his Prime Minister Ranil Wickremesinghe and appointed former president Mahinda Rajapaksa as the new premier, the president's office said. A private television network loyal to Rajapaksa televised him being sworn in as the new prime minister, replacing Wickremesinghe. There was no immediate word from Wickremesinghe, who helped Sirisena win the January 2015 elections against Rajapaksa. The surprise move comes after disagreements between Sirisena and Wickremesinghe over economic policy and day-to-day administration of the government. The pair were reported to have clashed in cabinet last week over government plans to lease a port terminal to neighbouring India. Wickremesinghe's government came to power promising economic reforms and accountability for atrocities committed in Sri Lanka's bloody civil war during Rajapaksa's presidency. By Ezgi Erkoyun and Ali Kucukgocmen ISTANBUL (Reuters) - Turkish prosecutors have prepared an extradition request for 18 suspects from Saudi Arabia in the killing of journalist Jamal Khashoggi, authorities said on Friday, after President Tayyip Erdogan urged Riyadh to disclose who ordered the murder. Erdogan has in recent days stepped up pressure on Saudi Arabia to come clean in the case, and Western governments have also voiced increasing scepticism, pitching the world's top oil exporter and a pivotal Middle East ally into a worsening crisis. Erdogan said Turkey had more information than it had shared so far about the killing of Khashoggi, a Saudi national and Washington Post columnist who was killed at the Saudi consulate in Istanbul on Oct.2 By Ezgi Erkoyun and Ali Kucukgocmen ISTANBUL (Reuters) - Turkish prosecutors have prepared an extradition request for 18 suspects from Saudi Arabia in the killing of journalist Jamal Khashoggi, authorities said on Friday, after President Tayyip Erdogan urged Riyadh to disclose who ordered the murder. Erdogan has in recent days stepped up pressure on Saudi Arabia to come clean in the case, and Western governments have also voiced increasing scepticism, pitching the world's top oil exporter and a pivotal Middle East ally into a worsening crisis. Erdogan said Turkey had more information than it had shared so far about the killing of Khashoggi, a Saudi national and Washington Post columnist who was killed at the Saudi consulate in Istanbul on Oct.2. Khashoggi, who lived in the United States, was a critic of Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, the kingdom's de facto ruler. Saudi Arabia's public prosecutor on Thursday said the killing of Khashoggi was premeditated, contradicting a previous official statement that it happened accidentally during a tussle in the consulate. Riyadh's numerous shifting accounts of the killing have undermined Prince Mohammed's stance in the West. Turkish prosecutors seeking the extradition accuse the 18 of "murder by premeditation, monstrous intent or by torture". Riyadh previously arrested the 18 as part of its investigation into the case. Those include a 15-man security team that Turkey says flew in hours before the killing and carried it out. "Who gave this order?" Erdogan said in a speech to members of his AK Party in Ankara. "Who gave the order for 15 people to come to Turkey?" he said. Saudi officials initially denied having anything to do with Khashoggi's disappearance after he entered the consulate, which he had visited to obtain paperwork for a planned marriage. "The reasoning behind the extradition request is that Jamal Khashoggi was murdered in Turkey by Saudi nationals who travelled to Turkey for this specific purpose," a senior Turkish official said. "It is clear that the judicial system in Turkey is better equipped to genuinely serve the cause of justice in this case." Saudi Arabia has also sacked five senior government officials as part of the investigation. FIANCEE SPURNED TRUMP INVITE Khashoggi's Turkish fiancee, Hatice Cengiz, said she did not accept an invitation from U.S. President Donald Trump, the kingdom's staunchest Western champion, to visit the White House after Khashoggi's murder because she thought it was aimed at influencing public opinion in his own favour. In her first television interview since the killing, Cengiz recounted the events leading up to their visit to the consulate on Oct. 2 where Khashoggi handed her his two mobile phones and went inside while she waited outside for him to emerge. "Trump invited me to the United States but I perceived it as a statement to win public favour," Cengiz told broadcaster Haberturk, pausing at times during an interview and more than once breaking down in tears. Trump and Prince Mohammed have cultivated warm ties though the U.S. president said earlier this week that the crown prince, as the kingdom's de facto ruler, bore ultimate responsibility for the operation against Khashoggi. Trump also said Riyadh had staged the "worst cover-up ever" over the killing. Cengiz said Khashoggi was concerned tensions would arise when he visited the consulate for the first time on Sept. 28, but he was treated well at that visit, which appeared to reassure him, she said. "He thought Turkey is a safe country and if he would be held or interrogated, this issue would be swiftly solved," she said. SELF-STYLED REFORMER How Western allies deal with Riyadh will hinge on the extent to which they believe responsibility for Khashoggi's death lies directly with Prince Mohammed and the Saudi authorities. Prince Mohammed, who casts himself as a reformer, has said the killers will be brought to justice. Erdogan said he had spoken with Prince Mohammed. "I also told the crown prince. I said, 'You know how to make people talk. Whatever happened between these 18 people, this dodgy business is among them. If you are determined to lift suspicion, then the key point of our cooperation is these 18 people.'" Turkish officials suspect Saudi agents killed Khashoggi, 59, inside the consulate and dismembered him. Turkish sources say authorities have an audio recording documenting the murder. U.S. CIA Director Gina Haspel heard the audio during a visit to Turkey this week, sources told Reuters, and has briefed Trump about Turkey's findings and her discussions. Saudi state television quoted the Saudi public prosecutor on Thursday as saying Riyadh was interrogating suspects on the basis of information given by a joint Saudi-Turkish task force. Many Saudis have been shocked by Riyadh's admission after two weeks of denials and condemnation of foreign news reports. On Friday, authorities tried to stem the domestic fallout, instructing mosque preachers to focus sermons on "the fierce and unjust onslaught targeting the country", according to a directive seen by Reuters that did not specifically mention the Khashoggi murder. One Riyadh cleric warned worshippers against repeating reports from TV or social media "without contemplating the danger of this news", adding that "most of them are lies". (Additional reporting by Orhan Coskun and Tulay Karadeniz in Ankara, Maria Tsvetkova in Moscow; Yesim Dikmen and Daren Butler in Istanbul and Stephen Kalin in Riyadh; Writing by David DolanEditing by Mark Heinrich) This story has not been edited by Firstpost staff and is generated by auto-feed. Turkish president Recep Tayyip Erdogan urged Saudi Arabia on Friday to disclose who gave the order to kill journalist Jamal Khashoggi, as well the location of his body, saying Turkey had more information about the case than it has shared so far. Istanbul: Turkish president Recep Tayyip Erdogan urged Saudi Arabia on Friday to disclose who gave the order to kill journalist Jamal Khashoggi, as well the location of his body, saying Turkey had more information about the case than it has shared so far. Erdogan also said Riyadh needed to reveal the identity of the local cooperator who Saudi officials earlier said had taken Khashoggis body from Saudi agents after the journalist was killed inside the Saudi consulate in Istanbul on 2 October. Saudi Arabia said on Thursday the killing of Khashoggi, a Washington Post columnist and a critic of Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, was premeditated, reversing previous statements that it was unintended. Khashoggis murder sparked global outrage and mushroomed into a crisis for the worlds top oil exporting country and Prince Mohammed, the kingdoms de facto ruler. Who gave this order? Erdogan said in a speech to members of his AK Party in Ankara. Who gave the order for 15 people to come to Turkey? he said, referring to a 15-man Saudi security team Turkey has said flew into Istanbul hours before the killing. Erdogan also said Saudis public prosecutor was due to meet the Istanbul prosecutor in Istanbul on Sunday. Saudi officials initially denied having anything to do with Khashoggis disappearance after he entered the consulate, before changing the official account to say an internal investigation suggested he was accidentally killed in a botched operation to return him to the kingdom. On Thursday, Saudi State TV quoted the Saudi public prosecutor as saying the killing had been planned, and that prosecutors were interrogating suspects on the basis of information provided by a joint Saudi-Turkish task force. Annual Report to Shareholders Perth, Oct 26, 2018 AEST (ABN Newswire) - Ardea Resources Ltd ( ASX:ARL ) ( OTCMKTS:ARRRF ) provides the Company's Annual Report to shareholders.Chairman's Letter to Shareholders 2018Dear Shareholders,On behalf of the Directors of Ardea Resources Limited ("Ardea") I am pleased to report on the Company's activities over the past year.Ardea has made significant progress in advancing the Goongarrie Nickel Cobalt Project towards development. In March 2018 the results of the Pre-Feasibility Study for both a 1.0Mtpa and a 1.5Mtpa option were released. In July 2018 we announced the results of an Expansion Study for 2.25Mtpa. All of these studies confirmed the strong potential returns for Shareholders from the development of the Goongarrie Nickel Cobalt Project.The Company has also completed 29,747 metres of drilling at the Goongarrie project, which results are currently being used to update the resource estimate for the project. The drill core has also been used for metallurgical test work including Ardea's first pilot plant program to produce nickel and cobalt sulphate crystals.To further enhance project value, Ardea plans to explore the upside potential of scandium, High Purity Alumina, manganese and vanadium at Goongarrie. These are potentially valuable by-products and warrant further evaluation to maximize the value Ardea can extract from this exceptional orebody.The international interest in nickel and cobalt continues to rise, particularly with cobalt and its value in battery development for electric vehicles. As such in June 2018, Ardea announced that KPMG would conduct a Strategic Partner process to seek a well-financed, battery metal producer, end-user or mining company to assist in developing the Goongarrie Nickel Cobalt Project with us. Goongarrie is a multi-decade production platform in a first world location with significant infrastructure already in place. This Strategic Partner process is ongoing.While the prime focus at Ardea is Goongarrie we have continued, in parallel to advance our gold and nickel projects in Western Australia (where drilling is planned in late 2018), and also the Lewis Ponds project in New South Wales (where a resource update is underway.)The Company is well funded as Ardea raised $27.5M in 2018, leaving our cash position at 30 June at $19M. Issued capital remains tight at 105M Shares. After a stellar share price rise in 2017, the fall in the cobalt price over the last year has weighed on the Company's share price, however the long-term demand for nickel and cobalt remain strong due to the strong international uptake in electric vehicles.I would like to thank our small but dedicated team of employees, directors and consultants for their work which has enabled us to achieve so much and look forward to the next exciting stage of the Company's development.A development like the Goongarrie Nickel Cobalt Project works best when the local Community is in support. To this end, I would like to acknowledge the encouragement provided by the Menzies Shire and the City of Kalgoorlie Boulder where the Project is located. As Goongarrie advances, Ardea hopes to become the employer of choice in these Local Government districts, and elsewhere in our areas of operation.I would also like to thank our Shareholders for their ongoing support.To view the Annual Report, please visit:About Ardea Resources Ltd Ardea Resources Ltd (ASX:ARL) (OTCMKTS:ARRRF) (FRA:A91) is an ASX listed resources company, with 100% controlled Australian based projects, prioritising a three-pronged value creation strategy which is: - development of the Goongarrie Nickel Cobalt Project, which is part of the Kalgoorlie Nickel Project, a globally significant series of nickel-cobalt deposits which host the largest nickel-cobalt resource in the developed world, coincidentally located as a cover sequence overlying fertile orogenic gold targets; - advanced-stage exploration at WA gold and nickel sulphide targets within the Eastern Goldfields world-class nickel-gold province; and - the demerger of the NSW gold and base metal assets with planned in-specie share distribution, with projects located within the Lachlan Fold Belt world-class gold-copper province. Announces Successful Production of First Potash Salts Perth, Oct 26, 2018 AEST (ABN Newswire) - Australian Potash Limited ( ASX:APC ) (Company) is pleased to advise the second successful transfer of approximately 70 tonnes of potassium saturated brine from the first harvest pond (H1) into the second harvest pond (H2) at the Lake Wells Sulphate of Potash project pilot evaporation pond network.This second transfer allows for the desiccation and collection of potassium (K) and sulphate (SO4) bearing salts precipitated in H1.Highlights:- Successful Brine Transfer from First Harvest Pond to Second Harvest Pond- Approximately 10 tonnes of potassium and sulphate bearing salts precipitated into the first harvest pond- The next phases of evaporation and crystallisation in the second and third harvest ponds will produce more than 10 additional tonnes of salts- APC will produce an estimated 250 kilograms of SOP trade samples in an initial production run for delivery to MOU Offtake Partners Q4 2018The pilot pond network at Lake Wells comprises a large pre-concentration pond (P1) and three smaller, harvest ponds (H1 to H3). The raw, hypersaline brine was pumped into P1 using one of the five (5) existing production bores at the project. Evaporation in P1 promoted the precipitation of NaCl and the saturation of dissolved K and SO4 in the remaining brine solution.(see Note below) While minor amounts of NaCl continued to precipitate in H1, the crystallisation of K and SO4 bearing salts also occurred.Following this second successful brine transfer, the salts in H1 may now be harvested.As the brine evaporates further in H2, various K and SO4 bearing salts continue to crystalise. It is anticipated that the third and final transfer of brine into the final harvest pond (H3) will occur within the next 2 - 3 weeks, resulting in the final crystallisation of 'feeder' or harvest salts in the harvest ponds. A blend of salts from H1, H2 and H3 will be processed to a refined SOP.The pilot evaporation pond program is anticipated to produce more than 20 tonnes of harvest salts, from which approximately two tonnes will be transported to the laboratory in Perth, where a pilot plant is being established; the remaining salt will be stored on site for future testing as required. In the initial pilot run, approximately 250 kilograms of trade samples of SOP will be produced. The Company's processing consultants, Novopro, will manage the production of SOP at the Perth laboratory's pilot plant.Managing Director Matt Shackleton commented: "The understanding of the evaporative environment that we gain from the pilot pond network is invaluable in our final design concepts for the commercial scale ponds. Coupled with the more than 100 years of local meteorological records and our own long-term Class A evaporation pan trials, we are seeing confirmation of the evaporation models being developed by expert Canadian potash processing consultants Novopro."The Definitive Feasibility Study has entered its final phase across abstraction, evaporation and processing. We are very advanced with our permitting, with EPA approval of our Environmental Scoping Document, have granted mining leases and have made material advancements in logistics."We look forward to continuing to provide regular updates on the DFS over these final few months."Note: Refer to ASX announcement 22 August 2018 'Pilot Pond Brine Processing'. That announcement contains the relevant statements, data and consents referred to in this announcement. Apart from that which is disclosed in this document, Australian Potash Limited, its directors, officers and agents: 1. Are not aware of any new information that materially affects the information contained in the 22 August 2018 announcement, and 2. State that the material assumptions and technical parameters underpinning the estimates in the 22 August 2018 announcement continue to apply and have not materially changed.To view figures, please visit:About Australian Potash Ltd Australian Potash Limited (ASX:APC) is an ASX-listed Sulphate of Potash (SOP) developer. The Company holds a 100% interest in the Lake Wells Potash Project located approximately 500kms northeast of Kalgoorlie, in Western Australia's Eastern Goldfields. Following the release of a Scoping Study in 2017, APC has been conducting a Definitive Feasibility Study (DFS) into the development of the Lake Wells Potash Project. The Company is aiming to release the findings of the DFS in H2 2019. The Lake Wells Potash Project is a palaeochannel brine hosted sulphate of potash project. Palaeochannel bore fields supply large volumes of brine to many existing mining operations throughout Western Australia, and this technique is a well understood and proven method for extracting brine. APC will use this technically low-risk and commonly used brine extraction model to further develop a bore-field into the palaeochannel hosting the Lake Wells SOP resource. A Scoping Study on the Lake Wells Potash Project was completed and released on 23 March 2017. The Scoping Study exceeded expectations and confirmed that the Project's economic and technical aspects are all exceptionally strong, and highlights APC's potential to become a significant long-life, low capital and high margin sulphate of potash (SOP) producer. to Access Additional R&D Rebates on Overseas Expenditure Perth, Oct 26, 2018 AEST (ABN Newswire) - Nanollose Limited ( ASX:NC6 ) ("Nanollose" or the "Company") is pleased to announce that it has obtained favourable findings from the Department of Industry, Innovation and Science ("Innovation and Science Australia") which will enable the Company to claim tax rebates on certain overseas research and development expenditure up to $1.419 million over the next three years.This represents potential tax rebates of $617k (at the current rate of 43.5%) over the next three years, subject to Nanollose undertaking these overseas R&D activities, and will be in addition to rebates claimed from the Company's Australian based R&D expenditure.Tax rebates under the Australian R&D Tax Incentive Scheme are typically only available for research and development activities undertaken in Australia. However, given the unique and specialised nature of Nanollose's operations, much of its research and development activities cannot be undertaken within Australia due to the specialist viscose spinning equipment and raw material feedstock not being available in Australia.As a result, Nanollose made an application to Innovation and Science Australia for advanced overseas findings which, following a very rigorous process, led to the issue of certificates under sections 28A and 28C of the Industry Research and Development Act 1986.The certificates enable partial recovery of expenses for overseas R&D work that cannot be undertaken in Australia. These include refinement of Nanollose's fibre spinning technology, creation of additional fibre types and development of the Company's pilot plant, which is being established to optimise production and processing conditions for microbial cellulose.Combined with tax rebates from the Company's R&D undertaken in Australia, these additional tax rebates on overseas expenditure will be an important source of non-dilutive funding for Nanollose.Nanollose Chairman, Dr Wayne Best, said "We are grateful for the finding given to Nanollose by Innovation and Science Australia and value the financial impact this will have on our R&D programs. The finding is the result of considerable effort in documenting our R&D programs for Innovation and Science Australia and reflects the quality and robustness of our programs."About Nanollose Ltd Nanollose Limited (ASX:NC6) is an innovative Australian company that uses a low cost and eco-friendly fermentation process to grow fibres that could become a sustainable alternative to conventional plant-derived cellulose fibres. The Companys process, which uses streams from various large-scale industries like sugar, wine and food, has the ability to produce Plant-Free Cellulose. Cellulose is the hidden building block polymer most consumers know nothing about, but forms a huge part of items used in their everyday life such as clothing, paper and hygiene products. Corporate Restructure - Appointment of Non-Executive Chairman Perth, Oct 26, 2018 AEST (ABN Newswire) - White Cliff Minerals ( ASX:WCN ) ("White Cliff", "the Company") advise that it has appointed Mr Jack Gardner as Non-executive Chairman effective 26 October 2018.Key Points:- Appointment of Non-executive Chairman- Gold strategy focus on extracting shareholder value from the 484,000 ounce Aucu gold deposit- Cobalt strategy focus on resource definition drilling to crystallise cobalt-nickel value at Australian projectsMr Gardner is an engineer with extensive experience bringing mines into production. Mr. Gardner graduated from the University of Melbourne in 1962 with a Bachelor of Engineering (Mechanical) degree and is a Fellow of the Institution of Engineers Australia. He also holds a Master of Business Administration degree from Curtin University, Western Australia.Mr Gardner has held directorships and senior management positions with Hawker Siddeley Engineering Pty Ltd, Comsteel Vickers/ANI, Minproc Engineers Pty Ltd and Broken Hill Metals NL between 1970 and 1990. From 1993-2006 he acted at Chief Engineer for Canadian Company Guinor Gold Corporation. He acted as Executive Chairman of Ghana Manganese Company (2000-2005), rebuilding it into a major manganese carbonate producer. Since 1996, he has developed and managed the 100,000 ounces per annum Lero gold Heap Leach Project and completed the LEFA Corridor project study and supervised the EPCM contractor constructing its 350,000 ounces per annum multiple open pit and CIP Plant project in remote Guinea, West Africa.In 2010 he was the inaugural Chair of Viking Mines Limited until retiring in 2017. During that chairmanship he supervised the expansion of the Akoase resource to 780,000 Oz gold and the subsequent sale of that Asset. A founder non-executive director of Mincor from 1996 until he retired in 2017, he served through the company's transition from a West African gold explorer in to its development as a substantial nickel sulfide miner and gold miner in the Kambalda region of WA.We warmly welcome Jack to the team and believe his wide ranging experience across different commodities in both production and exploration phases will be of significant value to the Company.As part of the Board re-structure the Company's Michael Langoulant will step down as Chairman but remain as an executive director. The changes allow the Company to adhere more closely to the Corporation Act on Corporate Governance and will strengthen the board as the Company focusses on developing the Aucu Gold deposit.Gold FocusThe Company will also focus on extracting value from its 90%-owned Aucu Gold Project in the Kyrgyz Republic, which contains an inferred gold resource of 2.95 million tonnes at 5.1 g/t Au for 484,000 ounces of gold and an inferred copper resource of 17.2 Mt at 0.37% copper containing 64,000 tonnes of copper. Recent geochemical sampling across the project porphyry area has highlighted multiple significant gold-copper and base metals targets highlighting the scale potential of this mineralised system.Australian Cobalt Nickel FocusThe Company will focus on its cobalt and nickel projects located south-east of Laverton. Each of these projects have the potential to become significant mines in the near term. Although the projects are at early stages, White Cliff believes each could potentially support a stand-alone development of a size and quality that could rival some similar projects being promoted by the leaders in the Australian cobalt-nickel sector. The White Cliff projects also benefit from being located close to Glencore's existing Murrin Murrin nickel-cobalt plant and GME Resources' proposed Mt Kilkenny nickel-cobalt plant, which offer alternative development options.About White Cliff Minerals Ltd White Cliff Minerals Ltd is a Gold, Copper, Cobalt, Nickel resources and mining company listed in Australia (ASX:WCN). The Company is focused on developing low cost high value mineral deposits that have near term cash flow potential. Major projects include the Aucu gold deposit that contains 484,000 ounces of gold (3mt at 5.1 g/t) starting at surface and Chanach copper deposit that contains 64,000 tonnes of copper (17.2Mt at 0.37% copper). Both projects have substantial blue sky potential with drilling covering only 5% of the known structures. In Australia the company is developing the Coronation Dam cobaltnickel deposit where a maiden resource will be announced in the late 2018. Annual Report to Shareholders Perth, Oct 26, 2018 AEST (ABN Newswire) - Mission NewEnergy Limited ( ASX:MBT ) ( OTCMKTS:MNELF ) provides the Company's Annual Report to shareholders.Chairman's/CEO's OverviewDear Valued Shareholders, on behalf of the Board of Directors, I present to you Mission NewEnergy's Annual Report for 2018.On 5 December 2016, the Company announced that it had entered into a Heads of Agreement to acquire the business operations of the AUS Group, a leading manufacturer of building materials products in Australia. The shares traded on the Australian Securities Exchange (ASX) were placed into voluntary suspension at that time. This transaction was anticipated to be completed via a reverse takeover, commonly known as an RTO and required AUS Group to complete a number of transaction condition precedents, including completing a pre-RTO funding round to meet immediate growth working capital requirements. On 19 January 2018 the Company terminated the agreement with AUS Group because they had been unable to fulfill the conditions precedent to complete the transaction.The Company believes that it is a good candidate to undertake an RTO with an entity that meets the ASX compliance rules and continues to work with potential entities to complete an RTO.The Group owns 100% of M2 Capital Sdn Bhd, a Malaysian subsidiary, which owns a 20% stake in FGV Green Energy Sdn Bhd (FGVGE), a refinery joint venture company. This asset is carried at a NIL value by the Group as the project has stalled.Therefore, the Company is focused on maximizing shareholder value through a positive return from:- Undertaking an RTO with a suitable operating entity, and/or- looking for new business opportunities.The Company continues to constantly evaluate the opportunities and challenges presenting themselves in order to act in the best interest of stakeholders.To view the full report, please visit:About Mission NewEnergy Limited Mission NewEnergy Ltd (ASX:MBT) (OTCMKTS:MNELF) is an Australian Securities Exchange ("ASX") listed company. 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. President Xi Jinping met with Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe in Beijing Friday, calling on both sides to cherish the good momentum in bilateral ties. Chinese President Xi Jinping (R) meets with Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe in Beijing, capital of China, Oct. 26, 2018. [Photo: Xinhua] Xi welcomed Abe's official visit to China and spoke highly of his positive efforts in improving and developing China-Japan relations in recent years. "China and Japan, as close neighbors with great converging interests, are major world economies and influential countries," Xi said. "The healthy, steady and long-term development of China-Japan ties is in the fundamental interests of the two countries' people, and represents common expectations of the international community." This year marks the 40th anniversary of the signing of the China-Japan Treaty of Peace and Friendship. "The treaty, signed by the elder generation of leaders of both countries, established a general direction of lasting peace, friendship between the two countries in the form of law, and provided solid support for both sides to conduct mutual beneficial cooperation, achieve common development, and properly deal with sensitive historical issues and the Taiwan issue," Xi said. "With concerted efforts by both sides, China-Japan ties are back on track and gaining positive momentum. This is worth cherishing." He called on both countries to "adhere to the various principles affirmed in the four political documents, stick to the general direction of peace and friendship, continue their joint efforts in mutual beneficial cooperation and further develop bilateral ties." "Under the new situations, China and Japan, increasingly interdependent in bilateral areas, also share more common interests and concerns on multilateral occasions," Xi said. "Thorough strategic communication should be carried out, and the two countries' dialogue mechanisms should play a better role via diverse channels at multiple-levels, so that each side can precisely grasp the other's development and strategic intentions." The two sides should effectively implement the consensus that they are partners rather than mutual threats, facilitate positive interactions, and deepen mutual political trust, Xi said. The Chinese president also called for tapping the potential of higher-level cooperation. "As China continues its reform and opens its door even wider to the world, more opportunities have emerged in China's cooperation with countries including Japan," Xi told Abe. "Japan is welcome to participate in China's progress in the new era." He expressed his hope of facilitating people-to-people exchanges between China and Japan, boosting mutual understanding, and encouraging the young to strive for friendship between both countries. "China and Japan should interact more actively in the security area, foster constructive security relations, and pursue the path of peace and development for regional peace and stability," Xi said. He called on the two sides to cooperate closely in the international arena, expand common interests, promote regional economic integration, jointly combat global challenges, safeguard multilateralism and uphold free trade and construct an open world economy. Xi reiterated the importance of keeping promises, noting that China and Japan should "act on the basis of their four political documents and consensus, deal with problems and differences constructively, so as to maintain the political foundation guiding healthy development of bilateral ties." Abe voiced his pleasure at paying an official visit to China at the "important moment" of the 40th anniversary of the signing of the treaty. "It is hoped that through this visit, the two sides will usher in a new era when 'competition is transformed into coordination,'" Abe said. As close neighbors, Japan and China should push forward bilateral ties on the basis of the principles set in their four political documents and in the spirit of "cooperating in a mutual-beneficial way and never posing a threat to each other," he said. The two countries should contribute to regional and international peace, as well as free trade, he suggested. Saying Japan welcomes and supports China's efforts in furthering opening-up, Abe expressed Japan's willingness to intensify exchanges with China to lay the social foundation to improve bilateral ties. The Japanese prime minister called on both sides to manage differences properly and make joint efforts to maintain regional stability and prosperity. Calling the Belt and Road Initiative "promising", Abe said Japan was willing to beef up cooperation with China in wide areas, including the exploration of third-party markets. Shareholder Invitation - TLEM Conference Adelaide, Oct 26, 2018 AEST (ABN Newswire) - Core Exploration Limited ( ASX:CXO ), in association with Vertical Events, would like to invite you to attend the Technology & Low Emission Minerals Conference on Wednesday 14 November 2018- Day 2.As a valued shareholder, we are delighted to offer you a complimentary one-day entry to the Technology & Low Emissions Conference at the Westin Hotel, Perth. This invitation includes entry to the exhibition booth area, morning and afternoon teas, lunches and presentations throughout the day.I will be presenting in the Main Auditorium at 2.40pm on Wednesday 14 November, so please come along for an update on Core's Finniss Lithium Project - one of the highest-grade undeveloped lithium deposits in Australia.Also, throughout the day, executives from other resource companies and industry experts will be making presentations and/or showcasing their activities in a booth within the exhibition area.You will find Core Exploration at Booth #33.If you would like to accept this offer, it is essential that you RSVP to admin@coreexploration.com.au by Friday 2 November, advising your name for registration and full contact details including an e-mail address.Free Shareholder passes are for genuine investors and NOT from one of the following:- Directors of any ASX listed resource/oil & gas companies- Non-executive Directors of above companies- Staff members of the above companies- Employed in the resources industry (consultants/contractors/lawyers/accountants/bankers/suppliers etc)For more information regarding the Technology & Low Emission Minerals Conference, including the full programme of speakers, visit http://www.verticalevents.com.au I look forward to seeing you there!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. Today, New Zealand producer and songwriter BAYNK has released the official video for new single"Settle," a collaborative track with UK artist and vocalist Sinead Harnett. The video follows in line with BAYNK's gorgeously sleek visual output, showcasing his masterful artistic sense across disciplines. The song is incredible and we love seeing what BAYNK is doing! Catch him at RNV this year, and give his new track a listen now (along with the video up top! Following specific concerns raised by the CFO Forum and EFRAG amongst others, nine industry bodies representing insurers in major markets around the world wrote to the IASB setting out a case for a two-year delay in the effective date of 1 January 2021. In contrast, last week the European Supervisory Authorities, comprising the European Banking Authority, the European Securities & Markets Authority and the European Insurance and Occupational Pensions Authority wrote to EFRAG to warn strongly against any slippage in the endorsement process in the EU, and consequently the likely effective date, citing in particular the interaction with the effective date of IFRS 9 Financial Instruments. Any changes are likely to be narrowly-focused In its October meeting, the IASB discussed the process for evaluating any potential changes to the standard, including the effective date, and agreed on the criteria by which they would assess the merits of any such amendments. In addition to maintaining the usefulness of information to investors, any changes should minimise disruption in existing implementation processes or risk undue delays in the effective date. From feedback received from stakeholders, the IASB staff had identified 25 areas of concern. While the Board expressed a willingness to consider these matters, there was a clear sense that any changes would be narrow in scope (the term surgical strikes was used by one Board member) and that, in general, there was a strong reluctance to re-open the published standard unless significant new information had come to light since issuing the standard. A number of Board members spoke of the need not to compromise the core principles underpinning the standard and IFRSs more generally. The Board will now consider individual points in the November or December meetings. Clearly with the need to abide by the IASBs due process requirements, including public consultation, potential revisions to the standard, if any, are unlikely to be confirmed in the near future, causing insurers added uncertainty as they progress with their implementation programmes, said Roger Gascoigne, Senior Director at Willis Towers Watson. Having spent 20 years preparing the standard, as ultimately issued, there is evidently no appetite for knee-jerk reactions. The Board is clearly alert to the consequential impacts, particularly on insurers who have already invested significant amounts on implementation. The Board debated some possible solutions to the question of a delay beyond 2021, including removing the requirement for comparatives and differentiating between listed and unlisted companies, but these options are not without significant disadvantages. How should insurers react? Insurers are, therefore, facing difficult questions about how much to invest in IFRS 17 implementation projects and whether to accelerate or delay their timetables. Given the current status, insurers should definitely keep going with projects under the assumption that effective date of 2021 remains, said Kamran Foroughi, Senior Director at Willis Towers Watson. One practical short term step may be to revisit the project plans, considering what key aspects would change if the effective date were to be delayed by a year or two. In our experience, this would reduce project risks, enable more contingency time and enable more testing of processes and systems including the ability to perform and implement improvements resulting from dry runs. Any delay in the timetable would allow preparers to adopt a value-add approach instead of struggling to achieve minimum compliance. Insurers would also have some capacity to consider business implications earlier and in a more measured way. Flipkart Diwali Festive Dhamaka Day offers: Heavy discounts and offers on laptops Features oi-Harish Kumar This Diwali- Flipkart brings lots of surprising deals on some devices, gadgets and other wares. With Diwali Festive Dhamaka Day, you get these products at great reduced price options. Among these merchandises, you can also purchase some laptops that offer heavy discounts and other bids. These laptops are available on the portal irrespective of different price category. The best thing is that you can also obtain a couple of premium laptops with amazing discounts. The deals offered by Flipkart include- 10% instant discount with Axis bank debit and credit cards, 10% cashback on payments through PhonePe, extra 5% off with Axis bank buzz credit card, no cost EMI option with better EMI rate, and more. You also get one year onsite warranty on these laptops. Talking about some of the best features of these laptops, you will be surprised to know. Several of them are of light weights without optical disk drive, supporting HD LED Backlit anti-glare TN display. While, some come pre-installed Genuine Windows 10 OS. Additionally, there are plenty more amazing features which will surely make you go for their purchasing. 28% off on Apple MacBook Air Core i5 5th Gen Buy This offer on Flipkart Key Specs Stylish & Portable Thin and Light Laptop 13.3 inch HD+ LED Backlit Display Light Laptop without Optical Disk Drive 35% off on Asus Pentium Quad Core Buy This offer on Amazon Key Specs 15.6 inch LED Screen Call on Asus Toll Free 1800 2090 365 Monday to Saturday from 9:00 to 18:00Intel Pentium Quad Core 4200 CPU 4 GB DDR4 Ram 1 TB Sata HDD Win 10 27% off on Lenovo Ideapad 320 Core i3 6th Gen Buy This offer on Amazon Key Specs Processor: 6th Gen Intel Core i3-6006U processor, 2.00 GHz Operating System: This is a DOS based laptop. Requires separate purchase and installation of operating system software (like Windows), not included in the box . Refer to Lenovo website for drivers. Supported Operating Systems: Windows 10 Display: 14-inch | Antiglare display Memory & Storage: 4GB DDR4 RAM with Integrated Graphics |Storage: 1TB HDD Design & battery: Laptop weight 2.2 kg | Battery Life: Upto 5 hours Warranty: This genuine Lenovo laptop comes with 1 year domestic warranty from Lenovo covering manufacturing defects and not covering physical damage. For more details, see Warranty section below. In the Box: Laptop included with battery, charger and user manual Ports & CD drive: 2 USB 3.0 | 1 Type C (USB 3.0) | 1 HDMI | 4-in-1 card reader (SD,SDHC,SDXC,MMC) | Combo audio and microphone jack | With CD-drive | 1 LAN port 37% off on Acer Nitro 5 Ryzen 5 Quad Core Buy This offer on Laptops Key Specs Processor: AMD Ryzen 5 2500U processor, 2.00GHz base processor speed Operating System: Pre-loaded Windows 10 Home with lifetime validity Display: 15.6-inch FHD (1920x1080) display Memory and Storage: 8GB DDR4 RAM with AMD Radeon RX 560X 4 GB GDDR5 VRAM Graphics | Storage: 1TB HDD Design and battery: Laptop weight: 2.7 kg | Lithium battery Warranty: This genuine Acer laptop comes with 1 year onsite domestic warranty from Acer covering manufacturing defects and not covering physical damage. For more details, see Warranty section below Preinstalled Software: Windows 10 Home | In the Box: Laptop with included battery, charger, user guide and manuals Ports and CD drive: 2 USB 2.0, 1 USB 3.0, 1 HDMI, 1 Audio-out | Without CD-drive 17% off on HP 15q Core i3 7th Gen Buy This offer on Amazon Key Specs Processor: 7th Gen Intel Core i3-7020U processor, 2.3GHz base processor speed, 2 Cores, 3MB Cache Operating System: This is a DOS based laptop. Requires separate purchase and installation of operating system software (like Windows), not included in the box. Refer to HP website for drivers Display: 15.6-inch HD (1366x768) display Memory and Storage: 4GB DDR4 RAM with Intel Integrated Graphics | Storage: 1TB HDD Design and battery: Thin and light design | Laptop weight:1.86 Kg | Average battery life = 4 hours, Lithium battery Warranty: This genuine HP laptop comes with 1 year domestic warranty from HP covering manufacturing defects and not covering physical damage. For more details, see Warranty section below Pre-installed Software: None | In the Box: Laptop with included battery and charger Ports and CD drive: 2 USB 3.0, 1 USB 2.0, 1 HDMI, 1 Audio-out | With CD-drive 31% off on Lenovo Ideapad 330 Core i5 8th Gen Buy This offer on Flipkart Key Specs Intel I5-8250U 8th Gen processor 8GB DDR4 RAM 1TB hard drive , 15.6-inch screen, Integrated GFX Graphics Free-DOS operating system 21% off on Dell Vostro 14 3000 Core i5 8th Gen Buy This offer on Flipkart Key Specs Processor: 8th Gen Intel core i5-8250U processor Clock Speed: 1.60GHz base processor speed Operating System: Preloaded Windows 10 Home with MS Office Display: 15.6-inch Full HD (1920x1080) display Ports & CD drive: 1 USB 2.0, 2 USB 3.0, 1 HDMI, 1 audio-out 24% off on Acer Predator Helios 300 Core i7 8th Gen Buy This offer on Laptops Key Specs Intel Core i5 8300H 8th Gen 2. 3 GHz Processor with Turbo Boost speed Upto 4 GHz Features 8 GB DDR4 Ram with 1 TB HDD and 128 GB SSD Features 4 GB NVIDIA Geforce GTX 1050 Ti Graphics Features15. 6 inch Full HD LED Backlit Wideview IPS Display and Back-lite Keyboard Windows 10 OS with 1 Year Warranty 22% off on MSI GL Series Core i5 8th Gen Buy This offer on Flipkart Key Specs NVIDIA Geforce GTX 1050 for Desktop Level Performance 15.6 inch Full HD LED Backlit Wideview Anti-glare TN Display Light Laptop without Optical Disk Drive Pre-installed Genuine Windows 10 OS 46% off on Acer Aspire 3 Pentium Quad Core Buy This offer on Flipkart Key Specs 1.10GHz Intel Pentium N4200 processor Slim laptop with No DVD Manufacturer recommends usage of only genuine Windows 10 with this machine. Pirated version of Windows cannot be installed on this laptop 4GB DDR3 RAM; 500GB hard drive 15.6-inch screen, Intel HD 505 Graphics Linux operating system 2.1kg laptop 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 Plus available for just Rs 999 under Flipkart Festive Dhamaka Days News oi-Vivek Nokia 6.1 Plus is priced at Rs 16,999 The Nokia 6.1 Plus is the first smartphone from HDM Global with the Qualcomm Snapdragon 636 SoC. This was also a game changer smartphone for Nokia, as it comes with an interesting set of features like a premium all-glass design, dual camera setup and stock Android OS. And now, Flipkart has come up with an offer, where the Nokia 6.1 Plus will be available for just Rs 999 under Flipkart Festive Dhamaka Days from the 24th of October to 27th of October. How to get the Nokia 6.1 Plus for Rs 999? The price of the Nokia 6.1 Plus has been dropped down to Rs 15,999 from the original price of Rs 16,999, as a festive season offer. There are additional offers like 10% instant discount for Axis bank credit and debit card users, which will further drive down the price of the Nokia 6.1 Plus. Flipkart is offering up to Rs 15,000 buy-back value on a select smartphone, so, exchange your smartphone for a brand new Nokia 6.1 Plus, which will reduce the price of the Nokia 6.1 Plus to Rs 999. Do note that, you need to have a high-end smartphone (as an exchange device to get Rs 15,000 exchange value). Ex: Flipkart is offering Rs 3,350 for Redmi Note 4, and you have to pay Rs 12,479 for the Nokia 6.1 Plus, and the company is offering Rs 3999 for the Realme 1, which will bring down the price of the Nokia 6.1 Plus to Rs 12,299. Go to Flipkart.com Search for the Nokia 6.1 Plus Select the required color Exchange your old smartphone Make payment using Axis band credit or debit card Nokia 6.1 Plus quick specs The Nokia 6.1 Plus comes with 5.8-inch IPS LCD screen with FHD+ resolution with a notch cut-out on top. Under the hood, the smartphone is powered by the Qualcomm Snapdragon 636 SoC with 4 GB of LPDDR4x RAM and 64 GB of internal storage with a micro SD card slot for storage expansion (up to 400 GB). The smartphone has a dual camera setup with a 16 MP wide-angle lens with a 5 MP depth sensor. On the front, the device has a 16 MP selfie shooter. The main camera and the selfie camera does offer features like portrait mode, HDR, Beauty mode, and 4K video recording (on the primary camera). The device has a 3060 mAh Li-ion battery with support for 10W fast charging via USB type C port with a dedicated 3.5 mm headphone jack. The smartphone runs on stock Android (Android 8.1 Oreo) and will receive Android 9 Pie update in the near future. 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 Reliance Jio blocking explicit websites on its network News oi-Sandeep Sarkar Jio has not made any kind of official announcement as to why it took the decision to ban the websites with explicit contents. The explicit video websites have always been a taboo in India. It is a well-known fact that the Indian government agencies have always tried to impose some king f ban or restrictions on these websites. The government has always targeted the websites which host objectionable content on their websites. This time it is Reliance Jio who has taken action against these websites on its network. Following the ban of explicit websites on the Reliance Jio Network, the users registered on Jio 4G network will no longer be able to access such websites on their device. The users who have subscribed Jio now receive a message stating, "You are not authorized to access this web page as per the DoT compliance" or will be able to see the connection error message. This has left many users disappointed. As of now, Jio has not made any kind of official announcement as to why it took the decision to ban the websites with explicit contents. However, as per some reports, the company is said to be taking this extreme measure in compliance with a recent directive given by the Department of Telecommunications (DoT). It is being reported that DoT had asked all the ISPs (Internet Service Provider) to 'take immediate necessary action for blocking of 827 websites as per the direction from Meity'. This order was first issued by the Uttrakhand High Court last month following which DoT had asked the ISPs to take immediate action. Notably, Jio has not blocked all the websites which feature such content; rather the company has blocked access to some of the major websites with explicit content. Users can still access some less popular websites that feature the explicit videos on the Jio mobile network. Following the ban, many of Reliance Jio subscribers took it to various community forums such as Twitter and Reddit discussing the action taken by the company. After the confirmation of the ban, users bombarded the community forums criticizing the company's move. It is immediately not clear if this ban will be removed in the future or not. We will keep you further posted on the same, so stay tuned for more updates. Image Source 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 Court Rejects Early Release For Former Russian Intelligence Officer October 25, 2018 A court in Russia's Republic of Mordovia in the Volga region has refused to approve the early release of a former Russian intelligence officer jailed for treason. The court explained its refusal by saying Gennady Kravtsov had received reprimands from the penal colony's guards for violating the penitentiary's internal regulations, including "incorrectly making up his bed," Kravtsov's lawyer, Ivan Pavlov, said on October 25. Kravtsov was found guilty of providing Western intelligence services with classified information about the Tselina-1 spacecraft and was sentenced in 2015 to 14 years in prison. The sentence was later cut to 6 years. Kravtsov was also stripped of his rank of colonel. Kravtsov was arrested in May 2015. He says he put some information related to the spacecraft in his resume while trying to get a job in Sweden. Kravtsov's case was one of several in recent years in which Russian citizens have been accused of disseminating classified or sensitive information. Based on reporting by TASS and Interfax Source: https://www.rferl.org/a/court-rejects-early-release- for-former-russian-intelligence-officer/29563726.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. NEWS LETTER Join the GlobalSecurity.org mailing list Enter Your Email Address Innovative solar panel project first in South Carolina By Staff Sgt. William Banton, 20th Fighter Wing Public Affairs / Published October 25, 2018 SHAW AIR FORCE BASE, S.C. (AFNS) -- The 20th Fighter Wing celebrated the completion of the Shaw Military Housing's solar power installation project with a ribbon cutting ceremony, Oct. 22, at Shaw Air Force Base. The project included the installation of 5,865 solar panels on 284 homes, accumulating an approximate 40 percent offset of total annual electrical consumption. It is a first for military housing in the state of South Carolina. The project solidifies the state as eighth in the nation for installed solar power capacity. A statement by Hunt Southern Group, owner and operators of Shaw Military Housing, said this project equates to the generation of approximately 2.4 million kilowatt hours of energy per year. In comparison, the U.S. Energy Information Administration estimates the average U.S. household uses 11,000 kWh of energy each year. The solar panel project allows for 100 percent of the revenue, after the lease of the solar power panels, to go back into a modernization project for base houses after 25 years, said Lt. Col. Brian Strickland, 20th Civil Engineer Squadron commander. Strickland said the project set a unique precedent for renewable energy in military housing units in South Carolina and created a roadmap for other military branches and installations. Shaw AFB's project was made possible through a collaborative partnership by Duke Energy, the 20th FW and Hunt Southern Group. Duke Energy, an electric power holding company which services Shaw AFB, effectively utilized a 2014 South Carolina General Assembly renewable energy legislation - commonly known as Act 236 - designed to stimulate the installation of 200 Megawatts of renewable energy capacity in the state by 2020. According to Hunt Southern Group, the law's framework established a system that encouraged customer installation of solar power technology through strategic programs like net metering incentives and rebate offerings. Net metering is a system in which solar panels are connected to a public-utility power grid allowing customers to offset the cost of power drawn from surplus energy. "The exceptional part of this is what it has done for our families," said John Hoyt, Hunt Military Communities vice president. "They aren't going to see or feel this but the reality is that 100 percent of the electricity saved from these panels will go directly to the project which will go directly to sustainability. It doesn't go into (someone's) pocket but it goes into the long term sustainment of the houses. That means that our military families will get equitable, marketable, safe and affordable housing for the future and there is really no greater value for us than that." In 2017, the Air Force created the Air Force Energy Flight Plan, committing resources to improving how it manages energy by advancing new methods and encouraging its leaders to develop new innovate projects. "This plan, along with our recent policies, codifies the importance energy resiliency has to the Air Force mission and identifies how we are going to move forward," said Miranda Ballentine, assistant secretary of the Air Force for installations environment and energy, during the implementation of the 2017 AFEFP. "We need to take a holistic approach to energy projects to provide resilient, cost-effective, cleaner energy solutions to ensure we can continue to operate when our energy supplies are interrupted." The AFEFP is a comprehensive document that provides a framework to facilitate an Air Force wide approach to energy conservation and resiliency. The completion of Shaw AFB's project conforms with this approach and its vision to improve resiliency, optimize demand and assure supply. NEWS LETTER Join the GlobalSecurity.org mailing list Enter Your Email Address 19 killed, 10 Injured in Saudi-Led Coalition raid in Yemen IRNA - Islamic Republic News Agency Tehran, Oct 25, IRNA -- At least 19 people have been killed and 10 others wounded by the Saudi air strikes on Yemen's western city of Bayt al Faqih located in the vicinity of the port city of Al Hudaydah on Wednesday, local media reported. The air raid had been held hours after the previous strikes that killed three civilians, including a minor child, and injured six other people, the Masirah TV channel reported, quoted by Sputnik news agency. A recent UN report said Saudi-led coalition airstrikes which have hit open-air markets, health clinics, schools, funerals and weddings, according to published reports have been blamed for most of more than 16,000 civilians killed or injured in the Yemen conflict over the past three years. Yemenis present documents in order to receive food rations provided by a local charity, in Sanaa, Yemen, Thursday, April, 13, 2017 UN Humanitarian Coordinator Mark Lowcock said Tuesday that Yemen is on the brink of a famine the likes of which have never been seen before. Lowcock told the UN Security Council that the total number of people facing pre-famine conditions in Yemen could soon reach 14 million. UN Humanitarian Coordinator stressed that the fierce clashes and airstrikes on the Red Sea port city of Hudaydah have blocked the eastern road to Sana, impacting food convoys from key ports that feed northern Yemen. US Air Force Special Operations Command chief Lt. Gen. Brad Webb said at a press briefing last week that the US had no plans to change its logistical support for Saudi-led military operations in Yemen. 1396**1396 NEWS LETTER Join the GlobalSecurity.org mailing list Enter Your Email Address North Atlantic Council discusses INF NATO - North Atlantic Treaty Organisation 25 Oct. 2018 Ambassadors in NATO's North Atlantic Council met on Thursday (25 October 2018) to discuss the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces (INF) Treaty, with the participation of senior officials from the US. Allies have repeatedly expressed concerns about the new Russian missile system, called the 9M729, or SSC-8. Today's meeting was an opportunity for Allies to share views on the INF Treaty, and to assess the implications of Russia's destabilising behaviour on our security. The United States has engaged Allies regularly on the state of the INF Treaty since 2014, when the US first declared Russia in violation. NATO Allies will continue to consult on this important issue. NEWS LETTER Join the GlobalSecurity.org mailing list Enter Your Email Address Peru and US Navy Celebrate a Successful DESI Deployment Navy News Service Story Number: NNS181025-09 Release Date: 10/25/2018 12:49:00 PM By Mass Communication Specialist 2nd Class Bryan Tomforde, Submarine Group 10 Public Affairs MAYPORT, Fl. (NNS) -- Peruvian and U.S. Navy Sailors celebrated 89 days of joint operations with the Peruvian Submarine BAP Arica (SS-36) at a closing ceremony held at Naval Station Mayport, Oct. 22. The Arica's participation is part of the Diesel-Electric Submarine Initiative (DESI). Established by U.S. Fleet Forces Command in 2001, the DESI program is a U.S. Navy partnership with South American countries and supports their diesel-electric submarine operations and fleet readiness events in operating areas off the U.S. east and west coasts. During its 89 days of stateside operations, Arica participated in fleet pre-deployment exercises with the Kearsarge Amphibious Readiness Group and conducted anti-submarine training with the Maritime Patrol and Reconnaissance Aircraft and the Helicopter Weapons School. Capt. Robert Wirth, commodore of Submarine Squadron 20, praised the crew members of the Arica on their initiative and devotion to duty during their operations, providing critical anti-submarine warfare training. "The Arica proved to be a quiet and elusive adversary, providing valuable insights into tactical operations against modern diesel submarines," said Wirth. Rear Adm. Luis Alba, commander of the Peru Submarine Force, applauded the Arica on their performance and the value the DESI program adds to the submarine force. "Arica is the best fast submarine for this exercise,' said Alba. "Peru gains so much experience from the opportunity to participate in this program and I look forward to these exercises for years to come." During the ceremony, each crew member received a DESI deployment pin and certificates. This marks the Peru's 15th deployment as part of the DESI program. NEWS LETTER Join the GlobalSecurity.org mailing list Enter Your Email Address Ecuadorian Minister of Defense Visits USNS Comfort Navy News Service Story Number: NNS181025-05 Release Date: 10/25/2018 8:55:00 AM By Mass Communication Specialist Seaman J. Keith Wilson, U.S. Naval Forces Southern Command & U.S. 4th Fleet Public Affairs ESMERALDAS, Ecuador (NNS) -- As part of its partnership with Ecuador, the hospital ship USNS Comfort (T-AH 20) hosted officials from the government of Ecuador during the ship's medical assistance visit, Oct. 22. Ecuadorian Minister of Defense, Oswaldo Jarrin, and U.S. Ambassador to Ecuador, Todd C. Chapman, were among the distinguished visitors aboard Comfort for a tour of the ship's medical facilities and a meeting with senior leadership. Both officials, along with Rear Adm. Sean Buck, commander, U.S. 4th Fleet, made remarks during a press conference held aboard the ship. "The U.S. Navy hospital ship Comfort begins its medical support for the people of Ecuador, our first mission stop of five, over an 11-week period, here, in the Southern hemisphere," said Buck. "Working with health and government partners in Ecuador, the embarked medical team will provide care onboard this ship, as well as at two sites ashore." During the conference, the Ecuadorian officials and Buck discussed Comfort's mission in Ecuador. "This deployment represents the United States' enduring promise to the peoples of Ecuador and other Latin American nations of our friendship, our partnership and our solidarity," added Buck. "This mission will enable us to strengthen ties in support of our enduring partnerships with the people of Central and South America. It is a partnership that will enhance our shared values, interests, and community, and a commitment to unity, security and stability in the region." Comfort is on an 11-week medical support mission to Central and South America as part of U.S. Southern Command's Enduring Promise initiative. Working with health and government partners in Ecuador, Peru, Colombia and Honduras, the embarked medical team will provide care on board and at land-based medical sites, helping to relieve pressure on national medical systems caused partly by an increase in cross-border migrants. The deployment reflects the United States' enduring promise of friendship, partnership and solidarity with the Americas. NEWS LETTER Join the GlobalSecurity.org mailing list Enter Your Email Address NATO launches military drills in Norway, alarming Russia Iran Press TV Thu Oct 25, 2018 07:17AM Tens of thousands of NATO troops are deployed to Norway for one of the biggest military exercises of the military bloc since the end of the Cold War. Norway will host the so-called Trident Juncture 18 from Thursday, October 25, to November 7. The military exercises, with the declared goal of training to defend NATO member states against potential threats, involve some 50,000 soldiers, 10,000 vehicles, 65 ships, and 250 aircraft from 31 countries. "In recent years, Europe's security environment has significantly deteriorated," NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg claimed. "Trident Juncture sends a clear message to our nations and to any potential adversary. NATO does not seek confrontation but we stand ready to defend all allies against any threat." The head of NATO's Allied Joint Force Command, US Navy Admiral James Foggo, also said the exercise was intended to "show NATO is capable to defend against any adversary. Not a particular country, anyone." Despite those broad assertions, NATO drills are practically aimed at Russia. The Western military alliance severed ties with Moscow in 2014, after the Crimean Peninsula voted in a referendum to be attached to Russian territory. Accusing Moscow of meddling in an armed conflict in Ukraine's east, NATO has been sending troops and weapons to Russia's western borders while simulating military confrontations with Russia by staging massive drills in the region. Moscow denies that it is involved in the Ukrainian conflict. NATO claims that it intends to protect its members in Eastern Europe against the so-called "Russia threat." Moscow, generally unsettled by NATO's move eastward, dismisses the allegation that it poses a threat to regional countries and says the US-led bloc is spreading Russophobia. In addition to NATO's 29 member countries, Norway's neighbors Sweden and Finland will be participating in the Trident Juncture exercises. Two Russian and two Belarusian military observers have been invited to watch the maneuvers. "The core exercise area is 1,000 kilometers from the Russian border, and air operations could take place up to 500 kilometers away from the border," Norwegian Lieutenant General Rune Jakobsen said. "There should not be any reason for the Russians to get scared or see this as anything other than a defensive exercise," he said. 'Anti-Russian' Yet, the Russian Embassy in Oslo said it viewed Trident Juncture 18 as an "anti-Russian" exercise that would worsen Norway's relations with Moscow and could escalate tensions on NATO's so-called northern flank. "Such activity... comes across as provocative, even if you try to justify it as being of a purely defensive nature," the Russian mission said. Earlier this month, Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova denounced NATO's military drills as "saber-rattling" and warned that Moscow would take "retaliatory measures to ensure its security." "The main NATO countries are increasing their military presence in the region, near Russia's borders," she said. "Such irresponsible actions are bound to lead to a destabilization of the political situation in the north, to heighten tensions." NEWS LETTER Join the GlobalSecurity.org mailing list Enter Your Email Address Afghanistan Probes Claims That 14 Civilians Killed In Army Raid RFE/RL's Radio Free Afghanistan October 25, 2018 Afghan officials say they have launched an investigation into claims that at least 14 civilians were killed in a military ground operation in eastern Afghanistan. Protesters temporarily blocked a major highway linking Afghanistan and Pakistan on October 24 to demand action against those responsible for the overnight raid by Afghan security forces in Nangarhar Province's Rodat district. Local residents and families of the victims laid the bodies of the deceased next to the highway connecting Nangarhar Province's capital, Jalalabad, with Torkham, one of the major border crossings into Pakistan, and closed it to traffic. Both the Taliban and Islamic State militants are active in Nangarhar. This image contains sensitive content which some people may find offensive or disturbing. Relatives surround the dead bodies of Afghan civilians who were allegedly killed during a military operation against militants in the Rodat district of Nangarhar Province on October 24. Attaullah Khogyani, the provincial governor's spokesman, confirmed there had been casualties in the military operation and said an official investigation was under way. A local elder, Najibullah Amarkhil, put the death toll at 16, including women and children. "Government forces raided several houses. They killed 14 people, including a 6-month-old baby," Amarkhil told the AFP news agency, adding two more died from their wounds in hospital. "We demand the government punish those responsible," he added. TOLOnews reported that the death toll was "at least 17." Civilians have borne the brunt of the 17-year conflict in Afghanistan. A total of 8,050 civilians were killed or wounded across the country in the first nine months of the year, according to a recent UN report. The report attributed 65 percent of casualties to the Taliban, the IS group, and other antigovernment forces. With reporting by AFP, Reuters, and TOLOnews Source: https://www.rferl.org/a/afghanistan-probes-claims-at-least -14-civilians-killed-in-army-raid/29563024.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. NEWS LETTER Join the GlobalSecurity.org mailing list Enter Your Email Address Pakistan Frees Senior Taliban Commander In Possible Peace-Talks Bid RFE/RL October 25, 2018 Pakistan has released from detention a senior Afghan Taliban commander who had been arrested eight years ago, reports say. The Associated Press quoted intelligence officials as saying on October 24 that Mullah Abdul Ghani Baradar, the Taliban's co-founder and former second-in-command, was released "after high-level negotiations." Baradar served as the Taliban's second-in-command under Mullah Omar and coordinated the group's military operations in southern Afghanistan before his arrest in the Pakistani city of Karachi in 2010. Reports said his release could be linked to U.S. efforts to revive peace talks between the militants and the Western-backed government in Kabul. "He wasn't released because he was ill," a Taliban source told the BBC. "In fact, Pakistan also wants him to play a role in peace talks," the source added. "He is in good shape and is expected to play a role in the peace process." Afghanistan's TOLOnews quoted unidentified sources as saying Baradar was released along with two other senior members of the Taliban movement, identified as Mullah Abdul Samad Sani and Mullah Mohammad Rasul. "Our beloved leaders have joined us back and we are celebrating their freedom," Reuters news agency quoted a senior member of the Taliban in the southern Afghan province of Helmand. He said the Taliban leaders were released a week ago but were united with their family on October 24. Afghan and Pakistani officials have not yet commented on the reports, which came after recent visits to Kabul by U.S. special representative Zalmay Khalilzad to discuss peace talks. They also followed a visit to Pakistan by the foreign minister of Qatar, where the Taliban have a political office. Based on reporting by AP, the BBC, and TOLOnews Source: https://www.rferl.org/a/pakistan-frees- senior-taliban-commander-in-possible- peace-talks-bid/29562977.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. NEWS LETTER Join the GlobalSecurity.org mailing list Enter Your Email Address Bolton Vows To 'Squeeze Iran,' Explore Weapons Sales To Armenia Harry Tamrazian, Ron Synovitz October 25, 2018 YEREVAN U.S. national-security adviser John Bolton has vowed that President Donald Trump's administration will "squeeze Iran" with maximum economic pressure in response to Tehran's "malign" behavior in the Middle East and around the world. Bolton made the remarks in an exclusive interview with RFE/RL on October 25 after he met in Yerevan with Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinian. "As I explained to the prime minister, we want to put maximum pressure on Iran because it has not given up the pursuit of nuclear weapons," Bolton told RFE/RL's Armenian Service. "It remains the world's central banker of international terrorism. And we're concerned about its ballistic-missile programs and its active conventional military operations in Syria and Iraq and elsewhere." Bolton said Washington doesn't want to "cause damage to our friends in the process" of expanding sanctions against Iran, which shares a border with Armenia. He said that's why he "stressed" to Pashinian, in advance, that the Trump administration is "going to enforce these sanctions very vigorously" and that the Armenian-Iranian border is "going to be a significant issue." "We are going to squeeze Iran because we think their behavior in the Middle East and, really globally, is malign and needs to be changed," Bolton said. Bolton's talks with Pashinian came a day after the U.S. national-security adviser met in Baku with Azerbaijan's President Ilham Aliyev and Foreign Minister Elmar Mammadyarov -- vowing that Washington will continue to support a peaceful resolution to the conflict between Baku and Yerevan over Azerbaijan's breakaway Nagorno-Karabakh region. Bolton said he and Pashinian "talked a lot, obviously, about Nagorno-Karabakh," and that he is aware of the economic difficulties Armenia faces as a result of the "geographical situation and historical antecedents" related to the conflict. Armenia's borders with Azerbaijan remain closed as a result of their ongoing conflict over the mainly Armenian-populated region of Nagorno-Karabakh -- a region seized by Armenian-backed separatists who declared independence amid a 1988-1994 war that killed at least 30,000 people and displaced hundreds of thousands. Internationally mediated negotiations with the involvement of the OSCE's so-called Minsk Group -- co-chaired by France, Russia, and the United States -- have failed to resolve the dispute. Turkey, in solidarity with Azerbaijan, also has closed its border with Armenia. Thus, if Yerevan adheres to U.S. sanctions against Iran, Armenia would have only Georgia as a neighboring trading partner -- raising concerns in Yerevan about how Russian pressure against Tbilisi would impact Armenia. Bolton said those "current circumstances highlight" the importance of Armenia and Azerbaijan "finding a mutually satisfactory agreement to the Nagorno-Karabakh issue." "Once that happened, then the Armenian-Azerbaijani border would open," Bolton said. "The Turkish border, I believe, would almost certainly open. And I think the border with Georgia might be less subject to concern about what pressure the Russians may be putting them under." Bolton told RFE/RL that Washington has wanted to be "of whatever assistance we could be behind the scenes, as well as one of the co-chairs of the Minsk Group, to see if we could help facilitate a solution between Armenia and Azerbaijan that would be mutually agreeable to both." "We recognized the obvious difficulties there, but we just felt that [Pashinian] was in an excellent position here in Armenia, and would be after the elections [in early December], to show leadership on that," Bolton said. Bolton also said the Trump administration wants to "look at" possibilities of weapons sales to Armenia that would not violate restrictions the U.S. Congress has imposed. "We have restrictions Congress has imposed on the United States in terms of [weapons] sales to Azerbaijan and Armenia because of the [Nagorno-Karabakh] conflict, but there are exceptions to that," Bolton explained. "As I said to the prime minister, if it's a question of buying Russian military equipment versus buying U.S. military equipment, we'd prefer the latter," he said. "We think our equipment is better than the Russians' anyway. So we want to look at that. And I think it increases Armenia's options when it's not entirely dependent on one major power." He also said Armenia's "excellent" prospects for becoming a "stable democracy" are "really fundamental to Armenia exercising its full sovereignty and not being dependent on -- or subject to -- excessive foreign influence." Bolton also noted that a large community of Armenian-American citizens in the United States makes the "prospects for closer economic cooperation" with the U.S. private sector "very real" and "much better for the long term than government-to-government assistance." "I think this is a time to be optimistic that Armenia can emerge more on the world stage," Bolton said, stressing that the Trump administration "considers the South Caucasus a very important area strategically" and that improving relations with Armenia is "a very high priority." Written by Ron Synovitz in Prague, based on reporting by RFE/RL Armenian Service Director Harry Tamrazian in Yerevan Source: https://www.rferl.org/a/u-s-national -security-adviser-bolton- vows-to-squeeze-iran-/29563540.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. NEWS LETTER Join the GlobalSecurity.org mailing list Enter Your Email Address NATO Drills Aggravate Military Situation in North Atlantic, Baltic Sea - Moscow Sputnik News 23:29 25.10.2018 MOSCOW (Sputnik) - NATO Trident Juncture 2018 drills in Northern Europe are obviously anti-Russian, and they lead to deterioration of military and political situation in the region, the Russian Foreign Ministry's Information and Press Department said in a statement on Thursday. Earlier in the day, Trident Juncture exercise started in Norway and surrounding areas of the North Atlantic and the Baltic Sea, including Iceland, and the airspace of Finland and Sweden. The drills, involving around 50,000 military personnel from NATO member states and its partners, will last until November 23. The ministry emphasized that the participating nations were practicing defense and, "essentially," offensive operations both on land, at sea, in the air and in the cyberspace in a "highly intense" conflict with a comparable rival. "Despite quite clumsy attempts by the representatives of the alliance and its member states to picture such military activity as defensive, it is obvious that this fighting capabilities demonstration has a distinct anti-Russian character. In fact, NATO military experts' latest know-hows on Russia's forceful containment will be practiced within the Trident Juncture 2018, in a climatic environment that is as much as possible similar to ours," the statement read. The ministry specified that Moscow was concerned over the drills in spite of the information that NATO provided. "Especially taking into consideration the fact that the number of military involved has increased by 50,000 'at the very last moment,' and US Navy's nuclear-powered aircraft carrier and strike and amphibious assault force groups joined the drills. We cannot ignore the fact that certain elements of the Trident Juncture 2018 will be carried out at objects located just 200 kilometers [124.27 miles] away from the Russian border," the statement read on. The ministry recalled that multiple reports on NATO member states' forces and weapons transfer to the region where the drills are held have emerged over the past few months. "The NATO side, of course, expands its anti-Russian information campaign in order to justify such dubious and provocative actions. It has a negative effect on the security of all the neighboring countries, it leads to deterioration of the military and political situation, and it certainly does not comply with the effort made toward creating new confidence-building measures in the Baltic Sea Region," the ministry added. The department called on NATO member states to take some steps in order to prove the readiness to de-escalate tensions and to decrease the risks of military activity that they had voiced. "This would imply putting an end to turning the cooperation territory, which Northern Europe has traditionally been, into an arena for potential confrontation," the statement concluded. On Wednesday, Russian Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu said that the scale of NATO's operations and combat training next to Russia's borders had been expanding, citing Trident Juncture 2018 as an example. Sputnik NEWS LETTER Join the GlobalSecurity.org mailing list Enter Your Email Address Belgium To Purchase F-35 Fighter Aircraft, Reaffirming Enduring Partnership With the United States Press Statement Heather Nauert Department Spokesperson Washington, DC October 25, 2018 The United States welcomes the decision by the Government of Belgium to purchase thirty-four new F-35 fighter aircraft. Belgium is now poised to fly the F-35 alongside its closest NATO Allies and longtime partners. The United States is proud of our enduring air partnership with Belgium, a country whose air power has contributed to the Defeat ISIS campaign in Iraq and Syria, and NATO's Baltic Air Policing mission. With Belgium's commitment to the F-35 program, its five-star aerospace industry will continue to expand as it supports this 5th generation aircraft, which was jointly developed with European partners. Belgium's participation in the F-16 program has been a cornerstone of our modern transatlantic defense partnership. We look forward to continuing this partnership for many decades to come with the F-35 program. NEWS LETTER Join the GlobalSecurity.org mailing list Enter Your Email Address 'Crippling to our credibility' that number of women peacekeepers is so low: UN chief 25 October 2018 - Despite greater participation of women in building and sustaining peace and the recognition from all quarters of the value they bring, the realities on the ground show that much more remains to be done, United Nations Secretary-General Antonio Guterres told Security Council members on Thursday. "Every year, we make laudable commitments," Mr. Guterres said at the Council's annual high-level debate on women and peace and security. "But they are not backed with the requisite financial and political support," he continued, noting lack of inclusion in mediation efforts and limited space for women to participate as peacebuilders. He said it was "crippling to our credibility and protection capacity that women represent only four percent of our military peacekeepers and ten percent of police." He added that the UN "fully supports the innovative efforts launched by Member States this year to incentivize greater representation." Furthermore, women's organizations overall are not provided with adequate funding while resources for empowerment programmes are constrained, added the UN chief. In his briefing, Mr. Guterres outlined key action points, which he will prioritize over the coming months, beginning with a commitment to ensure gender parity as well as stamping out all forms of sexual exploitation and abuse within the Organization. He went onto note he will continue to push for greater and more meaningful participation of women in mediation efforts, as well as for a gendered approach to peace and security. He said this meant "supporting peacebuilding at the local level, even during conflict We must consistently support the local women's groups that negotiate humanitarian access and support community resilience; learn from them; and build peace from the ground up." Ensuring full financing for these and other measures is vital, added the Secretary-General, noting also that he has setup a task-force to review the UN's funding for gender equality, including in the peace and security pillar. "Finally, from now on, I will include gender analysis in my reports to this Council whenever it is relevant to inform your decisions," he said. 'Continued tolerance' of limited space for women 'is shameful' Also speaking at the Security Council debate, Phumzile Mlambo-Ngcuka, the head of UN Women, the Organization's main gender equality and women's empowerment agency, briefed on the Secretary-General's report on women and peace and security. Stating that the report is a "loud alarm bell" on systemic failures which have prevented women's full involvement in peace-making, she called on UN Member States to ensure "genuine" efforts to include more women. "Our continued tolerance for the limited recognition of women's expertise and lived experience is shameful." The 20th anniversary of the landmark Security Council resolution 1325, in 2020 will be an opportunity to shape the agenda for the next decade with new commitments and priorities, she continued, calling on everyone to participate sincerely in the process and contribute to lasting change. Adopted in 2000, resolution 1325 reaffirmed the critical role of women in the prevention and resolution of conflicts, including peacebuilding, peacekeeping and in humanitarian responses. It also stressed the importance of their equal participation and full involvement in all efforts for the maintenance and promotion of peace and security. NEWS LETTER Join the GlobalSecurity.org mailing list Enter Your Email Address NATO Forces Scale Back 'Face-to-Face' Contacts With Afghan Partners By Ayaz Gul October 25, 2018 U.S.-led international forces in Afghanistan have temporarily scaled back "face-to-face" contacts with local partners after two "insider" attacks in the past week that killed a revered top Afghan police chief and a foreign service member. A spokesman for NATO's Resolute Support confirmed Thursday while speaking to VOA "the current situation" has prompted the mission to introduce measures to ensure the safety of American and other foreign troops. "This is a standard practice after green-on-blue attacks and applies mainly to face-to-face contacts," said Colonel Knut Peters, referring to shooting incidents in which Afghan personnel turn their guns on foreign partners. "We have not stopped operations but conduct them from a distance, in particular through phone and email," emphasized the NATO spokesman. On Monday, an Afghan soldier shot dead a Czech service member and wounded two others at a military base in western Herat province. That incident happened just days after a local security guard, a purported Taliban "infiltrator," opened fire at a gathering of top Afghan and American military officers in the southern province of Kandahar. The assault killed both the provincial police chief, Abdul Raziq, and the regional head of the national spy agency before U.S. soldiers gunned down the shooter. The provincial governor and a senior U.S. general, as well as as two other Americans, were among those wounded. Gen. Scott Miller, the U.S. commander of the military mission also was present in the gathering but he escaped unharmed. The Taliban insurgency claimed responsibility for both the attacks, saying its "infiltrators" among Afghan security forces carried them out. An insurgent spokesman asserted the attack in Kandahar was meant to assassinate both Gen. Miller and Raziq. In a new statement issued on Wednesday, the Taliban noted Afghan "loyalists" were responsible for saving the American general. Afghan President Ashraf Ghani alleged insurgents plotted the Kandahar attack in neighboring Pakistan, charges Islamabad rejected as baseless. The "green-on-blue" insider attacks have killed more than 150 U.S. or coalition forces and wounded about 200 since 2008. The number of such incidents increased dramatically in 2012, prompting coalition commanders to introduce precautionary force protection measures. The steps have led to a significant reduction in the violence since then. NEWS LETTER Join the GlobalSecurity.org mailing list Enter Your Email Address NATO Begins Largest Exercise Since Cold War By Carla Babb October 25, 2018 About 50,000 NATO personnel from 31 NATO and partner countries are springing to action Thursday at the start of the alliance's Trident Juncture exercise, its largest drills since the end of the Cold War. The massive exercise takes place in and around Norway and involves about 65 ships, 250 aircraft and 10,000 vehicles. 'We are ready' NATO's Command Senior Enlisted Leader for Allied Command Operations, Command Sgt. Maj. Davor Petek, told VOA in an exclusive interview that the large-scaled defensive games send a "very simple message." "We are ready, and we are capable to meet any possible security threat coming to our NATO borders," he said. "Nobody's willing to mess with an alliance that has so much potential, so much capability." Russia invited NATO said the drills are not an act of aggression, and the exercise's commander said the alliance has invited Russia to observe. "I'm happy that we have observers because they're going to see that we're very good at what we do. And that will have a deterrent effect on anybody who wants to cross those borders, but one nation in particular," U.S. Navy Adm. James Foggo, commander of U.S. Naval Forces Europe and NATO's Allied Joint Force Command Naples, told reporters at the Pentagon earlier this month. The exercise comes with Russia and the West still bitterly divided over Russia's illegal annexation of Ukraine's Crimea peninsula, with some NATO countries worried Moscow may try to encroach on their sovereign land. NATO funding It also comes as U.S. President Donald Trump has slammed NATO for benefiting Europe more than the United States. NATO members have committed to spend at least 2 percent of their GDP on defense by 2024, but just nine of the military alliance's 29 members are expected to reach or surpass that amount this year. Petek told VOA Trident Juncture helps display NATO's readiness and its commitment to stick together. "It's just an alliance that's been there for a long, long time over 70 years but I'd say it was never probably as active and determined as it is right now in this point of time," he said. Trident Juncture is expected to run through Nov. 7. NEWS LETTER Join the GlobalSecurity.org mailing list Enter Your Email Address Homes, Villages Burned as Cameroon Targets Separatists By Moki Edwin Kindzeka October 25, 2018 Some of the thousands of people who fled the volatile English-speaking regions of Cameroon before the Oct. 7 presidential election have returned nome to find that their houses and villages have been burned to the ground. Separatists pushing for an English-speaking state had vowed to prevent any voting in northwestern and southwestern Cameroon, and they attacked many polling places on election day. Christa Banla, 18, fled her village of Ngarum for a town in a French-speaking area. After incumbent President Paul Biya was declared winner of the election, she decided to go back to her village, thinking that peace had returned. Instead, she found her home had been torched. The military had attacked the village and other areas where they believed armed separatists were hiding or holding training camps. "They came and drove all of us out of the compound," Banla said. "We were only coming back in the evening to discover that the compound was destroyed by the military and burned down. We do not even have food to eat, no clothes to wear.We need help." Emmanuel Chuye, mayor of Ndu district, which includes Ngarum, said that after the election, the government ordered the military to attack suspected separatist strongholds. He said many people were being killed and their houses were being burned down by both the military and the separatists. "The government has been attacking the ones fighting for the restoration of the independence of southern Cameroon," Chuye said. "In Ngarum, a lieutenant was killed as well as two military officials; civilians were killed, including a [municipal] councilor. They were not only killed, they were burned and their houses, too, were set ablaze." The government has not given casualty figures from the recent fighting, but local media reported that at least 30 civilians, soldiers and suspected separatists had been killed in the northwest within a week. Northwest Region Gov. Deben Tchoffo confirmed that the military was at work in the region, but said soldiers were not killing indiscriminately and burning villages. He said the attacks would continue until peace returned to the region. "Government has taken necessary measures to secure the remotest areas, neglecting nothing that can hinder the global security of the nation," Tchoffo said. Two years ago Unrest began in Cameroon in November 2016 when English-speaking teachers and lawyers demonstrated against the dominant use of the French language. Separatists took over and demanded the English-speaking northwest and southwest secede from the rest of the country. The United Nations has said that at least 400 people have been killed and hundreds of thousands have fled their homes as a result of the conflict. At least 20,000 have fled to Nigeria. NEWS LETTER Join the GlobalSecurity.org mailing list Enter Your Email Address Ohio Man Arrested and Charged with Attempting to Travel to Join ISIS FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE Thursday, October 25, 2018 An Ohio man has been arrested and charged by criminal complaint with attempting to provide material support to ISIS-affiliated foreign terrorist organizations. Naser Almadaoji, 19, an Iraqi-born naturalized U.S. citizen, was arrested yesterday at John Glenn International Airport in Columbus, Ohio. It is alleged Almadaoji intended to travel through Kazakhstan on his way to Afghanistan, where he intended to join with, and fight for, ISIS. Assistant Attorney General for National Security John C. Demers, United States Attorney Benjamin C. Glassman for the Southern District of Ohio and Assistant Director Michael Garrity of the FBI's Counterterrorism Division made the announcement. "Naser Almadaoji allegedly attempted to seek terrorist training in weapons and tactics and discussed a willingness to conduct terrorist 'projects' in the United States on behalf of foreign terrorist groups," said Assistant Attorney Demers. "Protecting America from terrorist activity, including conduct like this, remains the highest priority of the Department of Justice." "This is the third individual arrested by the FBI on terrorism charges in just over a week. As demonstrated by these arrests -- two in Ohio and one in Illinois -- the threat posed by terrorism remains extremely serious," said Assistant Director McGarrity. "The FBI is working with our law enforcement partners day and night through our Joint Terrorism Task Forces across the nation to identify terrorists and those who support them. The American public also has an important role to play, and we urge anyone who sees something suspicious to contact law enforcement. Your tips are vitally important to protecting our country." "According to the charging document, Almadaoji wanted to make his way to Afghanistan to train with an ISIS organization," U.S. Attorney Glassman said. "He allegedly pledged allegiance to the leader of ISIS in a video in which he wore a head scarf, and had plans to cause conflict in America between the United States Government and anti-government militias. These are serious allegations, and thwarting terrorist threats remains a top priority for the United States Attorney's Office." According to an affidavit filed in support of the criminal complaint, Almadaoji purchased a plane ticket for travel on October 24. It is alleged that Almadaoji intended to travel to Astana, Kazakhstan, where he planned to be smuggled into Afghanistan so that he could receive military training from ISIS Wilayat Khorasan and then fight for the Islamic State (or one of its affiliates). Almadaoji explained to an individual whom he believed to be in contact with ISIS that he wanted "weapons experts training, planning, executing, hit and run, capturing high value targets, ways to break into homes and avoid security guards. That type of training." It is alleged that, between February 16 and 24, 2018, Almadaoji traveled to Egypt and Jordan. Following that travel, in August 2018, Almadaoji allegedly communicated online with an individual he believed was a contact with ISIS organizations. He represented that he tried to join a terrorist organization during his travels to Jordan and Egypt stating, "I don't wanna say here why I was in Egypt but him [an Egyptian associated] and I planned something and it didn't work at [sic] well." In the same month, it is alleged that Almadaoji told a second individual online whom he also believed to be associated with ISIS that he was "always willing" to assist with "projects" in the United States. According to the affidavit, Almadaoji pledged allegiance to ISIS and discussed with the second contact that he planned to cause the collapse of the United States by starting a conflict between the United States Government and anti-government militias." Almadaoji allegedly recorded and sent a video of himself wearing a headscarf and pledging allegiance to the leader of the Islamic State. It is further alleged that Almadaoji translated ISIS propaganda from Arabic to English, and told his contact, "Don't thank me . . . it's my duty." Attempting to provide material support and resources to a foreign terrorist organization is a federal crime punishable by up to 20 years in prison. The maximum potential sentences in this case are prescribed by Congress and are provided here for informational purposes only, as any sentencing of the defendant will be determined by the assigned judge. Assistant Attorney General Demers and U.S. Attorney Glassman commended the investigation of this case by the FBI. The case is being prosecuted by Trial Attorney Justin Sher of the National Security Division's Counterterrorism Section and Assistant United States Attorney Dominick S. Gerace. A criminal complaint merely contains allegations, and the defendant is presumed innocent unless proven guilty in a court of law. Attachment(s): Download Complaint Topic(s): Counterterrorism National Security Component(s): National Security Division (NSD) Press Release Number: 18-1390 NEWS LETTER Join the GlobalSecurity.org mailing list Enter Your Email Address Pentagon launches cyber op for 'Russian interference' in midterm elections Iran Press TV Thu Oct 25, 2018 03:06AM The US Cyber Command has launched a cyber operation to counter what it describes as "Russian interference" in the upcoming midterm elections. "The US government leadership has made it clear that it will not accept any foreign interference or attempts to undermine or manipulate our elections in any way," Cybercom spokesman Joseph Holstead said. "This includes the whole-of-government effort to protect election infrastructure and prevent malign, covert election influence operations." This is while Facebook and Twitter say they have at least found no evidence of Chinese meddling in the 2018 elections. The finding has been corroborated by other tech firms, namely cybersecurity companies FireEye Inc. and Symantec Corp. "There is nothing more important, no other priority that is higher at the NSA than the security of the midterm elections," said General Paul Nakasone, the third commander of the United States Cyber Command, at a conference last month. "We looked at what our adversaries have done previously and what they might do in the future... The forces that are working are well trained, ready to do what is necessary in terms of securing the elections in 2018." According to US spy agencies, Russia and China have also been eavesdropping on Trump's personal phone calls. Despite that the president has refused to give up his three iPhones. NEWS LETTER Join the GlobalSecurity.org mailing list Enter Your Email Address Pentagon Mulling Request for Troops at Southern Border to Stem Migrant Flow By Carla Babb October 25, 2018 The Pentagon is considering sending hundreds of troops to the southern border after President Donald Trump reiterated Thursday the military would be used to prevent a caravan of Central American migrants from entering the United States. A U.S. official confirmed to VOA the Pentagon has received a request from the Department of Homeland Security for troops to assist border patrol agents. The official, speaking on condition of anonymity, said no troop numbers were included in the request because the number provided is determined by the Pentagon, based on how many people are needed to provide the desired capabilities. More than 2,000 National Guard troops have already been deployed to the area. President Trump has referred to the caravan of migrants, which is more than a 1,600 kilometers from the closest U.S. border, as a "national emergency." "I am bringing out the military for this National Emergency. They will be stopped!," Trump wrote in a post on Twitter earlier Thursday. Trump also agreed with a border patrol labor union official that Democrats are to blame for migrants seeking refuge in the U.S. Trump has blasted Honduras, El Salvador and Guatemala for not stopping their citizens from departing for the U.S. He said Monday he would begin cutting off or reducing foreign aid to those countries and threatened last week to use military troops to close the border. After camping overnight in the southeastern Mexican town of Mapastepec, the caravan was set to resume its journey Thursday. Illness, police harassment and fear are taking their toll on the migrants, which now number between 4,000 and 5,000, a sharp decrease from the estimated 7,000 from just days earlier. Officials say nearly 1,700 migrants already have dropped out and applied for asylum in Mexico. A few hundred weary migrants have accepted Mexican government offers to transport them back to their home countries. The Mexican government has declined to give the migrants food, water, or even access to bathroom facilities, leaving it to private citizens, church groups or sympathetic local officials to provide essential goods, according to Associated Press. The Mexican government has, instead, reserved these basic items only for migrants who turn themselves in at immigration centers to apply for visas or to be deported. Sometimes Mexico's federal police have interfered with the caravan of migrants, who are mostly from Honduras, according to Associated Press. Parents who have remained in the caravan say they are doing so for their children's futures, and out of fear of the potential dangers that would await them upon return to gang-dominated Honduras. Honduras' homicide rate is about 43 per 100,000 inhabitants, among the world's highest for a country not at war. Such caravans have been routine over the years without much attention, but President Trump has used the caravan to rally his Republican base before the Nov. 6 midterm elections. Trump fueled the controversy in a series of tweets Monday, saying without evidence that "criminals and unknown Middle Easterners" were among the caravan of Central American migrants bound for the U.S. Many in the caravan may not qualify for asylum even if they reach the border, as the U.S. does not consider escapes from poverty and certain types of violence as qualifying factors. International law requires that individuals fleeing violence and persecution must be allowed access to the country where they are seeking asylum and the right to apply for it. Staff from the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees arrived earlier this week in the Mexican town of Tapachulas, which is near the Guatemalan border, to help stabilize the migrant caravan's chaotic situation and to register asylum seekers. UNHCR spokesman Adrian Edwards told VOA that its staffers also are safeguarding migrants' rights. "All countries have a right to be able to manage their own immigration and manage their own borders," Edwards said. "What is important for us is that those borders are managed in an asylum-sensitive way, which means giving people access, assessing their claims and then dealing with them accordingly in line with international law." NEWS LETTER Join the GlobalSecurity.org mailing list Enter Your Email Address North Korean official warn US against 'confidence-destroying measures' Iran Press TV Thu Oct 25, 2018 06:41PM A North Korean official tells a security forum in Beijing that US sanctions are "confidence-destroying" and hinder the denuclearization process on the Korean Peninsula. Song Il Hyok, deputy director general of the North Korean foreign ministry's Institute for Disarmament and Peace, called on Washington Thursday to "lift immediately the sanctions and this hindrance" to confidence-building. "We think that sanctions and pressure do more harm than good," media outlets quoted Song as saying. Also at the forum was North Korean Colonel General Kim Hyong Ryong, who said his country was following through on declarations reached with South Korea and the US. "It is our firm and unshakable position" to implement the joint statement with the US which will transform "the Korean Peninsula, once a hot spot in the world, into a peaceful and prosperous region", Kim said. The officials spoke at the Xiangshan Forum, a regional defense dialogue hosted by China since 2006 as part of Beijing's efforts to step up its global influence. In June, US President Donald Trump met North Korean leader Kim Jong-un in a landmark summit in Singapore, during which they agreed to work toward denuclearization of the peninsula. The North has already taken several steps toward that goal, but the US has taken none. Pyongyang agreed earlier this month to allow international inspectors into a missile engine test facility and the Punggye-ri nuclear testing site. The North is seeking relief from harsh sanctions, but the US has pledged to keep them in place as long as Pyongyang has not fully dismantled all its nuclear and ballistic missile programs. The United States has even blocked a move by South Korea to remove a broad trade and investment embargo imposed on the North in 2010. According to US officials, Trump and Kim are likely to hold their second summit early next year. The UN Security Council has imposed several rounds of crippling sanctions on North Korea since 2006 over Pyongyang's military programs, which it has defended as a deterrent against a possible US invasion. Last month, South's President Moon Jae-in and the North Korean leader signed a deal at a summit in Pyongyang, under which they agreed to halt military exercises, gradually remove landmines and guard posts within their demilitarized zone and establish an extensive no-fly zone near their border. The two Koreas are technically at war because their conflict of 1950 to 1953 ended in a truce not a peace treaty, but bilateral relations have improved significantly in the last year. NEWS LETTER Join the GlobalSecurity.org mailing list Enter Your Email Address Treasury Designates Singapore-Based Targets for Laundering Money in Support of North Korea U.S. Department of the Treasury October 25, 2018 WASHINGTON The U.S. Department of the Treasury's Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) today announced North Korea-related designations of two entities and one individual, continuing the implementation of existing sanctions. In a related action, today the U.S. Department of Justice unsealed criminal charges against the same individual, Tan Wee Beng. Today's action highlights North Korea's continued illicit use of the financial system to circumvent sanctions, as well as the U.S. Government's commitment to safeguard the international financial system and implement existing UN Security Council (UNSC) resolutions. Today's action also makes clear that the United States will not hesitate to impose sanctions on any individual, entity, or vessel supporting North Korea's illicit activities, regardless of nationality. "Tan Wee Beng and his co-conspirators made deliberate efforts to launder money through the U.S. financial system on behalf of North Korea," said Secretary Steven T. Mnuchin. "Governments, financial institutions, and other companies worldwide need to be on high alert to these types of schemes. The U.S. government will not overlook these deceptive practices. We are deeply committed to the final, fully verified denuclearization of North Korea, and Treasury will continue to enforce and implement sanctions until that time." OFAC designated Singapore-based Tan Wee Beng, Wee Tiong (S) Pte Ltd, and WT Marine Pte Ltd pursuant to E.O. 13551 for having, directly or indirectly, engaged in money laundering, the counterfeiting of goods or currency, bulk cash smuggling, narcotics trafficking, or other illicit economic activity that involves or supports the Government of North Korea or any senior official thereof. Tan Wee Beng is a director and significant shareholder of Wee Tiong (S) Pte Ltd, a Singapore-based commodities trading company. Over several years, dating back to at least 2011, Tan Wee Beng and at least one other individual in his company fulfilled millions of dollars in commodities contracts for North Korea. To do so, Tan Wee Beng made a concerted effort to obfuscate payment origins and structure transactions to avoid regulatory scrutiny. Tan Wee Beng and his co-conspirators also knew of and took efforts to evade financial sanctions on North Korea. In at least one instance, when a wire payment was rejected, Tan Wee Beng and Wee Tiong (S) Pte Ltd orchestrated payment in bulk cash, hand-delivered to a North Korean. OFAC also designated WT Marine Pte Ltd, a marine fuels company closely related to Wee Tiong (S) Pte Ltd, and of which Tan Wee Beng is the Managing Director. Last year, the JW JEWEL (IMO: 9402964) and NYMEX STAR (IMO: 9078191), vessels operated and managed by WT Marine Pte Ltd, engaged in illicit economic activity that involves or supports the Government of North Korea. Many of the activities undertaken by Tan Wee Beng and his associated companies are the types of activities that were highlighted in the November 2, 2017 Advisory on North Korea's Use of the International Financial System published by the U.S. Department of the Treasury's Financial Crimes Enforcement Network (FinCEN). Most notably, today's designations illustrate Treasury's previous warnings regarding North Korea's use of third-country companies to divide their payments into smaller outflows in complex layering schemes directed through front companies, shell companies, and shipping or trade businesses elsewhere in Asia. Moreover, North Korean financial representatives use third-country corporate service providers to establish the front or shell companies and use these companies to open bank accounts to access the U.S. and international financial systems. Tan Wee Beng's role in Wee Tiong (S) Pte Ltd and WT Marine Pte Ltd is also indicative of how North Korea-linked financial facilitators often establish and use multiple companies with the same owners or managers. These companies also frequently share addresses, telephone numbers, and employees, and they may transact with similar business partners. Additional questions or comments regarding the contents of the November 2, 2017 advisory should be addressed to the FinCEN Resource Center at FRC@fincen.gov. Moreover, UNSC resolution 1718 (2006) prohibits transactions with designated entities who subject to an asset freeze. In Resolution 2375 (2017) the UNSC decided that all Member State shall prohibit their nationals, persons subject to their jurisdiction, entities incorporated in their territory or subject to their jurisdiction, and vessels flying their flag from facilitating or engaging in ship-to-ship transfers to or from Democratic People's Republic of Korea (DPRK)-flagged vessels of any goods or items that are being supplied, sold, or transferred to or from the DPRK. As a result of today's action, any property or interests in property of the designated persons, including the two vessels, in the possession or control of U.S. persons or within the United States is blocked, and U.S. persons generally are prohibited from dealing with the designated persons. Identifying information on the entities and individual sanctioned today. #### NEWS LETTER Join the GlobalSecurity.org mailing list Enter Your Email Address US Understands India's Need to Purchase S-400 - Defense Minister Sputnik News 18:35 25.10.2018(updated 18:45 25.10.2018) Indian Defense Minister Nirmala Sitharaman has indicated that the US may not impose sanctions on India for the purchase of Russian S-400 Triumf air defense and missile systems. Speaking at the Economist India Summit in New Delhi on Thursday, Indian Defense Minister Nirmala Sitharaman stated that buying the S-400 air defense missile system from Russia was a choice India had made and the US understood the reason behind the decision. "Buying S-400 is a choice India makes. We are very clear on that and we made our side of the decision very clear and I am also grateful in a sense and happy that the American position, as represented by the secretary of defense, was that they understood why India had to go ahead with purchases," Sitharaman said. Sitharaman added that Russia has been an ally of India for several decades and that "India has also been procuring equipment from the US from some time as well. India keeps its options for acquiring resources very varied." The statement comes days after Sitharaman met her US counterpart James Mattis in Singapore on the sidelines of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations Defense Ministers' Meeting Plus (ADMM Plus). Sputnik had reported earlier this week that the Defense Ministry categorically denied reports about an ongoing discussion between Washington and New Delhi on the possible purchase of F-16 fighter jets for the Indian Air Force in exchange for a waiver on sanctions under the Countering America's Adversaries Through Sanctions Act (CAATSA) for the S-400 Triumf air defense system deal with Russia. Nirmala Sitharaman reiterated that the two countries did not talk about a CAATSA waiver for S-400 during the 2+2 ministerial dialogue in September. India signed a $5.43 billion deal to purchase five units of S-400 Triumf from Russia during the bilateral annual summit earlier this month. Before the deal, India had sent several delegations led by the foreign secretary to the US to make a case for a sanctions waiver and also conveyed that the discussion on the purchase of the S-400 preceded the CAATSA by years. Sputnik NEWS LETTER Join the GlobalSecurity.org mailing list Enter Your Email Address Mogherini: EU, UN will continue supporting JCPOA IRNA - Islamic Republic News Agency Tehran, Oct 25, IRNA -- EU foreign policy chief Federica Mogherini said Wednesday that the European Union and the United Nations as champions of dialogue and cooperation will continue supporting the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action. Speaking on the occasion of United Nations Day, which marks the entry into force of the UN Charter in 1945, Mogherini said 'Together, the EU and UN have been, are and will be the strongest champions of dialogue and cooperation. 'This is why we will continue to defend multilateral diplomacy and its achievements, from the Iran nuclear deal to the Paris agreement on climate change, and to support the essential work of all UN agencies.' She went on to say 'International rules, organizations and jurisdictions are a guarantee for all. That's why we will always continue to invest in a strong UN system. Together as we celebrate UN Day we will stay a force for change.' Since the US unilateral withdrawal of the JCPOA on May 8, the European Union has continued backing the international pact and ensuring that Iran would be able to receive the economic benefits of the deal. The EU announced that its new mechanism to facilitate payments for Iranian exports would be legally in place by Nov. 4, when the next phase of U.S. sanctions hit. 1396**1396 NEWS LETTER Join the GlobalSecurity.org mailing list Enter Your Email Address Iraqi PM Vows to Prioritize Iraq's Interests With Regard to US Sanctions on Iran Sputnik News 01:20 26.10.2018 MOSCOW (Sputnik) - Baghdad will act in accordance with its national interests when it comes to the US sanctions against Iran, Sky News Arabia TV channel reported on Thursday, citing Iraq's new prime minister, Adel Abdul Mahdi. According to the broadcaster, Mahdi said at a briefing that Baghdad would prioritize its interests, namely, its independence, in everything that concerned helping the United States in implementing restrictive measures targeting Iran. He added that the government aspired to distance itself from any meddling in other states' affairs. On October 3, newly elected Iraqi President Barham Salih named Mahdi, who was Iraqi oil minister in 2014-2016, as the country's prime minister and tasked him with forming a new government. Mahdi was sworn in on Wednesday, as well as 14 out of 22 lawmakers whom he had designated. In May, US President Donald Trump announced that the United States would withdraw from the Iranian nuclear deal, and reimpose its sanctions against Tehran that had been lifted under the agreement. The first round of the US restrictions came into force in August, the next sanctions package, due to hit Iran's oil sector, among others, is set to be re-imposed on November 4. While Iran and the United States are Iraq's two major partners, the United States tries to urge other countries to stop their cooperation with Tehran. Sputnik NEWS LETTER Join the GlobalSecurity.org mailing list Enter Your Email Address New Iraqi PM, two-thirds of proposed ministers sworn in Iran Press TV Thu Oct 25, 2018 02:51AM New Iraqi Prime Minister Adel Abdul-Mahdi and almost two-thirds of his ministerial picks were sworn in on Wednesday, but lawmakers failed to reach a consensus on the rest of the cabinet, postponing the votes to November 6. Out of the 22-member cabinet proposed by the 76-year-old prime minister, 14 picks won a vote of confidence, but the parliament did not make any decision about the rest, including the ministers of interior and defense. Thamer Ghadhban became oil minister and veteran Kurdish politician Fuad Hussein was sworn in as the finance minister. Mohammed Ali al-Hakeem was elected as minister of foreign affairs, Naim al-Rubaye as communications minster, Alaa al-Alwani as minister of health, and Abdullah Luaibi as transport minister. Ahmed Riyadh (minister of youth and sports), Bassem al-Rubaye (minister of labor and social affairs), Luay al-Khatteeb (minister of electricity), Mohammed Hashim (minister of trade), Jamal al-Adili (minister of water resources), Salih Abdullah Jabouri (minister of industry), Saleh al-Hassani (minister of agriculture), and Bangin Rekani (minister of housing and reconstruction) were the other ministers approved by the parliament. Before voting on the remaining eight posts could take place, lawmakers from Muqtada al-Sadr's bloc Sairoon, Haider al-Abadi's Nasr Alliance, Vice-President Ayad Allawi's Wataniya, and Sunni Muslim blocs left the room, arguing that they were not satisfied with the rest of the candidates. "It's enough to approve 14 ministers," Nasr lawmaker Ali Sined said. During the Wednesday session, some MPs reportedly accused proposed ministers of corruption. While the Iraqi Constitution gives the new prime minister until November 2 to form his government, the Iraqi parliament is to reconvene on November 6 to vote on the remaining members of the cabinet, Speaker Mohammed al-Halbousi said. PM Abdul-Mahdi faces the daunting task of rebuilding much of the country after a devastating war against Daesh, as well as solving acute economic problems and power and water shortages. The premier on Wednesday detailed his agenda for the next four years in a 122-page document, which lists plans for developing the war-torn country, settling differences with the Kurdistan Regional Government, boosting the economy and reducing poverty. In terms of security, he said all arms must be in the hands of the state, rejecting "semi-states" within the country. He also vowed his government would resolve electricity problems by the summer of 2019. Millions of Iraqis voted on May 12 in their first parliamentary election since the defeat of the Daesh Takfiri terrorist group, but a contentious recount process delayed the announcement of final results until August. Sadr's Sairoon bloc came first in the polls, while the Fatah Alliance led by Hadi al-Amiri, and Abadi's Nasr finished second and third respectively. The Iraqi politics has long been vulnerable to the differences lying along the country's major ethnic and sectarian fault lines. Under a de facto power-sharing agreement, the presidency of Iraq is traditionally held by a Kurdish politician, the PM is a Shia, while the parliament speaker is a Sunni. NEWS LETTER Join the GlobalSecurity.org mailing list Enter Your Email Address Pakistan releases top Taliban commander 'at US request' Iran Press TV Thu Oct 25, 2018 05:07PM Pakistan has released Mullah Baradar, a senior Taliban commander, as a "confidence-building" measure requested by the US, which is engaged in so-called peace talks with the insurgents. Abdul Ghani Baradar, the former right-hand man of Taliban founder Mullah Omar, had been held in Pakistani detention for over eight years, sources said Thursday. The move is said to be aimed at aiding the so-called peace talks between the US and the militant group, after the two sides agreed in Doha, Qatar to continue the secretive negotiations. Less than two weeks ago, US envoy Zalmay Khalilzad met with Taliban representatives in Qatar to discuss a "peace" deal. "Baradar was freed yesterday afternoon and he joined his family," Taliban spokesman Zabihullah Mujahid told AFP in a WhatsApp message. A Pakistani intelligence official also noted that Baradar was "released a couple of days ago". Baradar was the most high-profile Taliban leader detained by Pakistan since the 9/11 attacks in 2001. He was arrested in the southern port city of Karachi in 2010, reportedly in an operation that was described as a huge blow to the militant group. Apart from Baradar, several other senior Taliban leaders were freed this week following direct talks with Khalilzad on October 12, a senior Taliban official told AFP, adding that they believe the releases were made at US request. According to the official, Baradar will likely stay in Pakistan and shuttle between the group's Doha office, Kabul and Islamabad. The Taliban announced on October 13 that they would continue talks with the US, even though no tangible agreement was reached in the first round of meeting in Doha. Washington's repeated outreach to the Taliban contradicts its efforts to link other countries, including Iran and Russia, to the militant group. Early this week, the US Treasury Department blacklisted nine men, including two Iranian military officers, over allegations that they were "linked with the Taliban". US Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin claimed that the Iranians were providing financial and material support to the Taliban. Washington has a long history of liaison with the Taliban, starting with the militant group's years of war with the Soviets over their occupation of Afghanistan. Following the Soviet withdrawal, the US saw the group as a counterbalance to Iran's Islamic Republic and maintained its links with the Taliban. The Taliban government, however, was toppled during the US invasion of Afghanistan in 2001 because the group refused to expel the al-Qaeda which Washington blames for the 9/11 attacks. Senior US politicians have said the CIA also created al-Qaeda with the help of British, Pakistani and Saudi intelligence agencies to counter Iran. NEWS LETTER Join the GlobalSecurity.org mailing list Enter Your Email Address Italian Leader Urges End To EU Sanctions On Russia During Moscow Visit RFE/RL October 25, 2018 Italian Prime Minister Giuseppe Conte is urging an end to European Union sanctions on Russia and said he is committed to boosting trade with Moscow, despite the sanctions. On his first trip to Moscow since taking office in June, Conte on October 24 hailed Russia as an essential global player and invited Putin to visit Italy. The Italian premier said he believes the split between the EU and Russia over the Ukrainian conflict that began in 2014 has lasted too long, and he would like to see the sanctions against Russia lifted. "For Italy, the sanctions aren't the goal. They are an instrument that must be overcome as soon as possible," said Conte, the head of Italy's new populist governing coalition. However, he declined to say if Rome is ready to veto a planned renewal of the sanctions expected to come before EU leaders in December. "Italy would like to persuade other European countries that the only way forward is through dialogue," he said. Conte held hours of talks with Russian President Vladimir Putin in the Kremlin on October 24, and then the two looked on as officials signed a slew of trade and investment agreements aimed at overcoming a collapse in trade resulting from the EU's sanctions as well as from Moscow's retaliatory moves banning many European imports. Bilateral trade has increased recently as the Russian economy has climbed out of recession, but it remains a fraction of what it was before EU sanctions were first imposed in 2014 over Russia's annexation of Ukraine's Crimean Peninsula and its support for a separatist war in eastern Ukraine. Most EU members, led by Germany, have said the sanctions must remain in place until Russia and Ukraine make progress toward ending the conflict. But Conte suggested the sanctions should be eased before then. "The Ukrainian crisis has caused a split and blocked the dialogue," he said. "We can't allow that. We should leave that period behind. It already has lasted for too long." Putin said Russian-Italian trade reached $24 billion last year, but he said that was less than half the nearly $54 billion total in 2013, the year before the EU sanctions took effect. "Regrettably, Italy's niche in the Russian market has decreased, but the volume of our economic ties has remained strong," Putin said. Several rounds of EU and U.S. sanctions have crippled Western investment projects in Russia. Earlier this year, the Italian energy giant Eni abandoned a joint project with Russia's top state oil company Rosneft to tap Black Sea oil reserves. Eni was also considering suspending another such venture in the Barents Sea, Russian news agencies reported. Putin said the two countries nonetheless have maintained "businesslike, but also very warm relations." "Despite the difficult times, our political contacts have remained on a high level," he said. Conte's populist coalition includes the right-wing League party, which has called for a quick end to the EU sanctions on Russia, arguing they have hurt Italian exporters as much as Russian businesses. League leader Matteo Salvini, a deputy prime minister who visited Russia earlier this month, has praised Putin and said Italy would lobby the EU to lift the sanctions. The call for easing sanctions has been echoed by Italian businesses. The Italian agricultural lobby, Coldiretti, has called for an end to the EU sanctions as well as Russia's retaliatory ban on EU food imports, saying they have cost Italian food producers 1 billion euros since they were imposed. Putin said Italian investment in Russia has continued despite the restrictions, with more than 500 Italian companies having recently invested about $5 billion in developing projects in energy, transport, high technology, food industries, and other sectors. "We are ready to support the Italian companies that intend to develop cooperation with Russian partners," Conte said. "It's our duty to strengthen industrial cooperation with Russia." Following their talks, Conte and Putin oversaw by video link the launch of a new factory to produce high-voltage electric motors designed by Italy's Nidec company for Russian industries. The factory was built by Nidec and its Russian partners in the Ural Mountains city of Chelyabinsk. Russian and Italian business executives also signed cooperation agreements for shipbuilding, automobile industries, energy, and other sectors. With reporting by AP and Reuters Source: https://www.rferl.org/a/italian-prime- minister-conte-urges-end-eu-sanctions-russia- moscow-visit-putin/29562701.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. NEWS LETTER Join the GlobalSecurity.org mailing list Enter Your Email Address Russian Defense Ministry Explains Why S-400 is Better Than Patriots Sputnik News 22:11 25.10.2018 Despite Washington's threats to impose sanctions on states buying military equipment from Moscow, many of them, such as Turkey, India and Indonesia, still stick with Russian weaponry, citing its outstanding quality. Russian Deputy Defense Minister Alexander Fomin explained in an interview with Sputnik why many states around the world prefer to buy Russian S-300 and S-400 air defense systems over US-made Patriots or even upgraded Patriot PAC-3+ systems. According to him, none of the air defense systems in the world can come close to most of the S-300 and S-400's parameters. "Everyone understands that no Patriot, even its PAC-3+ version, can be better than the S-300, not to speak of the S-400. There is no system better [than the Russian ones] either by effective range, or by number of targets that can be attacked simultaneously, or by number of tracked targets, or by the target's speed. In all those parameters, we beat the Patriot PAC-3+," he said. Fomin further noted that while the Patriot system can hit targets at speeds up to 2,000 meters per second, the Russian air defense systems can shoot down targets flying at 4,700 meters per second. The deputy defense minister explained that such targets have not even been developed yet and will probably only be created by 2040-2050. "Everyone understands this and thus despite the fear [of sanctions] realize that there are no [air defense systems] better than ours," he concluded. Several states have faced the risk of being affected by US sanctions over their contracts to buy Russian military equipment. Namely, Turkey and India are facing such a threat over their contracts to buy Russian S-400 air defense systems. Indonesia is also at risk over its contract for Su-35 deliveries. Unless these states receive a waiver from the US Treasury, they could be sanctioned under the Countering America's Adversaries Through Sanctions Act. Sputnik NEWS LETTER Join the GlobalSecurity.org mailing list Enter Your Email Address Moscow Considers US Actions in S Syria 'Occupation' - Russian Foreign Ministry Sputnik News 16:01 25.10.2018(updated 17:34 25.10.2018) Moscow has repeatedly criticized the US military campaign in Syria, which has not been authorized by either the UN or Damascus. Speaking at a regular briefing on Thursday, Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova said that the United States has occupied the southern part of Syria. "The situation in the northeast of Syria, where the US side is still trying to flirt with separatist-minded Kurdish groups, is concerning, as well as in the south of the country near Al-Tanf, where there is a de facto undisguised occupation by US forces of the territory of the sovereign Syrian state," she said. The spokeswoman further stated that the militants who had found a "safe haven, a shelter in the 55-kilometer exclusive zone," established by the US, were extorting $2,000 dollars per person from civilians who wanted to leave the area. Drone Attack on Hmeymim Zakharova has also confirmed reports that the aerial attack on Russia's Hmeymim Air Base in Syria could have been controlled by a US spy plane. "This information, provided by our military experts, is absolutely relaible. We have repeatedly voiced our concerns in this regard. And, certainly, during our contacts with American partners, including along the military and political line. Our concerns will once again be brought to their notice." Her remarks come shortly after Russian Deputy Defense Minister Alexander Fomin said that unmanned aerial vehicles involved in an attack on the Hmeymim base were piloted by a US Poseidon 8 surveillance aircraft. He, however, didn't specify when exactly the assault took place. INF Treaty Addressing Washington's potential withdrawal from the 1987 Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty (INF), Zakharova said that Russia was calling on all nations to send an "unambiguous" signal to the US to preserve the agreement. The diplomat stressed that Russia's missile programs, including development of cruise missiles, were carried out in full compliance with the treaty, and while Moscow intends to continue work with the agreement, Washington is unwilling to act on equal basis. "For several years, the American side has refused to provide any objective data supporting Washington's conclusions that the Russian 9M729 ground-based cruise missile that passed flight tests has the operating range banned by the treaty. We have repeatedly confirmed that the missile programs implemented by Russia fully meet our obligations under the INF Treaty," she underscored, adding that the development of the 9M729 cruise missile was "transparent to the maximum affordable degree. "The American side was never able to present any evidence to either Russia or the international community to substantiate its claims. They remain unfounded and are provocative. And we reiterate that Russia strictly abides by the provisions of the treaty," she added. "Now we are forced to seriously warn Washington. If the American side undermines the treaty, Russia will have to react. We are ready to work on maintaining its [the INF] viability, but for this we need a partner who is responsible and interested in continuing the dialogue for the sake of world stability. A solution to the problem can only be found through a frank, equitable and, of course, constructive dialogue," she said. Her remarks came just days after Donald Trump told reporters he would scrap the 1987 INF treaty, citing Russia's alleged violations of the agreement on the development of ground-based intermediate-range missiles. Moscow has repeatedly rejected the claims and pointed to possible US violations of the treaty with its missile defense installations in Eastern Europe. Sputnik NEWS LETTER Join the GlobalSecurity.org mailing list Enter Your Email Address Haspel briefs Trump on Turkish evidence on Khashoggi's death Iran Press TV Thu Oct 25, 2018 11:28PM CIA Director Gina Haspel has briefed US President Donald Trump after reportedly listening to "compelling" audio recording which captured the killing of Saudi dissident journalist Jamal Khashoggi. Haspel made a secret visit to Turkey this week to check evidence of audio recordings provided by Turkey that it claims capture the murder, The Washington Post reported on Wednesday. According to Turkish authorities, based on the evidence Saudi operatives had tortured, murdered, and dismembered Khashoggi at the monarchy's consulate in Istanbul. Turkish media cited sources familiar with the audio recording of Khashoggi's death describing the evidence as "compelling". Details of Haspel's briefing to Trump on her Turkey visit, however, have not been published. Meanwhile, the killing of Khashoggi has sparked global condemnation and snowballed into a major crisis for the Saudi leadership. 'Khashoggi murder premeditated' Khashoggi's murder was "premeditated," according to Saudi Arabia's public prosecutor. "Information from the Turkish side affirms that the suspects in Khashoggi's case premeditated their crime," Saudi Arabia's public prosecutor stated on Thursday, giving the incident a new twist. The latest announcement cancelled an earlier account that the dissident journalist died in a botched operation to "negotiate" his return to the kingdom. MBS won't survive without US support Ilnur Cevik, an adviser to Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has accused Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman of having Khashoggi's "blood on his hands". Trump has also blamed the Saudi de facto leader, who is known in media as "MBS", for the killing of Khashoggi. However, Trump also said that he wanted to believe that rogue operatives were behind the Khashoggi killing. Saudi Foreign Minister Adel al-Jubeir claimed the individuals who killed Khashoggi "did this outside the scope of their authority", calling it a "rogue operation". "Even if US President Trump saves [Mohammed bin] Salman, in the eyes of the world, he is a questionable person with Khashoggi's blood on his hands," Cevik wrote. Reports indicate that MBS would maintain a low profile henceforth. 'Bad deal, worst cover-up' Khashoggi entered the Saudi consulate in Turkey's Istanbul on October 2 to obtain documentation for his upcoming marriage, but he never left the place. Initially Saudi officials claimed Khashoggi had left the diplomatic mission unharmed; however, under Turkish pressure joined by the questions from the global community, it was forced to confess that he had been killed in a premeditated murder. Trump described the plan to kill Khashoggi in the Saudi diplomatic mission in Istanbul, as well as the contrasting cover-up stories after it, as a "bad deal" and "the worst cover-up ever". "They had a very bad original concept, it was carried out poorly and the cover-up was the worst in the history of cover-ups," Trump said on Tuesday. "They had the worst cover-up ever." 'We will decide what to believe' Trump's son-in-law and senior adviser, Jared Kushner, told media that the Khashoggi case was still in the "fact-finding phase", and they would decide later on which facts 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." Meanwhile, Kushner, who has close ties with MBS, admitted that it was a serious situation. "This is a very serious accusation, a very serious situation," Kushner said. "I'd say our strategy in the Middle East relies on ... America's interests." NEWS LETTER Join the GlobalSecurity.org mailing list Enter Your Email Address Turkey to Saudi Arabia: Who gave order for Khashoggi killing? Iran Press TV Thu Oct 25, 2018 02:08PM Turkish Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu has urged Saudi Arabia to answer questions over the murder of dissident journalist Jamal Khashoggi in Istanbul. "There are still questions that need answers" over the premeditated murder, Cavusoglu said on Thursday, asking Riyadh to explain "who gave them the orders" and "where the body is". He pointed to an announcement by Saudi authorities that they had arrested 18 men in connection with the death, urging Riyadh to explain why they had been arrested. "You admit they did it, but why are they not saying where?" Cavusoglu told a press conference in Ankara with Palestinian Foreign Minister Riyad al-Maliki. 'Turkey not taking Khashoggi case to international court' Cavusoglu, however, noted Turkey had no intention of taking Khashoggi case to an international court, but was ready to share information if an international investigation was launched. "We are already carrying out a probe ourselves. We are cooperating with anyone who wants to cooperate. Saudi Arabia had suggestions on this matter and we didn't say no to them, but for the moment taking the case to international court is not on the agenda," he said, adding, "For the moment, we don't have the intention to do that." The Turkish foreign minister said, however, that "if international institutions or courts take initiative and start such an investigation, as Turkey, of course we will share the information and evidences we have as well as the results of our investigation. We are obliged to do that anyway." Cavusoglu's comments came days after Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan said all those behind the murder should be brought to justice and tried in Istanbul. "My demand is that the 18 people be tried in Istanbul," Erdogan said in an address to lawmakers from his ruling party at the parliament in Ankara on Tuesday on the case of Khashoggi, who was murdered after entering the Saudi consulate in Istanbul on October 2. Khashoggi murder premeditated: Saudi prosecutor A joint Saudi-Turkish investigation shows that Khashoggi's murder was "premeditated," Saudi Arabia's public prosecutor said Thursday, dismissing an earlier account that the dissident journalist had died in a botched operation to "negotiate" his return to the kingdom. "Information from the Turkish side affirms that the suspects in Khashoggi's case premeditated their crime," said a statement from the Saudi public prosecutor. The statement said Saudi prosecutors were interrogating suspects on the basis of information provided by a joint Saudi-Turkish task force. Ankara and Western allies of Riyadh have voiced deep doubts about Saudi explanations. Turkey has dismissed Saudi efforts to blame rogue operatives for the killing and urged the kingdom to search "top to bottom" for those responsible for the murder. An adviser to Erdogan has said that Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman has "blood on his hands" in the murder. "It is a disgrace that reaches all the way to Crown Prince [Mohammed bin] Salman. At least five members of the execution team are [Mohammed bin] Salman's right hands and are people that wouldn't act without his knowledge," Ilnur Cevik, an adviser to Erdogan, wrote in a column in the Yeni Birlik newspaper. "Even if US President Trump saves [Mohammed bin] Salman, in the eyes of the world, he is a questionable person with Khashoggi's blood on his hands," Cevik wrote. Trump has stopped his initial support for the Saudi crown prince for now, saying bin Salman bore ultimate responsibility for the operation that led to Khashoggi's killing. In his toughest comments yet, Trump told the Wall Street Journal he wanted to believe the prince when he said that lower level officials were to blame for the killing at the Saudi mission. But he suggested responsibility lay higher up: "Well, the prince is running things over there more so at this stage. He's running things and so if anybody were going to be, it would be him." Khashoggi's son leaves Saudi Arabia for US with family Human Rights Watch reported later on Thursday that the eldest son of the murdered Saudi journalist and his family had left the kingdom after the Saudi government lifted a travel ban imposed on him. "Salah and his family are on a plane to (Washington) DC now," Sarah Leah Whitson, HRW's executive director for the Middle East and North Africa, was quoted by AFP as saying. A few hours later, two sources close to the family told Reuters that Salah and his family had arrived in Washington. According to one source, Salah Khashoggi holds dual U.S.-Saudi citizenship. Salah's departure came a day after a meeting at the al-Yamama Palace in Riyadh in which he and other family members received condolences from King Salman and Prince Mohammed bin Salman. Germany's Merkel condemns Khashoggi's killing Also on Thursday, German Chancellor Angela Merkel made a phone call to Saudi Arabia's King Salman, strongly condemning the killing of Khashoggi and vowing to take appropriate measures in response. According to a statement issued by the German chancellery, Merkel "made clear that the exact course of events must be cleared up." "The chancellor urged Saudi Arabia to ensure a rapid, transparent and credible investigation. She stressed that all those responsible must be held accountable," the statement added. NEWS LETTER Join the GlobalSecurity.org mailing list Enter Your Email Address CIA Director Gina Haspel in Turkey to investigate Khashoggi murder Iran Press TV Thu Oct 25, 2018 10:33AM The Director of the US Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) Gina Haspel has listened to audio allegedly capturing the interrogation and killing of Saudi dissident journalist Jamal Khashoggi. The CIA chief's investigation will give a key member of President Donald Trump's administration access to the evidence used by Turkey to accuse Saudi Arabia of Khashoggi's premeditated murder. Haspel, who departed for a secret trip to Turkey on Monday, heard the audio during her visit to Istanbul, the Washington Post reported Wednesday, citing people familiar with her meetings. Haspel is scheduled to brief Trump on Thursday. Trump, who has made Saudi Arabia a central pillar of his Middle East strategy, has expressed skepticism about Riyadh's claim that Khashoggi's murder was a "rogue operation" that occurred after a fistfight broke out in the Saudi Consulate in Istanbul on October 2. On Tuesday, Trump said Saudi officials had engaged in the "worst coverup ever" and that those behind the killing "should be in big trouble." A person familiar with the audio said it was "compelling" and could put more pressure on the United States to punish Saudi Arabia for the death of Khashoggi. "This puts the ball firmly in Washington's court," Bruce Riedel, a former CIA official and scholar at the Brookings Institution, told the Washington Post. "Not only will there be more pressure now from the media but Congress will say, 'Gina, we would love to have you come visit and you can tell us exactly what you heard.' " Khashoggi was a Washington Post columnist and lived in the US, having fled Saudi Arabia in September last year. US lawmakers have increased their pressure on the Trump administration, accusing Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, also known as MBS and the country's de facto leader, of ordering the killing. The Trump administration took its first concrete steps to penalize Saudi Arabia on Tuesday by revoking visas for agents implicated in the killing, a symbolic and ineffective move considering 18 of the 21 Saudi suspects were already under arrest. In announcing the measures, US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said he is working with the US Treasury Department on whether to impose sanctions on those responsible for the journalist's death. "These penalties will not be the last word on this matter from the United States," Pompeo said. "We will continue to explore additional measures to hold those responsible accountable." MBS has denied having knowledge of the mission and on Wednesday promised to bring those responsible to justice. He called the killing of Khashoggi a "heinous crime." But Turkish officials have voiced their doubts about his intention to support a full investigation. "How should a real investigation in Saudi Arabia work when one of the main suspects is the crown prince MBS?" said a Turkish senior official. NEWS LETTER Join the GlobalSecurity.org mailing list Enter Your Email Address Saudi Arabia Now Says Khashoggi's Killing 'Premeditated' October 25, 2018 Saudi Arabia's public prosecutor has said the killing of journalist Jamal Khashoggi in the kingdom's consulate in Istanbul was premeditated, reversing previous official statements that his death was unintended. Khashoggi, 59, a U.S. resident and Washington Post columnist, was critical of the Saudi rulers. He disappeared after walking into the consulate on October 2 to obtain marriage documents. "Information has come from the Turkish side indicating that the suspects in the Khashoggi case embarked on their act with a premeditated intention," the prosecutor Saudi bin Abdullah said in a statement carried by the Saudi news agency SPA on October 25. The Saudi change of tack came after CIA director Gina Haspel reportedly heard an alleged audio recording of the killing during a fact-finding visit to Turkey this week. Haspel was due to brief President Donald Trump about Khashoggi on October 25. It also came after Saudi Arabia's Crown Prince Muhammad bin Salman on October 24 called the murder "repulsive" and vowed that justice will prevail, in his first public comments on a case that has provoked an international outcry. The prince himself has faced international criticism, with many officials charging he must have known about Khashoggi's killing, allegedly by Saudi security agents, and some saying he may have ordered his death. In a separate development, Human Rights Watch said Khashoggi's son, Salah, and his family have left Saudi Arabia after the government lifted a travel ban. "Salah and his family are on a plane to (Washington) DC now," Sarah Leah Whitson, HRW's executive director for the Middle East and North Africa, told the media. Based on reporting by AP, AFP, and dpa Source: https://www.rferl.org/a/saudi-arabia-now-says-khashoggi-s -killing-premeditated-/29564182.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. NEWS LETTER Join the GlobalSecurity.org mailing list Enter Your Email Address Saudi Crown Prince Calls Journalist's Killing 'Repulsive,' Vows Justice October 25, 2018 Saudi Arabia's crown prince has called the murder of journalist Jamal Khashoggi in a Saudi consulate "repulsive" and vowed that justice will prevail, in his first public comments on a case that has provoked an international outcry. "The incident was very painful for all Saudis. It's a repulsive incident and no one can justify it," Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, 33, said at an investment forum in Riyadh on October 24. "Those responsible will be held accountable... In the end justice will prevail," the heir apparent to the Saudi throne said. The prince himself has faced international criticism, with many officials saying he must have known about Khashoggi's killing in the Saudi Consulate in Istanbul, allegedly by Saudi security agents, and some saying he may have ordered the killing. Khashoggi, 59, a Washington Post columnist, was critical of the prince's repression of dissent and lived in self-imposed exile in the United States. He disappeared after walking into the consulate on October 2 to obtain marriage documents. Saudi Arabia initially denied he was killed but last week acknowledged his death and put the blame on officials in the Saudi intelligence service. Based on reporting by AP, AFP, and dpa Source: https://www.rferl.org/a/saudi-crown- prince-calls-journalist-s-killing- repulsive-vows-justice/29562825.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. NEWS LETTER Join the GlobalSecurity.org mailing list Enter Your Email Address Custodian of the Two Holy Mosques makes Telephone call to Chancellor of Federal Republic of Germany Saudi Press Agency Thursday 1440/2/16 - 2018/10/25 Riyadh, Safar 16, 1440, Oct 25, 2018, SPA -- The Custodian of the Two Holy Mosques King Salman bin Abdulaziz Al Saud made a telephone call today to Chancellor Angela Merkel of the Federal Republic of Germany. During the telephone conversation, they discussed means of developing relations between the two countries in all fields. For his part, the Monarch also briefed the German Chancellor on the latest developments of investigation into the murder of Saudi national Jamal Khashoggi, and confirmed that what was done by those involved in this crime does not represent the principles and values of the Kingdom, stressing that justice will take its course fully and resolutely and that whoever found guilty will receive deterrent punishment. For her part, the German Chancellor expressed hope that the ongoing investigations would uncover all the circumstances of this incident. -- SPA 22:43 LOCAL TIME 19:43 GMT 0037 NEWS LETTER Join the GlobalSecurity.org mailing list Enter Your Email Address Saudi Public Prosecutor Says Khashoggi Killing Was Premeditated - Saudi TV Sputnik News 13:28 25.10.2018(updated 14:18 25.10.2018) Ekhabariya TV has reported that prosecutors are interrogating suspects, verifying the information provided by a joint Saudi-Turkish task force. "The suspects in the murder of subject Khashoggi committed the crime deliberately," Prosecutor General Saud Mujib said in a statement, aired by the broadcaster. Earlier in the day, Turkish Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu stated that Ankara would not launch an international investigation into the Khashoggi case, adding, however, that Turkey had shared information on the issue with some parties. "Attorney General: Suspects in the Khashoggi case did it with premeditated intent," the tweet says. Jamal Khashoggi was a columnist for The Washington Post and a prominent critic of Saudi policies. On October, 2 he entered the Saudi Consulate in Istanbul in order to obtain documents for his marriage and has not been seen since. Saudi Arabia initially denied reports that Khashoggi had been abducted or murdered in the consulate, but on October 19, Riyadh admitted that the journalist had been killed during a fight inside the diplomatic facility. Sputnik NEWS LETTER Join the GlobalSecurity.org mailing list Enter Your Email Address What Does Turkey's Erdogan Want From Khashoggi Probe? By Jamie Dettmer October 25, 2018 As they demand answers about his death, friends of Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi have drawn some comfort from the unlikely figure of Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, who has overseen his own crackdown on dissent, has jailed journalists and has shuttered media outlets in his country. Khashoggi's friends hope Erdogan, who has vowed that Turkey won't let anyone get away with the "savage" killing of the journalist inside the Saudi Consulate in Istanbul, won't be diverted from discovering the full details of the Oct. 2 slaying. "It is not over yet," the Turkish leader has promised. "We are unraveling, dismantling [the case], and the world is closely following." But Erdogan's midweek speech to the Turkish parliament on Khashoggi's death, which he had billed just days before as the moment for the "naked truth" to come out, has left them queasy, and has prompted others to question exactly what Turkey's president wants out of the Khashoggi affair. In his speech, Erdogan added no new details to what was known already. "He did not drop a bombshell and he did not reveal anything we didn't know before," said Gonul Tol of the Middle East Institute, a Washington-based research group, aside from hinting he had personally approved the leaks to the media. His officials have been drip-feeding to the media lurid information about the grisly slaying in order to "maximize pressure on the Saudis" and to force reluctant admissions from them, said Peter Ricketts, a former British diplomat. Riyadh first claimed Khashoggi had left the consulate alive, only to be forced to admit the dissident commentator had been killed. But it insisted the killing was a rogue operation by renegade security and intelligence officials. In a twist that's adding to the unease of those who want to get to the bottom of the killing, Erdogan spoke by phone Thursday with Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, the man many believe most likely had prior knowledge of the plan to kill Khashoggi. That view appears to be shared partially by U.S. President Donald Trump, who told The Wall Street Journal on Tuesday, "He's running things and so if anybody were going to be [informed], it would be him." The phone call between the two men, who have often clashed before, is prompting further questions about Erdogan's objectives. Does he really want the "naked truth" to emerge, or will he parlay Khashoggi's death into a geopolitical deal serving other purposes, such as leveraging the oil-rich Saudis' money to help Turkey's ailing economy? Reportedly, Erdogan reacted dismissively to an offer of financial aid and investments made by Saudi royal family member Prince Khalid bin Faisal al-Saud during his visit last week to the Turkish capital. But "there's no evidence about a bargain that would involve a loan or investment by the Saudis in Turkey," said academic Galip Dalay, a friend of Khashoggi. Balancing power, economy But the Saudis have traditionally made problems go away by writing checks, and large Saudi investments could help calm financial markets and restore some confidence in Turkey's beleaguered economy, analysts said. Tol said Erdogan has to be careful that the Khashoggi affair doesn't backfire on Turkey economically. "Gulf countries have played an important role in the Turkish economy," she said. "Since 2002 when Erdogan first came into office, he has sought to decrease Turkish dependence on European investments and reached out to the Gulf countries.And the Saudis play a huge role in the Turkish economy." That's especially important for Erdogan now, she said, when Turkey is struggling and "can't secure enough European investments." Above all, he must avoid pushing the case to the point of rupture with the Saudis, she said, and that may explain his careful strategy. "You have to give credit to Erdogan for the way he has played his hand very well," she said in a podcast released Thursday by the Middle East Institute. Other analysts suspect Erdogan may have more than the Turkish economy in mind. In the Turkish capital, and among analysts in Europe and America, there's conjecture that Erdogan's aims are much broader than securing a single payoff and that they include major geopolitical objectives and a recalibration of the balance of power in the Gulf by dislodging the crown prince, or at the very least persuading the Saudi monarch, King Salman, to rein in his son. Among Erdogan's aims, according to analysts, is a likely parlaying of the Khashoggi affair into an end to the Saudis' economic blockade of Turkish ally Qatar and to halt the kingdom's antipathy to the Muslim Brotherhood, which is aligned with Erdogan's ruling AKP party. Western diplomats say that by pressuring the Saudi royal family with astute leaking and withholding of information, the Turkish leader is increasing his leverage. "The one thing the Saudis don't want to happen is for the [reported] audio tape [of the killing] to be released. Then the fallout would be even harder to contain," said a former British envoy to the Gulf kingdom. "If Erdogan steers this killing to safe port and minimizes the damage to the Saudi royal family, he will be owed a lot of favors." NEWS LETTER Join the GlobalSecurity.org mailing list Enter Your Email Address UN Special Rapporteur Claims Saudi State Responsible for Khashoggi's Murder Sputnik News 02:38 26.10.2018 WASHINGTON (Sputnik) The Saudi state is responsible for the murder of journalist Jamal Khashoggi and cannot "wash its hands" of responsibility, UN Special Rapporteur on Extrajudicial, Summary or Arbitrary Execution Agnes Callamard said at the UN headquarters in New York City on Thursday. "It is not quite possible for the state to wash its hands from the behavior of those actors," Callamard told reporters. "They were representing the state when they acted as they acted." On October 2, Khashoggi entered the Saudi Consulate in Istanbul in order to obtain documents for his marriage. Saudi Arabia initially denied reports he had been abducted or murdered in the consulate, but on October 19, Riyadh admitted he had been killed during a fight inside the diplomatic facility. "Even Saudi Arabia has admitted that the crime was premeditated From where I sit, this bears all the hallmark of extrajudicial executions. Until I am proven otherwise I must assume that this was the case. It is up to the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia to prove that it was not," Callamard said. Callamard said she had concluded that the Saudi government officials who orchestrated Khashoggi's killing were high enough in position to represent the state and that she had no information that they had acted in a completely rogue fashion. Earlier on Thursday, Saudi Arabian Prosecutor General Saud Mujib said the murder of Khashoggi, a US resident and Saudi Arabia critic, was premeditated. Sputnik NEWS LETTER Join the GlobalSecurity.org mailing list Enter Your Email Address Armed Forces always ready to restore stability to Syria IRNA - Islamic Republic News Agency Tehran, Oct 25, IRNA -- Syrian Deputy Commander-in-Chief of the Army and Armed Forces, Defense Minister Major Gen. Ali Abdullah Ayoub said that the armed forces are always ready to shoulder responsibility in restoring safety and security over Syria. Ayoub's remarks came during the People Assembly's 15 session of the 8th ordinary round, chaired by Speaker Hamoudeh Sabbagh on Thursday, SANA reported. Ayoub reiterated that the Syrian state will deal with the remaining areas which US is still betting on, either by local reconciliations or by the Syrian army operations. Ayoub clarified that Idleb province is a Syrian territory and it will return to the Syrian state, stressing that Syria considers the US and British presence on its territory illegal and a violation of the sovereignty of an independent country and a UN member. He pointed out that Washington has been losing its cards in Syria after most areas in Homs, Aleppo, Deir Ezzor, Eastern Ghouta, Darra and Quneitra , had been liberated from terrorism and returned to Syria's sovereignty. The Defense Minister saluted the martyrs who sacrificed their souls for the homeland, wishing a speedy recovery for the wounded. 1396**1396 NEWS LETTER Join the GlobalSecurity.org mailing list Enter Your Email Address Constitution sovereign affair decided by Syrian people: FM IRNA - Islamic Republic News Agency Tehran, Oct 25, IRNA -- Syrian Deputy Prime Minister, Foreign and Expatriates Minister Walid al-Moallem on Wednesday received UN Special Envoy for Syria Staffan de Mistura and the accompanying delegation. Talks during the meeting touched on efforts for achieving progress in the political track regarding the crisis in Syria, SANA reported. The two sides also followed up on the concepts related to the political process and the committee for discussing the current constitution, which were discussed during the meeting between al-Moallem and UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres on the sideline of the UN General Assembly meetings. Al-Moallem affirmed that Syria continues to support efforts for reaching a political solution for the crisis, noting that Syria has dealt positively with the output of the intra-Syrian national dialogue conference in Sochi and the formation of a committee to discuss the constitution. He said that the work of the aforementioned committee must adhere to the UN Charter, international law, and UN resolutions on Syria in terms of commitment to Syria's sovereignty, independence, and unity, and in affirming that the Syrian people are the only ones who get to decide Syria's future, therefore this process must be led and owned by Syria. The constitution and everything related to it is a purely sovereign affair decided by the Syrian people without foreign interference, al-Moallem said, noting that some sides and states seek are seeking to interfere and impose their will on the Syrian people. For his part, de Mistura reviewed the meetings and activities he carried out recently to revitalize the political process and form the committee for discussing the constitution. He said that during his years as Special Envoy, he did his best to reach a political solution under complicated circumstances. The two sides agreed to remain in touch in order to discuss ideas for pushing the political process forward. De Mistura told reporters in a brief statement at Four Seasons hotel "I held an expanded meeting with Minister al-Moallem and his deputy, during which we exchanged opinions clearly regarding the constitutional committee and the political process in general." 1396**1396 NEWS LETTER Join the GlobalSecurity.org mailing list Enter Your Email Address US plane piloted drones attacking Russia's Syria airbase: General Iran Press TV Thu Oct 25, 2018 09:30AM Russia says its Hmeimim air base in Syria where it is involved in an anti-terror mission once came under attack by over a dozen remotely-piloted American unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs.) Colonel General Alexander Fomin made the remarks at the 8th Beijing Xiangshan Forum on security partnership in China on Thursday. Hemeimim was attacked 13 drones with a US Poseidon-8 plane flying over the Mediterranean Sea simultaneously, Fomin said, without specifying the time of the incident. "Thirteen drones moved according to common combat battle deployment, operated by a single crew. During all this time the American Poseidon-8 reconnaissance plane patrolled the Mediterranean Sea area for eight hours," he said. The general also noted that the drones switched to a manual guidance mode and flew at a specific distance from Hmeimim when they faced the Russian equipment electronic warfare. "When these 13 drones faced our electronic warfare screen, they moved away to some distance, received the corresponding orders and began to be operated out of space and receiving help in finding the so-called holes through which they started penetrating. Then they were destroyed," he added. 'Arms flow to terrorists must end' Elsewhere in his remarks, Fomin stressed that an effective counter-terrorism fight in Syria requires blocking the supply of foreign made weapons to terrorists. "There is a need to put an end to the provision of money, weapons, equipment and various substances to terrorists, including chemical ingredients," he said. "Our experience proves that terrorists have the most modern weapons and communication means, including space-based tools." The Russian deputy defense minister further said that the Syrian military, supported by Russian aerospace forces, have purged Daesh terrorists from "virtually the entire" Arab country. "Over the past years, the Syrian government's forces supported by the Russian Aerospace Forces managed to liberate virtually the entire territory of the country from the terrorists of the Daesh terrorist group and the groups that have joined them," he said. Russian jets have been targeting positions held by terror outfits inside Syria at the Damascus government's request since September 2015. The airstrikes have helped Syrian forces advance against the militants, who have been wreaking havoc in the Arab country since 2011. NEWS LETTER Join the GlobalSecurity.org mailing list Enter Your Email Address Russia-Turkey deal on Syria's Idlib 'was Iran's idea' Iran Press TV Thu Oct 25, 2018 06:18AM (This is the fifth and last news article in the series "Iran's point man on Middle East." To read the fourth, click here; the third, here; the second, here; and the first, here. To read a report of the interview with Hossein Jaberi Ansari, see here.) A deal reached between Russia and Turkey last month to attempt to peacefully resolve the issue of Syria's Idlib Province, the last major stronghold of anti-government militants in the Arab country, was based in its entirety on an Iranian proposal, says Iran's chief negotiator on Syria. Hossein Jaberi Ansari, Iran's point man on the Middle East and North Africa, told Press TV's website in an exclusive interview on October 10, that the deal, reached in Sochi in mid-September, was based on Iran's idea to have Russia and Turkey which support opposing sides in the Syrian conflict meet each other halfway. Conflict erupted in Syria back in 2011, when a small group of opposition forces took up arms against Damascus. Soon, however, a mix of international terrorists and paid mercenaries mingled with and then largely sidestepped the armed Syrian opposition groups, effectively turning the Arab country into a battlefield for foreign governments opposed to Syrian President Bashar al-Assad. But the Syrian military, with advisory military help from Iran and Russia and a Russian aerial bombardment campaign has retaken control of much of the country, and the conflict is generally believed to be winding down. Idlib remains the last major piece of Syrian land still not in control of the Syrian government. Over the past couple of years, armed groups that have been defeated in battles with the Syrian military have been bused into Idlib under agreements with Damascus. While those groups have mostly had to leave their heavy weaponry behind under those deals, they have been allowed to take their small arms with them. In parts of his remarks published previously, Jaberi Ansari said that Moscow and Ankara did not see eye to eye on how to resolve Idlib. He said Russia was more inclined to resolve the matter more quickly while Turkey sought to indefinitely delay any resolution of the issue. 'Neither abrupt war, nor abrupt peace' He said Iran had its own ideas and offered a third path. Iran came up with a proposal to resolve the matter in a phased and incremental manner, "neither through abrupt [...] war, nor through abrupt peace," Jaberi Ansari said. That proposal faced "initial resistance" from Russia and Turkey but was later taken up by the two countries. At the end of a summit in Sochi on September 17, Russian President Vladimir Putin and Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan agreed on, among other things, establishing a demilitarized zone in Idlib that would cover an expanse of 15-20 kilometers of land. Militants would have to entirely clear that area by October 15. Presidents Putin and Erdogan had earlier, in a trilateral summit in Tehran, differed on how to resolve Idlib. 'Both the concept and the design' Jaberi Ansari said the Sochi "framework and all of its major concepts were Iran's ideas." He explained that both the Sochi deal's "concept" i.e. resolving matters in a phased and composite manner and the specific articles envisaged in it were based on Iranian ideas. If the specific articles of the deal are carried out according to plan, progress will have occurred "without firing a single bullet," he said. "The art of designing military and political plans is to make such things happen without extensive cost," Jaberi Ansari said. "Despite the initial resistance by our two other partners [in the Astana peace process for Syria], ultimately, that same framework and that same proposal was adopted as the basis of the Sochi deal," he said. In his official capacity as senior assistant to the Iranian foreign minister on special political affairs, Jaberi Ansari has been working with Russia and Turkey in a peace process for Syria known as the Astana process. The player behind the scenes Asked about why Iran did not participate in the Sochi meeting, Jaberi Ansari said Iran was "both present and absent." He said the fact that the deal was entirely based on Iran's idea is proof of that statement. And he said Iran does not insist on being present in photo ops and signing ceremonies. "Rather than seeking to show off itself, Iran has been and is after finding solutions," Jaberi Ansari said. The Sochi agreement was welcomed not only by the Syrian government and opposition but also by international observers. Iran called it proof that "[D]iplomacy works." NEWS LETTER Join the GlobalSecurity.org mailing list Enter Your Email Address US Poseidon-8 Orchestrated Drone Attack on Hmeymim Air Base - Russian MoD Sputnik News 07:24 25.10.2018(updated 12:39 25.10.2018) Russia's Hmeymim Air Base in Syria has been subject to a massive drone attack, with unmanned aerial vehicles having been piloted by a US Poseidon 8 surveillance aircraft, Russian Deputy Defense Minister Alexander Fomin stated, without specifying when exactly the assault took place. According to Fomin, the Russian airbase has once been attacked by 13 combat drones simultaneously, with a US Poseidon 8 aircraft flying over the Mediterranean Sea for about eight hours at that time. Fomin indicated that the drones can work both in an autonomous and manual mode. "The Poseidon 8, equipped with modern technology, was in manual control [over the drones]," Fomin indicated, speaking at the Xiangshan Forum on security in Beijing. He added that when the drones faced the radioelectric barrier of the Russian equipment, they were ordered to fly a specific distance away from it. Terrorists in Syria can detect radio waves at which Russian aviation operates, the Deputy Defense Minister stated. "I would like to say that terrorists [in Syria] have the technical possibilities of reaching the radio waves at which our aviation operates. Special equipment is needed for this," Russian Deputy Defense Minister Alexander Fomin noted. The deputy defense minister emphasized that this equipment was not made from scratch in the Syrian desert. The Syrian Armed Forces, supported by Russian Aerospace Forces, have managed to purge terrorists from virtually the entire territory of the Middle Eastern country, Russian Deputy Defense Minister Alexander Fomin said on Thursday. "Over the past years, the Syrian government's forces supported by the Russian Aerospace Forces managed to liberate virtually the entire territory of the country from the terrorists of the Daesh* terrorist group and the groups that have joined them," Fomin said at the Xiangshan Forum on security in Beijing. Normalcy is being restored in Syria as the country's citizens are returning to their homes, the official pointed out. Alexander Fomin also stressed that terrorists should not be negotiated with and should be killed far beyond a country's borders. "You cannot make deals with terrorists, you should only destroy them. There are no good or bad terrorists. They should be liquidated 'in the far reaches' instead of waiting until they multiply and come to our house That is why, not for a single second have we hesitated when in September 2015, the legitimate Syrian government invited Russia, acting through the Aerospace Forces, to come help in liquidating international terrorists in this country," Fomin said. The civil war in Syria broke out in 2011 and has since forced millions of Syrian refugees to flee from violence and destruction in the country. Russia along with Turkey and Iran are guarantors of the ceasefire in Syria. Moscow has also been supporting the government forces' fight against terrorist groups and providing humanitarian aid to civilians. Russian Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu said Wednesday that the situation in the Middle East was destabilized by the actions of the West, which has made it possible to create a stronghold of terrorism in Syria. Shoigu also stressed that with the help of Russia, it was possible to reverse the situation in Syria and crush large terrorist formations, as well as to liberate key settlements and unlock vital communications. *Daesh, also known as ISIS/ISIL/IS is a terrorist group banned in Russia Sputnik NEWS LETTER Join the GlobalSecurity.org mailing list Enter Your Email Address China 'will take military action at any cost to prevent Taiwan split if necessary' Iran Press TV Thu Oct 25, 2018 08:38AM China says it will take necessary military actions, "at any cost," to thwart potential attempts to separate the self-ruled island of Taiwan which Beijing claims as part of its territory from mainland China. "The Taiwan issue is related to China's sovereignty and territorial integrity and touches upon China's core interests," Chinese Defense Minister Wei Fenghe said during a speech at the Xiangshan Forum in the capital, Beijing, on Thursday. "On this issue, it is extremely dangerous to repeatedly challenge China's bottom line." "If someone tries to separate out Taiwan (from China), China's army will take the necessary actions at any cost [to prevent that]," Wei warned. His warning came three days after the United States dispatched two warships through Taiwan Strait, in the second such operation this year and the latest in a series of gestures made by Washington in support of Taiwan, which broke away from China during a civil war in 1949. Beijing has pursued reunification ever since. It claims full sovereignty over the island; and almost all world countries, including the US since 1979, recognize that sovereignty under a policy known as "One China." Washington has no diplomatic relations with Taipei; however, it has extensive military ties with Taiwan, forwarding advanced military hardware to the island state over the objections of China. Under President Donald Trump, the US has increasingly embraced Taiwan. Since he took office in January 2017, Washington has opened a new de facto embassy in Taipei, passed a law to encourage senior US officials to travel to Taiwan to meet their Taiwanese counterparts and vice versa, and has been flirting with the idea of recognizing Taiwan as "independent." Wei said that Beijing-Washington military ties were important and sensitive, adding, however, that China would never give up an inch of its territory. He said China opposed displays of strength and provocation in the South China Sea by "nations from outside the region," carried out under the pretense of protecting freedom of flight and navigation. The South China Sea is also claimed by Beijing but is disputed by other regional countries. The US routinely sends warships and military aircraft to the sea to protect what it calls its right to freedom of navigation in international waters. Beijing's relations with Taipei have particularly been strained since the island's president Tsai Ing-wen, of the independence-leaning Democratic Progressive Party, came to power in 2016. She has strong anti-China inclinations and refuses to acknowledge that both sides are part of "One China." Chinese President Xi Jinping has already declared that the issue of bringing Taiwan under Beijing's control cannot be postponed indefinitely; and some analysts believe he is determined to bring about that prospect during his time in office. NEWS LETTER Join the GlobalSecurity.org mailing list Enter Your Email Address 'Armed Forces Will Take Action': Beijing Warns of Taiwan Secession Attempts Sputnik News 05:16 25.10.2018(updated 08:35 25.10.2018) BEIJING (Sputnik) - The Chinese armed forces will take action if someone tries to separate Taiwan from China, China's Defense Minister Wei Fenghe said on Thursday. "If someone tries to separate Taiwan from China, the Chinese armed forces will take action at any price," Wei said at the Xiangshan Forum on security, being held in Beijing. However, the Chinese military remains steadfast in its commitment to peace and will never engage in an arms race or military expansion, Wei Fenghe stressed. "The strategic goal of our military development has always been clear and transparent. The Chinese military is committed to the peaceful way of development. We in China love and value peace that is why the peaceful way of development has become our government policy The Chinese military will never become a threat to other countries. Regardless of our level of development, we will not seek hegemony, we will not engage in any military expansion or arms race," Wei said at the Xiangshan Forum on security in Beijing. "China is against the Cold War mentality, the arms race and egoism of some countries. China seeks to cling to openness and inclusiveness instead of confrontation and the creation of alliances," the minister added. Official relations between the central Chinese authorities and Taiwan ended in 1949, when the Kuomintang government led by Chiang Kai-shek fled to Taipei after being defeated by the Chinese Communist Party, establishing the Republic of China on the island. Informal contacts resumed in the 1980s. Beijing does not recognize Taiwanese independence and claims the island is part of China. Taiwan similarly does not recognize the central government in Beijing. China has been repeatedly calling on other countries to cut their ties with Taiwan. Beijing has already slammed the United States for maintaining informal diplomatic relations with Taiwan in spite of formally sticking to the "One China" policy stipulating that Taiwan is Chinese territory. Sputnik NEWS LETTER Join the GlobalSecurity.org mailing list Enter Your Email Address Installation of Russia's S-400 systems to begin October 2019: Turkey Iran Press TV Thu Oct 25, 2018 08:45AM Turkey's defense chief says the deployment of Russian S-400 air defense missile systems will start next year, despite warnings from the US, a NATO ally, not to buy the advanced missile batteries. "Work to install the complexes will begin in October 2019," Defense Minister Hulusi Akar was quoted as saying by Turkish media on Thursday, adding selected personnel would be sent to Russia to receive training. "Now we are recruiting staff. The selected staff will go to Russia for training in the beginning of 2019, get the necessary knowledge there, then come back and get to work," he said. Moscow and Ankara finalized an agreement on the delivery of the S-400 missile systems on December 2017. The deal has drawn concerns among some of Turkey's NATO allies, who claim the missile batteries are not compatible with those of the military alliance. On April 3, Turkey's President Recep Tayyip and his Russian counterpart Vladimir Putin said in the Turkish capital Ankara that they had agreed to expedite the delivery of S-400 missile systems. The delivery had previously been scheduled for late 2019 and early 2020. The S-400 system, whose full name is the Triumf Mobile Multiple Anti-Aircraft Missile System (AAMS), is an advanced Russian missile system designed to detect, track, and destroy planes, drones, or missiles as far as 402 kilometers away. It has previously been sold only to China and India. Ankara has already begun constructing a site for the S-400 deployment, according to reports. Washington and its NATO partners have been striving to prevent the sophisticated Russian-built anti-aircraft weapon system from collecting information about the US-made all-weather stealth multirole warplanes, technically known as the Lockheed Martin F-35 fighters, just as they are gaining a foothold in Europe. The US has warned that any such acquisition would inevitably affect the prospects for Turkish military-industrial cooperation with the US. Turkey is working to boost its air defense, particularly after Washington decided in 2015 to withdraw its Patriot surface-to-air missile system from Turkey's border with Syria, a move that weakened its air defense. Before gravitating towards Russia, the Turkish military reportedly walked out of a $3.4 billion contract for a similar Chinese system. The withdrawal took place under purported pressure from Washington. Regarding the delivery of US-made F-35 fighter jets, the Turkish defense minister said he did not expect any problems with the delivery of the warplanes, adding that Ankara will receive the third and fourth jets in March next year. Turkey received the first two F-35s for training purposes in June this year. NEWS LETTER Join the GlobalSecurity.org mailing list Enter Your Email Address Turkey To Start Installing Russian S-400 Missile Systems In October 2019 October 25, 2018 Turkish Defense Minister Hulusi Akar has said the country will begin the installation of Russian-made S-400 antiaircraft missile systems in October 2019, state media reported. The Anadolu news agency quoted Akar as saying on October 25 that selected personnel will be sent to Russia to receive training from the beginning of 2019. Russia's state arms exporter, Rosoboronexport, had already announced in August that it will begin delivering its advanced S-400 air-defense systems to Turkey in 2019. The United States and other NATO member states have voiced concern over Turkey's purchase of the S-400 missiles. The United States has warned NATO-member Turkey that going through with the purchase could result in Washington imposing sanctions and halting other existing procurements. Ankara has pressed on with the deal, saying its Western allies had failed to cooperate in its efforts to boost its defense capabilities and that Ankara has had to look outside of the military alliance to meet its needs. Based on reporting by dpa and Reuters Source: https://www.rferl.org/a/turkey-to-start -installing-russian-s-400-missile-systems- in-october-2019/29563340.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. NEWS LETTER Join the GlobalSecurity.org mailing list Enter Your Email Address Turkey Says Russian S-400 Systems Installation to Begin Oct. 2019 - Reports Sputnik News 09:39 25.10.2018(updated 10:12 25.10.2018) Turkish personnel will be sent to Russia to receive training at the start of 2019, the Hurriyet newspaper reported citing Turkish Defense Minister Hulusi Akar. The deployment of Russian S-400 surface-to-air-missile systems to Turkey will start in October 2019, Turkish Defense Minister Hulusi Akar stated. "Work to install the complexes will begin in October 2019. Now we are recruiting staff. The selected staff will go to Russia for training in the beginning of 2019, get the necessary knowledge there, then come back and get to work," the minister said, as cited by the Yeni Safak newspaper. According to the minister, the US F-35 fighter jet program is to be continued as planned, with the next jets in the program to be delivered in March of next year. Last week, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan confirmed that Turkey expects to receive the Russian S-400 missile defense systems in the near future. Turkey reportedly began building a platform site in September for a Russian S-400 missile defense system, despite pressure from Washington to refrain from purchasing Russian military equipment. In December 2017, Russia and Turkey signed a loan agreement to supply S-400s to Ankara. According to a statement by the Turkish defense industry secretariat, two S-400 batteries will be operated and serviced by the Turkish military. Sputnik NEWS LETTER Join the GlobalSecurity.org mailing list Enter Your Email Address Historic day for the military as all roles are opened to women Defence Secretary Gavin Williamson has today announced that all roles in the military are now open to women. 25 October 2018 The historic day was marked at a land power demonstration on Salisbury Plain, involving some of the first women to join the Royal Armoured Corps. Mr Williamson announced that as of today, women already serving in the Army are able to transfer into infantry roles. Those not currently serving will be able to apply for infantry roles in December of this year, with new recruits starting basic training in April 2019. The Defence Secretary also confirmed that women are now able to apply to join the Royal Marines, with selection starting before the end of this year. Training courses will begin at Royal Marines Commando training centre in Lympstone in early 2019. Speaking at the demonstration event, Defence Secretary Gavin Williamson praised the day as a defining moment in the history of the armed forces. Defence Secretary Gavin Williamson said: "Women have led the way with exemplary service in the armed forces for over 100 years, working in a variety of specialist and vital roles." "So I am delighted that from today, for the first time in its history, our armed forces will be determined by ability alone and not gender." "Opening all combat roles to women will not only make the armed forces a more modern employer but will ensure we recruit the right person for the right role." While women have for many years given exemplary service, including in combat facing roles, females were unable to serve in ground close combat roles until the ban was lifted by the then Prime Minister in 2016. The Royal Armoured Corps was the first ground close combat branch to open its doors (in November 2016) to female soldiers and officers, followed by the RAF Regiment in September 2017. Since November 2016 the Army has around 35 women either serving or being trained to join the Royal Armoured Corps, with a number of personnel already being deployed in their new role to Estonia and Oman. While the military does not necessarily expect large numbers of women to apply for ground close combat roles, the changes are aimed at creating opportunities for individuals from all backgrounds and making the most of their talents. By making all branches and trades of the military open to everyone, regardless of their gender, the armed forces are building on their reputation of being a leading equal opportunities employer. NEWS LETTER Join the GlobalSecurity.org mailing list Enter Your Email Address 93 million missile project secures over 100 Belfast jobs Defence Minister Stuart Andrew has announced a multi-million-pound deal to modernise and boost the British Army and Royal Marines' very short-range air defence capability. 25 October 2018 The 93 million Future Air Defence Availability Project (F-ADAPT) was awarded to Thales UK during Minister Andrew's visit to Belfast today. The contract will secure over 100 jobs in the city and provide the UK Armed Forces with a potent defensive ability. The project will enhance the High Velocity and Lightweight Multi-role Missile systems which are designed to intercept a wide range of air and surface threats such as enemy drones, helicopters and armoured vehicles. The upgrades include thermal imaging which ensures the High Velocity Missile system can be used 24 hours a day and 'Friend or Foe' identification, which will maximise intelligence on potential threats and targets. The F-ADAPT, secured by the MOD's procurement agency Defence Equipment and Support (DE&S), will ensure that this critical capability is maintained during peacetime training but can also be rapidly deployed for operations into the 2020s. Defence Minister Stuart Andrew said: "Defence investment benefits every corner of our United Kingdom and Northern Ireland is no exception. This 93 million deal will secure over 100 local jobs and demonstrates the ingenuity and skill of Northern Irish industry." "In these uncertain times, it is crucial we protect ourselves from the rapidly evolving spectrum of global threats. These cutting-edge missile systems will fortify our military advantage over adversaries and help protect UK Armed Forces across the world and into the next decade." DE&S Director Weapons, Richard Smart said: "The F-ADAPT is crucial in safeguarding our Very Short-Range Air Defence capability and the team at DE&S has worked collaboratively with industry to deliver the enhancements needed to ensure this project continues to support our troops for years to come." Thales has a long and illustrious presence in Belfast dating back to 1952. Thales in Belfast is a world leader in the design and development of light weight weapon systems for tactical air, land and sea platforms. The company has over 500 local employees and has secured contracts worth hundreds of millions from the Ministry of Defence in recent years. The Belfast office contributed to Thales UK's record exports in 2017 which were worth over 500 million. The local economy also benefitted from a 6 million investment from Thales Alenia Space in 2016 which transformed the capital city into a global centre for excellence in electric propulsion systems. Northern Ireland plays an important role in UK defence, providing over 4,000 regulars and reserves to the Armed Forces, supporting over 600 industry jobs and is renowned for its defence manufacturing industry. Industry has committed to more than double its revenue from the aerospace, defence, security and space activities in the region to over 2 billion a year. Northern Ireland companies are part of the overall Ministry of Defence equipment and support plan to spend 180 billion over the decade to 2026-27 which will enhance prosperity across the UK. NEWS LETTER Join the GlobalSecurity.org mailing list Enter Your Email Address European Parliament Urges Tough Stand On Russia Over Sea Of Azov 'Blockade' RFE/RL October 25, 2018 BRUSSELS -- The European Parliament has urged EU states to make clear to Russia that it will face tougher measures if it intensifies its "de facto blockade" of international shipping in the Sea of Azov. A nonbinding resolution passed on October 25 called on EU member states to warn Moscow "that the targeted sanctions against Russia will be reinforced" if it further escalates actions it labeled as a "violation of Ukraine's sovereignty." The parliament "deplores excessive actions of the Russian Federation in the Sea of Azov as far as they breach the international maritime law and Russia's own international commitments," the resolution said. Russia's ambassador to the EU, Vladimir Chizhov, rejected the parliament's stance as "total nonsense" and said Moscow has the "full right" to conduct its operations in the Sea of Azov. It said it condemned "the excessive stopping and inspection of commercial vessels, including both Ukrainian ships and those with flags of third party states, including ships under flags of various EU member states." The dispute stems from Moscow's construction of a 19-kilometer bridge over the Kerch Strait from Russia's Krasnodar Krai to Crimea's eastern end in 2016 -- two years after Russia seized control and annexed the Ukrainian peninsula in a move that led to a series of sanctions against Moscow by the West. The United States and the EU assailed the construction of the bridge, accusing Russia of impeding international shipping in the Sea of Azov by limiting the size of ships that can transit the Kerch Strait. The strait is the only path to reach Ukraine's territorial waters in the Sea of Azov from the Black Sea. The European Parliament also expressed concern over the involvement of European companies in the construction of the bridge. It called on the European Commission "to assess and verify the application of the EU restrictive measures in force and on the member states to share information regarding any national customs or criminal investigations into cases of potential violations." The parliament said it was instructing its president to forward the resolution to the EU member states, the European Council, the European Commission, the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE), NATO, the Ukrainian government and parliament, and the president, parliament, and government of Russia. The office of Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko praised the EU Parliament statement and assailed the "Kremlin's aggressive actions in the Sea of Azov and the Kerch Strait." "The Russian aggressor must understand that all his actions in violation of international law and bilateral agreements will continue to receive a strong and adequate response from the democratic community," the statement said. "The European Union, together with Ukraine, will resist the creeping annexation of the Sea of Azov by Russia and violation of the freedom of navigation," it added. In mid-May, following the bridge's completion, Russia reportedly moved naval vessels, including warships from its Caspian Flotilla to the Sea of Azov, citing a need for stepped-up security around the new structure. Since then, Russia has detained more than 148 Ukrainian and foreign merchant ships -- many of them more than once -- and interrogated their crew members, Ukrainian officials, port authorities, local shipping companies, and experts told RFE/RL. With reporting by RFE/RL's Rikard Jozwiak and Christopher Miller in Kyiv Source: https://www.rferl.org/a/european-parliament -warns-russia-of-further-sanctions-over- actions-in-sea-of-azov/29563869.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. NEWS LETTER Join the GlobalSecurity.org mailing list Enter Your Email Address Share Article A Boeing KC-46 landed at Yokota AB, Japan, on Oct. 23?, marking the first overseas stop for the new tanker. Air Force photo by Osakabe Yasuo. A Boeing KC-46 Pegasus tanker landed overseas for the first time, stopping at Yokota AB, Japan, on Oct. 23 local time, as part of an Integrated System Evaluation test, the Air Force acknowledged Wednesday. It was the last overseas visit on a trip that started at Edwards AFB, Calif., with an interim stop at Hickam AFB, Hawaii. After Yokota, the jet will fly to Seattle, Wash., to continue testing. The ISE tests the aircrafts military utility and capability for worldwide operations, the Air Force said through a spokeswoman. During the 10-day, 40-hour evaluation, testers are evaluating equipment interoperability, supportability, defensive capability, and operational capability of the aircraft in an operational environment, the spokeswoman said. Air Force and industry officials added that exercising the navigational aids and communications equipment and assessing the integrated mission suite were key elements of the test. Officials said the jet did not exercise with the Japan Air Self Defense Force. The JASDF operates its own 767-based tankers, but the KC-46 is a later and more advanced design. The jet is one of six in the KC-46 test fleet. Five are all-up KC-46s, complete with all refueling gear, while one is still a 767-2C, which is the basic airframe without the air refueling equipment installed. Testing of the aircraft proceeds while Boeing works to satisfy Air Force requirements to certify the first group of aircraft for operational duty and get cleared for delivery of the remainder of the 18 jets that were to have been in service by the end of this calendar year. Certification of the tanker to refuel the F-15, for example, could come in the next two weeks. Boeing is still working to resolve some Category 1 deficiencies, which the Air Force deems significant enough to delay delivery. They include stiffness of the refueling boom during initial contact, an inability for the boom operator to detect additional loads put on the boom by the KC-46 pilot, and outstanding issues relating to undetected contacts with the receiver aircraft away from the refueling receptacle and with display of the refueling operation at the boom operators station. Boeing has acknowledged the company will miss the October deadline for delivering the first 18 jets. The Air Force has not publicly discussed any corrective contract action in response. The service awarded Boeing a $2.9 billion production contract in September for 18 KC-46s plus spares, support gear, spare engines, and Wing Air Refueling Pods (WARPs). The deal put Boeing under contract for a total of 52 aircraft. The first two production lots, for seven and 12 aircraft, respectively, were awarded in 2016, and a third, for 15 aircraft, was awarded in early 2017. The program is to yield 179 tankers, to be delivered by the end of 2028. Test aircraft will be converted to operational duty once testing is complete. Due to delays and redesigns necessitated by discoveries in development, Boeing has absorbed some $3.5 billion in overages on the fixed-price KC-46 contract. In an effort to address growing traffic congestion and air quality concerns, UPS and Seattle Mayor Jenny Durkan announced the deployment of an innovative downtown delivery pilot project using pedal-assist cargo eBikes and customized, modular trailers. The cargo eBikes will operate in the historic Pike Place Market and downtown Seattle area on sidewalks and in designated bike lanes. While we have launched cycle logistic projects in other cities, this is the first one designed to meet a variety of urban challenges. The modular boxes and trailer allow us to expand our delivery capabilities and meet the unique needs of our Seattle customers. Its exciting to return to our rootsUPS started in Seattle in 1907 as a bicycle messenger company. Were looking forward to being able to offer these customizable urban delivery solutions to other cities nationwide. Scott Phillippi, UPS senior director of maintenance and engineering, international operations Developed in collaboration with Silver Eagle Manufacturing using Truck Trikes, the cargo eBike system will have removable cargo containers that are deployed via a specially designed trailer. This plug and play design will provide greater flexibility to meet varying delivery needs. It will also be able to make deliveries to areas conventional delivery trucks cant access directly and currently require that trucks be parked on the periphery for long periods of time. This will reduce congestion in these areas by reducing truck dwell time, instances of double parking and other unintended consequences associated with downtown deliveries. UPS partnered with the Seattle Department of Transportation to develop plans for the new pilot program. If successful, UPS will expand the route and consider additional cargo eBike deliveries in other areas of the city. This is the first tailored urban delivery solution to address growing traffic congestion in Seattles downtown corridor, and is part of UPS Cycle Logistics Solutions that help reduce carbon emissions, noise, and traffic. The UPS cargo eBike is equipped with a battery-powered electric motor that can travel longer distances than traditional bikes, carry substantial loads and navigate hills and other terrain. The modular, detachable boxes on the trailer can hold up to 400 lbs and have a 95 cubic foot capacity. The bikes can be operated with human pedal power or battery power, providing drivers with the flexibility they need to navigate changing terrain and energy efficiency. UPS and the University of Washington Urban Freight Lab will evaluate the cargo eBikes reliability, design and integration into Seattles infrastructure over the next year. The Urban Freight Lab is an initiative that brings together transportation engineers and urban planners who manage public spaces with retailers, freight carriers and technology companies supporting transportation solutions. UPS will share data and analyses from the pilot for assessment against two of the labs key objectives: improving first delivery attempts and reducing dwell time, both of which should reduce traffic congestion and pollution. The success of the UPS eBike was first demonstrated in 2012 in Hamburg, Germany (earlier post), and serves as a prototype for the companys newest cargo eBike in Seattle. The company also operates inner-city delivery projects with delivery on foot and by bike in more than 30 major cities worldwide, including Leuven and Mechelen, Belgium; Paris and Toulouse, France; Frankfurt, Hamburg, Herne, Offenbach, Oldenburg and Munich, Germany; Dublin, Ireland; Rome and Verona, Italy; and London, UK in addition to the one other eBike previously operating in the United States in Pittsburgh. Using its Rolling Laboratory approach, UPS deploys approximately 9,300 low-emission vehicles worldwide to determine what alternative fuel and advanced technology vehicles work best in various routes and duty cycles. This includes all-electric, hybrid electric, hydraulic hybrid, ethanol, compressed natural gas (CNG), liquefied natural gas (LNG) and propane. In Washington, UPS uses 10 electric and hybrid electric vehicles. The cargo eBike is part of a broader UPS strategy to continue to electrify its delivery fleet. The Anguilla Tourist Board is pleased to announce that the World Health Organization (WHO) has removed its ZIKA virus country classification scheme, which categorized most of the Caribbean territories, including Anguilla, as areas having active ZIKA virus transmission. This removal by the WHO comes on the heels of data released by the Caribbean Public Health Agency, (CARPHA), giving evidence that the ZIKA virus transmission in the Caribbean had been interrupted for over 12 months, or was at undetectable levels, thereby posing very little risk to residents and visitors to the region. This was matched by data shared with CARPHA by Canada, the United Kingdom and the United States of America, which showed that no ZIKA had been detected for over 12 months in travelers returning from the Caribbean to their countries. This WHO decision sets the stage for Anguilla to be reclassified by the US Center for Disease Control (CDC) to a Category 3 Area of Interrupted Transmission. The last confirmed case in Anguilla was reported in February 2017, which reflects the islands successful, ongoing surveillance, education and vector control activities, initiated and encouraged since the outbreak was first reported some three years ago. (ANSA) - Ancona, October 26 - A five-year-old boy returned to his father in Italy on Thursday night two years after his mother, who is Mexican, took him to Mexico for a family visit and never returned. A judge in Pesaro ruled for immediate repatriation and sole custody for the father. Mexican officials accompanied the boy on his flight to Italy. For the latest events and activities happening in Greenwich, turn to For the record. To have your event included, submit a description, date, time, price and contact information. Photos are welcome. Drop us an email about your latest goings-on at gtcitydesk@scni.com. A Farmers Market is held from 9:30 a.m. to 1 p.m. every Saturday in the Horseneck commuter parking lot at Arch Street off Exit 3 of Interstate 95. All produce and products sold at the market are grown and prepared by the farmers themselves or fished locally. Family gallery tours The Bruce Museum, 1 Museum Drive, host Family Gallery Tours from 11:30 a.m. to 12:15 p.m. on Sunday. The tours are best for ages 6-10. Free with regular admission, and no registration is required. State of the town The Greenwich Chamber of Commerce is sponsoring its State of the Town Luncheon on Oct. 29 at the Hyatt Regency Greenwich, 1800 E. Putnam Ave. All are welcome to attend this luncheon as First Selectman Peter Tesei shares his vision for the Town of Greenwich. Check-in and reception start at 11:30 a.m.; lunch and presentation starts promptly at noon. The cost is $75 per person, or $700 for a table of 10. Register online at Greenwichchamber.com, call 203-869-3500 or email greenwichchamber@greenwichchamber.com. DOMUS Kids to host voter registration night Domus Kids Inc., a nonprofit serving struggling youth through school, out-of-school, and juvenile justice programs, will host a Voter Registration Night from 6 to 8 p.m. Oct. 29 at the Domus Gym, 83 Lockwood Ave., Stamford. The event is being held in partnership with local nonprofits, including YWCA Greenwich. Greenwich and Stamford residents will have an opportunity to meet with, and speak to, candidates vying for state and local offices. Residents will also have an opportunity to register to vote. Oct. 30 is the last day residents can register for the mid-term elections that will take place on Nov. 6. Breast cancer lecture Breast surgeons Dr. Barbara Ward, medical director of the Breast Center, and Dr. Alyssa Gillego will discuss Developments in Diagnosing and Treating Breast Cancers from noon to 1:30 p.m. Oct. 29 in Greenwich Hospitals Hyde Conference Room. Learn about staging breast cancer, types of surgery and developing a recommended treatment plan. To register, call 888-305-9253 or visit greenwichhospital.org/events. Free. Aging lecture The Town of Greenwich Commission on Aging will host the latest installment in the Distinguished Lecture Series with a program on Living Long and Prospering: The Breakout Science of Aging and Its Reversal with Aubrey de Grey, chief science officer and co-founder of SENS Research Foundation. It will be held at 6:30 p.m. Oct. 29 at the Cole Auditorium at Greenwich Library. Free, and transportation is available. RSVP to www.aging2.com/greenwich or call Lori Contadino with questions at 203-862-6710. Sculpture display The Brant Foundation Art Study Center is presenting works by Joe Bradley, Oscar Tuazon, and Michael Williams, which are on view through October. The exhibition includes a large-scale sculpture by Tuazon, a rare selection of Bradleys early works, and new work by Williams. In an effort to reflect their shared aesthetic connection, all three artists will show works together in the library gallery and in separate areas throughout the foundations exhibition space. The Brant Foundation Art Study Center promotes education and appreciation of contemporary art and design. It is located at 941 North St. and is open Mondays through Fridays by appointment only. For info, visit brantfoundation.org. Bruce Beginnings A program for children ages 2.5 to 5 with an adult on Tuesdays at 11 a.m. and 1 p.m. at the Bruce Museum, 1 Museum Drive. Explore the museum collections and exhibitions through picture books and hands-on activities. Topics change weekly. This program takes place on the museums free admission day and space is limited. See the visitor service desk upon arrival to secure a spot. The themes include Creepy Crawlies on Oct. 30; and Forest Friends on Nov. 6. Visit brucemuseum.org for more info. Sacred Beverages talk Explorer Justin Fornal will present a journey through the world of ancient and contemporary sacred beverages in a talk called Sacred Beverages: From the Black Drink to Ayahuasca from 6:30 to 8 p.m. Oct. 30 at the Bruce Museum. This lecture will discuss the heritage surrounding Xocolatl (Aztec chocolate), Ayahuasca, Cafe Touba, Soma, Peyotl (peyote tea), and more. Learn how different cultures sanctify ordinary liquids through elaborate rituals and mystical drinking vessels. The Ethiopian Coffee, Japanese Tea and Native American Black Drink ceremonies are broken down to their ancient roots. Beverage samples will be offered. Doors open at 6:20 p.m., with refreshments at 6:30 and the lecture at 7. Members and students with ID free; nonmembers $15. Reservations required at BruceMuseum.org. Try Tai Chi Its a great time to start Tai Chi lessons. Classes are held at 8 a.m. Wednesdays and at 9 a.m. Thursdays in the auditorium at the First Congregational Church Auditorium on Sound Beach Avenue in Old Greenwich, opposite Binney Park. The cost is $10 per one-hour session. Newcomers welcome. This relaxing exercise can loosen joints, improve balance, and teach graceful movements to music. Fun and no pressure. For info, call Joe at 203-504-4678. Old Greenwich Farmers Market The Old Greenwich Farmers Market is held from 2:30 to 6 p.m. Wednesdays in the parking lot of the Living Hope Community Church (formerly the Presbyterian Church of Old Greenwich) at 38 West End Ave. in Old Greenwich. The market offers Connecticut-grown, farm-fresh products. It runs through the end of October, then from 2 to 5 p.m. in November. Rain or shine. Speakers at Retired Mens Association The Greenwich Retired Mens Association offers a free program every Wednesday that is open to the public; no reservations are required. Social break starts at 10:40 a.m., followed by speaker at 11 a.m. Held at the First Presbyterian Church, 1 W. Putnam Ave., Greenwich. For info, visit www.greenwichrma.org or contact info@greenwichrma.org. Future speakers include Griffin Mann, Metropolitan Museums curator in charge of the Department of Medieval Art and The Cloisters, on Oct. 31; and Chandra Bozelko on Prison Reform on Nov. 7. Playing Bridge for fun Card fans are invited to join The Perfectly Polite Bridge Group at the YMCA every Wednesday. The goal is to have fun and create an atmosphere of good sportsmanship and goodwill. No partner needed. As of Oct. 24, there are three sessions offered: 9:45 a.m. to noon, with discussion and advanced beginner and intermediate supervised game to continue through December; 12:45 to 2:15 p.m., with Topic / Conventions - Supervised Game, and every hand is a convention or the subject topic; and 2:45 to 4:15 p.m. Beginner Bridge, starting Oct. 24, the first of four sessions (runs through Nov. 14) with required registration and prepayment for class. For more information or to register, call or text Frank Crocker at 203-524-8032. The cost is $10 for YMCA members, or $12 for nonmembers. Film on Belle Haven When author Matthew Bernard moved from California to Belle Haven in 1974, he was fascinated by the idiosyncrasies of his family home. He began researching the home, and his project expanded to include the neighborhoods architectural heritage and its early history as a summer resort for Victorian-era titans. Bernard will show a 20-minute film, which he produced, at an event from 2 to 3 p.m. Nov. 1 at the Greenwich Historical Society. He will talk about his book, Victorian Summer: The Historic Houses of Belle Haven Park, and conduct a question-and-answer session. Books will be available for purchase and signing. Refreshments will be served. Cost is $10 for members, $15 for nonmembers. Visit www.greenwichhistory.org for tickets. Nostalgia Night The Club at St. Lawrence will host a Nostalgia Night on Nov. 2. Remember Maneros steak dinner as everyones favorite returns. Get your tickets before it sells out. Cost is $40 for adults, $15for kids. For info, visit www.stlawrencesociety.com or call 203-618-9036. The club is located at 86 Valley Road, Cos Cob. Free Friday Films The longest-running film series in Greenwich continues on Fridays at 7:30 p.m. at the Greenwich Library. The Friends Friday Film Series is now over 70 years old and is made possible by contributions to the Friends of the Greenwich Library. Films are free, and doors to the Cole Auditorium open at 7:10 p.m. The lineup includes Enigma on Nov. 2; Phantom Thread on Nov. 9; Stronger on Nov. 16; no film on Nov. 23; All the Money In the World on Nov. 30; A Quiet Passion on Dec. 7; Maudie on Dec. 14; no film on Dec. 21 and Dec. 28; Wonderstruck on Jan. 4; The B-Side: Elsa Dormans Portrait Photography on Jan. 11; Paterno on Jan. 18; California Typewriter on Jan. 25; Act of Violence on Feb. 1; Marshall on Feb. 8; Brads Status on Feb. 15; Leaning Into The Wind on Feb. 22; The Big Sick on March 1; A Matter of Life and Death on March 8; First Reformed on March 15; Dawson City: Frozen Time and March 22; Red Desert on March 29; Wont You Be My Neighbor? on April 5; The Post on April 12; no film on April 19; The Florida Project: on April 26; Spettacolo on May 3; Dunkirk on May 10; Tyrus on May 17; no film on May 24 and May 31; I, Tonya on June 7; Le Bonheur on June 14; The Founder on June 21; and 8 on June 28. Pitch Perfect Temple Sholom in Greenwich will host tht e New England Jewish Collegiate A Cappella Competition and Showcase from 4 to 6 p.m. Nov. 4 at 300 E. Putnam Ave. Come see eight of the top a cappella teams from East Coast Universities perform songs in both English and Hebrew. Prizes will be awarded for 1st, 2nd and 3rd places, in addition to Best Soloist and Best Beatboxer. Tickets are on sale now and can be purchased at www.templesholom.com. Greenwich Exchange Gift Boutique You are invited to join the Greenwich Exchange for its Annual Gift Boutique at the Round Hill Club in Greenwich from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. Nov. 7 and from 10 a.m. to 3 p.m. Nov. 8. A total of 30 exciting new and returning favorite Exhibitors showcasing unique gifts, distinctive jewelry, chic-clothing and accessories for men, women and children. Also offered are toys, home accessories, Christmas holiday decorations and gourmet food plus hand-crafted clothing and gifts. Luncheon available from noon to 2 p.m. No admission charge. For further information, call the Greenwich Exchange: 203-869-0229. Bruce Beginnings Jr. This program at the Bruce Museum provides a welcoming and engaging museum experience for toddlers, ages 10 to 24 months, and their caregivers through hands-on play and exploration. Bruce Beginnings Jr. sessions are inspired by the museums collections and exhibits. It is held from 9:45 to 10:45 a.m. on the second Thursday of each month, next time on Nov. 8. This program is free with general admission but space is limited. See the visitor service desk upon arrival to secure a spot. Holiday boutique The Womans Club of Greenwich will hold its biggest fundraising event of the year, its Holiday Boutique, from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. Nov. 9 and Nov. 10. Get your holiday shopping done early at the event at 89 Maple Ave. in Greenwich. Admission is free with two floors of vendors, home-baked goods for sale and great raffle prizes. All proceeds from the event go to philanthropies in Greenwich supported by the club. Wild Bees buzz into Bruce Wild Bees, an exhibit featuring 26 photographs of wild bees in their natural habitats, will be on display through Nov. 11 at the Bruce Museum, 1 Museum Drive. As part of the exhibit, native bee specimens can be viewed under a video microscope and visitors can see an interactive website, bee houses, and giant model bees magnified 20 times. Admission is free for museum members and students with valid ID, $10 for nonmembers. For information, call 203-869-0376 or visit brucemuseum.org. Talks at St. Catherines Deacon Robert Henrey will conduct a presentation on Anatolian Turkey: Greek Religious Culture and the Spread of Early Christianity from 11:30 a.m. to 1 p.m. Nov. 11 in the Lucey Parish Hall of St. Catherine of Siena Church. It will include a lecture and slide show, along with refreshments. All are welcome to this free event at the church at 4 Riverside Ave. Visit www.stcath.org or call 203-637-3661 for more info. This is part of Henreys talks on Reflections on Religious Identity within the Contemporary World in which he shares his interest in different religious traditions. Other topics will include India: A Journey into the Northwest the Indo Islamic Heritage, Remnants of the British Raj and the Punjab on Jan. 20; and Pre-Columbian Peru and the Age of Discovery: A Tragic Clash of Cultures on Feb. 17. Sculpture show Gilles Clement Gallery, 45 E. Putnam Ave., will present the work of Marck + Sperber in a show titled Through the Looking Glass through Nov. 15. In the exhibit, American installation artist Deborah Sperber and Swiss video sculptor March use their mediums to draw the viewer into a wonderland of optical illusion, playful visual layering and unexpected use of space and scale. Venture down the rabbit hole for this delightful pairing of conceptual and technical artistry. To RSVP and for more info, visit www.gclementgallery.com or call 203-489-4556. Gifford luncheon The Greenwich Chamber of Commerce will host its next Women Who Matter Luncheon featuring TV celebrity Kathie Lee Gifford as guest speaker on Nov. 16 at the Greenwich Country Club, 19 Doubling Road. The reception begins at 11:30 a.m., with the event at noon. Celebrate women who make a difference and the guest presenter, who will speak about what truly mattered to her in creating her success. Gifford will share with us her life story, including her new movie Then Came You, her childrens book, The Gift That I Can Give and the creation of her own GIFFT wine. Key sponsor is TD Bank. Cost is $100 per ticket, or a table of 10 for $950. Valet parking. Register online at www.greenwichchamber.com; email greenwichchamber@greenwichchamber.com or call 869-3500. Japan Society lecture The Japan Society of Fairfield County is hosting lectures in the Greenwich Library Meeting Room. At 2 p.m. Nov. 17, there will be a talk on Challenging Times for the US and Japan, with William Farrell from the National Association of Japan-America Societies. The event is free and online registration is suggested on the librarys calendar. For more information, contact Dianne Niklaus of the Japan Society at dizano46@gmail.com or 203-249-5386. Weaving traditions A Continuous Thread: Navajo Weaving Traditions is on exhibit at the Bruce Museum through Nov. 25. The exhibition traces the history of the Navajo weaving tradition from the earliest Mexican-inspired Saltillo serapes circa 1880 to mid-20th century pictorial rugs. Featuring a dozen items from the museums Native American ethnographic collection some of which have never been publicly exhibited the exhibition will be on display in the Bantle Lecture Gallery. For more info, call 203-869-0376 or visit brucemuseum.org. ReTooled exhibit at the Bruce ReTooled: Highlights from the Hechinger Collection is on exhibit at the Bruce Museum through Dec. 30. In the exhibit, groundbreaking 20th-century artists illuminate the overlooked subject of tools with pun, wit and wonder. Featuring more than 40 paintings, sculptures, works on paper and photographs, the exhibition brings life to the unexpected subject of tools by profiling 28 artists from the Hechinger Collection, including Red Grooms, Walker Evans, Jim Dine, and Claes Oldenburg. Some of the artists represent tools with reverence to accentuate their purity of design. Others transform and distort tools to highlight their tragic obsolescence in a technological age. But all of the works remind us that tools embody the can-do spirit that defines America. For more info, visit brucemuseum.org. A 72-year-old Westport man faces a maximum jail term of 40 years after pleading guilty Thursday to multiple offenses stemming from an investment fraud scheme. U.S. Attorney for Connecticut John H. Durham said Barton Stuck will be sentenced by U.S. District Judge Jeffrey A. Meyer on Jan. 22. According to a release, Stuck controlled related business entities, including Signal Lake General Partner LLC, Signal Lake Operations LLC, Signal Lake Management LLC, Signal Lake Side Fund LP, Signal Lake Side Fund II LP, Signal Lake Side Fund IIA LP, Signal Lake Top Prospects Fund, and SLT Logic LLC (collectively, the Signal Lake entities). The Signal Lake entities were venture capital vehicles investing in various technology companies. Stuck solicited investments for the Signal Lake entities. In pleading guilty, Stuck admitted that he committed fraud in 2015 and 2016 by, among other things, misrepresenting the financial health and prospects of the Signal Lake entities and their investments in order to enrich himself. In one instance, Stuck made misrepresentations to an undercover FBI agent posing as a prospective investor. Stuck falsely guaranteed a payment of twice the original $500,000 investment, falsely claimed that a Signal Lake entity had $200 million in a particular bank account, and falsely stated that a $50,000 fee would be used for accounting and legal expenses, according to the release. Stuck also admitted he made false statements in forms that he filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission in 2016 and 2017. Specifically, Stuck falsely claimed that a Signal Lake entity managed and had a gross asset value of $145 million, and was subject to annual audits by a Stamford accounting firm. On Feb. 21, a grand jury returned an indictment charging Stuck with one count of wire fraud, one count of engaging in illegal monetary transactions, and two counts of making false statements to the SEC. Thursday, Stuck pleaded guilty to all four counts of the indictment. Stuck was released on a $100,000 bond pending sentencing. Signal Lake investors who believe that they may be victims of this investment scheme are encouraged to contact FBI Special Agent Mark Munster at 203-777-6311. This investigation is being conducted by the Federal Bureau of Investigation and the Internal Revenue Service, Criminal Investigation Division. The case is being prosecuted by Assistant U.S. Attorney Jonathan Francis. (ANSA) - Rome, October 26 - United Nations officials have written to the Italian government to express concern about a bill to reform the law on child custody after separations, The Huffington Post has reported. The letter, published by the online daily and dated October 22, was written by Dubravka Simonovic, the UN's Special Rapporteur on Violence against Women, and Ivana Radacic, a member of the UN Working Group on the Issue of Discrimination against Women in Law and in Practice. It says the bill, drafted by League Senator Simone Pillon, could amount to "a serious regression that would feed gender inequality". Among the issues the letter picks up one are the obligation for separating couples to go through a mediation process if they have children, saying this would be "very damaging if applied in cases of domestic abuse". It also said that, under the bill, "the child, even if they are a victim of violence, will be obliged to meet the violent parent". The cannabis market has been a boon for entrepreneurs in Colorado, Oregon and Washington, but the winds of change are starting to blow. For those businesses that are "just getting by" it will soon be time to face reality. Walk into any retail cannabis outlet and you can see it yourself -- there are way too many weed brands to choose from today. As a result, there is constant chatter on the street about a massive wave of consolidation coming our industrys way. It makes sense. In the West Seattle area alone there are over 20 retail shops! Consolidation is a natural and necessary business force in any emerging industry, but there are ways to mitigate the damage, protect your brand and ultimately survive. As an entrepreneur who has morphed from the haphazard early days of medical dispensary ownership to todays wild west-like retail environment, I have learned some unique survival methods over the past decade and would like to share them with you. Win the competition for talent. The value of a good budtender in a consolidating cannabis market cannot be overstated. Recently I visited several Seattle pot shops and found one major commonality amongst all of them -- the first products the budtender suggested were the cheapest items they had in whichever product category I had asked for. I did not ask for the cheapest options or even for a good deal. Yet, three out of the four budtenders who helped me never asked me more than one question about my wants and needs. Americans expect to be treated in a certain manner in a retail environment. If the experience doesnt meet or exceed their expectations, they will quickly go next door. For me, employing the best staff is paramount, for the reasons stated above, but also because a good percentage of my customers are senior citizens. Addressing their unique needs requires budtenders who are well-educated on the myriad nuances involved with cannabis and CBD products. Big mistakes here not only hurt your brand, they could also hurt your customer and lead to a lawsuit. Winning the talent competition right now should be the highest priority for cannabis entrepreneurs. The timing is ripe. Industry reports suggest that, for various reasons, finding the best talent is easier in a consolidating marketplace than in a thriving one. Now is the time to find those employees you can build your business around around. In his bestselling business book, From Good to Great, author Jim Collins, writes: ...leaders of companies that go from good to great start not with where but with who. They start by getting the right people on the bus, the wrong people off the bus, and the right people in the right seats. And they stick with that disciplinefirst the people, then the directionno matter how dire the circumstances. Related: Higher Education Cautiously Begins to Train Cannabis Industry Leaders Show brand ethos. In markets where the consumer has buying power you must convince me, the buyer, that we share the same ethos. Show me the origins of your brand and how it came to be, provided it is compelling and meets the ethos of your target audience. It might be the sole reason they buy anything you sell. A good example from the food industry is Clif Bar & Co., an independently-owned company that thrived during the consolidation of the energy bar market, largely by means of dramatic storytelling about the brands creation and identity. The companys creation story is famous in some foodie circles and skillfully sums up the reason for Clif Bars entire existence. In summary, Clif Bar founder Gary Erickson is an avid cyclist and according to legend was 50 miles from completion of a tough, 175-mile ride in 1990 when he started to bonk. He needed to eat, but only had a Powerbar left and wouldnt stomach another one. Clif Bars creation story should not be confused with messaging. Its employees live and breathe this story every single day. Can you apply this example to your cannabis brand? Related: From Fighting Terrorists in Syria to Delivering Sativa in Michigan Look for opportunities to collaborate with competitors. Find new ways to look at your competitors. Perhaps they should be viewed as collaborators or coopetition as opposed to competition? There are so many opportunities to work hand-in-hand with your competitors to make each others business better. For example, two competitive brands could sponsor an initiative to remove the abundance of plastics waste created by the cannabis industry. That type of campaign would benefit the image of both brands almost equally. This is not a concept unique to cannabis. Adam M. Brandenburger and Barry J. Nalebuff recently published a book called, Co-Opetition: A Revolution Mindset that Combines Competition and Cooperation, which explores the benefits of this growing mentality in a tough business climate. If you are a cannabis retailer, consider the following passage from the book and how it applies to your business in ways you might not have thought of previously that have nothing to do with marketing. Although competitors are often seen as parties to fight over market share with, it is actually perfectly possible to collaborate with as well. On the supplier side, competitors could combine forces when purchasing similar raw materials. By bulk purchasing altogether, you are able to negotiate discounts and lower the cost per unit. In my opinion, coopetition is part and parcel of the human survival strategy. What did early humans do to survive, when daily life was a constant competition for food and shelter with other, sometimes dangerous mammals? They banded together. Unfortunately, I know a lot of cannabis entrepreneurs that subscribe to the theory that the best thing you can do to survive as a business owner during the coming consolidation storm is to put on your business hat, go lean on staffing and grind it out from a marketing perspective. They would rather invest in complicated guerilla tactics rather than implementing sound simple business strategies such as investing in the best talent, creating a culture around a brands creation story and cooperating with competitors. Let them. Instead follow the models of those brands that not only survived consolidation, but thrived. Related: How to Not Get Squeezed Out by the Coming Cannabis Market Consolidation The Bright Future of Cannabis Retail Copyright 2018 Entrepreneur.com Inc., All rights reserved PIJIJIAPAN, Mexico - Everything Pedro Osmin Ulloa was wearing, from the black felt shoes with the gold buckles to the shimmery blue button-down, was as new to him as he was to Mexico. The 30-year-old Honduran corn farmer and dogged sojourner in the migrant caravan was dressed head-to-toe in donated clothes. His 3-year-old son, Alexander, played with donated toys. And the rest of the family - his wife, his two brothers and a cousin - sat on the sidewalk eating beef stew and tortillas ladled out for them by residents of this bustling market town in southern Mexico. "These people have been beautiful," he said. "Everyone's helping us out." RELATED: Pentagon OKs request for military help at southern border Who is financing the caravan? There is no sign here of George Soros or the Russians. Instead, the responsibility of feeding, clothing and sheltering several thousand migrants has been embraced by the small Mexican towns along the route, with residents jumping into charity mode as if they are responding to a natural disaster. It was hard to walk a block in this town without seeing crates of free bottled water, tables packed with ham and cheese tortas or relief stations filled with medical supplies donated by the community to help the people on this grueling march. "We're supporting them 100 percent," said Rafael Trinidad, a municipal employee, as he passed out sandwiches to migrants arriving along the main road. "At least here, they can feel good." While President Donald Trump is looking for ways to block the caravan at the U.S. border, Mexicans are pitching in to ease the travelers' journey. Residents along the route say they are motivated by the Catholic tradition of charity, a shared familiarity with migration to the United States and a sense of solidarity in the face of Trump's anti-migrant rhetoric. While they acknowledge the caravan could be a problem if it lingered, many do not seem to mind a brief stopover. Outside her family's hardware store, Coqui Cortez, 57, had set up a table to feed migrants lemon tea and stew, using meat from her son's butcher shop, while her daughter donated fruit down the street. "My family has been very blessed," Cortez said. "And we know that we are all brothers. What God gives us, we should share." "But we do it with a lot of love," she added. For towns such as Pijijiapan, not far from Mexico's border with Guatemala, migration is second nature. For decades, people have hiked the back roads and ridden trains heading north. Many here say they have relatives in the United States or have migrated themselves. Central American migration to southern Mexico has caused tensions in recent years, as numbers have grown, but people here understand the poverty and violence that migrants are fleeing. "Today it's them. Tomorrow it could be us," said Lesbia Cinco Ley, 70, who was volunteering with the Catholic church in town to distribute food. Town officials in Pijijiapan said they began readying for the caravan's arrival on Monday, holding meetings to strategize how to attend to the migrants. Before dawn on Thursday, Cinco Ley and several others began cooking, on a mission to prepare giant vats of ham and eggs, along with 14,000 sandwiches. Between the municipality, churches and private citizens, town officials estimated Pijijiapan had spent nearly $8,000 for one day's worth of food. "This is a poor town, but we still did all this," said Guadalupe Rodriguez, 48, a city councilwoman. When the caravan comes to town, it brings much more than just migrants. It has become a traveling road show of humanitarian workers, U.N. refugee staff, religious volunteers, government bureaucrats, police and immigration officials, as well as a good chunk of Mexico's foreign media corps. It is catching no one by surprise. On the radio in Tonala, a city 50 miles north of Pijijiapan, public service announcements went out on the radio Thursday ahead of the caravan's arrival, instructing people where to donate and how to help. READ MORE: Humanitarian groups shadow caravan, aiding migrants who can persevere Mexican nuns who have volunteered during earthquakes, tsunamis and floods flew down from Guadalajara to join the caravan. They have been treating migrants for severe sunburns and swollen, blistered feet. "Mexican people always unite in these types of situations," said Virginia Hernandez, 32, one of the sisters. "Our Honduran brothers are in great need." President Enrique Pena Nieto's government has vacillated on the caravan. There was an initial violent clash with federal police in riot gear at Mexico's southern border, but the group was eventually allowed to pass. Local governments in the state of Chiapas have so far been more welcoming. The newly elected mayor of Pijijiapan, Hector Meneses Marcelino, is from the Morena party, the same as Mexico's incoming president, Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador, who campaigned on treating migrants less as criminals and more as human beings with rights that need defending. Meneses said he spent one morning this week defusing a situation in which federal immigration officials wanted to arrest Mexicans who were picking up migrant hitchhikers. As hundreds of migrants filled the town square on Thursday, crowded under donated tarps for shade from the afternoon sun, municipal staffers and police bustled around attending to them and U.N. officials handed out pamphlets on Mexican asylum laws. On the town hall balcony, a man with a microphone called out names of migrants who had become separated from their relatives in the crush of people. It has been difficult to get a reliable estimate of the number of people in the caravan, for a several reasons: It is now dispersed among towns along the highway in Chiapas; more than 1,000 migrants have dropped out to apply for asylum in Mexico; and new people have joined in. Meneses, the mayor, said 7,500 migrants had been in town, while the U.N. staff traveling with the caravan put their estimate at 3,000. Still, for small Mexican towns, the arrival of even a few thousand people is a major event. As migrants entered town on foot and by hitching rides in cars and trucks, town official Gabriel Gonzalez, 43, greeted them in the main street, directing them to various gathering points and aid stations. "We've seen migrants here before, but never this many," he said. "It looks like all of Honduras is coming." Benjamin Netanyahu visited Oman Friday, the first official trip by an Israeli leader to the Gulf nation since 1996, for surprise talks with its reclusive leader on the stalled peace process with the Palestinians. Sultan Qaboos, 77, the Omani ruler, and Netanyahu "discussed ways to push forward the peace process in the Middle East as well as some issues of mutual interest that would serve peace and stability in the region," according to identical statements sent by the Israeli prime minister's office and the state-run Oman news agency. The visit wasn't made public until Netanyahu was back in Israel around 4 p.m. local time. The trip comes as the killing of journalist Jamal Khashoggi has triggered turmoil in the Middle East as it casts a shadow over the leadership of Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman. The Trump administration made the 33-year-old de facto ruler of the kingdom a cornerstone of its entire Mideast policy, including a yet-to-be released plan to revive Israeli-Palestinian talks. "Netanyahu wants to reset the narrative, to show that Israel's here, Israel's a player, Israel's still talking," said Joshua Teitelbaum, a political scientist specializing in the Gulf at Israel's Bar Ilan University. Netanyahu, who went to Oman with his wife as well as Mossad intelligence agency director Yossi Cohen, said the visit was aimed at "tightening relations with other nations in the region, while leveraging Israel's strengths in security, technology and finance." He said the meeting was the result of "extensive" contacts between the two nations. It also followed a trip earlier this week to Oman by Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas, who has refused to deal directly with Netanyahu and broke off communication with the Trump administration over its recognition of Jerusalem as Israel's capital last December. Qaboos, who rarely appears in public, was seen walking in a hallway with Netanyahu's wife, Sara, in photographs circulated by the Israeli prime minister's office. Qaboos's office issued a video clip of the meeting with the 69-year-old Israeli leader. The only two Arab states that recognize Israel are Egypt and Jordan, though relations are bumpy and Netanyahu is rarely seen publicly in either country. With Netanyahu likely facing elections in the coming months, the Oman visit is a reminder to voters that his peace strategy is not completely dependent on the larger Gulf states like Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates, said David Makovsky, a former member of the Obama administration's Israel-Palestinian mediation team. "The outreach to those states is under the table while this is beneficial as it is above the table," said Makovsky, a fellow at the Washington Institute of Near East Policy. As news of the Oman talks emerged, violence continued in the Gaza Strip in the seventh month of Friday demonstrations against the blockade of the Hamas-ruled territory by Israel and Egypt. Israeli snipers killed four Palestinians and a fifth was killed in an explosion while preparing a homemade bomb, according to the Gaza Health Ministry. Another Palestinian was killed by Israeli troops during a demonstration outside Ramallah, the seat of Abbas's government. --With assistance from Bloomberg's Fadwa Hodali, Saud Abu Ramadan and Udi Segal. ISTANBUL - Twenty-four days after a team of Saudi agents killed journalist Jamal Khashoggi at the Saudi consulate in Istanbul, U.S. and Turkish officials are still asking the same question: Where's the body? The remains of The Washington Post columnist are critical to vetting the shifting accounts of the Saudi government and determining a suitable punishment for the oil-rich monarchy, a key partner in the Trump administration's Middle East policy. Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan intensified pressure on the Saudi government on Friday in a speech demanding Khashoggi's body. "There has been a declaration that he has been killed, but where is the body?" Erdogan said. "You must show it." For days, President Donald Trump has also been asking his aides about the body, but Washington remains in the dark about its whereabouts, according to U.S. officials and diplomats familiar with the situation. Saudi officials said earlier this week that Khashoggi's body had been rolled into a carpet and given to a "local collaborator," but Turkish authorities say it was dismembered in a grisly operation involving a bone saw and large suitcases. "Finding the body in whatever form it's in could give credence to Turkey's account," said Amanda Sloat, a Turkey scholar at the Brookings Institution. "If the body appears in the way the leaks suggest, it gives credence to the premeditated nature of this attack and reflects poorly on the Saudi regime." On Thursday, CIA Director Gina Haspel briefed Trump about her recent trip to Turkey, where she listened to purported audio of Khashoggi's killing. But even after the meeting, U.S. officials made clear they needed additional information before taking further punitive action. "We continue to seek all relevant facts in this case," said State Department spokesman Robert Palladino. "As we learn more we will take additional actions as the facts warrant." A State Department official said Khashoggi's remains "should be located and returned to his family for a proper burial as soon as possible." In his speech, Erdogan suggested that Turkey has additional "information and documents" about the killing that it would eventually reveal and repeated his call for Saudi Arabia to hand over the 18 people it has arrested in the case if the country's authorities could not "make them talk." Later in the day, the semiofficial Anadolu news agency reported that Turkish prosecutors were set to "demand" the extradition of those suspects. "Hand them over to us," Erdogan said. "The event took place in Istanbul. We will judge them." A senior Turkish official said Turkey was requesting the extradition because Khashoggi was murdered by Saudis who traveled to Turkey, and because it was "clear that the judicial system in Turkey is better equipped to genuinely serve the cause of justice in this case." In their own ways, Turkey and the U.S. are pressing Saudi Arabia to provide a credible explanation for a crime that has drawn global condemnation and has prompted countries to reevaluate their ties with the Middle East power. U.S. and foreign officials say such an operation - involving a team of Saudi agents - was unlikely to have taken place without the knowledge of the kingdom's leaders, including ambitious Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman. In the aftermath of Khashoggi's killing inside the Saudi Consulate on Oct. 2, Saudi Arabia has offered shifting explanations for what happened, at one point saying Khashoggi had walked out of the rear of the building unharmed and later saying his death resulted from a fistfight. But Thursday, the country made its first apparent acknowledgment that the operation was "premeditated." Erdogan on Friday did not mention that development, but instead criticized earlier Saudi accounts as "comical." "These childish statements do not coincide with the seriousness of the state," Erdogan said. For Erdogan, who has ruled Turkey since 2003, the crime has provided grounds for pushing back against Saudi Arabia, one of its regional rivals, and weakening the credibility of the crown prince. Mohammed this week called the killing a "heinous crime." Both Mohammed and his father, King Salman, have told President Trump and Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, who traveled to Saudi Arabia last week, that they had no knowledge of a plot to kill Khashoggi. Still, the Trump administration is facing pressure to take action against the kingdom, even though an alliance with the Saudis has been a pillar of its strategy in the Middle East to counter Iran. Trump has called Khashoggi's murder "one of the worst coverups in the history of coverups." In its statement Thursday, Riyadh said it had learned from Turkish officials that the suspects in Khashoggi's killing had "committed their act with a premeditated intention." The Saudi news release, attributed to its public prosecutor, was significant because it relayed Turkey's conclusion, but it did not make clear whether Saudi investigators had reached that same conclusion on their own. Pompeo, speaking during an interview Friday with conservative radio host Hugh Hewitt, said "Saudi prosecutors yesterday made clear that this was a premeditated murder that took place, and we're continuing to learn the facts." "The president has made very clear we will hold those responsible accountable, but that America has important, long-term, strategic interest in our relationship with the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia and that we are going to do both of those things at the same time - protect our interests and hold those responsible accountable," Pompeo said. Khashoggi was visiting the Saudi Consulate in Istanbul to obtain documentation that would allow him to marry his Turkish fiancee, Hatice Cengiz. He was a royal court insider who had become critical of the Saudi government, and he was living in exile in Virginia, in part because of the nation's diminished speech freedoms and its crackdown on dissent. Khashoggi and Cengiz had recently furnished an apartment for themselves in Istanbul. In an interview with Turkish broadcaster Haberturk that aired Friday, Cengiz said Khashoggi was treated well during an earlier trip to the consulate on Sept. 28. He still had concerns, but "he thought Turkey is a safe country, and if he would be held or interrogated, this issue would be swiftly solved," Cengiz said, according to an account of the interview translated by Reuters. Salah Khashoggi, the eldest son of Jamal Khashoggi, arrived in the U.S. Thursday after departing Saudi Arabia, one person close to the family said. Salah is a dual U.S.-Saudi citizen who had previously been restricted from leaving and who was photographed earlier this week meeting Salman and Mohammed and receiving their condolences. All four of Khashoggi's children are now in the U.S. - - - Hudson reported from Washington. The Washington Post's Josh Dawsey and Kareem Fahim contributed to this report. Serbian President Aleksandar Vucic is determined to go down in history as the man who reconciled ethnic and territorial differences in a region synonymous with war. And that means allegiances are getting stretched. Russia's biggest ally in the Balkans says he won't cross German Chancellor Angela Merkel, however hard that sometimes might be. "We need to show fairness and loyalty," Vucic said in an interview at his presidential palace in Belgrade on Thursday. Talking to Merkel "was not an easy conversation," he said. "But I'll never say anything against her." The carrot of European Union membership juxtaposed with Russia's keenness to maintain influence are testing traditional ties in the Balkans, at best a region held together by fragile international agreements and the balance of global powers, at worst a hotchpotch of blood-and-soil grievances. Vucic, 48, is at the center of that tug-of-war between east and west and key to how the immediate future plays out amid warnings from the EU and Germany over the potentially explosive consequences should the region's leaders not be kept on board. European Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker said on Oct. 5 on the eve of elections in Bosnia that the EU needed to raise the prospects of the region joining the bloc or risk sleepwalking into violent conflict. In the event, Bosnian Serb nationalist Milorad Dodik, an ally of Vucic, emerged as the most powerful leader in the country. Both men want to redraw borders to bring Serbs closer together, though Vucic has publicly defended Bosnian integrity set out in the Dayton peace accords of 1995. For his part, Vucic needs to reconcile with Kosovo, a predominantly Albanian state that declared independence in 2008, a decade after NATO forces drove out warring Serb soldiers from its territory. It's a prerequisite of Serbia joining the EU, along with reforming the judiciary and fighting corruption. Vucic and his Kosovar counterpart, Hashim Thaci, appeared to near a deal this summer. But a mere mention that it may include a land swap in the region, where Europe's bloodiest fighting since World War II took place, led to a push back from the international community and resurrected fears of another conflict in the volatile region. Merkel's government likened it to opening Pandora's Box. The U.S. under Donald Trump, though, appears more receptive to upending agreements it brokered. Vucic said Washington has altered its position toward Belgrade. "The U.S. administration is more open to listening to our side as well," he said. Previously officials were telling Serbia it needed to recognize Kosovo, he said. "Now we can discuss something with Americans. That's the change. They have opened doors, and that's good." Serbia, through culture and religion, traditionally forms part of Russia's sphere, though the EU is by far the biggest investor in the country of 7 million. Russia and China, which have sided with Serbia in its refusal to recognize Kosovo, now publicly vow to support any stance that the Balkan nation takes. Yet Russia is wary of supporting any deal that could speed up Serbia's EU membership and further reduce its already dwindling footprint in the Balkans. China may be more supportive as it sees its investments in the region as its way into Europe. While talks with Kosovo have stalled, Vucic expects to meet Thaci in Brussels again this year. A trip in September failed to even get them to sit down together. Serbia has repeatedly said it won't give Kosovo an outright recognition. The two men also face opposition at home. Kosovo's prime minister has repeatedly warned that ceding any piece of territory could reignite a war. Vucic, a former Information Minister for the late strongman Slobodan Milosevic, has the political mandate after becoming president last year following a three-year stint as prime minister and he has the backing of the current premier. But recognition of Kosovo still carries risks among voters, some cabinet members and the Serbian Orthodox Church, which has strong links to Russia. "Some people don't like me because of my past, some people hate me because of some irrational reasons, some people hate me because of rational reasons," he said in the hour-long discussion. Yet the "resolution of the problem between Serbs and Albanians is something that will change this region entirely," he said. "Our region will be a machine of growth for the entire EU, and it doesn't matter if it is going to be a part of the EU or at the entrance." When it comes to the contents of any potential deal, Vucic declined to give details, though admitted it would be a tough compromise. "I will do my best to get closer to a solution, because that's something that will save Serbia in the future, save many lives," he said. Even as its citizens are getting more skeptical EU membership will ever happen, it's the only way forward he said - and that means he listens to Merkel. "I even said that to Russia today," he said. "We want to belong to that type of society." As much as people adore their house pets, the furry ones are not always the most considerate of cohabitants. From using your sofa as a scratching post to overturning your garbage, these nonhuman family members can really wreak havoc on a homeall with an innocent abandon that's both adorable and infuriating. So, whether you're looking for a glimpse of all that can go wrong if you get a pet, or just want a chuckle at some pet owners' real estate low points, check out these stories from pet owners on animals gone wild, and what we can learn from the fallout. 1. Never leave paper towels or TP in a dog's reach Three rolls of Bounty later... Paige Bart If it's made of paper, Crash, a 100-pound golden retriever, will shred it. Paige Bart, his New York City owner, has taken every measure to keep this substance up high or locked up. "We can't even have a box of tissues on the coffee table," she says. Margaret Hargroves Cavalier King Charles spaniel, Troy, is equally obsessed. "He'll grab the end of the toilet paper roll and run through the houseI'm constantly vacuuming after him," laments Hargrove, of Montclair, NJ. 2. They sometimes get in over their heads Trash lid as fashion statement Jane Beal "Can you guess how I knew Daphne had been in the garbage?" asks Jane Beal, a New York City real estate agent with Corcoran and the owner of this husky-Dalmatian mix. Luckily, this pooch has outgrown the habit. "This moment occurred in her naughty puppy phase," Beal recalls. 3. Don't expect oven doors to keep them out Emerson, left, with his sister, Lili, the culprit Larry Perlstein During a particularly awful storm, Larry Perlstein allowed his Rottweiler-shepherd mixes, Lili and Emerson, into the house, knowing that he would have to protect a cake. "Lili was a notorious counter surfer, so I covered it in plastic and foil and placed it in the toaster oven," says Perlstein. Despite these safeguards, Lili opened the oven, removed the wrapping, and devoured the cake. "I was worried about the chocolate she'd eaten, but the vet said she'd probably just have an upset stomach," reports the Westport, CT, homeowner. Of course, this was an understatement. She spent the next two days in the backyard, doing what dogs do when they consume an entire cakeand leaving Perlstein with the cleanup duty. 4. Child locks aren't puppy-proof, either Rosie, with the one object she likes to carry around Larry Perlstein Perlstein's next dog, a hound mix named Rosie, was only a slight improvement. To protect the kitchen garbage, he installed a child lock on the under-sink cabinet, but this wily pup can circumvent it by sheer chewing power alone. From there, what does she do? "She eats as much of the garbage as possible," Perlstein says, and then "spreads the rest all over the house." 5. Dog beds are more fun to destroy than sleep in But it tasted so good! Carla Levy Dogs usually don't ruin the spot where they sleep, but New York City black lab Birdie begs to differ. "I came home from work to find that she'd destroyed the pad in her crate," reports owner Ann Levy. Which means Birdie will just have to sleep in your bed, right? 6. Watch out with antiques Imagine a cherished wing chairwith the tops of the arms chewed off. Cara Schirrmeisters yellow lab, Buddy, accomplished this special horror for her. "It was an antique with original horsehair stuffing," recalls the New York City homeowner. Of course, cats are not immune to this type of behavior, either. William Grant's chubby orange tabby, Wanda, proceeded to destuff the sides of his oversized blue couch. "When she was done," says the Ghent, NY, homeowner, "it looked like something you'd find on the side of the road." 7. Never, ever, feed a pet table scraps Schirrmeister's pup had an episode one Christmas. "All my relatives must have been slipping him bits of food, because the next morning, Buddy had left clumps of poop on every step to the first floor and finished with a big puddle in the kitchen," she says. 8. Your kitchen isn't the only room at risk Pickles during the calm before the storm Christina Vercelletto Kitchen garbage is one mess, but what's tossed in the bathroom pail is another nightmare entirely. Christina Vercelletto's Chihuahua, Pickles, snatched a used sanitary pad from the loo trash and dashed around the house with it. "I chased him under the dining room table and was able to keep him from eating ... half of it," says the Babylon, NY, homeowner. 9. Pets can jeopardize a home sale, too So what if you're trying to actually sell your home? Pets can help sabotage that process, too. Just ask Amy Oliver of Salt Lake City, who tried to sell her townhouse twice. Both times, the cats staged brutal rebellions. "One of them would hide on a shelf, then leap down, claws extended, on potential buyers," Oliver recalls. "The other would hide under the bed and attack any ankles that happened to be passing by." The viewings of the townhouse were at such random times it was nearly impossible to get the cats out in time for showings. "Fortunately, a cute young couple with a great sense of humor didnt seem to mind and purchased the house despite the antics of my catsalthough they did make regular jokes about my excellent security system," says Oliver. "I was so glad to finally move and settle in, mostly because it spelled the end of the 'catpocalypse.'" The post 9 Insanely Hilarious Ways Pets Can Wreck Your Home appeared first on Real Estate News & Insights | realtor.com. (ANSA) - Rome, October 26 - The Swiss market is a growing one for Italian wines, with 2.4 billion euros worth of wine imported in 2017. The country's eight million residents drank an average of 40 litres of wine per person in 2017. These factors make Switzerland a prime country for high-quality wines from the Valpolicella area. The Swiss drink 11% of Amarone, making it one of the most prominent countries for the Verona-based "big red". Exports of Valpolicella DOC to Switzerland reached 8%, with 4% for Ripasso della Valpolicella. "The Swiss love Italian wines and wines from our territory; they appreciate high-quality wines," said Valpolicella Wines Consortium Director Olga Bussinello. She spoke in light of an upcoming event on October 29 in Zurich that will cap October festivities for the DOC wine's 50th anniversary. Among the events planned in Zurich is a "Walk Around Tasting" at the Metropol, where 14 Valpolicella DOC vineyards will be represented, along with 13 producers from the Conegliano Valdobbiadene Prosecco Superiore DOCG area. Amarone della Valpolicella will feature in two masterclasses conducted by Christian Eder, Italian correspondent for Switzerland's main wine magazine, VINUM. In addition, the Consorzio Tutela Conegliano Valdobbiadene Prosecco Superiore consortium will renew its collaboration with the magazine. A slew of new screenshots have surfaced, showing what changes Samsung Galaxy S9/S9+ and Galaxy Note9 owners will see with the Android 9.0 Pie update. Android Pie on flagship Samsung phones will come with Samsung Experience 10, which will be a mashup of legacy Samsung style and Google's own styling in Android Pie. Samsung will introduce a new system-wide typeface with a rounder look (similar to Google's own Product Sans), the notification shade with rounded icons and the app switching interface are also sticking closer to the stock Android. Samsung Experience 10 on Android 9 Pie On the other side the lockscreen and homescreen are unmistakably Samsung albeit with a slight refresh and simpler icons. Samsung has added a sytem-wide dark mode, called Night Theme, and its own gesture-based navigation, which we've already seen. You'll be able to choose between Samsung's new gestures and its legacy button operation. Samsung Experience 10 on Android 9 Pie The beta firmware (G965USQU3ZRJ7) will likely become available to registered beta testers with a Samsung Galaxy S9/S9+ very soon. We hope this beta program doesn't last as long as the Samsung Galaxy S8/S8+'s one - it kicked off in November of 2017 and delivered stable updates in the middle of January. It then took the Samsung Galaxy Note8 another two months to receive Android 8.0 Oreo in March. Source Huawei announced the Mate 20 Pro last week in London and to celebrate, Huawei has erected a large, digital version of a classic puzzle game: the Rubiks Cube. The idea is to demonstrate the power of Huaweis NPU, which minimizes the energy and time required to make large calculations. To solve the puzzle, a player must use the app on a Mate 20 Pro in front of the giant Cube. Each move is passed through the AI model and algorithms to give the user hints, via the app, about what the best next move is. Puzzle cubes have caused debate amongst mathematicians for decades, with numerous theories about the most efficient way to solve them. Weve been able to use the sophisticated AI in the Huawei Mate 20 Pro to offer players something interactive and intelligent. - Justin Costello, Huawei Director of Marketing, UK/Ireland So yeah, if you find yourself in London and see the big Rubiks Cube on the South Bank of London and youve never been able to solve one on your own, go solve it with Huaweis help. It's never too late to achieve your childhood dreams. The Oppo A7 has been in the rumor mill for some time now, so the latest leak doesn't come as a surprise - it just confirms what we've been reading all along but also showcases the handset in gold color. Specs and design match the Realme 2 closely, so the Oppo A7 might just be a re-branded version for the Chinese market. We've got the same 6.2-inch HD+ (720 x 1520) IPS panel with a waterdrop notch, Snapdragon 450 chipset running the show paired with 4GB of RAM and 64GB of memory. The camera setup on the back consists of a 13MP primary sensor and a secondary 2MP one for depth sensing while the selfie cam is 16MP. All is powered by 4,230 mAh battery and runs on Android 8.1 Oreo out of the box. Interestingly enough, the dimensions (155.9x75.4x8.1mm, 158g) are a bit off compared to the Realme 2, so there might be some differences after all. According to both sources, the handset should arrive on November 13 in China with a starting price of CNY 1,599 ($230). Source 1 (in Dutch) | Source 2 (ANSA) - Rome, October 26 - United States President Donald Trump has backed Italy's tough stance on migrants. "Just spoke with Prime Minister @GiuseppeConteIT of Italy concerning many subjects, including the fact that Italy is now taking a very hard line on illegal immigration," Trump said via his @realDonaldTrump Twitter account on Thursday. "I agree with their stance 100%, and the United States is likewise taking a very hard line on illegal immigration. The Prime Minister is working very hard on the economy of Italy - he will be successful!". Haiti - Politics : Civil society organizations warn against mining The Mines Justice Collective and other civil society organizations have denounced the way in which mining is practiced in Haiti and criticized the government's plan to stimulate the exploitation of these non-renewable natural resources. During his ratification sessions, Prime Minister Jean Henry Ceant told both Houses of Parliament that "everyone agrees on this project", a project that the organizations denounce, accusing the World Bank of having the right to on the drafting of laws on mining in Haiti... According to the Collective, mining represents a real danger for the country, underlining that there is no transparency in the management of mineral resources nor in helping people living near the exploitation zones, nor on the protection of the environment. Frandy Lesperance, Coordinator of the Collective, told at a press conference that one of the Government's objectives is to eliminate parliamentarians' control over mineral resources and has asked deputies and senators to veto the Government's project, which, according to the Collective, "simply aims at providing the country's resources to foreigners." Beyond these concerns, it is worth pointing out that in view of the revival of the mining sector, since 2012, Haiti relies on the advice and support of national and international partners with great expertise in the field, particularly South Africa, Ecuador, Jamaica, Peru and Chile to develop policies that would both encourage foreign investment and also secure equitable benefits for Haitians https://www.haitilibre.com/en/news-6750-haiti-economy-laurent-lamothe-evokes-the-legal-framework-of-the-mining-sector.html . In addition, the Haitian Government is working with the World Bank https://www.haitilibre.com/en/news-8604-haiti-justice-the-world-bank-is-helping-haiti-in-terms-of-mining-legislation.html which has expertise that Haiti does not have and benefits from its advice in the elaboration of a framework law setting the conditions for the exploitation of Haitian subsoil resources, a framework law that will require a revision of Haitian laws in this sector, that have not been updated since 1976 https://www.haitilibre.com/en/news-8604-haiti-justice-the-world-bank-is-helping-haiti-in-terms-of-mining-legislation.html Challenges of the development of the mining sector in Haiti : https://www.haitilibre.com/en/news-25486-haiti-economy-challenges-of-the-development-of-the-mining-sector-in-haiti.html Towards the exploitation of underground resources in Haiti : https://www.haitilibre.com/en/news-10732-haiti-economy-towards-the-exploitation-of-underground-resources-in-haiti.html See also : https://www.haitilibre.com/en/news-10538-haiti-economy-the-mining-stakeholders-in-haiti-present-at-pdac-2014.html https://www.haitilibre.com/en/news-9935-haiti-economy-towards-the-revival-of-the-mining-sector.html https://www.haitilibre.com/en/news-8724-haiti-economy-mining-resources-blessing-or-curse.html https://www.haitilibre.com/en/news-8718-haiti-economy-the-country-relies-on-the-mining-sector-for-its-development.html https://www.haitilibre.com/en/news-8604-haiti-justice-the-world-bank-is-helping-haiti-in-terms-of-mining-legislation.html https://www.haitilibre.com/en/news-7929-haiti-economy-the-senate-voted-the-suspension-of-mining-permits-in-haiti.html https://www.haitilibre.com/en/news-7467-haiti-economy-the-government-awarded-2-mining-exploitation-permits.html https://www.haitilibre.com/en/news-6750-haiti-economy-laurent-lamothe-evokes-the-legal-framework-of-the-mining-sector.html https://www.haitilibre.com/en/news-6356-haiti-economy-australian-interest-of-$200mm-in-the-mining-sector.html https://www.haitilibre.com/en/news-6294-haiti-economy-the-gold-rush-in-haiti-ki-yes-kap-vin-rich.html SL/ HaitiLibre Haiti - News : Zapping... Budget 2018-2019, 166 billion Gourdes planned Thursday, at the end of an important meeting with the Finance and Economy Committee of the Chamber of Deputies https://www.haitilibre.com/en/news-25939-haiti-economy-socio-economic-situation-of-the-country-the-minister-of-finance-in-parliament.html Ronald Decembre, the Minister of Economy and Finance announced that the draft budget 2018/2019 will be tabled in parliament on October 31, 2018. This budget is valued at 166 billion de Gourdes, 9 billion less than the one deposited in Parliament before the riots last July which had been estimated at 175 billion gourdes. Zombification and forensics On Wednesday Dr. Philippe Charlier, a forensic scientist, anthropologist, archaeologist and French journalist, spoke at the National Police Academy to discuss zombification and its legal medical aspects. Late afternoon at the National Bureau of Ethnology (BNE) if he gave a lecture on zombies! Textile sector jobs up Despite a difficult year the Textile sector continued to create thousands of jobs in Haiti. As of September 30, 2018, total employment was 52.187 or 13% higher than the previous year at the same date. Moise appoints the Secretary General of the Delegation of Artibonite Thursday President Jovenel Moses, in the official journal Le Moniteur N 186 issued a decree appointing citizen Tchawell Cesar, Secretary General of the Delegation of Artibonite FIFA Ranking, Haiti wins 1 place Thursday, in the last ranking of FIFA the national team of the Grenadier advanced from a very small place from 104th to 103rd with 1,216 points. In the CONCACAF zone, Haiti's ranking remains unchanged at 11th place. USA : Strengthening the business climate in Haiti On Thursday morning, Ambassador Michele Sison and her team met with the American Chamber of Commerce (AmCham) in Haiti to discuss how the United States and Haiti can continue to work together to strengthen the business and economic climate, and of investments in Haiti. HL/ HaitiLibre By Vasia Orion | Published on 2018/10/25 Kim Sae-ron might have landed her next role with "Neighborhood Lawyer Jo Deul-ho 2: Crime and Punishment". The actress is being courted to join Park Shin-yang's titular Jo Deul-ho as a lawyer partner with a unique skill set. If she accepts, she will be playing Yoon So-mi, the daughter of an investigator who worked with Deul-ho during his first term as a prosecutor. Advertisement So-mi has Asperger Syndrome, a term most often used for high functioning autism. With Deul-ho as her role model, she went through a lot to finish law school, but no agency will hire her due to her autism diagnosis. She has a tremendous ability for retaining information, and that memorization skill comes in handy next to Deul-ho in court. I always worry when Korean drama tackles disorders, disability or mental illness, because I've seen more problematic and inaccurate portrayals than informed ones. Reports on So-mi's condition aren't encouraging, ranging from her childhood autism having caused Asperger's, to it having been "cured" due to her father's efforts, leaving her with "convenient" Asperger's as a result. I'm hoping that these are just early drafts or uneducated description garnish. "Neighborhood Lawyer Jo Deul-ho" touched many people, and I hope to see a more socially conscious sequel. That being said, Kim Sae-ron is an exciting possible addition, so I look forward to more information on the series as we approach its reported January premiere. Written by: Orion from 'Orion's Ramblings' Sources (1) (2) (3) (4) Collette Lee Stump passed away from natural causes on October 25th, 2018 in the Peace Hospice House in Great Falls, Montana. Wake services began Thursday, October 25, 2018, and continued until her funeral service, which was at 10:00 a.m. Friday, October 26, 2018. Holland & Bonine Funeral Home was entrusted with arrangements. Please visit Collettes online memorial page and leave a message of condolence for her family at http://www.hollandbonine.com. Collette was born in Havre, Montana, to Donna Turner and John Stump Jr. She grew up in Rocky Boy, Montana, giving birth to her daughter Karley in December 1993, and graduating from Rocky Boy High School in May 1994. She attended Stone Child College for a few semesters, and worked many places throughout the Rocky Boy Reservation. She had many friends and relatives. Collette enjoyed going to round dances and listening to Northern Cree, calling her friends and family to visit, and loved watching the Lifetime channel when she wasnt working. She was preceded in death by her sister Tamra Tami Turner Morsette and her parents, Donna Turner and John Stump Jr. Collette is survived by her daughter, Karley (Austin) Russette; her precious puppy Sugar; her sister Lana Turner; her brother, Richard Boy Turner; her nephew, Dustin Turner; her three grandchildren; and many extended aunts, uncles, cousins, nephews and nieces. A Republican Havre businesswoman is challenging the incumbent Hill County treasurer in the Nov. 6 election. Penny Hadford said her 40 years of experience in business and finance will help her in the office if she is elected. "I think I would bring a fresh approach to the office," she said. "I think I always see how things can be done more efficiently, save time and money." She faces incumbent Democrat Sandy Brown, who is seeking her third term in the office. Hadford said she was born in Fort Belvoir, Virginia, while her family was en route to Germany, where her father was deployed. "I spent my first three years in Germany," Hadford said. When her parents died, Hadford said, her aunt, Blaine County Clerk of Court Monica Miller adopted and raised her. She graduated from Chinook High School, where she earned a state record in track for the Sugarbeeters in the 220. She went to school at Montana State University in Bozeman, but did not finish her degree, going to work full time instead. That work has given her the background for the office, Hadford said. "I have over 40 years of financial background, banking, office administration," she said. That work included being an office administrator for oil and gas companies and a Havre lumberyard, as well as starting Jitters Coffee Shop on First Street in 1994, working in banking and founding a trucking company. She said she retired in the past year and has kept busy doing odd jobs. "I understand all the facets of running a business, good record keeping, book keeping, budgets, working with the general public," she said. She said before this year, she hadn't thought of running for public office. I hadn't even considered it," she said. "Some people who know of my capabilities asked if I would be willing to run." She said she thinks she could help the office work with the public in a better way. "What I am hearing on the street is the courthouse isn't really willing to work with people." she said. She said she would like to see some changes, such as sending a second tax notice to people who haven't made their payments on time and that people should have easier access to information from the department. She added that she thinks a change in leadership can be good. "People have a tendency to become complacent. I truly believe that," she said. "... And I believe that a vote for me is a vote for Hill County." By Emily Mayer The barbs continued back and forth between the Havre and Hill County newspapers 100 years ago, particularly between The Havre Plaindealer and the Havre Daily Promoter. Daily except Mondays as the Plaindealer snidely reminded its readers. The two issues between the rival newspapers were the same as had been for weeks the Border Saloon raid and the split of the county Republican party. Of the latter, in the Plaindealers Oct. 26, 1918, edition, it contends strife within the Republican party but the other two Havre papers, the Promoter and the Hill County Democrat, carried columns titled Mr. Farmer and Common People advising their readers not to take the revelations too seriously and supported the Non-Partisan League causes, namely the election of Dr. Lanstrum for the U.S. Senate and C. R. Stranahan for Hill County attorney, as well as all other Republican candidates, which is hardly non-partisan. Lanstrum was up against Jeannette Rankin, who decided to run for U.S. Senate after being elected the first woman to the U.S. House of Representatives two years earlier. The newspapers had sharp eyes on each other, with the Plaindealer printing: This week, a member of the Havre Daily Promoter staff was seen lugging large quantities of Jeannette literature from the same office, where now republicanism seems to burn brightly. Apparently the literature had been taken to this office under the impression that its distribution would be handled from there and whether the incident represents misapprehension in sending it there originally or a change in policy is not announced. In any case it is hard on JeannetteThe Havre Daily Promoter now comes out again in advocacy of the N. P. L. although admitting the presence therein of some weak sisters. This is doubtless true, though ungallant, but as Jeannettes is the only feminine name appearing the reason for the plural is not apparent. Of the former, Assistant State Attorney General A. A. Grorud couldnt catch a break in Hill County. The Plaindealer ran a long story about the recent trial of Grorud and the botched Border Saloon raid. In part, it read: GRORUD IS CONVICTED AND FINED HUNDRED Is Case Embarrassing the Stranahan Campaign By a unanimous verdict of the jury in Judge Pypers court, A. A. Frorud, assistant state attorney general, was convicted, Thursday, of unlawful seizure and detention of property and on Friday, Judge Pyper imposed a fine of $100.00. Mr. Grorud, at the time of the Border Saloon raid, it was claimed by the state, overstepped his authority by breaking into a storehouse near the Border Saloon and taking charge of a stock of liquor there, belonging to C. W. Young. The state also contended that in appointing and arming men as deputy sheriffs, Mr. Grorud acted without any authority. The article went on to state that then-Attorney General Sam Ford directed then-Hill County Attorney Victor Griggs to dismiss the case, which he did not. Grorud then tried to dismiss his very own case, acting as special counsel. This, too, failed. Of course, the Plaindealer took another swipe at the Promoter, stating: A distorted, and apparently inspired, account of the case, appeared in the Havre Daily Promoter, Friday, with serious statements, absolutely contrary to the facts and records in the case. In a statement attributed to Mr. Stranahan, it is said that, the case had been framed by the county attorneyThe suggestion of personal irritation with a situation so annoying from a political viewpoint is rejected as inadequate. While all of this was being slugged out, there was a candidate, I think, of interest. Mrs. R. X. Lewis, wife of the former owner of the Plaindealer and Promoter who had died in September of 1916, decided to throw her hat in the ring and run for Hill County Clerk and Recorder. Her ad asked Why Not a Woman for County Clerk and Recorder. She was running as a Republican, had three years of experience as City Clerk, and declared The Government is calling upon Women to fill responsible positions. Of course, all this intrigue will be followed up in coming weeks. Regarding war news, the local price regulating committee met to set prices on everything from flour to beans, vegetables, meats and corn syrup. A long list of young men called to the draft was published, notifying Hill County it would be sending more boys over there to fight The Great War. A large ad containing 12 General Orders from Montana State Food Administrator Alfred Atkinson for Public Eating Houses was published, ranging from how much bread they could serve patrons, how much butter could be offered, and how much sugar could be used in their foods. Harlem High School graduate Shawn Tsosie, who earned his Ph.D. in mathematics from the University of California Santa Cruz in September, poses for a photograph. Press release For Shawn Tsosie, completing a doctorate degree in mathematics was a lifelong dream. Now, after graduating with a Ph.D. from the University of California Santa Cruz in September, hes seen that dream fulfilled. Tsosie first developed an interest in math in Harlem, Montana, where he attended elementary, middle and high school. In 1998, while in high school, he applied for a summer program at Stanford University, where he studied complex analysis. He met people who had doctorate degrees in math for the first time at this camp, inspiring him to pursue an advanced degree of his own. After graduating from high school, Tsosie began studying at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, but he struggled with the intense workload and difficult classes, leaving after three years. Soon after, he enlisted in the U.S. Army as an airborne infantryman in 2003. He earned several medals for his service over two deployments to Iraq. But during this time, he also came to realize his true passion was still mathematics. In his spare time, he worked through an analysis algebra and linear algebra book. After serving honorably for five years, Tsosie decided to return to school, redoubling his efforts in pursuit of a Ph.D. in math. He enrolled at the University of Massachusetts Amherst and worked as an undergraduate researcher at the Mathematical Sciences Research Institute. Shortly after that, he was re-admitted to MIT, where he excelled in his math classes, won two writing awards, interned during the summers and completed his bachelors degree in mathematics in 2012. Tsosie earned his Ph.D. in mathematics, with a focus on algebraic number theory. While at University of California Santa Cruz, studying on a fellowship, he found a community of supportive, passionate people who shared his enthusiasm for math. He also met his future wife, to whom he has been married three years. Upon his graduation in September, the couple relocated to South San Francisco, California, where Tsosie is beginning his career as a machine learning engineer. Tsosie said he would like to thank his family members for their unfailing support during this long journey, including his mother, Andrea Quintana, and his sisters, Talia Bell and Roberta Quintana of Harlem; his brother, Jay Tsosie of Missoula, Montana; his grandparents Chuck and Iona Schilling of Harlem; his wife, Claire Tsosie of South San Francisco, and all of his aunts, uncles and cousins. Exhibits: Beverly Barkat - the tribes and roots of Israel At Boncompagni Ludovisi museum, site-specific installation (ANSAmed) - ROME, OCTOBER 26 - The work of Israeli artist Beverly Barkat is on display at the Museum Boncompagni Ludovisi in Rome, near Via Veneto. The exhibit includes the four-meter-high installation 'After the tribes', made this year for the museum in Rome, which will be exhibited until December 31. The artwork is inspired by the 12 ancient tribes of Israel. Barkat was born in 1966 in Johannesburg but moved to Israel with her family when she was 12. She worked on her color palette and different materials through years of research. ''I physically studied places'', she said. ''I studied the land and took parts of it. I literally tried to bring the history of the 12 tribes that totally involved me not only as an artist but also as a Jew''. Seashells, precious and semi-precious stones, including emeralds, rubies and aquamarines, rocks, sand and clay from the caves, desert, sea and mountains of Israel have been pulverized to become the essential colors of the installation. Twelve disks with a meter-long diameter give visitors an insight from both sides - a rough one crafted by the artist and a sleek and shiny PVC side. ''The work focuses on color and material to reach a complex universe of symbols and citations - explained curator Giorgia Calo - and this is achieved'' through painting, inspired by classical art as well as modern art movements such as Abstract expressionism. The curator described the work as ''mystical and spiritual'', among other things. Just over a year after the show ''Evocative Surfaces'' at the Museum of Palazzo Grimani at the Venice Art Biennial, the artist is strengthening her ties to Italy with the Rome exhibition, invited by the museums of Lazio and the cultural office of the Israeli embassy in Italy. ''I knew I would make artwork dedicated to the 70th anniversary of the birth of the State of Israel'', said Barkat, who is married to Jerusalem Mayor Nit Barkat, who has filled the position for nearly a decade. The artist said she also knew that this implied ''interacting not only with history but also with the architecture of the museum and the city that were ready to host it. With this installation, I tried to represent the dynamism of a population constantly on the move, constantly projected towards the future, yet constantly looking back at its past''. (ANSAmed). By Bill Hathaway Psychedelic drugs such as LSD have a profound impact on human consciousness, particularly perception. Researchers at Yale and the University of Zurich provide new insight into the psychedelic effects of LSD on the brain and potential therapeutic uses of the drug. The new data indicate that LSD triggers a reduction of functional connections between regions of the brain governing cognitive processes and increases connectivity in brain networks associated with sensory functions. It does so by stimulating a particular receptor for the neurotransmitter serotonin (serotonin-2A or 5HT2A receptor). The 5HT2A receptor has been implicated in the regulation of mood and cognition. Using gene expression maps and data-driven tools to measure brain-wide communication, the team was able to infer the patterns of brain signals in subjects who had taken LSD and identify the 5HT2A receptor as a crucial mechanism leading to changes in perception and thought. There is a net effect of LSD on the entire brain but the effect is not uniform, explained Alan Anticevic, assistant professor of psychiatry and psychology and co-senior author of the paper, which appears in the journal eLife. In recent years, scientists have become increasingly interested in the use of psychedelics to treat mental health disorders such as depression. While serotonin plays a key role in maintaining mood balance and decreased levels are associated with depression, another immediate impact of the new findings may be in the treatment of schizophrenia, Anticevic suggested. Most schizophrenia patients are treated with atypical antipsychotic drugs, which block some of the serotonin receptors identified by the new study. However, many patients dont respond well to such treatments. Clinicians may be able to identify individual patients most likely to benefit from these drugs by looking for similar patterns of brain activity identified in the study, noted Katrin Preller, assistant professor at the University of Zurich and visiting professor at Yale, who is the lead author of the paper. Using a technology optimized by Anticevic and Dr. John Murray, assistant professor of psychiatry at Yale and co-author on the paper, researchers pinpointed gene activity in the brain and showed how it influences neurotransmitter function. In the 1960s, Yale researchers Daniel X. Freedman, Nicholas Giarman, and George Aghajanian first implicated the serotonin system, and the 5HT2A receptor, in the actions of LSD, noted Dr. John Krystal, professor and chair of psychiatry at Yale. It has taken over 50 years and technical advances in brain imaging and molecular neuroscience to enable us to build on the earlier work in mechanistic clinical research, Krystal said. This path, and other related research strategies will take us deeper in our search for the roots of human consciousness and the biology of mental illness. Franz Vollenweider of Zurich is co-senior author of the paper. Yale University We're a family of seven living in Georgia where Andrew's working as a professor at GSU. You can read more about us here ECCO's 'virgin birth' could make a splash in shark world A baby shark from a 'virgin birth' was a rare occurrence. Kortney Clark used a pair of ordinary looking scissors to execute an extraordinary bit of marine animal surgery. Peering through a couple of inches of aquarium saltwater, she carefully cut an egg casing the thickness of a fingernail that enclosed a baby shark. When the painstaking process was complete, so was the virgin birth one that potentially would make a splash in the world of shark research. The ECCO Aquarium had achieved what might be a historic moment. Theyve watched baby embryos develop from an egg before but Thursday around 2 p.m. was the first time they had hatched a baby shark, called a pup. Shes a pretty big pup in there, Ramer said. The downtown aquarium, which got the new larger shark tank in February, has been caring for and studying sharks for years under the guidance of BJ Ramer, the museum director and mentor to many young amateur aquatic researchers. That includes Clark, who started as a volunteer as a young teenager and has worked her way up to assistant director. Shes a student in the veterinary tech program at AB Tech. The shark team, from left, was Kortney Clark, Amanda Garrett, Meghan Fortner and BJ Ramer.The pup appeared to be viable swimming around as soon as she was freed from the egg case. Shell be fed by a yolk a yellow ball no bigger than a pinkie fingertip, attached to her body. If she makes it for a week and is liberated from the yolk, the little aquarium 250 miles from the nearest ocean may make news that the shark world will cheer nationwide, even worldwide. In parthogenesis, a female that ordinarily breeds with a male will become pregnant spontaneously. Parthogenetic births are common in the insect world and have been documented in snakes and turkeys and in sharks, too. But the embryos the females produce dont usually survive once their freed from the protective case. The pup born Thursday had been gestating in the shell since July 21, when a female named Epa shed the egg. "We have had several eggs start this process over the last couple of years, but none have survived," Ramer said before Thursday's "delivery." "This egg from July 21 is thriving. The pup is large and showing strong movement, fin development, eyes, and regular breathing patterns." Sure enough, when Clark finished clipping her out, Epa's offspring looked strong. Shes already made history, living this long, Ramer said. The last recorded parthogenetically birthed shark to become viable longterm happened around 19 years ago at an aquarium in Detroit, Ramer says. On Friday afternoon, Ramer reported that the pup was alive and well, having survived the critical 24-hour mark. AB Tech veterinary tech teachers Amanda Garrett and Meghan Fortner were on hand to assist with the birth and with an earlier procedure, to draw blood from a 3-year-old bamboo shark named Stanlie that seems to be suffering from seizures. "This is different than cats and dogs," Garrett said. "This is the first time I've drawn blood from a shark," Fortner said. If the pup survives she doesn't yet have a name yet ECCO plans to arrange for DNA tests of mother and baby to confirm once and for all that the pup is a clone. ECCO planned to spread the news about the parthogenetic birth to shark researchers who were waiting to hear about the pups condition, including the North Carolina Science Network and the North Carolina Science Museum. Theyre waiting on our pictures, Ramer said. SAM EVANS is the founder of Humphreys of Henley, a concierge service. Born in Gloucestershire, she went to local boarding schools and then Leeds University where she read for a degree in international history and politics. After graduating, she moved to London and worked in sales and sponsorship for media companies including Classic FM and then as a management consultant. She moved to Henley in 1998. Her partner Steve currently lives in America and they take turns to commute in order to see each other. Her other love is golden retriever Hector, whom she got as a puppy last year after the death of her previous dog Humphrey. She has been a town councillor since 2011 and focuses on her interests in the towns recreation and green spaces. Describe your business The Humphreys of Henley team are the experts in sourcing and creating fabulous things to do in the English countryside. I was inspired to launch the business by my love of everything that is quintessentially English and a desire to share the hidden delights of our countryside. For example, the guests enjoy everything from clay shooting, falconry and flying a tiger moth to exclusive tours of Windsor Castle and Blenheim Palace and fabulous evenings at the Henley Festival. Ive used my experience of travelling during my corporate career and apply my understanding of making the most of limited time and not wanting to feel that you may have missed the best bits. How many people does it employ? Three, including me, but we have a team of associates for all the various bespoke activities we organise. What did you do before you started this business? After my career in the media, I spent 14 years as a management consultant specialising in sales and performance management and focused on the pharmaceutical industries. When did you start your business? In 2014. What was your objective? To open up and promote the English countryside to visitors from home and abroad. Who or what influenced you? Just me. I had two major changes in my life and it was time to make a change and take control or feel sorry for myself I chose the former. Do you have a mentor or role model? Im an avid reader and Im a member of the Entrepreneurs Circle, which is a fee-based enterprise assisting small business owners, especially with strategy and marketing. Ive found this to be a big help. What would you do differently if starting again? It could take me until Christmas to fully answer that question! There are so many practicalities in running a business but there are many sources of help available which I didnt know about or look for in the early days. How is your business doing? We are 100 per cent up on last year. How do you market your business? We have unique connections with some five star hotels, including Cliveden, the Savoy and the Corinthia, among others. We work with travel companies in America. We use Facebook ads. Referrals and repeat business are a major factor in our continued growth. Whats the best thing about running your own business? The positive feedback we get from clients means a huge amount its the reason I set up Humphreys. Plus I get to visit so many wonderful places. Whats the most challenging aspect? Prioritising. Focusing on the right things and not getting side-tracked. Where is your business headed? In 10 years I want to sell it as a multi-million pound company which is recognised as the authority and go to expert on the British countryside. Whats the most valuable thing you've learned? That Im a lot stronger than I thought. I especially discovered this not too long ago when I was diagnosed with breast cancer. Im very happy to say that following my treatment Im now clear. How would you advise someone starting a business? Keep it simple. Listen and learn. Learn something new every day. Whats the biggest mistake youve made? I trusted a couple of people who, with the benefit of hindsight, I shouldnt have. What three qualities are most important to success? Believing in yourself and in what you are doing. Persistence. Direction. Whats the secret of your success? Im creative and I can sell. I love people. Im always open to learning. How organised are you? Im not naturally organised, which is why I do so much planning. I hire people with complementary skills to mine to ensure we cover all of the bases. How do you dress for work each day? Before I had an office I would often be in the clothes I wore for walking the dog. Now I make an effort! What cant you be without every day? Hector, my dog. Lunch at your desk or going out? At my desk. Do you continue to study? I read all the time and go on courses to become better at things that Im rubbish at. What do you read? Lots of books. I attended a presentation by Prof John Mullen and as a result Im reading all Jane Austens books. I read the Henley Standard, of course! How are you planning for retirement? I have a long list of places I want to visit, several of which I will tick off over the next 10 years before dedicating as much time as possible to exploring the world. Bouncers who threw a woman and her boyfriend from a nightclub were "out of control" and acting as though they were taking part in a blood sport, a judge said as he awarded the woman 25,000 damages. Circuit Court President Mr Justice Raymond Groarke said Eva Hawthorn (35) was grabbed by a bouncer in the Wright Venue on March 1, 2014, and knocked against some steps. He heard that Ms Hawthorn, of Ashton Drive, Ashton Broc, Swords, and her now former boyfriend, Andrew Lynch, were violently expelled from the Swords club. Unprovoked Judge Groarke said she was grabbed in a bear hug by 6ft 2in, 20-stone Viktor Rybakob and taken to the entrance where she was thrown through the air by another unidentified bouncer. Barrister Pat O'Brien, for Ms Hawthorn, said his client, who is now 39, suffered a bloody gash to her nose and body bruising following an unprovoked assault by bouncer Tomas Lukasz. She had sued I-Secure Risk Management Ltd, in liquidation, of Blanchardstown, Dublin, against which judgment had already been obtained, and Wrights Cafe Bar Airside Ltd, of Seatown Road, Swords, for 60,000 for assault and battery. Mr Rybakob said that at one stage Ms Hawthorn, said in court to be 5ft 4in tall and to weigh six stones, had been on his back giving him digs and choking him as he restrained Mr Lynch on the floor. Judge Groarke said there had been a degree of violence by two bouncers against Ms Hawthorn and Mr Lynch which was in no way commensurate with the aggression that the couple were alleged to have been showing toward them. The judge described Mr Lukasz as a large man and Mr Rybakob as "a giant of Celtic proportions" and said that at one stage both of them and another, slimmer bouncer were lying on top of Mr Lynch. He said he had heard no evidence that the bouncers concerned were registered security personnel or that they had ever received any training. He said the court had cctv evidence of Mr Lukasz making a movement to his right coinciding with Ms Hawthorn falling to the floor, which indicated an assault on her. "It is inescapable in my view that this is what happened in the nightclub and constitutes assault," Judge Groarke said. He said Mr Lynch had reacted in a very aggressive fashion, and the court would like to think that he was not proud of what he had done. "What I have here is an attitude of mind on the part of these bouncers which is exhibited by the manner in which Ms Hawthorn is expelled from premises," the judge said. Revenge "She seems to be thrown into the air quite a distance and all because she has annoyed a bouncer. "It was an act of aggression and revenge on the part of the security officers in the simple context of 'how dare you speak or act toward us in that fashion'. "It is clear to me that when these people are expelled there is great delight on the faces of the security men involved as if it were a form of blood sport on their part. "They were out of control." Leo Varadkar with Vivienne Bourke, St Lukes principal, Tim Stapleton, Tyrrelstown Educate Together principal, (right) and Joe McHugh TD, Minister for Education, during a visit to the two schools closed in west Dublin The Department of Education and the company at the centre of the school building safety controversy are at odds over who was responsible for signing off on three projects in which serious structural problems have come to light. The department delivered a robust response to a statement by Western Building Systems (WBS) about contracts for Ardgillan Community College, Balbriggan, and two primary schools in Tyrrelstown, west Dublin, which have closed, or partially closed, for safety reasons. WBS claimed the department "deemed each project to be fully compliant, issuing the supporting certificates of completion". Responsible But the department insisted that the contractor and its design team "were fully responsible for the construction and certification of the buildings in accordance with the regulations in force at the time". Senior counsel John Trainor, chair of the Construction Bar Association, said that, in general, in a design and build contract such as the one for the three schools, responsibility lay with the contractor, but ultimately it depended on the detail of the contract. WBS representatives joined department officials and structural engineers on site visits to the three schools yesterday. In a statement afterwards, the department said it provided the company with "the opportunity to view the structural issues identified at the three schools". More closures are expected as the programme of checks at 42 schools built by WBS over the past 15 years continues. An inspection is being carried out today at Letterkenny Educate Together, in Education Minister Joe McHugh's home town. Department officials are meeting representatives of education partners such as school managers and teacher unions today to brief them. Major efforts are under way to source alternative accommodation for pupils returning after the mid-term break if their school is closed. Taoiseach Leo Varadkar said the Government was looking at using prefabs and Portakabins. It may be possible for some schools to operate with internal bracing or for the ground floor to stay open, supplemented by Portakabins, he added. Mr McHugh said "good progress" was being made in sourcing alternative accommodation for pupils hit by the closure of Tyrrelstown Educate Together and the neighbouring St Luke's National School. The HSE said there were no safety concerns at this time about the integrity of its buildings over construction work carried out by WBS. "Having carried out an initial review, it would appear that a different form of construction is involved," it said in a statement. "However, we will be carrying out a comprehensive assessment of the relevant healthcare facilities to provide complete assurance." Earlier, Mr Varadkar said the scale of the matter had yet to be fully understood and some hospitals must now be assessed for any structural risk too. "It's being checked out [and] the initial indications from Beaumont and some of the health buildings are that they're not affected," he said. "But the truth is at the moment we don't have all the answers." Mr Varadkar made the comments during a visit to Tyrrelstown Educate Together and St Luke's National School. Nearby Le Cheile Secondary School has offered up to eight classrooms to take pupils. A Dublin landlord has earned more than 206,000 in the last 12 months renting their property on Airbnb. The revelation comes as it emerged landlords who rent their homes for more than 90 days a year face paying water charges and commercial rates, and may have to upgrade their insurance policies to ensure they are covered. New rules introduced by Housing Minister Eoghan Murphy will force landlords to secure commercial planning permission for properties they lease on a short-term letting basis on platforms including Airbnb. The rules will take effect from June 1, but will not apply to those renting a room or all of their family home, although a 90-day annual limit will apply. These owners will have to inform the local authority they intend to avail of an exemption allowing them to "homeshare", and lettings can be for no more than 14 days. The minister has indicated that in areas where there is a high demand for housing - including the capital, Galway, Cork and some other counties - councils will be given powers to refuse to allow planning permission for the properties to be let on a short-term basis. This will effectively ban Airbnb from Dublin and major cities. Figures from website AirDNA suggest there are just over 1,000 landlords who own multiple properties which are listed on Airbnb, totalling 3,533 units. If the ban is enforced, it means these homes will be available to the "normal" rental market. It is hoped this will help meet demand, and reduce monthly rental costs. False The rules have been sharply criticised by Airbnb, which said home sharing did not cause the housing crisis and that claims the regulations were the solution were a "false promise". "Legitimising home sharing with rules for the long term is good news for hosts in principle, however there is no clear rationale for the rules being proposed here," Airbnb said. "There is no data to support a 90-night restriction on primary residences, which are by definition people's homes, and not available on the long-term rental market. "Banning the use of secondary homes is also unlikely to significantly boost Ireland's housing stock. This appears to be a cut and paste from regulations in other cities, without properly adapting them to the needs of Ireland's residents and communities." The rules are expected to result in added costs to landlords. They will have to pay 80 for a change-of-use permission and are likely to be hit with commercial rates which are calculated on the size of the building. Dublin City Council said accommodation used for short-term lets was exempt from rates, unless it formed part of an aparthotel. "To date, Airbnb activities are exempt from rates," it said, but it added that a requirement to secure commercial planning permission meant a review was likely. A source said it was likely to result in a rates bill. In addition, water charges could also be applicable. The water regulator is currently introducing a standard tariff for non-domestic customers, which includes a standing charge of 90 a year plus 3.12 per litre of drinking water and wastewater if less than one million litres a year are used. Costs Insurance industry sources said some policies might have to be upgraded, which could incur additional costs. However, data from AirDNA shows that lucrative returns can be made from renting on the short-term letting platform. The average fee paid per night is 145 in Dublin, and there were 6,945 properties listed as available yesterday. The top earner received 206,521 for a property close to Grafton Street, at an average daily rate of 965. Some 3,812 entire homes are available, and 33,627 guests have utilised the properties in the past 12 months. Westlife fans were whipped into a frenzy yesterday as tickets for the band's Croke Park gig sold out in just seven minutes. The band are reuniting after seven years apart, marking their 20th anniversary with the announcement of an Ireland and UK tour next year. Tickets went on sale yesterday for their Dublin date and, after they were snapped up in minutes, a second date was added to the bill next summer. Nicky Byrne, Shane Filan, Mark Feehily, and Kian Egan will now take the stage on July 5 and 6 in Croke Park. Tickets for the band's three dates in Belfast's SSE Arena were also immediately snapped up yesterday. The boys were clearly delighted by the enthusiastic reception from fans, all taking to social media yesterday to express their gratitude to their loyal followers. Speechless Shane said he was "speechless" at the reaction from the band's fans. "We truly do have the best fans in the world," he said, as he shared the news of the speedy sales. "First Croke Park gone in seven mins! I'm speechless." The dizzying demand for tickets was also matched across the water, with extra dates added in every city in the UK the band are set to play. Of course, it wasn't smiles all round, as some fans missed out on getting their hands on the much-coveted tickets. Fans described being "gutted" on social media, with others saying they had experienced connection errors on the Ticketmaster site when they were trying to make a purchase. While the band seemed to be taken aback by the wild support from their fanbase, their press conference earlier this week suggested they might be open to the possibility of taking the tour on a longer stint, and maybe even worldwide if their fans call for it. Speaking at the press conference, Nicky suggested that he was open to the idea that he may be missing from his 2FM DJ-ing duties alongside Jenny Greene for some time next year if the band do decide to take The Twenty Tour to an international level. "If the Westlife thing explodes into worldwide tour, albums and songs that are taking over, I presume my break would have to extend for some time," he said. Jordan: Flash floods kill 20, mostly kids on school trip According to Petra news agency (ANSAmed) - AMMAN, OCTOBER 26 - The death toll from flash flooding in Jordan has risen to 20 - mostly teens on a school trip. The victims died when the bus they were travelling on near Jordan's shore of the Dead Sea was swept away by a sudden flood caused by torrential rain yesterday. The death toll was updated Friday by Jordan's official Petra news agency. The agency also reported that the number of people injured has risen to 35. More people are still missing, the news agency added, and rescuers are working against time, with helicopters, divers and teams with sniffer dogs from Israel. A national day of mourning is being observed today and King Abdallah has annulled a scheduled visit to Bahrain. (ANSAmed) Oxfam says one civilian death in Yemen every three hours Over 1.1 mn cases of cholera in last 18 months (ANSAmed) - ROME, OCTOBER 26 - One civilian has been killed every three hours in Yemen since the beginning of August, Oxfam said. A new wave of clashes between the Saudi-led coalition and the Houthis to control key ports and cities in the country has caused an exponential rise in victims. This has left the population without water and increasingly exposed to the risk of new epidemics. Oxfam said large world powers are doing little or nothing to stop what has been for some time the most serious humanitarian crisis in the world. Between 1 August and 15 October in Yemen, 575 civilians - including 136 children and 63 women - were killed in fighting, Oxfam said in a statement. It said there have been more than 1.1 million cases of cholera in the last 18 months, with over 2,000 victims; and more than 100 deaths from diphtheria over a similar period. The new wave of clashes is pushing the population to the edge of famine, without clean water and exposed to the risk of new epidemics of cholera and diphtheria. Oxfam said the UN warned this week that more than 14 million people could die from starvation if the war continues. On Wednesday in Hudaydah, the country's main port, an airstrike killed at least 16 civilians in a vegetable market. At the start of this month 15 civilians, including four children, were killed and 23 others were injured when an airstrike by the Saudi-led coalition hit two buses filled with passengers at a Houthi-held checkpoint to the south east of the city. A ground shelling at a camp for displaced people in southern Hudaydah killed a young woman and injured seven other people including six children. "World powers should feel shame over very single life lost in this scandalous conflict," said Paolo Pezzati, Oxfam Italy policy advisor for humanitarian emergencies. "Anyone who directly or indirectly supports the parties in this conflict is an accomplice in this massacre. How many people have to die before the powers admit that they are complicit in fueling this war for over three years? This is why we are calling on the United States, Great Britain, and Italy to immediately suspend arms sales to Saudi Arabia," he said.(ANSAmed). ANSAmed - Today's events in the Mediterranean (ANSAmed) - ROME, OCTOBER 26 - These are the main events scheduled for today in the Euro-Mediterranean area: TUNIS - EU, visit of European Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker. KARTEPE (TURKEY) - The annual summit continues, with this year edition focused on 'Migration, refugees and humanity' (to October 28). VALLETTA - 'Workshop Med Blue Economy' continues (to October 28). (ANSAmed). Low-cost airlines to revive Jordan tourism Petra fully booked as airlines launch new flights (by Mohammad Ben Hussein) (ANSAmed) AMMAN, OCTOBER 26 - Jordan's ailing tourism sector is hoping to get a new lease on life following the launch of low-cost flights from Europe. Tourism authorities are seeking to place the country on the list of top destinations in the region. Tour operators and hospitality industry executives hope revenue will be generated and jobs created, officials said. Ryanair, Norwegian Air, EasyJet and Russian airlines will lead an influx of tourists to visit the kingdom's main attractions. Some of its main attractions include the unique rock engraved city of Petra, the port city of Aqaba and the famous Wadi Rum rocky desert as well as a plethora of Roman and Islamic era ruins across the eastern desert and northern region. Officials from the Jordan Tourism Board (JTB) believe the arrival of low-budget flights will mark a new era in the history of the country's tourism industry. "These flights will place Jordan at a budge price for all European travelers. We are expecting an influx of tourists from all around Europe," said Ala al Hindi, digital marketing director at JTB. ''Jordan is currently working on improving the variety of options available to tourists to meet the demands of various types of travelers," he told ANSA. As of November 1st, the eagerly awaited flights of Ryanair will be in full swing between Amman and major European destinations, with 26 flights from Italy, Poland, Cyprus, Lithuania, Belgium, Romania, Hungary and the Czech Republic to Amman. The carrier will also fly to the Red Sea city of Aqaba, with eight flights per week from Greece, Italy, Bulgaria and Germany to Aqaba. Meanwhile, EasyJet is scheduled to start operating two flights per week from London and Berlin to Aqaba and Amman, while Norwegian Airlines currently operates two flights per week to Amman and will bring in an additional flight to Aqaba from Copenhagen. However, JTB officials said high-quality services must be implemented by tourism operators, while prices must remain within reach of middle class tourists. "The government needs to implement a robust monitoring system on hotels and restaurants in order to build a good reputation among tourists and travel operators," Hourani added. According to official estimates, price of a round-trip ticket from Amman to most of European destinations will drop from equivalent of USD 600 to USD 150 for the round trip. Following years of struggle, the tourism sector could be facing a new lease on life, as the kingdom is expected to serve as gateway to European and international travelers to the region. Meanwhile, the rock-engraved city of Petra has seen number of tourists jump to all-time record, with most hotels full capacity, said Hourani. "Currently, some people are renting caves to tourists to stay after all hotels became fully booked, with at least 2,000 tourists having booked in the 'Rose city'," said Hourani. The cash-strapped kingdom depends on tourism as one of its main sources of income, as official figures show it accounts for 14 percent of GDP. The development comes against the backdrop of listing Jordan by Lonely Planet as one of the 10 most attractive tourism destinations in the world. The renowned tourism platform took note of recent improvement in tourism infrastructure and services including Jordan trail and bike trail, which allow visitors to travel from north to south on foot or bikes while passing through breathtaking views. "There is a new Bike Trail complementing the Jordan Trail - a continuous route, offering 650 kilometers of beautiful hiking through myriad landscapes and terrains - as well as desert safaris at Shaumari Wildlife Reserve, and off-road routes snaking across the desolate Badia. There's never been a better time to visit," said Tom Hall, Lonely Planet's Editorial Director in a statement. The past five years have seen dozens of tour operators and hotels shut down as a result of the regional security situation. However, a recent improvement in the situation in Syria could help put the sector back on its feet.(ANSAmed). 4 dead including 2 children in Md. following brief Pa. police pursuit A Herald-Mail employee near the area said the vehicles seem to be concentrated a little north of Misty Meadow Farm Creamery. LOS ANGELES (JTA)-Kurt Waldheim managed an impressive feat: After serving as a soldier and intelligence officer in the Nazi army during World War II, he was twice elected secretary-general of the United Nations before topping off his career as president of his native Austria from 1986 to 1992. How did he do it? Largely by massaging his biography to convince the world that he had been merely an ordinary soldier during the war and was following orders. He also persuaded his fellow countrymen and the world that Austria was the first victim of Nazi aggression when native son Adolf Hitler annexed the country in 1938-to nationwide enthusiasm. As a popular joke at the time had it, Austrian diplomats managed to convince the public that Hitler, an Austrian, was a native German and Beethoven, a German, was Austrian. Nevertheless, by the time Waldheim ran for president in 1986, his war record had come back to haunt him. Among the protesters against his campaign at the time was Ruth Beckermann, a budding Jewish Viennese filmmaker who shot some of the larger Austrian demonstrations against Waldheim and the counter rallies. Some decades and over a dozen films later-including the very Jewish documentaries "Zorro's Bar Mitzvah" and "Toward Jerusalem"-Beckermann decided to take another look at the earlier footage. Her new film, "The Waldheim Waltz," choreographs the agile steps of one of the odder actors in recent world history, whose career nevertheless can still be seen as a forebear of current political swings in Europe and the United States. The film, recently selected as her country's entry into the Oscars' foreign film race, opens Friday in New York and gets a national rollout to other cities starting Nov. 16. In the early 1980s, between Waldheim's terms as U.N. secretary-general and Austrian president, the World Jewish Congress led a campaign to throw a spoke in his political wheel. An investigation of Waldheim's wartime record led by Nazi hunter Eli Rosenbaum revealed that after his service on the Russian front, Waldheim became an intelligence officer with the German army staff in the Balkans. In that capacity he played a key role in the brutal reprisals against the civilian populations of Yugoslavia and Greece-particularly in the deportation of most of Salonika's large Jewish population to Nazi death camps. He was also shown to have joined, in November 1938, the SA, the original Nazi paramilitary organization. The charges, and the denials by the Waldheim camp, became a focus of the heated 1986 campaign. Protesters hoisted slogans such as "No to Anti-Semitism, No to Waldheim," while his supporters countered with "We Austrians elect who we want" and "Waldheim, an Austrian who the world trusts." Waldheim was known for his love of horses, and one opponent declared with a straight face: "We never believed that Waldheim was a member of the SA-only his horse was." Another skeptic labeled the candidate's inability to remember his wartime activities as a symptom of "Waldheim's Disease." Adding material from archival and current news reports, Beckermann draws a historical line between those events of the 1980s and current political developments, particularly in Europe but also in the United States. Describing herself in a phone interview as "half demonstrator, half documentarian"-in addition to being director, producer, script writer and narrator-Beckermann discerned in the 1986 Austrian election the emergence of a new political force, still alive and growing in our own time. She said Waldheim's election as Austrian president represented one of the first victories of the surging coalition forged between traditional conservative ideologies and the populist, nativist appeal of vigorous right-wing activists. This anti-Waldheim horse statue was erected to protest his 1986 presidential campaign. Among the current examples of this force, Beckermann said, include the rise of populist anti-immigrant leaders in Austria, Poland and Hungary, the Brexit movement in Britain, and reinforced right-wing constituencies in Israel and France, as well as the election of President Donald Trump in the United States. During Waldheim's term as president, he was considered persona non grata by the U.S. and other Western governments (He was allowed in Arab countries and the Vatican, which he visited twice) At his funeral in 2007, then-Austrian President Heinz Fischer said Waldheim "deserves his lifetime to be seen as a whole." Despite her dejected tone, Beckermann discerns a glimmer of hope. "The good people will rally-though I don't know just when," she said. "Mankind will survive." Semi-autobiography novel weaves a timeless tale 'Love, Faith and a pair of Pants: A Novel in Stories,' by Herb Freed; Bellrock Press; released October 2, 2018 Ben Zelig thinks he has his life entirely planned out. Graduate from rabbinical school. Get hired by a spiritually enriched community. Meet a nice Jewish girl and start a family. Simple, right? Naturally, nothing ever goes according to plan, but life can still work out as long as you have love, faith and a pair of pants. Herb Freed, author of the timeless love story, "Bashert," returns to the page with a collection of short stories about the smart, witty, spiritual and, according to Ben's mother, incredibly handsome, Rabbi Ben Zelig. In five anecdotes about a rabbi's life, Zelig navigates romance, family ties, colorful congregants and the meaning of faith. From studying for the rabbinate under legendary Jewish theologian, Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel, to producing and directing Hollywood films and dancing with Martha Graham, Freed extracts from his own experience to weave a colorful and universal tale of life, love and spirituality. In a time where humanity is constantly put to the test, Freed takes readers from humor to pathos and back again in an uplifting examination of what it means to be human. Herb Freed started his adult life as an ordained rabbi and became the spiritual leader of Temple Beth Shalom in Lake Mahopac, New York. Eventually, he resigned his pulpit to become a movie director. He has directed and produced 15 feature films most of which have had psychological, spiritual and/or social themes in spite of their commercial categories. He is best known for "Graduation Day" and "Tomboy," as well as the taut thriller "Haunts," and "Child2Man," a story of survival during the Watts riots. A thriller that uncovers a story of heart, redemption and hope 'The Girl from Berlin,' by Ronald H. Balson; St. Martin's Press; released Oct. 9, 2018 Liam Taggart and Catherine Lockhart come to the aid of an old friend and are drawn into a property dispute in Tuscany that unearths long-buried secrets. This friend's aunt is being evicted from her home in the Tuscan hills by a powerful corporation claiming they own the deeds, even though she can produce her own set of deeds to her land. Catherine and Liam's only clue is to a bound handwritten manuscript, entirely in German, and hidden in its pages is a story long-forgotten. Ronald H. Balson is an internationally bestselling author whose previous books have been praised as "heart wrenching and triumphant" by The Chicago Tribune, and "page turning reads" by The Jewish Book Council. He is well-known for his poignant novels set during WWII and is extremely popular among readers of Jewish-fiction. Balson is a Chicago trial attorney, an educator and writer. His practice has taken him to several international venues. He is also the author of "The Trust," "Karonlina's Twins," "Saving Sophia," and "Once We Were Brothers." LOS ANGELES (JTA)-In 1993, filmmaker Ariel Vromen was part of an Israeli air force rescue unit sent in to Lebanon to evacuate both Jewish and Arab soldiers wounded during a battle. During the fighting, two of Vromen's closest friends died in front of his eyes. For several months afterward, he suffered debilitating post-traumatic stress disorder. But Vromen, now 45, took solace knowing that he and his fellow troops were "under a certain oath to take care of soldiers from Lebanon or Syria as much as we would give attention to Jews and Israelis," he said in a telephone interview. Vromen also recalled the disconnect of fighting just beyond Israel's northern border, when he would be "laughing and playing backgammon, and then in less than 30 minutes we'd find ourselves in a battle zone or a disaster area," he recalled. The contradictory nature of his military service is one reason Vromen (best known for directing the American thriller "The Iceman") was drawn to direct the spy thriller "The Angel," which premiered on Netflix Sept. 14. The film spotlights the enigmatic Egyptian Ashraf Marwan, a confidant of President Anwar Sadat who eventually turned into a spy for Israel. He famously warned the Mossad about the planned Arab surprise attack that started the Yom Kippur War in 1973, preventing what could have been even greater Israeli casualties. Ashraf Marwan (played in the film by Marwan Kenzari) was the son-in-law of Egypt's President Gamal Abdel Nasser and later became close with Nasser's successor, Sadat. Yet one day in the 1960s, he called the Israeli embassy from a telephone booth in London and offered his services as a spy. The Mossad enlisted his efforts, and Marwan passed valuable information to the Israelis, putting his life in serious danger along the way. In 2007, several years after he was publicly outed as a spy, Marwan fell to his death from a balcony in London at the age of 63-which may or may not have been suicide. Vromen, for his part, said he believes Marwan's death was a murder, given that the suspicious guests-various Egyptian diplomats, arms dealers and dissidents over the years-have been chalked up as "death by balcony." The filmmaker-who was raised near Tel Aviv but now lives in Los Angeles-came to the project two years ago, when an Israeli producer gave him an early draft of the screenplay, based on Uri Bar-Joseph's popular book, "The Angel: The Egyptian Spy Who Saved Israel." (Marwan's code name was The Angel.) But after reading the book, Vromen was at first reluctant to direct the movie. "I felt it was very one-sided... a very coherent story but told from the Israeli point of view," he said. "So I started to use a lot of my relationships in the Arab world to get into the Egyptian side of the story." One of Marwan's best friends eventually served as a valuable source of information for the film. Vromen regards Marwan as a hero for Israel who had more complex motivations beyond the notion of helping to create peace in the Middle East. "His motivation early on was as a young man who was poor, lost and humiliated by his father-in-law," the filmmaker said. Nasser apparently viewed Marwan with disdain, due in part to his dearth of funds at the time and his family's lack of status, Vromen said. "I'm very confident that when he first approached the Mossad it was an avenging emotional path," the filmmaker added. It was also partly a mercenary decision. "I don't know of any spy who didn't want to be paid," Vromen said. In fact, the filmmaker continued, Marwan used his Mossad fees to create the seeds of what would become a $3 billion business empire by the time of his death. Marwan's fortunes began to shift after Nasser died and he became a close aide to Sadat, with access to state secrets. As he became more successful, his motivation to spy shifted towards creating "a path to make peace between the countries," Vromen theorized. "I really think he was also putting all his efforts to serve Sadat," the director added. "He knew the only way for the president to sustain power would be if he could [persuade] the Israelis to give the Sinai back to the Egyptians." Even so, a number of Egyptians so far have criticized Vromen's movie on social and other media platforms. Nick Briggs/Netflix Ashraf Marwan (top center) with Egyptian President Anwar Sadat (seated, left) and Libyan leader, Col. Muammar Gaddafi (seated right). The Egyptians have long claimed that Marwan was a cunning double agent who actually duped the Israelis into funding expensive war mobilization efforts in two false alarms prior to the 1973 war. Many Egyptians have dismissed the film as Israeli propaganda and denounced Vromen's casting of an Israeli actor to portray Sadat. Vromen counters that he at first approached a number of Egyptian actors who refused to participate in the film. "Egyptians have cold feet about the movie," he said. "The assumption is that because I'm an Israeli, I am biased." But Vromen insists he attempted to show both countries' side of the story. "When I analyzed the character, money was a huge part of his persona," he said. "But I don't believe he could have risked what he risked, eventually, if he didn't have a bigger cause." NEW YORK (JTA)-Supreme Court Justice Elena Kagan, appearing at a Jewish day school in Brooklyn, spoke about her Jewish background and how her family jumped from synagogue to synagogue. "I had a very strange Jewish upbringing actually," Kagan, 58, told journalist Dahlia Lithwick, who moderated the Wednesday evening conversation. "You would think Lincoln Square Synagogue, she comes from a Modern Orthodox family. Actually my family didn't really know what it was." Though Kagan had her bat mitzvah at that Modern Orthodox synagogue on Manhattan's Upper West Side, she did not grow up in a strictly observant household, the associate justice told an audience of about 280 at the Hannah Senesh Community Day School. Kagan said her mother grew up in "an extremely, extremely religious family," but had abandoned many aspects of Jewish observance by the time she had children. "[We] kept a kosher home so that my grandparents would eat there, but otherwise we were the kind of Jews who kept a kosher home and then went out and ordered shrimp at the Chinese restaurant," the jurist recalled. Before Lincoln Square, the family was members of B'nai Jeshurun, which belonged to the Conservative movement (today the congregation is unaffiliated) and Congregation Rodeph Sholom, a Reform synagogue. "My mother's view was that everything depended on how good the rabbi was, and she would go from synagogue to synagogue to synagogue to find a rabbi she liked," Kagan said. Kagan said she "loved" attending Hebrew school at Lincoln Square, but hit a snag when she realized the synagogue, then led by Rabbi Shlomo Riskin, had not allowed a girl to have a bat mitzvah ceremony. "It was 1973 and they'd never done such things, and it was this kind of process of negotiation to try to get them to even get it into their heads that this was a possibility, and it was sort of a disappointment because I didn't get to do all the stuff my brother had done," she said. In the end, Kagan had a bat mitzvah ceremony on Friday evening rather than the typical Saturday morning, and chanted from the Book of Ruth instead of the haftarah and Torah portions. "It was a little bit not exactly what I wanted," she said. "But I have to say that they came a super long way even to do that in those days at that sort of synagogue, so I give them a lot of kudos for that." At the day school event, Kagan noted that she is one of three Jewish justices now sitting on the Supreme Court (Ruth Bader Ginsburg and Stephen Breyer are the others). Some thought that President Barack Obama would not nominate Kagan in 2010 because she would be the third Jewish justice on a nine-member court, she said. "As far as I know it never came up in the decision-making process that he used, and it really never came up as I went through the process that leads to confirmation, so I think it's something that's kind of a great thing," Kagan said. The jurist mostly skirted political topics at Wednesday's discussion, but she did address what she described as a "danger" for the Supreme Court today. In the recent past, Kagan said, the court has been seen as split between the left and right, with one jurist in the middle. "It prevents anybody from thinking that the court is on some team because the court just wasn't acting as if it was on any team," she said of the previous configuration. "Sometimes some people got what they wanted and sometimes other people got what they wanted." The Senate Judiciary Committee is holding hearings on the nomination of Brett Kavanaugh to the seat recently vacated by the swing voting Anthony Kennedy. Kavanaugh would be President Donald Trump's second appointment to the court and represent an expected 5-4 conservative majority. Kagan, who is part of the court's liberal wing, worried about a court being seen as merely political, especially in the big cases that "people care about." "I do think it's a dangerous thing," she said, if "it really does seem like the divisions follow ineluctably from political divisions and one side is winning." WASHINGTON (JTA)-There are 15 Jewish Republican candidates running in U.S. House of Representatives races this fall. Two are incumbents and 13 are challengers. JTA is breaking down the races, assessing where the candidates stand on the political spectrum, noting their Jewish involvement and reporting what the forecasters say. Last week we covered the five Jewish Senate nominees, all Democrats. You can find a breakdown of the Jewish Democratic House candidates here. These are all of the Republican House candidates, broken down by state and whether they are incumbents or challengers. (The prospects below are based on the 538 blog unless otherwise noted.) Incumbents: NEW YORK Lee Zeldin, 38 1st District, eastern Long Island, in Congress since 2015. Known for: His robust alliance with Trump, who has endorsed him. Zeldin, an Army veteran, has become a go-to TV talking head defending Trump from charges that his campaign colluded with Russia. Zeldin also embraces Trump's policies on stemming undocumented immigration and has sponsored legislation that would revoke the citizenship of Americans found to be members of gangs. Jewish stuff: An email from the Republican National Committee sent to New York Jewish Republicans called Zeldin "perhaps the most important pro-Israel" member of Congress. He has joined and in some cases led numerous legislative efforts championed by the centrist and right-wing pro-Israel community, including bids to cut funding to the Palestinians. Zeldin was a leading opponent of the Iran deal. Endorsements: The Republican Jewish Coalition PAC and right-wing pro-Israel PACs like American Principles, as well as Trump. Prospects: A 6 in 7 chance of keeping his seat. TENNESSEE David Kustoff, 52 8th District, parts of Memphis and western Tennessee, in Congress since 2017. Known for: Law and order. Kustoff, a former U.S. attorney in Tennessee, has initiated bills that aim to reduce opioid usage and preserve tough sentencing guidelines for criminals who use arms. Jewish stuff: Kustoff told JTA this year that one of his proudest freshman accomplishments was garnering bipartisan support for a bill that would enhance penalties for attacks on religious institutions. The bill recently became law. A primary challenger this year contrasted himself with Kustoff by emphasizing that he was a "Christian conservative." Kustoff won handily with an endorsement from Trump. Endorsements: The center-right pro-Israel PAC, Washington PAC; Trump. Prospects: 99 percent chance to be re-elected. Challengers: CALIFORNIA Ron Cohen, CPA 17th District covering Silicon Valley, challenging incumbent Democrat Ro Khanna. Know this: Cohen has advanced theories that the 9/11 attacks in 2001 were an inside job, that Michelle Obama is a man and that the Obamas' children were sired by others. He has deleted or apologized for some of these theories, but the California GOP has said it will not assist him and county GOPs have pulled their endorsements. Prospects: So poor, Cohen advises visitors to his campaign website to donate to someone else. FLORIDA Joe Kaufman, right-wing activist 23rd District covering parts of Broward and Miami-Dade counties, challenging Wasserman Schultz. Know this: This is Kaufman's fourth attempt to unseat Wasserman Schultz. He is a frequent contributor to Frontpage Mag, where he recently wrote about a purported Muslim Brotherhood threat on Ivanka Trump. Prospects: Nil. MASSACHUSETTS Joseph Schneider, consultant to the aerospace industry 6th District in the state's northeast corner, challenging incumbent Democrat Seth Moulton. Know this: Schneider's family fled from communist Romania when he was a child, and he became a Green Beret. He told the Boston Globe's Jeff Jacoby that he is not a fan of Trump's "cult of personality" but chides Democrats for reflexively opposing the president. Schneider told the Lynn Daily Item that he appreciates Trump for moving the U.S. Embassy to Jerusalem and for his tough posture on Iran. Prospects: Nearly nonexistent: 1 in 99 shot. MICHIGAN Lena Epstein, businesswoman 11th District northwest of Detroit, running to replace retiring Republican incumbent Dave Trott. Know this: Epstein, who chaired Trump's campaign in the state, wrote an op-ed titled "Why this Jewish millennial woman supports Trump" following the revelation late in the campaign that Trump had bragged about sexual assault. In June, she said the Jewish-founded Franklin Hills Country Club canceled a planned fundraiser for her, and she decried a lack of civil engagement in the Jewish community. Endorsements: Republican Jewish Coalition, Trump. Prospects: Not great: a 1 in 6 chance of keeping the seat red. Marc Herschfus, gastroenterologist 14th District encompassing part of Detroit and northern suburbs, challenging incumbent Democrat Brenda Lawrence. Know this: The district includes a substantial population of Chaldeans, the ancient community of Iraqi Christians who speak a version of Aramaic. He told the Chaldean News that as a Jew he feels an affinity with the group, noting that both communities have preserved the Aramaic language. Prospects: Nil. NEW JERSEY Seth Grossman, lawyer 2nd District encompassing the state's south, running to replace Republican Frank LoBiondo, who is retiring. His opponent is state Sen. Jeff Van Drew. Know this: The National Republican Congressional Committee has cut off this former Atlantic City councilor, who has on his Facebook page linked to racist musings. Grossman, whose primary victory was an upset over an establishment GOP candidate, has enthusiastically embraced Trump and has adopted the president's Make America Great Again motto. Prospects: 1 in 40 shot. It looks like this red district will flip to blue. Daryl Kipnis, lawyer 12th District in the center of the state encompassing Princeton University, challenging incumbent Democrat Bonnie Watson Coleman. Know this: Kipnis does not mention Trump on his website and favors a path to citizenship for "dreamers," undocumented migrants who came as children, a position directly at odds with the president but consistent with the state's liberal tendencies. Kipnis praised the Trump administration's decision to move the U.S. Embassy to Jerusalem. Prospects: Extremely unlikely: a 1 in 100 shot. NEW YORK Ameer Benno, lawyer 4th District encompassing parts of Nassau County, challenging incumbent Democrat Kathleen Rice. Know this: Benno, who has worked for Hillel International and Camp Ramah, is the president of the Merrick-Bellmore Jewish Community Council and has traveled to Israel to litigate on behalf of victims of terrorism. Prospects: Nil. Naomi Levin, software engineer 10th District, encompassing Manhattan's lower West Side and portions of Brooklyn, challenging longtime incumbent Jerrold Nadler. Know this: Levin's campaign bio says she speaks four languages, including Hebrew and Russian, "spoken by many in the district." Prospects: Nil. Eliot Rabin, upscale clothing retailer 12th District, encompassing Manhattan's East Side and Brooklyn's Greenpoint, challenging incumbent Democrat Carolyn Maloney. Know this: Rabin, from South Carolina, is a graduate of its military school, The Citadel, and a veteran. He says he was the president of the campus Hillel. He moved to New York to work in clothing. Trump's friendship with Russian President Vladimir Putin rattles Rabin. "I have a big problem with people humoring Mr. Putin when he's an out-and-out murderer," he told Town-Village, an East Side online newsletter. He favors outlawing the purchase of assault rifles. Prospects: Nil. OHIO Beverly Goldstein, audiologist 11th District, runs from Cleveland south to Akron, challenging incumbent Democrat Marcia Fudge. Know this: Goldstein's campaign website says she has been active in the Republican Jewish Coalition and Christians United for Israel. She has also been active with ACT! for America, a group the Anti-Defamation League calls the "largest anti-Muslim group in the United States." Prospects: Nil. PENNSYLVANIA Bryan Leib, businessman and political activist 3rd District covering parts of Philadelphia, challenging incumbent Dwight Evans. Know this: A year ago Leib, 32, made headlines in his city (and earned a spot on "Fox & Friends") for coming out as a Republican who couldn't get dates in a Democratic city. Prospects: Like the nice guy on the dating app, nil. TEXAS Phillip Aronoff, retired steel exporter 29th District, encompassing the eastern portion of the greater Houston area, running to replace incumbent Democrat Gene Green, who is retiring. His opponent is Sylvia Garcia, a Democratic member of the Texas State Senate. Know this: Aronoff for 13 years has been the honorary consul in Houston for Hungary. His campaign website does not mention Trump and his issues page repudiates many hallmarks of the Trump presidency: Gangs pose a greater threat to Mexicans than Americans, Aronoff says, and border security "doesn't require some big expensive wall." He wants a path to citizenship for dreamers and wants to reinstate a work visa program for Mexicans. Prospects: 1 in 99 in a district that is solidly liberal. Here are some other noteworthy tidbits on the midterms: The year of women? Of 56 Jewish candidates in the Senate and the House, 20 are women, among them two, an incumbent and a challenger, in the Senate; six Democratic incumbents in the House; nine Democratic House challengers (half of the party's 18 Jewish challengers); and three Republican House challengers. Inspired by dad Two women House Democratic challengers, Chrissy Houlahan in Pennsylvania and Kara Eastman in Nebraska, do not identify as Jewish, but each says her Jewish father shaped her outlook as a liberal Democrat. Three Levins There are three Levins running: Mike in California and Andy in Michigan, both Democrats, and Naomi in New York, a Republican. Married to the tribe Two Democratic House nominees, David Trone in Maryland and Angie Craig in Minnesota, are married to Jewish spouses and have raised their children as Jewish. They join at least two incumbent House Democrats who have done the same: John Sarbanes in Maryland and Rosa DeLauro in Connecticut. Jew vs. Jew Three House races pit a Jewish Democrat against a Jewish Republican: Nadler against Levin in New York; Perry Gershon against Zeldin in New York; and Debbie Wasserman Schultz against Kaufman in Florida. In the states Four Jews are in gubernatorial races, all Democrats: J.B. Pritzker tops the ticket in Illinois, as does Jared Polis in Colorado. Running for lieutenant governor are Susan Turnbull in Maryland and David Zuckerman in Vermont. (JNS)-Australian Prime Minister Scott Morrison announced on Tuesday that he would consider moving the country's embassy in Israel from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem, which would mark a major shift in policy in support of the Jewish state by a world power following the U.S. decision to recognize Jerusalem as its capital by the Trump administration in December. The Australian leader also announced that his country will vote against recognizing the Palestinian Authority as the chair of the G77 bloc in the United Nations, in addition to reviewing the 2015 Iran nuclear deal, also known as the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action. Morrison, an evangelical Christian from the right-wing Liberal Party who assumed office in August, said he was "open to" the move, describing it as a "sensible" proposal. "The orthodoxy that's driven this debate says issues like considering the question of the capital are taboo. I think we have to challenge that," he said. "We're committed to a two-state solution, but frankly, it hasn't been going that well," he continued. "Not a lot of progress has been made. And you don't keep doing the same thing and expect different results." The potential move by Australia to recognize Jerusalem as Israel's capital would make the country only the third to do so, following the United States and Guatemala in May. Paraguay relocated its embassy there as well, but its new leader, President Mario Abdo Benitez, reversed the move upon entering office. At the same time, it would also be a major foreign-policy win for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who has focused on building relations with nontraditional allies in places such as the Asia-Pacific region, Latin America and Africa. Netanyahu made a historic visit to Australia in 2017, becoming the first Israeli prime minister to go Down Under, where he touted the growing bilateral ties between the two nations. According to the Israeli Prime Minister's Office, Netanyahu spoke with the Australian leader ahead of his announcement on Jerusalem and "thanked him for his remarks." 'Sovereign territory since 1948' Australian pro-Israel groups, such as the Australia/Israel & Jewish Affairs Council (AIJAC), reacted positively to the announcements. AIJAC director of international and community affairs Jeremy Jones told JNS that "AIJAC welcomes the foreign-policy announcements made by Prime Minister Scott Morrison. The commitment to review policy on Iran, with a view towards taking a stand which would genuinely impact on that state's ability to continue to destabilize the Middle East, promote terrorism and existentially threaten Israel, is timely and necessary, given the changed U.S. policy and increasingly aggressive Iranian behavior." "The Prime Minister's declaration of openness to recognizing Jerusalem as Israel's capital and of potentially relocating the Embassy there from Tel Aviv, in the context of ongoing support for Israeli and Palestinian national aspirations and for a negotiated settlement between the parties, is also most welcome. It acknowledges the practical reality of Jerusalem's status, and also that there is no logical reason to continually delay consideration of this issue." AIJAC national chairman Mark Leibler echoed his colleague's remarks: "Recognizing Jerusalem as Israel's capital-something the government now says it is seriously considering-would right a longstanding injustice, as Israel is the only state in the world which the international community insists has no right to choose its own capital. "West Jerusalem, where the Knesset and the other main organs of the Israeli government are located, has been sovereign Israeli territory since 1948," stressed Leibler. "No one doubts that any negotiated two-state peace agreement would see Jerusalem remain as Israel's capital." "I congratulate the Australian government for being open to the idea of moving their embassy to Jerusalem," said Rabbi Levi Wolff of the Orthodox Central Synagogue in Bondi, reported The Guardian. "By doing so, the Australian government is simply stating that Israel-the only free democracy in the Middle East-has the freedom to choose where they want to have their capital. It's a basic right afforded to every nation in the world, so why should Israel be treated any differently?" Morrison cited former Australian Ambassador to Israel Dave Sharma, who is currently running for election in Australia in a heavily Jewish district, as a huge influence on the Jerusalem case. "The previous discussion was premised on the point that you couldn't pursue this issue without risking or without prejudicing the final status," said the prime minister. "Now [Sharma] is arguing the opposite to that, and he's saying that is possible. He's arguing it can be done consistent with Australia's long-running position... He's actually changing the way in which the issue is conceived." However, opposition leaders in Australia accused Morrison of playing politics with foreign policy, as Sharma is in a tight race for a byelection in for the city of Wentworth, home to 20,000-strong Jewish community. Labor opposition foreign-affairs spokeswoman Penny Wong said Morrison was playing "dangerous and deceitful" word games to bolster Sharma. "He is just posturing ahead of a byelection that he is desperate to win in order to hold on to a slim majority," she said. Sharma rejected those claims, saying the announcement "has to do with the timing of the U.N. resolution on which we need to take a position and articulate our views. I don't think any voters are single-issue voters in Wentworth." (BBC Watch via JNS)-The Israel Security Agency's report on terror attacks (Hebrew) during September 2018 shows that throughout the month a total of 204 incidents took place: 70 in Judea and Samaria, 10 in Jerusalem and 124 in the Gaza Strip. In Judea and Samaria, and in Jerusalem, the agency recorded 61 attacks with petrol bombs, eight attacks using improvised explosive devices (IEDs), seven arson attacks, one shooting attack and three stabbings. Incidents recorded in Gaza included 66 attacks with petrol bombs, 35 attacks using IEDs and 23 grenade attacks. There were no cases of rocket or mortar fire during September. One civilian was murdered and one member of the security forces was wounded in attacks that took place during September. The BBC News website did not produce any coverage at the time of the fatal stabbing in Gush Etzion on Sept. 16, but mentioned it a week later in a subsequent report. The "Great Return March" violent rioting along the border between Israel and the Gaza Strip, including the incident in which a soldier was injured in a grenade attack along on Sept. 21, was not the topic of any dedicated BBC News website news reports throughout the month. In summary, visitors to the BBC News website saw very belated coverage of just one (0.49 percent) of the 204 terror incidents which took place during September. Since the beginning of 2018, the BBC has reported 19.9 percent of the terror attacks that have actually taken place and 88.9 percent of the resulting fatalities. Israeli security forces at the scene where a building was hit by a rocket fired from the Gaza Strip in the southern Israeli city of Beersheba, on October 17, 2018. (JNS)-A medium-range grad rocket fired by terrorists in the Gaza Strip destroyed a home in Beersheva, Israel's third-largest city, deep inside Israeli territory. The Red Alert warning system was activated at 3:39 a.m. in Beersheva and the surrounding Negev communities, with residents throughout the area scrambling for shelter. A 39-year-old mother and her three children-ages 9, 10 and 12-were treated for shock after the rocket scored a direct hit on their family home. After hearing the warning siren, the mother woke the children and evacuated them to the home's bomb shelter just seconds before the rocket smashed the house. The family was extracted by police and firefighters were called to the scene, where they started to disconnect power sources and neutralize other risks. An additional rocket with an even higher payload was reported to have landed just off the Mediterranean coast, near a major population center. At around 8:30 a.m., the Red Alert system sounded in two communities in the Hof Ashkelon Regional Council on the Mediterranean coast. No additional injuries or damage were reported. Israeli Air Force fighter jets smashed 20 Hamas and Islamic Jihad terror targets in response, including underground and undersea terror tunnels, rocket-manufacturing sites and Hamas military bases. The Israel Defense Forces also fired on a terror cell, which was in the process of launching additional rockets at Israel. Three Gazans were reported wounded. IDF Spokesman Brig.-Gen. Manelis said the retaliatory attacks will continue. He noted that the Iron Dome missile-defense system failed to stop the medium-range rocket in this case. Hamas "creates an atmosphere of terror in the demonstrations near the border fence, where grenades have been thrown in recent weeks," said Manelis. The Beersheva municipality and the Sdot Negev Regional Council ordered schools closed for the day. An Egyptian delegation arrived in Gaza on Tuesday to attempt to negotiate a ceasefire between Hamas and Israel, with Egypt's head of intelligence expected in Israel on Thursday. Following the attack, a Security Cabinet meeting on the topic of the ceasefire was postponed. Hamas and Islamic Jihad released a joint statement denying responsibility: "We reject any irresponsible attempt to destroy the Egyptian efforts,"" to reach a ceasefire agreement with Israel, "including the rocket fire last night." However, the IDF's Manelis dismissed the terror groups' denials. "Only Hamas and Islamic Jihad have these type of rockets," he said. In the wake of the attack, IDF Chief of Staff Gadi Eizenkot cut short a trip to the United States and Defense Minister Avigdor Lieberman ordered the closure of the Kerem Shalom and Erez border crossings, and shortened Gaza's fishing zone to three nautical miles. When Mae Weisman was in a skilled-nursing facility, recuperating from a recent illness, it was only natural for her to miss doing the things she enjoys. One of the things she most looked forward to upon returning home to Brookdale Island Lake is the weekly Shabbat service led by Jewish Pavilion volunteers. Although the Jewish Pavilion had occasional programs and friendly visits at the nursing facility, Weisman missed having the weekly Shabbat program to look forward to. "This is the most warming, satisfying thing that I find here, is my services on Friday," Weisman said after a recent Island Lake Shabbat. She praised the enthusiasm and dedication of the volunteers: "The men and women really have such a feeling for Yiddishkeit!" An Orlando resident since 1970, Weisman has lived at Brookdale Island Lake for three and a half years. She is a fixture at the Friday Shabbat programs, which help her reconnect to the customs she's observed all her life. She also looks forward to the other Jewish Pavilion programs, including holiday celebrations. She said she is especially warmed to see the annual Passover Seder, led by Paul Stenzler and Terri Fine, pack the house year after year. "They do such a beautiful job," she said. "My children come, and they're awed!" WASHINGTON (JTA)Sen. Ted Cruz called J Street, the liberal Jewish Middle East policy group, rabidly anti-Israel in the Texas Republicans debate with his Democratic opponent, U.S. Rep. Beto ORourke. Congressman ORourke is fond of saying he doesnt take PAC money, but the truth is different, Cruz said Tuesday after ORourke accused the incumbent of accepting big money from political action committees. For example, the J Street PAC, which is a rabidly anti-Israel PAC, has raised over $160,000 for Congressman ORourke because of his many votes against the nation of Israel. ORourke has said and J Street has confirmed that ORourke accepts money from individual donors who route it through the J Street PAC, but does not accept money from the PAC itself. Donors sometimes route individual donations through PACs in order to emphasize to the candidate the issue that they favor. J Street immediately seized upon Cruzs jibe in a fundraising email. You know what? We honestly dont care if Ted Cruz wants to insult us. If anything, being attacked by Ted Cruz is a badge of honor, the group said in an appeal Wednesday with the subject line Ted Cruz Attacks J Street. What we care about is that extremists like himelected officials who undermined the Iran deal, demonize Palestinians to score political points and believe the only way to be pro-Israel is to support every policy of the Netanyahu governmenthold power in Washington right now, the appeal said. Each candidate has raised huge amounts, in the tens of millions of dollars, for the November election. Cruzs reference to ORourkes many votes against the nation of Israel appears to refer to ORourkes vote in 2014 during that years Gaza war against emergency funding for Iron Dome, Israels anti-missile system. Cruz has previously mentioned ORourkes vote. ORourke has said that he objected to how the funding was rushed through, but he took a great deal of flak from the pro-Israel community for the vote. This month, ORourke released a statement saying that he backs defense assistance for Israel because he believes Israel is critically important to the United States because it is the home of the Jewish people, because it is an exemplary democracy that shares our values, and because it is a crucial contributor to our national security objectives in the region. Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif and Federica Mogherini, the European Union's high representative for foreign affairs and security policy, at a meeting on the implementation of the Iran nuclear deal Sept. 22, 2016, in New York. (JNS)-U.S. President Donald Trump vowed in May to pull out of the Iran nuclear deal and signed an executive order in August to re-impose sanctions, which go into full effect on Nov. 4. The European Union, however, appears determined to ignore and circumvent U.S. efforts to force Iran into compliance on its nuclear program, and for the Islamic regime to cease and desist global terror activity. It appears that Trump's foreign policy on Iran has raised European ire and some of those countries do not yet seem willing to view Iran's hegemonic desires as dangerous. As such, European leaders instead seek to bypass U.S. sanctions by continuing to do business with the hostile Islamic regime. To that end, European officials have slammed renewed U.S. sanctions on Tehran as "illegal" and in violation of U.N. Security Council Resolution 2231. France, Germany and the United Kingdom-the three European partners to the accord (the E3)-have vowed to continue efforts to thwart U.S. measures and preserve the Iran nuclear deal. In August, the E.U. gave Iran $20.6 million in aid as part of a larger package to help offset the impact of U.S. sanctions. In September, following a ministerial meeting of the remaining signatories of the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action deal at the sidelines of the U.N. General Assembly, E.U. foreign-policy chief Federica Mogherini claimed that Iran has been complying with its end of the agreement, and said that the European Union would work around U.S. efforts to stem Tehran's oil exports with sanctions. Reading from a statement, she said, "Mindful of the urgency and the need for tangible results, the participants welcomed practical proposals to maintain and develop payment channels, notably the initiative to establish a special purpose vehicle to facilitate payments related to Iran's exports, including oil." However, the chairman of Iranian Parliament's National Security and Foreign Policy Commission Heshmatollah Falahatpisheh has called the European effort to circumvent U.S. sanctions on Iran as "weak." 'They will do whatever they can to circumvent Trump' Dr. Tsilla Hershco, a senior research associate at the Begin-Sadat Center for Strategic Studies, told JNS that "The E.U. is currently turning a blind eye on Iran's ambitions regarding its nuclear program... Mogherini has even initiated measures designated to neutralize the influence of the U.S. sanctions on the EU trade with Iran. "Seemingly, Mogherini was not sufficiently impressed by the exposure of Iran's attempts to conceal its nuclear ambitions, as was the case with its hidden nuclear archives exposed by Israel," continued Hershco. "Concurrently, the E.U. has already expressed its genuine security concerns regarding the Iranian ballistic-missile program, its aspirations for hegemony in the Middle East and its subversive activities, including the financing of terrorist activities. At the end of the day, the E.U. should better stop to underestimate Iran's nuclear ambitions, as they are interconnected with Iran's ongoing regional and global subversive activities, opposed by the E.U." The Europeans have made it clear they are committed to the JCPOA and point to numerous inspections by the International Atomic Energy Agency that, they say, prove Iran is in compliance. But this goes against the evidence that Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu presented at the recent U.N. General Assembly in New York. There, he provided what appears to be ample and sound proof that Iran continues to deceive the world over its nuclear ambitions. He also called on IAEA head Yukiya Amano to immediately inspect the areas he revealed. Yet the IAEA appears to have ignored Netanyahu's demand-a move that suggests that it is unreliable in keeping Iran in check. According to Emmanuel Navon, an expert in E.U.-Israel relations at the Jerusalem Institute for Strategic Studies, two issues regarding the E.U. remain of serious concern. "The first," he told JNS, "is economic interest. Most of the countries, especially Germany and France, want to circumvent U.S. sanctions because they want to keep business going in Europe, especially car-makers and natural-gas companies. In some areas, they can circumvent the sanctions, but ultimately, companies need to choose between doing business with Iran or doing business with the United States. That's why the sanctions are effective; they force the businesses to choose. That's one aspect." "The other aspect," Navon continued, "is from the E.U. itself, and Mogherini and ideology. They hate Trump. They think the deal they reached with Iran three years ago was the best deal they could have reached, and they will do whatever they can to circumvent Trump." 'Israel can break that consensus' While collectively, European countries often appear unwilling to listen to Israel's concerns regarding Iran's nuclear ambitions and regional aspirations, Jerusalem has good relations with some of the E.U. countries individually, and the Jewish state's concerns have made their way into the halls of European parliaments. "By having a part in convincing the U.S. to pull out of the deal, Israel was able to influence European attitudes towards Iran," said Navon. "Netanyahu has been doing a pretty good job in developing ties with the so-called rebels in Eastern Europe. So now, when there is a vote on the Mideast, Israel can break that consensus." Navon was skeptical that E.U. efforts to bypass U.S. sanctions would prove successful. "The test really will be whether the E.U. will be able to convince the companies to remain in Iran," he added. "At the end of the day, the bottom line is that European companies will have to choose between doing business with Iran or with the U.S." Quotes "Most of the countries, especially Germany and France, want to circumvent U.S. sanctions because they want to keep business going in Europe, especially car-makers and natural-gas companies. In some areas, they can circumvent the sanctions, but ultimately, companies need to choose between doing business with Iran or doing business with the United States. That's why the sanctions are effective; they force the businesses to choose." Emmanuel Navon, an expert in E.U.-Israel relations at the Jerusalem Institute for Strategic Studies "At the end of the day, the E.U. should better stop to underestimate Iran's nuclear ambitions, as they are interconnected with Iran's ongoing regional and global subversive activities, opposed by the E.U." Dr. Tsilla Hershco, a senior research associate at the Begin-Sadat Center for Strategic Studies. The Jewish Pavilion and Vitas Hospice is offering a free, six-week Grief Support group for people who have lost loved ones (spouses, children, parents, etc.). The first session is on Monday, Nov.12 from 10:30 a.m. until noon at Oakmonte Village (Valencia Building) in Lake Mary. Rabbi Maurice Kaprow from VITAS Innovative Hospice will lead the discussion. Judaism provides a beautiful, structured approach to mourning that involves three stages. When followed carefully, these stages guide mourners through the tragic loss and pain and gradually ease them back into the world. The loss is forever, but the psychological, emotional, and spiritual healing that takes place at every stage is necessary and healthy. The process of mourning is not easy, and the class provides a structure to let mourners feel their aloneness, separating them from the outside world and then gradually reinstating them back into society. Time does heal. But not because we are busy and the memories fade. With time comes the realization that the person we are today reflects the loved one we lost. The elements of our character, actions and values may result from this special soul lost. Like all Pavilion events, refreshments and socializing are part of the program. RSVP to Nancy Ludin at the Jewish Pavilion nancyludin@jewishpavilion.org or 407-678-9363. U.S. Ambassador to the U.N. Nikki Haley talked about some of the behind-the-scenes dealings with her boss, President Donald Trump, as well as foreign envoys in a closed-door meeting of the politically conservative Council for National Policy, Harpers Magazine reported. The diplomat revealed details about confrontations she had with some of Americas most notorious adversaries, including North Korea. To pass sanctions in the U.N. Security Council against that Communist state, Haley resorted to the madman theory, a political theory from the Nixon administration used to make leaders of hostile nations think the U.S. leader was irrational and volatile. My boss is kind of unpredictable, and I dont know what hell do. Thats what she said to her Chinese counterpart, Haley told the group. I tell the president, I do this all the time, Haley said, and he totally gets it. Haley also provided background about her acceptance of the job of ambassador two years ago. I told [Trump], Honestly, I dont even know what the U.N. does, she said. I finally decided that I could take the job, but with a few conditions, she noted. I told the president I wanted to be a cabinet secretary. And he said, I can do that. I said I wanted to serve on his National Security Council. Done. Then I said Im not going to be a wallflower or a spokesperson. I want to be able to have a decision-making role and give my advice on policy. And he said, Done! Defense of Israel The conservative audience was especially appreciative when Haley talked about her role in the U.N. defending Israel and Americas recognition of Jerusalem as its capital. Haley said she played a big part in helping the administration cut off its huge contributions to UNRWA, the Palestinian aid organization that the Trump administration has called irredeemably flawed. The Council for National Policy says it brings together the countrys most influential conservative leaders in business, government, politics, religion, and academia, with the aim of spreading the values of the Conservative movement in America. Many top-level evangelical Christians belong to the group, which is considered pro-Israel. JERUSALEM (JTA)Israel Post and the U.S. Postal Service have issued a joint stamp for Chanukah. The stamp also is meant to celebrate 70 years since the establishment of diplomatic relations between Israel and the United States, Israel Post said in a statement. The new stamp design was launched simultaneously in the Touro Synagogue in Newport, Rhode Island, the oldest synagogue in the United States, and at the American Center in Jerusalem. Todays joint stamp issue is a symbol of the shared values and the cultural affinity between the United States and Israel, U.S. Ambassador to Israel David Friedman said at the Jerusalem ceremony. Postal Service Judicial Officer Gary Shapiro said in Rhode Island: Starting today, this work of art celebrating the Jewish Festival of Lights will travel on millions of letters and packages, throughout America and around the world. The stamp art features a Chanukah menorah created using the technique of papercutting, a Jewish folk art, by artist Tamar Fishman. Behind the menorah is a shape that resembles an ancient oil jug representing the miracle of the oil that burned in the candelabra in the Holy Temple in Jerusalem after its sacking and recapture for the eight days necessary to resupply. Additional design elements include dreidels and a pomegranate plant with fruit and flowers. The stamp is being issued in the United States as a Forever stamp, which will always be equal in value to the current first class mail one-ounce price. It will sell in Israel for 8.30 shekels, the cost of a regular first-class stamp. Chanukah begins at sundown on Dec. 2. The first joint U.S.-Israel Chanukah postal stamp was issued in 1996. (Israel21c)-Humanitarian organization IsraAID is sending volunteers to northwest Florida; teams already helping in North Carolina, Philippines and Indonesia. Israeli humanitarian NGO IsraAID is preparing to deploy an emergency response team to northwest Florida, which has suffered brutal devastation from Hurricane Michael since it made landfall on Wednesday. Several people have been killed and thousands evacuated from their homes as the category-four hurricane damaged and destroyed houses, hospitals, roads and water systems across the Florida panhandle. IsraAID's team in Florida will collaborate with Team Rubicon, an international disaster response organization founded by US military veterans, to aid the return of survivors of Hurricane Michael to their homes. IsraAID also is working with Team Rubicon in North Carolina to remove debris and restore the homes of people forced to evacuate by Hurricane Florence last month. American volunteers are being recruited to join the IsraAID effort. "This will be the second time in just over a year that we have responded to an emergency in the state, after Hurricane Irma hit last September," said IsraAID co-CEOs Yotam Polizer and Navonel Glick. "Our team will remain in the area to help people affected by this devastating storm for as long as we are needed." IsraAID also has emergency response teams on the ground in the Philippines and Indonesia. Last year, IsraAID provided disaster relief to communities affected by Hurricanes Harvey, Maria and Irma in Texas, Puerto Rico and Florida; and by wildfires in Santa Rosa, California. In Houston, the organization is piloting a project to map community vulnerability to future disasters, while in Puerto Rico the team is providing long-term access to safe water and developing community response to the psychological and social impact of Hurricane Maria. After the initial emergency period ends, IsraAID transitions towards supporting a long-term, sustainable recovery, based on an assessment of need and in partnership with the local community. As of 2018, IsraAID has responded to crises in 47 countries, and currently has programs in 18 countries. Jewish Academy of Orlando will hold its annual book fair, Monday, Oct. 29-Nov. 2. This year's theme is Enchanted Forest. The fair's signature event, Family Night, will be held Oct. 28, at 6.30 p.m. The event will feature four children's authors including: Christina Farley, author of "The Princess and the Page"; J.J. Howard, author of "Pugs and Kisses"; Peter Raymundo, author of "Third Grade Mermaid" and "The Narwhal"; and Margaret Mincks, "Payback on Poplar Lane." "Once again, we are delighted to have each author conduct a special activity including, and back by popular demand, Peter Raymundo's illustration session. It will be a entertaining evening for the entire family," stated Lanie Reisman, school librarian. The Book Fair and Family Night are open to the community. Everyone is invited to shop the book fair all week between 8 a.m. and 4 p.m. To learn more about the book fair and Jewish Academy of Orlando, please visit: https://www.jewishacademyorlando.org or follow us on Facebook https://www.facebook.com/JewishAcademyOrlando. (JNS)-Since March, the Gazan border has played host to a series of violent demonstrations. Thousands of rioters, some of whom are armed with hand grenades, Molotov cocktails and slingshots, regularly amass along the border. As a whole, major media outlets have failed to accurately and objectively cover the events of the so-called "March of Return," and as a result, the truth surrounding the events of the last several months has been largely obfuscated. Enter Joseph Truzman, known on Twitter simply as "Joe." What began as a hobby of tracking and documenting various Palestinian militant groups in the Gaza Strip has become the "go to" source for objective coverage of the ongoing clashes in the enclave. "What I do is all about showing what is [happening] on the ground without advocating," said Truzman, who works from Oregon. "I want a good representation of the facts on the ground." Truzman, who daily tweets dozens photos, videos and statements from the various factions in the Gaza Strip, has garnered attention from high-profile journalists and, more notably, high-ranking Israeli officials who regularly share his content on their own social media pages. Joe was tight-lipped on how he gathers his information. "I can't reveal the secrets to my recipe," he joked. He went on to say that protecting the identity of his sources, especially of those in Gaza, is of the utmost importance. In the Hamas-controlled strip, these informants risk death when they share information that may expose the militants' tactics to the outside world. Truzman has followed Israeli security affairs since childhood, specifically those related to Gaza. "I read books on the Yom Kippur War and Israeli security services as a kid," he said. Truzman's childhood passion was palpable through the phone as he recalled every detail of a story he had read about Israeli operatives infiltrating Gazan militant leadership, entering the country by sea and posing as Palestinians from Lebanon. His attention to detail is evident in his work today. In spite of the platform's notorious brevity, Truzman manages to share content that is both digestible and revealing. In the coming months, Truzman expects to release new content with the hope of making the information from the border more accessible to his followers. "From my own take, the border [violence] isn't going to stop any time soon," said Truzman. "I plan on doing this for a long time." Perhaps one of the most significant motivating factors for Truzman's commitment to the subject has been what he calls the "downright awful" coverage of the ongoing situation by major media outlets. "When I started," said Truzman, who has collected more than 4,200 followers over the last eight months, "I was surprised at the lack of information going into some of these stories. As far as the journalists covering it, they're not doing their jobs-I almost feel like they don't really care. A lot of times, I've found that they're just flat-out wrong." Where journalists failed, Truzman has succeeded in providing objective, well-researched coverage of the ongoing border riots. For example, on Sept 29, an article from the Guardian reported that the increasing number of gatherings being held at night are "to save lives as people can move under the cover of darkness," omitting, as Truzman had reported nearly a week prior to the article's publication, that the purpose of these "night-time confusion" units is to regularly launch incendiary balloons and explosives towards Israel. "Staying objective is a learning process," he said. "I always think about my posts; I think about how it will be received by everyone out there. You can remain as neutral as possible, you're still going to get people who don't like [your content]" In spite of the occasional criticism, Joe's impartiality has led both Israelis and Palestinians to reach out and express their thanks to him. "I have Palestinians who message me saying good job; I have Israelis who message me saying good job. I think that means I'm doing something right." To keep up with the latest from the Gaza border, follow Joe Truzman on Twitter @Jtruzmah. Liel Asulin is a writer and educator. He is a campus coordinator with CAMERA. The Palestinians and several Muslim countries expressed indignation after Australian Prime Minister Scott Morrison announced he was considering recognizing Jerusalem as Israels capital and moving the countrys embassy to the city. Morrison revealed the possibility in a telephone conversation with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Monday. Im very thankful to him for this. We will continue to strengthen ties between Israel and Australia, Netanyahu tweeted that day. Morrison, Australias new prime minister, said on Tuesday he was open to following the U.S., which 10 months ago announced it was moving its embassy to Jerusalem. The idea was proposed to him by Dave Sharma, a member of his party and former ambassador to Israel. When sensible suggestions are put forward that are consistent with your policy positioning and in this case pursuing a two-state solution, Australia should be open-minded to this and I am open-minded to this and our government is open-minded to this, Morrison told reporters. Australias standing at stake? The Palestinian Foreign Ministry called on Morrison to reconsider his move, claiming it would be in violation of international law and United Nations resolutions. A Tuesday statement published by the official Palestinian WAFA news agency claimed Morrison harmed Australias interests and its international standing, and urged the Australian opposition, civil society organizations, the business sector and the Arab and Islamic communities to press the Australian government to reconsider its position. The Palestinian representative to Australia, Izzat Salah Abudulhadi, slammed the decision, calling Morrisons plan deeply disturbing and saying it would embolden the Trump administration to resolve the Israel-Palestinian conflict in a way that leaves the status of Jerusalem and Palestinian refugees off the table, the Guardian reported. Abudulhadi hosted a meeting of representatives of several Middle Eastern countries on Tuesday to discuss the Australian prime ministers proposal. The head of the Palestinian delegation was joined by representatives from the embassies of 12 countries in the Middle East and North Africa: Kuwait, Jordan, Algeria, the United Arab Emirates, Egypt, Sudan, Qatar, Lebanon, Saudi Arabia, Morocco and Iraq. Indonesia weighs in When Morrison became prime minister in August, he made his first overseas trip to Indonesia, the worlds largest Muslim-majority nation which strongly supports the Palestinians. Morrison told Parliament that he had briefed Jakarta overnight about the announcement. But the Australian Broadcasting Corp. reported that an unnamed Indonesian official had said Jakarta had been taken by surprise by the announcement, which could harm trade negotiations between the two countries. Indonesian Foreign Minister Retno Marsudi said his government questions the merits of Morrisons announcement and conveyed its strong concern. Indonesia has asked Australia and other countries to continue to support the Palestinian-Israeli peace process in accordance with the principles agreed upon and not take steps that could threaten the peace process itself, and threaten the stability of world peace, she said. While many Arabs and Muslims expressed sharp opposition to the U.S. relocation of its embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem in May and threatened action, the strong rhetoric did not manifest itself in violent protests. AP contributed to this report. The anti-Israel Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement has complexly failed in its mission to financially harm the Jewish state and has no impact whatsoever on its economy. Israels Globes financial news reported last week that a study of the impact of BDS on the Israeli economy estimates the damage at 0.004 percent, while some companies even benefit from the boycott. Israels Ministry of Strategic Affairs launched the study in 2010, and based on queries to hundreds of senior executives of large Israeli companies from every economic sector, the study has determined that the BDS has failed in its mission. When asked to quantify in money how much their company lost as a result of the economic boycott created by the BDS, The proportion of Israeli companies able to state that they had been damaged by the sanctions was around 0.75 percent. The rate of damage of each of them was less than 10 percent of their revenues, and even that was mostly during Israels counter-terrorism Operation Protective Edge in the summer of 2014. The companies experienced no damage in other years. A calculation of all the numbers shows that the cumulative proportion of economic damage since 2010 was 0.004 percent. To put it in tangible figures, if the Israeli economys yearly income were to average NIS 1 million, the damage from the sanctions would have been NIS 40 ($12), a completely negligible sum. BDS helping Israel businesses Ironically, there are also Israeli companies that benefited from the BDS campaign against them. One Israeli business reported that BDS activists demonstrating in front of its store in London left after two days when the media lost interest. After they left, the number of buyers at the store was four times the number on an ordinary day. Local non-Jewish residents who support Israel came especially to buy at the store in order to demonstrate their sympathy for Israel, so BDS essentially created a boomerang effect. Similarly, BDS academic boycotts are failing as well, and while some artists have joined the BDS cultural boycott of the Jewish state, the vast majority of performers ignore it. Video of Louis Farrakhan comparing Jews to termites removed from Facebook (JTA)A video posted to the Facebook account of Louis Farrakhan in which the Nation of Islam leader compares Jews to termites was removed for violating the social media platforms hate speech policies. It remains posted on Twitter, which said last week that it does not violate company policies. The video represents a Tier 1 violation for Facebook, The Wrap first reported. A Tier 1 violation includes attacks comparing a person or group of people to animals that are culturally perceived as intellectually or physically inferior. Tier 1 infractions also prohibit violent and dehumanizing speech, according to Facebooks community standards, Farrakhan had posted the video to his 960,000 followers, according to The Wrap, with a comment reading: To members of the Jewish Community that dont like me. Thank you very much for putting my name all over the planet. Because of your fear of what we represent, I can go anywhere in the world and theyve heard of Farrakhan. Thank you very much. A link to the video on YouTube also was deleted, with a message that it was removed for violating YouTubes policy on hate speech, whose parent company is Google. A video of the full speech remains available on the Nation of Islam website. Farrakhans tweet posted Tuesday was attached to video of a speech he gave Monday marking the 23rd anniversary of the Million Man March, his 1995 rally advocating empowerment for black men. To the members of the Jewish community that dont like me, thank you very much for putting my name all over the planet because of your fear of what we represent I can go anywhere in the worldIm not mad at you because youre so stupid, he said at the speech in Detroit. So when they talk about Farrakhan, call me a hateryou know what they docall me an anti-Semite, stop it! Im anti termite! The video clip of his remarks about Jews remains up on Twitter. A BuzzFeed reporter on Wednesday quoted a spokesperson for the company as saying that Louis Farrakhans tweet comparing Jews to termites is not in violation of the companys policies. The policy on dehumanizing language has not yet been implemented. DC Bible museum says 5 fragments in its Dead Sea Scroll collection are fake (JTA)The Museum of the Bible in Washington, D.C., will remove five items from its Dead Sea Scroll collection after an analysis showed they were fake. The museum said Monday that an outside analysis of the items concluded that they show characteristics inconsistent with ancient origin. Scholars had raised doubts previously about the authenticity of the fragments, which were believed to belong to a collection of ancient Jewish manuscripts found in caves near the Dead Sea. The museums Dead Sea Scroll collection consists of 16 items. 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 artifacts, the elaborate testing process undertaken and our commitment to transparency, the museums chief curatorial officer, Jeffrey Kloha, said in a statement. The museum said it will replace the five fragments with three others that will be on exhibit pending further scientific analysis and scholarly research. The analysis of the fragments was conducted by Bundesanstalt fur Materialforschung und-prufung, a German institute that analyzes such materials. The Museum of the Bible, which opened last November and cost $500 million to build, was largely funded by the evangelical Green family, which runs the Hobby Lobby chain of crafts stores. Its president, Steven Green, serves as the museums chairman. Jordan decides not to renew parts of 1994 peace treaty with Israel JERUSALEM (JTA)Jordans King Abdullah told Israel he has decided to not renew parts of their 1994 peace treaty. Abdullah said Sunday he would not renew two of the treatys annexes, that allowed Israel to lease two border areas from the Jordanians. Israels 25-year lease on the areasBaqura and Ghamris up next year. Baqoura and Ghumar have always been our top priority & our decision is to terminate the Baqoura and Ghumar annexes from the peace treaty out of our keenness to take all decisions that would serve Jordan and Jordanians, Abdullah tweeted. The deadline for renewing the annexes is later this week. Baqura, or Naharayim in Hebrew, is located south of the Sea of Galilee in Israels north, and Ghumar, or Zofar in Hebrew, is located south of the Dead Sea, in Israels south. Both are located on the border of Jordan and Israel. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said on Sunday that Israel intends to negotiate with Jordan over extending the lease. On Friday, protesters in Amman called on the king to cancel the lease and reclaim sovereignty over the territories. Others called on Jordan to cancel the entire peace treaty with Israel. The peace deal was reached between Abdullahs father, King Hussein, and Yitzhak Rabin, then Israeli prime minister. It is very unpopular in Jordan, which is home to a large Palestinian population. Jordanians also claim that Israel has failed to live up to water-sharing agreements, the Washington Post reported. A German Jewish communitys longtime leader may not be Jewish (JTA)The man heading a small Jewish community near Hamburg, Germany, has been accused of posing as a Jew for at least two decades. An investigation by Der Spiegel magazine into the biography of Wolfgang Seibert, head of the 250-member Jewish community of Pinneberg since 2003, revealed that he may be an imposter. Seibert is denying the Spiegel report, which was published Friday, telling the German media he would respond after speaking with his lawyer. He also refuted the magazines claim that he said he would withdraw from his position. The position is unpaid but gives its leader access to community funds. Seibert, 71, has described himself as having been born in a displaced persons camp for Jewish survivors in Germany and said his grandmother survived Auschwitz. He calls himself a liberal Jew and has been active as a promoter of interfaith dialogue. But Spiegel reporters Martin Doerry and Moritz Gerlach found documents indicating that Seibert was born on Aug. 16, 1947, to Protestant parents in Frankfurt, and was baptized a few days later. His grandparents also were Protestant, the report says, adding that it is unlikely that Seibert had any Jewish ancestors. His paternal grandfather was a German sergeant in World War II and his father was a private. According to the magazine, Seibert was convicted several times for fraud and embezzlement, and served time in jail well before he began his Jewish leadership role. Rabbi Walter Rothschild, who had served as head rabbi for the Reform Jewish communities in the German state of Schleswig-Holstein from 2003 to 2015, raised the question of Seiberts identity with the Jewish court, or beth din, after the rabbi was fired from his post. Rothschild served the small Reform congregations in the state and thus became acquainted with Seibert, and reportedly recalled the difficulty that Seibert had in documenting his Jewish roots. (As he could not adequately document those roots, Seibert had started a conversion process in 2002 at about the time he was co-founding the Pinneberg Jewish community, according to Spiegel. But the conversion process was dropped the following year after Seibert presented papers showing he had been a member of the Jewish community of Frankfurt am Main from 1972 to 1982 and that his mothers maiden name was Cohen.) The rabbinical court decided that there was enough proof that Seibert was Jewish and let the matter go. But the Spiegel reporters found otherwise after consulting numerous archives, including the Institute for City History in Frankfurt, the Memorial Center of Yad Vashem in Jerusalem and the International Tracing Service in Bad Arolsen in Germany. They also interviewed people who had known Seibert, including former members of the Pinneberg community as well as Seibert himself. Though Seibert told them he had incontrovertible evidence of his Jewishness, and this time said his mothers maiden name was Sznajder, he did not produce any documents. He also said he had been leading prayer services himself while waiting for the communitys newly hired rabbi to begin his duties next year. The journalists suggested in their report that it is not politically correct in Germany to challenge Jewish identity, thus it may have been relatively simple to hide under the protective cover of a presumed Jewish past. In a second interview with Seibert, the journalists confronted him with their documentary evidence. At this point, Seibert reportedly told them that the most important thing was that he had felt Jewish from an early age, and that he had told stories to match the Jewish identity I felt I had. He also told them he would resign from his position in Pinneberga claim Seibert now denies. Israels president, at Rabin memorial, says new generation does not understand danger of polarization JERUSALEM (JTA)President Reuven Rivlin of Israel, speaking at a ceremony marking the 23rd anniversary of the assassination of Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin, expressed concern that the new generation does not understand the seriousness of the polarization and incitement that led to the murder. Rivlin lit a memorial candle and spoke at the official ceremony opening the events marking the anniversary of Rabins death. It also marks the death of his wife, Leah Rabin, five years later in the same week. Members of the Rabin family were among those on hand for the event at the presidents residence in Jerusalem. Others included Deputy Knesset Speaker Revital Sweid, Supreme Court Justice Neal Hendel and students from the Bilingual School in Beersheba. In the 23 years that have passed since the murder, we have been through difficult times; wars and contentious political initiatives, Rivlin said. Each time, and despite the polarization of views, we have avoided terrible moments like this. Have we healed? I am not sure. I do not know. Day by day, the generation that did not know Yitzhak grows. The generation that did not itself see the dark slippery slope from incitement and hatred to bloodshed. Children and young people who have grown up and were born and immigrated over the last 20 or 30 years, the leaders of our tomorrow, did not know Yitzhak. And did not know the murder. And the truth is that something is not working. Because each year we make speeches and hold ceremonies, and yet we see the erosion of the centrality of the murder and what it means in Israeli public discourse. A right-wing extremist, Yigal Amir, shot Rabin to death on Nov. 4, 1995, at the end of an event the prime minister held to demonstrate public support for his efforts to make peace with the Palestinians. In addition to serving as prime minister, Rabin served as ambassador to the United States and defense minister, as well as Israels military chief of staff during the Six-Day War in 1967. Yonatan Ben-Artzi, Yitzhak Rabins grandson, criticized sitting Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in his address as a leadership that encourages division and violent attacks on other opinions. He who drives and incites against anyone who thinks differently from him as a sourpuss or a leftist will lead to the destruction of the next temple, Ben-Artzi said. Ben-Artzi reportedly called on Rivlin to support legislation that would put term limits on prime ministers. Netanyahu has served nearly 10 consecutive years in office after having previously served as prime minister from 1996 to 1999. North Texas school district asks mom to prove her child is Jewish to excuse Yom Kippur absence (JTA)A Jewish mother in North Texas said her childs school asked for proof that her daughter is Jewish in order to excuse her for Yom Kippur. Lauren Gordon told local CBS affiliate CBS 11 Dallas Fort Worth on Thursday that when she asked last month for her daughters absence from school on Yom Kippur to be excused, the Garland Independent School District requested that she send documentation from the religious establishment you attended, according to the report. That response basically told me that they didnt believe that we were Jewish. That they needed proof. Honestly, it upset me just as much as it made me angry, she said. After she posted about it on Facebook, she found out that other schools in the area also were asking for proof of Jewishness in order to excuse children from school for Jewish holidays. A local rabbi told CBS 11 that such requests were relatively recent. Gordon said that after she complained to the schools principal she formally apologized, said she did not mean to offend us in any way and moving forward this will never be an issue at her school while she is there. The schools handbook states that all religious holidays are excused. Gordon told the news channel that she wants to ensure that every school district in North Texas drops the requirement that parents prove a child is Jewish in order to miss school for the holidays. Australias embassy move to Jerusalem in doubt following Liberal Partys defeat in key parliamentary election (JTA)Australias potential move of its embassy to Jerusalem was left in doubt after the Liberal government lost its one-seat majority following a defeat in a special election for Parliament. Dave Sharma, the former ambassador to Israel, was beaten Saturday in the vote to fill a vacant House of Representatives seat near Sydney. Independent Party candidate Kerry Phelps, a convert to Judaism, won the Wentworth seat, which has gone traditionally to the Liberal Party. Wentworth is home to a Jewish community of 20,000, or 12.5 percent of its population. Days before the election, Prime Minister Scott Morrison had announced that he was considering officially recognizing Jerusalem as the capital of Israel and moving the Australian Embassy there. Morrison had credited Sharma with suggesting the embassy move, a major departure from Australias foreign policy on Israel. Critics suggested that Morrison was playing politics with the announcement by pandering to the Jewish community in order to maintain his one-seat majority. The seat was open following the resignation in August of Malcolm Turnbull, a Liberal lawmaker and former prime minister who was replaced by Morrison. Muslim man charged with hate crime for attack on Orthodox Jewish man walking to synagogue (JTA)A Pakistani Muslim cab driver was indicted for beating an identifiably Orthodox Jewish man at an intersection, and charged with a hate crime. A grand jury indicted Farrukh Afzal on Friday and included the hate crime charge, after it was presented by the District Attorneys Office, the local ABC affiliate WABC reported. The NYPD recommended Farrukh be charged with a hate crime, and the District Attorneys office initially declined those charges, according to the report. Afzal originally was charged with attempted assault in the second degree, assault in the third degree, menacing and harassment, but not with a hate crime since prosecutors believed it to be a case of road rage after being told that Afzal thought the victim was an Orthodox Jewish man who had stepped in front of his car earlier in the day. A second Orthodox man attempted to assist the victim and ran away while being chased by Afzal. The victim, Rabbi Lipa Schwartz, 62, claims that Afzal shouted Allah, Allah, said he wanted to kill all Jews, and made references to Israel throughout the Oct. 14 attack, which happened as Schwartz walked to synagogue for morning services. Afzals wife told the New York Daily News that her husband is schizophrenic and was acting out because he did not take his medication. Afzal reportedly has an extensive police record of violent assaults, including eight previous arrests. Nigerian separatist leader Nnamdi Kanu resurfaces in Jerusalem JERUSALEM (JTA)Nigerian separatist leader Nnamdi Kanu announced that he is in Israel a year after he disappeared from his home in southeast Nigeria. Kanu has been campaigning for an independent state called Biafra in southeastern Nigeria. A video live-streamed on Friday on social media showed Kanu praying at the Western Wall in Jerusalem wearing a kippah and Jewish prayer shawl, or tallit. Kanu claims the Igbo people, who are the majority in southeast Nigeria, are a lost tribe of Israel and that he will lead them to the promised land of Biafra. In a broadcast Sunday on his pirate radio station, Radio Biafra, Kanu announced that Im in Israel. I owe my survival to the State of Israel, he said, adding that he received help from the countrys Mossad intelligency agency He did not indicate what kind of assistance he may have received from Israeli authorities. In 2015, Kanu was charged with criminal conspiracy, intimidation and membership of an illegal organization, which could amount to treason, according to the BBC. He was released on bail last year after spending more than 19 months without trial on treason charges. Nigerian troops raided his home city of Umuahia, in the Abia state, in September 2017, after which he went missing until Friday, including failing to show up for his scheduled trial. In the Sunday broadcast, Kanu called on his followers to boycott elections next year in Nigeria unless there is a referendum for a state of Biafra on the ballot. He said he would not return to Nigeria for his trial, the Daily Post of Nigeria reported. Polish museum commemorates 1,500 towns where Jews were saved from the Nazis WARSAW, Poland (JTA)The Museum of Poles Saving Jews opened a memorial orchard commemorating 1,500 towns and villages where Poles saved Jews during World War II. The orchard, which was dedicated Friday in Markowa, in southeastern Poland, includes only towns where a resident was designated Righteous Among the Nations by Yad Vashem, Israels Holocaust authority. Between trees, on glass illuminated boards, nearly 1,500 names of villages, towns and cities are listed where Polish gentiles saved Jews during the German occupation. Yad Vashem has awarded nearly 7,000 Poles with the Righteous designation. According to Mateusz Szpytma, vice president of the Institute of National Remembrance, Poles saved tens of thousands of Jews during the war. Just as these trees bear fruit, your commitment and attitude will bear fruit each year because the descendants of those you have saved come into the world each year, Szpytma said at the ceremony. The orchard is another Polish initiative emphasizing the involvement of Poles in helping Jews during the war. Poland wants to honor them with two more monuments in Warsaw and a museum built in Torun. A diplomatic crisis erupted between Poland and Israel earlier this year after the Polish government passed legislation that criminalizes blaming Poles for Nazi crimes. Israeli soldier stabbed by Palestinian assailant in Hebron JERUSALEM (JTA)An Israeli soldier was stabbed by a Palestinian assailant near the Tomb of the Patriarchs in Hebron. The soldier was lightly injured in the Monday morning attack. After being stabbed, the soldier, along with other troops nearby, shot and neutralized the terrorist, preventing him from stabbing anyone else, the IDF said. The assailant was identified by the Palestinian Maan news agency as Muhammad Maamar al-Atrash. Maan reported that he was killed by Israeli forces. A photo accompanying the Maan article showed the assailants body covered with a black bag. Haaretz reported that he is a 42-year-old father of seven. (JNS)Given the rising tensions on the Israel-Gaza border, it is time we ask Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Defense Minister Avigdor Lieberman: How many times can you threaten Hamas? How many times can you say Somebody stop me before your credibility, as well as the militarys ability to effectively generate deterrence, will be completely eroded? The Palestinians have marked significant propaganda achievements over the past seven months. Islamic Jihad has declared that its operatives will not allow any normalcy for the border-adjacent Israeli communities, and Hamass weekly border riots and arson terrorism campaign have severely undermined Israeli sovereignty on the southern frontier. Israel may be willing to tolerate some things to avoid an unnecessary military conflict, but the fact that Palestinian terrorism dictates the daily routine of Israelis living near the border cannot be one of them. Moreover, it seems Hamas has schooled Israel in the art of deceptive diplomacy. For months, Egypt and U.N. Middle East envoy Nickolay Mladenov have been trying to broker a ceasefire between Israel and the Islamist terrorist group, only to see Hamas leaders go back and forth. Now, when Israel seems determined to take action, Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh suddenly declares that progress has been achieved in the indirect talks. As a result, Egyptian intelligence chief Abbas Kamel plans to visit Israel and Gaza this week, so is this the right time to launch a military campaign in the coastal enclave? Israel, it seems, has been made dizzy by the number of factors it must take into consideration. These include Palestinian Authority leader Mahmoud Abbas, the humanitarian situation in Gaza, Irans regional ambitions, the deal of the century the United States is working on and for which Hamass leaders seem willing to sacrifice the masses hurling themselves at the security fence weekly and last, but not least, the looming Israeli elections. The correct course of action would probably be to relinquish the futile attempts to understand the Palestinian mindset. A ceasefire deal may be brewing on the horizon, but it does not seem like a viable option at this time, especially when any mention of a truce always seeks to tie Israels hands. Sometimes you have to go with your gut and experience has shown that the Israeli reaction must significantly exceed what appears necessary. Statements like Netanyahu made on Sunday, saying If Hamas has any sense, it will cease its fire and its violence right now, are a commitment. If we have passed the point of no return, then surely we have reached the point of When you have to shoot, shoot. Dont talk. Amnon Lord, is an Israeli journalist with the daily newspaper Makor Rishon. His articles and essays about media, film and politics have been published in The Jerusalem Post, Mida, Azure, Nativ and Achshav. (Camera on Campus via JNS)As the U.S. Air Force C-17 left Afghan airspace, I allowed myself to relax for a brief moment. My year-long tour in Kabul, Afghanistan, was over. Returning home, I thought of those fellow soldiers, including my command sergeant major, who had not been so fortunate. In their service to the United States, they had been killed by the Taliban. In remembering them, I thought of the oath that we had all taken: to support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic. Now, as a former U.S. Army captain and a third-year law student, I have had the opportunity to further study the Constitution and the cases that have expanded and narrowed its original amendments. Particularly with the First Amendment, I have wrestled with whether there should be limits on what can be said. The battles I am currently fighting are no longer with bullets in Kabul, but with ideas in the classroom. Since entering law school, I have witnessed the vitriol directed at pro-Israel and Zionist students. At my law school, only one side of the story is told. To challenge the Students for Justice in Palestine agenda is to be ostracized among the general student body. In becoming the chair of the Alliance for Israel club, I have put myself at the center of these debates over free speech. I have fought their hate, and what I believe to be virulent anti-Semitism, by hosting pro-Israel and Zionist speakers at the law school. These collective experiences of serving in the military and being a law student have made me a free speech absolutist. I despise the hateful rhetoric that SJP spews about Israel. I believe, however, that they have a right to voice their opinions, no matter how ignorant. This is because I know that when I bring pro-Israel speakers to campus, these groups would want nothing more than for my events to be shut down. Free speech is a double-edged sword. I am, therefore, fearful of the undefined label of hate speech and its infinite ramifications. Such labels can be redirected to causes that I support. Despite my beliefs regarding freedom of speech, there are, nevertheless, limits to what the First Amendment will protect. In the seminal United States Supreme Court case of Brandenburg v. Ohio, the court overturned the lower courts rulings that had found the defendant, an Ohio KKK chapter leader, guilty of violating the Ohio Criminal Syndicalism Act (OCSA). The defendant had been arrested after he gave a speech that degraded Jews and blacks. The Supreme Court held that: [T]he constitutional guarantees of free speech and free press do not permit a State to forbid or proscribe advocacy of the use of force or of law violation except where such advocacy is directed to inciting or producing imminent lawless action and is likely to incite or produce such action (emphasis added). Imminent is the operative word. I do not call for UCLA to disinvite the 2018 National SJP Conference to be held on UCLAs campus from Nov. 16-18. Rather, it is imperative that UCLA and SJP understand the standard articulated in Brandenburg, and put the appropriate protections in place to prevent any possibility of physical violence from occurring. This means that UCLA administrators and SJP National Conference organizers need to educate themselves on the past violence that has occurred after SJP rallies. There are numerous cases of anti-Semitic incidents that resulted in physical violence. Many of these include documentation of SJP members physically assaulting pro-Israel and Zionist students. For example, on April 27, an SJP protest against a pro-Israel event at New York University turned violent when an SJP member stole an Israel[i] flag [from pro-Israel students] and brought it to the [SJP] protesters. [The flag] was ripped, stomped on, defaced with pink chalk and then burned. Also at the event, an SJP member sneaked in during the singing of Hatikva, forcefully and hurtfully grabbed the microphone from the [pro-Israel student] who had been holding it, and shouted, Free Palestine! The SJPs president explained the behavior of the protesters to Washington Square News saying, Were not going to let them stand by and support Zionism. Our point is to make being Zionist uncomfortable on the NYU campus. This incident is only one in a series of documented physical assaults against pro-Israel and Zionist students. In opening its campus to the 2018 SJP National Conference, UCLA becomes an inviting location for such physical violence to occur. In viewing the Brandenburg standard, one can debate the imminence of such violence. What is more likely than not, however, is that in the wake of such SJP rallies, violence is more likely to occur. In hosting this event, UCLA and the 2018 National SJP Conference should be held accountable for any physical violence that their conference attendees commit. Preparing for the worst, UCLA should have ample campus security in place to prevent SJP attendees from engaging in violent acts. UCLA should have designated protest areas. They should also have a zero-tolerance policy for any physical violence or destruction of property that occurs during the conference. In addition, the 2018 National SJP Conference organizers need to understand that, yes, they can lie all they want about Israel and Zionism, but direct, immediate calls for physical violence are not legally protected. They should be held liable for any physical violence to Jewish, pro-Israel or Zionist students and structures during and immediately following the 2018 National SJP Conference at UCLA. Once the line is crossed between hateful rhetoric, which is protected, and physical violence, which is not, campus authorities should react appropriately and arrest those physically violent offenders. Contributed by Micah Q. Jones, a third-year law student at Northeastern University School of Law. Before law school, Micah served more than five years in the U.S. Army. He is currently the chair of NUSLs Alliance for Israel (AFI) club. (Israel Hayom via JNS)Israeli Defense Minister Avigdor Lieberman announced on Saturday that he was stopping the newly resumed supply of fuel and gas to the Gaza Strip, and added: As long as the violence on the Gaza border does not come to a complete halt, including sending burning balloons over the fence and setting tires on fire near Israeli communities located near Gaza, Israel will not be resupplying the Gaza Strip with fuel or gas. On the other hand, Hamas leaders claim daily that the marches of return on the border will end only when the siege on Gaza is lifted. On Saturday, head of Hamass political bureau Ismail Haniyeh even declared that we appreciate the efforts to throw off the siege, but we will not accept partial solutions. The martyrs blood will not be spilled in vain. The marches will not end until the siege on Gaza is thrown off. The Hamas and Palestinian Authority leadership, like many in Israel and throughout the world, argue that steps Israel and Egypt have taken against the Hamas regime in Gaza are causing immense suffering to the million-and-a-half residents of Gaza, who they say are living in the largest prison in the world. One of the harshest critics of Israels policy is Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, who constantly repeats that not so much as a crate of tomatoes can be shipped to Gaza without Israels approval. Is the Israeli-Egyptian siege on the Gaza Strip the main reason for the serious humanitarian crisis there? The answer is an unequivocal no, despite the repeated declarations by the Palestinians and their supporters that Israel and Egypt are choking the population. The facts show a different picture. There is neither a siege nor a blockade in place on Gaza, other than the limitations demanded when dealing with a terrorist organization that has been in charge of Gaza and its population since 2007, when it seized power in a violent coup in which it expelled and executed Fatah officials and their families. After the putsch, the Hamas regime announced that it was tossing out all the security agreements and addenda to them that had been signed between Israel and the Palestinian Authority regarding Gaza. In response, the Israeli government declared Gaza hostile territory. Israel put major limitations on the shipment of goods into Gaza; barred Palestinians from moving between Gaza and the P.A., as well as trade between the West Bank and Gaza. Israel also shut down all maritime entrance to and exits from Gaza and declared severe restrictions on its legal fishing areas. However, despite declaring Gaza hostile territory; despite the military conflicts Israel waged against Hamas and the other armed factions in Gaza; despite the unceasing terrorist activity waged from Gaza; Israel always took care to allow 100 trucks carrying goods and fuel into Gaza every day. Meanwhile, the Egyptians are also playing a part in the supposed siege on Gaza. Until the events of the Arab Spring of 2011 and the revolts in Egypt that ousted first former President Hosni Mubarak and then Muslim Brotherhood-elected President Mohammad Morsi from power, Egypt allowed goods and people to pass through the Rafah crossing. But as the smuggling tunnels at Rafah multiplied and the Sinai-based terrorist groups gained in strengthnot to mention the 2008 incident in which operatives from Hamass military branch, the Izzedine al-Qassam Brigadesbreached the Rafah border fence and hundreds of thousands of Palestinians streamed into Egyptthe Egyptians decided to close the Rafah crossing entirely to the movement of people and goods. The events of the Mami Marmora flotilla in May 2010, in which Israeli commandos boarded a Turkish vessel carrying pro-Palestinian activists and killed several in the ensuing violence, prompted Israel to change its maritime blockade policy and make it significantly easier to move people and goods into and out of Gaza. In effect, since January 2011, Israel has allowed hundreds of trucks into Gaza each day. These trucks are carrying all sorts of goods, other than construction materials and items classed as dual-use, such as certain types of fertilizer that can be used to make bombs or ammunition, drones, or other electronic equipment that could be used for terrorist activity. Israel has even allowed trade between Gaza and the West Bank, as well as exports of various items from Gaza to Israel and other countries. The only policy that has remained in place is the ban on Gazans entering Israel, other than humanitarian and specially approved cases. It should be noted that the only goods crossing between Israel and Gaza is Kerem Shalom, now that Rafah is being opened only occasionally by the Egyptians. Who is calling that a siege? Earlier this month my wife and I flew to Iceland to chase and hopefully observe the Aurora Borealis, the Northern Lights, a spectacular colorful light show appearing in the night sky above the arctic circle, and in some instances even at lower latitudes. This heavenly event is caused when intense solar activity increases the solar wind and spews out highly charged particles strong enough to break out of the suns gravitational pull, which then travel to the outer limits of the solar system. As this solar wind passes through Earths magnetic field these particles are captured and interact with the atmospheric gases to create this spectacular night event. Scientists who study the sun and solar activity cycles are able to predict to some level of probability up to 30 days in advance, when these solar events will result in a stronger display as the Northern Lights. Armed with this scientific prediction, cameras and very warm clothing, we decided to fulfill this item on our bucket list with a weeks sojourn in Reykjavic, Icelands capital city. We could not wait to join our tour a few days later that would take us up to the Blue Mountains, a one hour drive away from the city lights to an unobstructed view of the sky and hopefully, to a dry and cloudless location. We were not disappointed. Although the swirls of light appeared to us more milky white rather than made up of vivid colors (because of the human eyes inability to see the full color spectrum in the darkness), the camera lens caught the lights in their full glorious color arrays. While we were in Iceland we also discovered another shining light, the new Jewish Center of Iceland. This newest of world-wide Chabad Houses is led by 27-year-old Rabbi Avraham Feldman and his charming wife Mushky, who arrived in May of this year with their young family. Although there is no official count of the Jewish population in Iceland, it is estimated to be in the neighborhood of 350 consisting of long-time local Jewish residents and expatriates doing business in Iceland. Many are in interfaith marriages. There are also increasing numbers of Jewish and Israeli tourists coming to see Icelands natural wonders. Rabbi Avi, as he likes to be called, has moved quickly to establish and sustain this nascent organized Jewish community, the first ever according to historians. As a result of his efforts, the Icelandic government has recognized and registered Judaism as a legitimate religion under Icelandic law, and as an eligible recipient of a proportional part of the religious income tax revenue imposed on all Icelanders. His first organized Shabbat dinner and service drew more people than his large apartment could handle. Subsequent and regular Shabbat services and dinners are now held each week at hotels. He indicated in our meeting that a Hebrew school is being started and is enthusiastically being received by the tiny Jewish community, who for the first time see an opportunity to educate their children in the faith, heritage and sense of peoplehood that make up Judaism. While their initial reception and first efforts were successful, many problems remain to be solved to insure the continuity of Chabads efforts in Iceland. Slaughtering animals according to Jewish law is not permitted since the country adopted the process of stunning as the only humane method of animal slaughter. Non-medical circumcision is frowned upon and is threatened by pending, but not yet passed legislation. On a positive note, because the nation has to import a substantial amount of its food, many kosher-labeled products can be found from overseas on supermarket shelves around the country. The efforts in establishing an organized Jewish community by this enthusiastic, optimistic and hard working couple in a country with a sparse Jewish population, strengthens and inspires the Jewish people everywhere; and truly brings a shining light to all Icelanders who in winter experience 18-hour days in darkness. In you wish to comment or respond to any of the contents herein you can reach me at melpearlman322@gmail.com. Please do so in a rational, thoughtful, respectful and civil manner. Shabbat Shalom Mel Pearlman holds both a B.S. and M.S in physics as well as a J.D. degree and came to Florida initially to work on the Gemini and Apollo space programs as a young physicist. He has been practicing law in Central Florida for the past 45 years. He has served as president of the Jewish Federation of Greater Orlando; on the District VII Mental Health Board, as Special Prosecutor for the City of Winter Park, Florida; and on the Board of Directors of the Central Florida Research and Development Authority. He was a charter member of the Board of Directors and served as the first Vice President of the Holocaust Memorial Resource and Education Center of Central Florida, as well as its first pro-bono legal counsel. Rabbinic debate has a long history in Judaism. In that spirit, I am responding respectfully to Rabbi Sanfords Olshanskys article in the Heritage accusing Mayor Andrew Gillum of being anti-Israel and Chris King of being anti-Semitic. Both charges are extremely serious and should not be made without full investigation, knowing all of the facts, and speaking to those who personally know them. Truth is a basic value in Judaism and we are not permitted to accuse someone of something that is not true in order to create fear of that person. How often this has been done to us as Jews! Rabbi Olshanky connects Andrew Gillum to Dream Defenders and then goes on to tell us all of the negative things related to Israel the organization does. The extrapolation, therefore is that Gillum is himself anti-Israel. What he fails to say is that Gillum is not a member of this organization nor closely allied with them. He supports their fight for human rights. They were in our own community protesting against Trayvon Martins murder. But Mayor Gillum does not support their positions on Israel. I wonder if those who stand with evangelicals support of Israel should be accused of supporting all of the issues these evangelicals believe in, many of which the Jewish community strongly opposes? Here are the facts. Andrew Gillum is on record against BDS, has been to Israel three times, once while missiles were launched into Israel and was deeply affected by this. He has connected Tallahassee to a sister city in Israel. A very close rabbinic colleague of mine in Tallahassee has known Mayor Gillum for 15 years and over the years has told me of the mayors strong support of Israel. But even more despicable to me is accusing Chris King of being anti-Semitic: A charge that should not be taken lightly. This conclusion is based upon a single foolish statement he made at 19 years of age. He has apologized and repented for this statement right after it happened. There is absolutely no other evidence to make this claim. But here are the facts. I know Chris King and his family. He is one of the most open, compassionate and embracing strongly religious people I know. He maternal grandfather was a physician in World War II and liberated a concentration camp. That experience deeply affected his grandfather and he taught it to his children, including Chriss mother Marilyn. She went on a quest to understand how the Christianity she loved could do that to Jews. She served on the board of The Holocaust Center, was involved in bringing Elie Wiesel to Orlando, and taught her children to ensure that this would never happen again. Chris is very close to many in our own Jewish community confiding in them like family. Do these facts sound like someone who is anti-Semitic? It is unworthy and mean spirited to make such charges in order to scare the Jewish community away from him. This is not about suggesting the way people should vote. In fact, I would say the same thing about those who have accused Representative Ron DeSantis of being a white supremacist and a racist. Do not draw conclusions until you know the facts. Judaism has a long history of this and it is an important lesson in order to maintain standards and norms in a society that seems to be drifting away from these. Rabbi Steven Engel is cohost of Friends Talking Faith with The Three Wise Guys. (JNS)The confirmation of Brett Kavanaugh as the newest associate justice of the U.S. Supreme Court was greeted by the organized Jewish world in the same manner as his nomination by U.S. President Donald Trump. While some organizations stayed silent, liberal-leaning Jewish groups generally deplored his ascension to the high court. The far smaller number of conservative-leaning groups that label themselves as Jewish cheered him. But the willingness of so many of the institutions that are tasked with representing Jewish interests to seek to drag the entire community into the no-holds barred brawl about Kavanaugh and the future of the court didnt draw much notice or debate. Thats because we take it for granted that such groups rarely question the notion that what is good for the secular partisan interests that most Jews support is what is also good for the Jewish community. While just about everyone in the country had an opinion about the court fightand is generally willing to view those who disagree as either evil or otherwise beyond redemptionthis ought to be one of those moments when Jewish institutions should be particularly careful about not getting involved in partisan politics that are tearing the country apart. Yet few seem willing to stay out of even the nastiest and most divisive battles, where, as was the case with Kavanaugh, the Jewish angle is far from obvious. The argument for their actions is based in a belief that liberal stands reflect Jewish values about social justice. For some, that means anything that is identified with liberals or Democrats can be depicted as a Jewish issue, rather than just one on which many individual Jews have strong opinions. But the problem with this sort of thinking is that once you head down that road, virtually any issue can be defined as the right Jewish stand, even if it is wholly unconnected to the direct interests of the Jewish people. When groups see no distinction between those partisan affiliations and the interests of the community, they are also marginalizing those who disagree. While there is no doubt that most American Jews are Democrats, the notion that liberals can speak for all Jews is as risible as the idea that one point of view encompasses that of all women or any other demographic group, let alone giving them the right to brand dissenters as beyond the pale. The irony here is that the one issue on which there can be no debate about its importance to the Jews or the obligation for Jewish organizations to speak upIsraelis often the one about which American Jews are bitterly divided. Support for the Jewish state has become controversial in some quarters, with many opposing its government policies on the peace process or are offended by the closeness between Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Trump. Many on the left are unperturbed by the drift away from support for Israel in the Democratic Party base or the rise of popular figures who are either critics or outright opponents of Zionism. An example of how this worked was the battle over President Obamas 2015 Iran nuclear deal. The pact was opposed by the overwhelming majority of Israelis and their government as a threat to their security, as well as to that of the region and the world, and many in the organized Jewish community followed their lead. But while polls indicated that Americans were split on the issue, the same surveys showed that U.S. Jews were more inclined to favor it, with 48 percent of Jews supporting the deal and only 28 percent of non-Jewish Americans doing so. Most Jewish Democrats viewed the issue through a partisan lens; even supporters of Israel among them were able to persuade themselves that it was the right thing to do. What this means is that though support for Israel is as strong, if not stronger, than it has ever been, Jews are, like the Democratic Party, divided about it or at least far more reluctant to support Netanyahu than many Christians. By contrast, when Jews dive headfirst into tussles like the Kavanaugh nomination, which are in no small measure primarily driven by opinions about abortion, those on the left do so in the knowledge that, as a 2015 Pew Research Survey revealed, most Jews are far more enthusiastic supporters of Roe v. Wade than they are of Netanyahu and Israeli security. On other issues, the Jewish angle is there, but isnt as clear-cut as some on the left assert. As the descendants of immigrants with memories of the Holocaust always present, most Jews are generally supportive of immigration and sympathetic even to those who are here illegally. But there is a difference between those principles and support for open borders, as well as opposition to enforcing the laws. When synagogues declare themselves sanctuaries for illegals and some Jewish Community Relations Councils embrace their plight with an enthusiasm that might exceed their level of support for Israels positions, the disconnect between Jewish interests (which ought to include the rule of law, as well as compassion for those who violate it) and the stands of those who claim to speak for the Jews remains clear. Yet as long as 83 percent of Jews are in favor of legal abortion and only 28 percent oppose something like the Iran deal, liberal-leaning groups arent wrong to conclude that their members (and much of the community) dont think theres anything wrong with them being liberal or partisan. While the numbers back up these assertions, that doesnt necessarily mean that Jewish organizations are right to squander their clout and credibility in fights where specifically Jewish issues arent at stake. Not all U.S. Jews may be fans of Netanyahu, but support for Israel and the security of the Jewish people as opposed to secular concernsis a Jewish obligation, not an option. That is something those who claim to speak for the Jews should never forget. Jonathan S. Tobin is editor in chief of JNSJewish News Syndicate. Follow him on Twitter at: @jonathans_tobin. Media coverage of Russian President Putins visit to India earlier this month focused strongly on a US law, Countering Americas Adversaries Through Sanctions Act (CAATSA), and its implications for the India-Russia defence cooperation. CAATSA originated from allegations, in the aftermath of President Trumps election, of collusion between his campaign staff and Russia. This snowballed into a wider, bipartisan concern that he might undermine American security interests by allowing unwise concessions to Russia. A bill, introduced in the US Congress, sought to restrain President Trump from diluting the Russia sanctions regime, which was established after the 2014 annexation of Crimea and subsequent events. As it progressed through Congressional deliberations, the bill developed a more ambitious objective dovetailing sanctions with US commercial interests. The hitherto sanctions compelled companies in the US and European Union to deny Russia technologies, investments and financing in specified sectors and put restrictions on transactions in US dollar or Euro. The CAATSA bill introduced sanctions against third countries for significant transactions with Russia in defence and energy. The menu of sanctions includes technology denials, visa bans and access restrictions to US banking, currency and financing. Official US briefings admit that, besides denying revenues to Russia, the principal focus of sanctions is on weaning business away from Russia and towards the US. India is the worlds largest arms importer, sourcing over 60% of its weapons from Russia. Its major defence purchases from Russia obviously attract the CAATSA scanner. CAATSA is like a nuclear weapon, which is meant to deter but not to be used. The Indian government imports Russian weapons; if sanctions are slapped on it, it cannot buy weapons from other countries. It is the threat of sanctions that is expected to yield the desired result: thinking twice before negotiating a new Russian defence platform, exploring US alternatives and seeking CAATSA waiver on a transaction to transaction basis. The US has so far imposed CAATSA sanctions only once: on a Chinese state-owned company that imported the S-400 air defence system. Since the US does not sell arms to China, these sanctions had the symbolic purpose of warning India against acquiring the system. In implicit recognition of Indias situation, US officials acknowledge publicly that countries will not undermine their defence capabilities by suddenly discontinuing arms purchases from Russia. They indicate that, as long as these countries do not go in for new, advanced systems (like the S-400), there would be flexibility even in respect of new purchases, provided the overall share of Russian arms in their inventory is reducing (which it is, in Indias case). India-Russia defence deals in the pipeline helicopters, frigates and rifles should benefit from this. There is also some flexibility now on significant defence transactions. As per provisions in the 2019 US defence budget, the President can waive sanctions, provided he certifies that it is in US national security interest and that the country concerned is reducing the share of major Russian defence equipment or cooperating on other critical US strategic interests. The debate on whether such unilateral sanctions for political ends violate international law has no practical impact. The US will continue to pursue what it considers its national interest. The challenge for India is to safeguard its national interests. A rigorous legal analysis of the restrictions imposed by CAATSA and other Russia-related sanctions can ensure that we do not forego business opportunities by over compliance. Specialised legal expertise on sanctions law in the US and European Union could be tapped. India has to continue to strive for US accommodation of its perspectives. Its arguments are well known. The India-US strategic partnership is built on a strong mutuality of interests but it is not an alliance. The US has important interests in India: defence sales, vibrant market and convergent perspectives on the Indo-Pacific, which it would not want to sacrifice. Indias diversification of defence acquisitions has followed a consistent course, which predates CAATSA; the US has been the main beneficiary of it in recent years. The process cannot be rushed without damage to defence preparedness, but it can be accelerated by more emphasis on technology transfers than military sales. India needs the autonomy to shape its relations with Russia in accordance with its political, economic and security interests. CAATSA waivers should be based on this overall perspective and not on a case-by-case review of transactions. Finally, India should be willing to make significant concessions on economic issues that President Trump keeps highlighting, in return for US understanding of our strategic perspectives. PS Raghavan is a former diplomat, and convener of the National Security Advisory Board The views expressed are personal Neetu Kapoor has shared a new picture from New York, where she is currently stationed along with husband Rishi Kapoor as he undergoes treatment for an unspecified illness. Her picture shows the two men in her life, walking together on the streets of New York City. While Rishi and Neetu are in the US, Ranbir returned on Thursday. She captioned the Instagram image, When roles are reversed - implying that Ranbir has become the caregiver to his father, now that Rishi is older. The family has been sharing frequent updates on social media. Only recently, Rishi shared a picture of Ranbir and him posing with actor Robert De Niro, whom they bumped into and promptly asked for a photograph with. He wrote: Wow moment. Impromptu meeting with Robert De Nero on 65th and 3rd. He knew Ranbir coz he had met him and Anupam and said come over with Kher for a drink! Simplicity and super stardom. I realized I have been such a bloody brat. Cannot get over his demeanor. Thank you Bob! Wow moment. Impromptu meeting with Robert De Nero on 65th and 3rd. He knew Ranbir coz he had met him and Anupam and said come over with Kher for a drink! Simplicity and super stardom. I realized I have been such a bloody brat. Cannot get over his demeanor. Thank you Bob ! pic.twitter.com/gzdhQDawBO Rishi Kapoor (@chintskap) October 25, 2018 Rishi has been visited by several Bollywood actors during his time in New York. He shared a chill walk with Anupam Kher, posed for group photos with Javed Akhtar, Priyanka Chopra, Sonali Bendre and Ranbirs girlfriend, Alia Bhatt. Dearest @chintskap & #NeetuJi. Thank you for a great evening full of anecdotes about love, life, hindi songs & desi food. Your laughter warmed my heart in freezing New York. Good luck with the hospital visit tomorrow. Looking forward to another great evening soon. Love. pic.twitter.com/toNbrG4AG9 Anupam Kher (@AnupamPKher) October 23, 2018 Thank you Javed Sahab for entertaining and making us laugh so much. Thank for visiting us! Wish you all super luck for your block buster musical shows. Believe me-your show is a break through idea. pic.twitter.com/X4tVoj9LSa Rishi Kapoor (@chintskap) October 19, 2018 Rishi, Ranbir and Neetu had unfortunately missed his mother, Krishna Raj Kapoors funeral, but Alia had made sure to FaceTime Ranbir from the ceremony. Urging fans and the media to avoid speculating about Rishis condition, his brother Randhir Kapoor recently told the Times of India, We dont know yet what is the exact nature of his ailment, he said. Rishi himself doesnt know what he is suffering from. He hasnt even started undergoing tests there; how can people speculate that he has cancer and that too, one that has escalated to an advanced stage. Follow @htshowbiz for more Badhaai Ho director Amit Sharma shared the details of behind-the-scenes from his blockbuster and they are no less entertaining than the film. Badhaai Ho, about a middle-class couple -- with two grown-up sons -- getting pregnant again has Indian in its thrall. But Amit believes he was more concerned with intimacy between middle-aged couples than pregnancy in his film. I am amazed at the response. I am getting calls from everywhere. A friend called from London while watching Badhaai Ho. He said he felt he was watching it in Lucknow. The response of the audience is so intense and deep, it almost feels as though every Indian has adopted the film, Sharma said. Tabu rejected Badhaai Ho role, suggested Neena Gupta It is interesting how Neena Gupta got the role of the impregnated mother. We had gone to Tabuji for the role. At that time, we had a different script in mind and we wanted Tabu maam and Irrfan Khan sir. When she heard the script, she suggested Neenajis name for her character. Tabu felt, perhaps rightly, that she looked like a woman who can still have a child. Badhaai Ho stars Ayushmann Khurrana, Neena Gupta, Gajraj Rao, Sanya Malhotra and Surekha Sikri. Ayushmann Khurrana who was already on board, was a little wary of Neenajis casting. Woh hot Mummy wali feeling aati hai. But I am glad we went with Neenaji. A friend in Belgium who saw my film called to say he saw my mother (who passed away prematurely in a car accident) in Neenaji. And he said the grandmother Surekha Sikri was exactly like my grandmother. My grandmother was bazooka. Once she started firing, nothing could stop her. Late pregnancies are not unfamiliar to me Late pregnancies are nothing unfamiliar to Sharma. My great grandmother and grandmother were pregnant at the same time. And my two wonderful co-writers Akshat and Shantanu had seen the same happening in their family. In fact, they had written the story for an ad film in 2012 which never got made. Gajraj Rao asked me to take a bigger star instead of him Every actor in Badhaai Ho seems pre-destined to play his or her character, none more so than the underused Gajraj Rao who plays Neenas husband. Sharma said: Ayushmann jokingly suggested he should play both the father and son. It was Ayushmann who suggested Gajraj Raos name. I knew him from the time we worked together for Pradeep Sarkar. When he heard the script for Badhaai Ho, he advised we get a bigger star to play the role since it was a major part. But I insisted on him. He agreed. Tu sambhaal lena (you handle it, he requested. Why do we assume married people with grown-up kids dont have sex? A debate has opened up on late pregnancy, and Sharma is quick to clarify: It isnt as if Im counselling couples to have children after the age of 50. As it is, there is a huge population surplus in our country. Why add to it? What we wanted to say in Badhaai Ho had more to with intimacy among couples beyond the socially permissible age. Why do we presume that married couples with grown up children never have sex? Well, the couple in my film did. And never mind if they couldnt use a condom because none was available when they were attracted. The decision to keep the baby was theirs. It isnt meant to be an endorsement of late pregnancy. Rationalising the huge emotional connection that the film has found among the audience, Sharma said: After my first film Tevar, I wanted to make a film that I felt strongly about. I wanted to make a film about a late pregnancy. I shared the idea with Priti Shahani of Junglee Pictures, and coincidentally her writer was also working on the same idea. We decided to merge our projects. And though the writing was done entirely by my co-writers Akshat and Shantanu, we still decided to credit Jyoti Kapoor, the writer selected by Junglee Pictures for their film on late pregnancy. Sharma is grateful for the success and appreciation that has come the films way. A film turns out well only when blessed by all involved. We worked with good vibes. We regretted the fact that we couldnt shoot in the real apartment in Delhi. But we made sure that the set representing the Kaushiks residence was authentic. We wanted to be as honest as possible. I think thats what has been appreciated the most. A Mumbai sessions court has rejected actor Alok Naths wifes application for an injunction order against writer Vinta Nanda, who has accused the actor of rape. According to ANI, the court has said that it cannot pass an injunction order against Nanda at this stage in the proceedings. The application sought that Nanda be directed to refrain from speaking to the media or making statements against Nath. Earlier this month, the actor had filed a civil defamation suit against the writer-producer, after she accused him of rape. The actor had sought a written apology, along with a compensation of Re 1 and a restraining order against Nanda. She had also lodged a police complaint against Nath. In a social media post in October, Nanda had alleged that the actor had raped her 19 years ago. Nath had refuted the allegations and also filed a civil defamation suit against Nanda. Nanda recounted her personal trauma in a wrenching Facebook post. I started to walk home on the empty streets... Midway I was accosted by this man who was driving his own car and he asked me to sit in it and said he would drop me home. I trusted him and sat in his car. I have faint memory after that. I can remember more liquor being poured into my mouth and I remember being violated endlessly. When I woke up the next afternoon, I was in pain, she wrote. Nanda credited actor Tanushree Dutta for giving her the strength to come forward with her story. Tanushrees allegations of sexual harassment against Nana Patekar are seen to have been the driving force behind the Indian #MeToo movement. In a response to ABP, Nath dismissed the allegation and said, Neither I am denying this nor do I agree with it. It (rape) must have happened, but someone else would have done it. Well, I do not want to talk much about it. As for the matter, if it has come out, it will be stretched. Naths wife filed an application seeking an investigation into Nandas claims. We have requested the court to order police to investigate the allegations. The allegations are meant to tarnish our clients image. We do not want money. We are seeking only a monetary compensation of one rupee, Alok Naths lawyer Ashok Saraogi was quoted by NDTV as saying. Actors Deepika Amin and Sandhya Mridul also shared their accounts of allegedly being harassed by Nath. Renuka Shahne and Himani Shivpuri have said that Naths predatory behaviour was an industry open secret. A police complaint has been lodged against Nath. Follow @htshowbiz for more In the 70mm cacophonic build up to the 2014 general elections, a recurring theme was the hype around the so-called Gujarat model. The Bharatiya Janata Partys (BJP) narrative through the campaign was that the ascent of Narendra Modi would ensure that the status quoist elites of Lutyens Delhi would get a whiff of fresh air from Gandhinagar, and what Gujarat thinks today, India would think tomorrow. Today, it is that very Gujarat model which is under the scanner as the controversy in the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI), the countrys premier investigation agency, has played out almost like a dangerous gang war where crime meets political intrigue. What is the Gujarat model? In political terms, it means the near decimation of all potential claimants, both within the BJP and outside, to Mr Modis status as the Supreme Leader. Where once the BJP in Gujarat had a parivar of senior leaders, by 2014 there was only one unquestioned Big Boss. To make it more attractive, the Gujarat model was marketed as Vibrant Gujarat, reflecting a deeper commitment to an alluring notion of high growth, vikas or development. The darker aspects of the Gujarat story, be it deeply divided communities or glaring regional and income inequalities, were glossed over. But perhaps the most distinctive sales pitch for the Gujarat model was the branding of prime minister Modi himself as a tough and decisive leader who would cut through the red tape of a slothful and inefficient state apparatus. Gujarat was widely praised, especially by the countrys business elites, as a single window clearance state where access to the individual mattered more than any institutional rigour. This single window, all powerful CMO meant that even anti corruption watchdogs were made subservient to the political executive. The conflict between the chief minister and the Gujarat Governor over the appointment of a state Lokayukta is a classic example of how the Modi government in Gandhinagar was unwilling to cede space to even a constitutional authority when it came to major appointments. This Gujarat model, with its centralising tendencies, might have worked in a relatively small state but now finds itself under strain when sought to be replicated in the Prime Ministers Office (PMO) at the Centre where the diverse nature of work and sheer scale of the government machine militates against any obsessively controlling mindset. The unprecedented anarchy at the top of the CBI is only the latest example of what happens when a model of governance is imposed from above in a manner that throws up parallel power centres and short circuits due process. This crisis has been in the making ever since the PMO decided to thrust a controversial Gujarat IPS officer, Rakesh Asthana, on to the countrys premier investigation agency as its director. It was only a Supreme Court intervention that prevented a silent coup from being completed. Asthana was just one of several Gujarat IPS/IAS officers brought into crucial government positions. A roll call in the PMO, senior bureaucracy and investigating agencies reveal a disproportionate number of Gujarat cadre officers, a majority of whom had worked closely with the prime minister in his previous avatar. It could be argued that Mr Modi is simply following a precedent set by most prime ministers who hand picked officers with whom they share a strong personal rapport. But choosing trusted bureaucrats to stay within ones comfort zone is one thing; seeking to disregard constitutional norms and institutional independence while making critical appointments is quite another. If the easing out of Raghuram Rajan as RBI governor exposed the government to the charge that it was intolerant of differing voices, howsoever credible, the CBI controversy is a pointer to a potentially even more damaging accusation: the Modi government is seeking to intervene in politically sensitive cases and protect officers who may seem to be tainted. Remember, the prime ministers biggest calling card has been his self-styled image as a crusader against corruption, best defined in his one-liner, na khaoonga na khane doonga. Now, if within 24 hours of an FIR being filed accusing Mr Asthana of virtually running an extortion racket, the CBI director, Alok Verma, who triggered the FIR is shunted out in a midnight coup and the investigation team changed, what is the message being sent out? Was he removed because of a turf war or because, as has been speculated, he was planning to investigate the contentious Rafale deal? Mr Asthana, too, may have been reluctantly forced out but will the serious charges against him be fully investigated or buried in the sands of shortlived public memories? It may be time for the prime minister to break his silence and reveal his mann ki baat on these uncomfortable questions. Post-script: When the United Progressive Alliance was in power, the CBI was called a caged parrot by the Supreme Court. So what tag should we now attach to a CBI split wide open under the National Democratic Alliance? A vulture perhaps, feeding on its own carcass of dwindling credibility as an agency free of political interference? Rajdeep Sardesai is senior journalist and author The views expressed are personal An eight-year-old student of a madrasa died after he sustained a head injury during a scuffle between two groups of minor boys in south Delhis Malviya Nagar on Thursday, police said. The scuffle broke out in the morning when students from madrasa objected to playing by some local boys on a land in front of the madrasa, the police said. The police have registered a case of murder and apprehended four juvenile boys. An officer said that Mohammed Azeem ,who lived in the madrasa, collapsed during the scuffle and was declared brought dead at the hospital. According to the police, doctors said there were no external injuries on the deceaseds body. A 11-year-old boy, also an eyewitness, said that he, along with Azeem and two others, were playing in the compound outside the madrasa. They(other group of boys) threw fire crackers and stones at us. We had a fight when they started abusing. They were five. We were four. Four of them picked up Azeem and threw him on a bike nearby. They also threw him on a rickshaw. He fell unconscious, the eyewitness said. The police said they received a call at 10:10 am from a madrasa, informing one of their residents, a minor boy, had been declared dead at the MM Hospital in Malviya Nagar, after getting into a fight with the other boys of the neighbourhood. The victim studied and lived in the madrasa. Deputy commissioner of police (south) Vijay Kumar said that a police team rushed to the spot and the hospital. During initial inquiry, we found that the minor boy was a student of Madrasa Dar-ul-Uloom-Faridiya and is a native of Haryana. The staff at the madrasa and other eyewitnesses told police that on Thursday morning four minor boys, all 12-year-olds, were playing in front of the madrasa. Five to six boys from the madrasa were also playing there, the DCP said. Kumar said, after some time, the two groups of children clashed during which Azeem sustained an injury on his head. The students told their elders in the madrasa and the child was rushed to a hospital where the doctors pronounced him dead. There were no external injuries on the childs body and post mortem reports are awaited to ascertain the cause of death. All four minor boys who were allegedly involved in the scuffle that led to the childs death have been apprehended, he said. Mumtaz Ali, a teacher at the madrasa, who also claimed to be an eyewitness, said, The boys from the jhuggis threw a stone at Azeem. They then threw fire crackers at Azeem and others. This led to a fight. When our boys objected and one of them came to us with a complaint, four boys picked up Azeem and threw him on a bike and later on a rickshaw. During questioning, the boys said that they often play on the vacant land in front of the madrasa but other boys from nearby slums oppose it. The areas of Mundka and Punjabi Bagh in west Delhi have become the newest addition to the list of pollution hotspots in Delhi as they have been recording very poor to severe levels of air quality for at least a fortnight. The Supreme Court-appointed Environment Pollution (Prevention and Control) Authority (EPCA) on Thursday asked the Delhi government to submit a report regarding these areas, which are known hubs of industrial activity. The agencies are also expected to list possible solutions to Delhis chief secretary for preparing a time-bound action to improve the air quality in these two areas. The Air Quality Index (AQI) value of Mundka on Thursday was recorded at 437 (in severe category) while Punjabi Bagh stood at 322 (in the very poor category). Large-scale waste burning during night has been found as the major reason behind spiking of pollution levels in these areas. This also includes industrial waste from a number of shoe-making factories which are burning rubber soles and plastic. We have asked the agencies concerned to submit the report of issue and possible solutions to the chief secretary for time-bound action, said EPCA chairman Bhure Lal. The smoke from large-scale waste burning is more damaging than the burning of agriculture residue in neighbouring states, Lal added. A report on pollution levels in Punjabi Bagh prepared by an EPCA member highlighted waste burning as the major contributor to constantly high AQI in the area. Beyond Punjabi Bagh, Azadpur village and Azadpur mandi are also the spots where unpaved paths and severe traffic congestion have been resulting in foul air, he said. Besides, EPCA has asked the Delhi Pollution Control Committee (DPCC) and pollution control boards of NCR cities, including Haryana, Uttar Pradesh and Rajasthan, to form a team each headed by an officer for patrolling the hotspots both during the day and night. These hotspots include Anand Vihar ISBT, Kaushambi bus depot, Bawana-Narela, Punjabi Bagh, Mundka, Bhalaswa, Dwarka, Nangloi, Sahibabad, Gurugram, Bhiwadi and Faridabad. Despite EPCAs earlier direction for night patrolling of these areas, DPCC and other government agencies are yet to start the exercise. The SC-body had also imposed a penalty ranging from Rs 50,000 to Rs 5 lakh on government agencies and private builders for flouting environment norms. The South Delhi Municipal Corporation (SDMC) said it has formed teams to conduct rounds of neighbourhoods prone to cases of burning leaves and garbage, especially during the night. A senior SDMC official said, The teams will visit the neighbourhoods round the clock and check incidents of garbageburning. They will issue warnings and spot fines. During night, they will focus on security guards and vendors burning wood to fight cold. Two sisters, in their seventies, were found murdered at their flat in west Delhis Paschim Vihar on Thursday afternoon, police said, adding that they appear to have been strangulated and hit with a blunt weapon. Their house was found to be ransacked, police said, adding that it is likely that robbery was the motive behind the murders. Investigators, however, remained uncertain if anything was missing from the house. RP Upadhyay, special commissioner of police (law-and-order), identified the deceased as 75-year-old Usha Pathak and 70-year-old Asha Pathak. While Usha had retired from a college in UPs Hapur, where she worked as a music teacher, Asha, before retirement, used to work as a librarian at Indian Council of Agricultural Research in Delhis Krishi Bhawan, Upadhyay said. Upadhyay maintained that during preliminary probe, the police have found that the two sisters were unmarried and had been living together for the last three decades in a flat owned by both of them in Anandvan Society, a gated residential neighbourhood in Paschim Vihars A block. Their father Krishna Dev Pathak, Upadhyay said, used to teach music at the same house until his death in the 1990s. Their domestic help Rani, who used to come to the house every day at 1.30pm to cook and clean, told us that a plumber working at the sisters house on Wednesday afternoon. Both Rani and the plumber left the house around 4pm, Upadhyay said. When Rani visited the house around 1.30 pm on Thursday, she allegedly found the door of the flat unlocked. According to Rani, it was not the first occasion that the sisters had left the door unlocked, said Upadhyay. Inside, she found the two sisters lying dead on the floor. They had been strangulated as well as struck on the heads with something hard. Their house was ransacked, said Seju P Kuruvilla, deputy commissioner of police, (outer Delhi). Kuruvilla, however, denied reports that the limbs of the sisters were tied. Immediately after, Rani raised an alarm and the police were informed of the incident. It seems to be a friendly entry into the house. So far, it appears to be the role of someone known to the women, said Kuruvilla. The DCP said they are going through to CCTV camera footage from the neighbourhood for clues. The police had not made any breakthrough at the time of filing this report. Upadhyay said that the family of the victims have been informed about the incident. The Edappadi Palaniswami (EPS) led AIADMK government can breathe easy, at least for now. The Damocles sword hanging over its longevity, with regard to the disqualification of 18 MLAs who rebelled, has been temporarily removed. The speakers disqualification of the rebel AIADMK MLAs has received the courts imprimatur by a 2-1 majority verdict. Ever since the death of J Jayalalithaa in December 2016, Tamil Nadu has been riven by political instability. The ruling AIADMK has been facing an internecine feud over leadership issues. In a 234-member assembly (including two vacancies because of the deaths of sitting members) the ruling EPS-OPS (O Pannerselvam, deputy CM) faction commands the fealty of 116 members in the reduced assembly strength of 214. The majority halfway mark is 108. The government is safe for the moment. However, the court also vacated the stay on by-polls being held for these constituencies. This means that the ruling party cannot rest easy. If the rebel faction, led by TTV Dhinakaran, decides to opt for polls rather than appeal against the high court verdict, the ruling faction of the AIADMK, which does not have a charismatic vote catcher, may struggle to retain a majority. Plagued by corruption charges in a number of schemes like the highway contracts project, the midday meal scheme and the gutka scam, the state government is struggling to deliver on the governance front. Power cuts have been endemic in the state, with the government blaming it on the Centre, saying that the supply of coal is inadequate. Even though western Tamil Nadu saw floods this year because of a good inflow into the Cauvery river, poor water management, which saw parts of Kollidam bridge being washed away, means it will be a dry summer again. The shutting down of the Sterlites copper smelter in Thootkudi and the opposition to the Rs 10,000 crore Chennai-Salem green corridor has meant that Tamil Nadu, one of the highly-industrialised states, is acquiring an image of being unfriendly to industries. This is a perception that the state government hasnt done much to counter. The government should be thankful that the main opposition party, the DMK which itself is undergoing succession pangs after the demise of its long-term leader Karunanidhi hasnt been able to capitalise on its failures. However, upcoming polls for the 39 Lok Sabha and the 20 assembly seats means that the ruling party has only a short window to get its act together. Otherwise, todays sigh of relief might prove to be ephemeral. An army soldier and two militants were killed in an encounter in Sopore area of north Kashmirs Baramulla district on Friday, a defence official said. A cordon and search operation began in the morning after forces were informed of militant presence in Malganipora area of the town. A gunfight ensued after the militants opened fire on the forces. Two militants and an army soldier were killed in the encounter, army spokesman Col Rajesh Kalia said. The soldier identified as Brijesh Kumar, who was injured minutes after the encounter started, succumbed at the Army Base Hospital in Srinagar, according to news agency IANS. Kalia said the identity and group affiliation of the slain militants is being ascertained. The encounter has ended, but a search is still on. Authorities have ordered all schools and colleges in Sopore town to remain shut for the day, IANS reported. Since Thursday morning, eight militants and a soldier have been killed in three separate encounters in north and south Kashmir. Another soldier was killed by militants in an attack in Tral last night. Three soldiers died and two militants were killed in separate incidents in Jammu and Kashmir, officials said on Friday, as the number of deaths, including that of civilians, since Sunday went up to 23 in the restive state. Defence spokesperson Colonel Rajesh Kalia said the two militants were killed and the soldier lost his life on Friday morning after a gun battle at Malganipora, Behrampora on the outskirts of the Sopore town. He identified the soldier as lance naik Brajesh Kumar of 22 Rashtriya Rifles. The bodies of the militants were handed over to police for identification, he said. Officials said the Indian Army and state police established a cordon around the village after inputs about the presence of militants in the village. They said the cordon and search operation turned into an encounter in which two unidentified militants and a soldier were killed. Kalia said two more soldiers lost their lives in south Kashmirs Tral and Anantnag areas. A soldier was killed and another injured in a standoff attack by militants on an army camp at Lurgam Tral late last night. The soldier was identified as sepoy Ngamsiamliana, who was from Mizoram and had joined the army five years ago, he said. The spokesperson said sepoy Rajinder Singh, who was injured during a stone pelting incident near Anantnag bypass trijunction on the national highway on Thursday evening, died on Friday. Around 6 pm, when the convoy was passing through the highway, few youths hurled stones at the vehicle and sepoy Rajinder got injured after being hit by a stone. He was shifted to armys base hospital where he succumbed to his injuries, he said adding Singh had joined the army in 2016 and belonged to Uttarakhand. A senior police officer, however, denied that any incident of stone pelting took place in the area on Thursday evening. Militants funerals Police have identified the two militants, who were killed in an encounter at Aathora village in north Kashmirs Baramulla district on Thursday, as Akeel Ahmad Sofi of Khanpora and Minajul Mohidin of BrathKalan in Sopore. Sofi had joined militancy two months ago and Mohidin recently, they said. A police spokesperson said both the militants were responsible for several attacks in Sopore and Sangrama. A shutdown was observed in Baramulla and Sopore towns against the killings of the local militants. A funeral was held for Sofi on Thursday morning at his native place in Baramulla, which was attended by many. Police also identified all the four militants killed in Arwani on Thursday as locals. Sahir Makroo, Owais Ahmad Lone, Muzamil Magray and Amir Tantray were affiliated with Hizbul Mujahideen, they added. Their funerals were held at their native villages in Kulgam and Anantnag districts. Clashes erupted near the encounter site on Friday and police used tear smoke shells to disperse the protesters. A 22-year-old soldier injured when protesters threw stones at an army convoy in south Kashmirs Anantnag has died, an army officer said on Friday. Sepoy Rajinder Singh was travelling in the convoy which was attacked near Anantnag bypass tri-junction on Thursday evening. Around 6 pm, when the convoy was passing through the highway, few youths hurled stones at the vehicle and sepoy Rajinder got injured after being hit by a stone. He was shifted to armys base hospital, Defence spokesman Colonel Rajesh Kalia said. He died late on Thursday night. Rajinder Singh was part of a Quick Reaction Team that was providing security to the Border Roads Organisation convoy. Singh had joined army in 2016 and hailed from Uttarakhand. Rajinder Singh died hours before another soldier, Ngamsiamliana, was killed in a gun-battle with militants in Baramulla, about 110 km from Anantnag. He had joined the army just five years ago. On Friday morning at Malganipora, Behrampora on the outskirts of the Sopore town, the army and police established a cordon around the village after inputs were received about militant presence in the village. Officials said the cordon and search operation turned into an encounter in which two unidentified militants and a soldier was killed. Colonel Rajesh Kalia said two militants were killed and one soldier also lost his life in the encounter. He identified the soldier as Lance naik Barjesh Kumar of 22 Rashtriya Rifles. The bodies of militants were handed over to police for identification. Kalia said that two more soldiers lost their lives in south Kashmirs Tral and Anantnag area. A soldier was killed and another injured in a standoff attack by militants on an army camp at Lurgam Tral late last night. The soldier was identified as sepoy Ngamsiamliana who was from Mizoram and had joined army five years ago. National Register of Citizens (NRC) Assam coordinator, Prateek Hajela, has claimed in the Supreme Court that the outcry against the exclusion of five identity documents as a basis for filing claims and objections is an attempt to get illegal immigrants included in the NRC. The top court had on Tuesday asked Hajela to explain to the state government, Centre and other stakeholders why five documents extract of the 1951 NRC, copy of electoral rolls up to March 24, 1971, citizenship and refugee registration certificates up to March 24, 1971 and ration cards were not allowed to be used for filing inclusion claims. Around four million people were excluded from the final NRC draft released on July 30. The Centre, the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP)-led state government, the Opposition Congress and outfits representing minority communities have demanded that the all the initial 15 List A documents, which the applicants could submit with the NRC, be allowed as a basis for filing claims, objections. In a report submitted in the Supreme Court on October 4 and made available by the court to the stakeholders on Thursday, Hajela states: As NRC claims and objections is the last chance for the illegal migrants, these actions [demand for inclusion of five documents]are actually a well planned attempt to get the illegal migrants into the NRC... HT has seen a copy of the report. Hajela added that the demand to include all 15 documents for filing inclusion claims and objections was more of political posturing than real requirement. He also accused the state government of failing to ensure implementation of rules to weed out illegal immigrants. The government, however, maintained that it would push for the inclusion of all 15 List A documents in the claims and objections process The people of Assam and AASU (All Assam Students Union) have been saying that illegal Bangladeshis are trying to get into the NRC through fake documents..., said AASU adviser Samujjal Bhattacharya. Aviation regulator Director General of Civil Aviation (DGCA) on Thursday gave a clean chit to former Biju Janata Dal (BJD) MP Baijayant Panda, who was accused of flying his chopper low over lake Chilika, Asias largest brackish water lake and a no-fly zone. The Chilika Development Authority had lodged a case with the Marine police station Arakhkuda on September 17 over allegations that a chopper reportedly piloted by Panda two days earlier flew very low over the lake. In a letter to the director of Bhubaneswar airport, the DGCA said there was no violation of rules. ... Based on fact and evidence, it could not be established that the helicopter has flown dangerously below the assigned altitude or have landed at Chilika Lake on September 15, 2018, the DGCA letter said. After the DGCA relief, Panda tweeted: Satyameva Jayate. Total clean chit by DGCA on Odisha government's cooked-up charges on me and my helicopter flying & sealing a hangar at Bhubaneswar Airport for the past 1.5 months, immobilising 3 choppers (incl 2 against which thr were no allegations whatsoever)!" BJD leaders refused to comment on the development. Hours after a Pune Court rejected the bail pleas of activists Arun Ferreira, Vernon Gonsalves and Sudha Bharadwaj, who were under house arrest, the Pune police took their custody and initiated steps to produce them before a city court by Saturday, an official monitoring the investigations said. Ferreira approached Bombay high court, which too refused to grant him interim relief. The high court, however, granted protection from arrest until November 1 to another activist, Gautam Navlakha, who had sought quashing of FIR against him by Pune police. Another accused, Professor Ashok Teltumbde who had also filed a plea for quashing of proceedings against him didnt get any interim relief. A senior police official said Ferreira and Gonsalves were taken into custody from Thane and Mumbai, respectively. Bharadwaj who was under house arrest in Chhatisgarh was taken into custody by another team. Earlier in the day, rejecting the bail pleas of of Bharadwaj, Ferreira and Gonsalves, additional sessions judge KD Vadane said, Under the pretext of doing social work, they are doing work for a banned organisation (CPI-Maoist) and (were) involved in the activities with intent to threaten unity, integrity, security, sovereignty of India. At this stage, on the basis of the material collected by the investigation officer, it reveals that there is a connection of the accused with the banned organization, the judge said. After the bail pleas were rejected, the defence lawyers sought a weeks stay on implementation of the order so that they could file an appeal in the high court, but the judge did not grant a stay. These activists were already arrested by the police although the Supreme Court had offered them relief saying that they be kept under house arrest for four weeks, said joint commissioner of Police Shivaji Bodkhe. Bodkhe said court order has vindicated the police action. The material presented by Police in the court has been taken into account, said Bodkhe. A Pune court on Friday rejected the bail petition of lawyers and activists Sudha Bharadwaj, Arun Ferreira and Vernon Gonsalves, three of the five activists put under house arrest in connection with their alleged links to the Maoists. Additional sessions judge KD Vadane rejected the bail applications filed by the three activists. We will appeal against the Sessions Courts judgement in Bombay high court, Dhairyasheel Patil, senior counsel representing Gonsalves, said. The prosecution had argued against the bail of all three left-leaning activists saying they have corroborative evidence against the activists which establishes their links with banned outfit CPI (Maoist). According to the prosecution, lawyer and trade unionist Bhardwaj was responsible for raising funds and sending recruits from various universities and educational institutes to the forest. Read | Bhima Koregaon violence was pre-planned, claim Pune Police Bharadwaj and lawyers Ferreira and Gonsalves, Telugu poet P Varavara Rao and activist Gautam Navlakha were arrested on August 28 in country-wide raids for alleged links with Left-wing rebels. The raids were a part of a probe into a conclave, Elgar Parishad, held in Bhima Koregaon near Pune on December 31, 2017 that allegedly triggered violence the following day. However, on a petition by historian Romila Thapar that linked the police crackdown to the strong views of the activists, the Supreme Court had ordered the police to place the five under house arrest rather than send them to jail. The Supreme Court while hearing on their petitions opposing arrests on September 28 had asked the activists to approach lower courts for relief from an imminent arrest. The top court had given four weeks time within which Pune court had to decide on the bail plea by activists. Among the other two activists, Navlakhas arrest has already been quashed by Delhi high court while poet Varavara Rao has approached Hyderabad high court for bail. The sessions court has reserved its order on bail pleas of other two activists, advocate Surendra Gadling and former Nagpur University professor Shoma Sen, till November 1. Also read | Maoists and Hindutva outfits: Bhima Koregaon probe moves ahead in two different directions Bihar chief minister Nitish Kumars Janata Dal (United) and the BJP will contest equal number of seats in the state in the 2019 Lok Sabha elections, BJP chief Amit Shah said on Friday, putting to rest speculations over differences between the two parties, but triggering concerns of a possible revolt by other partners of the National Democratic Alliance (NDA) in Bihar. At a press conference, Shah said an announcement on the exact number of seats would be made in a day or two. The decision, which came after a meeting between Shah and Kumar in New Delhi, means the BJP will have to let go of some of the seats it contested five years ago. Bihar sends 40 representatives to the Lok Sabha. In the 2014 elections, the BJP contested 30 seats (won 22), while its partners the Lok Janshakti Party and the Rashtriya Lok Samata Party contested seven (won six) and three (won three), respectively. The JD(U) was not part of the NDA then. KC Tyagi, the JD(U)s principal general secretary, said, Rank-and-file members are happy that their sentiments have been taken care of. Hindustan Times reported on July 11, ahead of a key meeting between Kumar and Shah, that the two parties had indicated their commitment to the alliance, with the BJP recognising Kumars importance in the state and the JD(U) seeking a resolution to the seat-sharing issue on equal and respectable terms. Thats exactly what Shah and Kumar finalised on Friday. However, the decision may have spooked the other partners of the NDA in the state, with media reports claiming RLSP president Upendra Kushwaha met Tejashwi Yadav of the Rashtriya Janata Dal (RJD) in Arwal district soon after Shahs statement in Delhi. The reported closed-door meeting lasted for 15 minutes. However, Union minister of state Kushwaha denied having held any closed-door meeting with the leader of Opposition in the state assembly. It was nothing but a chance meeting as Tejashwi was also staying at the circuit house, he told mediapersons. In 2014, the BJP had a vote share of 29.86% in Bihar. Kumars JD(U), which contested separately, fought 38 seats but managed to win just two with a total vote share of 16.04%. Leaders in Bihar, who spoke on the condition of anonymity, said there were two possibilities for the 2019 deal. First, the BJP and the JD(U) might contest 16 seats each, the RLSP three and the LJP five. Second, both the JD(U) and the BJP could fight 15 seats each, the LJP seven and the RLSP three. The reason behind the BJP conceding 16 seats to the JD (U) is to keep the alliance intact, said one of these leaders who belongs to the BJP. He added that the BJP also recognises Kumars influence among the extremely backward classes, Kushwahas, Kurmis and Dalits. BJP has taken lessons from the 2015 assembly results and cannot afford to antagonise Kumar, said the BJP leader, referring to his partys defeat in the state elections in which the JD(U) was in an alliance with the Congress and Lalu Parasads RJD. That alliance has since broken up and Kumar is back in the NDAs fold. Kushwaha has been critical of Kumars government in the state, especially on law and order and education front. His party had been demanding a larger seat share in the NDA commensurate with the growing base of the RLSP. Kushwaha remained non-committal on the issue. Let the number of seats be declared. I have also talked to Amit Shah, he said. RJD legislator Ramanuj Prasad Yadav said, We are ready to welcome all forces opposed to BJP, including the RLSP chief, with open arms. He has to take a call. Another RJD leader, who asked not to be named, claimed that LJP chief Ramvilas Paswans son Chirag Paswan spoke to Tejashwi shortly after the BJP-JD (U) top shots addressed the media. LJP spokesperson Shrawan Kumar Agarwal denied this. DM Diwakar, a social scientist at AN Sinha Institute of Social Sciences, said, It (the seat-sharing deal) is victory of JD(U), and also indicates that BJP is getting weak. The BJP was desperate not to lose JD(U). Nitish Kumars Janata Dal (United) and the BJP will fight on an equal number of seats in Bihar for the Lok Sabha Elections next year, BJP chief Amit Shah said after meeting Bihar Chief Minister Nitish Kumar on Friday. The two leaders addressed reporters together after their meeting. Other allies will also get a respectable seat share, Shah announced but made it clear that they will have to settle for fewer seats than the 2014 elections. When a new partner joins, you have to sacrifice... There will be reduction in seats for everyone, Shah said, and underscored that there was consensus among the four NDA partners in Bihar on this principle. He said the number of seats that would be contested by each alliance partner would be announced in two or three days. Nitish Kumar, who had last month asserted that his party will contest the election with pride and honour said, We have had talks... and as Amit Shah announced, there is an agreement on this... JD (U) and BJP will fight same number of seats. Bihar sends 40 members to the Lok Sabha that will need to be split between the four partners of the NDA for next years general elections. Ram Vilas Paswans Lok Janshakti Party and Upendra Kushwahas Rashtriya Lok Samta Party are the two other allies. Soon after Amit Shah and Nitish Kumar held their press conference, Upendra Kushwaha, who is a minister at the Centre, met Tejashwi Yadav of Bihars main opposition party the Rashtriya Janata Dal (RJD) at a circuit house in the states Arwal for about 15 minutes. Kushwaha described it as a chance meeting, but an RJD leader said they were happy to welcome the RLSP leader with open arms. Another RJD leader said Chirag Paswan, Ram Vilas Paswans son spoke to Tejashwi, who is the son of RJD chief Lalu Yadav, in jail in a corruption case. The Paswans LJP has however denied this. The JD (U) and the BJP, allies for many years, had contested the 2014 Lok Sabha elections separately; Nitish Kumars party could win only two Lok Sabha seats. The other three NDA allies had won 31of the 40 seats in that election, with the BJP alone winning 22. Before his return to the NDA last year, Nitish Kumar experimented with a Grand Alliance for the 2015 assembly elections in Bihar, joining hands with arch rival Lalu Yadav and the Congress. Together they stormed to power, winning 178 of the states 243 assembly seats. The RJD is the states largest party with 81 seats, while the JD (U) has 70 seats. The BJP, dumped temporarily by Nitish Kumar, could win only 53 seats. Nitish Kumar broke away from the grand alliance in July 2017, saying he could not continue to work with Lalu Yadav because of corruption charges against his son Tejashwi Yadav. Within hours he was reunited with the BJP. His partys comment earlier this year that the JD (U), by virtue of its larger share in the Bihar, was the alliances big brother was seen as a signal to the BJP that he expected to be treated as the senior partner in Bihar, a position the JD (U) held for the many years that the two parties were allies before the 2013 break-up. The last time they contested an election as partners, in 2009, the JD (U) had won 20 seats while the BJP had contested 12. The Bharatiya Janata Partys (BJP) much-touted Jan Ashirwad Yatra ended at Jabalpur Friday without meeting its target of covering all 230 assembly constituencies in Madhya Pradesh, its three senior leaders said on condition of anonymity. Though there was no official announcement from the BJP, one of the organisers of the yatra said it was terminated because just one was month left for November 28 polls and chief minister Shivraj Singh Chouhan, who was leading the yatra, was finding it difficult to find time for important meetings to decide candidates, manifesto and strategy. The yatra was flagged off by party chief Amit Shah in Ujjain on July 14 and was supposed to cover all constituencies by September 25. But it failed to cover areas in the Gwalior-Chambal and Malwa regions. The latter is a BJP stronghold but the former has significant Congress and Bahujan Samaj Party presence. Before the 2013 assembly polls, the yatra had covered 206 constituencies in about two months but this time it could cover only 187. The BJPs yatra in-charge Prabhat Jha refused to comment on whether yatra was over but said the CM will now go to the public for seeking a mandate. He will address public meetings across the state. The Congress claimed the yatra was terminated because of poor response. State Congress media in charge Shobha Oza said, Government officials, schoolchildren and beneficiaries of schemes stopped attending the yatra after the model code of conduct and the CM got exposed for his so-called popularity. The BJP will emerge the number one party in the state and Centre in 2019, with or without its ally Shiv Sena, Maharashtra chief minister Devendra Fadnavis said on Friday. Fadnavis said the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) will try to form an alliance with the Sena, for both the Lok Sabha and state assembly polls next year, and given the political reality, such a tie-up will fall in place. But, he added even if the alliance falls apart, the BJP was already prepared and would emerge winner. Both of us will suffer if we dont have an alliance. If we form one, we will win the polls easily and if we dont, we [BJP] will have to struggle a little. But, the BJP will be the number one party in any scenario, the chief minister told HT. Fadnavis was speaking to a group of mediapersons at the government guest house in Mumbai. His government completes four years on October 31. In the past four years, one of the biggest talking points of his government, politically, has been the continued, acerbic criticism from its 25-year-old ally, the Sena. Of late, Sena chief Uddhav Thackeray has sharpened his focus on the Hindutva agenda, pointing out the BJP shortcomings on delivering on it. However, Fadnavis felt Thackerays Hindutva narrative, and his trip to Ayodhya next month to campaign for a Ram temple, was itself indication that the saffron parties would come together in the larger interest of the ideology just like the so-called secular parties joined forces. Thackerays focus on Hindutva can only bring us together, he said. But he added that he did not see the Senas dual position of staying in government and criticising it bringing it any electoral dividends. I dont think a dual position can be beneficial. It can only lead to losses especially if there is opposition on every issue. Asked if BJP willing to split the chief ministers tenure with Sena to bring it on board before the polls? Fadnavis said the Sena had made no such demand yet. Fadnavis backed his partys stand on the building of a Ram temple in Ayodhya. I feel the Ram mandir must be built. It is the aspirations of crores of Indians... I hope for a favourable verdict from the apex court..., he said. The 48-year-old CM said the 2019 general elections would centre around PM Narendra Modi and his decisive leadership, just like in 2014. We will win the general polls because of PM Modi... victory in the Assembly polls will follow. Is he open to taking up a role in Delhi? I am happy anywhere (the party sends me), Fadnavis said. But, at the moment, I dont think I am required in Delhi. While the CM did not want to speak about specific charges made in the #MeToo movement, he believed any complaint of harassment of women at the work must be addressed immediately. The Supreme Court on Friday directed CBIs interim director, M Nageshwar Rao not to take any major policy decisions while the Central Vigilance Commission completed its probe into the allegations of corruption against the investigative agencys current chief Alok Verma. Rao, who was appointed as interim chief on Wednesday after the government divested director Alok Verma and his deputy Rakesh Asthana of duties, will perform routine functions essential for CBIs functioning, but not take any major decisions, a bench headed by Chief Justice Ranjan Gogoi ordered. The court was hearing a petition filed by Verma challenging the governments leave order issued at 2.30 am on Wednesday, following a feud with Asthana, with both accusing the other of corruption in connection with cases being investigated by the CBI. The judges have set a two-week deadline for the CVC to complete the probe against Verma which would be conducted under the supervision of a retired judge of the top court, A K Patnaik. It directed CBI to submit a list of all decisions taken by Rao before the court in a sealed cover on the next date of hearing, November 12. A list of all decisions taken between October 23 and today and up to this hour including the decisions with respect of to transfer of investigation and change of officers will be furnished to this court in a sealed cover on the next hearing when orders would be passed appropriately, the court ruled. Fridays hearing, in addition to a petition by Verma, also included a petition by non-profit organisation Common Cause, which also wanted the court to assign a special team to probe corruption charges against CBI special director Rakesh Asthana. By Friday morning, Asthana also filed a petition against the government order sending him on leave. But the judges remarked, they hadnt received a copy of his petition and quipped that he may just have missed the bus. Vinta Nanda had also lodged a complaint against Alok Nath for allegedly sexually harassing her in the 90s. Vinta Nanda has credited Tanushree Dutta for courage in opening up against Alok Nath. The Dindoshi Sessions Court on Thursday reserved its order on Alok Nath's plea seeking injunction order to Vinta Nanda that she should not give interviews or speak against him. Earlier this month, Alok Nath had filed a civil defamation suit against writer-producer Vinta Nanda, who accused him of rape. The actor had sought a written apology, along with a compensation of Rs 1. While hearing the case on October 17, a Mumbai court didn't pass an interim order and allowed writer-producer Vinta Nanda to use social media to comment on her rape and sexual assault allegations against Alok Nath. Vinta Nanda had also lodged a complaint against Alok Nath for allegedly sexually harassing her in the 90s. In the wake of ongoing #MeToo movement, Vinta had accused Alok Nath of rape and narrated her horrifying ordeal in a Facebook post. She was the writer and producer of teleserial 'Tara' in the 90s, in which Nath played a lead role. Following the allegations, the Indian Film and Television Directors' Association (IFTDA) had issued a notice to the veteran actor, seeking his stand on the rape allegations made against him. The Union government has authorised 16 district collectors across seven states to register as Indian citizens Hindus, Sikhs, Buddhists, Jains, Parsis and Christians from Pakistan, Afghanistan and Bangladesh under the Citizenship Act, 1955 a move which the Congress alleged was aimed at garnering votes in the upcoming assembly elections in five states. The order will come into effect from December 22. The districts include Raipur (Chhattisgarh); Ahmedabad, Gandhinagar and Kutch (Gujarat); Bhopal and Indore (Madhya Pradesh); Nagpur, Mumbai, Pune and Thane (Maharashtra); Jodhpur, Jaisalmer and Jaipur (Rajasthan); Lucknow (Uttar Pradesh); and West Delhi and South Delhi. Elections are due in Rajasthan, Madhya Pradesh, Chhattisgarh, Telangana and Mizoram in November-December and results for all five states will be announced on December 11. Granting citizenship to minorities who have fled these neighbouring countries has been one of the key poll promises of the Modi-led National Democratic Alliance government. Thursdays notification comes at a time when a move is afoot to amend the six-decade-old Citizenship Act, seeking to grant Indian nationality to Hindus, Sikhs, Buddhists, Jains, Parsis and Christians from Afghanistan, Bangladesh and Pakistan after six years of residence in India, instead of 12 years. The amendment has been opposed in Assam and other north-eastern states and a joint parliamentary committee is examining the draft bill. The Congress took exception to Thursdays order, alleging it violated the Model Code of Conduct imposed by the election commission. The MHA (Union home ministry) notification has a direct bearing on poll-bound states. Hence this is a violation of the Model Code of Conduct. The BJP (Bharatiya Janata Party) should explain the rationale behind it, Congress spokesperson Jaiveer Shergill said. On one hand, the BJP is creating political hysteria in the name of the National Register of Citizens in Assam [aimed at identifying illegal Muslim migrants from Bangladesh], and on the other, seeking registration just to create confusion and mislead the nation, Shergill added, suggesting that the government was trying to win over Hindu and Sikh votes. The government notification also says that the secretary of the home department of the concerned state or Union Territory will have power to register refugees from the three countries as Indian nationals in case the applicant is not a resident of the mentioned districts, subject to certain conditions. The Punjab government will provide jobs to the eligible family members of those killed in the Amritsar rail tragedy in Amritsar, Cabinet minister Navjot Singh Sidhu said Friday. At least 59 people were killed 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 in Amritsar. The people falling in the old age category would be given pension by the government, he said. Sidhu reiterated that he is committed to help the affected families monetarily and that the families would not be left in the lurch with the government standing shoulder-to-shoulder with them in their hour of need. The state government will give jobs to the eligible family members of those killed in the rail tragedy, he told reporters here. The minister said that though many people are coming forward to adopt the children rendered orphan in the tragedy, the government would only allow the adoption to take place after the completion of formalities and procedures as per the law. The Local government minister handed over cheques of financial assistance to 5 more victim families of the recent rail tragedy. He said that till date 46 families have been provided with the financial assistance and the rest of the 13 cheques would also be given soon. Sidhu termed as most unfortunate that some elements are playing politics over the bodies of the people killed in the tragedy. He said the state government would do everything possible to help the affected families. The Manohar Lal Khattar governments woes are set to pile up on Friday when the Haryana Sarvkarmchari Sangh, the umbrella body of over 40 unions of employees from all government and semi-government departments, giving a call for mass casual leave in support of the striking Haryana Roadways employees. Meanwhile, the roadways employees extended their strike till October 29 in the wake of failure of second round of talks with the transport minister on Wednesday, as the government rejected their demand to withdraw its decision of hiring 700 private buses. Haryana chief secretary DS Dhesi presided over a meeting of the crisis management group in view of the emerging difficult situation, with other sections of employees joining the stir. Various services related to health, power, municipal bodies and education are set to be hit when the employees unions of these departments go on a mass casual leave on Thursday, when the roadways strike will enter the 11th day. The roadways employees are protesting against the governments decision to induct private buses, alleging it is a step towards privatisation of the department. They also accuse the government of favouring a chosen few transport operators. The government, however, has refuted the charges, saying the move to rope in private buses is in favour of employees, people and the government. Haryana Sarvkarmchari Sangh general secretary Subhash Lamba said they support the roadways employees demand and are against the governments arbitrary stand on induction of private buses. Lamba claimed that around 30,000 employees of power utilities, another 30,000 of the local bodies department, 60,000 of the education department, 25,000 employees of the health department, including Asha workers, and 9,000 of Haryana Shahri Vikas Pradhikaran are associated with the Sangh, which has a total of over two lakh employees with it. Private buses wont hamper employees: Khattar Meanwhile, Haryana chief minister Manohar Lal Khattar reiterated that the governments move to rope in private buses would not adversely affect the interests of roadways employees. He denied that any route permits have been given to private buses. He said buses will be hired from private bus owners on kilometre basis, while conductors of the Haryana Roadways will accompany these. The Himachal Pradesh high court has summoned the Kullu superintendent of police Shalini Agnihotri in a case related to Polish national who went missing from Kullu districts Parvati Valley in August 2015. The Polish trekker, Bruno Muschalik, 24, had gone missing during a trek in Parvati valley of Kullu district. Brunos father Piotr Muschalik had filed a petition in the Himachal Pradesh high court in 2017. During the hearing of the petition, the court directed Kullu superintendent of police to appear in court on November 15. Piotr had pleaded before the court that police did not deal with the matter seriously. Piotrs counsel also referred to the findings of former agent of Mossad Israels national intelligence agency that is responsible for gathering intelligence and covert operations. Himachal Pradesh high courts division bench comprising chief justice Surya Kant and justice Ajay Mohan Goel had expressed concern over the lackadaisical attitude of Kullu police. The Polish national, according to his Facebook status, was supposed to go on a trek in Parvati Valley on August 9, 2015. After he went missing, his father Piotr Muschalik, 57, launched a manhunt to trace his son. Cops in Kullu failed to trace Bruno. The probe was handed over to polices crime investigation department. However, police investigating agency was unable to trace missing trekker who was last seen in Barshaini village of Kullu district. Piotr Muschalik, professor of photography at University of Katowice in Poland, filed a petition in high court last year. Piotr in his petition maintained that in spite intimation from Polish embassy in India, police dealt with the case casually and did not even register an FIR. Police registered an FIR last year after courts intervention. Further, Piotr had pleaded that the case is not only related to his missing son but was also about all those who had gone missing in the Kullu valley. As per records, at least 19 foreigners have gone missing from different parts of the Kullu district since 1992. A majority of them disappeared from the Manikaran valley. All of these cases have remained unsolved. Police have not been able to trace a single person. Of these, four were Australian, three American and Israeli nationals each, two from Switzerland and one from Netherlands, and one each from Yugoslavia, Ireland, Britain, Canada, Russia and Italy. Villagers in Kullu district extract hashish from the cannabis plant, which is sold at exorbitantly high rates to drug cartels active in the Parvati Valley. The hashish is sold under different names such as the Himalayan queen, black widow, AK-47, skunk balls. The Union government and the Opposition Congress welcomed the Supreme Court order on Friday in connection with the controversy in the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI), with both seeing a vindication for their side. Officials and ministers in the Union government describing the directions by the court the court ordered an investigation against CBI director Alok Verma to be wrapped up in two weeks, but retrained the interim chief from taking any policy decisions -- as a positive development that will enable a fair inquiry into an extraordinary situation. The controversy stems from a feud between director Verma and special director Rakesh Asthana, the agencys two top officers who have accused each other of corruption. Earlier this week, the government ordered for both to be sent on leave after Verma began taking action against Asthana and his aides, a decision called illegal by the opposition and challenged by the director in the top court. The Congress said the Supreme Court directive had stopped a sinister attempt by the government to capture CBI through lackeys. Truth prevails in Supreme Court... A slap in face of tyrants who wanted to pin the last nail in CBIs independence. CVC cant act as Modi governments pawn but would be supervised by a SC judge to act fairly, chief spokesperson of the Congress, Randeep Surjewala, tweeted. Congress president Rahul Gandhi on Friday led a protest outside the CBI headquarter in New Delhi, demanding Vermas reinstatement. Workers of the party held similar demonstrations in other parts of the country, where they found support in some other opposition parties such as the Trinamool Congress and Communist Party of India (CPI). According to officials in the Union government, who asked not to be named, the Supreme Court did not quash the orders of the Central Vigilance Commission (CVC) or the central government. Supervision of a retired judge over the CVC is without any aspersion on the CVC. It has been done keeping in mind the extraordinary circumstances in this case, this official said. The Union government, the official added, wanted to create a conducive atmosphere to enable a fair probe into both officers allegations a situation now allowed by the Supreme Court. Union finance minister Arun Jaitley called Fridays order extremely positive. Recent developments had eroded the credibility of the CBI and the CVC, in the interest of fairness, had passed an order that till investigation or inquiry is pending against the two top officers of the CBI, they must step aside and recuse themselves, he said. During his protest, Gandhi courted arrest while reiterating his allegation that the Vermas sidelining was initiated by Prime Minister Narendra Modi to prevent a probe into the Rafale deal. While Gandhi, senior leaders and hundreds of supporters marched from Dayal Singh College at Lodhi Road to the nearby CBI headquarters in Delhi at around 12.15 pm, Congress workers hit the streets across the country in protest against the move, demanding Vermas immediate reinstatement. Every institution in India is being ruined by the Prime Minister because he wants to hide the corruption in the Rafale deal. Chowkidar (watchman) has turned into a thief, the Congress chief said, addressing party workers outside the CBI headquarters before courting arrest. At an event in the national capital later in the evening, former prime minister Manmohan Singh too attacked the Modi government. Environment in countrys institutions like CBI is being vitiated, he said at the launch of congress MP Shashi Tharoors new book, The Paradoxical Prime Minister. Delhi chief minister and Aam Aadmi Party leader Arvind Kejriwal too welcomed the Supreme Courts intervention. Welcome intervention by the honble Supreme Court of India in the CBI matter. In the interests of the nation, hope that institutional integrity of CBI will be upheld & powers that be will understand that their illegal acts will not go unchallenged, he tweeted. Former Vishwa Hindu Parishad president Praveen Togadia, who on Tuesday floated his own party, could not elicit much support for the Ram Mandir movement during his three-day visit to Ayodhya this week. The firebrand leader, now the president of the Antarrashtriya Hindu Parishad (AHP), and the head of an as-yet unnamed political party, is making all efforts to project himself as the torch-bearer of the Ram Mandir in Uttar Pradesh. This, after he was thrown out of VHP over his alleged differences with top BJP leaders, including Prime Minister Narendra Modi. On this visit, he failed to evoke much response from both the saints and locals of the temple town, political and spiritual leaders familiar with the matter said. The Ram Janmabhoomi Nyas has nothing to do with Togadias visit. The Nyas is in no way associated with his movement. In future also we will not have any association with his political party, said Mahant Nritya Gopal Das, head of the Ram Janmabhoomi Nyas. The Nyas, which has been at the forefront of the mandir movement, has the final say on the issue. Some of the saints would also appear to be annoyed with Togadia because he has formed his own political party a move which could impact BJP in the general elections next year. He has lost the little sympathy we had for him after he announced a political party, added Das. Many say his party will have no impact on BJPs fortune in Uttar Pradesh. India and Pakistan are inching towards another milestone in their fraught relationship 10 years without any structured or sustained dialogue aimed at addressing outstanding issues such as terrorism, Kashmir and humanitarian issues. Within days of the Mumbai attacks carried out by operatives of Pakistan-based Lashkar-e-Taiba during November 26-29, 2008, India called off the more than a decade-old composite dialogue, with Indian diplomats saying it could no longer be business as usual. To be sure, there have been several interactions in this period, but no composite dialogue. Terrorism emanating from Pakistani soil remains the central hurdle to New Delhi resuming talks with Islamabad. External affairs ministry spokesperson Raveesh Kumar said on October 18 there is currently no proposal for a Track 1 or 1.5 dialogue or meetings between India and Pakistan. We have time and again very clearly mentioned talks and terror cant go together, that it was one of the reasons why the scheduled meeting in New York between the two foreign ministers (in September) was cancelled, he told a news briefing. The spokesperson made it clear the onus is on Pakistan to take credible steps to create conducive conditions for talks, which of course, means taking action against terrorist infrastructure which operates from its soil. Pakistan, however, remains hopeful of some sort of breakthrough despite the cancellation of the meeting of the foreign ministers on the margins of the UN General Assembly, with information minister Fawad Chaudhry saying talks remain the only option. Pakistan and India have three options: We could have war, and we already had three Follow the offensive defence policy of (Indian National Security Advisor) Ajit Doval and keep weakening each other from the inside, or lets try to talk to each other while softening our hardline positions and help each other in the economic and social sectors, Chaudhry said over phone from Islamabad We have tried the first two options for 70 years, lets try the third one for a change, he added. In the decade since the Mumbai attacks, India and Pakistan have also held several one-off meetings to discuss matters such as trade or the repatriation of elderly and mentally ill prisoners, and their officials have met at multilateral forums such as various Saarc organisations. Indias former prime minister Manmohan Singh met his then Pakistani counterpart Yousaf Raza Gilani on the sidelines of a Non-Aligned Movement summit in Egypt less than eight months after the Mumbai attacks and made a significant concession on Balochistan, but the two sides were unable to resume dialogue. More recently, Prime Minister Narendra Modi invited his then Pakistani counterpart Nawaz Sharif to his swearing-in in 2014 and even visited Sharif in Lahore in December 2015. Modis visit was preceded by external affairs minister Sushma Swarajs trip to Islamabad the same month, during which the two sides agreed to launch what was called a comprehensive dialogue covering the eight topics as the composite dialogue along with some additional components. But the proposal was junked following the Pathankot terror attack blamed on Pakistan-based terrorists. TCA Raghavan, Indias former envoy to Pakistan, said many in the Pakistani leadership still didnt grasp how much of a game changer the Mumbai attacks was. This was a certain transgression of trust that the Indian public hasnt forgiven as yet, he said. The lack of progress in efforts to resume talks reflected the deepening domestic crisis in Pakistan and there was also the factor of domestic politics on both sides. Right now, without probably being intended like that, the election cycles of India and Pakistan have disrupted diplomacy, Raghavan said. The prolonged disruption of sustained talks and the resultant stasis is not the most desirable status for India, said Commodore (retired) C Uday Bhaskar, director of Society for Policy Studies. Coming up with a meaningful response is in Indias long-term interest to ensure that Pakistan is in compliance with what were seeking, whether its in regard to the Mumbai attacks or (former president Pervez) Musharrafs January 2004 assurance that Pakistani soil wouldnt be used for terrorism, he said. India has not been able to fill the voids and it has also been held hostage to domestic political compulsions, he added. Baqir Sajjad, a talk show host and analyst for Pakistans influential DawnNews channel, described the interregnum in talks as a lost decade. He said: This happened because of shortsighted policies of self-serving leaders, who instead of harsh rhetoric could have, under a better environment, invested more resources in human development. That would have benefited them more in the longer run. Justice Ananga Kumar Patnaik, a retired judge of the Supreme Court, will supervise the Central Vigilance Commission inquiry into allegations against CBI director Alok Verma, made by his deputy CBI special Director Rakesh Asthana, that is to be completed by November 11. Justice Patnaik, who comes from Odisha, had a judicial career of 20 years a judge of the high court and Supreme Court. He retired from the Supreme court in 2014. Justice Patnaik was appointed as a judge to the Orissa high court in 1994 and till his elevation to the Supreme Court in 2009, he served in Gauhati HC, and as chief Justice in the high courts of Chhattisgarh and Madhya Pradesh. He came into the limelight in 2002, when he was made part of a three member high-level committee to probe allegations of sexual misconduct in the infamous Mysore sex scandal- against three judges of the Karnataka high court. The committee was set up by the Chief Justice of India. The committee gave all three judges a clean chit saying it had found no evidence against them. In 2007 again, justice Patnaik, when he was the chief justice of Madhya Pradesh high court, was made part of the three member committee appointed by the CJI to look into allegations of financial misconduct against Justice Soumitra Sen of the Calcutta high court. The Committee recommended the removal of justice Sen as a judge. Justice Patnaik was elevated to the top court in 2009 and had a stint of five years during which he dealt with many contentious issues such as the IPL corruption scandal, the Goa mining case, the interlinking of rivers, and the disqualification of MPs/MLAs upon conviction. In the IPL corruption scandal, justice Patnaik called for the removal of N Srinivasan as the chief of . In the Goa Mining case he along with 2 other judges ordered cancellation of iron ore mining leases in the state. In the disqualification of MPs and MLAs case, a bench headed by Justice Patnaik struck down as unconstitutional section 8 (4) of the Representation of the People Act, that allowed convicted lawmakers a three-month period for filing appeal to the higher court and get a stay on the conviction and sentence. After his retirement in 2014, justice Patnaik stayed back in Delhi although he did not accept any post retirement job. He has been engaged in writing scholarly works and editing legal bibles such as like DD Basus Shorter Constitution of India. CVC probe team KV Chowdary began his career as a probationary officer in Andhra Bank in 1978, the same year he joined the Indian Revenue Service. He rose to the post of chairman of Central Board of Direct Taxes (CBDT) before retiring in 2014. He was made the Central Vigilance Commissioner in 2015. As CBDT chief, he supervised many cases including the one against meat exporter Moin Qureshi, one of the root causes of conflict between Alok Verma and Rakesh Asthana. TM Bhasin who took charge as the vigilance commissioner in 2015 joined the Oriental Bank of Commerce as a probationary officer in 1978 and rose to the rank of general manager in 2003. He became the chairman and managing director (CMD) of Indian Bank in 2010 where he remained till 2015. He was instrumental in bringing out an exhaustive report on bank frauds and suggested measures to RBI to plug the gaps to check fraud. Sharad Kumar former Indian Police Service (IPS) officer of Haryana cadre, is the second vigilance commissioner and holds key in the probe against Verma given the fact he has served in CBI for nine years . A batch mate of verma, he knows the intricacies of CBIs working. Officials say he was instrumental in preparing the order against Verma divesting him of responsibilities as CBI chief. The Kerala high court on Friday warned the state government not to play to the gallery and harass innocent people amid the mass arrest of Sabarimala devotees, who protested against the Supreme Court verdict allowing women of all ages to worship at the shrine earlier this month. The division bench of the court, while hearing a petition filed by two devotees, said the government will have to pay a heavy price if it arrested innocent and sought a report from it by Monday. In their plea, the petitioners said the police were arresting innocent devotees who participated in peaceful nama japa yatra (hymn singing campaign) and some of them were slapped with non-bailable offences. The court will take up the case again on Monday. The temple dedicated to Lord Ayyappa, which opened for monthly rituals on October 18 for the first time after the Supreme Courts September 28 verdict allowing women of menstruating age to worship there, had witnessed large-scale violence. At least 12 women who came to worship at the shrine were prevented from going inside by angry protesters as police baton-charged devotees in two base camps of Pambha and Nilakkal, when the agitation took a violent turn. The number of people arrested for allegedly holding violent protests against womens entry into the shrine crossed 2,500 and state police chief Loknath Behra said more arrests will take place in the coming days. We are taking suggestions from a police committee on how to provide protection to women. We will discuss it with government as well. Discussions are going on, we havent yet come to a conclusion, director general of police Behera was quoted as saying by news agency ANI. The Nair Service Society, a socio-cultural organisation of the dominant Nair community, has also come down heavily on mass arrests. The governments acts and utterances will even shame the Emergency days. Many devotees, who took part in peaceful prayer meetings, were arrested from their house during odd hours, said a statement from the NSS condemning the police action. The issue has taken a political colour after the recent violence during the pilgrimage season, with the ruling Left Democratic Front on one side and the Congress and Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) on the other. Both blamed the state government for its handling of the situation that had resulted in violence. But after initial outbursts, the Congress has mellowed a bit but the BJP has hardened its position, eyeing a split in majority community votes, say political analysts. The saffron partys president Amit Shah will arrive in Kerala on Saturday for one-day visit as the hill temple continued to remain a flashpoint. Shah is expected to take the ongoing agitation of the party to the next level, said party leaders. Shah will have a special session with state leaders on Saturday night to discuss the prevailing political situation in the state, said a senior party functionary. The state government has said there was a big conspiracy to turn the pilgrim spot into a battlefield and that they handled the situation effectively and averted bloodshed. The Sangh Parivar wanted to fan trouble and exploit the situation. But the secular government wont allow their game plan, state temple minister Kadakampally Surendran said. A preliminary post-mortem report has not found any internal or external injury on the body of Father Kuriakose Kattuthara suggesting that he died a natural death. A native of Keralas Allepy, Kuriakose, 61, was a key witness in the Kerala nun rape case who testified against accused bishop Franco Mulakkal. Kuriakose was found dead under mysterious circumstances on Monday in his room on the Catholic Church premises in Dasuya, 40km from here. A four-member board, including Dr Jaswinder Singh (forensic medicine), Dr Kulwinder (medicine), Dr Shalinder (ENT) and Dr Harshpreet Kaur (pathology) on Tuesday conducted an in-camera post-mortem of Kattuthara at the Dasuya civil hospital. The post-mortem was video-graphed after Kuriakoses family said they may seek a second autopsy in Kerala in case they were not satisfied with the report. On Wednesday, Kuriakoses cousin John Thomas said they will not get the second post-mortem done as they were satisfied with in-camera proceedings. We have not found any external or internal injury on the body, said senior medical officer (SMO), Dasuya civil hospital, Dr Devinder Puri, adding the exact reason of the death could be known after they get the viscera report from the Kharar forensic lab. The funeral of Father Kuriakose was held at St Marys Forane Church in Pallippuram, Kerala. Nun who protested against bishop heckled Sister Anupama, who was at the forefront of protests demanding the arrest of bishop Franco Mulakkal, accused of raping a nun, was on Thursday heckled by her colleagues at her own parish and was asked to leave the cemetery where the funeral of Father Kuriakose was going on. The incident took place when Kuriakoses body was brought for the final rites at the St Marys Forane in Pallippuram. Reacting to the incident, Sister Anupama, who was accompanied by other nuns, broke down and said she was deeply hurt by the protests. I am from this place. I know Father Kattuthara for many years. He has seen me as his own daughter... we have only stood for truth, she said. (with agency inputs) Considering just how popular the couple is, this slim guest list definitely comes as a surprise. Looks like Ranveer and Deepika have taken a leaf out of Virat and Anushkas book only their wedding will be an even more intimate affair. We hear that the couple will be flying to the scenic island of Lake Como with just a handful of close friends and relatives for their mid-November nuptials. Says a source, From the film industry, only Farah Khan, Shah Rukh Khan and Karan Johar have been told to prepare for the wedding. A few more names may be added to the list of invitees, but the couple is taking along only a few handpicked guests. The rest of their friends will be invited to the wedding reception. Considering just how popular the couple is, this slim guest list definitely comes as a surprise. But then again, theyve always kept their relationship private. The decision to restrict the guest list was Deepikas. If Ranveer had his way, he would invite the entire band, baaja and baarat. But Deepika wants the wedding to remain a very low-key event, says a friend of the couple who hasnt made it to the guest list. Meanwhile, the couple is also likely to face some backlash for choosing a foreign destination to tie the knot when there are so many beautiful spots to choose from in India. They cant really say that theyre doing it to avoid the paparazzi, because media houses are already busy planting correspondents at the Italian venue. The Central Vigilance Commission investigation against CBI director Alok Verma will be conducted under the supervision of a retired top court judge, the Supreme Court said on Friday and set a two-week deadline for this probe to be completed. The top court also prohibited interim CBI director M Nageswar Rao from taking any major decisions and stick to routine tasks. A list of all decisions taken by Rao will have to be produced before the court in a sealed cover on the next date of hearing, November 12. We make it clear that the introspect or supervision of the ongoing enquiry by a former judge is a one-time exception felt necessary by this court on the peculiar facts of this case and does not reflect on the functioning of the CVC, the three-judge bench led by Chief Justice Ranjan Gogoi said. (Follow live updates here) Fridays hearing, in addition to a petition by Verma, also included a petition by non-profit organisation Common Cause, which also wanted the court to assign a special team to probe corruption charges against CBI special director Rakesh Asthana. Verma and Asthana have been locked in a feud with both accusing the other of corruption, a situation that the government cited to send out a dramatic order issued overnight to send them both off duty. The Central Vigilance Commission said it had attempted to look into allegations against Verma but he didnt cooperate. Both petitions Vermas as well as the one filed by Common Cause sought the removal of Asthana from CBI and the quashing of the order issued to appoint M Nageswar Rao as interim chief. By Friday morning, Asthana also filed a petition against the government order sending him on leave. But the judges remarked, they hadnt received a copy of his petition and quipped that he may just have missed the bus. The 1986 batch IPS officer Nageswar Rao, who had been entrusted to look after the directors role for the interim period, has been ordered not to take any major policy decisions and will only perform the routine tasks that are essential to keep the CBI functioning. A list of all decisions taken between Oct 23 and today and up to this hour including the decisions with respect of to transfer of investigation and change of officers will be furnished to this court in a sealed cover on the next hearing when orders would be passed appropriately, the court ruled. Rahul Gandhi and other Congress leaders were at the Lodhi Colony police station for almost an hour after they courted arrest on Friday afternoon while protesting at the CBI headquarters in Delhi against the Narendra Modi governments move to divest the investigation agencys director Alok Verma of his powers. PM Modi can run, flee, but cannot hide from the truth. The truth will come out. Removing the CBI chief will not make a difference...the Prime Minister acted against the CBI director as a result of panic, as a result of fear, Gandhi told reporters as he left the police station, linking this weeks action against Alok Verma with the Rafale deal. The Congress president on Thursday alleged that Verma was removed in panic because he was going to begin a probe into the Rafale deal. The government hit back, accusing him of spreading falsehood over the issue of CBI Director Alok Verma and said that he was living in hallucination. This morning, Rahul Gandhi marched along with hundreds of party leaders and workers for about a kilometre from Dyal Singh College on Lodhi Road to the CBI headquarters at the CGO complex, holding up placards with slogans against Prime Minister Narendra Modi. Scores of police personnel were deployed along the way. The march ended in a demonstration near the CBI office and Rahul Gandhi got on to a truck in front of the police barricades put up to prevent the protesters from reaching the building. The Congress leaders then courted arrest. Among the other senior Congress leaders who joined the march were Ashok Gehlot, Ahmed Patel, Motilal Vora, Veerappa Moily and Anand Sharma. Loktantrik Janata Dal leader Sharad Yadav, CPI leader D Raja and Nadimul Haque of the Trinamul Congress also joined the protest. Congress president Rahul Gandhi in the police van as he was detained during the protest march at the CBI headquarter in New Delhi on October 26. (Vipin Kumar/HT PHOTO) Ashok Gehlot said the decision to remove CBI director Alok Verma was illegal. Our demand is to reinstate the CBI director. As per the law, he can be transferred only with the consent of the appointing authority (comprising Chief Justice of India, the prime minister and the leader of opposition). The prime minister should tender an apology to the nation for destroying the image of the premier investigating agency, Congress Gehlot said. The government, however, has strongly defended its decision, saying it was absolutely essential to maintain the CBIs institutional integrity and the move was based on recommendations by the Central Vigilance Commissioner. The Congress protests in the national capital were replicated in several other states. CBI chief Alok Verma and his deputy Rakesh Asthana were stripped off charges late on Tuesday night after both were accused of corruption. Soon after, the Centre appointed interim CBI director M Nageswar Rao. The Supreme Court today directed Central Vigilance Commission to complete their probe against CBI director Alok Verma in two weeks under the supervision of a retired top court judge. The court also prohibited interim CBI director Rao from taking any major decisions and stick to routine tasks. A list of all decisions taken by Rao will have to be produced before the court in a sealed cover on November 12, the next date of hearing. The Supreme Court order to set a 2-week deadline for the probe against CBI director Alok Verma has strengthened the fairness criteria, finance minister Arun Jaitley said, according to news agency ANI. They (judges) fixed a time limit and in order to ensure that highest standard of fairness are maintained even in the inquiry they have appointed a retired judge to ensure that the CVC inquiry is extremely fair, the minister said in the governments first reaction to the top courts direction. A three-judge bench had earlier in the day asked a retired judge to monitor the Central Vigilance Commissions probe against Alok Verma, who has been stripped of his powers. The Congress interpreted the direction to imply that the court didnt trust corruption watchdog CVC enough. You are the sole reason for this trust deficit!, Randeep Singh Surjewala tweeted, attacking the government. Jaitleys intervention is seen to be an effort to correct the perception that government is taking sides in the feud between CBI director Alok Verma and his deputy Rakesh Asthana. The government has no interest for or against any individual. The government is interested in maintaining professionalism, image and constitutional integrity of CBI, Jaitley said. Jaitley also underlined that recent developments had eroded the credibility of CBI and the CVC had to step in and decide that Alok Verma and Asthana must step aside and recuse themselves from CBI functioning till inquiry is over. All officers of the CBI particularly the top two officers, like Caesars wife, must be beyond suspicion, must be above suspicion. And that is why it is in larger national interest that the truth is established following the highest standards of fairness and due process of law, he said. The top court has said that former Supreme Court judge AK Patnaik will oversee the CVC inquiry into allegations against Verma and the report has to be placed before it within two weeks, noting that the matter is of national importance and there should not be any delay. The retired judge will supervise the CVC inquiry against Verma because of the importance of the case without casting aspersions on any constitutional or statutory authority, the apex court said. A bench of Chief Justice Ranjan Gogoi and Justices SK Kaul and KM Joseph said, We want to see preliminary probe report in 10 days to decide whether it requires further probe. (With PTI inputs) The Supreme Court will today hear a plea filed by Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) director Alok Kumar Verma seeking a stay on the post midnight order divesting of him of duty and sending him on leave after fresh controversy when four Intelligence Bureau men were caught outside his house Thursday. As the opposition, particularly the Congress, attacked the Narendra Modi government over the leadership change in the agency, the CBI Thursday clarified that Verma continues to remain the director and Rakesh Asthana special director while joint director Nageshwar Rao will hold interim charge till the time Central Vigilance Commission (CVC) examines the allegations and counter allegations between the top two officials. (Follow up live updates here) Ahead of its taking up Vermas plea, the Supreme Court Thursday said it would consider according urgent hearing to a PIL by lawyer Prashant Bhushan, appearing for NGO Common Cause, seeking court-monitored SIT probe into the allegations of corruption against various CBI officials, including Asthana. In his plea, Verma has accused the government of interfering with the independence and autonomy of the premier institution, that divesting him of his powers overnight by the Department of Personnel and Training and the CVC was patently illegal, and also hinted that he was removed for investigating cases inconvenient to the government. He also hit out at Asthana, who too was sent on leave along with the director, for posing hurdles in investigating cases. Read | Boss trying to frame me, CBI No. 2 Rakesh Asthana tells court Vermas petition was mentioned by advocate Gopal Sankaranarayanan before a bench led by chief justice Gogoi on Wednesday morning. Investigating officers of sensitive cases are being changed, which may jeopardize a probe into many sensitive cases, he said. The court agreed with his request for an early hearing and listed the matter for Friday. Meanwhile, Congress president Rahul Gandhi Thursday stepped up his attack on Prime Minister Modi over removal of the CBI chief, claiming the post-midnight decision was a panic reaction to the agencys move to probe the Rafale fighter jet deal. He also alleged that the directors room was sealed and incriminating documents that were with him were taken away and that is why the work was done at 2 am, according to news agency ANI. The Congress has questioned the legitimacy of Vermas removal given that the CBI chief has a fixed two-year tenure and Vermas term runs till January-end. In a letter to PM Modi earlier in the day, senior Congress leader Mallikarjun Kharge had also insisted that neither the government nor the CVC had the power to divest Verma of the directors charge and appoint an interim director. Gandhi said Vermas removal from the post was not just an insult to the Constitution of India but also illegal and criminal. The BJP promptly hit back, accusing him of spreading falsehoods. Congress has lost all hopes of becoming relevant and it has also lost patience. And therefore in their dreams also they are dreaming only about Rafale. It appears Rahulji is living in hallucination, education minister Prakash Javadekar told reporters at the party headquarters. Early on Thursday, four men were detained by Vermas security guards from outside his Janpath house and identified themselves as Intelligence Bureau personnel. As opposition parties alleged they were snooping, a Union Home Ministry official said the men were on routine patrol duty in a high-security zone and had stopped to check why many people had gathered at the spot. Unfortunately, their presence was projected otherwise, he said. At least eight people were killed and five injured after an explosion at a workshop of a firecracker factory in Uttar Pradeshs Badaun on Friday evening, police said. The blast occurred in a room that was used to store crackers at around 4:30 pm. We have started the rescue work, said Superintendent of Police of Badaun Ashok Kumar. The workshop is located on the outskirts of Rasoolpur village, about six km from Badaun. The rescue teams pulled out seven bodies from the blast site. The wounded were rushed to a district hospital, of whom one succumbed to injuries . Dead bodies were sent for post-mortem examination. Two of the injured are critical, officials said. The building which houses the workshop was charred. Though police have started investigation, but according to locals the explosion followed the fire caused by short circuit. The district administration has called in a reserve battalion of Provincial Armed Constabulary(PAC) to assist in rescue work along with local police and District Disaster Management teams. The health department has set up field unit to provide emergency medical support near the blast site. Top police officials, including the District Magistrate are monitoring the rescue work. All necessary relief will be provide to the injured, said Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath DIG, Law and Order Praveen Kumar said the state government has sought report from the district magistrate and SP Badaun over explosion in the fire cracker factory. Initial report states that the factory owner had licence. Tamil Nadu chief minister Edappadi K Palaniswami, emboldened by the Madras High Courts verdict upholding the disqualification of 18 MLAs, may act against six more dissidents of the AIADMK openly siding with rebel leader TTV Dhinakaran. Of the six, three are AIADMK legislators - VT Kalaiselvan, A Prabhu, E Rathinasababpathy, and the other three are U Thaniyarasu, chief of a Gounder community outfit, founder of a Muslim party M Thameemun Ansari and S Karunas, leader of a fringe Thevar outfit. Karunas, Thaniyarasu, Ansari, who are technically ADMK legislators, have no qualms in hobnobbing with the principal opposition party DMK. Karunas, who had won on the ruling partys ticket, had even participated in the mock assembly session, held by the DMK earlier. There is a clamour within the party to rein the six other dissidents as they continue to be a thorn in the flesh for the EPS government. The chorus to remove them has become louder after the High Courts verdict, confirming the Speaker P Dhanapals decision of disqualifying the 18 MLAs. While upholding the disqualification, the then chief justice Indira Banerjee and the third judge, justice M Sathyanarayanan, were categorical they were only concerned with the process whether there was any infirmity in the method adopted by the Speaker to disqualify the 10 MLAs. Party sources said the chief minister, faced with continuing dissidence against his leadership, could then crack the whip as and when required. We dont have any other option other than taking the extreme step if the dissident legislators continue to indulge in anti-party activities. There is an end to our patience. When the situation arises, the Speaker might initiate action, Gokula Indira, the AIADMKs organisation secretary, said. The former minister said saving the AIADMK and the government of further embarrassment remains a top priority for the party. She, however, also extended an olive branch. We are ready to accept the disqualified MLAs as well as the remaining dissident legislators. They had won on the two leaves symbol and got the ticket from Amma (former chief minister J Jayalalithaa). As such, it is not a problem for us to accept their homecoming, Indira, also a former minister, said. However, Thaniyarasu remained firm in his support to Dhinakaran. Ill not return to the Edappadi camp, he said while speaking to the Hindustan Times, dismissing the threat of disqualification. On which ground could we be disqualified? he asked, adding that they have not acted against the government. Kalaiselvan said he continues to remain an MLA of the AIADMK. Though there are differences, I am an AIADMK MLA. I did not want to topple the government. So, how can the speaker send any notice to me? We have not received any notice so far. However, we are ready to face any such eventuality, he said while speaking to HT. Analysts are divided on the course the EPS government would take against the dissidents. The dissidents would not be disqualified, since that would bring the numbers of the AIADMK in the House, placing it in a disadvantage. Rather than taking such a drastic course, the government would ensure that the fall in line through various other means, K Elangovan, an advocate at Madras High Court, said. Aazhi Senthilnathan, an analyst and language rights activist, said it would not be surprising if the government took the dissidents head-on to send a strong message and to keep the flock intact. It will then become a numbers game, he said. While the strength of Tamil Nadu assembly is 234, it has come down to 214 following the disqualification of the 18 MLAs and because of the two vacant seats after the death of two members. The AIADMK has 116 MLAs, the DMK has 88 and its allies Congress has eight and IUML one. Dhinakaran is an independent MLA. Hence, the government requires 108 legislators to prove the majority and even if the six dissidents are removed, the AIADMK would have 110 MLAs, including the Speaker. Amidst these developments, chief election commissioner OP Rawat told the media that the Election Commission would wait for the disqualified MLAs to file the appeal against the verdict of the Madras High Court upholding the decision of Speaker within 30 days. It would then start the process to hold the by-poll for the 18 seats along with the two which fell vacant earlier, he said. The commission has to conduct the by-poll for the two seats by January and as such, the election for the 18 seats could be held along with them. We are ready to face the by-poll even while challenging the High Court verdict in the apex court, Thanga Tamilselvan, a disqualified MLA and a lieutenant of Dhinakaran, said. Meanwhile, in anticipation of the disqualified MLAs moving the Supreme Court, Dhanapal has filed a caveat in the top court. The commission has to conduct the by-poll for the two seats by January and as such, the election for the 18 seats could be held along with them. We are ready to face the by-poll even while challenging the High Court verdict in the apex court, Thanga Tamilselvan, a disqualified MLA and a lieutenant of Dhinakaran, said. Meanwhile, in anticipation of the disqualified MLAs moving the Supreme Court, Dhanapal has filed a caveat in the top court. Minutes after BJP chief Amit Shah and Bihar Chief Minister Nitish Kumar appeared together in Delhi on Friday to announce they would contest an equal number of seats in next years Lok Sabha election in Bihar, one of their partners met opposition leader Tejashwi Yadav at a circuit house in the states Arwal. Upendra Kushwaha - who heads the Rashtriya Lok Samta Party (RLSP) and is a Union minister of state as a member of the BJP-led National Democratic Alliance (NDA) - and Tejashwi Yadav of the Rashtriya Janata Dal held closed door talks for about 15 minutes. The meeting sparked new speculation about Kushwahas relationship status with the NDA. He had only days ago dismissed buzz that he was poised to exit the NDA ahead of next years general elections, telling the Hindustan Times that his party is strongly committed to ensure Narendra Modis re-election as Prime Minister for the next five years. Kushwaha said Fridays was nothing but a chance meeting as Tejashwi was also staying at the circuit house. The RJD leader was in Arwal in connection with his ongoing Nyaya Yatra. RJD leader Ramanuj Prasad Yadav, however, said, We are ready to welcome all forces opposed to the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), including the RLSP chief, with open arms. He has to take a call. Another RJD leader, not willing to be quoted, insisted that Chirag Paswan of the Lok Janshakti Party (LJP), the BJPs fourth partner in Bihar, spoke on the phone to Tejashwi shortly after the BJP and JD(U) bosses addressed the media. However, LJP spokesperson, Shrawan Kumar Agarwal categorically denied any such talks. In Delhi, as Shah announced that Nitish Kumars Janata Dal(United) and the BJP would contest an equal number of seats next year, he also made it clear that all partners would have to settle for less. Other allies will also get a respectable seat share, Shah announced but made it clear that they will have to settle for fewer seats than the 2014 elections. When a new partner joins, you have to sacrifice... There will be a reduction in seats for everyone, Shah said and underscored that there was a consensus among the four NDA partners in Bihar on this principle. Kushwahas party had been demanding a larger seat share in the NDA which he says should be commensurate with the growing base of the RLSP. It has been uneasy relationship ever since the JD(U) returned to the NDA fold in July last year. The RLSP leader has been critical of the Nitish Kumar government, especially on law and order and education, and had in August fuelled intense speculation when he said that a delicious kheer can be prepared with milk from the Yadavs (the RJDs base) and rice from the Kushwahas. He has since said that he was misunderstood by people who thought his comments signalled an alliance. It had, he said, only social intent. On Friday, the minister would only say, Let the number of seats be declared. I have also talked to Amit Shah. The RLSP has three MPs including Kushwaha in the Lok Sabha. Chirag Paswans LJP has six. In 2014, with Nitish Kumars JD(U) out of the NDA fold, the BJP had contested 30 of Bihars 40 Lok Sabha seats, while the RLSP had contested three and the LJP seven. The BJP had won 22, and together the allies took 31 seats. Congress president Rahul Gandhi on Thursday told people in Sikar he will not make false promises, as he intensified his attack on the central and state governments run by the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP). Addressing a public meeting on the second day of his state tour ahead of the December 7 assembly elections, Gandhi said he would ensure a Congress chief minister was working throughout the day if his party was to come to power after the polls. Results will be declared on December 11. I will not make any false promises of two crore jobs or Rs 15 lakh in your bank accounts, he said, taking an apparent dig at Prime Minister Narendra Modis campaign promises before the Lok Sabha election in 2014. But I assure you that the farmers, the youth, the women and everyone else will feel that the Congress chief minister is working throughout the day. Our CM will work 18 hours a day to ensure the youth are employed, he said. To ensure jobs for the unemployed, the Congress chief promised to set up a food processing plant in each of the 33 districts in the state. If the Congress party forms government in Rajasthan, a food processing plant will be set up in each district and youth will get jobs there. The farmers will be able to sell their produce (to the processing units) directly. Gandhi hit out at chief minister Vasundhara Raje for shutting down 25,000 schools. We will open best government schools, colleges and universities, and also relaunch former chief minister Ashok Gehlots scheme of providing free medicine to the economically weaker sections at private hospitals. He then launched a scathing attack on Modi over the controversial Rafale jet deal and lauded the Hindustan Aeronautics Limited (HAL), whichhe said has been protecting the country for the past 70 years. Modi, who talks about patriotism and sacrifice goes to France for the jet deal, he said, and is accompanied by Anil Ambani who did not make a single plane in his life and has a debt of Rs 45,000 crore. Ambani set up a firm 10 days before the contract was signed. The PM bought planes priced at Rs 526 crore for Rs 1,600 crore, he alleged. He also said that the countrys chowkidar removed the CBI director late night when the country was sleeping because he had called for an inquiry into the Rafale deal. State Congress president Sachin Pilot said the BJP misled people and came in power. Despite receiving huge mandate, they cheated the people. In Sikar, when the youth raised their voice at public meetings, they were arrested. BJP spokesperson Mukesh Pareek said, Rahul Gandhis speeches seem to be devoid of information. Not only are there more free medicines, poor people can also avail free treatment up to Rs 3 lakh at private hospitals. Farmers loan has been waived up to Rs 50,000, which was never done by the Congress. He said schools were merged under rationalisation as many did not have students. The enrolment has increased at government schools and students get milk for midday meal, he said. In a first of its kind, the prison department in Himachal Pradesh has allowed women inmates in different jails across the state to meet their husbands on Karva Chauth. Karwa Chauth is a tradition according to which married women or those who are of marriageable age pray for the safety and long life of their husbands, fiances or preferred husbands. The women inmates will be served special food on Karva Chauth after they break their day-long fast, Somesh Goyal, director general of police, prisons and correctional services said. They can also talk to their husbands through video conference, he said. This is for the first time that the prison department has allowed the inmates to meet their husbands on the ocassion. There are 17 prisons of different categories in the state including two central jails, ten district jails, one open air jail, one Borstal jail for youngsters and three sub-jails. Out of 2,400 prisoners in these jails, 99 are women. Jail authorities have been directed that women inmates who are fasting on the ocassion will be allowed to move out of the barracks to witness the moon while breaking their fast in the evening, Goyal said. Welfare programmes for inmates The states prison department is also organising a welfare programme Har haath ko kaam for the prisoners. At present, there are 15 women inmates in the Central Jail at Kanda. The prison department has also set up separate assembly lines for women to stitch clothes. Two prisoners at the jail run a famous book cafe on the ridge in Shimla. Male prisoners in the Bilaspur jail are already working at different business centres in the town, while women inmates remain confined to their prison cells. However, the prison department has now made a proposal allowing women to move out from their barracks to work. Special offers for couples Himachal Pradesh Tourism Development Corporation (HPTDC) is offering a special package for couples on Karwa Chauth. Couples staying at any of the HPTDC hotels for two nights will be provided a free stay for the third night. HPTDC hotels will provide free of cost food to guests on Karva Chauth. We will also make arrangements for accessories and cosmetics required by the guests, Kumud Singh, managing director, HPTDC said. The December 2018 deadline to acquire land for the Japanbacked Mumbai-Ahmedabad bullet train project is likely to be extended by one or two months, hinted Union Minister for Railways Piyush Goyal. Speaking at The Economist India Summit in Mumbai, Goyal said, We are hoping to complete it (land acquisition) by the end of this calendar year, or maybe one or two months beyond that. However, the minister assured that this will not affect the deadline decided for completion of the project set for 2022. We are advancing steadily on the project on all fronts. It is possible to meet the deadline of 2022 because of advanced Indian engineering and political will, he said. According to Goyal, the undersea tunnel and its engineering and logistics are proving to be challenging, while land acquisition on either side of the tunnel is in progress. He said, Because the government has met all deadlines set for the former, it is possible to meet the decided timeline. Goyal added, The government, of course, has the power to acquire this land, but whenever possible we want to engage with the affected people and sort out the issues by consent. Goyal announced that Indian railways will be 100% electrified by 2023, and solar-powered within the next 10 years. Indian railways share passenger and freight train corridors on important routes. By 2020, the railways will add 10,000 km of dedicated fast and semi-fast train corridors for passenger trains, Goyal said. He also spoke about five new routes that have been shortlisted to be converted into dedicated high-speed corridors, which include connecting Chandigarh, Bangalore, and Agra, with other important cities such as Mumbai and Delhi. SC will hear Alok Verma's plea, who was asked to go on leave when his feud with deputy Rakesh Asthana came into fore. Alok Verma has challenged the government order on the grounds that a 1998 verdict by the Supreme Court stipulated that the CBI Director should have a fixed minimum tenure of two years. (Photo: PTI) New Delhi: The Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) director Alok Verma petition, challenging the decision of the Centre to divest him of his duties and sending him on leave, will be heard by the Supreme Court today. Verma has also sought stay of the Centre's order asking him to proceed on leave and giving the interim charge of his post to Joint Director M Nageswara Rao, a 1986 batch Odisha-cadre IPS officer. In his petition, Verma, who took the government to court, said the decision taken "overnight" by the Centre and the CVC to divest him of his role as the head of the probe agency was "patently illegal" and such interference "erodes" the independence and autonomy of the institution. The bench will also hear another plea by non-profit Common Cause, which has sought for a Special Investigative Team (SIT) probe into corruption allegations against some CBI officials, including Rakesh Asthana. Heres all you need to know about this big story: Soon, Mumbaiites can log on to a mobile application to get their dry waste collected, processed and dumped. As part of its mega plan to streamline the collection and processing of 800 to 1,000 tonnes of dry waste generated daily, the Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation (BMC) has recently written to the consulates of seven countries for inviting Expression Of Interest (EOI) from entities of these countries to collect, transport, process and dispose of dry waste generated in the city. The civic body has also earmarked six locations in the city Colaba, Bandra, Kandivli, Malvani, Ghatkopar and Deonar which will be given to the selected firm for setting up a processing unit. The BMC has written to the consulates of United States of America, Germany, Finland, France, Netherlands, Italy and the United Kingdom. With this plan set to start, the civic body aims to send minimal waste to dumping grounds and stop the dumping in our landfills like Deonar that are anticipated to soon run out of space. Private entities from any of these countries will have to develop an app and a website to promote dry-waste segregation where citizens can approach them to collect waste. One of the conditions of the EOI states that of the total dry waste collected and processed, only three percent residue should be dumped in the landfills by the bidders. Kiran Dighavkar, assistant municipal commissioner of A ward and solid waste management, said, The selected firm for this plan will have to set up Material Recovery Facility, a machine that will segregate and process dry waste, at the decided locations. The unit needs to have a processing capacity of 100-250 metric tonnes a day. The city generates 7,200 metric tonnes of waste on a daily basis, of which nearly 11% is estimated to be dry waste. For entities to qualify for the waste-processing plan, the BMC has set several parameters like financial capacity of the agency, experience in handling dry waste segregation centres, technology proposed, collection and transportation mechanism and presentation of work-execution plan. An internal committee of the BMC will assess the entities and mark them on the given parameters respectively. At present, there are 36 dry waste segregation centres in the city. After segregation at the source (households) the waste is transported to these centres where it is further segregated by the rag pickers appointed by the BMC. The segregated product is then sold to scrap dealers. Initial investigations into the boat accident off Mumbais coast on Wednesday that killed one person have revealed the boat did not have the necessary permissions to set sail and was over capacity. Also, the skipper of the boat took a wrong, rockier route, causing the accident. The private speed boat was one of four carrying mainly political workers and government officials to the spot of the mid-sea memorial of the Maratha king, Shivaji, for a bhoomi puja function. However, the Mumbai Port Trust (MbPT), which issues permissions to operate ferries, yachts, and other vessels from the Gateway of India, said it had not given any permission for the boat that capsized to sail. A senior MbPT official said the vessel, MRM1, registered to a West Coast Marine Yacht Services India, did not have permission to operate. MbPT, which is also conducting a probe, said it would send a showcause notice to the Public Works Department (PWD), the Maharashtra Maritime Board (MMB) and the private yacht operator over the lapse in procedure. According to our preliminary investigation, we know that there were two private ferries and one boat owned by MMB that sailed. However, the boat that capsized didnt have our permission to sail, said a senior MbPT official. The official said the boat also did not have the vessel traffic system (VPS), which helps locate it in the seas. Senior PWD officials maintained that all processes were followed by their department, as well as the Vinayak Mete-headed Shiv Smarak Samiti that had co-organised the event with the PWD. However, the private boat was arranged at the last moment, as activists and supporters of Metes outfit arrived in large numbers. We had initially organised two ferries and a boat, and all of these which had the requisite permissions. However, it seems that as there were more people, another boat was arranged locally, said Manoj Saunik, the principal secretary, PWD. After the accident, the state government ordered a probe by the MMB, which is authorised to issue fitness certificates to inland vessels, and had given the capsized boat a fitness certificate in February 2018. We are looking at all angles: whether the boat had the necessary permissions, if the skipper had the required training, and why he took the route he did,said Vikram Kumar, the chief executive officer, MMB. Kumar added that the boats capacity was 20 passengers. The boat, however, had at least 25 people on board. Another senior MbPT official said the skipper should not have taken the route near the Prongs Reef, which is generally rocky. There is a demarcated channel for all vessels to follow in the water. Nobody can take any route they desire, the officer said. Despite several attempts, officials from West Coast Marines were unavailable for comment. An email sent to the company also remained unanswered at the time of going to print. The Maharashtra government is building the 2,846 crore memorial of Shivaji in the Arabian sea, off Mumbais coast. The construction of the Shiv Smarak, or the Chhatrapati Shivaji Maharaj Memorial, which is pegged to be worlds tallest statute, was to formally commence on Wednesday. The memorial project will include a 210-metre high grand statue of Shivaji, to be built by contractor L&T. Apart from the statue, the memorial will have a temple, museum, hospital, and a theatre showcasing highlights of the Maratha kings life. Three sanitation workers died inside a manhole in Dombivli on Friday. The deceased are Devidas Panjge, 36, Mahadev Zope, 38, and Ghanshyam Khori, 40. They were contract labourers employed by a private contractor hired to maintain a sewer line by the Dombivli division of Maharashtra Industrial Development Corporation (MIDC). Senior police inspector S Sawant of Tilaknagar police station said, We are yet to register a case. We will take the family members statement and then lodge the case. On Friday afternoon, one of the sanitation workers entered a manhole in Khambalpada as part of a routine cleaning operation. When he started suffocating, he called out for help. Two workers were waiting outside and jumped in when they heard their colleagues cries. Bystanders saw the three men enter the manhole and noticed no one was coming out. At 4.15pm, the fire department received a call from a bystander. The Kalyan Dombivli Municipal Corporation (KDMC) fire team reached the spot within 10 minutes. When we reached the spot, we first tried to enter the manhole. However, we could not make it inside as the manhole was very narrow, said Ravi Bhowari, fire officer, KDMC. Firemen who tried to enter the manhole also complained of suffocation, said Bhowari. Ultimately, they lowered a hook to lift the bodies. There were no safety masks when their bodies were recovered, said senior fire officer Suresh Shinde. Panjge, Zope and Khoris bodies were taken to Rukminibai Civic Hospital. It is suspected that the labourers died of suffocation inside the sewer as it has effluents. However, the post mortem will reveal more information, said KDMC health officer, Raju Lavangare. The post-mortem is expected on Saturday. Zope and Panjge were the primary breadwinners in their families. Both are survived by their wives and three children each. Their families have refused to claim their bodies from the hospital until theyve been compensated. Khori lived alone and his family is yet to be traced. A relative of Panjges, Sundarlal Panjge, said the contractor was to blame. They usually use a ladder to get inside the manhole, however on Friday, they did not have any ladder. The contractor had not provided any, nor were there any safety gears, masks or gloves, said Sunderlal. Deputy engineer of Dombivli MIDC, Deepak Patil, said an investigation into the tragedy was underway and denied allegations that the workers had no protective gear. The labourers were carrying the safety measures. The police have clicked their pictures. I will check with the contractor who had appointed them. After the detailed investigation we will take action against the contractor if he is found guilty, said Patil. He said MIDC only appoints contractors who supply safety gear to workers. Manual cleaning of sewers and septic tanks without protective equipment is prohibited under the Prohibition of Employment as Manual Scavengers and Their Rehabilitation Act, 2013. However, according to an answer given in Lok Sabha, in 2015, by the ministry of social justice and empowerment, Maharashtra had 35% of all manual-scavenging households in India. Three sanitation workers died in January this year, while coming out of a manhole in Powai. The strike called by Ola-Uber drivers entered the fourth day on Thursday, leaving office-goers hassled during morning and evening peak hours. The protest will continue on Friday, even as transport minister Diwakar Raote promised to look into their demands by Saturday. Mumbai has around 45,000 to 50,000 app-based taxis. Their drivers are demanding a minimum base fare in the range of 100-150 depending on the type of car and a per-km fare of 18 to 23. The drivers, under the banner of Maharashtra Rajya Rashtriya Kamgar Sangh (MRRKS), have been on strike since Monday. We interacted with Raote, who promised a discussion with the management of app-based cabs in the city. He has promised action in the next two days, but the strike will not be called off until our demands are met, said Sunil Borkar, secretary, MRRKS. Tired of the shortage of cabs and surge pricing, travellers took to social media to express their unhappiness. @MOosZAsZ tweeted to @ola_support, When is ur strike @olacabs & @Uber goin to end in Mumbai? No cabs only since four days? What is wrong with U guys? The companys handle responded back, saying they had no information on the strike, Hi! We do not have much information on this. However, kindly check for the live availability of cabs in the app, @abhimurudkar921 tweeted, @ola_supports when will the #olauberstrike end in Mumbai? Is Ola going to watch its customers suffering? Meanwhile, Raote has suggested that app-based cabs can be considered as cool cabs. The city taxi scheme 2017 was brought in to monitor the aggregators, but the companies got a stay on it. I have given orders to take all necessary steps to get the stay vacated from the high court. However, if app-based cabs are ready, we can explore options to consider them as cool cabs [which will bring them under the ambit of the state government], he said. In a fresh round of action against Nirav Modi in connection with the Punjab National Bank (PNB) fraud, the enforcement directorate attached the diamantaires valuables worth 255 crore in Hong Kong, under the Prevention of Money Laundering Act (PMLA). With this, the total worth of the attachment in the case has touched 4,744 crore. According to ED sources, after a case was filed against Nirav Modi, his Dubai-based companies exported the valuables, in the form of gold, diamond, jewellery and pearls, in 26 shipments to Hong Kong. During investigation, intelligence inputs showed that certain valuables belonging to Modi-controlled companies were lying in the vaults of a Hong Kong-based Logistics Company. Further details such as value, consignee, shipper, ownership of these shipments were obtained through investigation and after gathering the evidences of ownership and value of the goods, they have been attached, said the agency. In case of an overseas property, the ED has to send a judicial request to the foreign jurisdiction. As part of the procedure, the attachment order will now be sent to the authorities in Hong Kong, asking them to restrain the sale of the property, said an ED officer. The agency is likely to push for a letter rogatory (LR), a formal request from an Indian court to a foreign court, for judicial assistance. The PMLA Act defines proceeds of crime as any property derived or obtained, directly or indirectly, by any person as a result of criminal activity relating to a scheduled offence or the value of any such property. The agency has attached immovable properties worth 218.46 crore in the case this month. These properties belong to Mihir Bhansali, AP Gems and jewellery park Hyderabad, Mehul Choksi and his family members and Nirav Modi. Jalandhar divisional commissioner B Purushartha, who has been appointed special executive magistrate to probe the Amritsar train tragedy, said 20 people, including the Dussehra organisers and railway officials, have been summoned so far. At least 61 people were killed and many injured when a train ploughed through a crowd watching a Ravana effigy being burnt in Amritsar on October 19. On Thursday, Purushartha recorded statements of 51 people, including relatives of the dead and injured. Eyewitnesses also recorded their statements and submitted evidences. Purushartha said he has questioned Amritsar DC Kamaldeep Singh Sangha, commissioner of police SS Srivastva and deputy commissioner of police Amrik Singh Pawar. He said the main organiser of the event, Saurabh Madaan aka Mithu, has also been summoned. When questioned, Purushartha said Navjot Kaur Sidhu, who was chief guest of the event, has not been summoned. If need arises everyone involved will be called for questioning, he said. On Wednesday, a victim, accompanied by SAD-BJP leaders, lodged a complaint against Kaur and Mithu at the Mohkampura police station holding them responsible for the tragedy.On being questioned if any eyewitness gave evidence against Mithu and Navjot Kaur, he said: Its a part of the probe and the proceedings cant be disclosed. SAD-BJP leaders protest at AIT office SAD-BJP workers led by former minister Bikram Singh Majithia held a protest at the Amritsar Improvement Trust (AIT) office during a public hearing on the train tragedy. The protesters raised slogans and demanded probe by a high court judge. Why the inquiry is being conducted at the AIT office which is under Navjot Singh Sidhu? The magisterial inquiry has been ordered to give a clean chit to the Sidhus wife, Majithia, who was accompanied by state BJP chief Shwait Malik, said. People and media were not allowed in the trust office. If this was to be done, the inquiry could have been held at Sidhus residence, said Majithia, adding that the victim families are also being pressured not to name any Congress functionary before the inquiry officer. Exactly a week ago, the nation went numb as 61 people lost their lives and 143 were injured when a train ploughed through a crowd standing on the tracks to watch the Dussehra celebrations at Dhobi Ghat near Jaura Phatak in Amritsar. A week on, HT ran a reality check across Punjab to find that people, young and old, have learnt no lesson and continue to flout safety norms by crossing closed railway crossings or walking on tracks despite the rail traffic. Though Punjab Police and Railway Protection Force (RPF) teams are deployed at level crossings, it hasnt stopped people from being mindful about their safety. A police team led by sub inspector Hardeep Singh at Rambagh Phatak in Amritsar says commuters are impatient and duck the barrier at the slightest opportunity and cross the tracks. Jatinder Pal Singh, a railway guard the phatak, says, Nearly 100 trains pass through this crossing daily. Hundreds of people used to cross the closed level crossing but thanks to the police presence now such cases have come down. But for how long? A family with children in tow walking on the track as a train approaches and a youngster with ears plugged in Patiala on Thursday are examples of irresponsible civic behaviour. (HT Photo) Bridging the gap Pardeep Kumar of Amritsars Jethuwal locality, who was stopped by the police for crossing Rambagh Phatak despite it being closed, said, My grandmother, Kailash Vati, is undergoing treatment at Guru Ram Das Hospital. I took a break from work to deliver lunch to her. I had been waiting at the crossing for 15 minutes. It was getting late so I crossed it even if it meant risking my life. Why doesnt the government build bridges over railway crossings? It will save commuters time and ensure their safety. Maninder Singh of Sundar Nagar locality agreed, Its difficult to stand for 15-30 minutes and wait for the barriers to be lifted. Over bridges, especially in busy areas of the city, are needed if the government is really concerned about peoples safety. Karan Rampal, who runs a kiosk selling cigarette, at Shivala Phatak, said, Commuters are forced to bypass the closed level crossing due to the long duration it takes. Sometimes, this crossing is closed for an hour. Pavittar Singh, a Railway Police Force personnel posted at Shivala Phatak, said, Despite our vigil, people are defiant. At least, they should think about the recent tragedy. Commuters crossing a manned level crossing despite a train approaching at Shastri Nagar in Ludhiana on Thursday. (HT Photo) Broken walls Boundary walls of the railways are broken at several places along the busy Amritsar-Jalandhar route. Residents of slums and colonies adjoining the rail route walk and cross the rail tracks at will. Parveen Rani of Pawan Nagar in Amrtisar, who was caught crossing the tracks from Indra Nagar to Shivala Phatak, said, I have been crossing the tracks like this for decades. Most people here choose to do so because this is a shortcut. Amritsar railway station director Amrit Singh said 21 railway crossings in Amritsar district are manned. Railway sources said six crossings are unmanned in the district, most of them in the rural areas. Leaders of Punjab and Chandigarh Congress held a protest outside the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) office in Sector 30 in Chandigarh against the NDA governments move to remove CBI director Alok Kumar Verma and special director Rakesh Asthana. Police barricaded the roads leading to the CBI office and after the protestors tried to cross the barricades, water canons were used to disperse them. Punjab Congress chief Sunil Jakhar, Chandigarh Congress in-charge Asha Kumari, former union minister Pawan Kumar Bansal, Punjab Congress MLA Pargat Singh and Chandigarh Congress president Pradeep Chhabra were present during the protest. The Congress leaders demanded an apology from the Prime Minister and alleged that the illegal, unconstitutional and illegitimate removal of the CBI director had shamed India and its premier investigative agency. Alok Verma and Rakesh Asthana were divested of all duties late in the night following a feud between the two. Joint director M Nageswar Rao, a 1986-batch Orissa-cadre officer, who was asked to take over as acting chief immediately, in his first order, removed the entire team probing the bribery case against Asthana, including Ajay Bassi, the investigation officer (IO) and deputy inspector general Manish Sinha. The removal of the director triggered a political row, with opposition leaders criticising the move and Congress wondering if Verma was sacked for his keenness to probe the layers of corruption in the Rafale scam and sought an answer from Prime Minister Narendra Modi. (with agency inputs) At least 14 children were injured in a knife attack at a kindergarten at Chongqing city in southwest China on Friday. Reports said a woman attacked children inside the school with a kitchen knife in the morning. The incident occurred at Yudong New Century Kindergarten in Banan district of Chongqing, a bustling metropolis. The suspect was identified as 39-year-old Liu. School authorities and police took victims to the nearest hospital. Police pacified parents who demanded an explanation about the lack of security at the school. The motive behind the attack was not clear, though similar attacks fuelled by personal grievances or grievances against local governments have occurred in China before. Police denied reports that two children had been killed in the attack and urged social media users not to share rumours. In 2012, a knife-wielding man in central China had attacked dozens of kindergarten children because of family problems. One of the worst attacks triggered by personal problems took place in northwest China in 2016, when a debt-ridden migrant labourer set a packed bus on fire, killing at least 17 people and leaving more than 30 with burn injuries. A three-judge bench comprising CJI Ranjan Gogoi and Justices SK Kaul and KM Joseph will hear Alok Verma's petition. CBI Director Alok Verma petition has challenged the decision of the Centre to divest him of his duties and sending him on leave. (Photo: PTI) New Delhi: The Supreme Court has ruled that the Central Vigilance Commission inquiry into exiled CBI chief Alok Verma be completed in two weeks under the supervision of an apex court judge. The apex court also ruled that interim CBI chief M Nageswara Rao cannot take any policy decisions and will look after routine affairs only. Alok Verma had challenged in the Supreme Court the validity of the governments role in divesting his powers and sending him on forced administrative leave late on Tuesday. The government did so after bribery charges and counter charges flew thick between Verma and CBI deputy Rakesh Asthana, after which the CVC stepped in to probe charges against Alok Verma. The government soon sent both on leave. Verma challenged this decision, since the CBI chief is appointed for two years by a selection panel headed by the Prime Minister, the Leader of the Opposition and the Chief Justice of India. Opposition leader Mallikarjun Kharge has termed the governments move as illegal and malafide as no one -- neither you (government) nor the CVC enjoys the requisite authority to interfere with the Terms of Service vested in the Director. Here are updates from the Supreme Court: 01:58 pm: Congress President Rahul Gandhi and other leaders who were protesting near CBI headquarters in Delhi have been arrested. Congress President Rahul Gandhi and other leaders of the Congress Party detained during the protests at the CBI Headquarters in Delhi: Congress pic.twitter.com/f4pt4XeHdY ANI (@ANI) October 26, 2018 01:47 pm: "All officers of the CBI, particularly the top two officers like Caesar's wife must be beyond suspicion," Finance Minister Arun Jaitley said. #WATCH: FM Arun Jaitley says,"All officers of the CBI, particularly the top two officers like Caesar's wife must be beyond suspicion." pic.twitter.com/qlA1eLOCtH ANI (@ANI) October 26, 2018 01:33 pm: "Recent developments had eroded the credibility of CBI. CVC in the interest of fairness passed an order that till investigations are pending against two top officers of CBI, they must step aside and recuse themselves from CBI functioning till inquiry is over," Finance Minister Arun Jaitley said. 01:32 pm: "Today Supreme Court has further strengthened the fairness criteria. They fixed a time limit and in order to ensure that highest standard of fairness are maintained even in the inquiry they have appointed a retired judge to ensure that the CVC inquiry is extremely fair," Finance Minister Arun Jaitley said. 01:29 pm: "The current CBI controversy is an extremely positive development. Government has no interest for or against any individual. Government is interested in maintaining professionalism, image and constitutional integrity of CBI," Finance Minister Arun Jaitley said. 01:18 pm: Congress workers detained by police during protests near CBI headquarters in Delhi. #Visuals of Congress workers being detained by police during protests near #CBI headquarters in Delhi. pic.twitter.com/17TpXm6rte ANI (@ANI) October 26, 2018 01:13 pm: Congress workers in Telangana stage protest near CBI Office in Hyderabad against the removal of CBI Chief Alok Verma. Telangana: Congress workers stage protest near CBI Office in Hyderabad against the removal of CBI Chief Alok Verma. pic.twitter.com/ZQmkU0UodR ANI (@ANI) October 26, 2018 01:11 pm: Congress workers in Delhi stage protest against removal of CBI chief Alok Verma. #WATCH: Congress workers stage protest against the removal of CBI Chief Alok Verma in #Delhi. pic.twitter.com/BRk8Vvwvgv ANI (@ANI) October 26, 2018 12:45 pm: Police used water cannon at Congress workers protesting in Chandigarh against removal of CBI Director Alok Verma. Chandigarh: Police use water cannon at Congress workers who are protesting against the removal of CBI Director Alok Verma pic.twitter.com/SXwR3AgGRq ANI (@ANI) October 26, 2018 12:42 pm: "Congress doesn't have any people's issues to raise that is why they are taking up these non-issues. We should wait for the investigation report," Home Minister Rajnath Singh said. 12:35 pm: Congress President Rahul Gandhi and party leader Ashok Gehlot lead the protest march to CBI headquarters against the removal of CBI Director Alok Verma. 11:44 am: Congress workers held protest outside the CBI office in Lucknow against removal of CBI Director Alok Verma. 11:41 am: Decisions taken by Rao from October 23 till date shall not be implemented, said the Supreme Court. 11:34 am: "CVC will carry on probe in 10 days under the supervision of a judge of this court. M Nageswara Rao shall perform only routine task. Change of investigating officer by CBI will be furnished in sealed cover on November 12 before SC," said CJI Ranjan Gogoi. 11: 32 am: CJI Gogoi in his order stated, "Inquiry in respect of the allegation made in the note of the Secretariat as regards the present CBI Director Alok Verma shall be completed by the CVC within a period of 2 weeks from today." 11:29 am: The CVC inquiry to be conducted under supervision of retired Supreme Court judge AK Patnaik, orders Supreme Court. 11:28 am: Solicitor General Tushar Mehta said "10 days may not be enough to complete the inquiry and opposes supervision of CVC inquiry by SC judge." 11:25 am: Mukul Rohatgi appeared for Rakesh Asthana. CJI Gogoi told Rohatagi, "You file a separate writ". Rohatgi said, "I have, please keep my writ on Monday." 11:25 am: CJI Ranjan Gogoi asked Attorney General that inquiry will be conducted by sitting or former judge of Supreme Court. M Nageswara Rao will not take any policy decisions. 11:22 am: CJI Ranjan Gogoi says will examine the matter. 11:21 am: CJI Ranjan Gogoi remarks that enquiry by CVC should be completed in ten days and should be under supervision of a Supreme Court judge. 11:20 am: Fali Nariman cites to amendment to Delhi Special Police Establishment Act. 11:18 am: Fali Nariman who is representing Alok Verma submits, "Present case is concerned with whether his tenure of two years could be breached at any time." 11:17 am: Senior jurist Fali Nariman who is represting CBI Director Alok Verma cited Vineet Narain judgment and the 2-year statutory protection. 11:15 am: Hearing commences in Supreme Court, Senior jurist Fali S Nariman arguing for CBI Director Alok Verma. 11:12 am: Rakesh Asthana's was filed through advocate Amit Anand Tiwari a few minutes back. Amit Anand Tiwari has been CBI's lawyer in the Supreme Court. 11:10 am: CBI Special Director Rakesh Asthana moves the Supreme Court against the Centre's leave order. 11:04 am: Congress workers in Karnataka held protest outside the CBI office in Bengaluru against the removal of CBI Director Alok Verma. 10:31 am: Security tightened and barricading outside CBI headquarters ahead of Congress protest against the removal of CBI Director Alok Verma. 10:30 am: "It is just one more case. What is big about it? It is not as important as you think it is," Former Attorney General and senior advocate Mukul Rohatgi said. Also Read: CBI vs CBI crucial hearing: Alok Verma to challenge forced leave in SC today 10:20 am: Former Attorney General and senior advocate Mukul Rohatgi leave for the Supreme Court. He will be representing CBI Special Director Rakesh Asthana. (Photo: Twitter | @ANI) 10:10 am: TMC MP Nadeem Ul Haq will join the Congress protest led by Rahul Gandhi at Central Bureau of Investigation HQ against the removal of CBI Director Alok Verma. 10:06 am: CBI Special Director Rakesh Asthana outside former Attorney General and senior advocate Mukul Rohatgi's residence in Delhi: news agency ANI. (Photo: Twitter | @ANI) 10:05 am: Congress President Rahul Gandhi tweets on protests: 09:55 am: Security deployed outside CBI office in Lucknow ahead of the Congress protest against the removal of CBI Director Alok Verma. 09:45 am: Trinamool Congress to join the Congress party protest led by Rahul Gandhi at Central Bureau of Investigation headquarters against the removal of CBI Director Alok Verma. 09:43 am: Visuals from outside CBI headquarters in Delhi. 09:30 am: M Nageswar Rao is only holding charge as interim director until the Central Vigilance Commission looks into the allegations and counter allegations: CBI spokesperson Abhishek Dayal. 09:29 am: Alok Verma continues to remain director of CBI, Asthana remains special director: CBI spokesperson Abhishek Dayal. A presidential ordinance that proscribed the Jamaat-ud-Dawah (JuD) and Falah-e-Insaniyat Foundation (FIF), both fronts for the Lashkar-e-Taiba founded by Hafiz Saeed, has lapsed, a top law officer has informed a court in Islamabad. Deputy attorney general Raja Khalid Mehmood Khan confirmed that the ordinance had lapsed on Thursday while the Islamabad high court was hearing a petition filed by Saeed challenging the ban on JuD and FIF. Saeeds lawyers Raja Rizwan Abbasi and Sohail Warraich told Justice Aamer Farooq of the high court that the ordinance had not been extended after it lapsed. The ordinance was issued by in February by then president Mamnoon Hussain to amend the Anti-Terrorism Act of 1997 to proscribe terrorist individuals and organisations sanctioned under UN Security Council resolution 1267. The move was primarily aimed at the JuD and FIF, which were only on a watch list maintained by the interior ministry, and aimed at deflecting pressure from the Paris-based Financial Action Task Force, which had been approached by the US and other Western powers to put Pakistan on its grey list for failing to curb terror financing. Despite the action taken by Pakistan, the FATF opted to put the country on its watch list in June. Since then, the FATF has finalised an action plan for Pakistan to comply with in order to be removed from the grey list by 2019. According to a list updated on September 5 by Pakistans National Counter Terrorism Authority, 66 groups have been banned in the country but JuD and FIF are not among them. The two groups linked to Saeed continue to be under watch by the ministry of interior under the provisions of the Anti-Terrorism Act. Responding to a query from the court, Saeeds lawyers informed the judge that the Imran Khan government, which assumed office in August, had not extended the ordinance or tabled it in Parliament to convert it into an act. Deputy attorney general Khan declined a request from Saeeds lawyers to make a statement on behalf of the interior ministry regarding the lapse of the ordinance. He told the court that since Saeed had not named the ministry as a respondent, he could not make a statement unless the petition was amended and the interior secretary was added as a party to the case. The judge said Saeeds petition had became infructuous as the ordinance had lapsed. He disposed of the petition with the observation that if the government renewed the ordinance, Saeed could file another petition against it. Saeed claimed he established the JuD in 2002 and had cut off all ties with the LeT. He also claimed Indian authorities were maligning the JuD and that he was kept in detention in 2009 and 2017 due to Indian pressure. An electric-vehicle revolution is gaining ground in India, and it has nothing to do with cars. The South Asian nation is home to about 1.5 million battery-powered, three-wheeled rickshaws a fleet bigger than the total number of electric passenger cars sold in China since 2011. But while the worlds largest auto market dangled significant subsidies to encourage purchases of battery-powered cars, Indias e-movement hardly got a hand from the state. Rather, drivers of the ubiquitous three-wheelers weaving through crowded, smoggy streets discovered that e-rickshaws are quieter, faster, cleaner and cheaper to maintain than a traditional auto rickshaw. They also are less strenuous than cycle rickshaws, which require all-day peddling. So with more rides possible in a day, the e-rickshaws are proving more lucrative. As many as 11,000 new e-rickshaws hit the streets every month, and annual sales are expected to increase about 9 percent by 2021, according to consulting firm A.T. Kearney. Three-wheeled vehicles make up a $1.5 billion market, and manufacturers of electric versions include Mahindra & Mahindra Ltd. and Kinetic Engineering Ltd., along with smaller outfits that assemble parts imported from China. This is a once-in-a-lifetime, transformational opportunity that were looking at, said Goldie Srivastava, chief executive officer and co-founder of SmartE, an Uber-style app using 800-plus e-rickshaws around New Delhi. When we look at electric mobility, the focus should be: Are you as a government enabling products that are designed for the future? Indias dominant ride-hailing startup, Ola, plans to place 10,000 e-ricks in its service by next April. India is the worlds fourth-largest auto market, but previous attempts to boost private electric-car ownership flopped. The government likely scaled back because it fears disrupting an industry that contributes about 7 percent of the total gross domestic product, according to a Bloomberg NEF report in March.Unlike the estimated 1.35 million passenger EVs cruising around China, the number of electric cars plying Indian roads is a paltry 6,000, according to BNEF data. Chinese automakers sell more than that in three days. Indias largest automaker, Maruti Suzuki India Ltd., wont sell its first EV until 2020.Prime Minister Narendra Modis administration now is pivoting toward promoting EVs in public transportation and fleet operations primarily, two- and three-wheelers, taxis and buses. The Ministry of Finance is finalizing a plan to spend about 40 billion rupees ($600 million) in the next five years to improve the nations charging infrastructure and subsidize e-buses. India needs to focus on electrifying two-wheelers and three-wheelers, said Amitabh Kant, chief executive of NITI Aayog, a government policy institute helping formulate the new strategy. Outside an east Delhi metro station, a slew of partly open-air vehicles line the street as commuters hail their rides. They also carry tourists, schoolchildren, crates of fruit and the occasional goat. Anil Chaudhary, 32, switched to an e-rickshaw from a cycle model two years ago. His income increased, hes able to take longer breaks and he sends money to his wife and three children in Bihar, about 700 miles away. Hes already on his second electric model. Two months ago, I called my brother from the village and gave him my old e-rickshaw so that he could drive it, he said as a goat strolled past. Ive bought this new one, he said, gesturing toward a glossy, red vehicle adorned with paper flowers and an Indian flag. Then theres the ameliorative effect that e-ricks have on the toxic air in India, home to 10 of the worlds most-polluted cities, according to the World Health Organization.A total of 635,698 three-wheel vehicles were sold during the fiscal year that ended in March a 24 percent increase from a year earlier, according to the Society of Indian Automobile Manufacturers. By comparison, about 3.3 million passenger cars were sold, mostly all powered by gasoline or diesel. One hindrance to the potential growth of EVs is the lack of charging and battery-swapping stations nationwide. India had about 425 publicly available charging points at the end of last year. By 2022, government and private efforts are expected to boost that to an estimated 2,800 charging points, according to BNEF. Instead of waiting, some companies are starting to build their own infrastructure. SmartE partnered with Delhi Metro Rail Corp. to provide charging near 10 stations, with plans to expand throughout the 214-station system by the end of 2020. Another hindrance is the lack of bank financing for traditional rickshaw drivers, who typically earn low incomes, said Shishir Agrawal, managing director of Shigan eVoltz Ltd., the parent company of manufacturer GreenRick. The Gurgaon-based company, which sells e-rickshaws mostly in Delhi and Uttar Pradesh, could more than triple production to 1,000 vehicles a month if that issue was resolved. The potential market for e-rickshaws could be sales of 20 million vehicles a year, he said. If the subsidies get better, and easy financing options become available, this market is unstoppable, Agrawal said. A man was taken into custody in Florida on Friday in connection with the mailing of 14 explosives, including two new ones intercepted earlier in the day, to leading critics of US president Donald Trump, who, in turn, had attacked them viciously and frequently. I am pleased to inform you that law enforcement has apprehended the suspect and taken him into custody, the president said as he announced the arrest, calling the mailing of the explosives as terrorizing acts (that) are despicable and have no place in our country. The suspect was identified as Cesar Sayoc, Jr., a 56-year-old resident of Aventura, Florida, in media reports. He was arrested from outside his workplace in city called Plantation in the same state. FBI agents were seen covering a van with blue tarp in news footage from a location in Florida, which was then driven away aboard a carrier. DNA prints from the packages and Sayocs cellphone were reported to have played a role in his arrest. He had been under surveillance for the past 24 hours. The US justice department will announce details at a news conference. The intended recipients of the packages discovered Friday were Democratic senator Cory Booker and former director of national intelligence James Clapper. They fit the pattern that has emerged thus far. They are both strident critics of the president and also frequent target of his attacks. Booker is also said to be considering a run for the White House in 2020 against Trump if he wins the Democratic primaries. President Trump had condemned these intended attacks and called for unity, but also attacked his opponents, critics and media for holding him responsible for the bitterly divisive political climate in the country that may have motivated those behind the packages, that started arriving last Monday. On Friday, he complained the bombs were a distraction. Republicans are doing so well in early voting, and at the polls, and now this Bomb stuff happens and the momentum greatly slows - news not talking politics. Very unfortunate, what is going on. Republicans, go out and vote! he tweeted. The package for Booker was found at a mailing facility in Florida, intercepted before it shipped. And the one meant for Clapper was found at a mailing facility in New York, and was addressed to CNNs offices the ex-DNI appears frequently on the news network as an expert on national security. The total of these packages had gone up to 14. The packages started being noticed on Monday, with the first gong to George Soros, a billionaire supporter of the Democratic party. Similar packages meant for former president Barack Obama and former secretary of state Hillary Clinton were intercepted the day after, and then the rest followed There have been no injuries or damages. Each package is contained in a mania envelope, with bubble-wrap lining in the inside. The explosive devices are pipe bombs that have been described as rudimentary but functional and the FBI has warned people against touching or moving it around. The package meant for Booker, a senator from New Jersey, was discovered at a mailing facility in Florida Thursday night. The FBI confirmed it on Friday and said it was similar in appearance to all of the previous ones. As was the one sent to DNI Clappers, care-of CNN. This is the second package addressed to CNN. The first was meant for former CIA director John Brennan and was found at the networks Manhattan offices on Tuesday. His name was misspelt and though he may have appeared on CNN, he is a contributor at MSNBC, a rival TV news broadcaster. The package meant for Clapper was intercepted at an off-site clearing facility that the network has set up since, to prevent all mail from making it unscreened to the building, which has been evacuated completely, forcing the network and its news anchors to stay on air from the sidewalk a short distance away. Two more suspicious packages were found on Friday, addressed to Democratic senator Cory Booker and former director of national intelligence James Clapper, amid a manhunt for the serial bomber, or bombers, who earlier sent pipe-bombs to leading critics of President Donald Trump. The package for Booker was found at a mailing facility in Florida, intercepted before it shipped. And the one meant for Clapper was found at a mailing facility in New York, and was addressed to CNNs offices the ex-DNI appears frequently on the news network as an expert on national security. The total of these packages has gone up to 12 and the FBI, the investigating agency leading the hunt, does not have a suspect, or suspects, and renewed its appeal on Friday morning to the public for information leading to those behind what is increasingly being described as a case of domestic terrorism. The new intended recipients fit the pattern that has emerged so far as they are both strident critics of the president and also the frequent target of his attacks. Booker is also said to be considering a run for the White House in 2020, against Trump if he wins the Democratic primaries. President Trump has condemned these intended attacks and called for unity, but has also attacked his opponents, critics and media for holding him responsible for a fraught political atmosphere in the country that may have motivated those behind the packages, that started arriving last Monday. T he pull to "get back to nature" can be strong, especially among those of us stressed out by the manic pace of sleepless, overcrowded cities. But what if we dont want to sacrifice our 21st-century modcons to live in a tent? That's where clever contemporary design comes in, marrying primitivism with luxury a trend predicted to explode in 2019 and there's a stunning example currently on sale in Chile for 1.15million. Designed by Pritzker Prize-winning Chilean architect Alejandro Aravena, this majestic holiday home overlooking the Pacific Ocean offers a return to a more tranquil way of life while retaining a beautifully modern aesthetic. TODO: define component type brightcove It has been built as part of the Ochoalcubo (Eight-Cubed) project, "an architectural lab and live architectural museum" in Ochoquebradas, near the coastal city of Los Vilos, a three-hour drive north of Santiago. The site comprises 800 hectares of natural, unspoilt land brimming with dramatic cliffs, rock formations, dunes and bays. Sixteen leading Chilean and Japanese architects have been specially invited to create ground-breaking projects upon it, with the aim of promoting innovative design in the country. Smiljan Radic, designer of the 2014 Sepentine Pavilion, and Sou Fujimoto , whose Japanese architecture exhibition helped launch London's Japan House earlier this year, are among the other pioneering architects taking part in Ochoalcubo. They were all asked to focus primarily on concrete, so as to foster harmony between their individual designs and the surrounding rugged landscape. The Aravena house is made from three blocks of concrete built roughly on top of each other to echo the natural environment. Its simple lines are sure to appeal to fans of stripped-back minimalism. Unspoilt: look out over the Pacific Ocean from the master bedroom suite (Sotheby's) It offers 2,690 sq ft of living space split over four levels, including four bedrooms and four bathrooms, and is set in 1.3 acres of grounds. The wood-panelled living room, dining room, kitchen, en-suite master bedroom and an enclosed glass courtyard with a firepit are found on the main level. Smart sliding walls allow you to switch between privacy and an open-plan layout. Three bedrooms, all en-suite, are found on the other three levels, reached by a fabulous open concrete spiral staircase. Huge floor-to-ceiling windows draw the breathtaking outside in, incorporating nature into the design. The large open terrace suspended above the ravine is a particular highlight. Despite the potentially unforgiving coldness of the concrete exterior, comfort has been a consideration throughout. Statement: the concrete spiral staircase is a highlight of the Chile house (Sotheby's) The high-end Miele kitchen is fitted out with everything from a coffee maker to an integrated plate warmer and the bathrooms have a cosy, spa-like feel. Yolanda Tejeda de Walker, International Business Manager for Chile Sotheby's International Realty, who is marketing the property described it as "truly unique". "The concrete blocks stack and lean against each other, making it seem more like a sculpture than a home," she said. "On the inside, it is filled with light, with floor-to-ceiling windows casting a glow on the raw concrete interior, which constantly changes hue depending on the sunlight. At an event in Mumbai on Tuesday Smriti Irani said women had a right to pray but 'not desecrate' places of worship. The complaint against Union Minister Smriti Irani was lodged before the court of Chief Judicial Magistrate, Sitamarhi, Saroj Kumari by advocate Thakur Chandan Singh. (Photo: ANI) Sitamarhi (Bihar): A complaint was lodged at a Sitamarhi court on Thursday against Union minister Smriti Irani for her alleged remarks on allowing women of menstruating age into the Sabarimala temple in Kerala. A controversy had erupted after Smriti Irani said at an event in Mumbai on Tuesday that women had a right to pray but "not desecrate" places of worship. Hours later, she tweeted that she made "2 factual statements" and "rest of the propaganda/agenda" was launched using her as a "bait". Also Read: 'Would you take blood-soaked napkin to friends?' Smriti on Sabarimala row The complaint was lodged before the court of Chief Judicial Magistrate, Sitamarhi, Saroj Kumari by advocate Thakur Chandan Singh. Thakur Chandan Singh has made protesters against entry of women into the shrine as party in the case. On September 28, the Supreme Court lifted the ban on entry of women of menstrual age into the Sabarimala temple. However, women were stopped by protesters from climbing up the hill top shrine. The complaint has been lodged under Sections 120B (criminal conspiracy to commit offence punishable with death), 124A (sedition), 353 (deterring public servant from discharge of duty) and 354 (outraging the modesty of a woman) of the Indian Penal Code. The matter is likely to come up for hearing on October 29. The ministry appointed Col Aman Anand, who is the spokesperson of the Indian Army at present, as the acting Official Spokesperson. The incumbent spokesperson Swaranashree Rao Rajashekar's controversial tweet came in response to a remark made by former navy chief Admiral Arun Prakash. (Photo: Twitter | @payyaboy) New Delhi: The spokesperson of the Ministry of Defence has gone on leave after a tweet from the spokesperson's official twitter handle criticising the misuse of privileges by military officials sparked an outrage with armed forces veterans terming it as an insult. The ministry appointed Col Aman Anand, who is the spokesperson of the Indian Army at present, as the acting Official Spokesperson. Col. Aman Anand, took over as the acting Official Spokesperson of MOD as the Spokesperson proceeds on leave, the defence ministry spokesperson's handle tweeted on Friday evening. The incumbent spokesperson Swaranashree Rao Rajashekar's controversial tweet came in response to a remark made by former navy chief Admiral Arun Prakash. On Friday, Rajashekar responded to a retweet by Admiral Prakash highlighting misuse of flags by civilian officers. The tweet had an image showing the use of a flag on the bonnet of the Internal Financial Advisor appointed to the Western Command of the Army in Chandimandir in Haryana's Panchkula district. Since bureaucrats are not entitled to such privilege reserved only for top military brass, the visual went viral on social media. Admiral Prakash retweeted the image with caption, ''Even if misuse of an Army Command's insignia by a civilian is not a cognisable offence, the person needs to be reprimanded".' Responding to Admiral Prakash's tweet, the defence ministry's spokesperson replied from the official handle: "What about the misuse of jawans in your residence during an officer's tenure sir? And how about children being picked up and dropped to school in Fauji gaadis? Not to forget Madam's shopping expedition, in government vehicle. And endless parties...who pays for that?" Later, Rajashekar, an official from the Defence Accounts Service, deleted the tweet. However, the post drew strong reactions from military veterans who felt that Rajashekhar's tweet reflected "a deep rooted and twisted anti-armed forces mindset that prevails in MoD" and bureaucracy. "Is this inadvertent. It shows the true colours of your MoD Madam. You are meant to protect the military, not insult it. Keeping this spokesperson is an insult to India, its armed forces and their sacrifices. It shows no respect for senior veterans. Your spokesperson is a disaster," Retired Major General Harsha Kakar told Defence Minister Nirmala Sitharaman. "This is indeed shameful for @SpokespersonMoD to tweet this to a former Service Chief," retired Air Vice Marshall Manmohan Bahadur wrote on Twitter. Retired Lt General KJ Singh tweeted, "Is it allowed to be done under Official handle. It is dangerous to have such people to project us & our relationship with others". The former Navy chief chose to ignore the spokesperson's rude reply to him and instead urged the ministry to "reflect" on the state of civil-military relations. "Rather than getting excited over indiscreet tweet of @SpokespersonMoD I would suggest sober reflection; (a) by MoD on state of civil-mil (military) relations & (b) by Military Leadership on the aspersions cast by MoD (IDAS?) civil-servant on personal conduct of Service officers,'' he said. Following the outrage, the defence ministry spokesperson apologised for the tweet and said it was "inadvertent". The post also caught the eye of BJP MP Rajeev Chandrasekhar, who demanded an inquiry into the matter. Rebranding 26 October 2018 Adventurous Journeys (AJ) Capital Partners announced today that it has acquired the Atherton Hotel in State College. The hotel will operate independently while renovations take place. Once complete in fall of 2019, the hotel will be converted to Graduate State College, part of the Graduate Hotels collection. The 150-room hotel is conveniently located in downtown State College, just a few blocks from The Pennsylvania State University's campus. Prominently situated on Atherton Street, the hotel is a short walk from Old Main and the sprawling Penn State University Park campus, and just steps from College Avenue's restaurants and shops. The hotel is also in close proximity to Beaver Stadium, the Bryce Jordan Center and University Park Airport, making Graduate State College an ideal location for business and leisure travelers alike. Created for travelers who seek memory-making journeys, Graduate Hotels is a thoughtfully crafted collection of hotels that reside in the most dynamic university-anchored cities across the country. Each property celebrates and commemorates the optimistic energy of its community, while offering an extended retreat to places that often play host to the best days of our lives. There are currently 11 open and operating hotels across the U.S. and an additional 12 hotels under development slated to open by 2020. The hotel will undergo a comprehensive renovation to convert it to Graduate State College, which will touch all guestrooms, common areas, the restaurant and lobby lounge and the hotel's 5,000 square feet of flexible meeting and events space. For more information on Graduate Hotels, please visit www.graduatehotels.com. Rebranding 26 October 2018 Hyatt Hotels Corporation (NYSE:H) has announced today that a Hyatt affiliate has entered into a management agreement with Socomix for the Hotel du Palais in Biarritz, France. This historic, luxury palace will be the third property in France to join The Unbound Collection by Hyatt brand, alongside Hotel du Louvre in Paris and Hotel Martinez in Cannes. As the sixth property in The Unbound Collection by Hyatt in Europe, the 142-room hotel will mark a significant milestone for the brand's growth. In addition to Hotel du Palais, Great Scotland Yard Hotel in London and Parisi Udvar Hotel in Budapest are expected to open under this brand before the end of 2019. As a living memory of the Biarritz history, the "Villa Eugenie", now Hotel du Palais, was built in 1855 by Napoleon III for his wife Eugenie de Montijo. With its captivating past, its exclusive, prime location facing the Atlantic ocean and its famous architecture and design, Hotel du Palais will deliver on the brand's promise to create story-worthy and shareable experiences for the modern traveler, making it a natural addition to The Unbound Collection by Hyatt portfolio. Guests will be able to follow in the footsteps of global celebrities who indulged in the alluring French glamour of this property, one of France's prestigious palace hotels. The hotel will be fully renovated by renowned design companies, including Atelier COS, honoring traditional French luxury and the hotel's rich heritage. A partial reopening is set to take place between July and October 2019, and final renovations are scheduled to be complete for a full reopening in June 2020. New features will include renovated guestrooms, two revitalized signature restaurants, a new lounge and bar, as well as restored public areas to create a lively local atmosphere for guests. There are currently eight other Hyatt properties open in France, including the new Hyatt Centric La Rosiere, Hotel Martinez in Cannes, Hyatt Paris Madeleine, Hyatt Regency Nice Palais de la Mediterranee, Hyatt Regency Paris - Charles de Gaulle, Hyatt Regency Paris Etoile and Park Hyatt Paris-Vendome. Hotel du Louvre is currently under renovation and Hyatt Regency Chantilly is scheduled to open in late 2018 along with three additional hotels expected to open under Hyatt's select service portfolio in the coming years: Hyatt Place and Hyatt House Charles De Gaulle Airport and Hyatt Place Rouen. External Article 26 October 2018 New York City is home to some of the most legendary hotels in the world. Highly touted for their service, luxury and elegance, many of them also have a rich history that adds to the experience of staying there. Advertisements Here are a handful of top Manhattan hotels that boast as much substance as style. The Algonquin Prices have definitely increased since The Algonquin opened in 1902 with a nightly rate of two dollars but, surprisingly, so has the hotel's mystique. For a decade, starting in the summer of 1919, influential writers including Dorothy Parker, Harpo Marx and George S. Kaufman met over lunch at the hotel every day to discuss their work. They called their group the Vicious Circle, and, over a century later, they are still the envy of writers. Even President John F. Kennedy admitted, "When I was growing up, I had three wishes. I wanted to be a Lindbergh-type hero, learn Chinese and become a member of the Algonquin Round Table." Teachers Change The World, One Child At A Time Thanks to the money he won in a Vicious Circle poker game, Harold Ross financed and created The New Yorker in 1925. Today, guests of The Algonquin receive free copies of the classic literary magazine, and some of the floors are wallpapered with its famous cartoons. The Algonquin has been the site of many other timeless creations, as well. In 1950, William Faulkner wrote his Nobel Peace Prize speech in his suite. Maya Angelou wrote the screenplay for her memoir, "I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings" on Algonquin stationery, and in 1956 Alan Jay Lerner and Frederick Loewe composed the music for "My Fair Lady" in Suite 908. The hotel is also known for its resident feline. In the 1930s, original owner Frank Case took in a stray cat that wandered into the hotel. He named him Rusty until actor John Barrymore, a regular guest, decided he needed a more theatrical name and changed it to Hamlet after one of his own stage roles. The hotel has since been home to three female cats (each named Matilda) and eight males (each named Hamlet). The current Hamlet has his own following on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram. Prasad asked how Srinivasa Rao could bring a sharp weapon into the airport when security personnel dont allow even a nail cutter inside the airport. Visakhapatnam: YSR Congress party chief Y.S. Jagan Mohan Reddy was injured in a knife attack at the VIP lounge of Visakhapatnam airport on Wednesday afternoon. A restaurant waiter, identified as Janipalli Srinivasa Rao, was reportedly aiming for Mr Reddys neck. However, Mr Reddy pushed away the knife and was injured on his left arm. Mr Reddy, who is on a padayatra in Vizianagaram district, had come to Vishakhapatnam airport to board a scheduled Indigo flight to Hyderabad at 1.05 pm to attend court on Friday. Mr Reddy, along with other YSRC leaders, was in the VIP lounge of the airport when Srinivasa Rao, who worked at Fusion Foods restaurant in the airport, approached him with a cup of tea. He placed the cup on the table and sought Mr Reddys permission to take a selfie with him. He told Mr Reddy that the YSRC would win over 160 seats in the state. Then all of a sudden, Srinivasa Rao whipped out a blade that is used during rooster fights and tried to stab Mr Reddy in the neck. Mr Reddy, however, deflected the blade with his hand and suffered an injury on his arm, said YSRC city president Malla Vijay Prasad who was with Mr Reddy at the time of the incident. Srinivasa Rao was roughed up by the YSRC leaders and then handed over to the police. Mr Prasad called the attack an attempt to murder democracy and a political conspiracy as Srinivasa Rao has been working in Telugu Desam leader T. Harshvardhan Prasads food court at the airport. Mr Prasad asked how Srinivasa Rao could bring a sharp weapon into the airport when security personnel dont allow even a nail cutter inside the airport. Mr Reddys followers say this was a deliberate attack on Mr Reddy by the Telugu Desam because he has been gaining sympathy and support from the people in the state. Director of Visakhapatnam airport G Prakash Reddy said that that first aid was immediately given at the airport and Mr Reddy then boarded his flight to Hyderabad. We have registered a case against the accused Srinivasa Rao based on the complaint from a commandant of the Central Industrial Security Force (CISF) at Visakhapatnam Airport and the investigation is on, said ADCP (Admin) K. Mahendra Patrudu and ACP (West) L Arjun. Our preliminary investigation has revealed that the accused Srinivasa is a supporter of the YSRC and he committed the crime for popularity only. Civil aviation minister Suresh Prabhu on Thursday ordered a probe into the incident. He also said that he had asked the Union civil aviation secretary to fix responsibility in the matter. In a tweet, the minister said, "Shocked by attack on Mr Jagan Reddy, (I have) Asked all agencies to investigate matter thoroughly, including @CISFHQrs (CISF that guards airports). (I have) Asked secretary civil aviation to fix responsibility. I strongly condemn this cowardly attack. We will punish the guilty. Investigations are underway, started immediately." External Article 26 October 2018 A Boston developer wants to showcase the city's innovative spirit and fight the onslaught of short-term rentals in his upcoming South End hotel. "This is like an Airbnb killer," Mount Vernon Co. founder and Chairman Bruce Percelay said. "You get your Airbnb pricing, but also a social experience." Boston's hospitality industry notoriously has Airbnb in its crosshairs, and Percelay thinks his upcoming Revolution Hotel will take back some market share. Formerly a hostel, the Revolution, at 40 Berkeley St. in the South End, will feature 164 rooms targeted at younger travelers. The hotel rooms are on the smaller side, but the developer said that is why he is going to be able to make his hotel one of Boston's most affordable. The Boston and Cambridge 2017 average daily rate for hotels was $258, according to Pinnacle Advisory Group. Rooms at the Revolution will average around $150 per night, and Percelay said guests should not expect accommodations akin to the property's hostel past, although some will have shared bathrooms. "It's not like you're slumming it," he said. "It's very cool." Mount Vernon bought the building in 2014 for $17.2M and plans to open the hotel in December. Percelay was previously in advertising and has used his creative side in designing the property with a nod to Boston's knack for innovation. The hotel is decorated with more than 160 items that were invented in Boston, ranging from the newspaper to the Chuck Taylor sneaker. A column in the lobby will be outfitted with other Massachusetts firsts, like the telephone and a computer mouse. A basement lounge will include coworking space accessible only to members and hotel guests. The lounge's bar is made from wood of a 130-year-old tree that fell in Back Bay last year. It will now provide a history lesson for guests waiting for a cocktail. Percelay's team has branded into the rings of the trunk historic Boston events, ranging from Revere Beach becoming the country's first public beach in 1895 to Mark Zuckerberg launching Facebook from his Harvard dormitory in 2004. Press Release 26 October 2018 Canada's hotel industry reported mixed year-over-year results in the three key performance metrics during the third quarter of 2018, according to data from STR. Compared with Q3 2017: Occupancy: -0.5% to 78.0% Average daily rate (ADR): +4.4% to CAD182.28 Revenue per available room (RevPAR): +3.9% to CAD142.14 The absolute ADR and RevPAR levels were the highest for any quarter in STR's Canada database. August was the strongest month of the quarter for absolute occupancy (80.4%), ADR (CAD184.94) and RevPAR (CAD148.75). STR analysts note that a continued influx of inbound international tourism and solid economic conditions helped achieve the record performance levels. Hotels were also helped by several significant events in major markets such as the Canadian National Exhibition (16 August through 3 September) and Vancouver Fashion Week (17-23 September). Overall, six of the 11 reporting provinces and territories saw RevPAR growth during the quarter. British Columbia posted the highest jump in RevPAR (+6.7% to CAD191.97), which was driven by the largest lift in ADR (+8.7% to CAD227.22). Saskatchewan experienced the highest rise in occupancy (+2.8% to 60.4%), but one of the only declines in ADR (-1.8% to CAD115.81). Ontario registered the second-largest increase in RevPAR (+5.7% to CAD146.22). Newfoundland and Labrador saw the only double-digit drops in occupancy (-11.8% to 71.8%) and RevPAR (-15.9% to CAD107.31) and the largest dip in ADR (-4.7% to CAD149.49). New Brunswick reported the second-largest declines in occupancy (-3.1% to 80.1%) and RevPAR (-1.8% to CAD108.19). AccorHotels announced today the successful closing of the acquisition of the 'Tour Sequana' building, its head office since 2016 located near Paris in Issy-Les-Moulineaux, for an amount of EUR 363 million. AccorHotels announced today the successful closing of the acquisition of the 'Tour Sequana' building, its head office since 2016 located near Paris in Issy-Les-Moulineaux, for an amount of EUR 363 million. This amount had been determined in 2015, at the signing of the lease contract, which included a call option. The building is currently valued at more than EUR 500 million. The transaction is financed by a EUR 300 million 8-year Green Mortgage Loan, which carries an annual coupon of 1.8%. Established in line with Green Loan Principles, the Green Mortgage Loan benefits from a Second Opinion by the extra-financial rating agency Sustainalytics. The Sequana Tower benefits from a high level of HQE certification. The balance of the acquisition price was paid in cash. The acquisition will notably translate into savings of about EUR 20 million per annum in rental charge. Daily News Delivery Join your colleagues and stay up to date on the latest Hotel industry news and trends. Subscribe 2021 Hotel News Resource Revenue per available room up 1.8 Percent to CAD141.67 Canadas hotel industry reported mixed year-over-year results in the three key performance metrics during the third quarter of 2018, according to data from STR. Compared with Q3 2017: Occupancy: -0.5% to 78.0% Average daily rate (ADR): +4.4% to CAD182.28 Revenue per available room (RevPAR): +3.9% to CAD142.14 The absolute ADR and RevPAR levels were the highest for any quarter in STRs Canada database. August was the strongest month of the quarter for absolute occupancy (80.4%), ADR (CAD184.94) and RevPAR (CAD148.75). STR analysts note that a continued influx of inbound international tourism and solid economic conditions helped achieve the record performance levels. Hotels were also helped by several significant events in major markets such as the Canadian National Exhibition (16 August through 3 September) and Vancouver Fashion Week (17-23 September). Overall, six of the 11 reporting provinces and territories saw RevPAR growth during the quarter. British Columbia posted the highest jump in RevPAR (+6.7% to CAD191.97), which was driven by the largest lift in ADR (+8.7% to CAD227.22). Saskatchewan experienced the highest rise in occupancy (+2.8% to 60.4%), but one of the only declines in ADR (-1.8% to CAD115.81). Ontario registered the second-largest increase in RevPAR (+5.7% to CAD146.22). Newfoundland and Labrador saw the only double-digit drops in occupancy (-11.8% to 71.8%) and RevPAR (-15.9% to CAD107.31) and the largest dip in ADR (-4.7% to CAD149.49). New Brunswick reported the second-largest declines in occupancy (-3.1% to 80.1%) and RevPAR (-1.8% to CAD108.19). STR provides clients from multiple market sectors with premium, global data benchmarking, analytics and marketplace insights. Founded in 1985, STR maintains a presence in 10 countries around the world with a corporate North American headquarters in Hendersonville, Tennessee, and an international headquarters in London, England. For more information, please visit str.com. Daily News Delivery Join your colleagues and stay up to date on the latest Hotel industry news and trends. Subscribe 2021 Hotel News Resource This historic, luxury palace will be the third property in France to join The Unbound Collection by Hyatt brand, alongside HAtel du Louvre in Paris and HAtel Martinez in Cannes Hyatt Hotels Corporation (NYSE:H) has announced today that a Hyatt affiliate has entered into a management agreement with Socomix for the Hotel du Palais in Biarritz, France. This historic, luxury palace will be the third property in France to join The Unbound Collection by Hyatt brand, alongside Hotel du Louvre in Paris and Hotel Martinez in Cannes As the sixth property in The Unbound Collection by Hyatt in Europe, the 142-room hotel will mark a significant milestone for the brand's growth. In addition to Hotel du Palais, Great Scotland Yard Hotel in London and Parisi Udvar Hotel in Budapest are expected to open under this brand before the end of 2019. As a living memory of the Biarritz history, the "Villa Eugenie", now Hotel du Palais, was built in 1855 by Napoleon III for his wife Eugenie de Montijo. With its captivating past, its exclusive, prime location facing the Atlantic ocean and its famous architecture and design, Hotel du Palais will deliver on the brand's promise to create story-worthy and shareable experiences for the modern traveler, making it a natural addition to The Unbound Collection by Hyatt portfolio. Guests will be able to follow in the footsteps of global celebrities who indulged in the alluring French glamour of this property, one of France's prestigious palace hotels. The hotel will be fully renovated by renowned design companies, including Atelier COS, honoring traditional French luxury and the hotel's rich heritage. A partial reopening is set to take place between July and October 2019, and final renovations are scheduled to be complete for a full reopening in June 2020. New features will include renovated guestrooms, two revitalized signature restaurants, a new lounge and bar, as well as restored public areas to create a lively local atmosphere for guests. "Hotel du Palais provides Hyatt with a unique opportunity to take on a property steeped in rich national history, significantly strengthening our European resort offering for Hyatt overall and The Unbound Collection by Hyatt brand in particular," said Guido Fredrich, regional vice president, development Europe. "We have seen some significant additions to the brand throughout the course of this year and our priority remains expanding its footprint in a meaningful way. Hotel du Palais, with its exclusive location, elegant design and unique story, is a perfect fit for The Unbound Collection by Hyatt brand." "We are delighted to work with Hyatt to convert this landmark building. The iconic Hotel du Palais will be a great addition to The Unbound Collection by Hyatt due to its rich history and personality," said Michel Veunac, president at Socomix. "The renovation will maintain the Second Empire style which defines Biarritz and assures its reputation as a refined sea resort." There are currently eight other Hyatt properties open in France, including the new Hyatt Centric La Rosiere, Hotel Martinez in Cannes, Hyatt Paris Madeleine, Hyatt Regency Nice Palais de la Mediterranee, Hyatt Regency Paris - Charles de Gaulle, Hyatt Regency Paris Etoile and Park Hyatt Paris-Vendome. Hotel du Louvre is currently under renovation and Hyatt Regency Chantilly is scheduled to open in late 2018 along with three additional hotels expected to open under Hyatt's select service portfolio in the coming years: Hyatt Place and Hyatt House Charles De Gaulle Airport and Hyatt Place Rouen. Daily News Delivery Join your colleagues and stay up to date on the latest Hotel industry news and trends. Subscribe 2021 Hotel News Resource Suge Knight's has arrived at Wasco State Prison in California where he might be serving the rest of the 28-year sentence for manslaughter, TMZ reports. The mogul will undergo a series of both physical and mental exam and have his records reviewed before they determine where Suge Knight will be permanently placed to serve his sentence. Depending on how the results of his exams, he could be sent to a different state prison. Suge Knight is currently serving a 28-year bid after he entered a plea deal for the murder of Terry Carter. The former music executive pled no contest to voluntary manslaughter. He received credit for the three and a half years he served while he was awaiting trial. After serving his sentence, he'll be on parole for three years. He had five years added to his sentence because Carter's murder was described as a "serious and violent felony." However, there's a chance he could be out in a bit over 10 years due to overcrowding prisons. Suge was arrested in 2015 after he fatally ran over Terry Carter in the Tam's Burger parking lot during the production of NWA's biopic. The surveillance footage shows Suge putting his car in reverse before he struck one man and then driving forward and running over Terry before killing the man. Peep his new mugshot below. BHP is putting multiple floors in its Uptown office tower on the sublease market, a result of the company exiting the shale business earlier this year. The Houston-based oil and gas arm of BHP, part of Australian mining conglomerate BHP Billiton Corp., just moved into the building 30-story building at 1500 Post Oak Blvd. last year. The company commissioned the space in 2013 when oil prices were still in the $100-per-barrel range and the company had just entered the booming shale business. It signed a lease through 2031. RELATED: Oilfield services company inks major Energy Corridor lease "Following the shale exit, significant portions of the 1500 building will become underutilized," the company said in a statement. "As such, we will aim to utilize the space more efficiently and plan to sublease a number of our underutilized floors." The company will lease 273,123 square feet of space in the building, the Houston Business Journal reported. BHP sold its U.S. shale assets to BP in July for $10.5 billion, one of the biggest energy deals of the year. RELATED: Owner of former Chevron campus unveils early redevelopment plans BHP leases a second building in the 1360 Post Oak in the Four Oaks Place office complex, which is owned by TIAA-CREF and Allianz Real Estate of America. The company also has space on the sublease market there. Transwestern developed BHP's new 600,000-square-foot office tower. Pickard Chilton of New Haven, Conn. designed the building, and Gensler was the interior architect. The company showed its space off to the Chronicle last year, highlighting the building's energy efficient design and workplace amenities inspired by Apple stores, art museums and the corporate campuses of Silicon Valley. The 2018 Culinary Stars is just that: a stellar foodie night where the brightest lights on the Houston dining scene get to shine. Held Thursday night at the Houston Chronicle's event space, Culinary Stars showcased the culinary talents of about 30 restaurants, many of which found themselves among Alison Cook's Top 100 restaurants in Houston. More than 500 people attended the event that served as a congratulatory celebration of the Chronicle restaurant critic's annual canvassing of the Houston dining scene. Questioned about the four Intelligence Bureau officials caught outside t he CBI directors residence, Mr Gandhi said, They snoop on everybody. New Delhi: Congress president Rahul Gandhi on Thursday said that Prime Minister Narendra Modi illegally removed CBI director Alok Verma in a midnight coup because he was going to launch an investigation into the Rafale deal. The Prime Ministers reaction is a panic reaction. The CBI director was removed at 2 am and all incriminating documents with him were taken away, Mr Gandhi said at a press conference called to make the most of the crisis the government has landed itself in, in the unfolding CBI saga. The Congress president, flanked by the partys top brass Ahmed Patel, Ashok Gehlot, Anand Sharma and Mallikarjun Kharge said that the CBI directors sudden removal was not just an insult to the Constitution, the Chief Justice of India and the Leader of the Opposition, but was illegal. Mr Verma was, on the orders of the Appointments Committee of the Cabinet led by the Prime Minister, sent on indefinite leave on Tuesday midnight and an interim director appointed in his place. The PM cannot remove him. Only the Chief Justice of India, Leader of Opposition and Prime Minister together appoint and remove him, Mr Gandhi said, and, in a reference to the Rafale deal, added, The PM has taken Rs 30,000 crore from the youth of the country and put it in the pockets of a top industrialist. Referring M. Nageswar Rao, who has been appointed the interim CBI director, the Congress president said that the agency has been given a person who has cases against him so that the Prime Minister can control him. Questioned about the four Intelligence Bureau officials caught outside t he CBI directors residence, Mr Gandhi said, They snoop on everybody. Earlier, speaking at a road show in Rajasthan, Mr Gandhi alluded to the PMs role in the removal of Mr Verma and said, Two days ago the watchman did something new. It was not done in the daytime, but when people of the country were sleeping. I feel sad that one watchman has defamed all the watchmen of the country. These watchmen are not at fault as they are working honestly. We are talking about an individual who had asked to be made a chowkidar rather than the Prime Minister, he added at the rally in Sikar district. The BJP retaliated by accusing the Congress of manufacturing lies and its president of hallucinating. Union minister and senior BJP leader Prakash Javadekar said the Congress has lost all hopes of becoming relevant in national politics and also lost its patience and, therefore, its president is busy manufacturing lies after lies. Mr Javadekar claimed that the Congress president has been manufacturing lies over Rafale issue as the Congress could not get commission out of the deal and people are appreciating the action taken by the government in the CBI case. The weekend is here, which means it's time for everyone's favorite days-off pastime: brunch. Freshen up your midday meal routine with our mix of recently-opened restaurants and old favorite haunts with new menus. From a Museum District staple to a new Tex-Mex spot in the Heights, here are some of the best spots to start the day in Houston. Goode Co. Kitchen and Cantina 9005 Katy Freeway Brunch: Saturday and Sunday; 7:30 am to 12 pm The cocktail game is strong at casual Memorial restaurant Goode Co. Kitchen and Cantina, deferring not just to a typical mimosa, but to an extra flavorful version with sparkling wine and both orange juice and orange liqueur, and a house sangria with citrus, fruit, and cava, plus a double dose of liqueur: elderflower and aloe. To eat, start with made-to-order guacamole, then dig into a savory plate of enchiladas topped with two eggs and served with Mexican rice and refried beans. Or try eggs any style with house-made venison sausage, crispy potatoes, refried beans, and handmade tortillas. UB Preserv 1609 Westheimer Brunch: Sunday; 10:30 am to 3 pm While the dim sum-style menu at James Beard Award-winning chef Chris Shepherd's UB Preserv rotates regularly, you can count on staples like a crispy rice salad, the Nebraska kolache filled with beef, cabbage, onions, and seasonings, and Vietnamese fajitas, along with a selection of creative egg dishes (think wok-fried shrimp and egg and bavette steak and eggs) and pastries. Plan ahead so you're there for the off-menu Power Hour Special, available on Sundays but only for an hour from 2 to 3 pm. The $15 deal includes a Bavik Pilsner, shot of Wild Turkey, and boudin siu mai. Insider tip: UB Preserv now takes reservations. RELATED: Houston beer maven Kevin Floyd steps away from Underbelly Hospitality Spanish Village 4720 Almeda Brunch: Sunday; 10 am to 2 pm You've likely been to Spanish Village, a fixture in the Museum District since the early 1950s, for lunch and dinner a number of times. Thanks to the restaurant's brand-new, and first-ever, midday menu, you can now also score its homemade Tex-Mex fare for brunch. Expect dishes from migas to breakfast quesadillas to tres leches French toast to a seared jalapeno cheddar masa cake with charro beans, a poached egg, and chipotle hollandaise. Say cheers to sangria and mimosas, available by the glass or carafe. The Classic 5922 Washington Avenue Brunch: Saturday and Sunday; 8 am to 4 pm Nostalgic yet contemporary Rice Military neighborhood restaurant The Classic serves up elevated-yet-simple dishes. During brunch, indulge in the Dutch Baby Pancake served in a skillet with lemon ricotta, pecans, berries, and maple syrup, steak and eggs with roasted potatoes, or breakfast sandwich with glazed pork, pepper jam, gruyere, a fried egg, and aioli, all on an English muffin with a side of fries. Or keep it simple with an almond chia bowl of seasonal fruit and almonds. Midday cocktails range from a bloody Mary to the eye-opening One-Eyed Willy with rum, coffee-flavored liqueur, Irish cream, and cold brew coffee. Superica 1801 North Shepherd Brunch: Saturday and Sunday; 10 am to 3 pm Chef and restaurateur Ford Fry, whose empire includes Atlanta's Marcel, Beetlecat, and The El Felix and Houston's State of Grace, grew up in the Bayou City. Unsurprisingly, then, the menu at Superica, with locales in Atlanta, Charleston and now the Heights, reflects his roots. The roster of Texas favorites and reinterpreted classics with an elevated spin includes chilaquiles with tortilla strips, red chili sauce, two fried eggs, queso fresco, and avocado; two scrambled eggs with chorizo, potatoes, and cheese; and pork tamales with chili gravy, cheese, and two sunny-side up eggs. If you lean sweet, go for the big-as-your-head hot cakes with buttermilk syrup. Come for the eats, stay for the drinks. Both the fresh agua frescas and horchata (sweet almond and rice milk) here can be spiked with your choice of booze. Los Tios 4840 Beechnut Brunch: Saturday and Sunday; 8 am to 2 pm Long-time Meyerland restaurant Los Tios has introduced its premiere brunch menu, which comes with an assortment of signature items like the Desayuno Tex Mex, featuring two classic cheese enchiladas topped with a fried egg, and the Enchiladas Con Huevo. Scrambled eggs are served burrito-style in two our tortillas and topped with ranchero sauce, melted cheese, and avocado. Familiar favorites include huevos rancheros, migas, and chilaquiles. Classic cocktails are the bulk of the drink menu with offerings like a bloody Mary, mimosa, and Michelada. Coming soon Bisou 4444 Westheimer Brunch starts November 3: Saturday and Sunday; 10 am to 3 pm From its owners, the Cle Group whose other Houston concepts include Cle and Spire, to its chic decor with brass accents and black glass columns to DJ spins, Bisou (French for "kiss") at River Oaks District has 'party brunch' written all over it. Keep it simple with short rib hash or a spinach and caponata (eggplant, olives, and onions) egg white omelet or go luxe with foie gras French toast or soft scrambled eggs with caviar. As for the drinks, linger over classic cocktails, wine options galore, and champagne magnums. RELATED: The Rustic sets roots in downtown Houston The Rustic 1836 Polk Brunch starts November 3: Saturday and Sunday; 10 am to 2 pm Downtown restaurant-slash-live-music venue The Rustic from Kyle Noonan, Josh Sepkowitz, and Texas country artist Pat Green, which opens November 2, offers a family-style brunch deemed, "Jam and Toast." Highlights on the menu include Nashville-style spicy fried chicken with dill pickles on Texas toast fried on a griddle, house-made donuts, and fried challah bread soaked in vanilla custard and topped with house-made rosemary syrup. Sip your choice of 40 beers on tap with a Texas leaning, or select a drink from an extensive list of wines and cocktails. 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 It started with money. The womans husband wouldnt allow her to ask questions about his salary or spending after they immigrated to Houston from India in 2009. Eventually, he started restricting her meals to three times a day, then two. Meanwhile, the woman who asked not to be identified because of concern for her safety was left isolated from friends and family. She says her husband was verbally, emotionally and then physically abusive. She says he hit her for the first time shortly after the birth of their son, and continued to do so over the next two and a half years. As soon as we moved to the U.S., I lost all the strong parts of my life, she told the Houston Chronicle. My confidence went down. And yet the worst abuse were the repeated threats regarding her H4 spouse visa. She said her husband repeatedly told her that her immigration status was tied to his, and that she would be deported if she left him or reported him to police. She ultimately risked being separated from her U.S.-born son to get free of her spouse, an example of those who must choose between legal immigration status and their safety. As the Trump administration has made it harder for immigrants to achieve legal status, advocates say theyve seen a rise in domestic violence cases locally and nationally that involve an abuser wielding power over a non-citizen immigrant. Abusers use lack of citizenship as a control tactic by threatening deportation, failing to file paperwork for visa applications and otherwise raising victims fear of reporting abuse to law enforcement. Victims are more fearful given the obstacles placed in the path of achieving legal status under the administrations zero-tolerance policy, narrowing down the already limited options for survivors of domestic violence. After the elections, the volume of individuals calling with fear and stories of deep concern increased in our office, said Anne Chandler, executive director of the Houston chapter of the nonprofit Tahirih Justice Center. Tahirih centers nationwide received 620 phone calls concerning immigration in the first two months of 2017 alone, compared to 877 phone calls in all of 2015. The National Domestic Violence Hotline also saw a nearly 14 percent increase in calls from survivors who indicated that immigration was a part of their story in some way from 2017 to 2018, CEO Katie Ray-Jones said. And in the first nine and a half months of 2018, reports of immigration threats to Daya, a nonprofit that supports South Asian survivors of domestic violence and that supported the Indian woman, more than doubled from all of 2017. Our call volume stayed the same (under Trump), but the content of the calls was quite different, said Rachna Khare, executive director of Daya. You really felt that culture of fear within our immigrant survivors, whether they are here on valid visas or undocumented. Hana, a second woman who asked that her full name not be used, grew up in Libya with an abusive father. She went on to marry a man who she says abused her physically, sexually, emotionally, verbally and financially. My family would not protect me, the court would not protect me, the government would not protect me, she said. It was very dark around me. The idea of ending her life, she said, was comforting at times but she held on for her three children. She briefly felt hopeful when her husband said they were moving to the United States, where he would work and she would be able to study. But the abuse continued until he abandoned her and their children, taking her scholarship money and the kids health insurance with him. Broke, she stayed in Houston with her kids and ended her graduate studies, which put her at risk of losing her F1 student visa covering a temporary stay. She didnt know what to do. Because of increased vulnerabilities, immigrant women are twice as likely to experience domestic violence as the general population, according to Tahirih. Of abused immigrant women, 27 percent said they hadnt reported their abuse because they feared being deported, according to a survey cited by Daya. Their spouses will tell them, Go ahead and call the police, Im going to have you deported, Khare said. And they dont know whether thats true or not, and they cant take the risk because if their spouse gets arrested and their visa depends on (the spouses) visa, where does that leave their kids? Where does that leave (the victim)? The fear is not unfounded. According to a 2015 survey of advocates and attorneys conducted by the American Civil Liberties Union, 54 percent of respondents said police are sometimes or often biased against immigrants. And with frequent executive orders and news stories about stricter immigration enforcement over the past 21 months, advocates say deportation and family separation fears have heightened, emboldening abusers wielding such threats. The spike comes amid an increasing reluctance within the immigrant community to report abuse to law enforcement generally. In the Hispanic community alone, Houston police saw a nearly 50 percent decrease in rape reports from 2017 to 2016. Adding to the fears is SB 4, the Texas measure passed last year that allows local law enforcement to ask about immigration status during routine interactions and requires them to detain anyone that the federal government suspects is in the country illegally. Even before SB4 took effect last year, 86 percent of the arrests made by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcements Houston field office in the first four months of the Trump administration were from local jails in cooperation with law enforcement, according to the Migration Policy Institute, a Washington-based think tank. However, there are local law enforcement agencies and ICE field offices that have ensured they would not target abuse victims. The real concern that organizations like Daya and Tahirih have had since Trump took office is what happens after a victim comes forward. Before we would say to clients, Here are pathways for you to be able to stay in this country legally with your children, and you can start working, Khare said. And now those pathways are just getting a lot harder. Should I go back to India? Should I take a risk and bring my son with me, without second parent permission? But if I do that, I wont be able to come back. And they might take my son from my custody at the airport. I dont have legal status here. I cant work here. But I cant leave my son. Those thoughts were racing in the head of the woman from India when she finally took her son and left her husband in 2012. She filed a protective order against him, according to court documents obtained by the Chronicle. She had a legal consultation with one of Dayas partner pro bono attorneys. She applied for a U-Visa, an option for victims of domestic violence if they help law enforcement investigations. She stayed in the transitional housing that Daya had at the time. And she waited. That was very difficult for me to process emotionally, financially, socially, she recalled. I felt like I was just dumb, very devastated, no hope. Nothing really seemed to make me happy except when I was with my son, I would try to make myself happy. But then she received her work permit at the end of 2013. She was barely making enough money to survive, but it didnt matter. She was getting her life back. She was approved for one of the 10,000 U-Visas that are given out per year in the U.S. Her 2012 application was one of nearly 25,000 that year. Hanas life also turned around after she was referred to Tahirih and Daya in 2008. As the groups prepared an asylum case for her, she fought for herself. She worked for cash. She finished her graduate studies by 2011 and became a professor. In 2012, she filed for divorce and a restraining order, according to court records. I dont know from where I got the courage, she said. I was thinking that enslaved women will raise slaved children, and free women will raise free children. And after seven difficult years, Hana was granted asylum in the U.S. in 2015. The process of asylum itself for me felt like abuse, she said. Time-consuming papers, going back to square one many times, justice and fairness Time felt like it was running out of the door. But these womens stories are an anomaly, especially in the current climate, some say. Things are getting a lot more difficult, Khare said. Every day the messaging is very unclear, and changes happen very quickly through executive orders. Were losing some of the protections that kept people safe. U.S. Attorney General Jeff Sessions order that ultimately removed domestic violence as a credible qualification for asylum status in the U.S. which would have barred Hana from being granted asylum when she applied was a huge blow to the immigrant community. The Trump administration also proposed a new rule last month that would make it more difficult for legal immigrants and tourists to obtain a green card or any type of visa if they or their dependents, including their American children, have used an expanded range of public benefits, from Medicaid and food stamps to the Childrens Health Insurance Program. The only visa options that abuse victims are left with are U-Visas, of which there are a limited number, T-Visas for victims of sexual trafficking, and the Violence Against Women Act Visa, which advocates support but find limiting because its only available when the abusive spouse is a U.S. citizen or green card holder. Even with visa options, though, immigration attorneys say that each application requires volumes more paperwork and evidence than ever before. The process can take years, during which time victims may remain without legal status and income. Because its such an uncertain time, its hard for even us to parse out the myths and facts, Khare said. I love that theres laws in the books that we can turn to that are protecting survivors. But were in this gray area, so now we have to do some preemptive planning with our clients just in case (they have run-ins with law enforcement). The woman from India and her son are both still traumatized by the abuse they experienced and for which they now get mental health counseling. But she has a twinkle in her eye when she talks about her life. She got her license to practice in health care in the U.S. Her son, now 9, scored at the top of his class last year. His favorite subject is math, and he wants to be a NASA scientist when he grows up. It really affects life when immigration ties you. Youre confined, she said. But now, Im confident, no fear. Just very happy in life. But the pain hasnt subsided for Hana. She hasnt been able to travel to visit her mother in Libya for the past 10 years, she said, because of her immigration status. And when she finally had the opportunity to take her children to meet her mother in Jordan this year, she had to cancel their reunion so as not to risk her daughters green card papers. I told her, Sorry, I cant come, because Trump will not allow me to come back with my children, she said with tears in her eyes. My case was approved, but my soul wasnt relieved. The system was still trying to break me. massarah.mikati@chron.com Through four days of early voting, Harris County continued to keep pace with presidential-year turnout, as election officials in Baytown caught an error by the county voter registrar that affected nearly 300 ballots. More than 58,900 residents voted in Harris County on Thursday, and another 4,226 ballots arrived in the mail, bringing the four-day tally to 309,115. That total far outpaces early voting in any previous midterm election held in the county. Harris County Clerk Stan Stanart has said balloting has gone smoothly, despite uncharacteristically long lines from Pasadena to Acres Homes. Still, errors have occurred. Election workers in Baytown discovered some residents who lived on land the city recently had annexed from unincorporated Harris County received ballots that did not include city races. City of Baytown spokeswoman Natasha Barrett said as many as 294 voters would have received incorrect ballots because the Harris County tax assessor-collector and voter registrar failed to update it maps reflecting the new city boundaries. Barrett said Baytown informed Harris County of the boundary changes in July. We submitted all of our paperwork, Barrett said. The tax office had human error over there. Harris County Clerk spokesman Hector de Leon said though the incorrect ballots were the fault of the voter registrar, the clerks office worked with Baytown officials to correct the issue immediately. We wanted all voters who hadnt been impacted yet to receive the correct ballot, de Leon said. Residents who already voted using incorrect ballots are not allowed to vote again. Harris County Tax Assessor-Collector Ann Harris Bennett did not respond to questions about how the error occurred and whether her office failed to update voter records of residents in other municipalities. Bennetts office also bungled a challenge of 4,000 voter registrations this summer from a Harris County Republican Party official by mistakenly placing more than 1,700 registrations in suspension. The county attorneys office said the registration challenges were invalid, and Bennetts office never should have considered them. The tax assessor-collectors office has been without a communications director, voter registration director and chief of staff for several months, but clerks still registered 55,482 new voters between March and October, more than any other Texas county. zach.despart@chron.com twitter.com/zachdespart AUSTIN The states regulatory higher education agency approved the University of Houstons proposed medical school Thursday, the most fundamental hurdle to its bid to create the citys first new school awarding degrees for doctors in nearly half a century. The Texas Higher Education Coordinating Board unanimously approved the UH proposal, which calls for a focus on training primary-care doctor to practice in underserved areas, a huge need in the state. UH hopes to enroll its first class in fall 2020. Were hopeful this school will have a great impact, addressing the state shortage of primary-care doctors, Renu Khator, UHs president and chancellor, told the Chronicle after the vote. Its the right thing to do for Houston and Texas and a natural maturation of our existing health-care programs. The Coordinating Board approval represents a major milestone in UHs bid to create a medical school, a long-time dream of the 91-year-old university. Regents last November committed to the creation of such a school, a linchpin of Khators overall vision for UH, but school officials began meeting with Coordinating Board staff three years ago on how to fashion a winning proposal. Proposed UH College of Medicine The University of Houston will partner with the Hospital Corporation of America (HCA) Gulf Coast Division to create eight residency programs and more than 100 first-year slots by 2020. UH plans to set tuition and fees at $22,510 annually, which the Texas Higher Education Coordinating Board says is "in line with existing Texas public medical schools." An anonymous donation of $3.2 million will cover tuition and fees for all four years for the entire inaugural class. Another gift will cover tuition and fees for all four years for 10 students in the second class. See More Collapse Numerous Coordinating Board members praised the finished proposal for its unique approach to solving serious health-care problems. Texas ranks 47th out of 50 states in the ratio of primary-care doctors per person and state projections call for it to need another 6,260 such doctors by 2030. Dr. Stephen Spann, the founding dean of the proposed UH school, says disparities are so bad in some parts of Houston that their health problems are similar to those of Third World countries. Khator said she will bring to UH regents in November a report of whether to build the school on campus or in the Texas Medical Center. A UH committee has not finished analyzing the options it has narrowed the possibilities from four sites to two but Khator said it has identified strong advantages to putting the school on campus. She said she has not decided yet whether she will recommend one location or just relay the strengths and weaknesses of both options. Stuart Stedman, the Coordinating Board chairman, expressed a preference for the UH location, asking how the school would serve the Third Ward if its in the TMC rather than on campus. The Third Ward, a center of the citys black community known for its health disparities, is located near the UH campus. Khator responded that whichever location UH picks, it would maintain a strong presence both on campus and in the medical center. The board granted the approval, after about 40 minutes of discussion, on the condition that UH pursue scholarship and loan repayment programs to achieve its goal of having 50 percent of students come from minority populations. Khator and Spann said such efforts are already under way. The Coordinating Board approval is one of three major hurdles the school faces. Still remaining are accreditation by the Liaison Committee on Medical Education and support by the Texas Legislature. UH plans to submit application materials to the liaison committee in early December. That process typically takes no less than 10 months, Spann said. Spann noted earlier this week that Coordinating Board approval is fundamentally important because it acts as a prerequisite for follow-up actions. UH cant offer degrees without Coordinating Board approval and the Liaison Committee on Medical Education wont accredit a new school that hasnt already been approved by its state higher education regulatory body. Also, such approval is expected to influence the Legislature, from which UH plans to request $40 million over 10 years. Two state legislators praised the Coordinating Board decision Thursday. We are pleased the Texas Higher Education Coordinating Board has approved the creation of the University of Houstons College of Medicine, Reps. Garnet Coleman, D-Houston, and Armando Walle, D-Houston, wrote in a joint statement that noted the areas significant health disparities despite the presence of the TMC. UH is the right institution to reduce those persistent disparities because the College of Medicine will be able to integrate with the universitys existing health and health-related professions, colleges, and programs, Coleman and Walle said. William McKeon, president and CEO of the medical center also applauded the vote, predicting the type of medical school the University of Houston is building one that emphasizes population health and primary care will become a national model. Investment in this effort will pay dividends in communities across Houston, and beyond. The Coordinating Board approval was not unexpected given it was recently recommended by both staff and the boards committee on academic and workforce success. That had not seemed such a sure thing earlier this year when Commissioner of Higher Education Ray Paredes, the head of the agency, warned at a meeting that were expanding programs more quickly than resources from the state suggest we should. Paredes said little at the meeting about the proposed UH school. He noted hed previously expressed concerns about expansion, but said they have nothing to do with the UH proposal. Before the vote, he asked Khator and Spann to respond to the committee recommendation that it pursue scholarship and loan repayment programs. Paredes left directly after the meeting and could not be reached for comment. The meeting was not without challenging questions. Coordinating Board members pressed UH officials on the likelihood it will reach its goal of 50 percent of its graduating students going into primary care when the national average is around 20 percent, given students can make two to three times more in specialty care. They asked if there are other schools where roughly half of students go into primary care. Spann, a family physician, responded that it would be cynical to say students only vote with their wallets. He touted three strategies that should boost UH numbers: predictors that an applicant will go into primary care, such as coming from a family of teachers or serving in the Peace Corps; a plan to create a culture of primary care that includes students spending at least half a day in such settings every week of their four years; and scholarships and loan repayment programs that reward students who choose primary care in underserved areas. Spann and Khator cited the medical schools of Florida State, Florida International and Southern Illinois as places where large percentages of students go into primary care. A UH medical school will make a crowded field, with Baylor College of Medicine and UTs McGovern Medical School in the medical center; UT Medical Branch at Galveston 55 miles to the south and Texas A&M Medical School 100 miles to the north and pursuing more of a presence in the medical center. In addition, Sam Houston State University two months ago received Coordinating Board approval to create a school of osteopathic medicine in Huntsville. McGovern was the last medical college created in the city. Then known as the University of Texas Medical School at Houston, it began enrolling students in 1972. The Houston Forensic Science Center has fired a crime scene investigator who violated policy by using unapproved equipment that resulted in false negatives for biological evidence in at least two sexual assault cases, officials said Friday. Lab officials, who fired investigator Tammy Barette Thursday, said they may never know the full impact her actions may have had on other cases. "When protocol is violated, incidents like this occur and HFSC cannot tolerate such conduct," said Peter Stout, CEO of the forensic science center. "The work done by HFSC has enormous impacts on people's lives, the justice system and the community. We take that responsibility seriously and believe we have an obligation to hold ourselves to the highest standards." Barette, who has been with the agency since 2015, could not be reached for comment. BOMB PROBE: More explosive devices uncovered in nationwide case As a crime scene investigator, Barette was required to use a device called an Alternative Light Source, which identifies the presence of biological fluids such as blood, saliva and semen. The tool doesn't prove the presence of DNA or involve the actual testing of the material, Stout said. But Barette was using her own instrument, which didn't meet the forensic science center's requirements, officials said Friday. Adequate light sources need to operate at a range of wavelengths, and the investigator's only operated on one. Tyler Flood, criminal defense attorney and former president of Harris County Criminal Lawyers Association, commended the crime lab for being transparent and called the investigator's alleged actions a "complete disregard for the integrity of forensic evidence." "These written standard operating procedures are what allows these labs to do what they do," Flood said. "That wasn't being done here." Read more: 65 criminal cases jeopardized because of crime-scene errors A supervisor first discovered that Barette was using her own equipment during a routine technical review for quality control. He noticed she hadn't documented testing the light source before working with case materials, which is required, Stout said. Out of 19 cases where Barette used the improper light source, including the case that sparked the investigation, only four had evidence available to retest, agency spokeswoman Ramit Plushnick-Masti said. Two of those were wrongfully marked as negative for the presence of biological fluids, when they should have yielded positives. In the 15 cases that were unable to be tested because of a lack of evidence, Stout acknowledged the possibility that some of those could have had a different outcome. The forensic science center was unable to immediately provide the span of cases that weren't tested, but Plusnick-Masti said that the crime scene unit almost exclusively responds to violent crime scenes, including homicides, aggravated assaults and sexual assaults. No charges have yet been filed in the two cases that yielded incorrect results from the light source, and the updated results will be sent to prosecutors, Stout said. It's yet to be seen whether the findings will have an impact. Stout said the forensic agency had other issues with the Barette regarding policies and procedures. None of those issues affected her casework until the recent incident. "Certainly we will continue to emphasize the necessity of following policies and protocols," Stout said. "Is our training adequate? We're not seeing anything that says we need to change the policies and procedures." During the investigation, the center strengthened the language of a policy to make it clear that unauthorized equipment was not allowed, Plushnick-Masti said. And in their case notes, investigators must now write down the exact model number of their instruments. The firing is just the latest trouble for the crime lab, which fired an analyst in January after it was discovered that she shredded original case notes from a homicide. And in April 2017, it was reported that 65 criminal cases were jeopardized because of errors by Houston crime-scene investigators, including 26 homicides, five officer-involved shootings and six child deaths. The Harris County District Attorney's office has been notified about the most recent firing, and the forensic science center will notify the Texas Forensic Science Commission, a state oversight board. The district attorney's office declined to comment. The story of Gulfton is one of family, fortitude and possibilities. A series of 12 new murals in the community now capture this tale along the walls of businesses, schools and apartment complexes in the area. The Gulfton Story Trail murals are the brainchild of local nonprofit, Culture of Health Advancing Together, or CHAT. Founded in 2015 by Aisha Siddiqui, the nonprofit works to improve the quality of life for immigrant and refugee mothers in Gulfton by offering resources like access to education and the arts through partnerships across Houston. Gulfton is often the first home for immigrants and refugees coming to Houston. Siddiqui, who came to the United States from Pakistan in 1985, said she knows how daunting it can be to start over from scratch and that there is value in having pride in ones neighborhood. The intent of the new murals, painted by immigrants or children of immigrants, is to instill a sense of pride in Gulftons legacy as an entryway for newcomers, and as a means to draw needed investments into the neighborhood, Siddiqui said. People are surviving here, but we want them to thrive, she said. Gulfton is one of the areas targeted by Mayor Sylvester Turners Complete Communities program which was launched last year. The initiatives goal is to develop and follow through on action plans to revitalize underserved communities. The Complete Communities program is the embodiment of my vision for a more equitable Houston, Turner said in a statement. As part of the Gulfton action plan, CHAT received $75,000 total from the Mayors Office of Cultural Affairs and the Houston Arts Alliance to fund the installation of the murals. The 12 art pieces are artists interpretations of poetry written by local students ranging from elementary school through college. For muralist Jesus Sanchez, it was important to ensure that immigrant and refugee faces and cultures be present in his art because he rarely sees this community represented in murals across Houston. On the side wall of a discount store on Gulfton Street, Sanchezs Celebration of Diversity mural depicts smiling African, Latino and Middle Eastern children with a technicolor eagle soaring behind them. Each child has the same blue aura around them, which he says represents their shared inner light. The colorful eagle is an homage to Sanchezs hometown of Mexico City. On Mullins Drive, Alex Arzu attempted to capture the range of emotions experienced in Gulfton and across Houston before, during and after Hurricane Harvey. A pink woman prays as she is surrounded by red light behind her with both ominous and clearing clouds ahead. Arzu, and his collaborator, Jesse De Leon, said they wanted to play with time, geometric shapes and color schemes in their work. Art is meant to be engaged with, Arzu said. He said he specifically designed murals with a more abstract point of view to give Gulfton residents and visitors something to think about and something to feel. When approached with the offer to design work for the Gulfton Story Trail, Arzu said he knew it would be a chance to provide access to art to a community that may otherwise never experience it. It just takes seeing one painting to make a difference, Arzu said. While already on display, the murals will officially be unveiled at a ceremony in December, Siddiqui said. She added that her nonprofit group hopes to offer trolley tours for visitors and residents eager to see the murals and learn more about their respective stories. CHAT will also provide a detailed map tour on its website for those interested in planning their own experience. With most of the murals on or close to businesses run by Gulfton residents, Siddiqui hopes the artwork will draw in potential customers, providing an economic boost to the neighborhood. After all, Siddiqui said, art is a universal language. ileana.najarro@chron.com twitter.com/IleanaNajarro By 2020, Texas City residents won't need to travel across town to see white sand beaches around a lagoon filled with kayaks, paddleboards and sailboats. Texas-based developer Land Tejas this week announced plans to build a new 12-acre Crystal Lagoon that will serve as the centerpiece of a larger 70-acre resort in the Lago Mar development. RELATED: Michael Phelps to attend opening of Houston-area's massive Crystal Lagoon It will be the second such lagoon in the Houston area and the largest in Texas, according to a Land Tejas press release. "This project has amazing potential to create a totally new type of lifestyle for residents of Lago Mar and for Houston-area families looking to enjoy a fun, outdoor lifestyle," said Land Tejas founder Al Brende. Amenities around the lagoon will include white sand beaches, a large heated cabana pool, a kid's beach and docks that can accommodate kayaks, paddleboards and small sailboats, the release said. It was also include a beach club, a two-story swim up bar and a beachfront lawn for weddings and concerts. The water in the lagoon will be up to 10 feet deep, and it will use Crystal Lagoon's chemical-reducing technology. RELATED: Texas's first massive crystal lagoon starts filling with water Around the 70-acre resort, people will be able to find restaurants, shops, condominiums and town homes. The first Crystal Lagoon, which includes a 2-acre lagoon, opened in August in the Balmoral community in Humble. Construction is also underway on another Crystal Lagoon in Dallas, a Land Tejas official said. Construction on the Texas City lagoon is slated to begin this month. Phase one is expected to be completed by 2020. "The Galveston-Clear Lake corridor is booming, and resort-style amenities like a large public access lagoon will attract residents and visitors to the area for a long time to come," Texas City Mayor Matt Doyle said in the release. 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 Shelby County Sheriff's Office Police said a 21-year-old East Texas man attempted to kill, eat and then have sex with the corpse of a young girl before his arrest on Monday. In an arrest affidavit obtained by ABC 7, police said Alexander Nathan Barter solicited the disturbing fantasy on the dark web, a hidden part of the internet often used for drug deals and other criminal activities. Manju Verma had resigned as the social welfare minister following the registration of the case. New Delhi: The Supreme Court, on Thursday, questioned the CBI and the Bihar government for not arresting Chandra-sekar Varma, husband of ex-minister Manju Varma, in the Muzaffarpur shelter home rape case. A bench of Justices Madan B. Lokur and Deepak Gupta sought a status report from the CBI explaining why Chandras-ekar, one of the accused, was not arrested. It issued notice to Brajesh Thakur, the main accused in the Muzaffarpur shelter home case, as to why he should not be shifted to a jail outside Bihar to ensure a free and fair probe in the case. The bench observed, The main accused in the Muzaffarpur shelter home rape case, Brajesh Thakur, is a very influential person and is obstructing the ongoing probe and he should be shifted to a jail outside Bihar. After perusing the status report submitted by CBI on the probe, Justice Lokur said, Shocking details have emerged, including that the girls were being sedated. He observed that allegations levelled by CBI against prime accused Brajesh Thakur were very serious and the report gives very scary details of how the crime was committed. When counsel for Bihar supported the shifting of Thakur to a jail outside Patna, the bench pulled up the state for its inaction and said that it will not be appropriate to keep Brajesh Thakur in Bihar jail as he is a very influential person. On October 11, the CBI carried out searches at two separate locations in Muzaffarpur in connection with the sexual assault of minor girls at the state-funded shelter home in the district. The searches were carried out at the premises of Balika Grih and Sewa Sankalp Evam Vikas Samiti, the non-profit group which the Centre ran, said officials. Manju Verma had resigned as the social welfare minister following the registration of the case. It had come to light that her husband had allegedly spoken to Thakur several times between January and June this year. The bench posted the matter for further hearing on October 30. An undocumented Mexican immigrant who lived for years in a rural San Antonio suburb pleaded guilty Thursday to charges of fraud and identity theft, admitting he used a stolen identity to vote in several elections. Enrique Salazar Ortiz, 63, would not tell federal agents how many times he had voted using the name of former San Antonio resident Jesse H. Vargas Jr., but Salazar did admit casting a ballot in the 2016 general election, according to the plea agreement. But Bexar County records show a man with Vargas name and date of birth voted in every general election for the past 24 years, county elections administrator Jacque Callanen said Thursday. Hes been voting since at least 1994, Callanen said. Vargas also voted in the 2008 Democratic primary, she said. Vargas, now 57, could not be reached for comment Thursday, but a relative said that he hasnt lived in Bexar County since he was in his teens, when his family moved to California. Vargas now lives in Arizona and told federal agents that he did not know Salazar nor give permission to use his name and date of birth, according to court documents. Salazars lawyer, assistant federal public defender Molly Roth, said her client worked in construction, is married and has a daughter. Both his wife and daughter are U.S. citizens, she said. Salazars scheme was discovered by the State Department when he mailed an application in December 2016 to renew a passport he had been using over the prior 10 years, court documents say. A fraud prevention manager referred the application to the State Departments Diplomatic Security Service because the Social Security number being used had been issued later in life, which is unusual, a criminal complaint affidavit said. During the investigation, agents determined there were two people with the same name and date of birth but with different appearances, including the real Vargas, who had previously lived in San Antonio. The agents raided Salazars home in Elmendorf on Aug. 24, 2017, and arrested him. Salazar told them he bought a U.S. birth certificate with Vargas identifying information on it for $20 and had used the identity ever since. Salazars plea deal said Salazar admitted that he used Vargas information to get a passport in 2006 and used it to travel several times. When asked if he had ever voted, at first Mr. Salazar Ortiz was hesitant to answer, but when confronted with voting records, he indicated that he voted in the most recent election on Nov. 8, 2016, the plea deal said. The plea agreement said the voting records also showed Salazar had registered to vote multiple times. In federal court Thursday, Salazar pleaded guilty to making a false statement in a passport application, which carries a maximum of 10 years in prison; unlawful voting by an alien, punishable by up to one year in jail; and aggravated identity theft, which carries a mandatory two years incarceration on top of any other charges. As part of the deal, Assistant U.S. Attorney Tom Moore will dismiss two other charges, including false representation of U.S. citizenship and being an alien in unlawful possession of a firearm. Salazar told U.S. District Judge Fred Biery that he was born in Veracruz, Mexico and did not have legal documents to be in the United States. Biery asked Salazar if he knew what he was doing was illegal. Unfortunately, yes, I knew it was, Salazar replied. Biery set sentencing for Jan. 24. Guillermo Contreras covers federal court and immigration news in the San Antonio and Bexar County area. Read him on our free site, mySA.com, and on our subscriber site, ExpressNews.com. | gcontreras@express-news.net | Twitter: @gmaninfedland Texas Democratic candidates rolled through Harris and Fort Bend counties Thursday near the tail end of their statewide bus tour, stumping in Sugar Land and Houston in a bid to draw votes in the two key areas. The stop comes amid record early voting turnout in Harris County, which Democratic gubernatorial nominee Lupe Valdez viewed as an encouraging sign in her bid to knock off Republican Gov. Greg Abbott. Texas overall has drawn higher than usual turnout for a midterm election year. WANTED: Judges who wont give up on Houstons children. In 2015 lawmakers sent out the word across Texas that our courts needed to stop incarcerating so many juveniles. Most judges got the message loud and clear. The number of incarcerated juveniles in Texas plunged from 5,000 in 2007 to under 1,000 today. Apparently Harris County didnt get the memo. The county is made up of 15 percent of the states population but its three juvenile district courts account for 25 percent of kids sent to juvenile prisons. These courts need to put a stop to this pipeline of kids into the juvenile justice system. Voters should consider themselves lucky that theres an easy fix to the problem. Judges Glenn Devlin and John Phillips are largely responsible for this spike in kids behind bars. The two judges, who sit on the 313th and 314th Juvenile District Courts, account for account for more than one-fifth of all children sent to state juvenile prison last year, as reported by Chronicle reporter Keri Blakinger. Devlin and Phillips are both on the ballot this election year, and they do not deserve re-election. Their over-reliance on juvenile detention is not only cruel to children, but it also makes Texas less safe. Kids incarcerated in state-run facilities are 21 percent more likely to be arrested again than their peers who instead remain under some type of alternative supervision, according to the Counsel of State Governments 2015 Closer to Home report. The situation is getting worse. Last year Phillips and Devlin sent at least twice as many kids to the Texas Juvenile Justice Department as they did in 2014. That increase cant be explained away by an across-the-board change in juvenile lawlessness. Judge Michael Mike Schneider, who presides over the 315th Juvenile District Court, sent only 1.4 times as many juveniles to lock up as 2014. Phillips and Devlin are also incarcerating kids at inappropriately young ages. The two sent 18 13- or 14-year-olds to the TJJD in 2017. Schneider sent zero. Let the number 18 sink in. Phillips and Devlin are sending youth who are barely old enough to shave to the same state-run lockups that have for decades been plagued by scandal, allegations of sexual abuse and violent behavior by employees at these facilities. Think of the friends these juveniles make in prison and the lessons they learn from older, more experienced offenders. Its not as if these kids are committing particularly dangerous crimes. About half of the kids both Devlin and Phillips sent to state-run juvenile lockups had charges such as burglary, evading arrest and unauthorized use of a vehicle. In comparison, more than 80 percent of the youth sent to juvenile prison from Schneiders court were charged with the serious offenses of aggravated robbery or aggravated assault. In addition, the vast majority of Harris County kids an average of 96 percent sent to juvenile prison in 2017 were children of color, according to state data. Democrats and Republicans alike should find these statistics disturbing. The numbers reflect a system that has lost its focus on the well-being of these children, who still have their lives ahead of them. That is why the Houston Chronicle editorial board has recommended that voters remove Phillips and Devlin from office and replace them with their challengers: Natalia Oakes in the 313th Juvenile District Court and Michelle Moore in the 314th Juvenile District Court. The two Democratic candidates each promise to dedicate their courts to local rehabilitation. What Music Rules The Car Country, Rock or Hip Hop? Cars have been linked to the music industry for as long as both have been around in advertising, consumption, and even lyrical content. Thanks to new analytic technology, it's now possible to quantify this relationship between the musical and the automotive. _____________________________ Guest post by Fred Jacobs of Jacobs Media Strategies In yesterday's post, we looked at radio's sales outlook for automotive ad dollars, as well as the way car companies continue to use Classic Rock soundtracks to brand their new makes and models. And as promised, we're going to take that one giant step forward and make that connection between music, radio, and cars. That's because so many musicians and performers have crooned about cars. As a Detroit guy firmly rooted in both the radio and automotive industries, it's a topic that hits home. When you live in the Motor City, frequent conversations revolve around the car you drive, the music you love, and the radio stations that bring it all together whether you're driving on the John C. Lodge Freeway, Woodward Avenue, or Telegraph Road. And now thanks to analytics and word search, it's possible to quantify that magical relationship. Gold Eagle, a Chicago-based automotive mainteance products supplier used the services of Digital Third Coast to conduct lyric-based research to determine which format genre most frequently refers to our four-wheeled friends our cars. Here's how they did it: Matt Zajechowski, Digital Third Coast's Outreach Lead (and Phish phanatic), explains how his company analyzed 100,000 songs using the lyrics.com database. To make the determination, they used scores of search terms, including cars, trucks, 4X4, coupe, sedan and hooptie. They also included many makes and models of cars and trucks, like Escalade, Caddy, Mustang, Jeep, and Jag, as well as terms like F-150 and C-Class. And the result? It turns out that automotive is very much a key part of the music we listen to and program. Overall, 13,000 artists and 72,000 songs mention car search terms somewhere in their lyrics. That's a lot of car talk. But the big question is this: Which musical genre leads the league in car lyrics Rock, Hip-Hop, Country, or another format entirely? This automotive contest isn't even close. Hip-Hop is the runaway leader. Of the top 100 performers who mention cars in their songs, 94 are hip-hop artists or rappers. In fact, the top 3 are Lil Wayne, Jay-Z, and Snoop Dogg. Rock is right up there, led by Bruce Springsteen. The Boss is followed by Tom Waits, Kid Rock, and Frank Zappa. And Pop songs often contain lyrics about cars, headed up by Jimmy Buffet and Prince, while topping the Country top charts are Johnny Cash and Jason Aldean. It's seems notable that novelty artists like Zappa and Weird Al Yankovic show up on the list, along with cultural icons like Cash, Dylan, and Iggy Popp. Cars are part of the formula for writing hit songs, and dashboard radio is the conduit that brought it all together. Here's a slice of the Gold Eagle/Third Coast Digital infographic that provides artist-level data for car lyrics: The auto industry is as brand driven as any other consumer product. So, it's fascinating to see the most-mentioned car makes in the database of 72,000 songs. As a Detroiter, I'm especially interested in which car brands celebrated in this music are the standouts. The leader in the clubhouse that is, garage is Mercedes (the S-Class is most prolific in song lyrics), mentioned in more than 4,700 songs, followed by Cadillac. Here's the way these musical car brands stack up in the music we know and love: Sadly, the Honda Civic is the least mentioned car tracked in the research. You can see the full analysis and infographic here. It's fascinating how some artists are inextricably linked with the songs and cars they made famous: Bruce Springsteen Pink Cadillac Commander Cody Hot Rod Lincoln Bob Seger '60 Chevy Janis Joplin Mercedes Benz Prince (Little) Red Corvette Strangely, my five favorite driving songs hardly mention the word car, much less a brand or nameplate. But when I think about radio, rock n' roll, and cars, they're the ones that resonate most and motivate me to turn up the radio when I'm headed down the highway: Steppenwolf Born To Be Wild Golden Earring Radar Love Tom Petty Runnin' Down A Dream Tom Waits Diamonds On My Windshield Bruce Springsteen Born To Run And yours? Thanks to 88.1 The Park's Bill Keith for the lead on today's post. Fred Jacobs founded Jacobs Media in 1983, and quickly became known for the creation of the Classic Rock radio format. Jacobs Media has consistently walked the walk in the digital space, providing insights and guidance through its well-read national Techsurveys. In 2008, jacapps was launched a mobile apps company that has designed and built more than 1,200 apps for both the Apple and Android platforms. In 2013, the DASH Conference was created a mashup of radio and automotive, designed to foster better understanding of the "connected car" and its impact. Along with providing the creative and intellectual direction for the company, Fred consults many of Jacobs Media's commercial and public radio clients, in addition to media brands looking to thrive in the rapidly changing tech environment. Share on: The developments are bound to cause considerable concern to India, which is closely watching the developments in its southern maritime neighbour. New Delhi: The sudden sacking of Sri Lankan Prime Minister Ranil Wickremesinghe, who was widely seen to be pro-India, by President Maithripala Sirisena and his (Mr Wickremesinghe) being replaced by the pro-China former president Mahinda Rajapaksa as prime minister is being seen as a setback for New Delhi and a huge boost to Beijing who are both jostling for influence in the island nation. The developments are bound to cause considerable concern to India, which is closely watching the developments in its southern maritime neighbour. New Delhi is believed to be viewing the recent political developments as the internal developments of Colombo but the significance of what has happened is not lost on it, particularly since Mr Wickremesinghe was sacked by the president just about a week after his visit to New Delhi. Ironically, Mr Rajapaksa had earlier been defeated in the Presidential polls by the same man Mr Sirisena who has now appointed him as PM. The rapprochement between Mr Rajapaksa and Mr Sirisena who had become fierce rivals has taken even Sri Lankans by surprise. It remains to be seen whether Sri Lanka, under its new dispensation, distances itself politically from New Delhi and moves back closer to China. Mr Rajapaksa, as president earlier, had won accolades on the island nation for the military campaign during his tenure that led to the defeat and decimation of the rebel secessionist LTTE. Mr Rajapaksa was seen to be openly pro-China in his approach and during his tenure, New Delhi had become alarmed over the frequent movement of Chinese submarines around Sri Lanka. Beijing had also undertaken infrastructure and connectivity projects in Sri Lanka at that time which vastly boosted its economic influence. In fact, Mr Wickremesinghe was being seen as standing up to Chinese clout, which added to his pro-India image. The countdown to Fridays developments started with differences between Mr Sirisena and Mr Wickremesinghe in the past few weeks. Speculation was agog in Sri Lankan media circles when President Sirisena was suddenly seen to be making anti-India statements. But matters reached a head with reports-subsequently deniedthat Sri Lankan President Sirisena had accused an Indian intelligence agency of being involved in a plot to assassinate him. President Sirisena had alsoin what was seen as a damage-control exerciseswiftly called up Prime Minister Narendra Modi to personally deny the reports. But the episode had New Delhi worried, since it was seen as a fallout of rivalry between Mr. Sirisena and Mr. Wickremesinghe in which New Delhi was being unnecessarily dragged into. Soon after that, just last week, Mr. Wickremesinghe visited New Delhi on an official visit and held talks with PM Modi during which the two leaders had discussed the entire gamut of bilateral relations and ways to further deepen the historically close and friendly relations between the two countries. The two leaders had also exchanged views on regional and global issues apart from taking stock of the progress of development projects in Sri Lanka which are being carried out with Indian assistance. But barely a week after that, Mr. Wickremesinghe was sacked. A large number of Indians also work and stay in the oil-rich region which is of huge strategic significance to India. New Delhi: External affairs minister Sushma Swaraj will continue Indias robust engagement with West Asia by making a four-day visit to Qatar and Kuwait in the region starting October 28. Her visit to Qatar is particularly significant, given Qatars strained ties with much of the Arab world particularly Saudi Arabia which is one of Indias largest oil suppliers. New Delhi has excellent relations with both Qatar and Saudi Arabia and has worked hard to strike a balance. A large number of Indians also work and stay in the oil-rich region which is of huge strategic significance to India. In a statement, the MEA said, External Affairs Minister Sushma Swaraj will visit two countries in the Gulf region from 28 to 31 October 2018 at the invitation of her counterparts. She will have engagements in the State of Qatar from 28 and 29 October 2018 and in the State of Kuwait on 30 and 31 October 2018. It further said, During her visit to Qatar, the minister will interact with her counterpart Sheikh Mohammed bin Abdulrahman Al Thani and others. Oxford scholars book fluid traces back Da Vincis Vitruvian man to India. Da Vinci himself credits 1st century BC Roman architect and engineer Marcus Vitruvius Pollio, as the first exponent of this idea, in his 13-30 BC book, Des Architectura. In a research revelation like the origin of zero or Fibonacci series from India, Oxford scholar Ashish Jaiswal in his book fluid, has proposed that the celebrated drawing The Vitruvian Man by Leonardo Da Vinci may actually have its roots in India. Da Vincis celebrated work on the dimensions of the human form, The Vitruvian Man created around 1490, is a beautiful convergence of artistic, scientific and mathematical knowledge. Since 1822, the Vitruvian Man has been a part of the permanent collection of the Gallerie dellAccademia in Venice, Italy. It is considered priceless. Da Vinci himself credits 1st century BC Roman architect and engineer Marcus Vitruvius Pollio, as the first exponent of this idea, in his 13-30 BC book, Des Architectura- in the chapter Temples and the Human Body. Interestingly, out of roughly 22 measurements noted by Vitruvius, Da Vinci uses less than half, interpreting the remaining measurements himself. But heres the twist. According to author Ashish Jaiswal, Vishudharmottaram Puranam - the not so well known ancient Indian text contains, the first ever, extensive measurements of the perfectly proportionate human body. And despite the fact that western writers have known it, they have never given it due credit. Ashish Jaiswal explains, I find it astonishing that no one has previously established the connection between the perfectly proportioned human form in Vishudharmottaram Puranamand Da Vincis Vitruvian Man. In fact, celebrated art historian Stella Kramrisch, who translated the Vishnudharmottaram in 1928 and who must be aware of The Vitruvian Man doesn't acknowledge the depth in which the proportions of the human body have been explained in the ancient text. In Vishudharmottaram Puranam, the writers voice is that of Rishi Markandeya who is explaining to King Vajra how to create perfect representation of god and goddesses. The mathematical precisions with which the proportions of human body are explained by Rishi Markandeya in Vishudharmottaram are much sophisticated than those by Vitruvius in Des Architectura. It is true that there is hardly any awareness of this encyclopaedic like puran in the public domain. Rishi Markandeya uses the width of a single finger as a standard measuring unit to measure human body; as opposed to Vitruvius, who largely uses the length of the head. The significance of this is that Rishi Markandeya is able to give measurements of smaller body parts (for example, Rishi Markandeya notes that the length of front tooth of a perfectly proportionate human is half a finger wide). This is a long lost discovery that must be brought out, adds author Ashish Jaiswal. The final salvo could perhaps be the gender issue, especially relevant in the time of #MeToo. While the Vitruvian Man is only about a male body, the Vishnudharmottaram Puranam, describes five types of perfect men, and five types of perfect women; of varying heights and proportions. Ashish outlines further that the act of dismissing or ignoring Indias achievements has been observed before as well, citing how the architect of Delhi, Edwin Lutyens considered the Taj Mahal to be wonderful but not architecture. Ashish Jaiswal has a doctorate from Oxford University and incidentally was a few years junior to the historian writer Yuval Noah Harari. This has come after NCP supremo Sharad Pawar and MNS chief Raj Thackeray were seen together during flight journey on Thursday. Mumbai: The Nationalist Congress Party (NCP) has clarified that the coming grand alliance against Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) wont have a place for the Maharashtra Navnirman Sena (MNS). This has come after NCP supremo Sharad Pawar and MNS chief Raj Thackeray were seen together during flight journey on Thursday. There were talks of inclusion of the MNS in grand alliance for pockets in Mumbai, Thane, Pune and Nashik. But the Congress had opposed the idea vehemently. Mr Pawar was with Mr Thackeray while returning from Aurangabad on Thursday. The photos and video of both leaders talking to each other went viral on social media. This kicked off the talks of NCP - MNS alliance for coming elections. Earlier, NCPs Nawab Malik had said on record that the partys workers want to have an alliance with Mr Thackeray. NCP had even raked this in meeting with Congress leaders. But Congress party rejected this proposal thoroughly. Thursday was not the first instance when both leaders came together. In this year itself, Mr Pawar and Mr Thackeray met minimum three times. First Mr Thackeray had interviewed Mr Pawar in Pune. Later he met veteran politician in Mumbai at his home. All this was taken as Mr Pawars efforts to have political understanding with Mr Thackeray. Though there is demand from section of workers. But our partys ideology is on opposite pole that to MNS. It is not possible to have any kind of alliance with MNS, said a senior NCP leader. Congress states chief Ashok Chavan also rejected an idea. Leaders met on airport. We too meet BJP leaders if traveling by same plane. But that doesnt mean it is political alliance, said Mr Chavan. Purdue technology assisting nonverbal children with autism wins Autism Hero and GAIN 18 Awards West Lafayette, Indiana - Two Purdue-licensed technologies assisting speech and language development in children with nonverbal autism have won awards from the German Academic International Network (GAIN) and the Anna Kennedy Online Charity. SPEAKall! and SPEAKmore! mobile applications won GAINs best startup idea and Anna Kennedy Online Charitys Autism Hero Entrepreneurial Award. The Autism Society reports nearly 3.5 million Americans live with autism spectrum disorder, and rates of diagnosis have risen to one in 59 children. Nearly 66 percent of children on the autism spectrum experience some level of difficulty acquiring spoken language, said Oliver Wendt, the German technology inventor. The technology we provide can be life-changing for children and adults as well as their parents and caregivers. Wendt, a University of Central Florida faculty member, developed the mobile platforms SPEAKall! and SPEAKmore!, and both platforms have received international recognition moving speech-language pathologys traditional communication boards onto mobile devices. SPEAKall! functions as a smart device communication board, which teaches students to associate words and images. In the application, students choose digital cards and move them to the speech bar, then the application reads the sequence aloud word by word. Users, caregivers and clinicians also can upload their own photos or word cards into the application to personalize the program for each learners individual needs. Oliver Wendt, inventor of SPEAKall! and SPEAKmore!, speaks at the GAIN 18 conference before winning GAIN 18 Award for best technology. (Photo provided) SPEAKall! is really a very versatile speech and language learning platform, Wendt said. What makes it so successful is its flexibility to target a variety of learning goals from early communication to emerging language and social interaction. Essentially, SPEAKall! can grow with the learner as needs and capabilities grow. SPEAKmore! enables children who have advanced beyond the capabilities of SPEAKall! to expand their vocabulary and message complexity. The SPEAKmore! application enhances early language learning by bring a matrix training approach to mobile devices. GAIN hosted a Boston conference in order to showcase research and commercialization efforts. Competing against five other start-up teams, Wendt explained how his mobile technologies make a critical impact for children and adults affected by severe autism. As part of the award program, Wendt will travel to Germany for individualized, entrepreneurial mentoring from business experts. Wendt also received the 2018 Autism Hero Entrepreneurial Award from the Anna Kennedy Online Charity, after reaching nearly a thousand users in England. The charitys mission is to raise autism awareness across the world by creating networks and supporting autism communities. Wendt developed both mobile applications while serving as a Purdue University faculty member, and the development was supported by a National Institute on Deafness and Other Communication Disorders grant. Our initial support for the technologys clinical validation came from the Purdue Center for Families led by director Shelly MacDermid Wadsworth, Wendt said. They were one of the first research sponsors to help these technologies get off the ground and develop intervention protocols for easy implementation in family homes. Im honored to have the Purdue Center for Families as a partner and to serve on their advisory board. Both technologies are licensed through Purdue Office of Technology Commercialization. The technology aligns with Purdue's Giant Leaps Sesquicentennial Campaign celebrating the universitys global advancements made in health, space, artificial intelligence and sustainability highlights as part of Purdues 150th anniversary. Those are the four themes of the yearlong celebrations Ideas Festival, designed to showcase Purdue as an intellectual center solving real-world issues. Diane Von Furstenberg is not known for being one to shy away from the spotlight--or shrink from controversy. The Belgian-born entrepreneur explained to a crowd at the Fast Company Innovation Festival Thursday how she found her voice--and why she embraced being outspoken. It started with founding her fashion business: "I wanted to be able to have a man's life in a woman's body, so to be independent was my goal," she said. "Very quickly I was in the light; I had a voice." The years she started designing silk-jersey dresses were also the first in her marriage to Prince Egon von Furstenberg. Magazines portrayed her as a "Park Avenue princess," she recalled--a label that offended her. "One of the reasons I became ... a little bit provocative was that at least when they quoted me they were actually quoting me," she said. Von Furstenburg built her company in the 1970s, and learned to project confidence to bolster her business. "The more confidence I had, the more I was selling," she said. Still, for decades she didn't consider herself an iconic designer--even as her brand, DVF, became known globally (it would grow to an estimated $500 million in revenue by 2015). She described driving up to the 2014 exhibition celebrating the 40-year-anniversary of her legendary wrap dress, and finally realizing that she was worthy of the accolades she had received. In recent years, Von Furstenburg has brought in outside executives to run DVF, changing her role now that, at the age of 71, she's in what she called her "third act," "I am an oracle," she said. "I am an old women. I have done a lot. Come to me for advice." She said she begins her days with an act of selflessness, sending two emails that have no benefit to her, simply connecting other people or doing them favors. Samantha Mathis has spoken publicly about River Phoenix for the first time since his death in 1993. The actors met while working on The Thing Called Love and began a romantic relationship on set. Speaking to The Guardian, Mathis revealed that she recently watched the 1993 comedy for the first time since Phoenix's death, and, after being approached by the publication, felt like the universe wanted me to talk about him. Phoenix died aged 23 of an overdose of cocaine and heroin on 31 October 1993 outside the Johnny Depp-owned Viper Room nightclub in Los Angeles. The actor's younger sister and brother, Rai and Joaquin, were at the club, along with Mathis. I knew something was wrong that night, something I didnt understand, Mathis said. I didnt see anyone doing drugs but he was high in a way that made me feel uncomfortable I was in way over my head. Forty-five minutes later, he was dead. Mathis says that she went to the bathroom and when she emerged, Phoenix was engaged in a scuffle with another man. After security escorted the group out, Phoenix began to convulse on the ground. I knew he was high that night, but the heroin that killed him didnt happen until he was in the Viper Room. I have my suspicions about what was going on, but I didnt see anything, she said. The best films of 2018 (so far) Show all 17 1 /17 The best films of 2018 (so far) The best films of 2018 (so far) The Guardians From its slow-burning beginning, The Guardians develops into an epic melodrama. Its a wartime story in which, for a change, the men are relegated to supporting roles. It follows in a tradition of French rural family sagas like Jean De Florette or Manon Des Sources. The landscapes and the changing seasons play as much of a part in the story as the main characters. The best films of 2018 (so far) Dark River Dark River offers little such consolation. It has some lyrical and delicate moments but the mood is generally overwhelmingly bleak and lugubrious. Incest and abuse dont leave much space for any comic interludes. This is a powerful film with a grinding intensity about it. Light relief it isnt but Dark River still has quite an impact. Alamy The best films of 2018 (so far) Zama Late on in Argentinean director Lucrecia Martels startling, highly original new feature, Zama, a character who has just had both his arms cut off, is advised to shove your stumps in the sand if you dont bleed out, youll survive. Its a grisly, darkly humorous moment in a film that continually surprises us with both its brutality and its lyricism. The Match Factory The best films of 2018 (so far) The Breadwinner The most dispiriting aspect of this otherwise enrapturing Oscar-nominated animated feature is that its storyline still seems so current. The film depicts an Afghan society in which women dont have a face. It is set during the Taliban rule, which lasted from the mid-1990s until late 2001, but this doesnt feel like a period piece. Seventeen years after the Taliban were ousted from power in Afghanistan following the US invasion, the plight of women in the country appears hardly to have improved. GKIDS The best films of 2018 (so far) BlacKkKlansman Spike Lees work sometimes risks sensory overload. He fires off so many different ideas and storytelling styles that audiences can become bamboozled by his scattergun approach. BlacKkKlansman is one of his very best films because the digressions are as entertaining as ever but dont get in the way of the main story. AP The best films of 2018 (so far) Early Man Much of the pleasure in Aardman films has always lain in their gently ironic, Alan Bennett-like humour. They take very exotic characters and subject matter but then deal with them in a matter-of-fact fashion. They make a virtue out of their own relative modesty. Early Man isnt the flashiest animated feature that youll see this year but it is certainly the most likeable. The best films of 2018 (so far) Isle of Dogs Like all of Wes Andersons work, Isle Of Dogs is very stylised, very offbeat and characterised by its extremely dry and often ironic humour. This Japanese-set stop-motion fable is also gorgeous to look at packed full of intricate visual detail. It deals with some weighty themes (ethnic cleansing, fascism and corruption) but does so in an idiosyncratic fashion. The best films of 2018 (so far) Three Billboards Outside of Ebbing, Missouri Writer-director Martin McDonagh has a host of award-winning plays behind him but his movies havent always lived up to his stage work. This one certainly does. It shares some of the dark and nihilistic humour found in McDonaghs previous film, Seven Psychopaths. The best films of 2018 (so far) A Quiet Place In an era of wearisome poltergeist movies, haunted house stories and torture porn, A Quiet Place is a refreshingly pared-down and very original affair. Director John Krasinski relies on editing, sound effects and off-screen action to crank up the tension. We do see the creatures from time to time, sometimes even in extreme closeup. They are very grotesque, bigger versions of the polyp-like succubus which exploded out of John Hurts stomach in Alien. However, the most terrifying moments here come when the humans are waiting for them to appear, desperately hoping that they wont. Paramount Pictures The best films of 2018 (so far) Lady Bird Lady Bird is one of the best American coming-of-age films since Barry Levinsons Diner. Written and directed by Greta Gerwig, it offers an utterly winning mix of humour, poignancy and sharp-eyed social observation. Gerwig approaches her subject matter with the same tenderness and affectionate irony with which the adolescent Lady Bird regards Sacramento. Gerwig also shows Lady Birds heroism as the young heroine strives against the odds to become the very best version of herself she can be. A24 The best films of 2018 (so far) Phantom Thread If Phantom Thread is indeed Daniel Day-Lewiss final film as an actor, he is going out on a wondrously bizarre note. This must be the oddest film in his career, one in which he gives a typically commanding but very idiosyncratic performance. Almost everything here is jarring but generally in a very positive way. The best films of 2018 (so far) First Reformed It is not so long ago that Paul Schrader seemed to be giving up on cinema. The American writer-director (whose credits include Taxi Driver, American Gigolo and Affliction) had taken to making movies like the sour Hollywood satire The Canyons with Lindsay Lohan and the cartoonishly violent Dog Eat Dog, shot cheaply, aimed at a VOD audience. The former had a montage of closed-down movie theatres. In interviews, Schrader struck a gloomy note about the future of the industry. This is why First Reformed is so refreshing. This is not just Schraders best film in a very long while. It is also a re-affirmation of the directors belief in the medium. Rex The best films of 2018 (so far) The Happy Prince Oscar Wilde goes to ruin in Rupert Everetts debut feature as director. Everett also wrote and stars in the film, giving a grandstanding performance as the Irish writer at the end of his life, after his release from prison, where he has been doing hard labour for gross indecency. This is a moving and surprising biopic that squeezes out every last drop of pathos from its subject matter. BBC Films The best films of 2018 (so far) Black Panther Black Panther is not only one of the most entertaining recent superhero films but has an intelligence and a political dimension that such inchoate offerings as Suicide Squad and Justice League completely lacked. It is an action movie which touches on Pan-Africanism and which owes as much to Malcolm X as it does to Batman or Captain America. Marvel Studios/Disney The best films of 2018 (so far) Sicilian Ghost Story Sicilian Ghost Story is a genre-bending affair that combines elements of teen romance, gothic psycho-drama and political thriller. It is loosely based on a true story of a boy called Giuseppe Di Matteo whose father, an ex-member of the Sicilian Mafia, turned grass against his erstwhile associates. The Mafia responded by kidnapping Giuseppe and keeping him in captivity for nearly 800 days. Altitude The best films of 2018 (so far) First Man First Man is all about understated heroism. Its affecting precisely because Armstrong (played with quiet intensity by Ryan Gosling) doesnt feel the continual need to boast about his mission. The film is a tearjerker but a very subtle one. AP The best films of 2018 (so far) Dogman Dogman is one of the best Italian films of recent times, a modern day neo realist fable that bears comparison with the great work of Fellini, Rossellini, De Sica et al. Its main character, the dog groomer Marcello (Marcello Fonte), is a wonderful creation: loveable, vulnerable, seedy and comic all at the same time. Curzon Artificial Eye Phoenix was a highly-celebrated actor during his lifetime, receiving an Oscar nomination for his role in Sidney Lumet's Running on Empty. Mathis has had a successful career in Hollywood, going on to star in American Psycho, Broken Arrow and Little Women. Remembering Phoenix, she called him sensitive and obsessive," adding that he felt things "on his heart very deeply. Support free-thinking journalism and attend Independent events I think if River was still here, I think hed be acting, directing, saving the environment, just living and hanging out," she said. "Oh gosh, wouldnt that be nice? A new strategy to resist sea level rise is urgently needed as regular floods and erosion batter the English coast, according to government climate advisers. Communities in vulnerable areas such as north Norfolk and south Devon have already seen these devastating events play out, with homes left inundated with water and cliff-top buildings sent crashing into the waves. Experts have warned that this will only get worse as the effects of climate change play out across the country in coming decades, and many coastal areas will be left uninhabitable. Around 1.2 million homes will be at significant risk of flooding and 100,000 properties will face coastal erosion by the 2080s, according to a new report from the Committee on Climate Change (CCC). There will also be dozens of major roads, train stations and landfill sites left exposed to the sea, triggering significant disruptions to local infrastructure. Climate change is expected to cause sea levels around the UK to rise by at least 1 metre by around 2100, and the advisers warned the government that the time to act is now. The end of this century isnt all that far away, its in the lifetime of children who are alive today, said Professor Jim Hall, the CCC adaptation committees expert on flooding and coastal erosion. We want to get things right now in order to make it easier to manage climate change in the future. 10 photographs to show to anyone who doesn't believe in climate change Show all 10 1 /10 10 photographs to show to anyone who doesn't believe in climate change 10 photographs to show to anyone who doesn't believe in climate change A group of emperor penguins face a crack in the sea ice, near McMurdo Station, Antarctica Kira Morris 10 photographs to show to anyone who doesn't believe in climate change Floods destroyed eight bridges and ruined crops such as wheat, maize and peas in the Karimabad valley in northern Pakistan, a mountainous region with many glaciers. In many parts of the world, glaciers have been in retreat, creating dangerously large lakes that can cause devastating flooding when the banks break. Climate change can also increase rainfall in some areas, while bringing drought to others. Hira Ali 10 photographs to show to anyone who doesn't believe in climate change Smoke filled with the carbon that is driving climate change drifts across a field in Colombia. Sandra Rondon 10 photographs to show to anyone who doesn't believe in climate change Amid a flood in Islampur, Jamalpur, Bangladesh, a woman on a raft searches for somewhere dry to take shelter. Bangladesh is one of the most vulnerable places in the world to sea level rise, which is expected to make tens of millions of people homeless by 2050. Probal Rashid 10 photographs to show to anyone who doesn't believe in climate change Sindh province in Pakistan has experienced a grim mix of two consequences of climate change. Because of climate change either we have floods or not enough water to irrigate our crop and feed our animals, says the photographer. Picture clearly indicates that the extreme drought makes wide cracks in clay. Crops are very difficult to grow. Rizwan Dharejo 10 photographs to show to anyone who doesn't believe in climate change Hanna Petursdottir examines a cave inside the Svinafellsjokull glacier in Iceland, which she said had been growing rapidly. Since 2000, the size of glaciers on Iceland has reduced by 12 per cent. Tom Schifanella 10 photographs to show to anyone who doesn't believe in climate change A river once flowed along the depression in the dry earth of this part of Bangladesh, but it has disappeared amid rising temperatures. Abrar Hossain 10 photographs to show to anyone who doesn't believe in climate change A shepherd moves his herd as he looks for green pasture near the village of Sirohi in Rajasthan, northern India. The region has been badly affected by heatwaves and drought, making local people nervous about further predicted increases in temperature. Riddhima Singh Bhati 10 photographs to show to anyone who doesn't believe in climate change A factory in China is shrouded by a haze of air pollution. The World Health Organisation has warned such pollution, much of which is from the fossil fuels that cause climate change, is a public health emergency. Leung Ka Wa 10 photographs to show to anyone who doesn't believe in climate change Water levels in reservoirs, like this one in Gers, France, have been getting perilously low in areas across the world affected by drought, forcing authorities to introduce water restrictions. Mahtuf Ikhsan Englands coastlines have always been risky places to live. In 2013 Storm Xaver struck and caused over 1.6bn of damage, and earlier this year parts of the Norfolk coastline vanished so quickly that several homes in the town of Hemsby collapsed into the sea. Though steps have been taken to tackle such events, the governments current shoreline management plans were dismissed by the CCC as insufficient, as they are neither legally binding or properly funded. A proper strategy to prepare for the changes to come would likely cost between 18-30bn, but this would depend on the rate of climate change. Many of the countrys coastal defences are expected to fail in the near future, and there is an urgent need to strengthen the resilience of seaside towns and restore habitats that can act as buffers against the rising tides. Recommended Government urged to act fast on climate change after UN warning While sustainable adaptation strategies are possible, the CCC warned that maintaining the status quo by building ever higher flood defences would be far too expensive for up to 185km (115 miles) of Englands coastline. As a result, some smaller communities may have to be abandoned. Crucially, the report found that not enough had been done to communicate these issues, and Professor Hall said the dangers of coastal living should be acknowledged by authorities and discussed with people especially those considering moving to these areas. They are buying properties without a full understanding of the risk, he said. The report concluded that money must be made available for a campaign to broadcast these risks to people, as well as large-scale restoration projects for beaches, dunes and salt marshes that provide natural protection for coastlines. Support free-thinking journalism and attend Independent events As the climate changes the current approach to protecting the English coastline is not fit for purpose, said Professor Hall. Climate change is not going away: action is needed now to improve the way Englands coasts are managed today and in the future, to reduce the polluting emissions which cause climate change, and to prepare seaside communities for the realities of a warming world. Responding to the report, a government spokesperson said: The environment secretary has been very clear we will take the action required to ensure our country is resilient and prepared for the challenges the changing climate brings. The government has already committed 1.2bn of investment in coastal erosion and sea flooding projects over the next six years to better protect 170,000 homes. We welcome the committees report which will inform our work to tackle increasing flood and coastal erosion risks, ahead of the publication of our government policy statement on flooding and coastal erosion next year. In February, environment minister Michael Gove got into a Twitter spat with the European Commissions first vice-president, Frans Timmermans, over plastic straws. A few years ago, straws would have seemed a ridiculous topic for two men of such standing to fall out over. But we are living in the post-Blue Planet age, when public hatred of plastic has reached fever pitch, and taken the top slot in the environmental debate. After initially suggesting the EU was holding back his plan to ban the offending items and subsequently being set straight Mr Gove claimed Europe was behind the UK in efforts to tackle single-use plastics. Unless youre a matte make-up stan, its likely that youll be looking to achieve a radiant finish to your look. The lucky ones among us are blessed with a natural glow, but most of us need a helping hand in that department. Cue: the highlighter. But what is it? Highlighter is a light reflective product used to add dimensionality to the face, playing with light to bring desired features forward in a flattering way, says Warren Dowdall, senior pro artist for Bobbi Brown. It also adds instant brightness and radiance to the complexion for a well-rested and luminous look. There are plenty of brilliant highlighters to choose from, in an array of different textures to suit your glow-needs. The most popular formulas are liquid, powder and cream. But how does each one differ and which one should you go for? Liquid has a softer lightweight finish, can be mixed into foundation for all-over radiance and is great for beginners, Warren explains, while a cream is easy to use on-the-go and can be used on bare skin for a no makeup glowy finish. Finally, powders are the most versatile: Theyre precise, can be used anywhere on the face and can be layered to create a custom intensity. Whatever you choose, if it makes the light bounce off your skin and leaves a radiant finish, its doing its job. But does it stay put? Does it look natural? Is it easy to apply? Does it sit happily on the skin? Its all in the finer detail here is our round-up of the highlighters that do it all. Read more: How we tested While testing these products to find our final cut, we first ensured that there was a variety of textures in the mix, and shades for different skin tones. For weeks, our testers tried each one while wearing make-up and then again without make-up to get a feel for how they perform on their own for a natural glow, as well as with the aid of other makeup like foundation and bronzer. We also considered everything from ease of application and how well each one blends into the skin to each products longevity and how many shades are available. The best highlighters for 2021 are: Best overall YSL touche eclat shimmer stick in light rose: 28, Yslbeauty.co.uk YSL touche eclat shimmer stick in light rose: 28, Yslbeauty.co.uk Best powder highlighter Bobbi Brown highlighting powder in afternoon glow: 37, Bobbibrown.co.uk Bobbi Brown highlighting powder in afternoon glow: 37, Bobbibrown.co.uk Best liquid highlighter Benefit high beam liquid highlighter: 15.50, Benefitcosmetics.com Benefit high beam liquid highlighter: 15.50, Benefitcosmetics.com Best versatile highlighter Laura Mercier face illuminator highlighting powder in inspiration: 32, Johnlewis.com Laura Mercier face illuminator highlighting powder in inspiration: 32, Johnlewis.com Best for on-the-go Collection Cosmetics gorgeous glow stick in highlighter: 4.99, Superdrug.com Collection Cosmetics gorgeous glow stick in highlighter: 4.99, Superdrug.com Best for a natural look Revlon Skinlights prismatic highlighter in daybreak glimmer: 9.99, Boots.com Revlon Skinlights prismatic highlighter in daybreak glimmer: 9.99, Boots.com Best custom highlighter No 7 custom blend highlighting drops in bronze: 13.50, Boots.com No 7 custom blend highlighting drops in bronze: 13.50, Boots.com Best for glam Charlotte Tilbury glowgasm beauty light wand in goldgasm: 29, Feelunique.com Charlotte Tilbury glowgasm beauty light wand in goldgasm: 29, Feelunique.com Best lightweight highlighter - Max Factor facefinity highlighting powder in nude beam: 10.99, Lookfantastic.com YSL touche eclat shimmer stick in light rose Best: Overall highlighter Rating: 10/10 With its travel-friendly packaging, easy to apply formula and beautiful radiant finish, this shimmer stick is frankly the perfect highlighting cocktail. Either swipe it on directly from the stick and blend in with your finger or use a synthetic haired brush to blend it onto the areas where you need illumination. This shade is more suited to fair to medium skins (there are five shades available overall), and the finish is beautiful its shimmery, not glittery, and catches the light in all the right ways. We really noticed how easy it is to blend this cream in. While some formulas disappear during the blending process, or are too dry to move around on the skin, this silky smooth, lightweight texture stretches nicely and still leaves a subtle gleam, all day long. It even has a floral, sweet fragrance too not something you often find with highlighters but adds to that luxury feel. Buy now 28 , yslbeauty.co.uk {{#hasItems}} Price comparison {{/hasItems}} {{#items}} {{ merchant }} {{ price }} Buy now {{/items}} {{#hasItems}} {{/hasItems}} Bobbi Brown highlighting powder in afternoon glow Best: Powder highlighter Rating: 9/10 From the brand which brought you the signature shimmer brick face palette, this highlighting powder is equally pleasing to the eye and lives up to all expectations. It doesnt gather or clog in fine lines and is everything you want from a powder highlighter a sheer texture thats available in numerous shades, its easy to layer and incredibly long lasting. So much so that as a test, we swished some on our hands then tried to remove it with a cotton pad and it didnt budge. This golden shade, afternoon glow, is ideal for fair to medium skin tones but pink glow would be best if youre very fair, while bronze glow would be gorgeous on dark skin. All skin tones can apply one layer of their suited shade over bronzer on the apples of their cheeks for an extra sun-kissed finish. Buy now 37 , Bobbibrown.co.uk {{#hasItems}} Price comparison {{/hasItems}} {{#items}} {{ merchant }} {{ price }} Buy now {{/items}} {{#hasItems}} {{/hasItems}} Benefit high beam liquid highlighter Best: Liquid highlighter Rating: 8/10 This could quite easily be one of Benefit Cosmetics most iconic products an oldie but a goodie. The satiny pink description on the packaging could not be more accurate thats exactly what it looks and feels like on application, as the slight iridescent finish makes it look like you have literally shone a torch on your skin. We particularly liked the doe-foot applicator which gives instant control over how much you apply its especially handy as a little goes a long way with this one. If you use too much, the pinky hue can appear rather white so as long as youre savvy about quantity youll notice the quality. It blends in quickly and seamlessly and lasts a full day whether youre wearing make-up or not, although it should be said that wearing it with make-up looks more seamless because of the intensity of this highlighters glow. Buy now 15.50 , Benefitcosmetics.com {{#hasItems}} Price comparison {{/hasItems}} {{#items}} {{ merchant }} {{ price }} Buy now {{/items}} {{#hasItems}} {{/hasItems}} Laura Mercier face illuminator highlighting powder in inspiration Best: Versatile highlighter Rating: 9/10 Not only is this beautifully presented highlighter versatile in the application department, it is also an all-rounder when it comes to the shade range, meaning that all skin tone bases are covered (if youll pardon the pun). Available in five varied shade, we tested inspiration, a rose gold shimmer that looks beautiful on medium to dark skin tones and can be applied, well, everywhere you want really. From the tops of your cheekbones as a highlighter, to the centre of your eyelids as a highlighting eyeshadow, this is a crowd pleaser in all areas. The formula is actually surprisingly sheer so dont be fooled by its seemingly opaque finish when you open the palette. But sheer can only mean one thing easily buildable and the way the pigment catches the light is super flattering. Buy now 32 , Johnlewis.com {{#hasItems}} Price comparison {{/hasItems}} {{#items}} {{ merchant }} {{ price }} Buy now {{/items}} {{#hasItems}} {{/hasItems}} Collection Cosmetics gorgeous glow stick in highlighter Best: For on-the-go Rating: 8/10 This is a great little handbag essential for when youre on the move and your skin needs a quick pick-me-up. For a start, the packaging is chunky and sturdy meaning any worries about the lid coming off in your handbag can be forgotten. The formula is a shimmery cream this shade is best for fairer skins and is super soft on application. It feels slightly more oily than the Estee Lauder stick above, but that makes it perfect for those with drier skin. Even though it does have more slip, it doesnt clog or feel tacky when youre wearing it thanks to it settling into the skin nice and quickly. As far as longevity goes, it may need touching up at lunch time but hey, thats why its the best one for when youre on-the-go. Buy now 4.99 , Superdrug.com {{#hasItems}} Price comparison {{/hasItems}} {{#items}} {{ merchant }} {{ price }} Buy now {{/items}} {{#hasItems}} {{/hasItems}} Revlon skinlights prismatic highlighter in daybreak glimmer Best: For a natural look Rating: 8/10 For those who like a natural finish, this powder is just that. Plus, it leaves a subtle, lightweight finish. Where liquid or cream highlighters can deliver a strong glow off the bat, powders can be more subtle and easily buildable. This one is the sort of highlighter that can easily become a staple in your daily make-up routine thanks to its longevity, reasonable price and all-round non-cakey texture. It adds shine without the glitter and allows the light to bounce off it without looking streaky or obvious. It blends in with other natural make-up but also looks beautiful when worn alone. Either way, it adds radiance in one quick layer. Buy now 9.99 , Boots.com {{#hasItems}} Price comparison {{/hasItems}} {{#items}} {{ merchant }} {{ price }} Buy now {{/items}} {{#hasItems}} {{/hasItems}} No 7 custom blend highlighting drops in bronze Best: Custom highlighter Rating: 8.5/10 Dont be fooled by the somewhat miniscule bottle this highlighter might be small in size but its mighty in performance. Theres no messing about with its liquid formula we tested the bronze shade for dark skin, and when worn alone, it spreads onto the skin like wildfire. In other words, you only need the very smallest of drops. For less intensity, you can mix it into your foundation to achieve an all-over glow but our preferred method is mixing a few drops with moisturiser to create either a tinted moisturiser or just a glowy base for foundation. We liked that we could wear it in three different ways, whatever our mood, plus its beautifully bronzed glimmer finish is gorgeous. Wear alone or with make-up for a sun-kissed, radiant finish. Buy now 13.50 , Boots.com {{#hasItems}} Price comparison {{/hasItems}} {{#items}} {{ merchant }} {{ price }} Buy now {{/items}} {{#hasItems}} {{/hasItems}} Charlotte Tilbury glowgasm beauty light wand in goldgasm Best: For glam Rating: 9/10 This shimmery gold shade was tested on medium to dark skin and it really didnt disappoint. For a start, a little goes a long way so dont be put off by the price. You wont need to make a top up purchase for a while. The intense sheen that this gives is perfect for glamorous evening looks, but may be a bit too much for daytime wear, depending on your preference. We enjoyed the finish best when wearing make-up. Its twistable, on and off applicator is a clever way of saving on product wastage when youre not using it and we love how the sponge applicator gives such a smooth, easy application. Buy now 29 , Feelunique.com {{#hasItems}} Price comparison {{/hasItems}} {{#items}} {{ merchant }} {{ price }} Buy now {{/items}} {{#hasItems}} {{/hasItems}} Max Factor facefinity highlighting powder in nude beam Best: Lightweight highlighter Rating: 9/10 Listen up, subtle make-up fans! This pressed powder highlighter is as light as a feather and youll never know youre wearing it unless you catch a glimpse of your own radiance in the mirror. Its lightweight formula is just the right mix of subtle and glowy. Powder highlighters often get a bad reputation for creating a face full of glitter this one certainly has sparkle but it is not glittery and leaves just the right amount of sheen. Apply with a large brush for an all-over glow, a small brush for precision or use your finger to dab it into small nooks like the inner corners of your eyes or cupids bow. We didnt need to reapply it over the course of the day either lightweight and low-maintenance. Buy now 10.99 , Lookfantastic.com {{#hasItems}} Price comparison {{/hasItems}} {{#items}} {{ merchant }} {{ price }} Buy now {{/items}} {{#hasItems}} {{/hasItems}} Highlighter FAQs Does highlighter make you look older? On the contrary, using a highlighter actually adds a youthful sheen to the face. While mature skin can often appear dry and flat, applying a highlighter will give it more depth and allow the skin to look healthier. That said, if you have mature skin, steer clear of highlighters containing glitter or sparkle as this can draw attention to fine lines and avoid applying thick highlighting textures in the lines around your eyes so that the product doesnt clog inside them. The performance of your highlighter also depends on your pre-make-up skin prep. Make sure your skin is cleansed, toned and moisturised before applying your make-up so that your highlighter stays put and doesnt slide off or, equally, dry up. The purpose of a highlighter is to keep the skin looking fresh and young looking, so not doing a proper skincare routine before you apply it would prove to be counteractive. If you have mature skin, choose cream or liquid textured highlighters instead of powders to keep dry skin supple and glowy. Where should you use highlighter? Highlighter should be applied to the high points of your face so that you can create the illusion of a prominent bone structure. This means along the tops of your cheekbones, on your brow bones, down the bridge of the nose and on your cupids bow. The light will bounce off wherever you put it so try not to overdo it subtlety is key. However, if you prefer a little more radiance, dab some in the upper-centre of your eyelids, in the inner corner of your eyes and even near your temples on the sides of your forehead, but not in the middle as that area is naturally more oily and you dont want to add more shine to an already oily T-zone. How do you choose the right colour? Highlighters are applied to add light to your face and also to enhance your features, so choose one that is one or two hues lighter than your natural skin tone. The idea is for it to create a natural, seamless glimmer of light on your skin, rather than a harsh, noticeable strip. Fair skin tones should opt for pearlescent or champagne shades, medium/neutral skin tones suit iridescent, pink or golden tones and dark skin tones look best in rose gold or bronze highlighters. When youre more tanned during the summer you can go a little bit darker. The verdict: best highlighters For a highlighter that does it all (and smells good in the process), our best buy is the YSL touche eclat shimmer stick. If you want to spend a little less money but still use a flattering cream texture then Collection Cosmetics gorgeous glow stick will do the trick or, for a super-glam finish and a product that lasts and lasts, we love Charlotte Tilbury glowgasm beauty light wand. Voucher codes For the latest discounts on make-up and other beauty buys, try the links below: Feelunique discount codes Lookfantastic discount codes Charlotte Tillbury discount codes For more must-have complexion products, read our review of the best bronzers IndyBest product reviews are unbiased, independent advice you can trust. On some occasions, we earn revenue if you click the links and buy the products, but we never allow this to bias our coverage. The reviews are compiled through a mix of expert opinion and real-world testing. A British doctor claims to have invented makeup that will be resistant to acid attacks and prevent victims from being disfigured. Dr Almas Ahmed has spent the last 10 years developing the non-reactive formula, which she says can be added to any cosmetic product, from foundation to lipstick. She was inspired to create the compound by Katie Piper, who suffered an acid attack in 2008 at the hands of her ex-boyfriend, leaving her with severe facial injuries, including blindness in one eye. Recommended Model left burned after acid attack shares tips on how to be confident Ahmeds compound is also waterproof and has a high boiling point, meaning it should protect wearers from fire-related injuries in addition to the caustic material in acid. I started developing this when I was in medical school and I kind of forgot about the issue, she told BBC Radio 5 Live. This summer, when there was lots of acid attacks in the news, it made me want to revisit the idea and finish it off. Thats why I have come to this stage now. Its because it is an issue for me living in this country. She explained that adding the compound to pre-owned makeup shouldnt change the aesthetics of the product. It works very well. It blends like a normal foundation. You can apply it to different things, like eyeliners, mascaras, lipsticks and nail varnishes. The Bradford-based medic said she is currently awaiting approval from the Medicines and Healthcare Products Regulatory Agency (MHRA) but insisted that the product has been tested and it does work. Ahmed hopes to get the products into shops by next summer. Acid attacks in the UK are on the rise, with the number of incidents rising by a third between 2015 and 2017. Support free-thinking journalism and attend Independent events In the first six months of 2017, there were approximately 400 attacks alone, which roughly equates to two a day. According to Rachel Kearton, the Assistant Chief Constable of Suffolk Police and National Police Chiefs Council, the UK now has one of the highest rates of recorded acid and corrosive substance attacks per capita in the world. Months after the passing of one of the culinary worlds most influential chefs, a former employer of Anthony Bourdain has compiled a list of tips for travelling like the late chef. Apart from his cooking skills, Bourdain was beloved for his storytelling abilities, which he used to entertain viewers on his travel shows, No Reservations, and later, Parts Unknown. During these trips to remote, fascinating and unique locations around the world, Bourdain did what he did best - ate, tried new experiences, and brought the unknown into the worlds of his fans. Following his death, Kathleen Rellihan, a CNN travel writer who worked with Bourdain at Travel Channel, has offered some advice for fellow travellers looking to experience the world the same way the chef did. Find your own path According to Rellihan, there are seven ways people can incorporate Bourdains legacy into their own travels - starting with finding their own unique destinations. What made Bourdain so special was his ability to seek out locations that were off the beaten path - which others should also do in their quests for new experiences. Find your own path, Rellihan advises. Ask questions Bourdains success was in part due to his understanding of the importance of communication - and his ability to ask questions that unravelled stories. Anthony Bourdain: Celebrity chef in pictures Show all 8 1 /8 Anthony Bourdain: Celebrity chef in pictures Anthony Bourdain: Celebrity chef in pictures The 2017 New Yorker Festival - Anthony Bourdain Talks With Patrick Radden Keefe Getty Anthony Bourdain: Celebrity chef in pictures Anthony Bourdain with Nigella Lawson and Ludo Lefebvre in Channel 4's 'The Taste' Channel 4 Television Anthony Bourdain: Celebrity chef in pictures Anthony Bourdain winning Outstanding Informational Series Or Special at the 2016 Creative Arts Emmy Awards Getty Anthony Bourdain: Celebrity chef in pictures Bourdain's no-holds-barred account of life in American kitchens is both a memoir and an insider's guide to the tricks of the trade. Anthony Bourdain: Celebrity chef in pictures Chefs Anthony Bourdain (L) and Mario Batali take a selfie Chefs Anthony Bourdain (L) and Mario Batali take a selfie Getty Anthony Bourdain: Celebrity chef in pictures Bourdain and Danny Bowien at 'The Mind Of A Chef' Premiere Launch Party Getty Anthony Bourdain: Celebrity chef in pictures Anthony Bourdain atThe 53rd annual Clio Awards Anthony Bourdain ( Honorary Clio Award) The 53rd annual Clio Awards Alamy Anthony Bourdain: Celebrity chef in pictures Anthony Bourdain and Joel Rose return for the follow up to their bestseller Get Jiro! Anthony Bourdain, and Joel Rose (Kill The Poor) return for the follow-up to their #1 New York Times bestseller Get Jiro! Alamy To get the most out of a destination and a culture previously unknown, you should simply ask questions. Be transparent about what you see and experience According to Rellihan, part of Bourdains appeal was that he never shied away from reality and authenticity in a world where people are constantly sharing editing or staged photos. In one episode of Parts Unknown, Bourdain didn't hide from viewers that a fishing expedition was actually staged by the fisherman - instead he kept the cameras running as he expressed his anger. CNN to create final season of Anthony Bourdain:Parts Unknown To change the world for the better, share what you see during your travels - the good and the bad. Visit hole-in-the-wall restaurants One of Bourdains biggest travel tips was to seek out restaurants that were loved by the locals - which often led to the best food. For authentic experiences, and more importantly, authentic food, travellers should do as the locals do. Do your research before you go Prior to travelling anywhere, the 61-year-old chef would learn everything he could about his upcoming destination through books and movies. Anthony Bourdain's Top 5 Travel Tips for Paris To learn about a culture and get the most out of your trip, Rellihan recommends first immersing yourself in its art - just as Bourdain did. Support free-thinking journalism and attend Independent events Dont let preconceived notions influence you Throughout his remarkable career, Bourdain did not discriminate when it came to choosing destinations to visit - even if they were considered unsafe, unsuitable for travel, or unfriendly. By visiting places and countries that were typically overlooked by tourists, Bourdain taught viewers that negative perceptions should not keep you from experiencing a place - as what you actually find is likely to surprise you. Aulii Cravalho, who starred as Polynesian princess Moana in the 2016 Disney film of the same, has said that she believes its appropriate for children to dress up as her character for Halloween. Among the plethora of creative and well-thought-out Halloween costumes that emerge every year, there are always some people who attract controversy by wearing outfits that others condemn as cultural appropriation. Two years ago in the same year of Moanas release, Disney was accused of promoting full body brownface by selling a Halloween costume of demi-god Maui, the character played by Dwayne Johnson in the film. The costume featured a bodysuit with brown skin, traditional Polynesian tattoos, a bone necklace and a grass garment, with activists criticising Disney for trying to profit off the back of another cultures beliefs and history. While some may think that dressing up as Moana would be similarly problematic, Cravalho believes that all should feel welcome to dress up as the character for Halloween, regardless of their ethnicity. I think its absolutely appropriate, she tells People. Its done in the spirit of love and for Disney and for the little ones who just want to dress up as their favourite heroine, Im all for it. The 17-year-old also doesnt think that adults should refrain from taking inspiration from her character for Halloween. Walt Disneys Disneyland: A visual history Show all 7 1 /7 Walt Disneys Disneyland: A visual history Walt Disneys Disneyland: A visual history Walt Disney described his park on television in 1954 2018 Disney Enterprises, Inc Walt Disneys Disneyland: A visual history The original Disneyland sign on Harbor Boulevard welcomed guests from 1958 to 1989. Its bold colors, shapes, and kinetic exuberance make it an icon of midcentury design Collection of Dave DeCaro, davelandweb.com Walt Disneys Disneyland: A visual history The drawbridge to Sleeping Beauty Castle was lowered for the rst time on opening day, and only once since: when the redesigned Fantasyland opened on May 25, 1983. The castle sits at the center of Disneyland and is one of the worlds most recognizable structures, with spires that rise as high as 77 feet (about 24 m), but it wasnt the rst concept Walt had in mind. A palace for Cinderella and a castle for Robin Hood were considered in the planning stages Getty/The LIFE Picture Collection Walt Disneys Disneyland: A visual history In good company Walt Disney is joined in 1964 by some of his most adored characters. Many starred in what Walt called classic stories of everyones youth that, in Fantasyland, had become realities for youngsters of all ages to participate in. Lawrence Schiller, Polaris Communications Inc Walt Disneys Disneyland: A visual history The buildings of the Rainbow Ridge mining town were designed by art director and set designer Bill Martin, who recalled they were a favorite of the Disneys: I remember that Walt and Lilly would often walk along the pathways between those little buildings when they stayed at the park overnight. Although the attraction is long gone, the little town can still be seen in the queue to the Big Thunder Mountain Railroad Collection of Dave DeCaro, davelandweb.com Walt Disneys Disneyland: A visual history Monstro the Whale, from Pinocchio, guards the entrance to the Storybook Land Canal Boats. His giant blinking eye and spouting blowhole sometimes surprised guests posing for photos 2018 Disney Enterprises, Inc Walt Disneys Disneyland: A visual history Walt Disneys Disneyland 40 Taschen I would encourage anyone who wants to dress up as a wayfinder who journeys beyond her reef to figure out who she truly is, I totally support you. Go for it! she says. Parents can dress up as Moana, too. During the films development process, directors Ron Clements and John Musker formed the Oceanic Story Trust, a group of experts from across the South Pacific, in order to ensure that Moana was as culturally sensitive as possible. Online retailer Fashion Nova recently sparked controversy by selling a geisha costume, which was condemned as racially insensitive. The costume, which is still on sale on the site, includes a kimono; an obi, which is a traditional Japanese sash; a skirt; and hair sticks. What makes Fashion Novas costume so racially insensitive is that it feeds into a stereotype of Asian women being sexual objects and temptresses for mens (almost always white men) desires), a spokesperson for Students Teaching Against Racism told Metro.co.uk. Support free-thinking journalism and attend Independent events Sponsored: Read more on The Nutcracker and the Four Realms and Misty Copeland Cravalho has reprised her role as Moana in Wreck-It Ralph 2, which is being released later this year. One of the world's most recognisable fashion models has said the advent of social media has radically transformed the industry with models struggling to get jobs if they do not have hefty social media followings. Natalia Vodianova, a Russian supermodel whose nickname is Supernova, said the rising influence of social media has seen a far greater emphasis on personality over beauty since the industry. But the 35-year-old who had a seven-figure contract with Calvin Klein said this shift had not manifested itself among catwalk models and it had instead moved in the other direction. When it comes to the catwalk, unfortunately, you see that kind of ideal of very, very skinny girls who have an edge, a look, but its not really about personality, Vodianova told The Independent. Recommended Natalia Vodianova condemns cafe for forcing out her autistic sister Even from my time when in fact girls were more themselves, we were allowed to smile, breathe and try to do our thing on the catwalk, even fifteen years ago. Now its more faceless. Its not about them - the character - but the character imposed by the designer. Vodianova who was the worlds third highest earning model in 2012 and is currently ranked by models.com as one of the fashion industrys New Supers said the proliferation of social media has changed the whole fashion industry. For young models, its really, really hard. Its really hard without this following. I know a lot of brands are asking models how many followers they have this dictates whether they get the job or not. Its interesting because that means personality is celebrated and its not really about the brand's ideal of the, lets say, face. Its crazy because very beautiful girls, or whatever that means, will miss out and the job will go out to someone who is very charismatic and funny and has a lot of personality. Some people find it unfair but I think its interesting. The model, who does a range of campaigning work, noted the competitive nature of this shift but said it allowed for a greater diversity of models. She argued the growing influence of social media has led the industry to embrace a greater range of body shapes but it still had a long way to go. A lot of it is forced by social media and by the fact more and more of these conversations are surfacing. The industry sort of follows it like a trend. Unfortunately, it is still not normalised enough. The issues of one type of body and perfection are changing a lot because we now see consumers wanting to see more diversity, she added. Big influencers and the brands themselves now have a great presence on social media so they can hear from their consumers directly about what works and what does not. I think this is really positive. She added: Influence has gone from the industry-at-large to a mix of important influencers. The newcomers and Instagram stars mean it is a very different landscape. Its very interesting. But she said the issue of body diversity has yet to revolutionise the world of catwalk high fashion noting such designers create their clothes with slim women in mind. That is the way they want to see it. But then often what is in the catwalk is not what you find in the shop, she said. Asked whether she thought this provided a negative role model for young girls, she said the responsibility needed to lie with designers rather than the models themselves. Model with Down's syndrome makes strides worldwide Show all 18 1 /18 Model with Down's syndrome makes strides worldwide Model with Down's syndrome makes strides worldwide Model Madeline Stuart, who has Down's syndrome, standing on a runway during rehearsal at the Angel Orensanz Foundation during New York Fashion Week Reuters Model with Down's syndrome makes strides worldwide Madeline having her final touches made before before walking in the Colleen Morris presentation of the Spring/Summer 2019 collection during London Fashion Week Reuters Model with Down's syndrome makes strides worldwide Madeline has her makeup applied backstage before the Colleen Morris Presentation Reuters Model with Down's syndrome makes strides worldwide Madeline enjoying her time backstage of the Soiree show at London Fashion Week Reuters Model with Down's syndrome makes strides worldwide Madeline walking onto the catwalk for the Colleen Morris presentation Reuters Model with Down's syndrome makes strides worldwide Madeline and her mother, Rosanne, pose for photos while sightseeing in Trafalgar Square Reuters Model with Down's syndrome makes strides worldwide Madeline walking in the Swedish School of Textiles show at London Fashion Week Reuters Model with Down's syndrome makes strides worldwide Madeline celebrates after stepping out of a taxi cab as she arrives for New York Fashion Week Reuters Model with Down's syndrome makes strides worldwide Madeline looks through a window as her mother is interviewed about Madeline's modelling career Reuters Model with Down's syndrome makes strides worldwide Rosanne Stuart attempts to cover her daughter, Madeline, from rain as they walk to a show during New York Fashion Week Reuters Model with Down's syndrome makes strides worldwide Madeline waits backstage as a dress is steamed before a runway show during New York Fashion Week Reuters Model with Down's syndrome makes strides worldwide Madeline having her make up applied backstage before walking in the Lulu Et Gigi presentation at New York Fashion Week Reuters Model with Down's syndrome makes strides worldwide Madeline being assisted backstage before walking in the Rutu Bhonsle runway show at New York Fashion Week Reuters Model with Down's syndrome makes strides worldwide Madeline standing backstage before walking in the Burning Guitars runway show during New York Fashion Week Reuters Model with Down's syndrome makes strides worldwide Madeline standing backstage between two male models at New York Fashion Week Reuters Model with Down's syndrome makes strides worldwide Madeline stands among models backstage after walking in the Burning Guitars presentation during New York Fashion Week Reuters Model with Down's syndrome makes strides worldwide Madeline sits at the Remedy Diner with her mother and manager Rosanne after walking in a runway show during New York Fashion Week Reuters Model with Down's syndrome makes strides worldwide Madeline sits in the back of a taxi cab after walking in a runway show during New York Fashion Week Reuters What is it to do with catwalk models? We cant blame catwalk models. They are beautiful. And they are often very healthy. They are naturally skinny, she said. Whether there should be more diversity, that is another story. A lot of these girls and a lot of these models were born this way. I was born this way so I can speak on their behalf. She called for a greater variety of female body types to be represented on the catwalk. There will always be a place for girls who are naturally slim, but I would love to see more beautiful, curvy women on the catwalk. I see a lot of these shows and I think it should be more like in real life. Vodianova joined the United Nations Population Fund to lead a global symposium on tackling the taboos surrounding womens health around the world in Antalya in Turkey on Thursday and Friday of this week. The event, called Lets Talk!, was powered by her digital charitable platform Elbi and run in conjunction with the United Nations sexual and reproductive health agency. Too often womens health issues go unheard and unnoticed because of unwarranted stigmas and taboos which have let far too many women down for generations, she said. She said the global issue of period poverty was close to her heart revealing she was subject to fierce trolling after sharing a photo of herself holding a sanitary pad with her two million Instagram followers. The model said she received around 5,000 comments in less than ten hours and the reaction of Russian women to the image was crazy. Most of it was harsh criticism saying How can you do this? There are teenagers following you. Why dont you start posting pictures sitting on the toilet? Why dont you post toilet paper? I could not believe my eyes. I am not used to so much hate and criticism thrown my way. Then I thought this is really cool actually. iIt proves my point that these conversations are so important. I just did not realise this shame and stigma was so close to home in Russia. Sphen and Magic had caught the attention of aquarium workers when they were constantly seen waddling around and going for swims together. Sydney: Two male penguins who paired up as a "same-sex couple" have successfully incubated a baby chick and are "doting" on their tiny offspring, an Australian aquarium announced Friday. Gentoo penguins Sphen and Magic are happily "taking turns caring for their baby chick," born on October 19 weighing 91 grams, said Tish Hannan of the Sea Life Sydney Aquarium. Taking to Facebook, they wrote, Baby Sphengic is not only the first chick fostered to same-sex couple, Sphen and Magic, but has waddled into the history books as Sea Life Sydneys first sub-Antarctic penguin chick and will now serve as an ambassador for its generation! Sphen and Magic had caught the attention of aquarium workers when they were constantly seen waddling around and going for swims together. They then began to build a collective nest of pebbles, prompting the aquarium to provide a dummy egg for them to look after and, when they proved up to the task, a real egg. The pair have bonded, Hannan, Sea Life's penguin department supervisor, told AFP. "They recognise each other's signature calls and songs. "Only bonded penguins will be able to successfully find their partner using their calls when they are separated." Unlike many mammal species, male and female penguins take on the same parenting roles, and share parental duties 50-50. "There is no real difference when it comes to breeding behaviours between males and females," Hannan explained. So it "is common to have male-male or female-female showing courtship and breeding behaviour." In the wild, however, these courtships are unlikely to result in a chick, so they are normally shortlived, with the penguins becoming unsatisfied and looking for another partner. "Because we have given Sphen and Magic the opportunity to have a potentially successful breeding season, it is very likely that they will return to each other again next year," said Hannan. This is not the first time same-sex penguin couples have adopted eggs in captivity, with a handful of zoos worldwide reporting similar cases. In 2009, two male penguins -- Z and Vielpunkt -- successfully hatched and reared a chick that was rejected by its heterosexual parents at a zoo in Berlin. Before them came Roy and Silo, two male chinstrap penguins at a zoo in New York who were spotted frequently trying to mate with each other. After they tried to incubate a rock, zookeepers gave them a foster egg which they successfully hatched. Their foster chick, a female called Tango, eventually paired up with another female. Bitcoin was born out of the global financial crisis of 2008, but on the eve of its 10th anniversary the world's first cryptocurrency may be facing a crisis of its own. Uncertain regulation, technological failings and infighting within its developer community mean another cryptocurrency could be on the verge of taking its place as the world's leading digital currency. With a market cap of over $100 billion, bitcoin has established itself over the last decade as the world's leading cryptocurrency, yet since its inception more than 3,000 other cryptocurrencies have since come into existence each attempting to offer something that bitcoin can't. After a decade of dominance, experts tell The Independent that one of them may soon succeed. "A number of clouds now hang over bitcoin's original vision chiefly the speculation around whether it can make it as a general service for payments," said Shiv Malik, head of strategy and communications at the blockchain firm Streamr. "But bitcoin now has many children cryptocurrencies and digital tokens of all sorts and they will eventually serve as the basis not just for money, and money transfer but for accessing all sorts of vital digital services in the future." Bitcoin's volatile history in pictures Show all 10 1 /10 Bitcoin's volatile history in pictures Bitcoin's volatile history in pictures Satoshi Nakamoto creates the first bitcoin block in 2009 On 3 January, 2009, the genesis block of bitcoin appeared. It came less than a year after the pseudonymous creator Satoshi Nakamoto detailed the cryptocurrency in a paper titled 'Bitcoin: A peer-to-Peer Electronic Cash System' Reuters Bitcoin's volatile history in pictures Bitcoin is used as a currency for the first time On 22 May, 2010, the first ever real-world bitcoin transaction took place. Lazlo Hanyecz bought two pizzas for 10,000 bitcoins the equivalent of $90 million at today's prices Lazlo Hanyecz Bitcoin's volatile history in pictures Silk Road opens for business Bitcoin soon gained notoriety for its use on the dark web. The Silk Road marketplace, established in 2011, was the first of hundreds of sites to offer illegal drugs and services in exchange for bitcoin Screenshot Bitcoin's volatile history in pictures The first bitcoin ATM appears On 29 October, 2013, the first ever bitcoin ATM was installed in a coffee shop in Vancouver, Canada. The machine allowed people to exchange bitcoins for cash Reuters Bitcoin's volatile history in pictures The fall of MtGox The world's biggest bitcoin exchange, MtGox, filed for bankruptcy in February 2014 after losing almost 750,000 of its customers bitcoins. At the time, this was around 7 per cent of all bitcoins and the market inevitably crashed Getty Images Bitcoin's volatile history in pictures Would the real Satoshi Nakamoto please stand up In 2015, Australian police raided the home of Craig Wright after the entrepreneur claimed he was Satoshi Nakamoto. He later rescinded the claim Getty Images Bitcoin's volatile history in pictures Bitcoin's big split On 1 August, 2017, an unresolvable dispute within the bitcoin community saw the network split. The fork of bitcoin's underlying blockchain technology spawned a new cryptocurrency: Bitcoin cash Reuters Bitcoin's volatile history in pictures Bitcoin's price sky rockets Towards the end of 2017, the price of bitcoin surged to almost $20,000. This represented a 1,300 per cent increase from its price at the start of the year Reuters Bitcoin's volatile history in pictures What goes up... Bitcoin price crashes spectacularly, losing half of its value in a matter of days Getty Images Bitcoin's volatile history in pictures Bitcoin plunges The cryptocurrency eventually bottoms out below $4,000 in 2019 before slowly rebuilding momentum to outperform more traditional assets Getty Images One of the fundamental features of bitcoin is that it's decentralised, meaning there is no government or financial institution that can interfere as an intermediary. But while this allows fee-free international transactions and protects against manipulative monetary policies like quantitative easing, a lack of centralisation and governance also means it is difficult to implement new technologies that are necessary to keep up with its growth. "Some argue that the bitcoin community's lack of governance will prevent the community from adopting innovations at a fast enough pace, quickly resulting in an antiquated network that fades in prominence," said Will Warren, CEO of decentralised exchange platform 0x. This could see another cryptocurrency overtake bitcoin and dominate the space, much in the same way as some early internet companies like MySpace were eventually usurped by superior alternatives like Facebook. One potential rival that could overthrow bitcoin is one that spawned from its own blockchain the online ledger that documents every transaction in an effort to make transactions cheaper and more efficient: Bitcoin cash. Recommended Scandal and infighting fuels the battle over bitcoin The new cryptocurrency, which launched last year, is currently only worth around 15 per cent of the original bitcoin, yet its improved functionality means some of the original proponents of bitcoin believe it is the one true bitcoin and will soon replace it. "Perhaps the push of bitcoin cash with its narrative of being the true bitcoin and ownership of key bitcoin domains and handles of social media will make bitcoin cash overtake bitcoin, or maybe some centralised cryptocurrencies will become the new standard," said Angel Versetti, CEO of blockchain firm Ambrosus. "I hope the latter does not happen though, as hopefully people will become more educated about what blockchain is and how it should work, and make the choice for freedom from censorship and control." Regardless of whether this happens or not, Cristian Gil, Co-founder of trading firm GSR believes bitcoin has served its fundamental role of kickstarting a financial revolution, even if it is another cryptocurrency or cryptocurrencies that eventually achieve the full potential. "The space is evolving at such a rapid pace that it is difficult to make predictions even two years out," he said. "Whether bitcoin itself is used in the pipes for these systems or not, when history books are written about this period of time, bitcoin will have earned the first page mention." North Korea is using and exploiting cryptocurrencies to bypass international regulators and help financially support its regime, a new report has revealed. Researchers from the cyber-threat intelligence firm Recorded Future attributed two separate cryptocurrency scams in 2018 to a network of "North Korea-enablers" in Singapore, both of which were designed to con investors and funnel funds into the country. One of the scams relates to the cryptocurrency 'hold', which was listed on and removed from a series of exchanges in 2018, before eventually rebranding to 'huzu'. The authors of the report say the cryptocurrency "left its investors high and dry." Bitcoin's volatile history in pictures Show all 10 1 /10 Bitcoin's volatile history in pictures Bitcoin's volatile history in pictures Satoshi Nakamoto creates the first bitcoin block in 2009 On 3 January, 2009, the genesis block of bitcoin appeared. It came less than a year after the pseudonymous creator Satoshi Nakamoto detailed the cryptocurrency in a paper titled 'Bitcoin: A peer-to-Peer Electronic Cash System' Reuters Bitcoin's volatile history in pictures Bitcoin is used as a currency for the first time On 22 May, 2010, the first ever real-world bitcoin transaction took place. Lazlo Hanyecz bought two pizzas for 10,000 bitcoins the equivalent of $90 million at today's prices Lazlo Hanyecz Bitcoin's volatile history in pictures Silk Road opens for business Bitcoin soon gained notoriety for its use on the dark web. The Silk Road marketplace, established in 2011, was the first of hundreds of sites to offer illegal drugs and services in exchange for bitcoin Screenshot Bitcoin's volatile history in pictures The first bitcoin ATM appears On 29 October, 2013, the first ever bitcoin ATM was installed in a coffee shop in Vancouver, Canada. The machine allowed people to exchange bitcoins for cash Reuters Bitcoin's volatile history in pictures The fall of MtGox The world's biggest bitcoin exchange, MtGox, filed for bankruptcy in February 2014 after losing almost 750,000 of its customers bitcoins. At the time, this was around 7 per cent of all bitcoins and the market inevitably crashed Getty Images Bitcoin's volatile history in pictures Would the real Satoshi Nakamoto please stand up In 2015, Australian police raided the home of Craig Wright after the entrepreneur claimed he was Satoshi Nakamoto. He later rescinded the claim Getty Images Bitcoin's volatile history in pictures Bitcoin's big split On 1 August, 2017, an unresolvable dispute within the bitcoin community saw the network split. The fork of bitcoin's underlying blockchain technology spawned a new cryptocurrency: Bitcoin cash Reuters Bitcoin's volatile history in pictures Bitcoin's price sky rockets Towards the end of 2017, the price of bitcoin surged to almost $20,000. This represented a 1,300 per cent increase from its price at the start of the year Reuters Bitcoin's volatile history in pictures What goes up... Bitcoin price crashes spectacularly, losing half of its value in a matter of days Getty Images Bitcoin's volatile history in pictures Bitcoin plunges The cryptocurrency eventually bottoms out below $4,000 in 2019 before slowly rebuilding momentum to outperform more traditional assets Getty Images A second scam involved a blockchain application called Marine Chain Platform and its initial coin offering (ICO) crowdfunding efforts. "We came across discussions of Marine Chain as a cryptocurrency in a couple of bitcoin forums in August 2018," the researchers wrote in their report, titled 'Shifting patterns in internet use reveal adaptable and innovative North Korean ruling elite'. "Marine Chain was supposedly an asset-backed cryptocurrency that enabled the tokenisation of maritime vessels for multiple users and owners." An extensive investigation into the company and its alleged employees revealed with "high confidence" that it was in fact a scam conducted on behalf of North Korea. Recommended Floyd Mayweather and DJ Khaled caught up in cryptocurrency scam North Korean hackers have previously been blamed for a cyber attack on South Korean bitcoin exchange Youbit last year, which resulted in the theft of around $72 million-worth of cryptocurrency. This interest in cryptocurrency was further highlighted in 2017 when the Pyongyang University of Science and Technology invited foreign experts to lecture students on the technology. The mining of cryptocurrency by hijacking foreign computers has also been attributed to North Korea, with the funds funnelled into the country through the state university. Earlier this year, researchers at cyber security firm AlienVault discovered the so-called 'cryptojacking' malware, saying cryptocurrency offered a "financial lifeline" to a regime hit hard by sanctions. Support free-thinking journalism and attend Independent events The latest report suggests that the mining of bitcoin and monero is ongoing, though remains relatively small scale. "Broadly, these types of cryptocurrency scams fit the template of low-level financial crime described by defectors, that has plagued South Korea for years and the international community is just beginning to track," Recorded Future's report into the cryptocurrency scams concluded. "It is a natural step for both a group of actors that has been so embedded in the cryptocurrency world for years and for a network that is being forced to innovate new funding streams to counter the effects of international sanctions." What is the secret to a life free-from tension headaches and relentless toe-tapping? Rather than laughter, sleep or a warm cup of coffee, one Japanese academic claims that the most beneficial way to relieve stress is to shed a tear - or several. Former high school teacher Hidefumi Yoshida refers to himself as a tears teacher and organises regular workshops and lectures across Japan to educate people on the psychological benefits of crying. Recommended Sophie Turner reveals why she was crying in snap taken with Joe Jonas The act of crying is more effective than laughing or sleeping in reducing stress, the 43-year-old told Japan Times. Yoshida explains that listening to emotive music, watching sad films and reading tear-jerking books can offer huge benefits to your mental health by stimulating parasympathetic nerve activity, which slows the heart rate, that can have a soothing effect on the mind. If you cry once a week, you can live a stress-free life, he added. In 2014, Yoshida teamed up with Hideho Arita, a professor at the Faculty of Medicine at Toho University in Tokyo, to launch a series of lectures aimed at raising awareness of the benefits of crying. He has since been inundated with requests from schools and companies to host workshops and other activities on the subject. In September, Yoshida hosted a lecture at Osaka High School in Daito City, Japan, where 79 teenage students watched a film in the hope that it would induce tears. They then wrote essays, which they also read out, about how the experience made them feel. Yoshida isnt the first person to tout the soothing effects of crying. In 1981, a study titled Tear Expert conducted by Dr William Frey at the University of Minnesota claimed that crying releases endorphins, subsequently promoting feelings of happiness and wellbeing. Another study conducted in 2008 of more than 3,000 people found that crying made people feel much better in difficult situations, leading the authors to suggest that inducing tears should be used as a form of therapy When Jaidev Janardana, chief executive of Zopa, was 17, he learned the hard way about what can go wrong with credit. He was born in the Kerala region of southern India and his parents roamed the country working for the government as part of the rubber board. Then his father decided to go into the private sector, setting up as a producer of adhesives. My dad wasnt the best entrepreneur, Janardana says. His father had no difficulty obtaining a line, or lines, of credit but not from entirely reputable sources. He was being charged 10 per cent per week i.e. a higher rate of interest than Wonga used to levy. Labelling his fathers lenders loan sharks is unfair to sharks. Debt collection is not exactly regulated in India, says Janardana the younger. People were lining up outside the house screaming at us to give them their money back. It was the son who paid them all off in the end. He studied engineering, worked in telecoms, rolling out the network in India, then went to business school, was hired by Capital One, and started in its credit card office in Washington DC. Fortunately the exchange rate of dollars to rupees was favourable at the time. Junior, then aged 24, salvaged the family finances. In April 2008, I was labelled a party pooper. People said its only a Wall Street crisis. Its a US thing. Were not in the subprime mortgage business Janardana on the financial crisis of 2008 Its more about reputation face and respect in India, he says. Sometimes your parents social security is you. To be fair, they wouldnt have incurred so much debt if not for me. I was living off them for a long while. In the wake of that traumatic experience, and while working for Capital One, lending to consumers, and having responsibility for collections and defaults, Janardana could feel defaulters pain. He was abnormally sensitive to any looming crisis. The year 2007 found him based in London. We were all gung-ho for growth, he says. But Janardana pointed out even when the economy was doing well, losses were piling up, and he forecast rocky times ahead. In April 2008, I was labelled a party pooper. People said its only a Wall Street crisis. Its a US thing. Were not in the subprime mortgage business. But Janardanas warning was heeded and by September 2008, when everything unravelled, Capital One had a head start of three or four months, and had already shut down new custom and reduced exposure. Still, it wasnt a fun time. Most of 2008 was spent just trying to survive. Support free-thinking journalism and attend Independent events By that time, Janardana had decided not to return to the US, and to become a British citizen. Zopa attracted him because it was something completely different: a peer-to-peer system in which investors and borrowers are brought together for mutual advantage, with Zopa in the middle, like the shaded area of a Venn diagram. One persons loan is anothers investment. Investors do better than they would by parking money in a bank albeit with higher risk and borrowers get a much better deal than Janardanas entrepreneurial father ever did. The typical borrowers are teachers and nurses in their mid-30s, often for the purpose of home improvements or buying a car. The average loan size is just under 10,000. With his engineering background, the thing that particularly pleased Janardana was how Zopa had managed to speed up the process of obtaining a loan. The business does its own risk assessment. But what really concentrated minds, was the question of comparison sites. Zopa had previously informed applicants if they could get a loan in 27 seconds flat. But Money Supermarket said approval had to be 12 seconds for it to show up on its site Zopa got it down to seven. The exact rate is outlined within three minutes. The real rate, stresses Janardana, not the lowest rate which is so misleading. Janardana has been CEO since August 2015. Weve had a charmed four years, he says. The business had a turnover of 265m in 2014-15, now its more than 1bn. Revenue has gone up from 11m to 45m. Customer satisfaction, according to Trust Pilot, hits 4.8 or 4.9 out of 5. Now Zopa is two years into building a fully-fledged online bank, and is running the registration gauntlet, performing the required stress tests. It wants to extend the ethos of peer-to-peer into retail banking. 10,000 The average amount people borrow from Zopa We are sitting in the Zopa HQ on the south bank of the Thames, looking out at the river flowing languidly by, with the towers of the City leaning over it. Its probably something to do with his personal history, and his mum and dad nearly going under, but when Janardana speaks of giving customers more control, its easy to feel the passion and conviction beyond the expression of good intentions. He objects to what he calls the win/lose model. He ought to get a job as chancellor of the exchequer. In fact, he comes out with a line neither the chancellor nor anyone else, other than Jeff Bezos gets a chance to say very often. We had too much money. In other words, there was more lending than borrowing. Citizens Advice knows customers who renew loans generally get a worse rate than those who switch. Banks make money by upping the rate. We could have pulled the same trick, but we dont want to do that, says Janardana, sounding a bit like Chris Tarrant on Who Wants To Be A Millionaire. With us you always get the same rate as a new customer. A bank where we win, and our customers win. Even if he is CEO, Janardana still talks regularly to the guy who handles complaints. He wants people to be happy and sometimes Janardana speaks more like a yoga teacher than a money expert. Its rather zen and soothing. I want, he says, to take away the points of tension. Some of the worlds biggest companies are being challenged over climate change by a group of influential investors which includes the Church of England Pensions Board. Firms including BP, Rio Tinto and Volkswagen are facing calls to reconsider their ties to lobbying organisations whose climate change policies do not match up to the Paris Agreement targets. Investors have written to 55 companies, asking them to review the lobbying positions being adopted by the organisations of which you are a member, particularly any groups that might oppose progressive climate change policies. Unilever, Nestle and Rolls-Royce were also approached. The 55 firms have been chosen due to their high greenhouse gas emissions and significant role in energy-intensive sectors, investors said. The decision to take action on back-door lobbying comes weeks after the UNs Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) warned that greenhouse gas emissions must be cut almost in half by 2030 to avert a global environmental catastrophe. Under current climate commitments by world leaders, the Earth will be 3C warmer by the end of the century, according to the IPCCs report. The worst effects of global warming including the total loss of every coral reef, the disappearance of Arctic ice and the destruction of island communities will only be avoided if the global temperature increase stays below 1.5C. Scientists think this figure will be exceeded within around 20 years. Adam Matthews, of the Church of England Pensions Board, said: Misleading and misaligned corporate lobbying practices undermine the ability of governments to act on climate change and meet the goals of the Paris Agreement. The influence of trade associations is often exerted behind closed doors and can be deeply insidious to public policymaking on climate change. Support free-thinking journalism and attend Independent events As the recent report from the IPCC clearly highlighted, the stakes are high and time is against us. It is therefore right that investors are challenging Europes most high-emitting companies to ensure consistency in their lobbying practices. Stephanie Pfeifer, chief executive of the Institutional Investors Group on Climate Change, said: Long-term investors have a clear interest in the Paris Agreement being implemented to support the necessary transition to a low-carbon global economy. Shareholders should rightly expect companies in which they invest to advocate for the climate policy required for this to happen. This includes ensuring the trade bodies of which they are members are working to the same end. There has been a 58 per cent rise in the number of childrens operations cancelled by the NHS in the past seven years, according to figures which critics warn illustrate the cruel toll of pressures on the health service. Last year, a record 18,647 under-18s had surgery cancelled or delayed, with cancer treatment, pregnancy terminations and broken bones among the procedures affected. That compares with 11,821 cancellations since the Conservatives came to power in coalition with the Liberal democrats in 2011/2012, and the number has climbed steadily in a period where austerity policies have seen budgets fall behind rising demand. A lack of theatre capacity, bed shortages and equipment failures among other reasons given for surgery cancellations are all signs the health services shoestring budget is affecting the most vulnerable, experts said. The fact that more childrens operations are being cancelled nationally, is of deep concern to surgeons, said Richard Stewart, president of the British Association of Paediatric Surgeons (BAPS), and Eric Nicholls, chair of the Childrens Surgical Forum at the Royal College of Surgeons, in a joint statement. Having an operation cancelled is stressful for children and their families, they added. Alongside practical considerations, such as wasted time off school and work, children and their families have to deal with the mental anguish of preparing for surgery all over again. NHS at 70: demonstration and celebration march to mark anniversary Show all 18 1 /18 NHS at 70: demonstration and celebration march to mark anniversary NHS at 70: demonstration and celebration march to mark anniversary AFP/Getty Images NHS at 70: demonstration and celebration march to mark anniversary Labour Party leader, Jeremy Corbyn, addresses demonstrators following the march AFP/Getty NHS at 70: demonstration and celebration march to mark anniversary AFP/Getty Images NHS at 70: demonstration and celebration march to mark anniversary EPA NHS at 70: demonstration and celebration march to mark anniversary AFP/Getty Images NHS at 70: demonstration and celebration march to mark anniversary Reuters NHS at 70: demonstration and celebration march to mark anniversary REUTERS NHS at 70: demonstration and celebration march to mark anniversary EPA NHS at 70: demonstration and celebration march to mark anniversary REUTERS NHS at 70: demonstration and celebration march to mark anniversary PA NHS at 70: demonstration and celebration march to mark anniversary REUTERS NHS at 70: demonstration and celebration march to mark anniversary AFP/Getty Images NHS at 70: demonstration and celebration march to mark anniversary REUTERS NHS at 70: demonstration and celebration march to mark anniversary PA NHS at 70: demonstration and celebration march to mark anniversary AFP/Getty Images NHS at 70: demonstration and celebration march to mark anniversary AFP/Getty Images NHS at 70: demonstration and celebration march to mark anniversary AFP/Getty Images NHS at 70: demonstration and celebration march to mark anniversary AFP/Getty Images The two groups first warned of rising cancellations in 2006, but pressures have been made worse by bed and staff shortages as a result of the financial pressures the NHS has faced over recent years. Addressing funding and moving more minor surgery out of specialist centres, could also reduce cancellations, they added. Abortions after nine weeks pregnancy are also carried out in a hospital setting, and delays can be particularly stressful for young women, charities said. When a woman is certain of her decision to end a pregnancy, it is best for her health and wellbeing that she can access abortion services as soon as possible, Katherine OBrien, from the British Pregnancy Advisory Service, told The Independent. Abortion is a safe procedure, but it is safer at earlier gestations As a pregnancy advances, this can also restrict womens choice of method. They may move from having a procedure under local anaesthetic to general anaesthetic, for example. More than 117,936 paediatric operations were cancelled in the last seven years, figures obtained through Freedom of Information Act requests by Labour reveal. Actual cancellations could be far higher, as only a third of NHS trusts in England provided figures, with Alder Hey Childrens Hospital in Liverpool, and the Birmingham Womens and Childrens hospitals among the NHS trusts that did not respond, Labour said. Specialist childrens hospitals that did respond to the request accounted for the majority of cancellations. Great Ormond Street Hospital has cancelled 46,151 operations in seven years, and Sheffield Childrens NHS Foundation Trust cancelled 18,064. Support free-thinking journalism and attend Independent events Behind each of these cancellations is a sick child and their loved ones facing unnecessary distress for entirely avoidable reasons, shadow health secretary Jonathan Ashworth said. These cancelled operations risk harming children further in the long term, and its shameful that cancellations have reached this level. The scale of cancellations, Mr Ashworth added, reveals yet again an NHS pushed to the brink by the Tories. Demand reached crisis point last winter, as the NHS directed hospitals to cancel all non-urgent care to guarantee emergency provision, and The Independent revealed childrens wards were being used as overflow areas for adults. The fallout from the winter is still being felt with December a month away. On Thursday, the Health Service Journal revealed Derriford Hospital part of the stretched University Hospitals Plymouth Trust had struck a deal to move all non-urgent orthopaedic operations to private hospitals, to tackle its waiting list. But those figures do not show how many operations were cancelled at short notice or rescheduled within the recommended 30-day period. It is bad enough being ill at any age, but it is particularly cruel for children to be waiting in pain and discomfort for an operation that has been delayed, said John Kell, head of policy at the Patients Association. It is hard to feel optimistic for an NHS that is feeling the effects of sustained underfunding and disastrous workforce planning. We hope the new funding that will be available from next year can start to turn things around, though it will be stretched thin. In the meantime, families with children who need an operation are facing an anxious winter. A Department of Health and Social Care spokesperson said: There are 2.1 million more operations taking place a year than in 2010, and hospitals continue to do everything they can to keep last-minute cancellations to a minimum. The NHS long-term plan, together with our historic funding commitment for the health service, will see frontline services improve, and put the health service on a long term, sustainable footing, backed by an extra 20bn a year by 2023/24. Here at Humber Street Gallery on Hulls historic waterfront, Jamie Reid is busy assembling his biggest ever one-man show. Its a diverse display, spread across three floors of this old warehouse, encompassing everything from situationist propaganda to new age spirituality. Its the old punk slogans that leap off the walls though: Cash from Chaos; Demand the Impossible; Never Trust a Hippy. Jamie Reid has been making art for 50 years, and this is his most comprehensive retrospective. However, somewhat to his own chagrin, hes destined to be remembered for a few record sleeves and posters he made in the 1970s for a short-lived punk band called the Sex Pistols. As Johnny Rotten once said: Ever get the feeling youve been cheated? The Sex Pistols raucous anthems became the soundtrack of 1970s counterculture a furious backlash against cosy conformity and the artwork Reid created to promote them was almost as important as the music. His iconoclastic designs channelled that anger into art. The union jack has never looked quite the same since he ripped it up to promote the Pistols Anarchy in the UK. Her Majesty has never looked quite the same since Reid put a safety pin through her top lip to promote the Pistols God Save the Queen. Of course theres a lot more to his work than punk PR, and this retrospective bears that out. Some of his agit-prop preceded punk; some of it came much later, like his Free Pussy Riot poster featuring Putin in a balaclava. His new age stuff is entirely different youd never guess it was by the same artist: dreamy abstract designs which wouldnt look out of place on a prog rock gatefold sleeve. Yet its the slogans that stand out, and there are lots Ive never seen before: Keep Warm this Winter Make Trouble; Save Petrol Burn Cars; City of Culture, My Arse (a nice irony, here in last years UK cultural capital) and a new take on an old favourite, Never Trust A Punk. War reporting is easy to do but difficult to do well. No one taking part in an armed conflict has an incentive to tell the whole truth. This is the case in all forms of journalism, but in time of military conflict the propaganda effort is at its peak and is aided by the chaos of war, which hobbles anybody searching for the truth about what is really happening. Military commanders are often more aware than reporters of the complexity and uncertainty of news from the battlefront. Citing such reasons, the Duke of Wellington doubted if a truly accurate account of the Battle of Waterloo could ever be written. During the American Civil War, the Confederate general Stonewall Jackson made a somewhat different point. Surveying the scene of recent fighting with an aide, he turned to him and asked: Did you ever think, Sir, what an opportunity a battlefield affords liars? The tears of baby mice make females less interested in sex, meaning they could be used as an unlikely form of pest control. A Japanese study revealed that pheromones produced by young mice override sex-stimulating chemicals produced by amorous males. This makes the males less appealing to females, and could therefore be used to lower birth rates. Only mice aged one to three weeks produce the substance, called ESP22, which ends up spread liberally around their territory. Its effects may benefit the young mice by stopping their mothers producing more offspring, leaving more food and attention for them. The scientists think this natural birth control, which seemed to affect all females whether or not they were mothers themselves, could be an effective way of stopping mice spreading. 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. Using sensitive analysis of the chemical composition of sweat, researchers were able to tell the difference between those who had been directly exposed to heroin and cocaine, and those who had encountered it indirectly. Getty Science news in pictures Nasa releases stunning images of Jupiter's great red spot The storm bigger than the Earth, has been swhirling for 350 years. The image's colours have been enhanced after it was sent back to Earth. Pictures by: Tom Momary It is unlikely that other animals would be affected because pheromones are so species specific, said Professor Kazushige Touhara from the University of Tokyo, who led the project. The sex-rejecting behaviour is an innate instinct, so its also unlikely that the mice will learn to change their behaviour. A similar pheromone called ESP1 is produced by male mice to encourage sex, and the scientists found that ESP22 signals essentially replace these signals in the females brains. Support free-thinking journalism and attend Independent events Their findings were published in the journal Nature Communications, and besides providing an insight into the mouse brain chemistry the scientists now hope it will help them pursue practical applications. ESP22 is difficult to artificially synthesise, so we want to find a smaller portion of the pheromone molecule that could be added to mouse drinking water, said Professor Touhara. This could prevent mice breeding in areas where they are pests. The scientists noted that due to pheromones being highly species specific, direct connections between human and mouse behaviour could not be made in this case. Nasa delighted the world when it announced it had found an uncannily rectangular iceberg floating in the Antarctic. And now it has revealed another one. The scientists who took the picture that was shared around the world has revealed that he saw another iceberg on the same trip. Both pictures come from the IceBridge project, where Nasa flies planes over the polar ice to assess changes in the height and the state of the ice. The new specimen is not quite as astonishingly flat and crisp as the iceberg that fascinated the world this week. But it has much of the same appeal, looking as if it is so out of place among the rest of ice and water surrounding it that there is something strange going on. In the picture above, it can be seen just off the centre, hovering amid a set of much smaller and messier icebergs. The original slab can be seen just off in the left, almost obscured by the plane's engine and wing. The rectangular iceberg that first caught the world's attention (Nasa) IceBridge senior support scientist Jeremy Harbeck, who took the pictures, said that he sees icebergs with such squared fairly often. But he had never seen one before that looked quite as clean as this, he said. I thought it was pretty interesting; I often see icebergs with relatively straight edges, but I've not really seen one before with two corners at such right angles like this one had, he said. 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 The famous iceberg wasn't the subject of the scientist's survey he had in fact been looking at the A68 iceberg, a huge slab the size of a US state that can be seen off in the distance. I was actually more interested in capturing the A68 iceberg that we were about to fly over, but I thought this rectangular iceberg was visually interesting and fairly photogenic, so on a lark, I just took a couple photos, he said. The companys 39 per cent rise in profits and better-than-expected fourth-quarter forecast should come as a relief for investors. Intel executives do not see any near-term weakness from the trade tensions or Chinese economy. Intel Corp beat analysts estimates for quarterly profit and revenue on Thursday, driven by its high-margin data centre business and strong demand for its PC chips, sending its shares up as much as 6.0 per cent in extended trading, though those gains later evaporated on concerns about US trade tensions with China. The companys 39 per cent rise in profits and better-than-expected fourth-quarter forecast should come as a relief for investors after three days of grim news from other major chipmakers that have shaken stock markets globally. Amazon Inc and Alphabet Inc also reported disappointing earnings on Thursday, sending technology stocks down in after-hours trading. Intel executives do not see any near-term weakness from the trade tensions or the Chinese economy, despite the fact that large data centre customers like Baidu Inc and consumer PC factories are located there. But Intels share gains in extended trading diminished to less than 1 per cent when Interim Chief Executive Bob Swan said trade tensions could be a headwind in the longer term next year. Texas Instruments Inc, STMicroelectronics NV and SK Hynix have all warned of slowing demand for the remainder of the year. Intel bucked the trend thanks to strong sales of chips for PCs, the second quarter in the row the company benefited from the sector after years of stagnation in that business, and increasing sales of iPhone modem chips. Swan told Reuters the PC chip strength came from computer purchases by business customers in developed economies as well as gamers building high-end machines. Many businesses are upgrading their PCs because Microsoft Corp has said it will end support for some older versions of Windows in early 2020. At first, Intels results seemed to allay concerns that a trade conflict between the United States and China or a slowdown in the Chinese economy could drag down the global chip business. Well be working with our domestic Chinese customers and our global [PC manufacturers] to adjust and adapt the supply chain to deal with constraints, Swan told Reuters in an interview before holding a conference call with analysts. But later on the call, Swan conceded that the trade tensions could a headwind for Intel in 2019, though the company has not specified how much sales could suffer. Also boosting Intel sales this quarter was its business for modems, which connect smartphones to wireless data networks which were up 131 per cent in the quarter. The gain resulted from Intel completely replacing rival modem supplier Qualcomm Inc in the most recent models of Apple Incs. But Swan said the modem sales are also pressuring Intels margins and contributed to the firm lowering its fourth-quarter operating margin outlook to 34.5 per cent. That being said, what the modems and memory do for the company is allow us to play in a much larger market, he said. Intel forecast current-quarter revenue of USD 19 billion and adjusted earnings of USD 1.22 per share. Analysts on average were expecting revenue of USD 18.40 billion and a profit of USD 1.09 per share, according to Refinitiv data. Intel has been increasingly catering to a booming data centre market as revenue from PCs has flattened since 2011. Revenue from its data centre business rose 25.9 per cent to USD 6.14 billion in the quarter, while analysts were expecting revenue of USD 5.89 billion, according to financial and data analytics firm FactSet. Rival Advanced Micro Devices Inc, which has been gaining ground with its new EPYC chips for servers, reported a better-than-expected quarterly profit on Wednesday but forecast fourth-quarter revenue below estimates due to falling demand for its graphics chips from cryptocurrency miners. Revenue in Intels client computing business, which caters to PC makers and is still the biggest contributor to sales, also rose 15.5 per cent to USD 10.23 billion, beating FactSet estimates of USD 9.33 billion. Intels PC sales have trended positively in recent quarters, lifted by stronger demand. Many businesses have started the process of buying new PCs because Microsoft Corp has said it will end support for Windows 7 in early 2020. Theres been really strong demand for both the consumer and enterprise for PCs which helped. They also did a great job managing through some supply disruptions, said Elazar Advisors analyst Chaim Siegel. Intel recorded a USD 290 million charge as a result of Micron Technology Incs decision to buy out Intels portion of a memory fabrication plant in Utah where the two had partnered to build advanced memory chips, a move analyst Patrick Moorhead of Moor Insights & Strategy called negotiation tactics. He expects the two to find a way to work together. Intels Swan told Reuters that Intel has retained its rights to the technology and intends to eventually build its own factories to produce the chips. Despite their announcement, we will still have access to supply from the fab for the next 18 to 24 months, and that will give us time to explore the alternatives we have to produce the product, Swan said. On a conference call with investors, Swan said he expected capital expenditures on memory chips to be a little bit lower in 2019 despite building self-sufficiency after Microns move. Net income rose to USD 6.40 billion, or USD 1.38 per share, in the third quarter ended Sept. 29 from USD 4.52 billion, or 94 cents per share, a year earlier. Excluding items, the company earned USD 1.40 per share. Net revenue rose 18.7 percent to USD 19.16 billion. Analysts on average were expecting adjusted earnings of USD 1.15 per share and revenue of USD 18.11 billion. (Source) A man suspected of using a hammer to steal a copy of Magna Carta from Salisbury Cathedral was wrestled to the ground and held by two employees before his arrest, police said. The 45-year-old is said to have smashed through an outer layer of protective glass surrounding the priceless 1215 document housed at the cathedral. The Rev Nicholas Papadopulos praised the courageous staff members who he said were able to restrain the man for 12 minutes before authorities got to the scene. He walked out of the chapter house and tried to leave the cathedral via our work yard and he was detained there and restrained until the police arrived, the dean said. Staff were alerted after an alarm sounded and Wiltshire Police were called on Thursday afternoon at around 5pm. Witnesses described seeing the two men apprehend the suspect. Speaking to the Salisbury Journal, Jenny, a witness, said: We were walking past the cathedral as the alarms started, and everyone was starting to come out. As we got to the stonemasons gateway we heard some shouting and could see a few people coming out of the gates so we stopped. It looked like some men play-fighting but as they got through the gates I saw a hammer drop to the floor and one of the men kicked it into the road whilst another man held on to him. They then held onto him with hands behind his back whilst they picked up the hammer lots of people around started to come over The men really did a good job. The suspect, whose name has not yet been made public, was arrested shortly afterwards on suspicion of attempted theft, possession of an offensive weapon and criminal damage. Photographs show the man successfully broke through the glass case, but had been unable to reach the document before he was stopped. Handout photo issued by Wiltshire Police of the damaged box holding the Magna Carta in Salisbury Cathedral (PA) No damage was done to the ancient text, which formed the basis of modern justice and human rights, and has been described as the most important document in the world. A police spokesman said: A 45-year-old man is in custody this morning arrested on suspicion of attempted theft of Magna Carta. Shortly before 5pm yesterday alarms were activated at Salisbury Cathedral after an attempt was made to smash the glass box surrounding the Magna Carta. Staff were alerted and police were called. A man matching the description given by witnesses was arrested on suspicion of attempted theft, possession of an offensive weapon and criminal damage, and has been taken to Melksham custody for questioning where he remains. The Magna Carta has not been damaged and nobody was injured in the incident. We are aware there were a number of witnesses to the incident who may not have spoken to police. Magna Carta, Latin for great charter, was brought into law under King John of Runnymede on 15th June 1215. It was credited as being one of the first documents to limit the power of the crown. The charter was imposed upon the king by a group of his subjects, the feudal barons, and limited his powers on the likes of punishing a freeman, unless through the law of the land. But the document didnt last long, with Pope Innocent III annulling it in August 1215, saying it was a shameful and demeaning agreement, forced upon the king by violence and fear. After King John died, his successor Henry III thought it was a good idea and brought it back. Three clauses of the 63 are still in force today freedom of the English church, the ancient liberties of the City of London and a right to due process. It was written in Latin by hand, by an expert scribe, on parchment. In pictures: Magna Carta anniversary Show all 4 1 /4 In pictures: Magna Carta anniversary In pictures: Magna Carta anniversary Magna Carta anniversary Image of King John from the British Library exhibition The British Library In pictures: Magna Carta anniversary Magna Carta anniversary The first printed Magna Carta, from 1506 The British Library In pictures: Magna Carta anniversary Magna Carta anniversary Lincoln Cathedral In pictures: Magna Carta anniversary Magna Carta anniversary Temple Church, a stop on the celebratory London walk Chris Christodoulou Magna Carta was not signed, but sealed, and at the bottom of the Salisbury copy it is possible to see the marks where King Johns seal was once attached. Shortly after the originals were sealed, at least 13 copies were made but there are just four remaining copies of Magna Carta. Two are kept in the British Library, one is in Lincoln Cathedral and one at Salisbury Cathedral, which is the best-preserved manuscript. PA contributed to this report Plans to construct one million new homes in the south of England as part of a major new development have come under fire due to the potential destruction of vast swathes of countryside. The houses in the proposed Oxford-Cambridge Arc would be largely built on land set aside for farming or woodland, according to the Campaign to Protect Rural England (CPRE). In total, the group estimates an area the size of Birmingham would have to be cleared to make way for the new development. The government announced plans for a new expressway connecting the cities in September. Nicknamed the brain belt, the route linking the two renowned university towns has been heralded by the road minister, Jesse Norman, as enhancing both transport connectivity and growth across the region for the benefit of the UK as a whole. However, it has faced bitter opposition from local activists who fear the destruction of local environments, as well as an uptick in air pollution and impact on communities. As part of this project, the National Infrastructure Commission (NIC) has recommended that one million new houses must be built in the area by 2050 in order to help boost economic growth. The entire county of Oxfordshire currently has just 285,000 homes. 10 photographs to show to anyone who doesn't believe in climate change Show all 10 1 /10 10 photographs to show to anyone who doesn't believe in climate change 10 photographs to show to anyone who doesn't believe in climate change A group of emperor penguins face a crack in the sea ice, near McMurdo Station, Antarctica Kira Morris 10 photographs to show to anyone who doesn't believe in climate change Floods destroyed eight bridges and ruined crops such as wheat, maize and peas in the Karimabad valley in northern Pakistan, a mountainous region with many glaciers. In many parts of the world, glaciers have been in retreat, creating dangerously large lakes that can cause devastating flooding when the banks break. Climate change can also increase rainfall in some areas, while bringing drought to others. Hira Ali 10 photographs to show to anyone who doesn't believe in climate change Smoke filled with the carbon that is driving climate change drifts across a field in Colombia. Sandra Rondon 10 photographs to show to anyone who doesn't believe in climate change Amid a flood in Islampur, Jamalpur, Bangladesh, a woman on a raft searches for somewhere dry to take shelter. Bangladesh is one of the most vulnerable places in the world to sea level rise, which is expected to make tens of millions of people homeless by 2050. Probal Rashid 10 photographs to show to anyone who doesn't believe in climate change Sindh province in Pakistan has experienced a grim mix of two consequences of climate change. Because of climate change either we have floods or not enough water to irrigate our crop and feed our animals, says the photographer. Picture clearly indicates that the extreme drought makes wide cracks in clay. Crops are very difficult to grow. Rizwan Dharejo 10 photographs to show to anyone who doesn't believe in climate change Hanna Petursdottir examines a cave inside the Svinafellsjokull glacier in Iceland, which she said had been growing rapidly. Since 2000, the size of glaciers on Iceland has reduced by 12 per cent. Tom Schifanella 10 photographs to show to anyone who doesn't believe in climate change A river once flowed along the depression in the dry earth of this part of Bangladesh, but it has disappeared amid rising temperatures. Abrar Hossain 10 photographs to show to anyone who doesn't believe in climate change A shepherd moves his herd as he looks for green pasture near the village of Sirohi in Rajasthan, northern India. The region has been badly affected by heatwaves and drought, making local people nervous about further predicted increases in temperature. Riddhima Singh Bhati 10 photographs to show to anyone who doesn't believe in climate change A factory in China is shrouded by a haze of air pollution. The World Health Organisation has warned such pollution, much of which is from the fossil fuels that cause climate change, is a public health emergency. Leung Ka Wa 10 photographs to show to anyone who doesn't believe in climate change Water levels in reservoirs, like this one in Gers, France, have been getting perilously low in areas across the world affected by drought, forcing authorities to introduce water restrictions. Mahtuf Ikhsan CPRE said with current capacity for around 50,000 houses on previously developed land in the region, 27,000 hectares of countryside will have to be converted for the remaining buildings. There are 230,000 homes currently planned or under construction in the Arc, meaning an increase of 330 per cent would be required to achieve the new target. Responding to CPREs analysis, the NIC said their proposal came with the clear condition that the regions natural environment and its green belt protections would not be compromised. The housing and communities secretary, James Brokenshire, said building the homes our country needs does not mean tearing up vast tracts of our countryside. The government is due to respond to the recommendations on Monday. Campaigners say they are alarmed that the proposal appears to be going ahead despite the lack of a formal public consultation, environmental assessment or parliamentary enquiry. If given the green light, this development will change the face of Englands countryside forever. Yet no formal assessment of the environmental impact it will have has taken place, said Paul Miner, head of strategic plans and devolution at CPRE. Despite costing at least 5.5bn in public money, there has been no formal public consultation around developing the Arc. The lack of debate equates to a major, and troubling, democratic deficit at the heart of the proposals. Green MEP for the South East, Keith Taylor, said the study revealed the terrifying extent of the impact of the Oxford-Cambridge Arc, and questioned the legality of pushing ahead without consulting with local communities. It clearer than ever that the project is a monumental disaster and act of environmental sabotage, he said. Responding to the claims, an NIC spokesman said: Our recommendations come with the clear condition that new schemes should not compromise the high-quality natural environment for existing and future residents, and do not need to involve any changes to existing Green Belt protections. In fact, our report made clear the need for significant investment in landscape improvements, affordable housing and sustainable transport. These changes are vital to make the most of the areas economic potential and the contribution it makes to the wider UK economy. CPRE has called for a full assessment to be conducted that looks at the impact on peoples health and wellbeing as well as environmental impacts including climate change. Instead of investing in the new expressway, the group called for investment in improved public transport in the region alongside a commitment to building genuinely affordable homes. The government is aiming to build 300,000 new homes each year in England to meet demand, and experts have warned of significant backlogs. Mr Brokenshire said: The Oxford-Cambridge Arc is an opportunity to further strengthen rural economies, enhance the environment and benefit local communities. Our new planning rulebook strengthens protections for the Green Belt and we have sets out our ambition to ensure housing projects are more environmentally friendly. A Green politician has called for the EU to intervene in a controversial project to build a major new road between Oxford and Cambridge. Keith Taylor, Green MEP for South East England, said the lack of public consultation so far may contravene environmental laws. In a letter addressed to Violeta Bulc, the European Commissions transport commissioner, Mr Taylor highlighted the significant impact such a development would have on local people, and said the government had worked on the project behind closed doors. "The way this decision has been handled, without any meaningful consultation with the local communities directly impacted by it, appears to be in direct contravention of the UK's international legal obligations under the Aarhus Convention, Mr Taylor told The Independent. I have written to the European Commission calling for an investigation into the legality of the project." While plans for a public consultation were laid out after the announcement of the preferred route in September, Mr Taylor wrote in his letter that the actual notion of the road and the question of its necessity has not been presented to the public. 10 photographs to show to anyone who doesn't believe in climate change Show all 10 1 /10 10 photographs to show to anyone who doesn't believe in climate change 10 photographs to show to anyone who doesn't believe in climate change A group of emperor penguins face a crack in the sea ice, near McMurdo Station, Antarctica Kira Morris 10 photographs to show to anyone who doesn't believe in climate change Floods destroyed eight bridges and ruined crops such as wheat, maize and peas in the Karimabad valley in northern Pakistan, a mountainous region with many glaciers. In many parts of the world, glaciers have been in retreat, creating dangerously large lakes that can cause devastating flooding when the banks break. Climate change can also increase rainfall in some areas, while bringing drought to others. Hira Ali 10 photographs to show to anyone who doesn't believe in climate change Smoke filled with the carbon that is driving climate change drifts across a field in Colombia. Sandra Rondon 10 photographs to show to anyone who doesn't believe in climate change Amid a flood in Islampur, Jamalpur, Bangladesh, a woman on a raft searches for somewhere dry to take shelter. Bangladesh is one of the most vulnerable places in the world to sea level rise, which is expected to make tens of millions of people homeless by 2050. Probal Rashid 10 photographs to show to anyone who doesn't believe in climate change Sindh province in Pakistan has experienced a grim mix of two consequences of climate change. Because of climate change either we have floods or not enough water to irrigate our crop and feed our animals, says the photographer. Picture clearly indicates that the extreme drought makes wide cracks in clay. Crops are very difficult to grow. Rizwan Dharejo 10 photographs to show to anyone who doesn't believe in climate change Hanna Petursdottir examines a cave inside the Svinafellsjokull glacier in Iceland, which she said had been growing rapidly. Since 2000, the size of glaciers on Iceland has reduced by 12 per cent. Tom Schifanella 10 photographs to show to anyone who doesn't believe in climate change A river once flowed along the depression in the dry earth of this part of Bangladesh, but it has disappeared amid rising temperatures. Abrar Hossain 10 photographs to show to anyone who doesn't believe in climate change A shepherd moves his herd as he looks for green pasture near the village of Sirohi in Rajasthan, northern India. The region has been badly affected by heatwaves and drought, making local people nervous about further predicted increases in temperature. Riddhima Singh Bhati 10 photographs to show to anyone who doesn't believe in climate change A factory in China is shrouded by a haze of air pollution. The World Health Organisation has warned such pollution, much of which is from the fossil fuels that cause climate change, is a public health emergency. Leung Ka Wa 10 photographs to show to anyone who doesn't believe in climate change Water levels in reservoirs, like this one in Gers, France, have been getting perilously low in areas across the world affected by drought, forcing authorities to introduce water restrictions. Mahtuf Ikhsan The letter comes after the Campaign to Protect Rural England claimed that the million homes proposed as part of the project would require a massive area of countryside to be converted. Local activists are concerned that the proposed 5.5bn project would also lead to a surge in carbon emissions and air pollution across the region, and have questioned whether it is necessary. However, the government has stated that the brain belt linking the two major university cities would provide a massive economic boost for the region. Support free-thinking journalism and attend Independent events They have also emphasised the importance of the accompanying construction project to make up for the massive shortfall in homes being built. Mr Taylor, a member of the European Parliaments transport committee, said he was not in favour of more road building and called instead for investment in local train lines. "That the planned road will run parallel to a much-needed East-West rail link that has already been downgraded from electric to diesel just adds air pollution insult to environmental injury, he said. He said avoiding more carbon emissions was a particularly urgent priority considering the recent Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change report laying out the thresholds required to avoid dangerous global warming. In response, a Department for Transport spokesperson said: "The Oxford to Cambridge Expressway will enhance transport connectivity and growth across the region and for the benefit of the UK as a whole. "We have been engaging with community groups about developing ideas for a road in this area since 2016, and we expect to consult on specific proposals, developed with the help of local communities, next year." Scores of protesters have blockaded a residential street in an attempt to stop immigration officers from detaining a local shop owner. The demonstration began on Thursday night in Easton, Bristol, after around 20 immigration enforcement officers reportedly raided the mans shop and forced him into a removal van. Police were called to Chelsea Road in Easton to reports from officers that a small group of protesters had used vehicles to block the road and stop them from leaving the area. The number of people protesting quickly grew to around 100, with chants of cops go home ringing out and one person reportedly climbing on top of the immigration enforcement van. The situation was eventually resolved at around 5am when the immigration enforcement officers were able to leave the area without any injury or arrests, police said. Laurie Underwood, a local resident who was protesting, said: We were angry because the government's 'hostile environment' policies and forced deportations are a form of state violence. They clash with the compassion and humanity we feel towards each other. "We're proud of the resistance that happened here last night. Our communities are built on mutual aid, interdependence and solidarity - not the racism and division we hear from the government and some media outlets." Charities said the demonstration signalled how the "stripping away" of safeguards against excessive and abusive immigration powers had led to an increased dependence on "community solidarity as a means of protecting their rights. Steve Valdez-Symonds, of Amnesty UK, said: As more and more is exposed of the scandalous lack of respect at the Home Office for either peoples lives and humanity or the law by which the department is meant to bound, it is small wonder that communities are motivated to protest against immigration officials in defence of their family, friends and neighbours. And since Parliament and ministers have systematically stripped away vital safeguards against excessive and abusive use of Home Office power removing legal aid, appeal rights and basic data protections community solidarity is for some, particularly people who are poor and marginalised in our society, all that is left to defend them and their rights. Eiri Ohtani, director of the Detention Forum, tweeted: We dont talk enough about the damage immigration enforcement does to local communities - no one likes their community members being raided in the middle of the night and their communities being ripped apart like this. Support free-thinking journalism and attend Independent events A spokesperson for Avon and Somerset Police said: We would like to say a huge thank you to community leaders in Easton who worked with us throughout the night to help resolve a public order issue peacefully and without incident. We will always facilitate peaceful and lawful protest and we are pleased to say that thanks to the support from our community leaders, and people living locally, the situation was resolved at around 5am this morning. A Home Office spokesperson said: While we respect the publics right to protest, it is important that any demonstrations do not obstruct our officers from carrying out their lawful business. "We are grateful both to the police and local community leaders who worked with us to resolve the incident peacefully." Argentina could take advantage of uncertainty caused by a no-deal Brexit to bring the Falkland Islands back under its control, the countrys foreign minister has said. Jorge Faurie suggested that Buenos Aires would exploit looser diplomatic ties between the UK and Brussels to enhance its position, as EU treaties will cease to apply and member states will no longer have to support the UKs claim to the islands. The comments came after a meeting with foreign secretary Jeremy Hunt amid uncertainty over the legal status of the UKs overseas territories after Brexit. Recommended Falkland Islands government sounds alarm on leaving single market Our planning for Las Malvinas [the Argentine name for the islands] is to have a negotiation that will enable stronger relations between the people on the islands and the people on the continent, Mr Faurie told The Telegraph. And we hope that the non Brexit solution will enhance the possibility of that dialogue to be truly one with results. He added: If you think member states [of the EU] would not sustain the Malvinas claim in favour of the UK, we are there ... to talk, to negotiate, to see what would be the best solution for the people in the islands to be much more in touch with Argentina. Mr Faurie reiterated Argentinas position that the Falkland Islands should be returned to the mainland, which was the subject of the conflict between the UK and Buenos Aires in 1982. Support free-thinking journalism and attend Independent events The islands are currently recognised as a British overseas territory under the EUs 2009 Lisbon Treaty, in which the blocs Duty of Sincere Cooperation obliges member states to support each other on claims of sovereignty. Theresa May is due to meet Argentinian president Mauricio Macri next month at the G20 summit in Buenos Aires, which will be the first time a British prime minister has visited the country since 2001. Asked about the comments, the prime ministers official spokesperson said Mr Faurie was talking very positively about our bilateral relationship. I think I would just say that the Falklands remain an overseas territory of the UK after we leave the EU as will all our overseas territories, they said. We are clear that all our overseas territories will retain their current relationship with the UK after we leave the EU. The prime minister will be in Argentina in the coming weeks so she will discuss a number of issues including the EU exit with foreign leaders there. Pressure is mounting on Ms May to avert a no-deal Brexit by uniting her divided party in the frantic final weeks of the talks. The EUs chief negotiator has been warned to make contingency plans for a second Brexit referendum, as pressure builds to give the public a final say on leaving. Prominent Remain politicians met with Michel Barnier in Brussels this week and said it was time to start serious contingency planning, as The Independents petition neared one million signatures and the future of Brexit looks increasingly uncertain. In a visit on Friday, Sadiq Khan, the mayor of London, told Mr Barnier that the negotiating period should be extended so Britain could have time to have a referendum. The warning comes after 700,000 people took to the streets of London last weekend to make the case for a vote on the final deal. For there to be time to hold a referendum, the EU would likely have to extend the Article 50 negotiating period, which will automatically expire on 29 March 2019, leaving Britain to slide out with a no-deal Brexit. The calls for an extension came from across a number of parties. Liberal Democrat leader Vince Cable said following a meeting with Mr Barnier on Thursday: My message to Michel Barnier was clear: its time to start serious contingency planning for a Peoples Vote. We know the UK government has started making such plans as a result of the growing demand for such a vote, demonstrated by last weekends march. The EU should do the same, because MPs who back the Peoples Vote are fast forming the biggest and most cohesive bloc in Westminster. Plaid Cymru Westminster group leader Liz Saville Roberts, who also met with Mr Barnier, said she had used the meeting to push for an extension to the negotiation period to accommodate a referendum. I pressed Michel Barnier on protecting Waless interest through the extension of Article 50 and a Peoples Vote, she said. In Westminster, with the prime ministers proposals amounting to nothing more than a mix of fudge and fantasy, a Peoples Vote is more likely than ever. The EU has previously reacted cooly to suggestions that the period could be extended, but has not ruled it out. An extension would require the unanimous approval of all 28 EU leaders on the European Council. Sadiq Khan visited Brussels on Friday (Getty) Brussels is particularly wary about extending the transition into May, when Britain would have to take part in the next European Parliament elections if it was still in the EU. Mr Khan, speaking after a separate meeting on Friday, said: The point I made to Michel Barnier, really quite forcefully, is that there is a possibility of the British parliament rejecting the deal that Mrs May secures from the EU. 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 There is a very real possibility of there being either a general election, which I think is less likely, or a referendum. In those circumstances, I suggested the EU should begin preparatory work on the extension of Article 50. Because what would not be a good thing in my view is if we managed to get a referendum but it was too late because we had left the EU or the EU had not made preparations for an Article 50 extension. Mr Khan added: Whatever Theresa May brings back will probably be rejected by cabinet, almost certainly rejected by the party, and if not will definitely be rejected by parliament. Thats why I said to Michel Barnier: listen, you need to start preparing for the possibility of extending Article 50 because if that is the case we will need time to have a referendum. A Tory MEP has suggested EU citizens living in the UK should not be given voting rights after Brexit as it would bolster support for other political parties. Daniel Hannan, who played a key role in the Leave campaign, reportedly told Conservative colleagues in the European Parliament that draft exit proposals contained plans to let all EU nationals vote in England and Northern Ireland after Brexit. European citizens living in the UK can vote at a local level but the comments could raise the hopes of some three million EU nationals who cannot cast their ballot in national polls. Recommended EU citizens make first applications to remain in UK after Brexit The news also raises questions over how the Brexiteer MEP gained access to the closely-guarded draft of the withdrawal agreement between London and Brussels, which will set the terms of the UKs exit from the EU. In leaked WhatsApp messages, obtained by The Guardian, Mr Hannan said: I just saw an extract of the draft withdrawal agreement. Britain has decided to enfranchise all EU nationals (at least in England and Northern Ireland its devolved in Scotland and Wales.) What an odd decision: why offer a blanket deal instead of country by country bilaterals? For what its worth, it will significantly bolster the non-Tory electorate. However, the prime ministers official spokesperson said: We have always said we are committed to doing bilateral deals, to ensure that UK nationals living there and EU nationals living in the UK have voting rights and thats the approach we are continuing to take. Theresa May has promised to protect the existing rights of EU citizens living in the UK even in the event of a no-deal scenario but question marks still hang over their future rights after Brexit. It also comes as Brexit secretary Dominic Raab said the government had no plans to publish a technical notice on the future of EU citizens, despite publishing more than 100 pieces of no-deal advice, including information on pet passports and threats from asteroids. He told MPs: Citizens rights are an issue of scale, importance and sensitivity, which means that it will be dealt with not in technical notices, but in a different format. However, I reassure [MPs] that all the details will be coming along shortly to provide the assurances that I think both sides of the House want to give to EU nationals here. We value their contribution and want them to stay. Speaking afterwards, shadow Brexit minister Paul Blomfield accused ministers of failing to guarantee the future of EU citizens and called for concrete commitments to set their mind at ease. 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 uncertainty is leading many people in key jobs to leave the UK, he said. Dropping their no-deal plan for EU citizens is yet another broken promise which will add to the anxiety. We are now entering a critical phase of this process. Warm words are no longer good enough. A scheme guaranteeing urgent medical treatment for Britons visiting the EU is at fresh risk after Brexit, with an announcement of emergency legislation. Ministers had vowed to fight to save the European Health Insurance Card (EHIC) even after the UK leaves the EU, after acknowledging it had major advantages. But they have now announced a fast-track bill they say will provide the powers that are needed to replicate the benefits as part of stepping up preparations for crashing out of the EU without a deal. The announcement of the Healthcare (International Arrangements) Bill legislation never previously proposed by the government was slipped out on a Friday afternoon. Virendra Sharma, a Labour supporter of the anti-Brexit Best for Britain group, said: It seems like the government have just given up on the EHIC and that should worry everyone. And Guto Bebb, a Conservative MP who backs the Peoples Vote campaign, said: People did not vote for Brexit in order to make their lives more costly or complicated, but thats the reality were heading towards. An EHIC gives Britons the right to state-provided healthcare during a temporary stay in another EU or European Economic Area (EEA) country. It covers treatment that is medically necessary on the same basis as enjoyed by a resident of that country, so either free or at a much-reduced cost. Pre-existing medical conditions and routine maternity care are also covered, provided someone has not travelled specifically to give birth or seek treatment. The EHIC scheme pays for 250,000 medical treatments each year and UK travellers have saved around 1.2bn since it began in 2006, according to figures released last year. 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 Without the cards, it is feared that the cost of travel insurance will soar, as insurers find themselves liable for medical treatment that is currently free of charge. Now the emergency legislation has been unveiled by the department of health, to be rushed through before next March in case the Brexit talks fail. It will establish the legal basis to fund and implement vital reciprocal healthcare schemes and share necessary data after we leave the EU, the department said. Officials stressed the bill would still allow the EHIC scheme to survive after Brexit subject to an agreement with the EU. But they admitted it was being brought forward because plans for it to rollover until the end of 2020, as part of the planned transition period, were now at risk. Mr Bebb added: The European Health Insurance Card means Brits can travel to the EU without worrying about ending up out-of-pocket if they get ill or injured. With ministers apparently giving up on preserving it shows just how miserable this botched Brexit will be. But James O'Shaughnessy, a health minister, said: Whether on holiday, working or retiring abroad, British people want to know they can access the same high quality healthcare that they enjoy in the NHS. This bill will allow us to implement new healthcare arrangements with other countries in the EU and elsewhere so that UK citizens can travel with confidence. The legislation would also safeguard reciprocal healthcare for 190,000 expat UK pensioners in the EU, or intending to retire to the EU, if there is no deal. US federal investigators are searching coast to coast for a suspect terrorising a growing list of prominent critics of Donald Trump by sending them bombs with former vice president Joe Biden and actor Robert De Niro the latest to be targeted. Two packages for Mr Biden were intercepted in Delaware, the FBI said, while another was received at a building housing a restaurant and production company owned by De Niro in New York City. Investigators said they matched parcels which contained pipe bombs sent to former president Barack Obama and several other Democrats this week. It is believed that investigators have turned their attention to Florida,with Homeland Security Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen confirming that at least some of the packages were mailed in in the state. Some of the packages went through the mail. They originated, some of them, from Florida, she told Fox News. I am confident that this person or people will be brought to justice. The latest discoveries mean that eight vocal critics of Mr Trump have been targeted by at least 10 packages. All were intercepted and there have been no injuries. At a press conference on Thursday, officials in New York would not discuss possible motives or details on how the packages found their way into the US postal system. Nor would they say why none of the packages had detonated, but they stressed they were still treating them as live devices. As far as a hoax device, were not treating it that way, said Police Commissioner James ONeill. The case is being treated as domestic terrorism. Late on Thursday, the Miami-Dade Police Departments bomb squad and K-9 unit announced it had helped sweep a US Postal Service facility in Opa-locka, Florida. This assistance is as a precautionary measure, the department said. The series of bomb alerts began on Monday and would spread across locations in New York, the Washington DC area and Florida. A number of them were called pipe bombs. World news in pictures Show all 50 1 /50 World news in pictures World news in pictures 30 September 2020 Pope Francis prays with priests at the end of a limited public audience at the San Damaso courtyard in The Vatican AFP via Getty World news in pictures 29 September 2020 A girl's silhouette is seen from behind a fabric in a tent along a beach by Beit Lahia in the northern Gaza Strip AFP via Getty World news in pictures 28 September 2020 A Chinese woman takes a photo of herself in front of a flower display dedicated to frontline health care workers during the COVID-19 pandemic in Beijing, China. China will celebrate national day marking the founding of the People's Republic of China on October 1st Getty World news in pictures 27 September 2020 The Glass Mountain Inn burns as the Glass Fire moves through the area in St. Helena, California. The fast moving Glass fire has burned over 1,000 acres and has destroyed homes Getty World news in pictures 26 September 2020 A villager along with a child offers prayers next to a carcass of a wild elephant that officials say was electrocuted in Rani Reserve Forest on the outskirts of Guwahati, India AFP via Getty World news in pictures 25 September 2020 The casket of late Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg is seen in Statuary Hall in the US Capitol to lie in state in Washington, DC AFP via Getty World news in pictures 24 September 2020 An anti-government protester holds up an image of a pro-democracy commemorative plaque at a rally outside Thailand's parliament in Bangkok, as activists gathered to demand a new constitution AFP via Getty World news in pictures 23 September 2020 A whale stranded on a beach in Macquarie Harbour on the rugged west coast of Tasmania, as hundreds of pilot whales have died in a mass stranding in southern Australia despite efforts to save them, with rescuers racing to free a few dozen survivors The Mercury/AFP via Getty World news in pictures 22 September 2020 State civil employee candidates wearing face masks and shields take a test in Surabaya AFP via Getty World news in pictures 21 September 2020 A man sweeps at the Taj Mahal monument on the day of its reopening after being closed for more than six months due to the coronavirus pandemic AP World news in pictures 20 September 2020 A deer looks for food in a burnt area, caused by the Bobcat fire, in Pearblossom, California EPA World news in pictures 19 September 2020 Anti-government protesters hold their mobile phones aloft as they take part in a pro-democracy rally in Bangkok. Tens of thousands of pro-democracy protesters massed close to Thailand's royal palace, in a huge rally calling for PM Prayut Chan-O-Cha to step down and demanding reforms to the monarchy AFP via Getty World news in pictures 18 September 2020 Supporters of Iraqi Shi'ite cleric Moqtada al-Sadr maintain social distancing as they attend Friday prayers after the coronavirus disease restrictions were eased, in Kufa mosque, near Najaf, Iraq Reuters World news in pictures 17 September 2020 A protester climbs on The Triumph of the Republic at 'the Place de la Nation' as thousands of protesters take part in a demonstration during a national day strike called by labor unions asking for better salary and against jobs cut in Paris, France EPA World news in pictures 16 September 2020 A fire raging near the Lazzaretto of Ancona in Italy. The huge blaze broke out overnight at the port of Ancona. Firefighters have brought the fire under control but they expected to keep working through the day EPA World news in pictures 15 September 2020 Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny posing for a selfie with his family at Berlin's Charite hospital. In an Instagram post he said he could now breathe independently following his suspected poisoning last month Alexei Navalny/Instagram/AFP World news in pictures 14 September 2020 Japan's Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, Chief Cabinet Secretary Yoshihide Suga, former Defense Minister Shigeru Ishiba and former Foreign Minister Fumio Kishida celebrate after Suga was elected as new head of the ruling party at the Liberal Democratic Party's leadership election in Tokyo Reuters World news in pictures 13 September 2020 A man stands behind a burning barricade during the fifth straight day of protests against police brutality in Bogota AFP via Getty World news in pictures 12 September 2020 Police officers block and detain protesters during an opposition rally to protest the official presidential election results in Minsk, Belarus. Daily protests calling for the authoritarian president's resignation are now in their second month AP World news in pictures 11 September 2020 Members of 'Omnium Cultural' celebrate the 20th 'Festa per la llibertat' ('Fiesta for the freedom') to mark the Day of Catalonia in Barcelona. Omnion Cultural fights for the independence of Catalonia EPA World news in pictures 10 September 2020 The Moria refugee camp, two days after Greece's biggest migrant camp, was destroyed by fire. Thousands of asylum seekers on the island of Lesbos are now homeless AFP via Getty World news in pictures 9 September 2020 Pope Francis takes off his face mask as he arrives by car to hold a limited public audience at the San Damaso courtyard in The Vatican AFP via Getty World news in pictures 8 September 2020 A home is engulfed in flames during the "Creek Fire" in the Tollhouse area of California AFP via Getty World news in pictures 7 September 2020 A couple take photos along a sea wall of the waves brought by Typhoon Haishen in the eastern port city of Sokcho AFP via Getty World news in pictures 6 September 2020 Novak Djokovic and a tournament official tends to a linesperson who was struck with a ball by Djokovic during his match against Pablo Carreno Busta at the US Open USA Today Sports/Reuters World news in pictures 5 September 2020 Protesters confront police at the Shrine of Remembrance in Melbourne, Australia, during an anti-lockdown rally AFP via Getty World news in pictures 4 September 2020 A woman looks on from a rooftop as rescue workers dig through the rubble of a damaged building in Beirut. A search began for possible survivors after a scanner detected a pulse one month after the mega-blast at the adjacent port AFP via Getty World news in pictures 3 September 2020 A full moon next to the Virgen del Panecillo statue in Quito, Ecuador EPA World news in pictures 2 September 2020 A Palestinian woman reacts as Israeli forces demolish her animal shed near Hebron in the Israeli-occupied West Bank Reuters World news in pictures 1 September 2020 Students protest against presidential elections results in Minsk TUT.BY/AFP via Getty World news in pictures 31 August 2020 The pack rides during the 3rd stage of the Tour de France between Nice and Sisteron AFP via Getty World news in pictures 30 August 2020 Law enforcement officers block a street during a rally of opposition supporters protesting against presidential election results in Minsk, Belarus Reuters World news in pictures 29 August 2020 A woman holding a placard reading "Stop Censorship - Yes to the Freedom of Expression" shouts in a megaphone during a protest against the mandatory wearing of face masks in Paris. Masks, which were already compulsory on public transport, in enclosed public spaces, and outdoors in Paris in certain high-congestion areas around tourist sites, were made mandatory outdoors citywide on August 28 to fight the rising coronavirus infections AFP via Getty World news in pictures 28 August 2020 Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe bows to the national flag at the start of a press conference at the prime minister official residence in Tokyo. Abe announced he will resign over health problems, in a bombshell development that kicks off a leadership contest in the world's third-largest economy AFP via Getty World news in pictures 27 August 2020 Residents take cover behind a tree trunk from rubber bullets fired by South African Police Service (SAPS) in Eldorado Park, near Johannesburg, during a protest by community members after a 16-year old boy was reported dead AFP via Getty World news in pictures 26 August 2020 People scatter rose petals on a statue of Mother Teresa marking her 110th birth anniversary in Ahmedabad AFP via Getty World news in pictures 25 August 2020 An aerial view shows beach-goers standing on salt formations in the Dead Sea near Ein Bokeq, Israel Reuters World news in pictures 24 August 2020 Health workers use a fingertip pulse oximeter and check the body temperature of a fisherwoman inside the Dharavi slum during a door-to-door Covid-19 coronavirus screening in Mumbai AFP via Getty World news in pictures 23 August 2020 People carry an idol of the Hindu god Ganesh, the deity of prosperity, to immerse it off the coast of the Arabian sea during the Ganesh Chaturthi festival in Mumbai, India Reuters World news in pictures 22 August 2020 Firefighters watch as flames from the LNU Lightning Complex fires approach a home in Napa County, California AP World news in pictures 21 August 2020 Members of the Israeli security forces arrest a Palestinian demonstrator during a rally to protest against Israel's plan to annex parts of the occupied West Bank AFP via Getty World news in pictures 20 August 2020 A man pushes his bicycle through a deserted road after prohibitory orders were imposed by district officials for a week to contain the spread of the Covid-19 in Kathmandu AFP via Getty World news in pictures 19 August 2020 A car burns while parked at a residence in Vacaville, California. Dozens of fires are burning out of control throughout Northern California as fire resources are spread thin AFP via Getty World news in pictures 18 August 2020 Students use their mobile phones as flashlights at an anti-government rally at Mahidol University in Nakhon Pathom. Thailand has seen near-daily protests in recent weeks by students demanding the resignation of Prime Minister Prayut Chan-O-Cha AFP via Getty World news in pictures 17 August 2020 Members of the Kayapo tribe block the BR163 highway during a protest outside Novo Progresso in Para state, Brazil. Indigenous protesters blocked a major transamazonian highway to protest against the lack of governmental support during the COVID-19 novel coronavirus pandemic and illegal deforestation in and around their territories AFP via Getty World news in pictures 16 August 2020 Lightning forks over the San Francisco-Oakland Bay Bridge as a storm passes over Oakland AP World news in pictures 15 August 2020 Belarus opposition supporters gather near the Pushkinskaya metro station where Alexander Taraikovsky, a 34-year-old protester died on August 10, during their protest rally in central Minsk AFP via Getty World news in pictures 14 August 2020 AlphaTauri's driver Daniil Kvyat takes part in the second practice session at the Circuit de Catalunya in Montmelo near Barcelona ahead of the Spanish F1 Grand Prix AFP via Getty World news in pictures 13 August 2020 Soldiers of the Brazilian Armed Forces during a disinfection of the Christ The Redeemer statue at the Corcovado mountain prior to the opening of the touristic attraction in Rio AFP via Getty World news in pictures 12 August 2020 Young elephant bulls tussle playfully on World Elephant Day at the Amboseli National Park in Kenya AFP via Getty The first was found in the post box of billionaire businessman George Soros. Packages were also sent to a New York home of Hillary and Bill Clinton and to Mr Obama and Congresswoman Maxine Waters in Washington DC. A second package addressed to California Democrat Ms Waters was found in Los Angeles. CNNs New York office was evacuated on Wednesday morning after a package addressed to former CIA director John Brennan was found in its mailroom. In Florida, another package was discovered that was addressed to former attorney general Eric Holder. The packages are being analysed by the FBI at its laboratory in Quantico, Virginia, with authorities reluctant to go public with more than board patterns. At least five of the packages, including the one sent to Mr Soros, involved manila envelopes addressed to prominent Trump critics and carried a similar arrangement of labelling and US postage stamps. The Florida address of Representative Debbie Wasserman Schultz was listed as the return address of most of the packages. Investigators were seeking forensic clues left on the unexploded packages and were following other leads. A number of the packages had travelled through the US Postal Service, although at an afternoon press conference it was said none had been seen for at least eight hours. However, John Miller, the New York Police Departments deputy commissioner for intelligence and counterterrorism, said that authorities dont know yet if other devices were on the way to being delivered and urged Americans to remain vigilant. That vigilance was seen in the De Niro case, with NYPD Commissioner Mr ONeil also praising the retired detective who called the emergency services in the pre-dawn hours on Thursday because the images he was seeing on television resembled a package he had intercepted on its way to the actor. X-ray photographs leaked to the media suggested that at least some of the packages contained pipes packed with explosive powder along with shrapnel such as pieces of glass. Andrew Cuomo, the governor of New York, said on Thursday that the devices were viable bombs. Although it appears that at least some of the devices had been put together poorly and may not have been able to explode. Trump crowd chants 'lock her up' after bomb mailed to Hillary Clinton Investigators are trying to determine whether the devices were intended to detonate or whether they were simply sent to sow fear. Authorities were scrutinising security camera videos for signs of the bomber, Mr Cuomo told CNN, after it was discovered the package to CNN was hand delivered. Legislators across the country have responded to the series of suspicious packages with shock and have called for a calming of rhetoric against the media with Mr Trump having frequently targeted CNN as fake news and political opponents. However, Mr Trump and White House officials rejected suggestions that he bore any responsibility for a climate that could lead to the sending of explosives, instead blaming the media for stirring trouble. A very big part of the Anger we see today in our society is caused by the purposely false and inaccurate reporting of the Mainstream Media that I refer to as Fake News, Mr Trump tweeted. It has gotten so bad and hateful that it is beyond description. Mainstream Media must clean up its act, FAST! Former CIA director John Brennan, the target of the explosive device sent to the CNN offices in New York, hit back at the president on Twitter. Stop blaming others. Look in the mirror. Your inflammatory rhetoric, insults, lies, & encouragement of physical violence are disgraceful. Clean up your act ... try to act Presidential. The American people deserve much better. BTW, your critics will not be intimidated into silence, Mr Brennan said. Ms Waters responded to the string of suspicious packages by saying she aint scared of the threats levelled against her and other prominent Democrats. We have to keep to doing what were doing in order to make this country right; thats what I intend to do, and as the young people say, I aint scared, Ms Waters told The Community for Black Creativity and News (Blavity). Support free-thinking journalism and attend Independent events I think the president of the United States should take responsibility for the kind of violence that we are seeing for the first time in different ways, she continued. I think the president of the United States has been dog whistling to his constituency, making them believe that their problems are caused by those people over there. But not everyone was on the same page. Speaking at an Axios event in Washington about the string of suspicious packages sent to prominent Democrats, former House speaker Newt Gingrich said the American press had earned being called the enemy of the people by Donald Trump, and that the current political climate is everyones fault. As to why a number of Trump supporters and Trump-backing pundits have purported the suspicious packages to be a left-wing false flag conspiracy, Mr Gingrich said: Because its October. He was referring to the crucial midterm elections which are only two weeks away. The New York Police Department has said it is investigating yet another suspicious package found at a postal facility near the CNN offices in the Time Warner building in Manhattan. Another package has been found in Miami, Florida, addressed to Democratic Senator Cory Booker of New Jersey. Nearby roads have been closed out of caution. The FBI confirmed in a tweet the Florida package was the 11th one found in the past week. The New York package is the 12th and reportedly addressed to former Director of National Intelligence James Clapper, but included the CNN office address. Recommended Follow live as more suspicious packages are sent across America The news comes after a string of packages containing explosives and one with white powder were found or intercepted, addressed to Bill and Hillary Clinton, Barack and Michelle Obama, former CIA Director John Brennan, House Democrat Maxine Waters, former US Attorney General Eric Holder, and former Vice President Joe Biden. Mr Biden and Ms Waters both received two separate packages. It began with a package containing an explosive device sent to billionaire George Soros, who has contributed millions of dollars to Democrats. Though investigators have not confirmed it as being a connection to the packages, all of the intended recipients and the news network have been frequent targets and vocal critics of President Donald Trump. CNN reporter Jim Sciutto, who had to leave the anchor desk mid-broadcast on Wednesday morning when the live explosive device was found in the networks office tweeted a picture of the latest package addressed to Mr Clapper. To echo [Mr] Brennans comments...this is not going to silence the administrations critics, Mr Clapper told CNN this morning. I think anyone who has...publicly been a critic of President Trump needs to take precautions...but at the same time we cant get too overwhelmed about it, too overwrought is the right word, the former intelligence chief said. I have every confidence in all the law enforcement involved, Mr Clapper said. He said he was glad the president had not once again hit out at the FBI and said they were in tatters..once again this proves theyre not. Police cars congest the streets near the Time Warner Center in New York City following suspicious package CNN He said he wished the president had named the targets of the bombs in his initial statement and skipped the political rally the president held that same evening in Wisconsin because he thinks Mr Trump bears some responsibility for the acts. Mr Trump had said Wednesday after the first seven packages had been found that he considered them egregious acts of domestic terrorism. However, just one day later the president tweeted:A very big part of the Anger we see today in our society is caused by the purposely false and inaccurate reporting of the Mainstream Media that I refer to as Fake News. It has gotten so bad and hateful that it is beyond description. Mainstream Media must clean up its act, FAST! he wrote. Mr Trump tweeted again in the middle of the night: Funny how lowly rated CNN, and others, can criticize me at will...yet when I criticize them they go wild and scream, its just not Presidential! The packages intended for the Clintons, Obamas, Mr Holder, and Mr Brennan and Mr Clapper whose packages had CNNs address had the sender address listed as that of Debbie Wasserman Schultz. Ms Wasserman Schultz is a Democrat in the US House and the former chair of the Democratic National Committee (DNC). The package which was meant for Mr Holder actually had an incorrect address for the former Attorney General and ended up back in the south Florida district office of Ms Wasserman Schultz. 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 Investigators have noted her name was spelled incorrectly on at least two of the packages, addressed to Mr Brennan and Mr Clapper via CNN. It is not known at this time who was listed as the return/sender address on the other packages. US Midterms 2018: The five big questions Actor Robert DeNiro also received a suspicious package at his New York City office this week. He called on to vote despite the threat to silence prominent Democrats. He said in a statement: Theres something more powerful than bombs, and thats your vote. People must vote! US rejected the Russian draft resolution because it came too late to be compatible with the agenda of the UN Disarmament Commission. If passed, the resolution would allow 'the continuation of discussions between Russia and the US in order to work through the two countries' concerns about the framework of the agreement.' (Representational Image) United Nations: The US pushed back Thursday against a Russian draft resolution to the UN General Assembly that proposed to preserve the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty (INF) that the US plans to pull out of, according to diplomatic sources. "The international community has an obligation to react to this apocalyptic situation," a Russian diplomat said in response to Washington's recent announcement. "The draft resolution pulls from a series of resolutions adopted by the General Assembly and aims to reinforce the viability of the treaty," he added. If passed, the resolution would allow "the continuation of discussions between Russia and the US in order to work through the two countries' concerns about the framework of the agreement." "That would allow us to preserve and reinforce the two parties' responsibilities for its implementation," the diplomat said. Moscow considers "preserving this agreement (to be) the sine qua non condition to continuing to advance the cause of reducing nuclear weapons," according to the diplomat, and called on all UN member states to consider the draft resolution. According to a UN source, the US rejected the Russian draft resolution because it came too late to be compatible with the agenda of the UN Disarmament Commission. And Washington criticized Moscow for having shared the resolution with Russian media before UN member states had seen it, according to the same source. US President Donald Trump announced Saturday that the US would pull out of the INF treaty, which prohibits nuclear missiles with a range of 500 (310 miles) to 5,000 kilometres -- and which the US has accused Russia of violating for several years. The treaty was signed in 1987 by Ronald Reagan and the last Soviet Union leader Mikhail Gorbachev, who has said abandoning the agreement would be a "mistake." Moscow officials have said the US has committed "flagrant violations" of the treaty and Russian President Vladimir Putin said the US decision to pull out could cause a "dangerous" situation. Putin and Trump could meet in Paris in November during events marking the 100-year anniversary of the end of World War I. Close President Trump praises law enforcement for mail-bombing arrest On Friday, United States Attorney General Jeff Sessions said that Cesar Sayoc Jr, the suspect connected to the mailing of more than a dozen parcel bombs and suspicious packages to senior Democrats and prominent critics of Donald Trump, had been charged with five federal crimes. The federal felony charges include interstate transportation of explosives, illegal mailing of explosives and threats against a former president among others. In a press conference, Mr Sessions said Mr Sayoc faced up to 58 years in prison if found guilty. We will not tolerate such lawlessness, especially political violence, he said. Several moments later, however, the Justice Department said Mr Sessions had inaccurate information about the alleged bombers prison time. Mr Sayoc faces 48 years in prison, not 58. Recommended US officials search for motive after charges filed against Cesar Sayoc When asked if there are other suspects, FBI Director Christopher Wray said the investigation is active and ongoing. Officials believe there may be other explosive devices in the mail system. The federal authorities were able to find Mr Sayoc after finding a fingerprint on one of the envelopes sent to California Congresswoman Maxine Waters, which has been confirmed to belong to him, Wray said. Investigators also believe there is DNA on other packages Mr Sayoc sent. The authorities also seized Mr Sayocs white van. The vehicle was covered in stickers featuring Mr Trump, Vice President Mike Pence, anti-gay symbols, Ku Klux Klan paraphernalia, and a lynching of a black person. One of the stickers read CNN sucks, echoing a chant often said in Mr Trumps rallies. The prosecutor for Mr Sayoc's case is US Attorney for the Southern District of New York Geoffrey Berman. This is an ongoing and active investigation. We will not rest until these crimes are fully investigated, Mr Berman said. Mr Sessions said the mail bomb suspect appears to be partisan, but said he does not know why Democratic political figures were targeted. 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 Support free-thinking journalism and attend Independent events Two weeks prior to sending pipe bombs, Mr Sayoc harassed and threatened Democratic strategist Rochelle Ritchie. Ms Ritchie reported him to Twitter. The social media site responded by saying that Mr Sayoc did not commit any violations. Mr Sayocs Facebook page, listed under the name Cesar Altieri Randazzo, is filled with right-wing propaganda. He appeared to have shared posts and articles from right-wing pages, Breitbart and Fox News. One of the posts Mr Sayoc shares is from a Facebook page called Handcuffs for Hillary. A Facebook spokesperson said it removed multiple posts from Mr Sayocs account for violating its community standards. Some of the removals were the result of Facebook users reporting Mr Sayocs posts for violations. Others were identified by Facebook through its detection systems. The violations, however, were not severe enough for the company to remove the account. If you want to see how the day progressed, follow the live blog below A Florida man has been charged with sending at least 13 pipe bombs to critics of Donald Trump across the country including Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton as officials look to pin down a motive for the mail bomb spree which has taken place less than two weeks before midterm elections. Cesar Sayoc Jr, 56, faces five federal charges, which could mean up to 48 years in prison for the undetonated bombs, which were made of six-inch portions of PVC piping, clocks, and would-be explosive materials. According to a criminal complaint, the packages included photographs of his intended targets, each one marked with a red X. Mr Sayoc was arrested at an auto parts shop in the Florida city of Plantation. What is believed to be Mr Sayocs white van, which was covered in political stickers celebrating Republicans and denouncing President Trump's opponents, was parked outside before being covered with a blue tarp and taken away by federal agents. Recommended Follow live as suspect in US bombs and package mystery is arrested Mr Sayoc's arrest on Friday morning came even as the crude devices continued to appear across the country. One of those packages was addressed to Senator Cory Booker, a New Jersey Democrat; another was sent to James Clapper, a former director of national intelligence; and a third was intercepted before it reached Senator Kamala Harris, a California Democrat. A fourth bomb, found on Friday in a mail facility in California, was addressed to Tom Steyer, a prominent Democratic donor. US Attorney General Jeff Sessions, announcing the charges, said that the the suspect's arrest should serve as a warning that the United States government would not tolerate violence of any kind being brought against individuals for political beliefs. He said: This is a law-and-order administration. We will not tolerate such lawlessness, especially not political violence. Let this be a lesson to anyone, regardless of their political beliefs, that we will bring the full force of law against anyone who uses threats, intimidation, or outright violence to further an agenda. When asked why Mr. Sayoc had sent the bombs to Democrats, Mr Sessions said he was not sure, adding that the suspect appears to be a partisan. On what appeared to be Mr Sayoc's Facebook account there were photos of a Trump rally that he attended during the 2016 presidential campaign. He was wearing a red Make America Great Again hat. All told, at least 14 suspicious packages were mailed to various Democrats or progressive activists in the past week, although no explosions or injuries were reported. (Getty Images) (Getty) Explosive packages sent to prominent Democrats and CNN Show all 11 1 /11 Explosive packages sent to prominent Democrats and CNN Explosive packages sent to prominent Democrats and CNN Barack Obama The Secret Service intercepted a package en route to the Washington D.C. residence of former President Barack Obama on Wednesday 23 October Getty Explosive packages sent to prominent Democrats and CNN Hillary and Bill Clinton A package was delivered to the Chappaqua, New York home of former US President Bill Clinton and former Secretary of State and Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton on Tuesday 23 October Getty Explosive packages sent to prominent Democrats and CNN Joe Biden Two packages adressed to former Vice-president Joe Biden were found at a sorting facility in Delaware on Thursday 25 October AFP/Getty Explosive packages sent to prominent Democrats and CNN George Soros A package was delivered to the New York home of Billionaire investor and funder of the Democrats George Soros on Monday 22 October AFP/Getty Explosive packages sent to prominent Democrats and CNN CNN and John Brennan A package was delivered to former CIA director John Brennan at the CNN offices in New York on Wednesday 23 October Getty Explosive packages sent to prominent Democrats and CNN Debbie Wasserman Schultz A package was delivered to the office of Democratic Congresswoman Debbie Wasserman Schultz on Wednesday 23 October, it was addressed to former attorney general Eric Holder Getty Explosive packages sent to prominent Democrats and CNN Eric Holder The package that was delivered to the office of Democratic Congresswoman Debbie Wasserman Schultz was addressed to former attorney general Eric Holder Getty Explosive packages sent to prominent Democrats and CNN Maxine Waters Two packages were sent to Democratic congresswoman Maxine Waters on Wednesday 23 October, one to LA one to D.C. Getty Explosive packages sent to prominent Democrats and CNN Robert De Niro A package was delivered to actor Robert De Niro in New York on Thursday 25 October AFP/Getty Explosive packages sent to prominent Democrats and CNN Cory Booker A package found in Florida was addressed to Democratic Senator Cory Booker on Friday 26 October Getty Explosive packages sent to prominent Democrats and CNN James Clapper NYPD intercepted a package addressed to former directo of national intelligence James Clapper on on Friday 26 October AFP/Getty Mr Sayoc has charged with five federal felony charges, including interstate transportation of explosives, illegal mailing of explosives, threats against a former president, and other crimes. The 56-year-old faces as many as 48 years in prison if convicted Those four packages intercepted on Friday join ten others that were sent to various officials and activists this week, starting with a package delivered to billionaire donor George Soros. That package was followed by bombs sent to former President Barack Obama, former Vice President Joe Biden, former US Secretary of State Clinton, and former US Attorney General Eric Holder. Further packages were sent to former CIA Director John Brennan, actor Robert De Niro and two packages were addressed to Congresswoman Maxine Waters. Federal officials said they had tracked down Mr Sayoc, who has a lengthy arrest history, after finding one of his fingerprints on a package sent to Ms Waters, a California Democrat. Mr Sayocs identify was confirmed, the officials said, after investigators found a match between DNA samples discovered on two of the packages he sent and DNA collected from previous arrests. A review of what appears to be Mr Sayocs social media accounts show that he frequently posted messages attacking Mr Soros and other Democrats. It was not immediately clear why Mr Sayoc would have been motivated to allegedly send the pipe bombs to the elected officials, if it was intended as a political message, or if he was motivated at all by Mr Trumps frequent hostile remarks aimed at both his political rivals and the news media. Support free-thinking journalism and attend Independent events The bombs were nevertheless still described by officials as serious attempt to damage. Were still analysing the devices in our laboratory, FBI Director Christopher Wray said at the Friday press conference. These are not hoax devices. The president, for his part, called for unity following the mailings, and continued to attack the news media for fake news reporting that he said fuels the Anger we see today in our society. Offices for news network CNN was among the locations where packages were sent, the network has been a frequent target for Mr Trump's ire. I am pleased to inform you that law enforcement has apprehended the suspect and taken him into custody. Its an incredible job by law enforcement. Weve carried out a far reaching federal, state, and local investigation to find the person or persons responsible for these events, Mr Trump said on Friday in the White House. These terrorising acts are despicable and have no place in our country. No place. In an earlier Tweet, Mr Trump had suggested that Republicans had been "doing so well" in early voting before the 2018 midterms next month but "now this 'bomb' stuff happens and the momentum greatly slows." Mr Sayoc is a registered Republican voter, according to public records, and has owned a dry cleaning business and a catering business. He has been charged in the US District Court for the Southern District of New York, as five of the packages were delivered to the state. A Florida man has been charged with sending 13 packages containing explosive devices and pipe bombs to CNN and several prominent Democrats, all vocal critics of Donald Trump. Cesar Altieri Sayoc Jr, 56, was arrested in Plantation, Florida, outside an auto-parts store and faces up to 48 years in prison, according to the US Justice Department. The suspect has a long criminal record dating back to 1991 and appears to have a social media presence full of tweets and posts in support of the president and Republicans. Recommended Follow live as suspect in US bombs and package mystery is arrested The news of his arrest comes after a string of packages containing explosives and one with white powder were found or intercepted, addressed to Bill and Hillary Clinton, Barack and Michelle Obama, former CIA director John Brennan and former director of national intelligence James Clapper both via packages addressed to CNN, House Democrat Maxine Waters, former US attorney general Eric Holder, former vice president Joe Biden, Democratic Senators Cory Booker and Kamala Harris, and billionaire Democrat donor Tom Steyer. Mr Biden and Ms Waters both received two separate packages, bringing the total to 13. It began with a package containing an explosive device sent to billionaire George Soros, who has contributed millions of dollars to the Democrats. President Trump praises law enforcement for mail-bombing arrest Geoffrey Berman, the US Attorney of the Southern District of New York, said Mr Sayoc is being charged with five counts: interstate transportation of an explosive, illegal mailing of an explosive, threats against former presidents, threatening interstate communications, and assaulting federal officers. The defendants conduct is cowardly, reprehensible, and totally anathema to our democracy, Mr Berman said at a press conference. Mr Sessions, during the same press conference, reminded Americans Mr Sayoc is innocent until proven guilty under the US criminal justice system but later noted: We do believe weve caught the right guy. However, he also said this is a law and order administration and warned the government would prosecute anyone regardless of political beliefs should they resort to such crimes, especially political violence. FBI Director Christopher Wray said: Todays arrest is a testament to the strength of our partnerships in the law enforcement community and commended his agents as well as those from other agencies, the Joint Terrorism Task Force, and New York and Florida police. Trump crowd chants 'lock her up' after bomb mailed to Hillary Clinton He said these were not hoax devices, contrary to a line pushed by several supporters of Mr Trump on social media channels. According to the director each package contained a six inch PVC pipe, a small clock, a battery, wiring and energetic material. The material, Mr Wray said, would make the bombs functional if subjected to the right combination of heat, shock or friction. He also said certain of the mailings included photographs of the target-recipients marked with a red X. Mr Wray also confirmed all the packages had the same return address, that of US House Democrat from south Florida Debbie Wasserman Schultz, who is also former chair of the Democratic National Committee (DNC). He added that a fingerprint on a package sent to congresswoman Maxine Waters had been key in identifying the suspect. There is also a possible DNA association between a prior sample of Mr Sayocs DNA and a sample taken from packages sent to Mr Obama and Ms Waters. Despite the praise he received following the rapid arrest, he cautioned it doesnt mean were all out of the woods..[there] may be other packages in transit now. Explosive packages sent to prominent Democrats and CNN Show all 11 1 /11 Explosive packages sent to prominent Democrats and CNN Explosive packages sent to prominent Democrats and CNN Barack Obama The Secret Service intercepted a package en route to the Washington D.C. residence of former President Barack Obama on Wednesday 23 October Getty Explosive packages sent to prominent Democrats and CNN Hillary and Bill Clinton A package was delivered to the Chappaqua, New York home of former US President Bill Clinton and former Secretary of State and Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton on Tuesday 23 October Getty Explosive packages sent to prominent Democrats and CNN Joe Biden Two packages adressed to former Vice-president Joe Biden were found at a sorting facility in Delaware on Thursday 25 October AFP/Getty Explosive packages sent to prominent Democrats and CNN George Soros A package was delivered to the New York home of Billionaire investor and funder of the Democrats George Soros on Monday 22 October AFP/Getty Explosive packages sent to prominent Democrats and CNN CNN and John Brennan A package was delivered to former CIA director John Brennan at the CNN offices in New York on Wednesday 23 October Getty Explosive packages sent to prominent Democrats and CNN Debbie Wasserman Schultz A package was delivered to the office of Democratic Congresswoman Debbie Wasserman Schultz on Wednesday 23 October, it was addressed to former attorney general Eric Holder Getty Explosive packages sent to prominent Democrats and CNN Eric Holder The package that was delivered to the office of Democratic Congresswoman Debbie Wasserman Schultz was addressed to former attorney general Eric Holder Getty Explosive packages sent to prominent Democrats and CNN Maxine Waters Two packages were sent to Democratic congresswoman Maxine Waters on Wednesday 23 October, one to LA one to D.C. Getty Explosive packages sent to prominent Democrats and CNN Robert De Niro A package was delivered to actor Robert De Niro in New York on Thursday 25 October AFP/Getty Explosive packages sent to prominent Democrats and CNN Cory Booker A package found in Florida was addressed to Democratic Senator Cory Booker on Friday 26 October Getty Explosive packages sent to prominent Democrats and CNN James Clapper NYPD intercepted a package addressed to former directo of national intelligence James Clapper on on Friday 26 October AFP/Getty He would not elaborate on the total number of packages or where they could have been sent. According to his Facebook profile, Mr Sayoc is originally from Brooklyn, New York, but grew up in Florida and attended high school in Miami Beach. The registered Republican reportedly lived in Aventura, Florida, at the time of his arrest but that he could have been before he was kicked out of his parents home and he began living in his van. The white van seen outside of his arrest location was covered in stickers in support of Mr Trump and vice president Mike Pence. The political paraphernalia also included a sticker that read CNN sucks. It could be seen, covered in blue tarp, and being towed away for further investigation. Support free-thinking journalism and attend Independent events Mr Sayoc worked as a catering manager for a company called Native American Catering and Vending in Hallandale Beach, Florida. Native American tribes like the Seminole Tribe of Florida have said Mr Sayoc has no affiliation with them either as a member or employee. Public records also indicate his home was foreclosed on in 2009, which led to him declaring bankruptcy in 2012. His social media is littered with images of him wearing the presidents signature Make America Great Again red hat and there is at least one video of Mr Sayoc chanting Mr Trumps name at an indoor political rally. According to the Miami Herald newspaper, Mr Sayoc stopped posting on his Facebook profile in October 2016 after a series of Trump rally videos. Mr Sayoc, at one point, frequently posted memes hitting out at Democrats and Islam, which one meme he posted characterised as a barbaric evil cult. One particular post from September 2016 read: Hilary Clinton health decline and headed to graveyard where she has had many executed. The lord delivering death and America will celebrate. Mr Sayocs criminal record dates back to at least 1992, when he was arrested on theft charges in Miami-Dade county. In 2002, he was arrested again in Miami-Dade for making bomb threats and ended up on probation in 2014 after another arrest on theft and battery. Donald Trump has tweeted the "'Bomb' stuff" has slowed "momentum greatly" for Republicans in the 2018 midterm elections taking place less than two weeks away. His tweet comes just hours after the 11th and 12th suspicious packages containing explosive devices were found this week, one near the offices of CNN addressed to former Director of National Intelligence James Clapper and the other in south Florida, addressed to Democratic Senator Cory Booker of New Jersey. Mr Trump wrote the news was "not talking politics. Very unfortunate, what is going on" and then encouraged "Republicans, go out and vote!" in the 6 November election just minutes before federal authorities announced they have arrested a suspect in the investigation. Recommended Follow live as more suspicious packages are sent across America The president has been on a feverish pace of campaigning for Republican candidates across the country, even holding a "Make America Great Again" rally in Wisconsin the same day seven of the packages containing explosives were found. The news comes after a string of packages containing explosives and one with white powder were found or intercepted, addressed to Bill and Hillary Clinton, Barack and Michelle Obama, former CIA Director John Brennan via CNN, House Democrat Maxine Waters, former US Attorney General Eric Holder, and former Vice President Joe Biden. Mr Biden and Ms Waters both received two separate packages. It began with a package containing an explosive device sent to billionaire George Soros, who has contributed millions of dollars to Democrats. Though investigators have not confirmed it as being a connection to the packages, all of the intended recipients and the news network have been frequent targets and vocal critics of the president. Trump crowd chants 'lock her up' after bomb mailed to Hillary Clinton Critics have said Mr Trump's constant negative attacks on Ms Clinton, Mr Obama, Ms Waters, and CNN have contributed to the packages being sent, however his tweets appear to continue to blame the media for the attacks. Mr Trump had said Wednesday after the first seven packages had been found that he considered them "egregious acts" of "domestic terrorism." He promised the "full weight" of the federal government was being put behind the investigation to bring the perpetrator to justice. However, later that day at a rally, Mr Trump joined in on the infamous "lock her up" chant regarding Ms Clinton. He has repeatedly called for her to be further investigated and jailed for a variety of matters, but mostly her use of a private email server for official emails while she was Secretary of State. Just one day later the president tweeted: "A very big part of the Anger we see today in our society is caused by the purposely false and inaccurate reporting of the Mainstream Media that I refer to as Fake News". It has gotten so bad and hateful that it is beyond description. Mainstream Media must clean up its act, FAST! he wrote. Mr Trump tweeted again in the middle of the night: Funny how lowly rated CNN, and others, can criticize me at will...yet when I criticize them they go wild and scream, its just not Presidential! To echo [Mr] Brennans comments...this is not going to silence the administrations critics, Mr Clapper told CNN this morning. I think anyone who has...publicly been a critic of President Trump needs to take precautions...but at the same time we cant get too overwhelmed about it, too overwrought is the right word, the former intelligence chief said. He said he wished the president had named the targets of the bombs in his initial statement and skipped the political rally the president held that same evening in Wisconsin because he thinks Mr Trump bears some responsibility for the acts. The investigation continues as a suspect has been arrested in Florida. The suspect has a criminal history with ties to New York. Russian President Vladimir Putin has been invited to visit Washington in early 2019, Donald Trumps national security advisor John Bolton has announced. Mr Bolton spoke at a press conference in Georgia on Friday morning. He said scheduling for the trip had yet to be worked out, but Mr Putin would be invited after the first of the year. We have invited President Putin to Washington after the first of the year for, basically, a full day of consultations, Mr Bolton said, days after meeting the Russian president in Moscow. What the scheduling of that is, we dont quite know yet. Recommended Defiant Bolton signals no way back for arms control in Putin meeting President Trump held a summit with Mr Putin in Helsinki, the Finnish capital, in July, and then issued Mr Putin an invitation to visit Washington in the autumn. But plans for a reciprocal visit were postponed after Mr Trump faced allegations of not being hard enough on the Kremlin. It was not immediately clear if Mr Putin had accepted the invitation. The Russian president last held a meeting with his US counterpart on American soil in 2015, when he met Barack Obama on the sidelines of a UN general assembly. Mr Trumps earlier invitation to Mr Putin sparked outcry in Washington, including from members of the presidents Republican party, who argued Mr Putin was an adversary not worthy of a White House visit. 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 US intelligence agencies allege Russia interfered in the 2016 presidential election and the matter is the subject of a federal investigation led by special counsel Robert Mueller. That probe is also examining possible collusion between Moscow and Trump campaign officials. Russia denies any election meddling. Mr Bolton said the two presidents are set to meet in Paris when they attend 11 November events marking 100 years since Armistice Day although that meeting is expected to be brief. Support free-thinking journalism and attend Independent events Russian foreign minister Sergei Lavrov had a call with US secretary of state Mike Pompeo to discuss acute issues on the international agenda, and bilateral ties in the context of preparations for planned contacts between the presidents, the Russian foreign ministry said in a statement. Reuters and Associated Press contributed to this report For a country with an average life expectancy barely above 70, the existence of a hundred centurions living in two hostels in northwest Moscow appeared suspicious. So suspicious, says a new report, the Russian pension fund ordered an investigation. Dead souls, after all, have long been a profitable business for local criminals and novelists. The report, published on Friday by a publication funded by Kremlin foe Mikhail Khodorkovsky, says the pension fund investigation was shut down on the orders of the Russian Ministry of Defence. What the probe had inadvertently revealed, it claimed, were the names and personal details of the children of military intelligence agents. Their identities had apparently been crudely concealed, in 2011, by taking 100 years off their date of birth: those born in 2005 were switched to 1905, and so on. Veteran investigative journalist Sergei Kanev, says he replicated the findings of the pension probe using readily-available databases. He ran searches for addresses with known connections to Russian military intelligence in phone directories. These revealed 47 centurions in one hostel on Volokolamsky Road, in northwest Moscow, and another 56 in a hostel nearby, on Marshal Biryusova Street. The latter address famously housed Anatoly Chepiga aka Ruslan Boshirov, one of two men accused of conducting a nerve agent attack in Salisbury when he studied in Moscow. It has become widely known as the old peoples home among agents, the journalist claims, though he quotes only a single security agency source. Another easily-obtainable dataset, from the police one of the most corruptible institutions in Russia led the investigator to his second set of discoveries. GRU agents had, it appeared, fallen victim to a robbery involving $90,000 in cash. Another officer reported his car stolen. But the victims had also been on the wrong side of the law, assaulting police officers and shooting people with rubber-bullet handguns. The revelations chronicle the latest in a series of humiliating blunders by Russias military intelligence agency. 'Nothing criminal' about UK Skripal suspects says Putin Not for the first time, it appeared the bureaucratic oversights of senior officers had allowed investigators to unlock embarrassing operational details. Previous investigations pounced on decisions to issue agents passports in numerical sequence; to send operatives to spy on European agencies while using their real identities; and to tie passports and driving licences to known GRU addresses. Those arbitrary decisions allowed internet researchers not to mention foreign spy adversaries to identify hundreds of suspected agents in domino fashion. It has led to the most difficult period in the military intelligence agencys recent history. In the first decade of Putins rule, the GRU was sidelined by flashier colleagues in the Federal Security Service and Foreign Intelligence Service. But starting from around 2014, the organisation moved beyond its usual zone of influence, and began to play important roles in military interventions in Ukraine and Syria. That past performance makes it unlikely the gaffe-stricken agency will fall out of favour with the Kremlin any time soon. The Kremlin has not responded to the latest report, and previously indicated it would only issue statements in reply to official, published data. Turkish president Recep Tayyip Erdogan has called on Saudi Arabia to reveal who ordered the killing of journalist Jamal Khashoggi, piling further pressure on the countrys embattled crown prince. Mr Erdogan called Saudi explanations for Khashoggis death childish in a speech to members of his Justice and Development (AK) Party in Ankara on Friday, and promised to reveal more details of the Turkish investigation soon. Who gave the order for 15 people to come to Turkey? he said, referring to the Saudi security team alleged to have been sent to Istanbul to carry out the killing. Addressing another key unanswered question in the case, Mr Erdogan called for the Saudis to produce Mr Khashoggis body. It is crystal clear that he is murdered but where is the body? You have to show it, he said. His comments mark an escalation in a row between Turkey and its regional rival over the killing of the dissident journalist, which has plunged the Saudi royal family into crisis and angered even its closest allies. On Thursday, following weeks of shifting statements, Saudi prosecutors concluded that the killing of Mr Khashoggi was premeditated, arriving at the same conclusion that Turkish investigators reached in the days after his disappearance. The attempted cover-up has strained already poor relations between Mr Erdogan and the powerful Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, Saudi Arabias de-facto leader. Originally written-off as a rogue operation, the crisis has made its way to the palace gates, with members of the crown princes own security team named as suspects by Turkish officials. Saudi Arabia has repeatedly denied any suggestion that the crown prince had knowledge of the killing. Saudi authorities have arrested 18 people in connection to the killing, but nothing has been heard from them since, a development that has frustrated Ankara. Seemingly addressing the crown prince on Friday, Mr Erdogan called for those suspects to be returned to Turkey to eliminate suspicion. He said: You know how to make people talk. But if you cannot make them talk, then hand them over to us. This incident happened in Istanbul. Let us put them on trial. Just hours later, Turkeys state-run news agency said prosecutors would be formally requesting that the 18 suspects be extradited. Jamal Khashoggi death: key figures Show all 7 1 /7 Jamal Khashoggi death: key figures Jamal Khashoggi death: key figures Jamal Khashoggi Washington Post journalist who was critical of the Saudi regime and the young Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, he was murdered on 2 October in the Saudi Arabian consulate in Istanbul AFP Jamal Khashoggi death: key figures Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman Heir to the Saudi throne, Mohammed bin Salman has been implicated in the murder, with US officials claiming that he must have known of the plot AFP/Getty Jamal Khashoggi death: key figures 15 man hit squad Turkish police suspect these 15 men of being involved in the murder of Jamal Khashoggi, issued 10 October, 8 days after the journalist disappeared EPA Jamal Khashoggi death: key figures Saud al-Qahtani Aide to Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, Saud al-Qahtani is claimed to have ordered Khashoggi's murder Saud Al-Qahtani/Twitter Jamal Khashoggi death: key figures Maher Abdulaziz Mutreb A former diplomat who often travelled with the Crown Prince, Mutreb was initially claimed to be the leader of the hit squad and is pictured here entering the Saudi consulate on the day of the murder AP Jamal Khashoggi death: key figures Mustafa al-Madani First implicated in the 15 CCTV photos released by the Turkish police, al-Madani was later found to have been used as a body double for Khashoggi, leaving the Saudi consulate dressed in his clothes on the day the journalist was killed CNN Jamal Khashoggi death: key figures Salah bin Jamal Khashoggi (L) Son of the murdered journalist met with Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman on 23 October EPA Jamal Khashoggi was murdered in Turkey by Saudi nationals who travelled to Turkey for this specific purpose, a senior Turkish official said. It is clear that the judicial system in Turkey is better equipped to genuinely serve the cause of justice in this case. The killing of Mr Khashoggi, a columnist for The Washington Post who was critical of Crown Prince Mohammeds crackdown on dissent, was all the more shocking to many because it took place in Turkey, a place that dissidents from across the Arab world considered a safe haven. Mr Khashoggis fiancee, Hatice Cengiz, who waited outside the consulate for her partner for hours when he did not emerge on 2 October, said Mr Khashoggi had believed Saudi officials would not be so bold as to harm him in Turkey. He thought Turkey is a safe country and if he would be held or interrogated, this issue would be swiftly solved, she said in an interview with Turkish broadcaster Haberturk on Friday. The Saudi royal family has strenuously denied any involvement in Mr Khashoggis death. At a conference in Riyadh on Wednesday, the crown prince said the killing was a heinous crime that cannot be justified and warned against any efforts to manipulate the crisis and drive a wedge between Saudi Arabia and Turkey. Donald Trump: Jamal Khashoggi death 'the worst cover up ever' But analysts said that by attacking the Saudi leadership for a second time this week, Mr Erdogan has sent a message that he is unmoved by the crown princes overtures, and may seek to use the tragedy to gain leverage over his rival. As long as this Khashoggi affair is on the agenda, Erdogan wins, Turkish journalist Ilhan Tanir told The Independent. Even before this happened, Mr Erdogan and the young prince were not getting along, and everything appeared to be running against Mr Erdogan. Now he is driving a wedge between the US and Saudis and capturing the attention of the entire national media, which he loves. Mr Khashoggis killing has shone a spotlight on the wests relationship with Saudi Arabia. Even as thousands of civilians have been killed by US and UK-made weapons in a Saudi-led campaign in Yemen over the past three years, arms sales have continued apace. But those lucrative deals are facing fresh scrutiny. This week, the European parliament voted in a non-binding resolution for an EU-wide arms embargo on Saudi Arabia. French president Emmanuel Macron dismissed the calls as demagoguery on Friday, saying weapons sales had nothing to do with Mr Khashoggi. The largest arms suppliers to Saudi Arabia the US and the UK have also refused to consider a halt to sales. Since Saudi Arabia intervened in Yemen in 2015 to reinstall the internationally recognised government of president Abdu Rabbo Mansour Hadi, UK arms exporters have earned 4.6bn from sales to the Saudi regime. Foreign secretary Jeremy Hunt has emphasised that the UKs strategic relationship would be measured against any response. US president Donald Trump described the Saudi actions in the aftermath of Mr Khashoggis disappearance as one of the worst cover-ups in the history of cover-ups and has suggested the crown prince may have been involved. But he also said he did not want to lose the massive profits made from selling weapons to the Saudi military. Mr Trumps position has hardened over time, however, and may do so further as more details of the killing emerge. CIA director Gina Haspel was in Turkey earlier this week to review evidence, and was reportedly played audio tapes of the killing. She returned to Washington on Thursday to brief the president. So far, only Germany has taken concrete steps to target the Saudi state. It is necessary to clarify the background of this horrible incident, chancellor Angela Merkel said in Prague during a news conference with Czech prime minister Andrej Babis. Meanwhile, the investigation into Mr Khashoggis death has shown no signs of slowing down. The pro-government newspaper Sabah said 3,500 hours of recordings have been examined so far and a team of 750 people has been formed to investigate the murder. Saudi Arabias chief prosecutor is due to arrive in Turkey on Sunday and Mr Erdogan on Friday promised to reveal more information and evidence. New Zealand has created a new world map which puts the oft-overlooked Australasian country front and centre. With the help of Lord of the Rings creator Sir Peter Jackson, Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern, Flight of the Conchords star Rhys Darby and even featuring a cameo from Ed Sheeran, New Zealand tourist board has launched the Middle Earth map concept with a video. Its a follow-on to the previous short film released earlier this year, which saw Darby try to solve the conspiracy behind why New Zealand kept being left off world maps. Recommended Air New Zealand is selling a vegan burger and people are furious In the sequel, the actor and comedian is still on the hunt for the answer; a mysterious call, which turns out to be from Jackson, leads him to put together a string of meaningless clues which somehow implicate Ed Sheeran. Im not yet a citizen of New Zealand, but Im working on it, says the British musician on a clip played by Darby. He informs the PM of his progress: My lady, Ive solved the conspiracy! He loves it here in New Zealand, he wants citizenship, but heres the clincher he wants it all for himself. So hes taking us off all the world maps! Sheeran has a few NZ connections he sang I See Fire on The Hobbit soundtrack, and famously popped round for tea and scones with Ardern back in March 2018. Jacksons solution is far simpler: Its not any one country or person behind this. New Zealand has simply been positioned in the wrong place. I like to call this the Middle Earth map, he says, as Darby unrolls a map with NZ slap bang in the centre and the rest of the worlds land masses positioned accordingly. Darby has one complaint Australias still looking a little bit too big next to us but other than that, Jackson has nailed it. The video is all part of a new push to encourage more people to visit New Zealand and is undoubtedly one of the more successful tourist board marketing campaigns of recent years. Hong Kong came under fire earlier in October for its latest attempt to entice visitors. Support free-thinking journalism and attend Independent events The tourist board released a promotional video showing a girl furiously searching for her passport, worried shes going to miss an imminent flight. Instead she finds a note from her ex (or possibly current) boyfriend, who holds her travel document hostage until she completes a treasure hunt. Critics accused the campaign of romanticising abusive behaviour. We know that Ryanair flight FR15 departed on time from Barcelona airport on Friday 19 October, and landed safely and punctually on time at Stansted. We also know something of what happened in the cabin before departure. A passenger who we now know to be David Mesher launched into a racist, foul-mouthed tirade against a fellow traveller on the flight, 77-year-old Delsie Gayle. Another passenger, David Lawrence, filmed the outburst on his phone and it has now been viewed millions of times. Mrs Gayle and her daughter Carol, who was on the flight, were extremely upset by the vile and threatening outburst. Recommended Ryanair finally responds to racist abuse video Some politicians have called for a boycott of Ryanair. They argue that the cabin crew on the flight should clearly have removed the man responsible from the plane, but instead moved Mrs Gayle to another seat. The implications: either the Irish airline does not train its staff properly, or it tolerates racism. Neither is true. Ryanair could, though, have put its side of the story forward a lot earlier. Finally, on Friday morning a week after the incident, it explained: As the cabin crew believed they were dealing with an argument between two passengers, they followed company procedure, to defuse the argument, and separate the passengers by offering to move one to alternative seating. In this case, the female passenger was moved at her request, to a seat adjacent to her daughter who was also travelling on this flight. After moving the female passenger, both passengers were asked if they were okay, and both confirmed that they were. As far as the cabin crew were concerned, that was the end of the matter, and since there was no threat to aircraft safety, the issue of offloading one passenger did not arise. The captain was not informed of any argument between the two passengers, and nor were airport security in Barcelona alerted, because as far as the cabin crew were concerned, the verbal argument had been defused. In my experience, cabin crew the world over are professionals who have excellent soft skills and are generally very good judges of character and behaviour. Regrettably, they encounter a fair amount of personal abuse in their daily work, and therefore are well tuned to identifying the demeanour of disruptive passengers. Indeed when you are welcomed aboard a plane, the senior cabin crew member is quietly sizing passengers up to identify anyone who might be a problem at altitude. In cases of disruption when still on the ground, airlines have clear procedures in place often informed by the very good guidelines provided by the UK Flight Safety Committee. Aggressive and threatening behaviour has unfortunately become more common in our society, they say. Although unruly passengers represent only a minute proportion of our passengers as a whole, we must never forget that one aggressive passenger can jeopardise safety on board. The committee has set three levels of disruption and prescribes the appropriate response. A Category 1 passenger is: Aggressive or abusive but possible to influence. Compliance after staff intervention. Support free-thinking journalism and attend Independent events Category 3 applies in the case of: Physical violence, threats and other punishable behaviour. The video evidence indicates this was clearly a Category 3 case, calling for the immediate removal of the offender. But the film suggests the cabin crew were not present for the nastiest parts of the rant. In the absence of other passengers pointing out the racism and threats, it was not unreasonable for them to conclude the offender was Category 1: unpleasant but to be tolerated. When something serious happens on a plane, airline passengers have a duty to look after one another. That includes calling out abusive fellow travellers by informing cabin crew of unacceptable behaviour. And dont save the video evidence for social media: show it to cabin crew so they can do something about it. This appalling episode will, I hope, remind everyone of that obligation. Meanwhile, David Mesher will not be allowed on Ryanair again a relief for those of us who will continue to fly with the airline. Q I was interested in the coverage of Singapore Airlines flight SQ22 from Singapore to New York (aka the worlds longest non-stop flight). Two questions, which are slightly related. Why did it touch down at New Jerseys Newark airport rather than the more celebrated gateway to Manhattan, JFK? And how easy is it to build the flight into a round-the-world trip at a reasonable price? James P A My answers are slightly related, too. The reason the flight from Singapore to New York lands at Newark rather than JFK is not because the distance is three miles shorter, thereby saving about 20 seconds and a few dollars worth of fuel; on a 9,534-mile, 18-hour trip such differences are trivial. The motive for choosing the New Jersey is that Newark is a key hub for Singapore Airlines Star Alliance partner, United. Metro Manila (CNN Philippines, October 26) An economics professor said that small-scale farmers might not be entirely disenfranchised from relaxed rice trade laws if they band together with the private sector. In an interview with CNN Philippines Business Roundup, UP School of Economics professor Ramon Clarete said that farmers could weather the possible blow to their income as a result of more rice imports. "We would not expect all of the farmers especially the smaller ones on their own would survive after the tariffication, so we need to organize them to form cooperatives and cooperations, and have professional managers," Clarete said. The rice tariffication bill, which seeks to lower trade imports on rice by imposing a general 35 percent tariff, is one of the key measures being pushed by the administration's economic managers to lower the price of the food staple. While Senator Sherwin Gatchalian, one of the co-authors of the bill in the Senate, believes that the measure could generate P10 billion in revenue for the government, consumer group Bantay Bigas is worried that local farmers could be abandoned. READ: Proposed rice tariff seen to generate 10-B tax Clarete said that the private sector should be encouraged to invest in the agriculture sector, which in turn can lead to more income for the farmers. "We need to encourage private sector investments, commercial investments into the sector. It's so difficult to get productivity up with only small scale agriculture with each farmer deciding on the management," Clarete said. According to the professor, private sector management of large tracts of agricultural land would give the farmers better access to irrigation, technology, marketing and credit. "Those farmers can still own the land. They will be getting income from the lease of the land from that particular entity and they can also work on the land," Clarete said. In turn, better access to these necessities could lead to more yields, he added. "This would increase their incomes because the yields from agriculture would go up," said Clarete. Caravan of some 5,000 to 7,000 people, mostly from 3 Latin American countries El Salvador, Honduras and Guatemala is heading towards US. According to some media reports, quite a number of those in the caravan are people from South Asia including Bangladesh. (Photo: AFP | FIle) Washington: US President Donald Trump on Thursday asked the people in caravan, which is inching towards the southern border with Mexico, to go back to their countries and apply for American citizenship like million others. A caravan of some 5,000 to 7,000 people, mostly from three Latin American countries El Salvador, Honduras and Guatemala is heading towards America through Mexico to enter the country illegally. Trump's direct message to the people in Caravan came hours after he said he is deploying military on the Southern border with Mexico to stop them from entering the United States illegally, as he described the situation as a "national emergency". "To those in the Caravan, turnaround, we are not letting people into the United States illegally. Go back to your Country and if you want, apply for citizenship like millions of others are doing!" Trump said in a tweet. According to some media reports, quite a number of those in the caravan are people from South Asia including Bangladesh. This is for the second time this year that such a caravan has been formed. Trump says people are taking the advantage of the "stupid" US policy of catch and release, under which illegal immigrants are arrested immediately upon entering the border illegally and then released with the advice that they appear before the court for the next hearing, which at times is months away. Illegal immigrants were also the topic of discussion when Trump spoke over the phone with the Italian prime minister. Trump in a tweet said that among the issues included the fact that Italy is now taking a very hard line on illegal immigration. "I agree with their stance 100%, and the United States is likewise taking a very hard line on illegal immigration. The Prime Minister is working very hard on the economy of Italy - he will be successful!" Trump said. In his remarks and speeches over the past two weeks, Trump has repeatedly said he will not allow the migrant caravan to come inside the country illegally. He has claimed that there are criminals and people of Middle Eastern descent among the migrants. A picture can say a thousand words, but in todays ever-connected world, the good ones can generate even more retweets. A viral image taken in Gaza by photojournalist Mustafa Hassona, which depicts a bare-chested Palestinian protester holding a large flag and wielding a sling, has achieved both of these feats. The photograph was taken as protests continue on the border of Israel. Gaza's health ministry said 32 Palestinians were wounded as demonstrators threw stones at Israeli forces, who responded with tear gas and live fire. The image has provoked a huge reaction online, with social media users likening it to Liberty Leading the People, the iconic Eugene Delacroix painting of the French Revolution. From the moment we sleepily check our phones in the morning, most of us are bombarded with information and imagery, some of which can be disturbing. This photograph is undeniably striking, but the online reaction displays a worrying tone of detachment in the face of human suffering that is becoming all too common. Ahed Tamimi: Teenage Palestinian protester released from Israeli prison Paintings such as Delacroixs have decorated gallery walls for centuries. Encased within ornate gold frames and protected by glass, their figures are distant, providing us with the romantic fantasy of a world gone by. They might be based on historical events, but our minds can easily decipher that theres nothing real behind the flat oily surface of the canvas. But Hassonas photograph couldnt be more real. Behind its palpable kinetic energy and visual dynamism lies one of the most desperate human rights situations in the world. The flag bearer, identified by Al Jazeera as 20 year-old Aed Abu Amro, is one of almost two million people that are trapped on the tiny Gaza strip, unable to leave. This year has seen hundreds of deaths at the hands of Israeli forces, who have been condemned by the United Nations for using excessive force against protestors. Unarmed medics, such as 21 year-old Razan al-Najjar, are among the fatalities. A 12 year-old boy was shot dead earlier this month. A UN report has warned that Israel's blockade will make Gaza, the worlds third most densely populated area, uninhabitable by 2020. 97 per cent of the territorys drinking water is undrinkable and there are only four hours of electricity a day. These facts are distressing to read. But this hopeless situation has been facilitated by governments across the world enabling what will one day be universally accepted as crimes against humanity. Romanticising the image of a desperate man taking on an army allows us to justify its circumstances and distract ourselves from the grim truth that, in the real world, David rarely defeats Goliath. Aed could die today, tomorrow, or the week after that. If he keeps protesting, it is almost an inevitability. Protesting is, of course, a choice. But it is also a choice for Israel to continue flouting international law by building on Palestinian land and planning to demolish Palestinian villages a potential war crime. It was a choice for the US to deliberately inflame the situation by moving its embassy to Jerusalem, causing unnecessary bloodshed and anguish. Left to swelter without a trace of hope in what is essentially an open air prison where 50 per cent of children express no will to live, as the world looks the other way, is there not a chance we would all do the same? Support free-thinking journalism and attend Independent events In the most tasteless responses, social media users have remarked on Aeds chiselled jaw and physique. This overt fetishisation of his suffering is obscene, but the idea that the pain and anguish of marginalised groups is a price worth paying for beautiful art is a notion far older than even the paintings of Delacroix. From Asads chemical weapon attacks in Syria, to the bodies of refugee children washed up on the beaches of Europe, images have a radical, empathy-spreading power that can change the world. But the flippant reaction this particular shot, of someone literally risking being shot, represents our growing detachment from pain and lack of collective responsibility for it. Dont let this photograph fool you: there is nothing beautiful or poetic about the oppression of Palestinians. Beyond the lens, the constant misery of wasted life and unnecessary death in Gaza continues - we must not let that drift out of focus. One reason Saudi Arabia and its allies are able to avoid a public outcry over their intervention in the war in Yemen, is that the number of people killed in the fighting has been vastly understated. The figure is regularly reported as 10,000 dead in three-and-a-half years, a mysteriously low figure given the ferocity of the conflict. Now a count by a non-partisan group has produced a study demonstrating 56,000 people have been killed in Yemen since early 2016. The number is increasing by more than 2,000 per month as fighting intensifies around the Red Sea port of Hodeidah. It does not include those dying of malnutrition, or diseases such as cholera. We estimate the number killed to be 56,000 civilians and combatants between January 2016 and October 2018, says Andrea Carboni, who researches Yemen for the Armed Conflict Location and Event Data Project (ACLED), an independent group formerly associated with the University of Sussex that studies conflicts and is focusing attention on the real casualty level. He told me he expects a total of between 70,000 and 80,000 victims, when he completes research into the casualties, hitherto uncounted, who died between the start of the Saudi-led intervention in the Yemen civil war, in March 2015, and the end of that year. Recommended Demonstrators gather outside Saudi embassy to protest Yemen bombings The oft-cited figure of 10,000 dead comes from a UN official speaking only of civilians in early 2017, and has remained static since. This out of date statistic, drawn from Yemens patchy and war-damaged health system, has enabled Saudi Arabia and the UAE who lead a coalition of states strongly backed by the US, UK and France to ignore or downplay the loss of life. Casualties are rising by the day as Saudi and UAE-directed forces try to cut off Hodeidah the last port controlled by the Houthi rebels from the capital, Sanaa. Oxfam said this week, a civilian is being killed every three hours in the fighting, and between 1 August and 15 October, 575 civilians were killed in the port city, including 136 children and 63 women. An airstrike on Wednesday killed 16 civilians in a vegetable market in Hodeidah, and other strikes this month have hit two buses at a Houthi-held checkpoint, killing 15 civilians, including four children. Little information about casualties in Yemen reaches the outside world because Saudi and the UAE make access difficult for foreign journalists and other impartial witnesses. By contrast to the war in Syria, the American, British and French governments have no interest in highlighting the devastation caused in Yemen they give diplomatic cover to the Saudi intervention. But their deliberate blindness to the death of so many Yemenis is starting to attract more negative attention, as a byproduct of the flood of international criticism of Saudi Arabia in the wake of the premeditated murder of Jamal Khashoggi now admitted by Saudi officials in Istanbul on 2 October. The absence of credible figures for the death toll in Yemen has made it easier for foreign powers to shrug off accusations they are complicit in a human disaster. That is despite frantic appeals from senior UN officials to the organisations Security Council to avert a manmade famine which now threatens 14 million Yemenis half the population. The crisis has worsened because of the siege of Hodeidah with the city a lifeline for aid and commercial imports since mid June, a situation that has forced 570,000 people to flee their homes. UN humanitarian affairs chief Mark Lowcock warned on 23 October the immune systems of millions of people on survival support for years on end are now literally collapsing, making them especially the elderly more likely to succumb to malnutrition, cholera and other diseases. Just how many people die because they are weakened by hunger is difficult to know accurately, because most of the deaths happen at home and are unrecorded. This is particularly true of Yemen, where half the meagre health facilities no longer function, and people are often too poor to use those that do. Loss of life from fighting should be easier to record and publicise, and the fact this has not happened in Yemen is a sign of the lack of interest by the international community in the conflict. Carboni says ACLED has been able to tally the number of civilians and combatants killed in ground fighting and bombing by drawing on the Yemeni press and, to a lesser extent, international media. ACLED has used these sources, after carefully assessing their credibility, to calculate the number of fatalities. Where figures differ, the group uses lower estimates and favours the claims of those who suffered casualties, over those who say they inflicted them. It is difficult to distinguish between civilian targets that are deliberately attacked, and non-combatants who died because they were caught in the crossfire, or were close to a military unit or facility when hit. A study by Professor Martha Mundy Strategies of the Coalition in the Yemen War: Aerial Bombardment and Food War concludes the Saudi-led bombing campaign deliberately targeted food production and storage facilities. Some 220 fishing boats have been destroyed on Yemens Red Sea coast and the fish catch is down by half. ACLED began counting casualties after the war was under way, which is why it is only now researching loss of life in 2015, with its findings due to be published in January or February. Support free-thinking journalism and attend Independent events Carboni adds, the trend is for the number of people being killed to rise. The monthly total before December 2017 was fewer than 2,000 casualties, but since then it has always been more than 2,000. Almost all those who died are Yemenis, though the figures also include 1,000 Sudanese troops killed fighting on behalf of the Saudi coalition. The Khashoggi affair has led to greater international focus on the calamitous war in Yemen, and the role of Saudi Arabia and Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman in the conflict. But there is no sign of the US, Britain or France curtailing military assistance to the kingdom and the UAE, despite the likelihood the coalition will fail to win a decisive victory. The true butchers bill in the Yemen war has taken too long to emerge, but it may help to increase pressure on outside powers to stop the killing. Bulmers-maker C&C won't look at the possibility of reporting in sterling until at least after Brexit, according to CEO Stephen Glancey. The bulk of its revenue is now generated in the currency. Mr Glancey also confirmed that the group continues to hold talks with some brewers to make their products in the UK post-Brexit. The group signalled earlier this year that it had also been approached by some UK drinks-makers interested in having their products manufactured at C&C's plant in Clonmel, Co Tipperary as a result of Brexit. C&C, which also owns brands including Tennent's, acquired UK distributor Matthew Clark and Bibendum in a pre-pack administration deal earlier this year. Releasing first-half results yesterday, C&C said that total revenue in the period was 838.7m. That included 529.5m in sales generated by Matthew Clark and Bibendum in a five-month post-acquisition period. Ireland accounted for 124.5m, or 14.8pc of revenue in the first-half. It also made 26.1m of C&C's 58.4m group profit. In its results, C&C cited currency fluctuations as one of the side-effects of Brexit, especially given as it translates sterling revenue into euro for reporting purposes. Mr Glancey said that while there's "logic" to reporting in sterling, it's not something that is an immediate plan. "It's something that we will look at some point in time but, at the moment, with all the political uncertainty in Brexit, it's not a time to make too many changes," he told the Irish Independent. He said that the group would first have to talk to shareholders and that's a "next-year conversation rather than a this-year conversation". He said that a hard Brexit poses no significant risk for C&C which, apart from its manufacturing facility in Clonmel, also has a brewery in Glasgow. C&C has a number of contingency plans in place in the event that any difficulties arise, he added. "We're quite lucky because we manufacture in the UK and we manufacture in Ireland," said Mr Glancey. He said that cider is similar to wine-making in that the juice used to make it can last a couple of years. "If there's a hard Brexit, we'll bring forward production in January and February and ship over to the UK, which is a drive from Dublin to Belfast," he added. C&C makes Tennent's at its Wellpark brewery in Glasgow, where it also manufactures some own-brand drinks for supermarket chains. "The opportunity is around making beer for other people in the UK," said the CEO. "For every crisis there's an opportunity." The DAA has begun a formal consultation process for its planned 900m capital investment programme designed to enable Dublin Airport to handle 40 million passengers a year. The investment, previously flagged by the DAA, will include infrastructure such as new boarding gates, aircraft parking stands, and other facilities. It also confirmed that the contract for the construction of the 320m new runway project will be awarded soon. Construction of the new runway is due to commence before the end of the year. The cost of that project includes the infrastructure such as new aircraft taxiways. The Irish Independent recently revealed that a consortium of Limerick-based construction firm Roadbridge and Spanish group FCC has been named preferred bidder for the contract. Of the 900m capital expenditure plan, the DAA expects to invest about 400m between 2020 and 2024 to deliver extra capacity at the northern end of the airport, close to Terminal 1. The remainder is earmarked for an investment at the airports south apron close to Terminal 2. Last month, the DAA sought planning permission to undertake work on the Dublin Airport airfield to allow for the construction of aircraft parking stands on the south apron. That will include the relocation of stables used for horses that are being transported by air. The DAA pointed out that the investments are not funded by the taxpayer. These are shovel-ready projects that will address the capacity issues created by eight years of strong passenger growth at Dublin Airport and position us for the future, said DAA chief executive Dalton Philips. This plan has been designed to meet the needs of our airline customers, allowing them to continue to grow their business at Dublin Airport, which will boost tourism, trade and foreign direct investment throughout Ireland, he added. He said that Dublin Airports charges are between 30pc and 40pc cheaper than those of its peers. We are not expecting any increase in charges, despite the very significant investments that we are planning, he said. Dublin Airport will handle more than 30 million passengers this year. The DAA will have a series of meetings and discussions with airport users in the coming weeks, it said, before submitting its final capital plan to the Commission for Aviation Regulator (CAR). This will inform CARs draft determination on airport charges for the 2020-2024 period, which is expected to be published next April. The Department of Transport today formally published a report prepared for it by Oxford Economics that has suggested Dublin Airport could need a third terminal as early as 2030. The DAA has insisted it doesnt need another terminal until about 2040. The DAA said that while the report says that an independently operated new terminal at Dublin Airport is potentially feasible, the report also notes that there is no international precedent for a regulatory/charging model for a fully competing independent terminal [to access existing infrastructure], so there is substantial risk in attempting to make the first implementation. In this context, DAA welcomes the fact that the Oxford report states that the incremental expansion of Terminals 1 and 2 is desirable so investment in new capacity should continue, said the DAA. The relationship between farmers and their silage contractors is one thats invariably built around tall tales, half-truths and downright lies. The contractors repertoire includes stalwarts such as: Well be with you tomorrow which usually means around 10 days time. Weve four to do around your place, and youre the first of them silage talk for were moving to the other end of the county, or province. Weve had a bad breakdown but were nearly back on track could be true, but its as likely that the lads went AWOL after a wedding or the Whit Weekend. Being careless with the truth comes just as easily for the farmer, particularly when the contractor is hunting for money. Here are some of the old reliables: Are you sure that was the acreage? Ive a blast of cattle to sell in November and youre the first man on the list. After the Single Farm Payment lands. Im sure these lines have been trotted out ad infinitum again this year, but have mindsets shifted ever so slightly as a result of the severe difficulties encountered this summer? The Association of Farm & Forestry Contractors in Ireland (FCI) certainly seems to think so. It reports that outstanding farmer debts are not as bad as would have been expected in such a difficult year. We have noticed that there is a growing appreciation of the role that farm contractors have played, and continue to play, in facilitating our farmer clients to manage their fodder needs, said Richard White, FCI national chairman. Services Farmers are responding to the cash-flow needs of farm contractors, and at FCI we are confident that they will use their Single Farm Payments to manage their farm contractor debt in a structured way. Our farmer clients are growing in appreciation of the unique services that farm contractors now provide and this comes with an increased level of structured payment programmes being put in place between farm clients and their contractors. Steady now lads, the art of lying could be dead by the time next years silage season comes around if this rapprochement takes hold. AIB shares closed down more than 2.6pc today, clawing back steep early losses, with the shock defection of chief executive Bernard Byrne to Davy rattling investor nerves. The stock was down 10pc at one stage - with chairman Richard Pym saying it was a very grim day in my life when Bernard told me that he had an external opportunity which he wanted to pursue. The comments have served to underline Mr Pyms recent criticism of pay restrictions imposed by the Government on the bailed-out bank. Mr Byrne will not be subject to the caps at Davy, where he will become deputy chief executive and replace well-known stockbroker Kyran McLaughlin as Davys head of capital markets. Analysts said investors were shocked by the news. Chief financial officer Mark Bourke is also leaving the bank, while Myles OGrady, a senior lieutenant of Mr Bourke in the banks finance department, recently departed for Dres Properties which is lining up a stock market flotation. There has been speculation that Davy itself might be considering a flotation - for which Bernard Byrnes experience of the recent AIB IPO may have proved useful. But a company spokesman insisted: The current ownership model has served Davy well and we have no plans to change to it. Owen Callan, an equity analyst at Investec, said the slew of departures suggest that the bank is struggling to retain high-quality staff and senior management in the face of what is obviously a very tight labour market. He added that Mr Pyms strong comments wouldnt have helped in terms of the sell-off of AIB shares yesterday but that they would have conveyed to the market and Government Mr Pyms unhappiness with the restrictions. Darren McKinley, senior equity analyst at Merrion Capital, said FBD boss Fiona Muldoon would be a credible replacement and an appointment that might ease investor concerns. Another potential candidate is Tomas OMidheach - recently appointed deputy chief executive. Mr OMidheach has been at the bank since 2006, holding roles including chief operating officer and chief digital officer. Shares in AIB are trading down over 8pc this morning after CEO Bernard Byrne announced that he is to step down. The drop in share price has wiped approximately 1bn off the value of AIB. Mr Byrne has led the bank since 2015, having previously held a number of senior executive positions, including chief financial officer and director of personal, business and corporate banking. His departure is likely to revive concerns raised by AIB's management about the pay cap on bank salaries, after it warned in 2017 that it risked losing employees to international banks. In response to Mr Bryne's decision to step down, AIB chairman, Richard Pym, said: "It was a very grim day in my life when Bernard told me that he had an external opportunity which he wanted to pursue. The fact that it came so soon after the resignation of our CFO, Mark Bourke, made it doubly difficult." With Mr Pym adding that Mr Byrne had been a "great business partner to me and a good friend." Mr Byrne will remain as CEO of AIB into 2019. The bank also today announced that it continued to perform well in the third quarter, and is on track to deliver a full year financial performance in line with market expectations. Net interest income a key measure of a banks performance - was stable in the nine months to September 2018 compared to the equivalent prior year period, according to a trading update from the bank. Net loans increased 0.5bn from December 2017 to 60.5bn, which the bank said reflected strong growth in new lending. AIB said that its small and medium business is trading well, despite what it described as a "weaker market backdrop". The bank said its mortgage lending in Ireland so far this year is "strong" with drawdowns up 13pc on the prior year period. AIB had a market share of mortgage drawdowns of 32pc in August. The bank added that new lending in the UK remains stable and reflects its current cautious risk appetite given the Brexit backdrop. Non-performing loans at the bank now represent 11pc of gross loans, down from 16pc at December, having reduced to 7.2bn at September 2018 from 10.2bn at December 2017. "Following a positive financial performance in H1, we continue to deliver strong profitability, generate capital and increase new lending," Mr Byrne said. Kerry Group is back on the acquisitions trail and is to spend 365m to buy the US-based Fleischman's Vinegar and Omani-owned AATCO Food as the Tralee-based group expands its global footprint further. The deals see Kerry tap into the US - the world's richest market - and into the Middle East, after it said it could spend as much on 800m on acquisitions this year. The AATCO acqusition fits with chief executive Edmond Scanlon's strategy of building up Kerry's business in developing markets after it bought two Chinese companies in 2017. Kerry said in a statement that the deals would "further expand the group's foundational technology portfolio, as well as strengthening its foodservice and developing markets positioning". Fleischmann's makes speciality vinegars and cooking wines, while AATCO is a foods group that has a big footprint across the Gulf and in Africa. Mr Scanlon ran Kerry's business in Asia before he succeeded Stan McCarthy as CEO. The company spent 500m in 2017 on acquisitions and has stressed its long-term ambitions to build its business footprint, especially in its taste and nutrition division where volumes grew 4.1pc in the first half of this year versus 1.3pc in its consumer foods division, which was once the mainstay of its business. The company's stock fell 25 cent to 91.25 yesterday. Kerry's stock price has almost doubled in the past five years amid an expansion drive as it moves into the higher margin flavourings business from producing lower-value ingredients. It faces a threat from Brexit, even though the British market is a far smaller part of its business than it was when the group started, Half of Ireland's farm exports go to Britain and in the event of "no deal" could face tariffs of up to 60pc under World Trade Organization rules, volatile exchange rate movements and the risk that ports could be paralysed, hitting cargoes. Clampdown: Housing Minister Eoghan Murphy has indicated there will an effective ban on short-term lets in areas of high housing demand. Picture: Colin O'Riordan LANDLORDS who rent out their properties on Airbnb face being hit with extra water, insurance and commercial rates bills from summer. New rules will oblige landlords to secure commercial planning permission if they intend renting property out on a short-term basis. This would leave them open to paying a host of costly additional charges. Dublin City Council said Airbnb lettings were currently exempt from commercial rates, but this would be reviewed in the context of units being converted to commercial use. Rates are calculated on the size of the building. In addition, water charges could also be applied, which would cost landlords a standing charge of 90 a year coupled with a 3.12 charge per 1,000 litres of water and wastewater utilised under a proposed charging system. The landlords will also have to secure a change of planning permission, which costs around 80, and there may also be extra insurance premiums. New rules, to take effect from June 1, will force landlords to secure a commercial planning permission for properties they let on a short-term basis on platforms including Airbnb. This will not apply to those renting a room in, or all of, their family home, although a 90-day annual limit will apply in these cases. These owners will also have to tell the local authority they intend to avail of an exemption allowing them to 'homeshare', and lettings can be for no more than 14 days. However, Housing Minister Eoghan Murphy has indicated that in areas where there is a high demand for housing, there may be an effective ban on short-term lettings. In Dublin, Galway, Cork and parts of other counties, councils will be given powers to refuse to allow planning permission for the properties to be let on a short-term basis. The rules have been sharply criticised by Airbnb, which said homesharing did not cause the housing crisis and that claims the regulations were the solution were a "false promise". "Legitimising homesharing with rules for the long term is good news for hosts in principle, however there is no clear rationale for the rules being proposed here," it said in a statement. "There is no data to support a 90-night restriction on primary residences, which are by definition people's homes, and not available on the long-term rental market. "Banning the use of secondary homes is also unlikely to significantly boost Ireland's housing stock. This appears to be a cut and paste from regulations in other cities, without properly adapting them to the needs of Ireland's residents and communities." Figures from analytics website AirDNA suggest there are more than 1,000 landlords who own multiple properties in Dublin which are listed on Airbnb, totalling 3,533 units. If the ban is enforced, it means thousands of homes will be available to the 'normal' rental market. It is hoped this will help meet demand, and reduce monthly rental costs. Dublin City Council said accommodation used for short-term lets were exempt from rates, unless it formed part of an aparthotel. "To date, Airbnb activities are exempt from rates," it said. "The reference... to landlords securing commercial planning permission to lease their properties will no doubt impact on their ability to lease their properties under Airbnb. "The regulations when published will be reviewed in tandem with the Valuation Act to consider if properties let on a short-term basis will become liable for commercial rates." Sinn Fein housing spokesman Eoin O Broin said the regulations were 'reasonable', but sanctions should be imposed on platforms including Airbnb if they allowed a property to be advertised without the appropriate permissions. "The big issue is enforcement," he added. "Will councils have sufficient staff? Because if not, it would be a rather weak instrument." The Green Party said the measures don't go far enough. Continued from page 1 Tanaiste and Minister for Foreign Affairs & Trade Simon Coveney with Taoiseach Leo Varadkar at the Getting Ireland Brexit Ready Workshop at the Convention Centre, Dublin. Photo: Julien Behal Photography Fluctuations in the value of sterling has emerged as the biggest worry ahead of Brexit for Irish SMEs. Hundreds of representatives from small- and medium-sized businesses yesterday descended on the Convention Centre for the latest 'Getting Ireland Brexit Ready' event. Attendees from the agri-food, fisheries and tourism sector were prominent at the event, which was moved from a smaller venue because of demand. One attendee, Pearse Donnelly from Grove Turkeys, which employs 120 people in Co Monaghan, said that currency uncertainty was a major concern for his company. "If this is a cliff-edge situation - which we all hope it won't be - we need to know what are the supports that are going to be in place for businesses like ours, which is very heavily weighted towards exporting to the UK." "A good chunk of our business is transacted in sterling... the impact of sterling over the past two years has been significant. "It needs to find a way of restabilising itself, because it is a massive drain on the business." Angela Walsh of Celtic Chocolate - which sends 90pc of its exports to the UK - said she was concerned about both sterling fluctuations and border delays given the perishable nature of her products. Over 2,500 firms have now attended Enterprise Ireland Brexit events, a measure of the concern among business owners and managers. Opening the event, Taoiseach Leo Varadkar told delegates that it was "very hard to prepare for something when you don't know what you are preparing for". "My objective is to give businesses certainty," he added. Independent News & Media Group Business Editor Dearbhail McDonald was the event's MC, and led the interview on Brexit preparedness with Mr Varadkar and Tanaiste Simon Coveney. Mr Coveney said businesses need to think about preparation now. "As we speak today, Dublin Port is putting in new inspection bays; the same will be done in Dublin Airport and Rosslare," the Tanaiste said. "Business needs to nominate somebody in their business to really understand Brexit and the challenges it will bring. If it's a no-deal how are you preparing for the short term dramatic change in the value of sterling? "The starting point has to be to understand the potential consequences for your business and then how to plan around that: diversification, looking at your suppliers and so on." He said that any business that puts its head in the sand and hopes Brexit goes away is being very naive and "may live to regret that". Last year, Pentagon singled out Pak as possible location for future Chinese military base, though China has said that is pure speculation. Gwadar, in the southwestern province of Baluchistan, is the crown jewel of China's USD 60 billion investment in Belt and Road Initiative projects in Pakistan. (Photo: File) Beijing: China has not asked for military access to Pakistan's Chinese-funded, deepwater port of Gwadar, a senior Pakistani rear admiral said today, amid persistent speculation in India and the United States it could become a Chinese naval base. Gwadar, in the southwestern province of Baluchistan, is the crown jewel of China's USD 60 billion investment in Belt and Road Initiative projects in Pakistan. The plan is to turn Gwadar into a trans-shipment hub and megaport to be built alongside special economic zones from which export-focused industries will ship goods worldwide. A web of energy pipelines, roads and rail links will connect Gwadar to China's western regions. Last year the Pentagon singled out Pakistan as a possible location for a future Chinese military base, though China has said that is pure speculation. Diplomatic and security sources see Gwadar as the likely location. Speaking at the Xiangshan Forum in Beijing, which China styles as its answer to the annual Shangri-La Dialogue security forum in Singapore, Navy Secretary of the Pakistan Navy Rear Admiral Javaid Iqbal said Gwadar is a "significant addition to the regional maritime landscape". "Let me emphasise that the Gwadar port is purely a commercial venture and has no military overtones," he told the forum. "Suitably located outside the potentially risky and confined waters of the Gulf, Gwadar has the potential to act not only as a transit port for China and Central Asia but also a trans shipment port impacting the prosperity of the entire region," Iqbal added. He told Reuters that he was very specific about the non-military nature of the port. "The Gwadar port has no military dimension. It will be just a commercial port," he said. "The Pakistan navy will maintain a presence to ensure maritime security, to ensure the security of the port." "The geopolitical debate that somehow goes on in the media about Gwadar being used as a foreign military base is not correct at all," Iqbal added. Asked whether China had specifically asked for military access, he answered: "No, not at all." China opened its first overseas military base, which it formally calls a logistics facility, in the Horn of Africa country Djibouti last year. Djibouti's position on the northwestern edge of the Indian Ocean has fuelled worries in India. China has repeatedly downplayed expectations it could be about to embark on a plan to build military bases around the world, even as it ramps up an impressive military modernisation programme. Ulster Bank has reported a loss of 87m in the three months to 30 September. This represents a considerable swing on the 36m in profit reported for the same period a year earlier. Higher legal costs, largely relating to customer remediation and "legacy business issues", saw operating expenses increase by 47m year-on-year at the bank, according to a trading update from the banks parent company RBS. In addition, Ulster Bank recorded a net impairment loss of 68m, which includes a provision for a further non performing loan sale that the bank expects would result in a material reduction in its non performing exposure ratio. Overall and total income at Ulster Bank increased by 3m in the three months, or 1.8pc, compared with the same period last year, which the bank said reflected an increase in lending income and lower cost of deposits, with a 14 basis point increase in net interest margin, largely offset by a reduction in income from free funds. Compared with the second quarter of 2018, net interest margin decreased by 19 basis points primarily reflecting a 13m one-off funding benefit in the prior quarter. RBS meanwhile saw its income increase by 268m, or 2.7pc, for the year-to-date compared with 2017. Third quarter income increased by 485m, or 15.4pc, compared with the same period in 2017, mainly reflecting indemnity insurance recoveries of 272m and lower disposal losses, the bank said. Soaring fuel costs and a depreciating krone against the dollar saw Scandinavian carrier Norwegian make less money in the third quarter than analysts had anticipated. The low-cost carrier posted earnings before interest, tax, depreciation and amortisation (ebitda) of 1.86bn krone (195.6m) in the period, with CEO Bjorn Kjos conceding that the aviation sector is challenged. Although the profit missed expectations, it was still 13pc higher than in the third quarter last year. Shares in the carrier soared more than 18pc, however, after news agency Bloomberg reported that Norwegian is engaged in talks with a Chinese leasing firm and other parties with a view to creating a joint venture that would take over cash obligations on Norwegian's large jet order book. That would see Norwegian receive a $1bn cash injection, giving its balance sheet a much-needed boost. The deal would cover a total of about 123 Airbus and Boeing jets the airline either has on order or which it has taken delivery of. It won't replace Norwegian's existing leasing company, according to Mr Kjos. The airline would have first right of refusal to lease any new planes, after which the venture would be allowed to find other customers, providing added operational flexibility to Norwegian. Mr Kjos said it was important that the airline continues to streamline operations and reduce costs. Revenue of 13.3bn krone (1.4bn), met expectations. Investors also continue to pin hopes on the possibility of the airline being bought out. But despite yesterday's share surge, the stock is still trading well below levels it hit in April when Aer Lingus owner IAG revealed it had acquired a 4.6pc stake in Norwegian. IAG CEO Willie Walsh said the group would be interested in making an outright bid, but talks have not progressed. Mr Walsh told the Irish Independent in August that IAG would wait at most another year to seal a deal. Norwegian has tried to develop a sustainable, profitable low-cost transatlantic business, but high fuel costs and its largely unhedged position could derail the already difficult proposition. But Mr Kjos has insisted that once Norwegian's high capital expenditure costs related to aircraft acquisitions slows, the group will see its plan succeed. "However, there is no doubt that tough competition, high oil prices and a strong dollar will affect the entire aviation industry, making it even more important to further streamline our operations and continue to reduce costs," he said. Norwegian carried 10.9 million passengers in the third quarter, 11pc higher year-on-year as capacity rose 33pc. It will boost capacity by 40pc this current year. Its unit costs excluding fuel fell 10pc in the third quarter on a reported basis and 12pc on a constant currency basis. But including fuel, unit costs rose 1pc on a reported basis and fell just 2pc on a constant currency basis. Norwegian operates flights from Ireland to Newburgh's Steward Airport in New York, and Providence in Rhode Island. Next summer, it's starting flights from Dublin to Hamilton Toronto airport. It's been selling some aircraft it ordered, including eight Boeing 737-800s offloaded in the third quarter that are due for delivery this year and next. Sinead Dunphy, Festival Director, Guinness Cork Jazz Festival at Cork Community Art Link preparing for the Dia De Los Muertos Jazz Parade which launched the Guinness Cork Jazz festival programme Picture: Clare Keogh An average of 300,000 per hour will be spent in Cork this weekend as the 41st Guinness Jazz Festival gets into full swing. The festival, which has defied recessions, bank collapses and social changes, will attract more than 50,000 fans to Cork as it vows to continue to rival landmark jazz events such as those in Montreal and New Orleans. Organisers insisted the festivals ability to adapt, embrace varied musical styles and remain relevant have helped make it one of Irelands most successful and longest running events. More than 1,000 musicians from around the world have flocked to Cork for a festival which was founded in 1978 and yet remains hugely popular. Expand Close Costume maker Kasia Nita at Cork Community Art Link preparing for the Dia De Los Muertos Jazz Parade which launched the Guinness Cork Jazz festival programme Picture: Clare Keogh / Facebook Twitter Email Whatsapp Costume maker Kasia Nita at Cork Community Art Link preparing for the Dia De Los Muertos Jazz Parade which launched the Guinness Cork Jazz festival programme Picture: Clare Keogh The 2018 festival runs until October 29 - with musicians confirmed to attend from more than 20 countries. Cork's very own Paul Dunlea will be the inaugural 'artist in residence' for the festival. Expand Close Sinead Dunphy, Festival Director, Guinness Cork Jazz Festival at Cork Community Art Link preparing for the Dia De Los Muertos Jazz Parade which launched the Guinness Cork Jazz festival programme. Picture: Clare Keogh / Facebook Twitter Email Whatsapp Sinead Dunphy, Festival Director, Guinness Cork Jazz Festival at Cork Community Art Link preparing for the Dia De Los Muertos Jazz Parade which launched the Guinness Cork Jazz festival programme. Picture: Clare Keogh The stars taking part this year include China Moses, Laura Mvula, Blind Boys of Alabama, Nnenna Freelon, Stanley Clarke, Hypnotic Brass Ensemble and The Maria Schneider Orchestra. This year, the festival will also include a 'Dia De Los Muertos' or Parade of the Walking Dead as well as the hugely popular plaza open air jazz sessions. Guinness Jazz Festival director, Sinead Dunphy, said Cork now aims to copper fasten its reputation alongside such legendary jazz events as Montreal and New Orleans. "We aim to grow the festival so that it emulates the success of those major international festivals," she said. Video of the Day "This will ensure that Cork continues to be the home of jazz in Ireland and one of the most important arts festivals in the world." Guinness became associated with the festival in 1982 and, from humble beginnings with just a handful of venues and around 100 musicians, it has established itself as one of the worlds great jazzspectaculars. The festival now offers a remarkable 35m boost to the Cork economy. In keeping with tradition, more than 95pc of the sessions in 60 Cork pubs, hotels and clubs will be free to the public. There was also a programme of street performances and open air concerts to broaden the community appeal of the festival and to persuade people to spend time in Cork city. Hotel and guesthouse bookings are estimated to be running at up to 10pc above last years festival though there were concerns Brexit and the Sterling exchange rate could impact on UK visitors. The venues this year include Cork Opera House, Cork School of Music, the Everyman Palace, the Metropole Hotel and the Triskel Arts Centre as well as almost 100 pubs and clubs across Cork, Kinsale, Blarney and other towns. Since its inception more than 30 years ago, the people of Cork have warmly welcomed in excess of one million visitors to the festival which has been a fantastic showcase for the city and county, a festival official said. Long may that continue to be the case. Sean O'Rourke is celebrating a boost in listenership for his RTE Radio 1 late morning show, but admits he does not "take anything for granted". The latest figures in the JNLR/Ipsos MRBGI report into radio listening in Ireland, published on Thursday, reveal the programme gained 10,000 listeners from July to September to reach an impressive audience of 371,000. It bucked the trend for weekday news-led programmes, most of which suffered losses, apart from Newstalk's Ivan Yates, who gained 4,000 new listeners in the same period for his early evening programme, The Hard Shoulder. O'Rourke took a two month break from broadcasting in July and August, during which time the slot was helmed by Miriam O'Callaghan, whose own weekend show gained 8,000 for the same period. Speaking to Independent.ie about the results, O'Rourke said he was "not surprised" by the increase for the show. "You just dont know. Sometimes its down a bit and then it goes up, but were going in the right direction," he said. "Im not surprised the numbers have gone up because I know the programme is really good and it was really good when I was away. The common element, whether its me or Miriam, is a really good team with a really good producer, Tara Campbell. They dont miss anything." The broadcaster has fronted the programme since 2013 when he took over from Pat Kenny who left RTE after 41 years to join Newstalk. Their shows both air on weekday mornings, although not at the same time. The listenership for O'Rourke's show is 317,000 while Kenny's currently stands at 149,000. "You get new figures every three months so I suppose we just go in every day trying to make the best possible programme we can. Every day is a fresh challenge and its been going really well," he says. Video of the Day "Ill put it like this, I think we have pretty much the same kind of numbers now as when I started. There were all these apocalyptic suggestions being made that we were going to lose 100,000 [listeners]. It didnt happen. Its really the fact its Radio 1. Its not my programme or Miriams programme its RTEs programme." Speaking about the competition on rival stations, he said they "keep an eye". "We take nothing for granted," he said. "I know a lot of good people out there as well want to take our audience and it puts it up to us to just keep on top of things. We wouldnt want to be complacent and were not." The presenter's two month break from broadcasting the summer was the longest he had had in a decade. "I certainly felt invigorated by it," he said. "It did me a lot of good." Since his return eight weeks ago he has been thrust into the run up to the Presidential election, with long form interviews with each of the candidates taking place on his programme. "I think Ive probably done some of the best stuff that Ive done in my entire career in the past eight weeks, certainly some of the most enjoyable," he said. " Its been full on." Miriam O'Callaghan echoed O'Rourke's sentiments about the teams and producers behind the shows when she addressed her 8,000 increase to 272,000 with the Herald on Thursday. "I am delighted with the figures but to be honest it's really all about the teams and producers behind the presenters who work so hard," she said. "I try not to make too much of the figures when they go up, that way you don't have to make too much of the down days." Lyndsey Clarke with Taoiseach Enda Kenny during the local elections in 2014 Two solicitors - including one who ran as a Fine Gael local election candidate - have been struck off the roll of solicitors over findings of professional misconduct arising from the operation of a "chaotic" practice. The High Court orders were made against Keith Flynn and Lyndsey Clarke, who practised as Keith Flynn & Company in Dublin until the practice closed in 2016. Mr Flynn was admitted to the roll of solicitors in 2006 while Ms Clarke was admitted in December 2012. She was a candidate in Cork during the 2014 local election campaign, but failed to be elected. High Court President Mr Justice Peter Kelly said, despite the "sadness" of making such orders against solicitors at an early stage in their careers, he endorsed the Law Society's view they were necessary to ensure the integrity of the solicitors' profession. He ordered their names be struck off the roll and they should pay costs of 8,288 to the society. Noting Mr Flynn has an ill wife and dependant children and Ms Clarke has a dependant child, he placed a 12-month stay on the costs order. Both solicitors were suspended in late 2016 but the Law Society sought strike-off orders this week arising from findings of professional misconduct by the Solicitors Disciplinary Tribunal. The tribunal found, among other matters, that the respondents improperly and/or dishonestly caused or allowed a minimum deficit of about 40,302 on the client account as of November 2016. The society told the tribunal that the practice was "chaotic". Due to the solicitors' behaviour, there had been claims on the society's compensation fund which resulted in payouts of 231,999 of which some 133,000 had been recovered, leaving a shortfall of almost 99,000. The High Court has refused to extradite an Irish woman to the US over allegations she was at the centre of a major international steroid smuggling ring. The request was refused on health grounds after the court found the mother of one was mentally ill and likely to deteriorate significantly if extradited. Ms Justice Aileen Donnelly heard the woman had been on suicide watch while in custody over the past three-and-a-half years. US officials alleged the suspect, who cannot be named for legal reasons, was central to the smuggling operation with almost 1m in wire-transfers being sent to two Austrian bank accounts in her name. Assistant US Attorney Brent Hannafan alleged the woman and her former husband, who is currently subject to extradition proceedings in South Africa, operated an international internet-based drug-trafficking business from 2004 to 2009. He alleged the smuggling ring imported a variety of anabolic steroids, human growth hormone and misbranded prescription pills into the US from China and Moldova. These were repackaged, to give the impression they came from a legitimate laboratory, and sold via websites used by weightlifters and bodybuilders. Authorities began investigating the ring after a package containing 100 vials of human growth hormone was seized by customs officials at John F Kennedy Airport in New York in March 2008. This ultimately led to the further seizures of large quantities of drugs in a variety of locations. Most of the drugs found were anabolic steroids or drugs associated with the taking of anabolic steroids. However, other misbranded drugs were also found, including two used to treat breast cancer. It was claimed these were used by bodybuilders to counteract the build-up of oestrogen in the body. Seven members of the criminal organisation subsequently co-operated with the inquiry, but the woman and her former husband remained at large. She was arrested in the UK in September 2012 and had been due to be extradited from there to the US. However, she failed to surrender herself and skipped the country while out on bail of 250,000 (282,000), put up by her brother and sister-in-law. She was arrested in Ireland in July 2015 and has remained in custody since then. Fresh extradition proceedings initiated after her arrest were delayed on a number of occasions for health and procedural reasons. In a judgment delivered this week, Ms Justice Donnelly said the woman's daughter had stopped visiting her in prison, although she was maintaining telephone contact. Since then, the woman had restricted her food intake and was diagnosed with an eating disorder. The judge said the woman's daughter was damaged by events and would undoubtedly suffer should her mother be extradited. She said there were powerful, persuasive family and personal factors which had to be weighed against the public interest in extraditing the woman. Extradition would have particularly injurious circumstances for the mentally ill mother and her young daughter, the judge concluded. Judges at the Special Criminal Court will continue to deliver their verdict next Friday in the trial of three Dubliners charged with the murder of Gareth Hutch. Siblings Jonathan (33) and Regina Keogh (41) together with Thomas Fox (31) have all denied Mr Hutch's murder. A nephew of Gerry "The Monk" Hutch, 36-year-old Gareth Hutch was shot dead in the car park outside Avondale House on North Cumberland Street on May 24, 2016. Mr Fox, with an address at Rutland Court, Dublin 1, has also pleaded not guilty to the unlawful possession of a Markarov 9mm handgun on May 23, 2016 at the same place. There was a heavy presence from the Garda Public Order Unit in a packed courtroom in the Criminal Courts of Justice for the reading of the verdict. Mr Justice Tony Hunt, presiding, with Judge Patricia Ryan and Judge Michael Walsh, began reading his ruling in the case of Mr Keogh, just before 11am on Friday. The court broke for lunch, and Judge Hunt continued reading the verdict until 4.20pm. At which point, Judge Hunt said there was 40 pages remaining in Mr Keogh's judgment. With his voice going, Judge Hunt said he was adjourning the verdicts until next Friday. The judge also said the judgments in the cases of Ms Keogh and Mr Fox were "considerably shorter". During the nine week trial, it was the State's case that Mr Keogh, of Gloucester Place, Dublin 1, was one of the gunmen, together with Mr AB who is not before the courts. It was alleged that Regina Keogh was "central and fundamental" in the plan to kill Mr Hutch and that she helped to procure the use of protected witness Mary McDonnell's flat to stake out Mr Hutch's flat. In relation to Mr Fox, the State alleged he was the getaway driver and that he retrieved the guns the night before the attack and brought them to Mrs McDonnell's flat. A retired taxi driver who sexually abused two of his daughters and raped one of them over a 10-year period has been jailed for six years. Patrick Byrnes (78), of Castletroy, Limerick, appeared for sentence at the Central Criminal Court yesterday after being convicted by a jury last July. The father-of-nine was found guilty of 58 charges of indecent assault and two counts of rape on dates between 1975 and 1985. The court was told that Byrnes began abusing his daughters when they were aged around seven, the year of their First Communion. They lived in abject fear of him and have been left broken by the decade of abuse. Three of the indecent assault charges involved Byrnes "willing" the family dog to engage in sexual acts with one of the daughters. During his campaign of abuse, he threatened the two children that if they told anyone about it, he and their mother would split up. Garda Tony Carmody said that it was only after the defendant's wife died in 2013 that the two women reported the matter to gardai. Byrnes denied all charges and continues to deny them. Yesterday Mr Justice Paul McDermott noted that the case has split the family. The court heard that the abuse happened on a twice-weekly basis for a period of 10 years. The judge said the daughters were repeatedly abused by their father and lived a life of "abject fear". Byrnes abused them with impunity. He noted that both women said they were left broken by the childhood abuse. The judge noted that Byrnes suffers from a number of health conditions including heart disease and osteoarthritis but he added that there was nothing to suggest these cannot be addressed in prison. He said that given Byrnes's lack of remorse and his refusal to admit responsibility, the only mitigating factor he could consider was his age. Byrnes might die in prison and he has given that serious consideration, he added. The judge set a headline sentence of nine years for the rape and six for the sexual assault but reduced these by one year to take account of his age. He suspended the final two years on condition that Byrnes is not in the company of any woman under 18 unless accompanied by another adult. All the sentences are to run concurrently. Gda Carmody told Gerry Clarke SC, prosecuting, both complainants waived their right to anonymity so their father, who they say they will never forgive, could be named. Byrnes had worked as a lorry driver and a delivery man as well as a taxi driver and had never previously come to the force's attention. Maureen Curran, Tallaght, Dublin leaving the High Court in Dublin on opening day of her personal injuries action for damages. (Pic: CourtPix.) A woman who claims she was injured when she slipped on cream on the floor of the dairy aisle in a supermarket has sued in the High Court. Maureen Curran told the court she fractured her right wrist in the fall five years ago and still has to wear a splint most days. She was working as a Glanbia representative at the time and visiting the Cavan town Dunnes Stores checking on her company's products in the store. She claims she was walking in a normal manner along the dairy aisle when her legs went from under her and she slipped on a cream spillage which was being mopped up by staff. My feet went from under me. I landed sideways, she said. Her counsel Hugh O Keeffe, opening the case, said the fall had been captured on CCTV. Ms Curran came to grief and she could not have expected the hazard in that area, he said. He submitted to the court the performance of the cleaning operation of the cream spillage was wholly inadequate and only one warning sign was placed on the aisle. His side contended it took between 12 and 14 minutes after the accident for Dunnes to be satisfied the area was clean. Ms Curran (64) Tymonville Court, Tallaght, Dublin, has sued Dunnes Stores as a result of the accident in the Cavan Town supermarket on September 3, 2013. She has also sued her employer at the time Glanbia PLC with offices at Glanbia House, Kilkenny. She has claimed against Dunnes Stores there was an alleged failure to have an adequate cleaning system in operation. There was also an alleged failure to warn her of the danger posed by the spillage. She has claimed against Glanbia that there was an alleged failure to take any or any adequate precautions for her safety while she was engaged in her work. The claims are denied. Ms Curran told the court at the time she was a business development manager with Glanbia and travelled around the country checking on the companys products in supermarkets. She said on September 3, 2013, in Dunnes, she was going to check on a particular product. Four or five feet from a warning sign, she said her feet went from under her. She said she got up but it was only when she reached for her phone, she realised her hand did not work as it should. Cross examined by Marcus F Daly SC, for Dunnes, Ms Curran agreed the accident happened in a split second. She agreed she went back to work when the cast on her hand came off eight weeks later and she continued to work until she was made redundant by Glanbia around a year later. The case continues. The premier and 14 ministers gather in the former Parliament unused since the era of Saddam Hussein. Key appointment yet to be made in new executive, such as Minster for Interior and the Defense. UN letter of reference over lack of women in the government team. Baghdad (AsiaNews / Agencies) - The Iraqi yesterday cabinet met for the first time outside the Green Zone, the fortified district in the heart of the capital erected 15 years ago in the aftermath of the US invasion of the Arab country. The meeting was attended by the premier Adel Abdel Mahdi and 14 new ministers whose designation was approved the night before by Parliament; however, for the formation of the new executive there are still some key roles around which negotiations within the coalition are open. The government meeting took place in a place of symbolic value: this is the former seat of Parliament, used at the time of Saddam Hussein. Since the fall of the dictator in 2003, following the US invasion, a wave of violence and terror led to the construction of a fortified district [the Green Zone], in the center of Baghdad and isolated from the rest of the city. Inside there are the highest offices of the country and foreign diplomatic representations. To protect the symbolic sites - the seat of government and parliament, US and British embassies - the authorities have set up a series of checkpoints and walls protected by barbed wire and electrified. In recent days, Prime Minister Abdel Mahdi accelerated the formation of the new government, defining as many as 14 ministerial roles. At the moment, however, some key dicasteries are missing, including the Interior and the Defense, which are still the subject of negotiations between the various coalition forces. So far it is a men-only executive and no woman's name has emerged for government roles. Hence the appeal of the United Nations in an official letter sent in recent days to Baghdad, to promote and foster a greater gender balance. The Prime Minister is required to present his choices for a vote in Parliament by November 6, six months after the parliamentary elections. In the context of two different telephone conversations, US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo congratulated Abdel Mahdi and new Foreign Minister Mohamed Ali al-Hakim, former ambassador to the United Kingdom. Pompeo is committed to working closely with Abdel Mahdi to "help his government ensure stability, security and prosperity for all Iraqis". Moreover, a balance between opposing forces [United States on one side and Iran on the other] will be essential for a future of peace and stability, putting behind the sectarian violence that has torn apart the country following the US invasion and the war against the jihadist militias of the Islamic State (IS, ex Isis). Maureen Curran, with an address in Tymonville Court, Tallaght, Dublin pictured leaving the Four Courts Photo: Collins Courts A woman who slipped on spilled cream in a supermarket has been awarded 75,000 by the High Court. Maureen Curran (64) was working at the time as a Glanbia rep visiting supermarkets when the accident occurred on September 3, 2013 in Dunnes Stores, Cavan town. Mr Justice Kevin Cross said she suffered a nasty injury when she had a "sudden and helpless fall". Mrs Curran, Tymonville Court, Tallaght, Dublin, sued Dunnes Stores and Glanbia. She claimed there was an alleged failure by Dunnes Stores to have an adequate cleaning system in operation. There was also an alleged failure to warn her of the danger posed by the spillage. She claimed against Glanbia that there was an alleged failure to take any or any adequate precautions for her safety while she was engaged in her work. The claims were denied an a hearing took place over a day and a half in the High Court. She told the court she walking in a normal manner along the dairy aisle when her legs went from under her and she slipped on a cream spillage which was being mopped up by staff. "My feet went from under me. I landed sideways," she said. The incident was captured on CCTV. She said she got up but it was only when she reached for her phone, she realised her hand did not work as it should. She had fractured her right wrist and still has to wear a splint most days, the court heard. In his judgment awarding her 75,000, Mr Justice Cross said all witnesses in the case had given truthful evidence. The accident, he said, did not occur when the floor was being cleaned by Dunnes Stores staff. He found Dunnes had failed to have warning signs to mark out the extent of the spillage. Mrs Curran saw the one warning sign which she presumed was the location of the spill and not where she slipped, he said. The supermarket protocol says that warning signs should be left out until the floor is dry, he said. It was vital to ensure the entire area of a floor was dry and this unfortunately was not done, he said. He found no contributory negligence on the part of Ms Curran. She did nothing the judge said that visitors to Dunnes Stores are not expected to do, that is walk up and down the aisle doing their business. She was an honest woman who did not exaggerate her injuries, he said. He found the loss of her job with Glanbia a year later was not related to her accident. There was no doubt the accident had a severe effect on her, he added. The Department of Education and the company at the centre of the school building safety controversy are at odds over who was responsible for signing off on three projects where serious structural problems have come to light. The department delivered a robust response to a statement by Western Building Systems (WBS) about contracts for Ardgillan Community College, Balbriggan, and two primary schools in Tyrrelstown, Dublin, which have closed, or partially closed, for safety reasons. WBS claimed the department "deemed each project to be fully compliant, issuing the supporting certificates of completion". But the department insisted the contractor and its design team "were fully responsible for the construction and certification of the buildings in accordance with the regulations in force at the time". Senior counsel John Trainor, chair of the Construction Bar Association, said in general, in a design and build contract such as applied for the three schools, responsibility lay with the contractor, but ultimately it depended on the detail of the contract. WBS representatives joined department officials and structural engineers for site visits to the three schools yesterday. In a statement afterwards, the department said it provided the company with "the opportunity to view the structural issues identified at the three schools". The department is awaiting a response from WBS. More closures are expected as the programme of structural checks - shared between three teams - at 42 schools built by WBS over the past 15 years continues. An inspection is being carried out today at Letterkenny Educate Together, the home base of Education Minister Joe McHugh. The department has noted the three buildings affected by closures to date are three storey, while most other WBS schools are one or two storey. Department officials are meeting representatives of the education partners such as school managers and teacher unions today to brief them. Major efforts are under way to source alternative accommodation for pupils returning after the mid-term break if their school is closed. Taoiseach Leo Varadkar said they were looking at the use of prefabs and portable buildings, while in some cases it may be possible for a school to operate with internal bracing or for the ground floor to stay open, supplemented by portable buildings. Mr McHugh said "good progress" was being made in relation to sourcing alternative accommodation for the 1,200 pupils of Tyrrelstown Educate Together and the neighbouring St Luke's National School. Meanwhile, the HSE has confirmed there are no safety concerns regarding its buildings in relation to works carried out by WBS at this time. Two primary schools forced to close this week because of concerns about structural safety will be able to re-open their ground floors after the mid-term break, the Department of Education said today. The partial re-openings will allow about half the classrooms in Tyrrelstown Educate Together and St Lukes National School to function and children with special needs will be prioritised. Work on the necessary structural engineering solutions to allow for the ground floors to open will start on Monday. The two schools have 1,200 pupils on their rolls, and work is underway with other schools to provide temporary accommodation for the remainder of the classes. Meanwhile, Ardgillan Community College, Balbriggan, Co Dublin will be able to accommodate all pupils on Monday week, through the use of a community hall and some facilities in neighbouring schools. The Department expects to provide information on a batch of schools inspected in recent days later today, or early tomorrow. In all, 42 schools are being inspected for structural safety, and the programme is continuing over the weekend and next week. Meanwhile, the dispute over responsibility for certifying three school buildings that have closed on safety grounds intensified today as the contractor claimed that the Department had a right to inspect before signing off. Western Building Systems (WBS) also released the signed certificates of completion issued in respect of Ardgillan Community College, Balbriggan, Co Dublin, and Tyrrelstown Educate Together and St Lukes National School in west Dublin. The certificates were signed by representatives of project management companies, who acted in a client liaison capacity with the contractor on behalf of the Department. Attached are the three certificates as then provided, signed on behalf of the Minister of the day, the company said in a statement. It added that Department inspectors, on a fortnightly and monthly basis, had the right to inspect each project". WBS said that the compliance process which regulated the building of these schools included on-site inspections by Department appointed inspectors every two weeks, plus monthly on-site inspection meetings with the Departments inspectors. It added that projects were only deemed concluded once a completion certificate was issued by the Departments inspectors as was the case in these schools. The statement went on: As per the contracts which governed these projects, schools are handed-over to the Department upon certified practical completion. For the 12-month period post completion, there is a responsibility on the contractor to remedy notified defects which the Department identifies for consideration under the contract. After completion of these matters, a further certificate of defects completion is issued to confirm all defects have been rectified on the snag list. "The contract allows for the Department to retain a final payment until it is satisfied that the defects are remedied. Thereafter, for a period of up to 12 further years, the Department has a right of recourse as against the contractor for any latent defects. The contractor has a right to challenge this if it is the case that these do not form part of the contractual obligations." The Department insists that the contractor and its design team, were fully responsible for the construction and certification of the buildings in accordance with the regulations in force at the time. And two of the certificates released by WBS today, in relation to the west Dublin schools and signed Healy Kelly Turner & Townsend Project Management explicitly state: In issuing this Certificate of Substantial Completion, the Employers Representative is relying on, and shall have no liability in respect of, the appended Opinions of Compliance issued by the Design and Build Contractor and the Design and Build Contractors Team certifying that the completed works have been properly carried out, in accordance with the Contract and fully comply with the current Building Regulations, Planning Permissions and Fire Safety Certificate. In response to the WBS statement, the Department said the Certificate of Substantial Completion releases payments under the contract. It is not a certificate of compliance with the Building Control Regulations and should not be confused with such. The Department statement added that "in order to provide further clarification on this point, the Department is now publishing the following certificates relating to Ardgillan Community College on its website at the following link: https://www.education.ie/en/School-Design/western-building-systems-information/ The second stage of the CervicalCheck scandal inquiry has been given the go ahead and will investigate how tests of thousands of Irish women ended up in labs in Hawaii and Las Vegas unknown to the Irish health service. The slides of women who had gone for cervical screening in Ireland were sent to a Texas lab CPL as part of outsourcing. But some were sent from Texas to other locations without apparently telling CervicalCheck. Dr Gabriel Scally who completed a scoping inquiry last month is to visit these other labs to investigate what kind of quality assurance was applied. Health Minister Simon Harris announced today that he had signed off on the new terms of reference for the next stage of the investigation. The CervicalCheck scandal led to a majority of 221 women who had developed cervical cancer, including the relatives of the deceased, only finding out in recent months that an internal audit found they got the wrong test result. It is unclear how many of these incorrect results were due to negligence or the limitations of the test. Dr Scally will look at the nature, ownership, extent of activity, quality and accreditation arrangements, governance structures, and other relevant matters regarding the other labs. He will examine the circumstances which led to these laboratories undertaking work for CervicalCheck and the extent to which the screening service in Ireland was aware of and approved the transfer. The inquiry will also examine the different forms of accreditation between labs in Ireland and the United States. He is free to incorporate further relevant elements if identified during the course of the supplementary analysis." Dr Scally is to report back to Mr Harris. Parts of the last report of Dr Scally were leaked before its publication, causing deep distress to victims. Taoiseach Leo Varadkar said he has appointed an official to investigate who was responsible for the breach but there is increasing impatience at the length of time it is taking to carry out a simple inquiry into a report submitted in early September. His officials have refused to say who has been interviewed and if the leaker will be named and sanctioned. Only of half the women who developed cervical cancer and have been invited to provide their slides for an external review of laboratory screening have so far consented. The Royal College of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists, commissioned to do the review in the wake of the CervicalCheck scandal, has contacted 1,591 women to date, including relatives of the deceased. Some 813 have returned forms and 786 have consented. Some 65 of these are part of the original 221 group who received wrong test results. The figures were released by Health Minister Simon Harris to Sinn Fein health spokeswoman Louise O'Reilly. Meanwhile, there is increasing impatience among the victims of CervicalCheck at the time it is taking to investigate the leak of part of the Gabriel Scally report on CervicalCheck before it was published. The move caused major upset to women who were diagnosed with cancer and the bereaved. Taoiseach Leo Varadkar said he appointed an official to examine the breach. However, his department has refused to say if anyone has been interviewed and why it is taking so long. A spokesman also refused to say if the people involved will be named and disciplined. The leak said Dr Scally's view was that a commission of inquiry into the scandal was not needed. A spokesman for the department said he had nothing further to add at this stage of the inquiry. Tributes: Midwife Patrick White was known to TV viewers One of Ireland's few male midwives has died. Members of the nursing and midwifery communities have been paying tribute to Patrick White, from Skibbereen in Co Cork. Clinical midwife manager Mr White was the only male midwife at Cork University Hospital. He was known to many TV viewers after appearing on RTE series 'From Here to Maternity'. Mr White, who was in his 40s and was taken ill recently, previously spoke about being inspired to become a midwife after studying at Cambridge University. "I fell in love with it straight away," he said. "Every single day is rewarding because you get to share in some of the happiest moments of people's lives. "Every so often, I bump into parents on the street and they remember me." INMO general secretary Phil Ni Sheaghadha said it was a "sad time" and shared her sympathies with Mr White's loved ones. "This is a very sad time for Patrick's colleagues, friends and family. The thoughts of Ireland's midwives and nurses are with them today," she said. The Support for Nurses, Midwives and Frontline Staff group paid tribute to Mr White on social media, writing: "Today we say goodbye to one of our colleagues, Patrick White. One of Ireland's only male midwives. Thank you for your brilliant service to our health service, Patrick." Mr White is survived by his father, brothers, sisters, brothers-in-law, sisters-in-law, nephews, nieces and a large circle of friends. Airbnb provided details of payments to customers to the Revenue Commissioners. Stock picture Data from website AirDNA, which analyses usage of Airbnb, shows that lucrative returns can be made from renting on the short-term letting platform. The average fee paid per night in Dublin is 145, falling to 112 in Galway and 100 in Cork. In the capital, the top earner has received 206,521 over the past 12 months for a property close to Grafton Street, at an average daily rate of 965. In fact, the top 10 earners in Dublin earned a minimum of 139,190. The highest 'average' daily rate was 1,034, for a property close to O'Connell Street. In the city, a total of 6,945 homes are available. Of these, 3,812 are entire homes. But the data also shows that just over 1,000 'hosts' own a total of 3,533 properties. Each of these units will require commercial planning permission, which - according to the Housing Minister Eoghan Murphy - is likely to be refused in the capital, given the housing shortage. Restrictions are also likely in Galway, Cork and other areas which are subject to rental caps. In 2010, some nine properties were rented on Airbnb. This increased to 22,888 this year. The average monthly rent for an entire home is 2,991, and 14.9m was generated last month alone in rental income. Some 33,627 guests have utilised the properties in Dublin in the past 12 months. Of these, just over 16,000 guests came from London, followed by New York, Paris and Toronto. In Galway, there are 1,470 entire homes listed as available, with 492 hosts owning a total of 1,697. In Cork, there are 1,174 entire homes listed, with a total of 2,211 active rentals. Of these, 363 landlords owned 1,067 properties, almost half the total on offer. The average occupancy rate is 65pc. A schoolboy born in Ireland who made headlines recently when he was threatened with deportation has been told he can remain in the country pending a review of his case. A petition was started by St Cronan's Boys National School in Bray, Co Wicklow, more than a week ago asking Justice Minister Charlie Flanagan to revoke the deportation order and allow the 4th class pupil Eric Zhi Ying Mei Xue to stay in Ireland. More than 50,000 people have signed the petition to date. Eric, who is nine years old, was born in Ireland, but he is not a citizen and so could face deportation to China. Speaking today on the Last Word with Matt Cooper, Health Minister Simon Harris said he had received some good news from the Department of Justice. Ive just got some good news, very recently from the Department of Justice, which Ive conveyed to Erics family, that there is no imminent threat of deportation. "Thats all I ever called for, thats all Erics family ever asked for, was an opportunity for a humanitarian review of the case to take place. The idea that a nine year old boy who is as much from Wicklow as I am, as much from Ireland as I am would be told that he is going back to China, a country he had never been to was simply ludicrous. More than a week ago, Mr Harris, who lives in Eric's constituency, made representations to the Department of Justice and Equality on his behalf. "I have appealed for Eric to remain in Ireland on humanitarian grounds. Quite frankly, Eric is Irish," he told Independent.ie. "He was born here, goes to school here and has never lived anywhere else. This is his home. This is his country. I really hope common sense can prevail." Following a 2004 referendum, babies born in Ireland to foreign parents don't have an automatic right to Irish citizenship. 14 children injured. Perhaps the woman had grievances against the government. Attacks on small children in schools are very frequent. Chongqing (AsiaNews / Agencies) - At least 14 children were stabbed and wounded this morning at a nursery school in Chongqing, Banan District. The children were doing physical exercises in the Yudong New Century kindergarten courtyard when a woman attacked them with a kitchen knife. The 39-year-old woman, named Liu, was taken away by the police. The children were transported to the hospital to treat their wounds. The reason for the attack is unknown, but several social media say the woman was furious at the government. In all these years there have been frequent attacks against children in schools. The perpetrators have often expressed anger towards teachers, towards schools that refuse their children, because the government had forced a mother to submit to a forced abortion, or mental insanity. Last June, a 29-year-old man injured two children outside a primary school in Shanghai; last April in Shaanxi, nine schoolchildren were stabbed to death by Zhao Zewei, a man who was later sentenced to death. Local residents Margaret Kearney, Stephanie O'Toole, Miriam Mason and Valerie Keogh who are affected due to the closed-off Edmondstown Road (Photo: Kyran O'Brien) Residents Margareth Kearney, Stephanie O'Toole, Miriam Mason and Valerie Keogh protest over the road closure A Dublin road will reopen today after almost a year of "inconvenience" following its closure in November 2017. Edmondstown Road, known as the "gateway" to the Dublin mountains by locals, was closed by the council following alleged unauthorised excavation works. Local residents have been endlessly campaigning for the reopening of the road, after the closure led them to endure "a daily 10km detour for a pint of milk". The road will reopen today after a 345-day closure. In September, South Dublin County Council (SDCC) estimated a completion time of 12 weeks for roadworks, but have since said that the works were completed quicker than expected. "Edmondstown Road will reopen tomorrow, Friday afternoon 26th October, as the contractor has completed the works ahead of schedule," a spokesperson for the council said yesterday. "The road is being resurfaced Thursday 25th Oct today and lining will be carried out 26th Oct. "There will still be some minor tidying up and wall and fence rebuilding to be carried out week starting 29th October." Read More Local TD John Lahart welcomed the confirmation, describing it as the end to an "inconvenient" year for the local residents. "The forced closure of Edmondstown Road, Rathfarnham last November has caused immense inconvenience for local residents," he said. "For the past 12 months those living and working in the area have had to manage without access to this essential route. "All going well, this will mark the end to a long and inconvenient year for very many Edmondstown road users." Members of the Reopen Edmondstown Road Now Campaign previously told Independent.ie that they are "delighted" with the news following a lengthy campaign. "Locals are overjoyed with this news as it brings certainty and there is now an end in sight to what has been a most disruptive period in our lives," local resident Miriam Mason told Independent.ie. "Great credit is due to the local community who showed perseverance and tenacity in the ongoing campaign to reopen Edmondstown Road." Jim O'Callaghan says he met with Frances Fitzgerald on Wednesday Fianna Fail justice spokesperson Jim O'Callaghan has claimed he is certain he mentioned the Tusla file on garda whistelblower Maurice McCabe to Justice Minister Frances Fitzgerald last Wednesday. On Sunday Ms Fitzgerald said the first time she learned of the allegations was when she watched RTE's Prime Time on Thursday night. This latest revelation is further evidence of the huge gulf that is growing between the government and main opposition party Fianna Fail, which facilitates the minority governement. Appearing on Newstalk Breakfast this morning Mr O'Callaghan said he was instructed to go to the Tanaiste by his party leader Micheal Martin last Wednesday, a full 24 hours before the show was broadcast. Expand Close Fianna Fail TD and barrister Jim O'Callaghan Photo: Tom Burke / Facebook Twitter Email Whatsapp Fianna Fail TD and barrister Jim O'Callaghan Photo: Tom Burke Mr O'Callaghan said he contacted Ms Fitzgerald on the phone. Read More They arranged to meet face-to-face in the members' section Leinster House. "I told her there was an issue around a Tusla file that was going to be broadcast on RTE's Primetime on the Thursday. "I told her that in my opinion the terms of reference were not sufficiently broad. "We then had a discussion for about seven or eight minutes about paragraph B of the terms of reference. And the point I was making to her was that the terms of reference in paragraph B was limited to communications between Supt [Dave] Taylor and the broadcasting media. "I said it needed to be broader than that. My thinking was that it would cover Tusla and other things we do not know." "I spoke to the Tanaiste. I felt we were doing the government and the Tanaiste a favour." He said she was skeptical about this initially. .@MichealMartinTD: Says election will delay investigation and consequences. 96fm Opinion Line (@OpinionLine96) February 13, 2017 .@MichealMartinTD: MM finds it very hard to believe copy & paste error. He says there appears to be unrelenting attacks on McCabe for yrs. 96fm Opinion Line (@OpinionLine96) February 13, 2017 When asked by host Shane Coleman if he said this to Ms Fitzgerald, Mr O'Callaghan said: "There is obviously conflict here. I'm 100pc certain I did." He added: "I remember saying to her 'Frances you need to speak to Katherine Zappone as she met Sgt McCabe, she has this information about the Tusla file." "The important thing to say is that I mentioned it to her." Later on RTE Radio One Mr O'Callaghan said he mentioned Tusla "three or four times" to Ms Fitzgerald. He repeated his claims that he told her about the report. "I'm a hundred per cent that I did mention Tusla and I'm also a hundred percent certain that I said to the Tanaiste, and the words I used were - 'Frances, you need to speak to Katherine Zappone because she has met Sgt McCabe and she has full knowledge about this issue'." When asked by host Sean O'Rourke about how many times he believes he mentioned Tusla, he stated: "I said it 3 or 4 times, when we sat down I said there's an issue here, Primetime are doing a programme tomorrow night about a Tusla file, Micheal Martin has just mentioned it to me and he has just spoken to Maurice McCabe." Micheal Martin has said Garda Commissioner Noirin O'Sullivan should "assess" her own position in light of the controversy. But Mr Martin has ruled out collapsing the Government over the Tusla and whistleblower controversies, saying doing could jeopardise the prospect of securing "answers." Speaking on the Opinion Line on Cork's 96fm, the TD hit out at Sinn Fein over what he described as an "opportunistic" motion of confidence in the government. But Mr Martin appeared to shift his position in relation to the Commissioner's future. Pressed by Presenter PJ Coogan over the matter, Mr Martin said Commissioner O'Sullivan should "assess" this matter herself. "The Commissioner herself should assess where she stands." Mr Martin said he would be putting it to the Dail that Ministers Fitzgerald and Zappone should come before the house and answer questions in relation to this, Mr Martin plans to meet with Sergeant McCabe later today for an update on the controversy and the treatment of garda whistleblowers that has now rocked the Government. I found it incredible that the Cabinet itself took a decision on the establishment of the (Judge) Charlton inquiry given that this very pertinent issue of the Tusla file was known to Minister Zappone, he said. By this stage, the Tusla file had been discredited. Tusla themselves had put their hands up, the HSE had put their hands up Katherine Zappone had met Maurice McCabe two weeks ago, he told the radio show. There was no reason why Katherine Zappone could not have briefed the Cabinet. I am simply saying that a false file or a file that had no bearing (was known about) - there is no reason why that shouldnt have been said to Cabinet. Mr Martin said, in his opinion, the core issue was which Government ministers were informed of specific details of the Tusla file and the McCabe meeting. I would refer people back to Katherine Zappone's first statement on Friday which I think has been lost sight of, he said. We need a far more concrete explanation as to the difference between her first statement and her second statement on Friday. Her first statement said she briefed relevant Cabinet colleagues I think we need to find out what does that mean? I dont buy the argument that it means, as the subsequent statement tries to portray, that it simply meant that I met Maurice McCabe. I have some difficulties with that. Katherine Zappone was not available for personal reasons all weekend to explain this. It is an opportunity today for Katherine Zappone to fully explain this. The Fianna Fail leader was also scathing of the Sinn Fein intervention to table a confidence motion. (Pursuing ministers) to answer in the Dail, to be accountable to Dail members - that would have been the more intelligent and sincere thing to do in my view rather than just slap down a motion of confidence which means the entire week will just be on the confidence motion. Ministers can be protected now from coming in (to be questioned) and I hope that is not the case. Fianna Fail will abstain on the Sinn Fein motion, warning that there is no desire for an election. I dont think the Irish people want a general election every few months. But people are very, very angry about the way in which a good and decent person (Maurice McCabe) was treated. Day off: Michael D Higgins opted not to run campaign events on the final day Sean Gallagher casts his vote in the presidential election with his wife Trish and son, Bobby, 5, at the Charlesland Sports and Recreation centre in Greystones. Pic credit; Damien Eagers / INM Sean Gallagher pictured after voting in the presidential election with his wife Trish and son, Bobby, 5, and daughter Lucy, 3, at the Charlesland Sports and Recreation Centre in Greystones. Photo: Damien Eagers / INM The ballot paper for the Presidential Election at St Marys Hospital, Phoenix Park this morning. Photo: Tony Gavin President Michael D Higgins casts his vote with his wife Sabina for the Presidential Election at St Marys Hospital, Phoenix Park this morning. Photo: Tony Gavin Voting is underway in the 2018 presidential election and the blasphemy referendum today - and it's said to be a low turnout so far. The challengers to the incumbent Michael D Higgins all partook in last-minute attempts to shore up support in the last couple of days. However, Mr Higgins opted not to run campaign events on the final day. Presidential candidate Peter Casey has pledged to step down in five years' time and contest a second term if elected as the next president. Expand Close Sean Gallagher casts his vote in the presidential election with his wife Trish and son, Bobby, 5, at the Charlesland Sports and Recreation centre in Greystones. Pic credit; Damien Eagers / INM / Facebook Twitter Email Whatsapp Sean Gallagher casts his vote in the presidential election with his wife Trish and son, Bobby, 5, at the Charlesland Sports and Recreation centre in Greystones. Pic credit; Damien Eagers / INM Meeting voters in Dublin, Mr Casey said he will step down after five years to trigger an election as he believes the seven-year term is too long, but will run again. "The date of the next presidential election will be the date of the county council elections. I will be resigning - May 23, 2024. I'll be stepping down at the appropriate time, whenever the appropriate notice is," he said. Meanwhile, businessman Sean Gallagher called for broadcasters to review the way in which the presidential debates are run, branding them a "farce". He said the debates should be modernised to allow a portion devoted to the vision of the candidate and a separate portion for questions to the candidates "rather than trying to create a gladiatorial environment". Expand Close President Michael D Higgins casts his vote with his wife Sabina for the Presidential Election at St Marys Hospital, Phoenix Park this morning. Photo: Tony Gavin / Facebook Twitter Email Whatsapp President Michael D Higgins casts his vote with his wife Sabina for the Presidential Election at St Marys Hospital, Phoenix Park this morning. Photo: Tony Gavin Joan Freeman said she had not thought beyond the results of this election when asked about her political future, adding she is "thrilled" with her campaign. Mr Higgins's campaign warned against complacency in an email to supporters. Expand Close Gavin Duffy is pictured casting his vote (Photo: Mark Condren) / Facebook Twitter Email Whatsapp Gavin Duffy is pictured casting his vote (Photo: Mark Condren) Meanwhile, in his final statement Gavin Duffy cited Brexit, climate change and issues around social media among the challenges facing Ireland. For her part, Sinn Fein's Liadh Ni Riada said she pledged to be a president who would lead the conversation about a united Ireland. Expand Close The ballot paper for the Presidential Election at St Marys Hospital, Phoenix Park this morning. Photo: Tony Gavin / Facebook Twitter Email Whatsapp The ballot paper for the Presidential Election at St Marys Hospital, Phoenix Park this morning. Photo: Tony Gavin Voting got under way on the 11 occupied islands yesterday. Islanders traditionally vote one day ahead of the rest of the country to ensure there is no delay in transferring the ballot boxes to the mainland. In total there are 2,601 islanders eligible to vote. Voting today? Why there's no need to be confused by the process for either ballot Irish citizens can vote at the presidential election and blasphemy referendum today. More than 3.2 million people are eligible to cast their ballots. Polling stations will be open between 7am and 10pm and polling cards have been issued to all voters. You don't need a polling card to vote but if you haven't received one, you should contact your local authority and check that you are on the register. The usual rules will apply while voting, bring identification with you and no political badges or clothing are allowed. Selfies with your ballots are strictly prohibited. You will receive two ballots at the polling station. Presidential Election There is only one position up for grabs here, and the electoral system is a variant of the PR-STV used at all other elections. The ballot will list the six candidates in alphabetical order accompanied by photos. On this occasion, none of the candidates will have party affiliations. Liadh Ni Riada is contesting the election for Sinn Fein but has chosen not to use her party logo. Michael D Higgins was the Labour Party candidate in 2011, but he resigned his party membership upon election and on this occasion he used a specific clause in the Constitution that allows a sitting president to nominate themselves. You should rank the candidates in order of your preferences. Simply put number '1' next to your preferred candidate and number '2' next to your second preferred candidate and so on. You can rank as many or as few candidates as you like. Some voters may choose to cast just one preference while others like to vote all the way to the end. It is up to each individual voter and there is no right or wrong way. Blasphemy Referendum The referendum is asking voters if they agree with the proposal to remove blasphemy as an offence from the Constitution. Blasphemy is defined as "the action or offence of speaking sacrilegiously about God or sacred things". It was included in the original version of the Constitution in 1937, but the Constitutional Convention recommended it should be removed and the Government proceeded with its recommendation. The campaign has been very quiet as very few people oppose the proposal, but equally many who want to see it removed have not been exercised enough to do much campaigning. The design of all referendum ballots is set out in law and unfortunately the requirements mean that ballots are not that clear for voters. The ballot paper will include the title of the bill proposing to amend the Constitution, in this case the 37th Amendment to the Constitution, and voters will be asked if they agree or disagree with the proposal. If you agree with deleting blasphemy, you should mark a clear X in the Yes box. If you disagree with deleting blasphemy, you should mark a clear X in the No box. Counting When the polls close, all the ballot boxes will be transferred to count centres around the country. Ballot boxes will be opened at 9am on Saturday. First, the presidential election and referendum ballots will be separated, then counting will begin. For the presidential election, all of the number one votes for each candidate will be put into piles and then they will be counted. A candidate must reach a set number of votes, known as the quota, to be elected. The quota is calculated using a formula which includes the number of votes cast and the number of seats available. On this occasion, there is just one seat so it is very straightforward. This could be a very unusual election, the polls suggest that Michael D Higgins may be elected on the first count. His current poll numbers give him support levels between 65pc and 70pc and if the polls translate to votes, it will all be over after the first count. If there is a big surprise and Mr Higgins does not reach the quota on the first count, the candidate with the lowest number of votes will be eliminated and the second preferences on his or her votes will be examined and added to the bundle for the candidate that receives the preference. These number two preferences then have the same weight as a number one. Referendum counting is very straightforward. The ballots are put in Yes and No bundles, counted, and a simple majority applies. - Dr Theresa Reidy is a political scientist at University College Cork All smiles: Peter Casey jokes with Olga Mahon, from Rathmines, and her son Roman (10 months). Photo: Damien Eagers How to spend the last day of this monumentally bizarre presidential campaign? Curled up under a blanket in a darkened room would probably be the first choice for most of us, after suffering months of lofty claptrap and cheap publicity tricks. But for our six lucky ticket holders, the show had to go on. For Michael D Higgins, it was very much business as usual - as he received the Ambassador of Spain, Jose Maria Rodriguez Coso, in a farewell courtesy call at Aras an Uachtarain. But it was a farewell to the ambassador, who has come to the end of his term, rather than to the President. Perhaps. Peter Casey spent his own final day casually campaigning in Dundrum Town Centre with no advisers, no leaflets and no fuss. Instead, his wife Helen and their daughter Alicia popped into the shops as he strolled through the centre, shaking hands with well-wishers. For a man who started as an almost complete unknown in this race, he now attracts a mixture of curious nods and congratulations. Over the course of an hour with the Irish Independent, he met with no disapproval despite being at the centre of a racism row. He repeated his mantra that his controversial claim that Travellers were "basically people camping in someone else's land" is "not racist". "How can you be a racist when the Traveller community are the same race as us?" he said. "That just doesn't make sense. I lived with a guy from Jamaica for three years in university," Casey argued. "I think it's more somebody speaking out. It's nothing to do with the Traveller community." He insisted his pause to consider pulling out of the race was real and largely caused by Leo Varadkar's call for people not to vote for him. An emboldened Casey subsequently said the Taoiseach should "shut his trap" - but, surprisingly, that's the one comment he seemed willing to take back. "That was wrong of me to say that. I will apologise when I meet him. I was just so annoyed and so tired and a bit bad tempered," he said yesterday. There'll be no such apology for Michael D Higgins over his campaign attacks, which even took in the Aras dogs - but Casey conceded he would wish him well if the polls turn out to be accurate. Gavin Duffy was at Manor House School in Dublin's Raheny, while Joan Freeman had a quick trip to Dublin Zoo followed by a visit to Trinity College and a walk on Dun Laoghaire pier. She was in a reflective mood, saying that putting herself forward for election had been "the best decision" of her life. It had been "the most wonderful experience" and had allowed her to see people "at their finest". But she was not at all sorry to see the back of the presidential debates. Freeman said the whole process of electing a president now needs to be looked at "from start to finish". "We're supposed to be voting for a president, not who can be humiliated the most. Not who has the fastest answer on the Constitution," she said. Liadh Ni Riada was out and about in her native Baile Bhuirne, Co Cork. Sean Gallagher made a last foray down Grafton Street in Dublin in a bid to pick up votes, as well as a visit to the DCU Law Society. "One of the sad days for the country was when the Cabinet had come out in force down Grafton Street to make tea to support the President," he claimed, given the extent of the homelessness crisis. "It was a shocking indictment of the Government." Half way down the street, Gallagher met with 'Simon from Donegal' who works for the US Democrats in New York but who had come home to vote. He had watched the debates with his American girlfriend who had been shocked, asking him: "Is this the standard of politics in Ireland?" He planned on giving his number one to Joan Freeman, he said, believing that Michael D Higgins had become "a bit condescending" in the debates. Gemma Fletcher, from Co Offaly, said she was off on holiday and so would not be around to vote - but Sean Gallagher had "grown" on her mother, who would be. "He's a small bit of a change but he's not too radical," she explained. Presiding Officer Marian Roarty and Garda Eamonn McGinley arrive by helicopter with a ballot box for the Irish presidential election, on Tory Island, County Donegal. Photo: Reuters Voting at the Presidential Election and Blasphemy Referendum Irish citizens can vote at the presidential election and blasphemy referendum today. Polling stations will be open between 7am and 10pm and polling cards have been issued to all voters. You don't need a polling card to vote but if you haven't received one, you should contact your local authority and check that you are on the register. The usual rules will apply while voting, bring identification with you and no political badges or clothing are allowed. Selfies with your ballots are strictly prohibited. You will receive two ballots at the polling station. Presidential Election There is only one position up for grabs here, and the electoral system is a variant of the PR-STV used at all other elections. The ballot will list the six candidates in alphabetical order accompanied by photos. On this occasion, none of the candidates will have party affiliations. Liadh Ni Riada is contesting the election for Sinn Fein but has chosen not to use her party logo. Michael D Higgins was the Labour Party candidate in 2011, but he resigned his party membership upon election and on this occasion he used a specific clause in the Constitution that allows a sitting president to nominate themselves. You should rank the candidates in order of your preferences. Simply put number '1' next to your preferred candidate and number '2' next to your second preferred candidate and so on. You can rank as many or as few candidates as you like. Some voters may choose to cast just one preference while others like to vote all the way to the end. It is up to each individual voter and there is no right or wrong way. Blasphemy Referendum The referendum is asking voters if they agree with the proposal to remove blasphemy as an offence from the Constitution. Blasphemy is defined as "the action or offence of speaking sacrilegiously about God or sacred things". It was included in the original version of the Constitution in 1937, but the Constitutional Convention recommended it should be removed and the Government proceeded with its recommendation. The campaign has been very quiet as very few people oppose the proposal, but equally many who want to see it removed have not been exercised enough to do much campaigning. The design of all referendum ballots is set out in law and unfortunately the requirements mean that ballots are not that clear for voters. The ballot paper will include the title of the bill proposing to amend the Constitution, in this case the 37th Amendment to the Constitution, and voters will be asked if they agree or disagree with the proposal. If you agree with deleting blasphemy, you should mark a clear X in the Yes box. If you disagree with deleting blasphemy, you should mark a clear X in the No box. Counting When the polls close, all the ballot boxes will be transferred to count centres around the country. Ballot boxes will be opened at 9am on Saturday. First, the presidential election and referendum ballots will be separated, then counting will begin. For the presidential election, all of the number one votes for each candidate will be put into piles and then they will be counted. A candidate must reach a set number of votes, known as the quota, to be elected. The quota is calculated using a formula which includes the number of votes cast and the number of seats available. On this occasion, there is just one seat so it is very straightforward. This could be a very unusual election, the polls suggest that Michael D Higgins may be elected on the first count. His current poll numbers give him support levels between 65pc and 70pc and if the polls translate to votes, it will all be over after the first count. If there is a big surprise and Mr Higgins does not reach the quota on the first count, the candidate with the lowest number of votes will be eliminated and the second preferences on his or her votes will be examined and added to the bundle for the candidate that receives the preference. These number two preferences then have the same weight as a number one. Referendum counting is very straightforward. The ballots are put in Yes and No bundles, counted, and a simple majority applies. Dr Theresa Reidy is a political scientist at University College Cork Handy excuse: Seamus Murphy has 40 rooms for rent on Airbnb and cant understand the extreme new rules. Photo: Douglas OConnor An Airbnb landlord with 20 properties to rent in the capital has said he doesn't believe the Government's plan to crack down on short-term rentals will solve the housing crisis. Seamus Murphy, who is originally from Co Cavan, has some 40 rooms for rent on the site around Dublin's city centre. He told the Irish Independent how he viewed the Government's move as making Airbnb "a handy excuse" for its lack of action in building new homes. "I won't say that I was shocked, because I knew something was coming, but I was surprised it was this extreme," he said. The new rules, to be implemented in June, target professional Airbnb landlords and will require an application for commercial planning permission to use a property as a short-term let. In areas where there is a high level of housing demand this is unlikely to be granted. "I can't see what the Government is getting at, at all. The real problem is they haven't built homes. They claimed to have built 12,000 homes and this was a lie. "They told us there would be 20,000 homes a year. Where are they? "They're doing this because they have to be seen to be doing something," he told the Irish Independent. He said he worked with four others, who had 10 people working for them, and it was likely these people would lose their jobs. "They are cleaners who are maybe on 30 hours a week. It's not like losing a job for life but they are maybe students supporting themselves on that income," he added. Mr Murphy also spoke on RTE's 'Liveline' yesterday where he said the move would negatively hit the tourism industry. "I suppose it will drive the hotel prices up higher than they are already," he told the show. He said it was ridiculous for Failte Ireland to spend so much money promoting Ireland as a tourist destination, only for a step like this to be taken by the Government. Once upon a time - or, earlier this week, to be exact - feminism and fantasy collided when actor Kirsten Bell spoke about her concerns over the message that fairytales send to impressionable girls. The Good Place star said that when she reads Snow White to her young daughters, she makes sure to point out that it's not ok to take food from strangers or to kiss someone while they slumber. Meanwhile, fellow star Kiera Knightley said she had banned her three-year-old from watching films like Cinderella and The Little Mermaid because both the heroines wait around to be rescued by a dashing prince. There was a predictable backlash to the comments online, with a lot of criticism directed at Bell, who has herself voiced a Disney princess, playing Anna in Frozen. How the literal 'sisters are doing it for themselves' theme of that movie escaped anyone is beyond me, but 'haters gonna hate' as the millennials say. Besides, Bell and Knightley have played enough strong women between them to speak out on feminist issues without looking like the #Time's Up bandwagon has just driven by. It strikes me as curious, however, that we don't want our little girls dreaming of growing up to be a princess in a big dress on the arm of a handsome prince, but it's ok for them to aspire to be a movie star in a big dress on the arm of a handsome date. (Or even an actual prince in the case of Meghan Markle.) To me, that's just the princess fantasy by another name, and it's one I don't think we ever get over. It would certainly explain the fascination with the royal wedding this summer, and new excitement over the impending royal baby. It would also go some way towards explaining the sight of grown women fangirling (thanks again millennials) over Nigella Lawson when she visited Dublin this week. The celebrity chef was at the National Concert Hall on Monday night for a public conversation to celebrate 20 years since the release of her How To Eat cookbook. The largely female audience was palpably excited to see the object of their admiration in the flesh - squeals of "I love Nigella" echoed around the building. Expand Close Meghan, Duchess of Sussex talks with students during a visit to Tupou College in Tonga on October 26, 2018 / Facebook Twitter Email Whatsapp Meghan, Duchess of Sussex talks with students during a visit to Tupou College in Tonga on October 26, 2018 When the woman of the moment appeared, she looked tall and disappointingly slim in a bright pink floral dress that stopped below the knee, her hair in its customary gentle curl. (Yes, I know it's not very sisterly of me to comment on another woman's weight, but I always preferred curvy Nigella.) And her hands, oh her hands! As she spoke, they danced a mesmerising aerial ballet, leaving me shocked when she professed to not possessing great dexterity. Though the questioning could have been juicier, Nigella was eloquent and entertaining, studding her culinary chronicles with jokey asides about being an uncool teenager and dreading food without butter. She admitted to feeling torn about judging on Australian Masterchef when she doesn't think food should be a competitive sport, and insisted that while television might make her look glamorous, she doesn't adopt a public 'persona'. When she laughed about the freezer being the place that good food goes to die, there was a ripple of delighted recognition from the audience - I do that too! As she spoke, I found myself wondering what it is that makes an Irish audience connect with someone like Nigella Lawson (beyond the fact that she'd told us, to rather cringey applause, that she'd just been converted to a cheese and onion fan by a packet of Tayto). After all, she's the kind of woman who says "one" instead of "I"; the kind of woman who flashes a crimson Louboutin sole when she crosses her legs; the kind of woman who runs her own business empire but still gets home to cook for her kids; the kind of woman who eats for a living but has a tiny waist; the kind of woman who comes back from a cocaine scandal and an ugly divorce by appearing on the cover of Vogue; the kind of woman who professes to be a mess but still looks perfect. Video of the Day She's the kind of rarified woman the rest of us 'normal' women should hate, but instead dream of being in a big dress, with optional handsome date, who lives happily ever after. It's the princess fantasy for grown-ups - and she's even already got the title. The princess may have had her day, now we're in the reign of the goddess. Britain's Prince Harry and his wife Meghan, Duchess of Sussex arrive for their farewell ceremony at Nadi airport on October 25, 2018 Britain's Prince Harry and Meghan, Duchess of Sussex, flanked by Tonga's Princess Angelika Latufuipeka, arrive at Fua'amotu airport on the main island Tongatapu in Tonga October 25, 2018. REUTERS/Phil Noble Prince Harry, Duke of Sussex and Meghan, Duchess of Sussex attend the Unveiling of the Labalaba Statue Meghan, Duchess of Sussex looking straight to camera on October 25, 2018 in Suva, Fiji The Duke and Duchess of Sussex attend an official welcome at Consular House in Tonga on the first day of their visit to the country The Duke and Duchess of Sussex attend an official welcome at Consular House in Tonga on the first day of their visit to the country Irish designer Don O'Neill was asked to leave a little extra seam allowance in the dress he created for Meghan Markle - he immediately guessed why, but didn't reveal the secret at the time. The Kerryman has been like a hatching hen for the last week in New York, scanning the news and social media "morning, noon and night" to see if Meghan Markle had worn the Theia ivory column gown he had dispatched to her, not once but twice. Finally, it happened yesterday when the Duchess of Sussex stepped out in Tonga wearing Don's super elegant heavy crepe column gown with jewel neckline, side slit and flanged extended shoulders accentuated with hand-embroidered appliques of crystals and micro glass beads. "I can't believe it," said Don at his Brooklyn home after hearing the news. Expand Close The Duke and Duchess of Sussex attend an official welcome at Consular House in Tonga on the first day of their visit to the country / Facebook Twitter Email Whatsapp The Duke and Duchess of Sussex attend an official welcome at Consular House in Tonga on the first day of their visit to the country It was an emotional 6.30am call as the Ballyheigue man revealed the drama, passion and clock-watching that went into fulfilling his first royal commission. By the time it had been made, Don knew, or at least suspected with good reason, that the Duchess of Sussex was pregnant before the rest of the world was told. The stunning gown actually started out its fashion life as a turquoise dress in Don's recent Pre-Fall Theia collection. "Meghan saw it and loved it. I heard from her stylist and they asked if I could make it in ivory so I did and rushed it to Kensington Palace," he told the Irish Independent. "My spring summer 2019 bridal show was just a week away but we stopped everything in my sample room and immediately went to work on the gown." It was completed in two days and shipped and Don thought that was it until a second message came through. The Duchess of Sussex loved his dress but as the stylist, her best friend Jessica Mulroney, explained there was "a caveat". "The duchess loved the dress but they asked could I make it again in exactly the same size but with an extra seam allowance." Don says he knew immediately why this was required "but mum's the word, and with less than one week to my bridal show, all hands were on deck once more and we remade the gown. I literally had to run down Broadway that Friday night to catch the UPS truck, making it with just two minutes to spare." Expand Close Britain's Prince Harry and his wife Meghan, Duchess of Sussex arrive for their farewell ceremony at Nadi airport on October 25, 2018 / Facebook Twitter Email Whatsapp Britain's Prince Harry and his wife Meghan, Duchess of Sussex arrive for their farewell ceremony at Nadi airport on October 25, 2018 Video of the Day It's more than 30 years since Don got into fashion by accident, securing a place at a Dublin fashion college after winning an Irish Independent competition. Yesterday he became the first Irish designer to dress Meghan, the world's most photographed woman. The good news is the feminine gown will be available for pre-order for $995 (around 875) on the TheiaCouture.com website. His exclusive stockist in Ireland is Costume on Dublin's Castle Market and his bridalwear is stocked in Folkster in Co Kilkenny. At dinner with him in New York last May, Don spoke about how tough the fashion industry is becoming with major fashion stores closing in America and gown rental firms multiplying. However, having Meghan as a client is a serious feather in his cap and will bring invaluable international exposure. Souleman Yusph was arrested in early October by Assyrian militias working for the Kurdish administration over his articles slamming attempts to close the Christian schools. During captivity, he suffered physical and psychological abuse. Despite the intimidation, he plans to continue his work. He is also disappointed by the actions of the United States and the international community in Syria. Hasakah (AsiaNews) Souleman Yusph, a Christian journalist and researcher specialising in minority issues, hails from Qamishli, a town in the Kurdish-controlled north-eastern region of Syria. He spoke to AsiaNews about his disappointment vis-a-vis the indifference of the West, especially the United States, who could exert pressure to defend Christians in Syria but instead shows that it does not care about them and their future. He also expressed fear of ending up again in the crosshairs of Kurdish authorities and their Christian ally, which arrested and held him for several days, torturing him, only because he had reported on abuses and violations. Released after a few days of detention, during which he came to realise the value and importance of personal and other freedoms, he is highly critical of a nation and a people who have become used to the role of victims of "tyranny, suppression and rejection of others". Yet, he plans to "continue to write" and account for any abuse or violation against Christians, starting precisely from the threatened closure of schools in the Kurdish-controlled areas. What follows is an interview he gave AsiaNews: Who is behind your arrest and did you fear for your life? I was arrested by members of Sutoro, the Syriac Security Office, the police force of the Syrian Union Party (SUP), which joined the so-called Democratic Federation of Northern Syria (Syrian Kurdistan) in the Jazeera region. The agents stormed my home as if they were raiding a terrorist den. They searched the house and confiscated computers, mobile phones, compact discs and USB sticks. They gagged me and drove me 200 km away from Qamishli, my hometown, to one of the Syriac Military Forces training camps, armed by the SUP. They handcuffed me, tortured me a bit with an electric stick. The room was warm and poorly ventilated. I spent the first night with bugs as my only companions, isolated from the outer world. I felt persecuted and humiliated just for expressing my thoughts. In my cell, I understood the value of freedom. On what basis were you detained? I was arrested on charges that I deliberately offended their party, the Syrian Union, in my writings and that I was driven by other parties to do so. I firmly denied the allegations during the interrogation. All I wrote comes under the framework of freedom opinion and expression about the positions and practices of the SUP regarding critical issues concerning issues that touch the Assyrian people, such as Assyrian schools in the Jazeera region. Did you fear for your life? What did you think about during captivity? I did live in real horror when they pulled me out of the car into the detention centre, when I was given electric shocks, when I was accused of forming terrorist groups and dealing ties with Daesh (Islamic State), and when they threatened to kill me. At those moments I felt my life was near its end. I had many terrible thoughts. I thought about my family, their suffering and the panic they must have felt when the militiamen attacked my house, their anxiety over my fate. My detention by Christian Syriac militia, part of the Kurdish authority, made me realise that the problem is not the Syrian regime that has governed the country for decades, but a question rooted in the Syrian mindset, of people born and raised in a culture of tyranny, suppression and rejection of others. Were you afraid that your work could put you in danger? As a long-time opponent of the Syrian regime, I expected the regimes security forces in Qamishli to raid my house and detain me. I would never have expected, however, to be detained by an Assyrian Syriac Christian party, which is supposed to back and protect Assyrian activists and dissidents. Will you continue your job as before or are you afraid of new attacks? For sure, I will continue [to write] the way I used to before my arrest. I will write to speak out regarding nationalist and national issues that matter to us as Assyrians and as Syrians, without offending any party or authority. The solidarity campaigns during my detention have exceeded all my expectations, strengthened my self-confidence and provided me with even greater moral strength and motivation to write. What is the situation of schools and Christians in the Kurdish areas? Schools are threatened with closure. They are between the rock of Syrias Arabist regime and the hard place of the Kurdish authority. The Kurds are trying to impose their curriculum, unrecognised by any international or local authority, by force in all schools under their control. On the other hand, the regime threatens to withdraw the license from schools that do not use the curriculum of the Syrian Ministry of Education. I dont claim that that Kurdish authorities wants to drive Assyrians and Christians (and non-Christians) out of the areas under their control. However, some of their wrong policies and practices encourage Christians (and others) to leave. The future of Assyrian schools, the future of Assyrians and all the Christians in these regions is conditioned by developments in the Syrian crisis and the nature of the solutions that will be adopted. Do you feel abandoned by the international community and by the West in particular? The Kurdish-controlled Jazeera region of Syria is an area under American influence. The Americans can pressure and ask their Kurdish partners to spare Assyrians and Christians the conflicts and not harm their private schools. However, the Americans have not done so because they dont care about Assyrians and Christians and their future. The Christians of Syria, and of the East in general, have long been disappointed by the behaviour of the West and the international community. The response to the plight of Christians in Syria should not be limited to some humanitarian aid. The question is to be or not to be. Christians need those who can guarantee their security and protection. US authorities have detained a man in connection with the mail bombs scare that has widened to 12 suspicious packages, officials said. Three law enforcement officials identified the man as Cesar Sayoc, 56, of Aventura, Florida. Expand Close Cesar Sayoc (Broward County Sheriffs Office/AP) / Facebook Twitter Email Whatsapp Cesar Sayoc (Broward County Sheriffs Office/AP) Video from television news helicopters showed federal agents and police examining a white van in the car park of a business in Plantation, Florida. The van had several stickers on the windows, including American flags. Earlier on Friday, authorities said suspicious packages addressed to New Jersey senator Cory Booker and former National Intelligence director James Clapper both similar to those containing pipe bombs sent to other prominent critics of President Donald Trump had been intercepted. The discoveries further spurred a coast-to-coast investigation as officials scramble to locate a culprit and possible motive amid questions about whether new packages were being sent or were simply surfacing after a period in the mail system. Expand Close FBI agents cover the van (WPLG-TV/AP) / Facebook Twitter Email Whatsapp FBI agents cover the van (WPLG-TV/AP) The devices have targeted well-known Democrats including former president Barack Obama, ex-vice president Joe Biden, Hillary Clinton and former attorney general Eric Holder. Mr Trump said later that the suspect will be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law, and added: We must never allow political violence to take root in America. Expand Close Cory Booker, left (Charlie Neibergall/AP) / Facebook Twitter Email Whatsapp Cory Booker, left (Charlie Neibergall/AP) The FBI said the package to Mr Booker was intercepted in Florida, and one discovered at a Manhattan postal facility was addressed to Mr Clapper at CNNs address. An earlier package had been sent to former Obama CIA director John Brennan care of CNN in New York. Attorney general Jeff Sessions said the Justice Department was dedicating every available resource to the investigation, and I can tell you this: we will find the person or persons responsible. We will bring them to justice. Mr Trump, on the other hand, earlier complained that this bomb stuff was taking attention away from upcoming elections and claimed critics were wrongly blaming him and his heated rhetoric. Expand Close Donald Trump speaks about the arrest in the mail bomb scare (Andrew Harnik/AP) / Facebook Twitter Email Whatsapp Donald Trump speaks about the arrest in the mail bomb scare (Andrew Harnik/AP) Investigators are analysing the crude devices to reveal whether they were intended to detonate or simply sow fear just before election day on November 6. Law enforcement officials said the devices, containing timers and batteries, were not rigged to explode on opening, but they were uncertain whether the devices were poorly designed or never intended to cause physical harm. Homeland Security secretary Kirstjen Nielsen acknowledged that some of packages originated in Florida. One official said investigators homed in on a postal facility in Opa-locka, where they believe some packages originated. The package addressed to Mr Booker was found during an oversight search of that facility, according to a law enforcement official. Most of those targeted were past or present US officials, but others were sent to actor Robert De Niro and billionaire George Soros. The bombs have been sent across the country from New York, Delaware and Washington DC to Florida and California, where Democratic representative Maxine Waters was targeted. They bore the return address of Florida representative Debbie Wasserman Schultz, the former chairwoman of the Democratic National Committee. The common thread among the targets was obvious: their critical words for Mr Trump and his frequent criticism in return. Expand Close Inspectors at a postal facility in Opa-locka (Wilfredo Lee/AP) / Facebook Twitter Email Whatsapp Inspectors at a postal facility in Opa-locka (Wilfredo Lee/AP) The president claimed he was being blamed for the mail bombs, complaining in a tweet: Funny how lowly rated CNN, and others, can criticize me at will, even blaming me for the current spate of Bombs and ridiculously comparing this to September 11th and the Oklahoma City bombing, yet when I criticize them they go wild and scream, its just not Presidential!' The package to Mr Clapper was addressed to him at CNNs Manhattan address. The frequent Trump critic told CNN he was not surprised to be targeted and that he considered the actions definitely domestic terrorism. The devices were packaged in manila envelopes and carried US postage stamps. They are being examined by technicians at the FBIs forensic lab in Quantico, Virginia. Expand Close Donald Trump at a rally in Wisconsin (Mike Roemer/AP) / Facebook Twitter Email Whatsapp Donald Trump at a rally in Wisconsin (Mike Roemer/AP) The packages stoked nationwide tensions ahead of the elections to determine control of Congress a campaign both major political parties have described in near-apocalyptic terms. Politicians from both parties used the threats to condemn a toxic political climate and to lay blame. Mr Trump, in a tweet on Thursday, blamed the Mainstream Media for the anger in society. Mr Brennan responded, tweeting that the president should stop blaming others. Look in the mirror. Stop blaming others. Look in the mirror. Your inflammatory rhetoric, insults, lies, & encouragement of physical violence are disgraceful. Clean up your act....try to act Presidential. The American people deserve much better. BTW, your critics will not be intimidated into silence. https://t.co/cS5qNiuU7o John O. Brennan (@JohnBrennan) October 25, 2018 The bombs are about 6in long and packed with powder and broken glass, according to a law enforcement official who viewed X-ray images. The official said the devices were made from PVC pipe and covered with black tape. The first bomb discovered was delivered on Monday to the suburban New York compound of Mr Soros, a major contributor to Democratic causes, who has called Mr Trumps presidency dangerous. A woman armed with a kitchen knife attacked children at the gate of a kindergarten in China's southwestern city of Chongqing on Friday, injuring 14 of them, police said. The 39-year-old, identified only by her surname Liu, launched the attack as children returned from morning exercises about 9:30 a.m. (0130 GMT), police said on their official account on China's Twitter-like Weibo. The victims were taken to hospital while guards and staff at the kindergarten restrained the attacker, said the police, adding that they were investigating. The statement did not give possible motives for the attack. Violent crime is rare in China compared with many other countries, especially in major cities where security is tight, but there has been a series of knife and axe attacks in recent years, many targeting children. Such attacks are often blamed on people with mental illness or who have personal grievances. Knives are most commonly used, because gun controls are extremely strict in China. In September, China executed a man convicted of killing nine students and injuring 11 in a knife attack at a middle school in the central province of Shaanxi. British Airways owner International Airlines Group (IAG) has said profits were hit by higher fuel costs in the third quarter as it continues to grapple with the fallout from a major cyber attack. On a pre-tax basis, profits fell 0.4% to 1.42 billion euros (1.26 billion) in the three months to September. Operating profit, meanwhile, grew 0.7% to 1.46 billion euros (1.29 billion) in the period, while total revenue rose 8.5% to 7.14 billion euros (6.32 billion). The figures come as fuel unit costs for the third quarter rose 14.3%, or 15% at constant currency. Airline profits have come under pressure from the increase in oil prices this year, with the price of a barrel of Brent crude rising from around 67 US dollars to 76 US dollars today. Profit was also dragged down by 111 million euros (98.3 million) in foreign exchange impact, IAG said. Expand Close IAG chief executive Willie Walsh (Niall Carson/PA) / Facebook Twitter Email Whatsapp IAG chief executive Willie Walsh (Niall Carson/PA) IAG boss Willie Walsh said: Were reporting a good quarter-three performance. These were strong results despite significant fuel cost and foreign exchange headwinds. At constant currency, our passenger unit revenue increased by 2.4% while non-fuel unit costs went down 0.7%. Were pleased to announce an interim dividend of 14.5 euro cents (12.8p) per share and this week we completed our second 500 million euro (442.8 million) share buy-back programme. The company, which also owns Aer Lingus, Vueling and Iberia, expects underlying operating profit for the full year to increase by 200 million euros (177.1 million). Shares in IAG rose by 3% in morning trade to 604.8p. George Salmon, equity analyst at Hargreaves Lansdown, said: There are a few encouraging points in IAGs results. Not only is the group adding more flights, its managing to fill more seats on its planes while also getting a benefit from pricing. Thats helping the top line grow smoothly. Take out the impact of higher fuel prices and unfavourable currency moves, and it becomes clear IAG is doing some pretty impressive work. Nonetheless, it shouldnt be forgotten business and leisure travel are both sensitive to the fortunes of the wider economy. IAG remains vulnerable to any economic downturn on the back of a disorderly Brexit. The results come a day after IAG said that 185,000 further customers may had their personal details compromised during a cyber attack. The group said in a stock exchange announcement on Thursday that,as part of an investigation into a cyber breach that took place earlier this year, it is contacting two groups of customers not previously notified. In September, thousands of BA customers had to cancel their credit cards after the airline admitted that a 15-day data hack had compromised 380,000 payments, prompting a criminal inquiry led by specialist cyber officers from the National Crime Agency (NCA). A new opt-out system for organ donation which could save hundreds of lives each year has moved a step closer to becoming law in the UK. Under the plans, adults will be presumed to be organ donors unless they have specifically recorded their decision not to be. The British government has estimated that such a scheme would save up to 700 lives each year. The measures, put forward in the Organ Donation (Deemed Consent) Bill, follow on from a high profile campaign by 10-year-old Max Johnson, who was saved by a heart transplant and subsequently demanded a change in the law. UK Labour MP Dan Jarvis, who spoke in support of the Private Members' Bill, said: "This is a Bill which will save lives, but it is important to note that of all the people who died in the UK last year only about 1PC died in circumstances that would have made a donation possible. "This means that even though hundreds of thousands of people across the country are registered as potential donors, only a small handful will ever be in a situation that would allow a donation to take place. "This is one of the main reasons why today in the UK there are thousands of people waiting for an organ donation and why every year hundreds of people will die waiting. "This loss of life is devastating but it is not inevitable." He added: "I believe that moving to an opt-out system for organ donation, like the one they have in Wales, will add thousands of names to the donor register, meaning that once the Bill is passed hundreds of lives could be saved. "This is not about the state taking control of people's organs or shaming people into donating. If people do want to opt-out that is absolutely fine and I am entirely respectful of any decision of any one for whatever reason so to do, no questions will be asked and there will be no hard feelings." The Bill cleared the UK Commons after receiving its third reading and will undergo further scrutiny in the Lords at a later date. The measures are expected to come into effect in England in spring 2020 - because the timetable for its introduction will allow for a year of "transition" to the new law. The British government has said it would also encourage people to discuss, with their families, the issue of whether they would want to be a donor in the event of their death. UK health minister Jackie Doyle-Price praised backbench MPs for bringing the legislation forward and said it was something "that will save lives". Ms Doyle-Price said: "I am so proud that I have been able to play my part in taking this Bill forward. "It really has been a fantastic piece of cross-party working to be frank, it's made it quick and speedy as a consequence and we've all been focused on what we're trying to achieve here which is to save more lives." She added that the measures would be in place "very speedily" once the Bill had achieved Royal Assent. The woman who was the victim of a racist tirade on a Ryanair flight has rejected an apology from the passenger concerned because he denied being racist. David Mesher apologised publicly for the first time, in an interview aired on Friday, over his treatment of Delsie Gayle, saying he lost his temper "a bit". Footage showed him calling the 77-year-old widow an "ugly black bastard" and telling her "Don't speak to me in a foreign language, you stupid ugly cow". Mr Mesher, who has been spoken to by police in Birmingham, where he lives, apologised for the first time in the interview aired a week after the incident. He told ITV's Good Morning Britain that the dispute began after he asked Ms Gayle to move from her seat but "she didn't seem to want to get up". "I probably lost my temper a bit and ordered her to get up," he said, adding that he "absolutely" regrets his behaviour. "I'm not a racist person by any means and it's just a fit of temper at the time, I think," he continued. "I apologise for all the distress you've had there and since." But Ms Gayle and her daughter, Carol Gayle, rejected the apology over the language used on the plane from Barcelona to London on October 19. Asked if she accepts the apology, Delsie Gayle said: "I don't think so. You must forget and forgive but it's going to take a long time for me to get over what he has done to me." Her daughter added: "He says he wasn't racist - he wouldn't be saying words like that if he wasn't racist." They also renewed their criticism of Ryanair, saying they are still yet to hear from the budget airline, branding its statement saying staff had apologised "lies". Officers from West Midlands Police assisted Essex Police, who are leading the investigation, by speaking to Mr Mesher in his sheltered accommodation in Yardley Wood on Thursday. The incident took place on the tarmac of Barcelona Airport before the plane departed for Stansted, so UK police have said officers will pass the investigation to Spanish authorities. Essex Police said: "There are agreed national protocols to follow when incidents are reported to have happened in another country. As such, we will be conducting an investigation to submit to the Spanish authorities in due course." Delsie Gayle has spoken about how "depressed" she felt about the tirade, adding: "I haven't done anything to attack him, it's because of the colour of my skin I was abused like that." Ryanair issued a statement to media today to "clarify facts" about their communication with the Mr Mesher and Ms Gayle following the incident. Not naming either of the passengers due to data protection, the airline said they wrote to both on the Sunday morning once they were made aware of the incident. A spokesperson for the airline said Ryanair "only became aware of this video late on Sat 20th Oct, which showed that racist abuse had taken place during a verbal argument between two passengers seated adjacent to each other during the boarding of this flight on Fri 19th". They continued; "Ryanair immediately reported this video, and the racist abuse, to the Essex Police in Stansted Airport at 9am on Sun 21st Oct. We provided the Police with a copy of the video, and relevant details of the two passengers involved. "These prompt actions disprove the false claims that Ryanair did not respond quickly or appropriately to this video." They added that the Spanish cabin crew were aware of an argument between these two passengers during the boarding process, but were not aware of, as they were not present when, racist comments that were made by the male passenger towards the female passenger. They said Ryanair did not become aware of the content of the video until late Saturday evening when it began to go viral online. They stated that the crew present followed company procedure. Ryanairs Robin Kiely said: "We again extend our very sincere apologies to this passenger for the regrettable, and unacceptable remarks that were made to her by an adjacent passenger, and we believe that by reporting this matter immediately to the Essex Police and by apologising in writing to this customer early on Sunday morning, Ryanair treated it with the urgency and seriousness it warranted. "We trust that this statement will address the inaccurate media coverage of this incident over recent days, and that the legal rights of both passengers will be respected, while the Police services in Essex and Barcelona conduct their investigation of this matter, with Ryanairs full cooperation and assistance." Read More Additonal reporting by PA George Papadopoulos, the former Trump campaign adviser who pleaded guilty in special counsel Robert Muellers probe, is asking for immunity to give evidence before the Senate intelligence committee. Two people familiar with the negotiations said Papadopoulos has asked for the immunity as the committee seeks a closed-door interview with him. The committee is investigating Russian interference in the 2016 presidential election. It is unclear why Papadopoulos wants immunity after he was already sentenced to two weeks in prison for lying to the FBI about his contacts with Russian intermediaries during the campaign, but he has spent many nights posting on Twitter, along with his wife, venting anger about the FBI and insisting he was framed by the government. Cant discuss my testimony, but after todays hearing, this scandal is much worse than anyone can imagine. George Papadopoulos (@GeorgePapa19) October 26, 2018 Papadopoulos appeared on Capitol Hill on Thursday for a closed-door interview with Republicans in the House who are investigating what they say is bias at the Justice Department. He did not receive immunity for that interview. Republicans left the interview saying he had reinforced their belief that the FBI and Justice Department were biased against President Trump when they started the Russia investigation. Papadopoulos said in a TV interview on Friday that he learned new information in the meeting and is considering withdrawing his guilty plea. George Papadopoulos: If I end up deciding to fight this, I would be doing it more so to assure that this precedent doesnt affect a future American who might join a presidential campaign or anyone for that matter. pic.twitter.com/6ZyGzdnd8d Fox News (@FoxNews) October 26, 2018 It is unlikely that he would be able to do that. Federal law generally does not allow defendants to withdraw a guilty plea after sentencing without proof of some overriding injustice or new evidence. A lawyer for Papadopoulos would not comment specifically on his request for immunity. There are a number of options on the table right now and we are evaluating all of them closely, said Caroline Polisi. Republicans said they learned new facts from Papadopoulos but would not detail what they were. They repeated their claims, echoed by Mr Trump, that the Justice Department made mistakes in 2016 as it cleared Democrat Hillary Clinton in an investigation of her emails and started a probe of Mr Trumps Russia ties. These facts continue to lend themselves to the narrative that there were folks in the Obama FBI and Justice Department that prejudged Hillary Clintons innocence, and prejudged Donald Trumps guilt or involvement with the Russian government and potential collusion, said representative John Ratcliffe, who attended the interview. Papadopoulos, who served as a foreign policy adviser to Mr Trumps campaign, has been a central figure in the probe dating back before Mr Muellers May 2017 appointment. He was the first person to plead guilty in the probe and the first Trump campaign adviser to be sentenced. His case was also the first to detail a member of the Trump campaign having knowledge of Russian efforts to interfere in the 2016 presidential election while it was ongoing. According to a sweeping indictment, Russian intelligence had stolen emails from Mrs Clintons campaign and other Democratic groups by April 2016, the same month Papadopoulos was told by a professor, Joseph Mifsud, that Russian officials had told him they had dirt on Mrs Clinton in the form of thousands of emails. According to a New York Times report last year, Papadopoulos then told an Australian diplomat, Alexander Downer, who tipped off the FBI. Papadopoulos later lied about those contacts. He told a judge during sentencing that he was deeply embarrassed and ashamed of his lies. An activist lights a candle during a candlelight vigil for Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi outside the consulate (AP) The son of murdered journalist Jamal Khashoggi has left Saudi Arabia after the kingdom revoked a travel ban, allowing him to come to the United States. The move is the latest event in the saga of the Saudi writer and dissident whose macabre killing earlier this month at the Saudi consulate in Istanbul shocked the world. US state department spokesman Robert Palladino said Washington welcomed the decision to have Salah Khashoggi and his family leave Saudi Arabia. His destination has not been disclosed, but his late father lived in the Washington area. Expand Close A vigil for Jamal Khashoggi in Istanbul (AP) / Facebook Twitter Email Whatsapp A vigil for Jamal Khashoggi in Istanbul (AP) Mr Palladino said US secretary of state Mike Pompeo had discussed Jamal Khashoggis son during his recent visit to Riyadh and made it clear to Saudi leaders that Washington wanted him free to leave the kingdom. We are pleased that he is now able to do so, Mr Palladino said. Saudi media had showed images of a meeting earlier this week between Mr Khashoggis son and Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, who reportedly expressed his condolences. Mr Palladino also said Mr Pompeo attended a briefing on the former Washington Post writers death by CIA director Gina Haspel, following her return from Turkey. Expand Close Mr Khashoggi was killed in the Saudi consulate in Istanbul on October 2 (AP) / Facebook Twitter Email Whatsapp Mr Khashoggi was killed in the Saudi consulate in Istanbul on October 2 (AP) The developments came after the kingdom cited evidence showing Mr Khashoggis killing was premeditated, changing its story again to try to ease international outrage over the death of a prominent critic of Crown Prince Mohammed. The announcement contradicted an earlier Saudi assertion that rogue officials from the kingdom had killed Mr Khashoggi by mistake in a brawl inside their Istanbul consulate. That assertion, in turn, backtracked from an initial statement that Saudi authorities knew nothing about what happened to the columnist for The Washington Post, who vanished after entering the consulate October 2. The shifting explanations indicate Saudi Arabia is scrambling for a way out of the crisis that has enveloped the worlds largest oil exporter and a major US ally in the Middle East. However, a solution seems a long way off, partly because of deepening scepticism in Turkey and elsewhere that the brazen crime could have been carried out without the knowledge of Prince Mohammed, the heir apparent to King Salman. Expand Close An activist wearing a mask depicting Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman (AP) / Facebook Twitter Email Whatsapp An activist wearing a mask depicting Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman (AP) At a conference in Riyadh, the crown prince said the killing was a heinous crime that cannot be justified and warned against any efforts to manipulate the crisis and drive a wedge between Saudi Arabia and Turkey, which are regional rivals but also diplomatic and business partners. On Thursday, Prince Mohammed attended the first meeting of a committee aiming to restructure the kingdoms intelligence services after the killing of Mr Khashoggi, the state-run Saudi Press Agency said. Mr Khashoggis death has derailed the powerful princes campaign to project a modern image of the ultra-conservative country, instead highlighting the brutal lengths to which some top officials in the government have gone to silence its critics. Mr Khashoggi, who lived in self-imposed exile in the United States for nearly a year before his death, had written critically of Prince Mohammeds crackdown on dissent. Expand Close Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman (AP) / Facebook Twitter Email Whatsapp Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman (AP) A statement by Saudi attorney general Saud al-Mojeb attributed the latest findings of a joint Turkish-Saudi investigation to information from Turkish counterparts. The evidence of Turkish investigators indicates that the suspects in the incident had committed their act with a premeditated intention, the Saudi statement said. After the journalist disappeared, Saudi Arabia initially insisted Mr Khashoggi had walked out of the consulate after visiting the building. It later dropped that account for a new one, saying it had detained 18 people for what it described as an accidental killing during a fistfight. What US president Donald Trump called one of the worst cover-ups in the history of cover-ups was revealed to the world through information leaks from Turkey, including references to purported audio recordings of the killing and security camera footage of Saudi officials who were involved as they moved around Istanbul. Saudi officials said that the kingdom sent a team to Turkey which included a forensics expert and a member whose job was to dress in the 59-year-old writers clothes and pretend to be him even though they were insisting as late as Tuesday that Mr Khashoggis death was an accident. Activists protesting against the killing of Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi outside Saudi Arabias consulate in Istanbul (AP) Saudi Arabia has said evidence shows that the killing of journalist Jamal Khashoggi was premeditated. The Saudi prosecutors cited Turkish evidence that the killing was planned, contradicting a Saudi assertion just days ago that rogue officials from the kingdom killed him by mistake in a brawl inside their Istanbul consulate. That earlier assertion, in turn, backtracked from an initial statement that Saudi authorities knew nothing about what happened to the columnist for The Washington Post, who vanished after entering the consulate on October 2. Expand Close A vigil for Jamal Khashoggi (AP) / Facebook Twitter Email Whatsapp A vigil for Jamal Khashoggi (AP) At a conference in Riyadh on Wednesday, Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman said the killing was a heinous crime that cannot be justified and warned against any efforts to manipulate the crisis and drive a wedge between Saudi Arabia and Turkey, which are regional rivals but also diplomatic and business partners. On Thursday, Prince Mohammed attended the first meeting of a committee aiming to restructure the kingdoms intelligence services after the killing of Mr Khashoggi, the state-run Saudi Press Agency said. Mr Khashoggi, who lived in self-imposed exile in the United States for nearly a year before his death, had written critically of Prince Mohammeds crackdown on dissent. A statement by Saudi Attorney General Saud al-Mojeb attributed the latest findings of a joint Turkish-Saudi investigation to information from Turkish counterparts. Expand Close Mr Khashoggi was killed after going to the consulate on October 2 to pick up paperwork ahead of his wedding (AP) / Facebook Twitter Email Whatsapp Mr Khashoggi was killed after going to the consulate on October 2 to pick up paperwork ahead of his wedding (AP) The evidence of Turkish investigators indicates that the suspects in the incident had committed their act with a premeditated intention, the Saudi government statement said. What US president Donald Trump called one of the worst cover-ups in the history of cover-ups was revealed to the world by Turkish leaks of information, including references to purported audio recordings of the killing, and security camera footage of the Saudi officials who were involved as they moved around Istanbul. As the revelations mount, Turkey is pushing Saudi Arabia for more detail. Jamal Khashoggis body still hasnt been found. Where is it? Turkish foreign minister Mevlut Cavusoglu said at a news conference with his Palestinian counterpart. There is a crime here, but there is also a humanitarian situation. The family wants to know and they want to perform their last duty, Mr Cavusoglu said, referring to hopes for a burial. Expand Close Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman (AP) / Facebook Twitter Email Whatsapp Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman (AP) CIA director Gina Haspel on Thursday briefed Mr Trump on the evidence about Mr Khashoggis death that she reviewed during a trip to Turkey. The White House did not release any details of their meeting. Also on Thursday, Human Rights Watch said that Mr Khashoggis son, Salah, and his family have left Saudi Arabia for the United States after a travel ban on them was lifted. Saudi media showed Salah Khashoggi meeting on Tuesday with the crown prince, who reportedly expressed his condolences. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo made it clear to Saudi leaders that he wanted Salah Khashoggi to return to the United States, and we are pleased that he is now able to do so, State Department spokesman Robert Palladino said. Theresa May is due to meet Mauricio Macri, Argentina's president, at the G20 in Buenos Aires on November 30. Stock image Argentina could use a no-deal Brexit to further its efforts to bring the Falklands under its control, its foreign minister has said. Jorge Faurie said he would exploit the situation to "enhance" efforts to pull the islands away from the UK and towards Buenos Aires. After Brexit, all EU treaties cease to apply and member states would no longer have to support the UK's claim over the territory. "Our planning for Las Malvinas is to have a negotiation that will enable more strong relations between the people on the islands and the people on the continent," Mr Faurie said. His remarks came amid growing uncertainty over the legal status of UK overseas territories. Under the EU's 2009 Lisbon Treaty, the Falkland Islands are a British overseas territory to which some EU rules apply. The EU's Duty of Sincere Co-operation includes a legal obligation for member states to assist each other in matters including claims over sovereignty. Mr Faurie, on a visit to the UK, reiterated his position that the Falklands should be integrated into Argentina. Theresa May is due to meet Mauricio Macri, Argentina's president, at the G20 in Buenos Aires on November 30. Talks will officially focus on post-Brexit trade but both leaders will be under pressure to discuss the territory's future. Italy, with its historic ties to Buenos Aires, and Spain are thought to be sympathetic to Argentina's position. ( Daily Telegraph London) Telegraph Media Group Limited [2021] Investigators hunting for the source of package bombs sent to critics of President Donald Trump suspect that some of the parcels were mailed from Florida. Three more devices were linked to the plot two addressed to former vice president Joe Biden and one to actor Robert De Niro bringing the total to 10 as authorities warned there might well be more. Law enforcement officials told The Associated Press that the devices, containing timers and batteries, were not rigged like booby-trapped package bombs that would explode upon opening. But they were still uncertain whether the devices were poorly designed or never intended to cause physical harm. Expand Close Local and federal authorities remove a suspicious package found at a US postal facility in Wilmington (David Swanson /The Philadelphia Inquirer via AP) / Facebook Twitter Email Whatsapp Local and federal authorities remove a suspicious package found at a US postal facility in Wilmington (David Swanson /The Philadelphia Inquirer via AP) A search of a postal database suggested at least some may have been mailed from Florida, one official said. Investigators are homing in on a postal facility in Opa-locka, Florida, where they believe some of the packages originated, another official said. Homeland Security Director Kirstjen Nielsen, in an interview on Thursday night with Fox News Channel, acknowledged that some of packages originated in Florida. New details about the devices came as the four-day mail-bomb scare spread nationwide, drawing investigators from dozens of federal, state and local agencies in the effort to identify one or more perpetrators. The targets have included former president Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton, CNN and Representative Maxine Waters of California. At a press conference on Thursday, officials in New York would not discuss possible motives, or details on how the packages found their way into the US postal system. Nor would they say why none of the packages had detonated, but they stressed they were still treating them as live devices. As far as a hoax device, were not treating it that way, said Police Commissioner James ONeill. Details suggested a pattern that the items were packaged in manila envelopes, addressed to prominent Trump critics and carried US postage stamps. The devices were being examined by technicians at the FBIs forensic lab in Quantico, Virginia. The packages stoked nationwide tensions and fears as voters prepared to vote on November 6 to determine partisan control of Congress. Even with the sender still unknown, politicians from both parties used the threats to decry a toxic political climate and lay blame. A very big part of the Anger we see today in our society is caused by the purposely false and inaccurate reporting of the Mainstream Media that I refer to as Fake News, Mr Trump said on Twitter. It has gotten so bad and hateful that it is beyond description. Mainstream Media must clean up its act, FAST! He later added: Funny how lowly rated CNN, and others, can criticize me at will, even blaming me for the current spate of Bombs and ridiculously comparing this to September 11th and the Oklahoma City bombing, yet when I criticize them they go wild and scream, its just not Presidential!' Former CIA director John Brennan, the target of a package sent to CNN, fired back. Stop blaming others. Look in the mirror, Mr Brennan tweeted. Your inflammatory rhetoric, insults, lies, & encouragement of physical violence are disgraceful. Clean up your act.try to act Presidential. Stop blaming others. Look in the mirror. Your inflammatory rhetoric, insults, lies, & encouragement of physical violence are disgraceful. Clean up your act....try to act Presidential. The American people deserve much better. BTW, your critics will not be intimidated into silence. https://t.co/cS5qNiuU7o John O. Brennan (@JohnBrennan) October 25, 2018 The list of bombing targets spread from New York, Delaware and Washington DC to Florida and California. The explosive devices were packed in envelopes with bubble-wrap interiors bearing six American flag stamps and the return address of Florida Representative Debbie Wasserman Schultz, the former chairwoman of the Democratic National Committee. The bombs seized on Wednesday were about six inches long and packed with powder and broken glass, according to a law enforcement official who viewed X-ray images. The official said the devices were made from PVC pipe and covered with black tape. The packages addressed to Mr Biden were intercepted at Delaware mail facilities in New Castle and Wilmington, officials said. Much like earlier targets, both Mr Biden has been sharply critical of Trump. In turn, Mr Trump has called the former US vice president Crazy Joe and mentally weak. On Thursday, during a campaign trip to suburban Buffalo, Mr Biden said: Weve got to get off this hate machine. Weve got to come together. At a New York briefing, authorities confirmed that at least some of the packages were distributed through the US mail, and cautioned that there could be additional devices in the postal system. They said investigators searching for more suspicious parcels had not found any during the previous eight hours. David Chipman, a retired federal ATF agent and now senior policy adviser for the Giffords Centre, said the details revealed telltale signs that could help guide investigators. The tape on the pipe is an investigators dream, he said, recalling a case in Texas that was solved because the fibres on the tape were traced to the bombers dog. He said bombers tend to plot methodically. This is someone sitting down and spending time thinking about what theyre going to do to someone else. And some people like to relish that, he said. ADIC Sweeney: We continue to advise the American people to remain vigilant, as it remains possible further packages have been or could be mailed. These devices should be considered dangerous. Report any suspicious package to law enforcement. FBI (@FBI) October 25, 2018 The new packages discovered on Thursday set off a new wave of alarm. A retired New York police detective working in security in De Niros Manhattan office called police after seeing images of a package bomb sent to CNN and recalling a similar package addressed to the actor, officials said. The actor has also been a strong critic of Mr Trump, dropped an expletive insult against him at this years Tony Awards and also apologising to Canadians for the idiotic behaviour of my president. The #FBI has confirmed three additional packages, similar in appearance to the others one in New York addressed to Robert DeNiro, and two in Delaware addressed to former Vice President Joseph Biden. FBI (@FBI) October 25, 2018 The first crude bomb to be discovered was delivered on Monday to the suburban New York compound of George Soros, a liberal billionaire and major contributor to Democratic causes. Mr Soros has called Mr Trumps presidency dangerous. Similar packages addressed to Mrs Clinton and Mr Obama were intercepted on their way to Mrs Clintons New York home where she lives with former President Bill Clinton and to Washington, where Mr Obama lives with his wife, Michelle. The Secret Service said neither package reached its intended recipient. Others were sent to frequent Trump critics Ms Waters and former Obama attorney general Eric Holder. His ended up at the Sunrise, Florida, office of Representative Debbie Wasserman Schultz, who was listed as the return address. A police bomb squad removed the package addressed to Mr Brennan on Wednesday from CNNs New York office, which was evacuated. In response to the events, Mr Trump decried political violence but also joked about moving to more polite speeches. Lets get along, he said at a Wisconsin rally on Wednesday night. By the way, do you see how nice Im behaving tonight? Have you ever seen this? After meeting Mohammed bin Salman, Salah Khashoggi was able to leave for the US after his travel ban was lifted. Saudi public prosecutor, who is set to visit Istanbul, accepts the premeditation theory. CIA chief returns from Istanbul to brief President Trump on available evidence. Riyadh (AsiaNews/Agencies) Salah Khashoggi and his family arrived over night in Washington, DC after leaving Saudi Arabia. He is the eldest son of Jamal Khashoggi, the Saudi journalist and dissident whose death has cast a shadow on Saudi Arabia. Salah Khashoggi, who is a dual US-Saudi national, was able to leave after the Saudi government lifted a travel ban imposed on him because of his fathers criticism and dissidence vis-a-vis the countrys rulers. Salah Khashoggi, who was able to reach his brothers who are long-time residents of the United States, met on Tuesday met with Crown Prince Mohammad bin Salman (MbS), who according to critics is the instigator of his fathers murder. Salah Khashoggi gave what many saw as a cold, frightened stare during the meeting in which the Crown Prince extended his condolences to the dead journalists family. Some observers believe the meeting may have been the price for being allowed to leave the country. US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo is purported to have told Saudi leaders that he wanted Salah Khashoggi to be able to return to the US. Following the journalists murder, allegedly inside the Saudi consulate in Istanbul, Pompeo scrambled to visit Saudi Arabia and Turkey to find out what happened. Saudi Arabia's public prosecutor said on Thursday that the killing was premeditated, as Turkish President Recep Erdogan had suggested. He plans to travel to Istanbul to collect the evidence the Turkish leader announced today. Turkish prosecutors investigating the affair for weeks are convinced that the Saudi Crown Prince knows what happened inside the diplomatic mission. According to activists and opponents, MbS ordered the execution and managed the various phases. Saudi authorities continue to strongly deny this version of events, insisting on the thesis of rogue elements who acted beyond their mandate. After taking part in the "Davos in the desert" forum in Riyadh (23-25 October), the Crown Prince chaired the first meeting of a committee to reform the state's intelligence services, which was set up following Mr Khashoggi's death. Also yesterday, CIA director Gina Haspel briefed President Donald Trump after her return from a quick visit to Turkey. Mr Pompeo was also at the White House with Ms Haspel. Unconfirmed media reports say that during the Turkey visit Ms Haspel met with Turkish investigators and heard audio recordings that investigators claim capture the murder. Red-handed: A protester dressed as Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed Bin Salman during a vigil for Jamal Khashoggi in Istanbul. Photo: Chris McGrath/Getty Saudi Arabia has changed its explanation of Jamal Khashoggi's death for a third time to admit that the journalist's murder was "premeditated" by Saudi operatives. Officials initially claimed that Mr Khashoggi had walked out of the Saudi consulate in Istanbul unharmed on October 2. Later, they said the 59-year-old 'Washington Post' columnist had been killed accidentally in a "fist fight" with a team of 15 Saudi agents. Yesterday, Saudi Arabia's attorney general said he had received new information from Turkish investigators which showed that "the suspects in the incident had committed their act with a premeditated intention". One detail has remained consistent across all three versions - an insistence that Mohammed bin Salman, the crown prince of Saudi Arabia, was not responsible for the killing. The latest Saudi version of events came hours after it was reported that Gina Haspel, the director of the CIA, had listened to a Turkish audio tape which allegedly shows that Mr Khashoggi was tortured before being killed. Turkish officials have long said that the tape disproves Saudi claims that the agents did not mean to kill Mr Khashoggi. Turkey has not made the tape public and the CIA has not officially confirmed that Ms Haspel has heard it. However, if the tapes are as gruesome as described, it will make it more difficult for the US to avoid reaching a public conclusion about what happened and who is responsible. Three days ago, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, Turkey's president, said that the killing was "planned" and rejected the Saudi explanation of an accidental death during a fist fight. "Intelligence and security institutions have evidence showing the murder was certainly planned," Mr Erdogan said during a speech to his parliament. Riyadh's new story closes the gap between Turkey and Saudi Arabia's narratives of what happened, but leaves several issues unresolved. Mr Erdogan said he did not believe that "rogue" agents were responsible for the killing and said "those who gave the orders" must be held accountable. He did not, however, directly accuse the 33-year-old crown prince of involvement, as several leading US senators have. The White House is attempting to tread a delicate line between being seen to take action on Mr Khashoggi's death without upsetting US ties with Saudi Arabia. Despite international condemnation and widespread boycott of its 'Davos in the Desert' investment conference, Saudi Arabia said it signed $56bn worth of deals this week and expected the United States to remain a key business partner. More than two dozen top officials and executives from the United States and Europe, including US Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin and chief executives of big banks, boycotted the investment conference. There was concern that, temporarily at least, commercial ties with the West could be damaged as the blow to Riyadh's reputation and the risk of economic sanctions over the Khashoggi affair made it harder to enter new deals. Still, the three-day Future Investment Initiative conference drew hundreds of businessmen and government officials from around the world to a palatial venue in Riyadh, aiming to attract foreign capital to support Saudi economic reforms. "There were more than 25 deals signed worth $56bn," Saudi energy minister Khalid Al-Falih told state television yesterday, adding that US companies accounted for most of those contracts. He added: "The US will remain a key part of the Saudi economy because the interests that tie us are bigger than what is being weakened by the failed boycotting campaign of the conference." ( Daily Telegraph London) Telegraph Media Group Limited [2021] Turkish prosecutors have prepared an extradition request for 18 suspects from Saudi Arabia in the killing of journalist Jamal Khashoggi, authorities said on Friday, after President Tayyip Erdogan urged Riyadh to disclose who ordered the murder. Erdogan has in recent days stepped up pressure on Saudi Arabia to come clean in the case, and Western governments have also voiced increasing scepticism, pitching the world's top oil exporter and a pivotal Middle East ally into a worsening crisis. Erdogan said Turkey had more information than it had shared so far about the killing of Khashoggi, a Saudi national and Washington Post columnist who was killed at the Saudi consulate in Istanbul on Oct.2. Khashoggi, who lived in the United States, was a critic of Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, the kingdom's de facto ruler. Saudi Arabia's public prosecutor on Thursday said the killing of Khashoggi was premeditated, contradicting a previous official statement that it happened accidentally during a tussle in the consulate. Riyadh's numerous shifting accounts of the killing have undermined Prince Mohammed's stance in the West. Turkish prosecutors seeking the extradition accuse the 18 of "murder by premeditation, monstrous intent or by torture". Riyadh previously arrested the 18 as part of its investigation into the case. Those include a 15-man security team that Turkey says flew in hours before the killing and carried it out. "Who gave this order?" Erdogan said in a speech to members of his AK Party in Ankara. "Who gave the order for 15 people to come to Turkey?" he said. Saudi officials initially denied having anything to do with Khashoggi's disappearance after he entered the consulate, which he had visited to obtain paperwork for a planned marriage. "The reasoning behind the extradition request is that Jamal Khashoggi was murdered in Turkey by Saudi nationals who travelled to Turkey for this specific purpose," a senior Turkish official said. "It is clear that the judicial system in Turkey is better equipped to genuinely serve the cause of justice in this case." Saudi Arabia has also sacked five senior government officials as part of the investigation. Khashoggi's Turkish fiancee, Hatice Cengiz, said she did not accept an invitation from U.S. President Donald Trump, the kingdom's staunchest Western champion, to visit the White House after Khashoggi's murder because she thought it was aimed at influencing public opinion in his own favour. In her first television interview since the killing, Cengiz recounted the events leading up to their visit to the consulate on Oct. 2 where Khashoggi handed her his two mobile phones and went inside while she waited outside for him to emerge. "Trump invited me to the United States but I perceived it as a statement to win public favour," Cengiz told broadcaster Haberturk, pausing at times during an interview and more than once breaking down in tears. Trump and Prince Mohammed have cultivated warm ties though the U.S. president said earlier this week that the crown prince, as the kingdom's de facto ruler, bore ultimate responsibility for the operation against Khashoggi. Trump also said Riyadh had staged the "worst cover-up ever" over the killing. Cengiz said Khashoggi was concerned tensions would arise when he visited the consulate for the first time on Sept. 28, but he was treated well at that visit, which appeared to reassure him, she said. "He thought Turkey is a safe country and if he would be held or interrogated, this issue would be swiftly solved," she said. How Western allies deal with Riyadh will hinge on the extent to which they believe responsibility for Khashoggi's death lies directly with Prince Mohammed and the Saudi authorities. Prince Mohammed, who casts himself as a reformer, has said the killers will be brought to justice. Erdogan said he had spoken with Prince Mohammed. "I also told the crown prince. I said, 'You know how to make people talk. Whatever happened between these 18 people, this dodgy business is among them. If you are determined to lift suspicion, then the key point of our cooperation is these 18 people.'" Turkish officials suspect Saudi agents killed Khashoggi, 59, inside the consulate and dismembered him. Turkish sources say authorities have an audio recording documenting the murder. U.S. CIA Director Gina Haspel heard the audio during a visit to Turkey this week, sources told Reuters, and has briefed Trump about Turkey's findings and her discussions. Saudi state television quoted the Saudi public prosecutor on Thursday as saying Riyadh was interrogating suspects on the basis of information given by a joint Saudi-Turkish task force. Many Saudis have been shocked by Riyadh's admission after two weeks of denials and condemnation of foreign news reports. On Friday, authorities tried to stem the domestic fallout, instructing mosque preachers to focus sermons on "the fierce and unjust onslaught targeting the country", according to a directive seen by Reuters that did not specifically mention the Khashoggi murder. One Riyadh cleric warned worshippers against repeating reports from TV or social media "without contemplating the danger of this news", adding that "most of them are lies" The Russian military spying agency has had its inner workings exposed again as determined journalists and Kremlin critics continue to focus on uncovering its secrets. A new report details the alleged misbehaviour and bizarre bureaucratic decisions that allowed a Russian journalist to identify people he says are GRU officers. Sergei Kanev said he wants to call attention to problems within an organisation he believes has moved from traditional spying into unchecked violence and foreign interference. But his story portrays the agency as more sloppy than scary: one finding was that suspected GRU agents appeared to blow their own covers. Expand Close Two men identified as Ruslan Boshirov and Alexander Petrov have been accused of being the Salisbury attackers (RT/AP) / Facebook Twitter Email Whatsapp Two men identified as Ruslan Boshirov and Alexander Petrov have been accused of being the Salisbury attackers (RT/AP) None of the few dozen agents he wrote about is suspected of grave wrongdoing, but governments in multiple countries have implicated GRU agents in the March nerve agent attack on a Russian ex-spy in Britain, hacking the 2016 US presidential campaign, involvement in downing a Malaysian plane and disrupting anti-doping efforts. Russian authorities deny the accusations, calling them part of a global smear campaign. Mr Kanev said he identified three agents after they filed police reports for stolen goods, by cross-checking names with databases showing addresses or other information on GRU employees. Another was identified after being arrested over a cafe shootout. The report also said the Russian Defence Ministry sought to conceal the identities of dozens of children of alleged GRU officers living in a Moscow housing complex by adding 100 years to their ages in administrative registries. GRU agents jokingly called it the old folks home, Mr Kanev said. Pension authorities raised alarm after discovering the apparent concentration of very elderly residents, suspecting some kind of fraud. Expand Close The website for British investigative group Bellingcat (Alexander Zemlianichenko/AP) / Facebook Twitter Email Whatsapp The website for British investigative group Bellingcat (Alexander Zemlianichenko/AP) Mr Kanev, who lives in self-imposed exile in Europe, told the Associated Press he uncovered the identities by using databases purchased on the black market from Moscow police, traffic officers or security agents. He said he cross-checked them with open sources and discussions with security sources. Other Russian journalists have described using similar methods. His reporting was funded and published by Kremlin opponent Mikhail Khodorkovskys Dossier Project, and also released by Russian independent broadcaster Dozhd TV. The details of the report could not be immediately verified, but it fits with a pattern of embarrassing exposures that has caused some to question the GRUs professionalism and highlighted corruption that has allowed leaks to occur. Last month, British intelligence released surveillance images of GRU agents accused of the March attack in Salisbury. Investigative group Bellingcat and Russian site The Insider quickly exposed the agents real names, and the Associated Press and others revealed details about their backgrounds. Dutch authorities recently identified four alleged GRU agents who tried to hack the WiFi of the worlds chemical weapons watchdog from a hotel car park. Expand Close One of the many phones belonging to four Russian officers who targeted the chemical weapons watchdog (Dutch Defence Ministry/AP) / Facebook Twitter Email Whatsapp One of the many phones belonging to four Russian officers who targeted the chemical weapons watchdog (Dutch Defence Ministry/AP) All this makes it look like GRU officers cant tie their own shoelaces, said Michael Kofman, an expert on Russian military affairs at the Woodrow Wilson International Centre in Washington. In an interview with the AP, Mr Kanev said he also identified 16 GRU officers who once lived in the same Moscow dormitory as Anatoly Chepiga, one of the officers suspected of poisoning turncoat GRU agent Sergei Skripal in Salisbury. Mr Kanev did not publish their names. He said the fact he could identify so many officers was a sign that Russia is eroding. Keir Giles, the director of the Conflict Studies Research Centre in Cambridge, warned that exposing Russian spies who are not accused of serious wrongdoing exposes Mr Kanev and his backer, oligarch-turned-dissident Mr Khodorkovsky, to charges that instead of reforming Russia, they just want to harm it. Meanwhile, the drip-drip of revelations will continue to dent the image of the GRU, but not deter it from unsavoury actions, experts said. Terror fears: Donald Trump kisses wife Melania at the White House after she spoke about the bombs Actor Robert de Niro and the former US vice-president Joe Biden became the latest targets of a suspected serial bomber yesterday. The suspicious packages addressed to the Oscar-winning star, who has been public in his opposition to President Donald Trump, and to Mr Biden set off a new wave of alarm. The new packages, which resemble those containing explosive devices previously sent to figures including former president Barack Obama and former secretary of state Hillary Clinton, were located in Delaware and New York. Like the others, they were intercepted before reaching their intended targets. Last night a law enforcement source said the investigation was focusing on leads in Florida. All the suspicious packages are believed to have gone through the US postal system at some point, the source said. The devices found so far, which officials have described as pipe bombs, have put many in the country on edge, and authorities have begun an intensive effort to find other explosives that may still be out in the postal system. Expand Close Robert De Niro / Facebook Twitter Email Whatsapp Robert De Niro Investigators found a package addressed to Mr Biden in a Delaware mail facility that was like the other pipe bombs found this week, according to a law enforcement official. The package was apparently not delivered to Mr Biden's home and may have been on its way to being returned to the person listed on the return address of the envelope, the official said. In a statement, the FBI declined to confirm that a package addressed to Mr Biden was found, instead saying only that local and state police, along with US Postal Service investigators and FBI agents, were "responding this morning to a United States Postal facility in Delaware to conduct law enforcement activity". A similar package was found addressed to De Niro at his production offices in Manhattan, according to law enforcement officials. This package was discovered around 5am by security staff working for De Niro's film company, Tribeca Productions. Expand Close Joe Biden / Facebook Twitter Email Whatsapp Joe Biden A police spokesman said the parcel "was similar to explosive packages that had been publicised". An X-ray of the package indicated a similar pipe bomb inside, and investigators suspect it was sent by the same person who sent explosives to Ms Clinton, Mr Obama and others, a law enforcement official said. Video from the scene showed the NYPD bomb squad removing the package in a heavily armoured containment truck. It was transported to Rodman's Neck, a peninsula in the Bronx where the NYPD explodes bombs, the department said. New York's Democratic mayor Bill de Blasio urged people across the city to be on alert, and to refrain from opening suspicious packages. "Alert authorities, call 911," he said on CNN. He added that the city had "put an additional NYPD presence outside media companies across the city, outside the offices of certain elected officials." The hunt for a serial mail bomber was launched late on Tuesday when Secret Service personnel conducting standard mail screenings found a pipe bomb inside a plain manila envelope with a bubble-wrapped interior addressed to Ms Clinton, the former secretary of state. A similarly packaged bomb was found hours later in mail addressed to Mr Obama. Neither bomb got close to its intended target, and neither contained a written message, according to law enforcement officials. But the twin discoveries led to other undetonated devices being found elsewhere, including in the mailroom at CNN's New York headquarters and a district office of the Florida Democratic congresswoman Debbie Wasserman Schultz. As more devices were discovered, a disturbing pattern emerged - the bomber or bombers appeared to be targeting prominent figures on the political left. The first such package had been discovered on Monday at the New York home of George Soros, a billionaire activist known to fund pro-democracy and liberal political groups. That activism has made Mr Soros the frequent target of Mr Trump's incendiary rhetoric. Trump supporters regularly make unsubstantiated claims that Mr Soros pays individuals to demonstrate at anti-Trump protests. The package addressed to De Niro came after he had also publicly tangled with Mr Trump. At the Tony Awards in June, he made his disgust with Mr Trump clear in a speech which received a standing ovation. "F*** Trump," he said. "It's no longer down with Trump," he said, "but f*** Trump." The results showed that the alarms using the mother's voice woke up 86-91pc of children and prompted 84-86pc to escape from the bedroom, compared with 53pc awakened and 51pc escaped for the tone alarm Fire alarms would be more effective at waking sleeping children in the event of a blaze if they were fitted with the sound of their mother's voice, a new study has shown. Children's hearing is different to that of adults, and British research last year showed that 80pc of under-13s do not wake up to the high-pitched sound of a normal home smoke detector. To find a way round the problem, US researchers at Sleep Disorders Centre at Nationwide Children's Hospital, Ohio, tested four different types of fire alarms to see which was best at waking youngsters. They tested three alarms that used the mother's voice in addition to a high-pitch tone smoke alarm commonly used in homes on 176 children aged between five and 12. The results showed that the alarms using the mother's voice woke up 86-91pc of children and prompted 84-86pc to escape from the bedroom, compared with 53pc awakened and 51pc escaped for the tone alarm. "These new findings put us one step closer to finding a smoke alarm that will be effective for children and practical for parents," said Dr Gary Smith, lead author of the study and director of the Centre for Injury Research and Policy at Nationwide Children's Hospital. "This study confirmed that a maternal voice alarm is better than a traditional high-pitch tone alarm for waking children and prompting their escape under conditions typical of homes. "It also showed that the mother's voice was enough to be effective without using the child's first name. This means one alarm could work for multiple children sleeping near each other in a home." ( Daily Telegraph London) Telegraph Media Group Limited [2021] 'House Of Cards' cast members cancelled an appearance on a US talk show after the host made controversial comments about blackface. Megyn Kelly apologised after suggesting it was acceptable to wear blackface as long as it was part of a Halloween costume. The 47-year-old host of 'Today', one of the US's most popular morning chat shows, later said she realised such behaviour was wrong. There were reports last night that NBC had released her and would pay out her entire $69m (61m) contract. Kelly's comments sparked a backlash after she said: "What is racist? Because truly you get in trouble if you are a white person who puts on blackface at Halloween. "When I was a kid, that was OK as long as you were dressing up as a character." Officers watch over the scene outside the Time Warner Center on Wednesday, Oct. 24, 2018, in New York. Law enforcement officials say a suspicious package that prompted an evacuation of CNN's offices is believed to contain a pipe bomb. (AP Photo/Kevin Hagen) An NYPD bomb squad vehicle departs an area outside Time Warner Center on Wednesday, Oct. 24, 2018, in New York. Law enforcement officials say a suspicious package that prompted an evacuation of CNN's offices is believed to contain a pipe bomb. (AP Photo/Kevin Hagen) NYPD Deputy Commissioner of Intelligence & Counterterrorism John Miller, center, arrives outside Time Warner Center on Wednesday, Oct. 24, 2018, in New York. Law enforcement officials say a suspicious package that prompted an evacuation of CNN's offices is believed to contain a pipe bomb. (AP Photo/Kevin Hagen) Cesar Altieri Sayoc is pictured in Ft. Lauderdale, Florida, U.S. in this August 2015 handout. Pic: Broward County Sheriff's Office/Handout via REUTERS U.S. Attorney General Jeff Sessions said on Friday that Cesar Sayoc, the suspect in a raft of suspicious packages sent to prominent Democrats and others, is in the custody of the FBI and has been charged with five federal crimes. Sayoc faces up to 58 years in prison if found guilty, Sessions said at a press conference announcing the charges. Expand Close An NYPD bomb squad vehicle departs an area outside Time Warner Center on Wednesday, Oct. 24, 2018, in New York. Law enforcement officials say a suspicious package that prompted an evacuation of CNN's offices is believed to contain a pipe bomb. (AP Photo/Kevin Hagen) / Facebook Twitter Email Whatsapp An NYPD bomb squad vehicle departs an area outside Time Warner Center on Wednesday, Oct. 24, 2018, in New York. Law enforcement officials say a suspicious package that prompted an evacuation of CNN's offices is believed to contain a pipe bomb. (AP Photo/Kevin Hagen) "We will not tolerate such lawlessness, especially political violence," he said. FBI director Christopher Wray said more than a dozen mail bombs sent were not hoax devices. FBI agents arrested Sayoc, 56, in Plantation, Florida and also hauled away a white van plastered with pro-Trump stickers, the slogan "CNN SUCKS" and images of Democratic figures with red crosshairs over their faces. Wray told the news conference that fingerprints on a package sent to Representative Maxine Waters belonged to Sayoc. He also said there could be other packages. Announcing the arrest by the Federal Bureau of Investigation to a cheering audience at the White House, US President Donald Trump said such "terrorizing acts" were despicable and had no place in the United States. Expand Close Officers watch over the scene outside the Time Warner Center on Wednesday, Oct. 24, 2018, in New York. Law enforcement officials say a suspicious package that prompted an evacuation of CNN's offices is believed to contain a pipe bomb. (AP Photo/Kevin Hagen) / Facebook Twitter Email Whatsapp Officers watch over the scene outside the Time Warner Center on Wednesday, Oct. 24, 2018, in New York. Law enforcement officials say a suspicious package that prompted an evacuation of CNN's offices is believed to contain a pipe bomb. (AP Photo/Kevin Hagen) "We must never allow political violence to take root in America - cannot let it happen," Trump said. "And I'm committed to doing everything in my power as president to stop it and to stop it now." Sayoc's home address was listed in public records as an upscale gated apartment complex in the seaside town of Aventura, Florida. According to the records, he is a registered Republican with a lengthy criminal past - including once making a bomb threat - and a history of posting inflammatory broadsides on social media against Trump's political foes. Sayoc was being held at an FBI processing center in Miramar, Florida, CNN said. He was expected to be taken to the Federal Detention Center in downtown Miami and will likely make his first appearance before a judge on Monday, according to former Assistant U.S. Attorney David Weinstein. A federal law enforcement source said charges would likely be brought by federal prosecutors in Manhattan and Sayoc transferred to New York City. US authorities earlier detained Sayoc in connection with the mail bombs scare that has widened to 14 suspicious packages, officials said Video from television news helicopters showed federal agents and police examining a white van in the car park of a business in Plantation, Florida. Earlier on Friday, authorities said suspicious packages addressed to New Jersey senator Cory Booker and former National Intelligence director James Clapper - both similar to those containing pipe bombs sent to other prominent critics of President Donald Trump - had been intercepted. The discoveries further spurred a coast-to-coast investigation as officials scramble to locate a culprit and possible motive amid questions about whether new packages were being sent or were simply surfacing after a period in the mail system. The devices have targeted well-known Democrats including former president Barack Obama, ex-vice president Joe Biden, Hillary Clinton and former attorney general Eric Holder. The FBI said the package to Mr Booker was intercepted in Florida, and one discovered at a Manhattan postal facility was addressed to Mr Clapper at CNN's address. An earlier package had been sent to former Obama CIA director John Brennan care of CNN in New York. Investigators are analysing the crude devices to reveal whether they were intended to detonate or simply sow fear just before election day on November 6. Law enforcement officials said the devices, containing timers and batteries, were not rigged to explode on opening, but they were uncertain whether the devices were poorly designed or never intended to cause physical harm. Homeland Security secretary Kirstjen Nielsen acknowledged that some of packages originated in Florida. One official said investigators homed in on a postal facility in Opa-locka, where they believe some packages originated. The package addressed to Mr Booker was found during an oversight search of that facility, according to a law enforcement official. Most of those targeted were past or present US officials, but others were sent to actor Robert De Niro and billionaire George Soros. The bombs have been sent across the country - from New York, Delaware and Washington DC to Florida and California, where Democratic representative Maxine Waters was targeted. They bore the return address of Florida representative Debbie Wasserman Schultz, the former chairwoman of the Democratic National Committee. The common thread among the targets was obvious: their critical words for Mr Trump and his frequent criticism in return. The president claimed he was being blamed for the mail bombs, complaining in a tweet: "Funny how lowly rated CNN, and others, can criticize me at will, even blaming me for the current spate of Bombs and ridiculously comparing this to September 11th and the Oklahoma City bombing, yet when I criticize them they go wild and scream, 'it's just not Presidential!'" The package to Mr Clapper was addressed to him at CNN's Manhattan address. The frequent Trump critic told CNN he was not surprised to be targeted and that he considered the actions "definitely domestic terrorism". The devices were packaged in manila envelopes and carried US postage stamps. They are being examined by technicians at the FBI's forensic lab in Quantico, Virginia. The packages stoked nationwide tensions ahead of the elections to determine control of Congress - a campaign both major political parties have described in near-apocalyptic terms. Politicians from both parties used the threats to condemn a toxic political climate and to lay blame. Mr Trump, in a tweet on Thursday, blamed the "Mainstream Media" for the anger in society. Mr Brennan responded, tweeting that the president should "stop blaming others. Look in the mirror". The bombs are about 6in long and packed with powder and broken glass, according to a law enforcement official who viewed X-ray images. The official said the devices were made from PVC pipe and covered with black tape. The first bomb discovered was delivered on Monday to the suburban New York compound of Mr Soros, a major contributor to Democratic causes, who has called Mr Trump's presidency "dangerous". Target: Police at the Time Warner building in New York, where CNN has its HQ US President Donald Trump yesterday again blamed the media for his nation's "incivility" - as a suspected serial bomber continued to target his opponents and critics. In an early morning tweet, Mr Trump wrote: "A very big part of the Anger we see today in our society is caused by the purposely false and inaccurate reporting of the Mainstream Media that I refer to as Fake News. "It has gotten so bad and hateful it is beyond description. Mainstream Media must clean up its act, FAST!" The tweet was sent amid television coverage of police in New York swarming a block in Lower Manhattan after reports of a suspicious package at a building where actor Robert De Niro has offices. The package was addressed to De Niro, who verbally attacked Mr Trump in June at the Tony Awards. Investigators later found a package addressed to former vice-president Joe Biden in a Delaware mail facility that was like the other pipe bombs found this week, according to a law enforcement official. Mr Trump had also taken aim in the media at a rally in central Wisconsin on Wednesday night. During the rally, Mr Trump's supporters chanted: "Lock her up" at references to Hillary Clinton, another opponent who had been a target of the mail bomber. Mr Trump himself was relatively subdued as he spoke, interrupting himself several times to point out that he was "trying to be nice" and taking no responsibility for his own role in contributing to the degraded civic discourse in his country. "The media also has a responsibility to set a civil tone and to stop the endless hostility and constant negative - and often times, false - attacks and stories," Mr Trump said at the rally. He also denounced those who "carelessly compare political opponents to historical villains" and who "mob people in public places or destroy public property". Mr Trump has long made the media a target of his ire, denouncing reporters as the "enemy of the people". The targets of suspicious packages in recent days have all been derided by Mr Trump as well. After De Niro attacked him in June, Mr Trump fired back on Twitter, calling him a "very Low IQ individual" who had taken "too many shots to the head by real boxers in movies". One of the undetonated devices was found on Wednesday at the New York HQ of the television network CNN. It was addressed to former CIA director John Brennan, who has been an outspoken critic of Mr Trump since leaving public office. However, Mr Brennan is an on-air analyst for NBC News and MSNBC, rather than CNN. Mr Brennan responded to Mr Trump's tweet with a scathing tweet of his own. "Stop blaming others," he wrote. "Look in the mirror. Your inflammatory rhetoric, insults, lies, & encouragement of physical violence are disgraceful. "Clean up your act try to act Presidential. The American people deserve much better. BTW, your critics will not be intimidated into silence." Democratic senator Chris Murphy also condemned Mr Trump's tweet. "Rise up, America," he said on Twitter. "The President of the United States is now blaming the attempted murder of Democrats on press criticism of him. I didn't think his narcissism could sink to this ugly of a place. But it has." In an interview yesterday, Mr Trump's press secretary Sarah Sanders stressed that he has condemned the actions of the suspected bomber. She insisted that he "could not have been more presidential" in addressing the crisis. Asked if Mr Trump could go "the extra mile" to foster more civil political discourse, she said: "Look, the president did exactly that last night. "There is major political philosophical difference between Democrats and Republicans, and there's nothing wrong with pointing those differences out," Ms Sanders added. "There is something wrong with taking that to a point of violence." ( 2018, The Washington Post) Police respond to a report of a suspicious package in the Manhattan borough of New York, New York, U.S., October 26, 2018. REUTERS/Mike Segar Authorities found two more suspicious packages on Friday addressed to U.S. Senator Cory Booker and James Clapper, the former U.S. director of national intelligence, amid a manhunt for the person who sent bombs to prominent Democrats and critics of U.S. President Donald Trump. The 11th package was found at a mail sorting facility in Florida and was addressed to Booker, the Democratic senator from New Jersey, the FBI said on Twitter. A 12th package was addressed to James Clapper, the former director of national intelligence, and sent to CNN, the cable network reported. Meanwhile, a local police bomb squad and canine units joined federal investigators on Thursday to examine a sprawling U.S. mail distribution center at Opa-Locka, northwest of Miami, Miami-Dade County police said. U.S. Homeland Security Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen said that Florida appeared to be the starting point for at least some of the bomb shipments. "Some of the packages went through the mail. They originated, some of them, from Florida," she said during an interview with Fox News Channel on Thursday. "I am confident that this person or people will be brought to justice." Authorities called the parcel bombs an act of terrorism. They were sent less than two weeks before national elections that could alter the balance of power in Washington. No one has claimed responsibility for the bombs, and the public was asked to report any tips. All the people targeted were frequently maligned by right-wing critics. They included Democratic Party donor George Soros, former President Barack Obama, former Vice President Joe Biden, and former Secretary of State and presidential candidate Hillary Clinton. The Federal Bureau of Investigation has said that at least five of the packages bore a return address from the Florida office of U.S. Representative Debbie Wasserman Schultz, a former chair of the Democratic National Committee. Authorities believe the packages, which were intercepted before reaching their intended recipients, all went through the U.S. Postal Service at some point, a source said. None detonated and no one has been hurt. The devices were thought to have been fashioned from bomb-making designs widely available on the internet, a federal law enforcement source told Reuters. Still, investigators are treating the devices as "live" explosives, not a hoax, said James O'Neill, the New York City police commissioner. Two of the parcels surfaced there. "It does remain possible that further packages have been or could be mailed," William Sweeney, assistant director of the FBI, told a news conference in New York. Investigators have declined to say whether the devices were built to be functional. Bomb experts and security analysts say that based on their rudimentary construction it appeared they were more likely designed to sow fear rather than to kill. The parcels each consisted of a manila envelope with a bubble-wrap interior containing "potentially destructive devices," the FBI said. Each was affixed with a computer-printed address label and six U.S. "Forever" postage stamps, the agency said. Others who received the bombs were former Attorney General Eric Holder, former CIA director John Brennan, U.S. Representative Maxine Waters of California, and actor Robert De Nero. Two packages were sent both to Waters and Biden. Brennan's package was sent in care of the New York bureau of CNN, where he has appeared as an on-air analyst. The episode sparked an outcry from Trump's critics, who charged that his inflammatory rhetoric against Democrats and the press has created a climate for politically motivated violence. After first calling for "unity" and civil discourse on Wednesday, Trump lashed out again Thursday at the "hateful" media. His supporters accused Democrats of unfairly suggesting the president was to blame for the bomb scare. "Funny how lowly rated CNN, and others, can criticize me at will, even blaming me for the current spate of Bombs and ridiculously comparing this to September 11th and the Oklahoma City bombing, yet when I criticize them they go wild and scream, its just not Presidential! Trump said on Twitter at about 3:15 a.m. EST (0715 GMT) on Friday. by Paolo Fossati According to government data, those aged 15 to 29 number over 62 million. Out of seven million Indonesian Catholics, two are young. "We realise that they are a 'small flock', said the bishop of Ketapang, but they are the missionaries in today's world". Training, leadership, environment and interfaith dialogue are the focus of the Indonesian Church. Vatican City (AsiaNews) Mgr Pius Riana Prapdi (pictured), bishop of Ketapang (West Kalimantan province) and president of the Youth Commission (KomKep) of the Indonesian Bishops Conference (KWI), told AsiaNews that education, work, the fight against intolerance and environmental protection are the main challenges of the future that young Indonesians face. Mgr Riana Prapdi is one of the two Synodal Fathers chosen by KWI for the Synod on Young People, set to end in two days time. The other is Mgr Adrianus Sunarko, bishop of Pangkal-Pinang (Bangka-Belitung). Indonesia, the fourth most populous country in the world with about 260 million inhabitants, is going through a demographic transition. In the coming years, the younger segment of the Indonesian population will continue to grow, albeit a slower rate than that of their parents. According to government data, at present those aged 15 to 29 number more than 62 million. "We are grateful for so many young people, said Mgr Riana Prapdi. However, the country is called to provide them with an adequate education, with the same quality both in the more developed regions, such as Java and Sumatra, as well as the less prosperous regions, like Papua and Kalimantan ". A young and growing labour force will need quality jobs, which makes vocational training crucial. "It would be a disaster if young people were not qualified and had a weak mindset", the bishop stressed. Young people in the most populous Islamic country in the world are also threatened by Islamist pressures. For the prelate, "relations between the different communities are good", but it is necessary to "recognise that radical groups operate in society, promoting intolerance with considerable attraction for youth." Economic development also cannot ignore environmental protection. Mgr Riana Prapdi calls for a "serious commitment to nature" through programmes and initiatives that counter consumerism and the problems it creates, such as monocultures, excessive use of plastic and paper, deforestation. In Indonesia, out of about seven million Catholics, two are young. "We realise that they are a 'small flock', said the bishop of Ketapang, but we can face the challenges knowing that they are the missionaries in today's world". In several of the countrys 37 dioceses and also at the national level, the Church offers young men and women different programmes aimed at business training, leadership, environmental protection and interfaith dialogue. "This way, they can participate in the building of the Church and of society", Mgr Riana Prapdi noted. Thanks to him and to Mgr Adrianus Sunarko, the Indonesian Churchs commitment to the young has found expression in the Synod dedicated to them, according to Pope Franciss wishes. "This event will allow the Church hierarchy to be more present in the life of the new generations, the bishop said. It will be possible through greater understanding, deeper listening, and more effective communication. The owner of Patisserie Valerie has suspended its shares following the discovery of potentially fraudulent accounting irregularities (PA) Patisserie Valerie has parted company with its finance director, who is facing a fraud probe relating to a black hole in the companys accounts. Patisserie Holdings, the parent of the cake chain, said on Friday that it had accepted the resignation of chief financial officer Chris Marsh. Mr Marsh was suspended from his role on October 9 after significant and potentially fraudulent irregularities were discovered in the companys accounts. He was then arrested on suspicion of fraud later that week, before being released on bail. The Serious Fraud Office (SFO) has opened a criminal investigation into potential fraud at the company. Shares in the company are still suspended on Londons junior market following its brush with collapse earlier this month. Chairman Luke Johnson was forced to loan 20 million to the company to keep it trading, while shareholders poured in another 15 million through a fundraising. Accountants from PricewaterhouseCoopers are now investigating accounting irregularities at the business. On Wednesday the company dodged another threat as it announced that a winding-up order issued against it by the taxman was dismissed in court. The petition was issued by HMRC against the companys principal trading subsidiary, Stonebeach Limited, over an unpaid tax bill of more than 1 million. But the High Court of Justice, Business and Property Courts dismissed the claim on Tuesday. Royal Bank of Scotland has reported an increase in profit in the third quarter (David Cheskin/PA) Royal Bank of Scotland posted a rise in third-quarter profit but the lender suffered a hit to its share price after warning over Brexit. The lender, still 62% owned by the taxpayer, posted a 14% increase in profits to 448 million in the three months to September 30. But RBS also took a 240 million impairment charge, including 100 million to reflect the more uncertain economic outlook in Britain ahead of Brexit. Unimpressed investors sent the shares down around 5% in morning trade to 222p. Joseph Dickerson, equity analyst at Jefferies, said: The incremental (100 million) charge is not explained well and is at odds with extensive research we conducted on corporate credit and also consumer credit. Q3 2018 results have now been announced. Read the details here: https://t.co/EqwKY0Wm61 NatWest Group (@NatWestGroup) October 26, 2018 It is also at odds with the actions of other banks operating in the same market. Shares in Barclays, HSBC and Lloyds were also hit off the back of the RBS update. However, referring to Brexit, RBS boss Ross McEwan said that in a recent call with Prime Minister Theresa May the lender sensed a more optimistic tone than in the past. Third quarter figures also showed that pre-tax operating profit was up 10% to 961 million, but RBS also booked 200 million in provisions to cover costs for the mis-selling of payment protection insurance (PPI) in the period. It reflects higher-than-predicted complaints volumes following a Financial Conduct Authority advertising campaign featuring Arnold Schwarzenegger aimed at encouraging people to come forward before an August 2019 deadline for final claims. Expand Close RBS chief executive Ross McEwan hailed the good performance (Andrew Milligan/PA) / Facebook Twitter Email Whatsapp RBS chief executive Ross McEwan hailed the good performance (Andrew Milligan/PA) RBS has made provisions totalling 5.3 billion to date for PPI claims. In total, RBS detailed 389 million in third-quarter conduct and litigation costs. Mr McEwan added: This is a good performance, set against a highly competitive market and an uncertain economic outlook. We are growing lending in our target markets and are in a strong position to support the economy. Were aware there is much more work to do and are fully focused on improving for our customers. RBS also said on Friday that it has secured approval from Dutch regulators to serve EU clients out of Amsterdam post-Brexit. Earlier this month, RBS paid out its first dividend in 10 years after reaching a long-awaited 4.9 billion US dollar (3.7 billion) settlement with US regulators over claims that it mis-sold mortgages in the run-up to the financial crisis. It was considered the largest of a string of legacy issues that the bank is starting to put to rest a decade on from its bailout in 2008. Robert Durst, the New York property heir who was the subject of a major TV documentary series, has been ordered to stand trial for the murder of a close friend in Los Angeles 18 years ago. A judge ruled there is enough evidence to try the eccentric 75-year-old multimillionaire for the point-blank shooting of Susan Berman at her home. He has pleaded not guilty. Prosecutors say Durst killed Ms Berman, a friend from college and the daughter of a Las Vegas mobster, to keep her from telling police what she knew about his wifes 1982 disappearance in New York. Kathleen Durst has been missing for more than 35 years and is presumed dead. Durst, who has never been charged with a crime related to his wifes disappearance, has denied killing either woman. He remains jailed without bail and was ordered back to court on November 8 for arraignment. You're caught! What the hell did I do? Killed them all, of courseRobert Durst on HBO's The Jinx The murder charge against him includes the special circumstance allegations of lying in wait and killing a witness to a crime. There is also an allegation that he personally used a handgun to carry out the murder. At the end of the preliminary proceedings that were continued over several months, Dursts lawyer, David Chesnoff, argued there was no hard evidence such as DNA, fingerprints or witnesses linking him to Ms Bermans killing. Durst was arrested in New Orleans in March 2015, hours before the airing of the final episode of HBOs The Jinx: The Life And Deaths Of Robert Durst. The documentary examined the disappearance of his wife, and the killings of Ms Berman and a Texas neighbour, Morris Black, in 2001. A jury acquitted him of Mr Blacks murder after finding the killing was in self-defence. The HBO series created a sensation after Durst was heard during the finale muttering to himself on a live microphone: Youre caught! What the hell did I do? Killed them all, of course. Prosecutors will try to make the connection between Ms Bermans death and the mystery around Ms Dursts disappearance, which they want to show as the foundation for the motive for Ms Bermans murder. After Ms Durst vanished, Ms Berman served as Dursts unofficial spokeswoman, but prosecutors and witnesses in a series of earlier hearings said she did much more. She told friends over the years that Durst acknowledged killing his wife and said she helped him cover his tracks. Prosecutors hope to use those hearsay statements at trial, which defence lawyers have vigorously challenged. Ms Berman told one friend who gave evidence at an earlier hearing that if anything happened to her, Durst would be the culprit. The US government is planning to dispatch 800 or more active duty troops to the southern border as a caravan of thousands of migrants makes its way through Mexico. The move comes as US president Donald Trump seeks to transform fears about immigration into electoral gains in next months mid-term congressional elections. US defence secretary Jim Mattis is expected to sign an order sending the troops to the border, bolstering US National Guard forces already there. The action came after Mr Trump spent recent days drawing attention to the caravan of Central Americans slowly making their way on foot into southern Mexico, although still more than 1,000 miles from US soil. Expand Close Mr Trump has made migration a central part of his US mid-term election campaign (AP) / Facebook Twitter Email Whatsapp Mr Trump has made migration a central part of his US mid-term election campaign (AP) Mr Trump, who made fears about immigrants a major theme of his 2016 election campaign, has been eager to make it a top issue heading into the November 6 mid-term elections, which will determine control of US congress. The president and senior White House officials have long believed the issue is key to turning out his ardent base of supporters. The additional troops would provide logistical and other support to the Border Patrol, US officials said. It is not unusual for the US National Guard to help with border security. Although active duty troops are sometimes called on for domestic emergencies like hurricanes or floods, they rarely deploy to the southern border. Expand Close Thousands of people are making their way to the US border (AP) / Facebook Twitter Email Whatsapp Thousands of people are making their way to the US border (AP) Fears of militarising the border were fanned by a May 1997 incident in which a Marine on a counter-narcotics mission shot to death an 18-year-old who was herding goats in Redford, Texas. In the current situation, active duty troops will not be on armed security missions that could lead to a similar incident. The additional members of the military would assist the Border Patrol by providing things such as vehicles, tents and equipment. There are already about 2,000 National Guard troops there under a previous Pentagon arrangement. Mr Trump has used the caravan to bolster his election-season warnings that the US is being infiltrated by illegal immigrants pouring across the border. He has claimed without any apparent basis in fact that Middle Easterners are among the group. At rallies and on Twitter, Mr Trump has tried to portray the Democrats as pro-illegal immigration, even claiming, with no evidence, that Democrats had organised and paid for the caravan. He tweeted that Democrat inspired laws make it tough for us to stop people at the border and said he was using the military to respond to what he called a National Emergency. The migrants in the sprawling caravan once estimated by the United Nations to number more than 7,000 are hoping to make it to the United States. Most are Hondurans, seeking to escape the poverty and violence that plagues the region, although others have come from Guatemala and El Salvador. Mr Trump tweeted a direct message to the migrants on Thursday, urging them to return home. To those in the Caravan, turnaround, he wrote. We are not letting people into the United States illegally. Go back to your Country and if you want, apply for citizenship like millions of others are doing! Activists, protesting the killing of Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi, hold a candlelight vigil outside Saudi Arabias consulate in Istanbul (AP Photo/Lefteris Pitarakis) Turkey has intensified its demands for Saudi Arabia to extradite 18 suspects in the killing of journalist Jamal Khashoggi. Mr Khashoggis Turkish fiancee, meanwhile, gave an anguished and tearful TV interview in which she said she keeps asking herself if she had missed some signs and should have prevented him from entering the Saudi Consulate in Istanbul on October 2. The Istanbul chief prosecutors office submitted a request for Saudi Arabia to hand over the suspects in the killing, and Turkeys Foreign Ministry will formally notify the kingdom, Turkeys state-run Anadolu news agency reported. The reasoning behind the extradition request is that Jamal Khashoggi was murdered in Turkey by Saudi nationals who travelled to Turkey for this specific purposeTurkish official The Saudi government has said it arrested and would itself punish 18 people for what it described as a rogue operation by officials who killed Mr Khashoggi in the consulate. We expect our request (for the suspects) return to be fulfilled because this atrocious event took place in Turkey, said Turkish justice minister Abdulhamit Gul. Saudi Arabia has returned suspects to Turkey before. The stakes are much higher in the Khashoggi case, however, as some of those implicated are close to Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, the kingdoms heir apparent whose condemnation of the killing failed to ease suspicions that he was involved. Expand Close Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman (Amr Nabil/AP) / Facebook Twitter Email Whatsapp Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman (Amr Nabil/AP) Turkish prosecutors want the suspects to face prosecution for premeditated killing executed with fiendish sentiments or by causing torment, according to the Anadolu agency. The reasoning behind the extradition request is that Jamal Khashoggi was murdered in Turkey by Saudi nationals who travelled to Turkey for this specific purpose, a senior Turkish official said. Expand Close CCTV of Jamal Khashoggi entering the Saudi consulate in Istanbul (CCTV/Hurriyet/AP) / Facebook Twitter Email Whatsapp CCTV of Jamal Khashoggi entering the Saudi consulate in Istanbul (CCTV/Hurriyet/AP) Turkeys judicial system is better equipped to serve the cause of justice in this case, the official said, adding: The court proceedings in Turkey will be open to international observers in order to ensure the greatest level of transparency. Turkey alleges a 15-member hit squad was sent to Istanbul to kill the journalist, a onetime Saudi insider who became a critic of Prince Mohammed and was a columnist for The Washington Post. Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has said the three others in the group of 18 who were detained in Saudi Arabia were consulate employees. Expand Close Turkeys President Recep Tayyip Erdogan (Presidential Press Service via AP, Pool) / Facebook Twitter Email Whatsapp Turkeys President Recep Tayyip Erdogan (Presidential Press Service via AP, Pool) Mr Erdogan said on Friday that Turkey would reveal more evidence about the killing but was not in any rush to do so, indicating that Turkish authorities will methodically increase pressure on Saudi Arabia. There is no point in being too hasty, Mr Erdogan said in an address to ruling party leaders. He added that the Saudis who killed Mr Khashoggi must reveal the location of his body. Saudi prosecutors have said evidence from Turkey indicates that the killing was premeditated, a change from previous Saudi statements seeking to dodge responsibility for a crime that caused global outrage. Hours after Mr Erdogans speech, Mr Khashoggis fiancee Hatice Cengiz told HaberTurk, a Turkish news channel, about her pain since he disappeared after entering the consulate. I found myself in a darkness I cannot express, Ms Cengiz said. She described how she had accompanied Mr Khashoggi, 59, to the consulate and waited outside while, she thought, he was getting paperwork for their planned marriage. He never came out. I still have questions that I cannot answer, said a tearful Ms Cengiz. Did I miss something? Did I not notice something? Ms Cengiz said she has not received any condolence call from Saudi officials after the death of Mr Khashoggi, who left Saudi Arabia for self-imposed exile in the United States a year ago. On Thursday, one of the journalists sons, Salah Khashoggi, flew with his family from Saudi Arabia to the US. Prince Mohammed has condemned the killing, but critics suspect a cover-up designed to protect him, noting that he has tight control over the day-to-day affairs of the kingdom. The Saudi officials who killed journalist Jamal Khashoggi in their Istanbul consulate must reveal the location of his body, Turkeys president said as he sharply criticised the kingdoms handling of the case. Recep Tayyip Erdogan also said Saudi Arabias chief prosecutor will arrive in Turkey on Sunday as part of the investigation and will meet Turkish counterparts. Turkeys state-run news agency said Turkish prosecutors plan to seek the extradition of 18 suspects. Anadolu Agency said the Istanbul chief prosecutors office submitted its request to the Justice Ministry, and the Foreign Ministry will formally request the extraditions. On Thursday, Saudi prosecutors said Mr Khashoggis killing was premeditated, citing Turkish evidence and changing the countrys account again to try to ease international outrage over the murder of a prominent critic of Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman. Expand Close Recep Tayyip Erdogan (Presidential Press Service/AP) / Facebook Twitter Email Whatsapp Recep Tayyip Erdogan (Presidential Press Service/AP) Turkey has other information and evidence about the killing by Saudi officials after Mr Khashoggi entered the consulate on October 2, and it will eventually reveal that information, Mr Erdogan said. There is no point in being too hasty, he said in an indication that Turkey is prepared to maintain pressure on Saudi Arabia, even as the kingdom struggles for ways to end the crisis. CIA director Gina Haspel was in Turkey earlier this week to review evidence, and she briefed Donald Trump in Washington on Thursday. What the US president called one of the worst cover-ups in the history of cover-ups was revealed to the world by Turkish leaks of information, including references to purported audio recordings of the killing, and security camera footage of the Saudi officials involved as they moved around Istanbul. Key mysteries remaining include whether the killing was carried out with the knowledge of the crown prince, who denies it, and the location of Mr Khashoggis body. Expand Close Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman (Amr Nabil/AP) / Facebook Twitter Email Whatsapp Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman (Amr Nabil/AP) It is clear that he has been killed but where is it? You have to show the body, Mr Erdogan said during an address to Turkeys ruling party leaders. He criticised initial Saudi statements that claimed Mr Khashoggi had left the consulate unharmed after going there for paperwork related to his planned marriage to a Turkish woman. He will leave the consulate and not take his fiancee with him? Such childish statements do not go hand in hand with statesmanship, said Mr Erdogan, again urging Saudi Arabia to turn over 18 suspects the kingdom said it had arrested and would punish for the crime. If you cannot get them to speak then hand them over to us and let us put them on trial, he added. Mr Khashoggis son Salah has left Saudi Arabia after the kingdom revoked a travel ban, allowing him to travel to the US. Expand Close CCTV of Jamal Khashoggi entering the Saudi consulate in Istanbul (CCTV/Hurriyet/AP) / Facebook Twitter Email Whatsapp CCTV of Jamal Khashoggi entering the Saudi consulate in Istanbul (CCTV/Hurriyet/AP) Mr Khashoggis fiancee said later that she has not received any condolence call from Saudi officials. Hatice Cengiz, who is Turkish, also said in an interview on Turkish television channel HaberTurk: I found myself in a darkness I cannot express. She said she had asked US secretary of state Mike Pompeo, who called her about the case, whether he had any news that would make her happy. But he said he didnt, she added. State Department spokesman Robert Palladino said Washington welcomed the decision to have Salah Khashoggi and his family leave Saudi Arabia. His US destination was not immediately known but his late father lived in the Washington area. The statement from Saudi prosecutors that evidence showed Mr Khashoggis killing was premeditated contradicted an earlier Saudi assertion that rogue officials from the kingdom had killed him by mistake in a brawl. That assertion, in turn, backtracked from an initial statement that Saudi authorities knew nothing about what happened to the columnist for the Washington Post. The shifting explanations indicate Saudi Arabia is scrambling for a way out of the crisis that has enveloped the worlds largest oil exporter and a major US ally in the Middle East. But a solution seems a long way off, partly because of deepening scepticism in Turkey and elsewhere that the brazen crime could have been carried out without the involvement of Prince Mohammed, the kingdoms heir apparent. FBI agents covering a van in connection with the case (WPLG-TV via AP) A man has been charged in connection with a mail bomb campaign targeting prominent Democrats who have criticised US President Donald Trump. US Justice Department officials revealed that a fingerprint found on one package helped them identify their suspect as Cesar Sayoc, 56, of Aventura, Florida. The criminal complaint charges Sayoc with illegally mailing explosives, illegally transporting explosives across state lines, making threats against former presidents, assaulting federal officers and threatening interstate commerce. Court records show Sayoc, an amateur bodybuilder with social media accounts that denigrate Democrats and praise Mr Trump, has a history of arrests for theft, illegal steroids possession and a 2002 charge of making a bomb threat. Expand Close Cesar Sayoc has been charged (Broward County Sheriffs Office via AP) / Facebook Twitter Email Whatsapp Cesar Sayoc has been charged (Broward County Sheriffs Office via AP) The development came amid a nationwide manhunt for the person responsible for at least 13 explosive devices addressed to prominent Democrats including former president Barack Obama, former vice president Joe Biden and Hillary Clinton. The case widened on Friday as investigators in California scrutinised a similar package sent to Democratic senator Kamala Harris, her office said. In Washington, US attorney general Jeff Sessions cautioned that Sayoc had only been charged, not convicted. Expand Close Attorney general Jeff Sessions speaks about the arrest of Cesar Sayoc (AP Photo/Alex Brandon) / Facebook Twitter Email Whatsapp Attorney general Jeff Sessions speaks about the arrest of Cesar Sayoc (AP Photo/Alex Brandon) But he said: Let this be a lesson to anyone regardless of their political beliefs that we will bring the full force of law against anyone who attempts to use threats, intimidation and outright violence to further an agenda. We will find you, we will prosecute you to the fullest extent of the law. In Florida, law enforcement officers were seen on television examining a white van, its windows covered with an assortment of stickers, outside the Plantation auto parts store. Authorities covered the vehicle with a blue tarp and took it away on the back of a truck. Expand Close The vans windows were covered with stickers (Courtesy of Lesley Abravanel via AP) / Facebook Twitter Email Whatsapp The vans windows were covered with stickers (Courtesy of Lesley Abravanel via AP) The stickers included images of Mr Trump, American flags and what appeared to be logos of the Republican National Committee and CNN, though the writing surrounding those images was unclear. Mr Trump, after Sayoc was apprehended, declared that we must never allow political violence take root in America and Americans must unify. As in comments earlier in the week, he did not mention that the package recipients were all Democrats or officials in Mr Obamas administration, in addition to CNN, a news network he criticises almost daily. Earlier on Friday, he complained that this bomb stuff was taking attention away from the upcoming election and said critics were wrongly blaming him and his heated rhetoric. The Justice Department scheduled a Friday afternoon news conference in Washington that was to include New York Police Commissioner James ONeill, whose department investigated the mailings with the FBI. Law enforcement officials said they had intercepted a dozen packages in states across the country. None had exploded, and it was not immediately clear if they were intended to cause physical harm or simply sow fear and anxiety. Earlier on Friday, authorities said suspicious packages addressed to New Jersey senator Cory Booker and former national intelligence director James Clapper both similar to those containing pipe bombs sent to other prominent critics of Mr Trump had been intercepted. Investigators believe the mailings were staggered. The US Postal Service searched their facilities 48 hours ago and the most recent packages did not turn up. Officials do not think they were sitting in the system without being spotted. We are now "used to breathing the air of conflict". Every day, on TV and in newspapers, the talk is about conflicts, "one after the other". For the pontiff, "we see even world institutions, created with the best of intention to help the unity of humanity, peace, feel unable to reach an agreement". Hence, we should follow Jesuss advice: to agree at the beginning, make peace at the beginning". Vatican City (AsiaNews) At todays Mass in Casa Santa Marta, Pope Francis said that peace can be built with humility, gentleness and magnanimity, a peace that the world today is struggling to find and that world institutions feel incapable of securing. The Letter of Saint Paul to the Ephesians inspired the Holy Father who noted that, from the solitude of his imprisonment, the apostle addressed Christians a true hymn to unity, stressing the "dignity of vocation". Such solitude accompanied Saint Paul to his death at the place called Three Fountains because Christians were too busy" in their "internal struggles". Jesus himself, "before dying, at the Last Supper, asked the Father for the grace of unity for all of us." Yet we are now "used to breathing the air of conflict". Every day, on TV and in newspapers, the talk is about conflicts, "one after the other", wars, "without peace, without unity". Even if parties "make deals" to stop conflicts, these agreements are disregarded. Thus, "the career of armaments, the preparation for war, destruction, go on". "We see even world institutions, created with the best of intentions to help the unity of humanity, peace, feel unable to reach an agreement: there is a veto here, an interest there ... And they struggle to reach peace agreements. Meanwhile, children have no food, do not go to school, are not educated; there are no hospitals because war destroys everything. Ours is a tendency towards destruction, war, disunity. It is the tendency that plants in our hearts the enemy, the destroyer of humanity: the devil. Paul, in this passage, teaches us the path towards unity, which, he says: 'Unity is covered, it is 'armoured, we can say, with the bond of peace'. Peace leads to unity." This calls for behaviour worthy "of the calling" received, "with all humility, gentleness and magnanimity". In order "To make peace, unity among us, 'humility, sweetness we who are used to insulting, shouting ... sweetness and magnanimity' [are needed]. Let it go but open your heart. Can we make peace in the world with these three little things? Yes, it's the way. Can we reach unity? Yes, that [is the] way: 'humility, sweetness and magnanimity'. Paul is practical and continues with very practical advice: putting up with one another in love'. Put up with one another. That is not easy. There is always some judgment, condemnation, which leads to separation, distance ..." This happens, the Pope noted, even when creating distance between the members of the same family. And this makes "the devil happy"; it is "the beginning of war". The advice is "to put up [. . .] because we can be a nuisance, cause impatience, because we all are sinners, we all have our faults". Saint Paul recommends "to preserve the unity of the spirit through the bond of peace, [. . .], most certainly under the inspiration of the words of Jesus at the Last Supper: 'One body and one spirit'". He "goes on to show us the horizon of peace, with God; as Jesus showed us the horizon of peace in prayer: 'Father, may they be one, as You and I'. [That is] Unity. Francis goes on to stress that in today's Gospel (Lk 12:54-59), Jesuss advice is to reach an agreement with our adversaries "along the way". For the Holy Father, this is "good advice" because "it is not difficult to find an agreement at the beginning of a conflict". "Jesuss advice is to come to an agreement at the beginning, make peace at the beginning: this is humility, this is sweetness, this is magnanimity. You can build peace in the whole world with these little things, because these attitudes are Jesuss attitude [for he was] humble, meek, forgiving of everything. The world today needs peace, we need peace, our families need peace, our society needs peace. Let's start at home and practise these simple things: magnanimity, sweetness, humility. Lets go forward this way: of always making unity, consolidating unity. May the Lord help us on this journey." By Acee Agoyo DENVER, Colorado -- Indian Country leaders and advocates continue to express optimism that not one but two Native women will soon be walking the halls of Congress. As voters cast their ballots across the nation in less than two weeks, all eyes are on Sharice Davids , a citizen of the Ho-Chunk Nation , and Deb Haaland , who hails from the Pueblo of Laguna . Both are seeking seats in the House of Representatives , where a Native woman has never served in the history of the United States. "We may end up with two Native American women in Congress," Jason Giles, a citizen of the Muscogee (Creek) Nation who serves as the executive director of the National Indian Gaming Association told tribal leaders here on Thursday. "That is historic," said Giles, speaking at the 75th annual convention of the National Congress of American Indians Good morning, Johnson County! Early voting is now open - and you know there was a proud mom in the front of the line!#KS03 #TeamSharice #EV4Sharice pic.twitter.com/dc5REwx3gi Sharice Davids (@sharicedavids) October 22, 2018 Rep. Ben Lujan (D-New Mexico) was even more upbeat. As chair of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee , his party's campaign arm, he predicted victories for Davids and Haaland in his address to NCAI on Thursday. Davids, who is running in the 3rd Congressional District in Kansas , is "an incredible leader," Lujan said. She served as a fellow in the White House and worked on economic development on the Pine Ridge Reservation in South Dakota. "Sharice Davids will be a formidable force," Lujan told tribal leaders. Despite being a political newcomer, Davids has managed to out-poll and out-raise Kevin Yoder , the Republican incumbent who has represented the district for nearly a decade. She's also secured high-profile endorsements from former president Barack Obama and his vice president Joe Biden The hard work is paying off. In its latest update, the non-partisan Cook Political Report on Tuesday rated the district as "Lean Democratic," meaning Davids enjoys the advantage over Yoder though she must still prevail at the polls on November 6. As for Haaland, who held an event here on Monday, she continues to look secure in her bid for New Mexico's 2nd Congressional District , where voters have sent a Democrat to Capitol Hill in every election since 2009. Her chances are so strong that Cook Political Report considers her race "Solid Democratic." "Shes an activist," Lujan said of Haaland, who was the first Native woman to run New Mexico's Democratic party. "She knows how to roll up her sleeves." Missing from NCAI's discussions this week was a third Native woman who is seeking a voice in Congress. Yvette Herrell , a citizen of the Cherokee Nation , is also running in New Mexico, as a Republican in the 2nd Congressional District But even though voters in the district, which is home to several tribes, have elected Republicans in three out of the last four elections, Herrell is not seeing an easy path to victory. Cook Political Report still considers the race to be a "Republican Toss-Up," meaning it could go either way on election day. The Democratic candidate is Xochitl Torres Small , whose first name means "flower" in Nahuatl, an indigenous language spoken in Mexico and Central America. An attorney and former U.S. Senate aide, she has described herself as a "Native New Mexican" but not as indigenous. But with a victory for Haaland almost secure and one for Davids nearly in reach, tribal leaders remain hopeful about increasing the visibility of Native women in Washington, D.C. Throughout NCAI's 75th annual convention , they have been encouraging everyone to get out and vote on November 6. "We are two weeks away from making history," said Aaron Payment, who serves as NCAI's vice president and as chairperson of the Sault Ste. Marie Tribe of Chippewa Indians NCAI's milestone convention is taking place in the same city where tribal leaders came together in 1944 to address threats to their sovereignty. In hope of carrying their voices to more ballot boxes across the nation, delegates on Tuesday, by unanimous request, directed the organization to look at the possibility of establishing a non-partisan political action committee that would support Native candidates of all political stripes. "It will be looking for people who are I, for Indian," said Payment. NCAI's convention wraps up on Friday. Join the Conversation Related Stories The real stars of Badhaai Ho were Neena Gupta, Gajraj Rao, and Surekha Sikri. While Ayushmann Khurrana and Sanya Malhotra complimented the film well, the real stars still were the trio who lit up the big screen with their impeccable comic timing and dialogue delivery. But do you know that Neena Gupta and Gajraj Rao were not the first choices of director Amit Sharma? Instead of Rao and Gupta, the elderly couple that Sharma had visioned were Tabu and Irrfan Khan. Twitter In an interview with IANS, Amit Sharma revealed why Tabu rejected the role stating that she "looked like a woman who can still have a child." Junglee Pictures But it was Tabu who passed on the role and suggested that Neena Gupta would suit more. Amit Sharma added, Agencies "We had gone to Tabu ji for the role. At that time, we had a different script in mind and we wanted Tabu ma'am and Irrfan Khan sir. When she heard the script, she suggested Neenaji's name for her character. Tabu felt, perhaps rightly, that she looked like a woman who can still have a child." There is another trivia about the film that's surprising. Sharma further said that Ayushmann Khurrana (who played the role of the couple's elder son jokingly suggested that he could have played the role of the father as well as the son. He was quoted as saying, Twitter "Ayushmann jokingly suggested he should play both the father and son. It was Ayushmann who suggested Gajraj Rao's name. I knew him from the time we worked together for Pradeep Sarkar. When he heard the script for Badhaai Ho, he advised we get a bigger star to play the role since it was a major part. But I insisted on him. He agreed." But as the old adage says, all's well that ends well and the film has currently earned over Rs. 61 core and is currently unstoppable at the box-office. According to recent reports, Mumbai's Dindoshi Sessions Court on Friday rejected the application by Alok Nath's wife seeking an injunction order against Vinta Nanda, who accused Nath of rape and sexual harassment. The application sought that Nanda be directed to refrain from speaking to the media or making statements against Nath. Dismissing the order, the court said it can't pass an injunction order against her at this stage. Earlier this month, the actor had filed a civil defamation suit against the writer-producer, after she accused him of rape. The actor had sought a written apology, along with a compensation of Re 1 and a restraining order against Nanda. Earlier this month, Vinta Nanda had also lodged a police complaint against Nath. PTI In the wake of ongoing #MeToo movement, Vinta had accused Alok Nath of rape and narrated her horrifying ordeal in a Facebook post. She served as the writer and producer of teleserial 'Tara' in the 90s, in which Nath played a lead role. Following the allegations, the Indian Film and Television Directors' Association (IFTDA) had issued a notice to the veteran actor, seeking his stand on the allegations against him. Kerala Police have detained five members of a Rohingya family, including a six-month-old baby from Vizhinjam in the state capital Thiruvananthapuram on Tuesday. According to police, the family had reached Thiruvananthapuram from Hyderabad via train and then travelled to Vizhinjam on road. They have been identified as Sayub, his wife Safiya Kathum, their six-month-old baby Safiyan, Sayub's brother Irshad and Safiya's brother Anwar Shah. Police said the family had United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR)-issued ID cards and was living in Hyderabad since 2015. They had reportedly come to Kerala in search of work. They will be sent back to Hyderabad, where they have been registered as refugees after completing the formalities. Earlier the Railway Protection Force (RPF) had issued a warning to its units in Kerala and Tamil Nadu over the movement of Rohingya refugees. On Thursday, Union Home Minister Rajnath Singh had also warned about Rohingyas entering Kerala. PTI "There are reports that the Rohingya are trying to enter the southern states. The Centre has issued advisories to all states to enumerate, observe and collect biometric data of Rohingyas living in India," Singh had said. The reports of a mass influx of Rohingyas has caused quite a stir in Kerala, especially in the social media. With thousands of migrant workers coming to Kerala every day looking for work, including from states like West Bengal and Assam there was earlier apprehension about illegal Bangladeshi immigrants with fake documents coming to the state. BCCL/ File So far, officially there are only five Rohingya families living in Kerala, in Wayanad district. But authorities suspect there could be more who could be living illegally in the state. In a related development, the Supreme Court on Thursday refused to interfere in Centres decision to deport 7 Rohingya refugees to Myanmar. The government told the SC that Myanmar has accepted the seven Rohingyas as their citizens and has agreed to take them back. They were arrested in 2012 for illegally entering India and has been lodged in the Silchar Detention centre in Assam. Two days after a dog was seen carrying an severed leg of a patient in the Buxar Sadar hospital, a pig was on Wednesday found running with a newborns body in its jaws at the Sadar hospital at Saharsa. Hospital sources said a stray pig entered the hospital with a babys body lying in a compound adjacent to the hospital premises. People tried to stop the animal, but it fled into the forest along with the body. Representational Image Saharsa sadar hospitals deputy superintendent Dr Anil Kumar told this reporter over the phone on Thursday the unclaimed body was of a two-day-old baby and it was lying outside the hospital premises. The pig with the body between its jaws was first seen outside the hospital. Vested interests drove the pig through the hospital premises just to malign the hospital and its security arrangements, Dr Kumar claimed and added the hospital in its records did not have any mention of a baby dying in recent days. TOI/Representational Image The Saharsa DM, however, ordered an inquiry by SDO Shambhu Jha. While on a visit to the hospital, Jha defended the hospital management, but narrated a different story to the newsmen. He said the pig had dug the body out of a ditch near a school. On Monday, a dog reportedly found its way to the operation theatre of Buxar sadar hospital and reportedly took away the severed leg of one Ramnath Mishra of Ara. Mishra was admitted to the hospital after he fell on the track while trying to board a running Sharamjeevi Express at Buxar junction. He later succumbed to his injuries. State health secretary Sanjay Kumar had, however, later said the canine had picked up the leg from the accident spot. Sister Anupama, a Kerala nun, who had led the unprecedented protest in the state demanding the arrest of Franco Mulakkal, the then Bishop of Jalandhar, who was accused of rape, was heckled and forced to leave the church on Thursday where she had gone to attend the funeral of Fr Kuriakose Kattuthara, a key witness in the case. A group of nuns including Sister Anupama had gone to the St Marys Forane Church, Pallippuram in Cherthala on Thursday evening to attend the funeral where a group of pensioners raised objection after she began to speak to the media. BCCL/ FILE The parishioners alleged that the nuns were 'anti-diocese' elements out to dismantle Christian beliefs. Sister Anupama who broke down in the face of the protests later told media that she was deeply hurt by what happened. I know Father Kattuthara for many years. He has seen me as his own daughter.. we have only stood for truth, she said. She also added that no amount of intimidation and social isolation will make them go back from their demands. PTI/FILE Fr. Kattuthara a senior priest and staunch critic for Franco Mulakkal was found dead on Monday inside his room in Dasuya under mysterious circumstance. The 67-year-old had earlier deposed against Mulakkal in the rape case and had told the media that he was aware of other nuns who had left the convent because of the Bishop. Immediately after the news of his family in Kerala had alleged foul play in the death and wanted it to be probed. According to them ever since Mullakal was out on bail, Fr. Kattuthara was under severe stress and had told his brother that his life could be in danger. However Police and the Jalandhar Diocese, to which the priest belonged to have maintained that Fr. Kattuthara died of natural causes. by Melani Manel Perera Supatha, the youth group of the Holy Family association, put on two performances at the Loyola College Auditorium in Negombo to raise funds for the Maharagama Cancer Hospital. Colombo (AsiaNews) The youth group of the Holy Family association wants to give a "smile of hope" to cancer patients of a Sri Lankan hospital. To achieve this, they put on a show in Colombo today aimed at raising funds for the patients at the citys Maharagama Cancer Hospital. To advertise the event, they handed out flyers and attached stickers at bus stops, schools and streets. The chosen date is the birthday of Fr Pierre Bienvenu Noailles, founder of the association. The group staged two performances at the Loyola College Auditorium in Negombo, a district south of Colombo. The first, at 2.30 pm, was reserved for students; the second, at 6:30 pm, was open to the general public. We will put all our energy into the success of the project, said Chamudi Jude and Erandi Nawoda, two youth leaders before the show went on. We hope to raise as much as possible for our loved ones who are in hospital. We would like to give them a smile of hope, they added. The youth group, Supatha, staged Hangum Wrusawa (The rain of thoughtfulness). The funds raised will go to buy medicines and medical equipment. Another goal was to raise awareness about cancer prevention and collaborate with the hospitals chaplain, Fr Jude Nichols. The Kerala Police has released an album of 210 suspects who engaged in violence in Sabarimala last week. In a major goof-up, Kerala Police included a photograph of a policeman in plain clothes. Realising their mistake, the Kerala Police removed the photograph and post it on their social media page. The blunder was first pointed out by BJP leader MT Ramesh. The person listed as no 167 in the lookout notice is a member of the police force. The photograph of Ibrahim, a police driver at the Pathanamthitta AR Camp is being circulated claiming that he is a member of the RSS. Police personnel and CPI(M) cadres started trouble in Sabarimala. This man got caught because cameras dont lie, Ramesh said in a post. Kerala Police acknowledge the error and apologised for the same. Truth is that this is not a look-out notice; these are pictures of people suspected to have engaged in violence at Sabarimala, collected from in and around the temple. These details have been sent to all district police chiefs to investigate and nab the real culprits. Since we confirmed that he (Ibrahim) was caught in the violence while returning from duty, as the mob attacked the vehicle he was driving, we decided to remove him from the list of suspects, read the post. Police have arrested more than 1,400 people across the state. Additionally, 258 cases have been registered against 2,000 people for defying an order of the Supreme Court that had allowed women of all ages to visit the temple. Thirty-six-year-old Nusrat Parveen decided to beat all odds and turn her pain into motivation. She has become the first Muslim woman from India and first from Kashmir to bag the prestigious title of Mrs India International- 2018, held in Malaysia. My pain was so deep and cruel. I faced that all alone, hence, managed to come out of the ordeal. I decided to leave all my agonies behind to do something for myself, Nusrat Parveen told Kashmir Patriot. Nusrat hails from Yaripora Khanpora village of Kulgam district in South Kashmir. Kashmir Patriot Nusrat, a mother of three children told Kashmir Patriot, her failed marriage was a trauma in her life. But that becomes my motivation too, she added. I had a love marriage with a man from Maharashtra state, who is an architect. The more successful architecture he became in life, the more distanced he got from me and our children. But as a typical and obeying housewife, I still managed my relationship with him. Because to me whatever I had was my destiny and I was supposed to live with it. This is what we believe and how we live in our society, she said. However, a few months earlier when she got to know about her husbands second marriage, she was left shocked and devastated. She decided to not live with the man who cheated on her and left their children as well. After making to the top ten finalists at the pageant, Nusrat said, I told them (judges), I am a housewife, mother of three children, who is confined to four walls for her house, looking after her children and household chores. Today I am at a stage for the first time. She also requested the judges to speak in Hindi because she is not confident of speaking in Hindi. She said that perhaps her simple approach towards life impressed the judges. Japanese PM Shinzo Abe will host Prime Minister Narendra Modi for a private dinner at his holiday home in the picturesque Yamanashi prefecture, which is home to Mount Fuji, in a rare such reception to a foreign leader. Modi will be in Japan for a two-day visit from October 28-29 to hold the annual India-Japan summit. Modi had hosted Abe in Ahmedabad for the summit last year during which the Japanese PM was also taken to Sabarmati Ashram of Mahatma Gandhi. BCCL A formal launch of negotiations for a military logistics pact is expected to be the highlight of the 13th India-Japan summit starting Sunday. Connectivity, infrastructure and security situation in the Indo-Pacific are expected to be other focus areas, the government said ahead of PM Narendra Modis visit to Japan. Briefing journalists about Modis visit, foreign secretary Vijay Gokhale said formal negotiations for Acquisition and Cross Servicing Agreement (ACSA) will begin during the summit. He, however, added that any announcement about signing of ACSA was unlikely on this occasion. India and Japan conduct joint military exercises regularly and, as Japanese ambassador to India Kenji Hiramatsu said recently, it is only natural for the two militaries to have a logistics-sharing agreement. The agreement would allow both navies to access each others naval facilities for refuelling and servicing. BCCL This will be the 5th India-Japan summit to be attended by Modi. "Regional security will be another topic. We presume that given the interest Japan has in issues related to the Korean peninsula and DPRK, this matter will be discussed. We will certainly raise our concerns over terrorism and other trans-border crimes which are of importance to us," Gokhale said. Abe is currently visiting China, the first visit by a Japan PM to Beijing in 7 years, and will return just in time to receive Modi. Asked about this thawing of ties between Japan and China, Gokhale said it was not going to have any impact on Indias bilateral ties with Japan and that New Delhi welcomed good relations between the two countries. BCCL He said India is also hoping to have some kind of synergy or integration between Modi's Ayushman Bharat scheme (on health insurance) and the Japanese programme which is called Asia Health and Well-being Initiative. "How we dovetail this and how we leverage Japan's strength in certain areas including medical equipment, hospitals and others is something that the two leaders can explore," Gokhale said. Asked if land acquisition issues could mar the bullet train project with Japan, Gokhale said the government believed that the project will be completed by 2022. The Indian government has decided to send the Rohingya refugees back to Myanmar. However, the decision has left thousands of asylum seekers in a difficult situation as they still fear for their lives. "Where do we go now?" bemoans Mohammad Tahir, a man in late forties, though his wizened appearance makes him look a lot older. Living in a shabby shanty in South Delhi's Kalindi Kunj camp, Tahir's query perhaps reflects the collective concern of all the Rohingya refugees living in India. ALSO READ: While India Calls Them 'Security Threat', Bangladesh Says Rohingya Refugees Are Not Radicalised On October 3, the Indian government deported seven Rohingya refugees to Myanmar for entering the country without proper 'documentation'. The incident has raised concern and suspicion among the refugees living in India. "We are being thrown into a death trap. Bangladesh, India or Myanmar, no country has space for us" says Tahir, with a discernible irateness donning his face. Tahir has seen his relatives being raped in front of his eyes by the Burmese army, before he 'miraculously' saved his life by crossing two international borders. "Do you think we would not love to go back to our homes? Do you think I enjoy collecting scrap here to feed my family? We will go the very day they stop killing us there (Myanmar)." ALSO READ: Rohingya Refugees In India Say They Want To Live Here, Those Who Have Been Deported Will Soon Be Killed Indian government though has toughened the stand against the Rohingya refugees with Home ministry asking states to 'identify' any individual who has entered the country illegally. With general elections only a year away and many state elections slated next month, the issue, not astonishingly is also making it to election rallies. "All illegal migrants are like termites eating into our nation's security. We will make sure no one of them stays in this country, if we are elected again" said BJP president, Amit Shah, in a recent election rally in Madhya Pradesh. ALSO READ: After Reports About Huge Influx Of Rohingya Refugees To Kerala, Five Member Family Detained The fear of deportation is forcing many refugees to flee their camps during the day time. In Kalandi Kunj, southeast Delhi, the refugees allege that the police is frequenting the camps and making them fill 'certain' forms, which they fear is being done to deport them. Narrating the tales of fear, Najnin Begum, who lives in a small dingy one room house with her sister and brother in law in the camp laments her fate, "We are bare handed and have lost everything. What makes native people fear us?" ALSO READ: These Aerial Photos Show The Extent Of The Damage During Violence Against Rohingyas In Myanmar Najnin lost her three children and husband in the violence, Kill us here, rather than sending us back, she says. About half of the refugees in India including Najnin Begum have United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) cards, however, the government doesn't consider it as a legal permit to stay in the country. With election times ahead the humanitarian tragedy of Rohingiya refugees issue is expected to be draped with political connotations, with Tahir and Najnin set to become numbers on 'certain' forms and devoid of any corporeal existence. It was in November last year that The Information first uncovered the skeletons in Andy Rubin's closet. The Android creator had left the company in 2014, but they found out it was thanks to sexual misconduct allegations. Now, it seems Google actually rewarded him for it. Android creator Andy Rubin For those of you still somehow unawares, yes, the 'Father of Android' was accused of multiple counts of sexual misconduct during his time at Google. It got to the point where an investigation's results in 2014 led Google co-founder Larry Page to ask him to resign. Yet, instead of tossing him out on his heels, The New York Times now says they actually presented him with an exit package, and a hefty one at that. Google had been obliged to investigate an incident in 2013, where Rubin allegedly coerced another Google employee to perform oral sex on him in a hotel room. Apparently, the investigation found the claims to be extremely credible, which is why Page decided Rubin needed to go. Yet, Google reportedly handed the former Android chief, who had abused his power for sexual motive, a $90 million exit package. The last $2 million of that amount will be paid out next month. That's not the half of it. During the early stages of the 2014 investigation, Google reportedly gave Rubin "a stock grant worth $150 million." It was incentive to stay with the company after he'd left the Android team to focus on robotics. NYT says it's unclear if Larry Page or any of the leadership knew about the investigation at the time, given that it would have been ideally carried out in secrecy. Google co-founder Larry Page However, they knew about it for certain when they handing him a $90 million exit package. They even allowed him to delay in paying back a $14 million loan he'd taken from the company to buy a beach estate in Japan. And possibly worst of all, Page at the time publicly praised Rubin when he made the announcement. For his part, Rubin has continued to deny the sexual misconduct allegation, and calls the reports of his compensation "wild exaggerations. According to him it's part of a smear campaign as he's engaged in a messy divorce and custody battle. A divorce his wife sought earlier this year, a few months after the Information story about his sexual antics at Google. 2/2 to disparage me during a divorce and custody battle. Also, I am deeply troubled that anonymous Google executives are commenting about my personnel file and misrepresenting the facts. Andy Rubin (@Arubin) October 26, 2018 On the other hand, the reaction from Google now is more interesting. In an email to employees the same day as the NYT story, CEO Sundar Pichai and VP of people operations Eileen Naughton didn't deny anything in the piece. Instead, they called it "difficult to read", and preferred to detail all the steps they say Google has taken to make women feel safer. In particular, they wanted to point out that they've fire 48 people in the last two years over sexual harassment claims, and none of them were paid an exit package. In fact, despite Google's callous actions, the story says it was under no obligation to provide Rubin with an exit package either. The Times story in fact details other executives that have been given separation agreements over sexual misconduct allegations. Google could have just fired them all, like it should have. Instead it worked to protect their public images, for the sake of its own, and offered sexual predators millions in total. All Rubin was forced to do for his $90 million was not work for a Google rival and not publicly disparage the company. Google CEO Sundar Pichai The Times story goes on to say that the 2013 incident was merely one of a few. Rubin may have met his now ex-wife Rie Rubin at Google, but he reportedly "also dated other women at the company while married." The ex-wife's divorce filing also sheds more light on the Father of Android. She claimed he had multiple "ownership relationships" with other women while they were married, paying them hundreds of thousands of dollars. "You will be happy being taken care of," a screenshot of one email Rubin sent to a woman in 2015 read. "Being owned is kinda like you are my property, and I can loan you to other people." In an official response to the New York Times though, it doesn't seem the company has learned anything at all. "We investigate and take action, including termination," the company said. "In recent years, we've taken a particularly hard line on inappropriate conduct by people in positions of authority. We're working hard to keep improving how we handle this type of behavior." The Paiter tribe, more commonly known as Surui, are an indigenous people living in the Brazilian state of Rondonia. Living in the heart of the Amazon, they're the only line of defence against illegal tree-cutting in the jungle. And since the Amazon forest is pretty much the lungs of our planet, for its ability to absorb 25% of carbon dioxide released in the atmosphere, their efforts have far-reaching consequences for the rest of the world. Surui Chief Almir Narayamoga - Google Earth Outreach Almir Narayamoga Surui is a chief of one of the four Paiter clans in the region. To look at him, wearing his polo shirt and slinging a hunting rifle, you wouldn't think it's just been 50 years since his tribe first made contact with the outside world. It's been a very quick half century for the Paiter, with them being introduced to factory-made clothing, firearms, and more. Unfortunately, they've also been introduced to loggers. "Since the beginning of this year 2016, we have gone through a total invasion of loggers and gold and diamond prospectors," Chief Almir says on the tribe's website (yes, they have one now). "Each day, more than 300 trucks leave outside our territory filled with wood, representing 600 hectares of deforested forests. And it continues to grow, while according to the Brazilian Constitution, it is illegal to deforest an indigenous reservation." "These changes, however, did not erase our warrior spirit." Though various factors forced the Surui to emerge from the forests in 1968, it wasn't until 1983 that the Brazilian government granted them their own territory. Named 'Seventh of September' (for the first time they emerged), it's 1,000 square miles of thickly forested land, one of the few remaining forested regions here. Through the 1980's eleven percent of Rondonia's forest was decimated by loggers. It's today the most deforested state in Brazil's Amazon. That's a bigger worry than you might think, because the entire world depends on the Amazon rainforests. According to experts, it's responsible for That's the equivalent of pollutants emitted by 4.3 billion cars in a year. So if the Amazon goes from green to bare earth, we're all screwed. But first and foremost, that would mean the Surui lose the only home they've ever known. Almir says he became chief in 1982 at age 18, but it's taken years of struggling against loggers and miners with no success. Then, around 2009, they had a breakthrough. The cavalry has arrived Google, as part of its Google Earth Outreach program, visited the Paiter in the territory. From there, they took them to nearby cities to experience technology and the Internet for the first time. And the first time Chief Almir saw Google Earth, he realised it was exactly the weapon he needed for the war. With backing from various environmental groups, the Paiter have partnered with Google, who taught them to use computers and mobile phones. Now, aside from the crops they harvest and livestock they tend to, the biggest installment in the Chief Almira's village is a gigantic steel tower that brings them WiFi. They use it to keep track of patches of forest on Google Earth, so they know when loggers or miners are illegally tearing up pieces of the rainforest. They've also begun using their smartphones to track the number and kinds of wild animals they kill, to ensure their hunting is sustainable. And when they're not working to protect the forests, the WiFi also lets them access things we've come to take for granted, like YouTube and Facebook. Still, the Paiter can and do fight transgressions that malicious forces attempt on their land. But as far as the area surrounding the Seventh of September, they don't have the authority to do much. Which is why the Surui are calling out for help on that website we talked about. Because if they don't survive, none of us will. A US woman found help in the most unlikely of places when she was desperately trying to save her injured brother. Lisa Nagengast just got home to Tampa, US, after spending a few days with her brother in Columbus to see him through spinal surgery and then get him settled back at home. He was in extreme pain, something was wrong with his incision site, and he couldn't feel his left leg and at that time he was all alone. He said, My left leg is numb, Im in excruciating pain, and I cant walk,' Nagengast told Yahoo Lifestyle. After getting off the plane she called him back, and he explained to his sister the complicated scenario. He couldnt call 911, because hes on disability, and if ambulance workers decided his condition is not life-threatening, he might have to pay the medical bills in full, reports Yahoo News. There were only two cab drivers in town and no Uber, and he couldnt afford to pay for a car anyway. To make things worse, he didnt feel comfortable with his social worker and was hesitant to call her. "I'm going to drive myself to the hospital," Holeman, 48, said on the voice mail. Facebook But Nagengast put her foot down and didn't allow him to move. She forced him to give his social worker's number to get help. Just as she dialled the number, things took a strange turn. Nagengast was unaware that she dialled the wrong number. It reached a sandwich shop called Jimmy Johns and before anything she blurted out her sticky situation. Nagengast told her story again. "I need you to help me. If you need me to pay for it, I will. We have to get this done." The manager said that he had some drivers and that he could send one to help her brother. He'd call her back in 15 minutes. The manager who himself was an ex-war veteran immediately arranged a way to help her brother. Nagengast went on to appreciate the Jimmy Johns workers incredible act of kindness, and is sure that this is a story that will stay on for generations. Philanthropist, author and the founder of Microsoft, Bill Gates recently shared a moving tribute for the man hailed as 'Condom King' who saved Thailand from an HIV/AIDS epidemic. Mechai Viravaidya is a social activist from Thailand who is credited with promoting the use of condoms and encouraging responsible family planning in the country. In his Gates Notes blogpost Bill Gates wrote,"Mechais work with PDA helped prepare Thailand for its biggest health challenge of the 1980s and 1990s: HIV/AIDS. When the AIDS epidemic came to Thailand, Mechai and PDA responded with prevention programs targeting those at greatest risk, including sex workers and their clients. " Gates also shared an Instagram post to speak about Mechai Viravaidya's incredibly feat to help his country and it's people. "In a country where most people were uneasy discussing sex, Mechai Viravaidya pushed the conversation out into the open," writes Mr Gates in his Instagram post, sharing four pictures of Mr Viravaidya while praising his efforts. "Mechai has helped improve the lives of millions of people in Thailand. And the Thai people have thanked him with an honor that is perhaps the greatest measure of his impact," he added. "When people in Thailand want a condom, they don't call it a condom. Instead, they refer to it by the name of the man who taught them the importance of using one - they ask for a 'Mechai." "The world can continue to learn from Mechai's efforts to expand access to contraceptives," he wrote, sharing a video that details Mr Viravaidya's efforts. The banning of porn websites in India comes in the wake of Uttarakhand High Courts order that asked the government to block 857 websites that contain adult content. The order came on September 27 and the high court said that Internet service providers will have to ban the sites or face cancellation of their licences. According to India Today, hundreds of popular porn websites in India are taken down and some claim that the telecom provider Jio has a major role to play. While some slammed the decision saying it was archaic others were busy churning out some humour: #1 #2 #3 #4 *After #pornban in india* Jio users Airtel and vodafone Be like users be like pic.twitter.com/JHmCLBTIFW PRITHVI (@Prithvi_raj17) 25 October 2018 #5 #6 *trying to search up a porn site on jio network . *jio network pic.twitter.com/bV4FYptiow Uranus Desai (@brokenulna) 24 October 2018 #7 After Jio's porn ban All VPN Apps : pic.twitter.com/19hTbbrEBo Lakhan Vijayvargiya (@Four_2kaOne) 24 October 2018 #8 #PornSiteBanInIndia #PornBan * [ Me to that tharki person who have a lot HD collection of Study material...] pic.twitter.com/cSfpjdvGiT Ravi_Raj (@__pin2__) 24 October 2018 #9 When you delete ur 100 GB study material and then see porn websites are banned by Jio.. pic.twitter.com/F1M043epCF Rinku Mani Ojah (@Ring_and_Q) 24 October 2018 #10 We're always interested in hearing about news in our community. Let us know what's going on! Go to form Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe interact during a groundbreaking ceremony for the Mumbai-Ahmedabad high speed rail project in Ahmedabad Sept. 14, 2017. The two leaders will meet Oct. 28-29 during the annual bilateral summit between the two nations. (Sam Panthaky/AFP/Getty Images) The Chilean national economic development agency, Corfo, which owns the lithium-rich Salar de Atacama, has opened a dispute with United States-based lithium producer Albemarle to seek an interpretation by the International Chamber of Commerce (ICC) of a contract between the two. The contract between Corfo and Albemarle was signed in April 2017. It says that Albemarle would have to sell as much as 25% of its lithium production from Atacama at a preferential price to another company or companies willing to invest in the production of value-added lithium materials in Chile. Corfo made a call for such investors in May 2017. This resulted in a shortlist published on March 9 this year from which Corfo selected Molymet, Samsung SDI and Sichuan Fulin Industrial Group. They will be permitted to buy as much as 25% of Albemarles lithium output, which totals 20,000 tonnes per year at the moment, at preferential prices. Corfo has a similar agreement with Chile-based lithium producer SQM, which shares the Salar de Atacama with Albemarle. The three investor companies are expected to put $754 million into Chile and to create more than 650 new jobs once their projects start. No time-frame was specified for this, however, and Fastmarkets understands that none of this investment has yet been made. But the Corfo-Albemarle dispute could put these investments at risk. Corfo-Albemarle disagreement The disagreement between Corfo and Albemarle concerns the level of the preferential prices, and began as a formal legal process on October 17, after months of conversations. "After several months of talks, we have not reached an understanding [with Albemarle] regarding a definition of the preferential price for 25% of its lithium production, which has the objective of kick-starting the value-added industry in Chile," Corfo said in press release on Wednesday October 17. "We firmly believe that Albemarles proposal is not adjusted to the contract terms, [and does] not respond to the promotion of a value-added industry in [Chile]," the agency added. "As [required] by the government from the first day, Corfo assiduously monitors whether the contracts associated with lithium are fulfilled, and will not allow any breach that harms the interests of all Chileans." Fastmarkets made several attempts to contact Corfo representatives for further comment, but had not been successful at the time of publication. Sources within the lithium industry told Fastmarkets that the dispute started because Albemarles interpretation of "preferential prices" would exclude any sales to its own subsidiaries, because of the lower prices at which Albemarle sells to them. The inclusion of such sales in the definition would mean that the preferential price would be much lower. Although Albemarle did not comment on its interpretation of "preferential prices," Eric Norris, president of Albemarles Lithium Global Business Unit, told Fastmarkets that "per our contract with Corfo, Albemarle pays commissions of up to 40% on the final sales prices paid by its customers, not the value used for related company transfers." Norris went on to say that "we regret that we have to [go through] this arbitration due to the substantial differences between the obligation defined in our contract with Corfo and the summoning and awarding of production at a preferential price made by this agency. We have confidence in our position." According to the former vice president of Corfo, Eduardo Bitran, who promoted the original contract, the agreement specified that Albemarle would have to sell 25% of its production in Chile at a preferential export price, and this included the prices at which Albemarle sells material to its subsidiaries in the US and Germany which are the lowest prices achieved by the company. Bitran negotiated the agreement with Albemarle before stepping down on March 9 this year after a change in the Chilean government. "Corfo did an exhaustive study of the prices of lithium sold from Chile by Albemarle and SQM, by working with Chilean customs, and it was concluded that Albemarle is selling lithium compounds at 25-35% discounted prices to the US and Germany, compared with other Albemarle sales and its competitor SQM," Bitran told Fastmarkets. Bitran said that some of the sales between Albemarle Chile and its subsidiaries in the US and Germany would have a price as low as $7,000 per tonne and that, under the terms of the contract, Molymet, Samsung SDI and Sichuan Fulin would have to benefit from a similar preferential price if that is Albemarles lowest export price from Chile. Fastmarkets assessed the contract price of lithium carbonate, min 99%, technical and industrial, ddp Europe and US, at $14.50-17.50 per kg on September 26. This was down month on month from $16-18 per kg. Fastmarkets assesses the market price and updates it month by month, but company transfer prices are lower than the market level and are excluded from our assessments. Lower company transfer prices are typical of the lithium market and other metal and mineral markets where corporations have assets in different territories. Albemarle production expansion in Chile In related negotiations, Corfo will allow Albemarle to increase its lithium quota in Chile to as much as 140,000 tonnes per year of lithium carbonate equivalent (LCE) by 2043 from 80,000 tpy in January 2017. At the same time, Corfo established in January 2017 a progressive commission system payable to the Chilean state that would go as high as 40% for material sold at a price of more than $10,000 per tonne. This was a condition for the expansion of Albemarles production. This increase in production is expected to happen without extracting more brine from the Salar de Atacama, but instead by introducing new technology to improve lithium extraction from the same volume of brine. For KPFA Support To The Defense Of Whistleblower & Journalist Julian Assange-Presented At August 18 KPFA LSB Meeting-Yet To Be Voted OnWhereas, Assange and Wikileaks have released a vast trove of primary source material unlike anything that journalists have ever had such ready access to,Whereas, Wikileaks releases have made evidence-based journalism more possible than ever before,Whereas, Julian Assange and WIkileaks have helped expose the role of the US and other governments war crimes and violations of international law and,Whereas, Assange and WikiLeaks have, in the Podesta emails, Vault 7, the Trade in Services Agreement, and many other releases, exposed the collusion between government officials, politicians, oligarchs, and corporations against the public interest, including even the survival of life on earth,Whereas, the US government along with the UK government are seeking to push Julian Assange out of Ecuadors London Embassy to be arrested by Theresa Mays government in the UK government and then most likely extradited to the United States for criminal prosecution and,Whereas, the US government and the UK government refuse to prosecute any of the war criminals that have been exposed by the whistleblowing of Julian Assange and WikiLeaks and,Whereas, there is a systematic effort by the US government to harass, repress and jail reporters and whistleblowers who exposed corruption and criminal activities by government officials and,Whereas, US politicians have called for the murder and torture of Julian Assange to silence him and,Whereas, KPFA and Pacific network is also under attack and threatened by the US government and corporations that the US government represents and,Whereas, the Australia Media, Arts and Entertainment Alliance (MEAA) union made Julian Assange an honorary member for life, waived his fees, and called for the defense of his rights, http://www.abc.net.au/ /journalists-union-shows-sup/2383428Whereas, leading intellectuals and whistleblowers including Daniel Ellsberg, John Kiriakou, Ray McGovern, and Coleen Rowley have called for unity in support of Julian Assange,Therefore be it resolved that the KPFA Local Station Board calls for the freedom of Julian Assange and an end to the harassment including the halting of internet and media access at Ecuadors London Embassy, an end to efforts to jail Assange by either the UK government or US government, and calls for KPFA and Pacifica to launch a campaign on our website and our programming to defend Julian Assange and all journalists and whistleblowers who are coming under increasing attacks by the US government and the corporations who control the government.Lastly we call on our KPFA LSB delegates to the Pacific Board to make a similar resolution and call for national publicity and programming by all Pacifica affiliated stations for the defense of Julian Assange and all journalists and whistleblowers who face threats to their democratic rights.Submitted by:Steve Zeltzer, KPFA LSB Staff RepresentativeEndorsed by:Daniel Ellsberg, Pentagon Papers whistleblowerProject Censored And The Media Freedom FoundationRandy Credico Comedian, Activist, and Former WBAI hostTom Voorhees, Elected Member, KPFA Local Station Board and Pacifica National BoardAnn Garrison, Journalist, Black Agenda Report, SF Bay View, KPFA NewsMary Ratcliff, Editor, SF Bayview NewspaperRichard Stone, APWU San Francisco, SFLC Delegate, Member KPFA Community Advisory BoardDr. George Wright, UPWA.infoJoe Lauria, Editor, Consortium News, Biweekly KPFA FlashpointsMichael Parenti, book author and political scientistDennis Bernstein, KPFA Pacifica Flashpoints ProducerOct. 7, 2018For Immediate ReleaseContact: Maxie Jackson III ed [at] pacifica.org Nancy Sorden nsordenPFW [at] gmail.com Pacifica Foundation Announces Support for Julian AssangePacifica National Board asks for Freedom for Whiste Blower(Berkeley) - The National Board of the Pacifica Foundation passed a resolution supporting the journalist and whistle blower Julian Assange at its October 4 meeting. The resolution said, The Pacifica National Board calls for the freedom of Julian Assange and an end to the harassment of Assange at the Ecuadorian Embassy in London.The resolution noted that Assange has been deprived of access to the outside world, including the use of the Internet, in the past few months. It called for the end of efforts to imprison Assange by the governments of the United States and the United Kingdom and an end to the attacks on journalists and whistle blowers by these governments.Assange, the founder of the WikiLeaks, has been residing in the Ecuadorian Embassy in London since 2012 when he was first given asylum. Ecuadorian President Lenin Moreno, has been under pressure from the United States to hand Assange over to the British authorities. That pressure intensified after a meeting between Moreno and U.S. Vice-President Mike Pence in June of this year.British authorities have repeatedly stated that if Assange steps one foot out of the Ecuadorian Embassy he will be immediately arrested and would then very likely be extradited to the United States, where he faces criminal charges that could put him in jail for the rest of his life. Assange continues to face a secret grand jury trial in Virginia, home of the Pentagon and CIA, on multiple charges under the 1917 Espionage Act. The charges against Assange are linked to special prosecutor Robert Muellers investigation into collusion of Trumps campaign with Russia to influence the 2016 elections. WikiLeaks has been accused of knowingly accepting hacked emails from Russian espionage agents stolen from the Clinton campaign. Assange has denied these charges.The moves against Assange are aimed at denying free speech to Assange and WikiLeaks, who over the last decade have exposed the war crimes, coup plots and the mass surveillance carried out by the US government and its allies.Over the years WikiLeaks has published reams of documents supplied by whistle-blowers that chronicle the secret machinations of the U.S. and other governments behind the backs of its people. These included documentation of equipment expenditures and holdings in the Afghanistan war and a report informing a corruption investigation in Kenya. In April 2010, WikiLeaks released the so-called Collateral Murder footage from the 12 July 2007 Baghdad airstrike in which Iraqi journalists were among those killed. Other releases in 2010 included the Afghan War Diary and the "Iraq War Logs". The latter allowed the mapping of 109,032 deaths in "significant" attacks by insurgents in Iraq that had been reported to Multi-National Force Iraq, including about 15,000 that had not been previously published. In 2010, WikiLeaks also released the US State Department diplomatic "cables", classified cables that had been sent to the US State Department. In April 2011, WikiLeaks began publishing 779 secret files relating to prisoners detained in the Guantanamo Bay detention camp. WikiLeaks received much of this material from whistle-blower Chelsea Manning.In addition to publishing the hacked emails from the Democratic Presidential campaign of Hillary Clinton in 2016, WikiLeaks published a trove of material from the CIA in 2017 exposing the cyber tools used by that agency to compromise the privacy of data on iPhones and other personal communications devices.The defense of Julian Assange has received the support of a number of journalists and prominent individuals. Among those who have spoke up in defense of Assange has been the journalist Chris Hedges, the film maker Ken Loach as well as the film maker Oliver Stone. Oliver Stone sent a letter to the Pacifica National Board in the days leading up to its Oct. 4 meeting asking that the organization go on record defending Assange.The motion was brought forth by Pacifica Board member Alex Steinberg who represents radio station WBAI in New York. Steinberg stated that,The Julian Assange case is a key case for freedom of the press. Assange has been hunted by the U.S. government and the government of the UK and it now looks like the government of Ecuador is getting ready to hand him over to the tender mercies of the U.S. Justice Department. His crime is very simple - he exposed the secret machinations of the U.S. government through the whistle-blowing activities of WikiLeaks.In standing up for the freedom of Julian Assange and of all whistle blowers the Pacifica Foundation reiterates its commitment to the principle of freedom of the press and the right of the public to know what its governments are doing no matter who is embarrassed by the release of this information. In doing so Pacifica is following in the traditions of its founder, Lew Hill, who as a pacifist, stood up to the U.S. government during World War II.Pacifica calls on other media organizations and individuals to join us in defending Julian Assange and WikiLeaks and the principle of Freedom of the Press.###Started in 1946 by conscientious objector Lew Hill, Pacificas storied history includes impounded program tapes for a 1954 on-air discussion of marijuana, broadcasting the Seymour Hersh revelations of the My Lai massacre, bombings by the Ku Klux Klan, going to jail rather than turning over the Patty Hearst tapes to the FBI, and Supreme Court cases. Those cases include the 1984 decision that noncommercial broadcasters have the constitutional right to editorialize, and the Seven Dirty Words ruling following George Carlins incendiary performances on WBAI.The Pacifica Foundation operates noncommercial radio stations in five major metropolitan areas, operates the Pacifica Radio Archives with decades of historical audio, and syndicates content to over 250 affiliate stations. It invented listener-sponsored radio.KPFA - Northern California, KPFK - Southern California, WPFW - Washington DC,KPFT-Houston, WBAI-New York, Pacifica Radio Archives, Pacifica.org Pacificanetwork.org Documenting the San Jose Marriott Strike by RiseUp Thursday Oct 25th, 2018 8:42 PM Photo Credit: Unite Here Local 19 These photos document some of the actions in front of the San Jose Marriott hotel since an historic strike began in early October. Photos are courtesy of Unite Here Local 19. Marriott employees are calling for increased wages, job security and workplace safety. Unite Here wants to change the lives of all workers in the industry with this strike which is affecting a total of 23 hotels in eight cities. In San Jose workers wore red t-shirts emblazoned with the slogan One Job Should Be Enough. Many Marriott employees say they have to work two or three jobs to support themselves. Community members including Sharat G. Lin, board member of San Jose Peace and Justice Center, and the Raging Grannies joined the rally of October 20th to support the workers. The Raging Grannies sang about solidarity with strikers in Spanish. A nearby celebration of Dia de los Muertos plus the workers' action made for a jam packed downtown on a warm afternoon. Mondelez expands Cocoa Life into Brazil Mondelez International has announced the expansion of its global cocoa sustainability initiative, Cocoa Life, in Brazil. The company says that Cocoa Life aims to create empowered and thriving cocoa farming communities. Mondelez International has announced the expansion of its global cocoa sustainability initiative, Cocoa Life, in Brazil. The company says that Cocoa Life aims to create empowered and thriving cocoa farming communities, by helping farmers to become more profitable and sustainable while safeguarding the future of chocolate. Around the world, Mondelez claims that the initiative is already making progress in five key cocoa origin countries: Ghana, Cote dIvoire, Indonesia, India and Dominican Republic. Mondelez International has been supporting cocoa production in Brazil since 2014 and says it will build on this work, and on the learnings from other origins, to fully deploy the Cocoa Life program. In Para, the company will invest around $200,000 per year over the next three years to empower cocoa farmers and to nurture thriving and independent cocoa communities. In Bahia, where farmers are said to face a myriad of challenges related to crop management, Cocoa Life is designed to provide guidance on the latest techniques in farm rejuvenation and good agricultural practices to improve yields and the quality of the cocoa produced as well as to mitigate environmental impact. The cocoa beans produced with Cocoa Life support will be part of the Mondelez International supply chain network for its Lactachocolate portfolio. We are thrilled about adding Brazil to our Cocoa Life initiative. Brazil is not only a cocoa-growing country but its also an important chocolate manufacturing hub, home to one of our local heritage brands, Lacta, one of the country's favorites and top-selling chocolate brand," says Christine Montenegro McGrath, Chief of Sustainability & Well-being. Cocoa Life has already made a significant impact in West African cocoa farming communities and we expect it will do the same in Brazil. In addition, the program will also look at contributing to the preservation of the Amazon rainforest and to the community development. The Cocoa Life launch in Brazil is the result of a collaboration with The Nature Conservancy (TNC) and its Forest Cocoa project, which was created to foster low-carbon family-based farming, generate social and economic benefits and engage farmers to commit to zero deforestation targets and an agroforestry-based restoration of degraded areas. The partnership with Cocoa Life brings a new perspective to expand our efforts. Indeed, the Para region, which had one of the highest rates of deforestation in Brazil, has the potential to become an example of sustainable development and restoration in the Amazon Rainforest," says Rodrigo Freire, Vice Coordinator of Restoration for TNC in Brazil. Over the past five years, we have supported the planting of 450 hectares of cocoa agroforestry-system in the Amazon, benefitting over 120 families in the Sao Felix do Xingu and Tucuma municipalities in southeastern Para. Our goal is to reach 1,000 families in the next five years." Read more Cocoa and Chocolate news Cocoa (CC) Bouncing Off Weekly Chart Upchannel Support Tradable Patterns - Thu Nov 18, 11:03PM CST Cocoa (CC) rallied another near 1% yesterday, forming a 4th straight green daily candle and is suddenly back to near the November high. Significantly, although CC may consolidate today yesterdays recapture... CCZ21 : 2,552s (+1.51%) NIB : 29.79 (+0.82%) Corn Red for Thursday Close Barchart - Thu Nov 18, 4:50PM CST Corn was a little weaker on Thursday, ending the session fractionally to 2 1/4 cents in the red. For December, that meant a dime fade off the days high. Dec 22 contracts stayed fractionally higher... ZCZ21 : 573-6 (unch) ZCPAUS.CM : 5.5788 (-0.34%) ZCH22 : 579-4 (unch) ZCZ21 : 573-6 (unch) ZCPZ21US.CM : 5.6207 (-0.40%) Wheat Red after New Highs Barchart - Thu Nov 18, 4:50PM CST Wheat futures turned south in the afternoon, after reaching new highs for the move. CBT SRW got to $8.43 1/4 cents for December, before dropping to a 2 1/4 cent loss on the day. The other front month CBT... ZWZ21 : 826-4 (+0.79%) ZWPAES.CM : 7.7153 (-0.29%) KEZ21 : 831-0 (+0.45%) KEPAWS.CM : 8.0555 (-0.85%) MWZ21 : 1022-4 (+0.57%) Double Digit Losses for Beans Barchart - Thu Nov 18, 4:50PM CST Soybean prices ended the session with 10 3/4 to 11 3/4 cent losses at the bell. For November that was off the days high by 22 cents. Soymeal closed red on Thursday too, giving back $4.30 to $5.10/ton.... ZSF22 : 1268-2 (+0.24%) ZSPAUS.CM : 12.2783 (-0.94%) ZSH22 : 1279-2 (+0.22%) ZSX21 : 1234-0s (+1.79%) ZSPX21US.CM : 12.2783 (-0.94%) Dollar Declines on Strength in Stocks Barchart - Thu Nov 18, 3:14PM CST The dollar index (DXY00 ) on Thursday fell -0.281 (-0.29%). The dollar index on Thursday moved lower throughout the day and posted moderate losses. A rally in stocks on Thursday reduced the liquidity... DXY00 : 95.886 (+0.36%) ^EURUSD : 1.13205 (-0.45%) ^USDJPY : 114.453 (+0.18%) GCZ21 : 1,855.3 (-0.33%) SIZ21 : 24.820 (-0.32%) Chart of the Day: Information Services Group - A Top 100 Stock Barchart - Thu Nov 18, 3:05PM CST The Barchart Chart of the Day belong to the management consulting company Information Services Group (NASDAQ: III ). I found the stock by sorting Barchart's Top 100 Stocks list first by the most... III : 9.33 (+0.32%) Nat-Gas Prices Rally on Record U.S. Nat-Gas Exports Barchart - Thu Nov 18, 3:05PM CST December Nymex natural gas (NGZ21 ) on Thursday closed up +0.086 (+1.79%). Dec nat-gas prices on Thursday posted moderate gains. Unprecedented foreign demand for U.S. nat-gas supplies is bullish for prices... NGF22 : 5.061 (+1.32%) Shootin' the Bull Swift Trading Company - Thu Nov 18, 3:04PM CST Cash continues to firm. Futures are firming with a slight gap higher to start this day off. I look for the firm tone to remain for a little while longer. Uh-oh! It could be you, or it could be us, but there's no page here. It was barely two months ago that Munich Re announced it was snapping up industrial Internet of Things (IoT) technology firm relayr as part of its digital strategy. Now its subsidiary Hartford Steam Boiler (HSB) has completed the deal. Through a capital contribution from Munich Re, HSB acquired 100% of relayrs shares and equity interests for US$251.7 million (about AU$356.1 million) in cash after accounting for the 15.51% of its previous minority interest. The swoop will see relayr reporting to HSB president and chief executive Greg Barats, who also serves as global lead of Munich Res IoT business. The new entities American International Group UK Limited (AIG UK) and AIG Europe SA (AESA) will start writing business come December 2018. Policies will move to the relevant unit from AEL, which will be merged into Luxembourg-headquartered AESA. Company alumnus Thomas Lillelund has been tapped to serve as CEO of the new European unit, which will have over 20 branches across the European Economic Area and Switzerland. We have cleared the final major legal hurdle in our Brexit plans which will enable us to offer our clients, partners, and colleagues certainty that AIG is ready to overcome the challenges posed to the insurance industry by Brexit, regardless of the UKs future relationship with the European Union, said Anthony Baldwin, chief executive of AEL and AIG UK. All our clients can be assured of past, present, and future contract certainty under the new structure. As we launch our two new legal entities to ensure the smooth operation of our business across Europe after Brexit, its an exciting time for AIG. Climate change is affecting the damage management and wider insurance market significantly. Like many years before 2018, rainfall and stormy weather has caused havoc in the UK and has led to devastating floods causing property damage to many businesses and homes. Of course, there are more factors to consider for flood risk such as building locations, building types and the land below and around properties however, with an increase in construction plans to cope with a growing population, it simply increases the flood risk probability to home and business owners. Ultimately, we cannot control or prevent adverse weather conditions, but as an industry we can encourage flood resilience to further protect consumers, and education is the key. Jonathan Davison (pictured), strategic development director of the BDMA, was involved in The Department for Environment Food & Rural Affairs The Property Flood Resilience Action Plan, where he was in Task Group 2 which focused on embedding resilience in small businesses. Here he provides insight into how we can work in partnership to guide and advise consumers Educating consumers Floods are often seen by consumers as something that will never happen to them, or at least a once in a lifetime situation. This may well be the case, yet some counties within the UK or particular building types are more susceptible to a flood situation. Either way there needs to be better education available for consumers signing up to a property insurance policy. Insurers need to be explicitly clear with customers when they take out a property insurance policy. Furthermore, insurers should be discussing flood resilience measures and providing advice to consumers on improvements that can be made to protect buildings. These discussion points can further insurers approach to treating customers fairly. Rewarding policyholders More emphasis should be placed on encouraging and making policyholders aware to make flood resilient changes to their properties. If insurers could recognise and reward policyholders for taking these actions, there would likely be higher motivation for consumers to apply resilient changes to their buildings. Demonstrating empathy When policyholders make a property claim due to flood damage, it is a distressing time in their lives. Our job as an industry is to provide the best possible solution that we can, with empathy front of mind. Policyholders need the reassurance that insurers, loss adjusters, damage management companies and others will do the best job by them, regularly communicating, acting promptly and ultimately aiming to shorten the claim lifecycle to ensure their lives can return to normality as soon as possible. Damage management technicians can add further steps to this customer service by providing further information on resilient measures, and, of course, such messages need to be aligned to the insurers instructions and the policy cover itself. In addition to repair work, new measures can be taken such as water-resistant building materials e.g. insulation, flooring or wall boards. Additionally, there could be further changes made to properties such as drainage pumps and (or) drain channels. Higher wall sockets and switches, as well as kitchen appliances are also commonly being implemented. Advice like this will demonstrate extra value. Upskilling technicians Today damage management technicians need to be up to speed and skilled to deal with both flood resilient and non-flood resilient properties. Technicians need exposure to the differing processes involved between these property types. The industry has seen a big push towards awareness and exposure with the completion of the Flood Resilient Repair House, at BREs innovation park. This really is an asset to our industry, raising awareness among professionals of repairing and refurbishing a flooded house which may also be at risk of future flooding. It has been adapted with flood resilient elements such as insulation, doors and windows. It also demonstrates just how resilient we can make properties today, without limitations. Work in partnership As experienced through my involvement in The Property Flood Resilience Action Plan, flood resilience is an initiative that is much more powerful when embraced by the various business interests within the wider insurance industry. A partnership between flood recovery, damage management and wider insurance stakeholders ensures that a clear vision is in place to lower flood risks and champion flood resilience. Admiral Insurance provides excess and surplus (E&S) lines coverage for commercial risks and distributes exclusively through wholesale brokers. Berkley Public Entity specializes in public entities and intergovernmental pools or trusts, including law enforcement, public officials and educators. W. Robert Berkley, Jr., president and CEO of W. R. Berkley Corporation, commented: Scott has a wealth of experience both in the industry and at Berkley that will complement the knowledge and skill set of BPEs president, Rich Vincelette, and bring considerable value to Berkley Public Entity. Along with his team, Rich has developed BPE into a leading provider of insurance for our governmental clients in a relatively short time. With Scott focused on building the ongoing strategy of the business, Rich will be able to increase his focus on serving our target market. Curt has extensive knowledge and experience in the excess and surplus lines insurance market and has been a key member of the senior management team at Admiral Insurance for many years. As such, he is well-suited to take on this important role and lead the operating units strategy for the future. Were delighted to have such depth and versatility in our senior management team. Brightway was also one of 100 companies to land a spot on Franchise Business Reviews Top Innovative Franchises in 2018 list. Were very proud of the franchise model weve developed and thrilled our franchisees rate their satisfaction with Brightway as high, said Michael Miller, Brightway co-founder and chairman. Being named a top franchise for veterans and innovators based on the feedback our franchisees provided is quite an honor that inspires us to continue to build an even stronger system for them. Brightway offers a 10% discount off the franchise fee ($4,500-$6,000) for military veterans, the company said. Owning a franchise with Brightway is owning your own business, said Baton Rouge, La., franchise owner Richard Ingram, a US Army veteran who served four tours in Iraq and Afghanistan. Its truly a partnership. There is no man in the tower bellowing orders, expecting his way or the highway. Brightway listens to the franchisees and facilitates change when necessary, derived from owner input. Brightway has proved to be the right franchise at the right time for my family, said Air Force veteran Eric Seuffert, owner of Brightway, The Seuffert Agency in Cape Coral, Fla. We could not be happier. The budget insurance companies are building these cheap, knockoff robots to compete with us These bots dont have the compassion of a real State Farm agent, Nunezs character says in the commercial. In a special feature on Forbes, author and futurist Chunka Mui has likened State Farms ridicule of AI-powered insurance to similar statements made by major companies and executives throughout history who have also turned their noses up at disruptive technologies, such as: When Western Union found Alexander Graham Bells telephone patents idiotic When Ken Olsen (founder of minicomputer developer DEC) mocked personal computers When Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer balked at Apples reveal of the very first iPhone, saying the most expensive phone in the world will not appeal to business customers because it doesnt have a keyboard. Mui believes the mockery is short-sighted. The biggest challenge for successful business executiveslike Ballmer, Olsen and those at Western Unionwhen confronted with potentially disruptive innovations is to think deeply about potential strategic shifts, rather than simply mock innovations for violating current assumptions, he said in his Forbes piece. According to Mui, AI is one of the major information technology trends that are reshaping every information intensive industry including insurance. And while State Farm boasts that its 19,000 human agents bring real compassion compared to Lemonades AI chatbots, there is more to the insurtech than just robots taking calls, Mui added. The insurtech is poised to disrupt the entire insurance industry with its mobile-based customer experience and is even using behavior economics to ensure that customers are not only honest about their claims, but also receive transparency reports about how their premiums work. State Farm executives need to get beyond the mocking and think deeply about how emerging innovations might disrupt their strategic assumptions, Mui remarked. Related stories: Hey dude, wheres my car claim? State Farm targets Asian Americans New Yorks attorney general on Wednesday sued Exxon Mobil, saying the Texas energy giant has misled investors about the risks that climate change poses to its operations. The lawsuit filed by Attorney General Barbara Underwood is the latest in a series of actions against the company claiming it has not been forthcoming with investors and the public about climate change. The complaint states Exxon courted investors such as the states public pension funds with inaccurate information, assuring them it was accounting for the possibility of stricter regulations of greenhouse gas emission in its planning, when it was doing much less than it claimed. Exxon built a facade to deceive investors into believing that the company was managing the risks of climate change regulation to its business when, in fact, it was intentionally and systematically underestimating or ignoring them, contrary to its public representations, Underwood said in a statement. Exxon Mobil looks forward to refuting the claims and getting the lawsuit dismissed, spokesman Scott Silvestri said Wednesday. These baseless allegations are a product of closed-door lobbying by special interests, political opportunism and the attorney generals inability to admit that a three-year investigation has uncovered no wrongdoing, Silvestri said in an email. The lawsuit follows a three-year investigation by Underwoods office and similar probe in Massachusetts. Exxon Mobil had sued the attorneys general of both states after they subpoenaed documents about Exxons research into the role of fossil fuels in climate change, calling their investigations politically motivated and accusing them of trying to take away the companys right to free speech. A federal judge dismissed that lawsuit. The complaint asks for an order requiring Exxon to correct past misrepresentations and provide restitution to shareholders. Two of New Yorks public pension funds hold Exxon shares with a combined value of about $1.5 billion, Underwood said. Consumer and environmental groups hailed the lawsuit as a significant step in addressing what they called Exxon Mobils deception around climate change. The lawsuit opens a new front in the climate change fight, with the prospect of a judicial reckoning and severe financial penalties for one of the biggest fossil fuel companies in the world, Blair Horner, executive director of New York Public Interest Research Group, said in a statement. A federal judge in June dismissed lawsuits brought by San Francisco and Oakland, California, that sought to hold big oil companies including Exxon Mobil liable for climate change. New Yorks lawsuit comes less than three months after the Securities and Exchange Commission dropped a similar investigation. Copyright 2021 Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed. Topics Lawsuits New York Climate Change An insurance broker who stole nearly $1 million while continuing to sell health care coverage he knew was fake has been sentenced to 18 months in prison. David Clark, 75, of Morristown, N.J., previously pleaded guilty before U.S. District Judge Michael Shipp to an information charging him with conspiracy to commit wire fraud. Judge Shipp imposed the sentence in Trenton federal court. According to documents filed in this case and statements made in court, Clark owned and operated Real Benefits Association LLC (RBA), a New Jersey limited liability company he incorporated on Dec. 17, 2003, under a similar name. Clark established RBA as a purported labor organization and as a way to market and sell health insurance to the general public through the RBA Welfare Plan. Initially, the Welfare Plan was fully insured through Perfect Health, a licensed New York insurance company. Participants paid insurance premiums to bank accounts of RBA or the Welfare Plan, which Clark then remitted to Perfect Health. Perfect Health was purchased by Health Insurance Programs (HIP) in 2008, and HIP discontinued its insurance policy with the RBA Welfare Plan. The federal government notified Clark that RBA did not qualify as a labor organization and was required to cease operating. Clark continued, however, to market and sell the health insurance plans to unsuspecting participants. Participants began to complain to their respective state insurance departments when their medical claims were not being paid, which prompted various departments throughout the United States to issue cease and desist orders. Clark and conspirators continued to market and sell bogus health insurance, and from December 2008 to July 2011, they collected approximately $1.8 million in premiums for RBA health insurance coverage. Clark diverted $962,027 from the premiums paid by RBA participants for his personal use, including by using victims premiums to fund personal debit and credit card purchases, college tuition payments and deposits to a relatives bank account. In addition to the prison term, Judge Shipp sentenced Clark to two years of supervised release. Source: U.S. Department of Justice Topics Agencies USA New Jersey International Airlines Group said an investigation into the theft of customers data at its British Airways subsidiary showed hackers may have stolen the personal information of a further 185,000 customers. British Airways apologized in September after the credit card details of hundreds of thousands of its customers who made bookings between Aug. 21 and Sept. 5 were stolen in the most serious attack on its website and app. On Thursday, BA said that it was notifying the holders of another 77,000 payment cards that the name, billing address, email address, card, payment information including card number, expiry date and security codes had potentially been compromised, and a further 108,000 without the security code. These customers were those who had made reward bookings between April 21 and July 28, 2018 and who used a payment card. Investigation into a cyber attack at British Airways is ongoing, Britains Information Commissioners Office said in a statement. British Airways also revised down its original estimate of 380,000 cards compromised in the September cyber attack, saying only 244,000 of those were affected. This takes the total number of payment cards potentially affected by the hack to 429,000. British Airways confirmed that it had no verified cases of fraud since the announcement on Sept. 6. A BA spokeswoman told Reuters the airline would reimburse customers who suffered financial losses as a direct result of the data theft. The attack came 15 months after the carrier suffered a computer system failure at Londons Heathrow airport, which stranded 75,000 customers over a holiday weekend. (Reporting by Arathy S Nair and Noor Zainab Hussain in Bengaluru; additional reporting by Sangameswaran S; editing by Elaine Hardcastle/David Holmes/Jane Merriman) Related: Topics Cyber Madison, Wisconsin-based American Family Insurance Mutual Holding Co. announced its policyholder members have approved the companys merger with Floridas Main Street America Group Mutual Holdings Inc. More than 86 percent of votes cast by proxy or in person supported the merger. Main Street America members approved the merger at a member meeting Oct. 19, with more than 90 percent of votes cast in favor. The merger was previously approved by state insurance regulators in Wisconsin, Florida, Indiana, Minnesota and South Carolina, and by the American Family and Main Street America boards of directors. The merger is effective on Oct. 31. At that time, Tom Van Berkel and Idalene F. Kesner, a Main Street America board member since 2010, and dean and professor of strategic management at Indiana University Kelley School of Business, will join the board of directors of American Family Insurance Mutual Holding Co. Main Street America has a robust commercial insurance business, and its strong presence in east coast states complements the American Family brand footprint and helps reduce the geographic concentration risk of Midwest storms. While American Family sells its branded products primarily through exclusive agents, Main Street America uses independent agents, offering the American Family group of companies a new sales channel. Main Street America will operate as a stand-alone brand within the American Family Insurance group, similar to The General and Homesite, acquired in 2012 and 2013, respectively. The combined equity of the merged entities is expected to be more than $9 billion. Service, coverage, premium rates and claims handling under existing American Family insurance policies are unaffected by the merger with Main Street America. Source: American Family Insurance Related: Topics Mergers The board of directors at Bloomington, Minnesota-based SFM Mutual Insurance Co. has named Terry Miller president and chief executive officer of the organization. Millers promotion, effective Nov. 5, is the result of a leadership succession strategy that has been in motion since 2015. Miller has worked at SFM for more than 30 years, serving as the companys original controller. He has risen through the ranks, becoming vice president of accounting, vice president of finance, then senior vice president and CFO. Since April 2016, Miller has held the position of executive vice president and chief operating officer. Millers appointment comes as SFM President and CEO Bob Lund steps down after leading SFM since May 2007. After a remarkable tenure of leadership at SFM, Lund has chosen to enter a new career adventure in private law practice that will allow him to perform pro bono work in the elder law area, among other services. Before his 12-year stint as president and CEO, Lund was vice president and general counsel. During his time at SFM, he said hes enjoyed working together with employees to develop a culture of caring for customers and the community at large. Miller is a certified public accountant and holds the chartered financial analyst designation. He serves on the Board of Directors of the Minnesota Workers Compensation Reinsurance Association, The Insurance Federation of Minnesota and Small Sums, a Saint Paul, Minnesota-based nonprofit. He recently was on the board of the Minneapolis Urban League. Hes also a member of the Minnesota Society of CPAs, the American Institute of CPAs, the CFA Institute and the Insurance Accounting and Systems Association. SFM is a customer-owned mutual insurance company providing Minnesota, Wisconsin, Iowa, Nebraska and South Dakota employers with workers compensation coverage. SFM offers workers compensation insurance for employers of all sizes, including claims and disability management, cost containment, legal assistance and third-party administration. Source: SFM Mutual Insurance Co. Topics Workers' Compensation Minnesota Keep an eye out for Openly, a new digitally-sophisticated upmarket homeowners insurer catering to independent agents. According to Ty Harris, founder and CEO, Openly will launch in early 2019 in a yet-to-be-announced large inland state. Were going after mainland America homeowners insurance, Harris, a former Liberty Mutual executive turned entrepreneur, told Wells Medias Andy Simpson at the 2018 InsureTech Connect Conference. Openlys simplified system asks agents to answer only three questions to obtain a quote for a customer and makes it easy to click to add and price coverage for second homes, flood, contents, landlords or other options. Matt Wielbut, co-founder, is a former Goldman Sachs technology executive who has also started an insurance agency. Harris says Openly plans to add more products after it gets going. In this interview, Harris discusses Openlys origins, its digital capabilities, its upgraded homeowners policy, and its proposition for independent agents. Video: Home Insurer Openly Creates 'Sophisticated' Digital Experience for Independent Agents Powered by InsuranceJournal.tv Topics Agencies InsurTech Tech Homeowners Texas Denton County will pay $115,000 to a female former county doctor after a federal court entered judgment in favor of the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) in a pay discrimination lawsuit (EEOC), the federal agency announced. According to the lawsuit, Dr. Martha C. Storrie worked as primary care clinician in the Denton County Public Health Department beginning in October 2008. The job duties of her position were primarily to provide medical treatment for Denton County residents in clinics operated by the County. In August 2015, Denton County hired a male physician to perform the same duties as her. However, when the newly hired clinician was brought on board, the county set his starting annual salary at more than $34,000 higher than hers. The Denton County director of public health then failed to take remedial measures in response to Storries complaint about the unequal pay. Such alleged conduct violates the Equal Pay Act and Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, which both prohibit unequal pay disparities which are based on gender as opposed to other factors such as qualifications and job duties. The Equal Pay Act makes it unlawful for employers to pay women less than men for a job requiring the same skill, effort and responsibility, performed under similar working conditions. The EEOC filed suit in August 2017 in the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Texas, Sherman Division (EEOC v. Denton County, Civil Action No. 4:17-CV-614) after first attempting to reach a pre-litigation settlement through its voluntary conciliation process. The final judgment and order issued by Federal District Judge Amos L. Mazzant III on Oct. 24, 2018 awards Dr. Storrie $115,000 in damages. It also requires Denton County to implement a new written policy regarding the compensation policy for all new physicians in the public health department in Denton County. Denton County is also to provide training on equal pay for women and the posting of a notice at Denton County facilities. Source: EEOC Topics Lawsuits Texas Injury rates have more than doubled at five West Virginia coal mines acquired by Murray Energy Corp. in 2013, according to a Reuters review of federal data, as the firm sharply increased the amount of coal produced per manhour. Although injuries and productivity rates rose over the same period, the causes of the increase in injuries remain unknown and could include a host of factors in the complex business of underground coal mining. Murray the nations largest underground coal mining company with about 6,000 employees producing more than 60 million tonnes of coal annually bought the mines from rival CONSOL Energy. Those mines now account for more than half the firms production. The injury rate at the five mines averaged 6.35 per 200,000 work hours last year, up from 2.79 in 2013, the last year CONSOL operated them, according to data from the U.S. Mine Safety and Health Administration. Thats the highest injury rate for the group in a decade and 70 percent above the national average for underground mines, the data show. At the same time, coal output per manhour at the five mines rose nearly 50 percent since 2013 to 5.7 tons in 2017, according to MSHA figures. By comparison, the industry average in 2015 the last year for which industry-wide data is available was 3.4 tons per manhour. Murray spokesman Cody Nett said that productivity has no correlation to injury rates. Strategies that Murray has used to increase output at the mines such as continuing production through the overnight maintenance shift and keeping machinery and vehicles running during shift changes are standard practices widely utilized throughout the industry, Nett said. Nett said the injury rate at the former CONSOL mines was inflated by false claims from workers who took time off for other reasons. He also attributed the doubling of injury rates since Murray acquired the mines to under-reporting by the previous owner during the preceding years an assertion disputed by the Department of Labor and its Mines Safety and Health Administration (MSHA), which collects the data. Regulators did cite CONSOL for under-reporting in a 2013 audit. But MSHA later revised the companys data to include injuries that CONSOL initially failed to properly report, said MSHA spokeswoman Amy Louviere. Asked about the agencys adjustments, Nett said it was flat out incorrect that the mine safety agency had corrected CONSOLs data. CONSOL spokesman Zach Smith declined to comment on the companys 2013 reporting violations. The injury rate at the five mines translated to about 200 injuries requiring days off work in 2017. Workers at the five sites have suffered 159 injuries so far in 2018, according to the MSHA data. Murray controls six other mines in Kentucky, Ohio, Illinois, and Utah and each has an injury rate below the national average, according to the data. The company has won numerous safety awards in recent years, including from the U.S. governments National Institute of Occupational Safety and Health in 2015. Davitt McAteer, a mine safety expert in West Virginia who had directed MSHA under former President Bill Clinton, said that many factors could have played into the increased injury rates at the Murray mines in West Virginia. Those particular mines are decades old, meaning miners are having to work deeper, more complicated coal seams, with aging equipment and infrastructure, he said, adding that such conditions are more dangerous for workers. The companys CEO, Robert Murray, is among the coal sectors most vocal advocates for rollbacks of environmental and safety oversight, frequently arguing that government regulation is unnecessarily onerous and costly for companies. Murray Energy has also sued the government to invalidate an Obama-era rule called the Pattern of Violations rule, intended to beef up enforcement of safety standards against repeat offenders. That case, filed in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Ohio, is now in settlement negotiations with the Trump administration. (Reporting by Richard Valdmanis and Valerie Volcovici Editing by Brian Thevenot) Topics USA Pricing Trends Virginia Mining The Wyoming Attorney Generals Office is suing the maker of OxyContin, claiming the pharmaceutical company deceptively marketed opioid painkillers in the state. The Casper Star-Tribune reports the state filed the lawsuit Thursday in Laramie County Circuit Court against Purdue Pharma, accusing the company of misrepresenting the risks and benefits of drugs. The lawsuit claims Purdue convinced doctors to prescribe higher doses of opioids to more patients over longer periods of time. Purdue representatives did not immediately respond to the newspapers email seeking comment. State Attorney General Peter Michael says his office is investigating other drugmakers and is monitoring ongoing settlement discussions between other companies and a coalition of attorneys general from the across the state. Copyright 2021 Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed. Topics Lawsuits Investopedia and our third-party partners use cookies and process personal data like unique identifiers based on your consent to store and/or access information on a device, display personalized ads and for content measurement, audience insight, and product development. To change or withdraw your consent choices for Investopedia.com, including your right to object where legitimate interest is used, click below. At any time, you can update your settings through the "EU Privacy" link at the bottom of any page. These choices will be signaled globally to our partners and will not affect browsing data. List of Partners (vendors) The Vanguard Mid-Cap Index Fund Admiral Shares mutual fund (VIMAX) is an index fund that seeks to mirror the performance of the CRSP U.S. Mid-Cap Index, an unmanaged benchmark representing medium-size American firms. It began trading in November 2001, and as of November 2020, the mutual fund was yielding 1.34% It holds a five-star rating by Morningstar Investment Research. Its net expense ratio is .05%; its management fee is .04%. The Admiral share class is Vanguards version of an institutional share class, in which larger clients and accounts are charged lower fees in exchange for higher minimum account balances. Donald Butler has managed the fund since its inception. Michael Johnson joined him as portfolio manager in 2016. Performance As of Dec. 2020, Vanguard Mid-Cap Index Fund Admiral Shares is up 18.24% year to date (YTD). The mutual fund has generated strong returns of 18.24% over the past three years; 13.28% over the past five years; 12.40% over the past 10 years; and 10,53% since its inception almost precisely in line with its benchmark index. Portfolio Allocation As of November 2020, 97.88% of the mutual fund was allocated to stocks; the rest was in bonds and cash. The top five sectors by allocation weight were technology (19.70%), consumer discretionary (15.60%), industrials (13.50%), healthcare (12%), and financial services (11.20%). Top 10 Holdings The Vanguard Mid-Cap Index Fund Admiral Shares had a total of 346 positions within its portfolio, and it has an annual turnover ratio of 15.2%. the median market cap of its companies is $22.2 billion (on the larger end of the mid-cap range). The top 10 holdings, which comprise 7.50% of the total assets, are Moderna, Snap, .Twilio, Lululemon Athletica, DocuSign, IDEXX Laboratories, KLA, Amphenol, Trade Desk, and Veeva Systems. Ford vs. General Motors: An Overview Ford Motor Company (NYSE: F) and Chevrolet, which is owned by General Motors Company (NYSE: GM), are the two largest automobile brands in the United States. Both Ford and GM are leaders and fierce competitors in the global automobile industry. Fords largest brand is its namesake, Ford, while GMs largest brand is Chevrolet. At first glance, the two large car makers may appear to have similar business models. However, potential investors who dive deeper will find key differences as well as many similarities between the two companies. The following is a comparison of Ford and GMs business models, which describes critical factors for potential investors. Key Takeaways Ford and General Motors are the two biggest automakers in the United States and are also big players on the world stage. General Motors leads in US market share. Both companies were hit by the credit crisis of 2008. GM took a government bailout, while Ford declined; both companies have recovered in the years since. Ford's brand strategy has been to scale back; Ford and Lincoln are the automaker's only significant brands globally. Ford and GM have both produced electric vehicles, but GM has more fully embraced the technology. GM Leads U.S. Market Share GM remains the largest market shareholder in the United States, controlling 17% of the industrys total sales as of 2020. In terms of the worldwide market, neither Ford nor GM lead the way. In 2019, Toyota held the largest global market share at 10.24%, followed by Volkswagen Group at 7.59%. Ford was third with 5.59%. The global market is highly competitive and diversified. As emerging economies with large populations such as India, China, and Brazil continue to develop, establishing a significant presence in these areas is critical for the future growth of both Ford and GM. GM vs. Ford: Recent Performances GM is a smaller company than Ford. GMs total revenue for 2020 was $122 billion, a 10.75% decrease from the previous year. Fords total revenue was $127 billion, an 18.45% decrease from the previous year. Both companies have achieved significant revenue growth since the economic crisis of 2008 and 2009, but neither has returned to its previous total sales volume. Each company has experienced serious financial difficulties in the past 10 years. Fords product line fell behind its competition in the early 2000s, and it began losing market share. It reported substantial net operating losses in 2006, 2007, and 2008. During this period, under the leadership of CEO Alan Mulally, Ford began initiatives to consolidate operations and create more appealing car models. These plans to become more efficient and innovative were already in process when the economic recession hit in 2008. Although the decreased demand for cars during the recession hurt Ford, the company refused a government bailout offer, avoided bankruptcy, and generally emerged from the recession a stronger company. GM became insolvent in 2008 and required government bailout assistance and a Chapter 11 bankruptcy reorganization in 2009 to keep the company operational. The company has since fully repaid its bailout loan and returned positive net income to shareholders since then. GM is making strategic investments to produce more innovative, efficient, and technologically savvy vehicles, which it believes drive future growth. It is also investing significantly in emerging markets such as China. Revenue and profit generation through vehicle financing and leasing arrangements are critical to both Ford and GM's business models. Ford runs Ford Credit and GM owns the General Motors Financial Company. Ford vs. General Motors: Brand Strategy One of the main differences between these two competitors is the number of brands owned and marketed by each company. Fords One Ford plan, which was implemented during difficult years for the company leading up to the economic crisis of 2008, included reducing the total number of brands it owns and operates worldwide. Fords only significant brands on the global market are Ford and Lincoln. Recent divestitures or discontinuations of brands include the following: Aston Martin (sold in 2007) Jaguar (sold in 2008) Land Rover (sold in 2008) Volvo (sold in 2010) Mazda (controlling interest sold in 2010 (minority interest remains) Mercury (discontinued in 2011) Fords belief is that by reducing the number of brands and consolidating the number of vehicle platforms upon which various models are built, it can become more efficient and more innovative. In 2007, Ford had 27 different vehicle platforms across the world; in 2015, it had 12, and as of 2021, it only owns two: Ford and Lincoln. General Motors owns and operates a plethora of automobile brands across the globe. These brands include Chevrolet, Buick, GMC, Cadillac, and Hummer. GM, similar to Ford, has divested or discontinued several brands, including the following: Oldsmobile (discontinued in 2004) Pontiac (discontinued in 2010) Daewo (discontinued in 2011) Saturn (discontinued in 2010) Saab (sold in 2010) Hummer was discontinued by GM in 2010 but has since returned. Although GMs actions in previous years pointed towards a belief is that its different brands are essential to serving different market segments, its continuing divestment in the global markets shows GM is following Ford's strategy. Many of its discontinued brands were shut down due to poor performance rather than strategic planning. In mid-2017, after 16 consecutive yearly losses in Europe, GM sold its European division to French automaker PSA Groupe. Fuel Efficiency and New Technologies Both Ford and GM recognize the importance of improving fuel efficiency and leveraging technology to keep their product lines popular among customers. Many countries, including the United States, have strict laws requiring improvements in fuel efficiency and the amount of environmental pollution created by vehicles. Both companies have significantly reduced the fuel consumption of their overall fleets. Both Ford and GM have also embraced the movement towards all-electric vehicles. As of June 2021, Ford offers two fully electric vehicles: the 2021 Mustang Mach-E and the 2022 F-150 Lightning. It also manufactures six hybrid vehicles. Hybrid versions are available of all three of the company's most popular models: the Fusion, Escape, and Explorer. GM was one of the first auto manufacturers to jump on the hybrid electric vehicle trend when it produced the Chevrolet Volt, which was since been discontinued. According to the U.S. Energy Information Administration, the miles per gallon for all motor vehicles have slowly risen from 2000 to 2020. In 2000, the average stood at 16.9 mpg; in 2020, it stands at 18.1 mpg. Though the Volt was discontinued, GM has not slowed down in its commitment to producing electric vehicles. In fact, GM has been praised for spearheading the movement. The company announced it will be offering 30 new EVs by 2035, helped by a new technology it produced named the Ultium Platform. According to GM's website, the new technology has been "engineered for range, power, and flexibility to charge fast, run long, and fit every type of vehicle." The Bottom Line As the two largest automakers in the United States, Ford and GM are incredibly powerful companies with an immense responsibility to shape the future of global auto manufacturing. Just as the industry had to adapt to new safety regulations such as the seat belt, the success of either company moving forward will lie in how it can appease consumers who worry about climate change. What Is Magna Cum Laude? Magna cum laude is an academic honorific used by educational institutions to signify that an academic degree was earned with notable distinction. The Latin phrase means "with great praise." Magna cum laude is one of three commonly used academic degree honors at educational institutions in the United States and many other countries. The others are summa cum laude, meaning with highest distinction, and cum laude, or "with distinction." The titles are referred to as Latin honors because they retain their original Latin forms. Key Takeaways Magna cum laude is an academic honorific awarded to students who have achieved academic excellence. Many colleges award magna cum laude honors in addition to summa cum laude honors, which are above magna cum laude, and cum laude honors, which are just below. The practice of awarding Latin honors began at Harvard in the mid-19th century and has spread to colleges and universities around the world. Understanding Magna Cum Laude Magna cum laude is more prestigious than cum laude honors but less prestigious than summa cum laude. The criteria by which each of these distinctions is achieved depends on the specific requirements of each institution. The awarding of Latin honors is common in colleges and universities in the United States, although not all bestow them. Many high schools also grant Latin honors. 1:30 Magna Cum Laude Latin honors are most commonly awarded in conjunction with a bachelor's degree. Students who graduate with honors may wear stoles of a distinct color or some other designation during commencement ceremonies, and their honors may be cited when their names are read. Latin honors are generally included in a student's official transcript. Requirements for Magna Cum Laude The criteria for earning Latin honors may include the student's grade point average (GPA), class rank, number of hours completed, and recommendations from an academic department. Some schools have substituted other titles, such as "with distinction," in place of or in addition to the traditional Latin terms. Note GPA requirements for Latin honors at some colleges change every year because they are based on a percentage of the student's class. Real-World Examples of Magna Cum Laude The academic thresholds for honors differ among academic institutions and even between programs at the same institution. Texas A&M graduates, for instance, must complete 60 credit hours of work toward a degree while earning a GPA of 3.70 to 3.899 to earn their degree magna cum laude. At some universities, the GPA requirements for Latin honors change every academic year because they are based on a percentage of the student's class. For example, for a student to graduate magna cum laude in engineering from the University of California Los Angeles they must finish between the top 5% and 10% of their class after completing 90 credits. For the 20192020 academic year, they needed a GPA of at least 3.839, while the cutoff for 2020-2021 was 3.857. By contrast, at Harvard University, where Latin honors originated in the mid-19th century, undergraduates completing degrees with an overall GPA in the top 20% of all graduates will receive either summa cum laude or magna cum laude distinction, with the summa honorific reserved for students with the highest GPAs. Brown University, on the other hand, does not use a student's GPA in its calculation. Students are eligible for just one Latin honor, magna cum laude, upon graduation. A student achieves the honor by earning a high percentage of "A" grades and "S" for distinction marks for courses. No more than 20% of a graduating class can earn magna cum laude honors. Special Considerations Colleges may consider other non-GPA factors in their decisions to grant magna cum laude status. An institution might require that students complete an honors thesis to be eligible. Others seek letters of recommendation from faculty members, attesting to students' exceptional academic performance. Others stipulate that students must complete a certain number of advanced courses. Some colleges, including Stanford University, do not offer Latin honors at all. Stanford bestows a single "with distinction" title on the 15% of students with the highest GPA in each graduating class. The Value of a Magna Cum Laude Degree The relative value of a magna cum laude degree or one with another Latin honor is difficult to judge in the context of a job application. It may mean a great deal to some employers and nothing to others. Nonetheless, as new college graduates compete for jobs, having a Latin honor on their diploma or resume certainly doesn't hurt. It may be of greater benefit when students compete for slots in graduate school. The top law schools, for instance, expect students to have achieved certain GPAs as undergraduates, the type of high marks that are often accompanied by Latin honors. Vancouver, British Columbia - October 26, 2018 (Newsfile Corp.) (Investorideas.com Newswire) Ely Gold Royalties Inc. (TSXV: ELY) (OTCQB: ELYGF) ("Ely Gold" or the "Company") is pleased to announce that through its wholly-owned subsidiary, Nevada Select Royalty, Inc. ("Nevada Select") it has acquired three new strategic properties. Ely Gold is a growing royalty company with over 77 projects in play or optioned, primarily in Nevada and the north western United States. The Company's portfolio currently consists of 27 deeded royalties, 24 properties optioned to third parties, all of which are being explored or developed by partners, the Company also has 26 properties for sale. Ely Gold's partners include major mining companies, mid-tier producers and junior exploration companies. Rodeo Creek Rodeo Creek consists of 31 claims that Ely Gold acquired in September 2018, through staking, in Elko County, Nevada and are approximately 48 km northwest of Carlin, Nevada. The claims are adjacent to the Barrick Gold and Premier Gold Mines (see Figure 1). In a separate transaction with an unnamed private party, The Company acquired the complete data base on the Rodeo Creek claims. The claims were previously held by the same party for over 40 years before becoming available on September 1, 2018. Musgrove Creek Musgrove Creek, an advanced gold exploration project ,consists of 18 unpatented claims that Ely Gold acquired in September 2018, through staking, in Lemhi County, Idaho, and are located approximately 24 km southwest of Revival Gold's Beartrack gold deposit. Geologically, Musgrove Creek may have the potential to host a large, low-grade gold deposit. The property is one of many mineral deposits that occur along the Panther Creek fault system within the major northeast-trending Trans-Challis structural zone. These deposits include the Beartrack Mine, the Grouse Creek Mine and other past producers to the northeast and southwest (see Figure 2). The dominant host rock at Musgrove is metamorphosed fine-grained sediments of the Precambrian age Apple Creek Formation. Gold mineralization is associated with quartz veining, sericite alteration, brecciation, and structural preparation. Idaho State Lease Ely Gold has been granted an Idaho State Lease consisting of 551 acres in Owyhee County, Idaho. This property is located in the Delamar District currently being explored by Integra Resources. The ground was previously explored by War Eagle Mining in the 1980s and by Agnico Eagle in the 1990s (see Figure 3). The leased claims may have the potential for high grade vein targets and bulk tonnage targets. Stephen Kenwood, P. Geo, is a director of the Company and a Qualified Person as defined by NI 43-101. Mr. Kenwood has reviewed and approved the technical information in this press release. About Ely Gold Ely Gold Royalties Inc. is a Vancouver based, emerging royalty company with development assets focused in Nevada and the Western US. Its current portfolio includes 26 Deeded Royalties and 24 properties optioned to third parties. Ely Gold's royalty portfolio includes fully permitted mines, mines under construction and development projects that are being permitted for mine construction. The Company is actively purchasing existing third-party royalties for its portfolio and all the Company's Option Properties will produce royalties, if exercised. The royalty and option portfolios are currently generating significant revenue. Ely Gold is well positioned with its current portfolio of over 20 available properties to generate additional operating revenue through option and sale transactions. The Company has a proven track record of maximizing the value of its properties through claim consolidation and advancement using its extensive, proprietary data base. All portfolio properties are sold or optioned on a 100% basis, while the Company retains net smelter royalty interests. Management believes that due to the Company's ability to generate royalty transactions, its successful strategy of organically creating royalties, its equity portfolio and its current low valuation, Ely Gold offers shareholders a low-risk leverage to the current price of gold and low-cost access to long-term mineral royalties. On Behalf of the Board of Directors Signed "Trey Wasser" Trey Wasser, President & CEO For further information, please contact: Trey Wasser, President & CEO trey@elygoldinc.com 972-803-3087 Joanne Jobin, Investor Relations Officer jjobin@elygoldinc.com 604-488-1104 Neither the TSX Venture Exchange nor its Regulation Services Provider (as that term is defined in the policies of the TSX Venture Exchange) accepts responsibility for the adequacy or accuracy of this release. Disclaimer: This press release contains certain "forward-looking statements" within the meaning of Canadian securities legislation, including statements regarding the Company's contemplated acquisition of the Royalty relating to GORO's Fenelon Property, and GORO's stated plans for further near-term exploration and development of the Fenelon Property. Although the Company believes that such statements are reasonable, it can give no assurance that such expectations will prove to be correct. Forward-looking statements are statements that are not historical facts; 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, or are those statements, which, by their nature, refer to future events. The Company cautions that 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. Consequently, there can be no assurances that such statements will prove to be accurate and actual results and future events could differ materially from those anticipated in such statements. Except to the extent required by applicable securities laws and the policies of the TSX Venture Exchange, the Company undertakes no obligation to update these forward-looking statements if management's beliefs, estimates or opinions, or other factors, should change. Factors that could cause future results to differ materially from those anticipated in these forward-looking statements include the risk of accidents and other risks associated with GORO's mineral exploration, development and extraction operations, the risk that GORO will encounter unanticipated geological factors, or the possibility that GORO may not be able to secure permitting and other governmental clearances, necessary to carry out its stated plans for the Fenelon Property, the Company's inability to secure the required TSXV acceptance required for the Transaction, and the risk of political uncertainties and regulatory or legal disputes or changes in the jurisdictions where the Company carries on its business that might interfere with the Company's business and prospects. The reader is urged to refer to the Company's reports, publicly available through the Canadian Securities Administrators' System for Electronic Document Analysis and Retrieval (SEDAR) at www.sedar.com for a more complete discussion of such risk factors and their potential effects Figure 1 Rodeo Creek Location Map Figure 2 Musgrove Creek Regional Structure Map Figure 3 War Eagle Mining State Lease Location Map More Info: This news is published on the Investorideas.com Newswire - a global digital news source for investors and business leaders Disclaimer/Disclosure: Investorideas.com is a digital publisher of third party sourced news, articles and equity research as well as creates original content, including video, interviews and articles. Original content created by investorideas is protected by copyright laws other than syndication rights. Our site does not make recommendations for purchases or sale of stocks, services or products. Nothing on our sites should be construed as an offer or solicitation to buy or sell products or securities. All investing involves risk and possible losses. This site is currently compensated for news publication and distribution, social media and marketing, content creation and more. Disclosure is posted for each compensated news release, content published /created if required but otherwise the news was not compensated for and was published for the sole interest of our readers and followers. Contact management and IR of each company directly regarding specific questions. More disclaimer info: https://www.investorideas.com/About/Disclaimer.asp Learn more about publishing your news release and our other news services on the Investorideas.com newswire https://www.investorideas.com/News-Upload/ and tickertagstocknews.com Global investors must adhere to regulations of each country. Please read Investorideas.com privacy policy: https://www.investorideas.com/About/Private_Policy.asp By Eamon Quinn Bank of Ireland shares tapped into a rare shares rally across Europe, to gain 1.5%, as the lender said it had boosted its mortgage lending and expanded its overall loan book by 500m before it starts selling home loans through brokers next month. Shares in Bank of Ireland and AIB have been hit by the Italian governments standoff over its budget, while Brexit concerns and the housing crisis, which limits the number of mortgages available, have also weighed on Irish banks. But Bank of Ireland, in an interim management statement, said it was trading in line with expectations. The loan book swelled to 76.6bn at the end of September, up 500m from December. Chief executive Francesca McDonagh told a conference the bank was committed to improving corporate culture and to learning from the mistakes of the past. By Geoff Percival Drinks group C&C is to invest in a new brewery in Dublin to increase capacity for its Five Lamps craft beer label. The maker of Bulmers/Magners cider and Tennents lager is also in talks to take on a significant level of outsourcing duties for other drinks companies on the back of Brexit. Earlier this year, chief executive Stephen Glancey said C&C would be investing 1m to 2m to boost cider production at its Clonmel, Co Tipperary, plant and was looking at long-term investment at its Five Lamps craft beer brewery in Dublin. However, speaking yesterday, Mr Glancey said C&C will be making an investment in Five Lamps in the next three-to-four months which will see a move to a new brewing site away from its current north inner city base. He was speaking on the back of a strong set of first- half figures, which saw 186% annualised revenue growth to 838.7m and 16% growth in operating profit to 58.4m for the six months to the end of August. The revenue figure included a first contribution from Matthew Clark Bibendum, the leading independent drinks distributor to the UK pub sector, which C&C bought earlier this year. Stripping that business out, C&Cs core first-half revenues were up by 6.4% at just over 309m. Mr Glancey also said management is confident of seeing a return to full-year profit growth in its current financial year, which runs to the end of February. Last year, the company saw operating profits fall 7% and revenues decline 5%. We have momentum in our core business and good cash generation. Were pretty confident on our full-year numbers, Mr Glancey said, saying that a good Christmas performance by Matthew Clark Bibendum should position C&C well for long-term growth. Sales of Five Lamps beer increased 50% in the first half. C&Cs Irish revenues rose 6.6%, with Bulmers sales volumes up by over 5%. UK net revenues were ahead by over 8%, with operating profit growth there touching 10%. Despite intense competition from rivals, with Heineken eating into the cider market and Diageo upping its lager production, Mr Glancey said that despite brand and marketing investment from others, when the sun shines, people drink Bulmers. Regarding its Brexit plans, C&C intends to manufacture cider in Ireland and shift enough stock to the UK to remove transport, logistics and red tape worries for at least two years in the case of a hard Brexit. Mr Glancey also said that C&C is hopeful of agreeing deals to package EU-bound wine for South American, South African and Australian labels, post-Brexit, in the next six months. He also said the group is in talks with drinks groups in continental Europe to manufacture products for them at its Glasgow brewery after the UK leaves the EU. Mr Glancey said mainland Europe-based manufacturers have approached C&C on the matter and that meaningful discussions have taken place. C&C shares are up over 23% in the past year. They were up just over 1% yesterday. By Padraig Hoare Irish union bosses have called for an urgent meeting with UK retailer Debenhams as the firm said it would close 50 stores in the next five years after posting the biggest full-year loss in more than two centuries. Debenhams is saying little about the future of its Irish operations as it announced the British store closures after posting a record full-year loss of 491.5m (550m). The struggling retailer, which has 11 stores in Ireland and five in the North, said 50 of its 166 stores were to close, with up to 4,000 jobs in the UK in the firing line. When asked specifically about the implications for the Irish arm of Debenhams, a spokesman for the firm said it was not giving any details of the 50 stores at this stage. The firms full-year loss of 491.5 (550m) was the worst in its 240-year history and comes during a period of major turmoil for a range of British companies such as House of Fraser and John Lewis. Household name Toys R Us and electronics firm Maplin have closed as consumer habits change and online shopping rose dramatically in recent years. The Irish division of Debenhams has 11 stores in Ireland in Dublin, Cork, Galway, Limerick, Waterford, Newbridge, and Tralee. There are also five stores in the North, in Belfast, Derry, Newry, Craigavon, and Ballymena. The Irish stores have become synonymous with main city streets, including Henry Sts Ilac Centre in Dublin, and St Patricks St in Cork, where it took over one of the citys most famous flagship shops, Roches Stores, in 2006. Debenhams Ireland exited examinership in 2016, with the loss of nearly 100 jobs. The chain has 27,000 employees in the UK in 166 stores, and issued a number of profit warnings this year alone before the plan was announced for the 50-store closure. Trade union Mandate, which represents many of the Irish staff, said it was not satisfied with the details emanating from the UK, saying it was too vague. Mandate assistant general secretary Gerry Light said: We are seeking an urgent meeting with the senior management of Debenhams in Ireland on behalf of our members. Mr Light said he feared the firms plan was indicative that Brexit waves were starting to finally break following a few ripples so far. What happened in 2016 came as a shock but we worked through the process painstakingly. This time, it is not news you want to wake up to, especially before Christmas. Brexit is not going to be good for retailers, and especially not for UK retailers with operations in Ireland, he said. The Criminal Assets Bureau (CAB) has searched four homes in Dublin and two holiday homes in Wexford linked to a major drug dealer connected to the Kinahan cartel. Bureau officers seized four luxury watches, an Audi Q5 jeep valued at 40,000 and froze 10,000 in a bank account under money laundering legislation. The investigation was targeting the convicted dealer and his wife, who are living in the Ronanstown area of west Dublin. The couple has conducted extensive renovations on their home and recently got married in what was described as a lavish wedding in north Dublin. Two homes in Clondalkin and Ballyfermot, also in west Dublin, were searched, as was a home in the north inner city. Furthermore, two holiday homes in Wexford were searched, as was an office in the holiday park. The main target of the raids, who has more than 80 convictions for a range of offences, including for the supply of drugs, is originally from Dublins north inner city. CAB officers believe the drug operation run by the individual is specifically in that area, not in west Dublin. It is understood the man has connections with the Kinahan cartel, although other relatives have linkages with the rival Hutch grouping. In a complicated situation, some members of the wider family have connections with former members of the Kinahan cartel. In a statement, CAB said the investigation was targeting an organised crime group distributing drugs in the north inner city. Officers from the Criminal Assets Bureau (Garda, Revenue, Department of Employment Affairs and Social Protection) and local gardai from the DMR North Central conducted a search operation in the Dublin 1, Dublin 10, Dublin 22, and Co Wexford areas this morning, Thursday, the statement said. The CAB investigation centres on a member of an organised crime gang involved in the sale and supply of drugs in the north inner city of Dublin. It said the following exhibits were seized: Three Rolex watches; One Breitling watch; 2,000 in cash; A 142 Audi Q5; Mobile phones; Financial documentation. There was also 10,000 frozen in a bank account under Section 17 of the Criminal Justice (Money Laundering and Terrorist Financing) Act, 2010. The statement said there were no arrests and that the investigation was ongoing. Technical officers will examine the mobile phones with other specialist CAB staff, including forensic accountants, will trawl through the financial documentation seized. Known to many as the face of Cork Citys historic English Market, fishmonger Pat OConnell says changing retail and shopping trends, not the afternoon car ban on St Patricks St, influenced his decision to open a stall in a suburban shopping centre. Lots of people will jump up and say its because of the car ban but the truth is weve been talking to Dunnes about this for the last 18-months to two years. Anyone who tries to link the two doesnt know me at all, Mr OConnell said as he opened his second K OConnell Fishmongers stall yesterday at the Dunnes Stores Bishopstown Court outlet in the western suburbs a move that will create 10 jobs. I am passionate about the English Market. I was reared in the market, Ive spent my life in the market. It has an incredible experiential offering, one you cant match anywhere in Ireland. It has a history, a tradition, a great product and a remarkable skillset built up over two centuries. But retail is changing. Thats the bottom line. People are just not going to town as much as they were. Thats nothing to do with town its just because people are living busy lifestyles and they are shopping at different times. I have a new generation coming up [in the business], and you can leave passion rule everything else, but when it comes down to the nuts and bolts, retail is changing, people are doing their shopping more in the suburbs, and you need to be part of that. This makes complete business sense. Joe Duke, the manager of Bishopstown Court, said they are thrilled to land one of Corks iconic food retailers in their new food hall alongside James Whelan Butchers, Nourish, Alternative Bread Company, Sheridans Cheeses, and Baxter and Green. Pat is an exceptional fishmonger, with an international reputation for doing the simple things well which is very important to us, he said. He also shares the same ethos and passion for great food. Mr OConnells mother, Kathleen, opened her stall in the English Market in 1962. Mr OConnell and his brother Paul, and their children, Eoin, Sean, and Emma, are now involved in the business. Despite the closure some years ago of a stall they opened in another suburban shopping centre, Mr OConnell said that the time and circumstances are right to open this one. The tricky bit was trying to transfer what we do in the market to a supermarket, he said. Thats not easy, because we want to fillet fish in front of people, we want to talk to them about how to cook it. But in fairness to Dunnes, theyve done everything they possibly can to accommodate us. It will be the same offering, pricing, the same conversation and slagging. It will be like a little slice of the English Market in the suburbs. Asked if stressed-out Young Offenders mum, Mairead, who normally works the market stall, will move to the Bishopstown branch, Pat joked: Shell have to posh up the auld accent. Late-night gridlock in Cork, caused when roadworks clashed with an overnight closure of the Jack Lynch Tunnel, demonstrates that the city needs a second river crossing, an international expert said. Arnold Dix, an engineering, legal, and safety expert, and independent disaster investigator who is in Ireland to conduct health checks on the Jack Lynch and Dublin Port Tunnels for Transport Infrastructure Ireland (TII) made his comments after witnessing the traffic snarl-ups late on Tuesday. Prof Dix said he would have expected better co-ordination between the various authorities but was struck by how fragile the flow of traffic is around the city. The dependence of the city on the tunnel which handles up to 100,000 vehicles a day, and the resultant traffic chaos when it is closed, should send a clear message to the local and state authorities that a solution is required. Tunnels, especially older ones like the Jack Lynch Tunnel, have to be closed for the maintenance and safety works, Prof Dix said. That is nothing out of the ordinary. But if closing one lane on a dual carriageway at the same time can cause such difficulties, especially at off-peak times, then city planners must know there is a need for alternative relief. Thats a second tunnel. Should the gridlock have happened? No. Do I understand why it happened? Yes. I would have expected better co-ordination between all the players. The traffic jams highlight how fragile existing arrangements are. The tunnel closed for routine maintenance at 9pm on Tuesday while lane restrictions were in place on the main diversion route along the Lower Glanmire Road to facilitate Irish Water pipe laying. Motorists were caught in traffic jams for hours, with reports of tailbacks until 1am. Cross-city journeys, which would normally take 20 minutes through the tunnel, took up to 90 minutes. In the context of Brexit, and with planned population growth in the Metropolitan Cork region, Prof Dix said it is essential that preparations are made now to make the regions road network more resilient. He will include his observations in his final report to TII before the year-end. TII said it arranges and agrees all closures of the Jack Lynch Tunnel with Cork City Council at least six months in advance, and the closures are advertised at least 30 days in advance. A spokesman said both TII and Irish Water attended a traffic meeting on October 17 where Irish Water, the council, gardai and other stakeholders were reminded of the tunnel closure and the resulting increased traffic on the Lower Glanmire Road. At no point was TII requested to defer the planned closure, it said. TII said the scale and scope of the maintenance operations are extensive, with up to 80 maintenance staff on site on Tuesday and 100 on Wednesday. The works included safety inspections and functional checks; inspection of lighting and controls; repairs to tunnel doors; the maintenance of fire extinguisher, fire mains, hose reels and the servicing of fire detection and alarm systems; the inspection and service of tunnel joints; the cleaning of jet fans and the replacement of one fan; the cleaning of gully and drainage systems; the installation of some fibre optics and additional CCTV systems ahead of the Dunkettle interchange upgrade, and repairs to message signs. Security Correspondent Frontline gardai have welcomed comments from Garda Commissioner Drew Harris that he was a big supporter of gardai wearing body cameras. In the strongest comment by a Garda chief in favour of the technology, the commissioner said that the cameras can both calm down potentially volatile situations and provide clear evidence in court cases. He said Garda headquarters was conducting a technical and legal analysis of the devices and their lawful use and that, if they could clear the legal obstacles, he intended to roll them out across the organisation. He told the Oireachtas Justice Committee on Wednesday: I am a big supporter of body-worn video. It provides quick evidence but it can also settle situations down if people who would be otherwise disruptive realise that all of this is being recorded on camera. It is very good then in terms of going into court, so Im a big supporter of it. The former deputy chief constable of the PSNI was strongly in favour of its introduction in the North and his comments mark a far more positive view than any previous commissioner. The police chief said there was a Garda project underway which, he noted, was exploring some of the legal complexities regarding their introduction here. In response to questions from Independent TD Peter Fitzpatrick, he said the case for their use had been well made but said they wanted to be on the right side of the law. Once we know the legal position, once we clear that hurdle, then well want to move forward with a rollout of cameras, he said. Jim Mulligan, president of the Garda Representative Association (GRA), said he welcomed the comments from the commissioner. That is a very strong statement and we do welcome it, he said. We have been calling for body cameras for a long time. The GRA has said cameras would provide protection for both gardai and the general public in potentially confrontational incidents, including public order flashpoints and protests, responding to domestic violence incidents and situations where an individual or individuals are threatening, or engaging in, violence. Body-worn cameras can calm situations down and can be used in court as an independent evidential tool, said Mr Mulligan. They protect both members and the public and is a tool that has been used in other police forces. He accepted there were legal issues involved and that it would require legislative change, to surveillance and most probably data protection laws, to introduce it which also would be followed by protocols about their usage. Focus Ireland has revealed that it advised homeless families on around 180 occasions so far this year to consider spending the night at a garda station. The figure emerged as the group wrote to members of Dublin City Council, expressing its frustration at the policy vacuum over the issue. Regarding the 180 figure, Focus Ireland director of advocacy Mike Allen said many of those instances occured in the first three months of this year and added: We then follow up and connect with those families in the morning. In the letter to Dublin City Council, Mr Allen wrote that Focus Ireland had verified around 20 cases in which families admitted to staying in garda stations this year. He said Focus Ireland had adopted the advice policy in the absence of any guidance from the local or national authorities as to what should happen in such extreme circumstances. Despite the intervening years, and the periodic moral outrage expressed on the issue, there is still no such guidance from either the relevant national bodies or, indeed, yourselves, he wrote. Since 2015, we have asked DCC, the DRHE, Department of Housing, and the Department of Children and Youth Affairs to produce formal guidelines about what action and reporting should occur in these extreme circumstances. However, no guidelines or reporting mechanisms has been produced by any of the various statutory authorities who are involved." The letter asks for the support of councillors in establishing a process which sets out what should happen if there is ever a circumstance when a family cannot be accommodated at night. A new report has highlighted ongoing problems in the Irish prison system. The report is part of a series of three looking at issues such conditions, accountability and reintegration. This is the second annual report from the Irish Penal Reform Trust highlighting human rights issues in our prisons. According to the report, the Irish penal system continues to fall short of international best practice. Three main areas have been highlighted in the report as needing urgent attention. The first is mental health services. Executive Director of the Irish Penal Reform Trust, Deirdre Malone, says many people with mental health issues are being detained in the prison system when they should be receiving professional medical care. "In terms of mental health there's a lack of adequate mental health services and that's particularly for those with severe and enduring mental illness," Ms Malone said. What that means is on a daily basis, there are between 20 and 30 people in the prison system who should not be there, who should have been identified as requiring transfer to the Central Mental Hospital but there are no places for them. A second problem area is the increase in the number of women being detained leading to consistent overcrowding in the two women's prisons. The report also finds staffing levels are impacting day to day activity in the prison service. Ms Malone believes this is having a knock on effect on the ability to help educate and rehabiltate prisoners. "What we're also seeing is regular closure of prison schools, classes and workshops," she said. "That's due to insufficient staff numbers on a daily basis to bring prisoners to their classes. Prison education is one of the areas which is positive activity in terms of rehabilitation. As the government continues to grapple with the health and housing crisis, the report also highlights that the issues are interlinked with one in six prisoners identifying as homeless on commital and 70% reporting addiction issues. Digital Desk By Sean ORiordan The Land Development Agency (LDA), established two months ago by the Government, has confirmed it is in talks with the Health Service Executive (HSE) to transform a former psychiatric hospital in Cork City into a major housing project. The LDA revealed to the Irish Examiner it has agreed in principle to acquire the former fire-damaged St Kevins Hospital off the Lee Road and its 14 acres of adjoining land. However, it has not disclosed the price it will pay for the badly-gutted building, which was near destroyed by arsonists in July 2017. Video by Evan Shelly Known as the Red Brick hospital, it dates to the late 19th century but quickly became derelict after its shutdown by the HSE in 2002. The iconic building, with panoramic views of the Lee Fields, had been targeted by vandals on numerous occasions since, and the HSE had been forced to spend a substantial amount on security. As talks are continuing between the two parties, the HSE has taken the property off the open market where it was on sale for 2.95m. It had been on the market since March through agents Lisney who advised the site had clear residential development potential. The LDA is in the process of carrying out a feasibility study on the site with a view to bringing forward a proposal, said a spokesman. The four-storey over-basement main building at St Kevins is the largest on the campus. However, the total building space accounts for more than 90,000 sq ft. If a deal proceeds, St Kevins will be the second psychiatric hospital the LDA has earmarked for housing. The agency has already agreed on a deal to turn the former Central Mental Hospital, Dundrum into 1,500 housing units and hopes to commence construction on the site in the autumn of 2020. Both Cork city and county councils were previously urged to jointly buy the property and convert the site into badly-needed housing. There are thousands of home seekers on the waiting list in the Cork Metropolitan Area. Fine Gael councillor Deirdre Forde, who proposed the move at a county council meeting last Monday, said she was delighted that, at last, some agency had taken on the project. We have so many people on the housing waiting list in the city and in the county council-controlled areas on its periphery that projects like this are a matter of extreme urgency, she said. Its an ideal location which is very close to a number of amenities and to public services. Ms Forde said she was hoping the LDA would consider at a mixture of social and private housing when it draws up a plan. The government has committed long-term funding to the LDA of 1.25bn. The agencys mission is to develop 150,000 new homes over the next 20 years. Increasing numbers of prisoners with a severe mental illness are on a waiting list for the countrys only forensic psychiatric hospital. While there are psychiatric referral units in all Dublin prisons, as well as Portlaoise and Midlands, there are none in Cork, Limerick, or Castlerea, despite approval for them in 2016. An Irish Penal Reform Trust (IPRT) report said there are fewer psychologists for prisoners now than three years ago, but that the Irish Prison Service had recruited som recently. The Progress in the Penal System report raises particular concern at the increase in prison numbers since the latter half of 2017, saying it risked reversing the reductions since 2011. The 116-page assessment, published today, said three issues needed to be urgently addressed: The number of people with severe mental illness presenting in jails; The increasing numbers of women being detained in prison with the two womens prisons being the most overcrowded; Staffing issues that have resulted in the closure of schools and workshops. On a monthly basis in 2018, there were consistently 20-30 prisoners with a severe mental illness awaiting transfer to the Central Mental Hospital, said the report. The average monthly number of prisoners awaiting transfer was 20 during 2017, increasing to 23 over the first five months of 2018, hitting a peak of 29 in May. The report cites CMH estimates of 323 prisoners out of 4,000 with a severe mental illness. It said there is a diversion system, involving CMH clinicians, in all Dublin jails as well as Portlaoise and Midlands prisons. There was no such service in Cork, Limerick, or Castlerea prisons. This was despite HSE approval in 2016, but the IPS said it had not been possible to recruit consultant forensic psychiatrists. The report said the ratio of psychologists to prisoners was 1:233 in 2015 and had increased to 1:268 in 2018. It said the ratio was 1:78 in Canada and 1:123 in Scotland. It said the IPS has invested in the service since 2017. The IPRT said only two prisons (Mountjoy and Cloverhill) had high-support units for mentally ill prisoners, even though an inquest jury in 2016 called for one in every prison. A report last week by the Oireachtas Joint Committee on the Future of Mental Health Care said that prisons were becoming a de facto extension of the mental health system. As we put back the clocks this weekend, could it really be for the last time? Robert Hume traces the origins of our biannual tradition. The European Commission has recommended that member states abandon the practice of changing the clock in spring and autumn. Since 1980 all EU countries have been required to move their clocks an hour forward on the last Sunday in March and switch back to wintertime on the last Sunday in October. A recent survey shows that 84% of EU citizens are in favour of staying on summertime throughout the year. Changes happen slowly, and MEP Sean Kelly reckons it wont be until March 2021 when we alter the clocks for the last time. Seeing the light, New Zealand post office clerk George Hudson was the first to propose Daylight Saving Time. His interest in hunting bugs after work made him aware of the value of daylight hours, and in 1895 he presented a paper to the Wellington Philosophical Society calling for a seasonal time adjustment of two hours. He was mocked for the idea. Waste of Daylight Kent builder William Willett was out horseriding in Petts Wood one summer morning in 1905 when he was dismayed to notice how many curtains still remained drawn. In his pamphlet, Waste of Daylight (1907), he proposed advancing clocks by 20 minutes each Sunday in April and turning them back by 20 minutes each Sunday in September. Lloyd George, Winston Churchill, and Conan Doyle supported Willett; while at Sandringham King Edward VII was already putting clocks back 30 minutes so he could hunt for longer. Most people thought that tinkering with the time was too radical. It is often claimed that Daylight Saving Time began during the First World War. William Willett: In Waste of Daylight, he proposed advancing clocks by 20 minutes each Sunday in April and turning them back by 20 minutes each Sunday in September. A few hundred residents of Port Arthur, Ontario, introduced it earlier, on July 1, 1908. Local businessman John Hewitson successfully petitioned the town council to put forward the clocks by one hour in the summer so children and outdoor workers could enjoy an extra hour of sun. Other Canadian towns followed suit. Great Britain and Ireland, the German Empire, and Austria began it in spring 1916 as a way of minimising the use of artificial light and saving fuel for the war effort. Set your clock before going to bed In Ireland, the Freemans Journal reminded readers how they should alter watches and clocks. Usually, this was simply a matter of turning the hands forward and back. But with striking clocks, the hands on no account must be moved backwards as injury may be done to the mechanism. The clock should either be stopped until it showed the correct time; or the hands slowly moved forward, taking care that all the hours, half-hours, and quarter-hours are allowed to strike fully then adding four or five minutes for the time taken to make the change. No need to stay up until 3 oclock in the morning, it reassured readers: It was possible to alter their timepieces before going to bed! A letter from J OCallaghan, South Mall, to the Cork Examiner on May 13, 1916, welcomed the new system: department stores would save money in lighting; and sales assistants, cooped up in shops for long hours, would be able to enjoy an extra hours daylight. What if the magistrate lay asleep? The prospect of advancing clocks by an hour was ridiculed at the Mallow Sessions, Co Cork, in May 1916. What would happen if the clerk arrived at the proper, legal, hour but the magistrate kept to the old, illegal, hour and lay fast asleep? Worse, what if the plaintiff arrived one hour after his case had already been dismissed with costs? Calling time on turning the clocks back and forward Saving Daylight. Or, horror upon horror, the accused found that a police constable was waiting with handcuffs ready to take him to prison when he could easily have proved he was innocent? In practice, when clocks were put forward for the first time in spring 1916, it did not cause much of a stir: The time stolen from the usual hours of slumber made no one the more tired, said the Cork Examiner. In September 1916 Ireland did not put the clocks back one hour, like Great Britain, but by 25 minutes, to correspond with Greenwich Mean Time. Between 1968 and 1971, Ireland again experimented with no wintertime. A chaos of clocks Since its introduction, some countries have gone their own way. In the US, states could opt in or out of summertime after the First World War. Time magazine (1963) said it led to a chaos of clocks. Although Uniform Time was adopted in 1966, Arizona, Hawaii, Puerto Rico, and the US Virgin Islands stayed on standard time all year round. During the Second World War, British clocks were advanced by two hours resulting in double summertime, with clocks remaining on regular summertime even during the winter. Although Europe, most of North America, and some of the Middle East observe summertime, most of Africa and Asia does not. Russia experimented with all-year summertime in 2011, but President Vladimir Putin returned the country permanently to wintertime in 2014. Calling time on turning the clocks back and forward Saving Daylight. In South America most countries in the north, near the equator, have never observed it as there is little difference between hours of light in summer and winter, while Paraguay and southern parts of Brazil do. Australians turn their clocks forward in October and back in April to correspond with their spring and autumn apart from Queensland, the Northern Territory, and Western Australia, where time stays put. Confused? BBC Radio London DJ Robbie Vincent certainly was. On his late 1970s show he had a weekly link up with the US, and announced one spring Sunday that it would be an hour later due to the clock change but it should have been an hour earlier. By the scheduled link-up time, he found he had, of course, missed it by two hours! That was a one-off. But if some European countries now opt to keep the same time all year, while others continue to turn back and forward, mix-ups will always be happening. The chaos of clocks might well be returning. Time for a change? The case for and against Daylight Saving Time: FOR It helps save artificial light. It gives us longer evenings to spend outdoors in summer. This is healthy and might do something to combat our sedentary lifestyle. Optional DST means mayhem. A 40-mile journey in Ohio once involved seven different time changes. Studies have found that DST improves road safety by reducing pedestrian fatalities at dawn and dusk. Who would say no to an extra hours sleep in winter? AGAINST: Tord Gustavsens Nordic leanings could help produce one of the gigs of the jazz weekend, writes Alan ORiordan. Tord Gustavsen made his musical name as the leader of a piano trio that released three acclaimed albums from 2003 to 2007, as he joined the likes of Esbjorn Svensson in popularising the idea of Nordic jazz. There followed success as a quartet, and with various side projects and collaborations. There was tragedy, too, with the early death, in 2011, of bass player Harald Johnsen, which may explain why its only now that Gustavsen has returned to the trio format, in the shape of a rather aptly titled album, The Other Side. "Experiencing the tragic passing of Harald, it didnt feel right to just form a new trio. It felt more right to explore different soundscapes, Gustavsen says, speaking ahead of his visit to the Guinness Cork Jazz Festival as part of Triskels ECM Weekend. I felt now that the time was right to have the piano a bit more in the melodic foreground again and to revisit and reopen the trio interplay. "I think it had to take this long because the quartet and the other projects felt really strong and important. It had to take this long until I could go into the studio and just be in the here and now, playing with the trio, instead of having the feeling I was following up on something. Sigurd Hole is the new bassist on The Other Side, joining the stalwart Jarle Vespestad on drums. The interplay with Jarle on drums has developed over a period of almost 20 years and he continues to surprise me with his playing every night. "Thats such a blessing to know someone that well musically, and still be amazed and surprised. The dynamics, the micro-timing, the textures, the rhythmic layers we create together, its really special. With Sigurd, his melodic inventiveness, combined with the strong sensual foundation he lays out is very important part of the way we play. We combine all the time simplistic lyrical playing with exploring and finding textures, changing roles: he embodies this paradoxical combination in a very accomplished way. He has a highly developed arco technique, as one says in the classical world: playing with the bow lots of percussive aspects to it, soloing a lot with the bow that adds several different colours to the trio. I find it very inspiring, the kind of interplay weve developed with it. The Other Side ranges widely in terms of the music it draws on. It revisits some familiar Gustavsen terrain, drawing on Norwegian folk and sacred music. There are original compositions, too, and versions of three Bach chorales. Gustavsen views this kind of material, the hymnal books he grew up with, the baroque, sacred music, as almost a European mirror to the Great American Songbook that forms a bedrock for so much of the great jazz tradition. I learned the hymns long before I learnt the songs of the American jazz canon, he says. When I improvise over hymns, thats me playing the songs that are closest to my heart. They are, in a way, my standards as a jazz musician. ROOTS AND CULTURE The roots of this European approach to jazz go back to the 1970s, when the likes of Jan Garbarek began to see the European folk tradition as grist to the improvisational mill. But I think it is becoming even more evident now, Gustavsen says, that there are different sensibilities and different strengths in Europe, as opposed to America. Its like more and more bands are finding a way to play that is not an inferior version of what the Americans are doing but something distinct, unique. That is, of course, much more satisfying and artistically worthwhile, than creating a second-rate copy of something. The Other Side is an expansive, warm, and refined album that seems itching for a live-performance shakeout. The live performance, with improvisation at its heart, sustains Gustavsen the performer, but has also attracted him as a thinker. Away from the piano keyboard, he has applied his combined his interests in musicology and psychology to explore ideas about improvisation and the dilemmas or paradoxes it embodies. Its not like I think people should view the music according to the words or concepts I use, but to me exploring from a theoretical standpoint the parallels between the challenges of improvisation and the challenges of intimate relationships using musical theory was a very fruitful thing to do. "Its about restraint and passion; its about being inside every musical moment, and at the same time having perspective; its about being childlike and analytical at the same time. These paradoxes, I think, everyone in a way feels them, but in different ways. Improvised music, then, has a special quality, where these paradoxes can be explored and experienced, by performer and audience. Good improvised music can have very special potential for being a place where we have an encounter ourselves, in all senses of that word, Gustavsen says. Almost a spiritual or therapeutic encounter. Tord Gustavsen plays Triskel Christchurch on Sunday at 8pm as part of a double bill with Kit Downes. My husband and I only have sex in the missionary position because it seems guaranteed to bring both of us to orgasm. Im worried sometimes that were being lazy and not adventurous enough. Should we be spicing things up? Youre not the only ones. A few years ago I carried out a sexual practices survey that was filled in by 3,500 people and a whopping 80% of them cited missionary as the sexual position they engaged in most frequently. Like you, most couples harbour secret anxieties about dining from a limited sexual menu, but psychological research has shown time and again that choice is the enemy of satisfaction. When you give people too many options, they either stick to the choices that have worked for them in the past, or they avoid choosing altogether. There may be umpteen positions, but there are a number of very good reasons why missionary is most peoples go-to. First, you can look each other in the eye, which lets you communicate your feelings. Second, it maximises skin contact and you can reach pretty much any body part of interest. Third, you are close enough to kiss each other. Missionary is also one of the best positions for clitoral stimulation, although some people find that it doesnt work for them. That could be simply because of their anatomy. Dr Susan Oakley, an obstetrician and gynaecologist at Good Samaritan Hospital in Cincinnati, Ohio, used magnetic resonance imaging and found anatomical differences between 10 women who were unable to orgasm and 20 women who could. Oakley found that women who had difficulty reaching orgasm also tended to have smaller clitorises that were located about 5-6mm farther away from the vaginal opening. But I digress. The missionary position is great for men because it allows them to control the rhythm and depth of their movement. It also gives men who fear premature ejaculation some control over the level of stimulation, and this can help them to delay orgasm. You dont say whether you have children yet, but the missionary position is believed to be the best position for reproduction. If you are worried about being boring, it is easy to tweak things to make sex more adventurous. Instead of just lying down, why not lift your legs and rest them over his arms, or over his shoulders. This will make quite a normal position feel a lot more risque. Adding in a few well-chosen props can help too. Missionary when you are wearing a blindfold is quite a different experience. You could also try using couples sex toys. The We-Vibe Sync is a good place to start its a vibrator that has been designed to be enjoyed with a partner during penetrative sex. It is designed to stimulate both of you at the same time. Other good options are to try this variation on the missionary. Change positions with each other, so that you are on top, and lying your body along the length of his. Put one leg between your husbands two. Its a position that women tend to find very pleasurable, and it also means that you can control the rhythm. You could also try mastering the coital alignment technique, which involves rocking rather than thrusting, to put rhythmic pressure on your clitoris. Your husband needs to position himself on top, but farther up your body than normal. However, I must warn you that while the coital alignment technique works well for some couples, it can be terribly tricky to master and some people find that the effort involved in getting into the right position and coordinating the rhythm ends up being such a faff that it is a complete turn-off. For that reason alone, it is definitely worth giving it a go. There is nothing like a laboured attempt to spice up your sex life to make you appreciate the intimate and reliably orgasmic sex life you already have. While I fully admire your determination to keep your sex life rich and varied, I would urge you not to forget that it sounds very much like you already have a better sexual relationship than most people. So as the saying goes: If it aint broke, dont fix it. Please send your queries to suzigodson@mac.com A teenage girl talks to Susan OShea about being bullied relentlessly at school and on social media by a Queen Bee and classmates, leaving her with no option but to quit BULLYING may be an age-old problem, but the rise of The Queen Bee and her cohorts, aided by social media, can have devastating consequences for those who fall prey to her actions, and in extreme cases, leave the victim so traumatised, they find themselves unable to stay in school. Sarah*, from Co Cork, was a happy, well-adjusted teen until transition year and the bullying began. The bullies had been her friends since nursery, but at the start of fourth-year turned on her with devastating consequences. With transition-year comes a lot of extra freedom, where we were unsupervised and there was constant bitching and competition. All the talk was about the weekend, going out, getting drunk. I wasnt into that. The bullying quickly escalated from being bombarded by text and excluded from social occasions to having rumours spread about her to being completely ignored. Its clear from Sarahs demeanour as I talk to her that the experience was deeply distressing. I would sit in the canteen at lunchtime and nobody would talk to me, they would literally turn their backs, but at the same time it felt like the whole school was talking about me. Now 20, she picks nervously at her cuff sleeves as she recalls the loneliness and isolation. I felt the bullies had turned everyone against me, I had no one. Can you imagine what its like sitting next to people who wont talk to you? Sarahs experience follows the classic model of what clinical psychologist Enda Murphy refers to as a bitch fest typically led by the queen bee or gang boss, two trusted lieutenants and two hangers on. Most interesting is his assertion that girls like Sarah are not targeted because they are vulnerable but because they are the emotionally mature ones. If the girls in the group were going out, getting drunk, and this wasnt her thing, she wasnt having the same shared social experience. Something about this behaviour didnt sit right with her, in other words, her moral compass was different to theirs and thats why she was targeted. Sarahs mother Helen met the year head and school principal on a number of occasions to inform them about the bullying but because a lot of it was happening on social media, she says the school adopted a hands-off approach. What was going was very clever, very discreet. When we showed them the social media messages they said that was outside of school. They basically didnt want to know, she says. The situation became so intolerable that Sarah started to refuse to go to school. The two clearly have a close, and loving relationship, but Helen said the mornings became horrendous. She was screaming, shouting Im not going. We would persuade her to get dressed and my husband would drive her to the gates but shed refuse to go in. I couldnt face it, says Sarah. I couldnt face going in to sit next to people who literally wouldnt talk to me. It affected the whole house, and understandably Helen was afraid that Sarahs younger brother, who is now 15, might follow a similar pattern. There was lots of shouting and roaring initially as we tried to understand what was happening and get her to go, but at no stage was I prepared to give up on her. Helen said the vice principals advice was to force Sarah to go to school, a strategy that clearly wasnt going to work. They attended their GP and started seeing a therapist on his advice (the offer of medication was flatly refused). However, after eight sessions they felt it was having little effect. She basically said, I understand you are fearful and to relax at home, watch some soaps, dont worry about school. This was the only therapeutic support Sarah got. They also made contact with the HSEs Child and Adult Mental Health Services but there was a lengthy waiting list to access it services. Cork and Kerry has the longest waiting list according to a recent report. With only intermittent attendance, Sarah managed to sit her summer exams, and the school promised to review the situation in August. Helen said the impression was its the summer we dont want to deal with this. They also wrote to the Department of Education about the bullying, and the department replied via the school that the problem was dealt with appropriately. The principal then suggested it may be better if Sarah switched school. She left behind the big, co-ed community school and opted for a small, single-sex rural secondary where she hoped she could start fifth-year afresh but very quickly the social exclusion started again, with her new classmates wondering why she had left her former school, reluctant to let her enter the close-knit groups they had formed. At this stage, Sarahs confidence was at an all-time low and she began to feel she was the problem. I felt there has to be something wrong with me, this cant be happening again, she says. Six weeks into fifth-year in the new school she broke down in the principals office, but this time the schools response was markedly different. They tried everything to persuade me to come in, down to offering to collect me, but I couldnt. I would have my uniform on, bag packed but I couldnt leave the house, she says. By Christmas, Sarah was unable to sit her exams and never returned to school for a normal school day. Instead, she started studying at home. She would get up every morning and follow the timetable. It was important to stay in a routine, some days were harder than others, but I was determined to get my Leaving Cert, she says. Her parents paid for grinds at home in some subjects and the school arranged and covered the costs for one-to-one tuition in maths and biology. Sarah would go to the school at 4pm when the other pupils had left. I was terrified of meeting any of them and would creep up the stairs. But I focused on the Leaving Cert, I wasnt going to let anyone take that away from me. When asked if this is an option for other pupils in a similar situation, the Department of Education said home tuition has only been provided in exceptional cases in respect of students with diagnoses of school phobia and/ or associated depression/anxiety which has caused, and is likely to continue to cause, major disruption to their attendance at school. After 18 months of no formal schooling, Sarah managed to sit the Leaving Cert. When it came to the actual exams, the school provided a special centre, basically a classroom where Sarah and two other girls were able to sit their exams, away from the stresses of a big exam hall. Sarah and her mother are full of praise for the second school and the approach it took. Even though I wasnt going to school they never washed their hands of me. They arranged for meetings with a guidance counsellor and suggested I do a beauty therapist course as this was something I was interested in, she says. They also recommended a PLC in Corks College of Commerce. Sarah says this was a lifesaver as it helped to restore her confidence. It had got to the stage that I was terrified of the whole world. I couldnt even go into a shop on my own. The year in the College of Commerce, doing business, was the best ever, I felt I grew up, I made friends. She started studying business in CIT a couple of weeks, and while she was terrified at the thought of a lecture hall filled with 300 freshers, she says she was ready. The College of Commerce showed me I can go into a room and talk to people and make friends, she says. Transition times are key flashpoints for bullying, so entry into second level is a particularly risky time, the start of Junior Cert and fifth year, when exam stresses come into play, but perhaps most worrying, fourth-class in primary school. Murphy says parents also need to change how they view bullying. We need to view this through a different lens. Everyone sees the victim of bullying as the vulnerable one but its the Queen Bee who is suffering from chronic low self esteem. The girl who is targeted will have a much higher emotional intelligence. She feels shes in a world where she doesnt fit in. We must teach her that its the situation thats abnormal, not her. Its almost impossible to obtain data on how many teens are refusing to attend school because of bullying. In Sarahs case, only close family and friends were aware of the real reason. Anyone else who asked was simply told she was ill. As Helen says: There is a veil of secrecy around it, and when you are in the middle of it, the last thing you want to do is talk about it. Tusla provides rates for non-attendance as a whole, but there is no breakdown for the reasons, and individual services like the Child and Adult Mental Health Services and Jigsaw, a free, non-judgemental and confidential mental health support service for people aged 12 to 25, do not keep specific data. International figures suggest that up to 5% of non-attendance is anxiety-based. One teacher, a qualified psychotherapist with 24 years experience and who wished to remain anonymous, is employed by a number of schools to offer one-to-one therapy to school refusers, funded privately by the schools, rather than the Department of Education. She has seen a steady rise in social anxiety stemming from bullying over the last decade. Of the 12 pupils she sees on a one-to-one basis weekly, at least one is struggling to attend school because of bullying. Unfortunately, kindness is utterly out of fashion at the moment, mean is fashionable, she says. While most teens are kind and just want to get on with things, there is a small cohort who follow the Queen Bee model, she says, adding that many schools adopt a hands-off approach. In the schools where she is employed, when a pupil is struggling to attend the first step is to recommend they take a week off. The next is to schedule a counselling appointment with her, and offer the pupil a reduced timetable. This, she says, is a often a successful strategy, as it takes a lot of the pressure off. The aim is to prevent complete disconnection, so even if a pupil is just showing up and attending a few classes, at least they are staying engaged. Outside school, pupils are advised to ditch their SIM card, and only issue the new number to people they trust, and close their social media accounts. In other words, remove as many tools as possible from the bullies. Erica Lawless is a full-time researcher, currently conducting a doctorate in educational psychology in UCD on non-attendance. She says there is a lack of awareness about the problem and inconsistency in the provision of services. The first step a school takes when there is a problem with non-attendance is to contact Tuslas education welfare officers but this only applies if the pupil is under 16 years. Over that age, the National Educational Psychological Service should be contacted, and it advises schools dont delay and allow the problem to fester, but to seek help immediately but their services are stretched. A Department of Education spokesperson told Feelgood: Student mental health and wellbeing are key goals in the Governments Action Plan for Education. Among the initiatives taken so far include: Restoration of 500 out of 600 of the cut in guidance counsellors. The Governments intention is to deliver further progress: Implementing the new Junior Cycle wellbeing programme; recruitment of 21 (a 12% increase) additional National Educational Psychological Service psychologists between May 2016 and September 2018 and 65 over the lifetime of the Government. Building a relationship between the school and student is key. Lawless says ideally a school should have an extra staff member who can adopt a pastoral role, and is able to check-in regularly with pupils, but for many schools, with funding and staffing constraints, this remains a pipe dream. She agrees that proven strategies include a reduced timetable and offering the pupil a safe space during the day. This could be just an office, where they can get away from the stresses of school. For pupils in this situation simply getting in the school gates is an achievement and its important to build on that. And if a reduced timetable is in place, all of the teaching staff need to be made aware of the issue. If a teacher is insensitive or unaware of the issue and makes comments in the class, it can add to the problem, she says. The best practice approach is where all the relevant agencies, the school, parent and pupil work together in a collaborative approach to tackle the problem, says Lawless. There are supports available, she says, but they are not consistent, waiting times can depend on where you live, the attitude of the school is key, and often parents are unaware of where to turn for help. For example, Jigsaw offers early intervention in the form of free, one-to-one support over a six-week period, she says. The Department of Education says its Action Plan on Bullying sets out its approach to tackling bullying and promoting an anti-bullying culture in schools. However, Lawless says from her research many schools need greater awareness of the problem, too often the awareness only comes after the problem surfaces, and schools are thus slow to act. Sarah and her mother were keen to share their story with Feelgood as they believe there are other teens out there being bullied and isolated at school, and who may not know where to turn to for help. Their advice is not to give up. Stay motivated, its hard, but it will pay off. It was great to know my parents always had my back. Try and stay positive, says Sarah. She describes the principal and vice-principal in her second school as like second parents, and says without them and the support of her parents, she wouldnt have succeeded. As I leave she says, If I met you 18 months ago, I wouldnt even have been able to look you in the eye, never mind talk to you. And while I lost out on a lot, and the experience was terrible at the time, I wouldnt change it. I feel I became a better, stronger person. I was always the hanger on in the group, never quite part of the circle, now I have a new group of friends on my own terms. Sarah and her mothers names have been changed to protect their identity Support for children under pressure NEPS Department of Education resource offering booklets and resources with tips for parents and schools on building resilience, dealing with emotional difficulties and promoting positive mental health www.jigsaw.ie There are 13 Jigsaw services in communities across the country and are the only mental health service with an exclusive focus on 12-25 year olds. CAMHS HSE site provides assessment and treatment for young people and their families who are experiencing mental health difficulties. www.spunout.ie A youth information website created by young people, for young people, it aims to help create an Ireland where 16-25 year olds are empowered with the information they need to live active, happy, and healthy lives. The Raggy Dolls Club on Facebook Helps people understand the true nature of panic attacks and anxiety and how to overcome it. Roughly 5,000 people, mostly from Central Americas violent and unstable Northern Triangle of Guatemala, El Salvador and Honduras are reportedly making their way through Mexico with the intention of claiming asylum at the U.S. border. The so-called migrant caravan is attracting intense social and political attention, with U.S. President Donald Trump declaring it a national emergency. He has also claimed, erroneously, that the migrants have to claim asylum in Mexico first. Migrants arent obligated to claim asylum in any country, but have a right to seek asylum in a country of their choosing, the right to a fair process in that country, and crucially, a right not to be sent back to a country where they will face persecution or even death. Ive been working with asylum-seekers in Europe and the U.S. since 2008. Over the last decade I have witnessed firsthand the increasing pressure on the asylum system to manage complex situations at borders. The reality is that even if the migrants currently traveling through Mexico are able to claim asylum at the U.S. border a big if, considering they are still more than 1,000 miles away the legal path to safety is challenging. What has always been a difficult process has been made more difficult by growing governmental and public concern that asylum-seekers are gaming the system or that asylum itself has become a backdoor route for economic migrants. Pressures like these lead to ever-narrowing legal protections for asylum-seekers. The asylum system is flawed, and ensuring fair access to genuine protection requires making significant improvements to the broader legal, administrative and social contexts. The legal framework The international legal framework for asylum is the 1951 Convention on the Status of Refugees, which was developed at the end of WWII by the United Nations. The convention established five categories on which asylum claims can be based: race, nationality, religion, political opinion or membership in a particular social group. From the beginning, however, these protection categories were political. Much like recent efforts to limit protections for those fleeing domestic or gang violence, these categories have always protected some, but not all persecuted people. For example, the 1951 convention excluded Germans expelled from Eastern Europe and those forced to flee partition of India and Pakistan. Many of the people displaced or persecuted today also struggle to fit their experiences into the boxes created by the law. For example, despite broad global support for the rights of women and LGBTQ persons, no specific categories exist for gender or sexuality. The 1951 Convention is not useless far from it. However, it contributes to a legal environment in which successful asylum-seekers must have rather narrowly defined experiences in order to be protected. The administrative process Central American migrants traveling with a caravan to the U.S. make their way to Mapastepec, Mexico, Wednesday, Oct. 24, 2018. Thousands of Central American migrants renewed their hoped-for march to the United States on Wednesday, setting out before dawn with plans to travel another 45 miles (75 kilometers) of the more than 1,000 miles that still lie before them. (AP Photo/Rodrigo Abd) When a person seeks asylum not just in the U.S., but in any country that is a party to the refugee convention they have to prove they have been persecuted because of their race, nationality, religion, political opinion or membership in a particular social group. Whats more, they have to prove that they cannot live safely in their country of origin. Their proof depends in large part on being able to demonstrate credibility. In other words, they have to share their experiences in such a way that their claim is believed to be true and their fear of persecution is found to be genuine. This process is made more challenging by suspicions that asylum-seekers are abusing the system. For example, in January 2018, U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services, which manages the administrative process, changed their policy regarding interviews so that those who have claimed asylum more recently are interviewed first. The assumption by USCIS is that newer applications are more likely to be fraudulent and quicker interviews will deter people from using asylum backlogs solely to obtain employment authorization by filing frivolous, fraudulent or otherwise non-meritorious asylum applications. In the meantime, those who have been waiting years to be interviewed will wait even longer. In January 2018 more than 300,000 people were waiting. USCIS used to publish a bulletin of wait times, but discontinued it when the interviewing policy changed in January. The last published bulletin showed that, for example, people in Miami were waiting nearly four and a half years to be interviewed. In addition to confronting suspicion that they are abusing the system, asylum-seekers face a lack of legal support for making claims, and the reality that decision-makers have a great deal of discretion in deciding their fate. No legal representation is automatically provided for asylum-seekers. Many manage the entire process, including going before an immigration judge, entirely on their own. Unsurprisingly, those who do have an attorney are five times more likely to be granted asylum. Research also regularly shows that the chances of being granted asylum vary considerably depending on the applicants nationality and the location within the U.S. where they seek asylum. In 2017, almost 90 percent of claims from Mexicans were denied, compared to only 20 percent of Chinese cases. All three Northern Triangle countries El Salvador, Honduras and Guatemala are in the top five most frequently denied, with more than 75 percent of claims being refused. Similarly, a case is more likely to be granted in New York or San Francisco than in those courts closer to the border in Texas or Arizona. The social context Lastly, asylum has in many ways become an outlet for broader social anxieties about borders, security, terrorism, economic inequality and multiculturalism. Research shows us that migrants and refugees are in fact not more likely to commit crime than citizens. Nor are they likely to be terrorists. In fact, they contribute to local economies in positive ways. But until these social attitudes and assumptions change, the prospect of there being sufficient political will to create workable legal solutions will likely remain low. The legal and administrative frameworks can only really be addressed once adequate social and political will exists to make the kinds of changes that would support a just and humane asylum system. This article was written by Abigail Stepnitz of University of California and was originally published on The Conversation Read the original article here. In volume two of his biography of Eamon de Valera, covering 1932-1975, the RTE journalist David McCullough paints a complex picture, writes Ryle Dwyer. Todays presidential election coincides with the publication of the second and concluding volume of David McCullaghs biography of Eamon de Valera. This timely volume which begins with his coming to power in 1932 concludes with the Long Fellows role in the presidency and his involvement in purely political affairs. On coming to power in March 1932, de Valera insisted on cabinet consensus on all issues. If anyone disagreed with what he desired, he would simply prolong the debate. As he possessed enormous patience, he almost always got his own way by exhausting any dissenters. Desmond Ryan, therefore, entitled his early biography Unique Dictator. De Valera was always at pains to deny that he had dictatorial tendencies, according to McCullagh. Although he preserved cabinet consensus with great determination in the 1930s and 1940s, the dictatorial allegation was understandable against the backdrop of his earlier career. In the wake of the Treaty split, notes McCullagh, de Valera specifically denied the right of a majority of voters to accept a settlement of which he disapproved. In the 1930s, he notes that de Valera established an impeccably democratic constitution in marked contrast with most of the newly established states in Europe, particularly the Catholic ones. He went on to provide inspired leadership in keeping Ireland out of the Second World War, even though he initially warned that it would be impossible to remain neutral. People were living in a fools paradise if they thought they could escape attack while exporting food to Britain, warned de Valera. In modern warfare, there is not any neutrality. Yet, he went on to achieve the seemingly impossible by feigning neutrality, while secretly siding with the Allies. "The Irish coast watching service reported simultaneously to Dublin and the British. In addition, British aircraft were secretly authorised to fly over Donegal, and the British Navy was allowed to station armed tugs at Killybegs, Cobh, and Berehaven for air-sea rescue purposes. Nevertheless, the notion was assiduously developed by Winston Churchill and the Americans that Ireland pursued an indifferent neutrality. This was a gross distortion, but it was largely prompted by de Valeras own earlier exploitation of the partition issue. For years he contended that his main objection to the 1921 Treaty was that it was likely to confirm Partition. This was a blatant distortion. If the Dail did not recognise the rights of Northern Unionists, de Valera warned the Dail in August 1921, it would make the same mistake with them that the British made with the rest of the island. When Michael Collins challenged him to present an alternative to the Treaty at the outset of the Dail debate that December, de Valera produced Document No 2, which contained the Treatys partition clauses verbatim. There was no difference between them over partition. The real issue revolved around the question of Irish sovereignty. While Collins admitted that the Treaty did not provide full national freedom, he insisted it contained the freedom to achieve it. de Valera disputed this at the time, but later proved during the Second World War that the Big Fellow had been right. The driving force of de Valeras policy during the world war, was his assertion of the sovereignty of the 26 counties, argues McCullagh, convincingly. Neutrality has given the people more faith in what the government has achieved for the independence of this country than any other act. But de Valera had so shamelessly exploited the partition issue over the years that the British and Americans feared he would use it to cause post-war problems between Britain and the US. To prevent this, David Gray, the American minister to Ireland, advocated undermining de Valera in British and American eyes with a series of public requests for Irish bases, for the expulsion of Axis diplomats, and for permission to seize the German Legation in Dublin. Although Gray was confident de Valera would reject such requests, American and British military leaders balked at asking for Irish bases. They argued that the Irish leader had been so helpful that he might hand over the bases, which would only be a liability to the Allied war effort. There were no security grounds for demanding the closure of the Axis missions, Churchill admitted, but he backed an American request for de Valera to expel the German and Japanese representatives as a supposed threat to the Allied invasion of Europe. The real aim was to inflame US public opinion against de Valera. Grays plan worked perfectly, according to McCullagh. American public opinion was inflamed by de Valeras refusal. Incensed by Grays scheming, de Valera retaliated by proffering condolence to the German minister Edouard Hempel following the death of Hitler. During the whole of the war, the Taoiseach explained privately, Dr Hempels conduct was irreproachable. He was always and invariably correct in marked contrast with Gray. I certainly was not going to add to his humiliation in the hour of defeat. The gesture was a serious political blunder, because it reinforced Grays distortions. But this should certainly not detract from the magnificent way in which de Valera kept this country out of the war. Of course, McCullagh goes on to conclude that de Valera made a further mistake in not knowing when to quit: Unfortunately for his reputation and for the country he stayed on too long. The Fianna Fail government that came to power in June 1951 was undoubtedly the worst led by de Valera, contends McCullagh. It was arguably the worst in the history of the State. He goes on to note that as president, de Valera flouted the convention of staying out of political affairs. In 1969, when a delegation from Northern Ireland sought to discuss the northern troubles with de Valera, he refused to meet them. This was entirely in line with the convention that the president is above politics, notes the author. Around the same time, de Valera clearly flouted this convention by getting Kevin Boland to backdown after telling colleagues in a huff that he was resigning from cabinet over policy differences. Boland was reluctant to change his mind, until de Valera warned that the resignation would not only threaten government stability but could even lead to Fine Gael gaining power. This was an internal party matter in which he had absolutely no business, argues McCullagh. But it was not the last involvement de Valera would have in the coming months. Peter Berry, secretary of the Department of Justice, contacted the president, supposedly for advice, in April 1970. Justice minister Micheal O Morain had developed a serious drink problem, and Berry said he could not be sure that the taoiseach, Jack Lynch, had been informed about a matter of grave national concern. He did not explain that two government ministers Charles Haughey and Neil Blaney were involved in importing arms for the IRA in Northern Ireland. Berry was not really looking for advice; he was just using the President in order to put pressure on Lynch. He knew de Valera would advise him to tell Lynch directly. By consulting the president, and telling the taoiseach that I had consulted the president, explained Berry. I would be pushing the Taoiseach towards the enforcement of the rule of law. After the arms trial debacle, de Valera encouraged Lynch to resist an obvious leadership bid by Haughey, and he also privately advised Paddy Hillery and Des OMalley to support the taoiseach. As the president had no business in involving himself in internal Fianna Fail affairs, contends McCullagh, his conversations with Hillery and OMalley, and his private message to Lynch, are more like those of a party chieftain than an impartial head of state. De Valeras subsequent political intervention, in February 1973 when Frank Aiken decided not to stand for re-election in the general election after party headquarters ratified Haughey as a Fianna Fail candidate was even more significant. Eamon deValera and Winston Churchill. Aiken intended to publicise his reasons for withdrawing, but de Valera persuaded him not to make any announcement. Lynch then lied publicly by announcing that Aiken had stepped down for medical reasons. It was a sad end for Aiken, but ultimately even worse for Lynch, who was essentially pushed out as taoiseach by Haughey, who went on to replace him. "For better or worse, Eamon de Valera did more than any other individual to shape the Ireland over which he ruled, concludes the author in his fair and thoroughly balanced biography. It is not a book for someone looking for a concise overview of de Valeras life, but those interested in an in-depth assessment, or those wishing to evaluate specific aspects of his career, such as his presidency, will find the biography invaluable. The consistency of the two exit polls is remarkable and the result is crystal clear. As expected, President Michael D Higgins will romp home to victory and can now look forward to seven more years in office. Despite a concerted effort by the establishment parties to avoid an election, when it did eventually happen, the campaign was a damp squib. Questions about the spending at Aras an Uachtarain and the 317,000 unaudited allowance were legitimate but they never damaged the incumbent as he insulated himself from attack. Firstly, he since taking office in 2011 had reduced his salary and he too has come in under budget year on year. The amount of focus on such matters by the other rival candidates was simply bizarre as was their unwillingness to tackle the President on his ideas for the office. They accepted he had done a good job and therefore severely limited the field of attack. However in saying that, it was a far from impressive campaign from the President. On several fronts he was seen to go back on his word. Firstly on standing for a second term when he said he would only serve one previously. Then at the height of the row over the allowance, he committed to issuing a formal statement on his spending, only to later say he would do it after the race was completed. Then his explanation about using the Government Lear jet to travel to Belfast appeared to change when he was pressed on the matter. Despite all that, in truth, not one of the other candidates came close to laying a glove on Michael D. Seasoned businessmen like Sean Gallagher and Gavin Duffy will be scratching their heads as to why they even considered running in the first place. Gallagher was not rewarded for standing again, despite the feeling one got from him throughout that he was owed another shot at the crown. Given the likelihood of him taking home the wooden spoon prize, Duffy's decision to stand could prove very costly indeed to him. For all his public relations expertise, he at times struggled to be convincing or even likeable, appearing smug and arrogant. His involvement in a serious road traffic accident in his earlier years did clearly overshadow his campaign. Sinn Fein's Liadh ni Riada too will be licking her wounds after a poor showing by her party's standing. At 7% and 8% in the two exit polls, she has fallen well short of Sinn Fein's core party support level, so a sizeable chunk of her own party's supporters did not vote for her. Perhaps her comments about being prepared to wear a poppy was a bridge too far too soon for some. Senator Joan Freeman's campaign never got going and despite having a decent back story to tell, her message clearly did not resonate with the public. She struggled too in debates and often bemoaned the fact those debates were dominated by money issues and the business interests of other candidates. But the big surprise of the race was Peter Casey. Shooting from the hip he clearly won admirers after he was critical of the actions of the Traveller community last week. There was a palpable sense that what he said resonated with people, who could be heard: I agree with him, but I just can't say it. The irony of Casey's result is that he is likely to get back his 200,000 election expenses, despite needing them the least of all of the runners-up. Voter turnout in the Presidential election across the country is set to be the lowest ever, reflecting the low-key nature of the campaign. Previously, the lowest turnout recorded in a Presidential election was in 1997, where just 46.7% of those eligible to vote cast their ballot. On that occasion, Mary McAleese saw off the challenge of Mary Banotti, Derek Nally, Adi Roche and Dana Rosemary Scallon. The highest turnout recorded in a Presidential election was 65.3% in 1966 when Eamon DeValera defeated Thomas F O'Higgins to secure his second term in the Aras. Since Douglas Hyde was first elected President in 1938, seven men and two women have held the office A spokesman for the Chinese government had previously described the reporters treatment as completely unacceptable and said she herself was assaulted for asking questions. But calls for outright independence are a red line for Chinas Communist Party leaders, who deem the global financial hub to be an inalienable part of the nation. Hong Kong returned to Chinese rule in 1997 under a one country, two systems principle, with the guarantee of a high degree of autonomy and freedoms not enjoyed elsewhere in China. Kong did not respond to a request for comment left at her companys offices in London. China Central Television, also known as CCTV, is Beijings largest TV network, with dozens of channels and ambitious plans to expand internationally. West Midlands Police said she had been charged with common assault and will appear at Birmingham Magistrates Court on Nov. 7. Kong Linlin, a 48-year-old reporter for the countrys state-run broadcaster China Central Television, was arrested after the incident at the event that featured pro-democracy supporters from the former British colony. LONDON A female Chinese reporter has been charged with assault after allegedly slapping a volunteer at an event on the sidelines of the UKs Conservative Party conference last month where they were discussing political freedoms in Hong Kong. A morning commuter walks in front of the China Central Television building on Dec. 2, 2015. / Reuters A morning commuter walks in front of the China Central Television building on Dec. 2, 2015. / Reuters US Senate Leader: Congress Should Not Join 'Pile-On' On Myanmar's Suu Kyi Thai Army Chief Says No Need to Intervene if Politics Stable Official Suing Journalists for Incitement Tells Court Their Article was Wrong No Development Without Rule of Law, Mon State MP Says More Than 170 Rohingya Refugees Resettled in Northern Rakhine, Govt Says Bago Rice Millers Ask Govt to Clamp Down on Chinese Traders I Would Not Exchange My Life For That Amount of Money: Nang Mo Hom Durga Puja Brings Brief Burst of Joy to Hindu Refugees in Bangladesh Global Pressure Mounts on Myanmar to Act on Accountability in Rakhine Crisis Former Malaysian PM Najib Faces Six More Corruption Charges over State Funds We do not encourage viewing this site in this width. Please increase the size of your window. Burma Global Pressure Mounts on Myanmar to Act on Accountability in Rakhine Crisis Rohingya refugees hold banners and placards during a visit of UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres and World Bank president Jim Yong Kim at the Kutupalong refugee camp in Coxs Bazar, Bangladesh, July 2, 2018. / Reuters UNITED NATIONS China, backed by Russia, failed on Wednesday to stop a United Nations Security Council briefing by the chair of a UN inquiry that accused Myanmars military of genocide against Rohingya Muslims and urged the 15-member council to push for justice. Atrocities continue to take place today, Marzuki Darusman, chair of the UN Fact Finding Mission on Myanmar, told reporters ahead of the council briefing. It is an ongoing genocide that is taking place. Global pressure is mounting on Myanmar to act on accountability after a Myanmar military crackdown in the western state of Rakhine last year drove some 700,000 of the largely stateless minority over the border into Bangladesh. Australia on Tuesday slapped travel and financial sanctions on five top Myanmar military officers, accused of overseeing brutal violence against Rohingya Muslims by units under their command, following similar moves by the European Union and United States. Darusman told the Security Council that remaining Rohingya in Rakhine were at grave risk and returning those who have fled in this context is tantamount to condemning them to life as sub-humans and further mass killing. Myanmar has rejected the findings of the UN report. We are willing and able to take on the accountability issues for any alleged human rights violation where there is sufficient evidence, Myanmars UN Ambassador Hau Do Suan told the Security Council. The military crackdown followed attacks by Rohingya militants on security posts. Myanmar has denied committing atrocities against the Rohingya, saying its military carried out justifiable actions against militants. The crimes we have heard echo those committed in Rwanda and Srebrenica some twenty years ago. The Security Council acted in those two situations. It acted too late to prevent them which is all to our lasting shame but it did act to ensure accountability, British UN Ambassador Karen Pierce told the council. Britain coordinates council action on Myanmar and Pierce said she would push for accountability that genuinely ends the Burmese militarys impunity. The UN inquirys report, released in August, called for the Security Council to impose an arms embargo on Myanmar, targeted sanctions and set up an ad hoc tribunal to try suspects or refer them to the International Criminal Court (ICC) The report accused Myanmars military of gang rapes and mass killings with genocidal intent 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. National sovereignty is not a license to commit crimes against humanity or genocide, Darusman told the council. The Rohingya and all of Myanmars people, in fact the entire world, is looking at you to take action. However, diplomats say council veto powers China and Russia are likely to protect Myanmar from any action. Myanmars UN ambassador said the country would never accept an ICC referral. Britain, France, the United States and six other members requested Wednesdays briefing, but China called a vote to try to stop it. Nine countries voted in favor of the briefing the minimum needed while China, Russia and Bolivia voted against and Ethiopia, Equatorial Guinea and Kazakhstan abstained. Chinas UN Ambassador Ma Zhaoxu told the council it should not get involved in country-specific human rights issues and that the briefing would be counterproductive to efforts to solve the situation. In Beijing, Chinese foreign ministry spokeswoman Hua Chunying said China had always maintained that the international community should allow a compromise and cooperation between Myanmar and Bangladesh. The Security Council is not the appropriate place to discuss human rights issues, she told a regular news briefing, adding that the briefing interfered with the talks between Myanmar and Bangladesh and was not beneficial to an appropriate resolution of the issue. Russian UN Ambassador Vassily Nebenzia accused the nine members who called the meeting of intentionally torpedoing council consensus on the issue. Burma Northern Rakhine Women's Center to Open to 'Promote Social Cohesion' Rohingya Muslims and Arakanese Buddhists walk in a market in Maungdaw, June 6, 2014. / Reuters YANGON In order to promote social cohesion between Muslim, ethnic Arakanese and Hindu communities in northern Rakhines Maungdaw Township, the Union government has approved the construction of a womens center, said social welfare minister Dr. Win Myat Aye. The minister said the government believes that the center will play a vital role in confidence building, as well as providing development and job opportunities. Women from different communities will be able to exchange opinions on a number of different issues at the center, Dr. Win Myat Aye said. Daw San San Aye, the director general of the social welfare ministry who is assigned to womens projects across the country, said the center was a plan made by stakeholders in Maungdaw rather than the ministry. Over the past two weeks, the Rakhine Womens Network held a womens forum in downtown Maungdaw and invited community leaders, government officials, and the prominent South African politician and businessman Roelf Meyer, who is said to have coined the womens center project. Daw San San Aye stated that the project would be funded by an international donor and that the site has not yet been selected. She told The Irrawaddy to reach out to the Center for Diversity and National Harmony for more information, as it has been an active participant. The CDNH could not be reached for comment at the time of publication. This is the first project of its kind in Maungdaw and the government expects good outcomes, Daw San San Aye added. Daw Yin Myat Oo, who organized the womens forum in Maungdaw, said the center would likely be located between Myo Thu Gyi village and the entrance of Maungdaw town. She added that initial meetings between Muslim and ethnic Arakanese participants focused on combatting domestic violence, tackling unemployment among women in the region, human trafficking, and a free exchange of views between the two sides to promote harmony. Rohingya Muslim women in Maungdaw face many restrictions and do not have much access to education. This exchange could help them realize what they need, said Daw Yin Myat Oo. Daw Nu Nu Khin, a Muslim community leader said that Muslim women are restricted from freedom of movement and that their lack of education could be attributed to discrimination in government schools. She estimated that the literacy rate of Muslim women in Maungdaw could be as low as 1 percent and added that even after graduating, these women are unable to obtain jobs in government departments. She hopes this will change in the future. Daw Nu Nu Khin told The Irrawaddy that women have been trying to implement such a center in recent years, but that it was put on hold following Arakan Rohingya Salvation Army attacks on border guard posts in August 2017 and subsequent Myanmar Army clearance operations in Rakhine State that forced some 700,00 Rohginya Muslims to flee to neighboring Bangladesh. The army has been accused of widespread extrajudicial killings, rape and arson. A UN report stated that the Myanmar Army acted with genocidal intent and the international community has called for accountability. Daw Nu Nu Khin elaborated that the majority of Muslim women, particularly in northern Rakhine States strife-torn Maungdaw district, are unable to explain properly even where they lived and worked in their daily lives. They were by far the most vulnerable group in the wake of 2017 Rakhine crisis, she said. According to government statistics, nearly 430,000 Rohingya women lived in Maungdaw and Rathedaung Township before the 2017 conflict. Its unclear how many Muslim women remain in these towns. Daw Nu Nu Khin speculated that more than 80 percent of the Muslim women previously living in Maungdaw district are now in Bangladesh. In terms of the womens center in Maungdaw, prominent Myanmar womens rights and peace activist Ma May Sabe Phyu, also director of the Gender Equality Network, remarked that initiating trust building between women from different communities is beneficial, as women are more flexible and better negotiators than men. Women in conflict zones face numerous challenges in their daily lives and they will come together to share resources and avoid clashes post conflict, she said. Hatred indiscriminately targets all women, no matter what they believe, said Daw May Sabe Phyu. News Hundreds Flee Fighting Between RCSS, Two Northern Alliance Members Villagers from Mong Yin seek refuge at the Shwe Myin Thar monastery in Namtu Township, northern Shan State on Oct. 25, 2018. / EPRN / supplied YANGONNearly 750 residents of Mong Yin village in northern Shan States Namtu Township have fled fighting between the Restoration Council of Shan State/Shan State Army South and a joint force of the Taang Nationalities Liberation Army and the Shan State Progressive Party/Shan State Army North this week. The displaced villagers are currently sheltering in Namtu town. Tensions over a territorial dispute began to escalate again between the RCSS/SSAS and Northern Alliance members TNLA and SSPP/SSAN on Oct. 22. Fighting erupted on Oct. 24, forcing residents of nine villages to flee after artillery fire threatened their homes. It was still not safe to return on Friday, and villagers remained in temporary shelters in Namtu town, said Sai Ba Nyan, vice chairman of Namtu Townships relief team for internally displaced persons (IDPs). While no fighting was reported on Friday, The [ethnic armed organizations] troops are still present on the routes to the IDPs homes, and they are afraid of being questioned, he said. Lacking adequate food and shelter, the IDPs have sought aid from locals and the Social Welfare Department, Sai Ba Nyan said. They want the ethnic armed organizations (EAOs) to stop fighting, he said. We want no fighting, Sai Ba Nyan said. We would like to ask that they resolve their conflict at the negotiating table rather than with weapons. The last time fighting erupted in the area, it broke out north of the Namtu tributary, forcing villagers to flee south of the river. This time the fighting is south of the Namtu tributary, so the displaced fled into the town, he said. Frequent clashes between EAOs near Namtu this year have disrupted farming. In mid-July, more than 1,000 people fled to temporary shelters in Namtu and nearby Hsipaw Township after fighting broke out. They were forced to spend a week in the shelters before heading home. In an interview with The Irrawaddy last week, RCSS chairman General Yawd Serk said his group and both the TNLA and SSPP would need to negotiate differences of opinion regarding the clashes. In May, two residents of Mansa village in Namtu were injured during an exchange of fire between the SSPP and TNLA. News Lawmaker Files Slander Complaint Against NLD Spokesman NLD spokesman U Myo Nyunt speaks to the media on Sept. 23 in Naypyitaw. / Htet Naing Zaw / The Irrawaddy NAYPYITAW A former member of the ruling National League for Democracy (NLD) has filed a complaint against a spokesman for the party under the Law Protecting the Privacy and Security of Citizens. Upper House lawmaker U Tin Aung Tun, from Magwe Region, said NLD spokesman U Myo Nyunts statement to the media about his resignation from the party sullied his name. The lawmaker filed the complaint with police in Magwes Minbu Township on Tuesday under Article 10 of the law. Following an NLD central executive committee meeting in Naypyitaw on Sept. 23, U Myo Nyunt told reporters that the party had accepted the resignation of U Pe Chit of Yangon Constituency 9 and U Tin Aung Tun of Magwe Constituency 5. They said that party rules were too strict and they were also not happy that they had to make cash contributions to the party, the spokesman said when reporters asked him why the two men had resigned. According to party sources, NLD lawmakers have to contribute 25 percent of their monthly salaries 250,000 kyats ($158) to the party. I filed the complaint because I believe what he said breached this law. I am filing the complaint because what he said is not true and damaged my reputation, U Tin Aung Tun told reporters. U Tin Aung Tun said he left the NLD simply because he no longer wanted to be a party member. He denied having given the reasons U Myo Nyunt claimed. U Myo Nyunt said he did not specifically name U Tin Aung Tun in his remarks on Sept. 23. I just said it generally to refer to that group, he said, referring to the lawmakers who had submitted resignation letters. I didnt mean to defame like he said. He said U Tin Aung Tun filed the complaint out of anger with public criticism. People voted for them not because of who they are, but because they were from the NLD. And people are angry because they resigned from the party after becoming lawmakers, the spokesman said. The Law Protecting the Privacy and Security of Citizens has rarely been used to file defamation charges since it was enacted in March 2017, said lawyer U Khin Maung Zaw. Article 8 (f) of the law bars anyone from unlawfully interfering with a citizens personal or family matters or from acting in any way to slander or harm a citizens reputation in the absence of an order, permission or warrant issued in accordance with existing laws or permission from the president or a Union-level government body. Article 10 states that those who violate Article 8 will be sentenced to between six months and three years in jail and fined between 300,000 kyats ($190) and 1.5 million kyats ($950). Translated from Burmese by Thet Ko Ko. News Lawyer For Eleven Media Journalists Says Govt Stalling Mediation Eleven Media Group journalists wave to reporters while walking out of the Tamwe Township Court in Yangon after being released on bail on Friday. / Myo Min Soe / The Irrawaddy YANGON The lawyer for three Eleven Media Group journalists said the Yangon Region government had to take responsibility for not withdrawing its incitement lawsuit against the trio and preventing the Myanmar Press Council from stepping in to mediate, as per the presidents instructions. Despite the journalists release on bail Friday, the Press Council said it would not mediate until the government dropped its lawsuit. Eleven Media managing editors U Kyaw Zaw Lin and Nari Min and chief reporter U Phyo Wai Win walked free Friday afternoon after the Tamwe Township Court approved their bail request from last week. The Yangon government filed a suit against the trio 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. They were arrested on Oct. 10 and detained at Yangons Insein Prison. The lawsuit and arrests drew strong public rebuke from critics who pointed out that the offending article was based primarily on remarks by lawmakers in a Yangon Parliament session about a recent report by the local auditor general. The lawmakers themselves insisted the story was accurate. The lawsuit prompted President U Win Myint to tell 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. The Yangon government submitted a complaint letter to the Press Council following the presidents directive last week. Since then, the Press Council has called on the Yangon government to withdraw its lawsuit because the bodys rules forbid it from intervening in a case that is already with the courts. But the government has yet to drop the suit. Instead, on Oct. 19, it demanded that Eleven Media apologize for the article, but it has not said whether it would drop the suit if the news outlet complied. The plaintiff, government official U Aung Kyaw Khaing, did not appear in court on Friday and could not immediately be reached for comment. Press Council Vice Chairman U Myo Thant Tin told The Irrawaddy on Friday that the trios release on bail was not enough to allow the body to start mediating. Right after the withdrawal [of the suit]; only then can we intervene, he said. The journalists lawyer, U Kyee Myint, said he welcomed the bail but added that the government had yet to follow through on the Press Councils request to drop the lawsuit. The president has given a clear order that the case has to be settled first with the Media Law. The Yangon government has to take responsibility for its failure. It should follow the presidents instruction, he said. Upon his release on Friday, U Phyo Wai Win told reporters outside the court that he stood by everything in the article. The Irrawaddy reporter Htet Naing Zaw contributed reporting to the story. News Myanmar, India Appoint Operator for Sittwe Port Project Barges for use in the Kaladan Project are moored near Sittwe Port in 2017. / Min Aung Khine / The Irrawaddy YANGONMyanmar signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) early this week with India to appoint a private operator for Sittwe Port. The move is part of the Kaladan Multi Model Transit Transport Project under Indias ambitious Act East Policy. According to the MoU, the private operator will manage the operation and maintenance of a deep-water port in Sittwe, the capital of Rakhine State on the Bay of Bengal, as well as the Paletwa Inland Water Terminal in Chin State and associated facilities that are part of the transport project. A statement from the Indian Embassy described the MoU, signed during Indian Foreign Secretary Vijay Keshav Gokhales visit to Myanmar, as a significant step in the implementation of Indias Act East Policy. It said the agreement would boost connectivity between the two countries and promote regional development, particularly in Chin and Rakhine states. The statement said, It would also add to local infrastructure capacity and help in creating more job opportunities for the local people. India shares a 1,600-km-long border with Myanmar, whose strategic location between Southeast Asia and East Asia makes it important to New Delhis Act East Policy. India adopted its Look East policy in 1991 to enhance economic and strategic relations with Southeast Asia in an effort to strengthen its role as a regional power, and to provide a counterweight to Chinas influence in the region. Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi carried the policy to the next level, renaming it the Act East Policy. The ambitious policy aims to develop comprehensive, close ties in politics, economics and security through developing trade relations with the Mekong countries and other states surrounding China, according to the report Indias Act East Policy Amid Myanmars Centre-Periphery Conflict published in 2017 by Indias South Asian University. Myanmar serves as a crucial buffer state between China and India and also plays a crucial part in Chinas ambitious Belt and Road Initiative (BRI). One component of the BRI, the China-backed Kyaukphyu Special Economic Zone, is 100 km south of the India-backed Sittwe Special Economic Zone. A railway network is planned between Chinas Yunnan and Kyaukphyu to facilitate trade. New Delhi has been making efforts to get transit access through Bangladesh to ship goods to Indias landlocked northeastern states. A key element of Indias Act East Policy, the Kaladan Multi-Modal Transit Transport Projectfor which it signed a framework agreement with Myanmar in 2008expects to open sea routes and a highway transport system to link the eastern Indian seaport of Kolkata with its landlocked northeastern state of Mizoram through Myanmars Rakhine and Chin states. In Myanmar, the link will connect Sittwe seaport to Paletwa in Chin State via the Kaladan River route, and Paletwa to Mizoram State by road. The project includes 158 km of waterway on the Kaladan River from Sittwe to Paletwa in Myanmar and a 109-km road component from Paletwa to Zorinpui along the India-Myanmar border in Mizoram. The project also aims to reduce the travel distance from Kolkata to Sittwe by about 1,328 km through the use of waterways, reducing by three or four days the time needed to transport goods through the narrow Siliguri corridor, also known as the Chickens Neck. According to the Kaladan Movement, the Indian government expects the Kaladan project to increase economic linkages with Myanmar and the rest of Southeast Asia. The Kaladan Movement is an alliance of civil-society organizations concerned about the human-rights, social, economic and environmental impacts of the Kaladan project. The estimated expense of the entire project of $480 million is being provided through the Indian Ministry of External Affairs (MEA). According to India media, the project is scheduled to be operational by 2019-20. The project is being implemented in four major phases. Phase 1 involves constructing jetties and a port facility in Sittwe to accommodate large cargo ships; Phase 2 involves dredging and widening stretches of the Kaladan River into a 160 km inland waterway transport system for cargo ships, including the construction of a port and transshipment terminal at Paletwa Town in Chin State; Phase 3 involves the construction of a 130-km two-lane highway from Paletwa Town to the Myanmar-India border crossing at Myeik Wa village; and Phase 4 will see the construction of a 100-km two-lane highway in Mizoram State from Lomasu to Lawngtlai. This will connect with the existing Indian National Highway and include the construction of a land customs station at Zorinpui in Mizoram. Neither side has announced updates on estimated completion dates. According to Indian media, phases 1 and 2 were mostly completed between 2014 and 2016. Some projects have been halted due to the Rohingya crisis in Rakhine State, according to India media reports. U Mg Mg Soe, an expert in the history of Rakhine and an observer of social, economic and political developments in the state, said that while Rakhine made international headlines due to the communal violence between local Buddhists and Rohingya Muslims in the north, the conflict shouldnt impact the project due to its location several hundred miles to the south. The project will assist India to transport goods from Kolkata to its western states. We will only get service charges from the port, U Mg Mg Soe said. He said that if Myanmar wants to see real benefits from the project, the government needs to establish direct trade with the eastern and southern states of India. During the visit, Foreign Secretary Gokhale said that India values its relationship and close cooperation with a close neighbor like Myanmar and will continue to deepen its cooperation with it in the areas of connectively, security, people-to-people relations and economic and commercial cooperation, according to the statement. Under the Act East Policy, Myanmar and India opened two land-border crossing in Augustat Tamu-Moreh in Manipur, northeastern India, and Rihkhawdar-Zowkhawtar in Mizoramto facilitate closer trade and commercial ties. News NLD Prepares For By-Election Losses in Rakhine, Shan Mandalay Region Chief Minister U Zaw Myint Maung. / Htet Wai / The Irrawaddy MANDALAY The ruling National League for Democracy (NLD) believes it may lose the November by-elections in Rakhine and Shan states, said U Zaw Myint Maung, the chief minister of Mandalay Region and chair of the partys Mandalay chapter. [Rakhine and Shan] are ethnic [minority] regions. Besides language barriers, there are other pressures. To be frank, we have no confidence [of victory], he said on Monday after a meeting with civil society groups. In the beginning we also had some difficulties with Chin State, but things have improved a lot now. It has been the same with Karen State, he added. The Shan State Parliament is dominated by the NLDs main opposition, the Union Solidarity and Development Party (USDP), while the Arakan National Party dominates in Rakhine State. Across the country, a total of 13 legislative seats four in the Lower House, one in the Upper House and eight in regional parliaments will be up for grabs on Nov. 3. The NLD is contesting all 13 seats, while the USDP is fielding candidates only in constituencies outside of ethnic minority regions. In all, 69 candidates from over 20 political parties and some independents are contesting the by-elections. The four vacant Lower House seats are in Chin States Kanpetlet Township, Shan States Laihka Township, Mandalay Regions Myingyan Township and Yangon Regions Tamwe Township. The vacant seat in the Upper House is in Kachin States Constituency 2. The vacant regional parliament seats are in Chin States Matupi Township, Sagaing Regions Tamu Township, Bago Regions Oktwin Township, Rakhine States Rathedaung Township, Magwe Regions Minbu Township, Yangon Regions Seikkan Township, Mandalay Regions Thabeikkyin Township, and the ethnic Shan constituency in Mandalay. At first, candidates were very concerned. But they have been encouraged because the partys central executive committee has campaigned in those areas, U Zaw Myint Maung said, noting that the NLD was using the language of the local communities to communicate with potential voters. This is to show that the NLD is made up of various ethnicities and that it can engage in ethnic affairs, he said. Though the challenge is huge, the most important thing is the decision of the people. We have to accept the decision of the people, he added. On Oct. 19 State Counselor and NLD leader Daw Aung San Suu Kyi travelled to Myitkyina in Kachin State, where she visited a boarding school for students and camps for internally displaced people in the area. The party has denied claims from local parties that the trip was part of the NLDs election campaign. Translated from Burmese by Thet Ko Ko. News No Deals on Secession, Military Integration Without Consent of Shan People: RCSS RCSS/SSA soldiers march in a parade to mark Shan National Day at Loi Tai Leng, the headquarters of the SSA-S, in February 2016. / Nyein Nyein / The Irrawaddy The Restoration Council of Shan State (RCSS) would never consider integrating its forces into the Myanmar military or disavow its right to secede from the Union without consulting the Shan community, the group said on Friday. The group issued a statement Friday clarifying its position on two points discussed at a meeting with leaders of the Myanmar military (or Tatmadaw), the government, Parliament and ethnic armed organizations (EAOs) in Naypyitaw on Oct. 15-16. The issue of non-secession from the Union involves all ethnic Shan; therefore we will stand with the Shan people and would never make [such a promise] without the consent of all our people, the group said in the statements first point. Regarding the establishment of a single national army, we would accept it based on international practices and principles. But we will [only] fully accept the creation of a single army once all sides have fully agreed on how to settle security sector issues. Until we can reach a security agreement through negotiated settlement, we will not accept an integrated army, the statements second point reads. Colonel Sai Oo, a spokesperson for the RCSS based in Taunggyi, the capital of Shan State, told The Irrawaddy on Friday that, We cannot ignore the desires of our ethnic people. Therefore, we will continue to stand with them, he said. Regarding the creation of a single army, Col. Sai Oo said, We need to look at how the current Tatmadaw was formed, and study international practice on integrating armed forces. There should be a Union army in our country. However, We cannot accept the establishment of a single army as an attempt to disarm us, he said. The RCSS has signed the Nationwide Ceasefire Agreement with the Myanmar government and participated in peace negotiations along with other EAO signatories. RCSS chairman General Yawd Serk participated in the Naypyitaw meeting but was not happy with the discussions of non-secession and integrating the military, according to some EAO leaders. Such was his dissatisfaction that at one point he even decided not to attend the second day of the meeting, though he later relented. Some ethnic leaders believe the Myanmar Army proposes the two points for discussion at peace talks as a way of extracting concessions from EAOs without having to use force. This approach will never lead to lasting peace in Myanmar, they said, because it favors one side (the Tatmadaw) while asking the other (the EAOs) to disarm. Myanmars peace process has deadlocked over the two issues. Sao Khun Sai, a political adviser to the RCSS based in Chiang Mai, Thailand, said the Myanmar Army would have to decide whether it wants to pursue a win-win peace process or one that was win-lose. If the Myanmar Army is the only side that gains from the peace process, there will be no peace, he said. The result will in fact be a lose-lose process, he said. Other EAOs, including the Karen National Union (KNU), are similarly unhappy with the Tatmadaws proposal to create a unified army and its demand that the organizations agree never to seek secession. While the KNU has not published its opposition in a formal statement, two senior leaders of the Karen National Liberation Army (KNLA) told the Karen Peace Support Network that they disagreed with the Tatmadaws proposal on military integration. KNLA commander General Saw Johnny the network on Oct. 22 that in a democratic country, the Army should be under the control of the president. However, he said, the Myanmar Army was under the control of neither President U Win Myint nor the countrys de facto leader, State Counselor Daw Aung San Suu Kyi. We all know they protect the 2008 Constitution, and took 25 percent [of the seats in] Parliament. They want a single army, but that wont happen within the next 20 years. A federal army will only be created when all people live in peace and stability. All ethnic armed groups should be able to participate in it, Gen. Saw Johnny said. News Singapore to Hang Two Drug Traffickers Amid Calls for a Halt An anti-death penalty activist places a candle outside Changi prison in Singapore, December 2, 2005. / Reuters SINGAPORE Singapore is due to execute two convicted drug traffickers on Friday after hanging a man on Wednesday for the same offense amid fresh calls for the wealthy state to abolish the death penalty. Human rights group Amnesty International called on Singapore to follow the example of neighboring Malaysia and end capital punishment. Singaporean authorities must halt the imminent executions of Prabu N. Pathmanathan, a 31-year-old Malaysian national, and of another man whose name has not been released, Amnesty International said in a statement on Wednesday. News of these planned executions follow the reported execution of another man today, and that of three men, on 5 October, also for drug-related offenses. Pathmanathan was convicted of smuggling drugs from Malaysia into Singapore in 2014, according to court documents. Malaysias newly elected cabinet, which took power in May, said this month it would abolish the death penalty by the end of the year. I will issue a letter to the Singapore government to urge them to give Prabu a chance, Malaysian Law Minister Liew Vui Keong told reporters on Wednesday. Singapore has some of the toughest anti-drugs laws in the world, and its customs forms warn arriving travelers of death for drug traffickers in no uncertain terms. Amnesty International says that 15 countries have laws for the death penalty for drug-related offenses. But Amnesty International recorded executions for drug-related offenses in only four China, Iran, Saudi Arabia and Singapore, it said. Singapores Ministry of Home Affairs, which runs both the Singapore Central Narcotics Bureau and the Singapore Prison Service, could not be immediately reached for comment. A candlelight vigil, expected to be attended by anti-death penalty activists, will take place later in the day. News USDP Criticizes Ruling Party's Trips to Minority Areas Ahead of By-Elections State Counselor Daw Aung San Suu Kyi makes a donation for internally displaced people in Myitkyina, Kachin State, on May 19. / Htoi Aung NAYPYITAW The Union Solidarity and Development Party (USDP) has questioned the honesty of the ruling National League for Democracy (NLD), citing government leaders recent trips to ethnic minority regions with vacant constituencies ahead of the Nov. 3 by-elections. The government is obliged to serve the interests of the people at all times, not just before an election, said U Nandar Hla Myint, spokesman for the USDP. As the by-election is about to be held, government officials go frequently [to ethnic minority areas] and do development work. It is not honest, if you ask my opinion. Only coming frequently and doing [local development work] ahead of a by-election draws criticism, he said. Ive seen and heard that government officials at the Union, region and state levels have recently visited most of the places where the by-elections will be held and have undertaken development work there, and that chief ministers take immediate action when asked by those constituencies, he added. On Oct. 19, State Counselor and NLD leader Daw Aung San Suu Kyi visited Kachin States Myitkyina Township, where a by-election will be held for a seat in the Union Upper House representing the states Constituency 2. Today she travelled to Chin States Kanpetlet Township, where by-elections will be held for both a seat in the Union Lower House and in the local legislature. We believe the state counselors trip is related to party affairs. She made the visit as a government official. But we believe that the trip is about both government and party affairs because she visited this particular place at this particular time, U Mana Naing, the USDP candidate of Kanpetlet, told The Irrawaddy. NLD spokesman U Myo Nyunt denied that the state counselors trips were timed to coincide with the election campaign. We are doing [the campaign] on our own agenda. There is no connection at all, he told The Irrawaddy. But political analyst U Yan Myo Thein also criticized Daw Aung San Suu Kyis latest trips to ethnic minority constituencies. I think it is not appropriate to do that. Leaders will also think the same if they analyze this carefully. What I believe is that [the NLD] should applaud if ethnic parties win in ethnic constituencies, he said. Across the country a total of 13 legislative seats four in the Union Lower House, one in the Union Upper House and eight in regional parliaments will be up for grabs in the by-elections. The NLD is contesting all 13 vacant seats, while the USDP is fielding candidates only in constituencies outside ethnic minority regions. The trips are good for local people. Their regions will get developed. But in the eyes of the opposition, the ruling party is making full use of its authority for an electoral victory. I hope people can see this correctly, said U Nandar Hla Myint. The former USDP government also came under fire when then-President U Thein Sein visited Meiktila in Mandalay Region ahead of the 2015 general elections and said the Meiktila plain will turn green. The ambiguous statement made the front page of a state-run newspaper and drew criticism to the USDP, whose party flag is predominantly green. Translated from Burmese by Thet Ko Ko. Friday, October 26th, 2018 (8:21 am) - Score 1,825 The UK Governments Minister for Digital, Margot James MP, has praised ISP Community Fibre for having successfully made their 1000Mbps capable Fibre-to-the-Home (FTTH) broadband network available to 50% of social housing in the London borough of Wandsworth (the first of the citys boroughs to do so). At the start of this year Community Fibre confirmed that they had already completed deployment to 10,000 council homes in the borough (here), which still left another 25,000 to go before completion (35,000 total). Sadly todays update doesnt include an updated figure but we assume theyve made some progress since January 2018. The providers work around London, which tends to focus its energy on doing deals with local authorities in urban areas to serve large social housing estates, is being supported by an investment pot of 40 million (example). This money has primarily come from Railpen and Amber Infrastructure (Digital Infrastructure Investment Fund). We should point out that CFs deployment is done at no cost to either the council or the resident (except for the service rental of course). Margot James, Minister for Digital, said: We recently announced our ambition for a nationwide full fibre broadband network as part of our plans to build a Britain thats fit for the future. Partnerships, like the one between Wandsworth Council and Community Fibre, will be instrumental in delivering this, and we want to see more boroughs working with network operators to make sure residents get the connectivity they need for the future, as soon as possible. Jeremy Chelot, CEO of Community Fibre, added: The residents of Wandsworth are now some of the best connected people in the country, with access to the fastest speeds in the UK. We believe in providing better internet for everyone, and this milestone is a significant first step in our commitment to eliminating the growing issue of digital poverty where a large proportion of UK consumers have access to some of the slowest broadband speeds in Europe. We would like to thank the Government for the work it has been doing to encourage full-fibre roll out. Wed also like to extend our gratitude to Wandsworth Council for being game-changers in their collaborative approach to working with network providers like us, which is instrumental in helping to accelerate London toward the future. Having been raised in social housing myself, I have seen first-hand the impact the internet can have in improving lives and opportunities. Our vision for the future is one of a 100% full-fibre Britain, and we are doing everything we can to make that a reality. Community Fibre currently expects to have extended their Gigabit capable FTTH/P broadband network to around 50,000+ homes in London by the end of 2018 and in total theyre already contracted to build 180,000 premises. Over the medium-term the operator is also targeting a total coverage of 500,000 premises by 2022 and on top of that theyve hinted at an aspiration to reach 1 million by around 2025 (here). At present the fastest package available to residents is a symmetrical 1Gbps connection but in the future they plan to offer a 10Gbps service. October 24, 2018 POCATELLO The 48th annual Idaho State University Womens Club Holiday Fair will be held Nov. 9 from 10 a.m. to 6 p.m. and Nov. 10 from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. in the ISU Pond Student Union Ballroom. On Friday, Nov. 9 from 11 a.m. to 2 p.m., the traditional enchilada lunch with homemade desserts will be provided for hungry shoppers and vendors. This luncheon is sponsored by our friends at Idaho State University Credit Union, which allows all proceeds from the lunch to go directly toward scholarships. Free parking will be available at the Pond Student Union parking lot, and there is no admission fee. This year, the Holiday Fair will have 41 vendors to help make your holiday shopping easier by offering a wide array of one-of-kind handcrafted, locally made items. Community vendors will offer unique, locally-made essential oils, hammocks, pottery, jewelry, holiday crafts, artwork, quilts, stained and blown glass art, photography, fine art, home and fashion accessories, and more for sale. The ISU Womens Club booths, Heartfelt Creations (handicrafts and homemade baked goods by club members, faculty and staff, and friends), Upscale Resale (gently used items), and the Raffle, which includes a variety of gift baskets, a beautiful handmade quilt, and other prizes, provide something for every taste and pocketbook. The ever-popular Holiday Gift Basket Silent Auction will take place on Nov. 9 only. All community vendors will donate 20 percent of their profits to student scholarships, while booths hosted by the ISU Womens Club will donate 100 percent of their profits to scholarships. Susanne Forrest, publicity chair for the ISU Womens Club, invites the campus and wider community to come to the fair. We would like to cordially invite all ISU faculty, staff, students, alumni and friends in the community to start their early holiday shopping at the fair to help us reach our goal of raising enough money to fund at least three $3,000 scholarships, Forrest said. Giving the gift of education is the gift that keeps on giving, she added. Thanks to the funds raised by last years Holiday Fair, the Womens Club was able to provide three $3,000 scholarships to ISU students. This event is hosted by the ISU Womens Club, the oldest organization on campus, established in 1923. Volunteers for this event are needed to donate crafts or baked goods, volunteer at a booth and help serve lunch. For more information, or to volunteer, contact Forrest at (208) 282-4062 or forrsusa@isu.edu. Not-for-profit social exchange Infoxchange has developed a new program for the Victorian cities of Geelong and Wangaratta, to teach digital skills to disadvantaged youth and youth who are at-risk. A statement from Infoxchange said the Youth Digital Skills pilot would be backed by the Victorian State Government which was contributing $420,000. Fifty youth would be supported during the pilot. The program hopes to enable the youth who are trained to gain employment in the digital industry and also open up a path to education. Infoxchange chief executive David Spriggs said the program aimed to tackle the shortage of digital skills while helping a class of people who were at a disadvantage. Young people account for more than a third of unemployed people in Australia, with an even higher rate in regional areas," said Spriggs. "At the same time, regional communities stand to gain huge benefits from leveraging digital technologies, but theres a significant digital skills gap holding them back. Demand is growing for workers in the tech sector, and we want to make sure young people are getting their best chance at landing those jobs. "Our digital skills program will provide that opportunity by giving young people access to training and industry connections that would otherwise be out of reach." Participants will study a Certificate III in Information, Digital Media and Technology and also take short courses from Digital Springboard, a program by Infoxchange and Google that aims to build job readiness skills for a digital world. Infoxchange will collaborate with the Barwon (Geelong) and Ovens Murray (Wangaratta) Regional Partnerships during the program. The organisation is looking for prospective educational partners and businesses that can offer work placements to program participants in the Greater Geelong and Wangaratta regions. Companies that suffer breaches should share the information with others in their space so that the perpetrators cannot indulge in attacks on others in the same line, the chief executive of a security firm in Canberra says. Daniel Lai, the head of ASX-listed Canberra-based cyber security firm archTIS, told iTWire that in the case of the Cathay Pacific breach, there had been silence from the company for more than six months, with the breach occurring in March and disclosure in October. "Cathay Pacific's reputation is seriously damaged by this leak. The time it has taken to disclose this incident demonstrates this," he said. Lai said the implications were especially severe because of the nature of the information that had been leaked: passenger name; nationality; date of birth; phone number; email; address; passport number; identity card number; frequent flyer program membership number; customer service remarks; and historical travel information. Cathay Pacificabout the breach of details of 9.4 million customers on Thursday, but did not provide any break-up of how many customers were affected in each country where it does business. Lai said that it would be easy for professional identity thieves to steal the identities of Cathay customers given the surfeit of details that had leaked. "You can steal someone's identity, destroy their credit history and and potentially leave their lives in complete disarray," he said. The Australian data breach law, promulgated on 22 February, was a start towards making companies accountable for breaches but it needed to be tougher, he opined. Lai agreed that information about a breach should be made public, so that people could be properly forewarned about what to expect in a particular case. While the tendency for companies to keep quiet about a breach was natural - because of the liability involved - Lai said there was a responsibility also to think in wider terms and provide information to the particular sector so that more breaches did not follow. The breach also demonstrated that traditional security was not up to the task of protecting a company, he pointed out. One could not have access controls for different sections of a company that did not talk to each other, else each could be exploited on its own. Nick Lennon, country manager at email security provider Mimecast, said: "The Cathay Pacific breach is very concerning in terms of its scale and length of time taken to alert affected customers. Its likely that EU citizens were included in a breach of this size and GDPR questions will be asked. Once personal information is compromised, cyber criminals can implement highly targeted spear-phishing and social engineering attacks, often via impersonation emails against friends or business contacts. These impersonation attacks are now the easiest way for criminals to steal money and valuable data. Notified customers should change passwords as precaution and alert their employers IT security teams to help look out for attacks misusing their personal information. The purpose of National Vulnerability Databases (NVDs) is to create a centralized list of security-related software flaws and enable a more automated approach to vulnerability management. The US, China, and Russia all run their own NVDs. However, there are distinct flaws with all three, meaning there could be major gaps within an organizations vulnerability management strategy. The US NVD is slow; the media gap between a vulnerability becoming public and appearing on the list is seven days. Chinas NVD is quicker to upload public vulnerabilities, but has been accused of altering data to hide government influences. The Russian NVD, run by the countrys Federal Service for Technical and Export Control of Russia, misses many vulnerabilities and is slow with what it does publish. Good threat intelligence is more than a list of vulnerabilities. Instead of relying on NVDs alone to power your vulnerability scanning, companies should look to other sources to supplement their threat intelligence operations. According to a study by Tenable, over a third of vulnerabilities have a working exploit available on the same day of disclosure, giving hackers days or more of unfettered opportunity to attack. By broadening the scope of your intelligence gathering, you can close the window of opportunity for cybercriminals and gain a richer set of data with which to defend yourself. Today Considerable clouds early. Some decrease in clouds later in the day. High 82F. Winds light and variable. Tonight Partly cloudy. Low near 50F. Winds light and variable. Tomorrow More clouds than sun. High 81F. Winds light and variable. Fitzharris 04 to Share Grisly World of Victorian Medicine with IWU Sept. 28, 2018 Lindsey Fitzharris 04 BLOOMINGTON, Ill. Bestselling author and medical historian Lindsey Fitzharris 04 will return to her alma mater to present a talk titled Good Old Hospital Stink: The Grisly World of Victorian Surgery on Tuesday, Oct. 30 at 7:30 p.m. in the Hansen Student Center (300 E Beecher St., Bloomington). The event is free and open to the public; however, guests are asked to register in advance. Fitzharris bestselling book, The Butchering Art: Joseph Listers Quest to Transform the Grisly World of Victorian Medicine , will be available for signing after the program. Fitzharris will spend the evening shedding light on the brutal and bloody world of Victorian surgery a place definitely not for the squeamish. She will discuss how surgeons, working before anesthesia, were lauded for their speed and brute strength. They rarely washed their hands or their instruments, and carried with them a cadaverous smell of rotting flesh, which those in the profession cheerfully referred to as good old hospital stink. Fitzharris will also explore a critical turning point in the history of medicine. When surgery could not have been more dangerous, an unlikely figure stepped forward: Joseph Lister, a young, visionary Quaker surgeon whose quest to unite science and medicine delivered us into the modern world. By making the audacious claim that germs were the source of all infection and could be treated with antiseptics and working ceaselessly to enlighten the medical world, Lister brought centuries of savagery, sawing, and gangrene to an end. A Mount Prospect, Illinois native, Fitzharris holds a bachelors degree in history from Illinois Wesleyan, and masters and doctoral degrees from the University of Oxford, where she also studied as an undergraduate during her junior year through the IWU Pembroke Program. She hosts the YouTube series Under the Knife and has appeared in the PBS series Secrets of the Dead, BBC and National Geographic. In February 2018, Fitzharris was awarded the PEN America/E.O. Wilson Prize for Literary Science Writing. Her next book will be on the birth of plastic surgery told through the incredible story of Harold Gillies, the pioneering surgeon who first united art & medicine to address the horrific injuries that resulted from World War I. 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 Summerville, SC (29483) Today A mix of clouds and sun. Morning high of 61F with temps falling to near 50. Winds NNE at 10 to 15 mph.. Tonight Mainly clear skies. Low 38F. Winds NE at 5 to 10 mph. VANCOUVER, British Columbia, Oct. 26, 2018 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Novo Resources Corp. (Novo or the Company) (TSX-V: NVO; OTCQX: NSRPF) is pleased to announce bulk sample results from its Comet Well joint venture (80% Novo; 20% Smith/Gardner Mining), part of Novos greater Karratha gold project, Western Australia. First round bulk sample results confirm the potential of the basal conglomerates at Karratha and support Novos view of significant prospectivity across its Comet Well/Purdys Reward tenements and, more broadly, the prospectivity of Novos 12,000 square kilometer land-holdings across the Pilbara. Highlights: Bulk samples reported in this news release come from two gold-bearing conglomerate units at Comet Well, the Upper Cannonball Conglomerate ( UCC ) and Lower Cannonball Conglomerate ( LCC ) as well as surrounding rock strata. Figure 1 displays a location map of bulk sample sites. Figure 2 illustrates the position of each bulk sample with respect to stratigraphy. Table 1 (nearby) lists bulk sample data including weight, thickness, gold grade, and fractions of gold occurring in each processing stream. ) and Lower Cannonball Conglomerate ( ) as well as surrounding rock strata. Figure 1 displays a location map of bulk sample sites. Figure 2 illustrates the position of each bulk sample with respect to stratigraphy. Table 1 (nearby) lists bulk sample data including weight, thickness, gold grade, and fractions of gold occurring in each processing stream. Bulk samples were collected from 2 x 2 meter pits scattered along 1.2 km strike from Cannonball Gully in the southwest to the Purdys Reward tenement boundary in the northeast (Purdys Reward is a joint venture on conglomerate/paleoplacer gold; 50% Novo and 50% Artemis Resources Ltd.). Thicknesses of samples range from approximately 0.35 to 1.20 meters. The bounds of gold-bearing conglomerates are not readily identifiable by eye, therefore bulk sampling encompassed sections of conglomerate above and below each respective gold-bearing unit in order to better constrain their limits. Processing of each sample encompasses coarse crushing and screening then passing material through a metal detector to collect any nuggets. Once detected, the sample is finely crushed, screened and further processed through a gravity concentrator. Concentrates and tails are analyzed, with the final grade based upon the gold recovered from each of the three sample streams (see Figure 3 below). At Cannonball Gully, Novo has identified what it believes are significant basin-bounding faults that may have been active during sedimentation and controlled LCC deposition. Diamond drilling indicates the LCC continues into the basin and may open up and become more laterally extensive, particularly to the east. Therefore, Novo believes that exposures of LCC at Cannonball Gully form a small outcropping apex of this important unit. Bulk samples from the mineralized core of the LCC include KX157 (7.14 tonnes) grading 10.40 grams per tonne gold and KX158 (6.85 tonnes) grading 1.51 grams per tonne gold (samples previously reported in the Companys news release dated May 31, 2018). Collectively, these two samples represent a 1.4 m high vertical profile through the LCC with a weighted average grade of 6.06 grams per tonne gold. Nearby samples KX160 (7.17 tonnes) grading 1.99 grams per tonne gold and KX161 (13.5 tonnes) grading 2.62 grams per tonne gold collectively represent a 1.8 m high vertical profile through the LCC with a weighted average grade of 2.40 grams per tonne gold. Gold nuggets recovered from bulk samples of LCC are typically flat, up to 10 mm across, weigh a gram or less and occur within sandy matrix between boulders. Boulder clasts in the LCC range in size up to 1.5 meter diameter and are tightly packed. Bulk samples from the mineralized core of the UCC include KX223 (3.78 tonnes) grading 4.53 grams per tonne gold, KX227 (3.40 tonnes) grading 3.06 grams per tonne gold, KX198 (6.44 tonnes) grading 2.26 grams per tonne gold, KX224 (4.11 tonnes) grading 1.29 grams per tonne gold and KX171 (4.96 tonnes) grading 1.22 grams per tonne gold. Gold nuggets recovered from bulk samples of UCC are similar in shape to those of the LCC but are typically larger, up to 18 mm across and weighing up to approximately 6 grams. Such size nuggets are typical of mineralized conglomerate at nearby Purdys Reward, therefore Novo believes the UCC at Comet Well may be geologically related to the Purdys Reward conglomerate. Novo has currently explored a combined length of 3.6 kilometers of UCC and Purdys Reward conglomerate. This zone remains open at both ends and into the basin. Novo collected circa 300 kilogram bulk samples from trenches at Purdys Reward late last year. Results from these samples were discussed in Novos news release dated February 14, 2018 and are restated in Figure 2 of this news release. Variability of grade in conglomerate bulk samples is largely a function of the number of nuggets in each sample. Novo also believes the proportion of boulders to matrix in each respective sample significantly impacts variability. Given the nuggety nature of gold mineralization at Karratha, such variability is expected. At Karratha, gold almost universally occurs as nuggets with a thin, 2-5 mm, halo of fine-grained gold in the matrix of conglomerates (see Figure 4 below). In spite of this, the proportion of gold occurring as nuggets varies widely from bulk sample to bulk sample. Novo believes this may reflect breakdown of nuggets to finer gold particles during processing of some samples. Novo does not see evidence of a significant component of fine-grained, disseminated gold in Comet Well conglomerates. Table 1, Summary of Comet Well Bulk Sample Data: Stratigraphic Position Sample # Sample Thickness (m) Sample Mass (t) Reporting Head Grade (g/t) Weighted Average Grade % Au Recovered in MDC (Nugget Au) % Au Recovered in Gravity Concentrate % Au Recovered in Gravity Tailings % Au Recovered via Gravity Lower Cannonball Conglomerate Core KX157 0.5 7.14 10.40 1.4 m @ 6.06 gpt Au 43.90% 27.90% 28.10% 71.90% KX158 0.5 6.85 1.51 16.00% 16.60% 67.40% 32.60% KX160 0.6 7.17 1.99 1.8 m @ 2.40 gpt Au 52.60% 17.80% 29.60% 70.40% KX161 1.2 13.35 2.62 57.20% 21.80% 21.00% 79.00% Margin of LCC Core KX190 0.5 8.35 1.38 3.80% 79.30% 16.90% 83.10% KX192 0.6 5.86 0.46 0.00% 99.00% 1.00% 99.00% Below LCC Core KX159 0.5 4.01 0.16 0.00% 48.90% 51.10% 48.90% KX195 0.7 5.71 0.11 0.00% 83.30% 16.70% 83.30% Above LCC Core KX153 0.5 7.19 0.08 0.00% 48.90% 51.10% 48.90% KX154 0.5 5.64 0.01 0.00% 28.40% 71.60% 28.40% KX155 0.5 6.54 0.01 0.00% 34.70% 65.30% 34.70% KX156 0.5 7.59 0.06 0.00% 17.30% 82.70% 17.30% KX189 0.5 5.13 0.04 0.00% 73.70% 26.30% 73.70% KX193 0.6 4.88 0.02 0.00% 78.40% 21.60% 78.40% Upper Cannonball Conglomerate Core KX171 0.6 4.96 1.22 94.90% 4.70% 0.40% 99.60% KX198 0.8 6.44 2.26 21.10% 49.80% 29.10% 70.90% KX223 0.4 3.78 4.53 10.00% 69.50% 20.60% 79.40% KX224 0.4 4.11 1.29 0.00% 22.20% 77.80% 22.20% KX227 0.4 3.40 3.06 49.50% 36.50% 14.00% 86.00% Margin of UCC Core KX170 0.6 7.70 0.59 48.20% 15.70% 36.10% 63.90% KX197 0.6 9.04 0.52 10.20% 60.90% 28.90% 71.10% Below UCC Core KX172 0.6 4.37 0.01 0.00% 46.50% 53.50% 46.50% KX178 0.6 7.44 0.10 0.00% 71.20% 28.80% 71.20% KX183 0.6 5.88 0.12 0.00% 53.50% 46.50% 53.50% Above UCC Core KX226 0.4 3.67 0.12 0.00% 67.20% 32.80% 67.20% The multi-tonne bulk samples presented in this news release serve to provide an indicative grade of the two gold-bearing conglomerates at Comet Well. Novo takes the view that bulk sampling on the scale of 10,000s tonnes is required to more fully ascertain the grade, distribution, and continuity of these units and to determine the commercial viability of whether a potential mining operation could proceed. Such process is well-known in the diamond industry where trial excavation of very large samples is required to evaluate economics of deposits prior to mining. Novo plans to use this bulk sample data along with geologic data collected from recently completed diamond drill cores as a basis for a mineralization report, a critical component needed to convert an exploration license to a mining lease. Bulk Sample Processing Novo staff collected bulk samples discussed in this news release. Bulk samples were submitted to SGS Minerals in Perth, Australia where they were treated in a test plant detailed in Novos news release dated February 6 and May 31, 2018. Because gold mineralization at Comet Well is extremely coarse, the entire sample is coarsely crushed and screened and passed through a metal detector to collect any nuggets. Once detected, the sample is finely crushed, screened and further processed through a gravity concentrator. Concentrates and tails are analyzed, with the final grade based upon the gold recovered from each of the three sample streams (see Figure 3 below). Samples are scrutineered by independent consultants from RSC Mining and Mineral Exploration, Perth, whilst each sample is collected and received into the laboratory, maintaining complete integrity over the chain of custody. All assay certificates and head grade calculations were provided by SGS as secured documents, with the calculations and head grades checked by Novo internal resources and verified by Dr. Simon Dominy. There were no limitations to the verification process and all relevant data was verified. (Figure 1 Plan map showing the location of Comet Well bulk samples.) (Figure 2 Schematic stratigraphic sections from Cannonball Gully, Drum Gully and Purdys Reward showing the position of bulk samples and the two gold-bearing conglomerate units. The bounds of gold-bearing conglomerates are not readily identifiable by eye, therefore bulk sampling encompassed sections of conglomerate above and below each respective gold-bearing unit in order to better constrain their limits.) (Figure 3 SGS Bulk Sample flowsheet) (Figure 4 Scanning electron microscope image of Comet Well gold nugget with halo of fine gold particles surrounding it. Field of view is 20 mm across.) Dr. Quinton Hennigh, P. Geo., the Companys, President and Chairman and a qualified person as defined by National Instrument 43-101, has approved the geological content of this news release. Dr. Simon Dominy, FAusIMM (CP), a consultant geometallurgist to the Company, a qualified person as defined by National Instrument 43-101, has approved the processing and sample grade content of this news release. About Novo Resources Corp. Novos focus is to explore and develop gold projects in the Pilbara region of Western Australia, and Novo has built up a significant land package covering approximately 12,000 sq km with varying ownership interests. For more information, please contact Leo Karabelas at (416) 543-3120 or e-mail This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. On Behalf of the Board of Directors, Novo Resources Corp. Quinton Hennigh Quinton Hennigh President and Chairman 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. Forward-looking information Some statements in this news release contain forward-looking information (within the meaning of Canadian securities legislation) including, without limitation, the statement that Novo plans to use the bulk sample data described in this news release, along with geologic data collected from recently completed diamond drill cores, as a basis for a mineralization report, a critical component needed to convert an exploration license to a mining lease. These statements address future events and conditions and, as such, involve known and unknown risks, uncertainties and other factors which may cause the actual results, performance or achievements to be materially different from any future results, performance or achievements expressed or implied by the statements. There can be no assurance given that the exploration license will be converted to a mining lease. NOT FOR DISSEMINATION IN THE UNITED STATES OR TO UNITED STATES NEWSWIRE SERVICES. VANCOUVER, British Columbia, Oct. 25, 2018 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Regulus Resources Inc. ("Regulus" or the "Company") (TSX-V: REG) is pleased to announce that, further to its news releases of June 29, 2018, August 30, 2018, September 24, 2018, October 9, 2018 and October 22, 2018, it has completed the spin-out of Aldebaran Resources Inc. ("Aldebaran"). In addition, Aldebaran has entered into the previously announced joint venture and option agreement (the "JV Agreement") with Stillwater Canada LLC, an indirect subsidiary of Sibanye Gold Limited, trading as Sibanye-Stillwater ("Sibanye-Stillwater"), to acquire up to an 80% interest in the Altar Copper-Gold project in San Juan Province, Argentina ("Altar" or the "Altar Project"). John Black, CEO of Regulus and Aldebaran, commented as follows: We are extremely pleased to have completed this transaction, which will allow Regulus to focus on its AntaKori project in Peru with no further funding obligations in Argentina, and provide Regulus shareholders with equity, at no cost, in a new well-funded mineral exploration company that will focus on the Altar Project, which management believes has considerable upside. I would also like to express our appreciation to the many people who assisted us in this rather complicated process, including our legal counsel, Denton Canada LLP, our financial advisor Maxit Capital LLP, and the other advisors noted below who participated in the process. I would also like to offer a special note of gratitude to Route One Investment Company L.P. whose unwavering financial support made all of this possible. We look forward to creating value for shareholders of both companies through the exploration and development of these high-potential projects. The spin-out was completed by way of a statutory plan of arrangement under the Business Corporations Act (Alberta) (the "Arrangement") wherein, Regulus transferred its Argentine subsidiaries to Aldebaran in exchange for 30,331,534 common shares ("Aldebaran Shares") of Aldebaran, which have been distributed to Regulus shareholders on the basis of one Aldebaran Share for each three Regulus common shares held as of the close of business on September 28, 2018. In addition, Aldebaran has completed the previously announced financing ("Financing") with certain investment funds managed by Route One Investment Company L.P. (such funds, collectively, "Route One"), whereby Route One subscribed in the aggregate for 31,250,000 Aldebaran Shares at a price of US$0.96 per share for total proceeds of US$30 million. Aldebaran has also issued an aggregate of 15,449,555 Aldebaran Shares to Sibanye-Stillwater, representing 19.9% of the issued and outstanding Aldebaran Shares, and made an upfront cash payment of US$15 million to Sibanye-Stillwater, all in accordance with the JV Agreement. There are currently 77,635,959 Aldebaran shares issued and outstanding of which existing Regulus shareholders (other than Route One) own approximately 29.8%, Route One owns approximately 49.5%, Sibanye-Stillwater owns 19.9% and other Aldebaran shareholders own approximately 0.8%. The Aldebaran Shares are expected to begin trading on the TSX Venture Exchange under the symbol "ALDE" in approximately 5 business days. Advisors Maxit Capital LP acted as financial advisor to Regulus and Aldebaran, Dentons Canada LLP acted as legal counsel to Regulus and Aldebaran, Richards Kibbe & Orbe LLP acted as U.S. legal counsel and Goodmans LLP as Canadian legal counsel to Route One, Linklaters LLP acted as counsel and Stikeman Elliot LLP as Canadian legal counsel to Sibanye-Stillwater and PI Financial Corp. provided the fairness opinion to the Special Committee of Regulus. For further information on Regulus Resources Inc. or Aldebaran Resources, please consult our website at www.regulusresources.com or contact: Regulus Resources Inc. John E. Black, CEO / Director Phone: +1 303 618-7797 mobile +1 720 514-9036 office Email: This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. Qualified Person The scientific and technical data contained in this news release has been reviewed and approved by Dr. Kevin B. Heather, B.Sc. (Hons), M. Sc, Ph.D, FAusIMM, FSEG, Chief Geologic Officer of Regulus, who serves as the qualified person (QP) under the definitions of National Instrument 43-101. Reader Advisories The securities have not been registered under the United States Securities Act of 1933, as amended, and may not be offered or sold in the United States absent registration or an exemption from registration. This press release shall not constitute an offer to sell or the solicitation of an offer to buy nor shall there be any sale of the securities in any state in which such offer, solicitation or sale would be unlawful. About Regulus Resources Inc. Regulus is an international mineral exploration company run by an experienced technical and management team, with a portfolio of precious and base metal exploration properties located in North and South America. The principal project held by Regulus is the AntaKori copper-gold-silver project in northern Peru. The AntaKori project currently hosts an inferred resource of 294.8 million tonnes with a grade of 0.48% Cu, 0.36 g/t Au and 10.2 g/t Ag based upon 17,950 m of drilling by previous operators (see Southern Legacy Minerals press release of July 3rd, 2012 - Southern Legacy Minerals and Regulus merged in 2014 and kept the name Regulus Resources Inc.). Mineralization remains open in most directions and a significant drilling campaign is currently underway to confirm and increase the size of the resource. About Aldebaran Resources Inc. Aldebaran is a recently formed mineral exploration company that was spun out of Regulus Resources Inc. and has the same core management team. Aldebaran acquired the Rio Grande copper-gold project located in Salta Province, Argentina from Regulus along with several other earlier stage projects in Argentina. Aldebaran also has the right to earn up to an 80% interest in the Altar copper-gold project in San Juan Province, Argentina from Sibanye-Stillwater. Altar hosts a large porphyry copper-gold system with mineralization currently defined in three distinct zones. Aldebarans primary focus will be on the Altar project with a view to discovering new zones with higher-grade mineralization. Forward-Looking Statements This press release contains forward-looking statements and forward-looking information within the meaning of applicable securities laws. The use of any of the words "expect", "anticipate", "continue", "estimate", "objective", "ongoing", "may", "will", "project", "should", "believe", "plans", "intends" and similar expressions are intended to identify forward-looking statements or information. In particular this press release contains forward-looking statements and information relating Aldebaran's plans in respect of the Altar Project. Although Aldebaran believe that the expectations and assumptions on which the forward-looking statements and information are based are reasonable, undue reliance should not be placed on the forward-looking statements and information because Aldebaran cannot give any assurance that they will prove to be correct. Since forward-looking statements and information address future events and conditions, by their very nature they involve inherent risks and uncertainties. The forward-looking statements and information contained in this press release are made as of the date hereof and Regulus and Aldebaran undertake no obligation to update publicly or revise any forward-looking statement or information, whether as a result of new information, future events or otherwise, unless so required by applicable securities laws. Neither the TSX Venture Exchange nor its Regulation Services Provider (as that term is defined in policies of the TSX Venture Exchange) accepts responsibility for the adequacy or accuracy of this release. October 25, 2018 / TheNewswire / Vancouver, Canada - Klondike Silver Corp. (the "Company") (TSX.V:KS): is pleased to report further to the New Release dated August 20, 2018 the Company has commenced exploration drilling and exploration drifting as described in the August 20 news release and in accordance with the BC Mines Act - Permit M-65. Klondike Silver will be in attendance at the following conferences: November 9-10, 2018 Munich, Germany The International Precious Metals and Commodities Show. Location - Event Area of the Olympic Park in Munich, Germany. Hours - Friday November 9th Booth #49 10 am to 6 pm Saturday November 10th Booth #49 10 am to 6 pm November 15, 2018 Zurich, Switzerland The Swiss Mining Institute Conference. Location - Hotel: Baur Au Lac in Zurich, Switzerland. Address: Talstrasse 1, 8001 Zurich, Switzerland Phone: +41 44 220 50 20 Hours - Thursday November 15th 8:00 am to 3:30 pm Tom Kennedy Klondike's CEO will be presenting at 12:45 pm. November 16, 2018 Geneva, Switzerland The Swiss Mining Institute Conference. Location - Hotel Metropole in Geneva, Switzerland. Address: Quai du General-Guisan 34, 1204 Geneve, Switzerland Phone: +41 22 318 32 00 Hours - Friday November 16th 8:00 am to 3:30 pm Tom Kennedy Klondike's CEO will be presenting at 11:30 am. We invite you to join us at the above conferences. For additional show information click the following links: https://www.edelmetallmesse.com/index.php?lang=en http://www.swissmininginstitute.ch/ About Klondike Silver Klondike Silver's royalty-free SILVER LEAD ZINC land package (100 km2) is located in the historic SLOCAN MINING CAMP, southeast British Columbia. It is 138 km north of Teck's Trail BC Lead-Zinc smelter. Based on the British Columbia MINFILE mineral database, sixty-eight (68) of the one hundred and seventy-three (173) past producing Silver Lead Zinc mines in the Slocan Mining Camp are located in the Klondike Silver land package. Klondike Silver has created (with the use of modern technology) the first real opportunity, in the history of the camp, to invest in and properly explore a sizeable portion of one of the most historic mining camps in British Columbia. Klondike considers the Slocan the best under-explored Silver Lead Zinc camp, in Canada. For additional information please visit the Company's website www.klondikesilver.com. The scientific and technical disclosure in this news release has been reviewed and approved by David Makepeace, P.Eng., Senior Geologist - Environmental Engineer for Micon International Limited, who is an independent consultant to the Company and Qualified Person as defined in NI 43-101. CONTACT INFORMATION Corporate Inquiries: Dale Dobson: (604) 682-2928 Email: This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. On Behalf of the Board of Directors Klondike Silver Corp. "Thomas Kennedy" Thomas Kennedy CEO, President and Director This news release contains certain forward looking statements which involve known and unknown risks, delays, and uncertainties not under the control of Klondike Silver Corp. which may cause actual results, performance or achievements of Klondike Silver Corp. to be materially different from the results, performance or expectation implied by these forward looking statements. By their nature, forward looking statements involve risk and uncertainties because they relate to events and depend on factors that will or may occur in the future. Actual results may vary depending upon exploration activities, industry production, commodity demand and pricing, currency exchange rates, and, but not limited to, general economic factors. 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. MONTREAL, Oct. 26, 2018 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Auxico Resources Canada Inc. (CSE:AUAG) is pleased to announce that its common shares began trading today on the NEX Exchange Growth Market (NEX Exchange) in London, UK. The NEX Exchange, which is operated by the NEX Group, is a regulated UK stock exchange for small and medium companies. The NEX Exchange provides access to capital and liquidity, and the Growth Market is the market for early stage, entrepreneurial companies seeking access to growth capital. Auxicos primary listing remains the Canadian Securities Exchange (CSE). Auxico is the first Canadian company to become dual-listed on the NEX Exchange using the fast-track procedure that the NEX Exchange has established across various stock exchanges around the world. The Companys ticker on the NEX Exchange will be AUAG, which is the same as that on the CSE; Auxicos ISIN number is CA05334L1094. Auxicos engaged Peterhouse Capital as its corporate advisor in connection with this NEX Exchange listing. Guy Miller of Peterhouse Capital stated, This is an exciting time for NEX and for us as a corporate adviser and believe that Auxicos quote will open opportunities for UK-based investors to be able to invest seamlessly into this Canadian-listed company, and set a precedent for further Canadian companies to follow. Patrick Birley, Chief Executive of the NEX Exchange, added, We are delighted to welcome Auxico Resources as our first dual quoted stock with the Canadian Securities Exchange. We have long admired the approach of the CSE and hope that by working together, we can offer dual quoted companies greater access to a wide range of investors. Pierre Gauthier, Chairman & CEO of Auxico, commented, The dual listing of Auxicos common shares on the NEX Exchange will provide our Company with access to the capital markets of London, one of the largest financial markets in the world. Access to growth capital from London, through the NEX Exchange, will help Auxico to advance its business plans in Colombia and Mexico, where we have access to significant opportunities in the mining sector. In addition, a NEX listing makes sense for our Company as a significant portion of our common shares are already held by residents of the UK. ON BEHALF OF THE BOARD OF DIRECTORS signed Mark Billings President, Auxico Resources Canada Inc. This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. Cell: +1 514 296 1641 About Auxico Resources Canada Inc. Auxico Resources Canada Inc. (Auxico) is a Canadian company that was founded in 2014 and based in Montreal. Auxico is engaged in the acquisition, exploration and development of mineral properties in Colombia and Mexico. The Canadian Securities Exchange (CSE) has not reviewed and does not accept responsibility for the adequacy or the accuracy of the contents of this release. Announcing the decision this week, Swedish Justice Minister Morgan Johansson warned that the case could land Lundin Petroleums Swiss CEO Alex Schneiter, who was head of exploration at the time, and Swedish chairman Ian Lundin who lives in Switzerland in prison for life. The governments approval is necessary for the Prosecutor to move on with the case because the alleged crimes took place outside the country. According to Swedens Justice Ministry, the charges relate to funds that Lundin Petroleum allegedly provided to the Sudanese army and death squads responsible for clearing pockets of the local population in areas where the company would carry out oil exploration activities. I think there are no cases of multi-billion dollar companies actually indicted for war crimes since Nuremberg. I think its a first I think there are no cases of multi-billion dollar companies actually indicted for war crimes since Nuremberg. I think its a first, says Egbert Wesselink of the Dutch peace movement Pax, part of an NGO coalition whose report sparked the investigation. There have been some cases of small businessmen and there are some cases of crimes against humanity, but they are all still in the investigative state, so this would be pretty unique. And these are big crimes. This is actually aiding and abetting the killing of thousands of people, forced displacement of 150 to 200 thousand people, the destruction of an entire area, rape, looting Alleged complicity in crimes against humanity But Lundin vigorously denies the allegations. We find it totally unacceptable that the Ministry of Justice has decided to approve the prosecutors application to pursue the case, the company stated in a written response to questions from JusticeInfo. Strong submissions were made to the Ministry, supported by independent expert legal opinion, highlighting the jurisdictional and legal flaws why it should not be allowed to proceed, which we fear have not properly been taken into account. The investigation is now in its ninth year and we are increasingly concerned about the fairness of it. We will strongly contest the case if a decision is made to proceed to trial. The case was opened in 2010 after a report published by the European Coalition on Oil in Sudan (ECOS) was sent to Swedens public prosecutor. According to aid and human rights groups, up to 12,000 Sudanese died of starvation and 160,000 people were displaced in areas were Lundin was active between 1997 and 2003. The ECOS report says that the actual perpetrators of the reported crimes were the armed forces of the Government of Sudan and a variety of local armed groups that were either allied to the Government or its main opponent, the Sudan Peoples Liberation Movement/Army (SPLM/A) but that an oil consortium led by Lundin may have been complicit in the commission of war crimes and crimes against humanity. The indictment has not yet been issued, but charges would likely be aiding and abetting international crimes, according to Wesselink, a senior advisor at Pax, which held the ECOS secretariat and continues to monitor the case. I dont know if it will be restricted to crimes against humanity or also war crimes. But there is a good possibility it could also be war crimes, he told JusticeInfo. Lundin: One of Europes largest independent oil companies Lundin is one of Europes largest independent oil companies, whose main activity is now oil production and exploration in Norway. It sold its oil interests in Sudan in 2003. Allegations relate to events between 1997 and 2003 in Block 5A, an area which is now in north-central South Sudan but was at that time still part of Sudan. The government in Khartoum waged a decades-long war against the oil-rich south before the 2005 Comprehensive Peace Agreement paved the way for South Sudans independence in 2011. According to the ECOS report, Swedish oil company Lundin Oil AB (Lundin) formed a consortium in 1997 with Petronas Carigali Overseas Sdn Bhd (Petronas) from Malaysia, OMV (Sudan), Exploration GmbH (OMV) from Austria, and the Sudanese state-owned oil company Sudapet Ltd. The Lundin Consortium signed a contract with the government in Khartoum for the exploitation of oil in concession Block 5A that was not at that time under full government control. The start of oil exploitation set off a vicious war in the area, according to the report. Between 1997 and 2003, international crimes were committed on a large scale in what was essentially a military campaign by the Government of Sudan to secure and take control of the oil fields in Block 5A. The crimes, according to the report, include indiscriminate attacks and intentional targeting of civilians, burning of shelters, pillage, destruction of objects necessary for survival, unlawful killing of civilians, rape of women, abduction of children, torture, and forced displacement. It also says that satellite pictures taken between 1994 and 2003 show that the Lundin Consortiums activities in Block 5A coincided with a spectacular drop in agricultural land use. A force for development So if these abuses were committed by parties to the Sudanese conflict, what is the alleged responsibility of the oil companies? As research in this report makes clear, throughout the war the Consortium worked alongside the perpetrators of international crimes, say the ECOS researchers. Its infrastructure enabled the commission of crimes by others. Taking into account the overwhelming body of reporting at the time, the members of the Lundin Consortium should have been aware of the abuses committed by the armed groups that partly provided for their security needs. However, they continued to work with the Sudanese Government, its agencies and its army. We remain convinced that there are absolutely no grounds for any allegations of wrongdoing against any representative of Lundin, replies the company. We have cooperated extensively and proactively with the investigation by providing information regarding the past operations in Sudan and by participating in interviews. Swedish and Swiss police nevertheless raided the companys premises in Stockholm and Geneva earlier this year in what appears to have been a joint operation on the same day. Our firm position is that there are no grounds for any allegations of wrongdoing and we strongly believe that we were a force for development in Sudan, Lundin further told JusticeInfo. On its website the company says that our community development and humanitarian assistance made life better for thousands of people. It is very saddening to see the situation in South Sudan, which is deeply tragic for the population. The only way forward today is what we advocated at all times during our presence in the area almost 20 years ago; peace must be achieved and upheld through peaceful means. The challenge of reparations So will there be a trial? Wesselink strongly believes so. I think it is inevitable now. There is the green light from the Swedish government, which basically means there are no formal obstacles any longer. Now its up to the Public Prosecutor to complete the files and send the indictment to the Defence. The Public Prosecutor has been saying that he is very confident, and I think its a good investigation. For the activist, the most important thing is whether there will be any reparations for the victims. The real challenge in this court case is: will it do something good in South Sudan for the people who suffered in this war? he told JusticeInfo. Thats the real challenge, and thats where the investors come in, because theyre the only ones who can make the company take responsibility and basically pay for remedy. And its a very rich company. South Sudan was their only operation in 2001, it was a tiny little cowboy company. They made a 100 million dollar profit selling out their Sudanese operation. They invested all that in Norway and there they hit the jackpot in 2011. Now its a 10 billion dollar company. They can pay up easily, and they should. According to Wesselink a South Sudanese group, the Liech Victims Voices in South Sudan, has already issued a claim for reparations to Lundin and its investors but so far none of the investors nor Lundin have reacted to this claim. If there was a trial and a conviction, Wesselink says reparations could only be given to victims represented in court. There will be several dozen South Sudanese victims represented in court. There are three or four different lawyers in Sweden representing them. SALEM, Ore. A man sentenced to death in 1997 for a double murder has died at the age of 50, according to the Oregon Department of Corrections (DOC). Although Robert Acremant was serving his sentence on Death Row, execution was not the cause of his death on Friday morning. "As with all in-custody deaths, the Oregon State Police have been notified and the Medical Examiner will determine cause of death," the DOC said in a statement on Friday. Acremant was convicted in Jackson County for the kidnapping and murder of Roxanne Ellis and Michelle Abdill in 1995 business and life partners who were committed "activists for gay and lesbian rights," according to former Medford police officer Mike Moran. The double murder stirred fears that the perpetrator was motivated by hate. However, when authorities captured Acremant in California weeks later, they came to believe that he had "conceived his plot as a robbery to finance his infatuation with a Las Vegas stripper." Acremant did eventually admit that he had known Ellis and Abdill were lesbians, which "was a factor in his actions," according to Moran. Acremant would stay on Death Row at the Oregon State Penitentiary in Salem from his sentencing in 1997 until his death on Friday. Although Oregon has maintained the death penalty since 1978, only two inmates have been executed since then. In 2011, NewsWatch 12 reported that Acremant would no longer face the death penalty for his crimes in Oregon, and his sentence was altered to life in prison without the possibility of early release or parole. The change occurred due to Acremant's diagnosis with mental illness in the early 2000s. Although DOC mental health professionals considered the possibility that Acremant was faking or exaggerating his symptoms, none of the evaluators came to that conclusion. Under federal law, the mentally ill cannot be given the death penalty. However, apparently because Acremant still faced the death penalty for crimes he committed while in California, he would never leave Death Row in Salem. GRANTS PASS, Ore. -- School administrators and police are praising the actions of Allendale Elementary School's office staff for stopping an attempted abduction. On Tuesday, Oct. 24, 2018, a man walked into the school, and said he was there to pick up 3 young females from class -- two 10-year-olds and an 8-year-old girl. The school staff checked with the girls' parents and found out that Stout was an acquaintance, but they were not aware of any plans for him to pick up the children. School staff alerted a school marshal, who then radioed police about a "suspicious situation" at the school. Office staff told Stout they wouldn't release the girls to him. Stout left. Soon after, detectives went to work on investigating Stout. Interviewing other people, they identified Stout and discovered a likely location for him. According to GPDPS, the detectives also uncovered evidence that Stout had planned to pick the girls up in order to engage "in sexual contact with at least one of the girls." The police and the school district's chief financial and operations officer is applauding both the detectives involved, and the school staff. School principal Jake Musser says it was just about following protocol. "My office manager and secretary are amazing," Musser said. "I called them my watch dogs." GRANTS PASS, Ore Herman Baertschiger State Senator for District 2 says, "People are telling me their summers are ruined." Today senator Herman Baertschiger met with the Jackson County Board of Commissioners to discuss fire prevention and smoke. "It's a hundred-year plan but we have to get started. Right now we have no hundred year plan," Baertschiger said. But he says that plan should entail full fire suppression instead of management. "The Oregon Department of Forestry basically protects private lands and that's a full-suppression policy. Cause the private land owners don't want one acre burned and the Forest Service does fire management policy. I'll give an example the Klondike Fire, in my opinion, should not have been a fire to grow much more then 20,000, maybe 30,000 acres," Baertschiger said. To make his point, Senator Baertschiger said that during fire season this year, Southern Oregon saw seven of the worst air quality days on the planet. "For managing the forest I understand why they are doing it but please hear what I'm saying. What I'm saying is we can't do that management at the expense, health and welfare for the citizens. you just can't do it. We are going to have to react to those starts and how you do that is full suppression," Baertschiger said. NewsWatch 12 reached out to the U.S Forest Service for comment on their methods of fire management instead of suppression, but they had not replied before this article was posted. 183 Shares Share On my first day of medical school, my father, a dentist, told me hed just been diagnosed with stage four pancreatic cancer. Cancer had crept back into my life except this time not into my body. At age 12, I was diagnosed with brain cancer. After an aggressive surgery, I was tumor-free for 10 years. Then, at 23, I received the news of an inoperable recurrence. While going through radiation and chemotherapy, I struggled with how to move forward in the face of endless uncertainty until I realized that, with or without cancer, everyone lives with uncertainty. Since I never knew what the next day would bring, I decided that the most important thing wasnt where I wanted to be in 10, 15 or 20 years but how I wanted to live now, in the present. So I applied to medical school. Given how long it takes to become a doctor, this decision may seem absurd. For me, however, living in the present meant fostering human connection, and I felt I could do that best as a physician. A year after finishing treatment, I was accepted into the UC Berkeley-UCSF Joint Medical Program, and a few months later, I moved from my hometown, Boston, to Berkeley, drawn both by the programs unique qualities and by the chance to live in a place where I could put down roots free from the history of my illness. At the end of day one of orientation, while my new classmates ordered ice cream at a shop close to campus, I stood just outside, talking on the phone with my father. How are you, Dad? They want me to get a liver panel to check my bilirubin, AST and ALT to make sure my liver and bile duct are all right, he said. Then well see what chemotherapy Ill start on. It would be months before I learned what all those words and acronyms meant, and I didnt want to know about the tests anyway. My mind roiled with flashbacks to my own diagnoses the sinking feeling in the pit of my stomach as my future suddenly became hazy. I just wanted to hear how he was holding up and how he felt about his illness the feelings so seldom talked about in medical training. How are you, Dad? I repeated. It is what it is, he replied. I wanted to press for more, but perhaps, having dedicated his life to the practice and teaching of dentistry, he found clinical language more comfortable than that of the emotions. That same week, my class had our first anatomy lab. Before entering, we sat in a circle and shared our thoughts and feelings regarding what we were about to experience. My thoughts swirled uncontrollably. I tried to forget that, when talking with my dad earlier, hed said, Maybe Ill donate my own body. I wondered if I would, or could, do the same when the time came. I recognized the magnitude of this moment how privileged I am, as a medical student, to learn about the human body in such an intimate way from someone Ill never know. At the same time, I felt a rising uncertainty. Who am I right now? I thought. Am I a patient, a son whose father has a terminal illness, or a medical student? Do I need to choose? I didnt know. As my classmates and I followed the teaching assistant to the cadaver at the far end of the room, my heart felt like it would jump out of my chest. We stood by the cadaver, and the teaching assistant showed us how to properly unwrap the body and gave us each a different organ to inspect. Ironically, I was handed the brain. The last time Id been this close to one was on a tour of the Cushing Center at Yale Medical School. As the other applicants marveled at the displays of Dr. Cushings neurosurgical accomplishments, I stared at a brain in a jar whose faded label read: Oligodendroglioma. My tumor, I thought. Next to the jar, several others held brains with various tumor types: glioblastoma, astrocytoma the list went on. But all I could think about were my friends the ones Ive met on my journey, fellow brain-tumor survivors, some of whom are still around, but many of whom, sadly, have passed. Can I handle medical school if, rather than seeing medical breakthroughs, all I can see is the people they remind me of? I wondered. Now, holding the brain, I braced for the same visceral reaction, but it never came. Instead, I felt awe and fascination that the organ I was holding governs every movement I make, every sense I experience, every thought or memory I piece together. I wondered if my lack of emotion meant that I was detaching from my identity as a patient. Was it okay to just be a medical student? As the months passed, I often felt disoriented by my shifting sense of identity. In our clinical classes mock interviews, Id opt to play the patient before being the clinician. During class discussions, Id wonder at different moments whether it would be appropriate to share my thoughts as a medical student or my experiences as a patient. When talking through cases or listening to patients speak, was it acceptable to acknowledge my feeling of emotional connection to them? This inner conflict didnt arise out of an excessive emphasis on professionalism within my medical school, which is humanistic and encourages self-reflection. Perhaps it was a response to the larger medical culture one in which medical practitioners with white coats and the learned behaviors we call professional are separated from their patients by an invisible boundary. Even this early, Ive seen enough to know that its a culture of burnout, in which practicing doctors tell you to hold on to your idealistic naivete as long as you can. After two-and-a-half months of anatomy, my classmates and I finally reached a much-needed break. I flew back to Boston to visit my father for the first time since his diagnosis. Wed planned to grab lunch, but we ended up in the emergency room instead. Although wed spoken by phone regularly, I soon discovered that he hadnt told me everything. In order to keep me at school, hed concealed how fast his condition was declining. Now we found ourselves in an inpatient room. His oncologist said the cancer had invaded his liver to such an extent that further chemotherapy would be useless. This was news to both of us. My father had known it was inevitable, but hadnt expected it to happen this soon. It was already time to plan for hospice. I sat across from my fathers bed as he slept. Nurses streamed in and out, the monitors beeped rhythmically, and the pads around my fathers swollen legs inflated and deflated every minute. At times, Id glance at my father and see the man who raised me. At other times, Id see where I might be at some point. And in a terrifying way, at times Id glance at him and see only a patient with pancreatic cancer and liver failure. On the day when hed shared his diagnosis, I hadnt wanted to think about his liver but now, seeing him in the hospital after 10 weeks of classes, I saw in my father what I was learning in medical school. As so often in the past, I found myself wondering, Is that normal? Is that OK? But there was no textbook I could consult to find out how a patient-turned-medical student-turned-son of a dying father should act in a situation like this. Jeremy Pivor is a medical student. This piece was originally published in Pulse voices from the heart of medicine. Image credit: Shutterstock.com PORTLAND, Ore. (AP) -- Authorities say 22 people were indicted on federal charges in a drug-trafficking ring that spanned Oregon and Washington state. The Oregonian/OregonLive reports federal agents made 17 arrests after spreading out across the Portland area Wednesday. Fifteen people appeared before a federal judge in Portland later Wednesday, entering not guilty pleas. Others are expected to appear in court later this week. According to the federal indictment, they are linked to a Mexican drug cartel and are accused of conspiring to possess and distribute methamphetamine, cocaine and heroin. Others are also accused of manufacturing meth and distributing it to people to sell across Oregon and into Washington. The indictment stemmed from an investigation involving the FBI, the U.S. Department of Homeland Security and local agencies. SALEM, Ore. (AP) -- A judge has ruled that Gov. Kate Brown's administration has until 5 p.m. Friday to release about 250 bill proposals for 2019. The Oregonian/OregonLive reports Marion County Circuit Court Judge Audrey Broyles ruled Wednesday, saying there's a significant public interest in the documents being disclosed. The case centers on whether Brown and state agencies she oversees can keep bill proposals confidential while legislative lawyers are drafting legislation. With Brown in a close re-election race against Republican Knute Buehler, she has avoided the topic of how she would pay for several of her policy proposals and whether she wants to raise taxes in 2019. The bill requests could shed light on that. Officials say the state plans to ask the Oregon Court of Appeals to halt the records release. PORTLAND, Ore. (AP) - Authorities say a man who killed a lesbian couple in Oregon and a man in California has died on death row at the Oregon State Penitentiary. The Oregon Department of Corrections says 50-year-old Robert James Acremant died Friday morning. No further information about his death was released. A medical examiner will determine his cause of death. Acremant lured Roxanne Ellis and Michelle Abdill to a Medford duplex apartment on Dec. 4, 1995, where he bound them with duct tape and shot them in the head, the Mail-Tribune newspaper reported. Acremant was convicted of aggravated murder in Jackson County in 1997. He was also convicted of two counts of kidnapping and one count of robbery in Jackson County in 1996. While his death sentence in Oregon had been reduced to life in prison, authorities say he remained on death row for the 1995 killing of Scott George in Visalia, California. EUGENE, Ore. -- There could soon be more passenger trains running between Portland and Eugene. The state unveiled a draft plan last week about adding to Amtrak's services. The proposal could cost up to one billion dollars. According to the plan, as the population and economy grows, so does the demand for travel. Eugene resident Christian Ives, who travels to Portland often, said more trains would be beneficial for the community. "I think it's great they're adding more routes,'' Ives said. "I think two routes is great, but I think just to get more of those options for travel is definitely going to help a lot of people. It's definitely going to help me for sure." A final plan is expected to be approved in 2019 Metro Manila (CNN Philippines, October 25) They may not be as popular as other established names in politics, but three of the lesser known aspiring senators are hoping that their platforms will fuel their possible bid for a Senate seat in next year's elections. Women's rights advocate and former member of the Bangsamoro Transition Commission Samira Gutoc is banking on the timely rehabilitation of Marawi City as she seeks a seat at the Senate under the opposition coalition. "I am from Marawi and we would push for legislation that would protect the interests of internally displaced persons," Gutoc told CNN Philippines' On The Record on Thursday. She hopes the rehabilitation of the city will set as a "sample case" on how other local government units should address disasters. "Marawi rehabilitation is very big budgeted and it's also the first armed destruction in the country so we need to rehabilitate not just buildings and homes but also people's heart and their relationship with each other and even government," she added. "We need to rebuild the trust again," she said. "It needs legislations so there will be actions and policies that will be instituted." Ding Generoso, former spokesperson of the Consultative Committee that President Rodrigo Duterte tasked to review the 1987 Constitution, sees the election as an avenue to raise people's awareness on federalism. "Right now everybody's mind, everybody's eyes are on the elections. We need to steal the thunder from the politicians this time. We have to make this an issue-based election," he said during the show. "We have to bring it to the people and answer all the questions. There's no other better platform to answer all questions raised about federalism in an election arena," he added. Generoso, who filed his certificate of candidacy under the Katipunan ng Kamalayang Kayumanggi party, said he will push for "system change" through a new form of government if he wins in the senatorial race. "We felt that we have to bring the issue of system change and draft constitution to the people. We felt also that none among, or very very few, if ever, among the candidates in the lower house or higher chamber of the Congress would be willing to take this to the people," he said. Meanwhile, former Interior and Local Government Secretary Rafael Alunan III eyes economic reforms by developing the country's manufacturing sector. "China is off loading because they want to move to high tech, and so they're looking for other countries to unload, so they're eyeing us. It's a question of how we play our cards right with China," he said during the show, adding that a robust manufacturing industry will lead to more jobs in the country. Alunan, who belongs to Bagumbayan party, said the Philippines should only tie up with China in areas that will not lead to dispute. "The contentious issues are something that we must talk about with them (China), but in areas that are not contentious then let's proceed with collaboration. That's what our independent foreign policy is all about," he said. Alunan said he will also push for a change in criminal justice system and a stronger national defense. "There will always be threats to the country. You'll never know who's gonna be the next threat. If you have a good diplomatic position, it must be backed up by a strong military position as well," he said. MASON CITY, Iowa - It's a traumatic experience for victims of sexual assault, but a Lutheran church is wanting to give a sense of dignity and compassion by offering Lily Bags. The WELCA group, Martha's and Mary's, from St. Paul Lutheran Church are creating Lily Bags, which are packed with a basic set of clothing, including a shirt, sweatpants, underwear, bra and socks, as well as a note offering support. They are then given to advocates with Crisis Intervention Services, and are given to victims after a sexual assault. The idea came from a church group in Pennsylvania who donated Lily Bags to a hospital. The lily was chosen due to being in the 'Women of the ELCA' logo, and stands for strength, beauty and vitality. Crisis Intervention Volunteer Coordinator Lori Elbermawy says that in many cases, victims' clothing can be taken away to be used as evidence in an investigation. In some cases, victims are only given a hospital gown to wear home. She says this service will provide for those who have gone through so much. "As some people who don't have any family with them that could go and provide a fresh set of clothes, this is absolutely wonderful because they have a fresh set of clothes, brand new, that they're able to put on and leave the hospital with." In addition, she says it's a unique way to help, and appreciates the partnership. "I always appreciate it when we have people reach out to us and ask, hey, we have this idea for a project, can we work with you and figure it out. I'm more than happy to always work with people and how we can plan it and execute a project like this." The church plans to continue with the Lily Bag project as long as there is a need. WORTH COUNTY, Iowa A Minnesota woman and a Texas man are facing drug and theft charges after an early Friday morning traffic stop. The Worth County Sheriffs Office says a deputy stopped an erratically moving silver 2018 Toyota Corolla just before 4 am at the intersection of Highway 105 and Mallard Avenue. The deputy suspected the driver, Samantha Renee Linaman, 28 of Kenyon, MN, and the passenger, Benjamin Wayne Blaschka, 41 of New Braunfels, TX, were both under the influence of drugs. The Sheriffs Office says the Corolla was searched and deputies found plastic baggies, scales, cellphones, a narcotic prescription pill, a small amount of marijuana, and a large amount of methamphetamine. Deputies also say they found several burglars tools in the passenger area of the Corolla and three coin dispensers from vending machines at a Northwood business that had just been robbed. Linaman and Blaschka are being held on $100,000 bond in the Worth County Jail on charges of possession of burglars tools, possession of marijuana, illegal possession of prescription drugs, possession with intent to distribute methamphetamine, 3rd degree criminal mischief, failure to use a drug tax stamp, possession of drug paraphernalia, and 4th degree theft. Linaman is also charged with OWI and for not having a drivers license. AUSTIN, Minn. Police are investigating a report of shots fired overnight. The Austin Police Department says it got a call around 2:10 am Thursday about gunfire in the 900 block of 6th Avenue SE. Officers say they found 10 .40 caliber bullet casings at the scene. Police say they do not know the source of the shooting or why it happened at this time. ALBERT LEA, Min.- Three Republican candidates went to an unlikely spot on Thursday, the county jail. But it wasnt for any wrong doing, they just wanted to learn about the needs many Minnesota jails are facing. Republican Gubernatorial Candidate Jeff Johnson, Candidate Jim Hagedorn and Secretary of State Candidate Doug Wordlow all toured the Freeborn County Jail Thursday. Sheriff Kurt Freitag said funding for mental health is one of the biggest issues the county faces right now. we have people going to our facility that have no business being there, he said. Thats not the right place for them. The state is lacking in resources to use so it would be nice if we had additional funding. Sheriff Freitag also explained that drugs are the number one issue they face. He explained that the meth crisis is not going down and the opioid epidemic is already here. He said even if they doubled the staff they have for drug related crimes they would still have a full schedule. When his beloved 90-year-old cousin Sidney needed to move from her New Jersey home into a nearby independent-living community last spring, Paul Mesard faced a dilemma. Mesard, 62, lives in Denver, and taking off enough time to pack up a house that Sidney had lived in for 35 years and relocate her seemed nearly impossible. But Mesard came across a solution: Hire a senior move manager, a professional who specializes in helping older adults move from their longtime homes and resettle elsewhere. A move manager and her team guided Sidney through every room, closet and drawer, quizzing her gently on what to keep or give away. After the move, they unpacked and set up her new apartment. The entire process took just two days. They were really focused, so it wasnt a trip down memory lane, Mesard says. Youre paying them by the hour, so its just about business. Seniors moving for the first time in decades can be overwhelmed by the task of emptying out an attic or basement full of boxes. And even younger baby boomers may have recent knee or hip replacements that make moving difficult. Some seniors also face a major living transition, often into a smaller apartment in a care facility or to an adult childs house in another part of the U.S. Sometimes you do have to move because its not safe, or affordable, or feasible for you to stay where you are, says Tracy Greene Mintz, a social worker and long-term-care consultant in Redondo Beach, Calif. But that doesnt mean its not hard and its not sad. Hiring Help to Ease the Transition Senior move managers, some of whom may have social work backgrounds or special training, address these emotional minefields. Some serve as neutral third parties divvying up family possessions. Others acknowledge the pain of saying goodbye to treasured items. Clients always have final say, but some managers find ways to help ease the transition. One manager painstakingly photographed and recreated the display of a collection of glass figure miniatures for a cabinet in a clients new apartment, says Susan Devaney, president of The Mavins Group, a move-management company in Westfield, N.J. TORONTO (Reuters) - Barrick Gold Corp (ABX.TO) could have nine of the worlds top gold mines in a relatively short time under its $6.1 billion acquisition of African miner Randgold Resources Ltd (RRS.L), Barrick Executive Chairman John Thornton said Thursday. Barrick and Randgold will focus on Tier 1 assets, ones that produce 500,000 ounces of gold annually, have a mine life of more than 10 years and are low cost. The combined company, subject to a Nov. 5 shareholder vote, will have five of the worlds top 10 Tier 1 assets, Thornton said. This combination could have as many as nine Tier 1 assets within a relatively short period of time, he said on a conference call with analysts to discuss quarterly financial results. Barricks Fourmile project and Turquoise Ridge mine in Nevada have high potential to become Tier 1 assets, Thornton said, adding that the company is also optimistic about its Veladero mine in Argentina and Acacias North Mara mine in Tanzania. Talks with the government of Tanzania, to resolve a long-running tax dispute affecting Barricks Acacia Mining unit, are continuing but have slowed, Senior Executive Vice President Kevin Thomson said on the call. We continue to be optimistic that we will get to the right place, Thomson said, while declining to provide a time frame for any resolution. Barrick has not held any talks with Acacia about buying out the 31.9 percent stake that it does not own, he said in response to a question about a Bloomberg report that Barrick favors taking back control of Acacia after the Randgold deal closes. Barrick has also identified non-core assets that it will consider selling, among other options, to maximize value, Thornton said. Barrick is in slow-motion, long-term conversations with partners in Saudi Arabia and China who are highly interested in Barricks copper assets, he added. Thornton, who last week joined Randgold CEO Mark Bristow to meet with shareholders in the United States, Canada and Europe, encouraging investors to vote on the deal. Barrick was among a string of gold miners, including Newmont (NEM.N), Agnico Eagle (AEM.TO) and OceanaGold (OGC.AX), reporting moderately positive quarterly results this week and offseting weaker metal prices, Scotiabank analyst Tanya Jakusconek said in a note Thursday. BRUSSELS/PARIS/BERLIN (Reuters) - Pressure is growing for the European Union to consider an arms embargo on Saudi Arabia after Germany, Austria and the European Parliament called for an end to weapons sales over the killing of Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi. In the space of a few hours that highlighted tensions over the matter, Germanys Angela Merkel on Friday reaffirmed that her country would not deliver any arms to Saudi Arabia until Khashoggis death was explained, while French President Emmanuel Macron said such moves smacked of populist demagoguery. EU ambassadors may formally discuss the issue after a rare request to do so by governments, two diplomats said on Friday, and the Netherlands is lobbying for a new EU regime to sanction human rights abuses, regardless of where they happen. But the debate in Brussels and in EU capitals is also reviving familiar splits in the blocs foreign policy, with Europes main powers following their own economic and political interests that tend to undermine any forceful EU foreign policy that aims to be guided by democracy and human rights. The murder of Khashoggi, a Washington Post columnist, inside the Saudi consulate in Istanbul on Oct. 2 has sparked global outrage, become a crisis for the worlds top oil exporting state and underscored how Western powers are allied to an Arab kingdom that enforces floggings and the death penalty for dissent. The Belgian region of Wallonia, which owns firearms manufacturer FN Herstal, has said it will examine future requests for arms export licences to its top weapons client with the greatest circumspection following Khashoggis murder. While Austria, which holds the EUs six-month presidency, wants a halt to arms sales and Germany will stop approving weapons exports until Khashoggis murder is cleared up, France had ignored such calls. Macron went further on Friday, saying there was no link between arms sales and the killing of Khashoggi, a prominent critic of de facto Saudi ruler Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman. Thats pure demagoguery to say we must stop arms sales. Its got nothing to do with Mr Khashoggi, he told reporters during a trip in Slovakia, while not ruling out other coordinated sanctions against those held responsible. British Prime Minister Theresa May said on Wednesday that Britains weapons exports to Saudi Arabia met national and EU arms export licensing rules. Spain, meanwhile, is trying to go ahead with the sale of 400 bombs in order to protect a Saudi contract with a shipyard in the Andalusia region that would create 5,000 jobs. If Austria is proposing this ban, then ask how many weapons Austria sells to Saudi Arabia, said a senior EU diplomat. BILLIONS AT STAKE Though Austria has a substantial arms industry, it sold a meager 1.4 million euros ($1.59 million) of arms and ammunition to Saudi Arabia in 2017, according to EU data. Germany approved around 400 million euros worth of arms supplies to Saudi Arabia in the first nine months of 2018. Last year, Germany sold 351 million euros worth of aircraft, including helicopters and planes, to Saudi Arabia, though EU data does not specify how much of that is military. German weapons account for under 2 percent of Saudi Arabias arms purchases. Britain exported military goods to Saudi Arabia worth 1.1 billion pounds ($1.41 billion) in 2017, according to UK parliamentary papers, while tiny Belgium and Luxembourg combined for 184 million euros in arms sales to the Saudis last year. France sold Saudi Arabia 1.8 billion euros in planes, helicopters and other aerospace equipment in 2017, an amount that has climbed over the past decade, EU data shows, though again it does not say what part of that is military. The sale of weapons is something very political and part of a long-term vision, said Camille Lons, a researcher at the European Council on Foreign Relations think-tank. Lons cited Libya, Syria and even the Sahel region, where France, which has thousands of troops on the ground, has sought Saudi help to finance local African forces. At the heart of Macrons strategy is Mohammed bin Salman, often referred to as MbS, the 33-year-old Saudi de facto leader who has painted himself as a reformer but is under scrutiny over his potential involvement in Khashoggis seizure and death. Its easy for (German Chancellor Angela) Merkel to come out with this when she sells weapons everywhere except Saudi Arabia, a senior French diplomat told Reuters. When you see global weapons sales, Germany is one of the largest in the world over the last couple of years, but Saudi isnt much. A German government spokeswoman on Friday welcomed Austrias initiative, but declined to comment when asked if German and Austria were isolated on their position within the EU. Merkel vowed again on Friday to halt all German arms exports to Saudi Arabia until Khashoggis killing was explained. One face-saving move for the European Union could be to sanction Saudi individuals accused of the Khashoggi murder and separate the issue from its close ties with the Saudi state. EU governments recently agreed a mechanism to punish chemical weapons attacks by targeting people regardless of their nationality. They could set up a similar system for human rights abuses. The United States has its Magnitsky human rights act that covers abusers in any country, named after Sergei Magnitsky, a 37-year-old Russian whistleblower who died in prison. France and Germany have to deal with the big issue of arms exports. Something EU governments could do is to establish a Magnitsky-type act to react, said Rebecca Harms, a Green member of the European Parliament. She helped spearhead the assemblys resolution calling for an arms embargo and sanctions this week. * LME copper stocks at lowest in nearly 13 years* Global equities head for worst week in more than 5 years* Nickel hits lowest since Dec, aluminium lowest since last August (Adds closing prices, details) By Maytaal Angel LONDON, Oct 26 (Reuters) - Copper fell 1 percent on Friday as global equities headed for their worst week in more than five years, overshadowing a supply shortage of the metal building in the market. Available London Metal Exchange copper inventories fell to their lowest in nearly 13 years, while cash copper traded at its highest premium to the three-month future in nearly three years. Still, investors are spooked about Sino-U.S. trade frictions, a mixed bag of U.S. corporate earnings, Federal Reserve rate increases and an Italian budget dispute. Aluminium hit its lowest in more than a year while nickel slumped to its weakest since late December. Higher than expected U.S. GDP data was not enough to assuage investor nerves. "When you've had an equity market selloff like we've had in the past few weeks, metals are not going to benefit," said Colin Hamilton, head of commodities research at BMO Capital Markets. "There should be a relief rally in base (metals) for the year-end as Chinese economic data improves ... because of stimulus ... but a lot depends on financial market conditions stabilising," Hamilton added, referring to policy measures in China designed to stimulate the economy. * COPPER PRICE: Three-month copper on the London Metal Exchange ended down 1.1 percent at $6,160 a tonne, clocking its fourth weekly drop in five. * SUPPLY: Miner and commodities trader Glencore on Friday reported a 12 percent rise in copper production so far this year. Other major miners reporting this month - BHP Billiton and Rio Tinto - have signalled lower copper output. * OPEN INTEREST: Market open interest on Shanghai copper fell to 495.476 lots on Thursday, the lowest since Feb. 9, 2017, in a sign that money is leaving the market. * OTHER METALS: LME nickel hit its weakest since late December at $11,810 and ended down 2.1 percent at $11,900, while aluminium hit its weakest since last August at $1,975 but closed up 0.2 percent at $1,998. "Aluminium production appears to be being cut back in China due to the current weak margins," Commerzbank analysts said in a note. "Lower production, which should result in lower Chinese exports, is likely to shore up aluminium prices. The LME (price) has nonetheless dipped below $2,000 per tonne." * STOCKS: Shanghai Futures Exchange lead inventories plunged 44.6 percent from a week earlier to 6,139 tonnes, the exchange said on Friday, the lowest since January 2016. * OTHER METALS: Lead ended down 0.7 percent at $1,998, zinc closed up 0.6 percent at $2,652, while tin ended flat at $19,300. <^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^ Top Base and Precious Metals Analysis - GFMS ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^> (Additional reporting by Tom Daly Editing by Kirsten Donovan and David Holmes) Messaging: maytaal.angel.thomsonreuters.com@reuters.net) ))LME price overview COMEX copper futures Base metals news All metals news All commodities news Metals diary Foreign exchange rates SPEED GUIDES )) TRONDHEIM, Norway, Oct 26 (Reuters) - Norway's central bank will maintain its policy of gradual monetary policy tightening, it said on Friday. "The outlook and balance of risks imply a gradual increase in the key policy rate," Governor Oeystein Olsen told a business conference. On Thursday the board of Norges Bank kept rates unchanged at 0.75 percent and said a hike would likely take place in the first quarter of 2019. (Reporting by Camilla Knudsen, editing by Terje Solsvik) Messaging: terje.solsvik.thomsonreuters.com@reuters.net)) Messaging: terje.solsvik.thomsonreuters.com@reuters.net)) Disclaimer: The views expressed in this article are those of the author and may not reflect those of Kitco Metals Inc. The author has made every effort to ensure accuracy of information provided; however, neither Kitco Metals Inc. nor the author can guarantee such accuracy. This article is strictly for informational purposes only. It is not a solicitation to make any exchange in commodities, securities or other financial instruments. Kitco Metals Inc. and the author of this article do not accept culpability for losses and/ or damages arising from the use of this publication. WINNIPEG, Manitoba (Reuters) - The United States trade wars have allowed Canadas agriculture industry to pump up sales of soybeans and wheat to China, and pork to Mexico. But the same tariff battles are undermining commodity prices and eating into Canadian farmers profit margins even as they grab more market share. Their struggles illustrate the complex global consequences of U.S. protectionism as tariffs launched by President Donald Trump spark retaliations and redraw global agricultural supply lines around the globe. In the case of Canada, farmers have become bystanders hit by retaliatory strikes aimed at the United States. The situation is bad enough to prompt Canadian soy and hog farmers to demand compensation from Ottawa. Soybean growers here, whose crop amounts to just 6 percent of U.S. output, say they are worse off than U.S. farmers despite increased Canadian exports of the oilseed. (Graphic: Global soy prices - tmsnrt.rs/2P749Us) The U.S. government has provided its farmers a $12 billion aid program to limit the damage from lost purchases by China, the worlds biggest soybean importer. But Canada has provided farmers no support to ease the sting of falling prices in the United States, which undermine the value of Canadian crops. The government is monitoring the impact on farmers and has existing programs to mitigate such market risks, said James Watson, a spokesman for Canadas agriculture department. China, which bought one quarter of U.S. soybeans last year, halted most buying in July after Beijing imposed a 25 percent tariff on U.S. soy imports in retaliation for U.S. tariffs on a wide range of Chinese goods. China has turned to other soybean exporters including Canada, Brazil and Argentina. In June, ahead of Chinas July 6 imposition of tariffs against U.S. soybeans, Canada shipped 159,000 tonnes of soybeans to China, 12 times more than a year earlier, according to Statistics Canada. But while Latin American soybean farmers are seeing a big boost in prices and profits with the rush of Chinese demand, their Canadian counterparts are seeing prices fall. Canada soybean prices have slipped along with the benchmark U.S. soybean futures in Chicago, which fell by 23 percent from May through September. Since then, export demand has propped up Western Canadian prices, but they remain relatively low. The reality is were net losers, said Dauphin, Manitoba soybean farmer Ernie Sirski, chairman of Soy Canada, which is seeking government compensation. Many farmers are selling at C$11 per bushel for yields Sirski estimates at an average 31 bushels per acre in Manitoba. That results in revenue of C$341 per acre - barely above production costs of C$335. Such thin margins leave little room for error and may mean smaller Canadian soy plantings next year, he said. Scorching summer weather that shriveled plants in Manitoba added to the pain of lower prices, Sirski said. Other sectors of the Canadian agricultural industry have taken a direct hit from changes in U.S. trade policy. The U.S. forced Canada to concede some market share in dairy and poultry under revisions to the free trade agreement between the two countries and Mexico. Like soybean growers, Canadian pig farmers are hurting. Chinese tariffs on U.S. pork have raised alarm about demand, pressuring the U.S. hog prices on which Canadian sales are based. Canada, the third-largest pork exporter, sold 19.5 percent more pork to Mexico in the first eight months of the year, according to Statistics Canada, including hams that Mexico would normally buy from the United States. The Canadian sales grew after Mexico imposed retaliatory tariffs on U.S. pork. But Canadas overall pork shipments declined, including to China, which is oversupplied, and the United States, its two biggest export markets. Canadian Pork Council said in a statement in September that hog farmers need government compensation to cover losses related to trade wars, similar to a U.S. government payout of $8 per hog. PINNING HOPES ON WHEAT, CANOLA Canada does have other opportunities for gains if the trade war drags on. Canadian farmers could sell 500,000 to 1 million tonnes more wheat than usual to China in 2018/19, depending on harvest quality, said Rhyl Doyle, director of export trading at Paterson Grain. Canada has averaged sales to China of 751,000 tonnes during the past five years. Chinese tariffs against U.S. soybeans have bolstered interest in Canadian canola meal, which can also be fed to pigs, said James Rea, assistant vice-president at Richardson International. But as with soy, such market gains have not lifted prices. ICE canola futures prices are down since spring, influenced by plunging soy prices, and Minneapolis spring wheat futures prices have made up little ground since then despite dry global conditions. Its not going to be a banner year, said Alberta farmer Matt Sawyer, who grows wheat, barley and canola. It is disappointing. More Ontario corn is flowing into Europe, helped by European Union tariffs against the United States. But in Alberta, farmers expect a tide of U.S. corn in Europe that will compete with the barley and wheat they sell for cattle rations, said commodity broker Errol Anderson. Down the road though, Canadian farmers pain may pay off with new customers, he said. Were at the emotional stage, Anderson said. The U.S. goes down, and so (Canada) goes down too. But global trade patterns are changing, and long-term, the U.S. is going to lose out. Union members of GM Korea stage a sit-in protest in front of Cheong Wa Dae in Seoul, Wednesday. Yonhap By Nam Hyun-woo Many GM Korea subcontractors are on the verge of collapse as the struggling carmaker's sales show no signs of recovery, industry officials said Thursday. The escalating labor-management conflict at the Korean unit of the U.S. auto giant has made things worse for auto parts makers, which have been hit hard by plunging sales amid higher labor expenses and soaring raw material costs, they said. According to an Incheon-based group of GM Korea's first-tier suppliers, Thursday, its 144 member companies' operating ratios have averaged approximately 40 percent since July, down 10 percentage points from the first half of this year. GM Korea has more than 300 first-tier suppliers and thousands of second- and third-tier suppliers. "We are having the hardest time that we have ever experienced," an official at one of the member companies said, asking not to be named. "It is hard to tell exactly how difficult things are, but the number of facilities operating seems to be far lower than what it used to be." GM Korea's sales have continued to falter. According to GM Korea, it sold 34,816 vehicles last month, down 13.5 percent from a year earlier. Adding more concern to the company, its domestic sales remained at 7,434 vehicles, down 17.3 percent during the same period. The company has proclaimed the "normalization" of its operations months after it signed an MOU between GM headquarters, its union and the government in May to address its financial problems which resulted in the closure of the firm's plant in Gunsan, North Jeolla Province. However, sales have not recovered as the GM unit hoped, rather showing a decline. GM Korea sold 40,879 cars in May, but the number dropped sharply to 23,101 in August. The Equinox SUV, which the company launched ambitiously four months ago to lead its normalization, is showing slow progress in sales, with 858 sold during the period, far below GM Korea's monthly target of 1,000. The recent dispute with its union is also hurting GM Korea's reputation. Last Friday, GM Korea shareholders approved the company's plan to establish a separate corporate body for research and development, despite the union's efforts to disrupt the meeting. While the company says the new R&D unit will be GM's technological hub in the region, the union claims the move is a prelude to its withdrawal from Korea. Though the union's bid to go on strike legally was disrupted after the National Labor Relations Commission ordered it to continue talks with management, members are continuing their protest against the move, staging a rally in front of Cheong Wa Dae and calling for GM Korea CEO Kaher Kazem's resignation. "The current dispute between GM Korea and its union is already damaging the reputation of GM cars, which drags down sales. We hope everything will be addressed quickly," an official at a different GM Korea supplier said. "Though our company also supplies other carmakers, some other suppliers rely 100 percent on GM Korea. If the dispute continues, they may suffer more." Reportedly, there are more than 80 companies supplying 100 percent of their products to GM Korea. "We are aware of partner companies' suffering," a GM Korea official said. "GM headquarters has recognized Korean suppliers due to their quality products, and we will try to provide opportunities for quality suppliers to sell their products to not only GM Korea but also other GM units." Scott Olson/Getty Images(NEW YORK) -- Ford Motor Co. on Thursday said it was recalling nearly 1.5 million Focus vehicles in North America over a malfunctioning canister purge valve. The recall affects Focuses manufactured from 2012 to 2018 that are equipped with either a 2.0-liter GDI or GTDI engine. The canister purge valve can become stuck in an open position, according to the Detroit automaker, causing the vehicle's plastic fuel tank to become deformed. A driver may see a malfunction indicator light turn on or a fuel gauge with fluctuating or inaccurate fuel levels. The malfunction could stop the car from restarting or lead it to stall while in motion, Ford said. The company said it was not aware of any accidents, injuries or fires as a result of the defect. Ford recommends that Focus owners maintain at least half a tank of fuel until the recall is complete. Dealers will inspect and replace the canister purge valves at no charge, Ford said. A list of all Ford 2018 recalls can be found here. On Wednesday, Ford reported third-quarter revenue of $34.66 billion, up 3 percent from the prior year. Total revenue was $37.6 billion. Copyright 2018, ABC Radio. All rights reserved. Metro Manila (CNN Philippines, October 26) Is the country going in the right direction? Three out of four Filipinos believe so, according to the latest Social Weather Stations (SWS) survey released Thursday. The Third Quarter 2018 SWS survey, conducted from September 15 to 23, found 75 percent of its respondents saying the country is in the right direction. Meanwhile, 22 percent think the opposite, saying the country is in the wrong direction. The remaining 3 percent had no an answer . More people believe the country is headed the right way, as the current percentage score is 5 points above the 70 percent SWS recorded in June 2018. The rise in percentage scores, SWS said, was reflected in all areas. The highest was at 89 percent recorded in Mindanao, which is President Rodrigo Duterte's bailiwick. The sentiment was also stronger among class D and E. The proportion for class D or the "masa" rose by 5 points from 70 percent in June 2018 to 75 percent in September 2018. Class E saw a two-point hike to 72 percent from 70 percent in June this year. SWS added the belief that the country is on the right track increased among non-college graduates. The pollster said the net satisfaction rating with Duterte's performance was higher at a +72 "excellent" score among those who say the country is in the right direction. READ: More Filipinos satisfied with Duterte amid 'vulgar' remarks - SWS The survey used face-to-face interviews of 1,500 adults. Puerto Vallarta to Expand Airport, Add Connections Puerto Vallarta, Mexico - Offering flights to more than 50 destinations around the world, including Helsinki, Los Angeles, San Diego and Chicago, and transporting nearly 5 million passengers a year, the Puerto Vallarta International Airport is busier than ever. So busy, in fact, that Grupo Aeroportuario del Pacifico (GAP) is planning a new airport expansion as part of its Master Development Plan for the 2015-2019 period. Recent investments in the Puerto Vallarta airport include a new International VIP Lounge, as well as improved connectivity via access to a free wireless Internet network in the airport and new routes that will connect Puerto Vallarta and Riviera Nayarit with the rest of Latin America coming in December. But the Mexican airport operator has not yet finished improving PVR. "We are planning a completely new terminal building, with more space, excellent services and commercial areas so that passengers enjoy their travel experience," Raul Revuelta, the general director of GAP, said in a statement. The new terminal will span more than 200,000 square feet and include five new jetways and six security lines. "Through the International Airport of Puerto Vallarta we seek to contribute to the economic and tourist development of the States of Jalisco and Nayarit, giving a better service and image to Mexicans and foreigners who visit them," Revuelta added. Grupo Aeroportuario del Pacifico, S.A.B. de C.V. (GAP) operates 12 airports throughout Mexico's Pacific region, including the major cities of Guadalajara and Tijuana, the four tourist destinations of Puerto Vallarta, Los Cabos, La Paz and Manzanillo, and six other mid-sized cities: Hermosillo, Guanajuato, Morelia, Aguascalientes, Mexicali and Los Mochis. In April 2015 GAP acquired 100% of Desarrollo de Concesiones Aeroportuarias, S.L., which owns a majority stake of MJ Airports Limited, a company operating the Sangster International Airport in Montego Bay, Jamaica. Then, in September 2018, GAP won the bid "to operate, modernize and expand" the Norman Manley International Airport in Kingston, Jamaica. Islamabad, Oct 26 (PTI) China's Ambassador Yao Jing Friday said that the financial support provided for the USD 50 billion China-Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC) was not a burden on the economy of Pakistan. He told media in the Chinese embassy here that the CPEC was a win-win project for both Pakistan and China and ultimately of huge benefit to Pakistan. "The CPEC is beneficial not only for China but also for Pakistan and it is a wrong impression that only Chinese companies are benefiting from it," Yao said. As the ambassador said that the "CPEC is not a burden on Pakistan's economy", China's deputy ambassador Lijian Zhao said that it was wrong to attribute Pakistan's economic hardships to Chinese loans. "China's debt to Pakistan is 6.3 per cent of Pakistan's total debt. Pakistan only has to pay two per cent interest. It has 15 to 20 years to repay the loan. From 2020 to 2021, Pakistan has to pay between USD 300 million and USD 400 million," he said. Lijian said that the CPEC would create 700,000 jobs by 2030, while by 2022 Pakistan's energy needs will be met through various power generation initiatives by China. The deputy ambassador also said that the early harvest project of the CPEC would be by early 2019. He said that out of the 22 projects, 10 had been completed which include seven relating to energy. He said that Iran and Afghanistan could also become part of the CPEC in future. However, the ambassador said that China was spending USD 19 billion on the 22 projects, as he hit out at the global powers for trying to undermine the importance of the CPEC for Pakistan. "Some powers are bothered by Pakistan and China's cooperation, relationship and friendship," Yao said. He also claimed that Chinese projects were completely transparent and so far no report about any financial misappropriation was received. Yao also said China would provide all possible assistance to help Pakistan to come out of the current the economic challenges. "We understand Pakistan right now faces some challenges and definitely as a friend China will extend whatever assistance possible," said the ambassador. He said China was looking forward to the upcoming visit of Prime Minister Imran Khan who will pay a official visit to China in the first week of November. However, the deputy ambassador was more precise to indicate that China will provide financial assistance. "In terms of financial assistance during the visit of Khan, we will provide hopefully a grant to the Pakistani government and at the end of the visit there will be good news," said Lijian. (This is an unedited and auto-generated story from Syndicated News feed, LatestLY Staff may not have modified or edited the content body) Mumbai, Oct 25 (PTI) Congress MP Shashi Tharoor Thursday said India was staring at a "demographic disaster" as a major section of the country's youth was not yet equipped to take advantage of the job opportunities that the current century has to offer. He also made a pitch for policies to provide "right kind of education", including skill development and vocational training, to youngsters to address the issue. "Sixty five per cent of our population is under the age of 35. The ILO (International Labour Organisation) says in 2030 we will have 116 million people on the job (with the) starting age group of 19 to 23, whereas China will have only 92 million. So, we are going to be, in a sense, in a position to be the dynamic, productive, youthful nation," Tharoor said. He made the remarks at 'The Economist Summit 2018' held here. "But all of this will make sense, will only be a demographic dividend if we can in fact equip these young people to be able to take advantage of the opportunities the 21st century offers," he added. Tharoor observed that presently India was not on course to provide the opportunities of the current century -- job market-driven education -- to its youngsters. The MP said India has "wasted" its last five years when it comes to providing skill development to the youth. Without naming anyone, the former Union minister said not much has been done in India to enhance the skills of the youth in the country, despite identification of the need. The Parliamentarian also referred to a 2016 World Bank development report, which said that 69 per cent jobs in Indian economy faced threat due to technological advancements. "So, you put all that (issues) together and let's really start reacting very newly to all of this (the problems). We are looking at a demographic disaster," he said. He also said there was a need to evolve the country's education system in order to impart knowledge on teaching newer subjects, such as data analytics, machine learning, artificial intelligence and robotics. "These are the things of the 21st century. There is no point in teaching the kids what worked in the 1990s or even the first decade of the 21st century. Because those things are already getting out of date in the world," he said on the sidelines of the event. (This is an unedited and auto-generated story from Syndicated News feed, LatestLY Staff may not have modified or edited the content body) The Union Public Service Commission (UPSC) has released the admit card online for the recruitment of Combined Defence Services (CDS) Examination (II), 2018. Those who have applied for the exam successfully can download the same from the official website; upsconline.nic.in. It must be noted that the last date to download the hall tickets is November 18, 2018. UPSC CDS exam will be conducted at 41 centres nationwide, and students without call letters will not be allowed to sit for the recruitment test. The commission scheduled to hold the CDS II exam on November 18. Upper Age Limit Decided by Centre for UPSC Recruitment 2018 CSE Examinations. The official update released by the commission on its website reads, Candidates should check their e-Admit Card carefully and bring discrepancies, if any, to the notice of UPSC immediately. If any applicant is not able to download his/her e-Admit Card, he/she may contact UPSC Facilitation Counter on Telephone Nos. 011-23385271, 011-23381125 and 011-23098543 between (10.00 AM to 5.00 PM) on working day during working hours. The candidate may also send Fax message on Fax No. 011-23387310. Earlier, the admit card for CDS II was expected on October 28. It is worth noting that the commission will not issue paper admit card to any aspirant. Mobile phones and any other electronic devices are not allowed inside the examination hall. UPSC IFS Main Recruitment Exam 2018 Timetable Released! The students should carry three photographs along with the ID card and printout of the e-admit card to the examination centre. If the photo is not printed on the admit card, the photographs must be carried. Meanwhile, UPSC is yet to release the notification for CDS I 2019 notice, and it is expected on October 31. CDS is conducted by UPSC every year to recruit candidates to the Indian Military Academy- Dehradun, Indian Naval Academy- Ezhimala, Air Force Academy-Hyderabad and Officers' Training Academy, Chennai. (The above story first appeared on LatestLY on Oct 26, 2018 11:06 AM IST. For more news and updates on politics, world, sports, entertainment and lifestyle, log on to our website latestly.com). New Delhi, October 26: It is an eventful day on Friday for the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI). While the Supreme Court is set to take up CBI top boss Alok Verma's plea against him being sent on leave, the Opposition led by the Congress will protest outside the CBI Headquarters against the temporary removal of Verma. CBI Director Verma and Special Director Rakesh Asthana were sent on leave in a late night 2 am move on Tuesday amid the mess in the investigating agency. Supreme Court to Hear CBI Chief Alok Verma's Plea Challenging His 'Removal'. The Supreme Court will hear the pleas filed by Verma and NGO Common Cause challenging his removal as the director of the Central Bureau of Investigation. The bench which would be adjudicating on the petitions is headed by Chief Justice Ranjan Gogoi. On Thursday, Congress leader in the Lok Sabha, Mallikarjun Kharge, wrote a strongly-worded letter to Prime Minister Narendra Modi on the CVC's decision to send CBI director Alok Verma on a forced leave. Kharge, who is part of the selection panel which appoints the CBI chief, expressed his disapproval on Verma being divested of his powers. Calling the move illegal, Kharge said the PM should had convened a selection committee meeting to decide on the case. Congress president Rahul Gandhi yesterday accused the government of "sacking Verma at 2 am in the night as he was about to begin a probe into the Rafale deal". Had the probe been initiated, "the PM would had been finished", he added. The CBI, meanwhile, issued a clarification claiming that neither Verma nor Asthana have been removed of their charges. Both the top officials have been sent on a forced leave till the CVC adjudicates on the complaints registered against them. Lucknow, October 26: Lucknow police arrested a man impersonating as a Lieutenant Colonel in the Indian Army for forgery and misusing the army uniform on October 24. According to a report published in The Times of India, the 40-year-old Arvind Mishra had been staying in Lucknow for the last one year and had created a fake Facebook profile in the name of Lt Col Rahul Mishra. He also posted photographs in the army uniform. There were also complaints against him of cheating several people especially young women, by promising them of jobs and taking money in return. Security Staff Apprehends 4 Imposters Trying to Enter Sena Bhawan According to the report, officials of Directorate of Military Intelligence (DMI) are also interrogating Mishra. Apart from revolvers and pistols, a white car with the emblem of 1/11 Gorkha Rifles was recovered from the accused. The police also seized his bank passbooks, laptops and mobile phones. For the past 15 days, we had been getting various complaints from girls about being duped by an army officer. During the investigation, Arvind's fake profile surfaced, reported TOI quoting Nodal officer of cyber cell Abhay Mishra. Kerala Floods: Indian Army Refutes Imposter's Claims on Facebook Video; Asks Citizens To Connect Directly Via WhatsApp He also cheated many women on matrimonial sites impersonating as an army officer. The Lucknow police nabbed Mishra through surveillance and assistance from DMI. He was stooped at Hazratganj and asked about his identity. After a few questions, he was exposed. The accused is an MBA degree holder and had worked in a private company till 2017. During an investigation, he confessed that for a lavish lifestyle and money he impersonated as an army officer. It is not the first case when someone impersonated as an army official. Earlier this month, a man impersonating as an Indian Army soldier was arrested for allegedly duping people to the tune of Rs six lakh, reported TOI. The accused Manjunath Reddy, a resident of Harihara, used to take money from various Indian Army soldiers to get them benefits of various schemes run by the government. (The above story first appeared on LatestLY on Oct 26, 2018 05:26 PM IST. For more news and updates on politics, world, sports, entertainment and lifestyle, log on to our website latestly.com). Chennai, October 26: The Thoothukudi district court on Friday directed the police to register an FIR against Tamil Nadu BJP chief Tamilisai Soundararajan and her party workers who allegedly threatened and abused 28-year-old research scholar Lois Sofia at the Tuticorin airport last month. The court's order came after the police had refused to file a case based on the complaint of Sofia's father A A Samy. This compelled Samy to move the district court seeking action against the accused. Louis Sophia, Arrested After Raising 'BJP Fascist' Slogan, Gets Bail; Tamilisai Soundararajan Says 'Her Character Questionable'. The incident which has landed Soundararajan in soup was reported on September 3, when she was on the same flight with Sofia. The scholar reportedly raised slogan of "Fascists down, BJP government down!" on spotting the BJP state unit chief on board. Watch Video of the Argument Between Sofia and Soundararajan: #WATCH BJP Tamil Nadu President Tamilisai Soundararajan got into an argument with a co-passenger at Tuticorin airport. The passenger who has now been detained had allegedly raised 'Fascist BJP Govt down down' slogan #TamilNadu pic.twitter.com/TzfyQn3IOo ANI (@ANI) September 3, 2018 The slogans triggered an argument between the two, which ensued even as they alightened the flight. At the airport, nearly 10 supporters of Soundararajan allegedly abused Sofia and threatened her. The police, however, detained Sofia from the airport after Soundararajan complained of being harassed by her onboard. The scholar was booked under Section 75 of the Tamil Nadu City Police (TNCP) Act, 1888 and sent to judicial custody for 15 days. A day later, however, she was granted an unconditional bail by the Magistrate S Tamilselvi. (The above story first appeared on LatestLY on Oct 26, 2018 04:22 PM IST. For more news and updates on politics, world, sports, entertainment and lifestyle, log on to our website latestly.com). Nilakkal, October 26: Nearly 2,016 people have been arrested till now by the Kerala Police for the Sabarimala violence. Those arrested had protested against the Supreme Court's decision of allowing women aged between 10 and 50 years from entering the historic Sabarimala Shrine. Meanwhile, 452 cases have been registered against the protestors. In the historic judgment on September 28, 2018, the top court had pronounced the verdict by 4:1 majority. Most of the people arrested were from Pathanamthitta - the district where the temple is located. Many have also been arrested from Kozhikode, Thiruvananthapuram and Ernakulam. Several women journalists as well as those women who tried to enter the Sabarimala Temple were blocked and even assaulted by protesters earlier last week. Smriti Irani's Bizarre Analogy on Women's Entry in Sabarimala Temple: 'Will You Take Sanitary Napkin Soaked in Menstrual Blood to Friend's Home?' Around 19 petitions have been filed in the Supreme Court seeking to review its order on Sabarimala Shrine allowing women of all ages. The apex court has agreed to consider the petition seeking review of its decision on Ayyappa shrine on November 13 at 3 pm. This comes after the gates of the shrine were open for the first time after the court's verdict but due to heavy protest, no women were not allowed to enter the temple. Supreme Court to Consider Review Petitions on Women's Entry in Sabarimala Temple on November 13. Earlier on October 19, Hyderabad based Journalist Kavitha Jakkal and activist Rehana Fathima tried and failed to enter the Sabarimala Temple. They were just a few metres away from the temple gates but had to stop after the head priest warned them that he will stop all the rituals and close the gates of the temple. After the Police authorities explained them the whole matter, both of them agreed to return. (The above story first appeared on LatestLY on Oct 26, 2018 03:46 PM IST. For more news and updates on politics, world, sports, entertainment and lifestyle, log on to our website latestly.com). New Delhi, October 26: Congress President Rahul Gandhi, who was arrested by Delhi police after his protest march against what he calls is the "sacking of CBI Director Alok Verma". The Congress President has claimed that Alok Verma, the CBI director who has been sent on a forced leave by the government, has been "sacked" because he was "investigating the Rafale deal." The Congress President criticised Prime Minister Narendra Modi and also raised the slogan "Chowkidar Chor Hai", while talking to the protestors. The Congress President was taken to the Lodhi Colony Police Station, while his supporters kept chanting slogans in support of Rahul Gandhi outside the police station. Senior Congress leader from Rajasthan Ashok Gehlot and UP Congress leader Raj Babbar were also been arrested, said reports. CBI vs CBI: SC Orders Court-Monitored Inquiry Within 10 Days, Says Interim Boss Will 'Only Perform Routine Task' Till Next Hearing on November 12. On Friday morning, Rahul Gandhi embarked on a protest from Dayal Singh College on Lodhi Road to the CBI HQ. Though reports claimed that Rahul Gandhi courted arrest, the Congress claimed that he and the other leaders were arrested. CBI vs CBI Row LIVE News Updates: Rahul Gandhi And Other Congress Leaders Arrested, Says Randeep Surjewala. Check the Tweet Below. Congress President, Sh. Rahul Gandhi & other leaders arrested Randeep Singh Surjewala (@rssurjewala) October 26, 2018 Watch the Congress leaders' protest walk in the ANI video below: #WATCH Congress President Rahul Gandhi and Ashok Gehlot lead the protest march to CBI HQ against the removal of CBI Chief Alok Verma. pic.twitter.com/7FNkhoWQCb ANI (@ANI) October 26, 2018 The Supreme Court on Friday morning, heard the plea by exiled CBI Director Alok Verma. The Supreme Court, while hearing the pleas filed by Alok Verma and NGO Common Cause challenging his removal as the director of the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI), today said that it will examine the matter and the inquiry will be completed in 10 days. The Apex Court has issued notices to government, CVC and others. While hearing the case, CJI Ranjan Gogoi said, "Matter to be listed after Diwali break, interim CBI boss M Nageswara Rao, will not take any policy decision." The Supreme Court has decided November 12 as the next date of hearing in the case. (The above story first appeared on LatestLY on Oct 26, 2018 01:50 PM IST. For more news and updates on politics, world, sports, entertainment and lifestyle, log on to our website latestly.com). Philanthropist, humanitarian, and founder of Microsoft Bill Gates couldn't stop praising Mechai Viravaidya, a social activist and politician from Thailand on his Instagram account. Mechai is the man behind popularising the use of condoms in Thailand. The man is known for promoting safe sex and family planning in his country. People of Thailand affectionately call him 'The Condon King' for his contribution in spreading AIDS awareness. Mechai is the reason Thailand became one of the first countries in the world to achieve a considerable reduction in the rising HIV cases. Gates shared pictures of Mechai's unique marketing techniques on his Instagram saying, "In a country where most people were uneasy discussing sex, Mechai Viravaidya pushed the conversation out into the open." Writing about Mechai's company named Condoms and Cabbages he praises the man's effort saying, "Mechai has helped improve the lives of millions of people in Thailand. And the Thai people have thanked him with an honor that is perhaps the greatest measure of his impact." "When people in Thailand want a condom, they don't call it a condom. Instead, they refer to it by the name of the man who taught them the importance of using one - they ask for a 'Mechai.'" Aadhaar Gets Thumps Up from Bill Gates: Microsoft Founder Says UIDAI Will be Helpful Here is Bill Gates' Instagram post: Know how Mechai contributed in decreasing the population of Thailand and the ways in which he popularised the use of condoms: Bill Gate's Instagram post has gone viral with over 79,000 likes and more than 600 comments at the time of publishing this article. He has also published a blog about Mechai named 'All Hail The Condom King' shedding light on the importance of the use of condoms. Through the post, Bill has also requested the world to take Mechai's example for a better future. (The above story first appeared on LatestLY on Oct 26, 2018 08:14 PM IST. For more news and updates on politics, world, sports, entertainment and lifestyle, log on to our website latestly.com). Moscow, October 26: Samsung has sued its Russian Brand Ambassador for around $1.6 million after she was seen using an iPhone X on TV. According to reports, Ksenia Sobchak, who is a reality show host, journalist and politician, was seen using rival Apple's iPhone X during an interview. While Samsung Russia has not released an official statement on the issue, under the terms of the agreement, influential people are not allowed to use the competitive brand's product in public. According to the Mirror, Sobchak was bound by contract to use the Samsung smartphone phone in public. But in the said interview, she was seen attempting to hide her iPhone with a piece of paper. However, this is reportedly not the first time she was caught using rival brand's phone on camera. Earlier, Sobchak was seen using iPhone during a social event in Moscow city. India Mobile Congress 2018: Samsung to Initiate Large Scale 5G Trials in India by Q1 2019. Neither Sobchak's staff nor Samsung have publicly commented on the issue. Previously in April, 'Wonder Woman' star Gal Gadlot posted a series of tweets to her followers endorsing the Huawei Mate 10 Pro, but the tweets were sent from iPhone. Later the tweet was removed and replaced, and one of Gadot's staffers was blamed for the mixup. (The above story first appeared on LatestLY on Oct 26, 2018 01:55 PM IST. For more news and updates on politics, world, sports, entertainment and lifestyle, log on to our website latestly.com). The movies of Caroline Danjuma are known to everyone who is interested in the creative life of Nollywood actors. She is not just beautiful, but incredibly talented and intelligent. You can read more about the biography of this prominent actress and discover things that will amaze you! If you are a true fan of her, you would not want to miss the chance to read Caroline Danjuma biography! Photo: dailypost.ng Who is Caroline Danjuma and what are the reasons for her popularity? Caroline Danjuma is one of the modern Nollywood actresses, who is really popular among avid movie fans. Her movies are always full of passionate acting and great talent. She is one of the brightest Nollywood stars of the current time, and because of her amazing roles, she has gained a lot of dedicated admirers. Now, it is time for you to discover interesting facts from the biography of Caroline Danjuma, the young and beautiful actress! Believe us, it is a really fascinating story! Photo: nigeriafilms.com Actress Caroline Danjuma's biography in brief The full name of this bright actress is Caroline Uduak Abasi Ekanem Danjuma. She was born as Caroline Ekanem, and Danjuma is her husbands last name. She is not just an actress but also a movie producer and a businesswoman. Caroline Ekanem was born on June 26th. Her birth town is Uyo, Akwa-Ibom State. She was born in the multi-racial family: her father was Scottish, while her mother was Yoruba. Caroline is the oldest child in the family. She also has two younger half-brothers, who are called Tunde Raphael and Abiodun Solomon Afolabi. They have a different father, who is from Osun State. Caroline Danjuma's parents Carolines mother is called Jennifer Afolabi, and she comes from Eket, Akwa-Ibom State. She works as a fashion designer in the United States. The actress describes her mother as hardworking, talented, God-fearing, and disciplined. She said that when her mother was young, she was a contestant in Miss Uyo beauty pageant, where she got the position of the first runner-up. This is where her father met her and fell in love. Later, Carolines parents both traveled to Spain together, where her mother attended fashion design school. Soon, they got married. The mother of Caroline Danjuma ended up divorcing her husband, Julian David Hollinwarth Hornelin this is the name of the Nollywood stars father. Julian David's parents were wine makers in Spain, however his uncle lived in Nigeria, that is why he often visited the country. For a long time after their divorce, Caroline Danjuma's parents were not on good terms. Even though her father invited her to visit him many times, her mother would not let her visit him until she was 18 years old. According to the actress, her mother thought that her father would not give her much attention that she needs, and this, in turn, upset him a lot. Nowadays, Carolines father lives in France, and sometimes she talks to him on the phone. With no father around and her mother putting effort into work, Caroline had to grow up very quickly. She describes herself as an independent woman throughout her entire life. She said that she never wanted to depend on anyone, even the members of her family, and knew very well that she needs to earn money on her own. However, she had a person in her life, which always supported her with wise words of advice, and this was her grandma. The actress says that she had very helpful tips and always said that with determination and consistent hard work, she will achieve everything she wants and become a superstar. Photo: aderonkebamidele.com Caroline Danjuma's education and career Caroline Danjuma was always a hardworking and focused student. As she remembered, throughout her school days she often received awards for neatest girl and best behavior at Federal Government Girls College, Oyo. Later, she transferred to the African Church Model College. Her grandma was actually a principal at this school, and Caroline was made a prefect. She was in charge of sanitation and principals office. After secondary school, Caroline got her education at the University of Calabar, where she received a degree in Environmental Protection Management and Geography. Caroline Danjuma always wanted to be a model since she was young, even if her grandma was always against it, saying it is not too good for her. Caroline actually had some modeling experience after all, and she said that her grandmas pieces of advice truly helped her to survive in the business because otherwise she would have been corrupted by money. She recalled the painful experience with her first agent. As Caroline stated, he always called her during the late hours and made promises based on whether she would sleep with him, even if she refused. Caroline Danjum's acting career Caroline Danjuma acting career started as an adventure. She was introduced into the movie industry by the director Chico Ejiro, and was recommended by the famous actress Rita Dominic. Her first rise to prominence was when she starred in the 2004 blockbuster Deadly Care with Rita Dominic. Deadly Care was directed and produced by Chico Ejiro. When this movie became successful, Caroline started getting more exciting roles. After the great breakthrough of Deadly Care, she went on starring in the next blockbuster movie, Deadly Kiss. Thanks to her role in this production, she was nominated for the Best Actress award at this years Africa Movie Academy Awards. Since the beginning of her career, Caroline Danjuma has appeared in more than 150 Nollywood productions. Aside Deadly Care and Deadly Kiss, the movies that made her famous, the popular films with her also include Missing Angel, Foreign Affairs, The Captor, Real Love, A Second Time, The Twist, The Angel, The Beast, and many others. She got nominations for Best Actress twelve times in her career. After the overwhelming success, she decided to take a hiatus from acting, to focus on her personal life. For a few years, she did not accept any movie proposals and solely concentrated on the other areas of her life. For instance, she started her own music label, called Guepard, where she produced two acts. The label later went on a break, but Caroline did not stop. She also became an executive producer of a movie called In the Cupboard, starring the famous Nollywood actress Ini Edo. She worked on her own luxury empire named mini Dubai, and ran her own production company. She took professional training at design and makeup schools in London. Photo: 36ng.ng Caroline Danjuma's husband The personal life of Caroline Danjuma was quite overwhelming. She used to date the famous music star of Nigeria, 2face Idibia. However, this relationship did not work out in the long run, and they broke up. Back then, in the interview, she spoke about her perfect man that she would want to get married to, and she confessed that she would marry any time as long as her man is responsible. She said that her perfect partner should be not rich, but wealthy physically, mentally, and spiritually this would mean that their relationship would be healthy. It was also important for her that her future husband is a good listener and has a kind heart, and she believed that he would also be able to strengthen her physical being and faith. Before marriage, Caroline Danjuma often dressed up as a girl next door, and her favorite clothing items were jeans, minis, and tees. She changed her style after she became a wife and a mother she opted for a more sophisticated style. Either way, the actress now found her perfect balance in clothing, and she always looks nice whenever she goes out somewhere and appears in public. The husband of Caroline Danjuma is Musa Danjuma, who is the younger brother of Theophilus Danjuma. He is a successful businessman and lawyer, who is also an executive chairman of many corporations, such as Comet Shipping Agencies, Nigeria American Line Ltd, Five Star Logistics Ltd, and Best Trade Nigeria Ltd. Musa Danjuma is much older than Caroline he was born in 1954. Though Caroline stated that age to her was just a number, and she was really in love with her husband. They got married in 2007. Caroline and Musa Danjuma have two sons and a daughter. Caroline Danjuma's husband and children. Photo: informationng.com Caroline Danjuma loves her children a lot and would do anything for them. Her last pregnancy with a little girl was quite complicated, as she had fibroid while being pregnant. In the end, she thought she was going to die, and chose her daughters life over hers. Thankfully, they both survived, and now her little daughter is four years old. This touching story of unconditional parental love was shared by Caroline Danjuma on social media on her daughters birthday. READ ALSO: Nollywood top actresses broken marriages and breakups of the decade Caroline Danjuma's daughter. Photo: happenings.com.ng Unfortunately, their marriage, which lasted for nine long years, crashed in 2016. The two got divorced, and even though Caroline Danjuma confirmed the divorce, she did not spread any unpleasant gossips about her ex-husband and asked the media not to create any untrue stories about them. During her marriage, she did not appear in public a lot due to her decision to take a hiatus from her acting work. Even during her first movies, she knew that alongside successful career she also wants a happy, long-lasting marriage and children. When speaking of her decision to take a break, she stated that she never left acting for good, only set up her priorities. When she left the spotlight, she was a newly married woman and a young mother, so her husband and children were all that mattered to her. In her words, acting was extremely demanding, so she had to consider this decision, and it was not the one she took lightly. She said that in the future, she was planning to return to acting, but back then she wanted to concentrate on her husband and children. In 2016, after getting divorced with her husband, Caroline came back to acting. She decided to make a loud comeback with the movie called Stalker, which was a romantic thriller. Caroline was both a producer and a star of this movie, and her first production after the long hiatus was met very warmly. Along with acting and producing, she also does a lot of work which contributes to society. For instance, in August 2017, she was praised by the Pan-African organization for her own advocacy-related programs, which were focused around helping out Nigerian youth and building their capacities. Caroline Danjuma was not linked to many controversies. She is a relatively calm public figure who does not appear in the spotlight too often. Still, there was a time where the false rumors were spread about her age. In 2015, Caroline said that she was 28 years old, but other people were saying that she is actually 34. She ended up sharing her I.D. to prove that she is the age she claims to be. Her birth year is unknown because of these rumors sometimes you can find the information that she was born in 1980, while some other sources say it is 1987. READ ALSO: Musa Danjuma biography Caroline Danjuma's children. Photo: sagagist.com.ng In 2018, Caroline once again became a happy mother to her fourth child. She did not get married again, and neither did she give birth to this child. The actress decided to become an adoptive mother to a little girl from the orphanage. She announced this huge change in her life on her Instagram, posting a picture of her holding a little hand of the child. She left a touching message saying that she is completely in love with her new child and finds her incredibly beautiful. The Nollywood star also encouraged people to give the lost children new homes. READ ALSO: Who is Caroline Danjuma's husband? Caroline Danjuma's adorable photo with her adopted daughter. Photo: tvcontinental.tv This was the exciting biography of one of the most prominent and loved Nollywood actresses of our time, Caroline Danjuma. We hope that she will give us many more amazing movies. READ ALSO: 5 Nigerian billionaire wives who look like teenagers Source: Legit.ng - Senator Kabiru Marafa has accused Governor Abdulaziz Yari of sponsoring protests against the APC national chairman - Marafa said the governor is hell-bent on the removal of Comrade Adams Oshiomhole so he can perpetuate illegality - The senator described the party chairman as a law-abiding leader The chairman of the Senate committee on petroleum (downstream), Senator Kabiru Garba Marafa has faulted the protest in Gusau, the Zamfara state capital, calling for the sack of the national chairman of the All Progressives Congress (APC), Comrade Adams Oshiomhole. A number of sponsored protesters stormed Gusau, the Zamfara state capital on Thursday, October 24 calling for the removal of Oshiomhole. Marafa in a statement sent to Legit.ng, said the protesters were mobilised by the state governor, following his inability to bend rules to impose candidates who are his cronies on the party in the state. The ranking senator who is the leading governorship aspirant of the APC in Zamfara, said Governor Yari should be the one to be sacked and not Oshiomhole who he described as a law abiding leader. READ ALSO: You have sent out a very bad signal to the world - Okorocha replies APC Yari and his co-travelers are wrong and Comrade Oshiomhole is right as far as the issues in the party are concerned, he said. Recalling the genesis of the party crisis in Zamfara, he insisted that primaries were not conducted in Zamfara state and that there was no consensus either. His words: There was a court order that says all parties should not take any step that will render useless the litigation before it. The party under the able leadership of Comrade Adams Oshiomhole respected the order and said all parties in the crisis should hands off. The party and it leadership should be commended for respecting the law, a foundation upon which APC was built. Two, when the committee of the NWC came to conduct the primary in Zamfara, violence orchestrated by Yari's people erupted, the committee was forced to cancel the election. This is also a valid thing. The position taken by the governor that primaries should be conducted by the executives in his camp was irresponsible, contemptuous and the height of lawlessness. The crux of the matter is that there was no election and there was no consensus in Zamfara. So, we are commending Comrade Oshiomhole and INEC for respecting the court order. Marafa said the millions of naira spent by Yari to organise the protest should have been channelled towards securing the release of 17 persons including two young girls kidnapped in Dauran, Jangebe, Magami and other locations in the state. The money spent on the protest should have been used to assist the security agencies in the state to rescue the abducted persons. The governor has stopped assisting security agencies with fund in the state in the last five months, he said. Senator Marafa assured that majority of APC family members in Zamfara are solidly behind Oshiomhole and the leadership of the party. PAY ATTENTION: Get the Latest Nigerian News Anywhere 24/7. Spend less on the Internet! Senator Marafa recently distanced himself from a purported meeting convened by tOshiomhole with Zamfara governorship aspirants on Thursday, October 11. Some media reports had indicated that Oshiomhole met with the nine Zamfara APC governorship aspirants in Abuja on the said day. Marafa, one of the aspirants in a statement issued on Friday, October 12, said he was not aware of the meeting. Agbor Man Lists President Buhari's Achievements - Nigeria Street Gist | Legit TV Source: Legit.ng - Aggrieved APGA aspirants failed to attend a reconciliation meeting called by the partys leadership in Anambra - The meeting was scheduled for 3pm at the partys secretariat in Awka, but was shunned by the aggrieved aspirants - According to one aggrieved aspirant, if the party's leaders are serious about the reconciliation, they should start by refunding their monies Aggrieved members of the All Progressives Grand Alliance (APGA) on Thursday, October 25, failed to attend a reconciliation meeting scheduled by the partys leadership in Anambra. The meeting was meant to pacify the aspirants who felt they were humiliated by the party during the recent primary elections in the state, NAN reports. Legit.ng gathers that there were widespread protests over alleged irregularities, extortion, wrongful disqualification, unfair playing field and favouristism during the primary election for most contested positions. The seeming disenchantment among party faithful led to the setting up of the Peace and Reconciliation Committee, headed by the partys vice presidential candidate, Chief Jerry Chukwueke. READ ALSO: Why restructuring Nigeria troubles me - Emir Sanusi The meeting, which was scheduled for 3pm at the partys secretariat in Awka, was shunned by the aggrieved aspirants. Some party supporters who were at the secretariat to witness proceedings, said the committee might have stayed away for fear of being attacked, as tempers were still high. Chief Norbert Obi, simply told anxious newsmen: There is nothing to say. One of the aspirants, who preferred anonymity, stated that he was not aware of the meeting. They did not tell me anything, I am not aware of it, he said. Another aggrieved aspirant said the only acceptable condition for reconciliation was refunding of fees paid to them. He threatened that they would fight back for the injustice done to them. What reconciliation are they talking about; reconciliation with whom? After extorting monies from us, they now say they want to reconcile us, how possible is that? If they are serious about the reconciliation, let them start by refunding our monies to us, then we will know they are serious, he said. PAY ATTENTION: Install our latest app for Android, read best news on Nigerias #1 news app Recall that Legit.ng previously reported that the venue of the Anambra South senatorial primary of the All Progressives Grand Alliance (APGA) was invaded by gunmen. The gunmen invaded the exercise, which took place at the Township Stadium, Ekwulobia, in the Aguata local government area of the state; disrupting it and scaring away delegates. The hoodlums were said to have been mobilised by a certain disgruntled senatorial aspirant. What does Nigeria need right now? - on Legit.ng TV: Source: Legit.ng - President Muhammadu Buhari is disappointed in the Nigerian press - Buhari says the media did not give his administration the credit for its achievements in the agricultural sector - The president added that food security has been achieved under the present administration President Muhammadu Buhari has expressed his dissatisfaction with the Nigerian press, saying he is disappointed in the latter. According to the president, the media did not give his administration the credit for the agricultural revolution that is currently going on in the country, Punch reports. READ ALSO: Why restructuring Nigeria troubles me - Emir Sanusi Legit.ng gathers that Buhari made his position known when he hosted some young political appointees to a dinner at the Presidential Villa, Abuja, on the evening of Wednesday, October 25. The president said: Im very disappointed in the Nigerian press. They didnt give this government the credit of the Go back to the land programme. We have cut down the importation of rice by at least 90 per cent." He said white collar jobs were being abandoned by Nigerians, who now embraced farming. According to him, food security has been achieved under the present administration. President Buhari noted the achievement of the minister of agriculture, Audu Ogbeh, who he said was appointed based on his antecedents. He said: Ogbeh went to a bank, borrowed money and invested in agriculture. He suffered but eventually, he paid the money. There was no power and they said they spent $16bn on power. Where is it (power)? PAY ATTENTION: Install our latest app for Android, read best news on Nigerias #1 news app Meanwhile, Legit.ng previously reported that following criticism of President Muhammadu Buhari by Atiku Abubakar Presidential Campaign Organisation, the social media aide to the president, Lauretta Onochie, listed 64 achievements of the president in the agricultural sector. Recall that the federal government was charged by the organisation to list its visible achievements since the APC took the mantle of leadership in 2015. Onochie took to her Facebook page on Thursday, October 11, to list the achievements, which included the initiation of Home Grown Feeding Programme by the president. She said the programme was designed to put an end to importation and market monopoly of farm produce that could be grown in Nigeria. Election 2019: President Buhari Proves He is Fit to Run in 2019 | on Legit.ng TV Source: Legit - Ahead of 2019, President Muhammadu Buhari has informed INEC that his credentials are in the custody of the military - In place of the credentials, Buhari is said to have submitted an affidavit, which he swore to - On his part, Atiku Abubakar submitted all relevant documents including his educational records and tax returns President Muhammadu Buhari has again failed to attach necessary supporting documents needed from candidates vying for the presidency in the 2019 general elections. According to Punch, the president informed the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) that his credentials were in the custody of the military. READ ALSO: Aggrieved APGA aspirants shun reconciliation meeting in Anambra Legit.ng gathers that the credentials of the various presidential candidates were made available to journalists on Thursday, October 25. However, Buhari is said to have submitted an affidavit, which he swore to. He stated: I am the above named person and the deponent of this affidavit herein. All my academic qualification documents as filled in my presidential form, APC/001/2015 are currently with the secretary of the military board as of the time of this affidavit. On his part, the presidential candidate of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP), Alhaji Atiku Abubakar, reportedly submitted all relevant documents, with a Diploma in Law in 1969 from the Ahmadu Bello University being his highest qualification. Atiku also attached tax returns indicating that he had paid N10.8m in tax from 2015 to 2017; and declared his income within the period as N60.2m. PAY ATTENTION: Install our latest app for Android, read best news on Nigerias #1 news app Meanwhile, Legit.ng previously reported that President Muhammadu Buhari said he is the only one contesting for the presidency in 2019 in the ruling All Progressives Congress (APC). The president made the comment during an interactive session with the Nigerian community in the United States. He reportedly stated: I am the only one contesting for presidency in APC, those who wanted to contest against me left for other parties, but I will meet them there. It's Buhari vs Atiku in 2019 - on Legit.ng TV: Source: Legit Nigeria There have been several reports on social media about womens underwear being used for ritual purposes. A young man has just come out to warn ladies about this evil act. He warned them to beware of how and where they spread their used panties in order to avoid being victims of an unfortunate circumstance. According to a viral video, the man explained that he decided to expose the booming business because of the woman in his life (his mother). He revealed that boys now make use of stolen panties for underground purposes because they want to be rich. Boys are now selling used underwear for N350,000 - Nigerian man warns ladies Source: UGC READ ALSO: Days after honeymoon unhappy bride flees with husbands money and properties He added that, once these guys get hold of any used female panties they sell it for N200,000. Adding that, anyone that has thick stains (discharge) or blood stain go for N350,000. Following this revelation, the young man then advised ladies not to spread their panties outside carelessly and to take a few when visiting their boyfriends/lovers because its risky and dangerous if one is secretly taken for the evil purpose. This man also claimed that this is one of the reasons why some ladies get married late and even become childless among other misfortunes that will befall them if their panties are used for the ritual purpose. Watch video below: PAY ATTENTION: Best love tips and relationship advice on Africa Love Aid group! Legit.ng earlier reported that the Ghanaian police in Ahanta West District of the Western Region is searching for the headmaster of Cape Three Point Catholic Primary School for allegedly defiling a 12-year-old pupil. May God help ladies! Peace Abiamuwe Story: I Make N1.5k From My Palm Kernel Business and Im Okay With It | Legit TV. Source: Legit.ng News - Senator Ovie Omo-Agege has said that no gang-up against APC national chairman, Adams Oshiomhole, would succeed - Some aggrieved APC governors have called for the resignation of Oshiomhole over the outcome of the party's primaries - But Omo-Agege said that he and other members of the party would resist any attempt to remove Oshiomhole as the chairman Senator Ovie Omo-Agege representing Delta central senatorial district in the Senate on Thursday, October 25, declared that nobody would remove Comrade Adams Oshiomhole as the national chairman of All Progressives Congress (APC), saying, We will resist it and it will fail. READ ALSO: Theres plot against Buhari within APC ahead 2019 elections - Amosun cries out Vanguard reports that he stated that Oshiomhole enjoys the support of President Muhammadu Buhari and power brokers in the presidency, while a reconciliation committee comprising leaders of the party would soon move out to dialogue with those still upset over the outcome of the primaries. Legit.ng gathered that Senator Omo-Agege, who spoke amid report that stakeholders of the party in the south-south, the home base of Oshiomhole, have begun search for his replacement, dismissed the move. However, an ex-APC presidential aspirant, Alhaji Mumakai Unagha, who spoke to journalists, confirmed the hunt for an acceptable and mature candidate to replace Oshiomhole. Unagha asserted: Gentlemen of the press, following the clarion call on the national chairman of the All Progressive Congress (APC), Adams Oshomhole to resign, we, APC stakeholders, in the south-south have commenced search for his replacement. Oshiomhole is no longer a saleable candidate, he is a bad product that cannot be hawked in the public market nor advertised. Whether the position of the national chairman will still come from Edo state for now I do not know as the immediate past chairman, Chief John Odigie-Oyegun, as well as the current chairman are all from Edo state. We are working within the time frame to come out with an acceptable and mature candidate that would savage the party and deliver it to victory in the 2019 general election. We, the stakeholders wish to assure APC faithful across board that hope is not lost yet as the party will come out stronger and deliver President Muhammadu Buhari in the forth coming election. READ ALSO: NAIJ.com upgrades to Legit.ng: a letter from our Editor-in-Chief Bayo Olupohunda We call on the national chairman to respect the wishes of the people by resigning since the clarion calls is also a no confidence vote on him. We also call on President Muhammadu Buhari to save the situation to relieve the chairman of the party so that he can face his corruption case or cases that are pending in courts. APC is a party of integrity and genuine change. APC is a party of integrity and genuine change, Unagha stated. Dismissing Unagha, Senator Omo-Agege said: I am not aware of any move to replace Oshiomhole and to the extent that there is any such move, it will fail. It will fail because I know that Oshiomhole enjoys the confidence of Mr. President, he enjoys the confidence of who is who in the Presidency. Yes there are lots of agitations and allegations flowing from the primaries. You will imagine that as a family that there are bound to be problems after the primary, it is the ability of the party to address the post-primary challenges that makes it strong or otherwise. I know that a reconciliation committee is about to be put in place and leaders are going to be reach out to those who are aggrieved, but I can tell you there is no legitimate move to go after Oshiomohles seat. I repeat, to the extent that it is being contemplated, we will resist it and it will fail. We are talking seriously and you are talking about people who do not matter in the party. For the major stakeholders, there is nothing like that, we are satisfied with the stewardship of Comrade Oshiohole. As I said earlier, yes there is bound to be agitation in every primary, it does not matter who is superintending over the primary, even if you bring an angel to conduct it, there will still be challenges, once again, it is the ability of Oshiomhole to rise above the post primary challenges and addresses it that matters. PAY ATTENTION: Install our latest app for Android, read best news on Nigerias #1 news app But I can tell you any move from the south-south or anywhere to remove Oshiomhole from that seat will be resisted and it will fail, he added. Meanwhile, Legit.ng had previously reported that the national chairman of the All Progressives Congress (APC), Comrade Adams Oshiomhole, is making strenuous efforts to reconcile aggrieved members, particularly governors, whose interest have been worked against during the party primaries. Nigeria Latest News: Buhari Reacts To APC Senators Betrayal | - on Legit.ng TV Source: Legit.ng - The DHQ has vowed to stop any person or group planning to cause mayhem in the country - Brigadier General John Agim, director of defence information, made this known in Abuja - Agim also advised those stockpiling weapons with the intention of causing havoc in the 2019 general election in the country to have a rethink The Defence Headquarters (DHQ), Abuja, has vowed to deal decisively with the leader of the Indigenous People of Biafra (IPOB), Nnamdi Kanu, over his threat to make Nigeria hell when he returns to the country. Daily Sun reports that the director of defence information, Brig-Gen. John Agim, gave the warning at a media briefing on the successes of military operations across the country in Abuja. According to him, Operation 777 is on and whoever that is coming to Nigeria with hell, Operation 777 will contend with the person, be it Nnamdi Kanu or any other person. READ ALSO: Man who climbed mast, undergoing psychiatric evaluation - Adamawa police Agim said: In the operation around the maritime areas, a total of 398 metric tonnes of stolen crude oil was recovered, 67,000 litres of illegally refined AGO, 126 reservoirs, 34 illegal refineries, 27 wooden boats and a quantity 101 of 100-litre drums of premium motor spirit were recovered and destroyed. Operation 777 is intended to energised our operations. I am happy to observe that various operations across the nation have assumed new vigour, which have recorded a lot of successes in the last few weeks. Operation 777 is running concurrently. The operation is also geared towards enhancing a conducive and stable environment for socio-economic activities and the safety of Nigerians, as well as preventing bandits and outlaws from escaping to other peaceful areas. Consequently, the operation is expected to raise the confidence of the public in the affected states, particularly, the IDPs to return back to their homes. The activities of troops are being conducted simultaneously in all the operations areas. It is focused on identifying and destroying bandits and other persons bearing arms against the Nigerian state. It is also to eliminate armed gangs and adversaries as well as conducting cordon-and-search operations to retrieve illegal arms and ammunitions. READ ALSO: NAIJ.com upgrades to Legit.ng: a letter from our Editor-in-Chief Bayo Olupohunda ''Furthermore, the operations will actively engage and sensitise the locals and the general public to cooperate with the military. In Benue state, for instance, Operation 777 has located the camp of one notorious criminal and cult leader by name Gana. We were able to neutralise more than 15 of his gang members, including his wife. Gana managed to escape, but our troops are on his trail. Sequel to this, many of the IDPs have started returning home. The chairman of Logo Local Government Area confirmed that 27,000 out of 34,000 IDPs at Anyiin IDP Camp have returned home. During the period under review, our gallant troops neutralised 35 criminals and a total of 98 suspected bandits/criminals were arrested and they are undergoing investigation and shall be handed over to the police for prosecution. The weapon seized include quantity five AK-47 rifles, 20 bows and arrows, 113 quantity of 7.62mm live ammunition, 20 live cartridges and four rifle magazines. PAY ATTENTION: Install our latest app for Android, read best news on Nigerias #1 news app Within the period also, 419 rustled cattle were recovered, 405 sheep and 101 goats were recovered and handed over to the various state committees established to return the animals to the rightful owners. In the operation around the maritime areas, a total of 398 metric tonnes of stolen crude oil was recovered, 67,000 litres of illegally refined AGO, 126 reservoirs, 34 illegal refineries, 27 wooden boats and quantity 101 of 100-litre drums of premium motor spirit (PMS) were recovered and destroyed. Regrettably, during these operations, the military suffered some casualties. Two soldiers were killed in action, two wounded in action. Equally, two soldiers were missing in action while one AK-47 rifle went missing in action. He, however, advised those stockpiling weapons with the intention of causing havoc in the 2019 general election in the country to have a rethink or have themselves to blame as the wrath of the law would be visited on them. Meanwhile, Legit.ng had reported that the Israeli government on Sunday, October 21, said it had no evidence about the appearance of the leader of the Indigenous People of Biafra (IPOB), Nnamdi Kanu in the country. The government said the pictures and videos showing Nnamdi Kanu praying in Israel could be old. The spokesman of the Israeli foreign ministry, Emmanuel Nashon, said there was no evidence that the leader of IPOB was in their country of recent. THE SCOOP: IPOB proscribed, Nnamdi Kanu vanishes, 2600 rifles from Turkey - On Legit TV: Source: Legit Nigeria - INEC has published the names of candidates contesting for 2019 presidential election - The commission also published the particulars of the candidates and their running mates - Vice president Yemi Osinbajo's name was published as President Buhari's running mate for 2019 elections The Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC), on Thursday, October 25, published the forms and particulars of presidential and National Assembly candidates of political parties submitted for the 2019 general elections. Daily Trust reports that names of 76 presidential candidates being sponsored by their political parties, including detailed information about their personalities were also published by the electoral empire. READ ALSO: No gang-up against Oshiomhole will succeed - Senator Omo-Agege declares Legit.ng gathered that it was the same for candidates vying for seats in the National Assembly. The forms/particulars which were for purposes of claims and objections ,were pasted at the offices of INEC in the Federal Capital Territory (FCT) as well as its offices across the federation. According of the newspaper, INEC reported that the lists were still being pasted at the entrance as at 8:30 pm. A senior official of the commission explained that what the commission did does not amount to the publication of the full list of candidates as that would be done by January 17 next year as provided in the time table and schedule of activities. READ ALSO: NAIJ.com upgrades to Legit.ng: a letter from our Editor-in-Chief Bayo Olupohunda A scrutiny of the particulars of candidates pasted at the FCT office of the commission showed that President Muhammadu Buhari is the candidate of the APC with Professor Yemi Osinbajo as his running mate; while Alhaji Atiku Abubakar is the candidate of the opposition PDP with former Anambra state governor, Peter Obi as his running mate. Others included Obadiah Mailafia as presidential candidate of the African Democratic Congress (ADC) with Professor Tanimowo Nasiru as his running mate. The forms and particulars of 22 candidates for the single FCT senatorial seat as well as 24 candidates vying for two House of Representatives seats were also displayed at the FCT office of INEC. Those contesting for the Senate seat were Zephania Jisalo (APC), Senator Philip Aduda (PDP), Esther Audu (ADC) and Eric Ibe (SDP). The forms indicated that the candidate for the House of Representatives for AMAC/Bwari is Lamorde Halilu (APC), Micah Jiba (PDP) while Ene Idoko-Abel is of the ADC. Other political parties whose candidates particulars/forms were displayed included the Zenith Labour Party (ZLP), KOWA party and the All Progressives Grand Alliance (APGA). PAY ATTENTION: Install our latest app for Android, read best news on Nigerias #1 news app Meanwhile, Legit.ng had previously reported that the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) would be announcing candidates for the presidential and National Assembly elections. Nigeria Latest News: Buhari vs Atiku - 2019 Elections | - on Legit.ng TV Source: Legit - The ruling APC continues to battle internal crisis regarding the upcoming 2019 general elections - The party supporters in Niger state are currently aggrieved over an alleged substitution of candidates - The supporters stormed the Niger state Government House to express their dismay over the situation A report by Channels Television indicates that a crowd of protesters blocked the road leading to the Niger state Government House on Thursday, October 25, accusing the All Progressives Congress (APC) of replacing their candidate. According to the report, the protesters said Jafaru Illiyasu Auna won the APC ticket to contest for the Magama/Mariga/Rijau federal constituency but he was replaced with Shehu Saleh, who had contested for Zone C senatorial ticket in the state. They alleged that the certificate of return given to Auna had been withdrawn by the national leadership of the APC. Over the last three weeks, there have been series of protests by APC supporters in Niger state over alleged interference by the national leadership of the party. This, the aggrieved supporters say, may negatively affect the partys chances in the 2019 general elections. PAY ATTENTION: Read the news on Nigerias #1 news app Similarly, some youths under aegis of Tudun Wada Youth Association (TWAA) on Sunday, October 21, in Kaduna took to the streets of the state and set hundreds of brooms ablaze to protest the decision of the party to deny Senator Shehu Sani a return ticket to the Senate in 2019. The protesters who marched through the streets of Kaduna South local government chanting anti-government songs, hurled curses on Kaduna state governor, Mallam Nasir El-Rufai, who they blamed for the senator's ordeal. The leader of the group, Abubakar Garba Musa, who spoke to journalists during the protest, said the governor subverted the will of the people and mounted pressure on the national chairman of the APC, Comrade Adams Oshiomhole to remove Senator Sani's name from the party's list of candidates for the 2019 elections. Nigeria News Today: No Lawmaker is in the House of Assembly for the People | Legit TV Source: Legit.ng - Nigerian Army has denied rumour that it cordoned off the NASS complex - It said its officers were at the complex upon reports that Shiite might storm the place - It urged the media to verify their stories before publishing Authorities of the Guards Brigade of the Nigerian Army (GBNA) has expressed in a statement made available on Wednesday, October 24, that the presence of Army operatives at the National Assembly was because of the intelligence report it received that the Shiite group wanted to overtake the complex. In a report available in Vanguard, assistant director, Army public relations, Captain Haruna Tagwai said the brave move was to forestall breakdown of law and public peace by the aggrieved set. Legit.ng gathers that the army also cautioned media organisations across the country to verify their stories before publishing them. READ ALSO: Why restructuring Nigeria troubles me - Emir Sanusi Tagwai said: "The report that soldiers were trying to take over the National Assembly is false and misleading. The Brigade wishes to state that troops of Guards Brigade Nigerian Army are routinely deployed within Abuja and environs on receipt of any intelligence report of mischievous elements that may want to cause mayhem. Therefore as part of the routine responsibilities of the Brigade, troops were deployed at the 3 Arm Zone of the Federal Capital Territory (FCT) based on an intelligence report of an invasion by the Islamic Movement of Nigeria to force their way into the zone, hence, troops were deployed to forestall any breach of peace and security. The Brigade wishes to state that media platforms should verify their stories before publication to avoid misleading the general public. The Nigerian Army is a professional organization that conducts its operations with international best practices. PAY ATTENTION: Download our mobile app to enjoy the latest news update Meanwhile, Legit.ng previously reported that there was a tight security at the National Assembly as some armed soldiers were reportedly seen manning strategic positions at the federal legislative complex on Wednesday, October 24. The soldiers numbering about 10, were spread across different locations of the National Assembly premises. Similarly, two armed soldiers were seen manning one of the entrance gates, while one each was placed at the car parks of both Senate president Bukola Saraki and speaker Yakubu Dogara. TY Danjuma, Nigerian army and the herdsmen crisis | Legit TV Source: Legit - Leaders of the APC in the southwest are strategising on ways to mitigate the incursion of the Atiku Abubakar into the zone - The PDP presidential candidate's wide acceptance across the zone is said to be unsettling leaders of the ruling party - The leaders are said to be planning a wining strategy ahead of the 2019 polls A report by New Telegraph indicates that governors and leaders of the All Progressives Congress (APC) in the southwest are currently strategising on ways to mitigate the incursion of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) presidential candidate, Alhaji Atiku Abubakar, into the zone ahead of the 2019 presidential election. According to the report, leaders of the APC in the zone are frantically pushing to put the post-primary crisis in some states behind it, come together in the coming days and plan a winning strategy that will guarantee the re-election of President Muhammadu Buhari, ahead of the PDP candidate. A leader in the ruling APC, who was quoted in the report under the condition of anonymity gave more details. READ ALSO: NAIJ.com upgrades to Legit.ng: a letter from our Editor-in-Chief Bayo Olupohunda His words: The Atiku challenge is real and we cant afford to take it for granted because south-west is where the swing votes reside. As we speak, the signals on the field are not cheering in almost all the six states of the south-west and that is why it is necessary for the party and the presidency to summon everyone and give a marching order on how to prosecute the elections. The reverse in the order of crisis we are having in the south-west is unfortunate. PDP used to be the party in crisis before now, but they are gradually shaking off that nomenclature. Currently, all is not well with our party in Ogun, Ondo, Lagos, Oyo and perhaps Osun. Unfortunately, this division is beginning to create in-roads for PDP and Atiku in the zone. His offer of Secretary to the Government of the Federation (SGF) has also emboldened his campaign in the zone. We cant afford to sleep on them because we learnt they are meeting different people and groups in the zone. READ ALSO: NAIJ.com upgrades to Legit.ng: a letter from our Editor-in-Chief Bayo Olupohunda In reaction, one of the governors in the zone is said to have warned traditional rulers in his state against partisan politics, stating that they are royal fathers and not politicians. It was gathered that the governor gave the directive to the traditional rulers following a proposed courtesy visit of some PDP leaders to select traditional rulers in the south-west next month. However, barring any last minute change, leaders of the PDP in the south-west are set to converge on Lagos on Friday, October 26, for a meeting. Aside from using the meeting to appraise the reports of primary elections conducted in the zone, the gathering is expected to chart a course for the 2019 election, appoint campaign teams and also deliberate on the proposal of Atiku to offer the zone the SGF slot. A source within the zonal executive of the party said: We are meeting in Lagos on Friday and we will be deliberating on many crucial matters, including the SGF offer by the presidential candidate. I dont want to pre-empt the meeting, but I know that the zone will still demand for more positions from the candidate. We have the second largest voting population after the North-West and I think that should be key to any form of negotiation. PAY ATTENTION: Read the news on Nigerias #1 news app Meanwhile, the PDP says it is yet to name further members of its campaign council for the 2019 presidential election. The national publicity secretary of the party, Kola Ologbondiyan, disclosed this in a statement sent to journalists on Wednesday, October 24. He urged all members to remain calm and await further announcement by the National Working Committee of the party on the final composition of the council. Nigeria Latest News: PDP Convention: Atiku Elected as Presidential Candidate | Legit TV Source: Legit.ng President George Weah of Liberia has declared the University of Liberia and all other public universities in the country tuition-free for all undergraduates. Legit.ng gathers that Weah took to his official Facebook page to make the announcement on Wednesday, October 24. He posted on Facebook that he was excited to make the announcement. See post below: READ ALSO: NAIJ.com upgrades to Legit.ng: a letter from our Editor-in-Chief Bayo Olupohunda Meanwhile, Legit.ng previously reported that Liberian president George Weah said on Monday, January 29, that he would seek to remove a racist clause in the countrys constitution that restricts citizenship to black people, and promises to cut his salary as the economic situation of the nation demands. In 1847, Liberia was founded by freed slaves from the United States, who effected the requirement into the constitution to create a refuge and a haven for freed men of colour. Weah noted in his first address to the nation that he believed this restriction was unnecessary, racist, and inappropriate for the place that Liberia occupies today in the comity of nations. He said that such restriction was unfit for Liberia's economic growth. PAY ATTENTION: Install our latest app for Android, read best news on Nigerias #1 news app In an previous report by Legit.ng, George Weah, the newly elected president of Liberia, was issued a certificate by the countrys electoral body after the October 10, 2017 elections and the subsequent December 26 runoff as a constitutional requirement to take over from Ellen Sirleaf Johnson. Weah and his deputy, Jewel Howard-Taylor, received their certificates at the NEC headquarters in Sinkor. About 66 other victorious politicians also got their certificates, according to the report, which said the official ceremony was performed by Jerome Korkoya, the NEC chairman. Benue IDPs: Education amidst crisis | Legit TV Source: Legit - Festus Keyamo has denied receiving money from NNPC to fund Buhari's campaign - Keyamo is the spokesperson for the campaign organisation seeking Buhari's re-election in 2019 - The human rights lawyer, however, said that the organisation would not depend on public purse to run its activities The spokesperson for the Muhammadu Buhari campaign organisation, Festus Keyamo, has denied collecting money from the Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation (NNPC) to run the publicity department of the organisation. Legit.ng gathered that Keyamo, who is also the campaign organisations director of strategic communications, said on Thursday, October 25, in Lagos that the organisation would not depend on public purse to run its activities. READ ALSO: Police halt Shiites procession in Kano In a statement copied to the News Agency of Nigeria, Keyamo said: Our attention has been drawn to fake news to the effect that I have received a large sum of money from the NNPC and submitted another budget to the same corporation to run the media and publicity department of the campaign. The story is a classic example of the many rots in the system that President Muhammadu Buhari is determined to address. Experience has taught that sharing of money does not win elections. We do not intend to go that route. We shall continue to showcase the achievements of President Muhammadu Buhari to convince Nigerians that he deserves a second term in office, the spokesman said. The senior advocate of Nigeria said that his participation in the campaign was part of his larger crusade for enthronement of an accountable government and true democracy. To me, this is not just a campaign but a crusade; hence, I came out of my shell to make a full-blown participation in the process. READ ALSO: NAIJ.com upgrades to Legit.ng: a letter from our Editor-in-Chief Bayo Olupohunda I am determined to make my little contribution to prevent those who looted our treasury in the past to establish `big businesses from staging a comeback to power. In the process, my hard-earned integrity will be guarded jealously. I have not, and will not go near the public purse; the campaign organisation will not do so either. This is a pledge before the Nigerian people by which we shall stand, he said.(NAN) Meanwhile, Legit.ng had previously reported that Festus Keyamo (SAN), the director of Buhari campaign organisation, recently said that Nigeria has the best-performing economy in Africa. PAY ATTENTION: Install our latest app for Android, read best news on Nigerias #1 news app Speaking with newsmen on Channels TV on Monday, October 15, Keymo said: I need to remind Nigerians about the GDP growth. Of the 11 countries that went into recession around the world, Nigeria has exceeded all of them in terms of GDP growth." Nigeria Latest News: PDP Convention - Atiku Elected as Presidential Candidate | - on Legit.ng TV Source: Legit Newspaper - Isaac Kosgey, a casual labour at a flower farm in Eldoret said his wife left their matrimonial home after a stint of association with controversial politician Jackson Kibor - Kosgey said Kibor had a habit of dropping his wife home with his high end vehicle - He said his wife had began behaving suspiciously and barred him from picking her from workplace A 38-year-old man from Eldoret in Kenya has accused a wealthy farmer and controversial politician Jackson Kibor of snatching his wife of 13 years. Isaac Kosgey claimed that his 30-year-old wife, Mercy Jepkemboi Sultan, had vacated their matrimonial home just a month after a stint of suspicious association with the old man. Isaac Kosgey 38 and his wife Mercy Jpkemboi Sultan. He accused farmer Jackson Kibor of snatching him the wife. Photo: TUKO.co.ke READ ALSO: It was gathered that Kosgey made a report at Eldoret police station on Thursday, October 25, indicating he feared for his life after the 83-year-old tycoon lured his wife away with regular lifts in his high-end vehicle. "There has been a problem in our marriage from September when my wife began behaving suspiciously. I had just bought a new motorbike and would pick her every evening from Eldoret town where she works in a pharmacy store . She said motorcycle rides were exposing her to cold," the man said. Kosgey added that he was not satisfied with his wife's reason to bar him from picking her up and was even worried when he realised her shoes did not have any mud when he came back from work despite being a rainy season. "A neighbor told me Mzee (Kibor) had been dropping my wife. One day I told my wife I would be late at work to which she did not object. I came back early and hid at my neighbour's place. I was shocked to see my wife being dropped at home by Kibor in his expensive car," he claimed. According to him, he was hurt to see all that unravel before his eyes especially as his wife insisted that the octogenarian was her client at work. Jackson Kibor denied any relationship with Mercy Sultan saying he only gave her a lift one day. Photo: TUKO.co.ke "She could not explain why Mzee was dropping her home. She walked away with her belongings the following day and later picked up our two daughters who are in Standard Six and Three secretly to an unknown place," said the man who works in a flower farm. An angry Kosgey said he would not follow up his wife vowing never to marry again but demanded he be refunded the dowry of two cows he had paid to Sultan's home. PAY ATTENTION: Get your daily relationship tips and advice on Africa Love Aid group Contacted over the allegations, the mother of two said her husband was an insecure and lazy man who could not provide for the family and spent most of his time spying on her. She said: "He has not even paid dowry to our home. It is sad that he cannot allow me to talk to anyone and has habit of checking my phone to see who I talk with. Kibor is our client and he just dropped me that day because we had closed shop and were going to the same direction." Mercy Sultan said her husband was lazy and was not providing for their family. Photo: UGC Kibor who recently confessed to the court he was polygamous when he successfullyfiled a divorce against his second wife, Josephine Chepkoech, laughed off the allegations saying he did not even know his accuser. "I just gave the lady a lift that one day and we were several people in the car. Is there anything wrong with giving somebody you know a lift? Let him provide evidence to prove I have snatched his wife. She is not in my house because I am married," the 83-year-old said. Kosgey alleged Kibor who had said he did not mind marrying a younger wife to add to three others had rented his wife of over a decade a house in an affluent estate in Eldoret. Nawa o! Peace Abiamuwe Story: I Make N1.5k From My Palm Kernel Business and Im Okay With It | Legit TV. Source: Legit.ng - Sectarian crises in parts of Kaduna state have forced residents to stay indoors - Government had imposed a curfew in the state to ensure peace - The popular Kaduna-Abuja train service has also been shut down The Kaduna-Abuja train shuttle service has suspended its operations due to the reinstatement of a 24-hour curfew by the Kaduna state government. The train service has been a viable alternative for passengers as the Kaduna-Abuja expressway has been a den of kidnappers and armed robbers in recent times. Passengers shuttling between Kaduna and Abuja have been using the train service despite a few hitches recorded like timing, ticket racketeering, slow movement and sometimes a halt in the operations. READ ALSO: NAIJ.com upgrades to Legit.ng: a letter from our Editor-in-Chief Bayo Olupohunda The Nigeria Railway Corporation has however suspended operations of the service for now. Following the tension generated by the killing of HRH Agom Adara by the criminals that abducted him, the Kaduna state govt has reinstated the 24-hour curfew in Kaduna metropolis, Kasuwan Magani, Kajuru, Kateri and Kachia, from 11am today, a short statement from the Governor Nasir El Rufai's office informed residents. The government had imposed a 24-hour curfew on the Kasuwan Magani community in Kajuru local government area of the state after crisis broke out in the area. The bloody riot had claimed the lives of 55 people on Thursday, October 18, according to the Nigeria police. PAY ATTENTION: Get the Latest Nigerian News Anywhere 24/7. Spend less on the Internet! Governor El-Rufai also promised that the perpetrators and sponsors of the crime would be made to face justice when he visited the area. We must live in peace and never use violence to solve a problem. We are not happy with this and government will pursue and punish those responsible for this devilish act, the governor said. Nigeria Latest News: Herdsmen Have Destroyed my Farm - Nigerian Investor in Plateau | Legit TV Source: Legit Nigeria - A new batch of stranded Nigerians was received from Libya on Friday, October 26 - The returnees numbering 149 were received by the National Emergency Management Agency - One of them says she regrets embarking on the journey, saying Nigeria is far better than Libya The National Emergency Management Agency (NEMA) has received another batch of 149 stranded Nigerians from Libya. The News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) reports that the returnees arrived at the cargo wing of the Murtala Muhammed International Airport, Lagos at about 1.20 am on Friday, October 26. Legit.ng gathers that they were brought back in a Buraq Airlines Boeing 737-8000 aircraft with registration number 5A-DMG by the International Organisation for Migration (IOM) under its Assisted Voluntary Return Programme. READ ALSO: NAIJ.com upgrades to Legit.ng: a letter from our Editor-in-Chief Bayo Olupohunda Ibrahim Farinloye, spokesperson for NEMA, southwest zone, said the majority of the returnees came back from Tripoli, the capital city of the volatile North African country. Farinloye said they comprised of 81 adult males, 56 adult females, two male children, eight male infants, one female child and two female infants. One of the returnees, Aminat Sunday, told newsmen that she worked as a maid during her stay in Libya, adding that she was lured to the country due to family burdens and persuasion from her trafficker. The 29-years-old lady who hails from Ifo local government area of Ogun state, said she regretted embarking on the journey as she had a very difficult experience in Libya. According to her, she paid her trafficker with her full year wages after arriving in Libya. She said: I was working as a housemaid cleaning tiles but the work made me to come back home because it is very stressful, tiring and have serious health problems on my body. To be sincere, Nigeria is far better than Libya, I have learned my lessons in wrong way but thank God I am still alive." PAY ATTENTION: Install our latest app for Android, read best news on Nigerias #1 news app She therefore advised other youths to learn from her experience and shun the urge of irregular migration in search of greener pastures. Meanwhile, Legit.ng previously reported that some Libya returnees on Tuesday, April 24, were at the Edo state government house in Benin City to protest the management of their stipend accounts by financial institutions where their accounts are domiciled, and related issues. The protest was peaceful and the issues raised were largely administrative such as N1,100 deduction for Automated Teller Machine card, maintenance fee and sundry issues. Nigerians speak on slavery in Libya - on Legit.ng TV Source: Legit.ng - Ibe Kachikwu has bagged multiple honours, including honorary citizenship of the State of Georgia in the US - Kachikwu, Nigeria minister of state for petroleum, said he dedicated the honours to President Buhari - He also thanked the president who gave him the opportunity to serve in various capacities The minister of state for petroleum, Ibe Kachikwu, was on Thursday, October 25, conferred with multiple honours, including honorary citizenship of the State of Georgia in the US. The News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) reports Kachikwu was also conferred with honorary doctorate degree by the Trinity International University of Ambassadors, and Keys to the State of South Carolina and City of Stonecrest, State of Georgia. The event, which held at the Capitol Hill of the state in Atlanta, also featured the declaration of October 25 as `Emmanuel Kachikwu Day by the State of South Carolina. Ibe Kachikwu flanked by House of Representatives members of the Geogia at the conferment of honorary citizenship of the State of Geogia on Kachikwu at the State Capital in Atlanta. Photo Credit: NAN Source: Depositphotos READ ALSO: APC will lose southeast without Okorocha - Imo aspirants declare The Black Caucus of the State Legislature, took turns to eulogise Kachikwus unimpeachable reputation for integrity, intelligence, fairness and kindness. The legislators, Gloria Butler, Michael Rheft, Donzella James, Roger Bruce, Billy Mitchel, Howard Mosby, Erica Thomas, Sandra Scotts, Pam Stevenson, Jason Lary, and John King, also expressed pride at their African heritage. The State of Georgia has the largest Black Caucus in the US hosting 60 members, and is described as the heartbeat of African-Americans, with about 3.2 million black population. Ms Dawkins Haigler, Chair Emeritus of the Black Caucus, and most of the other legislators, said they had done their ancestry tests, which confirmed that they were between 65 per cent and 85 per cent Nigerians. The lawmakers said they always knew they were Africans and were proud to identify with their motherland, adding that they had sponsored several trips to Nigeria. READ ALSO: NAIJ.com upgrades to Legit.ng: a letter from our Editor-in-Chief Bayo Olupohunda Responding to the awards, Kachikwu, who was visibly elated at the honours, said he was extremely humbled and dedicated the honours to President Muhammadu Buhari. Usually I dont lack words but today, I think I do by the happenstance of today. I think the award is fantastic but what I think is more important is the symbolism of the awards. The fact that citizens of the United States, especially our Black brothers and sisters, decided today to recognise a very humble nation that has nearly half of the population of Africa and command the great economic heights of Africa and is bound to be the leader of tomorrow in the world. That country is Nigeria; and for those of you who havent been there, you should be there; you should be in a hurry to get there. You will attest to the fact that it is only a matter of time before Nigeria finds its feet and finds its own and become a power to recognise. I thank President Muhammadu Buhari who gave me the opportunity to serve in various capacities that are bringing some of these awards today. Not only for his self belief but his determination as the leader to go outside the political mainstream and pick somebody he believed could help in the arduous task of trying to change the oil environment. It is still work in progress; theres still a lot of work to be done but were very committed. The problem with Nigeria isnt the disagreement that we have, it isnt the things that we have not achieved, it isnt the sometimes black sheep name that pervades all over the world about Nigeria, that is not the problem with Nigeria. PAY ATTENTION: Install our latest app for Android, read best news on Nigerias #1 news app So, today, the recognition that I get, I receive in honour of the President of the Federal Republic of Nigeria, President Muhammadu Buhari. Also, in honour of my colleagues who have worked very deeply with me and I think some of the things that weve achieved over the last three years, we didnt think were possible. Into the next five years, I see a Nigeria where there will be power available for all nationals, where our refineries will work so we do not have to import petroleum products, where young people can set up businesses and do not need to know anybody in the system to be able to make that business grow. Among the dignitaries who attended the event were the Permanent Secretary of the ministry, Folashade Yemi-Esan, Directors, heads of agencies of the ministry, Nigerian officials in the U.S., and members of the Nigerian community, among others. Meanwhile, Legit.ng had reported that the minister of state for petroleum resources, Ibe Kachikwu, faulted reports credited to him that the country had incurred a total of N1.4 trillion deficit due to importation of petrol. Kachikwu made this known in a statement issued on Monday, April 9, in Abuja by Idang Alibi, the director, press and public relations in the ministry. He said attention had been drawn to reports in which he was quoted to have said Nigeria presently incurs over N1.4 trillion till date as under-recovery or losses on the importation and sale of petrol. Nigeria News 2018: Is Nigeria Truly the Poorest Country in The World? Omisore Speaks | Legit TV: Source: Legit Barely 24 hours after being declared wanted by the police over the disappearance of an Army General, Mohammed Idris Alkali (retd), three suspects on Friday, October 26, voluntarily surrendered themselves to the Plateau state police command in Jos. A source said the other suspects were also ready to surrender themselves but were waiting to see how the persons who already surrendered to the police would be treated, The Punch reports. The three suspects voluntarily surrendered themselves to the police. If the police detain them, it will be difficult to get the others. But if they are granted bail, be assured that they will all appear before the police by next week, the source stated. READ ALSO: APC will lose southeast without Okorocha - Imo aspirants declare The suspects who surrendered to the police were the village head of Dura-Du District in Jos South local government area of Plateau state, Yakubu Rapp (52); youth leader of the community, Matthew Rwang (aka Amesco, 27); and a tipper driver, Timothy Chuwang (26). They were said to have arrived in the police command headquarters in Jos by 10am accompanied by the lawyer representing the community, Matthew Godfree. Legit.ng previously reported that the suspects were declared wanted after the mysterious disappearance of the former Army Chief of Administration. Alkali who was said to have disappeared in questionable circumstances was said to have retired a few weeks before he was declared missing on Monday, September 3, 2018, a day after gunmen swooped on Dura-Du and killed about 13 persons. PAY ATTENTION: Get the Latest Nigerian News Anywhere 24/7. Spend less on the Internet! About three cars were said to have been recovered from a mining pond in the DuraDu District during a cordon and search operation conducted by a team of soldiers led by the Garrison Commander of 3 Armour Division, Brig. Gen. Umar Mohammed. The suspects were sighted in the office of the Officer-in-Charge (Homicide Department). Godfree said the community was ready to cooperate with the police in their investigation. TY Danjuma, Nigerian army and the herdsmen crisis | Legit TV Source: Legit.ng News Nothing beats the excitement and happiness that comes with waiting for something for a long time and eventually getting more than what was expected. This especially concerns women who are looking for the fruit of the womb. Such is the case of a woman who has been married for 16 years without having a child. This expectant lady does not just count as any ordinary person. She is the wife to a chairman of the All Progressives Congress (APC). Her husband named Olorogun Cyril Abeye Ogodo is the head of the party's members in Delta state. For almost two decades, the man has been waiting to birth a child with his wife. As it happens, their wait paid off in the long run. Even more, they got more than what they expected as the wife to this APC chairman gave birth to a set of triplets! Wife of APC chairman delivers triplets after 16 years of waiting (photos) Source: Utseoritselaju Ayo/ Facebook Source: Facebook READ ALSO: Gov Amosun visits 67-year-old woman who delivers healthy baby after 40 years of marriage (photos) The family amazed at this unexpected line up of blessings have taken to taking pictures of their adorable triplets. However, it was a very close friend of the family who considered the chairman his political godfather that took to Facebook to share the news of the miraculous birth. The man identified as Utseoritselaju Ayo on Facebook was very excited at the news of the birth of the children so he took to expressing his joy. He did this via a caption he shared. He also posted the photos of the man, his wife and the three lovely newborns as well. PAY ATTENTION: Get the Latest Nigerian News on Legit.ng News App See his post below: "BREAKING NEWS... God has bless my able state chairman with a triple blessings. Congratulations to my Apc Delta State Chairman, and my political godfather, Olorogun Cyril Abeye Ogodo on the birth of your triplet sons. They both patiently waited for over sixteenth years. God indeed has been faithful to you Sire...in Him alone we return all the glory to. God give enough strength to your wife for the breastfeeding... Lol #TripleEjimeLol#" PAY ATTENTION: Love, relationship, marriage on Africa Love Aid Meanwhile, Legit.ng shared the story of a woman who has given birth to 44 children even though she is just 40 years old. The news about the lady has inspired quite a lot of Nigerians. NAIJ.com Upgrades to Legit.ng: Message from Goke Olaegbe Managing Director?/ Legit.ng TV Source: Legit - Chris Ngige has spoken about N30, 000 minimum wage proposal - Ngige said federal government and governors will discuss it on Monday, October 29, - He, however, noted that government will not fail to implement the No work, no pay rule. The minister of labour, Chris Ngige, declared that the Economic Management Team (EMT) and governors will meet on Monday, October 29, over the N30, 000 minimum wage proposal and other grey areas. The Nation reports that Ngige made this known on Friday, October 26, said no final decision has been taken by the government on the proposed N30, 000 minimum wage. The minister who disclosed this after meeting with President Muhammadu Buhari at the Presidential Villa, Abuja, insisted that the government will not fail to implement the No work, no pay rule. READ ALSO: Nigerian Army locates shallow grave where missing general was reportedly buried He further explained that the rule started under the administration of former president, Olusegun Obasanjo. Meanwhile, Legit.ng had reported that the minister of labour, Chris Ngige, said President Buhari is interested in the welfare of Nigerian workers and that will enhance their salary in the year 2018. Ngige who made this known in a chat with journalists at Ifitedunu, Dunukofia local government area of Anambra state, said a national tripartite committee set up by President Buhari on minimum wage had commenced work. PAY ATTENTION: Install our latest app for Android, read best news on Nigerias #1 news app According to him, We had our inaugural meeting on 14th December and we did a framework for our work. We will finish our job before the third quarter of this year, but we may finish earlier. President Buhari is monitoring it strictly, and I am monitoring it too. I wear a double cap as minister of labour, who is the regulator and also as the deputy chairman of the committee. Who should get higher salary - doctors or teachers? - on Legit.ng TV: Source: Legit - Babatunde Fashola urged Nigerian to vote for the Buhari administration in 2019 - The minister said the government has focused on infrastructural development - He said Jonathan conceded defeat because of the imminent recession The minister for power, works and housing, Babatunde Fashola, has said that Goodluck Jonathan conceded defeat to Muhammadu Buhari because he knew Nigeria would soon be plunged into recession. Premium Times reports that the minister made this statement on Thursday, October 25 at a South-west town hall meeting organised by the minister for information, Lai Mohammed, and held at the Emeritus Professor Theophilus Ogunlesi Hall in Ibadan, Oyo state. READ ALSO: Breaking: Nigerian Army locates shallow grave where missing general was reportedly The former governor of Lagos said after plunging the country into recession, the Jonathan administration then pushed the country into debt. He said: What was left behind were massive debts owed to contractors who had not been paid for three to five years and who had laid off thousands of workers and shut down equipment and plants. That was one of the reasons why the economy first went into, and, I suspect, one of the reasons they (Goodluck administration) quickly conceded defeat. Fashola explained that when the present administration assumed office in 2015, the three ministries previous budget was N19 billion for works, N5 billion for power, and N1.2 billion for housing making a total of N25.2 billion, as at when the country was selling oil at $100 per barrel in that decade. In 2017, the All Progressive Congress (APC) led administration budget for works was N394 billion; power was N69.96 billion and housing was N64.9 billion (total- N529 billion) and oil price hovered between $40-$60 per barrel. Let me start by saying that my ministry is responsible for delivering some of Nigerias critical infrastructure for transport, electricity and housing, he added. He commended President Muhammadu Buhari for showing seriousness in the area of infrastructural development. He said: In a country where the population is growing faster than the infrastructure, the difference between these budgets must tell you that this government is more serious about providing infrastructure to support you. Another feature of the difference between these two budget sizes is that the last government was spending less on infrastructure for almost one decade when oil prices stayed at $100 per barrel during that decade. This government is spending more on infrastructure when oil prices largely hovered between $40-$60. He urged Nigerians to either to vote in a government that spends more on infrastructure or a government that spent less on infrastructure. So, if you need more roads, more bridges, more power, more housing and the job opportunities and prosperity that their delivery will bring, your choice in the next election should be easier. Dont go back to a budget of N25.2 billion for infrastructure, move forward with a budget for infrastructure which has grown to N529 billion in 2018. So, in making your choice, please consider who is the better manager. The one who did less with more or the one who did more with less. Again I urge you to reflect. Do you want to go back to doing less with more, or move forward with doing more with less? PAY ATTENTION: Install our latest app for Android, read best news on Nigerias #1 news app Meanwhile, Legit.ng had earlier reported that the minister of power, works and housing, Babatunde Fashola, on Thursday, October 25, urged the people of southwest to vote for President Muhammadu Buhari in the 2019 elections to guarantee a return of power to the region in 2023. Nigeria Latest News: Buhari vs Atiku - 2019 Elections | - on Legit.ng TV Source: Legit Editor's note: Philip Agbese, a human rights law researcher based in the United Kingdom analyses the stir on the social media over the certificate of President Muhammadu Buhari. Agbese said politicians and political parties are at it again scheming on how to take over power or how to retain power in places where they are in charge, and therefore political shenanigans, propaganda, lies, outright falsehoods and even hate speeches are all on the increase at this time. Disclaimer: The views and opinions expressed here are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of Legit.ng. Your own opinion articles are welcome at info@corp.legit.ng drop an email telling us what you want to write about and why. More details in Legit.ngs step-by-step guide for guest contributors. Were ready to trade your news for our money: submit news and photo reports from your area using our Citizen Journalism App. Contact us if you have any feedback, suggestions, complaints or compliments. We are also available on Twitter. Elections are around the corner again. Politicians and political parties are scheming on how to take over power or how to retain power in places where they are in charge, and therefore political shenanigans, propaganda, lies, outright falsehoods and even hate speeches are all on the increase at this time. These are not the best times for those who value character and decency. I read somewhere some people are calling on INEC to disqualify President Buhari from contesting the 2019 general elections because he doesnt have his school certificate. Very laughable, how many times will they try the same old trick? President Buhari has been contesting elections since 2003. Between 2003 and now there have been four election circles Buhari has contested in all these elections. At no point was the issue of his WAEC certificate questioned until suddenly in 2015 as soon as he won his partys primaries. Those who knew he was unstoppable from there on, began to unleash different ludicrous propaganda after propaganda. From Buhari will Islamize Nigeria to Buhari is terminally ill, to Buhari has no certificate. All of their propaganda fell flat on their faces. READ ALSO: NAIJ.com upgrades to Legit.ng: a letter from our Editor-in-Chief Bayo Olupohunda Now that elections are around the corner, they have resurfaced again with the Buhari has no certificate propaganda. It will be a complete waste of effort this time as this election is going to be about issues and not propaganda. The election is going to be about track records of the different parties while in office. The people are going to be comparing the roads now and then, they will compare power supply now and then. The parents of the over 7 million schools pupils being fed every school day will compare now and then. The over one million most vulnerable poorest of the poor among us receiving 5000 Naira conditional cash transfer every month, the over half a million graduates receiving 30,000 Naira every month all of these people will compare the party in power now with the performance of those who left power in 2015. These are what the Nigerian people will be discussing in 2019 not some mundane propaganda, sponsored by some failed politicians who squandered the opportunity to better the lot of the people whilst they were in power. READ ALSO: Jubilation as Senate confirms Gbajabiamila as DG lottery commission Let me also use this opportunity to dismiss their lies. The constitutional requirement to run for office of the President are very clear and unambiguous. Section 131 (d) of the 1999 constitution states that: "A person shall be qualified for election to the office of the president if", subsection (d); "He or She has been educated up to at least school certificate Level or its equivalent". Many legal luminaries addressed this issue in the run up to the 2015 elections, so many legal opinions on this section. One of such that will help anyone interested in more clarity on this issue is the article written by the legal luminary Professor Taiwo Osipitan in the Guardian on the 26th of January 2015. He dealt extensively on the fact that the requirement was for such aspiring candidate to show evidence of education up to or even equivalent of school certificate. PAY ATTENTION: Install our latest app for Android, read best news on Nigerias #1 news app In the case that your certificate is missing like every other vital missing document an attestation letter can then suffice which INEC can confirm with the school. This is a very simple matter that some mischievous people hope to draw some political points from. President Buharis former school , Government College, formerly Provincial Secondary School Katsina released a statement that Buhari actually graduated from the school and that he wrote the School certificate Examination there. The school later went ahead to release the result to the public, including a copy of the result spread sheet showing other candidates who sat for same exam with their results as well. So what other evidence would the detractors of the President require before they are satisfied? In an interview granted to the punch newspapers on the 13th of November 2016, Chief Alex Ajayi. The octogenarian who was a former director at the West African Examination Council (WAEC) mentioned in the interview and I quote him I had the opportunity of issuing WAEC certificates to three former Heads of State; Buhari, Abacha and Babangida in the 60s. It is outright ridiculous and very mischievous to claim that President Buhari isnt educated up to school certificate level. A man that rose to the pinnacle of his career. A general in the Army . He has attended several courses across the different continents of the world. There are those who believe that the PDP might have sponsored some people to tamper with President Buharis documents with the army. If not, how could this suddenly just be an issue in 2015. The same forms he submitted to INEC 2003, 2007 and 2011 and this issue was not raised, then suddenly in 2015 his documents are missing. I am tending to believe in this line of thoughts by now. If not, how do you confidently wake up and then start accusing a retired general of the Nigeria army that he didnt attend secondary school. There must be something informing such confidence may be they know something we dont know. In 2015 whilst President Buhari and his party were out there campaigning, telling the people what they will do. I remember a Fani Kayode and his fellow party man Governor Ayo Fayose were busy selling propaganda to the people calling Buhari all sort of names. Rather than tell the people what they have done and what they intend to do better they rather preferred abuse and propaganda. We all saw what the outcome was President Buhari trumped them at the polls with a wide margin. The Nigerian people will have none of their nonsense any more. The Same thing is already playing out now. President Buhari as usual will not join issues with anybody. He has been focused on the job at hand, commissioning projects up and about the whole country, on the other hand those who are challenging to take over are not telling Nigerians what they will do better but want to start the nonsense they did the other time and lost, again. The propaganda that could not save them whilst in power is not likely to get them back to power now that they are out. Nigerians are interested in real issues that affect them daily. Not mundane propaganda about President Buharis health or certificate. Nigeria Latest News: Buhari vs Atiku - 2019 Elections | - on Legit.ng TV Source: Legit The Chairman of the Independent National Electoral Commission, Mahmood Yakubu, has held a meeting with the Chief of Staff to President Muhammadu Buhari, Abba Kyari. The Punch reports that the meeting was held behind closed door on Friday, October 26. READ ALSO: Breaking: Nigerian Army locates shallow grave where missing general was reportedly buried The meeting lasted for 30 minutes after which the INEC chairman left without disclosing the details of the meeting. President Muhammadu Buhari will be seeking a second term on the platform of the ruling All Progressives Congress. There are assumptions that the meeting may be related to the publication made by INEC on the profile of presidential candidates which showed that the president indicated that his WAEC certificate was with the military board. Meanwhile, the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) on Friday, October 26, said it received nominations from 79 political parties for the 2019 presidential election and 6,352 for the National Assembly. INEC chairman, Prof. Mahmood Yakubu disclosed this while addressing newsmen in Abuja on update on the implementation of activities for the 2019 general elections. The breakdown of the nominations for NASS according to Yakubu, is 1,856 nominations for the 109 Senate seats, and 4,496 nominations for the House of Representatives with 360 seats. Answering questions on the Supreme Court judgment on the All Progressives Congress (APC) Rivers State chapter primaries, Yakubu said that INEC was still awaiting the full text of the judgment to determine its next action. Also asked of update on INEC decision that APC Zamfara could not file in candidates for NASS elections, Yakubu said that the matter was still in three High Courts. PAY ATTENTION: Get the Latest Nigerian News Anywhere 24/7. Spend less on the Internet! However, INEC did not receive any submission from APC Zamfara state. I will not say more than that because the matter is still in court. He said that three out of the outlined activities toward the 2019 general elections had been implemented starting with the publication of official notice for the elections. Nigeria Latest News: PDP Convention: Atiku Elected as Presidential Candidate | Legit TV Source: Legit - Nigeria police say it is ready to partner with Innoson Vehicle Manufacturing Co. Ltd. for the production of Armoured Personnel Carriers (APC) - The police also called on other organisations to support the locally made vehicles - On his part, Governor Willie Obiano of Anambra praised the ingenuity of the company amidst apparent challenges in the industry The Nigeria Police Force has expressed readiness to partner with Innoson Vehicle Manufacturing Co. Ltd. for the production of Armoured Personnel Carriers (APC) to assist in crime fighting. The inspector-general of police, Mr Ibrahim Idris, expressed the readiness on Friday, October 26, at the inauguration of IVM Granite vehicle, 2019 edition manufactured by the indigenous company in Nnewi, Anambra. READ ALSO: Nigerian Army locates shallow grave where missing general was reportedly buried Idris commended Innoson for providing camouflaged vehicles for the Nigerian Army to tackle insecurity. Idris, who was represented by the Deputy Inspector-General in charge of Logistics and Supply, Mr Agboola Oshodi-Glover, also called on other organisations to support the locally made vehicles. Innoson is making history. This type is rare. I congratulate you and want to assure you that police will give you all the necessary supports you need. But you need to commence production of Armoured Personnel Carriers to enable the police tackle insurgents and other security challenges in the country, he added. Also, Governor Willie Obiano of Anambra praised the ingenuity of the company amidst apparent challenges in the industry. I am happy this is happening in our state. Its only here that were manufacturing vehicles. Others travel to other countries and gather parts to assemble in Nigeria, he said. Obiano, however, expressed regret that the epileptic power supply in the state had hampered some production capacity of the company. The governor urged the federal government, as a matter of urgency, to provide adequate power supply and enabling environment for maximum productivity. He also appealed to state and Federal Governments to commence placing orders on the vehicles produced by IVM. With what Innoson is doing, he is contributing immensely to the nations GDP and should be encouraged to do more, Obiano, who was represented by his deputy, Dr Nkem Okeke, added. Earlier, the chairman of Innoson Vehicle Manufacturing Company, Chief Innocent Chukwuma, said the companys major strength depended on its ability to produce according to clients specifications. The fact that the Nigerian Police vehicle operate in diverse and dangerous terrains as a result of its functions, Innoson vehicles can produce specific operational vehicles that will meet the operational requirements of the Nigerian police. This pick up is built for our roads and its in line with the latest generation of international brands of high end pick up, he said. PAY ATTENTION: Read the news on Nigerias #1 news app Legit.ng had reported that Nigerias first indigenous vehicle manufacturing company, Innoson Vehicle Manufacturing Ltd is to commence the manufacturing of affordable and quality vehicles in Nigeria as from January 2018. Can Nigeria's first ever locally built helicopter fly? - on Legit.ng TV Source: Legit.ng A woman is accused of lying about a Bethlehem traffic stop and dash cam footage of the incident proves she lied, police said. Theresa Sokoloski claimed officer William Marques was abusive when he questioned her, used profanity, and "treated her like a drug dealer because she did not know her boyfriend's address," according to police. On Friday, Bethlehem police planned to file a charge of unsworn falsification to authorities against Sokoloski, of the 3200 block of Farmersville Road in Bethlehem Township, Pa. The 37-year-old Sokoloski will be charged via a mailed summons. A phone number for Sokoloski or her address could not be located. Bethlehem police said Sokoloski was cited after failing to stop at a stop sign the morning of June 14 in the city. Marques stopped the 2017 Honda at East Fourth and Emery streets. The stop was recorded by the dash cam in Marques' cruiser, as well as from cameras from two other police vehicles, police said. The videos also have audio recordings of the stop. On June 27, Sokoloski went to Bethlehem police headquarters and filed a civilian complaint against Marques. She said she received a bench warrant in the case because the officer incorrectly filed the citation -- including having the wrong location. The complaint, which Sokoloski signed, indicates the information is submitted as true under penalty of law. An internal investigation conducted by Bethlehem police officers Sgt. John Lamana and Sgt. Robert Urban found Sokoloski did not stop at the intersection. Marques did not use any profanity, was not abusive to Sokoloski and the citation was filed correctly and on time, police said. The bench warrant was issued due to Sokoloski not responding to the citation as required by law, police said. Records show Sokoloski pleaded guilty Aug. 3 to failing to stop at a stop sign. "If a civilian complaint is investigated and it is found that the officer was wrong, that officer will be held accountable. If a civilian complaint is investigated and it is found out that the citizen made false statements, that citizen will be held to the same standard and will be held accountable," Chief Mark DiLuzio said in a news release. "The officer was found to have acted in a manner appropriately to his job function." Sarah Cassi may be reached at scassi@lehighvalleylive.com. Follow her on Twitter @SarahCassi. Find lehighvalleylive.com on Facebook. An explosive "pipe-bomb" style device similar to those targeting Democratic politicians and activists critical of President Trump was sent to the Camden office of U.S. Sen. Cory Booker, D-N.J., NJ Advance Media has learned. Booker has been both a frequent and vocal critic of Trump, as well as a putative 2020 Democratic challenger to replace him. The package containing the explosive device was intercepted at a South Florida U.S. Postal Service center mail sorting facility in Opa-locka, according to a source familiar with the investigation, which is on-going. The Opa-locka facility handles packages mailed from Broward, Miami-Dade and Monroe counties. An FBI spokeswoman in Washington, D.C., confirmed that the explosive device addressed to Booker was intercepted in Florida, but declined to be more specific about the location. Investigators have been searching coast to coast for the culprit and motives behind the bizarre mail bomb plot aimed at critics of the president, analyzing the innards of the crude devices to reveal whether they were intended to detonate or simply sow fear two weeks before Election Day. Three more devices were linked to the plot Thursday -- two addressed to former Vice President Joe Biden and one to actor Robert De Niro -- bringing the total to 11 in an outbreak of politically loaded menace with little if any precedent. Authorities warned there might well be more. Law enforcement officials told The Associated Press that the devices, containing timers and batteries, were not rigged like booby-trapped package bombs that would explode upon opening. But they were uncertain whether the devices were poorly designed or never intended to cause physical harm. A search of a postal database suggested at least some may have been mailed from Florida, one official said. Investigators are homing in on a postal facility in Opa-locka, Florida, where they believe some of the packages originated, another official said. The officials spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to discuss the ongoing investigation by name. Homeland Security Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen, in an interview Thursday night with Fox News Channel, acknowledged that some of packages originated in Florida. New details about the devices came as the four-day mail bomb scare spread nationwide, drawing investigators from dozens of federal, state and local agencies in the effort to identify one or more perpetrators. The targets have included former President Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton, CNN and Rep. Maxine Waters of California. The common thread among them was obvious: critical words for Donald Trump and frequent, harsher criticism in return. Trump claimed on Friday he was being blamed for the mail bombs addressed to his critics, complaining in a tweet sent before dawn: "Funny how lowly rated CNN, and others, can criticize me at will, even blaming me for the current spate of Bombs and ridiculously comparing this to September 11th and the Oklahoma City bombing, yet when I criticize them they go wild and scream, 'it's just not Presidential!'" The Associated Press contributed to this report. A worker at the Wanaque Center for Nursing and Rehabilitation described filthy conditions and widespread mismanagement at the facility where a viral outbreak has claimed the lives of seven children and infected at least 11 others. The worker said the conditions at the facility have to "play a part" in the outbreak. The worker requested anonymity because of concerns about retaliation from the facility's leadership for speaking out. The state Department of Health is conducting an investigation into the deadly outbreak of adenovirus earlier this month at the facility in Haskell. But as the investigation continues, the worker gave an inside look into the facility, which the worker described as "filthy." The descriptions echo those of a mother of a seriously ill 1-year-old who had been living at the Wanaque Center. On Wednesday, she told NJ Advance Media about months of unsanitary conditions she said her son was living in -- including bug-infested rooms -- while he was receiving care at the facility. A photo taken in early October of a crib in a room of the pediatric unit at the Wanaque Center for Rehabilitation and Nursing, in Haskell, where a parent said her 1-year-old son had been receiving long-term care. "I've never seen anything like this," said the worker. The worker went on to describe dirty rooms, old and rusty equipment, mold, poor upkeep and managers apparently indifferent to concerns raised by staff for years. "The facility is filthy," the worker said. "(There would be) bees sometimes coming in the patients' rooms." The worker said "either the equipment is rusty or malfunctioning." The worker blames the problems at the facility on the management that took over about four years ago. Since then, the worker said, the focus has been on cutting costs and reducing staff wherever possible. In 2014, the Wanaque Center was taken over by Continuum Healthcare LLC, of Marlton, which operates six other facilities in New Jersey and at least two in Pennsylvania. The Wanaque Center is a 227-bed, for-profit facility that has a pediatric unit for medically fragile children who often need continual monitoring and treatment. A photo taken in early October of equipment in a room of the pediatric unit at the Wanaque Center for Rehabilitation and Nursing, in Haskell, where a parent said her 1-year-old son had been receiving long-term care. In its most recent health inspection report, the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services gave the facility a "below average" rating. The 2017 report said the facility "failed to ensure infection control practices were followed." The worker said that state health officials conducted a visit to the facility in August and told employees that a carpet had to be removed immediately because of its dirty condition. The carpet remained, the worker said. The worker further charged that the facility's managers only seemed concerned about cleanliness when they knew health officials were coming for an inspection. "(These patients) deserve to be taken care of," the worker added. "They aren't even getting a quarter of what they are paying for." Rowena Bautista, administrator for the Wanaque Center, had told NJ Advance Media in a statement that the facility "promptly notified all appropriate government agencies when the virus was initially identified." A Philadelphia-based media relations company issued a statement on behalf of the facility late Thursday afternoon saying, "Our thoughts are with the families and loved ones impacted by this tragedy." The company, however, did not address the allegations of the worker who spoke to NJ Advance Media. The statement added that the facility has taken "a number of key steps to support this grieving community and our families," including offering grief counseling to anyone impacted and "working side-by-side with medical experts from the Department of Health and the CDC (Centers for Disease Control and Prevention), and will be in constant contact with them until this issue is fully resolved." Spencer Kent may be reached at skent@njadvancemedia.com. Follow him on Twitter @SpencerMKent. Find the Find NJ.com on Facebook. Have information about this story or something else we should be covering? Tell us. nj.com/tips Northampton County District Attorney John Morganelli at 11 a.m. Friday in Easton will announce criminal charges in a death case, according to a news release. The charges are the result of a county grand jury investigation and presentation, but he did not specify which case. While Morganelli declined to take questions about the case prior to the event, on Monday the district attorney held a news conference to talk about three local deaths from lookalike drugs sold on the street. People thinking they were buying painkillers such as Percocet actually received fentanyl and heroin, Morganelli said. Charges were expected soon. Assistant District Attorney William Blake, who oversees the grand jury, was part of Monday's presentation, which was planned to warn the public about the lookalike drug sales. A Lower Nazareth woman and two Bethlehem men have died, Morganelli said. It was not immediately clear if any of these deaths will be the focus of Friday's charges. Coverage is planned of the 11 a.m. event and a new post will follow. Tony Rhodin may be reached at arhodin@lehighvalleylive.com. Follow him on Twitter @TonyRhodin. Find lehighvalleylive.com on Facebook. A man robbed a BP gas station about 7:50 p.m. Thursday in Pohatcong Township, police report on Facebook. Authorities did not say what weapon the man used in the armed robbery at 1204 Route 22 or if he got away with cash. The robber is described as white, 5 feet 10 inches to 6 feet tall and weighing 200 to 220 pounds, township police said. He was last seen walking toward Phillipsburg Mall, which is next to the station, police said. Police released a surveillance image. If anyone has any information on the crime of the robber, they are asked to call police at 908-454-9836. Tony Rhodin may be reached at arhodin@lehighvalleylive.com. Follow him on Twitter @TonyRhodin. Find lehighvalleylive.com on Facebook. Many tributes have been paid tonight to Electric Picnic founder and music promoter John Reynolds who died suddenly at his home earlier today. He was the founder of the Electric Picnic music festival and once owned the POD nightclub on Harcourt Street in Dublin. Jerry Fish said: "Shocked to hear the sad and tragic news that John Reynolds has passed away. My love and condolences to close friends and family. The magic he created in the world of the Irish music festival speaks for itself, thought JR would be around for many years to come." Deputy Editor of Hot Press, Stuart Clark, said he was "shocked & saddened by the death of John Reynolds who brought the boutique festival to Ireland. "I loved his passion and willingness to take a risk. He was so proud - and justifiably so - of launching the All Together Now Festival this year. John will be sorely missed." Former Green Party TD and Senator Dan Boyle tweeted, "Shocked to hear of the death of John Reynolds at such a young age. His promotion of Electric Picnic has impacted on lives of thousands of people in the country. RIP." In a statement released on Thursday evening, his family confirmed he died suddenly at his home. It is with great sadness that the Reynolds family confirm the sudden death of John Reynolds of POD this evening. John aged 52 years, who was one of Irelands leading independent festival and concert promoters, died suddenly at his home in Milltown, Dublin. Funeral arrangements will be announced in the coming days. "The family requested privacy at this time. "Metropolis Festival will go ahead this Saturday 27th and Sunday 28th October as scheduled in the RDS, Dublin." In addition to the Electric Picnic festival and the POD, John ran the Red Box club on Harcourt Street and he was also the driving force behind Dublin's Forbidden Fruit and Vinyl festivals. This year he launched a new festival weekend, All Together Now, through his promotions company POD at Curraghmore House, Co Waterford. Tributes have been pouring in a social media; Very very sad news about the sudden death of visionary concert promoter John Reynolds - RIP pic.twitter.com/8NrevYX2Z8 Ian Dempsey (@IanDempsey) October 25, 2018 Just heard about John Reynolds, my condolences 2 his family & friends. U may not have heard of John before, but if u've been 2 Electric Picnic, Forbidden Fruit, shows at Pod Venues in dublin, then u know John's work. He gave me a lot of shows when i was starting out. So sad. RIP JamesVincentMcMorrow (@jamesvmcmorrow) October 25, 2018 Hard to take in the news tonight of the passing of John Reynolds. A true giant of Irish Music, he shaped many of our best loved festivals and music venues and raised the bar for live music. Deepest sympathies to all his family and friends. Whelan's (@whelanslive) October 25, 2018 Very sad to hear of John Reynolds passing. He was a really good guy who put on so many amazing events - starting @EPfestival 14 years ago, then @ForbiddenFFest , Altogether now and this wkends Metropolis fest. RIP John https://t.co/v04qp0TVly HamsandwicH (@Ham_Sandwich) October 25, 2018 Dreadfully sad news about an old pal John Reynolds. A beautiful person. As resident DJ in his family's Longford nightclub, Blazers, I truly enjoyed working with him throughout his college years. Rest Peacefully, John https://t.co/kZzpLydRM3 Liam Tuohy (@djleejt) October 25, 2018 Deeply shocked to hear the news about John Reynolds. He commissioned many pieces off me over the years and was only in my home a few months ago, such a lovely man, rip John #JohnReynolds #RIPJohnReynolds #ThePod Niall O'Loughlin (@nialloloughlin) October 25, 2018 The care & attention to detail that John Reynolds put into everything - his clubs, pubs, small gigs, big gigs & of course festivals was something else. The POD was magic, those early years of @EPfestival were incredible & @ATNfestival was magic in the making. RIP John & thank you Ronan Casey (@ronan_casey) October 25, 2018 As I've gotten older I take it as a compliment now that #johnreynolds once thought me too young to be in the #Pod one night even though I was of age! Sorry to read this news this evening. Sincere sympathies to his family & friends. https://t.co/xqR1M6NAzD Nuala Carey (@nualacarey25) October 25, 2018 Saddened to hear of the death of John Reynolds. One of the first gigs he promoted was The Stunning in Moate, Co. Westmeath around 1993. He changed the face of festivals in Ireland with #ElectricPicnic & was about to do it all again with #AllTogetherNow. RIP. The Stunning (@TheStunningBand) October 25, 2018 RIP the wonderful #JohnReynolds a talented innovator who made gigs and festivals a better experience for music fans in Ireland. And what a fan himself. Who else would put the Blue Nile on the main stage at The Electric Picnic? #RIPJohnReynolds pic.twitter.com/7qwm4Oa8k6 Ken Sweeney (@KenSweeney) October 25, 2018 A 19-year-old man who stole tools from vans in Emo has been sentenced to ten months in jail, with the last four suspended. Thomas McDonagh (19), with an address at 5 St Brigids Lawn, Porterstown Road, Co. Dublin, was charged with two counts of criminal damage, and theft, at Gate House, Emo, on December 15 last year. Inspector Ollie Baker gave evidence that on December 15, 2017, a vehicle was spotted acting in a suspicious manner at The Rock, Mountmellick. It was stopped by gardai and stolen property to a value of 4,900 was found in the vehicle. Three people, including the accused, were in the vehicle and were arrested. The accused made admissions to the gardai that he had broken into two vans and stolen the tools, causing damage to the vans. One van was damaged to a value of 450 and the other to a value of 120, Insp Baker told the court. The accused had 17 previous convictions. In ruling, Judge Catherine Staines said it was a serious crime to steal tools from two vans, tools which were needed by people to do their jobs. She said fortunately the tools were recovered, but the offence meritted a custodial sentence. She acknowledged the accuseds very tragic life and said that presumably the theft was carried out to pay for drugs. The judge imposed ten months in prison, with the last four months suspended for the accused to remain under probation supervision for 12 months. EuroMillions fever is gripping Ireland as tonights jackpot soars to a life-changing 70 million. As people go to the polls today to cast their vote in the Presidential election Irish EuroMillions players have an opportunity to give their first preference to be in with a chance of winning the mega jackpot and to be one of ten lucky winners to share in the EuroMillions Ireland Only Raffle top prize of a cool 1 million and to win 100,000 each. A National Lottery spokesperson said today that the National Lottery is delighted to be giving players a chance to share in this mega Ireland Only Raffle prize. The EuroMillions jackpot is rolling high and there is huge excitement all over Ireland with an amazing 70 million at stake. In addition ten of our players have a unique chance to share in a guaranteed 1 million from tonights EuroMillions Ireland Only Raffle. "This is a lovely amount of money for ten of our players to win with only eight weeks to Christmas! In addition to the normal raffle prize of 5,000 this Friday raffle winners will also share on million euros - meaning a total of 100,500 each for ten lucky players. So after they cast their vote for our next President they can join the poll to land a nice windfall. Ireland has had the rub of the green this year when it comes to EuroMillions with 26 players to date landing the top prize in EuroMillions Plus of 500,000. Here is the roll call of the lucky thirteen Irish EuroMillions jackpot winners to date: July 2005: Dolores McNamara from Limerick, was Irelands first and biggest EuroMillions winner scooping over 115 million. July 2008:A lucky player from Co. Tipperary won a 15 million jackpot with a ticket bought in Carrick-on-Suir in Co. Tipperary. June 2009:A family syndicate shared the jackpot with a British winner, taking home over 29.4 million with a ticket they purchased in Dublin. June 2013:A winning ticket sold in Beaumount, Dublin, shared a EuroMillions jackpot worth over 187 million. A Dublin player earned half of the jackpot and picked up over 93 million. September 2013: A young man from the South East shared a jackpot of over 25 million with a player in Spain, taking home over 12.8 million. April 2014: A jackpot prize worth 15 million was claimed on a ticket sold in Castlebar, Co. Mayo. September 2014: An 86.7 million jackpot was won by a syndicate from Dublin. The ticket was sold in Centra, Ballybrack, Co. Dublin. January 2016: A syndicate of friends won over 66 million, splitting the jackpot of 132,376,632. The ticket was sold in Easons store, Fairgreen Shopping Centre, Carlow. July 2016: 22 colleagues from Dublin Bus won the 23.8 million. The ticket was sold in OHanlons Portarlington, Co Laois. January 2017: A Dublin work syndicate claimed the 88.5 million EuroMillions jackpot. The winning ticket was sold at the Applegreen Service Station on the M1 Northbound in Lusk, Co. Dublin. July 2017: A syndicate from the West of Ireland won a 29 million EuroMillions jackpot. The ticket was sold in Garryduff XL Store on Pound Road, Castlebar in Co. Mayo. December 2017: A small family syndicate from Dublin won 38.9 million on a ticket purchased in The Village Shop in Malahide Shopping Centre. In June 2018: 32 colleagues from Stakelums Hardware store in Thurles Co. Tipperary share a 17 million EuroMillions jackpot with a ticket they purchased at Easons Store in Thurles Shopping Centre in Co. Tipperary. The Shackleton Autumn school which will take place this weekend in Athy is now in its 18th year. Shackleton fans from far and wide including America, New Zealand, and Europe are expected to attend this years four day programme from Friday, October 26 to Monday, October 30. There are 29 people coming from Norway, said Sinead Cullen with the Shackleton museum in Athy. We even had people from India one year. It is great for the fans as they get to meet up at all the polar events and they get to meet some of his family. Alexander Shackleton comes every year as well as the artic explorer Jonathan Shackleton. This is a major event of the year for them. According to Sinead the local economy also benefits from the school with hotels and B&Bs booked out months in advance. This year visitors can also expect a new exhibtion on Shackleton which will be on loan from the Fram musuem in Norway, called Exploring Shackleton. The exhibition was devised and created by the Fram Museum in Oslo and focuses on the life and expeditions of Shackleton. It charts his whole life from his birth in Kilkea, Athy to his death and all the various expeditions in between. The programme for this year includes a master class with sculptor Mark Richards who created Athys Shackleton statue and a book launch by author Shane Mc Corristine of his latest work The Spectral Arctic: A History of Ghosts and Dreams in Polar Exploration. There will be several lectures on the Artic on both Saturday and Sunday. These include Lessons from the Artic: How Amundsen won the race to the South Pole; Stories from the Frozen Deep; and What the sea floor can tell us about the great ice sheets and Isolation; working and wintering in Antarctica. A film will be shown on Sunday called Ice and the Sky at 3pm. This documentary follows the story of the French Scientist Claude Lorius who participated in 22 expeditions to the polar region since the 1960s. Claude is a long time campaigner about global warming and in this film he reflects on his scientific endeavours. That evening a one man show called Shackletons Carpenter will be performed at 8pm by Malcolm Rennie. It tells the story of Harry McNish, the carpenter on Shackletons ill fated ship Endurance. SEE ALSO: Naas music session this weekend The Minister for Rural and Community Development, Michael Ring TD, has today (Friday) announced a allocation of 79,591 for Kildare local roads as part of a 10 million for Local Authorities under the Local Improvement Scheme (LIS). Minister Ring said: "The Local Improvement Scheme provides funding to improve small roads and lane ways in rural Ireland that are not under the normal maintenance of the County Councils. The scheme has made a huge impact on many people living in rural areas by improving the roads they use every day to access their homes and farms, as well as important local amenities such as graveyards and beaches. Meanwhile an additional 600K for road repairs in Kildare has been allocated under the Special Maintenance Grant to repair storm damaged roads. Extreme weather events over the last year, such as Storm Eleanor, Storm Emma, flooding incidents and the summer drought have had a major impact on the regional and local road network. These events combined with the extended period of reduced funding for road maintenance following the economic downturn have left the road network much more vulnerable to damage. This additional funding will ensure as far as possible, the provision of a safe and efficient network of national, regional and local roads in Kildare. Senator Anthony Lawlor welcomed the funding. "Roads throughout Kildare need repair and all road users need safe roads on which to travel," he said. "The adverse weather last winter damaged rural roads in particular impacting local farmers and residents. I want works completed before weather and road conditions become a concern again this year. This funding is part of this governments commitment to our transport network and regional development as announced in the National Development Plan 2018-2027. The National Development Plan demonstrates this Governments commitment to meeting Irelands infrastructure and investment needs over the next ten years. Kildare will become increasingly more important as Dublin maxs its potential for growth. SEE ALSO: Traffic protest in Kill Gardai have sealed off premises on the Laois Kildare border which its believed was operating as an organised crime 'chop shop' for stolen cars. A man, who is aged in his early 30s but not local, was arrested on Thursday morning, October 24 in the Ballylinan area of east Laois on the Castlecomer road. He was detained at a location where Gardai believe stolen cars and other vehicles were being disassembled for the purpose of selling on part possibly overseas. Gardai have not ruled out the possibility the some of the cars were being broken down for reassembly in other countries. While Gardai are keeping an open mind on the mater, it is suspected that the operation was linked to organised crime and that the cars were being stolen in Dublin. The man who was arrested is being detained by Laois Offaly Division Gardai who do not believe local people were involved. Gardai in Laois are leading the investigation but also involves officers from other divisions. Gardai in Portlaoise and Ballylinan appealed to the members of the public who may have seen vehicles coming and going towards the premises to contact them on 057 8674100. It is not believed that the operation was as extensive as the recently uncovered chop shops in Meath and neighbouring Kildare. A large quantity of suspected stolen vehicle parts was seized on October 16 a number of premises were searched in the two counties. Two men, aged 34 and 24, were arrested and detained. It involved the Stolen Motor Vehicle Investigation Unit, Garda National Bureau of Criminal Investigations supported by the Garda National Drugs and Organised Crime Bureau and local based Gardai. Residents are concerned about the state of road surface following ongoing Irish Water roadworks from Allen Cross to Allenwood over the previous number of days. Sinn Fein said local residents voiced concerns with local representative Patricia Ryan about the poor condition of the roadway after the pipeworks. The roads are left in a awful state and coming towards winter I was worried about frost and snow making them worse. At Kilmeague outside some housing estates it is disgrace and all the way to Allen Cross, she said. She asked Cllr. Mark Lynch to raise the issue with the council and Irish Water. The council said the area engineer has spoken to the contractor on site, who has assured the council that the reinstatement carried out to date is temporary. They are in the testing phase of their works and once complete, they intend to commence permanent reinstatement in the coming weeks, added the council spokesperson. Metro Manila (CNN Philippines, October 26) Expect colder weather in the coming months as the northeastern monsoon or Amihan is here, state weather bureau PAGASA said. "Medyo mas lalamig ang ating temperature, so magkakaroon na po ng hangin na medyo malamig, 'yung northeast [monsoon, or] Amihan," PAGASA Climate Monitoring and Prediction chief Annalisa Solis told CNN Philippines. [TRANSLATION: Temperatures would drop, so we would have cold winds, the northeast monsoon, or Amihan.] This comes three weeks after PAGASA announced that the southwest monsoon season or Habagat has ended, which was followed by a transition period characterized by the strengthening of high pressure systems. Solis said temperatures would drop to their lowest from December to February, when "cold surges" - or the consecutive drop in temperatures for at least three consecutive days - are expected. She said the state weather bureau has been monitoring the weather system, characterized by cold winds blowing from the northeastern part of the Philippines, since October 18. It has been consistently prevailing since then, meeting their criteria to declare the start of Amihan season. Amihan is also expected to further weaken "Yutu," the super typhoon that battered US territory, as cooler weather would deprive it of moisture, Solis said. "Kaya po humihina ang bagyo kasi papunta siya dito sa ating bahagi na medyo malamig," she said. Yutu, which would be named "Rosita" when it enters the Philippines on Saturday, now only packs maximum sustained winds of up to 180 kilometers per hour (kph) with gusts of up to 220 kph - weaker compared to the 210 kph it was packing Thursday. A man appeared at Naas District Court last Thursday, October 25 charged in relation to an incident where he became violent in a Garda Station and assaulted one of the Gardai. Garda Wendy Cagney, who is stationed at Newbridge Garda Station, gave evidence that on March 24, 2017 a woman and her child entered the Station and indicated that her husband was aggressive towards them. Shortly afterwards a man, the defendant, entered the station and demanded to speak to the woman. The garda had put the woman and her child into another room and told the man he could not see her. I make the rules here and I want to see her. I want to speak to her. The defendant was refused access to his wife and went away, but came back soon afterwards. He admitted he had been drinking, and became difficult again. No f**king bitch like you tells me what to do, he told Garda Cagney. He clenched his fist at me and told me to Get my f**king child now, the Garda said in evidence. He ignored repeated instructions from the Garda to leave the Garda Station and eventually a scuffle broke out where Garda Cagney and Garda Marshall attempted to subdue the defendant. On the floor the defendant reached up and grabbed Garda Cagneys thigh, her wrist and her tie and pulled them. Eventually Garda Marshall subdued the defendant using pepper spray and he was taken into a cell. The defendant only has one previous conviction dating back many years and has come to no Garda attention since this incident. The defendants barrister explained to the court the difficult family circumstances at the time. The defendant had lost his job prior to the incident, and had successfully contested that legally. As a result of being out of work he was effectively his childs primary carer. He had come to believe however that his wife was having an affair and that his marriage might be coming to an impending end, and that he might lose his daughter. His marriage has since ended. On the day in question the man had brought his child to the pub that evening and after a number of hours his then wife turned up and took the child from him. His wife had been due to travel to the US the following day, but subsequently did not. He was in a very difficult place, counsel told the court. The defendant has since returned to work but is now paying the entire mortgage on the family home himself. Counsel said that his client absolutely accepted that he was in the wrong and had apologised to the Gardai for all that occured. He was under immense stress, he added. Mindful of the sensitive details revealed in court, Judge Desmond Zaidan ordered that the defendant not be identified in press reports, in order to protect his child.He also remonstrated with the man for bringing his child to the pub, noting that the child would grow up thinking that this was the norm. The judge said he believed it was the sort of behaviour that would warrant a custodial sentence, but counsel stressed that a custodial sentence on the man would affect his relationship with his child. Initially counsel said that a sum of 250 was available to the court by way of a gesture of remorse. Judge Zaidan called this an insult, and the defence increasd the amount considerably. The judge said that he would not send the defendant to prison because of the effect it would have on his child. He adjourned the matter until a date in February to allow a sum of money to be raised. Voters in Leitrim are going to the polls across Leitrim this Friday morning (October 26) in the presidential election and constitutional referendum.The referendum is on the Thirty-seventh Amendment of the Constitution (Repeal of offence of publication or utterance of blasphemous matter) Bill 2018. A low turnout is expected as turnouts at Irish presidential elections are lower than general election turnouts. Voters are advised that ballot papers for the presidential election are white in colour and will feature the name and photo of each of the six candidates which should be numbered in order of preference. The six candidates in the presidential election are Peter Casey, Gavin Duffy, Joan Freeman, Sean Gallagher, the incumbent Michael D Higgins and Liadh Ni Riada. The ballot papers for the blasphemy referendum are green in colour with voters being asked clearly indicate their preference by marking the yes or no box. In terms of this, voters are being asked whether to remove or retain Article 40.6 of the Constitution which makes blasphemy an offence. There is no obligation on people to cast votes in both the presidential election and referendum and they are free to vote in just one if they wish. On Saturday, October 27 at the Mohill Fire Brigade station firefighters and friends will hold a Car Wash in aid of Andrew OMalley. As first responders, our Fire Fighters witness many events that remind them of the fragility of life and how lives can be changed in an instance. They also know that the kind and compassionate people of Mohill and the surrounding community are always eager to help and lend a hand to those less fortunate. In previous years their car wash days raised in the region of 20,000 supporting Hospice, the Irish Cancer Society and individuals facing difficult health challenges. Their efforts have been so successful because of you and your generosity. This year, their intention is to raise funds for Andrew aged 32, as he faces a long, gruelling and expensive path to recovery from debilitating injuries he received in a tragic accident. Now a quadriplegic Andrew can only move his head and shoulder. He has been told that he will not regain any further movement in the rest of his body. Take advantage of this Annual Fund Raising event to do your bit. Washing will commence at 9am. Volunteers will be helping so you wont be kept waiting. In addition to helping Andrew you support will give the Firefighters the encouragement to continue with their charitable efforts in the years to come. Sadly, there will always be a need and we never know who is next. If you would like to support this fundraising campaign you can do so by clicking here. Read Also: AA issues road safety warning ahead of chilly bank holiday weekend Get Spooked in Leitrim this Halloween: List of events and activities in the county AN ELDERLY farmer who shot and injured another farmer in a long-running dispute over a right of way, previously threatened the son of a separate neighbour with a knife, a court has heard. Ted ODonoghue, aged 74, of Kilmoreen, Kildimo, has pleaded guilty to a number of charges, including recklessly discharging a firearm, at Ballycasey, Kildimo on June 16, 2017. During a sentencing hearing, Detective Garda Jason Mitchell told Limerick Circuit Court the incident was connected with a long-running dispute. He said a laneway which passes through Mr ODonoghues lands is used by a number of other farmers to access their lands. However, the defendant has taken issue with how the laneway is used and does not believe tractors and heavy vehicles should be driven on the laneway. They are tearing it asunder, he told gardai following his arrest adding the right of way dates back to the era of horses and carts. Det Garda Mitchell said a major investigation was launched after John Hayes (67) sustained wounds to his shoulder after Mr ODonoghue discharged his legally-held shotgun at him at around 10.30am. Mr Hayes sheepdog, Lassie, who was in the cab of his John Deere tractor died after being struck by multiple pellets. The court heard Mr Hayes was confronted Mr ODonoghue as he arrived to carry out work on his farm that morning. The defendant, who was inside the gate, told him you are not coming in here, you are never again coming in here. He then retrieved his shotgun from his van and discharged a shot in the direction of Mr Hayes and his tractor. Mr Hayes told gardai he heard his dog screaching and that he did not immediately realise he had been shot. Following his arrest later in the day, Mr ODonoghue told gardai he had blazed Mr Hayes but insisted he did not intend to hurt him and did not realise he had hit him. He added he did not know his sheepdog was in the tractor which was struck by pellets. Det Garda Mitchell said the defendants shotgun was seized when he was located in Patrickswell a number of hours later and that he has not sought to have it returned or to renew his firearms licence. While Mr ODonoghue has no previous convictions, Lily Buckley BL, prosecuting, said he came before Newcastle West Court last year after he was charged in relation to an incident on September 10, 2016. On that date he produced a knife during an altercation with a son of another neighbour. The Probation Act was applied after the defendant made a contribution to the court poor box. Anthony Sammon SC said his client insisted at all times that he did not intend to hurt Mr Hayes and that there have been no difficulties since. He said land disputes such as the one outlined in court can become an obsession and do have a way of turning right-minded people into obsessive fools. He said his client had gotten worked up in a way he should not have and had become frustrated as efforts to resolve the dispute had failed. Mr Sammon said his client is no longer farming the lands at Ballycasey and that he has had time to reflect on his actions which he deeply regrets. A number of testimonials in support of the defendant were submitted to the court for its consideration. A victim impact statement, prepared by Mr Hayes' wife, was also read into the record. Judge Tom ODonnell indicated he will impose sentence on December 19, next. A YOUNG man who beat his girlfriend into submission following a sustained and brutal attack at their home in Limerick has been jailed for three years. Robert Quilligan, aged 20, who has an address at Cahereas West, Castleisland, County Kerry had pleaded guilty to assaulting the woman at an apartment at Mount Kenneth, Dock Road on January 24, 2017. The woman, who is aged in her early 20s, was repeatedly punched by Mr Quilligan who also attempted to choke her and stabbed her with a biro. Imposing sentence, Judge Tom ODonnell said no person should ever be exposed to the level of violence as was outlined to the court. During a sentencing hearing earller this year, Garda Cathal OSullivan said the assault happened at around 9.30am after the defendant became angry having gone through his girlfriends phone. He complained she was contacting her family behind his back. He told her she was going to pay, he told John OSullivan BL, prosecuting. In addition to striking the woman in the face, the defendant stabbed her in the leg with a biro, pulled her hair and stood on her throat. He ordered her to get dressed and leave the apartment before repeatedly kicking her while walking near Shannon Bridge a short time later. Garda OSullivan said the woman made a complaint to gardai around a week later after Quilligan was arrested in relation to separate matters. When questioned by gardai about the assault he told them the case wont make court. In a victim impact statement, which was read to the court, the woman described how she suffers from PTSD, lost her dignity and self respect as a result of the incident and how she will never be able to forget what happened to her. Solitude and isolation seem to be the safest option for me, she stated adding that she hopes, by coming forward, she will help others who have suffered the same faith. Katie OConnell BL said her client suffers from depression and anxiety and was consuming a lot of medication and alcohol around the time. He was in a haze, it was quite a volatile relationship, she said adding that Quilligan has complied with the terms of a barring order which was taken out since the assault. Judge ODonnell described what happened as a violent and brutal assault which took place over a sustained period of time. He noted the victim has sustained physical injuries and that there has also been considerable psychological fallout. He said the control which Quilligan exercised over the woman was of enormous concern as was the manner in which he had beat her into submission. The judge noted the defendants propensity for violence and that he has serious issues with drugs and alcohol. He imposed a four year prison sentence, suspending the final year. Quilligan was ordered not to have any contact with the woman or her family following his release. THERE is real excitement and confidence that Na Piarsaigh can retain the county hurling title for the first time in their history. Children at Christ the King National School donned the distinctive sky-blue shirts of the club this week as they got ready for Saturday nights showpiece under lights at the Gaelic Grounds, throw-in 7.30pm. The school is adorned with flags and sky-blue bunting as teachers and students alike get ready to cheer on their heroes in the hope they can conquer Doon and retain the trophy they won last year, en route to Munster glory. School principal Pat Millane said keeping the Daly cup in Caherdavin would be the icing on the cake after Na Piarsaigh supplied six players to Limericks victorious All-Ireland panel. To paraphrase the Duke of Wellington, he said it was the playing fields of Eton where the Battle of Waterloo was lost and won. We reckon the All-Ireland and the County Final will be lost and won on the Christ the King parish fields. In effect, the spine of the team comes from our school, he said. Indeed, five of Limericks six panelists went to school at Christ the King Peter and Michael Casey, Shane Dowling, Kevin Downes and David Dempsey. Club captain William ODonoghue went to school in nearby JFK. Principal Pat believes Na Piarsaigh can once again go all the way to the All-Ireland final and capture a title so cruelly denied to them by Dublins Cuala last March. First its Doon though who have in their ranks four senior county hurlers, in the shape of captain Richie English, Darragh ODonovan, Pat Ryan Simon and Barry Murphy. Among the students, there is confidence the city side can conquer their county cousins. They are not really that good. I think well beat then by a lot of points, declared nine-year-old Luke Madden from Ballynanty, who has plundered five goals at his level this season. I dont know much about Doon. But I think well win by 16 points, smiled Samuel Long, 11, of Brookfield Avenue. Sam Gleeson said: Were going to do great were going to win by 20 points! But the principal was more cautious, saying: It would be a foolish man or woman who would take them for granted. It will be a doubly special day for ten-year-old Greg Shinnors, from Shannonvale, with his level playing a half-time game on the turf of Pairc na nGael against their Doon counterparts. A MOTORIST who struck a cyclist at a pedestrian crossing in Limerick late at night has avoided a driving ban. Brian Curtin, aged 24, of Friarstown, Grange, Kilmallock pleaded guilty, at Limerick District Court, to careless driving relating to an incident which happened on January 9, 2018. Sergeant Adrian Whelan said the cyclist was on a pedestrian crossing at Childers Road, near the Kilmallock Road Roundabout at around 9.40pm on the night when he was struck. The man, he added, sustained a broken leg as a result of being struck. Judge Marian OLeary was told Mr Curtin, who is in full time employment, has no previous convictions and was fully insured. Imposing a 500 fine, the judge noted it was a dark night and that all of the defendants documentation was in order. In the circumstances, she said she was exercising her judicial discretion and would not impose a disqualification. A separate hit and run charge relating to the same incident was withdrawn by the State. Mr Curtin will receive five penalty points on his drivers licence. WHEN the local election campaign comes around next May in Limerick, dont expect to see too many posters with Cllr Michael Sheahans face on them. For the Fine Gael man, who was re-selected to run for the party in the City East ward next year, has pledged to reduce considerably the number of posters he uses in the interests of the environment. And, he will lobby Limerick City and County Councils environment department to create specially designated zones where candidates can display their posters. Speaking at his partys convention in the Castletroy Park Hotel where he was picked to run alongside Cllr Marian Hurley and newcomer Michael Murphy Cllr Sheahan said: This will be music to the ears of our two treasurers. I am now calling on all candidates in the era of anti-plastic, that we would reduce considerably the use of posters in the next local elections and from thereon. Naturally, with new candidates fearful of not getting the exposure, Cllr Sheahan suggests poster zones at busy areas leaving huge swathes of countryside as no-go areas. What I am saying is with the co-operation of the environment section in Limerick County Council that we would agree postering stations. We would agree postering centres. Crossroads where there is heavy traffic, for example. It would massively reduce the amount of posters and the amount of ties in this era of plastic suffocation. I am calling on all councillors, all candidates to do this, he added. Cllr Sheahan, who will seek election for a third time in 2019, said: I will be very selective in where I put my posters. You will not see a line of Michael Sheahan posters from here to Castleconnell. I will be very conservative, and Im not a conservative! And he believes Limerick can be a trailblazer for the rest of the country if this approach goes well. He added: If we get it right at local elections, it could be a very good step for the rest of the country so our children and grandchildren can live a life of safety from plastic. Meanwhile, City North local election candidate Kieran Walsh is also sounding an environmental note in his campaign. He wants to see the local authority stop using single use plastics by 2024. Local authorities need to become industry leaders in this regard. It is very easy for local government to preach, but I am calling on them to practice what they preach by engaging with their suppliers to ensure that events run by Limerick City and County Council are single use plastic free, the Social Democrats candidate said. IRISH Water is expected to begin work early next year on the design and planning of sewerage treatment plants for Foynes and Glin. The utility company confirmed that feasibility studies for both communities had already been carried out. Work is due to get underway in early 2019 on detailed design, planning and land acquisition for new wastewater treatment plants, a spokesman for Irish Water told the Limerick Leader. The announcement comes just days after a very critical report from the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) revealed that raw sewage from Foynes and Glin continued to flow into the River Shannon. The villages were among 38 towns and villages nationally where untreated sewage is entering waterways. According to Irish Water, projects to upgrade wastewater treatment plants at Askeaton, Bunlicky (Limerick City), Castletroy and Dromcollogher are also at an advanced stage. Works at Herbertstown and Hospital are also on Irish Waters priority list. It was a great disappointment to see Glin and Foynes on the map of Ireland in relation to raw sewage being dumped into the Shannon, Glin councillor and chairman of the Newcastle West Municipal District, Cllr John Sheahan said. This needs to be immediately addressed. A year ago, he continued, he had been told that designing and planning of a treatment plan for Glin was underway. It doesnt appear to have moved any great distance. I am calling now for this to be expedited, he said. His points echo those of the EPA which, on Monday, was critical of the pace of improvements being carried out to address the countrys water treatment deficit. While over 50 improvement works were completed last year, the report pointed out less than half of the works due between 2009 and 2017 had been completed. Ireland is not addressing the deficiencies in its waste water treatment infrastructure at a fast-enough pace, Dr Tom Ryan, EPA director of Environmental Enforcement said. The report also revealed that waste water treatment at 28 of Irelands 179 large towns and cities failed to meet standards set to prevent pollution and protect public and that waste water from 57 areas caused significant impacts on our rivers, lakes and coastal waters. It is unacceptable that, 13 years after the final deadline to comply with treatment standards, there are still 28 large towns and cities discharging inadequately treated sewage that fails to meet these standards, Dr Ryan said. In its statement this Wednesday, Irish Water stressed it has been progressing plans to address wastewater treatment deficits at a number of locations across the country and in Co Limerick. Since 2014 treatment plants in 55 locations around the country have been upgraded or built including in 12 towns where raw sewage was going directly into the water.. In Limerick, the spokesman pointed out, work to upgrade the treatment plan in Athea got underway this summer at a cost of 1.5m. Earlier this month, the Limerick Leader reported claims by Cllr Liam Galvin that West Limerick villages such as Templeglantine, Tournafulla and Mountcollins could not expand and develop because of inadequate sewerage treatment facilities. According to figures released to Cllr Galvin, there is overload in Tournafullas sewerage treatment plant where the capacity is for a population of 85 only. Capacity in Templeglantine is for a population of 112 with a population of 67, Cllr Galvin was told but this does not include the school. The councillor questioned the assertion there was spare capacity in Mountcollins. A KILMALLOCK man, who was stabbed in a pub on his last visit home from Australia, has pleaded guilty to violent disorder. Sean Todd, aged 35, of Gortboy, Kilmallock received the most serious injuries during the incident in Daffy Bar in the town. Garda Bob Young gave evidence of meeting Mr Todd by appointment and charging him with violent disorder. Kevin Power, solicitor for Mr Todd, said there was a plea of guilty. He told Judge Marian OLeary that his client resides in Australia and is home on holidays. Garda Young and the court accommodated Mr Todd by hearing the case on the day. Garda Young said the incident, involving six or seven people occurred in Daffys Bar on August 20, 2017. Two males received stab wounds during the fracas. The accused would have thrown a punch. He received a stab wound. He received treatment in hospital for three weeks. His involvement was at the very minor end. He was very co-operative and kept in contact with me while he was in Australia, said Garda Young. The Kilmallock garda said a row broke out and Mr Todd was defending a friend. He thought he was doing the right thing. He was not the instigator. No injuries were received as a result of Mr Todds actions. A knife had been produced by another party. Mr Todd did receive the most serious injuries on the night, said Garda Young. Mr Power said his client is an Australian citizen. He was home on two weeks holiday. He was on a normal night out with friends in a pub. He stepped in to defend a friend. He got stabbed. He spent three weeks in hospital. He was not the aggressor in the matter at all. He hasnt been home since the incident, said Mr Power. The solicitor said Mr Todd is returning to Australia in three weeks and asked Judge OLeary if a monetary payment could be imposed. Kilmallock Court heard that three other men who pleaded guilty to violent disorder were ordered to do voluntary work in the town. Garda Young said they are working with Kilmallock Tidy Towns to enhance the locality. Mr Power said his client is happy to so some work while he is home. Judge OLeary ordered Mr Todd to pay 500 to the court poor box. Mr Todd said: I can pay it now if you want your honour. The money was handed to the court clerk. Judge OLeary struck the violent disorder charge out. TURNOUT is relatively low at polling stations across Limerick as voting in the presidential election and constitutional referendum continues. Around 300 polling booths across the city and county opened at 7am and will remain open until 10pm with the votes being counted on Saturday at the Limerick Racecourse. Unofficial figures from polling stations, suggested that as of this lunchtime, turnout is much less than the last vote, the referendum to repeal the eighth amendment back in May. John F Kennedy National School in the Ennis Road, which is considered a 'bellweather for the Limerick City constituency reported turnout of between nine per cent and 14% across its seven boxes. It appears there is a disconnect among some young voters to this election, with one officer at the northside school telling the Leader that during Mays referendum, there were far more youngsters coming in early to vote. Elsewhere, Monaleen National School, often a trendsetter for eastern suburbs of the city like Castletroy, was reporting turnout of just nine per cent this lunchtime. Milford National School had just 10% turnout, while the former Scoil Carmel in OConnell Avenue was enjoying comparatively high numbers of 15%. In County Limerick, Caherline National School reported a 13% turnout, while just eight per cent of those registered to vote had attended Caherconlish NS by this lunchtime. More turnouts across #Limerick thanks to @AlanMorrissey: Caherline NS 13%, Milford NS 10%, Scoil Carmel 15%, Monaleen 9%, Gaelscoil Castletroy 7.6% Caherconlish 8% Scoil Ide Corbally 9.5%, Herbertstown 12% and Hospital 10% #Aras18 #BlasphemyRef #LimerickDecides @Limerick_Leader Nick Rabbitts (@Nick468official) October 26, 2018 The six candidates in the presidential election are Peter Casey, Gavin Duffy, Joan Freeman, Sean Gallagher, the incumbent Michael D Higgins and Liadh Ni Riada. The ballot papers for the blasphemy referendum are green in colour with voters being asked clearly indicate their preference by marking the yes or no box. In terms of this, voters are being asked whether to remove or retain Article 40.6 of the Constitution which makes blasphemy an offence. There is no obligation on people to cast votes in both the presidential election and referendum and they are free to vote in just one if they wish. More than 140,000 people are eligible to vote across Limerick. Ballot papers will be sorted by count staff from 9am tomorrow with the counting of the votes expected to get underway around lunchtime. While trends may become clear early in the day, the result of the first count is not expected until the early evening. - Stay with the Limerick Leader for updates through today and during the count from the Limerick Racecourse on Saturday The Bible has been under attack in the western world for over 200 years but never more intensely than today. These attacks have taken different forms and have come from many different corners of the academic world, from philosophers, to scientists, to textual critics. In the specialized world of archaeology the attacks have increased dramatically in the past 50 years. Once a specialization filled with Bible believing individuals, the field of archaeology is now overrun with atheists and skeptics, agnostics and those committed to the destruction of the Bible as a source of true historical information. These attacks on the Bible are a part of a sweeping movement in western culture. Spearheaded by academic elitists in the university and the public educational system, the news and popular media, and the entertainment industry, these revisionists cloak themselves with supposed objectivity, purity of motives, and the superiority of science over the "uninformed", "unscientific", religious community. They regularly mock those who question their world-view and their conclusions by name-calling and the worst forms of anti-Bible and anti-Christian propaganda. They have powerfully infected the church by turning Bible believing Christians against the very Scripture which is the foundation of truth and life in this world. Instead of contending for the Bible, Christian academics, pastors, and lay-persons are making egregious accommodations to these destroyers of faith and truth. In these days of intense spiritual battle, God has called ABR to step into the gap to contend for the truth and to assist the church in this critical hour. ABR is a non-profit ministry dedicated to demonstrating the historical reliability of the Bible and to give answers to questions being asked by believers and non-believers alike. We do this by using original archaeological fieldwork and research along with studies in other apologetic disciplines. We take on the bold claims of skeptics and critics. We challenge the bizarre anti-biblical propaganda that is purveyed upon the public as gospel through television and print media. We uphold the gospel of Jesus Christ, which is God's message for the salvation of all mankind! Sanef grieves over Moses Moyo's passing The South African National Editors' Forum (Sanef) is mourning the death of journalist Moses Moyo. Moyo passed away on 25 October 2018 due to illness. He was an editor and publisher at Inner City Gazette newspaper. Furthermore, Moyo was a long-standing Sanef council member. A hurricane has wiped a Hawaiian island completely off the map. East Island, a tiny speck of land in Papahanaumokuakea Marine National Monument in northwest Hawaii, was washed away by Hurricane Walaka on Oct. 3 and 4, Honolulu Civic Beat reported Tuesday (Oct. 23). The island had been a critical nesting site for threatened Hawaiian green sea turtles and critically endangered Hawaiian monk seals, biologists told the news organization. "There's no doubt that it was the most important single islet for sea turtle nesting," National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) biologist Charles Littnan told Civic Beat. East Island was a mere 11 acres (0.04 square kilometers) in area. Between 1944 and 1952, it hosted a small Coast Guard station, but the island has otherwise been a haven for wildlife, ranging from albatross to turtles and seals. Satellite imagery has confirmed the island's demise, but a marine debris team will be headed to the area to survey the damage this week, the Civic Beat reported. Researchers told Civic Beat that the island's seals and turtles had left the island after their breeding season but before the hurricane struck. It's unclear, so far, whether they'll find a new haven on one of the nearby shoals. "Species are resilient up to a point," Littnan told Civic Beat. "But there could be a point in the future where that resilience isn't enough anymore." The Hawaiian green sea turtle (Chelonia mydas) is a genetically distinct species of green sea turtle found almost exclusively around Hawaii, according to NOAA. They are legally protected under Hawaiian law and the U.S. Endangered Species Act, and those protections have resulted in a 53 percent increase in population since the late 1970s. Their primary nesting grounds are the French Frigate Shoals, including the former East Island. The Hawaiian monk seals (Neomonachus schauinslandi), which used East Island as breeding grounds, are in a more precarious position. These seals are found only in Hawaii, and despite their protections as a critically endangered species, their numbers are still declining, according to NOAA. Only about 1,400 Hawaiian monk seals are left in the wild, NOAA estimates. A couple hundred of those call the French Frigate Shoals home, Littnan told Civic Beat. And of those, about 30 percent were born on East Island. The shoal was the victim of bad luck, given the storm's direct hit. But researchers told Civic Beat that Walaka was strengthened by warmer-than-average ocean waters, a trend scientists predict will only worsen as the globe warms. Originally published on Live Science. There are 18 volcanoes in the U.S. that pose a high threat to human life and livelihood, including Kilauea in Hawaii. There are 161 known active volcanoes in the United States, and 18 of them pose a "very high threat" of death and destruction to Americans living nearby, according to a new volcanic risk report released by the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS). Kilauea volcano, which rained destruction on Hawaii's Big Island this summer and forced the evacuation of some 1,700 people, ranked No. 1 on the list due to its recent eruptive history and proximity to heavily populated areas. Rounding out the top five highest-risk volcanoes were Mount St. Helens and Mount Rainier in Washington, Redoubt volcano in Alaska, and Mount Shasta in California. [History's Most Destructive Volcanoes] The new USGS report, published online Monday (Oct. 22), is an update on a similar report released in 2005. According to the authors, the report's threat rankings are "not a forecast or [an] indication of which volcanoes are most likely to erupt next," but rather an indicator of the "potential severity of impacts" that could result from future eruptions at a given volcano. The higher a volcano landed on the list, the more disastrous an eruption could be to people, cities and U.S. infrastructure. Anticipating which volcanoes around the country will have the most destructive potential should help guide research, monitoring and emergency preparation, the authors wrote. To calculate a threat score for each volcanic region, the report's authors weighed the combined effects of 24 risk factors. These included the type of volcano, its explosive potential, recent activity, the number of people living in the vicinity and the potential disruption to air traffic of an eruption. The resulting scores were then used to separate the volcanoes into five risk categories: very low threat (21 volcanoes), low threat (34), moderate threat (49), high threat (38) and very high threat (18). The complete list of "very high threat" volcanoes includes: 1. Kilauea (Hawaii) 2. Mount St. Helens (Wash.) 3. Mount Rainier (Wash.) 4. Redoubt volcano (Alaska) 5. Mount Shasta (Calif.) 6. Mount Hood (Ore.) 7. Three Sisters (Ore.) 8. Akutan Island (Alaska) 9. Makushin volcano (Alaska) 10. Mount Spur (Alaska) 11. Lassen volcanic center (Calif.) 12. Augustine volcano (Alaska) 13. Newberry volcano (Ore.) 14. Mount Baker (Wash.) 15. Glacier Peak (Wash.) 16. Mauna Loa (Hawaii) 17. Crater Lake (Ore.) 18. Long Valley Caldera (Calif.) That these 18 volcanoes pose particular dangers to the surrounding communities is no news to volcanologists; the exact same group appears at the top of the 2005 USGS report. Several volcanoes were added to the master list based on new information collected since 2005, however, including one new "high risk" volcano (the Salton Buttes lava domes in Southern California). Overall, however, the list of 161 known active sites includes eight fewer volcanoes than the 2005 report. "This report may come as a surprise to many, but not to volcanologists," Janine Krippner, a volcano expert at Concord University in West Virginia not involved in the study, told The Guardian. "The USA is one of the most active countries in the world when it comes to [volcanoes]." According to the new report, there have been 120 volcanic eruptions in the United States since 1980. Originally published on Live Science. A 40-year-old man who pretended to be an Uber driver and sexually assaulted a female passenger in San Mateo was arrested Thursday, authorities said. Brandon Sherman, of San Jose, was booked at the San Mateo County Jail on felony charges of assault with a deadly weapon and kidnapping with the intent to sexually assault and rape, according to the San Mateo Police Department. The incident occurred about 7 p.m. on Aug. 14 when a woman hailed a ride near Highway 92 and Grant Street. A man, later identified as Sherman, arrived in a gray Toyota hatchback with Uber and Lyft stickers on his windshield, police said. Sherman allegedly drove the victim to a secluded area near the 1400 block of Fashion Island Boulevard and sexually assaulted her. The victim, who was not identified, escaped the vehicle and called 911 with the help of a passerby, police said. Surveillance footage taken from local businesses led police to an image of a suspect vehicle. Search warrants were sent to Uber and Lyft. Detectives filtered through about 1,100 cars that matched the description before narrowing it down to five potential leads, police said. Authorities concluded that the suspect vehicle was a 2010 Toyota Matrix. Using the victims statement, a sketch of the suspect and information from the search warrants, detectives developed a profile of the suspect which led to the identity of Sherman, police said. Sherman was driving a Toyota when he was stopped and arrested during a traffic stop at about 9:20 a.m. Thursday, police said. A search warrant was served at Shermans home on the 700 block of Calero Avenue in San Jose, where authorities allegedly found evidence that linked him to the sexual assault. Sherman was not an Uber driver when the incident occurred, a company spokesman said. He previously drove for Uber but lost access to the service. Lyft deactivated Shermans account as soon as they found out about the incident, a company spokeswoman said. What is being described is deeply disturbing and our hearts go out to those impacted, Lyft said in a statement. While the incident did not occur on the Lyft platform, we permanently deactivated the driver as soon as we were informed by law enforcement of their investigation. Lyft and Uber both vet drivers through a company called Checkr that sifts through public records. Sherman is expected to appear in court at 1:30 p.m. Friday and is being held on a $750,000 bail. Sarah Ravani is a San Francisco Chronicle staff writer. Email: sravani@sfchronicle.com Twitter: @SarRavani Tough Cases: Judges Tell the Stories of Some of the Hardest Decisions They've Ever Made Edited by Russell F. Canan, Gregory E. Mize, and Frederick H. Weisberg New Press. 280 pp. $26.99 --- In May 1944, as the nation waged World War II, Judge Learned Hand delivered a brief, stirring address before an immense crowd in New York City for an event titled, "I Am an American Day." Hand, perhaps the nation's foremost jurist never nominated to the Supreme Court, memorably proclaimed: "The spirit of liberty is the spirit which is not too sure that it is right." Yet, in the actions and opinions of most judges, this spirit of liberty is conspicuously absent. Judges may acknowledge complexity and even uncertainty when deliberating in the privacy of chambers, but they almost invariably strike a pose of overweening certitude in their official actions. "Judicial opinions are notoriously - even comically - unequivocal," Prof. Dan Kahan of Yale Law School noted in the Harvard Law Review. "It is rare for opinions to acknowledge that an issue is difficult, much less that there are strong arguments on both sides." Against this backdrop, "Tough Cases" stands out as a genuine revelation. At its best, this collection of essays - written by 13 judges who served, or are serving, on various lower courts - candidly reveals that legal questions do not always admit one-sided answers. The editors, Russell F. Canan, Gregory E. Mize and Frederick H. Weisberg, contend in a brief introduction that the volume aims "to demystify judicial decision-making and to make the process accessible to ordinary people, who would not otherwise get a ringside seat." The book succeeds on this score, and thus provides an invaluable public service, as the judicial branch is perpetually shrouded in mystery. Even more important, though, several judges go further by shedding the self-serving, wholly unrealistic pretense that legal interpretation never confronts shades of gray. In one chapter, Judge Robert H. Alsdorf of Washington state discloses that in his written opinions he identifies when losing litigants have marshaled compelling arguments - even if they ultimately did not carry the day. When crafting opinions, Alsdorf writes, "I try to explicitly note for the losing party how laudable ... its ... legal argument is, and then give a straightforward explanation of why that factor nonetheless cannot be used by the court to justify a ruling in its favor. ... We can acknowledge this without losing any judicial power." In other words, admitting complexity and the power of competing legal arguments in decisions should not be mistaken for indecision. To the contrary, as Kahan has observed, such acknowledgments may indeed serve to enhance legal legitimacy - rather than erode it - by communicating to disappointed parties that the judge has truly heard their claims. Many of the cases that judges identify here as posing exceedingly difficult questions arise from family-based disputes. Some take readers behind the scenes of nationally prominent cases, such as the custody of Elian Gonzalez and the removal of life support for Terri Schiavo. Many of the most penetrating essays, however, explore more obscure legal disputes. In one haunting example, Judge Frederick H. Weisberg presided over the trial of Banita Jacks, 33, who was convicted of murdering all four of her daughters in Washington, D.C. If the underlying crimes were not grisly enough, Jacks was found living with her children's remains. The decomposing bodies were discovered only after an eviction crew encountered the overpowering stench of death. Jacks claimed that her children had died in their sleep during several inexplicable days. Jacks' role was not much in doubt, but Weisberg had to grapple with whether to honor the defendant's desire to waive her insanity defense. He extended colloquies with Jacks - who, strikingly, appeared rational and even shrewd at times - are nothing less than riveting. Even readers who disagree with the judge's decision to permit the insanity waiver will be forced to admire the candor with which he discusses the issue's competing considerations. In another case, outside the realm of the family, Judge Russell F. Canan coaxed a defendant who had pleaded not guilty - and who Canan believed was not guilty - into accepting a guilty plea. Canan maneuvered in this fashion to avoid the jury's verdict, which he feared would be guilty. "I had orchestrated a turn of events that scared [the defendant] - at the threat of five years of hard time, and with the unsaid promise from me that he would not go to prison - into pleading guilty to something I felt he did not do," Canan writes. "I had crossed a line to do the right thing under severe pressure in exceptional circumstances." Such judicial confessions of error are incredibly rare - and, therefore, to be prized. Regrettably, none of the 13 contributions was written by a U.S. Supreme Court justice or even by a federal circuit court judge. The legal profession is intensely hierarchical, and nowhere is this hierarchy more prevalent than within the judiciary. That dynamic is unsurprising, of course, because much of what lower courts do is apply precedents articulated by higher courts. "Tough Cases" vividly illuminates, however, that lower court judges have much to teach members of the most elite reaches of the judiciary about the importance of acknowledging complexity and difficulty. Our most distinguished judges should follow the lead of this groundbreaking volume by publicly acknowledging their own tough decisions - at least if they wish to honor the spirit of liberty. --- Driver, a law professor at the University of Chicago, is the author of "The Schoolhouse Gate: Public Education, the Supreme Court, and the Battle for the American Mind." 21 Lessons for the 21st Century By Yuval Noah Harari Spiegel & Grau. 372 pp. $28 --- In the 1930s, the Marxist thinker Antonio Gramsci sat in an Italian prison for his opposition to the Fascist regime of Benito Mussolini and contemplated the rapid change and enormous uncertainty sweeping Europe. People were bewildered and governments were unable to contain the rapidly spreading turmoil. "The crisis consists precisely in the fact that the old is dying and the new cannot be born," Gramsci wrote in a prison notebook. "In this interregnum a great variety of morbid symptoms appear." Inevitably, the morbid symptoms not only appeared but fed the cataclysmic political and cultural forces that smashed the old continent. Something similar is going on now, although a cataclysmic end is not inevitable. What's clear is that we are living through a similar interregnum in which old certitudes are no longer reliable, new ones haven't yet arisen and morbid symptoms are popping up everywhere. A wish to understand this moment and its possible dire consequences has unleashed a flood of articles and books - some by superstar authors. One of the literary giants is Yuval Noah Harari, a 42-year-old history professor at the Hebrew University in Jerusalem who gained global acclaim with "Sapiens: A Brief History of Mankind," first published in Hebrew for the Israeli market in 2011. Three years later, its English edition sold more than 1 million copies, and the book is now available in 45 languages. His success continued in 2015 with the Hebrew edition of "Homo Deus: A Brief History of Tomorrow," followed by the American edition in 2017. In "Homo Deus," Harari predicts the end of the world as we know it, caused by the collapse of democracy and the free market and the replacement of humans by sophisticated new technologies. If "Sapiens" explores the deep past and "Homo Deus" looks to the distant future, "21 Lessons for the 21st Century" probes the present. "In this book I want to zoom in the here and now," Harari writes. "My focus is on current affairs and on the immediate future of human societies." "21 Lessons for the 21st Century" is based on Harari's previously published essays and op-ed columns as well as on his talks. "This book was written in conversation with the public," he explains. "Many of the chapters were composed in response to questions I was asked by readers, journalists, and colleagues." One of Harari's hallmarks is the immense ambition of his intellectual enterprises and this effort is no exception. As he explains, "My agenda here is global. I look at the major forces that shape societies all over the world and that are likely to influence the future of our planet as a whole." The result is a mixed bag. A profusion of platitudes, well-known vignettes, stock phrases and cliches coexists with the brilliant observations that distinguish Harari's writings. Here he offers his opinions about war (his original specialty as a historian) and the meaning of life (and Disney's "The Lion King"), humility ("You are not the center of the world"), God (in six pages), civilization (there is no clash of civilizations because there is only one), terrorism (governments should fight it with good intelligence and clandestine action against the financial networks that feed it, and the news media should avoid hysteria and the public should avoid panicking), education ("Change is the only constant"), nationalism ("Global problems need global answers"), ignorance ("You know less that you think") and so on for a dozen more thorny and interesting subjects. Alongside some of the bromides he relies on to dispatch major problems, Harari also offers an abundance of fascinating interpretations and comments. In his provocative discussion of fake news, for example, he acknowledges that it is a serious problem but argues that humans have always lived in the age of post-truth. "Homo Sapiens is a post-truth species, whose power depends on creating and believing fictions," he writes. "For millennia, much of what passed for 'news' and 'facts' in human social networks were stories about miracles, angels, demons, and witches with bold reporters giving live coverage from the deepest pits of the underworld. ... When a thousand people believe some made-up story for one month, that's fake news. When a billion people believe it for a thousand years, that's a religion" Religion and politics have always depended on fake news because myths and propaganda are powerful tools to unite and control people. "By bringing people together, religious creeds make large-scale human cooperation possible," Harari explains. "They inspire people to build hospitals, schools, and bridges in addition to armies and prisons. Adam and Eve never existed, but Chartres Cathedral is still beautiful. Much of the bible may be fictional, but it can still bring joy to billions ... just like other great works of fiction, such as "Don Quixote," "War and Peace" and the Harry Potter books." Fake news and propaganda have long been part of the tool kit of populist politicians and dictators who know, as Nazi propaganda maestro Joseph Goebbels allegedly observed: "A lie told once remains a lie, but a lie told a thousand times becomes the truth." In another of his provocations, Harari anticipates the rise of what he calls a "useless class" of millions of workers who lose their jobs to machines as automation spreads. But Harari warns that we must not complacently expect that an equivalent number of new jobs will be created to replace the lost ones. He cautions that "the potential social and political disruptions are so alarming that even if the probability of systemic mass unemployment is low, we should take it very seriously." In his judgment, it will become necessary, if not inevitable, for governments to step in and support the useless class with various forms of public aid, including a guaranteed income to cover basic needs. Harari points out, however, that providing a basic income is not enough. Tending to the mental health of millions also will be necessary and will require the creation of meaningful pursuits for those with little to do. Harari identifies the ultra-Orthodox Jewish men in Israel as a successful example of how to live a contented life in a post-work world. About 50 percent of them never work and "dedicate their lives to studying holy scriptures and performing religious rituals. They and their families don't starve partly because the wives often work and partly because the government provides them with generous subsidies and free services, making sure that they don't lack the basic necessities of life." Harari is aware of the many shortcomings of this example but highlighting it vividly illustrates the extreme measures a society should be prepared to undertake to respond to what he views as a major and imminent threat. "21 Lessons for the 21st Century" is a defective book and probably the weakest of Harari's opus. Yet, it is a testament to his brilliance that this book has much to engage the curious mind. --- Naim is a distinguished fellow at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace and the author of "The End of Power: From Boardrooms to Battlefields and Churches to States, Why Being in Charge Isn't What It Used to Be" and "Illicit: How Smugglers, Traffickers, and Copycats Are Hijacking the Global Economy." A former senior aide to U.S. Rep. Henry Cuellar, D-Laredo, has filed a complaint with a special congressional office, claiming that she was fired, in violation of federal law, for being pregnant. Kristie Small submitted a request for counseling Monday with the Office of Compliance, the body that handles discrimination and harassment complaints in Congress, after she was terminated as Cuellar's acting chief of staff last week. Small said that when she asked the Texas lawmaker to meet to discuss plans for her maternity leave, he told her she was on a 90-day "probation period" and set two new markers for her performance that he later claimed she had failed to meet. "I knew I was doing an excellent job," Small said Wednesday in a phone interview. "All of this started happening in response to my maternity-leave email. It's 100 percent clear to me that had I not been pregnant, I would still be in this job." Cuellar's office released a statement defending Small's firing but declining to address her claims in detail. "The Office of Representative Cuellar considers internal personnel matters confidential and will not comment publicly on Ms. Small's allegations at this time, except to say that the office values its employees and conducts all personnel matters in compliance with the congressional Accountability Act and applicable House Rules. All actions taken with respect to Ms. Small's employment were in compliance with the law and House Rules," the statement said. The Pregnancy Discrimination Act, according to the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, says a woman "cannot be fired, rejected for a job or promotion, given lesser assignments, or forced to take leave" because of her pregnancy. The dispute highlights the latest claim of gender-related discrimination on Capitol Hill since a series of explosive #MeToo allegations raised concerns about male lawmakers' treatment of female aides. Eight House members have resigned or chosen not to seek re-election because of employment or sexual misconduct scandals since last October. Small, who is in her third trimester of pregnancy, must undergo a lengthy counseling and mediation process through the Office of Compliance before she is permitted to file a lawsuit. The system was criticized in the wake of the #MeToo movement as biased toward lawmakers over staff. The House and Senate failed to agree on a bill to overhaul the system before recessing for the midterm elections. Sara Blackwell, a Florida-based employment attorney who is representing Small, said that a counselor from the Office of Compliance responded to the initial complaint and that they are scheduling an interview for next week. "The average American doesn't know about this secret process that happens in Congress," Blackwell said. "We want people to know that this is happening, that this is what Kristie went through and that her only recourse is through this secretive, unfair system, when there is a bill pending that could change everything." Before joining Cuellar's office, Small worked for more than 13 years as an aide to Rep. Robert Brady, D-Pa., first in his personal office and then as a professional staff member on the House Administration Committee. She asserted she never had "issues, problems, write-ups or terminations" in her previous jobs. Brady's spokesmen did not immediately respond to requests for comment. Cuellar, a co-chairman of the Blue Dog Coalition of moderate Democrats, has represented South Texas in the House since 2005. He has no Republican opponent this election cycle and is expected to be re-elected easily Nov. 6. An analysis released in March by LegiStorm found that Cuellar had the House's fifth-highest level of staff turnover between 2001 and 2016. He declined Wednesday to comment on the report but had previously attributed the high turnover to his staff's tendency to excel and advance to other jobs. Small, 37, said she joined Cuellar's office June 1 and after learning she was pregnant, emailed him about planning for her maternity leave. Cuellar replied to the Aug. 8 email by telling Small that she was under probation that they needed to discuss, she said. Small said Cuellar had never raised concerns about her performance before then. "I was very confused. I had never been told there was a 90-day probation period. When I asked other staffers, no one else had ever had this type of discussion with him," she said. Cuellar, through his office, declined to say whether he conducts a probationary period for all new employees. Small said they met to discuss the probation period Sept. 5 and that Cuellar praised her work while asking her to help the office's media team and learn more about his legislative positions. She said he told her they would revisit the issues in 30 days. Small said she had been "working on those two things already" and devoted substantial effort after their conversation to fulfilling his requests. "I know I did a good job," she said. "It was an extremely difficult work environment, but I didn't let that bother me. I'm not afraid of hard work or a tough boss." Small said Cuellar called her last Tuesday to say that she had failed to adequately address his concerns and that she could either resign or be fired. She said her termination has put her family's finances in jeopardy and raised the possibility that she will have to find new doctors at a crucial stage in her pregnancy. "I don't want other women to have to face this," she said. "If I can help change employers' minds on how they treat pregnancy, that's my goal." A suspected thief is wanted by the Laredo Police Department. LPD identified him as Alejandro Estevis, 44. He has three outstanding warrants on theft of property charges. Estevis is about 5 feet 6 inches and weighs about 170 pounds. His last known address was in the 8800 block of McPherson Road. READ ALSO: LPD: Man accused of pointing gun during road rage incident Anyone with information on his whereabouts can call Laredo Crime Stoppers at 727-TIPS (8477). Callers will remain anonymous. Information leading to an arrest may be eligible with up to $1,000. The Harris County Department of Education has secured a $480,233 federal grant to propel a three-year, layered approach to school violence prevention and mental health training in Harris County schools through Harris County Department of Educations Center for Safe and Secure Schools. The two strands of training empower both students and school staff to help them prevent or prepare for school violence like the shooting in Santa Fe, Texas. The U.S. Department of Justice grant award called Student, Teacher and Officers Prevention (STOP) School Violence Prevention and Mental Health Training program enables adult trainings in active shooter scenarios, threat assessment, the Alert, Lockdown, Inform, Counter, Evacuate (ALICE) programs and Youth Mental Health First Aid. The program provides training for two staff members from each of the 25 Harris County school districts, twice a year. A second strand of the grant trains 9,500 students during its first year of implementation in Harris County school districts. In 2018-19, 13 intermediate and middle school campuses are included: 10 from Pasadena and three from La Porte independent school districts. During school years 2019-20 and 2020-21, an additional 17 schools are added. Students gain training in crisis intervention, restorative discipline, bullying prevention and Rachels Challenge, a program focused on anti-bullying, said Ecomet Burley, director for the Center for Safe and Secure Schools. We also incorporated information gleaned from Gov. Greg Abbotts School and Firearm Safety Plan. Burley said this past summer, center officials invited teachers and school personnel and officials from the 25 districts to learn about the grant opportunity. Pasadena and La Porte signed up for year one of the grant. HCDEs Center for Grants Development secured the three-year grant. Within the application, research showed that of 1.8 million youth in Houston/Harris County, 32 percent of local middle and high school students feel unsafe going to and leaving from school. According to Texas Education Agency databases, 1,168 assaults were reported on campuses across Houston/Harris County during the 2016-17 school year, along with 136 weapons found. The Center for Safe and Secure Schools plans a menu of school safety workshops for the public throughout the year, including the Human Trafficking Summit on Nov. 13 with Children at Risk. For more information, go to www.hcde-texas.org/register. BEIJING - The leaders of China and Japan vowed Friday to open a new chapter in their often-fraught relationship and strengthen financial and trading ties between the world's second- and third-largest economies. The pledge, accompanied by multibillion dollar deals, comes as China is mired in a protracted trade war with the United States, the world's biggest economy and Japan's most important security ally. It underscored Chinese president Xi Jinping's efforts to lessen his country's exposure to the American market, but also noted a certain amount of pragmatism from the Japanese prime minister, Shinzo Abe. "From competition to coexistence, Japanese and Chinese bilateral relations have entered a new phase," Abe told reporters in Beijing after meeting with China's top two leaders. "With President Xi Jinping, I would like to carve out a new era for China and Japan." Xi also struck a remarkably upbeat note about the neighbors' relationship, saying they should move in a "new historic direction" by working together at a time of growing global "instability and uncertainties." "Sound and stable development of China-Japan relations would fundamentally benefit the people of both nations, and that is something that the regional and the international community want," he said. This was their first official meeting in seven years and was a sharp departure from their last encounter in Beijing, on the sidelines of a multilateral forum in 2014. Then neither Abe nor Xi could muster the faintest hint of a smile and they could hardly wait to get their handshake for the photographers over and done with. That visit came during the days of a heated territorial dispute that brought the countries to the brink of military conflict. That dispute, over a set of islands controlled by Japan, has not been resolved. But this year, on the 40th anniversary of the Sino-Japanese friendship treaty, the two leaders are finding a way to put their differences behind, superficially at least. Abe was treated to a full red-carpet welcome by Premier Li Keqiang, inspecting an honor guard with him and being celebrated at a reception in the opulent Great Hall of the People. This was accompanied by the somewhat startling sight of Japanese and Chinese flags flying together along the wide central boulevard between Tiananmen Square and the Forbidden City, fluttering in front of a huge portrait of Mao Zedong, the founding father of Communist China. Memories of Japan's aggression against China during the first half of the 20th century remain strong here. Abe brought 500 business representatives with him, and Japanese and Chinese companies had signed deals worth $18 billion during the visit, Li said. He hailed as a sign of the "bright prospects" for the countries' economic relationship. Their two central banks also signed a three-year credit swap agreement that will allow them to exchange $30 billion worth of each others' currencies, a measure that will make it easier for banks to facilitate trade between the two countries. "Vigorous trade will bring the bonds between our people ever closer," Abe said Friday. They also signed deals relating to elderly care and the securities market, although details were vague. And they pledged to work together on joint developments in Southeast Asia and to promote a Chinese-led regional trade deal called the Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership. There is still plenty mistrust between the longtime rivals. For one, China is highly suspicious of Abe's efforts to revise Japan's pacifist constitution, and for another, Tokyo thinks Beijing is intent on regional domination. But their focus on common interests reveals both leaders' concerns about their economies. China is trying to shore up other big markets - it is Japan's largest trading partner - as President Trump's tariffs begin to bite at the same time as the domestic economy cools. And Japan is both concerned about becoming collateral damage in the trade war and about its shrinking market as its population ages rapidly. China's middle class totals about 250 million people, double the entire population of Japan, representing a tantalizing opportunity for Japanese consumer goods companies. This comity is likely to cause some discomfit in the White House, where the Trump administration has been seeking to punish China over unfair trading practices and encourage advanced economies like Japan and in the European Union to join it in loudly condemning practices like intellectual property theft. At Houston's City Hall last week, Mayor Sylvester Turner, D, gathered with company CEOs, university professors, police officers, politicians and local judges to discuss a $6 billion problem they all have in common: the 2020 census. City officials and business leaders are worried about people like 21-year-old Ana Espinoza, a U.S. citizen by birth who lives with undocumented relatives. Espinoza has no intention of answering the census because she worries it could expose her family and get them deported. "I'm scared," she said. "If they go, I'll be by myself." In a region where 37 percent of immigrants are undocumented -- the largest proportion in the country -- the 2020 census has already become a case for crisis management. Every person who goes uncounted represents a loss in federal funding, which means fewer resources for roads and schools and health care. More than just money, the census helps companies plan expansion and staffing to serve a multicultural population. And "political representation, how we draw lines," are all determined by an accurate count, the mayor said. The Oct. 18 gathering of city and business officials marked the launch of a joint project by City Hall and the Houston Hispanic Chamber of Commerce to make sure as many people as possible are counted. With more than a year to go before the census-taking kicks in, Houston is coordinating an effort among diverse stakeholders that it believes can serve as a model for the rest of the country. Getting an accurate count has broad economic implications across the city, said Laura Murillo, chief executive officer of the Hispanic Chamber. "For everyone, the census is important. It doesn't matter if you're a Republican or Democrat, black or white or green." For growing businesses, the census is crucial for understanding the population they're serving in different regions. Enterprise Rent-A-Car used the 2010 census to help diversify the company's employee base. The data prompted Enterprise to staff a new location in Houston with Spanish-speaking employees to better serve area customers, said the company's human resources manager Phil Dyson. "It's been one of our top locations," he said. Texas stands to lose at least $1,161 in federal funding for each person not counted, according to a March report by Andrew Reamer, a research professor at the George Washington Institute of Public Policy. Multiplied by the estimated 506,000 unathorized immigrants who live in the nation's fourth-largest city, that puts at stake about $6 billion for Houston over the 10 years the census applies. That's just for programs such as Medicare and Medicaid. The potential loss is even larger when grants are taken into account for items like highways and community development, he said. There's more reason to worry: In trial runs conducted by the U.S. Census Bureau in 2016 for Hispanic neighborhoods in Houston and Los Angeles, as much as 30 percent of the population didn't respond to survey requests, even after workers tried six times, according to a report on 2020 preparations by the U.S. Government Accountability Office. "It's a problem for the mayor of Houston," said Steve Murdock, a former director of the Census Bureau appointed by President George W. Bush. "If they are under-counted, he's got a lot of people that they are going to have to provide services for, and he might not get any assistance from the federal government to do so." Every census poses a massive logistical challenge, but 2020 brings a fresh set of obstacles. The government will depend heavily on internet-based forms, making it more difficult for the poor or elderly who may not have computers. The U.S. population has become more mobile, making people harder to track down. And in Houston, thousands remain displaced from their homes after Hurricane Harvey's flooding. Most worrisome for city officials: A controversial citizenship question has been added, which some fear will scare off unauthorized immigrants and even their documented relatives, like Espinoza. The matter is in federal court in New York after the American Civil Liberties Union and more than a dozen states, cities and counties sued the commerce department, saying it's discriminatory and will reduce the accuracy of the count by lessening participation. Espinoza left to live in Mexico nine years ago when her mother was deported and returned when she was 18. She and her 4-month-old child now live with relatives, some of whom came here illegally. They're all worried about what the census will mean for their family, she says. "As long as the census is perceived as a means of potentially enforcing immigration laws, it will be difficult to overcome the potential for under-counting," said Ray Perryman, an economist in Waco, Texas, who sees border states at particular risk of a "substantial under-count." Immigrants aren't the only population that poses a challenge for census takers, said Margaret Wallace Brown, a city planner who's spearheading Houston's census effort. Frequent movers, single-parent homes, the poor and less educated, and anyone who mistrusts government will be hard to count. Millennials, who have the lowest voter turnout rates of any generation, could also be difficult to reach. For the Houston census project, Murillo's chamber has partnered with 20 media outlets, including local English and Spanish-language TV and radio stations in the area to spread the word about why the census is important. The chamber has collected $1.3 million in advertising donations so far, including billboards and print ads to help in the effort, Murillo said. The city will recruit volunteers from churches, community centers and other nonprofits to set up computer centers in neighborhoods where people can fill out the surveys, she said. A key part of the message will be to reassure people that the census is not part of an immigration enforcement sting. "No one is going to take the information and use it against you or your family members,'' Mayor Turner said. People have often ignored the "power and the breadth of the Hispanic community," said Debbie Ortiz, director of development at the Association for the Advancement of Mexican-Americans in Houston. Hispanics account for $54 billion in spending power in the city, according to the chamber. If individuals in the community don't raise their hands to be counted, Ortiz said, "It's like they're not even there." ABOARD THE USS JASON DUNHAM, PERSIAN GULF - U.N. experts on Thursday inspected a shipment of weapons recently seized by the U.S. Navy that American officials suspect could provide new evidence of Iranian support for Houthi rebels in Yemen. The U.N. inspectors will seek to identify the origin of about 2,500 AK-47s seized in the Gulf of Aden on Aug. 28, U.S. officials said. The weapons are being stored aboard the USS Jason Dunham, a guided-missile destroyer that confiscated the weapons off a vessel encountered about 70 miles off the southern coast of Yemen. Vice Adm. Scott Stearney, the commander of U.S. Naval forces in the Middle East, said American officials had conducted a preliminary examination of the weapons but would wait to determine how to handle them until the U.N. investigators reach their own conclusions. "What the U.N. inspection team does is it allows us to have a level of validation that maybe is accepted on a broader scale," Stearney told a small group of reporters. The team members have expertise in weapons coming out of Iran, Yemen and Somalia, "so, everything that connects this portion of the theater," he said. The seizure comes as the Trump administration seeks to choke off outside support to the Houthis, who have been battling Saudi Arabia, a U.S. ally, and other nations since 2015. The United States provides limited military support to the Saudi-led military coalition, which conducts air and ground operations in Yemen, including aerial refueling and intelligence support. Critics allege that American backing has enabled the Saudi-led coalition to conduct an air campaign resulting in repeated targeting of civilian sites and widespread noncombatant casualties, even as the war exacerbates a humanitarian crisis. U.N. officials this week declared that half of Yemen's population now lives under "pre-famine conditions." At least 21 Yemeni civilians were killed Wednesday in airstrikes on a market in the Red Sea port of Hodeida, according to the U.N. humanitarian aid agency. Friction over Riyadh's handling of the war had been growing even before relations with the United States plunged into crisis over the death of Washington Post contributing columnist Jamal Khashoggi, who Saudi officials have admitted was killed in the country's consulate in Istanbul this month. Since the war in Yemen began, U.S. and allied naval forces have seized weapons shipments that the U.S. government believes originated in Iran and were bound for the Houthis, a Shiite group that took over the capital almost four years ago. Cmdr. John Hamilton said the ship's helicopter had taken video of two small boats, a skiff and a traditional dhow, transferring cargo at sea at night. The following morning, the Dunham dispatched personnel, who determined that the vessels were not flagged and thus considered stateless. After boarding the skiff, the U.S. team recovered weapons wrapped in plastic and Styrofoam casings. Three crew members from the skiff boarded the Dunham after U.S. officials determined that the craft, which had been weighed down with the guns, was no longer seaworthy. The men were handed over to Yemeni authorities, officials said, and the skiff was destroyed. Officials were unable to recover 500 AK-47s from that vessel. Naval officials provided reporters access to the weapons, which were stacked about five feet high and four weapons deep on the Dunham. The guns, which officials said were new when they were confiscated, are quickly rusting in the sea air. U.S. officials believe the interdicted vessels embarked from Somalia and suspect the shipment may have been made with Iranian support. Gregory Johnsen, who previously served as a member of the United Nations' Yemen Panel of Experts, said the inspectors in addition to examining the weapons themselves probably would ask for documents that were found on the boat, information about communications its crew might have had with shore and might also ask for information including maps to determine the vessel's trajectory. Establishing origin will be more difficult since they are small, commonly available arms rather than larger weaponry. Determining that the weapons are linked to Iran would reinforce the Trump administration's assertion that the country is providing lethal aid to the Houthis. In recent months, the White House and State Department have injected new urgency in their push against Iran's military reach and intensified economic measures on Iranian affiliates. The Trump administration has displayed other seized arms allegedly linked to Iran at a military base outside Washington. U.S. officials have also accused Iran of supplying more sophisticated weapons to the Houthis, including ballistic missiles that threaten Saudi Arabia. That the Navy has not announced such a seizure since 2016 could suggest that combatants in Yemen are relying on alternate routes for accessing outside weaponry. It also underscores the difficulty of finding contraband that may be trafficked in small vessels amid the vast area - about 2.5 million square miles - that the ships of U.S. Central Command patrol. Securing commerce around Yemen, which sits along some of the most heavily transited waters in the world, has become a priority for the Pentagon because of the Houthis' military power and their record of attacking vessels linked to Saudi Arabia or its supporters. The Bab al-Mandeb, where the southwest tip of Yemen is only 18 nautical miles from the Horn of Africa, is a particular concern because of the volume of oil and commercial goods that transit it. "So, trying to thread that needle while it's moving is something we're really good at in the military, but we have to be good at it in a very, very collective way," which includes working with an international naval coalition that battles piracy and terrorism, Stearney said. Rep. Maxine Waters, D-Calif., issued a defiant response on Thursday to being targeted by homemade mail bombs, declaring in an online video, "I ain't scared." Waters was among the 10 prominent Democrats and critics of President Donald Trump who were sent packages containing explosive devices this week. All of the packages were intercepted before reaching their intended targets. The FBI said Wednesday that two packages addressed to Waters's offices in Los Angeles and Washington were recovered by authorities. In a video of an interview posted Thursday by the website Blavity, Waters said "we must not be intimidated" in the wake of such violent threats. "We have to keep doing what we're doing in order to make this country right," Waters said. "That's what I intend to do. And as the young people say, 'I ain't scared.'" Waters is one of Trump's most vocal critics, and the president has frequently used her as a foil on the campaign trail, referring to her as a "low I.Q. individual." In Thursday's video, the California Democrat did not hold back on her criticism of Trump, who she said "should take responsibility for the kind of violence that we're seeing for the first time in different ways." She noted that in remarks at a recent rally, the president praised Rep. Greg Gianforte, R-Mont., for body-slamming a journalist. "I think the president of the United States has been dog-whistling to his constituency, making them believe that their problems are caused by 'those people' over there," Waters said. "And I think that they are acting out what they believe the president wants them to do." In recent months, Republicans have seized on remarks Waters made at a rally in which she called for supporters to confront Trump administration officials wherever they go. Waters has maintained that she was not calling for violence. She urged caution in Thursday's video, telling viewers, "Of course, we must be wise." "We must not be foolish and act in foolish ways," she said. "But we should never stop the struggle and the fight for justice and equality in this country." - - - The Washington Post's Cleve R. Wootson Jr. and Alex Horton contributed to this report. As one who has worked with and supported immigrants and immigrant assistance programs over the past years, I am appalled at the lies being thrown around by our president and his lackeys. A simple search on the internet at other than right-wing sites will put to rest the vile lies not misstatements, not untruths not misunderstandings or misstatements about immigration, immigrants and what they are doing to this nation! The truth if anyone is interested in the truth anymore is that immigration is good for our nation. We have always prospered when immigrants have arrived. We profit from their work, their new ideas, even their new ways of looking at the world. Are there problems? Sure! Change is always difficult, but the facts you remember those pesky little things? are that we are the nation we are because of immigrants. That is true whether they are like my comfortably white ancestors who arrived centuries ago from Europe or like my 90-year-old dads doctor of darker complexion who arrived 10 years ago from India. So, here are the facts yes, the facts about immigration in a condensed form: The present caravan about to invade our nation is not funded by Democrats. There may be some criminals and Middle Easteners mixed in, but there is no plot to do so. (And, by the way Middle Eastener is a not a synonym for terrorist. After all, Jesus was a Middle Eastener.) The idea that the border will be flooded by these people is unlikely as many will drop off along the way. It has not triggered a national emergency. The crisis at the border is not all the Democrats fault. There is plenty of blame to go around and Republicans presently control all branches of government, by the way. Immigrants are not only not taking jobs away from American citizens, they are performing jobs that Americans will not do. (Yes, there are some few exceptions, but they are few and far between.) In addition, the American-born labor force is shrinking due to the retirement of the large baby boomer bubble, of which I am a part. The vast majority of immigrants are not coming from Mexico any more. As of 2016, most come from China and India. Undocumented workers pay taxes lots of taxes. They pay seven sales taxes, have Social Security and Medicare taken out of their paychecks, and they pay property taxes. It is estimated that in Texas alone they pay $159 million to $194 million in taxes. Finally, immigrants actually have a lower rate of all kinds of crimes most especially violent crime. The conservative think tank American Majority Foundation notes that crime rates are lowest in states with the highest rates of immigration. I did not make these facts up. They came from nonpartisan, independent references. Stop being sucked in by what New York Times columnist Frank Bruni calls audaciously far from the truth and shockingly deep in the gutter lies from people who should know better. Become a thinking, compassionate American again. The Rev. Sharon M. Freeto, of San Antonio, is a retired United Methodist pastor and a retired Air Force colonel who was a chaplain. The burning of the Victoria Islamic Center was not a mere property crime, as the defense lawyer for the man convicted of the arson tried to spin it at his clients sentencing in federal court. It was an egregious hate crime. That it was committed the day after President Donald Trump imposed a travel ban on those from some majority Muslim countries and at a time when political passions on the issue were running high makes it all the more serious. A property crime generally results in the loss of something of monetary value. In this case, the loss to the Victoria community was way more than just the destruction of bricks and mortar. The mosque fire left permanent scars on the usually quiet community of 60,000 residents, located 30 miles from the Gulf Coast, where families generally have a passing acquaintance with each other through the activities of their school-age children. The shock, terror, anxiety and loss of peace the arson produced may take years, perhaps decades, to overcome. Things may never go back to the way they were, but the community is rallying together on this. The hateful act brought the diverse South Texas community together in support of the centers rebuilding, and they were joined in the effort by many across the globe who backed them with prayers and financial support. In late September, the Victoria Islamic Center reopened. It was rebuilt with $1.1 million in donations made by more than 20,000 people who contributed to a GoFundMe site. It was reassuring to see the U.S. Department of Justices Civil Rights Division aggressively prosecute this case, sending a strong message that this type of behavior, even in a small Texas city and committed by a single individual, will not be tolerated. The 24-year sentenced assessed this month by U.S. District Judge John Rainey against the man convicted in that arson reflects the seriousness of the Jan. 28, 2017, criminal act that terrorized the community. It was important to hear the judge say that the sentence he was imposing was intended to send a message to the defendant, Marq Vincent Perez, 26, and those of a like mind that there would be zero tolerance for such behavior. This must stop. Its like a cancer on our society, the judge said, referencing the growing religious intolerance in our country. Its sage advice as we keeping witnessing diminished civility at all levels of our society not just involving religion. Metro Manila (CNN Philippines, October 26) Upon the orders of President Rodrigo Duterte, all casinos in the newly-reopened Boracay Island have ceased operation. During Friday's formal reopening of Boracay after a six-month closure, Interior and Local Government Acting Secretary Eduardo Ano said Duterte gave him specific instructions earlier this week to ensure that no casinos will operate once the island reopens, even the existing ones. "There are no casinos now existing in Boracay Island. We intend to implement that regulation continuously," he said in a media briefing with Boracay Interagency Task Force heads. Ano said they have requested Philippine Amusement and Gaming Corporation (PAGCOR) to cancel the existing permits granted to casinos. Justice Secretary Menardo Guevarra said the permanent and provisional franchises of existing casinos can be revoked at anytime. "Walang question on that, that can be revoked because that's a mere privilege extended by the state," he said. He said they have recommended to Duterte to issue an executive order to implement a policy that will ban casinos on the island. He said Boracay is not a place for gambling; rather it is supposed to be a family-oriented vacation spot. Prior to the island's massive rehabilitation, Duterte in April said there was no plan to put up a casino on Boracay, despite the provisional license granted to a Chinese company to build a $500-million (P26 billion) hotel-casino on the island. The President on February 9 imposed a temporary halt on the construction of more casinos to avoid an "oversupply" of gaming complexes. If early indications are anything to go by, turnout levels in the 2018 presidential election and blasphemy referendum look set to fall considerably below the 64 per cent total that prevailed during May's abortion referendum. Just one person had posted their vote in booth no. 1 at Granard's Sacred Heart National School when the Leader popped in at around 8:20am. By 10am around 3 per cent of the electorate had cast their vote. In Killoe, the figures didn't get much higher with four voters out of 297 having marked their ballot papers. That figure has since risen to 11 at 10am. The last time the voting public were tasked with exercising their democratic right, a sizeable 64.5 per cent came out to vote. The low level of activity at polling booths across the county has also raised questions as to whether the 2018 presidential election will surpass or even match the 56.1 per cent turnout at its 2011 equivalent. Alongside deciding on the next head of State, voters are also being asked if they agree with the proposal to remove blasphemy as an offence from the Constitution. More than 3.2 million people are eligible to cast their ballots. Polling stations will be open between 7am and 10pm with counting expected to get underway from 9am tomorrow. Valentine's Day may be several months away, but Longford woman, Jillian McNulty, is already planning her next Valentine's Day Ball for Cystic Fibrosis. Last year's ball was a huge success, raising a total of 6,600 after costs. I'm hoping to surpass that this year. I'm hoping for 10,000, Jillian told the Longford Leader. A percentage of the funds raised will go to Cystic Fibrosis Ireland, Jillian explained. But the majority of the money will go directly to the Cystic Fibrosis ward in St Vincent's Hospital. I wanted to make sure it goes straight to the hospital, said Jillian, who is well aware of the needs of Cystic Fibrosis patients through personal experience. Some people in the hospital arent that well off and if theres a fund there for them, it makes things a little easier. Jillian organises a fundraiser for Cystic Fibrosis every year. This is her second Ball and she hopes to make it an annual event. Last years ball was good but I was really sick, so I couldnt enjoy it. But everyone told me they enjoyed it, said Jillian. The ticket price includes a prosecco punch reception and a four-course meal. Gobsmacked are the band and theyre playing for free because its for charity, which I'm so grateful for. Then Mike D'Arcy from Shannonside will be DJ for the night. There will also be a leg wax and a head shave after the meal with some local volunteers willing to go under the razor - and the wax. Finally, there will be a raffle with some great prizes, including a trip to Lourdes. And, Jillian added, you don't have to go to the ball to support the cause. Anyone can buy a raffle ticket simply by getting in touch with Jillian through her Facebook page, Valentine's Ball for Cystic Fibrosis. Tickets for the ball can also be purchased by contacting the Facebook page. The Valentine's Ball will take place on Saturday, February 9, 2019 in Lough Rynn Castle. Tickets are 65 each, with a 5% discount when booking a table of 10. Read Also: Hero Award for Longford Campaigner, Jillian McNulty Local News, Crime, Business & Finance, Press Releases By Long Island News & PR Published: October 26 2018 Respondents Ordered to Pay Nearly $100K in Consumer Restitution, Civil Penalties, and Costs. New York, NY - October 26, 2018 - Attorney General Barbara D. Underwood today announced a judgment against Joseph Funding Company, Inc. and its owners Joseph Holman a/k/a Reggie Holman and Rebecca Ausby a/k/a Rena Holman for falsely advertising as real estate and property management professionals and engaging in repeated and persistent fraudulent conduct. The Honorable Donald A. Greenwood of Onondaga County Supreme Court found that the respondents used deception, misrepresentation, concealment, false pretense or promises, and unconscionable contractual provisions to trick several New York homeowners into turning over ownership of their homes to the company. The court order permanently bans Holman and Ausby from owning or operating any real estate or real estate investment business in New York State and requires them to pay $98,891 in victim restitution, civil penalties, and costs. Deceiving homeowners through tricks and false pretenses is unconscionable and against the law, said Attorney General Underwood. This court order reminds New York businesses that engaging in fraudulent practices will not be tolerated by my office. I encourage consumers to use our tips to protect themselves from deed theft and other foreclosure scams. Ausby and Holman preyed on homeowners who were struggling to pay their mortgage, at risk of foreclosure, or interested in getting rid of hard-to-sell properties without any profit or loss. As owners of Joseph Funding Company, Ausby and Holman represented that they were real estate professionals who had extensive experience buying and selling homes and managing properties including homes in economically depressed neighborhoods. They offered to sell consumers homes for them and promised to manage their properties prior to sale by finding tenants, collecting the rent, and paying the consumers mortgage. Ausby and Holman advertised that Joseph Funding Company buys and sell houses quickly, and the companys recorded voicemail message stated that they could take over the homeowners mortgage payments right away. Their website identified dozens of properties that they were managing or had recently sold or rented. In fact, the listings were fake; Joseph Funding Company had no connection to most of the listed properties. Furthermore, neither Holman nor Ausby are licensed by the New York State Department of State as real estate professionals and therefore are not authorized to sell or manage properties in New York State. To solidify the property management deal, Holman and Ausby presented consumers with paperwork to be signed in order to make Ms. Ausby the Trustee for the property and the consumers power of attorney. However, consumers were not informed that they were also signing a document that assigned their interest in the trust to Mr. Holman and transferred ownership of the propertys deed to Joseph Funding Company. After taking full ownership of the property, Holman and Ausby failed to abide by their promise to pay consumers mortgages. The company typically paid the homeowners mortgage for a few months to a year, and then stopped without informing the consumers, but continued to profit from the monthly rental incomes. Consumers first learned that they had defaulted on their mortgages when they experienced problems with their credit or were sued in a foreclosure action. Consumers reported to the Attorney Generals office that they were promised these services as a guise and that they were duped into signing paperwork that transferred their propertys deed to Rebecca Ausby and Joseph Funding Company. Five homeowners unknowingly lost ownership of their homes, yet remained fully responsible for the mortgage payments. In November 2017, the Attorney Generals office filed suit against Joseph Funding Company Inc., Joseph Holman, and Rebecca Ausby. Holman and Ausby also advertised that they could stop foreclosure and come up with solutions to help people in default. New York State Real Property Law regulates distressed property consultants and requires that such consultants have written consulting contracts that include specific disclosures. Online advertising is also regulated and must disclose to homeowners that government-approved housing counselors may provide the same services for free. Joseph Funding Company did not have the required contracts and disclosures. One homeowner who was in default on his mortgage was allegedly led to believe that he had sold his home to Joseph Funding Company, and that Ausby and Holman would pay the bank directly for the property. Unbeknownst to him, he gave away his property but received no money. Holman and Ausby did not pay the bank at all, and the bank foreclosed on the property. Homeowners at risk of foreclosure should reach out to the Attorney Generals office, which can connect them with a free, qualified housing counseling through the Attorney Generals Homeowner Protection Program (HOPP). Additionally, the Attorney General suggests that people struggling with their mortgage visit HomeownerHelpNY.com for helpful information, including: earch Government-Vetted Companies: HomeownerHelpNY.com allows consumers to search the name of an individual or company to determine if that entity is a government-vetted agency (that is, either a member of the Attorney Generals HOPP network or a HUD-certified counseling agency). If the company searched is not a government-vetted agency, the consumer will be told to proceed with caution and advised with several tips on how to identify signs of a foreclosure rescue scam. Locate Nearby Counseling Partners: HomeownerHelpNY.com also features an interactive map that allows consumers to find the nearest Homeowner Protection Program (HOPP) grantee. The Attorney General has dedicated $110 million to fund HOPP, a network of more than 85 housing counseling and legal services agencies across the state that are dedicated to providing free assistance to New Yorkers. Report Scams: Consumers who have already been contacted by, or are in the process of working with a company suspected of operating a foreclosure rescue scam, can file a complaint with the Attorney Generals office via this Consumers who have already been contacted by, or are in the process of working with a company suspected of operating a foreclosure rescue scam, can file a complaint with the Attorney Generals office via this online complaint form Get Tips: HomeownerHelpNY.com offers details on how to recognize signs of a foreclosure rescue scam, including samples of scam letters and other materials utilized by fraudsters to target homeowners, and provides information about recent foreclosure scams that have been the subject of enforcement actions brought by the Attorney Generals office and other law enforcement agencies. Local News, Crime, Business & Finance, Press Releases By Long Island News & PR Published: October 26 2018 Reliance Star Payment Services, Inc. Required to Stop Using Non-Compete Agreements and Discontinue All Pending Litigation Seeking Enforcement. Long Island, NY - October 26, 2018 - Attorney General Barbara D. Underwood today announced a settlement with Reliance Star Payment Services, Inc., a payment processing service firm based in Attorney General Barbara D. Underwood today announced a settlement with Reliance Star Payment Services, Inc., a payment processing service firm based in Great Neck, NY and largely serving small retailers in the Chinese-American community, for requiring employees to sign non-compete agreements regardless of position or job duties, exposure to confidential information, or compensation. The non-competes were written only in English even though a number of Reliance Star employees had only limited English proficiency. As part of the settlement, Reliance Star has agreed to stop using and enforcing non-compete agreements against all former, current, and future employees and notify all current and former employees who left within the last three years that the non-competes are no longer in effect. Reliance Star will also discontinue all pending litigation against its workers seeking enforcement of a non-compete. Too often, non-compete agreements are misused, particularly with low-wage workers unreasonably limiting employees mobility, said Attorney General Underwood. Employees job opportunities should not be limited by the threat of a lawsuit from their former employer. Well continue to work to end these overly broad non-compete agreements and ensure New York workers rights are protected. In 2017, the Attorney Generals office began an investigation after receiving complaints that Reliance Star routinely required its employees to sign non-competes and other restrictive covenants. The investigation revealed that, since its founding in 2004, Reliance Star regularly required employees to sign employment agreements with non-competes regardless of position, compensation, or exposure to confidential information. New York permits the use of non-compete agreements, but they are generally intended to be used in very limited circumstances, such as when an employee has unique skills or access to trade secrets. In 2014, as a condition of continued employment, Reliance Star required employees to sign non-compete agreements that prohibited them from engaging in any business or enterprise competitive with Reliance Star for up to three years with a wide geographic scope of 16 states, including New York. The employees bound by this agreement earned, on average, less than $35,000 per year and had little access to proprietary information. On multiple occasions, Reliance Star attempted to enforce the non-compete agreements against former employees by sending letters threatening litigation or commencing litigation. In some cases, Reliance Star threatened or brought litigation against former employees even though they had not signed the 2014 non-compete. The settlement agreement requires Reliance Star to stop using and enforcing non-compete agreements against all former, current, and future employees; discontinue all pending litigation seeking enforcement of a non-compete agreement; and to notify all current and former employees from the last three years that their non-competes are no longer in effect. Last month, the Attorney General reached an agreement with WeWork to discontinue its use of non-competes for thousands of employees nationwide. The office has previously reached agreements with other companies to curb the use of non-competes, including Jimmy Johns, Law360, and EMSI. The Attorney General also recently released Non-Compete Agreements In New York State Frequently Asked Questions , which provides easy-to-understand answers to common questions workers have regarding non-competes. Employees who believe they are subject to an overly broad non-compete agreement are encouraged to contact the New York Attorney Generals office at 212-416-8700 or email noncompete@ag.ny.gov with questions or concerns. Nature & Weather, Local News, Community, Charity & Cause, Press Releases By Long Island News & PR Published: October 26 2018 Over 100 Holbrook residents assisted with the clean-up in order to improve the aesthetic of their hometown. Holbrook, NY - October 26, 2018 - Suffolk County Legislator Bill Lindsay III along with the Suffolk County Legislator Bill Lindsay III along with the Holbrook Chamber of Commerce (Chamber) sponsored their tenth semi-annual Holbrook Clean-Up this past Saturday. Over 100 Holbrook residents assisted with the clean-up in order to improve the aesthetic of their hometown. Volunteers met at Legislator Lindsays office to pick-up their garbage pickers, bags, and gloves at 8:45 AM on Saturday. Many were returning volunteers that look forward to the bi-annual event. Legislator Lindsays late father, Presiding Officer Bill Lindsay, commenced this event many years ago along with the Chamber; it has remained a community tradition. It is a wonderful way for children and adults to work together in order to beautify their neighborhood. Students may request community service recognition from Legislator Lindsay upon the completion of their clean-up efforts. "Thank you to Legislator Lindsay's Staff, and the overwhelming response from our community for our clean-up on 10/20, said Rick Ammirati, President of the Holbrook Chamber of Commerce. The Town has never looked cleaner. Led by Nick and several of his students from Cutting Edge Kempo Karate on Main Street the turnout this year was over 100 volunteers who eagerly canvassed and cleaned up just about every public corridor of Holbrook." Every community clean-up we host is filled with eager volunteers, and admirable community service efforts by all, said Legislator Lindsay. It is important to me to carry-on my fathers tradition, and maintain a strong partnership with the Holbrook Chamber of Commerce. The clean-ups are paramount in the beautification of our neighborhood. As always, I am proud of the children, and adults who consistently donate their time to this cause. I look forward to the next clean-up in the spring. Local News, Crime, Press Releases By Long Island News & PR Published: October 26 2018 Gary Lotocke was last seen on Hamilton Avenue on Thursday, October 25. UPDATE - October 29, 2018 - Police report that Gary Lotocke has been located. Below is the original report. West Hempstead, NY - October 26, 2018 - The Missing Persons Squad reports the details of a Missing Vulnerable Adult from The Missing Persons Squad reports the details of a Missing Vulnerable Adult from West Hempstead that occurred on Tuesday, October 23, 2018 at 7:00 p.m. and was reported to police on Thursday, October 25, 2018 at 10:40 p.m. According to detectives, Gary Lotocke, 62, was last seen on Hamilton Ave. He is described as a male white, 61, 150 lbs. with brown eyes and gray hair. He was last seen driving a 2013 white Ford Mustang with NY registration HCV3155. His clothing description is unknown. His destination is unknown. Forty-three people were arrested and 26 issued criminal summonses on the grounds of MGM Springfield during the casino's first six weeks of operation, according to newly released figures from the Massachusetts State Police. The statistics, obtained by MassLive through a public records request, account for crimes investigated from the casino's opening in late August through the end of September. "We can tell you that the majority of these were for minor offenses, such as trespassing or disorderly conduct, several others were for simple drug possession, and several others were for people found to have outstanding warrants," State Police spokesman David Procopio wrote in an email. "There was one motor vehicle offense. As far as serious offenses, there was one serious assault, a few simple assault and battery offenses, and one firearm arrest." The data represents a first, though incomplete, glimpse at whether public safety fears raised by opponents of gaming in Springfield could prove justified. In 2017, before the casino opened, Springfield police made 4,405 total arrests -- an average of 508 in each six-week period. MassLive has requested additional details on crime reports and arrests within the casino property. The Massachusetts Gaming Commission will also be conducting an analysis of the casino's effects on crime in the city, with the first quarterly report to be made in January. "We are very pleased with our operations at every level in the first two months. MGM Springfield is very proud of the strong partnerships we have formed with the Massachusetts Gaming Commission, Springfield Police Department, Massachusetts State Police and other law enforcement agencies, and grateful for the extraordinary level of professionalism, engagement and coordination," MGM Springfield President Michael Mathis said in a statement. "Our professional security force, 24-hour patrols, state-of-the-art surveillance systems, and K-9 units stand ready to address any situation as they arise." So far, there has been no significant increase in neighborhood crime linked to the casino, Springfield Police spokesman Ryan Walsh said in an interview. "At this point, there's not a lot of spillover. The incidents or crimes that were happening in the Metro area were happening before," Walsh said. "On the property, it is busy." The city's Metro unit, which patrols the neighborhood surrounding the casino, has identified one crime pattern possibly linked to activity around the casino, Walsh said -- a wave of car break-ins that victimized people who had parked on the street to visit MGM Springfield. A likely suspect in those break-ins was arrested last month. "What we've seen, around the casino it's been steady. There's been more people obviously down there, but off-property the only issues we've really seen that would be considered new or different - there were a handful of windows smashed," Walsh said. "The Metro unit then arrested this guy with brass knuckles and spark plug on Sept. 24. That then ended." One serious crime on casino grounds has already made the news. 27-year-old Springfield resident Devon Williams has been charged with assault with intent to murder and assault and battery with a dangerous weapon for allegedly punching and kicking a 55-year-old victim at the casino, after embarking on a spree of random assaults around the city that night. The firearm charge referenced by state police was not linked to any threat to casino patrons, Walsh said. Police arrested a man in the casino's hotel after finding him in drunk and in possession of a legal firearm while investigating loud noises coming from his room. "He had a license to carry and the firearm was in his hotel room," Walsh said. "Because he was intoxicated and there was a firearm in there, that was a firearm charge." Police have also received six reports of stolen cell phones, Walsh said. One casino patron was trespassed from the facility for "chip topping" -- attempting to secretly increase a wager after a winning bet to cheat money from the casino. In anticipation of the casino's opening, Springfield Police, the Massachusetts State Police and the Massachusetts Gaming Commission announced a suite of public safety measures to account for increased foot traffic and the potential for late-night rowdiness. Most of the criminal counts have been due to disorderly conduct or default warrants, Walsh said. The Gaming Enforcement Unit, a joint group of state and city police consisting of about 20 officers, is responsible for investigating all crimes reported on MGM property. Working in concert with the casino's private security, the unit is headed by State Police Lt. Timothy Babbin. "They will be on the front lines of the footprint of the casino," Lt. Col. Barry O'Brien, deputy superintendent of the Massachusetts State Police, said at an August press conference detailing casino security measures. The city has also established a 40-member Metro unit, run out of a newly opened police substation on Dwight Street. Those officers patrol the city's downtown and are available to assist the Gaming Enforcement Unit if needed on the casino premises. About $13 million per year in state, city and MGM Springfield funds will be spent on security in downtown Springfield, officials said in August. MBTA Transit Police are investigating after a man was struck and killed by an outbound Orange Line train in Boston Thursday night. Authorities responded to Green Street station in Jamaica Plain after receiving a call of a person possibly struck at 7:40 p.m. Transit Police, Boston Firefighters and Emergency Medical Services arrived and found a man had been struck by an outbound Orange Line train at the station. Soon after the man was pronounced dead due to his injuries. He has not been publicly identified. Detectives with the MBTA Transit Police are investigating the death and say they believe foul play is not suspected. An 80-year-old Lynn man faces up to five years in prison after he was arrested on charges he conspired with two store owners to commit tax fraud and filing false tax returns for his part in a multi-million-dollar lottery scam called "ten-percenting," federal authorities said. Clarance Jones was released on conditions following an appearance Friday in U.S. District Court in Boston. According to a Department of Justice press release, former store owners George Kinslieh, 68, and Bhavna Patel, 44, from at least 2013 through 2015 worked with other to purchase winning lottery tickets from the ticket holders at less than their value, thereby allowing the winners to avoid paying taxes on the proceeds. Jones then took the tickets to the Massachusetts Lottery office, took the full winnings, which he claimed on his tax returns but offset the winnings with losses he said he incurred as a professional gambler, prosecutors said. Jones split the returns from the scheme with Patel and Kinslieh. Both Kinslieh and Patel have pleaded guilty to charges in the case. Neither claimed the proceeds from the scam on their tax returns. Patel entered a guilty plea to a single count of conspiring to defraud the Internal Revenue Service. He is scheduled for sentencing Feb. 7. Kinslieh pleaded guilty to a single count of filing a false tax return and is scheduled to be sentenced Feb. 4. Columbia Gas Company has announced that the homeowners and business owners impacted by the gas disaster last month will now have to wait until early- to mid-December for heat to be turned back on. The initial gas restoration completion date offered by Columbia Gas was Nov. 19, already more than two months after explosions and fires rocked communities in Merrimack Valley. Columbia officials said Friday that it would now be sometime between Dec. 2 and Dec. 16 that all of the 8,400 impacted gas meters would be relit in Lawrence, Andover and North Andover. "We recognize there is an incredible sense of urgency...We are racing against the winter," Chief Recovery Officer Joe Albanese said at a press conference in Lawrence on Friday. Albanese and Columbia Gas Restoration Officer Pablo Vegas spoke alongside political leaders including Gov. Charlie Baker, Lt. Gov. Karyn Polito and Lawrence Mayor Dan Rivera. Each praised the resiliency of the Greater Lawrence community and acknowledged the difficult situation residents were placed in following the disaster tied to Columbia Gas. Columbia officials said the gas company will directly contact those whose homes or businesses will not be ready by the original Nov. 19 date. For some families suffering from the gas disaster that rocked the Greater Lawrence community on Sept. 13, Thanksgiving will not be spent in their homes, but perhaps in the alternative housing that has been offered to them, like trailers, recreational vehicles and hotel rooms. "I acknowledge that this process has been very disruptive to people and has placed significant difficulties to daily life," Vegas said. He added that the company will directly contact those who will be displaced past the Nov. 19 date "and see if there's something we can do to make that holiday a little more special." So far, 1,040 gas meters have been lit, officials said. As of Friday, about 33 miles - 74 percent of the main pipeline - had been replaced. By Halloween, Columbia Gas expects to complete all 44.5 miles of main pipeline replacement in the area, which the company said is 2.5 weeks ahead of schedule. More crews from three different contractor companies were added to the repair process, nearly tripling the number of workers on the ground, according to the company. Albanese announced a new plan that will target repairs to restore heat and hot water for each home and business first. Once those repairs are made, crews will make a second visit to each unit to replace appliances like stoves and dryers. Any heating units repaired in the short-term will be fully replaced in the spring, according to Albanese. The announcement comes on the heels of a letter from the office of Massachusetts Attorney General Maura Healey to Columbia Gas officials, which warned a speedier restoration process was needed. "Without mitigation, the damage from frozen pipes will be enormous," Healey's letter read. Vegas said the company has heard numerous complaints about the claims process and that communication with customers would be improved. The company's interactive online map, which aims to notify residents and business owners when their property will be visited by repair crews, will be removed over the weekend and posted again on Monday with updates. Vegas said more than 21,600 claims have been recorded by Columbia Gas, and the company has paid out nearly $30 million. "As of today, since Sept. 13, we are still in disaster area, disaster zone. And for a lot of peoples' lives, it's meant changing the way they live," Rivera said. Rivera urged residents to seek and secure alternative housing offered by the company as soon as possible, before temperatures dip. In a change of tune from his original comments after the disaster in September, the mayor vocally supported the progress of Columbia Gas. But Rivera made demands from the company, too. While reading from a joint statement also signed by Andover Town Manager Andrew Flanagan and North Andover Town Manager Andrew Maylor, Rivera asked Columbia Gas to provide a written contract. "Verbal commitments will no longer be acceptable to the cities or the towns," Rivera said, citing the changed Nov. 19 deadline. Rivera asked the company to provide a written agreement specifying "what each resident and business can expect and when," in the form of a contract provided to each customer. In addition to several other demands tied to "necessary resources" and boiler replacement, Rivera asked Columbia Gas commit to "curb-to-curb replacement of all roads impacted by the by gas main replacement work associated with this disaster." The Lawrence mayor said should Columbia Gas fail to meet its agreements, the company would face up to a $1 million penalty per property under a current order by the Department of Public Utilities. Gov. Baker said he believes the increase in work crews, change in strategy and experiences learned by Columbia Gas over the last month will expedite the process to heat homes. "If you walk outside, you realize we are finally moving into what I would call late fall, and we consider this to be, at this point, sort of a primary objective given the weather," Baker said. A 53-year-old Belmont woman is accused of trying to kill a dementia patient in his 80s by suffocating him with a pillow at a Cambridge hospital, officials said. The victim was admitted to the hospital earlier this month as a result of complications from dementia, according to the office of Middlesex District Attorney Marian Ryan. Tania Boghossian was staying with the victim during his hospital stay, Ryan's office said in a statement released Friday. The victim and Bognhossian are known to one another. A "sitter" was assigned by the hospital to watch the victim, the statement said. Around 2 p.m. on Oct. 12, the sitter allegedly heard Bognhossian tell the victim, "take your last breath," Ryan's office said. Bognhossian and the victim were behind a curtain at the time. The sitter drew the curtain and allegedly saw Bognhossian holding a pillow over the victim's face, the statement said. Bognhossian was removed from the premises by hospital security, the district attorney's office said. Cambridge police were contacted by Ryan's office on Oct. 18 regarding the incident. After a police investigation, a warrant was issued for Bognhossian's arrest. Bognhossian was arraigned Monday in Cambridge District Court on one count of attempted murder, Ryan's office said. She was ordered held without bail pending a dangerousness hearing. At the dangerousness hearing on Wednesday, Bognhossian was ordered held without bail again by Judge Dominic Paratore. Bognhossian is scheduled to return to court Nov. 15 and has also been ordered to undero a mental health evaluation. After a limousine crash killed 20 people in New York state earlier this month, investigators flagged problems with the vehicle and the qualifications of the person behind the wheel. In Massachusetts, meanwhile, there are a number of licensing and inspection requirements in place to ensure limos and their drivers are as safe as possible. Few companies in the state have been cited for violations. It is unclear how many limousine companies operate in Massachusetts. The New England Livery Association has 83 members but not all companies join, said Executive Director Rick Szilagyi. He said there are likely 1,000 limousine companies in the state. "The Department of Public Utilities regularly inspects Massachusetts livery companies' operations, drivers, and vehicles, and all livery vehicles are also required to be inspected annually by a MassDOT-licensed inspection station," said Katie Gronendyke, a spokeswoman for the state Executive Office of Energy and Environmental Affairs. "The Department is committed to ensuring the safe operation of livery companies across the Commonwealth in compliance with all state and federal regulations." Szilagyi said most companies "go above and beyond" what's required with things like carrying additional insurance. He said the state does spot checks and companies can be cited for things like having a fire extinguisher that's out of date by a day. A random look at records for dozens of Massachusetts limousine services on the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration website found few companies under review. None listed any crashes, and most companies had a satisfactory safety record. A few were listed as conditional -- meaning that the carrier was out of compliance with one or more safety requirements. Here's a sampling of violations found earlier this month, based on a federal database search and information from a state DPU spokeswoman: Concierge Limousine Co., of Stoughton, has a "not authorized" status because the carrier's insurance certificate has expired. The carrier has been notified to update the insurance with both that agency and the DPU. A-Executive Limo, of Billerica, has a conditional rating but can continue to operate. That company was cited for six violations including four for having either missing, discharged or unsecured fire extinguishers, one for an inoperative or defective hazard warning lamp and another for insufficient warning devices. A Formal Affair, of Marshfield, does not have federal interstate operating authority, but has a DPU charter certificate to operate intrastate. Limo D'Skilo, of Dedham, is not authorized to operate interstate as it is under an out-of-service order by the federal government, and does not have a charter certificate from the DPU. Livery companies and drivers must have different types of licenses and permits depending on the number of occupants their vehicles can carry. "Passenger for hire" drivers carrying up to 14 passengers need a DPU-issued restricted motor bus certificate, which requires a road test, according to the DPU website. The driver is also required to have a current physical. Drivers transporting more than 14 passengers must have a commercial driver's license. Any livery company using a vehicle designed to transport nine or more passengers must have a DPU-issued intrastate charter certificate. All companies offering passenger for hire transportation must report to DPU any accident resulting in loss of life, serious personal injury or considerable property damage. Szilagyi said while attention falls to limousines after a crash like the one in New York, there's not as much scrutiny when it comes to ridesharing companies like Uber and Lyft. In 2016, a law was passed to address those services in Massachusetts. The new law sets up a two-tiered background check system, one completed by the company and another by the DPU. Drivers would have to get an inspection of their vehicles, through a mechanism determined by state officials and law enforcement. The companies would be required to get insurance coverage for their drivers. Any time they are carrying a passenger, drivers must have at least $1 million in liability coverage. The driver in the deadly Oct. 6 limousine crash in Schoharie, New York, was improperly licensed and the vehicle failed an inspection the previous month, authorities have said. Federal safety investigators have been unable to conduct a full examination of the limousine because of a criminal case against the limo company's operator, the Associated Press reported. Nauman Hussain of Prestige Limousine is charged with criminally negligent homicide. He has pleaded not guilty to the charge and has declined to comment on the crash. Meanwhile, U.S. Sen. Chuck Schumer has called on the National Transportation Safety Board to create stricter safety regulations around limousines, according to CBS News. SPRINGFIELD -- Mercy Medical Center, which this week announced it will close its long-established hearing center along with other workforce changes, for several years has been part of Trinity Health, an Indiana nonprofit corporation whose fiscal 2018 operating income increased more than 50 percent over the prior year. Trinity Health Corp., headquartered in Livonia, Michigan, is one of the largest, multi-institutional Catholic health care delivery systems in the country. Its approach of merge and acquire seems to have proven strategically sound thus far for the corporation and it now includes 94 hospitals and 109 continuing care facilities, home care agencies and outpatient centers in 22 states. It has, according to its recent report for fiscal 2018, succeeded in improving performance and operating income over fiscal 2017 despite increases in expenses to "buffer continued unfavorable industry trends." "Throughout fiscal year 2018, we kept our focus on improving performance across all aspects of our people-centered care continuum which helped buffer continued unfavorable industry trends," Ben Carter, executive vice president and chief financial officer of Trinity Health, said in a news release about the financial results. "In particular, our efforts centered on clinical and administrative efficiencies related to both productivity and supply costs, as well as improving performance in value-based care delivery models." According to its fiscal 2018 results released Oct. 3, Trinity Health showed an operating income of $401.3 million before other items and corresponding operating margin and operating cash flow margin of 2.2 percent and 8.1 percent, respectively. It said this was a $135.2 million increase in year-over-year operating income, "representing an improvement of more than 50 percent over fiscal year 2017, during which the system reported results of $266.1 million in annual operating income." It said comparable fiscal 2017 operating margin and operating cash flow margin were 1.5 percent and 7.6 percent, respectively. It also said revenue increased by $700 million to $18.3 billion, which it called a 4.1 percent increase over fiscal 2017. Excluding the effect of acquisitions, it attributed the revenue increase primarily to the result of "growth in patient volumes, payment rates and case mix." It said expenses increased by $582.4 million, or 3.4 percent, to $17.9 billion. The news release also said "other items incurred during the year resulted in a net charge to operations of $264.4 million for non-cash asset impairment charges that are helping the system right-size inpatient physical plant utilization and reposition in some markets." The news release said the system's decision to move to a single, enterprise-wide electronic health record and revenue cycle management system platform "resulted in $107.8 million of the impairments." Trinity Health Corp. was formed in 2013 when Trinity Health, created from the consolidation of Holy Cross Health System and Detroit-based Mercy Health Services, merged with Catholic Health East. Catholic Health East was formed in 1998 when 12 health systems, including that of the Holyoke-based Sisters of Providence, whose hospitals included Mercy, integrated to form one system. Trinity Health Of New England, based at St. Francis Hospital and Medical Center in Hartford, Connecticut, was formed in 2015. Parent company Trinity Health acquired St. Francis in 2013 and went on to initially create its New England entity with Mercy and St. Francis. It has since acquired other Connecticut facilities into what it calls its regional ministries with a management success geared to improving declining revenues and taking facilities out of the red. It made a capital commitment of $275 million to St. Francis over five years through 2020 "if performance metrics are achieved." In fiscal 2017, Trinity Health Of New England reported an operating margin -- the percentage of what was taken in and what is left after expenses -- of 1.26 percent and a total operating margin, which includes more revenue sources, of 2.4 percent. Dr. Reginald J. Eadie was named president and chief executive officer of Trinity Health Of New England in March. Larger health systems can help update community hospitals they acquire, introducing or updating electronic recording keeping as an example. But these systems can face challenges from declining operating margins and net operating income. Hospitals acquired can feel the impact in both positive and negative ways, from changes in leadership and elimination of positions to the influx of funds for community population health projects. The fact that Mercy will close its hearing centers -- one on its Springfield campus and one in Agawam -- at year's end as part of what it called a "reorganization" and "transition in our workforce" speaks at a grassroots level to the change that continues for both providers and consumers of the health care industry. Lower reimbursement rates from Medicaid and Medicare, the moved toward bundled payments rather than fee-for service, the rise in competing ambulatory care centers can all impact operating margins and revenue for hospitals. The Mercy Hearing Center was cited by Sister Kathleen Popko, president of the Sisters of Providence of Holyoke, as providing needed services in the area when it opened a number of years ago. It hired audiologists to provide an array of services to both children and adults, from diagnostic hearing tests in on-site sound booths to counseling on best options for improved hearing as well as fitting and programming hearing aids selected. Today, consumers have many outlets outside hospital settings when in need of such supports as hearing aids. Mark Fulco, who was named Mercy president in 2017, told staff in a letter sent Wednesday about "reduction of positions." A subsequent statement by Mercy's media specialist, Mary Orr, said the hearing center would close and that a "limited number of positions throughout the hospital will also be impacted" by what she termed "actions to ensure the sustainability of our health ministry." "These actions involve both a reorganization of certain departments and a transition in our workforce. This reorganization avoids any reduction in direct caregivers at the bedside," Orr said. "These changes will allow us to continue providing exceptional patient care, delivered with highest quality, and in a manner that honors our commitment to steward the resources entrusted to us." In July, Providence Behavioral Hospital in Holyoke, one of Mercy Medical Center's affiliates, announced the elimination of an unspecified number of full- and part-time jobs in what was said to be a restructuring to "align the size and structure of the workforce with current services." Last month, Mercy renamed its affiliated medical practices, such as RiverBend, Trinity Health Of New England Medical Group. The medical group includes more than 740 integrated surgical, specialty and primary care providers with 95 practice locations in Connecticut and Greater Springfield. The website of Trinity Health Of New England proclaims "we are just beginning our story." It describes its "regional health ministry" as a "strategic partnership" that also now includes three other Connecticut facilities -- Mount Sinai Rehabilitation Hospital in Hartford, Johnson Memorial Hospital in Stafford Springs and Saint Mary's Hospital in Waterbury. It notes Trinity Health Of New England "hospitals, walk-in clinics, medical offices, specialized facilities, affiliated institutions, and foundations serve a population of nearly three million people and includes 13,000 colleagues." Mercy's other affiliates include Weldon Rehabilitation Hospital on the campus of Mercy; Brightside for Families and Children, an outpatient service offering counseling and family support programs; two outpatient substance abuse treatment centers; and Mercy Continuing Care Network, which includes skilled nursing facilities, residential care facilities, an adult day health program, Mercy Homecare, Mercy Hospice and Mercy Life, a care program for the elderly. SPRINGFIELD -- The Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court has created a steering committee to explore ways to reduce stress on lawyers, help restore work-life balance, increase professional satisfaction and better support those who are confronting mental health and substance use disorders. Among the members is Springfield lawyer and past president of the Hampden County Bar Association Travaun Bailey. The justices of the court Friday named the members of the Steering Committee on Lawyer Well-Being. In his annual State of the Judiciary address in the John Adams Courthouse on Wednesday, Supreme Judicial Court Chief Justice Ralph D. Gants spoke of the importance of lawyer well-being. A press release from the SJC said the Report of the National Task Force on Lawyer Well-Being in August 2017 found that many attorneys are struggling with serious health issues that are exacerbated, if not caused, by the way that law is practiced today, including increased financial pressures and client and work expectations. A study done two years ago of nearly 13,000 practicing lawyers found that between 21 percent and 36 percent qualified as problem drinkers and approximately 28 percent were struggling with some level of depression, 19 percent with anxiety and 23 percent with stress, the SJC press release said. The steering committee is coordinated by retired SJC Justice Margot Botsford, who served as an associate justice from 2007 to 2017. Committee members represent different areas of the legal community, including judges, bar regulators, legal employers and representatives from law schools, bar associations and the lawyer assistance program. "They will be responsible for consulting with a diverse, representative group in their respective areas of practice or work, including lawyers in recovery, to learn what is currently being done to support lawyer well-being, to explore best practices, and to consider whether structural changes need to be made to better foster the health of the profession," the press release says. "I am confident that the committee members will work together and with the legal community to develop some practical solutions to the serious issues confronting the profession," Botsford said. The other members of the committee are: Gabrielle R. Wolohojian, state Appeals Court judge; Denise I. Murphy, Massachusetts Bar Association vice president; Richard Page, Boston Bar Association executive director; Marilyn J. Wellington, Massachusetts Board of Bar Examiners executive director; Constance Vecchione, Office of the Bar Counsel; Joseph Berman, Board of Bar Overseers general counsel; and David P. Rosenblatt of Burns & Levinson. Also: Anna Levine, Lawyers Concerned for Lawyers executive director; First Assistant Attorney General Mary Strother; Suffolk County Assistant District Attorney David A. Deakin; Pasqua Scibelli, Committee for Public Counsel Services staff lawyer for appeals; Christine Hughes, Emerson College vice president and general counsel; Geraldine M. Muir, Boston University School of Law associate dean of student affairs; and Lyonel Jean-Pierre Jr., Harvard Legal Aid Bureau clinical instructor. The New Hampshire man accused of stabbing a Massachusetts State Trooper last week in New Salem was released from the hospital where he had been treated for a gunshot injury, according to a spokesman for Northwestern District Attorney David Sullivan. Nhhia V. Le, 18, of Manchester, New Hampshire, is now in the custody of the Franklin County Sheriff's Department, said DA spokeswoman Mary Carey. He is being held at the Franklin County House of Correction pending his arraignment, which is planned for sometime next week, she said. He is facing several charges including assault with intent to murder, assault and battery with a dangerous weapon, assault and battery on a police officer, armed carjacking, and multiple motor vehicle offenses. Le is charged with leading police on a pursuit from the Vermont line along Route 202 into New Salem. When the pursuit ended after Le crashed his car, he fought with an unnamed trooper who was attempting to arrest him. State police say at some point in the struggle, Le pulled out a knife and began stabbing the trooper in the neck and chest. Another trooper shot Le to make him stop. The 47-year-old trooper suffered multiple stab wounds and required surgery at UMass Medical Center in Worcester. At last report earlier in the week, the trooper was still hospitalized but he was said to be in stable condition and in good spirits. Le also required surgery at UMass Medical. The nature of his gunshot wound was not released. According to state police, Le had been involved in a car accident earlier in the day. He fled that scene by pulling a driver out of a car, jumping in and driving off. The man then cut through Vermont on Interstate 91 south and drove into Massachusetts. SPRINGFIELD -- The historic Campanile tower has stood tall for over a century in Court Square, but admirers are hoping that a new structural and mechanical analysis will help pave the way for some immediate repairs and its eventual long-term restoration. Peter Garvey, the city's director of capital asset construction, said Thursday that the $450,000 investigation, led by architectural firm Bruner/Cott & Associates, of Boston, is examining the exterior and interior of the tower and long-troubled features that include the clock and elevator, and the bronze bells. The work this week included a subcontractor, Vertical Access, of Ithaca, New York, using employees to rappel on the outside of the Campanile from rigging and ropes, and the use of a drone for additional inspection work. "We look forward to getting the results and moving forward with this project," Garvey said. "Hopefully we will be able to move forward after securing the funding." Garvey said that the city has found original structural drawings of the Campanile that are helping the analysis. A report that will include findings, recommendations and strategies for the Campanile is due by March. The city would initially target critical safety work that is needed, Garvey said. Thereafter, the full restoration of the Campanile has an estimated price tag of $25 million. The 275-foot-high, 105-year-old tower has been outfitted with black safety netting on all four corners of the building for many years to help reduce damage from crumbling limestone. The city is exploring various sources of funds for needed renovations including grants, Garvey said. The city's Department of Capital Asset Construction has applied for an initial $250,000 grant under the Community Preservation Act, which is funded by a new property surtax in Springfield. Under the program, the tax revenue can be used for historic preservation projects and other community enhancements, if approved by an oversight committee and the City Council. Garvey said the interior of the Campanile is pretty sound, but the exterior has been deteriorating for decades because of weather and wear and tear. The Campanile is part of the historic Municipal Group buildings at Court Square. It is located between the Symphony Hall and City Hall buildings. The buildings are on the National Register of Historic Places. Kenneth R. Guditz, senior associate with Bruner/Cott, is using ropes and a drone to help document "the extent and types of limestone failures, in order to develop appropriate details and methods for their repair." AGAWAM -- Tennessee Gas Pipeline Co. has properly delineated wetlands and buffer zones along its proposed 2.1-mile pipeline corridor, according to a third-party consultant's report. Wetland scientist John Prenosil of Belchertown conducted an "unbiased peer review" of wetland boundaries recently defined by Tennessee, and found "two minor issues" which have since been resolved, Prenosil wrote in an Oct. 24 letter to the Conservation Commission. Tennessee must now submit a detailed Notice of Intent to the commission, which ruled 5-0 Thursday night that the Wetlands Protection Act applies to the planned pipeline construction. Technically, the ConCom reviewed a "request for determination of applicability" submitted by Tennessee, and returned a "positive determination." Deborah McCartney, permitting specialist with Tennessee, addressed the Agawam commission on Thursday. Also present for Tennessee were Ruth Silman of the Nixon Peabody law firm, and a representative from SWCA Environmental Consultants. Tennessee plans to beef up its compressor station on Suffield Street and construct a new pipeline loop, mostly parallel to an existing pipeline, so it can provide Columbia Gas of Massachusetts with more natural gas capacity. The plans would widen existing rights-of-way and alter wetland resource areas, according to an environmental notification form filed with the state. The company will adhere to a "project-specific environmental construction management plan" to minimize erosion, damage at stream crossings, and other impacts, the form states. Columbia Gas, as part of its "Greater Springfield Reliability Project," plans a six-mile, 12-inch pipeline between Agawam and Holyoke. The utility-owned pipeline would connect to the interstate pipeline owned by Tennessee. A related project planned by Tennessee would put a new "meter station" in Longmeadow so Columbia can build its own pipeline on the east side of the Connecticut River to Springfield. Conservation Commission chair Henry Kozloski said three members of the commission have already conducted a site visit. To build in Agawam, Tennessee will need a "certificate of public convenience and necessity" from the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission. That voluminous application was submitted on Oct. 19. Tennessee is hoping for a FERC certificate by November 2019. The only local permit the company needs is an order of conditions from the Conservation Commission. Hampden County District Attorney Anthony Gulluni, a Democrat, has endorsed Republican Gov. Charlie Baker's gubernatorial campaign. Baker's campaign announced Gulluni's endorsement as one of several endorsements by law enforcement officials and organizations. It came days after Baker appointed Gulluni to the state's Victim and Witness Assistance Board, which funds organizations that provide services to crime victims. "The Baker-Polito Administration's thoughtful, balanced, and pragmatic approach to public safety has made communities safer across the Commonwealth," Gulluni said in a statement. Baker is facing Democrat Jay Gonzalez in the Nov. 6 election. Gulluni is a Democrat who has donated to Democratic candidates, including House Speaker Robert DeLeo, Governor's Councilor Mary Hurley, Chicopee Rep. Joseph Wagner, Hampden County Sheriff Nick Cocchi and former House Ways and Means Chairman Brian Dempsey. Bristol County District Attorney Thomas Quinn, also a Democrat, is also backing Baker. The state's two Republican District Attorneys already announced their support for the governor. Baker has generally been a supporter of law enforcement. Two organizations that backed Democratic former attorney general Martha Coakley for governor against Baker in 2014 - the Massachusetts Coalition of Police and the Massachusetts Police Association - announced they were supporting Baker this year. The Massachusetts Major City Chiefs of Police Association made its first candidate endorsement in 15 years to support Baker. The association specifically cited Baker's efforts to address opioid addiction and his signing of a law adding a fee to car rentals to fund municipal police training. Several other police organizations that backed Baker in 2014 are supporting him again, including groups representing minority police officers and corrections officers. "Since day one, we have worked hard to provide our brave law enforcement officers the tools and support they need to do their jobs, and to invest in programming and resources that help communities keep our streets safe," Baker said in a statement. In addition to signing the municipal police training bill, Baker successfully advocated with the Legislature to include in a criminal justice bill a harsher penalty for assault and battery on a police officer. Baker has supported the death penalty for people who kill police officers, although there is little chance of Massachusetts reinstating the death penalty. He has been pushing for legislation that would give judges and prosecutors more opportunity to classify an offender as "dangerous" when considering bail and conditions of release. Massachusetts Attorney General Maura Healey, a Democrat, is backing Gonzalez. Gonzalez has been a strong critic of the culture at the Massachusetts State Police, calling for the firing of Police Col. Kerry Gilpin in the wake of multiple scandals. Baker said Gilpin has led the investigation into the scandals. Gonzalez supports making additional reforms to the criminal justice system to focus on things like mental health treatment and diversion to lower incarceration rates. He supports eliminating all mandatory minimum sentences other than murder and eliminating cash bail. Botswana Innovation Hub (BIH) has challenged the nation to move away from its conservative mindset, embrace technology and innovation for the local economy to blossom.BIH Chief Executive Officer, Alan Boshwaen has said the country should fully participate in the ongoing fourth industrial revolution coiled around internet of things (IoT) and data. Technology is moving so fast and we have to align ourselves and be willing recipients, said Boshwaen.He said although initially the revolution was about technology, horizons have expanded, challenging entrepreneurs to create not only new types of businesses but add value to existing industries. Innovation is the ability to deliver new value to your customers, said Boshwaen, adding that innovation is idle until someone is willing to pay for it.Boshwaen implored the nation to innovate the local culture, so that citizens can be at the forefront of innovation. Culture of innovation is to share creativity, using the tools available to us. BIH believes innovation should be hinged to the countrys features such as the fact that Botswana is a large and landlocked country with a small population, dominated by young people faced with unemployment challenges and whose industry is at infancy stage. In addition, the country boasts of a high mobile penetration rate. We have to figure out how to use these to create value for the economy. And organise the framework around which ideas are created through networking platforms and promote collaborations, said Boshwaen, highlighting that the nation needs to identify the confluence of factors that can drive the countrys innovation culture. Dimension Data Chief Executive Officer, Onnayang Marumo shares Boshwaens sentiments and believes more dialogue around the digital revolution is a must for the nation.The change is coming and is coming at a high speed, said Marumo, citing that artificial intelligence (AI), internet of things (IoT) and blockchain are disrupting economies at a large scale. She said AI is changing the way in which companies innovate and communicate processes and products, highlighting that beyond 2020, the world will witness a lot of automation.By 2020, there will be more than 50 billion things connected to the internet, said Marumo, highlighting that blockchain will have the same impact that internet had in 1993. It is a lot more than Bitcoin. We are only left with two choices, to disrupt or be disrupted, remarked Marumo. Marumo said the fourth industrial revolution is rapid and insensitive since it has already made some professions invalid, urging career curriculum developers to also start making forecast. Skills that are not yet here, will be required tomorrow, said Marumo, calling for different stakeholders to start asking what the right curriculum is for the future. Botswana International University of Science and Technology (BIUST) Vice-Chancellor, Professor Otlogetswe Totolo has urged chartered accountants to continue learning and grow their profession. Speaking during Botswana Institute of Chartered Accountants (BICA) graduation and awards ceremony last week, Professor Totolo said lifelong learning is imperative in every profession. Learning ensures professional growth and guarantees the gaining of new light and understanding. I therefore expect our graduates to continue further into their professional studies and learn every day of their lives, said Totolo. He highlighted that accounting profession is an ethical profession therefore all graduates should display the ethical attitude and conduct in every aspect of their lives.The public expects accountants to play a critical role as gatekeepers of financial probity and honest, reliable financial reporting. The accounting profession is a noble one as it links commerce and integrity. It ensures that we are able to assess and measure business records, financial transactions and records with confidence, said Professor Totolo. He highlighted that this gives both insiders and outsiders the necessary comfort that governments, businesses and individuals portray as a record of their financial dealings is indeed true, honest, accurate and reliable. Institute of Chartered Accountants in England and Wales (ICAEW) President, Mr Paul Aplin said accountancy is a unique profession. Our ICAEW Chartered Accountants find themselves in a wide variety of exciting and diverse roles. Being a Chartered Accountant offers huge opportunities. It is the best passport to professional success but with that comes huge responsibility, said Aplin. BICA President, Gosego Motsamai pointed out that the graduation and awards ceremony proves that the institute is on track towards attaining its strategic objective of increasing the number of professional accountants in Botswana. BICA has a total number of 1334 professional accountants in which 717 are foreigners while only 617 are citizens. BICA qualification is meant to be a panacea to this shortage. The qualifications competitive advantage is derived from its fusion of both theory and practical work experience over and above its emphasis on ethics, said Motsamai. BICA qualification started in 2011 and has so far produced 17 top quality Chartered Accountants. The qualification is internationally recognised in over 170 countries and the institute is a member of the Institute of Chartered Accountants in England and Wales (ICAEW). National Development Bank (NDB), the cash-strapped development bank has failed to release its financial results to March 2018 on time due to the fact that audit has not been completed. Chief Executive Officer, Lorato Morapedi has recently told the Public Accounts Committee (PAC), adding they have requested the sole shareholder, government to give them more time to complete the audit, which they should have submitted by end of September. The shareholder is aware of our challenges, we requested to be given up to the end of November and we are still waiting for the response from the regulator, said Morapedi.Previously, the bank has request government to inject capital into its operations, but they are yet to be positively responded to. It is understood during the appearance at PAC, the bank had prepared themselves to seek support from the committee in their bid to get financial boost from government. For the year ended March 2017 the bank recorded increased impairments to P184.7 million from P60 million in the previous year resulting in a total loss of P168 million. Loans and advances to customers were reduced by 24 percent from P1, 2 billion in March 2016 to P911.1 in 2017 due to high impairment charge during the year. The bank recorded a loss of P168.1 million compared to P21.2 million in the previous year as a result of a high impairment charge on loans and advances to customers at P184.7 million compared P59.9 million in the previous year. Meanwhile, in 2016 the bank requested government to inject capital amounting to about P1 billion in the next three years in order to transform the bank and prepare it for commercialization. In 2017, it was offered P400 million by government, P100 million of it being a grant while the remaining P300 million was a loan. In the banks 2017 annual report, Morapedi said the impact of negative economic downturn manifested in the form of financially distressed customers resulting in increased impairments during the year. This is exacerbated by the fact that the Banks mandate dictate that it supports key priority sectors which are also highrisk such as start-ups and agricultural projects which are not attractive to other financiers, said Morapedi. The total value of loans approved during the period was P167.5 million compared to P47 million in the previous year with agriculture loans constituting 78.13 percent of total approvals for the period. The global dermatology devices market is estimated to expand at an above-average CAGR over the forecast period (2017-2022). The global market for dermatology devices is expected to account for over US$ 1,000 Mn revenues by 2022-end. Dermatology devices have been installed in various hospitals and dermatology clinics for assisting physicians in treatment of skin disorders. Procedures associated with non-invasive cosmetic correction have witnessed a surge in demand, with growing geriatric population, soaring healthcare expenditure, and rising disposable income of people in developing and developed countries. In contrast, high costs of dermatology devices have made the dermatological treatments expensive, which may act as a restraining factor to adoption of these treatments. Several side effects are associated with dermatological treatments, which in turn, incurs significant challenges for leading players in the global dermatology devices market. The prevalence of skin-related disorders has been increasing around the world. As per The Skin Cancer Foundation, more than 10,000 people died owing to melanoma in 2016. Request 170 Pages Sample Report Now: https://www.factmr.com/connectus/sample?flag=S&rep_id=97 In order to lower such high mortality rates, diagnosis of skin diseases, such as skin cancer. In addition, several diagnostic equipment have been utilized for treating various types of skin cancer. For instance dermatoscopes are playing an indispensable role in detecting melanoma, with evaluation of the pigmented lesions. A number of technological advancements are being made in dermatology devices, for example laser instruments, and light therapy improved aesthetic appeal of people. The advanced liposuction equipment have improved body contouring treatment. Power- and vibration-assisted liposuction devices have aided in reducing significant amount of fat in shorter time period. Developments such as these will impact growth of the market in the upcoming years. 9 Key Estimations for the Global Dermatology Devices Market Radiofrequency electrosurgery devices are expected to remain the most lucrative product in the market, and sales of these devices are estimated to account for more than one-third revenue share of the market over the forecast period. Revenues from ultrasonic electrosurgery devices sales are anticipated to hold the lowest share of the market. Although hospitals are estimated to remain the largest end-users in the global dermatology devices market, sales of these devices in dermatology clinics are expected to register the highest CAGR during the forecast period. On the basis of application, dermatology devices are anticipated to witness the largest adoption in procedures of hair removal. Stretch marks reduction will continue to be the second largest application of dermatology devices in the market. North America is estimated to remain dominant in the global market for dermatology devices, in terms of revenues. Dermatology devices sales across Asia Pacific excluding Japan (APEJ) are expected to exhibit the fastest expansion over the forecast period, followed by Europe. Europe is projected to remain the second most lucrative market for sales of dermatology devices. Key market players profiled in the report include Erbe Elektromedizin GmbH, Johnson & Johnson Private Limited, Medtronic Plc, Smith and Nephew Co., B. Braun Melsungen AG, Heal Force Bio-meditech Holdings Limited, Bovie Medical Corporation, and AngioDynamics, Inc. To Buy This Market Report, Visit- https://www.factmr.com/checkout/97/S About Fact.MR Fact.MR is a fast-growing market research firm that offers the most comprehensive suite of syndicated and customized market research reports. We believe transformative intelligence can educate and inspire businesses to make smarter decisions. We know the limitations of the one-size-fits-all approach; thats why we publish multi-industry global, regional, and country-specific research reports. Contact Us Rohit Bhisey Fact.MR 11140 Rockville Pike Suite 400 Rockville, MD 20852 United States Email: sales@factmr.com Web: https://www.factmr.com/ Bone Graft Substitutes Market Scenario Market Research Future (MRFR)s latest study reveals that the global bone graft substitutes market is expected to expand at 6.52% CAGR during the forecast period 2017 to 2027. The market is set to reach a valuation of USD 5,031 Mn by the end of the assessment period. The increasing prevalence of diseases related to bones has intensified the demand for bone graft substitutes. Additionally, the rising awareness about the developments in bone graft substitutes coupled with rising healthcare expenditure is likely to augment the market size and revenue over the next couple of years. The painful procedure related to autografts have paved the way for developments in the bone graft substitutes market. Hence, the demand for alternatives such as allografts, xenografts, and synthetic bone grafts has been on the rise. It is projected to aid the proliferation of the market in the forthcoming years by accelerating its adoption. Request Sample copy at https://www.marketresearchfuture.com/sample_request/1195 The growth of the bone graft substitutes market is guided by the factors such as increasing orthopedic problems, exponential geriatric population, and rising demand for reconstructive orthopedic treatments. The adoption of bone graft substitutes in the oral healthcare sector is another factor responsible for catalyzing the growth of the bone graft substitutes market through the assessment period. The bone graft substitutes market is poised to remain highly lucrative in the foreseeable future. However, risks associated with disease transmission in allografts and xenograft as well as graft rejection, improper fixation, etc. are prognosticated to restrict the market expansion over the forecast period. Bone Graft Substitutes Market Segmentation: By type, the global bone graft substitutes market is segmented into autograft, demineralized bone matrix, synthetic bone grafts, bone morphogenetic protein, and others. By application, the bone graft substitutes market has been segmented into spinal fusion, joint reconstruction, long bone, dental, foot & ankle, and others. Competitive Players: ACE Surgical Supply Company Dentium Co. Ltd. BioHorizons IPH Dentsply Sirona Medtronic plc Stryker Corporation Zimmer Biomet And Institut Straumann AG. Industry Developments: In August 2018, BoneSupport, a Scandinavian orthobiologics company, won Health Canada approval for Cerament G bone graft substitute. In September 2018, Baxter International Inc., an American healthcare company, received FDA clearance for its Actifuse Flow bone graft substitute. It shall be used in orthopedic surgical procedures. Bone Graft Substitutes Market Regional Insights: By region, the global bone graft substitutes market has been segmented into Americas, Europe, Asia Pacific, and the Middle East & Africa. Americas accounted for the largest share of the global market in 2016. It is expected to retain a significant share of the market by the end of 2027 striking a CAGR of 6.1%. The growth is attributable to the technological advancements in health care, the presence of key players, etc. The developed healthcare sector of the U.S. is poised to be one of the primary revenue generators in the regional bone graft substitutes market. Europe is the second largest market for bone graft substitutes. It is estimated to thrive at 6.76% CAGR owing to increasing awareness about bone graft substitutes and rising healthcare expenditure. Meanwhile, Asia Pacific is set to register a relatively higher CAGR of 6.85% during the forecast period. The presence of fast-developing economies such as China and India are immensely supporting the growth of the bone graft substitutes market in the region. The trend is likely to perpetuate over the next couple of years. The Middle East & Africa is expected to exhibit steady growth due to the developments in the healthcare sector in Gulf nations. However, the poor socio-economic situation in African regions remains an impediment to the market growth. Browse Complete 130 Pages Premium Research Report Enabled with 111 Respective Tables and Figures at https://www.marketresearchfuture.com/reports/bone-graft-substitutes-market-1195 About Market Research Future: At Market Research Future (MRFR), we enable our customers to unravel the complexity of various industries through our Cooked Research Report (CRR), Half-Cooked Research Reports (HCRR), Raw Research Reports (3R), Continuous-Feed Research (CFR), and Market Research & Consulting Services. Contact Market Research Future Office No. 528, Amanora Chambers Magarpatta Road, Hadapsar, Pune 411028 Maharashtra, India +1 646 845 9312 Email: sales@marketresearchfuture.com by Sara Guaglione , October 25, 2018 New York magazines shopping site The Strategist is gearing up to opens its first brick-and-mortar pop-up shop, with curated products for the holiday season. Called I Found It at The Strategist, the experiential space will operate in SoHo from November 8 to December 30. It will focus on beauty brands and lifestyle products, with items ranging from bed sheets to sheet masks. Shoppers will have access to try-and-buy product stations and beauty services, such as nail treatments and manicures from nail polish company Sundays, personalized skin-care consultations and custom beauty blending from LOLI Beauty and in-person hair services from Hairstory. Participating brands at the I Found It at The Strategist shop also include Parachute, Ohii, Corsx, Herbivore, TULA, East Fork, Cocokind, Freck, Incausa, Peet Rivko, Jaxon Lane, Rikumo, My Beauty Diary, APTO, Kin Social, Negative Underwear, Beautycounter and Scentbird. advertisement advertisement Publishers are increasingly hosting branded brick-and-mortar stores to connect with their audiences in real life and partner with advertisers. The Strategist store will host editors, influencers and insiders for live demonstrations and panels in the New York Media lounge. Scheduled programming includes a launch party on November 7, a beauty panel on the industrys sustainability movement and a panel with Kathleen Hou, beauty director of New York magazine's style vertical The Cut. Other panelists include Alexis Page, product developer and beauty expert; Julee Wilson, fashion and beauty director at Essence; makeup artist Katie Jane Hughes; cofounder of Tula, Dr. Roshini Raj; and beauty writer Arabelle Sicardi. by Dave Morgan , Featured Contributor, October 25, 2018 For years, folks in the ad industry have talked wistfully of the day when TV advertising would be bought through automated online interfaces on auction-based bid marketplaces, as search, social and digital display advertising have been bought since the middle 2000s. And some folks have done more than just talk. In 2003, a start-up called SpotRunner launched an online marketplace for local TV ads. It was shut down before the decade was out. In 2007, eBay tried to create a TV ad marketplace, but it never even made it to the launch pad. Also in 2007, Google created an online marketplace for TV ads, only to shut it down five years later. Microsoft bought a TV ad-tech company, Navic or its Admira TV ad marketplace but it didnt make it much past 2010. What gives? Why have some of the worlds largest tech companies failed at bringing marketplace technology to TV? To me, the answer is pretty straightforward. Just as everything is a nail to a hammer, to most digital ad-tech companies, all media is like digital. advertisement advertisement Except, as anyone who truly knows TV knows, the world of TV advertising is nothing like digital. Heres what I mean: In TV advertising, demand exceeds supply. TV has a futures market, the upfront, because more advertisers want guaranteed placements on TV than there are placements to be sold. Thus, they must reserve them and lock in pricing many months in advance. Digital doesnt work that way. The vast majority of digital ads are not actually bought until a millisecond before they are served, or the availability perishes. Real-time systems operate totally differently than futures systems do. Virtually all of the core ad technology that powers digital marketplaces bidding, ad serving, optimization, demand-side platforms and sell-side platforms operate on a real-time waterfall system, and have at their core real-time decisioning engines that optimize against an addressable media unit. The digital ad-tech systems that can make the most optimal decisions against the largest pool of addressable units (browsers, apps, mobile phones, etc.) in the least amount of time win. Not so in TV. The value and optimization potential in TV advertising is in the future, and the transaction unit is a TV spot. The vast, vast majority of TV spots are not addressable. Thus, the purchased unit has to be viewed as a portfolio, not a person or browser or app, since every TV ad spot represents thousands or millions of different people that have different duplication and relative cost relationships to every other one of the spots available on TV during a campaign (every day, there are more than 250,000 spots on national TV). Trying to predict and optimize TV ad campaigns with digital ad-tech systems is like trying to predict tsunamis off the coast of Indonesia six months in advance by sticking your hand out your Manhattan office window 10,000 times per second. Good luck with that. TV networks have nothing to gain by exposing unsold inventory. Why do TV networks have special deals in place with direct-response advertisers, many of whom pay much lower rates than large brands do? Because the structure of most of those deals permits the networks to preempt those ads at the last second with higher-paying ads, and having them in place guarantees scarcity of available impressions. That dynamic is critical in maintaining TV as a supply-constrained market. In that world, TV networks gain nothing from exposing the volume or pricing of their unsold, or under-sold, inventory to buyers. In the digital ad world, publishers must push their avails information and status directly into the buyers interfaces, to be picked off at the last moment. In the TV world, it is the opposite. Buyers demand the amount that advertisers or agencies are willing to bid and pay for specific TV spots or audiences needs to be pushed all the way into sellers interfaces, with sellers able to unilaterally accept or reject those bids each and every time. This mismatch between the interests of TV sellers, and the design and operation of digital ad-tech systems built for a marketplace where buyers rule, is one of the most fundamental reasons weve seen so many digitally inspired marketplaces fail in the world of TV advertising. Will all this change? Will we see marketplaces purpose-built for the TV ad ecosystem? For sure. Its an area Ive been personally focused on, and weve heard from a lot of the large TV ad market participants like AT&Ts Xandr and Comcast that theyre headed there, too. This will be fun to watch. What do you think? Verizon is introducing a new Palm, a miniature smartphone for those times when consumers might not want to lug around their larger device but dont want to go without. Instead of a screen thats six inches big like newer smartphones boast, this unit has just a 3.3-inch display, and altogether is about the size of a credit card. Speaking of credit cards, Verizon says the phone will cost $299.99 with a two-year Verizon agreement, or $349.99 retail. It will be available starting Nov. 2 at Verizon stores and at Best Buy kiosks. Buying Verizon NumberShare, so your new little Palm can sync to your existing larger smartphone, will cost an additional $10 a month. Promotional literature says Palm lets you be more present, with more control over the technology in your life. It prioritizes action over consumption with smart features designed to eliminate mindless scrolling and excessive screen time. Specially designed for life on the go, Palm allows you to live in the moment, without sacrificing connectivity. advertisement advertisement Calls, texts, alerts, Google, emails and photos are all there, but with a feature called Life Mode, you decide which apps get your attention so you arent distracted by notifications. Quick Actions shortcuts help navigate quickly. Palm augments the smartphone in a special new way, says Brian Higgins, vice president of device and consumer product marketing for the wireless giant. Palm and Verizon set out to reinvent something in a smaller form factor that allows you to connect with only what matters. This seems to be the smartphone for users who may recognize that sometimes enough communicating is enough but dont want to totally leave the phone at home when they go out. For people out on the town, the Palm is unobtrusively small, helping users to avoid the temptation of gazing into their smartphone when theyre supposed to be reading the dinner menu. The Palm company marketed the Palm Pilot personal digital assistant back in 1996, but the brand and company bounced around from owner to owner when smartphones began to overwhelm the market. It was purchased by Chinese tech firm TCL in 2014. Now the newly revived brand is based in San Francisco. This Verizon tie-in is its big coming-out opportunity. We haven't disclosed the advertising plans at this time, but it is safe to say, since the companion product is a new category, TV is likely not the best medium to explain [it], says a spokeswoman. Look out for it on other channels, as well as for some bundling with our key flagship phones as we head into the holiday season. by Laurie Sullivan @lauriesullivan, October 25, 2018 Alphabet's revenue rose 21% year-over-year, with its advertising business accounting for $28.95 billion of the total $33.7 billion generated in the third quarter -- up 18.44% year-over-year. Analysts estimated Alphabet would bring in$10.42 per share on $34.04 billion. Operating losses also grew to $727 million, up from $650 million in the year-ago quarter. Google's traffic acquisition costs (TAC), which makes up the money it pays to phone manufactures and for its services like search came in at $6.58 billion, or 23% of advertising revenue, up from $5.5 billion. eMarketer analyst Monica Peart made a bold statement on Thursday. She said the firm has noticed a larger than expected slowdown in Google properties' revenue, representing its core search business. This is likely related to the ramp-up in competition from Amazon, as consumers increasingly turn to the ecommerce giant for their product searches. advertisement advertisement Google worldwide will generate $88.04 billion in net digital ad revenue in 2018, giving it a 31.5% share of the worldwide digital ad market, according to eMarketer. During the earnings call, Google CEO Sundar Pichai tried to keep investors and analysts positive. He ran down some of the new features the company launched this past quarter, including a new AI-powered ranking approach for search, and a redesigned Google feed called Discover, as well as Smart Shopping Campaigns that use signals such as seasonality and price to optimize as ads are shown. In response to an analysts question, Pichai named some key investments required to make search more relevant and visual. We do invest in image search and have products like Google Maps and Photos that all add to the Google experience, he said. We are investing in our advertising offerings as well, and so over time we will invest in that, so they will go hand in hand. by Alex Weprin , October 26, 2018 Senator Mark Warner (D-VA.), Vice Chairman of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence and a member of the Banking Committee, has sent a letter to the Federal Trade Commission calling on the agency and tech giant Google to combat digital advertising fraud. Warner sent the letter in the wake of a blockbuster report published this week about an ad fraud scheme affecting apps running on Googles Android mobile platform. The scheme siphoned millions of dollars from advertisers to the fraudsters, which used a network of more than 125 apps that were installed on more than 11 million Android devices to facilitate their effort. Google ultimately removed all the apps, but BuzzFeed News, which detailed the scheme, estimates that hundreds of millions of dollars may have been stolen. advertisement advertisement In his letter to FTC chairman Joseph Simons, Warner argues that Google may have engaged in willful blindness, all while profiting from this fraudulent activity. He also criticizes Google for failing to uncover the full extent of the scheme even after researchers from the ad fraud intelligence firm Pixalate revealed the basics of the fraud in June. Googles inattention to misconduct within its app store also enabled the extensive fraud involved here, Warners letter adds. In addition to failing to notify users of the change in ownership, Google failed to detect changes in the apps that facilitated extensive user tracking subsequently used for bot behavior. "Nor did it detect the myriad indicators of coordinated fraudulent activity between the apps including overlaps in app content, source code, IP addresses, SDKs, and common traffic patterns. Despite being approached by researchers in June with evidence of part of this scheme, Google failed to dig deeper to reveal the full scope of this fraudulent activity. While there is no evidence Google had direct knowledge, Googles ad network and ad exchanges were also implicated in these schemes, Warners letter continues. At the very least, it seems that across a number of its products, Google may have engaged in willful blindness, all while profiting from this fraudulent activity. Warner also tied the ad fraud revelations to other investigations around Russian troll farms and political misinformation on social media. More than illuminating the capacity of these technologies to be exploited by bad actors, the revelations of the last year have revealed the dark underbelly of an entire ecosystem, Warner writes. In the same way that bots, trolls, click-farms, fake pages and groups, ads, and algorithm-gaming can be used to propagate political disinformation, these same tools can and have been used to assist financial frauds, such as stock-pumping schemes, click fraud in digital advertising markets, schemes to sell counterfeit prescription drugs, and efforts to convince large numbers of users to download malicious apps on their phones, he notes. by Sara Guaglione , October 26, 2018 Vice News has partnered with Spotify to produce its first podcast, a bilingual series called Chapo, that follows the rise and fall of Sinaloa cartel leader Joaquin El Chapo Guzman. The podcast series will premiere on November 1. Were tremendously excited to bring Vice News in-depth reporting to the podcast format for the first time, stated Ryan McCarthy, editor-in-chief, Vice News. This is the story of El Chapo that you wont hear in the courtroom, and that you wont read in the headlines. The series will interview journalists, Chapos family, government officials, cartel hitmen and citizens "living through the drug wars real-life consequences," according to the publisher. advertisement advertisement The series features the former DEA agents who captured El Chapo, as well as Felipe Calderon, the former president of Mexico, and Consuelo Loera, Chapos mother. Hosting Chapo are Vice News reporter Keegan Hamilton and Miguel Angel Vega, a Mexican journalist who spent years covering the drug trade for the Riodoce newspaper in Sinaloa, Mexico. Chapo represents Vice News latest effort to reach Latino audiences by developing original audio journalism in both English and Spanish. The first three episodes will be released in English, on all major podcast platforms. The following episodes in English and Spanish will be available weekly exclusively on Spotify. Spotify, the music streaming subscription service with over 180 million users and 83 million Premium subscribers, has increasingly expanded its nonfiction programming, in addition to its music offerings. Chapo goes on trial in New York City this November. Parkinsons disease is a movement disorder that affects the nervous system. Its symptoms occur because of low dopamine levels in the brain. Experts do not know why Parkinsons disease develops, but they currently believe that genetic changes and exposure to environmental factors, such as toxins, play a key role. Read on to find out more about the early signs of Parkinsons disease and what causes it. Causes Parkinsons disease is a neurological disorder that develops when changes occur in the brain. Precisely why it happens is unclear, but scientists have identified some variations that occur. Low dopamine levels Parkinsons disease symptoms mainly result from low or falling levels of dopamine , a neurotransmitter. It happens when cells that produce dopamine die in the brain. Dopamine plays a role in sending messages to the part of the brain that controls movement and coordination. Therefore, low dopamine levels can make it harder for people to control their movement. As dopamine levels continue to fall, symptoms gradually become more severe. Low norepinephrine levels Parkinsons disease may also involve damage to the nerve endings that produce another neurotransmitter, norepinephrine, which contributes to blood circulation and other automatic body functions. Low levels of norepinephrine in Parkinsons disease may increase the risk of both motor and nonmotor symptoms, such as: stiffness and rigidity postural instability tremor anxiety difficulty focusing dementia depression This may explain why people with Parkinsons disease commonly experience orthostatic hypotension. This refers to when a persons blood pressure changes when they stand up, leading to lightheadedness and a risk of falling. Lewy bodies A person with Parkinsons disease may have clumps of protein known as alpha-synuclein, or Lewy bodies, in their brain. The accumulation of Lewy bodies can cause a loss of nerve cells, leading to changes in movement, thinking, behavior, and mood. It can also lead to dementia. Lewy body dementia is not the same as Parkinsons disease, but people may have both as the symptoms are similar. Learn more about Lewy body dementia. Genetic factors Experts have identified changes in several genes that appear to have links with Parkinsons disease, but they do not consider it a hereditary condition. Genetic factors appear to cause only 10% of cases, mostly among people with early onset disease. Autoimmune factors In a 2017 study , scientists found a possible genetic link between Parkinsons disease and autoimmune conditions, such as rheumatoid arthritis. In 2018, researchers investigating health records in Taiwan found that people with autoimmune rheumatic diseases had a 1.37-higher chance of also having Parkinsons disease. Risk factors Several environmental factors may increase the risk of developing Parkinsons disease. These include: Past traumatic brain injury : Head injuries from contact sports, for example, may increase the risk of the condition. Head injuries from contact sports, for example, may increase the risk of the condition. Toxin exposure: Such as pesticides, solvents, metals, and other pollutants. Such as pesticides, solvents, metals, and other pollutants. Gender: Males are 50% more likely to develop the condition than females, although one 2016 study suggests the risk for females may increase with age. Males are 50% more likely to develop the condition than females, although one 2016 study suggests the risk for females may increase with age. Age: The condition often appears from the ages of 60 years. The condition often appears from the ages of 60 years. Some drugs and medications: Certain medicines can lead to Parkinsonism, where a person has tremors and other symptoms but does not have Parkinsons disease. Symptoms usually appear from the age of 60 years. However, 510% of people with the disease have early onset Parkinsons, which starts before the age of 50 years. Do racial factors affect the risk? In the past, statistics have suggested that Parkinsons disease is less likely to affect Black people than other people of other ethnicities in the United States. However, experts now say this may be due to a lack of awareness about how the disease can affect Black individuals and a higher chance of misdiagnosis due to inequities in health provision. For more on issues of health equity, see our dedicated hub. A study published this week in The BMJ concludes that treatment with a particular blood pressure medication increases the risk of lung cancer, compared with other blood pressure drugs. Share on Pinterest A widely used hypertension drug comes under scrutiny in a new study. People use angiotensin converting enzyme inhibitor drugs (ACEIs) for managing hypertension. They are effective, and doctors consider them relatively safe when people take them for short periods of time. Earlier studies have hinted that ACEIs might increase peoples cancer risk, but findings have not been conclusive; most existing studies only had access to relatively small sample sizes or for short periods of time. Recently, scientists from McGill University in Canada set out to investigate whether ACEIs increase the risk of developing cancer, specifically lung cancer. They published the results earlier this week. Scientists have theorized that ACEIs might increase lung cancer risk by encouraging a buildup of two particular substances in the lungs: bradykinin and substance P. Bradykinin is a peptide that causes blood vessels to dilate, reducing blood pressure; substance P, which is also a peptide, can act as a neurotransmitter. Scientists have associated both of these compounds with lung cancer tissue: bradykinin is thought to directly stimulate the growth of lung cancer, while lung cancer tissue expresses substance P, possibly encouraging tumor proliferation. Blood pressure drug and lung cancer The researchers involved in the current study, led by Prof. Laurent Azoulay, dipped into the medical records of almost 1 million people in the United Kingdom. All patients had started taking blood pressure-reducing drugs in 19952015. The participants were 18 years of age or older and had no previous incidence of cancer. The research team followed them for an average of 6.4 years. Across this time period, doctors made almost 8,000 lung cancer diagnoses. The scientists compared the risks of developing lung cancer in individuals who had started taking ACEIs against those who were taking a group of blood pressure drugs called angiotensin receptor blockers (ARBs). To reduce statistical clutter, they made allowance for other factors that can influence lung cancer risks, such as smoking tobacco, age, body mass index (BMI), alcohol use disorders, and a history of lung disease. They concluded that taking ACEIs was associated with a 14 percent increase in lung cancer risk, compared with taking ARBs. The relationship was apparent after an individual had taken the drug for 5 years. As they continued to use the drug, their risk steadily increased. Individuals who took the drug for a decade or more had a particularly pronounced risk that increased by 31 percent. The risk of having a stroke particularly the kind that results from a blood clot or other obstacle traveling from the heart appears to be greater in people who have higher levels of iron, according to recent research. Share on Pinterest New research finds a link between increased levels of iron and the risk of having certain strokes. Scientists from Imperial College London in the United Kingdom examined stroke risk in people for whom they had information on their levels of iron and whether they had genetic differences that altered their iron status. This yielded evidence suggesting that those with genetically determined higher iron levels were at greater risk of having a stroke, they note in a report on the study that now features in the journal Stroke. In addition, it seems that this effect is driven by an increased risk of cardioembolic stroke, a type of stroke in which blood in a vessel supplying the brain is blocked due to an obstruction that has traveled from the heart. The study authors caution, however, that people should not use these findings as a reason to try to alter their iron levels, and they call for further research to confirm their results and also find out why iron may have this effect. This is an early-stage finding, notes lead study author Dr. Dipender Gill, from the School of Public Health at Imperial College London, and we would certainly not recommend that patients at risk of stroke reduce their iron intake, as it has many crucial roles in the body. Cardioembolic stroke and iron status According to the World Health Organization (WHO), around 15 million people have a stroke every year. Of these, 5 million die as a result and another 5 million will be disabled for the rest of their lives. In the United States, more than 795,000 people have a stroke every year and about 140,000 die, accounting for 1 out of 20 deaths. The majority of strokes are of the ischemic type, which occurs when a blockage in a blood vessel has stopped oxygen- and nutrient-rich blood reaching the affected part of the brain. Cardioembolic stroke accounts for a notable proportion of ischemic strokes and is often linked to a heart condition called atrial fibrillation, wherein the heart beats irregularly and often faster than normal. Iron has many uses in the body, the main one being to carry oxygen in red blood cells. The authors explain that studies have examined links between iron levels and stroke risk, but the results have been conflicting. Some studies, for example, have tied a raised risk of stroke to low levels of iron, while others have tied it to high levels of iron. In addition, there have also been studies that have found no link at all. Genetically driven iron status Dr. Gill explains that they decided to investigate further because there have also been studies that have suggested that in some cases iron can [actually] trigger blood to form a clot. The first part of the teams investigation involved identifying genetic differences that influence how much iron people have, which is known as their iron status. They searched public data sources that held genetic information on more than 48,000 people. Using a technique called Mendelian randomization, the scientists identified three single-letter alterations, or single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs), in their DNA that can raise or reduce an individuals iron status. They then used the three SNPs to screen another genetic dataset covering 60,000 people who had experienced strokes. They found that people with SNPs that can raise iron status were the ones most likely to have cardioembolic strokes. Over a year has gone by since Hollywood biggie Harvey Weinstein was exposed by The New York Times, a monumental day that marked the real beginning of the #MeToo movement. All these women, these survivors have been raising their voices loud and clear - they are ready to be heard. The #MeToo movement's arrival in India earlier this October, has followed in the same footsteps. The uprising has since shaken up our nonchalant society, that has long subdued and ignored the protests of sexual abuse and harassment survivors. The voices are finally being heard in our homeland. Twitter Don't believe us? You think the movement hasn't caused a stir worth acknowledging and looking out for? Well, to such naysayers, we bring these proofs. A recent report published by The Indian Express shows that the #MeToo tweets in India in the month of October has exceeded US' monthly high. That is, between September 20th and October 19th, 1.2 million #MeToo tweets have come out of India. The report also states that Twitter saw more #MeToo tweets from India at the month ending October 19 than any single month in the US over the past year. With India's October #MeToo tweets exceeding US' monthly high, it evidently seems that Indian women have finally launched a movement that will not die anytime soon, and surely not without bringing about a change. Twitter The uproar has already managed to cause a seismic shift in the country's gender politics and altered the status-quo across the nation in varying degrees. Showing her support towards Tanushree, and placing her faith in the movement's inherent power, Freida Pinto wrote in a Instagram post, "What you have done is monumental and important and it has to shake the very core of a nation and an ideology that for too long has gotten away with heinous crimes against women and where the ugliness of misogyny has dominated the rights and suppressed any voice that has dared to speak up." It seems this time women have sworn to not stop until the culprits are brought to justice, until the power structures are dismantled, and the laws that are meant to protect the wellbeing of the country's citizens, are not bent to serve the powerful and mighty. Actor Richa Chadha seems to be highlighting this aspect of the movement when she told PTI that, "The #MeToo movement isn't going away any time soon. It is here to stay. It is time to make men accountable for their actions and the trauma that is caused to the victims, men or women. Twitter Regardless of what the naysayers and fake male feminists try to believe, the winds of change are blowing stronger than ever amidst #MeToo solidarity. The pushback has forced prominent accused such as MJ Akbar, Prashant Jha, Sajid Khan and many others to step down from their positions of power, and step away from their projects and positions, under the public glare. Numerous celebrities, journalists and politicians have also come forward to support the survivors who have spoken up and condemned the culprits. Be it Farhan Akhtar, Hansal Mehta, Priyanka Chopra, or Sandhya Menon and Maneka Gandhi, they have all come in support of the movement. Anurag Kashyap and Akshay Kumar have also condemned and stepped away from projects they had undertaken with Vikas Bahl and Sajid Khan respectively. However, socio-political activist Chanda Asani feels that the movement needs to turn more inclusive, where it can move beyond social media and include the voices of people working on the ground. She further says that "On sexual harassment, I think we are trying to put ourselves in the same rut patriarchy has put us in. It's not just about the body - woman or man's. The power structures need to change. We hope the tides of #MeToo leave behind a better tomorrow in its wake, not only for the survivors to heal, but for the future generations to live freely in. If gazing at the night sky is one of your hobbies, then perhaps you're familiar with the Big Dipper or Orion's Belt. However, what you won't see is the Millennium Falcon or Ironman zipping around. Well, think again! 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. NASA Even more modern characters have been added like the Little Prince, the time-warping TARDIS from 'Doctor Who,' and the antimatter-powered U.S.S. Enterprise from 'Star Trek: The Original Series'. "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. NASA described the constellations as unofficial, since there are only 88 recognized constellations, according to the International Astronomical Union. NASA NASA paid homage to the Hulk's comic book beginnings, when Dr. Bruce Banner's experiments with gamma rays went horribly wrong and compared the resemblance of Godzilla's trademark "heat ray" to gamma-ray jets associated with black holes and neutron stars. NASA has a full breakdown of 21 new constellations, along with pictures demonstrating how they fit the characters they're named for. Since its installation 10 years ago, Fermi scanned the sky each day, measuring and mapping gamma-ray sources, which is the highest-energy light in the universe. It enables scientists to answer persistent questions across a broad range of topics, including supermassive black-hole systems, pulsars, the origin of cosmic rays, and searches for signals of new physics. NASA 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 in a statement to PTI. The Gamma-ray Burst Monitor (GBM) detects sudden flares of gamma-rays produced by gamma-ray bursts and solar flares. After five years of operations, on Aug. 11, 2013, Fermi entered an extended phase of its mission, a deeper study of the high-energy cosmos. Deputy Minister of Foreign Affairs Markos Bolaris received today the President of the Community of Ahmadi Muslims in Greece, Imam Atta-Ul Naseer. The latter described to the Deputy Minister the activity of the Ahmadiyya Muslim Community, which believes in the peaceful coexistence of people and nations, promotes its faith in Muslims who defend peace and lawfulness, in Greece as well as in every country where they reside. The Ahmadiyya community believes in and promotes the slogan Muslims for Peace as well as the message Muslims for Loyalty. This is why it is preparing the launch of an awareness-raising campaign geared towards both Greek public opinion and immigrants of the Muslim faith. The Deputy Minister welcomed the efforts of Imam Naseer and the Ahmadiyya Community and assured him that he will provide all possible assistance within the framework of his competence with regard to its realisation. Subsequently, Mr Naseer briefed the Deputy Minister on the prejudices and persecution that Ahmadi Muslims face in certain Muslim countries and gave him a publication by the United Nations which describes the forms of persecution directed against this Community. The Imam invited the Deputy Minister of Foreign Affairs to meet the head of the international Ahmadiyya community, who is based in London, Caliph Hazrat Mirza Masroor Ahmad, on the occasion of the Deputy Ministers scheduled visit to the United Kingdom. Metro Manila (CNN Philippines, October 26) The Bureau of Immigration (BI) downgraded Australian nun Patricia Fox's missionary visa to that of a temporary visitor, in an order signed on Wednesday. Fox, who is the subject of a deportation order from the Department of Justice (DOJ), had to apply for the downgrade after an extension of her missionary visa was not granted. Her new visa expires on November 4. "Downgrading reverted her status to a temporary visitor, and she is given 59 days from the day her missionary visa expired, which was September 5," said BI spokesperson Dana Krizia Sandoval. Fox's camp has since appealed the deportation before the DOJ. Sandoval said that the BI "still needs to wait for the decision before acting her deportation," and added that they granted her the temporary visitor's visa, without prejudice to the resolution of her appeal. Fox's legal counsel Jobert Pahilga told CNN Philippines in a phone call that their camp would apply for an extension at the BI before November 4. Another counsel, Sol Taule, said they could either request for a renewal of the temporary visitor's visa or apply for a 30-day tourist visa. "This means she can still stay in the Philippines to face the deportation charges against her," Taule said in a text message. "We intend to still exhaust all remedies possible to let Sister Fox stay." The 71-year-old nun was propelled into the spotlight when she was arrested and detained last April for attending protest rallies. The BI said her participation violated the conditions of her stay, but her lawyers argue that fighting for the rights of minorities is part of her missionary work. Fox's camp also maintains the gatherings she attended were not anti-government in nature. Her arrest, and a move to forfeit her missionary visa, was seen as another crackdown on dissent from President Rodrigo Duterte's controversial administration. The President himself admitted that he was behind the BI probe on Fox. In June, the DOJ revoked the BI's forfeiture of Fox's visa, saying the move was not within the bureau's jurisdiction. However, the department is still studying her appeal for deportation. "For now, Sister Fox is staying in the congregation house and abiding the order of the BI... but it does not mean she surrenders her right to stay as a missionary here," said Pahilga. "She will not abandon the appeal we filed at the DOJ." If the DOJ decision is unfavorable, Taule says, "We can still appeal that to the Office of the President or [the] Supreme Court." UPPER THUMB -- The holidays are coming, and it will be a busy time for the Blue Star Mothers Thumb Chapter 178. They will be busy buying items to send Christmas packages to our servicemen and servicewomen. Packages will be packed in late November and mailed first week in December. Each year, the Shoreline Times looks forward to working on the Best of Shoreline special edition. Sure, some businesses win year after year, but it doesn't get old. It's like seeing a friendly face when we revisit these oh-so familiar people and places. We are reminded why they are so beloved by customers. And, there are plenty of brand new winners wildcards and an upset or two. Read about some of the spas and salons that got top honors, and click through the slideshow to see the full list of finalists in the Wellness & Pampering category. ________________________ Branford is a destination for day spas Branford is the destination our readers head to to relax and enjoy a little TLC with three locations tied for first place for Best Spa on the Shoreline. At By the Sea Day Spa, owners Doreen and Paul Costanzo have created a dreamy home away from home just off the Branford Green. As New Haven County's largest full service spa, By the Sea offers an array of treatments in a cozy setting that will leave your cares at the door. The spa offers plenty of room for large parties such as bridal, bachelorette or corporate retreats. Try the Ultra-Lift Age Correct Facial that will immediately smooth, plump and lift your skin. Rejuvenate your skin with a Cranberry Pomegranate Sugar Scrub to renew tired summer skin. If total relaxation is in order, a Hot Stone Massage will soothe and balance your stressed body. Specials for the month of October include a Pumpkin Berry Spice Facial with a 60 minute Swedish Massage. Perhaps, a Swedish Couples Massage for a mid-week getaway is in order with that special someone. The spa also offers a full menu of mani/pedi treatments (ah, the "Peppermint Pattie" Foot Treatment!) in addition to waxing services. After relaxing in the glass sunroom by the fireplace, guests can bring the spa experience home. The spa's gift shop carries the Eminence Organic Skin Care line known worldwide for using the highest quality ingredients as well as Michel Design Works body washes and California Natural body lotions. Just off the busy Boston Post Road at the stone entry sits the Branford River Spa. Enjoy the peaceful waterfront setting while sitting in the gazebo taking in the sights and sounds of birds chirping in the tall grasses. Branford River Resort and Spa is a family run business owned by Natalie Bastian. The spa offers an extensive array of services such as Deep Tissue Massage, Chocolate Body Wrap, Microdermabrasion, Hot Stone Facial, as well as mani/pedi and waxing services. What really sets Branford River Spa apart is the futuristic Wellness Pod. This egg-like covered bed performs multiple functions at once for maximum potential health benefits. Clients lie inside to experience the oxygen infused chamber while receiving LED therapy which is a soothing and rejuvenating skin treatment and enjoy the relaxing benefits of aromatherapy. Bastian's mom Doreen encourages guests to take time to reflect and meditate on the charming side porch above the seven-circuit labyrinth. Down the road you'll find Aura Day Spa, a more intimate, tranquil one-floor space. Owner Sharon Cawley prides herself on the smaller scale spa, "Aura is unique because we are a smaller spa where we can personally relate to our customers and take the extra time needed to meet their personal needs." Cawley said their most popular service is the Radiant Facial which is described as the BLT of facials: Brightening, Lightening and Tightening! Cawley added that eyelash tinting and lash extensions along with their couple's massage top the list of most asked for services. The spa offers its own exclusive skin care line called Rose of Sharon which is a plant, flower, and essential oil based line. Cawley added, "We sell our signature blends of pure oils which we incorporate into most treatments to stimulate the olfactory sense and recreate a feeling of peace and tranquility at home." Cawley, who's been an esthetician for 21 years, says that she loves being able to inspire wellness and stress relief for everyday life by focusing on skin, body, and spirit. Her clients seem to agree with one saying, "It's like I've been transported into a tranquil world when I come into Aura " ________________________ Allusions Hair Salon, Branford Allusions Hair Salon recently underwent a total transformation with the opening of their new location in Branford. The elegant, intimate salon located just off the Branford Green prides itself on treating its clients like family which is why our readers trust Allusions to keep their tresses looking beautiful. Owner Francine Piscitelli has been in business for 25 years and offers her clients personalized service in a warm, inviting space. With shimmering chandeliers casting light above each stylist's station, Allusions offers a wide array of services for men and women from cuts, color, extensions, spray tanning and makeup. Always looking to keep her clients young and fashion forward, Piscitelli recently traveled to Italy for further training and inspiration to bring back home. She said, "I am passionate, innovative and feel inspired by their European beauty and fashion. I love making people look and feel beautiful and am continually keeping up with new hair trends." In addition to creating exciting looks for her clients, Piscitelli is also a certified Framesi Color educator and trains both her own staff as well as other stylists. Sharing why she loves her career, Piscitelli said, "As long as I can remember, I've always loved playing with hair. I enjoy the artistry of hair so it no longer feels like work." Allusions Hair Salon also lends its expertise to local news celebrities Darren Kramer, Ann Nyberg, Kent Pierce and Teresa Dufour of News 8 New Haven creating perfect on camera looks. Kramer shared, "I have loved that place and those people since the first time I walked in there. Not only are they great at what they do, they are fun, nice people. Fran runs a great shop. " Piscitelli said, "My staff and clients are considered like family to me. Once you step foot into Allusions you will leave as family, too." ________________________ Timothy Pamment Salon, Madison The New England climate can be a balancing act for your complexion with its unpredictable, seasonal weather. Thankfully, facialist Lara Marcuss delivers just the remedy to reveal hydrated, glowy skin, and our readers agree voting the Timothy Pamment Salon Best Facial on the Shoreline. Tucked in back of the bustling salon, the facial room is a quiet oasis, dimly lit and filled with soft, soothing music. Lie back on the plush bed and let Marcuss work her magic. As an esthetician on the Shoreline for 22 years who has worked with many skincare lines, Marcuss raves about the products used during treatments. Brands include Natura Bisse, Meder Beauty Science, and EvenSwiss which are typically found in European spas or high-end stores in Manhattan. Customers receive personalized treatments that are truly results oriented. Marcuss said, "We guide you through each season. We're like your personal trainer giving you a regimen and guiding you along the way." She highlighted two facials that bring amazing results like the Natura Bisse Vitamin C treatment. She shared, "It's phenomenal, uses 6 percent vitamin C, and is really effective." A second favorite is the Meder Beauty Hydra-Fill Facial which includes an organic sheet of bamboo soaked in hyaluronic acid placed on the face for ultimate hydration. Client Kim Bartlett of Madison enjoys facials at the salon and shared, "Lara is absolutely wonderful, and the best facial I have ever received including services I've had while traveling to different spa locations around the world. She has the ability to make me completely relax and I love that she incorporates massaging the hands and feet." ________________________ Refine by Farrell, Old Saybrook Twenty-first century aging looks beautiful when in the right hands which is why our readers voted Refine by Farrell Best Med Spa on the Shoreline. Those hands happen to be those of founder Suzanne Arcuni Farrell, APRN, a nurse practioner with over 20 years experience, whose clients trust her implicitly to keep them looking naturally youthful and fresh. One unique aspect of Farrell's practice is the privacy and individualized service offered to each client. "We are a boutique practice with a personalized approach to aesthetic injectables. I love getting to know each of my patients as individuals. We have a lot of fun together! I love to see the happiness it brings when someone's appearance reflects how they want to present to the world." said Farrell. Combining both her artistry and medical science background is a passion for Farrell. Her practice offers a variety of treatments including medical grade peels, Botox and the very popular dermal fillers. Farrell shared, "Dermal fillers give natural looking, long lasting results. Facial volume can be restored, and wrinkles and lines can be softened or eliminated resulting in skin that appears more firm. Clients are always saying, 'Filler is our friend!'" In addition to fillers and Botox, (Farrell is nationally recognized as a Certified Master Injector), other services include Kybella injections to eliminate excess fat as well as Latisse at home prescription treatment for lusher lashes. To keep skin looking its best, Refine by Farrell also offers skin products by SkinMedica. Treatments are offered in a serene, private setting by appointment only so your secret to gorgeous skin is safe. Farrell shared, "Treatments are done to achieve a Shoreline style of beauty without letting patients look or feel overdone." WASHINGTON -- Sen. Claire McCaskill, ranking Democrat for the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee, is calling for a probe by the inspector general into a website that claims to trade and share nude photos and videos of female service members. McCaskill said Thursday that she heard of the site, hotmilitarygirls.com, through a researcher for a veterans organization and was alarmed at its claims. The site appears to be operated out of Canada and shares suggestive photos and videos of women who are service members or their partners, the Missouri senator's office said. "The exploitation of our brave women in uniform is repugnant, and the targeting of our service members' spouses is just as appalling," said McCaskill, who is also a member of the Senate Armed Services Committee. "There needs to be a thorough investigation of this website, and if wrongdoing is found, the perpetrators should be brought to justice." Online trading of nude images of female service members isn't a new problem for the military. In 2017, the Marine Corps fired two commanders and punished 33 other service members following the so-called "Marines United" photo-sharing scandal. The Marines were accused in March 2017 of sharing revealing and often explicit photographs of female Marines through a private Facebook group. In April, Gen. Robert Neller, commandant of the Marines, told a Senate panel that the Corps has since enacted a series of reforms and was making progress reining in a culture of harassment. The now-defunct Marines United Facebook page had an estimated 30,000 followers when it was uncovered. Active-duty and veteran Marines were exchanging nude photos of female Marines, making derogatory comments and even threats in some cases on the webpage. "I think today you look at our Marine Corps we are as diverse, as integrated and inclusive as we've ever been," Neller told the Senate Armed Services Committee in April. On Thursday, Air Force Maj. Carla Gleason, a Pentagon spokeswoman, said while Pentagon officials were not specifically aware of the new website, the military has implemented policies designed to combat such concerns in the wake of the Marines United scandal. For example, a new armed forces harassment prevention and response policy was enacted in February of this year to establish a comprehensive, department-wide program on such matters that updated previous policies. McCaskill said she is calling on the Pentagon's inspector general to investigate the site. In a letter addressed to Glenn Fine, the principal deputy inspector general at the Department of Defense, McCaskill said foreign entities might be using websites and Facebook pages to exploit service members, veterans and their families. "Many of the women pictured are easily identifiable; their consent to be photographed and have the photos posted online is not evident and therefore cannot be guaranteed," McCaskill, a former sex crimes prosecutor, wrote in the letter to Fine. "I respectfully request that you evaluate whether there are exploitation concerns or violations of law, military regulations, or policies, associated with these sites and, if warranted, undertake a thorough investigation." Dwrena K. Allen, a spokeswoman for the Defense Department's inspector general, confirmed Thursday that McCaskill's letter was received and the senator's request for an investigation was being reviewed. McCaskill's office was alerted to the site by a researcher with Vietnam Veterans of America, Kris Goldsmith, who was recently featured in a Wall Street Journal story after he uncovered dozens of fake Facebook pages targeting military personnel and veterans. Goldsmith said he came across two Facebook pages affiliated with the website in June and July 2017 and contacted the social media giant. Facebook promptly took down the pages, one of which had 17,000 followers, he said. The social media pages and the website appeared to feature nude images of service members or their partners wearing U.S. military uniforms, Goldsmith said. That, along with identifiable details connected to the images, could let viewers trace the women to their homes, he said. "Some stuff appears to be provided willingly and with consent, but I'm sure there are women on there who don't even know" they are on the site," said Goldsmith, who is the assistant director for policy and government affairs for Vietnam Veterans of America. And "it would be very easy for anyone to track them down and blackmail them." The website features a messaging board to trade suggestive photos and videos of women who appear to be "embers or partners of "embers. It appears to be active and has been operating for more than 17 years. Efforts to reach the website's administrators were not successful Thursday. McCaskill said the site was registered Feb. 15, 2001 and changed internet protocol addresses 24 times and appears to operate now from a server in Montreal. It also shows account names, emblems, and clothing that appears to be linked to the U.S. military. "Despite the domain being managed from Montreal, a majority of the women on this site appear to be in the U.S. military or have some relation to it," McCaskill wrote to Fine. McCaskill has been a key figure in an ongoing Capitol Hill fight to boost assistance for victims of sexual violence in the military. Earlier this year, she called for the Department of Veterans Affairs to better assist veteran survivors of sexual assault and she was a sponsor of a 2017 law to better fend off "revenge porn" in the military. She was also involved in efforts to shutdown Backpage.com, a website known for trafficking images of vulnerable women and girls. Stars and Stripes reporter Corey Dickstein contributed to this report Vice President Mike Pence and Air Force Secretary Heather Wilson on Thursday pledged a full recovery for Tyndall Air Force Base from the destruction caused by Hurricane Michael, but they gave no timeline for when flightlines would be reopened and military families could return. On a visit to Tyndall in Florida's Panhandle, where hangars, air operations centers and base housing were destroyed by the recent storm, Pence echoed President Donald Trump in promising to rebuild the base "bigger and better than before." Wilson said the Air Force has committed $100 million to recovery efforts thus far. Neither Pence nor Wilson would say how many F-22 Raptor fifth-generation fighters were unable to fly off the base before the storm hit two weeks ago, or how many of the ones that rode out the storm on-base were damaged. The majority of the more than 50 F-22s stationed at Tyndall were flown to other bases. Wilson said many of them would be returning to Florida in the coming weeks for training, but they will be flying out of Eglin Air Force Base. "We can't fly aircraft out of Tyndall at the moment," Wilson said. "But by Thanksgiving, we will have F-22s in the skies over the Panhandle." She said that the 800 airmen who worked in the air operations center would also begin returning in the coming weeks. "We want to get back to initial operating capability by the first of January" for the air operations center, Wilson said. The "Schoolhouse," where pilots train on F-22 simulators, was also expected to be back in operation by Jan. 1, Wilson said. Wilson and Pence said Tyndall base housing would be restored, but said there was no estimate on when the 600 military families who were safely evacuated would be able to return. Shortly after the storm hit, Air Force Gen. Joseph Lengyel, commander of the National Guard Bureau, told defense reporters that 100 percent of the housing at Tyndall was uninhabitable. When asked for an estimate on when families could return, Air Force officials cited the example of Keesler Air Force Base in Biloxi, Mississippi, which took five years to recover from Hurricane Katrina. "Our objective is to make sure that the families that serve here are able to return here as quickly as possible," Pence said Thursday. Col. Brian Laidlaw, commander of the 325th Fighter Wing at Tyndall, also had no estimate for the return of families but said there was a concentration of evacuated Tyndall airmen and family members "just west of here at Hulbert Air Force Base, Eglin Air Force Base." "So we have a welcome center set up for those Airmen and those families," Laidlaw said. "You can get things like legal advice, you can get moving advice, you can get personnel center advice. We have school liaison officers, because I know schools are on people's minds as well." -- Richard Sisk can be reached at richard.sisk@military.com. Two Democrats on the House Armed Services Committee have called on the Army to release its lessons learned report on the Iraq war that reportedly concludes the military was hamstrung by poor resourcing and guidance from the top. In a letter Wednesday to Army Secretary Mark Esper and Army Chief of Staff Gen. Mark Milley, Reps. Jackie Speier, California, and Ruben Gallego, Arizona, who served as an enlisted Marine in Iraq in 2005, called for the quick and public release of the report, initially ordered up by then-Army Chief of Staff Gen. Ray Odierno in 2013. The Wall Street Journal reported earlier this week that a draft of the report, completed in 2016, concluded that the U.S.-led coalition effort in Iraq was "largely unsuccessful" due to failures to provide enough troops to accomplish the mission and the "under-resourcing" of efforts to train and advise the Iraqi security forces. The journal reported that the document was ultimately held from publication. In their letter, Speier and Gallego expressed their "great concern over the prospect that the Army is withholding an unclassified history of the service's performance in the Iraq war." "We have heard conflicting information on the report's expected release date [reportedly next month] and urge publication as soon as possible," the letter said. "This is simply the Army being unwilling to publicly air its mistakes," Speier said. "It's no secret that the Army and, frankly, our entire defense establishment, made serious mistakes and miscalculations in Iraq since 2003," Gallego added. There have been numerous "lessons learned" studies and reports over the years on the Iraq war from think tanks, academic institutions and retired and active duty military officials. In 2012, Maj. Matthew Hover, an Army Judge Advocate, published a study titled "The Occupation of Iraq: A Military Perspective on Lessons Learned." Many existing studies and reports appear to have reached the same conclusions as the Army's draft report, as reported by the Wall Street Journal -- that the mission given to the military was never adequately defined, and the means to carry out the mission were never properly funded. However, Speier and Gallego said the release of the Army's report was necessary to put an official perspective on a war in which more than 4,550 U.S. troops have been killed thus far, according to the website iCasualties.org. Various estimates on the costs of the Iraq war to taxpayers generally range from about $800 billion to $1.7 trillion. -- Richard Sisk can be reached at richard.sisk@military.com. The United States reversed its plan to ban cluster munitions last year and kept its dated stockpiles for one reason: North Korea, a top defense official said Friday. "That policy change was driven by the North Korean situation," Deputy Defense Secretary Patrick Shanahan said. "When we were going through our readiness exercise, we said, 'How do we prepare for North Korea?' And we looked at the munitions that are required and the munitions that were available," he said in response to questions during the annual Military Reporters & Editors conference outside Washington, D.C. Shanahan said developing a replacement for cluster bombs would take too long when faced with the North Korean threat, so the Pentagon looked to available capability. Related content: In early 2017, North Korea stated it was readying a missile that could reach the United States. A month later, it conducted its first missile test, which was unsuccessful, just days after President Donald Trump moved into the White House. The regime conducted six more missile or nuclear tests in roughly five months' time. The last was a single intercontinental ballistic missile test in November. Shanahan in December signed a directive to stop a 2008 policy approved by then-Defense Secretary Robert Gates stipulating that, by the end of 2018, the Pentagon would "no longer use cluster munitions which, after arming, result in more than one percent unexploded ordnance." The New York Times reported that the weapons' "dud rate" often approaches 20 percent when deployed in combat situations, making the environment extremely dangerous to friendly forces and civilians. The Times noted the U.S. has roughly 2.2 million cluster munitions in the United States itself and 1.5 million overseas, with the majority in South Korea. The Pentagon was tasked by President George W. Bush's administration to bring cluster bombs' failure rate under one percent or find an alternative. However, Defense Department spokesman Tom Crosson said last year the U.S. military's efforts to develop more reliable, and thus safer, cluster munitions that have a failure rate of one percent or less were unsuccessful, The Associated Press said at the time. Shanahan confirmed that report Friday. "You're probably familiar with the fact that we've been working on a technology to eliminate the danger of cluster munitions, but the timing of that technology to eliminate the danger, and the need to backfill the shortfall in munitions, did not line up," he said. It was not immediately clear whether the Pentagon is continuing efforts to improve the cluster bombs' reliability, or if the current stockpiles will remain unchanged. Meanwhile, relations between the U.S. and North Korea have appeared to be on the mend in recent months, with Trump noting his blossoming relationship with Kim Jong Un. "I was really being tough and so was he. And we would go back and forth. And then we fell in love, OK?" Trump said at a campaign rally Sept. 29. "No really. He wrote me beautiful letters. And they're great letters. And then we fell in love." -- Oriana Pawlyk can be reached at oriana.pawlyk@military.com. Follow her on Twitter at @Oriana0214. China's Sub Force Is Growing More Powerful. This Is What the US Navy Needs to Do to Stay Ahead WASHINGTON -- A day after a key senator demanded an official probe into a website that solicits nude photos and videos of female service members, the site has been disabled. Missouri Sen. Claire McCaskill, the ranking Democrat for the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee, on Thursday called for the Defense Department's inspector general to investigate the website, hotmilitarygirls.com. By Friday morning, the site appeared to be disabled with a posted message asking viewers to be patient as lawyers investigate and review the website. "HMG is currently offline," the posting reads. "We are having our lawyers review the entire site to ensure it does not violate any laws due to a request for an investigation into the website. We STRONGLY disagree with any kind of revenge posting and have went [sic] to great lengths to delete anything close to this." It also appears an affiliated website, hotmilitarygirls.net, is still in operation from a server in the Netherlands, said Kris Goldsmith, a research who tracks websites that target service members and veterans. Both the .com and .net versions of the site appear to have anonymous registrations through the internet domain company GoDaddy Inc., said Goldsmith, who is assistant director for policy and government affairs for Vietnam Veterans of America, or VVA. Goldsmith alerted McCaskill's office about the hotmilitarygirls.com website, which was previously tied to two active Facebook pages -- one with about 17,000 followers. Facebook took down the pages during the summer after Goldsmith reported them to the social media giant. The social media pages and the website appeared to feature nude images of service members or their partners wearing U.S. military uniforms. That, along with other identifiable details connected to the images could let viewers trace the women to their homes, Goldsmith said. In August, Goldsmith reported the site to federal authorities. "I recognize there is a First Amendment right to publish porn, but no one has a right to publish porn without the subject's permission," he said of the disabled site Friday. Now, Goldsmith is concerned hotmilitarygirls.com is getting rid of any images that might have been obtained without consent before the site can be investigated. "VVA is strong in support of Sen. McCaskill's demands for an investigation by [the Defense Department's inspector general]. I would hope that some experts are going in and taking all the evidence before the people behind it scrub it," Goldsmith said. "The page warning looks to me like we have to scrub the site of evidence.'" Immediate efforts to reach the website's administrators have not been successful. The original site appeared to be operated out of Canada, McCaskill's office said Thursday. McCaskill, who is also a member of the Senate Armed Services Committee, said the site was registered Feb. 15, 2001, changed internet protocol addresses 24 times and appears to operate now from a server in Montreal. She also said it shows account names, emblems, and clothing that appears to be linked to the U.S. military. In a letter addressed to Glenn Fine, the principal deputy inspector general at the Department of Defense, McCaskill said foreign entities might be using websites and Facebook pages to exploit service members, veterans and their families. "Many of the women pictured are easily identifiable; their consent to be photographed and have the photos posted online is not evident and therefore cannot be guaranteed," McCaskill, a former sex crimes prosecutor, wrote in the letter to Fine. "I respectfully request that you evaluate whether there are exploitation concerns or violations of law, military regulations, or policies, associated with these sites and, if warranted, undertake a thorough investigation." Online trading of nude images of female service members isn't a new problem for the military. In 2017, the Marine Corps fired two commanders and punished 33 other service members following the so-called "Marines United" photo-sharing scandal. The Marines were accused in March 2017 of sharing revealing and often explicit photographs of female Marines through a private Facebook group. In April, Gen. Robert Neller, commandant of the Marines, told a Senate panel that the Corps has since enacted a series of reforms and was making progress reining in a culture of harassment. On Thursday, Air Force Maj. Carla Gleason, a Pentagon spokeswoman, said while Pentagon officials were not specifically aware of the new website, the military has implemented policies designed to combat such concerns in the wake of the Marines United scandal. For example, a new armed forces harassment prevention and response policy was enacted in February of this year to establish a comprehensive, department-wide program on such matters that updated previous policies. Dwrena K. Allen, a spokeswoman for the Defense Department's inspector general, confirmed Thursday that McCaskill's letter was received and the senator's request for an investigation was being reviewed. "The exploitation of our brave women in uniform is repugnant, and the targeting of our service members' spouses is just as appalling," McCaskill said. "There needs to be a thorough investigation of this website, and if wrongdoing is found, the perpetrators should be brought to justice." October 26 marks the National Day of the Deployed. This day honors all service members who have been deployed in service of our country. The day also acknowledges the sacrifices that military families make during deployment. The first National Day of the Deployed was observed in 2006, when North Dakota announced a proclamation for the day, thanks to Shelle Michaeles Aberle, who petitioned Governor John Hoevento with the idea. October 26 was chosen for the date in honor of Shelle's cousin, LTC David Hosna, who had been deployed to Iraq (the day was Hosna's birthday). By 2012, every state in the US was observing this day. If you're honoring those who have been been deployed, it is recommended to post to social media including the hashtag #DayOfTheDeployed. If you're looking to support service members on this day of recognition, check with local veterans service organizations, or, if you live near a military base, contact the bases Family Resource Center. For more tips, see Military.com's Easy Ways to Support Our Troops and Their Families. If you a deploying service member or military family member, visit Military.com's Deployment Center for additional resources and guides to aid you before, during and after deployment. You can also visit MilitaryOneSource's Deployment Resources for Families page. U.S. sailors aboard the Arleigh Burke-class destroyer John Finn destroyed a target Friday with the latest version of the Standard Missile-3 interceptor during a flight test off the coast of Hawaii. The ship launched the SM-3 Block IIA guided missile, which then successfully intercepted a medium-range ballistic missile target deployed from the Pacific Missile Range Facility at Kauai, Hawaii, according to a U.S. Missile Defense Agency press release. Mark Wright, a spokesman for MDA, confirmed that the SM-3 Block IIA impacted with the target. "It's a kinetic kill vehicle, meaning it has to slam into the target, not just explode near it," he told Military.com. Built by Raytheon, the Block IIA can be deployed on land as well as at sea. It features larger rocket motors that will allow it to defend broader areas from ballistic missile threats and a larger kinetic warhead, according to the company's website. "This was a superb accomplishment and key milestone for the SM-3 Block IIA return to flight," said MDA Director Lt. Gen. Sam Greaves. "My congratulations to the entire team, including our sailors, industry partners, and allies who helped achieve this milestone." In late January, the Block IIA missed its target when it was fired an Aegis Ashore test site in Hawaii, USNI.org reported. The SM-3 Block IIA, a joint development effort between the U.S. and Japan, operates as part of the AEGIS Ballistic Missile Defense system -- the naval component of the U.S. Ballistic Missile Defense System. It's also part of the European Phased Adaptive Approach, which is designed to protect U.S. deployed forces and NATO allies in Europe from ballistic missile attacks. Phase 3 of the EPAA is scheduled to deploy Block IIAs to a new Aegis Ashore site in Poland by the end of 2018, according to MDA fiscal 2018 budget documents. -- Matthew Cox can be reached at matthew.cox@military.com. Gear makers still have a few days left to respond to the Marine Corps' call for ideas for new magazine pouches designed to fit the service's new PMAG polymer magazines. Marine Corps Systems Command put out a request for information Oct. 4 to identify potential sources for magazine pouches that will fit Magpul PMAGs as well as standard aluminum magazines for the M4 carbines and M16 rifles. The Corps authorized PMAGs for use in late 2016 after testing showed that the Army's M855A1 enhanced performance round did not meet the reliability requirement of the Marine M27 Infantry Automatic Rifle. The Marine Corps began fielding the M27 in 2010 to replace the M249 squad automatic weapon in infantry squads and then approved it for all Marine infantrymen in late 2017. The baseplates on PMAGs are slightly larger than standard-issue aluminum magazines, which makes them difficult to fit in the current double and triple-stack magazine pouches. The newer Gen M3 design helps to mitigate fit problems, according to Magpul's website. Despite the improvement, the Marine Corps "is planning to purchase a minimum of 60,000 with a possibility of up to the maximum quantity of 500,000 magazine pouches" if a contract is awarded in the future, according to the solicitation. Companies have until Oct. 31 to respond to the Marine RFI. Designs for the pouches should: Be compatible with the current Pouch Attachment Ladder System for attachment to current load bearing equipment. Provide a retention mechanism that allows for the magazine to be retained during normal combat operations. Allow the magazines to be smoothly drawn from the pouch with one hand. Be configurable to allow for a single Marine to carry a minimum of six magazines on their person. The magazine pouches should also be "lighter than the current M4/M16 double/single rifle magazine pouch for a double magazine design (T= 0.27lbs) or lighter than half the weight of the current M4/M16 double/single rifle magazine pouch if a single magazine design (T=0.14lbs)," the solicitation states. -- Matthew Cox can be reached matthew.cox@military.com. "Indivisible" is an unapologetically faith-based movie that tells the story of Army Chaplain Darren Turner and what happened during and after his deployment to Iraq. It's not quite the story you might expect and raises some interesting questions for anyone who's experienced combat or has a friend or family member who did. Darren Turner is a real guy who's still serving in the Army. He spoke with us and has some excellent insight into the difference between his actual life and way a movie tells a story. He also talks about his service and how he's addressed his own post-traumatic stress. The real Darren and Heather Turner (courtesy photo) What's the process of working with the Pentagon when you're on active duty and having a film made about your life? I have no idea, to be quite honest. The Graceworks Pictures folks did that. All we did was notify our public affairs officer and our JAG. And they looked into a little bit, but Graceworks did all of the communicating with big Army public affairs and I'm sure public affairs got the clearance from the Pentagon. That's why it took four or five years to figure this out. My wife and I had very little to do with that. Once we were able to legally sign our life rights over to the production folks, they ran with it and did all of the stuff that needed to be done. How did Graceworks come across your story? Our deployment was covered in a couple of newspaper articles. There was a journalist who came over and reported some of what happened during that deployment. We had a pretty rough time of it there. I also kept a blog with pictures and notes that I would write to the kids. So Dr. David Evans from Graceworks read the articles, Googled me, he found the blog, read that, and contacted us after that and said, "Your story is really attractive, I'm a movie maker." David and Esther Evans are the founders of Graceworks Pictures. By day, he's a professional eye doctor in Memphis, Tennessee. David had the passion for movie making on the side, but when he's making movies that is obviously his priority during that time. Dr. Evans learned our full story. After the deployment, I came home and almost lost my marriage. I was a wreck and did not handle that homecoming well. I got out of the Army for a year, we patched things up and I went back in the Army. When David called us, we had just returned to the military. He said, "Oh, my gosh. It's not just the online articles in your blog, but now you're telling me this whole cycle of crisis and redemption." That's when he said, "I've gotta get your life rights, I'm gonna make a film about it. I've actually wanted to make a film about an army chaplain and your story is going to be a huge part of that." He already had some of the details in mind for a movie, so he combined chunks of our story with those ideas to create "Indivisible." Air Force veteran Skye P. Marshall stars as Sgt. Shonda Peterson and Justin Breuning plays Army Chaplain Darren Turner in "Indivisible." I've seen dozens of movies where people go into combat and come home, and usually that's the last five minutes of the movie. "Indivisible" is unusual because, in a way, the most important part of the film comes after your return from deployment. A lot of war movies just show what happens in war. "Indivisible" does a great job of balancing the battles that my wife is having in her life, which are not the same battles I'm having while I'm deployed. We had three small children and she was part of the family readiness group, which takes care of spouses who are losing their husbands. She had her own drama that year as well and I think the movie shows that beautifully. When I watch the movie, I have a new respect for what spouses really go through when they're nervous about going into the home of someone who was just notified that their husband was killed. That's an incredibly courageous moment for other Army wives to go into that scene and Indivisible does a great job of showing that, just that tension (inaudible * 0:05:54.6) outside of that door before they walk in. I have a new respect for army wives who serve in that capacity. Was it a tough decision for you and your wife to tell the part of your story from after your return? That's not a part of the story that anybody really knew and some of it's pretty tough to watch. As a chaplain, I have the privilege of walking the journey with lots of people who are in a tough marriage or family situation. We're not afraid to share our messiness because we do it anyway with other Army couples who seek us out for counsel. When we lead marriage retreats, we'll inject some of our own struggles into the curriculum. And it resonates with people. When I'm supposed to have life figured out (or at least the culture says that this guy is supposed to have life figured out), it helps when they realize I'm a human and I have issues and struggles. That increases confidence in what I have to offer them because I've been there, I'm with them. I'm not just way up here, some religious dude who doesn't have struggles. I'm in the fight with them and we've been through a tough time and we've been able to recover. And so here's how we were able to recover. That's really attractive to folks who are in a tough time and don't know how to recover. How do your kids feel about the movie? They giggle when they see it. It's still very surreal to hear our names spoken by actors in a movie. Of course, the movie is not a biography. When the kids saw themselves up there, our youngest said, "Oh, I would never do that." And we have to explain, "It's okay, they're portraying an Army kid. They didn't necessarily try to nail exactly what you did in this moment. They're not disparaging you by saying that this or that happened." She's funny. She's 12, so she's trying to wrap her head around all this. "But I thought this was our true story?" It's based on a true story, but the movie folks wanted to have you do this, instead of what you actually did. I think we should start a video review channel on Military.com where you explain military movies to our readers. Yeah, you can sharp shoot this all day, so Army folks will be able to sharp shoot this. There are a couple of scenes where, if you're really paying attention, you will recognize some of the uniform issues. I hope that doesn't detract from the arc of the story. We can get caught up in, "Oh, the uniform was jacked up in that particular scene" or whatever. Yeah, that's true. The folks who made it were not military. They did have some advisors on set, but a couple things slipped through the cracks. R to L: Chaplain Darren Turner (Justin Bruening) performs an Easter Baptism service in Iraq with Lance Bradley (Tanner Stine) in "Indivisible." (Photo courtesy of 2018 Provident Films LLC and The WTA Group, LLC.) Obviously, there are a lot of people who serve in the military who don't share your particular faith or maybe don't have a faith at all. What can people who aren't necessarily Christians get out of watching the film? "Indivisible" shows the struggles that are common to all military families. Here's what I mean by that: loss. If you've been in the military more than a minute, you've lost a buddy or a buddy of a buddy and you've gone through that. That is unique to our human condition, the grief and the pain that comes along with that. Anyone who has deployed to a combat zone, you're going to resonate with the unique stress that deployment produces. Not only just being away from your family, but getting shot at or almost dying in a situation where there's mortars coming in or just getting caught in a firefight. There are universal themes in this movie that are external to my Christian faith, that are going to resonate with folks in a very realistic way. The director didn't want to candy-coat anything in the combat scenes or when the movie shows what my homecoming was like. This movie is real and it's raw and it's vulnerable too. It leads us to a state of "Wow, you know I need to take inventory of where I'm at with my own family situation, whether I'm married or not. Maybe I need to work some things out with my parents or my siblings or my neighbors or my friends." At the end of the day, relationships are all we have. The Army will come and go, we're going to wear the uniform for a time, and one day we're going to take it off. What are we left with? Friends and family, the love that we have. That's universal. Your character in the film isn't prepared for the loss before he goes into combat. I would venture to say that no one is prepared for that level of loss. I don't know anyone who goes on a deployment prepared for mass casualties, multiple memorial ceremonies. My commander had been on many deployments by that time. I was a new chaplain and that was my first one. Those casualties had the same effect on his heart and soul as it did mine, as they did for everybody in our organization. You can't prepare for that, but you can process it if and when it does happen in a healthier way than I did. I retreated from my family instead of running towards them. At least initially upon our homecoming, I wanted to be with the guys who I had deployed with because they were familiar. I didn't have to explain myself to them, they didn't have to explain themselves to me. We have family members who want to know what we went through. We live in that and it's taxing and tiresome. So it's easier just to default to be with people that you're comfortable with instead of doing the hard work, which is to bring your family into the situation that you've gone through in a meaningful way. Chaplain Darren Turner (Justin Bruening) shares words of encouragement with his troops before heading out on patrol in "Indivisible." (Photo courtesy of 2018 Provident Films LLC and The WTA Group, LLC.) During World War II, on every street and in every town, everyone knew somebody who had suffered a loss. That's obviously not the case now. Do you have any ideas about what we can do as a country to share that burden instead of leaving it to just a very small group of people who are active in the military? That's a great question. Almost every community across our great nation has some sort of military organization in it, whether it's a VFW or American Legion or some nonprofit organization that serves the military. That's a great place for civilians who have never served and don't plan to serve, but love the military. If they want to get involved, go to that fish fry and just get to know some of the veterans, hear their stories, listen to them, ask them good questions. Don't just throw some money in the bucket and drive away, but sit down and share that meal with them or go to that Bingo night or whatever event is going on. Because these men and women who have served have an incredible amount of wisdom and resources in them. If we don't tap into that, it could be a generation that is lost without our great land learning from what they've done, their sacrifice, their selfless service. They're volunteering to go to war and die for you and me, if necessary. It's an incredible privilege to talk to people who have actually signed on the dotted line in a time of voluntarly service, willingly knowing that they may have to give their life. There are people who have served who are angry and don't want to reach out to people who don't already know what they've been through. What do you think people in the military communities can do to share those stories and make everyone else more aware of what men and women go through to serve their country? I think they need to come to a place where they're going to have to make a choice. For those people, they've got to decide if they want to foster relationships, maybe new relationships in their life, or existing relationships. If they want to reach out, they've got to come to a place where they're willing to risk being vulnerable, they're willing to risk reaching out and listening to somebody else and not just hope that someone listens to their story. And that's a tough decision to make and I fully understand that. That's the decision I had to come to when I saw my family falling apart. I was no longer just wanting my own wounds to heal, but I recognized that my wife and children had wounds and that I was part of the feeling in their lives as well. I had to decide to get outside of my comfort zone and engage with other people. It was going to be risky, it was painful at times, but it was worth it in the end. Like I said, one day we're going to take this uniform off and then what? When we're in uniform, we're surrounded by like-minded people, but when we get out of the military we're suddenly no longer in that really tight community. We've got to learn ways to engage with folks in a meaningful way and listen to them and hopefully they will listen to us. On set of "Indivisible": (L to R) David Evans (director), Chaplain Darren Turner, Justin Bruening (Darren Turner), Darren Moormana (producer). (Photo credit: Sarah Drew) Have you had a chance to see the film with people you've served with or who you are serving with now? No, I have not. That'll be a pretty emotional experience when that happens. I've seen it with my family and the movie director and production folks, but I have not seen it with fellow service members. I'm getting choked up even thinking about that. Has there been a premiere yet? There's been a red carpet event already. It was in Memphis earlier this month and we did attend that. The movie comes out this Friday, October 26th, and we just plan to show up at a random theater near our home and just be Darren and Heather Turner and not make an announcement and go see it with people who don't even know we're in the audience. This film, ultimately, is not about us. We are representative of millions of people who have chosen to either serve in the military or be a first responder. You run to chaos. And that lifestyle has unique challenges. We are them and they are us. We are representing them. We hope that people who watch this film will have a new appreciation for military and first responders. The submarine thriller "Hunter Killer" (now in theaters) is based on the novel "Firing Point" by U.S. Navy veteran George Wallace and Don Keith. Action star Gerard Butler plays American submarine Captain Joe Glass. His crew teams up with an elite group of Navy SEALs to prevent a Russian coup and rescue the country's kidnapped president. Commander George Wallace served on two of Admiral Rickovers famous Forty One for Freedom submarines and commanded the USS Houston SSN 713 in the early nineties. After retirement, he decided to write a novel about submarines and, twenty years later, his story has finally made it to the screen. He spoke to Military.com about the journey. Author Don Keith, actor Gerard Butler and author George Wallace at the "Hunter Killer" premiere event on the USS Intrepid October 22, 2018. (Photo Credit: Patrick Lewis/StarPix2018) Please tell our readers about your military background. I served 22 years, all in submarines. I was commissioned in '73, I have a degree from The Ohio State University. I went right into nuclear power and submarines. My first boat was the John Adams, one of the old 41 for Freedom, the original Poseidon Polaris boats. Then I was engineer officer on the Woodrow Wilson, another one of the 41 for Freedom. I was executive officer on Spadefish. She was a sturgeon class fast attack. And I commanded Houston, SSN-713. She was a Los Angeles-class fast attack. I retired in '95. What made you decide to become an author? When I retired, we moved to Durango, Colorado. And if you've never been to Durango, it's in southwest Colorado and it's about as far away from the ocean as you could possibly get and still be in the continental US. A lady who worked with me actually thought the submarine force was part of the Coast Guard. No one in town knew anything about submarines or submariners and I got the idea that people needed to understand what my crew and other submariners had done or were doing. This was a story that needed to be told. I could have sat down and written a fact-based book, but there are two things to consider: One, most of what we did was pretty highly classified and still is, so I would run afoul of those rules pretty quickly. Quite frankly, most of what we did was extremely boring. You sit off somebody's coast for a month, two months looking at nothing, and then experience five seconds of sheer terror, and then you go home. That doesn't make a very good book, so I decided to write a novel instead. That way, I could spend time explaining submarines and particularly submariners: what the life was like, what the comradery was like, and tell it in an interesting story that brings in the everyday reader and gives them some excitement. I wanted to give the young reader (or now the young movie attendee) something to look at for a life goal: "I want to go be a submariner because this is what it's like, it's really interesting, really challenging." That's where we started and hopefully that's where we're at. There are a lot of people who believe they could write a book but you're one of the very few who've actually done the work and got it published How did you get a book deal? How did you manage to get your book out there for everyone to read? You have to be extremely lucky. When we started, my first agent told me that 95 percent of the first-time authors never find an agent. 95 percent of those that find an agent never get published. And I'll add my own metric. I think 99 percent of the writers that get published never get a movie deal. So you have to be extremely lucky and Don and I were extremely lucky. Tell us how you got a movie deal. We wrote the manuscript, got an option for the movie, and then our book "Firing Point" was published. It was, again, being at the right place, at the right time. We were living in Los Angeles and my wife and I were a member of the Naval Submarine League. We attended a meeting down in San Diego. The president of the league who was a friend of mine and he introduced me to this guy named Arne Schmidt. Arne was doing research for a movie he wanted to do on a World War II submarine, but he's a big time Hollywood producer. He's probably done 150 different movies as either director or producer or line producer or executive producer. We got to talking, discussed another book we'd written, and then Arne looked at "Firing Point." He said, "Hey, we can do something with this." So we took our 700-page baby, cut it down to a hundred-page screenplay, and then shopped it around to the studios. 11 years later we have a movie. I don't think people realize how long it can take to get a movie made. There's a whole other book in that. Yeah, it takes forever. There were any number of times during those 11 years where we actually thought this idea is dead. Either the studios lost interest, the timing is not right, we can't get a director, we can't get a leading man, whatever. And it seemed like every time that happened, somebody would step up. Relativity, the first studio, went bankrupt. Millennium and Neal Moritz stepped up. They were having a hard time getting a leading man. And Gerard Butler, Gerard has been with the movie since 2011. He stepped up and now he's the star of this movie, he's been the star of many other movies. Authors George Wallace and Don Keith at the "Hunter Killer" premiere event on the USS Intrepid October 22, 2018. (Photo Credit: Patrick Lewis/StarPix2018) Were you on the Intrepid for the New York premiere event? Were you in New York for that event? That was great. It was a fun event. It was a good chance to meet a lot of people who were involved in the movie that, frankly, I hadn't gotten a chance to meet before. The feedback is that we've got something here and that we've done what we set out to do. I probably got that feeling more last Monday night, when they did a premiere at the Navy Memorial in D.C.. There were a number of Navy flags there, but they brought a bunch of midshipmen from the Naval Academy and the local NRTC units. The theater was packed. When I talked with the midshipman afterwards, I got the realization that we accomplished what we wanted to do because they were very, very excited about "Hunter Killer." Actor Gerard Butler speaks to reporters at the Pentagon on Oct. 15, 2018, promoting his new movie, "Hunter Killer." Navy Vice Adm. Fritz Roegge stands to his right. Photo by Oriana Pawlyk/Military.com Your movie has something that I don't think I've ever seen before: Gerard Butler standing at the Pentagon giving a press conference. Do you have any inside scoop on how that happened? A little bit. The movie has had tremendous navy support from the CNO, Admiral Richardson, on down. And you say Admiral Roegge that was there with Gerard at the Pentagon. He had made arrangements for Gerard and for Donovan Marsh to go out and ride Houston to learn what submarining was like. They were out for three days. So all that played into getting the Pentagon news conference. But as I said, tremendous navy support pretty much all the way through. Thanks for speaking with us. Thank you. When you see the movie, plan on sitting on the edge of your chair the entire time. I will tell you the action starts at the beginning and it doesn't stop until the end. FRANKFORT, MI - It was 138 years ago this fall that a schooner hauling iron ore met a violent end in a sudden squall in northern Lake Michigan. The wreck still litters the lake's bottom near Frankfort - and sparked a haunting mystery that continues to be part of Great Lakes lore: a woman who died lashed to the sinking ship's mast. Boaters have floated over the waterlogged timbers off shore. They're all that remain of the J. Hazard Hartzell. That, and a U.S. Life Saving Service annual report that goes into great detail about the 1880 wreck and its controversial rescue effort. The story itself is that of an extraordinary effort. Townspeople and surfmen from the nearby Life Saving Station worked together under grueling conditions for more than 12 hours to save the seven men aboard. But the only woman on the ship - a cook named Lydia Dale from Toledo - remained frustratingly out of reach. One sailor after another reached the safety of the beach that horrible day, only to tell rescuers that the woman was already dead. But was it true? A movie has been made about the Hartzell. At least one book has been loosely based on the wreck. But to truly understand what it was like out there in that vicious squall - a day that became known as the Big Blow because it sent other ships under the waves - one only has to read the harrowing account penned in that annual government report. The level of detail is amazing. And if that writer didn't go on to author adventure novels, it was a loss for readers everywhere. We're drawing from that historical account here to tell the Hartzell's story, and show you why the mystery of Lydia Dale persists. An Easy Trip, Then a Violent Squall The J. H. Hartzell left L'Anse in Lake Superior, at the base of the Keweenaw Peninsula on Monday, Oct. 11. She was loaded with 495 tons of iron ore, bound for the Frankfort Furnace Company and the harbor of that namesake town fronting Lake Michigan. Five days later, graced with fair winds, the schooner arrived just off the town's coast around 3 a.m. Captain William A. Jones later told people he decided to anchor off-shore and wait until daylight to enter Frankfort's harbor. Around 6 a.m., the winds suddenly shifted and a hard gale began to blow. A mix of hail, snow and rain began to whip across the lake. Waves pounded the boat. When the squall kicked in, Capt. Jones and his crew of six men let both anchors go and tried to turn the Hartzell away from the wind, "but in the growing fury of the wind and sea, the vessel would not obey her helm and began to drift in." The schooner ran hard aground on a sand bar about 300 yards from shore, in the area near what is now known as the Elberta Bluffs. In front of the crew at the edge of the roiling lake rose a towering, forested bluff several hundred feet high, according to the U.S. Life Saving Service's description of the incident. "The seas at once crashed over her, and the awful staving and rending usual in such cases began. The yawl was carried away, the deck cabin wrenched asunder and scattered to the breakers, and the vessel began to founder. In a couple of hours, all that remained for her crew was to take to the rigging." As this life-and-death drama increased with each battering wave, the cook Lydia Dale was described by the crew as being seriously ill. When the crew climbed 50 feet up, it took four men to boost the heavyset woman up into the cross-trees of the ship's foremast where planks nailed across it created a platform. She was wrapped in blankets. Her head lay on a sailor's knees for support. Like the rest of the crew, she was covered in wet canvas cut from the gaff-topsail. Forty feet below their perch, the captain clung to the ladder-like ropes of the schooner's ratlines. It was about this time - around 8 a.m. - that a fisherman's boy who lived near Frankfort's south pier told his father he'd seen a boat having trouble in the gale. The boy's father ran to nearby South Frankfort (now called Elberta) with about 20 other citizens. They built a big fire on the beach and used driftwood to spell out "Life Boat Coming" on the bluff's bare sand. From their perch in the foremast, the Hartzell's crew signaled that they understood. Meanwhile, a lone rider on horseback set out for the Point Betsie Life Saving Station, which sat about 10 miles north of Frankfort. It was there that a group of surfmen had a Lyle Gun, a breeches buoy and other equipment needed for the rescue. But getting all that equipment over the rugged trails and hills to reach a beach two towns away was no small feat. It took a couple sweat-stained hours. Townspeople used axes and handspikes to clear the underbrush that led to the bluffs where the equipment then had to be hauled carefully down a mountain of shifting sand. "Even with the impediments removed, so precipitous was the activity that it took the unified effort of 27 brawny men, by actual count, and a span of stout horses, to gain the summit, only about 20 feet being made at a time." By the time they reached the shoreline where the half-sunk schooner was visible through a blowing curtain of sleet, a group of 50 to 60 fishermen, farmers and townspeople had gathered to help the surfmen start the rescue. A Lyle Gun was a common piece of life-saving equipment. A Gun, Some Breeches and a Surf Car The rescue cart was unloaded. The Lyle Gun - a common rescue piece during that era - was planted and made ready to fire. It looked like a miniature cannon. Propelled by the force of black powder, the gun was designed to shoot a light line across the vessel so the crew could grab it and create a connection between the boat and the rescuers on land. In the Hartzell's case, it took two tries to get the line secured to the sinking schooner. To the line rescuers attached a breeches buoy - essentially a life ring hooked to a pair of canvas shorts. The ship's first mate put himself in the breeches and was pulled to land. It was a perilous 17-minute journey, witnesses reported. "A citizen ... gave him a draught of brandy. This seemed to revive him, and presently he said, 'Save the others.' " Before being led into town, the first mate told the rescuers the woman on the boat did not want to come ashore in the breeches buoy. So the surfmen then hauled out the "surf car," which was a tube-like metal pod with a hatch that closed. It was sent out to the ship using the rope system so the crew could climb in a few at a time, shut the hatch and be hauled to shore. In its first trip, it carried two crewmen back. "Upon being interrogated about the woman, the two men appear to have given evasive answers, to the general effect that she would come ashore in the the next trip of the car." But in its second trip, the surf car carried back the second mate and captain. "In the beginning of the creeping darkness, the car arrived from the sea and was torn open by a dozen eager hands. The crowd was confident that the woman would be brought this time, and were stupefied when only the two men appeared." "There was an instant burst of fierce interrogation, to which the captain and mate appear, like their predecessors, to have rendered equivocal answers." They said the woman was "the same as dead," and that she'd be brought to shore on the next trip. That response, witnesses later said, drew "sullen, angry murmurs from the crowd." The dents in the battered surf car were hammered out and it was put on the rope out for its third and final trip. A breeches buoy. A Roar From the Crowd: "Where is the Woman?" The rescuers waited a long time before giving the signal to haul the car back in, wanting to give the two remaining crew plenty of time to load the cook inside of it. When finally it became so dark they could hardly see it, they gave the order to pull in the car. "A frenzy of activity at once fell upon the hillside. The common consciousness that the woman was at last coming in the car with the remainder of the men on the wreck, and that the tremendous hardship and effort of many hours were about to bear fruit gave a furious alertness to the cordons of obscure figures on the ghostly front of the bluff and the rope of the life car was slid swiftly through the darkness." A dozen men went into the surf to haul out the car. When they opened the hatch, the last two men were inside. But not Lydia Dale. "Where's the woman?" came the shouts from the crowd on the beach. Some even reached inside the metal pod with their hands to feel if anyone had been left inside. "They haven't brought the woman." "The dark air resounded with a roar of curses, and amidst the din men were heard yelling that they never would have laid hands to the hauling lines if they had known that the woman was to be left upon the wreck to perish." The last sailors to be rescued told the crowd the woman was dead, describing her as "stiff as a board." Too dark to attempt another trip out, the Life Saving Station team decided they'd assess the wreck again in the daylight. "It is, and doubtless will always be, an open question: in what condition the hapless woman was left upon that mast," the Life Saving Service report said. Already Dead, or Impossible to Help? By dawn the next day, the schooner's mast was gone. And with it, any evidence of Lydia Dale's fate. Talk in town was sharply divided about how that piece of the rescue had been handled. Some believed she'd died long before help arrived, and there was nothing more that could have been done. But that talk was silenced 17 days later when the cook's body washed ashore. The coroner determined Lydia Dale had died of drowning, "leaving it to be inferred that she was left upon the wreck alive, and perished upon the subsequent fall of the mast into the sea." The Hartzell's sailors were not there for the inquest. They'd already left town. The official summary of the incident report focuses on the seven men saved by the heroic efforts of the townspeople and the men of the nearby Life Saving Station. But it leaves readers with the question of Lydia Dale's horrific last moments: "It remains, and will doubtless always remain, a mystery whether, as the coroner's jury substantially found, the poor woman was needlessly sacrificed, whether she was abandoned in her insensibility because her companions felt the impossibility of lowering her to the car." Sunset along the Elberta Bluffs, where the Hartzell ran aground and wrecked. Want to learn more about Frankfort and its smaller sibling, Elberta? Check out these stories before you plan your next trip: ANN ARBOR, MI - A little more than a year ago, author Charles Murray was met with protests, boos, chants, intentionally annoying cellphone sounds and an overhead projector displaying an arrow pointing to him along with the words "white supremacist" while speaking to a raucous group of students shouting him down at the University of Michigan. There was no such reception for conservative comedian Steven Crowder during his visit to UM's Power Center Thursday, Oct. 25, where people of all ages sported "Make American Great Again" hats, while a number of others wore T-shirts with the slogan "socialism is for f*gs." Crowder felt right at home in Ann Arbor, regaling the crowd with jokes and music while sounding off politically on topics ranging from immigration and gender to Caitlyn Jenner and Justin Trudeau. Most of it wasn't politically correct and nobody was trying to change Crowder's mind. Beyond his comedy, Crowder's message to college students and beyond was clear: It's OK to be conservative. "We wanted to come out and just let you guys know that there are other people out there like you - they may not be your teachers, they may not be your friends in college, they may not be the people writing the papers about today's event, but they are out there," Crowder said. Crowder has become a popular voice with conservatives for his antics on college campuses across the country, which he documents regularly on his YouTube channel and daily show on CRTV.com. Some of his most recognized work includes visits to "free speech zones" on college campuses like Texas Christian University, where he encourages students to "change my mind," on what he describes as controversial topics like "rape culture is a myth." The video, which was uploaded at the beginning of the month, has accumulated nearly 6.5 million views. Crowder has provided similar performances aimed at denying the existence of "white privilege." Another performance had Crowder undercover, crashing a "college socialist #SJW protest," all in the hopes of offending liberal college students. Crowder's visit Thursday, however, was about giving conservatives a sense of confidence in how they address their views among a liberal majority of their peers on college campuses. "You are not that small of a minority when it comes to people, even when it comes to the student body. You know what you are? You're the students, you're the piece of the pie that elect presidents," Crowder said addressing an audience member's question about how to deal with being a conservative on a primarily liberal campus. Crowder's visit to UM Thursday was sponsored by UM's chapter of Young Americans for Freedom (YAF) and was filmed for his "Louder with Crowder LIVE" show, which was hailed as the Halloween Spooktacular edition, with many members of the audience dressing up in costumes. UM YAF Chairman Jacob Chludzinski said Crowder - who used to live in Michigan - reached out to the student organization looking to speak on campus knowing that the his views would clash with students and others from the university. "Especially on our campus, we see a lot more students who are more shy to stand up and say that they're conservative because of what other students say, what professors say or what the media says," Chludzinski said. "It's really encouraging to see this big event come together of conservatives getting together to have a fun event." UM freshman Tejas DeBolle, who was dressed in historic American Revolution attire for Thursday's event, was excited to see Crowder come to a campus like UM. "It definitely does give me hope," DeBolle said of the large conservative crowd. "I feel like Steven is a fairly even debater. He has his moments when he goes off the end and is having a good time, but you can tell he has a serious face, which I think a lot of people appreciate. He hears both sides of it and he defends what he believes in." Crowder's appearance was highly-anticipated by students, who reserved all of the free tickets to the show in just two days, show organizers noted. Due to demand, students were hosted in a special overflow room at Pierpont Commons, from which the show was live streamed. BAY CITY, MI -- A 38-year-old Essexville man accused of sexually assaulting a teenage girl has accepted a plea offer. Gerald L. Boughter on Oct. 18 appeared before Bay County Circuit Judge Harry P. Gill and pleaded guilty to one count of third-degree criminal sexual conduct with a victim between the ages of 13 and 15. In exchange, the prosecution agreed to dismiss two more counts of the same charge. Boughter's trial was to begin Oct. 23. The girl told authorities Boughter had sex with her multiple times between July 1 and Oct. 31, 2017. The girl was 14 when the acts occurred, police said. Michigan's age of consent for sexual activity is 16. Defense attorney John Melton declined to comment. Boughter had been free on a $50,000 cash-surety bond, posted on his behalf by a bonding agency, since July 13, two days after his arraignment. When Boughter entered his plea, Judge Gill revoked his bond and ordered him held in the Bay County Jail until sentencing. Gill is slated to sentence Boughter Dec. 3. BAY CITY, MI -- A Saginaw man accused of raping a woman while he was home from his military service is facing more than a dozen criminal charges. Nicholas J. Stewart, 28, on Oct. 16 appeared in Bay County District Court for arraignment on four counts of first-degree criminal sexual conduct with a weapon, six counts of felony firearm, and one count each of first-degree home invasion, assault with a dangerous weapon, interfering with an electronic communications device, and domestic violence. First-degree criminal sexual conduct is a life offense. A felony firearm conviction comes with a mandatory minimum two-year sentence, to be served consecutively to any other term. According to Michigan State Police Special 1st Lt. David Kaiser, troopers on Oct. 13 responded to a home on Bay City's East Side. They encountered a 25-year-old woman there and removed her from the residence. She told them Stewart, with whom she has been in a romantic relationship, had sexually assaulted her that day. Stewart had a gun at the time, she alleged. The woman told troopers she had earlier visited Stewart at his military base in Italy, where he had also sexually assaulted her, Kaiser said. Stewart told police the sex was consensual, Kaiser added. Records indicate Stewart is in the U.S. Navy and lives in Saginaw. Midland attorney John Wilson is representing Stewart. MLive was unable to reach Wilson for comment. Stewart's arraigning judge set bond at $200,000. As of Friday, Oct. 26, he has not posted it and remains the Bay County Jail. Stewart is to appear for a preliminary examination on Nov. 1. FLINT, MI -- Bishop Airport stabbing suspect Amor Ftouhi refused to accept any pleas deal in which he admitted guilt for the June 2017 attack that made international headlines. That fact emerged in Flint District Court on Thursday, Oct. 25 during a final pretrial hearing before the case moves to jury selection on Election Day and a trial to follow in short order. It came after Ftouhi pleaded not guilty in front of U.S. Magistrate Stephanie Dawkins Davison on three charges -- violence at an international airport, interference with airport security and committing an act of terrorism transcending national boundaries. He's accused of stabbing Bishop Airport Lt. Jeff Neville June 21, 2017, inside the terminal. Two of the charges come with potential life sentences if Ftouhi is found guilty at trial. Appearing in court Thursday afternoon after previously refusing to get out of his jail cell for previous hearings, Ftouhi appeared calm and talkative at points during the proceedings. He said through an Arabic interpreter that he understood there were previous discussions between his defense attorneys and those from the U.S. Attorney's Office regarding jury selection. When asked if he knew about the talks between defense attorney Joan E. Morgan and assistant U.S. attorney Jules DePorre in reference to plea deals in which guilt would be admitted, Ftouhi held steadfast in not agreeing to that language. "I am not guilty. I am innocent," he commented, dressed in a brown shirt, orange pants, shackles draped around his waist and wrists. "That's why I do not agree one bit." Ftouhi asked for a French interpreter to be used during rather than an Arabic interpreter during the trial, expected to begin in early November. He is a dual citizen of Canada and Tunisia. More than 130 jury questionnaires were completed, with prosecutors seeing 90-100 potential jurors, while Morgan saw the number closer to 60-65. The pool will eventually be thinned to 14 jurors, which includes two alternates. The trial will take place in Flint after a request by Ftouhi to move it out of the jurisdiction was rejected in early September. Morgan said Ftouhi also was found competent to stand trial following an assessment that included an independent defense expert after the previous discussion of a possible mental health defense. Jury selection is scheduled to begin Nov. 6. Witnesses chosen to testify will be sequestered. U.S. District Judge Matthew Leitman, who was assigned the case on Oct. 18, stated he'd like to see the trial turned over to jurors by the Veterans Day weekend. He has been assigned the case due to a "longstanding agreement" for U.S. District Judge Linda V. Parker to move from Flint to the Detroit court as of Nov. 1, according to a court official. FLINT, MI - The state of Michigan wants a Genesee County judge to dismiss two lawsuits filed on behalf of victims in two police pursuit crashes in Flint. The state's motion asks Genesee Circuit Judge David Newblatt to dismiss the lawsuits filed against Michigan State Police, claiming the agency has governmental immunity. Newblatt agreed to take the motion under advisement in court documents filed on Thursday, Oct. 25. The lawsuit filed on behalf Tiphanie Mayfield, who is deceased, is one of two suits claiming an analysis of accident data by a Trinity University professor proves Detroit, Flint, Saginaw and Pontiac saw an 80 percent higher rate of pursuit crashes, deaths, injuries and property damage since additional troopers were assigned in those cities through the state's Secured Cities Partnership. Attorneys for the victims and state police were scheduled to be in court June 25, arguing whether the cases should be dismissed, in part because of state claims that it is shielded by governmental immunity. That hearing was delayed. The state's new motion asking that the cases be discharged says troopers have the authority to patrol all Michigan cities and enforce the laws of the state. The lawsuits, the state argues, are "based on a misunderstanding of MSP's authority to conduct law enforcement activities throughout the state, and seek to enjoin an MSP pursuit policy that is no longer in effect." The state's filing doesn't take issue with statistical claims made in the crash study by professor David Macpherson. The state's motion is the latest action in a debate over state police chases in Flint, three of which left innocent bystanders dead in 2014 after troopers chased suspects for routine traffic violations. State Rep. Sheldon Neeley, D-Flint, attempted to change state law in 2015 to require troopers to run pursuits in "conformity with the municipality's local pursuit policy" but the measure was never approved by the Legislature. Michigan State Police changed its pursuit policy on its own in September 2017, limiting chases to situations in which troopers have a reasonable belief that a felony has been committed. Previously, the policy more broadly authorized police chases but told officers to take eight factors into account first, including the nature of the violation, the presence of pedestrians and traffic conditions. Attorneys for the pursuit victims are asking Judge Newblatt to rule state police pursuit policies are unlawful as well as the Secured Cities Partnership because each has resulted in higher death and injury risks to residents in majority-black cities. The lawsuits also seek unspecified monetary judgments. Mayfield was killed in a police pursuit crash four years ago near Mackin Road and Caldwell Avenue in Flint. Patrena James suffered what the lawsuit describes as "a life-altering brain injury" in the same incident. In the second lawsuit, Mary Saunders and Antonio Robert Ford claim they suffered serious injuries when a vehicle being chased by state police officers on Carpenter Road in Flint at speeds of more than 100 miles per hour slammed into their vehicle in March 2016. FLINT, MI - Four suspects in a deadly rock-throwing case on Interstate 75 have taken plea deals. Kyle Anger, 18, pleaded guilty to second degree murder at the Friday, Oct. 26, court hearing. Anger had 10 of 11 charges against him dropped and is seeking a manslaughter sentence as part of the agreement. Three other suspects, 17-year-olds Mark Sekelsky, Mikadyn Payne and 16-year-old Trevor Gray, pleaded guilty to manslaughter. Ten of 11 of their original charges were dropped and the charge of second degree murder was reduced to manslaughter as part of their plea agreements. The other suspect, 16-year-old Alexzander Miller, wasn't present in court because his attorney James Gust had another hearing in Saginaw. Attorneys for Sekelsky, Payne, Gray and Miller are seeking juvenile sentences. They are charged in the Oct. 18, 2017, killing of 32-year-old Kenneth A. White, who died after police say a rock was thrown by Anger from the Dodge Road overpass onto southbound I-75 in Vienna Township, crashing through the windshield of the vehicle White was riding in. Genesee Circuit Judge Joseph J. Farah has the option to sentence Sekelsky, Payne, Gray and Miller as juveniles or adults following a juvenile sentencing hearing. If Farah decides to sentence the suspects as adults, they have the right to withdraw their pleas. If Anger's request to be sentenced for manslaughter but convicted of second-degree murder is denied, he is allowed to withdraw his plea. All suspects in the case testified they loaded rocks and other objects onto Anger's Ford pickup truck and proceeded to throw 10- to 12-inch rocks from an overpass onto I-75. Anger testified he threw four rocks, Gray and Payne testified they threw three rocks each and Sekelsky testified to throwing two. Investigators previously said tires and an engine piston also were thrown from the Farrand Road overpass onto I-75, roughly three miles north of where White was killed. Several other vehicles sustained damage, including flat tires, from items thrown onto the interstate. The rocks, one weighing 20 pounds, were gathered from a dead-end street in Vienna Township, police previously said. CUTLERVILLE, MI -- A suspected serial arsonist damaged property at four businesses along South Division Street Friday morning. The alleged arsonist targeted and lit on fire a vehicle, a boat, an RV and a modular home at four different businesses, said Kent County Sheriff's Sgt. Joel Roon. The first fire was reported around 7:30 am. Friday, Oct. 26, Roon said. The fires span a little more than a mile of Division Street between 60th Street SE and 72nd Street SE. Roon said it's believed the fires were lit in succession. Businesses hit included Preferred Mobile Homes, Big Ray's Oil Change, Cutlerville Small Engine Repair and Veurink's RV Center, Roon said. The modular home at Mobile Homes started on fire but didn't sustain significant damage, Roon said. Two vehicles were ignited at Big Rays, and both appear to be complete losses, he said. A boat at Cutlerville Small Engine was lit on fire and so was the rear of an RV at Veurink's. None of the business offices were damaged. The method used by the suspect is under investigation, and the suspect is still at large. Anyone with information is asked to call Silent Observer at 616-774-2345. A top-ranking Republican lawmaker from Indiana who was badly injured in a motorcycle crash near the Mackinac Bridge is now recovering at home. House Speaker Brian Bosma provided the update on House Ways and Means Chairman Tim Brown, R-Crawfordsville in a statement on Friday Oct. 26. "Tim is now recovering at home with his wife, Jane, and going through therapy. His condition continues to improve, and he's impressed his doctors with his progress. Tim's family sincerely appreciates all of the support and prayers and ask for continued respect of their privacy while Doc focuses on his recovery." Brown was injured in the Sept. 12 crash when his motorcycle struck an SUV that pulled out in front of them. Rep. Mike Speedy, R-Indianapolis, who was traveling nearby, was able to avoid the vehicle and was not injured. Brown was taken in critical condition to a Michigan hospital where he initially was kept in a medically induced coma More recently, he was in "critical by stable" condition and was moved to an Indianapolis hospital. Now, he's made his way home. Brown, a retired emergency room physician, has served in the Legislature since 1994. Eleven days before the Nov. 6 election, almost 590,000 Michigan voters -- 8 percent of registered voters -- have handed in absentee ballots so far, according to numbers released Friday by the Michigan Secretary of State's office. That's up 66 percent from this point before 2014 election, the last time the state voted for governor. Michigan's local election clerks have sent out 1,078,724 absentee ballots and have received back 587,565 completed ballots as of Friday morning, the state numbers show. That compares to 688,677 sent out and 353,911 returned 11 days before the 2014 November election. However, the 2018 numbers are still below the 2016 presidential election, when 1,143,166 ballots were sent out by 11 days before the election and 685,729 returned. This most recent data seems to confirm Michigan will experience a record turnout this year for a gubernatorial election, but it will still be below the voter turnout in a presidential year. About 3.2 million voted in 2014. The turnout record for an gubernatorial election was set in 2006, when 3.85 million Michigan voters went to the polls. Almost 5 million voted in 2016. Below is an online database that allows you to look up the county-level data released Friday by the Secretary of State office. It shows the numbers of absentee ballots returned 11 days before the election in 2014, 2016 and 2018. Absentee ballots returned 11 days before election In Michigan, absentee ballots are available to voters: Age 60 or older. Who will be out of town on Election Day. Unable to get to the polls without assistance. Serving as an election worker. In jail or in prison awaiting arraignment or trial. Absentee ballots can be obtained at local city and township clerk offices, or click here for a downloadable request form. The deadline for obtaining an absentee ballot is 4 p.m. Monday, Nov. 5. However, ballots picked up on Monday from local clerks must be fill out and turned in immediately; they can not be taken home. Absentee ballots must be in the hands of election clerks by Nov. 6. Voters guide for November election MLive has partnered with the League of Women Voters Education Fund to provide information and resources in the 2018 election. More information can be found at Vote411.org, which has information on all state and federal races and many of Michigan's county and local races. All responses in the voters guide were submitted directly by the candidate and have not been edited by the League of Women Voters, except for necessary cut if a reply exceeded character limitations. Spelling and grammar were not corrected. Publication of candidate statements and opinions is solely in the interest of public service and should NOT be considered as an endorsement by the League of Women Voters. The League never supports or opposes any candidates or political parties. Michigan State University will issue $500 million in bonds to cover the settlement with plaintiffs in the Larry Nassar sexual abuse case, as the university continues to negotiate with its liability insurance providers over reimbursement. "Bonding is the quickest process to establish the settlement fund with least amount of immediate impact on MSU programs and services," MSU said in a press release from June, when $500 million bond issue was decided. "The university is still in negotiations with applicable insurance providers to be reimbursed based on those policies." MSU announced in May that it had reached a settlement with victims of Nassar, a MSU doctor who sexually abused patients over two decades. The settlement calls for 333 plaintiffs to divide $425 million, and another $75 million to be set aside for victims who came forward after April. Initially, interim MSU President John Engler said the university would cover the costs through a combination of bonding, fund reserves and cost-cutting, as well as pursuing liability coverage from insurers. The board agreed at their June board meeting to bond the entire amount, as they sought reimbursement from their liability insurance policies. In July, MSU filed a lawsuit against 13 insurance companies to force them to help cover settlement costs. The settlement still needs to be finalized by U.S. District Judge Gordon Quist in Grand Rapids. In recent months, plaintiffs' attorneys have been collecting signatures from the 333 plaintiffs saying they agreed to the settlement. Those signatures have now been collected and have been submitted to the court, MSU spokesman Emily Guerrant said. Once the settlement is approved by the judge, MSU needs to quickly put the $425 million in an account. Payouts to plaintiffs then will be determined by retired California judge William L. Bettinelli, a former California Superior Court judge who now works for Judicial Arbitration and Mediation Services, Inc., a firm specializing in dispute resolution. Bettinelli is expected to develop a formula for payouts that will take into account factors such as age of each victim at the time of abuse; length of abuse, and damages suffered by each victim. The other $75 million will be put in an escrow account that will be controlled by MSU. More than 160 plaintiffs are seeking a settlement from that fund. Nassar started working for MSU in 1996. He was fired in September 2016 after allegations of abuse became public. However, multiple victims said they complained to MSU staff about Nassar and were ignored. In 2014, a Nassar patient filed a complaint with MSU police and the university's Title IX office. Nassar was ultimately cleared in those investigations, with officials saying the patient misunderstood the "nuanced difference" between medical treatment and assault. As a result of the 2014 complaint, Nassar was told to have a chaperone in the room when treating patients in "sensitive areas" and to get informed consent from patients before treating or examining the genital region. However, those stipulations were not enforced and dozens of women say they were molested between that time and when Nassar was fired. At Friday's meeting, the board also addressed changes to the university tenure policies including provisions that impact the ability of tenured faculty to take paid leaves of absences during dismissal cause proceedings, and whether or not faculty members can obtain retiree status from the university while their dismissal for cause proceedings are pending. The changes addressed by the board will be reviewed by the Faculty Senate at an upcoming meeting. The issue arose as a result of the Nassar case, when Engler moved to strip tenure from William Strampel, the former dean of MSU's College of Osteopathic Medicine and Nassar's former boss. Strampel, who retired in July, is still facing criminal charges for lack of oversight of Nassar as well as sexually harassing and assaulting female students at MSU. A separate bond resolution, for $381 million, also was approved at Friday's MSU board meeting for construction financing to support university construction projects, such as the new STEM building, campus water system improvements, music building addition, modernization at the T.B. Simon Power Plant and renovations at Wonders Hall. LANSING, MI - President Donald Trump has visited other states ahead of the election but still not graced Michigan, where Republican gubernatorial candidate Bill Schuette has touted the president's endorsement. In the polls, Schuette is tailing Democratic candidate Gretchen Whitmer. But Schuette is confident he's gaining ground and will win the race. A visit from Donald Trump, experts say, would be a boost for Schuette. "When presidents visit, it does appear that it increases voter turnout for their candidates, historically," said Jeffrey Grynaviski, associate professor of political science at Wayne State University. But another question is whether Trump coming would be good for Trump. Grynaviski said his visits so far have been to more red than purple states, and he's using his influence on congressional midterms, too. But a president has the most potential influence with candidates that are on the bubble and close to winning, Grynaviski said. The Real Clear Politics polling average has Whitmer leading Schuette by nine points, although the most recent poll put the gap at 5 points. "I think it would be clearly in Schuette's interest to have Trump come to Michigan. But is it in Donald Trump's interest to come to Michigan at this point, and to back someone who's still 5 points down in the latest polls? I'm not sure," Grynaviski said. While the president himself hasn't come to Michigan, a slow tide of Trump surrogates have rolled through the state recently. His son, Donald Trump Jr., and daughter-in-law Lara Trump both came, though only Lara Trump did an appearance with Schuette. Vice President Mike Pence did a rally for U.S. Rep. John James in August and is slated to come to a general Republican event next week. His wife, Karen Pence, is coming to Michigan Friday to rally with Lena Epstein, the Republican candidate in the 11th Congressional district. But TJ Bucholz, President and CEO of the left-leaning Vanguard Public Affairs, said the only candidate to directly come to a Schuette event so far, Lara Trump, is "kind of a sad-level surrogate." It would be good for Schuette if Trump did come, Bucholz said. "Trump's arrival in Michigan may lead to, I think more excitement among Republican voters and given the high voter turnout that we're seeing already in the absentees and probably on election day, it should be able to galvanize the base to the polls, which is what their goal should be," Bucholz said. "I think it probably would be a good idea for Schutte to bring Trump in under the right circumstances, in the right way," said Bill Ballenger, a former Republican lawmaker and publisher of The Ballenger Report. Schuette's speculated about the specifics - specifically, he'd like Trump to come to Macomb County, where Trump is immensely popular, and talk about bringing truck production back to that area. Trump has visited other Midwestern states in recent weeks, including Pennsylvania, Kentucky, Ohio, Illinois and Wisconsin. Meanwhile, Whitmer's been pulling in the top names: Bernie Sanders rallied for her last week, and former President Barack Obama will rally with her Friday. In Democratic politics, Ballenger said, "I think that's about as top as you can get." Schuette himself is still confident Trump will come. "Michigan's on Trump's mind," Schuette said on Wednesday. "I expect the president to come in, and I look forward to that." KALAMAZOO, MI -- The man with murder suspect Jerome Oday during a fist fight that preceded a fatal shooting of a Benton Harbor man in a Kalamazoo liquor store went to talk to police the day after the homicide. He told police Oday was high on ecstasy and thought the shooting victim was part of a group that tried to rob him at gunpoint earlier that week, according to police records. Police responded to J & B Discount Liquor at 110 W. Stockbridge Ave. at around 1:20 a.m. Saturday, Sept. 15. There, they found 23-year-old Tykarri Shaheed Lucas, of Benton Harbor, shot twice in the torso. Police tried to save his life, but the man died at the scene. In probable cause testimony given Monday, Sept. 17, in Kalamazoo County District Court, Kalamazoo Department of Public Safety Detective Cory Ghiringhelli said surveillance video from inside and outside the store captured the fatal shooting on tape. On the tape, detectives saw 27-year-old Oday, of Kalamazoo, and another man, who has not been charged in the killing, fight Lucas, Ghiringhelli said. Oday punched Lucas, and the three men started fighting. Then, Oday pulled a handgun out of his hoodie pocket and shot Lucas, Ghiringhelli said. Lucas stumbled down an aisle, and Oday shot him a second time in the torso, the detective said. Oday and the other man are shown on video fleeing the store, Ghiringhelli said. The man in the liquor store with Oday went to Kalamazoo Department of Public Safety the day after the shooting, according to a police report obtained by MLive. He was interviewed by Detective Gary Gaudard, who asked him to explain what happened. The man said he and Oday had been drinking the night of the shooting and took ecstasy around 11 p.m. Friday, Sept. 14. He said they were high when they entered the liquor store more than two hours later. The man told police they recognized Lucas from an encounter a few days earlier, when four men attempted to rob Oday at gunpoint on Belmont Avenue. He confirmed that a fight ensued between Lucas and Oday and himself. The man told police that he did not know Oday had a gun at the time. There had been rumors of a group from Chicago robbing people in Kalamazoo, the man told police. Lucas told them he was from Chicago before the fight inside the liquor store, he said. After the shooting, police reported Lucas is from Benton Harbor. In the police report, Ghiringhelli said he was familiar with Oday because he is a member of the Belmont Boys gang and has had several past interactions with police in Kalamazoo. Arrested at a home in Wyoming later on the day of the shooting, Oday was arraigned Sept. 17 on charges of open murder, two counts of felony firearm, one count of possession of a firearm by a felon and one count of carrying a concealed weapon. A preliminary examination in Kalamazoo County District Court is scheduled for Oct. 31. MLive/Kalamazoo Gazette reporter Kayla Miller contributed to this story. KALAMAZOO, MI -- Parents of a 16-year-old boy said documented mental health issues should prevent their son from standing trial for allegedly assaulting a teacher at Kalamazoo Central High School. The teen, who MLive is not identifying due to his age, has waited in juvenile detention for 8 months while the court determined his competency. Kalamazoo County Family Court Judge Julie Phillips determined Friday that the teen is fit to stand trial, which may not come until a full year after the Feb. 6 incident at the high school. During a competency hearing at the county's Justice Complex on Gull Road, Phillips weighed the conclusions of three competency examinations conducted by different experts. It was the end of a process started in May, which lagged while the defense and prosecution submitted conflicting reports about the teen's mental state, and a third which provided Phillips enough information to make a decision. Phillips said two reports showed the defendant was aware of his actions and has the ability to assist his legal counsel. Family members said they are considering raising money to find a new attorney. They feel the court is discriminating against the teen by ignoring his mental state. A date will be set by the court for a designation hearing, where the court will determine whether to charge the defendant as an adult or minor. Phillips said the next available date is in March, but the court will attempt to set an earlier date. The teen is being charged with assault by strangulation and disturbing the peace, which could result in a 10-year felony if convicted as an adult. A Kalamazoo Township police report states the student was in the wrong classroom with a substitute teacher when another teacher came to remove him. The 43-year-old teacher told police he tried to pick the student's school ID card off the floor and "gently pushed" the student after he came too close. The police report states the student pushed back. During a competency exam after the incident, the student said he acted in self-defense. Police said the student was restrained by the teacher, who chose to let him go out of fear that he would hurt the student. The teen jumped on the teacher's back and wrapped his arms around his neck, according to the police report. The teacher was allegedly choked until he fell on the ground. He felt close to losing consciousness when the student let go, after around 15 seconds. Police reported the teacher was evaluated by medical personnel but found no evidence of serious injuries, other than a slight redness on his throat. The student fled the school and was later arrested at his home. Defense attorney Scott Ryder called juvenile court psychiatrist Danielle Williams to testify as an expert witness Friday morning. Williams was the only psychiatrist to find the teen unable to be held criminally responsible for his actions. Williams said the teen lacked the ability to assist his attorney to defend himself and did not have a factual or rational grasp of the charges against him. Reading from Williams' report, Ryder said the teen has trouble understanding legal processes and communicating. Williams described the teen as emotionally impaired, prone to shutting down and being unable to process information under stress. Though the defendant could understand the court process, Williams said he had trouble retaining information. Kalamazoo Public Schools found the teen has an emotional impairment that causes discipline problems. He was first evaluated as a 6th grade student. An individual education program shared with MLive/Kalamazoo Gazette shows Kalamazoo Public Schools considers the teen eligible for special education. A meeting after the February incident with district staff found his behavior was directly related to his disability. The defendant had incidents in his school record showing aggression toward his classmates and teachers. Williams concluded that he would struggle to testify on his own behalf. "If he will struggle in a juvenile setting, he very much will struggle in an adult setting," Williams said. Phillips noted that Williams has less formal education than the other forensic psychologists who submitted reports that found the defendant fit to stand trial. However, Ryder said Williams' evaluation was more thorough and based her opinion on a "full and complete picture" of the student's life. Ryder said the court should find his client unfit to stand trial so he can receive counseling and mental health services. "It's clear to me that (the teen) has developmental disabilities which will stay with him through the rest of his life," Ryder said. "I believe that he has consistent periods of time where he is not connected to reality, where he blacks out. I believe that there are times when he is angry and that causes him not to think about consequences and defeats his ability to process information." Assistant Prosecuting Attorney Paul Yancho said the teen was able to give a detailed account of the incident. Two other psychologists found he has the capacity to understand what is occurring during a trial and protect his rights "at an age-appropriate level." "I don't want to say it, but I'm going to say it: I think that the finding of incompetency by Ms. Williams was a stretch, given the results she received," Yancho said. The student has had many interactions with the criminal justice system. He was 11 when he was first in court. He has been convicted of five felonies and nine misdemeanors for assault, destruction of property, retail fraud, concealing a stolen vehicle and other charges, according to court records. MUSKEGON HEIGHTS, MI - A new urban housing development expected to yield up to 20 homes in the $80,000-$90,000 range is planned for a vacant school site in Muskegon Heights. The 2.5-acre site of the former Glendale school, 3001 Jefferson St. in Muskegon Heights, will soon be cleared in preparation for a $2 million development of up to 20 single-family homes. The redevelopment of Glendale is the first of a three-phase project that will also develop housing at the the former Lindbergh School at Barney and Hoyt streets, and the former Dr. Martin Luther King School, at East Barney and Dyston streets. The goal is to establish at least 100 new housing units between the three sites. On a scale of 0-10, Muskegon Heights City Manager Jake Eckholm rates his excitement for the project at a 10. The Glendale portion will reintegrate an underutilized block into the surrounding neighborhood with owner-occupied housing in a price range that's affordable to city residents, he said. "It checks all the boxes for us," Eckholm said. It's also the first major single-family housing development in the city since before the Great Recession, he said. The former Glendale school property is owned by the Michigan Land Bank Fast Track Authority, which is leading the development effort in partnership with the city. The land bank also owns the former Lindbergh school parcel. Lindbergh and MLK, both larger than Glendale, could include multi-unit housing, senior housing and single-family homes, Eckholm said. MLK is owned by the city but will be sold to the land bank for $53,000 to allow for a uniform redevelopment process, he said. First on the to-do list is demolition of the old Glendale school before the calendar turns to 2019, said Josh Burgett, director of the Michigan Land Bank. While demolishing blighted buildings is commonplace for the state land bank, acting as a developer is not - but this project is more "proactive," Burgett said. "We really facilitate development, but in this case, we're committed to becoming a developer if we have to," he said. "If we're the developer, we're not trying to make a profit." A request for proposals for the Glendale site will go out this winter with hopes of finding a developer that can keep within the $80,000-$90,000 price point per home and begin construction during spring 2019. The city and land bank have been working together for about a year to come up with a viable plan, Burgett said. The Muskegon Heights City Council endorsed the development this week. "Affordability is important for the community - no one wants to build something that can't be sold," Burgett said. Helping keep the home prices down are the facts that the land bank already owns the Glendale property, water and sewer infrastructure is in place and there's an option to build modular homes, Burgett said. If a private developer is hired, the land bank would pass the parcel to the developer at no cost. Eckholm said he expects the up to 20 homes could have three bedrooms, two bathrooms and measure 1,100 to 1,400 square feet on 50-by-100-foot lots. The expectation is that all 20 would be sold before they're built as the result of "aggressive" marketing, he said. Timelines for Lindbergh and MLK are further out, with requests for proposals planned to go out during winter 2019. Another former Muskegon Heights school was recently opened as affordable apartments and supportive housing for the homeless. The former Theodore Roosevelt Elementary School, 525 W. Summit Ave., was shuttered in 2010. It was purchased by Grand Rapids-based Dwelling Place in 2016 and reopened this month as Roosevelt Apartments. DALTON TOWNSHIP, MI - An appointed Dalton Township trustee will face a political newcomer hoping to unseat her in November. Dalton Township Board of Trustees candidate Brian Vallier. Incumbent trustee Hillary Frank faces a challenge from Brian Vallier in the Tuesday, Nov. 6, election. Both candidates are seeking to serve a two-year term. 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. Frank, 26, is seeking to become a constant fixture on the Dalton Township Board of Trustees after being appointed to the board in January. She did not return an MLive questionnaire and a picture is not available. Vallier, 46, is a truck driver for Misze Sand Mine and a lifelong resident of Dalton Township. Below is how Vallier answered a questionnaire about his stances on particular issues. What are your top three priorities for your municipality and how would you address them? Improve many of our township roads. This can be done by allotting more of our township budget towards this goal. Decrease frivolous spending. Currently many full time positions within the township could be reduced to part time positions, saving the township thousands of dollars in wages and top of the line benefits for these positions. Keep the township transfer station affordable for our residents so refuse is not being dumped along our roadsides, parks, dead end streets, etc. What policies do you support to increase jobs and help your residents improve their economic positions? Work with business owners within our township and support them in any way we can. Reach out to other business establishments and encourage them to locate within our township by stressing the amenities Dalton township has to offer such as our industrial park, safe friendly environment, our parks and lakes, etc. Supporting current businesses and encouraging new businesses to locate here will create more jobs within our community. What actions or policies do you support to protect your municipality's water, air and land for current and future generations while meeting community energy needs? Enforce all Federal, State, County and Local antipollution laws. Promptly investigate any report of violations and make sure proper action is taken to remedy the situation. What initiatives or policies do you support to help increase tourism and recreational activities in your municipality for residents and visitors? Michigan Adventure is by far our most popular tourist attraction. It is well known as a safe, fun and family friendly amusement park. Dalton also has miles of beautiful bike trails, and lakes and parks which I will ensure are well maintained to encourage and promote tourism and recreational activities. CASNOVIA, MI - The Casnovia village president will square off against a challenger in the Nov. 6 election. Helen Sands Incumbent village President Helen Sands is being challenged by Consuelo Rose Morris. 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. Sands, 64, is finishing her first two-year term as village president. She previously served on the Casnovia Village Council, including as its president pro-tem, for 13 years. Sands spent her career as a laboratory manager at Spectrum Health. Morris, 57, did not return a questionnaire and biographical information is unavailable. Below is how Sands answered a questionnaire about their stances on particular issues. What are your top three priorities for your municipality and how would you address them? HELEN SANDS Update infrastructure; keep our Village safe and clean; more citizen involvement. What policies do you support to increase jobs and help your residents improve their economic positions? HELEN SANDS We are a small community with few job opportunities, but welcome new growth. What actions or policies do you support to protect your municipality's water, air and land for current and future generations while meeting community energy needs? HELEN SANDS I am opposed to big business disturbing and potentially harming our environment and serenity. What initiatives or policies do you support to help increase tourism and recreational activities in your municipality for residents and visitors? HELEN SANDS We have dedicated grant money to the Old School (in Casnovia) to improve the grounds (playground equipment, ball fields and parking and security) and community center building. The Village Council supports and maintains our Veteran's Memorial. MUSKEGON, MI - The first review of the Muskegon Public Schools superintendent's improvement plan following his rating as "minimally effective" was "very good," according to the school board president. In a presentation during a special board meeting in September, Muskegon Public Schools Superintendent Justin Jennings shared his progress on all five goals in the plan. The goals are in the areas of governance and board relations, community relations, staff relations, and business and finance. "I feel very good about it," board President Cindy Larson said of Jennings' progress. "There is not a question in my mind ... that he is working very hard on all the goals." The board rated Jennings "minimally effective" in February. Michigan law requires that superintendents ranked less than effective be placed on an "individual development plan," which needs board approval. The plan was approved in July. The most difficult turnaround will be in student achievement, for which the district is "on the path," Larson said. Student achievement is not among Jennings' goals for improvement. The improvement plan is intended to help develop skills that will improve job performance. "I'm always looking to improve on anything," Jennings said. "My focus is on something that's not really in there, and that's our student learning. That's the centerpiece." Student achievement currently is 40 percent of the superintendent's annual review, he added. The review that resulted in the "minimally effective" rating was Jennings' first after being hired during January 2017. He is a first-time superintendent who was hired from within the district. Some key points in the plan make changes to hiring practices, allowing board members to participate in interviews for administrative positions and shifting reference checks to human resources officials. It also requires Jennings to create guidelines for merit-based raises and to obtain board approval for expenditures over $1,000. The district came under fire last year when it increased spending on administrative salaries by more than $500,000 in fiscal year 2017-18, which had a budget impact of about $244,000, according to district officials. The increase was revealed by an MLive investigation in October 2017. MLive/Muskegon Chronicle filed a Freedom of Information Act request to obtain Jennings' PowerPoint presentation on his progress. Goal No. 1 of the improvement plan requires Jennings to create a strategic plan with a theory of action for the central office, administration, teachers and staff, students and families, and community. He detailed a five-pillared theory of action in his report that included "differentiated professional development, targeted feedback and alignment of resources ... to incorporate a growth mindset grounded in the instructional framework to implement powerful, relevant standards-based instruction responsive to individual learning and social-emotional needs." Goal No. 2 requires Jennings to implement a process for hiring practices with all reference checks done by human resources. In his presentation, Jennings included a "Blueprint for Advancement Process": candidate screening, traditional interview, performance interview, behavior event interview, fit-to-school determination and reference checks. Goal No. 3 calls for an improvement in community relations. In the presentation, Jennings cited his meetings with community members dubbed "Superintendent's Coffee with the Clergy," "Coffee with the Superintendent" with parents in the morning and "Iced Tea and Conversation with the Superintendent" with parents in the afternoon. He noted those would start again in November. Goal No. 4 is in regard to staff relations. It calls on Jennings to increase communication and understanding with district employees. He cited the implementation of a monthly newsletter and participation in "Lunch & Learn" with the central office staff at school buildings, both of which were required in the goal. He also noted his regular Thursday visits to schools and a program called "Muffins and Coffee with the Superintendent." Goal No. 5 relates to business and finance. It calls for a two- to three-year plan by Nov. 15 to maintain a fund balance of at least 5 percent, factoring in enrollment, budget declines and school closures. The goal also calls for guidelines for performance-based raises. At the time of the improvement plan's adoption, it was estimated that the district had finished the 2017-18 school year with a $851,781 deficit, putting the fund balance below 5 percent. However, the audited numbers show a surplus of $392,000 surplus, resulting in a 7.7 percent fund balance. Jennings is working with the board toward the sales of the former Angell and Craig schools and the Hackley Administration Building. The next review of Jennings' plan of assistance will take place during a special board meeting at 6 p.m. on Tuesday, Nov. 13, at the administration building, 349 W. Webster Ave. Since at least December 2017, the board has been split on whether Jennings is fit for his job. Secretary Pro-tem Billie Bruce called for Jennings' dismissal in January. In December 2017, the board discussed a $100,000 severance package for Jennings over text message. In May, Secretary Lynnette Marks called for Jennings' resignation in a failed motion that was supported by Bruce and Trustee Zachary Anderson. Metro Manila (CNN Philippines, October 26) The Department of Justice (DOJ) said Friday it has filed a motion for partial reconsideration of a Makati Regional Trial Court's decision against arresting opposition Senator Antonio Trillanes. Justice Secretary Menardo Guevarra confirmed in a text message to CNN Philippines that the motion was filed late Thursday and it would be heard on October 30. Makati RTC Branch 148, helmed by Judge Andres Soriano, rejected the DOJ's petition to arrest Trillanes, a vocal critic of President Rodrigo Duterte. The government has expressed determination to seek a reversal of the decision. In the 10-page motion, Senior Deputy State Prosecutor Richard Anthony Fadullon and company argued that because the presidential proclamation was considered valid, there was enough basis to believe Trillanes did not file for amnesty at all. It said the RTC "contradicted itself" when it did not grant the DOJ petition. "Proclamation No. 572, series of 2018, is valid, thus the factual bases for its issuance are also valid," it said. It asked that the hold depature order and warrant of arrest be granted. Duterte first released a presidential proclamation that voided the amnesty granted to Trillanes, who was involved in military uprisings against former President Gloria Macapagal Arroyo's administration. The government subsequently argued that Trillanes did not meet the requirements for amnesty such as filing an application and admitting guilt although the senator's camp maintained otherwise. The government first sought his arrest for rebellion charges. Trillanes posted bail when Makati RTC Branch 150 issued a warrant. The coup d'etat charge which Soriano decided on was a non-bailable offense. While Soriano ruled in Trillanes' favor, he also said Trillanes failed to prove the presidential proclamation was unconstitutional causing confusion as to what this could mean for the senator. The constitutionality of the proclamation has also been forwarded to the Supreme Court. The move to arrest Trillanes is seen by Duterte's critics as one of the administration's ways of shutting down dissent. If the DOJ succeeds in procuring a warrant, Trillanes would be the second sitting senator after Leila De Lima to be arrested after criticizing Duterte. CNN Philippines Correspondent Anjo Alimario contributed to this story. This is a developing story. Refresh the page for more updates. Asian spot prices for liquefied natural gas fell to an over two-month low this week amid increased supply and lower demand especially in Japan which is expecting a warmer-than-usual winter and the restart of nuclear reactors. High freight rates are also weighing on Asian demand, with deliveries of LNG heading to northwest Europe instead. December spot LNG fell to $10.20 per million British thermal units (mmBtu), the lowest since August 10. Bids and offers were far apart, while the price spread between December and January was estimated at about $1 per mmBtu. Illustrating the tepid demand, a fleet of half-a-dozen tankers carrying unsold LNG has been floating in Singapore and Malaysian waters for up to two weeks, traders said this week. The ships are carrying a total of around 1 million cubic metres of LNG, worth more than $200 million at current spot market prices. The LNG cargoes were purchased ahead of the northern hemisphere winter season in a strategic move but are now failing to find buyers, several traders told Reuters. Falling appetite for LNG in Japan, the largest importer of the commodity globally, will contribute to slower Asian demand-growth as gas is replaced by nuclear energy. A court in Japan on Friday paved the way for Shikoku Electric Power Co to restart its only operable nuclear reactor, rejecting a lawsuit from residents to close the unit. Japan is expected to have about 9 gigawatts (GW) of nuclear capacity online by this winter compared with 3.5 GW last winter, FGE said earlier this week. Companies from China, whose gasification push last winter helped push up spot prices to 2014 highs, have also been securing term supplies to meet anticipated demand increases instead of waiting until winter to procure LNG, which is weighing on spot prices. With freight rates soaring to 6-year peaks, near record-high LNG deliveries are heading to Europe. Ports in northwest Europe will have received 2.6 million tonnes of LNG by the end of the month, the highest for any time of the year since Refinitiv Eikon shipping data began in 2013. TENDERS AND DEALS Focus this week was on mid-term deals with companies from South Korea and India issuing tenders. South Korea's Korea Midland Power Co Ltd (KOMIPO) is seeking up to 20 cargoes for delivery over five years from 2020, while sources said India's H-Energy is looking 17 cargoes for delivery over 2019 to 2022. On the supply front, Cheniere Energy expects to see the first LNG from its Corpus Christi project soon, a senior executive said earlier this week. live bse live nse live Volume Todays L/H More Dr Reddy's Laboratories said it will be focusing on the resolution of pending regulatory issues, and continue to work on cost optimisation as it tries to beat the pricing pressure in its key US market. Our continuous focus on execution, operational efficiency and cost optimization are showing results, said GV Prasad, Co-Chairman and CEO of Dr Reddys. Looking ahead, our priority will be to resolve pending regulatory issues, and continue to work on execution and cost structures that will enable affordable medicines for more patients, Prasad added. The company on October 26 reported net profit rise of 77 percent year-on-year (YoY) to Rs 504 crore in the second quarter ended September helped by cost optimisation measures and a favourable forex, despite sustained US pricing pressure. The net profit was partly helped by Rs 46.4 crore gain on account of sale of rights relating to Cloderm brand including its authorised generic in the US and profit on the sale of the antibiotic manufacturing facility in Bristol, US. The net finance income stood at Rs 62.5 crore due to forex gain. Revenue during the quarter grew 7 percent to Rs 3,797.8 crore compared to Rs 3,546 crore in the same quarter last year. Earnings before interest, tax, depreciation, and amortisation (EBITDA) margins for Q2FY19 stood at 22.8 percent improved by 340 basis points over last year and 110 basis points on a sequential basis. The North America business that constituted about 38 percent of global generic sales declined 0.4 percent Rs 1,426.5 crore in Q2 on YoY basis, primarily due to the absence of generic de-addiction drug Suboxone sales in Q2 and competitive pricing pressure on some of the key molecules. As of September 30, 2018, cumulatively 113 generic filings are pending for approval with the USFDA. Of these filings, 61 are Para IVs out of which 32 have 'First to File' status, that makes them eligible for 180-days marketing exclusivity. Emerging markets that contribute 20 percent of generic sales business rose 36 percent to Rs 749.2 crore in Q2. Revenues from Russia grew 18 percent to Rs 380 crore on account of new launches and volume traction in some of the key molecules. Revenues from India grew 8 percent to Rs 690 crore in Q2FY19, by new products and improvement in base business. Europe sales declined 21 percent in Q2FY19 to Rs 190 crore on account of higher price erosion in some of its key products. Pharmaceuticals services and active ingredients (PSAI) revenue during the quarter increased 7 percent to Rs 600 crore YoY driven by volume traction in some of our key molecules. The company was also helped by the Chinese shortages. Proprietary products saw 4 percent YoY growth to Rs 77.6 crore. R&D expenses in Q2 declined 1 percent to Rs 412 crore. The company said the Duvvada oncology formulation facility or FTO-7 is undergoing USFDA re-inspection that started on October 22. With respect to API manufacturing facility at Srikakulam, the Dr Reddys was asked to carry out certain detailed investigations and analyses by USFDA. In response, the company said it had submitted the results of the investigations and analyses in October 2018. US FDA responded with certain additional follow-on queries. The company said it is in the process of responding to these queries. The company received a warning letter from USFDA in November 2015, regarding certain deviations with current Good Manufacturing Practices at its API manufacturing facilities in Srikakulam, Andhra Pradesh and Miryalaguda, Telangana, as well as regarding violations at its oncology formulation facility at Duvvada, Visakhapatnam, Andhra Pradesh. The company managed to resolve API manufacturing facility at Miryalaguda in June 2017. The status of the warning letter on the remaining two facilities remained unchanged. Status of key approvals Dr Reddys is banking on generic Suboxone film, generic Nuvuring and generic Copaxone to drive US sales growth in coming quarters. Indivior, a spun-off of UK-based Reckitt Benckiser has secured a temporary restraining order from a US court restricting Dr Reddys from selling the copy version of blockbuster Suboxone sublingual film indicated for the treatment of opioid dependence. The company said it is expecting the court to decide on the matter before January 4, 2019. If we win, we will launch the drug, if well lose, we will continue to be under an injunction, said Erez Israeli, Chief Operating Officer and Global Head of Generics of Dr Reddys to analysts. On generic contraceptive vaginal ring Nuvuring, Dr Reddys said it has responded to the queries raised by US FDA and expects approval by second half of 2019, on Copaxone the company said it expects approval by end of 2019. The company also said it is expecting 10-15 approvals from USFDA in the remainder of FY19. If filmmaker Madhur Bhandarkar were to make a sequel to Corporate, Essar Steel's insolvency battle would make for a good script. The surprise last-minute offer by the debt-laden company's promoters Ruias to offer repayment to all its creditors is being seen as an attempt to delay the resolution process with more legal hurdles. At a time when bankers were finalising their votes on ArcelorMittal, the final bidder for Essar Steel's assets, Ruias threw their net wider than the Lakshmi Mittal-owned firm. On October 25, Essar Steels promoters Ruias offered to pay Rs 54,389 crore to the company's creditors saying it will amount to 100 percent recovery of all dues, including those of operational and unsecured creditors. Lawyers see this as an attempt to delay an almost-done deal which is being fought by lenders over a year to recover Rs 49,000 crore-debt under the Insolvency and Bankruptcy Code (IBC). "The move (by Essar) is something that they can throw in and see how the CoC (committee of creditors) reacts to it, said Nilang Desai, an insolvency partner at law firm AZB & Partners. Late evening on October 25, the CoC is said to have approved ArcelorMittal's offer of Rs 42,000 crore to Essar Steel's financial creditors, with a majority of 92.4 percent of CoC. On the same day, the offer by Ruias, a loan defaulter barred from bidding its own company as per IBC, seems to be an intentional spin to the losing battle for the family, says another lawyer. Accept or Reject? Either bankers can take a bold option to accept this late and unusual offer or a bold step to reject such a huge offer. Or maybe, as Desai points out, banks go to the National Company Law Tribunal (NCLT) saying they need clarification of the law on this point. "Then it may go to the NCLAT (National Company Law Appellate Tribunal) and later to the Supreme Court, which can chose to use its discretion and powers under Article 142. The article allows to pass such order it considers necessary in the interests of justice (including taking a company out of IBC)," Desai adds. The Ruias said that section 12A of IBC allows the creditors to permit the withdrawal of an insolvency application. This section was introduced in June this year. In July, a new regulation under the IBC stated that withdrawal of insolvency application can be made till invitation is issued for expressions of interest (EoI). In the Essar Steel case, EoIs were invited last year. However, lawyers refute that under Section 12 A, it is not permissible to exit the IBC at this stage. But the apex court, when deciding a dispute brought before it, can chose to do so under Article 142, they say. "Bankers are blank. Legal opinion says that banks have to strictly go by SC judgement which says 'to accept best of the plans resubmitted or else take the company to liquidation'," the banker said. Why now? In September, the Supreme Court had directed Numetal to pay the overdue amounts of Essar Group companies that have been declared a non-performing asset (NPA). Numetal had been unable to clear dues within the two weeks deadline At the same time, though unestablished, Numetal's bid is seen as a backdoor entry for the Ruias. According to another banker, "There is a legal rule which says 'courts will not grant relief if the party approaching it has not come with clean hands'. The rule applies with more vigour under Article 142 since it is a public law remedy." Essar Steel is one of the 12 large corporate NPAs to be immediately referred for insolvency proceedings by the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) in June last year. A senior banker close to the development says this is a last resort trick as they want to retain control at any cost and also waited till just before the end of the process. If they had the money, why couldn't they pay it earlier itself. It remains to be seen if bankers open any doors for the Ruias after the final voting or the Essar Steel promoters manage to knock the court doors to further dent the process. The country's foreign exchange reserves declined by $942 million to $393.523 billion in the week to October 19 on account of a fall in foreign currency assets, according to RBI data. In the previous week, the reserves had seen a steep fall of $5.14 billion to reach $394.465 billion. In the reporting week, foreign currency assets, a major component of overall reserves, fell by $922.4 million to $369.076 billion, as per the RBI data. Expressed in US dollars, foreign currency assets include the effect of appreciation or depreciation of the non-US currencies such as the euro, the pound and the yen held in the reserves. Forex reserves had touched a record high of $426.028 billion in the week to April 13, 2018. Since then, the forex kitty has been on a slide and is now down by over $31 billion. Gold reserves remained unchanged at $20.522 billion in the reporting week, the data showed. The special drawing rights with the International Monetary Fund (IMF) was down by $7.3 million to $1.465 billion. The country's reserve position with the IMF also declined by $12.3 million to $2.495 billion, the apex bank said. India expects to double its natural gas production by 2022 as it seeks to reduce its reliance on imports into the country and to meet an anticipated surge in domestic demand, government officials said on Friday. India is expected to double its gas production to over 60 billion cubic metre (bcm) from the current 33 bcm, said V.P. Joy, director general of India's Directorate General of Hydrocarbon which organised an investment roadshow in Singapore. India plans to spend an additional $2 billion in the next three to five years, particularly in deepwater and offshore areas, to increase its gas production. "There is a lot of potential (for the number to be higher) because of all the various bidding rounds," said Joy, speaking to reporters on the sidelines of the roadshow. India is wooing companies in Singapore this week to invest in its upstream oil and gas sector and also to help build its strategic petroleum reserves. The world's fourth-largest energy consumer after China, the United States and Russia, is pushing to more than double the share of natural gas in its energy mix to 15 percent by 2022. India's coal bed methane production is also expected to increase to 5 million cubic metres per day (cmpd) in the next four to five years from the current 2 million (cmpd), added Joy. Citing disbursal of loans under the Pradhan Mantri Mudra Yojna (PMMY), Prime Minister Narendra Modi Thursday said "unprecedented" employment and entrepreneurial opportunities exist in the country on October 25. Modi addressed the employees of Hari Krishna Exports, a prominent Suarat-based diamond processing-exporting firm, through video conference from Delhi. The company, led by Savji Dholakia, gifted 600 cars to its employees Thursday as Diwali bonus at an event named as 'Hari Krishna Skill India Incentive Ceremony'. "Around 14 crore loans were disbursed across the country under this (Mudra) scheme. Out of these, 40 lakh loans were given to the youth of Gujarat. In the last four years, loans worth Rs 7 lakh crore were disbursed under this scheme," Modi said in his speech. "Out of all those who took loans under Mudra, over 3.5 crore youth were first-time entrepreneurs, as they have chosen the path of self-employment for the first time. Today, there exist unprecedented employment as well as entrepreneurial opportunities in the country," the prime minister said. Two women, one of them a disabled person, and two male employees of the firm received keys of their cars from Modi himself in Delhi. The prime minister said his government has been taking many steps to strengthen the gems and jewellery sector, as it is a significant generator of employment and a key contributor to the exports. Referring to the "Main Nahin Hum" portal and app launched yesterday, Modi urged the company and its employees to dedicate some time for social causes. He appealed Dholakia and his company to set themselves a target of making at least 100 villages "digital" by 2022. He would be visiting Gujarat on October 31 to dedicate the Statue of Unity of Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel, Modi said. Representative image India's trade minister Suresh Prabhu said on Friday that China has agreed to increase its imports from the country. "Global disruptions offer a chance to increase Indian exports," Prabhu said at an event organised by the Confederation of Indian Industries (CII). Prabhu said Chinese authorities will hold a meeting in November specifically with Indian exporters to address their concerns relating to market access and trade regulations. India's trade deficit with China is its widest with any country, with large amounts of electronics and other items flowing across the border with its northern neighbour. The Indian government said on Thursday it is set to boost exports of rice and rapeseed to China to try to narrow this gap. A top finance ministry official on October 25 said the liquidity stress in financial institutions is overstated allaying fears of a liquidity crunch in NBFCs, including housing finance firms triggered by a crisis at infrastructure financier IL&FS. Banks currently have adequate liquidity in the system to support Non-Banking Finance Companies (NBFCs), although there are sectoral concerns, the official said. It is learnt that Finance Minister Arun Jaitley today met select banks and officials from his ministry on liquidity concerns. Banks said few NBFCs have approached them and the lenders have supported them by buying their assets, the official said, adding that most NBFCs said they are comfortable with the liquidity situation. Over the past one month, the severe liquidity crunch faced by the Infrastructure Finance & Leasing Services (IL&FS) has caused anxiety in the entire NBFC sector. As a cautionary measure, the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) has already started an inspection of several NBFCs to assess their exposure to high-risk assets. The central bank is looking to tighten norms for non-bank lenders to address the mismatch in their assets and liabilities. The RBI governor, Urjit Patel, had earlier said, The well-structured institutional measures taken by the government in the IL&FS case have been timely and appropriate. These have helped stabilise the situation and the RBI will engage with the new management if necessary on assistance on its efforts going forward." A series of defaults on financial instruments, short-term deposits, commercial paper and non-convertible debentures by IL&FS in the last two months, as well as rating downgrades in some, affected the financial markets causing redemption pressure on the mutual funds, which held such financial instrument. The redemption pressure on mutual funds has created a large systemic risk leading to quality papers being sold at steep discounts to meet the redemption demand. The debt market shocks got transferred to the equity market sparking a sell-off particularly in NBFC stocks and sectors linked with NBFC financing, the finance ministry said in a statement earlier this month. Bio-pharmaceutical company Biocon reported a 167 percent jump in second-quarter profit, beating analysts' estimates. CNBC-TV18 spoke to Kiran Mazumdar Shaw, CMD of the company, about the earnings and business plans. "Biologics sales were led by Pegfilgrstim, sale of other biosimilars and sale of insulin in certain markets like Mexico, Malaysia and Brazil," said Shaw, adding that the rich contributions in terms of margin and topline has come from US launch of Pegfilgrstim in Q1. All this sets us up for good sustainable growth in coming years because we are also preparing for a European entry for Pegfilgrstim and Trastuzumab where we await approval by the end of the year, she said. Overall, we have a nice basket of biosimilars for both the US and European market, which will set us up for a steady growth in that segment going forward, said Shaw. Clarifying about the exceptional income and stake in Equillium, she said, "Itolizumab is a unique antibody that they had developed in India but found that India was not the right place to develop this asset because there was poor recognition of such a valuable asset and so they decided to license it to a US biotech company called Equillium." Equillium proposed to develop the asset for certain indication for which we entered into a licensing agreement, which saw us getting a stake in Equillium. This stake is what has been evaluated as a fair market valuation and this is what we have recognised as an exceptional income, said Shaw. (Source: CNBC TV 18 In a bid to make the most out of its 7,500 km-long coastline, India is planning a cruise to connect Chennai to Coxs Bazar in Bangladesh. In fact, the government is hopeful of attracting private players to operate on the route. We will soon start the India-Bangladesh coastal cruise line between Chennai and Coxs Bazar, Pravir Pandey, chairman, Inland Waterways Authority of India (IWAI) told Moneycontrol. Pandey said that cruise liners operating between the two destinations, separated by 1600 nautical miles, will have to go via Chittagong port. New Delhi and Dhaka agreed to formulate standard operating procedure (SOP) to start cruise operations between the two countries on October 25. The SOP was signed during the 19th standing committee meeting between the neighbouring countries. IWAI, which is looking after such projects in the country, hopes to attract private players to run the cruise line. Both the countries have allowed the route. If any private operator wants to operate between Chennai and Chittagong, we will allow, Pandey said. He said that India would also allow Bangladesh-based private cruise liners to navigate in the region. We have finally signed SOP to facilitate cruise service from Chennai to Chittagong and finally Coxs Bazar, said Abdus Samad, shipping secretary, Bangladesh. We want to start passenger cruise service to facilitate tourism between the two countries, he said. Another senior official from Indian shipping ministry said that the proposed cruise route will take time to shape up and become operational. Currently, only an in-principal approval has been given. "The cruise will be operational in the next financial year," the official said. Cruise tourism gained momentum in India when union minister of shipping, Nitin Gadkari, said that the sector has the potential to generate revenue up to Rs 35,000 crore and create employment for close to two lakh people. According to data provided by the government, about 1,62,660 cruise passengers visited India in 2017-18. On October 20, IWAI, in the presence of Gadkari and Maharashtra chief minister Devendra Fadnavis, inaugurated a cruise route between Mumbai and Goa. The authority also has cruise operations at Varanasi on river Ganga on National Waterways-1. Apart from that, IWAI is planning cruise operations between Kolkata and Guwahati via Dhaka on NW-2 by the end of this financial year. live bse live nse live Volume Todays L/H More Chinese telecom gear maker Huawei expects over 60 percent growth in enterprise business in India next year on account of national initiatives like Digital India and transformation of technologies at business organisations, a top company official said. "This year between first and third quarter enterprise business grew by around 60 percent. Next year we expect to continue with same level of growth but not less that this," Derek Hao, President, Enterprise Business Group (EBG), Huawei India told PTI. He said national initiatives like Digital India are leading to transformation across the country, including within business organisations. Huawei India CEO Jay Chen announced that the company under Huawei EBG is setting up an 'OpenLab' in Delhi to develop new technologies in collaboration with partners and train engineers to adopt next-generation technologies. Huawei is investing $200 million over three years for setting up 20 such labs globally, including one in India. Out of the total budget, Huawei will invest $23 million in setting up OpenLab in India and Thailand. "In India, we will train over 400 engineers, certify 200 engineers and we will do over 100 proof of concept every year with partners," Hao said. Huawei's global alliance partners who will work with the company in OpenLab include TCS Infosys and Tech Mahindra as well as some local Indian companies. Wall Street | 1987 | The movie, directed and co-written by Oliver Stone has Michael Douglas and Charlie Sheen as the main characters. The story revolves around Gordon Gekko, a rich and ruthless corporate raider and Bud Fox, a junior stockbroker, who idolises Gekko. It narrates the rise and fall of both characters who use insider information to make their fortune. The movie also has a sequel. (Reuters) Glengarry Glen Ross | 1992 | Adapted by David Mamet from his 1984 Pulitzer Prize-winning play of the same name, the movie stars Al Pacino and Kevin Spacey in the lead cast. The film revolves around four real estate salesmen who use dubious methods in a race to pip each other. Rogue Trader | 1999 | It is a true story about Baring Banks star derivatives trader, Nick Leeson. His reckless trades eventually resulted Barings Bank going under in 1995. The movie is based on Leeson's book Rogue Trader. To cover up one bad trade, Leeson dealt in a series of derivative contracts which cost Barings, the world's second oldest merchant bank, $1.3 billion. (Image: Reuters) Gafla | 2006 | Labelled by many as a movie ahead of its time, Gafla tells the story of Subodh Mehta, a character loosely based on Harshad Mehta, called the Big Bull of Dalal Street in the early 1990s. Mehta was the kingpin of the Rs 4,025 crore securities scam of 1992, which straddled the stock market and banking industry. Interestingly, the movie also features a character resembling Mehtas protege Ketan Parekh who would be at the centre of another stock market scam in 2000-01. (Image: Youtube/Junglee Film Club) Inside Job | 2010 | An acclaimed five-part documentary on the 2008 financial crisis, it pieces together the policies and banking practices which led to the crisis . Directed by Charles Ferguson, the documentary won the 2010 Academy Award for Best Documentary Feature. Trivia: It also features former RBI governor Raghuram Rajan who had predicted the crisis as early as 2005. (Reuters) Too Big to Fail | 2011 | The television film chronicles the behind-the-scene actions to salvage the situation arisen before and after the collapse of Lehman Brothers in 2008. The plot revolves around the efforts of the US treasury and Federal Reserve to contain the fallout. The movie is based on Andrew Ross Sorkin's non-fiction book by the same name. It was first broadcast on HBO. (In picture, director Curtis Hanson; Reuters) Margin Call | 2011 | Set in the early stages of the 2008 financial crisis, the story wraps events over 36 hours at a large Wall Street investment bank. It narrates the efforts by the doomed banks employees as they try in vain to avert the impending collapse. (Reuters) The Wolf of the Wall Street | 2013 |The Hollywood blockbuster with Leonardo DiCaprio in the lead role is based on the memoir of the same name by Jordan Belfort. It showcases the rise and the fall of Belfort from a penny stockbroker to one of the biggest names on the Wall Street. (Reuters) Indian Bank live bse live nse live Volume Todays L/H More Shares of Equitas Holdings and Ujjivan Financial Services fell 18-23 percent on Friday as investors turned wary of RBIs letter to the entities on listing of small finance banks. The central bank reiterated in its letter to the banks that promoters of small finance banks should list their banking units separately within three years of operation. This is as per the central banks licensing requirements for small finance banks. Both Ujjivan and Equitas told exchanges that the RBI had reiterated this rule along with maintaining promoter shareholding at 40 percent for a five-year period. The Bank and the Company are committed to consider all appropriate measures to ensure the timely compliance of the above directives of the RBI, while ensuring the long term interests of the shareholders of the Company are maintained, Ujjivan Financial Services said in an exchange filing. In view of the said regulatory requirement, the Boards of Equitas Small Finance Bank and the Company would be considering the following, in their ensuing Board Meetings scheduled on November 1, 2018 and November 2, 2018, respectively. 1. Further steps to get the shares of ESFBL listed within the prescribed timelines; and 2. Approaching RBI for an approval to merge with the Bank at appropriate time, post the lock-in period Macquarie believes that the move is negative for Ujjivan Financial as an IPO of small finance bank will result in dual listing and attract a holding company discount. It highlighted that due date for Ujjivan is January 2020 and for Equitas is September 2019. Further, it added that the stock could fail to attract new buyers if the small finance entity lists separately. It added that the stock is now suitable for truly long-horizon investors willing to ride out this hoopla. The management of Equitas Small Finance Bank told CNBC-TV18 that it is required to dilute 60 percent in five years and will be listing the bank separately as per RBIs reply. It also said that it will have to hold minimum 40 percent in the listed entity initially. Equities Bears tightened their grip on Dalal Street for second consecutive session on Friday as the Nifty50 closed volatile session sharply lower but managed to defend psychological 10,000 levels. The index formed large bearish candle which resembles a 'Bearish Belt Hold' kind of pattern on the daily charts as well as weekly scale. A 'Bearish Belt Hold' pattern is formed when the opening price becomes the highest point of the trading day (intraday high) and the index declines throughout the trading day making up for the large body. The candle will either have a small or no upper shadow and a small lower shadow. The index failed to surpass previous support of 10,138 and corrected towards 10,000 zones intraday by making fresh seven month low levels indicated that there could be possibility of breaking March lows of 9,950 levels in coming sessions, experts said. The Nifty50 after opening flat at 10,122.35 immediately corrected sharply to hit an intraday low of 10,004.55. The index made many attempts to hold 10,100 levels amid volatility, but failed and finally closed 94.90 points lower at 10,030. "Bears continued their strength without giving any chance of pullback as intraday attempts of recovery by bulls from around 10,100 levels were thwarted thrice by the bears before signing off the session with a bearish candle which resembles a Bearish Belt Hold formation whereas on weekly charts it appears to be a strong bear candle with a 400-point range pointing towards the severity of correction," Mazhar Mohammad, Chief Strategist Technical Research & Trading Advisory, Chartviewindia.in told Moneycontrol. He said as bulls are unable to make any meaningful recovery the chances of dipping below 9,950 to complete one corrective structure looks bright in next couple of trading sessions. As markets are remaining choppy and volatile, Mazhar advised traders to take neutral stance till some sort of stability or strength is seen in the markets as even creating fresh shorts around these levels looks risky as markets are reaching critical support points. India VIX moved up by 3.21 percent to 19.57 levels. Volatility is not cooling down further and that is the concern for the market. It has to go down below 17-16 zones to rescue the bulls after the sharp cut of last two months, experts said. On option front, maximum Put open interest (OI) was seen at 10,000 followed by 9,800 strike while maximum Call OI was seen at 10,500 followed by 10,800 strikes. Call writing was seen at 10,100 followed by 10,400 strike while Put writing was seen at 10,000 followed by 9,800 strike. "Now till the index remains below 10,130 zones weakness could continue towards 9,952 then 9,800 zones while on the upside hurdle is shifting towards 10,250 then 10,333 zones," Chandan Taparia, Associate Vice President | Analyst-Derivatives, Motilal Oswal Financial Services said. Bank Nifty breached its crucial support level of 24,650 mark and slipped sharply in last hour of trading session towards 24,350 level. The index closed 396.40 points lower at 24,421.05. It formed a bearish candle on daily and weekly scale which suggests bears are holding tight grip in the market, experts believe. "Now till Bank Nifty holds below 24,650 it can slip towards 24,000 and even lower levels while on the upside hurdle is seen at 25,000 zone," Taparia said. The Supreme Court on Friday grilled the Chief Financial Officer (CFO) and internal auditors of Amrapali Group over diversion of home buyers' money and ordered that the company's Chairman and Managing Director (CMD) and its two other directors would remain under police surveillance at a hotel in Noida. The top court zeroed in on 23 "dummy companies", which the real estate Group claimed to have been created as special purpose vehicles (SPVs), and sought their details of incorporation and bank statements. It asked Amrapali Group to hand over all the laptops, computers and hard-drives used by the company since 2008 to the forensic auditors appointed by the court to audit the affairs of the embattled real-estate company. A bench of Justices Arun Mishra and UU Lalit, grilled CFO Chander Wadhwa, who earlier claimed to have had "memory failure" during questioning by the forensic auditors. It also asked the company's two internal auditors, Anil Mittal and Ravi Kapoor, to hand over all the documents related to the Group, warning them of jail term for non-compliance. The court directed the banks which have accounts of Amrapali Group to release the statements of the 2008-2018 period, to be handed over to the forensic auditors in three days by the company. It directed the police to seize the documents related to group companies from the internal auditors of Amrapali Group in three days and hand them over to the two forensic auditors. "We request the police to collect the documents from Dhavan and Company and Anil Mittal and Company (internal auditors). In case the documents are not handed over to the police, this will be viewed very seriously and punishment will be imposed," the bench said in its order. At the outset, forensic auditor Pawan Kumar Aggarwal told the court that they have found diversion of money collected from home buyers by some of the group firms, and some shell companies were also created for this purpose. The top court, terming it as "sorry state of affairs", sought details of incorporation, financial details, including bank accounts of four companies - GauriSuta Infrastructures Pvt Ltd, Mannat Buildcraft Pvt Ltd, Vidhyashree Buildcon Pvt Ltd and Jhamb Finance and Leasing Private Limited - where around Rs 242.38 crore was diverted by the Group company. It noted that directors of GauriSuta Infrastructures, which was given an advance of Rs 90 crore, were Ashish Jain and Vivek Mittal, a nephew of the company's auditor Anil Mittal. With regard to company's CFO, the bench granted him one last opportunity to cooperate with the forensic auditors and come out clean and warned him with jailtime on the grounds of professional misconduct. When the bench questioned Wadhwa, he revealed that he was a director in Amrapali Developer, a UK-based company and in one Delhi based company. He also disclosed to the bench that his son Amit Wadhwa was also a director in a company associated with the Amrapali Group. The bench asked him to furnish the details of his salary, benefits he had obtained from the Amrapali Group, bank details and in how many companies he is a director of. The court also pulled up the two internal auditors for overlooking the 'shady transactions' of the company and said it was not a fault but a "deliberate fraud" committed by not mentioning the diversion of funds in the audit report of the company. Senior advocate Geeta Luthra, appearing for Amrapali Group, sought relief for the directors including the Chief Managing Director Anil Sharma saying that since collating of documents has been completed, they should be now allowed to go home from the hotel. "No relief can be granted to them till all the documents are received to the satisfaction of forensic auditors. If there is non-compliance ofthecourt's order, we may send them to the appropriate place. They are currently living in an honourable place in a hotel," the bench observed. Anil Sharma and two directors Shiv Priya and Ajay Kumar were earlier directed by the court to be kept in police surveillance round the clock and in the night they were to be taken to a hotel in Noida. Advocate M L Lahoty, appearing for home buyers said that the company has deliberately not disclosed the names of all the directors as directed by the court and a total of 86 names were given instead of 102 names. He said that the names of four directors which include two daughters, wife and brother-in-law of Anil Sharma, were deliberately not given by the company. Earlier, the apex court had said that the Group has played a "big fraud" by diverting money collected from home buyers to other firms and the "big racket" behind this has to be unearthed. The top court had earlier fixed a 15-day limit for the forensic auditors to collect, collate and catalogue the documents from 2008 till now with regard to the 46 companies of the group from the nine properties situated in Noida, Greater Noida of Delhi-NCR and Rajgir and Buxar in Bihar. It had also initiated contempt proceedings against the group's CMD Anil Kumar Sharma and its directors Shiv Priya and Ajay Kumar for prima facie violating court's order and thwarting the course of justice. A file photo of Hand-in-Hand joint military drill between the militaries of India and China. BEIJING (PTI): China and India would hold joint military drills later this year and officials from the two sides will soon meet in Chinese city Chengdu to finalise the plans to resume the exercises, the Defence Ministry said in Beijing on Thursday. The 7th India and China joint military exercises will be held in China this year, Defence Ministry spokesman Col Wu Qian told a media briefing. "The two sides agreed to hold the planning conference in Chengdu to further discuss on details of the joint exercises," he said. The exercises - 'Hand-in-Hand' - focussing on counter-terrorism operations were not held last year as both sides were locked in a 73-day standoff in Doklam in the Sikkim sector of the border. The strained relations between the two sides later improved, resulting in an informal summit between Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Chinese President Xi Jinping in Chinese city of Wuhan. Since then the bilateral military ties have also improved. Chinese Defence Minister Gen. Wei Fenghe visited India in August and met Prime Minister Modi and held talks with his Indian counterpart Nirmala Sitharaman. The two ministers talked about setting up a hotline between adjacent military commands and improve the role of defence and security consultations mechanism and the meeting mechanism between the working delegations of the defence ministries, the Chinese military said earlier. India and China have held so far 20 rounds of Special Representatives talks to resolve their border dispute. India and Bangladesh, on October 25, agreed to explore a route to run passenger and cruise vessels between Kolkata and Guwahati via Dhaka. The cruise vessels will ply on the Inland Protocol route and coastal shipping route. The two countries have reached an understanding, through a standard operating procedure (SOP), for movement of passenger and cruise vessels on Inland Protocol route and coastal shipping route, Gopal Krishna, secretary, Ministry of Shipping told reporters. According to a senior official, ships and vessels will commence their trip from Kolkata (West Bengal) and reach Guwahati (Assam) via Haldia in Bengal to Barisal and Dhaka in Bangladesh. In technical terms, this is route 1 &2 and 3 & 4 of protocol route. Inland Waterways Authority of India (IWAI), under the aegis of shipping ministry, has taken charge to run the passenger cruise line on National Waterways-2. Ganga will be connected to Brahmaputra via Indo-Bangladesh protocol route, Pravir Pandey, chairman, IWAI told Moneycontrol. He said that the cruise line will be connecting three rivers in the two neighbouring countries. Ganga in India (called Padma in Bangladesh), Jamuna at Sunderbans in Bangladesh and Brahmaputra in Assam will become the route, he said. The chairman said that the route is expected to be operational by March 29, 2019 and will be operated by Heritage cruise line. The Heritage cruise liner has agreed to run cruise from Kolkata to Guwahati (National Waterways-2) via Dhaka... We are hopeful of operating it by then, he said. The cruise liner will start from Kolkata and will reach Dhaka via Sunderbans plying over protocol route 1 & 2 and 3 & 4. The liner will enter Assam from Dhubri and go up to Guwahati. Cruise tourism gained attention in India over a year ago when union minister of shipping, Nitin Gadkari, said that the sector has potential to generate revenue up to Rs 35,000 crore and create employment for close to two lakh people. According to data provided by the government, about 1,62,660 cruise passengers visited India in 2017-18. This was less than 1,91,725 cruise passengers that visited India in 2016-17. On October 20, Gadkari and Maharashtra chief minister Devendra Fadnavis inaugurated Indias first luxury cruise line from Mumbai to Goa. U.S. President Donald Trump waves prior to departing on a trip to Wisconsin from the White House in Washington, U.S., October 24, 2018. REUTERS/Cathal McNaughton TPX IMAGES OF THE DAY - RC13580F4390 US President Donald Trump lashed out at CNN for blaming him for the current spate of bombs being sent to present and former high-ranking officials including his predecessor Barack Obama, saying it is "funny" how he is being criticised by the cable news network and others. The President, who has been at loggerheads with several mainstream media outlets including CNN, ABC News, The New York Times and The Washington Post, has quite often described them as "fake media". So far, law enforcement agencies have detected eight explosives-laden suspicious packages sent to high-level current and former officials including Obama, former vice president Joe Biden and former secretary of state Hillary Clinton. The FBI is investigating the case. Most of these explosives are crude pipe bombs coming in a similar kind of yellow packages with a return address of Florida. One of these packets went to CNN office in New York. Early on October 26 another suspicious package was found addressed to Democratic Senator Cory Booker. Over the past two days, Trump has been briefed multiple times on the investigation relating to the spate of bombs. Coming less than a fortnight before the mid-term elections, Democratic opponents and some media outlets led by CNN have blamed this for his rhetoric against the press. CNN and the White House have been engaged in a war of words on this issue, with CNN charging the administration of being insensitive. "Funny how lowly rated CNN, and others, can criticise me at will, even blaming me for the current spate of bombs and ridiculously comparing this to September 11th and the Oklahoma city bombing, yet when I criticise them they go wild and scream 'it's just not Presidential!' Trump said in a 3 am tweet on October 26. Nirmala Sitharaman Defence Minister Nirmala Sitharaman said the authority of her ministry and of the armed forces have not been undermined by recent changes in the country's security establishment apparatus. She also said the National Security Adviser (NSA) plays an important role in inter-ministerial coordination for security-related matters. At an event, the defence minister was replying to a question on "changes in the shape of security establishment" and its criticism in some quarters after the NDA government recently reconstituted the Strategic Policy Group, with NSA Ajit Doval as its chairman, to assist the National Security Council. "Now if you are looking at security and strategy council, looking at national security council or NSA, now because it is going to have (to) bring in other ministries, other departments (for security-related matters)... that does not undermine the Raksha Mantralay (defence ministry)," the minister said. "It does not take away the powers of the three forces, which largely are remaining autonomous," she said. "Today, defence of India is not only through your army, navy or air force alone," she said, adding there are various kinds of threats including those in the cyber domain. The minister said the cyber security is not only the software industry's concern but "also has severe repercussions on your security network". "You need to have an inter-ministerial coordination and that is where the NSA plays a role," Sitharaman said. "And even then, the collective decisions that are being discussed there will have to pass through the Raksha Mantri (Defence Minister) and then only it will go to the Cabinet Committee on Security. So that could be the forum where most of these things are being discussed. Hence there is no undermining of the defence minister," she said. To a question on integration of commands of the armed forces, she said it has been initiated in the Andaman and Nicobar Command. "Andaman-Nicobar is an integrated command. We have already moved in that direction. The chief of it controls everything to do with army, navy and air force," she said. "We will probably be moving towards having other commands also gradually move (towards unified command) so that the assets, which we have from the Ministry of Defence for the three forces, are better utilised, optimally utilised," she said. "The lessons learned from Andaman-Nicobar are being absorbed by the other commands within the mainland," said the minister. Prime Minister Narendra Modi has left social media in spilt with his comment about making tea from gutter fumes. At an event to mark World Biofuel Day, the PM claimed that he had once read about a tea seller in a small town who tapped into gas emanating from a gutter to make the beverage. Loosing on the fact, the PM unintentionally ended up inventing a new laughing gas for netizens. Prime Minister Narendra Modi described India and Japan a "winning combination" and said the island nation is New Delhi's most trusted partners in its economic and technological modernisation. In a statement before he leaves for Japan on October 27 to attend the Annual Summit on October 28 and 29, Modi said India's partnership with Japan is of great substance and purpose. "We have a special strategic and global partnership. Our ties with Japan, both economic and strategic, stand completely transformed in recent years. It is today a partnership of great substance and purpose. It rests on the strong pillars of India's Act East Policy, and our shared vision and commitment to a free, open and inclusive Indo-Pacific," he said. Modi said it will be his 12th meeting with Prime Minister Shinzo Abe since he first toured Japan as prime minister in September 2014. He said, as democracies, the two countries have shared values and they seek peace and prosperity for all. "Our complementarities make India and Japan a winning combination. Japan today is one of the most trusted partners in India's economic and technological modernisations and one of the top investors in India," he pointed out. The PM said that projects such as Mumbai-Ahmedabad High Speed Rail and Dedicated Freight Corridors reflect the high level and "strength of our economic engagement". "Japan is also at the forefront of engaging in our national initiatives, such as 'Make in India', 'Skill India', 'Digital India', 'Start Up India'...Japanese investors have faith in India's economic future, which is marked with myriad opportunities," Modi said. He said India values Japan's global leadership in innovation, technologies and best practices and during his visit, he will have a chance to see some of Japan's high-tech capabilities in robotics. "I will have wide-ranging talks with Prime Minister Shinzo Abe and interact with business leaders and captains of industry from both countries. I will also address the Indian community. These interactions will help to further strengthen our trade and investment ties, and cooperation in new areas such as healthcare, digital technologies, agriculture and food processing, disaster risk reduction and disaster resilient infrastructure," he said. He recalled that last year, he had hosted Prime Minister Abe and his wife Akie Abe in his home state of Gujarat. In a special gesture, Modi will be hosted by his Japanese counterpart for a private dinner at his holiday home in the picturesque Yamanashi prefecture on October 28, which will be, perhaps, the first such reception to be extended to a foreign leader. This handout picture provided by the Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) shows the surface of the moon taken by Moon Impact Probe (MIP), after separating from India's Chandrayaan-1 spacecraft, November 14, 2008. A lunar probe from India's first unmanned moon mission Chandrayaan-1 has landed on the moon and started sending its first images, officials at the Indian Space Research Organisation said on Friday. Picture taken November 14, 2008. REUTERS/Indian Space Research Organisation/Handout (INDIA). FOR EDITORIAL USE ONLY. NOT FOR SALE FOR MARKETING OR ADVERTISING CAMPAIGNS. - GM1E4BF1KI201 The ISRO will send human for the first time in space by 2022 while its ambitious project Chandrayan 2 will be completed in 2019 with landing of an indigenous spacecraft, the space agency's chairman Kailasavadivoo Sivan said here Thursday. Sivan, who is here to attend the convocation ceremony of DDU Gorakhpur University Friday, told reporters, "We have set a deadline of sending human to space by the end of 2021 or beginning of 2022". The Chandrayan 2 will be sent on the moon by January or February next year. Chandrayan 2 is designed to make soft landing on the moon and carry out extensive experiments on its surface. Scientists at the Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) will undertake three to six missions in the next six months, he said. The ISRO is serving the nation in various fields including communication, navigation, space science etc and every single person of India is somehow linked with its services, he said. "Under Digital India Mission launched by Prime Minister Narendra Modi, the ISRO is all set to provide high data connectivity of 100 GBPS in rural and remote areas by placing four communication satellites in to space, of which one is already placed this year, while the rest three will be placed in November, December and early next year," he said. He said more than 75 per cent of the population of country lives in remote areas and it is advisable to space technology to provide services in various speeds. The ISRO chairman said although it was not possible for India's premier space agency to recruit all potential engineers passing out from Indian universities yet it was working on capacity building programmes to tab their potential through incubation and research centers. "The ISRO is all set to give young engineers opportunity to serve the nation by opening six incubation centers, research centers and research chair in north, south, east, central and west India," he said. While one incubation center is already opened in Agartala, rest will operationalise in Jalandhar, Bhubneshwar, Indore, Nagpur and Kochi. Similarly, research centers would come up in Guwahati, Jaipur, Krukshetra, Kanyakumari, Patna and Varansi, he said. Markets regulator Sebi will auction as many as five properties of Aspen Projects India Ltd next month at a reserve price totalling over Rs 67 lakh. The move is part of an effort by Sebi to recover money that the Kolkata-based company had illegally mobilised from people. The auction of these land parcels, located in West Bengal, will be conducted on November 27, the Securities and Exchange Board of India (Sebi) said in a notice Friday. The reserve price of these properties amounts to Rs 67.24 lakh. Sebi has invited "bids for sale of properties in the Recovery proceedings against Aspen Projects and its promoters/directors, through e-auction platform". It has engaged SBI Capital Markets to assist it for sale of these properties. The interested candidates can inspect the properties on November 12, Sebi said, adding that bidders should make their own independent enquiries regarding the encumbrances, title of properties put on auction and claims, among others, prior to submitting their bids. After finding the company and its directors had illegally raising funds from the public, the watchdog in August, 2015 had directed them to refund the money. The regulator has been auctioning the assets of those companies, which had illegally raised money from investors. The BJP has entrusted its Tripura unit with the responsibility of wooing Chakma and Bru voters in five Assembly constituencies of Mizoram, dominated by people belonging to the two ethnic communities, a senior party leader said. The five Mizoram Assembly constituencies have been identified as West Tuipui, Mamit, Tuichawng, Hachhek and Thorang, vice-president of BJP's Tripura unit, Pratima Bhowmick, said on Friday. Elections to the 40-member Mizoram Assembly are scheduled for November 28. "We have been given the responsibility of the overall campaign in the five constituencies where the maximum voters are from Chakma and Bru communities. We are hopeful of winning all the five seats," Bhowmick told PTI. Tripura Chief Minister Biplab Kumar Deb, Social Welfare Minister Santana Chakma, state BJP vice-president Pratima Bhowmick and MLAs Sambhu Lal Chakma and Promod Reang on Tuesday began their campaign in Mizoram for the Assembly elections. Biplab Kumar Deb, Santana Chakma and Sambhu Lal Chakma addressed a poll rally at Kamalanagar, the headquarter of the Chakma Autonomus District Council. The Tripura chief minister has been given special responsibility to campaign for the Mizoram elections, Bhowmick said. "We conducted the first round of campaign at Kamalanagar and other constituencies and received overwhelming response from voters there. People of the Chakma community gathered in large numbers at the helipad to receive us. "We found Santana Chakma and our chief minister to be very popular among them," Bhowmick said. Bhowmick, along with MLA Dilip Das on Friday left for refugee camps in North Tripura district, where at least 35,000 Bru inmates are sheltered. "We will campaign among the Bru inmates there, because they are voters in Mizoram. Many refugee leaders are now campaigning for us in Bru compact areas in the state," she told PTI before leaving for the refugee camps. Bhowmick said 96 percent of the population in the Chakma district council area in Mizoram are from the Chakma community. About 50 percent voters in Mamit are from the Bru community and 5 percent from the Chakma community. In Hachhek constituency, the Brus constitute 68 percent of the total voters, in Thorang constituency Chakmas constitute 30 percent and Brus represent 27 percent and in West Tuipui, the Chakmas constitute 80 percent of the voters, Bhowmick said. Ninety-eight percent of the voters in Tuichawng seat belong to the Chakma community, she said. BJP spokesperson Subrata Chakraborty said, chief ministers of many northeastern states will campaign for the Mizoram Assembly elections, including Assam Chief Minister Sarbananda Sonowal. BJP president Amit Shah had visited Aizawl on October 17 to kick off the partys election campaign. RAJPUTS: They form about 12 percent of the states population and assert influence over 25 seats. (Image: Reuters) GUJJARS: Comprising around 9 percent of the state's total population, they have recently been added to the OBC (Other Backward Classes) category. (Image: Reuters) MINAS: They form about 7 percent of the state's population, enjoy the ST status with over 500 IAS, IPS and other white-collared job holders. This puts the Gujjars at loggerheads with the Minas. (Image: Reuters) JATS: Forming about 12 percent of Rajasthan's population, they assert influence on more than two dozen seats. (Image: Reuters) Congress Member of Parliament from Guna, Madhya Pradesh and former union minister Jyotiraditya Scindia The Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) has been in power for 15 years in Madhya Pradesh. Chief Minister Shivraj Singh Chouhan has been at the helm of affairs for 13 out of those 15. There is growing anger among the upper castes against the Chouhan government over an amendment to the Scheduled Caste/Schedule Tribe (Prevention of Atrocities) Act. Farmer protests have also escalated in the central Indian state over the last few years, making Chouhans bid to retain power difficult. Also read: Key factors likely to impact the election Congress, the principle opposition party in the state, is now raring to beat the Chouhan government by riding on the tide of anti-incumbency and fatigue that may have crept in. One leader is at the centre of Congress plans Jyotiraditya Madhavrao Scindia, Member of Parliament (MP) from Guna constituency and the head of the royal family of Gwalior. Besides having been entrusted to organise and manage Congress poll campaign in the state, Jyotiraditya is also seen as one of the top contenders for the chief ministers position. Over the last few years, Jyotiraditya has systematically travelled to rural areas of the state to build support at the grassroots. He was also at the centre of Congress successful campaign for the Mungaoli and Kolaras assembly bypolls earlier this year. The events were seen as calculated moves by the 47-year-old royal to manoeuver himself into being named Congress chief ministerial candidate, political observers suggest. But, Congress refused to declare a CM candidate before the polls and appointed former Union minister Kamal Nath as the state unit president. This has led to factionalism within the Madhya Pradesh Congress Committee (MPCC). Who is MPs next CM? The three key Congress factions are being led by Jyotiraditya, Nath and former chief minister Digvijaya Singh. In a television interview earlier, Jyotiraditya said while he will abide by whatever decision the party takes, he preferred that a name be declared in advance. Observers suggest that Jyotiradityas desperation to be named as the CM candidate stems from the fact that he may be more popular than other candidates. According to an opinion survey by India Today-Axis My India, when asked Who should be the next CM? in Madhya Pradesh, more respondents preferred Jyotiraditya than Nath and Digvijaya Singh put together. The survey indicates that 32 percent respondents wanted Jyotiraditya as the next chief minister. This was followed by Naths 8 percent and Digvijaya Singhs 2 percent. Jyotiraditya, however, trailed Chouhan (46 percent). However, Congress hesitation could be rooted in the fact that he hails from a royal household. Jyotiraditya, a close confidant of Congress President Rahul Gandhi, could also come under attack over his royalty from Prime Minister Narendra Modi during the latters campaign. The prime minister has often targeted political individuals who come from political dynasties, including Gandhi. While Jyotiradityas aunt Vasundhara Raje is the incumbent CM and BJPs CM candidate in Rajasthan, observers feel Jyotiraditya may not be able to effectively counter such a narrative being built around him. Early life Jyotiraditya was born on January 1, 1971 in Bombay (now Mumbai) to Madhavrao Scindia and Madhavi Raje Scindia. He studied at Campion School in the city before being sent to The Doon School in Dehradun. He pursued Economics at Harvard University from where he graduated in 1993. In 2001, he completed his Masters in Business Administration (MBA) from Stanford Graduate School of Business. He also roughed it out with various jobs with Merryl Lynch; the UN in New York; Morgan Stanley in New York, Hong Kong and Mumbai. While his father Madhavrao Scindia became the Maharaja of Gwalior in 1961, Jyotiraditya could not assume the throne as India had abolished titles, privileges and privy purses of princely states in the meantime. Jyotiraditya is married to Priyadarshini Raje Scindia, who belongs to the Barodas Gaekwad family. Politics He jumped into politics after his fathers demise. In 2002, he won the bypoll for the Guna Lok Sabha seat in Madhya Pradesh, earlier held by his father. He was re-elected from Guna in the 2004 Lok Sabha election. In 2007, Jyotiraditya was inducted into the Manmohan Singh cabinet as the Minister of State (MoS) for Communications and Information Technology. He was re-elected in 2009 and appointed as the MoS for Commerce and Industry. In 2012, he was made MoS for Power with independent charge. In July that year, Jyotiraditya was in the eye of a storm when two severe blackouts occurred in northern and eastern India, affecting more than 600 million people. This is considered one of the largest blackouts in history, globally. Jyotiraditya was able to retain his Parliamentary seat in 2014 even as Congress faced drubbing. Congress An Assembly constituency in Dhar district of Madhya Pradesh has become a bone of contention between the Congress and Jai Adivasi Yuva Shakti (JAYS), a fledgling tribal political outfit, which are currently engaged in alliance talks for the next month's state polls. The seat sharing talks between them have apparently hit a roadblock, as both are keen on contesting election from Kukshi seat in western MP, currently held by the Congress. The JAYS wants to field its candidate from Kukshi, although the Congress says it does not want to part with this seat as it has been its traditional stronghold. The opposition party has been winning this seat since 1972, except losing it only twice- in 1990 assembly elections and 2012 bypoll. Talking to PTI on Friday, JAYS convener Dr Hiralal Alawa said, "Our seat-sharing talks with the Congress are underway. We want to contest the upcoming election from 40 assembly constituencies. Fighting from Kukshi due to our strong presence there is top on our agenda." Another JAYS leader said, "We have categorically told the Congress that we want to contest from Kukshi. The fate of alliance depends on this seat. If the Congress is adamant for this seat, then the alliance talks might even fail." "We have already demonstrated our strength in Kukshi by organising Kisan Panchayat programme held on October 2. Over one lakh tribal youths had taken part in the event," he added. Kukshi seat is currently held by Congress' Surendra Singh Baghel, a supporter of senior party leader Digvijay Singh. Baghel said he was all set to contest the upcoming polls from this seat, and also expressed confidence that he would win it with a huge margin. Another Congress leader said, "Kukshi is our traditional seat and we can't let it go so easily." The JAYS has made its presence felt in 22 tribal seats spread across Alirajpur, Ratlam, Jhabua, Dhar, Khargone, Burhanpur, Khandwa, Dewas and Barwani districts in Malwa-Nimar region of western MP, which has a sizable tribal population. Of these 22 constituencies reserved for tribals, the Congress currently holds five seats. The state leadership of the Congress is keen on joining hands with the JAYS in Malwa-Nimar region that comprises 66 assembly seats. The Congress does not have a strong presence in this region. Currently, the Congress only has nine MLAs as against the ruling BJP's 56 legislators in the region. Besides, this time the Congress is treading cautiously as it seems to have learnt a lesson from its disastrous defeat in the 2003 state elections when a tribal political outfit Gondwana Gantantra Party (GGP) in eastern MP had eaten into its vote bank. Although the GGP managed to win only three seats in eastern MP in 2003, it had nibbled into a major share of the Congress' traditional tribal vote bank. The GGP had won 5,17,270 votes, especially in the tribal-dominated areas. The Congress had managed to win only 38 assembly seats out of all the 230 constituencies in the state, whereas the BJP had won 173 seats in the 2003 polls. The opposition party, which has been out of power in MP since the last 15 years, had earlier tried to stitch an alliance with the BSP for the upcoming elections, although it failed to work out. The state is going to polls on November 28. The Rt Hon Lord Henley, Parliamentary Under Secretary of State at the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy (BEIS), visited the Universitys Bristol BioDesign Institute today, along with a visit to science incubator, Unit DX [25 Oct]. The Institute is pioneering the use of engineering approaches to harness the power of biology. The combination of biology, chemistry, engineering and computer sciences enables wide-ranging applications, from health to food security. The Institute links world-class research in Bristols Synthetic Biology Research Centre, BrisSynBio, multidisciplinary training in the SynBio Centre for Doctoral Training, industrial engagement and commercialisation through the BBI Innovation Programme, and public dialogue through synthetic biology art and outreach projects. Lord Henley toured the BrisSynBio facilities with Professors Imre Berger and Christiane Berger-Schaffitzel from the School of Biochemistry, Claire Grierson Head of the School of Biological Sciences, along with Drs Andy Boyce, Innovations Manager and Kathleen Sedgley, Scientific Manager. The Pro Vice-Chancellor for Research, Professor Nishan Canagarajah, and Director of Bristol BioDesign, Professor Dek Woolfson (Biochemistry and Chemistry), met the Minister to discuss the future of biodesign research and innovation at the University. Professor Canagarajah said: We were delighted to welcome Lord Henley to the Bristol BioDesign Institute. This institute aligns 104M of synthetic biology research in Bristol and cements the Universitys place as a world-leader in biomolecular design. Lord Henleys visit is recognition of how Bristol is leading the charge to use synthetic biology to drive economic impact and tackle hitherto intractable public and industrial needs. Lord Henley also discussed Bristols latest translational research projects and training activities with BrisSynBio scientists biodesign researcher leaders: Dr Ash Toye (Biochemistry); Dr Lucia Marucci (Engineering Maths) and Dr Paul Race (Biochemistry). Business Minister Lord Henley said: Bristols innovative businesses and academics are applying science and engineering to seize the biggest opportunities and tackle the greatest challenges of our time. The Bristol BioDesign Institute and Unit DX are a great example of the strong links between our world-leading universities and businesses that the Government is supporting through our modern Industrial Strategy, backed by the biggest increase in public research and development investment in UK history. During the afternoon, Lord Henley visited Bristol science incubator, Unit DX, which has become a hub for Bristols growing biotech cluster. The minister met biodesign spinouts including: Carbometrics (previously Ziylo); Zentraxa Ltd; CytoSeek Ltd; Imophoron Ltd and Folium Bioscience Ltd. In particular, the group discussed the Ziylo and Carbometrics story which saw a University of Bristol spin-out company based at Unit DX reach a deal of potential value of over $800 million in less than three years through work on the treatment of diabetes. Harry Destecroix, CEO and Co-founder at Unit DX and Carbometrics, said: Bristol is an exciting place to be at the minute, as there is a cluster of biodesign companies at Unit DX with huge potential. We are happy that central government is recognising how Bristol science is making a global impact, and we were delighted to welcome Lord Henley to Unit DX. Congress President Rahul Gandhi in Madhya Pradesh Congress workers led by their president Rahul Gandhi took to the streets on Friday against the move to divest CBI Director Alok Verma of his powers and send him on leave, and to demand an apology from Prime Minister Narendra Modi. The Congress, which marched from Dayal Singh College on Lodhi Road to the CBI headquarters about a kilometre away, has termed the move against Verma "illegal and unconstitutional". Senior Congress leaders, including Ashok Gehlot, Ahmed Patel, Motilal Vora, Veerappa Moily and Anand Sharma, took part in the march that culminated in a demonstration ahead of the CBI headquarters. Loktantrik Janata Dal leader Sharad Yadav, CPI leader D Raja and TMC's Nadimul Haque joined the protest. Carrying placards against the prime minister, the protesters walked the distance with scores of police personnel maintaining vigil and camera crews jostling with each other to capture the moment. One of the protesters was carrying a placard depicting the Central Bureau of Investigation in a cage. Gandhi got on to a truck in front of the police barricades put up ahead of the CBI headquarters in the CGO complex to prevent the protesters from reaching the building. Gehlot said the decision to remove CBI director Alok Verma was "illegal". "The chief justice of India, the leader of the opposition and the prime minister can together take a decision to remove him, but not the prime minister alone," he told reporters. "Our demand is to reinstate the CBI director. As per the law, he can be transferred only with the consent of the appointing authority (comprising Chief Justice of India, the prime minister and the leader of opposition). The prime minister should tender an apology to the nation for destroying the image of the premier investigating agency," Gehlot added. The government has strongly defended its decision, saying it was "absolutely essential" to maintain the CBI's institutional integrity and the move was based on recommendations by the Central Vigilance Commissioner. The Congress' protests in the national capital were replicated in other parts of the country. State Congress leaders led demonstrations in their regions against what the Congress described as the "illegal, unconstitutional and illegitimate removal of the CBI director by the Modi-Shah duo that has shamed India and its premier investigative agency". Alleging that the prime minister is experiencing 'Rafale-o-Phobia', the opposition party said the "demolition of the CBI" was prompted by fears that the director was going to conduct a probe into the fighter jet deal. The government sent Verma and Special Director Rakesh Asthana, who have accused each other of corruption, on leave on Tuesday. It also transferred several CBI officials and appointed M Nageswar Rao as the interim chief of the agency. The Congress protest was held soon after the matter came up in the Supreme Court. The apex court said former Supreme Court judge A K Patnaik will oversee a CVC inquiry into the allegations and counter allegations and the report has to be placed before it within two weeks. It directed that interim CBI chief M Nageswara Rao shall not take any major policy decisions. Decisions taken by him since October 23 till date shall not be implemented, it said. All decisions taken by Rao shall be placed before the apex court in a sealed cover. The court sought a response from the CBI, the CVC and the Centre on Verma's plea challenging the government's decision to divest him of his duties. A bench headed by Chief Justice Ranjan Gogoi posted the next date of hearing on November 12. Agriculture still continues to be the principal source of livelihood for more than 55 percent of the Indian population. Despite the involvement of more than 50 percent of the workforce in the agriculture sector, the contribution of agriculture in Gross Domestic Product (GDP) is merely 14 percent. The agricultural sector has not reached its full potential due to small land holdings, over-dependency on monsoon, insufficient irrigation facilities, cheap credit and insurance etc. A total of 12,602 persons involved in farming sector (consisting of 8,007 farmers/cultivators and 4,595 agricultural labourers) have committed suicides in 2015, as per a National Crime Records Bureau (NCRB) report. According to figures released by the government for 2016 the latest year for which data is available farmer suicides have come down to 6,351 from 8,007 in 2015, marking a drop of 21 percent. In addition, the data has pointed out that 80 percent of farmers killed themselves in 2015 because of bankruptcy or debts after taking loans from banks and registered microfinance institutions. In 2015, Rajasthan lay in the category of up to five farmer suicides in a year. However, this number escalated quickly in the last couple of years, especially in May 2018 when prices of the garlic crop hit rock bottom because of bumper produce. Farmers had to sell their crop at throw-away prices with prices dropping by Rs 200-700 per quintal. Five farmers from the Hadoti region committed suicide in May alone. The Hadoti region comprises Kota, Bundi, Baran and Jhalawar districts. Even though Rajasthan State Co-operative Marketing Federation Ltds (RAJFED) market intervention scheme is in place for such circumstances, it didnt seem to be enough. The opposition Congress slammed the ruling BJP for turning a blind eye towards farmer suicides and not even acknowledging them; whilst the ruling BJP maintained that the suicides were not because of debt. In June this year, Rajasthan Chief Minister Vasundhara Raje announced a farm loan waiver worth Rs 8,500 crore, writing off loans up to Rs 50,000 for small and marginal farmers. She had also made an ambitious promise, By the end of this year, we would have given interest-free farm loans worth up to Rs 80,000 crore, which would be the highest in the country. Ambitious, because the BJP government in Rajasthan struggled to arrange the money after NABARD (National Bank for Agriculture and Rural Development) refused to give credit for farm loan waiver. But the farmers on the ground have not been satisfied by the waiver. They want more. They want the government to implement Swaminathan Commissions recommendations while calculating the Minimum Support Price (MSP) that includes the cost of production from the farm to the market and the presumed cost of land. In addition, farmers have been demanding a guarantee of procurement and lowering the cost of inputs such as water, fertilizer and power. Many reports have suggested that there is growing disenchantment among farmers over the execution of the Centre's proposal to hike MSP. Economist VS Vyas told the Hindustan Times, In any case, MSP benefits only 10-12 percent farmers who are able to sell their produce. The government neither has a proper procurement infrastructure nor proper storage facilities. This disenchantment could cost the ruling party a hefty chunk of voters. In fact, in the Gujarat assembly elections that took place last year, the urban-rural divide was evident. The rural voters had advertently voted for the Congress, to the extent that the Grand Old Party wrested the Saurashtra belt from the BJP. In the bypolls that happened in Rajasthan immediately after the Gujarat assembly elections, the Congress snatched all three seatsAlwar and Ajmer Lok Sabha seats, and the Mandalgarh assembly seat from the BJP. This was a sign that the rural voter base was shifting from the ruling BJP to the Congress, and a warning to the saffron party that the same pattern could project itself on a much larger scale. The ruling Bhartiya Janata Party (BJP) in Maharashtra on Thursday once again reached out to its estranged ally Shiv Sena for an electoral tie-up in the state at a time when the party chief Uddhav Thackeray has raked up the issue of construction of a Ram temple in Ayodhya. Senior BJP leader and Revenue Minister Chandrakant Patil also said Sena chief Uddhav Thackeray will have the right to pick a chief ministerial candidate of his choice if his party wins even one seat more than the BJP in 2019 assembly polls. In 288-member Assembly, the BJP has 122 MLAs and the Sena 62. Patil's statement is seen as the latest overture by his party to placate the Sena, which had announced to contest all future polls on its own strength. Recently, Maharashtra Chief Minister Devendra Fadnavis and Finance Minister Sudhir Mungantiwar have expressed hope the Sena will tie up with the BJP for the 2019 assembly and Lok Sabha elections. BJP president Amit Shah had met Thackeray at the latter's residence in Mumbai in June this year, apparently to placate the recalcitrant ally. Apart from being the oldest member of the National Democratic Alliance (NDA), the Sena is a constituent in the Central and Maharashtra governments. Addressing reporters here Thursday, Patil sought to enlist Sena's support in elections to keep Congress and Nationalist Congress Party (NCP) away from power. "If we (Sena and BJP) fight the elections as allies, we will definitely increase numbers in the Lok Sabha as well as in the state Assembly," he said. Exuding confidence that the NDA will return to power again in 2019, Patil said the next chief minister will definitely be either from BJP or Sena, and not from Congress or NCP. "But for that Sena should fight with us in the next elections," he said. "The party that wins even one seat more than its ally in the assembly polls will install its chief minister. If Sena wins even a single seat more than BJP, Thackeray will have the right to pick his candidate as chief minister," said the minister. In an apparent reference to Sena's unrelenting criticism of BJP government, Patil said his party communicates with Sena leaders at a personal level which common people are not aware of. "This is the reason I am appealing to Sena for an alliance through media," he said. Uddhav had announced that he would visit Ayodhya on November 25 and "question" Prime Minister Narendra Modi over the (delay in construction of the temple) issue. Meanwhile, Patil reminded Sena that BJP came to power on its own in all local bodies like municipal corporations, municipal councils, Zilla Parishads and even gram panchayats in last four years, against the Opposition as well as Sena. "The BJP won despite Sena contesting against it in some local bodies," he said. The minister pointed out BJP's victory in Sangli civic body, despite Sena, NCP and Congress being in fray. Tata Motors has priced the Tiago JTP at Rs ** lakh and the Tigor JTP at Rs ** lakh (ex-showroom). The two cars are the first products of the 50:50 joint venture company JT Special Vehicles that was formed between Tata Motors formed with Coimbatore-based Jayem Automotives, founded by former race car driver J Anand live bse live nse live Volume Todays L/H More Tata Motors, the countrys fourth largest car maker, has launched performance variants of the Tiago and Tigor hatchback priced at Rs 6.39 lakh and Rs 7.49 lakh, respectively, ex-showroom, New Delhi. Prices are introductory. The two cars are the first products of the 50:50 joint venture company JT Special Vehicles formed between Tata Motors and Coimbatore-based Jayem Automotives, founded by former race car driver J Anand. Both the cars bear spruced-up interior and exterior styling intended to give them a sporty look which differentiates them from the regular models. Engines have also been tuned up to produce 34 percent more power than their regular counterparts. The Tiago and Tigor will carry the JTP branding on the front grille and rear. Both cars come powered by a three-cylinder 1.2-litre turbocharged engine that delivers a peak power of 114bhp. Tata Motors wants to position them as performance cars to enhance their overall brand appeal. Mayank Pareek, President (passenger vehicle business unit), Tata Motors said, Average age of car buyers has come down to 32 from 39 years in the last few years. Products like JTP will have a rub-off on the main brand and it can be huge. Tiago, which is into its third year, is already doing very well. I want it to do well even in its sixth year. Actually, this is not a product strategy (but) it is a marketing strategy. It is not unique for a hatchback or a sedan to come powered by an engine that generates more than 100bhp. Marutis Baleno, Volkswagens Polo GT TSI and Fiats Abarth Punto are some of the experiments by Tata Motors rivals in the hatchback space. But this is the first time that a vehicle maker in India has partnered an engineering company to build performance versions of regular cars. Some of these companies have in-house performance verticals such as AMG for Mercedes Benz, M Series by BMW, RS by Audi, Abarth by Fiat. Tata Tigor JTP Globally such kind of cars do not have more than 5-6 percent share of the main brand. It is not about volume. But the rub-off is huge on that brand to the extent of 20 percent, added Pareek. Tiago was launched by Tata Motors in the first half of 2016. The car has been a runaway success for clocking around 8,000-9,000 units a month. The hatchback has helped Tata Motors break into the list of top three car makers in some of the months. Tigor has been doing around 2,500 a month. Tata Motors decided to give Tigor another push with the coming on board of actor Hrithik Roshan as its brand ambassador. This dream of launching performance versions germinated in 2016, immediately after launching the Tiago. And within a year we partnered with Jayem Auto. Tata Motors has the wherewithal to undertake such a venture but we are already stretched at the moment with new products, BS-VI, electrification. Jayem is quick and they have a great engineering capability, added Pareek. Both the cars will be made at Sanand, Gujarat where Tiago and Tigor are made presently. Sources said Tata Motors could be looking to sell around 500-600 units sales of JTP versions per month. To begin with, there will be 30 dealerships with dedicated staff to take care of sales. After 15 years in power in Madhya Pradesh, the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) is facing a stiff challenge from the opposition. Chief Minister Shivraj Singh Chouhan has been at the helm of affairs for 13 out of the 15 years and political observers feel the election will boil down to his popularity. CHAMBAL: The northernmost region of Madhya Pradesh is expected to be the tensest battleground. Both BJP and Congress have their eyes on this region. In 2013, BJP had won 20 seats in the region followed by 12 by the Congress. The BSP had managed to win two seats here. The erstwhile royal family of Gwalior is considered to have an influential factor in the region. The family is now headed by Jyotiraditya Scindia, Congress MP from Guna. VINDHYAN: The fight in the easternmost region was closer than any other region. BJP won 16 seats and was closely followed by Congress with 12 seats. BSP won two seats. MALWA: In 2013, BJP had swept the region by winning 49 out of the 55 seats here. Congress won five seats while an Independent candidate won one seat. The region includes Mandsaur, which is the epicentre of the agrarian crisis. The Congress is hoping to make gains here. (Image: Reuters) The Systematic Voters Education and Electoral Participation (SVEEP) programme of the Election Commission of India (ECI) has gathered steam in Chhattisgarh, especially in the areas where tribal population is in the majority. Collectors in various districts of the state are building innovative campaigns aimed at maximum voter participation. For instance, in Jashpur district of the state, one of the unique aspects is that those participating take an oath by standing in a circle. The idea is that everybody is equal in a circle and theres no hierarchy. Its called the Jash Pran Chakra. Farmers in Jashpur brought their tractors to a campaign called SVEEP Kisan Mitan and formed a human as well as a tractor circle. In Kansabel village, the campaign focused on around 5,000 women who took an oath not only to vote themselves, but also bring 10 other voters along. Congress MP Shashi Tharoor on Thursday said India was staring at a "demographic disaster" as a major section of the country's youth was not yet equipped to take advantage of the job opportunities that the current century has to offer. He also made a pitch for policies to provide "right kind of education", including skill development and vocational training, to youngsters to address the issue. "Sixty five per cent of our population is under the age of 35. The ILO (International Labour Organisation) says in 2030 we will have 116 million people on the job (with the) starting age group of 19 to 23, whereas China will have only 92 million. So, we are going to be, in a sense, in a position to be the dynamic, productive, youthful nation," Tharoor said. He made the remarks at 'The Economist Summit 2018' held here. "But all of this will make sense, will only be a demographic dividend if we can in fact equip these young people to be able to take advantage of the opportunities the 21st century offers," he added. Tharoor observed that presently India was not on course to provide the opportunities of the current century -- job market-driven education -- to its youngsters. The MP said India has "wasted" its last five years when it comes to providing skill development to the youth. Without naming anyone, the former Union minister said not much has been done in India to enhance the skills of the youth in the country, despite identification of the need. The Parliamentarian also referred to a 2016 World Bank development report, which said that 69 per cent jobs in Indian economy faced threat due to technological advancements. "So, you put all that (issues) together and let's really start reacting very newly to all of this (the problems). We are looking at a demographic disaster," he said. He also said there was a need to evolve the country's education system in order to impart knowledge on teaching newer subjects, such as data analytics, machine learning, artificial intelligence and robotics. "These are the things of the 21st century. There is no point in teaching the kids what worked in the 1990s or even the first decade of the 21st century. Because those things are already getting out of date in the world," he said on the sidelines of the event. Germany's Chancellor Angela Merkel gestures as she addresses the audience during a news conference at National Palace in Mexico City, Mexico June 9, 2017. REUTERS/Carlos Jasso - RTS16G03 German Chancellor Angela Merkel vowed on Friday that Berlin would not export arms to Saudi Arabia until the murder of dissident journalist Jamal Khashoggi is clarified, a stance French President Emmanuel Macron dubbed "pure demagoguery". "The case of journalist Khashoggi is, of course, something incredible, I told the Saudi king yesterday in our telephone conversation," Merkel said at a press conference with Czech prime minister Andrej Babis. "We need to clarify the background of this horrible crime and until that, we will not supply weapons to Saudi Arabia," she added, reiterating comments made earlier this week. The stance led to a clash with France's Macron who told reporters in the Slovak capital Bratislava on Friday that stopping arms sales to Saudi Arabia would be "pure demagoguery". The sale of weapons "has nothing to do with Mr. Khashoggi. One shouldn't mix everything up," he said. Merkel also insisted that "Saudi Arabia must do everything to solve the urgent humanitarian situation in Yemen, there are currently millions of hungry people, we are witnesses of one of the greatest humanitarian catastrophes." 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. 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 jointly calling for Riyadh to clarify how Khashoggi died inside its Istanbul consulate, and for its account to "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 location of his body. Traveling can be a cathartic experience, with the journey often lending time for introspection. In a globalised world, the exchange of both people and ideas, has become the norm. However, few nations still remain shrouded in mystery. North Korea remains terra incognita for most travelers. Anita Ngai, Chief Revenue Officer at Klook, managed to secure a passage to the hermit kingdom. This is her story. My passion for discovering the unknown secrets of a destination had only made this trip possible. So, heres my story to a strange land, North Korea. I have heard much about the stories of this state and the secrets of it intrigued me on planning a trip there. When I was studying for my masters in international relations, I specialized in developing economies in Asia, and because of my childhood dream to be a spy, I was mesmerized by the mystery of North Korea. A visit to the worlds most isolated nation, where cell phones, internet, even cameras remain relatively unknown, exploring the popular attractions is a challenge. But, the reason the city is one of my favourite destinations is that it taught me how lucky I was. Travelers can only visit the country when theyre part of a state-approved tour company - this was quite an amazing experience. The most unique experience was touring in a stipulated area where you have sight of seemingly staged local North Korean people. The two-hour long morning tour in the mausoleum was quite a different story where the travelers are not allowed to even smile. I was there for a week and I became a big fan of the rules! I learnt the peaceful art of patience and respect. And it is also important to keep in mind that checking of images clicked on your phone or cameras upon exiting the country is very normal, to avoid disrespect to the Korean leader. So, for those who travel there, know that this will easily take up to 5-6 hours of your time. However, theres always a way out. Thats how I traveled back learning the true meaning of yours to explore and realised how independent travelers can actually be bonded around travel tours and packages, and you dont always need to jump off a plane to learn the meaning of adventure. As told to Anusua Banerjee by Anita Ngai. 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. Ahead of Pakistan Prime Minister Imran Khan's maiden visit, China on Friday sounded positive about extending new loans to Islamabad to avoid another IMF bailout package which may carry stringent conditions. Khan's visit from November 2 to China, Pakistan's all weather ally, will come ahead of a visit to Islamabad by International Monetary Fund officials on November 7 for formal discussions on a bailout package for the cash-strapped country. "We noted the difficulties faced by Pakistan in its financial situation...We support Pakistan in taking pro-active measures to deal with this. Actually, we also provide our outmost efforts and assistance to Pakistan," Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesperson Hua Chunying told a media briefing here Friday. "We believe Pakistan has the capability to ensure steady economic development," Hua said. She was replying to a query on whether China would consider providing new financial assistance to Pakistan during Khan's visit. Khan, accompanied by Foreign Minister Shah Mahmood Qureshi, will lead a delegation from November 2-5 to Beijing for talks with Chinese President Xi Jinping amid anxieties here over his government's approach to deal with the USD 60 billion China-Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC) following reports about Islamabad downsizing certain projects. Pakistan has reportedly sought to amend the CPEC, which Beijing touts as the flagship infrastructure programme in its vast Belt and Road Initiative, to put greater emphasis on projects that focus on social development, rather than purely on infrastructure. The US has said the debts accrued on the CPEC projects were to blame for Pakistan's current economic crisis, a statement which was rejected by both Beijing and Islamabad. The IMF had said it would closely scrutinise CPEC projects and US is opposed to use IMF money to service the Chinese loans. Though Pakistan has approached the IMF for a bailout package, it is also in touch with other "friendly nations" for loans so as to minimise borrowing from the international lender. "Their (friendly nations) response is positive. I am quite hopeful that we will not have to approach the IMF for our economic needs," Khan said on Wednesday. Pakistan has also recently secured USD 6 billion financial support from Saudi Arabia, another close ally. Replying to a query on China's expectations from Khan's visit, the Foreign Ministry spokesman said, "China and Pakistan are all weather strategic cooperative partners. We enjoy high standard bilateral relations. After Imran Khan was elected Prime Minister, he reaffirmed Pakistan's commitment to developing our bilateral relations as well as the CPEC." Recalling Chinese State Councillor and Foreign Minister Wang Yi's recent visit to Pakistan after Khan's government took over power, she said, "We compared notes and reached wide consensus on a series of issues." "We will try to make our relations a pillar underpinning the regional peace and will ensure full success for Khan's visit this time to make greater progress in China Pakistan relations," Hua added. The Pakistani premier would also visit Shanghai to attend China's international import and export fair which would be inaugurated on November 4. Khan has reiterated his government's support to CPEC projects during Wang's visit to Islamabad. Hua also spoke about Khan's reiteration of his commitment for CPEC projects. However, according to a Dawn report, during his meetings, "Khan would inform the Chinese leadership that his government wanted to bring about a significant shift in the projects falling under the purview of CPEC". Quoting sources, the report said 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 centrestage. There were also concerns in Beijing about Khan roping in Saudi Arabia to invest in Balochistan bordering Iran. The province is key to CPEC as it terminates at the strategic Gwadar port located there. The CPEC connects China's Xinjiang province with Gwadar through a rail, road and pipeline network. China do not want the CPEC projects to get caught in the Saudi-Iran rivalry. India is opposed to the CPEC as it traverses through Pakistan-occupied Kashmir. A member of staff who worked at Russell Roof Tiles for 44 years recently received a warm retirement send-off. John Jamieson began working at the roof tile manufacturer in 1974 aged 21. He started off as a lorry driver at the Lochmaben site in Scotland, but developed quickly to undertake positions in Quality Control and Yard Management. He was then promoted to Stock Control before taking up a role in Production Planning, where he remained until he retired. The manufacturer has seen a number of employees celebrate significant work milestones over the years. In fact, this year alone, ten employees across the business have received long service awards ranging from 15-30 years. Production Director Bruce Laidlaw said: Russell Roof Tiles has always understood the importance of supporting its employees, so they can build a successful career with us. John was no exception. Having been a pivotal member of the team for over 40 years, he witnessed significant changes and saw the Lochmaben site grow and expand over the years. As a thank you from us, John was presented with a watch, an engraved tankard and holiday vouchers. We wish him the best of luck in his retirement. Pictured (L-R) Managing Director Andrew Hayward, Jamieson and Laidlaw. Donald Trump US President Donald Trump said Thursday all American sanctions against Iran will be in full force on November 5, as he signed into law another legislation imposing hard-hitting sanctions on Lebanese militant group Hezbollah. "On November 5th, all US sanctions against Iran lifted by the nuclear deal will be back in full force, every sanction that we had on their originally, which would have -- if they would have just left it a little bit longer, would have been so much easier than what we've been through over the last number of years," Trump said at a White House event. After withdrawing from the Iranian nuclear deal, Trump has asked all countries to reduce their purchase of oil from Iran to zero or face secondary sanctions. India, being one of the largest importers of Iranian oil, also comes under the purview of American sanctions. To avoid this, India either needs a waiver from the US or has to bring down the purchase of Iranian oil to zero. Trump said these sanctions will be followed up with even more sanctions to address the full range of Iran's "malign conduct". "We will not allow the world's leading sponsor of terror to develop the world's deadliest weapons. Will not happen," he said. Moments earlier, Trump signed into law the Hezbollah International Financing Prevention Amendments Act (HIFPAA) of 2018, which imposes additional hard-hitting sanctions on Hezbollah. "Hezbollah has kidnapped, tortured, and murdered American citizens, including in its brutal attack in 1983 on our Marine Barracks in Beirut, Lebanon, which killed 241 American Marines, Sailors, and Soldiers, wounded 128 other American service members, and killed a Lebanese civilian. "Another bombing against the French barracks killed 58 French peacekeepers and five Lebanese civilians, White House Press Secretary Sarah Sanders said. The legislation, Sanders said, will further isolate Hezbollah from the international financial system and reduce its funding. These sanctions will target foreign persons and government agencies that knowingly assist or support Hezbollah, and Hezbollah-affiliated networks that engage in drug trafficking or other transnational crime, she said. During a White House event Thursday night to commemorate the 35th anniversary of the attack in Beirut on the Marine Barracks with survivors and family members of the victims, Trump said over the past year, his administration has levied the highest number of sanctions ever imposed on Hezbollah in a single year, by far. "Just a few moments ago I signed legislation imposing even more hard-hitting sanctions on Hezbollah to further starve them of them of their funds. And they are starving of funds," he said. 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 The son of slain journalist Jamal Khashoggi has left Saudi Arabia after the kingdom revoked a travel ban, allowing him to come to the United States the latest in the saga of the Saudi writer and dissident whose macabre killing earlier this month at the Saudi Consulate in Istanbul shocked the world. State Department spokesman Robert Palladino said Washington welcomes the decision to have Salah Khashoggi and his family leave Saudi Arabia. His US destination was not immediately known but his late father lived in the Washington area. Palladino said that US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo had discussed Jamal Khashoggi's son during his recent visit to Riyadh and "made it clear" to Saudi leaders that Washington wanted him free to leave the kingdom. "We are pleased that he is now able to do so," Palladino said. Saudi media had shown Khashoggi's son meeting with the crown prince, who reportedly expressed his condolences. Palladino also said Pompeo attended a briefing on the former Washington Post writer's death by CIA Director Gina Haspel, following her return from Turkey. The White House did not release any details of their meeting. The developments came after the kingdom on October 25 cited evidence showing Khashoggi's killing was premeditated, changing its story again to try to ease international outrage over the slaying of a prominent critic of Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman. The announcement contradicted an earlier Saudi assertion that rogue officials from the kingdom had killed Khashoggi by mistake in a brawl inside their Istanbul consulate. That assertion, in turn, backtracked from an initial statement that Saudi authorities knew nothing about what happened to the columnist for The Washington Post, who vanished after entering the consulate on October 2. The shifting explanations indicate Saudi Arabia is scrambling for a way out of the crisis that has enveloped the world's largest oil exporter and a major US ally in the Middle East. But a solution seems a long way off, partly because of deepening skepticism in Turkey and elsewhere that the brazen crime could have been carried out without the knowledge of Prince Mohammed, the kingdom's heir apparent. At a conference in Riyadh on October 24, the crown prince said the killing was a "heinous crime that cannot be justified" and warned against any efforts to "manipulate" the crisis and drive a wedge between Saudi Arabia and Turkey, which are regional rivals but also diplomatic and business partners. On October 25, Prince Mohammed attended the first meeting of a committee aiming to restructure the kingdom's intelligence services after the killing of Khashoggi, the state-run Saudi Press Agency said. Khashoggi's death has derailed the powerful prince's campaign to project a modern image of the ultraconservative country, instead highlighting the brutal lengths to which some top officials in the government have gone to silence its critics. Khashoggi, who lived in self-imposed exile in the United States for nearly a year before his death, had written critically of Prince Mohammed's crackdown on dissent. A statement by Saudi Attorney General Saud al-Mojeb attributed the latest findings of a joint Turkish-Saudi investigation to information from Turkish counterparts. The evidence of Turkish investigators "indicates that the suspects in the incident had committed their act with a premeditated intention," the Saudi statement said. After the journalist disappeared, Saudi Arabia initially insisted Khashoggi had walked out of the consulate after visiting the building. It later dropped that account for a new one, saying it had detained 18 people for what it described as an accidental killing during a "fistfight". What President Donald Trump called "one of the worst cover-ups in the history of cover-ups" was revealed to the world by Turkish leaks of information, including references to purported audio recordings of the killing, and security camera footage of the Saudi officials who were involved as they moved around Istanbul. US_China_Trade_Trade war_Tariff Kunal Singh The trade war between the United States and China is heating up. Washington has imposed tariffs on $250 billion worth of Chinese imports, and China has hit back with its own tariffs. The tensions go beyond this. US President Donald Trump is particularly targeting China's high tech ambitions. The Trump administration has already tightened controls on nuclear technology exports to China, and is looking to institute measures to curb Chinese acquisition of American tech firms. A new law will allow the US to spend $60 billion to compete with Chinas Belt and Road Initiative (BRI). Moreover, Trump has pulled the US out of the Universal Postal Union, a multilateral organisation that sets the rules for international mail exchanges, arguing that favourable shipment rates gave Chinese companies an unfair advantage over their American counterparts. Overall, these measures seem to be well coordinated. The idea is to force Beijing to agree to a deal which offers better terms to the US. But there are some who think that Trump will not stop even after achieving such a deal. His aim is bigger: decoupling of the American and Chinese economies. To evaluate this claim, one needs to examine why such a coupling took place in the first instance, and why did it take so long for the US to contemplate decoupling when the relative losses to China were visible for so long? Trade is as much strategic as it is economic. The US courted China in 1970s taking advantage of the Sino-Soviet split at the peak of the Cold War. Subsequently, the US helped assimilate China in the liberal international order that the former had built up strenuously in the aftermath of the World War II. China joined the International Monetary Fund, the World Bank, and finally the World Trade Organization. The most pressing reason for the US-China embrace had vanished by the end of the Cold War. But the US continued to give China a long rope. One reason was that the American business community had developed a stake in Chinas rapidly growing economy. Another was that the US was a tad too complacent after its victory in the Cold War after all, it was supposed to be the end of history moment. Finally, there was a belief that a growing middle class in China will inevitably lead to the countrys democratisation. By the time George W Bush was in office, it was becoming clear that the US is losing more than it is gaining from the status quo. The topmost concern was that Chinas economic gains were being ploughed to build a military threat to the US hegemony. However, decoupling was still not an option given the weight of business lobby in Washington. The Bush administration devised a solution. The genius of Bushs solution, wrote Ashley J Tellis of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, resided in the fact that it would be grounded not in seeking to keep China down but rather in attempting to raise others up. The others included India and the Indo-US nuclear deal was a result of the same thinking. However, Chinas continued rise and the relative decline of American power, especially in the aftermath of 2008 financial crisis, meant that the US policy was up for a review. Barack Obamas Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) was a brave attempt at balancing American commitment to liberal international order while excluding China from enjoying its fruits. The American withdrawal from the TPP under Trump marked an undoing of the genius solution that Bush had arrived at. While the US would still value military partnerships with Chinas regional rivals, such as India and Japan, it would not merely support their economic rise to check Chinas ambitions. The US would, from here on, itself actively work to reverse the forces that propelled China so far. Understanding this change is important for New Delhi too. One, Washingtons propensity to ignore Indias own economic gains from trade with the US has probably seen its peak. It is no surprise that while the defence and strategic component of the ties has flourished even under the Trump administration, the friction over bilateral trade and visa issues have spiralled. Two, the resentment against the liberal international order was rising in the US for various reasons. The order did not guarantee American hegemony as many expected. It even failed to democratise China. The uneven distribution of economic globalisation gave impetus to protectionist tendencies across the developed world. India was served well by this liberal international order ever since it opened up its economy in early 1990s. Now New Delhi needs to adapt to newer realities. Three, the US has concluded that letting China gain from an imbalanced trade relationship was a mistake. It doesnt want to repeat the mistake with another country. India, however, needs to remind the US that, unlike China, not every country which gains from trade with the US desires global hegemony. The best example is the US-Japan economic tension in the 1980s. That those problems were amicably resolved had a great deal to do with close security alliance between the US and Japan. A stronger India, both in economic and military terms, remains in American interests. The reason is simple: India, like the Japan of 1980s, is largely a status-quoist power. (Kunal Singh is a New Delhi-based strategic affairs analyst. Views are personal) COPENHAGEN, DENMARK - JULY 10: Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe during his meeting with Danish Prime Minister Lars Loekke Rasmussen at the PM's Office on July 10, 2017 in Copenhagen, Denmark. The two heads of state discussed the situation on the Korean peninsula and how Japan and Denmark could enhance their strategic partnership further. The Japanese PM said during their joint press conference that North Korea undermines the international order seriously. (Photo by Ole Jensen - Corbis/Corbis via Getty Images) Prime Minister Shinzo Abe held a second meeting with his Chinese counterpart Li Keqiang on Friday during the first formal visit to Beijing by a Japanese leader in nearly seven years that heralds warming ties following years of acrimony. Speaking to reporters afterward, Li said 500 business agreements worth USD 18 billion had been signed between Chinese and Japanese companies during the visit, displaying the "bright future" for cooperation between the sides. Abe, who has been accompanied by a 500-strong business delegation, expressed hopes for closer ties and a shift in relations from an age of "competition to cooperation," an apparent reference to rifts that until recently have muted Japanese business interests in China. Abe is due to meet Chinese President Xi Jinping later Friday, possibly cementing the steady recovery in relations that hit a low in 2012 amid a dispute over East China Sea islands. Ties have also been dogged by enduring Chinese resentment over Japan's invasion and occupation during World War II and a political, military and economic rivalry for influence in Asia and beyond. However, for now at least, the sides appear to have drawn closer by economic necessity brought about partly by President Donald Trump's punitive tariffs on imports. Asia's two largest economies are seeking to deepen trade, investment and cooperation on infrastructure and other projects in third countries. China is Japan's largest trading partner and economic ties have remained strong despite political differences. Abe is scheduled to return to Japan on Saturday. The last such visit was in late 2011. US President Donald Trump has said all sanctions against Iran lifted by the 2015 nuclear deal will be back in "full force" from November 5 and promised more in the future to prevent Tehran from developing the world's deadliest weapons. In May, the Trump administration withdrew the US from the Iranian nuclear deal and reimposed a series of tough sanctions on Iran, citing the Islamic nation's 'malign activities'. While the first phase of sanctions is already in place, the sanctions would come into full force on November 4 and the US expects all countries, including India, to bring down their import of Iranian oil to zero by then or face secondary sanctions. To avoid this, India either needs a waiver from the US or has to bring down the purchase of Iranian oil to zero. "On November 5th, all US sanctions against Iran lifted by the nuclear deal will be back in full force, every sanction that we had on their originally, which would have -- if they would have just left it a little bit longer, would have been so much easier than what we've been through over the last number of years," Trump said at a White House event. His remarks came as he signed new sanctions on Thursday targeting the Iranian-funded Lebanese militant group Hezbollah, which is considered a terrorist organisation by the US. Trump said these sanctions will be followed up with even more sanctions to address the full range of Iran's "malign conduct". "We will not allow the world's leading sponsor of terror to develop the world's deadliest weapons. Will not happen," he said. The US government has made it clear that any country that continues to do business with Iran after November 4 will be blocked from accessing the American banking and financial system. Though India has already reduced its import, it has indicated that it is unlikely to go down to zero given its massive energy needs. India and the US are currently in talks on this issue. Three new employees have joined tesa. The technical adhesive tape manufacturer has welcomed Jon Snow (pictured) as Sales Area Representative for Craftsmen, responsible for an area covering the northern Home Counties up to and including Scotland. Snows appointment is a promotion from the companys warehouse operation, where he worked for the past three years. The Milton Keynes UK headquarters will remain his base. Neil Walker will take on the role of Key Account Manager, Building Supply. He previously worked as Sales Area Manager for tesas industrial operations. Nigel Jarram joins tesas UK Sales team in the role of Sales Area Manager, Industry Business for the Midlands. He was previously Sales Area Representative at Craftsmen, where he worked for more than three years. Jeremy Smith, Trade Marketing Manager at tesa, said: These appointments form part of our commitment to deliver the very best service to our distributor network across the industrial and consumer markets. Jon, Neil and Nigel bring a wealth of experience to the table and we are confident they will play a key role in continuing to deliver a high standard of service to our industry partners. Health-conscious employees at SR Timber attended a Heart Health session run by the British Heart Foundation, which included a demonstration of CPR, as part of its partnership with the charity. This was to celebrate World Heart Day, with the aim of helping staff to get a better understanding of how to look after their own hearts and what to do if someone has a heart attack. Staff practised CPR on Annie, the BHF dummy, and learned about cardiovascular disease and how to reduce the risks associated with it. The session was organised by SR Timbers Operations Manager Steve Hill who has been appointed to the role of Heart Monitor within the company to coordinate its fundraising activities for the charity. He said that the importance of heart health hit home to staff after the BHF said that in the East Midlands (where SR Timber is based) alone, around 19,249 people lose their lives to conditions including heart disease, stroke and heart failure every year. He called the session a real eye-opener, and said: Were all very glad we took part because it made us realise that virtually everyone is touched by cardiovascular disease in some way, said Steve. As well as giving us lots of information, there was a very practical side to it, and giving everyone the opportunity to practise on Annie was invaluable because CPR really can be the difference between life and death. The session served to help us to double our efforts in raising awareness and much-needed funds for the charity, which is the biggest independent funder of cardiovascular research in the UK. As part of the Heart Health session, a representative from the BHF covered some of the risk factors that increase the likelihood of getting cardiovascular disease, such as smoking, high blood pressure, high blood cholesterol, physical inactivity, being overweight or obese, having diabetes or having a family history of coronary heart disease or stroke. It also covered some of the symptoms of a heart attack, such as pain or discomfort in the chest that doesnt go away (with the pain then spreading to the left or right arm or even to the neck and jaw), feeling sick and having a shortness of breath. The BMF has been SR Timbers charity partner since earlier this year. Pictured (L-R) Richard Stone, Jason Lumley, Steve Hill, Shaun Revill and Derek Kilgariff from the BHF. That Torontos financial sector is ranked third in North America could also provide a glimpse into what is to come. As of 2017, the ranking is number 11 globally for the financial sector, he continued. What this means is that in the world, Toronto is the eighth-most livable city and our job sector is going to grow, as well, in the next few years. Torontos condo market is undervalued, so whoever can get a piece of Toronto real estate should do it while its still available. Our transportation system is being improvedthe city is changing implementation, said Sally. A lot of changes are going to turn this into a global city. Right now everyone knows where Toronto is. We had 28,900 new tech jobs created in Toronto, and thats more than the San Francisco Bay Area, Seattle and Washington D.C. combined. Major players in the tech industry are setting up shop in the city, including Microsoft, Uber, Shopify, Airbnb, and Google Sidewalk Labs. Moreover, a slew of new jobs in the sector will be created and Sally believes that will have an impact on condo valuations, believes Sally. Coupled with the fact that new tech sector jobs will be created in the years ahead, and the fact that supply already lags well behind demand, Toronto condo valuations are on pace to surge. Two Wells Fargo executives are headed out the door as the banks parade of scandals continues. The banking giant announced Wednesday that Hope Hardison, its chief administrative officer, and David Julian, its chief auditor, have taken leaves of absence. Hardison and Julian will no longer be members of Wells Fargos operating committee, the bank said. Wells Fargo said that the leaves of absence were linked to ongoing reviews into its sales practices by federal regulators. A bank spokesman would not comment on why the executives werent simply fired, according to a CNN report. Oil rose as a rout in global equity markets subsided and OPEC signaled it may curb output within months. Futures advanced as much as 1.2 percent in New York on Thursday, wiping out earlier losses. Stock markets moved higher in the U.S. and Europe, fueled by optimism about what positive profit reports portend for economic growth. Meanwhile, the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries indicated it may adjust output limits to prevent a re-emergence of a price-killing glut. The cartel should expand production to protect "the health of the growth of the global economy," International Energy Agency Director Fatih Birol said in an interview in London. Without an increase, crude supplies will soon tighten, imperiling economic activity, he said. PREVIOUSLY: Oil climbs as refiners signal imminent ramp up post-maintenance "The equity market seems to be stabilizing a bit today and that's probably lending oil a little bit of support," said Gene McGillian, manager of market research at Tradition Energy. Despite Thursday's gain, oil is on track for the worst monthly performance since July 2016 as trade tensions stoked concerns about global energy demand at a time when American crude stockpiles are increasing. International wild cards include the impact of U.S. sanctions on Iranian exports, the collapse of Venezuela's economy and crude output, and perennial threats to production in West and North Africa. INVENTORIES: Crude inventories rise, but less than some projections "There needs to be a driver which can push prices up again and Iran sanctions kicking in might be one of them," said Hans van Cleef, senior energy economist at ABN Amro Bank NV. West Texas Intermediate for December delivery rose 35 cents to $67.17 a barrel at 11:05 a.m. on the New York Mercantile Exchange. Brent for December settlement gained 32 cents to $76.49 on the London-based ICE Futures Europe exchange. The global benchmark traded at a $9.32 premium to WTI. See also: WTI and Stocks Correlation Returns With Demand Concerns U.S. crude inventories climbed by 6.35 million barrels last week for the longest streak of gains since March 2017, the Energy Information Administration reported on Wednesday. That compared with the median 3.7 million-barrel increase forecast in a Bloomberg survey. --With assistance from Jessica Summers, Alex Longley and Tsuyoshi Inajima. 2018 Bloomberg L.P. The Permian West Texas Intermediate crude futures contract proposed by Intercontinental Exchange and announced in June went live this week. "We had a good launch," Jeff Barbuto, ICE's vice president, oil markets, said in a phone interview on the contract's first day of trading. He estimated there were more than 400 lots traded with bids and offers for the first four calendar months of the contract. He said there also were at least four calendar spread markets trading, as well as inter-commodity spreads for Houston-WTI and Houston-Brent quoted and traded at a good rate. "We saw several physical players trading, and brokers put orders through," Barbuto said. "There were also some participants that were completely new to the USGC oil market." Participants offered great feedback, he said. "The hope is to bring new liquidity into the market," Barbuto said. It's always tricky launching a new contract, he said, but the new Permian WTI contract had the benefit of a significant portion of the market showing up, testing and using the trading system for the new contract. The new contract is for barrels physically delivered in Houston and is designed to provide hedging and trading opportunities for anyone with exposure to U.S. crudes. Delivery is for barrels off the Longhorn and BridgeTex pipelines into Magellan Midstream Partners' terminal in East Houston. Barbuto said Magellan is known for its quality control, and the market trusts the quality that is coming off those pipelines. As the U.S. continues to develop its crude exports, he said, "It's all about getting a USGC crude futures contract to a place where it's transparent enough, liquid enough and accessible enough for the market to trade and manage risk where U.S. crude meet the international marketplace." The Permian Basin is estimated to be producing 3.5 million barrels a day, much of it headed for the export market to meet growing international demand for light sweet crude. In designing the new futures contract, ICE determined Houston will be the central delivery point for domestic crude. ICE plans to list 36 months of flat price Permian WTI (HOU) contracts and a full matrix of calendar spreads, as well as inter-commodity spreads for HOU/Brent and HOU/WTI. The impact of the pipeline bottleneck afflicting the Permian Basin, and the resulting gap in price between West Texas Intermediate Midland and WTI Cushing is beginning to be felt among the region's service companies. Westwood Global Energy Group, through its SatScout service, is reporting a 6 percent decline in observed well completions in September, with the month's 472 wells down from 502 wells in August and 510 wells during the peak month of June. SatScout had begun identifying a decline in completion activity beginning in late August. "From our standpoint, our clients are sensing a cooling off," Todd Bush, principal with Energent Group, Westwood's North American unconventional market intelligence service, said in a phone interview from his Houston office. "We're quantifying the cooling off," he said. "At 6 percent, there's still a slowing of activity, at least on the completion side." The top 15 most active Permian operators by number of wells completed in 2018 include 13 public and two private operators, according to Westwood. In September, the top 15 operators accounted for 46 percent of all activity and declined by 8 percent from the previous month. One operator's well completion activity more than halved, Westwood said. The drilling side tells a different story, Bush said. In the first week of January, the rig count was at 400. Today it stands at 490, he said. "Year-to-date, we're looking at a pretty sizable increase," he said. "There's been a strong increase in drilling, though the last couple of weeks have been flat." He said there are several different reasons for the continued drilling activity -- from drilling wells in order to hold a lease by production, to pad drilling. The slowdown in completion activity "has a direct effect on the amount of sand consumed, and it also means less water consumption," said Bush. The study said the 6 percent decline in completions equates to a loss of 185,000 tons of frac sand demand and a demand decline of 375 million gallons of water. The silver lining in this decline is that companies had been busily ramping up to meet activity levels and now they have the opportunity to catch up, Bush said. "We're projecting a slowdown on the completion side, but that will enable other service providers and equipment providers to work down their backlog," he said. "As pipeline capacity increases, we anticipate more demand for completion crews, frac sand and water," Bush said. Bush said he doesn't anticipate job losses from the slowdown. "The companies we've talked to, we expect them to redeploy their crews and not have any layoffs, especially as they expect in the next nine to 12 months they'll need more crews." The recently launched SatScout service uses daily satellite imagery, machine learning and Westwood's team of analysts to identify when an operator constructs a drill pad, rigs up for drilling or started completing a well with a frac crew. For example, in the second quarter of 2018, SatScout identified that: --Diamondback Energy completed 43 wells with no previous company guidance, --Parsley Energy completed 25 percent more wells than the company stated during the first quarter, --Cimarex Energy fell short of its completion guidance by 28 percent, and --Energen Resources completed 86 percent more wells than announced previously. Samaritan Counseling Center hosted its 24th annual Family of the Year Celebration luncheon Tuesday at Green Tree Country Club. The event recognizes families from Midland and Odessa and the recipient of the Samaritan Award. Proceeds from the luncheon benefit the center and its programs. At the Samaritan family, were so blessed to honor all three recipients, executive director Risse Rogers said in a phone interview. The two families and H-E-B absolutely represent what a Samaritan is. The families are selected through their overall involvement in the community. The family of Marcy and Doug Tull was named Midland Family of the Year. What an incredibly family they are, Rogers said. They have given their time and talents and philanthropy to so many. Well never know how many lives both of our families have touched continually and forever. The Tulls founded Rock the Desert Ministries 19 years ago. The ministry presents the annual Rock the Desert music festival. Doug Tull was humbled by the recognition but gives credit elsewhere. It was quite an honor, and its been kingdom work, he said. This journey of RTD Ministries is about him and not us. God called us to do this years ago, and its been fun to watch what hes done and allowed our family to be a part of this. The family of Renee and Rich Earls was honored as Odessa Family of the Year. H-E-B was given the Samaritan Award for its community involvement. Colton Batchelor, H-E-B director of retail operations for West Texas, accepted the award and served as the luncheons keynote speaker. H-E-B was selected for its local involvement and emergency response. Anywhere H-E-B is located, they are very active in that community, Rogers said. We have examples of that here with their Feast of Sharing and other campaigns. But then they are some of the first responders to emergencies. They were stepping in right away with the recent Texas floods and were instrumental in helping out. U.S. Customs and Border Protection said they arrested multiple Mara Salvatrucha, or MS-13, gang members this week in the Rio Grande Valley. The first arrest was made by Brownsville agents on Sunday night when agents apprehended four immigrants entering the U.S. The arrests led to the discovery of one MS-13 gang member with an extensive criminal history including robbery and aggravated assault, the agency said. Dyess Air Force Base officials reported Friday that the B-1B Lancer aircraft that has been housed at Midland International for months was flown to Oklahoma for maintenance and upgrades. After undergoing maintenance to get the aircraft into a safely operable condition, a crew from the 10th Flight Test Squadron flew the aircraft Friday to Tinker Air Force Base in Oklahoma, according to a press release from the Air Force. While at Tinker AFB, the B-1B will undergo depot maintenance and upgrades at the Oklahoma City Air Logistics Complex and be quality-tested by the 10th FLTS. State Rep. Tom Craddick posed a rather obvious question to kick off the portion of a legislative forum dealing with roads. 49 percent of all the rigs in the country are in the Permian Basin; what about the roads? It is a question that hundreds of people from Midland to Pecos and from Big Lake to Seminole have been asking since the shale revolution created a production renaissance in the Permian. Those participating in the Permian Basin Petroleum Associations legislative forum on Thursday reminded PBPA members that obtaining funding wont be easy, not when there is a population explosion in Dallas-Fort Worth, Houston and San Antonio. West Texas legislators told those in attendance at the Petroleum Club there will be attempts to bring more revenue to the region. As Craddick said in his introduction of the topic, there arent many truckers eager to travel the state highway from Pecos north into New Mexico because of the danger of driving on such an inadequate highway. A panel that included state Sen. Kel Seliger, state Rep. Dustin Burrows, Sen. Dawn Buckingham and state Rep. Brooks Landgraff said there will be efforts, such as the bill in a previous session that dedicated money from a severance tax and put it back into the counties where oil was produced. That was wildly popular our here, Burrows said. It was not lost on the members of the panel of the need to reinvest in roads. As Buckingham said, this will be the session of infrastructure. However, Hurricane Harvey recovery will garner a lions share of attention as will other natural disasters. And with the number of representatives in Harris County outnumbering the entire representation in West Texas, getting additional funding will be tough. The logic is obvious, Seliger said. The mechanism is less obvious. There has to be constant pressure, including by West Texas voters, to remind state leaders their responsibility to take care of West Texas, panelists said. As Buckingham said, Texas must have adequate road infrastructure to ship the food, fuel and fiber that the region produces and thats needed by Texas and its economy. On education Seliger said a strategy to end Robin Hood requires the state to increase from 38 percent to 50 percent the share of the budget dedicated to education. The Amarillo Republican and member of the Senate Education Committee told those in attendance there are no easy answers to fixing school finance. He said he would be wary of a sales tax solution because of the volatility of the states economy. He told the Reporter-Telegram afterward the notion that just closing a loophole is not the answer to the $40 billion education finance problem. His comment referenced a question about Mike Colliers suggestion that some commercial and industrial property owners are taking advantage of a loophole in a 1997 Equal and Uniform law that was meant to protect homeowners and small businesses. Collier told the Reporter-Telegram earlier this week that language in the bill was worded improperly. Owners of commercial and industrial properties have been able to shake down appraisal districts across the state to the tune of billions of dollars, the candidate said. Collier said Robin Hood payments totaled around $2 billion in 2018 and the amount is expected to increase to $2.5 billion in 2019. If $40 billion a year is what we are talking about, there is no quick fix, Seliger said. It is more complex than that. All of the panelists made clear the ultimate goal of any solution is that all local dollars stay at home, and as Buckingham said, Texans should be wary of a system of giving all their money to the state and then having the state determine what you get. A 32-year-old Midland man died early Thursday morning after being hit by a pickup on Wadley Avenue, and the pickup's driver was arrested in connection with the incident. James Ryan Gonzalez pulled out of a parking lot on the north side of the 3300 block of West Wadley Avenue in a Ford Mustang at about 2 a.m. and was headed westbound. He lost control of the car, which hit the south curb and was facing westbound in the eastbound lanes, according to a press release from the city's spokeswoman. Gonzalez got out of the car and attempted to push it off the street. | BY Ricki Green | In support of this years partnership with The Royal Hospital for Women and BAZAAR in Bloom, Westfield Sydney has collaborated with internationally acclaimed photographer, director and artist Alina Gozina to present to the public this stunning photographic artwork lightbox installation, showcasing in high definition and intimate detail some of the most exhilarating shots of floral blooms you may ever see Says Alina: Ive shot these flowers the way I shoot notable people, using the same technique and approach, bathing the subject in intricate studio light, capturing the intimate details and the soul of these stunning natural wonders at that moment in time. This is Alinas second collaboration with Westfield, her first featuring in 2017 titled At Your Door: The Doormen of New York City. Gozina recently returned from New York last week, where she shot Kevin Rudd for the cover of Good Weekend Magazine as well as a billboard campaign for a new HBO show. Alinas new body of work The Harlem Stories of the Heart has been selected to open as a solo show by the Head On Photo Festival in May 2019. The Last Snow of New York, another solo exhibition, is set to open in June 2019. Alina is represented by Flint Productions and Wentworth Galleries. To see more work by Alina visit her websites: For enquiries and art work acquisition, please contact: Emma Chappel / art@alinagozina.com Tim Berriman / tim@flintsydney.com A pair of children apparently abandoned by their mother inside a northwest Houston cell phone store are now in Child Protective Custody. It all unfolded around 11:30 a.m. inside the Boost Mobile store in the 6000 block of W. Tidwell Road. 'HE WAS DEAD SERIOUS': Rock band said it received death threat at Houston concert The mother brought her two boys, ages two and 10, into the store and then left to walk around in the s parking lot, according to store manager Muhammad Naeem. She walked back inside and told Naeem that she's recently been living on the streets since her partner kicked her and the two children out of his home. "I worried about the kids," Naeem said. "I asked, 'are you OK?' She said, 'do you want my kids?'" That's when the woman walked off, leaving her children and purse behind, Naeem said. "Once (one of the children) understood that his mom left, he started crying a lot," he said. Officers with the Houston Police Department came to the store and took a report. They are currently searching for the mother. An HPD spokesman said the Special Victim's Unit has launched an investigation into the incident. They are looking to interview the woman to determine if she is actually the mother of the children. The spokesman said it is too early to determine if any charges will be filed. CPS is trying to reunite the children with family members, according to spokesperson Tejal Patel. She said the boys are healthy and did not show any signs abuse or neglect. Jay R. Jordan covers breaking news in the Houston area. Read him on our breaking news site, Chron.com, and our subscriber site, HoustonChronicle.com | Follow him on Twitter at @JayRJordan | Email him at jay.jordan@chron.com | Text CHRON to 77453 to receive breaking news alerts by text message | BY Ricki Green | New Zealand is back with its ongoing investigation into why the country is missing off world maps. Launching today, Tourism New Zealands follow-up video via Augusto features passionate conspiracy theorist and New Zealand comedian, Rhys Darby and his attempt to solve the global mystery. New Zealand Prime Minister, Jacinda Ardern returns alongside Darby who has been on the trail for six months to solve the unfathomable question of how a country bigger than the UK could be left off so many maps. This time, the duo is backed by world-renowned director and fellow Kiwi, Sir Peter Jackson who shares his theory that New Zealand is closer than everyone thinks in fact, its in the middle of the earth. Long-time friend of New Zealand, British rock star Ed Sheeran makes a cameo in the video not surprising given his recent tea and scones date with Prime Minister Ardern and close connection with Sir Peter Jackson, performing the soundtrack I See Fire on his 2013 film The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug. I love New Zealand it stole my heart, and it feels bonkers anyone could miss it off a map, said Sheeran. Prime Minister Ardern said, Ive loved seeing the global response to our campaign. With a little help from Sir Peter, my hope is that people will see New Zealand right where it deserves to be on the top of their list of places to visit! | BY Lynchy | McCann Worldgroup China has appointed Sheena Jeng as Chief Creative Officer. Based in Shanghai, Jeng joins McCann with a remit to drive the agencys expanding business, and to unite and enhance MWG Chinas creative offerings across all disciplines and clients. Previously with Publicis, Jeng has over 20 years of experience in the Greater China region, building strong business partnerships with clients such as Tencent, Buick, LOreal, Citibank, P&G, Unilever, J&J, Coca-Cola, Fidelity, Avon, Sanofi, Philips, and Nestle amongst others. Her work has garnered recognition from major national and international shows including, Cannes, D&AD, One Show, Spikes, Epica, New York Festival, AdFest and the China 4A and Long-Xi awards. Additionally, Jeng is well-respected in the industry, having served as Vice Chairman of the Association of Accredited Advertising Agencies of China and Vice Chairman of Chinas Advertising Association of Commerce and has been named Taiwans Best Advertising Professional and Chinas Top Female Advertising Professional. Charles Cadell, President of McCann Worldgroup Asia Pacific, commented, As the worlds second largest advertising market, continued success in China is key to McCann, so I am delighted to welcome a creative of Sheenas calibre to the team. Ronald Sun, together with Mike Zeng, Co-CEOs of McCann Worldgroup China said, We are thrilled to have top-notch creative, Sheena, join the network. Her expertise will take our work to the next level, enhancing our client offerings. Jeng remarked, I look forward to being a proud member of McCann and enabling brands to play a meaningful role in peoples lives. Megyn Kelly appears to be on her way out at "Today," according to sources who told The Washington Post that her show will stop airing after her comment about blackface being OK when she was a child. News of her likely exit comes less than two years after her own controversial start at the network. Back then, she took over the "Today" time slot held by Al Roker and Tamron Hall, leading to Hall's sudden exit from NBC. The rumors raged in early 2017 that the "Today" show lineup was primed for a shake-up. According to reports citing inside sources, NBC was in talks with former Fox News anchor Kelly to take over the 9 a.m. slot, which at the time was anchored by Roker and Hall. Then on Feb. 1, 2017, NBC made the abrupt announcement: Hall left the network the day before, on the day her contract was up. Her quick departure also meant she was not able to say goodbye on air. "Tamron is an exceptional journalist, we valued and enjoyed her work at 'Today' and MSNBC and hoped that she would decide to stay," a statement from NBC said. "We are disappointed that she has chosen to leave, but we wish her all the best." In a statement of her own, Hall said "the last 10 years have been beyond anything I could have imagined, and I'm grateful. I'm also very excited about the next chapter. To all my great colleagues, I will miss you and I will be rooting for you." Despite the calm words, Page Six came out with some juicy details, including that Hall reportedly learned she was being replaced just before she went on air the Friday before. Roker posted a tweet celebrating the seven-week ratings streak the 9 a.m. hour had enjoyed, reportedly hours after they learned about being replaced by Kelly. People reported Hall viewed the idea of being replaced as a demotion; citing its own sources, People wrote Hall had been offered a multimillion-dollar deal, and she knew her slot was never set in stone. Regardless of when and how she found out, fans of Hall were not pleased, particularly since she was the first black female anchor on "Today" and her replacement had previous controversies surrounding race (like the time she insisted to children watching her Fox show that Santa Claus is white and always will be). Hall's departure "saddened" the National Association of Black Journalists, which noted that replacing Hall and Roker with Kelly was "seen by industry professionals as whitewashing." The NABJ also called attention to Kelly's past work on Fox. "Kelly has a well-documented history of offensive remarks regarding people of color," the NABJ said in a statement. "On 'The Kelly File,' her Fox News show, the host said then-First Lady Michelle Obama's commencement address at Tuskegee University pandered to a 'culture of victimization.'" It was not the first time "Today" had faced this kind of drama: The shake-up reminded people of Ann Curry's disastrous 2012 exit, which many blamed partially on her co-host Matt Lauer. Curry broke down in tears as she said goodbye on air: "For all of you who saw me as a groundbreaker: I'm sorry I couldn't carry the ball over the finish line, but man, I did try!" This week, Kelly apologized and said she was sorry for her comments about blackface. She said she "defended the idea, saying as long as it was respectful and part of a Halloween costume, it seemed OK. Well, I was wrong." She also sent an email to NBC staffers, but not everyone felt it was sufficient, including one of the "Today" personalities who used to be a co-host during her time slot. "The fact is, while she apologized to the staff, she owes a bigger apology to folks of color around the country," Roker said Wednesday. For her part, Hall has stayed quiet and refrained from publicly commenting on this week's controversy. She has been busy, however, posting links on Twitter to her public appearances, including photos of her presenting Soledad O'Brien with an award at the Harlem United Boulevard Bash Gala. "Crazy happy!!!!" she wrote, retweeting O'Brien's photo of the pair from the gala. "Living our best lives..." Hall is launching her own talk show with ABC next fall. WINCHESTER Winchester School District is asking community members to take a drive to benefit a fund drive, and community response has turned the effort into an event. to do a drive for the schools Drive 4-UR School that has turned into an event thanks to the generosity of local businesses. The Drive 4-UR School event will be from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. Saturday at Winchester Grade School. For each person who test-drives a Ford vehicle, Ford Motor Company and Westown Ford of Jacksonville will donate $20 to the school. A test drive of a Ford Fusion will be worth an extra $10 donation for a total of $30 donated up to $8,000. We would love for everyone to come down and enjoy some of the fun activities we have going and to test-drive a vehicle for a good cause, Winchester Grade School Principal Andy Stumpf said. With Westown Ford in the mix, the school district didnt want to leave out Marshalls Chevrolet, which has been a huge supporter of the district. Marshalls was not only supportive of the idea of participating but volunteers to have a cookout from 11 a.m. to 1 p.m. Saturday, Stumpf said. The cookout will include free hot dogs, pumpkin painting, and kid fingerprinting by the Scott County Sheriffs Department. It doesnt surprise me at all, Stumpf said. Paul and Jay (Rueter) have been big supporters of Winchester schools over the years This is people coming together, regardless of business and background, to help our students. The school also will have a bus present for the WGEM Fall Harvest Air Specialist School Challenge, through which people can donate non-perishable food items in an attempt to win the school $1,000 if it is one of the challenges top two donors. There is no charge to test-drive any of the vehicles. Those test-driving the vehicles need only to have a valid drivers license and be 18 or older. There is a limit of one donation per household. The test-drive route will go around the high school and back toward the pre-kindergarten building, where the vehicles will be queued. Funds generated from the event will go toward paying off the new handicap-accessible playground equipment and the new Promethean boards that were installed last year, Stumpf said. Nick Draper can be reached at 217-245-6121, ext. 1223, or on Twitter @nick_draper. Political class must sacrifice in the ... Calaveras County Superior Court View Photos San Andreas, CA The trial date may be coming soon for a man accused of murdering his sister in her San Andreas apartment and then absconding with her truck to Nevada. According to the Calaveras County District Attorneys Office, Nov. 9 is the next court appearance for Sean McGeough, who has been in custody for the past 15 months since authorities arrested him in the Reno-Sparks area on outstanding related warrants. McGeough, who had been living in a San Diego transient community before arriving in Calaveras County, is accused of the September 2016 murder of Stephanie McGeough. A resident of Creekside Apartments. Sheriffs officials discovered her body when called to her unit to do a welfare check. As reported here, even while autopsy results were pending, sheriffs officials were treating the case as a homicide and initiated a broad search for a silver 2004 Chevrolet Tahoe registered to the victim. The vehicle, as reported here, was recovered shortly afterwards in the Sparks-Reno, Nevada area. At preliminary hearings last fall McGeough was assigned a public defender. The DAs office notes that activities that have extended the pre-trial process have included a change in McGeoughs primary defense attorney due to that person leaving the public defenders office, and expert witness review and testimony scheduling conflicts. Following McGeoughs most recent court appearance earlier this month and the determination that an earlier trial date of Nov. 7 would have to be moved out, Clarke Broadcasting talked with Deputy District Attorney Brad Jones, who noted the processes involved and his offices efforts to reschedule a new date for the trial. At this point he estimates it will be early in the new year. Sacramento, CA Californias planned bullet train had two legal victories this week. The Associated Press reports the high speed rail authority reached a settlement on Wednesday with the small community of Shafter, ending one of several lawsuits filed over the plan to build the train between Los Angeles and San Francisco. Shafter had filed a California Environmental Quality Act (CEQA) lawsuit arguing that the plan would hinder its ability to make improvements on a freight line already running through the town. Then yesterday, a judge tentatively rejected arguments that the authority is improperly spending voter-approved bond money. Judge Richard Sueyoshi issued the tentative ruling in Sacramento County Superior Court, but the plaintiffs, Central Valley farmer John Tos and former head of the rail authority Quentin Kopp, will appear in court today for further discussions. $10-million in initial bond money for the project was approved by voters in 2008, and cost over-runs and delays have spiked the overall price tag to around $77-billion. Much of the funding still needs to be identified/generated by the state. It is tentatively scheduled to be completed around 2033. Clint Gould and Curtis Kvamme View Photos Sonora, CA This weekends Mother Lode Views will focus on the 36,400 acre Donnell Fire that ignited on August 1st in the Stanislaus National Forest. The fire is still putting off smoke in the forest and it will take a major rain event to finally bring it to full containment. On this weekends Mother Lode Views, Deputy Stanislaus National Forest Fire Management Officer Clint Gould will talk about many of the challenges firefighters faced in fighting the blaze. In addition, Forest Service Soil Scientist Curtis Kvamme will speak about the recent BAER report put together that analyzes the impacts of the fire, and makes recommendations to prevent things like flooding and rockslides. They will speak about things travelers need to keep in mind when heading up near the fire in the coming months. Two visitors to Yosemite National Park apparently fell to their deaths from Taft Point, an area known for its spectacular views 3,000 feet down to the valley floor, officials said Thursday. The bodies of an unidentified man and woman were being recovered by rangers, said Jamie Richards, a park spokeswoman. The cause of the incident is under investigation. Richards said visitors spotted the two bodies Wednesday on the steep terrain below Taft Point, but not all the way down on the valley floor. Yosemite rangers climbed down to them Thursday, she said, and began the recovery effort. Right now it looks like they fell from Taft Point, Richards said. Taft Point, a famous 7,500-foot elevation promontory, is a popular day hike destination off Glacier Point Road. Hikers can walk 1.1 miles directly to the cliffs edge and take in dizzying views of Yosemite Valley, El Capitan and Yosemite Falls. The granite ledge hanging over the edge like a diving board is a favorite place for snapshots. A picture taken inadvertently by a professional photographer of a couple getting engaged at the point went viral last week. The photographer reportedly looked for the couple, but couldnt find them. Richards said there is no way of knowing right now who the two dead people are, whether they were climbers or tourists, how or why they fell. She said, however, that there is a safety railing at the edge of the point. It is way too early for us to speculate on any of those questions, she said. The investigation is probably going to take several weeks and any answers will come out of that investigation. Richards said there have been 10 fatalities in the park this year. Six of those park visitors have fallen to their deaths. In May, a 29-year-old man fell from the climbing cables on Half Dome. In June, two veteran rock climbers, ages 45 and 42, fell from El Capitan. In September, an 18-year-old man fell from Nevada Fall. Richards said the tragedy is a good reminder to stay on the designated trails and stay within your physical limits. Steve Rubenstein and Peter Fimrite are San Francisco Chronicle staff writers. Email: srubenstein@sfchronicle.com, pfimrite@sfchronicle.com Twitter: @SteveRubeSF, @pfimrite STAMFORD Two more arrests have been made in the wild altercation outside a West Side Chinese restaurant stemming from a customer claiming he found a mouse in his food. Juwan Knight, 24, has been charged with second-degree assault and conspiracy to commit third-degree assault and Ervin Thompson, 25, has been charged with third-degree assault and conspiracy to commit third-degree assault. The charges stem from an incident in August when a China XPress customer demanded a refund because he claimed the fried rice he purchased the previous night had a mouse in it, police said. An employee looked inside the bag of food and refused to give 25-year-old Antwaun Boyd a refund because he did not see a mouse. Boyd, however, told police the employee pulled the rodent out of the rice and got rid of it. According to restaurant employees, Boyd became agitated and yelled at employees. Police said Boyd began arguing with the restaurant owner and took off his shirt to instigate a fight. Police said Boyd called a friend asking for help fight the employees, police said. A few minutes later, police said three people got out of a car and Boyd punched one of the employees in the face. A fight then broke out between the employees and Boyd and his friends. Knight slammed an employee to the ground and repeatedly punched the man in the face, according to his arrest affidavit. Thompson punched the same employee in the face, the arrest affidavit said. Boyd fled the with his friends, leaving his grandmother at the restaurant. The grandmother was struck with a wooden spoon, police said. No pleas have been made in the case. Knight declined comment and Thompson could not be reached for comment. Boyd was charged in August with second-degree assault and disorderly conduct. jnickerson@stamfordadvocate.com Explosive devices targeting U.S. Senator Kamala Harris and billionaire Democratic activist Tom Steyer were intercepted Friday in what authorities called a Florida mans plot to mail more than a dozen pipe bombs to politicians and public figures critical of President Trump. An improvised explosive device, or IED, sent in a package addressed to Harris was discovered by a post office worker in Sacramento, according to the FBI. A second bomb in a package addressed to Steyer was found at a mail processing facility at 1625 Rollins Rd. in Burlingame. The packages were discovered on the same day a nationwide manhunt ended with the arrest of Cesar Sayoc, 56, who was taken into custody in Plantation, Fla. His fingerprints and DNA were allegedly found on another bomb mailed to Rep. Maxine Waters, D-Los Angeles. At least 13 packages containing pipe bombs were sent to Democratic Party leaders including former President Barack Obama, former Vice President Joe Biden and Trumps 2016 election opponent, Hillary Clinton, authorities said. Postal service workers in Burlingame were escorted out of the Rollins Road facility after the device was discovered. Agents continued investigating the scene Friday afternoon. The device was taken off-site, according to Burlingame police. FBI officials in San Francisco tweeted that the package was rendered safe around 1 p.m. Mail carrier Cynthia Maffei said she was about to leave the facility around 10 a.m. when the package sent to Steyer was found by another employee. Thirty minutes later, Maffei said, the post office was evacuated. They were seriously telling us to get out now, she said. It makes me nervous. Supervisors told her to forget everything, get out of the building and not come back for the day, Maffei said. Steyer ran the hedge fund Farallon Capital for 26 years and has donated $65 million to Democratic candidates and environmental causes during the 2016 elections, according to Forbes. He has also led an effort to have Trump impeached. At a youth summit Friday, Trump said he was pleased with the arrest of Sayoc, but many Democratic leaders blamed the presidents rhetoric for creating a dangerous political climate. Lily Adams, a spokeswoman in Harris office, said it was time for leaders across the political spectrum to take seriously the power they hold, adding that elected officials should elevate our discourse and bring people together. Steyer tweeted out a statement calling on the Republican Party to denounce any attacks on the rights and dignity of any American. We are seeing a systematic attack on our democracy and our rule of law that extends much further than just one isolated terrorist in Florida, Steyer wrote. Whether its voter suppression, voter intimidation, attacks on our free press, gerrymandering, or attempted violence the trust and norms that are the actual basis of our civil society and political system are being eroded. In total, 13 IEDs consisting of six inches of PVC pipe, a small clock, battery, wiring and energetic material have been found, according to the criminal complaint against Sayoc. FBI Director Christopher Wray warned that more packages could be found in the coming days. Authorities declined to comment on the motive behind the bombs, though Sayoc, who has a long arrest record, had expressed contempt for liberals and reverence for Trump, including on social media. In Florida, authorities seized Sayocs white van, which was adorned with pictures of Trump and stickers critical of Democratic leaders and news network CNN, another of the alleged bombers targets. Rep. Jackie Speier, D-Hillsborough, told The Chronicle that Sayocs targets are people on the presidents enemies list. Trump has gone out of his way to throw verbal bombs, Speier said. He elevates people who do violent things. This could have been catastrophic to our country. Attorney General Jeff Sessions said he didnt know why Democrats were targeted. Sayoc was charged with five federal crimes that included transporting explosives across state lines, illegally mailing explosives, threatening former presidents and other people, threatening interstate communications, and assaulting assaulting federal officers, according to the criminal complaint. He could face up to 48 years in prison if convicted, Sessions said. Prior to the announcement of the arrest, Trump was criticized for bashing CNN in a Friday morning tweet that used quotation marks around the word bomb. Republicans are doing so well in early voting, and at the polls, and now this Bomb stuff happens and the momentum greatly slows news not talking politics, Trump wrote. Very unfortunate, what is going on. Republicans, go out and vote! Chronicle staff writer Jill Tucker contributed to this story. Sarah Ravani and Gwendolyn Wu are San Francisco Chronicle staff writers. Email: sravani@sfchronicle.com, gwendolyn.wu@sfchronicle.com Twitter: @SarRavani @gwendolynawu Upon the recommendation of Katy Mayor Chuck Brawner, Katy Christian Ministries has just received a large donation from the Hurricane Harvey Relief Fund at the North Texas Community Foundation. A Helping Texans: A Hurricane Harvey Benefit concert held on Nov. 28, 2017, in Fort Worth, featured Clint Black, Lyle Lovett and Don Henley. All of the proceeds from the benefit concert, which totaled $328,322, was given to Katy Christian Ministries. Blacks representative contacted Brawner on Hurricane Harveys first anniversary for recommendations on organizations active in the ongoing relief efforts within the city. Brawner said he met with multiple organizations gathering insight as to how they would utilize the donation. He said the Fort Worth concert raised more than $1 million and each of the three featured performers divided the proceeds. Each got a share and got a chance to decide where the money goes, said Brawner. Clint Black from Katy decided he wanted to help his hometown. On Sept. 14, 2018, Black made the decision to donate the entire amount to Katy Christian Ministries. Henley and Lovett were both born in Texas, while Black was raised in Katy. Black has spoken about watching footage of Hurricane Harvey devastate his hometown. We braced ourselves through the night as the flood waters grew closer to our familys doorsteps in Houston and Katy, Black said. My mom, brothers, niece and nephews were all very fortunate, and I knew I had to find a way to help those who werent so lucky, to recover and rebuild what was lost in the hurricane. Deysi Crespo, KCM executive director, said, We remember how devastating it was for our community a year ago, and the struggle continues for many of our neighbors as there are some who are still displaced and/or are looking for resources to recover from the financial hardship it created in their household. We rejoice in the way how we came together as one and poured out so much love to get everyone out of the immediate crisis, but our work has not ended as we continue with long-term recovery efforts. We are humbled and thankful for this opportunity offered by our very own Clint Black and fellow performers Lyle Lovett and Don Henley, as it provides hope and light in times of darkness to many families in our community. Carolyn Chandler, grant officer for Katy Christian Ministries, has been hard at work since Hurricane Harvey made landfall and devastated our local community. With the disaster funds KCM had already received and distributed, we have financially assisted an average of $3,000 per household in need, Chandler explained. With the over $300,000 donation received from the benefit concert, Katy Christian Ministries will be able to assist over 100 households, aiding more than 300 people. The following are just a few examples of how Katy Christian Ministries will utilize the funds: Financial assistance with rent/mortgage for displaced families. Cost of furniture and appliances replacement such as mattresses, stoves, refrigerators. Vehicle replacement and/or repair. Relocation fees and cost. Cost of home repairs and materials through Home Depot, Lowes and/or Ace Hardware. Fence repair and sod replacement cost. The City of Katy is proud to have an organization like KCM in our community, Brawner said. So many people were impacted by Hurricane Harvey, and we are thankful to Clint Black, Lyle Lovett and Don Henley for their contribution to help Katy rebuild and recover. I know KCM will work hard to help as many people as possible with this donation. Brawner added that a thank-you letter will be composed and sent to Black, the other entertainers and the citizens of Fort Worth for their support on Harvey survivors in the Katy area In fact Brawner said he recently referred a single mom with two kids in college to KCM because she doesnt have the money to get her house in shape after Hurricane Harvey so she can move back to her home. Shes been staying with relatives. Katy Christian Ministries is located at 5504 First St. in Katy. Visit www.ktcm.org for information or to learn how you can help. Financier and former New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg is jumping into the California congressional races in a big way, pumping $8.6 million into television ads attacking a pair of Southern California Republicans. Bloomberg, who has said he will spend more than $100 million to help Democrats take back Congress, has put up $4.1 million against Rep. Dana Rohrabacher of Costa Mesa (Orange County) and $4.5 million to oppose Rep. Steve Knight of Lancaster (Los Angeles County). Bloombergs money is an independent expenditure, meaning it doesnt go directly into the campaigns of Harley Rouda or Katie Hill, the Democrats opposing Rohrabacher and Knight, respectively. But two weeks of nonstop TV attacks on their opponents will be a huge boost to the challengers in races viewed as toss-ups. The news came as a surprise to Rouda. I heard about it (Wednesday) night from my campaign manager, he said in an interview. The fact that we have polling that shows we can beat (Rohrabacher) probably convinced Bloomberg to jump in. A poll released last week by Monmouth University found Rohrabacher with a 50 percent to 48 percent edge over Rouda. A survey done by UC Berkeleys Institute of Governmental Studies in September gave Hill a 50 percent to 46 percent lead over Knight. Bloombergs money will be used to run ads that his Independence USA PAC already produced with the League of Conservation Voters Victory Fund. Both ads attack the Republicans for their environmental views. The one aimed at Rohrabacher shows him declaring that global warming is a fraud, and calls him too extreme and out of touch. The anti-Knight ad accuses him of siding with polluters. It concludes by saying, Cleaner air starts by cleaning out Congress. The $8.6 million is a huge amount to spend on TV in the final two weeks of the campaign, even in Los Angeles and Orange County, which is the second-most-expensive television market in the nation. This is going to bump out a lot of beer ads, said Eric Jaye, a Democratic consultant who is not working with the Rouda or Hill campaigns. The challenge is not going to be to place the ads, which you can always do if youre willing to spend enough money. But Jaye noted that many voters have already cast their ballots by mail, so how effective is it going to be? Rohrabacher spokesman Dale Neugebauer called Bloombergs infusion an obscene level of spending. ... Voters in Orange County are going to ask why one of the wealthiest men in the world, a New Yorker worth $48 billion, is spending vast sums of money nationwide to elect radicals and more than $4 million to smear Congressman Rohrabacher. Bloombergs ads arent going unanswered. The Congressional Leadership Fund, an independent expenditure committee funded by Republicans including Las Vegas casino owner Sheldon Adelson, has put millions into TV ads attacking Rouda, Hill and other Democrats. Bloomberg is also putting late money into other Democratic campaigns in Washington and Virginia. He also said he will put $10 million into a generic TV ad that will run in cities across the nation, urging viewers to vote for a Democratic Congress. John Wildermuth is a San Francisco Chronicle staff writer. Email: jwildermuth@sfchronicle.com Twitter: @jfwildermuth Cameroonian authorities announced this week that President Paul Biya had been reelected - again. Biya has ruled the country since 1982, making him the second-longest-serving president in Africa. At 85 years old, he's also the continent's oldest. But this year's election, held on Oct. 7, took place in unusual circumstances: Since 2016, the central African country, a key U.S. security partner, has been teetering dangerously on the brink of civil war between English-speaking separatists and its government, dominated by French speakers. Elite circles in Cameroon are largely controlled by Francophones, while Anglophones are routinely overlooked for top ministerial jobs. There have been complaints about such marginalization for decades, but unrest broke out in late 2016 after Anglophone citizens complained that more and more Francophone teachers and judges were being sent to teach in their schools and preside in their courts. The military responded violently to Anglophone protests, killing some demonstrators and rounding up others. The harsh reprisals only enraged Anglophones, who have given growing support to an armed movement trying to create an English-speaking breakaway state called Ambazonia. In September, Amnesty International reported 160 members of Cameroon's security forces had been killed by armed separatists since the conflict began. Around 400 civilians have been killed over the past year by armed groups on both sides of the conflict, and schools have become a common target. That isn't the only crisis Cameroon has on its hands. For years now, the country's Far North region has struggled to contain the threat of Boko Haram, the Islamist group that has terrorized the area and displaced many Cameroonians. About 300 U.S. soldiers are on the ground there to aid Cameroon in its anti-extremist operations. As the International Crisis Group said in a report before the Oct. 7 election, "the political climate is tense, the economy shaky and much of the country insecure, torn between Boko Haram in the Far North and a conflict in the Anglophone regions in the Northwest and Southwest." Biya is one of a number of African leaders who have found ways to cement their hold on power even as their countries spiral into unrest. In Uganda, President Yoweri Museveni has been in power since 1985 - and last year, the Ugandan parliament repealed a presidential age limit that would have prevented the aging leader from running for reelection. In Burundi in 2015, President Pierre Nkurunziza ran for a third term that his opponents insisted was unconstitutional, sparking unrest that displaced hundreds of thousands of people and left many others dead. Aside from the tension surrounding the election in Cameroon, the validity of the vote itself appears suspect. This week, Cameroon's constitutional council said voter turnout was at 54 percent. But between the violence and the displacement it caused, it's unlikely that so many voters were able to make it to the polls. There's also suspicion of fraud about the votes that were cast. According to the official tally, Biya took 71 percent of the vote and even did well in some Anglophone areas where he has little support. Maurice Kamto, the next-closest runner-up, took only 14 percent of the vote. Even Cameroon's state-run television channel found itself in an awkward position after reporting Transparency International was in the country observing the elections - a claim the organization later refuted. "A deliberate attempt to impersonate Transparency International or knowingly portray non-affiliated individuals as employees of the anti-corruption watchdog is completely unacceptable," the watchdog group said in a statement. All of this has reinforced suspicions that the vote was rigged from the get-go. Kamto said in a statement that he would "solemnly and categorically reject these manufactured results and refuse to recognize the legitimacy of the Head of State." "We will use all means of law to restore the truth of the ballot box," he said. The United States considers Cameroon an important partner in a somewhat unstable region, and State Department spokeswoman Heather Nauert congratulated Cameroon after the vote on its "largely peaceful elections," while noting that there "were a number of irregularities prior to, during, and after" the vote. With many Cameroonians seeing Biya's win as fraudulent, the violence may get worse. This week, heavy fighting broke out between the military and separatists in the country's northwest. The death toll is disputed, but the Associated Press reported that its journalist on the scene "saw at least 18 corpses." The incident may be a harbinger of what's to come: At least 160,000 people are displaced within the country and tens of thousands of others have fled into neighboring Nigeria. Frustrations are now mounting across the country, and the International Crisis Group warned in a report that "ordinary people's opinions are increasingly radical." Biya manages to avoid dipping his toes too much in any of the chaos unfolding around him - an investigation by the Organized Crime and Corruption Reporting Project earlier this year found he has spent about 4 1/2 years of his time in office abroad on "private trips." After the election results were announced, he simply tweeted: "Thank you for your renewed and large confidence. Let us now join in taking up, together, the challenges that confront us." Those challenges could soon become larger than he's able to tackle. Metro Manila (CNN Philippines) Two massive drug shipments both worth billions of pesos were smuggled into the Philippines in magnetic scrap lifters, but their journeys have different endings. In August, 4.3 billion-worth of illegal drugs that entered the country were intercepted by Customs officers. The next day, authorities found similar containers, but the drugs estimated at 11 billion, were nowhere to be found. Here is how it unfolded: August 7 Five hundred kilos of suspected methamphetamine hydrochloride or shabu worth 4.3 billion are intercepted by the Bureau of Customs (BOC) at the Manila International Container Port (MICP). The illegal drugs, which were foil-wrapped in sealed plastic, are hidden inside two magnetic scrap lifters. The Philippine Drug Enforcement Agency (PDEA) says the drug shipment arrived on June 28. August 8 Authorities find four magnetic scrap lifters in a warehouse in General Mariano Alvarez in Cavite. But its contents believed to be over 1 ton of shabu are missing. PDEA Director General Aaron Aquino says traces of illegal drugs were detected in the containers with the help of sniffer dogs. PDEA initially pegs the value of the missing shabu at 6.8 billion, but later revises its estimate to a whopping 11 billion. PDEA says the drugs were smuggled into the country by a Taiwanese drug syndicate, Golden Triangle syndicate. August 11 Customs Commissioner Isidro Lapena says he wasn't alerted about the entry of the 6.8 billion worth of shabu. He says had he known, he wouldn't have allowed the shipment in the country. Lapena also recommends the relief of district collector Vener Baquiran, who was in charge of the Manila International Container Port when the shipment allegedly entered the country. August 13 President Rodrigo Duterte still trusts the Customs chief despite drug shipment that slipped into the coutry undetected, Malacanang says. The Department of Justice directs the National Bureau of Investigation to look into the drug shipment. August 14 The heads of Customs and PDEA have different information on the presence of drugs in the magnetic lifters. Lapena says the claim the containers were filled with drugs had no basis. During the first House hearing into the issue, he says that laboratory tests done on four empty magnetic scrap lifters "yielded negative results" for the presence of dangerous drugs. Later that day, Duterte dismisses the shabu shipment as "pure speculation." August 28 The swab test of PDEA and Philippine National Police on the lifters find no presence of illegal drugs. August 29 The government's anti-drug agency charges four people over the missing shabu shipment in Cavite. Suspects Chan Yee Wah Albert, Zhang Quan, Vedasto Baraquel Jr., and Maria Lagrimas Catipan are charged for violating the Comprehensive Dangerous Drugs Act of 2002. September 11 Senate holds its first hearing into the 6.8-billion shabu smuggling. Aquino says, although PNP and PDEA's swab test results were negative, "Dogs don't lie," as their K9 sniffed out drugs. In the hearing, the committee establishes that Jimmy Guban of the Customs Intelligence and Investigation Service used a "scavenger" identified as Joel Maritana to sign an affidavit that would make him appear as the final consignee of the SMYD shipment containing the illegal drugs. Guban admits he did it as part of their operation involving an incoming shipment. Senate Blue Ribbon Committee Chairman Sen. Richard Gordon cites Guban in contempt for lying about his role in the smuggling of illegal drugs into the country. September 19 Marina dela Cruz Signapan, the owner of the importation company behind the alleged smuggling of 6.8 billion worth of shabu, is detained in the Senate after she was cited in contempt for allegedly lying on the witness stand. PDEA reveals it has sought the help of Hong Kong to hunt down a certain KC Chan, who is allegedly behind the smuggling of the 4.3 billion worth of shabu. September 26 Former Customs (BOC) Deputy Collector for Operations Ma. Lourdes Mangaoang presents to the Senate the x-ray images of the scanned magnetic lifters that were suspected to contain drugs. She says asbestos was found inside the lifters, apparently to insulate the drugs from heat and prevent it from melting. September 27 Guban is cited in contempt by a House of Representatives panel for issuing conflicting statements about his role in the smuggling of illegal drugs. He is also ordered detained at the House "for non-cooperation" and for failing to give proper answers. Guban also reveals he was tapped by a dismissed police, a certain "Colonel Acierto," to find a consignee for the shabu shipment. October 10 Duterte presents a special report revealing the involvement of law enforcement officials in illegal drugs trade. Five active police officials are named. They included former S/Supt. Eduardo Paderon Acierto, former PDEA deputy director general for administration Ismael Gonzales Fajardo Jr., and Guban. October 23 Lapena claims the reforms he implemented at the bureau have "hurt the players and drug syndicates," triggering them to orchestrate moves for his fall. October 24 During a House probe, Customs X-ray inspector John Mar Morales insists that the lifters were empty, based on his analysis of X-ray images. Lapena backtracks, says he now believes that the P6.8 billion worth of illegal drugs slipped past Customs. Duterte orders Guban's arrest, but customs official remains in Senate custody. October 25 Guban is now being considered by the Senate as a "vital witness" after he vowed to divulge all his knowledge on the drug smuggling in the country. PDEA revises the estimated value of the missing drugs from the four magnetic lifters in Cavite, which would now amount to P11 billion. Aquino says 1.6 tons is the weight of the shabu inside the lifters, higher than the previous 1 ton estimate. Lapena disputes this. Duterte boots out Lapena from Customs and names Maritime Industry Authority (MARINA) Administrator Rey Leonardo Guerrero as his replacement.He orders all Customs commissioners and department heads out so Guererro could have his choice of personnel. Duterte "promotes" Lapena as head of Technical Education and Skills Development Authority (TESDA) a Cabinet Secretary post. NEW HAVEN Advocates have worked for years to create a Family Justice Center in the city for people suffering from domestic violence to easily get help. Soon, that work will be realized. The New Haven Family Justice Center will have a soft launch Nov. 13 at 316 Dixwell Ave. as it prepares for its full opening anticipated in March next year. The center is an offshoot of BHcares Umbrella for Domestic Violence Services, a service provider for domestic violence victims with offices in Ansonia and East Haven. The woman spearheading the center is Project Coordinator Julie Johnson, a retired New Haven police captain who worked in the special victims unit. Toward the end of her career, she served as a domestic violence liaison for the department. She and others from BHcare announced the centers soft launch Thursday at BAR. For domestic violence victims, the center will be one stop shopping, Police Chief Anthony Campbell said. At the center, someone can walk in and file a report, get the services they need and have someone right there to help them. One in four households in New Haven doesnt have a car, so a victim would need to take public transportation, which is especially difficult if that person has children. Johnson gave an example of a fictitious victim of domestic violence using New Haven public transportation to get to five different basic services in the city. Taking the bus, it would take that person 25 hours to get to each location, Johnson said, and the victim would only be able to have one appointment per day, a massive challenge since victims can have up to 30 appointments they need to make. The Family Justice Center operates differently since the model focuses on gathering services around the victim under one roof. This includes police, prosecutors, victim advocates and other providers. This model removes transportation and child care barriers for victims and simplifies the process, Johnson said. Its a victim-centered, survivor-focused philosophy, she said. Johnson said theyre looking at a location downtown because its central to City Hall, the courthouse, states attorneys office and Police Department. Everything in the center is free and would require only one trip for someone to get everything they need in one day. What makes the center special is it will be a truly trauma-informed space focused on the survivor, Johnson said. From the minute they walk in, its all about their experience, from the questions developed for the victim, to where the victim waits for an advocate, to where they talk to the prosecutor, its all about the victim. Johnson compared that approach to experiences of people seeking help now in which victims would have to talk to a prosecutor in a courthouse hallway. The number one benefit to communities with family justice centers is the reduction of domestic violence homicides in the community, Johnson said. New Haven sees one domestic violence homicide per year on average, but this year has seen two, Campbell said. A victim who is wrapped in services is safer, Johnson said, as it takes an average of seven times before a victim can leave their situation for good. Christina Lee, a single mother of two girls and survivor of domestic violence, spoke about her experience. I truly never thought that I would be here today to talk with anyone because I was so close to dying at the hands of someone who was supposed to love me, Lee said. Lee was married to a man for five years and in that time he had never hit her, she said, but the relationship was very controlling. One night her daughter woke her up to say that her father was trying to hurt her, so Lee confronted the man and told him to leave, but he didnt want to. The next thing I remember, he put liquid on me and set me on fire, she said. As Lee ran to get help, her husband tried to go after her daughter, who saved herself and her 3-month-old sister. Lee lost everything in her apartment that night and was burned on 40 percent of her body. Reflecting on her life, though, Lee said she has come to love herself and walk with a smile on her face because she is at peace. She told others who have experienced domestic violence to remember they are not alone in it. Campbell said domestic violence is a crucial issue to fight because its an area in which society can reduce trauma to children and vulnerable populations, adding that domestic violence affects the community, which includes law enforcement. Officers have to witness this carnage that happens when someone is victimized. They see the pain in children, he said. Domestic violence has always been an issue in the city and are the most dangerous call to which officers respond. Last year, two officers were shot responding to a domestic violence call, which sent a shock through the department, Campbell said. Police respond to domestic violence incidents every day and in a week theyre called to between 30 to upward of 100 times for such incidents. Campbell said in domestic violence situations, victims and everyone affected need tangible hope to grab onto, which is what the Family Justice Center will be. After the soft launch, the center will be open 10 a.m. to 2 p.m.Tuesdays and Fridays by appointment by calling 203-789-8104. If a persons situation is urgent, they can still call and be seen at the Umbrella Centers East Haven or Ansonia office. mdignan@hearstmediact.com State Senate Democratic President Pro Tempore Martin Looney, D-New Haven, is seeking a 14th term in the 11th District, and he describes this election as especially important. This is a very critical election in terms of the future direction of the state of Connecticut, he said. I think it would be appalling if Connecticut came under the control of the Trump-centered Republican Party operating at the state level. It would be a disaster for Connecticut, just like it has been for a state like Kansas. Republican gubernatorial candidate Bob Stefanowski has campaigned on repealing the state income tax, similar to a plan implemented in Kansas in 2012. Looney said his constituents are concerned about cuts made to services, and any reductions in revenue could hurt his constituents when it comes to spending. I think our constituents are concerned about levels of municipal aid and aid to education, but also they are concerned about support for public education at all levels from pre-K through college, he said. I think they are concerned about the anti-labor tendency of the Republican Party. Looneys challenger, Republican Erin Reilly, says on her campaign website that Democrats destroyed Connecticut. Reilly did not return multiple requests seeking comment for this story, but says on the website that For over 40 years, Connecticut has been controlled by a Democrat legislature that spends recklessly and makes empty promises to State employees. Putting left-wing ideology ahead of your best interests and pursuing the same failed policies over and over have been the hallmarks of Connecticuts government, the site says. The results of this type of state governance for New Haven and Hamden have been higher taxes, fewer jobs, slower economic growth, higher crime, burdensome city debt levels and fewer opportunities for advancement, Reilly says on her website. Send me to Hartford and I will work with other Republicans to change that, her website promises. Looney said he has also campaigned on earned family leave, raising the minimum wage to $15 an hour, protecting access to affordable health care as well as strengthening the law against sexual harassment. He said that, although several protections afforded under the Affordable Care Act exist in state law and would survive a federal rollback, those protections would not be safe if the General Assembly were won by Republicans. Reillys site notes, in her path to victory section, that among the first things she does is start aggressively registering voters in my district. In our two towns of 150,000 adults eligible to vote there are over 55,000 of them that are unregistered. Why are they unregistered? The Democrats do an exceptional job with their voter registration drives - how could they have missed all these people? These 45,000 people are not Democrat voters. They are neglected, disenfranchised potential Republican voters that have been ignored for decades, she says on the site . The 11th District includes Hamden, North Haven and New Haven. brian.zahn@hearstmediact.com Washington Less than two weeks before the midterm elections, President Donald Trump on Thursday announced a plan to lower prices for some prescription drugs, saying it would stop unfair practices that force Americans to pay much more than people in other countries for the same medications. "We are taking aim at the global freeloading that forces American consumers to subsidize lower prices in foreign countries through higher prices in our country," Trump said in a speech at the Department of Health and Human Services. "Same company. Same box. Same pill. Made in the exact same location, and you would go to some countries and it would be 20 percent of the cost of what we pay," said Trump, who predicted the plan will save Americans billions. "We're fixing it." But consumers take note: The plan would not apply to medicines people buy at the pharmacy, just ones administered in a doctor's office, as are many cancer medications and drugs for immune system problems. Physician-administered drugs can be very expensive, but pharmacy drugs account for the vast majority of what consumers buy. Don't expect immediate rollbacks. Officials said the complex proposal could take more than a year to put into effect. In another twist, the plan is structured as an experiment through a Medicare innovation center empowered to seek savings by the Affordable Care Act. That's the law also known as "Obamacare," which Trump is still committed to repealing. Trump has long promised sweeping action to attack drug prices, both as president and when he was running for the White House. He made his latest announcement just ahead of the Nov. 6 elections, with health care high among voters' concerns. Under the plan, Medicare payment for drugs administered in doctors' offices would gradually shift to a level based on international prices. Prices in other countries are lower because governments directly negotiate with manufacturers. Drugmakers immediately pushed back, arguing the plan amounts to government price-setting. "The administration is imposing foreign price controls from countries with socialized health care systems that deny their citizens access and discourage innovation," Stephen Ubl, president of the Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America, said in a statement. "These proposals are to the detriment of American patients." Trump is linking the prices Americans complain about to one of his longstanding grievances: foreign countries the president says are taking advantage of U.S. research breakthroughs. Drug pricing expert Peter Bach of Memorial Sloan Kettering's Center for Health Policy and Outcomes called the plan "a pretty substantive proposal" but one that faces "serious political challenges." "The rhetoric about finally dealing with foreign freeloading suggests that we are going to take steps to get other countries to pay their fair share for innovation," Bach added. But that's "quite literally the opposite of what is being proposed. What is being proposed is that we freeload off of other countries' ability to negotiate more effectively." Democratic leaders on Capitol Hill were dismissive. House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi of California said if Trump wants to save seniors money he should seek congressional approval for Medicare to negotiate prices for its main prescription drug program, "Part D." Almost every 10 minutes, a car crash occurs in San Antonio. That's about 140 collisions every day, or more than 50,000 total during 2017, according to data obtained from the Texas Department of Transportation. They're not usually spaced out every ten minutes, though, nor are they evenly spaced throughout the city, data showed. High-speed and high-congestion roads, such as Loop 1604, Loop 410 and Interstate 35, saw significantly more accidents than other parts of the city. The Department of Transportation gathers the data each year for every county in the state in order to plan construction projects that will improve safety and mobility for drivers, according to the department's Traffic and Safety Division. It also provide the information to cities, counties, Metropolitan Transportation Authorities and research entities to use for similar purposes. In response to a request, the department issued the information to the San Antonio Express-News as well. The department defines motor vehicle traffic crashes as "any crash involving a motor vehicle in transport that occurs or originates on a traffic way, results in injury to or death of any person, or damage to the property of any one person to the apparent extent of $1,000." The data was provided as latitude and longitudes. RELATED: 12 San Antonio streets with the most pothole repairs The numbers of collisions in the county have been increasing steadily since 2010, from about 33,800 that year to more than 52,000 in 2016, according to data from the division. The number dropped slightly in 2017 and is on track to drop slightly more in 2018, which earlier this year state officials attributed to program efforts. The numbers, however, are still part of an upward trend, not only in total crashes but in fatalities and suspected serious injury crashes as well. Driver inattention, including distracted driving, remains the number one cause of collisions, according to the division. Speeding and following too closely came in second and third respectively. When are Bexar County drivers most likely to crash? Rush hour is by far the most dangerous time to be on Bexar County roads, based on total number of crashes last year, with nearly one of every three collisions occurring during that time. Evening rush hour (4-7 p.m.) is more dangerous than morning traffic (7-10 a.m.), with the highest number of collisions occurring Thursdays between 5 and 6 p.m. RELATED: San Antonio City Council adopts e-scooter regs March had the highest number of collisions, while June and July were the safest months of the year. Sunday was the only day of the week when the highest number of collisions took place during the middle of the night (2-3 a.m.) rather than during the afternoon. The day that snow fell in San Antonio last year and the day before it, Dec. 7 and 6, had the highest number of collisions. Minors? Young adults? Seniors? How old are most of the drivers in collisions? Young adults (18 to 34 years of age) are more often involved in crashes than any other demographic by a long shot. Of the more than 80,000 crashes with ages reported in 2017, 45 percent involved 18-34 year olds. Drivers aged 35-44 accounted for an additional 18 percent. Seniors and minors combined were only involved in about 10 percent of the crashes. Young adults were involved in more than half of all fatal accidents. What type of vehicles are typically involved? Four-door passenger cars the standard body style are involved more than any other type of car or truck, followed by sport utility vehicles, pickups and two-door passenger cars. But plenty of commercial and emergency vehicles were involved as well. Trucks were involved 4 percent of the time. Nearly 600 buses, including 86 yellow school buses, were part of collisions. Police, fire and emergency services vehicles were involved in more than 300 crashes. Farm equipment vehicles were listed 11 times. Click through the slideshow to see which Bexar County spots had the highest number of collisions. S. M. Chavey is a breaking news and general assignment writer. Read her on our breaking news site, mySA.com and on our subscriber site, ExpressNews.com | sarah.chavey@express-news.net | @smchavey A San Antonio man was sentenced to life in prison without parole for sexually assaulting a toddler whose mother tried to explain away the child's severe injuries as a dog attack. Visiting Judge Philip Kazen sentenced Isaac Andrew Cardenas, 25, to life in prison without parole on two charges of super aggravated sexual assault of a child. The sentences will be served at the same time. The child's family cried and embraced after Kazen announced the sentence. Afterward, the child's grandmother, Monica Farrow, gave an emotional victims impact statement directed at Cardenas. She was just an innocent baby, Farrow said through tears. She couldn't even fight back. Farrow told Cardenas he will meet his maker, who will inflict the ultimate punishment for eternity. Much of her statement was inaudible as she fought back tears. Crystal Herrera, 24, the childs mother, faces one count of injury to a child by omission. Herrera is out on bail and is awaiting trial. She faces a maximum of life in prison and a $10,000 fine if convicted. According to authorities, Herrera called 911 on Dec. 31, 2016, to report that dogs had viciously attacked her daughter, who at the time was 21 months old. Herrera told the Bexar County sheriffs deputies that the child had wandered away from their home in South Bexar County. The girl was taken to University Hospital for treatment of numerous sharp injuries to her genital and anal areas. In his closing argument earlier this month, prosecutor Leo Gonzalez apologized to the jurors who had to see such horrific, graphic images that he said affected everyone involved in the case from jurors to law enforcement, medical personnel and investigators. Theyve never seen anything like this, he told the panel. These images will never leave their minds. After the sentencing, Cardenas' lawyer, Denny Callahan, told reporters the sentence was expected. He said Cardenas will likely appeal. Emilie Eaton is a criminal justice reporter in the San Antonio and Bexar County area. Read her on our free site, mySA.com, and on our subscriber site, ExpressNews.com. | eeaton@express-news.net | Twitter: @emilieeaton A 20-year-old was killed and two others were critically injured Thursday evening in a Northeast Side neighborhood that has seen two other violent attacks in two weeks. San Antonio Police Chief William McManus said the shooting occurred at about 6:15 p.m., moments after a gray pickup backed into the driveway of a home in the 4000 block of Mystic Sunrise. Investigators said a man and a woman got out of the truck, walked up to the home and rang the doorbell. READ ALSO: Family of 18-year-old killed in officer-involved shooting sues officer, city of San Antonio Someone answered the door. They went in. Shooting started, McManus said. Three people inside the house were hit, said McManus, who did not the genders of the victims. They were the only people at the house when the man and woman arrived, investigators said. McManus said the 20-year-old died at the scene. He added that the motive for the shooting could have involved drugs, but could not be certain as an investigation continues. The other two shooting victims are in their mid-to-late 20s, police said. They were taken to an area hospital in critical condition. Investigators are searching the house where the shooting occurred, McManus said, and another house for additional evidence. At least 15 friends and family members became distraught during McManus briefing with the media because they said no one in law enforcement informed them of what had occurred. Y'all can't inform the family first? one person shouted. One woman was heard saying that her husband could still be in the house, but that she did not know his condition. READ ALSO: San Antonio-area man looking for person who shot and killed his missing dog McManus approached the family after the media briefing and spoke to them for some time. Several women could be heard crying after speaking with McManus. The Northeast Side neighborhood has seen a string of violent incidents recently. Late Tuesday, a 37-year-old man was shot multiple times at a home in the 4000 block of Coral Sunrise. According to investigators, the man was shot in the doorway of a home and then collapsed onto the porch. As of Thursday, no one had been arrested in connection with the shooting. On Oct. 11 on the same block of Coral Sunrise, 34-year-old Janice Crawford was fatally struck by a stray bullet in a drive-by shooting. The next morning, the suspect in the shooting, 25-year-old Tyrend Ryshawn White, surrendered to police. jbeltran@express-news.net | Twitter: @JBfromSA The skies over San Antonio have cleared up enough to entice people outside this weekend and also to allow for some major highway construction. The Texas Department of Transportation will be shutting down lanes on different highways in San Antonio this weekend, according to a news release. The biggest closure comes on the city's North Side at U.S. 281 and Loop 1604, where all main lanes will be shut down in both directions. RELATED: 6 Central Texas state parks closed indefinitely due to flooding Southbound motorists will exit U.S. 281 at Sonterra Boulevard before they can reenter the highway after Donella Drive. On the northbound side, motorists will exit at the Loop 1604 intersection and take a right on the eastbound frontage road. To continue north, they will use the turnaround at Gold Canyon Road and take a right at the intersection onto the northbound frontage road. Motorists who want to continue westbound on Loop 1604 from U.S. 281 North will take a right on the eastbound frontage road through the intersection and use the turnaround at Redland Road to get onto the highway. Those closures will begin Saturday at 2 a.m. and last through Monday at 5 a.m. Crews are also planning alternating lane closures on the main lanes of Interstate 10 East between Loop 410 and Loop 1604 on Saturday from 5 a.m. until 9 p.m. After that, the closures will continue nightly from 9 p.m. until 5 a.m. from Sunday until Nov. 2. In Boerne, crews will close one right lane between Johns Road from Friday at 9 p.m. until Monday at 5 a.m. to reconstruct the eastbound shoulder. 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 Tim Fischer/Midland Reporter-Telegram State Sen. Dawn Buckingham added her voice to the many encouraging Texans to vote as Election Day approaches. Participating in a panel discussion on legislative issues at the Permian Basin Petroleum Associations 56th annual meeting, she took a moment to promote voting and explained why it is particularly important for Midlanders to vote. It may not be once in a lifetime, but it is a rare occasion when we meet a candidate with the energy, intelligence and knowledge of Stephanie Thomas. Stephanie is running for a seat in the Connecticut State Legislature in the 143rd District. She is in contact with voters on a daily basis as she knocks on doors, one at a time. Her district encompasses the eastern part of Norwalk, a small sliver of Westport and a large area of Wilton. Is the INF Treaty so important that the Russians should be allowed to cheat on it without consequence? Thats the implication of the criticisms of President Donald Trump for saying that hes pulling out of the Cold War-era arms-control agreement. Mikhail Gorbachev deemed Trumps stated intention unacceptable and very irresponsible, although it isnt the U.S. that has been flagrantly violating the treaty for years. The Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty, signed in 1987, was a central achievement of the Reagan-Gorbachev diplomacy of the late 1980s. The Soviets had deployed intermediate-range SS-20 missiles that could hit NATO countries from bases in the Soviet Union. The U.S. countered by deploying its own intermediate-range missiles in Europe. At the same time, President Ronald Reagan proposed the zero option to eliminate such missiles from the arsenals of both countries. As he sought to save the doomed Soviet system, Gorbachev agreed. The Russians have recently made obvious their contempt for Gorbachevs handiwork. The State Department has determined since 2014 that Russia is in violation of the treaty, via the 9M729 ground-launched cruise missile. Tests of the noncompliant missile go back to 2008, and the Obama administration first told Congress of its concerns in 2011. Supporters of the treaty say we should just pressure the Russians to comply rather than pull out. But when confronted with their cheating, the Russians simply deny it. Meetings of the Special Verification Commission, the treatys mechanism for addressing compliance issues, have achieved nothing. The Kremlin has remained unmoved, even though we have made it clear that we have them nailed. We have provided Russia the names of the companies involved in developing the missile and the coordinates of the locations of tests. If Moscow cared to come into compliance with the treaty, it had ample opportunity and warning. Legislation has expressed the sense of Congress that Russias actions have defeated the object and purpose of the INF Treaty. Secretary of Defense James Mattis has called the Russian cheating untenable. The Russians have persisted in it for the simple reason that it is in their interest. The former head of the Russian General Staff has commented that intermediate-range missiles would provide Moscow national security assurance by threatening Poland, Romania and the Baltics, the missiles would cool the heads of these states leaders. One thing that the U.S. and Russians can agree on is that its senseless that they are the only two countries in the world that are notionally forbidden from possessing this category of weapon. Nowadays, a Russian defense official complained in 2014, almost 30 countries have such missiles in their arsenals. China in particular is outdoing itself. The head of U.S. Pacific Command, Adm. Harry Harris, told Congress last year that the Chinese military controls the largest and most diverse missile force in the world, with an inventory of more than 2,000 ballistic and cruise missiles. This fact is significant because the U.S. has no comparable capability due to our adherence to the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty with Russia. According to Harris, 95 percent of the Chinese missiles would violate the INF if China was a signatory. Given Russian cheating, the INF treaty as a practical matter only prohibits the U.S. from having such missiles. What sense is there in that? Arms controllers often fall back on the argument that U.S. self-restraint has a symbolic effect, discouraging other countries from developing weapons by the force of our example, but this is manifestly untrue. Despite our efforts to minimize the role of nuclear weapons in international affairs, the 2018 Nuclear Posture Review notes that since 2010, no potential adversary has reduced either the role of nuclear weapons in its national security strategy or the number of nuclear weapons it fields. Theres no reason to limit our capabilities and flexibility for the sake of an INF Treaty that doesnt even constrain its other signatory. comments.lowry@nationalreview.com The North American Free Trade Agreement was signed in San Antonio in 1992, and its update should be signed here as well. The politics around the United States-Mexico-Canada Agreement were distressing, but the end result holds promise for all three nations. The underlying premise of the new agreement remains the same. Mexico and Canada are our neighbors and most important allies, and this trade agreement reflects our shared prosperity and deep economic ties. San Antonio has long been a supporter of free trade, which is a major reason NAFTA was signed here. The Texas economy, in particular, has benefited from NAFTA and, we believe, will benefit from this update. In letters to U.S. Trade Representative Robert E. Lighthizer, Mayor Ron Nirenberg and Bexar County Judge Nelson Wolff have asked that the United States-Mexico-Canada Agreement be signed here. Likewise, U.S. Reps. Joaquin Castro, Lloyd Doggett, Henry Cuellar, Lamar Smith and Will Hurd have championed a return to San Antonio for the signing of this historic update. Importantly, U.S. Sens. John Cornyn and Ted Cruz have also advocated for San Antonio in this regard. Texas is the nations leading export state, and the state is the appropriate venue for any signing. But San Antonio, in particular, has strong ties to Mexico and Canada. We are an international city, a welcoming city, and are in the midst of our Tricentennial. A key part of our rich history is the signing of NAFTA, and the update to this trade agreement should occur here as well. This editorial has been corrected to reflect that Sens. Cruz and Cornyn have also asked that the updated trade agreement be signed in San Antonio. HAMDEN - Three Ohio men were arrested after they were caught in the process of removing catalytic converters from vehicles, police said. At 4 a.m. Friday, Hamden police responded to the 900 block of Mix Avenue on the report of suspicious activity. A Zimbabwean court is reportedly set to hear how soldiers recently fired gunshots and teargas at farmers who resisted eviction to make way for the establishment of an army base near Domboshawa, one of the countrys prime farming areas. According to Daily News, the soldiers ran amok as they invaded the farms. In their court papers, the affected farmers wanted the court to declare the establishment of a military base in that area illegal and invalid. This was not the first time that the Zimbabwe Defence Forces (ZDF) was accused of grabbing land for its own use, said the report. Early this month, a major mining firm RioZim Limited sued Defence Minister Oppah Muchinguri-Kashiri after two military linked companies grabbed one of its mines. Safety of civilians Muchinguri-Kashiri was accused of unilaterality declaring a portion of the mining company in Darwendale area a military zone. According to NewsDay, in her responding papers to the latest case, Muchinguri-Kashiri defended the move by the the army to declare Elphida Farm a cantonment area. She argued that it was in the interest and safety of the civilians that such a declaration was made. She also said that the Lichfield Willesden Farm was declared a cantonment area under section 6 of Statutory Instrument (SI) 93 of 2006 (Defence (Cantonments) Notice, 2006, by her predecessor, to ensure the country maintained its national security and protected civilians. She said the area was in close proximity with the Zimbabwe Defence Manufacturing Industry (ZDMI), where explosives were made and tested, and as result, there was a risk of accidental discharge that could put lives at high risk. News24 Breaking News via Email Loading... Related Zimbabwe Latest News A Top United States diplomat has expressed optimism about Zimbabwes prospects of turning around its economy in the wake of reforms being implemented by President Mnangagwas Government. Mr Tibor Nagy the US Assistant Secretary of State for African Affairs said this in a tele-press conference with African journalists on Tuesday ahead of his trip to the continent next week. He said Zimbabwes level of education and infrastructure development meant it stood to enjoy dramatic economic progress if the right policies were implemented. We are very much encouraged by some of the things they say; we are now looking for some concrete examples of moving forward, Mr Nagy said of the Zimbabwean leadership. He added that his countrys businesspeople were looking forward to investing in Zimbabwe. I can tell you that Zimbabwe is another country that the American business community could be very excited by based on concrete achievements, he added. Mr Nagy is a veteran US diplomat on Africa and was confirmed by the US Senate in July after being nominated for the post, which had been vacant for more than a year. On his trip next week, Mr Nagy is expected to visit Guinea, Mali, Togo and will deliver a speech in Nigeria on US-Africa relations. He will then visit Britain and France, where he will meet his counterparts on Africa policy. The comments by the US diplomat follow similar expressions by various countries towards Zimbabwe as it continues with efforts to re-engage the international community. President Mnangagwa has said his vision is to turn Zimbabwe into a middle income economy by 2030. In his inauguration speech after his victory in the July 30 harmonised elections, the President said focus was shifting from politics to the economy. Also, in his first State of the Nation Address and the official opening the First Session of the Ninth Parliament, he laid out a legislative agenda aimed at addressing the ease of doing business and aligning laws with the Constitution. President Mnangagwa has also spoken out against corruption and set up an Anti-Corruption Unit in his Office to expedite prosecution of those accused of graft. He has also appointed a lean Cabinet and taken other measures to curb Government expenditure. The Government has also streamlined indigenisation laws in response to concerns raised by investors with the 51-49 percent thresholds now only applicable to companies involved in diamond and platinum mining. Herald Breaking News via Email Loading... Related Zimbabwe Latest News The lifting of a protectionist policy introduced by former president Robert Mugabes regime last year to promote local production could see companies closing shop, resulting in massive job losses, industrialists warned yesterday. On Tuesday, Cabinet revoked Statutory Instrument (SI) 122 of 2017 to allow individuals and companies to bring in basic commodities that are currently in short supply in a desperate bid to stabilise skyrocketing prices. This comes at a time many Zimbabweans have been priced out of the market for basic goods due to steep price hikes blamed on acute shortages of foreign currency. Yesterday, the Confederation of Zimbabwe Industries (CZI), warned that rescinding SI 122 was a recipe for disaster. CZI president Sifelani Jabangwe said the import restrictions had helped revive dying companies, while enabling others increase their capacity utilisation. The SI 64 which later became SI 122 helped the economy to recover at a time we were in recession. In 2015, the growth of the economy was at 0,06 percent and thereafter growth was 3,7 percent in 2017 and we are now targeting six percent, he said. Jabangwe who leads Zimbabwes largest industrial lobby group said the removal of SI 122 means that several manufacturing companies are no longer protected from imports, particularly from South Africa the continents largest economy. The challenge is that at the moment we are still ranked lowly in terms of ease of doing business and cost of doing business so by implication what it means (is that) companies are operating in a negative environment. You cannot be competitive in such a scenario. So (the net effect is that) we may see some closing, some retrenching and yet those were the things we were fighting against. You were not hearing company closure or retrenchments in the last period but that could just come back, he added. According to CZI, since the introduction of trade restrictions, industry had diversified, partnered with the agriculture sector, created a number of jobs and closed the gap on the leakage of money from the domestic economy. Addressing journalists in Harare on Tuesday, Finance minister Mthuli Ncube said local companies had brought the amendment of SI 122 on themselves by allowing prices to go haywire. Ncube said the measure would also reduce the demand for foreign currency as individuals and companies would be able to source their own funds to import. The Oil Expressers Association of Zimbabwe (OEAZ) a grouping of seven producers who supply 95 percent of the countrys edible oils said they were concerned by the policy inconsistencies from government. Over $60 million of investment has gone into the sector since 2014 by big multinational companies like Surface Wilmar and Willowton. How will the investor community trust our national programmes when we open and close on policy at short notice? queried OEAZ president Busisa Moyo. He said industries built over the last nine years may not be able to recover from the setback, risking over 2 000 people employed by the sector. Most of the traders clamouring for unrestrained importation have no interest in contributing to the fiscus and are most likely to avoid all duties at the border which means government will lose the industries that they have built over the last nine years but will not be able to claw back the lost revenue from duties, said Moyo. DailyNews Breaking News via Email Loading... Related Zimbabwe Latest News The war of words between rival MDC leaders Thokozani Khupe and Nelson Chamisa is intensifying. Yesterday, Khupes party tore into the MDCs 19th anniversary celebrations planned for tomorrow, describing the commemorations as a facade. Khupes spokesperson, Khaliphani Phugeni, said Chamisa and those he leads have deviated from the values and principles of the original MDC founded by Morgan Tsvangirai in 1999. I am not sure what they are celebrating when they specialise in bigotry, violence, insults, propaganda and blatant lies like Zanu PF, Phugeni said. The real MDC was started as a response to the then prevailing conditions in the country such as tribalism, marginalisation, unaccountability and non-democratic space by the Zanu PF government but through his party, Chamisa has displayed all those things. The original MDC was formed in 1999, as a labour-backed party. Khupe crossed swords with the youthful Chamisa during a contest to succeed Tsvangirai, who succumbed to cancer of the colon in February this year. Tsvangirai had three deputies namely Khupe, Chamisa and Elias Mudzuri, who were all gunning for the top office in the MDC. Before the former trade unionist could be buried, Chamisa pulled a fast one on Khupe and Mudzuri by hastily convening a meeting at the partys headquarters where he was appointed acting MDC president. In days that followed, he was made the substantive MDC leader. Regardless, Khupe also declared herself as the legitimate MDC leader, resulting in a long-drawn dispute which is now before the courts. Khupe insists her party is the real MDC and would soon announce a date for their 19th anniversary celebrations, which had to be put on ice due to the outbreak of cholera. Chamisas party had also postponed its anniversary celebrations, now scheduled for tomorrow at Gwanzura Stadium after a long struggle to get police clearance. Khupes party accused Chamisa of abusing the mantra of democracy when in reality he is just pushing a personal project. It is obvious that we are leading in MDC and we are recognised in the courts as the remnant of a party that was led by the late Tsvangirai, Phugeni said. Everyone knows how Chamisa violently created his own faction and we wont attend the cabals celebrations, we will have our own celebrations as the real MDC. Phungeni said Khupes party will never make peace with Chamisa, alleging the 40-year-old was tribal and sexist. We cannot be part of a man who sings democracy during the day and at night is busy working out a plan on how to persecute genuine democrats, women and the minorities in our country, Phugeni said. He may fool those that he is fooling but I think the whole world knows that he is a violent young man who is no different from Zanu PF, if not worse, she said. Contacted for comment yesterday, Nkululeko Sibanda, Chamisas spokesperson, said Khupe must realise that they have since moved on. Sibanda said everything his boss has done has been about integration, transformation, prosperity, progress, and that remains his focus. Adding that Chamisa intends to save Zimbabwe from governments catastrophic rule and unprecedented breakneck speed economic decline. DailyNews Breaking News via Email Loading... Related Zimbabwe Latest News The MDC led by Nelson Chamisa has accused President Emmerson Mnangagwa of employing dirty tactics to silence the opposition after police gave strict guidelines for the partys 19th anniversary celebrations set for tomorrow. If you read the conditions set for us you would be forgiven for thinking that they were set by Adolf Hitler because it is clear that Zanu PF does not tolerate opposition and would rather have a one-party State, said Chamisas deputy Morgen Komichi while alleging that the law enforcement agents and other State institutions were captured by Mnangagwas government. When Hitler came to power as the Chancellor of Germany in the 1930s, on July 14, 1933, his Nazi party officially declared itself the only political party in the country and outlawed the formation of any other parties. This was after the Reichstag building that housed the German Parliament was set on fire which was blamed on the communists who were allegedly plotting to overthrow the Nazi government. The following day, Hitler issued a decree for the Protection of the People and the State, commonly known as the Reichstag Fire Decree that stripped citizens of their constitutional liberties and allowed the Nazi government to arrest communist leaders. Komichi said the conditions set by the police were meant to dampen the MDCs spirits in a manner that violated its supporters rights. We are dealing with a regime that is illegitimate and is a perpetuation of (former president Robert) Mugabes rule if it is not worse. Zimbabweans have not known freedom under Zanu PFs rule and we have always been fighting that and will continue to do so no matter how hard they try to frustrate us. We have developed thick skin, Komichi said. The countrys law enforcement agents bowed to opposition pressure on Wednesday and gave the party the greenlight to proceed with its long-awaited 19th anniversary celebration. The celebrations had been put on hold following a cholera outbreak that saw authorities banning public gatherings last month. But following a recent Constitutional Court ruling that struck off provisions of the Public Order and Security Act that empowered the police to block public gatherings, the MDC took the decision to proceed with its commemorations. At the ceremony, the party hopes to anoint Chamisa as the real peoples president. In a letter to the MDC, the police directed party officials to control the behaviour of their members, before, during and after the celebrations. Your political party shall not intimidate passers-by and those who have nothing to do with your celebrations. Your members should not be involved in toy-toying, convoying of vehicles of people chanting, singing and disseminating hateful and defaming speeches, the letter reads in part. The police also directed that MDC marshals must be dressed in a uniform ostensibly to make it easier to be identified by the police. A list of the marshals shall be presented to the officer who will be responsible for police security at your celebrationsany deviation from the above will result in police dispersing your gathering. Police further said organisers of the event, Rhino Mashaya and party organising secretary Amos Chibaya will be held accountable for any troublesome behaviour by MDC supporters. DailyNews Breaking News via Email Loading... Related Zimbabwe Latest News In civilized countries, a civilized President does not leave his country in the midst of a severe crisis like the one in Zimbabwe. On the other side of the same coin, a President on a foreign visit will cut it short to return home on reports of a crisis unfolding back home. But not in Africa and certainly not in Zimbabwe. In advanced countries, a President personally addresses the nation on a developing crisis, in the middle of the crisis and at the end of the crisis, spelling out how that crisis will be avoided in future. In Zimbabwe we are addressed by Acie Lumumba on Facebook. Lumumba becomes both the President and Minister of Finance because he has a pair of those things that make him a man. I think it would be better if Lumumba was the President. He would tackle the crisis head on, taking no prisoners. The President had time to fly to Zambia to celebrate that countrys Independence. How insensitive and detached. The house is on fire and he goes next door for a cup of tea! Wow! He is completely out of touch. His deputy is throwing pity parties at his homestead in Hwedza, where he threatens a few clergy and goes on and on about his illness and of course the war. His favorite subject. After that he is pictured in dirty waters, getting baptized as Zimbabwe burns on. If the President and his carefree deputies decided to step down, we would not mention them at all and would let them rest in peace, well, not the other resting in peace! They have a job to do and they are not doing it. They do not even have a fire truck to douse the flames. Ayaas. Stanley Goreraza Breaking News via Email Loading... Related Zimbabwe Latest News Gentle readers, A brief but heartfelt thanks for all your generous donations during our fundraiser. Not only was it a big relief to have the contributions keep coming in steadily, but it was very gratifying and humbling to get so many notes and comments about how much the Naked Capitalism community means to you. For that, you should all be proud. For those of you who gave by check, be warned that I process them all at once, which takes more than half a day including the time in front of the teller, and that wont happen until the weekend after this one (or possibly the week after). So I hope it does not mess up your personal bookkeeping if your check to us does not clear pronto. For those of you who werent able to give while the fundraiser was on, we gladly accept donations all year! So if you want to smooth things out for us with a regular donation or a PayPal subscription, well be grateful. Or if you get a better-than-expected year-end bonus or other financial break, we hope youll consider us then. And there are other ways to help: sharing articles with friends, family, and colleagues, whitelisting the site if you use adblockers, commenting, and sending us links, antidotes, and pictures of plants. Even if we dont use a particular link you sent we need to keep Links to 45 a day, otherwise it becomes overwhelming to us and readers rest assured we see them and they do influence our coverage. Thank you so much! Yves P.S. Because we have so much of the Recent Items real estate taken up by the last day of our fundraiser, be sure not to miss Lamberts latest 2018 midterms update: Worksheet for the 2018 Midterms (If There Is a Blue Wave, What Next for Democrats?). * * * Cat described as a fur baby starts looking for new owners Daily Mash The (Imaginary) Numbers at the Edge of Reality Quanta (David L) Water out of thin air: California couples device wins $1.5M TechXplore (Chuck L). Shades of Dune. AI-Generated Portrait Sells for $432,500 in an Auction First Bloomberg In Groundbreaking Decision, Feds Say Hacking DRM to Fix Your Electronics Is Legal Motherboard Facebook confirms its building augmented reality glasseser TechCrunch (Kevin W) Vital Ignored Truths in Milgrams Obedience to Authority Studies Counterpunch (Chuck L) The places that escaped the Spanish flu BBC (Bill B) Cosmonaut brains show space travel causes lasting changes National Geographic (David L) The Underestimated Cerebellum Gains New Respect From Brain Scientists NPR China? Matteo Salvini to Brussels: We are not changing a comma of the budget Politico Desiree Mariottini killing: Migrants held in Italy over girls death BBC. Hoo boy. Angela Merkel braces for second election blow in Hesse DW Brexit UK-EU transport links after Brexit increasingly a cause for concern Independent Dominic Raab warns that Britain will leave the EU without a deal if Brussels takes a deliberately intransigent approach to talks Telegraph. The blame game continues. Brexit Talks on Hold With Mays Team in Disagreement, Sources Say and DUP sceptical of temporary Brexit plan Bloomberg. No. 10 is acting that they just need to get through the budget on Monday. Britain faces trade talks with 20 nations over WTO proposals The Times. Key section: Britain is preparing for trade negotiations with almost two dozen nations after they objected to the terms it proposed for its World Trade Organisation membership after Brexit. Liam Fox confirmed yesterday that countries have expressed reservations over the draft text put forward by the UK before its departure from the European Union. The trade secretary said that Britain intends to enter negotiations with relevant partners over its future rights and obligations at the WTO. About 20 members are understood to have opposed the countrys initial proposal, dashing hopes of an unchallenged arrival at the Geneva-based body that governs global trade. The WTO has 164 members and was set up in 1995 as a regulator and somewhere for countries to negotiate deals and settle disputes. The UK, which is currently a member through the EU, will require its own independent terms of membership after leaving the bloc. From Politicos European newsletter: REALITY CHECK WITH REAL BUSINESS OWNERS: Its just unbelievable that EU politicians tell us we should prepare for a no-deal scenario, said Hinrich Mahlmann, CEO and managing partner of Otto Fuchs KG, a German metal processing company. We cant prepare for no deal, he said, adding that it is hard to understand why a no-deal scenario wasnt taken off the table completely early in the piece Thomas Fischer, chairman of the board of Mann+Hummel, one of the worlds largest filter manufacturers, told me he doesnt expect carmakers that dont manufacture motors in the U.K. to stay in the country in the event Britain crashes out of the EU its relatively easy for them to relocate production in the long term, he said. That would mean that Mann+Hummel would probably have to gradually close its British plants too, he said, adding that investments the company has already made would be used as long as possible. Read: basically only until they are written off. If you look at it rationally, we dont manufacture for the British market in the U.K., but for export, said Fischer. BBC has failed on equal pay, MPs on culture select committee say BBC (Kevin W) New Cold War Syraqistan Khashoggi, Erdogan and the Truth Craig Murray (J-LS) Big Brother is Watching You Watch Imperial Collapse Watch Trump Transition Brian Kemp Leaked Audio About Georgia Voting Concerns Raises Questions Rolling Stone Final-complaint-Palast-v-Kemp.pdf Greg Palast (Chuck L) Kill Me Now Fake News Facebook Fined $645K For Its Role In The Serious Cambridge Analytica Data Breach Dateline Hollywood Google reportedly paid Andy Rubin $90 million after he allegedly coerced sex from employee The Verge Fed Fires Warning Shot at Wall Streets Riskier Loan Deals Bloomberg Simon Wren-Lewis warped view of modern macroeconomics Simon Wren-Lewis (UserFriendly) Class Warfare Antidote du jour (MGL): And a bonus: Wheelchair dogs at animal rescue enjoying playtime. pic.twitter.com/DnXy4UqX1R puppie (@activepuppie) October 26, 2018 See yesterdays Links and Antidote du Jour here. Yves here. Richard Murphy read, and more important, translated the NAO report so you dont have to! And you can see why May is angling for a longer transition period. It appears to have finally dawned on the less bloodthirsty Tories that no way, no how will the UK have a trade deal with the EU at the end of 2020 unless the EU dictates terms (and even then thats not a given). So the UK is faced with a crash out with the EU with respect to trade then even with the current outlines of a deal, and all the border requirements that go with it. And as we flagged some time ago, the UKs custom system upgrade, which is due to be completed January 2019 (and the Governments record of completing IT projects on time is poor), wont be able to handle remotely enough daily transactions to handle EU goods with the UK no longer in the Single Market. No one even discussed whether it would be possible to get the border systems in shape by the end of 2020, which suggested that the experts saw it as so implausible as to not be worth mentioning. Another issue is that the few official documents put out by the UK on Brexit have been astonishingly flabby, lots of fuzzy high concept, very little concrete detail. And the Joint Agreement (the punt on the Irish border last December that contained the infamous backstop) had an uncomfortably high amount of aspirational language that didnt seem clearly related to eventual deal terms. Has this sort of mushy thinking become common in the UK civil service, or is this a verbal protective crouch in response to Brexit? By Richard Murphy, a chartered accountant and a political economist. He has been described by the Guardian newspaper as an anti-poverty campaigner and tax expert. He is Professor of Practice in International Political Economy at City University, London and Director of Tax Research UK. He is a non-executive director of Cambridge Econometrics. He is a member of the Progressive Economy Forum. Originally published at Tax Research UK The National Audit Office has issued a report today on the UKs preparedness for border controls as and when Brexit happens (as I think it will, I am afraid). Their conclusion (with my comments) is as follows: Effective management of the border is critical for the UK after it leaves the EU. Its a pity no one told the Leave campaign, in 2016 or those remnants of it that still exist now. It is fundamentally important to our national security, economy and international reputation. Keep reading, and youll realise all three are being shredded, right now. Leaving the EU will trigger some important changes to how the border is managed, but making such changes is not easy. It requires significant effort and the coordination of large numbers of organisations, many parts of government and millions of border users. Its a pity no one told the Leave campaign. If the government reaches a withdrawal agreement with the EU, industry and government will have until December 2020 to design and implement any new arrangements. Thats mighty wishful thinking. This could involve significant work, such as the implementation of new customs arrangements, and the time available to meet these challenges is not long compared to many complex government programmes. In other words, the NAO think its nigh on impossible. However, the scale of this change will be nowhere near that required if the UK and the EU cannot reach an agreement. Someone smiled when they wrote that. And then went outside and did the honourable thing. If there is no withdrawal agreement, the government has recognised that the border will be less than optimal. No, they didnt: they came back and added that as a footnote. We agree with this assessment, and it may take some time for a fully functioning border to be put in place. In other words, well be a nation-state without a functioning border. Which reduces us to something less than a functioning nation state when you think about it, because one of the identifying characteristics of a nation-state is that it has an identifiable border and we wont have that. Individuals and businesses will feel the impact of a sub-optimal border to varying degrees. The master of understatement strikes again. The government is putting in place coping responses where it can. For that read but we cant find where. How effective they will be remains to be seen. Which in civil service speak is as close to saying that this is going to be a disaster and there is no way around it as anyone dares go. I should add, I agree with this assessment, barring its optimism, which is significantly over-stated. The Wall Street Journal has a very useful snapshot of the current state of play on the US-China trade talks, which is that they are going nowhere fast. This has been the situation for some time, if youve been paying attention. As well discuss in more detail, the two sides are engaged in a fight over the shape of the table, as to how the negotiations will proceed, which isnt a good sign. Reading between the lines, the reason for the jockeying now appears to be to try to prevent Trump from making commitments to Xi at meeting set to take place at a G-20 summit at the end of next month, since Trump is particularly fond of making a show of his authority. However, even if Trump gives up ground by shooting from the hip next month,1 its not hard to infer that China is not where it expected to be now. When Trump started with his tariff threats and then action against China, some China watchers, who claimed to represent the thinking of well-placed insiders, were close to smug in their dismissiveness. The Chinese government had a long term perspective and was set up to execute on it, while the US could be guaranteed to change course with elections. Trump would be weakened by the midterms and out after 2020, if not sooner. US business was sure to be unhappy about Trumps tariffs hurting their interest and they would reduce their support. At worst, the Chinese would just stay the course and ride out this inconvenience. But the Chinese appeared not to have anticipated that the US would move to impose tariffs on an additional $200 billion of tariffs after the earlier rounds that targeted $34 billion and then an additional $16 billion of imported items. In a departure from past practice, the US Trade Representative is not allowing any exceptions to the $200 billion round of tariffs that come into effect in January, a decision that has retailers up in arms. Moreover, the tariff imposition does not appear likely to have much impact on the midterms. Trumps ratings are on the high end of his range as President. Conventional wisdom has long been that the Democrats would pick up 20 to 40 seats in the House. Thanks to the Democrats focusing on identity politics, which cuts both ways, their prospects in the House dont seem to have improved even with ongoing Trump outrages; Kavanaugh has improved the odds of Republicans picking up seats in the Senate and may even mitigate their losses in the House. The Chinese expected Trump to be walking wounded after the midterms, particularly after choosing goods for their retaliatory tariffs with the goal of undermining Trump support. That doesnt look like it will be the case. By contrast, as Marshall Auerback has pointed out, China will come out the bigger loser in a trade war. Chinas official growth slowed to 6.5% last quarter, which means the real level was probably lower. China has a large and rising level of debt, to the degree that Steve Keen identified it as crisis prone due to the combination of rapid growth in debt (which added to demand) and the high level it has attained. Keen contends that for China merely to halt its debt growth would trigger a financial meltdown. A new article at Knowledge@ Wharton points out the danger of the highly leveraged structure used in China. So even though the Chinese may contend that tariffs wont have that much impact on the economy, Trump may have caught China in a window where the tariffs could do disproportionate damage. Having said that, the US is also going out of its way to poke a stick in the eye of the Chinese geopolitically. Theres a difference between applying pressure and being a jerk, and the Trump team doesnt appear to have any interest in discerning how far might be counterproductively too far. For instance, Congress is allowing a $330 million arms sale to Taiwan to proceed, which is the second deal of this type in 18 months. Last Monday, two US warships sailed through the Taiwan Strait, leading to harsh denunciations in the official press. On the trade talks front, the US has broken off talks with China because China is not acceding to the US request to put its ask on the table. The US could claim that its already done so. But some of what the US has asked for, like having China reduce its trade surplus with the US by half, is likely seen by the Chinese as so extreme an opener as not to be taken seriously. From the Wall Street Journal: The U.S. is refusing to resume trade negotiations with China until Beijing comes up with a concrete proposal to address Washingtons complaints about forced technology transfers and other economic issues, officials on both sides of the Pacific said Negotiations have been on hold since mid-September, when the Chinese canceled a trip to Washington after the U.S. announced levies on the $200 billion of Chinese imports. Since then, Beijing has sought to re-engage, including asking U.S. Treasury Undersecretary David Malpass to resume talks. He declinedwith the backing of the White House trade teamuntil the Chinese present a formal offer, U.S. officials said The impasse comes as tensions between the worlds two largest economies are spreading from trade to national-security issues. Vice President Mike Pence, in a recent speech, railed against Chinas acquisition of sensitive technology and its confrontational military posture. Mr. Pence accused Beijing of meddling in U.S. politics, leaving Chinas leadership perplexed over the scope of their mounting challenges with Washington For Beijing, making a formal offer presents a number of risks, individuals briefed by the Chinese said. First, it would reveal Chinas negotiating position. Second, Beijing fears Mr. Trump could make any offer public in a tweet or statement as a way to lock in any concessions by China The U.S. is concerned China will string out negotiations and try to get pledges from Mr. Trump in a one-on-one session with Mr. Xi. That would produce agreements that sort of commit to things that will sound good but arent meaningful, the senior White House official said. Chinese officials divided the U.S. demands into 142 separate items, which they then placed into three categories, said individuals briefed on the Chinese discussions. Of the demands, 30% to 40% could be done immediately; another 30% to 40% could be negotiated over time; and 20% were off limits because they involve national security or other sensitive issues, they said. Informally named the 80/20 plan or the 60/20/20 plan, the idea was presented to the U.S. in mid-August negotiations, U.S. and Chinese officials said. Chinese negotiators, however, didnt reveal the items in each of the three categories other than to say 122 of the 142 items were considered negotiable, and they didnt say how individual items would be handled. Rather, the proposal was conceptual in nature, said U.S. officials, who argue that isnt t sufficient. Now the Chinese may be hoping, and they could be correct, that Trump is playing macho with China as part of his midterms strategy and will relent once the elections are past. US businesses are up in arms about the prospect of the tariffs kicking in next January. Trump is regularly his own worst enemy, so even if he has managed to get China in a less advantaged position, letting the tariffs proceed is a lose/lose, even if China loses more. And as the White House staff clearly worries, Trumps distaste for detail means he could also undermine himself, or renege on an airy statement, confirming the notion that the US is not agreement capable. That too would undermine getting to an agreement where China makes concessions in return for the US dropping or reducing the tariffs. Finally, one of the USs big issues is intellectual property theft by China, both piracy of end consumer goods like software programs and movies, as well as industrial misuse, like patent violations. Even if China were to agree to reforms, its hard to see how they could construct an enforcement apparatus that would catch a significant percentage of the violations. So it isnt clear how China could meet a key US demand. With the January deadline approaching, I cant imagine China will do nothing, but it will be interesting to see if they make an effort to reopen talks. Stay tuned. ____ 1 Not sure this is a mixed metaphor, since the both images are combat-related. A Polish man currently serving a prison sentence for a drugs offence has been refused legal aid for defending the Criminal Assets Bureaus (CAB) that a commercial property where approximately 1m of cannabis was found growing is the proceeds of crime In September 2016 Gardai arrested two men after the discovery of a cannabis 'growhouse' in Hollyford, Co Tipperary. Arising out of the discovery 44-year-old Andrezej Pacek with an address at Deerpark, New Ross, Co. Wexford along with another man Przemylaw Pstrowski of Lacknacreeney, Hollyford, Co. Tipperary, were each sentenced to ten years imprisonment at Clonmel Circuit Court in 2017, with the final six years suspended. They were jailed for being in possession of a controlled drug with a value of 13,000 or more for unlawful sale or supply. The Criminal Assets Bureau have brought proceedings against Mr Pacek, who is currently detained in Portlaoise Prison, claiming the property where the drugs were found was acquired with the proceeds of crime. The house at Lacknacreeney, Hollyford is the subject of freezing obtained by CAB under the Proceeds of Crime Act. The claim is denied and in a sworn statement Mr Pacek said the house in Hollyford was his only asset and was purchased with savings from the sale of his transport business in Poland in 2006. He claimed that he had sold some nine vehicles that were part of his business before moving to Ireland. The married father of three children said he did not have the means to pay for lawyers. He had received legal aid when he was before the Circuit Criminal Court. The application was opposed by CAB, CAB Michael Binchy Bl for CAB said that no evidence to support Pacek's claims where the money used to purchase the Hollyford property originated from. Counsel said that there had been a number of unexplained four figure lodgments to Pacek's bank accounts prior to the purchase of the property. In her ruling, Ms Justice Carmel Stewart dismissed the application for legal aid. The court noted that Pacek was in prison resulting in translation difficulties was problematic for his legal team to obtain full and proper instructions from their clients, However, given the explanations tendered on his behalf and the lack of documentation to support his claims the Judge said the interest of justice in the case did not merit admitting Pacek to the legal aid scheme. The Judge adjourned the case to a date in November, A Tipperary man caught carrying two pipe bombs and a pistol to further the activities of the IRA has had his sentence upheld on appeal. Dylan Cahill (24), of Lower Irishtown, Clonmel pleaded guilty to the possession of a .380 calibre Colt semi-automatic pistol and four rounds of .380 calibre ammunition at Sradrine, Glefarne, Co Leitrim on May 13th, 2015. He also pleaded guilty at the non-jury Special Criminal Court to the possession of two improvised explosive devices, or pipe-bombs, at the same place on the same date. The Special Criminal Court heard gardai on traffic duty stopped a maroon VW Passat on the day in question after reports the car had left a filling station without paying for fuel. The car was driven by Cahill and the passenger was John Burke. When gardai searched the car they found a plastic shopping bag on the floor of the front passenger seat. The pistol and pipe bombs were in the bag. Ms Justice Isobel Kennedy, presiding alongside Judge Sinead Ni Chulachain and Judge James Faughnan, sentenced Cahill to six years in prison, with the final year suspended. The Court of Appeal upheld Cahills sentence today. President of the Court of Appeal Mr Justice George Birmingham said there was no basis for suggesting the imposition of the mandatory minimum sentence of five years for possession of a firearm could amount to an error in principle. He said the carrying of a semi-automatic pistol, ammunition and a pipe bomb in furtherance of the activities of an illegal organisation, "the IRA", was a very serious offence. Mr Justice Birmingham, who sat with Ms Justice Maire Whelan and Ms Justice Marie Baker, dismissed the appeal. The NATO Deputy Secretary General, the Honourable Rose Gottemoeller, will travel to Reykjavik on Sunday, 28 October 2018. She will participate in the 14th annual NATO Conference on Weapons of Mass Destruction (WMD), Arms Control, Disarmament, and Non-Proliferation on 29 October where she will deliver an opening address. In the margins of the Conference, the Deputy Secretary General will meet with the Minister of Foreign Affairs and External Trade of the Republic of Iceland, H.E. Mr. Gudlaugur Thor Thordarson, as well as other senior officials in attendance. The speech will be published on the NATO website after the event. Follow the Deputy Secretary General on Twitter (@Gottemoeller). Also follow us at @NATOPress. Clare Hutchinson, the NATO Secretary Generals Special Representative for Women, Peace and Security, participated in a UN Security Council debate on women's empowerment in New York on Thursday (25 October 2018). Ms. Hutchinson stressed NATO's strong commitment to the Women, Peace and Security agenda, noting the adoption of a new Policy and Action Plan by Allied leaders in July. She said: "the Women, Peace and Security agenda needs collective action to ensure tangible progress. We must be courageous in our work together to achieve sustainable and lasting peace, not only for women, but for everyone." Read her full statement here From left to right: Major General Jan Toft, Director of the Cooperative Security Division, Lieutenant General Malik Zafar Iqbal, Director General of the Pakistani Joint Staff, and Lieutenant General Jan Broeks, Director General of the NATO International Military Staff. (Natural News) The establishment media is doing its best to convince as many Americans as possible that the so-called bombs sent this week to notable Democrats and critics of POTUS Donald Trump were the result of the presidents violent and hostile rhetoric. Given what Trump has done and said, this was absolutely predictable, Paul Waldman wrote at The Washington Post. In fact, its a wonder that it took this long. Its not just that Trump advocates violence against his political opponents though he does. Its that everything about his rhetoric pushes his supporters in that direction. The unrelenting hatred churned up by Donald Trump for the two years following 2016 is dangerous. A Washington Post columnist [Jamal Khashoggi] is dead and progressive icons are targets of bombs, tweeted little-watched MSNBC host and one-time conservative Joe Scarborough. The unrelenting hatred churned up by Donald Trump for the two years following 2016 is dangerous. A Washington Post columnist is dead and progressive icons are targets of bombs. https://t.co/SFkRuAIlFx Joe Scarborough (@JoeNBC) October 24, 2018 If law enforcement wants to warn for future bomb targets, all they need to do is check Trumps Twitter feed and play back tapes of his campaign rallies, tweeted activist and writer Amy Siskind. And not to be outdone, CNN actually referred to Democrats who were sent fake bombs as Trumps targets. Trumps targets? Really? Yes, of course. The Lefts outrage is the only outrage that counts because when things happen to them its so wrong and unfair. Meanwhile, when something bad happens to conservatives and, in this day and age especially, POTUS Trump supporters, not only does the disgustingly dishonest establishment media cheer it on but they pretend as though everyone on the Right has it coming. For instance, where was the widespread media condemnation when twice-failed presidential loser Hillary Clinton said recently that her side of the political aisle should not be civil to the other side of the aisle? (Related: Left-wing VIOLENCE has created a new normal for GOP Congress: Dramatic increase in THREATS.) The Left has been advocating violence for years In an interview with CNN (who else?), Clinton stated plainly that it is not possible to be civil with a party (the GOP) that wants to destroy what you stand for, what you care about. She noted further that if Democrats can win back one or both chambers of Congress, thats when civility can start again. You cannot be civil with a political party that wants to destroy what you stand for, what you care about. Thats why I believe if we are fortunate enough to win back the House and/or the Senate, thats when civility can start again. But until then, the only thing that the Republicans seem to recognize and respect is strength, she said. Of course, shes not the only Left-wing Democrat to use this kind of rhetoric. Rep. Maxine Waters, D-Calif., has called on supporters to physically confront members of POTUS Trumps Cabinet wherever they find them and to push back on them. Lets make sure we show up wherever we have to show up and if you see anybody from that Cabinet in a restaurant, in a department store, at a gasoline station, you get out and you create a crowd and you push back on them, and you tell them theyre not welcome anymore, anywhere! she said earlier this year. If that isnt a dog whistle call for violence, then nothing is. This all comes after a sitting member of Congress House Majority Whip Steve Scalise, R-La. was nearly assassinated by a hard-Left Bernie Sanders supporter in June 2017 as he and other GOP lawmakers were practicing for their annual congressional softball game. But fake bombs being sent to Democrats just two weeks before the 2018 midterms designed to do nothing more than change the political narrative and tilt it in favor the Donkey Party well, thats just too much! POTUS Trump and Republicans have been targeted by unhinged Leftist mobs for nearly two years. For the Left-wing establishment media to feign outrage now over fake bombs and blame them on the presidents allegedly violent rhetoric is a sick joke. Read more about real Left-wing terrorism at Terrorism.news. Sources include: NaturalNews.com WashingtonPost.com TheNationalSentinel.com NewsTarget.com (Natural News) A California judge has issued a landmark ruling that affirms the cancer-causing effects of glyphosate, the primary active ingredient in Monsantos Roundup herbicide. San Francisco Superior Court Judge Suzanne Bolanos ultimately sided with jurors in the case of Dewayne Johnson, a school groundskeeper who developed a severe and fast-moving form of non-Hodgkins lymphoma from repeated exposure to Roundup and Ranger Pro, two popular Monsanto (now owned by Bayer) weedkiller products. The original verdict called for Bayer to hand over $289 million in damages to Johnson, though pending an agreement from Johnsons lawyers, that amount could be reduced to $39 million. Either way, the ruling represents a landmark decision since its the first time that a court has ever ruled in favor of plaintiffs suing Monsanto. Reports indicate that Judge Bolanos had originally intended to rule against Johnson. But after receiving letters from at least five of the jurors who urged her to uphold their decision, she ultimately agreed, setting a new precedent against the safety of Roundup and glyphosate. According to an earlier hearing, the judge toyed with the idea of dropping the damages altogether, wrote a brokerage alpha in a note to clients. Now, however, the judge made a U-turn and confirmed the jurys previous verdict. For more related news, be sure to check out Glyphosate.news. This one single ruling shaves 10 percent off Bayers value as a company The ruling is good news not only for Johnson, but also the more than 8,000 other similar lawsuits pending against Monsanto-Bayer, many of which claim similar harm from exposure to glyphosate and Roundup. Reports further indicate that this single ruling all by itself has delivered a huge blow to the German chemical giant, wiping away a whopping 10 percent of the companys value. This could balloon further once the rest of the lawsuits make their way through the justice system. As Natural News reported back in 2016, its an undeniable fact that glyphosate isnt the innocuous agriculture chemical that Monsanto has long claimed. The chemical is known, based on animal, human cell, and human epidemiological and clinical case studies to damage the liver and kidneys, disrupt hormones, impair reproductive ability, damage gut bacteria, corrupt DNA, and promote cancer. Even at very low doses of exposure, glyphosate kills placental, embryonic, and umbilical cells, writes Mike Adams, the Health Ranger. Glyphosate is associated with genetic damage (mutations), including chromosomal aberrations, even at doses below those recognized as safe.' As for how Johnson and his lawyers plan to proceed with the amount of damages they plan to accept as part of the ruling, its safe to say that everyone in-the-know about Monsantos endless crimes against humanity is hoping and praying for maximum damage to be inflicted against the worlds most evil corporation. The evidence presented to this jury was, quite frankly, overwhelming, stated Johnsons lawyers, seemingly suggestive of no capitulation to calls by Monsanto for a reduced judgment. While the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) continues to deny the evidence showing that glyphosate does, indeed, cause cancer, the World Health Organizations (WHO) International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC) back in 2015 declared the opposite, stating that glyphosate is probably carcinogenic to humans. This decision was accompanied by WHOs reclassification of glyphosate as a Category 2A substance, meaning it has the strong potential to cause cancer in those exposed to it. Based on these findings, and the ruling in Johnsons case, Monsanto-Bayer is likely going to be hit hard by a continued onslaught of lawsuits that, in the end, just might lead to this multinational corporation going belly up. To keep up with the latest happenings with Monsanto, be sure to check out Monsanto.news. Sources for this article include: Reuters.com NaturalNews.com (Natural News) Giving fish oil supplements to children helps improve their reading and comprehension performance, Swedish experts report. Researchers at the University of Gothenburg examined 154 children who were either given the fish oil supplement Equazen or a placebo pill. Study data revealed that the children who received fish oil supplements exhibited a 64 percent improvement in overall comprehension compared with those who were given placebo. Researchers also found that children who took fish oil supplements were five times faster in decoding jumbled up words than those in the placebo group. Of interest, participants in the placebo group exhibited similar outcome when given the fish oil supplements. We were a bit surprised to see this level of effect in mainstream children. This has not been shown before. As a scientist, you always want a second study to confirm your findings, but these are very promising results, says study lead researcher Dr Mats Johnson. Public health nutritionist Dr. Emma Derbyshire lauds the results of the study. It shows that Equazen is having a great effect on reading scores for mainstream children. A child who is a poor reader is likely to show behavioral problems and an inability to focus on learning tasks two years later. Similarly, children who show early signs of behavioral problems are more likely to develop reading problems, Dr. Derbyshire says. The findings are slated for presentation at an educational conference. Studies link fish oil to better school performance in children Various other studies have demonstrated that fish oil supplements help improve the overall school performance in children. An analysis of more than 3,000 grade 11 pupils showed that those who took omega-3 and omega-6 capsules had average scores that were 17.7 points higher than those who did not take fish oil supplements. A 2007 study also revealed that fish oil supplementation resulted in higher subject scores among students taking their annual standard assessment test. Researchers found that 92 percent of students were able to meet the required standard for English, up from only 68 percent that was previously estimated by their teachers. Data also showed that 92 percent of children were able to meet the national standards in maths, which is significantly higher than the pre-estimated passing rate of 78 percent. The children also showed improvements in concentration and behavior, researchers say. Data shows that fish oil supplementation helps improve reading comprehension skills in younger students. Researchers say seven and eight-year-old pupils started with an average reading of nine months above their age, but finished with an average reading of 18 months above their age after taking the fish oil supplement for three months. Fish oils may also keep babies sharp at a young age High levels of docosahexaenoic acid (DHA), commonly found in fish oils, promote learning and visual acuity in infants. An analysis of 109 infants and their mothers reveals that higher cord blood levels of DHA is tied to better visual acuity, cognitive function, and motor development in infants during the first year after birth. The findings highlight the need for an increased intake of essential fatty acids during the third trimester to aid in photoreceptor development and in the synaptogenesis in the brain. A placebo-controlled study also found that taking even smaller doses of fish oil supplements during pregnancy result in better visual acuity in babies. Another study shows that higher fish intake is tied to having significantly smarter infants, but these effects are cancelled out when high hair mercury levels are observed. Another study published in the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition reveals that children and women with high DHA levels in their blood cells regardless of fish oil supplementation attained above average scores in an intelligence test. The findings suggest that long-term fatty acid intake may be a bit more effective in boosting cognitive performance than supplementation alone. Sources include: DailyMail.co.uk Telegraph.co.uk PsychologyToday.com BabyMed.com (Natural News) Not only are the social media behemoths responsible for directly censoring conservative, pro-POTUS Trump voices, but their CEOs are also increasingly being seen as complicit in what many believe are criminal invasions of privacy. In recent weeks, the city of Portland, Ore. has become ground zero in what many believe could be the opening rounds of a new American civil war or, at a minimum, 1960s-style violence and unrest. Rival factions of Alt-Left Antifa and conservative, Trump-friendly organizations like Proud Boys and Patriot Prayer routinely battle each other on city streets. And last week, Left-wing anarchists who took over several blocks could be seen on social media antagonizing and threatening passing motorists. Huge brawl just happened and police came in to firenless lethal rounds on people. Right-wingers were clubbing people w clubs outside of Kellys Olympian, way worse than NYC last night. proud Boys and Patriot prayer and Antifa just had a huge wild fight pic.twitter.com/a750y2ai7J Mike Vampire Hunter B Bivins (@itsmikebivins) October 14, 2018 Mind you, the violence goes both ways but when it first began, Leftist anarchists were responsible; since then, Right-leaning groups show up expecting to be attacked and are merely fighting back when they are. (Related: Radical left-wing activists call for violent revolution in Austin, Texas leave bloody pig heads at conservative campaign offices as warning.) Videos are usually posted to social media. But thats not all. As Far Left Watch reports, Twitter has looked the other way as Antifa members in Seattle and elsewhere have been doxxing federal Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents on the platform: In the lead up to the midterms, social media giants like Google, Twitter, and Facebook have rolled out waves of censorship designed to minimize the influence of conservative activists online. Despite the consistent suspension of conservative and right-wing accounts, Twitter has taken no action against hundreds of violent far-left accounts that use the platform to recruit new members and organize criminal activity. Arent the social media CEOs aiding and abetting domestic terrorism? In June, Greater Seattle GDC, a violent Antifa cell, used their Twitter account to dox 37 ICE agents, putting their names, addresses, and phone numbers online so they could be targeted and/or harassed and threatened. This violates multiple Twitter Terms of Service and this has been brought to Twitters attention on numerous occasions throughout the last two months, Far Left Watch reports. And though the violations have been reported several times to Twitter officials, accounts used in doxxing attacks are still live and have not been taken down. Antifa accounts actively violate @Twitter TOS without consequence. Not only do they openly encourage people to carry out violence against @ICEgov agents but it appears they also use the platform to disseminate the personal addresses and information of those agents. @Jack? pic.twitter.com/SbPBc8KCo1 Far Left Watch (@FarLeftWatch) August 16, 2018 Far Left Watch has even reported Antifa TOS violations and still nothing has been done to the offending accounts. Meanwhile, accounts belonging to Infowars and Alex Jones, among many other conservative pro-Trump voices, have been banned completely. In addition to Twitter, Facebook, Google, and YouTube have also looked the other way when it comes to Left-wing violations of terms of service. Conservatives and pro-Trump voices are given no quarter; the Left is given a wide berth. Last year, three lawmakers Reps. Katherine Clark, D-Mass.; Susan Brooks, R-Ind.; and Patrick Meehan, R-Pa. proposed legislation that would make doxxing a federal crime as part of an online safety bill. It hasnt gone anywhere, however. So, its time to try another approach. Since CEOs like Twitter boss Jack Dorsey refuse to enforce their own terms of service when it comes to Left-wing tactics, its time to revisit an Obama-era designation and arrest him and others for aiding and abetting domestic terrorism. As a result of increased calls for action, the AWOL mayor of Portland, Ted Wheeler, finally proposed an emergency ordinance this week that would empower police to physically separate protesters and counter-protesters, then move all of those who have a history of violent encounters into specially designated zones under additional police supervision, Zero Hedge reported. I will not allow continued, planned street violence between rival factions to take place in Portland, Oregon, he said Monday at a news conference, two days after Antifa, Proud Boys, and Patriot Prayer members beat and assaulted each other on the streets, including the use of pepper spray. Several were reportedly injured. Well see about that. Wheeler is the same sort of Leftist that Jack Dorsey is and the other social media CEOs. Theyll look the other way if the right is being targeted. Read more about Antifas violent tactics at AntifaWatch.news. Sources include: FarLeftWatch.com ZeroHedge.com NewsTarget.com While high-profile sexual abuse charges make headlines across the country, a quiet epidemic has been surging in Americas prisons and jails for years. According to recently released numbers from the Department of Justice, the rate of sexual abuse reports by inmates tripled in just four years. More than half of those incidents involve allegations of staff victimizing inmates. And while women make up just 7 percent of the U.S. prison population, they are victims in a third of the cases that are substantiated. Lucia asked that we hide her identity. She says Deputy Sheriff Daniel Swanson sexually abused her while he was transporting her to hospital visits. She has filed a civil lawsuit against Swanson, San Joaquin County, and Sheriff Steve Moore. The county's District Attorney has filed a felony charge against Swanson for assault by a public officer. Lucia needed a series of medical exams after she was injured while picking up a heavy bag in jail. During her first appointment, Lucia says Deputy Swanson complimented her. He told me that I was pretty. I said, Thanks. That was it and he took me back. I didnt think anything of it at the time. But starting with her second hospital visit, Lucia says Swanson got physical with her. Sexually Abused Behind Bars An inmate tells her story of abuse at the hands of a San Joaquin Sheriff's deputy. Swanson has been charged with felony assault and misdemeanor sexual battery of a female inmate while she was shackled and under his control. On Oct. 2, 2018, Swanson pled not guilty. His attorneys office, Villapudua Law, did not return calls or emails requesting comment. Here is video of Swanson entering his not guilty plea in court with his lawyer. On October 2, 2018, Sheriffs Deputy Daniel Swanson pleaded not guilty to a felony charge of Assault by a Public Officer and a misdemeanor charge of touching a person intimately against will for sexual arousal. There is actually a long history of sexual victimization of women in custody, said Dr. Brenda Smith, a member of the Prison Rape Elimination Act (PREA) Commission, a task force assembled to study sexual assaults in U.S. prisons and jails and set guidelines for reducing those attacks. See PREA Report here. To learn more about Prison Rape Elimination Act, click here. Inmates who are sexually abused often have no choice but to bring the matter up to prison staff. All inmates are at risk of victimization because of the lack of power in institutional settings, because of the code of silence and also because of the poor investigative outcomes, Smith said. The latest data from the Department of Justice shows reports of sexual victimization of inmates by staff have more than tripled in a five-year period, from 4,293 cases in 2011 to 14,303 in 2015. The number of substantiated reports rose 43 percent within that time, from 433 cases to 619. Smith points out that one area the commission failed to address is inmate transport, and admits that this was an oversight. While there was debate about it, we ultimately did not enact standards related to transport, she said. However, she stresses that its up to each prison and jail to ensure that inmates are safe from sexual abuse and violence while being transported. The PREA standards are the floor, she said, and the reality is that agencies were on notice long before the standards - that transport was an area of vulnerability to sexual victimization and abuse. The San Joaquin County Sheriff declined to sit down for an interview, citing the pending litigation. A staffer at the sheriffs office did state during a phone call that changes had been made since the charges were filed against Swanson, but declined to offer details. I anticipate that there will be a slew of cases like this one, said Attorney Stan Goff, who is suing San Joaquin County, the sheriff and Swanson for $2 million on behalf of Lucia. I think that people as a whole should hold people accountable, he said. Goff is building a case against Swanson and, in his words, the people who hired him and the people who failed to supervise him in a proper manner. Lucia says she doesnt feel safe and doesnt trust anyone at the jail but believes she has to speak out. This uniform doesnt mean that we can be treated like we are nothing, she said. It is always going to be our word against theirs. We have to have dignity and not stay quiet. Two people have died after apparently falling from Taft Point in Yosemite National Park, park officials stated Thursday. The bodies of the male and female park visitors were being recovered by park rangers Thursday morning. The deaths are under investigation, according to park officials. Authorities have yet to determine the identities of the park visitors, park officials stated. Taft Point features a lookout spot from the edge of a cliff that offers visitors expansive views of Yosemite Valley, El Capitan and Yosemite Falls. Yosemite National Park spokesman Scott Gediman says railings only exist at some parts of the overlook. Visitors can walk to the cliff's edge, where there is no railing. Gediman says more than 10 people have died this year in Yosemite, some from natural causes and others from falls. Last month, an Israeli teenager visiting the park fell hundreds of feet to his death while hiking near the top of 600-foot-tall Nevada Fall. The death of 18-year-old Tomer Frankfurter was considered an accident, the Mariposa County coroner's office said. The Associated Press contributed to this report. CNN Chief White House Correspondent Jim Acosta received the Hearst Award for excellence in professional journalism at San Jose State University on Thursday night. Students and faculty from SJSU and many other area campuses attended the event, during which Acosta was set to deliver a speech in celebration of the First Amendment, as well as the importance of free speech and media ethics. But he updated his remarks with commentary on the recent mail bombs sent to high-profile Democrat officials and other well-known liberals. "Make no mistake, these events have stiffened our spines," he said. "They have made us more determined than ever to do the news and to get at the truth as to whats happening in this country." Acosta spent much of Thursday talking with students about the journalism industry, telling them, "Truth is bigger than a bully, and truth is bigger than bombs." Acosta covers the Trump administration and previously covered the Obama administration from the White House and around the world. He reported while following Trump on the 2016 campaign trail. The San Francisco Planning Commission on Thursday recommended against an outright ban on new corporate cafeterias after hearing concerns from companies and workers. Commissioners did support exploring other options that still support small business. The planning commission listened as people spoke for more than an hour. It did not want a ban, but did want to strike a balance. Chef Tim Eelman said restaurants that serve lunch in the area have struggled. At the Perrenial, where he works, the restaurant does not serve lunch, something that helps the business' bottom line. "I think in a perfect scenario it would be healthier to not have these in certain areas of the city," Supervisor Asha Safai said. Safai introduced an ordinance banning employee cafeterias in future office space to help boost the local economy. "We are authorizing in our central SoMa plan 6 million more square feet of office space," Safai said. At a hearing Thursday, representatives of tech companies and businesses spoke along with cafeteria workers concerned about their jobs and unionizing. There are more planned discussions on the issue before it heads to the full Board of Supervisors. Spenger's Fresh Fish Grotto, a Berkeley landmark for 128 years, abruptly closed this week, leaving customers and its staff stunned. The Berkeley Chamber of Commerce CEO said the owners of the restaurant, the Kelly Restaurant Group, released a statement confirming Spenger's has closed permanently. The ownership group attributed the closure to prohibitive employee and labor costs in Berkeley. Another restaurant group has applied to take over the liquor license. NBC Bay Area's Roz Plater has more in the video report above. What to Know The New York Times reported that President Trump uses unsecured iPhones to call confidants According to the report, Chinese and Russian spies listen in on the calls Trump denied the report and said, "I rarely use a cellphone, & when I do its government authorized" President Donald Trump on Thursday denied a New York Times report that claimed Chinese and Russians are spying on him when he uses an unsecured cellphone, saying the story is "soooo wrong!" Citing current and former American officials, the Times reported that Trump's aides have warned him that the calls to friends aren't secure and that the information the spies are allegedly picking up is being used to influence him and impact administration policy. While NBC News has not verified the Times' reporting, U.S. officials tell NBC News that they have been concerned for months that Trump has been discussing sensitive information on an unsecured cell phone with informal advisers, including Sean Hannity of Fox News. Trump said on Twitter that he only uses government-authorized cellphones or land lines and called the article incorrect. "The New York Times has a new Fake Story that now the Russians and Chinese (glad they finally added China) are listening to all of my calls on cellphones. Except that I rarely use a cellphone, & when I do its government authorized. I like Hard Lines. Just more made up Fake News!" the president tweeted. Earlier, he tweeted that the Times article is "long and boring" and "so incorrect I do not have time here to correct it. I only use Government Phones, and have only one seldom used government cell phone. Story is soooo wrong!" Officials told the newspaper that Trump "has two official iPhones that have been altered by the National Security Agency to limit their abilities and vulnerabilities and a third personal phone that is no different from hundreds of millions of iPhones in use around the world." While the devices are not completely secure, the Times reported, the calls are intercepted while traveling through international cellphone networks. While Trump tweeted that "I rarely use a cellphone," the message was sent from an iPhone, according to social media manager Tweetdeck. One of his phones is optimized for Twitter and other apps, according to the Times report. He also dictates tweets to aides. In a tweet, the newspaper said "The New York Times is confident in the accuracy of our reporting." Later Thursday, White House Deputy Press Secretary Hogan Gidley said Trump "does not have three cellular phones. He has one official government iPhone. This phone security follows industry best practices and is closely managed under government supervision in conjunction with recommendations from industry partners." "The phone is rotated on a regular basis and is constantly monitored for any security vulnerabilities and attacks, in accordance with recommendations from the intelligence community, Gidley said in a statement. Apple said it is not commenting on the report, and NBC has also reached out to the Federal Communications Commission for comment. China on Thursday denounced the report as "fake news" and suggested Trump exchange his iPhone for a cellphone made by Chinese manufacturer Huawei. Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Hua Chunying told reporters that the journalists behind the report in the Times "are sparing no efforts to win the Academy Award for best screenplay." A 2012 congressional report said Huawei's equipment was a security risk. If the U.S. is still concerned about security, Trump could "abandon all modern communication devices and cut off contact with the outside completely," Hua said. The Associated Press contributed to this report. What to Know Massachusetts officials announced Oct. 26 that the deadline for gas restoration in the Merrimack Valley has been pushed back to December. Authorities said they now expect to complete gas restoration between Dec. 2 and Dec. 16. The original deadline was Nov. 19. Gov. Baker and Lawrence Mayor Dan Rivera urged residents to take advantage of temporary housing being offered as temperatures begin to drop. The utility involved in a series of natural gas explosions and fires in three Massachusetts communities last month acknowledged Friday it would not meet its original Nov. 19 deadline for restoring gas service to all its customers. Columbia Gas set a new timeline for complete restoration of between Dec. 2 and Dec. 16, but officials added they expected most residents and businesses to have heat and hot water back before then. Attorney General Maura Healey blasted the gas company Friday, calling the delay "simply unacceptable." "Columbia Gas needs to explain why, even after incorporating temporary repairs, it may take until mid-December to restore heat and hot water to families who have already faced these burdens for weeks and weeks," she said. "By November 19, Columbia Gas should provide all impacted residents with either temporary or permanent heat, or appropriate temporary housing, regardless of cost." Thousands of customers in Lawrence, Andover and North Andover have been without gas service since the Sept. 13 disaster as the utility replaces some 50 miles of gas pipeline. One person was killed and 25 others injured in the explosions and fires that damaged 131 structures and destroyed five homes. A preliminary report issued by the National Transportation Safety Board this month found over-pressurized natural gas lines as the source, but the investigation is continuing. Gov. Charlie Baker on Friday called the recovery "painful, frustrating and inconvenient." "As these challenges persist, we all know the temperatures are dropping," said Baker, who urged residents without heat and hot water to consider taking advantage of temporary housing being offered to them in trailers, apartments and hotels. Overnight temperatures dropped to near freezing in much of the region. Lawrence Mayor Dan Rivera also urged residents to take advantage of the temporary housing. "Don't let distance be deterrent in getting housing. If its Tewksbury, if its Boston, take the housing now. We are in a disaster zone in disaster conditions," Rivera said. "This is a disaster situation and if you wait until the last moment to allow yourself of a hotel, youre going to find a busy line." Baker also called for improved communication between Columbia Gas and affected residents. Joe Albanese, who was brought in by state officials to oversee the recovery effort, said crews are ahead of schedule in replacing pipeline. The key stumbling block, however, has been assessing damage on a house-by-house basis and replacing damaged gas lines, burners and appliances so they are safe to receive gas. Officials say crews will now in some cases make temporary repairs to burners so heat and hot water can be restored, with the promise that the equipment will be permanently replaced at a later time. "Each day that goes past our deadline is a day too long," said Albanese, adding that Columbia Gas is also bringing in three more contractors to add to the manpower involved in the restoration. "We understand the urgency you all have to return home and reopen your businesses. It's cold outside. The hardship and inconvenience created by this incident is more than just disruptive and devastating," said Albanese. To date, the utility said it had relit 1,040 residential and business meters, and installed hundreds of new water heaters, boilers, furnaces, dryers and ranges. Pablo Vegas, chief restoration officer for Columbia Gas, expressed sympathy for the affected residents and reassured them of the work being done. "We understand this has been a frustrating process for many," Vegas said. "The patience and resilience of this community is inspiring, and we will work day and night to restore and regain our customers' trust in us." Vegas said the company is doing all it can to reduce suffering by customers. "But we have to do more," said Vegas. "Every individual, family and business owner that has been impacted by the events of Sept. 13 deserve to know when their lives will be returned to normal," he said. Residents have been increasingly frustrated with the lack of gas in the city as they struggle to keep warm without any heat or hot water. "It was 59 degrees, and thats during the day," Lawrence resident Sherri Deshaies said. Deshaies and her elderly mother can no longer bear the cold and will be heading to a hotel in New Hampshire for shelter. "She says shes sleeping in her bed with double layers of clothing on fully dressed and told me today she puts her hands in her pockets when she goes to sleep," Deshaies said of her mother. Andover Town Manager Andrew Flanagan issued a statement saying he shared in the frustration of residents. "Today's news no doubt leaves many people frustrated and adds many new questions to an already complex crisis. I share in your frustration, and it is my job to ask the vital questions every day until everyone has answers," Flanagan said. "Andover's town officials will remain at the table every day until every pipe, meter and appliance is fixed; every driveway, lawn and street repaired; and every home and business made whole again." Convicted Boston mob boss James "Whitey" Bulger has been moved from a federal prison in Florida to a transfer facility in Oklahoma, according to the U.S. Bureau of Prisons website. The 89-year-old is serving a life sentence for 11 murders and other related crimes. The U.S. Bureau of Prisons does not list when Bulger was moved or a reason for transferring him from the prison in Sumter County, Florida, where he has been since September 2014. Prior to that, Bulger was held at a prison in Tucson, Arizona. Bulger was the head of Boston's Irish mob and an FBI informant. He was convicted of gangland crimes in the 1970s and '80s and sentenced to life in prison after a jury convicted him in 2013. His case became an embarrassment for the FBI as corrupt agents accepted bribes and protected him. Bulger was a fugitive for 16 years until his 2011 arrest in California. In October 2016, the Supreme Court turned away Bulger's appeal of his racketeering convictions and life sentence. The justices did not comment on leaving in place Bulger's convictions for playing a role in the 11 murders. Bulger argued that the judge at his trial should have let him tell the jury that a now-dead federal prosecutor had granted him immunity from prosecution. The judge said Bulger hadn't offered hard evidence that such an agreement existed. Bulger also contended that federal prosecutors failed to disclose "promises, rewards and inducements" made to John Martorano, a hit man who testified against the Boston gangster at his trial. Massachusetts authorities are searching for the suspects that vandalized the Vietnam Veterans Memorial in Boston. Patricia McCormack reported the damage to state police Thursday afternoon. "They came prepared to do damage and they did damage," McCormack said. When troopers arrived at the location on Morrissey Boulevard to investigate, they saw that landscaping around the memorial had been damaged extensively. In addition, an American flag was cut and a Massachusetts flag was taken off the flagpole and found nearby with trash dumped on top. Bricks were also thrown at the memorial which left marks on the stone. Authorities said a POW-MIA flag that had been at the memorial was apparently stolen. For Vietnam Veteran Joseph Zinck, seeing the vandalism is heartbreaking. He helped build the memorial more than 30 years ago for fallen Dorchester soldiers. "I was just devastated. I can't make rhyme or reason why somebody would damage it," Zinck said. Zinck hopes to see it all rebuilt soon while he continues to serve his hometown while honoring those who never came home. Zinck and other members of the Vietnam Veterans Memorial Committee estimate it will cost about $20,000 to replace what was ruined. "It has to be somebody that is very, very angry at something or somebody to do this," said Zinck. "It was done with purpose because somebody had a chainsaw or some kind of saw to cut the trees and some kind of weapon to cut the ropes for the memorial." It's likely that the memorial won't be able to be repaired until the spring when the weather gets warmer. Anyone with information about the vandalism is urged to contact Massachusetts State Police at 617-740-7710. Democrat Brendan Kelly listened as the people crowded inside a Southern Illinois University conference room talked about how trouble at the Carbondale campus has brought trouble for the whole region. Decreasing enrollment means jobs aren't filled when employees quit or retire. A local furniture store that used to sell a truckload of mattresses to college students from its parking lot each August hasn't come close to that level of sales in years. A four-lane highway between St. Louis and Carbondale that people have been saying for a generation would attract more students has yet to be built. "We can't sell our houses," retired university employee Susan Rehwaldt told Kelly during a town hall meeting Thursday night. "You just can see the prices going down." Photos: Candidates for Illinois Governor Face Off in #ILGovForum Kelly, a prosecutor and Navy veteran, is trying to retake a House seat that Democrats held for more than 30 years before Republican state Rep. Mike Bost won it in 2014. Two years later the working-class corner of the state home to steelworkers and a once-thriving coal industry supported Donald Trump by 15 percentage points after twice backing Barack Obama for president. How Kelly and Democrats running in other largely rural, blue collar districts fare in November could determine whether the party wins the 23 seats it needs to take control of the House next month. It could also signal whether the Democrats have any hope of winning back those voters in 2020. Kelly says it's clear the last few years haven't brought the kind of economic turnaround Illinois' 12th Congressional District was hoping for. "The issues are not left versus right. The issues here are up versus down," he says. And Southern Illinois is still very much down. The district has a median household income of just under $50,000, and one-quarter of children live in poverty, according to the U.S. Census Bureau. On the Issues: Candidates for Illinois Governor Answer 11 Questions The race has seen millions in outside spending from both sides, as well as attention from the president. Trump, who held an August rally with steelworkers in the district, will return Saturday to campaign with Bost in Murphysboro, the congressman's hometown just west of Carbondale. Bost, a union firefighter and grandson of a coal miner, says his election and Trump's appeal in the area are a continuation of something that's been happening slowly over the past few decades. When he was elected to the state Legislature in 1994, his was the most Democratic district in the state to elect a Republican to the Statehouse. Today, most of southern Illinois' legislators, as well as many local elected officials, are Republicans. The reason, he says, is that people in southern Illinois voted Democratic when they believed the party represented working men and women. Many oppose abortion rights and support gun rights. Now they see Democrats putting job-killing regulations on the coal industry and talking about abolishing Immigration and Customs Enforcement. 10 Races to Watch in Illinois' Midterm Elections "When you used to ask them why they were Democrats they said, 'Because Mom and Dad told me I was,' or 'My union told me I needed to be,'" Bost says. "That has come to the point where they hear what's happening on the national level and the state level, and they hear the ideas the Democrats are putting forward, and it doesn't fit the mold of what their mom and dad's Democrat party was." Take Carol Green, who owns a Murphysboro antiques and collectibles store with her husband. She was raised in a family that always voted Democratic, and she did, too, because her father was a union ironworker and "the party supported the unions." "I've often wondered what he would think if he was still alive," said Green, 70, who last voted for a Democrat for president in 1992. She and her husband say Democrats now seem more interested in taking money from working people to give to others. While she voted for longtime Democratic Rep. Jerry Costello until he left office in 2013, she's backed Bost since then, and plans to do so again this year. But Democrats also see signs that give them hope. Voters here backed Democrat Tammy Duckworth for Senate over incumbent GOP Sen. Mark Kirk in 2016, even as they overwhelmingly supported Trump. Kelly is seen as a strong candidate, one Democrats have tried to recruit for several election cycles because of his local roots and background as a veteran and prosecutor. He's getting some help from Democratic Rep. Cheri Bustos, whose western Illinois district supported Trump even as she won re-election by a roughly 20-point margin. Bustos is now overseeing "heartland engagement" for the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, working with candidates in the Midwest, as well as West Virginia and Pennsylvania, to flip GOP districts that resemble her own. She acknowledges the party hasn't done what it needs to in areas like these, where most towns might have no more than 1,000 residents. "There are many Democrats who decided to write off those towns and the people in those towns," Bustos said. "And that is a big, big mistake. The Democrats running this cycle are not letting that happen." Many of the issues they're talking about are similar to other Democrats, such as how to reduce the cost of health care and ensure people with pre-existing conditions have insurance. There also are issues more specific to these mostly rural areas, such as improving infrastructure. Kelly is campaigning on what he calls his "Save Southern Illinois" plan, which touches on everything from improving bridges and water mains a broken pipe left thousands of people in nine counties without water last year to helping institutions like Southern Illinois University. He notes that in some towns, the police headquarters were built during Franklin D. Roosevelt's administration. At one, sewage has leaked into the evidence room. He's been in St. Clair County, the urban area east of St. Louis where he's state's attorney, as well as towns like Ina population 881. What he's heard has been consistent: The stock market may be doing well, but voters aren't reaping the benefits. "It's just that the people at the top are doing really, really well, but it's not trickling down here." What to Know A person is in custody in Florida in connection with the mail bombings, law enforcement sources said The person is believed to be a man in his 50s The Justice Department confirmed someone was in custody and that they would hold a news conference Friday afternoon The Florida man suspected of sending pipe bombs to prominent Democrats and critics of President Donald Trump across the nation this week appears to have sent threatening social media posts to Rep. Luis Gutierrez. Screenshots of the posts from the now suspended Twitter account containing the name and images of 56-year-old Cesar Sayoc Jr. contain graphic and threatening content that were sent to the Illinois congressmans official account in September. Hey slime scum you like make threats we Unconquered Seminole Tribe will answer your threats on our land here Swamp and Everglades and we will find see you very soon.Remember hug your loved ones close everytime u walk our your doors.Watch family real cl, (sic) one post reads paired with photos of Gutierrez and his family members. NBC 5 was able to track down at least nine tweets directed at Gutierrez from the account that appears to be linked to Sayoc. Other tweets include graphic images of a person who appears to have been eaten by a large snake. Another shows video footage of a news report concerning an alligator attack. Anotehr shows what looks like a bloodied and decapitated goat. More include what appear to be macabre tarrot cards with German soldiers. "I am used to death threats and they are not going to stop me or slow me down in anyway," Gutierrez said in a statement. "When my home was firebombed in 1984, I rushed my wife out and carried my daughter out of our home before it burned to the ground. My wife and I were scared but never deterred. That crime was never solved, so I am pleased that the current string of mail bombs appear to be moving towards a resolution." Gutierrez expressed his appreciation for law enforcement and said he and his staff continue to take precautions "to protect ourselves." 13 Suspicious Package Incidents Within five days, apparent explosive devices were detected in the mail addressed to Democratic politicians Barack Obama, Joe Biden, Hillary Clinton, Sen. Corey Booker and Rep. Maxine Waters; billionaire philanthropist George Soros; the New York City offices of CNN and others. No one was hurt and investigators are working to determine if the incidents are all linked, though many of the devices appeared similar. Sayoc is originally from Brooklyn and currently of Florida. Public records show he has a lengthy record of arrests for battery, theft, moving violations, and steroid-related charges -- as well as a 2002 incident where he threatened to throw a bomb. (He pleaded guilty in that case and received probation.) A registered Republican, his social media accounts identify him as an ardent supporter of President Trump who attended many rallies -- and who continued tweeting about some of his targets even after the bombs started arriving. When he was arrested, authorities seized a van festooned with stickers of Trump and Vice President Mike Pence, as well as anti-Democrat and anti-media stickers (some overlaid with crosshairs). NBC 6 Attorney General Jeff Sessions, at a Department of Justice news conference, said Sayoc would face five charges and up to 48 years in prison if convicted. According to sources, Sayoc was questioned under national security exception where he denied the charges before asking for a lawyer and refusing to answer further questions. 13 Suspicious Package Incidents Within five days, apparent explosive devices were detected in the mail addressed to Democratic politicians Barack Obama, Joe Biden, Hillary Clinton, Sen. Corey Booker and Rep. Maxine Waters; billionaire philanthropist George Soros; the New York City offices of CNN and others. No one was hurt and investigators are working to determine if the incidents are all linked, though many of the devices appeared similar. A 'VERY NICE' PERSON A cousin who wished to remain anonymous told NBC News that Sayoc had been working in strip clubs since he was 22, as both a dancer and bouncer. In a 2014 court filing, Sayoc described himself as a road manager for traveling male "revues" during which dancers strip. Hes very estranged from his family," this cousin said, describing Sayoc as a "loner" with "a lot of problems." As recently as Thursday night, Sayoc was working as a DJ at a strip club in West Palm Beach, NBC affiliate WPTV reported. Another cousin of the suspect described Sayoc as a "very nice, thoughtful person." Asking not to be identified, the woman said she was stunned to hear about his arrest. She knew nothing about his political beliefs or arrest history, she said. The two hadn't connected in 20 years until recently, when her father died. "It was mostly just small talk, how's your family, that kind of thing," the woman said. "I don't really know that much about him. We have a very big family." His one-time defense attorney Daniel Aaronson described Sayoc as being "as polite of a client as Ive ever represented" and said he would be willing to represent him in this case. But not everyone had such nice things to say. A former TV reporter named Rochelle Ritchie tweeted that the suspect had previously threatened her life on social media accounts following a TV appearance. The Seminole Tribe of Florida issued a statement denying Sayoc was a member or that he had worked at the tribe's Hard Rock casino, despite Sayoc's claims on social media to the contrary. The arrest news followed shortly after the discovery of two more suspected mail explosives in New York City and in Florida, one addressed to former Director of National Intelligence James Clapper and one to New Jersey Sen. Cory Booker. After Sayoc's arrest, word emerged of another suspicious package sent to Sen. Kamala Harris in Sacramento. 14 BOMBS The three parcels seized Friday bring the total number of suspected mail bombs to 14. All of the packages were irregularly shaped, in yellow manila envelopes, with six stamps that were not postmarked. None of the bombs detonated, no injuries were reported and authorities said Thursday it appeared some of the devices were flawed and incapable of exploding, though it wasn't clear if they were purposefully structured that way or it was just bad construction. According to sources, the explosive devices were made from PVC pipe and contained a timer (likely a digital alarm clock) to set off the detonator. The powder contained in the bombs comes from pyrotechnics. X-rays show there was likely shrapnel inside the PVC pipe, law enforcement officials say. The return address listed on each one was the Florida office of ex-Democratic National Committee chair Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz. Investigators had said they were looking into any past incidents involving her office to determine if there could be any connections to the current probe, but have said there is no suggestion she had any involvement whatsoever. In Pictures: Pipe Bombs Addressed to Hillary Clinton, Obama, CNN, Others Its pretty common for parents to meddle in their adult childrens love lives, but after one Florida woman used her single son to make a political statement about the #MeToo movement, her son felt he had to respond. Marla Reynolds Carr wrote Oct. 6 that her son Pieter Hanson, a 32-year-old Navy veteran from Orlando, wont go on solo dates because of false sexual accusations by feminists with an axe to grind. This is MY brother. And people ask if mom has ever done this before. She has. Here is the evidence. Enjoy. #HimToo pic.twitter.com/rAgcY2wORT Jon Hanson (@DancinJonHanson) October 10, 2018 The tweet seems to refer to the sexual misconduct and assault allegations made against recently confirmed Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh. Kavanaugh vehemently denied the accusations at a hearing where Dr. Christine Blasey Ford, one of his accusers, recounted her experience. Supporters of #HimToo, which gained popularity during Kavanaughs hearing, argue that the judge is an innocent man falsely accused in a #MeToo climate that supports sexual assault survivors and vilifies all men. That tweet has since been deleted, and Hanson felt it misrepresented him. He created a Twitter account @Thatwasmymom to clarify how he feels. The account has now evolved into a platform for his outpourings of support for people fighting cancer and photos of cute cats. Dubbing himself a proud Navy vet, Cat Dad and Ally, Hanson said he supports women who have shared their experiences of sexual assault. That was my Mom, Hanson wrote in the accounts first tweet. Sometimes the people we love do things that hurt us without realizing it. Lets turn this around. I respect and #BelieveWomen. I never have and never will support #HimToo. Since its creation on Tuesday, the account has gained more than 39,500 followers. Hansons clarification didnt stop the wave of This is my son memes that erupted on Twitter in response to Carrs original tweet. Twitter users have accompanied pictures of theirs pets, famous movie characters and TV personalities with This is my son descriptions parodying Carrs original tweet. This is MY son. He graduated #1 from the University of Flavortown. He was awarded three banging fajita poppers. He was #1 in flamin' hot crunch. He won't go on solo dates due to the current climate of false accusations of taking the last slice of pizza. I VOTE. #HimToo pic.twitter.com/4DY151a2W7 Mike Drucker (@MikeDrucker) October 9, 2018 [[496603291 , C]] Also, Twitter, your meme game is on point, Pieter Hanson complimented. Hansons older brother, Jon Hanson, 35, told "Today" the situation is the ultimate gift for teasing his younger brother, who he said is overwhelmed and tired because of the massive social media response. But hes being a really good sport, and trying to make it a positive thing, Jon Hanson said. Its still so funny to me. I told the story so many times. Jon Hanson also said this isn't the first time their mom has tried to score them a date using social media. Shes done it to us, but nothing political before, Jon Hanson, who is currently engaged, said. But shell write things like, Gosh, my sons are good guys. Why are they still single? FBI Director Christopher Wray on Wednesday said the FBI went through the "usual process" in its supplemental probe of Brett Kavanaugh. Wray made his first public comments on the case before a Senate committee. Jon Hanson also tweeted a screenshot of a 2015 Facebook post in which their mom said she was so proud of Pieter Hanson, one of the handsomest guys in the world. Despite deleting her Twitter account, their mother has also been able to laugh at the situation, according to her older son. I think were all getting a laugh out of it right now, Jon Hanson said in an interview this morning. I talked to her an hour ago. She is upset but we got her to laugh. Pieter Hanson, a University of Central Florida business student with plans to open a brewery, is using his new handle to correct the misrepresentation shared in his moms tweet. [NATL] 'Believe Survivors': Protests Mount as Kavanaugh Confirmed to Supreme Court A scroll down the @Thatwasmymom page will reveal photos of his cats Monkey and Chalupa and retweets of other peoples stories about battling and surviving cancer. Pieter Hansons younger brother Cooper is a non-Hodgkin lymphoma survivor. In one of his more recent tweets, Peter Hanson called on his followers to help him maintain the good vibes and said he was overwhelmed and humbled by the outpouring of love, positivity and cat photos. If you have positive things you want me to share let me know! Oh and more cats! Hanson wrote. What to Know 13-year-old Jayme Closs has been missing since October 15, authorities say Her parents were found shot dead inside their Wisconsin home that same day Authorities have already cleared more than 1,400 leads on the case and continue to pursue others The search for a 13-year-old Wisconsin girl whose parents were killed enters its 12th day Friday and investigators still haven't said if they have clues as to what was behind the attack and suspected abduction. They have followed up on more than 1,700 tips and a $50,000 reward is being offered for information that leads to Jayme Closs. But child abduction case experts say the need to find her grows more urgent with each passing day and that it's important the public stay engaged, no matter how long it takes to find her. Here are some details: WHAT HAPPENED TO JAYME? She's been missing since early on Oct. 15, when sheriff's deputies responding to a 911 call found the door to her family's home near Barron kicked in and her parents, James and Denise Closs, shot dead inside. Investigators believe Jayme was abducted and ruled her out as a suspect in her parents' killings. WHAT ARE AUTHORITIES DOING? Barron County Sheriff Chris Fitzgerald said more than 200 law enforcement officers are on the ground daily and authorities have cleared more than 1,400 leads and continue to pursue others. Some tips led officials to recruit 2,000 volunteers for a massive ground search , which has yet to turn up anything of value. Authorities are also seeking information on two cars a red or orange Dodge Challenger and a black Ford Edge or black Acura MDX that may have been near the family's home on the night of the attack. And they are asking anyone who was on Highway 8 early on Oct. 15 to call the tipline to see if they can offer any information. Fitzgerald said Wednesday that a new evidence team went through the house to make sure nothing had been overlooked and that it removed some items that were being processed. Authorities are also still reviewing the 911 call in which no one spoke to dispatchers. The call was made from Denise Closs' cellphone. Rick Thornton, a former head of the FBI in Minneapolis who is not connected to the case, said authorities are also likely interviewing witnesses and associates, examining social media accounts, computers and other devices, and analyzing cellphone traffic from the area. He said the real challenge for investigators is prioritizing what leads might be most likely to bear fruit. Another challenge is managing it all and making sure that someone takes a look at what is found to try to connect the dots. Thornton also said investigators might know more than they are releasing to the public, and that they need to strike a balance between keeping the public engaged and protecting the investigation. 12 LONG DAYS Thornton said in any criminal probe, the first 48 hours are critical to getting a quick resolution. But no matter how long it takes, investigators will not give up on missing children cases and will be motivated to follow any lead that comes in. "You don't lose hope on these things," Thornton said. "You keep following the leads that come up." He said it only takes one lead to go from an unsolved case to "all of a sudden you are on the fast track to a resolution." Thornton led the FBI's Minneapolis office when the remains of Jacob Wetterling, a boy who was kidnapped in Minnesota in 1989, were found in 2016. He said that despite the decades of not knowing what happened, he always held out hope that Jacob would be found alive. Bob Lowery, vice president of the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children, said: "As time goes on ... it becomes more difficult to find these children, but it doesn't mean that we don't." BRINGING THEM HOME Elizabeth Smart was 14 when she was kidnapped from her Utah home in 2002. While many feared the worst, she was found alive nine months later. Jaycee Dugard was 11 when she was kidnapped from a California street in 1991. She was held captive for 18 years before she was rescued. Three women and girls ages 14, 16, and 21 when they were abducted from 2002 through 2004 were found in a Cleveland home in 2013 after one of them screamed for help. Thirteen-year-old Ben Ownby was found four days after he was kidnapped in 2007, and his discovery in Missouri led authorities to Shawn Hornbeck, who was kidnapped four years earlier. Lowery said, "until we know for certain, we can never give up hope." Jayme's aunt, Jennifer Smith, addressed her niece directly at a news conference on Wednesday, saying the family missed her giggles, and her grandpa needs more artwork for his refrigerator. "Jayme, not a moment goes by that we're not thinking of you and praying for you," Smith said. "We need you here to fill that hole in our hearts. We will never stop looking for you." What to Know Weeks of walking have taken a toll on a caravan of migrants now estimated at more than 4,000 as it slowly marches through Mexico Many travelers are dehydrated and have burns on their feet from walking in the heat Many locals are offering shelter, food, medical treatment and clothes to the migrants passing through The main plaza in Pijijiapan quickly became a makeshift triage center as thousands of Central Americans trudged into this southern Mexico town. A severely dehydrated woman connected to an IV line sat on a plastic chair in the gazebo. Nearby, volunteer nurses took temperatures and treated coughs, handing out donated medicine as migrants lined up. Two weeks of walking have taken a toll on a caravan of migrants now estimated at more than 4,000 as it slowly marches through Chiapas, Mexico's southernmost state that is far from their goal of reaching the United States. In the first four hours Thursday, Dr. Jesus Miravete treated more than 120 people. Many had burns on their feet from walking in plastic sandals on the steaming highway. "So many tell me: 'I can't rest. I have to go on,'" Miravete said. "It's really hard. I feel overwhelmed, above all by the number of dehydrated children I have seen." Yet the migrants were planning what would be their most ambitious single-day trek since they crossed into Mexico, setting their sights for Friday on reaching Arriaga, about 62 miles (100 kilometers) up the coast. Like in many places in Chiapas, residents in Pijijiapan turned out in force to aid the travelers as they streamed in on foot, offering shelter, food and medical treatment. Some people offered rides to the plaza. Others showed up with used clothes and boxes of sandwiches. The caravan was earlier welcomed in a similar fashion into Mapastepec, a municipality of 45,000 residents 30 miles to the south where city officials put up tents around the main square offering everything from medical attention to donated clothing to baby formula. Local churches offered free showers and set up food distribution points. "They are human beings. You have to do something to help them," said Cesar Cabuqui, who handed out dozens of homemade bean and cheese sandwiches and bags of water. Chiapas is home to some of Mexico's poorest communities. Yet the towns on the migrants' route have organized to offer them shelter, medical treatment and donations as best they can. Grateful for the hospitality, many of the migrants have tried to be respectful visitors. Jose Reyneri Castellanos, from El Progreso, Honduras, hung back behind the rest of the caravan with his wife and two young sons to help sweep and tidy up in Mapastepec as they've done at each stop, figuring it well help ensure a continued warm reception as they head north. "I think it is important to leave the community and the city clean," Castellanos said. Many of the migrants say they are dreaming of finding better lives in the United States. They say they have been driven to leave their homelands by severe poverty and rising gang violence. Such caravans have taken place regularly, if on a smaller scale, over the years, but U.S. President Donald Trump has seized on the phenomenon this year. He has been warning about this caravan and illegal immigration, repeating hitting Democrats on the issue as the U.S. heads into the hotly contested Nov. 6 midterm elections. Defense Secretary Jim Mattis signed off on the request for help from the Department of Homeland Security and authorized the military staff to work out details such as the size, composition and estimated cost of the deployments, according to a U.S. official. Mattis, who is traveling in the Middle East, is expected to approve the actual deployments after all the details are ironed out, according to the official, who spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss planning that has not yet been completed or publicly announced. The caravan is still some 1,000 miles from the nearest border crossing at McAllen, Texas, but the journey could be twice that if the migrants head to the Tijuana-San Diego crossing. That was the destination of a smaller caravan earlier this year, and only about 200 in the group made it. This group also has begun to thin. Authorities say 1,740 have applied for refuge in Mexico and hundreds more have taken up offers of bus rides back to Honduras. Sickness, exhaustion and police harassment have helped whittle down their numbers. Immigration officials appeared to be intervening more aggressively with the migrants' movements amid the sweltering 90-degree heat. A taxi driver in Mapastepec said he had seen immigration agents force migrant passengers out of cabs at a checkpoint. An official from the country's Human Rights Commission said migrants could go through if they were in vans or trucks that offered them free rides, but if they had paid they would have to get out because of insurance regulations. On Thursday, the long column stretched for miles along the highway. Families with young children packed sidewalks asking for donations and rides. Candy Guillermo, 37, said she had heard from others in the caravan about Trump intending to send U.S. troops to the border. A single mother of four, she was puzzled that the leader of such a powerful country would find her and the families traveling alongside her a threat. "It surprises me because there are children here. President Trump should be more humanitarian," Guillermo said, wiping sweat from her brow. "We only want to give our kids a better future." Turkey on Friday intensified its demands for Saudi Arabia to extradite 18 suspects in the killing of journalist Jamal Khashoggi, a call that is likely to be met with resistance from the kingdom and could escalate tensions between the U.S.-allied regional powers. Khashoggi's Turkish fiancee, meanwhile, gave an anguished and tearful TV interview in which she said she keeps asking herself if she had missed some signs and should have prevented him from entering the Saudi Consulate in Istanbul on Oct. 2 questions that she says she cannot answer. The Istanbul chief prosecutor's office submitted a request for Saudi Arabia to hand over the suspects in the killing, and the Turkey's Foreign Ministry will formally notify the kingdom, Turkey's state-run Anadolu news agency reported. The Saudi government has said it arrested and would itself punish 18 people for what it described as a rogue operation by officials who killed Khashoggi in the consulate. "We expect our request (for the suspects') return to be fulfilled because this atrocious event took place in Turkey," said Turkish Justice Minister Abdulhamit Gul. Saudi Arabia has returned suspects to Turkey before. The stakes are much higher in the Khashoggi case, however, as some of those implicated are close to Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, the kingdom's heir apparent whose condemnation of the killing failed to ease suspicions that he was involved. Turkish prosecutors want the suspects to face prosecution for "premeditated killing executed with fiendish sentiments or by causing torment," according to the Anadolu agency. "The reasoning behind the extradition request is that Jamal Khashoggi was murdered in Turkey by Saudi nationals who traveled to Turkey for this specific purpose," a senior Turkish official said, speaking on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to talk to the media. Turkey's judicial system is better equipped to serve the cause of justice in this case, the official said, adding: "The court proceedings in Turkey will be open to international observers in order to ensure the greatest level of transparency." Turkey alleges a 15-member hit squad was sent to Istanbul to kill the journalist, a onetime Saudi insider who became a critic of Prince Mohammed and was a columnist for The Washington Post. Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has said the three others in the group of 18 who were detained in Saudi Arabia were consulate employees. Erdogan said Friday that Turkey would reveal more evidence about the killing but was not in any rush to do so, indicating that Turkish authorities will methodically increase pressure on Saudi Arabia even as the kingdom floats conflicting statements in a vain and often clumsy attempt to end the crisis. "There is no point in being too hasty," Erdogan said in an address to ruling party leaders. He added that the Saudis who killed Khashoggi must reveal the location of his body. Saudi prosecutors have said evidence from Turkey indicates that the killing was premeditated, a change from previous Saudi statements seeking to dodge responsibility for a crime that caused global outrage. Hours after Erdogan's speech, Khashoggi's fiancee Hatice Cengiz told HaberTurk, a Turkish news channel, about her pain since he disappeared after entering the consulate. "I found myself in a darkness I cannot express," Cengiz said. She described how she had accompanied Khashoggi, 59, to the consulate and waited outside while, she thought, he was getting paperwork for their planned marriage. He never came out. "I still have questions that I cannot answer," said Cengiz, who shed tears at times in the interview. "Did I miss something? Did I not notice something?" Cengiz said she has not received any condolence call from Saudi officials after the death of Khashoggi, who left Saudi Arabia for self-imposed exile in the United States a year ago. On Thursday, one of the journalist's sons, Salah Khashoggi, flew with his family from Saudi Arabia to the U.S. Prince Mohammed has condemned the killing, but critics suspect a cover-up designed to protect him, noting that he has tight control over the day-to-day affairs of the kingdom. While Saudi Arabia has been the focus of widespread condemnation, Turkey has seen its fortunes rise as it showcases its investigative mettle with leaks of evidence to media outlets and an effort to steer international revulsion over the killing. It is something of a turnaround for Turkey, which was recently sparring with the U.S. and other Western countries, even though differences among the allies remain. "We have given and continue to give information and documents to anyone who is curious, although not the originals," Erdogan said of the Khashoggi file. "We gave them to Saudi Arabia also. They all get shocked when they see the information and documents. The expressions they use are very interesting. Because the issue is not an ordinary issue." Erdogan has shared information on the investigation with Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, Turkish officials in the president's office said on condition of anonymity, in line with regulations. In a telephone call Friday, the two agreed on the need for "all aspects of the murder" to be exposed and for the killers to be brought to account, the officials said. CIA director Gina Haspel, who was in Turkey earlier this week to review evidence, briefed U.S. President Donald Trump in Washington on Thursday. Saudi Arabia's chief prosecutor will arrive in Turkey on Sunday as part of the investigation and will meet with Turkish counterparts, according to Erdogan. Support for the Saudi narrative of events in the case won support from Russia. President Vladimir Putin spoke to Saudi King Salman on Thursday, and Putin's spokesman, Dmitry Peskov, told reporters Friday that the Kremlin accepts the royal family's denial of any role in Khashoggi's killing. "There is an official statement from the king and an official statement from the crown prince," Peskov said. "No one has any reason to disbelieve that." Hartford police said theyll provide a dignitary protection detail for former vice president Joe Bidens trip to Hartford Friday with officers, detectives and supervisors who have a lot of training in the field of protection. Biden is coming to Hartford to stump for Democratic gubernatorial candidate Ned Lamont and 5th District congressional candidate Jahana Hayes. His visit will be just a day after two suspected explosive devices addressed to Biden were discovered at postal facilities in Delaware. The devices are similar to others sent to prominent Democrats across the country over the past few days. In all, 10 suspicious devices have been found so far. Biden's event in Hartford is scheduled for 3:30 p.m. Friday at the Hartford Magnet Trinity College Academy. Hartford Police Lt. Paul Cicero said the department will provide security to the building and the surrounding area. There will be plainclothes and uniformed officers. Obviously with whats going on with the country right now were at a heightened sense of awareness in regards to what is occurring, Cicero said. Cicero said the department has secured high-profile events and attendees in the past and is prepared for the challenge. The city of Hartford has recently and routinely offered plenty of security for presidents past presidents and other high-profile politicians," he said. In an email on Thursday, Hartford Assistant Police Chief Rafael Medina said the police department has had no threats related to the event and that they were working to ensure a safe venue. The event should not affect regular patrols in the city and there are no planned road closures. Republican Bob Stefanowski is kicking off a statewide tour of Connecticut in the final days of the gubernatorial election. The Madison businessman announced Thursday he will start his 52-stop, nine-day "Rebuild Connecticut Road Tour" on Saturday. His first stop is in East Hartford for the UConn homecoming tailgate party. Stefanowski dismissed criticism that he's shied away from members of the news media, saying "I honestly don't know where that's coming from." Federal authorities arrested a man in Vernon Friday morning who is accused of kidnapping his 1-year-old son in Canada 31 years ago. Investigators tracked Allan Mann, Jr. to U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development Section 8 housing in Vernon. Mann is accused of kidnapping his son, Jermaine, in June 1987 during a court-ordered visit in Toronto. Authorities believe Mann took Jermaine and made his way into the U.S. He changed his name to Hailee Randolph DeSouza, changed his son's name, and got them both fake birth certificates, according to federal prosecutors. The U.S. Marshals Service is working with Canadian authorities on the case and Jermaine's mother was notified that her son was found. Canadian authorities said that Jermaine believed his mother had died after giving birth to him. During the application process for HUD's Section 8 program, Mann, a citizen of both Canada and Ghana, provided a birth certificate that stated he was born in Houston, Texas in 1957. The State of Texas determined the birth certificate was counterfeit, according to prosecutors. Mann also lied on his Section 8 application and claimed he was a U.S. citizen, according to the arrest warrant affidavit. "This is one of those rare cases that tugs at your heartstrings," said Special Agent in Charge Christina Scaringi, of the Office of Inspector General, U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development. "Not only did we, working collectively, get this alleged bad actor off the streets, but we played a role in reuniting an unjustly separated family." Mann is charged with making false statements and making false statements in HUD transactions. The Cincinnati Zoo is suing for the return of a gorilla loaned to a California conservatory as a companion for Koko, the late gorilla famed for mastering sign language. In a complaint filed Thursday against The Gorilla Foundation, attorneys for the Cincinnati Zoo said Ndume, a 37-year-old silverback gorilla, has lived in isolation to his detriment since Koko's death in June. The zoo sent Ndume to the foundation in 1991 under a contract that was revised to say he would be transferred after Koko's death. In the months that followed, the Gorilla Species Survival Plan recommended Ndume move back to the zoo where he was born. The zoo's complaint alleges the foundation violated the contract when they refused to coordinate Ndume's planned return. Francine Patterson, an animal psychologist who cared for Koko and co-founder of The Gorilla Foundation, wrote in a September letter addressed to zoo officials that a move would harm Ndume by causing unnecessary stress. She said would also exacerbate an "ongoing suffering after the loss of Koko." In the letter, Patterson claimed Ndume screamed, banged and shoved objects for 14 consecutive hours after overhearing talk of a transfer - behavior the gorilla had never before exhibited at the foundation. She said gorillas' ability to understand human speech is underestimated, and the foundation's "decades of experience communicating with them confirms their ability to do so." Ron Evans, curator of primates at the Cincinnati Zoo, acknowledged every transfer has its risks, but Ndume's isolation presents a greater concern. "To be near and/or with other gorillas is a foundational, natural-history-proven and unarguably basic need for all gorillas," he wrote in a reply. Patterson acknowledged Ndume's need for a social group, but emphasized he is not technically alone. "He is with a strong family support group of human great apes, from whom he takes great comfort," she wrote. She added The Gorilla Foundation will continue trying to bring Ndume gorilla companions, after what she calls many "blocked attempts" by the Association of Zoo and Aquariums. The foundation does not have AZA accreditation. A federal judge in San Francisco will decide Ndume's future. A message seeking comment was left Friday for The Gorilla Foundation, most widely known for purchasing Koko from the San Francisco Zoo in 1977. Patterson began teaching the gorilla sign language that became part of a Stanford University project in 1974. Western lowland gorillas like Ndume are considered to be a critically endangered species, with fewer than 175,000 found in the wild. Cincinnati Zoo officials killed a gorilla named Harambe in 2016 after a 3-year-old boy climbed into the enclosure. Harambe's death inspired global mourning, criticism and satire. What to Know In Florida, accusations of racism are playing a central role in the hotly contested campaign for governor. On Tuesday, some Florida voters received a robocall appearing to mock Gillum, featuring a voice speaking in a demeaning minstrel dialect. The final stretch of the midterm campaign is increasingly dominated by debate over one of the most sensitive issues in American culture: race. In Florida, accusations of racism are playing a central role in the hotly contested campaign for governor. Ron DeSantis, a Republican former congressman, chafed at questions about his ties to supporters who have made inflammatory comments. "How the hell am I supposed to know every single statement somebody makes?" DeSantis said during a debate Wednesday. "I am not going to bow down to the altar of political correctness." His Democratic opponent, Tallahassee Mayor Andrew Gillum, could become the state's first black governor. Gillum went on offense at the debate, blaming DeSantis for fostering an environment that promotes racism. "I'm not calling Mr. DeSantis a racist I'm simply saying the racists believe he's a racist," Gillum said during a debate. The exchange is a snapshot of how candidates from both parties are grappling with race less than two weeks before the midterms. From New York to Florida, dog-whistle politics are showing up in ads and attacks from outside groups and, in some cases, GOP candidates. It's playing out against the backdrop of President Donald Trump, who has tapped into racial anxiety with warnings of rampant violence in urban areas, voter fraud, a caravan of migrants and unknown "Middle Easterners" threatening the U.S. southern border. Democrats argue the GOP is using racially charged appeals to boost turnout among white voters. "If you believe the midterms are about base turnout, then from a strategic standpoint you get why they're trying to throw the best red meat to their base: tribalism," said Democratic pollster Cornell Belcher. "It's all about fear. Fear of the other, fear of losing their country. That wasn't by accident, and this is part and parcel of that." Republican strategist Brian Robinson dismissed such arguments as part of "the silly season." "In the final days, you throw out stuff that you had, that you weren't sure how it would work, that may be inflammatory," he said. Robinson argued that Democrats are more likely to use race as a motivating factor. "Republicans are very sensitive about being called racist," Robinson said. "The standards applied to Republicans are much stricter. We're not allowed to discuss race, so we tiptoe around it, and our own desire not to be called a racist keeps us in line." Still, the racial dynamics of the campaign have been on display this week. On Tuesday, some Florida voters received a robocall appearing to mock Gillum, featuring a voice claiming to be the nominee, speaking in a demeaning minstrel dialect that sounds nothing like him. DeSantis denounced the call. In a telephone interview, Gillum said he listened to the beginning of the audio but didn't play all of it. "These things are also not only designed to go after their base of voters who they think is going to be motivated by these kinds of things, but there's also a little bit of an effort to throw me off my game," Gillum said. "If they can get me angry, catch me with an angry outburst, maybe they can make the case, 'The guy's unstable, you never know what he just might do.'" In Georgia, reports have surfaced over Democrat Stacey Abrams' involvement in a protest more than 25 years ago in which the old state flag which contained a Confederate symbol at the time was burned. Abrams is seeking to become the first black woman governor in America, and her opponent, Georgia Secretary of State Brian Kemp, has labeled her "too extreme for Georgia." Abrams responded to The New York Times report during a gubernatorial debate Tuesday, saying: "Twenty-six years ago, as a college freshman, I, along with many other Georgians, including the governor of Georgia, were deeply disturbed by the racial divisiveness that was embedded in the state flag with that Confederate symbol. I took an action of peaceful protest." In upstate New York, an ad released last month by the Republican National Congressional Committee showed clips of Antonio Delgado, a Democratic nominee for the U.S. House, performing songs from his 2006 rap album under his stage name, A.D. The Voice. Delgado, a Rhodes scholar and Harvard Law School graduate, said his opponent, Rep. John Faso, is using racial attacks to alienate him, a black first-time candidate in a district that is more than 90 percent white. On the stump and on Twitter, Trump continued to hammer the theme of immigration. This week, he told reporters that there "very well could be" people in the migrant caravan from the Middle East a veiled nod to a possible terrorist threat mixed in with migrants fleeing violence and seeking asylum. Mexican officials say nearly 1,700 people have dropped out of the caravan to apply for asylum in the country. Sickness, fear and police harassment could further whittle down the group, estimated to be about 4,000 to 5,000, which is more than 1,000 miles (1,600 kilometers) from the U.S. border. Immigration was also a theme in Texas, where Trump started the week at a rally to boost former rival Sen. Ted Cruz's numbers in the state. The president also labeled himself a "nationalist," sticking to his "America First" mantra, though some pointed to history and questioned whether the title had racial overtones. "They wait until the last two or three weeks, especially when the enthusiasm gap was so large," said Democratic strategist Donna Brazile. "Every button is being pushed. it's like every ember of the racial fire is being stoked. It's going to get dirtier." The federal government says it has very few answers about the mysterious polio-like illness sickening kids across the United States, but the country's top researchers actually do know a lot about the disease and what causes it, according to NBC News. There've been more than a 60 confirmed cases of acute flaccid myelitis this year, but many more suspected cases, including a handful in North Texas. NBC News reports that doctors who've been studying children with AFM have gathered evidence that enterovirus D68 is the main cause of the current AFM outbreak. Experiments have shown that EV-D68 can invade nerve tissue, including the spine. A team of academic researchers have formed their own network to try to find out why very few children actually develop paralysis from the virus that is harmless in more than 99 percent of people it infects. In the meantime, the CDC hasn't consistently found EV-D68 in confirmed cases and they're still looking at other possible causes. EV-D68 was believed to be the cause of a similar outbreak of the polio-like illness in 2014. Kingston Robinson, of McKinney was diagnosed with tranverse myelitis, of which acute flaccid myelitis is a subset. His doctor at the time, Dr. Benjamin Greenberg, told NBC 5, "one of the things that is unique about this variant of transverse myelitis is not only will kids be weak, but they're very floppy. A limb or two or four will be like wet spaghetti." Dr. Greenberg, associate professor at UT Southwestern Medical Center and director of the Transverse Myelitis and Neuromyelitis Optica Program at Childrens Health, added, "are we going to see this virus year after year, and if it causing paralysis, then we need to do something about the virus itself." A fired Texas sheriff's deputy was indicted Thursday in the fatal shooting of an unarmed black man during a March confrontation. A grand jury in Houston indicted former Harris County Sheriff's deputy Cameron Brewer on a charge of aggravated assault by a public servant for the death of 35-year-old Danny Ray Thomas. In the confrontation, which was partially captured on video, Thomas had his pants around his ankles and was unarmed as he advanced toward Brewer, who had told him to get on the ground. Thomas' family said he was having a mental health crisis. The shooting happened about 30 seconds after Brewer arrived at the scene. Brewer, who is black, was equipped with a Taser at the time of the shooting. Harris County District Attorney Kim Ogg said when law enforcement exceeds its authority, the community will hold them accountable. "Law enforcement officers have very, very difficult jobs. They perform them well almost all of the time," Ogg said. "But in this case, the deputy exceeded his lawful use of force. He disregarded his training and a man who was innocent died." Wes Rucker, Brewer's attorney, described the ex-deputy as an "honorable officer" for the last seven years who was a former teacher and a mentor with the Boys & Girls Clubs of America. Rucker said Brewer felt justified in using force against a man whom he believed was high on drugs. "He was placed in fear of his life out there," Rucker said. Brewer was not in custody late Thursday but Rucker said he was working on arrangements for his client to turn himself in to authorities. If convicted, Brewer faces up to life in prison. Ogg said the grand jury had the option of indicting Brewer on a murder charge. She said aggravated assault by a public servant is "not a lesser charge" as it has the same punishment range as murder. The sheriff's office fired Brewer in April after an internal investigation found he failed to follow the department's use-of-force policy. "The brave men and women of the Harris County Sheriff's Office hold our community's trust as sacred," Sheriff Ed Gonzalez said in a statement. "We will continue striving to earn that trust anew, every single day." Brewer's indictment was the first time since 2003 that a grand jury in Harris County, where Houston is located, has issued an indictment in a fatal shooting by an on-duty officer. Since 2010, a total of 347 officer-involved shootings, both fatal and non-fatal, have been presented to Harris County grand juries and only two have been indicted, including Brewer. The other one involved a former Houston police officer who was indicted for a 2016 incident in which he shot and wounded a neighbor after a fight over their dogs. Thomas' family filed a federal lawsuit in April against the county for wrongful death. His family said Thomas had been grieving the loss of his two children, who authorities allege were drowned in a bathtub by his ex-wife in 2016. The renovation is complete on the tallest border fence in the southwestern region of the U.S. and the Department of Homeland Security Secretary called on Congress to move forward with funding of President Donald Trump's proposed border wall. Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen spoke Friday in Calexico, California along the repaired fence near the El Centro Port of Entry. Walls work, she said. Weve seen the success of walls in El Paso, in Yuma, in San Diego and in the past, right here in the El Centro sector. She also addressed the heightened security around the U.S. due to a series of mail bombs and her department's request for military troops along the border. This plaque now on this Calexico stretch of a border fence reads This plaque was installed on October 26, 2018 to commemorate the completion of the first section of President Trumps border wall. @nbcsandiego pic.twitter.com/ZpCl5FqFpu Danny Freeman (@DannyEFreeman) October 26, 2018 The repairs to an old, dilapidated fence made of landing mats were funded by 2018 appropriations. The construction began in February and ended on Oct. 4. "Currently, this 30-foot wall is the tallest border wall deployed along the southwest border," said El Centro Sector Border Patrol Chief Gloria Chavez. A steel bollard wall has been built in the area considered to be the most active in illegal crossings and attacks on federal agents, Chavez said. Early next year, DHS will begin construction on 11 more miles of 30-foot fence. Three more miles of fence will extend to the east and eight more miles of fence will be built to the west. The fenced area toured Friday is not part of the prototypes built last year near the San Ysidro Port of Entry. The eight prototypes that stand about 30 feet tall and 25 feet wide are made from a variety of materials. In a report released in September, some of those prototypes were breached when they underwent testing by tactical teams, including experts from CBP, U.S. Special Operations Command and the Marine Corps Special Operations Command. Nielsen called on Congress to approve funding for the proposed border wall. There are two bills in Congress that would offer amounts varying from $1.6 billion to $5 billion for funding a border wall, according to NBC News. NBC News reported in August that White House officials have suggested the entire wall project could cost $8 billion to $12 billion and internal DHS assessments suggest that the cost could be even higher - as much as $21 billion. While in El Centro, Secretary Nielsen addressed the current investigation into mail bombs intercepted in several states as well as the news this week that the Department of Defense has approved deploying troops along the U.S.-Mexico in support of President Trump. The department has heightened the security posture at federal facilities around the nation in response to the devices targeting a number of high-profile politicians, Nielsen said. If you notice a strange package or if you see something that appears out of the ordinary, do not remain silent, she said. If you see something, say something. Nielsen also addressed a question regarding the military deployment of troops to the border. We have asked for engineering support, logistics support, Nielsen said. I dont have any information with respect to particular troop numbers, thats up to DOD to meet our request. A new report from the government outlines how the border wall designs can be broken. NBC 7's Liberty Zabala is in Otay Mesa with more. Less than two weeks before the midterm elections, President Donald Trump on Thursday announced a plan to lower prices for some prescription drugs, saying it would stop unfair practices that force Americans to pay much more than people in other countries for the same medications. "We are taking aim at the global freeloading that forces American consumers to subsidize lower prices in foreign countries through higher prices in our country," Trump said in a speech at the Department of Health and Human Services. "Same company. Same box. Same pill. Made in the exact same location, and you would go to some countries and it would be 20 percent of the cost of what we pay," said Trump, who predicted the plan will save Americans billions. "We're fixing it." But consumers take note: The plan would not apply to medicines people buy at the pharmacy, just ones administered in a doctor's office, as are many cancer medications and drugs for immune system problems. Physician-administered drugs can be very expensive, but pharmacy drugs account for the vast majority of what consumers buy. Don't expect immediate rollbacks. Officials said the complex proposal could take more than a year to put into effect. In another twist, the plan is structured as an experiment through a Medicare innovation center empowered to seek savings by the Affordable Care Act. That's the law also known as "Obamacare," which Trump is committed to repealing. Trump has long promised sweeping action to attack drug prices, both as president and when he was running for the White House. He made his latest announcement just ahead of the Nov. 6 elections, with health care high among voters' concerns. Under the plan, Medicare payment for drugs administered in doctors' offices would gradually shift to a level based on international prices. Prices in other countries are lower because governments directly negotiate with manufacturers. Drugmakers immediately pushed back, arguing the plan amounts to government price-setting. "The administration is imposing foreign price controls from countries with socialized health care systems that deny their citizens access and discourage innovation," Stephen Ubl, president of the Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America, said in a statement. "These proposals are to the detriment of American patients." Trump is linking the prices Americans complain about to one of his longstanding grievances: foreign countries the president says are taking advantage of U.S. research breakthroughs. Drug pricing expert Peter Bach of Memorial Sloan Kettering's Center for Health Policy and Outcomes called the plan "a pretty substantive proposal" but one that faces "serious political challenges." "The rhetoric about finally dealing with foreign freeloading suggests that we are going to take steps to get other countries to pay their fair share for innovation," Bach added. But that's "quite literally the opposite of what is being proposed. What is being proposed is that we freeload off of other countries' ability to negotiate more effectively." Democratic leaders on Capitol Hill were dismissive. House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi of California said if Trump wants to save seniors money he should seek congressional approval for Medicare to negotiate prices for its main prescription drug program, "Part D." Senate Democratic Leader Chuck Schumer of New York said "it's hard to take the Trump administration and Republicans seriously about reducing health care costs for seniors two weeks before the election." The health insurance industry, at odds with drugmakers over prices, was pleased with the administration's action. Matt Eyles, president and CEO of America's Health Insurance Plans, said: "Drug prices are out of control, and we commend the Administration for its continued commitment to reduce drug prices." As an experiment, the proposal would apply to half the country. Officials said they're seeking input on how to select the areas that will take part in the new pricing system. HHS Secretary Alex Azar said politics would have nothing to do with it. In advance of Trump's speech, HHS released a report that found U.S. prices for the top drugs administered in doctors' offices are nearly twice as high as in foreign countries. The list includes many cancer drugs. Medicare pays directly for them under its "Part B" coverage for outpatient care. Physician-administered drugs cost Medicare $27 billion in 2016. HHS says the plan would save Medicare $17.2 billion over five years. Beneficiaries would save an estimated $3.4 billion through lower cost-sharing. The plan could meet resistance not only from drugmakers but from doctors, now paid a percentage of the cost of the medications they administer. However, HHS officials said the plan is designed so it would not cut into doctors' reimbursements. Azar said more plans are being developed on drug costs. "This is not the end of the road, the end of the journey," he said. "There is more coming." Trump has harshly criticized the pharmaceutical industry, once asserting that the companies were "getting away with murder." But it's largely been business as usual for drugmakers even as Trump has predicted "massive" voluntary price cuts. A recent Associated Press analysis of prices for brand-name drugs found far more increases than cuts in the first seven months of this year. The analysis found 96 price hikes for every price cut. The number of increases slowed somewhat and they were not quite as steep as in past years, the AP found. The Trump administration proposal is open for public comment for 60 days. Fire tore through a commercial building in downtown Los Angeles late this afternoon, forcing crews to battle the flames from outside the structure, but no injuries were reported. The blaze, which became a major emergency structure fire, was reported at 5:35 p.m. at a one-story building in the 1400 block of South Long Beach Avenue, near the Santa Monica (10) Freeway, according to Margaret Stewart of the Los Angeles Fire Department. Flames could be seen leaping through the building's roof as crews arrived on scene. More than 140 firefighters battled the flames and worked to keep them from spreading to buildings on three sides of the affected structure. Knockdown was called after a firefight that lasted an hour and 22 minutes, Stewart said. Downed power lines complicated firefighters efforts and Los Angeles Department of Water and Power crews were called to the scene, she said. Some crews remained on scene conducting overhaul operations. The building housed a printing business, a man who identified himself as the owner said. Arson investigators were dispatched to determine the cause of the blaze, Stewart said. The suspect arrested in connection to the 12 crude explosive devices sent by mail, Cesar Altieri Sayoc Jr., was born in Brooklyn but lived in South Florida where he acquired an extensive criminal record. Sayoc, 56, was arrested on Friday at an AutoZone location in Plantation. His van was towed away by officials, including the FBI. The windows of the suspect's vehicle were plastered with decals of President Trump, Vice President Pence and other images, including negative images targeting the media. Officials said DNA evidence played a role in finding him. Criminal charges for Sayoc in South Florida date back to 1991 when he faced several parking and traffic violations in Broward County. Sayoc is a registered Republican as of 2016. AutoZone said Sayoc was not an employee and was apparently at the location to shop. In 2002, Sayoc faced a felony bomb threat charge in Miami-Dade County. It is not clear if he was found guilty in the case as the Miami-Dade County court docket suggests judgment was withheld. The Miami-Dade State Attorneys Office said files for the 2002 arrest have already been destroyed. In 1991, Sayoc pleaded guilty to grand theft to the third degree and given probation until 1993 in Broward County. Sayoc, who went through a Fort Lauderdale foreclosure in 2009, pleaded no contest to felony grand theft and battery charges in 2013. In 2014, Sayoc faced a misdemeanor charge of theft in Hollywood in which he violated his previous probation. He pleaded no contest to that charge and received credit for time served. Sayoc also faced a larceny and theft charges in 1992 and 2014 in Miami-Dade County. A cousin of the suspect described Sayoc as a "very nice, thoughtful person." Asking not to be identified, the woman said she was stunned to hear about his arrest. She knew nothing about his political beliefs or arrest history, she said. The two hadn't connected in 20 years until recently when her father died. "It was mostly just small talk, how's your family, that kind of thing," the woman said. "I don't really know that much about him. We have a very big family." At least 12 suspicious packages have been discovered. All of the packages were irregularly shaped, in yellow manila envelopes, with six stamps that were not postmarked. None of the bombs detonated, no injuries were reported and authorities said it appeared some of the devices were flawed and incapable of exploding. It is not clear it was intentional that the bombs would not be capable of detonating. According to sources, the explosive devices were made from PVC pipe and contained a timer to set off the detonator. The powder contained in the bombs comes from pyrotechnics. X-rays show there was likely shrapnel inside the PVC pipe, law enforcement officials said. A suspicious package intercepted at a U.S. Postal Service facility in Opa-locka Friday morning was addressed to New Jersey Democratic Sen. Cory Booker, as authorities continue to investigate whether other suspicious items sent to high-profile politicians and others in recent days went through the same facility. The news came as authorities arrested a 56-year-old South Florida man, Cesar Sayoc Jr., and charged him with federal crimes for the mail scare. The package found Friday was similar to the others sent to other politicians, with the return address listed as the Sunrise office of Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz, officials said. A senior law enforcement official told NBC News on Thursday that investigators are looking into whether some of those earlier packages containing possible explosives came through the Royal Palm Processing and Distribution Center, located off of Red Road. Miami-Dade Police officials said late Thursday that their bomb squad and K-9 unit were on scene looking for any evidence at the request of federal authorities. "This assistance is as a precautionary measure. We cannot provide additional information at this time due to the active nature of this federal investigation," MDPD said in a statement. Wasserman Shultz addressed the threats at a campaign event for Florida gubernatorial candidate Andrew Gillum Thursday. Her name was labeled on the return address of 10 suspicious packages discovered earlier this week. "There will always be those who use distractions, threats and even violence to accomplish their ends, said Shultz. The Opa-locka facility is South Floridas largest mail processing center. A spate of pipe bombs mailed to prominent Democrats around the country has raised fresh questions about the ability of the U.S. Postal Service and private delivery companies to intercept explosives and other dangerous items. Biohazard detection, X-rays and other technologies have had some notable successes in recent years, but officials warn that the sheer volume of mail makes it impossible to catch everything. "The public should not have the impression that all of our mail is screened like going through security at the airport," said David Chipman, a retired agent with the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives. "That's not the case, and we know that from a string of cases." While two packages addressed to former Vice President Joe Biden were intercepted at postal facilities in Delaware on Thursday, a pipe bomb addressed to former Attorney General Eric Holder made it so far into the mail stream that it was returned to its purported sender: the Sunrise, Florida office of Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz, whose name was on the return address. (There is no suggestion Wasseran Schultz had any involvement.) Another crude bomb addressed to former CIA Director John Brennan at CNN went through the U.S. mail before a courier took it to the Time Warner Building, where the cable network has its New York offices, according to a law enforcement official who was not authorized to discuss the investigation and spoke to The Associated Press on condition of anonymity. "Most if not all of these packages were sent through the U.S. mail," the official said. Those deliveries occurred even though the packages had certain suspicious features, including excessive postage, homemade labels and high-profile addressees, security experts said. The parcels also contained a number of misspellings. "These devices are the poster children of what a suspicious package looks like," said Fred Burton, a former counterterrorism agent with the State Department who serves as chief security officer for Stratfor, a global private intelligence company. Employees are also trained to check if the package is bulky or rigid. Are there oil stains or have a strange odor? Is it sealed with excessive tape? Is there a return address, and if so, is it addressed to a title or an individual? If the answer to any of those questions is yes, it could signal a threat. While it's not clear how much the packages weigh, mail that weighs more than 13 ounces is not supposed to be delivered using just stamps and anonymous drop-off; the package must be taken to a retail service counter where the sender would interact with a USPS employee. Packages that weigh more than 13 ounces found in USPS drop-off boxes "will be returned to sender," the agency states on its website. Investigators were still trying to piece together how they reached their respective destinations. The FBI said Thursday it appeared the pipe bombs first passed through a regional post office in south Florida, meaning some if not all of the bombs were mailed from that area. None of the devices so far in this week's scare have detonated. A Florida man was arrested Friday in connection with nationwide mail bombs. In the meantime, Phillip Bartlett of the U.S. Postal Inspection Service's New York division said hundreds of thousands of postal employees were searching the system for any additional bombs. On Friday, the 11th and 12th suspected mail explosives were intercepted at postal facilities in Manhattan and in Florida. One addressed to former Director of National Intelligence James Clapper and one to New Jersey Sen. Cory Booker, law enforcement sources and officials familiar with the investigation tell News 4 and NBC News. A 13th package, addressed to Sen. Kamala Harris, was intercepted at a facility in California, two law enforcement officials said. That package appears similar to the others but its contents have not been described. The Postal Inspection Service, which investigates mail-related crimes, said in an email that in screening the mail, the agency relies on a "targeted strategy of specialized technology, screening protocols and employee training," as well as "state-of-the-art equipment to include portable X-ray machines." The agency pointed to its Dangerous Mail Investigations division, a program created following the 2001 anthrax-by-mail attacks that killed five people, including two postal workers, and infected several others. The program was part of a costly security overhaul in which the Postal Service added a Biohazard Detection System at its mail-processing centers. The Inspection Service says on its website that it has investigated "an average of 16 mail bombs over the last few years" while processing more than 170 billion pieces of mail. "That means during the last few years, the chances that a piece of mail actually contains a bomb average far less than one in 10 billion!" The Postal Service does not have the resources to X-ray every parcel and typically reserves that technology for packages postal inspectors deem suspicious. While the Postal Service intercepted some of the packages in this week's scare, the developments underscored the limitations of the screening technology in use, said Phil Nater, a former longtime postal inspector in New York. "There's a lot of human activity involved before mail actually goes through a screening device or system," Nater said. "It's gotten a lot better, but it's not impossible to bypass." Meanwhile, the union that represents U.S. postal workers, said Thursday its members are "rightfully deeply concerned for their own well being" as well as that of the public. The American Postal Workers Union issued a statement to members urging them to be alert and vigilant and said the group is working to schedule nationwide safety training refreshers on detecting suspicious packages and what protocols to follow. The high cost of screening every parcel also limits the security measures taken by private couriers. A UPS spokesman said the company "has security measures in place, but we do not disclose those methods to maintain their effectiveness." A FedEx spokesman declined to comment. The Postal Service has successfully intercepted a number of suspicious letters and packages in recent years. Earlier this month, a Navy veteran in Utah was arrested in connection with several envelopes sent to President Donald Trump and top military chiefs. Authorities said at least two of the envelopes contained castor seeds, the substance from which the poison ricin is derived. In 2013, a postal inspector in Arizona flagged a suspicious package addressed to then-Sheriff Joe Arpaio in Phoenix. Authorities said a possible smokeless powder was leaking from the parcel. A bomb squad later X-rayed the package and discovered gunpowder and other components of an explosive device. The sender was later convicted. But John Rooney, a retired postal inspector in Philadelphia, said the system's limitations are highlighted by the massive amount of narcotics that goes through the mail every year. "People don't understand the sheer magnitude of mail the Postal Service handles," he said. "When it comes to drugs, it's impossible. You can't stop it." --NBC's Danielle Abreu contributed to this story. What to Know No date has been set yet for the meeting between Vladimir Putin and Donald Trump National Security Adviser John Bolton said Putin was invited for "a full day of consultations" but did not give any more details U.S. National Security Adviser John Bolton said Friday that Russian President Vladimir Putin has been invited to visit Washington next year. Bolton said "we have invited President Putin to Washington after the first of the year for, basically, a full day of consultations." He said no date has been set yet. Bolton spoke on a trip to the ex-Soviet nation of Georgia, which fully lost control over its two separatist provinces after losing a brief war with Russia in 2008. Bolton noted that Putin and U.S. President Donald Trump are set to meet in Paris when they attend Nov. 11 events marking 100 years since Armistice Day. Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov had a call with U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo to discuss "acute issues on the international agenda and bilateral ties in the context of preparations for planned contacts between the presidents," the ministry said in a statement. Putin and Trump held a summit in Helsinki in July amid sharp differences over the Ukrainian crisis, the war in Syria and the allegations of Russian meddling in the U.S. 2016 presidential election. In the wake of the summit, Trump was widely criticized for failing to publicly denounce Russia's interference in the 2016 U.S. election and appearing to accept Putin's denials of such activity. Days after the Helsinki meeting, Trump asked Bolton to invite Putin to Washington in the fall but the invitation further fueled controversy and the invitation was quickly pushed back until next year. Putin has repeatedly said that improvements in U.S.-Russian ties have been thwarted by U.S. political infighting, but voiced hope that Trump could eventually move to repair the fractured relations. Earlier this month, the Russian leader said "playing the Russian card" was a convenient instrument in U.S. politics ahead of the midterm election in November. A media-darling doctor has been sanctioned in court after he failed to produce medical records for a former patient who is now suing him for fraud. Dr. David Greuner, a cardiovascular surgeon once named one of America's "most beautiful" doctors, told the court his treatment records for Maria Angeles Liberatore, an admitted opioid addict, were destroyed in 2012, when Sandy flooded a residential garage in Roslyn Heights on Long Island. A friend of Greuner, Arthur Komissar, said in a 2016 sworn affidavit that "shortly after Hurricane Sandy ended in 2012, I discovered that the hard drive containing the medical records was destroyed by the storms flooding, among other things." When Judge Shlomo Hagler heard the explanation for such key evidence going missing, he called the dapper doctor "negligent" for keeping sensitive medical records in a residential garage. "It strikes me that the obligation of Dr. Greuner is more than just giving it to a friend to store in a garage, that sounds like its negligent," Hagler said. "There was a negligent storage of the documents that were required to be stored for six years under the education law. So there is a sanction that must be provided for in this case." In her lawsuit against Greuner, Liberatore accuses the physician of prescribing her hundreds of Demerol shots and other opioids, mostly in 2011 and 2012, in a fraudulent scheme to keep her hooked and paying up to $7,000 a day to support her habit. Liberatores attorney, Evan Fensterstock, suggested the lost medical records would have shown why Greuner thought it was ok to prescribe large amounts of opioids to a patient who already exhibited characteristics of an addict. He also said the flooding explanation was not believable because Roslyn Heights experienced far less water damage than other parts of Long Island during Sandy. "The bottom line is that the defendant had plaintiffs medical records and he destroyed them. His behavior was contumacious and reprehensible," Fensterstock told the judge. In her court response, Caroline Wallitt, the defense attorney representing Dr. Greuner, emphatically said her client did not intentionally lose the medical records. "He denied destroying them, there is no evidence that he destroyed them. They were not lost negligently. They were not lost intentionally," Wallitt said. "It was an act of God." In response to the original lawsuit, Wallitt also painted Liberatore as a liar who duped Greuner into believing she had legitimate pain problems when she was really doctor shopping, trying to acquire opioids to feed her addiction. "She complained of severe migraines, back and neck pain, muscular spasms, cramps, and misalignment, all the result of a serious car accident," Wallitt said. The I-Team reached out to New Yorks Office of Professional Medical Conduct to inquire whether storing medical records in a residential garage is permitted under state law. The agency did not respond to that question. OPMC spokesman Jonah Bruno also declined to say whether any investigation was ever opened into Liberatores accusations against Greuner. "Consistent with Public Health Law the Department cannot confirm or deny the existence of an Office of Professional Medical Conduct investigation of a licensee unless charges have been posted on the DOH website or the Board for Professional Medical Conduct has taken a public action," Bruno wrote in an email to the I-Team. In 2014, the New York Public Interest Research Group published an analysis criticizing OPMC for rarely taking licensure action against doctors even when there are findings of negligence. "The agency needs to reform. I mean its really stacked for the doctor," said Blair Horner, NYPIRG Executive Director and co-author of the report. The I-Team first notified OPMC of the prescribing accusations against Greuner back in 2016. Since then, his license to practice medicine has been unblemished. He has faced no sanctions related to those allegations or the issues with his record keeping, which he testified during a deposition in Liberatores case, were reported to OPMC more than a year ago. What to Know Officials are investigating up to 10 explosive packages sent to high-profile Democrats and supporters in nearly a half-dozen states All had a return address linking to a high-profile Democratic party member; at least one of them also had a white powder envelope The flurry of incidents began less than 48 hours after a bomb was planted in mailbox at billionaire philanthropist Soros' NY home A nationwide search is underway for the culprit or culprits responsible for targeting critics of President Donald Trump with crudely made mail bombs and investigators now say some, if not all, of the packages were mailed from the South Florida region. Officials added that although they have honed in on the Sunshine State, they do not have a specific suspect or motive just yet. They are looking for ongoing forensic work or tips from the public to help them catch a break in the bizarre case quickly. The NYPD swarmed a mall at the Time Warner Center Thursday after unattended toys sparked a suspicious package scare, just a day after the Columbus Circle office that houses CNN was evacuated. It was deemed a false alarm; however, authorities at the same time flocked a mail facility north of Miami to search for clues they say was the real deal. The FBI said they think that regional post office processing center is where the pipe bombs first passed through, meaning some if not all of the 10 bombs were mailed from that area to top Democrats and others in New York, Washington, Delaware and Los Angeles. It's small break in the four-day case. As of Thursday evening -- several days after the first device was found at the New York home of billionaire George Soros -- there were still no leads on a suspect in the case. It also remains unclear if their builder intended for them to actually explode or were part of some politically motivated hoax. Hours after authorities found devices addressed to former Vice President Joe Biden and one to actor Robert De Niro Thursday, investigators revealed the devices examined so far were poorly made. So far, there have been 10 packages discovered, none of which have been detonated. Three -- two addressed to former Vice President Joe Biden in Delaware and one addressed to Robert De Niro at a building he owns in Manhattan -- were discovered in a flurry of frenzied hours before 10 a.m. Thursday. Officials said a retired NYPD detective watching the news Thursday morning alerted them to a device mailed to De Niro. He recognized the suspicious packages on the broadcast as similar to one he had screened earlier in the week. The others came in the prior 72 hours: two were addressed to Rep. Maxine Waters of California; others were also addressed to Hillary Clinton, former President Obama, ex-Attorney General Eric Holder and former CIA Director John Brennan. The first was left at Soros' home in Westchester County on Monday. According to sources, the explosive devices were made from PVC pipe and contained a timer (likely a digital alarm clock) to set off the detonator. The powder contained in the bombs comes from pyrotechnics. X-rays show there was likely shrapnel inside the PVC pipe, law enforcement officials say. Officials in several states have described the devices as live explosives, and a number of senior bomb technicians briefed on the probes said they all had the needed components to detonate successfully. "As far as a hoax device, we're not treating it that way," said Police Commissioner James O'Neill. Officials didn't elaborate on the reasoning, but the return address listed on each one was the Florida office of ex-Democratic National Committee chair Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz. Investigators are looking into any past incidents involving her office to determine if there could be any connections to the current probe, but have said there is no suggestion she had involvement. Investigators are working to glean forensic clues to help identify who sent them, gathering fingerprints and DNA evidence while tracking the origin of the packages and the components used. While some have made note of the fact that the devices were not postmarked, multiple officials have said this was not uncommon, and that because of the soft packaging they could not go through automated sorting machines to have their postage canceled. Larry Johnson, a former head of criminal investigations for the U.S. Secret Service who also served as a special agent in charge of the presidential protective detail, said it is highly likely the person or people who built the bombs have been previously flagged by law enforcement. At a joint NYPD/FBI briefing in New York Thursday afternoon, Mayor Bill de Blasio urged people to come forward with any information on suspicious packages. FBI New York assistant director William Sweeney said initial analysis of powder found in packages in New York found it posed no biological threat. But investigators cautioned that the analysis is far from complete, and they say anyone who encounters one of the parcels should treat them as dangerous. Officials said they were treating the items as "potential explosive devices." The latest development could lend credence to a theory New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo mentioned in a Thursday interview with CNN, where one of the devices was sent. "Theres a theory that the bombs were not intended to explode, but were intended to intimidate," Cuomo said. "If that is the intent, then this is having the desired intent. And it could actually be fueling the group thats doing it." Investigators familiar with such probes caution against a rush to judgment on any theoretical motive, suspect or group of suspects. If you have info that could assist the #FBI's investigation of suspicious packages, call 1-800-CALLFBI (225-5324) or use http://tips.fbi.gov. What to Know The confirmed cases of measles in Rockland County has risen to 20, with four suspected cases being investigated, officials said Friday Rockland County has been grappling with a measles outbreak in recent weeks The Health Department held vaccine clinics in response to the growing cases of the contagious disease, with more clinics expected, The confirmed cases of measles in Rockland County has risen to 20, with four suspected cases being investigated, officials said Friday. Rockland County has been grappling with a measles outbreak in recent weeks even asking students, last week, who are unvaccinated to not attend school. The Health Department held vaccine clinics in response to the growing cases of the contagious disease. More vaccine clinics are expected next week, officials say, although a dates and locations are not clear at this time. Measles is a highly contagious disease. Young children, the immunocompromised, and non-immune pregnant women are at highest risk for severe complications. Measles is transmitted by airborne particles, droplets, and direct contact with the respiratory secretions of an infected person. Measles typically presents in adults and children as an acute viral illness characterized by fever and generalized rash. The rash usually starts on the face, proceeds down the body, and may include the palms and soles. The rash lasts several days. Infected individuals are contagious from four days before rash onset through the fourth day after rash appearance. Six children in Brooklyn were also diagnosed with measles after one of them apparently returned from Israel with the highly contagious disease and exposed others to it, city health officials say. Rockland officials encourage everyone to be up-to-date with the measles, mumps, rubella (MMR) vaccine to help protect them in case of any future exposure to measles in Rockland. Individuals are considered protected or immune to measles if they were born before 1957, have received two doses of MMR vaccine, have had physician or provider-confirmed measles, or have a lab test confirming immunity. To prevent the spread of illness, the Rockland County Health Department advises anyone who may have been exposed or have symptoms consistent with measles to contact their health care provider, local clinic, or local emergency department before going for care. This will help to prevent others at these facilities from being exposed to the illness. What to Know A person is in custody in Florida in connection with the mail bombings, law enforcement sources said The person is believed to be a man in his 50s The Justice Department confirmed someone was in custody and that they would hold a news conference Friday afternoon BREAKING: A 14th mail bomb has been seized that appears to have been sent by Cesar Sayoc, officials say. A Florida man with an extensive criminal background and a fervent admiration for President Trump is in custody in connection with the pipe bombs mailed nationwide this week. The suspect is 56-year-old Cesar Sayoc Jr., originally from Brooklyn and currently of Florida. Public records show he has a lengthy record of arrests for battery, theft, moving violations, and steroid-related charges -- as well as a 2002 incident where he threatened to throw a bomb. In that case, he was accused of telling a power service representative he was going to blow up the company and it would "be worse than 9/11." Sayoc pleaded guilty in that case and received probation. A registered Republican, his social media accounts identify him as an ardent supporter of President Trump who attended many rallies -- and who continued tweeting about some of his targets even after the bombs started arriving. When he was arrested, authorities seized a van festooned with stickers of Trump and Vice President Mike Pence, as well as anti-Democrat and anti-media stickers (some overlaid with crosshairs). NBC 6 Attorney General Jeff Sessions, at a Department of Justice news conference, said Sayoc would face five charges and up to 48 years in prison if convicted. According to sources, Sayoc was questioned under national security exception where he denied the charges before asking for a lawyer and refusing to answer further questions. A 'VERY NICE' PERSON A cousin who wished to remain anonymous told NBC News that Sayoc had been working in strip clubs since he was 22, as both a dancer and bouncer. In a 2014 court filing, Sayoc described himself as a road manager for traveling male "revues" during which dancers strip. 13 Suspicious Package Incidents Within five days, apparent explosive devices were detected in the mail addressed to Democratic politicians Barack Obama, Joe Biden, Hillary Clinton, Sen. Corey Booker and Rep. Maxine Waters; billionaire philanthropist George Soros; the New York City offices of CNN and others. No one was hurt and investigators are working to determine if the incidents are all linked, though many of the devices appeared similar. Hes very estranged from his family," this cousin said, describing Sayoc as a "loner" with "a lot of problems." As recently as Thursday night, Sayoc was working as a DJ at a strip club in West Palm Beach, NBC affiliate WPTV reported. Another cousin of the suspect described Sayoc as a "very nice, thoughtful person." Asking not to be identified, the woman said she was stunned to hear about his arrest. She knew nothing about his political beliefs or arrest history, she said. The two hadn't connected in 20 years until recently, when her father died. "It was mostly just small talk, how's your family, that kind of thing," the woman said. "I don't really know that much about him. We have a very big family." His one-time defense attorney Daniel Aaronson described Sayoc as being "as polite of a client as Ive ever represented" and said he would be willing to represent him in this case. But not everyone had such nice things to say. A former TV reporter named Rochelle Ritchie tweeted that the suspect had previously threatened her life on social media accounts following a TV appearance. The Seminole Tribe of Florida issued a statement denying Sayoc was a member or that he had worked at the tribe's Hard Rock casino, despite Sayoc's claims on social media to the contrary. The arrest news followed shortly after the discovery of two more suspected mail explosives in New York City and in Florida, one addressed to former Director of National Intelligence James Clapper and one to New Jersey Sen. Cory Booker. After Sayoc's arrest, word emerged of another suspicious package sent to Sen. Kamala Harris in Sacramento. 13 Suspicious Package Incidents Within five days, apparent explosive devices were detected in the mail addressed to Democratic politicians Barack Obama, Joe Biden, Hillary Clinton, Sen. Corey Booker and Rep. Maxine Waters; billionaire philanthropist George Soros; the New York City offices of CNN and others. No one was hurt and investigators are working to determine if the incidents are all linked, though many of the devices appeared similar. 14 BOMBS The four parcels seized Friday bring the total number of suspected mail bombs to 14. All of the packages were irregularly shaped, in yellow manila envelopes, with six stamps that were not postmarked. None of the bombs detonated, no injuries were reported and authorities said Thursday it appeared some of the devices were flawed and incapable of exploding, though it wasn't clear if they were purposefully structured that way or it was just bad construction. According to sources, the explosive devices were made from PVC pipe and contained a timer (likely a digital alarm clock) to set off the detonator. The powder contained in the bombs comes from pyrotechnics. X-rays show there was likely shrapnel inside the PVC pipe, law enforcement officials say. The return address listed on each one was the Florida office of ex-Democratic National Committee chair Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz. Investigators had said they were looking into any past incidents involving her office to determine if there could be any connections to the current probe, but have said there is no suggestion she had any involvement whatsoever. In Pictures: Pipe Bombs Addressed to Hillary Clinton, Obama, CNN, Others Robert De Niro is calling on people to vote in light of the series of bombs addressed to targets of right-wing anger. In a statement released by his publicist on Friday, the actor says "There's something more powerful than bombs, and that's your vote. People must vote!" A suspicious package containing what authorities described as a crude pipe bomb was discovered at De Niro's New York City office on Thursday. De Niro says he is thankful no one was hurt. He also thanked "the brave and resourceful security and law enforcement people for protecting us." The Oscar-winner has been one of Trump's most vocal critics, dropping an expletive insult at Trump at this year's Tony Awards and also apologizing to Canadians for the "idiotic behavior of my president." What to Know It appears that the NJ Senate race between incumbent Sen. Bob Menendez and his opponent Bob Hugin is a toss up, according to a report The Cook Political Report says the toss up is due in part to Democrat Menendez alleged ethics problems Hugin, a Republican and ex-pharmaceutical CEO, has outspent Menendez $27.7 million to $11.8 million, according to pre-election FEC report It appears that the New Jersey Senate race between incumbent Sen. Bob Menendez and his opponent Bob Hugin is a toss up, according to a recent The Cook Political Report analysis. The latest report, published Friday, says the toss up is due in part to Democrat Menendez alleged ethics problems and Hugins outspending his opponent in political television ads. Hugin, a Republican and former pharmaceutical CEO, has outspent Menendez $27.7 million to $11.8 million, according to the pre-election FEC report, and most of Hugins money has funded television ads, The Cook Political Report says. Hugin has poured millions of dollars into ads attacking Menendez over his 2017 corruption trial. Menendez denied wrongdoing in the bribery case and the trial ended in a mistrial. Prosecutors dropped the charges. The Senate Majority PAC, which is the Democrats Senate super PAC, has now invested almost $6.5 million in the race, including a $3 million advertising buy this week alone. The investment levels the playing field somewhat, but Hugin still holds a very definitive advantage on television, the report says. The analysis determined that the biggest threat to Menendezs re-election is not Hugin, but rather the voter who goes to the polls and decides to send Menendez a message in the same way that many did during the primary when 38 percent voted for his unknown primary opponent. Though it seems the scale is tipping in favor of Menendez, who is said to have a lead of between four and six points, The Cook Political Report says that the race is close enough to warrant a move to a toss up in New Jersey, which tends to be a blue state. Seven South Carolina law enforcement officers were shot Wednesday, one fatally, in a confrontation with a man who held children hostage as he fired on the officers, officials said. The suspect was taken into custody and the children weren't hurt after a two-hour standoff in an upscale neighborhood just outside of Florence, not far from areas that were devastated by flooding from Hurricane Florence, authorities said. The man shot three Florence County deputies from inside a home as they came to serve a warrant around 4 p.m. Wednesday, Florence County Sheriff's Maj. Mike Nunn said. He was identified as Fred Hopkins. Hopkins then shot four Florence city police officers, one fatally, as officers from all around the area swarmed in to help, Florence Police Chief Allen Heidler said. A bullet-proof vehicle had to be used to rescue the wounded officers as the man held children hostage inside for two hours, Nunn said. Late Wednesday, officials said five members of the Florence County Sheriff's Department had been at the residence serving a search warrant for an alleged sexual assault on a foster child. Hopkins was identified as the father of the alleged perpetrator of the sex crime, 27-year-old Seth Hopkins. Police said Seth Hopkins was shot and in surgery. It is unknown whether he was shot by his father or police. The three sheriff's deputies who were shot are all female, police said. Two are in critical condition and were shot in the torso area. The third, who was shot in the leg, is in stable condition. The four Florence City officers who were shot are all male. One has already been released; another was shot in the side and is in stable condition. A third officer was shot in the head and has a graze wound. He remains hospitalized. City of Florence spokesman John Wukela identified the fourth fallen officer to The Associated Press as Terrence Carraway of Darlington. Carraway, 52, had just celebrated 30 years as a police officer in the city, Wukela said. He was pronounced dead at a local hospital. An autopsy will be performed at Medical University of South Carolina in Charleston, according to the coronor's office. Both Heidler and Florence County Sheriff Kenney Boone had tears in their eyes as they spoke to reporters about two hours after the standoff ended. "I want you to pray for the family who lost the bravest police officer I have ever known," Heidler said, visibly overcome by emotion at the news conference. Condolences and outpourings of support rolled in at news of the shooting. "This is simply devastating news from Florence," Gov. Henry McMaster tweeted. "The selfless acts of bravery from the men and women in law enforcement is real, just like the power of prayer is real." Thom Berry, spokesman for the State Law Enforcement Division, said the agency had sent crime scene technicians to assist officials in Florence but were not immediately requested to help with any investigation. Boone said investigators from Richland County would help investigate the shooting. He did not say why he wasn't using state police like most law enforcement agencies do in officer shootings in South Carolina. Authorities said the shootings happened in Vintage Place, an upscale neighborhood west of the city. Neighbors said the community is full of brick homes and well-kept yards. Property records show several houses valued at more than $400,000. Bobby Goin stood outside waiting for police to let him back to his home where his wife and granddaughter heard gunshots from the home back further in the neighborhood. "Surprised is probably an understatement," Goin said of the shooting in the neighborhood where he has lived for 20 years. "The worst thing that goes on around here is that someone runs a stop sign and it gets posted on Facebook." This is the second shooting of multiple police officers in South Carolina this year. In January, a 47-year-old former banker shot four officers in York County, killing one, after his wife called 911 to report he beat her. Christian McCall pleaded guilty and was sentenced to life without parole. Florence, a city in South Carolina's northeastern corner home to roughly 37,000, sits at the convergence of Interstates 95 and 20. It's the largest city in the region known as the Pee Dee, where flooding from Hurricane Florence devastated areas to the east and south. Monica Mathur contributed to this report. Authorities say Californians are now at greater risk of flooding and debris flows during this winter's storms because of the many wildfires that have scorched vast areas of land. Federal, state and local officials issued the warning Wednesday at a press conference in Santa Barbara, adjacent to Montecito where a January debris flow from the Thomas Fire burn scar devastated homes, killed 21 people and left two missing. The state Department of Water Resources says more than 7 million California residents are at risk of flooding. Experts say post-fire floods are a greater risk to homes downslope from scorched areas because the ground cannot absorb the water, which picks up ash, topsoil and debris as it flows downhill. A judge will decide Friday if the "Bolder Than Most" rapist, a sexually violent predator a little more than halfway through a 50-year sentence handed down to him in the 80s, will be released into a remote east county community. Alvin Quarles was granted release from a state hospital by Judge David Gill on Oct. 12 into a supervised conditional release program. Judge Gill ordered Quarles release to a Jacumba Hot Springs residence at 43050 Desert Rose Ranch Road be completed by Nov. 30, but East County residents upset by the placement, and victims of Quarles upset that hes being released at all, rallied Thursday to try and stop it. Victims and their family and friends demonstrated in Downtown street with hopes of sending a message to the judge they want Quarles to stay in a state hospital for his entire 50-year sentence. "It has hit me very hard and I see it in every aspect of my life, victim Mary Taylor said. She has been outspoken in protesting Quarles release since it was announced. Quarles had 14 victims, four of whom were raped at knifepoint. His brutal attacks earned him the "Bolder Than Most" rapist moniker before his sentencing in 1989. "Once I knew he was gone for 50 years I worked on my own healing and I did a good job, Taylor said. Since he was granted release, Taylor has started a petition to keep him in a state hospital. The District Attorneys office has also filed a motion to stop his release. Taylor hopes the judge changes his mind and puts an end to her reoccurring nightmare. "I also stand here with every sexual assault survivor out there and say You know what? We gotta change the laws." The sexual assault survivors will not have the chance to speak at Fridays hearing but they will be allowed in the courtroom. Quarles will not be at the hearing. President Donald Trump is calling for troops to be sent to the border as the latest caravan of Central American migrants head toward the U.S.-Mexico border but one critic calls the move unnecessary and a piece of political theater. The caravan, by some estimates, is now 7,000 people strong and the president is calling the group a national security threat. He is proposing to send 800 active-duty troops to the border in the coming weeks. I don't think it's being done for law enforcement reasons, USDs Trans-Border Institute director Ev Meade said. Unfortunately, it's largely part of a political theater on immigration policy right now, and I think it's probably unnecessary. Meade doesnt see the caravan has a security threat. Very few of the caravan members even make it into the U.S. and there is no evidence they pose any threats, he said. The group is mostly made up of mostly women and children. There's just no indication that these are people who pose some kind of imminent threat to the United States, so I don't think the language of invasion or of a crisis is justified, Meade said. In April, some 4,000 members of the National Guard were deployed to the border when another caravan of migrants approached the U.S. Threat or not, Terence Shigg, the president of the local chapter of the National Border Patrol Council, is welcoming any help he can get. He said the issue isnt the caravan but a lack of resources for border patrol. Even without this caravan, one of the things that we want people to understand is that the [asylum seekers] and refugees, they're still coming every day, Shigg said. It's not as if there's been a hiatus and none have been showing up. We've still been dealing with this issue. Even if active-duty troops are sent, they will not be dealing with hands-on law enforcement, such as making arrests. The Posse Comitatus Act signed into law in 1878 by President Rutherford B. Hayes forbids the federal government from using the military to enforce U.S. laws within the borders of the United States. Instead, those troops will take on support duties freeing up Border Patrol agents to guard the border. It was not known how many of the 4,000 National Guardsmen sent in April are still working with the Border Patrol. Special counsel Robert Mueller's office has obtained communications suggesting that a right-wing conspiracy theorist might have had advance knowledge that the emails of Hillary Clinton's campaign chairman had been stolen and handed to WikiLeaks, a source familiar with the investigation told NBC News. Mueller's team has spent months investigating whether the conspiracy theorist Jerome Corsi knew WikiLeaks had obtained emails hacked by Russian intelligence officers before the public did and whether he passed information about the stolen emails to Trump associate Roger Stone, multiple sources said. Mueller's investigators have reviewed messages to members of the Trump team in which Stone and Corsi seem to take credit for the release of Democratic emails, said a person with direct knowledge of the emails. The source and other people familiar with the matter say they have seen no evidence suggesting either man played any role in the hacking or release of the emails. Stone has denied doing anything besides passing on information already in the public domain. Corsi and his lawyer, David Gray, declined to comment. Mueller's spokesman, Peter Carr, said the office had no comment. The ashes of Matthew Shepard, whose brutal murder in the 1990s became a rallying cry for the gay rights movement, were laid to rest in Washington National Cathedral. Shepard's remains have for 20 years been kept by his family in Wyoming, where the 21-year-old college student was killed in 1998. His ashes were interred at the cathedral Friday morning. Shepard's parents picked the Cathedral as his final resting place because he loved the Episcopal Church and felt welcomed at one he attended in Wyoming. "Matt loved the church. He loved the ceremony. He loved the fact that it was safe place for anyone who wanted to enter, it was a welcoming place for anyone who wanted to enter, it was a place of acceptance for anyone who wanted to enter," Shepard's father, Dennis Shepard, said during Friday's memorial service. On Oct. 6, 1998, Matthew Shepard was brutally beaten, tied to a fence and left to die outside Laramie, Wyoming. He died in a hospital six days later. Shepard's murder at the hands of two roofing workers who, authorities said, targeted him because he was gay, grabbed national headlines. The gruesome nature of the crime threw a spotlight on the hatred, violence and discrimination endured by LGBTQ individuals and communities in towns and cities across America. A day before the service, Shepard's parents donated some of his personal items to the National Museum of American History. Twenty years after his death, the legacy of Matthew Shepard will be preserved at a national museum. Shepard's parents donated some of his personal belonging to the National Museum of American History on Thursday. The donation came one day before their son's ashes were scheduled to the laid to rest at the Washington National Cathedral. The items donated to the museum included a Superman cape Shepard wore as a child, fair ribbons and his pre-school diploma. "The Superman cape was part of Matt's wardrobe for quite some time. There's wear holes on the cape," Shepard's mother, Judy Shepard, laughed. Shepard's parents hope the items will teach others that their son was just like everyone else. "I hope they learn about Matt that he was just like every other child," Shepard's mother, Judy Shepard said. "Every other child had a Superman cape. Every other child had a pre-school diploma. There was nothing different about Matt other than who he loved." On Oct. 6, 1998, Matthew Shepard was brutally beaten, tied to a fence and left to die outside Laramie, Wyoming. He died in a hospital six days later. The gruesome nature of the crime threw a spotlight on the hatred, violence and discrimination endured by LGBTQ individuals and communities in towns and cities across America. In the years since his death, Shepard's parents have advocated for the rights of the LGBTQ community, creating the Matthew Shepard Foundation in his memory. A Latina woman who says a white woman verbally harassed her and her family at a Virginia restaurant for speaking in Spanish earlier this month says her family is considering taking legal action against the woman. The family was visiting from Guatemala and they were inside Andys restaurant in Lovettsville when the woman allegedly confronted them. "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 victim told News4 on Friday her family is angry about the incident. They want to sue the lady or do something because its not fair, she said. She said she wants police to charge the woman with disorderly conduct or abusive language. If you do something wrong you have to pay the consequences, she said. The Spanish-speaking victim said previously her 7-year-old daughter was present during the profanity-laced attack. She told Telemundo 44 that she was 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. Its disturbing, you dont like to see that kind of behavior anywhere, said Loudoun County Commonwealths Attorney Jim Plowman. However, Plowman said Virginias statutes limit him in moving forward with charges against the woman. They describe language that basically incites acts of violence, or a violent reaction from the recipient of the language, he said. Violence is not just where I physically put my hands on you, you can be affected by individuals words. And to me this was violence, said Tonja Thompson, with the Loudoun County NAACP. Thompson believes the incident is a criminal offense, but acknowledged the statutes aren't as clear as they could be. She said she hopes to work with Plowman to make changes to law. We welcome the opportunity to talk to you to put forth some kind of statute, some that our community feels safe, Thompson said. I work with a lot of our legislators and Im happy to do that either at the state level or locally here, said Plowman. (CNN) The Chinese government is trying to hijack one of this year's hottest social trends for its own propaganda purposes. For months, young people across China have been posting images of themselves pretending to fall out of cars or trip, spreading their expensive belongings in front of them, as if they've just casually fallen out of their pockets. It's called the "flaunt your wealth" challenge and, although it isn't clear where it started, it has taken Chinese social media by storm. It isn't just huge in China -- people across the world including Russia and Australia have taken the opportunity to show off, under the hashtag #fallingstars. Originally popular among wealthy Chinese women, the trend rapidly spread across all parts of society. "It is no longer just the rich people who are falling off their yachts or planes. It's people from all professions -- doctors, lawyers, workers, even babies. It's hilarious," Haiqing Yu, Chinese digital media expert at Melbourne's RMIT University, told CNN. But as the viral craze spread from wealthy to ironic posts by regular internet users, the Chinese government saw an opportunity to hijack the meme for its own means. Employees of local government organizations across the country posted photos of themselves lying on the ground, surrounded by their simple work tools or the honors they had received for their hard work. "This is the real positive energy of the people," China's Ministry of Emergency Management posted alongside pictures of firefighters taking the challenge. "It is too painful to see that the pursuit of money and power affects young people now. Only when we support the hardworking young people will our motherland have hope." One student at Hainan University lies on the floor surrounded by books by Karl Marx and Chinese leaders Mao Zedong and Deng Xiaoping. People's Daily, the official mouthpiece of the Chinese Communist Party, compiled a selection of students and government employees "flaunting their wealth," praising them for knowing what was truly valuable in life. "These pictures may seem posed, but they show that the young generation dare to express themselves ... they flaunt their love and commitment for work. If everyone is hardworking at the work at hand, it will be the biggest wealth for the society," the publication's social media post said. Yu said the government was using the meme to spread "positive energy," a propaganda catch phrase used by the Chinese Communist Party to ensure content on the Chinese internet adheres strictly to "socialist values". "The flaunting the wealth trend is seen as corrupting by the government to Chinese society, (so instead now) you see a variety of people from different professions, age groups and of course male and female doing the same sort of thing," she said. "Chinese propaganda is no longer as sharp as it used to be, but soft." This story was first published on CNN.com. "China's government is trying to hijack a viral meme for propaganda" The Trump administration is drafting an executive action that would make it exceedingly difficult for Central American migrants seeking asylum at the U.S.-Mexico border to gain entry, three sources familiar with the proposed measures told NBC News. The exact details have not yet been finalized, the sources said. The news comes as President Donald Trump and national security adviser John Bolton have grown increasingly frustrated with the rising number of undocumented immigrants crossing the southern border and the Honduran migrant caravan currently making its way to the U.S. "The administration is considering a wide range of administrative, legal and legislative options to address the Democrat-created crisis of mass illegal immigration," a White House official said. "No decisions have been made at this time. Nor will we forecast to smugglers or caravans what precise strategies will be employed." One piece of the action under consideration would use an authority similar to that invoked by the travel ban to block entry to unauthorized immigrants who are not yet in the U.S., said the three sources. However, if these immigrants cross the U.S.-Mexico border and claim asylum, they would have the ability to apply for asylum. Other, more extreme measures under consideration include not allowing immigrants who are apprehended between ports of entry to claim asylum, said the senior administration official. What to Know Officials are investigating up to 10 explosive packages sent to high-profile Democrats and supporters in nearly a half-dozen states All had a return address linking to a high-profile Democratic party member; at least one of them also had a white powder envelope The flurry of incidents began less than 48 hours after a bomb was planted in mailbox at billionaire philanthropist Soros' NY home UPDATE: Some Devices Flawed, Unable to Explode; Others Yet to Be Analyzed, Several Investigators Say Investigators seized three more suspected package explosives -- two addressed to former Vice President Joe Biden in Delaware and one addressed to Robert De Niro in New York -- early Thursday, bringing the total number of confiscated devices sent to high-profile Democrats and others to 10 in 72 hours. Multiple officials briefed on the investigation say there are no solid leads on a suspect as of Thursday afternoon. While there are no known devices still outstanding, they remain concerned there could be others still undiscovered. 13 Suspicious Package Incidents Within five days, apparent explosive devices were detected in the mail addressed to Democratic politicians Barack Obama, Joe Biden, Hillary Clinton, Sen. Corey Booker and Rep. Maxine Waters; billionaire philanthropist George Soros; the New York City offices of CNN and others. No one was hurt and investigators are working to determine if the incidents are all linked, though many of the devices appeared similar. Officials say they are looking into whether at least some of the packages were mailed from Florida. They also say the devices were poorly made and it is unclear if these were attempted hoaxes or simply a case of bad construction. Ten have been seized in total since Monday, though most of the intercepts came Wednesday. Three more -- to Biden and De Niro -- came Thursday. News of the De Niro device broke first. That one was addressed to him and had been sent to a Greenwich Street building he owns that houses offices for Tribeca Films and Tribeca Grill. A building worker called police early Thursday because, after seeing Wednesday's news, he remembered seeing a similar package a day or so earlier. The device was safely removed from the property. Less than two hours later, the FBI and local police swarmed a postal facility in Delaware in connection with the bombing investigation. Sources had said authorities suspected a similar device may have been addressed to Biden. Nothing was found at his house, but investigators apparently tracked it down in a New Castle postal facility, officials said. It was said to be akin to the others. About an hour later, a second package addressed to Biden was confiscated at a postal facility in Wilmington, Delaware. Details on that one weren't clear. In Pictures: Pipe Bombs Addressed to Hillary Clinton, Obama, CNN, Others The De Niro device and at least the first Biden package had the same stamps and return address (that of Florida congresswoman and ex-Democratic National Committee chairman Debbie Wasserman Schultz) as others reported on Wednesday. Two senior law enforcement officials say they are looking into whether some of the packages were mailed from Florida. They are also looking into any past incidents involving Wasserman Schultz's office and if any of those incidents could be connected to these devices. As of early Thursday, there have been 10 such packages. In addition to Biden and De Niro, two devices in separate packages were addressed to Rep. Maxine Waters of California; ones were also addressed to Hillary Clinton, former President Obama, ex-Attorney General Eric Holder and former CIA director John Brennan. The first in the series was a mailbox pipe bomb left at the Westchester County home of billionaire philanthropist George Soros. None of the devices detonated and no one has been hurt. Authorities are examining the crude explosives and warning there could be more out there. NBC News obtained an X-ray photo of one of the bombs, which shows protruding wires that appeared to be connected to a cylindrical device. According to sources, the explosive devices were made from PVC pipe and contained a timer (likely a digital alarm clock) to set off the detonator. The powder contained in the bombs comes from pyrotechnics. X-rays show there was likely shrapnel inside the PVC pipe, law enforcement officials say. The seven confirmed package bombs sent to political figures had several things in common and the discoveries are spurring calls for lawmakers to turn down the political rhetoric. Ray Villeda reports. Meanwhile, investigators examining the explosive devices are working to glean forensic clues to help identify who sent them, gathering fingerprints and DNA evidence while tracking the origin of the packages and the components used. While some have made note of the fact that the devices were not postmarked, multiple officials have said this was not uncommon, and that because of the soft packaging they could not go through automated sorting machines to have their postage canceled. Former NYPD Commissioner Bill Bratton said on MSNBC Thursday that it's a plus the FBI has recovered so many of the package bombs. They will look into whether they were intended to function, how they were supposed to detonate and where the design came from. That could help find an online trail. Larry Johnson, a former head of criminal investigations for the U.S. Secret Service who also served as a special agent in charge of the presidential protective detail, said it is highly likely that the person or people who built the bombs have been previously flagged by law enforcement. If you have info that could assist the #FBI's investigation of suspicious packages, call 1-800-CALLFBI (225-5324) or use http://tips.fbi.gov. [[498282861, C]] The reaction to the devices was swift and visceral, with high-level people on both sides of the aisle, including the president, pledging Wednesday no resources would be spared in taking down whoever was responsible. The tone became more partisan-charged over the course of the day, with some assailing the White House for its "violent political rhetoric." Upon news three more packages, including two addressed to Biden, were seized early Thursday, Brennan, who was the addressee on the CNN package, tweeted at Trump to "Look in the mirror" and "Clean up your act." "Stop blaming others," Brennan tweeted. "Your inflammatory rhetoric, insults, lies & encouragement of physical violence are disgraceful." The president responded shortly thereafter, slamming "Fake News" as "a very big part of the Anger we see today in our society." "Mainstream Media must clean up its act, FAST," Trump added. [NATL] Top News Photos:Ukraine Protests, The Queen's Speech and More Vermont political leaders are reacting to this week's discovery of mail bombs, targeting prominent figures in public life, including Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton and actor Robert de Niro. "It's a heinous crime," Rep. Peter Welch, D-Vermont, said. "It's awful." Welch decried the string of mail bombs, which were also sent to other prominent Democrats, and to news network CNN. Federal investigators are scrambling to track down their sender and figure out that person's motives, which appear to be political. Elected officials from both sides of the aisle are now calling for civility, and an end to toxic politics. "It's absolutely essential that, no matter what our differences are, we have mutual respect," Welch said Thursday. "Whatever our position is, we really have to understand that at the core, we all have a commitment to this country." Gov. Phil Scott, R-Vermont, has labeled political polarization one of the greatest threats to our nation, and called us weaker as a people when we stop listening, stop working together and stop seeking common ground. After the bomb discoveries, Scott tweeted, "I want to reiterate the urgent need for us to come together as Americans and focus on what unites us, rather than what divides us." Lt. David Petersen from the Vermont State Police bomb squad said Thursday that units like his around the country have been sharing information on the devices as the investigation unfolds. "So that we can have that understanding of what we might be dealing with here in Vermont, should one of these packages arrive here," Petersen told necn affiliate NBC 5 News, describing the reason for information-sharing. The offices of Vermont's congressional delegation told NBC 5 Thursday they have not received threatening mailings such as were discovered elsewhere. While the FBI is taking the lead on the national investigation, the U.S. Postal Inspection Service out of Boston said Thursday that suspicious mailings are taken very seriously, and that it has sophisticated screening protocols aimed at ensuring a safe and secure mail system. The family of a teen killed when a series of natural gas explosions rocked communities north of Boston plans to file a wrongful death lawsuit against the utility company. Attorney Doug Sheff told reporters Thursday Columbia Gas was reckless and should have to pay for last month's death of Leonel Rondon. "This family wants justice. This family wants to find meaning in such a senseless death," said Sheff. The high school junior died after the chimney of an exploding house crashed into his car and crushed him. He had received his driver's license just hours earlier. Sheff says the complaint will be filed at a later date. "We believe that there was reckless behavior. We believe that there were so many things that went wrong that it's actually hard to see it ever happening anywhere. It shouldnt happen ever," said Sheff. Columbia Gas spokesperson Judy Rakowsky issued a statement later in the day: "We are not commenting on the litigation. We do want to say that our hearts go out to the Rondon family. This was a tragic incident and we recognize how devastating and heartbreaking this loss is to the family and everyone in the community," read the statement from Rakowsky. The National Transportation Safety Board says over-pressurized gas lines caused the explosions. Richard Benyon has no qualms over the possibility to prolong Britain's exit from the EU NEWBURY MP Richard Benyon has said he can live with an extended post-Brexit transition period, should the option to prolong Britains exit from the EU present itself. The UK is due to leave the EU on March 29, 2019, and the transition period is designed to smooth the path to a future permanent relationship between Britain and the EU. But after arriving at stalemate with European leaders at the summit in Brussels last week, Mrs May has said this period could be extended, if necessary, by a matter of months. The current plan is for a transition period of 21 months, but prolonging this period would give authorities and companies time to adjust, she said. Supporters of the idea say a longer transition period would allow more scope for securing a trade deal and to avoid a hard border in Ireland which remains the biggest obstacle for EU leaders to sort out. But the possibility has incensed some Brexiteers including members of the Conservative Party who say continuing to be part of the EU would be likely to cost the UK billions of pounds. This week, Mr Benyon sided with the Prime Minister, amid growing calls from his own party for her to ditch her Brexit plan. Mr Benyon said: Im with the Prime Minister. I do not want it to be delayed. Its taken us 12 years to get into the Common Market and weve been in the EU for 45 years. If it takes us a bit longer for us to leave it will give certainty to businesses and individuals. I can live with an extended transition period. In the same week that saw 700,000 protesters gather in Parliament Square to demand a peoples vote on the final exit deal from the EU, Mr Benyon once again quashed the omnipresent call for the country to hold a second referendum. He said: I just dont want to reopen all the horrible divisions of the first referendum. I do not believe a second referendum would be practical we would not be able to hold it until this time next year. We would need to put all the necessary legalisation in progress and I would not want months of highly-charged discussions which would not resolve the end. There are so many complications to this that have such a divisive effect. I do not think there is a majority in the house who would support a second referendum. It would be wrong to put democracy at risk in that way. The backlash at the suggestion to extend a transition period follows a turbulent week of events for Mrs May, who warned politicians to be careful about language they use. It comes after words were directed to her over Brexit by a Tory backbencher, while another told her to bring her own noose to a meeting yesterday (Wednesday) which Mr Benyon wholeheartedly condemned. Im utterly contemptuous of people who use that type of language, he said. People have a right to object in our society and to express their views with passion, but to say such violent words, full of vitriol, has no place in public life. Train services disrupted as police investigate A body has been found on train tracks near Kintbury. British Transport Police officers were called to the scene near Kintbury station at 8.32am following reports of a body on the tracks. A spokesman said: Colleagues from Thames Valley Police and the Ambulance Service also attended, and sadly a person was pronounced dead at the scene. Officers are currently at the scene working to identify the person and establish the circumstances which led to their death. Great Western Railway has said that train services between Newbury and Bedwyn have been cancelled or delayed by up to 30 minutes because of the incident. The disruption is expected until 11.30. Great Hollow Nature Preserve at 225 State Route 37 in New Fairfield will hold HollowFest: A Fall Family Fun Day Oct. 27 from noon to 4 p.m. The event will feature cider pressing, pumpkin painting, a pie eating contest with American Pie Company, baby farm animals from Happy Acres, giant board games, a haunted house and more. A new report has shown that the air outside the offices of General Practitioners and outside hospitals are high in pollutants. This can aggravate the lung problems in patients of asthma and Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary Disease (COPD) says the report. The report looks at the air quality of 2,200 GP surgeries and 248 hospitals and has shown that the air particles called particulate matter or PM2.5, around them exceed the recommended levels from the World Health Organisation (WHO). When patients with pre-existing lung conditions visit these places, they are put at a great risk the report states. The tiny particles of air pollutants are capable of passing via nose into the lungs and blood stream of the patients visiting these offices and hospitals. These can lead to asthma exacerbations as well says the report. The study was backed by the British Lung Foundation and was conducted by the Cambridge Environmental Research Consultants. The researchers have said that this level of air pollution is unacceptable. Alison Cook, director of policy at Cambridge Environmental Research Consultants in a statement said, It cant be right that hospital staff and GPs must care for people in environments that could worsen their symptoms and could be putting them at risk of a whole range of health problems. A total of around 10,000 NHS health centres and areas around them were looked at in this study. It was noted that one third of GP practices and one fourth of hospitals are located in regions where air pollution is beyond recommended safe levels. Not surprisingly, the levels of pollution are greatest in major and moderately large cities such as London and Birmingham as well as Cardiff, Leeds, Leicester, Nottingham and Southampton. Great Ormond Street Hospital in London and Birminghams Children Hospital were particularly vulnerable to pollution, the report said. Smaller towns too were not free from pollution says the report and cites examples of Barrow-in-Furness, Cumbria, Cornwall, Ipswich, Westcliff-on-Sea, Gillingham, Worthing, Kettering, Basingstoke, Colchester, Hull and Chelmsford. Wales came up with 54 GP surgeries that were located in air polluted areas while Scotland had three in Aberdeen, Falkirk and Berwickshire which were in polluted regions. Dr Maria Neira, from the WHO said that these hospitals and the GP surgeries were the heart and lungs of the healthcare system and no one who was visiting these places should be at risk of being exposed to air pollution. The British Lung Foundation also added that at least 12 million people are at risk of air pollution and its harmful effects. Improving the air quality can reduce the exacerbation and aggravation of thousands of cases of asthma, COPD, heart disease, stroke and lung cancers, the BLF says. Air pollution is responsible for around 40,000 prematrue deaths in the UK annually say the statistics. According to a statement from a Defra spokesman, the Government would adhere to its Clean Air Strategy and said, The forthcoming Environment Bill will include provisions to improve air quality. UK currently meets its own maximum legally recommended pollutant PM2.5 levels but this is twice as high as the WHO recommendation. This report comes right before the next weeks WHO global pollution conference. The European Research Council (ERC) today announced the results of the 2018 Synergy Grants call for proposals. The aim of Synergy Grants is to address ambitious research questions that can only be answered by the coordinated work of a small group of two to four principal investigators and their teams, bringing together their complementary skills, knowledge and resources. The ultimate goal of the scheme is to give support to a close collaborative interaction that will enable transformative research at the forefront of science, capable of yielding groundbreaking or even unpredictable scientific results and/or cross-fertilizing disciplines. Two research groups from the Centro Nacional de Analisis Genomico (CNAG-CRG) of the Centre for Genomic Regulation (CRG) with expertise in genome sequencing technologies and single-cell genomics led by Ivo Gut and Holger Heyn, and two research groups from the Institut d'Investigacions Biomediques August Pi I Sunyer (IDIBAPS) with expertise in cell biology, pathology and clinic led by Elias Campo and Inaki Martin-Subero, have been awarded with an 8,3 M grant in this call. These researchers will develop the [email protected] project, which aims at resolving the genomic and epigenomic hallmarks of chronic lymphocytic leukemia using single-cell analysis. "We will be able to disentangle chronic lymphocytic leukemia with far greater resolution than ever before and generate comprehensive information from thousands of individual cells. This will undoubtedly lead to novel insights into the origin and evolution of cancer," says Ivo Gut, director of the CNAG-CRG. "Our groups have been working together on chronic lymphocytic leukemia since 2009. We have come a long way in our understanding of the genomic features of this disease. Now, the ERC Synergy grant will allow us to take another huge step forward in the understanding of chronic lymphocytic leukemia development and progression by comprehensively studying it at single-cell resolution," he concludes. The [email protected] project is one of the three awarded projects in Spain in this call the only one in Catalonia. It is one of the 27 granted projects throughout Europe, among the 295 submitted proposals with a 9% success rate. Mapping every cell in chronic lymphocytic leukemia Chronic lymphocytic leukemia is the most frequent adult leukemia in the Western world. This type of leukemia is derived from mature B-cells, which are a class of immune system cells in our blood. There is great variability in the course of this disease in leukemia patients. Some patients stay stable without treatment, some get cured by treatment, while others progress despite treatment or die with a different progression of the disease. Over the last years, the groups collaborating in this project have already characterized the molecular features of normal B-cell subpopulations and of pools of leukemic cells from chronic lymphocytic leukemia patients. "Our previous work has revealed that there is an ecosystem of cancer cells in chronic lymphocytic leukemia and now we need to characterize this diversity of cancer cells" explains Elias Campo, director of the IDIBAPS. These cancer cell subtypes are related to different B-cell maturation stages, and every single cell can be relevant to predict the evolution and outcome of the disease in every patient. "Variation between B-cells is dynamically modulated during the course of the disease, and it has deep implications in its biology, clinical aggressiveness and treatment responses," adds Inaki Martin-Subero, group leader at IDIBAPS. The [email protected] researchers will apply cutting-edge single-cell methodologies to comprehensively dissect the maturation and differentiation of B-cells, and their transformation to chronic lymphocytic leukemia. The [email protected] project joins four groups with complementary expertise in B-cell biology, clinical aspects and pathology, genomics, transcriptomics, epigenomics, sequencing technologies, single-cell profiling and computational biology, to decipher the genesis and molecular anatomy of chronic lymphocytic leukemia during the entire course of the disease. "We will generate genetic, transcriptional and epigenetic maps of hundred-thousands of single cells across locations, time points and individuals. New technologies in single-cell genomics will provide this individual information that we are now missing in order to better predict the course of the disease as well as to better target treatment," explains Holger Heyn, team leader at CNAG-CRG. A study conducted by LSU Health New Orleans researchers provides new evidence that early exposure to multiple health disciplines in pipeline programs targeting underserved/underrepresented students interested in health professions reduces the development of traditional role and leadership stereotypes about professional health care teams and practice. Programs that include interprofessional health exposure will ultimately improve collaboration resulting in better patient outcomes. The findings are reported in Health and Interprofessional Practice published October 18, 2018, available at https:/ / commons. pacificu. edu/ hip/ vol3/ iss3/ 12/ . The LSU Health New Orleans research team led by Tina Gunaldo, PhD, DPT, Director of LSU Health New Orleans' Center for Interprofessional (IPE) Education and Collaborative Practice, examined pre and post-survey responses of students participating in the 2017 Summer Health Professions Education Program at LSU Health New Orleans. LSU Health New Orleans is one of 13 sites offering the free, six-week academic enrichment program designed for college freshmen or sophomores interested in pursuing healthcare careers. It is funded by the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, in association with the Association of American Medical Colleges and the American Dental Education Association. At LSU Health New Orleans, the program is a partnership of its schools of medicine, dentistry and public health with support from its Center for Interprofessional Education & Collaborative Practice. The program helps develop critical thinking and reasoning skills and provides academic enrichment in selected gateway undergraduate basic science and quantitative courses, such as Organic Chemistry, Physics, Anatomy & Physiology, Microbiology, and the Introduction to Biostatistics & Epidemiology, along with public health and health policy. The program also provides professionalism skills and knowledge development in areas of cultural competency, health equity, professional careers financial planning, as well as social determinants of health, medical ethics, and patient quality initiatives. The students also gain some clinical experience. Participants in 2017 also took part in small IPE group activities and IPE sessions, completed an online module created by the National Center for Interprofessional Practice and Education, and met faculty from various health disciplines at LSU Health New Orleans to learn about the educational and training requirements of their fields. Fifty-three students who completed the surveys for the study demonstrated statistically significant positive changes in IPE perceptions. Additionally, student perceived knowledge of the scope of practice of dental providers, physician providers and public health professionals also improved. The World Health Organization defines interprofessional education as occurring "when students from two or more professions learn about, from, and with each other to enable effective collaboration and improve health outcomes. Once students understand how to work interprofessionally, they are ready to enter the workplace as a member of the collaborative practice team. This is a key step in moving health systems from fragmentation to a position of strength." LSU Health New Orleans is the most comprehensive professional health university in Louisiana and the only one is the state with a centralized IPE office. It developed and integrated the two-year Team Up interprofessional education experience into the curricula of all six LSU Health New Orleans schools for first and second-year students. Not many universities in the country and no others in the state match LSU Health New Orleans' preparation of future health professionals for team-based health care. "Research is emerging on the positive impact of interprofessional education," notes Dr. Gunaldo, "however there has not been much in the literature about the best time to incorporate it. We found that inclusion of IPE in an academic enrichment program exposes pre-health professional students to the importance of collaboration and influences typical negative stereotypes that exist before admission into a health professional program. Such early exposure has the potential to improve the development of professional health care teams." Standing outside the gun shop she co-owns, next to her SUV sporting "NRA" on the license plate, Christy Perry pledges full support for President Donald Trump. "He's doing a good job," said Perry, a four-term Republican member of the Idaho legislature who has voted for a litany of conservative causes, including weakening labor unions, restricting abortion and boosting charter schools. With those credentials, Perry hopes for another big win on Election Day one that puts her at odds with Trump and GOP orthodoxy. She's helping lead the drive to persuade state voters to expand Medicaid a central tenet of the Affordable Care Act, the 2010 law embraced by Democrats and derided by many Republicans. Perry has been pushing for Medicaid expansion the past several years in the state legislature, but those efforts were thwarted by top House leaders. Now a ballot initiative, Proposition 2, puts the matter before Idaho voters. Perry said Medicaid coverage is desperately needed by people struggling in low-wage jobs and the economics make sense for the state given the federal government will pay a 90 percent share. An expansion will reduce or eliminate the need for other Idaho-funded programs to help the uninsured, she said. She said the state can't wait any longer. "The longer you wait, the more people die" because they miss out on care, she said. If the push is successful on Nov. 6, about 62,000 Idaho adults would be added to the state-federal health insurance program that covers 73 million low-income Americans. It would be a major advance for Obamacare into one of the most conservative parts of the country. Idaho is one of the remaining 17 GOP-controlled states where lawmakers have steadfastly resisted expanding Medicaid. But voters in Idaho, Nebraska and Utah will decide next month whether to buck their political leaders and go forward with the expansion. The issue is also on the ballot in Montana, which expanded Medicaid in 2016. There, residents will decide whether to continue it past 2019. Of those states, Idaho is arguably the least politically hospitable for Medicaid expansion. Trump carried Idaho by the largest margin nearly 32 percentage points. Last year, Maine became the first state to approve expanding Medicaid via a ballot referendum, although the GOP governor has stalled implementation. Unlike Maine, where political power has been split between Democrats and Republicans in recent years, Idaho, Utah and Nebraska are solidly GOP territory. Trump and Republican congressional leaders have vowed to repeal the health law, which made expansion possible by providing the bulk of the funding for those who qualify for new coverage. Perry, 50, doesn't see a problem getting Trump voters to back the expansion. She said that the Republican failure to repeal the law last year opened the door for conservative states to go forward. "I think people here listen to that and it now falls to states to go ahead" with expansion, she said. Supporters of the referendum were successful at garnering 70,000 signatures to put the vote on the ballot, but they face a steep challenge educating the electorate about the complexities of Medicaid financing. Tim Dunnagan, dean of the College of Health Sciences at Boise State University, said few Idaho voters know that most states including neighboring Oregon and Washington have already expanded Medicaid. Because the issue can be confusing, he said, voters may gravitate to their long-held concerns about paying more taxes and government overreach. "There is a strong sentiment that if the federal government is involved, it is not a good thing," he said. "There's a fierce individualism out in the West." Perry and the broad coalition endorsing the referendum including teachers, employers, county sheriffs and the health industry seek to remind voters that they are already paying for the health law's provisions through their federal taxes and the expansion would bring $400 million in federal funds into the state. The expansion would cover residents with incomes below 138 percent of the federal poverty level, or nearly $17,000 a year for an individual. Currently, Idaho adults who do not have children and are not disabled are not eligible for Medicaid. Those with children can only qualify with incomes up to 26 percent of the poverty level, or $3,156 a year. The expansion also would eliminate a gap for residents whose income is too low to qualify for government subsidies to buy private coverage but who earn too much to qualify for Medicaid. Supporters have canvassed neighborhoods across the state in recent weeks. Hundreds of volunteers use lists of registered voters and a special app on their phone to detail their results. On a recent evening, about 20 people gathered about 10 miles east of downtown Boise, where a field organizer gave them voter lists and instructions on how to approach homeowners. Tracy Olson, 54, a nurse turned real estate agent, and Jill Galanter, 55, a physical therapist, went to an upper-income planned community. About two-thirds of the people they met said they support expansion, and most of the rest had not heard about it. Only a couple of people said they oppose the ballot question. In their one-minute pitch, Olson and Galanter explained the coverage gap for low-income residents and the millions in federal dollars the state can gain by expanding. They didn't mention the ACA. That's not an oversight, organizers said. "Obamacare has a negative connotation here," Perry said. Mike Brown, 50, an engineer, told Olson he didn't know the issue but added that his health costs have soared in recent years. He nodded as Olson explained whom the expansion would help. "I can sympathize," he said. They recorded him as a "leaning yes." Richard Rapp, 75, a retired head of the career center at Boise State University, said he will support the expansion for humanitarian reasons. "Too many people don't have adequate coverage, and that ends up costing us all," he said. Later that week, another volunteer, Lauren Necochea, also found support in the Nampa area, west of Boise. Norm Holm, 67, listened to her pitch. "It makes sense to me," said Holm, a registered Republican. "Everyone deserves a decent shot at health care." Asked if he knew that the Medicaid expansion is part of the ACA, Holm shook his head. "If they can't do away with it, maybe this is a way to make it better," he said, adding that he believes the health law has good and bad parts. In contrast, opponents of the referendum stress how Medicaid expansion is part of what they call the "failed Obamacare." The Idaho Republican Party and the conservative Idaho Freedom Foundation are fighting the ballot initiative. Foundation officials say it would divert dollars that could be spent on roads and education. "Medicaid expansion is a cornerstone of Obamacare, which has failed to cover everyone and has led to increasing health costs," said Fred Birnbaum, vice president of the foundation. His group plans to run radio commercials, use social media and put out flyers. Lawmakers opposed to expanding Medicaid have argued that the state could not afford its share of the cost without having to raise taxes. Under the law, the federal government pays about 90 percent of the costs for expansion and states cover the rest. But a state-funded report this year found it would cost Idaho relatively little $105 million over 10 years, which includes savings from state and county funds that would no longer be needed to help the uninsured. Idaho's budget tops $3 billion a year. Brad Little, the GOP nominee for governor who is widely expected to win in November, said he would abide by the will of the voters. Perry is not the only Republican state lawmaker who has come out in support of expansion, but she is one of the most prominent. Perry tried and failed to get lawmakers to expand Medicaid. She is not running for re-election. "Christy is well-known among GOP women and well-liked," said Toni Lawson, vice president of government relations at the Idaho Hospital Association, which supports the initiative. She said persuading GOP women to vote for expansion will be key to a victory. Perry said her gun store ownership and mainstream conservative values will help gain voters' trust on Medicaid. "Idaho is a conservative, Christian and right-to-life state, and Medicaid expansion fits right in with our morals and values we have," she said. "It's about doing the right thing." A series of papers published in the Lancet shows that globally the number of babies born through cesarean section (C-section) almost doubled between 2000 and 2015: from 12% to 21% of all births or nearly 30 million worldwide. C-section, an operation to deliver a newborn through a cut made in the mother's abdomen and womb, can undoubtedly save lives when complications occur. The World Health Organization (WHO), however, estimates that only 10-15% of births medically require one. The authors of this series estimate that rates of C-section are higher than this in nearly two thirds of countries and in at least 15 countries C-section use exceeds 40%. In the context of widespread overuse, a team from King's School of Life Course Sciences, led by Professor Jane Sandall CBE, analyzed the potential risks of C-section in the second of three papers in the series. Professor Sandall said of the study: 'Given the increasing use of C-section, particularly cases that are not medically required, there is a crucial need to understand the health effects on women and children. Greater understanding of this is important to help inform decision making by families, physicians and policy makers.' By reviewing 15 years of previous research, Professor Sandall and the team found that maternal death and disability is higher after C-section than vaginal birth and leads to a more complicated recovery for the mother. The unavoidable scarring of the womb is associated with bleeding, abnormal development of the placenta, ectopic pregnancy, stillbirth and preterm birth in subsequent pregnancies. There is also emerging evidence that babies born via C-section are exposed to different hormones, environments, bacteria and medicines during birth which can subtly alter their health in later life. While the long-term risks of this are not yet well understood, the short-term effects include changes in immune development which can increase the risk of allergies and asthma and alter the bacteria in the gut. Speaking of the team's conclusions Professor Sandall said: 'C-section is a type of major surgery, which carries risks that require careful consideration. The growing use of C-sections for non-medical purposes could be introducing avoidable complications, and we advocate that C-section should only be used when it is medically required.' Source: https://www.kcl.ac.uk/lsm/schools/life-course-sciences/news-events/newsrecords/2018/do-we-understand-the-risks-of-caesarean-section.aspx Belgian research groups from the UCLouvain and WELBIO, VIB and Ghent University, and the biotechnology company argenx elucidated the three-dimensional structure of an assembly of proteins operating on cells that dampen immune responses. They also discovered how an antibody can block this assembly and the immunosuppression it induces downstream. Such an antibody could serve to stimulate immunity against tumor cells in cancer patients, triggering the destruction of their tumors by immune cells. The study is published in the authoritative journal Science. Immunosuppression through a cascade of interactions Tregs (regulatory T lymphocytes) are immunosuppressive cells that normally counterbalance excessive immune reactions to prevent autoimmune diseases. But in cancer patients, they play deleterious roles by tempering immune reactions against tumor cells. Tregs induce their effects by producing a protein messenger called TGF-beta. This messenger transmits inhibitory signals to immune cells in the immediate vicinity, notably those that are supposed to destroy tumors in cancer patients. The way Tregs produce TGF-beta is complex and finely regulated, because TGF-beta is very potent and must be kept under tight control. Three years ago, Prof. Sophie Lucas and her team at the de Duve Institute of the UCLouvain discovered that TGF-beta is released by Tregs from a protein called GARP, present on the Treg surface. In collaboration with argenx, her team also discovered that it was possible to block the release of TGF-beta from GARP with specific antibodies, which were rare and difficult to obtain. The next thing to find out was how GARP regulates the production of the TGF-beta messenger and how antibodies actually block its release. The molecular mechanisms elucidated To address these questions, Sophie Lucas and argenx initiated a collaboration with the team of Prof. Savvas Savvides at the VIB-UGent Center for Inflammation Research, to resolve the three-dimensional structure of the protein assembly made of GARP and TGF-beta. The researchers used X-ray crystallography, a method that has been used to study the structure of molecules for more than a century and that is still being developed for the study of biological macromolecules at atomic resolution. However, they were confronted with the practical problem that they could not readily obtain crystals of the GARP and TGF-beta complex. Via a highly collaborative effort spearheaded by Dr. Stephanie Lienart (UCLouvain) and Dr. Romain Merceron (VIB - Ghent University), the two teams decided to use a blocking antibody to stabilize the structure - a successful approach that not only helped to generate suitable crystals for structure determination, but also provided details about how a therapeutic antibody might function. Prof. Savvas Savvides (VIB-UGent): "We discovered that GARP resembles a horseshoe that is straddled by TGF-beta. The two molecules are so intricately assembled that TGF-beta itself contributes to the structure of the GARP horseshoe. The antibody fragment sticks to both GARP and TGF-beta in the assembly. It appears to glue the two molecules to one another, ensuring that when other molecules pull on one part of the assembly, the small, active part of TGF-beta is not released, and is thus prevented from conveying its inhibitory message." Prof. Sophie Lucas (de Duve Institute at the UCLouvain): "Visualization of this large molecular assembly illustrates the feasibility of blocking TGF-beta activity emanating from a precisely defined and restricted cellular source, such as the surface of Tregs. This can lead to the design of exquisitely specific approaches to treat various diseases associated with altered TGF-beta or Treg activity, most notably for the immunotherapy of cancer." Quadrant Biosciences, Inc., an emerging life science company based in Syracuse, N.Y., today announced its collaboration with the Autism Speaks Autism Treatment Network (ATN) and its university research partners on research into the treatment of autism spectrum disorder (ASD). The ATN is a collaboration of Autism Speaks and some of the finest children's hospitals and academic institutions in North America, specializing in multi-disciplinary medical care for children with autism. This Signature Study, including researchers from the Cincinnati Children's Hospital Medical Center, University of Pittsburgh, and University of Missouri, is looking at the treatment of autism symptoms with the antibiotic minocycline. In addition to providing financial support for this important study, Quadrant Biosciences will be collecting salivary RNA data to further its work on epigenetic factors associated with ASD. Prompted by earlier studies, researchers at the Cincinnati Children's Hospital Medical Center initiated a study looking at the effects of minocycline treatment on ASD symptoms. "While the etiology of ASD remains poorly understood in the majority of cases, a growing body of literature implicates neuroinflammatory mechanisms in the pathophysiology of the disorder," explained Dr. Logan Wink, Associate Professor, Division of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry at Cincinnati Children's Hospital Medical Center and Principal Investigator on this study. "Moreover, minocycline readily crosses the blood-brain barrier and is known to have direct neuroprotective effects as well as anti-inflammatory properties." Given these characteristics, animal researchers hypothesized that minocycline treatment would improve autism symptoms, and indeed this was the case. Researchers saw improvement in many classic autism symptoms such as aberrant social interaction, exploratory behavior, locomotion, and anxiety behaviors in various mouse models of ASD treated with minocycline. Additionally, trials in humans with Fragile X Syndrome-associated ASD have demonstrated improvement on the Clinical Global Impression Improvement subscale. These compelling results prompted the initiation of the present Autism Speaks ATN Signature Study. "With the literature yielding evidence of symptom improvement with minocycline treatment, we felt it warranted further investigation," said Donna S. Murray, Ph.D., Vice President of Clinical Programs and head of the Autism Treatment Network. "It also fit perfectly with the ATN philosophy of collaborating with highly regarded children's hospitals and academic institutions to develop evidence-based treatments that can be quickly translated into practice." Quadrant Biosciences had been independently conducting research at SUNY Upstate Medical University and Penn State College of Medicine looking at epigenetic diagnostic biomarkers for ASD. That research, funded in part by the NIH, identified specific poly-omic RNAs that could accurately differentiate children with ASD from peers with typical development and non-autistic developmental delay. These findings led to the development of a simple saliva test to aid the early diagnosis of autism, which will be commercially available later this year. When Quadrant CEO Richard Uhlig learned of the exciting work being conducted by the ATN group, he immediately saw synergies. "Dr. Wink and her colleagues are doing exceptional work on the positive effects of minocycline on children with autism. Given our focus on epigenetic factors in autism, it seemed a natural fit to collect saliva swabs of the patients to further understand the molecular implications of this treatment protocol." The Autism Speaks ATN research also received support through the ATN's role as the federally funded Autism Intervention Research Network for Physical Health. The clinical trial to begin later this year will involve a 24-subject, double-blind, placebo-controlled, four-week crossover study of minocycline in youths with ASD ages 12 to 22 years. The study aims to: 1) Determine if minocycline use will be associated with reduction in elevated EEG gamma power in persons with ASD compared to placebo; 2) assess the short-term safety and tolerability of minocycline in youths with ASD; and 3) better understand the efficacy and dosage of minocycline for the short-term treatment of memory, social gaze, psychophysical markers, attentional impairments, quality of life, and other concerns in adolescents with ASD. Source: https://quadrantbiosciences.com/ Scientists at Tel Aviv University have discovered a critical 48-hour cycle that is responsible for synchronizing the biological mechanisms that protect our skin from sun damage. The new study reveals a biological clock dubbed the "UV-protection timer" that both synchronizes the skin's response to ultraviolet rays and mediates a tradeoff between two skin defense systems: stress response and pigmentation. "Our discovery was prompted by the surprising finding that low-frequency UV exposure results in higher skin pigmentation," says Prof. Carmit Levy of the Department of Human Genetics and Biochemistry at TAU's Sackler Faculty of Medicine, who led the research for the study with TAU doctoral student Hagar Malcov-Brog. "This provides an in-depth mechanistic understanding of how the skin's response to ultraviolet rays is regulated. Our results support the premise that the evolution of furless human skin led to a UV-protection 'timer.' This timer provided maximum skin protection with minimum damage." The research was the product of a collaboration with Prof. Shai Shen-Orr of the Technion-Israel Institute of Technology and Prof. Mehdi Khaled of Universite Paris-Saclay. Technion doctoral student Ayelet Alpert also conducted research for the study, published as the cover story in Molecular Cell on October 25. Skip a day in the sun "We have identified a mechanism that spreads like a wave through the skin over 48 hours after an initial exposure to ultraviolet rays. This process synchronizes the natural defense mechanisms in the skin," says Prof. Levy. "We concluded that exposure to the sun at a frequency of once every two days leads to optimal protection from sun damage." Two principal defense mechanisms naturally protect the skin from UV damage. The first recruits the immune system, inflammation and DNA repair to heal any burning or damage caused by UV radiation that can ultimately cause skin cancer. The second mechanism, pigmentation or tanning, creates a physical buffer to safeguard the skin against future exposure. The researchers exposed both human and mouse skin samples to disparate UV doses at different times to measure reparative protein and pigmentation responses in the skin. The measurements revealed that certain genes appeared in the skin in a neat and synchronized sequence 48 hours following initial exposure to UV radiation. To deepen their understanding of the process, the Technion researchers then built a mathematical model of the finding, which shows that MITF, the protein controlling the two skin protection mechanisms, spreads in the skin in a wave-like form, synchronizing the two protective mechanisms. "The frequency of the wave is 48 hours," says Prof. Shen-Orr. "Imagine you tossed a stone into a pond and saw the ripples spread. Then, before they settled down, you threw in another stone, interrupting the process." "Similarly, a process of building and breaking takes place in our skin when it is exposed to the sun," Prof. Levy continues. "Most experts recommend going to the gym every other day, not daily. The same is true of protecting our skin from sun damage. If you interrupt the protection process by sitting in the sun two days in a row, you damage a mechanism that requires 48 process to complete its cycle." The researchers are currently exploring the reason, perhaps related to Vitamin D levels, behind the biological mechanism. President Donald Trump's new pledge to crack down on "the global freeloading" in prescription drugs had a sense of deja vu. Five months ago, Trump unveiled a blueprint to address prohibitive drug prices, and his administration has been feverishly rolling out ideas ranging from posting drug prices on television ads to changing the rebates that flow between drugmakers and industry middlemen. Thursday, Trump proposed having Medicare base what it pays for some expensive drugs on the average prices in other industrialized countries, such as France and Germany, where prices are much lower. The proposal is in the early stages of rule-making and awaiting public comments. The U.S., Trump said, will "confront one of the most unfair practices, almost unimaginable that it hasn't been taken care of long before this." The proposal was met with hope and skepticism, with several experts saying they were happy the administration was taking on Medicare Part B's rising drug prices but questioning its approach. Walid Gellad, director of the Center for Pharmaceutical Policy and Prescribing at the University of Pittsburgh, said in an online post that the administration's proposed solutions were unclear. And, he said, they would "face insurmountable challenges." While some industry watchers pointed to the announcement as a political move, Wells Fargo pharmaceutical analyst David Maris said that this is a broader effort by the president and his administration to attack the root causes of high drug prices. "The reality is he could very easily not take this on and do what other administrations have done and let the prices keep rising." Trump, too, promised more to come and said he will soon announce "some things that will really be tremendous." On Friday, Health and Human Services Secretary Alex Azar said that, as promised in the blueprint, there would be more changes to Medicare Part D, which covers most prescriptions. Ian Spatz, a public policy expert and senior adviser at Manatt Health, said the overall blueprint was "unprecedented in terms of how many different ideas and areas of ideas that it contained." Nothing would happen overnight. The proposal to require drug prices in TV ads could be delayed by litigation and notably, if implemented, does not include any penalties for companies who fail to post their prices. The proposed rebate rule was delivered to the Office of Management and Budget in July. Matt Brow, president of industry consulting firm Avalere Health, said he expects the administration to publish the rule for comment by year's end. Trump's international pricing plan is not as far along as the rebate proposal. Rather, it is an "advanced notice of proposed rule-making." The proposed rule could come in spring 2019, and Azar said the new model could begin in late 2019 or early 2020. Yet, on Friday, Azar signaled the proposal could change, telling an audience at the Brookings Institution that the administration is "open to any number of alternative ideas." Avalere's Brow said there is a good chance the proposal will change significantly. "The sweeping nature of the proposal makes the stakes higher and makes it harder to implement," Brow said. If the administration moves forward, it would bypass Congress and implement a pilot under the Center for Medicare & Medicaid Innovation's purview. The pilot would phase in over five years and apply to 50 percent of the country. Azar said there would be no changes to Medicare benefits and no restrictions on patient access. The proposal focuses on drugs covered under Medicare Part B, which are administered in hospitals, clinics and doctors' offices. It also would alter the reimbursement formula for doctors and providers and would allow private-sector vendors to purchase drugs and then sell them to doctors and hospitals. Medicare would reimburse those vendors at the international pricing level. Currently, doctors and hospitals administering Part B drugs are reimbursed the average price of a drug plus 6 percent. President Barack Obama's administration attempted to alter Part B as well but drew intense lobbying opposition and eventually withdrew a proposed pilot project. Allan Coukell, senior director for health programs at Pew Charitable Trusts, said removing incentives that reward doctors for purchasing costlier drugs and bringing in a new way to control prices "makes a lot of sense." Drug spending within Medicare Part B reached $22 billion in 2015, and drug costs have increased by an average of 8.6 percent annually since 2007. Stephen Ubl, president of the industry trade group Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America, or PhRMA, said imposing foreign price controls from countries with socialized health care systems would harm patients and hinder drug discovery and development. Azar, a former executive at pharmaceutical manufacturer Eli Lilly, told reporters Thursday that "you may hear the tired talking points" that this will affect innovation. He disputed that idea, concluding that "less than 1 percent of pharma [research and development] could potentially be impacted by this change." KHN's coverage of prescription drug development, costs and pricing is supported in part by the Laura and John Arnold Foundation. Two UTA social work professors are using an NIH grant to find ways to reduce stress of families caring for loved ones with Alzheimer's disease. Noelle Fields and Ling Xu, both assistant professors in The University of Texas at Arlington's School of Social Work, were awarded a $459,994 National Institutes of Health grant for their research titled "The Senior Companion Program Plus (SCP Plus): A Psychoeducational Intervention for African American Dementia Caregivers." "This grant means that Ling and I are taking the next step in our research careers by conducting meaningful community-based research that is funded externally, in hopes of leading to future grants related to family caregiving and aging," Fields said. "The School of Social Work also benefits from this grant because we are supporting numerous students and strengthening the research environment in the School and University as a whole." The research project aims to reduce caregiver burden and stress, increase the well-being of the caregiver and grow caregivers' knowledge about Alzheimer's disease. They will be working with the Senior Companion Program which is part of the Corporation for National and Community Service. See a video about the research the professors are doing. "To date, few studies have utilized lay providers for dementia caregiving interventions and no studies have utilized the Senior Companion Program as a platform for this type of family caregiver intervention," Fields said. "Our intervention, the Senior Companion Program Plus (SCP Plus) augments the Senior Companion Program by adding a component specific to dementia family caregivers." According to the latest research from the Alzheimer's Association, Alzheimer's disease and related dementia will triple during the next 30 years and African-Americans are disproportionately affected by the disease. "Family caregivers are the main providers of support to people with dementia, and they are faced with many challenges in their role compared to non-dementia caregivers," Xu said. "Those challenges may include high levels of stress, depression, anxiety and health impairments." More caregiver services and programs are needed to sustain families during the challenges of this type of family caregiving, Fields and Xu said. The SCP Plus takes into consideration the needs and strengths of African-American families. Overall, the goal of the study is to create a cost-effective and sustainable intervention for family caregivers that Senior Companion Programs can utilize across the nation. "Our goal is to design, deliver and evaluate a psychoeducational intervention for African-American dementia family caregivers utilizing Senior Companions as lay providers of the SCP Plus program," Fields said. Fields and Xu are very optimistic about the impact this award will have on their research. "The grant is helping us to expand on our pilot study of the SCP Plus to several sites," Xu said. "This award will lead to future studies of family caregiver interventions." The impact of their research doesn't stop there, however. Students at the School of Social Work also will benefit because of the research Fields and Xu are conducting. "We are thrilled that the funding will support not only our study, but also will support social work students who will be paid as research assistants, as well as support the infrastructure of the UTA School of Social Work," Xu said. According to the two researchers, community partners such as the Senior Source, Inc. in Dallas have been very supportive in helping design and implement innovative and impactful research. "These community-based partnerships are integral to the success of translational research and are well-aligned with the mission of the social work profession," Fields said. Fields and Xu are excited to see the impact their research will have in building sustainable urban communities and improving the health and the human condition, two of the tenets of UTA's Strategic Plan 2020: Bold Solutions | Global Impact. Director-General of Civil Aviation Simon Li (fourth left) attends the 55th Conference of Directors General of Civil Aviation, Asia & Pacific Regions in Fiji. Director-General of Civil Aviation Simon Li has attended the 55th Conference of Directors General of Civil Aviation, Asia & Pacific Regions in Fiji. Organised by the International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO), this years conference attracted more than 200 delegates from about 50 states, administrations and industry organisations. The five-day event concluded successfully today. They submitted about 130 papers to the conference covering aviation safety, air navigation, aviation security, unmanned aircraft systems and technical co-operation. Mr Li also held meetings with his counterparts from Singapore and Thailand to enhance air traffic flow in the Asia-Pacific region. Hong Kong International Aviation Academy President Vivian Cheung also joined the Hong Kong, China delegation at the conference, at the invitation of Mr Li. They met ICAO Secretary General Fang Liu, ICAO Regional Director for the Asia Pacific Arun Mishra, and key representatives from aviation partners in the region. GamesRadar+ is supported by its audience. When you purchase through links on our site, we may earn an affiliate commission. Learn more Sorry! This content is not available in your region Bengaluru: The citys Kempegowda International Airport will see 17 per cent more overseas flights this winter as three domestic carriers including national carrier Air India are set to scale up their international operations from here, BIAL said on Friday. Budget carriers IndiGo and GoAir besides Air India will launch additional flights from Bengaluru to eight existing international destinations during the period between this October and March next year, the Bangalore International Airport (BIAL) said in a statement. BIAL is the joint venture company that manages and operates the countrys third largest airport. It is majorly owned by India-born Canadian billionaire Prem Watsas Fairfax. Also Read | Krishi Kumbh 2018: PM Modi inaugurates farmers' conclave in Lucknow via video conferencing While, according to the statement, IndiGo will operate daily flights to Male, Bangkok, Kuala Lumpur, Hong Kong and Kathmandu, Air India is set to commence services to Bangkok and London from the Bengaluru airport. Wadia group-promoted GoAir, which commenced its international operations this month, will also connect Bengaluru with Phuket in Thailand during the winter schedule. Besides, Air India Express will launch a round-trip flight to Singapore from Bengaluru, flying four times a week, from October 29, BIAL said. Airlines winter schedule in India this year will commence from Saturday mid-night and will go on till March 30 next year. Resurgent growth translates into the need for new routes and the addition of aircraft to the existing base. We will continue to work with our airline partners to offer passengers attractive routes that connect Bengaluru to some of the most exotic destinations in India and abroad, said Javed Malik, chief operating officer, BIAL. Read More | Caroline Wozniacki, former World No.1, diagnosed with rheumatoid arthritis On the domestic side, no-frills carrier SpiceJet have plans to connect Kanpur, Gorakhpur and Udaipur with the city, while peer IndiGo has also announced its plans to fly to Udaipur and Prayagraj (erstwhile Allahabad) from the Bengaluru airport, the statement said. Also, Jet Airways will operate flight services from Bengaluru to Aizawl through Guwahati and Air Indias regional arm, Alliance Air, is connecting Kolhapur from here during the winters, BIAL said. In all, flight operations from the Bengaluru airport will be extended to seven new routes, while two new airlines Air India Express and Turkish Cargo - will be starting their operations from here during the coming winter, it said. With this, Bengaluru will now connect to 82 destinations 53 domestic and 29 internationals, it added. BIAL expects the Bengaluru airport to achieve about 744 aircraft movements per day (659 domestic, 85 international) at the start of winter this year. This is expected to progressively achieve 766 ATMs (air traffic movement) per day (675 domestic and 91 international), it added. The airport operator expects the average international ATMs for winter 2018-19 to grow at 17 per cent over summer 2018, while domestic movements are expected to achieve a growth of 10 per cent. The overall growth forecast for the forthcoming schedule is pegged at 11 per cent, it said. For all the Latest Business News, Download News Nation Android and iOS Mobile Apps. New Delhi: Neena Gupta is garnering applaud for her role as a pregnant mid-aged woman in recently released Badhai Ho. But, it is known to very few that Neena Gupta was not the first choice of the director for the role. Even the role of her husband, played by Gajraj Rao was offered to some other actor before him. Amit Sharma, director of Badhai Ho told to IANS, We had gone to Tabu ji for the role. At that time, we had a different script in mind and we wanted Tabu ma'am and Irrfan Khan sir. When she heard the script, she suggested Neenaji's name for her character. Tabu felt, perhaps rightly, that she looked like a woman who can still have a child. Also Watch | Pihu trailer: Story of a two-year old home alone girl will give you chills The director also said that it was Ayushmann Khurrana who suggested Gajraj Raos name. Meanwhile, the story of Badhai Ho revolves around a mid-aged couple with two grown up kids, who are expecting another child. Talking about the box-office collection of the flick, with the help of positive reviews and good word-of-mouth, Badhai Ho is churning big numbers for its producers. The movie has managed to earn more than Rs 66 crore in its first week and is expected to do good business in the second weekend as well. Badhai Ho also features Sanaya Malhotra, Surekha Sikri and Sheeba Chaddha in pivotal roles. For all the Latest Entertainment News, Bollywood News, Download News Nation Android and iOS Mobile Apps. New Delhi: The government on Friday ordered all telecom companies to stop using Aadhaar authentication for verifying existing mobile phone customers and issuance of new connections. The Supreme Court had last month in a landmark verdict restricted the use of Aadhaar by private entities in the absence of a legal provision. To comply with the order, the Department of Telecom (DoT) Friday issued detailed instructions to telecom companies on stopping the use of Aadhaar-based electronic-know your customer (e-KYC) and report compliance by November 5. Aadhaar e-KYC cannot be used for verifying existing customers as well as giving new SIM connections, the DoT said in a three-page circular. Also, it permitted the use of physical Aadhaar card for giving new connections provided the customer voluntarily offers it. On October 18, the Department of Telecom (DoT) and Unique Identity Authority of India said in a joint statement that the government will not push for re-verification of mobile service customers and it will be done only if a customer opts to replace Aadhaar records with any alternate identity or address proof. Also Read | Gender equality Vs religious fanaticism, the battle continues unabated in India "In compliance to the judgement of the Supreme Court, all licencees are to discontinue the use of Aadhaar eKYC service of Unique Identification Authority of India (UIDAI) both for verification as well as for issuing new mobile connections," the Telecom Department said in the circular. All telecom service providers shall ensure its implementation across the country in a time-bound manner and compliance in this regard is required to be submitted by November 5, 2018, it said. The DoT noted that the industry had suggested an alternate digital process for KYC of mobile subscribers which entails Customer Acquisition Forms to be embedded with live photo of the subscriber and scanned images of proof of identity and proof of address, thereby digitising the end-to-end process for onboarding of new mobile subscribers and making it paperless. Also Read | Anantnag: Army soldier Rajendra Singh, 22, dies after being attacked by protesters Accordingly, all telecom service providers have been asked by DoT to ensure readiness of their systems and offer the proof of concept of the proposed digital process by November 5 for approval. "Consequently, instructions issued including....dated 16.08.2016 and subsequent follow up orders related to Aadhaar based eKYC process shall stand withdrawn. Meanwhile, this process can be implemented provisionally by all telecom service providers. Any modification which may be required in this process by the Government shall be carried out within a period of 30 days," it said. (With agency inputs) For all the Latest India News, Download News Nation Android and iOS Mobile Apps. New Delhi: The Supreme Court on Friday asked the Central Vigilance Commission (CVC) to complete its investigation into allegations raised against Alok Verma within two weeks after the CBI Director challenged the government's decision to force him to go on leave and appointed M Nageshwar Rao as the interim director. The court appointed retired Justice Ananga Kumar Patnaik to oversee the inquiry. Who is AK Patnaik? # AK Patnaik was once a member of a constitution bench that is credited with giving new wings to the "caged parrot" by scrapping the need for the agency to take the government's permission for acting against senior officers. # The provision Section 6 (a) was inserted in the Delhi Special Police Establishment Act, which governs the CBI, in 2003 during the regime of the NDA led by Atal Bihari Vajpayee. This made it compulsory for the CBI to take permission of the government to initiate any enquiry or investigation against officials of the rank of joint secretary or above. #Patnaik was born in 1949 in Orissa. He had joined Supreme Court in 2009 where he gave some remarkable judgments during his five-year tenure. # He was superseded five times during 2007-09 before his elevation to the apex court on November 17, 2009.Patnaik, as chief justice of Madhya Pradesh High Court, was also a member of 'In-House committee' of the Supreme Court that probed allegations against Justice Soumitra Sen of the Calcutta High Court. # He was part of the two-member Supreme Court bench which had commuted the death sentence of the American Centre attack mastermind Aftab Ansari and Jamulludin Nasir. # Patnaik was also the member of bench which had acquitted six accused in the 2002 Akshardham temple attack in Ahmedabad. # A bench led by Patnaik had powerful BCCI Chief N Srinivasan to step down in order to ensure a fair probe in IPL fixing allegations. # He was also made part of a two-judge bench to hear all cases related to the 2G scam. (With PTI inputs) For all the Latest India News, Download News Nation Android and iOS Mobile Apps. New Delhi: Indian Army soldier Rajendra Singh hasA succumbed to his injuries after being attacked with stones by some youth in Kashmir's Anantnag on Thursday.A A An army spokesman said Sepoy Rajendra Singh, 22, was part of the Quick Reaction Team which was providing security to a Border Roads Organisation (BRO) convoy on Thursday. Army soldier Rajendra Singh was part of Quick Reaction Team that was providing security to a Border Roads Organisation convoy y'day.When convoy was passing through Anantnag bypass tri-junction,few youth hurled stones at vehicle&he was hit by a stone.He later succumbed to injuries pic.twitter.com/arNCzzQMxV a ANI (@ANI) October 26, 2018 aAt around 1800 hours, when the convoy was passing through the Anantnag bypass tri-junction near NH-44, few youth hurled stones at the vehicle and Sep Rajendra Singh was injured after being hit by a stone directly on the head,a said the spokesman.A aHe was provided immediate first aid and evacuated to 92 Base Hospital but unfortunately succumbed to the injury. Sep Rajendra Singh hailed from village Badena in Pithoragarh, Uttrakhand and had joined Army in 2016. He is survived by his parents,a said the spokesman. Srinagar: Wreath laying ceremony of Army personnel Ngamsiamliana, Brajesh Kumar and Rajendra Singh who lost their lives in action in separate encounters in #JammuAndKashmir since yesterday pic.twitter.com/txExTN3skj a ANI (@ANI) October 26, 2018 On Friday,A the army paid tributes to Singh in Srinagar. For all the Latest India News, Download News Nation Android and iOS Mobile Apps. New Delhi: The Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) on Friday registered a case against self-styled godman Daati Maharaj and three others for allegedly raping and having an unnatural sex with an inmate of his ashram. The CBI had taken over probe in the case on the instructions of the Delhi High Court. A woman had filed a complaint at Fatehpur Beri Police Station in South Delhi, alleging that Daati Maharaj, his three brothers and a woman were involved in a rape and unnatural sex case. Following the complaint, the police had quizzed Daati Maharaj, who was charged with rape of a disciple at his ashrams in Delhi and Rajasthan. Raising doubts over the police investigation, a bench of the Delhi High Court Chief Justice Rajendra Menon and Justice VK Rao had allowed the complainant woman's plea to transfer the matter to the CBI. 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". On October 22, a bench of the Supreme Court 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. (With PTI inputs) For all the Latest India News, Download News Nation Android and iOS Mobile Apps. New Delhi: A day after four operatives of the Intelligence Bureau (IB) were caught near the official residence of Alok Verma, the Delhi Police on Friday withdrew two of its Personal Security Officers (PSOs) posted with the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) director and placed them in an 'undisclosed location'. The move by the Delhi Police came amid severe reprisal from the IB over the incident, according to reports. The IB is apparently unhappy over the way the Delhi Police PSOs handled four of its operatives on duty near the CBI director's house. While Home Ministry officials said the four men were on "routine, covert" duties in the high-security area outside Verma's 2 Janpath residence, sources said they were taken away by the police for questioning and later let off. Also Read | Anantnag: Army soldier Rajendra Singh, 22, dies after being attacked by protesters In an unprecedented move by the Central government, Verma and CBI's Special Director Rakesh Asthana were sent on leave till further notice and their offices were sealed on Wednesday. The Delhi Police fears for the lives of its PSOs. "They have been moved out and the situation will be assessed further," the sources told news agency ANI. Talks between senior IB officials and the Delhi Police have been going on since Thursday to sort out any misunderstanding between the two organisations. Till the time the two agencies are able to resolve their differences, the Delhi Police decision to shift the personnel to safe place is a precautionary measure so that the IB does not pick up these men. According to reports, the IB Director had met National Security Advisor Ajit Doval on Friday morning and apprised him of the incident. Also Read | CBI books Daati Maharaj, three others for alleged rape and unnatural sex Meanwhile, the Supreme Court on Friday set a deadline of two weeks for the Central Vigilance Commission (CVC) to complete the inquiry against Verma, who has been divested of his duties and sent on leave in view of the feud between him and Special Director Rakesh Asthana. The court directed that the inquiry be conducted under the supervision of a retired apex court judge and also barred IPS officer M Nageswara Rao, who has been given interim charge of looking after the duties of the CBI Director, from taking any policy decision or any major decision. (With agency inputs) For all the Latest India News, Download News Nation Android and iOS Mobile Apps. Fairfield and Westchester counties may be among the richest in the country, but not everyone shares the wealth. Right in the middle of these affluent communities there are people going hungry, Kathy Purdy, founder and executive director of Hillside Food Outreach, said. There are people who go to bed hungry and wonder how they are going to make it through the next day. For her dedication to the community, Purdy received the 2018 Heart of Women award from the Womens Business Council during an event Thursday evening at Ethan Allen Hotel. The Womens Business Council is a program of the Greater Danbury Chamber of Commerce. Founded in 1997, Hillside delivers food to those in need who cannot visit a pantry, such as the elderly and people with disabilities. It has offices and warehouses in Danbury and Pleasantville, N.Y., and serves more than 2,000 clients throughout Fairfield and Litchfield counties, as well as Westchester and Putnam counties in New York. Purdy founded Hillside Food Outreach after discovering her grandmother was using her limited funds to buy groceries for neighbors who could not afford to buy food for themselves. Purdy on Thursday expressed reluctance in accepting the award. To be able to help people is a privilege, not a job, she said. The Heart of Women award recognizes women who have championed a cause and made an impact, said Joann Cueva, director of the Greater Danbury Chamber of Commerce. It was created in 2011. Pat Zachman of Womens Center was last years recipient. Other past recipients include Dawn Blom, Julie Horne, Linda Anderson, Wilda Hayes, LouAnn Bloomer, Marie Hatcher and Jane Martellino. Former New York Yankees player Bernie Williams is an honorary board member for Hillside Food Outreach. JoAnn Cueva, director of the Greater Danbury Chamber of Commerce, read a letter of support Thursday from Williams to Purdy. Selly Vasquez, a board member of Hillside Food Outreach, introduced Purdy. Kathy is a woman who is very humble, but her contributions to the community are incredible, Vasquez said. She truly exemplifies an outstanding person. Vasquez said volunteers and donations are always needed at Hillside. To reach Hillside Food Outreach, visit www.hillsidefoodoutreachorg or call call 203-702-4881. State Sen. Michael McLachlan, R-Danbury, read a citation from the bipartisan Danbury delegation in honor of Purdy. Marie Miszewski, president and CEO of Regional YMCA of Western Connecticut and a steering committee member of the Womens Business Council, challenged the audience to thank someone who has made a difference in their life. Sometimes we forget to thank these people, she said. Let someone know that they changed your life. New Milford is looking to make its seven-member road committee permanent. The committee has been reinstated every six months for the past few year, John Wittman, chair of the road committee said during this weeks public hearing. He said the town and committee have completed a number of roads and are working on a bond to complete more roads. Mayor Pete Bass said its important to make the committee permanent as the town works on a multi-year bonding to improve more roads. He said the committee can work with public works employees to create the plans during the winter, allowing work to begin in the spring. Councilman Tom Esposito said he hopes this accepted because a permanent committee has been needed for a long time to address road needs. Former Mayor David Gronbach created a roads committee in October 2016 to act as a liaison between residents and the public works department. The Town Council is expected to vote on it at the Nov. 13 meeting. MILFORD Can a plastic bag get people used to the idea of using fewer plastic bags? Beginning next week, four supermarkets in Milford will be handing out multi-use plastic bags instead of the flimsy, single-use ones were all used to. In Connecticut, people use a billion plastic shopping bags a year, said Mayor Benjamin Blake. A billion. And were trying to get people into the mind-set that its better for everyone to use re-usable bags when they go to the supermarket. Four Milford supermarkets have signed on with the Green Halloween effort the Adams IGA in the Woodmont enclave, the two Stop & Shop supermarkets and the recently opened Shop-Rite. Meanwhile, the city will be handing out fabric tote bags at the Hall-O-Weekend Fall Festival on Sunday from 11 a.m. to 2 p.m., on River Street, near the Metro-North station, according to Alderman Karen Fortunati. Each of the four participating supermarkets will be handing out 500 of the tote bags, too. The Green Halloween effort is scheduled to last at least though the week. We ordered 25 cases of reusable bags with 275 bags per case, said Rick Carnevale, manager of the IGA. Our real goal is that people will bring them back and use them again and again. He said that the Green Halloween bags, which cost the stores about 12 cents each, should each last for about 120 supermarket visits. More News Plastic bag ban being crafted for New Haven Look, people have to realize that the bags that we give away for free cost us about 3 or 4 cents each and that cost is, one way or the other, passed on to the consumer, Carnevale said. Although Greenwich and Stamford have approved bans on single-use plastic shopping bags, Carnevale and Blake agreed that it would be far better to enact a statewide ban on the wasteful bags. A bag ban in one town would put the supermarkets in that town at a competitive disadvantage, Blake said. People might drive to the next town to get the free bags. Back in 2013, a bill was introduced in the General Assembly to do exactly that HB6313 but now its dead in the water, according to state Rep. Kim Rose, D-Milford. In the next session, Im planning on introducing a new bill banning single-use bags statewide, Rose said. But when you do that, man, you really get clobbered by the lobbyists. She agreed that a single-use bag ban needs to be statewide. We really cant wait for all 169 towns to get on board, she said. Fortunati said shes a big fan of using tote bags at the supermarket. Were trying to get the idea of using reusable bags on peoples radar, she said. And were hoping that people will be picking up the tote bags there. Were really thrilled that the four supermarkets are on board with this. Really, your life will be a lot simpler when you get in the habit of using tote bags, Fortunati said. Theyre easier to carry, and you wont have to deal with all of those plastic bags after you get home. I always keep a few in the trunk of my car. jburgeson@ctpost.com The Government of Canada has made a new C$49.3-million investment in General Fusion, a clean technology company seeking to transform the worlds energy supply with safe, sustainable and economical fusion energy. The Honourable Navdeep Bains, Minister of Innovation, Science and Economic Development, together with the Honourable Harjit Singh Sajjan, Minister of National Defence, announced the investment. The funding will help General Fusion create technology leading to 400 new jobs and support its project to develop a first-of-its-kind large-scale prototype plant that will demonstrate a practical approach to commercializing affordable, abundant, safe and emission-free electricity from fusion energy. General Fusions technology has the potential to revolutionize how sustainable energy is generated and position British Columbiaand Canadaas a global leader in fusion technology. Thanks in part to this federal investment through the Strategic Innovation Fund, General Fusion will expand its collaboration with post-secondary institutions and employ inclusive hiring practices as the company grows its workforce. As a result of this project, Canadians will see more intellectual property developed and retained in Canada. Quotes from Canadian Government on General Fusion General Fusion is working at the forefront of clean technology. It has the real potential to transform how the world generates abundant clean energy. This will help us reduce our environmental impacts. Our government is proud to invest in this innovative project to help create hundreds of middle-class jobs and position Canada as a world leader in fusion energy technology. The Honourable Navdeep Bains, Minister of Innovation, Science and Economic Development Innovative companies such as General Fusion are a key part of our governments plan to grow the economy and create well-paying middle-class jobs for British Columbians. As a leader in the development of safe, affordable and emission-free electricity, General Fusion is a testament to the kind of quality work that this region is capable ofand the quality talent that is right here in British Columbia. The Honourable Harjit Singh Sajjan, Minister of National Defence General Fusions ground-breaking technology holds incredible promise in addressing climate change and revolutionizing global clean energy markets. Our government continues to support B.C. tech and innovation, and we are proud to have a world-leading company like General Fusion creating jobs in our strong and sustainable economy, because good jobs in B.C. mean a better life for people and their families. The Honourable Bruce Ralston, B.C. Minister of Jobs, Trade and Technology This investment by Canada in General Fusions transformative clean energy technology is evidence of its commitment to meeting the countrys climate change goals while fostering truly sustainable growthsustainable growth that will be powered by the disruptively competitive economics and environmentally responsible benefits of fusion energy. This Strategic Innovation Fund investment and Canadas expectation for a financial return on this investment are a vote of confidence in General Fusions ability to successfully commercialize its technology and in our ability to deliver new jobs and new opportunities throughout British Columbia and across Canada. We are grateful to Canada for its long-standing support of the company, support that has helped General Fusion become the worlds most advanced private fusion technology venture. Christofer Mowry, CEO, General Fusion Quick Facts * Fusion energy has been proven in laboratories, where closely contained fusion reactions release energy from superheated hydrogen gas, energy which can be captured and converted to electricity. Fusion results in no carbon dioxide emissions and does not produce high-level nuclear waste. * According to the International Atomic Energy Agency, in case of failure, fusion reactors automatically come to a halt within a few seconds, with no harmful effects being produced. * General Fusion will invest at least $150 million in Research and Development with the potential for over $250 million in additional investment for the construction of a demonstration plant. Founded in 2002, General Fusion employs more than 70 people in Burnaby and is the only Canadian company working to commercialize fusion technology. Clean technologies contributed over $26 billion, or 1.4%, to Canadas GDP in 2016. Of this, approximately $8 billion is exported. Clean technologies also provide approximately 178,000 well-paying jobs. This investment supports the Innovation and Skills Plan, the Pan-Canadian Framework on Clean Growth and Climate Change, as well as Canadas commitments toward Mission Innovation, a global initiative of 23 countries and the European Union to dramatically accelerate global clean energy innovation. General Fusion Developing Power Generating Prototype Nextbigfuture interviewed Christofer Mowry, the CEO of General Fusion. The highlights are that General Fusion is rapidly pushing ahead to achieve commercialization and the next step is to make a 70% scale pilot plant that will prove out the viability of generating electricity from General Fusions magnetized target nuclear fusion. General Fusion does not need to demonstrate fusion containment because they are pulsed power systems like a diesel engine or steampunk fusion. The pilot system will prove three things: 1. Fusion conditions will be repeatably produced 2. There will be a kill chain from neutrons to electrons 3. Economics will be validated. Simulations will be used to validate the economics and design specifics to move to a 100% system. The next system after the 70% scale system will be a full commercial system. The Demo system will cost several hundred million dollars. General fusion is fundraising now. Several existing funders (Jeff Bezos, Canadian and Malaysian government) are likely participants in the next round. However, the fundraising cannot have actual disclosure until it is completed. As of late 2016, General Fusion had received over $100 million in funding from a global syndicate of investors and the Canadian Governments Sustainable Development Technology Canada (SDTC) fund. They now have another C$49 million from the government of Canada. All of the individual components have been matured enough to enable integration into a prototype pilot plant. Over the five years of the demo plant, there will be design, construction and a nominal 18 months of testing. The plasma injector component built so far is a 2-meter plasma injector. It will be a 3-meter injector for the pilot plant. Titanium fabrication is with GE Additive as a partner. The current component for has 14 pistons and was not to achieve plasma compression but to work out other engineering issues. The demo system will have several hundred pistons. Perhaps around 500. The next system could have more or fewer pistons depending upon how experiments inform the design and how smoothly the plasma will need to be compressed. It will be deuterium fusion. The demo plant will not add tritium. Addition of tritium is a well-understood process and would have a predictable impact. Tritium will be added in the follow-up commercial system. General Fusion took its PI2 plasma injector to the 2018 GLOBE Forum in Vancouver. Chris Mowry Christofer M. Mowry, Chief Executive Officer & Director Chris Mowry has 30 years of global experience in the energy and infrastructure sectors, including power, oil & gas, automation, and process industries. Through his leadership he has revitalized businesses in GE and Babcock & Wilcox Company (BWC), founded disruptive energy technology company Generation mPower, and has overseen the transformation of complex international organizations. Chris was most recently Chief Executive Officer and Chairman of General Synfuels International, Inc. (GSI), a privately held company developing in situ oil shale gasification technology that produces hydrocarbons in an economically competitive and environmentally responsible manner from oil shales. Prior to GSI, Chris was the Founder and CEO of Generation mPower, a company formed in 2011 to design, license, and deliver Small Modular Reactors (SMRs), the next generation of nuclear energy technology. Previously, Chris was President of B&W Nuclear Energy, a division of The Babcock & Wilcox Company. Before joining B&W, Chris was the President and Chief Operating Officer of WSI, a private equity-backed field services and manufacturing company serving the energy and petrochemical industries. Chris spent 10 years with GE Energy in various management roles, growing the firms automation business by 34% in two years. He began his career with the Philadelphia Electric Company, and holds a Bachelor of Science (Engineer & Astronomy) from Swarthmore College, and a Masters of Science in Mechanical Engineering from Drexel University. Dr. Michel Laberge, Founder and Chief Scientist Dr. Michel Laberge is a physicist with widespread practical experience in plasma physics and modern plasma diagnostic techniques. He has extensive knowledge of the latest technologies related to electronics, computers, materials, lithography, optics and fabrication, and is experienced at designing and constructing test apparatuses to evaluate technical concepts. Components of the General Fusion system A magnetized target fusion system has 3 main components: a plasma injector, which supplies the fuel; an array of pistons, to compress the fuel; and a chamber of spinning liquid metal, to hold the fuel and capture the energy. Guided by advanced computer simulation, General Fusion is developing and optimizing each of these components in preparation to build a demonstration fusion power plant. General Fusion has built a world-class Magnetized Target Fusion research and development team consisting of over 50 research and development professionals who have demonstrated the ability to quickly and cost-effectively design, simulate, prototype, and test advanced fusion systems. General Fusions science team includes PhD scientists from leading fusion research institutions including LEcole Polytechnique in France, the Culham Centre for Fusion Technology in the UK, the Joint Institute for High Temperatures at the Russian Academy of Sciences, and Kyushu University in Japan. Additionally, General Fusion has supplemented its research group with experts in regulatory affairs, project management, government relations, intellectual property, finance, and strategic business development. Inside a General Fusion plant By harnessing the same process that powers the sun and the stars, fusion has the potential to be a zero-emission, safe and widely available source of energy. Fusion runs on hydrogen, and this fuel must be heated to immense temperatures over 150 million degrees Celsius to release its energy. Learn how a General Fusion power plant creates fusion energy with the infographic below, followed by full explanation of how the process works. The way a General Fusion power plant works could be compared to a diesel engine: the fuel is injected into a chamber, compressed to heat it up, and the resulting burst of energy is then captured. To get the fusion fuel to the temperatures required for fusion, the hydrogen must first be transformed from a gas to a plasma (a process called ionization). In a plasma state, the fuel can be heated to much higher temperatures and can be controlled using magnetic fields. The plasma is formed at the top of the machine, and a magnetic field then pushes it into the compression chamber. At this point the plasma is around 5 million degrees Celsius hot, but not hot enough for fusion. Inside the compression chamber, the plasma is surrounded by a wall of liquid metal, which will capture the energy that comes out of the reaction. On the outside of the chamber are gas-driven pistons, evenly arranged around the surface. When these pistons push down, they compress the liquid metal wall (and the plasma trapped inside it) from all sides. As the plasma gets compressed it rapidly grows hotter, until it reaches fusion temperatures and the reaction takes place. The energy from the reaction heats up the liquid metal wall, capturing the energy so that it can be used to create electricity. The process then repeats, with cooler liquid metal cycled back in and a new plasma pulse injected into the chamber. General Fusions approach is designed from the ground up to enable a practical, commercially-viable power plant. The use of pistons provides a cost-effective and well-understood way of heating the plasma, while the pulsed function of the machine avoids needing giant magnets to keep the plasma stable for long periods of time. The liquid metal wall is another major advantage, making it possible to get the energy out of the system and convert it to electricity. This is a particularly important part, as most fusion power plant designs do not have an effective way of extracting this energy. You can learn more about how electricity is produced from fusion energy in our infographic: Bringing fusion energy to the grid. The world-first nanophotonic device encodes more data and processes it much faster than conventional fiber optics by using a special form of twisted light. The tiny nanophotonic device built for reading twisted light is the missing key required to unlock super-fast, ultra-broadband communications. Present-day optical communications are heading towards a capacity crunch as they fail to keep up with the ever-increasing demands of Big Data, Ren said. New cables would be required to effectively twist light, any upgrade could involve replacing existing fiber networks. They accurately can transmit and read data via light at its highest capacity in a way that will allow us to massively increase our bandwidth. Current state-of-the-art fiber-optic communications, like those used in Australias National Broadband Network (NBN), use only a fraction of lights actual capacity by carrying data on the color spectrum. New broadband technologies under development use the oscillation, or shape, of light waves to encode data, increasing bandwidth by also making use of the light we cannot see. This latest technology, at the cutting edge of optical communications, carries data on light waves that have been twisted into a spiral to increase their capacity further still. This is known as light in a state of orbital angular momentum, or OAM. In 2016 the same group from RMITs Laboratory of Artificial-Intelligence Nanophotonics (LAIN) published a disruptive research paper in Science journal describing how theyd managed to decode a small range of this twisted light on a nanophotonic chip. But technology to detect a wide range of OAM light for optical communications was still not viable, until now. Our miniature OAM nano-electronic detector is designed to separate different OAM light states in a continuous order and to decode the information carried by twisted light, Ren said. To do this previously would require a machine the size of a table, which is completely impractical for telecommunications. By using ultrathin topological nanosheets measuring a fraction of a millimeter, our invention does this job better and fits on the end of an optical fiber. LAIN Director and Associate Deputy Vice-Chancellor for Research Innovation and Entrepreneurship at RMIT, Professor Min Gu, said the materials used in the device were compatible with silicon-based materials use in most technology, making it easy to scale up for industry applications. Our OAM nano-electronic detector is like an eye that can see information carried by twisted light and decode it to be understood by electronics. This technologys high performance, low cost and tiny size makes it a viable application for the next generation of broadband optical communications, he said. It fits the scale of existing fiber technology and could be applied to increase the bandwidth, or potentially the processing speed, of that fiber by over 100 times within the next couple of years. This easy scalability and the massive impact it will have on telecommunications is whats so exciting. Gu said the detector can also be used to receive quantum information sent via twisting light, meaning it could have applications in a whole range of cutting-edge quantum communications and quantum computing research. Our nano-electronic device will unlock the full potential of twisted light for future optical and quantum communications, Gu said. Optical imaging, sensing and metrology have been significantly advanced with the development of complementary metaloxidesemiconductor (CMOS) technology. Its unique capability to support photonic devices with high-spatial and -spectral resolution has allowed the detection of optical signals in different physical dimensions. The orbital angular momentum (OAM) of light carried by a helical wavefront with a physically unbounded set of spatial modes has emerged as a physically orthogonal dimension of light. Although the generation and measurement of the OAM of light have recently been exploited by nanophotonic methods the separation of OAM modes has been limited to bulk optics that accomplish the linear displacement of OAM-carrying beams due to the lack of OAM-dispersive materials or detectors at a nanoscale. They have demonstrated a CMOS-integratable OAM nanometrology, through the spatial engineering of plasmonic angular momentum modes in an ultrathin OAM-dispersive plasmonic topological insulator film. They have applied the outperforming plasmonic effect in an ultrathin topological insulator Sb2Te3 thin film for on-chip OAM nanometrology with an integratable CMOS camera at a visible wavelength. Notably, the current OAM nanometrology signals were imaged by a CMOS detector via a magnifying 4f optical system in the far-field region. However, owing to the recent rapid progress in nanotechnology, our demonstration holds great promise for future all-on-chip integration of the OAM nanometrology chip with a high-resolution CMOS detector. This kind of CMOS-compatible ultrathin OAM nanometrology device with a small footprint is highly compatible with other integrated devices such as vortex emitters, OAM microlasers, OAM manipulation metasurfaces and photodetectors. The high-precision OAM nanometrology in a CMOS-compatible plasmonic topological insulator material holds a great promise for the development of ultrathin optoelectronics with versatile functionalities and ultracompact photonic integrated circuits. Nature Communications Angular-momentum nanometrology in an ultrathin plasmonic topological insulator film Complementary metaloxidesemiconductor (CMOS) technology has provided a highly sensitive detection platform for high-resolution optical imaging, sensing and metrology. Although the detection of optical beams carrying angular momentum have been explored with nanophotonic methods, the metrology of optical angular momentum has been limited to bulk optics. We demonstrate angular-momentum nanometrology through the spatial displacement engineering of plasmonic angular momentum modes in a CMOS-compatible plasmonic topological insulator material. The generation and propagation of surface plasmon polaritons on the surface of an ultrathin topological insulator Sb2Te3 film with a thickness of 100 nm is confirmed, exhibiting plasmonic figures of merit superior to noble metal plasmonics in the ultraviolet-visible frequency range. Angular-momentum nanometrology with a low crosstalk of less than 20 dB is achieved. This compact high-precision angular-momentum nanometrology opens an unprecedented opportunity for on-chip manipulation of optical angular momentum for high-capacity information processing, ultrasensitive molecular sensing, and ultracompact multi-functional optoelectronic devices. Pentagon Research and Development chief Mike Griffin has all-out push to catch up with Russia and China in hypersonic weapons. The US Army, Navy, Air Force and Missile Defense Agency are all cooperating to develop hypersonic weapons. The US Armys Alternate Re-Entry System is funded at $197 million in 2018. The Alternate Re-Entry System was previously called the Advanced Hypersonic weapon program. It is the primary warhead being used by the Air Force. The US Air Force has awarded over $1 billion in hypersonic contracts. The pieces of the programs are being combined. Air Force Secretary Heather Wilson said the Armys hypersonic warhead had worked much better than the Air Force warhead. The US will take the Army warhead, put it on an Air Force booster, launch it off of a B-52. The Army is developing the ground launch version. The Navy will put them on ships. Here is a 49 page report on US hypersonic weapons. There will be hypersonic weapons tests in 2020 and 2021 and the weapons will be fielded around 2022-2024. A boost-glide weapon uses an ICBM-style booster to reach hypersonic speeds. It detaches and flies through the atmosphere. A true hypersonic cruise missile would have engines that thrust continuously throughout its flight. A boost-glide weapon glides at over 3,800 mph. Hypersonic boost-glide has three advantages: * The radar and heat signature are easily distinguished from those of any ICBM, reducing the chance the target will panic and launch nukes. * The glider warhead is a very hard target for current ballistic missile defense systems * The warhead speed and movement is beyond current cruise missile defenses The US wants to deploy a hypersonic kill chain. The kill chain * detects the target * tracks it precisely as it moves * makes the decision to fire * strikes the target * assesses the damage and * decides whether to fire again. Each year, the Shoreline Times looks forward to working on the Best of Shoreline special edition. Sure, some businesses win year after year, but it doesn't get old. It's like seeing a friendly face when we revisit these oh-so familiar people and places. We are reminded why they are so beloved by customers. And, there are plenty of brand new winners wildcards and an upset or two. Read about some of the spas and salons that got top honors, and click through the slideshow to see the full list of finalists in the Local Flavors/Restaurants category, as well as in the Tastebuds and Provisions category. ________________________ Lobster Landing known for lobster roll Loyal customers return, year after year, to Lobster Landing for their fresh picked, hot lobster rolls. "All of my customers are repeat customers," says co-owner Enea Bacci, known simply as Bacci. "They are very good acquaintances. "They come here because we sit down here and chat, I remember their grandchildren. I enjoy their company and I'm so happy to see them come year after year." It is the consistently good lobster roll that he and his co-owner and wife, Cathie Bacci, have been serving since 1995 that keep the crowds returning, year after year, to the seaside shack, says Bacci. "They know when they pack up their car to come down that they are not going to be surprised," he says. "They are expecting to have the same lobster roll that they had 10 years ago, 15 years ago." This reputation has been recognized by ShoreLine Times readers who voted them Best Lobster Roll for 2018. That lobster roll is pound of just-cracked tail, knuckle and claw meat, carefully weighed in a small mesh bag, served on a toasted bun and finished off with melted butter and a quick squeeze of fresh lemon. "Very simple, very gentle," Bacci explains. "You're not overpowering the butter, you don't overpower the lemon. Just a little squeeze, so you retain the beautiful freshness of the taste of the lobster." S.P. Kyrcz ________________________ Amato's Pizza and Pasta brings family history to the table Amato Bevilacqua grew up eating Italian food, including a special pizza that has a long family history. The heirloom recipe, over 100 years old, is now being used at his newly-opened restaurant, Amato's Pizza and Pasta. Opened on March 2, Amato's Pizza and Pasta has earned the honor of Best New Business in Madison 2018 in the ShoreLine Times Reader's Poll. "I'm a fourth-generation pizza-maker, which is kind of unique," says Bevilacqua. "It came from my great-grandfather in Naples, my grandfather then came here, my father did pizzas here, so I'm the fourth generation in the family to do pizzas. "It's been tweaked a little bit along the way, but other than that, it's 100 years old," he says. "We use all Italian products, San Marzano tomatoes, Italian cheeses. It's pretty unique." Growing up in Madison, Bevilacqua attended Daniel Hand High School, graduating in 2006. Throughout his high school years and beyond, he worked at his parents Branford restaurant, Pepe and Rose. It was after they retired and closed the restaurant in October 2017, that Bevilacqua was able to fulfill a lifelong dream of opening his very own Italian restaurant. "I've been in the business my whole life," the 29-year-old says. "The only job I ever had was to work for my dad." Now this entrepreneur works for himself in an 800-square-foot restaurant, serving up pasta, sandwiches, salads, appetizers. S.P. Kyrcz ________________________ Luigi's Restaurant right at home as Shoreline's best Enter Luigi's Restaurant and you feel like you are in a friend's home. Family photos cover the walls, Little League and Pinewood Derby trophies are on display and the grand piano looks inviting enough to sit down and play a tune or two. "Homey atmosphere, that's totally what we count on," says Owner Len DiBella. "Luigi's is a place where everybody knows somebody who's there and people in one booth will talk across to someone in the other booth." The atmosphere, in addition to the menu items, has earned Luigi's Restaurant the honor of Best Italian Restaurant and Best Pizza in the 2018 Shoreline Times Reader's Poll. DiBella is a third-generation owner. At 57-years-old, he says he had been involved with the restaurant his entire life, although he has been at the helm for about 35 of those years, many with his brother, Mike, who retired 11 years ago. He stresses that customers often comment on the value-added benefit of meals at Luigi's. A salad or homemade soup accompanies every meal, as well as homemade bread. The menu is extensive and includes chicken and veal parmigiana, fried calamari, mussels capri, manicotti, six cheese Italian purses, sausage and pepper plate and of course, the homemade sauce and meatballs. Then there is the pizza. "It's dough that's homemade every day," says DiBella. "The pizza is hand tossed, made to order, cooked right on the oven floor, not in a pan and high-quality ingredients." S.P. Kyrcz ________________________ Darbar India brings Eastern flavors to Branford It's generally understood that what comes out of the barrel-shaped, 1,000-degree kitchen behemoth known as the tandoor will go far in determining the success of an Indian restaurant. The key to the roasting process is in the exquisite timing. Two seconds too long, it's dry and stringy. Two seconds too soon: red and raw inside. Fortunately for all of us, the tandoor chef at Branford's Darbar India, which readers once again voted Best Indian Restaurant on the Shoreline, has it down to a science. And an art. Take the impossibly tender chicken tandoori, ordered either whole or half; the textural miracle of the flaky salmon tandoori; and the naan, the airy, bubbly flatbread whose smoky flavor is a direct result of the tandoor's extreme heat. Overall, there's also the gentle babble of the koi pond, the soft lighting, and the roomy seating lending a mellowness to the atmosphere; and the accommodating service typified by the complimentary deep-fried ball of dough bathed in rose and cardamom syrup to end the meal. Add to that a chicken masala that, according to manager Manju Shahani, regularly sells 50 plates on an average weekday, and a weekend lunch buffet that includes a variety of dishes spiced and sauced to perfection. It's no surprise that word of Darbar India's expertise in traditional fare ranges well beyond the Shoreline, with Indian restaurant connoisseurs associating Branford, Connecticut with Darbar. All that, and the red-bricked Main Street institution offers outside catering for corporate events and weddings, as well as take-out, and an upstairs banquet hall. Given its sheer range of selections, including an extensive vegetarian menu, its mastery of the tandoor, and its singular hospitality, it's fair to wonder why anyone seeking a state of nirvana would dine anywhere but Darbar India. Lisa Reisman ________________________ Historic Griswold Inn a flavorful mainstay When something has been around for 242 years, it's easy to forget it's there. Such is the case with the Griswold Inn in Essex, which opened for business in 1776, the same year the United States did, making it one of America's oldest continuously operated inns. Apparently, it's been doing something right, as it's also your choice for Best American Cuisine, Best Steakhouse, and Most Romantic Dinner on the Shoreline. The private Covered Bridge Room of The Gris, as it's affectionately called, may feature the wood paneling and stone fireplace befitting a Colonial-era establishment, but its innovative cuisine and myriad wine options are decidedly contemporary. Take the apple-cornbread-stuffed chicken and salmon served with seasonal fruit salsa. There's also a well-executed roasted cod filet with crab crust, a seared Atlantic salmon, baked stuffed shrimp, and the signature braised short ribs of beef with mashed potatoes and red wine demi-glace. Not to mention the intriguing seasonal game menu. The piece de resistance: the opulent joy of the grilled New York strip which, in its top-drawer cut and expert preparation, is, "a thing of beauty," as one diner gushed. What really brings the Gris to life, though, is the ambiance of the place, whether it's the bookcases, vintage tables and chairs, and creaky floors in the main restaurant, or the labyrinth of interconnected rooms that lead to the wine bar, a space that, in its 12 short years of existence, has distinguished itself in its own right with its innovative cuisine. Lisa Reisman ________________________ Midwester BBQ smokes Shoreline's best at Chester's When Chester's Barbeque opened in Clinton, the Dugas family brought the true taste of Midwestern style barbeque to the Connecticut Shoreline. With two locations in Connecticut serving up homestyle smoked goodness, it's no wonder our readers voted Chester's Best Authentic Barbeque another year in a row. "Everything is smoked. We're an old-time barbeque restaurant like you would find in the Midwest." said owner Skip Dugas who along with his brother, Chester, opened the Clinton restaurant three years ago after opening their first location in Groton. Dugas recalled that after living in Kansas City, M.O., he and his brother wanted to bring the flavor of real barbeque back home to Connecticut. While most people think of barbeque as just a sauce, Dugas reminds that it's all about the preparation. In fact, Chester's motto is, "Barbeque is not the sauce...It's what the sauce goes on!" Chester's offers barbeque from all over the country like beef brisket (85,000 pounds a year!), and Carolina-style pulled pork with apple cider vinegar. "On Fridays we do corned beef. Pickled and brined smoked for 14 hours with a little mustard barbeque sauce...It's a thing of beauty." said Dugas. Start your meal with a bowl of Chester's Famous Chili. Try the 1/2 Chicken dinner, the Texas Trinity combo dinner with brisket, ribs and sausage, or build your own combo like the Lil' with your choice of one meat, side dish and corn bread. Sides include baked beans, mac & cheese, or sweet potatoes to name a few. And, if you're planning a small gathering or a pig roast for many, Chester's Barbeque will gladly cater your next party. Elizabeth Friedman-Rubin BRIDGEPORT There once was a time when the term Americana didnt exist as a genre description for music. There was just David Bromberg out there playing the blues, bluegrass, newgrass, folk and gospel music moving effortlessly from one genre to another and from guitar to fiddle to mandolin to Dobro, all in the same show. Over the years, hes played with the likes of Bob Dylan, Jerry Garcia, George Harrison, Dion, Ringo Starr, Willie Nelson, his mentor Rev. Gary Davis, John Hartford and some of the best sidemen around. Five and a half decades later, hes still doing it. Better than ever. All that is just music history, except for this part: Bromberg and his tight-as-a-drum David Bromberg Quintet will be doing it again Oct. 28 with style, a high level of musicianship and tons of personality at Bridgeports beautiful, intimate Bijou Theatre. Showtime is 7 p.m. (Doors at 6.) Tickets are $57-$37, available in advance at bijoutheatrect.net. The Bijou, one of Connecticuts nicest old theaters, is located at 275 Fairfield Ave. in downtown Bridgeport. Be it bluegrass, folk, gospel or blues or some exquisitely eclectic blend Bromberg has always known how to turn a phrase with feeling, irony and always humor. When it comes to pickin, he can hang with the best of them and even knows how to build his instruments as well as play them. Hes currently touring in support of his 2016 Red House Records release, The Blues, The Whole Blues and Nothing But the Blues. Bromberg, a native of Philadelphia who was raised in Tarrytown, New York, and reared musically on the 1960s Greenwich Village folk scene, has pretty much played with everyone in the music world over the years, including Dylan, George Harrison, the Grateful Dead, Link Wray, Willie Nelson, The Eagles, Carly Simon and many of his bluegrass and blues idols. One of the most intriguing things about him is how he manages to cross genres and do each with such respect and authority, all while sounding like no one else but David Bromberg. As a child, I listened to rock n roll and whatever else was on the radio, Bromberg has said. I discovered Pete Seeger and The Weavers and, through them, Rev. Gary Davis. I then discovered Big Bill Broonzy, who led me to Muddy Waters and the Chicago blues. This was more or less the same time I discovered Flatt and Scruggs, which led to Bill Monroe and Doc Watson. Brombergs performance history stretches back to 1966. In the Village, Bromberg was able to watch and learn from such icons as Davis first-hand, while also getting the opportunity to work as a backing musician for the likes of Tom Paxton, Jerry Jeff Walker and Rosalie Sorrels, among others. Through that, he became a first-call, hired gun guitarist for recording sessions, playing over the years on hundreds of recordings by artists ranging from Bob Dylan (New Morning, Self Portrait, Dylan) and Link Wray to The Eagles, Ringo Starr, Willie Nelson, and Carly Simon. His 1971 debut album spawned the FM radio classic Suffer to Sing the Blues, The Holdup, a songwriting collaboration with former Beatle Harrison, and other gems. Members of The Grateful Dead, including the late Jerry Garcia, played on two of Brombergs four initial Columbia Records releases. Bromberg took a break from performing for a number of years beginning in 1980, when he disbanded his band. His wife, Nancy Josephson, and he moved from California to Chicago. There, Bromberg attended the Kenneth Warren School of Violin Making, although he later was lured back into performing by friends. These days, he is both a performer and the proprietor of David Bromberg Fine Violins, a retail store and repair shop for high-quality instruments in Wilmington, Delaware. TRUMBULL Priscilla said the abuse started when she was 13. I prayed while being sexually abused by my father, she said Wednesday, sharing her story with a room of about 40 people at the Trumbull Library during a vigil that celebrated survivors of sexual assault and reflected on lives lost through domestic violence. Priscilla said her father shared her with his friends, introduced her to drugs and alcohol and repeatedly assaulted her. I was a little girl with a dream, she recalled. Where was my safe haven? She said she kept the abuse a secret from her mother and sister until she was 32, which is when she found out two of her sisters survived the same abuse. Years later, Priscilla found her safe haven in the Center for Family Justice, an organization based in Bridgeport that helps all victims of all forms of domestic violence. Priscilla, who did not give her last name, is one of the Center for Family Justices VOICES survivors of domestic violence who are ready and comfortable to share their stories with the public. Its never too late, Priscilla said. They (our abusers) dont get to win. ... Stand with me and fight back. October is Domestic Violence Awareness Month. Trumbulls vigil is one of many similar events planned locally, statewide and nationally to bring attention to domestic violence and its effects on society. Deb Greenwood, the president and CEO of the center, said 143 Trumbull residents were treated or received services at the center last year. We know domestic violence has many faces, Greenwood said. In 2017, the center helped an estimated 5,000 people in the centers safe homes. Greenwood said 89 percent of them were women and 11 percent were men. That number, she said, included the 250 children the center helped. Its (domestic violence) serious for all genders, all races, all cultures, she said. First Selectman Vicki Tesoro urged residents to get involved and to be active to help break the cycle of abuse. This type of violence knows no borders, she said. When it comes to law enforcement, since at least 2012, police across the state have sent a minimum of two officers to any domestic violence call. These calls are the most dangerous ones police respond to, Trumbull Police Chief Michael Lombardo said. Theyre more dangerous for those living there, he added. Lombardo mentioned a town resident that suffered a very traumatic attack. He said after they went to the center for help, they told him their life was saved. Its much better now than it was years ago, Lombardo said, attributing that to organizations like the Center for Family Justice. Greenwood urged members of the public to get involved with the center, which is staffed by 41 people. She said the best way to help is to listen to and believe survivors when they tell their story. Priscilla agreed, saying that fear of people judging her temporarily deterred her reporting the abuse. But she said she overcame those fears with encouragement from the center. We are no longer victims, we are victorious survivors, Priscilla said. Wednesdays event wrapped up with the reading of names and brief summaries of victims of fatal domestic violence instances in Connecticut last year. On Feb. 8, 2017, 61-year-old Robert Jones, of Bridgeport, was beaten to death by his niece, Tynisha Hall, 35, and her husband, 39-year-old Brent Whiteman. The two, who police said also tortured Jones for months, were charged with his murder. On Feb. 24, 2017, 26-year-old Nidia Gonzalez was stabbed to death by her boyfriend, Oscar Hernandez. He fled with their daughter and was caught in Pennsylvania after a three-state pursuit. He was charged with her murder. His trial is under way. On April 24, 2017, 10-month-old Bridgeport resident Donovan Siberon was taken from his parents home unresponsive. He died the next day. The babys father, Derrick Siberon, was later charged in connection with his death. On July 5, 2017, 33-year-old Jennifer Knox, of Bridgeport, was shot and killed by her husband, Keith Knox, 32, before he turned the gun on himself. On Aug. 15, 2017, 27-year-old Raenetta Catchings, of Stratford, was shot dead by her uncle, 21-year-old Michael Catchings. Police charged him with her murder. Two newcomers to the political scene are vying for the seat that Sen. Ted Kennedy Jr., D-Branford, has held since 2014 the 12th District representing Branford, North Branford, Durham, Guilford, Killingworth and Madison. Democrat Christine Cohen of Guilford and Republican Adam Greenberg of Branford have been talking with constituents and listening to concerns about the states financial crisis, the current business climate and the environment. Cohen lives in Guilford with her husband, Rob, and their three children. In addition to running Cohens Bagel Company in Madison, she serves on the Guilford Board of Education. She talked about ways in which the state can survive the current financial deficit. I think the biggest piece of that is to make Connecticut an even better environment in which to start or run business, she said. She cites barriers that exist for small businesses and believes that her experience as a small business owner gives her the experience and knowledge to help remove these obstacles. I know a lot about what those barriers look like and what we could do to remove them and make Connecticut more fertile ground on which businesses can build and grow, she added. She cites health insurance as one example. It is such a barrier to growth and really, quite frankly, entry, because the costs are so exorbitant to insure your employees, said Cohen. In addition, she said it is important to protect the states assets, including education and the environment. We need to ensure that the young people have the best education possible so that they can then grow up and lead successful lives and have gainful and great careers, she said. Greenberg grew up in Guilford and currently lives in Branford with his wife, Lindsay, and their two sons. In 2010, he founded the INC 500 health and wellness company Lurong Living. As a Shoreline native, is as concerned about the environmental issues as all of his neighbors and friends. As I tell everyone, I grew up clamming, fishing, crabbing, going out lobstering and then of course, with the orchards that we have, blueberry picking, raspberry picking and taking my kids, he said. We just have so much here in the 12th that the environment and agriculture is such a critical piece of what makes it so special, he added. When discussing business concerns in the state, Greenberg stressed that in addition to the financial issues, including taxes and tolls, he is concerned about state regulations for both business owners and those who do business in the state. Its nearly impossible to keep a business here, he said. We need to reduce those regulations. We need to make it easier for the businesses to be here, not at the expense of the environment. He also talked about the people he has met during his campaign who worry about being able to remain in Connecticut. So many people cant afford to live here in the state that (they) love and are so concerned about having to move out if they cant afford to and also concerned that their children are not going to come back once they graduate, said Greenberg. Theres a lot of seniors that are getting taxed out of their homes and have to make decisions that are really, really tough. 3 1 of 3 Brian Zahn/Hearst Connecticut Media Show More Show Less 2 of 3 Hulton Archive - Stringer/Hulton Archive/Getty Images Show More Show Less 3 of 3 NEW HAVEN The New Haven Board of Education will soon vote on whether the Elm City Montessori School can continue to exist, but the facility seems to have favorably impressed board members Wednesday, according to a report in the New Haven Independent. During a fact-finding mission to the charter schools new Blake Street campus, school board members monitored classes, met the board of trustees and interviewed staff, the report said. NEW HAVEN As part of its goal to replace blighted properties with new construction and encouage home ownership, the Livable City Initiative is on its way to final approval to sell six multi-family homes in two neighborhoods. Using a combination of state Neighborhood Renewal Program funds leveraged with New Haven funds, five two-family homes on Judith Terrace were built to enhance Fair Haven Heights as a neighborhood of mixed-income homeownership. The state program requires homeowner occupancy and puts an income restriction on the homeower to qualify for the purchase. The owner cannot earn more than 100 percent of the area median income, which is $94,025 for a family of four. The properties, which are on land that was vacant for more than seven years, are located at 90-92, 99-101, 100-102, 103-105 and 110-112 Judith Terrace. The construction is set to be completed before next year and the LCI document on the proposal said the properties are being marketed aggressively. Approval to sell them was given by the Community Development Committee of the Board of Alders this week.The proposal now goes to the full board for a vote. LCI went to the alders now for approval to make it easier for the potential buyers. LCI said lending institutions like all the necessary approvals in place before they will sign off on a mortgage. The five homes are seen as the cornerstone of continued residential revitalization in Fair Haven Heights. Part of the sales agreement will include a 30-year covenant requiring homeowner occupancy and the income restriction. A pending sale will go to the LCI board for review before the closing. Any revenue above the construction costs of approximately $900,000 for the five homes has to be returned to the Neighborhood Renewal program as income to be used to develop phase two and street infrastructure. The estimated tax on each of the homes is estmated at $7,500. The City Plan Commission recommeded that the Board of Alders approve the sale of the properties with these stipulations. The second property approved by the aldermanic committee is a two-family home at 384 Blatchley Ave., which made use of U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development funds, as well as state neighborhood stabilization money. Like the Judith Terrace properties, the city was the owner/developer of the home which it also acquired in a foreclosure. The lot on Blatchley had been vacant for more than six years. This property will be sold subject to a 15-year covenant that requires the new owner have an income of not more than $116,150 for a family of four, which is 120 percent of the area median income. The owner would also have to occupy one of the units. Any revenue above the construction costs of approximately $160,000 for this home will have to be returned to the HUD program to be used for additional homeownership housing in the future. mary.oleary@ hearstmediact.com; 203-641-2577 NEW HAVEN The jurors in the James Kendrick sexual assault trial spent all day Friday deliberating but could not reach a verdict and will try again next week. In a sign that they are focusing on the key issue of the complainants credibility, the six jurors asked to again view the videotape of her interview with a forensic examiner, in which she described the alleged assault. (CNN) President Donald Trump continues to make calls via cell phone despite intelligence that China and Russia listen in, The New York Times reported Wednesday. The Times report, citing current and former officials, said Chinese spies have listened to Trump's iPhone calls and that the President's aides had told him Russian spies were listening regularly. Trump's cell phone use has been noted throughout his tenure, and security experts have raised concerns in the past. CNN noted in April that after John Kelly became chief of staff, Trump made more calls through the White House switchboard, but by the time of the April report, the President had begun to make more calls through his cell. The New York Times report said the officials raising an alarm about Trump's refusal to stop making unsecured calls were doing so out of frustration. Those officials told the Times that China was seeking to use its findings on Trump to help the country in its trade dispute with the US and that the Chinese had noted Trump's conversations with Stephen Schwarzman, head of The Blackstone Group, and Steve Wynn, a Las Vegas figure who established major investments in Macau, a gambling hub in China. Wynn stepped down as finance chair for the Republican National Committee last January following allegations of sexual misconduct, which he denied. China, in turn, has begun using its own businessmen to try to influence people friendly with those Trump talks to, according to the New York Times report, hopes the information will make it to the President. An attorney for Wynn told the Times that Wynn was retired and declined to comment, and a spokeswoman for Blackstone said Schwarzman "has been happy to serve as an intermediary on certain critical matters between the two countries at the request of both heads of state." Schwarzman spokeswoman Christine Anderson told CNN she had no additional comment. As the report noted, Trump indicated to the Wall Street Journal this week that he had discretion about information transmitted through his phone. "I actually said don't give it to me on the phone," Trump said of information on the death of Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi. "I don't want it on the phone. As good as these phones are supposed to be." This story was first published on CNN.com. "New York Times: China, Russia listening to Trump's cell phone calls" Photo: Darren Handschuh A new parking system is coming to VJH. Paying for parking at Vernon Jubilee Hospital will soon be a little more convenient for those visiting the medical centre. As of Nov. 1, the existing parking payment system will transition to a pay-by-plate system rather than by stall number or displayed receipts. There will be no changes to rates. New parking pay stations will be installed inside the lobbies of the Polson Tower, Jubilee and Emergency entrances. One pay station, located at the surface lot on the east side of the property, will remain outdoors. The new payment system, which requires people to enter their licence plate number, will offer the convenience of remaining indoors to perform transactions and extend time if required. Payment can be made at any one of the pay stations regardless of where a vehicle is parked. For drivers with mobile devices, the parking app HangTag, will enable them to make payment or extend their parking time on their phones. The new system has has been set up at other centres including in Kamloops and Kelowna. Parking passes for extended periods are available to visitors and patients by contacting Interior Healths Parking Services directly at 1-855-491-6498. Exemptions to paid parking requirements at IH sites apply to patients, clients, and visitors with identified extenuating circumstances based on medical or financial hardships that have been reviewed on a case-by-case basis. A Millville police officer accused of slamming a suspect face-first onto a concrete floor and trying to jam a gun into another man's mouth before pistol-whipping him has been indicted on 24 counts of using excessive force, tampering with evidence and lying to his superiors. Jeffrey E. Profitt, 39, is accused of using excessive force in five violent arrests and is charged with 10 counts of filing false and incomplete reports about arrests he made between 2013 and 2016. One of those arrests resulted in a lawsuit. Profitt was originally indicted last year on charges related to a 2016 arrest in which he allegedly threw a 62-year-old man, identified in court documents as A.W., to the floor in the police station's sally port, causing serious facial injuries. That original, 8-count indictment included a charge alleging a pattern of official misconduct involving violent incidents between 2014 and 2016, but Profitt sought to have that count separated from the other seven, which dealt specifically with the incident involving A.W. A judge granted that move, but prosecutors appealed the decision. In June, appellate court judges sent the matter back to the lower court to reconsider severing the counts into two separate cases. Prosecutors expanded on the pattern of misconduct allegations contained in that eighth count and took their case back to a Cumberland County grand jury, which handed up this week's superseding indictment. The charges include multiple counts of official misconduct, aggravated assault, endangering another person, terroristic threats, tampering with physical evidence, tampering with records and obstructing the administration of law. The allegations involving A.W.'s injuries stem from an April 11, 2016, arrest at a liquor store where A.W. was "causing public alarm," according to court documents. EMTs arriving at the police station because of the man's apparent intoxication testified that they saw Profitt pick up A.W. and throw him to the floor. "A.W.'s face, according to one of the EMT witnesses, hit the concrete floor like 'a pumpkin smashing,'" according to details described in the appellate court ruling. The state claims Profitt misled superior officers about the extent of A.W.'s injuries. While A.W. lost a "substantial amount of blood," according to the indictment, he told his superiors that only a "little bit of blood" had to be cleaned up from the floor. As a result, a lieutenant called for maintenance staff to clean up the area, rather than ordering an investigation. Hours later, after a pool of blood had been cleaned up, the lieutenant learned how seriously A.W. had been injured. The man required three hours of surgery to repair facial fractures. In the meantime, Profitt laundered his uniform to get rid of blood evidence, prosecutors allege. The indictment goes on to accuse Profitt of using excessive force in four other cases. In an incident from Oct. 8, 2014, Profitt arrested a man identified as W.H., and while the officer's report made no mention of injuries, the man's arrest photo showed facial swelling, bruising and "copious blood around his nose and forehead," according to appellate documents related to the first indictment. The new indictment states that Profitt grabbed W.H. and threw him, causing the man to hit the ground face-first. On May 3, 2015, he allegedly grabbed O.P. from behind and threw him to the ground, smashing his face onto a stone driveway. On Dec. 12, 2015, Profitt allegedly forced H.G. against the exterior of a restaurant, then threw him face-first onto large landscaping rocks. Following the June 15, 2015, arrest of K.H., investigators revealed Profitt struck the man when he tried to pull away from the officer during an arrest. While his arrest photo showed no injury, a photo taken after K.H. was released from the hospital revealed an injury to the back of his head which was allegedly caused when Profitt struck him. The K.H. described in that incident is Kenneth Harden, who filed a lawsuit last year alleging that Profitt punched and pistol-whipped him. The lawsuit claims Profitt pulled Harden out of his car during a traffic stop and repeatedly punched him. Harden claimed he feared for his safety and ran, but stopped when Profitt drew his gun. Harden said Profitt then tried to force the gun into his mouth before striking him on the back of the head with the weapon "causing his head to split open and begin bleeding," according to the suit. Prosecutors charge that Profitt failed to file "truthful, accurate and complete" Attorney General use of force reports about those arrests and five others that occurred between 2013 and 2015. He also didn't report the severity of the injuries suffered by the people he arrested. Profitt joined the department in 2012 and is currently suspended without pay, according to a department spokesman. Police Chief Jody Farabella could not be reached for comment. Efforts to reach the officer's attorney were unsuccessful on Friday. Profitt is free pending future court appearances. He's due back before a judge on Nov. 9 for a post-indictment arraignment. 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. "Just Kids: Illustrated Edition" By Patti Smith (Ecco, 370 pp, $39.99) Growing up in the Bronx, going into the city meant Manhattan, and once I discovered Greenwich Village, it was love. With Washington Square Arch as the backdrop, I first saw buskers, drank espresso and knew I belonged there, as an artist, writing poetry. This was a few years after a South Jersey girl named Patti Smith had this feeling in 1967. The rocker originally recalled those days in this 2010 tender memoir of her friendship with the artist Robert Mapplethorpe. Now it's back in a lovely expanded edition with a new preface and many more photographs. What hasn't changed though, is its bittersweet nostalgia. When Smith arrived in Manhattan she was already a little lost. She had attended Glassboro State College (now Rowan University) to become a teacher; a born spinster like her, her father said, needed a career. Instead she became pregnant, dropped out, and put the baby up for adoption. A year later she got off the bus in Port Authority with art supplies, a book of poetry and no money. Mapplethorpe was already in New York, supposedly taking commercial art at Pratt. Instead, he was taking acid and trying to figure out who he was. It took him awhile to realize part of that answer was gay. Shortly after he met Smith at her new bookstore job, they moved in together. They were lovers sometimes, but in love always - with each other, with art and with New York, which she describes as full of "arthouses offering Fellini and Bergman movies throughout the afternoon for fifty cents, pawnshop windows filled with transient treasure." They shared a series of awful apartments. Mapplethorpe made collages of pornographic photographs. Smith wrote poetry and assumed the responsibility of supporting them. It was a struggle. "Robert and I hardly fought, but we would bicker like children - usually over managing our small income. My salary was sixty-five dollars a week and Robert would find the occasional odd job. With rent at eighty dollars a month, plus utilities, every penny had to be accounted for." "So my last image was as the first. A sleeping youth cloaked in light, who opened his eyes with a smile of recognition for someone who had never been a stranger," Patti Smith writes of Robert Mapplethorpe. If she wanted to call her family in Deptford Township, she had to skip a meal to afford the payphone. If the couple splurged on a trip to Coney Island, lunch was one hot dog, shared. Once, Smith went to the Automat for a cheese sandwich - only to discover, to her horror, the price had gone up by 10 cents. She didn't have it. Miraculously Allan Ginsberg appeared, contributing the dime as well as a cup of coffee, and invited her to share his table. He later admitted, embarrassed, that it was only because he'd first thought she was a boy. Although it was hard to support themselves, they easily supported each other. Smith began writing more, and performing her poetry. Mapplethorpe decided to take his own photographs instead of using other people's. And, after a series of dumps, they managed to rent a tiny room at the eccentric, eclectic Chelsea Hotel, a "doll's house in the Twilight Zone." Eventually, they both made their own way. Smith fell in love with Sam Shepard, and added guitar to her poetry readings. By 1971, she was inventing punk rock. Mapplethorpe's photography grew more accomplished and more erotic, garnering him fame and infamy, with his last solo show slammed as obscene. That was in 1989, and it was a scandal the artist would have appreciated. However, he had died of AIDS a few months before. Nor was Smith on the scene; she married in 1980, and had spent much of the decade in rural Michigan, raising a family. The days when they had were bohemians from the burbs - "just kids" - seemed a lifetime ago. But Smith remembers it all fondly now. "We were as Hansel and Gretel, and we ventured out into the black forest of the world. There were temptations and witches and demons we never dreamed of and there was splendor we only partially imagined. No one else can speak for these young people, off their days and nights together. Only Robert and I could tell it. Our story, as he called it. "And having gone he left the task to me to tell it to you." A state inspection has uncovered "major infection control deficiencies" at University Hospital in Newark following the death of a premature baby, the state Department of Health said Thursday. The state said its inspection of the hospital revealed issues with "hand hygiene, personal protective equipment and cleanliness" and that it has created a "Directed Plan of Correction" for New Jersey's only public hospital, following an investigation that showed that the Department of Health's "recommended practices had not been implemented." Four cases of Acinetobacter baumannii bacteria at University are under investigation by the New Jersey Department of Health. Photo credit: Janice Haney Carr via CDC The premature baby that was in the hospital's Neonatal Intensive Care Unit contracted the Acinetobacter baumannii bacteria, and was transferred to another unnamed facility, where the child died in late September, "prior to the Department's notification of problems in the NICU," the department stated. "Due to the other compounding medical conditions, the exact cause of death is still being investigated," the state said. Acinetobacter baumannii bacterial infections typically occur in intensive care units and healthcare settings housing very ill patients, according to the CDC. The bacteria is usually found in soil or water, and can cause pneumonia or serious blood or wound infections. There were four cases of Acinetobacter baumannii in the hospital's neonatal intensive care unit (NICU) and the department said it first became aware of the bacterial infection on Oct. 1. "The plan calls for the hospital to hire a full-time Certified Infection Control Practitioner consultant, who will report to the Department on immediate actions taken in the coming days," the release stated. "The Department is also exploring further actions it may need to take in the coming days to ensure patient safety." The hospital said it will be working with the department of health to address the issues. "University Hospital takes patient safety, including infection control, very seriously," the hospital said in a statement. "We have been in regular communication with the Department of Health and continue to work closely with them to address this issue as quickly as possible." University Hospital was was already under surveillance by the Department of Health following an executive order issued by Gov. Phil Murphy in July, after it received a failing grade in April's Leapfrog Safety report card. In addition to Wanaque, @NJDeptofHealth is investigating multiple cases of Acinetobacter in the neonatal ICU at @UnivHospNewark 4 cases, 1 death after transfer to another hospital. We take this very seriously, and have directed corrective action. More: https://t.co/f30bV6NdnE Shereef Elnahal, MD (@ShereefElnahal) October 25, 2018 Based on data from 2016 and 2017, University Hospital scored below average in preventing four out of five common infections, and below average for preventing six out of seven surgical complications. Murphy's administration also alleged that the hospital had illegally begun phasing out some pediatric services and transferring the beds to Newark Beth Israel Medical Center, before the state had granted it permission to do so. The discovery of the bacteria at University Hospital comes just days after a deadly viral outbreak at the Wanaque Center for Nursing and Rehabilitation in Haskell that has claimed the lives of seven children and infected at least 12 others. Chris Sheldon may be reached at csheldon@njadvancemedia.com. Follow him on Twitter @chrisrsheldon Find NJ.com on Facebook. JERSEY CITY -- The detention hearing today for a 29-year-old Jersey City man charged with the manslaughter of a Hoboken father of three in Jersey City was quickly adjourned until Tuesday because of an apparent paperwork foul-up. Joshua Espada, 29, is charged with the reckless manslaughter Luis Rivera, 38, who died Sunday after being assaulted Saturday in Downtown Jersey City, officials said. The state moved to detain Espada during the course of his prosecution. At today's detention hearing, Hudson County Assistant Prosecutor Kevin Roe said Espada is a danger to the public, there is video evidence in which he is clearly seen assaulting Rivera, and two witnesses have identified him in photo lineups. Espada was originally charged with aggravated assault and the charge was then updated after a postmortem examination determined Rivera's death was a homicide. But during today's detention hearing, Hudson County Superior Court Judge Paul DePascale said that when he checked the file on the case it was still listed as an aggravated assault. Roe and defense attorney Adrienne Edward said they were prepared to proceed, but DePascale said he was not. He adjourned the hearing until Tuesday. Police officers responding the area of First Street and Marin Boulevard on a report of a street fight on Saturday around 3 a.m. found Rivera lying unresponsive on the ground with apparent facial wounds, officials said. Rivera was treated by emergency medical personnel before taken to the Jersey City Medical Center, where he was pronounced dead at about 4:10 a.m. Sunday, officials said. In 2013, Espada was charged with three counts of aggravated assault for allegedly being among three men who attacked two people, The Jersey Journal reported. He pleaded guilty to simple assault and was sentenced to one year probation in 2014. Rivera worked as a superintendent at Katerra, a technology company that recently merged with Fields Construction of Hoboken. The Prosecutor's Homicide Unit and the Jersey City Police Department are continuing to investigate the homicide. Anyone with information is asked to contact the Prosecutor's Office at 201-915-1345 or leave an anonymous tip on the Prosecutor's Office official website at: http://www.hudsoncountyprosecutorsofficenj.org/homicide-tip/. Hudson County Prosecutor Esther Suarez said all information will remain confidential. When a gun was recovered and a 31-year-old man was arrested late Sunday night, it capped a violent weekend in Jersey City that included at least five arrests and six shooting victims. It also capped a weekend in which Jersey City officials declined to provide information to The Jersey Journal on all but one of the shooting incidents that had occurred over the previous 72 hours. Very basic information was released Thursday, a week after the first incident. Asked a number of questions regarding why police delayed releasing crime information, Wallace-Scalcione released this statement: "While shootings and homicides are down significantly year over year, our goal is to drive this down to zero. That means the investigation component in the minutes and days after a shooting are detailed and expansive. It is important to provide factual information, and often when there is an active investigation there may be a delay in reporting." Here is a list of the incidents on which police refused to provide information until Thursday, Oct. 25: Early Friday, Oct. 19, two people were apparently shot on Myrtle Avenue and they went to a local hospital on their own. At 2 p.m. Saturday, police told the Jersey Journal there was a "shots-fired" incident on Myrtle Avenue, and made no mention of victims. On Thursday, Oct. 25, police told the newspaper it was "shooting" incident, but again refused to say if there were any victims. On Saturday, Oct. 20, a man was shot near Oxford Avenue and Sackett Street, an incident that was confirmed by a police source after a police spokeswoman declined to respond to a request for information. Early Sunday morning, Oct. 21, 18-year-old Stephon Murphy was charged with a shooting on Duncan Avenue, near Delaware Avenue. He was charged with criminal attempted homicide, bail-jumping and multiple weapons charges. The police refused to say if anyone was shot, but a source told The Jersey Journal a person was indeed shot. Late Sunday, Oct. 21, Tariq Williams was arrested in the area of Tonnelle Avenue and Manhattan Avenue, after police received a call of a man with a gun, Jersey City officials. The Jersey Journal posted stories last Saturday and Sunday on spate of shooting incidents, using limited information from the police, witness accounts, information gleaned from the police radio, sources and a tweet by Police Chief Michael Kelly. Jersey City spokeswoman Kimberly Wallace-Scalcione provided scant information on the incidents on Oct. 25 after city officials received a call from The Jersey Journal's attorney. State public records law requires that police respond, with at least basic information -- even if an investigation is active -- within 24 hours of a request regarding a reported crime. Only in extreme cases that the release of information would put a person's life in danger can the police withhold crime information. Friday afternoon Wallace-Scalcione said that she had no information on any arrests being made during the span that the information was withheld from the public. Police responded to a serious assault Thursday night in the Greenville section of Jersey City where a male was reportedly struck in the head with a brick or cement block. Jersey City spokeswoman Kimberly Wallace-Scalcione only confirmed that an aggravated assault occurred at 8:38 p.m. near Fulton and Ocean avenues, but did not provide a narrative of the incident. But the episode was described in more detail on the police radio Thursday night. Authorities said over the radio the victim suffered a "bad head wound" and appeared to have been attacked with a brick or a cement block. Emergency medical personnel responded to the scene to treat the victim, who was to be taken to Jersey City Medical Center, according to police radio transmissions. Wallace-Scalcione did not provide a current condition of the victim or his age. Police said over the radio that the suspect, who was described as wearing blue jeans and no shirt, fled west on Fulton Avenue. No one was immediately arrested. JERSEY CITY -- A violent offender from age of 11 was sentenced to 10 years in prison today for leaving the scene of a crash that claimed the lives of two teens riding a single bike down a steep street on Jersey City's Western Slope last year. "One year has gone by and I still wait for his return," said the sobbing mother of Alexander Rosas Flores, 16, who was riding the bike with Elionel Jimenez, 15, when it was struck by 21-year-old Rashaun Bell on Oct. 18, 2017. Holding a large picture of her son as she stood beside Jimenez's mother, Esperanza Sanchez, Lucia Flores Campos continued saying "I believe that if the defendant had stopped for a second and helped, they might not have lost their lives. ... It hurts and it's not fair." When given a chance to speak, Bell said "I do feel sorry for the kids and I'm sorry I ever got in the car that day. I apologize to the family, but I'm not the cause of it. ... I regret that it happened. That's all I can say." The boys were riding the bike down two steep sections of Leonard Street when they crossed Terrace Avenue onto the Secaucus Road off ramp from Routes 1&9 North and were struck by Bell's car. Jimenez was unresponsive when found on the ramp and pronounced dead at the scene around 2:40 p.m. Rosas Floras was thrown over an 8-foot fence and fell 30 feet to Route 1&9's northbound lanes. He was pronounced dead at 2:05 p.m. the next day. Hudson County Superior Court Judge Patrick Arre sentenced Bell -- who avoided a trial by pleading guilty -- to 5 years each on two counts of leaving the scene of a fatal accident and those terms will be served consecutively. He was also sentenced to a 3-year concurrent sentence for drug possession. When he was arrested in 2016, Jersey City police called Bell one of the city's most violent gang members. Hudson County Assistant Prosecutor Lynne Seborowski said Bell has 25 prior arrests, beginning at the age of 11, and he has seven criminal convictions. His adult convictions include drug and violent crimes. He has served two probation terms and two terms of incarceration. "He left those two boys to die like dogs," said Seborowski, adding that the boys' mothers understand why they died, but cannot understand how Bell acted after striking the pair. Bell's heavily damaged vehicle was found empty a short distance away. Bell's girlfriend, Denasia Felder, 20, was a passenger in the car and refused to provide Bell's identity to police. A second woman in the car gave Bell up and Bell surrendered two days after the crash. Felder pleaded guilty to two counts of hindering his apprehension. The prosecutor said an hour before the crash Bell said on Facebook that he had marijuana. She said it is unfortunate that the law makes it advantageous for a possibly intoxicated driver to flee the scene because it results in a leaving the scene charge rather than a possible homicide charge. "He is being rewarded," Seborowski said. "If he stayed at the scene and had we had been able to prove he was using drugs -- but he fled. The state has to close that loophole," Seborowski said. Bell's attorney, Inessa Abayev, argued for the judge to be more lenient than the plea agreement and said her client would never place himself in similar circumstances. "I always believe that people are capable of change." Abayev said, adding that the decision made by the boys to barrel down the hill onto the exit ramp "was tragic." Bell smiled at his supporters as he was led from court after the hearing. Arre asked several of his supporters to leave the courtroom for being disruptive during the hearing. Madison Erhardt It's been almost a year since a Kelowna pastor has been diagnosed with stage four liver cancer, and he and his family continue to battle with help from the community. Sean Lalonde was diagnosed with hepatocellular carcinoma, an advanced non-operable liver cancer in December 2017. A family friend started a GoFundMe account after receiving the news, and since its inception more than $30,000 has been raised to help with medical expenses and treatments. The family has explored several clinical trials and treatments in Canada over the last 10 months, but on August 30 doctors said there was nothing more they could do. "We are now asking for your help again to pursue what I feel is the last option of treatment. We are pursuing a special medical facility in Mexico called Chipsa," Sean said. Chipsa provides advanced integrative treatments and immunological therapies. "The treatments will help shrink my tumours. The cost will be $33,427 US, not including travel expenses," he said. "I really want to fight to stay alive." The treatment would be done over a three-week period. The family has five children. The youngest is six, and the oldest is 17. "Sean has been fighting hard for 10 months and wants to continue to fight. He is doing this for our family," his wife Valerie said. JERSEY CITY -- A Hoboken police officer and his wife were convicted of stealing $187,000 in federal relief funds to repair a home they owned in Seaside Heights after Superstorm Sandy, Attorney General Gurbir S. Grewal announced Thursday. An Ocean County jury found that Hoboken Police Officer Nikola Lulaj, 45, and Majlinda Lulaj, 32, falsely claimed that the Seaside Heights home was their primary residence at the time of the storm, when in fact they lived in Dumont, Grewal. "For a police officer to commit this type of fraud is particularly egregious, because officers take an oath to uphold the law and we rightly hold them to the highest standards," Grewal said in a statement. The pair was convicted of second-degree conspiracy, second-degree theft by deception, and six counts of fourth-degree unsworn falsification. Second-degree charges carry a sentence of five to 10 years in prison, third-degree offenses carry a sentence of three to five years and fourth-degree charges carry a sentence of up 18 months, Grewal said. The attorney general also noted that Nikola Lulaj will no longer be able to hold public employment. His job status as a result of the conviction was not immediately available from the Hoboken Police Department. The state Attorney General's Office has charged over 120 defendants with fraud related to Sandy relief programs for allegedly diverting more than $8 million in relief funds. Lulajs were tried before Superior Court Judge James M. Blaney. They are slated to be sentenced in January on a date to be determined. "When disaster strikes, we cannot allow dishonest applicants to divert disaster relief funds from the intended recipients namely, those victims whose primary homes were destroyed or damaged," Grewal said. HOBOKEN Hoboken voters will get the chance on Election Day to reinstate runoff elections after three mayoral races in a row where the winners received less than 50 percent of votes cast. The campaign to return runoff elections comes one year after the 2017 mayor's race ended with winner Ravi Bhalla nabbing 33 percent of the vote in a six-person field. If Hoboken still had runoffs, Bhalla would have faced off against the No. 2 finisher in a subsequent round of voting. Last year, the No. 2 finisher was Councilman Mike DeFusco, who has pushed for this year's referendum, arguing along with his allies that runoffs would ensure election winners enter office with a mandate. "Our elections last year almost broke our community," Councilwoman Tiffanie Fisher, who did not back Bhalla, told The Jersey Journal. "Whenever you have an outcome that doesn't represent the will of the majority, you feel it. It's palpable." Councilwoman Emily Jabbour, a Bhalla supporter, opposes a runoff return. Jabbour noted that there was a sharp decline in turnout for the recent round of runoffs in Jersey City's municipal races. "I fear that by swinging the pendulum back after just five years, we are legislating from a reactive place that is motivated by politics instead of evidence," she said. "I fear that this referendum is motivated by politics rather than evidence-based policy making." DeFusco has noted that Hoboken's last mayoral runoff, in 2009, had higher turnout than the first round of voting. Hoboken voters eliminated runoff elections in a 2012 referendum, the same year voters approved a second ballot question the shifted municipal races from May to November. Proponents of the change argued that eliminating runoffs would save money and curb the power of Hoboken's "cash for votes" operations, an argument Bhalla has made. A request for comment from Bhalla was not returned. Hoboken has reported spending $188,938 less on elections in mayoral years since 2009, though school elections have since been consolidated with November races and 2009 had an extra special municipal race. Dawn Zimmer was first elected mayor in that election, which had no runoff. She won 42 percent of the vote against six opponents. In November 2013, after runoffs were eliminated, she won a second term with 47 percent against two opponents. A pro-runoff animated short DeFusco started promoting on social media last week notes that in 2017, 67 percent of voters "voted against the candidate who won." The animated short is a "Schoolhouse Rock"-style explainer on runoff elections. It features a graphic that shows the actual vote shares of Hoboken's 2017 mayoral candidates, matching them up with cartoons that bear no resemblance to the actual candidates. The first-place finisher is named J.J. Moneyworth III and in second place is a pirate, Cap'n Joe. The two battle it out in a runoff, Cap'n Joe wins and then apparently becomes mayor of Hoboken. The election is Tuesday, Nov. 6. Terrence T. McDonald may be reached at tmcdonald@jjournal.com. Follow him on Twitter @terrencemcd. Find The Jersey Journal on Facebook. Here is a look at the final injury report for Sunday's Week 8 game between the Jets and Bears in Chicago: (Click here to check out the Thursday injury report.) JETS Out: WR Quincy Enunwa (ankle) Doubtful: WR Robby Anderson (ankle), CB Trumaine Johnson (quad) Questionable: C Spencer Long (knee/finger), CB Morris Claiborne (shoulder/foot), LT Kelvin Beachum (back), S Marcus Maye (thumb), ILB Kevin Pierre-Louis (foot) Did not practice: WR Quincy Enunwa (ankle), C Spencer Long (knee/finger), WR Robby Anderson (ankle), CB Trumaine Johnson (quad) Limited participant: CB Morris Claiborne (shoulder/foot), LT Kelvin Beachum (back), S Marcus Maye (thumb), ILB Kevin Pierre-Louis (foot) Full participant: ILB Darron Lee (illness), WR Andre Roberts (foot/ankle), LG James Carpenter (shoulder/ankle), RB Isaiah Crowell (foot), DE Leonard Williams (back), CB Buster Skrine (concussion) What it means: One late change: Long was upgraded to questionable before the Jets logged their final injury report at 4 p.m. Earlier in the day, on the report distributed to the media, Long was listed as doubtful. That's obviously a step in the right direction for the Jets' center, though it remains to be seen if he's improved enough to play against the Bears. Bowles said Friday that Long's finger injury has gotten worse by the week, so there remains a chance that Jonotthan Harrison is the man in the middle. Bowles wouldn't commit to Harrison over Dakota Dozier, who would be the other option in Long's absence, though he seems like the more likely option given what we saw in the preseason. It'd be stunning if Johnson plays, given he did not practice at all this week and has not practiced in about a month now. Anderson has only been out for this one week, but it would be a surprise if he plays after missing three straight practices, too. If that's the case, the Jets could be in serious trouble at wide receiver. Jermaine Kearse would be their one remaining regular, with guys like Andre Roberts, Charone Peake and Deontay Burnett trying to fill in the cracks. Rishard Matthews, who just signed with the team this week, could help out as well, though he's still learning the offense. Bowles would not say how big of a role Matthews may be able to take on. Claiborne and Beachum both look like they should be good to go after a second straight limited practice. Maye's return, however, is far more murky. There is a chance Maye could return for this week's game with a soft cast on his thumb, but he still hasn't taken any contact. It will be all about pain management and whether the Jets feel he can be effective despite the injury. It still seems likelier that Terrence Brooks will take his spot. Maye's usual backup, Doug Middleton, is out for the year with a torn pectoral muscle. The only true good news from the Jets came courtesy of Skrine, who is now out of the concussion protocol and will play on Sunday. That's a boost for the banged-up secondary. BEARS Out: LG Eric Kush (neck) Questionable: OLB Khalil Mack (ankle), WR Allen Robinson (groin) Did not practice: LG Eric Kush (neck) Limited participant: OLB Khalil Mack (ankle), WR Allen Robinson (groin) What it means: Kush is a starter, so that loss hurts. But both Mack and Robinson look like they will be available; they didn't practice earlier in the week, but that seems like a case of just keeping them fresh, given their injury designation and limited workload on Friday. Mack is one of the NFL's best players on either side of the ball, so the Jets would love to see him miss this game, but odds are they won't get so lucky. That said, he still may be slightly limited by that ankle issue come game time. Matt Stypulkoski may be reached at mstypulkoski@njadvancemedia.com. Follow him on Twitter @M_Stypulkoski. Find NJ.com Jets on Facebook. Two candidates running for school board in Hamilton Township have been accused of making racist and racially insensitive posts on social media. As first reported by the Hamilton Post, candidates Richard Crockett and Sherry Morency's Facebook accounts have shared and commented on anti-Muslim and other offensive articles - posts both candidates deny making. On Nov. 10, 2014, an account with Morency's name posted a meme that criticized then-President Barack Obama for inviting Rev. Al Sharpton to the White House, the Post reported. Crockett allegedly commented on the post using the N-word and references to the Ku Klux Klan, the report said. The report also listed several other posts made by Morency's account that linked to conservative websites which were hateful to Muslims and an article that defends the KKK and argues white pride is not racist. Morency told NJ Advance Media she has since shut down her Facebook account. In an interview with The Post, she blamed the social media activity on her page on hackers. "I have taken it down because I don't need any more of this stuff going on," Morency said in a phone call with NJ Advance Media. "I have been complaining about my posts all the way back to 2013," she said, apparently a reference to past social media posts saying her account was hacked. "I support equality. I do not tolerate racism in public or even in my own household," Morency said. "These comments are completely uncharacteristic of myself." Crockett could not be reached for comment. In an interview with The Post, he denied making the offensive statements. Morency and Crockett are in a nine-person race for three seats on the Hamilton board of education. Their third running mate, Cynthia Simon, said she did not agree with the posts from Morency's Facebook page, but defended Crockett. "Shery's posts have me concerned. I can't defend what I've seen," she said. "I've known Rich for a long time, I know those aren't his views. I stand behind him 100 percent." The Crockett, Morency and Simon campaign is managed by David Henderson, a strategist for the Mercer County Republican Party. "I condemn racism and I condemn hate in any fashion," Henderson said. "I think it's unfortunate the race is being based on personal attacks and not on the issues." Morency and Simon said they also wished there was a bigger focus on the issues and not on social media. "They have no intention of dropping out of the race, they are not people that are going to be intimidated by bullies," Henderson said. According a statement on their campaign Facebook page, Crockett, Morency and Simon advocate for fiscal responsibility, strong schools with students that excel in and out the classroom and addressing parent and student concerns in a transparent manner. Also running for seats on the board are candidates Angelo Hall, Susan Ferrara, Girard Casale, Janna Sheiman, Richard Kanka, and Chandler Georgiou. The candidates are expected to appear at a Meet and Greet hosted by the teachers' association scheduled for Oct. 30. It will be the first meet and greet the Crockett and Morency will attend. The slate was supposed to host its own meet and greet this Saturday but has since canceled the event due to "bullies," Henderson said. Olivia Rizzo may be reached at orizzo@njadvancemedia.com. Follow her on Twitter @LivRizz. Find NJ.com on Facebook. Have a tip? Tell us. nj.com/tips WASHINGTON (AP) -- A Florida man with a long criminal history was charged Friday in the nationwide mail-bomb scare targeting prominent Democrats who have traded criticism with President Donald Trump. It was a first break in a case that has seized the national conversation and spread fear of election-season violence with little precedent in the U.S. Cesar Sayoc Justice Department officials revealed that a latent fingerprint found on one package helped them identify their suspect as Cesar Sayoc, 56, of Aventura, Florida. The criminal complaint charges Sayoc with illegally mailing explosives, illegally transporting explosives across state lines, making threats against former presidents, assaulting federal officers and threatening interstate commerce. Court records show Sayoc, an amateur body builder with social media accounts that denigrate Democrats and praise Trump, has a history of arrests for theft, illegal steroids possession and a 2002 charge of making a bomb threat. The development came amid a nationwide manhunt for the person responsible for at least 13 explosive devices addressed to prominent Democrats including former President Barack Obama, former Vice President Joe Biden and Hillary Clinton. The case continued widening Friday even as Sayoc was detained, as investigators in California scrutinized a similar package sent to Democratic Sen. Kamala Harris, her office said. In Washington, Attorney General Jeff Sessions cautioned that Sayoc had only been charged, not convicted. But he said, "Let this be a lesson to anyone regardless of their political beliefs that we will bring the full force of law against anyone who attempts to use threats, intimidation and outright violence to further an agenda. We will find you, we will prosecute you to the fullest extent of the law." In Florida, law enforcement officers were seen on television examining a white van, its windows covered with an assortment of stickers, outside the Plantation auto parts store. Authorities covered the vehicle with a blue tarp and took it away on the back of a flatbed truck. The stickers included images of Trump, American flags and what appeared to be logos of the Republican National Committee and CNN, though the writing surrounding those images was unclear. Trump, after Sayoc was apprehended, declared that "we must never allow political violence take root in America" and Americans "must unify." As in comments earlier in the week, he did not mention that the package recipients were all Democrats or officials in Obama's administration, in addition to CNN, a news network he criticizes almost daily. Earlier Friday, he complained that "this 'bomb' stuff" was taking attention away from the upcoming election and said critics were wrongly blaming him and his heated rhetoric. The Justice Department scheduled a Friday afternoon news conference in Washington that was to include New York Police Commissioner James O'Neill, whose department investigated the mailings with the FBI. Law enforcement officials said they had intercepted a dozen packages in states across the country. None had exploded, and it wasn't immediately clear if they were intended to cause physical harm or simply sow fear and anxiety. Earlier Friday, authorities said suspicious packages addressed to New Jersey Sen. Cory Booker and former National Intelligence Director James Clapper -- both similar to those containing pipe bombs sent to other prominent critics of Trump-- had been intercepted. Investigators believe the mailings were staggered. The U.S. Postal Service searched their facilities 48 hours ago and the most recent packages didn't turn up. Officials don't think they were sitting in the system without being spotted. They were working to determine for sure. The officials spoke to The Associated Press on condition of anonymity to discuss an ongoing investigation. Online court records show that Sayoc in 2002 was arrested and served a year of probation for a felony charge of threatening to throw or place a bomb. No further details were available about the case. Sayoc was convicted in 2014 for grand theft and misdemeanor theft of less than $300, and in 2013 for battery. In 2004, he faced several felony charges for possession of a synthetic anabolic-androgenic steroid. He also had several arrests for theft in the 1990s. He filed for chapter 7 bankruptcy in 2012, informing the court he had $4,175 in personal property and more than $21,000 in debts. His name is also listed on business records tied to dry cleaning and catering businesses. Records show he was born in New York and according to an online resume he attended college in North Carolina. "Debtor lives with mother, owns no furniture," Sayoc's lawyer indicated in a property list. Investigators were analyzing the innards of the crude devices to reveal whether they were intended to detonate or simply sow fear just before Election Day. Law enforcement officials told The Associated Press that the devices, containing timers and batteries, were not rigged to explode upon opening. But they were uncertain whether the devices were poorly designed or never intended to cause physical harm. Most of those targeted were past or present U.S. officials, but one was sent to actor Robert De Niro and billionaire George Soros. The bombs have been sent across the country - from New York, Delaware and Washington, D.C., to Florida and California, where Rep. Maxine Waters was targeted. They bore the return address of Florida Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz, the former chairwoman of the Democratic National Committee. The common thread among the bomb targets was obvious: their critical words for Trump and his frequent, harsher criticism in return. The package to Clapper was addressed to him at CNN's Midtown Manhattan address. Clapper, a frequent Trump critic, told CNN that he was not surprised he was targeted and that he considered the actions "definitely domestic terrorism." The devices were packaged in manila envelopes and carried U.S. postage stamps. They were being examined by technicians at the FBI's forensic lab in Quantico, Virginia. The packages stoked nationwide tensions ahead of the Nov. 6 election to determine control of Congress -- a campaign both major political parties have described in near-apocalyptic terms. Politicians from both parties used the threats to decry a toxic political climate and lay blame. The bombs are about 6 inches (15 centimeters) long and packed with powder and broken glass, according to a law enforcement official who viewed X-ray images. The official said the devices were made from PVC pipe and covered with black tape. The first bomb discovered was delivered Monday to the suburban New York compound of Soros, a major contributor to Democratic causes. Soros has called Trump's presidency "dangerous." ___ Associated Press writers Laurie Kellman, Ken Thomas, Jill Colvin and Chad Day in Washington and Jim Mustian, Deepti Hajela, Tom Hays and Michael R. Sisak in New York contributed to this report. UPDATE: Federal authorities charge Florida man with weeklong bomb-package scare Federal authorities took a man into custody Friday in Florida in connection with the mail-bomb scare that earlier widened to 12 suspicious packages, the Justice Department said. Cesar Sayoc (Broward County jail) The man was identified by law enforcement officials as Cesar Sayoc, 56, of Aventura, Florida. He was arrested at an auto parts store in the nearby city of Plantation. Court records show Sayoc has a history of arrests. Law enforcement officers were seen on television examining a white van, its windows covered with an assortment of stickers, in the city of Plantation in the Miami area. Authorities covered the vehicle with a blue tarp and took it away on the back of a flatbed truck. The stickers included images of American flags and what appeared to be logos of the Republican National Committee and CNN, though the writing surrounding those images was unclear. President Donald Trump said he expected to speak about the investigation at a youth summit on Friday. The development came amid a coast-to-coast manhunt for the person responsible for a series of explosive devices addressed to Democrats including former President Barack Obama, former Vice President Joe Biden and Hillary Clinton. Law enforcement officials said they had intercepted a dozen packages in states across the country. None had exploded, and it wasn't immediately clear if they were intended to cause physical harm or simply sow fear and anxiety. Earlier Friday, authorities said suspicious packages addressed to New Jersey Sen. Cory Booker and former National Intelligence Director James Clapper -- both similar to those containing pipe bombs sent to other prominent critics of President Donald Trump-- had been intercepted. LIVE: @NBCNews Special Report: President Trump discusses latest on investigation into wave of pipe bomb packages across the US. https://t.co/5MGorR3Wih https://t.co/2MqPjlRKXP NBC News (@NBCNews) October 26, 2018 Investigators said they believed the mailings were staggered. The U.S. Postal Service searched their facilities 48 hours ago and the most recent packages didn't turn up. Officials don't think they were sitting in the system without being spotted. They were working to determine for sure. The officials spoke to The Associated Press on condition of anonymity to discuss an ongoing investigation. The FBI said the package to Booker was intercepted in Florida. The one discovered at a Manhattan postal facility was addressed to Clapper at CNN's address. An earlier package had been sent to former Obama CIA Director John Brennan via CNN in New York. Booker said after the arrest was announced that such "cowardly acts of terror will never silence or intimidate Americans." Instead, Booker said in a tweet, such attacks "will only strengthen our resolve to stand against fear & hatred." Grateful for law enforcement's work to bring those responsible to justice & for their vigilance to keep Americans safe. Cowardly acts of terror will never silence or intimidate Americansthey will only strengthen our resolve to stand against fear & hatred. https://t.co/Xd2CYgXIHC Cory Booker (@CoryBooker) October 26, 2018 Attorney General Jeff Sessions said Friday the Justice Department was dedicating every available resource to the investigation "and I can tell you this: We will find the person or persons responsible. We will bring them to justice." Trump, on the other hand, complained that "this 'bomb' stuff" was taking attention away from the upcoming election and said critics were wrongly blaming him and his heated rhetoric. Investigators were analyzing the innards of the crude devices to reveal whether they were intended to detonate or simply sow fear just before Election Day. Law enforcement officials told The Associated Press that the devices, containing timers and batteries, were not rigged to explode upon opening. But they were uncertain whether the devices were poorly designed or never intended to cause physical harm. Most of those targeted were past or present U.S. officials, but one was sent to actor Robert De Niro and billionaire George Soros. The bombs have been sent across the country - from New York, Delaware and Washington, D.C., to Florida and California, where Rep. Maxine Waters was targeted. They bore the return address of Florida Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz, the former chairwoman of the Democratic National Committee. The common thread among the bomb targets was obvious: their critical words for Trump and his frequent, harsher criticism in return. Trump claimed Friday he was being blamed for the mail bombs, complaining in a tweet sent before dawn: "Funny how lowly rated CNN, and others, can criticize me at will, even blaming me for the current spate of Bombs and ridiculously comparing this to September 11th and the Oklahoma City bombing, yet when I criticize them they go wild and scream, 'it's just not Presidential!'" @CBSMiami I have some pictures of this van I saw him at a stoplight one day and thought is was very strange. pic.twitter.com/VWUwznJK8k Mo (@thereal_mo01) October 26, 2018 The package to Clapper was addressed to him at CNN's Midtown Manhattan address. Clapper, a frequent Trump critic, told CNN that he was not surprised he was targeted and that he considered the actions "definitely domestic terrorism." Jeff Zucker, the president of CNN Worldwide, said in a note to staff that all mail to CNN domestic offices was being screened at off-site facilities. He said there was no imminent danger to the Time Warner Center, where CNN's New York office is located. At a press conference Thursday, officials in New York would not discuss possible motives or details on how the packages found their way into the postal system. Nor would they say why the packages hadn't detonated, but they stressed they were still treating them as "live devices." The devices were packaged in manila envelopes and carried U.S. postage stamps. They were being examined by technicians at the FBI's forensic lab in Quantico, Virginia. The packages stoked nationwide tensions ahead of the Nov. 6 election to determine control of Congress -- a campaign both major political parties have described in near-apocalyptic terms. Politicians from both parties used the threats to decry a toxic political climate and lay blame. Trump, in a tweet Thursday, blamed the "Mainstream Media" for the anger in society. Brennan responded, tweeting that Trump should "Stop blaming others. Look in the mirror." The bombs were about 6 inches (15 centimeters) long and packed with powder and broken glass, according to a law enforcement official who viewed X-ray images. The official said the devices were made from PVC pipe and covered with black tape. The first bomb discovered was delivered Monday to the suburban New York compound of Soros, a major contributor to Democratic causes. Soros has called Trump's presidency "dangerous." Military veterans and active-duty personnel will have free access to Brick beaches, regardless of where they live, while everyone else will pay the same $8 fee, under an ordinance adopted this week that originally intended to give a discount to non-military residents compared to their out-of-town counterparts. The Brick Township Council adopted the ordinance on second and final reading Tuesday night, after striking the provision that would have given residents a discount, the mayor and the township attorney said Wednesday. They said the provision would have violated the so-called Public Trust Doctrine, an ancient legal principle dating back to Roman times that provides universal access to the sea. Mayor John Ducey, a lawyer, said the ordinance was approved by the council upon introduction on Oct. 9 with the residents' discount included. But Ducey, who does not vote with the council, said it had been drafted by the business administrator's office in conjunction with the township's recreation commission, and that he only saw the text of the ordinance following its introduction. It was then that Ducey said he informed fellow officials of a 1972 New Jersey Supreme Court case, Borough of Neptune City v. Borough of Avon-by-the-Sea, that successfully invoked the Public Trust Doctrine to bar Avon from giving its residents preferential beach access over non-residents. The Public Trust Doctrine has also been invoked to prevent condominium associations and other private property owners from denying beach access to the general public. A bipartisan bill codifying the rights of all people to swim, fish, and otherwise use tidal waters and beaches under the Public Trust Doctrine is now awaiting a hearing by the Assembly Judiciary Committee. The bill, S-1074, has already passed the full Senate after having been introduced in January by Senators Bob Smith, D-Middlesex, and Christopher "Kip" Bateman, R-Somerset. The township attorney, Kevin Starkey, who concurred with the mayor's opinion, said the solution was to remove any distinction giving residents preference. "It was pretty simple," he said. "We deleted the line for non-residents." Ducey said the main reason officials revisited the beach ordinance was to do something for military beachgoers, whose granting of free-access by the ordinance is legally permissible because it applies to all veterans or active service members, regardless of their residence. Tim Dillingham, executive director of the American Littoral Society, a Highlands-based group that advocates for beach access, said he was unaware of any challenges ever having been raised to free or discounted beach access for veterans or active-duty military personnel. "I don't have a problem with it," Dillingham said, adding that there were too few veterans and active-duty personnel to mean that a preference for them would effectively discriminate against others. But, he added, "In the best of all worlds, everybody would get on the beach free." Ducey said the idea of a residents' discount had been an afterthought of the military preference, following requests by residents that they pay less for beach badges because it was their property taxes alone, not those of out-of-towners, that were paying the lifeguards, beach attendants and other costs of operating Brick beaches. Other provisions of the amended beach ordinance that will remain in effect include an increase in the cost of one-day beach badges, from $5 to $8, though the price of seasonal passes will remain at $25 if purchased before June 15, or $30 after that. While the ordinance may please veterans, service members and advocates for universal beach access, Ducey harbored no illusions that his taxpaying constituents might be consoled by the knowledge that they would not, or at least should not, pay more than residents of other towns when going to the beach outside of Brick. "I don't think they're going to look at it that way," he said. Steve Strunsky may be reached at sstrunsky@njadvancemedia.com. Follow him on Twitter @SteveStrunsky. Find NJ.com on Facebook A once prominent Ocean County attorney known for his work representing senior citizens was sentenced Friday to 10 years in state prison after he admitted to stealing millions of dollars from his clients, according to New Jersey Attorney General Gurbir Grewal. Robert Novy, 67, of Brick, pleaded guilty on July 27 to first-degree money laundering, officials said. Robert Novy, 67, of Brick (Courtesy N.J. Attorney General's Office) Novy, who taught seminars on a specialty known as elder law, and also hosted a bi-monthly radio program called "Inside the Law" focusing on topics of concern to seniors, stole $3 million from at least 24 elderly clients, some of whom had Alzheimer's disease or dementia, from 2009-2016. "Novy preyed upon vulnerable seniors who trusted him as their attorney to guard their interests," Grewal said in a release. "Instead, he callously stole their life savings, betraying their trust and the oath he took to uphold the law. We have secured justice with this lengthy prison sentence and have ensured that his victims will receive restitution from the assets we seized from him during our investigation." Novy must pay $4 million in restitution to his victims out of two funds; a $3 million one for client victims, heirs, estates and trusts already identified through the state's investigation, and a second fund of $1 million to provide restitution, with court approval, for others not previously identified who come forward with proof that they were victims of thefts, the release stated. He surrendered his license to practice law in the state and must pay $500,000 to the state as an anti-money laundering profiteering penalty, officials said. The New Jersey Office of Attorney Ethics issued an ethics complaint against Novy in January 2016. He was arrested in October 2016. Detectives executed a search warrant at his firm, Novy & Associates in Manchester, and seized billing records and other evidence, according to the release. The attorney general's office obtained court orders freezing over $4 million in assets held by Novy and his firm. Grewal said the investigation showed Novy stole funds from elderly and deceased clients who did not have a close relative to their estate or were not able to challenge his actions. He used the funds - which he gained control of through wills, powers of attorney and trust documents signed by his clients - to pay personal and business expenses, according to the news release. Grewal said Novy directed insurance companies to cash out annuity and life insurance policies and send the proceeds directly to him. When relatives or trustees challenged the withdrawal of the funds, Novy claimed they were "administrative errors" and repaid the funds, it was stated in the release. Grewal said Novy used three different schemes to steal funds from his clients: The first involved transferring funds from clients' personal bank accounts, or placing their liquidated personal assets, into his own bank account. In the second scheme, he transferred money from his victims' personal accounts, or liquidated assets, into an Interest on Lawyer Trust Account he controlled rather than a trust fund he did not control, according to the release. In the third scheme, Novy transferred three clients' funds into the law firm's operating and disbursement accounts, according to attorney general's office. He reportedly excessively billed the clients for power of attorney fees without any supporting invoices. He was charged with money laundering because he engaged in transactions involving the stolen funds and the various accounts - primarily his attorney trust accounts and/or attorney business accounts - by which he concealed the source of the stolen funds and used them to promote his criminal activities, the attorney general's office said. Victims of Novy who could prove damages were asked to email Deputy Attorney General Kara R. Webster in the State Office of Victim Witness Advocacy at WebsterK@njdcj.org, or call 609-376-2444. Chris Sheldon may be reached at csheldon@njadvancemedia.com. Follow him on Twitter @chrisrsheldon Find NJ.com on Facebook. A man who was shot by a police officer in Ocean County last year after he lunged at him with a knife told detectives that he "felt terrible" his actions forced an officer to use force against him, according to a report released Friday. Travis Van Pelt, who survived the shooting, was charged with attempted murder, aggravated assault, simple assault and weapons offenses following the December 2017, incident at his home in Jackson Township. He pleaded guilty in May to aggravated assault by attempting to cause bodily harm with a weapon, and was sentenced to five years of probation and time served. Van Pelt, 22, spent 158 days in the Ocean County jail. The Ocean County Prosecutor's Office on Friday released the findings of its review of the incident, which determined that the use of force was "legally justified and that there are no material facts in dispute that require presentation of this matter to the grand jury." The state Attorney General's Office signed off on those findings. Just before 8 p.m. on Dec. 23, 2017, two Jackson police officers responded to a home on Laurel Avenue after Van Pelt's brother called 911 and said he and his father had been assaulted by Van Pelt. The brother stated that Van Pelt had a knife. When officers arrived at the home, family members told them Van Pelt was armed with a knife and had threatened them, according to the prosecutor's statement. The officers tried to enter the home through the front and side doors but weren't able to get inside. They then went to the back door, where one of the officers spotted Van Pelt through a window. The officer tried to make contact with Van Pelt, but wasn't able to. The officer then busted through the door and yelled at Van Pelt to drop the knife, the statement said. "Van Pelt ignored his commands and continued advancing toward him with the knife in his hand," the statement said. The officer shot Van Pelt, forcing him to fall backward, according to the statement. The second officer, who said he heard the first officer scream at Van Pelt to drop the knife, found the black, serrated knife near Van Pelt's left hand, according to the statement. Van Pelt was taken to Jersey Shore University Medical Center in Neptune where he was listed in critical condition. On the way to the hospital, Van Pelt told detectives that he lunged at the officer with the knife "on purpose" because he wanted to commit suicide. "Van Pelt stated that he knew that if he lunged at the officer that the officer would have to shoot him and that (he) felt terrible knowing that he forced the officer to shoot him," the statement said. The investigation was conducted by the Ocean County Prosecutor's Office under the guidelines of the Attorney General's Office. 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 It is undeniable that being a Republican member of Congress from a blue state in the Age of Trump is like juggling chain saws on a unicycle. So one wonders what these lawmakers thought when the president told his rabid rally-goers last week to follow his advice when they're in the polling booth on Nov. 6: "Pretend I'm on the ballot," he cooed. It is an impossible predicament for a veteran legislator like Leonard Lance. He is in the "what elephant?" stage of these proceedings, and there is no escaping it: The voters pulling levers in Central Jersey on Election Day have a right to ask what Donald Trump has done for America, for New Jersey, and for the 7th District, other than clogging the roads around Bedminster on weekends. And they would be justified in believing that the issues championed by Trump and Republican leadership cling to Lance like a Tiberian bat, as he faces a formidable election challenge from Democrat Tom Malinowski. Lance argues that his moderate voice can move Republicans to the sensible center, as long as moderate Democrats are also willing to save Congress from its creeping degradation. The flaw in his argument is that the few remaining GOP moderates are either retiring or have abandoned principles for politics by hitching their wagons to Trump, for whom moderation is the dirtiest word in the political lexicon. Lance has never succeeded in this effort and never will, particularly with big issues such as health care and tax reform. Even when he tries to do the right thing, he is reduced to irrelevance. Take health care. Affordability is the No. 1 issue in the 7th, which covers six counties, and the voters have already been told that another Republican majority will try to neuter the Affordable Care Act again. Why should New Jerseyans trust Lance to save health care? He has already voted dozens of times to tear up the ACA, and though he voted against its last repeal in May 2017, he helped move a very similar bill out of the Energy and Commerce Committee for a floor vote two months earlier. Lance also helped sabotage the ACA by voting to end subsidies and the mandate to buy insurance, measures that drove up premiums. Or consider the Republicans' signature achievement under Trump, the 2017 tax plan that capped the state and local tax deduction. It is anathema to voters throughout New Jersey. Lance, like three other GOP representatives from our state, was not in favor of it. But voters must weigh the logic of electing a Republican candidate - particularly one incapable of thwarting the GOP goal of making these tax cuts permanent - instead of a Democrat who would work to repeal them. Even when Lance gets it right, he vacillates. Consider the environment: He once supported the fight against climate change, but abandoned the cause as his party moved to the right. Now he is against a carbon tax and cap-and-trade, the only pragmatic solutions at a time the planet is burning. His most recent explanation is that it wouldn't pass Congress. He also wants an "all of the above" energy policy, which means he won't denounce coal. On immigration, he voted against the original Dream Act, and as recently as 2016 he ran ads opposing "Obama's amnesty for illegals." That helped create the policy mess we are in now, with the president who uses human beings for legislative ransom. Lance has since changed his mind, and supports Dreamers. These are just two examples, but his opponent has no trouble spotting a trend: "Leonard is a weather vane," Malinowski said. "And the problem with a weather vane is that it doesn't change the way the wind is blowing." Malinowski has worked at the highest echelons of government - serving on Bill Clinton's National Security Council and as Assistant Secretary of State under President Obama - and he spent 12 years fighting tyranny around the globe as the Washington director of the indispensable Human Rights Watch. On policy, he favors a public option that allows people to buy into Medicare, given the baked-in cost controls. He favors a repeal of the tax plan and supports cap-and-trade. He wants comprehensive immigration reform, including a path to citizenship for the undocumented, and more high-tech surveillance to monitor the border. He has the gravitas to be a leader on issues that matter to New Jersey. Lance, meanwhile, votes with Trump 87 percent of the time. That is intolerable if there's another GOP majority in both houses: The ACA, Medicare, Social Security, Medicaid, Planned Parenthood, the Mueller investigation, and the environment would all be in jeopardy. Dream Act? Fat chance. Gateway funding? No chance. This is not about the quality of the man's soul. No one can summon an unkind word about this model of forbearance from Hunterdon County. But the paradigm for choosing our representatives has changed, and we can no longer afford effete lawmakers who feed Trump's dogmatic arrogance. The Star-Ledger endorses Tom Malinowski. The GOP members of the Problem Solvers Caucus have the votes right now to force action on bipartisan bills in the House. Why wont they? pic.twitter.com/0RiVQjQ589 Tom Malinowski (@Malinowski) October 23, 2018 Bookmark NJ.com/Opinion. Follow on Twitter @NJ_Opinion and find NJ.com Opinion on Facebook. The referendum on electoral reform is confusing, complicated, rigged, and unfair. First, only 92,000 people were consulted on whether we should even consider electoral reform and, if so, what form it should take. Why did the government not consult with every voter in the province with, oh, a referendum of some sort? The first question on the ballot asks whether you prefer first past the post or a system of proportional representation. Aha! Two options, but only one choice. Confused yet? Question 2: Rank your preferred electoral methods from the three presented to determine which we should adopt if the majority of voters support PR in the first question. Thats right the NDP and Greens wont tell us in advance under which system we will elect our local and regional MLAs. They refuse to reveal the results of the referendum before all the votes have been counted! The whole process is clearly rigged to favour the majoritys preferences. Finally, if 51 per cent or more of citizens vote for PR, we'll have to try it out for two whole elections before choosing whether to keep it or return to the current FPTP. And you can bet that during those two terms, extremist fringe parties will try every dirty, sneaky trick possible co-operating, consulting, etc. to make it appear as though PR is working well. Why cant we just stick with a system in which 35-45 per cent of eligible citizens who vote (about 20-30 per cent of registered voters) determine who runs the show for everyone each term? Are you confused and furious yet? Sera Kirk, Vancouver By Diane Coleman I have an advanced neuromuscular condition and must use breathing support with a mask 18 hours a day. As a severely disabled person who depends on life-sustaining treatment, I would be able to qualify for assisted suicide at any time where it is legal. If I became despondent, for example if I lost my husband or my job, and decided that I wanted to die, I would not be treated the same as a nondisabled, healthy person who despaired over divorce or job loss. If anyone doubted that someone like me would qualify for assisted suicide in a state like Oregon, those doubts were laid to rest in December 2017 when an Oregon Public Health Department official clarified in writing: "Patients suffering from any disease (not just those that typically qualify one for the DWDA [Death With Dignity Act]) may not be able to afford some treatments or medication, and may choose not to pursue some treatments or take some medication for personal reasons. . . . If the patient does not receive treatment or medication (for whatever reason) and is left with a terminal illness, then s/he would qualify for the DWDA." In the decade leading up to the passage of Oregon's assisted suicide referendum in 1997, proponents often revealed their view that people with disabilities should be eligible. Two thirds of "Dr. Death" Jack Kevorkian's body count were people with non-terminal conditions like multiple sclerosis. The Hemlock Society contributed to his legal defense fund. When the Hemlock Society morphed into "Compassion and Choices," the messaging shifted, partly in an effort to exclude disability rights organizations from the public debate. Assisted suicide is only for people expected to die within six months, they said. The person must self-administer the lethal drugs, so no one else could kill them, they said. Any reasonably trained lawyer should be able to see the absence of meaningful patient protections in assisted suicide bills. It took a decade to pass the Washington State statute that came next. All along, disability groups have pointed out the inherent discrimination and empty pretense of safeguards in these bills. Why does everyone else get suicide prevention, while old, ill and disabled people get suicide assistance? How could a doctor who's known a person for an average of 13 weeks know if they are being pressured to ask for assisted suicide? Reported reasons for requesting assisted suicide pertain to disability, chronic or acquired due to illness. Three of these reasons (feeling a loss of autonomy, loss of dignity, feelings of being a burden) could be addressed by consumer-directed in-home care services. However no disclosure or provision of such services is required. Basically, the law operates as though the reasons don't matter, and nothing need be done to address them. People who need home care shouldn't be treated as disposable. Assisted suicide proponents are fond of saying that many people don't go through with it, but the lethal drugs give them peace of mind. What if some of the many who change their mind have family members who are not happy about it? If the only other person present at the end is a greedy heir or tired caregiver, there are no safeguards to determine whether they self-administered the lethal drug or were cajoled, tricked or forced. Although these and other obvious weaknesses persist in New Jersey's assisted suicide bill (AB1504), the New Jersey Law Journal not only endorses it, but openly advocates expanding it to include active euthanasia and eligibility for people who are not expected to die in six months. No more incremental strategy, no need to hide the broader agenda. Throughout last summer, people in wheelchairs with the group ADAPT were dragged out of Congressional hearings and arrested, leading successful efforts to save healthcare for millions of Americans. This same group asserts that "Assisted suicide is not about relieving the suffering of the dying: it is an expression of the most toxic and deadly form of ableism." We urge New Jersey lawmakers to reject ableism, to look behind the public relations images of assisted suicide and consider the dangers to the many elders, ill and disabled people who are not safe from mistake, coercion and abuse. Diane Coleman is the president and CEO of Not Dead Yet, a national disability rights group which she founded in 1996 to give voice to disability rights opposition to legalization of assisted suicide and euthanasia. RELATED COVERAGE: Should your doctor help you die? How N.J. lawmakers voted after emotional hearing N.J.'s 'Aid in Dying' bill: What you need to know My newlywed wife ended her life on her terms. Brittany Maynard advocated for aid-in-dying laws My husband died in agony, and he didn't have to. State must pass Aid-in-Dying bill Tom Moran: I saw my sister's terrible decline close up. We should allow death with dignity. Bookmark NJ.com/Opinion. Follow on Twitter @NJ_Opinion and find NJ.com Opinion on Facebook. Thirty-eight miles and two very different initiatives, recently announced, separate two of South Jersey's county jails. In Camden County, a $50,000 national grant will kick off an effort to see if the correctional facility can reduce its population, beyond the reductions in prisoner numbers that have occurred because of New Jersey's statewide bail-reform initiative. The examination of Cumberland County's correctional facility is not self-directed. NJ Advance Media has confirmed that federal authorities are looking into six inmate suicides over a three-year period. It's important to remember that county jails hold mainly people who are waiting for trials. They've been charged with crimes, but they're not convicted criminals. If found guilty, the time to which they've been sentenced will most likely be served in a state prison. Camden County is just one of 13 jurisdictions nationwide that will be part of a $148 million project, funded by the John D. And Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation. It's called the Safety and Justice Challenge, aimed at "rethinking" what jails are and how they're best utilized. The grant's webpage makes a controversial assumption that "over-incarceration" is a term that automatically belongs in our lexicon. New Jersey, now almost two years into eliminating cash bail amounts for most offenses, has already dealt with the basics of the foundation's recommended reforms. No longer is it routine here for those charged with non-violent crimes, or who are not flight risks, to be locked away because they are "simply too poor to post bail." Thus, it's to Camden County's credit that officials saw the need to go further by seeking the MacArthur grant. Its focus, officials say, will be strategies to keep those arrested from being incarcerated in the first place, such as mental health intervention,and in reducing return visits from those who might get in trouble after release. There are also racial disparities to be addressed. It's undeniable that jail populations can reflect the characteristics of neighborhoods with elevated crime rates. But it's also become clear that black people and brown people more often end up in custody for transgressions similar to those for which white offenders might get a summons to appear in court. In Bridgeton, the U.S. Department of Justice obviously sees something out of the ordinary in the number of suicides. While the DOJ will not probe any of the incidents individually with respect to criminal or civil responsibility, it want to see if the Cumberland jail takes reasonable steps to prevent inmates from taking their own lives, including mental health screenings and providing adequate supervision. One must therefore take a protest at this week's freeholder meeting by members of Police Benevolent Association Local 221, the Cumberland County corrections officer union, with some skepticism. The union is alleging unfair labor practices, and some outspoken members want Warden Richard Smith removed -- with the suicide rate cited as one reason. Its obvious the jailers don't get along with their boss. But Smith took over in February 2017, after all but two of the suicides had occurred. So, if Smith is a problem in regard to the suicides, he's not the only problem. Both the federal investigation in Bridgeton and the alternate strategy exploration in Camden are hopefully headed toward the same goal -- a recognition that county jails are not warehouses to keep the accused out of sight and out of mind. No matter how many or how few really need to be there, once locked up, they must be treated with enough dignity that it matters whether they live or die. Send a letter to the editor of South Jersey Times at sjletters@njadvancemedia.com Bookmark NJ.com/Opinion. Follow on Twitter @NJ_Opinion and find NJ.com Opinion on Facebook. UPDATE: Florida man in custody in connection with bomb packages sent to top Dems An explosive "pipe-bomb" style device similar to those targeting Democratic politicians and activists critical of President Trump was sent to the Camden office of U.S. Sen. Cory Booker, D-N.J., NJ Advance Media has learned. Booker has been both a frequent and vocal critic of Trump, as well as a putative 2020 Democratic challenger to replace him. A pipe bomb addressed to U.S. Sen. Cory Booker's office in Camden at 2 Riverside Drive was intercepted in Florida. Police and federal authorities were at the Camden office building early Friday investigating. The package containing the explosive device was intercepted at a South Florida U.S. Postal Service center mail sorting facility in Opa-locka, according to a source familiar with the investigation, which is on-going. The Opa-locka facility handles packages mailed from Broward, Miami-Dade and Monroe counties. An FBI spokeswoman in Washington, D.C., confirmed that the explosive device addressed to Booker was intercepted in Florida, but declined to be more specific about the location. The #FBI has confirmed an 11th package has been recovered in Florida, similar in appearance to the others, addressed to Sen. Cory Booker. FBI (@FBI) October 26, 2018 Saddened and angered that an explosive device was sent to @CoryBookers office. @NJOHSP is working closely with federal, state, and local partners to monitor the situation and coordinate our response. Grateful to law enforcement for keeping us safe from these acts of terror. Governor Phil Murphy (@GovMurphy) October 26, 2018 Frightening and sad to see my friend Cory has now been targeted by these package bombs - but I know he wont be intimidated & he wont step back from all the amazing work hes doing. Thank you law enforcement for your diligence & to our free press for keeping us informed & alert. https://t.co/JrVFLuFzYO Senator Bob Menendez (@SenatorMenendez) October 26, 2018 Booker spokeswoman Kristin Lynch declined comment. Booker's office in Camden is located at 2 Riverside Drive, a high-rise office building that also includes the state Division of Taxation, the Delaware River Port Authority and PSE&G. The building remained open, though police cars were parked out front and an officer with a search dog was at the scene. People who work at the building continued to come and go on Friday morning, and there was no evacuation. Police had mostly left the scene after 10 a.m. "There was never any threat to the building," said John Hanson, the chief executive officer of the Delaware River Port Authority. The DRPA also has offices inside the building. "In an abundance of caution, parts of the building were checked out to verify that, in fact, there was no threat," he told reporters gathered at the scene Friday morning. Camden County Police Chief Scott Thomson said there is no danger to residents of the city, and that his department worked with the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives to "methodically" sweep the building. He said everything was going "smoothly," but noted the toll such threats can take on civilians. "This impacts not just the individual being targeted, but the community at large," he told reporters. Thomson also said Booker's staff was still working Friday in Camden despite the threat, answering phones and "staying dedicated to the constituency." A suspicious package has also been found at a New York post office addressed to former Director of National Intelligence James Clapper. Clapper, a retired lieutenant general in the U.S. Air Force, earlier this week called the slew of mail bombs "domestic terrorism." The one discovered at a Manhattan postal facility was addressed to Clapper c/o CNN. An earlier package had been sent to former Obama CIA Director John Brennan in care of CNN in New York. Investigators were analyzing the innards of the crude devices to reveal whether they were intended to detonate or simply sow fear just before Election Day. The packages sent to Booker and Clapper mark the 11th and 12th sent by the serial bomber. Breaking: Federal Agents just arrived with explosive sniffing K-9 at New Jersey U.S. Senator Cory Bookers Camden office after suspected bomb package addressed to this office intercepted in Florida @FOX29philly pic.twitter.com/fpIc4wWdsC Steve Keeley (@KeeleyFox29) October 26, 2018 Investigators have been searching coast to coast for the culprit and motives behind the bizarre mail bomb plot aimed at critics of the president. Three more devices were linked to the plot Thursday -- two addressed to former Vice President Joe Biden and one to actor Robert De Niro -- in an outbreak of politically loaded menace with little if any precedent. Authorities warned there might well be more. Robert De Niro statement following package sent to his office: I thank God no one's been hurt, and I thank the brave and resourceful security and law enforcement people for protecting us. There's something more powerful than bombs, and that's your vote. People MUST vote! Jake Tapper (@jaketapper) October 26, 2018 Law enforcement officials told The Associated Press that the devices, containing timers and batteries, were not rigged like booby-trapped package bombs that would explode upon opening. But they were uncertain whether the devices were poorly designed or never intended to cause physical harm. The officials spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to discuss the ongoing investigation by name. Homeland Security Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen, in an interview Thursday night with Fox News Channel, acknowledged that some of packages originated in Florida. The targets have included former President Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton, CNN and Rep. Maxine Waters of California. Trump claimed on Friday he was being blamed for the mail bombs addressed to his critics, complaining in a tweet sent before dawn: "Funny how lowly rated CNN, and others, can criticize me at will, even blaming me for the current spate of Bombs and ridiculously comparing this to September 11th and the Oklahoma City bombing, yet when I criticize them they go wild and scream, 'it's just not Presidential!'" NJ Advance Media reporter Amanda Hoover and The Associated Press contributed to this report. WASHINGTON -- The nasty race between Democratic U.S. Sen. Robert Menendez and Republican challenger Bob Hugin is now a tossup, as the Cook Political Report said the incumbent's ethics baggage could cost him the seat. The Washington-based publication that tracks Senate races downgraded Menendez's chances less than two weeks before Election Day, citing little-known and unfunded community newspaper publisher Lisa McCormick's surprisingly strong performance in June's Democratic primary. "The contest isn't about anything else but Democratic U.S. Sen. Bob Menendez and his ethics problems," said Jennifer Duffy, Cook's Senate analyst. "The biggest threat to Menendez's re-election is not so much Hugin than it is the voter who goes to the polls and decides to send Menendez a message, much the way many did in the primary when 38 percent voted for his unknown primary opponent," she said. Still, Inside Elections, which also tracks Senate races, said Menendez was likely to win re-election, and Nate Silver's FiveThirtyEight gave him a 90 percent chance of being re-elected. The Real Clear Politics polling average put him ahead by 7.7 percentage points. Hugin has spent millions of dollars on ads bashing Menendez, making the race much closer than originally expected. But Menendez, who has never trailed in any legitimate opinion poll, spent more money on ads in the closing weeks of the campaign than Hugin has, and got a boost when the Senate Democrats' super political action committee, Senate Majority PAC, said it would spend another $2.8 million on his behalf. Federal Election Commission reports covering the period Oct. 1-17 and filed Thursday showed Menendez spending $4.3 million during the period, $3.9 million of that on political commercials. Hugin spent $5 million with $2.6 million going for advertising. Overall, Hugin, a former Celgene Corp. executive, spent more than twice as much as Menendez through Oct. 17, $27.7 million to $11.8 million. Helping to reduce spending gap were Senate Majority PAC, which has spent $5.8 million overall to help Menendez, and the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee, which spent $900,000. Another super PAC, Patients for Affordable Drugs Action, spent $3.3 million to help Menendez. Integrity NJ, the super PAC founded by allies of Gov. Chris Christie, spent $3.8 million on behalf of Hugin. Investment banker Nicholas Brady, a former U.S. treasury secretary and former interim U.S. senator from New Jersey, contributed $1.8 million. Hugin's financial edge was due to the $31 million in personal funds he put into his campaign -- including $7 million so far this month -- allowing him to flood the airwaves with ads focusing on Menendez's ethical problems. Menendez's trial on criminal corruption charges ended in a mistrial. The Senate Ethics Committee then rebuked him for intervening with federal agencies on behalf of Dr. Salomon Melgen, a friend and campaign donor who had given him gifts and trips. Hugin's recent ads resurrected the unproven allegations that Menendez slept with underage prostitutes during a trip to the Dominican Republic with Melgen. The ads were criticized by independent fact-checkers. The challenger raised $2.8 million from other sources and had $2.6 million to spend. Among his most recent contributors were Vice President Mike Pence's leadership political action committee, which gave the maximum $5,000 to his campaign. Menendez raised $11.7 million for his re-election and had $1.8 million in the bank. Jonathan D. Salant may be reached at jsalant@njadvancemedia.com. Follow him on Twitter @JDSalant or on Facebook. Find NJ.com Politics on Facebook. In the BTK killer case in Kansas, a bite mark on the victim was crucial in convicting Dennis Lynn Rader, who bound, tortured and killed 10 people between 1974 and 1991. It was ill-fitting Isotoner gloves that helped acquit O.J. Simpson of murder in 1995. In the case of Nathaniel Young, a Rahway man accused of robbing and killing Imad Alasmar, a taxi driver and father of 10, in Rahway in 2015, one of the key pieces of evidence is Young's rope-like dreadlock hairdo. Prosecutors argued Thursday before the case went to the jury that Young cut his shoulder-length hair after the crime. "Why did he cut em? Because he knows when he ran out of that cab, people saw him, and what's the most distinguishing feature about the defendant at this time? His shoulder-length dreadlocks," Albert Cernadas Jr., Union County's first assistant prosecutor, said in his closing argument. Young's attorney and his girlfriend, however, said he cut his dreadlocks the day before the crime. Then, his girlfriend, on video, changed her story and said she saw him with his new shorter dreadlocks on Aug. 25, 2015, the day of Alasmar's murder. Young's best friend was also videotaped telling detectives that Young's dreadlocks were shoulder length before the crime, and that Young had the phone number for the taxi company on his phone. Young, 23, faces charges of murder, robbery and weapons possession offenses in the death of Alasmar, a 57-year-old Edison man who worked at Station Cab in Rahway. Alasmar was shot and robbed on the 1400 block of Bedford Street in Rahway. After the shooting, his cab kept going and crashed into a parked car where two people were sitting. A woman was thrown from the car and seriously injured. Young also faces an aggravated assault charge for injuring the woman in a separate car. Witnesses told police they saw a man about six-feet-tall with long dreadlocks leaving the scene. In addition to his dreadlock argument, Cernadas told the jury about other critical evidence: cell phone records that put Young near the scene of the crime and fingerprint and DNA analysis of the gun recovered at the scene and of the taxi. Defense attorney Dino Bjelopoljak argued that the prosecution's timeline doesn't add up. Young's phone shows that he was in Rahway at 10:44 p.m. and in East Orange at 11:09 p.m. Detectives estimate the shooting took place at 10:55 p.m. Bjelopoljak argued his client would have had to been "faster than Usain Bolt" to kill the driver in Rahway, go back to his car and drive to East Orange by 11:09 p.m. If convicted of the murder charge, Young faces up to 30 years in prison. Taylor Tiamoyo Harris may be reached at tharris@njadvancemedia.com. Follow her on Twitter @ladytiamoyo. Find NJ.com on Facebook Photo: BC Gov't A national group representing providers of shelters and transition houses says surveys of women and children escaping violence across Canada reveal most of them can't get the help they need due to lack of capacity or resources. Women's Shelters Canada executive director Lise Martin says surveys of a 24-hour period have been done every year since 2014, and the latest one found 404 requests for help, but only 100 women and children were taken into a shelter. She says the results for the past four years have suggested up to 75 per cent of those seeking housing aren't getting it. Martin says B.C. is starting to offer some relief to women and children, with plans to build 280 new transition homes in 12 projects located across the province, including in Kelowna and Kamloops. B.C. Housing Minister Selina Robinson says the 12 projects are part of the government's investment of $734 million over the next decade to build 1,500 transition housing spaces. The Central Okanagan Emergency Shelter Society will receive funding to operate up to 40 units of second-stage and permanent affordable housing. Likewise, the Kamloops and District Elizabeth Fry Society will also operate up to 40 units. Makenna Rielly, of the Women's Transition House Society in Victoria, says construction of second-stage housing in the suburban community of Langford would allow women and children a safe home for up to 18 months so they can transition to a new life. The Times-Picayune is marking the tricentennial of New Orleans with its ongoing 300 for 300 project, running through 2018 and highlighting 300 people who have made New Orleans New Orleans, featuring original artwork commissioned by NOLA.com | The Times-Picayune with Where Y'Art gallery. Today: broadcaster Sally-Ann Roberts. The icon: Sally-Ann Roberts. The legacy: In March 1977, a fresh-faced reporter from Mississippi named Sally-Ann Roberts signed on at WWL-TV as the New Orleans station's City Hall reporter. It would mark the start of an accomplished on-air career that over the next four decades would see her become a beloved local broadcast figure. She's best known for her 25 years as co-anchor with Eric Paulsen of WWL's "Eyewitness Morning News," but at every step along the way -- whether as part of her teen-issues show "Our Generation," her community work as a mentor, her advocacy for bone marrow donations -- she proved to be a dignified, hard-working and unflappable pro. Roberts retired from the airwaves in February 2018, but her legacy lingers: She was the type of newswoman that up-and-coming journalists could aspire to become, and the sort of soothing, beaming personality a whole city loved to wake up to each morning. The artist: Jeff Morgan. The quote: "When you hear the name Sally-Ann, it represents all that is good about mornings in New Orleans and southeast Louisiana. She has reached that rare status of being an icon." -- Tod Smith, WWL-TV's president and general manager, when Roberts announced her retirement Explore more of Morgan's work online at WhereYart.net and in person at the Where Y'Art gallery, 1901 Royal St. Her father, Lawrence Roberts, was an Air Force colonel and one of the legendary Tuskegee Airmen during World War II. By John Pope, contributing writer Source: The Times-Picayune archives; staff research More on 300 for 300: A 16-year-old boy detained at New Orleans juvenile jail was charged Thursday (Oct. 25) with trying to beat to death one of the jails counselors, according to the Orleans Parish District Attorneys office. A grand jury indicted Mikeise Jefferson on a charge of attempted first-degree murder in the Sept. 2 attack, which left the male counselor with a head wound that required several medical staples to close, prosecutors said. The teen was being detained in the Youth Study Center on one count of attempted first-degree murder and two counts of armed robbery in connection with a pair of August robberies in New Orleans East, including one that involved a shooting. According to prosecutors, authorities at the juvenile detention center said the attack occurred after Jefferson, disobeying staff orders, locked himself inside an office and barricaded the door with furniture and other objects. The teen had entered the office without permission about 11 p.m. Sept. 1 and ransacked the room, the DAs office said in a news release. When staff tried to breach the doorway about 7:30 a.m. Sept. 2, Jefferson spit on them and doused them with a milk carton of urine, prosecutors allege. At that point, the DAs office alleges that Jefferson attacked the 39-year-old counselor, who was bending down in an effort to push his way into the office. Jefferson broke off the arm of a chair and used it to bludgeon the counselors head, according to prosecutors. The counselor received emergency treatment for his head and scalp wound. The Sept. 2 attack occurred just a couple of days after Jefferson was indicted on charges of attempted first-degree murder and armed robbery in crimes reported Aug. 4 and Aug. 14, all around the 6000 block of Chef Menteur Highway. 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 In the Aug. 4 robbery, a male shot a 26-year-old man in the leg after the victim refused to turn over his property, according to an initial police report. The robbery and shooting occurred in the 4300 block of Stemway Drive, just off Chef Menteur Highway. Just before midnight Aug. 14, authorities say Jefferson robbed a 25-year-old woman at gunpoint in the 6000 block of Chef Menteur. According to an initial NOPD report, the woman was leaving a store when a known male, identified as Jefferson, began yelling at her. The woman continued walking and the male showed the gun in his waistband and then snatched her purse. When the victim ran after him, he pointed the gun at her and she backed away, police said. Jefferson was arrested the next day by NOPD 7th District Task Force officers. While executing a search warrant in connection with Jeffersons arrest, officers recovered two guns reported stolen out of Jefferson Parish. Officers also arrested Trina Jefferson, 34, who was booked with two counts of illegal possession of a stolen firearm. Prior to Thursdays indictment, Mikeise Jeffersons charges in the August robberies had already been transferred to the adult Orleans Criminal District Court and allotted to Section F Judge Robin Pittman. His bond was set Sept. 20 at $120,000 in those cases, and he was appointed representation by Orleans public defenders James Brockway and Tina Peng. Ad hoc Orleans Criminal District Judge Dennis Waldron on Thursday set bond for Jefferson's new attempted-murder charge at $60,000 after the indictment was read. Assistant DA Alexandra Serpas presented the case to the grand jury. A hearing is set for Oct. 31 to determine whether Jefferson should remain at the Youth Study Center or be transferred to a segregated youth tier at the Orleans Justice Center jail as he awaits trial. Prosecutors have filed a motion asking for Jeffersons transfer to the Orleans Justice Center jail, while defense attorneys have requested Jefferson remain at the juvenile jail, court records show. Man shot in New Orleans' Pines Village area, NOPD says The Orleans Parish Coroners Office has identified a man who was fatally shot near Bourbon Street in the French Quarter early Wednesday morning (Oct. 24). Charles Lee, 33, was shot dead at 4:47 a.m. in the 700 block of Iberville Street (map), between Bourbon and Royal streets. New Orleans police found Lee in the drivers seat of a Chevrolet Impala stopped in the middle of the street, according to a preliminary report. EMS took the man to the hospital, where he later died. Police have not yet identified the shooter. An NOPD spokesman told our news partners at WVUE Fox 8 News that police are in the process of reviewing footage captured on the citys real-time crime cameras. In a press conference shortly after the shooting, NOPD 8th District Commander Nick Gernon urged the shooter to come forward and tell us what happened. Youre on camera, Gernon said. Man killed in shooting near Bourbon Street, New Orleans police say At the time, Gernon said an officer was on Bourbon Street a half a block away from the shooting when it happened. Top stories in New Orleans in your inbox Twice daily we'll send you the day's biggest headlines. Sign up today. e-mail address * Sign Up He heard shots, responded, saw what was going on, Gernon said. The officer was not able to make the apprehension, but he was extremely close to where the actual incident occurred, he added. Authorities ask anyone with information about this crime to call Crimestoppers at 504-822-1111. -- NOLA.com | The Times-Picayunes Carlie Kollath Wells contributed to this report. Olivia Prentzel is a reporter at NOLA.com | The Times-Picayune. Contact her at oprentzel@nola.com. Follow her on Twitter @olivepretzel. Defense attorneys for two men on trial in federal court for their alleged roles in an attempted fatal 2017 armed robbery questioned the credibility of their clients co-defendant who testified against them Thursday (Oct. 25), asking him repeatedly about lies he told to investigators when they interviewed him about the case. Father and son Armstead and Jerome Kieffer are facing several charges including attempted armed robbery resulting in death and conspiracy to commit bank robbery connected to a May 31, 2017, incident in which two gunmen tried to rob two Loomis armored truck drivers at the Campus Federal Credit Union on Tulane Avenue. Loomis guard James Jimmy McBride was killed in an exchange of gunfire. The Kieffers also are charged in an unrelated 2015 armored truck robbery. Deltoine Scott, who pleaded guilty Oct. 9 to several charges related to both robberies, and to lying to federal investigators, told jurors Thursday he was testifying against his co-defendants as part of a deal with the government a deal he said he hoped would help him avoid a life sentence. I made a big mistake in my life, Scott said. I dont want to serve the rest of my life away from my daughter and my family. Man convicted in fatal attempted robbery of Loomis guard said crime was co-defendants idea Scott, who appeared in court in a red jail jumpsuit, insisted he was telling the truth and said he wouldnt lie just to get a better deal. From the witness stand Wednesday, Scott said the robbery was Jerome Kieffers idea and Armstead Kieffer acted as the lookout. Jerome Kieffer also was the mastermind behind the 2015 armed robbery of a Brinks armored car driver, Scott said. They walked away with $160,000 in that robbery, he testified, and Armstead Kieffer took $5,000 when he and Jerome went to a store on Canal Street to buy new clothes with the proceeds. Defense attorney John Fuller questioned Scotts recollection of the crimes and the events leading up to them, asking whether he saw copies of police reports related to the case before deciding to enter a guilty plea. Scott said he had seen police reports, but again insisted he would not lie to the jury to get a better outcome for himself. Scott is scheduled to be sentenced Jan. 30. He faces between 32 years and life in prison. 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 I ran for cover: Ex-Loomis worker testifies about robbery attempt resulting in coworkers death Fuller, who is part of a team of lawyers representing Armstead Kieffer, asked Scott if he knew three people a former Brinks employee named Ramon, and two other men named Jerome and Eugene. Scott said he knew Eugene, but not the other men, and that he and Jerome Kieffer went to Houston to visit Eugene after the 2015 armed robbery. The 2017 robbery it wasnt you and Eugene, it wasnt you and Ramon, it wasnt you and one of your family members, but it was you and Jerome? Fuller asked. Yes, sir, Scott replied. One of Jerome Kieffers defense attorneys suggested in opening statements Scott implicated the Kieffers in the attempted robbery at Campus Federal, but someone else he was trying to protect actually participated in the crime. Jurors on Thursday also heard from two men who were in jail after the 2017 attempted armored truck robbery with Jerome and Armstead Kieffer. The man who was in jail with Jerome Kieffer, Jorge Bolanos, said Kieffer told him he participated in the robbery and his dad helped plan it. Bolanos said Kieffer told him he rented an apartment across from the bank so they could watch for the armored truck. A man who was in jail with Armstead Kieffer in St. Charles Parish said Kieffer and another man who was in jail on bank robbery charges talked about bank robberies together. The man also said Armstead Kieffer told him he saw his sons life flash in front of him and wished he could take back what happened that day. Jason Williams, Jerome Kieffers defense attorney, and Gregory Carter, Armstead Kieffers defense attorney, asked both men who have pleaded guilty to federal drug charges -- if they hoped to get time knocked off their sentences by testifying. Both said yes. The government is expected to continue their case Friday morning. A Holden man has pleaded guilty to federal charges for robbing drug dealers at gunpoint in St. Tammany Parish and in Tickfaw, the U.S. Attorneys office said Friday (Oct. 26). Stephan Mitchel Thomas, 22, entered guilty pleas Wednesday to two counts of Hobbs Act robbery and one count of brandishing a firearm during a crime of violence, the office said in a news release. He also pleaded guilty to possessing unregistered firearms, including a firearm silencer, a short-barrel rifle and a sawed-off shotgun, it said. U.S. District Judge Ivan L.R. Lemelle set sentencing for Jan. 30. Thomas and others robbed drug dealers on July 11, 2016, in St. Tammany Parish and on Sept. 1, 2016, in Tickfaw in Tangipahoa Parish, court documents show. In the St. Tammany holdup, Thomas and associates forcibly entered a home and demanded cash and pills, according to the factual basis for the case. They stole a .22-caliber pistol, several thousand dollars in cash, electronics and prescription narcotic pain pills, it said. At one point, Thomas put one of the victims in a bathroom and hit him in the head with a gun. 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 During the robbery, Thomas wore a shirt emblazoned with DEA Drunks Enjoying Alcohol, the document said. In the Tickfaw robbery, Thomas and others went to a mans home, pulled guns on him in his bedroom and asked where he kept his drugs. They restrained the resident with zip ties and put him in a bathroom, according to court documents. Thomas and his associates stole marijuana, which was stored in an ice chest in the garage, as well as cash and a Cadillac. Thomas faces a maximum sentence of 20 years in prison, a fine of $250,000, three years supervised release after imprisonment, and a $100 special assessment on each count of Hobbs Act robbery, the U.S. Attorneys Office said. The Hobbs Act, original enacted to combat racketeering, is a federal law that criminalizes both robbery and extortion. Thomas faces a minimum sentence of seven years to life on the charge of brandishing a firearm during a crime of violence. On each count of possessing unregistered firearms, Thomas faces a maximum sentence of 10 years in prison and a fine of $10,000. The case was investigated by the federal Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives as well as the Hammond Police Department, St. Tammany Parish Sheriffs Office and the Tangipahoa Parish Sheriffs Office. The case is being prosecuted by Assistant United States Attorneys Maria M. Carboni and Shirin Hakimzadeh. A 35-year-old man was struck several times in a shooting late Thursday (Oct. 25) on North Roman Street in the Treme neighborhood, New Orleans police reported. Police originally said the victim was shot near Ursulines and North Claiborne avenues but on Friday updated the location to the 1000 block of North Roman Street, which sits just off Ursulines Avenue and a couple of blocks from North Claiborne. The shooting was reported about 11:45 p.m., and the gunman wore all black clothing, according to an initial NOPD report. At the scene, several people who identified themselves as friends of the victim said the victim had been robbed and began to pursue the robber to retrieve their belongings when they were shot. A woman, who declined to identify herself, said the victim appeared to have a gunshot wound to the arm and had blood, possibly from another wound, around the neck and shoulder area. The woman said the victim was still conscious and talking as she applied pressure to the victims wounds. I didnt want (the victim) to talk because I know sometimes when you talk, you panic, she said. Officers cordoned off two small scenes about a block apart, including an area around the intersection of North Roman and Ursulines Avenue and a patch of North Derbigny Street just past Ursulines. 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 As officers investigated, several people huddled at Ursulines and North Derbigny, discussing what happened to their friend. Nearby, crime-scene investigators snapped photos of a ball cap and what appeared to be a towel or piece of clothing on the sidewalk near the intersection, as officers searched North Derbigny Street for more evidence. At the intersection of Ursulines Avenue and North Roman Street, officers scoured the roadway with flashlights. Several neighbors said they didnt see the shooting but heard five or six gunshots and then saw a man holding his arm as he made his way to Ursulines and North Derbigny. The neighbors later saw an ambulance arrive at that intersection. Anyone with information on the shooting is asked to call Crimestoppers at 504-822-1111. This post was updated Friday (Oct. 26) with new details from police. A 23-year-old Slidell man was killed and two others injured when the mans car crashed into tractor-trailer Thursday (Oct. 25) on Interstate 55 South in St. John the Baptist Parish, Louisiana State Police reported. Justin Weaver was pronounced dead at the scene of the crash, which occurred about 4:15 p.m. According to a preliminary investigation by state police, Weaver was driving a Mazda MZ6 in the left lane of I-55 when he reached traffic congestion from a previous crash. Unable to stop the Mazda in time, he swerved to the right, hitting the back of the Freightliner, which was stopped in the right lane. State troopers are still working to determine why Weaver was unable to stop in time, Trooper Melissa Matey, spokeswoman for Troop B, said in a news release. Weaver was not wearing a seatbelt at the time of the crash. 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 Weavers front-seat passenger, a 22-year-old woman, was wearing a seatbelt and received moderate injuries. She was taken to a local hospital for treatment. The Freightliners driver, a 38-year-old from Denham Springs, received minor injuries. He also wore a seatbelt. Impairment is unknown and toxicology results are pending an autopsy for Weaver, Matey said. The Freightliners driver voluntarily submitted to a blood test to be analyzed by the Louisiana State Police Crime Lab. The crash remains under investigation. Isidore Newman School on Thursday (Oct. 26) unveiled its new $15 million Rupa and Tarun Jolly Science and Technology Building, equipped with state-of-the-art classroom laboratories," according to a news release. Students and faculty started using the building at the beginning of this school year. The building is named for its largest benefactors, Dr. Tarun and Rupa Jolly, who donated $3 million to the project, the largest gift in the schools century-long history, according to the release. The family joined Newman to celebrate the new facility in a formal dedication held Thursday night at the school. The three-story, 30,000 square-foot building is designed to support independent, student-led science experiments, with nine integrated classroom laboratories and three lab spaces for independent long-term experiments. In addition to regular classroom experiments, the space will be able to support projects completed in partnership with Newmans medical school and university research partners. The building features an energy dashboard that displays the buildings energy consumption in real time. In addition, students will have access to a so-called makerspace for design, fabrication and engineering projects. The building will house the middle and upper schools science programs, with a floor each dedicated to one of three subject areas, including life sciences, applied chemistry, and physics and design, according to the release. In a statement, Dr. Tarun Jolly said he and his wife are honored to help fund Newmans new science building. The Jollys currently have children enrolled at the private school. Jolly leads Louisiana Pain Specialists, a pain management practice with six clinics in the New Orleans area. As an entrepreneur, I have a responsibility to give back, and we are fortunate to contribute to this amazing school to help them educate the future leaders of our community, Jolly 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 Newman Head of School Dale Smith called the center transformational." Perhaps more than any other subject, science is meaningfully enhanced by the physical environment and equipment," Smith said in a statement. With this facility, we are able to improve our already strong academic program to ensure that top-notch science teaching and learning continues for generations of Newman students. The school worked with Woodward Design Group and lead architect Don Fant, a Newman graduate, to design the project. The addition also marks the completion of a major part of Newmans master plan, which guides the schools future growth, the release said. Newman is a private Uptown school that serves 1,055 students in pre-K through grade 12. The non-sectarian school employs 208 people and awarded $2.1 million in financial aid to students last year, according to its website. Isidore Newman School second-line celebrates homecoming, drainage work progress Wilborn P. Nobles III is an education reporter based in New Orleans. He can be reached at wnobles@nola.com or on Twitter at @WilNobles. The St. Bernard Business and Professional Womens Club hosted its 58th annual gala recently honoring its Man and Woman of the Year for 2018, as Sheriff James Pohlmann and Lena Torres Nunez were honored for their commitment and service to the community. The gala at the Sigur Civic Center is held each year in conjunction with National Business Womens Week, celebrating the contributions of working women and by honoring two distinguished citizens of St. Bernard. Wanda Alcon, who serves as St. Bernards chairman of National Business Womens Week, said the event was a great one, honoring two deserving residents of St. Bernard while raising money to fund the BPWs scholarship program. Each year members nominate and elect two honorees who exemplify the qualities of leadership, community service and dedication to the people of St. Bernard Parish, Alcon said. After the presentation of colors by the St. Bernard Sheriffs Office Honor Guard, the singing of the National Anthem by Roxanne Gray and the Invocation by BWP vice president Claudette Reuther, BPW member Faith Moran read her letter of nomination for Pohlmann. Moran listed a series of accomplishments and awards during Pohlmanns decades-long career in law enforcement, including his training with the Federal Bureau of Investigation at its National Training Academy and his induction into the 2018 Louisiana Justice Hall of Fame. Sheriff Pohlmann is a member of the International Association of Chiefs of Police, Louisiana Sheriffs Association and the St. Bernard Kiwanis Club, Moran said. The sheriff has created and oversees several community outreach programs offered by the Sheriffs Office, including a Citizens Police Academy, Refuse to be a Victim classes, free Holiday Ride Home program and Junior Deputy program. Moran also praised the Addiction Resource Program Pohlmann created last year to help residents struggling with addictions of all types. Following Morans nomination, the sheriffs guest speaker, Joey Difatta, took to the stage, sharing some poignant and powerful stories about the sheriffs hard work and commitment. When Difatta finished, Pohlmann joked that he was glad he picked someone on the payroll to speak so well about him. BPW member Tracy Petrucelli then had the pleasure of reading her nomination for this years Woman of the Year. In her address, Petrucelli focused on Nunezs volunteerism and how giving and selfless Nunez is. A lifetime resident of St. Bernard, Nunez is a member of St. Bernard Historical Society and serves as the president of the Los Islenos Heritage and Cultural Society. She is also an officer in a number of other community groups, including the Suburban Womans Club, President, The Serra Club of St. Bernard, the St. Bernard Tourist Commission, The Krewe of Lourdes and the St. Bernard Chamber. 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 For her efforts, Nunez received the St. Bernard Chamber of Commerce Citizen of the Year Award in 2016 and this year the received the Paul Harris Fellow Award from the Rotary Club of St. Bernard. Sidney Torres III served as guest speaker and recounted stories that illustrate his sisters selflessness and parish pride. Nunez followed at the mic, and during her brief remarks was gracious and humble, thanking her family and the community for being such an important part of her life of service. Parish president Guy McInnis and State Rep. Ray Garafolo were also on hand, issuing a pair of proclamations to the two honored guests. The gala ended a busy time for the St. Bernard BPW as earlier that week the organization honored two other community members its Model Working Women. Lisamarie Brandon, the president of the St. Bernard BPW, said each year the committee selects women who live or work in St. Bernard. We believe these ladies go above and beyond in the workplace and possess qualities that make them role models, Brandon said. This years Model Working Women are Cheramie Kerth and Katherine Karcher Lemoine. That gathering was held on the grounds of the picturesque River House in St. Bernard in celebration of the 57th birthday of the local BPW chapter. Alcon said it was a great week to recognize the great work happening each day. We were really happy with how both of our events turned out, she said. We look forward to continuing our work giving scholarships, creating opportunity and celebrating the hard working women in our parish. Barry Lemoine writes about people and events in St. Bernard Parish. To reach him, email barrylemoine@gmail.com. Photo: Jon Manchester Both sides in B.C.'s electoral reform battle are accusing the other of misleading voters. Claims of exaggeration and fear mongering are being levelled by those in favour of proportional representation as well as proponents of B.C.'s current first-past-the-post system in the current referendum process. Premier John Horgan is being criticized for wearing rose-coloured sunglasses. "We're talking about co-operation that will lead to governments that work together, where a majority of the votes cast will be reflected in the governments of the community," Horgan has said. But, Bill Tieleman of the No Proportional Representation Society says: "There's all sorts of things we can do to increase co-operation in our legislature. The idea that under (proportional representation) parties sit around the campfire and sing Kumbaya after the session is completely bogus." He said the campaign for prop-rep doesn't mention what ridings would look like after a potential Yes vote or that how many MLAs a riding might have wouldn't be worked out until later. Meanwhile, supporters of prop-rep claim a TV ad against the system goes too far when it states extremists could gain seats in the legislatures with only a tiny percentage of votes. "They can hold the balance of power," the ad says. "It's not extreme at all," says Tieleman. "We have neo-Nazi-linked parties being elected. Recently in Sweden, they got 18 per cent of the vote. In Germany, they have 94 seats now." Others say the referendum ballot asking voters to rank proportional representation systems is purposely confusing. "I have tremendous confidence in (voters') ability to wade through information and disinformation," Horgan countered. The mail-in referendum closes Nov. 30. with files from CTV Vancouver Photo: Contributed UPDATE 8:21 a.m. Federal authorities have detained a person in connection with the mail-bomb scare that widened to 12 suspicious packages, a Justice Department official said Friday. Department spokeswoman Sarah Isgur Flores said authorities planned to announce more information at a press conference. Earlier Friday, authorities said suspicious packages addressed to New Jersey Sen. Cory Booker and former National Intelligence Director James Clapper both similar to those containing pipe bombs sent to other prominent critics of President Donald Trump had been intercepted. The discoveries making 12 so far further spurred a coast-to-coast investigation, as officials scrambled to locate a culprit and possible motive amid questions about whether new packages were being sent or simply surfacing after a period in mail system. The devices have targeted well-known Democrats including former President Barack Obama, former Vice-President Joe Biden, Hillary Clinton and former Attorney General Eric Holder. The FBI said the package to Booker was intercepted in Florida. The one discovered at a Manhattan postal facility was addressed to Clapper at CNN's address. An earlier package had been sent to former Obama CIA Director John Brennan via CNN in New York. Attorney General Jeff Sessions said Friday the Justice Department was dedicating every available resource to the investigation "and I can tell you this: We will find the person or persons responsible. We will bring them to justice." Trump, on the other hand, complained that "this 'bomb' stuff" was taking attention away from the upcoming election and said critics were wrongly blaming him and his heated rhetoric. Investigators were analyzing the innards of the crude devices to reveal whether they were intended to detonate or simply sow fear just before Election Day. Law enforcement officials told The Associated Press that the devices, containing timers and batteries, were not rigged to explode upon opening. But they were uncertain whether the devices were poorly designed or never intended to cause physical harm. Homeland Security Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen, in an interview Thursday with Fox News Channel, acknowledged that some of packages originated in Florida. One official told AP that investigators are homing in on a postal facility in Opa-locka, Florida, where they believe some packages originated. The package addressed to Booker was found during an oversight search of that facility, according to a law enforcement official. The officials spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to discuss the ongoing investigation by name ORIGINAL 6:09 a.m. A suspicious package addressed to Democratic Sen. Cory Booker of New Jersey, and similar to crude pipe bombs sent to prominent critics of President Donald Trump, was recovered Friday in Florida, the FBI said. None of the devices have exploded. The FBI is doing a nationwide manhunt for whoever is sending the pipe bomb packages, and officials are trying to determine if the sender or senders was trying to sow fear or actually cause physical destruction. Early Friday, the FBI tweeted that it "has confirmed an 11th package has been recovered in Florida, similar in appearance to the others, addressed to Sen. Cory Booker." Booker is a potential 2020 presidential contender. Devices have also been sent to former President Barack Obama, former Vice-President Joe Biden, Hillary Clinton and CNN. At a press conference Thursday, officials in New York would not discuss possible motives or details on how the packages found their way into the U.S. postal system. Nor would they say why none of the packages had detonated, but they stressed they were still treating them as "live devices." "As far as a hoax device, we're not treating it that way," police Commissioner James O'Neill said. Details suggested a pattern that the items were packaged in manila envelopes, addressed to prominent Trump critics and carried U.S. postage stamps. The devices were being examined by technicians at the FBI's forensic lab in Quantico, Virginia. The packages stoked nationwide tensions and fears as voters prepared to vote Nov. 6 to determine partisan control of Congress a campaign both major political parties have described in near-apocalyptic terms. Even with the sender still unknown, politicians from both parties used the threats to decry a toxic political climate and lay blame. "A very big part of the Anger we see today in our society is caused by the purposely false and inaccurate reporting of the Mainstream Media that I refer to as Fake News," Trump said on Twitter. "It has gotten so bad and hateful that it is beyond description. Mainstream Media must clean up its act, FAST!" Tripp Girardeau is the crime and courts reporter with the Aiken Standard. Follow him on Twitter at @trippgirardeau. The state of South Carolina and the U.S. Department of Energy are now in talks to potentially settle a multimillion-dollar plutonium-related court case. On Wednesday, U.S. Court of Federal Claims Judge Margaret M. Sweeney filed an order stating the court had been "advised" that the state and the DOE, represented as the U.S., were "engaging in settlement negotiations" over a demanded $200 million. The state initially sought the money because the DOE had not removed weapons-grade plutonium from South Carolina in a timely manner, according to court documents. On Thursday, a spokesperson for S.C. Attorney General Alan Wilson said the state is "continuing to pursue the litigation" but is also keeping all options and avenues open. Energy Secretary Rick Perry, NNSA chief attended White House MOX meeting Both U.S. Secretary of Energy Rick Perry and National Nuclear Security Administration chief Lisa Gordon-Hagerty attended and participated in a An update on the settlement negotiations is required no later than Nov. 26, according to Sweeney's order. Updates will be required every 60 days beyond that, as well. Federal law mandated beginning Jan. 1, 2016 the DOE pay South Carolina $1 million for each day, up to 100 days per year, the department failed to process weapons-grade plutonium via the Mixed Oxide Fuel Fabrication Facility or more generally remove 1 metric ton of it from the state. South Carolina launched a legal offensive when the deadline and requirements were not met. On Oct. 10, the National Nuclear Security Administration terminated the MOX project contract. MOX, an incomplete facility at the Savannah River Site, is designed to turn weapons-grade plutonium into fuel for nuclear reactors. The state's in-limbo Court of Federal Claims case was first filed Jan. 8, according to court records. An amended complaint which asked for the $100 million from 2016, the $100 million from 2017, interest and legal fees was filed March 6. "Unfortunately, proving accurate the prior concerns expressed by the state, the secretary and DOE have ignored their statutory mandates and commitments to the state and have failed to process or remove weapons-grade defense plutonium or provide any of the economic and impact assistance payments owed to South Carolina," the amended complaint reads. A response from the DOE in July argued the department could not disburse the millions of dollars to South Carolina "because Congress made no appropriations available for DOE to make any such payments." "Because the United States is not liable in the absence of available appropriations, the court must dismiss the complaint," the July 5 response continues. NNSA document details one year of MOX termination work "The government requires termination activities to be completed in the shortest timeframe and at minimal cost in alignment with budget availab The notification of settlement proceedings comes about one week after U.S. Sens. Lindsey Graham and Tim Scott, U.S. Rep. Joe Wilson, S.C. Gov. Henry McMaster and the state attorney general visited the White House to discuss the future of the MOX project with President Donald Trump. U.S. Secretary of Energy Rick Perry and NNSA chief Lisa Gordon-Hagerty attended that summit, as well. Inquiries made to DOE proper were not immediately returned. Photo: The Canadian Press The Hot Dog Water guy is back. The creator of the satirical $38 health product will set up shop outside the Goop wellness summit in Vancouver's Stanley Park this weekend. "We just felt like this was a good opportunity to promote our product and cross-pollinate with Goop's demographic," Douglas Bevans told CTV. Bevans' spoof on high-priced bottled water made headlines over the summer when he sold dozens of bottles at an East Vancouver street festival. Hot Dog Water is what it says a fancy bottle of tap water with a boiled wiener inside. Bevans says the performance art project is aimed at getting consumers to think more critically about where they spend their money. He says he has nothing against Goop, but notes the Gwyneth Paltrow lifestyle brand agreed to pay $145,000 in penalties after a California taskforce found some of its health claims to be unfounded. Goop's products include egg-shaped stones to be placed inside the buyer's vagina to increase "feminine energy." with files from CTV Vancouver Roseburg, OR (97470) Today Rain showers early with overcast skies later in the day. High 51F. Winds light and variable. Chance of rain 40%.. Tonight A few clouds from time to time. Low 36F. Winds light and variable. Viewed of Thank you for reading! On your next view you will be asked to log in to your subscriber account or create an account and subscribepurchase a subscription to continue reading. Photo: The Silverbacks If you just can't get enough of OK Oldies 103.9's main man, Gord Vizzutti head over to the Halloween Howl II. Gord and his band, The Silverbacks, will be blowing the roof off the East Kelowna Hall Saturday night Oct. 27 at 7:30 p.m. This is the second go for the Halloween Howl, they took several years off due to personal issues. Vizzutti says, "our band has been personally impacted by suicide so this event is near and dear to our hearts and we just want to do everything we can to help reduce the stigma around mental health issues." The Silverback specialize in good old rock 'n roll you'll hear music from the Rolling Stones and Eagles and all proceeds raised from the event will go to the Canadian Mental Health Association of Kelowna. Events such as the Halloween Howl are important to the CMHA to raise money for programs and services, but also continue to grow awareness in the community. The Halloween Howl is a licensed event restricted to people 19 years and older. (CNN) Google has dropped plans to build a large campus in Berlin after months of fierce protests from locals. The tech giant had intended to open a 3,000-square-meter facility for start-ups in the Kreuzberg district of the German capital. But the company met with angry opposition from residents, who opposed Google's presence in the bohemian neighborhood and the effects of gentrification on real estate prices. Google has now said the space will go to two nonprofit organizations, saying it will become "a home for social commitment." "We are happy to see that a small neighborhood which is organized and connected in the spirit of solidarity and equipped with a reasonable critique of tech-capitalism and its effects on local communities is able to successfully stand up to one of the biggest companies worldwide," said activist Konstantin Sergiou from the organization Bizim Kiez, part of the No Google Campus Alliance group. "Being confronted with the stress of permanent protest is clearly not the atmosphere in which people want to network and discuss ideas," he added. "We believe that the protest played a central role in Google's decision." Activists have been protesting the plans since they were unveiled in 2016. Many opposed the company's tax practices and data-collection policies, as well as the gentrification of the Kreuzberg area. "Protest works," campaign group GloReiche wrote on Twitter following the news of Google's reversal. AFP reported that real estate prices in the Kreuzberg area rose by 71% between 2016 and 2017, citing a study by property consultancy Knight Frank. The firm also found that the 20.5% jump across Berlin was the largest rise of any city in the world. Google's German spokesman, Ralf Bremer, didn't comment on whether the protests led to the decision, but he told CNN that the move was "the result of 18 months of conversations with neighbors, social organizations, policy makers, shop owners and many others." 'We are suspicious' The Berlin campus was set to be Google's fourth in Europe and seventh around the world. It currently has facilities in London, Madrid and Warsaw, as well as Tel Aviv, Seoul and Sao Paulo. But while protesters celebrated, some raised questions about the company's decision to use the space to house Betterplace, a non-profit donation platform, and Karuna, a humanitarian organization. "Betterplace and Karuna seem to do an honest job, but in this context, it is not farfetched to assume that they might have gotten into the role of a social facade and placeholder for the internet giant, even without really realizing it," said Sergiou of Bizim Kiez. "Of course we are happy about the message from Google that there will be no Google campus in Kreuzberg. And to open the house for social activities sounds like a good thing," Stefan Klein, a local activist with the GloReiche neighborhood group, told CNN. "But we are quite suspicious (about) what these social activities will be, and we will do some research on this topic in the next days," he added. CNN has contacted both companies with a request for comment. This story was first published on CNN.com, "Google abandons Berlin campus plans after local protests." Photo: The Canadian Press Britain's Meghan, Duchess of Sussex smiles during a visit to Tupou College in Tonga, Friday, Oct. 26, 2018. Meghan, the Duchess of Sussex, has described how she worked with designer Clare Waight Keller of Givenchy to create a "timeless" wedding gown for her wedding to Prince Harry earlier this year. Harry and the former Meghan Markle recorded their memories of the wedding for an audio commentary that is part of the new "Relive the Royal Wedding" exhibition at Windsor Castle that opened Friday. The gown and the five-meter-long veil Meghan wore with it are set to be the prime attraction at the 10-week display. In the audio recording, the former actress said she had a clear idea of what she wanted to wear from the start. "I knew at the onset I wanted a bateau neckline, I wanted a cropped sleeve, I wanted a very timeless, classic feeling," she said. The dress also needed to be suitably modest for the May 19 wedding held in a chapel on the grounds of Windsor Castle, she said. "There was a great level of detail that went into the planning of our wedding day," said Meghan, who is pregnant with the couple's first child. "I think for us, we knew how large the scale of the event would be, so in making choices that were really personal and meaningful, it could make the whole experience feel intimate, even though it was a very big wedding," the duchess said. Meghan described the "incredibly surreal day" when she and her fiance visited Queen Elizabeth II, Harry's grandmother, to choose a tiara for her to wear during the wedding ceremony. She picked Queen Mary's diamond and platinum bandeau tiara from the queen's unmatched collection. It is featured in the new exhibit. For his part, Harry said it was "very sweet" of his grandmother to lend his bride-to-be the priceless headpiece. Harry's wedding outfit, including the distinctive frockcoat uniform made by master tailors on Savile Row, is also on display. When Lincoln Kirstein and the choreographer George Balanchine were attempting to get a company off the ground in the 1930s and 40s, they had little more than a pickup troupe, with meager seasons and slender prospects. That began to change in 1948, when the company, the newly named New York City Ballet, found an institution willing to take it in: New York City Center. The studios had splintery floors. The orchestra pit was cramped. There was practically no backstage space and the stage itself was small. I could do a couple of jumps and be past center stage, said Jacques dAmboise. He danced with the company during its City Center years, as did Edward Villella, who lived a brownstone away from the theater. They used to deliver huge blocks of ice, Mr. Villella said, and they would take it into the alley in the back, and that was the air-conditioning. Since those early days, the building, a fanciful Moorish-style structure built as a meeting place for the Shriners, a Masonic group, has been updated many times, most recently in 2011. In 1943, it became a temple for the arts, converted for that purpose by the civic-minded mayor Fiorello La Guardia. Tickets were kept affordable. In the 40s, a prime seat went for $2.40, roughly equivalent to $35 today. In an interview on Thursday, Mr. Peters disputed City Halls interpretation of the letter. It certainly wasnt a threat, Mr. Peters said, both because the fact of the investigation going on was already well known to City Hall, and I dont believe that anyone would seriously think that what we would do in our investigation would in any way be influenced by what City Hall does. We dont permit noninvestigatory concerns to influence it. Mr. Peters said that he could not confirm a continuing investigation, including whether or not his office was investigating the yeshiva review, and suggested that more than one inquiry may be underway. If they believed this was solely a reference to any investigation involving yeshivas, that belief would be wrong, he said. There is no indication that Mr. Peterss investigators have found evidence that City Hall interfered with the yeshiva review, but the mere existence of an inquiry could complicate matters as Mr. de Blasio considers whether to fire Mr. Peters over the whistle-blower case. No mayor has ever fired an investigations commissioner, and doing so could open Mr. de Blasio to the charge that he was seeking to quash a politically sensitive investigation that has put his inner circle under scrutiny. The Department of Education began a review of the yeshivas in 2015, after complaints that the schools were not providing adequate education in nonreligious subjects, including math, science and English. The review, completed in August, concluded that 15 schools were either meeting state educational requirements or instituting improvements. Another 15 schools refused to cooperate, according to the Education Department. The review was criticized for its slow pace, its conclusions and the citys inability to obtain the cooperation of many of the schools. Nuclear weapons are a threat to the world. Any large-scale nuclear exchange would have globally catastrophic consequences. Conscious of this reality, President Ronald Reagan and Mikhail Gorbachev, the leader of the Soviet Union, worked in the 1980s to reduce the number of nuclear weapons, with the ultimate goal of getting rid of them. The Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty, signed in 1987, was a major step toward this goal, eliminating a large class of nuclear weapons that were viewed as particularly destabilizing. The treaty is still in force, although both the Obama and Trump administrations have said that Russia is in violation. Whatever the case, we need to preserve the agreement rather than abandon it, as President Trump has threatened to do. Indeed, we should invite other countries to join the treaty and resist the temptation ourselves to develop new classes of these deadly weapons. The first step would be to convene a meeting between American and Russian experts to discuss possible violations of the treaty. Imagine one day you wake up and youre this guy, Then, this happens: Saudi Arabia confirms journalist Jamal Khashoggi is dead. A journalist is murder. Premeditated murder, then dismembered into pieces with a bone saw on the grounds of a diplomatic mission of a NATO ally by an entourage of intelligence and security officials, including some with close ties to the crown prince, followed by a dizzying and absurd cover up by an autocratic regime, known for beheading people, squelching free speech, and denying women their basic rights. Oh, and the journalist is a US resident. As of this moment, they deny it. Instead of waffling, Could it be them? Yes, flip flopping, It certainly looks that way to me. Taking a brutal dictators words at face value. The king firmly denies any knowledge of it. And doing his PR for him. Rogue killers. Here are some more effective policies. Option 1: sanctions. Stop talking about Visa bans and do it. Consider banning travel to the US for others, including Saudi crown prince Mohammed bin Salman, if warranted. Discourage private foreign investment. Even this guy agrees. I know what Im going to do, Im going to sanction the hell out of Saudi Arabia. Option 2: halt support for a gruesome, immoral war in Yemen thats killed thousands of civilians and left millions more starving. Stop refueling Saudi jets and lets go ahead and stop selling them US manufactured weapons. At least Germany has moral leadership. Theyve already banned weapons sales. Option 3: suspend negotiations on a deal known as a 123 agreement that would provide the Saudis with American made technology for civil nuclear energy. Remember that Iran deal they ripped up, even though Iran was complying and still is? Option 4: remove the US ambassador from Saudi. Oh wait, we dont have one. So, why hasnt the president done any of these? Maybe it has something to do with this. I like the Saudis very nice. I make a lot of money with them. They pay me millions, and hundreds of millions. $450 billion. They committed to purchase $450 billion worth of things and $110 billion worth of military. Those are the biggest orders in the history of this country. Those numbers arent even real. Trump is exaggerating, of course, just like the number of floors in Trumps Tower. The truth is, we need Saudi as an ally. It helps manage the world oil markets and works with us to fight terrorism in the region. But we also need to address the brutality and authoritarianism of the present regime or else achieving those goals will be much harder, if not impossible. Over 30 years ago, President Ronald Reagan and I signed in Washington the United States-Soviet Treaty on the elimination of intermediate- and shorter-range missiles. For the first time in history, two classes of nuclear weapons were to be eliminated and destroyed. This was a first step. It was followed in 1991 by the Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty, which the Soviet Union signed with President George H.W. Bush, our agreement on radical cuts in tactical nuclear arms, and the New Start Treaty, signed by the presidents of Russia and the United States in 2010. There are still too many nuclear weapons in the world, but the American and Russian arsenals are now a fraction of what they were during the Cold War. At the Nuclear Nonproliferation Review Conference in 2015, Russia and the United States reported to the international community that 85 percent of those arsenals had been decommissioned and, for the most part, destroyed. Today, this tremendous accomplishment, of which our two nations can be rightfully proud, is in jeopardy. President Trump announced last week the United States plan to withdraw from the Intermediate-range Nuclear Forces Treaty and his countrys intention to build up nuclear arms. Also back on the presidents to-do list: infrastructure. In 2016, Mr. Trump promised to deliver a plan immediately after getting elected. That high-priority agenda item went exactly nowhere with this Congress. But not to worry, he guarantees that therell be a big push right after the midterms. We think thats going to be an easy one, he recently told Fox Business. Opinion Debate Will the Democrats face a midterm wipeout? Mark Penn and Andrew Stein write that "only a broader course correction to the center will give Democrats a fighting chance in 2022" and beyond. write that "only a broader course correction to the center will give Democrats a fighting chance in 2022" and beyond. Tory Gavito and Adam Jentleson write that the Virgina loss should "shock Democrats into confronting the powerful role that racially coded attacks play in American politics." write that the Virgina loss should "shock Democrats into confronting the powerful role that racially coded attacks play in American politics." Ezra Klein speaks to David Shor, who discusses his fear that Democrats face electoral catastrophe unless they shift their messaging. speaks to David Shor, who discusses his fear that Democrats face electoral catastrophe unless they shift their messaging. Ross Douthat writes that the outcome of the Virginia gubernatorial race shows Democrats need a new way to talk about progressive ideology and education. It would be easy to dismiss Mr. Trumps latest policy patter as hogwash, the sort of promise-making in which he specializes like his pledge to drain the political swamp or get Mexico to pay for The Wall. It further muddles matters that Mr. Trumps words often seem to contradict his actions, as when he portrays himself as champion of coverage for pre-existing conditions even as he urged Congress to vote to repeal Obamacare without replacing it or as his administration declines to defend the provision against legal challenges. But if Democrats manage to take control of the House after the Nov. 6 elections, Mr. Trumps campaign palaver could shift to something more interesting: a starter map to policies on which the president and Democratic lawmakers might actually be able to get something done. Yes, go ahead and roll your eyes. Yet recall that in the days before Mr. Trump took office, when lawmakers from both parties were anxiously wondering what a Trump era would look like, some Democrats said they would be willing happy even to work with the new president on shared values. Infrastructure development was one area of potential agreement. Lowering prescription drug costs and shoring up coverage for pre-existing conditions clearly would fall into that category as well. Nearly two years on, a Democratic House majority playing ball with a president that most of its base would love to see driven from office may sound absurd. Some of Mr. Trumps promises arent much different from what he touted in 2016, and so far he has lacked follow-through to realize them, either because hes not interested or because other Republicans wont let him. But, if the House flips, there are advantages to at least trying. Until recently, it looked as if the midterm elections might be defined largely by an argument about health care. Over the past few days, however, the headlines have been dominated instead by hatred hysteria over a caravan of migrants a thousand miles from the U.S. border, and now the attempted assassination of multiple prominent Democrats. But whoever sent the bombs and why, the caravan hysteria is no accident: creating a climate of hatred is how Republicans avoid talking about health care. What were seeing in this election is a kind of culmination of the strategy the right has been using for decades: distract working-class voters from policies that hurt them by promoting culture war and, above all, racial antagonism. When it comes to substance, the modern conservative policy agenda, which centers on cutting taxes and tearing up the social safety net, is consistently unpopular. By large margins, voters want to raise, not lower, taxes on corporations and the wealthy. They overwhelmingly oppose cuts in Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid. Even self-identified Republicans favor preventing insurers from discriminating against people with pre-existing medical conditions something Obamacare does, but Republican health proposals wouldnt. So how do Republicans manage to win elections? Partly the answer is that gerrymandering, the Electoral College and other factors have rigged the system in their favor; Republicans have held the White House after three of the past six presidential elections, despite winning the popular vote only once. And they will probably hold the House unless Democrats win by at least 6 percent. Photo: CTV Looks like the city of Vancouver will be the next centre hit by rotating Canada Post strike action. The Canadian Union of Postal Workers indicates that strike action is set to begin Friday at 9 a.m. Kelowna was hit by strike action earlier this week. CUPW has been in negotiations with Canada Post for the past 10 months, to no avail. Nearly 9,000 CUPW members walked off the job in the Toronto region early Tuesday as part of rotating strikes that began Monday to back contract demands. There has also been job action at the giant gateway parcel facility in Mississauga, Ont., which processes roughly two-thirds of all parcels mailed in Canada. -with files from CTV SAN FRANCISCO The headlines swirling around Alphabet, the parent company of Google, are not positive: European regulators are cracking down on its business practices, politicians are expressing concern about political bias, and there are growing fears about how it is pushing the boundaries on user privacy. But those clouds have done little to darken Alphabets earnings a testament to the enduring strength of Googles core search business. In 2018, Google is expected to capture about 60 percent of global search advertising spending, according to the research firm eMarketer. On Thursday, Alphabet reported a net profit of $9.19 billion in the third quarter, up 37 percent from a year earlier. Quarterly revenue was $33.74 billion, an increase of 21 percent but slightly lower than analysts expected, pushing the companys stock price down about 5 percent in after-hours trading. Alphabets profits, however, exceeded analysts estimates, reflecting a lower tax rate that it attributed to the impact of tax cuts passed in the United States last year. Alphabets quarterly tax rate was 9 percent versus 16 percent a year earlier. Amazons profits were hit or miss for its first couple of decades. But now, for the first time, they are starting to look consistent with four consecutive quarters above $1 billion in profit. On Thursday, the company reported a net income of $2.9 billion in the third quarter, surpassing analyst expectations. But the focus on profit that investors have long sought wasnt enough to keep them happy. The companys shares dropped more than 7 percent in aftermarket trading, after Amazon also announced that revenue in its core retail business was growing more slowly than in the past. The companys sales were up 29 percent to $56.6 billion, below what analysts had predicted. In Amazons biggest business, its online store, sales rose just 11 percent over the past year. A year ago, the pace was twice as quick. They are saturating the core market in the U.S. for e-commerce, said Cooper Smith, who leads Amazon research for Gartner L2. This is a company in transition right now, moving from a focus on acquiring more customers to getting more growth from people who already shop the site. Questions of American restlessness and rootlessness may gnaw at you while chatting with fellow audience members at the communal tables. Learning where we all came from, I found myself wondering whether our frequent and sometimes violent relocations reflect an atavistic impulse to explore or a more personal need to escape. That turns out to be a ripe way to enter Clarkston, set mostly in a Costco on the Washington side of the river. There, Chris, a robust local, is showing Jake, an indirect descendant of William Clark, how to do the job of a late-shift stock boy. They carry giant jugs of cheese puffs and popcorn from pallets at one end of the space, now reconfigured as a rectangle with the audience on the two long sides, to display shelves at the other. Is this, the play asks, whats left of the wild frontier? If so, Chris (Edmund Donovan) doesnt seem to mind. A deceptively unsophisticated type, with a blond brush cut, he has never lived anywhere beyond the twin cities and has never seen an ocean. On the other hand, frail Jake (Noah Robbins) majored in postcolonial gender studies at Bennington. Like Marnie in Lewiston, he has retraced an ancestors path from the countrys periphery to its mountain interior in hopes of finding something to belong to. That he does not already feel that kind of belonging is not because he is gay, nor because he has Huntingtons disease and may not survive a decade. Its more profound than identity or even death. He senses but cannot understand how privilege and intelligence have somehow, in him and, the play implies, in the country as a whole festered into confusion and anomie. Despite that, he develops an intense relationship with Chris, full of switchbacks and mortifications. Some of the mortifications are the kind that result when two people who may not be ideally suited to each other have a great need and few options. Others are familial. When Chriss volatile mother, Trisha, shows up, a tragic vein in the story is opened, with the heartbreaking Mr. Donovan at its surprising center. You may recognize Trisha subliminally; she is played by Heidi Armbruster, who provided the voice of Marnies unstable mother in Lewiston. There are many such pointers in each play toward the other: Marnie and Jake both pitch tents Jake badly; both plays include scenes that take place, somewhat baldly, on the Fourth of July. Unemployment, the closet and drug addiction are afflictions in common. But Clarkston is the richer drama, with themes that are more tightly bound to characters and a plot both surprising and inevitable. Its perfect ending for the first time using the space that was once Rattlesticks stage platform feels like a kind of apotheosis, or at least a small reward. Indeed, Mr. Hunters golden diptych, no less than Mr. McCallums spectacularly unspectacular production, suggests that small rewards may be the only kind available. From the moment Gladys Green opens her mouth which is the moment that the curtain rises on Kenneth Lonergans wonderful play The Waverly Gallery at the Golden Theater its clear that for this garrulous woman, idle conversation isnt a time killer. It is a lifeline. An octogenarian New Yorker, former lawyer and perpetual hostess for whom schmoozing and kibitzing have always been as essential as breathing, Gladys operates on the principle that if she can just continue to talk, she can surely power through the thickening fog of her old age. That she has clearly already lost this battle makes her no less valiant. That its Elaine May who is giving life to Gladyss war against time lends an extra power and poignancy to The Waverly Gallery, which opened on Thursday night under Lila Neugebauers fine-tuned direction. Long fabled as a director, script doctor and dramatist, Ms. May first became famous as a master of improvisational comedy, instantly inventing fully detailed, piquantly neurotic characters who always leaned slightly off-kilter. Her partnership with Mike Nichols is still considered the gold standard for such quick-sketch portraiture. And their appearance on Broadway together in the early 1960s is recalled by those who saw it as if they had been divine visitations, blazing and all too brief. A former sheriffs deputy in Houston who shot and killed an unarmed black man who was acting erratically was indicted Thursday on a felony charge. The deputy, Cameron Brewer, encountered Danny Ray Thomas at an intersection in Houston in March. Mr. Thomas, 34, who was unarmed, had his pants around his ankles. According to the Harris County Sheriffs Office, he walked toward Mr. Brewer and did not comply with the deputys demands to stop. Mr. Brewer, who is black, then fired a single gunshot that fatally wounded Mr. Thomas. After an internal investigation by the sheriffs office, Mr. Brewer was fired in April because he had not adhered to the departments policy on use of force. On Thursday, a Harris County grand jury indicted Mr. Brewer on one count of aggravated assault by a public servant, a first-degree felony that carries a maximum penalty of life in prison. A gunman who killed two people at a Kroger supermarket in Jeffersontown, Ky., on Wednesday tried to enter a predominantly black church minutes before the attack, the police said on Thursday. The man, Gregory Bush, 51, of Louisville, was arraigned Thursday on two counts of murder and 10 counts of wanton endangerment. He was ordered held with bail set at $5 million. The victims, Vickie Lee Jones, 67, and Maurice E. Stallard, 69, were both black, while Mr. Bush is white. The United States attorney for the Western district of Kentucky, Russell M. Coleman, said in a statement on Friday that his office was investigating the attack as a possible hate crime. The son of a witness said his father heard the gunman make a racist remark during the episode, though the police said they could not confirm that account. The police said there was no indication that Mr. Bush knew either of the victims, nor did he have any known connection to the grocery store. Mr. Bush has a history of mental illness, Chief Sam Rogers of the Jeffersontown Police Department said at a news conference on Thursday. Court records show that he also had a long history of domestic violence charges, and had previously been barred from possessing a firearm. SAN PEDRO SULA, Honduras The passengers from American Airlines Flight 941 trickled out, alone, in couples and in groups all but the small girl whose family was nervously awaiting her in the arrivals area. It had been three months since 2-year-old Fernanda Jacqueline Davila had been whisked away with her grandmother on a journey to the United States that had gone badly wrong. For months, the childs mother, Alison Michell Davila, had been trying with the rest of the family in Honduras to navigate the labyrinth of the American immigration system from afar. They pleaded for the release of the child, who was being held in foster care in New York. She doesnt need to stay in America, the family told the authorities. Just let her come home. Finally, more than an hour after the plane landed, an immigration officer emerged bearing the toddler in his arms. Ms. Davila wept. Mi amor, she called out, my love. There was no smile of recognition just a blank stare. Mother, grandparents and aunts put away the welcome poster, the balloon and candy from her favorite movie, Frozen, all brought to celebrate the end of a venture that some had hoped might be a new beginning for Fernanda but that had proved more painful than any of them had ever imagined. Caitlyn Jenner, the transgender rights activist who has long drawn criticism from members of the L.G.B.T.Q. community for her Republican leanings, unambiguously denounced President Trump on Thursday for his stance on transgender issues. In a column published in The Washington Post, Ms. Jenner, 68, wrote that she had hoped she could work within the Republican Party to improve its position on L.G.B.T.Q. issues, but that she had evolved to see that belief as a mistake. Ms. Jenner, an Olympic gold medalist and reality television star, delivered this blunt rebuke days after The New York Times reported that the Trump administration was considering narrowly defining gender as a biological condition determined by a persons genitalia at birth. The news prompted rallies and online fury, with many including Ms. Jenner declaring that they wont be erased by the federal governments policies. The reality is that the trans community is being relentlessly attacked by this president, Ms. Jenner wrote. He has made trans people into political pawns as he whips up animus against us in an attempt to energize the most right-wing segment of his party. As the auction season for jewelry begins, theres probably no better place to examine these sales than Christies, which appears to have held the first in 1795. Thats when James Christies 29-year-old London auction house sold the glittery collection of Madame du Barry, Louis XVs longtime mistress, two years after she was executed by guillotine. Christies event of this season is the Magnificent Jewels sale on Dec. 5 at its Rockefeller Center building in New York. The sale is already in previews, so to speak, as the more than 370 lots travel to various Christies showrooms to be viewed by prospective buyers (Thursday and Friday in Los Angeles, Nov. 9-12 in Geneva, Nov. 23-26 in Hong Kong and, finally, Nov. 30-Dec. 4 in New York). Between now and then, on Nov. 5, Christies New York is hosting a preview of the Pink Legacy, an almost-19-carat pink diamond that will be sold on Nov. 13 at Christies Geneva. To find a diamond of this size with this color is pretty much unreal, said Rahul Kadakia, the international head of jewelry for Christies. MIAMI It might have been the first time a traffic jam in South Florida ended in smiles. On the afternoon of May 7, 1983, cars began to slow down on the causeways that sail over Biscayne Bay and connect Miami Beach with the mainland. Many motorists stopped altogether, hopping out onto the road for a better look at the surreal sight in the bay: 11 small, uninhabited islands were newly surrounded by 6.5 million square feet of pink woven polypropylene fabric, each looking like a 200-foot-wide, pastel-colored lily pad, shimmering in the tropical sunlight. This cultural moment is now receiving a deep dive at the Perez Art Museum Miami with Christo and Jeanne-Claude: Surrounded Islands, Biscayne Bay, Greater Miami, Florida, 1980-1983/A Documentary Exhibition, an exhaustive chronicle of the project from conception through legal hurdles to the nuts and bolts of its waterborne installation. The show celebrates not only the 35th anniversary of Surrounded Islands a spectacle with an oddly matter-of-fact title by the Bulgarian-born and New York City-based artist Christo and his artistic partner and wife, Jeanne-Claude but also the de facto 35th anniversary of the museum itself. The institutions earliest precursor, the Center for the Fine Arts, opened its doors in January 1984, basking in the afterglow of Surrounded Islands and hoping to appeal to a mass audience that was primed for fresh thinking about avant-garde artwork. That connection was particularly resonant for Rene Morales, a curator at the Perez, who adapted the show from a European iteration. He had witnessed Surrounded Islands firsthand as an 8-year-old, having arrived in Miami from Cuba with his family three years earlier. What I remember more than the project itself is the look on my fathers face, Mr. Morales recalled of their trip to a spot above it. This look of excitement and wonder! Throughout my career, Ive always thought back on that as what I want to do with my work. I love the idea of helping artists create that same sense of wonder in an audience. Photo: CTV Police are investigating reports of gunfire behind a Vancouver strip club. Police were called to the No. 5 Orange shortly after midnight, when 911 callers reported shots fired in the laneway off Powell Street. "Our officers were able to confirm that shots had been fired, however no suspect or victims were located," Const. Jason Doucette told CTV. He said the incident "does not appear to be a random event." with files from CTV Vancouver LONDON A man was arrested on Thursday in connection with the vandalism of a glass display case at the cathedral in Salisbury, England, housing an original Magna Carta, one of the worlds most revered legal documents. The local police said the man, 45, was taken into custody and is suspected of using a hammer to smash three holes in the case protecting the document, which was made in 1215 and is one of only four surviving original copies. We are very relieved that no one was hurt during the incident and that the Magna Carta itself is undamaged, a spokeswoman for the Salisbury Cathedral said in a statement. We are very grateful to all who dealt with the situation so swiftly. The document has been temporarily taken off display, the statement added. The Salisbury Cathedral has been in the news for another reason this year. Two men accused of poisoning a former Russian spy and his daughter in Salisbury in March claimed they were actually in the city to see the cathedral. With its 38-foot-high ceiling, bookcases stuffed with faded, leather-bound volumes and walls festooned with oil portraits that seem to wink, the second floor reading room of the New-York Historical Society bears a striking resemblance to a certain fictional school for wizards. Which is why it seems appropriate that 50 fans of Harry Potter were gathered here on a recent Friday night to answer some burning questions: 1. What is Albus Dumbledores full name? 2. When is Harry Potters birthday? 3. What is a recommended remedy for a visit from a Dementor? 4. Which pub provides a secret passage to Hogwarts? If you barely recognize these names and care not how they are connected to the wizard world created by J.K. Rowling, youre in the wrong oak-paneled library. (If you are curious, the answers are below). Welcome to Best of Late Night, a rundown of the previous nights highlights that lets you sleep and lets us get paid to watch comedy. If youre interested in hearing from The Times regularly about great TV, sign up for our Watching newsletter and get recommendations straight to your inbox. Trump Isnt Spilling Secrets Late-night hosts took President Trump to task after a New York Times report revealed that he often used unsecured cellphones. Spies from China and Russia are often able to listen in on his calls as a result, but the hosts joked that Trump probably didnt know enough secrets to pose a risk. Split timelines the bad past that explains the bad present are a genre staple, and the emergence of something awful and long-suppressed is such a consistent motif that it has turned many novels into waiting games: What exactly happened back then? Tell! Readers speed ahead not because theyre gripped but because theyre impatient with so much calculated withholding. If these books become efficient conveyor belts that trundle along with the promise of a tidy little gift bag of answers and rationales right out of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, you may well feel relieved, but you are unlikely to feel disturbed. For a thriller, disturbed is better. 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. One of the most exciting things about Sara Grans THE INFINITE BLACKTOP (Atria, $26) is the way it uses all of these often restrictive neo-conventions to its advantage in order to create a completely original hybrid of mystery, thriller, contemporary noir, dark comedy and postmodern meditation about what it means to be a detective. This is the third in a series of novels to feature Claire DeWitt, the self-professed best detective in the world, although she is actually closer to Sue Graftons Kinsey Millhone if Kinsey had thrown everything away and taken a serious turn toward the dark side. The newest story opens in 2011, as Claire is on the wrong end of a car crash that may be a deliberate attempt to kill her. As Gran hurtles ahead in that narrative, we also leap back to an account of the disappearance of Claires childhood friend in 1986 Brooklyn and to a third story, of the 1999 case that made her into a professional detective. Gran makes this fragmentation, in which no single story line ever becomes central, feel organic to her main character, who also seems constructed out of jagged shards, and is as dangerous as youd imagine someone fitting that description might be. She steals cars, pulls knives on people who get in her way and cold-cocks others when they double-cross her, scrawling CLAIRE DEWITT ALWAYS WINS on their walls as a flourish. She views life experience as an infinite blacktop of things youd regret not knowing later and her future as a long series of empty moments that took me down a highway to nowhere in particular. We dont know why shes like this; she doesnt either. In fact, nobody in this cold, hard-core, genre-blurring novel can be understood except in analogical terms; even a murderer finds himself bewildered to be someone who DID things. Someone like the people in detective novels. In The Infinite Blacktop, all that brings characters together is that they dissociate on the same frequency. For good measure, Gran throws in excerpts from a detection manual that has special meaning for Claire, and a long chunk of a teen-sleuth saga as well. The last quarter of her book takes a plunge into metafiction that is likely to be polarizing. (Note scribbled in the margin: What IS this?) But it helps that Gran has an engagingly sardonic voice and a sure grip of storytelling basics, even those she is manifestly interested in ignoring or transcending; in particular, the 1999 sections work as a satisfying whodunit/whydunit of which Ross Macdonald probably would have approved. The Infinite Blacktop is droll, savage and healthily unsettling, even at moments when it verges on becoming an essay about its own construction. The English novelist Camilla Way may not be the innovative stylist Gran is, but in THE LIES WE TOLD (Berkley, paper, $16), she makes up for it with no-nonsense efficiency. At first I mistook the severed head for something else. It wasnt until I was very close that I realized it was Lucys, she begins in 1986. Just a couple of pages later, she leaps to present-day London, where were immersed in the lives of Clara Haynes and Luke Lawson, a young couple who both work in magazines. Luke has a secret life on the internet (there may be a contemporary thriller in which the role Facebook is assigned is non-malevolent, but it has not yet presented itself). He also has a stalker. He soon goes missing, but lets not linger on that too long, because theres poor decapitated Lucy to consider. The other half of this novel, which alternates timelines throughout, unfolds the plight of Doug and Beth Jennings, who have a bird-murdering, fire-starting 5-year-old bad seed of a daughter. Another of my favorites was Better You Believe, by Carole Johnstone, a tightly written story of mountain climbers struggling to descend the south face of Annapurna. A blizzard hits and nature becomes the ruthless slayer that she is, picking off climbers one by one and sending them down into the horror of all that silent blue dark. While the story is about survival, it is also about female rivalry, the sacrifices we make for love and what it really means to come out on top. We know we are in big trouble when Sarah, the narrator, thinks: Bad things are about to happen. Bad things do happen. I wont say what. You should read it and find out. Image John Ajvide Lindqvist Credit... Mia Ajvide Lovecrafts fear of the unknown is at the center of I AM BEHIND YOU (St. Martins, $28.99), the latest by the Swedish novelist John Ajvide Lindqvist. In this masterwork of speculative fiction, four families in a Swedish campground wake to find their caravans and cars have been relocated to an unknown location comprising a vast expanse of grass, each blade just over three centimeters long. There is no sun, no moon, no stars. The air is thick and heavy. There is no way to discern the direction they walk or their location on a GPS. Are they still in Sweden? Have they been taken by aliens to another planet? Fallen into another dimension? Nobody knows for sure why they have come there, or why they must hang around. They exist in an infinite field of unknowing. As one might expect, throwing a group of people together under such conditions brings out the worst in them. They beat, shoot at, steal from and cheat one another. All the jealousy and anger pushed below the surface of their lives begins when the pressure of their situation is applied to ooze out over the landscape. It is a sad microcosm of society, you might say, one with all the predictable results. But nothing is quite as predictable as it seems. We soon discover that there is a supernatural mechanism at work, a metaphysical machine that customizes life-changing visions for each person. A black tiger appears to Carina; a chalk-white creature with a pure gaze fills Isabelle with sorrow and longing; the Bloodman appears to Donald, driving him mad; an old man appears to Stefan and his son. These characters have all experienced crisis-inducing visions earlier in their lives. But now, these apparitions push them to understand something essential and life-altering about themselves. Such epiphanies render these unsavory characters much more interesting than they were at first glance. It is fun to watch them squirm. Their tendency toward violence, and their deplorable behavior, let me be vicariously violent and deplorable. I Am Behind You is pre-eminently readable. The pacing and structure kept me turning the pages. And while I was intrigued by the premise, it was the sheer weirdness of the book, its insistence on subverting expectations at every turn, that made it so good. I Am Behind You is my favorite kind of novel utterly unclassifiable. It resists genre. While it might be called horror, it is also a suspense novel, a fantasy novel and a character-driven exploration of the state of humanity in our time. Lindqvist has been called the Stephen King of Sweden. I havent read his other books, and so I cannot make general claims, but this novel, with its descent into an alternate universe and its insistence that reality can shift onto a weird and metaphysical track, has more in common with Haruki Murakami. And like Murakami, Lindqvist has defined his own style and genre. Its not horror. Its Lindqvist. In Andrew Michael Hurleys novel DEVILS DAY (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, $26), fear is generated not from being lost, but from going home. John Pentecost returns to the Endlands when his grandfather dies, bringing his pregnant wife, Kat. Unfortunately, the place is cursed. According to legend, the Devil arrived 100 years ago, disguised himself in a ewes fleece and infiltrated the land as the maggot in the eye of the good dog, the cancer that rotted the rams gonads, the blood in the babys milk. One feels the Devil everywhere, in the blackness that unfolded in all directions. The inhabitants of the Endlands dread the Devils return, and have instituted a yearly ritual called Devils Day to keep him at bay. But he is never far away. We feel him there, lurking, even as we discover that human treachery can keep pace with the Devils evil ways. All adolescents face two monsters: insecurity about where they are now, and the stress of impending adulthood. Fantasy writers have long asked us to imagine how tough that would be if supernatural forces were also in the mix. Two new graphic novels spin enthralling tales of young heroes slaying those inner beasts right along with the kind that suck your blood and try to kill you. FAKE BLOOD (Simon & Schuster, 336 pp., $14.99; ages 10 and up) is the third book and first graphic novel written and drawn by Whitney Gardner. Her delightful tale juxtaposes a preteen crush, a tranquil, woodsy neighborhood in the Pacific Northwest, and vampires. Its the kind of story that connects well with its intended audience so well that my 11-year-old son pilfered my review copy and refused to return it until he was done. Gardners protagonist, AJ, thinks hes the most boring sixth grader at Spoons Middle School. He just wants to be cool and interesting. How can he get his crush, Nia, to notice him? In an act of creative desperation, AJ realizes that the key to Nias heart is her obsession with young adult vampire fiction. He goes full goth, with Halloween fangs and fake blood, and pretends to be a vampire. His awkward charade is convincing enough that Nia finally notices him. But AJ is shocked to learn that Nia is actually a vampire slayer, and AJ becomes her next target. As he tries to prevent the love of his life from driving a stake through his heart, a true monster threat endangers AJ and his friends. AJs transformation from lovesick kid to wannabe vampire feels oddly believable. Instead of a breezy metamorphosis over a quick montage, here AJ becomes a vampire little by little. As his appearance and his confidence develop, AJ even makes the geeky red sunglasses he won at the librarys summer reading contest, emblazoned with the word READ!, look kind of cool. We had been told nothing about Peter; my mother lived with such a sense of shame. It had been so well hidden. Then one day, my mother got on the phone and called us all, can you come over, there is someone I would like you to meet, Ms. Olsson said. She had been a wonderful mother but I think we all felt her grief in that there was something wrong and we didnt know what it was. It was almost as if we werent enough and, of course, we werent enough, there was one of us missing. Ms. Olsson was journalist for nearly 20 years. In many ways, Pearl is her younger self. I have given her a lot of the things about myself I really dont like, shame, guilt, the appalling errors I made, some of the things I dont even like to think I did are in Pearl. In creating Pearl, Ms. Olsson realized that she still had residual shame about herself as a single parent and her broken marriage she married when she was 19 and had two children. Everyone brings their whole history to everything in writing. Writing is mapping: times, emotions, your own blood, she said. She is an active member of Sisters Inside, an organization that advocates for the rights of women and girls in prison. I have a strong sense of wanting to rescue people as a form of atonement. Susan Wyndham, a former literary editor of the Sydney Morning Herald, described Shell as one of the great Sydney novels. Ms. Olssons writing, Ms. Wyndham said, is like a prism that refracts dazzling images of the city, its politics and people, light and water and weather. In the last stages of writing Shell, Ms Olsson went on a writing retreat to a beach house in northern New South Wales with several novelist friends. She was struggling with the structure and ending of the book. Even at that stage I was going nuts and thinking maybe I am not even close. I was cutting out and writing little tiny bits on squares and didnt even have a title. As always she took refuge in walking, this time on the beach, where she picked up some shells. I took them back and put them on the table, and there it was, the Opera House. It wasnt just the shape of the building. I could see everything else I was trying to work out. As it did for Jorn Utzon, nature provided the answers. You just have to look closely enough. (Want to get this briefing by email? Heres the sign-up.) Good morning. Heres what you need to know: Authorities arrest suspect in pipe bomb case Federal authorities arrested a man in Florida this morning in connection with a series of explosive devices sent by mail this week to high-profile critics of President Trump. A law enforcement official identified the suspect as Cesar Sayoc Jr., 56, of Aventura, Fla. Mr. Sayoc, a registered Republican, has a lengthy criminal history that includes being accused of threatening to use a bomb, public records show. Speaking at the White House, Mr. Trump praised law enforcement officials for quickly arresting a suspect. The arrest was announced hours after the authorities said they had discovered two more pipe bombs, one addressed to Senator Cory Booker of New Jersey and the other to James Clapper, the former director of national intelligence, law enforcement officials said today. So is Mrs. Post still relevant? Philip Galanes, the Social Qs columnist for The Times since 2008, says she is. Her advice was meant to help people be comfortable behaving in a social sphere that wasnt their own, something we can still use in todays world, Mr. Galanes said. She was holding out the fantasy of a lot more social mobility. It was important to her that we be armed with a way to behave, he said. A lot of the things shes writing about seem so antique, because the Duchess of Sussex is not inviting us to tea. But if you do find yourself invited by royalty, dont worry about accidentally picking up the wrong piece of cutlery. Mrs. Post said it best herself: Manners are a sensitive awareness of the feelings of others. If you have that awareness, you have good manners, no matter what fork you use. Claire Moses wrote todays Back Story. _____ Your Morning Briefing is published weekday mornings and updated online. Check out this page to find a Morning Briefing for your region. (In addition to our European edition, we have Australian, Asian and U.S. editions.) Sign up here to receive an Evening Briefing on U.S. weeknights, and heres our full range of free newsletters. What would you like to see here? Contact us at europebriefing@nytimes.com. If youre still employed and working at a company or organization with 20 or more employees (or your spouse is), and youre covered by an employee health plan, you may not need Part B yet. Instead of paying premiums, it could make financial sense to hold off. But its important to know that after losing employee coverage due to retirement, layoffs or any other reason you have an eight-month special enrollment period to sign up for Part B. If you miss that window, you have to wait for the general enrollment period, which runs from January 1 through March 31 each year. That creates two problems. First, Medicare will add a permanent 10 percent penalty to your premiums for each year you delayed. Mr. Zeppenfeldt-Cestero has to pay $187.60 per month now because he waited more than three years to sign up. If he had enrolled when he was 65, his monthly premium would be $134. Without good information, people make mistakes and theyre costly, Dr. Neuman said. In this case, its a cost that continues the rest of your life. The second problem: the general enrollment period imposes coverage gaps. The general enrollment period (not to be confused with the Open Enrollment Period currently underway when those already receiving Medicare can change plans) runs from January through March, remember. But coverage doesnt begin until the following July 1. If you didnt sign up for Part B and recognize your error in March, you can be insured in July. If you figure it out in April, however, you cant enroll until the following January and coverage begins the following July. It could be well over a year, depending on when you discover the problem, said David Lipschutz, senior policy lawyer at the Center for Medicare Advocacy. Unfortunately, some people discover it when they get sick. Photo: The Canadian Press Barry and Honey Sherman are shown in a handout photo from the United Jewish Appeal. The family of billionaire philanthropist couple Barry and Honey Sherman is offering a $10 million reward for information leading to an arrest in the pair's deaths. A lawyer for the family says a private investigation has uncovered major shortcomings in the Toronto police's probe of the deaths, prompting the couple's loved ones to offer the reward. The Shermans were found dead in their Toronto mansion last December in what police have classified as a targeted double homicide. Family lawyer Brian Greenspan says police failed to collect sufficient fingerprint and DNA evidence 10 months after the couple's bodies were found in their Toronto mansion. He says a team he's assembled at the request of the family, including several former homicide investigators and Ontario's former chief pathologist, have uncovered other evidence, including 25 finger and palm prints, that the police had not identified. Greenspan says the family took the step of hiring private investigators after police erroneously stated they were not looking for suspects in the Shermans' deaths, implying that they died either by suicide or murder-suicide. Dr. Dirk Elston, the journals editor, said in an email that he replaced the article with a notice of temporary removal after receiving multiple calls and emails expressing concerns about the accuracy of a few parts of the article. On Wednesday, nearly two weeks after removing the article, Dr. Elston told the authors they had a choice: They could correct factual errors or retract the paper. The authors maintain that the article does not contain any factual errors and that several of the corrections requested had to do with protecting the reputation of the specialty and the leaders of the American Academy of Dermatology, the association that publishes the journal. Later on Wednesday, they submitted some revisions. The article had gone through the standard editorial process of academic journals, undergoing multiple revisions based on feedback from peer-reviewers selected by the journal, before being accepted for publication. It presents data to support a conclusion that private equity firms acquire outlier practices that is, practices that perform an unusually high number of well-reimbursed procedures and bill high amounts to Medicare. It was interesting when we ran the numbers and we were counting how many practices with billing outliers were being acquired by private equity, said Dr. Joseph Francis, a dermatologist in Florida who is a co-author on the paper. With every revision of the paper, that number kept increasing. So it didnt seem like an anomaly. Before reading the article: On Oct. 7, The Times reported: A landmark report from the United Nations scientific panel on climate change paints a far more dire picture of the immediate consequences of climate change than previously thought and says that avoiding the damage requires transforming the world economy at a speed and scale that has no documented historic precedent. The report, issued on Monday by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, a group of scientists convened by the United Nations to guide world leaders, describes a world of worsening food shortages and wildfires, and a mass die-off of coral reefs as soon as 2040 a period well within the lifetime of much of the global population. How concerned should we be about the dangers of climate change? Given that young people will most likely be the ones experiencing the effects of climate furthest in the future, well past 2040, what actions can young people take now to address global warming? Brainstorm a list. Now, read the article, Young People Are Suing the Trump Administration Over Climate Change. Shes Their Lawyer, and answer the following questions: 1. Why are 21 young people, ages 11 to 22, suing the federal government? What claim do the plaintiffs make? 2. Why is their age central to their argument? 3. What remedy are the young plaintiffs demanding? 4. What argument are the Trump administrations lawyers making in an attempt to dismiss the suit? 5. Why do legal experts view Julia Olsons chances with a measure of ambivalence? Finally, tell us more about what you think: This case could test whether the judicial branch has a major role to play in dealing with global warming and whether there is a constitutional right to a stable and safe climate. What do you think? Do these young people have strong arguments in their favor? The Taliban attacked and captured two border outposts in Kamdesh District, killing six members of the border forces and wounding 11 others. Four border forces are missing after the attack. Reinforcements and air support pushed the Taliban back. Border forces were part of the Afghan Ministry of Interior, but recently became a part of the Ministry of Defense. Oct. 22 Nangarhar Province: five civilians killed Afghan Special Forces carried out an operation in the Bagh-e-Bala area of Sukhroud District. High-level members of the Taliban were killed, but five civilians were also killed and two others were wounded during the operation. People in the area brought the bodies of those killed to a main road in the district and asked the government to stop killing civilians. Oct. 21 Nimroz Province: two police killed A police Humvee was hit by a roadside bomb in Ghurghori area of Khashroud District. Two police officers were killed and two others were wounded in the incident. Oct. 21 Zabul Province: one member of security forces killed The Taliban attempted to shoot and kill the provincial governor, Rahmatullah Yarmal, when he went to Mizan District to evaluate the security situation. One of Yarmals bodyguards was killed, but he escaped the attack unhurt. Oct. 21 Kunduz Province: one member of security forces and two civilians killed Multiple clashes between the Taliban and security forces left one member of the security forces and two civilians dead and 38 civilians wounded. Thirteen of those wounded were women. Oct. 21 Badakhshan Province: two police killed Two police officers were killed in Taliban attacks on security outposts in Keran Wa Manjan District. Three Taliban fighters were also killed in the clashes. A commander of a pro-government militia surrendered to the Taliban with 15 men. Oct. 21 Baghlan Province: three civilians killed Multiple clashes between the Taliban and security forces left three civilians dead and 26 civilians wounded. [Get a weekly roundup of Times coverage of war delivered to your inbox. Sign up here.] The base was built when British forces were fighting a resurgent Taliban that had slowly reformed in the years after the initial American invasion in 2001. The American military had not yet committed to the volatile province. It was a bloody campaign, and Dwyer was a small outpost. It wasnt until the spring of 2008 that United States Marines started to show up in force. Before this, American Army units visited only sporadically for brief missions. With a few tents, most American Marines and soldiers would sleep outside. Some armored vehicles couldnt fit inside the perimeter. They were the first of what would turn into the next iteration of the Afghan strategy, in which tens of thousands of American troops spread across the country, building small outposts and expanding the ones that already existed. In 2009, Dwyer grew, and the Marines started a spat of offensives. The base changed from Forward Operating Base Dwyer to Camp Dwyer. Engineers plowed the dirt and paved a new airfield. Troops bled and died in the surrounding farmland. By 2010, the number of American service members in Afghanistan climbed toward 100,000; a few laps around Camp Dwyers perimeter could easily equal 10 miles. There were two mess halls staffed by foreign contractors, a phone center with computers and a trailer where soldiers, sailors, Marines and airmen could use phone cards to call home. A line of medical evacuation helicopters sat on Dwyers tarmac. There white and red crosses silhouetted on their black airframes. In 2012, when the British started its slow withdrawal from the country, the memorial cross was sent back to England as a token of remembrance for James Dwyers unit. By then, the text at the bottom had faded. American troops began their departure too. Dwyer stopped growing. In 2014, as the Pentagon euphemistically declared that it had ended combat operations in Afghanistan, larger bases like Camp Leatherneck shut down. Camp Dwyer remained, turning into a detached hub of contractors, Special Operations soldiers and American advisers. Dwyers perimeter was most mostly unchanged by 2016, but the buildings within it had slowly been torn down. Tents where troops lived were replaced with air-conditioned trailers. The medical helicopters remained mostly idle, reserved almost entirely for the Western troops relegated to advising from behind the frontlines. But the Afghan soldiers, fighting the war with limited support and air power, died in extraordinary numbers in the countryside. With the addition of roughly 4,000 troops under the Trump administration in 2017, the Marines returned to Camp Dwyer. Army soldiers patrolled the perimeter. At night, mortars fired illumination rounds into the air. On Oct. 4, 2018, around 9:30 a.m., an Army patrol hit a roadside bomb seven miles southeast of Camp Dwyer, immobilizing one of its vehicles. Specialist Slape hopped into an armored truck and drove out of the bases gate. He was an explosive-ordnance disposal expert, and the ground around the blast needed to be cleared. Around 1:30 that afternoon, he stepped on the bomb that killed him. I was excited to read the On Medicine column by Siddhartha Mukherjee. In residency, I listened to the 22-hour audiobook of his work The Emperor of All Maladies, a great example of the way a physician can contribute to the popular understanding of medicine and write for a lay audience. However, I was saddened to learn that Mukherjees conclusion was that physicians should subspecialize and do more research. As an academic generalist in obstetrics and gynecology, I have purposefully chosen not to subspecialize, because I believe that women need doctors who can care for them and consider their medical issues within the context of their reproductive life cycle. I like to think there is value not only in treating the abnormal Pap test but also in considering how it may affect a womans future reproductive plans. Or how the method of delivery could affect a womans future pregnancies. As Mukherjee points out, physicians who practice in emergency-oriented subspecialties and are confronted frequently by lawsuits are most at risk for burnout. Doctors frequently joke about the annual wellness lectures at our various institutions that advise us to avoid burnout by practicing self-care. But what is sequestering yourself in a tidy research niche, except self-care taken to its extreme? In that world, who will staff labor and delivery, the trauma bay and the emergency department? Alice Sutton, U.C. San Diego Health Lets not forget the physician assistants and nurse practitioners. In the surgical theater, were expected to see patients with the same acuity, complete the same charts and work similar hours while being paid a fraction of the M.D. salary. Before I became an advanced-practice nurse, I predicted being tired, and I could even imagine feeling burned out. However, I didnt anticipate the professional isolation and the strains it can cause in a care team. Isabel Vargas, La Mesa, Calif. Mukherjee describes relationships formed working together dissecting a cadaver. This took me right back to my anatomy lab 44 years ago. Mukherjee hooked me with how he wove the lives of his group with facts about medicine today and physician burnout. I agree with his many valid points. He ends, however, by suggesting that burnout is prevented by doing more. For physicians who do full-time clinical practice, we need structural changes. Sharon Dobie, M.D., Seattle For scary-movie lovers, the 1980s were a golden decade. The horror scene exploded so much after the original Halloween (1978) proved so popular that titles like The Dorm That Dripped Blood, The Mutilator and Deadtime Stories were being advertised in the mainstream pages of The Times, The Daily News and The New York Post. With creepy, meticulously designed illustrations that threw subtlety out the window, and text that made outrageous claims far beyond the movies actual contents, these ads could make a minor piece of schlock look like the most elaborate exercise in terror. They caught the imagination of one horror fan, Michael Gingold, who began clipping promotions for My Bloody Valentine and the like, from his familys subscriptions as a junior high student in 1979. He collected them as a way to both celebrate and keep track of movement in the genre. He would continue to do so throughout the 80s. I was a die-hard collector, Gingold said in a phone interview. I wrote a list of every ad that I had in the order that I assembled them. I started building this chronological history of the horror films that opened, by the advertisements. Jackman, on the other hand, seems to have no obvious shortcomings: His offscreen persona is that of a happy husband to the Australian actress Deborra-lee Furness and a doting father to their teenagers, Oscar and Ava, who sings in the shower and makes his best decisions while tap dancing. On the day before his 50th birthday which he would celebrate with his wifes ricotta hot cakes before heading to the set of Bad Education, about an embezzlement scandal in a Long Island school district Jackman talked about politics and privacy, whats next for The Greatest Showman and why his life just keeps getting better. Here are edited excerpts from the conversation. What was it like being cast as Gary Hart? It produced a little anxiety in the right kind of way. I mean, nerve-racking for many reasons [Gary] is mysterious, hard to pin down, closed off. Even he said, People call me cold and aloof but if I start winning theyll call me enigmatic. Then of course Ive never played someone whos alive. But I feel very strongly that our stories are one of the most valuable things to people. How were seen in the world, potentially how were remembered. And I wanted him to know that I took that very seriously. Before Hart, presidents had affairs but the news media mostly left them alone. What changed? This was really a key turning point, particularly in the relationship between press and politicians, and also politics and personality. Once the private life became a really important indicator of character, and something that voters and press could latch onto to describe their worthiness to lead, then the floodgates opened. Its the most important job in the world, arguably, and you are making a decision about the character of someone in terms of what they say theyre going to do. For me, how they conduct their marriage is not that important. In 2017, with Logan, you retracted your Wolverine claws after 17 years, a decision which you credited to Jerry Seinfeld. When Glenn Rhee, the scrappy pizza deliveryman turned warrior on The Walking Dead, became another casualty of that AMC series, Steven Yeun, the actor who played him, already felt he had outgrown his character. But like Donnie Yen, Joan Chen and other Asian-American performers before him, he had to look outside Hollywood to find three-dimensional roles that defied stereotypes and caricatures. While The Walking Dead led to parts in provocative American indies like Sorry to Bother You and Mayhem, its in South Korea that he got a chance to collaborate with world-class auteurs on serious Palme dOr contenders. A case in point is Burning, the new film from Lee Chang-dong opening this week in the United States. The movie and Yeuns performance as Ben, the cosmopolitan rival of the country-bumpkin antihero earned rave reviews at the Cannes Film Festival in May, and the experience of working overseas made Yeun realize that he didnt feel exactly at ease in either the United States or South Korea. It really just makes you have to go inward and you can only be comfortable in your own skin, he said in an interview earlier this month when Burning played the New York Film Festival. Clad in a fitted black T-shirt, gray slacks and black boots, the 34-year-old Yeun was affable and engaging as he continued, You try to find yourself amidst all these labels that people are trying to place onto you. Youre just trying to find what it means to be you. And I think thats kind of what has been my goal the last couple of years. Suspiria would prove to be Argentos greatest artistic achievement, an influence on Halloween, A Nightmare on Elm Street and countless other horror movies. In addition to its aesthetics, the movie was also notable at the time because it tried to flip the traditional dynamic of violence in horror movies on its head. Where most such films exploited and victimized women, here women are committing the brutality. A lot of people would classify it as a misogynist film because of its violence against women, which I dont disagree with, said Alexandra West, co-host of the podcast The Faculty of Horror. What I think is interesting from a feminist lens is how off to the side all the male characters are. Ultimately it is women harming each other, saving each other, befriending each other and getting angry at each other. Guadagnino set his version in 1977 during that season of social tumult and radical feminism. Radio clips and newspapers refer to bombings and a Red Army Faction hostage episode. A muted palette draws on the influence of filmmakers like Rainer Werner Fassbinder. The score by Thom Yorke of Radiohead also plays off the period. The time of the original 1977 was very important in terms of revolt and affirmation and the feminist movement then was very strong, Guadagnino said. Within the movement they had differences with each other that were very interesting to explore, he added. I dont think female rage is exactly what I was looking for, its more a female community and like any community you have displays of power and every relationship of power can bring with it cruelty. Photos of the van showed that one of the stickers depicted a heroic Mr. Trump standing in front of flames and the American flag. Another was of Mrs. Clintons face in the cross hairs of a rifle scope. A third said: CNN Sucks. It struck me because of the crazy, conspiratorial stickers covering the windows, said David Cypkin, a documentary film producer who until recently lived in Aventura and often noticed the van. It was unsettling, and also it seemed to be occupied. Sometimes the door would be ajar or a window would be open, which indicated to me that maybe somebody was living in the van. The criminal complaint against Mr. Sayoc was filed in Federal District Court in Manhattan, where he will be prosecuted. Five of the bombs sent this week fall under the jurisdiction of federal prosecutors in Manhattan. Mr. Sayoc is expected to appear before a judge in Florida on Monday. A lawyer from the Federal Defenders office in Manhattan, Sarah Baumgartel, was assigned to represent him. We hope that he will be presented in court and brought to New York expeditiously so that the case can proceed, Ms. Baumgartel said. For months now, Mr. Trump has been attacking the F.B.I., ridiculing its officials and damaging morale at the bureau. The swift arrest on Friday was a public win for Mr. Wray, the F.B.I. director, and a reminder of his agencys effectiveness. Photo: Alaska Highway News Othman Hamden A British Columbia man has been deemed inadmissible to Canada for being a security risk based on his Facebook posts promoting terrorism in support of the Islamic State group. Othman Hamdan is a Jordanian national who was acquitted of terrorism-related charges by a B.C. Supreme Court judge in September 2017, but immigration authorities arrested him and determined at multiple detention reviews that he poses a danger to the public. Now, the Immigration and Refugee Board of Canada has decided Hamdan should be deported. The board says in its written decision that Hamdan made himself out to be a cheerleader for the Islamic State in many of his 85 Facebook posts as he glorified and encouraged lone wolf attacks in Canada, the United States and other western countries. The decision says Hamdan cast his activity on Facebook as an alternative news source, providing his followers with another view of events in the Middle East as he relayed the message of a terrorist organization. Hamdan was arrest in 2015 at his home in Fort St. John, where he moved years after studied electrical engineering in the United States. It should have been an easy swipe at an opponent. Keith H. Wofford, one of two black major-party candidates running for New York attorney general, used an appearance in Crown Heights, Brooklyn, to draw attention to a city program accused of mistakenly taking multimillion-dollar homes from mostly minority owners. We have a public advocate who lives somewhere nearby, says she is the peoples lawyer, and they are literally stealing millions of dollars in equity from elderly black homeowners and she says nothing, Mr. Wofford said of his opponent, Letitia James, the Democratic public advocate in New York City, who is favored to win on Nov. 6. But even though the underlying message may have been welcome, the messenger was not. Mr. Wofford is the Republican nominee, and in this part of New York City, that affiliation carries more weight than the color of Mr. Woffords skin or the tenor of his speech. No matter who wins the race between Mr. Wofford and Ms. James, who is also black, New York is poised to have its first black attorney general on Jan. 1, and black leaders across the country are celebrating the milestone. Good morning on this nebulous Friday. Perhaps you saw it this week at Columbus Circle or in Lower Manhattan, or on the television news. Its the truck with the big white sphere that has been collecting and carrying away the explosive devices that have been delivered in manila envelopes to critics of President Trump. But where does it go? And whats up with the globular container? The big white sphere is known as a Total Containment Vessel, or T.C.V. Explosives are loaded inside, usually with the help of robots, and driven to a location where they can be safely deactivated or blown up by a bomb squad. The explosives found at Columbus Circle and in TriBeCa this week were taken to a police facility in Rodmans Neck, a peninsula in the Bronx, according to the police. And while Tom Cat had no legal obligation to compensate the workers it could no longer employ, the company offered a severance package that included one weeks pay for every year of service, full salary for unused vacation and sick days and three months of continued health benefits. The labor union representing bakery workers stood in full support of Tom Cat. It is worth noting as well that the Park Slope Food Coop in Brooklyn, the citys reigning seat of ethical food consumption, looked into whether to continue carrying Tom Cat breads. After much research on the part of the coops general manager, Joe Holtz, it determined that Tom Cat had conducted itself decently enough. Still, a boycott was put up for a vote, and co-op members voted against it. One of the complaints that activists advanced was that the severance pay was not sufficiently generous. They also want Tom Cat to adopt guidelines established in part by the National Immigration Law Center directing businesses what to do when ICE intervenes in the workplace. But when Mr. Holtz sought to find out what companies followed these guidelines, he told me, he could not find any. The advocacy groups involved in designing them have no account of what businesses have voluntarily decided to use them either. The State of California has signed some of the recommended protections into law but the statute has been subject to legal challenge. Adopting the policies would be largely symbolic, and symbols can be meaningful. But even though the number of work-site immigration investigations has tripled over the past year (to just under 6,100), that figure still represents a tiny fraction of the millions of private-sector employers in the country. The chance of any one business receiving an ICE audit is minuscule; even the Immigration Law Center acknowledges that. Rage, though, has its own logic. The antipathy directed at Tom Cat would seem to implicate the larger furies around globalism; two years ago the company was acquired by a Japanese baking conglomerate worth billions of dollars. Even so, Tom Cat remained in Long Island City, a neighborhood near the universe of low-income people, many of them undocumented, it could employ. What this shows us is the extent to which protest can lose its power when it seems indiscriminate. There is a dissonance to opposing a relatively small New York City business, succeeding at a time when these businesses keep disappearing. The Emily group heeds a full roster of liberal values: it starts its dishwashers at $15 an hour, Mr. Hyland told me, and gives jobs to immigrants and sources its ingredients locally as much as possible. It even passes on a percentage of proceeds from its sale of ranch dressing to an animal rescue operation. I guess thats why she lost. She doesnt get it. She never did. I knew that a long time ago. Hillary never got it. Thats why she lost. Remarks at the White House, Oct. 9, 2018 Former President Barack Obama It did not start with Donald Trump. He is a symptom, not the cause. Hes just capitalizing on resentments that politicians have been fanning for years. Speech at the University of Illinois, Sept. 7, 2018 TRUMP SAID How low has President Obama gone to tapp my phones during the very sacred election process. This is Nixon/Watergate. Bad (or sick) guy! Twitter, March 7, 2017 John O. Brennan, former C.I.A. director The fact that hes using a security clearance of a former C.I.A. director as a pawn in his public relations strategy I think is just so reflective of somebody who, quite frankly, I don't want to use this term maybe, but he's drunk on power. He really is, and I think hes abusing the powers of that office. The Rachel Maddow Show, Aug. 17, 2018 When the full extent of your venality, moral turpitude, and political corruption becomes known, you will take your rightful place as a disgraced demagogue in the dustbin of history. You may scapegoat Andy McCabe, but you will not destroy America...America will triumph over you. Twitter, March 17, 2018 TRUMP SAID Has anyone looked at the mistakes that John Brennan made while serving as CIA Director? He will go down as easily the WORST in history & since getting out, he has become nothing less than a loudmouth, partisan, political hack who cannot be trusted with the secrets to our country! Twitter, Aug. 18. 2018 Representative Maxine Waters, a California Democrat We dont know what damage has been done to these children. All that we know is theyre in cages. Theyre in prisons. Theyre in jails. I dont care what they call it, thats where they are and Mr. President, we will see you every day, every hour of the day, everywhere that we are to let you know you cannot get away with this. Rally in Los Angeles, June 23 TRUMP SAID John Hickenlooper, the term-limited Democratic governor, told me that when he goes to the East Coast, I do feel like an outsider. The way we approach things here, its almost like were speaking a different language. In the West, I think there is an inclination, almost an instinct, to sit down with people you disagree with and sort of sort through as he did with the oil and gas industry to produce a rational energy policy, the nations first regulatory framework limiting future emissions. Might he, eyeing 2020, run for the Democratic Party nomination for president on this can-do, bridge-building platform? We are certainly looking at it, Hickenlooper said. We spent the summer talking to people that are really smart. Im preparing, but dont think Id make a decision probably until February. That sounds to me like a yes. A Hickenlooper candidacy would be interesting because theres no way to govern Colorado, as he has for eight years, without dealing with the way Trump has tapped into a deep-seated economic and cultural frustration. Trump support is no abstraction here, or cause for derision. Its a fact. Despite the strong economy, hardship is widespread. Wages have lagged. Some school districts, like Pueblo, have gone to a four-day week for lack of tax revenue. In rural areas, health insurance premiums have soared, sometimes 30 percent or more above Denver levels, because only one insurer remains. So people go without while others worry they will lose their Medicaid if they take a job. They clean bathrooms for billionaires in Telluride for a minimum wage. Just like the rest of the country, most people cant easily afford housing, cant easily afford health care, cant easily afford higher education or early childhood education; so another way of saying that is most of the people cannot afford a middle-class lifestyle, Senator Michael Bennet, a Democrat (whose brother happens to run the Times Opinion section), told me. The feeling of being left behind, forgotten or cheated by a rigged system in a country of sharpening inequality is Americas core dilemma. The question now is who will more effectively convince Americans that the American dream can be restored: Trump, with his unscrupulous rabble-rousing and America-first nationalism masking tax and other policies that favor the one percent, or a Democratic Party that rediscovers the ability to speak to small-town and blue-collar and barely middle-class America (like the teachers who went on strike in Colorado this year) in a way that does not sound patronizing? To the Editor: News that a suspect has been arrested in connection with the rash of explosive devices sent to critics of President Trump provides a collective sense of relief to the nation. But its likely that the relief will prove temporary if the president continues to use his office as a bully pulpit of division that spews hateful vitriol and conspiracy theories that prey on his supporters fears. History shows us that words have consequences. While its true that the segregationist Gov. George Wallace of Alabama never actually instructed anyone to plant bombs in churches, his divisive rhetoric was a wink and a nod to a small number of individuals who were not only consumed by hate, but also unhinged. Cody Lyon Brooklyn To the Editor: Re Pioneer of Court Calls for Comity in Face of Illness (front page, Oct. 24): Ill never forget the day Sandra Day OConnor called me. I was a young corporate lawyer dutifully sitting at my desk and had just pitched her an idea, by letter, for a new center for women judges that would help end violence against women. The phone rang and to my surprise I heard a no-nonsense voice: Is this Kim Azzarelli? Because this is Justice OConnor. And I think your idea is a fine one! Several months later, in 2009, with her support we launched the Avon Global Center for Women and Justice at Cornell Law School. Over the next decade, Justice OConnor went from being an icon the first woman on the Supreme Court, a model of intellectual rigor, unshakable fairness and strong character to a cherished mentor. I had the privilege of working with her on projects ranging from supporting women in the judiciary to iCivics, the digital civics-education games she created for children, to fostering civil discourse through the Sandra Day OConnor Institute. Along the way, Justice OConnor gave me advice on everything from how to fix Washington (less politics, more human relationships) to what to wear when I traveled (black pants, always). But two lessons I learned from her stand out above all. One was that a womans lens is critical to all areas of public life. The second was the importance of using ones power for purpose. To the Editor: Re What Is Turkeys Game? (editorial, Oct. 24): In terms of arresting journalists, Turkey has a far worse record than any other nation, including Saudi Arabia. An article on Al Bawaba, a Middle East news website, quotes an official of Human Rights Watch saying that Turkey is the world leader in jailing journalists, with around 170 reporters and media workers currently behind bars. It goes on to say, Journalists and activists Erdogan deems threatening are subject to physical and psychological torture for extended periods of time. So President Recep Tayyip Erdogans game is to distract from his own abuses to journalists. Perhaps we should take what Mr. Erdogan has to say on this subject with a grain of salt. Robert J. Firestone New York Richard Wright: I am a former lifelong Republican (became independent after Trumps nomination), a Burkean conservative reader of National Review and Commentary, and Ross, along with David Brooks, are two of my current ideological guideposts. I have already mailed in my [Florida] ballot in which I did exactly as Ross proposed: Dem for the House, Rep for the Senate, and a write in of Jeb Bush for Gov . since Gillum is too far to the left and Desantis is too much a Trump sycophant. Eric Morgan: I am a lifelong Republican, having voted with the party in every presidential election since the first Reagan term. I was never a [Bill] Clinton fan and in the current #metoo world we live in his legacy has not aged well in my opinion. So it was with a clothespin upon nose and a very heavy heart that I pulled the lever for Hillary in 2016. So, I count myself among the Never Trumpers who has taken the previously inconceivable action of voting for not only a Democrat but one of the most deeply flawed candidates in my lifetime. Here is the good news I live in Utah and will vote for Mitt Romney who has shown the courage to speak out against the most flawed President since Nixon. I hope he doesnt let us down. Lynn Schmidt: I am a Never Trump former Republican. I live in Missouri where we have Senator McCaskill running against Josh Hawley. Josh is a Trump lackey. I will be voting for and even have donated money to several Democratic campaigns. As a mother of a child with a disability, I got off the Trump bandwagon when he made fun of the reporter with a disability. I was a delegate to the 2012 RNC but would not even attend our state convention if that meant supporting Trump. I am no longer a Republican if the G.O.P . is the Party of Trump. I am disappointed every day by our president. There are currently no checks and balances. That is what I am voting for, checks and balances. For more on this topic, you can read some of the conservatives who have grown disillusioned with the Republican Party, including: Jay Caruso of The Dallas Morning News, writing a piece in The Atlantic called Im Not Leaving the Republican Party; The Washington Posts George Will urging Republicans to vote against their party; Mona Charen, about an on-stage encounter early this year; Max Boot, on quitting the G.O.P.; and Jonathan Chait on the importance of Boots attack on the party. When I interviewed members of the caravan here, many, including an 18-year-old student named Daniel Martinez, said they were running from criminals; in his case, gang members in San Pedro Sula demanded that he work for them. He knew that refusal would earn him a death sentence. Back in June, in the Mexican city of Tenosique, I met Francis Gusman, 32, who was disabled after being shot in the spine in the Honduran city of Yoro. Her husband and a friend had taken turns carrying her over 36 miles from the Guatemalan border to a shelter. She was in Tenosique with her 12-year-old son and 13-year-old niece, left orphaned when Ms. Gusmans sister was shot dead in February. These many individual tragedies are reflected in the surging numbers looking for refugee status in Mexico. Last year, there were more than 14,000 applications a sevenfold increase from the 2,000 in 20 14 . Some in the caravan say they want to stay in Mexico and seek refuge, while others say they want to go to the United States. People who flee poverty are considered economic migrants rather than refugees. However, in some parts of Latin America the economic pressures motivating people to move are extreme. In Honduras, about two-thirds of people live in poverty, which has been made worse by drought and political turmoil. In Venezuela, people have been forced to search in garbage for food. The desperation can be seen in the caravan among the families with small children sleeping in crowded plazas. People described to me how they simply saw news of the caravan on television and, within hours, decided to join it. Many are traveling with no possessions or money. Many are wearing clothes handed out on the way. Many dont know for sure where theyll end up, but are simply hoping for anywhere that can offer a better life. When it comes to the forces contributing to the refugee crisis, there are no easy solutions. Governments of the region should be meeting to discuss the refugee crisis with, or without, the United States. Aid needs to be channeled more effectively to actually reach the poor. There must be real efforts to stop the flow of guns to the gangs terrorizing communities. Mr. Trumps call to turn away from internationalism hasnt helped. But this is an issue that will go beyond his presidency. Unless the core problems are dealt with, the lines of people wading through border rivers could grow even longer. United Nations designated terrorist and 26/11 attacks mastermind Hafiz Saeed's Jamaat-ud-Dawa (JuD) and Falah-i-Insaniyat Foundation (FIF) are no longer mentioned in the list of banned outfits after a presidential ordinance that prohibited them under a UN resolution lapsed. In February, former Pakistan President Mamnoon Hussain promulgated an ordinance amending the Anti-Terrorism Act 1997, thereby banning terrorist individuals and organisations that were listed by the UN Security Council. The JuD and FIF were proscribed under this ordinance. According to a petition filed by Saeed, his counsel Raja Rizwan Abbasi and Sohail Warraich told the Islamabad High Court (IHC) on Thursday that the ordinance had lapsed and was never extended by the Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) government, The Dawn reported. The globally designated terrorist challenged the ordinance under which his organisations, the JuD and FIF, were blacklisted for being on the watch list of the UN Security Council. In his plea, Saeed had claimed that the ordinance issued was against the sovereignty and the Constitution of Pakistan. The counsel informed Justice Aamer Farooq of the IHC that the ordinance was neither extended by the current government nor it was tabled in the Pakistan Parliament to convert it into an act. Subsequently, the judge said that Saeed's plea was no longer effective as the ordinance was not extended by the government. The Pakistan government had banned terror organisations and individuals from making donations to JuD, FIF, and others on the UN Security Council sanctions list. The UNSC sanctions list includes the names of terror organisations such as al-Qaeda, Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan, Lashkar-e-Jhangvi, JuD, FIF, and Lashkar-e-Taiba. -ANI We are in a period of human history in which more people are on the run than ever before, according to the United Nations, with tens of millions of people displaced by conflict and instability worldwide. This mass migration is one of the biggest stories of our time, and our correspondents have been documenting it across the globe for years, traveling with Syrian families on the arduous trek through Europe, following Rohingya refugees as they escape Myanmar and even tracking down a distraught mother in a remote Senegalese village who lost multiple sons to the deadly crossing from Africa. In Latin America alone, we have written extensively about the exodus of Venezuelans trying to flee their countrys economic collapse, the rush of Cubans trying to leave the island before the chance slipped away, and the desperation of Haitians who wend their way across the hemisphere only to end up stranded in Mexico. A few years ago, our Mexico City bureau chief, Azam Ahmed, walked the dangerous migrant trail through Mexico himself to record what migrants faced along the route. Our stories on the latest migrant caravan are part of that continued coverage, and they will almost certainly not be the last. The journey north is so treacherous that migrants have increasingly decided to travel in large groups for safety, marking a potential shift in traditional migration patterns. Having our reporters, photographers and videographers on the ground with them enables us to give our readers a full, accurate sense of who these migrants are, and what is driving them to abandon their homes to risk such a difficult, potentially fruitless, journey. And, yes, President Trump is a big part of the equation. But that does not make the caravan any less of a story. It simply adds yet another powerful dynamic to an already newsworthy phenomenon. After all, Mr. Trumps immigration policies determine the fate of these migrants, and his repeated return to immigration as a campaign theme shapes the election debate. Less than a decade on, even early and midcareer artists are being lured by real estate developers to make art for public consumption and reach an audience they might never have been exposed to. Having art in the lobby can communicate that they are a company that cares about culture, Ms. Lamensdorf said. Ms. Lamensdorf recently asked the abstract painter Claudia Chaseling to produce a permanent piece for the lobby of her companys building at 55 Fifth Avenue, which opened Sept. 20. Ms. Chaseling, who is German, said she took on the unusual challenge with relish. A public building gives me an opportunity to be visible on a different level than a gallery space would, she said. In galleries, people come to see art; in public buildings you have a lot of passers-by who have no clue about art and I am all for as many people seeing my work as possible, and for everyone having their own perspective on it, she said. Her Radiationscape, a response to the Indian Point nuclear power plant, drips from 55 Fifth Avenues wall onto the lobby floor. True, the commission is not exactly what one would expect from either an avant-garde artist or a real estate developer. I dont consider my work with developers as compromising my artistic integrity at all, Ms. Chaseling added. Arsia Mons is 12 miles high and 270 miles wide, dwarfing Mauna Loa, Earths largest volcano, which is only 6.3 miles high and 75 miles wide, and mostly underwater. (Its not the biggest volcano on Mars, though. Thats Olympus Mons, which is more than 13 miles tall and the largest in the solar system.) Dr. Noe Dobrea said this was clearly not a volcanic event, because spacecraft would have detected a rise in methane, sulfur dioxide and other gases that spill out of eruptions. Instead, this is an example of how topography affects weather. Meteorologists even have a term to describe this phenomenon: orographic lifting. It happens on Earth a lot, Dr. Eldar Noe Dobrea said, mentioning storms that frequently break out in the Sierra Nevada mountains in California. The clouds form when water-laden air is pushed upward along a mountain. Cooler, thinner air cannot hold as much water, causing some of the moisture to condense and freeze, forming clouds. The air on Mars is much thinner than on Earth, but the rules of weather physics also apply there. SAN FRANCISCO Silicon Valley parents are increasingly obsessed with keeping their children away from screens. Even a little screen time can be so deeply addictive, some parents believe, that its best if a child neither touches nor sees any of these glittering rectangles. These particular parents, after all, deeply understand their allure. But its very hard for a working adult in the 21st century to live at home without looking at a phone. And so, as with many aspirations and ideals, its easier to hire someone to do this. Enter the Silicon Valley nanny, who each day returns to the time before screens. Usually a day consists of me being allowed to take them to the park, introduce them to card games, said Jordin Altmann, 24, a nanny in San Jose, of her charges. Board games are huge. Almost every parent I work for is very strong about the child not having any technical experience at all, Ms. Altmann said. In the last two years, its become a very big deal. SAN FRANCISCO Last year, when Facebook disclosed a sweeping, coordinated disinformation campaign carried out by Russian agents, the company presented the first evidence of a new kind of information warfare. Now mischief makers in other countries appear to be following the Russian playbook. Facebook said on Friday that it had identified and removed a new influence network that had originated in Iran. It was the second time this year that a disinformation effort targeting people in the United States and Britain had been tied to Iranians. The company took down more than 82 pages, groups and accounts, including 30 Facebook pages, 33 Instagram accounts and three Facebook groups, it said. About one million users in the United States and Britain followed those accounts. The latest disinformation campaign, which Facebook said was discovered last week, was much smaller than the Russia-linked information operations before and after the 2016 presidential election. Back then, millions of Facebook and Instagram users viewed divisive ads and disinformation that investigators say were created with the aim of widening political and social divisions among Americans. When billboards appeared across the country last summer, showing a smiling Mr. Soros with the line, Dont let Soros have the last laugh, anti-Semitic graffiti soon appeared on many of them. Andras Heisler, leader of the Federation of Hungarian Jewish Communities, addressed an open letter to Mr. Orban at the time: This campaign, while not openly anti-Semitic, clearly has the potential to ignite uncontrolled emotions, including anti-Semitism, he wrote, calling for an end to this bad dream. In a phone interview this week, Mr. Heisler said that there was more public animosity in Hungary toward the Roma minority and refugees than toward Jews. But, he said, our historical experiences suggest that it is never good to have strong hatred in a country. As the audience entered the venue for The Chosen Ones, the director and some assistants greeted them from a stand, like agents conducting a survey. They sized up each person and categorized them in groups including cultural Jew, Soros Jew or self-hating Jew labels taken from public speech and online forums in Hungary. Later, a young woman performed a musical litany of hate against everyone, across the whole political and social spectrum. Doesnt matter why, doesnt matter who, everyones a filthy something, she sang. Political cabaret is a popular genre in Hungary with a long tradition that survived through the countrys Communist dictatorship. Some characters in The Chosen Ones suggest real-life figures one is the prime minister, for example others bring to mind archetypes, such as liberal protester. Mr. Borgula said the anti-Semitic slurs heard onstage fly around in public life so much that we need to talk about them, adding, This is therapy, we need to laugh at it. And plays that deal with current events are more popular with audiences than other productions in Golem Theaters repertoire, he said. When she moved from India to England in 1991, Asma Khan studied British constitutional law but she could barely boil an egg. I struggled a lot because I didnt know how to cook, she said. England was a foreign land. Nothing was in my control. But I realized I could infuse my house with the aromas of home. For two summers she returned to India to learn the recipes of her mother and grandmother. And with her new skill, came a vision: Every time I slept at night, I dreamed I was feeding people, she said. Last June, Ms. Khans dream became a reality when she opened Darjeeling Express, a bright and cheerful restaurant on Carnaby Street in Londons Soho district. Hanging plants, pendant lamps and blue and white walls create a welcoming atmosphere. The restaurants name harkens to Ms. Khans best childhood memories, a homage to the train she once took to her familys summer home. Its menu honors her experiences as an immigrant and daughter, influenced by her familys Mughali and Nawabi recipes, the flavors of Kolkata (where she was born and raised), and local produce. Humble British vegetables shine in dishes like the beetroot chop, a croquette of mashed beets that balances spice and earthy sweetness. Beets also lend their rich color and flavor to raita, staining the cooling yogurt sauce bright pink. A pile of tender baby eggplants hummed with the striking flavors of peanut and coconut. Kolkatas street food inspired a first course of puchkas, delicate wheat and semolina shells stuffed with a mixture of spiced potatoes and chickpeas that require a two-step eating process: pour a dash of tamarind water into the shell, and then pop the whole thing in your mouth for an explosive bite of crunch, tang, and spice. Tangra chili-garlic prawns blended heat, browned garlic, and the sassy succulence of perfectly cooked shellfish. Debra Messing has starred in television shows and movies for decades, but the actress is best known for playing Grace Adler in Will and Grace, which ran on NBC from 1998 to 2006 and which the network brought back to TV screens last year. The sitcoms new season had its premiere on Oct. 4. Ms. Messing, who won an Emmy for her performance in 2003, travels frequently for pleasure, but most of her overseas trips are for her work as a global ambassador for HIV-AIDS awareness for Population Services International, an NGO. Ive traveled with them to Malawi, Zimbabwe, Zambia, and I fell in love with the continent, she says. The travel isnt glamorous it requires visiting the doctors involved in piloting projects to prevent and eradicate AIDS, as well as meeting local, state and health officials and involves, as Ms. Messing says, a lot of long drives in vans. Were going to the places where people dont have easy access to a testing facility, or a treatment center, or a place where they can get circumcised or get counseling. Its very, very hot and its a lot of bumpy terrain, but its also exquisitely beautiful and the people are just magnificent. When she does take a vacation, she doesnt usually get too active. Oh no no no no no no. I am lying by the pool, and going to the spa, and having body scrubs and massages. But her preference is usually to go back to Africa. On some level, I feel most fundamentally myself on the continent of Africa, she says. It really is the place that, if I have any time, thats where I want to go. Heres what she packs on every trip. Camera For this last trip [on safari in Kenya] I was with my son and we were traveling on little tiny prop planes, where theres a weight maximum. So I bought a Sony RX10 IV which is a very compact, really, great camera for all the animal encounters that we went on. AVENTURA, Fla. On Twitter, Cesar Sayoc Jr. lashed out at immigrants, gun control advocates, and prominent Democratic politicians. On Facebook, he misspelled a racial epithet, directing it at the likes of Oprah Winfrey and former President Barack Obama. With fury in his fingers, he shared inflammatory news stories from Breitbart, hard-edge videos from Fox News, and angry posts from pages like Handcuffs for Hillary. He tweeted a threat to former Vice President Joe Biden. And he posted photographs of himself wearing a red Make America Great Again hat at one of President Trumps campaign rallies. After a frenzied nationwide search for the person who sent 13 makeshift bombs to some of Mr. Trumps most prominent critics, Mr. Sayoc, 56, was arrested Friday morning in Plantation, Fla., at an AutoZone car parts shop. Authorities released a photograph of a man with a buzz cut and a mouth that drooped toward a frown. They hauled away a white van plastered with bombastic stickers expressing support for Mr. Trump and animosity toward those who clashed with him. Dishonest Media, read one on the vans back right window. CNN Sucks. Cross hairs appeared on a photograph of one of the liberal commentators at the network, which received more than one package from Mr. Sayoc at its offices in New York. Mourners flocked to his funeral in Casper, Wyo., but so did protesters carrying derogatory signs. His parents wrestled with a location for a burial after that, fearing it would be at risk of desecration. The family had considered other options, including spreading his ashes over the mountains and plains of Wyoming. But they settled on the cathedral because they wanted a place they could visit to talk to him. And that is what his father during his speech on Friday encouraged others to do. Matt was blind just like this beautiful house of worship, Dennis Shepard said. He did not see skin color. He did not see religion. He did not see sexual orientation. All he saw was a chance to have another friend. Just like this beautiful home we have here right now. He thanked those gathering for helping us take Matt home. Mr. Shepard and others who addressed the congregation emphasized that the cathedral was an inclusive, accepting place, whether they were religious or not, and regardless of their sexual orientation. Rev. V. Gene Robinson, who became the first openly gay bishop in the Episcopal Church in 2003 but has since retired, gave the homily. If you close your eyes and open your hearts, Matt is right here, he said. Then later, weeping, he said there were three things he wanted to say to Matthew: Gently rest in this place. You are safe now. Oh yeah, and Matt, welcome home. Amen. Bishop Robinson had been working with Mr. Shepards parents on issues affecting lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender people for years. When Judy Shepard asked him about the possibility of interring her sons ashes at the cathedral, he said, he helped to make it happen. The Republican committees included in this tally are the Republican National Committee, the partys two congressional campaign arms the National Republican Senatorial Committee and the National Republican Congressional Committee as well as the super PAC focused on the partys House candidates, the Congressional Leadership Fund, and the one helping its Senate candidates, the Senate Leadership Fund. The Democratic committees included in this analysis are the Democratic National Committee, the partys two congressional campaign arms the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee and the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee as well as the super PAC focused on the partys House candidates, House Majority PAC, and the one helping its Senate candidates, Senate Majority PAC. President Trump is powering Republican fund-raising Mr. Trumps campaign was not required to file a finance report on Thursday, because he is not up for election next month. But his fund-raising appeal trickled down to other committees that are directly involved in the midterms. His campaign committees, which have raised a remarkable $106 million since his election, have transferred more than $22 million to the Republican National Committee, or R.N.C., over the course of the election cycle, according to the filings. And Mr. Trumps campaign said it transferred another $3 million to the R.N.C. this week, which is not reflected in the filings, and planned to begin a $6 million television and digital midterm advertising campaign on Monday that will run through Election Day. The R.N.C., in turn, has transferred nearly $10 million to the partys congressional campaign arms, the National Republican Congressional Committee and the National Republican Senatorial Committee, according to Thursdays filings. That doesnt include another $3.5 million it reportedly transferred to each committee this month. By contrast, the Democratic National Committee, which has lagged significantly behind the R.N.C. in fund-raising, has transferred only $2.4 million to the partys House campaign arm, the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, most of which came this month. Welcome to The Tip Sheet, a daily political analysis of the 2018 elections, based on interviews with Republican and Democratic officials, pollsters, strategists and voters. Where things stand The United States economy rose at a 3.5 percent annualized rate in the third quarter, the government announced Friday, outpacing expectations and providing the presidents party with a potential boost just ahead of the midterms. The nations financial performance under Mr. Trump has been perhaps the strongest argument in favor of Republican success this fall, and the numbers can only help. On the other hand, Mr. Trumps relatively low approval ratings have persisted through a humming economy since the start of his presidency, so its possible the latest news will change few minds. With officials in both parties seeing Democrats holding an edge in the race for the House, Republicans are spending more money than theyd like defending open seats that were once reliably red. There are limits to that process, but Republicans myriad efforts to repeal the Affordable Care Act provide a guide. The bill, which ultimately failed, would have turned Medicaid, the health care program for the poor, into block grants to the states while slowly rolling back its expansion under the Affordable Care Act and squeezing overall spending on the program. Last year when we were taking a run at repealing Obamacare, there was a very serious effort to reform Medicaid, said Senator Patrick J. Toomey, Republican of Pennsylvania. We got close to uniting Republican senators on the idea that not only do we need to change the architecture of the program but also long-term growth of the program. This would be their easiest play, especially if the Republican majority expands in the Senate. If Republicans keep the House, I have no doubt they will redouble their efforts to repeal the Affordable Care Act and slash funding, said Representative Frank Pallone Jr. of New Jersey, the highest-ranking Democrat on the Energy and Commerce Committee, which oversees the program, in an email. Indeed, if Republicans keep control of Congress, they might view this as a mandate from voters. Social Security is probably, but not entirely, secure Republicans have long toyed with the notion of allowing some private investments in Social Security, but there has been no serious legislative attempt since President George W. Bush was smacked down when he tried to change the program in 2005. President Barack Obama offered some cuts in Social Security in exchange for new revenues in the grand bargain he pursued with the House speaker at the time, John Boehner, toward the end of both of their terms. But House Republicans rejected that notion, and it collapsed under the weight of partisan brawls. Further, the retirement program is generally considered less of a threat to fiscal solvency than Medicare since its outlays are not expanding as fast as the health programs. [Read more about campaign pledges regarding Social Security.] And given the political polarization, Democrats and Republicans are unlikely to agree on a plan to overhaul the program, which would be necessary for any major changes. Welcome to The New York Timess international election newsletter, where Sarah Lyall tries to explain the U.S. midterm elections to readers outside the United States (and perhaps to herself). Eleven days to go. [To receive this newsletter in your inbox, subscribe here.] Mikie Sherrill, a former Navy helicopter pilot and federal prosecutor running for Congress in New Jersey, appeared at a campaign event this week and said that it is an urgent time to be a woman candidate. A lot of us women thought that by taking nontraditional jobs, or working really hard in our careers, we were making the world a better place for our kids and breaking through our own glass ceilings, she said in a church hall in a town called Nutley. And yet we realized when we saw the attacks on women, and how womens voices are silenced when theyre talking about sexual violence, we need to do more, she went on. We need to have a seat at the table legislatively. But the bigger issue there seems to be homelessness and the conditions that can lead to it. Here in Anaheim, what to do about the homeless encamped along the Santa Ana River, in our parks, and in our freeway verges has been a very hot topic for a couple of years, getting hotter all the time, wrote Julia Schroter. Emily Wheeler, in Oakland, said, the homelessness crisis is being fueled by the housing affordability crisis around 60 percent of the citys homeless population had previously lived in homes in the area for over 10 years, according to the San Francisco Chronicle. The issue is on the ballot statewide with Proposition 10, and in the city with measures W and Y. Income inequality was a topic across the country. We have a huge income gap in New Orleans, wrote Amy Knoll. For a town that relies on tourism, theyve discovered that if the workers cant live close to their jobs, there is no one to serve the people they give their amenities to. In northeast Ohio, the dominant issue is the opioid crisis, said Priscilla R. Smith. The state had the second-highest overdose rate in the country, behind only West Virginia, according to the Centers for Disease Control. In Massachusetts, the opioid crisis is playing out through a fight over a new bridge. Boston wants to build a bridge to an island that houses a now-dormant addiction center. But that bridge would have to run through the town of Quincy which is opposing it. You can just imagine the traffic headaches, right? wrote Claire Goodwin. Well, the story is a major headache for the area, with all sorts of implications for wellness treatment and quality of life for the addicts and the Quincy residents. Bridges were a worry, too, for those of you concerned about infrastructure development. Here in Mississippi, its all about infrastructure, wrote David McDowell. It needs to be fixed and quickly. Its the one thing we can all agree. We cant, however, always agree about how to pay for it. Last year, the Federal Highway Administration determined that hundreds of the states bridges were unsafe for travel, according to Mississippi Today. Good Friday morning. Here are some of the stories making news in Washington and politics today. _____________________ At least nine bombs addressed to prominent critics of President Trump have been found, with the latest sent to former Vice President Joe Biden and the actor Robert De Niro. Officials said several of the bombs may have been mailed from Florida. Here are the latest updates. After the bomb scares, Mr. Trump called for national unity briefly then returned to an attack on the fake news. Read the story. Mr. Trump will order roughly 800 United States Army troops to the southern border as he warns about a migrant onslaught. Read about the effort to block immigrants from entering the country. Though polls show Ms. Abrams and Mr. Kemp in a very tight race, she has some odds to beat, and not just the odds of being a black female Democrat running for statewide office. In 2016, President Trump won 51 percent of the Georgia vote to Hillary Clintons 45.9 percent. Mr. Kemp, who has been accused of overseeing voter suppression as secretary of state, is running a Trumpian campaign full of conservative appeals on issues like immigration and tax cuts that animate the presidents base. In recent weeks, Mr. Kemp has worked to soften his image, but one campaign ad this summer depicts him revving up a chain saw, posing with his firearms collection and showing off his pickup truck. I got a big truck, he drawls, slamming the drivers side door, just in case I need to round up criminal illegals and take em home myself. Both candidates are running hard on job creation and pro-business policies. This summer Ms. Abrams visited every one of Georgias 159 counties, many of them in deeply Republican areas, with the same wonkish, detail-obsessed message delivered in the same rapid-fire cadences: Georgia needs more jobs, more public transportation, better infrastructure, better rural health care. It needs gun control. It needs to allow its citizens to vote. It does not need a religious freedom law, championed by Mr. Kemp, that Ms. Abrams says would protect one group while discriminating against others. This race is also about race. How could it not be, given who she is, where she is from, and the state she hopes to lead? She has declared that the massive pro-Confederate carving at Stone Mountain, just east of Atlanta, should be taken down, just as the Confederate imagery on the old state flag had to go. But she is much more likely to discuss her desire to expand Medicaid under the Affordable Care Act a liberal idea, but one she believes will resonate across racial and party lines in a state with an acute rural health care crisis. If Medicaid expansion was embraced by Indiana under then-Gov. Mike Pence, she likes to say, why shouldnt it be embraced by Georgia? Still, in considering the strategy, Mr. Trump appeared to be betting that the political impact would be more immediate. He has called the caravan a blessing in disguise for Republicans in the run-up to the Nov. 6 midterms, as he seeks to demonize its participants and tie them to Democrats and to progressive groups. This is much more about the optics before the election than the legality of the presidents action, said Jennifer Quigley, a refugee specialist at Human Rights First. The caravan represents such a minuscule number of people coming toward our border that it just strains credulity to say that this is a national emergency that demands immediate action. The distinction could be important because the strategy the president is weighing involves circumventing the normal federal rule-making process to impose an immediate change to the rules governing asylum claims, something that can be done only when the government has good cause, such as a national emergency, to do so. Under the plan, which is still under discussion and could change, the Homeland Security and Justice Departments would jointly issue new rules that would disqualify migrants who cross the border in between ports of entry from claiming asylum, according to people familiar with the discussions but who were not authorized to discuss the planning. Exceptions would be made for people facing torture at home. Mr. Trump would then invoke broad presidential powers to bar foreigners from entering the country for national security reasons under the same section of immigration law that underpinned the travel ban to issue a proclamation blocking migrants from crossing the southern border, according to the plans under discussion. It was not clear how broad the directive would be, including whether it would apply only to people from certain countries or those arriving within a certain period of time. Gender Letter helps you keep up with the world and the women and issues shaping it. Tell me what you think at dearmaya@nytimes.com. On a panel of L.G.B.T.Q. journalists a couple of weeks ago, I was asked what news organizations were missing in our coverage of issues affecting this segment of the population. For me, the answer was easy: Americans deserve a wider and more thorough examination of local and state legislation that relates to gender identity and sexual orientation. The Human Rights Campaign, which advocates protections of L.G.B.T.Q. people, tracked 129 bills introduced across 30 states last year that it described as anti-L.G.B.T.Q. And that was before new reports this week that the Trump administration is moving to roll back protections for transgender Americans, possibly legally invalidating their existence by narrowly defining gender as based on sex assignment at birth. About 1.4 million Americans consider themselves transgender, according to a 2016 analysis of federal and state data. The challenge originated in Russia and has spread throughout Asia, especially in China, where thousands of people have participated on Weibo, a popular social network. Even rigid government departments have joined in. The Consular Protection Center of Chinas Ministry of Foreign Affairs posted a photo that showed a worker falling into a pile of paper. A police school photographed a fallen officer surrounded by bullets. The Peoples Daily, the main news outlet of Chinas ruling Communist Party, chose not to condemn the meme, as it has others. While it didnt approve of flaunting wealth, those participating in more creative versions have been busy with life, but there is no shortage of hard work; there is also an interesting soul behind the serious face, the paper wrote in an editorial. It called the meme an internet craze with positive energy, a favorite catchphrase of the Communist Party. The challenge has spread beyond Russia and China, with tens of thousands of posts from various countries appearing on Instagram. (Russia is also responsible for the recent addition of the Skibidi Challenge to the internets consciousness, but well leave that for another day.) NEW DELHI As India grapples with questions of how much government institutions should be involved in religious affairs, a violent war of wills playing out over womens access to one of Hinduisms most important temples has led to the arrest of more than 2,000 people this past week, the police said on Friday. After Indias Supreme Court struck down a 1991 ban that forbade women of childbearing age to pray at the Sabarimala Temple, a centuries-old hillside shrine in the southern state of Kerala, it did not take long for protesters to set vehicles on fire, pummel the police and attack women who tried to hike up a three-mile trail to reach the temple. Thousands of furious devotees many of them women have vowed to resist the courts verdict, saying it would chip away at years of tradition. In recent days, leaders of Prime Minister Narendra Modis governing party, the Bharatiya Janata Party, and another powerful rival party, the Indian National Congress, which has traditionally extended rights to minorities, have sided with proponents of the ban. BEIJING It has been eight years since China overtook Japan as the worlds second-largest economy. Yet the Japanese government continued to provide China with development assistance usually reserved for poorer countries. Until now. In Beijing for the first official visit by a Japanese leader since 2011, Prime Minister Shinzo Abe acknowledged Chinas economic dominance by announcing an end to the aid. Instead, he pledged to forge deeper economic and political cooperation, in what is widely seen as a hedge against the volatile, America-first policies of President Trump. The announcement coupled with new cooperation agreements Mr. Abe signed on Friday with his Chinese counterpart, Li Keqiang signaled a significant shift in a relationship that has been haunted by war and occupation and is still strained by territorial disputes and other issues, which, publicly at least, have receded into the background. The subtext to the budding detente was Mr. Trump, whose go-it-alone approach to foreign relations has pushed the two historic rivals closer together. ISLAMABAD, Pakistan Sri Lanka plunged into a constitutional crisis Friday after the president ousted the prime minister, a move that took the nation by surprise and was denounced as illegal by some government ministers. Sri Lankans were glued to their television sets Friday after President Maithripala Sirisena dismissed Prime Minister Ranil Wickremesinghe and replaced him with Mahinda Rajapaksa, a popular former leader who was accused of human rights abuses, brazen nepotism and excessively close ties to China when he governed the country. The swearing-in ceremony, broadcast live, was a moment of high political drama for Sri Lanka, with Mr. Rajapaksa grinning as he shook Mr. Sirisenas hand. The men were former political allies until the president broke away from Mr. Rajapaksas party to unseat him in 2015. Fireworks and celebrations broke out across Sri Lanka after the swearing in ceremony, but the capital, Colombo, was uneasy as some cabinet ministers declared the move unconstitutional. Mr. Rajapaksa was sworn in at about 7 p.m. as representatives of the navy, air force and army watched in a stately room inside the presidential secretariat. Now, the United Nations Committee Against Torture has agreed to hear Mrs. Coppins accusations of systematic human rights violations in the industrial school and the Magdalene laundries, where she spent five years. This time, in what amounts to a test case for all survivors of the laundries, the main target of her complaint will not be the nuns but Ireland itself. She is arguing that despite having paid roughly $30 million to 696 women who survived the laundries, including $63,000 to her, the Irish state has never admitted its role in supporting the laundries. Yet, according to an official report in 2013, thousands of inmates of industrial schools, including Mrs. Coppin, were sent to laundries directly from state care. Those who escaped were often returned by the police. Nevertheless, the state refuses to admit any liability for their treatment, or to agree to calls for a full inquiry or truth commission. The religious orders that ran the laundries have neither contributed money for compensation nor admitted to any human rights violations. Born in May 1949 in Kerrys county home essentially, a workhouse to an 18-year-old unmarried mother, Mrs. Coppin never knew her birth father. Her stepfather beat her so savagely that she was placed at age 2 with the Sisters of Mercy in the Nazareth House industrial school in Tralee. There, she told the police in her initial complaint, the abuse continued. She said that one particularly sadistic nun, whom she named, would regularly strip her and beat her buttocks with a strap until she was welted and bruised. Sometimes the nun would grab her by the hair and swing her around the room. The nuns regularly starved her, locked her in cupboards and kept her out of school to do heavy housework. When the little girl wet herself she would be forced to wear her soiled clothes on her head. At the age of 12 or 13 she tried to kill herself by setting fire to her clothes. Although she was severely burned, she was denied medical treatment, and received not even an aspirin, she said. Her chief abuser would taunt her as she cried out in pain. FULDA, Germany It is telling of the flagging strength of Chancellor Angela Merkel of Germany that when she showed up this week to lend support to her party in Hesse before bellwether elections on Sunday, she all but urged voters not to consider her. If people say, Merkel was there; did you tell her that things cant continue the way they are in Berlin? I would say I know that already, the chancellor told a crowd in Fulda, a town of some 65,000 people, asking them to focus on local issues instead. With that backhanded endorsement, the chancellor seemed to acknowledge that her partys biggest problem before Sundays vote may be the chancellor herself, deepening speculation about how much longer she can survive politically. Just two weeks ago, balloting in the southern state of Bavaria saw support crater for Ms. Merkels conservative allies, which was bad enough. But in Hesse, Ms. Merkels own Christian Democratic party is in the race, and a similar outcome could even precipitate the end of Ms. Merkels reign, political analysts say. DUBLIN As an academic, poet, intellectual, committed socialist and famously pause-averse public speaker, Irelands president, Michael D. Higgins, is far from your typical crowd-pleasing candidate. Yet as voting closed in Irelands presidential election last night he was expected to easily win a second term as Irelands head of state, taking as many as twice as many votes as the other five candidates combined. Irish voters were also asked to decide whether to remove a constitutional clause banning blasphemy. Having recently approved far more divisive measures allowing same-sex marriage and abortion, they were expected to approve the proposal by a wide margin. Although no one has ever been prosecuted for blasphemy in modern Ireland, rights groups like Amnesty International say the existence of the ban has been used by governments like those of Pakistan and Saudi Arabia to argue in support of their own repressive regimes in various international forums. BRUSSELS Just a few years ago, the European Union faced down a populist Greek government whose debts threatened the common currency, the euro, and the very integrity of the bloc. But if the European Union thought the problem was behind it, it is now back and bigger and more dangerous than ever in Italy, whose populist government is also insisting on breaching bloc rules for fiscal discipline in order to keep faith with its voters. The European Union rejected Italys draft 2019 budget this week and demanded revisions; Italian leaders, like the Greeks before them, say that they will ignore those demands. This clash between an elected government that ran on increasing public spending and the technocrats of Brussels encapsulates the dilemma at the heart of the European Union its democratic deficit as it tries to manage a currency shared by differing sovereign states without a common budget or finance minister. LONDON Britains home secretary has apologized to hundreds of immigrants who were illegally forced to provide DNA samples as part of a visa application process to settle in the country. In a speech to Parliament on Thursday, the home secretary, Sajid Javid, said that an internal review had found that more than 400 immigrants including relatives of Gurkha soldiers and of Afghan nationals who had served the British government were sent letters demanding DNA tests to prove they were related to British citizens. Those seeking visas to remain in Britain on the basis of a family relationship can choose to provide DNA evidence to support their application, but the provision is not mandatory by law. At the end of June, we became aware of some immigration cases where the provision of DNA evidence had been made a requirement, and it was not simply a request, Mr. Javid said. VATICAN CITY Two modern-day American suffragists had a plan. During this months Synod of Bishops, an international gathering at the Vatican, Deborah Rose-Milavec and Kate McElwee, who lead groups dedicated to advancing women in leadership roles in the Roman Catholic Church, made sure that Cardinal Lorenzo Baldisseri, the synods general secretary, was presented with a hefty pink folder. Inside was a petition with more than 9,000 signatures and one specific request: Allow female religious superiors at the synod to vote as equals alongside their Brothers in Christ. The petitions request, said Ms. Rose-Milavec, the executive director of Future Church and Ms. McElwee, who holds the same post at the Womens Ordination Conference, was a minor volley in what has seemed to be an insurmountable battle to get the male-centric Catholic Church to pay serious attention to women, who represent about half the worlds 1.3 billion Catholics but count for little where it matters. Vatican synods are held every few years. Women have emerged as a major concern of this one, which opened earlier this month and focuses on how the church can better minister to todays youth in an era of emptying pews. JERUSALEM Grief at the death of 21 people, mostly schoolchildren, in a flash flood near the Dead Sea in Jordan turned to anger on Friday as the Jordanian government said that the school that organized the trip may not have had the proper permits. The middle-school students, from a private school in Amman, the capital, were visiting hot springs on Thursday when rain storms unleashed floods that swept them into a valley. The Jordanian Civil Defense Directorate said in a statement on Friday that paramedics had treated 35 people who had been injured in the flood and that rescuers were continuing to search for a number of missing people. ISTANBUL President Recep Tayyip Erdogan said Friday that Turkey had uncovered further evidence in the killing of the Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi, pressing Saudi Arabia to reveal who gave the orders and demanding that its leaders explain what happened to Mr. Khashoggis body. There is more information, Mr. Erdogan said at a gathering in the capital, Ankara, and suggested he might make more evidence public in the future. But beyond all else, who gave the order? Turkeys chief prosecutor officially asked Saudi Arabia to extradite 18 Saudis to Turkey to face charges of deliberate murder in the death of Mr. Khashoggi, Turkish media reported on Friday. Mr. Khashoggis Turkish fiancee, Hatice Cengiz, said in a television interview on Friday that he had been relaxed and hopeful when he entered the Saudi Consulate in Istanbul on Oct. 2 to pick up a document that would allow them to marry. He was killed inside the consulate by a team of men from Saudi Arabia. In another example, Toyota, the maker of the Prius, has sold bonds whose proceeds were used to promote its hybrid technology. Here are three ways to consider climate change as a criterion for making investments: Tap public markets for green investing Investing in publicly traded equity and debt is an easy way to express a view on climate change. And their availability, along with the increasing number and size of mutual funds with a focus on the environment, offer plenty of choices. Yet these investments, like any other, carry risk. You still have to do your homework, said Lloyd Kurtz, head of social impact investing for Wells Fargo Private Bank. If you buy an expensive stock with bad fundamentals, it could be green but its still going to perform badly. That was the case with many early solar investments and the selections that early green energy funds made, Mr. Kurtz said. But he said the case for renewable energy had been bolstered by companies, like Apple and Google, that adopted these sources to power their operations in the United States. The debt market has developed to a level that there are offerings for retail investors. Louise Herrle, managing director and head of socially responsible investing at Incapital, which underwrites bond offerings, said she had seen an increased interest from baby boomers who want a portfolio aligned with their values. This could mean offerings from the World Bank to fund water projects or bonds like the one from Toyota. Retail is going to drive this, she said. They want to put their money where their mouth is. People are talking about the financial return and the social return. Seek companies expanding responsible business Constructing sustainable buildings is a major source of green investment, as are wind farms and solar arrays. But there are plenty of companies in a middle ground, working to retrofit buildings or using alternative energy to add to existing power sources. Leon Neal/Getty Images(NEW YORK) -- In Darwinian fashion, some online trolls and bots have evolved into more sophisticated, stealthy threats that social media companies and security researchers are finding more difficult to spot, according to a top Facebook security official and several information operations experts. While algorithms and human investigators catch millions of inauthentic social media accounts every day, more sophisticated actors constantly alter their schemes in an attempt to duck the newest security innovations. Its a cat-and-mouse game playing out behind our digital screens that information operations expert Renee DiResta, director of research at the Austin, Texas-based cybersecurity firm New Knowledge, doesnt see stopping anytime soon. So now the people at the first line of defense are the people at the tech platforms and what theyre going to find is as they change the state of play, as they change the rules a little bit, the adversary is going to evolve and respond, said DiResta. This is going to be an arms race thats going to play out kind of for the indefinite future. Ben Nimmo, an information defense fellow at the Atlantic Councils Digital Forensic Research Lab, said that two years ago Russian trolls, in particular, on social media were getting away with everything but those days are really over. So youve got trolls really trying to hide. Facebook cybersecurity policy chief Nathaniel Gleicher said Facebook, which has partnered with the Atlantic Council to help identify disinformation, has seen trolls use virtual private networks, or VPNs, which help obscure their physical location, or link accounts to international cell phone numbers that better match the accounts purported location. The longer an actor has been in a space, the more sophisticated they get, Gleicher said of Russian trolls in particular. Though other trolls are also evolving, researchers have paid particular attention to those suspected to come from Russia in the wake of revelations about the purported Moscow-directed online influence operation ahead of the 2016 presidential election. Suspected Russian-linked accounts have also put more effort into appearing legitimate by creating more involved backstories for the different personas they use, according to Lee Foster, manager of information operations intelligence analysis at the cybersecurity firm FireEye. Foster said suspected trolls appear to be trying to disguise the spread of propaganda through proxies, amplifying legitimate American commentators who make statements in line with the trolls goals. Gleicher said it works the opposite way as well, when foreign inauthentic accounts seed memes or discussion points online and just wait for real Americans to pick them up and spread them on their own. In court papers filed on Friday, for example, the Department of Justice described how an alleged Russian troll disguised as an American created a Facebook page to sow divisiveness and then encouraged real American users to populate the page and spread the content, which focused on the hot-button issue of immigration. The DOJ also said Russian trolls on Twitter pretended to be Americans and posted or retweeted divisive content, gaining thousands of followers many real Americans presumably among them -- in the process. The Russian government has dismissed the influence operation accusations. The intentional mixing of legitimate speech online and foreign influence operations presents a new challenge for Facebook, and Gleicher said the company is fighting back by either targeting the inauthentic behavior or the misinformation content itself, depending on the situation. But at the end of the day, he said, How do you disentangle that sort of thing? On Twitter, where automated accounts known as bots are more of an issue than on Facebook, Nimmo has seen a marked difference in the way bot networks operate compared to how they operated before the Twitter crackdown that followed the 2016 election, as shown in a mountain of data recently released by the social media giant. Previously, networks of automated accounts would reuse profile photos, hardly bother to meaningfully change the profile names and rapidly post with inhuman timing similar to a firearms-themed suspected bot network that ABC News discovered in August that was quickly taken down. Now, the networks tend to be smaller, Nimmo said, and the accounts are more realistic-looking with posts that appear to be human-like, all in the hopes of ducking Twitters detection algorithms. Twitters head of site integrity, Yoel Roth, told ABC News in a statement, Since 2016, weve been learning and refining our approach to new threats and challenges. Weve expanded our policies, built our internal tooling, and tightened our enforcement against coordinated platform manipulation, including bot networks regardless of origin. Our goal is to try and stay one step ahead in the face of new challenges going forward, he said. Adam Meyers, vice president of intelligence at the cybersecurity firm CrowdStrike, said trolls and bots are continuously evolving, but said its difficult to pinpoint specific behavioral change since theyve long been seen in different levels of sophistication from bespoke personas with rich fake histories to farm-bought, barely backstopped accounts. While the farm-bought accounts might be easier to identify and kill, the well-constructed personas will always been harder to catch. Darren Linvill, a Clemson University professor who with his colleague Patrick Warren previously analyzed some three million tweets linked the alleged Russian operation, previously told ABC News its imperative that researchers are able to analyze the tactics of trolls and bot-makers as soon as possible, because they change so quickly. The way they [Russian trolls] operated in 2016, 2017, looks nothing like theyre doing now, he said. Copyright 2018, ABC Radio. All rights reserved. (CNN) U.S. Defense Secretary James Mattis is expected to sign deployment orders as soon as Thursday that could send 800 or more troops to the border with Mexico to help border patrol authorities stop a caravan of migrants from Central America moving through Mexico to enter the US, according to three administration officials. The officials tell CNN final details are being worked out including where the troops will come from and their specific tasks. Several administration officials say it is anticipated that the Pentagon will pay for the bulk of the mission by using active duty troops. It's not yet clear if the Department of Homeland Security will reimburse the Pentagon. Officials also emphasize because the troops are there to support civil authorities, it is not expected they will come into any regular contact with migrants. If the troops carry arms, it will be solely for self-defense. These officials say the Pentagon has been under growing pressure from the White House to send troops to the southern border, especially after the President repeatedly called for the use of the military. But the deployment is strongly expected to adhere to current law which prohibits the routine use of troops in law enforcement functions. The troops will not engage in lethal operations to stop the migrants. Instead they are expected to provide fencing, wall materials and other technical support at several key points along the border where it is believed the migrants may try to cross. The troops will also provide tents and medical care for border authorities in those areas. The troops retain the right of self-defense, but border patrol officers will still be the ones physically stopping illegal migration, the officials said. U.S. President Trump hinted at the upcoming effort with a Thursday morning tweet, saying "I am bringing out the military for this National Emergency." The troops are expected to be in position next week. On Thursday morning, the caravan left Mapastepec, Mexico, about 80 miles from the Mexico-Guatemala border and it isn't expected to reach the U.S. border for weeks. This deployment is separate from an ongoing National Guard effort along the border to support border authorities with technical assistance. That mission has approximately 4,000 personnel authorized but only 2,100 are currently in place according to the Pentagon. This story was first published on CNN.com, "Mattis expected to send 800 more troops to help border authorities stop caravan." As if habitat loss and pesticide exposure werent enough to deal with for bumble bees, they also face increasing pressure from a parasitic fly that attacks them midair, injects them with eggs with hatch larvae which proceed to eat the pollinators from the inside before finally forcing them to dig their own graves. It sounds like something out of a body snatchers horror movie, but the conopid fly is very much a real-life threat for bumble bee colonies already under a lot of pressure from human activities. The conopid fly is classified as a parasitoid, a parasite that not only feeds on its host, but ends up killing it in a gruesome, terrifying way. Weve featured creepy body snatchers in the past, some that turn their host into zombies, others that simply take control of their bodies but leave their brains intact, but the conopid fly is even worse. It literally eats bumble bees from the inside, before somehow forcing them to land on the ground and dig a whole to die in. The injected parasite grows inside the host and ultimately bursts out of it as a mature conopid fly that attacks other bumble bees and continues this nightmarish cycle. Photo: Fir0002 (GDFL license) Conopid flies have a very sneaky way of infecting its victims. Adult female flies will lie in wait in a patch of flowers that is likely to attract pollinators, and when a bumble bee gets close enough, it takes off and dive-bombs the bee in mid-air. Conopids are tiny compared to their victims, but the force of the impact is strong enough to send the bumble bee crashing to the ground. Thats the least of the pollinators problems though, as they are quick to recover their bearings and fly off, oblivious to the fact that theyve been infected with a parasite that will kill them in a matter of days. The conopid flys dive bomb is very carefully executed. As it hits the bumble bee, the parasitoid jams its ovipositor into the victims abdomen and inserts an egg into it. According to bumble bee expert Rosemary Malfi, the ovipositor is like a can opener that opens the bees abdominal segments and shoots an egg inside. It takes two days for the egg to hatch into a hungry conopid larva that starts to feed on the bumble bees hemolymph, its blood. As it grows, it starts consuming the hosts gut tissue as well, literally hollowing it out from the inside, while its still alive. After about 10 days, something very strange happens. The infected bumble bee will land on the ground, and use its small legs to dig itself a hole in the ground. It then crawls into it and dies. Its not clear how the parasite forces bumble bees to do this, but according to one theory it somehow tricks the victim to act like a queen bee getting ready to hibernate for the winter. Photo: Marco Almbauer/Wikimedia Commons But the cycle doesnt end with the hosts death. In the cozy protection of the bumble bees buried body, the larva develops into a pupa and the following spring an adult conopid fly bursts out of the shallow grave, ready to stalk and infect other bumble bees. Studies have found that conopid parasites not only eat and ultimately kill their hosts, but also radically affect their behaviour. For example, a Swiss study found that infected baumble bees also seem to change their foraging behaviour radically. Entomologists Regula Schmid-Hempel and Christine Muller of the Zoological Institute of the University of Basel studied such these infected insects and found that they tend to spend less time in the nest and more time foraging for food. The researchers analysed the nests of 140 bees during the night, when no bees should be foraging, and found that only 5.7 per cent of bumble bees had been infected by conopid flies. By comparison, as many as 70 per cent of bumble bees outside the nests were parasitised. These led them to conclude that infected bees probably dont return to the nest at all after being infected. There are two possible explanations for this. The first is physical stress the bumble bee behaves strangely because it is being consumed from the inside. The second has to do with the conopid larvas defense mechanism. While the bumble bee nest would offer it protection from predators, it also exposes it to fungi common in such nests. Scientists have yet to discover which theory is correct. Conopid flies have always targeted bumble bees, its just how nature works. However, with human activity already decimating bumble bees worldwide, their parasitic behaviour has become a serious problem. Simply put, conopids have a bigger impact on bumble bee colonies than before, because the pollinators are now dealing with man-made threats as well. Sources: Roadside Science, New Scientist, Atlas Obscura A Chinese man swallowed an 8-inch metal spoon as a stupid stunt, a year ago. It got stuck in his esophagus, but seeing as he could eat and drink normally, he never sought medical assistance to have it removed. He claims that he only started experiencing chest pains a few days ago, after being punched in the chest. The unnamed man from Chinas Xinjiang autonomous region told doctors that he had swallowed a stainless steel spoon during a drunken bet. He told his friends that he could swallow the spoon and then pull it back up again by tying a string to its handle. It must of sounded like a good idea at the time, but things didnt go according to plan, and the eating utensil got stuck in the mans food pipe. Instead of going to the hospital immediately, the man waited to see if the spoon prevented him from eating and drinking normally. It didnt, so he lived with it stuck in his esophagus for the last year. The spoon would hav probably remained stuck in the mans esophagus for much longer, if he hadnt received a punch to the chest a few days ago, which started causing him excruciating pain and trouble breathing. He finally went to the Xinjiang Meikuang General Hospital seeking help, and casually told doctors that he had been living with a metal spoon stuck in his esophagus for a year. I was shocked. I have never anything like this, Dr Yu Xiwu wrote in a statement released by the hospital. When we admitted the patient, his oesophagus was already infected. After discussing the best course of action, doctors at Xinjiang Meikuang General Hospital decided that the best way to extract the spoon was the way it had gone in, through the mouth. The patient was put under general anaesthetic and a team spent two hours trying to remove the 8-inch spoon using endoscopy equipment. The hospital informed Chinese media that the man is recovering well and is due to be discharged soon. Mail Online reports that this case is rare, but certainly not unique. For example, in 2015, doctors managed to remove a six-inch metal spoon from a woman who had reportedly swallowed it while eating noodles too fast. Donald Trump doesnt understand that words matter. Words have consequences. People are affected by words. Some may even be inspired by words to mail explosive devices to political opponents or lash out at desperate people fleeing abject poverty and violence in the hope of better lives for their children. The president doesn't get it. Or at least I hope he doesn't get it. He appealed for unity and civility last night as if unity and civility can be flipped on and off like a light switch. It took a series of bombs for Trump to be forced to say, Those engaged into political arena must stop treating political opponents as morally defective. And of course, he expected fulsome praise. Do you see how nice I am behaving tonight? he said. Pathetic. He can't even fake acting presidential. In true Trumpian fashion, the president made no mention in Wisconsin of the explosive devices; rather he bemoaned the treatment of Republican politicos, who have had their dinners disturbed by fellow restaurant patrons and activists. And of course, Trump could not overcome the temptation to criticize the media or as he calls them, the enemy of the people. As part of the larger national effort to bridge our divide and bring people together, the media also has a responsibility to set a civil tone and stop the endless hostility and constant negative and often times, fake attacks and stories, said Trump. Thats the ultimate false equivalency. And Trump today apparently ditched his pitch for peace, love and understanding. He fired off this tweet: A very big part of the Anger we see today in our society is caused by the purposely false and inaccurate reporting of the Mainstream Media that I refer to as Fake News. It has gotten so bad and hateful that it is beyond description. Mainstream Media must clean up its act, FAST!. Trump also ginned up fear-mongering of the so-called caravan. The tweeter-in-chief is sending 800 American soldiers to the Mexico border to stop the 7,000 bedraggled men, women and children heading north to turn themselves over to US officials at the border. His bid to create fear of a Hispanic hoard may be delicious red meat for his political supporters, but it goes against the core of what this nation hopefully still stands for. The president hasnt dispatched any troops to the newsrooms of the New York Times, Washington Post, CNN and NBC. Lets see how the midterm election plays out. The Waite Company has rebranded. The new brand includes a new logo, tagline and refreshed website that was designed to reflect the Albuquerque's firm's recent advancements in capabilities and scope. The company will launch a completely revamped website in early 2019. Founded by Whitney Waite in 2012, The Waite Company has served clients in such sectors as healthcare, tourism, water, natural resources and education. The company says it plans to be heavily focused on environmental and water projects in the coming years. It also has offices in Albuquerque, Taos and Melbourne Kacy Shaw Fox Greenberg Public Relations, a boutique lifestyle PR firm with offices in New York and Los Angeles, has added an office in San Francisco headed by Kacy Shaw. The outpost will serve Napa Valley clients. Founded in 2003, FGPR works with clients in the health, beauty, hospitality, non-profit, media and event spaces, including Festival Napa Valley, City Winery, The Ink House, Alohilani Resort Waikiki Beach and JJ Young by Caolion Cosmetics. TBWA/Helsinki handles Neste, a company that creates sustainable solutions for transport, business and consumer needs. It has launched Zerobnb, a site where people can list sustainable alternatives for vacation lodgings. The company says that one of its goals in starting up Zerobnb is to encourage Airbnb, the leading accommodation-sharing site, to include a category for travelers who seek sustainable accommodations. Zerobnb will be live only until Airbnb creates such a category. The demand for more sustainable travel is growing, but when you are not an expert, it can be very demanding to evaluate whether a certain accommodation is sustainable or not, said Neste director of marketing Sirpa Tuomi. Our goal is to provoke discussion and we are hoping that this will inspire Airbnb to add a sustainable accommodation category onto their site. Hullabaloo! Offalys Childrens Arts Festival from Wed 31 October to Sat 3 November is a perfect solution to any upcoming mid-term break anxieties. Hullabaloo! has something for all ages between 3-12yrs, with opportunities for children to get creative and try something new, as well as enjoy live shows with all the family. Taking Flight Theatre present Youre Got Dragons a delightful take on Kathryn Caves book of the same name. A highly visual and sensitive production with live and original music, it is a humorous and touching exploration of one childs journey to come to terms with her dragons. This intergenerational show, featuring Axelina Heagney previously with Offaly Youth Theatre has creative captioning, interwoven Irish Sign Language, audio description and is supported by Arts and Disability Ireland. Suitable for children 4yrs+. A unique and FREE Dragon Taming Workshop takes place directly after the performance and provides simple techniques for children and families to build resilience in mental health. Birr Theatre & Arts Centre, Wed 31 Oct, 2-2.50pm. One Man Shoe with Jango Starr has been described as a hilariously funny and well- rounded family show with magic tricks, puppetry, juggling and slapstick comedy. The star of the show, Jango Starr, a bumbling theatre caretaker takes us on a comical journey as he is thrust into the limelight. Suitable for ages 5yrs+. Birr Theatre & Arts Centre, Fri 2 Nov, 3-3.50pm : Clara Family Resource Centre, Thurs 1 Nov, 5.15-6.05pm : Edenderry Town Hall, Thurs 1 Nov, 12-12.50pm. Punch Lion present Whats the Story Comedy Improv - Stories for Kids with Danny & Paul who love making up stories - silly stories, scary stories and anything-out-of-your-head stories! These two comics bring you on a nonsense, fun, gobbledygook journey using your story suggestions and their comedy improv skills. Suitable for ages 6yrs+. Clara Family Resource Centre, Fri 2 Nov, 11.30am-12.15pm : Edenderry Town Hall, Fri 2 Nov, 5-5.45pm Hullabaloo! Festival Film is Beauty & The Beast where a selfish prince is cursed to become a monster for the rest of his life unless he learns to fall in love with a beautiful young woman, Belle, the only human to visit his castle. This classic film is brought to life on the big screen along with our favourite characters Lumiere, Cogsworth, Chip and Mrs Potts! Birr Theatre & Arts Centre, Fri 2 Nov, 7-9pm. A Winter Wish by Ceol Connected is an immersive and multisensory performance about the mysteries of Whistleberry Forest when a little robin comes to visit and grants the creatures of the forest their very own wish. This mesmerizing theatre and music performance with traditional musicians Thomas Johnston and Stephen Markham and visual artist, Orla Kelly has been specially created to engage children of all abilities. Birr Theatre & Arts Centre, Sat 3 Nov, 11-11.50am. Tickets prices for all shows are 10 (1 adult & 2 children) 15 (1 adult & 3 Children). For further information on shows and all the workshops available in Birr, Clara, Edenderry and selected Offaly Libraries, go to www.hullabaloofestival.ie or call 057 9122911. Follow us on Facebook Hullabaloo Childrens Arts Festival. After a lively debate on Prime Time earlier this week, presenter David McCullagh will be live in studio following the polls closing to deliver the RTE / Red C Exit Poll result in the race to the Aras. Catherine Corless, the historian who uncovered details of a mass grave at the former Mother and Babies Home in Tuam, will join Ryan to give her thoughts on the Governments decision this week to initiate a forensic excavation at the site. Catherine last appeared on the Late Late Show in 2017, receiving a standing ovation from the audience after an extremely powerful interview. From aristocracy, to rock royalty, Dublin actor Allen Leech joins Ryan to chat about what it was like to achieve worldwide fame playing Tom Branson in the critically acclaimed Downton Abbey, and his role as Freddie Mercurys manager in the highly anticipated movie, Bohemian Rhapsody. Hes one of the GAAs most talked about personalities, and an All-Ireland winning hurler and manager. Davy Fitzgerald joins Ryan to chat about his legacy, his fiery reputation, and the latest season of Irelands Fittest Family which kicks off on Sunday. In April, Sean Cox went to Anfield to watch his beloved Liverpool in action in the Champions League, but ended up fighting for his life. Ryan is joined by Seans wife Martina Cox, to discuss how the familys life was changed forever on that evening. Comedian Des Bishop will be in studio to talk about our obsession with Netflix and carvery dinners, and there will be music from Bell X1 and Gavin James. One Offaly councillor has described as a 'scandal' the fact that almost 400 patients over the age of 75 were left waiting for more than 24 hours at the A&E Department at Tullamore Hospital in 2017. In new figures, seen by the Offaly Express, it is revealed that in the entire year of 2017, 397 patients aged 75 or older experienced a wait of 24 hours or longer at Tullamore Hospital. Moreover, the trends suggest the figure for 2018 will be far higher. The figures for the first eight months of 2018, January to the end of August, showed that 398 patients over 75 years of age had waited more than 24 hours. Based on monthly averages, by the end of 2018, 600 (597) patients aged 75 or over will have spent longer than 24 hours waiting at A&E in Tullamore Hospital. Commenting on the figures, Offaly County Councillor and RENUA Ireland leader, John Leahy, said: "This is another case where Offaly is the forgotten county and the elderly are the forgotten citizens of the HSE." "This ongoing scandal is now nothing short of being a human rights issue. Minister Harris and the Government need to spend more time and energy ensuring the people who built this country, our Grand-mums and Dads are not left in corridors, alone, haunted by fear and uncertainty." "Instead of spending taxpayers money promoting themselves on social media trying to convince the nation that they are doing a great job when clearly the figures demonstrate their performance. It's time for an immediate task-force to end this abuse of human dignity," Leahy concluded. Cllr Frank Moran said, its a terrible indictment of this government's inability to manage the Health Service. The figures are startling, especially for our County Hospital in Tullamore." "The staff in Tullamore and indeed every other hospital are working tirelessly for their patients, however, they are understaffed and this, through no fault of their own, is why we have such shocking numbers." "The buck stops with the Minister and his predecessors and if they're not fit for the job, get out now and stop making our vulnerable citizens suffer for their inability to run the department," he remarked to the Offaly Express. Cllr Noel Bourke said more ancillary services could alleviate some of the overcrowding at Tullamore A&E. "What people in Edenderry want and need is a proper MIDOC Service based in Edenderry town which would serve the town and its wider surrounds," he commented. "Older people, in particular, are fearful outside the normal doctors surgery times on the five days each week and therefore tend to go to A&E." "A proper MIDOC Service in Edenderry would ease the pressure at the A&E in Tullamore. Staff and Consultant levels in Tullamore Hospital need to be increased to the required level," Cllr Bourke added. MIDOC services in Edenderry and Birr were scrapped earlier this year, leaving one MIDOC service in the county in Tullamore. In response to the figures, the Dublin Midlands Hospital Group on behalf of Midland Regional Hospital Tullamore, said: "The experience of patients over 75 attending our service is a matter of ongoing focus for the Clinical and Senior Management Teams at Midland Regional Hospital Tullamore (MRHT)." "The increase in those waiting longer than 24 hours in ED is a reflection of the continued increase of that demographic across the country, and the greater complexity of care required for this cohort. Despite the additional demands placed on our service, staff have continued to treat and care for 26,306 patients at ED so far this year, 6,437 of whom were admitted," a spokesperson told the Offaly Express. "Midland Regional Hospital Tullamore is working hard to improve the journey of all patients accessing our service through the increased utilisation of our discharge lounge, the establishment of a Short Stay Unit, Frail Intervention Team and the opening of the Acute Medical Assessment Unit." "These will all alleviate pressures on the ED and contribute to improving the patient flow and patient experience. In addition, management has brought together an unscheduled care group who will have oversight on how these and other changes can contribute to improving patient experience. The recent appointment of a Hospital Patient Flow Manager whose sole focus is improving our patients journey through the hospital is an important development in this endeavour," the spokesperson concluded. A High Court dispute between two dentists who operate their separate practices out of the same premises has been resolved after both parties withdrew all allegations of improper conduct against each other. Dentists Dr Michael Maguire and Dr James Hiney, had for many years worked well alongside each other from a building they co-own at Market Point, Mullingar, Co Westmeath. However, the court heard that relationship became "toxic" and in proceedings launched last June, Mr Maguire claimed his staff were put under surveillance by a secret camera installed in a hole in the ceiling of the shared premises by Mr Hiney. Dr Hiney claimed the camera was put in for security reasons and denied it was used to spy on Mr Maguire or his staff, as alleged. Dr Maguire did not accept that explanation and sought various injunctions from the High Court against Mr Hiney including one preventing the defendant from monitoring and surveillance of his employees. The case was adjourned from time to time returned before the court on Thursday when Stephen Byrne Bl for Dr Maguire said that following "a second mediation" between the parties that ended late on Wednesday night the proceedings had been settled and could be struck out. As part of the settlement, counsel read a statement to the court. It said, "that in the course of the division of the two dentist's practices a number of difficulties and disagreements arose between the parties." "These, unfortunately, resulted in various allegations and counter allegations being made about the conduct of the dentists and their respective employees, including in the proceedings that came before the court." "These proceedings have compromised in terms acceptable to the two dentists." Counsel said, "for the avoidance of doubt the dentists unconditionally withdraw all and any allegations of improper conduct of any description against each other made during this difficult period." "Dr Maguire now acknowledges that in installing CCTV cameras in the premises that Dr Hiney did not intend to survey Dr Maguire or his patients." "Dr Maguire understands that Dr Hiney installed the cameras following consultation with An Garda Siochana." "Dr Maguire now further acknowledges that any contact by Dr Hiney of Dr Maguire's patients was not for the purposes of solicitation." "Both Dr Maguire and Dr Hiney are now pleased that the proceedings have been resolved" counsel concluded. No other details of the settlement agreement were revealed in open court. Welcoming the resolution Ms Justice Leonie Reynolds agreed to strike out the case. In his action, Dr Maguire claimed there had been a host of issues between the dentists, ranging from petty complaints to serious allegations of criminal behaviour between the two. He claimed Mr Hiney made allegations against him, including assault, defamation, harassment, vandalism, the withholding of information from insurers about the building they share. Mr Maguire rejected all the allegations against him. Dr Maguire had also claimed in his action that Dr Hiney had engaged in a marketing campaign, including sending text messages, in an effort to solicit his patients Dr Maguire claimed that his patient's details were obtained from a backup computer server that contained records which the defendant removed from the shared premises and has not returned and that Mr Hiney had engaged people to commence works on the exterior of the premises. He had also sought orders requiring Dr Hiney to return all data allegedly removed to Dr Maguire, an order that the alleged solicitation of his patients ceases, and that any proposed construction works at the premises be halted. All of the allegations were denied by Dr Hiney, who said he never intended to have any construction works carried out on the shared premises as long as Mr Maguire's business was operating out of the building. The Financial Times reported that the chief executive of Gatwick, the UKs second busiest airport, has said he expects some airlines to fall into bankruptcy this winter following a number of recent failures. A number of European airlines having failed in the past two years, including Air Berlin and Alitalia in 2017, heralding turbulence in the months ahead. Alone in the last two months, Latvias Primera Air, Small Planet in Germany and Belgiums VLM have all collapsed. Bjoern Maul, global aviation practice partner, said the failure of these carriers tended to be a result of overexpansion, being behind in restructuring [and] issues around changing market environments all of a sudden. Read the full article here and discover more from of our aviation practice here. The global labour market has endured a series of disruptions in recent decades from rapid globalisation, to deep business-cycle troughs to battles for gender equality. Today, workforces globally are justifiably anxious once more due to the Fourth Industrial Revolution (4IR) a merging of the physical and the digital that hints at widespread future redundancies as well as rapid societal ageing. Shrewd policy initiatives will be required to address the twin threats of aging and automation, and to mitigate the associated fallouts. Job displacement at the hands of technology accompanied with increasing societal ageing could increase un- and under-employment, widen inequality, and exacerbate talent shortages for firms. Increased life expectancies and decreasing birth rates around the world have dramatically quickened the global phenomenon of societal ageing. The global birth rate has flattened rapidly over the past five decades and will, according to data from the United Nations Department of Economic and Social Affairs, decrease steadily until the end of the century. Meanwhile, upward mobility and increased access to quality healthcare has increased life expectancies around the world the UN World Population Prospects projects that between 2015 and 2100, the average global life expectancy at birth will increase by more than ten years. For many countries, these combined demographic phenomena mean that young-person populations are shrinking in favour of older-person populations. The UN has projected that by 2050, more than a third of the entire worlds population will be above the age of 50 even though back in 1950, this age group made up just 15.7 percent of the worlds population. Many economists have expressed concerns over these trends, citing the potential for slowed productivity, labour shortages, and for pension systems being placed under pressure as pension recipients grow while working contributors dry up. However, societal ageing in much of the developed world has also given rise to an additional phenomenon: the rise of the older worker. OECD data shows that older workers average retirement ages are steadily increasing, as more and more workers in the developed world delay exiting the workforce to make use of their good health and collect additional funds for retirement. On average around the OECD, older workers (aged 50-64) are increasingly making up larger and larger shares of their countries labour forces. The ability of these older workers to retain their jobs and incomes will be crucial in the coming decades to ensure older workers afford retirement without falling into hardship. The Fourth Industrial Revolution, now in full swing, is disrupting entire value chains and reshaping the very nature of work. Governments and companies, looking to do more with less, are turning to emerging technologies to usher in new efficiencies. Today, public and private entities are still nursing their wounds from a decade-long global downturn, and are enticed by the promises of digital transformation. Unfortunately, digital transformations threaten the jobs and livelihoods of large swathes of workers especially older ones skilled in the work of yesterday. Many nations older workers will find themselves at risk of being excluded from the economies of tomorrow: indeed, in much of the developed world, older workers tend to widely do work that is at serious risk of automation and displacement. History additionally records long-term unemployment and age discrimination for such employees in OECD nations, and shows that they are prone to particularly harsh fallouts from displacement by new technologies. Mercer and Oliver Wymans report, The Twin Threats of Aging and Automation, focuses on 15 major markets and derives the risk older workers face of displacement by workplace automation in each. The report finds that countries that are ageing the most rapidly also tend to have some of the most older workers at risk of automation and that most of the highest-risk markets are found in the Asia Pacific region. Industries in Gulf countries are facing widespread disruption at the hands of technology. Technological progress in many areas GDP per capita, healthcare access, Internet penetration has outpaced that of global peers, and governments across the region are eager to leverage the gains of technology to encourage enhanced growth. Saudi Arabias Vision 2030, for example, has broadly committed to investing in the digital economy with a focus on Artificial Intelligence; the UAEs Vision 2021 has similarly identified digital technology as a top primary national sector for investment and growth. At the very same time, GCC countries are ageing rapidly. By 2030 more than 23% of working age population across GCC countries will be above the age of 50 a dramatic increase up from just 13% in 2015. Inspired by our report, The Twin Threats of Aging and Automation, and given the dramatic demographic and technological shifts taking place in the region, we decided to do a deep-dive into our home region and conduct new analysis on the ageing and automation threats faced by workforces in GCC countries. Our results show that older workers situations are not optimistic. Based on our analysis, GCC workers over 50 are at risk of automation by more than 1.5 times the average level for OECD countries. At the same time, in the next 15 years the number of workers in the over-50 age group will grow by over 74% a far more dramatic growth rate than that seen in many other countries around the world. With high risks of displacement and rapid rates of ageing, older workers in GCC countries will face far greater risks than their global counterparts in the coming decades. This will place pressure on pension funds and older persons abilities to fund their retirement, and could accelerate workers premature exits from GCC workforces exacerbating talent shortages and skills gaps for firms that could have been overcome with better training and worker redeployment programmes. These issues are being exacerbated by the fact that across the GCC, prime-aged populations (those aged 15-49) are shrinking compared with older-worker populations (aged 50-64). The UNs Populations Division predicts that Saudi Arabias working-age population is likely to be 18.2% made up of workers aged 50 to 64 by 2030, and the risk of automation to these workers will sit at 63%*, almost 1.5 times the OECD average. The same data makes similar predictions for Kuwaits workforce, which will be 19.1% made up of 50-to-64-year-old workers by 2030, facing an automation risk factor of 61%, almost identical to the KSA scenario. Non-Scary Fun at the Great Swamp Adventure out to the Great Swamp Conservancy of Canastota for non-scary Halloween Fun Days Saturday and Sunday from 11 a.m. to 3 p.m. There are rooms filled with welcoming surprises and a treat not a trick is awaiting for all little monsters. Follow the interactive paths to see what the Good Witch is brewing, Year of the Heron nest, Balloon Ghosts, Shark Tank, Scare Crow Convention, Creatures of the Night, Aliens Have Landed, and much more! The Swamp Snappers Camera Club will be taking photos in the spooky Old Farm House/office of individuals or families in Halloween costumes or of your pet for a very minimal cost. Food will be available at Lady Bug Cafe. Enter the coloring contest by picking up a flyer at the Canastota and Chittenango public libraries. Winners will be announced Sunday night. Admission is $3 for children 16 and younger, accompanying parents/adults $1. Special this year, after the GSC Fun Days fundraiser on Sunday, the Mohawk Valley Strings will present A Halloween Spooktacular. This special 45 minute costume concert starts at 4 p.m. in the GSC museum and members consists of area youth to perform a haunting experience through music. The String Orchestra is lead by Liz Friedel, Allyson Sklar, with conductors: Joan Batson and Hannah Roth. Bring the kids, wear costumes and join the Strings group for a trunk or treat following the concert. All are welcome to participate in the trunk or treat!! Deck out the back of your cars, or trunk and pass out candy. This is a free concert but donations are welcome to support the Mohawk Valley Strings. Halloween in Hamilton The third annual village-wide Halloween in Hamilton on Oct. 31 will be a giant celebration with crafts, trick-or-treating, and a free movie. From 3-4 p.m., head over to the Colgate Bookstore (3 Utica St.) for a gigantic celebration. Create a glowing Dream Jar, design your own enormous BFG ears, and snack on some Frobscottle. Then, join the costume parade down Lebanon Street from 4-4:30 p.m. Local shops will hand out treats as the children parade through town. Lebanon Street will be closed for traffic from 3:30-4:30 p.m. for safety. Starting at 4:30 p.m., the Hamilton Movie Theater (7 Lebanon St.) will play the 2016 film, The BFG (rated PG, 1h 57m) for free, sponsored by the Colgate Bookstore. Based on a book by Roald Dahl, The BFG tells the story of an orphan little girl who befriends a benevolent giant who takes her to Giant Country, where they attempt to stop the man-eating giants that are invading the human world. After the movie, head out through the village of Hamilton for a night of safe, fun trick-or-treating. For more information, call 315-228-6960 or visit www.colgatebookstore.com/ Sherrill Library Hours Changed The Sherrill Kenwood Library, located at 543 Sherrill Road, has changed their hours to better serve the community. The new hours are Monday through Thursday, 11 a.m. to 7 p.m., Friday, 11 a.m. to 6 p.m., and Saturday 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. The library is pleased to work with two groups serving as collection points for their community outreach missions. Gently used coats, jackets, snow pants, mittens and scarves will be collected until Nov. 7 to be donated to the 19th annual Coat Give Away held Saturday, Nov. 10 at the Oneida First United Methodist Church. Shoes will be collected until Dec. 1 to aid the Greater Utica Sunrise Rotary Club. All donated shoes will be redistributed by Funds2orgs to help impoverished people start, maintain and grow businesses in countries such as Haiti, Honduras and other nations in Central America and Africa. Donations are accepted during library hours only. Please do not leave items outside the library. Saturday, Nov. 3 at 11 a.m. will be a story time focusing on Veterans Day. We will make cards to send to local Veterans thanking them for their service. Wampsville Leaf Pickup The Village of Wampsville Fall Leaf Pickup will be held on Saturday, Nov. 3, and Saturday, Nov. 10. Materials being picked up will be restricted to yard debris, including leaves, grass, weeds, brush, vines and tree limbs up to two inches in diameter. No large trees or large tree limbs will be picked up. Leaves, grass, weeds, brush and vines must be bagged in PAPER BAGS ONLY. Tree limbs (up to two inches in diameter) must be stacked and preferably bundled. All items must be curbside. The village reserves the right to not collect items that are not properly prepared according to the above. Please contact the village clerk or stop in the village hall with any questions. Morrisville Library Events Shop for the library this holiday season from Nov. 1 to Jan. 19. There are several items the library needs! Grab a Christmas tag off their giving tree of something you would like to donate to the library. Buy it, donate it, whatever it says and bring the tag and the item in as soon as you can! All donations should be turned in by Jan. 31, 2019. The librarys silent auction opens on Monday, Nov. 5 and runs through Friday, Dec. 7. Stop in and bid on several items. Perfect gifts to bid on, win and give to loved ones this holiday season! The silent auction is being held in the librarys program room. Art Zimmer will conduct a virtual walk through downtown Hamilton storefront by storefront, pointing out what business is in each storefront today and discussion what business was located there in the 1950s, on Friday, Nov. 9 at 6:30 p.m. For longtime residents, it will be a fun nostalgic trip down memory lane. For newer residents, it will be an interesting surprise of what the businesses were in Hamilton over 60 years ago. Mr. Zimmer moved to Hamilton in 1948. He will add comments of how changes in society have influenced the changes in the business makeup of downtown Hamilton. The talk is free and open to the public. The virtual walk does not leave the library. Bring your own Nerf equipment (darts too-please label them) and join us for open play around the library on Saturday, Nov. 17 from 4:30-7 p.m. Bring your own Nerf equipment (darts too-please label them) and join us for open play around the library! See if the library stacks provide you enough shelter from getting hit by a friends foam dart! Open to ages 10 and up; so adults are welcome too! Everyone must bring a snack and beverages will be provided. ONLY 16 spaces are available!! ALL participants MUST sign up in the library and get a permission slip to return completed the night of. We will not allow people to complete permission slips at the door. Punch Card Price Increase On Tuesday, Oct. 9, 2018 the Madison County Board of Supervisors approved a resolution that would increase the 2019 Solid Waste Punch Card by twenty cents per punch to $3 per punch or $15 per Solid Waste Punch Card (each card includes five punches). This change comes due to the increase in cost to managing the waste brought to the landfill in Lincoln. Unlike previous years, punch cards purchased prior to Jan. 1, 2019 will be honored. So if a resident has a punch card has not been used up yet they can still use that at the landfill. Solid Waste Punch Cards may be purchased from the Solid Waste Office and Board-authorized vendors. The full list of authorized punch card vendors is available at: https://www.madisoncounty.ny.gov/Faq.aspx?QID=273. The new Solid Waste Punch Card fee takes effect Jan. 1, 2019. Morrisville, N.Y. Farmers just looking to start out or make changes to their business got the chance to learn more at the Madison County Cornell Cooperative Extensions Aspiring Farmers Academy. In this two part workshop, attendees learn how to set goals and objectives, understand the resources available to them in their community, inventory their assets, get a handle on their business plan, and more. Among those attending on Oct. 25 were Lorna Wilson of Hamilton, who owns a 29-acre farm. Wilson said she has a bachelors degree in agricultural economics and rural sociology at Pennsylvania State University. Since she moved to Hamilton, Wilson has been selling real estate. Ive been thinking, what else can I do with my land? Wilson said. Id like to transition into something from real estate into doing something with my land. Emily and Roger Connolly have lived in Morrisville for a year now and own a 10-acre farm. We just retired, Emily said. Were just trying to figure out what we can do with our farm. Emily said she and Roger hadnt had a chance to do anything just yet, because theyve been busy doing repairs on their home. But they do have a lot of ideas. We came here to raise llamas, Roger said. That was always a joke between us, that wed retire and raise llamas, Emily said. We might actually now. We have chickens going, but we dont have any fences yet for the barn. Emily and Roger said they bought the Happy Talk Farm four years ago, and they moved to Central New York from Long Island when their children settled down. We had a lot of ambitions when we came up here and while we hit reality, were in pretty good shape now, Roger said. Some of the topics covered during the event were acreage limits and agricultural districts. Weve learned a lot about the ag districts, Emily said. We have a dairy farm were next to and down the road, theyre raising cattle. Ag districts are often confused with ag zoning, Agriculture Economic Development Educator Jennifer Farwell said. You have to enroll in it. Agricultural Educator Sarah Ficken explained to Emily and Roger that while they are technically in an ag district at the moment, since they are not enrolled in it they are not part of the district. If they want to be part of it, Ficken said Emily and Roger will need to apply. Through the month of October, Madison County is offering open enrollment in ag districts. Wilson said she knows the town of Eaton has a limit on how many acres per livestock is allowed and wanted to know just how that was determined. Farwell said it varies. In the town of Cazenovia, farmers need 3 acres for their first livestock and an acre more for each livestock. But things change when discussing cattle or ponies, since cattle require more area for grazing. Emily and Roger said while they havent figured out exactly what theyll raise, whether it be llamas or cashmere goats, they both felt the move out to Madison County was worth it. Weve lived on Pleasant Valley for a year now and in one year, Ive talked with all of my neighbors more than my neighbor of 23 years on Long Island, Roger said. Weve got enough saved up that we dont need money. Weve got more eggs than we could need and were going to donate them to the local food bank. If we can make money, the would be fine. But were just enjoying ourselves, looking out at the hills and all the colors. Oneida, N.Y. The fourth and final suspect in an Oct. 19 home invasion and armed robbery that took place in Oneida has been caught states away in Ohio. Christopher Santilli, 35, of Munnsville, was arrested Friday, Oct. 26, in Stuebenville, Ohio, by members of the United States Marshals Service (USMS) NY/NJ Regional Fugitive Task Force. Santilli was held in Jefferson County (Ohio) Jail as a fugitive from justice. He is scheduled to appear before the Jefferson County Court for an extradition hearing, and he will eventually be transported back to Oneida to be arraigned on charges of first-degree burglary; second-degree burglary; two counts of first-degree robbery; two counts of second-degree robbery; third-degree assault; two counts of second-degree menacing; two counts of second-degree unlawful imprisonment; and endangering the welfare of a child. Santilli is the fourth suspect in a home invasion and armed robbery that occurred at a Stone Street residence in the early morning hours of Oct. 19. Police say Victor J. Alamo-Clemente, 23, of Syracuse, along with Santilli, John Santiago, 23, from Syracuse, and Donnie Deverso, 42, from Solvay, broke into the residence. A 43-year-old male victim was assaulted and restrained, and a 13-year-old female victim was also restrained. Police say at least one handgun was displayed and possibly discharged during this incident. Santiago and Deverso were arrested after the incident, but Alamo-Clemente and Santilli escaped. Alamo-Clemente was arrested on Tuesday, Oct. 23, around 8:15 p.m., after members of the United States Marshals Service (USMS) NY/NJ Regional Fugitive Task Force found him at a residence on East Fayette Street in Syracuse. Alamo-Clemente was arraigned before the Oneida City Court and held at Madison County Jail on $100,000 bail or $200,000 bond. Santiago was arraigned before the Oneida City Court and held at Madison County Jail on $100,000 bail or $200,000 bond. Deverso was arraigned before the Oneida City Court and held at the Madison County Jail on $50,000 bail or $100,000 bond. We are now days away from the most important election this country has ever faced. I think I know my American history and I think I know what Im talking about. The people who wrote the Constitution knew what they were doing at least they thought they were doing the right thing at the time. They could not have anticipated the perfect storm would overtake todays politics. When they entered into the great compromise, giving the small and large states what we now call the Electoral College, they could not have known that doing so would, not once but several times, result in a sharp stick in the eye of democracy. They probably didnt consider that the candidate who received the most votes would lose. Because I am older now, I can confess to you that I told my college students that in todays world, if a candidate who got the most votes actually lost, the people would take to the streets with pots and pans and maybe worse instruments to protest. Was I ever wrong! So now we have a president with fascist and totalitarian tendencies who is leading this country and, indeed, the world into chaos. It isnt only that he rewards his friends and punishes his enemies. It isnt only that he exhibits the worst misogynist tendencies. It isnt only that he divides us based on religion and the color of our skins. It isnt only that he is a bully who encourages his followers to beat up his enemies. It isnt only that he makes friends with the very worst dictators in the world. It isnt only that he is making out like a bandit using his position to create wealth and power for himself and his acolytes. It is all of the above and more. If you want to understand just how dangerous this situation is, grab a copy of the Declaration of Independence and follow it along line by line. Pay particular attention to the line that says, All men are created equal. Then read Thomas Jeffersons famous line, that whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness. Jefferson said that revolution should not be taken lightly and I agree because there are times, like those experienced in France, when the result is quite terrible. The Constitution was drafted to anticipate the troubles that Trump is now causing. The whole idea was to have each of the various branches overseeing the others. That is not happening. The Republicans in both houses of Congress have proven themselves feckless. Their fear of the Trump Republican voters is palpable. There are no profiles in courage here. In the end, it comes down to the very electorate that has been screwed by this psychologically damaged president. Obviously, no one wants a revolution with bodies strewn about and grieving families. All it takes is registering and voting. The Republicans in state legislatures are doing everything in their power to prevent that from happening. They are passing laws that will stop people from showing up. Every pastor in every church has to preach to his or her congregation that the only way to preserve Social Security and health care and a decent education for every child is to march to the polls. Its also one of the reasons why a Democratic State Senate is a must in New York so that the State Senate cannot put up roadblocks to people voting. Every reader of this column, no matter what political party, must get to the polls and vote. We have to return sanity to our government. Keep the faith, we are with her in this struggle: Subramanian Swamy to Kangana Ranaut Aircel-Maxis case: Swamy just doesn't mince words India oi-Chennabasaveshwar P New Delhi, Oct 26: Rajya Sabha MP Subramanian Swamy has one more feather to his cap. Known to take on high profile politicians of India, Swamy was congratulated on social media for pursuing Aircel-Maxis case in which former finance minister P Chidambaram has been booked by Enforcement Directorate (ED). Throughout the investigation, Swamy stood by ED officials probing the case and did not hesitate to criticise his own government, directly and indirectly, especially Finance Minister Arun Jaitley. Swamy closely followed every development in the Aircel-Maxis case, he did not mince words while expressing his displeasure with the government for allegedly 'protecting' P Chidambaram. From the day Swamy took up Aircel-Maxis case, he was hell-bent on bringing Chidambaram to justice in Aircel-Maxis case. Also Read | Chargesheeted Chidambaram exceeded brief in granting FIPB A day after ED filed chargesheet against Chidambaram, Swamy, said, " In all CBI midnight swoop, let us not forget uprightness and selflessness of the outgoing ED Director Karnal Singh. On his last day as Director, he got filed the chargesheet of money laundering against PC/BC which no selfish officer would do on the last days of his tenure." In another tweet, Swamy batted for the promotion of joint director of ED Rajeshwar Singh who probed the 2G scam and Aircel Maxis case. "ED Rajeshwar Singh overdue promotion must be given on provision in Govt of what is called Proforma promotion.Orders are issued from due date,put in sealed cover & given effect from original date with pay arrears when task is completed.This ensures that officers doesn't lose on any count." In a scathing attack Congress, Swamy blamed the BJP government for corrupting the ranks of the premier investigating agency. "It is rubbish to call the action of CBI Director as infighting. For the past 3 years the infiltration of corrupt Congress touts have polluted CBI to protect PC and other 'Congi chors'. In our own ranks we have traitors helping. Hence Director Verma had done the right thing." Also Read | Now Rakesh Asthana moves SC, seeks reversal of decision that sent him on exile "Good that PC has been chargesheeted by ED on my complaint on Aircel Maxis. Now Namo must order that Rajeshwar continue in the case since he knows it thru and thru. His promotion to Addl Director ED blocked by Adhia for last one year must restored." It may be recalled that Rajeshwar Singh had made a scathing attack on revenue secretary Hasmukh Adhia questioning him if he has developed animosity against him by "siding with scamsters and their affiliates". In his letter dated June 11, 2018 forwarded to the revenue secretary by ED director Karnal Singh, joint director Rajeshwar Singh asked a series of uncomfortable questions from Adhia ranging from ignoring his promotion, "compromising National security", "set scores on an ego trip" among others. However, the finance ministry said charges levelled by Rajeshwar Singh against the revenue secretary are absolutely baseless, as reported by PTI. Swamy doubted that Rajeshwar Singh will be suspended so that he cannot file chargesheet Chidambaram, however, Rajeshwar continued as joint director. He outrightly blamed Arun Jaitley for targetting Rajeshwar Singh. "My father gave up teaching Maths to head the CSO in 1947. Mahalanobis targeted him. My wife's dad in ICS refused Nehru's demand to use IAF to fly in his videshi mistress. Shunted! But never I have seen the PC/AJ type of targeting of sincere officers as being done to ED's Rajeshwar" "The players in the CBI massacre are about to suspend ED's Rajeshwar so that he cannot file the chargesheet against PC. If so I will have no reason to fight the corrupt since my govt is hell-bent on protecting them. I shall then withdraw from all the corruption cases I have filed." When ED attached properties of Chidambaram in Aircel-Maxis case, Swamy showered praises ED officers and at the same time blamed Revenue Secretary Hasmukh Adhia for blocking Rajeshwar Singh's promotion. ED attachment of property of PC/BC has shattered complacency of Congis. ED Director Karnail Singh and Jt Director Rajeshwar deserve praise of the nation. Why was there complacency? Adhia, his patron,and his accomplices. Rajeshwars due promotion has been blocked for one year now! Subramanian Swamy (@Swamy39) October 12, 2018 PC/BC properties attached by ED today. Shows Adhia his place and and the stout heart of Rajeshwar and his associates in ED Subramanian Swamy (@Swamy39) October 11, 2018 Swamy outrightly criticized NDA government (could be a veiled attack on PM Narendra Modi) for struggling to 'save Chidambaram & Co'. The struggle in CBI &MoF is a 4 yr struggle in NDA to save PC & co. If honest officers like [Alok] Verma and Rajeshwar have to go through such inquisition by the corrupt and compromised, then forget fighting corruption. The corrupt want to forestall tenure extension to CBI and ED chiefs. The struggle in CBI&MoF is a 4 yr struggle in NDA to save PC & co. If honest officers like Verma and Rajeshwar have to go through such inquisition by the corrupt and compromised, then forget fighting corruption.The corrupt want to forestall tenure extension to CBI and ED chiefs Subramanian Swamy (@Swamy39) October 22, 2018 The prosecution for corrupt acts of Special Director of CBI Asthana by CBI itself is a matter of the government. But a lady journalist known as PC's hired gun is feverishly tweeting away against the CBI. Why? Because the last hope of saving PC was Asthana? The prosecution for corrupt acts of Special Director of CBI Asthana by CBI itself is a matter of the government. But a lady journalist known as PCs hired gun is feverishly tweeting away against the CBI. Why? Because the last hope of saving PC was Asthana? Subramanian Swamy (@Swamy39) October 21, 2018 Amnesty India cries foul, dubs ED raids as 'governments assault on civil society' India oi-Vikas SV Bengaluru, Oct 26: Amnesty India, which is under the Enforcement Directorate's scanner over suspected violation of FCRA and FDI, dubbed the raids on its offices as the government's assault on civil society in the country. It said raids shows "a disturbing pattern of government silencing organisations that question power." Human rights watchdog, Amnesty International was raided by the Enforcement under the Foreign Exchange Management Act. Two locations of Amnesty International were raided at Bengaluru, Karnataka and ED sources said that they suspected violations under the Foreign Contribution Regulation Act and Foreign Direct Investment guidelines. Also Read | Raids on Amnesty International: Rs 36 crore foreign funding under ED's scanner "Focus of ED's questioning was the relationship between two entities-Amnesty International India Pvt Ltd and Amnesty International India Foundation. Most of the documents asked for during search were available in public domain or were already filed with relevant authorities," AMI quoted an Amnesty India statement as saying. "Amnesty India's bank accounts have been frozen by the Enforcement Directorate, effectively stopping our work. Amnesty India is thus the latest target of the government's assault on civil society in the country," it said. The human rights watchdog alleged that the government is instilling fear among civil society organisations by conducting such raids. "...We reiterate, our structure is compliant with Indian laws," Amnesty India said in a tweet. "ED raid on Amnesty India shows a disturbing pattern of the government silencing organisations that question power and it is clear that the government wants to instill fear among Civil Society Organisations," it said. Amnesty India, in a series of tweets, said over five ED officials had raided its office and had ordered employees not to leave, shut their laptop computers and searched their desks. "Employees were not allowed to use their phones to call friends and families," it said. The watchdog also said the 10-hour raid conducted at its office ended midnight and the staff had fully cooperated with officials. Also Read | Bengaluru: Enforcement Directorate raids Amnesty International headquarters The ED, in a statement, had said, "After Amnesty International India Foundation Trust (AIIFT) was denied the permission/registration under FCRA by the MHA (ministry of home affairs) they resorted to bypass the FCRA by floating commercial entity in the name of Amnesty International India Pvt Ltd (AIIPL). "This entity has received foreign funds through commercial route to the extent of Rs 36 crore till date," it had said. Of the total amount of Rs 36 crore, it said, Rs 10 crore was received as long-term loans. "This amount was immediately placed in FDs (fixed deposits) and another Indian entity Indians for Amnesty International Trust (IAIT) had established an overdraft facility for Rs 14.25 crore keeping the said Rs 10 crore FD as collateral which means the receipt of FDI by trust only. The remaining Rs 26 crore was received in two other bank accounts of AIIPL as consultancy services. The inwards remittances received by the AIIPL from overseas is in violation of FDI guidelines," it had said. In this background, searches were conducted at Bengaluru office of the NGO and further probe is in progress, it had said. The agency, sometime back, had frozen over a dozen bank accounts of environmental NGO Greenpeace and its linked entity after it conducted searches at their premises in Bengaluru on charges of alleged forex violations after taking cognisance of the FCRA action against it. OneIndia News with Pti inputs For Breaking News and Instant Updates Allow Notifications Story first published: Friday, October 26, 2018, 13:34 [IST] UP BJP chief to workers: Have tea with Dalits, make them understand votes are cast on nationalism, not caste Lok Sabha 2019 polls: BJP agrees on 50-50 formula with JD(U) for Bihar seats India oi-Madhuri Adnal New Delhi, Oct 26: Bharatiya Janata Party President Amit Shah after meeting Nitish Kumar said BJP & JDU will fight on equal number of seats for Lok Sabha Elections 2019 in Bihar. Speaking to media, Shah said,''It has been decided that BJP & JDU will fight on equal number of seats for Lok Sabha Elections 2019 in Bihar. Other allies will also get a respectable seat share. Numbers will be announced in a few days.'' ''Upendra Kushwaha and Ram Vilas Paswan will remain with us. When a new ally has joined us, there will be a reduction in seat share for everyone,'' Shah said. Also Read | NDA will remain in power after 2019 Lok Sabha polls: Ramdas Athawale Earlier in the day, Nitish Kumar and Amit Shah met over seat sharing strategy ahead of crucial Lok Sabha election in 2019. Earlier, it was reported that the BJP and JDU were in discussion to contest on 32 seats - (16 for JDU and 16 for BJP) - and remaining eight seats were for Ram Vilas Paswan's Lok Janshakti Party and Upendra Kushwaha's Rashtriya Lok Samta Party. In the last Lok Sabha polls, JD(U), which allied with the Communist Party of India, contested on 38 seats but could win only two seats. On the other hand, the BJP won 22 seats out of 40 it contested. LJP not ready for anything less than 7 seats; JD (U) looking for equal seats with the BJP The meeting comes just a few months ahead of the crucial general election that is expected to take place somewhere between March and April 2019. 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 Bombay HC to hear Lt Col Prasad Purohit's appeal on Monday India oi-Chennabasaveshwar P Mumbai, Oct 26: The Bombay High Court agreed to hear prime accused in the 2008 Malegaon blast case Lt Col Prasad Purohit's appeal on Monday. Purohit had moved the Court against the order of the special NIA court that had rejected his challenge to Unlawful Activities (Prevention) Act (UAPA) sanctions. No stay on trial for the meanwhile. Malegaon: Brave cops save 5 people from being lynched by mob over child-trafficking rumour In his appeal, Col. Purohit's lawyer Amit Ghagh has said that the trial judge failing to apply his mind and his decision on the applicability of the UAPA in the case during the trial is incorrect. 2008 Malegaon blast accused Ramesh Upadhyay to contest 2019 Lok Sabha poll The special court designated to hear cases under the National Investigation Agency (NIA) act, had last week dismissed Purohit's application challenging the sanction to prosecute him under the provisions of the UAPA. It had also clarified that it would frame charges against all the accused including Purohit under the UAPA on October 26. CBI vs CBI: SC orders CVC inquiry against Verma, wants report in 2 weeks India oi-Vicky Nanjappa New Delhi, Oct 26: The Supreme Court has said that it will ask the Central Vigilance Commission to inquire into both the Director and Special Director of the CBI under the supervision of retired Supreme Court judge, Justice A K Patnaik. A Bench headed by Chief Justice of India, Ranjan Gogoi said that it would ask the CVC to complete the probe in two weeks. This is a matter of national importance and there cannot be any further delay. We want to see a preliminary probe report in ten days and then decide whether it would require further probe, the Bench also said. The court also said that in the interim, the interim director of the CBI, M Nageshwar Rao will not take any decisions. He will only do a routine job to keep the CBI going, the Bench said. Further the Bench also asked the Centre to give it in a sealed cover the decisions taken till date by the interim director after he was given charge. He court said, " inquiry in respect of allegations made in the note of the Secretariat as regards to the present CBI Director, Verma shall be completed in 2 weeks from today. The inquiry will be conducted by retired judge of the Supreme Court, Justice A K Patnaik. The background: The court is hearing a petition filed by Alok Verma, who had challenged the decision of the government to send him on leave. Earlier CBI special director, Rakesh Asthana moved the Supreme Court challenging the decision of the government that sent him on leave, following a spat with the agency's director, Alok Verma. Verma is being represented by Fali Nariman, while Mukul Rohatgi argued for Rakesh Asthana. Solicitor General, Tushar Mehta is representing the CVC, while Attorney General K K Venugopal is arguing on behalf of the DoPT. On Thursday, advocate, Prashant Bhushan challenged the decision of the government to send, CBI Director, Alok Verma on leave. In his petition sought for the quashing of the CVC's orders on the basis of which the government divested Verma of his duties and functions in the CBI. Bhushan also urged the court to tag his petition with the one filed by Verma. He also sought the removal of Rakesh Asthana from the CBI and sought for the setting up of an Verma in his petition said that the investigating officers of sensitive cases are being changed. Verma further said that there is a need for an independent CBI. Present circumstances occurred when certain investigation into high functionaries do not take the direction that may be desirable to the government. He said that he can furnish details of many cases which have led to the present circumstances. They are extremely sensitive in nature. The CVC took an overnight decision to divest me completely of the CBI director's role. This is contrary to Section 4 B of the DSPE Act, which grants a secure term of 2 years to the CBI chief in order to ensure independence. The section also mandates the appointment of a CBI Director by a high powered panel of the PM, LoP and CJI. Further the committee's consent is also needed to transfer the CBI Director. This latest action bypass the mandate of the committee, he also said. Following the ugly public spat, the government decided to send both Verma and his deputy Rakesh Asthana on leave. Following this M Nageshwar Rao was appointed as the interim director with immediate effect. In a late night order the government appointed Rao as the interim chief of the CBI. The order stated, " The Appointments Committee of the Cabinet has approved that during the period of the subsistence of the aforesaid interim measure, cited in reference above, Shri M Nageshwar Rao, IPS, presently working as Joint Director, CBI shall look after duties and functions of Director CBI and shall take over duties and functions with immediate effect." Congress Seva Dal to be actively working on 50 Assembly seats in Rajasthan elections India oi-Vinod Kumar Shukla New Delhi, Oct 26: The Congress Seva Dal which has been more or less a defunct organisation within the Congress from long but the party has been trying to rejuvenate it once again. The organisation is likely to play an active role in the forthcoming Rajasthan Assembly elections with Congress chief Rahul Gandhi asking workers of the Congress Seva Dal to be given important and active role in the Assembly elections. Sources in the Congress said that Congress Seva Dal will be handed over the responsibility of such seats which the Congress has been loosing in successive elections. They said that the Congress was devising a special strategy for such seats and Congress Seva Dal workers will be handling the responsibility of these seats. Also Read | Rajasthan polls 2018: Some interesting facts from history The Congress has already identified some of those constituencies and Seva Dal workers have been placed on those seats with all kinds of assistance provided to them. They are collecting all relevant data on those week seats for the Congress. The Congress is trying to understand caste equations, mood of the voters and identifying local issues on such seats. The Congress Seva Dal has also been asked to suggest names for Assembly tickets on these constituencies to the party high command. Some of the constituencies where Seva Dal workers have already started working included Sanganer, Vidyadhar Nagar, Adarsh Nagar and Kishanpole Assembly seats in Jaipur. They are visiting door to door appealing people to support the Congress candidates in their constituencies. Constituency of Rajasthan chief minister Vasundhara Raje Jhalrapatan, Bundi and Ladpura in Hadoti, Rajsamand in Mewar, Bhim in Udaipur city, Shergarh, Lohawat, Marwad Junction, Parbatsar, Degana and Jodhpur City from Marwad region, Pilani, Churu and Sadulpur districts in Shekhawati and around 50 seats out of the total 200 Assembly seats in Rajasthan have been identified that would be given to Seva Dal workers in the Assembly elections. Also Read | PM good at only giving slogans on women safety: Rahul Gandhi The Congress wants to rejuvenate this organisation which was quite useful for the Congress for organisational activities. The Rajasthan elections will a test for the Congress Seva Dal. For Breaking News and Instant Updates Allow Notifications Story first published: Friday, October 26, 2018, 10:50 [IST] Dera Sacha Sauda supporters getting united in Rajasthan before Assembly elections India oi-Vinod Kumar Shukla New Delhi, Oct 26: Not only Haryana but Rajasthan too has certain degree of influence of Deras (sect) which too wield political clout and influence elections in certain pockets. One such organisation, Dera Sacha Sauda of Gurmeet Ram Rahim Singh has become politically active in Rajasthan which apparently has its influence over roughly 35 Assembly seats. Dera has sent message to its followers to make its strength realised despite the fact that Dera chief is in jail on charges of rape. Since Dera chief is in jail so no political leaders are reaching to his birth place Gurusar Modia. But Dera has already planned its strategy to make its strength realised to political parties contesting elections in the state and it is working on it. The birth place of Dera Sachcha Sauda chief is in Sri Ganganagar district of Rajasthan. Also Read | Rajasthan polls 2018: Some interesting facts from history Dera is planning to unite its followers Assembly-wise by organising Satsang (religious congregation). Dera people in the leading role at the block level have been communicated to unite people having faith in Gurmeet Ram Rahim Singh. The influence of Dera is in the several districts of Rajasthan that included Sri Ganganagar, Hanumangarh, Kota, Sikar, Churu, Alwar, Jaipur, Dausa and Bikaner in which around 35 Assembly constituencies have sizable supporters of Dera. After Dera chief was sentenced for rape charges, cases against Dera workers were registered that has infuriated supporters of Dera against the Bharatiya Janata Party. But they are not sympathetic towards any other political party. Dera has an eight-member political wing in Rajasthan that is in consultation and after the reading the mind of their supporters any decision will be taken which way to go. Besides Sirsa in Haryana, Sri Ganganagar is district in Rajasthan is also an important place for Dera followers where lots of activities related to Dera take place. The district has sizable supporters of Sikhs and Dera supporters. So the support of Dera will matter in and around Sri Ganganagar district. For Breaking News and Instant Updates Allow Notifications Story first published: Friday, October 26, 2018, 9:56 [IST] Dilli Gupshup: It is feared Yogi might change name of Kareenas son from Taimur to Tukaram India oi-Vinod Kumar Shukla New Delhi, Oct 26: Uttar Pradesh chief minister's decision to change name of Allahabad to Prayagraj received a mixed response with people praising and making fun of him both. [All places named after Mughals should be changed: Giriraj Singh] Another interesting development of intolerance that will go unreported when the Congress did not allow reporter of his favourite channel to ask a question for him being harsh on the party. In another development a central minister is asking suggestion from the local media of his home state for his branding and finally two young politicians at the loggerheads with the blue eyed boy of the party leadership having the last laugh. Some interesting reports with a pinch of salt for weekend readings. It is feared Yogi might change name of Kareena's son from Taimur to Tukaram Uttar Pradesh chief minister Yogi Adityanath has changed the name of Allahabad to Prayagraaj but the issue is failing to die down. Taking a dig on him people say that the way he is changing name and colour the UP CM would very soon name the son of Bollywood starts Kareena Kapoor and Saif Ali Khan from Taimur to Tukaram. The naming of Taimur Ali Khan was also debated like anything as the issue of Prayagraj. Now the Taimur to Tukaram has become a rage in a section and circulated in WhatApp like crazy. [Yogi defends renaming of Allahabad, says those opposing it have 'zero understanding of history'] Journalists must learn to ask pleasing questions from politicians Generally tolerance and intolerance debate that was confined among political parties and rights organisations but now it has caught up with politicians and journalists. A reporter from the favourite news channel of the Congress was not allowed to ask question as he was very harsh while asking questions in his last press conference of the party. The other reporter from the same organisation was allowed to ask question. So journalist must learn to ask such questions that please political parties. Is this what it means we guess? Face off between two young turks of the ruling party A so-called blue-eyed boy of the party president and another important functionary of the BJP are at the loggerheads over handling of social media of the party. Both these heads of their respective departments of the party. So if someone gets approved something the other one gets its disapproval done. Time is the biggest judge else the person who had introduced technology in the BJP and people associated with him are forced to seek help of others in the matter of technology. Grapevine is abuzz that arrogance for having talent is justified but arrogance for having someone's favourite doesn't lost long. So better mend ways before it is late. Central minister seeks journalists' suggestion to get published There is no limit for anyone getting publicity, ever since a BJP minister has been entrusted with some more responsibility in his home state, he is in touch with local reporters seeking their advice that what to do to get published constantly. If he is rightly taken by the media and what further needs to be done etc. But the most important things is that if one of his rival from the state is getting similar footage and similar print space. This is how people start nurturing big dreams but in the present dispensations even dreams too are the prerogative of the top two duo. So it is advised to him not to run so fast. For Breaking News and Instant Updates Allow Notifications Story first published: Friday, October 26, 2018, 22:11 [IST] Disqualified AIADMK MLAs to approach SC against Madras HC verdict India oi-Chennabasaveshwar P Chennai, Oct 26: Disqualified 18 rebel AIADMK MLAs have decided to approach the Supreme Court against the Madras High Court verdict which upheld their disqualification. Thanga Tamil Selvan, one of the disqualified MLAs, told media persons, "Our advocate says that there are many drawbacks in this verdict by Madras High Court. Within 30 to 90 days, we will approach the Supreme Court." TTV Dhinakaran had told the media after the Madras HC verdict"If the 18 MLAs decide to go to the Supreme Court, we will go; or else we will wait for the by polls. But whenever elections happen, we will win. " Senior AIADMK ministers celebrated the HC verdict along with chief minister and the deputy chief minister. Meanwhile, Palaniswami has said that if the Election Commission decides to conduct by-elections in these seats based on the court's verdict, AIADMK will contest and win in all of them. Eighteen AIADMK MLAs were disqualified for "anti-party activities" in 2017 for supporting the Sasikala-Dhinakaran faction by P Dhanapal, the Speaker of the House, under the 10th Schedule of the Constitution (anti-defection law) after they expressed a lack of confidence in chief minister E Palaniswami. For Breaking News and Instant Updates Allow Notifications Story first published: Friday, October 26, 2018, 14:44 [IST] Human Rights cant be an excuse for defying law of the land: MHA on Amnesty Govt treating human rights organisations like criminal enterprises: Amnesty India pti-PTI Bengaluru, Oct 26: Amnesty International India said Friday the Union government is treating human rights organisations like criminal enterprises in the wake of searches by the Enforcement Directorate at its premises. The ED on Thursday conducted searches at two locations of the rights watchdog in connection with a foreign exchange contravention case. "Government authorities are increasingly treating human rights organisations like criminal enterprises," Amnesty International India executive director Aakar Patel said in a statement here. Raids on Amnesty International: Rs 36 crore foreign funding under ED's scanner The searches were in connection with alleged violation of foreign direct investment norms that is linked to an earlier case of revocation of FCRA licence of the NGO by the Union Home Ministry in 2010. "As an organisation committed to the rule of law, our operations in India have always conformed with our national regulations. The principles of transparency and accountability are at the heart of our work," Patel said. #MeToo in K'taka: KFCC to form committee deal with sexual harassment charges The focus of ED's questioning was the relationship between two entities Amnesty International India Pvt Ltd and Amnesty International India Foundation, it said. Most of the documents asked for during the search were available in the public domain or were already filed with the relevant authorities, the watchdog said. Details of Amnesty India's current structure, which was the focus of much of the questioning, have been available on its website since 2014, the statement said. However, ahead of the raids, the Indian authorities leaked a cache of their internal documents marked "secret" that appear to cast Amnesty India's operations as a dark web of intrigue, the statement said. "Our work in India, as elsewhere, is to uphold and fight for universal human rights. These are the same values that are enshrined in the Indian Constitution and flow from a long and rich Indian tradition of pluralism, tolerance and dissent," Patel said. "We could not agree more with the Prime Minister when he says that periods of repression, like during the Emergency, have left a stain on India's history. Sadly, those dark days are now casting a shadow over India again. "Instead of protecting human rights, as it vowed to do, the government is now targeting the people who fight for them," Patel said. Over 40 lakh Indians have supported Amnesty India's work over the last six years and around one lakh Indians have made a financial contribution, he said. Amnesty India said its bank accounts have been frozen by the Enforcement Directorate, effectively stopping its work and it is the latest target of the governments assault on civil society in the country. The accounts of Greenpeace India were frozen earlier this month, it added. Around 1.30 pm on October 25, a group of officers from ED entered the premises and locked the gates behind them, the statement said, adding that they ordered Amnesty India staff to remain in office, shut their laptops, and not use their mobile phones. Earlier, in a series of tweets, Amnesty India said its structure is compliant with Indian laws and ED raid showed a disturbing pattern of government silencing organisations that question power and also wants to instill fear among civil society organisations. "...We reiterate, our structure is compliant with Indian laws," Amnesty India said in a tweet. "ED raid on Amnesty India shows a disturbing pattern of the government silencing organisations that question power and it is clear that the government wants to instill fear among Civil Society Organisations," it said. The watchdog also said the 10-hour long raid conducted at its office ended midnight and the staff had fully cooperated with officials. The ED, in a statement, had also said, "After Amnesty International India Foundation Trust (AIIFT) was denied the permission/registration under FCRA (Foreign Contribution Regulation Act) by the MHA (ministry of home affairs) they resorted to bypass the FCRA by floating commercial entity in the name of Amnesty International India Pvt Ltd (AIIPL). "This entity has received foreign funds through commercial route to the extent of Rs 36 crore till date," it had said. Out of the total amount of Rs 36 crore, it said, Rs 10 crore was received as long term loans. "This amount was immediately placed in FDs (fixed deposits) and another Indian entity Indians for Amnesty International Trust (IAIT) had established an over draft facility for Rs 14.25 crore keeping the said 10 crore FD as collateral which means the receipt of FDI by trust only. "The remaining Rs 26 crore was received in two other bank accounts of AIIPL as consultancy services. The inwards remittances received by the AIIPL from overseas is in violation of FDI guidelines," it had said. In this background, searches were conducted at Bengaluru office of the NGO and further probe is in progress, it had said. PTI With 2 more arrests NIA steps up heat on terrorists targeting civilians in J&K Cleaning up the inside rot: The importance of gunning down Kashmirs white collared terrorists Hyderpora encounter: Bodies of two civilians exhumed, to be handed over to families J&K: Two terrorists killed in Sopore, one soldier martyred India oi-Vikas SV Srinagar, Oct 26: Two terrorists were gunned down by the security forces in Jammu and Kashmir's Sopore area on Friday (October 26) while one soldier was martyred. Reports say that 10 terrorists have been killed in the last 48 hours in Jammu and Kashmir. On Thursday (October 25), two terrorist were killed after an encounter broke out between security forces and terrorists in Athoora, Kheri in Jammu and Kashmir's Baramulla district. Also Read | This day, that year, when J&K became an official part of India The security forces on Wednesday (October 24) gunned down two terrorists in Jammu and Kashmir's Nowgam region. On Sunday (October 21), three terrorists who were hiding in a residential house were killed by the security forces in Larro area of Kulgam district in Jammu and Kashmir. Also Read | Why do we continue to use weapons of the 1990s, Hizb commander asks Pakistan Last week, two terrorists were gunned down when they tried to attack the police in the Kralhaar area of Baramulla district in north Kashmir. For Breaking News and Instant Updates Allow Notifications Story first published: Friday, October 26, 2018, 10:32 [IST] Norovirus outbreak in Kerala: How contagious is it? Symptoms, treatment, all you need to know Kerala: BJP to stage statewide protest condemning arrests India oi-Chennabasaveshwar P Trivandrum, Oct 26: BJP to stage a statewide protest in Kerala condemning the arrest of protesters on Friday. In a Statewide crackdown that began on Wednesday, the Kerala police have arrested 1,400 people in connection with the violent protests against the entry of young women into the Sabarimala temple earlier this month. Kerala: 1,400 arrested in connection with Sabarimala protests Police have filed 440 cases and issued lookout circular for 210 persons allegedly involved in the protests at Nilackal, Pampa and Sabarimala. Sources said 150 persons had already been identified. State police chief Loknath Behera told PTI that the arrests were made in the last two days and 440 cases registered in connection with violent incidents following the supreme court verdict allowing women of menstrual age to offer prayers at the hill temple. Kerala: Four women approach High Court seeking police protection to go to Sabarimala Temple Police have also released photographs of over 200 people suspected to have been involved in the protests at Sabarimala to prevent the entry of women of menstrual age into the shrine last week. Special teams would be formed in all districts to identify the suspects whose photographs were released on Wednesday, police sources said. (WIth PTI inputs) For Breaking News and Instant Updates Allow Notifications Story first published: Friday, October 26, 2018, 9:26 [IST] No Bitcoin scam, says ruling BJP; No foul play in investigation: Bengaluru police Bengaluru Apartment Fire Accident Today: Fire breaks out at building in Electronic City, no causality reported #MeToo in K'taka: KFCC to form committee deal with sexual harassment charges India oi-Chennabasaveshwar P Bengaluru, Oct 26: Karnataka Film Chamber of Commerce (KFCC) is planning to form a committee to deal with sexual harassment charges in the film industry. The plan comes in the wake of Sruthi Hariharan leveled sexual harassment against senior actor Arjun Sarja. However, the KFCC failed to broker truce between Sruthi Hariharan and Arjun Sarja on Thursday. Both the actors have sough legal action against each other. Subsequently, the KFCC decided not to intervene over #MeToo allegations by Sruthi Hariharan as the matter is in court. #MeToo in Sandalwood: Ambareesh speaks to Sruthi Hariharan over allegations against Arjun Sarja Also, Sruthi Hariharan lodged complaint against Arjun Sarja's close aide Prashant Sambargi in High Grounds police station for allegedly threatening her. Many have rushed to Arjun's defence, after Sruthi Hariharan shocked the Kannada film industry when she accused actor Arjun Sarja of inappropriately behaving with her on the sets of Vismaya (2016). For Breaking News and Instant Updates Allow Notifications Story first published: Friday, October 26, 2018, 11:38 [IST] Modi to address business leaders, industry people and Indian community in Japan India oi-Vinod Kumar Shukla New Delhi, Oct 26: Bilateral relations between India and Japan are very important not only in terms of business but also for the infrastructure development, technology support and but even cooperation in the field of atomic energy. Prime Minister Narendra Modi will be meeting twelfth time with his Japanese counterpart during his tenure. He will be there from October 28 to 29, 2018 for the Annual Summit. [PM Modi on two-day visit to Japan starting Oct 28: MEA] Prime Minister Narendra Modi said, "Japan is India's valued partner. We have a special strategic and global partnership. Our ties with Japan, both economic and strategic, stand completely transformed in recent years. It is a partnership of great substance and purpose. It rests on the strong pillars of India's Act East Policy, and our shared vision and commitment to a free, open and inclusive Indo-Pacific." The Prime Minister said, "As democracies, we have shared values. We seek peace and prosperity for all. Our complementarities make India and Japan a winning combination. Japan is one of the most trusted partners in India's economic and technological modernisations and one of the top investors in India. Projects like Mumbai-Ahmedabad High Speed Rail and Dedicated Freight Corridors reflect the high level and strength of our economic engagement. Japan is also at the forefront of engaging in our national initiatives, such as 'Make in India', 'Skill India', 'Digital India', 'Start Up India', etc." ['CBI director was about to investigate Rafale deal, that's why PM removed him': Rahul Gandhi] Japanese investors have faith in India's economic future, which is marked with myriad opportunities. "We value Japan's global leadership in innovation, technologies and best practices. During this visit, I will have a chance to see some of Japan's high-tech capabilities in robotics. I will have wide-ranging talks with Prime Minister Shinzo Abe and interact with business leaders and captains of industry from both countries. I will also address the Indian community." These interactions will help to further strengthen trade and investment ties, and cooperation in new areas, such as healthcare, digital technologies, agriculture and food processing, disaster risk reduction and disaster resilient infrastructure. "I greatly welcome the growing ties between our parliamentarians, and between our states and Japan's prefectures. It is a matter of happiness that direct relations between the peoples of our two countries continue to grow through active interaction in areas such as education, skill development, culture and tourism. My visit will promote our traditional friendship that is deeply rooted in history, and consolidate our partnership for a better and more prosperous future." This will be Indian PM's twelfth meeting with Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe since his first visit to Japan as Prime Minister in September 2014. He had visited Japan in 2016 for the Annual Summit. Last year, he had hosted Prime Minister Abe and Mrs. Akie Abe in Gujarat as well. Rahul Gandhi's old tweet goes viral: 'Mark my words, govt will take back anti-farm laws' PM Modi can run, hide but truth will be revealed: Rahul Gandhi India oi-Vikas SV New Delhi, Oct 26: Congress president Rahul Gandhi, who was detained by the police while leading Congress' protesting against the ouster of CBI chief Alok Verma, on Friday (October 26) continued his attack on Prime Minister Narendra Modi and said "truth will be revealed". Rahul Gandhi and Congress MP Bhubaneswar Kalita were taken to Lodhi Road police station in the national capital from outside CBI headquarters. Rahul Gandhi was leading the protest march from Dyal Singh College to CBI HQ against the removal of CBI chief Alok Verma. "The Prime Minister can run, he can hide but in the end, truth will be revealed. Removing CBI Director will not help. The Prime Minister acted against CBI Director; it was an act out of panic," he said after leaving Lodhi Colony police station in Delhi, as per ANI report. Also Read | CBI vs CBI: SC orders CVC inquiry against Verma, wants report in 2 weeks Gandhi said earlier today that the government can detain him as many times as they want but they cannot hide the truth. Trinamool Congress MP Nadeem Ul Haq, CPI leader D Raja and senior Congress leader Ashok Gehlot were also part of the protest. In a press conference held on Thursday, Rahul Gandhi said the party would also protest outside all the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) offices across the country. The Supreme Court today said that it will ask the Central Vigilance Commission (CVC) to inquire into both the Director and Special Director of the CBI under the supervision of retired Supreme Court judge, Justice A K Patnaik. Also Read | Rafale file was not under Alok Verma says CBI The Centre and the CBI were asked by the apex court to provide the CVC report in a sealed cover within 10 days. Upon this direction, the CVC pleaded that 10 days for CBI inquiry is not enough as it has to look into several documents. The top court then granted two weeks' time to the CVC for concluding the probe. For Breaking News and Instant Updates Allow Notifications Story first published: Friday, October 26, 2018, 15:24 [IST] PIL in SC challenges Centre's ordinances on powers to extend tenure of Directors of CBI, ED Rafale file was not under Alok Verma says CBI India oi-Vicky Nanjappa New Delhi, Oct 26: The CBI Thursday rejected reports that files related to several crucial cases, including that of the Rafale fighter aircraft deal, was under the consideration of its Director Alok Verma when he was divested of his powers by the Centre. In an unprecedented shake-up in the CBI's 55-year-history, both Verma and his deputy, Special Director Rakesh Asthana, were divested of their powers and sent on leave in a dramatic overnight action by the government Tuesday night. CVC still waiting for CBI report on year-old secret note with allegations against Rakesh Asthana A news report claimed Thursday that several crucial files, including the one related to the Rafale fighter jet deal, was under the consideration of Verma when the Centre in a mid-night order divested him of his powers. In a statement, CBI Spokesperson Abhishek Dayal termed the news report as false. This is being manufactured by vested interests. Every file in the CBI at each level is accounted for, he said. Activist lawyer Prashant Bhushan and former Union minister Arun Shourie had submitted a detailed complaint to Verma on October 4 regarding alleged corruption in the deal signed with France's Dassault Aviation to buy 36 Rafale aircraft. Along with the "detailed" complaint under the Prevention of Corruption Act, Bhushan and Shourie had also submitted documents buttressing their argument for the need of probe. Alok Verma remains CBI Director, Asthana Spl Director, Rao given only interim charge: CBI Alleging that the offset contract for Rafale aircraft was actually a commission to an private company, they had asked Verma to take the government's permission to initiate a probe in accordance with the law. Apart from protecting Asthana (Special Director) from investigation, the Rafale complaint by Shourie, Sinha and myself, entertained by the CBI Director, must be another reason for the Govt to remove him with such alacrity by this midnight order, Bhushan had tweeted Wednesday. For Breaking News and Instant Updates Allow Notifications Story first published: Friday, October 26, 2018, 6:06 [IST] Raids on Amnesty International: Rs 36 crore foreign funding under EDs scanner India oi-Vicky Nanjappa Bengaluru, Oct 26: Human rights watchdog, Amnesty International was raided by the Enforcement under the Foreign Exchange Management Act. Two locations of Amnesty International were raided at Bengaluru, Karnataka and ED sources said that they suspected violations under the Foreign Contribution Regulation Act and Foreign Direct Investment guidelines. Under the scanner was a foreign funding of Rs 36 crore through a commercial route, which the ED said was in violation of FCRA and FDI. Chargesheeted Chidambaram exceeded brief in granting FIPB The searches are in connection with alleged violation of foreign direct investment (FDI) norms that is linked to an earlier case of revocation of FCRA licence of the NGO by the Union Home Ministry in 2010, the ED said. "After Amnesty International India Foundation Trust (AIIFT) was denied the permission/registration under FCRA (Foreign Contribution Regulation Act) by the MHA (ministry of home affairs) they resorted to bypass the FCRA by floating commercial entity in the name of Amnesty lnternational India Pvt Ltd (AIIPL). "This entity has received foreign funds through commercial route to the extent of Rs 36 crore till date," the ED said in a statement. Out of the total amount of Rs 36 crore, it said, Rs 10 crore was received as long term loans. "This amount was immediately placed in FDs (fixed deposits) and another Indian entity-- Indians for Amnesty International Trust (IAIT) had established an over draft facility for Rs 14.25 crore keeping the said 10 crore FD as collateral which means the receipt of FDI by trust only. Aircel Maxis Case: ED files chargesheet naming Chidambaram as accused No.1 "The remaining Rs 26 crore was received in two other bank accounts of AIIPL as consultancy services. The inwards remittances received by the AIIPL from overseas is in violation of FDI guidelines," it said.In this background, searches were conducted at Bengaluru office of the NGO and further probe is in progress, it said. The agency, sometime back, had frozen over a dozen bank accounts of environmental NGO Greenpeace and its linked entity after it conducted searches at their premises in Bengaluru on charges of alleged forex violations after taking cognisance of the FCRA action against it. This day, that year, when J&K became an official part of India India oi-Vikas SV New Delhi, Oct 26: October 26 is an important day in the history of Jammu and Kashmir. It was on this day in 1947 that Maharaja Hari Singh, the ruler of then princely state Jammu and Kashmir, signed on the Instrument of Accession and decided to be part of India. This day is, by and large, celebrated by the people of Jammu and Kashmir, barring the seperatists who observe it as a 'Black Day'. Hari Singh's decision to join India and the signing of the Instrument of Accession is at the center of so called Kashmir dispute between India and Pakistan. India claims that the accession is unconditional and final while Pakistan maintains that the accession is fraudulent. The very claim of India at every international forum, including the United Nations, that entire Kashmir is integral part of India is based on this signing of accession by Hari Singh. When the British rule ended in 1947 on undivided India, there were over 562 princely states. Mohammed Ali Jinnah's demand for a seperate nation for Muslims led to partition and creation of the Dominion of Pakistan and the Union of India. Princely states were left to choose whether to join India or Pakistan or to remain independent. Who would take this decision - the ruler of the pricely state or the people - remained a contetious issue. The widespread belief and the way it should have worked was ruler taking the decision while respecting the wishes of the population. Eventually, princely states with majority Hindu population, by and large, had no problems joining India. But Jammu and Kashmir was a special case. Jammu and Kashmir was a Muslim majority state with a Hindu ruler. Pakistan made various efforts to persuade the Maharaja of Kashmir to join Pakistan. When Pakistan felt that Hari Singh may accecced to India, it organized a large-scale invasion of Kashmir by Pathan tribesmen. Hari Singh's forces could not stop the invasion by the fierce Pasthun tribesmen which was orchastrated by Pakistan to frighten Hari Singh into submission. Instead the Maharaja appealed to India for assistance, and the Governor-General Lord Mountbatten agreed on the condition that the ruler accede to India. Here is the full text of the Instrument of Accession executed by Maharaja Hari Singh on 26 October, 1947, and accepted by Lord Mountbatten on 27 October, 1947. Whereas the Indian Independence Act 1947, provides that as from the fifteenth day of August, 1947, there shall be set up an Independent Dominion known as India, and that the Government of India Act, 1935 shall, with such omission, additions, adaptations and modifications as the governor-general may by order specify, be applicable to the Dominion of India. And whereas the Government of India Act, 1935, as so adapted by the governor-general, provides that an Indian State may accede to the Dominion of India by an Instrument of Accession executed by the Ruler thereof. Now, therefore, I Shriman Inder Mahander Rajrajeswar Maharajadhiraj Shri Hari Singhji, Jammu and Kashmir Naresh Tatha Tibbetadi Deshadhipathi, Ruler of Jammu and Kashmir State, in the exercise of my sovereignty in and over my said State do hereby execute this my Instrument of Accession and I hereby declare that I accede to the Dominion of India with the intent that the governor-general of India, the Dominion Legislature, the Federal Court and any other Dominion authority established for the purposes of the Dominion shall, by virtue of this my Instrument of Accession but subject always to the terms thereof, and for the purposes only of the Dominion, exercise in relation to the State of Jammu and Kashmir (hereinafter referred to as "this State") such functions as may be vested in them by or under the Government of India Act, 1935, as in force in the Dominion of India, on the 15th day of August, 1947, (which Act as so in force is hereafter referred to as "the Act"). I hereby assume the obligation of ensuring that due effect is given to the provisions of the ACT within this state so far as they are applicable therein by virtue of this my Instrument of Accession. I accept the matters specified in the schedule hereto as the matters with respect to which the Dominion Legislatures may make laws for this state. I hereby declare that I accede to the Dominion of India on the assurance that if an agreement is made between the Governor General and the ruler of this state whereby any functions in relation to the administration in this state of any law of the Dominion Legislature shall be exercised by the ruler of this state, then any such agreement shall be deem to form part of this Instrument and shall be construed and have effect accordingly. The terms of this my Instrument of accession shall not be varied by any amendment of the Act or of the Indian Independence Act, 1947 unless such amendment is accepted by me by an Instrument supplementary to this Instrument. Nothing in this Instrument shall empower the Dominion Legislature to make any law for this state authorizing the compulsory acquisition of land for any purpose, but I hereby undertake that should the Dominion for the purposes of a Dominion law which applies in this state deem it necessary to acquire any land, I will at their request acquire the land at their expense or if the land belongs to me transfer it to them on such terms as may be agreed, or, in default of agreement, determined by an arbitrator to be appointed by the Chief Justice Of India. Nothing in this Instrument shall be deemed to commit me in any way to acceptance of any future constitution of India or to fetter my discretion to enter into arrangements with the Government of India under any such future constitution. Nothing in this Instrument affects the continuance of my sovereignty in and over this state, or, save as provided by or under this Instrument, the exercise of any powers, authority and rights now enjoyed by me as Ruler of this state or the validity of any law at present in force in this state. I hereby declare that I execute this Instrument on behalf of this state and that any reference in this Instrument to me or to the ruler of the state is to be construed as including to my heirs and successors. Given under my hand this 26th day of OCTOBER nineteen hundred and forty seven. Hari Singh Maharajadhiraj of Jammu and Kashmir State. (Text of Instrument of Accession Source - Wikipedia) Youth wing of Congress to perform havan for Kanganas wisdom Congress in alliance talks with Sharad Pawar's party, others for Goa polls CBI Gherao protest: Rahul Gandhi, senior Congress leaders detained India oi-Chennabasaveshwar P New Delhi, Oct 26: Congress President Rahul Gandhi and party workers, protesting against the removal of CBI Chief Alok Verma, were detained by Delhi Police near CBI headquarters on Friday. Rahul Gandhi is going to Lodhi Road police station to court arrest. Earlier, scores of party workers led by Rahul Gandhi reached CBI HQ to protest against the removal of CBI Director Alok Verma. Trinamool Congress MP Nadeem Ul Haq, CPI leader D Raja and senior Congress leader Ashok Gehlot joined the protest. Rafale file was not under Alok Verma says CBI Security has been tightened and barricaded outside CBI headquarters ahead of Congress protest. Also, security forces have been deployed outside CBI offices across the country. Lucknow. Meanwhile, Police used water cannon at Congress workers who are protesting against the removal of CBI Director Alok Verma in Chandigarh. Alok Verma remains CBI Director, Asthana Spl Director, Rao given only interim charge: CBI In a press conference held on Thursday, Rahul Gandhi said the party would also protest outside all the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) offices across the country. "Tomorrow, outside CBI offices nationwide, the Congress party will protest the Prime Minister's (Narendra Modi) disgraceful attempt to prevent an investigation into the Rafale scam by removing the CBI Chief," Rahul Gandhi said. Congress President Rahul Gandhi Congress President Rahul Gandhi and senior party leaders march towards the CBI headquarters during a protest demanding the reinstatement of CBI Director Alok Verma, in New Delhi, Friday, Oct 26, 2018. (PTI Photo Cutout of Rafale jet Congress President Rahul Gandhi holds a cutout of a fighter aircraft during a protest demanding the reinstatement of CBI Director Alok Verma outside the CBI headquarters, in New Delhi, Friday, Oct 26, 2018. (PTI Photo Rahul Gandhi detained Congress President Rahul Gandhi and senior party leaders are taken in a police bus after they courted arrest during a protest demanding the reinstatement of CBI Director Alok Verma outside the CBI headquarters. PTI Lodhi Colony Police Station Congress President Rahul Gandhi inside Lodhi Colony Police Station after being reportedly detained during CBI protests. Courtesy: ANI news SP and JD (U) looking for more electoral space beyond their pocket-borough Its not a tough call for BJP to drop five sitting Lok Sabha MPs in Bihar after alliance Upendra Kushwaha calls on RJD Leader Tejashwi Yadav after BJP agrees on 50-50 seat sharing formula India oi-Madhuri Adnal Patna, Oct 26: Union minister and Rashtriya Lok Samta Party chief Upendra Kushwaha met Rashtriya Janata Dal chief Tejashwi Yadav in Bihar on Friday evening. The meeting, held at the Arwal Circuit guest house, comes just after BJP chief Amit Shah and JD(U) supremo Nitish Kumar announced in Delhi that the two parties have agreed to contest the 2019 Lok Sabha election from equal number of seats. The JD(U) had on Tuesday said it had negotiated a 'good deal' with the BJP on the seat sharing agreement, but both the allies had said they were not privy to the discussions. China has never taken one inch of land from other countries: Xi tells Biden China cabbie caught driving with facial mask on; the reason will leave you amazed International oi-Shubham Ghosh Beijing, Oct 26: A 25-year-old taxi driver in the city of Taizhou in Zhejiang province was found sitting at the wheels wearing a facial cleansing mask and it has left the Internet abuzz. The driver, surnamed Chen, said he wore the mask because he found working in the night shift badly affected his facial complexion, according to a report in Shanghaiist. Neither the authorities nor Chen's employers were amused by his tactic though. While the police told him how risky it was to drive with a mask on, his employers straightaway suspended him for three days for the act. Indian Railways is building world's highest rail lines in Ladakh along India-China border Meanwhile, Chen's photo had gone viral on the social media with netizens calling him China's most "refined" taxi driver. But they also feared that his bizarre artificial countenance could also frighten children. The police caught Chen after seeing the photos and reprimanded him. He also faced the wrath of his employers. Japan PM makes a visit to China, hopes his visit lift relations to new level Chen was surprised that his masked face had become an Internet sensation. He also divulged his obsession with facial care and said he has bought skincare products worth 30,000 yuan in the last five years, the Shanghaiist report added. For Breaking News and Instant Updates Allow Notifications Story first published: Friday, October 26, 2018, 7:23 [IST] French President Emmanuel Macron In an interview published in Czech, Hungarian, Polish and Slovak media, the French leader insisted that "Europe is not a supermarket", driving home a point he made previously that eastern states could not pick and choose among the bloc's fundamental values. Devastation in war-torn Syria Seven months ahead of elections to the European Parliament, Macron said he expected the campaign ahead of the vote to be a duel between "progressives" and nationalists. As he kicks off a two-day visit to Slovakia and the Czech Republic, Macron also expressed concern about the refusal of some eastern EU members to accept migrants from the Middle East and North Africa under an EU quota programme drafted in the wake of the 2015 migrant crisis. Also Read |Syrian civil war: More than 900 children died in 2017, UN calls it deadliest' "We have a collective need for coherence and solidarity: we cannot benefit from the European budget without demonstrating solidarity on migration," Macron said. Syrian refugees fleeing from their country He also warned that any moves by member states to reduce their payments into the common budget could serve to undermine EU unity, including its single market. "We cannot try to reduce our contribution to the European budget without understanding what the single market brings. If we want to kill Europe, we should continue like this," Macron said. "Europe isn't a one-way street: it is a reciprocal commitment," he added. Turning to Poland's controversial judicial reforms, Macron said he hoped that "the Polish government will take the necessary steps to address the concerns of the (European) Commission and its partners." Its nationalist government has put Poland on a collision course with the European Union by introducing a string of controversial judicial reforms that the bloc has warned pose a threat to judicial independence, the rule of law and ultimately to democracy. The French leader also noted that "the situation of the rule of law in Hungary is undergoing worrying developments", and pointed to threats to the division of powers and the independence of non-governmental organisations. "I have a good relationship with Viktor Orban, whom I respect personally and as a prime minister chosen by the Hungarian people... But a Europe that ignores the diversity of ideas and beliefs, the independence of the judiciary or the press, the reception of refugees who have fled political persecution, is a betrayal of who we are," Macron added. Also Read |Peace and development in Syria and Afghanistan equally important for India and Russia He also condemned the February murder of a journalist in Slovakia, insisting that "threatening, attacking or killing journalists undermines the foundations of our democracies". As the human rights in Syria started to deteriorate from 2008, it led to huge protests. In 2011, Syrian Army had to intervene that gradually lead to violence to a rapid increase in military operations to suppress resistance. US secretary General Antonio Guterres By mid-2011, thousands of Syrian refugees fled away from their own country with majority of them reached Turkish border. As quoted by Antonio Guterres, US Secretary General who was a former UN High Commissioner for Refugees stated that Syria crisis has become "biggest humanitarian emergency of our era, yet our world fail to meet the needs of refugees". PTI Kashmir continues to be 'core unresolved agenda', says Pak Army chief International pti-PTI Islamabad, Oct 25: Pakistan Army chief General Qamar Javed Bajwa on Thursday said the Kashmir issue continues to be a "core unresolved agenda" and warned against "misadventure" against his country. Gen Bajwa made the remarks during a visit to Sarpir and Pandu Sectors at the Line of Control where he interacted with the Pakistani troops, the Inter-Services Public Relations (ISPR) - the media wing of the army - said in a statement. He appreciated the "operational readiness and high morale" of troops and said the Pakistan Army is "fully invested in peace and stability of the region". "However, we are ready and resolute in defending the motherland against any misadventure," Gen Bajwa was quoted as saying by the statement. [J&K: Two terrorists killed in an encounter in Baramulla's Keeri] The army chief said the Kashmir issue continues to be a "core unresolved agenda" and reiterated his support for the right to self-determination of Kashmiris. The ties between India and Pakistan remains strained after the terror attacks by Pakistan-based groups in 2016 and India's surgical strikes inside Pakistan-occupied Kashmir. After assuming power in August, Prime Minister Imran Khan wrote to Prime Minister Narendra Modi suggesting a meeting between the two countries' foreign ministers on the margins of the UN General Assembly in September. India accepted the proposal but, within hours of its acceptance, terrorists killed three policemen in Jammu and Kashmir, prompting New Delhi to cancel the foreign ministers' meeting on the sidelines of the UNGA. PTI Sri Lanka won't be allowed to be used for 'any activity' against India: President Rajapaksa Sri Lankan human trafficking case: Victims were lured with promise of jobs in Canada Mahinda Rajapaksa sworn in as Sri Lankan Prime Minister amid political drama International oi-Madhuri Adnal Colombo, Oct 26: Former President Mahinda Rajapaksa has been sworn-in as the Prime Minister before President Maithripala Sirisena. He replaced Ranil Wickremesinghe, reports Sri Lankan media. [Indian suspect in Sri Lankan president's assassination bid alleges frame-up] A private television network loyal to Mr Rajapakse televised him being sworn in as the new Prime Minister, replacing Mr Wickremesinghe. Rajapaksa, 72, tweeted a photo of him and Sirisena after the swearing in ceremony. "Former #SriLanka President Mahinda Rajapaksa sworn in as new Prime Minister," he said in the tweet. The unexpected announcement comes just minutes after the United People's Freedom Alliance (UPFA) decided to withdraw from the unity government. [11th suspect package found, it was sent to Democratic lawmaker Cory Booker: FBI] UPFA General Secretary Mahinda Amaraweera, speaking to Ada Derana, stated that the Speaker of Parliament has been notified of the decision in writing. Reacting sharply to the development, Minister of Finance and Media Mangala Samaraweera said that the appointment of Rajapaksa as the prime minister is "unconstitutional and illegal". "This is an anti democratic coup," he said in a tweet. The unity government was formed in 2015 when Sirisena was elected President with Wickremesinghe's support, ending a nearly decade-long rule by Rajapaksa. The sudden political development ends an over three-year-old coalition government that was formed by Sirisena and Wickremesinghe on a promise to combat corruption and financial irregularities. Sirisena, who was Rajapaksa's minister of health, broke away from him to contest the presidential elections. ['I will remain Lankan PM, naming Rajapaksa unconstitutional': Ranil Wickremesinghe] Political analysts said Sirisena's move to install Rajapaksa as the prime minister could lead to a constitutional crisis as the 19th amendment to the Constitution would not allow the sacking of Wickremesinghe as the premier without a majority. Last week, it was reported that Mathripala Sirisena accused his senior coalition partner the UNP of not taking seriously an alleged conspiracy to assassinate him and Gotabhaya Rajapaksa, the former top defence ministry bureaucrat and brother of ex-president Mahinda Rajapaksa. (with PTI inputs) Super typhoon Yutu wreaks havoc on Northern Mariana Islands, one dead International oi-PTI Honolulu (US), Oct 26: Residents of the Northern Mariana Islands braced Friday for months without electricity or running water after the strongest storm to hit any part of the United States this year devastated the US territory, killing one person, officials said. Even after Super Typhoon Yutu had moved away from the Pacific islands, emergency management officials warned residents to stay indoors because downed power lines blocked roadways and winds were still strong enough to make driving dangerous. A 44-year-old woman taking shelter in an abandoned building died when it collapsed in the storm, a post on the governor's office Facebook page said. Also Read | Typhoon approaches Japan, flights stand cancelled Officials couldn't immediately be reached for additional details. The territory will need significant help to recover from the storm that injured several people, said Gregorio Kilili Camacho Sablan, the territory's delegate to Congress. He said Thursday that there were reports of injuries and that people were waiting to be treated at a hospital on the territory's largest and most populated island, Saipan. He could not provide further details or official estimates of casualties. "There's a lot of damage and destruction," Sablan said in a telephone interview with The Associated Press from Saipan. "It's like a small war just passed through." The islands' emergency management agency was "deploying resources to clear our roadways so first responders can begin assisting residents who have lost their homes and for those who need transport to seek medical attention or transportation to the nearest shelter," spokeswoman Nadine Deleon Guerrero said in a statement. Also Read | 50 supercars including Ferraris destroyed in Typhoon Jebi Sablan said has not been able to reach officials on the islands of Tinian and Rota because phones and power are out. "It's going to take weeks probably to get electricity back to everybody," he said. The two islands will be unrecognizable, said Brandon Aydlett, a meteorologist with the National Weather Service. The agency received reports that catastrophic winds ripped roofs from homes and blew out windows. "Any debris becomes shrapnel and deadly," he said. The electricity on Saipan about 6,115 kilometers west of Hawaii went out at 4 pm (local time) Wednesday, resident Glen Hunter said. Maximum sustained winds of 290 kph were recorded around the eye of the storm, which passed over Tinian and Saipan early Thursday local time, the weather service said. PTI For Breaking News and Instant Updates Allow Notifications Story first published: Friday, October 26, 2018, 12:05 [IST] US President Donald Trump "The attack was carried out by Hezbollah, which Iran was instrumental in founding earlier to advance its radical agenda and remains its main patron today. And we're doing a big number on Iran today, in case you haven't noticed," Trump said. White House Press Secretary Sarah Sanders "Hezbollah has kidnapped, tortured, and murdered American citizens, including in its brutal attack in 1983 on our Marine Barracks in Beirut, Lebanon, which killed 241 American Marines, Sailors, and Soldiers, wounded 128 other American service members, and killed a Lebanese civilian. Another bombing against the French barracks killed 58 French peacekeepers and five Lebanese civilians," White House Press Secretary Sarah Sanders said. Also Read |After years on the run, Hezbollah financier lands in Brazil police net The legislation, Sanders said, will further isolate Hezbollah from the international financial system and reduce its funding. These sanctions will target foreign persons and government agencies that knowingly assist or support Hezbollah, and Hezbollah-affiliated networks that engage in drug trafficking or other transnational crime, she said. The White House Trump said over the past year, his administration has levied the highest number of sanctions ever imposed on Hezbollah in a single year, by far. "Just a few moments ago I signed legislation imposing even more hard-hitting sanctions on Hezbollah to further starve them of them of their funds. And they are starving of funds," he said. Also Read |Terrorist' Hezbollah, allies make big gains in Lebanon polls; West-backed PM losing trust? "We will target, disrupt, and dismantle their operational and financing networks of which they had plenty. They don't have plenty now. And we will never forget what they did to our great Marines in Beirut. We will never forget," the US president said. The US has designated Hezbollah a terrorist organization that also plays a major political role in Lebanon. The bill Trump signed Thursday also expands the list of those who can be sanctioned for doing business with Hezbollah. File photo of Israel shelling Hezbollah group's locations Iran, Hezbollah's main sponsor, also has been targeted by US sanctions in recent months. Since May of this year when the U.S withdrew from the 2015 nuclear deal with Iran, the US has imposed a number of embargoes against Tehran. In August, the US re-imposed a set of sanctions prohibiting Iran's purchase of US dollars and precious metals, which is part of a larger US measure aimed at cutting the country off from the international financial system. A second round of US sanctions in November will target Iran's energy sector. Hezbollah is a Shiite Islamist political party and militant group based in Lebanon. Hezbollah's paramilitary wing is the Jihad Council, and its political wing is Loyalty to the Resistance Bloc party in the Lebanese parliament. Since the death of Abbas al-Musawi in 1992, the group has been headed by Hassan Nasrallah, its Secretary-General. The group is considered a terrorist organization by the United States, Israel, Canada, the Arab League, the Gulf Cooperation Council, along with its military wing by the United Kingdom, Australia and the European Union. OneIndia News with PTI inputs US president Donald Trump A caravan of some 5,000 to 7,000 people, mostly from three Latin American countries - El Salvador, Honduras and Guatemala - is heading towards America through Mexico to enter the country illegally. Also Read |For first five years migrants will not get welfare, says Trump Trump's direct message to the people in Caravan came hours after he said he is deploying military on the Southern border with Mexico to stop them from entering the United States illegally, as he described the situation as a "national emergency". Protesters against Trump "To those in the Caravan, turnaround, we are not letting people into the United States illegally. Go back to your Country and if you want, apply for citizenship like millions of others are doing!" Trump said in a tweet. Also Read |After Assad, Trump uses "animals" to define migrants According to some media reports, quite a number of those in the caravan are people from South Asia including Bangladesh. This is for the second time this year that such a caravan has been formed. Migrants against Trump's rule Trump says people are taking the advantage of the "stupid" US policy of catch and release, under which illegal immigrants are arrested immediately upon entering the border illegally and then released with the advice that they appear before the court for the next hearing, which at times is months away. Illegal immigrants were also the topic of discussion when Trump spoke over the phone with the Italian prime minister. Trump in a tweet said that among the issues included the fact that Italy is now taking a very hard line on illegal immigration. Italian Prime Minister Giuseppe Conte "I agree with their stance 100%, and the United States is likewise taking a very hard line on illegal immigration. The Prime Minister is working very hard on the economy of Italy - he will be successful!" Trump said. In his remarks and speeches over the past two weeks, Trump has repeatedly said he will not allow the migrant caravan to come inside the country illegally. He has claimed that there are criminals and people of Middle Eastern descent among the migrants. Also Read |Thousands protests across US against Trump's immigration policies In August 2017, Trump announced that migrants won't be receiving welfare in five years after they arrive in US as he wanted to create a merit based green card system that would end the abuse of welfare system and offer protection to Americans. In May 2018, Trump termed migrants as "animals" as he wanted them to stay outside States with the intention of making it pure. However in July 2018, his decision to start "zero tolerance" policy met with controversial results which led to children of immigrants being separated. Many immigrants including Indian Americans protested against Trump to condemn his policy. PTI Under Imran Khan, Hafiz Saeeds JuD and FIF now have legit status International oi-Vicky Nanjappa New Delhi, Oct 26: Hafiz Saeed, the boss of the Lashkar-e-Tayiba appears to have been given a breather by Pakistan. His so called charity outfits, Jamaat-ud-Dawa and Falah-i-Insaniyat are no longer mentioned in the list of banned outfits. It may be recalled that in February, former Pakistan president, Mamnoon Hussain had promulgated an ordinance amending the Anti Terrorism Act of 1997 under which terrorists and their organisations were banned. It was under this ordinance that the JuD and FIF were proscribed. It has now come to light hat the ordinance has lapsed and was never extended by the new government under Imran Khan. This was submitted before the Islamabad High Court. Also Read | 'Will certainly ask him why he did that': Pak Foreign Min on colleague meeting Hafiz Saeed Following the ordinance Saeed had challenged the same while stating that it was against the sovereignty and Constitution of Pakistan. With the new government failing to extending the ordinance, it would mean that both these outfits are legitimate in Pakistan. This would also mean that people can make donations to the organisations as well and the same would not be monitored. When the ordinance was passed and both these outfits were proscribed, people were barred from making any donations to these outfits. Also Read | Hafiz Saeed's JuD get Pak SC nod to do charity work Intelligence agencies from across the world have said that both the JuD and FIF were just fronts of the Lashkar. These outfits under the garb of charity work collected and channelised funds towards the Lashkar-e-Tayiba, which in turn used it for terror related activities. For Breaking News and Instant Updates Allow Notifications Story first published: Friday, October 26, 2018, 9:37 [IST] Afghan territory must not be used to carry out terror attacks against other countries: BRICS Leaders Vladimir Putin invited to visit Washington in early 2019, says US National Security Advisor International oi-Madhuri Adnal Washington, Oct 26: US President Donald Trump's national security advisor, John Bolton, on Friday said the White House has formally invited Russian President Vladimir Putin to Washington in early 2019. "We have invited President Putin to Washington after the first of the year for, basically, a full day of consultations." He says no date has been set. Bolton noted that Putin and US President Donald Trump are set to meet in Paris when they attend November 11 events marking 100 years since Armistice Day. [India-Russia may work together on resource rich Northern Sea Route] Putin and Trump have met several times on the sidelines of multilateral gatherings, but had only one bilateral summit, in the Finnish capital in July. After that encounter, Trump was accused by opponents, and even some members of his own Republican Party, of failing to stand up to the Russian leader. Trump and Putin also plan to hold a bilateral meeting on the sidelines of events in Paris on November 11 to commemorate the centenary of the end of World War One. Bolton, who was speaking at a news conference on a visit to ex-Soviet Georgia, said their Paris meeting would be brief. Among the people she assisted in Evanston were an elderly homeless couple whod been visiting the library for years. A social service agency had reached out to the couple in the past, but they didnt want to leave the library, which they considered their safe space, Janis said. She got to know them, and in time, connected them with an agency that found housing for the couple. Although users often are sending each other $5 or $10 for pizza or beer, those transactions add up. Zelle processed $32 billion in payments between July and September, up 67 percent from the same period last year, according to Early Warning, which is based in Arizona but has an office with about 40 employees in Chicago. More than 75 million email address and phone numbers are enrolled in Zelle, which has its own app and can be offered through banks apps or systems. Zelle also processes corporate disbursements, such as insurance payouts, which are included in its numbers. Scott Worsham, co-owner, mfk and Bar Biscay: While working at a well-respected restaurant in Sonoma, Calif., that no longer exists, a man and woman with the air of two divorcees on a first date are seated. He peruses the wine list, and I ask if I can assist him with a selection. He declines with a wave of his hand, as if he knows all about wine and a please dont insult me reaction. Upon my return, he requests a bottle of the Cork-hage, pronouncing the word with a French accent. It takes me a second to realize he is ordering the corkage fee, the cheapest thing on the wine list. With a straight face, I politely inform him that I have to check on our availability of that wine and go have a very solid laugh with the kitchen crew. I return and suggest our most inexpensive bottle on the list to which he haughtily replies, That will be fine. I have been known to occasionally say Cork-hage out loud, for no reason, ever since. If you are creatively inspired, you can work with it. You can use it for any particular reason, said Michael Neault, AICs executive creative director of experience design and the guiding hand behind the three-year website overhaul process, the first redesign in six years. We wanted to get our collection into the hands of more people. Paul Lewis was soloist in Beethovens Piano Concerto No. 2, which actually is the first of the composers five piano concertos (in order of composition). As such, it carries unmistakable Mozartean influences, though Lewis emphasized Beethovens distinctive spirit via a brisk tempo, sharply articulated accents and considerable rhythmic drive. Though the pianists tone wasnt as poetic as, say, Murray Perahias, or as bejeweled as Mitsuko Uchidas, Lewis more pointed keyboard attack made an impression. This was Beethoven viewed as piano virtuoso and revolutionary, for Lewis was more aggressive than playful in the third movement and daring in use of sustaining pedal during key moments of the second. But none are needed. Enough can be verified now about Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerbergs business model, safety and security lapses and secretive data mining operations to let billions of us make an informed risk analysis about Facebook, our lives and its digital surveillance thereof. Im still on Facebook, for the record. If you are, too, you should watch this two-hour Frontline report. For news feed scrollers and algorithm patsies everywhere, director James Jacobys careful, dogged, very fine documentary will make for an engrossing lesson in the price of a like. The 7.8-mile-long Skyway, which links the Indiana Toll Road and Chicagos Dan Ryan Expressway, opened in 1958. It is frequently used by Chicago-area residents on their way to and from northwest Indiana, Michigan and Ohio. Former Mayor Richard M. Daley leased the Skyway in 2005. It is now controlled by three Canadian pension funds and operated by Skway Concession Co. Reframing is not the same as delusion. Delusion is a failure to grasp reality. When you reframe, you see reality but understand that it has many angles. You acknowledge that what you perceive depends on where you look, on where you stand, on how you name what you see and feel. She tries to pull this stuff, Oh, I didnt like it. He came too close to me. I didnt like that he said a compliment to me, OShea testified, according to the complaint. If she tries that with regard to any kind of work situation, I think theyll look at this and say, Well, we have to determine whether or not it really was what she said or whether it was just another excuse to get out of the situation shes in. Global Travel Mobility Scooter Market 2018 by Top Manufacturers Kymco, Sunrise Medical, Pride Mobility Products, Invacare, Roma Medical, Hoveround Corp, Drive Medical Travel Mobility Scooter https://www.researchreportsinc.com/sample-request?id=217873 https://www.researchreportsinc.com/check-discount?id=217873 https://researchreportsinc.com/enquiry?id=217873 https://researchreportsinc.com/checkout/?add-to-cart=217873&&attribute_pa_choose-license=single-user&&quantity=1 The production is estimated at XX million in 2017 and is forecasted to reach XX million by the end of 2023, growing at a CAGR of XX% between 2018 and 2023.It covers Regional Segment Analysis, Type, Appliction, Major Manufactures, Industry Chain Analysis, Competitive Insights and Macroeconomic Analysis.Leaders Of The Industry :- Kymco, Sunrise Medical, Pride Mobility Products, Invacare, Roma Medical, Hoveround Corp, Drive Medical, Golden Technologies, Quingo and so on.The Complete Report Spreads across 93 Pages.Fill The Form To Book A PDF:Furthermore, years considered for the study are as follows:Historical year 2013, 2016Base year 2017Forecast period 2018 to 2023Reasons for Buying this ReportThis report provides pin-point analysis for changing competitive dynamicsIt provides a forward looking perspective on different factors driving or restraining market growthIt provides a six-year forecast assessed on the basis of how the market is predicted to growIt helps in understanding the key product segments and their futureIt provides pin point analysis of changing competition dynamics and keeps you ahead of competitorsIt helps in making informed business decisions by having complete insights of market and by making in-depth analysis of market segments.Grab Discount at: -By Category: Travel Mobility Scooter Video Content Travel Mobility Scooter Digital Text Content Travel Mobility Scooter Digital Games Content Travel Mobility Scooter Digital Audio ContentBy Device: Travel Mobility Scooter Mobile Content Travel Mobility Scooter Non-Mobile ContentBy Regions: Travel Mobility Scooter North America U.S. Canada Travel Mobility Scooter Europe UK Germany Travel Mobility Scooter Asia Pacific China India Japan Travel Mobility Scooter Latin America Brazil MexicoHave Any Query? Ask Our Experts at: -Table of Contents2018-2023 Global Travel Mobility Scooter Consumption Market Report1 Scope of the Report1.1 Market Introduction1.2 Research Objectives1.3 Years Considered1.4 Market Research Methodology1.5 Economic Indicators1.6 Currency Considered2 Executive Summary2.1 World Market Overview2.1.1 Global Travel Mobility Scooter Consumption 2013-20232.1.2 Travel Mobility Scooter Consumption CAGR by Region2.2 Travel Mobility Scooter Segment by Type2.2.1 Electrical Polisher2.2.2 Pneumatic Polisher2.3 Travel Mobility Scooter Consumption by Type2.3.1 Global Travel Mobility Scooter Consumption Market Share by Type (2013-2018)2.3.2 Global Travel Mobility Scooter Revenue and Market Share by Type (2013-2018)2.3.3 Global Travel Mobility Scooter Sale Price by Type (2013-2018)2.4 Travel Mobility Scooter Segment by Application2.4.1 Automotive Repair Shop2.4.2 Automotive Care Shop2.4.3 Others2.5 Travel Mobility Scooter Consumption by Application2.5.1 Global Travel Mobility Scooter Consumption Market Share by Application (2013-2018)2.5.2 Global Travel Mobility Scooter Value and Market Share by Application (2013-2018)2.5.3 Global Travel Mobility Scooter Sale Price by Application (2013-2018)We Also Can Offer Customized Report To Fulfill Special Requirements Of Our Clients.Purchase this Premium Report at:-3 Global Travel Mobility Scooter by Players3.1 Global Travel Mobility Scooter Sales Market Share by Players3.1.1 Global Travel Mobility Scooter Sales by Players (2016-2018)3.1.2 Global Travel Mobility Scooter Sales Market Share by Players (2016-2018)3.2 Global Travel Mobility Scooter Revenue Market Share by Players3.2.1 Global Travel Mobility Scooter Revenue by Players (2016-2018)3.2.2 Global Travel Mobility Scooter Revenue Market Share by Players (2016-2018)3.3 Global Travel Mobility Scooter Sale Price by Players3.4 Global Travel Mobility Scooter Manufacturing Base Distribution, Sales Area, Product Types by Players3.4.1 Global Travel Mobility Scooter Manufacturing Base Distribution and Sales Area by Players3.4.2 Players Travel Mobility Scooter Products Offered3.5 Market Concentration Rate Analysis3.5.1 Competition Landscape Analysis3.5.2 Concentration Ratio (CR3, CR5 and CR10) (2016-2018)3.6 New Products and Potential Entrants3.7 Mergers & Acquisitions, Expansion4 Travel Mobility Scooter by Regions4.1 Travel Mobility Scooter by Regions4.1.1 Global Travel Mobility Scooter Consumption by Regions4.1.2 Global Travel Mobility Scooter Value by Regions4.2 Americas Travel Mobility Scooter Consumption Growth4.3 APAC Travel Mobility Scooter Consumption Growth4.4 Europe Travel Mobility Scooter Consumption Growth4.5 Middle East & Africa Travel Mobility Scooter Consumption Growth5 Americas5.1 Americas Travel Mobility Scooter Consumption by Countries5.1.1 Americas Travel Mobility Scooter Consumption by Countries (2013-2018)5.1.2 Americas Travel Mobility Scooter Value by Countries (2013-2018)5.2 Americas Travel Mobility Scooter Consumption by Type5.3 Americas Travel Mobility Scooter Consumption by Application5.4 United States5.5 Canada5.6 Mexico5.7 Key Economic Indicators of Few Americas CountriesAbout Us:Research 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 worldwideWith our expertise and research offerings, we ensure we deliver on all your requirements, whether youre looking for industry analysis or market trends or anything else, first time and every time!Email us sales@researchreportsinc.comCall: US / Canada Toll Free: +18554192424, UK : +4403308087757 LEMONSHARK POKE CONTINUES EXPANSION IN GOLDEN STATE LemonShark Poke www.lemonsharkpoke.com BEVERLY HILLS, Calif. (October 25, 2018) LemonShark Poke, a fine-casual premium poke concept known for serving top-quality locally-sourced ingredients is growing its footprint in its home state with its seventh California store location the town of Yucaipa. The store opened its doors on October 25 and is set to make waves in the Yucaipa restaurant society.The LemonShark Poke in Yucaipa is a family affair. Owners Michelle Mueller, Jeff and Sue Stanley will operate the new California store. Mueller, who has 20 years of restaurant experience will be leading the day-to-day operations. Originally from Chicago, Mueller worked with a number of concepts including the Outback Steakhouse and Cracker Barrel in the mid-west. With her vast restaurant experience and the Stanley's desire to expand their portfolios, all hoped to connect with a franchise they could get behind. After moving to California in 2017, Mueller started working at the Redlands LemonShark Poke restaurant and was immediately hooked by its top-notch service, modern decor, and corporate support team.Named after the Lemon Shark who only consumes the very best fish possible, LemonShark Poke prides itself on serving the finest quality ingredients to its guests. In addition to traditional poke offerings, the menu includes shareable appetizers such as tempura shrimp and egg rolls, and its signature Hawaii Katsu menu that features cooked-to-order, delectable entrees including chicken, Alaskan cod and more. LemonShark Pokes new location provides Yucaipa locals with an elevated dining experience featuring Japanese-inspired upscale, chic decor and seating for more than 35 people.We are delighted that Michelle and her family are opening their first LemonShark Poke location, said Tobi Miller, president and co-founder of LemonShark Poke. With Michelle having been a long-time team member of LemonShark Poke, she has a deep-rooted understanding of our unparalleled customer service and premium menu offerings, and we look forward to their success in Yucaipa!LemonShark Poke is located at 33562 Yucaipa Blvd., Yucaipa, CA 92399. Hours of operation are Monday-Saturday 11:00 a.m. to 10:00 p.m., and Sunday 11:00 a.m. to 9:00 p.m. For more information, please call 909-918-0120 or visitAbout LemonShark Poke:LemonShark Poke is a fast casual, premium poke franchise that serves locally-crafted poke. LemonSharks mission is for sushi lovers and health-conscious consumers who seek a premium product, LemonShark Poke serves only the finest-quality ingredients in refined environments for a great value. Unlike other poke concepts, LemonShark Poke provides a combination of extraordinary service, a comprehensive food selection and a tight family community. LemonShark Poke is named after the Lemon Shark, a social species that hunts only on the finest quality of fish. The Lemon Shark looks for healthy, mature fish to prey on. Inspired by the discerning Lemon Shark, LemonShark Poke creates poke with only the finest line-caught fish available that is certified dolphin, sea turtle and sea mammal safe. LemonShark differs from other poke restaurants in that it offers a premium product and environment. Each location is spacious, inviting customers to sit and enjoy their meal, rather than grab and go.LemonShark Poke439 N Bedford Dr., Beverly Hills, CA 90210Press Contact: Courtney Heimbuck, Konnect Agencycheimbuck@konnectagency.com | 213-225-4428 Global Refurbished and Used Mobile Phones Market to 2025| Apple, Samsung, Lenovo, Nippon Telephone, Verizon Communications, Green Dust, At&T https://www.researchmoz.us/enquiry.php?type=S&repid=1905462 https://www.researchmoz.us/global-refurbished-and-used-mobile-phones-market-insights-forecast-to-2025-report.html/toc https://www.researchmoz.us/enquiry.php?type=E&repid=1905462 https://marketinfo247.wordpress.com/ Albany, NY, 26th October : Recent research and the current scenario as well as future market potential of "Global Refurbished and Used Mobile Phones Market Insights, Forecast to 2025" globally.This report studies the global market size of Refurbished and Used Mobile Phones in key regions like North America, Europe, Asia Pacific, Central & South America and Middle East & Africa, focuses on the consumption of Refurbished and Used Mobile Phones in these regions.Get PDF for more Professional and Technical insights @This research report categorizes the global Refurbished and Used Mobile Phones 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.Mobile phones is a portable telephone that can make and receive calls over a radio frequency link while the user is moving within a telephone service area.The mid-price brand division is becoming a prominent division among all the brand divisions, especially in developing regions.In 2017, the global Refurbished and Used Mobile Phones market size was xx million US$ and is forecast to xx million US in 2025, growing at a CAGR of xx% from 2018. The objectives of this study are to define, segment, and project the size of the Refurbished and Used Mobile Phones market based on company, product type, application and key regions.The various contributors involved in the value chain of Refurbished and Used Mobile Phones include manufacturers, suppliers, distributors, intermediaries, and customers. The key manufacturers in the Refurbished and Used Mobile Phones includeAppleSamsungLenovoNippon TelephoneVerizon CommunicationsGreen DustAt&TTogofogoView Complete TOC with tables & Figures @Market Size Split by Typeby TypeCompany OwnedConsumer Ownedby BrandPremium BrandMid-Priced BrandLow-Priced BrandMarket Size Split by ApplicationPublic UsePrivate UseOthersMarket size split by RegionNorth AmericaUnited StatesCanadaMexicoAsia-PacificChinaIndiaJapanSouth KoreaAustraliaIndonesiaSingaporeMalaysiaPhilippinesThailandVietnamEuropeGermanyFranceUKItalySpainRussiaCentral & South AmericaBrazilRest of Central & South AmericaMiddle East & AfricaGCC CountriesTurkeyEgyptSouth AfricaThe study objectives of this report are:To study and analyze the global Refurbished and Used Mobile Phones 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 Refurbished and Used Mobile Phones 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 Refurbished and Used Mobile Phones 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 Refurbished and Used Mobile Phones with respect to individual growth trends, future prospects, and their contribution to the total market.To project the value and volume of Refurbished and Used Mobile Phones 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 Refurbished and Used Mobile Phones are as follows:History Year: 2013-2017Base Year: 2017Estimated Year: 2018Forecast Year 2018 to 2025Make An Enquiry @This report includes the estimation of market size for value (million US$) and volume (K Units). Both top-down and bottom-up approaches have been used to estimate and validate the market size of Refurbished and Used Mobile Phones market, to estimate the size of various other dependent submarkets in the overall market. Key players in the market have been identified through secondary research, and their market shares have been determined through primary and secondary research. All percentage shares, splits, and breakdowns have been determined using secondary sources and verified primary sources.ResearchMoz is the one stop online destination to find and buy market research reports & Industry Analysis. We fulfill all your research needs spanning across industry verticals with our huge collection of market research reports. We provide our services to all sizes of organizations and across all industry verticals and markets. Our Research Coordinators have in-depth knowledge of reports as well as publishers and will assist you in making an informed decision by giving you unbiased and deep insights on which reports will satisfy your needs at the best price.Mr. Nachiket Ghumare,ResearchMoz,90 State Street, Albany NY, United States,Tel: +1-518-621-2074,USA-Canada Toll Free: 866-997-4948,Email: sales@researchmoz.us,Follow me on : Global Flavored Cigar Market Key Players Analysis and Forecast to 2025 | General Cigar, Drew Estate, Gurkha Cigars, Imperial Tobacco, Miami Cigar https://www.qyresearchreports.com/sample/sample.php?rep_id=1863692&type=S https://www.qyresearchreports.com/report/global-flavored-cigar-market-research-report-2018.htm/toc https://www.qyresearchreports.com/report/global-flavored-cigar-market-research-report-2018.htm https://www.linkedin.com/company/qyresearchreports-com https://www.qyresearchreports.com https://reportanalysis.blogspot.in Qyresearchreports include new market research report Global Flavored Cigar Market Research Report 2018 to its huge collection of research reports.This report studies the global Flavored Cigar market status and forecast, categorizes the global Flavored Cigar market size (value & volume) by key players, type, application, and region. This report focuses on the top players in North America, Europe, Asia-Pacific, South America, and Middle East & Africa.Flavored cigars are cigars that have the taste and aroma of various kind of flavors. Flavored cigars are available in hand-rolled and machine-made forms like conventional cigars.Fill The Form To Book A Free Sample PDF :The machine-made flavored cigars segment dominated the flavored cigar market and is expected to continue its dominance over the next few years. The major contributors to the growth of the segment is the low cost of the machine-made cigars and the growing preference of young adults due to the availability of various flavors.In terms of geography, the Americas accounted for the majority of shares of the global flavored cigar market and the region will to continue its market dominance during the forecast period as well. Factors such as the increased popularity of disposable products, the availability of these cigars in retail stores and through online channels, and the rapidly rising demand from the young population, will drive the growth of the market in this region.The global Flavored Cigar market is valued at xx million US$ in 2017 and will reach xx million US$ by the end of 2025, growing at a CAGR of xx% during 2018-2025.The major manufacturers covered in this reportGeneral CigarDrew EstateGurkha CigarsImperial TobaccoMiami CigarArnold AndreAvanti CigarDavidoff of Geneva USAOliva Cigar FamilyRocky PatelScandinavian Tobacco Group (Havana Honeys')Swisher Sweets (Swisher International)Geographically, this report studies the key regions, focuses on product sales, value, market share and growth opportunity in these regions, coveringNorth AmericaEuropeChinaJapanSoutheast AsiaIndiaBrowse full table of contents @On the basis of product, this report displays the production, revenue, price, market share and growth rate of each type, primarily split intoHand-Rolled Flavored CigarsMachine-Made Flavored CigarsOn the basis of the end users/applications, this report focuses on the status and outlook for major applications/end users, consumption (sales), market share and growth rate for each application, includingRetail StoresSpecialty StoresOtherThe study objectives of this report are:To analyze and study the global Flavored Cigar sales, value, status (2013-2017) and forecast (2018-2025).Focuses on the key Flavored Cigar manufacturers, to study the sales, value, market share and development plans in future.Focuses on the global key manufacturers, to define, describe and analyze the market competition landscape, SWOT analysis.To define, describe and forecast the market by type, application and region.To analyze the global and key regions market potential and advantage, opportunity and challenge, restraints and risks.To identify significant trends and factors driving or inhibiting the market growth.To analyze the opportunities in the market for stakeholders by identifying the high growth segments.To strategically analyze each submarket with respect to individual growth trend and their contribution to the marketTo analyze competitive developments such as expansions, agreements, new product launches, and acquisitions in the marketTo strategically profile the key players and comprehensively analyze their growth strategies.In this study, the years considered to estimate the market size of Flavored Cigar are as follows:History Year: 2013-2017Base Year: 2017Estimated Year: 2018Forecast Year 2018 to 2025For the data information by region, company, type and application, 2017 is considered as the base year. Whenever data information was unavailable for the base year, the prior year has been considered.Access the full Report @Key StakeholdersFlavored Cigar ManufacturersFlavored Cigar Distributors/Traders/WholesalersFlavored Cigar Subcomponent ManufacturersIndustry AssociationDownstream VendorsAbout Us:QYResearchReports.com delivers the latest strategic market intelligence to build a successful business footprint in China. Our syndicated and customized research reports provide companies with vital background information of the market and in-depth analysis on the Chinese trade and investment framework, which directly affects their business operations. Reports from QYResearchReports.com feature valuable recommendations on how to navigate in the extremely unpredictable yet highly attractive Chinese market.Contact Us:Brooklyn, NY 11230United StatesToll Free: 866-997-4948 (USA-CANADA)Tel: +1-518-621-2074Follow Us on LinkedIn:Web:Email: sales@qyresearchreports.comBlog: We have lost one of our own today, said a statement issued by Rims restaurants. Peter Rim passed away this morning surrounded by loved ones. His wild, fun, energetic and loving legacy will live on forever. We love you Peter Rim, more than words can describe. You affected so many lives here and every one here misses you so much. You are so loved. Rest easy Peter. Cloud-based Drug Discovery Platforms Market 2025| IBM Corporation, Accenture PLC, Tata Consultancy Services Limited, SAS Institute Inc., BioXcel Corporation, Cloud Pharmaceuticals Inc. https://www.researchmoz.us/enquiry.php?type=S&repid=1396727 https://www.researchmoz.us/global-market-study-on-cloudbased-drug-discovery-platforms-pharmaceutical-vendors-projected-to-be-the-most-attractive-end-user-segment-through-2025-report.html/toc http://bit.ly/1TBmnVG https://marketsizeinfo.blogspot.in/ Researchmoz added Most up-to-date research on "Global Market Study on Cloud-based Drug Discovery Platforms: Pharmaceutical Vendors Projected to be the Most Attractive End User Segment Through 2025" to its huge collection of research reports.About this ReportCloud has proliferated key aspects of business across multiple industries and the healthcare industry is no exception. The facilitation of drug discovery through the cloud is one of the healthcare sectors most significant developments till date and to study the various key aspects of this domain, Persistence Market Research has recently conducted extensive research and published the findings in a new report. This report titled Cloud-based Drug Discovery Platform Market: Global Industry Analysis (2012 2016) and Forecast (20172025) presents an in-depth analysis and forecast of the global cloud-based drug discovery platform market by considering various micro and macroeconomic factors anticipated to impact revenue growth of the market. For the purpose of accurate market estimations, we have taken into account the historical market size for the period 2012 to 2016 and used this as a reference (with 2016 as the base year) to calculate the market size for the assessment period 2017 to 2025.Research MethodologyPersistence Market Research leverages a robust research methodology to gather and analyze data acquired from multiple sources. We begin by gathering critical market data from secondary sources such as company websites, company annual reports, white papers, and financial reports, and paid publications such as Factiva, GBI, Genios, and Meltwater. This data is then validated by speaking to key stakeholders in the cloud-based drug discovery platform market based in various countries. Finally, data gathered through primary and secondary research along with our analysis and recommendations is triangulated to arrive at the final data points pertaining to the global cloud-based drug discovery platform market. This data is then scrutinized using advanced tools to glean relevant insights capable of helping our clients make informed business decisions.To Get Sample Copy of Report visit @Some of the assumptions we have made while preparing this report are:We have not considered yearly change in inflation rate while forecasting market numbersTop-down approach has been used to assess market numbersBottom-up approach has been used to counter-validate the reached market numbersMacroeconomic indicators such as GDP, wholesale & retail trade, merchandise trade, and prices have been considered to arrive at the indicated market numbersWe have also considered the economic fluctuations while forecasting market numbersReport StructureAs with all our publications, this report on the global cloud-based drug discovery platform market begins with a clear and self-explanatory executive summary that provides a snapshot of the market. This section comprises the market overview and analysis and our key recommendations. Next follows the market introduction section that defines the global cloud-based drug discovery platform market and highlights the various market segments. In this section, we have also covered the parent market overview and a value chain analysis of the global cloud-based drug discovery platform market. The market viewpoint section that follows right after, presents the macroeconomic factors anticipated to impact revenue growth of the global market; this is followed by an opportunity analysis of the market.The next few sections present the global cloud-based drug discovery platform market value forecast including market size and Y-o-Y growth, absolute $ opportunity, and key regulations. The next set of sections present the regional forecasts of the cloud-based drug discovery platform market, touching upon the regional market dynamics (drivers, restraints, trends), an impact analysis of the drivers and restraints, and the historical as well as current market size analysis and forecast. The relevance and impact of forecast factors on the global market growth concludes this section.A very important section of the report features the competitive landscape of the global cloud-based drug discovery platform market. In this section, we provide information on the market structure, market share analysis, and a competition dashboard featuring the top market players. We have also profiled some of the leading companies in the global cloud-based drug discovery platform market in this section, to enable the reader to acquire a holistic picture of the competitive scenario of the global cloud-based drug discovery platform market.Market TaxonomyBy End User-Pharmaceutical Vendors-Biotech Vendors-Contract Research Organizations-OthersBy Region-North America-Latin America-Europe-Asia Pacific-MEATable of Content1. Executive Summary1.1. Market Overview1.2. Market Analysis1.3. PMR Analysis and Recommendations1.4. Wheel of Fortune2. Market Introduction2.1. Market Definition2.2. Market Taxonomy2.3. Parent Market Overview2.4. Value Chain AnalysisGet Complete TOC With Tables and Figures @3. Market View Point3.1. Macro-Economic Factors3.2. Opportunity Analysis4. Global Market Analysis 20122016 and Forecast 201720254.1. Market Size and Y-o-Y Growth4.2. Absolute $ Opportunity4.3. Key Regulations5. North America Cloud-based Drug Discovery Platform Market Analysis and Forecast5.1. Introduction5.2. Regional Market Dynamics5.2.1. Drivers5.2.2. Restraints5.2.3. Trends5.3. Drivers and Restraints: Impact Analysis5.4. Historical Market Size (US$ Mn) Analysis 2012-2016, By Country5.4.1. U.S.5.4.2. CanadaContinue...About ResearchMozResearchMoz is the one stop online destination to find and buy market research reports & Industry Analysis. We fulfill all your research needs spanning across industry verticals with our huge collection of market research reports. We provide our services to all sizes of organizations and across all industry verticals and markets. Our Research Coordinators have in-depth knowledge of reports as well as publishers and will assist you in making an informed decision by giving you unbiased and deep insights on which reports will satisfy your needs at the best price.For More Information Kindly Contact:ResearchMozMr. Nachiket Ghumare,Tel: +1-518-621-2074USA-Canada Toll Free: 866-997-4948Email: sales@researchmoz.usFollow us on LinkedIn @Follow me on @ Global Tax Software Market 2026| Industry Crucial Players - ADP LLC, Blucora, Inc., Chetu, Inc., Intuit Inc., Drake Software.,Thomson Reuters Corporation, Vertex, Inc., Wolters Kluwer N.V., Xero Limited, Sage, Avalara MRRSE https://www.mrrse.com/sample/17168 https://www.mrrse.com/tax-software-market https://www.mrrse.com/enquiry/17168 https://www.mrrse.com/ Market Research Report Search Engine (MRRSE) recently announced the addition of a new research study to its comprehensive collection of research reports. The research report, titled Tax Software Market Global Industry Analysis, Size, Share, Growth, Trends, and Forecast 2018 2026 offers a detailed analysis of the market, providing insights into the market dynamics that are expected to influence the overall market positively in the next few years. Furthermore, the product segmentation, drivers, barriers, key geographical segments, and the competitive scenario of the Global Tax Software Market have been elaborated upon in the research report.For More Information Request Free Sample on Tax Software Market Research Report @Technological inventions in electronic equipment have increased at a fast pace. Tax management systems are one such innovation that play a vital role in banking, government, telecom, retail, etc. Tax software is designed to help companies or individuals in ensuring tax compliance for corporate tax, income tax, VAT, customs, sales tax, service tax, and similar tax users may require to pay. Tax software simplifies the process of filing tax through tax forms and also automatically calculates a company's or individuals tax compulsions/obligations. The objective of this software is to provide the user with a simplified solution to calculate tax payment and minimize any associated human error.Tax software offers numerous opportunities for countries that intend to invest in developing new technological features in various industries. Vendors are popularizing the use of tax software due to their advanced features providing electronic accounting solutions, handling financial data, automation of business critical applications, reduced execution risk by reducing operating costs, improving management, visibility, and increased productivity.Key drivers of the tax software market are increase in the penetration of tax software, rise in investments in digital solutions, and adoption of electronic accounting. Demand for tax software is increasing exponentially due to the advanced features offered by these solutions. Vendors across regions are investing in the development of advanced technology to provide tax management solutions. For instance, banks and insurance companies are most heavily hit by identity theft and lose billions of dollars each year as a result. Therefore, the banking sector is adopting tax software in order to avoid losses. Tax software are anticipated to revolutionize many sectors of the economy, including business, healthcare, social networks, and transportation. However, a major restraint faced by the market is security and networking issues for cloud applications. The market presents an opportunity for vendors across China, Germany, India, and the U.K. to develop new tax software.Browse Detail on Tax Software Market Research Report with TOC @The tax software market can be segmented based on component, tax type, software deployment type, end-user, industry, and geography. Based on component, the market can be segmented into tax software and services. Furthermore, the tax software is sub-segmented as standalone and integrated whereas services is sub-segmented as managed and professional. On the basis of tax type, the market is categorized as sales tax, income tax, and others such as VAT, service tax, and estate tax. In terms of software deployment,the market is segmented into cloud and on premise. In terms of end-user,the market is classified into individuals and commercial enterprises, wherein commercial enterprises is further classified into large, and small and medium (SMEs) enterprises. Based on industry, the market is classified into banking, financial services, and insurance (BFSI), government, healthcare, retail, IT & telecom, manufacturing, transportation, energy and utilities, etc.In terms of region, the tax software market can be segmented into North America, Europe, Asia Pacific, South America, and Middle East & Africa. North America is projected to dominate the tax software market due to the presence of strong players in the U.S. and spending by the U.S. government for the provision of tax management systems in various public and private organizations. The market in Asia Pacific and Europe is likely to present strong growth opportunities during the forecast period,due to a rise in investments in the taxation industry and business expansion of vendors across the region.The research study includes profiles of leading companies operating in the global tax software market. Some of the key players profiled in the market include ADP LLC., Blucora, Inc., Chetu, Inc., Intuit Inc., Drake Software.,Thomson Reuters Corporation, Vertex, Inc., Wolters Kluwer N.V. (Kluwer Publishers and Wolters Samsom), Xero Limited, Sage, and Avalara.Enquire about this Report @About (MRRSE)Market Research Reports Search Engine (MRRSE) is an industry-leading database of Market Research Reports. MRRSE is driven by a stellar team of research experts and advisors trained to offer objective advice. Our sophisticated search algorithm returns results based on the report title, geographical region, publisher, or other keywords.MRRSE partners exclusively with leading global publishers to provide clients single-point access to top-of-the-line market research. MRRSEs repository is updated every day to keep its clients ahead of the next new trend in market research, be it competitive intelligence, product or service trends or strategic consulting.Contact UsState Tower90, State StreetSuite 700Albany, NY - 12207(United States) Telephone: +1-518-730-0559Email: sales@mrrse.comWebsite: Cloud Services Market to Reap Excessive Revenues by 2021 https://www.persistencemarketresearch.com/samples/6667 https://www.persistencemarketresearch.com/toc/6667 http://www.persistencemarketresearch.com Cloud services are those services that are offered to users via the Internet from the server of cloud computing service provider. Such services provide scalable and easy access to various resources and applications, and are entirely managed by the cloud service providers. The examples of cloud services include web-based e-mail services, online backup solutions and data storage, document collaboration services, technical support services, and database processing among others. Cloud service providers supply the necessary software and hardware required for cloud service, thereby eliminating the need for organizations to deploy their own resources for managing networked services. The other advantage of cloud services over the traditional methods of providing infrastructure is faster deployment of services and reduction in in-house maintenance costs.On the basis of mode of delivery, the cloud services market is segmented into Platform as a Service (PaaS), Software as a Service (SaaS) and Infrastructure as a service (IaaS). The SaaS mode of delivery is further segmented into SMB and mobile corporate SaaS cloud services, corporate SaaS cloud services, SMB SaaS cloud services and others. North America is the largest contributor to the cloud services market due to the high penetration of internet in this region. This region is followed by Europe, Asia-Pacific and Rest of the World (RoW).Request for Report Sample :Major benefits offered by cloud services are driving business organizations in implementing the use of cloud services. Cloud services maximize the effectiveness of shared resources and ensure the business organizations higher returns and faster paybacks. In addition, cloud services offer scalable solutions to growing business organizations at low cost of ownership. This drives business organizations to invest in such services that allow them to generate higher revenues by optimizing the available resources. However, the data security issues are the roadblocks that are adversely affecting the growth of this market. The increasing data hacking incidences using sophisticated tools result in loss of sensitive data, causing serious dents in the business revenues. Also, there are constant evolutions of new security threats that are affecting the quality of cloud services. Further, the small and medium businesses find it difficult to repeatedly invest in the customized solutions available for cloud services security. Due to such factors, the business organizations are reluctant in investing in the cloud services and prefer to carry on with conventional methods of network infrastructure.Some of the major players in the market are improving their existing services by adding new and innovative features. This helps them in staying competitively ahead in the market. For instance, Akamai Technologies, Inc., one of the leading cloud services providers, recently added Zone Apex Mapping feature to its Ion network acceleration technology. This feature reduces DNS resolution time and avoids HTTP redirects. Other major players in the market include VMware, Inc., (U.S.), Taleo Corporation (Ireland), Oracle Corporation, (U.S.), NetSuite Inc., (U.S.), Microsoft Corporation (U.S.), Joyent Inc., (U.S.), International Business Machines Corporation (U.S.), Hewlett-Packard (U.S.), Flexiant Limited (United Kingdom), ENKI Consulting (U.S.), Etelos Inc.,(U.S.), Citrix Systems Inc., (U.S.), Cisco Systems Inc., (U.S.), CA Technologies, Inc., (U.S.), and SAP AG (Germany).Request for Report TOC :About UsPersistence Market Research (PMR) is a third-platform research firm. Our research model is a unique collaboration of data analytics and market research methodology to help businesses achieve optimal performance.To support companies in overcoming complex business challenges, we follow a multi-disciplinary approach. At PMR, we unite various data streams from multi-dimensional sources. By deploying real-time data collection, big data, and customer experience analytics, we deliver business intelligence for organizations of all sizes.Contact UsPersistence Market Research305 Broadway7th Floor, New York City,NY 10007, United States,USA,Canada Toll Free: 800-961-0353Email: sales@persistencemarketresearch.comWeb: Global Photomask Market 2018 | Major Key Players Hoya, DNP, SK-Electronics, Toppan, Photronics, LG Innotek, Compugraphics Photomask Solutions, Taiwan Mask Analysis And Forecast : MI Reports Photomask Market 2018 http://www.wiseguyreports.com/sample-request/3057112-photomask-global-market-status-and-trend-report-2013-2023 https://www.wiseguyreports.com/reports/3057112-photomask-global-market-status-and-trend-report-2013-2023 Description :Photomask-Global Market Status and Trend Report 2013-2023 offers a comprehensive analysis on Photomask industry, standing on the readers perspective, delivering detailed market data and penetrating insights. No matter the client is industry insider, potential entrant or investor, the report will provides useful data and information. Key questions answered by this report include:Worldwide and Regional Market Size of Photomask 2013-2017, and development forecast 2018-2023Main manufacturers/suppliers of Photomask worldwide, with company and product introduction, position in the Photomask marketMarket status and development trend of Photomask by types and applicationsCost and profit status of Photomask, and marketing statusMarket growth drivers and challengesFor Sample Report @The report segments the global Photomask market as:Global Photomask Market: Regional Segment Analysis (Regional Production Volume, Consumption Volume, Revenue and Growth Rate 2013-2023):North AmericaEuropeChinaJapanRest APACLatin AmericaGlobal Photomask Market: Type Segment Analysis (Consumption Volume, Average Price, Revenue, Market Share and Trend 2013-2023):Quartz MaskSoda MaskToppanFilmGlobal Photomask Market: Application Segment Analysis (Consumption Volume and Market Share 2013-2023; Downstream Customers and Market Analysis)SemiconductorFlat Panel DisplayTouch IndustryCircuit BoardGlobal Photomask Market: Manufacturers Segment Analysis (Company and Product introduction, Photomask Sales Volume, Revenue, Price and Gross Margin):HoyaDNPSK-ElectronicsToppanPhotronicsLG InnotekCompugraphics Photomask SolutionsTaiwan MaskIGINippon FilconHTAShenZheng QingViPlasma ThermComplete Report Details @Table of ContentsChapter 1 Overview of Photomask1.1 Definition of Photomask in This Report1.2 Commercial Types of Photomask1.2.1 Quartz Mask1.2.2 Soda Mask1.2.3 Toppan1.2.4 Film1.3 Downstream Application of Photomask1.3.1 Semiconductor1.3.2 Flat Panel Display1.3.3 Touch Industry1.3.4 Circuit Board1.4 Development History of Photomask1.5 Market Status and Trend of Photomask 2013-20231.5.1 Global Photomask Market Status and Trend 2013-20231.5.2 Regional Photomask Market Status and Trend 2013-2023Chapter 2 Global Market Status and Forecast by Regions2.1 Market Development of Photomask 2013-20172.2 Production Market of Photomask by Regions2.2.1 Production Volume of Photomask by Regions2.2.2 Production Value of Photomask by Regions2.3 Demand Market of Photomask by Regions2.4 Production and Demand Status of Photomask by Regions2.4.1 Production and Demand Status of Photomask by Regions 2013-20172.4.2 Import and Export Status of Photomask by Regions 2013-2017Chapter 3 Global Market Status and Forecast by Types3.1 Production Volume of Photomask by Types3.2 Production Value of Photomask by Types3.3 Market Forecast of Photomask by TypesChapter 4 Global Market Status and Forecast by Downstream Industry4.1 Demand Volume of Photomask by Downstream Industry4.2 Market Forecast of Photomask by Downstream IndustryChapter 5 Market Driving Factor Analysis of Photomask5.1 Global Economy Situation and Trend Overview5.2 Photomask Downstream Industry Situation and Trend OverviewChapter 6 Photomask Market Competition Status by Major Manufacturers6.1 Production Volume of Photomask by Major Manufacturers6.2 Production Value of Photomask by Major Manufacturers6.3 Basic Information of Photomask by Major Manufacturers6.3.1 Headquarters Location and Established Time of Photomask Major Manufacturer6.3.2 Employees and Revenue Level of Photomask Major Manufacturer6.4 Market Competition News and Trend6.4.1 Merger, Consolidation or Acquisition News6.4.2 Investment or Disinvestment News6.4.3 New Product Development and LaunchChapter 7 Photomask Major Manufacturers Introduction and Market Data7.1 Hoya7.1.1 Company profile7.1.2 Representative Photomask Product7.1.3 Photomask Sales, Revenue, Price and Gross Margin of Hoya7.2 DNP7.2.1 Company profile7.2.2 Representative Photomask Product7.2.3 Photomask Sales, Revenue, Price and Gross Margin of DNP7.3 SK-Electronics7.3.1 Company profile7.3.2 Representative Photomask Product7.3.3 Photomask Sales, Revenue, Price and Gross Margin of SK-Electronics7.4 Toppan7.4.1 Company profile7.4.2 Representative Photomask Product7.4.3 Photomask Sales, Revenue, Price and Gross Margin of Toppan7.5 Photronics7.5.1 Company profile7.5.2 Representative Photomask Product7.5.3 Photomask Sales, Revenue, Price and Gross Margin of PhotronicsContinued.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.Wise Guy Reports is part of the Wise Guy Research Consultants Pvt. Ltd. and offers premium progressive statistical surveying, market research reports, analysis & forecast data for industries and governments around the globe.Office No.528,Amanora Chambers,Magarpatta Road,Hadapsar,Pune-411028. Global Wireless Charging Market 2018 Key Players: Samsung, Ergo(aircharge), BEZALEL, FONE, NXP Semiconductors, IOttie. Wireless Charging Market https://www.wiseguyreports.com/sample-request/2826968-global-wireless-charging-market-research-report-2018 https://www.wiseguyreports.com/reports/3483237-global-automotive-lubricants-market-size-study-by-base Wireless Charging Market:WiseGuyReports.com adds Wireless Charging Market 2018 Global Analysis, Growth, Trends and Opportunities Research Report Forecasting 2025 reports tits database.Executive SummaryThis report studies the global Wireless Charging market status and forecast, categorizes the global Wireless Charging market size (value & volume) by manufacturers, type, application, and region. This report focuses on the top manufacturers in United States, Europe, China, Japan, South Korea and Taiwan and other regions.The major manufacturers covered in this reportSamsungErgo(aircharge)BEZALELFONENXP Semiconductors,IOttieHumavoxSemtechIntegrated Device Technology, Inc.LenmarGill ElectronicsEnergizer Holdings, IncConvenient Power HK LimitedWiTricity CorporationLeggett & PlattQualcomm IncorporatedMurata Manufacturing Co. LtdPowermat TechnologiesPowerbyProxi LtdTexas Instruments IncorporatedGeographically, this report studies the top producers and consumers, focuses on product capacity, production, value, consumption, market share and growth opportunity in these key regions, coveringNorth AmericaEuropeChinaJapanSoutheast AsiaIndiaOn the basis of product, this report displays the production, revenue, price, market share and growth rate of each type, primarily split intoInductive TechnologyRF TechnologyResonant TechnologyOthersOn the basis of the end users/applications, this report focuses on the status and outlook for major applications/end users, consumption (sales), market share and growth rate for each application, includingConsumer ElectronicsIndustrial UsedAutomobileHealthcareOthersRequest Sample Report @The study objectives of this report are:To analyze and study the global Wireless Charging capacity, production, value, consumption, status (2013-2017) and forecast (2018-2025);Focuses on the key Wireless Charging manufacturers, to study the capacity, production, value, market share and development plans in future.Focuses on the global key manufacturers, to define, describe and analyze the market competition landscape, SWOT analysis.To define, describe and forecast the market by type, application and region.To analyze the global and key regions market potential and advantage, opportunity and challenge, restraints and risks.To identify significant trends and factors driving or inhibiting the market growth.To analyze the opportunities in the market for stakeholders by identifying the high growth segments.To strategically analyze each submarket with respect to individual growth trend and their contribution to the marketTo analyze competitive developments such as expansions, agreements, new product launches, and acquisitions in the marketTo strategically profile the key players and comprehensively analyze their growth strategies.In this study, the years considered to estimate the market size of Wireless Charging are as follows:History Year: 2013-2017Base Year: 2017Estimated Year: 2018Forecast Year 2018 to 2025For the data information by region, company, type and application, 2017 is considered as the base year. Whenever data information was unavailable for the base year, the prior year has been considered.Key StakeholdersWireless Charging ManufacturersWireless Charging Distributors/Traders/WholesalersWireless Charging Subcomponent ManufacturersIndustry AssociationDownstream VendorsAvailable CustomizationsWith the given market data, QYResearch offers customizations according to the company's specific needs. The following customization options are available for the report:Regional and country-level analysis of the Wireless Charging market, by end-use.Detailed analysis and profiles of additional market players.Table of ContentsGlobal Wireless Charging Market Research Report 20181 Wireless Charging Market Overview1.1 Product Overview and Scope of Wireless Charging1.2 Wireless Charging Segment by Type (Product Category)1.2.1 Global Wireless Charging Production and CAGR (%) Comparison by Type (Product Category)(2013-2025)1.2.2 Global Wireless Charging Production Market Share by Type (Product Category) in 20171.2.3 Inductive Technology1.2.3 RF Technology1.2.5 Resonant TechnologyOthers1.3 Global Wireless Charging Segment by Application1.3.1 Wireless Charging Consumption (Sales) Comparison by Application (2013-2025)1.3.2 Consumer Electronics1.3.3 Industrial Used1.3.4 Automobile1.3.5 Healthcare1.3.6 Others1.4 Global Wireless Charging Market by Region (2013-2025)1.4.1 Global Wireless Charging Market Size (Value) and CAGR (%) Comparison by Region (2013-2025)1.4.2 North America Status and Prospect (2013-2025)1.4.3 Europe Status and Prospect (2013-2025)1.4.4 China Status and Prospect (2013-2025)1.4.5 Japan Status and Prospect (2013-2025)1.4.6 Southeast Asia Status and Prospect (2013-2025)1.4.7 India Status and Prospect (2013-2025)1.5 Global Market Size (Value) of Wireless Charging (2013-2025)1.5.1 Global Wireless Charging Revenue Status and Outlook (2013-2025)1.5.2 Global Wireless Charging Capacity, Production Status and Outlook (2013-2025)2 Global Wireless Charging Market Competition by Manufacturers2.1 Global Wireless Charging Capacity, Production and Share by Manufacturers (2013-2018)2.1.1 Global Wireless Charging Capacity and Share by Manufacturers (2013-2018)2.1.2 Global Wireless Charging Production and Share by Manufacturers (2013-2018)2.2 Global Wireless Charging Revenue and Share by Manufacturers (2013-2018)2.3 Global Wireless Charging Average Price by Manufacturers (2013-2018)2.4 Manufacturers Wireless Charging Manufacturing Base Distribution, Sales Area and Product Type2.5 Wireless Charging Market Competitive Situation and Trends2.5.1 Wireless Charging Market Concentration Rate2.5.2 Wireless Charging Market Share of Top 3 and Top 5 Manufacturers2.5.3 Mergers & Acquisitions, Expansion3 Global Wireless Charging Capacity, Production, Revenue (Value) by Region (2013-2018)3.1 Global Wireless Charging Capacity and Market Share by Region (2013-2018)3.2 Global Wireless Charging Production and Market Share by Region (2013-2018)3.3 Global Wireless Charging Revenue (Value) and Market Share by Region (2013-2018)3.4 Global Wireless Charging Capacity, Production, Revenue, Price and Gross Margin (2013-2018)3.5 North America Wireless Charging Capacity, Production, Revenue, Price and Gross Margin (2013-2018)3.6 Europe Wireless Charging Capacity, Production, Revenue, Price and Gross Margin (2013-2018)3.7 China Wireless Charging Capacity, Production, Revenue, Price and Gross Margin (2013-2018)3.8 Japan Wireless Charging Capacity, Production, Revenue, Price and Gross Margin (2013-2018)3.9 Southeast Asia Wireless Charging Capacity, Production, Revenue, Price and Gross Margin (2013-2018)3.10 India Wireless Charging Capacity, Production, Revenue, Price and Gross Margin (2013-2018)4 Global Wireless Charging Supply (Production), Consumption, Export, Import by Region (2013-2018)4.1 Global Wireless Charging Consumption by Region (2013-2018)4.2 North America Wireless Charging Production, Consumption, Export, Import (2013-2018)4.3 Europe Wireless Charging Production, Consumption, Export, Import (2013-2018)4.4 China Wireless Charging Production, Consumption, Export, Import (2013-2018)4.5 Japan Wireless Charging Production, Consumption, Export, Import (2013-2018)4.6 Southeast Asia Wireless Charging Production, Consumption, Export, Import (2013-2018)4.7 India Wireless Charging Production, Consumption, Export, Import (2013-2018)5 Global Wireless Charging Production, Revenue (Value), Price Trend by Type5.1 Global Wireless Charging Production and Market Share by Type (2013-2018)5.2 Global Wireless Charging Revenue and Market Share by Type (2013-2018)5.3 Global Wireless Charging Price by Type (2013-2018)5.4 Global Wireless Charging Production Growth by Type (2013-2018)ContinuousFor further information on this report, visit About Us:Wise Guy Reports Is Part Of The Wise Guy Consultants Pvt. Ltd. And Offers Premium Progressive Statistical Surveying, Market Research Reports, Analysis & Forecast Data For Industries And Governments Around The Globe. Wise Guy Reports Features An Exhaustive List Of Market Research Reports From Hundreds Of Publishers Worldwide. We Boast A Database Spanning Virtually Every Market Category And An Even More Comprehensive Collection Of Market Research Reports Under These Categories And Sub-Categories.Addres:WISEGUY RESEARCH CONSULTANTS PVT LTDOffice No. 528, Amanora ChambersPune - 411028Maharashtra, IndiaPhone :+91 841 198 5042 Chromoblastomycosis Treatment Market 2023 Expected CAGR 6.3% with Astellas Pharma, Biocon Limited, Abbott Laboratories, Merck Sharp and Dohme, Gilead Sciences, Mylan Labs, Bristol Myers Squibb, Bayer AG and More Chromoblastomycosis Treatment Market https://www.marketresearchfuture.com/sample_request/5685 https://www.marketresearchfuture.com/enquiry/5685 The Global Chromoblastomycosis Treatment Market is expected to grow at a CAGR of approximately 6.3% during the forecast period, 2017-2023.Market Scenario:Chromoblastomycosis is a fungal infection caused by species such as Fonsecaea pedrosoi, Cladophialophora carrionii, Phialophora verrucosa, Fonsecaea compacta, Rhinocladiella aquaspersa, Chaetomium funicola and others. This disease mostly affects the skin and the subcutaneous tissues. Globally, there is about a million type of fungal species, yet nearly 300 are capable of causing infections or disease in humans. Most of these cases are seen in people with compromised immune systems and can occur almost in any part of the body.A type of fungal infection known as systemic mycosis is affecting the internal organs of the body. During this, fungal infection can spread and affect other organs of the body. The rising cases of immunological diseases is a reason for increased probability of systemic mycosis. Thus, the developing novel treatment for chromoblastomycosis with fewer side effects is the primary objective of manufacturing companies.The newly launched azoles such as voriconazole and itraconazole, are the gold standard drugs for antifungal therapy. Chromoblastomycosis infections need to be treated with antifungal medication such as itraconazole, terbinafine, posaconazole, amphotericin B. Often, the treatment for chromoblastomycosis requires surgery to scrape off the infected tissue. The growth of the market is primarily driven by increasing incidents of fungal infections, rising prevalence of immunological diseases, availability of wide range of products, and increasing awareness about the fungal infections. However, the existence of misbranded drugs and their side effects may slow the growth of the market. The treatment of fungal infections is available in multiple dosage forms such as oral and intravenous medicines. Furthermore, the medications are also available in the form of sprays, creams, solutions, and shampoos.Get Premium Sample Copy @Key Players:Astellas Pharma (Japan), Biocon Limited (India), Abbott Laboratories (U.S.), Merck Sharp and Dohme (U.S.), Gilead Sciences (U.S.), Mylan Labs (U.S.), Bristol Myers Squibb (U.S.), Bayer AG (Germany), Lonza Group (Switzerland), Sanofi (France), F. Hoffman La Roche (Switerzland), Cadila Pharmaceuticals Limited (India), Johnson & Johnson (U.S.), Pfizer Inc. (U.S.), Novartis AG (Switerzland), and othersSegmentation:The global chromoblastomycosis treatment market is segmented on the basis of species, types, diagnosis, treatment, and end-users.On the basis of the species, the global chromoblastomycosis treatment market is segmented into Fonsecaea pedrosoi, Cladophialophora carrionii, Phialophora verrucosa, Fonsecaea compacta, Rhinocladiella aquaspersa, Chaetomium funicola, and others.On the basis of the disease type, the global chromoblastomycosis treatment market is segmented into nodular type, tumoral type, verrucous type, plaque type, and others.On the basis of the diagnosis, the global chromoblastomycosis treatment market is segmented into blood test, immunodiagnosis, histopathology and mycological examination, tissue biopsy, and others. The immunodiagnosis is classified into enzyme-linked immune sorbent assay (ELISA), and immunodiffusion, and others.On the basis of the treatment, the global chromoblastomycosis treatment market is segmented into surgery, antifungal drugs, amphotericin B therapy, thermotherapy, laser therapy, photodynamic therapy, adjuvant therapy, and others. The surgery is classified into cryosurgery, curettage, electrodesiccation, surgical excisions, and others. Furthermore, the antifungal drugs are categorized into oral itraconazole, oral terbinafine, posaconazole, isavuconazole, and others.On the basis of the end-user, the market is segmented into hospitals & clinics, medical institutes, research organization, and others.Regional Analysis:The global chromoblastomycosis treatment market consists of countries namely the Americas, Europe, Asia Pacific, and the Middle East & Africa.The Americas dominate the global chromoblastomycosis treatment market owing to a huge patient population for chromoblastomycosis and well-developed healthcare sector. This disease commonly affects the agricultural workers in rural regions of South America, Central America, and North America.The European region is the second largest market for the global chromoblastomycosis treatment owing to the rising occurrence of fungal infections among the patients, and advancements in the surgeries procedure and the use of surgical devices. It was estimated that about 20% of these cases were found in countries such as the Czech Republic, Romania, and Finland.Asia Pacific is the fastest growing region for chromoblastomycosis treatment market due to increasing prevalence of fungal infections, and regional expansion for the development of this market. Japan is considered to exhibit the highest prevalence rate for chromoblastomycosis in the Asia Pacific region.The Middle East & Africa region contributed the lowest share of the global chromoblastomycosis treatment market, in 2016. Several different Latin American and the African countries, such as Colombia, Gabon, Venezuela, the Dominican Republic, and Cuba, have high prevalence rates for this condition.TABLE OF CONTENTChapter 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 Restraints4.3 Opportunities4.4 Challenges4.5 Macroeconomic Indicators4.6 Treatment Trends & AssessmentChapter 5. Market Factor AnalysisContinued!Ask Query @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 Egg and Egg Products Market are Cal-Maine Foods, Inc., Land O'Lakes, Inc., Noble Foods Ltd, Tyson Foods, Inc., and Ningbo Jiangbei Dexi Foods Co. Ltd. https://www.futuremarketinsights.com/reports/egg-products-market https://www.futuremarketinsights.com/toc/rep-gb-217 https://www.futuremarketinsights.com/reports/sample/rep-gb-217 www.futuremarketinsights.com Products which are obtained from different blends and components of eggs and are ready for human consumption are known as egg products. Egg products can partly be complemented by additives or some other food products. They can be found in different forms such as concentrated, crystallized, deep-frozen, liquid, solid, and frozen with a shelf life of three weeks.View complete report:About 70% of the eggs are mainly produce in the economies of China, India, U.S., Japan, Indonesia, Mexico, Brazil, and France. In which 36% of the eggs are produce in China and about 11% in Latin America. There are different types of eggs products available in the market which includes pasteurized liquid egg, pasteurized liquid yolk, pasteurized liquid white, dehydrated white, dehydrated egg, hardboiled egg, dehydrated yolk, and ready-cooked meals with egg as their main ingredient.Request Report toc @As egg and egg products offers a source of protein to the consumers with the slightest environment impact is the major factor driving the growth of the market. Technology changes, government regulations are some of the factors contributing to the growth of the market. As the industry is continuously changing due to rising demand, increasing consumption and production of egg and egg products and technology advancement the market has huge growth opportunities in future. But, the insignificant growth in the international trade with some exceptions can act as a restraint for the market.Some of the key players of the market are Cal-Maine Foods, Inc., Land OLakes, Inc., Noble Foods Ltd, Tyson Foods, Inc., and Ningbo Jiangbei Dexi Foods Co. Ltd.This research report presents a comprehensive assessment of the market and contains thoughtful insights, facts, historical data and statistically-supported and industry-validated market data and projections with a suitable set of assumptions and methodology. It provides analysis and information by categories such as market segments, regions, product type and distribution channels.Request for sample report:Future Market Insights (FMI) is a leading market intelligence and consulting firm. We deliver syndicated research reports, custom research reports and consulting services, which are personalized in nature. FMI delivers a complete packaged solution, which combines current market intelligence, statistical anecdotes, technology inputs, valuable growth insights, an aerial view of the competitive framework, and future market trends.Future Market Insights616 Corporate Way, Suite 2-9018,Valley Cottage, NY 10989,United StatesT: +13479183531F: +1-845-579-5705Email: sales@futuremarketinsights.comWebsite: Drain Cleaning Equipment Market Segmentation Product Type Hand Tools, Auger, Hand Spinners, Plunger, Sewer Tapes https://www.futuremarketinsights.com/reports/sample/rep-gb-4622 https://www.futuremarketinsights.com/reports/drain-cleaning-equipment-market https://www.futuremarketinsights.com/toc/rep-gb-4622 https://www.futuremarketinsights.com/ Drain cleaning equipment is the major components in operation and maintenance of water, wastewater, and sewer utilities. It is a never ending and challenging task to keep drainage system, the piping system in the flow. However, it is most important but most overlooked elements of healthy facilities. As there is numerous material which can cause blockage in drainage. The area of blockage may be hard to access and so difficult to remove the blockage. Drain cleaning equipment help to remove the blockage in these locations and clear the drainage system.Drain cleaning equipment is equipment of includes hand tools as well as power tools. A major misconception related to drain cleaning equipment is one machine can handle all the drain issues. But in reality, it is not so, as there are several issues at various location and in different sizes systems. So there are different equipment made for different issues to solve it effectively and easily.Request For Report Sample @Drain Cleaning Equipment Market:Market DynamicsSignificant investments by State and Federal governments on the operation and maintenance of water, wastewater, and sewer utilities is one of the major factors in driving the drain cleaning equipment demand in the forecast period. A survey from American Society of Civil Engineers (ASCE) states that waste water treatment plants will increase considerably in the upcoming year. As these are the target markets, the drain cleaning equipment market is expected to grow significantly in the upcoming years.The high price of power drain cleaning equipment limiting their usage on commercial applications. The traditional hand tools such as plungers and augers are commonly found to be used in household applications, the major reason being the low cost, which in turn results in high penetration of these products. Where the advance drain cleaning power tools such as drum machine, sectional machine, sink machines, and water jetters are capable of offering a wide range of operations and are easy to use, find limited adoption in the household due to its high price. However, providing drain cleaning equipment on rent is in trend these days.Drain Cleaning Equipment Market:Market SegmentationSegmentation ofDrain Cleaning Equipment Market can be doneon the basis of product type as follows:Hand ToolsAugerHand SpinnersPlungerSewer TapesPower ToolsSink MachinesDrum MachinesSectional MachinesWater JettersRodder MachinesKnow More About Report@Segmentation of Drain Cleaning Equipment Market can be doneon the basis of application as follows:MunicipalResidentialIndustrialSegmentation of Drain Cleaning Equipment Market can be doneon the basis of By sales channel as follows:Distributor SalesRetail OutletOnline SalesDrain Cleaning Equipment Market: Regional OutlookNorth America holds a significant share in the global Drain Cleaning Equipment Market in terms of value as well as volume followed by Europe. The Drain Cleaning Equipment Market in Asia Pacific is expected to grow at a substantial rate over the forecast period. Growth in Asia-Pacific Drain Cleaning Equipment Market is mainly due to the rapid growth in the urbanization and industrialization. Furthermore, significant investments in the field of cleaning as well as operation and maintenance of drains, wastewater, and sewer in the countries such as India and China will bolster the Drain Cleaning Equipment Market. The growth in the Drain Cleaning Equipment Market in North America is chiefly due to the government support and funding in the field of development and implementation. Rest of the world market is estimated to account for a relatively small share of the Drain Cleaning Equipment Market.Request For Report Table of Content (TOC):Drain Cleaning Equipment Market: Market ParticipantsSome of the examples of the market participants in the global Drain Cleaning Equipment Market, identified across the value chain are:Masco CorpDURACABLE.Gorlitz Sewer & Drain, IncGeneral Wire Spring Co.Electric Eel Manufacturing Co IncSpartan Tools LLCDuracable Manufacturing CORothenberger USA LLCGoodway Technologies Corp.About UsFuture Market Insights is the premier provider of market intelligence and consulting services, serving clients in over 150 countries. FMI is headquartered in London, the global financial capital, and has delivery centers in the U.S. and India.FMIs research and consulting services help businesses around the globe navigate the challenges in a rapidly evolving marketplace with confidence and clarity. Our customized and syndicated market research reports deliver actionable insights that drive sustainable growth. We continuously track emerging trends and events in a broad range of end industries to ensure our clients prepare for the evolving needs of their consumers.U.S. Office616 Corporate Way, Suite 2-9018,Valley Cottage, NY 10989,United StatesT: +1-347-918-3531F: +1-845-579-5705Email: sales@futuremarketinsights.comWeb: Europe Generator Sets Market Growth Analysis with Major formulators include Kohler, Cummins, Caterpillar, Honda, Escorts, Yamaha, John Deere, Atlas Copco, Caterpillar among others Europe Generator Sets Market https://www.graphicalresearch.com/request/1032/sample https://www.graphicalresearch.com/industry-insights/1032/europe-generator-sets-market https://www.graphicalresearch.com/request/1032/inquiry-before-buying https://www.graphicalresearch.com/industry-insights/1034/europe-lng-bunkering-market https://www.graphicalresearch.com/industry-insights/1031/middle-east-gas-turbine-market https://www.graphicalresearch.com/ According to the Graphical Research new growth forecast report titled Europe Generator Sets Market analysis based on Current, Fuel, Power Rating, Application, End-Use, Industry Analysis Report, Regional Outlook, Price Trend, Competitive Market Share & Forecast, 2018 2024, estimated to exceed USD 5 billion by 2024.Europe Generator Sets Market size is predicted to exceed USD 5 billion by 2024. Rising demand for uninterrupted & reliable power supply in response to the inadequate grid infrastructure will drive the Europe gensets market growth. The ability of these gensets to efficiently backup crucial operations during power fluctuations or unexpected blackouts constitutes the key factor which will strengthen the products adoption.Request for a sample of this research report -Increasing digitization accompanied by sizeable expansion of the data center infrastructure will propel the Europe generator sets market growth. The booming regional data center industry, primarily led by Germany, the Netherlands, France, and the UK are supporting the widespread deployment of generator sets as requisite backup power equipment. These units are majorly installed across financial services and IT firms, hospitals and other commercial spaces.Germany gensets market, in 2017 was valued over USD 600 million. Growing investments by industry giants toward the expansion of their cloud footprint is set to stimulate the industry expansion. For instance, Microsoft, in March 2018, announced the extension of its data centers infrastructure in Germany with the opening of two new facilities, which in turn will create cyclical demand for gensets.Europe gas fired gensets market is set to witness robust growth on account of stringent legislative requirements aimed at reducing GHG emissions and supporting the adoption of energy efficient equipment. In addition, the expansion of gas pipeline infrastructure across the region, coupled with increased competitiveness of fuel prices will support the industry outlook. As per the European Commission (EC), the EU, in 2016 funded the construction of a gas pipeline (Balticconnector) between Finland and Estonia with an investment of over USD 200 million.Browse key industry insights from this 2018 report Europe Generator Sets Market in detail along with the table of contents at:Rising infrastructure and commercial investments, predominantly across the Eastern Europe will drive the Europe gensets market size. The industry growth is largely driven by gradual upturn in overall investment volumes in 2017 on account of improving macro-economic outlook and real estate expansion. Moreover, growing demand for retail, logistics and office properties in addition to expansion of senior nursing and housing establishments will accelerate the deployment of gensets in the region.Europe AC generator sets market size is set to expand over 6% by 2024. AC gensets are majorly deployed across residential spaces subject to their low maintenance requirements and operational viability for small power ranges. Affordable price, operational durability, quick start-up, and reliability are some of the key features strengthening the product demand.Notable industry players operating in the Europe gensets market include Kohler, Cummins, Generac, Caterpillar, Honda, Escorts, Yamaha, John Deere, Atlas Copco, Caterpillar among others.Segments We Cover:Europe Generator Sets Market Growth, By CurrentDC, ACEurope Generator Sets Market Statistics, By FuelGasoline, Diesel, GasEurope Generator Sets Market Trends, By Power Rating1000 kVAEurope Generator Sets Market Share, By ApplicationBackup, Prime PowerEurope Generator Sets Market Analysis, By End UseResidential, Commercial, IndustrialThe above information is provided on a country basis for the following:Russia, UK, Germany, France, Spain, Austria, ItalyMake an inquiry for purchasing this report @Related Reports:1. Europe LNG Bunkering Market Size by Product (Truck-to-Ship, Port-to-Ship, Ship-to-Ship, Portable Tanks), By End-Use (Container Vessels, Cruise-ships, Bulk Carriers, Ferries, Offshore Support Vessels), Industry Analysis Report, Regional Outlook (Norway, The Netherlands, Germany, Belgium, Denmark, UK, Spain, France, Italy), Competitive Market Share & Forecast, 2018-2024Key industry players catering across the LNG bunkering market comprises of Gasum, ENN Energy, Prima LNG, Skangas, Crowley Maritime, Engie, Polskie, Bomin Linde, Swedegas, Enagas, and Fjord Line.2. Middle East Gas Turbine Market Size By Capacity (< 50 KW, 50 KW to 500 KW, > 500 KW to 1 MW, > 1 MW to 30 MW, > 30 MW to 70 MW, > 70 MW to 200 MW, > 200 MW), By Product (Aero-Derivative, Heavy Duty), By Technology (Open Cycle, Combined Cycle), By Application (Power Plants, Oil & Gas, Process plants, Aviation, Marine), Industry Analysis Report, Country Analysis (Saudi Arabia, UAE, Qatar, Kuwait, Oman, Egypt, Turkey, Bahrain, Iraq, Jordan, Lebanon) Application Development Potential, Price Trend, Competitive Market Share & Forecast, 2018 2024Eminent players in the Middle East gas turbine market comprise Centrax ltd, MAPNA Turbine Engineering & Manufacturing Co. (TUGA), Siemens AG, General Electric, Wartsila, Toshiba, Solar Turbines, Ansaldo Energia, Capstone Turbine and Score Group plc.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:Parikhit B.Corporate sales,Graphical ResearchEmail: sales@graphicalresearh.comWeb: Mobile Point-of-Sale (POS) Terminals Market - Growth by key Players (ax technology Limited, Squirrel Systems, Toshiba Corporation, Posiflex Tachnology) Mobile Point-of-Sale (POS) Terminals Market https://bit.ly/2CE9snA https://bit.ly/2ReVLji https://www.polarismarketresearch.com/ The rising number of cashless transactions and growing need for digital payments primarily drive the growth of this market. Mobile POS solutions enable users to conduct financial transactions at remote locations with increased convenience and ease. Growing proliferation of mobile devices, increasing internet penetration, and technological advancement boosts the adoption of mobile POS terminals. Mobile POS terminals are also capable of accepting payments through EMV chip-enabled cards, contact-less cards, and NFC enabled cards.Download PDF Sample:According to a new study published by Polaris Market Research the worldwide Mobile POS Terminals market is anticipated to reach over USD 81.3 billion by 2026. In 2017, the hardware component dominated the global market, in terms of revenue. North America is expected to be the leading contributor to the global market revenue during the forecast period.Mobile POS terminals are used by business to enable faster and easier checkouts. These terminals provide quicker checkouts during high volume transactions, thereby increasing customer experience. Mobile POS terminals are integrated with mobile devices such as smart phones and tablets, which offer benefits such as reduced serving time, higher workforce efficiency, while improve customer experience. These terminals are connected to inventory management systems, to further improve efficiency. Mobile POS terminals allow users to send digital receipts to consumers for better organization, and ease of use. Small businesses are increasingly adopting mobile POS terminals for increased profitability. Mobile POS terminals offer enhanced security as transactions are encrypted and not stored on devices. The declining prices of mobile devices, increasing demand for portable & wearable devices, rising NFC-based transactions, and technological advancements further supplement the growth of mobile POS terminals. The rising adoption of cloud-based and Android POS devices also boosts market growth. Integration of mobile wallet payments with mobile POS terminals to offer additional payment options to users is expected to create numerous growth opportunities in the coming years.North America generated the highest revenue in the market in 2017, and is expected to lead the global market throughout the forecast period. The growing adoption of advanced NFC and EMV-enabled devices with the aim to minimize frauds and security breaches related to payments are driving growth in this region. Increasing penetration of mobile devices, affordable mobile POS terminals, and growing acceptance by small and medium-sized businesses further supports market growth in this region. The use of POS terminals in varied industries such as healthcare, retail, and hospitality among others accelerates its adoption.On the basis of components, the global mobile POS terminals market is segmented into hardware components, and software components. The hardware components include mobile devices, bar code scanner, and magnetic strip reader. The hardware is used across various industries with software varying according to industry specific requirements. The software segment is expected to grow significantly in the coming years owing to additional features offered such as customer loyalty programs, employee management, and business process monitoring. Growing adoption of cloud-based mobile POS solutions would also supplement market growth.For More Information and TOC:The well-known companies profiled in the report include VeriFone Systems, Oracle Corporation, Ingenico S.A., Pax technology Limited, Squirrel Systems, Toshiba Corporation, Posiflex Tachnology, Panasonic Corporation, NEC Corporation, and Hewlett-Packard Company. These companies launch new products and collaborate with other market leaders to innovate and launch new products to meet the increasing needs and requirements of consumers.About Polaris Market Research:Polaris Market Research is a global market research and consulting company. 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. The company specializes in providing exceptional market intelligence and in-depth business research services for our clientele spread across different enterprises.Contact us:Mr. NeelCorporate Sales, USAPolaris Market ResearchPhone: 1-646-568-9980Email: neel@polarismarketresearch.comWeb: Illinois has allowed the sale of medical marijuana since 2015 but strictly limited its use to patients with only a few dozen documented conditions. In August, Gov. Bruce Rauner signed legislation to dramatically expand access to medical cannabis and permit its use as a painkiller, an alternative to powerful opioids. The measure also eased restrictions on those applying for state authorization to use medicinal cannabis. Prior to that, the Tribune reported that cultivators throughout the state were bolstering their growing capabilities in anticipation of more people having access to the drug. Global Metabolomics Market Analysis Covering Size, Share, Trends and Upcoming Opportunities by 2026 | Key Players are Huafon Group, Kuraray, Toray, Wenzhou Imitation Leather, Alfatex, etc. https://www.factmr.com/connectus/sample?flag=S&rep_id=398 https://www.factmr.com/report/398/microfiber-synthetic-leather-market https://www.factmr.com/checkout/398/S https://www.factmr.com/ https://factmrblog.com/ Fact.MR has published a new research report titled Global Metabolomics Market Analysis Covering Size, Share, Trends and Upcoming Opportunities by 2026 to its online database that tries to unveil the various scenarios prevailing in the Microfiber Synthetic Leather Market. This assessment delivers a smart compilation of primary and secondary data which provides a clear insight about the future plans expected to impact the Microfiber Synthetic Leather Market. This study comprises of prominent data which makes it a beneficial source for investors, analysts and industry experts to acquire necessary knowledge associated to the fundamental market trends, opportunities and growth drivers during the stated forecast period (2017-2026).Get Free Sample of Global Microfiber Synthetic Leather Market Research Report Here -Fact.MR Report examines global microfiber synthetic leather market for the forecast period 20172026. Prime purpose of the report is to find opportunities and trends in the market and provide insights pertaining to segments of the global microfiber synthetic leather market.To understand the opportunities and trends in this market, the report is categorically divided into three sections namely on the basis of product type, application, and region. The report analyzes global microfiber synthetic leather in terms of value (US$) and volume (000 units).Microfiber leather is a type of synthetic leather where ultra-fine microfiber bundles and high grade polyurethane resin are combined together to imitate the infinitesimal structure of leather. The procedure used to create microfiber leather gives the final product a similar amino structure almost identical to genuine leather. Microfiber leather is a comparatively new technology in the market that has only recently been incorporated into several applications. Global microfiber synthetic leather market is anticipated to witness significant revenue growth over the forecast period. Rapid changes in lifestyle has led to shift in consumer preference from animal leather to microfiber synthetic leather. As a result, domestic and international companies are making major investments in synthetic leather instead of real leather. Because of magnificent performance, microfiber synthetic leather has been the best vegan leather, the optimal substitute of real leather and the best leather alternative materials, can replace leather perfectly.However, high cost price of microfiber synthetic leather is a prime challenge for leather substitute industries.Microfibers are 100 times finer than human hair. The fineness of microfibers creates durability and flexibility in the fabric. Leather is made from the hide of a cow or other animal that has undergone a tanning process before being upholstered onto a sofa. Microfiber is purchased by the yard. Leather is purchased by the hide. This in turn, significantly increases costs associated with microfiber synthetic leather.Learn More about Global Microfiber Synthetic Leather Market Research Report Here -The report also provides region-wise data of local and international companies, new install base of Microfiber synthetic leather.The global microfiber synthetic leather market is segmented as follows:On the basis of product type the market is segmented into the following:Bio-Based LeatherPU Synthetic LeatherPVC-Based Synthetic LeatherPVC-Based Synthetic Leather accounts for one-third of total microfiber synthetic leather market. However, Microfiber Synthetic Leather market is expected to expand at a CAGR of 4.9% over the forecast period.On the basis of Application, the market is segmented as follows:ClothingFurnishingBags, Purses & WalletsFootwearAutomotiveOther ApplicationsFurnishing segment is expected to dominate microfiber synthetic leather market over the forecast period. However, rapidly growing number of automotive requirements are creating high growth opportunities for microfiber synthetic leather market.Regions covered in the report are as follows:North AmericaLatin AmericaEuropeJapanAsia Pacific excluding JapanMiddle East & AfricaIn the final section of the report, a competitive landscape has been included to provide report audiences with a dashboard view. Detailed profiles of the providers are also included in the scope of the report to evaluate their long-term and short-term strategies, key offerings and recent developments in the microfiber synthetic leather space. Key players in the global microfiber synthetic leather market includes Huafon Group, Kuraray, Toray, Wenzhou Imitation Leather, Alfatex, Zhejiang Hexin Industry Group Co., Ltd., Anhui Anli Material Technology Co., Ltd., Kunshan Xiefu Artificial Leather Co., Ltd., Shandong Tongda Textile Machinery (group) Co.,Ltd., Tongda Island, Double Elephant, Topsun Micro Fiber, Yantai Wanhua Synthetic Leather Group Co., Ltd., Teijin Cordley, Asahi Kasei Mayur Uniquoters Limited, Xiangyu Xinghong, Clarino, Kolon Industries, San Fang Chemical Industry Co., Ltd., Wanhua Micro Fiber, Jeongsan International, Meisheng Group, FILWEL, Huafeng Group, Fujian Tianshou, Ecsaine, Sanling Micro Fiber, SISA, NPC, Ecolorica, H.R.Polycoats Pvt. Ltd., others.In addition, it is imperative to note that in an ever-fluctuating global economy, we not only conduct forecasts in terms of CAGR but also analyze on the basis of key parameters such as year-on-year (Y-o-Y) growth to understand the predictability of the market and to identify the right opportunities.Also, another key feature of this report is the analysis of all key segments in terms of absolute dollar opportunity. This is traditionally overlooked while forecasting the market. However, absolute dollar opportunity is critical in assessing the level of opportunity that a provider can look to achieve, as well as to identify potential resources from a sales and delivery perspective in the global microfiber synthetic leather market.Buy Hassle Free Global Microfiber Synthetic Leather Market Research Report Here -About Fact.MRFact.MR is a fast-growing market research firm that offers the most comprehensive suite of syndicated and customized market research reports. We believe transformative intelligence can educate and inspire businesses to make smarter decisions. We know the limitations of the one-size-fits-all approach; that's why we publish multi-industry global, regional, and country-specific research reports.Contact UsFact.MR11140 Rockville PikeSuite 400Rockville, MD 20852United StatesEmail: sales@factmr.comWeb:Blog: Middle East Gas Turbine Market Outlook, Forecast & Major Industry Participants includes Centrax, Siemens, Wartsila, General Electric, MAPNA, Toshiba, Solar Turbines and Ansaldo Energia. Middle East Gas Turbine Market https://www.graphicalresearch.com/request/1031/sample https://www.graphicalresearch.com/industry-insights/1031/middle-east-gas-turbine-market https://www.graphicalresearch.com/request/1031/inquiry-before-buying https://www.graphicalresearch.com/industry-insights/1025/europe-air-source-heat-pump-market https://www.graphicalresearch.com/industry-insights/1032/europe-generator-sets-market https://www.graphicalresearch.com/ According to the Graphical Research new growth forecast report titled Middle East Gas Turbine Market analysis based on Capacity, Product, Technology, Application, Industry Analysis Report, Country Analysis Application Development Potential, Price Trend, Competitive Market Share & Forecast, 2018 2024, estimated to exceed annual deployment of 4 GW by 2024.Middle East Gas Turbine Market was over USD 900 million in 2017 and is anticipated to exceed annual deployment of 4 GW by 2024. Strengthening government measures toward renewable energy integration along with restructuring of trade policies and investment flow will stimulate the Middle East gas turbine market growth. Refurbishment and retrofitting across the key power markets in line with technological enhancements across the materials, combustion, cooling and aerodynamics industries will further drive the industry landscape.Request for a sample of this research report -Rising energy demand from manufacturing plants coupled with paradigm shift toward the integration of effective energy mix will drive the gas turbine market size. The industry growth is further attributed to the implementation of effective energy utilization policies toward the expansion of combined cycle power plants.Ongoing installation of co-generation units to withstand energy consumption in commercial, small industrial and isolated transmission & distribution networks will propel the gas turbine market. In addition, ongoing expansion of effective re-generation units to withstand minimal heat requirements will further boost the industry landscape.Operational efficiency, lower overall operational cost, effective environmental proximity, and effective waste heat utilization are the key factors justifying the product demand. In addition, growing industrial headway along with increasing demand for energy & stability in gas prices will further develop a positive scenario for the gas turbine market.Increasing deployment of gas turbines across process industries by replacement of coal by gas in a host of small-scale industrial applications will further enhance the growth prospects of Middle East gas turbine market. In addition, government reforms to curtail emissions along with stalling of gas prices in the current industrial regime will further pose immense potential for gas turbine deployment.Browse key industry insights from this 2018 report Middle East Gas Turbine Market in detail along with the table of contents at:Middle East gas turbine market will witness robust growth on account of government funding and extensive R&D reforms toward installation of efficient combined cycle generation units. For instance, in 2015, European Investment Bank granted a loan of USD 600 million to the Government of Egypt for the establishment of Damanhour Power Station of 1,800 MW capacity.Shifting trends toward energy-efficient technologies coupled with increasing focus toward replacement of inefficient coal fired power plants will drive the Middle East gas turbine market. Increasing efforts for power capacity augmentation to meet the constantly increasing power demand will further provide a thrust to the industry dynamics. As per OPEC 2016, Saudi Arabia depends on oil exports for about 85% of its annual revenues and is expected to replace oil power plants by gas fired generating stations in the country.Notable participants across the gas turbine market in Middle East include Centrax, Siemens AG, Wartsila, General Electric, MAPNA, Toshiba, Capstone Turbine, Solar Turbines, Score Group and Ansaldo Energia.Make an inquiry for purchasing this report @Segments We Cover:Middle East Gas Turbine Market Statistics, By Capacity< 50 kW50 kW to 500 kW> 500 kW to 1 MW> 1 MW to 30 MW> 30 MW to 70 MW> 70 MW to 200 MW> 200 MWMiddle East Gas Turbine Market Trends, By ProductAero-derivativeHeavy dutyMiddle East Gas Turbine Market Analysis, By TechnologyOpen cycleCombined cycleMiddle East Gas Turbine Market growth, By ApplicationPower plantsOil & gasProcess plantsAviationMarineOthersThe above information is provided for the following countries:Saudi ArabiaUAEQatarKuwaitOmanRelated Reports:1. Europe Air Source Heat Pump Market Size by Product (Air to Air, Air to Water), By Application (Residential, Commercial, Industrial), Industry Analysis Report, Country Outlook (Austria, Norway, Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, Italy, Switzerland, Spain, Sweden, UK), Growth Potential, Competitive Market Share & Forecast, 2018 2024Eminent industry players in the Europe air source heat pump market comprises Bosch Thermotechnology, NIBE, Danfoss, BDR Thermea Group, Viessmann, Glen Dimplex, Husky Heat Pumps, Climaveneta, Vaillant, Swegon Group, Grant Engineering, Systemair AB, Trane, Finn Geotherm UK, and Stiebel Eltron.2. Europe Generator Sets Market Size by Current (DC, AC {Single Phase, Poly Phase}), By Fuel (Gasoline, Diesel, Gas), By Power Rating (1000 kVA), By Application (Backup, Prime Power), By End-Use (Residential, Commercial, Industrial) Industry Analysis Report, Country Analysis (Russia, UK, Germany, France, Spain, Austria, Italy), Application Potential, Price Trend, Competitive Market Share & Forecast, 2018 2024Key players active across the Europe generator sets market include Cummins, Kohler, Generac, Honda, Yamaha, Caterpillar, Escorts among others.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:Parikhit B.Corporate sales,Graphical ResearchEmail: sales@graphicalresearh.comWeb: Sex Toys Market Is Booming Worldwide 2026 By Top vendors - BMS Factory, Doc Johnson Enterprises, LELO, PHE Inc, Aneros Bad Dragon Enterprises, Inc., Beate Uhse AG, and Tantus, Inc. https://www.coherentmarketinsights.com/insight/request-pdf/1401 https://www.coherentmarketinsights.com/insight/request-customization/1401 Sex toys are those that may enhance sexual health and also sexual pleasure. Sex toys are gaining popularity due to the increasing acceptance and use of these products. Most of these toys are designed to resemble human genitalia. Sex toys are widely available globally for both men and women and include dildos, vibrators, and sex dolls.The major factors that contribute to the growth of the sex toys market include increasing awareness and acceptance of such toys for sexual pleasure and increasing use of these amongst couples and the LGBT community. However, various government regulations and low government approval of sex toys products in emerging economies such as India and South Africa with regards to the sale and distribution of these toys due to the taboo related to the use of the products is a major factor that is expected to affect the growth of the sex toys market.Download PDF Brochure of Research Report @Global Sex Toys Market OutlookThe North America sex toys market is expected to be the most dominant during the forecast period. This is mainly due to the wide scale acceptance of sex toys in North America especially in the U.S. According to the Society for Scientific Study of Sexuality, the U.S. accounted for the highest number of Google searches for sex toys, standing at approximately 100 searches per 1000 people. The U.S.-based company Comingle launched the Mod in 2014, a vibrating dildo that could be customized and can be set to vibrate according to the requirement, level of excitement, amongst others. Factors such as these are expected to drive the growth of the sex toys market in the region.Global Sex Toys Market TaxonomyGlobal sex toys market is segmented asBy Product TypeDildosVibratorsCock ringsOthersBy Distribution ChannelSupermarketsSpecialty storesOnline StoresOthersRequest Customization Of Research Report @Some of the major manufacturers in the Global sex toys market are BMS Factory, Doc Johnson Enterprises, LELO, PHE Inc, Aneros Bad Dragon Enterprises, Inc., Beate Uhse AG, and Tantus, Inc.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 Global E-cigarette and Vaping Market 2018-2025 Production, Revenue and Consumption By Altria Group, Inc., British American Tobacco, Imperial Brands, International Vapor Group, Japan Tobacco, International, NicQuid E-cigarette and Vaping http://www.orbisresearch.com/contacts/request-sample/2305686 http://www.orbisresearch.com/reports/index/global-e-cigarette-and-vaping-market-insights-forecast-to-2025 http://www.orbisresearch.com/contact/purchase/2305686 This report presents the worldwide E-cigarette and Vaping market size (value, production and consumption), splits the breakdown (data status 2013-2018 and forecast to 2025), by manufacturers, region, type and application.This study also analyzes the market status, market share, growth rate, future trends, market drivers, opportunities and challenges, risks and entry barriers, sales channels, distributors and Porter's Five Forces Analysis.E-cigarette is a battery-operated device that is considered as a safe alternative to smoking cigarettes. The industry is non-uniformly regulated as effects of the devices are under review. Large tobacco companies have flourished by introducing these devices through various brands that cater to different requirements, thereby enhancing quality and level of customization of the products.The market is expected to gain traction over the forecast period, owing to growing popularity of these products among millennials. Moreover, availability of a variety of e-cigarette options is another factor projected to provide a tremendous push to the market over the forecast period.The E-cigarette and Vaping market was valued at xx Million US$ in 2017 and is projected to reach xx Million US$ by 2025, at a CAGR of xx% during the forecast period. In this study, 2017 has been considered as the base year and 2018 to 2025 as the forecast period to estimate the market size for E-cigarette and Vaping.Request a sample of this report @The following manufacturers are covered in this report: Altria Group, Inc. British American Tobacco Imperial Brands International Vapor Group Japan Tobacco International NicQuid Philip Morris International Inc. R.J. Reynolds Vapor Company Shenzhen IVPS Technology Co., Ltd. Shenzhen KangerTech Technology Co., Ltd.E-cigarette and Vaping Breakdown Data by Type Disposable Rechargeable Modular DevicesE-cigarette and Vaping Breakdown Data by Application Online RetailBrowse the complete report @E-cigarette and Vaping Production by Region United States Europe China Japan South Korea Other RegionsThe study objectives are: To analyze and research the global E-cigarette and Vaping status and future forecast?involving, production, revenue, consumption, historical and forecast. To present the key E-cigarette and Vaping manufacturers, production, revenue, market share, and recent development. To split the breakdown data by regions, type, manufacturers and applications. To 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 regions. To analyze competitive developments such as expansions, agreements, new product launches, and acquisitions in the market.This report includes the estimation of market size for value (million USD) and volume (K Units). Both top-down and bottom-up approaches have been used to estimate and validate the market size of E-cigarette and Vaping market, to estimate the size of various other dependent submarkets in the overall market. Key players in the market have been identified through secondary research, and their market shares have been determined through primary and secondary research. All percentage shares, splits, and breakdowns have been determined using secondary sources and verified primary sources.For the data information by region, company, type and application, 2017 is considered as the base year. Whenever data information was unavailable for the base year, the prior year has been considered.Major Points from Table of Content:Chapter One: Study CoverageChapter Two: Executive SummaryChapter Three: Market Size by ManufacturersChapter Four: E-cigarette and Vaping Production by RegionsChapter Five: E-cigarette and Vaping Consumption by RegionsChapter Six: Market Size by TypeChapter Seven: Market Size by ApplicationChapter Eight: Manufacturers ProfilesChapter Nine: Production ForecastsChapter Ten: Consumption ForecastChapter Eleven: Value Chain and Sales Channels AnalysisChapter Twelve: Market Opportunities & Challenges, Risks and Influences Factors AnalysisChapter Thirteen: Key Findings in the Global E-cigarette and Vaping StudyChapter Fourteen: AppendixPlace a purchase order of this report @About Us:Orbis Research (orbisresearch.com) is a single point aid for all your market research requirements. We have vast database of reports from the leading publishers and authors across the globe. We specialize in delivering customized reports as per the requirements of our clients. We have complete information about our publishers and hence are sure about the accuracy of the industries and verticals of their specialization. This helps our clients to map their needs and we produce the perfect required market research study for our clients.Contact Information:Hector CostelloSenior Manager Client Engagements4144N Central Expressway,Suite 600, Dallas, Offshore Decommissioning Market trends and dynamics 2017 - 2025 : Amec Foster Wheeler Plc, John Wood Group Plc, Ramboll Group, Aker Solutions ASA, and Tetra Technologies Inc https://www.tmrresearch.com/sample/sample?flag=B&rep_id=2489 https://www.tmrresearch.com/sample/sample?flag=T&rep_id=2489 https://www.tmrresearch.com/offshore-decommissioning-market Global Offshore Decommissioning Market: OverviewOffshore decommissioning is the process of disassembling offshore oil platforms, which also includes burying the holes drilled into the ground for exploration and extraction purposes. Mature oil platforms can have an adverse impact on the surrounding environment, which necessitates their removal. The global offshore decommissioning market is likely to remain a key sector of the global oil and gas industry in the coming years, as the latter is likely to emphasize increasingly on offshore petroleum extraction. Well plugging and abandonment is likely to remain the key segment of the global offshore decommissioning market in the coming years, with the extensive scale of the operation key in ensuring a steady dominant share for the segment in the global market.Global Offshore Decommissioning Market: Key TrendsThe global offshore decommissioning market is likely to exhibit steady growth in the coming years due to the rising number of mature oilfields, which no longer remain commercially viable. The high number of aging platforms in shallow water is also likely to remain a key driver for the global offshore decommissioning market in the coming years.Request Sample Copy of the Report @On the other hand, the high cost of offshore decommissioning projects could hinder the growth of the global offshore decommissioning market. Due to the large scale of offshore oil and gas platforms, significant expenditure needs to be dedicated for effective offshore decommissioning projects. Since the expenses go toward removing a nonfunctional asset rather than expanding the existing capacity, many players in the global oil and gas industry have remained reluctant about offshore decommissioning. The technology required to carry out offshore decommissioning efficiently are also lacking in several regions, as is systemic support from the regulatory framework. This is also likely to restrain the global offshore decommissioning market in the coming years.The rising use of techniques to maximize and prolong the viability of oilfields is also likely to restrain the growth of the global offshore decommissioning market in the coming years. Refilling and other techniques can help extend the operational lifespan of oilfield by a few years, and result in further profits for the oil and gas operator. This remains a key challenge for the offshore decommissioning market in the coming years, as offshore decommissioning remains unprofitable both economically as well as logistically compared to these techniques.Global Offshore Decommissioning Market: Market PotentialOil and gas operations in the North Sea are likely to be vital to the global offshore decommissioning market in the coming years. The U.K. and Norway are among the leading oil producers operating in the North Sea and are likely to remain among the key consumers of offshore decommissioning technology in the coming years. As a result, Europe is likely to be the leading regional offshore decommissioning market over the coming years.Request TOC of the Report @Global Offshore Decommissioning Market: Geographical DynamicsFollowing Europe, North America is also likely to retain a significant share in the global offshore decommissioning market due primarily to the rising role of the U.S. in the global oil and gas sector. The U.S. has traditionally been a major player in the oil and gas industry and is a leading operator of offshore oilfields at present. The rising prominence of Southeast Asian countries such as Indonesia and Malaysia in the global oil and gas sector is also likely to drive the Asia Pacific market for offshore decommissioning in the coming years.Global Offshore Decommissioning Market: Competitive DynamicsThe leading players in the global offshore decommissioning market include AF Gruppen ASA, Amec Foster Wheeler Plc, John Wood Group Plc, Ramboll Group, Aker Solutions ASA, and Tetra Technologies Inc.Read Comprehensive Overview of Report @About TMR ResearchTMR Research is a premier provider of customized market research and consulting services to business entities keen on succeeding in todays supercharged economic climate. Armed with an experienced, dedicated, and dynamic team of analysts, we are redefining the way our clients conduct business by providing them with authoritative and trusted research studies in tune with the latest methodologies and market trends.Our savvy custom-built reports span a gamut of industries such as pharmaceuticals, chemicals and metals, food and beverages, and technology and media, among others. With actionable insights uncovered through in-depth research of the market, we try to bring about game-changing success for our clients.Contact:TMR Research,3739 Balboa St # 1097,San Francisco, CA 94121United StatesTel: +1-415-520-1050Email: sales@tmrresearch.com Industry Trends: Carrier Ethernet Services Market By Key Vendors: Actelis, ADVA, Infinera, IPITEK 2018-2025 QyResearchReports https://www.qyresearchreports.com/sample/sample.php?rep_id=1736580&type=S https://www.qyresearchreports.com/report/global-carrier-ethernet-services-market-size-status-and-forecast-2025.htm http://www.qyresearchreports.com Qyresearchreports include new market research report Carrier Ethernet Services to its huge collection of research reports.The global Carrier Ethernet Services market has witnessed changing patterns of consumer demand in the recent times. This research study is an attempt to understand the changes and the impact of this changes on the market across the world. The study delivers a comprehensive analysis of the worldwide Carrier Ethernet Services market, acting as a source of valuable information for active market participants across the value chain and assisting them in capitalizing the opportunities as well as developing crucial business strategies.This report studies the global Carrier Ethernet Services market size, industry status and forecast, competition landscape and growth opportunity. This research report categorizes the global Carrier Ethernet Services market by companies, region, type and end-use industry.This report focuses on the global top players, coveredActelisADVAAxerra NetworksHitachi CableHuawei TechnologiesInfineraIPITEKJuniper NetworksMRV CommunicationsNECNokia Siemens Networks (NSN)Overture Networks...Get Free Sample Report of the Research Study at:The study objectives of this report are:To study and forecast the market size of Carrier Ethernet Services in global market.To analyze the global key players, SWOT analysis, value and global market share for top players.To define, describe and forecast the market by type, end use and region.To analyze and compare the market status and forecast between China and major regions, namely, United States, Europe, China, Japan, Southeast Asia, India and Rest of World.To analyze the global key regions market potential and advantage, opportunity and challenge, restraints and risks.To identify significant trends and factors driving or inhibiting the market growth.To analyze the opportunities in the market for stakeholders by identifying the high growth segments.To strategically analyze each submarket with respect to individual growth trend and their contribution to the marketTo analyze competitive developments such as expansions, agreements, new product launches, and acquisitions in the marketTo strategically profile the key players and comprehensively analyze their growth strategies.For the data information by region, company, type and application, 2017 is considered as the base year. Whenever data information was unavailable for the base year, the prior year has been considered.Key StakeholdersCarrier Ethernet Services ManufacturersCarrier Ethernet Services Distributors/Traders/WholesalersCarrier Ethernet Services Subcomponent ManufacturersIndustry AssociationDownstream VendorsTable of Contents1 Industry Overview of Carrier Ethernet Services1.1 Carrier Ethernet Services Market Overview1.1.1 Carrier Ethernet Services Product Scope1.1.2 Market Status and Outlook1.2 Global Carrier Ethernet Services Market Size and Analysis by Regions (2013-2018)1.3 Carrier Ethernet Services Market by Type1.3.1 EPL Services1.3.2 EVPL Services1.3.3 E-LAN Services1.4 Carrier Ethernet Services Market by End Users/Application1.4.1 Commercial1.4.2 Industrial1.4.3 Transportation1.4.4 OthersRead Complete Research Report at:2 Global Carrier Ethernet Services Competition Analysis by Players2.1 Carrier Ethernet Services Market Size (Value) by Players (2013-2018)2.2 Competitive Status and Trend2.2.1 Market Concentration Rate2.2.2 Product/Service Differences2.2.3 New Entrants2.2.4 The Technology Trends in Future3 Company (Top Players) Profiles3.1 Actelis3.1.1 Company Profile3.1.2 Main Business/Business Overview3.1.3 Products, Services and Solutions3.1.4 Carrier Ethernet Services Revenue (Million USD) (2013-2018)3.2 ADVA3.2.1 Company Profile3.2.2 Main Business/Business Overview3.2.3 Products, Services and Solutions3.2.4 Carrier Ethernet Services Revenue (Million USD) (2013-2018)...List of Tables and FiguresFigure Global Carrier Ethernet Services Market Size (Million USD) Status and Outlook (2013-2018)Table Global Carrier Ethernet Services Revenue (Million USD) Comparison by Regions (2013-2018)Figure Global Carrier Ethernet Services Market Share by Regions (2013-2018)Figure United States Carrier Ethernet Services Market Size (Million USD) and Growth Rate by Regions (2013-2018)Figure Europe Carrier Ethernet Services Market Size (Million USD) and Growth Rate by Regions (2013-2018)Figure China Carrier Ethernet Services Market Size (Million USD) and Growth Rate by Regions (2013-2018)Figure Japan Carrier Ethernet Services Market Size (Million USD) and Growth Rate by Regions (2013-2018)Figure Southeast Asia Carrier Ethernet Services Market Size (Million USD) and Growth Rate by Regions (2013-2018)Figure India Carrier Ethernet Services Market Size (Million USD) and Growth Rate by Regions (2013-2018)Table Global Carrier Ethernet Services Revenue (Million USD) and Growth Rate (%) Comparison by Product (2013-2018)Figure Global Carrier Ethernet Services Revenue Market Share by Type in 2017Figure EPL Services Market Size (Million USD) and Growth Rate (2013-2018)Figure EVPL Services Market Size (Million USD) and Growth Rate (2013-2018)Figure E-LAN Services Market Size (Million USD) and Growth Rate (2013-2018)Figure Global Carrier Ethernet Services Market Share by Application in 2017...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 Carbon Fibre Composites Market Steady Growth to be Witnessed by 2018 to 2024 with Major key players SGL, Toho, MRC, Rock West Composites,Hexcel, Zhongu-Shenying, Aksa, Hengshen Fib. Mat., and Sonstige Carbon Fiber Composites Market https://www.gminsights.com/request-sample/detail/2180 https://www.gminsights.com/industry-analysis/carbon-fibre-composites-market https://www.gminsights.com/inquiry-before-buying/2180 https://www.gminsights.com According to a new research report by Global Market Insights, Inc. Carbon Fiber Composites Market size is estimated to surpass USD 31 billion by 2024Global carbon fiber composites market share is expected to exceed 290 kilo tons till 2024. Strong product outlook from aerospace and defense sector owing to its light weight and superior strength will drive industry growth during the forecast timeframe. Increasing demand for products improving the overall fuel efficiency of the aircraft will further support the industry demand.Strong application outlook of ceramic segment from construction industry will drive the product demand. Superior wear and tear resistance along with excellent thermal stability are the major factors positively influencing the product penetration.Request sample copy of this report @SGL, Toray+Zoltek, Toho, Rock West Comp., MRC and Solvay are among the few major players in the carbon fiber composites market. Other key manufactures include Hexcel, Aksa, Hyongsung, Zhongu-Shenying, Hengshen Fib. Mat. and Sonstige. Manufacturers are focusing on enhancing the production capacity to cope up with the escalation demand.Global carbon fiber composites market share is expected to exceed 290 kilo tons till 2024. Strong product outlook from aerospace and defense sector owing to its light weight and superior strength will drive industry growth during the forecast timeframe. Increasing demand for products improving the overall fuel efficiency of the aircraft will further support the industry demand.Polymer matrix material is expected to hold major volume share of around 60% by 2024. Low processing time along with good formability of the product are the key properties propelling the carbon fiber composites market size from 2017 to 2024. Additionally, extended shelf life offers bulk buying that will further support the industry.Aerospace and defense sector dominate the industry, contributing over 30% volume share in 2016. The sector requires superior quality product owing to the need of enhanced properties such as high strength to weight ratio and temperature resistance.Browse Report Summery @North America carbon fiber composites market is expected to contribute over 35% by 2024 owing to strong presence of major aerospace manufacturers in the region. Moreover, replacing conventional aircraft with efficient light weight aircrafts will support the industry growth.Automotive industry is expected to account for considerable volume share and will exhibit highest growth at over 13% till 2024. Rising usage of the components offering superior strength along with light weight will support the carbon fiber composites market growth.Europe will witness significant growth during the forecast timeframe owing to strong demand from automotive sector. Stringent government regulations towards usage of lightweight materials in the vehicles that improves efficiency by reducing fuel consumption will support the growth.Asia pacific carbon fiber composites market is anticipated to witness highest growth at over 12% up to 2024. Presence of major manufacturers in the region particularly in China, Japan, South Korea and Taiwan will positively influence the revenue generation. Further, propelling end use industries including automotive and aerospace will further drive the demand.Make an inquiry for purchasing this report @Mergers and acquisitions is the key strategy adopted by the carbon fiber composites manufacturers that offers them a competitive edge. For instance, in March 2014, Toray acquired Zoltek to achieve a leading position in the market. Moreover, price reduction is another move adopted by producers to penetrate in various end-use industry.About Global Market InsightsGlobal Market Insights, Inc., headquartered in Delaware, U.S., is a global market research and consulting service provider; offering syndicated and custom research reports along with growth consulting services. Our business intelligence and industry research reports offer clients with penetrative insights and actionable market data specially designed and presented to aid strategic decision making. These exhaustive reports are designed via a proprietary research methodology and are available for key industries such as chemicals, advanced materials, technology, renewable energy and biotechnology.Contact UsArun HegdeCorporate Sales, USAGlobal Market Insights, Inc.Phone: 1-302-846-7766Toll Free: 1 888-689-0688Email: sales@gminsights.comWeb: Military Surveillance Drones Market: Region, Key Players, Competition and Forecast to 2023 https://www.wiseguyreports.com/sample-request/2450434-military-surveillance-drones-market-research-report-global-forecast-to-2023 https://www.wiseguyreports.com/reports/2450434-military-surveillance-drones-market-research-report-global-forecast-to-2023 www.linkedin.com/company/4828928 https://twitter.com/WiseGuyReports https://www.facebook.com/Wiseguyreports-1009007869213183/?fref=ts Market SynopsisMilitary drones are powered aerial vehicles that do not carry human operators and can fly autonomously and remotely. These drones are largely being used for intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance (ISR) missions. The drones can stay in air for hours or days at a time, and their high-tech cameras can scan a wide geographic area required for surveillance. Such drones are procured by several countries for monitoring their national and sea borders.GET SAMPLE REPORT @The global military surveillance drones market is a very dynamic market and is expected to witness high growth over the forecast period. The global Military surveillance drones market is driven by various factors such as increase in Internal and External Security Threats, increasing Need for Border Monitoring and development of Next-Generation Drones. Drones are the next generation of aerial platforms that are being deployed by the defense ministries around the world. The demand for such unmanned systems has been fuelled by their successful deployment, during combat missions, majorly in countries such as Iraq and Afghanistan. In recent years, there has been a rise in the number of global conflicts such as the Russia and Ukraine conflict over Crimea, battle for supremacy in the South China Sea territory between China and South Korea, maritime disputes between Venezuela and Guyana, and the sea border dispute between Colombia and Nicaragua. This creates the need to up-date border surveillance systems and the treatment of operational information concerning threats.The global Military surveillance drones market is expected to grow at 11.96% CAGR during the forecast period. In 2016, the market was led by North America, with a 54.3% share, followed by Europe and Rest of the World with shares of 22.2% and 13.1%, respectively.The global military surveillance drones market has been segmented on the basis of types, payload and regions. On the basis of types, the market has been segmented into Fixed Wing, Micro/ Nano and Mini. Whereas, the payload segmented has been divided into Electro-Optic/Infrared Sensor, Cameras, Electronic Intelligence, Maritime Patrol Radar and Others. Of all types, the fixed wing segment is projected to account for the largest market share. Fixed-wing drones are equipped with wings (rather than vertical lift rotors), which are similar to the normal airplanes, and are much efficient as compared to other type of drones. On the basis of payload, Electro-Optic/Infrared Sensor segment is dominating the global Military surveillance drones market.The key players of global Military surveillance drones market include Boeing (U.S.), Airbus Corporation (Netherlands), Lockheed Martin (U.S.), Northrop Grumman Corporation (U.S.), Thales Group (France), Elbit Systems Ltd (Israel), Saab Group (Sweden), Israel Aerospace Industries Ltd. (Israel), AeroVironment, Inc. (U.S.) and General Atomics (U.S.).The report for Global Military surveillance drones market of comprises of extensive primary research along with the detailed analysis of qualitative as well as quantitative aspects by various industry experts, key opinion leaders to gain the deeper insight of the market and industry performance. The report gives the clear picture of current market scenario which includes historical and projected market size in terms of value and volume, technological advancement, macro economical and governing factors in the market. The report provides details information and strategies of the top key players in the industry. The report also gives a broad study of the different market segments and regions.Table of Content: Key Points1 Executive Summary 122 Introduction 143 Research Methodology 164 Market Dynamics 205 Market Factor Analysis 266 Patent Trends 297 Global Military Surveillance Drones Market, By Type 328 Global Military Surveillance Drones Market, By Payload 36ContinuedACCESS REPORT @Get in touch:LinkedIn:Twitter:Facebook:Wise Guy Reports understand how essential statistical surveying information is for your organization or association. Therefore, we have associated with the top publishers and research firms all specialized in specific domains, ensuring you will receive the most reliable and up to date research data available. We also provide COTS (Commercial off the Shelf) business sector reports as custom exploration agreeing your needs.WISE GUY RESEARCH CONSULTANTS PVT LTDOffice No. 528, Amanora ChambersPune - 411028Maharashtra, India ELiquids and eJuice in India Market 2018 Analysis By Key Players ITC Limited, Japan Tobacco Inc., Altria Group Inc., Godfrey Philips India Ltd ELiquids and eJuice in India Market https://www.wiseguyreports.com/sample-request/905773-indian-eliquids-and-ejuice-market-2016-2022 https://www.wiseguyreports.com/enquiry/905773-indian-eliquids-and-ejuice-market-2016-2022 https://www.wiseguyreports.com/checkout?currency=one_user-USD&report_id=905773 WiseGuyReports.Com Publish a New Market Research Report On ELiquids and eJuice in India Market 2018 Global Analysis By Key Players ITC Limited, Japan Tobacco Inc., Altria Group Inc., Godfrey Philips India Ltd.Description:-eLiquids can be categorized into eJuice, eCigarettes, eFluids, vaporizer cigarettes, electronic nicotine delivery systems (ENDS), electronic non-nicotine delivery systems (ENNDS), and eCigs. The eCigarettes are considered as an alternative to real cigarettes with no tobacco and is powered by a battery device that emits a flavored fog (nicotine is required if the user prefers it) when inhaled. In India, eCigarette business is in initial stage as consumers are starting to switch from traditional cigarette to eCigarette, which are considered healthier hence eCigarette is becoming popular among the end-users. Additionally, eLiquids are 95% less harmful than a normal cigarette.Get a Sample Report @For more information or any query mail at sales@wiseguyreports.comMarket Analysis: According to Infoholic Research, the Indian eLiquid and eJuice Market is estimated to witness a CAGR of 54.1% during the forecast period 2016-2022. The increasing young population, changing consumer lifestyle, changing demands, and spending activities have led the demand for eLiquid and eJuice in India. In addition, the development of innovative products with extra features helps to improve the customer satisfaction and increase the customer base as customers are demanding for various flavour products and they are ready to spend money. The Indian eLiquid and eJuice market is analyzed by types pre-filled eLiquid and bottled eLiquid; distribution channels online, offline (retail), and others; demography age group and sex; and location tier 1 cities, and tier 2 cities.Product Analysis: Pre-filled eLiquid is expected to reach $1,095.3 million by 2022 due to the growing demand for pre-filled eLiquid products in the market. In addition, the users often prefer refillable or replaceable eLiquid. The tier 1 cities segment is expected to play a major role in the market growth. The smokers in the age group of 24-45 years are primarily targeted by the eCigarette players.Key Players: The eLiquid and eJuice market in India is expected to grow and value chain players are continuing to expand, bringing new innovative products, and rising M&A activities to gain the revenue in this market. Some of the players included in the report are ITC Limited, Japan Tobacco Inc., Altria Group Inc., Godfrey Philips India Ltd., Reynolds American Inc., and Foschia (R.R. Chemicals).Benefits: The report provides complete details of industry trends about the eLiquid and eJuice market. The report provides business opportunities for various key stakeholders by providing an in-depth analysis of adoption and demand for eLiquid and eJuice. Some of the key points featured in the report aiming to help the industry participants are described below.The report provides complete details about major trends, drivers, restraints, and opportunities in each industry vertical. This business information helps the key stakeholders to understand the current and future market outlook to focus/expand/invest in various types and distribution channels and can target specific demography to offer the eLiquid and eJuice market. Further, this report provides the complete details about the tier 1 cities and tier 2 cities.Furthermore, the report aims to provide an opportunity for players to understand the latest trends, current market scenario, government initiatives, and technologies related to the market. In addition, helps the venture capitalist in understanding the companies better and take informed decisions.The report gives an opportunity to the players to improve their current business approach by providing strategic intelligence about the competition.The report also provides the competitive landscape of the leading players specific to eLiquid and eJuice market that helps them to understand about their competitors landscape.The report can also be tailored as per the specific info required by the users. The customization of the report is available on the basis of distribution channels, vendor profiles, and tier cities.Enquiry About Report @Table Of Contents Major Key Points1 Industry Outlook1.1 Industry Overview1.2 Industry Trends1.3 PEST Analysis2 Report Outline2.1 Report Scope2.2 Report Summary2.3 Research Methodology2.4 Report Assumptions3 Market Snapshot3.1 Total Addressable Market (TAM)3.2 Segmented Addressable Market (SAM)3.3 Related Market3.3.1 eHookah Market4 Market Outlook4.1 Overview4.2 Market Definition Infoholic Research4.3 Evolution4.4 eCigarette Operation4.5 Traditional Cigarettes VS eCigarettes4.6 Government Rules and Regulations4.7 Market Segmentation4.8 Porter 5 (Five) Forces5 Market Characteristics5.1 Market Dynamics5.1.1 Drivers5.1.1.1 Environment friendly5.1.1.2 Helps to quit smoking5.1.1.3 Low cost and affordable price5.1.1.4 Less harmful than traditional cigarettes5.1.2 Restraints5.1.2.1 Battery explosions5.1.2.2 Government taxation, rules and regulations5.1.2.3 Increase in poisoning incidents5.1.3 Opportunities5.1.3.1 Opportunities for tobacco players5.1.3.2 Focus on developing states in India5.1.3.3 Increasing demand for pre-filled eLiquid5.1.4 DRO Impact Analysis6 Types6.1 Overview6.2 Pre-filled eLiquid6.3 Bottled eLiquid7 Distribution Channels7.1 Overview7.2 Online distribution channel7.2.1 Resellers7.2.2 Websites7.3 Offline (Retail)7.3.1 Vape Shops7.3.2 Convenience Stores7.4 OthersContinuedBuy 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 Anisole Market Is Expected to Showcase a CAGR of 5.3% during the forecasted period 2027 https://www.researchnester.com/sample-request-1137 https://www.researchnester.com/request-toc-1137 https://www.researchnester.com/reports/anisole-market/1137 Anisole Market: Global Demand Analysis & Opportunity Outlook 2027The global anisole market is segmented by end user type into dyes, perfumes and pharmaceuticals products. Among these segments perfumes segment is expected to occupy top position in overall Anisole market during the forecast period. This can be attributed to the increasing consumption of cosmetic goods such as scents, fragrance does and many others. Additionally, rapid industrialization along with rising use of transitional chemicals for manufacturing of other products such as polycarbonates, and detergents is expected to propel the expansion of capacity over the forecast period.Global Anisole market is expected to flourish at a CAGR of 5.3% during the forecast period. Additionally, the global Anisole market is thriving on the back of rising consumer demand of cosmetic products and advancement in pharmaceutical products is anticipated to propel the growth of the market. Further, application of anisole as insect pheromones is expected to provide significant opportunities in the market over the forecast period.In the regional market, Europe captured the largest market share in overall anisole market and is expected to continue its dominance over the forecast period. Additionally, cosmetics area of application will have highest share surpassing 37% in global anisole market. The product is used to produce fragrances, perfumes and various beauty care products to offer aromatic smell.Rising Demand for Anisole CosmeticsRising demand for fragrance products such as scents, perfumes and creams will push the industry penetration over the upcoming years. Additionally, improved manufacturing process as well as technological innovations to surge the demand of products with high purity levels will have a progressive impact on the market. Robust manufacturing base of fragrance products coupled with increasing demand in countries like U.S., Brazil, Germany, Mexico and Saudi Arabia is expected to drive the global anisole market.Request Free Sample Pages@Government Regulation and Enactment of AnisoleRapid urbanization along with positive GDP figures of developed and developing nations such as U.S., China and others are projected to flourish the growth of anisole market in pharmaceutical industries. In addition to this, favorable government initiatives and regulations regarding the benefits of individual safety while using cosmetic product is expected to fuel the growth of anisole market.In contrast, raw material availability and price volatility remain as one of the largest challenges in the global anisole market.The report titled Anisole Market: Global Demand Analysis & Opportunity Outlook 2027 delivers detailed overview of the global anisole market in terms of market segmentation by purity, by end user and by region.Further, for the in-depth analysis, the report encompasses the industry growth drivers, restraints, supply and demand risk, market attractiveness, BPS analysis and Porters five force model.Request Free Table of Contents Here-This report also provides the existing competitive scenario of some of the key players of the global anisole which includes company profiling of Solvay S.A., Westman Chemicals Pvt. Ltd., Parchem fine & specialty chemicals, Evonik Industries AG, Huaian Depon Chemical Co., Ltd., Jiangsu Tianjiayi Chemical Co. Ltd., Kessler Chemical, Inc., Shaanxi Top Chemical Co., Ltd., Yasho Industries Pvt., Ltd., Hangzhou Haichem Co. Ltd. and other key players. The profiling enfolds key information of the companies which encompasses business overview, products and services, key financials and recent news and developments. On the whole, the report depicts detailed overview of the global Anisole market that will help industry consultants, equipment manufacturers, existing players searching for expansion opportunities, new players searching possibilities and other stakeholders to align their market centric strategies according to the ongoing and expected trends in the future.Read more Information-ABOUT USResearch Nester is a leading service provider for strategic market research and consulting. We aim to provide unbiased, unparalleled market insights and industry analysis to help industries, conglomerates and executives to take wise decisions for their future marketing strategy, expansion and investment etc. We believe every business can expand to its new horizon, provided a right guidance at a right time is available through strategic minds. Our out of box thinking helps our clients to take wise decision so as to avoid future uncertaintiesAjay Danielajay.daniel@researchnester.comU.S. Phone: +1 646 586 9123U.K. Phone: +44 203 608 5919 She has been so worried about her money and having him go unpunished for his crimes, Lawkowski-Keller said. Nelly certainly never wants to see him ever again and feels he is going to get what he deserves. New Study On Chip-on-Board Light Emitting Diodes Market Growing Fast during 2018-2025- Estimated By Top Key Players like Osram Opto Semiconductors GmbH, Samsung Electronics Co. Ltd., LG Innotek Co. Ltd. New Study On Chip-on-Board Light Emitting Diodes Market Growing Fast during 2018-2025- Estimated By Top Key Players like Osram Opt https://www.upmarketresearch.com/home/requested_sample/10792 https://www.upmarketresearch.com/home/requested_sample/10792 https://www.upmarketresearch.com/home/enquiry_before_buying/10792 https://www.upmarketresearch.com/home/request_for_discount/10792 https://www.upmarketresearch.com/buy/chip-on-board-light-emitting-diodes-market www.upmarketresearch.com UpMarketResearch offers a latest published report on Global Chip-on-Board Light Emitting Diodes Market Analysis and Forecast 2018-2025 delivering key insights and providing a competitive advantage to clients through a detailed report. The report contains 116 pages which highly exhibits on current market analysis scenario, upcoming as well as future opportunities, revenue growth, pricing and profitability.Get Free Exclusive PDF Sample Copy of This ReportChip-on-Board Light Emitting Diodes Industry 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 business policies are reviewed in the report. The report contains basic, secondary and advanced information pertaining to the Chip-on-Board Light Emitting Diodes Industry global status and trend, market size, share, growth, trends analysis, segment and forecasts from 2018 - 2025.In this study, the years considered to estimate the market size of Chip-on-Board Light Emitting Diodes :History Year: 2013-2017Base Year: 2017Estimated Year: 2018Forecast Year 2018 to 2025The 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.Get Free Exclusive PDF Sample Copy of This ReportThe report for Chip-on-Board Light Emitting Diodes market analysis & forecast 2018-2025 is segmented into Product Segment, Application Segment & Major players.Global Chip-on-Board Light Emitting Diodes Market: Manufacturers Segment Analysis Cree Inc. Lumileds Osram Opto Semiconductors GmbH Samsung Electronics Co. Ltd. LG Innotek Co. Ltd. Citizen Electronics Co. Ltd. Nichia Corporation Seoul Semiconductor Co. Ltd. Everlight Electronics Co. Ltd. Lumens Co. Ltd Cooper Lighting PerkinElmer Sharp Electronics Lextar Electronics CorporationFor More Information Please VisitChip-on-Board Light Emitting Diodes Consumption by Region North America Asia-Pacific Europe Central & South America Middle East & AfricaGet Best Discount @Chip-on-Board Light Emitting Diodes Breakdown Data by Type Organized Structure Unorganized StructureChip-on-Board Light Emitting Diodes Breakdown Data by Application Automotive Backlighting IlluminationKey Stakeholders Chip-on-Board Light Emitting Diodes Manufacturers Chip-on-Board Light Emitting Diodes Distributors/Traders/Wholesalers Chip-on-Board Light Emitting Diodes Subcomponent Manufacturers Industry Association Downstream VendorsTo Buy This Report and Get It Delivered In Your Inbox Within 24 Hours @The Report covers in-depth analysis as follows1 Study Coverage2 Executive Summary3 Market Size by Manufacturers4 Chip-on-Board Light Emitting Diodes Production by Regions5 Chip-on-Board Light Emitting Diodes Consumption by Regions6 Market Size by Type7 Market Size by Application8 Manufacturers Profiles9 Production Forecasts10 Consumption Forecast11 Upstream, Industry Chain and Downstream Customers Analysis12 Opportunities & Challenges, Threat and Affecting Factors13 Key Findings14 AppendixKey Reasons to Purchase: To gain insightful analyses of the market and have a comprehensive understanding of the Global Chip-on-Board Light Emitting Diodes 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 Chip-on-Board Light Emitting Diodes 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 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.Contact Info:Name: Alex MathewsEmail: Alex@upmarketresearch.comOrganization: UpMarketResearchAddress: 500 East E Street, Ontario, CA 91764, United States Adoptive cell therapy for cancer treatment Market Poised to Expand at a Robust Pace Over 2017 2027 https://www.futuremarketinsights.com/reports/sample/rep-gb-3569 https://www.futuremarketinsights.com/toc/rep-gb-3569 https://www.futuremarketinsights.com Adoptive T Cell Therapy referred as lymphocyte transfusion, which is being tested for the cancer treatment and chronic infections. Adoptive T Cell Therapy can increase the Anti-tumor immunity, enhance vaccine efficacy, etc. There is three basic treatment for curing cancer: surgery, chemotherapy, and radiotherapy. The new technique or therapy, i.e., adoptive T cell therapy emerged as a fourth therapy for the cancer treatment.Because adoptive T cell therapy targeting cancer by natural mechanism, the immune system uses to distinguish between healthy and pathologic tissue rather than by its anatomic location or tendency to divide. Adoptive T-cell therapy (ACT) is a potentially powerful approach to cancer treatment that relies on the infusion of tumor-specific T cells. Anti-tumor immunity stimulates by two primarily different strategies which have been tested in humans: these are therapeutic vaccination and passive immunization. Adoptive T cell therapy also called as passive immunization. Furthermore, recent studies indicate that tumor infiltration by human T cells is a powerful predictive biomarker of survival for the various different type of cancers.Request Sample Report @The global adoptive T cell therapy market is categorized based on various modes of treatment, pipelines product and end users. The treatment segment is further sub-segmented into autologous adoptive T cell therapy and allogeneic Adoptive T cell therapy. The pipeline product segment includes various clinical trial phases such as phase I, phase II and phase III.Regarding geographic, adoptive T cell market is segmented into five major regions such are North America, Latin America, Europe, Asia-pacific, and the Middle East and Africa. North America dominates the global adoptive T cell therapy market due to a high number of ongoing clinical trials. The U.S. represents the largest market for adoptive T cell therapy followed by Europe.Adoptive T cell therapy for cancer market faced a critical situation wherein, several ongoing clinical trials still in pipelines such as adoptive T cell therapy in breast cancer after HER2 vaccination is under phase I and phase II clinical trials phase. Companies continue to evaluate the role of adoptive T cell therapy for the treatment of advanced stage cancers.Cambridge Healthtech Establishment's Fourth Yearly adoptive t cell Treatment occasion will concentrate on the means expected to convey receptive cell treatments to the patient. Clinical advance with Chimeric Antigen Receptors (CAR), T cell Receptor (TCR), and Tumor infiltering Lymphocytes (TIL) will be tended to top to bottom, and new procedures for target revelation will be looked into.Accentuation will likewise be put on clinical case investigations to promote the comprehension of T cell receptor receptors and their biology. Extra concentration will be given to assembling difficulties and answers for scale-up. Generally speaking, this occasion will address clinical advance, case analyses, and basic parts to make Adoptive T cell treatments feasible. Adoptive t cell market expands rapidly in forecasted period due to ongoing clinical trials and increasing rate of incidence and prevalence for various type of cancer, the adoption rate for adoptive T cell therapy will also increase due to its natural mode of mechanism against cancerous cells.Request to View TOC @Some of the major companies operating in the global adoptive cell therapy market areAmgen, Merck, Eli Lilly, GlaxoSmithKline, Janssen, Genentech, Roche, Bristol-Myers Squibb and others.ABOUT US:Future Market Insights is the premier provider of market intelligence and consulting services, serving clients in over 150 countries. FMI is headquartered in London, the global financial capital, and has delivery centres in the U.S. and India.FMIs research and consulting services help businesses around the globe navigate the challenges in a rapidly evolving marketplace with confidence and clarity. Our customised and syndicated market research reports deliver actionable insights that drive sustainable growth. We continuously track emerging trends and events in a broad range of end industries to ensure our clients prepare for the evolving needs of their consumers.Future Market InsightsU.S. Office616 Corporate Way, Suite 2-9018,Valley Cottage, NY 10989,United StatesT: +1-347-918-3531F: +1-845-579-5705Email: sales@futuremarketinsights.comWeb: Forecast On Tuberculosis Biomarkers Market Global Industry Analysis and Trends till 2027 https://www.factmr.com/connectus/sample?flag=S&rep_id=569 https://www.factmr.com/report/569/tuberculosis-biomarkers-market https://www.factmr.com/connectus/sample?flag=T&rep_id=569 https://www.factmr.com/ Tuberculosis (TB) biomarkers occupy a central role in the disease characterization, infection and risk assessment, rapid diagnosis, and ultimately cure. Despite considerable volumes of research and the proliferation of biomarker candidates over the past decades, the global market is still characterized by large unmet needs. This is evident in the devastating effect of tuberculosis on the mortality and morbidity in worldwide populations. The market is replete with tuberculosis biomarkers that claim to measure the status of infection and further predict outcomes of vaccination or therapy. But, the fact that none of them is efficacious enough to enable a simple, accurate, and rapid diagnostic test for the infectious disease is a pressing concern.Request Report Sample @The development of biomarkers that can measure responsiveness to treatments and those that assess the risk of developing into full-fledged disease are critical clinical endpoints. Hence, the development and launch of biomarkers that can measure well against such clinical endpoints is the need of the hour, belittling the massive investments made by companies so far. Hence, there is a need for more research that looks into reducing the gap between an emerging panoply of biomarker candidates and their efficacy against targeting product profiles. The need for non-DNA biomarkers to achieve this goal could unlock new, exciting avenues in the tuberculosis biomarkers market.Tuberculosis is a major dilemma in low and middle- income countries, accounting for second leading cause of death from an infectious disease, globally. The diagnosis of tuberculosis is crucial for controlling the disease. Biomarkers are biological markers which measure and asses as an indicator of normal biological states, pathogenic process, pharmacological responses and future disease risk of patients. The tuberculosis biomarkers can help classify patients at a single time point having active tuberculosis, latent M. tuberculosis or no diseases. In addition, these biomarkers have potential to predict future reactivation risk, support monitoring of the diseases and support in development of new drugs for tuberculosis.Scientists are exploring more about the tuberculosis biomarkers for accurate, cost effective and rapid diagnostic assay for better predictive of tuberculosis treatment outcome. In 2015, Spring Meeting of the Biomarkers and Correlates Working Group (BCWG), tuberculosis experts from around the world, discussed and made recommendations for the TB vaccine community regarding the studies needed to better define biomarkers or correlates for risk of TB infection or disease. Furthermore, there has been an increase in investment of tuberculosis research which have help address shortcomings in tuberculosis biomarkers research and development. For instance, in 2012 The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation announced $7.7 million funding for 10 new grants to identify biomarkers for diagnosing tuberculosis (TB). Thus, increase in investment and rising research and development activities associated with the tuberculosis biomarkers is anticipated to create new opportunities for the market, during the forecast periodView Full Report @Tuberculosis biomarkers Market: Drivers and RestraintsTuberculosis biomarkers market primarily driven by a key factors such as the increasing incidence of tuberculosis. According to the WHO, in 2016 approximately 1.7 million people were dead and 10.4 million new cases were reported, worldwide. The introduction of newer tuberculosis biomarkers is expected to play a crucial role in helping scientist in the characterization and selection of suitable treatment strategies. For instance, in 2016 scientist from Oxford University identified new biomarkers for Tuberculosis (TB) which will provide valuable clues to assess whether potential new vaccines could be effective.The antigen detection technology and biomarkers discovery strategies are rapidly evolving, which is expected to fuel the Tuberculosis biomarkers market growth. Increasing awareness among doctors, patients and technicians in the developing countries would help in promoting the growth of market. However, more chances of experimental failure, ethical issues associated with the tuberculosis diagnosis and treatment, huge investment, time consumption, low validation and independent confirmation of biomarkers limits further development of tuberculosis biomarkers market.There is no evidence based results showing the best way to treat osteonecrosis and it acts as a restraint in the growth of the Tuberculosis biomarkers marketTuberculosis biomarkers Market: Region-Wise OverviewGlobal tuberculosis biomarkers market segmented into following regions North America, Latin America, Western Europe, Eastern Europe, Asia-Pacific, Japan and the Middle East and Africa. North America holds significant market share in the global tuberculosis biomarkers mainly due to the well-established players. The emerging regions in Asia Pacific, Middle East and Africa holds promising future for rise in tuberculosis biomarker market, due to increase in awareness towards the tuberculosis and increase in population simultaneously. In developing economies such as India and China, new industry players are trying to establish their market presence by developing the generic version of the biomarker, through contract research organizations. This is expected to support in reduction in the manufacturing cost for the company and other production related cost.Request TOC of this Report @Tuberculosis biomarkers Market: Key ParticipantsKey players in the tuberculosis biomarkers market are Antrum Biotech, QIAGEN, Thermo Fisher Scientific, QuantuMDx, bioMerieux, Abbott, Rapid Biosensor Systems Ltd, GlobalBio Diagnostics Corp., Danaher Corporation, Alere Inc and Cisbio Bioassays.The research report presents a comprehensive assessment of the market and contains thoughtful insights, facts, historical data, and statistically supported and industry-validated market data. It also includes projections using a suitable set of assumptions and methodologies. The research report provides analysis and information according to market segments such as geographies, application, and industry.About Fact.MRFact.MR is a fast-growing market research firm that offers the most comprehensive suite of syndicated and customized market research reports. We believe transformative intelligence can educate and inspire businesses to make smarter decisions. We know the limitations of the one-size-fits-all approach; that's why we publish multi-industry global, regional, and country-specific research reports.Contact usFact.MR353-1-6111-59311140 Rockville PikeSuite 400Rockville, MD 20852United StatesEmail: sales@factmr.comWeb: Saudi Arabia Pharmaceutical Market Analysis By Top Key Players - Novartis AG, SPIMACO, Pfizer Inc., and Glaxosmithkline plc., Jamjoom Pharma https://www.futuremarketinsights.com/reports/sample/rep-gc-1733 https://www.futuremarketinsights.com/ask-the-analyst/rep-gc-1733 https://www.futuremarketinsights.com/reports/saudi-arabia-pharmaceutical-market https://www.futuremarketinsights.com/ The significant rise in lifestyle-related diseases and the developments in healthcare infrastructure are expected to influence the demand for pharmaceuticals in Saudi Arabia. In 2016, the Saudi Arabia pharmaceutical market is anticipated to procure value worth US$ 5,209.5 Mn at a y-o-y growth of 6.0 % over 2015. The mounting demand for branded drug products will continue to incite the growth of the Saudi Arabian pharmaceutical market in 2016.To know key findings Request Sample Report:The demand for pharmaceuticals in Saudi Arabia is expected to register substantial growth owing to the increasing penetration of health insurance companies and the rising incidence rate of non-communicable diseases. Furthermore, the exceptional rise in the per capita income of Saudi Arabia is also expected to foster the demand for branded pharmaceutical drugs. Another key factor driving the growth of the pharmaceutical market in Saudi Arabia is the countrys strategic move to allow 100% FDI in the pharmaceuticals sector. Although, the shortage of profound indigenous research capacity in the pharmaceutical industry and the delayed registration of drug and medicine patents is expected to limit the expansion of the market in 2016 and beyond.Based on the product type, the pharmaceutical market in Saudi Arabia is expected to witness an upsurge in the prescription-type branded drug products. In terms of market value, the branded drugs are estimated to reach US$ 2,760.8 Mn by 2016-end. The demand for generic drugs is projected to secure steady growth, attributing to the insisting promotion of generic drug adoption by healthcare insurance providers.Ask questions to Expert @:On the basis of the diseases, the pharmaceutical drugs used for treatment of cardiovascular diseases will continue exhibiting robust growth in 2016. The demand for cardiovascular medications will continue to surge due to the prominence of circulatory disorders in Saudi Arabia. Additionally, the rising prevalence of disorders related to body sugar levels is expected to make diabetes a rapidly growing disease-based sub-segment in the Saudi Arabia pharmaceutical market.The pharmaceutical market in Saudi Arabia is also segmented on the basis of distribution channel, where retail pharmacies will continue to account for 80% market share compared to hospital pharmacies. The westernised modernisation of retail pharmacies in Saudi Arabia has led to the availability of a wide range drugs and medicinal products, thereby attaining a considerable growth in the retail pharmacy sub-segment in 2016 and further.The rising resource potential in Saudi Arabia is projected to positively reform the production environment for pharmaceutical manufacturers. In order to expand the markets size, structuring alliances with well-established native companies is predicted to be a key strategy for global pharmaceutical leaders. The key players in the Saudi Arabia pharmaceutical market include Novartis AG, SPIMACO, Pfizer Inc., and Glaxosmithkline plc., Jamjoom Pharma, and Tabuk Pharmaceutical Manufacturing Co. among others.Get access to full summary @:Long-term Outlook: The Saudi Arabia pharmaceutical market is expected to expand at a CAGR of 9.0% over the forecast period 2016-2026. In terms of market value, the pharmaceutical market in Saudi Arabia is estimated to be worth US$ 12,281.4 Mn by the end of forecast period.About UsFuture Market Insights is the premier provider of market intelligence and consulting services, serving clients in over 150 countries. FMI is headquartered in London, the global financial capital, and has delivery centres in the U.S. and India.FMIs research and consulting services help businesses around the globe navigate the challenges in a rapidly evolving marketplace with confidence and clarity. Our customised and syndicated market research reports deliver actionable insights that drive sustainable growth. We continuously track emerging trends and events in a broad range of end industries to ensure our clients prepare for the evolving needs of their consumers.Contact UsU.S. Office616 Corporate Way, Suite 2-9018,Valley Cottage, NY 10989,United StatesT: +1-347-918-3531F: +1-845-579-5705Email: sales@futuremarketinsights.comWeb: Increasing out-of-pocket healthcare expenditure and patent expiries of blockbuster drugs fuelling the global branded generics market https://www.futuremarketinsights.com/reports/sample/rep-gb-1260 https://www.futuremarketinsights.com/ask-the-analyst/rep-gb-1260 https://www.futuremarketinsights.com/reports/branded-generics-market https://www.futuremarketinsights.com/ Differential and innovative product strategies that are adopted by various multinational pharma companies have been fuelling the growth of branded generics market at a global scale. These strategies include establishing sustained local capabilities with the strong local talents, engaging in portfolio marketing, recalibrating regulatory affairs, bolstering sales force with the multi-channel engagement and enhancing contracting capabilities. Developing regions are witnessing a rapid increase in demand for branded generics on account of increasing affordability of the products and ease of regulations. Rising disposable income and changing lifestyle of consumers is also expected to augur well for growth of the branded generics market in the near future.To know key findings Request Sample Report:The study predicts that patent expiries of the blockbuster drugs are likely to create demand for branded generics during the forecast period. Increasing prevalence of the lifestyle and chronic diseases such as cardiovascular diseases and diabetes together with increasing purchasing power makes branded generics market attractive for investors. The study by Future Market Insights predicts that branded generics market is likely to register a healthy 7.3% CAGR over the forecast period, 2016-2026. Commodity generic products and huge competition from the branded drugs have prevailed as major challenges inhibiting the growth of branded generics market, in terms of price structure.Cardiovascular Diseases are likely to prove highly lucrative for revenue growth of branded generics market due to rising prevalence of diverse types of cancers and increasing comorbidities across the globe. Anti-hypertensive segment is expected to prove highly lucrative for the purpose of reducing premature cardiovascular disease. Oral formulations hold the largest demand from medical providers and patients for branded generics. This is mainly due to the benefits that oral formulation offers such as accuracy, dosing convenience and easy adherence to a medication plan.Ask questions to Expert @:Parenteral formulations are likely to gain traction in branded generics market during the forecast period, with API (active pharmaceutical ingredient) being degraded in intestinal tracts, thereby driving the demand for parenteral delivery. The report predicts that APEJ and North America are likely to remain lucrative for parenteral formulations during the forecast period. Retail Pharmacies are expected to prove as the most lucrative distribution channel for branded generics, as the pharmaceutical companies manufacturers are highly dependent on this distribution channel for selling the products over-the-counter.APEJ accounts for the largest revenue share in the branded generics market owing to lack of worldwide health coverage and higher out-of-the-pocket expenditure on healthcare. China, India and ASEAN countries are expected to pose lucrative growth opportunities for the new and existing key players in the forthcoming years. Most of the leading manufacturers in the global market are concentrated in Asian countries and have been working towards expansion of their production capacity, for catering to the existing and emerging global demands.Statutory regulatory bodies have been playing a significant role in the growth branded generics market in APEJ by providing approvals for products. Furthermore, growth through the adoption of inorganic approaches have been forming cornerstone of the branded generics drug makers in APEJ region. Latin America, Eastern Europe and North America will prove significantly lucrative for the branded generics market in the forthcoming years.Get access to full summary @:Brand-name prescriptions are anticipated to remain ubiquitous amongst the aged people worldwide. Since geriatric demographics hold a larger portion of drug-consuming population across the globe, demand for branded generics are expected to rise substantially. Branded generics market has been projected to develop at a healthy pace as enormous number of the pharmaceutical products are expected to go off-patent within the assessment period of 2016-2026.About UsFuture Market Insights is the premier provider of market intelligence and consulting services, serving clients in over 150 countries. FMI is headquartered in London, the global financial capital, and has delivery centres in the U.S. and India.FMIs research and consulting services help businesses around the globe navigate the challenges in a rapidly evolving marketplace with confidence and clarity. Our customised and syndicated market research reports deliver actionable insights that drive sustainable growth. We continuously track emerging trends and events in a broad range of end industries to ensure our clients prepare for the evolving needs of their consumers.Contact UsU.S. Office616 Corporate Way, Suite 2-9018,Valley Cottage, NY 10989,United StatesT: +1-347-918-3531F: +1-845-579-5705Email: sales@futuremarketinsights.comWeb: Offset Lithography Machines to Remain Top-selling Products https://www.futuremarketinsights.com/reports/sample/rep-gb-5833 https://www.futuremarketinsights.com/checkout/5833 https://www.futuremarketinsights.com/reports/ring-pull-caps-market https://www.futuremarketinsights.com/reports/blow-fill-seal-equipment-market www.futuremarketinsights.com Future Market Insights exclusive study on the global printing machines market delivers a forecast on how the demand for printing machines will shape up in the years to come. According to the research study, the global market for printing machines will be worth over US$ 25 Bn by the end of the forecast period, 2017-2026. During this period, the market is poised to expand at a moderate CAGR of 4.1% as a range of factors are likely to restrain the production and sales of printing machines.Request to Sample of Report @One of the key restraints for the global printing machines market is the stringent environmental laws. Manufacturers of printing machines are compelled to modify their production techniques and create machines that can optimize the use of printing inks. Since these inks contain VOCs, strict environmental laws are curbing the commercialization of machines that arent able to optimize the use of printing inks. In addition, the report also projects that increasing penetration of electronic devices will lower the need for printing, and ultimately limit the demand for printing machines in the near future. Printed hoardings on streets will be replaced by digital signage, and consumers will gradually shift to print-free media. Leading manufacturers of printing machines, which are the key stakeholders in the global printing machines market, will face the brunt of the changing dynamics as such. The study reveals that companies namely, Agfa-Gevaert Group, Oce Imagistics, Inc., Bobst Group SA, Fujifilm Holdings Corporation, Heidelberger Druckmaschinen AG, Hewlett Packard Enterprise Company, Koenig & Bauer AG, Komori Corporation, Apex Machine Company Inc., and Cerutti Group will remain active in the expansion of the global printing machines market through 2026.High Demand for Offset Lithography Printing MachinesA majority of key players in the global printing machines market are focusing on increasing the production of offset lithography printers. Competitive advantage of offset lithography when compared to digital printing techniques and flexography will continue to drive the demand for such machines. By the end of 2026, over US$ 12.7 Bn worth of offset lithography printing machines are expected to be sold across the globe. Digital printing machines, on the other hand, will register a CAGR of 5.4%, reflecting fastest sales during the forecast period.APEJ and North America Leading Markets for Printing MachinesRegional analysis and forecast, developed in the study, projects that the printing machines market in North America and Asia-Pacific excluding Japan (APEJ) region will register impressive growth. By 2017-end, the printing machines markets in these regions are expected to be worth over US$ 4 Bn individually. North America is anticipated to record higher sales of printing machines due to booming packaging businesses in the US and Canada, while the APEJ printing machines market will be characterized by mass-scale production of printing machines at affordable costs.Global Printing Machines Market: Additional Forecast HighlightsThe report has further revealed that:By 2017, paper and paperboard will be the leading type of substrate used in printing machines. Revenues procured from sales of paper and paperboard substrates for printing machines is estimated to net over US$ 8 Bn in global revenues by the end of 2017.Packaging is expected to be the leading end-use industry for printing machines, accounting for nearly half of the global market value by 2017 and beyond.Throughout the forecast period, printing machines will be predominantly used in packaging and labelling applications.Get full report now @More from Packaging Market Intelligence:Ring Pull Caps Market Segmented By By Material - Aluminum, Steel; By Cap Diameter - 26 mm, Other sizes; By End-use - Beer, Soft drinks, Others (wine, Juices, etc.):Blow-fill-seal Equipment Market Segmented By Production Capacity - Up to 5,000 containers/hr., 5,000-10,000 containers/hr.,Above 10,000 containers/hr.; By Product Type - Bottles, Ampoules, Vials, Prefilled Syringes & Injectable; By End-Use Industry - Pharmaceuticals, Food & Beverage, Cosmetics & Personal Care:About UsFuture Market Insights is the premier provider of market intelligence and consulting services, serving clients in over 150 countries. FMI is headquartered in London, the global financial capital, and has delivery centres in the U.S. and India.FMIs research and consulting services help businesses around the globe navigate the challenges in a rapidly evolving marketplace with confidence and clarity. Our customised and syndicated market research reports deliver actionable insights that drive sustainable growth. We continuously track emerging trends and events in a broad range of end industries to ensure our clients prepare for the evolving needs of their consumers.Contact UsU.S. Office616 Corporate Way, Suite 2-9018,Valley Cottage, NY 10989,United StatesT: +1-347-918-3531F: +1-845-579-5705Email: sales@futuremarketinsights.comWeb: Manufacturers of cling films in North America are introducing eco-friendly alternatives in the global market https://www.futuremarketinsights.com/checkout/2654 https://www.futuremarketinsights.com/askus/rep-gb-2654 https://www.futuremarketinsights.com/reports/bottle-pourers-market https://www.futuremarketinsights.com/reports/disposable-plastic-pallet-market www.futuremarketinsights.com Several companies across the globe are working on advanced technology that will help them cut through the general product portfolio and expand their customer base. For instance, recently, Arm, a British semiconductor and software design organisation partnered with a Cambridge-based company PragmaticIC for developing an ultra-thin electronic gadget that can be easily printed on super flexible plastic. This smart-wrap is capable of carrying some data about the product and the location of the products. The sensor in the smart film allows tracking of the product lifecycle from the factory to the retail outlet to ensure the authenticity of the product.Get full report now @Leading restaurants across the globe as well as food and beverage stores are identifying the advantages associated with the use of cling film as more people are using them on a day-to-day basis. Most companies are manufacturing cling films and supplying these at wholesale prices to retail outlets, hence making these films available to end consumers at affordable rates. Intensifying urbanisation in emerging economies such as India and China has led to the growing adoption of on-the-go food products, especially by the working population. Cling films are extensively used as an effective material for the packaging of ready-to-eat food products, hence boosting growth in demand across the global food and beverages industry.Considering all the leading scenarios, Future Market Insights (FMI) projects that the global cling film market will exhibit a CAGR of 5.8% from 2018 to 2028. The market was worth US$ 1,045.3 Mn by 2017 and is estimated to rise to a valuation of US$ 1,924.5 Mn by 2028 end.Request to Report Methodology @Cost-effectiveness and Durability to Push Demand for Cling FilmsThough cling film is thin it is highly durable and solid at the same time. Cling films can hold up against any object for an extended period of time. Even if the item is dropped, moved or tampered with in any way, the cling wrap will hold up and continue to protect the item. Cling film is one of the most cost-effective products to protect items compared to other materials. These films also help save space and keep stored products organised by consolidating items together without any added bulk, which is particularly useful when moving offices or homes. Cling films also keep the items fresh and even extend the shelf life of the products. Additionally, cling films are convenient to use as there are no restrictions and work with any kind of object that needs to be shipped or moved.Evidence Suggests Cling Films May Have Negative Impact on Human HealthFor decades now, doctors have been cautioning people about the toxic impact of plastic. New evidence suggests that heat causes the chemicals in cling film storage boxes to contaminate food products, causing grave concerns to human health. Cancer Research UK has been warning that cling film should not be allowed to touch the food it covers, when the food is heated in a microwave. The chemical causing the most concern is Bisphenol A (BPA), mainly used in the manufacture of plastics. Laboratory studies have linked BPA with breast and prostate cancer. These negative factors may restrict revenue growth of the global cling film market to a certain extent.More from Packaging Market Intelligence:Bottle Pourers Market Segmented By material type - Plastics,Polyethylene,Polypropylene ,Stainless Steel ,Aluminum ,Others; By product type - Pop-up bottle Pourer,Pull-up bottle Pourer,Flip-Top bottle Pourer,Spill-Stop bottle Pourer,Screened bottle pourers ,Ball bottle;By end use - Food & Beverages,Alcoholic beverages,Non Alcoholic beverages,Oil & Vinegar,Syrup & Seasoning,Water ,Others,Personal Care & Household,Hotels & Restaurants ,Pharmaceuticals ,Automotive,Others :Disposable Plastic Pallet Market Segmented By product type - Single faced disposable plastic pallet,Double faced disposable plastic pallet; By technology type - Single faced disposable plastic pallet,Double faced disposable plastic pallet ,Injection Moulding,Thermoforming ,Blow Moulding;By material type - High density polyethylene (HDPE),Polypropylene (PP),Polyethylene terephthalate (PET);By end use industry - Food and Beverage,Healthcare,Consumer goods,Logistics,Chemical,Others :About UsFuture Market Insights is the premier provider of market intelligence and consulting services, serving clients in over 150 countries. FMI is headquartered in London, the global financial capital, and has delivery centres in the U.S. and India.FMIs research and consulting services help businesses around the globe navigate the challenges in a rapidly evolving marketplace with confidence and clarity. Our customised and syndicated market research reports deliver actionable insights that drive sustainable growth. We continuously track emerging trends and events in a broad range of end industries to ensure our clients prepare for the evolving needs of their consumers.Contact UsU.S. Office616 Corporate Way, Suite 2-9018,Valley Cottage, NY 10989,United StatesT: +1-347-918-3531F: +1-845-579-5705Email: sales@futuremarketinsights.comWeb: Trending Market: Microprinting Industry Insights 2018-2025|Top Emerging Opportunities with Latest Technologies and Innovations, CAGR, Competitive Analysis, Rise in Demand InForGrowth https://www.inforgrowth.com/samplerequest/r/33177/global-microprinting-market-insights-forecast- https://www.inforgrowth.com/r/33177/global-microprinting-market-insights-forecast- https://www.inforgrowth.com/enquiry/r/33177/global-microprinting-market-insights-forecast- Latest report on Global Microprinting Market available at InForGrowth.com focuses on Market Size and CAGR (%) by Region. It also analyzes Capacity, Production, Revenue (Value), Supply (Production), Consumption, Export, Import by Region. This report also presents the worldwide Microprinting market size (value, production and consumption), splits the breakdown by manufacturers, region, type and application.Micro-printing, also known as micro-words, is an anti-counterfeiting technology widely used on banknotes, bank checks, and other valuable prints and documents. In the inconspicuous places on paper money or some other printed matter, micro-printing technology is usually used - some words are printed with a very small font size, so that it is difficult to identify with the naked eye.The study objectives are to present the key Microprinting manufacturers, production, revenue, market share, and recent development as well as to analyze competitive developments such as expansions, agreements, new product launches, and acquisitions in the market.Request to Get Sample PDF Pages of Global Microprinting Market, atThe following manufacturers are covered in this report: Sauressig GmbH, Diagramm Halbach, Xerox Corp, Micro Format Inc, Printegra, Team NiSCA, Brady Inc, Gallas Label & Decal, Huber Group, Troy Group, Heidelberg Instruments, Hewlett Packard, GeSiM, Smith & Ouzman, Computastat Group, Trustcopy, Favini, William Frick & Co, MaxMax, SAFEChecks, Zebra Technologies, Data Carte Concepts, Cardlogix, Spectrum PositiveMicroprinting Breakdown Data by Type: UV Invisible Marking, Special Inks, Infrared Ink Marking, Magnetic Ink, Micro-Embossing, OthersMicroprinting Breakdown Data by Applications: Currency, Bank Checks, ID Cards, Labels, Packaging, Consumer Electronics, Defense, OthersMicroprinting Production by Region: United States, Europe, China, Japan, South Korea, Other Regions.Microprinting Consumption by Region: North America, United States, Canada, Mexico, Asia-Pacific, China, India, Japan, South Korea, Australia, Indonesia, Malaysia, Philippines, Thailand, Vietnam, Europe, Germany, France, UK, Italy, Russia, Rest of Europe, Central & South America, Brazil and more.Find more information about this reportMajor Topic Covered in Table of Contents :Microprinting ProductGlobal Microprinting Market Size Growth Rate by TypeMicroprinting Growth Rate (CAGR) 2018-2025Microprinting Production by ManufacturerGlobal Microprinting Production Market Share by RegionsGlobal Microprinting Consumption Market Share by RegionsGlobal Microprinting Production by TypeKey Trends for Microprinting Markets & ProductsMergers & Acquisitions, Expansion PlansGlobal Microprinting Breakdown Data by ApplicationMicroprinting Production and Revenue ForecastMicroprinting Consumption Forecast by ApplicationMicroprinting Sales ChannelsMicroprinting DistributorsMarket Opportunities & Challenges, Risks and Influences Factors Analysisand more.With the tables and figures the report provides key statistics on the state of the industry and is a valuable source of guidance and direction for companies and individuals interested in the market.This report includes the both top-down and bottom-up approaches have been used to estimate and validate the market size of Microprinting market, to estimate the size of various other dependent submarkets in the overall market.Talk to Analyst to know more about this reportAbout InForGrowth:We are a market-intelligence company formed with the objective of providing clients access to the most relevant and accurate research content for their growth needs. At InForGrowth, we understand Research requirements and help a client in taking informed business critical decisions. Given the complexities and interdependencies of market-intelligence, there is always more than one source to explore and arrive at the right answer. Through our smart search feature and our reliable & trusted publishing partners, we are paving way for a more simplified and relevant research.For all your Research needs, reach out to us at:Address: 6400 Village Pkwy suite # 104, Dublin, CA 94568, USAEmail: info@inforgrowth.comPhone: +1-909-329-2808 / +44-203-743-1890 Software Defined Wide Area Network Market 2018 Global Analysis By Key Players VeloCloud Networks, Inc., Viptela, Inc., CloudGenix, Citrix System, Nuage Networks, Cisco Systems, Versa networks Software Defined Wide Area Network Market https://www.wiseguyreports.com/sample-request/905769-software-defined-wide-area-network-market-2016-2022 https://www.wiseguyreports.com/enquiry/905769-software-defined-wide-area-network-market-2016-2022 https://www.wiseguyreports.com/checkout?currency=one_user-USD&report_id=905769 WiseGuyReports.Com Publish a New Market Research Report On Software Defined Wide Area Network Market 2018 Global Analysis By Key Players VeloCloud Networks, Inc., Viptela, Inc., CloudGenix, Citrix System, Nuage Networks, Cisco Systems, Versa networks.Description:-The Software Defined Wide Area Network (SD-WAN) is an emerging solution for networking, which is aimed at simplifying and enhancing branch and remote office connectivity. This provides an improved and secure internet connectivity that allows administrators to manage the WAN, identify, and address service issues. It also helps businesses to manage their connections between the internet, external cloud services, data center and sites. The integration of hardware and software reduces the need for hardware and increases the enterprises business. The SD-WAN has been gaining attention due to the operational benefits and huge cost savings over traditional WAN infrastructure.Get a Sample Report @For more information or any query mail at sales@wiseguyreports.comThe Software Defined Network (SDN) adoption in the data center is gaining strong interest with SD-WAN. It is expected that over the next 5 years, many organizations will deploy SD-WAN solution for the development of branch networking solutions. The report is segmented into network components, deployment, services, products, verticals, and regions. North America is expected to have the largest market share followed by Europe and Asia Pacific. The emerging regions such as Latin America and MEA are also expected to increase their spending on SD-WAN over the next 2 years. There will be an increased demand from the enterprises for more flexible, open, and cloud-based WAN technologies.The it is estimated that the Worldwide Software Defined Wide Area Network (SD-WAN) market will witness a CAGR of around 90.2% during the forecast period 20162022. The reducing operational cost is one of the major drivers for SD-WAN adoption. There is an increased interest among the organizations and many new startups are going after the potential in the SD-WAN market. The key players covered in this report are VeloCloud Networks, Inc., Viptela, Inc., CloudGenix, Citrix System, Nuage Networks, Cisco Systems, Versa networks, etc.The study covers and analyzes the Worldwide Software Defined Wide Area Network (SD-WAN) market. Bringing out the complete key insights of the industry, the report aims to provide an opportunity for players to understand the latest trends, current market scenario, government initiatives, and technologies related to the market. In addition, helps the venture capitalist in understanding the companies better and take informed decisions.Enquiry About Report @Table Of Contents Major Key Points1 Industry Outlook1.1 Industry Overview1.2 Industry Trends1.3 Pest Analysis2 Report Outline2.1 Report Scope2.2 Report Summary2.3 Research Methodology2.4 Report Assumptions3 Market Snapshot3.1 Total Addressable Market (TAM)3.1.1 WAN3.1.2 SDN3.2 Segmented Addressable Market (SAM)3.3 Related Markets3.3.1 SaaS4 Market Outlook4.1 Overview4.2 Market Definition4.3 Impact4.4 Architecture4.5 Evolution4.6 SD-WAN Value Chain4.7 Market Segmentation4.8 Porter 5 (Five) Forces5 Market Characteristics5.1 Difference Between SND and SD-WAN5.2 Difference Between Traditional WAN and SD-WAN5.3 Advantage, Disadvantages and Need for SD WAN5.4 Need of SD-WAN5.5 SD-WAN features5.6 Things need to be consider before the adoption of SD-WAN5.7 Market Dynamics5.7.1 Drivers5.7.1.1 Increasing MPLS cost5.7.1.2 Reduce the complex infrastructure5.7.1.3 Increase in the bandwidth5.7.1.4 Increased flexibility5.7.1.5 Need for improving traffic management5.7.2 Restraints5.7.2.1 Huge implementation cost5.7.2.2 Interoperability issues5.7.2.3 Lack of SD-WAN standards5.7.3 Opportunities5.7.3.1 New revenue generation for service providers5.7.3.2 Improved customer value5.7.3.3 High operational efficiency5.7.4 DRO Impact Analysis6 Network Components6.1 Overview6.1.1 MPLS6.1.2 Internet Broadband6.1.3 4G/LTE7 Services7.1 Overview7.2 CSP (Communication Service Provider)7.3 MSP (Managed Service Provider)7.4 Cloud Managed ServiceContinuedBuy 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. E-Commerce Logistics Market Outlook, Revenue Size, Status,Forecast 2018-2025 and Key Players: DHL International GmbH, FedEx Corporation, SF Express Co, United Parcel Service, Clipper Logistics, CEVA Logistics E-Commerce Logistics Market http://bit.ly/2A0fNYM http://bit.ly/2Cxxlhr http://bit.ly/2ElJR5F E-Commerce Logistics Market is a set of communication computing and collaborative technologies that helps to transform logistical processes to be consumer centric by sharing data, knowledge and information with supply chain partners. The ultimate aim of e-commerce logistic is to deliver right product in right quantities at right place and to the right customer.Get Sample Copy of this Report atIncrease of cross-border e-commerce activities and rise in the internet penetration are the major drivers which help in surging the growth of e-commerce logistics market whereas infrastructural challenges restrict the service of last-mile connectivity which act as a restraining factor for this market. Large amount of logistic from abroad and value-added services such as innovative tracking of parcel and route optimization will add new opportunities for this market in the coming years.The "Global E-Commerce Logistics Market Analysis to 2025" is a specialized and in-depth study of the e-commerce logistics industry with a focus on the global market trend. The report aims to provide an overview of global e-commerce logistics market with detailed market segmentation by service type, operational area, end-user and geography. The global e-commerce logistics market is expected to witness high growth during the forecast period. The report provides key statistics on the market status of the leading market players and offers key trends and opportunities in the market.Key Players:- DHL International GmbH, FedEx Corporation, SF Express Co, United Parcel Service, Clipper Logistics, CEVA Logistics, C.H. Robinson Worldwide, Kerry Logistics Network, Nippon ExpressThe report provides a detailed overview of the industry including both qualitative and quantitative information. It provides overview and forecast of the global e-commerce logistics market based on service type, operational area and end-user. It also provides market size and forecast till 2025 for overall e-commerce logistics market with respect to five major regions, namely; North America, Europe, Asia-Pacific (APAC), Middle East and Africa (MEA) and South America (SAM). The market by each region is later sub-segmented by respective countries and segments. The report covers analysis and forecast of 16 counties globally along with current trend and opportunities prevailing in the region.Inquire about this Report atReason to Buy- Save and reduce time carrying out entry-level research by identifying the growth, size, leading players and segments in the global E-Commerce Logistics Market- Highlights key business priorities in order to assist companies to realign their business strategies.- The key findings and recommendations highlight crucial progressive industry trends in the E-Commerce Logistics Market, thereby allowing players to develop effective long term strategies.- Develop/modify business expansion plans by using substantial growth offering developed and emerging markets.- Scrutinize in-depth global market trends and outlook coupled with the factors driving the market, as well as those hindering it.- Enhance the decision-making process by understanding the strategies that underpin commercial interest with respect to products, segmentation and industry verticals.Besides this, the report analyzes factors affecting market from both demand and supply side and further evaluates market dynamics effecting the market during the forecast period i.e., drivers, restraints, opportunities, and future trend. The report also provides exhaustive PEST analysis for all five regions namely; North America, Europe, APAC, MEA and South America after evaluating political, economic, social and technological factors effecting the market in these regions.Direct Purchases@Also, key e-commerce logistics market players influencing the market are profiled in the study along with their SWOT analysis and market strategies. The report also focuses on leading industry players with information such as company profiles, products and services offered, financial information of last 3 years, key development in past five years.Some of the key players influencing the market are DHL International GmbH, FedEx Corporation, SF Express Co., Ltd., Amazon.com, Inc., United Parcel Service, Inc., Clipper Logistics Plc., CEVA Logistics, C.H. Robinson Worldwide, Inc., Kerry Logistics Network Limited. and Nippon Express Co., Ltd among others.About Us:The Insight Partners is a one stop industry research provider of actionable intelligence. We help our clients in getting solutions to their research requirements through our syndicated and consulting research services. We are a specialist in Technology, Healthcare, Manufacturing, Automotive and Defense.Contact Us:Call: +1-646-491-9876Email: sales@theinsightpartners.com Free Space Optics Communication Market Top Companies to Watch Out: Koninklijke Philips N.V., General Electric, Bytelight, Panasonic Corp https://www.coherentmarketinsights.com/insight/request-pdf/1558 https://www.coherentmarketinsights.com/insight/request-customization/1558 Free space optics is an optical communication technology, which is responsible for transmitting light beams in free space for broadband communications. This optical communication technology offers various advantages including, high-speed data transmission rate, installation, and protected data transfer. The technology is utilized in deep-space probes, satellite links, for aircraft communication as well as for communication in UAVs and remote areas.Download PDF Brochure of Research Report:Proliferation of internet usage is one of the major factors driving growth of the global marketMajor factors driving growth of the global free space optics market is, increasing internet traffic. Factors such as utilization of high-bandwidth applications, expanding online video content, and rising number of mobile internet users will lead to rise in the global IP traffic during the forecast period. Adoption of smartphones is increasing, which is leading to increasing mobile advertising, including SMS & MMS advertising, mobile web, mobile video & television, and several online advertising channels; and increasing demand for on-demand services such as videos, online messagingapplications, video chat, and voice calls, at anytime and anywhere. These are powerful tools for effective real-time communication.Global Free Space Optics Communication Market: Regional InsightsThe market in Asia Pacific is expected to exhibit the highest CAGR during the forecast period. This growth is attributed to increasing number of internet users in this region along with growing 5G pilot projects in the region. government initiative plays a major role for growth of the 5G infrastructure in Asia Pacific region. For instance, China government is expected initiate commercial rollouts by 2020. With 3,4003,600 MHz band, the countrys first trials will be conducted in 2020. The 3,3003,400 MHz, 4,4004500 MHz, and 4,8004,990 MHz bands are also under consideration.Global Free Space Optics Communication Market: Competitive BackgroundMajor players operating in the free space optics communication market are Koninklijke Philips N.V., General Electric Co., Bytelight, Inc., Panasonic Corp., Purelifi Ltd., LVX System, Oledcomm, Lightbee Corp., Outstanding Technology Corp., Ibsentelecom Ltd., and Supreme Architecture Inc.Request for Customization of Research Report:Global Free Space Optics Communication Market: TaxonomyOn the basis of components: Transmitters Receivers Modulators Demodulators Encoders & Decoders OthersOn basis of application: Mobile Backhaul Enterprise Connectivity Disaster Recovery Defense Satellite Healthcare Security Engineering and Design OthersOn basis of region: North America Europe Asia-Pacific Latin America Middle East AfricaAbout 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 Profiling Top Companies in New Global Business Intelligence (BI) Software Market Report 2023: SAP AG, Oracle, Microsoft, Qlik, SAS, IBM, Tableau Software, Information Builders, Teradata https://www.researchnreports.com/request_sample.php?id=5645 https://www.researchnreports.com/ask_for_discount.php?id=5645 www.researchnreports.com Business intelligence software provides security at all levels of the enterprise IT architecture, so you can remotely monitor these applications. Data growth is expected to drive the growth of the business intelligence software market during the forecast period. In certain industries, such as retail and BFSI, customer data growth has fueled industry penetration due to higher space requirements for data storage and higher hardware requirements.This report presents a 360-degree overview of the competitive scenario of the Global Business Intelligence (BI) Software market. The report further projects the size and valuation of the global market in the coming forecast period. The report also presents a thorough qualitative and quantitative data affecting to the projected impact of these factors on markets future growth prospects.Get a sample copy atLeading companies are covered in this report:SAP AG, Oracle, Microsoft, Qlik, SAS, IBM, Tableau Software, Information Builders, Teradata, MicroStrategy etc.The research study further covers the competitive landscape of the Business Intelligence (BI) Software market across the globe and offer a list of all the leading players operating in the market. The company profiles, product portfolio, business strategies, financial overview, SWOT analysis, and recent developments of the prominent players have been highlighted in the research report.Highlighted points of this new 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 five-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 segmentsAvail discount atThe main goal for the dissemination of this information is to give a descriptive analysis of how the trends could potentially affect the upcoming future of Business Intelligence (BI) Software market during the forecast period. This markets competitive manufactures and the upcoming manufactures are studied with their detailed research. Revenue, production, price, market share of these players is mentioned with precise information.All the way through this report, the core dynamic factors of the Business Intelligence (BI) Software market were acknowledged and the commercial partners, end users were also worked out. The business segment organization, business configurations and encounters of this market internationally are also a part of this widespread analysis. Abundant interviews and talks were conducted with the protuberant leaders of the industry to gain dependable and reorganized information relevant to the market.Table of ContentsGlobal Business Intelligence (BI) Software Market Research ReportChapter 1 Global Business Intelligence (BI) 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, Global Emollient Market to witness Huge Growth Trend and Demand by 2022 |Top Key Players : BASF SE, Croda International Plc, Lubrizol Corporation, Stepan Emollient Market https://www.businessindustryreports.com/sample-request/113741 https://www.businessindustryreports.com/buy-now/113741/single https://www.businessindustryreports.com/check-discount/113741 Businessindustryreports.com adds report on Global Emollient Market to understand current global competitive market status. This report categorizes the Emollient Market into key industries, region, type and application. This report covers major geographical regions and concentrates on product sales, value, market size and growth opportunities in these regions.Global Emollient Market Overview:According to market analysts, Global Emollient Market is projected to grow at a high CAGR value from 2018 to 2022.Request a Sample Report @The emollients market is majorly driven by the trends in the cosmetic, skin care, and hair care industries. In addition, changing lifestyles and increasing consciousness about personal grooming are boosting the market of emollients. Furthermore, rise in the purchasing power for personal care products in emerging countries are expected to drive the growth of emollient esters market during the forecast period.The Emollient Market is segmented by product, end user, and region. On the basis of product, the emollient market is sub- segmented into soap substitutes, bath additives and cream & ointments.On the basis of end user, the emollient market can be sub-segmented into fragrances, toiletries, hair care, makeup, oral care and skin care. The volume of emollient consumed by the skin care products constitute more than one-third of its total end user market. This growth is mainly attributed to the increasing demand of emollient in moisturizers, anti-aging skin products, and sun care products.Regionally, Developed nations such as the U.S. and European countries are expected to witness growth of the emollients market, in terms of volume and revenue. The market in Asia Pacific is anticipated to experience high growth during the forecast period. This is due to rising disposable income of consumers, especially in developing countries such as India and China.Purchase this 125 Pages report online along with complete Table of contents@Key Players:1 BASF SE2 Croda International Plc3 Lubrizol Corporation4 Ashland Inc5 Evonik Industries AG6 Stepan7 AAK AB8 Lipo Chemicals and More....Key Regions:1 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 @Key Questions Answered in this Report:1 Who are the key vendors in the market?2 What are the latest market trends?3 What are the challenges to market growth?4 What will the market size and the growth rate be in 2022?5 What are the key factors driving the Emollient Market?Table of Content:1 Emollient Definition2 Global Emollient Market Major Player Share and Market Overview3 Major Player Emollient Business Introduction4 Global Emollient Market Segmentation (Region Level)5 Global Emollient Market Segmentation (Type Level)6 Global Emollient Market Segmentation (Industry Level)7 Emollient Market Forecast 2018-20228 Emollient Segmentation Type9 Emollient Segmentation Industry10 Emollient Cost Analysis11 ConclusionAbout us:BusinessindustryReports.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 Ozone Generators Global Market 2018: Key Players Biozone Corporation, Daikin Industries, Ltd., DEL Ozone, Electrolux, Honeywell International Inc. https://www.wiseguyreports.com/sample-request/1306476-ozone-generators-global-market-outlook-2016-2022 https://www.wiseguyreports.com/enquiry/1306476-ozone-generators-global-market-outlook-2016-2022 https://www.wiseguyreports.com/checkout?currency=one_user-USD&report_id=1306476 https://www.wiseguyreports.com Ozone Generators IndustryDescriptionWiseguyreports.Com Adds Ozone Generators -Market Demand, Growth, Opportunities and Analysis of Top Key Player Forecast To 2022 To Its Research DatabaseAccording to Stratistics MRC, the Global Ozone Generators market is accounted for $XX million in 2016 and is expected to reach $XX million by 2022 growing at a CAGR of XX% from 2016 to 2022. Some of the key drivers for ozone generators market include increasing demand from emerging economies, rising demand for air purification systems and rapid urbanization and industrialization. Furthermore, stringent government regulations, growing demand from various end use industries and emission reduction targets are the factors enhancing market growth. However, high pricing of products is hampering the ozone generators market.Asia Pacific is expected to grasp major revenue shares in ozone generators market and is expected to grow with a high CAGR during the forecast period. This growth is attributed to expansion of the manufacturing and construction industries and rapid industrialisation in China and India. North America and Europe regions are two significant markets for Ozone Generators.Request for Sample Report @Some of the key players identified in the global market includeBiozone Corporation, Daikin Industries, Ltd., DEL Ozone, Electrolux, Honeywell International Inc., IN USA, Inc., Mitsubishi Electric, Oxyzone, Ozone Solutions, Ozonetech, Primozone, Sharp Corporation, Sun-Belt USA, Toshiba and Whirlpool Corporation.Technologies Covered: Corona Discharge (CD) ozone generation Cold plasma ozone generationApplications Covered: Aquaculture Laboratory equipment Medical application Potable water treatment Semiconductor Swimming Pool Waste water treatmento Industrial wastewater treatmento Municipal wastewater treatmentVerticals Covered: Automotive Construction Healthcare Energy & Utility Food & Beverage Manufacturing Other VerticalsLeave a Query @Regions Covered: North Americao USo Canadao Mexico Europeo Germanyo Franceo Italyo UKo Spaino Rest of Europe Asia Pacifico Japano Chinao Indiao Australiao New Zealando Rest of Asia Pacific Rest of the Worldo Middle Easto Brazilo Argentinao South Africao EgyptWhat our report offers:- Market share assessments for the regional and country level segments- Market share analysis of the top industry players- Strategic recommendations for the new entrants- Market forecasts for a minimum of 6 years of all the mentioned segments, sub segments and the regional markets- Market Trends (Drivers, Constraints, Opportunities, Threats, Challenges, Investment Opportunities, and recommendations)- Strategic recommendations in key business segments based on the market estimations- Competitive landscaping mapping the key common trends- Company profiling with detailed strategies, financials, and recent developments- Supply chain trends mapping the latest technological advancementsBuy 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 Cord Blood Banking Services Market Expected to Reach $2,772 Million by 2023 | Key Players include National Cord Blood Program, ViaCord, Inc., Virgin Health Bank, CordVida, Americord, CryoHoldco, and Vita34 https://www.alliedmarketresearch.com/request-sample/111?utm_source=OPR www.alliedmarketresearch.com/get-discount/111?utm_source=OPR www.alliedmarketresearch.com According to a new report published by Allied Market Research, titled, Cord Blood Banking Services Market by Storage Services: Global Opportunity Analysis and Industry Forecast, 2017-2023," the global cord blood banking services market accounted for $1,126 million in 2016, and is estimated to reach at $2,772 million by 2023, registering a CAGR of 13.8% from 2017 to 2023. North America was the highest revenue contributor in the global market in 2016; however, Asia-Pacific is expected to witness the highest growth rate during the forecast period.Download Now! Sample PDF Brochure @Umbilical cord blood is collected from the nursing homes and hospitals post the delivery of a baby. This blood contains a large amount of stem cells, which can be used to treat various diseases. The public cord blood banks are operated by the non-profit organizations with the help of government funding, which are donated by families after the delivery of baby. This donated cord blood is available for multiple applications such as for research purposes and treatment of genetic diseases.The private cord blood banks are privately owned banks where the parents can store the cord blood of newborn for future use such as for treatment of certain chronic disease. In private banks, charges are incurred for the collection, processing, and storage of cord blood. Thus, the public cord blood banks possess competitive advantages in developed regions such as North America and Europe.The cord blood banking services market is expected to witness a moderate growth during the forecast period. The key drivers for the market growth are adoption of novel marketing strategies by key players, increase in R&D activities for application of cord blood, and rise in funding for establishment of public cord blood storage banks. However, high cost associated with the processing, difficulty in finding a match in the donor list of public cord blood banks, and legal & ethical issues related to collection of cord blood are expected to hamper this growth. Conversely, advancement in the stem cell therapeutics and presence of untapped potential in the developing and developed regions are expected to provide various opportunities to the cord blood banking services.The private cord blood banks segment occupied a dominant part of the market in 2016, and is expected to grow at the highest rate. This is attributable to the better service provided by the private banks to their customers, guarantee of storing the cord blood for a specified period, and immediate retrieval of the cord blood when required for treatment of any genetic disease.In 2016, North America accounted for maximum contribution to the total revenue generated, owing to the market maturity, high awareness among the expectant parents, presence of high disposable income, and high adoption rate of cord blood storage services. However, Asia-Pacific is expected to witness the highest growth during the analysis period, attributable to rise in awareness related to the benefits of storing cord blood, increase in focus of key players to expand their services, and rise in disposable income.Key Findings of the Cord Blood Banking Services Market: The private cord blood bank segment is anticipated to grow at the highest rate during the analysis period. Germany was the highest revenue-generating country in the European market in 2016, and is expected to continue its dominance during the forecast period. In 2016, North America dominated global cord blood banking services market, and is estimated to continue this trend in the near future. China is expected to grow at the highest rate in the Asia-Pacific region. Latin America was the largest contributor in the LAMEA region.The key companies profiled in the report include China Cord Blood Corporation, Cord Blood America, Inc., CBR Systems, Inc., Cordlife Group Limited, Cryo-Cell International, Inc., Cryo-Save AG, Lifeforce Cryobanks, National Cord Blood Program, ViaCord, Inc., Virgin Health Bank, CordVida, Americord, CryoHoldco, and Vita34.Check offers and discount on this report @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: Aquaponics Market will grow at CAGR of 11.13% during Forecast period of 2019-2023 Aquaponics Market, Aquaponics Industry, Aquaponics Market Sales, Aquaponics Market Size, Aquaponics Market Share, Aquaponics https://www.marketresearchnest.com/Global-Aquaponics-Market-2019-2023.html https://www.marketresearchnest.com/report/enquirybuy/458941 https://www.marketresearchnest.com/report/purchase/458941 MarketResearchNest.com published an Exclusive Research Report on Global Aquaponics Market 2019-2023 that highlights the in-depth market analysis and covers significant data with future prospects of the market.This report studies the Aquaponics Market with many aspects of the industry like the market size, market status, market trends and forecast, the report also provides brief information of the competitors and the specific growth opportunities with key market drivers. Find the complete Aquaponics Market analysis segmented by companies, region, type and applications in the report.About Aquaponics:Aquaponics is a system that combines both aquaculture and hydroponics. It enables the growth of both fish and plants in a symbiotic environment.Research analysts forecast the Global Aquaponics Market to grow at a CAGR of 11.13% during the period 2019-2023.Covered in this report:The report covers the present scenario and the growth prospects of the aquaponics market. To calculate the market size, the report considers the revenue generated from aquaponics systems across the globe.Browse full content and In-depth TOC of Aquaponics Market Report 2019@Aquaponics Market continues to evolve and expand in terms of the number of companies, products, and applications that illustrates the growth perspectives. The report also covers the list of Product range and Applications with SWOT analysis, CAGR value, further adding the essential business analytics. Aquaponics Market research analysis identifies the latest trends and primary factors responsible for market growth enabling the Organizations to flourish with much exposure to the markets.The market is divided into the following segments based on geography: Americas APAC EMEAGlobal Aquaponics market 2019-2023, 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: AquaCal Backyard Aquaponics ECF Farmsystems Nelson and Pade PentairInquiry before buying sample copy of Aquaponics Market Report 2019@The Aquaponics Market research report completely covers the vital statistics of the capacity, production, value, cost/profit, supply/demand import/export, further divided by company and country, and by application/type for best possible updated data representation in the figures, tables, pie chart, and graphs. These data representations provide predictive data regarding the future estimations for convincing market growth. The detailed and comprehensive knowledge about our publishers makes us out of the box in case of market analysis.Market driver* Increase in number of aquaponic farms* For a full, detailed list, view our reportMarket challenge* High set-up cost and maintenance cost of aquaponics* For a full, detailed list, view our reportMarket trend* Growing inclination toward CSA practices* For a full, detailed list, view our reportKey questions answered in this report What will the Aquaponics Market Size is in 2023 and what will the growth rate be? What is the key Aquaponics Market Trends? What is driving this Aquaponics Market? What are the challenges to Aquaponics Market Growth? Who are the key vendors in this Aquaponics Market Space? What are the Aquaponics Market Opportunities and Threats faced by the key vendors? What are the strengths and weaknesses of the Aquaponics Market Key Vendor?Purchase a sample copy of Aquaponics Market Report 2019 Copy@About us: - MarketResearchNest.com is the most comprehensive collection of market research products and services on the Web. We offer reports from almost all top publishers and update our collection on daily basis to provide you with instant online access to the worlds most complete and recent database of expert insights on industries, organizations, products, and trends.Contact us: - Mr. Jeet Jain, Sales Manager, sales@marketresearchnest.com ;+1-240-284-8070, +44-20-3290-4151;Connect with us: Google+ | LinkedIn | Twitter | Facebook Global Automotive Gesture Recognition Market will grow at 43% CAGR to 2024 by Key Companies - Texas Instruments, Qualcomm, NXP Semiconductors, Jabil, Intel Corporation, Harman International, Apple, Visteon Corporation Automotive Gesture Recognition Market https://www.gminsights.com/request-sample/detail/1369 https://www.gminsights.com/inquiry-before-buying/1369 https://www.gminsights.com/industry-analysis/automotive-gesture-recognition-market Automotive Gesture Recognition Market size is estimated to surpass USD 13 billion by 2024; according to a new research report by Global Market Insights, Inc. High consumer preference towards application-based vehicle technologies coupled with rising awareness regarding driver safety will stimulate the revenue generation over the forecast timeframe. Increasing electronic components and sensors in vehicles will further support the adoption of these systems. In addition, drivers will access multiple vehicle features without losing control on the steering wheels.Sample Copy of This Report @Multimedia/navigation/infotainment application in the automotive gesture recognition market is anticipated to acquire the maximum share of more than 60% by the end of 2024. Automobile OEMs are focusing on improving customer experience with infotainment and navigation systems, primarily driving the demand. Driver distraction can be reduced with easy operability of multimedia in the car with gesture control, supporting the growth of the segment. Growth of door/window opening segment is attributed to vehicle manufacturers focusing on delivering improved functional features in the vehicles. Moreover, increasing driver control over the vehicle to ensure safety will stimulate the demand for the segment.Company profiled in this report based on Business overview, Financial data, Product landscape, Strategic outlook & SWOT analysis:1. Apple2. Cognitec Systems3. Continental AG4. eyeSight Technologies Ltd.5. Delphi Automotive PLC6. Gestigon Gmbh7. Harman International8. Intel9. Jabil10. Melexis11. Navtek Solutions12. Neonode13. NXP Semiconductors14. Qualcomm Inc.15. Renesas16. Sony Dephthsensing solutions (SoftKinetic)17. Synaptics Incorporated18. Texas Instruments19. Visteon CorporationMake an Inquiry for purchasing this Report @Passenger cars will dominate the automotive gesture recognition market, generating a demand for over 32 million units over the forecast timeframe. Rising demand from infotainment, navigation and multimedia features in the vehicles will stimulate the industry penetration. Surging demand for medium and high-end passenger vehicle across the globe along with shifting customer preference towards highly advanced variants in given vehicle range will further boost the automotive gesture recognition market from passenger cars. Heavy commercial vehicle manufacturers are less likely to adopt these systems owing to less proximity of vehicles in public utilities.Hand/fingerprint authentication segment of the automotive gesture recognition industry is predicted to be the fastest growing with over 43% CAGR between 2017 and 2024. This can be attributed to technological improvements coupled with rising usage of TOF sensors. Safety regulations is further boosting the product demand. Vision/iris will exhibit over 41% CAGR due to increasing customers and manufacturers interest in deployment of such systems. With technical improvements automotive gesture recognition business is estimated to witness sturdy growth over the projected time span.Touch based systems accounted for maximum automotive gesture recognition market share, crossing USD 550 million in 2016 and will continue its dominance over the next eight years. This can be credited to high preference owing to their strong prevalence over the past years. Automotive gesture recognition touchless systems will exhibit substantial growth, exhibiting around 44% CAGR till 2024 owing to provision of advanced features and enhanced user experience delivered by these systems.Browse Report Summery @Europe is anticipated to dominate the automotive gesture recognition market, crossing USD 6 billion over the next eight years. High penetration of the premium cars such as BMW 5 and 7 series across the region is expected to primarily support the regional dominance. Established automotive industry with substantial vehicle production is likely to further propel the revenue generation. North America automotive gesture recognition market will exhibit more than 40% CAGR from 2017 to 2024 owing to rising demand for these systems across the region. This high demand is credited to rising R&D investments by OEMs and shifting consumer preference towards advanced vehicle features.Major automotive gesture recognition market players are Continental AG, Harman International, Visteon Corporation, Cognitec System GmbH, and Qualcomm Technologies Inc. Other notable players are Softkinetic International SA, NXP Semiconductors, Synaptics Incorporated, Gestigon Gmbh, and Eyesight Technologies.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.com U.S. IVF Services Market Growth Analysis Reveals Key Factors that Will Drive the Growth During Forecast Period https://www.alliedmarketresearch.com/request-sample/3491?utm_source=OPR https://www.alliedmarketresearch.com/request-for-customization/3491?utm_source=OPR https://www.alliedmarketresearch.com/press-release/US-IVF-services-market.html www.alliedmarketresearch.com The U.S. IVF Services Market was valued at $2,213.1 million in 2015 and is projected to reach $4,472.2 million by 2022, registering a CAGR of 10.6% from 2016 to 2022. In vitro fertilization is a fertility treatment in the clinical industry that involves fertilization of an egg outside of the human body.Download PDF Report Sample @In vitro fertilization is a type of assisted reproductive technology, which involves the artificial fertilization of egg with sperm in laboratory settings and then resulting zygote is implanted into the uterus. According to the Society for Assisted Reproductive Technology (SART), in 2013 about 1.5% babies born in the U.S. were conceived through IVF proceduresDelay in parenthood, increase in number of infertility cases due to age concern, and increase in trend of middle age pregnancies drive the market. In addition, rise in health awareness on fertility issues, adoption of advanced IVF procedures, and increase in consumption of alcohol and cigarettes leading to sedentary lifestyles further fuel the market growth. However, factor such as expensive IVF treatments and stringent government regulations restrain the market growth. The upsurge in demand for novel IVF technologies and rise in disposable incomes are expected to provide numerous opportunities for market growth during the forecast period.The overall number of embryo transfers performed in U.S. stood at 180.4 thousand in 2015 and is expected to reach 353.7 thousand by 2022, registering a CAGR of 10.1% during the forecast period. The growth of the market is associated with modern lifestyle, increase in infertility rate among couples, availability of advanced technology, and skilled IVF technicians.Key players in the U.S. IVF services market includes companies, hospitals, surgical centers, fertility centers, and clinical research institutes- Fertility and Gynecology Center Monterey Bay IVF,- Conceptions Reproductive Associates,- Servy Massey Fertility Institute,- Sher Institute for Reproductive Medicine (SIRM),- Cardone Reproductive Medicine & Infertility,- Fertility Center of San Antonio,- Houston Fertility Center,- New hope fertility center, and- Reproductive Medicine Associates of New Jersey.Get Customized Report @Table Of ContentChapter: 1 INTRODUCTION1.1. REPORT DESCRIPTION1.2. KEY MARKET BENEFITS1.3. KEY MARKET SEGMENTS1.4. RESEARCH METHODOLOGY1.4.1. Secondary research1.4.2. Primary research1.4.3. Analyst tools and modelsChapter: 2 EXECUTIVE SUMMARY2.1. KEY FINDING OF THE STUDYChapter: 3 MARKET OVERVIEW3.1. MARKET DEFINITION AND SCOPE3.2. OVERVIEW3.3. MARKET SIZE AND FORECAST3.3.1. Number of infertility clinics, 20153.4. REGULATORY ISSUES, LEGISLATIONS, AND AUTHORITIES3.5. INSURANCE REIMBURSEMENT SCENARIO3.6. KEY IMPACTING FACTORS3.6.1. Drivers3.6.1.1. Increasing popularity of IVF in the U.S.3.6.1.2. Increased rate of infertility and practices of embryo banking cycles3.6.1.3. Delayed pregnancy3.6.1.4. Technological advancements in IVF treatment3.6.2. Restraints3.6.2.1. High cost of IVF treatments in the U.S.3.6.2.2. Restrictions on three-parent IVF treatments3.6.2.3. Scattered ReimbursementsAccess Full Summery @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.ContactDavid Correa5933 NE Win Sivers Drive#205, Portland, OR 97220United StatesToll Free: +1-800-792-5285UK: +44-845-528-1300Hong Kong: +852-301-84916India (Pune): +91-20-66346060Fax: +1855550-5975help@alliedmarketresearch.comWeb: Ericsson (NASDAQ: ERIC) today announced that it has signed an Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) with Axiata Group Berhad (Axiata or the Group) to collaborate and create innovative value propositions in the Business Support System(BSS), Operational Support System (OSS) and Internet of Things (IoT) domains by leveraging on the next generation digital API platform offerings of Apigate, an Axiata subsidiary, and Ericssons Digital Business Systems portfolio. The MoU will facilitate Oregon State Police this week arrested a convicted killer wanted in Washington on a 40-year-old murder of a Port Angeles woman. Tommy Ross Jr., 60, was arrested Tuesday afternoon during a traffic stop on Interstate 5 in Clackamas County, according to Oregon State Police. Ross was accompanied by his two brothers at the time of his arrest and was headed to Los Angeles, according to the Peninsula Daily News. Ross is being held in the Clackamas County Jail on $1.5 million bail. Ross is a convicted killer who served 38 years in prison in Canada for the 1978 murder of Janice Forbes, 26, of Victoria, according to the Daily News. He was paroled in 2016 and arrested shortly after that by Washington authorities in the 1978 murder of Janet Bowcutt, 20, of Port Angeles, Washington. Forbes was killed three weeks after Bowcutt, the newspaper reports. Until this week, Ross was in Clallam County Jail, awaiting prosecution in the Bowcutt murder. A judge then dismissed the murder charges, citing violations to Ross' constitutional rights to a speedy trial, the Daily News reports. Prosecutors in Washington sought an emergency stay of the judge's ruling, which an appellate court granted on a temporary basis. Prosecutors also have asked the court to overturn the judge's dismissal. An arrest warrant was then issued for Ross. Ross appeared in Clackamas County Circuit Court Thursday afternoon, where he refused to waive extradition to Washington. That sets in motion a process where the Washington governor signs a warrant for Ross's return to the state. Ross's next court appearance is Dec. 21. -- Noelle Crombie 503-276-7184 @noellecrombie My personal opinion is the overproliferation of underperforming charter schools to compete with the pool of students that would normally feed into Hirsch has not just decimated the school itself, but the community at large, said Maria Owens, an attorney who serves on Hirschs Local School Council. Heres the problem. You keep hearing from the (school) board that there are no students, there are no parents and there are no families in the Grand Crossing community. Not so. The families are there. Multnomah County continues to close one lane in each direction on the Hawthorne Bridge from 9 a.m.-3 p.m. Friday, Oct., 26, for inspection and welding repairs to the deck. The outside westbound lane and the center eastbound lane will be the closed lanes. Both sidewalks and one lane in each direction will remain open to traffic at all times. The work is being done at off-peak commute times and Thursday's work didn't seem to cause large delays for bridge users. During the work, crews will use two snooper cranes to inspect and weld areas of the steel deck on the north side of the bridge that are damaged from wear, according to Multnomah County. In coming weeks, the deck in the center and south lanes will be repaired, during off-peak travel hours. *** NORTHEAST PORTLAND 8:08 a.m.; Crash reported on Northeast Lombard Street at 22nd Avenue. *** GERMANTOWN ROAD 8:30 a.m.; Expect delays 8:30 a.m.-3 p.m. Friday on Northwest Germantown Road between Skyline Boulevard and Kaiser Road, as a contractor completes repairs related to a recent culvert replacement. The eastbound lane will be closed at times during the one-day operation. Flaggers will direct two-way traffic on the open lane. *** NORTHEAST PORTLAND 7:50 a.m.; Crash blocks the intersection of Northeast Sandy Boulevard and 82nd Avenue. Update 8:50 a.m.; Cleared. *** FAIRVIEW 7:25 a.m.; Injury crash on Northeast Fairview Parkway where it crosses over I-84. *** INNER SOUTHEAST 7:23 a.m.; Units responding to an injury crash on Southeast Morrison Street at Second Avenue. *** DOWNTOWN 6:45 a.m.; Crash on I-405 northbound near the Fourth Avenue exit has traffic backed up on I-5 southbound over the Marquam Bridge. *** VISTA RIDGE TUNNEL 6:30 a.m.; A crash is blocking the onramp from Southwest Jefferson Street to U.S. 26 westbound. Update 7:29 a.m.; Cleared. *** We're waiting on the Washington State Department of Transportation to update the status of the work that was to close State Route 500 between St. Johns and Andresen roads this weekend. The closure is scheduled to begin 11 p.m. Friday, Oct. 26, and continue through Monday morning. The work was said to be "very weather dependent" and the weather isn't looking good past about mid-day on Saturday. We'll update this space as soon as we get a confirmation. Update 8:40 a.m.; WSDOT has CANCELED the scheduled closure of SR 500 for the weekend due to wet weather. More trouble for E-scooter companies: Check back throughout the morning for the latest commuting updates and follow us on Twitter: @trafficportland When Shari Dunn needed to help a client to a job interview or a skills training quickly this year, she had a free option at her fingertips: an Uber ride. Dunn, the executive director of Oregon's Dress for Success chapter, received $10,000 in free ride credits from the ride-hailing giant in 2017. For the nonprofit, which helps women with processional clothes, job training and other support services, the free rides were nothing short of a "godsend." The company also gave her organization $10,000 in cash, Dunn said. "The impact this has had on the women we serve has been tremendous," Dunn said, noting that the nonprofit booked 489 rides in 2018 for free through Uber. "It's been revolutionary." Dress for Success was one of seven nonprofits in the Portland area to be awarded ride credits from Uber. Forty-five organizations in Oregon and Washington received the credits through Uber's nonprofit grant program, which is entering its third year. All told, more than $600,000 in grants were distributed to groups representing women, immigrants and the homeless in 2018 alone. For years, Dress for Success has offered clients bus tickets and other help to get to and from appointments for those clients without cars. But for clients in east Multnomah County or Clackamas, transit service can be sporadic. The grant program allows Dunn to book the ride for the clients and a driver is dispatched in seconds. She said the program took an incredible load off of her clients' shoulders. It's one less thing to worry about as they ready for a job interview. "This allows people to get where they're going without being terrified that they're going to be late," she said. The Portland and Seattle area are the only cities where Uber has its ride credit and grant program. Since it began in early 2017, the company has committed $1.3 million in financial support to 45 organizations in the Pacific Northwest. Uber drivers are paid just like they would be for any other ride, but the company has set up a special software program to allow the nonprofits to book a ride for their clients remotely. Jon Isaacs, Uber's public affairs manager in Oregon, said other clients like Street Roots newspaper enjoy the service because it allows for flexibility. "We're really proud that it's filling that gap or giving new opportunities to Street Roots," he said, adding it was an example where ride hailing companies "can help empower people." Uber swept onto the global scene years ago as a transportation disruption machine, but was quickly embroiled in scandals big and small. The company acknowledges that the program came on the heels of some of its biggest controversies in Portland. It launched without city approval in 2014 and later admitted to using a software program to block city regulators from tracking its activities in the city. In 2018, Uber apologized for its past actions in Portland. Freed, the grant program director, said she was hired in late 2016 to come up with the program. A former U.S. State Department official, she worked with providing international aid to foreign countries previously. The program's launch "happened to coincide with those issues," she said. Dunn, the Dress for Success leader, said she planned to apply for grants for the 2019 cycle as well. She added that she knows many people look at the ride-hailing companies like Uber with skepticism, but the work they've done for local women is "tremendous." Uber started accepting grant applications last week, and will accept them through Nov. 28. -- Andrew Theen atheen@oregonian.com 503-294-4026 @andrewtheen Over the course of about 90 seconds, an encounter between a police officer and a man inside a southern Oregon Carl's Jr. bathroom last month turned deadly, video released Thursday shows. The Jackson County District Attorney's Office released body camera footage in the Sept. 19 fatal shooting of Matthew Graves, 33, in Eagle Point. District Attorney Beth Heckert announced Wednesday that a county grand jury determined Officer Daniel Cardenas, an Eagle Point officer for two years, was legally justified in shooting Graves. The shooting occurred during a fight in the restroom between Graves, Cardenas and Senior Officer Clarence "C.J." Davis, a 15-year department veteran who arrived as backup to Cardenas. The body camera worn by Cardenas falls off at one point when all three men are struggling with each other on the bathroom floor. The total video is about 11 minutes and begins after Cardenas tries unsuccessfully to stop Graves from walking away from him near the fast-food restaurant and ends after the shooting with police dragging Graves on the ground back outside to paramedics and Cardenas later being asked what happened by another law enforcement officer. *Note* The Oregonian/OregonLive has provided a condensed version of the footage. Cardenas testified to a grand jury that he first spotted Graves while he was driving his patrol car on Oregon 62 around 8:45 p.m. last month and had to brake because Graves stepped into the street against the traffic light, Heckert said Wednesday. Graves went back onto the sidewalk until the officer drove off, then Cardenas said he did a U-turn after looking in his rearview mirror and seeing Graves walk across the street while the light was still green for oncoming traffic. Cardenas followed Graves to the fast-food restaurant because he intended to talk to Graves about the dangers of jaywalking, Heckert said. He also said he suspected Graves might have had an outstanding arrest warrant or a weapon, the district attorney said. It was later determined Graves was unarmed and had no active warrants. Graves' father told jurors his son has been diagnosed with schizophrenia and hadn't been taking medication for years. The officers testified that Cardenas used a Taser on Graves after Graves put his hands on him, that the stun gun had little effect, that Graves punched Davis soon after he got into the bathroom, and that Graves managed to Tase Davis with Cardenas' unholstered Taser. They also said that Davis told Cardenas twice that Graves had a gun and that Cardenas shot Graves twice in the back. The officers later realized Davis mistook the Taser for a gun. The officers' Tasers and firearms were both black and could have been easily confused in the chaos, Heckert said. Grand jurors suggested officers' Tasers and firearms be different colors, and Police Chief Darin May said Wednesday that it would be something he would look into. According to the body camera footage, Cardenas asked Graves what he was doing three times before they were both in the Carl's Jr. Graves swore at the officer, told him to leave and called Cardenas worthless. Graves went into the men's bathroom. Cardenas drew his gun before going into the restroom, ordered Graves twice to show his hands and again asked what he was doing. Graves replied while washing his hands that he was getting food, told Cardenas to shut up. After Graves finished drying his hands, Cardenas holstered his gun, pulled out a Taser, ordered Graves to the ground and warned he'd be stunned if he didn't comply. The officer told Graves to get on the ground four times and Graves didn't comply. Graves tried to walk past the officer and out the door, and Cardenas pushed him back, telling him to back up. "You touch me again and you're gone," Graves tells Cardenas. "Touch me again and see what (expletive) happens." Cardenas replies. Cardenas pushed Graves twice more and shocked Graves with the Taser after Graves pushed him. Graves recoiled while being stunned and Cardenas told him five more times to go to the ground. Graves didn't comply and instead approached the officer. Davis came into the bathroom at some point and then the view of what occurs is obscured as the fight between the three begins. In seven seconds, Davis said there was a gun, Cardenas asked Graves if he had a firearm, Davis repeated that there was a gun, but then said it was a Taser, and Cardenas drew his pistol and fired. Cardenas then immediately reported the shooting to emergency dispatchers. As they waited for help to arrive, both officers yelled at Graves to stay conscious, Cardenas put s a handcuff on one of Graves' wrists and Davis told Cardenas that he didn't know if Graves had grabbed a gun. When Cardenas asked where the gun Davis mentioned earlier was, Davis mentioned the Taser on the ground and said it might've been what he saw. -- Everton Bailey Jr. ebailey@oregonian.com 503-221-8343; @EvertonBailey A central Oregon man suffered burns to more than half his body Tuesday after a butane hash oil explosion inside a suspected home drug lab, authorities say. Nicholas Helms, 26, is being treated at OHSU Hospital after being caught in the explosion around 7:35 p.m. inside a box trailer on River Drive in Lebanon, Albany police said. Investigators seized several pounds of marijuana, cash and guns from the scene and discovered blasting caps there as well, according to police. No charges have been announced in the case. Police ask anyone with information about the explosion to contact the Linn County Interagency Narcotics Enforcement task force at 541-791-0102. -- Everton Bailey Jr. ebailey@oregonian.com 503-221-8343; @EvertonBailey Portland-area voters will decide the fate of a $652.8 million housing bond. But its reach could hinge on a constitutional amendment that will be decided by voters statewide. Metro says the housing bond it referred to its voters in Multnomah, Washington and Clackamas counties, Measure 26-199, would build or preserve 2,400 to 3,900 homes for low-income residents. The 1,500-home spread depends on the outcome of Measure 102, the proposed constitutional amendment that boosters say would allow affordable housing bonds across the state go a lot further. Here's how it works: The Oregon Constitution requires that most anything built or bought with bond money must be owned by the government that issued the bonds, not a private entity. But that's not how most affordable housing is built these days; reduced-rent homes are often built, owned and operated by private corporations, many of them nonprofits. And federal tax credits, sold to private investors who are usually part-owners in the project, are a key source of funding. That all means bond money is off limits. Measure 102 would let local governments put bond money toward privately owned projects. That means bond proceeds such as from the Metro housing bond, if approved, or the $258 million bond Portland voters approved in 2016 could be combined with the revenue from selling tax credits in projects belonging to housing nonprofits. "It can go farther," said Dan Valliere, the chief executive of nonprofit affordable housing developer Reach Community Development Corp., "and everything can go faster, too." It could also help Oregon use federal funds it's leaving on the table. The state gets an allocation of tax credits each year that it doesn't use, largely because there isn't enough state and local funding for affordable housing to make the projects work financially. "If you look at any tax credit project, you'll always find the tax credit is accompanied by a local funding source," Valliere said. "Those are fully maxed out every year." The constitutional amendment has broad and bipartisan support, even among opponents of Metro's housing bond like Republican gubernatorial candidate Knute Buehler, because it leans on the private sector to help create housing that most agree is urgently needed. Metro housing bond The Metro bond measure, meanwhile, would raise $652.8 million for affordable housing projects, which property owners would pay back through higher property taxes over the next 30 years. Property taxes would rise 24 cents per $1,000 in assessed value, Metro says, or $60 a year for a home with an assessed value of $250,000. (Although the region's average home value is far higher than $250,000, the average home's assessed value was $231,000 last year.) The proceeds would be used to build 2,400 affordable apartments if Measure 102 fails. But if the constitutional amendment passes and bond money can be combined with federal tax credits, the bond measure could build 3,900. The apartments would mostly be within reach of families making less than 60 percent of the area's median income; that's about $49,000 for a family of four. Metro-area rents have been climbing at a brisk pace for years. The average rent on a one-bedroom apartment now tops $1,100, a 56 percent jump since 2010. Two bedrooms typically run $1,300, a 59 percent surge. About one in four metro-area renters are putting more than half of their income toward housing, and there are increasingly fewer options for anyone making below the median income. The cities of Portland and Vancouver have declared housing emergencies in recent years. "We believe that the market is not meeting the needs of too many people," said Portland City Commissioner Nick Fish, who supports the bond measure. "Doing nothing is not an option." But the region has a deficit of about 48,000 affordable housing homes, far more than the housing bond could provide even under the most optimistic scenarios. Opponents say that's a good reason to vote "no." Raising property taxes, they say, will hurt those who need affordable housing but can't manage to get into one of the limited rent-restricted units. "Many of those not benefiting from this will be affected by it, because they will pay for it," said Andy Duyck, the Washington County chairman, who opposes the measure. "If you make matters worse on the market side, you're driving more people into the need for affordable housing." He says that Metro, with its limited experience in the affordable housing realm, will add costs and inefficiencies. Instead, Duyck believes the responsibility should stay with local housing authorities, like the one he oversees in Washington County. Metro, which oversees the region's land use, should focus on increasing the overall supply of homes, he said. Lynn Peterson, the Metro Council's president-elect, says the agency does need to address the cost of building in the Portland area. But, she says, problem is too urgent to wait. "This is a crisis," she said. "This is not the time to say same-old, same-old." -- Elliot Njus enjus@oregonian.com 503-294-5034 @enjus Oregon elections officials say the state's campaign finance reporting system had a problem earlier this week that caused it to stop processing transactions for just one campaign: Republican governor candidate Knute Buehler. At this point in the election cycle, campaigns must report contributions and expenditures within seven days. Buehler's campaign had scheduled transactions to be processed Monday through Wednesday in order to meet the deadline, but the ORESTAR computer system stopped processing them, according to the Secretary of State's office. Secretary of State Dennis Richardson is the only Republican in statewide elected office in Oregon. The Secretary of State's office said in a news release that it discovered the problem on Thursday. The Democratic Party of Oregon had filed a complaint about the late filings, according to Democratic Gov. Kate Brown's reelection campaign spokesman, Christian Gaston. Debra Royal, the agency's chief of staff, did not explain in a news release why such a problem would only affect one political action committee out of hundreds active in the November election, and she could not immediately be reached for comment. No other details of the technology problem were provided. It's not the first instance of late filings leading to a complaint this election season. In September, Republican political operative Paul Rainey filed a complaint that the campaign to defeat ballot Measure 104 had failed to timely report $420,000 in contributions from labor groups. Measure 104 would make it more difficult for the Legislature to trim tax breaks. In that case, the campaign's bookkeeper took responsibility for the problem. -- Hillary Borrud 503-294-4034; @hborrud Updated: Police identify man found dead down embankment in SW Portland Human remains were found down an embankment in Southwest Portland on Friday and an investigation is ongoing to determine what led to the person's death. Portland police officers and members of Mountain Wave Search and Rescue discovered the person in the afternoon, according to police. There were no apparent signs of foul play, said Portland police spokesman Sgt. Chris Burley. The person's identity and what initially led authorities to the area also are not immediately clear. The remains of the person were discovered about 30 feet down an embankment near Southwest Capitol Highway and Barbur Boulevard, said Lt. Damon Simmons, a Portland Fire & Rescue spokesman. He said firefighters were alerted a little before 3:10 p.m. to assist police in the recovery. -- Everton Bailey Jr. Ben Souede one of two candidates vying for his Multnomah County Circuit Court judge seat certainly has a lot of support this election. Many big names in Oregon's justice system have endorsed him: Multnomah County District Attorney Rod Underhill, Oregon Attorney General Ellen Rosenblum, all seven state Supreme Court justices, and 35 of 37 his Multnomah County Circuit Court colleagues. Of course, Gov. Kate Brown has endorsed him, too. Souede formerly worked as general counsel for the governor's office, until Brown bypassed the traditional application process and appointed him to his current judgeship in July 2017. That doesn't seem right to Souedes opponent, Portland attorney Bob Callahan. Callahan said he decided to challenge Souede because doesnt approve of a system where judges often retire part way through their terms allowing the governor to choose their replacement. By the time the next election rolls around, the new judge can run as the incumbent, giving him or her a significant advantage. I fundamentally believe in democracy, and its not democratic to have the executive from one branch of government controlling who is in the other branch of government, Callahan told The Oregonian/OregonLive this week. Souede, however, said the system in which the governor fills judicial vacancies is laid out in the Oregon Constitution, and there's nothing underhanded about it. When the next election arrives, voters have the power to show their approval or dissatisfaction with that choice, he said. "The system is working exactly as it was designed," Souede said. Souede said his judicial experience and track record make him very qualified for the job and his endorsements show others agree. Souede (pronounced "suede") graduated from Harvard Law School in 2002. He worked in private practice representing big and small businesses in complex civil litigation, as well as criminal defense work. He advised the governor on a wide array of legal matters from 2015 to 2017. In becoming a judge, Souede took a pay cut, from approximately $143,000 to about $130,000 a year. Callahan, who graduated from Lewis & Clark Law School, has practiced law in Portland for more than 30 years and has tried more than 100 jury trials both civil and criminal. He sees that as an advantage over his rival, whom he says never tried any jury trials while working as a lawyer. Souede responded that there are many areas of law, and that he focused on areas that didn't require jury trials. He said he's presided over 40 trials as a judge. Callahan said that while Souede has captured many endorsements from judges, Callahan has gathered his support from the community from some lawyers, teachers, community activists and others. Callahan said hes running to give voters a choice. Once somebody gets the moniker of being an incumbent, nobody wants to run against them because its such a hard road, Callahan said. Thats the situation Im in, because its common knowledge that its impossible. The seat Souede and Callahan are competing for Position 30 is the only contested position of four positions in Multnomah County Circuit Court that are up for vote Nov. 6. -- Aimee Green agreen@oregonian.com o_aimee As wildfires have become increasingly devastating occurrences in Oregon and other Western states, debates have raged about the role climate change plays in the blazes, and how forests and fires should be managed. But those aren't the issues that drove filmmakers Alex Jablonski and Kahlil Hudson to make "Wildland," a documentary that airs on PBS' "Independent Lens" series Oct. 29. "We don't necessarily need another film that tells us the sky is falling," says the Pasadena, California-based Jablonski, 40. "We do need another film that tells us how we take care of each other in that context." "I fully believe that climate change is man-made," Jablonski says, "and we're on a really dangerous path." But he and Hudson, Jablonski says, wanted "Wildland" to look at the people who become wildland firefighters, and why they do it. Hudson, who's based in Sante Fe, New Mexico, says he and Jablonski went through firefighting training themselves before coming to Oregon to film. The majority of filming happened in 2016, focusing on men going through training at a facility in Grants Pass, operated by Grayback Forestry, a company that provides, as its website says, "wildfire suppression and forest restoration." "We knew kind of what to expect," says Hudson, 41. "We had been doing the research for about two years, so we knew the kind of people coming into this work." But it took some time to build trust, Hudson says. "When we first met the guys that we ended up shooting with, they hadn't let us in enough to know what their backstories were, or for a lot of them, how dark their backgrounds were, or what kind of struggle they'd seen in their lives." Though "Wildland" includes scenes of the crew fighting fires, notably a blaze in California, the most affecting scenes are quiet, as men in training talk about the tough times that have come before, and the difficulty of finding a job. One man, older than most of the others, says when he was 18, he "flipped out on LSD" at a Grateful Dead concert. "I kind of lost my 20s," he says, adding that he's been in and out of jail a lot, and made mistakes. A young man says he left his family in Massachusetts, where there was a "lack of grit," adding, "people don't get up when they fall down," they "just stay at their parents' house." He says that he, by contrast, "can do this thing called adulthood." Other mention battles with addiction and depression. One of the film's more compelling characters is Ed Floate, a former smoke jumper who's now a training instructor. "Folks," he bluntly tells the novice firefighters, "this is not a safe occupation." Floate also shares another firefighter's observation that firefighting is "long hours of hard, boring work, punctuated by moments of sheer terror." Jablonski says he and Hudson both "know a lot of guys" like the men featured in "Wildland," but "I don't think either one of us felt like we'd seen a lot of those guys on film, or portrayed in more than one dimension." Hudson adds, that, in addition to needing to earn a paycheck, "most of the guys on the crew are looking to fill some need." "Wildland" airs at 11 p.m. Monday, Oct. 29 on PBS. -- Kristi Turnquist kturnquist@oregonian.com 503-221-8227 @Kristiturnquist Murray said Jones also told police that she had never met the woman she tried to have killed. The intended victim was married to a co-worker of Jones, who worked as a nurse at Loyola University Medical Center. Jones and the co-worker had been involved in a relationship, but the co-worker ended it in late 2017. Alpaca products will be for sale and raffled off to support a local military family on Nov. 3 in Auburn. The fifth annual Alpaca Fall Bazaar will take place from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. at the Knights of Columbus Hall, 4760 Garfield Road in Auburn. Attendees will get the chance to purchase an array of alpaca products and also pet, feed and take photos with the fuzzy creatures themselves. Blessed Sacrament Church, 3109 Swede Ave, is sponsoring an Alternative Christmas Gift Fair for 9 a.m. to 1 p.m. Sunday, Nov. 4. The fair will feature more than 30 nonprofit organizations covering local, national, and international needs. People will have an opportunity to sign cards for military personnel. There will be activities for children. For the second year in a row, Midland resident Jaxson Lewis is conducting a local Socktober donation event. The project focuses on collecting brand new men's, women's, children's and infant socks to donate to Midland County shelters. Lewis came across the idea for Socktober last year when he was searching for ideas on how to give back to the community. He came across YouTube star Kid President, who talked about hosting a sock drive in October - hence "Socktober." Lewis' rendition of the event stretched from the middle of October to the week of Thanksgiving last year. He ended up collecting more than 1,400 pairs of socks. Students at Hidden Treasures Preschool and Calvary Baptist Academy recently got to pretend to drive a police car, ambulance and fire truck. The Larkin Township Fire Department, the Midland Police Department, the MidMichigan Medical Center-EMS, and the Midland County Sheriff's Department gave of their time to visit the school earlier this month. Local heroes gave demonstrations of equipment and answered student questions. According to the charges, the innocent targets of the gang included Kenneth Whitaker, shot twice in the head in July 2016 while walking past an elementary school at 74th and Morgan streets. At the time, the Goonies were out for revenge after one of their own had been slain earlier that night, sources told the Tribune. They had just left a nearby hospital when they opened fire on Whitaker, 34, a security guard with no gang ties. To the editor: Jim Geisler is the candidate for county commissioner in District 5 who has proven himself time and time again to be the kind of commissioner, businessman and leader Midland County needs, one who will work with residents toward common goals. His leadership skills go back decades, long before he accepted the position of vice chairman of the county commission, a position he has thrived in for five years. Before that he served as chairman of the board's Executive, Administration & Operations, Finance and Law Enforcement & Justice committees, at various times. In all, he has been an active board member for eight years. A Midland resident for 41 years, Jim honed his skills early, first in the Marine Corps where he was honorably discharged as a sergeant and then as president of the student body at the University of Michigan-Dearborn. He bought his first company, Tri-City Plastics in Auburn and ran that for 15 years before selling. He now owns Geisler Enterprises, a 60,000-square-foot warehouse and business incubator. Through that business, he donates space and equipment to the Marines for its annual Toys for Tots Christmas drive, to the Girl Scouts for their annual cookie sale and to the Midland Rotary for its annual cookout. Jim's list of civic and professional boards and commissions on which he served are too numerous to place in a letter, so I will just point out a couple. First, he has sat on the City of Midland's Planning Commission and was elected its chairperson for two years. He is a member and past president of the Midland Chamber of Commerce. He is a member and past president of the Mid-Michigan Society of Plastics Engineers. He sat on the board of the Saginaw and Midland Water Supply System. Jim is a commissioner and businessman who has given back much to his community and deserves your support in the November election. MARK BONE Midland Having raised five children here over the last 20 years -- four of them Eagle Scouts, the other now an active duty Army wife -- I understand and will faithfully represent the conservative hometown values shared by most families regardless of party. These are my priorities if elected as our next state representative: Reduce car insurance costs. I support the bipartisan House plan to let drivers choose their level of insurance coverage at lower cost, up to $1,000 a year less for seniors. Improve our third-grade reading scores. After lengthy discussion with the director of the Bay City Dyslexia Center, I know there are tried and true methods we must ensure our teachers have the training and resources to apply. Continue the Republican Legislature's focus on improving skilled trades training, offering students an income exceeding that of their college-bound peers, and filling the strong demand for skilled labor in our manufacturing economy. Continue the Republican Legislature's appropriation of record-high funding for public schools. Our current state representative secured an extra $500,000 in new annual funding for "at risk" students in Midland Public Schools, but because it's not as much per pupil as other districts, I'll continue to pursue parity for every child in need. Fulfill the commitment to taxpayers a decade ago to repeal the "temporary" income tax increase enacted under the last Democratic governor. This budget year alone, due to the economic stimulus and job creation that resulted from the federal tax cuts based largely on legislation crafted by our own former Congressman Dave Camp, the state has collected half a billion dollars more in tax revenue than was projected. We can afford the promised tax cut, which will stimulate even further investment and job growth. Repeal the Pension Tax, which was unfairly imposed on senior citizens after they'd already retired, and after they'd already paid taxes on their income once while working. We should incentivize seniors to stay in Michigan, not relocate to Florida or other states that have no state income tax. Protect patients with preexisting conditions. As you may have read, I'm married to one. Protect our Great Lakes water and environment. I'm proud to be endorsed by Congressman Moolenaar, Sen. Jim Stamas, Small Business Association of Michigan, Michigan Chamber of Commerce, Michigan Corn Growers, and many others listed at www.AnnetteGlenn.com, and I respectfully ask your support as well. The concept of community is critical to a thriving democracy, and never more so than in times of turmoil. Our nation has become incredibly divided, with the current state of politics fracturing society in ways that will take years, if not decades, to heal. To return to civility, we must find common ground and move forward together. We won't always agree on everything, and we don't need to. We must remember our fundamental values and how much we do agree on. If I've learned anything while holding listening parties and knocking on doors and attending forums, it's that we care about each other in the 98th District. We care about the future and the world we are leaving to our kids and grandkids. My campaign is focused on core principles that have only become controversial and politicized in an effort to divide us. Michigan was once the shining light of America when it came to good jobs. We built our nation, and the working class, but current leaders in Lansing have voted to eliminate those very jobs that are the foundation of the middle class. Nobody should have to work multiple jobs just to make ends meet. Our schools were always funded, and teachers respected. Yet we're now living in a society where very wealthy special interests have worked incredibly hard to destabilize public education. Why? To give themselves even more. Michigan is raiding our tax dollars and giving them to for-profit schools, while public education crumbles. Educators are being forced to teach for standardized testing instead of what they, as professionals, know kids need to learn. I've heard many falsehoods about me, but perhaps the greatest is that I'm running because I'm some kind of radical. I'm the same person I've always been: I've always worked in organizations that aim to make the world better. We need people in government who care about everyone, not a select few. People with the skills and track records of working together to find solutions. The wave of enthusiasm for candidates like me this year isn't driven by hatred of the right; it's driven by a concern for humankind. On Nov. 6, it's between you and the ballot box. Vote for public schools. Vote for good jobs. Vote for better roads. Vote for health care. Vote for someone who will stand with the people of the 98th, not special interests. Vote for me, Sarah Schulz. For more information about my plan, visit: http://sarah4mi.org/sarah-schulz-issues/ Cooke said she was startled by the level of security for jurors. Their cellphones had been confiscated earlier in the day. Hours later, when they finally arrived at their hotel, armed deputies with police dogs searched the parking lot. They were kept from other hotel guests during dinner. The electrical cords to the televisions inside their rooms had been removed, and a deputy sat guard outside each of their doors throughout the night. Following the commissioning of the Hong Kong-Zhuhai-Macao Bridge (HZMB), Airport Authority Hong Kong (AA) is launching off-airport check-in services at the HZMB boundary crossing facilities for the convenience of passengers using the bridge to connect to destinations around the world. At the Hong Kong Boundary Crossing Facilities (HKBCF), the check-in service center has check-in counters and smart check-in kiosks where passengers can check their baggage and obtain boarding passes. ') } else { console.log ('nompuad'); document.write(' ') } // --> ') } else if (width >= 425) { console.log ('largescreen'); document.write('') } else { console.log ('nompuad'); document.write('') } // --> The center provides check-in services for Cathay Pacific, Cathay Dragon, Hong Kong Airlines and HK Express, available from 07:00am to 10:30pm. After checking in at the HKBCF, passengers may then go to the Hong Kong International Airport (HKIA) or elsewhere without the hassle of carrying their luggage. They will collect their checked baggage at their destinations. Passengers who prefer to proceed directly to the airport for check-in procedures can make use of public bus services at the HKBCF. The upstream check-in services set up by the AA at the Zhuhai Boundary Crossing Facilities has also started operations in tandem with the bridge, while the same service will be available at the Macao Boundary Crossing Facilities in the first quarter of 2019. With these upstream services, passengers can check-in and obtain boarding passes before going to HKIA via the bridge. For passengers who prefer to check-in at HKIA, dedicated transportation services are also available for them to proceed from Zhuhai or Macao via HKBCF to the airport directly. Steven Yiu, deputy director, service delivery of the AA, said, With these check-in services at the HZMBs three boundary crossing facilities, passengers can enjoy a hassle-free journey when traveling to various destinations around the world via HKIA. Leveraging HKIAs advantageous geographical location as a gateway to the mainland, we will continue to strengthen our multi-modal transportation services, striving to offer HKIAs extensive connectivity to passengers traveling to and from cities throughout the Pearl River Delta region and beyond. To provide an even more seamless travel experience for passengers using HKIA, an Intermodal Transfer Terminal at the HKIA is to be built, linked to the HKBCF by a new bonded vehicular bridge that is being built in parallel with the transfer terminal construction. When the new transfer terminal and bonded bridge completes in 2022, passengers who have completed upstream check-in procedures in the mainland and Macao and are traveling to HKIA via the HZMB will no longer need to undergo border clearance procedures at the HKBCF before boarding their flights. Instead, they will proceed directly to their boarding gates in the airport restricted area via the bonded bridge and the intermodal transfer terminal, and vice versa for passengers arriving at HKIA en route to the mainland and Macao via the HZMB. Like philosophy, politics is the art of the second question. Most people have the curiosity to ask a first question, and get a first response: What is justice? Getting what you deserve. But in this workaday, workanight world, we rarely think to ask the obvious followup: Well, what do we deserve? Second questions are the secret to understanding the world. The rules of politics work the same way: First question: Whats the deal with the people coming up through Mexico? First answer: Theyre a caravan of immigrants, the majority of them from Honduras, Guatemala, and El Salvador. Thats where far right-wing media would have you stop. Because, of course, its in their interest to portray them as a Horde. To use John Cales phrase, its a bullet of searchlight. If this is how you honestly see the worldif your brain is married to cable news, the number-one poisoner of senior citizens, then theres not a lot of medicine to fix what ails you. A caravan is coming. Whats there to understand? Here stands us, here stands the danger. Better close the windows. Better lock the doors. The mountains and deserts and the watchful stars wont guard us. The wall hasnt been built. God in heaven, who can save us from the caravan? Wont someone think of the Applebees? Is nothing sacred? But theres the second question, that somehow never gets asked: What makes them a caravan, and what are they running away from? Excellent question. Caravan is not the right word to use. Its the word the far-right wants you to use. The alternatives are more precise and accurate: the asylum seekers, the refugee convoy, the escapees, the friendless, the poor. However, using those terms would create the emotion of sympathy in listeners. That would make them human. The far-right doesnt want that. So caravan is the noun they use. Whatever you call them, an estimated five thousand people are moving through Mexico. Many of them are families. Many of them women and children. Most likely, the bulk of the populace will be absorbed by Mexico. But still, they are coming. So much for who they are. Onto the second part of the second question: What are they running away from? Now, thats the real question. Like anyone else, Hondurans and Guatemalans and Salvadorans prefer not to relocate if they have other options. But they dont have a choice. These families are moving north because their countriesHonduras especiallyare racked by massive, ceaseless violence. Honduras second largest city, San Pedro Sula, has been compared to a war zone. In 2012, the tiny nation suffered, on average, a score of homicides per day. Why? Because of us. Honduras was, until recently, a stable country. Well, perhaps its more precise to say its elite were stable. A steady ruling class is the kind of firm foundation you build colonialism on. A few years ago, that all changed. And we were involved. Run back the tape, wont you, to the Reagan Era? During the decade of John Hughes, South and Central America finally began to escape U.S. dominance. Theyd been trying to get out from under our thumb since the 19th century. This scared the holy hell out of Washington. So in the Seventiesand truthfully, in the preceding decades as wellwe pushed back against Latin and South America. There was a lot to do: sponsoring death squads, overthrowing governments, backing brutal dictators, war crimes, assassinations, the works. From our view, Honduras was a perfect place to stage our mafia adventures. We set up shop just south of the city of Comayagua, in Honduras. A little place called Palmerola Air Base, also called Soto Cano Air Base. That was ground zero for U.S. black bag operations in Latin America. Even before Palmerola was set up, we were using Honduras for our terrorist actions. Listing all our crimes would make for a far longer column. For instance, the blood-soaked Contras, who probably murdered about a hundred thousand people in Guatemala and Nicaragua, operated out of Honduras. So did the people who overthrew Guatemalas Arbenz, in 54. Lets not even talk about what we did in El Salvador. Eventually, Honduras had enough. This guy Zelaya got elected there in 2005. Ran on a platform of reform and peace. Hes successful. So Zelaya figures, why not join the neighbors? The Cold War is over, right? Honduras decides to join a leftist economic organization set up by Cuba and Venezuela. Zelaya goes even further: he pushes back against American manufacturers. Agitates for the minimum wage to go up. And even closing the holiest of holies, the Palmerola Base. Zelaya gets popular approval to rewrite the American-backed constitutionand wouldnt you know it, the day the vote was going to happen, he gets detained by the military, and exiled. The guys who pull off the coup are American-trained military officers. This is in 2009. The Obama Administration doesnt lift a finger. You can probably guess what follows. The people of these ravaged countries suffer because of us. There are hundreds of stories like this, from every country south of the Rio Grande. This particular set of refugees started from San Pedro Sula on October 12. In the beginning, there were about a hundred and sixty of them. They left because they couldnt find jobs, because they were terrified of crime, sick of poverty. According to the BBC: Most previous migrant caravans have numbered a few hundred people, but after a former politician posted about the plan on Facebook, news of it quickly spread and the numbers swelled. By the time the group set off in the early hours of 13 October, more than 1,000 Hondurans had joined. They have since crossed into neighbouring Guatemala and then Mexico, with thousands more people joining along the way. ... Its our dream to reach the United States, we want to give our children a better future and here [in Honduras] we cant find work, one mother of two told local newspaper El Heraldo. Theyre fainting. Hungry. Dehydrated. Sleeping on the streets. In other words, they cant fight back, not really. The refugees were a golden opportunity for the President, who ran on a white-supremacist platform of harassing brown people. As usual, Trump made up a bunch of numbers, added them to a collection of make-believe facts, and started yapping about it on Twitter. The President is insisting the asylum-seekers are criminals, are Middle Easterners, etc. Now, in a crazed, racist-grandfather-universe, this has a kind of logic to it: all of these people are reliably non-white, ergo, they must be the same. The liar-in-chief, who was suffering a bad month, needed a distraction for his troubled party. The Fox News organization was still lost in the woods after the demise of its hideous, lecherous founder. Conservatism, faced with the upcoming impeachment of its Orange God, desperately needed a new scandal. And so the myth of the Terrible Migrant Caravan was born. When you consider how many things frighten the far rightteens, Colin Kaepernick, Nike shoes, award ceremonies, SNL, lukewarm Dem politicians, all motion pictures, mouthy baristas, ungrateful grandchildren, and now poor asylum-seekersits amazing that they have the will to escape bed every morning. And so it was that the richest, most powerful country in the history of the world, a country of 325.7 million people, a nation that would not notice an influx of five thousand peoplea nation that doesnt seem to get upset when Irish immigrants overstay their visawell, my God, a small part of that nation decided these poor people were the four horsemen. For the sane majority of us, a simple thought experiment: Widen your view a bit. Look at everyone who moves to Europe and North America. What causes all of the scattered, desperate people to stream to the West? What would make anyone relocate permanently to a strange land? In our own lives, no matter how bludgeoned we are by daily affairs, most of us manage to crawl home with some small amount of satisfaction. Home is home, after all. Every stone, every tree, every brick we pass is written with history, with memory. Now that youve thought about this, imagine yourself an immigrant. Imagine tearing yourself away from the place your family has always lived. What would it take for you to move? It would have to be pretty bad, right? If you stop and think about it, really think about it, youll wonder about what we (and our allies) have done to the world. Either by our own hands, or indirectly, through climate change. The far right loves telling poor people there are consequences for everything. Well, there are consequences when we meddle in foreign lands. There are consequences when we burn the air and raise the oceans. There are consequences for our wars and pillagings. Why are we so scared? The question isnt who the refugees are, or why theyre coming. We know what theyre running away from. They know what theyre afraid of. Do we? Intel Corp beat analysts estimates for quarterly profit and revenue on Thursday, driven by its high-margin data center business and strong demand for its PC chips, sending its shares up as much as 6.0 percent in extended trading, though those gains later evaporated on concerns about U.S. trade tensions with China. Reuters report notes that "Intel bucked the trend thanks to strong sales of chips for PCs, the second quarter in the row the company benefited from the sector after years of stagnation in that business, and increasing sales of iPhone modem chips. Intel further noted that boosting their sales this quarter was its business for modems, which was up 131 percent in the quarter. The gain resulted from Intel completely replacing rival modem supplier Qualcomm in the most recent iPhone models. Intel's Interim Chief Executive Bob Swan added that "what the modems and memory do for the company is allow us to play in a much larger market." The companys 39 percent rise in profits and better-than-expected fourth-quarter forecast should come as a relief for investors after three days of grim news from other major chipmakers that have shaken stock markets globally." With news that AMD will be announcing their next-gen 7nm processors while Intel continues to struggle to deliver 10nm processors, the news may be different in January if AMD announces early release of their 7nm processors for consumer and business desktops, notebooks and servers. Being optimistic, Intel executives do not see any near-term weakness from the trade tensions or Chinese economy, despite the fact that large data center customers like Baidu Inc and consumer PC factories are located there. Interestingly the report touched on Intel's "Optane Memory" business indirectly by noting that Intel recorded a $290 million charge as a result of Micron Technology Incs decision to buy out Intels portion of a memory fabrication plant in Utah where the two had partnered to build advanced memory chips, a move analyst Patrick Moorhead of Moor Insights & Strategy called "negotiation tactics." He expects the two to find a way to work together. Intels Swan told Reuters that Intel has retained its rights to the technology and intends to eventually build its own factories to produce the chips. Despite their [Micron's] announcement, we will still have access to supply from the fab for the next 18 to 24 months, and that will give us time to explore the alternatives we have to produce the product, Swan said. For more on this, read the full Reuters report here. A new report this morning states that "Samsung Electronics is overhauling its line-up of premium phones for 2019, preparing to launch its first 5G-capable smartphone, a cheaper flagship model and a foldable-screen device to challenge Apple and stay ahead of Chinese rivals." This may be difficult with Xiaomi launching their new Mi Mix 3 yesterday with specs that crush Samsung's Galaxy Note 9 and S9 models. Patently Apple posted a report on Wednesday that noted that Samsung would likely be launching their next Galaxy S10 with 5G in late February. Today's Bloomberg report notes that Samsung is in talks with Verizon for a 5G rollout. On Sunday Patently Apple posted a report covering the two big features on the new Huawei Mate 20 Pro with under the display fingerprint scanning being one of them. Bloomberg is now reporting that Samsung will be next to introduce this feature in their Galaxy S10. Our Patently Mobile IP blog covered Samsung's patent for an "Ultrasonic" based fingerprint scanner for under display scanning back in July. Patently Apple reported on Oct. 11 that Samsung introduced their more economical A7 and A9 models with fresh premium specs like a rear Quad camera system. Bloomberg adds to their report that while Samsung released lower priced "A" models to better compete with the likes of Oppo, Huawei and others like Vivo, the company now hopes to introduce a unique folding smartphone in 2019 that will give them an edge over these same competitors. Samsung has been patenting a wide range of foldable and scrollable smartphones for years. This morning's Bloomberg report says that Samsung has likely chosen their first design model to be one that favors a portrait type of design that is "easier to hold with one hand even though its display may feel narrower when opened." Bloomberg further reports that "The prototype weighs more than 200 grams because it has bigger screens than any other phone on the market, meaning Samsung may have to reduce the battery size in order to make the device lighter. While the hinge has recently passed internal tests of folding more than 200,000 times -- the threshold for durability -- there are still questions about its so-called yield rate in mass-production. When a product is mass-produced, technical problems that werent found in prototypes may arise. The screen, when it does crack, shatters like dried paper." The bendable phone model may launch later in Q2 well after their classic Galaxy S10 arrives. Samsung is still working with Google on the software for their foldable model. Bryan Ma, vice president of devices research at IDC states in the Bloomberg report that "Samsung really needs to hit it out of the park on the next one, especially since the S9 and Note 9 have been such yawners. A foldable would garner bragging rights, but I wouldnt expect it to be an immediate hit." Of course bragging rights doesn't translate into 'hitting it out of the park' and Samsung's Android competitors in China keep dancing circles around them and nothing known to be coming from Samsung will change that. In the U.S., being first with 5G may win them some new customers if it's backed with a service or feature that is unique to 5G. Otherwise it'll be empty bragging rights. Samsung is now in a fight to remain relevant in the Android community. Samsung is just lucky this year that the U.S. government kept Huawei out of the market or they'd be in the fight for their life this holiday season. Though with Xiaomi getting closer to entering the U.S. market in 2019, their nightmare competition in China will likely be in their face shortly and losing Android market share in the U.S. will be assured. For more on this, read the full Bloomberg report here. The images below are from just one of many folding phone patents that Samsung has. You could review the patent report covering the images below here. Johnson is subject to the Illinois Sex Offender Registry because of an aggravated criminal sexual assault committed against a 28-year-old when he was 32, according to the registry, which still lists his address at an apartment in the 5300 block of West Montrose Avenue in Chicagos Jefferson Park neighborhood. constitution_center.jpg The National Constitution Center announced free admission and special activities for veterans, active military, and their families the week before Veterans Day, Nov. 5-10, followed by free admission for all visitors on Monday, Nov.12, for a Veterans Day Family Festival. (Facebook) The National Constitution Center on Thursday announced free admission and special activities for veterans, active military, and their families the week before Veterans Day, Nov. 5-10, followed by free admission for all visitors on Monday, Nov. 12, for a Veterans Day Family Festival, all through the support of Macy's. Laura Bush and former President George W. Bush will be honored Nov. 11 at the National Constitution Center in Philadelphia during the Liberty Medal Ceremony. Daily programming will include Thank-A-Vet letter-writing stations and public conversations with veterans. A full list of programs can be found here. The weeklong celebration of veterans and active military will also feature the National Constitution Center's 30th annual Liberty Medal Ceremony on Veterans Day, Nov. 11, which will honor President George W. Bush and Mrs. Laura Bush for their post-presidency work with veterans and their families. "It's an honor to offer free admission to the Center for veterans and their families as we give thanks for their service in preserving and defending the Constitution," National Constitution Center President and CEO Jeffrey Rosen said in a press release. "We hope as many veterans as possible will join us for a week of programing culminating in our award of the Liberty Medal on Veterans Day to President George W. Bush and Mrs. Laura Bush, in recognition of their service to veterans." The Center has partnered with area veterans groups including the Veterans Multi-Service Center; Thank-A-Vet; the Philadelphia Council of the Navy League of the United States; the Association of the United States Army, William Penn Chapter; Liberty USO; Army Public Affairs Northeast; U.S. Army Mid-Atlantic Recruiting; and The Steven A. Cohen Military Family Clinic at the University of Pennsylvania, as well as Team 43 of the Bush Institute's Military Service Initiative, to include members of the veterans community as guests to the ceremony. The National Constitution Center is located at 525 Arch St. on Philadelphia's Independence Mall. The Center is open 9:30 a.m. to 5 p.m. Mondays through Saturdays and from noon to 5 p.m. on Sundays. The Center will be closed for museum admission on Nov. 11 in preparation for the Liberty Medal Ceremony. The full list of Veterans Week programming is available on the Center's website, as are details about admission. A complaint to ChildLine, Pennsylvania's child abuse reporting system, has resulted in charges against a middle school math teacher accused of "inappropriately touching" four 8th-grade girls, Pa. state police say. As TribLive.com and KDKA-TV report, the teacher, 51-year-old Robert Willison, has been suspended from his post as a math teacher at Slippery Rock Area Middle School in Butler County, Pa. State Police tell TribLive.com the incidents happened on four separate dates involving four different female students - three of whom are 13 and one who is 14. All four girls tell police Willison touched their buttocks, TribLive.com writes. The incidents occurred between Aug. 15 and Sept. 20. Details from TribLive.com: State police say Willison had previously been suspended twice: Once in 2012 for allegedly inappropriately touching a female teacher in the copy room, and again in 2015 for allegedly touching another teacher and making inappropriate comments about students to her. Willison faces felony counts of institutional sexual assault, corruption of minors and endangering the welfare of children; indecent assault, a misdemeanor, and a summary count of harassment. School officials could not be reached for comment by TribLive. A neighbor found the three-year-old boy wandering in the streets Thursday morning, prompting police in western Pennsylvania to investigate. What they found in the boy's home was even worse, as police say his parents were "squatters." As KDKA-TV and the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette report, the boy's parents -- 39-year-old Athena Coffey and 39-year-old Joel Coffey of North Braddock, Pa., were both taken into custody during the police investigation. Their three-year-old son is now in the custody of the county's Children, Youth and Families, and police said he appeared to be in good health and was a "happy and cheerful kid," KDKA writes. The boy's home, however, was anything but cheerful, according to police. Officers searched the family's second-floor apartment, which should have been vacant according to records, but police discovered the family's "deplorable" living conditions, instead, as KDKA reports: "There was urine in a cup, feces in the toilet that has been there for months, drug paraphernalia all through the house," Acting North Braddock Police Chief Issac Daniele told the station. Indeed, North Braddock officials described the couple as squatters: "My code enforcement officer said there should have been nobody living there in that top floor apartment," Chief Daniele told KDKA. Police said the apartment was littered with hypodermic needles, empty heroin stamp bags and garbage. There was no heat in the apartment, no running water and no food in the refrigerator. The stench in the apartment was so bad, police said they gagged when they were inside. At last report, Athena Coffey was facing charges of endangering the welfare of children and possession of drug paraphernalia and was lodged in Allegheny County Jail. However, there was no immediate word on charges against Joel Coffey, who had been taken into custody for questioning later Thursday. The best part of these 1952 photos of President Dwight Eisenhower is the other things you can see in them. The Hotel Warner and Senate Theater are clearly visible in one shot along with The Patriot and The Evening News office on Market Street. The uniforms of the state troopers are quite different from what they wear today. There is one photo of a woman wearing a dress with the name "Ike" all over it. She is being lifted up to the podium to give Mamie Eisenhower flowers - wouldn't happen today. Eisenhower arrived by train. These days everyone arrives through HIA on an airplane. All of the vehicles in Eisenhower's motorcade are convertibles - he is easily accessible. Again, very different from what we see today. Eisenhower visited Harrisburg on Monday, Oct. 27, 1952, as part of his presidential campaign. According to The Patriot, the visit was scheduled to last just 40 minutes. According to the newspaper, 100,000 people gathered to hear Eisenhower speak. He was greeted by a "rolling roar of welcome." "The big heart of Harrisburg beat out a hero's welcome to Gen. Dwight D. Eisenhower yesterday as the Republican presidential candidate paid major attention to this Capital of a friendly state on the last week of his campaign. The cheers and warm shouts from the uncounted thousands who lined the streets on his route from the Pennsylvania railroad station and the thunderous chant from the throng assembled before the Capitol as he spoke were the pulsebeats of the welcome, one such as this city -= accustomed to great and near-great - has rarely extended. From the moment the 'Eisenhower Special' train rolled in, 20 minutes late, from Lancaster at 11:33 a.m. until it headed westward toward Altoona, Johnstown and Pittsburgh, nearly an hour later, the general was accorded a welcome that was warm, deep and pervading." WASHINGTON (AP) -- Suspicious packages addressed to New Jersey Sen. Cory Booker and former National Intelligence Director James Clapper -- and similar in appearance to pipe bomb devices sent to other prominent Democrats -- have been intercepted, the FBI said Friday, as investigators scrambled from coast to coast to locate the culprit and motives behind a bizarre plot aimed at critics of President Donald Trump. The discoveries brought to 12 the total number of devices addressed in recent days to Democratic figures, including former President Barack Obama, former Vice President Joe Biden, Hillary Clinton and CNN. The FBI said the package to Booker was intercepted in Florida. The one discovered at a Manhattan postal facility was addressed to Clapper in care of CNN. An earlier package had been sent to former Obama CIA Director John Brennan in care of CNN in New York. Investigators were analyzing the innards of the crude devices to reveal whether they were intended to detonate or simply sow fear just before Election Day. Booker is a potential 2020 presidential contender. At a press conference Thursday, officials in New York would not discuss possible motives or details on how the packages found their way into the U.S. postal system. Nor would they say why none of the packages had detonated, but they stressed they were still treating them as "live devices." "As far as a hoax device, we're not treating it that way," police Commissioner James O'Neill said. Details suggested a pattern -- that the items were packaged in manila envelopes, addressed to prominent Trump critics and carried U.S. postage stamps. The devices were being examined by technicians at the FBI's forensic lab in Quantico, Virginia. The packages stoked nationwide tensions and fears as voters prepared to vote Nov. 6 to determine partisan control of Congress -- a campaign both major political parties have described in near-apocalyptic terms. Even with the sender still unknown, politicians from both parties used the threats to decry a toxic political climate and lay blame. LATEST: 12 suspicious packages known to have been sent as of Friday morning at 9:15 a.m. ET: 1 - Obama 1 - Clinton 2- Biden 1 - CNN / Brennan 1 - Holder / Wasserman Schultz's office 2 - Waters 1 Clapper 1 Booker 1 - Soros 1 - De Nirohttps://t.co/5MGorR3Wih NBC News (@NBCNews) October 26, 2018 Funny how lowly rated CNN, and others, can criticize me at will, even blaming me for the current spate of Bombs and ridiculously comparing this to September 11th and the Oklahoma City bombing, yet when I criticize them they go wild and scream, its just not Presidential! Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) October 26, 2018 The Justice Department says a person has been taken into custody in connection with a series of package bombs sent to prominent Democrats. Spokeswoman Sarah Flores says a news conference is scheduled for later Friday. The person's name was not immediately released. The Washington Post says a man in his 50s was taken into custody in South Florida. The packages -- 12 so far -- spurred a coast-to-coast investigation, as officials scrambled to locate a culprit and possible motive amid questions about whether new packages were being sent or simply surfacing after a period in mail system. The devices have targeted well-known Democrats including former President Barack Obama, former Vice President Joe Biden, Hillary Clinton and former Attorney General Eric Holder. BREAKING: Federal authorities have arrested a man in connection to the suspected explosive packages, according to multiple law enforcement sources Follow live updates: https://t.co/VlvTDuNkn5 CNN (@CNN) October 26, 2018 Attorney General Jeff Sessions said Friday the Justice Department was dedicating every available resource to the investigation "and I can tell you this: We will find the person or persons responsible. We will bring them to justice." Trump, on the other hand, complained that "this 'bomb' stuff" was taking attention away from the upcoming election and said critics were wrongly blaming him and his heated rhetoric. Republicans are doing so well in early voting, and at the polls, and now this Bomb stuff happens and the momentum greatly slows - news not talking politics. Very unfortunate, what is going on. Republicans, go out and vote! Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) October 26, 2018 Funny how lowly rated CNN, and others, can criticize me at will, even blaming me for the current spate of Bombs and ridiculously comparing this to September 11th and the Oklahoma City bombing, yet when I criticize them they go wild and scream, its just not Presidential! Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) October 26, 2018 Investigators were analyzing the innards of the crude devices to reveal whether they were intended to detonate or simply sow fear just before Election Day. Law enforcement officials told The Associated Press that the devices, containing timers and batteries, were not rigged to explode upon opening. But they were uncertain whether the devices were poorly designed or never intended to cause physical harm. Homeland Security Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen, in an interview Thursday with Fox News Channel, acknowledged that some of packages originated in Florida. One official told AP that investigators were homing in on a postal facility in Opa-locka, Florida, where they believe some packages originated. This story has been updated. Officials say a carelessly discarded cigarette sparked a fire that displaced 14 people from an apartment complex in Ephrata. A Pennsylvania State Police Fire Marshal assisted in determining the preliminary cause and origin of the fire, according to a news release from police in Ephrata. That investigation also included interviews of residents, 911 callers, and residents. Officials determined the origin of the fire is a second-story balcony, and the manner is accidental. APARTMENT FIRE. The Ephrata Police Department was on scene at a large fire at 177 Old Mill Road this afternoon. Kudos... Posted by Ephrata Police Department on Thursday, October 25, 2018 Ephrata Pioneer Fire Company posted Thursday afternoon that they and mutual aid crews were fighting an second alarm fire at an apartment complex on Old Mill Road. Police said Ephrata ambulances transported displaced residents to the Ephrata High School that acted as a temporary shelter. The Red Cross helped get displaced families into temporary shelters. A bipartisan group of lawmakers from Pennsylvania and West Virginia is accusing the U.S. Bureau of Prisons of failing to follow congressional directives to hire more full-time corrections officers. They also are critical of the bureau for: Failing to fully implement a policy of having at least two corrections officers on duty each shift in housing units in high-security institutions such as Over-reliance on augmentation -- the practice of having staff who are not corrections officers stand guard. The accusations are contained in a Thursday letter sent to Attorney General Jeff Sessions III by Pennsylvania Sens. Pat Toomey and Robert P. Casey Jr., Rep. Bill Shuster and West Virginia Sens. Joe Manchin III and Shelly Moore Capito. This is the second time this year a bipartisan group of lawmakers has written Sessions expressing safety concerns due to what they claim is the lack of adequate staffing. They again cite the 2013 murder of corrections officer Eric Williams while he was working alone in a housing unit with more than 100 inmates at the Canaan prison in northeastern Pennsylvania. The latest letter also makes note of two deaths this year in the Hazelton federal prison in West Virginia. A corrections officer was fatally injured during an April housing unit fight and in September an inmate was killed. Since 2016 Congress has provided the Bureau of Prisons with money to have at least two corrections officers in each housing unit at high-security institutions on all three shifts, the lawmakers point out. It is their understanding this is not occurring and that some wardens are allowing second officers to leave their workstation after all inmates are secured in their cells, the letter states. The lawmakers ask Sessions for an update on current bureau staffing practices at high-security institutions, including a detailed report on the two-officer minimum policy in housing units and any exceptions or exemptions made to it. "We understand the inherent dangers of these jobs and remain fully committed to ensuring the brave men and women of BOP have the resources they need to do them safely," the letter states. It points out Congress provided more than $7 billion in fiscal 2018 for salaries and expenses. That was $29 million more than the president requested, it states. The lawmakers express their concern about the over-reliance on augmentation and note a Senate subcommittee had directed the bureau to curtail it, particularly in housing units. They ask Session to provide an update on the ongoing efforts to hire more full-time corrections officers and the bureau's efforts to reduce over-reliance on augmentation. In March, a bipartisan coalition of nine Pennsylvania federal lawmakers led by Rep. Thomas A. Marino of Lycoming County, asked Sessions to reconsider the elimination of vacant positions at the 11 federal prisons in the state. That letter expressed concern about the bureau plans to cut 6,100 vacant or soon-to-be vacant positions nationwide including 182 at Allenwood and Lewisburg prisons and 39 at Canaan. Spokesmen for Marino and Toomey said Friday the bureau never responded. Noting "a butcher knife has long been considered a 'deadly weapon' in Pennsylvania," a state Superior Court panel has denied an appeal by a man who stabbed a woman after she gave him Thanksgiving leftovers. The ruling means Frank Aiello can't escape the 8- to 20-year prison term he is serving for attempting to kill that Good Samaritan and then trying to stab a cop. The incident that sent Aiello, 57, to jail occurred in Philadelphia on Nov. 29, 2014. Senior Judge William H. Platt noted in the state court opinion that Cheryl Mollo felt sorry for Aiello because he was distraught over not having seen his kids for a long time. So Mollo invited him to her home and gave him a plate of leftovers. Aiello refused to leave, however. Instead, police said, he told Mollo he was going to kill himself and her. Then Aiello started punching her. Mollo escaped to the bathroom and called police. When she came out, Aiello grabbed a butcher knife and threatened her with it. Police knocked on the door, and when Mollo went to open it, Aiello plunged the knife into her chest, puncturing one of her lungs, investigators said. Police burst into the home and one officer ordered Aiello at gunpoint to drop the knife. Aiello told the cops that if they came toward him "there are going to be problems," police said. Even while being tased, Aiello tried to stab one officer in the foot with the knife, police said. The weapon flew out of his hand only when he was hit with a second jolt of electricity. Aiello's prison sentence was imposed after he was convicted in 2016 on charges of attempted murder, aggravated assault, possessing an instrument of crime, making terroristic threats and reckless endangerment. On appeal, Aiello claimed there wasn't enough evidence to prove he intended to kill Mollo or to severely injury any police officer. He claimed he didn't actually try to stab one of the cops, but that he simply made an involuntary stabbing motion because he was being shocked. The fact that Aiello stabbed Mollo in the chest is "sufficient evidence to establish the specific intent to kill," Platt countered. It is evident as well that Aiello deliberately tried to stab a cop, the judge found, because he waited until the officer was within arm's length to swing the knife. Tickets for the Chicago event went fast, with all but the most expensive seats selling out just a few days after they went on sale in September. Less than 200 tickets still were available Friday on Ticketmasters website, going for $640 to $2,500. Cheaper options are being sold secondhand on StubHub, but a ticket in the nosebleed seats will still cost about $100. It seems obvious to say, but elections are all about choosing the candidates who will best represent the interests and priorities of the people they serve. For the first time in more than a decade, thanks to a newly redrawn congressional map imposed by the Pennsylvania Supreme Court, midstate residents will have a real chance to pick a congressman who truly represents them. Central Pennsylvania's redrawn 10th Congressional District (PennLive file) Rather than snaking down from northeastern Pennsylvania and the Lehigh Valley, central Pennsylvania's new 10th Congressional District includes all of Dauphin County, a big chunk of Cumberland County, and a portion of York County. It is a district, in short, that looks like the capital region. And this year, instead of choosing from incumbents who had negligible ties to the region, like U.S. Rep. Lou Barletta, of Hazleton, and former U.S. Rep. Charlie Dent, of Allentown, capital region residents will have the chance to choose from two candidates who make their home in central Pennsylvania. And in incumbent Republican U.S. Rep. Scott Perry and Democratic opponent George Scott, both of York County, midstate residents are presented with a clear choice on Election Day. Confronted with that choice, the Editorial Board of PennLive/The Patriot-News endorses Democrat George Scott as the best choice for election in the 10th Congressional District. We'll begin by examining what both men have in common. Both Scott and Perry have honorably served their country in uniform. Perry, of Carroll Township, has risen through the ranks of the Army National Guard to earn a commission as brigadier general. Perry is also a successful small businessman. Scott, of Franklin Township, is a retired Army lieutenant colonel with 20 years of service. After military life, Scott followed another calling, and currently serves as Lutheran pastor of a church in East Berlin, Adams County. The case for George Scott Scott, who aspires to be a "servant-leader," is a political moderate at a time when American politics is badly in need of some moderation. He impressed the board with his views on healthcare, women's reproductive rights and his commitment to increasing the minimum wage and expanding Medicaid coverage, among other issues. Unlike Perry, who has marched in lockstep with the House's most conservative faction, Scott has said he will not support current House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., for House speaker should Democrats retake the majority on Election Day. His aspiration to bipartisanship in an institution where that tradition is a dying art was also refreshing. He told the board that "it all starts with personal relationships ... not just with people in my party, but with folks on the other side of the aisle ... who want to solve tough issues." He shares Perry's commitment to the Second Amendment right to keep and bear arms. But unlike his Republican opponent, Scott also believes that right must be balanced with better regulation, including background checks for all gun sales and bans on products like bump stocks and high-capacity magazines. Scott has also called for a strong federal policy to address climate change, and says one that has caught his eye is a carbon fee-and-dividend proposal advanced by the Citizens Climate Initiative that would tax fossil fuels at production or point of importation, according to the carbon dioxide (one of the top greenhouse gases) produced. The idea is to get business, industry and government to more quickly convert to conversion to renewables and other cleaner fuels. Watch PennLive's full editorial board meeting with George Scott. The argument against Scott Perry. After three terms in Congress, Perry has emerged as a sharp-elbowed partisan and loyal conservative foot soldier of the hyperpartisan Freedom Caucus, a coalition of GOP lawmakers whose main priority often seems to be less about effective governance and more about ensuring a permanent state of legislative paralysis on Capitol Hill. Perry has voted repeatedly to repeal the Affordable Care Act, without approving legislation that would have replaced former President Barack Obama's signature legislative achievement. In 2017, he voted in favor of the GOP-authored alternative, the American Healthcare Act. Despite recent attempts at Republican white-washing, the bill would have made it harder and much more expensive for people with pre-existing conditions to obtain insurance coverage. Perry voted against a carbon tax proposal and has said his preference is to let market forces continue to attack the problem. He pointed to large emission reductions that have occurred organically in recent years as American power plants have moved from coal to natural gas as a fuel source. Watch PennLive's full editorial board meeting with Scott Perry. Perry's assertion to a constituent that he didn't want to pay for maternity care for other women because "I have two children, and we're not having any more," is dangerously short-sighted and a profound violation of the social contract between Americans. Perry joined with the Freedom Caucus to call for the impeachment of Rod Rosenstein, the senior U.S. Department of Justice official who oversees Special Counsel Robert Mueller's investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 presidential election. And he made the bizarre assertion, without providing any evidence, that ISIS was behind the mass shooting in Las Vegas that wounded hundreds and resulted in the death of 59 people. Asked by the board to substantiate that claim, which he still stands by, Perry declined, saying he'd been given access to confidential information he could not share. The Nov. 6 midterm offers central Pennsylvania voters a chance to forge a new direction, in a new district, with someone who truly represents their values. George Scott is that candidate. This is one of a series of stories on where the candidates for Pennsylvania's 10th Congressional District stand on issues of concern to voters. In the new 10th, comprised of Dauphin, most of Cumberland and northern York counties, incumbent Rep. Scott Perry, a Republican, is seeking a fourth term. He is being challenged by Democrat George Scott, a career Army officer now serving as a Lutheran pastor in East Berlin. Here are their positions on working with President Donald J. Trump and the current sharp political divides in Washington: Both candidates seem a little timid - at least in party-neutral settings - on how to play the Trump card in this election. Scott, perhaps mindful that he's running in a district where President Donald J. Trump outpolled Hillary Clinton by 10 percentage points in 2016, has avoided bashing the president during the campaign, instead preaching the need for bipartisanship at the Capitol. It's a given that Scott stands in disgreement with Trump's policies on many issues, from attempts to kill the Affordable Care Act to building the wall on the southern border to the fairness of the 2017 federal cuts. But he has given Trump credit during the campaign, for example, for opening the door through his June summit with North Korean Leader Kim Jong Un to the return of American Korean War veterans' remains, and for winning what many see as modest improvements in recent trade deals with Mexico and Canada. "I'm not an idealogue," Scott said. "I'm a practical person that wants to work on bipartisan solutions that will benefit the people right here in this district." Perry, meanwhile, has consistently stressed a preference for Trump's policies over Trump's practices. "I like his policies," Perry said when asked if Trump was a president he enjoys working with. "I think he's heading in the right direction. I think he's done things that haven't been done in a very long time. "I do think he's a disrupter," the Congressman added. "That makes it uncomfortable for some folks. But I... try to stay out of the drama and stick to the policies, and I think the policies are working and you're seeing the fruits of that all across the country." Perry has actually strayed from the White House's position a little more than most House Republicans, and that's owing primarily to what he sees as his principled opposition to any legislation that busts the federal budget. Aside from budget bills, other times Perry has differed with the White House have included his opposition to a "compromise" immigration bill, efforts to impose new privacy protections for American citizens under the Foreign Intelligence and Surveillance Act. Though vote trackers show Perry has voted with the President 85.9 percent of the time, that is a lower rate than all but 22 of the 235 members of the majority Republican caucus. Perry cites his relative independence as a sign that he tries to stay true to the principles he ran on, including trying to fix what he sees as a broken federal budget. Scott, meanwhile, has pointed to the GOP's conservative Freedom Caucus - to which Perry belongs - as lying at the heart of political gridlock that's blocked bipartisan agreement on important issues like immigration and the farm bill. Scott has argued former Republican Speaker of the House John Boehner pointed to the Freedom Caucus as "obstructionists," and a primary reason for him (Boehner) stepping down from the Speakership. "We've got to get leaders elected in Congress who are willing to put people above party, and put principle above rhetoric, and turn away from this divisiveness, turn away from demonizing the others," Scott said. Perry has shot back hard several times this fall at that line of criticism, arguing, in essence, that's what he promised to voters in the old 4th District, and that's what they decided to buy. "With all due respect, extremism is burning guns on the fire," he said, in a reference to Scott's much-discussed primary campaign ad in which he declared himself willing to vote for certain gun control measures. "What members of the Freedom Caucus generally do, is we go to our district and say: 'This is what we will do if you elect us to Congress. This is what we will do. We will not vote for spending bills, for instance, that blow up the deficit. We won't do it, right?' "And so when we don't do it then somehow we're the obstructionists... Yes, John Boehner had a problem because he issues orders and if you don't follow them you're a problem," Perry continued. "I take my orders from the people in the district. Not from Washington D.C." North Central announces acceptance into NJCAA, addition of six varsity sports PETOSKEY For years, local high school student athletes have continued their collegiate athletic careers at the junior college level, heading to the likes of Lansing or Grand Rapids to do so. Emergency crews were called to the old post office, 404 W. Harrison St., about 12:50 p.m. after a report of a person having suffered a fall, and a hazardous materials incident was called just before 1:05 p.m., the spokesman said. By Mark Hosenball and Gabriella Borter WASHINGTON/NEW YORK (Reuters) The investigation into 10 pipe bombs sent to high-profile Democrats and critics of U.S. President Donald Trump is focusing on leads in Florida, a federal law enforcement source said on Thursday while another source said investigators believe the devices design came from the internet. All the suspicious packages were believed to have gone through the U.S. postal system at some point, the source said. Many of the packages had the return address of the Florida office of U.S. Representative Debbie Wasserman Schultz, who formerly chaired the Democratic National Committee, according to the Federal Bureau of Investigation. The instructions for such explosive devices are widely available on websites and in propaganda distributed by militant groups such as Islamic State and al-Qaeda, said the second law enforcement official and a former federal government bomb expert. Former Vice President Joe Biden and actor Robert De Niro on Thursday became the latest targets of the bombs, none of which exploded. The bombs have heightened what already was a contentious campaign season ahead of the Nov. 6 elections in which Trumps Republicans will try to maintain majorities in the Senate and House of Representatives. The episode has also called attention to the harsh rhetoric Trump wields against his rivals. Trump condemned the bombs but later blamed the media, his frequent foil, for much of the angry tone. No one has claimed responsibility and the FBI urged the public to report any tips. The packages consisted of a manila envelope with a bubble-wrap interior containing potentially destructive devices, the FBI said. Each bore a computer-printed address label and six Forever postage stamps, the agency said. Some of the packages sent to New York locations had envelopes of white powder in them, but FBI Assistant Director William Sweeney said at a briefing in New York that initial analysis showed it was not a biological threat. The pipe bombs discovered on Wednesday were similar to the ones sent to Biden and De Niro, a federal official told Reuters. Authorities described the devices as crude while security experts said their goal may have been to create fear rather than to kill. FBI TO STUDY CNN BOMB One of the bombs was sent to the New York headquarters of CNN, which Trump has frequently derided for its coverage of him, and the network said on Thursday the device was being taken in a bomb-proof truck to the FBI lab in Quantico, Virginia, for analysis. Leading Democrats said the bombs were a dangerous outgrowth of an antagonistic political atmosphere created by the president. Trump and other Republicans have likened Democrats to an angry mob, citing protests at the confirmation hearing of U.S. Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh. The FBI said on Thursday one of the two packages sent to Biden who once said he would have fought Trump if they were in high school was discovered at a mail facility in his home state of Delaware and the second at another location. The device intended for De Niro, who received a loud ovation when he hurled an obscenity at Trump at the Tony Awards in June, was sent to one of his properties in New York City. At a Wisconsin rally on Wednesday night Trump, who has denounced news media organizations as an enemy of the people, called attention to how nice Im behaving tonight but on Thursday morning he attacked the media. A very big part of the Anger we see today in our society is caused by the purposely false and inaccurate reporting of the Mainstream Media that I refer to as Fake News, Trump wrote. It has gotten so bad and hateful that it is beyond description. Mainstream Media must clean up its act, FAST! TWO BOMBS FOR WATERS Several of the people who were sent bombs including former President Barack Obama and Trumps rival for the presidency, Hillary Clinton are frequent targets of right-wing critics. Also sent packages were Eric Holder, who served as attorney general under Obama; former CIA Director John Brennan, who had his security clearance withdrawn after frequently lambasting Trump; prominent Democratic Party donor George Soros; and California Representative Maxine Waters, another outspoken Trump critic. Two packages were sent to Waters, whom Trump has called an extraordinarily low IQ person. Several politicians, including U.S. Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell and New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio, described the package bombs as an act of terrorism. Someone is trying to intimidate. Someone is trying to quash voices in this country using violence, De Blasio said. I am confident that we will find the perpetrator or perpetrators. (Reporting by Susan Heavey in Washington and Jonathan Allen in New York; Additional reporting by Brendan OBrien in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, Mark Hosenball in Washington and Barbara Goldberg in New York; Writing by Bill Trott; Editing by Lisa Shumaker and Cynthia Osterman) The school currently has zero debt and this is the right time for this sale given favorable market conditions, according to the letter, a version of which was later posted online. That said, in an era of increased competition, changing audience needs and wants, and declines in class enrollment, we must re-examine parts of our operations to ensure a continued balanced budget as well as putting in place a road map for the future. 2.6k SHARES Facebook Twitter Whatsapp Pinterest Reddit Print Mail Flipboard The Georgia NAACP has filed a complaint against Sec. of State Brian Kemp alleging that votes for Democrat Stacey Abrams are being counted for Kemp in the governors race. The Georgia NAACP described the situation in a statement provided to PoliticusUSA: The Georgia NAACP has received complaints from several voters on touch screen irregularities when attempting to select Stacey Abrams as their choice for governor the machines instead chose Secretary of State Brian Kemp. In other instances, machines showed ballots being cast before any the person actually voted. According to reports from eye witnesses to NAACP officials, this has occurred in at least four counties in Georgia including Bartow, Dodge, Cobb, and Henry Counties. Yesterday the NAACP filed complaints with both Bartow and Dodge Countys Board of Elections and this morning filed complaints in both Cobb and Henry counties. The NAACP is a non-partisan organization, and we want to ensure that each voter is able to cast their ballot for their candidate of choice. NAACP Georgia State President Phyllis Blake said, Weve had a steady stream of reported malfunctions of voting machines and refuse to sit idly by while this election is compromised. The recent Rachel Maddow show on voter suppression in Georgia highlighted some of the clear conflict of interest issues surrounding Kemp and his failure to protect the integrity of the vote and democracy in Georgia. We just want him to know the world is watching. Illegal Republican efforts to toss mail-in ballots that were from minority voters were shot down by a federal judge on Wednesday, and with the gubernatorial election in a statistical tie, Republicans are engaging in every voter suppression technique imaginable to keep Abrams voters from showing up at the polls, and if they do show up, not counting their voters. Sunlight is the best disinfectant to combat Republican voter suppression. The nation is watching, and more importantly, voters are not being deterred by the undemocratic Republican efforts. The people are fighting, and they will not have their rights taken away or be silenced at the polls. For more discussion about this story join our Rachel Maddow and MSNBC group. Follow Jason Easley on Facebook. 6.8k SHARES Facebook Twitter Whatsapp Pinterest Reddit Print Mail Flipboard The Arizona Senate contest has been one of the closest races in the country this election cycle, but Rachel Maddow may have just dashed the GOPs hopes of holding onto the seat. In a brilliant fact check, Maddow exposed GOP candidate Martha McSallys blatant lies about her position on protecting health care coverage for her constituents. Are you freaking kidding me? Maddow said in response to the Republicans pledge that she is the candidate who will protect the Affordable Care Act after once saying she wanted to fing kill it. Video: Transcript: MADDOW: Congresswoman Martha McSally of Arizona told her colleagues, quote, lets get this f-ing thing done. Says Martha McSally. According to other people in the room and multiple reports, she didnt say fing. She said the whole thing. Lets get this [beep], lets get this f-ing thing done. And by this fing thing, she means lets kill Obama care. Lets f-ing kill it. Thats Martha McSally. And now shes running for Senate in Arizona like this. MCSALLY: We cannot go back to where we were before Obamacare where people were one diagnosis away from going bankrupt because they could not get access to health care. MADDOW: What was the way she put it again? Lets get this f-ing thing done, lets f-ing kill Obamacare. Now running as the Senate candidate that Arizona should trust to protect Obamacare. Its just like are you freaking kidding me? Republicans tried to kill Obamacare. Now theyre running as if they created it. Republicans in Congress voted dozens of times to repeal the Affordable Care Act, including protections for those with pre-existing conditions. Yet, in this election cycle, Donald Trump and GOP candidates all across the country including some of the same folks who have their names attached to lawsuits challenging protections for pre-existing conditions are running as if they invented Obamacare. As Maddow so appropriately said on Thursday night, Are you freaking kidding me? This strategy might work inside of the right-wing media bubble or at one of Trumps mob-style MAGA rallies, but anybody who has been paying attention will see right through it. Follow Sean Colarossi on Facebook. 221 SHARES Facebook Twitter Whatsapp Pinterest Reddit Print Mail Flipboard By Phil Stewart and Delphine Schrank WASHINGTON/PIJIJIAPAN, Mexico (Reuters) President Donald Trumps administration may send up to 1,000 active-duty troops to the U.S.-Mexico border, officials said on Thursday, as Trump hammered away at the issue of illegal immigration ahead of congressional elections. Trumps threat was sparked by the advance of a caravan of Central American migrants trekking through Mexico and headed toward the United States. I am bringing out the military for this National Emergency. They will be stopped! Trump wrote on Twitter. U.S. Homeland Security Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen said in an interview with the Fox News Channel that her department had asked the Pentagon for help to bolster its capabilities, including for some air support some logistics, planning, vehicle barriers, engineering. She said the requested support was meant to help better protect the Department of Homeland Securitys (DHS) agents and ports of entry. How to meet the request is up to the Department of Defense, Nielsen added. The preliminary DHS request could require deploying between 800 and 1,000 active-duty troops, two U.S. officials said, speaking on condition of anonymity. The U.S. military is prohibited from carrying out civilian law enforcement on American soil unless specifically authorized by Congress. Although Trumps language has suggested the military might be directly involved in preventing the migrants from entering the United States, one official said the troops would engage only in logistics and infrastructure services, like setting up tents, and not law enforcement activities. There are currently 2,100 National Guardsmen along the border, but the DHS request could lead to the first large-scale deployment of active-duty U.S. military forces to support the border protection mission under Trump. The Pentagon said it was working with DHS to determine the specifics of our support to the Customs and Border Protection agency, part of DHS. Trump and his fellow Republicans have sought to make the caravan and immigration major issues ahead of the Nov. 6 midterm congressional elections, in which the presidents party is trying to maintain control of the House of Representatives and the Senate. FLEEING VIOLENCE Fleeing violence, poverty and government corruption in their home countries, the caravan of migrants on Thursday continued its slow trek toward the distant U.S. border. Men, women and children set off at dawn from the southern Mexican town of Mapastepec, in the state of Chiapas. A local official said 5,300 migrants had assembled in the town on Wednesday night. As the sun began to blaze, they marched 30 miles (48 km) to the town of Pijijiapan, where they rested on blankets and tarps in the main park. A group of Mexican police, who said the responsibility for deporting migrants rests with immigration officials, tried to flag down rides for some. Meanwhile, further south in Guatemala, a second caravan of more than a thousand people that had formed on Monday and since broken into smaller groups also moved northward. Lucrecia Oliva, a worker at a migrant shelter in Guatemalas capital, said 400 migrants arrived on Wednesday in small clusters. On Thursday afternoon, around 60 Honduran migrants sat in the street outside, resting and eating donated food. GO BACK TO YOUR COUNTRY To those in the Caravan, turnaround, we are not letting people into the United States illegally. Go back to your Country and if you want, apply for citizenship like millions of others are doing! Trump tweeted on Thursday. We feel like hes not human, said Carlos Fernandez, a 39-year-old bricklayer, speaking by phone from the Guatemala-Mexico border after traveling since last Friday from the crime-wracked city of San Pedro Sula in Honduras. If someone migrates to the United States, its to work, and working is not a crime, he said. Trump pledged during the 2016 presidential race to build a wall along the southern U.S. border with Mexico. But the funding for his signature campaign promise has been slow to materialize, even though his party controls the U.S. Congress. In April, frustrated by lack of progress on the wall, Trump ordered the National Guard to help secure the border. Adam Isacson, an official at the Washington Office on Latin America, a group that advocates for migrant rights, expressed misgivings about the potential deployment. Even if its a short-term deployment, its another step toward militarization of our border, Isacson said, adding that 40 percent of people being apprehended at the border were children and families. (Reporting by Phil Stewart, Makini Brice, Steve Holland and Yeganeh Torbati in Washington; Delphine Schrank in Pijijiapan, Michael OBoyle in Mexico City and Sofia Menchu in Guatemala City; editing by Will Dunham, Rosalba OBrien and G Crosse) 329 SHARES Facebook Twitter Whatsapp Pinterest Reddit Print Mail Flipboard (Reuters) A black man and woman were identified by police on Thursday as the two people shot dead at a Kentucky supermarket by a white male suspect who is reported to have told an armed bystander not to shoot him as whites dont kill whites. The suspect, identified as Gregory Bush, 51, was in custody and facing multiple charges including two counts of murder and 10 counts of first-degree wanton endangerment, Jeffersontown Police said in a statement. Bush has been accused of shooting Maurice Stallard, 69, multiple times in front of his grandson as they shopped in the Kroger Co grocery store in Jeffersontown, about 15 miles (24 km) from downtown Louisville. Bush then walked out of the store and shot Vickie Jones, 67, several times in the parking lot, according to an arrest citation and the police statement. An armed bystander with a carry permit for a concealed weapon exchanged gunfire with Bush in the parking lot before the suspect fled in his car. He was apprehended soon after, police said. Jeffersontown Police chief Sam Rogers told reporters on Wednesday that the suspect appeared to shoot both of his victims at random. Police were working with the Federal Bureau of Investigation to determine a motive for the killings. Ed Harrell told the Louisville Courier Journal that he was waiting outside the supermarket for his wife when he heard gunshots and took hold of his revolver. He saw Bush walking through the parking lot with a gun and called out to ask what was going on. Dont shoot me. I wont shoot you. Whites dont shoot whites, Harrell said Bush told him before driving off. Our city and our future has no room for anyone who looks at their fellow human beings with hate or discrimination, Louisville Mayor Greg Fischer said at a press conference on Thursday. Fischer said Stallard was the father of his staff member Kellie Watson, the citys chief equity officer who leads efforts to improve racial equity in government policies and practices. (Reporting by Andrew Hay in New Mexico) 360 SHARES Facebook Twitter Whatsapp Pinterest Reddit Print Mail Flipboard By Amanda Becker WASHINGTON (Reuters) The record numbers of women running for office in the United States this year are mostly Democrats, and their party is banking on their candidacies and a widening gender gap on key issues to achieve big wins in the Nov. 6 elections. Reuters/Ipsos polling two weeks ahead of Election Day showed Democrats with a 5-percentage-point lead over Republicans among likely voters in the elections, where control of Congress is at stake. Democrats held an 8-point lead with women and a 2-point lead among men. But among likely voters with college educations, who vote at significantly higher rates, Democrats had a 23-point lead with women and an 8-point lead with men. It is a gender gap on steroids, Democratic pollster Celinda Lake said. The Democratic Party is trying to regain political power at the local, state and federal levels in next months elections. The 2016 election of Republican President Donald Trump despite multiple sexual misconduct allegations and the #MeToo movement against sexual misconduct have energized Democratic women in particular to seek office and vote. It may be women candidates who save our enthusiasm advantage by mobilizing women voters, Lake said. Women candidates help get women voters out, and that is a very important thing for Democrats. Democrats need to pick up 23 seats to win control of the U.S. House of Representatives and gain two seats to capture the Senate. Winning either chamber would help them thwart or stall much of Trumps policy agenda and increase congressional oversight and investigation of the administration. Of the 23 women on ballots for the 100-seat U.S. Senate and 237 vying for the 435-seat House, more than 75 percent are Democrats, according to the Center for American Women and Politics at Rutgers University. Its a bit of a partisan story, said Rutgers political science professor Kelly Dittmar. This year weve seen a surge of women candidates that are both running for office and winning nominations, but much of that surge is happening among Democrats and not Republican women. Women are more likely than men to vote in both presidential and congressional midterm elections across all ethnicities, according to Dittmars research and polling data. Reuters/Ipsos polling, which has tracked voting interest since 2012, showed Democrats, especially college-educated women Democrats, much more enthusiastic about voting this year compared with the last midterm elections in 2014, and their level of enthusiasm has risen more than it has among men. YEAR OF THE WOMAN? As Novembers elections have drawn closer, Reuters/Ipsos polling has also shown a widening gender divide on questions such as approval of Trump and the economy. In May, when asked if they approved or disapproved of the way Trump was handling his presidency, 47 percent of men and 43 percent of women approved. By mid-October, 46 percent of men approved but just 36 percent of women. Both men and women say the economy is their top issue, and Trump often touts an improved economy as one of his successes. But while 51 percent of men believe the economy is on the right track, only 37 percent of women do, Reuters/Ipsos polling showed. This years election is drawing comparisons to the 1992 elections dubbed the Year of the Woman, when a record number of women won seats in Congress, bringing total representation to around 10 percent. That election came the year after Anita Hill accused Clarence Thomas of sexual harassment during his U.S. Supreme Court confirmation hearing. Former Democratic Senator Barbara Mikulski, one of only two women in the Senate at the time of Hills testimony, said womens outrage at Hills treatment by an all-male Senate committee motivated them to run in numbers never heard before. This year, Christine Blasey Ford accused Brett Kavanaugh of sexual misconduct when they were in high school during his Supreme Court confirmation hearing. Republican leaders have cited Kavanaughs eventual confirmation as a catalyst for Republican enthusiasm in this years elections. But Lake said: Anger is the most motivating emotion more than happiness, fear. When asked to rate their anger on a scale of 1 to 10 with 10 being extreme anger Democrats were a 7.6 toward Trump, with Democratic women more angry than men, Reuters/Ipsos polling showed. Democrats were also much angrier about the Senates handling of Kavanaughs confirmation than Republicans or independents. Lake said she hoped 2018 was a breakthrough moment for women, who currently hold just 20 percent of seats in Congress. Weve had the Year of the Woman before and it has been a one-night sensation, but this is about filling the pipeline, she said. There will be a record number of women win; there will be a record number of women lose. What will be important is that those women run again. For all Reuters election coverage, click: https://www.reuters.com/politics/election2018 (Reporting by Amanda Becker in Washington; Additional reporting by Chris Kahn in New York and Vanessa Johnston in Washington; Editing by Colleen Jenkins and Peter Cooney) 3.5k SHARES Facebook Twitter Whatsapp Pinterest Reddit Print Mail Flipboard Cesar Sayoc Jr. wasnt just a Trump supporter. He was one of Donald Trumps most devoted followers. Here is Cesar Sayoc Jr. at a Trump rally: And HERE is the man himself, Cesar Sayoc, who tried to ASSASSINATE a large portion of the leadership of the Democratic party AT A TRUMP RALLY. pic.twitter.com/fvaOZ9Li40 Mikel Jollett (@Mikel_Jollett) October 26, 2018 Here he is in his MAGA hat: So he draws his hair and eyebrows and shaves his armpits, he is confused pic.twitter.com/n1qUvRFEtD Vote Blue Nov 6 (@sf002) October 26, 2018 The propaganda that was on the would-be assassins van is available at any Trump rally: The violent propaganda found on the side of the terrorist's van can be found AT ANY TRUMP RALLY: pic.twitter.com/QbUucgt7gF Mikel Jollett (@Mikel_Jollett) October 26, 2018 A Man Who Tried To Kill High Profile Democrats Was a Trump True Believer The press has been dancing around the subject, but the man who sent these bombs wasnt trying to scare Democrats. He was trying to kill them. Donald Trump has called CNN and the free press the enemy of the people. He has called for Hillary Clinton to be jailed and claimed that his critics have committed treason. Cesar Sayoc Jr. isnt some lone wolf who was acting out of his own motives. Sayoc was acting on what Donald Trump has been telling his supporters for years. This is a man who may have had inclinations, but was radicalized into action by Trump. The dozen or more bombs that were sent was the biggest mass assassination attempt in US political history. Sayoc didnt come up with the target list on his own. It was handed to him through the political rhetoric of Trump. For more discussion about this story join our Rachel Maddow and MSNBC group. Follow Jason Easley on Facebook. 471 SHARES Facebook Twitter Whatsapp Pinterest Reddit Print Mail Flipboard Recent polls show that Democrat Andrew Gillum has maintained a lead over Trump-endorsed rival Ron DeSantis in the race to become Floridas next governor. As a result, President Donald Trump and his aides in the White House are getting very, very worried. According to POLITICO, President Trump plans to barnstorm Florida over the next ten days to campaign for DeSantis and for current Gov. Rick Scott, who is running a tight Senate race against incumbent Democrat Bill Nelson. POLITICO writes: The White House is planning a political rescue mission in Florida, fearing a wipeout in a key swing state next month that could damage President Donald Trumps reelection hopes. Trump is expected to visit the state at least twice, according to two people familiar with the plans. Visits from several Cabinet members are likely, as well. Presidential text messages are being sent to Floridians who still havent cast their absentee ballots. And discussions are underway about blanketing the state with robocalls from Trump. Mac Stipanovich, a Florida GOP operative, believes that Trumps reelection chances will be hurt with a Democrat as governor of Florida. He said that if the charismatic Gillum is stumping for the Democratic presidential nominee in 2020 then he is less likely to win Floridas large pot of electoral votes. A Governor Gillum would be a significant obstacle for a Trump presidential campaign in Florida, and a Gov. DeSantis would be a significant asset, Stipanovich said. If they think Floridas important, which Im certain they do, they should be quite worried. And apparently Trump and his people are indeed very worried about the latest Florida polls showing DeSantis trailing, with only 11 days remaining until the election. According to POLITICO, the White House is also considering blanketing the state with Trump robo-calls and sending presidential text messages to voters who havent yet mailed in their absentee ballots. On Thursday, Vice President Mike Pence and White House counselor Kellyanne Conway were in Florida helping DeSantis and Scott, both of whom have unusually close ties to the president. Trump aides have been in constant contact with top Florida Republicans for weeks, and it is apparent that they are very worried. It is both my hope and my expectation that the president will be in Florida so much between now and the election that Floridians will be hearing Hail to the Chief in their dreams, said right-wing Florida Rep. Matt Gaetz, one of Trumps strongest House allies. Gaetz has reportedly been in contact with the White House and is attempting to arrange for the president to visit his district, which lies in the Panhandle area recently hit by Hurricane Michael. Clearly Trump does not want to lose two high-profile races in his adopted home state, which some consider the swingiest of swing states. Trump has placed a huge amount of his political capital on a DeSantis victory, since he intervened in the GOP primary to give him his endorsement. A DeSantis loss would be a great embarrassment and would be seen as a repudiation of the president. One thing that is not clear at this time is whether or not Trumps efforts in Florida will do any good. A Florida Atlantic University poll released last month found that just 39 percent of the states voters approved and 47 percent disapproved of Trumps performance, a net negative of 8 percentage points. In recent polls both Gillum and Nelson have been leading, and right now they are the odds-on favorite to bring Democratic victories to the Sunshine State. This will continue to be true no matter how many desperate trips Trump plans to make as he vainly tries to save face and bolster his chances for reelection. Buzzfeed reported yesterday that the federal investigation into President Donald Trumps former lawyer Michael Cohen is still active, and the grand jury involved in the Cohen investigation is still at work. This information was confirmed by federal prosecutors in New York on Thursday in a court filing opposing the New York Times request to make the search warrants against the presidents former longtime personal lawyer public. The Cohen investigation resulted in eight guilty pleas in August and many thought that the prosecutors had concluded their work. Federal law enforcement officials are strongly opposed to the Times efforts to unseal both the search warrants and all related court filings by the federal government in their investigation of the former fixer for Donald Trump. In the filing, attorneys for the US attorneys office for the Southern District of New York wrote: This request encompasses materials that, if disclosed, would reveal a substantial amount of non-public, sensitive detail about an ongoing grand jury investigation, as well as information about numerous uncharged third parties. The Times asked the presiding judge to unseal warrants on Cohen earlier this month, with their attorney arguing that the public interest could not be higher. They said that the public interest in the case is particularly high because: The materials relate to the governments criminal investigation of a person who was for a long time the personal lawyer to and close associate of the president of the United States. Mr. Cohen undertook some of his criminal conduct in his capacity as the presidents associate, and he alleges at his direction. The government also submitted a second filing on Thursday, under seal and only to the court, identifying specific portions of the warrant affidavits and other facts pertinent to the ongoing government investigation. The federal prosecutors wrote in the public filing that there is a significant interest in maintaining the materials under seal, because disclosure could prejudice an ongoing investigation in concrete, identifiable ways. (Emphasis added.) Although Cohen had no formal cooperation agreement as part of his plea deal in August, he has reportedly spoken with state and federal prosecutors, including some from Special Counsel Robert Muellers office, in the months since his guilty pleas. In September we reported that Cohen, has spent the last month in multiple interview sessions with investigators from special counsel Robert Muellers Trump Russia probe, talking about Russia, possible collusion, and pardon. Earlier this month President Trump said that Cohen was lying when he testified in August, as part of his guilty pleas, that Trump had directed him to break the law. The fact that the Cohen investigation is ongoing, coupled with the reports that Cohen has been meeting with Bob Mueller, is bad news for the president. Most legal experts believe that Mueller is working on additional indictments that could include both the president and his close family members. Mueller has been quiet for a while, and apparently he is waiting until after the midterm elections before making his next moves. It appears likely that those next moves will be big ones so big that they could possibly bring down the Trump presidency. 1.1k SHARES Facebook Twitter Whatsapp Pinterest Reddit Print Mail Flipboard By Daniel Trotta and Grant Smith NEW YORK (Reuters) U.S. gun-control advocates have outspent by more than 40 percent gun-rights groups on next months congressional elections, reversing the National Rifle Associations longstanding dominance in spending on gun politics. Boosted largely by the personal fortune of billionaire Michael Bloomberg, who is considering a 2020 presidential run, the gun-control war chest almost entirely benefits Democrats, who are seeking to wrest majorities from the Republicans in the House of Representatives and Senate in the Nov. 6 elections. Graphic: U.S. gun-control spending: Gun-control groups, including Giffords and Everytown for Gun Safety, have spent $20.2 million on the elections, well over the $14.1 million spent by pro-gun groups led by the NRA, according to data released on Friday by the U.S. Federal Election Commission. So far, it marks the first time in at least two decades that gun-control groups have outspent gun-rights groups on federal races, though gun-control groups have outspent gun-rights advocates in state elections in recent years, according to data compiled by the National Institute on Money in Politics. There is definitely a shift, said Peter Ambler, the executive director of Giffords, formed by gunshot survivor and former U.S. Representative Gabby Giffords after the mass shooting in December 2012 that killed 20 school children in Connecticut. It was just a few years ago when people considered gun safety to be one of politics third rails. Now the opposite is true. The FEC report covers federal campaign spending through Oct. 17 and will be the last public report before the Nov. 6 vote. The NRA accounts for about 85 percent of the gun-rights spending and overwhelmingly supports Republicans. It could still close the gap as its Political Victory Fund had $8.9 million on hand as of Oct. 17, the FEC data showed, compared with $2.1 million for Giffords and Everytown combined. An NRA spokeswoman said Bloombergs money would not overturn public support for the Second Amendment of the U.S. Constitution, which protects the right to keep and bear arms. While the gun-control lobby is funded by a blank check from a New York City anti-gun billionaire, the NRA relies on millions of small donations from working men and women, NRA spokeswoman Jennifer Baker said in an email. His money is no match for our grassroots organization. The NRA is concentrating on unseating Senate Democrats and recently said it would spend more than $1 million aimed at defeating U.S. Senator Joe Donnelly of Indiana. Bloomberg, founder of the financial information and media company Bloomberg LP, formed Everytown in 2014 when he pledged $50 million to the cause and combined forces with Moms Demand Action for Gun Sense in America. Bloomberg has pledged another $100 million for House and Senate Democrats this year. Everytown has spent $3.6 million, according to the FEC data. Most of its $20 million budget this year has been devoted to state races. Giffords has spent $16.3 million this election cycle, the FEC data show, and has set aside at least $1 million for each of four competitive House races to defeat incumbent Republicans in Virginia, Minnesota, Texas and Colorado. Everytown has pledged to spend $10 million in state races in Georgia, Michigan, Nevada and New Mexico, plus another $3.5 million in Nevada and $2 million in Florida. Gun control groups have outspent the pro-Second Amendment forces in states before, notably in 2016, by a margin of $26 million to $11 million, according to National Institute on Money in Politics. The NRA and its allies more than made up for that with $70 million in spending on the federal level. (Reporting by Daniel Trotta and Grant Smith; editing by Scott Malone) 700 SHARES Facebook Twitter Whatsapp Pinterest Reddit Print Mail Flipboard The Department of Justice is confirming that they have arrested and taken into custody someone in connection with the bombs sent to Democrats, Trump critics, and CNN. The DOJ tweeted: We can confirm one person is in custody. We will hold a press conference at the Department of Justice at 2:30pm ET. Sarah Isgur Flores (@whignewtons) October 26, 2018 It was later confirmed that the suspect is a man in his 50s: Confirmed: A male in his 50s has been taken into custody for MAGA bombings. pic.twitter.com/Op9hX5hg2N Sarah Reese Jones (@PoliticusSarah) October 26, 2018 The investigation moved at light speed once it centered on southern Florida. It is uncertain whether or not this person was previously known to law enforcement and a name is expected to be released soon. It is also unknown how many more bombs may be still out there, or if this person had help. There is still much more to come on this story, but the good news is that a suspect is in custody, and the nation is closer to breathing a sigh of relief. For more discussion about this story join our Rachel Maddow and MSNBC group. Follow Jason Easley on Facebook. What if we took the image of Dia de Los Muertos on a train that goes through the community and makes them feel recognized? Gallo said, recalling one of the questions posed as organizers came up with the idea. (And) for us to proudly share with them our regard for family caregivers in their community and everyone else? 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. (Reuters) FBI agents used DNA and a fingerprint to arrest a man in Florida suspected of sending at least 14 bombs to critics of U.S. President Donald Trump days ahead of congressional elections. Cesar Sayoc faces up to 48 years in prison if found guilty, said U.S. Attorney General Jeff Sessions. He earlier said he faced 58 years. Following are the figures targeted, starting with the most recent. Many packages used the return address of Representative Debbie Wasserman Schultz of Florida, former chairwoman of the Democratic National Committee. 1) Billionaire Tom Steyer, a Democratic donor 2) Senator Kamala Harris, a Democrat from California 3) Former Director of National Intelligence James Clapper and CNN 4) Senator Cory Booker, a Democrat from New Jersey 5) Former U.S. Vice President Joe Biden (2 packages) 6) Actor Robert De Niro, who hurled obscenities at Trump at the Tony Awards in June 7) Representative Maxine Waters from California (2 packages) 8) Former Attorney General Eric Holder, who served under former President Barack Obama 9) Former CIA Director John Brennan and CNN 10) Former President Barack Obama 11) Former U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, who ran against Trump for the presidency 12) Billionaire George Soros, donor to liberal groups (Reporting by Susan Heavey; editing by Lisa Shumaker and Cynthia Osterman) The New York Times reported Thursday that President Donald Trump is considering closing the United States southern border with Mexico. According to the Times: The effort would be the starkest indication yet of Mr. Trumps election-season push to play to his anti-immigrant base as his party fights to keep control of Congress. The proposal amounts to a sweeping use of presidential power to fortify the border and impose the kind of aggressive immigration restrictions and enforcement measures that Mr. Trump has made his signature pursuit. The plan is expected to prompt a swift challenge in federal courts. If the president does seal off the southern border it would be the culmination of a series of steps that he has taken or threatened to take to deal with illegal immigration. In the past few days he has announced his intentions to stop the Central American caravan and to send as many as 1,000 active-duty Army troops to help secure the southern border. He seems desperate to stop what he has called an onslaught of illegal immigration with less than two weeks until the midterm elections. He has posted many tweets and made numerous public statements expressing concern about the thousands of Central American migrants traveling north through Mexico. They have stated that their goal is to reach the U.S. border. Many in the group are women and children seeking refuge from violence and economic hardship. Trump, however, said (with no evidence) that criminals and unknown Middle Easterners were mixed in among the people in the migrant caravan. He has also blamed the existence of the caravan on Democrats, saying (again, with no evidence) that they support unlimited illegal immigration into the country. Earlier on Thursday Trump addressed one of his tweets to the caravan of asylum seekers. He tweeted: To those in the Caravan, turnaround, we are not letting people into the United States illegally. Go back to your Country and if you want, apply for citizenship like millions of others are doing! To those in the Caravan, turnaround, we are not letting people into the United States illegally. Go back to your Country and if you want, apply for citizenship like millions of others are doing! Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) October 25, 2018 After Trumps tweet Pulitzer Prize-winning New York Times writer Maggie Haberman said she believes that Trumps threat to seal the border will be a major campaign theme leading up to the midterms. She tweeted: Trumps tweet this morning wasnt a one-off he is looking at closing the border entirely as a pre-election effort to stoke his base. Not clear that this would ever actually happen, only that White House will likely drive it till Nov. 6 Trump's tweet this morning wasn't a one-off he is looking at closing the border entirely as a pre-election effort to stoke his base. Not clear that this would ever actually happen, only that White House will likely drive it till Nov. 6 https://t.co/vk6ASBxKFZ Maggie Haberman (@maggieNYT) October 26, 2018 Trumps new threat is his latest attempt to come up with a winning issue for Republicans in the midterm elections. They have failed with previous attempts to use the economy and tax cuts to win over voters. They are desperately trying to convince voters that they are the party that will protect pre-existing conditions and provide affordable healthcare. They have stoked fears that the U.S. is being invaded by an army of dangerous migrants who are merely poor refugees seeking asylum. Luckily the majority of American voters are not dumb enough to fall for Trumps lies and fear-mongering. On November 6th he will find out that his desperate ploys have not worked when Democrats take charge of the U.S. House of Representatives. 15.9k SHARES Facebook Twitter Whatsapp Pinterest Reddit Print Mail Flipboard The Trump DOJ has not charged Cesar Sayoc with terrorism, but with five other federal crimes that could result in 58 years in federal prison. Attorney General Jeff Sessions said at a news conference, I want to remind everyone that the defendant in this case as in every case is innocent until proven guilty. He has been charged today with five federal crimes including interstate transportation of an explosive, illegal mailing of explosives, threats against former presidents and certain other persons, threatening interstate communications and assaulting current and former federal officers. For these charges the defendant faces up to 58 years in prison. These charges may change or expand as the investigation proceeds. This is a law and order administration. We will not tolerate such lawlessness, especially not political violence. Video: Trump DOJ doesn't charge Cesar Sayoc with terrorism. pic.twitter.com/7R1TOLadLd PoliticusUSA (@politicususa) October 26, 2018 Cesar Sayoc has not been charged with terrorism yet It is clear that Sayoc fits the definition of a domestic terrorist, but yet the DOJ has refused to charge with any crime that uses the term terrorism. The Trump administration is already trying to put a political spin on these crimes by avoiding labeling one of the presidents own supporters as a domestic terrorist. Sec. 802 of The Patriot Act defines terrorism as: A person engages in domestic terrorism if they do an act dangerous to human life that is a violation of the criminal laws of a state or the United States, if the act appears to be intended to: (i) intimidate or coerce a civilian population; (ii) influence the policy of a government by intimidation or coercion; or (iii) to affect the conduct of a government by mass destruction, assassination or kidnapping. Additionally, the acts have to occur primarily within the territorial jurisdiction of the United States and if they do not, may be regarded as international terrorism. Sayocs actions fit the criteria for a terrorism charge, and the only reason one can think of that he hasnt been charged with terrorism is that he is a male supporter of Donald Trump. Hopefully, the DOJ will not cave to political pressure and charge Cesar Sayoc with terrorism. For more discussion about this story join our Rachel Maddow and MSNBC group. Follow Jason Easley on Facebook. By Margarita Antidze TBILISI (Reuters) The White House has formally invited President Vladimir Putin to Washington, U.S. National Security Advisor John Bolton said on Friday, returning to an idea that was put on hold in July amid anger in the U.S. over the prospect of such a summit. President Donald Trump held a summit with Putin in Helsinki, the Finnish capital, and then issued Putin an invitation to visit Washington in the autumn. But that was postponed after Trump was accused of cozying up to the Kremlin. We have invited President Putin to Washington, Bolton said at a news conference during a visit to ex-Soviet Georgia, days after meeting Putin and senior security officials in Moscow. It was not immediately clear if Putin had accepted the invitation, which is for next year. Bolton, in a separate interview with Reuters, strongly criticized Russian foreign policy, saying Moscows behavior on the world stage was one of the reasons Washington had imposed sanctions on Russia and was now considering imposing more. It will be helpful if they (the Russians) stop interfering in our election get out of Crimea and the Donbass in Ukraine stop using illegal chemical weapons to conduct assassination attempts against Russian exiles in the West, and if they would be less intrusive in the Middle East, he said. Russia denies meddling in the 2016 U.S. presidential election, sending soldiers and equipment to eastern Ukraine, and has rejected Western allegations it was behind the poisoning of former Russian spy Sergei Skripal and his daughter in Britain. WILL PUTIN ACCEPT? Putin last held a meeting with a U.S. president on American soil in 2015 when he met Barack Obama on the sidelines of a U.N. General Assembly. Trumps earlier invitation to Putin sparked an outcry in Washington, including from lawmakers in Trumps Republican party, who argued that Putin was an adversary not worthy of a White House visit. Trump has said it is in U.S. interests to establish a solid working relationship with Putin however. Trump and Putin plan to hold a bilateral meeting in Paris on Nov. 11 on the sidelines of events to commemorate the centenary of the end of World War One. Bolton said that the Paris meeting would be brief and more of a base-touching exercise. One of the most important subjects they will discuss is whether President Putin will accept President Trumps invitation to come to Washington or will President Putin once again extend his invitation to President Trump to go to Moscow, said Bolton. I think what President Trump would like would be more of an opportunity to discuss the issues at length and well have to see when it gets on the schedule. (Reporting by Margarita Antidze; Writing by Tom Balmforth/Andrew Osborn; Editing by Robin Pomeroy, William Maclean) By Zachary Fagenson MIAMI (Reuters) Police found two more suspicious packages on Friday addressed to U.S. Senator Cory Booker and James Clapper, the former U.S. director of national intelligence, as the hunt for the person who mailed bombs to prominent Democrats and critics of U.S. President Donald Trump focused on Florida. The 11th package was addressed to Booker, the Democratic senator from New Jersey, and was discovered at a mail sorting facility in Florida, the FBI said. A 12th package was addressed to Clapper at cable network CNN and was intercepted at a New York City post office, a federal law enforcement official said. This is definitely domestic terrorism, no question about it in my mind, Clapper said in an interview with CNN. This is not going to silence the administrations critics. Trump said on Friday that the incidents were distracting from successful efforts by Republican candidates. Republicans are doing so well in early voting, and at the polls, and now this Bomb stuff happens and the momentum greatly slows news not talking politics, Trump wrote on Twitter. Very unfortunate, what is going on. Republicans, go out and vote! All the people targeted by the suspicious packages have often been maligned by right-wing critics. They included Democratic Party donor George Soros, former President Barack Obama, former Vice President Joe Biden, and former Secretary of State and presidential candidate Hillary Clinton. The Federal Bureau of Investigation has said that at least five of the packages bore a return address from the Florida office of U.S. Representative Debbie Wasserman Schultz, a former chair of the Democratic National Committee. This community will not stand for any attack on our democracy. We are not going to be knocked down by violence and by vitriol and by venom, Debbie Wasserman Schultz told reporters on Friday. HATEFUL MEDIA There has been an outcry from Trumps critics, who charged that his inflammatory rhetoric against Democrats and the press has created a climate for politically motivated violence. After first calling for unity and civil discourse on Wednesday, Trump lashed out again Thursday at the hateful media. His supporters accused Democrats of unfairly suggesting the president was to blame for the bomb scare. Funny how lowly rated CNN, and others, can criticize me at will, even blaming me for the current spate of Bombs and ridiculously comparing this to September 11th and the Oklahoma City bombing, yet when I criticize them they go wild and scream, its just not Presidential! Trump tweeted earlier on Friday. Authorities believe the packages, which were intercepted before reaching their intended recipients, all went through the U.S. Postal Service at some point, a source said. None detonated and no one has been hurt. The devices were thought to have been fashioned from bomb-making designs widely available on the internet, a federal law enforcement source told Reuters. Still, investigators are treating the devices as live explosives, not a hoax, said James ONeill, the New York City police commissioner. Investigators have declined to say whether the devices were built to be functional. Bomb experts and security analysts say that based on their rudimentary construction it appeared they were more likely designed to sow fear rather than to kill. Two federal officials involved in the investigation cautioned that it was too early to say whether the devices were incapable of firing or were deliberately designed to frighten rather than explode. One of the officials said such declarations might only encourage the bomb maker to construct more effective and deadly devices if the threat continues. The parcels each consisted of a manila envelope with a bubble-wrap interior containing potentially destructive devices, the FBI said. Each was affixed with a computer-printed address label and six U.S. Forever postage stamps, the agency said. Two packages were sent both to Waters and Biden. Others who received the bombs were former Attorney General Eric Holder, former CIA director John Brennan, U.S. Representative Maxine Waters of California, and actor Robert De Niro. I thank God no ones been hurt, and I thank the brave and resourceful security and law enforcement people for protecting us, De Niro said in a statement. Theres something more powerful than bombs, and thats your vote. People MUST vote! (Reporting by Zachary Fagenson; Additional reporting by Gina Cherelus, Gabriella Borter and Peter Szekely in New York, Mark Hosenball, Makini Brice and Susan Heavey in Washington, and Brendan OBrien in Milwaukee; Writing by Daniel Wallis; Editing by Lisa Shumaker and Jeffrey Benkoe) Charleston, SC (29403) Today Partly cloudy. Morning high of 63F with temps falling to near 50. Winds NNE at 10 to 20 mph.. Tonight Mostly clear. Low 41F. Winds NNE at 10 to 15 mph. They are among at least 21 transgender people killed across the country so far this year, according to a count from GLAAD, an organization that works on behalf of the LGBTQ community. Of those, all but two were reported to be transgender women of color. The boyfriend, Thomas Loftus, now 80, testified at trial for the prosecution that he went to pick up Novak for work one morning in October 1981 and stumbled into a chaotic scene: the blinds pulled down from a window, blood all over the floor and Novak lying dead in the living room. Republican Gov. Henry McMaster and Democratic state Rep. James Smith meet in a final debate tonight at the Greenville Technical College Technical Resource Center Auditorium in Greenville. S.C. ETV and S.C. Public Radio are broadcasting the debate presented with The Post and Courier. Watch below. Charles Bierbauer, a former longtime CNN correspondent and dean of the University of South Carolina College of Information and Communications, and Andy Shain, The Post and Couriers Columbia bureau chief, are moderating the debate. Our coverage of the first governor debate can be found below. While an estimated 99 percent or more of ethylene oxide was captured by pollution-control equipment at the plant, permits allowed some to be released directly into the air an amount reported by the company to be more than 5,000 pounds in 2014. The emissions released through the back vents at the facility have been called uncontrolled by a federal agency because the emissions did not go through the pollution-control equipment. The company modified its plant in 2018 to route those emissions through its pollution control equipment. KFC Guam Marketing Director Edgar Allan Caper recently received a prestigious marketing award in the Philippines. Caper won the Outstanding Achievement in Overseas Marketing award for an individual during the 39th Agora Awards on Oct. 19 at the Okada Manila Grand Ballroom. He also was a previous Agora Youth Awardee in the Outstanding Marketing category. Caper has more than 20 years of experience in managing both homegrown and global restaurant brands. Success! An email has been sent to with a link to confirm list signup. Error! There was an error processing your request. He has led the KFC Guam brand since 2014. "Today, KFC Guam is recognized by its Asia regional office for the quality of its marketing work and consistent sales growth," according to a press release from KFC Guam. Leading a four-year record of double-digit growth, Caper helped the company realize its five-year roadmap during his tenure, the company press release stated. "In this time and age where our world is full of hatred, envy, hopelessness and inequality, as marketers being experts in communication and strategies, we need more inspiring marketing people today, I stand here to serve as an inspiration to my fellow dreamers, and it is in competitions like this that we show the world and to our fellow marketers that no matter how hard and difficult, no matter how far from home you may be, protect your dream," Caper stated, in his award acceptance speech. 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 I had long searched for a good reason to visit Armenia. As I grew up in Detroit, my father often reminisced about growing up in the Caucasus Mountains in the early 20th century. If you go The best way to Yerevan, Armenia From LAX, Aeroflot, Air France, Qatar, Austrian, Lot, KLM and Delta offer connecting service (change of planes) to Yerevan. (There are no nonstop flights from Los Angeles, so you will have a layover.) Restricted round-trip fares start at $1,122, including all taxes and fees. Telephones To call the numbers below from the United States, dial 011 (the international calling code), 374 (the country code for Armenia) and the local number. My Verizon iPhone did not work in Armenia. My son's AT&T iPhone did. Be sure to arrange an international calling plan ahead of time or, if your your phone is unlocked, a local SIM card. Where to stay Ibis Yerevan Center Hotel, 5/1 Northern Ave., Yerevan: 10-59-59-59, lat.ms/ibisyerevan hotel. Discount European hotel; doubles from $65. Avan Dzoraget Hotel, 1st Street, Building 127, Village Dzoraget; 93-94-78-89, tufenkianheritage.com/en/accommodation/avan-dzoraget-hotel. Awesome hotel north of Yerevan. Part of the Tufenkian Heritage Hotels chain. Doubles from $151. Where to eat Lahmajun Gaidz, 5 Nalbandyan, Yerevan; 77-33-21-18, lat.ms/lahmajungaidz. Terrific lunch fare (we tried lamb and beef lahmajun, a kind of Armenian pizza) just off Republic Square. Lunch for two was less than $10. For the hikes, we had brought energy bars with us. When we camped, we bought some shawarma wraps. Gear If you are planning to day hike, you'll obviously want the standard equipment: day pack, lightweight boots, good rain gear, water bottles, sunscreen and lots of moisture-wicking clothes. If you are backpacking, keep in mind that camping stove gas will be difficult to find and that you can't take it with you on the plane. Learn more Armenian Tourism Development Foundation, Armenia.travel/en The Office of the Attorney General is actively investigating allegations of fraudulent diplomas and transcripts that were issued by the Believe, Achieve, Motivate (B.A.M.) Program. Andrea Maanao Cruz, a George Washington High School Science teacher, was recently arrested after investigators executed a search warrant at her classroom and her car on campus. Cruz is accused of starting B.A.M. in late 2017 and providing approximately 300 students with diplomas and transcripts. She also faces drug charges after she was found in possession of a glass pipe containing methamphetamine residue. Success! An email has been sent to with a link to confirm list signup. Error! There was an error processing your request. The OAG is asking those who may have been victimized in connection with the program, or any other similar program, to contact prosecutors at 475-3406 ext. 2625. College raises concerns The Office of the Attorney General received information from Guam Community College in late August concerning applicants attempting to enroll with diplomas and transcripts from a private tutoring school called B.A.M. GCC officials questioned the legitimacy of the diplomas because they were unaware of the school and because diplomas depicted the logo for the Guam Department of Education. Around that time, GDOE and GCC issued a release stating they had no affiliation with B.A.M. and they were not accepting B.A.M. credentials. GDOE also filed a cease-and-desist letter for the unauthorized use of the department's logo. The attorney general's office then began an investigation into B.A.M. Investigators reviewed the school's Facebook page and learned that B.A.M. described itself as a "credit-recovery academy" and a "homeschool alternative to education," court documents stated. B.A.M. also described itself as a member of the Home School Legal Defense Association, a claim that was later refuted by the organization, documents added. A U.S. Coast Guard HC-130 Hercules flew out of Andersen Air Force Base on Guam Friday morning with a team of first responders to aid the CNMI in its recovery from Supertyphoon Yutu. Aboard were a salvage team, communication specialists and gear, along with other support personnel, said Petty Officer 3rd Class Amanda Wyrick of U.S. Coast Guard Sector Guam. Wyrick said the HC-130 Hercules flew out of the U.S. Coast Guard Airsta Barbers Point station in Hawaii. Success! An email has been sent to with a link to confirm list signup. Error! There was an error processing your request. Its being used to conduct overflights to assess the damage done by the storm as well as to bring in personnel and relief supplies. It was among the first relief flights to arrive at the Saipan International Airport which remains closed to all but military traffic. Supertyphoon Yutus 180 mile an hour winds tore through the airfield Thursday twisting steel roofing, leaving the check in area in tatters, and blowing the windows out of the airports Air Traffic Control tower which is no longer functional. Todd Hoose, a Federal Emergency Management Agency external affair officer here on Guam, said that a mobile traffic control tower is being flown in as a temporary replacement. Normal commercial air traffic will not resume until that mobile tower is in place. He declined to speculate on how long that will be. However, Hoose said that the Tinian and Rota airports are open to commercial traffic. Brad Ruszala, a Saipan resident, was on hand when the C-130 arrived on Saipan at noon Friday. A team of servicemen on the ground, are guiding the flights onto the runway landing strip by radio. The tower he said had its windows knocked out and the whole storm blew in to it. He said there was another earlier flight about 7:30am Friday when a C-17 dropped personnel and equipment off from Guam's 36th Contingency Response Group. Military helicopters have also flown into the airport, said Ruszala. Asked if people should stop passing petitions on her behalf, Mendoza said: I will tell you what I have told them Im not even going to talk about the mayors race until we know what happens with Bruce Rauner running for governor, and I hope to God that all of Illinois turns out to make sure we have a new administration thats going to put people first and stop ruining our states finances. Initially, Slayen blamed the incident on poor judgment and that neither staff member intended to take part in offensive behavior and said both had been suspended without pay. But hours later, though Slayen said the image was posted on a private Instagram account, she added, After further investigation, both staffers have been fired. New Zealands business climate is primed to attract entrepreneurs to the country. With a government that provides funding and grants to start businesses, New Zealand hosts a number of business possibilities. Because it has a system that typically encourages the fast set up of new businesses and tax laws that do not ask for capital gains, starting a business in the country can be done within days and easily. More importantly, start-ups, in particular, can find office space relatively easily as the country has a number of office platforms. In Auckland, the start-up scene got its start through what has now become the ubiquitous coworking scene. These working enclave communities have been the foundation of a lot of industry in New Zealand. An Auckland coworking space can fit out your business with workspace and an atmosphere that supports industry. Lets take a closer look at what you can expect from a coworking space in Auckland. Auckland A Hot Spot As one of the fastest growing coworking populations, the city is host to a number of coworking spaces. Like many other cities in the Asia-Pacific market, coworking offers professionals the choice of industry-specific spaces, mission-specific spaces, and the general space. As opposed to the past when start-ups pretty much drove the market, todays coworking space is being adopted by SMEs who see the concept as a way to build business. Other newer versions of the coworking space include spaces that cater to non-profit organisations and the digital nomad. In addition, this particular format, the city, as others in the country, are exploring other models that include those for large corporations. Another nuance of the current coworking model is creating spaces that have amenities outside what is currently offered. Lifestyle amenities like gyms and daycare facilities seem to be popular ideas that might make their way into the Auckland scene. The Innovation Hub Auckland appears to be poised to take on the role as a place for innovation in the country. One source cites the citys creative industries as a place where much of this innovation is to develop. Much of these endeavours will be the result of collaboration among Aucklands coworking, academic, and philanthropic communities, but market watchers say that all of this industry will culminate in bridging the citys Manukau region with Massey. At this point in Aucklands coworking scene, the emphasis is on matching talent in the city with resources to create innovation. Coworking Space Growth In Auckland New Zealands business culture is described as very laid-back but very respectful of rules and order. Taking much of its cues from the indigenous Maori, the business culture is tied to nature, which ultimately supports respecting the business climate and other professionals and shies away from the negativity that surrounds competitiveness. For this reason, the coworking concept works perfectly in this city. Coworking is more than a place to socialize, and in its infancy, its mission was to support collaboration within the industry and among professionals. Because of its laid-back atmosphere but organized structure, the coworking space is one that is so successful in Auckland because the culture fits with the coworking mission. Having said this, coworking seems to be fuelled by this agreement between business and culture. For the most part, smaller operators and a few larger ones have attracted SMEs who find the business culture and the coworking mission appealing, which is a reason behind growth. Auckland Where Business And Culture Meet Auckland, like New Zealands other major cities, is attractive for industry reasons. However, Coworking Auckland offers businesses traditional versions of the coworking space, in addition to spaces that offer newer amenities. For your business, the coworking community in this city is a place fertile with an opportunity to grow your business. Similar Posts: The surprise here isnt so much that the Arizona State Troopers Association has withdrawn its endorsement of Rep. Kyrsten Sinema in the Arizona Senate race; its that the organization endorsed this hippie-dippie leftist in the first place. Sure, Sinema cast herself as a moderate and friend of law enforcement. But no one who was paying attention should have been fooled. Sinema was simply positioning herself for a Senate run in a state she fears wont back an honest leftist. Heck. I called fake on Sinema more than a year ago. Recently, Sinemas radical views and behavior have come into sharper focus, thanks to oppo research. But long before that before she entered the Senate race the evidence was there for anyone to see. Its not clear, however, whether the revocation of the Troopers endorsement is based on Sinemas politics or on procedural concerns. Probably its based on both. According to this report, the groups executive board endorsed her for the open Senate seat without consulting its members. When some members complained to the press, the organization polled its members on whether they wanted to endorse Sinema or remain neutral in the race. The members voted to remain neutral. Apparently, they werent given the option of voting to endorse Sinemas opponent, Rep. Martha McSally. How embarrassing would it have been to the executive committee if that option had been presented and had prevailed? McSally seems a more likely choice for state troopers than a candidate who called Arizona the meth lab or democracy, considers the state crazy, and undoubtedly will vote as Chuck Schumer desires virtually every time he needs her vote. Arizona is in trouble if those entrusted with preserving its safety dont prefer McSally to Sinema. McSally is a center-right legislator and an American hero. Her American Conservative Union (ACA) rating is the same as that of Rep. Jim Rinacci, the Republican running for the Senate in Ohio. Among Senators, its the same as North Dakota Republican John Hoevens and slightly lower than those of Sens. Thom Tillis and Lamar Alexander. While less than ideal, this makes McSally vastly preferable to Sinema. You can help McSally defeat Sinema by contributing . I just did. Minnesotas Fifth District voters are about to elect state representative Ilhan Omar to succeed Keith Ellison in Congress. Rep. Omar appears to have married her brother in 2009 for some dishonest purpose not necessarily immigration fraud and undertaken the redundant exercise of divorcing him late last year to keep up appearances. (Speaking to an ignorant if fawning City Pages reporter in November 2016, Omar falsely asserted: There are particular challenges to getting a legal divorce. One of those is getting the cooperation and presence of the other person who you are divorcing. Telling the truth does not come naturally to her.) I reviewed the story as it then was in the September 2016 City Journal column The curious case of Ilhan Omar before her election to the state legislature two years ago. The APs Amy Forliti retraced my steps last week in Minnesota House hopeful calls marriage, fraud claims lies. Omar declined to provide documents or answer specific questions when pressed by Forliti. Omar wouldnt even supply Forliti a list of her siblings. This week PJ Medias David Steinberg substantially advanced the story in Official School Records Support Claims That Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-MN) Married Her Brother, following up on Steinbergs August 12 report State Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-MN) Swore to Apparent Falsehoods in Court While Divorcing Her Alleged Brother. A reasonable person might conclude that Omar married her brother in 2009. I am not sure, but that is my conclusion from the evidence available to date. Telling most strongly against this conclusion, however, is the lack of evidence explaining why she did so. I put this point in italics for emphasis. I think Omars apparent marriage to her brother Ahmed Nur Said Elmi is a big story. The Star Tribune sits in the heart of the Fifth District. Fifth District readers form the core of the Star Tribunes readership. The Star Tribunes Patrick Coolican reported the uproar we had aroused in his August 2016 story Marriage discrepancy clouds Ilhan Omars historic primary victory. Omar, by the way, has refused to answer related questions or sit for an interview by the Star Tribune or any other media outlet on the subject. Her treatment of Forlitis inquiries for last weeks AP story is representative. The Star Tribune ran Forlitis AP story, but where has the Star Tribune been on this story for the past two years? Where is it now? Doesnt Omars refusal to talk arouse sufficient interest to do a little digging? David Steinberg has done some digging, but the Star Tribune hasnt even mentioned either of Steinbergs two pieces supporting the proposition that Omar married her brother. Rene Sanchez is the editor of the Star Tribune. He is the guy at the top of the organization chart on the news/opinion side of the business: the top dog, the maximum leader, the majordomo. In advance of the August 14 primary that Omar was going to win, I wondered where the Star Tribune is. Because the Fifth District is one-party territory, the winner of the DFL primary on August 14 would be elected to Congress on November 6. Mr. Sanchez, whats the story? I wrote him on August 10: Rene, you may recall that I write for the site Power Line and that I emailed you directly to express some criticism of the Star Tribune two or so years ago. You responded most graciously, inviting me to follow up as I saw appropriate (if I recall correctly). This is a follow-up message. I find the superficiality of the Star Tribunes local election-related coverage this year almost unbelievable. Ive been doing work on Keith Ellison for the past 12 years and on Ilhan Omar for the past two years. The Star Tribune has barely scratched the surface now that they are leading contenders to become Minnesotas top lawman and Fifth District congressman for life, respectively, after the primary next Tuesday. Outside Minnesota, David Steinberg has dug into Ilhan Omars divorce file to see what it might tell us about the bona fides of her marriage to husband number 2. I have written about Ellisons past support for cop killers. None of this has even been glimpsed in the pages of the Star Tribune. I think you have shortchanged your readers in failing to perform the basic function of a major regional daily newspaper. If you dont have any sense of this and would like me to document what I am referring to, I would appreciate it if you let me know. Thank you as always for your courtesies and consideration. Mr. Sanchez promptly responded: Quite respectfully, I would quibble with your assertion on superficiality because I think the record shows a range of in-depth coverage on candidacies and issues. But, as you say, we still have much more to do.And, honestly, there will be much more to come between now and the general election in November, for all prominent races. I responded: Rene: My point is that for all practical purposes the election in the Fifth District is next Tuesday and the Star Tribune has contributed approximately nothing. You must know that. I think the same is probably true of the AG race Republicans havent won an AG race since 1966. I take it that the election is Tuesday. The Star Tribune has contributed nothing. As any knowledgeable observer would have predicted, Omar won the DFL primary on August 14. I took another whack at it on August 17: Rene, I wonder if you can give me any idea why the Star Tribune has let the story of Omars marriage to husband number 2 rest where the Star Tribune left it two years ago. I have now reread David Steinbergs [August 12] update on this story for PJ Media several times. He worked on it over a period of months from New York. It is intensely reported. It is documented. It is lucid. The Star Tribune is staffed up. The story is in your front yard and strongly suggests that Omar has engaged in misconduct for some dishonest reason. Yet she simply refuses to answer any questions about it. I really dont get the papers nonfeasance. I have also been interested in Omars attitude toward Israel. She calls it an apartheid regime. In my view, this is a stupid and anti-Semitic lie that would have been of interest to many Fifth District voters. Can she defend the statement? I may have missed it, but I dont think the Star Tribune has even reported it, though the reporter who covered Omars primary victory alluded to it and other such statements she has made. This was too little too late. When I wrote you last week, you seemed to suggest that the paper had nearly three months before the election to deepen its reporting. When I pointed out for all practical purposes the election was Tuesday, you left me hanging. I really dont get it. I want to understand. If you would be willing to share your thoughts or expand on your satisfaction with the newspapers coverage, I would be grateful. Mr. Sanchez responded: We intend to do more reporting on Omars candidacy. I wrote back one more time to make my case again before giving up: Rene, I didnt intend to restate my critique of the stories on which I am critical of the papers coverage and noncoverage, but I think I should reiterate they include both Ellison and Omar. On Ellisons numerous Nation of Islam lies, the Star Tribune has had 12 years to follow up. It would not have been difficult to arrive at a definitive judgment of his lack of veracity. Yet the Star Tribune has taken a pass. On Omar, the Star Tribune has had two years to dig in to the possible deception, dishonesty and misconduct involved in her marriage to husband number 2. It has taken a pass. On Omars expressed views related to Israel the Star Tribune took a pass this year. Her stated view of Israel as an apartheid state is ignorant and/or anti-Semitic. Beyond that her speech on the floor of the Minnesota House in support of BDS is a matter of public record. If the Star Tribune was to serve its readers and Fifth District voters, the time for taking a look would have been some time before August 14. I know many Fifth District voters do not know and wanted to be informed. I may have missed some crucial stories published by the paper, but I think the Star Tribune has poorly served its core Minneapolis readers in the case of both Ellison and Omar. I can think of reasons and excuses, but there should be some acknowledgement that the paper hasnt done the job. I think it owes readers a public acknowledgement and explanation or assessment of its performance that is self-critical in some serious way. Thank you for your time, your courtesies and your consideration. I know your time is precious and I appreciate your willingness to spend this part of it taking in what I have to say and responding. I have edited these messages for clarity and focus but otherwise submit them to the attention of interested readers without further comment except this: I think the Star Tribunes silence is a story all by itself. Inevitably, Democrats and their partners in the mainstream media want to focus on the political leanings of the man suspected of sending packages to leading leftists. However, Daniel Horowitz contends that the real story here is jailbreak, i.e., the failure to put criminals behind bars and keep them there. I agree that this is a key element of the story. The suspect apparently has a lengthy rap sheet that included dealing drugs, theft, traffic violations, and battery. A close analysis of his record will likely show he should have been in jail. This is a recurring but almost always ignored phenomenon. In one high-profile case after another, we learn that the criminal is a chronic offender with a rap sheet that, in a properly functioning society, would have mandated his incarceration at the time of his latest offense. Yet, Democrats and too many Republicans, including some in the White House, are dead set on increasing the number of convicted felons, including dealers of drugs like fentanyl, on the streets. They want shorter sentences for such offenders and they want them released from jail early an obvious recipe for more crime faster. In short, the bipartisan leniency-for-felons crowd seeks to make our under-incarceration problem worse, even though doing so can only increase the occurrence of crime, including violent crime. The consequences of this perverse policy are there for all to see, but the leniency crowd averts its eyes. PR-Inside.com: 2018-10-25 22:14:01 COVINGTON, Kentucky, October 25, 2018 -- Ashland Global Holdings Inc. (NYSE: ASH) today confirmed that Cruiser Capital Master Fund LP, which has disclosed ownership of 2.4 percent of the company's outstanding common stock, has provided notice of an intent to nominate four individuals to stand for election to the Ashland board of directors at the company's 2019 Annual Meeting of Stockholders ("2019 Annual Meeting"). The date of the company's 2019 Annual Meeting has not yet been announced. The company issued the following statement: The Ashland board of directors and management team are committed to acting in the best interests of the company and its stockholders. Ashland strives to maintain constructive, ongoing communications with all its stockholders and welcomes views and opinions that may advance its goal of driving enhanced value. To that end, Ashland has had numerous discussions with Cruiser Capital. The board regularly takes steps to refresh and strengthen its composition to ensure it has the right mix of experience and capabilities to maximize Ashland's full growth potential and deliver long-term stockholder value. In fact, five of the company's directors joined the board within the past three years, and four joined since the beginning of 2017. In addition, over the past five years, Ashland has nominated two directors who were recommended by stockholders. Ashland's board and management team are focused on building on the company's momentum to create enhanced value for stockholders by delivering on the financial targets for fiscal 2018-2021 presented at the company's Investor Day in 2017. Ashland's strong financial results year to date are clear evidence that the actions the company is taking to drive sales and earnings growth are yielding benefits. Ashland has a long history of taking decisive action to improve its competitive position and create value for stockholders. Most recently, the company has made significant progress in its efforts to create a leaner, more cost-competitive and growth-oriented specialty chemicals organization. In connection with its previously announced program to accelerate EBITDA margin growth, Ashland expects to achieve $120 million in run-rate savings by the end of calendar year 2019, with $50 million in annualized run-rate savings by the end of calendar year 2018. Ashland expects the full EBITDA margin acceleration redesign plan to be completed in early November and ready for full implementation. Of note, the total stockholder return of Ashland, a component of the S&P 400, has outpaced that index in recent years. Since the completion of the Valvoline separation on May 12, 2017, Ashland's total stockholder return is 24.2% compared to 6.4% for the S&P 400 over the same time period. Ashland's one-year total stockholder return is 8.6% compared to (0.8%) for the S&P 400, the company's three-year total stockholder return is 43.4% compared to 30.3% for the S&P 400, and the company's five-year total stockholder return is 73.6% compared to 49.7% for the S&P 400, as of October 24, 2018. The Ashland board is composed of 11 highly qualified directors, 10 of whom are independent and all bringing diverse experience and expertise in chemicals, research and development, finance, and other disciplines and industries that are relevant and important to the company's business and continued success. The Governance and Nominating Committee will review all director candidates in accordance with its charter and Ashland's corporate governance guidelines. The board's formal recommendation regarding director nominees will be included in the company's proxy statement and other materials to be filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission and mailed to all stockholders eligible to vote at the 2019 Annual Meeting. Ashland stockholders are not required to take action at this time. About Ashland Ashland Global Holdings Inc. (NYSE: ASH) is a premier global specialty chemicals company serving customers in a wide range of consumer and industrial markets, including adhesives, architectural coatings, automotive, construction, energy, food and beverage, nutraceuticals, personal care and pharmaceutical. At Ashland, we are approximately 6,500 passionate, tenacious solvers - from renowned scientists and research chemists to talented engineers and plant operators - who thrive on developing practical, innovative and elegant solutions to complex problems for customers in more than 100 countries. Visit ashland.com to learn more. C-ASH Additional Information and Where to Find It In connection with the forthcoming solicitation of proxies from stockholders in respect of Ashland's 2019 Annual Meeting of Stockholders, Ashland will file with the Securities and Exchange Commission ("SEC") a proxy statement on Schedule 14A (the "proxy statement"), containing a form of white proxy card. Ashland, its directors and certain of its executive officers will be participants in the solicitation of proxies from stockholders in respect of the 2019 Annual Meeting of Stockholders. Information regarding the names of Ashland's directors and executive officers and their respective interests in the company by security holdings or otherwise will be set forth in the proxy statement. Details concerning the nominees of Ashland's Board of Directors for election at the 2019 Annual Meeting will be included in the proxy statement. BEFORE MAKING ANY VOTING DECISION, INVESTORS AND SECURITY HOLDERS ARE URGED TO READ ALL RELEVANT DOCUMENTS, INCLUDING ASHLAND'S PROXY STATEMENT AND ANY AMENDMENTS THERETO AND ACCOMPANYING WHITE PROXY CARD, FILED WITH OR FURNISHED TO THE SEC WHEN THEY BECOME AVAILABLE BECAUSE THEY CONTAIN, OR WILL CONTAIN, IMPORTANT INFORMATION ABOUT ASHLAND. Stockholders may obtain free copies of the proxy statement and other relevant documents that Ashland files with the SEC on Ashland's website at http://investor.ashland.com or from the SEC's website at www.sec.gov. Forward-Looking Statements This communication contains forward-looking statements within the meaning of Section 27A of the Securities Act of 1933, as amended and Section 21E of the Securities Exchange Act of 1934, as amended. Ashland has identified some of these forward-looking statements with words such as "anticipates," "believes," "expects," "estimates," "is likely," "predicts," "projects," "forecasts," "objectives," "may," "will," "should," "plans" and "intends" and the negative of these words or other comparable terminology. Ashland may from time to time make forward-looking statements in its annual reports, quarterly reports and other filings with the SEC, news releases and other written and oral communications. These forward-looking statements are based on Ashland's expectations and assumptions, as of the date such statements are made, regarding Ashland's future operating performance and financial condition, as well as the economy and other future events or circumstances. These statements include, but may not be limited to, Ashland's expectations regarding its EBITDA margin acceleration redesign plan and its ability to complete and implement such plan, including related cost savings. Ashland's expectations and assumptions include, without limitation, internal forecasts and analyses of current and future market conditions and trends, management plans and strategies, operating efficiencies and economic conditions (such as prices, supply and demand, cost of raw materials, and the ability to recover raw-material cost increases through price increases), and risks and uncertainties associated with the following: the program to eliminate certain existing corporate and Specialty Ingredients expenses (including the possibility that such cost eliminations may not occur or may take longer to implement than anticipated), the expected divestiture of its Composites segment and the butanediol ("BDO") manufacturing facility in Marl, Germany, and related merchant Intermediates and Solvents ("I&S") products (including, in each case, the possibility that a transaction may not occur or that, if a transaction does occur, Ashland may not realize the anticipated benefits from such transaction), the impact of acquisitions and/or divestitures Ashland has made or may make, including the acquisition of Pharmachem (including the possibility that Ashland may not realize the anticipated benefits from such transactions); Ashland's substantial indebtedness (including the possibility that such indebtedness and related restrictive covenants may adversely affect Ashland's future cash flows, results of operations, financial condition and its ability to repay debt); Ashland's ability to generate sufficient cash to finance its stock repurchase plans; severe weather, natural disasters, cyber events and legal proceedings and claims (including product recalls, environmental and asbestos matters); and without limitation, risks and uncertainties affecting Ashland that are described in Ashland's most recent Form 10-K (including Item 1A Risk Factors) filed with the SEC, which is available on Ashland's website at http://investor.ashland.com or on the SEC's website at http://www.sec.gov. Various risks and uncertainties may cause actual results to differ materially from those stated, projected or implied by any forward-looking statements. Ashland believes its expectations and assumptions are reasonable, but there can be no assurance that the expectations reflected herein will be achieved. Unless legally required, Ashland undertakes no obligation to update any forward-looking statements made in this news release whether as a result of new information, future events or otherwise. (TM) Trademark, Ashland or its subsidiaries, registered in various countries. FOR FURTHER INFORMATION: Investor Relations: Media Relations: Seth A. Mrozek Gary Rhodes +1 (859) 815-3527 +1 (859) 815-3047 samrozek@ashland.com glrhodes@ashland.com This announcement is distributed by West Corporation on behalf of West Corporation clients. The issuer of this announcement warrants that they are solely responsible for the content, accuracy and originality of the information contained therein. Source: Ashland Inc. via Globenewswire PR-Inside.com: 2018-10-26 08:06:02 Since May 29, 2018, Pershing Squares Management and Affiliates Have Purchased More Than $520 Million of PSH Shares Bill Ackman and Nick Botta Have Acquired an Additional $116 Million of PSH Shares Media Maitland Seda Ambartsumian/Sam Turvey, +44 20 7379 5151 Media-pershingsquareholdings@maitland.co.uk Pershing Square Holdings, Ltd. (LN:PSH) (LN:PSHD) (NA:PSH) ("PSH or the Company") today noted that on 25 October 2018, Pershing Square Capital Management, L.P. (PSCM) CEO Bill Ackman purchased a total of 7,165,000 PSH Public Shares at a price of $14.96 per share, and PSH Board Member Nick Botta purchased a total of 335,000 PSH Public Shares at a price of $14.96 per share. On 24 October 2018, Mr. Botta also purchased 57,493 PSH Management Shares. Taken together, these purchases by Mr. Ackman, his affiliate and Mr. Botta total $116 million. Assuming all PSH Management Shares are converted to PSH Public Shares, Mr. Ackman and his affiliate would own approximately 39.9 million Public Shares, or 18.0% of the Company on a fully diluted basis. In total, Mr. Ackman, Mr. Botta, members of the PSCM investment team, other PSCM employees, members of the PSCM advisory board, and their affiliates (together, the PSCM Affiliates) would own approximately 44.5 million Public Shares or 20.0% of the Company on a fully diluted basis. The PSCM Affiliates have increased their investment in PSH because they continue to believe that PSH is substantially undervalued. About Pershing Square Holdings, Ltd. Pershing Square Holdings, Ltd. (LN:PSH) (LN:PSHD) (NA:PSH) is an investment holding company structured as a closed-ended fund that makes concentrated investments principally in North American companies. View source version on businesswire.com: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20181025006 PR-Inside.com: 2018-10-25 22:02:02 Camposol Holding Plc. will announce the results for the third quarter 2018 on Wednesday October 31,2018. In connection with the release, a telephone conference will be held at 10:00 a.m. (Lima) as described below. The results will be published at 8:00 a.m. (Lima) and will be available on the Company's website. In connection with the earnings release Jorge Ramirez Rubio, CEO, and Andres Colichon Sas, CFO, will host a conference call presentation and a Q&A session at 10:00 a.m. (Lima). To participate in the conference call, please use the following numbers: London, UK Local +44 (0) 20 3107 0297 US/Canada International +1 409 981 0728 Zurich, Switzerland, Local +044 580 1733 Oslo, Norway, Local +47 2231 0524 Colombia, National Free Phone +01 800 518 5094 Chile, National Free Phone +56 800 914686 Peru, National Free Phone +51 0800 71470 Participants will be asked for their name and conference ID. The Camposol conference ID is: 2238709 Audio access for the meeting is available by dialing the above mentioned numbers. To access the presentation webcast in connection with the conference call, please use: https://edge.media-server.com/m6/p/4bsevzdz Participants are advised to log on to the service and check their configuration well ahead of the telephone conference commencement. Please use the following link (that is also available from the registration page of your webcasts): http://edge.media-server.com/m/player/help/systemcheck.php?lan=en If you are unable to participate in the call, a playback of the conference is available until November 07, 2018 by dialing: Replay - US Local +1 404 537 3406 Followed by replay access number: 2238709 For further information, please contact: Andres Colichon Sas, CFO acolichon@camposol.com.pe Jossue Yesquen, Deputy Manager of Investor Relations jyesquen@camposol.com.pe Phone: +511 621 0800 Ext.: 7171 About CAMPOSOL CAMPOSOL is a vertically integrated producer of branded fresh and healthy food that offers high quality, healthy and fresh food to consumers around the world, based on a sustainable management model. CAMPOSOL is organized into two main business units: Camposol Fruits and Vegetables (fresh produce) and Marinasol (aquaculture) and its portfolio includes superfoods like blueberries, avocados, shrimp, mandarins, among others. Additionally, our international commercial platform is responsible for the commercialization of the products of these two units, with offices in the US, The Netherlands and China. CAMPOSOL guarantees the full traceability of its products and is committed to supporting sustainable development through social and environmental responsibility policies and projects intended to increase the shared-value for all its stakeholders. On the strength of this value proposition, CAMPOSOL's commercial offices have established long-term relationships with the top worldwide supermarket chains and service them directly. CAMPOSOL is also an active member of the Global Compact since 2008. It presents annual Sustainability Reports aligned to the GRI Methodology and has achieved the following international certifications: BSCI, Global Gap, IFS, HACCP and BRC among others. To learn more about CAMPOSOL please visit: www.camposol.com.pe This announcement is distributed by West Corporation on behalf of West Corporation clients. The issuer of this announcement warrants that they are solely responsible for the content, accuracy and originality of the information contained therein. Source: Camposol Holding Limited via Globenewswire PR-Inside.com: 2018-10-26 19:26:16 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/ # 669 Words Contact us-Mr. NeelCorporate Sales, USAPolaris Market ResearchPhone: 1-646-568-9980Email: sales@polarismarketresearch.comWeb: www.polarismarketresearch.comManager1-646-568-9980 The Global Cognitive Computing Market is anticipated to reach USD 53.73 billion by 2026. North America dominates the global Cognitive computing market with the presence of key providers operating in the cognitive computing market place such as Microsoft, IBM, and Google. Also, these companies are investing heavily in the development of cognitive computing technology in the local as well a global Cognitive Computing Market. For example, in 2015, Watson cognitive computing system by IBM has made considerable investments in Modernizing Medicine, a software company which provides EMR systems to specialty medical practices. The investment was made to increase the adoption of Watson cognitive computing by the healthcare industry.Request free sample copy of this report @ https://www.polarismarketresearch.com/industry-analysis/cognitive-computing-market/request-for-free-sample Top Key Player: -Google Inc.IBM CorporationMicrosoft CorporationPalantirSaffron TechnologyCold LightCognitive ScaleEnterra Solutions3MOracle Corporation.The growth of the industry is highly attributed to the constantly increasing concern of many enterprises to analyze the huge amount of date generated for evaluating the risks related with their strategic initiatives. Further, currently the cognitive computing industry is growing through several technological advancements resulting in offering remarkable features to several end-user industries including, healthcare, retail, BFSI and others.This system is emerging as a booming solution to eradicate the complexities related to analysis of huge data volumes generated by these enterprises and provide experts with netter understanding to take decisions. Moreover, the demand is anticipated to further increase with the rapid improvements in internet speed worldwide. Since, internet plays a major role in collecting enormous volume of dark data in several forms including, images, text, and videos. Thus, a better internet speed would enable easy and prompt collection of such data from different locations.Make Inquiry about this report @ https://www.polarismarketresearch.com/industry-analysis/cognitive-computing-market/inquire-before-buying On the basis of technology, the natural language processing segment of cognitive computing technology accounted maximum revenue of the total global Cognitive Computing Market share. Further, this technology is anticipated to continue its dominance during the forecast period. Machine learning technology, on the other hand, accounted for the second largest share. Other technologies such as automated reasoning is still at emerging stage and is growing at a highest CAGR during the forecast period owing to its increasing applications in various applications in computational biology.Key Findings from the study suggest North America Cognitive Computing Market is expected to dominate the market during the forecast period. APAC is presumed to be the fastest growing market, developing at a CAGR of more than XX% over the forecast period. The cognitive computing market is presumed to develop at a CAGR of over XX% from 2018 to 2026.For More Details @ https://www.polarismarketresearch.com/industry-analysis/cognitive-computing-market/ The cognitive computing technology is finding its extensive application in several industries including, security, healthcare, BFSI, retail, and other sectors. With the rapid inflow of unstructured data and constant technological advancements the demand for cognitive technology is propelling globally. Furthermore, cloud based technological developments, advancement of new hardware and software systems as well as innovative cognitive experience interfaces will increase the adoption of cognitive computing technology by several industry verticals.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: 2018-10-26 20:29:18 Press Information Published by ACCESSWIRE News Network 888.952.4446 e-mail http://www.accesswire.com # 452 Words ACCESSWIRE News Network888.952.4446 BLOOMFIELD, CT / ACCESSWIRE / October 26, 2018 / Deringer-Ney Inc. has announced that they will be participating at the Medical Design and Manufacturing Show that will be held in Minneapolis, Minnesota, on October 31st through November 1st, 2018 at the Minneapolis Convention Center, booth number 1219. MD&M Minneapolis is the largest medical technology event in the Midwest with more than 500 exhibitors. For a free pass to the show, people can visit the Deringer-Ney home page and click on the MD&M Minneapolis icon.Deringer-Ney designs custom precious metal alloys and manufactures components for medical instruments and electronic devices. Applications for Deringer-Ney biocompatible alloys include parts used in pacemakers, radiopaque markers for cardiovascular procedures, intravascular medicine, sensors hand-held medical devices, and dental implants. Deringer-Ney is certified to the medical device quality management system ISO13485.Dan Montone, Marketing Communications Manager at Deringer-Ney, says, "Our products are in literally millions of devices used worldwide including medical equipment, portable medical devices, semiconductor test equipment, military and aerospace systems, and many others. Deringer-Ney also supplies precious metal wire, strip, and ribbon in various diameters and thicknesses. You can learn more about our products by visiting our booth at MD&M Minneapolis. We're looking forward to seeing you there."According to Dan, the Deringer-Ney Technical Team are leaders in the development of platinum group metal alloys. The team consists of research scientists, metallurgists, process engineers, and material technicians who are prepared to work with customers to meet the unique needs of critical applications. The materials developed by Deringer-Ney are formulated to provide a variety of different application-specific characteristics including low reactivity, biocompatibility, radiopacity, high mechanical strength, and low electrical resistance.Their custom alloys include Paliney, Neyoro, and the Paliney In Vivo series. These materials can be supplied as ultra-fine rod, wire, ribbon, and strip. They also produce custom components to customer prints from a broad range of manufacturing capabilities including precision stamping, cold forming, and cold heading, high-speed machining, wire forming, plastic injection molding, wire EDM, and component assembly. Some of Deringer-Ney's parts are so small, geometric features can only be seen through a microscope.Dan explains, "Medical device manufacturers are demanding higher performing components that continue to decrease in physical size. At Deringer-Ney we are always refining existing processes and continually developing new processes and technologies to meet and exceed these market expectations."For more information about the products provided by Deringer-Ney, those interested are encouraged to visit their company website, DeringerNey.com . Meanwhile, people can learn more about the MD&M event by visiting the MD&M website.Contact: Deringer Ney Inc:Matt Wilson - VP of Marketing(860) 286-6108mwilson@ DeringerNey.comDERINGER-NEY INC.Corporate Office353 Woodland Avenue,Bloomfield, CT 06002SOURCE: Deringer-Ney Inc. The service offered a measure of closure for Shepard's parents who, until now, hadn't found a spot that seemed suitable or safe enough to rest their child's remains. It also provided a moment of unity and collective grieving for those in the LGBTQ community, for whom Shepard's death has for decades represented the pain and discrimination many had experienced themselves. And the setting inside the same sprawling cathedral in the nation's capital where U.S. presidents are memorialized lent to the weight of the moment as hymns, speeches, choral music and prayers for love, tolerance and equality bounced off the towering columns and sweeping arches, echoing across the nave. PR-Inside.com: 2018-10-26 05:22:29 Press Information Published by ACCESSWIRE News Network 888.952.4446 e-mail http://www.accesswire.com # 648 Words ACCESSWIRE News Network888.952.4446 BEIJING / ACCESSWIRE / October 25, 2018 / DHgate.com , a leading Chinese cross border e-commerce company, is quickly building a grassroots network of fans the world over. Small business-people from Laos, to Brazil, to Botswana see the company is committed to the concerns of small and medium sized companies and helping them conquer the odds of doing business abroad.For two weeks, more than 20 participants from 9 counties gathered in Beijing for the APEC Women Connect Capacity Building program - co-hosted by DHgate.com . It was a deep dive into globalization and the Chinese economy, in which participants spent two weeks touring Beijing and the e-commerce hub of Zhejiang province, a once in a lifetime opportunity to learn about the secrets of China's success, and the secrets of succeeding at business with their Chinese counterparts."They say 'knowledge is power and when you know better you do better,'" said Mmantlha Sankoloba, the CEO of Botswana Exporters and Manufacturers Association, one of the participants, on her time spent in China.The participants in the program have a number of things in common - they are from small companies, small countries, and many are women. Ms. Sankoloba and many others who participated see their main challenge as improving their place, and the place of their countries, in the global value chain."Small countries can't do everything," said Victor Hugo of ESPM, a Brazilian business school, "but globalization gives everyone and opportunity to specialize," he said.The participants had lively discussion over coffee on Sunday, the last full day of the program. One point of contention was whether Global Supply Chains make life easier or harder for small companies; while multinational corporations have tended to dominate global trade, the rise of global supply chains creates space for small entrepreneurs to specialize, said Mr. Hugo and others.Meanwhile , they all see China, and DHgate.com , as a friendly force in helping them and their countries move into global markets."We see DHgate.com as our principal partner for Ecuador in establishing trading relations with China," said Javier Lopez, a businessman from Ecuador.The question of gender divided the students as well - the rise of the high technology economy has benefited both men and women. But at the coffee debate on Sunday, participants argued good-naturedly about who benefited more, and who needed more help in adapting to the new world of e-commerce."We should help women more, because when you help women you are also helping children," said Monica Retamal, CEO of Kodea, a Chilean company.The program, made in partnership with Beijing's University of International Business and Economics, offered DHgate.com - a chance to showcase its vision of a fairer, more diverse global trading system.DHgate.com is uniquely placed to offer object lessons to these small businesswomen. Diane Wang, DHgate.com's Founder and CEO, launched the company as a startup in 2004 and has focused DHgate.com's mission on connecting small businesses around the world with each other.Ms . Wang has long been an advocate for a more inclusive trade, meaning trade with more small businesses, more women, and more diversity.DHgate.com is to date the only e-commerce platform that is dedicated to serving small and medium-sized retailers worldwide, by integrating the whole ecosystem together from logistics to payment, from marketing to customs clearance, to lower the entry barriers for SMEs to access global markets.DHgate.com expects that, through this unique opportunity, more and more people will soon be able to share China's digital trading skills and technology, transforming the global economy for the better.Document: http://n. eqs.com/c/fncls.ssp?u=EDMUBFXHMDDocument title: DHgate.com has Global Grassroots Ambitions 26/10/2018 - Dissemination of a Financial Press Release, transmitted by EQS Group.The issuer is solely responsible for the content of this announcement.Media archive at www.todayir.comSOURCE: PR-Inside.com: 2018-10-26 09:05:01 Exclusive Razer Parachute for Razer zGold Users in PUBG MOBILE RAZER Investors Canny Lo Canny.lo@razer.com +852 9836 7249 or Media Beatrice Wong Beatrice.wong@razer.com +852 9732 8223 or Henry Fong Henry.fong@razer.com +852 6106 7181 or Instinctif Partners Jimmy Chan Jimmy.chan@instinctif.com +852 9439 8408 Razer (Razer or the Company, HKEX stock code: 1337), the worlds leading lifestyle brand for gamers is pleased to announce that as part of Razer zGolds partnership with the wildly popular PUBG MOBILE, gamers will be able to score a Razer-themed parachute along with other exclusive deals if they use Razer zGold to top up UC (Unknown Cash). This press release features multimedia. View the full release here: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20181026005 (Photo: Business Wire) Razer zGold has been a partner with PUBG Mobile, since mid-September. As part of the latest promotion, gamers can drop in with style by simply topping up 1,750 UC (US$24.99) using Razer zGold and score a Razer Parachute. On top of that, every Razer zGold spent earns gamers Razer zSilver, the loyalty reward points for redeeming Razer gear, discount vouchers, exclusive products and more. Razer zGold is one of the largest virtual credits for gamers around the world. Thanks to its extensive physical network with over 1 million distribution points, Razer zGold is pre-eminent in areas such as Southeast Asia where credit card penetration is low. Razer zGold gives access to users to over 2,500 gaming titles and live streaming platforms. The Company expects to see more game and digital media companies to join the Razer zGold platform as they seek to expand their presence in emerging markets such as the fast-growing Southeast Asia market. For the six months ended 30 June 2018, Razer zGold virtual credits made up the majority of Razers Services business revenues, which was US$17.0 million with a gross profit margin of 63.4%. ABOUT RAZER Razer is the worlds leading lifestyle brand for gamers. The triple-headed snake trademark of Razer is one of the most recognized logos in the global gaming and esports communities. With a fan base that spans every continent, the company has designed and built the worlds largest gamer-focused ecosystem of hardware, software and services. Razers award-winning hardware includes high-performance gaming peripherals, Blade gaming laptops and the acclaimed Razer Phone. Razers software platform, with over 50 million users, includes Razer Synapse (an Internet of Things platform), Razer Chroma (a proprietary RGB lighting technology system), and Razer Cortex (a game optimizer and launcher). In services, Razer zGold is one of the worlds largest virtual credit services for gamers. Razer Pay is the e-wallet designed for youth and millennials, and Razer Game Store is the only games download store that offers rewards for gamers. Founded in 2005 and dual-headquartered in San Francisco and Singapore, Razer has 15 offices worldwide and is recognized as the leading brand for gamers in the USA, Europe and China. Razer is listed on the Hong Kong Stock Exchange (Stock Code: 1337). Razer For Gamers. By Gamers. View source version on businesswire.com: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20181026005 PR-Inside.com: 2018-10-26 19:27:18 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/ # 545 Words Contact us-Mr. NeelCorporate Sales, USAPolaris Market ResearchPhone: 1-646-568-9980Email: sales@polarismarketresearch.comWeb: www.polarismarketresearch.comManager1-646-568-9980 The Global Fiber Optics Market is anticipated to reach USD 7 billion by 2026. The market for Fiber Optics is propelled by factors including, increasing penetration of internet, rising government funds for the development of broadband infrastructure, and intense research investments by the companies for development of innovative and new technology in the fiber optic to enable cost-savings.Request free sample copy of this report @ https://www.polarismarketresearch.com/industry-analysis/fiber-optics-market/request-for-free-sample Major key Player: -IncorporatedPrysmian S.p.A.Optical Cable CorporationOFS FitelLLCAFLFurukawa ElectricSterlite Technologies LimitedFinolex Cables Ltd.YOFCGeneral Cable Corporation.The plastic optic fiber market is expected to notice a high growth during the projected period. The core material (polymer) used for construction of plastic optic fiber is different from the material (glass) used in single mode and multimode. This provides a dynamic application and helps in saving cost. Further, the telecommunication application segment is dominating the market for fiber optics attributed to the escalating demand for internet in developing economies. This segment is expected to witness constant growth owing to growing telecommunication industry particularly in Asia Pacific and Middle East & Africa region.The Asia Pacific Fiber Optics Market is anticipated to witness the highest growth followed by Middle East & Africa. Increased industrialization, increasing adoption of smart devices resulting in high demand for internet, and blooming telecommunication industry are the major factor for propelling market growth in Middle East & Africa. Further, rising fiber optics applications in medical sector is driving market growth in countries including, China, India, and Japan. Also, governments of developed nations such as US, Japan, Germany, UK, and China are significantly investing to improve their countrys security infrastructure. Thus, with the adoption of fiber optics by the government, due to the benefits delivered by it, has further resulted in increased the Fiber Optics Market growth.Inquiry before buying @ https://www.polarismarketresearch.com/industry-analysis/fiber-optics-market/inquire-before-buying Corning, one of the leading company in fiber optics market stated that the market demand is surpassing supply. The company announced its plans to spend USD 176 million in the next two years for building a new manufacturing facility for optical fiber as well as to expand its existing facility. Also, Finisa, a transceiver vendor, is also planning to construct a new manufacturing plant in China and expand its existing facility in Texas. Such development reflects the increasing market growth.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: 2018-10-26 18:59:02 MICA, Ahmedabad to Host AIM AMA Sheth Foundation Doctoral Consortium 2019 in India Invites Doctoral Scholars in South & South East Asian Countries to Apply MICA Prof. Vaneet Chhibber Associate Director - Marketing & External Relations vaneet.chhibber@micamail.in MICA, Indias premier institute for Strategic Marketing and Communication, will be hosting the 7th AIM AMA Sheth Foundation Doctoral Consortium and Conference. The AMA- Sheth Foundation Doctoral Consortium is a prestigious international platform where young and promising doctoral students of top business schools are invited to come together, not just to present their work but also to get their work assessed and evaluated by the best academics in the field who have been contributing to the marketing discipline relentlessly through research, teaching and advocacy. The 2019 Consortium adopts a timely and unique theme of Marketing Communication in the Digital Era. Emerging, passionate and committed scholars, especially from South Asia & South East Asia, are encouraged to apply to attend the consortium to present and share their interesting and rigorous work. The event is by invitation only. It will take place at the MICA campus at Ahmedabad from 4th to 6th January 2019, followed by a one-day conference on 7th January 2019. MICA is providing free boarding, and lodging for all the days of the Consortium and the Conference to the participants whose applications are approved and are invited. The Consortium is being jointly organized by Dr. Shailendra Raj Mehta, President & Director MICA, Dr. Jagdish Sheth, Founder and Chairman of AIM, Emory University USA and Dr. V. Kumar, Co- founder of AIM from Georgia State University, USA. It has an outstanding list of speakers such as Dr. A. Parasuraman from the School of Business, University of Miami, Dr. David W. Stewart Loyola Marymount University, USA, Dr. Vithala R. Rao Cornell University, USA, Dr. Rajan Varadarajan Texas A&M University, USA, Dr. Rajendra Srivastava, Indian School of Business, India to name a few who are well known and illustrious academic personalities in the field of marketing. This four-day AIM AMA Sheth Foundation Doctoral Consortium cum Conference promises to be an intellectually engaging event entwined with rich cultural experiences. Please visit the event website at MICAs website www.mica.ac.in/sheth-consortium/introduction for more information. Mr. Jayant Shah at AIM ( jayshah_ca@yahoo.com ) and Dr. Prof. Varsha Jain (Professor of Marketing) at MICA (varsha@micamail.in) can be written to for any specific queries. View source version on businesswire.com: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20181026005 PR-Inside.com: 2018-10-26 07:03:02 PHC Holdings Announces Strategic Cooperation Agreement with Mitsui & Co., Ltd. and China Resources Healthcare Group Limited Media contact: PHC Holdings Corporation Masayo Okada, +81-3-6778-5311 Corporate Communications Department PHC Holdings Corporation (headquarters: Tokyo, Japan, hereafter PHCHD), announces signing a Strategic Cooperation Agreement with Mitsui & Co., Ltd. (headquarters: Tokyo, Japan, hereafter Mitsui) and China Resources Healthcare Group Limited (headquarters: Hong Kong, hereafter CRH), a wholly-owned subsidiary of China Resources (Holdings) Co., Ltd. CRH is one of the leading healthcare business groups in China, owning China Resources Medical Holdings Company which operates over 100 hospitals across China. This May, the Japanese and Chinese governments signed a Memorandum on Business Cooperation in Third Countries between Japan and China, and established the Japan-China Forum on Third Country Business Cooperation, aiming to further promote exchanges between Japanese and Chinese companies as well as developing projects involving private-sector economic cooperation in third countries. The Agreement signed between PHCHD, Mitsui and CRH is intended for new healthcare business development utilizing each companys business platforms and expertise and maximizing business synergies in third countries, which will contribute to the Japan-China commercial economic cooperation promoted by both governments. PHCHD offers value-added products and services for its three core businesses Medical Devices, Healthcare IT, and Life Sciences. Through signing the three-party Agreement, PHCHD will seek to contribute to healthcare quality improvement and provide better service to patients by strengthening partnerships with Chinese companies in the healthcare field and accelerating healthcare businesses in third countries. About PHC Holdings Corporation Incorporated in 2014, PHC Holdings Corporation is a global healthcare company. Its subsidiaries include PHC Corporation and Ascensia Diabetes Care Holdings AG. Committed to its corporate mission, We contribute to the wellbeing of society through our diligent efforts by creating new value for all the people who wish for better health, the company develops, manufactures, sells and services medical equipment and solutions through its three core businesses for medical devices, healthcare IT and life sciences. PHC Holdings Corporation groups consolidated net sales in FY2017 was 192.6 billion yen with global distribution of products and services for more than 125 countries. PHC Holdings Corporation changed its name from Panasonic Healthcare Holdings Co., Ltd. in April, 2018. For further information on PHC Holdings Corporation, please visit www.phchd.com/jp/ About China Resources (Holdings) Co., Ltd. Established in 1938 in Hong Kong, China Resources Co., Ltd. is a state-owned, diversified holding company engaged in a broad range of businesses, including power, real estate, pharmaceuticals in China. Consolidated net sales in FY2017 reached RMB 551.3 billion. en.crc.com.cn/ About China Resources Healthcare Group Limited Founded in Hong Kong in 2011, China Resources Healthcare Group Limited, a wholly-owned subsidiary of China Resources (Holdings) Co., Ltd., is a leading healthcare company engaged in medical health service businesses in China, actively undertaking investment in healthcare industries and hospital operations management. www.crhealthcare.com.hk/ View source version on businesswire.com: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20181025006 PR-Inside.com: 2018-10-26 20:28:05 Press Information Published by ACCESSWIRE News Network 888.952.4446 e-mail http://www.accesswire.com # 1042 Words ACCESSWIRE News Network888.952.4446 VANCOUVER, BC / ACCESSWIRE / October 26, 2018 / Primary Energy Metals Inc. (CSE - Prim FSE - 1WZ:GR) ("Primary" or the "Company") is pleased to announce it has signed an arm's length acquisition agreement (the "Purchase Agreement") with the shareholders of 1177527 B.C. Ltd. ("1177527"). Pursuant to the terms of the Purchase Agreement, the Company will acquire all of the outstanding share capital of 1177527. In consideration for the acquisition, the Company will make a series of cash payments totaling $250,000 and will issue 20,000,000 common shares to the existing shareholders of 1177527. The Company will also assume a 2.0% net smelter returns ("NSR") royalty on commercial production from the properties held by 1177527. The NSR is owing to Contigo Resources Ltd., and one-half of it may be purchased at any given time in consideration for a cash payment of $1,000,000.1177527 holds the rights to 39 mineral claims in various locations in the Province of Quebec totalling approximately 985.41 hectares (the "Hardy Project"). The claims comprise a number of independent projects, as follows: - The Hardy and Nico Cobalt project claims are located approximately 250 km northwest of Baie Comeau, Quebec. Cobalt grades of 0.41%, 0.40%, 0.34%, 0.33%. - The Kwai, Coudon, and Boudrias Cobalt project claims are located in the Godbout, Quebec. Cobalt grades up to 0.084%. - The Muskrat and Perobonca - Begin Cobalt project claim are in the Lac Saint Jean area. Cobalt grades of 0.1022%, 0.1739%, 0.1408% - Champ Cobalt project is located Sherbrooke, Quebec. Several showings were identified with up to 10% sulphides and coincident magnetic anomalies. These provided results of up to 2.5% combined Cu + Ni, with showing #5 grading 1.93% Cu and 0.60% Ni. These grades are from selected samples and may not be representative of the mineralization hosted on the properties. Patrick Morris, CEO and President stated, "we consider the Hardy Project in Quebec as a strategic investment that is the focus of management to enhance the value of the company for our shareholders. Primary will use its geotechnical team to assess historic data in developing an exploration plan that can effectively and efficiently define a potential resource. There is a massive demand for cobalt and the dynamics of sourcing an ethical supply is growing rapidly driven by the surge in the production of EV's."THE GREEN ECONOMY RUNS ON COBALTThere are many types of lithium-ion batteries, but the vast majority of li-ions sold today use cobalt in some capacity.In fact, by 2020 it is expected that 75% of lithium-ion batteries will contain cobalt. Why? It's because cobalt is the most important metal for increasing the energy density of lithium-ion cathodes.Green uses such as EVs are driving the upwards trajectory of cobalt demand.By 2020, almost 1/5 of cobalt demand will stem from electric vehicles.Total refined cobalt demand:Year201020152020eDemand64,00095,000124,000% xEV batteries<1%6%17%% Electronics batteries30%36%31%Source: CRU"Cobalt's demand growth profile remains one of the best among industrial metals peers. Its exposure to rechargeable batteries continues to play a crucial role." - Macquarie Supply can tightenChemical cobalt - the kind used in batteries, is expected to fall into a growing deficit over the next few years. By 2020, CRU expects that deficit to be at least 12,000 tonnes.Cobalt prices have been rising, but they are nowhere near all-time highs yet.All-time highs for cobalt prices happened in 2008, after the DRC government placed restrictions on export of ores and concentrates. For a brief stint, cobalt prices even exceeded $50/ lb.The current price? Roughly $26.06/ lb."With this growth will come further disruption to the traditional market structures that have developed in cobalt over the last 30 years. In short, a new, more secure supply chain for the modern era will need to be created, a task that includes new mines, new refineries, and a more transparent supply chain." - Andrew Miller, Benchmark MineralsCompletion of the transaction with 1177527 is subject to completion of filings with the Canadian Securities Exchange, and confirmation as to title to the Hardy Project.The technical information contained in this news release has been reviewed and approved by Thomas Clarke P.Geo., Pr.Sci.Nat . who is a Qualified Person with respect to Primary's "The Hardy Project" as defined under National Instrument 43-101. About Primary PRIMARY ENERGY METALS INC. (CSE: PRIM FSE: 1WZ:GR) is a listed junior exploration and development company and is engaged in the business of acquiring, exploring and developing ethically sourced Vanadium, Cobalt, Copper, Nickel, and Uranium focussed mineral resource properties to create value for its shareholders. ACQUISITION FOCUS - Other projects Primary is investigating are in the clean energy sector. In this sector, the Company is focused specifically upon exploration opportunities to source green energy power minerals for use in battery production. Primary's interests in this sector are guided by the following: - Identifying opportunities in regions that are conducive to mining due to the regulatory nature of the government with existing infrastructure. - Identifying opportunities in geographical locations that provide easy access large markets for these metals. - Identifying opportunities with locations with existing mine shafts.ON BEHALF OF THE BOARD OF DIRECTORSPatrick MorrisCEO and PresidentTelephone: +1 778-735-1000E-mail: info@ primaryenergymetals.comNeither the Canadian Securities Exchange nor its Regulation Services Provider (as that term is defined in the policies of the Canadian Securities Exchange) accepts responsibility for the adequacy or accuracy of this release. Forward Looking Statements Certain information set forth in this news release may contain forward-looking statements that involve substantial known and unknown risks and uncertainties. All statements other than statements of historical fact are forward- looking statements, including, without limitation, statements regarding future financial position, business strategy, use of proceeds, corporate vision, proposed acquisitions, partnerships, joint-ventures and strategic alliances and co- operations, budgets, cost and plans and objectives of or involving the Company. Such forward-looking information reflects management's current beliefs and is based on information currently available to management. Often, but not always, forward-looking statements can be identified by the use of words such as "plans", "expects", "is expected", "budget", "scheduled", "estimates", "forecasts", "predicts", "intends", "targets", "aims", "anticipates" or "believes" or variations (including negative variations) of such words and phrases or may be identified by statements to PR-Inside.com: 2018-10-26 03:35:46 Press Information Published by ACCESSWIRE News Network 888.952.4446 e-mail http://www.accesswire.com # 713 Words ACCESSWIRE News Network888.952.4446 NEW YORK, NY / ACCESSWIRE / October 25, 2018 / The United States of America is a country built by immigrants, and they have always been indispensable contributors to its development and growth. For centuries synonymous with freedom and opportunity, the USA continues to draw people from all over the world, who arrive in pursuit of self-realization and prosperity. Immigrants keep the country's entrepreneurial spirit alive, drive its economic growth, and invigorate its culture, thus helping it maintain its global influence. The skills and business concepts brought by foreigners are vital for keeping the US competitive, so it is imperative for national leaders to support laws that facilitate business immigration and allow the country to benefit in full from the inflow of talent, ideas, and investments, comments acclaimed attorney Rahul Manchanda. Research clearly indicates that the United States has kept its edge thanks to business immigration. As one report notes, ''Highly skilled immigrants with high levels of education and financial capital give rise to entrepreneurs who exert a significant influence on economic development in their host countries. In the Silicon Valley, high-tech Indian and Chinese immigrant entrepreneurs founded companies that have created jobs and contributed billions of dollars toward expansion of the US economy.'' It is estimated that up to 25% of high-tech companies in the United States are started by immigrants, and foreigners moving to the country also file twice as many patents as native-born citizens. But while the discourse often centers on high-skilled workers, immigrants as a whole are vital for the economy, especially with the job market thinning out due to baby boomers retiring, Rahul Manchanda points out. As Cornell economist Francine Blau recentlytold the New York Times, ''A lot of our labor-force growth comes from immigrants and their children. Without them, we'd suffer the problems associated with countries with an aging population, like Japan.''After studying immigration trends over a 20-year period and their impact on the country, the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine reached similar conclusions, summingup the benefits as follows: ''Immigration is integral to the nation's economic growth. The inflow of labor supply has helped the United States avoid the problems facing other economies that have stagnated as a result of unfavorable demographics, particularly the effects of an aging workforce and reduced consumption by older residents. In addition, the infusion of human capital by high-skilled immigrants has boosted the nation's capacity for innovation, entrepreneurship, and technological change.'' The importance of business immigration was also highlighted by the openletter sent in August 2018 to Homeland Security Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen by the Business Roundtable, whose members include such renowned corporate leaders as JPMorgan's Jamie Dimon, Apple's Tim Cook, Cisco's Chuck Robbins, AT&T's Randall Stephenson, and Bank of America's Brian Moynihan. They appealed for fair immigration policies and minimum disruptions and uncertainty so as to encourage talented people to pursue careers in the United States and enable the country to retain its competitiveness. Rahul Manchanda, the principal attorney at ManchandaLaw Offices PLLC, is one of the most prominent representatives of the legal profession working today in the United States. An author, lecturer, and relentless fighter for peace, he has guided the law firm since 2002, making it an internationally recognized name. As a lecturer, Rahul Manchanda has spoken frequently about his pioneering practices, notably the merger of criminal defense law and immigration/deportation defense law. His impressive work and enormous contributions to the profession have led to wide recognition, including his choice as one of Newsweek Magazine's Top Attorneys in the United States of America in 2013 and Top Immigration Lawyers in the United States of America in 2012. The esteemed legal expert is also often invited to discuss major cases on networks such as Fox News, CNN, CourtTV, and NBC. His work and observations have been used to guide foreign policy decisions in both the Congress and Senate of the United States, the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), various think-tanks, NGOs, and numerous government agencies, both at home and abroad. Rahul Manchanda - Principal Attorney at Manchanda Law Offices PLLC: http://rahulmanchandanews.comRahul Manchanda, Esq. - Principal Attorney - Manchanda Law Office PLLC - LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/rahul-manchanda-esq-283a377Manchanda Law Office PLLC - Home - Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/ManchandaLawOffice/Contact Information: RahulManchandaNews.comcontact@rahulmanchandanews.comSOURCE: Rahul Manchanda PR-Inside.com: 2018-10-26 17:11:23 Press Information Published by ACCESSWIRE News Network 888.952.4446 e-mail http://www.accesswire.com # 1018 Words ACCESSWIRE News Network888.952.4446 Building An Industry AI Trading Market Powered by BlockchainSINGAPORE / ACCESSWIRE / October 26, 2018 / The invention of the steam engine and electricity marked the beginning of the industrial era. The emergence of the internet led to another technological revolution. Today, with the explosive development of computing capabilities and the gathering of big data, artificial intelligence is primed for leapfrog development; ready to usher in a new era of unprecedented industrial revolution. VisionX, the industry smart chain,appears with opportune timing. Boasting tailored solutions for the nuanced requirements of different industries as they prepare for the new era, VisionX will lead the development of a new paradigm powered by blockchain and optimal, customized Artificial Intelligence solutions.Leading the Path to Industry 4.0Industrial civilization is fueled by the gathering and applications of big data, and in particular, industry data. We sit atop a gold mine of global industry data whose value has yet to be tapped. According to data from KPMG, by 2020, the global AI market will be worth $4 trillion. Statista forecasts that the value of industry data at the end of 2018 will be $42 billion. For a fitting example of this explosive development, consider the visual inspection industry. China has over 60 million surface inspectors and spends $350 billion every year in this industry. Another example is robotic pick and place, estimated to be worth $47.3 billion by 2020.The trend of industrial development is rather clear; constantly increasing product quality, on-demand production and faster delivery time. As a consequence of these demands, labor costs keep rising and reports of human errors are frequently noted. One challenge is the lack of cross-industry AI solutions. Using current industry practices, in order to receive AI solutions, companies are required to first provide data. Additionally, it's difficult for a single company to generate enough valid data to be provided with an AI solution. This is where VisionX comes in.In the era of Industry 4.0, VisionX combines blockchain with AI to provide industry solutions starting with product surface defects detection and eventually expanding to offer thousands of tailored AI solutions to all manner of industries.Smart Industry Starts with VisionMaking intelligent machines be able to "see" product surface defects has become a difficult roadblock worldwide. Consider the following examples: small scratches, dents and holes can affect the quality and integrity of steel products; the tiny defects on textiles or zippers may deter customers from making a purchase; the flaws on aeronautical parts or safety belts may have public safety consequences; and surface defects on LED, LCD or solar panels will cause them to operate less efficiently.VisionX's goal is to build the world's largest surface defects detection images recognition database. It has the largest and highest-quality image dataset that includes more than 130,000 images and over 1 million metadata sets. It uses a Dataonomy algorithm to analyze relevant data with the goal of creating both generalpurpose and tailored AI solutions. It offers simple and efficient deployment and promises an accuracy rate of more than 95%. VisionX will allow savings of up to 30% as compared to competitors that utilize more traditional methods.VisionX can be applied to consumer electronics, textiles, furniture, steel, mining, automobile and display industries. In the future, it can be extended to predictive maintenance, robotic pick and place and cross-industry exhibition planning.Dataonomy Smart AlgorithmsVisionX has multiple patents, including one for automated AI-based surface inspection systems and methods and one for AI-based object recognition and manipulation systems and methods. Furthermore, VisionX has a patentpending for Dataonomy, a data classification algorithm which is its core IP.Dataonomy is a self-developed taxonomy algorithm and provides an innovative way to categorize data, discovering the internal relations between large-scale public data and more specific cross-industry defect data.At the moment, the Dataonomy algorithm has successfully helped with yielding results from visual inspection exercises, including successfully challenging the international industry surface defect inspection image data set (DAGM2007). Compared to currently employed traditional methods and deep-learning methods, it shows a clear advantage in the accuracy of its inspection capabilities.VisionX Smart Industry Trading MarketNo matter how smart an algorithm is, it can never sustain a complete ecosystem, because of the scattered data and high-costs for a single company to conduct research, as well as a general lack of necessary data among industries. VisionX's solution is an ecosystem built on blockchain to incentivize cross-industry participation. People can offer their datasets and VisionX will verify and test that contribution. VisionX will organize, clean and annotate the data in order to build an Industry X basic dataset and an Industry X basic AI solution, as well as providing customized AI solutions for special clients. Through the collection of data, the accuracy of such solutions can be as high as 99.97%; meanwhile, a decentralized cloud AI computing structure will support large-scale cloud deep-learning network training to provide clients with quick and frequent upgrades and iterations.Based on the data contribution recorded on the blockchain, users will receive token rewards and a percentage of the profit. VNX token rewards will encourage people to offer data, solutions and services; 15% of the profit from AI solution's sales will be distributed to data contributors, 65% will be given to solution providers and dataset builders and 20% will go to the VisionX Foundation. VisionX Foundation will use the 20% to buy back and burn VNX tokens, and they will continue to buyback and burn as much as 50% of the tokens in circulation.VisionX has built a bridge for industries and enterprises to realize cross-industry collaboration with the goal of creating high-quality AI solutions and leading the way into Industry 4.0. In the future it will be able to serve thousands of industries and offer millions of AI solutions with a vast and ever-expanding dataset. Starting at defect detection, VisionX will expand into robot pick and place, predictive maintenance, smart voice interaction, supply chain and much more.Their potential partners include the world's top 500 companies, tech giants, steel manufacturers, large-scale printing machine providers, image quality inspection in traditional enterprises, automation, robotic device developers and more.Contact:Shawn YouEmail: service@ visionx.orgWebsite: https://www.deepbrainchain.org/visionx.html SOURCE: DeepToken The Executive Secretary of Nigerian Shippers Council (NSC), Hassan Bello, said on Friday that Nigeria lost $25 billion to foreign ship owners between 2015 and 2017. Mr Bello said over $9.08 was paid as freight for dry and wet cargos to foreign ship owners in 2015 due to the absence of Nigerian-owned fleet plying the international route. The NSC boss said the trend had been recurring over the years till date adding that in 2016, over $7.55 billion dollars was estimated as opportunity loss. According to him, $8.60 billion was freight opportunity loss from import and export of dry and wet cargos in 2017. As a result of this the Federal Ministry of Transportation through the Minister of Transportation, Rotimi Amaechi, set up a committee for the Nigerian fleet implementation, he said He said the committee was to examine the possibility of using existing shipping companies to run a Nigerian fleet and provide guidelines on procedures of establishing a shipping company. Mr Bello said for government to realise its programme, a conducive environment backed by strong political will with incentives to operators, had to be in place. He said the ministry of budget and planning played an important role in fiscal policy direction of government. Speaking, the Minister of Budget and Planning, Udoma Udoma said the ministry of budget and planning would work with relevant agencies to resolve the issues and support the committee fully. We will work with the Ministry of Industry, Investment and Trade as well as the Ministry of Finance to try and ensure that we address those issues; it is important that your work succeed. It is very important because firstly there is need for this country to generate more revenue; there is the need to see if we can expand the Nigeria fleet, the work and the cargoes that they carry. We will be saving ourselves foreign exchange and we would be able to generate funds in foreign exchange as well. So it is very important to create an expansion for Nigerian fleet. We would also be creating jobs for Nigerians. When we expand the fleet we would also be expanding our transport infrastructure; you can be sure of our strong active support from this ministry, he said. (NAN) The organisers of Face of Okija cultural pageant have begun accepting entries for the 2018 edition. An initiative of Obijackson Foundation, the pageant does not dwell on physical beauty but rather seeks to promote true African values and morals in youths. The 2018 edition was officially flagged off in Lagos on Friday at an event attended by PREMIUM TIMES and other journalists. The 2018 Project Director, Konnie Agu, said this years event is tagged Re-engineering our Moral Standard. Ms. Agu also explained that the participants are expected to display unique African beauty, intelligence and diverse talents. She said, All the pageant hopefuls must be an unmarried graduate below 30 and must be an indigene of Anambra state. Mothers and pregnant women are not eligible to partake in the pageant. They must also speak fluent Igbo and must not have tattoos or piercings. Every contestant must also be available to serve the foundation within Nigeria for a period of one year. The organisers also noted that the grand finale of the event is scheduled to hold on December 29 in Okija, Anambra State. The winners of the competition would be offered automatic employment as brand ambassadors for the foundation with a regular monthly salary for the duration of their reign. In addition, they will also be provided a chauffeur driven official car for the duration of their reign. The organisers also added that the winner and the two runner-ups of the Okija Rising Talent Hunt would be given mouth-watering prizes. In its fourth year, the 2017 edition was held at the ObiJackson Boulevard in Okija, Anambra State on December 29. The show was hosted by media personality and Okija indigene, Ebuka Obi Uchendu. Chinasa Ezeamaka and Chukwudi Enukoha emerged winners and became the brand ambassadors of the ObiJackson Foundation. Court files show Sayoc completed a financial management course and was discharged from his debts in September 2012. Sayoc's mother, Madeline, also filed for bankruptcy at the same time and was discharged in January 2017. She was not immediately available to respond to phone messages left with her by the AP. The leader of the Syrian oppositions negotiation team insisted on Friday that President Bashar al-Assad resign as a precondition for restoring peace in the war-torn country. It is impossible for this person, who has destroyed Syria, who is responsible for the deaths of many Syrians, to remain, Naser al-Hariri said in Moscow ahead of a meeting with Russias top diplomat. Russia, the main military backer of Syrias leadership, has shifted its focus in recent months to facilitating a peaceful resolution to the Syrian civil war. Russia is capable of facilitating dialogue to achieve a political resolution, al-Hariri was quoted as saying in comments carried by Russian state news agency TASS. He expressed hope that his meeting with Russian Foreign Minister, Sergei Lavrov, would expedite the pursuit for a political resolution, the agency reported. Russia and Syrian opposition-supporter Turkey clinched a pivotal peace deal in September to prevent Syrian state forces from invading the rebel stronghold Idlib near the Turkish border. Turkey was on Saturday to host the leaders of Russia, France and Germany to discuss a range of efforts to resolve the Syrian conflict and restore peace in the war-torn country. (dpa/NAN) The federal government of Nigeria is a part owner and shareholder of the troubled telecommunications giant, MTN Nigeria, checks by PREMIUM TIMES have shown. The details, which is not entirely new but largely unknown to many analysts and Nigerian citizens, are coming to the fore amidst a long-running row between the Nigerian authorities and the telecom firm. The Central Bank of Nigeria had in August sanctioned MTN Nigeria and four commercial banks for alleged financial infractions. The CBN demanded a refund of about $8.13 billion (about N2.5 trillion at N306.15 to a dollar) allegedly repatriated illegally out of Nigeria through four banks, including Standard Chartered Bank, Stanbic-IBTC, Citibank and Diamond Bank. The banks were also ordered to refund various amounts totaling N5.87 billion. While Standard Chartered was asked to refund N2.5 billion, Stanbic IBTC was to refund N1.9 billion; Citibank, N1.3 billion; and Diamond Bank was asked to refund N250 million. The banks were accused of committing flagrant violation of extant laws and regulations of the Federal Republic of Nigeria, including the Foreign Exchange (Monitoring and Miscellaneous Provisions) Act, 1995 and the Foreign Exchange Manual, 2006. Details showed about $35.5billion was repatriated by Standard Chartered Bank based on illegally issued CCIs, while about $2.6billion, $1.8 billion and $348.9million fraudulently issued by Stanbic IBTC, Citibank and Diamond Bank respectively between 2007 and 2015. Besides, the CBN said further investigations revealed that on account of illegal conversion of MTN shareholders loan to preference shares (interest free loan) of $399.6million, about $8.13 billion was illegally repatriated by MTN. Further details showed MTN shareholders invested about $402.6million between 2001 and 2006 through the inflow of foreign currency cash transfers and equipment importation evidenced by the CCIs issued by Standard Chartered, Citi Bank and Diamond Bank. Although the affected banks denied wrongdoing, by September, the CBN had debited the banks. At the height of the controversies generated by the development in September, MTN was slammed a separate sanction by Nigerias attorney general to the tune of about $2 billion dollar over tax concerns. The telecoms firm took the matters to court and is now negotiating with the apex bank for a favourable resolution. Nigerian governments Investment in MTN In the middle of the controversies, there have been insinuations in and outside the media that the telecoms giant is being persecuted by the Nigerian authorities. A few analysts suggested, even, that the matter would have been otherwise if the nation had a major stake in the company, aside being chiefly a regulator. Checks by PREMIUM TIMES Wednesday, however, showed that the Nigerian government is an investor and stakeholder in MTN Nigeria, through the Nigeria Sovereign Investment Authority (NSIA), the nations investment agency. PREMIUM TIMES searched through the annual report and account of the Nigeria Sovereign Investment Authority (NSIA) between 2014 and 2016 and details showed that the nation has investment in MTN Nigeria. Titi Olubiyi, the NSIA spokesperson, also confirmed to PREMIUM TIMES Wednesday night that the agencys investment in the telecom giant, which commenced in 2014, is still valid. The NSIA came to being on May 27, 2011, after the then president signed the Nigeria Sovereign Investment Authority bill into law. The NSIA was created with the mandate of driving sustained economic development for the benefit of all Nigerians while its vision is anchored on building a savings base for the Nigerian people, enhancing the development of Nigerias infrastructure and, ultimately, providing stabilisation support in times of economic stress occasioned by depleting oil revenues. When probed during a telephone chat Wednesday, Mr Olubiyi disclosed that details of Nigerias investment in MTN could not be accessed by PREMIUM TIMES but the agency is aware of the rows between the government and MTN. The spokesperson added that having done its due diligence and market analysis adequately prior the investment, the NSIA is convinced that its investment in MTN and other conglomerates it invested on behalf of the Nigerian government is secured. MTN Nigeria is 75.81 percent owned by MTN International (Mauritius) Limited (MTNI); 18.7 percent held by Nigerian shareholders through special purpose vehicles; 2.78 percent owned by Mobile Telephone Networks NIC B.V and 1.76 percent owned by Public Investment Corporation SOC Limited. https://www.mtnonline.com/about-mtn/corporate-information It is not clear why the government would not want to disclose the size of its share in the company although it is clear public funds were used for the acquisition. It is clear however that its share would be under 18.7 per cent given the spread of equities. On Tuesday, MTN Group warned shareholders to exercise caution in dealing with the companys securities amidst plans to settle amicably with Nigerian authorities. They (shareholders) are advised that MTN Nigeria Communications Limited continues to engage with the relevant Nigerian authorities to ensure a mutually acceptable resolution to the matters concerning the Central Bank of Nigeria and the Attorney General of the Federal Republic of Nigeria, the telecom group said in a disclosure sent to the Johannesburg Stock Exchange, JSE, South Africa, where it is listed. Accordingly, shareholders are advised to continue to exercise caution when dealing in the Companys securities until a further announcement is made, it added. The spokesperson to President Muhammadu Buhari, Femi Adeshina, had said that the proposed N30, 000 as minimum wage for civil servants, is not feasible. The labour unions, who initially demanded N50, 000 minimum wage, and later said N30,000 was agreed upon during the negotiation, are angry at governments stance on a new minimum wage for workers. PREMIUM TIMES reported that the unions, on Sunday, stated that they will commence a nationwide, indefinite strike from November 6 if the government does not meet their demands on minimum wage for Nigerian workers. The organised labour has rejected the proposal of the federal government to raise the minimum wage from N18, 000 to N24, 000. Speaking on a Channels TV programme, Politics Today, aired on Thursday, Mr. Adesina noted that some governors were unable to pay the N18, 000, not to talk of N30, 000. So if they cant pay N18, 000 and labour is asking for N30, 000 and they refuse to come lower, there may be a stalemate which will not be good for the country. I think in the spirit of negotiation, labour should not insist on N30,000, he said. Mr Adesina was asked that if the political class, particularly members of the All Progressives Congress (APC), agree to reduce their salary, will the states be able to pay the N30,000 minimum wage? He replied; I doubt. Even if they decide not to collect anything, it still doesnt take care of N30,000 minimum wage. It doesnt. Maybe if the members of the national assembly concede part of their salaries and allowances, it can make a dent on minimum wage. But other office holders dont earn anything outrageous. Also, speaking on the independence of the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) towards the 2019 general elections, Mr Adeshina said; President Buhari once told me that if clean, free, and fair elections is the only thing he leaves for Nigeria, he is a satisfied and a contented man. President Buhari is not interfering with INEC. INEC is truly independent under this presidency, He added It should be recalled that Mr Buhari is seeking re-election and will be contesting against Atiku Abubakar of the Peoples Democratic Party, amongst other candidates. Mr Adeshina also reiterated that the federal government has not published the names of those affected by the travel ban as some media houses have published. It is only people that have skeleton in their cupboards that will be afraid to open their cupboards. When asked if the federal government will release the names, he explained that he doubts that and that only the Attorney General of the Federation has the power to do so. The Secretary to the Government of the Federation (SGF), Boss Mustapha, has said the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP), in its 16 years of power, did not achieve up to one-tenth what the ruling All Progressives Congress (APC) has achieved in three years. He said this on Wednesday at the Presidential Villa, Abuja, where President Buhari hosted a dinner for youth political appointees, Vanguard Newspaper reports. Mr Mustapha, who stressed that the Buhari-led government had achieved so much, promised to make available a document which was put together by his office. According to him, the document which he called a midterm report, captures what the government has been able to achieve in just about two and half years. If we have to make a comparison of what has been achieved in the last couple of years, the 16 years of PDP administration will not constitute one-tenth of what we have been able to achieve in the last three and half years. We went to the 2015 elections with promises, but we will go to the 2019 elections with our scorecard, he said. Kogi State governor, Yahaya Bello, who was also present at the dinner, urged the president and the APC to get ready for aggressive marketing by the PDP as he said the opposition party would not be a push over in 2019 general elections. Mr Bello explained that though the president remained the best leader for the country till 2023, the issue of perception was one that must be taken seriously by the APC to ensure that no chance was given to the opposition to return to power. He said what the APC has to do was to convince the masses of all the president had done for Nigerians. A good product sells itself and Mr President is a very good product. And his competence is definitely needed for the progress of this nation but we need to go out there and sell him to the people. We must market the incredible accomplishment of Mr President and of his administration to every voter and in a language he or she understands. If we fail, God forbids, the adverse narrative being put out by the PDP and other propaganda machine will dominate the land and shape perception. If we dont market our product very well, a tough and progressive victory against a terrorist threat, which continues to cost the lives of our brave military and law enforcement agencies, will be mistaken for inactions, he said. However, the executive director, Nigerian Social Insurance Trust Fund (NSITF), Jasper Azuatalam, told Mr Buhari that most Nigerians were currently disappointed at him because he had failed to perform the magic they had expected of him. He also said it would be the worst thing for Nigeria if power slipped back to the PDP in 2019. On his part, the president condemned the rush by some Nigerians, especially the youth, in search of greener pastures abroad, saying his administration was determined to transform the country and make it better than it met it. If people dont feel good about this country, let them go and find out what is happening elsewhere but we are going to stay here and we are going to salvage this country together. I have gone through a lot, I have been governor, I was in charge of our petroleum sector for over three years, I was Head of State and now I have come without the uniform and have visited each of the 774 local government areas in this country. The intention of this administration is to do the infrastructure and give education and healthcare to our people especially the poor, he said. He also criticised the media for failing to highlight his administrations achievement over the years as he reassured the youth that Nigeria had all it takes for them to live a good life. Four of the persons declared wanted in connection to the missing general, Idris Alkali, have turned themselves in, the police have said. Yakubu Rapp, the District of Dura Du, in Jos South Local Government Area, presented himself to the police on Friday. Three other suspects, of the eight declared wanted by the police, also turned themselves in. Terna Tyopev, the Plateau police spokesman, disclosed this in a statement on Friday in Jos. Four of the persons declared wanted, Yakubu Rapp, the district head of Dura Du; Timothy Chuwang, Mathew Chuwang and Stephen Chuwang have reported to the Plateau State Police Command headquarters Jos this morning and they are undergoing interrogation, Mr Tyopev said. He said that the development had indicated that the decision to declare some people wanted over the matter was yielding results. According to him, Mr Rapp reported at the command headquarters on Friday morning and is undergoing interrogation. The police had declared Mr Rapp and seven others wanted on Thursday, after claiming that they masterminded the abduction of the army officer. Mr Alkali was declared missing on September 3 after he left Abuja for Bauchi. After a thorough search, the army recovered his vehicle and personal effects in a pond at Dura-Du community of Jos South Local Government Area, three weeks ago. PREMIUM TIMES reported how the army also on Friday said it had discovered a shallow grave where the missing general was initially buried. The suspected killers, however, dug out the body and took it to a yet to be identified place, the army said. Nigerian carrier, Air Peace, has disclosed that its Lagos-Owerri Flight 7252 returned to base shortly after take off at the Murtala Muhammed Airport, Lagos on Thursday due to a change in cabin pressure. Chris Iwarah, Corporate Communications Manager, Air Peace, made the confirmation in a statement issued On Friday in Lagos. The News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) reports that an airline is said to return to base (where it took off) when there is a noticeable fault during flight. Mr Iwarah said: We confirm that Air Peace Lagos-Owerri Flight 7252 on Thursday returned to base after our crew observed that there was a change in cabin pressure. In line with our standard operating procedure, the captain-in-command descended to a level where it would be comfortable for our valued guests, before making a return to base in line with global best practices in the aviation industry. According to him, upon safely landing in Lagos, the passengers on board, who had remained calm, were quickly transferred to an alternative aircraft and flown to Owerri. He added that the airline regrets the inconvenience and discomfort caused its guests on board the flight. Mr Iwarah said: We wish to assure members of the public that the incident had nothing whatsoever to do with the engines of the aircraft nor was it a life-threatening situation. The aircraft has since been thoroughly checked and confirmed serviceable. The aircraft went back into operations in less than an hour after going for maintenance checks. Air Peace is renowned for its quality maintenance reputation and we assure members of the flying public that we will continue to sustain the high standards of our flight operations and professionalism to guarantee the safety of our valued guests and crew. (NAN) ASO/IS President Muhammadu Buhari has said that the greatest investment Europe and America can make in Africa now is helping the continent accomplish inter-basin water transfer to recharge the Lake Chad. The president spoke at State House, Abuja, on Friday, while hosting the chairman of the African Union Commission, Moussa Mahamat. President Buhari noted that the Lake Chad, which provided a means of livelihood to several millions of people in four countries Chad, Cameroon, Niger and Nigeria has now been reduced to ten per cent of its originate size, due to the impact of climate change. People who depended on the Lake for fishing, farming, animal husbandry, and many others, have been thrown into dire straits. That is one of the reasons youths now dare the Sahara Desert and the Mediterranean Sea, to seek greener pastures in Europe. But helping to recharge Lake Chad will help a great deal in curbing irregular migration, he said. While noting that the size of Nigeria and resources available place a lot of responsibilities on her shoulders, President Buhari pledged that the country would continue to fulfill its obligations to the African Union. At all international fora, we emphasise the matter of Lake Chad. We also talk about the influx of small arms from the Sahel, which worsens the security situation between herders and stagnant farmers. We will keep the issues on the front burners, the president emphasised. Mr Mahamat lauded President Buhari, saying his leadership was good for Nigeria, for AU, and for Africa in general. He added that the next AU Summit would look into the reform of the AU Commission, positioning the AU and Africa in the world, Single Air Transport Market, the Africa Continental Free Trade Area, and other issues. Saying Nigeria has played major roles towards peace in countries like Guinea Bissau, Togo, Liberia, Mali, Sierra Leone, and many others, the AU Commission chairman submitted: Nigeria is the engine of Africa politically, economically, and in the area of peace and security. Without her, Agenda 2063 cannot be accomplished. We depend on the elder to reach our destination in good shape. Nigeria is worthy of being followed. We rely on your wisdom to fulfill the task before us. President Muhammadu Buhari, Friday, in Abuja, reaffirmed that his administration will sustain the delivery of quality infrastructure across the country for investments and businesses to thrive. Receiving representatives of trade associations from the 36 states and the FCT led by the national coordinator, Paul Ikonne, President Buhari pledged that he will continue to do his best to ensure that the country is safe and secure for everybody. The president welcomed the groups appreciation of governments efforts in providing and improving critical infrastructure, especially roads and railways, to ensure ease in movement of goods and services. These efforts are part of our campaign slogans on security, the economy and the fight against corruption; and on security, it is common-sense that unless the country is secured it cannot be governed. The best people to comment on the achievements of this administration in terms of security are people who come from the North-east where they used to share their local governments with Boko Haram, get ambushed and dispossessed. Today, we are all witnesses to the commendable efforts of government on security, the president said. President Buhari also took note of some major observations by the traders including illegal seizure of good by agents of governments, harmonisation of taxes and charges, and the need for timely completion of rail networks connecting South to North, North to the East and East to the West. In his remarks, Mr Ikonne praised the Buhari administration for instituting policies that are friendly and encouraging to traders, artisans and farmers. He declared the associations support for the fight against corruption, saying Mr, President, we must applaud your courage to fight corruption which is restoring Nigerias reputation within and outside the country. This, indeed, is an outstanding achievement and we are proud of you. A senator, Shehu Sani, has warned the Deputy Senate President, Ike Ekweremadu, against leaving the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP). The senator, who recently resigned from the All Progressives Congress (APC), made the statement while reacting to speculations that Mr Ekweremadu was considering defecting to the ruling party. Bro Ike,stay where you are jeje,I just dey commot,If you no hear,you go see, he wrote on his official twitter page. Bro Ike,stay where you are jeje,I just dey commot,If you no hear,you go see. Senator Shehu Sani (@ShehuSani) October 25, 2018 Mr Sani had on October 20, announced his exit from the ruling party. His decision came few days after the national body of the APC submitted the name of Governor Nasir El-Rufais political adviser, Uba Sani, as the candidate for that senatorial district. He joined the Peoples Redemption Party (PRP), three days after. On the other hand, Mr Ekweremadu has denied reports he is considering leaving the PDP. He took to his Facebook page to make clarification on his political future Wednesday morning. Let it be known that my path in politics is in the hands of the Almighty God, who has indeed been very faithful and gracious to me. Im very grateful to God for this, he wrote. Other Nigerians on Twitter have since been replying to Mr Sanis post. See some of the reactions below. I actually thought this man was a good man who let his personal anger with Rufai get out of hand. Now I know that he is just a petty man with scarce honour. So all you really wanted was an automatic ticket. Is it by force to serve as a Senator? Oh! my bad N13.5M bad Arinola Ifeoma I. Awokoya (@iyaboawokoya) October 25, 2018 https://twitter.com/JohnGra60799908/status/1055514465255518209?s=19 https://twitter.com/Maybeks/status/1055538415951888386?s=19 https://twitter.com/aluge_godwin/status/1055523828384886786?s=19 Special adviser @ShehuSani , Baba u fall hands o as u let APC rubbish you. If Ike get ear make him hear. Wish you the best going ffwd Sir. James St.Patrick (@Engr_Sambass) October 25, 2018 Bro Ike nwanne, please Fellaini's father has advised you to learn from history. Mazi Martini (@MartinOkonkwo) October 25, 2018 Tell bro Ike that they do conduct direct primary here, no imposition of candidate, and the members always expecting accountability not legislooters. pic.twitter.com/sACSEHjC0r Aksolab (@aksolab001) October 25, 2018 Automatic ticket like Saraki,Dino,Tambuwal etc is what you couldn't get.I can understand.Ambode ,Uba Sani and others didn't get it and they didn't turn nuisance on TwitterNG Lanre Bam (@larucheebam) October 25, 2018 Personally, I don't see Ike leaving the PDP. He's just allowing his camp fly a kite to remind @OfficialPDPNig of the agreements made and about to be breached. This is the Atikuway and he's just warming up. More interesting times ahead. Usman Katun Umar (@ukayumar) October 26, 2018 Senator shehu, Since APC turned their back on you, you have suddenly become a philosopher and now pass ur messages in Parable. No More Stewwwwwwww Prince Ikekhua (@EhisOsara) October 25, 2018 A group of media rights activists on Friday protested at the Saudi Arabian embassy in Abuja to demand justice over the gruesome murder of Saudi journalist, Jamal Khashoggi. Mr Khashoggi was assassinated on October 2 at the Saudi Arabian consulate in Turkey when he had gone to receive some documents for his planned marriage. A team of assassins were reported to have flown into Turkey from Saudi Arabia to kill Mr Khashoggi. The journalist had departed Saudi Arabia, his country, for the United States, following growing fears about his safety, but was killed in what has been described by officials as premeditated murder. Mr Khashoggis death has drawn wide criticism on the Saudi Arabian monarchy, especially the countrys crown prince, Mohammed Bin Salman, who is accused of ordering the attack. On Friday, in Abuja, activists under the platform of the Coalition of Nigerian Media and Civil Society Groups demanded justice for Mr Khashoggi. They also asked the Nigerian government to re-open similar cases of journalists murdered by suspected government officials across the country. According to a statement signed by Peter Nkanga and Chido Onuma, the group urged Saudi Arabian citizens to understand that they deserve better than what they described as a blood thirsty leadership. With deep grief and greatest sorrow in memory of journalists killed in Nigeria and around the world, the Coalition of Nigerian Media and Civil Society Groups are gathered here to make three statements: First, we are gathered here to commiserate with the family and friends of journalist, Jamal Ahmad Khashoggi, and the good people of Saudi Arabia. We are gathered here to tell the people of Saudi Arabia that you deserve better. You deserve better than a blood thirsty government that kills its citizens at will, and with total impunity. No human being should ever have to face such a bestial death. Jamal did not deserve to die, let alone in the one place where he should have felt safest in a foreign land the Saudi Arabia Consulate. Let us think about it critically. Do we know how many people have died in similar circumstances at Saudi Embassies and Consulates around the world? Jamal Khashoggis blood is crying for Justice! The group said the protest is to prove to the world that Mr Khashoggis murder is a crime against the world. And that is why we are gathered here, to tell the Saudi government that injury to one is injury to all. The world abhors the evil perpetrated against Jamal. We are here to say Jamals life and death will never be in vain. His blood will keep speaking for generations to come and his legacy will forever remain. We are here to demand only one thing from the King and the Crown Prince of the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia: The person(s) who gave the order for the bestial murder of journalist, Jamal Ahmad Khashoggi, and the person(s) who carried the order, All of them MUST be brought to account. The second reason we are gathered here is in memory of our own Nigerian journalists, too many killed in the line of duty, and in total impunity. Just as we call on the Saudi government, so also, we call on the Nigerian government to put an end to impunity for crimes against journalists. The group also recalled the death of late Nigerian journalist, Dele Giwa. This month, 32 years ago, we still remember the murder of journalist, Dele Giwa, killed via a parcel bomb delivered to him on October 19, 1986. That case smacks of government conspiracy. We are here to tell the Nigerian government to take into account that in 32 years since Dele Giwas assassination, countless murders of journalists have occurred, and not one has been conclusive to bring the perpetrators to justice. We therefore call on Nigerian President, Muhammadu Buhari, to do what any conscionable government would do: Order the reopening of impartial, independent, and transparent investigations into the murders of all journalists killed in the country and ensure their killers dont go unpunished. When injustice becomes law, resistance becomes a duty! The call was sounded, even on short notice, yet we all turned up and decided to take action to defend our civil rights, the group said. But while the presidents tone may have changed, his policies toward Saudi Arabia have not. In terms of what we ultimately do , President Trump said recently, Im going to leave it up to Congress. Of course, Congress is not scheduled to return to session until the middle of next month, making the presidents plan more of an intentional delay on the bet that the outrage will blow over and less of an appeal for a firm bipartisan response. The delay is just the latest such bet by Trump. From the outset of his administration, the president has doubled down on the Saudi king and his young son, Prince Mohammed bin Salman. After all, they represented the pillar of his Middle East strategy. Trump made Riyadh his first stop on his first overseas trip and assured the Saudis he would not lecture them on their human rights record and embraced their efforts to counter Iran. He stood by Prince Mohammed despite a string of reckless Saudi moves, including blockading Qatar, kidnapping the Lebanese prime minister, imprisoning hundreds of Saudi royals and businesspeople without due process, and cutting off relations with Canada over a critical tweet. Former spokesperson of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) Olisa Metuh, on Thursday accused the former secretary to the government of the federation, Babachir Lawal, of threatening to imprison him ahead of his trial. Mr Metuh spoke on Thursday at an Abuja Division of the Federal High Court, venue of his ongoing trial for alleged diversion of N400 million. Mr Metuh, who is also accused of carting away $2 million in illegal transactions, began accusing President Muhammadu Buharis administration mid-way through his testimony on Thursday. The former PDP spokesperson is testifying in his trial. According to Mr Metuh, trouble began after he was invited by members of the ruling All Progressives Congress to a meeting in Dubai. At the meeting, he (Metuh) was allegedly told by the APC members about how worried the party was getting with the various criticism from the opposition. Mr Metuh further claimed that he decided not to yield to the demands of the party members, but spoke out whenever he found that something had gone wrong in this administration. Mr Metuh narrated that he started receiving threats, following his resolve to remain on the side of truth. The last one was when the president made a broadcast on a media live chart. He informed Nigerians that his government could arrest and detain individuals at will. I immediately countered, that he was becoming an unrepentant tyrant. This provoked a lot of warnings again. Another round of warnings. The APC national chairman, came out on air again to warn that the government could no longer take it kindly. Babachir Lawal warned me personally that this government has decided to teach me a lesson. That this government will use me to showcase to Nigerians and set an example of how they can destroy the carreers, finances and lives of Nigerians that attempt to put a clog in the wheel of their administrative tenure. Mr Metuh added that Mr Lawal told him in person that the APC administration plans to ensure that he is never released from jail. You are a very lucky man. We did not want you to come out Babachir Lawal. We did not want you to leave Kuje prison. You would have been prosecuted and jailed from there, said Mr Metuh while quoting the line of conversation he allegedly had with Mr Lawal. When PREMIUM TIMES contacted Mr Lawal Thursday evening however, the former SGF denied the allegations. I have never seen the man all my life. I do not know who he is. Let him carry his cross and leave me out of it, Mr Lawal said in text message to PREMIUM TIMES. Mr Metuhs trial has been adjourned to November 26. One person was killed while two others were injured by soldiers attached to Operation Safe Haven (OPSH), at the Diamond Bank branch on Ahmadu Bello way, in Jos North Local Government Area of the Plateau, the army has confirmed. PREMIUM TIMES gathered that the incident happened when a bank security guard asked the soldiers not to park their vehicle at a particular space, an action that provoked the soldiers who reportedly fired at the security guard, killing him and injuring two others.. The incident according to the army occurred on October 22 but was confirmed on Thursday. Adam Umar, the spokesperson of OPSH, who confirmed the incident to PREMIUM TIMES on Thursday, described it as unfortunate. He said it did not reflect professionalism of the military. The spokesperson in a statement also narrated how the incident occurred. An unfortunate altercation on October 22, 2018 at about 3 p.m., at Diamond Bank along Ahmadu Bello Way Jos, almost resulted into a major but was timely brought under control . The Incident involved some of our soldiers who went to transact personal business at the bank which led to the avoidable incident. The consequence of the altercation was a tensed exchange of vituperation between the soldiers and the banks security gaurd resulting into the death of Mr Linus Edogwu, while two others sustained gunshots wounds and have been hospitalised. Operation Safe Haven (OPSH), unequivocally condemns such bearing acts and hereby state that it doesnt in any way represent the professional posture of Armed Forces Nigeria at large, the statement said. The statement added that the culprits have been arrested and detained. The culprits have been identified, apprehended and currently under detention and will be subjected to undergo constituted military justice procedure, Mr Umar said. President Muhammadu Buhari has failed to submit his academic credentials to the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) ahead of his bid to seek re-election in 2019. Mr Buhari, a retired major general, instead told the electoral body that his credentials are still with the military, Punch newspaper reports. INEC on Thursday pasted names of 70 out of 91 political parties fielding candidates for presidential elections in 2019, including Mr Buhari. The commission is expected to publish a full list of candidates of political parties today. A list of candidates made available to journalists on Thursday indicate that Mr Buhari failed to attach necessary documents as requirement for his re-election bid. Instead, he insisted the documents are in custody of the military. He attached an affidavit to support his claim. I am the above named person and the deponent of this affidavit herein. All my academic qualification documents as filled in my Presidential form, APC/001/2015 are currently with the Secretary of the Military Board as of the time of this affidavit, the affidavit reads. Meanwhile, the candidate of Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) Atiku submitted relevant documents, with a Diploma in Law in 1969 from the Ahmadu Bello University being his highest qualification. The former vice-president also attached tax returns indicating that he had paid N10.8m in tax from 2015 to 2017 while declaring his income within the period as N60.2m. Mr Atiku is Mr Buharis major contender in the forthcoming election. The Federal Government of Nigeria will decide on a new national minimum wage on Monday, Minister of Labour and Employment, Chris Ngige, has said. Mr Ngige who spoke with State House correspondents Friday said an enlarged meeting of all key stakeholders in the government circle at both federal and states has been scheduled for Monday. Labour unions in the country have announced that they will embark on indefinite strike from November 6. While, the unions are insisting on a N30,000 per month minimum wage, the federal government is proposing N24,000, while state governors are proposing N20,000. The federal government had threatened to invoke a policy of now work no pay if labour goes ahead with its planned strike action. Mr Ngige on Friday said a decision would be taken at the end of Mondays meeting before a draft law would be transmitted to the National Assembly by President Muhammadu Buhari on the new national minimum wage law. Nigerians and opposition leaders have been reacting to the news that the presidential candidate of the All Progressives Congress (APC), Muhammadu Buhari, did not submit his academic credentials to the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC). Mr Buharis secondary school certificate controversy made the headlines in 2015. Mr Buhari has again not made it available in 2019, insisting his credentials are still with the military. Instead of submitting the credentials, Mr Buhari swore to an affidavit, wherein he told INEC they were with the military. Many Nigerians, however, raised concerns about why President Buhari, as the Commander in Chief of the Armed Forces, cannot ask the military to present the certificates or make copies for him. Reacting to this, the spokesperson of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP), Kola Ologbondiyan, via his Twitter handle @officialKolaO said, Integrity demands that you write to military authorities asking them to forward your credentials to INEC. Even @MBuhari followers are not prepared to accept NEPA Bill for WAEC in 2019. So, Mr President, Wey your certificate? The former media aide to past President Goodluck Jonathan, Reno Omokri, said it is evidently clear that Mr Buhari does not have the certificate. @MBuhari again tells @INECNigeria his certificate are with the army. Who controls the army as Commander-in-Chief? Is it not Buhari? Weve seen the evidence of certificateless leadership. We wont accept that excuse. Retweet to insist Buhari produces his certificate #RenosDarts A former minister of aviation, Femi Fani-Kayode, in his reaction said: Once again Buhari has refused to submit his WAEC certificate to INEC. Once again he says that it is with the military authorities. Even though he has been Commander in Chief for the last few years he has been unable to retrieve them. May God save Nigeria from this man. For Oluyemi Fasipe, who tweeted with the handle, @YemieFASH, Buhari did not tender any academic record to become President, INEC conspired with APC to install a WAEC-LESS President. The whole world must see this, dont stop retweeting. Cc: @BBCAfrica @CNN @AJStream @USEmbassyAbuja @UKinNigeria See the reactions of other Nigerians below. @AyeeshaMusa1 How did we get here Nigeria? How did we get this point where @MBuhari was elected @NGRPresident without a WAEC result, in a country (whose) total populations literacy level is at 59.6% (male: 69.2%, female: 49.7% as at January 20, 2018)? How did we get here Nigeria(?) @AbangMercy So Buhari hasnt been to any other school since he left the military? Why are we still looking for this? See, this is beyond me frankly & INEC allows this? If we havent found his certificate what should be done? Why does he keep telling the world his docs are with the military? No one will offer me a job if I keep telling them my certificate is with my first employer it is not only silly but shows I have none and I havent made any efforts to get new documents or developed academically- this man is President and he still cant find his certificate? We are allowing bad behaviour exhibited by the President and hes allowed to take a walk while we keep hold others to a much higher expectations Kemi Adeosun was thrown out over NYSC and your President has been presiding over Nigeria without any certificate but NEPA bill? @adeyanjudeji Our president does not have ordinary WAEC certificate in 2018. Even as President & C-in-C, he says he cant retrieve his so-called certificate from the military. Does he think we are all fools? Things cant just continue like this. @AsiwajuOladimej Last two year(s), around October, I was asked to submit my ORIGINAL certificate not even notification of result by my commission if not, my salary would be stopped. I went back to UNAD, paid 30k to get it. The President should go and get his WAEC certificate. Fuck excuse. The Minister for Power, Works and Housing, Babatunde Fashola, has said former President Goodluck Johnathan only conceded defeat after the 2015 elections because he knew the nation would witness economic recession soon. Mr Jonathan, before the announcement of the final results, in a move that shocked many political pundits, conceded defeat to the current president, Muhamadu Buhari, after a keenly contested polls. That was the first time an incumbent would be losing the top seat (and conceding victory) to an opposition party in Nigeria. Mr Jonathan has been celebrated globally for his action, which many believe saved the country from political turmoil. The economy plunged into recession shortly after in 2015. The recession raged in 2016 and through late 2017 when the nation then emerged from it. However, Mr Fashola, a former governor of Lagos State, said on Thursday at a South-west town hall meeting that Mr Jonathan only relinquished power because he wanted to avoid being at the helm of affairs during the recession. The meeting was organised by the Minister for Information, Lai Mohammed, and held at the Emeritus Professor Theophilus Ogunlesi Hall, opposite University College Hospital, Ibadan, Oyo State. Mr Fashola at the meeting also said the Goodluck government not only plunged the nation into recession but pushed it into debts. What was left behind were massive debts owed to contractors who had not been paid for three to five years and who had laid off thousands of workers and shut down equipment and plants. That was one of the reasons why the economy first went into, and, I suspect, one of the reasons they (Goodluck administration) quickly conceded defeat, Mr Fashola said. He explained that when the present administration assumed office in 2015, the three ministries previous budget was N19 billion for works, N5 billion for power, and N1.2 billion for housing making a total of N25.2 billion, as at when the country was selling oil at $100 per barrel in that decade. In 2017, the All Progressive Congress (APC) led administration budget for works was N394 billion; power was N69.96 billion and housing was N64.9 billion (total- N529 billion) and oil price hovered between $40-$60 per barrel. Let me start by saying that my ministry is responsible for delivering some of Nigerias critical infrastructure for transport, electricity and housing, he added. According to him, President Buhari has shown seriousness in providing adequate infrastructure to support the country. In a country where the population is growing faster than the infrastructure, the difference between these budgets must tell you that this government is more serious about providing infrastructure to support you. Another feature of the difference between these two budget sizes is that the last government was spending less on infrastructure for almost one decade when oil prices stayed at $100 per barrel during that decade. This government is spending more on infrastructure when oil prices largely hovered between $40-$60, he said. He urged Nigerians to make the right choices in the next election either to vote in a government that spends more on infrastructure or a government that spent less on infrastructure. So, if you need more roads, more bridges, more power, more housing and the job opportunities and prosperity that their delivery will bring, your choice in the next election should be easier. Dont go back to a budget of N25.2 billion for infrastructure, move forward with a budget for infrastructure which has grown to N529 billion in 2018. So, in making your choice, please consider who is the better manager. The one who did less with more or the one who did more with less. Again I urge you to reflect. Do you want to go back to doing less with more, or move forward with doing more with less? The Lagos Division of the Court of Appeal on Thursday upheld the judgment of the Lagos State High Court which on January 26 convicted and sentenced two oil marketers, Emmanuel Morah and George Ogbonna, owners of Rocky Energy Limited, to eight years imprisonment. They were convicted by Justice Lateefa Okunnu on a 26-count amended charge bordering on conspiracy, obtaining by false pretence and forgery to the tune of N789.6million. They, like several other suspects, committed the subsidy fraud during the Goodluck Jonathan administration in 2011. The trial of Messrs Morah and Ogbonna started in 2012. The charges were filed against them by the anti-graft agency, EFCC. The judge also ordered the convicts to return the money which they fraudulently collected as subsidy to the Nigerian government. However, dissatisfied with the judgment, the defendants approached the Court of Appeal to set aside the ruling of the lower court. Ruling on the appeal on Thursday October 25, J. Shagbaore Ikyegh, who led a panel of three justices, upheld the judgment of the Lagos State High Court and further ordered Rocky Energy Limited to remit the sum of N789,648,329.25 to the Nigerian government. The convicts purportedly imported 10, 862 metric tonnes of petrol for which they were paid the sum of money by the Petroleum Support Fund, PSF. However, investigation revealed that the documents used by the defendants were forged. Some All Progressives Congress politicians from the South-East have responded to a statement by the Minister of Power, Works and Housing, Babatunde Fashola, that the 2023 presidential ticket of the ruling party would be zoned to the South-West. Joe Igbokwe and Osita Okechukwu, both leading Igbo voices in the APC, said Mr Fasholas comment was a wake up call that the South-East must turn out to vote for President Muhammadu Buhari in 2019. Mr Fashola said at a town hall event in Lagos on Thursday that the people of South-West should vote for Mr Buhari in order to get the presidency back to the region. A vote for Buhari in 2019, means a return of power to the South-west in 2023. I am sure you will vote wisely, Mr Fashola said per the News Agency of Nigeria. Mr Fasholas comments contradicted repeated claims by Messrs Igbokwe and Okechukwu that the partys ticket will go to the South East in 2023. But in separate interviews Friday, they told PREMIUM TIMES that Mr Fasholas comments should not be seen as offensive but only logical and political. It is okay for the minister to say what he said because this is politics, Mr Igbokwe said. It is now left to the Igbo to see whether they would take this seriously and compete well in 2019. What the Igbo need to do now is to massively vote for the president in 2019 so that by 2023 the party would see that we have the numbers and zone the presidency to us, Mr Igbokwe added. Mr Okechukwu, director-general of state-owned Voice of Nigeria, said the APC would be ready to toe the path of equity and justice by zoning presidential ticket to the South-East in 2023, but warned that it would not come on a platter. You have to fight for it to get it. We have to show that we deserve the ticket in 2023 by voting heavily for the president at the upcoming elections, Mr Okechukwu said. The APC I know would consider how the South-East has not produced president since 1999 and, therefore, zone the ticket to us on the principle of equity and natural justice, he said. The two politicians have often added their voices to the call for Nigerians of Igbo extraction to embrace the APC as a political party, but this has largely been rebuffed. APC Chieftain, Joe Igbokwe (Photo Credit: Concise News) While the South-West is considered a swing region, the South-East is predominantly against the APC, overwhelmingly embracing Peoples Democratic Party, the major opposition party that was Nigerias ruling party from 1999 to 2015. Rochas Okorocha, the only APC governor in the South-East region of five states, has repeatedly urged the Igbo to embrace Mr Buhari in order to realise their 2023 presidential prospects. Osita Okechukwu The South-East APC politicians have repeatedly claimed that they have assurances of the president and his top administration officials, like Boss Mustapha, that the region would produce a presidential candidate in 2023. Vice President Yemi Osinbajo on Friday revealed his poetic side when he shared an intimate story of how his mother beat the poetic genius out of him. Mr Osinbajo disclosed this while giving the keynote address at the Ake Arts & Book Festival holding at the Radisson Blu, Ikeja, Lagos. I would have had a mildly successful career as a poet but for a traumatic experience when I was 10, Mr Osinbajo revealed. I wrote a poem for a girl whom I thought I could give my life for but my mother found out and beat the poetic genius out of me. My capacity for writing poetry was diminished. The vice-presidents intriguing story of a love poem gone wrong sent the crowd cheering with excitement. Speaking afterwards, Mr Osinbajo also revealed that the federal government was putting structures into place to help the creative sectors thrive. Creatives are the ones with the profession with the most reputation, as they do not let anyone put them in a box. We have a policy group which takes into account the views and things that creatives need. In her welcome address, the visionary of the festival, Lola Shoneyin, said it has always been her aim to create a festival that could transcend physical spaces. She noted, Different people come to the festival for different things. Theres something for everyone. We dont have a lot of that on the continent. We hope to make you happy this year. We will like to see creativity accorded pride of place because these are the things we call our own; these are the things that define us. There has never been a better time to invest in creativity than now. This sector must consistently benefit from strategies that create a nurturing environment. We are not making the needed investment to develop the sector. We would like to see creativity be awarded. These are the things that define us. Renowned novelist Somalian author, Nuruddin Farah is headlining the three-day festival, which is sponsored by Sterling Bank. Themed Fantastical Futures and events, the organisers said the conversations would focus largely on a re-imagined African future, whilst exploring the exciting wave of Afrofuturism across the continent. This year event lineup includes the memory room, panel discussions, drama, film and documentaries; feature book chats and art exhibition. The itinerary also includes a stage play, an in-depth interview, school visits, stimulating panel discussions, a musical concert and a night of poetry performance. Guests also have the opportunity to experience all the activities once they have fully registered. Ake Festival founder, Lola Shoneyin giving her welcome adress The editor of Ake Review, Molara Wood also presented the 2018 Ake Review, which features art, prose and poetry that reimagines an Africa future at the gathering. During her presentation, she said she it was her desire to see it become a collectors item. Founded in 2013, the Ake Arts and Book Festival is the biggest annual gathering of African literary writers, founders, editors and art enthusiasts in Nigeria. The festival has proven to be an attraction for activists, musicians, dancers, actors, illustrators, and a range of artists and thinkers who storm the event to share their ideas and work. The immediate past governor of Ekiti State, Ayodele Fayose, will spend the weekend in prison as he failed to meet his bail condition before the close of work on Friday. Mr Fayose who is facing an 11-count charge of conspiracy and money laundering amounting to 2.2 billion was granted a N50 million bail on Wednesday by a judge of the Lagos Division of the Federal High Court, Mojisola Olatoregun. The judge ordered that Mr Fayose should provide two sureties who must issue a 50 million bond in a reputable bank as well as possess three years tax clearance. She also directed that the former governor deposits his international passport with the court. However, Mr Fayose, who pleaded not guilty to all the charges leveled against him by the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC) has struggled to meet the bail conditions and could not do so on Friday before close of business. He will therefore spend the weekend at the Ikoyi Prison in Lagos, where he is currently being held. However, Mr Fayoses spokesperson, Lere Olayinka told PREMIUM TIMES that his principal has met his bail conditions but filed the papers this afternoon after the judge had closed for work. There are two questions. Has he met his bail conditions? The answer is yes. All the documents were brought to the court around 2 pm by that time the judge had left, he said during a telephone chat. Mr Olayinka added that he was sure that Mr Fayose will be released next Monday, at the start of the new working week. Pritzker says hed negotiate with the General Assembly on tax rates, which is why he cant talk now. But the switch to a graduated, or progressive, tax system is a huge move that would give the governor and lawmakers broad new powers in perpetuity. Even if higher rates initially apply only to the highest-income earners, the temptation to raise rates on everyone else will remain. We suspect that over time, as Pritzker feels pressed by Illinois crippling financial needs, his definition of middle-class taxpayers protected from higher tax rates will shrivel. The Kaduna State government has reinstated a 24-hour curfew on Kaduna metropolis and environs- Kasuwan Magani, Kajuru, Kateri and Kachia. According to a statement signed by Samuel Aruwan, the spokesperson to the governor, Nasir El-Rufai on Friday, the curfew is effective from 11am on October 26 and will remain in force until further notice. This is a necessary step to help maintain peace as we mourn the death of HRH Agom Adara, who we lost in the early hours of today to the criminals who abducted him last week. The traditional ruler, Maiwada Galadima, was abducted last Friday alongside his wife, while his security detail was killed. The abductors released the wife on Sunday. According to Thisday, an official of the Adara Development Association (ADA) who broke the sad news on Friday said the kidnappers collected an undisclosed some of money as ransom before killing him. He said the traditional ruler was killed on Thursday night, adding that his corpse was recovered and deposited at the St. Gerald Catholic Hospital Kakuri, Kaduna. The Kaduna State Government calls for calm in all our communities. The criminal elements who perpetrated this crime should not be allowed to divide us. This is a struggle between good, decent, law-abiding people trying to uphold the peace and criminals who want to divide and destroy. It is not a struggle between religious or ethnic groups. Let no criminal find succour in faith or tribe. Let us unite against every criminal activity. Let us stand together as human beings who have a right to live in peace, the statement highlighted. A senator, Kabiru Marafa (APC, Zamfara) has condemned Thursdays protest in Gusau, the Zamfara State capital, calling for the sack of the national chairman of the All Progressives Congress (APC), Adams Oshiomhole. According to Daily Trust Newspaper, the local government APC chairmen and hundreds of loyalists of the party in all 14 local government areas of the state, on Thursday staged a protest, demanding the sack of Mr Oshiomhole. The demonstration, which took off from NNPC depot through the Sokoto road and then ended at the state secretariat of the party, had some commissioners, women groups and other top party executive members. The party members who were carrying placards with many anti-Oshiomhole inscriptions said the protest was to register their anger over the way the national chairman of the party handled its affairs. However, in a statement issued in Abuja, Mr Marafa faulted the demonstration. He said the protesters were mobilised by the state governor, Abdulaziz Yari, following his inability to bend rules to impose candidates who are his cronies, on the party. Mr Marafa, a governorship aspirant of the APC in Zamfara, described Mr Oshiomhole as a law abiding leader. He said Mr Yari should be the one to be sacked. Yari and his co- travelers are wrong and Comrade Oshiomhole is right, as far as the issues in the party are concerned, he said. Making reference to the beginning of the party crisis in the state, he insisted that primaries were not conducted in Zamfara State and that there was no consensus either. There was a court order that says all parties should not take any step that will render useless the litigation before it. The party under the able leadership of Comrade Adams Oshiomhole respected the order and said all parties in the crisis should hands off. The party and it leadership should be commended for respecting the law, a foundation upon which APC was built. When the committee of the National Working Committee came to conduct the primary in Zamfara, violence, orchestrated by Yaris people, erupted. The committee was forced to cancel the election. This is also a valid thing. The position taken by the governor that primaries should be conducted by the executives in his camp was irresponsible, contemptuous and height of lawlessness. The crux of the matter is that there was no election and there was no consensus in Zamfara. So, we are commending Comrade Oshiomhole and INEC for respecting the court order, he said. He further said the millions of Naira spent by the governor to organise the protest should have been channelled towards securing the release of 17 persons including two young girls kidnapped in Dauran, Jangebe, Magami and other locations in the state. The senator said he believes majority of APC members in Zamfara are behind Mr Oshiomhole and the leadership of the party. At the time of this report, the APC spokesperson, Lanre Issa-Onilu, failed to comment as he did not respond to calls and text messages sent to him. Earlier, the lawmaker declared his support for INECs decision on APC. INEC declared the APC ineligible to field candidates for all elective positions in Zamfara State in the 2019 general elections. This is because the party failed to meet the October 7 deadline for conducting primaries to elect candidates for the elections. In its response, the National chairman of the APC, Adams Oshiomhole, said the party will present its candidates for all elective positions in Zamfara State in the 2019 general elections despite contrary directive by the electoral commission. Mr Marafa had in June, declared his intention to vie for the governorship slot. He said he joined the race due to numerous calls from members of the party in the 14 local government areas of the state. The lawmaker had pledged to fight corruption, injustice and provide the much needed leadership to stimulate the growth and development of the state. He also pledged to provide security as well as look at the states legal system to make it conform to the true teachings of Islam for the benefit of all. Overtime, Mr Mafara has been the state governors political foe, though both men are members of Nigerias ruling party, APC. The state has been ruptured by violence in recent months with armed bandits killing scores of people and destroying several houses and the lawmaker has continuously blamed the state governor, Mr Yari, for the high rate of insecurity and poverty in the state. The Paramount Chief of Adara, Agom Galadima, who had been in the den of his abductors since last Friday has been killed. The Kaduna State Government confirmed this in a statement on Friday and immediately reimposed a 24 hour curfew in some parts of the state. According to Samuel Aruwan, senior special assistant to Governor Nasir El-Rufai, Mr Galadima was killed early today. He said the curfew will be observed in Kaduna metropolis, Kasuwan Magani, Kajuru, Kateri and Kachia, from 11am today The News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) reports that four persons including a policeman were killed along Kaduna/Kachia road by the alleged abductors on Friday October 19 before taking away the monarch, his wife and driver. Both the driver and the wife were freed by the kidnappers, leaving only the chief in their custody. The Kaduna state government calls for calm in all our communities. The criminal elements who perpetrated this crime should not be allowed to divide us. This is a struggle between good, decent, law abiding people trying to uphold the peace and criminals who want to divide and destroy. It is not a struggle between religious or ethnic groups. Let no criminal find succour in faith or tribe, Mr Aruwan said. In a separate statement by Mr Aruwan, the Kaduna State Government extended its condolence to the family of this revered leader and to the people of the chiefdom he led with dedication and commitment. Government is shocked and disappointed by this unfortunate development. The government of Kaduna State and security agencies will pursue justice for this revered man. Dr. Galadima was a man of peace, a traditional ruler who consistently made positive contributions for the peace and tranquillity in his Chiefdom and the entire state. He was a gentleman to the core. Kaduna State has lost a cherished leader. Governor Nasir Ahmad El-Rufai on behalf of the government and people of the state extends deep sympathy to the immediate family and the people of the Adara Chiefdom. In his reaction, Isa Ashiru, the Kaduna State Governorship candidate of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) condemned the murder of Mr Galadima. Mr Ashiru, who said this in a statement on Friday in Kaduna, described the abduction and subsequent assassination of the chief as the ugliest form of criminality that should be condemned by all peace-loving people. He condoled with the immediate family of the deceased and the entire people of Adara Chiefdom. The candidate urged relevant authorities, security agencies and community leaders to continue to adopt effective measures toward the restoration of normalcy in the state. He particularly called on government and security agencies to intensify effort in ensuring that those behind the heinous crime were arrested and prosecuted. Mr Ashiru urged residents of the state to be peaceful and united in order to fight against enemies of the state bent in fomenting troubles. The governor of Bayelsa state, Seriake Dickson, has directed that all first class graduates who are from the state and have applied for jobs in the state civil service be automatically employed. Daniel Iworiso-Markson, the state Commissioner for Information and Orientation, disclosed this in a statement in Yenagoa, on Friday. Mr Iworiso-Markson said this was part of the ongoing reforms in the state public service and the decision of the government to employ 1,000 graduates of Bayelsa origin. He said other first class graduates of the state origin, who had not applied before, should also do so to benefit from the automatic employment. The News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) reports that 23,000 have applied and have written examinations for the 1,000 spaces in the civil service. He said the governor had directed the State Civil Service Commission to immediately commence the process of engaging all first class graduates who were captured in the earlier recruitment exercise. All the first class graduates, who did not apply during the previous exercise, have equally been urged to take advantage of the new window to have their names properly captured for job placements in the state public service. This is to appreciate and encourage excellence in our academy. The governor will have a one-day induction programme with the chairman and members of the commission as well as all the first class graduates already captured in the earlier exercise. The induction would hold by 1.00 p.m. on Monday, Oct. 29, 2018 at the Executive Council Chambers, Government House, Yenagoa. All those concerned are advised to take note and comply with this directive. (NAN) Eminent personalities have paid glowing tributes to Oladipo Akinkugbe, a professor, for his contribution to national development, especially in the areas of medicine, governance, business education, community development and traditions. A former president, Olusegun Obasanjo, while speaking as the chairman of the occasion, during the hanging up of the stethoscope and 85th birthday of the don at the University of Ibadan, Oyo State, said he is a model to many. He is a model to many and a symbol of what the young could achieve with commitment and hard work. He has been a reference point for distinction and excellence. An erstwhile vice chancellor of the institution, Ayodele Falase, a professor, described the medical expert as an inspiration. He stressed the need for Nigerians to be innovative. The Minister of Health, Isaac Adewole, represented by a former chief medical director of the University College Hospital (UCH), Abiodun Ilesanmi, both professors, described the celebrant as a first-class teacher, clinician, administrator, father, husband and mentor. On his part, the president of Nigerian Hypertension Society, Ayodele Omotoso, also a professor, said Mr Akinkugbes contribution to medicine and education was tremendous. He noted that the scholar remained one of the guiding lights of the fledgling sector having served as vice chancellor in different universities, and pioneer chairman of the Joint Admissions and Matriculations Board (JAMB). In his lecture titled, African Health: Matters Arising, the guest lecturer, Eldryd Parry, submitted that improvement in Nigerias health care system could improve life expectancy, nationwide. BTW: if the polls are even remotely right Pritzker should win by a lot. A whole lot. I mean double digits. What's bigger than a landslide? The point is, get use to the way I draw J.B. because it's going to be at least four years of it. 159 E. Walton St., No. 32A, Chicago: $6,750,000 | Listed: Oct. 11, 2021 This three-bedroom home has three full bathrooms, one half-bath and a private elevator foyer with marble flooring. The family room offers south-facing Michigan Avenue views and features a built-in bar and full-sized wine fridge, both of which are hidden behind custom doors. At the northeast corner of the home is a study complete with a fireplace, built-ins, and corner lake views. The eat-in kitchen features Wolf, Sub-Zero and Thermador appliances, stainless steel countertops, a butlers pantry, an indoor grill with a professional hood and custom cabinetry. The primary bedroom suite has a sitting room, custom built-ins, a fireplace and a bathroom with a steam shower, a Whirlpool tub, double sinks and a private commode. Two additional bedrooms with ensuite bathrooms, an entryway powder room and surround sound throughout complete this home. Agent: Katherine Malkin, Compass, 312-576-5200 *Some listing photos are virtually staged, meaning they have been digitally altered to represent different furnishing or decorating options. To feature your luxury listing of $800,000 or more in Chicago Tribunes Dream Homes, send listing information and high-res photos to ctc-realestate@chicagotribune.com. Join our Chicago Dream Homes Facebook group for more luxury listings and real estate news. 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. VERO BEACH, Fla., Oct. 25, 2018 /PRNewswire/ -- Allied Funding Corp ("Allied Funding Corp", or the "Company"), announces that they have serviced over 3,000 small business loans in 2018 and is primed to build an even stronger customer base in 2019. The Company focuses on providing equipment financing and small business loans to qualified businesses. Businesses can request a free quote and get a quick decision via the company's website www.alliedfundingcorp.com. Allied Funding Corp has burst onto the scene and credits their success to their hard working employees and dedication to customer satisfaction. Many of their clients are repeat customers and enjoy the amazing benefits of Allied Funding Corp as a financial solutions provider. The Vero Beach, FL based company projects that their growth is not a one-off and they expect to double business loans funded in 2019. Speaking about the rise of Allied Funding Corp, the Company's Vice President of Operations Lori Plesich had this to say, "We are extremely excited about the number of loans we have been able to fund in 2018 and are excited to offer even more incredible financial solutions to our customers in 2019. We have added to our incredible staff to ensure that we are able to provide the best customer service as our client base continues to grow." Allied Funding Corps' success can be attributed through the acquisition of new clients via digital channels and the amazing amount of repeat clients the Company services. Their repeat clientele can be attributed to the wonderful experience their clients have when working with the Company. Customers can expect up to 95% approval rates, a 24-hour funding process, flexible term and payment options, minimal paperwork, and the lowest cost of funds. The Company's positive forecast for 2019 is largely in part to the growing number of resources that Allied Funding Corp has added to their team and their commitment to excellence in the field of financial solutions for small businesses. About Allied Funding Corp Allied Funding Corp is located in Vero Beach, FL and provides small business loans, working capital capital, and equipment leases to new and established businesses. They are one of the top business funding companies in the Florida region and all of the United States.. For more information about Allied Funding Corp, visit www.alliedfundingcorp.com. Media Contact: Ephraim Turner Phone: (772) 600-4083 Email: [email protected] Related Links Allied Funding Corp Equipment Financing Allied Funding Corp Business Loans SOURCE Allied Funding Corp Related Links https://alliedfundingcorp.com PLANO, Texas, Oct. 26, 2018 /PRNewswire/ -- BG Staffing, Inc. (NYSE American: BGSF), a rapidly growing national provider of professional temporary staffing services, today announced that its Board of Directors has declared a quarterly cash dividend of $0.30 per share of common stock. The dividend is payable on November 13, 2018 to all shareholders of record as of the close of business on November 5, 2018. This is the 16th consecutive dividend BG Staffing has paid to holders of common stock. Based on yesterday's closing price of the Company's common stock, the annualized yield is approximately 5%. About BG Staffing, Inc. Headquartered in Plano, Texas, BG Staffing provides staffing services to a variety of industries through its various divisions. BG Staffing is primarily a professional temporary staffing platform that has integrated several regional and national brands achieving scalable growth. The Company was ranked as the 59th largest U.S. staffing company and the 45th largest IT staffing firm in 2018 by Staffing Industry Analysts. The Company's disciplined acquisition philosophy, which builds value through both financial growth and the retention of unique and dedicated talent within BG Staffing's portfolio of companies, has resulted in a seasoned management team with strong tenure and the ability to offer exceptional service to candidates and customers while building value for investors. For more information on the Company and its services, please visit its website at www.bgstaffing.com . Forward-Looking Statements The forward-looking statements in this press release are made under the "safe harbor" provisions of the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. The Company's actual results could differ materially from those indicated by the forward-looking statements because of various risks and uncertainties including those listed in Item 1A of the Company's Annual Report on Form 10-K and in the Company's other filings and reports with the Securities and Exchange Commission. All of the risks and uncertainties are beyond the ability of the Company to control, and in many cases, the Company cannot predict the risks and uncertainties that could cause its actual results to differ materially from those indicated by the forward-looking statements. When used in this press release, the words "believes," "plans," "expects," "will," "intends," and "anticipates" and similar expressions as they relate to the Company or its management are intended to identify forward-looking statements. Except as required by law, the Company is not obligated to publicly release any revisions to these forward-looking statements to reflect the events or circumstances after the date of this press release or to reflect the occurrence of unanticipated events. CONTACT: Terri MacInnis, VP of Investor Relations Bibicoff + MacInnis, Inc. 818.379.8500 [email protected] SOURCE BG Staffing, Inc. Related Links http://www.bgstaffing.com MADRID, Oct. 25, 2018 /PRNewswire/ -- HIV prevention research funding continued to decline in 2017 for the fifth consecutive year, driven largely by a five-year low in US public sector funding, according to a report released today at the HIV Research for Prevention (HIVR4P 2018) conference in Madrid, Spain. The Resource Tracking for HIV Prevention R&D Working Group's 14th annual report, Investing to End the Epidemic, documents funding that fell to the lowest level in more than a decade: In 2017, funding for HIV prevention research and development (R&D) decreased by 3.5 percent (US$40 million) from the previous year, falling to US$1.13 billion. This declining funding comes at a time of great optimism for research, with a slate of efficacy trials across the prevention pipeline including major HIV vaccine, passive antibody and next generation PrEP efficacy trials and critical follow-on research for proven antiretroviral-based prevention options, notably the dapivirine vaginal ring. But it also comes a time when the broader HIV field is grappling with a prevention crisis that is exacerbated by decreased funding for the overall HIV response and a lack of political will to adequately fund a response that will ensure the world meets the ambitious prevention targets to end the epidemic. The Working Group warns that getting to zero new infections will not only require the expansion of existing options like voluntary medical male circumcision (VMMC) and oral pre-exposure prophylaxis (PrEP), but also the development of innovative new products, including long-acting, antiretroviral-based prevention options and a vaccine. Sustained funding is critical to keep the full gamut of HIV prevention research moving forward in a timely manner. Even small declines in funding can delay or sideline promising, new HIV prevention options that are needed to end the HIV epidemic. "Make no mistake. We are in a prevention crisis and we cannot afford a further funding crisis," said Mitchell Warren, AVAC executive director. "It is unacceptable that donor funding for HIV prevention research continues to fall year after year even as research is moving new options closer to reality. We need continued and sustained investment to keep HIV prevention research on track to provide the additional tools that are required for sustainable, durable control of the HIV epidemic." The US government continued to be the major funder of HIV prevention research, contributing almost three-fourths of overall funding. A decrease of almost six percent, though, brought funding to a five-year low of US$830 million. The Working Group noted that sharp declines in US government funding have a major impact on the biomedical HIV prevention R&D field. With uncertainty around continued political will to fund the HIV response, this trend is extremely worrying. Together, the US public sector and the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation (BMGF) represented 87 percent of the total global investment in 2017, an imbalance that has continued for several years. The Working Group in this year's report cautioned against the disproportionate impact of shifting donor priorities by these two donors on cutting-edge research, noting that a US$50 million decrease in vaccine R&D in 2017 was largely attributed to cuts from the US government, while a 67 percent increase in VMMC funding in 2017 is due largely to enhanced investment from BMGF. The Working Group renewed a call to diversify the funding base to ensure both the sustainability of the field and that decades of gains made in scientific innovation are not lost to fluctuating investment. The Working Group noted with concern that funding by the European Commission (EC) dropped by almost half from 2016 to 2017 (US$14.4 million in 2016 to US$7.6 million). Noting increases in public sector funding from Canada, Brazil and the Netherlands, the Working Group called on other European countries to increase investment in critical HIV prevention tools to help end the epidemic and to offset the drop in EC funding. "A true end to AIDS will only be possible if we can develop and deploy an effective, accessible HIV vaccine and other biomedical innovations to prevent HIV infection," said Mark Feinberg, M.D., Ph.D., President and CEO of the International AIDS Vaccine Initiative. "Decades of research are paying off with the most exciting advances we've seen to date. But progress can only continue with sustained public and private sector investment in HIV prevention R&D." As researchers, implementers, advocates and funders gather this week in Madrid to review progress in HIV prevention research, there is much to be optimistic about in HIV science and in the accumulated knowledge of how to end the epidemic. At the same time, sobering changes in the funding and policy environment could imperil future progress and wipe out the progress made. Funding constraints, policy changes, shifting donor priorities and shifting demographics will all play a role in the world's ability to respond to the continued challenges that HIV presents. "With 5000 people becoming infected with HIV every day it is critical that we both scale up the effective HIV prevention programmes we currently have and invest in new technologies and solutions so that they can become a reality for the populations most affected by HIV," said Tim Martineau, Deputy Executive Director, Programme a.i. UNAIDS. "Doing both will avert new infections, save lives and reduce the rising costs of life-long antiretroviral treatment." The report and infographics on prevention research investment are online at www.hivresourcetracking.org and on social media with #HIVPxinvestment. Since 2000, the Resource Tracking for HIV Prevention R&D Working Group (formerly the HIV Vaccines & Microbicides Resource Tracking Working Group) has employed a comprehensive methodology to track trends in research and development (R&D) investments and expenditures for biomedical HIV prevention options. AVAC leads the secretariat of the Working Group, that also includes the International AIDS Vaccine Initiative (IAVI) and the Joint United Nations Programme on HIV/AIDS (UNAIDS). This year's report is additionally made possible by the support of several donors, including the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation and the American people through the US President's Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief (PEPFAR) and the US Agency for International Development (USAID). The contents are the responsibility of AVAC and the Working Group and do not necessarily reflect the views of PEPFAR, USAID or the United States Government. AVAC does not accept funding from the pharmaceutical industry. SOURCE AVAC Related Links http://www.hivresourcetracking.org NEW BRUNSWICK, N.J., Oct. 26, 2018 /PRNewswire/ -- Johnson & Johnson (NYSE: JNJ) today announced that the United States District Court, District of New Jersey has issued a ruling invalidating all asserted claims of U.S. Patent No. 8,822,438 for ZYTIGA (abiraterone acetate). The Court held that the patent claims would be infringed if the patent were valid. The patent infringement case was filed against several companies who have submitted Abbreviated New Drug Applications for 250 mg and/or 500 mg tablets. Janssen strongly disagrees with the court's ruling and will continue to defend the patent. We plan to appeal the decision. The Court has ordered that the status quo be maintained through October 30, 2018, and no generic launch shall occur before October 31, 2018 so that Janssen's preliminary injunction motion to enjoin defendants from launching their generic products pending the appeal process can be decided. Janssen has filed a motion for rehearing with the U.S. Patent & Trademark Office (USPTO) in connection with the prior Inter Partes Review decisions related to the '438 patent. Commercial launch of generic abiraterone acetate prior to the outcome of the appeals would be considered an at-risk launch. In Europe, ZYTIGA is protected by regulatory exclusivity through September 2022. Janssen will continue to defend intellectual property rights relating to its innovative medicines. The company reaffirms its guidance provided on October 16, 2018 for operational sales growth of 5.5% to 6.0% and its adjusted earnings per share guidance of $8.13 - $8.18 for the full-year 2018. About Johnson & Johnson At Johnson & Johnson, we believe good health is the foundation of vibrant lives, thriving communities and forward progress. That's why for more than 130 years, we have aimed to keep people well at every age and every stage of life. Today, as the world's largest and most broadly-based health care company, we are committed to using our reach and size for good. We strive to improve access and affordability, create healthier communities, and put a healthy mind, body and environment within reach of everyone, everywhere. We are blending our heart, science and ingenuity to profoundly change the trajectory of health for humanity. Cautions Concerning Forward-Looking Statements This press release contains "forward-looking statements" as defined in the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. The reader is cautioned not to rely on these forward-looking statements. These statements are based on current expectations of future events. If underlying assumptions prove inaccurate or known or unknown risks or uncertainties materialize, actual results could vary materially from the expectations and projections of Janssen Biotech, Inc., any of the other Janssen Pharmaceutical Companies of Johnson & Johnson and/or Johnson & Johnson. Risks and uncertainties include, but are not limited to: the USPTO appeal process related to the '438 patent and the current, or any other, litigation challenging the coverage and/or validity of the company's patents related to ZYTIGA. A further list and descriptions of these risks, uncertainties and other factors can be found in Johnson & Johnson's Annual Report on Form 10-K for the fiscal year ended December 31, 2017, including in the sections captioned "Cautionary Note Regarding Forward-Looking Statements" and "Item 1A. Risk Factors," in the company's most recently filed Quarterly Report on Form 10-Q and in the company's subsequent filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission. Copies of these filings are available online at www.sec.gov, www.jnj.com or on request from Johnson & Johnson. Neither the Janssen Pharmaceutical Companies nor Johnson & Johnson undertakes to update any forward-looking statement as a result of new information or future events or developments. Media Inquiries: Caroline Pavis Phone: 610-357-3121 Ernie Knewitz Phone: 732-524-6623 Investor Relations: Lesley Fishman Phone: 732-524-3922 Christopher DelOrefice Phone: 732-524-2955 U.S. Medical Inquiries: 800-526-7736 SOURCE Janssen Pharmaceutical Companies of Johnson & Johnson DUBLIN, Oct. 26, 2018 /PRNewswire/ -- The "Global Human Vaccine Market 2018-2022" report has been added to ResearchAndMarkets.com's offering. The Global Human Vaccine Market to grow at a CAGR of 7.73% during the period 2018-2022. Global Human Vaccines Market 2018-2022, has been prepared based on an in-depth market analysis with inputs from industry experts. The report also includes a discussion of the Key vendors operating in this market. To calculate the market size, the report considers the revenue generated from the retail sales of human vaccines across the globe. Vaccines have been impacting the global health scenario by reducing disease incidence, mortality rates, and life expectancy. According to the report, one driver influencing this market is the increase in investments in vaccine segment. High investments by vaccine manufacturers are necessary to develop a wide variety of vaccines, reduce product and process complexity, and maintain aggressive timelines for vaccine development and life cycle management. One trend affecting this market is the varied demand for vaccines in high-income and developing countries. The demand for novel vaccines is high in developing economies as they receive financial support. Further, the report states that one challenge affecting this market is the rising pricing pressure. Leading companies have been under pressure from medical associations to lower the price of vaccines so that governments can procure them for public immunization programs. Key questions answered in this report What will the market size be in 2022 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? Key Market Trends Varied demand for vaccines in high-income and developing countries Increase in strategic alliances and M&A Public-private partnership models and technology transfer to local players Innovative partnerships improving global vaccine access Emergence of new technologies for delivery of vaccines Differential pricing to accelerate uptake in low-income countries Key vendors GlaxoSmithKline Merck Pfizer Sanofi Key Topics Covered: PART 01: EXECUTIVE SUMMARY PART 02: SCOPE OF THE REPORT PART 03: RESEARCH METHODOLOGY PART 04: MARKET LANDSCAPE Market ecosystem Market characteristics Market segmentation analysis PART 05: PIPELINE ANALYSIS PART 06: MARKET SIZING Market definition Market sizing 2017 Market size and forecast 2017-2022 PART 07: FIVE FORCES ANALYSIS Bargaining power of buyers Bargaining power of suppliers Threat of new entrants Threat of substitutes Threat of rivalry Market condition PART 08: MARKET SEGMENTATION BY ROA Segmentation by ROA Comparison by ROA Oral - Market size and forecast 2017-2022 Intramuscular - Market size and forecast 2017-2022 Intradermal - Market size and forecast 2017-2022 Subcutaneous - Market size and forecast 2017-2022 Intranasal - Market size and forecast 2017-2022 Market opportunity by ROA PART 09: MARKET SEGMENTATION BY VACCINE TYPE Market segmentation by vaccine type PART 10: CUSTOMER LANDSCAPE PART 11: REGIONAL LANDSCAPE Geographical segmentation Regional comparison Americas - Market size and forecast 2017-2022 EMEA - Market size and forecast 2017-2022 APAC - Market size and forecast 2017-2022 Market opportunity PART 12: DECISION FRAMEWORK PART 13: DRIVERS AND CHALLENGES Market drivers Market challenges PART 14: MARKET TRENDS Varied demand for vaccines in high-income and developing countries Increase in strategic alliances and M&A Public-private partnership models and technology transfer to local players Innovative partnerships improving global vaccine access Emergence of new technologies for delivery of vaccines Differential pricing to accelerate uptake in low-income countries PART 15: VENDOR LANDSCAPE Overview Landscape disruption PART 16: VENDOR ANALYSIS Vendors covered Vendor classification Market positioning of vendors For more information about this report visit https://www.researchandmarkets.com/research/c9wk54/global_human?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 http://www.researchandmarkets.com DUBLIN, Oct. 25, 2018 /PRNewswire/ -- The "Global Type 2 Diabetes Market and Competitive Landscape - 2018" report has been added to ResearchAndMarkets.com's offering. The latest research Global Type 2 Diabetes Market and Competitive Landscape - 2018, provides comprehensive insights into Type 2 Diabetes pipeline, epidemiology, market valuations, product sales, market forecast, product forecasts, and market shares. This study accurately estimates and forecast Type 2 Diabetes market size and drug sales. This research also provides insights into Type 2 Diabetes epidemiology and late stage pipeline. The research is classified into following sections - Type 2 Diabetes overview with definitions, symptoms, etiology, diagnosis, treatment options; Type 2 Diabetes pipeline insights covering late stage clinical trials pipeline; Type 2 Diabetes prevalence trends by countries; Type 2 Diabetes market size and forecast by countries, market events, trends; product sales and forecast by countries; market shares by countries. The research scope includes G7 countries - US, Germany, France, Italy, Spain, UK, Japan. Research Scope: Type 2 Diabetes pipeline: Find out the drugs in clinical trials for Type 2 Diabetes by stages, phase 3 clinical trials, phase 2 clinical trials, and phase 1 clinical trials, by pharmacological class, by company Find out the drugs in clinical trials for Type 2 Diabetes by stages, phase 3 clinical trials, phase 2 clinical trials, and phase 1 clinical trials, by pharmacological class, by company Type 2 Diabetes epidemiology: Find out the prevalence of Type 2 Diabetes by countries - US, Europe , Germany , France , Italy , Spain , UK, Japan ; prevalence forecast to 2023 Find out the prevalence of Type 2 Diabetes by countries - US, , , , , , UK, ; prevalence forecast to 2023 Type 2 Diabetes products: Identify key products marketed and prescribed for Type 2 Diabetes by brand name, by molecule, by company, by branded / generic, by countries - US, Europe , Germany , France , Italy , Spain , UK, Japan Identify key products marketed and prescribed for Type 2 Diabetes by brand name, by molecule, by company, by branded / generic, by countries - US, , , , , , UK, Type 2 Diabetes market size: Find out the market size for Type 2 Diabetes drugs by countries - US, Europe , Germany , France , Italy , Spain , UK, Japan ; Find out how the market advanced from 2014 Find out the market size for Type 2 Diabetes drugs by countries - US, , , , , , UK, ; Find out how the market advanced from 2014 Type 2 Diabetes drug sales: Find out the sales of Type 2 Diabetes drugs by countries - US, Europe , Germany , France , Italy , Spain , UK, Japan , Global Find out the sales of Type 2 Diabetes drugs by countries - US, , , , , , UK, , Global Type 2 Diabetes drugs sales forecast: Sales forecast for Type 2 Diabetes drugs to 2023 by countries - US, Europe , Germany , France , Italy , Spain , UK, Japan Sales forecast for Type 2 Diabetes drugs to 2023 by countries - US, , , , , , UK, Type 2 Diabetes market share analysis: Find out the market shares of Type 2 Diabetes drugs and outlook by countries - US, Europe , Germany , France , Italy , Spain , UK, Japan Benefits of this Research: Evaluate commercial market opportunities for Type 2 Diabetes drugs Synthesize insights for business development & licensing Track market size, competitor drug sales, market shares in Type 2 Diabetes market Develop in-depth knowledge of competition and markets Analyze sales data to update your brand planning trackers Develop tactics and strategies to take advantage of opportunities in the market Track market trends and analyze key events in Type 2 Diabetes market Develop forecast models, healthcare frameworks, or economic models Answer key business questions; supports decision making in R&D to long term marketing strategies For more information about this report visit https://www.researchandmarkets.com/research/9mqnd8/global_type_2?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 http://www.researchandmarkets.com SHANGHAI, Oct. 26, 2018 /PRNewswire/ -- GreenTree Hospitality Group Ltd. (NYSE: GHG) ("GreenTree" or the "Company"), a leading franchised hotel operator in China, today announced that it will report its unaudited financial results for the quarter ended September 30, 2018, before U.S. markets open on Monday, November 19, 2018. GreenTree's management will hold an earnings conference call at 8:00 AM U.S. Eastern Time on November 19, 2018 (9:00 PM Beijing/Hong Kong Time on November 19, 2018). Dial-in numbers for the live conference call are as follows: International 1-412-902-4272 China 4001-201203 US 1-888-346-8982 Hong Kong 800-905945 or 852-301-84992 Participants should ask to join the GreenTree call. A telephone replay of the conference call will be available after the conclusion of the live conference call until November 19, 2018. Dial-in numbers for the replay are as follows: International Dial-in 1-412-317-0088 U.S. Toll Free 1-877-344-7529 Canada Toll Free 855-669-9658 Passcode: 10125987 Additionally, a live and archived webcast of the conference call will be available on the Company's investor relations website at http://ir.998.com. About GreenTree Hospitality Group. Ltd. GreenTree Hospitality Group Ltd. ("GreenTree" or the "Company") (NYSE: GHG) is a leading franchised hotel operator in China. As of December 31, 2017, GreenTree had the highest proportion of franchised-and-managed hotels among the top four economy to mid-scale hotel networks in China. In 2017, GreenTree was the fourth largest economy to mid-scale hotel group in China in terms of number of hotel rooms according to the China Hospitality Association. The Company has built a strong suite of brands including its flagship "GreenTree Inns" brand as a result of its long-standing dedication to the hospitality industry in China, the consistent quality of its services, signature hotel designs, broad geographic coverage and convenient locations. GreenTree has positioned its brands to appeal to value- and quality-conscious business travelers and leisure travelers. For more information on GreenTree, please visit http://ir.998.com SOURCE GreenTree Hospitality Group Ltd. WASHINGTON, Oct. 26, 2018 /PRNewswire/ -- Weber Shandwick, one of the world's leading global communications and marketing solutions firms, was awarded a Platinum Global SABRE in partnership with Iceland Foods for the #toocoolforplastics campaign at The Holmes Report's 2018 Global SABRE Awards last night. The campaign centered on Iceland Foods' commitment to removing plastic packaging from its 1,400 owned-label foods in just five years making it the first supermarket in the world to do so. The Global SABRE Awards recognize the 40 best campaigns from among more than 5,000 entries worldwide. The Platinum Global SABRE goes to the top ranked campaign of the year. "Communications can be a powerful tool for change and that's evident in our work with Iceland Foods," said Gail Heimann, president, Weber Shandwick. "This campaign went well beyond talk and centered on action action that drove results for the company and also helped advance an important global issue. Kudos to our team for this recognition, and thank you to Iceland Foods for their bravery in leading the #toocoolforplastics movement." The firm also was presented with two Global SABRE awards for outstanding client work with partners UNO/Mattel and Royal Caribbean, which were recognized among the top global campaigns of the year. Weber Shandwick created a new color-blind friendly UNO game for "The Color of Inclusion" campaign, which was honored in the top 20 campaigns of the year by The Holmes Report. UNO partnered with ColorADD to incorporate its "Color Alphabet" into a new UNO deck, making the world's most popular card game even more inclusive. The campaign was also recognized earlier this year with a Gold North America SABRE award in Cause-Related Marketing. Weber Shandwick's work with Royal Caribbean on "Eclipsing the Eclipse" which sent the world's largest cruise ship off-course, straight into the 2017 Great American Eclipse's "path of totality" was recognized in the top 40 campaigns of the year. The campaign, which has generated 6.3 billion impressions, was also shortlisted at the Cannes Lions Festival of Creativity, and was honored at this year's North America SABRE Awards, In2 SABRE Awards and Clio Music Awards. Earlier this year, Weber Shandwick was recognized with its clients across 10 categories at The Holmes Report's 2018 North America SABRE Awards in New York. The firm was also honored across seven categories at the annual EMEA SABRE and In2SABRE awards, and four categories at the 2018 APAC SABRE awards. In 2018, Weber Shandwick was also recognized as PRWeek's Global Agency of the Year for the fourth consecutive year and was designated an Ad Age Agency A-List Standout for the second consecutive year. About Weber Shandwick Weber Shandwick is a leading global communications and marketing solutions firm in 79 cities with a network extending to 129 cities around the world. The firm's diverse team of strategists, analysts, producers, designers, developers and campaign activators has won the most prestigious awards in the world for innovative, creative approaches and impactful work. Weber Shandwick was the only public relations agency included on the Advertising Age Agency A-list in 2014 and 2015 and the only PR firm designated an A-List Agency Standout in 2017 and 2018. Weber Shandwick was honored as PRWeek's Global Agency of the Year in 2015, 2016, 2017 and 2018, The Holmes Report's Global Agency of the Year in 2010, 2012, 2014, 2015 and 2017, and The Holmes Report's Global Digital Agency of the Year in 2016. The firm deploys deep expertise across sectors and specialty areas, including consumer marketing, corporate reputation, healthcare, technology, public affairs, financial services, employee engagement, social impact, financial communications and crisis management, using proprietary social, digital and analytics methodologies. Weber Shandwick is part of the Interpublic Group (NYSE: IPG). For more information, visit http://www.webershandwick.com. Contact: Kimberly Dixon Company: Weber Shandwick Phone: 212-546-7876 Email: [email protected] SOURCE Weber Shandwick Related Links http://webershandwick.com ZUG, Switzerland, Oct. 26, 2018 /PRNewswire/ -- Landis+Gyr (SWISS: LAND.SW) today announced financial results for the first half of fiscal year 2018 (April 1 - September 30, 2018). Key highlights included: Order intake increased 10.3% in constant currency year over year, reaching USD 910.0 million in H1 FY 2018 with committed backlog in EMEA increasing by 9.6% in constant currency to USD 760.2 million As supply chain constraints continued, net revenue decreased 1.9% in constant currency to USD 852.9 million compared to the first half of FY 2017 Adjusted EBITDA was USD 106.8 million compared to USD 106.5 million * in the first half of FY 2017 Reported EBITDA was USD 114.9 million compared to USD 40.8 million * in the first half of FY 2017 EMEA Adjusted EBITDA essentially breakeven as Adjusted Gross Profit margins increased by 290 basis points Reported net income was USD 59.2 million including a non-cash gain of USD 15.5 million related to the sale of intelliHUB in Australia . EPS of USD 2.01 Free cash flow (excluding M&A activities) was USD 14.1 million * Following the adoption by the Company of ASU 2017-07 relating to defined benefit pension scheme costs, H1 FY 2017 EBITDA has been revised down by USD 2.3 million as all pension income and expenses other than service costs are now reported under "Other income (expense)"; net income is unchanged. "Landis+Gyr's results for the first half of FY 2018 show the resilience of our Americas business while our strong efforts to drive operational improvements in EMEA are becoming visible. Americas net revenues excluding Japan were up 14% and Adjusted EBITDA margin remained over 20%. EMEA's Adjusted EBITDA was essentially breakeven as the benefits from new product introductions and our restructuring programs showed through. However, our results were impacted by ongoing supply chain constraints as we incurred higher costs to keep the supply chain flowing and even then we could not fulfill all orders on hand," said Richard Mora, Landis+Gyr's CEO. "The company is poised for further improvement in H2 FY 2018. Given the continued challenges in the supply chain, we have made minor adjustments to our full year guidance," Mora concluded. Net Revenue, Order Intake and Order Backlog Order intake for the first half of FY 2018 was USD 910.0 million, up USD 84.9 million or 10.3% (both in constant currency terms) over the same period in FY 2017. The increase was driven by EMEA where committed backlog rose 9.6% in constant currency terms to USD 760.2 million. For the Group as a whole, committed backlog was USD 2.348 million at the end of H1 FY 2018. In H1 FY 2018, net revenue for the group reached USD 852.9 million compared to USD 865.6 million in H1 FY 2017, a decrease of 1.5% (or 1.9% in constant currency terms). Revenue was negatively impacted by industry-wide supply chain constraints, as the company experienced shortages of certain electronic components. As a result, Landis+Gyr deferred shipment of about USD 20 million worth of customer orders on hand. Net revenue per segment was as follows (in USD millions, except where indicated): Segment H1 FY 2018 H1 FY 2017 Percentage change Percentage change in constant currencies Americas 497.5 475.2 4.7% 5.6% EMEA 291.6 320.7 (9.1%) (11.6%) Asia Pacific 63.8 69.7 (8.5%) (6.6%) Group 852.9 865.6 (1.5%) (1.9%) In the Americas region, strong H1 FY 2018 sales growth in North America offset a significant reduction in Japan's year over year revenues. EMEA experienced lower net revenues compared to last year. In addition to supply chain constraint impacts, the region experienced lower demand in some AMI markets, including a temporary slowdown in the UK as the market prepares for the transition to a new generation of meters, SMETS2, which will start in December 2018, and in Spain, as a project rolled off. Adjusted Gross Profit Adjusted Gross Profit for the reporting period was USD 291.9 million, a decrease of USD 12.5 million from USD 304.4 million in the first half of FY 2017. In total, during H1 FY 2018, Landis+Gyr booked USD 12.1 million (approximately 140 basis points of gross profit impact) in incremental costs associated with supply chain constraints. A reconciliation between Gross Profit and Adjusted Gross Profit can be found in the Supplemental Reconciliations and Definitions section of the Half Year Report 2018. The Adjusted Gross Profit by segment was as follows (in USD millions, except where indicated): Segment H1 FY 2018 H1 FY 2018 Percentage H1 FY 2017 H1 FY 2017 Percentage Americas 198.0 39.8% 208.5 43.9% EMEA 81.0 27.8% 79.8 24.9% Asia Pacific 12.8 20.1% 15.0 21.5% Eliminations 0.1 1.1 Group 291.9 34.2% 304.4 35.2% Adjusted Operating Expenses Adjusted Operating Expenses for the reporting period were USD 185.2 million, a decrease of USD 12.6 million year over year due to further positive impacts of Project Phoenix in EMEA and expense control in other regions. In H1 FY 2018, adjusted research and development (R&D) spending was USD 76.4 million or 9.0% of revenue. A reconciliation between Operating Expenses and Adjusted Operating Expenses can be found in the Supplemental Reconciliations and Definitions section of the Half Year Report 2018. In H1 FY 2018, Landis+Gyr had two major cost reduction programs underway in EMEA. Project Phoenix aimed at reducing the cost base by closing certain offices, unifying various back office functions and improving productivity in all functions. Phoenix is now delivering USD 20 million of annualized savings and the program is complete, having reached its target. The second program, Project Lightfoot, is aimed at bundling and, in part, outsourcing manufacturing activities to enhance production efficiencies, lower supply chain costs and further reduce capital intensity. Lightfoot is on track, and, by the end of FY 2020, is expected to achieve USD 25 million of annual savings, versus USD 20 million as initially planned, relative to the cost base at the time of the IPO. Adjusted and Reported EBITDA First half FY 2018 Adjusted EBITDA was USD 106.8 million, compared to USD 106.5 million in the first half of FY 2017. Asia Pacific and EMEA saw improved results while Americas posted reduced Adjusted EBITDA results compared to the first half of FY 2017. The Adjusted EBITDA by segment was as follows (in USD millions, except where indicated): Segment H1 FY 2018 Adjusted EBITDA H1 FY 2018 Percentage of net revenue H1 FY 2017 Adjusted EBITDA H1 FY 2017 Percentage of net revenue Americas 102.2 20.5% 105.9 22.3% EMEA (0.4) (0.1%) (3.9) (1.2%) Asia Pacific (3.6) (5.6%) (5.5) (7.9%) Corporate 8.5 N/A 10.0 N/A Group 106.8 12.5% 106.5 12.3% The adjustments made to bridge between EBITDA as reported in the Group's financial statements and Adjusted EBITDA are as follows (in USD millions): H1 FY 2018 H1 FY 2017 Reported EBITDA* 114.9 40.8 Adjustments Restructuring Charges 2.6 8.1 Exceptional Warranty Expenses 0.6 2.4 Normalized Warranty Expenses (11.3) 30.3 Special Items - 24.8 Adjusted EBITDA* 106.8 106.5 * Following the adoption by the Company of ASU 2017-07 relating to defined benefit pension scheme costs, H1 FY 2017 EBITDA has been revised down by USD 2.3 million as all pension income and expenses other than service costs are now reported under "Other income (expense)"; net income is unchanged. H1 FY 2018 restructuring charges mainly relate to measures taken in Brazil. The normalized warranty expense adjustment for the first half of FY 2018 reflects that the level of warranty expense in the Interim Consolidated Statement of Operations was below the three-year average utilization by USD 11.3 million. Landis+Gyr's first half FY 2018 Reported EBITDA was USD 114.9 million, compared to USD 40.8 million in the first half of FY 2017. Net income and EPS Net income for first half of FY 2018 was USD 59.2 million, or USD 2.01 per share. Net income included a non-cash gain of USD 15.5 million related to the sale of intelliHUB to the joint venture which was established together with Pacific Equity Partners in Australia in order to acquire Acumen. Net income increased by USD 54.1 million compared to the first half of FY 2017. Capital Expenditure In the first half of FY 2018, capital expenditure was USD 16.9 million, slightly below the first half of FY 2017 level. Cash flow and net debt Free Cash Flow, defined as cash flow provided by operating activities (including changes in net working capital) minus cash flow used in investing activities (capital expenditure on tangible and intangible assets) excluding merger and acquisition activities (M&A) was USD 14.1 million in the first half of FY 2018, a decrease of USD 6.5 million from the first half of FY 2017. The main driver for the decrease was higher legacy warranty cash-outs. "Landis+Gyr has a strong record of cash generation with free cash flow excluding M&A activities over the four fiscal years FY 2014 to FY 2017 averaging around USD 84 million per year. It's also the case that our cash generation tends to be skewed to the second half, given the timing of certain cash-outs. We expect another strong cash flow year in FY 2018," added Jonathan Elmer, Landis+Gyr's Chief Financial Officer. Net debt was USD 110.4 million and USD 107.3 million at September 30, 2018 and 2017, respectively, an increase of USD 3.1 million (net of the dividend payment of USD 68.4 million in July 2018, and the equity contribution of USD 18.9 million to the joint venture in Australia which acquired Acumen). The ratio of net debt to trailing twelve months Adjusted EBITDA was 0.5 at the end of September 2018. FY 2018 Outlook Landis+Gyr expects the second half of FY 2018 to be stronger than the first half; however, the supply chain situation remains challenging and leads to greater uncertainty than usual. Landis+Gyr's outlook for FY 2018 net revenues is 1-3% growth year over year. Adjusted EBITDA is expected to be in the range between USD 217 million and USD 237 million, as EMEA and Asia Pacific further improve their performance over the course of the second half and the Americas remains resilient. FY 2018 Free Cash Flow (excluding M&A activities) is expected to be between USD 90 million and USD 110 million. The FY 2018 dividend is expected to be the Swiss franc equivalent of at least 75% of Free Cash Flow (excluding M&A activities) and is expected to be not less than the FY 2017 dividend amount of CHF 2.30 per share. Regional Leadership Susanne Seitz will join Landis+Gyr as the new Executive Vice President for EMEA on November 19, 2018. In Asia Pacific, Steve Jeston has been named as the Interim Head of the region. The Company has set January 29, 2019 as the date for Landis+Gyr's first Capital Markets Day and the opportunity to meet the extended Executive Team. Sustainability Report Landis+Gyr's FY 2017 Sustainability Report was issued today. In FY 2017: water consumption within the Group decreased by 10.0%; total use of chemicals decreased by 2.4%; total waste produced increased by 5.3%, primarily due to the transfer of manufacturing capacities internally and to external partners; and total CO2 emissions fell by 11.1%. Since measurement began of Landis+Gyr's carbon footprint in 2007, CO2 emissions have been reduced on a per-turnover basis by 31%. Recent Corporate Developments In North America , Public Power customers across the US signed new Landis+Gyr technology solution agreements, totaling over 270,000 additional AMI endpoints planned for deployment along with a refresh of software and technology. Key customer names include Kissimmee Utility Authority, South Plains and Sulphur Springs. , Public Power customers across the US signed new Landis+Gyr technology solution agreements, totaling over 270,000 additional AMI endpoints planned for deployment along with a refresh of software and technology. Key customer names include Kissimmee Utility Authority, South Plains and Sulphur Springs. In the UK, the transition to the next generation of smart meters (SMETS2) is now confirmed by the government for December 2018 . As the UK market leader, Landis+Gyr added orders to committed backlog of GBP 161 million with 18 million meters now deployed or under contract. . As the UK market leader, Landis+Gyr added orders to committed backlog of with 18 million meters now deployed or under contract. In France , Enedis awarded Landis+Gyr a contract to supply approx. 20% of their future volumes (with potential for further expansion) in the planned rollout of the next thirteen million Linky meters by 2023, in line with the previous tenders and contracts to supply Linky meters and data concentrators. , Enedis awarded Landis+Gyr a contract to supply approx. 20% of their future volumes (with potential for further expansion) in the planned rollout of the next thirteen million Linky meters by 2023, in line with the previous tenders and contracts to supply Linky meters and data concentrators. Landis+Gyr launched a comprehensive managed services solution to operate all of Caruna Oy's 660,000 smart metering points in Finland with more than 17 million validated metering values provided to Caruna and its customers every day. The service includes full smart metering operations responsibility for a duration of six years and an optional extension for an additional three years. with more than 17 million validated metering values provided to Caruna and its customers every day. The service includes full smart metering operations responsibility for a duration of six years and an optional extension for an additional three years. Landis+Gyr and Pacific Equity Partners (PEP) established a joint venture which acquired Acumen from Origin Energy Limited, Australia's largest energy retailer. The Acumen business includes the existing management of an already deployed 170,000 smart meters and a material long-term contract with Origin for the deployment and management of additional smart meters across Australia . Landis+Gyr Group's Half Year Report 2018, the Sustainability Report 2017/2018 and the Half Year 2018 investor presentation were published today and can be downloaded at www.landisgyr.com/investors. Investor/Analyst Audio Webcast and Telephone Conference The management of Landis+Gyr will host an investor/analyst call to discuss the company's results. Date and time: October 26, 2018 at 09:00 am CET Speakers: Richard Mora (CEO) and Jonathan Elmer (CFO) Audio webcast: www.landisgyr.com/investors Telephone: Europe: +41 (0)58 310 5000 UK: +44 (0)207 107 0613 US: +1 (1)631 570 5613 Please dial in 1015 minutes before the start of the presentation and ask for "Landis+Gyr's half year 2018 results". Key dates Capital Markets Day January 29, 2019 Release of Results for Financial Year 2018 May 29, 2019 Annual General Meeting 2019 June 25, 2019 Release of H1 FY 2019 Results October 25, 2019 About Landis+Gyr Landis+Gyr is the leading global provider of integrated energy management solutions for the utility sector. Offering one of the broadest portfolios of products and services to address complex industry challenges, the company delivers comprehensive solutions for the foundation of a smarter grid, including smart metering, distribution network sensing and automation tools, load control and analytics. Landis+Gyr operates in over 30 countries across five continents. With sales of approximately USD 1.7 billion, the company employs c. 6,000 people with the sole mission of helping the world manage energy better. More information is available at www.landisgyr.com. Disclaimer This publication may contain specific forward-looking statements, e.g., statements including terms like "believe", "assume", "expect", "forecast", "project", "may", "could", "might", "will" or similar expressions. Such forward-looking statements are subject to known and unknown risks, uncertainties and other factors which may result in a substantial divergence between the actual results, financial situation, development or performance of Landis+Gyr Group AG and those explicitly or implicitly presumed in these statements. Against the background of these uncertainties, readers should not rely on forward-looking statements. Landis+Gyr Group AG assumes no responsibility to update forward-looking statements or to adapt them to future events or developments. SOURCE Landis+Gyr Related Links http://www.landisgyr.com HOUSTON, Oct. 26, 2018 /PRNewswire/ -- Quanta Services, Inc. (NYSE: PWR) announced today that it will release third quarter 2018 financial results on Thursday, November 1, 2018, before the market opens. In conjunction with the press release, Quanta has scheduled a conference call for 9:00 a.m. Eastern time on Thursday, November 1, 2018, which also will be broadcast live over the Internet. What: Quanta Services Third Quarter 2018 Earnings Conference Call When: Thursday, November 1, 2018 9:00 a.m. Eastern time How: Live via phone By dialing (201) 689-8345 or (877) 407-8291 and asking for the Quanta Services Third Quarter 2018 Earnings Conference Call at least 10 minutes prior to the start time. Live over the Internet by logging on to the website at the following address: http://investors.quantaservices.com For those who cannot participate live, an archive of the webcast will be available shortly after the call on the company's website at http://investors.quantaservices.com and dial-in information for a replay of the call will be available in the upcoming earnings release. For more information, please contact Kip Rupp at Quanta Services at (713) 341-7260. About Quanta Services Quanta Services is a leading specialized contracting services company, delivering infrastructure solutions for the electric power, oil and gas and communications industries. Quanta's comprehensive services include designing, installing, repairing and maintaining energy and communications infrastructure. With operations throughout the United States, Canada, Latin America, Australia and select other international markets, Quanta has the manpower, resources and expertise to safely complete projects that are local, regional, national or international in scope. For more information, visit www.quantaservices.com. Contact: Kip Rupp, CFA Quanta Services, Inc. (713) 341-7260 SOURCE Quanta Services Related Links http://www.quantaservices.com STOCKHOLM, Oct. 26, 2018 /PRNewswire/ -- Highlights from the third quarter In local currencies, sales increased by 10 percent for the third quarter. Reported sales increased by 16 percent to 3,388 MSEK (2,915). In local currencies, operating profit from product segments1) increased by 13 percent for the third quarter. Reported operating profit from product segments increased by 19 percent to 1,317 MSEK (1,104). Operating profit amounted to 1,305 MSEK (1,088) for the third quarter. Profit after tax amounted to 959 MSEK (753) for the third quarter. Earnings per share increased by 32 percent to 5.55 SEK (4.22) for the third quarter. 1) Operating profit for Swedish Match product segments, which excludes Other operations and larger one-time items. For the full report: www.swedishmatch.com/Investors/Financial-reports/Interim-reports/ Swedish Match telephone conference A telephone conference will be held today, Friday, October 26 at 2:00 p.m. (CET), (1:00 p.m. UK time). At this time we will review and comment on the results. Participants will include Lars Dahlgren, Thomas Hayes, and Emmett Harrison. Listen to the telephone conference: Telephone conference presentation: www.swedishmatch.com/Investors/Presentations/ Contacts: Lars Dahlgren President and Chief Executive Officer Office +46-8-658-0441 Thomas Hayes Senior Vice President and Chief Financial Officer Office +46-8-658-0108 Emmett Harrison Senior Vice President Investor Relations and Corporate Sustainability Office +46-8-658-0173 Richard Flaherty President US Division US Investor Relations contact Office +1-804-787-5130 This information is information that Swedish Match AB (publ) is obliged to make public pursuant to the EU Market Abuse Regulation and the Securities Markets Act. The information was submitted for publication, through the agency of the contact persons set out above, at 08.15 a.m. CET on October 26, 2018. This information was brought to you by Cision http://news.cision.com http://news.cision.com/swedish-match/r/interim-report-january---september-2018,c2655498 The following files are available for download: SOURCE Swedish Match Viettel vOCS 3.0 is the only IT product of Vietnam winning this award in the year along with Ooredoo - Qatar with the fastest 5G service in the world, Singtel - Singapore with the interactive sales system, Telkom - Indonesia with the mobile application for navigating locations for naval ships, etc. It is highly appreciated for the creativity and significant influence on the large number of users when being customized to suit each customer's specific needs. Currently, it has been put into use in 11 countries of Viettel with 170 million mobile subscribers with the capacity of each site serving up to 100 million subscribers. The most striking feature of vOCS 3.0 lies in its ability to design each single specific charge package for each user which has not ever been done by any OCS in the world. As stated by Ms. Clara, Communications Director for Asia region when evaluating Viettel's winning of 2018 IBA Stevie Awards, all members of the judging board had positive and impressive comments on Viettel's vOCS and agreed to award the gold prize. This product demonstrated both the insight of researchers, software developers and the ability to tackle a major problem in the telecommunications sector, which is the fear and hesitation among data service providers in unifying or integrating voice and data into one real-time billing system. The judging board was highly expected to witness the creation of a new business model from this highly-acclaimed real-time billing system. Viettel Group's real-time billing system (vOCS 3.0) completed its support on the Cloud/NFV virtualization platform for next version vOCS 4.0, which is intended to introduce many features on Mobile Virtual Network Operator (MVNO), Network Slicing as well as readily calculate charge for IoT/5G subscribers. When the new version 4.0 is completely launched, it will turn Vietnam into one of the OCS-producing countries that support the global trend, namely advanced virtualization technology in order to save overhead cost and facilitate management activities, thereby opening up worldwide business opportunities. This encouraged Viettel to send bidding invitations to more than 30 international telecommunications operators to bring this product to the international market. Asian markets such as Indonesia, Philippines, Pakistan, etc., will be first selected to expand vOCS 4.0 version with the latest and most distinctive technological strategy as well as the best customer care. IBA - International Business Stevie Awards is an annual international business award held since 2003 to honor great achievements and positive contributions of businesses and individuals globally to the benefits of the community, including IT and telecommunication fields. IBA 2018 did attract more than 3,900 nominations from all types of organizations / businesses in 74 countries. VIETTEL GROUP No. 1 Tran Huu Duc, My Dinh, Tu Liem, Hanoi Website: www.viettel.com.vn/en SOURCE Viettel Group Related Links http://www.viettel.com.vn/en WASHINGTON and PARIS, Oct. 26, 2018 /PRNewswire/ -- Europe was at the center of a milestone for women in tech today as nonprofit Women Who Tech and tech giant Mozilla announced the winners of the Women Startup Challenge Europe. Women-led startup finalists from across Europe pitched their ventures before a prestigious panel of tech industry executives and investors on 25 October at Paris's City Hall, co-hosted by the office of Mayor Anne Hidalgo. "While it's alarming to see the amount of funding for women-led startups compared to European companies as a whole go down from 14% to 11% between 2016 and 2018, the Women Startup Challenge is on a mission to close the funding gap once and for all. If the tech world wants to innovate and solve the world's toughest problems and generate record returns, they will invest in diverse startups," said Allyson Kapin, founder of Women Who Tech. "If investors don't know where to look, our Women Startup Challenge program has a pipeline of over 2,300 women-led ventures who are ready to scale." Sampson Solutions from the UK won the grand prize, receiving $35,000 in funding via Women Who Tech to help scale their startup. The Audience Choice Award went to Inorevia from Paris, France. Mozilla awarded an additional $25,000 cash grant to Vitrue from the UK, selected by jury member Mitchell Baker, cofounder and chairwoman of Mozilla. "Paris is determined to provide girls and women with the resources to occupy their rightful place in the society and in the tech industry. We were thrilled to cohost the Women Startup Challenge Europe and showcase 10 talented women-led startups who are making an impact in this world," said Deputy Mayor Jean-Louis Missika. Grand prize winner Sampson Solutions capitalizes on business opportunities precipitated by the Paris climate agreement. Founded by Colleen Becker , Sampson Solutions is creating bio-based construction materials from sustainable sources using a closed-loop, carbon neutral manufacturing process. capitalizes on business opportunities precipitated by the climate agreement. Founded by , Sampson Solutions is creating bio-based construction materials from sustainable sources using a closed-loop, carbon neutral manufacturing process. The Audience Choice Award was awarded to Inorevia . Inorevia's work in developing instruments used for bioassays has resulted in minimizing the cost, time and manipulation needed for next-generation bioassay and precision medicine. . Inorevia's work in developing instruments used for bioassays has resulted in minimizing the cost, time and manipulation needed for next-generation bioassay and precision medicine. Mozilla Prize Winner Vitrue Health is developing computer vision based tools that sit in the background of clinical assessments, autonomously measuring motor function metrics, freeing clinicians to focus on more complex patient interactions, and allowing them to detect and treat degradations in functional health. This improves quality of life and saves millions in healthcare costs. "I'm honored to award the Mozilla prize for privacy, transparency and accountability to Vitrue Health. Vitrue creates data about mobility capabilities, makes that data accessible and useful, and provides it to patients. By providing patients with access to their data in a useful way, Vitrue offers us an example of how creating new data -- even personal data -- can be quite positive when it is handled well," said Mitchell Baker, cofounder and chairwoman of Mozilla. The in-person jury included Mitchell Baker, Jean-Louis Missika, Deputy Mayor of Paris, Fatou Diagne, Partner and Cofounder at Bootstrap Europe, Julien Quintard, Managing Director of Techstars Paris, Alejandro Tauber, Editor-In-Chief of The Next Web (TNW), and Stephanie Hospital, Cofounder and CEO of OneRagtime. About Women Who Tech Founded in 2008, Women Who Tech is on a mission to close the funding gap. The nonprofit organization is shaking up a culture and economy that has made it exceedingly difficult for women to launch startups and raise capital. By showcasing women-led ventures through Women Who Tech's flagship Women Startup Challenges, the organization provides capital, mentoring and other resources for women who are creating the most innovative tech companies to help scale their products. The Women Startup Challenge was launched three years ago, in partnership with Craig Newmark, founder of craigslist and Craig Newmark Philanthropies. It's one of the largest global programs to showcase and fund women-led tech ventures with a pipeline of over 2,000 women-led tech startups. The Women Startup Challenges connect women founders and investors worldwide, with events hosted in New York, Silicon Valley, London, and Paris. To date the startup cohorts have raised more than $28M. Women Who Tech is supported by Craig Newmark, founder of craigslist and Craig Newmark Philanthropies, Pineapple Fund, Mozilla, Office of the Mayor of Paris, StartHer, TNW, Rad Campaign, Kite Hill PR, Amazon, Donna Griffit Corporate Storyteller, Women 2.0, Turner 4D, Allen Mireles Consulting, Patricia Philbin, Maddyness, INCO, ESPCI PSL, Women of Wearables, W Lounge, and more. Contact Allyson Kapin 1-240-475-3362 [email protected] SOURCE Women Who Tech Related Links http://www.womenwhotech.com WASHINGTON, Oct. 25, 2018 /PRNewswire/ -- The Air Force Aid Society (AFAS) has provided more than $6 million in hurricane disaster and relief assistance to airmen and their families across the Florida Gulf region following the aftermath of Hurricane Michael. Thousands of Air Force active duty, retirees, guard, and reservists who were stationed in or near the hardest hit areas within the Florida panhandle who applied for emergency assistance, received one-time stabilizing assistance grants through the AFAS Hurricane Relief Program. Grant amounts totaled $750 for single airmen and $1,500 for airmen with families. "Our response to hurricanes has improved over the years. Annually, we try to work with military bases that are potentially in the path of these violent storms prior to hurricane season," said AFAS CEO and retired Air Force Lt. Gen. John D. Hopper, Jr. "Practice is critical, but it is difficult to imagine the devastation of taking a direct hit from a near-category five storm. When Hurricane Michael hit and severely damaged Tyndall Air Force Base and the surrounding communities where our airmen live, we activated quickly and scaled up our assistance efforts." Through partnerships with the Air Force's Personnel Center (AFPC) Airman and Family Operations Division, the Airman and Family Readiness Centers (A&FRCs) across 85 Air Force installations, along with other military relief societies, and the American Red Cross, AFAS was able to render essential assistance to displaced Tyndall airmen and their families. "The urgency with which this relief was distributed allowed those affected to secure much-needed items such as fuel, food, generators and so much more," said Julie Mason, chief of the Airman and Family Operations Division. "For some, it gave them the means to secure a vehicle to haul the remains of their personal property to a safe area. Overall, the aid given to date has helped to meet both the physical and emotional needs of our Air Force community impacted by the storm." While recovery efforts are underway, AFAS will continue to address the ongoing needs of airmen in the affected areas through the AFAS Emergency Assistance Program. The A&FRCs continue to be a focal area for rendering ongoing support. Therefore, airmen in need of assistance should visit A&FRCs at their nearest Air Force installations. In the event that there is no location within close proximity, airmen can apply for assistance at any nearby military installation. If an airman is not located within 50 miles of a military installation, they should contact the American Red Cross directly at (877) 272-7337. If you are interested in donating to help Air Force families impacted by Hurricane Michael, please visit www.afas.org. For the latest information regarding Hurricane Michael and AFAS disaster assistance, please follow AFAS on Facebook and Twitter. About Air Force Aid Society The Air Force Aid Society is a 4-star Charity Navigator rated private, non-profit organization. Founded in 1942, the Air Force Aid Society's mission is to help relieve financial distress of Air Force members and their families and assist them in achieving their educational goals and improving their quality of life by providing proactive programs. In 2017 alone, the Air Force Aid Society provided over $15 million to more than 45,000 airmen and their families through emergency assistance, educational and community programs. Headquartered in Arlington, Va., the Air Force Aid Society administers assistance through Airman and Family Readiness Centers around the world and maintains cross-servicing agreements with the Army Emergency Relief, the Navy-Marine Corps Relief, the Coast Guard Mutual Assistance and the American Red Cross to offer emergency assistance 24 hours a day, 365 days a year. To learn more about the Air Force Aid Society, please visit www.afas.org or follow us on Facebook at www.facebook.com/AirForceAidSociety or Twitter at https://twitter.com/AFASHQ. For more information or to schedule an interview with an AFAS representative, please contact Latoya Crowe, Director of Communications and Development, 703-972-2643 or [email protected]. SOURCE Air Force Aid Society Related Links http://www.afas.org BOCA RATON, Fl., October 26, 2018 /PRNewswire/ -- MiX Telematics (NYSE: MIXT), a leading global provider of fleet and mobile asset management solutions, is proud to announce that its world-class telematics solution is being adopted by Algerian oil & gas industry leader, Sonatrach. MiX's channel partner in the region, Algeria Telecoms Satellite (ATS), will be providing Sonatrach with a fleet management solution to address their safety, efficiency and compliance needs for 1,000 of their vehicles. MiX Telematics' premium fleet solution is already installed in 500 vehicles of petroleum company Naftal, a division of Sonatrach. Based on the framework contract, which includes various Sonatrach divisions, the potential opportunity is 18,000 vehicles over several years. "We have a long-standing partnership with ATS and MiX is extremely proud to be working with them to continue providing customers in the region with world-class telematics solutions," says Charles Tasker, Group Chief Operating Officer at MiX Telematics. "MiX has an excellent reputation with Oil & Gas customers globally. We've helped some of the biggest names in the industry achieve outstanding results with their drivers and fleets," concludes Tasker. About MiX Telematics MiX Telematics is a leading global provider of fleet and mobile asset management solutions delivered as SaaS to more than 700,000 subscribers in over 120 countries. The company's products and services provide enterprise fleets, small fleets and consumers with solutions for efficiency, safety, compliance and security. MiX Telematics was founded in 1996 and has offices in South Africa, the United Kingdom, the United States, Uganda, Brazil, Australia and the United Arab Emirates as well as a network of more than 130 fleet partners worldwide. MiX Telematics shares are publicly traded on the Johannesburg Stock Exchange (JSE: MIX) and on the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE: MIXT). For more information, visit www.mixtelematics.com SOURCE MiX Telematics TOKYO, Oct. 26, 2018 /PRNewswire/ - Japanese wealth management company KLM Holdings has commented on Richemont, who owns luxury goods companies such as Cartier, which is entering a strategic partnership with Chinese e-commerce giant Alibaba. The joint partnership will look to takeover the online shopping market space for luxury goods, which will be a major catalyst of growth for both companies that has been a difficult area in the past for a lot of companies. Researchers at KLM Holdings have noted that Alibaba, China's biggest e-commerce platform, will look to launch mobile applications to start the multi-brand store. "When we talk about Chinese consumers we understand that on a global scale over a third of all luxury goods purchased are from China. This is a hot market place that many companies have not been successful in obtaining," noted Mr Rikiya, a key research analyst from the Japanese-based wealth management company KLM Holdings. With more shoppers spending in Mainland China on luxury goods such as high-end watches and jewelery, the increase has come from prices leveling out over the last few years that were much higher than other neighboring countries. The shift for the expensive market space is leaning to online marketplaces, with manufacturers applying more capital into advertising streams such as social media applications. A senior chief economist at KLM Holdings, Nathan Chambers, commented, "Any market in China is vast and extremely difficult to takeover, with Richemont partnering with the biggest, most successful company in China, Alibaba, who have time and time again proven that they have a firm understanding of Chinese e-commerce. In 2017 China's second largest e-commerce company, JD.com, a fierce rival of Alibaba, had already invested just shy of $400 million U.S. dollars in a fashion retailer Farfetch to assist the company's global reach. SOURCE Dynamic-marketing Inc. DETROIT, Oct. 26, 2018 /PRNewswire/ -- Ally Financial Inc. (NYSE: ALLY) today announced that it will conduct its 2019 annual meeting of stockholders on Tuesday, May 7, 2019. Additional details will be provided in the company's proxy statement. About Ally Financial Inc. Ally Financial Inc. (NYSE: ALLY) is a leading digital financial services company with assets of $173.1 billion as of September 30, 2018. As a client-centric company with passionate customer service and innovative financial solutions, Ally is relentlessly focused on "Doing it Right" and being a trusted financial partner for its consumer, commercial, and corporate customers. Ally's award-winning online bank (Ally Bank, Member FDIC and Equal Housing Lender) offers mortgage-lending services and a variety of deposit and other banking products, including CDs, online savings, money market and checking accounts, and IRA products. Ally also promotes the Ally CashBack Credit Card. Additionally, Ally offers securities brokerage and investment advisory services through Ally Invest. Ally remains one of the largest full-service auto finance operations in the country with a complementary auto-focused insurance business, which together serve approximately 18,000 dealer customers and millions of auto consumers. Ally's robust corporate finance business offers capital for equity sponsors and middle-market companies. For more information and disclosures about Ally, visit https://www.ally.com/#disclosures. Contacts: Brenda Rios Ally Communications (Media) 313-656-6809 [email protected] Daniel Eller Ally Investor Relations 704-444-5216 [email protected] SOURCE Ally Financial Coal Drops Yard, the new Heatherwick Studio-designed shopping and restaurant district in London's King's Cross, will open its doors to the public at 12pm on Friday 26 October 2018 . The first wave of stores and restaurants, which represent a majority of those confirmed to launch, will also open on this date, alongside Lower Stable Street and a number of special pop-ups. (Photo: https://mma.prnewswire.com/media/775130/Argent.jpg ) Coal Drops Yard is a vibrant new shopping district at the centre of King's Cross, home to over 50 stores, restaurants and cafes, bringing together a community of like-minded brands in a reimagined set of historic buildings and arches directly adjacent to Granary Square and Regent's Canal. Coal Drops Yard was originally established in 1850 to handle the eight million tonnes of coal delivered to the capital each year, and was latterly the location of nightclubs Bagley's and The Cross. The area is now reopening, reinvented by the acclaimed Heatherwick Studio, which has interwoven a contemporary design with the surviving structures, streets and rich ironwork of the original Victorian coal drops. Thomas Heatherwick, Founder of Heatherwick Studio, said: "It has been a huge privilege working on Coal Drops Yard, not only because it's the studio's first major building completed in London, but also because it is in King's Cross, where my studio and I have been based for the last seventeen years. "These amazing Victorian structures were never originally built to be inhabited by hundreds of people, but instead formed part of the sealed-off infrastructure of London. "After serving so many varied uses throughout the years, we've been excited by the opportunity to use our design thinking to finally open up the site, create new spaces and allow everyone to experience these rich and characterful buildings." New images of the district have been released today. These are available, with a full press release and list of stores and restaurants opening today, at the following link: https://www.dropbox.com/sh/6znq0pnh69pk2yt/AAD5_oYoUXMULGYT1LMfLl5_a?dl=0 Follow on Instagram: @coaldropsyard SOURCE Argent HANGZHOU, China, Oct. 26, 2018 /PRNewswire/ -- BEST Inc. (NYSE: BSTI) ("BEST" or the "Company"), a leading smart supply chain and logistics solutions and services provider in China, today announced that it will release its unaudited financial results for the third quarter ended September 30, 2018 before the U.S. market opens on November 9, 2018. The Company will hold a conference call to discuss the financial results at 7:30 am U.S. Eastern Time (8:30 pm Beijing Time) the same day. Participants may access the call by dialing the following numbers: United States: +1-888-317-6003 Hong Kong: 800-963976 or +852-58081995 China: 4001-206115 International: +1-412-317-6061 Participant Elite Entry Number: 8893478 A replay of the conference call will be accessible through November 16, 2018 by dialing the following numbers: United States: +1-877-344-7529 International: +1-412-317-0088 Replay Access Code 10125776 Please visit the Company's investor relations website http://ir.best-inc.com/ on November 9, 2018 to view the earnings release prior to the conference call. A live and archived webcast of the conference call and an accompanying slide presentation will also be available at the same site. About BEST Inc. BEST Inc. is a leading smart supply chain and logistics solutions and services provider. BEST's mission is to empower businesses and enrich the lives of consumers by leveraging technology and business model innovation to create a smarter, more efficient supply chain. For more information, please visit: http://www.best-inc.com/en/. SOURCE BEST Inc The collections created with the three internationally renowned designers will make their debut in Beijing on October 27 and officially hit the market on November 5. TIM COPPENS An alumni of the prestigious Royal Academy of Fine Arts in Antwerp and recognized as one of the "Ten of Tomorrow Rising Stars" in fashion, American designer Tim Coppens has served in top roles in prominent fashion houses, including working as the design director at Ralph Lauren and the creative director at Karl Lagerfeld before founding his own eponymous fashion label. He currently serves as the executive design director at Under Armour. His innovative fusionist style has earned him some of the most distinguished fashion awards and recognitions in the world, including the CFDA Swarovski Award for "Emerging Menswear Designer of the Year" (2014), LVMH Prize Finalist (2014) and multiple CFDA "Menswear Designer of the Year" nominations. The Bosideng x Tim Coppens collaborative collection will ingeniously fuse European fashion with New York styles using different materials in classic premium fall/winter color pallets with state-of-the-art tailoring to provide consumers with an exceptional upscale clothing experience that is both modern and comfortable. "I am very excited to collaborate with Bosideng, a creative globally reputed down clothing brand," said Tim Coppens. "Its diverse design is both intriguing and inspiring." ATLEIN The founder of ATLEIN and a recipient of the ANDAM Fashion Award, French designer Antonin Tron has served as the chief designer at illustrious international fashion labels such as Louis Vuitton, Balenciaga and Givenchy. His past experiences granted him the in-depth knowledge of French luxury brands' vitality: the ability to deliver fascinating showpieces, to excel in commercial collections, and to establish an impactful identity visually. Being a trekking enthusiast, Antonin Tron's capsule series in his collaborative collection with Bosideng drew inspiration from his experience of scaling the Himalayas and other outdoor activities. Featuring stylish contemporary silhouette and elegant French tailoring, the collection brings forward down-filled puffer jackets, parkas, zipped jackets and sportswear. With versatility in mind, the collection offers an exclusive experience with its modern structure and excellent fit. ENNIO CAPASA Italian designer Ennio Capasa has experience of working with Yohji Yamamoto, who is known to be the pioneer in modern fashion. His style is described as being "elegant and avant-garde" by international media. New York Times, for example, credited him for having "revolutionized men's fashion in the 1990's". Capasa has focused on fashion design for 32 years and has won multiple prominent fashion awards including Italian Designer of the Year and the La Kore award. CoSTUME NATIONAL, the Italian ready-to-wear brand founded by him in 1986, has been loved by many Hollywood celebrities including Tom Cruise, Angelina Jolie and Beyonce Knowles. "At the mention of down jackets, you immediately think of Bosideng, the world-leading down apparel expert," said Ennio Capasa, who was a collaborator of famous Japanese design master Yohji Yamamoto. In this collaboration with Bosideng, he made a bold use of colors such as black, white, red and azure in printed Scandinavian natural scenery and animal patterns in the expression of "wild nature". The combination of sophisticated Italian cutting and Bosideng's specialization in down technique creates a unique fashion that is practical and aesthetically refined all at once. As a down apparel expert with 42 years of history, Bosideng is loved by a great number of consumers in China and around the world with a well established presence in 72 countries including the United States, France and Italy. By teaming up with the three internationally esteemed designers to integrate its down apparel expertise with world-class design, Bosideng aims to provide consumers with better experiences and make "down apparel of China" bloom all around the world. SOURCE Bosideng PETALUMA, Calif., Oct. 26, 2018 /PRNewswire/ -- Growth challenges can impact the bottom line and even the survival of businesses and require adept handling by entrepreneurs. According to a recent article in Forbes, these challenges, especially during high-growth opportunities, can be addressed by hiring a strong team and empowering it to work autonomously. Critical issues include efficiently increasing the number of employees on the payroll, staying connected to customers and employees, and scaling business processes. Though individual entrepreneurs and opportunities vary greatly, Brandon Frere, CEO of Frere Enterprises and other ventures, is well aware of the demands and opportunities associated with growth. "Every company is unique, and there are no cookie cutter solutions, otherwise everyone would be able to grow successfully," said Frere. "That said, there are strategies that entrepreneurs and successful companies have utilized that promote healthy growth." Headcount, the number of employees employed by an organization, can be difficult to manage during times of growth. Not having enough employees limits capacity and creates team stress, while adding too many can lead to excessive trimming back when business fails to materialize. Many successful companies spend more time with the hiring process, carefully finding the right candidate for each role, despite pressure to fill urgent needs in headcount. Rather than frenzied hiring, experts urge deliberate decisions about who will be the best fit for each position throughout the organization. Relationships, with both customers and team members, remain at the heart of successful businesses and must be maintained in times of growth. As the old saying goes, "people like doing business with people they like." This can be stressed during times of growth when processes, such as hiring and product development, get out ahead of themselves during scaling. It is important to remain true to a company's mission customers need to remain trusting and engaged. This is greatly affected by personal relationships built with team members. When employees continue to feel honored and respected, that will be passed along to customers. Like everything else, business processes can be strained during growth. Balancing the need for more processes against the possibility of building too many inefficient processes can be daunting. Successful companies maintain the entrepreneurial culture of an organization while creating infrastructure to handle growth. Experts suggest erring on the side of simplicity, implementing the fewest amounts of processes necessary to accomplish goals, instead of obscuring goals with convoluted processes. "Understanding growth and how it affects a business is essential to a leader," said Frere. "Finding the right people for the right job and empowering them to remain entrepreneurial is a way to successfully navigate growth. Slow growth over time is the most solid way forward, but, when higher growth occurs, it is critical to keep a company as lean as possible with enough capacity to handle demand." 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 job-applicants-to-support-company.jpg Job Applicants to Support Company Growth Credit: fizkes/Bigstock image2.png Related Links Brandon Frere website SOURCE Brandon Frere Related Links https://brandonfrere.com REDWOOD SHORES, Calif., Oct. 26, 2018 /PRNewswire/ -- To streamline overall operations and campus experiences, California community colleges, San Bernardino Community College District (SBCCD) and San Joaquin Delta College (SJDC) are using Oracle Cloud Applications. The depth and breadth of Oracle cloud solutions are helping the colleges transform and standardize business systems to drive sustainable cost reductions, provide greater insights through real-time analytics and improve overall services for students, faculty, staff and vendors. Faced with the challenge of tightening public funding coupled with an influx of students, California community college administrators are under increased pressure to stretch available resources to serve the needs of their constituents. According to the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, funding for public two- and four-year colleges is nearly $10 billion below what it was just prior to the recession. Cloud-based technologies have enabled organizations across a variety of industries to address similar resource challenges while continuing to deliver innovative new services and build the foundation for a modern infrastructure to support evolving needs. "Like many business enterprises, higher education institutions navigate a complex environment of financial, political, and community based factors to achieve optimal success in running their organizations," said Keith Rajecki, senior director, Oracle Higher Education. "Oracle cloud solutions deliver proven, enterprise-grade tools to empower community colleges to effectively deliver enhanced higher education experience for students, faculty and employees while increasing productivity and efficiency across their colleges." San Bernardino Community College District (SBCCD) "San Bernardino Community College District is proud to be a leader in making technological improvements and innovative changes that make our public dollars work harder for local students and Oracle ERP Cloud is central in these efforts," said Jose Torres, executive vice chancellor at the San Bernardino Community College District. SBCCD, serves 24,000 students through Crafton Hills College and San Bernardino Valley College in Inland Southern California. As a champion for affordable, high-quality education and career training, SBCCD wanted to ensure the college district was well positioned to serve the needs of its entire campus community with the overall goal of declaring fiscal independence from the county. The college district recognized a modern financial platform was critical to that mission. Following a competitive RFP process, SBCCD became the first California community college to select Oracle ERP Cloud to provide improved reporting capabilities across all college functions and deliver the necessary insights to make informed decisions. San Joaquin Delta College (SJDC) "San Joaquin Delta College has always been committed to providing students with the innovative, high-quality education, and training necessary for 21st-century careers. Yet, legacy systems greatly hindered that mission," said Gerardo Calderon, MLIS, vice president of Operations, San Joaquin Delta College. "By choosing Oracle Cloud Applications SJDC is taking advantage of integrated functionality that empowers students to achieve their educational goals. Operationally, SJDC is looking forward to improve service delivery through workflows, real-time transactions processing and reporting and better decision making." Based in Stockton, Calif., SJDC serves 22,000 students and was eager to replace a variety of legacy systems including a 20-year-old homegrown student information system. The college selected Oracle ERP Cloud, Oracle HCM Cloud, Oracle Student Cloud and Oracle Campus Solutions with the goals of: Streamlining business processes across all college operations Improving student and college staff productivity through web and mobile-enabled applications Improving access to real-time data with actionable analytical insights Increasing responsiveness to state, federal and internal reporting requirements Reducing the number of costly, disparate systems that no longer support the college's needs For more information on how the capabilities in Oracle Cloud can benefit higher education institutions, visit https://www.oracle.com/industries/higher-education/index.html or read this blog. About Oracle The Oracle Cloud offers complete SaaS application suites for ERP, HCM and CX, plus best-in-class database Platform as a Service (PaaS) and Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS) from data centers throughout the Americas, Europe and Asia. For more information about Oracle (NYSE:ORCL), please visit us at oracle.com. Trademarks Oracle and Java are registered trademarks of Oracle and/or its affiliates. Other names may be trademarks of their respective owners. SOURCE Oracle Related Links http://www.oracle.com FLOWER MOUND, Texas, Oct. 26, 2018 /PRNewswire/ -- CBDOilUsers.com, a leading CBD oil consumer education website, has published its list of the best Halloween CBD sales from reputable brands, available at https://www.cbdoilusers.com/halloween-cbd-oil-sales/. Buying CBD oil online can be a scary experience, especially for beginners. Unscrupulous sellers and scammers lurk in the shadows looking to take advantage of people who are just looking for some relief from conditions like anxiety, chronic pain, and arthritis. The most common scary experiences for consumers include: Offers of a "free trial bottle of CBD oil" for a small shipping fee. But in reality, being signed up for a monthly charge of up to $90 for a low-quality product. for a low-quality product. False claims made by multi-level marketing salespeople on social media who lure unsuspecting victims into buying over-priced products. Outright scams by shady companies who collect money for CBD products that are never delivered. CBDOilUsers.com exposes the tricks of unscrupulous sellers and scammers to help keep consumers safe. They give out treats in the form of objective, reliable information about the best CBD products and brands. "We are committed to educating consumers and helping them find the best CBD oil products from the best companies in the industry," Brian Peterson, the managing editor of CBDOilUsers.com, said. "If you're going to buy CBD oil online, it's very important to buy from a company with high-quality products and a proven track record. Special deals offered by great companies during major holidays like Halloween are a great way to affordably try CBD oil for the first time or try a new brand." The top 5 Halloween CBD sales that are running now through midnight on Wednesday, October 31st are: cbdMD (30% off with coupon code "boo30") NuLeaf Naturals (30% off with coupon code "halloween30") Hemp Bombs (25% off with coupon code "treat25") 4 Corners Cannabis (20% off with coupon code "howl20") Lazarus Naturals (13% off with coupon code "spooky13") The CBDOilUsers.com website and its companion CBD Oil Users Group on Facebook is dedicated to providing education, reviews, recommendations and the sharing of experiences among users of CBD products. Questions? Contact: Brian Peterson, Managing Editor, CBDOilUsers.com Web: https://www.cbdoilusers.com Email: [email protected] Phone: (817)567-1331 SOURCE CBDOilUsers.com Related Links https://www.cbdoilusers.com NICOSIA, Cyprus, Oct. 26, 2018 /PRNewswire/ -- Invest Cyprus, the national Investment partner of the Republic of Cyprus, VeChain Foundation, a Singapore registered legal entity with focus on building public blockchain solutions, and CREAM, a USA registered legal entity with focus on blockchain project strategic advisory and investments, are announcing that the parties have signed a MoU for strategic collaboration. The essence of this MoU is to establish a framework for the basis of cooperation in the field of blockchain technologies and related use cases. This collaboration signifies the change in the direction to a prosperous Cyprus in the next digital age. VeChain Foundation and CREAM will establish a joint entity in Cyprus assisting in the development and implementation of blockchain solutions. To facilitate a new digital age through blockchain technology the two parties will make suggestions to Invest Cyprus including policy reform that enables blockchain as an underlying infrastructure for operations and financial services. The parties will work together to accomplish several national level investment strategies involving the advancement of blockchain technology and blockchain powered economies. This cooperation comes to show the real-life utilization of blockchain technology in financial services, investments and economic reform moving into many other aspects of society, in the context of the Government policy developing a new era of blockchain technology in Cyprus. The initial scope of the collaboration consists of the blockchainization in areas which will announce as the project matures. This cooperation represents the single largest venture into blockchain technology and intends to suggest reforms that are transparent, fair, and in compliance with AML and KYC, EU laws, regulations and best practices, which will also create value and economic development on Cyprus. "The plans unfolding in Cyprus should open the world to what is achievable by investing in new technologies. Invest Cyprus as a promoter of Cyprus Investment opportunities and advisor to the Government of Cyprus in the investments space, sees this technology as both transformational and fiscally restorative at the infrastructure level. We are investing in the development of the fintech, blockchain sector and we plan to be at the forefront so that we can facilitate investments and economic development in Cyprus and the region." Michalis P. Michael, Chairman of Invest Cyprus "Just as the blockchain technology represents something much bigger than business and money, this partnership represents the true competency for global change embedding trust, transparency, and fairness to the core of our society. Along with our partners, we are excited to showcase the true value of blockchain as supplemental technology and as an infrastructure to the world." - Sunny Lu, Co-Founder, and CEO of VeChain "Cyprus as a nation represents a wonderful opportunity to make trust and fairness commonplace in the next digital age. As the first nation to fully support the development of the blockchain technology, along with our partners, we will assist the nation to attract projects and talents from around the world increasing the vivaciousness of development building an ecosystem out of blockchain technology. In turn, we will help blockchain related projects to find a home where they will be supported and protected by the law to create, develop and thrive." Jackson Fu, Co-Founder and Managing Partner of CREAM About Invest Cyprus Invest Cyprus is the government's dedicated partner responsible for attracting and facilitating Foreign Direct Investment (FDI) in key economic sectors. Being the lead agent in establishing Cyprus as a world-class investment destination, Invest Cyprus proactively promotes the enhancement of the country's competitive environment, advocating reform and maximizing FDI, for the economic and social benefit of Cyprus. In close collaboration with all government authorities, public institutions and the private sector, Invest Cyprus is the investor's first point of contact. About VeChain Starting in June 2015, VeChain aims to connect blockchain technology to the real world by providing a comprehensive governance structure, a robust economic model, and IoT integration. VeChain is the pioneers of real-world applications using public blockchain technology, with international operations in Singapore, Luxembourg, Tokyo, Shanghai, Paris, Hong Kong, and San Francisco. About CREAM CREAM is a leading strategic advisory and investment firm utilizing blockchain and crypto-economy to unleash the potential of enterprises and startups around the globe. CREAM is a US-based firm with professionals in Las Vegas, San Francisco, Shanghai, the Netherlands, Australia, and Singapore. SOURCE VeChain "57th Street was a natural choice," says David Yurman, co-founder and chief executive officer. "We are on one of the greatest shopping streets in the world it attracts an international customer and is on par with the prestigious shopping destinations around the world." Overseen by Chief Creative Officer Evan Yurman, the store's interior will reflect the company's unique heritagethe Yurmans' journey from art to jewelryas well as its future with innovative technology incorporated into the client experience. The new space will also feature a curation of David Yurman product across all categories, including High Jewelry, Women's, Men's, Wedding and Watches. "We look forward to bringing the full David Yurman luxury experience to 57th Street with the new flagship location," said Carol Pennelli, President of David Yurman. "We're an American luxury brand with a growing global presence and being at such a quintessential New York location feels like a natural fit." David Yurman's 57th Street flagship will be located at 5 East 57th Street, New York, NY 10022, currently occupied by a temporary CHANEL boutique. With the opening of the 57th Street location, David Yurman will be closing their current Townhouse store on Madison Avenue. The brand's downtown boutique will remain on Prince and Greene in Soho. ABOUT DAVID YURMAN: David Yurman is the premier American luxury jewelry brand with a mission to share in life's exceptional moments. Founded by two artists, David and Sybil Yurman, in New York in 1980, artistic inspiration, craftsmanship and unconventional yet elegant designs are at the core of the brand. The marriage of David's background in sculpture with Sybil's natural understanding of color and art yields signature jewelry designs; diamond, pearl, and gemstone jewelry and Swiss-crafted timepieces that are renowned for capturing the essence of relaxed American luxury. David Yurman collections are available at 47 retail and concession locations throughout the United States, Canada, and France and at over 350 locations worldwide, through their exclusive authorized fine jewelry and timepiece network of retailers, including in the US, Canada, Mexico, the Caribbean, UK, Russia and the Middle East. Gabrielle de Papp David Yurman [email protected] 646.264.7766 Alexis Wulf HL Group 646.460.8931 [email protected] SOURCE David Yurman WASHINGTON, Oct. 26, 2018 /PRNewswire/ -- On October 22, 2018 the Superior Court of the District of Columbia approved a $14,250,000 settlement in connection with a class action lawsuit brought by women who used a religious bath at the National Capital Mikvah, where then Rabbi Bernard Freundel secretly made video recordings of women in the nude, while they were using the facilities. Freundel was arrested, charged, and ultimately pled guilty to 52 counts of voyeurism in October, 2014. He was sentenced to 6 years in prison. Chaikin, Sherman, Cammarata & Siegel, P.C., a distinguished law firm based in Washington, DC, has been protecting the rights of women victimized by Freundel since the arrest. The firm filed a class action lawsuit on behalf of victims, and served as co-counsel with appointed class counsel Sanford Heisler, LLP. The class action lawsuit (DC Superior Court Case No. Case No. 2014 CA 8073 B consolidated with 2015 CA 7814 B) named Freundel as a defendant, as well as four religious organizations, including the National Capital Mikvah and Kesher Israel Congregation. The mikvah is a highly intimate, spiritual, and private religious experience that women engage in as part of their conversion to Judaism. It is also used by married women after menstruation, and by women prior to the marriage ceremony. Freundel, a former Rabbi at the Kesher Israel Synagogue in Georgetown, and a former professor of religious studies at local universities, admitted to his inexcusable breach of trust against women who expected privacy and a sacred space for a unique spiritual experience. The settlement was approved by the Honorable Brian Holeman. Judge Holeman in discussing the efforts of counsel in this case, said, " . . . that this case, notwithstanding the troubling aspects of the underlying facts, has been, from a judicial management point of view, a pleasure to handle." Judge Holeman suggested that other counsel in other class action lawsuits should "contact the lawyers in this case to get a feel for how, in [his] view, a class actions matter should be handled." With the settlement now finalized, women confirmed to have been secretly filmed by Freundel are entitled to a minimum payment of $25,000. Women who used the mivkah but who were not confirmed to have been taped are entitled to a minimum payment of $2,500. Class members are also eligible to receive additional payment based on the degree of their injury. The evaluation of supplemental payments will be based on various factors set forth in claim forms including the extent of distress and harm victims suffered due to Freundel's conduct. Registration forms must be postmarked, or transmitted if sent by e-mail, no later than November 13, 2018. Chaikin, Sherman, Cammarata & Siegel, P.C. is available to assist potential class members who may be entitled to compensation in accordance with the Court approved settlement. You can find more information about the settlement and instructions about how to register for the settlement by clicking here. Chaikin, Sherman, Cammarata & Siegel, P.C. is a nationally recognized personal injury law firm serving clients throughout Washington, DC, Maryland, and Virginia. Backed by decades of collective experience and the insight of Board Certified Civil Trial Lawyers, the firm has recovered over $500 million in compensation for clients in matters involving preventable accidents, serious injuries, invasion of privacy, and other civil matters involving harm and losses caused by the negligent and wrongful acts of others. For more information about the firm's award-winning team and services, visit www.chaikinandsherman.com. SOURCE Chaikin, Sherman, Cammarata & Siegel Related Links http://www.chaikinandsherman.com TROY, Mich., Oct. 26, 2018 /PRNewswire/ -- Visitors to the Delphi Technologies booth at AAPEX 2018 (booth #5027), will be introduced to Delphi's newly designed aftermarket packaging. Featuring the new Delphi Technologies logo in a wallpaper print, along with a retail box based on the current design, the upgraded packaging is part of an extensive rebranding initiative that will see the company transition from its red oval logo to a single, common identity for both OE and aftermarket businesses. An improved layout and higher quality materials provide more robust packaging to better protect its contents and the environment. The Delphi Technologies branded box is the result of extensive research with the company's global customer base. During this time, the company conducted independent research with customers across Europe, Asia Pacific, and North and South America, to review a number of different box and label options. "We're delighted with the outcome," said Neil Fryer, vice president, Global Marketing, Product and Strategy, Delphi Technologies Aftermarket. "The new packaging is clean, fresh and modern, and it reflects both our new brand identity and product quality. There's also a strong nod to our current packaging, with retail boxes for our key product programs featuring a product image and other familiar design elements for greater recognition. This is key as we transition the equity from the old brand to the new." Creating a design that will display prominently on its customers' shelves was just one of many factors the company considered in order to arrive at a significantly enhanced packaging solution. "We know that quality is important, so we have invested in a new design with higher quality materials for greater protection during transport and storage," adds Fryer. "We also know that every square inch on our customer's shelves counts, so we've improved the size and orientation of our boxes, too. This will help optimize shelf space and reduce waste, making for a more customer and environmentally friendly solution." As part of Delphi's commitment to simplify the repair process for its customers, the new packaging also features an improved label that clearly conveys the information needed to quickly identify the part. This includes line drawings and the location of the part for some products. Critically, all labels on both the existing and new packaging will include the red oval, alongside the Delphi Technologies logo, for a seamless transition. The packaging launch is one pillar of a fully integrated brand conversion program, which includes a new brand campaign, digital activity, marketing collateral, signage and packaging inserts that will reach thousands of installers in selected countries. This program is geared toward ensuring the new brand is both understood and valued throughout the aftermarket distribution chain. By mid-2019, between 80 to 90 percent of outbound deliveries will be in the new branded packaging across multiple products. During the interim, customers will continue to receive Delphi products in both old- and new-look styles. Click here and here to download high resolution images of the new packaging. For more information about Delphi Technologies, please visit www.delphiaftermarket.com About Delphi Technologies Delphi Technologies is a technology company focused on providing electric vehicle and internal combustion engine propulsion solutions, in addition to solving emissions and fuel economy challenges for the world's leading automotive OEMs. Delphi also provides leading aftermarket service solutions for the replacement market. With headquarters in London, U.K., Delphi Technologies operates technical centers, manufacturing sites and customer support services in 24 countries. SOURCE Delphi Technologies This gift adds to the support the Foundation already provided earlier this year in the aftermath of Hurricane Florence , the California wildfires , Hawaii's record-breaking flooding and Kilauea Volcano eruption, and ongoing recovery in Puerto Rico from Hurricane Maria. The Foundation also made its annual donation to the American Red Cross Annual Disaster Giving Program in May. In total, the Enterprise Rent-A-Car Foundation's total disaster relief support in 2018 has reached nearly $2.8 million. However, in the wake of natural disasters, Enterprise's technology, expertise and network also can make a critical difference. "We know from years of experience that the availability of reliable transportation plays a vital role in maintaining the health, welfare and safety of both hurricane victims and relief teams," said Don Moore, vice president of business rental sales and global corporate accounts for Enterprise Holdings, which owns the Enterprise Rent-A-Car brand as well as the National Car Rental and Alamo Rent A Car brands. "And our team is working hard to provide that kind of support to areas affected by Hurricane Michael," Moore noted, "especially as we move several thousands of rental cars and trucks to the Florida Panhandle to assist with the hurricane recovery and clean-up efforts in critical areas." Rapid Response & Technology Make a Difference Enterprise Holdings is the world's largest car rental provider with a fleet of 2 million vehicles and more than 10,000 fully staffed neighborhood and airport locations. As Hurricane Michael approached the United States, Enterprise shifted resources to meet spiking demand for local ground transportation in affected areas. Each regional Enterprise Holdings subsidiary has an Emergency Action Plan to try to ensure its branch offices have the right number and types of vehicles available during disaster recovery. The company is always prepared to respond and move vehicles into affected areas as quickly and seamlessly as possible. Even before the storm made landfall, Enterprise Holdings was already collaborating with catastrophe teams before they arrived in affected areas to assess damage and begin cleanup. These teams include insurance and energy/power companies, the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA), the General Services Administration (GSA), the National Guard, and state emergency response officials. As part of the planning before and during a storm, employees can be sent home or to other operable locations with mobile tablets that enable them to process rental transactions from virtually anywhere. These Enterprise LaunchPad tablets make it easier to manage local demand when customer calls to inoperable branch offices are automatically forwarded to other operational sites. As soon as Hurricane Michael hit, Enterprise activated its Mobile Emergency Response Vehicle (MERV) and transported it to Panama City, Fla. MERV operates as a portable, state-of-the-art branch office in the event of an emergency. It is equipped with three workstations, five computers and a front counter. It can operate on a generator for more than 120 hours, supporting relief efforts even before local power is restored. Enterprise employees are able to use LaunchPad technology at the MERV site and additional pop-up locations, which have been set up to start quickly serving the transportation needs of customers in affected areas. SOURCE Enterprise Holdings BEIJING, Oct. 26, 2018 /PRNewswire/ -- Fang Holdings Limited (NYSE: SFUN) ("Fang" or the "Company"), the leading real estate Internet portal in China, today announced that it would hold its 2018 annual general meeting of shareholders at Block A, No. 20 Guogongzhuang Middle Street, Fengtai District, Beijing, 100070, the People's Republic of China on December 7, 2018 at 10:30 a.m. (local time). The proposals to be submitted for shareholders' approval at the annual general meeting are the re-election of Mr. Shaohua Zhang as an independent director of the board of directors of the Company (the "Board") and a member of the audit committee of the Board and the ratification of the appointment of KPMG Huazhen LLP as the independent registered public accounting firm of the Company for the fiscal year ending December 31, 2018. The Board has fixed November 7, 2018 as the record date (the "Record Date") for determining the shareholders entitled to receive notice of the annual general meeting or any adjournment or postponement thereof. Holders of record of the Company's ordinary shares at the close of business on the Record Date are entitled to attend the annual general meeting and any adjournment or postponement thereof in person. About Fang Fang operates the leading real estate Internet portal in China in terms of the number of page views and visitors to its websites. Through our websites, we provide e-commerce, marketing, listing, financial and other value-added services for China's fast-growing real estate and home furnishing and improvement sectors. Our user-friendly websites support active online communities and networks of users seeking information on, and other value-added services for, the real estate and home furnishing and improvement sectors in China. Fang currently maintains about 100 offices to focus on local market needs and its website and database contains real estate related content covering more than 651 cities in China. For more information about Fang, please visit http://ir.fang.com. For investor and media inquiries, please contact: Dr. Hua Lei CFO Phone: +86-10-5631-8661 Email: [email protected] Ms. Jessie Yang Director, Investor Relations Phone: +86-10-5631-8805 Email: [email protected] SOURCE Fang Holdings Limited Related Links http://ir.fang.com STAINES-UPON-THAMES, United Kingdom, Oct. 26, 2018 /PRNewswire/ -- Mallinckrodt plc (NYSE: MNK), a leading global specialty pharmaceutical company, today confirmed screening of the first patient in the company's Phase 4, multi-center, multiple-dose, open label study to assess the effects of H.P. Acthar Gel as a therapy option in patients with Severe Noninfectious Intermediate Uveitis, Posterior Uveitis, or Panuveitis (NIPPU). H.P. Acthar Gel is approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) for the treatment of severe acute and chronic allergic and inflammatory processes involving the eye and its adnexa such as keratitis, iritis, iridocyclitis, diffuse posterior uveitis and choroiditis, optic neuritis, chorioretinitis, anterior segment inflammation one of 19 indications. "I am pleased that the first patient has been screened in this important Phase 4 study, the results of which may potentially provide further evidence to support Acthar as a treatment option in appropriate uveitis patients." said C. Stephen Foster, M.D., Founder and President, Massachusetts Eye Research and Surgery Institution, Professor of Ophthalmology, Harvard Medical School, Founder of the Ocular Immunology and Uveitis Foundation, Waltham, Mass. "In my experience, a considerable number of uveitis patients can have persistent disease that may not be resolved by first-line treatment." "The screening of the first patient in this study is an important milestone in enhancing our understanding of Acthar's effectiveness and potential utility as a treatment option for certain uveitis patients," said Tunde Otulana, M.D., Chief Medical Officer at Mallinckrodt. "We believe this exploratory evaluation of patients with severe uveitis despite being on one or more standard treatments can potentially help physicians better understand which individuals may benefit from the drug as a treatment alternative." About the Trial The Phase 4 clinical study is titled "Efficacy and Safety of H.P. Acthar Gel in Subjects With Severe Noninfectious Intermediate Uveitis, Posterior Uveitis, or Panuveitis (NIPPU)." This is a Phase 4, multicenter, multiple dose, open label study to examine the effects of Acthar in adult subjects, with a target enrollment of 30. Subjects with current severe NIPPU who meet entry criteria will be treated with H.P. Acthar Gel 1 mL (80 units [U]) subcutaneously (SC) two times per week for 36 weeks. Initial treatment will be followed by a taper to Acthar 1 mL (80 U) SC once a week for two weeks, then 0.5 mL (40 U) SC once a week for two weeks. All subjects will have a follow-up contact 28 ( 14) days after their last dose of study drug. Response will be evaluated by vitreous haze (time frame: from baseline to 36 weeks) for the proportion of subjects with a two-step or more reduction from baseline (or achievement of Grade 0) in vitreous haze at 36 weeks. Full study details can be found on clinicaltrials.gov. Vitreous haze is the obscuration of fundus details by vitreous cells and protein exudation. It impacts vision more profoundly than anterior inflammation and therefore is used commonly as an outcome measure for clinical trials involving intermediate, posterior, or panuveitis.1 About Severe Noninfectious Intermediate Uveitis, Posterior Uveitis, or Panuveitis (NIPPU) Uveitis impacts a variety of patients each year2. A complex mix of acute or chronic allergic and inflammatory disorders, uveitis can affect the anterior, intermediate, and posterior structures of the eye as well as the uveal tract3,4. Uveitis accounts for 5%-20% of legal blindness cases in the United States. The annual incidence of uveitis is estimated to be 17-52/100,000 persons per year. The annual prevalence of uveitis is estimated to be 38-714/100,000 persons2. Adults of working age are most commonly affected by this condition4. Uveitis is a disease with a number of causes, associated conditions, and underlying immune responses that complicate its diagnosis and treatment.4,5 About H.P. Acthar Gel (repository corticotropin injection) Indications H.P. Acthar Gel is an injectable drug approved by the FDA for the treatment of 19 indications. Of these, today the majority of Acthar use is in these indications: Adjunctive therapy for short-term administration (to tide the patient over an acute episode or exacerbation) in rheumatoid arthritis, including juvenile rheumatoid arthritis (selected cases may require low-dose maintenance therapy) Monotherapy for the treatment of infantile spasms in infants and children under 2 years of age Treatment during an exacerbation or as maintenance therapy in selected cases of systemic lupus erythematosus The treatment of acute exacerbations of multiple sclerosis in adults. Controlled clinical trials have shown H.P. Acthar Gel to be effective in speeding the resolution of acute exacerbations of multiple sclerosis. However, there is no evidence that it affects the ultimate outcome or natural history of the disease Inducing a diuresis or a remission of proteinuria in nephrotic syndrome without uremia of the idiopathic type or that due to lupus erythematosus Treatment during an exacerbation or as maintenance therapy in selected cases of systemic dermatomyositis (polymyositis) The treatment of symptomatic sarcoidosis Treatment of severe acute and chronic allergic and inflammatory processes involving the eye and its adnexa such as: keratitis, iritis, iridocyclitis, diffuse posterior uveitis and choroiditis, optic neuritis, chorioretinitis, anterior segment inflammation IMPORTANT SAFETY INFORMATION Contraindications Acthar should never be administered intravenously Administration of live or live attenuated vaccines is contraindicated in patients receiving immunosuppressive doses of Acthar Acthar is contraindicated where congenital infections are suspected in infants Acthar is contraindicated in patients with scleroderma, osteoporosis, systemic fungal infections, ocular herpes simplex, recent surgery, history of or the presence of a peptic ulcer, congestive heart failure, uncontrolled hypertension, primary adrenocortical insufficiency, adrenocortical hyperfunction or sensitivity to proteins of porcine origins Warnings and Precautions The adverse effects of Acthar are related primarily to its steroidogenic effects Acthar may increase susceptibility to new infection or reactivation of latent infections Suppression of the hypothalamic-pituitary-axis (HPA) may occur following prolonged therapy with the potential for adrenal insufficiency after withdrawal of the medication. Adrenal insufficiency may be minimized by tapering of the dose when discontinuing treatment. During recovery of the adrenal gland patients should be protected from the stress (e.g. trauma or surgery) by the use of corticosteroids. Monitor patients for effects of HPA suppression after stopping treatment Cushing's syndrome may occur during therapy but generally resolves after therapy is stopped. Monitor patients for signs and symptoms Acthar can cause elevation of blood pressure, salt and water retention, and hypokalemia. Blood pressure, sodium and potassium levels may need to be monitored Acthar often acts by masking symptoms of other diseases/disorders. Monitor patients carefully during and for a period following discontinuation of therapy Acthar can cause GI bleeding and gastric ulcer. There is also an increased risk for perforation in patients with certain gastrointestinal disorders. Monitor for signs of bleeding Acthar may be associated with central nervous system effects ranging from euphoria, insomnia, irritability, mood swings, personality changes, and severe depression, and psychosis. Existing conditions may be aggravated Patients with comorbid disease may have that disease worsened. Caution should be used when prescribing Acthar in patients with diabetes and myasthenia gravis Prolonged use of Acthar may produce cataracts, glaucoma and secondary ocular infections. Monitor for signs and symptoms Acthar is immunogenic and prolonged administration of Acthar may increase the risk of hypersensitivity reactions. Neutralizing antibodies with chronic administration may lead to loss of endogenous ACTH activity There is an enhanced effect in patients with hypothyroidism and in those with cirrhosis of the liver Long-term use may have negative effects on growth and physical development in children. Monitor pediatric patients Decrease in bone density may occur. Bone density should be monitored for patients on long-term therapy Pregnancy Class C: Acthar has been shown to have an embryocidal effect and should be used during pregnancy only if the potential benefit justifies the potential risk to the fetus Adverse Reactions Common adverse reactions for Acthar are similar to those of corticosteroids and include fluid retention, alteration in glucose tolerance, elevation in blood pressure, behavioral and mood changes, increased appetite and weight gain Specific adverse reactions reported in IS clinical trials in infants and children under 2 years of age included: infection, hypertension, irritability, Cushingoid symptoms, constipation, diarrhea, vomiting, pyrexia, weight gain, increased appetite, decreased appetite, nasal congestion, acne, rash, and cardiac hypertrophy. Convulsions were also reported, but these may actually be occurring because some IS patients progress to other forms of seizures and IS sometimes mask other seizures, which become visible once the clinical spasms from IS resolve Other adverse events reported are included in the full Prescribing Information. Please see full Prescribing Information. ABOUT MALLINCKRODT Mallinckrodt is a global business that develops, manufactures, markets and distributes specialty pharmaceutical products and therapies. Areas of focus include autoimmune and rare diseases in specialty areas like neurology, rheumatology, nephrology, pulmonology and ophthalmology; immunotherapy and neonatal respiratory critical care therapies; analgesics and gastrointestinal products. To learn more about Mallinckrodt, visit www.mallinckrodt.com. Mallinckrodt uses its website as a channel of distribution of important company information, such as press releases, investor presentations and other financial information. It also uses its website to expedite public access to time-critical information regarding the company in advance of or in lieu of distributing a press release or a filing with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) disclosing the same information. Therefore, investors should look to the Investor Relations page of the website for important and time-critical information. Visitors to the website can also register to receive automatic e-mail and other notifications alerting them when new information is made available on the Investor Relations page of the website. CAUTIONARY STATEMENTS RELATED TO FORWARD-LOOKING STATEMENTS This release includes forward-looking statements concerning H.P. Acthar Gel including expectations with regard to the study described in this release, as well as future research plans and potential impact on patients. The statements are based on assumptions about many important factors, including the following, which could cause actual results to differ materially from those in the forward-looking statements: satisfaction of regulatory and other requirements; actions of regulatory bodies and other governmental authorities; changes in laws and regulations; issues with product quality, manufacturing or supply, or patient safety issues; and other risks identified and described in more detail in the "Risk Factors" section of Mallinckrodt's most recent Annual Report on Form 10-K and other filings with the SEC, all of which are available on its website. The forward-looking statements made herein speak only as of the date hereof and Mallinckrodt does not assume any obligation to update or revise any forward-looking statement, whether as a result of new information, future events and developments or otherwise, except as required by law. CONTACTS Investor Relations Daniel J. Speciale, CPA Investor Relations and Strategy Officer 314-654-3638 [email protected] Media Rhonda Sciarra Senior Communications Manager 908-238-6765 [email protected] Meredith Fischer Chief Public Affairs Officer 908-997-9294 [email protected] 1Davis JL, Madow B, Cornett J, et al. Scale for photographic grading of vitreous haze in uveitis. Am J Ophthalmol. 2010;150(5):637-641.e1. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3220938/. Accessed Oct. 7, 2018. 2Miserocchi E, Fogliato G, Modorati G, et al. Review on the worldwide epidemiology of uveitis. Eur J Ophthalmol. 2013;23(5):705-717. doi:10.5301/ejo.5000278. 3Chan CC, Li Q. Immunopathology of uveitis. Br J Ophthalmol. 1998;82:91-9 4Guly CM, Forrester JV. Investigation and management of uveitis. BMJ. 2010;341:821-826. doi:10.1136/bmj.c4976. 5Lee RWJ, Dick AD. Current concepts and future directions in the pathogenesis and treatment of non-infectious intraocular inflammation. Eye. 2012;26(1):17-28. doi:10.1038/eye.2011.255. Mallinckrodt, the "M" brand mark and the Mallinckrodt Pharmaceuticals logo are trademarks of a Mallinckrodt company. Other brands are trademarks of a Mallinckrodt company or their respective owners. 2018 Mallinckrodt. US-1800601 10/18 SOURCE Mallinckrodt plc Related Links http://www.mallinckrodt.com DUBLIN, Oct. 26, 2018 /PRNewswire/ -- The "AGV Software Market by Offering (In-built Vehicle Software and Integrated Software), Industry (Automotive, Manufacturing, Food & Beverages, Aerospace, Healthcare, Logistics, Retail), and Geography - Global Forecast to 2023" report has been added to ResearchAndMarkets.com's offering. The AGV software market is expected to grow from USD 540.2 million in 2018 to USD 1,046.4 million by 2023, at a CAGR of 14.14% from 2018 to 2023. Major factors driving the growth of the AGV market include the rising demand for automation across different industries, globalization of supply chain networks, and increasing adoption of on-cloud warehouse management system (WMS) solutions. In this report, the AGV software market has been segmented based on offering, industry, and geography. The study identifies and analyzes dynamics, such as drivers, restraints, opportunities, and challenges, for the AGV software market. It also profiles the key players operating in the market. Based on offering, the AGV software market for in-built vehicle software is expected to grow at a higher rate than integrated software during the forecast period. AGVs are controlled and navigated by advanced in-built vehicle software. Increasing digitization with the introduction of smart technologies, such as Industrial Internet of Things (IIoT) and big data analytics, is expected to create a positive impact on the in-built vehicle software market during the forecast period. Currently, the AGV market is dominated by Europe due to exceptionally high labor cost in the region which pushes companies to adopt automated industrial solutions to reduce overall operational expenditures. Flourishing manufacturing and automotive industries in the region are expected to spur the demand for AGVs and related software. These industries require highly sophisticated automation and warehousing facilities to sustain in a competitive global economy. The automotive industry has been one of the key users of AGV technology. Factors such as transportation of heavy materials, growing after-sales spare parts market, increasing levels of customization in vehicles, and the need to ensure availability of components during vehicle manufacturing/assembling are driving the implementation of AGVs in the industry. An increasing installation of AGVs has also allowed several automotive companies to offset shortages of labor and costs associated with retaining them. With the growing demand for AGVs, the related software market is also growing Food & Beverages Swelling global population, particularly in developing countries, is burdening the food & beverages industry with a growing demand for processed and packaged food items. An additional pressure on the industry is also created by the rising trend of online grocery shopping. The resultant needs for more efficient inventory management and hygienic handling of food Key Topics Covered: 1 Introduction 2 Research Methodology 3 Executive Summary 4 Premium Insights 4.1 Lucrative Opportunities in AGV Software Market 4.2 AGV Software Market, By Offering 4.3 AGV Software Market in APAC 4.4 AGV Software Market, By Country/Region 5 Market Overview 5.1 Introduction 5.2 Market Dynamics: AGV Software Market 5.2.1 Drivers 5.2.1.1 Rising Demand for Automation Across Different Industries 5.2.1.2 Globalization of Supply Chain Networks 5.2.1.3 Increaasing Adoption of On-Cloud Warehouse Management System (WMS) Solutions 5.2.2 Restraints 5.2.2.1 High Cost of Implementing and Upgrading AGV Systems 5.2.3 Opportunities 5.2.3.1 Integration of Advanced Features Such as Industry 4.0, Industrial Internet of Things (IIoT), Big Data Analytics, and Cloud Computing 5.2.3.2 Industrial Growth in Emerging Economies 5.2.4 Challenges 5.2.4.1 Need for Regularly Upgrading Software 5.2.4.2 Real-Time Technical Glitches 5.3 Industry Trends 5.3.1 Value Chain Analysis 5.3.2 Strategic Benchmarking 6 AGV Software Market, By Offering 6.1 Introduction 6.2 In-Built Vehicle Software 6.2.1 Management Software 6.2.2 Navigation Software 6.3 Integrated Software 6.3.1 On-Premise 6.3.2 On-Cloud 7 AGV Software Market, By Industry 7.1 Introduction 7.2 Automotive 7.2.1 Automotive Industry to Hold Largest Share of AGV Software Market During Forecast Period 7.3 Manufacturing 7.3.1 AGVs Help in Reducing Production Costs and Improving Quality of Goods in the Manufacturing Industry 7.4 Food & Beverages 7.4.1 Food & Beverages Industry to Grow at Highest CAGR in AGV Software Market During Forecast Period 7.5 Aerospace 7.5.1 AGVs Provide Intelligent Material Handling Solutions That Improve Production Efficiency in the Aerospace Industry 7.6 Healthcare 7.6.1 AGVs are Suitable for Handling Medical Products to Reduce Risk of Contamination 7.7 Logistics 7.7.1 AGVs Help the 3PL Providers for Handling Large Inventories in Warehouses 7.8 Retail 7.8.1 Growth of E-Commerce Drives the Market for AGV Software 7.9 Others 8 Geographic Analysis 8.1 Introduction 8.2 North America 8.2.1 US 8.2.1.1 US is the Major Contributor for AGV Software Market in North America 8.2.2 Canada 8.2.2.1 Canada is Second Largest Market for AGV Software in North America 8.2.3 Mexico 8.2.3.1 Proximity to US and Canada is Attracting Companies to Set Up Their Production and Warehousing Facilities in Mexico 8.3 Europe 8.3.1 UK 8.3.1.1 UK is Expected to Register the Largest Growth Rate for AGV Software Market in Europe During the Forecast Period 8.3.2 Germany 8.3.2.1 Germany is the Largest Market for AGV Software in Europe 8.3.3 France 8.3.3.1 The Rise in Retail and E-Commerce Sector is Leading to the Growth of AGV Software Market in France 8.3.4 Rest of Europe 8.4 APAC 8.4.1 China 8.4.1.1 China is Dominating the AGV Software Market in APAC 8.4.2 Japan 8.4.2.1 Automotive Industry is One of the Primary Users of AGV Software in Japan 8.4.3 India 8.4.3.1 India is Witnessing Remarkable Developments in the AGV Software Market in APAC Region 8.4.4 Rest of APAC 8.5 Rest of World (RoW) 9 Competitive Landscape 9.1 Overview 9.2 Market Ranking of Players, 2017 9.3 Competitive Scenario 9.3.1 Product Launches/Product Extensions 9.3.2 Partnerships, Joint Ventures, and Contracts 9.3.3 Acquisitions 10 Company Profiles 10.1 Key Players 10.1.1 Kion Group 10.1.2 Kuka 10.1.3 Toyota Industries 10.1.4 JBT Corporation 10.1.5 Murata Machinery 10.1.6 Oceaneering International 10.1.7 Kollmorgen 10.1.8 BA Systemes 10.1.9 Transbotics, A Scott Company 10.1.10 Gtting 10.2 Other Important Players 10.2.1 Seegrid Corporation 10.2.2 Savant Automation 10.2.3 Konecranes 10.2.4 SAP 10.2.5 Oracle 10.3 Key Innovators 10.3.1 Motum N.V. 10.3.2 3PL Central 10.3.3 Microlistics 10.3.4 Synergy Logistics 10.3.5 Addverb Technologies For more information about this report visit https://www.researchandmarkets.com/research/2k5qr9/global_agv?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 http://www.researchandmarkets.com DUBLIN, Oct. 26, 2018 /PRNewswire/ -- The "Global Medical Devices Market- Technologies, Market share and Industry Forecast to 2024" report has been added to ResearchAndMarkets.com's offering. Global medical devices market is expected to rise with the CAGR of about 5.3% during forecast period 2017-2024. Medical devices include apparatus and instruments such as lasers, sutures, orthopedic pins, vascular grafts, pacemakers, intraocular lenses, etc. which are specifically used for diagnostic and therapeutic purposes. Strategic initiatives taken by various market players is expected to contribute to the growth of global medical devices market during forecast period. According to the official company sources, in 2018, Siemens Healthineers launched Acuson Juniper ultrasound system, a next generation ultrasound system. The ultrasound system integrates high-end imaging performance and advanced applications with flexible, ergonomic design and lightweight applications which makes it suitable to be used across different clinical segments. Also, in 2017, Abbott Laboratories acquired St. Jude Medical, Inc. with the intent to establish itself as a leader in medical device market. The major aim of this acquisition was for the development of diverse and strong portfolio of medical devices and diagnostic instruments, as per the official company sources. Further, in 2017, Johnson and Johnson's DePuy Synthes launched a new high definition visualisation system, Purevue. The system comprises of an autoclavable camera embedded with endoscopy sensitive sensor to capture high definition images and is used in minimally invasive endoscopic surgeries, as per the official company sources. Moreover, in 2018, Roche Diagnostics signed a strategic collaboration with GE Healthcare for the development of digital clinical decision support solutions. The digital platform would improve the treatment for oncology and patient care, as per the official company sources. Such strategic initiatives for the development of advanced medical devices is expected to contribute to the growth of global medical devices market during forecast period. Rapidly increasing geriatric population to fuel large scale adoption of medical devices Rapid growth witnessed in geriatric population across the globe is one of the major factor which contributes to the growth of global medical devices market during forecast period. According to the National institute of health (NIH, United States), about 8.5 % of global population i.e. 617 million people were of age 65 and above (geriatric) in 2015. The geriatric population is expected to reach up to approximately 1.6 billion by the end of 2050. Increasing geriatric population would increase the need and demand for medical devices for diagnosis and treatment of age related diseases such as alzheimers, visual impairment, bone related disorders, etc. Also, major developed and developing countries are witnessing rapid rise in geriatric population. For instance, as per the Population Reference Bureau (United States), population of China of age 65 years and more was recorded to be around 90 million in 2010. Geriatric population across China is expected to increase and reach up to 300 million by the end of 2050. In addition, geriatric population (more than 65 years) in the United States is expected to get about double and would reach up to 98 million by the end of 2060 as compared to 46 million in 2016. Increasing geriatric population is expected to increase the adoption of medical devices globally which would fuel growth in the global medical devices market during forecast period. Increasing healthcare spending: Growth promoter Increasing healthcare spending and expenditure is one of the major factors which promotes the growth of global medical devices market during forecast period. According to the Institute of Health Metrics and Evaluations (United States), health expenditure across the globe is expected to reach to about $18.28 trillion by the end of 2040. Also, according to the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (United States), in 2015, national healthcare expenditure across the United States was recorded to be around $3.2 trillion. The national healthcare expenditure was increased and reached upto $3.35 trillion in 2016 across United States. Further, according to the Public Broadcasting service, healthcare spending per person in United States was $10,000 in 2015. This was increased up to nearly $10,345 per person in 2016 across United States. Moreover, healthcare expenditure across India is projected to riseby nearly12% to approx. $195.7 billion by the end of 2018 from $96.3 billion in 2013, as per the India Brand Equity Foundation (IBEF, India). Increasing healthcare expenditure is expected to enhance the research and development of medical devices that would contribute to the growth of global medical devices market during forecast period. However, product failures and recalls pertaining to medical devices and high cost of medical devices are some of the major factors restraining the growth of global medical devices market during forecast period. Key Topics Covered: 1. Introduction 1.1. Executive Summary 1.2. Estimation Methodology 2. Market Overview 2.1. Global Medical Devices Market: Evolution & Transition 2.2. Market Definition & Scope 2.3. Industry Structure 2.4. Regulatory Framework 2.5. Total Market Analysis 2.6. Estimation Analysis 2.7. Strategic Analysis 2.8. Competitive Analysis 2.9. Strategic Recommendations & Key Conclusions 3. Market Determinants 3.1. Market Drivers 3.1.1. Rising Prevalence Of Chronic Diseases 3.1.2. Rapid Increase In Geriatric Population 3.1.3. Increasing Healthcare Spending And Expenditure 3.1.4. Increasing Adoption Of Minimally Invasive Techniques 3.2. Market Restraints 3.2.1. Product Failures And Recalls 3.2.2. High Cost Of Devices 3.3. Market Opportunities 3.3.1. Increasing Medical Tourism 3.3.2. Technological Advancements In Medical Devices 3.3.3. Increasing Government Spending For Development Of Healthcare Infrastructure 3.4. Market Challenges 3.4.1. Regulatory Compliance 4. Global Medical Devices Market By Technology 4.1. Market Definition And Scope 4.2. Decision Support Database & Estimation Methodology 4.3. Comparative Analysis Across Market Segments 4.4. Opportunity Matrix 4.5. Market Segmentation 4.5.1. Global Drug Delivery Devices Market 4.5.1.1. Adoption Scenario & Market Determinants 4.5.1.2. Market Estimations And Forecasts 2015-2024 ($ Million) 4.5.1.3. Key Conclusions 4.5.1.4. Market Sub-Segments 4.5.1.4.1. Infusion Systems And Injectables 4.5.1.4.2. Inhalation Systems 4.5.1.4.3. Needle-Free Injections/Transdermal Systems And Others 4.5.2. Global Urology And Renal Market 4.5.2.1. Adoption Scenario & Market Determinants 4.5.2.2. Market Estimations And Forecasts 2015-2024 ($ Million) 4.5.2.3. Key Conclusions 4.5.2.4. Market Sub-Segments 4.5.2.4.1. Incontinence Devices 4.5.2.4.2. Lithotripters 4.5.2.4.3. Renal Dialysis Devices 4.5.3. Global In Vitro Diagnostics Market 4.5.3.1. Adoption Scenario & Market Determinants 4.5.3.2. Market Estimations And Forecasts 2015-2024 ($ Million) 4.5.3.3. Key Conclusions 4.5.3.4. Market Sub-Segments 4.5.3.4.1. Clinical Chemistry 4.5.3.4.2. Hematology/Hemostasis 4.5.3.4.3. Immunochemistry 4.5.3.4.4. Molecular Diagnostics 4.5.3.4.5. Point-Of-Care Testing 4.5.4. Global Orthopedics And Spine Market 4.5.4.1. Adoption Scenario & Market Determinants 4.5.4.2. Market Estimations And Forecasts 2015-2024 ($ Million) 4.5.4.3. Key Conclusions 4.5.4.4. Market Sub-Segments 4.5.4.4.1. Orthopedic Robotic Systems 4.5.4.4.2. Reconstructive Implants 4.5.4.4.3. Spinal Implants 4.5.4.4.4. Trauma Fixation Devices 4.5.5. Global Imaging Devices Market 4.5.5.1. Adoption Scenario & Market Determinants 4.5.5.2. Market Estimations And Forecasts 2015-2024 ($ Million) 4.5.5.3. Key Conclusions 4.5.5.4. Market Sub-Segments 4.5.5.4.1. Clinical/Point Of Care 4.5.5.4.2. Computed Tomography (Ct) 4.5.5.4.3. Interventional Radiology 4.5.5.4.4. Laser Imaging 4.5.5.4.5. Magnetic Resonance Imaging (Mri) Systems 4.5.5.4.6. Nuclear Medicine/Positron Emission Tomography (Pet) 4.5.5.4.7. Ultrasound Systems 4.5.5.4.8. X-Ray Systems 4.5.6. Global Cardiovascular Devices Market 4.5.6.1. Adoption Scenario & Market Determinants 4.5.6.2. Market Estimations And Forecasts 2015-2024 ($ Million) 4.5.6.3. Key Conclusions 4.5.6.4. Market Sub-Segments 4.5.6.4.1. Cardiac Rhythm Management 4.5.6.4.2. Transcatheter Technologies 4.5.7. Global Endoscopy Market 4.5.7.1. Adoption Scenario & Market Determinants 4.5.7.2. Market Estimations And Forecasts 2015-2024 ($ Million) 4.5.7.3. Key Conclusions 4.5.7.4. Market Sub-Segments 4.5.7.4.1. Flexible Endoscopes 4.5.7.4.2. Rigid Endoscopes 5. Competitive Landscape 5.1. Key Strategies 5.1.1. List Of Mergers And Acquisitions 5.1.2. List Of Joint Ventures 5.1.3. List Of Product Launches 5.1.4. List Of Partnerships 6. Geographic Analysis 6.1. Decision Support Database & Estimation Methodology 6.2. Comparative Analysis Across Market Segments 6.3. Opportunity Matrix 6.4. Global Medical Devices Market By Region 2015-2024 7. Company Profiles Abbott Laboratories (U.S.) Baxter International (U.S.) Beckman Coulter (U.S.) (U.S.) Becton Dickinson And Co. (U.S.) Fujifilm Sonosite (U.S.) Ge Healthcare (U.S.) Hitachi Aloka Medical, Ltd. ( Japan ) ) Johnson & Johnson (U.S.) Medison Ltd. ( Israel ) ) Medtronic Inc. (U.S) Mindray ( China ) ) Philips Healthcare Informatics, Inc. (U.S.) Qiagen ( Germany ) ) Roche Diagnostics ( Switzerland ) ) Shimazdu Corp. ( Japan ) ) Siemens Healthcare ( Germany ) ) Smith & Nephew (U.K.) Stryker Corp. (U.S.) Thermofisher Scientific (U.S.) Toshiba ( Japan ) ) Zimmer Biomet (U.S.) For more information about this report visit https://www.researchandmarkets.com/research/ncj3nf/global_medical?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 http://www.researchandmarkets.com LAKE OSWEGO, Ore., Oct. 26, 2018 /PRNewswire/ -- The Greenbrier Companies, Inc. (NYSE:GBX) and Saudi Railway Company ("SAR") announced today that they have signed an agreement under which the parties will invest and generate investments totaling 1 billion Saudi riyals (USD $270 million) in the Saudi rail industry. Greenbrier and SAR intend to establish a joint venture company ("JV") in Saudi Arabia to execute railway projects and supply railcars for profitable growth of the Saudi freight rail market. Together through the JV, Greenbrier and SAR will establish a new multi-modal business centered on creating and maximizing existing and new rail routes for freight movement throughout the Kingdom and, ultimately, the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) region. The JV will invest in assets and infrastructure required to expand profitable rail service offerings to the Saudi market. Based on achieving identified milestones, Greenbrier will provide the JV up to $100 million USD (370 million Saudi riyals) in new railcars, lift equipment and other terminal investment necessary to place railcars in revenue service, and will operate intermodal and other freight terminals. SAR will provide the JV locomotives, rail access and service schedules to facilitate line haul services. Using its investment syndication model, Greenbrier will facilitate raising an additional $170 million USD (630 million Saudi riyals) in collaboration with SAR and international public and private investment communities. The JV will operate similar to the model of TTX in North America on car supply, and can expand to serve GCC nations. Greenbrier will have a first right to manufacture and provide railcars for the JV's railcar pool and establish a Saudi-based manufacturing/assembly presence. Pooling brings several benefits to SAR including technology and knowledge transfer, advanced railcar designs and efficient network service design. The JV will promote supply chain efficiencies by increasing local content, reducing the capital burden on SAR, lowering SAR's operating costs and improving the railroad's competitiveness with highway transport. Freight traffic in Saudi Arabia is predominantly transported by truck or by pipeline. The JV will help SAR meet its customers' needs by providing well-maintained railcars in an efficient, network system for general freight traffic. The JV is consistent with and will serve the Kingdom's Vision 2030 National Priorities, the National Transformation Program Strategic Objectives and the National Industrial Clusters Development Program adopted by the Saudi Arabian government. Among other goals, the objectives of the JV include: (i) accelerating the development of Saudi Arabia into a regional logistics center by fully integrating rail into the freight transport sector; (ii) maximizing in-country employment opportunities in railcar manufacturing, railcar asset support services and supply chain logistics related to the Saudi rail system; and (iii) increasing safety and improving the livability of Saudi cities. The JV is intended to create a self-funding business, following the North American railroad model, which will reduce reliance on government funding for the rail sector over time and enhance value. William A. Furman, Chairman, CEO and President of Greenbrier said, "The JV will benefit the people of Saudi Arabia by enhancing the capacity and efficiency of freight and logistics systems in the Kingdom while contributing to local job growth, economic development and national defense mobility. As the Kingdom advances economic diversification to improve the life of its people, it will significantly grow its transportation infrastructure. We are pleased to partner with SAR as it addresses these needs in its rail network. We view this as a core part of our mission in every geography where we operate." The relationship between SAR and Greenbrier began in 2015 when Greenbrier was awarded a contract with the Public Investment Fund (PIF) to manufacture nearly 1,200 tank wagons for SAR to use in transporting molten Sulphur and phosphoric acid. These are commodities that the National Mining Company (Ma'aden) uses to produce fertilizer as part of the Wa'ad Al-Shammal ("Northern Promise") development project. Saudi Arabia and its people have been long-term friends and allies of America. This JV is the culmination of more than a year of collaboration between Greenbrier and SAR accompanied by regular consultation with our respective government representatives. The JV is subject to the completion of final due diligence by the parties and required government or corporate approvals. About Greenbrier Greenbrierheadquartered in Lake Oswego, Oregonis a leading international supplier of equipment and services to global freight transportation markets. Greenbrier designs, builds and markets freight railcars and marine barges in North America. Greenbrier Europe is an end-to-end freight railcar manufacturing, engineering and repair business with operations in Poland, Romania and Turkey that serves customers across Europe and in the nations of the GCC. Greenbrier builds freight railcars and rail castings in Brazil through two separate strategic partnerships. We are a leading provider of freight railcar wheel services, parts, repair, refurbishment and retrofitting services in North America through our wheels, repair & parts business unit. Greenbrier offers railcar management, regulatory compliance services and leasing services to railroads and related transportation industries in North America. Through unconsolidated joint ventures, we produce industrial and rail castings, tank heads and other components. Greenbrier owns a lease fleet of over 8,100 railcars and performs management services for 357,000 railcars. Learn more about Greenbrier at www.gbrx.com. "SAFE HARBOR" STATEMENT UNDER THE PRIVATE SECURITIES LITIGATION REFORM ACT OF 1995: This press release may contain forward-looking statements, including any statements that are not purely statements of historical fact. Greenbrier uses words such as "anticipates," "believes," "forecast," "potential," "goal," "contemplates," "expects," "intends," "plans," "projects," "hopes," "seeks," "estimates," "strategy," "could," "would," "should," "likely," "will," "may," "can," "designed to," "future," "foreseeable future" and similar expressions to identify forward-looking statements. These forward-looking statements are not guarantees of future performance and are subject to certain risks and uncertainties that could cause actual results to differ materially from the results contemplated by the forward-looking statements. Factors that might cause such a difference include, but are not limited to, reported backlog and awards that are not indicative of Greenbrier's financial results; uncertainty or changes in the credit markets and financial services industry; high levels of indebtedness and compliance with the terms of Greenbrier's indebtedness; write-downs of goodwill, intangibles and other assets in future periods; sufficient availability of borrowing capacity; fluctuations in demand for newly manufactured railcars or failure to obtain orders as anticipated in developing forecasts; loss of one or more significant customers; customer payment defaults or related issues; policies and priorities of the federal government regarding international trade, taxation and infrastructure; sovereign risk to contracts, exchange rates or property rights; actual future costs and the availability of materials and a trained workforce; failure to design or manufacture new products or technologies or to achieve certification or market acceptance of new products or technologies; steel or specialty component price fluctuations and availability and scrap surcharges; changes in product mix and the mix between segments; labor disputes, energy shortages or operating difficulties that might disrupt manufacturing operations or the flow of cargo; production difficulties and product delivery delays as a result of, among other matters, costs or inefficiencies associated with expansion, start-up, or changing of production lines or changes in production rates, changing technologies, transfer of production between facilities or non-performance of alliance partners, subcontractors or suppliers; ability to obtain suitable contracts for the sale of leased equipment and risks related to car hire and residual values; integration of current or future acquisitions and establishment of joint ventures; succession planning; discovery of defects in railcars or services resulting in increased warranty costs or litigation; physical damage or product or service liability claims that exceed Greenbrier's insurance coverage; train derailments or other accidents or claims that could subject Greenbrier to legal claims; actions or inactions by various regulatory agencies including potential environmental remediation obligations or changing tank car or other railcar or railroad regulation; and issues arising from investigations of whistleblower complaints; all as may be discussed in more detail under the headings "Risk Factors" and "Forward Looking Statements" in Greenbrier's Annual Report on Form 10-K for the fiscal year ended August 31, 2017, Greenbrier's Quarterly Report on Form 10-Q for the fiscal quarter ended May 31, 2018, and Greenbrier's other reports on file with the Securities and Exchange Commission. Readers are cautioned not to place undue reliance on these forward-looking statements, which reflect management's opinions only as of the date hereof. Except as otherwise required by law, Greenbrier does not assume any obligation to update any forward-looking statements. SOURCE The Greenbrier Companies, Inc. (GBX) Related Links http://www.gbrx.com The Rebelle Rally is a hybrid of serious competition and the ultimate road trip, spanning over eight days of competition and 1,700 miles across the deserts and backcountry of Nevada and California. It's not a race for speed, but a unique and demanding event where the teams navigate from checkpoint to checkpoint within set windows of time using only compasses and paper maps. "The 2018 Rebelle Rally proved to be an incredibly tough event mentally, physically and spiritually, and the Honda teams did a fantastic job driving their vehicles each day," said Emily Miller, Rebelle Rally founder. "Both the Pilot and the Ridgeline teams handled each situation professionally, intelligently, and with positive spirits throughout. It was impressive to watch, and we congratulate them and Honda for putting their associates to the ultimate authentic test." Demonstrating Honda's "Challenging Spirit" As first-time Rebelle Rally competitors, the Honda associates demonstrated a relentless challenging spirit as their navigational accuracy, driving prowess, time management, and endurance were tested. "On a daily basis, I felt we were living out the Honda core value of the Challenging Spirit," said Maria Guitar, engine test engineer, Honda R&D Americas. "We drove and navigated across different terrains, proving to ourselves and everyone who was watching what the Honda Ridgeline and Pilot were capable of. We pushed ourselves in so many ways, whether it was picking a smart line to drive through the terrain or working together as a team, we grew each day in our abilities." Ariel Jen, product planner for Honda R&D Americas, was also proud of her team's resilience. "There would be times where I'd be absolutely terrified, but we just had to go for it and do something because there was no other option," said Jen. "When it's just you out there with nothing else, and things go wrong, you can't dwell on the problem. You need to figure out a solution and move forward." Empowering Honda Associates Support for Honda's first-time Rebelle Rally competitors was a company effort that involved more than two dozen volunteers in California and Ohio. Since preparing for and participating in the Rebelle Rally provided the associates with valuable knowledge and growth experiences in their R&D roles, Honda management agreed to sponsor both first-time teams. Honda supported the associates' initiative through funding, vehicles, shop space, training opportunities and technical expertise. "Participating in the Rebelle Rally showed me that there is freedom in taking risks, failing, and learning from your mistakes," said Michelle Klein, vehicle safety test engineer, Honda R&D Americas. "As Mr. Honda said, 'Instead of being afraid of the challenge and failure, be afraid of avoiding the challenge and doing nothing.'" Showcasing the Honda Pilot and Ridgeline's Rugged Capability The 2019 Honda Pilot and 2018 Honda Ridgeline remained mostly stock for the rally event, with light modifications for additional durability and safety performance. These modifications included custom skid plates, extra ground clearance, off-road tires, and an interior modified for extra storage of spare tires and other equipment. Both light trucks feature Honda's highly advanced Intelligent Variable Torque Management (i-VTM4) all-wheel drive system. "The feedback we got from everyone was how surprised they were by the way the Pilot performed," said Melanie Morimoto, senior fabricator, Honda R&D Americas. "We got really off track a couple of times and ended up in some extremely rough roads more suited to 4x4 vehicles. The Pilot was a solid ride on the roughest roads." Added Klein, "With the Ridgeline's Sand Mode and capable suspension, we were able to cross steep river beds, climb rocky hills, and have a comfortable ride." About Honda Honda offers a full line of reliable, fuel-efficient and fun-to-drive vehicles with advanced safety technologies sold through over 1,000 independent U.S. Honda dealers. The Honda lineup includes the Fit, Civic, Insight, Accord and Clarity series passenger cars, along with the HR-V, CR-V and Pilot sport utility vehicles, the Ridgeline pickup and the Odyssey minivan. Honda has been producing automobiles in America for more than 35 years and currently operates 19 major manufacturing facilities in North America. In 2017, more than 90 percent of all Honda brand vehicles sold in the U.S. were made in North America, using domestic and globally sourced parts. SOURCE Honda (Photo: https://mma.prnewswire.com/media/775379/2D_GIWAXS.jpg ) Solar cells are a cost-effective, alternate source of energy. A subtype of these, organic solar cells make use of organic polymers inside the cell. Using these polymers makes the cells light-weight and increases their flexibility. Organic solar cells are produced by two different chemical methods: dry processing and wet processing, with the latter being a faster method. There are several parameters used to assess the efficiency of solar cells with absorption of light and transportation of charge being widely used. A prevailing problem with the structure of organic cells is that molecules in the active organic layer responsible for light absorption and charge transport tend to face both towards the edges of cells, as well as towards the light absorbing substrate. Maximizing the number of molecules facing the substrate, however, is the key to maximising absorption and conductivity of the cell. Scientists have modified the dry processing method to achieve such an orientation, but it has not been possible with the wet method. The research team led by Tetsuya Taima at Kanazawa University, is the first to successfully do so. The premise of their method is the introduction of a copper iodide (CuI) layer between the active molecules and the substrate. In their study, the researchers used a film of active molecules called DRCN5T and coated them onto either CuI/PEDOT: PSS (30 nm)/indium tin oxide (ITO) mixed substrates, or substrates without the CuI layer. The ratio of substrate facing to edge facing DRCN5T molecules was then compared between both. Subsequent high-resolution imaging revealed that the CuI containing cells had active molecules with a ten times higher substrate facing orientation, along with enhanced light absorption. The researchers attributed this altered orientation of the molecules to strong chemical interactions between the DRCN5T and CuI atoms. To further confirm this, DRCN5T molecules with bulky side chains that do not interact with CuI were used, and a higher substrate facing ratio was not seen. This is the first study that effectively demonstrates a method of producing such efficient organic solar cells using the wet processing method. Besides saving time, the wet method also results in larger film areas. "This technique is expected to greatly contribute to the development of organic thin film solar cells fabricated by wet processing in the future", conclude the authors. Their approach paves the way for producing high-performance solar cells faster. Background: Solar cells: Also known as photovoltaic (light creating voltage) cells, these devices convert light energy into electrical energy. The working principle of a photovoltaic cell consists of three steps. The absorption of light (sunlight or artificial light), results in the formation of electron-holes (exitons) pairs. These pairs are then separated, and electrons are carried through an active conducting layer, into electrodes, resulting in the creation of a charge. This phenomenon is also known as the photoelectric effect. In traditional solar cells, the conducting material is silicon. Organic photovoltaic cells usually have organic polymers in place of silicon. Solar cells connected in parallel, make up solar panels. Reference: Kohei Yamamoto, Md. Shahiduzzaman, Akihiro Yamada, Tomotsugu Takaya, Tatsuki Chikamatsu, Tomoyuki Koganezawa, Makoto Karakawa, Takayuki Kuwabara, Kohshin Takahashi, Tetsuya Taima. Molecular orientation control of semiconducting molecules using a metal layer formed by wet processing. Organic Electronics, 4th September 2018. DOI: 10.1016/j.orgel.2018.09.008 https://doi.org/10.1016/j.orgel.2018.09.008 About Kanazawa University As the leading comprehensive university on the Sea of Japan coast, Kanazawa University has contributed greatly to higher education and academic research in Japan since it was founded in 1949. The University has three colleges and 17 schools offering courses in subjects that include medicine, computer engineering, and humanities. The University is located on the coast of the Sea of Japan in Kanazawa - a city rich in history and culture. The city of Kanazawa has a highly respected intellectual profile since the time of the fiefdom (1598-1867). Kanazawa University is divided into two main campuses: Kakuma and Takaramachi for its approximately 10,200 students including 600 from overseas. Kanazawa University website: http://www.kanazawa-u.ac.jp/e/ Further information Kanazawa University Kakuma, Kanazawa, Ishikawa 920-1192, JAPAN E-mail: [email protected] Tel: +81(76)264-5963 SOURCE Kanazawa University Headquartered in Louisville, Kentucky, LDG has developed almost 10,000 units for families and seniors across eight states. The company was founded almost 25 years ago based on the belief that everyone deserves a quality place to live. "At LDG, we have the honor of investing in and supporting thousands of families who call one of our developments home," said Chris Dischinger, co-founder and principal of LDG Development. "The NAHRO/LDG Scholars program will allow our company to further invest in and support hard-working families and students who understand how a college education can help them achieve their long- and short-term goals." "I lived in public housing when I was young, and I would not be where I am today without many helping hands," said NAHRO President Carl S. Richie, Jr., who is a practicing attorney as well as the Board Chair of the Housing Authority of the City of Austin (HACA). "With these scholarships and the NAHRO/LDG Scholars initiative, we extend our own helping hands to children and young adults nationwide." NAHRO is a national organization of affordable housing and community development professionals and industry partners, whose members provide housing to more than 7.9 million low-income people. "Stable housing serves as a platform for other personal achievements," said NAHRO CEO Adrianne Todman. "We are thrilled that LDG will join with NAHRO to help students and young professionals achieve their dreams." Both initiatives will be administered by NAHRO. The NAHRO/LDG Scholars program will begin accepting applications in Summer 2019. Contact: Christi Lanier-Robinson (502) 609-9141, [email protected], Sylvia Gimenez (202) 289-3500, [email protected]. About LDG LDG Development is an award-winning multi-family housing developer that has created almost 10,000 units of affordable housing for active seniors and families who have sacrificed income for service. Headquartered in Louisville, Kentucky, LDG prides itself on providing high-quality, first-class housing for the residents and communities it serves. LDG has developments in eight states including Texas, Kentucky, Georgia and Louisiana and in 2017 was identified as the country's top developer of affordable housing. About NAHRO NAHRO, established in 1933, is a membership organization of almost 20,000 housing and community development agencies and professionals throughout the United States whose mission is to create affordable housing and safe, viable communities that enhance the quality of life for all Americans, especially those of low- and moderate-income. NAHRO's membership administers more than 3 million housing units for 7.6 million people. SOURCE National Association of Housing and Redevelopment Officials Related Links http://www.nahro.org LOS ANGELES, Oct. 26, 2018 /PRNewswire/ -- Lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and queer (LGBTQ) students enrolling in undergraduate or graduate programs for the 2019-2020 academic year are encouraged to apply online for a Point Foundation Scholarship. Point Foundation (Point) is the nation's largest scholarship-granting organization for LGBTQ students of merit and currently is providing financial assistance and programmatic support to 97 students. Applications open online November 1, 2018 at www.pointfoundation.org/apply. Apply for Point Foundation scholarships Point Foundation scholarship recipients Students may submit their application until 11:59 p.m. PST January 28, 2019. A short application information video is available online. According to a survey by StudentLoanHero.com, LGBTQ students accrue $16,000 more debt on average than their heterosexual peers. Moreover, nearly a third of LGBTQ students report being discriminated against because of their gender identity or sexual orientation when seeking financial assistance for higher education. Recognizing that LGBTQ students face distinct financial disadvantages and marginalization, Point Foundation provides its scholarship recipients with mentoring and leadership development training as well as financial support. "Despite the constant attacks on our community, our LGBTQ young people are eager to develop the skills they need to fight back against discrimination and become the leaders our country so desperately needs," said Jorge Valencia, Executive Director & Chief Executive Officer of Point Foundation. "These students' determination to create an equitable society that values and celebrates diversity needs to be and can be realized with our support." To receive a Point Foundation Scholarship, candidates must demonstrate academic excellence, leadership skills, community involvement, and financial need. Attention is given to applicants who have experienced marginalization and/or are working to improve the lives of marginalized groups, particularly the LGBTQ community. Speaking at the 2018 Point Honors Los Angeles event, Herb Hamsher Point Scholar Nia Clark, a social work student at California State University, proudly told the audience: "I am bigger than the discrimination that threatens my black Trans existence every day. I am somebody. I'm a leader. I'm a Point Scholar. And I'm going to change the world by living authentically and unapologetically in my truth." Once selected, each scholar is paired with a mentor and participates in leadership development training with fellow Point Scholars. Point Scholars also give back to the LGBTQ community by completing an individual community service project each year. After graduation, scholars become part of Point's growing alumni network, connecting them with caring individuals and professional contacts in a wide range of fields throughout the nation. Since 2002, Point has awarded more than 450 scholarships. Individuals, corporations, and organizations can support Point's mission by designating a scholarship with a "Name," which recognizes the donor, an individual, or an institution. Named Scholarship donors pledge to cover the financial assistance and programmatic support Point provides its scholars. New Named Scholarships for the 2019 - 2020 academic year will include: CAA Point Scholarship; FedEx Point Scholarship; Stacy R. Friedman Point Scholarship; and the Patti Sue Mathis Point Scholarship. The 2019 class of Point Foundation Scholarship recipients will be announced in June 2019 for LGBTQ Pride Month. About Point Foundation About Point Foundation: Point Foundation empowers promising LGBTQ students to achieve their full academic and leadership potential despite the obstacles often put before them to make a significant impact on society. Since 2002, Point has awarded more than 400 scholarships. The Foundation promotes change through scholarship funding, mentorship, leadership development and community service training. www.pointfoundation.org Contact: Eugene Patron (212) 512.7807 [email protected] SOURCE Point Foundation Related Links https://pointfoundation.org ADELAIDE, Australia, Oct. 26, 2018 /PRNewswire/ -- Mayne Pharma Group Limited ("Mayne Pharma") (ASX: MYX) has acquired the FDA approved halobetasol propionate foam 0.05% for an investment of up to US$32 million and an ongoing earn out payment Halobetasol foam is a highly complementary dermatology product treating plaque psoriasis that will be marketed through Mayne Pharma's existing Specialty Brands sales team New leadership talent on board to further drive and grow Specialty Brands Mayne Pharma is pleased to announce it has acquired the US and Australian rights to halobetasol foam 0.05% for an investment of up to US$32.0 million (comprising US$10.0 million in cash up front, US$5.0 million at commercial launch plus contingent payments of up to US$17.0 million based on reaching cumulative net sales targets, patent issuance and potential capital spend to support the project). In addition, there is an ongoing earn-out payment based as a percentage of net sales over a 10-year period. Under the terms of the asset purchase, license and commercialization agreement, Mayne Pharma has also acquired the approved US regulatory filing, medical and technical data, and a portfolio of pending US patent applications. This product received US Food and Drug Administration approval in May 2018 and Mayne Pharma is planning for the commercial launch of this product in early 2019. The product received three years of marketing exclusivity and has four pending patent applications with the US Patent and Trademark Office. Halobetasol foam is a potent corticosteroid used to treat plaque psoriasis. Plaque psoriasis affects more than 7.5 million Americans with potent topical corticosteroids prescribed to approximately 80% of psoriasis patients diagnosed[1]. The market for potent topical corticosteroids is estimated at US$600m with approximately 10 million units sold per annum, of which halobetasol dosage forms (cream, ointment and lotion) account for US$64 million and 0.8 million units[2]. The halobetasol market has been growing 10% per annum over the last three years2. Rationale for the acquisition Commenting on the acquisition, Mayne Pharma's CEO, Mr Scott Richards said: "Halobetasol foam is a new formulation that provides a highly desirable treatment option for patients in the management of plaque psoriasis. Adding halobetasol foam to our dermatology product portfolio is a material step forward in supporting psoriasis patients. We can now offer a potent steroid along with steroid-free Sorilux for psoriasis treatment giving our patients more treatment options with the benefits of an elegant foam formulation." "The acquisition broadens our portfolio of innovative dermatology products with strong growth potential, further diversifies earnings and strengthens Mayne Pharma's position in the US dermatology market. Halobetasol foam will be supported by our existing psoriasis focused sales team, leveraging existing commercial infrastructure across market access, customer service, medical affairs and supply chain." New leadership talent on board to drive Specialty Brands Brant Schofield has joined Mayne Pharma as Executive Vice President (EVP) of Specialty Brands. Brant brings more than 25 years of pharmaceutical industry experience including more than 15 years at Galderma Laboratories, a leading global dermatology and skin health company. Previously, he was Vice President and General Manager Dermatology at Sandoz US where he was responsible for the brand and generic product portfolio with revenues of approximately US$500m. Prior to Sandoz, he was Vice President of New Business for Nestle Skin Health (parent entity of Galderma) and he was also Vice President of Sales and Marketing for Galderma US, where he led a 300+ person sales and marketing team and was responsible for more than US$1.0b of sales across prescription, over-the-counter and aesthetic dermatology markets. "I am extremely pleased that Brant Schofield has joined the leadership team at Mayne Pharma. Brant will be a valuable addition to our business, bringing a proven track record of success in commercialising and growing specialty product portfolios. Brant brings a wealth of experience across sales and marketing, strategy, finance, supply chain and business development activities. Our specialty product portfolio is poised for growth with the pipeline of products under development including the New Drug Application for SUBA-Itraconazole capsules which the Company filed with the US Food and Drug Administration earlier this year as well as our on-market portfolio of dermatology products which have significant untapped potential." [1] American Academy of Dermatology Association, Company sponsored primary research [2] IQVIA, Aug MAT 2018 For further information contact: Lisa Pendlebury +61 419 548 434, [email protected] About Mayne Pharma Mayne Pharma is an ASX-listed specialty pharmaceutical company focused on applying its drug delivery expertise to commercialize branded and generic pharmaceuticals, providing patients with access to better and more affordable medicines. Mayne Pharma also provides contract development and manufacturing services to more than 100 clients worldwide. Mayne Pharma has a 30-year track record of innovation and success in developing new oral drug delivery systems and these technologies have been successfully commercialised in numerous products that have been marketed around the world. Mayne Pharma has two product development and manufacturing facilities based in Salisbury, Australia and Greenville, USA with expertise in the formulation of complex oral dose forms including potent compounds, controlled substances, modified-release products and inherently unstable compounds. For further information, visit maynepharma.com About halobetasol foam Halobetasol propionate topical foam is a corticosteroid indicated for the topical treatment of plaque psoriasis in patients eighteen years of age and older. Halobetasol foam was evaluated for the treatment of moderate to severe plaque psoriasis in two multicentre, randomised, double-blind, vehicle-controlled studies. These studies were conducted in 560 subjects with plaque psoriasis involving between 2% and 12% body surface area. A foam vehicle can have many benefits including being aqueous-based, absorbed quickly without residue or greasiness and easy to apply to both hair-bearing and non-hair bearing skin. Important Safety Information Halobetasol propionate foam is a topical corticosteroid that has been shown to suppress the hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenal (HPA) axis. Systemic effects of topical corticosteroids may include reversible HPA axis suppression, with the potential for glucocorticosteroid insufficiency. This may occur during treatment or upon withdrawal of treatment of the topical corticosteroid. The potential for hypothalamic-pituitary adrenal (HPA) suppression with halobetasol propionate foam was evaluated in a study of 25 adult subjects with moderate to severe plaque psoriasis involving 15% of their body surface area. halobetasol propionate foam produced laboratory evidence of HPA axis suppression when used twice daily for two weeks in 6 out of 25 (24%) adult subjects with plaque psoriasis. Recovery of HPA axis function was generally prompt with the discontinuation of treatment. Systemic effects of topical corticosteroids may also include Cushing's syndrome, hyperglycemia, and glucosuria. Use of more than one corticosteroid-containing product at the same time may increase the total systemic exposure to topical corticosteroids. Local adverse reactions from topical corticosteroids may include atrophy, striae, telangiectasias, burning, itching, irritation, dryness, folliculitis, acneiform eruptions, hypopigmentation, perioral dermatitis, allergic contact dermatitis, secondary infection, and miliaria. These may be more likely to occur with occlusive use, prolonged use, or use of higher potency corticosteroids, including halobetasol propionate foam. Some local adverse reactions may be irreversible. Use of topical corticosteroids may increase the risk of posterior subcapsular cataracts and glaucoma. Please see full prescribing information for halobetasol proprionate foam here. To report SUSPECTED ADVERSE REACTIONS, contact at Mayne Pharma at 1-844-825-8500 or FDA at 1 800-FDA-1088 or www.fda.gov/medwatch. About Plaque Psoriasis Psoriasis is a chronic (life-long) skin condition. It occurs when the immune system "speeds up" the growth cycle of skin cells. A normal skin cell matures and falls off the body in about a month. For people with plaque psoriasis, it can take only three or four days for new skin cells to develop. Instead of falling off, the cells remain on the skin and form thickened patches (lesions or plaques). While plaque psoriasis is a chronic condition, many patients experience times when their symptoms improve or worsen. Plaque psoriasis is the most common form of psoriasis. It typically causes raised, red lesions covered with silvery white scales. Plaque psoriasis can occur on any part of the body, but most commonly on the scalp, knees, elbows, and torso. Sorilux is a registered trademark of Mayne Pharma SOURCE Mayne Pharma Related Links www.maynepharma.com VANCOUVER, Oct. 26, 2018 /PRNewswire/ - Ritchie Bros. (NYSE and TSX: RBA), the world's largest industrial auctioneer and a leading equipment distributor, invites interested parties to participate in its third quarter 2018 earnings conference call, occurring on Friday, November 9, 2018 at 11:00 am Eastern time / 8:00 am Pacific time / 4:00 pm BST. During the call company executives will discuss Ritchie Bros.' earning results and answer questions from analysts and institutional investors. The Company's third quarter 2018 earnings results will be released after NYSE and TSX markets close the day prior, on November 8, 2018. Analysts and institutional investors may participate via conference call, using the following dial-in information: 1-888-231-8191 (toll-free North America ) ) 0-800-051-7107 (toll-free UK) 1-647-427-7450 ( Toronto & overseas long-distance) Please ask to participate in Ritchie Bros.' third quarter 2018 earnings call, and quote conference ID 1376496 if prompted. Media and other interested parties may listen to the conference call via webcast, by selecting the third quarter 2018 earnings call webcast link at https://investor.ritchiebros.com. Please note that there will be presentation slides accompanying the earnings call. The slides will be displayed live on the webcast, and will be available to download via the webcast player or at https://investor.ritchiebros.com/events-and-presentations the morning of the call. A replay of the conference call can be accessed after 2:00 pm Eastern time / 11:00 am Pacific time / 7:00 pm BST until December 7, 2018 at 416-849-0833 or 1-855-859-2056 (using passcode 1376496#). About Ritchie Bros. Established in 1958, Ritchie Bros. (NYSE and TSX: RBA) is a global asset management and disposition company, offering customers end-to-end solutions for buying and selling used heavy equipment, trucks and other assets. Operating in a multitude of sectors, including construction, transportation, agriculture, energy, oil and gas, mining, and forestry, the company's selling channels include: Ritchie Bros. Auctioneers, the world's largest industrial auctioneer offers live auction events with online bidding; IronPlanet, an online marketplace with featured weekly auctions and providing its exclusive IronClad Assurance equipment condition certification; Marketplacee, an online marketplace offering multiple price and timing options; Mascus, a leading European online equipment listing service; and Ritchie Bros. Private Treaty, offering privately negotiated sales. The company also offers sector-specific solutions including GovPlanet, TruckPlanet, Kruse Energy Auctioneers, and Cat auctions, plus equipment financing and leasing through Ritchie Bros. Financial Services. For more information about the unprecedented choice provided by Ritchie Bros., visit RitchieBros.com. SOURCE Ritchie Bros. Auctioneers Related Links http://www.rbauction.com HUDDINGE, Sweden, Oct. 26, 2018 /PRNewswire/ -- Increased focus where we can create the most value July September Significant events during the quarter Positive top-line joint structure outcomes were reported from the MIV-711 osteoarthritis phase II extension study (MIV-711-202). Treatment with MIV-711 over a total 12 months resulted in a continuing treatment effect on joint bone area growth and prevention of cartilage degradation. The first patient was enrolled and dosed with remetinostat gel 1% in an investigator-initiated phase II clinical study in patients with basal cell carcinoma (BCC). Dr. Linda Basse was appointed as Chief Medical Officer effective October 1 . Financial summary Net turnover totaled SEK 3.0 million ( 5.1 m ). The loss before interest, tax, depreciation and amortization (EBITDA) totaled SEK -66.9 million ( -78.3m ). Basic and diluted earnings per share were SEK -2.93 (-3.94) and -2.93 (-3.94) respectively. The cash flow from operating activities amounted to SEK -78.4 million ( -63.6 m ). Liquid assets and short-term investments totaled SEK 357.1 million ( 557.8 m ) at the period end. January - September Financial summary Net turnover totaled SEK 10.3 million ( 32.4 m ). The loss before interest, tax, depreciation and amortization (EBITDA) totaled SEK -229.9 million ( -250.1 m ). Basic and diluted earnings per share were SEK -9.88 (-11.42) and -9.88 (-11.42) respectively. The cash flow from operating activities amounted to SEK -248.1 million ( -269.6 m ). Liquid assets and short-term investments totaled SEK 357.1 million ( 557.8 m ) at the period end. Significant events after the period end Phase Ia clinical study of MIV-818 started in patients with advanced liver cancer. The purpose of this first-in-human trial is to study the safety, tolerability and pharmacokinetics of MIV-818. Positive interim data on birinapant in combination with Keytruda, in patients with advanced solid tumors who have exhausted available treatment options, were announced in October. Medivir announced its plans to concentrate its activities on clinical development. As a result, the board has appointed Dr. Uli Hacksell as the company's CEO. Dr. Hacksell, currently on the board of Medivir, succeeded Christine Lind as of October 15 . On October 17 Medivir notifyed the Public Employment Office of potential employee redundancies impacting 60 positions, mainly within pre-clinical research and administration. For further information, please contact Uli Hacksell, CEO, +46(0)8-5468-3100 Erik Bjork, CFO, +46(0)72-228-2831 CEO's comments I took office after the end of the quarter, but have closely followed the developments in Medivir since May this year as a board member. I would like to give a brief background to the focusing of the company's business that was communicated in connection with me becoming CEO. It is actually based on the positive development of our pharmaceutical projects in clinical phase. During the quarter, advancements continued with positive news for all of our clinical projects. Our strong commitment to developing the value of Medivir's drug candidates has led us to concentrate the company's resources on clinical development. It was a difficult but necessary decision announced after the end of the quarter when we also gave notice to the Public Employment Office regarding potential redundancies of 60 positions. It was taken to ensure that our resources are used where we can create the greatest value. The measures are expected to reduce our running costs, excluding the costs of the clinical projects, by about two thirds. Let me tell you about the development of Medivir's portfolio. At the end of the second quarter, we were able to present a good safety and tolerability profile in our phase II extension study with MIV-711 for the treatment of osteoarthritis. We could also show sustained effects on clinical symptoms based on the preliminary data. This was reinforced by the top-line results presented at the end of July, which showed that treatment with MIV-711 for a total of 12 months resulted in continued good effect on joint bone area growth. During the quarter, the FDA also published preliminary guidelines for the development of disease modifying osteoarthritis treatments. The new guidelines discuss structural changes as treatment goals in clinical trials, and how it could be used for so-called "accelerated approval", which can positively affect the value of MIV-711. At the beginning of August, our collaboration with Stanford University School of Medicine in California resulted in the first patient being dosed with remetinostat gel 1% in its trial-initiated phase II clinical study with remetinostat in patients with basal cell cancer. Dialogue with the FDA on the design of Medivir's planned phase III study with remetinostat continued during the quarter. We want to make possible the initiation of a pivotal study that, given good results, can result in market approval for the treatment of patients with early-stage cutaneous T-cell lymphoma. MIV-818, our proprietary drug for liver cancer, took the final steps towards the clinic and on October 1, the first patient was dosed with MIV-818 in a phase Ia study. The purpose of this first in human trial is to study safety, tolerability and pharmacokinetics of MIV-818 in patients with advanced liver cancer, a fatal disease with very few available treatment options. A few days later, on October 4, we presented positive safety data and an interesting effect signal after an interim phase I data analysis from the ongoing phase I/II study of birinapant in combination with Keytruda on cancer patients in advanced stages. In addition to an excellent safety profile, no dose-limiting toxicity was observed in the first three patient groups, and the dose escalation has been continued to the highest planned dose level in the study. The clinical projects have thus been pursued successfully. It is specifically to ensure our ability to develop and exploit the value contained in our clinical portfolio that we chose to concentrate the business and have taken both uncomfortable and heavy measures as it involves giving notice and reducing Medivir's research. Medivir's research is of high quality and our employees are excellent. Therefore, we are investigating strategic alternatives for the valuable assets found in our early research. Medivir is now restructuring into a significantly smaller organization. That we are reducing the running costs by two thirds says a lot. It will also require us to be more agile and flexible with the ability to work with outsourcing. In the proposed organization there is a high level of competence that also makes me confident we will manage to run the projects cost-effectively. Finally, I would like to thank Christine Lind for her efforts and continued contributions in the near future. Medivir's increased focus on clinical development gives us a positive path for the future. I look forward to sharing more information about our progress in the future. Uli Hacksell President and CEO The information in this report comprises the information that Medivir is obliged to disclose under the provisions of the Swedish Securities Markets Act. The information was submitted for publication at 08.30 CET on 26 October 2018. This information was brought to you by Cision http://news.cision.com http://news.cision.com/medivir/r/medivir-ab---interim-report-january---september-2018,c2655055 The following files are available for download: http://mb.cision.com/Main/652/2655055/933721.pdf INTERIM REPORT JANUARY a" SEPTEMBER 2018 (PDF) SOURCE Medivir DONGGUAN, China, Oct. 26, 2018 /PRNewswire/ -- The 2018 Guangdong 21st Century Maritime Silk Road International Expo (MSR Expo) opened on October 25 at the Guangdong Modern International Exhibition Center in Dongguan, the world-renowned manufacturing city in south China, and lasts for four days till October 28. As Chen Liangxian, vice governor of Guangdong Province, addressed at the opening ceremony, this year marks the 40th anniversary of China's reform and opening up and the fifth anniversary of the China-proposed Belt and Road Initiative (BRI). Guangdong, a pioneer in promoting reform and opening up, has increased cooperation with the Belt and Road countries and regions in all respects. The MSR Expo, inaugurated in 2014, has welcomed 694.5 thousand attendees in the past four years and gained recognition from all sectors, both domestic and international. The event now represents a critical platform for Guangdong and the Belt and Road countries and regions to strengthen exchanges and cooperation. According to the Expo's organizing committee, the event this year will host 1,732 companies from 57 countries and regions, including 1,221 from overseas, about 70.5% of the total. To meet the needs of exhibitors and buyers more precisely, the Secretariat signed the investment promotion and cooperation agreements with 14 national-level, provincial-level and foreign business associations, respectively. The figure of professional buyers to participate in the Expo is expected to increase from 31,000 last year to 34,000, registering a 9% growth. South African businesswoman of skin care products Usha Hunsraj said it's the third time that she had attended the MSR Expo. The market reaction to the previous two editions was so positive that she had forged business relationships with many clients around the world. The tourism and culture exhibition section at the MSR Expo will help expand exchanges and cooperation in tourism between Thailand and the MSR countries and regions, said Ye Hu from the Guangzhou Office of Tourism Authority of Thailand. The MSR Expo will continue to feature an exhibition in Dongguan and a themed forum in Guangzhou. On October 26, former members of state government and ministers from 15 Belt and Road countries, heads of important business associations and international organizations, world-famous economists and business leaders attended the MSR Expo forum. The Blue Paper on the Participation of Guangdong in the Construction of the Belt and Road Initiative (2013-2018), which was contributed by Sun Yat-sen University, will be released for the first time during the forum. SOURCE The Organizing Committee of Guangdong 21st Century Maritime Silk Road International Expo HOUSTON, Oct. 26, 2018 /PRNewswire/ -- NASA's Johnson Space Center will open its gates to the public Saturday, Oct. 27, for the first time in years, celebrating NASA's 60th anniversary and the International Space Station's 20th anniversary. To help ensure an enjoyable visit for everyone when they drive through the center's main gate from 10 a.m. to 1:30 p.m. Saturday, the center is asking visitors to abide by a few simple guidelines: No Pets (unless certified service dog) No firearms, weapons or ammunition (includes license to carry) No coolers, food or beverages (including alcohol) Motorcycle helmets are required on NASA property During the open house, visitors will get a free, behind-the-scenes look at some of the agency's historic accomplishments, as well as the exciting work currently going on as NASA prepares to return to the Moon and travel to Mars. While the incoming gate will close at 1:30 p.m., visitors will be allowed to remain on site until 2 p.m. See a full list of what will be open and a map that includes parking, at: https://www.nasa.gov/feature/johnson-open-house Visitors will have access to a variety of exhibits and hardware, ranging from moon rocks collected during the Apollo missions, to full-size mockups of the International Space Station, the Orion spacecraft and Boeing's CST-100 Starliner. In addition to facilities and exhibits, the center's Teague Auditorium will feature programs and speakers: 10:30 a.m. : Welcome from the Center Director : Welcome from the Center Director 11 a.m. : Exploration Integration Sciences Directorate : Exploration Integration Sciences Directorate 11:30 a.m. : Curating Ices and Organics : Curating Ices and Organics Noon: NASA Astronaut 12:30 p.m. : International Space Station Program : International Space Station Program 1 p.m. : Commercial Crew Program : Commercial Crew Program 1:30 p.m. : Orion Spacecraft "As we celebrate NASA's 60th anniversary, Johnson Space Center has played a key role in leading human space exploration and has been a part of the vibrant Houston community for nearly six decades," said Mark Geyer, director of Johnson Space Center. "While the past 60 years represent the best of our country and the height of American ingenuity, the talented, dedicated and diverse team here in 'space city' Houston is excited about the next chapter in spaceflight as we work to launch humans farther into the solar system." NASA opened for business Oct. 1, 1958, following the signing of the agency's founding legislation on July 29, 1958. After four decades that saw dozens of short-duration missions to the moon and low-Earth orbit, NASA and its international partners launched the first element of the International Space Station on Nov. 20, 1998, setting the stage for continuous human presence in space, which began in 2000. Visitors are welcomed year-round through Johnson's official visitor center, Space Center Houston, which provides tram tours and visits inside a number of key facilities. However, this open house will allow visitors to have access to several locations not accessible during visitor center tours. Connect with Johnson Space Center on social media at: https://twitter.com/NASA_Johnson and https://www.facebook.com/NASAJSC NASA Johnson Space Center news releases and other information are available automatically by sending an Internet electronic mail message to [email protected]. In the body of the message (not the subject line) users should type "subscribe hsfnews" (no quotes). This will add the email address that sent the subscribe message to the news release distribution list. The system will reply with a confirmation via E-mail of each subscription. Once you have subscribed you will receive future news releases via e-mail. SOURCE NASA Related Links http://www.nasa.gov ALPHARETTA, Ga., Oct. 26, 2018 /PRNewswire/ -- Neenah, Inc. (NYSE: NP) announced today that the Company will be presenting at the Baird 2018 Global Industrial Conference, which will be held at the Four Seasons Hotel in Chicago. John O'Donnell, President and Chief Executive Officer and Bonnie Lind, Senior Vice President, Chief Financial Officer and Treasurer, are scheduled to present on Thursday, November 8, 2018 at 10:00 a.m. CST and will be available for separate one-on-one meetings later in the day. A copy of the presentation will be available on the company's web site, www.neenah.com under the Investor Relations Presentations & Events section. About Neenah Neenah is a leading global specialty materials company, focused on premium niche markets that value performance and image. Key products and markets include advanced filtration media, specialized performance substrates used for digital transfer, tape and abrasive backings, labels and other products, and premium printing and packaging papers. The Company is headquartered in Alpharetta, Georgia and its products are sold in over 80 countries worldwide from manufacturing operations in the United States, Europe and the United Kingdom. Additional information can be found at the Company's web site, www.neenah.com. Contact: Neenah, Inc. Bill McCarthy Vice President Investor Relations and Corporate Analysis 678-518-3278 SOURCE Neenah, Inc. Related Links http://www.neenah.com ROCKVILLE CENTRE, N.Y., Oct. 26, 2018 /PRNewswire/ -- Catholic Health Services (CHS) earned a 2018 Top Workplaces honor from Newsday, ranked #8 in the large company category and coming in ahead of other Long Island health care providers. The award is based solely on employee feedback gathered through a third-party survey administered by research partner Energage , LLC (formerly WorkplaceDynamics), a leading provider of technology-based employee engagement tools. The anonymous survey measures several aspects, including workplace culture, alignment, execution and connection. "Top Workplaces is more than just recognition," said Doug Claffey, CEO of Energage. "Our research shows organizations that earn the award attract better talent, experience lower turnover, and are better equipped to deliver bottom-line results. Their leaders prioritize and carefully craft a healthy workplace culture that supports employee engagement." "Earning the Top Workplaces award is something everyone at CHS is very proud of," said CHS's Senior Vice President of Human Resources & Chief HR Officer Anthony Pellicano. "What makes it even more gratifying and valuable is knowing that this is the result of our employees expressing their opinions about our workplace culture. CHS's ability to provide compassionate and high quality care is directly related to the excellence of our employees, who are the heart and soul of our organization." One staff member said, "I love coming to my job because it is like a family. The work is challenging but the people is what makes the job special. Management is ethical, respectful and appreciative of employees' hard work." Another said, "I feel part of a team that always strives to do the best thing for the patients their families and the community." CHS is an integrated health care system with six acute care hospitals, three nursing homes, a home nursing service, hospice, a community-based agency for persons with special needs, a regional lab and an extensive network of physician practices. CHS offers a wide range of services backed by quality care and delivered by dedicated, compassionate professionals. "Becoming a Top Workplace isn't something organizations can buy," Claffey said. "It's an achievement organizations have worked for and a distinction that gives them a competitive advantage. It's a big deal." About CHS Catholic Health Services (CHS) is an integrated system encompassing some of the region's finest health and human services agencies. With 18,400 employees, 6 acute care hospitals, 3 nursing homes, a home nursing service, hospice, a community-based agency for persons with special needs and a regional lab, CHS's high standards have resulted in a 24% market share. For more information visit www.chsli.org. About Energage, LLC Headquartered in Exton, Pa., Energage (formerly known as WorkplaceDynamics) is a leading provider of technology-based employee engagement tools that help leaders to unlock potential, inspire performance, and achieve amazing results within their organizations. The research partner behind the Top Workplaces program, Energage has surveyed more than 47,000 organizations representing well over 16 million employees in the United States. SOURCE Catholic Health Services Related Links http://www.chsli.org SHANGHAI, Oct. 26, 2018 /PRNewswire/ -- OneSmart International Education Group Limited (NYSE: ONE) ("OneSmart" or the "Company"), a leading diversified premium K-12 education company in China, today announced that it has jointly acquired a 100% equity stake with a third-party investor in Beijing Tus-Juren Education Technology Co., Ltd. ("Tus-Juren"), a leading K-12 after-school education company in China. According to the share purchase agreement, OneSmart has agreed to acquire a strategic minority equity stake in Tus-Juren and will actively participate in the management of its daily operations to further expand the business and create greater synergies with OneSmart's existing businesses. As part of this long-term strategic transaction, OneSmart also entered into a strategic partnership with Tus-Education Group, a Tsinghua University-affiliated diversified education group. Mr. Steve Xi Zhang, Chairman and Chief Executive Officer of OneSmart, commented, "We are very excited to acquire this minority stake in Tus-Juren to jointly realize major strategic business synergies. This investment is another landmark transaction following our recent acquisitions of FasTrack English and Tianjin Huaying Education earlier this year, which will further diversify our business and create long-term values for our shareholders." "Tus-Juren is a highly respected educational institution renowned for its high-quality teaching, curriculum development capabilities, experienced faculty and management team, and strong brand recognition across China. Combined with our expertise in the meticulous management and operation of learning centers, Tus-Juren will be ideally positioned to further strengthen our small class offerings and expand our market share in China." "We also look forward to building a long-term partnership with Tus-Education Group to jointly explore opportunities in areas such as AI-based education technology, extracurricular activities, and international collaborations." About OneSmart Founded in 2008 and headquartered in Shanghai, OneSmart International Education Group Limited is a leading diversified premium K-12 education company in China. Since commencement of our business, our vision is to build the most trusted "Third Classroom" outside of home and school and our mission is to bring out the utmost learning power in each student by cultivating his or her study motivation, capability and perseverance, and enable our students to pursue their life-long success. Our company culture is centered on the core values of customer focus, execution, innovation and teamwork. The Company has built a comprehensive and diversified premium K-12 education platform that encompasses OneSmart VIP (exam preparation services for students from 3rd to 12th grade), HappyMath (kids mathematics services for children aged 3 to 8 years old), FasTrack English (kids English services for children aged 3 to 8 years old), etc. As of May 31, 2018, OneSmart operated a nationwide network of 302 study centers across 43 cities in China. For more information on OneSmart, please visit http://www.onesmart.investorroom.com. About Beijing Tus-Juren Education Technology Co., Ltd. Founded in 1994, Beijing Tus-Juren Education Technology Co., Ltd. ("Tus-Juren") is a leading K-12 after-school education company in China. Tus-Juren operates over 60 study centers with annual student enrollment exceeding 300,000 in 2017. After more than 20 years of development, Tus-Juren has built a talented team with experienced teachers and a strong pedagogical research platform. Tus-Juren's diversified after-school educational offerings include small classes, STEM, pre-school education, and study camps, etc. About Tus-Education Group Affiliated to Tsinghua University TUS Holdings, Tus-Education Group focuses on investment and operations of diversified education businesses including tutoring, cultural broadcasting, pre-kindergarten education, bilingual kindergarten, primary schools, middle schools, high schools, colleges, international schools, as well as overseas study services etc. For more information, please contact: OneSmart Ms. Rebecca Shen +86-21-5255-9339 ext. 8139 [email protected] Christensen In China Mr. Christian Arnell Phone: +86-10-5826-4939 E-mail: [email protected] In the US Ms. Linda Bergkamp Phone: +1-480-614-3004 Email: [email protected] SOURCE OneSmart International Education Group Limited Related Links http://www.onesmart.investorroom.com LOS ANGELES, Oct. 26, 2018 /PRNewswire/ -- Optimus Properties, LLC has completed the acquisition of an approximately 6,400 square foot retail and office building in Venice. The building, located at 62-66 Windward Ave, is just west of Pacific Ave. "We are very excited to purchase a value-add building opportunity in Venice. We remain bullish on the retail and office sector given the current state of the economy," said Kamyar Shabani, a principal of Optimus Properties, LLC. The building was built in 1915 and located just steps to the Venice Boardwalk and beach. Coalision USA Inc, who produces and distributes the Lole clothing brand, has signed a three-year lease for the entire second floor consisting of 2,337 square feet. Additionally, Jessebelle Boutique, a clothing, cosmetics and art retailer, has signed a five-year lease for the vacant 670 square feet on the first floor. With these new leases, the building is 100% occupied. "The Property has two long term tenants on the first floor and another retail space on the first floor and the second floor office space are vacant. We worked very quickly before and after closing on the acquisition of the Property to negotiate leases with new tenants with the goal of stabilizing the asset," said K. Joseph Shabani, a principal of Optimus Properties, LLC. Optimus Properties, LLC, located in Los Angeles, California, was founded by Kamyar Shabani and K. Joseph Shabani and employs a disciplined investment approach focused on value creation in office, retail, office and medical office properties throughout Los Angeles. SOURCE Optimus Properties, LLC Related Links http://optimuspropertiesllc.com VANCOUVER, Oct. 26, 2018 /PRNewswire/ - Pacton Gold Inc. (TSXV: PAC, OTC: PACXF, FSE: 2NKN) (the "Company" or "Pacton") is pleased to announce that Dale Ginn has been appointed Executive Chairman of the Board and a director of the Company. Dominic Verdejo has resigned as Chairman and director. The Company wishes to thank Mr. Verdejo for his service to the Company and wishes him well in his future endeavors. Mr. Ginn is an experienced mining executive and geologist of nearly 30 years. He is the founder of a number of exploration and mining companies and has led and participated in numerous gold and base metal discoveries, many of which are in production today including Gladiator, 007, Hinge, 777 and others. While specializing in complex, structurally-controlled gold deposits, he also has extensive mine-operations, development and startup experience. Mr. Ginn's career includes mine and exploration geology, mine management and various executive roles. He is the current Vice-President of Exploration with Bonterra Resources Inc. as well as the President and CEO of the newly formed Gatling Exploration Inc. Past senior positions include Jerritt Canyon Gold, Harmony Gold Mining, San Gold, Hudbay, Westmin, Goldcorp and Granges Exploration. Mr. Ginn is a registered professional geologist in Manitoba and Ontario and is a graduate of the University of Manitoba. "We welcome Dale to the Pacton team and are looking forward to further developments with his participation as a leader in an official capacity. He has certainly contributed quietly to date as a founder and large shareholder who has already spent considerable time and effort with our team," stated Alec Pismiris, Interim President and CEO. About Pacton Gold Pacton Gold is a well-financed Canadian explorer with key strategic partners focused on the exploration and development of high grade conglomerate and orogenic gold properties located in the district-scale Pilbara gold rush in Western Australia. On Behalf of the Board of Pacton Gold Inc. Alec Pismiris Interim President & CEO Neither TSX Venture Exchange, the Toronto Stock Exchange nor their Regulation Services Provider (as that term is defined in the policies of the TSX Venture Exchange) accepts responsibility for the adequacy or accuracy of this release. SOURCE Pacton Gold Inc. DETROIT, Oct. 26, 2018 /PRNewswire/ -- Today, Urban Alliance (UA), a national youth development nonprofit organization, brought its flagship youth employment model to Detroit with support from the Quicken Loans Family of Companies, who will serve as the program's anchor employer in the city. UA's High School Internship Program (HSIP) will help expand opportunity for students from underserved communities through intensive professional development and meaningful work experience in students' senior year of high school. Beginning with a pilot group of 40 students from Breithaupt Career and Technical Center, Osborn High School and Randolph Career and Technical Center during the 2018-19 school year, UA will provide Detroit students with: A 10-month paid, professional internship (part-time during the school year and full-time during the summer) Intensive job and life skills training (seven weeks of pre-employment training followed by 10-months of weekly skill-building workshops) One-on-one mentoring from an adult professional Post-high school planning assistance Lifelong college and career support Urban Alliance is expected to expand to additional schools, serving more than 250 students over the next four years. The program's goal is to open the door to new possibilities for Detroit students, and ensure that every intern is on a pathway to self-sufficiency whether that be college, living-wage employment or vocational training after graduating high school. The Quicken Loans Community Fund (QLCF) is supporting UA's expansion to Detroit and the ability to help in the professional development of Detroit students. Along with QLCF's financial support, the Quicken Loans Family of Companies will host 30 interns annually over the next two years across its Family of Companies, serving as UA's anchor employer in the city. UA's long-time partner Bank of America will also host an additional five interns per year, with another five interns per year placed at local nonprofits. "At Urban Alliance, we believe that it truly takes a village to build brighter futures for our youth, so we are honored to be joining the Detroit community and helping to expand economic opportunities for young people in the city," said Eshauna Smith, CEO of Urban Alliance. "Our primary goal is always to provide meaningful youth employment opportunities for as many young people who need them as possible, and the local support we've received particularly from our anchor employer Quicken Loans Family of Companies helps us reach that goal. We look forward to working with the entire community to open more doors for the talented young people of this city." Through its 'for-more-than-profit model', QLCF brings together for-profit and non-profit investments in order to maximize its impact on Detroit. The Quicken Loans Family of Companies is the largest employer in Detroit, and QLCF is dedicated to creating robust job training and education opportunities that will lead to real jobs in IT, construction and customer service. QLCF is also deeply invested alongside Detroit Public Schools Community District and numerous community partners in order to build meaningful mentorship experiences, career technical education opportunities, and on-the-job-training. QLCF has previously engaged two of the three schools that Urban Alliance is partnering with. Earlier this year, QLCF committed $1 million to Detroit high school Breithaupt Career and Technical Center to improve infrastructure, expand programming and boost enrollment. In addition, last year QLCF joined the Mayor's office to also revitalize Randolph Career and Technical Center. "Investing in our future workforce and Detroit students -- is important from both a business and philanthropic standpoint at the Quicken Loans Family of Companies. Youth employment strategies strengthen our business and city," said Bill Emerson, Vice Chairman of Quicken Loans Community Fund. "At Quicken Loans and our family of companies, we are committed to introducing young people to multiple opportunities and experiences which will ultimately shape their life goals, grow their options and help prepare them to become Detroit's future leaders." With more than 20 years of experience providing workforce opportunities to thousands of economically-disadvantaged students in Chicago, Washington, D.C., Baltimore, and Northern Virginia, UA has improved post-high school outcomes for underserved youth. A recent six-year study found that completing UA's High School Internship Program had a measurable impact on young men attending college, mid-GPA students enrolling in four-year colleges, and students' retention of professional soft skills. 100 percent of UA students graduate from high school; over 90 percent are accepted to college. A further 80 percent of enrolled alumni persist to a second year in college, and 80 percent of all alumni are connected to a college, career, or career training pathway one year post-program. Over 80 percent of Urban Alliance alumni enroll in college, compared to 61 percent of Detroit Public Schools Community District graduates. About Quicken Loans Community Fund The Quicken Loans Community Fund operates under a "for-more-than-profit" philosophy that recognizes that business and community are inextricably linked. This model brings together all of the assets of the Quicken Loans business team member talent, technology, policy advocacy, and philanthropic resources to invest in comprehensive community development across Detroit, Cleveland, Charlotte and Phoenix. Over the course of 2018 alone, the Quicken Loans Community Fund has invested in tax foreclosure prevention that has kept tens of thousands of Detroit residents in their home, served over 1,000 Detroit-based entrepreneurs, invested in career technical education and curriculum development that will support students city-wide in building successful careers, and built 47,000 square feet of new public spaces. The work of the Quicken Loans Community Fund is powered by the 30,000 team members that work for the Quicken Loans Family of Companies nation-wide. For more information, visit quickenloans.org or see our For-More-Than-Profit booklet here. About Quicken Loans Detroit-based Quicken Loans Inc. is the nation's largest home mortgage lender. The company closed more than $400 billion of mortgage volume across all 50 states from 2013 through 2017. Quicken Loans moved its headquarters to downtown Detroit in 2010. Today, Quicken Loans and its Family of Companies employ more than 17,000 full-time team members in Detroit's urban core. The company generates loan production from web centers located in Detroit, Cleveland and Phoenix. Quicken Loans also operates a centralized loan processing facility in Detroit, as well as its San Diego-based One Reverse Mortgage unit. Quicken Loans ranked highest in the country for customer satisfaction for primary mortgage origination by J.D. Power for the past eight consecutive years, 2010 2017, and also ranked highest in the country for customer satisfaction among all mortgage servicers the past five consecutive years, 2014 2018. Quicken Loans was once again named to FORTUNE magazine's "100 Best Companies to Work For" list in 2018 and has been included in the magazine's top 1/3rd of companies named to the list for the past 15 consecutive years. In addition, Essence Magazine named Quicken Loans "#1 Place to Work in the Country for African Americans." For more information and company news visit QuickenLoans.com/press-room. SOURCE Quicken Loans SAN JOSE, Calif., Oct. 26, 2018 /PRNewswire/ -- Semler Scientific, Inc. (OTCQB: SMLR), an emerging growth company that provides technology solutions to improve the clinical effectiveness and efficiency of healthcare providers, today reported financial results for the three and nine months ended September 30, 2018. "It is our intent to provide cost efficient and practical means for our customers to better care for their patients," said Doug Murphy-Chutorian, M.D., chief executive officer of Semler Scientific. "We believe that the clinical benefits of using our product are driving adoption and expansion in the medical marketplace." FINANCIAL RESULTS For the three months ended September 30, 2018, compared to the corresponding period of 2017, Semler Scientific reported: Revenues of $5,579,000 , an increase of $1,972,000 , or 55%, compared to $3,607,000 , an increase of , or 55%, compared to Cost of revenues of $615,000 , a decrease of $109,000 , or 15%, compared to $724,000 . As a percentage of revenues, cost of revenues was 11% compared to 20% , a decrease of , or 15%, compared to . As a percentage of revenues, cost of revenues was 11% compared to 20% Total operating expenses, which includes cost of revenues, of $4,033,000 , an increase of $502,000 , or 14%, compared to $3,531,000 , an increase of , or 14%, compared to Net income of $1,468,000 , or $0.24 per basic share and $0.19 per diluted share, an increase of $1,509,000 , compared to a net loss of $41,000 , or $0.01 loss per share (basic and diluted). As a percentage of revenues, net income was 26% For the nine months ended September 30, 2018, compared to the corresponding period of 2017, Semler Scientific reported: Revenues of $15,526,000 , an increase of $7,287,000 , or 88%, compared to $8,239,000 , an increase of , or 88%, compared to Cost of revenues of $1,999,000 , an increase of $144,000 , or 8%, compared to $1,855,000 . As a percentage of revenues, cost of revenues was 13% compared to 23% , an increase of , or 8%, compared to . As a percentage of revenues, cost of revenues was 13% compared to 23% Total operating expenses, which includes cost of revenues, of $11,633,000 , an increase of $2,166,000 , or 23%, compared to $9,467,000 , an increase of , or 23%, compared to Net income of $3,626,000 , or $0.60 per basic share and $0.48 per diluted share, an increase of $5,389,000 , compared to a net loss of $1,763,000 , or $0.33 loss per basic and diluted share. As a percentage of revenues, net income was 23% For the three months ended September 30, 2018, compared to three months ended June 30, 2018, Semler Scientific reported: Revenues of $5,579,000 , an increase of $95,000 , or 2%, compared to $5,484,000 , an increase of , or 2%, compared to Cost of revenues of $615,000 , a decrease of $65,000 , or 10%, compared to $680,000 . As a percentage of revenues, cost of revenues was 11% compared to 12% , a decrease of , or 10%, compared to . As a percentage of revenues, cost of revenues was 11% compared to 12% Total operating expenses, which includes cost of revenues, of $4,033,000 , an increase of $84,000 , or 2%, compared to $3,949,000 . As a percentage of revenues, total operating expenses were 72% compared to 72% , an increase of , or 2%, compared to . As a percentage of revenues, total operating expenses were 72% compared to 72% Net income of $1,468,000 , or $0.24 per basic share and $0.19 per diluted share, an increase of $15,000 , or 1%, compared to a net income of $1,453,000 , or $0.24 per basic share and $0.19 per diluted share. As a percentage of revenues, net income was 26% compared to 26% , or per basic share and per diluted share, an increase of , or 1%, compared to a net income of , or per basic share and per diluted share. As a percentage of revenues, net income was 26% compared to 26% Cash of $3,087,000 , an increase of $1,078,000 , compared to $2,009,000 During the first nine months of 2018, total liabilities were reduced by $2,091,000 as compared to the year ended December 31, 2017, as the company retired debts and reduced accounts payable, among other items. In early October, the company retired an additional $1,873,000 of principal and interest of notes due in January 2019 for cash, and concurrent therewith, the noteholder exercised warrants for 134,616 shares, resulting in $350,000 cash proceeds to the company. YEAR TO DATE 2018 HIGHLIGHTS Major accomplishments recognized in the first nine months of 2018 were: Reduction of total liabilities by $2,091,000 as compared to the year ended December 31, 2017 . Increase in stockholders' equity by $4,895,000 from stockholders' deficit of $2,583,000 on December 31, 2017 , to $2,312,000 on September 30, 2018 . Growth of revenues by 88% compared to the corresponding first nine months of 2017. Sustained profitability during 2018. For the remainder of 2018 and continuing in 2019, Semler Scientific expects continued profitability and cash generated from operating activities. It is the company's intent to grow revenues at a faster rate than expenses and to remain profitable. "Our goals are to work with the healthcare industry to reduce avoidable healthcare costs and improve health outcomes of patients," said Dr. Murphy-Chutorian. "We believe that earlier recognition of peripheral artery disease leads to early preventive care and the reduction of the risk of heart attack, stroke and amputation." Notice of Conference Call Semler Scientific will host a conference call at 11 a.m. ET, Friday, October 26, 2018. The call will address results of the third quarter and first nine months of 2018 and will provide a business update on the company's market outlook and strategies for the near-term future. The conference call may be accessed by dialing 877-359-9508 for domestic callers and 224-357-2393 for international callers. Please specify to the operator that you would like to join the "Semler Scientific Third Quarter and Year-to-Date 2018 Financial Results Call, conference ID#: 9672109." The conference call will be archived on Semler's website at www.semlerscientific.com. Semler Scientific, Inc. Condensed Statements of Operations (In thousands of U.S. Dollars, except for share and per share data) For the three months ended September 30, For the nine months ended September 30, (Unaudited) (Unaudited) 2018 2017 2018 2017 Revenues $ 5,579 $ 3,607 $ 15,526 $ 8,239 Operating expenses: Cost of revenues 615 724 1,999 1,855 Engineering and product development 587 432 1,443 1,345 Sales and marketing 1,798 1,350 5,283 3,502 General and administrative 1,033 1,025 2,908 2,765 Total operating expenses 4,033 3,531 11,633 9,467 Income (loss) from operations 1,546 76 3,893 (1,228) Interest expense (1) (42) (57) (190) Interest expense -- related parties (74) (75) (206) (158) Loss on extinguishment of loans - - - (179) Other expense (3) - (4) (8) Other expense (78) (117) (267) (535) Net income (loss) $ 1,468 $ (41) $ 3,626 $ (1,763) Net income (loss) per share: Basic $ 0.24 (0.01) $ 0.60 (0.33) Diluted $ 0.19 $ (0.01) $ 0.48 $ (0.33) Weighted average number of shares used in computing earnings (loss) per share: Basic 6,086,489 5,463,568 5,998,460 5,346,178 Diluted 7,927,788 5,463,568 7,611,961 5,346,178 Semler Scientific, Inc. Condensed Balance Sheets (In thousands of U.S. Dollars) At September 30, At December 31, 2018 2017 (Unaudited) Cash $ 3,087 $ 1,457 Other current assets 2,651 1,426 Noncurrent assets 1,305 1,355 Total assets 7,043 4,238 Current liabilities 4,719 5,140 Noncurrent liabilities 12 1,681 Stockholders' equity (deficit) 2,312 (2,583) Total liabilities and stockholders' equity (deficit) $ 7,043 $ 4,238 About Semler Scientific, Inc.: Semler Scientific, Inc. is an emerging growth company that provides technology solutions to improve the clinical effectiveness and efficiency of healthcare providers. Semler Scientific's mission is to develop, manufacture and market innovative proprietary products and services that assist its customers in evaluating and treating chronic diseases. Semler Scientific's first patented and U.S. Food and Drug Administration, or FDA, cleared product, introduced commercially in 2011, measured arterial blood flow in the extremities to aid in the diagnosis of peripheral arterial disease. In March 2015, Semler Scientific received FDA 510(k) clearance for the next generation version of this product named QuantaFlo, which was commercially launched in August 2015 to more comprehensively evaluate our customers' patients for risk of heart attacks and strokes. Semler Scientific believes it is positioned to provide valuable information to its insurance company and physician customers, which in turn permits them to better guide patient care. Additional information about Semler can be found at semlerscientific.com. Forward-Looking Statements This press release contains "forward-looking" statements. Such statements can be identified by, among other things, the use of forward-looking language such as the words "may," "will," "expect," "anticipate," "estimate," "project," "would," "could" or words with similar meaning or the negatives of these terms or by the discussion of strategy or intentions. The forward-looking statements in this release include statements regarding continued profitability and cash generated from operations, as well as its ability to grow revenues faster than expenses. Such forward-looking statements are subject to a number of risks and uncertainties that could cause Semler Scientific's actual results to differ materially from those discussed here, such as whether or not insurance plans and other customers will continue to license its cardiovascular testing products, and its ability to continue to control expenses, along with those statements detailed in Semler Scientific's SEC filings. These forward-looking statements involve assumptions, estimates, and uncertainties that reflect current internal projections, expectations or beliefs. 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. All forward-looking statements contained in this press release are qualified in their entirety by these cautionary statements and the risk factors described above. Furthermore, all such statements are made as of the date of this release and Semler Scientific assumes no obligation to update or revise these statements unless otherwise required by law. CONTACT: Susan A. Noonan S.A. Noonan Communications [email protected] 212 966 3650 SOURCE Semler Scientific, Inc. Related Links http://www.semlerscientific.com The fueling facility has a capacity of 1.2 million tonnes of jet fuel per year. The nominal volume of the tank battery is 20,000 cubic meters, and there is the possibility of increasing that to 25,000 cubic meters in the future. The hydrant system of the centralized aircraft fueling system at the apron of Terminal B in the North Terminal Complex Sheremetyevo has 49 hydrant columns, which provide the ability to refuel all types of aircraft at 27 parking aprons of single-aisle aircrafts. The facility is equipped with state-of-the-art systems for emergency protection and automation, detection and control of leaks, gas pollution control in process chambers, and electrochemical corrosion protection. The hydrant system fully complies with Russian and international safety requirements. From October 18 to October 19, 2018, SVO conducted audits and mandatory testing of the new facility with representatives of KLM Royal Dutch Airlines to ensure compliance with international standards and IATA Fuel Quality Pool rules. The new system earned the highest possible score according to international standards. Thus, Sheremetyevo has become the only airport in Russia with three independent fueling facilities. These facilities have developed a competitive environment in the local jet fuel market. The existing fueling infrastructure of Sheremetyevo is guaranteed to provide high-quality fuel to air carriers at the best market conditions, providing airlines with an effective base for operating and economic activities. Sheremetyevo International Airport is the largest Russian airport in terms of passenger and freight traffic, take-off and landing operations, terminal area and cargo capacity. The route network of Sheremetyevo includes more than 200 destinations. In 2017, the airport served 40 million passengers, a 17,8% increase from 2016. LUKOIL-AERO LLC was founded in 2003 and is a subsidiary of LUKOIL PJSC. The company sells jet fuel in bulk, fuels jets at the airports of the Russian Federation and abroad. The company's field of activities covers more than 30 airports in Russia and abroad. The company's clients include the largest Russian and foreign airlines. AERO-Sheremetyevo JSC (50% of shares Sheremetyevo International Airport JSC and 50% of shares LUKOIL-AERO LLC) provides aviation fuel to airlines flying to Sheremetyevo Airport. Aircraft refueling is carried out in strict accordance with Russian and international IATA requirements. SOURCE Sheremetyevo International Airport SHENZEN, China, Oct. 25, 2018 /PRNewswire/ -- SMAlux, a leading manufacturer of the smart light bulb in China, will be attending the Hong Kong International Lighting Fair (Autumn Edition) at the Hong Kong Convention and Exhibition Centre from 27-30 Oct 2018. SMAlux will showcase its latest smart light products and smart lighting solution at booth 1D-E40 Hall 1. SMAlux The Hong Kong International Lighting Fair (Autumn Edition) hosted by the Hong Kong Trade Development Center (HKTDC) is located in the Hong Kong Convention and Exhibition Center(HKCEC) located in Wan Chai. HK International Lighting Fair was first held in 1999, it is the largest professional lighting fair in Asia, and have attracted buyers and exhibitors worldwide for its professional reputation. During this year's HK Lighting Fair, SMAlux will showcase its cutting-edge products, such as the smart light bulb, the latest smart light technology, and the easy control solution. SMAlux and its technical 20+ years of experience, as well as its CEO Mr. Chen, who has 30+ year experiences in the lighting industry, will be at the booth to answer customer questions and provide technical support. Among SMAlux's key products include Wi-Fi smart bulbs, Bluetooth smart bulbs, sensor light, NB-IoT street light. SMAlux will continue to keep its smart lighting products competitive when it comes to design and quality. Remember to book in advance using the feature available online at the official website of hklightingfairae.hktdc.com website or download the "HKTDC Marketplace" App and complete the visitor registration before 26 Oct 2018, for free online attendance. SMAlux warmly welcome all customers to visit Hong Kong International Lighting Fair (Autumn Edition) at 1D-E40 in 1 Hall. About SMAlux SMAlux is brand of CE Lighting. CE Lighting has more than 22 years of experience in the field of the lighting industry. We are ISO9001 certified implemented since 1998, SA8000 through third-party review in 2012, and ISO14001 certified in 2015. And we manufactured more than 1 billion lamps sold worldwide. CE Lighting not only a LED bulb manufacturer, but we have also specially established the SMALUX brand and specialized in the Wi-Fi smart light bulb, smart fixture, smart lighting solution for more than 5 years. We trust we can provide more professional technical support and services with our customers worldwide. Send us an inquiry, and get a quick quote now. Contact Information Contact person: Ms. Li (Product Manager) Tel: +86 755 2698 9973 Email: [email protected] Website: www.smalux.com Add: Lighting House, Keji South 12th Road, High Tech Ind Park, Shenzhen, China Related Images 2018-hk-international-lighting-fair.png 2018 HK International Lighting Fair smart-light-bulb-from-smalux.jpg smart light bulb from SMAlux smalux-a19-bluetooth-smart-led.jpg SMAlux A19 Bluetooth Smart LED Light Bulb smalux-gu10-wi-fi-smart-led-light.jpg SMAlux GU10 Wi-Fi Smart LED Light Bulb Related Links SMAlux Related Video http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xBHgOQ-7-5k SOURCE SMAlux CHAPEL HILL, N.C., Oct. 26, 2018 /PRNewswire/ -- Medical Affairs has long been the function within the pharmaceutical industry that communicated scientific information to physicians and thought leaders. As emerging groups such as payers, Accountable Care Organizations, specialty pharmacies and others have become more prominent in the healthcare landscape, pharma has expanded the organizations that Medical Affairs interacts with for medical and clinical discussions. But adding these relatively new groups to Medical Affairs' work load has pharma leaders grappling with what roles, tools and activities bring the most value to interactions with government agencies, Integrated Delivery Networks, Group Purchasing Organizations and other critical external stakeholders. To share current practices regarding Medical Affairs' external interactions, research and consulting leader Best Practices, LLC has published a new study, "How Medical Affairs Creates Value & Relationships through Service to Critical External Groups." This benchmarking study is designed to provide biopharma companies with current insights into the current practices of Medical Affairs in terms of their interactions with emerging groups and what activities and tools they are using in their information exchanges. The new study also looks at how companies are measuring the performance of Medical Affairs related to interactions with these emerging groups. The 101-page report will help Medical Affairs leaders: Determine which external groups to work with and prioritize the importance and value of their work depending on a product life cycle Select tools, activities, services and roles to work with different external groups Provide key performance indicators and best practices to demonstrate value Medical Affairs leaders will be able to use the research results to compare their external engagement strategy and tactics with the practices of their industry peers. Best Practices, LLC engaged 50 Medical Affairs experts at 33 companies through a benchmarking survey. Data in this research are presented in three segments: Total Benchmark Class, Global Segment and U.S. Only Segment. To access the full report or to download a complimentary summary containing insights found in this report, click on the following link: http://www.best-in-class.com/rr1517.htm. For related research, visit the Best Practices, LLC Web site at www.best-in-class.com/. ABOUT BEST PRACTICES, LLC Best Practices, LLC is a leading benchmarking, consulting and advisory services firm serving biopharmaceutical and medical device companies worldwide. Best Practices, LLC's clients include all the top 10 and 48 of the top 50 global healthcare companies. The firm conducts primary research and consulting using its comprehensive proprietary benchmarking tools and analysis. SOURCE Best Practices, LLC Related Links http://www.best-in-class.com Supreme Cannabis completes first shipments of 7ACRES branded flower. 7ACRES will initially be available in adult-use markets in British Columbia , Alberta , Manitoba , Ontario , Nova Scotia and PEI. TORONTO, Oct. 26, 2018 /PRNewswire/ - The Supreme Cannabis Company, Inc. ("Supreme Cannabis" or the "Company") (TSXV: FIRE) (OTCQX: SPRWF) (FRA: 53S1), is pleased to announce that 7ACRES branded High-End Cannabis is available exclusively through Canada's provincially regulated adult-use channels. More information about 7ACRES and its products can be found at 7ACRES.com. 7ACRES, Canada's only coast-to-coast premium cannabis brand. (CNW Group/The Supreme Cannabis Company, Inc.) 7ACRES High-End Cannabis packaging (CNW Group/The Supreme Cannabis Company, Inc.) 7ACRES' Jean Guy strain is now available online in British Columbia, and the Company expects that Jean Guy will be online in Alberta, Ontario, Nova Scotia and Prince Edward Island next week, and in Manitoba in early November. The balance of 7ACRES' full product lineup will be available shortly thereafter online and in brick-and-mortar stores. "In 2013 we started our journey to develop 7ACRES into Canada's leading brand for premium cannabis flower, delivering on consumer expectations for aroma, visual appeal and flavour," said John Fowler, President of Supreme Cannabis & Founder of 7ACRES. "We're now excited to make 7ACRES available to adult cannabis enthusiasts and consumers looking for a superior sensory experience when consuming cannabis. Our mantra at 7ACRES is 'RESPECT THE PLANT'. We believe that by respecting the plant, the people who care for it and the people who ultimately consume it, we have built a culture of continual improvement where consumers can expect that each flower experience is better than the last." "7ACRES flower is focused on pleasing three primary senses: aroma, visual appeal and flavour. Through an intensive phenotype selection-process, we selected our four core strains to maximize the objective and subjective quality across these three categories. Each strain provides a unique aromatic bouquet and visual presentation focused on pleasing the discerning palate of the cannabis enthusiast," said Omer Azeez, VP Marketing at Supreme Cannabis. "With coast-to-coast distribution, 7ACRES' High-End Cannabis is now a well-known brand of premium flower. As the consumer market continues to mature, we look forward to becoming an integral part of Canada's social rituals for authentic cannabis consumption." About Supreme Cannabis The Supreme Cannabis Company (TSXV: FIRE) (OTCQX: SPRWF) (FRA: 53S1) is a Canadian publicly traded company committed to providing premium brands and products that proudly reflect its consumers, people and uniquely innovative culture. The Company's portfolio includes its wholly-owned subsidiary and flagship brand 7ACRES. 7ACRES is a federally licensed producer of cannabis operating inside a 342,000-square-foot facility in Kincardine, Ontario. 7ACRES is dedicated to providing consumers with a premium-quality product that recognizes its customers are informed, discerning and value a brand and culture that aligns with their principles. 7ACRES brand success has been reflected in provincial supply agreements, where 7ACRES' product is consistently listed in the highest brand category available to recreational consumers. The Company's growing portfolio also includes an equity investment and long-term global distribution partnership with Lesotho-based Medigrow for the exporting of medical-grade cannabis oil. The Supreme Cannabis Company has consistently set the standard for innovation in the sector, including the design of growing facilities and development of operational excellence metrics. We are confident that together with our flagship brand, proprietary technology and products, truly unique culture, and industry-leading team, we will deliver our shareholders consistent long-term value creation. Stay Connected For more information, please visit The Supreme Cannabis Company and 7ACRES websites. Follow us on Twitter, Facebook, or Instagram. Forward-Looking Information Certain statements made in this press release may constitute forward-looking information under applicable securities laws. These statements may relate to anticipated events or results and include, but are not limited to, the expected online availability of 7ACRES' Jean-Guy strain and the subsequent availability of 7ACRES's full product lineup, the quality of our products and other statements that are not historical facts. Particularly, information regarding our expectations of future results, targets, performance achievements, prospects or opportunities is forward-looking information. Often, but not always, forward-looking statements can be identified by the use of forward-looking terminology such as "may" "will", "expect", "believe", "estimate", "plan", "could", "should", "would", "outlook", "forecast", "anticipate", "foresee", "continue" or the negative of these terms or variations of them or similar terminology. Forward-looking statements are current as of the date they are made and are based on applicable estimates and assumptions made by us at the relevant time in light of our experience and perception of historical trends, current conditions and expected future developments, as well as other factors that we believe are appropriate and reasonable in the circumstances. However, we do not undertake to update any such forward-looking information whether as a result of new information, future events or otherwise, except as required under applicable securities laws in Canada. There can be no assurance that such estimates and assumptions will prove to be correct. Many factors could cause our actual results, level of activity, performance or achievements or future events or developments to differ materially from those expressed or implied by the forward-looking statements, including, without limitation, the factors discussed in the "Risk Factors" section of the Company's Annual Information Form dated October 2, 2018 ("AIF"). A copy of the AIF and the Company's other publicly filed documents can be accessed under the Company's profile on the System for Electronic Document Analysis and Retrieval ("SEDAR") at www.sedar.com. The Company cautions that the list of risk factors and uncertainties described in the AIF is not exhaustive and other factors could also adversely affect its results. Readers are urged to consider the risks, uncertainties and assumptions carefully in evaluating the forward-looking information and are cautioned not to place undue reliance on such information. Neither TSX Venture Exchange nor its Regulation Services Provider (as that term is defined in the policies of the TSX Venture Exchange) accepts responsibility for the adequacy or accuracy of this release. SOURCE The Supreme Cannabis Company, Inc. WASHINGTON, Oct. 26, 2018 /PRNewswire/ -- The American Society of Hematology (ASH), has entered into an agreement with Doctor Evidence (DRE) to host ASH annual meeting abstracts in DRE's innovative DOC Search artificial intelligence technology platform. ASH is the world's largest professional society serving both clinicians and scientists around the world who are working to conquer blood diseases. This subscription offering includes all abstract content back to 2016 along with the current year's annual meeting abstracts as they are released from embargo, thus enabling researchers to longitudinally probe and track data, methods, results, and changing research foci in the fields of hematology and oncology. Subscribers of the new offering will be required to have an active subscription to Blood. The DOC Search platform, powered by artificial intelligence, deep machine learning, and a robust ontology system, enables cutting edge research capabilities. Meeting abstracts are linked to clinicaltrials.gov registrations and other publications addressing the same clinical trial populations, so researchers can follow cohorts over time and avoid double counting patients. Most influential authors can be identified along with their coauthor networks, affiliations, and other publications. Saved signals can be set to monitor for future content matching specific search terms. Descriptive statistics, distributions, and frequent co-occurring concepts (characteristics, interventions, and outcomes) are instantly displayed for the set of abstracts matching each search query. "ASH is the preeminent research organization in hematology and hematologic diseases. We are pleased to provide our artificial intelligence technological solutions to promote and advance the important research presented at their annual meetings," said Robert Battista, CEO of Doctor Evidence. "DRE's capabilities for structuring and synthesizing complex data maximizes the agility of insights for the hematology research community." "The ability to more thoroughly and longitudinally probe the research output of hematology investigators should benefit ASH members and our field immensely," said Chair of the ASH Publications Committee David Scadden, MD, of Massachusetts General Hospital and the Harvard Stem Cell Institute. "It is a strong start to using machine learning to advance our understanding of blood diseases, which will lead to improvements in patient care." About Doctor Evidence: Doctor Evidence (DRE) is a health technology and consulting company utilizing state-of-the-art solutions that identify, synthesize, and analyze complex clinical research data into fit-to-purpose actionable knowledge. Resulting high quality evidence reviews provide guideline developers, academic researchers, medical providers, manufacturers, payers, and patients with evidence-based information to make timely and educated decisions on recommended treatment protocols, outcomes research, health economics, risk management, market access, reimbursement, value determinations, and burden of illness cost models. These methodologically rigorous reviews and analyses fully comply with accepted international standards to address the needs of patients, providers, and scientists worldwide. To learn more about Doctor Evidence, visit drevidence.com and GROWTHevidence.com. About American Society of Hematology: The American Society of Hematology (www.hematology.org) is the world's largest professional society concerned with the causes and treatment of blood disorders. Its mission is to further the understanding, diagnosis, treatment, and prevention of disorders affecting blood, bone marrow, and the immunologic, hemostatic, and vascular systems by promoting research, clinical care, education, training, and advocacy in hematology. The official journal of ASH is Blood (www.bloodjournal.org), the most cited peer-reviewed publication in the field, which is available weekly in print and online. In 2016, ASH launched Blood Advances (www.bloodadvances.org), an online, peer-reviewed open-access journal. SOURCE Doctor Evidence Related Links http://www.doctorevidence.com SACRAMENTO, Calif., Oct. 26, 2018 /PRNewswire/ -- McClatchy (NYSE American: MNI) announced today that Tim Grieve will step down from the position of Vice President of News after the midterm elections on November 7. "Tim's leadership has left a big mark on all of us at McClatchy, and we are grateful for what he has achieved over the past three years," said Craig Forman, President and CEO of McClatchy. "During a time of significant industry disruption, Tim's vision for local journalism and his intense focus on the areas where it can have the greatest impact has resulted in critical achievements for our company: Our newsrooms now reach more people than ever before with our own brand of local journalism that holds public officials accountable, makes a concrete difference in our communities and tells readers stories in compelling ways that will directly affect their lives." Grieve is leaving to join a new venture in the media space. "I'm incredibly proud of the work we've done -- and incredibly grateful for the way in which McClatchy's journalists pour their hearts and souls into this work," Grieve said. "While I'm excited about the new project ahead of me, I'm going to miss working with the extraordinary McClatchy team." Forman announced that with Grieve's departure, McClatchy's four regional editors will report directly to him as well as keep their existing direct-line relationships with regional publishers. "We have a strong and dynamic team of regional editors who each have the strategic vision, energy and record of achievement to push forward to our transformation." McClatchy's regional editors include in the West region, Lauren Gustus ; in the Central region, Mike Fannin ; in the Carolinas, Robyn Tomlin ; and in the East region, Kristin Roberts . "That we can now make this change is a sign of our great depth and strength in regional leadership around the country," said Forman. "And it reinforces that our commitment to independent, local journalism runs all the way through our leadership to the top, in keeping with our 161-year tradition at McClatchy." Andrew Pergam , Vice President of Video and New Ventures, will oversee McClatchy's News Desks, real time news operations and Newsroom Reinvention team. "Andy has done an outstanding job building our teams in video and new content technologies and is well positioned to take on this important responsibility," added Forman. "He and I will continue to work very closely to ensure our vision for news coverage is aligned and that we are operating in the most efficient ways possible." About McClatchy McClatchy operates 30 media companies in 14 states, providing each of its communities with strong independent local journalism in the public interest and advertising services in a wide array of digital and print formats. McClatchy publishes iconic local brands including the Miami Herald, The Kansas City Star, The Sacramento Bee, The Charlotte Observer, The (Raleigh) News & Observer, and the (Fort Worth) Star-Telegram. McClatchy is headquartered in Sacramento, Calif., and listed on the New York Stock Exchange American under the symbol MNI. #ReadLocal SOURCE McClatchy Related Links http://www.mcclatchy.com WASHINGTON, Oct. 25, 2018 /PRNewswire/ -- The Teamsters National UPS Freight Negotiating Committee has received a Last, Best and Final (LBFO) contract proposal from UPS Freight. Membership voting will take place on November 9, 10 or 11 at local union meetings nationwide. UPS Freight Teamsters rejected the previous proposed tentative agreement on October 5, 2018. The Teamsters negotiating committee notified the company that the 30-day extension agreement would terminate effective Monday, November 12, 2018, at 12:01 a.m. Subsequent to the contract rejection, negotiating committee members have reached out to members to identify the issues that led to the rejection of the tentative agreement. On Monday, October 22, the negotiating committee met and formulated a list of issues that were then presented to the company. The negotiating committee demanded: 1) tighter restrictions and limits on subcontracting and rail usage; 2) higher wage increases that are not split; 3) earning protection for city drivers when they perform dock work; 4) elimination of the new qualifiers for pension and vacation benefits; and 5) a week's worth of vacation pay for all classifications based on 1/52 of the prior year's earnings. The negotiating committee met with the company but has not been able to reach a revised tentative agreement. The negotiating committee did, however, negotiate several changes to the rejected tentative agreement. Those include: 1) In Article 25, Section 6, the 1,800-hour qualifier for a full year of pension credit will be reduced to the prior 1,500-hour level; 2) In Article 25, Section 5, the 182 reports qualifier for full vacation benefits will be reduced to the prior 156-day level; and 3) In Article 26, Section 1, pick-up and delivery drivers will receive their applicable driver rate of pay rate when performing dock work; and 4) In Article 26, Section 2, road drivers will maintain their applicable local/road driver hourly rate when performing dock work if they are not otherwise entitled to the Article 44(d) $37.61 rate. One additional change is in Article 44(e) where the percentages that subcontracting will be reduced over the life of the agreement will be adjusted so that the overall (4) percentage points remain the same but that the annual reductions will now be reallocated as: .5% by July 31, 2019; .5% by July 31, 2020; 1% by July 31, 2021; 1% by July 31, 2022; and 1% by July 31, 2023. The negotiating committee has determined that the LBFO does not sufficiently address the issues raised by the members. Nevertheless, because of the company's insistence that there is no more money to be had and in order to allow the members to make an informed decision on a question that will affect their livelihoods, the negotiating committee decided to submit the LBFO for acceptance or rejection. The negotiating committee is not making a recommendation to the membership for or against the offer. UPS Freight Teamsters have previously authorized a strike. While a strike is a last resort, if the company's LBFO is rejected by the membership there will be a strike at a time and location(s) determined by the negotiating committee. The proposal may be viewed at: http://ibt.io/UPSFreightupdate Contact: Kara Deniz [email protected] SOURCE International Brotherhood of Teamsters Related Links http://www.teamster.org MINNEAPOLIS, Oct. 26, 2018 /PRNewswire/ -- U.S. Bank announced today that it has entered into a distribution agreement with StoneCastle Cash Management, LLC ("StoneCastle") to provide FICA For Advisors ("FICA"), a federally insured cash solution, to its registered investment advisor (RIA) clients. The product is designed to maximize yields and provide high levels of FDIC insurance while reducing market, credit and principal risk on clients' cash balances. U.S. Bank is the sixth largest custodian in the United States and the first major custodian to offer the position-traded insured cash solution. The U.S. Bank account is seamlessly connected to a network of more than 800 banks, which enables clients to receive $25 million in federal insurance protection with the ability to insure up to $100 million per account. "We've seen increased demand for alternative investment options in the short-term fixed income and cash space," said Alan Markarian, manager of Investment Advisor Services for U.S. Bank. "This product provides a forward-thinking option for our clients that would be difficult for them to replicate on their own. It has a unique risk profile and a yield that clients may find attractive compared to other cash products they may be considering." "Our business model has always been to connect institutional and retail investors to banks through innovative deposit and cash management solutions," said Dan Farrell, chief executive officer of StoneCastle. "Partnering with U.S. Bank is a great privilege and a perfect extension of that message, which we are certain will help them become an even more competitive organization while contributing to their clients' business and financial successes." Extended FDIC insured products are designed to provide safety and underscore the importance of principal protection on cash holdings. Through a large network of pre-screened banks administered by StoneCastle, U.S. Bank provides an opportunity for its clients to extend FDIC insurance well beyond the $250 thousand dollar threshold normally found on a single deposit. "The product has a great balance of liquidity, yield, and principal protection. It's a best in class solution that we're excited to bring to our client base." added Markarian. About U.S. Bank U.S. Bancorp (NYSE: USB), with 74,000 employees and $465 billion in assets as of Sept. 30, 2018, is the parent company of U.S. Bank, the fifth-largest commercial bank in the United States. The Minneapolis-based bank blends its relationship teams, branches and ATM network with mobile and online tools that allow customers to bank how, when and where they prefer. U.S. Bank is committed to serving its millions of retail, business, wealth management, payment, commercial and corporate, and investment services customers across the country and around the world as a trusted financial partner, a commitment recognized by the Ethisphere Institute naming the bank a 2018 World's Most Ethical Company. Visit U.S. Bank online or follow on social media to stay up to date with company news. About StoneCastle Cash Management, LLC StoneCastle Cash Management, LLC is a leading administrator of insured cash solutions for many of the world's largest institutions and family offices. Today, the firm extends the reach of its operational and technology platforms through a daily cash sweep solution made available to brokerages, registered investment advisers (RIAs), trusts, and other programs offered through financial intermediaries and wealth managers. StoneCastle is backed by the strength and stability of world class partners, CIBC and Charlesbank Capital Partners. SOURCE StoneCastle Cash Management, LLC Related Links http://www.stonecastle.com MEXICO CITY, Oct. 26, 2018 /PRNewswire/ -- Volaris* (NYSE: VLRS and BMV: VOLAR), the ultra-low-cost airline serving Mexico, the United States and Central America, today announced its financial results for the third quarter 2018. The following financial information, unless otherwise indicated, is presented in accordance with International Financial Reporting Standards (IFRS). Third Quarter 2018 Highlights Total operating revenues reached Ps.7,316 million for the third quarter, an increase of 11.3% year over year. Total ancillary revenues were Ps.2,220 million for the third quarter, an increase of 23.5% year over year. The total ancillary revenues per passenger for the third quarter were Ps.474, increasing 10.1% year over year. Total operating revenues per available seat mile (TRASM) were Ps.134. 9 cents for the third quarter, a decrease of 1.9% year over year. for the third quarter, a decrease of 1.9% year over year. Operating expenses per available seat mile (CASM) were Ps.130. 4 cents for the third quarter, an increase of 4.8% year over year; with an average economic fuel cost per gallon of Ps.43.5, increasing 36.9% year over year, and an average exchange rate of Ps.18.98, a year over year increase of 6.5%. Operating expenses per available seat mile excluding fuel (CASM ex fuel) were Ps.81. 9 cents for the third quarter, a decrease of 7.9% year over year. for the third quarter, an increase of 4.8% year over year; with an average economic fuel cost per gallon of Ps.43.5, increasing 36.9% year over year, and an average exchange rate of Ps.18.98, a year over year increase of 6.5%. Operating expenses per available seat mile excluding fuel (CASM ex fuel) were Ps.81. for the third quarter, a decrease of 7.9% year over year. Operating income was Ps.246 million for the third quarter, with an operating margin of 3.4%, equal to a year over year operating margin decrease of 6.1 percentage points. Net loss was Ps.119 million (Ps. (0.12) per share / US$(1.17) per ADS for the third quarter, with a net loss margin of (1.6%), equal to a year over year net margin decrease of 12.6 percentage points. per ADS for the third quarter, with a net loss margin of (1.6%), equal to a year over year net margin decrease of 12.6 percentage points. At the close of the third quarter, the Mexican peso had appreciated 5.3% against the U.S. dollar with respect to the end of period exchange rate of the previous quarter. The Company booked a foreign exchange loss of Ps.419 million as a consequence of our U.S. dollar net monetary asset position. Net cash flow used in operating activities was Ps.136 million, in conjunction with cash flow provided by investing activities of Ps.20 million, net cash flow used in financing activities of Ps.247 million, and a negative net foreign exchange difference of Ps.326 million; the net cash decrease in the third quarter was Ps.689 million. As of September 30, 2018 , cash and cash equivalents were Ps.6,082 million. Stable Macroeconomics and Domestic Consumer Demand with Exchange Rate Depreciation and Fuel Price Pressures Resilient macroeconomics and domestic consumer demand: The macroeconomic indicators in Mexico during the third quarter were stable, with same store sales [1] increasing 5.3% year over year; remittances [2] increased 9.68% year over year during July and August 2018 ; and the Mexican Consumer Confidence Balance Indicator (BCC) [3] increasing 17% year over year in third quarter 2018. The macroeconomic indicators in during the third quarter were stable, with same store sales increasing 5.3% year over year; remittances increased 9.68% year over year during July and ; and the Mexican Consumer Confidence Balance Indicator (BCC) increasing 17% year over year in third quarter 2018. Air traffic volume increase: The Mexican DGAC reported overall passenger volume growth for Mexican carriers of 8.1% year over year in July and August; domestic overall passenger volume increased 7.4%, while international overall passenger volume increased 10.4%. The Mexican DGAC reported overall passenger volume growth for Mexican carriers of 8.1% year over year in July and August; domestic overall passenger volume increased 7.4%, while international overall passenger volume increased 10.4%. Exchange rate volatility: The Mexican peso depreciated 6.5% year over year against the US dollar, from an average exchange rate of Ps.17. 82 pesos per US dollar in the third quarter 2017 to Ps.18. 98 pesos per US dollar during the third quarter 2018. At the close of the third quarter, the Mexican peso had appreciated 5.3% with respect to the end of period exchange rate of the previous quarter. The Company booked a foreign exchange loss of Ps.419 million, mainly as a consequence of our US dollar net monetary asset position. The Mexican peso depreciated 6.5% year over year against the US dollar, from an average exchange rate of Ps.17. per US dollar in the third quarter 2017 to Ps.18. per US dollar during the third quarter 2018. At the close of the third quarter, the Mexican peso had appreciated 5.3% with respect to the end of period exchange rate of the previous quarter. The Company booked a foreign exchange loss of Ps.419 million, mainly as a consequence of our US dollar net monetary asset position. Higher fuel prices: The average economic fuel cost per gallon increased 36.9% to Ps.43.5 per gallon (US$2.3) in the third quarter 2018, year over year. Passenger Traffic Stimulation, Further Ancillary Revenue Expansion, and Positive TRASM Trend Reaching Almost the Same Level Last Year Passenger traffic stimulation: Volaris booked 4.7 million passengers in the third quarter of 2018, up 12.1% year over year. Volaris traffic (measured in terms of fare revenue miles, or RPMs) increased 9.9% for the same period. System load factor during the quarter decreased 2.7 percentage points year over year to 83.5%. Volaris booked 4.7 million passengers in the third quarter of 2018, up 12.1% year over year. Volaris traffic (measured in terms of fare revenue miles, or RPMs) increased 9.9% for the same period. System load factor during the quarter decreased 2.7 percentage points year over year to 83.5%. Positive TRASM trend almost at the same level of last year: For the third quarter of 2018, yield decreased 2.8% with TRASM decreasing 1.9%, year over year. During the third quarter 2018, in terms of ASMs, domestic capacity grew 15.8%, while international capacity increased 8.4%, year over year. For the third quarter of 2018, yield decreased 2.8% with TRASM decreasing 1.9%, year over year. During the third quarter 2018, in terms of ASMs, domestic capacity grew 15.8%, while international capacity increased 8.4%, year over year. Total ancillary revenue growth: For the third quarter of 2018, total ancillary revenues and total ancillary revenues per passenger increased 23.5% and 10.1% year over year, respectively. The total ancillary revenue generation continues to grow with new and matured products, appealing to customers' needs, representing 30.3% of the total operating revenues. For the third quarter of 2018, total ancillary revenues and total ancillary revenues per passenger increased 23.5% and 10.1% year over year, respectively. The total ancillary revenue generation continues to grow with new and matured products, appealing to customers' needs, representing 30.3% of the total operating revenues. New routes: In the third quarter 2018, Volaris announced 11 domestic routes from its focus cities Tijuana and Guadalajara , as well as from Mexico City and Bajio ; and three international routes, two from Bajio to Sacramento and San Jose, California and one from Guadalajara to Charlotte, North Carolina . Cost Control and Discipline, Despite Fuel Price Pressure and Exchange Rate Depreciation CASM and CASM ex fuel for the third quarter 2018 were Ps.130.4 ( US$6.9 cents ) and Ps.81. 9 cents ( US$4.3 cents ), respectively. This represented an increase of 4.8% and a decrease of 7.9%, respectively; mainly driven by higher average economic fuel cost per gallon of 36.9% and an average exchange rate depreciation of 6.5%, which were offset by a tightening cost control discipline. Young and Fuel-efficient Fleet During the third quarter 2018, the Company incorporated three aircraft (two A320 neo and one A321 neo) to its fleet; during this quarter no redeliveries were registered. As of September 30, 2018 , Volaris' fleet was composed of 73 aircraft (8 A319s, 52 A320s and 13 A321s), with an average age of 4.6 years. At the end of the third quarter 2018, Volaris' fleet had an average of 184 seats, 72% of which were in sharklet-equipped aircraft. Solid Balance Sheet and Good Liquidity Net cash flow used in operating activities was Ps.136 million, in conjunction with cash flow provided by investing activities of Ps.20 million, net cash flow used in financing activities of Ps.247 million, and a negative net foreign exchange differences of Ps.326 million; the net cash used in the third quarter 2018 was Ps.689 million. As of September 30, 2018 , cash and cash equivalents were Ps.6,082 million, representing now 23% of last twelve months operating revenues. Volaris registered negative net debt (or a positive net cash position) of Ps.2,889 million and total equity of Ps.8,863 million. Active in Risk Management Volaris remains active in its fuel risk management program. Volaris used call options to hedge 58% of its third quarter 2018 fuel consumption, at an average strike price of US $1.78 per gallon, which combined with the 42% unhedged consumption, resulted in a blended average economic fuel cost of US$2.3 per gallon. IFRS 15: Revenue from Contracts with Customers During 1Q 2018, we adopted IFRS 15 "Revenue from Contracts with Customers" which replaces existing revenue recognition guidance, including IAS 18 "Revenue" . IFRS 15 establishes a single comprehensive model for entities to use in accounting for revenue arising from contracts with customers. which replaces existing revenue recognition guidance, including IAS 18 . IFRS 15 establishes a single comprehensive model for entities to use in accounting for revenue arising from contracts with customers. The adoption of the IFRS 15 impacted the classification and timing of recognition of certain ancillary items such as bags, advanced seat selection, itinerary changes and other air travel-related fees, since they are deemed part of the single performance obligation of providing passenger transportation. These ancillary items are now recognized in passenger revenue (disclosed in the consolidated statement of operations including in these quarterly earnings release as "other passenger revenue" ). ). Non-passenger revenue primarily consists of revenue from the sale of other items such as rental cars, insurance, hotels and cargo. This change did not have a material impact on our income statement or balance sheet in any period presented. This quarterly earnings release includes supplemental information for comparable basis, with recast amounts with the IFRS 15 adoption effects, and were derived from unaudited financial statements included in the quarterly reports on Form 6-K during the year ended December 31 , 2017. IFRS 16: Leases The Accounting Standards Board (IASB) issued IFRS 16 Leases, which is effective for annual reporting periods beginning on or after January 1, 2019 , with limited earlier application permitted. This new standard will replace the current IAS 17 Leases standard. , with limited earlier application permitted. This new standard will replace the current IAS 17 Leases standard. Under IFRS 16, leases are accounted for based on a 'right-of-use model'. The model reflects that, at the commencement date, a lessee has a financial obligation to make lease payments to the lessor for its right to use the underlying asset during the lease term. The lessor conveys that right to use the underlying asset at lease commencement, which is the time when it makes the underlying asset available for use by the lessee. The most significant impacts of the new standard in airlines: The new standard requires almost all lease agreements to be recognized on the balance sheet; assets and liabilities will be increased significantly. Almost all the lease payments will no longer be recognized as part of the "rent expenses", but as part of the "depreciation expense". The standard includes certain recognition exemptions: a) leases with a lease term of 12 months, and b) leases where the underlying asset has a low value when new, of US$5,000 or less. or less. IFRS 16 permits two different adoption models. Full retrospective model or modified retrospective model. The impact of U.S. dollar volatility will have greater impact in Mexican airlines with Mexican peso as functional currency. Accounting and taxes implication for the impact of non-cash foreign exchange gain or losses as consequence of the recognition of the required lease liabilities under the adoption of this new standard. Cash Flows impact. Under IAS 17 (current standard) cash flows related to rent payments are recorded as part of the operating cash flows, but under IFRS 16 the cash flows related to rental payments will be presented as part of the financial cash flows. Income tax accounting. a) Recognition and measurement of deferred tax assets and liabilities; and b) Assessment of the recoverability of deferred tax assets. Additional disclosures The Company is in process of completing an assessment of the potential impact of adopting IFRS 16. Investors are urged to carefully read the Company's periodic reports filed with or furnished to the Securities and Exchange Commission, for additional information regarding the Company. Conference Call/Webcast Details: Presenters for the Company: Date: Mr. Enrique Beltranena, CEO Mr. Holger Blankenstein, Airline EVP Ms. Maria Elena Rodriguez, Investor Relations & Corporate Finance Director Friday, October 26, 2018 Time: 10:00 am U.S. EDT (9:00 am Mexico City Time) United States dial in (toll free): 1-877-830-2576 Mexico dial in (toll free): 001-800-514-6145 Brazil dial in (toll free): 0-800-891-6744 International dial in: + 1-785-424-1726 Participant passcode: VOLARIS (8652747) Webcast will be available at: https://webcasts.eqs.com/volaris20181026 About Volaris: *Controladora Vuela Compania de Aviacion, S.A.B. de C.V. ("Volaris" or the "Company") (NYSE: VLRS and BMV: VOLAR), is an ultra-low-cost carrier, with point-to-point operations, serving Mexico, the United States and Central America. Volaris offers low base fares to build its market, providing quality service and extensive customer choice. Since beginning operations in March 2006, Volaris has increased its routes from five to more than 167 and its fleet from four to 73 aircraft. Volaris offers more than 319 daily flight segments on routes that connect 40 cities in Mexico and 27 cities in the United States and Central America with the youngest fleet in Mexico. Volaris targets passengers who are visiting friends and relatives, cost-conscious business people and leisure travelers in Mexico and to select destinations in the United States and Central America. Volaris has received the ESR Award for Social Corporate Responsibility for eight consecutive years. For more information, please visit: www.volaris.com Forward-looking Statements: Statements in this release contain various forward-looking statements within the meaning of Section 27A of the Securities Act of 1933, as amended, and Section 21E of the Securities Exchange Act of 1934, as amended, which represent the Company's expectations, beliefs or projections concerning future events and financial trends affecting the financial condition of our business. When used in this release, the words "expects," "intends," "estimates," "predicts," "plans," "anticipates," "indicates," "believes," "forecast," "guidance," "potential," "outlook," "may," "continue," "will," "should," "seeks," "targets" and similar expressions are intended to identify forward-looking statements. Similarly, statements that describe the Company's objectives, plans or goals, or actions the Company may take in the future, are forward-looking statements. Forward-looking statements include, without limitation, statements regarding the Company's intentions and expectations regarding the delivery schedule of aircraft on order, announced new service routes and customer savings programs. Forward-looking statements should not be read as a guarantee or assurance of future performance or results and will not necessarily be accurate indications of the times at, or by, which such performance or results will be achieved. Forward-looking statements are based on information available at the time those statements are made and/or management's good faith belief as of that time with respect to future events and are subject to risks and uncertainties that could cause actual performance or results to differ materially from those expressed in or suggested by the forward-looking statements. Forward-looking statements are subject to a number of factors that could cause the Company's actual results to differ materially from the Company's expectations, including the competitive environment in the airline industry; the Company's ability to keep costs low; changes in fuel costs; the impact of worldwide economic conditions on customer travel behavior; the Company's ability to generate non-ticket revenues; and government regulation. Additional information concerning these, and other factors is contained in the Company's Securities and Exchange Commission filings. All forward-looking statements attributable to us or persons acting on our behalf are expressly qualified in their entirety by the cautionary statements set forth above. Forward-looking statements speak only as of the date of this release. You should not put undue reliance on any forward-looking statements. We assume no obligation to update forward-looking statements to reflect actual results, changes in assumptions or changes in other factors affecting forward-looking information, except to the extent required by applicable law. If we update one or more forward-looking statements, no inference should be drawn that we will make additional updates with respect to those or other forward-looking statements. Investor Relations Contact: Maria Elena Rodriguez & Andrea Gonzalez / Investor Relations / [email protected] / +52 55 5261 6444 Media Contact: Gabriela Fernandez / [email protected] / +52 55 5246 0100 Controladora Vuela Compania de Aviacion, S.A.B. de C.V. and Subsidiaries Financial and Operating Indicators Unaudited Three months ended September 30, 2018 Three months ended September 30, 2018 Three months ended September 30, 2017 (Adjusted) Variance (In Mexican pesos, except otherwise indicated) (US Dollars)* (%) Total operating revenues (millions) 389 7,316 6,571 11.3% Total operating expenses (millions) 376 7,070 5,948 18.9% EBIT (millions) 13 246 623 (60.5%) EBIT margin 3.4% 3.4% 9.5% (6.1) pp Depreciation and amortization 6 115 150 (23.4%) Aircraft and engine rent expense 85 1,593 1,384 15.1% Net (loss) income (millions) (6) (119) 720 NA Net (loss) income margin (1.6%) (1.6%) 11.0% (12.6) pp (Loss) income per share: Basic (pesos) (0.01) (0.12) 0.71 NA Diluted (pesos) (0.01) (0.12) 0.71 NA (Loss) income per ADS: Basic (pesos) (0.06) (1.17) 7.11 NA Diluted (pesos) (0.06) (1.17) 7.11 NA Weighted average shares outstanding: Basic - 1,011,876,677 1,011,876,677 0.0% Diluted - 1,011,876,677 1,011,876,677 0.0% Available seat miles (ASMs) (millions) (1) - 5,422 4,780 13.4% Domestic - 3,752 3,239 15.8% International - 1,670 1,541 8.4% Revenue passenger miles (RPMs) (millions) (1) - 4,526 4,119 9.9% Domestic - 3,230 2,852 13.3% International - 1,296 1,267 2.3% Load factor (2) - 83.5% 86.2% (2.7) pp Domestic - 86.1% 88.1% (2.0) pp International - 77.6% 82.2% (4.6) pp Total operating revenue per ASM (TRASM) (cents) (1) 7.2 134.9 137.5 (1.9%) Fare revenue per ASM (RASM) (cents) (1) 5.0 94.0 99.9 (5.9%) Fare revenue per RPM (Yield) (cents) (1) 6.0 112.6 115.9 (2.8%) Average fare (2) 58 1,091 1,146 (4.8%) Average other passenger revenue (1) 22 419 362 15.7% Average non-passenger revenue (1) 2.9 55 68 (19.4%) Total ancillary revenue per passenger (4) 25.2 474 431 10.1% Operating expenses per ASM (CASM) (cents) (1) 6.9 130.4 124.4 4.8% Operating expenses per ASM (CASM) (US cents) (3) - 6.9 7.0 (1.6%) CASM ex fuel (cents) (1) 4.4 81.9 88.9 (7.9%) CASM ex fuel (US cents) (3) - 4.3 5.0 (13.5%) Booked passengers (thousands) (1) - 4,680 4,173 12.1% Departures (1) - 30,391 26,999 12.6% Block hours (1) - 82,977 73,725 12.5% Fuel gallons consumed (millions) - 60.5 53.4 13.2% Average economic fuel cost per gallon 2.3 43.5 31.8 36.9% Aircraft at end of period - 73 67 9.0% Average aircraft utilization (block hours) - 13.1 12.5 4.4% Average exchange rate - 18.98 17.82 6.5% End of period exchange rate - 18.81 18.20 3.4% *Peso amounts were converted to U.S. dollars at end of period exchange rate for convenience purposes only (1) Includes schedule + charter (3) Dollar amounts were converted at average exchange rate of each period (2) Includes schedule (4) Includes "other passenger revenues" and "non-passenger revenues" Controladora Vuela Compania de Aviacion, S.A.B. de C.V. and Subsidiaries Financial and Operating Indicators Unaudited Nine months ended September 30, 2018 Nine months ended September 30, 2018 Nine months ended September 30, 2017 (Adjusted) Variance (In Mexican pesos, except otherwise indicated) (US Dollars) * (%) Total operating revenues (millions) 1,031 19,396 18,264 6.2% Total operating expenses (millions) 1,097 20,632 18,319 12.6% EBIT (millions) (66) (1,235) (55) >100% EBIT margin (6.4%) (6.4%) (0.3%) (6.1) pp Depreciation and amortization 20 371 418 (11.2%) Aircraft and engine rent expense 249 4,693 4,461 5.2% Net loss (millions) (64) (1,199) (1,106) 8.4% Net loss margin (6.2%) (6.2%) (6.1%) (0.1) pp Loss per share: Basic (pesos) (0.06) (1.18) (1.09) 8.4% Diluted (pesos) (0.06) (1.18) (1.09) 8.4% Loss per ADS: Basic (pesos) (0.63) (11.85) (10.93) 8.4% Diluted (pesos) (0.63) (11.85) (10.93) 8.4% Weighted average shares outstanding: Basic - 1,011,876,677 1,011,876,677 0.0% Diluted - 1,011,876,677 1,011,876,677 0.0% Available seat miles (ASMs) (millions) (1) - 15,538 13,966 11.3% Domestic - 10,687 9,379 13.9% International - 4,851 4,587 5.8% Revenue passenger miles (RPMs) (millions) (1) - 13,017 11,875 9.6% Domestic - 9,227 8,165 13.0% International - 3,790 3,710 2.2% Load factor (2) - 83.8% 85.0% (1.2) pp Domestic - 86.3% 87.1% (0.8) pp International - 78.2% 80.8% (2.6) pp Total operating revenue per ASM (TRASM) (cents) (1) 6.6 124.8 130.8 (4.5%) Fare revenue per ASM (RASM) (cents) (1) 4.5 84.4 93.4 (9.6%) Fare revenue per RPM (Yield) (cents) (1) 5.4 100.8 109.9 (8.3%) Average fare (2) 52 978 1,074 (8.9%) Average other passenger revenue 21 402 356 13.0% Average non-passenger revenue (1) 3.5 65 71 (8.7%) Total ancillary revenue per passenger (4) 24.8 467 427 9.4% Operating expenses per ASM (CASM) (cents) (1) 7.1 132.8 131.2 1.2% Operating expenses per ASM (CASM) (US cents) (3) - 7.0 6.9 0.6% CASM ex fuel (cents) (1) 4.6 86.1 93.3 (7.7%) CASM ex fuel (US cents) (3) - 4.5 4.9 (8.3%) Booked passengers (thousands) (1) - 13,434 12,200 10.1% Departures (1) - 87,076 80,182 8.6% Block hours (1) - 237,485 217,562 9.2% Fuel gallons consumed (millions) - 168.7 157.2 7.3% Average economic fuel cost per gallon 2.3 43.0 33.6 27.9% Aircraft at end of period - 73 67 9.0% Average aircraft utilization (block hours) - 13.4 12.5 7.1% Average exchange rate - 19.04 18.93 0.6% End of period exchange rate - 18.81 18.20 3.4% *Peso amounts were converted to U.S. dollars at end of period exchange rate for convenience purposes only (1) Includes schedule + charter (3) Dollar amounts were converted at average exchange rate of each period (2) Includes schedule (4) Includes "other passenger revenues" and "non-passenger revenues" Controladora Vuela Compania de Aviacion, S.A.B. de C.V. and Subsidiaries Consolidated Statement of Operations Unaudited Three months ended September 30, 2018 Three months ended September 30, 2018 Three months ended September 30, 2017 (Adjusted) Variance (In millions of Mexican pesos) (US Dollars) * (%) Operating revenues: Passenger revenues 375 7,058 6,286 12.3% Fare revenues 271 5,096 4,773 6.8% Other passenger revenues 104 1,962 1,513 29.7% Non-passenger revenues 14 258 285 (9.5%) Cargo 3 55 38 44.7% Other non-passenger revenues 11 203 247 (17.8%) Total operating revenues 389 7,316 6,571 11.3% Other operating income (13) (243) (8) >100% Fuel 140 2,631 1,698 54.9% Aircraft and engine rent expense 85 1,593 1,384 15.1% Landing, take-off and navigation expenses 61 1,150 989 16.2% Salaries and benefits 44 834 695 19.9% Maintenance expenses 21 393 324 21.3% Sales, marketing and distribution expenses 18 340 468 (27.4%) Other operating expenses 14 257 248 3.6% Depreciation and amortization 6 115 150 (23.4%) Operating expenses 376 7,070 5,948 18.9% Operating income 13 246 623 (60.5%) Finance income 2 37 30 23.3% Finance cost (4) (64) (20) >100% Exchange (loss) gain, net (22) (419) 125 NA Comprehensive financing result (24) (446) 135 NA (Loss) income before income tax (11) (200) 758 NA Income tax benefit (expense) 4 81 (38) NA Net (loss) income (6) (119) 720 NA *Peso amounts were converted to U.S. dollars at end of period exchange rate for convenience purposes only. Controladora Vuela Compania de Aviacion, S.A.B. de C.V. and Subsidiaries Consolidated Statement of Operations Unaudited Nine months ended September 30, 2018 Nine months ended September 30, 2018 Nine months ended September 30, 2017 (Adjusted) Variance (In millions of Mexican pesos) (US Dollars)* (%) Operating revenues: Passenger revenues 984 18,520 17,392 6.5% Fare revenues 697 13,118 13,050 0.5% Other passenger revenues 287 5,402 4,342 24.4% Non-passenger revenues 47 877 872 0.5% Cargo 9 156 118 32.2% Other non-passenger revenues 38 720 754 (4.5%) Total operating revenues 1,031 19,396 18,264 6.2% Other operating income (25) (475) (19) >100% Fuel 385 7,250 5,284 37.2% Aircraft and engine rent expense 249 4,693 4,461 5.2% Landing, take-off and navigation expenses 182 3,425 3,029 13.1% Salaries and benefits 124 2,330 2,108 10.5% Maintenance expenses 60 1,126 1,037 8.5% Sales, marketing and distribution expenses 57 1,079 1,212 (11.0%) Other operating expenses 45 832 789 5.4% Depreciation and amortization 20 371 418 (11.2%) Operating expenses 1,097 20,632 18,319 12.6% Operating loss (66) (1,235) (55) >100% Finance income 6 108 72 50.0% Finance cost (7) (129) (62) >100% Exchange loss, net (24) (457) (1,578) (71.0%) Comprehensive financing result (25) (477) (1,567) (69.5%) Loss before income tax (91) (1,713) (1,623) 5.5% Income tax benefit 27 514 517 (0.6%) Net loss (64) (1,199) (1,106) 8.4% *Peso amounts were converted to U.S. dollars at end of period exchange rate for convenience purposes only. Controladora Vuela Compania de Aviacion, S.A.B. de C.V. and Subsidiaries Reconciliation of total ancillary revenue per passenger The adoption of the IFRS 15 impacted the classification and timing of recognition of certain ancillary items such as bags, advanced seat selection, itinerary changes and other air travel-related fees, since they are deemed part of the single performance obligation of providing passenger transportation. These ancillary items are now recognized in passenger revenue (disclosed below as "other passenger revenue"). Non-passenger revenue primarily consists of revenue from the sale of other items such as rental cars, insurance, hotels and cargo. This change did not have a material impact on our income statement or balance sheet in any period presented. The following table shows quarterly additional detail about the components of total ancillary revenue: Unaudited Three months ended September 30, 2018 (US Dollars)* Three months ended September 30, 2018 Three months ended September 30, 2017 (Adjusted) Variance (%) (In millions of Mexican pesos) Other passenger revenues 104 1,962 1,513 29.7% Non-passenger revenues 14 258 285 (9.5%) Total ancillary revenues 118 2,220 1,798 23.5% Booked passengers (thousands) 4,680 4,680 4,173 12.1% Total ancillary revenue per passenger 25.2 474 431 10.1% *Peso amounts were converted to U.S. dollars at end of period exchange rate for convenience purposes only. Controladora Vuela Compania de Aviacion, S.A.B. de C.V. and Subsidiaries Consolidated Statement of Financial Position (In millions of Mexican pesos) September 30, 2018 Unaudited September 30, 2018 Unaudited December 31, 2017 (Adjusted) (US Dollars)* Assets Cash and cash equivalents 323 6,082 6,951 Accounts receivable 110 2,045 1,449 Inventories 16 309 295 Prepaid expenses and other current assets 36 678 768 Financial instruments 12 228 497 Guarantee deposits 49 925 1,353 Total current assets 546 10,267 11,313 Rotable spare parts, furniture and equipment, net 270 5,081 4,376 Intangible assets, net 9 162 190 Deferred income taxes 30 571 563 Guarantee deposits 291 5,477 6,098 Other assets 7 126 126 Total non-current assets 607 11,417 11,353 Total assets 1,153 21,684 22,666 Liabilities Unearned transportation revenue 149 2,806 2,293 Accounts payable 57 1,065 1,118 Accrued liabilities 120 2,263 2,051 Other taxes and fees payable 89 1,665 1,245 Income taxes payable 8 155 111 Financial instruments - 4 - Financial debt 127 2,393 2,404 Other liabilities 5 85 281 Total short-term liabilities 555 10,436 9,503 Financial debt 43 800 1,079 Accrued liabilities 8 153 200 Other liabilities 15 291 217 Employee benefits 1 22 19 Deferred income taxes 60 1,119 1,617 Total long-term liabilities 127 2,385 3,132 Total liabilities 682 12,821 12,635 Equity Capital stock 158 2,974 2,974 Treasury shares (5) (100) (85) Contributions for future capital increases - - - Legal reserve 16 291 291 Additional paid-in capital 96 1,813 1,804 Retained earnings 199 3,750 4,948 Accumulated other comprehensive losses 7 135 99 Total equity 471 8,863 10,031 Total liabilities and equity 1,153 21,684 22,666 Total shares outstanding fully diluted 1,011,876,677 1,011,876,677 *Peso amounts were converted to U.S. dollars at end of period exchange rate for convenience purposes only Controladora Vuela Compania de Aviacion, S.A.B. de C.V. and Subsidiaries Consolidated Statement of Cash Flows Cash Flow Data Summary Unaudited Three months ended September 30, 2018 Three months ended September 30, 2018 Three months ended September 30, 2017 (Adjusted) (In millions of Mexican pesos) (US Dollars)* Net cash flow used in operating activities (7) (136) (385) Net cash flow provided by (used in) investing activities 1 20 (564) Net cash flow (used in) provided by financing activities (13) (247) 268 Decrease in cash and cash equivalents (19) (363) (681) Net foreign exchange differences (17) (326) 73 Cash and cash equivalents at beginning of period 359 6,771 5,981 Cash and cash equivalents at end of period 323 6,082 5,373 *Peso amounts were converted to U.S. dollars at end of period exchange rate for convenience purposes only Controladora Vuela Compania de Aviacion, S.A.B. de C.V. and Subsidiaries Consolidated Statement of Cash Flows Cash Flow Data Summary Unaudited Nine months ended September 30, 2018 Nine months ended September 30, 2018 Nine months ended September 30, 2017 (Adjusted) (In millions of Mexican pesos) (US Dollars)* Net cash flow provided by (used in) operating activities 25 464 (130) Net cash flow used in investing activities (34) (641) (1,409) Net cash flow (used in) provided by financing activities (21) (386) 533 Decrease in cash and cash equivalents (30) (563) (1,006) Net foreign exchange differences (16) (306) (692) Cash and cash equivalents at beginning of period 369 6,951 7,071 Cash and cash equivalents at end of period 323 6,082 5,373 *Peso amounts were converted to U.S. dollars at end of period exchange rate for convenience purposes only Controladora Vuela Compania de Aviacion, S.A.B. de C.V. and Subsidiaries The following table shows adjusted balances after the adoption of IFRS 15, "Revenue from Contracts with Customers" on the quarterly statements of operations for each quarter of 2017. These recast amounts were derived from unaudited financial statements included in the quarterly reports on Form 6-K during the year ended December 31, 2017. Unaudited Three months ended March 31, 2017 Three months ended June 30, 2017 Three months ended September 30, 2017 Three months ended December 31, 2017 Full Year 2017 Adjusted (In millions of Mexican pesos) Operating revenues: Passenger revenues 5,407 5,700 6,286 6,257 23,650 Fare revenues 4,025 4,252 4,773 4,741 17,791 Other passenger revenues 1,382 1,448 1,513 1,516 5,859 Non-passenger revenues 292 294 285 267 1,138 Cargo 41 39 38 53 171 Other non-passenger revenues 251 255 247 214 967 Total operating revenues 5,699 5,994 6,571 6,524 24,788 Other operating income (1) (10) (8) (78) (97) Fuel 1,892 1,694 1,698 1,972 7,256 Aircraft and engine rent expense 1,699 1,378 1,384 1,612 6,073 Landing, take-off and navigation expenses 1,035 1,006 989 981 4,011 Salaries and benefits 696 717 695 715 2,823 Sales, marketing and distribution expenses 358 387 468 479 1,692 Maintenance expenses 351 362 324 396 1,433 Other operating expenses 270 270 248 300 1,088 Depreciation and amortization 128 139 150 131 548 Operating expenses 6,428 5,943 5,948 6,508 24,827 Operating (loss) income (729) 51 623 16 (39) Finance income 21 21 30 34 106 Finance cost (21) (22) (20) (23) (86) Exchange (loss) gain, net (1,145) (558) 125 784 (794) Comprehensive financing result (1,145) (559) 135 795 (774) (Loss) income before income tax (1,874) (508) 758 811 (813) Income tax benefit 556 - (38) (357) 161 Net (loss) income (1,318) (508) 720 454 (652) (Loss) earnings per share: Basic (pesos) (1.30) (0.50) 0.71 0.45 (0.64) Diluted (pesos) (1.30) (0.50) 0.71 0.45 (0.64) (Loss) earnings per ADS: Basic (pesos) (13.02) (5.02) 7.11 4.49 (6.44) Diluted (pesos) (13.02) (5.02) 7.11 4.49 (6.44) Controladora Vuela Compania de Aviacion, S.A.B. de C.V. and Subsidiaries The following table shows quarterly adjustments made due to the adoption of IFRS 15, "Revenue from Contracts with Customers" on the statements of operations for 2017. Unaudited Full Year 2017 as Reported Three months ended March 31, 2017 Three months ended June 30, 2017 Three months ended September 30, 2017 Three months ended December 31, 2017 Full Year 2017 Adjusted (In millions of Mexican pesos) Operating revenues: Passenger revenues 17,791 1,382 1,448 1,513 1,516 23,650 Fare revenues 17,791 - - - - 17,791 Other passenger revenues - 1,382 1,448 1,513 1,516 5,859 Non-passenger revenues 7,054 (1,339) (1,435) (1,524) (1,618) 1,138 Cargo 171 - - - - 171 Other non-passenger revenues 6,883 (1,339) (1,435) (1,524) (1,618) 967 Total operating revenues 24,845 43 13 (11) (102) 24,788 Other operating income (97) - - - - (97) Fuel 7,256 - - - - 7,256 Aircraft and engine rent expense 6,073 - - - - 6,073 Landing, take-off and navigation expenses 4,011 - - - - 4,011 Salaries and benefits 2,823 - - - - 2,823 Sales, marketing and distribution expenses 1,692 - - - - 1,692 Maintenance expenses 1,433 - - - - 1,433 Other operating expenses 1,088 - - - - 1,088 Depreciation and amortization 548 - - - - 548 Operating expenses 24,827 - - - - 24,827 Operating income (loss) 18 43 13 (11) (102) (39) Finance income 106 - - - - 106 Finance cost (86) - - - - (86) Exchange (loss), net (794) - - - - (794) Comprehensive financing result (774) - - - - (774) (Loss)income before income tax (756) 43 13 (11) (102) (813) Income tax benefit 161 - - - - 161 Net (loss) income (595) 43 13 (11) (102) (652) Basic (loss) earnings per share (0.59) 0.04 0.01 (0.01) (0.10) (0.64) Diluted (loss) earnings per share (0.59) 0.04 0.01 (0.01) (0.10) (0.64) Controladora Vuela Compania de Aviacion, S.A.B. de C.V. and Subsidiaries Reconciliation of total ancillary revenue per passenger The adoption of the IFRS 15 impacted the classification and timing of recognition of certain ancillary items such as bags, advanced seat selection, itinerary changes and other air travel-related fees, since they are deemed part of the single performance obligation of providing passenger transportation. These ancillary items are now recognized in passenger revenue (disclosed below as "other passenger revenue"). Non-passenger revenue primarily consists of revenue from the sale of other items such as rental cars, insurance hotels and cargo. This change did not have a material impact on our income statement or balance sheet in any period presented. The following table shows quarterly additional detail about the components of total ancillary revenue: Unaudited Three months ended March 31, 2017 Three months ended June 30, 2017 Three months ended September 30, 2017 Three months ended December 31, 2017 Full Year 2017 Adjusted (In millions of Mexican pesos) Other passenger revenues 1,382 1,448 1,513 1,516 5,859 Non-passenger revenues 292 294 285 267 1,138 Total ancillary revenues 1,674 1,742 1,798 1,783 6,997 Booked passengers (thousands) 3,964 4,063 4,173 4,226 16,426 Total ancillary revenue per passenger 422 429 431 422 426 Total ancillary revenue per passenger (as reported) (*) 411 426 434 446 429 (*) These recast amounts were derived from unaudited financial statements included in the quarterly reports on Form 6-K during the year ended December 31, 2017, under the called name "Non-ticket revenue per passenger". [1] Source: Asociacion Nacional de Tiendas de Autoservicio y Departamentales, A. C. (ANTAD) [2] Source: Banco de Mexico (BANXICO) [3] Source: Instituto Nacional de Estadistica y Geografia (INEGI) SOURCE Volaris TROY, Mich., Oct. 26, 2018 /PRNewswire/ -- Three women from Merrill Lynch who have achieved success in the financial services industry will share how others can bridge the gender gap and build a career in this competitive field during Walsh's Conversation With Leaders event at 5 p.m. Thursday, Nov. 8. The event, open to the public, will be held in room 199 at the Troy location, 3838 Livernois Rd. Troy, MI 48083. Merrill Lynch's Laurie Bournias, first vice president, wealth management advisor; Nicole Morgia, vice president, client relationship manager; and Estrella (Star) Crawford, community relations manager with the company's local markets organization, will speak at the event. The panel will be moderated by Nathan Marsden, managing director and market executive at Merrill Lynch. "These three women are not just leaders in their field, but also role models for other women who are interested in building a career in the financial services industry," says Walsh President & CEO Marsha Kelliher. "We are proud to welcome them to Walsh and share with our students and the community their experiences in the financial services industry." Bournias began her career at Merrill Lynch after earning a bachelor's degree in finance from Walsh in 1992. As a first vice president, wealth management advisor, she assists clients with a net worth of $1 million or more. She holds certifications and designations including Certified Financial Planner (CFP), Chartered Retirement Planning Counselor (CRPC) and FINRA and insurance licenses. Morgia, a client relationship manager, joined Merrill Lynch in 2016 after holding positions as director of operations for MetLife and regional manager at Raymond James. She graduated from Wayne State University with a bachelor's degree in English/communications. Crawford, community relations manager at Merrill Lynch, is responsible for supporting the market president and leadership team revenue growth and brand in local markets. She joined Bank of America in 2004 as a relationship manager and has held a wide variety of roles including change consultant, quality team manager and senior business controls specialist. She earned a bachelor's degree in modern foreign languages with a concentration in Spanish from Morris Brown College. There is no cost to attend the Conversation With Leaders forum. For more information, visit https://info.walshcollege.edu/cwl/. About Walsh Walsh is an all-business, private, independent, not-for-profit, fully accredited college offering undergraduate and graduate business and technology degrees, as well as certificate programs. Founded in 1922, Walsh is one of the region's largest business schools and Michigan's third largest graduate business school. Walsh has locations in Troy, Novi, Clinton Township and Port Huron, as well as online. Our nationally ranked programs integrate theory and application to prepare graduates for successful careers. Walsh degree programs include accounting, finance, information technology, management, marketing, taxation and other fields. For more information, please visit www.walshcollege.edu. Walsh is accredited by the Higher Learning Commission (www.hlcommission.org ) and the Accreditation Council for Business Schools & Programs (www.acbsp.org). MEDIA CONTACT Sharon Stanton Walsh [email protected] (248) 823-1360 SOURCE Walsh Related Links http://www.walshcollege.edu/ WASHINGTON, Oct. 26, 2018 /PRNewswire/ -- The Water Systems Council (WSC), the only national nonprofit organization solely focused on household wells and water well systems, celebrated President Trump's signing of America's Water Infrastructure Act into law earlier this week, saying that the new law is a major step toward providing all Americans with safe, clean drinking water. The new law includes the WSC-supported Securing Required Funding for Water Infrastructure Now (SRF WIN) Act, which was introduced by U.S. Senators John Boozman (R-AR) and Cory Booker (D-NJ). The SRF WIN Act modernizes investment in water infrastructure by empowering states to invest in multiple water infrastructure projects. "America's Water Infrastructure Act is in lock step with President Trump's vision for infrastructure," said Senator Boozman, Chair of the Senate Fisheries, Water and Wildlife Subcommittee. "I'm particularly pleased that this bill also includes the SRF WIN Act, legislation I introduced with Senator Booker. What the SRF WIN Act does is simple: it combines the efficiency and trust associated with the State Revolving Funds with the leveraging power of the Water Infrastructure Finance and Innovation Act (WIFIA). This legislation provides millions and potentially billions in project dollars to communities that have traditionally not had access to these types of funds. "The Water Systems Council was an integral part of getting this legislation included in AWIA and I couldn't have done it without their help," Boozman continued. "I would like to thank WSC for its efforts in support of the SRF WIN Act." Senator John Barrasso, Chair of the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee, noted that the passage of this new legislation is of particular interest to his home state of Wyoming, noting, "I applaud President Trump for signing this significant piece of infrastructure legislation into law. The president called on Congress to act and America's Water Infrastructure Act delivers. The bipartisan bill will keep communities safe and cut red tape, all while being fiscally responsible. It is good for Wyoming and good for the nation. America's Water Infrastructure Act will upgrade and maintain aging dams and irrigation systems, increase water storage, and deepen nationally significant ports. It authorizes funds to repair aging drinking water systems, so that communities across America have access to clean drinking water. It authorizes important projects that will create jobs and grow our economy. America's Water Infrastructure Act is a win for all Americans." WSC President Richard Mest said, "With the availability of economical alternatives like water well systems and an affordable funding solution provided by this new law, there should be no reason that every American should not have access to safe drinking water." The Water Systems Council is committed to ensuring that Americans who get their water from household private wells have safe, reliable drinking water, and to protecting our nation's groundwater resources. For more information, visit www.watersystemscouncil.org. Contact: Margaret Martens, Executive Director Water Systems Council [email protected] 202-625-4387 SOURCE Water Systems Council Related Links http://www.watersystemscouncil.org Paris, Oct 26 : French President Emmanuel Macron on Thursday discussed the situation in Syria and the summit on the Syrian conflict scheduled in Istanbul at the weekend, with US President Donald Trump in a phone conversation. In a statement issued by his office, the Elysee, Macron "presented the issues of this meeting which aims to reach a sustainable ceasefire in the region of Idlib and to deepen the discussions on the political process to resolve Syria's conflict," Xinhua reported. "President Trump supported this position. The United States and France share the same security, humanitarian and political objectives in Syria," it added. The two leaders also held talks about Washington's decision to withdraw from the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty (INF Treaty). They agreed to have tripartite discussion with Russia on the issue. The leaders of France, Germany, Turkey and Russia will hold a summit on the Syrian conflict in Istanbul on Saturday to seek ways to avoid a humanitarian crisis in Idlib region and ensure a lasting ceasefire. Srinagar, Oct 26 : An army soldier was injured in a gunfight on Friday in Jammu and Kashmir's Baramulla district, police said. As security forces laid a cordon around Pazalpora village of Sopore, hiding militants fired at them triggering an encounter in which an army soldier was injured. He was shifted to a hospital and his condition was stable, a police officer said. The operation was still underway and was being jointly conducted by the Rashtriya Rifles (RR), special operations group of police (SOG) and the Central Reserve Police Force (CRPF). Washington, Oct 26 : US Defence Secretary James Mattis is expected to sign deployment orders that could send over 800 more troops to the border with Mexico to help border patrol authorities stop a migrants' caravan from Central America to enter the US. Administration officials told CNN on Thursday that final details were being worked out including where the troops will come from and their specific tasks. It was anticipated that the Pentagon would pay for the bulk of the mission by using active duty troops but it was not yet clear if the Department of Homeland Security would reimburse the Pentagon. According to the officials, the Pentagon has been under growing pressure from the White House to send troops to the southern border, especially after President Donald Trump repeatedly called for the use of the military. The troops will not engage in lethal operations to stop the migrants. Instead they are expected to provide fencing, wall materials and other technical support at several key points along the border where it is believed the migrants may try to cross. They will also provide tents and medical care for border authorities in those areas and retain the right of self-defence, but border patrol officers will still be the ones physically stopping illegal migration, the officials told CNN. The troops are expected to be in position next week. On Thursday morning, the caravan left Mapastepec, Mexico, about 80 miles from the Mexico-Guatemala border and it isn't expected to reach the US border for weeks. Srinagar, Oct 26 : An Indian Army soldier and two militants were killed on Friday in a gunfight in Jammu and Kashmir's Baramulla district, police said. The soldier identified as Brijesh Kumar, who was injured minutes after the Pazalpora village encounter in the Sopore area started, succumbed at the Army Base Hospital in Srinagar. The bodies of the two terrorists were yet to be recovered and identified, a police officer said. Kumar sustained injuries after the security forces laid a cordon around the village and hiding militants fired triggering the encounter. The Rashtriya Rifles (RR), Special Operations Group (SOG) of the state police and the Central Reserve Police Force (CRPF) had launched the joint operation early in the day after receiving specific inputs on militant presence. Authorities have ordered all schools and colleges in Sopore town to remain shut for the day. New York, Oct 26 : In the backdrop of a possible change in 'gender definition' by the US administration, transgender activist Caitlyn Jenner has ended her support for US President Donald Trump over his record on trans rights. The ex-Olympic athlete and reality TV star said she had "remained hopeful" that she could work with the Trump administration but in a column for the Washington Post on Thursday, she admitted her position had been a "mistake". "The reality is that the trans community is being relentlessly attacked by this president," she wrote. Trump has faced strong criticism after the New York Times reported the government was considering officially defining gender as biological and fixed, the BBC reported. The change would rescind previous policy which eased trans recognition and would instead define gender solely by the genitalia people are born with. In her column, Jenner accused Trump of using the trans community as "political pawns". "The leader of our nation has shown no regard for an already marginalised and struggling community," she added. "He has ignored our humanity. He has insulted our dignity." In 2017, Jenner told the BBC that she had been "really upset" by some of the Trump policies, including his decision to revoke Obama-era guidance which allowed transgender students to use school toilets matching their gender identity. "It doesn't make me regret my vote yet, but it is very disappointing and I have been very verbal about that," she said at the time. The same year, Trump also reinstated a ban on transgender people serving in the military which had been lifted by former President Barack Obama. He later signed a more limited directive after federal judges ruled the initial ban was probably unconstitutional. Redmond (Washington State), Oct 26 : Microsoft is committed to complying with the law of the land when it comes to data privacy and will honour data localisation requests from all countries, including India. "We will have to comply with data laws of various countries. That is mandatory for us. We are already fully compliant with the EU General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) and will do the same with other countries' data protection laws," Ann Johnson, Corporate Vice President, Cybersecurity Solutions Group at Microsoft, told IANS. As the tech companies demand data to flow freely, Johnson said in order to improve current security and intelligent systems against cyber criminals who are well funded, certain sets of data have to move freely among the countries. "I care about the flow of anonymous sets of encrypted data that must flow freely among the countries. New cyber threats are emerging and in this scenario, knowing such set of triggers can help us build improved security systems, especially at a time when bad actors are very well funded," Johnson added. Over 1.2 billion people use Microsoft Office in 140 countries and 107 languages around the world so the task to safeguard their data is humongous. From device to platform, Microsoft is building solutions to meet the needs of the most security-conscious organisations and the regulatory guidelines in which they operate. According to Microsoft Intelligent Security Graph, the security researchers are today analysing trillion of cyber threat signals -- including 400 billion Outlook emails, 1.2 billion Microsoft devices, over 750 million Azure Cloud accounts and over 200 global partners and commercial services. "We are working very hard on the subject where to build our data centres. We are in nearly 40 countries now. There are government demands on a theory which is well established that if the data is located in a country, the government has more control over it," David Heiner, Strategic Policy Advisor at Microsoft, told IANS. "We are trying hard to think through what country we want to be in. Some countries where human rights are a big issue, we don't want to be there. We don't want our data to be turned over to such governments," Heiner noted. Microsoft has taken a lead in the data protection with the EU GDPR. "It ups the stakes for tech companies for data privacy and security as penalties are gigantic. Privacy never had such hefty fines and it does have now as it has set high international standards for others to emulate," the Microsoft executive emphasised. On a question that there should be a single global data privacy law, Heiner said that tech companies will be very happy if there is a standard set of rules. "But we will never get there as governments have different values and we respect that. Brazil has put a law in place which is identical to GDPR and we welcome that," he told IANS. When it comes to Artificial Intelligence (AI), the need of the hour is to build "trustworthy AI" that is fair and does not differentiate between religion, caste and colour. "The whole idea is to build applications around AI in a trustworthy way. People will not share data and they must not be. With respect to users' privacy, we need trusted AI systems that are safe and transparent," Heiner explained. To address such challenges, Microsoft has formulated a committee called AI and Ethics in Engineering and Research (AETHER), bringing together senior leaders from across the company to focus on proactive formulation of internal policies and how to respond to specific issues in a responsible way. AETHER has the task of ensuring Microsoft AI platform and experience efforts remain deeply grounded within the company's core values and principles and benefit the broader society. Among other steps, the company is investing in strategies and tools for detecting and addressing bias in AI systems and implementing new requirements established by the EU GDPR. (Nishant Arora is in Seattle on an invitation from Microsoft. He can be contacted at nishant.a@ians.in) Washington, Oct 26 : US President Donald Trump has signed new sanctions targeting the Iranian-funded militant group and political party Hezbollah, which is considered a terrorist organisation by Washington. "Over the past year we have levied the highest sanctions ever imposed on Hezbollah -- in a single year, by far. Just a few moments ago, I signed legislation imposing even more hard-hitting sanctions on Hezbollah to further starve them of their funds. And they are starving for them," Trump said during an event on Thursday marking the 35th anniversary of the attack on US Marine barracks in Beirut. The legislation, known as the Hezbollah International Financing Prevention Amendments Act, was sponsored by Senator Marco Rubio, a Florida Republican, reports CNN. The bill ramps up reporting requirements and places further financial and economic sanctions on the group. "We will target, disrupt and dismantle their operational and financing efforts, of which they have plenty and we will never forget what they did to our Marines in Beirut," the President added. White House press secretary Sarah Sanders said in a statement that the sanctions "will further isolate Hezbollah from the international financial system and reduce its funding". "These sanctions will target foreign persons and government agencies that knowingly assist or support Hezbollah, and Hezbollah-affiliated networks that engage in drug trafficking or other transnational crime," she added. Thiruvananthapuram, Oct 26 : K. Anvar Sadath, Vice Chairman and Executive Director of Kerala Infrastructure and Technology For Education (KITE), has become the first Indian to receive AECT's International Contributions Award. The award was handed over by Phillip Harris, Executive Director of Association for Educational Communications and Technology (AECT) at a ceremony held at Kansas City on Thursday night. "Sadath's outstanding and continuous contributions to the field of educational communications and technology in the international setting is well appreciated. We are impressed with his work and service to this field," the AECT committee said. Sadath heads the implementation of Kerala Hi-tech School project which has converted almost 45,000 classrooms of Classes 8 to 12 to hi-tech ones, besides empowering all teachers to handle the pedagogy-based classroom transactions that connect 15,000 schools. "Our strength is by integrating technology into curriculum to enhance teaching and learning," said Sadath. The AECT is the premier professional association for instructional design and educational technology, headquartered at Bloomington, US. It works to provide international leadership by promoting scholarships and best practices in the creation, use and management of technologies for effective teaching and learning. New Delhi, Oct 26 : The Supreme Court on Friday appointed one of its former judges, Justice A.K. Patnaik, to supervise the inquiry into the allegations against CBI Director Alok Verma while giving to two weeks time to the CVC to complete the probe. New Delhi, Oct 26 : Travel has emerged as an important element during the festive season, with a spiritual destination such as Amritsar witnessing a year-on-year increase in flight searches by 114 per cent, according to a trend search. Travel search engine Kayak has revealed that for the widely celebrated festival of Diwali this year, Indians are looking at travelling to different destinations. Domestically, Amritsar is topping the list of the most trending destinations, while amongst the top trending international destinations, Dubai leads the list by 83 per cent increase in flight searches being done during the festival. Abhijit Mishra, Director of India and Middle East, Kayak, said: "Diwali is known to be the festival of lights, prosperity, happiness and new beginnings all across the country. It is the perfect opportunity for people to connect with their loved ones and celebrate togetherness. "This year during the festival, Indians are choosing to celebrate that connect by travelling to and with their close ones. With travel searches having increased from the previous year around the same time, we believe that the love Indians have for travelling is growing." After Amritsar in the domestic market, Chennai holds the second spot a 70 per cent year-on-year increase, followed by Bengaluru, Varanasi and Bhubaneswar. Indians are interested in not just in destinations within the country but are also willing to explore international destinations. Apart from Dubai, people look to travel to Milan, Cairo, Bangkok and Phuket. The data is based on searches conducted on Kayak.co.in in between January 1, 2018 - July 31 for travel dates between November 1, 2018 and November 31, 2018. Indore, Oct 26 : A two-year-old girl was molested by her maternal grandfather in Madhya Pradesh's Indore city, police said. The accused, Lakhan Yadav, has been arrested, police said late on Thursday. The incident happened around 4 p.m. on Thursday when the mother of the victim left her under the care of Yadav to buy groceries from outside. Upon returning, she heard her daughter's screams and rushed her to a nearby hospital. Seeing the critical condition of the girl, the hospital referred her to Maharaja Yeshwantrao Hospital, which denied treatment. The mother then returned home with her daughter. The police took charge of the situation around 11 p.m. and took the victim to the hospital after the incident went viral on social media. Tel Aviv, Oct 26 : Global cybersecurity solution provider Check Point Software Technologies has announced the acquisition of Israel-based Cloud security company Dome9 for an undisclosed amount. This acquisition enhances Check Point's fully consolidated Infinity architecture and its Cloud security offerings with advanced active policy enforcement and multi-Cloud protection capabilities, Check Point said in a statement. "This acquisition will enhance our ability to deliver the benefits of Cloud with the critical security that must extend from the networks, endpoints and data centers to the Cloud and Mobile enterprise-wide," Check Point CEO Gil Shwed said. Founded in 2011, Dome9 enables its customers to use its platform to secure multi-cloud deployments across Amazon Web Services (AWS), Microsoft Azure and Google Cloud. The company provides significant Cloud-native security capabilities including intuitive visualisation of security posture, compliance and governance automation, privileged identity protection and cloud traffic and event analysis, enabling Cloud deployments safer and more manageable. Check Point Software Technologies, which has its international headquarters in Tel Aviv, is a leading provider of cyber security solutions to corporate enterprises and governments globally. Srinagar, Oct 26 : A soldier suffered minor injuries on Friday in a militant attack in Jammu and Kashmir's Shopian district, police said. Police said militants opened fire at the Mantribugh village camp of Rashtriya Rifles. "The militants escaped into the apple orchards around the camp," a police officer said. Washington, Oct 26 : US President Donald Trump has dismissed the New York Times report about Chinese and Russian spies listening in on his cellphone calls as "fake" and "wrong". "The so-called experts on Trump over at The Times wrote a long and boring article on my cellphone usage that is so incorrect I do not have time here to correct it," Trump said in a Thursday tweet. "I only use government phones and have only one seldom used government cell phone. Story is soooo wrong!" In another tweet Trump insisted that his cellphone usage was rare. "I like Hard Lines," he wrote. "Just more made up Fake News!" The Times report published on Wednesday detailed how American intelligence agencies figured out that China and Russia were eavesdropping on calls Trump makes from his iPhones. The report also said that the President continued to use a cellphone despite warnings from aides that calls on it were not secure. White House spokesman Hogan Gidley said that the article "presented inaccurate information about the President's cellphone". He added that "the President does not have three cellular phones. He has one official government iPhone. This phone security follows industry best practices and is closely managed under government supervision in conjunction with recommendations from industry partners". Responding to the Times report, Chinese Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Hua Chunying had said that "certain people in the US are sparing no efforts to win the best screenplay award for the Oscars". "I would like to say that this only provides another piece of evidence of the New York Times concocting fake news... I suggest they replace their phones with Huawei (Chinese mobile phone manufacturer) ones," she said. The Times, citing current and former US officials, had said that the US President uses the iPhones to speak to "old friends", and domestic spy agencies had determined China was seeking to use information from the calls to keep a trade war with the US from escalating. The agencies were said to have learned of the eavesdropping from people inside foreign governments and through intercepting communications between foreign officials, the report said. Patna, Oct 26 : At least four people were killed and nearly 24 injured after a bus overturned near here on Friday, police said. A bus, travelling from Patna to Bihar's Samastipur district, overturned after the driver lost control of the vehicle, Patna Senior Superintendent of Police Manu Maharaj said. The injured have been hospitalised. London, Oct 26 : Astronomers have found evidence for a large number of double supermassive black holes, the likely precursors of gigantic black hole merging events. This confirms the current understanding of cosmological evolution -- that galaxies and their associated black holes merge over time, forming bigger and bigger galaxies and black holes, said an international team of scientists led by astronomers from the University of Hertfordshire, UK. For the research, published in the journal Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society, the team looked at radio maps of powerful jet sources and found signs that would usually be present when looking at black holes that are closely orbiting each other. Supermassive black holes emit powerful jets. When supermassive binary black holes orbit, it causes the jet emanating from the nucleus of a galaxy to periodically change its direction. Astronomers studied the direction that these jets are emitted in, and variances in these directions; they compared the direction of the jets with the one of the radio lobes (that store all the particles that ever went through the jet channels) to demonstrate that this method can be used to indicate the presence of supermassive binary black holes. "We have studied the jets in different conditions for a long time with computer simulations. In this first systematic comparison to high-resolution radio maps of the most powerful radio sources, we were astonished to find signatures that were compatible with jet precession in three quarters of the sources," said lead author Martin Krause, lecturer at the varsity. The fact that the most powerful jets are associated with binary black holes could have important consequences for the formation of stars in galaxies; stars form from cold gas, jets heat this gas and thus suppress the formation of stars. A jet that always heads in the same direction only heats a limited amount of gas in its vicinity. However, jets from binary black holes change direction continuously. Therefore, they can heat much more gas, suppressing the formation of stars much more efficiently, and thus contributing towards keeping the number of stars in galaxies within the observed limits, the astronomers explained. Istanbul, Oct 26 : The Turkish police have found no DNA traces in water samples taken from a well at the residence of the Saudi Arabian consul in Istanbul as they searched for the body of murdered journalist Jamal Khashoggi, the media reported on Friday. Teams of investigators were able to access the kingdom's consulate in Istanbul for the first time on October 15, 13 days after the Saudi journalist entered there and was killed, as Riyadh has already admitted. On October 17, the teams obtained permission to search the consular residence, located about 200 metres away. Turkish Hurriyet newspaper reported that the police tried to empty the water from a well located at the residence, but the Saudi authorities refused to allow access to firefighters because they did not appear on a previously agreed list of names. The agents later inspected the well with a camera and took samples of water, which were sent to a laboratory, Efe news reported citing the daily. However, no traces of Khashoggi's DNA were detected. The daily said that all vehicles of the consulate were subjected to a thorough professional cleaning before the Turkish teams received permission to search them. The Saudi public prosecutor's office admitted on Thursday that the killing of the Washington Post contributor had been planned in advance, adding that those responsible for the crime would be punished. Initially, Saudi Arabia had said Khashoggi left its consulate alive on October 2. But nearly three weeks later, the kingdom admitted he had been killed at the diplomatic mission's building in a fist fight, an account that generated scepticism and which several governments questioned. Later, the Saudi prosecutor's office announced 18 people had been arrested and that the security officials involved in the case had stepped down. Turkey said it believed a hit squad of Saudi nationals had travelled to Istanbul with the sole purpose of killing Khashoggi, a former member of the Saudi elite who became critical of the current government's administration in his country. New Delhi, Oct 26 : Congress President Rahul Gandhi on Friday refused to comment on the Supreme Court order on an inquiry into the allegations against CBI Director Alok Verma by the CVC, saying it was a "process being carried out". "It's a Supreme Court judgement, a process that is being carried out. I don't want to comment on it," Gandhi told reporters outside the Lodhi Road police station where he was briefly detained for leading a protest outside the CBI headquarters. "But I will say that the Prime Minister acted against the Director of the CBI as a result of panic, as a result of fear, because he has helped Mr Anil Ambani with Rs 30,000 crore," he said. The Supreme Court earlier in the day appointed one of its former judges, Justice A.K. Patnaik, to supervise the inquiry into the allegations against Verma while giving two weeks time to the CVC to complete the probe. Yangon, Oct 26 : Three Myanmar journalists who were arrested for publishing a report that criticized government spending were released on bail here on Friday. Eleven Media senior staff Kyaw Zaw Lin, Nayi Min and Phyo Wai Win were escorted by the police at Tamwe township court where the bail hearing took place, Efe news reported. After the hearing, the three journalists emerged from the courtroom smiling and waving. They were arrested on October 10 after Yangon's regional government filed a lawsuit against them for a story that criticized the regional government's financial management. The three were charged under Article 505 (b), which criminalizes the publication of reports that could cause "fear or alarm to the public" and carries a maximum punishment of two years' imprisonment. The arrests once again fixed the spotlight on press freedom in the country, where journalists have been prosecuted in recent months. Two Reuters reporters were each jailed for seven years in September for violating the colonial-era Official Secrets Act. They were arrested while investigating abuses against the Rohingyas in western Myanmar. That same month, a former newspaper columnist and known critic of Myanmar's leader Aung San Suu Kyi was sentenced to seven years in prison on sedition charges. On October 11, the Myanmar Press Council (MPC) denounced the arrests of the Eleven Media journalists, saying that the government should have lodged a complaint with the MPC first. Reporters Without Borders (RSF) called for the "immediate and unconditional release" of the journalists. The Eleven Media Group, which won the RSF Press Freedom Prize in 2011, brings out five weeklies "and has played a fundamental role in the emergence of a civil society in Myanmar," RSF's Asia-Pacific desk said in the statement. Myanmar is currently ranked 137th out of 180 countries on the RSF World Press Freedom Index. New Delhi, Oct 26 : The Supreme Court's decision to intervene in the Central Bureau of Investigation row is a "commentary on a failed government" led by Prime Minister Narendra Modi, the Congress said on Friday. "Today, Modiji was again reminded that 'Modi Rule' fails miserably before the 'Rule of Law'," Congress spokesperson Randeep Singh Surjewala tweeted. The party said "brazen attempts to interfere, infiltrate or capture institutions" will not be tolerated and "people of India will remind you (Modi) in 2019 that bad governments come with an expiry date!" The apex court on Friday appointed one of its former judges, Justice A.K. Patnaik, to supervise an inquiry into the allegations against CBI Director Alok Verma while giving two weeks time to the Central Vigilance Commission to complete the probe. This came "despite the goverment's protests in court", as a bench of Chief Justice Ranjan Gogoi, Justice Sanjay Krishan Kaul and Justice K.M. Joseph called the probe an "exception" to be supervised, stripping the interim Director M. Nageswara Rao of all powers except daily administration, Surjewala said. "History will not forget how you severely underminined the reputation of two premier institutions, CBI and CVC. You are the sole reason for this trust deficit!," the party said hailing the top court's decision. With this yet again the Modi governmentt's "sinister attempt to capture CBI through lackeys" have fallen flat, the party said, adding that the BJP-led NDA should consider it a "slap in face of tyrants who wanted to pin the last nail in CBI's independence". Mumbai, Oct 26 : Non-life insurer Reliance General Insurance Company Ltd on Friday said it closed the quarter ended September 30, with a net profit of Rs 56 crore. In a statement issued here the company said its gross written premium for the quarter under review was Rs 2,025 crore logging a year-on-year (YoY) growth of 20 per cent. The profit after tax (PAT) went up to 56 crore, a YoY growth of 20 per cent. Reliance General Insurance Company Ltd is a wholly owned subsidiary of Reliance Capital Ltd. The combined ratio (ratio of total incurred losses and expenses: earned premium) improved from 109 per cent in Q2 FY18 to 106 per cent in Q2 FY19. The company's investment book increased to Rs 8,650 crore - a YoY increase of 19 per cent. "The industry will benefit from favourable regulatory enactments such as compulsory long-term insurance for motor vehicles and enhancement in the compulsory personal accident cover. We remain focused on our journey of profitable growth. For Q2, our premium grew by 20 per cent against industry growth of 13 per cent," Rakesh Jain, ED and CEO, was quoted as saying in the statement. Chennai, Oct 26 : PMK founder S. Ramadoss on Friday urged the Madras High Court to summon the concerned Minister and all officials and condemn them for hiking the property tax rates much more than the undertaking given to the court. In a statement issued here, Ramadoss said the Corporation of Chennai had increased the property tax rates up to 518 per cent as against an undertaking to the court that the rates would not be increased beyond 50 per cent. Ramadoss said the High Court had ordered the government to revise upwards the property tax rates and also said it would take care of the political leaders criticising the hike. Hence the High Court should take serious action against the Tamil Nadu government's tax rate hike, Ramadoss said. New Delhi, Oct 26 : The National Capital Region should brace for more toxic air as biomass burning, one of the major contributors to air pollution in India, may see a rise of 45 per cent by 2050 with the rise in crop production, a latest study said. The study said 488 metric tonnes of the total crop residue was generated in India in 2017 and about 24 per cent of it was burnt in agricultural fields, mainly in Punjab and Harayna. This resulted in emissions of air pollutants, including greenhouse gases, which play an important role in changing the atmospheric chemistry -- locally, regionally and globally. The rice straw burning in agricultural fields was considered 80 per cent in Punjab, Himachal Pradesh and Haryana, 50 per cent in Karnataka and 25 per cent in other states. Researchers of the School of Public Health of the Department of Community Medicine in the Post Graduate Institute of Medical Education and Research in Chandigarh and the Department of Environment Studies in Panjab University in Chandigarh say crop residue can be used for energy production in biomass power plants. It has the potential of generating 120 TWh (terawatt hours) of electricity, says the study 'Emissions of air pollutants from primary crop residue burning in India and their mitigation strategies for cleaner emissions' published in Journal of Cleaner Production this month. The researchers -- Ravindra Khaiwal, Tanbir Singh and Suman Mor -- estimate atmospheric emissions of various pollutants from crop residue burning using the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) guidelines. Generally, wheat straw is used as fodder for cattle, but farmers do not prefer to use rice straw for cattle feed and hence it is burned openly in agricultural fields. Rice straw contains high silica and has low digestibility and nutritive values and may affect the health of livestock. The sowing window between the harvesting of kharif crops and rabi crops is very short (a few days), hence farmers prefer to burn the crop residue of rice in the fields, say the researchers. With 2017 as the base year, it was considered that there would be an annual growth of 1.5 per cent per annum for all crops from 2017 to 2030 and after that crop production will decline to 0.9 per cent per annum up to 2050 in India. The crop production will increase due to increase in cropping intensities and higher yields. However, there is a potential to decrease crop residue burning emissions by various technological and policy options and that includes biomass energy generation, says the researchers. In India, around 500 biomass power and co-generation plants have been installed by the Ministry of New and Renewable Energy. Lead researcher Khaiwal told IANS Punjab is reeling with cancer due to chemicals and pesticides. "The farmer is therefore the first victim of the pollution caused by biomass burning," he said. (Vishal Gulati can be contacted at vishal.g@ians.in) Ankara, Oct 26 : Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan on Friday called on Saudi Arabia to reveal the location of murdered journalist Jamal Khashoggi's body and hand over the suspects involved in his killing. Erdogan's comments came after the Turkish media reported that the country's police found no DNA traces of the Washington Post columnist in water samples taken from a well at the residence of the Saudi Arabian consul in Istanbul. The leader said that the top Saudi prosecutor will travel to Turkey on Sunday to meet the top Istanbul prosecutor and argued that those responsible for killing him should face trial in Turkey, CNN reported. After Saudi Arabia admitted that the supporter-turned-critic of Crown Prince Mohammad bin Salman was killed on October 2 in its Istanbul consulate, five high-ranking officials were dismissed, including Bin Salman's media chief and the deputy head of the Saudi intelligence service. Eighteen people were arrested. "Whatever happened, it comes down to these 18 persons. If you are determined, if you want to remove the suspicion and clear the air, these 18 persons are the bottom line to this," Erdogan said, addressing the provincial heads of his ruling Justice and Development Party in Ankara. If the Saudis can't make the suspects talk, then Turkey will, he said. "The incident took place in Istanbul. So, hand them to us, and let us judge them." Erdogan described some of the statements made by the Saudis as the Khashoggi case unfolded as "very funny". "These juvenile statements do not match with the seriousness of government affairs... It is obvious that (Khashoggi) is killed. But where? Where is the body?" After weeks of providing conflicting accounts of what happened to Khashoggi, the kingdom last week said that he was killed "accidentally" in a fist fight at the consulate by "rogue" agents. But Riyadh maintained that neither the Crown Prince nor King Salman knew of the operation to target Khashoggi. US officials have said such a mission -- including 15 men sent from Riyadh -- could not have been carried out without the authorization of Bin Salman, the country's de facto ruler. News of the Saudi Attorney General Sheikh Suood bin Abdullah Al Mo'jab's planned trip to Turkey came a day after he said that the kingdom now considered Khashoggi's killing to be "premeditated", based on information from Turkish investigators. Meanwhile, CIA chief Gina Haspel briefed US President Donald Trump on Thursday on her findings following her trip to Turkey, where she was dispatched to assess the information the Turks collected in the case. The Washington Post reported that Haspel listened to the audio purportedly of Khashoggi's interrogation and murder. The White House confirmed the briefing had taken place but gave no further details. The Saudi government has faced wide condemnation from western nations over Khashoggi's killing and its apparent cover-up. Russia, however, has yet to criticize the kingdom. Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said on Friday that there was no reason to doubt what the Saudi royals said about Khashoggi's death. Asked if the Kremlin believed the statements, Peskov said: "That is an inappropriate question, there is an official statement from the King and Crown Prince. There is no reason basically not to believe it." Russian President Vladimir Putin discussed the case with King Salman on Thursday in a phone call held at the initiative of the Saudi side, the Kremlin said. Panaji, Oct 26 : The Congress on Friday demanded that the Bharatiya Janata Party-led coalition government in Goa prove that Chief Minister Manohar Parrikar, who is suffering from advanced pancreatic cancer for nearly eight months and has not been seen in public since October 14, is fit to govern. Addressing a press conference at the Congress state headquarters in Panaji on Friday, party spokesperson Jitendra Deshprabhu said the Opposition party would have to approach the Court to seek directions to the government to issue a medical bulletin specifying the health of the former Defence Minister. "At least they should release a video showing that the Chief Minister is walking, speaking and working. There is no bulletin or any doctor speaking on his health condition," Deshprabhu said. Parrikar has been in and out of hospitals in Goa, Mumbai, New York and Delhi. His absence has created a political leadership vacuum in Goa, even as the Opposition has demanded that he step aside to focus on his treatment. Parrikar has not made a single public appearance since his return from Delhi's AIIMS hospital on October 14 and is currently bedridden in a room at his private residence, which party sources said has been converted into a hi-tech medical facility, with medical and para medical staff on 24-hour duty. "We request the BJP president not to misguide people. The fact should be known to the people of Goa," Deshprabhu said. Seoul, Oct 26 : The two Koreas agreed on Friday to withdraw 11 border guard posts each by November as part of a bilateral military agreement, the South Korean Defence Ministry said. The decision was adopted at a meeting in the Joint Security Area in the heart of the militarized border between the countries, which have been technically at war for over six decades as the Korean War in the 1950s had ended with an armistice and not a peace agreement. The ministry said that the two Koreas will also withdraw personnel and equipment from the guard posts by the end of November. The removal of the guard posts would be a first step for the eventual elimination of all guard posts along the dividing line, Yonhap news agency reported. The two countries also agreed to set up a joint team to study the possible re-opening of the Han River estuary (west of Seoul and adjoining the border with North) -- which has been restricted owing to cross-border tensions -- to civil navigation. The two Koreas will also establish a joint commission in the future to monitor the implementation of the military agreement signed during the summit between South Korean President Moon Jae-in and North Korean leader Kim Jong-un in Pyongyang on September 19. This year has seen relations between the two neighbours thaw considerably after a decade of tensions, owing to a hardline stand by conservative governments in Seoul, and Pyongyang's refusal to abandon its nuclear and missile program. The two countries had also removed landmines from around the JSA and Cheorwon, a South Korean border town, to ease tensions. New Delhi, Oct 26 : Expecting a highly polluted Diwali, a pollution task force headed by the CPCB on Friday issued advisories to a Supreme Court-appointed environment body, suggesting closure of industries, construction and intensified traffic regulation between November 1 and 10. Meteorological condition are expected to get supportive of breathable air in Delhi-NCR around Diwali, while festival traffic rush is likely to aggravate pollution in Delhi, Central Pollution Control Board (CPCB) officials said. A CPCB-headed task force has suggested certain restrictions and checks across Delhi-NCR between November 1 and 10 to Environment Pollution (Prevention and Control) Authority (EPCA). Health experts with the task force have also recommended encouraging people to avoid prolonged exposure during the period to avoid health issues. The task force's advisory also includes encouraging people to use public transport. Pollution is expected to spike around Diwali due to unfavourable winds set to change around Diwali to westerly and north-westerly coming from Punjab and Haryana where stubble-burning has been intensified. The additional pollutants may not dissipate due to lower morning temperature around Diwali. Additional festival rush and fire crackers, which this year are not banned by the Supreme Court, are also set to lead to a polluted Diwali, CPCB said. "All the construction activities which produce dust should be stopped across Delhi and National Capital Region (NCR) from November 1 and 10. "Coal and biomass-based industries should be shut from November 4 to 10, except the waste-to-energy units and thermal power plants across NCR," Prashant Gargava, member secretary CPCB said while addressing the media. The task force has also requested the EPCA to ask the traffic department of Delhi and satellite cities like Ghaziabad and Faridabad in NCR, to intensify checks on polluting vehicles and proper regulation from November 1 to 10 to control the pollution. The restrictions, suggested to be part of a Graded Response Action Plan (GRAP) which comes in force with abnormal air-quality, will be implemented by the EPCA. The task force includes CPCB and local state pollution control boards of neighbouring states of Delhi. "We are reviewing the air-quality status on a daily basis and weather conditions in November are not going to be similar to what we have present," CPCB head said, adding the department would appreciate if people use 'Sameer', a mobile app to report environment violations such as garbage dumping and open burning. "Not much reporting is registered on Sameer App. we would appreciate if people report more violations so that agencies can act," Gargava said. Meanwhile T.K. Joshi, advisor environment health to the Union Environment Ministry has suggested people against prolonged outdoor exposure and exercising like jogging or running. He said even lighting incense sticks or mosquito coil indoor is harmful these days. Srinagar, Oct 26 : A soldier hit on the head with a stone in Jammu and Kashmir's Anantnag district succumbed to his injuries on Friday. Defence Ministry spokesman Col Rajesh Kalia told IANS that Sepoy Rajendra Singh, 22, was part of a Quick Response Team that was providing security to a Border Roads Organisation (BRO) convoy on Thursday. At around 6 p.m., when the convoy passed through the Anantnag bypass, a few youths hurled stones at the vehicle, the spokesman said. Rajendra Singh was hit on the head. He was provided first aid and evacuated to a military hospital but died on Friday. The soldier hailed from village Badena in Pithoragarh in Uttarakhand and joined the Army in 2016. He is survived by his parents. Salisbury (England), Oct 26 : A man was arrested on Friday after he tried to steal an original copy of the Magna Carta, the UK's oldest charter of civil rights signed in 1215, from Salisbury Cathedral, the police said. The Wiltshire Police said a 45-year-old man tried to smash a reinforced glass box containing one of four original copies of the Magna Carta, which is considered to be one of the UK's most valuable and important documents, Efe news reported. "Alarms were activated at Salisbury Cathedral after an attempt was made to smash the glass box surrounding the Magna Carta," a police statement said. "A man matching the description given by witnesses was arrested on suspicion of attempted theft, possession of an offensive weapon and criminal damage and has been taken to Melksham custody for questioning where he remains," the statement said. The document was not damaged in the attempted robbery and nobody was injured. The Magna Carta Libertatum, medieval Latin for the Great Charter of Liberties and more commonly known as Magna Carta, is a charter of civil liberties agreed by King John of England on June 15, 1215. The Charter is considered to be one of the most important legal documents in the world and the foundation for individual rights and modern constitutional law, whose principles also underlie much of the Constitution of the US. Ranchi, Oct 26 : Criminals looted Rs 1.60 lakh from the staff of a contractor here on Friday, police said. When Santosh Vyas and Aswani Kumar were on their way to deposit the money in a bank, the criminals came on a motorcycle and looted the money at gun point. The incident took place at near the Food Corporation of India (FCI) godown near the Katrabha roundabout. New Delhi, Oct 26 : The BJP and JD-U will contest an equal number of seats in the Lok Sabha elections in Bihar next year under a seat-sharing formula agreed to between the two sides, BJP President Amit Shah and Bihar Chief Minister Nitish Kumar announced after talks between them on Friday. The other alies -- LJP headed by Union Minister Ram Vilas Paswan and RLSP headed by another Union Minister Upendra Kushwaha -- would be given "respectable number of seats", Shah told the media with Nitish Kumar by his side. The talks between the two leaders followed a separate meeting between Nitish Kumar and Prime Minister Narendra Modi. Both Shah and Nitish Kumar said the details of the number of seats and the constituencies from which the parties would contest would be made public in two or three days. Shah said discussions would be held with LJP and RLSP on the number of seats to be contested by them. In 2014, the JD-U contested the Lok Sabha polls alone. "When a new fried has joined, the number of seats for each will come down," Shah said. Of the 40 Lok Sabha seats, the BJP had won 22, LJP 6 and RLSP 3 as part of the NDA alliance. The JD-U had bagged only two seats. Shah said there was agreement that the alliance would contest under the leadership of Modi and form the government at the Centre after the 2019 elections. Nitish Kumar, Paswan and Sushil Modi, the Deputy Chief Minister, will lead the campaign in Bihar. Shah expressed confidence that the NDA would win more seats in Bihar in 2019 than in 2014. Jodhpur, Oct 26 : A division bench of the Rajasthan high court has issued notices to the state government along with the district and civic administration of Jodhpur seeking their response as to why goat sacrifice on the day of Bakrid is not banned. Allowing a PIL seeking a ban of the sacrifice of goats, a division bench headed by justice Sangeet Lodha issued the notices to the state government, district magistrate and the municipal corporation of Jodhpur seeking their reply in four weeks. Petitioner Purushottam Agarwal has linked goat sacrifice with the environment. "A large number of goats are sacrificed on Bakrid and the disposal of the remains and blood causes a huge blow to the environment," argued the petitioner's counsel Moti Singh Rajpurohit. "An Uttarakhand court has already ruled that the sacrifice of animals affects the environment badly", said Rajpurohit, adding that such sacrifice can not be a part of any religion. He said markets selling goats ahead of Bakrid in the city are unauthorized and illegal. "There are several court directions already that no cattle can be sold and purchased for the purpose of sacrifice and that nor could they be transported without a medical certificate", said Rajpurohit. He said in Rajasthan, only 9 places have been designated and authorized for cattle fairs. "Except these 9 places, there can not be a cattle gathering for the purpose of their sale anywhere", he argued. New Delhi, Oct 26 : Ahead of his visit to Japan on Saturday for the annual bilateral summit with his counterpart Shinzo Abe, Prime Minister Narendra Modi said on Friday that his visit is aimed at boosting trade and investment ties and bilateral cooperation in new areas. "I will have wide-ranging talks with Abe and interact with business leaders and captains of industry from both countries," Modi said in a pre-departure statement here, adding that he will also interact with members of the Indian community there. "These interactions will help to further strengthen our trade and investment ties, and cooperation in new areas such as healthcare, digital technologies, agriculture and food processing, disaster risk reduction and disaster resilient infrastructure." Stating that Japan was one of the "most trusted partners" in India's economic and technological modernisations and one of the top investors in India, Modi said: "Projects like Mumbai-Ahmedabad High Speed Rail and Dedicated Freight Corridors reflect the high level and strength of our economic engagement. "Japan is also at the forefront of engaging in our national initiatives, such as 'Make in India', ;Skill India', 'Digital India', 'Start Up India'." He also said that Japanese investors had faith in India's economic future, "which is marked with myriad opportunities". "We value Japan's global leadership in innovation, technologies and best practices. "During this visit, I will have a chance to see some of Japan's high-tech capabilities in robotics." This will be Modi's third visit to Japan since 2014 for the annual bilateral summit and his 12th meeting with Abe. While India is the only country with which Japan holds annual bilateral summits, India has a similar mechanism with Russia too. New Delhi, Oct 26 : To accelerate enterprise digitisation in India and help the industry test and develop innovative solutions, Chinese technology giant Huawei on Friday launched its first "market-oriented" OpenLab in the country which is the company's 12th such facility globally. "Over the next three years, Huawei will be investing $23 million jointly in its OpenLabs in India and Thailand. These facilities will provide platforms for customers and partners to innovate together using Huawei's ICT capabilities and India's local talent," said Jay Chen, CEO, Huawei India. Compared to traditional technology-centric labs, Huawei said its OpenLab Delhi will be market-oriented, and aims to develop hardware and software services as well as solutions based on customers' requirements during their digital transformation. Built as a part of Huawei's Global OpenLab Programme, the OpenLab Delhi will provide Huawei ecosystem partners and customers a platform to freely test and customise their solutions. The OpenLab Delhi will focus on driving smart city innovations in areas as diverse as IoT (Internet of Things), smart building, smart campus (perimeter alarm, smart parking, energy efficiency management and visitor management), smart transportation, intelligent video surveillance solutions and convergent command and control solutions, Huawei said. "In the future we will extend the range of solutions to digital banking, smart energies, and more and more areas," Derek Hao, President, Enterprise Business Group, Huawei India, told IANS. "With this OpenLab, Huawei looks to serve India as well as global partners and customers leveraging its global expertise, talents, technologies, and customer business successes," he said, adding that the facility will serve as a co-innovation platform for Huawei, its customers and partners for incubating industry solutions to address the challenges of digital transformation. The OpenLab Delhi, located at the company's Gurugram headquarters, will also be providing training and certification to Indian ICT talent in the latest technologies. It will offer ICT training to nearly 400 personnel per year and provide "ICT Career Certification" to 250 engineers per year; and "Proof of Concept Training" to nearly 100 engineers annually, Huawei said. In the first three quarters, Huawei achieved 60 per cent growth in the enterprise business in India, compared to the growth achieved in the three quarters of last year, Hao said, adding the the Huawei Enterprise Business Group is now serving top manufacturing, retail and large enterprise customers in India. New Delhi, Oct 26 : The Supreme Court on Friday directed the Central Vigilance Commission to complete its probe into bribery allegations against CBI Director Alok Verma under the supervision of a retired apex court judge Justice A K Patnaik in two weeks while restraining interim chief M. Nageshwar Rao from taking any policy or major decisions during the period. The Supreme Court order came on a petition filed by Verma challenging the government notification divesting him of his duties and powers on Tuesday and giving charge to Rao, a joint director. The court also issued notice to CBI, CVC and the government for reply by November 12 when the next hearing would take place. Making it clear that prolonging the inquiry was not in the nation's best interest, a bench of Chief Justice Ranjan Gogoi, Justice Sanjay Krishan Kaul and Justice K.M. Joseph said the inquiry would be conducted on the allegation contained in the Cabinet Secretary's note to the CVC, which itself was based on a letter written by Rakesh Asthana, a Special Director in the CBI, Verma and Asthana had been at war for nearly a year now and things reached a peak last Sunday when the CBI made public an FIR filed against him. Both the top officials have levelled allegations of bribery against each other in the meat exporter Moin Qureshi case. As Attorney General K.K. Venugopal told the court that the inquiry should not just be on the allegation against Verma but also on the allegations raised against CBI Special Director Rakesh Asthana, Chief Justice Gogoi said: "We are only concerned with Verma". The court also asked officiating Director Rao not to take any policy or major decision except for routine ones that are essential to keep the CBI functional. It directed all decisions taken by Rao "after taking over charge till this hour" (when the order was being dictated) to be submitted to the court in a sealed envelope by November 12, when the court will hear the matter again. It said it may reverse or retain Rao's decisions. The court made it clear that that entrustment of supervision of ongoing inquiry by the CVC to a former judge is a one-time exception which has been felt necessary by the court in the peculiar facts of the case and should not be understood to be casting any reflection on any authority of the government. The government welcomed the Supreme Court's intervention and said it will strengthen the investigation process and help the truth to come out "soon and without bias". "The Supreme Court direction to set a two-week time frame is a positive development and it would further strengthen the fairness criteria of the investigation. Appointment of a retired Supreme Court judge would ensure a fair inquiry," Finance Minister Arun Jaitley said. Jaitley said the objective of the CVC direction, and the government's action on those directions, to remove Verma from the top post of the probe agency was to ensure a fair investigation since he was facing bribery charges. He said the two additional steps by the apex court -- the two-week deadline and Patnaik's appointment to oversee the investigation -- would ensure those objectives and would lead to early disposal of the case, which the government sees as a positive development. The Congress said that the Supreme Court's decision to intervene in the Central Bureau of Investigation row was a "commentary on a failed government" led by Narendra Modi. Congress President Rahul Gandhi, who hit the streets in the capital along with leaders of his party and its allies demanding "reinstatement" of Verma, courted arrest after dubbing the Prime Minister a "chor" (thief). He, however, refused to comment on the court order but said that the Prime Minister acted against the CBI Director as a result of panic, as a result of fear, because he has helped Anil Ambani with Rs 30,000 crore. But Congress Spokesperson Randeep Surjewala tweeted: "Today, Modiji was again reminded that 'Modi Rule' fails miserably before the 'Rule of Law'." He said "brazen attempts to interfere, infiltrate or capture institutions" will not be tolerated and "people of India will remind you (Modi) in 2019 that bad governments come with an expiry date!" Delhi Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal welcomed the "intervention" by the Supreme Court and hoped the institutional integrity of the investigating agency will be upheld. "Welcome intervention by the Supreme Court in the CBI matter. In the interests of the nation, hope that institutional integrity of CBI will be upheld and powers that be will understand that their illegal acts will not go unchallenged," Kejriwal tweeted. New Delhi, Oct 26 : External Affairs Minister Sushma Swaraj will visit Qatar and Kuwait, two of India's key energy security partners in West Asia, from October 28 to 31, it was announced on Friday. According to the External Affairs Ministry, during her visit to Qatar on October 28-29, Sushma Swaraj will meet Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Foreign Affairs Sheikh Mohammed bin Abdulrahman Al Thani. She will also call on Emir of Qatar Sheikh Tamim Bin Hamad Al-Thani besides meeting members of the Indian community. "Qatar hosts about seven lakh Indians," a Ministry statement said. "Qatar is a reliable energy partner, supplying more than 50 percent of India's natural gas imports." India-Qatar bilateral trade stood at $9.9 billion in 2017-18. After Qatar, Sushma Swaraj will visit Kuwait where she will meet Deputy Prime Minister and Minister for Foreign Affairs Sheikh Sabah Al Khalid Al Sabah. She will also call on Amir of Kuwait Sheikh Sabah Al-Ahmad Al-Jaber Al-Sabah and interact with the Indian community. Kuwait is home to around 10 lakh Indians, who form the largest expatriate community in that country. India-Kuwait bilateral trade stood at $8.5 billion in 2017-18. These will be Sushma Swaraj's first official visits to both countries. "The visit is in pursuit of India's objective of enhanced engagement with the Gulf region, which is in India's extended neighbourhood," the statement said. "It will provide an opportunity to hold in-depth discussions with the political leadership on a wide range of global, regional and bilateral issues and will advance India's growing engagement with these countries in particular and the region in general," it added. New Delhi, Oct 26 : Union Environment Ministry will soon initiate its first-ever study to assess mortality and acute events due to air pollution starting from 20 major cities this year, officials said. The government had earlier rejected acknowledging the international research from institutions like Lancet and World Health Organisation (WHO). The alarming reports in the past two years had projected figures attributing to a number of premature deaths caused by air-pollution. According to the environment health advisor to the Union Environment Ministry, India aims a long-term study to quantify the health risks and impacts leading to premature deaths and factors responsible. The research aims to get a country-wide clear picture in the next three years, but to begin with, it aims 20 major cities which include Delhi, Chennai, Mumbai, Kolkata, Hyderabad, Lucknow and Chandigarh. "The plan may take three years, but we need to get going and we will get some results in a year. The plan may take a final shape by this month-end in the next meeting at the Ministry," said Dr T.K Joshi, Environment Health advisor, Union Environment Ministry. The study will especially focus on the mortalities of below five-year-old children. The ministry is also in process of identifying 20 hospitals, each in selected cities, which will keep a tab on such cases. It will research and report to the nodal agency. In the national capital, AIIMS has been identified to track the acute cases due to air-pollution. The Ministry has also decided to appoint one Principal Investigator, a senior doctor of the designated health institute or hospital in each of the 20 cities. "We need to know how severe is the problem of acute effects and cases like strokes due to air-pollution. This study aims at quantifying the risks and to understand the quantum of health impacts and the exact cause," he said. Earlier in 2016, a Global Burden of Disease stated that 9,20,000 premature deaths occurred in India due to household air pollution and 5,90,000 premature deaths due to ambient air pollution. Lancet medical journal had stated that India and China contributing to 5.4 million of the pollution-related mortalities. The study said air pollution led to over 2,750 cases of deaths or severe illnesses per lakh people in 2016. Madurai, Oct 26 : The 18 disqualified AIADMK MLAs in Tamil Nadu on Friday decided to appeal in the Supreme Court against the Madras High Court order upholding the Tamil Nadu Speaker P.Dhanapal order disqualifying them. Speaking to reporters here, Thanga Tamilselvan, one of the disqualified MLAs, said they will be filing their appeal petition in two or three days. He announced the decision after a meeting of the disqualified law makers with Dhinakaran. The challenging of the decision and a plea for stay on the holding of bye-elections in these constituencies could scuttle the chances of immediate polls to fill these vacancies. On Thursday Justice M. Sathyanarayanan, the third judge named by the Supreme Court after a split verdict delivered by a two-judge bench earlier, upheld Speaker Dhanapal's order, saying it was done under the provisions of the anti-defection law and vacated the stay on holding bye-elections to these constituencies. The 18 disqualified legislators belong to the sidelined AIADMK leader T.T.V.Dhinakaran, now an independent legislator. Last year, the 18 legislators had met the then Governor C.Vidyasagar Rao and gave a representation requesting him to change Chief Minister K.Palaniswami as they had lost confidence in him. Following that Speaker Dhanapal on the representation from the Chief Government Whip S.Rajendiran disqualified the 18 legislators under the anti-defection law. According to Thanga Tamilselvan, the disqualified legislators would fight the by-polls if held. It may be noted, they were disqualified last year and the case was pending in the Madras High Court since then. The Madras High Court in an interim order had restrained the Election Commission from holding by-polls in the 18 seats. Kolkata, Oct 26 : A 12-year-old girl from Howrah district, who has never been to school, has been found eligible to sit for the West Bengal Board of Secondary Education (WBBSE) examination in 2019, an official said on Thursday. "Saifa Khatun, 12, has never been to school. The girl did quite well in the test given to her. So we have allowed her to sit for the WBBSE examination in 2019," said Kalyanmoy Ganguly, President of the administrative body of WBBSE. According to Ganguly, the last time an under age candidate appeared for the Board examination was in 1991. New Delhi, Oct 26 : The Congress, led by its President Rahul Gandhi, on Friday hit the streets across the country over the government's move to divest the powers of CBI Director Alok Verma, slamming Prime Minister Narendra Modi as a chowkidar who turned out to be a "thief", saying he can run, but cannot hide from truth in the Rafale deal. In a massive protest joined by opposition leaders such as TMC's Rajya Sabha member Nadimul Haque, the CPI's D Raja and the Loktantrik Janata Dal's Sharad Yadav, the Congress leaders courted arrest. "Prime Minister Narendra Modi is finishing every institution of the country because he wants to hide corruption in the Rafale deal. He is attacking the CBI, Election Commission and other institutions. Chowkidar chor hai (watchman is a thief)," he said in a brief address to a crowd of Congress workers outside the CBI headquarters in Lodhi Road area in south Delhi. Linking the government's action of divesting CBI Director Alok Verma of his powers, duties and functions with the controversy over the Rafale contract, the Congress President alleged the Prime Minister had benefited a businessman to the tune of Rs 30,000 crore through this deal. "The Congress will not allow the 'chowkidar' to commit this theft. The opposition parties will not allow the 'chowkidar' to commit the theft," Gandhi said amidst frenzied slogan-shouting by party supporters. Standing atop a truck, Gandhi shouted "chowkidhar chor hai". The crowd roared as it repeated the slogan in unison before courting arrest. Gandhi was leading a noisy protest over the government's action in CBI. He was flanked by party leaders Bhupinder Singh Hooda, Ahmed Patel, Ashok Ghelot and Randeep Singh Surjewala as well as opposition leaders Nadimul Haque (Trinamool Congress), D. Raja (CPI) and Sharad Yadav (Loktantrik Janata Dal). Later, Gandhi and other leaders were taken to the Lodhi Colony police station in a police bus. Surjewala tweeted that Gandhi and others have been arrested. "Rahul Gandhi's arrest by an autocratic Modi government won't deter or cow millions of Congress workers from exposing the dismantling of the CBI to hide the Rafale scam," he said. Ghelot said the Congress was staging protests outside CBI offices throughout the country with the demand that Alok Verma be reinstated. "We want the reinstatement of Alok Verma. He can be transferred only by the collegium of Prime Minister, Chief Justice of India and Leader of Opposition. The Prime Minister should tender an apology to the nation for destroying the image of CBI." Later, the leaders were let off. Gandhi told reporters outside the police station that Modi put Rs 30,000 crore in the "pocket" of industrialist Anil Ambani. "The Prime Minister can run and run but cannot hide from truth. The truth will come out. The Prime Minister acted out of fear and panic (on the issue). The Prime Minister cannot give a rupee in waiver for farmers. Nirav Modi, Vijay Mallya, Mehul Choksi, Lalit Modi all fled. Anil Ambani will also flee. "The reality is that the Prime Minister has indulged in corruption. Chowkidhar chor hai," he roared. Earlier, Gandhi led a short march from Dayal Singh College to the CBI headquarters along with opposition leaders. Hundreds of Congress activists took part in the protest, shouting slogans against Modi. The Congress leaders in various states staged protest outside CBI offices. In Mumbai, thousands of Congress activists staged a noisy protest outside the CBI office in Bandra Kurla Complex (BKC), shouting anti-government slogans. Led by party chief Sanjay Nirupam, senior leaders including several former Ministers and ex-MPs like Eknath Gaikwad and Priya Dutt and thousands of workers joined the demonstrations carrying placards and banners with anti-BJP slogans. "We are opposing Prime Minister Narendra Modi's disgraceful and unconstitutional attempt to block the investigations into the Rafale scam by removing the CBI Director Alok Verma," Nirupam said. Besides Mumbai, the Maharashtra Congress also organised similar demonstrations in Pune and Nagpur outside the CBI offices there as part of nationwide protests. In Jaipur, the Congress protested under the leadership of state President Sachin Pilot. "The Prime Minister's act of removing CBI Director and sending him on leave in the midnight to save his own skin is an unconstitutional act," he said. In Chandigarh, Congress leaders protested under the leadership of state Congress chief Sunil Jakhar and state in-charge Asha Kumari while in Tripura, Congress workers led by AICC serectary Bhupen Kumar Borah and state party chief Birajit Sinha gheraoed the CBI office in Agartala. CPI-M members also organised separate protest rallies in different parts of Tripura. In Bengaluru, former Chief Minister Siddaramaiah said the recent events related to CBI were another manifestation of the Prime Minister's autocratic rule. "The BJP feels that they are entitled to destroy the democratic pillars. People are clueless about the lawlessness, have lost faith and confidence in the system," he said. Pune, Oct 26 : A Special Court here rejected the bail plea filed by three human rights and civil liberties activists, accused of involvement in the Elgaar Parishad and the Koregaon-Bhima caste riots of January 1, following which two of them were re-arrested on Friday. The Special Judge of the Unlawful Activities (Prevention) Act Court, K.D. Vadane, passed a common order declining the bail applications of Sudha Bharadwaj, Vernon S. Gonsalves and Arun T. Ferreira in the case filed against them by the Vishramgbaug police station here. Shortly after the verdict, lawyers for Gonsalves and Ferreira moved fresh applications seeking extension of their house arrests by one week, but that too was not allowed by Special Judge Vadane. "Since their pleas were not granted by the court, we have arrested them (Gonsalves and Ferreira) and taken them into custody. We are now working on arresting Bharadwaj," Joint Commissioner of Police Shivajirao Bodkhe told IANS. Gonsalves and Ferreira shall be produced before a court for remand on Saturday before continuing further investigations, he added. The three were placed under house arrest along with two other co-accused, as per an earlier Supreme Court directive, in a public interest litigation filed by historian Romila Thapar and others. During the investigations into the Koregaon-Bhima riots, the Pune Police had raided and arrested five accused including Bharadwaj, Gonsalves, Ferreira, Gautam Navlakha (now released) and P. Varavara Rao (currently in house arrest in Hyderabad). Earlier in June, the Pune Police had nabbed activists Rona Wilson, Sudhir Dhawale, Shoma Sen, Surendra Gadling, Mahesh Raut and Rana Jacob in the Koregaon-Bhima case. Besides the Koregaon-Bhima violence, the police claimed that they harboured links with Maoist terror groups, were allegedly planning to carry out a high-level political assassination in a 'Rajiv Gandhi-style operation', procuring arms and ammunition and seeking to incite disturbances and violence in the country to topple the government. Thiruvananthapuram, October 26 : Wading into the row over the Supreme Court verdict lifting curbs on entry of women aged between 10 and 50 to the Sabarimala temple, young Congress MLA V T Balram has taken strong exception to the statements made by some Congress spokespersons on TV channel debates on the issue. In a hard-hitting Facebook post on Friday, Balram reminded the leadership that it was important to ensure that party spokespersons appearing on TV panel debates should be well versed with the ideological legacy of the Congress party, adding that he had personally communicated this to KPCC chief Mullappally Ramachandran. Indian National Congress is the party of Indira Gandhi, who threw in the dustbin the practice of giving privy purse to erstwhile ruling families, Balram wrote. Even as he admitted that he, personally, still welcomed the apex court verdict lifting curbs on entry of women of child-bearing age to the Lord Ayyappa temple at Sabarimala, he wrote that he understood the Congress partys democratic obligation take into account the sentiments of the many Ayyappa devotees, who oppose the SC verdict, and stand with them. Also, both the Sangh Parivar and the CPI(M)-led state government must be exposed for trying to tear the secular fabric of Kerala through provocations and their stubborn attitudes. However, in a veiled reference to some of the questionable statements made by Congress spokespersons in connection with the Sabarimala issue, Balram wrote that there was no need for the party to be the votaries of Brahminical supremacy, devotion to erstwhile ruling families, or anti-progressive views. Remember, Rahul Gandhi, and not Rahul Easwar, is the leader of the Congress party, Balram wrote. Senior Congress leader and former Travancore Devaswom Board (TDB) member Ajay Tharayil had the other day made an impassioned defense of former Sabarimala tantri family member Rahul Easwar during a discussion on a private news channel, saying that the state government would not be able to do anything to Mr. Easwar. Rahul Easwar was booked by the police over the violence at Sabarimala triggered by protests against the SC verdict. Also, many Congress leaders had come out staunchly defending the rights of the erstwhile Pandalam ruling family over the Sabarimala temple in the wake of Chief Minister Pinarayi Vijayans questioning the Pandalam familys rights over the temple citing the 1949 covenant, under which the family was divested of all administrative powers over the funds and properties of the temple. New Delhi, Oct 26 : India and Myanmar on Friday agreed to act against insurgent groups operating within their territories and to strengthen cooperation on international border management. The agreement on international border management included construction of subsidiary pillars to better demarcate the 1,643 km border between the two countries. The decisions were taken during the 22nd National-level meeting between India and Myanmar held on October 25-26. The Indian delegation was led by Home Secretary Rajiv Gauba and the Myanmarese delegation was headed by Deputy Minister of Home Major General Aung Thu. The two countries also agreed on facilitating movement of people and trade across the international border and cooperate in preventing smuggling of wildlife and narcotic drugs, said a Home Ministry official. The visiting delegation also called on Union Home Minister Rajnath Singh. Lucknow, Oct 26 : Eight persons were killed and six critically injured on Friday when a stockpile of crackers exploded at a firecracker factory in Budayun district of Uttar Pradesh, police said. The tragedy took place at Rasoolpur in a house where the firecrackers were being manufactured ahead of Diwali. The explosion led to many neighbouring houses developing cracks on the walls. Police and the Provincial Armed Constabulary (PAC) were pressed into service to rescue those believed to be buried under the rubble. One body was found in the debris. District Magistrate Dinesh Kumar Singh said a probe was on. The state government announced ex-gratia of Rs 2 lakh each to the families of the deceased and Rs 50,000 each to the injured. The deceased were identified as Sanju (25), Sher Singh (45), Ramesh (30), Yameen (40), Pannalal (40), Guddu Sharma (23), Satish (25) and Shyam Lal (55). New Delhi, Oct 26 : Union Road and Transport Minister Nitin Gadkari on Friday discussed the progress of India-Myanmar transport connectivity with the Myanmar Minister for Communication and Transport U Thant Sin Maung. "The two sides discussed the status of the project for upgrading the Kalewa-Yagyi stretch of the India-Myanmar-Thailand (IMT) Trilateral Highway, starting Imphal-Mandalay bus service, and a bilateral Motor Vehicles Agreement between the two countries," a statement released by Gadkari's office said. The upgrade of the Kalewa-Yagyi stretch of IMT is being executed by the National Highways Authority of India (NHAI). "The project is running well within time and we hope to complete it before the scheduled date," NHAI said. The two sides, the statement said, also expressed willingness to start the Imphal-Mandalay bus service. "India and Myanmar had operationalized the Land Border Crossing Agreement earlier this year. The agreement allows nationals from the two countries holding valid passport and visa to cross over without requiring special permission. Now both countries have to select bus operators to run the service," it said. Once the service starts, a bus from India will take passengers to the Myanmar border where they will be transferred to the bus run by a Myanmar operator for travelling further into Myanmar. Likewise, India-bound Myanmar nationals will transfer into bus run by an Indian operator for further travel into India. Gadkari's office said that both the countries also expressed their eagerness to carry forward the process of connectivity by signing a bilateral "Motor Vehicles Agreement" for seamless movement of cargo and passenger movement. "The draft agreement is under discussion and the two sides are keen to finalize it soon," it said. The 1,360-kilometer-long IMT Trilateral Highway is a regional highway being constructed under India's Act East policy to boost connectivity in the region. Colombo, Oct 26 : Former Sri Lankan President Mahinda Rajapaksa was sworn in as the new Prime Minister at the Presidential Secretariat here on Friday, a government official said. Rajapaksa took the oath in front of President Maithripala Sirisena shortly after the Sirisena-led United People's Freedom Alliance (UPFA) withdrew from the national coalition government, reports Xinhua news agency. Sirisena sacked Prime Minister Ranil Wickremesinghe and appointed Rajapaksa as the new Prime Minister after UPFA's withdrawal. The coalition government consisted of the UPFA and the United National Party (UNP), led by Wickremesinghe. Meanwhile, Finance Minister and UNP legislator Mangala Samaraweera called the appointment of Rajapaksa "unconstitutional," while another cabinet Minister said UNP would challenge the move in court. Wickremesinghe was quoted by local media as saying: "I am still the Prime Minister." UPFA General Secretary Mahinda Amaraweera said that Parliament Speaker Karu Jayasuriya had been informed of UPFA'a decision. New Delhi, Oct 26 : The BJP and JD-U will contest an equal number of seats in the Lok Sabha elections in Bihar next year under a seat-sharing formula between the two sides, BJP President Amit Shah and Bihar Chief Minister Nitish Kumar announced after talks between them on Friday. The other alies -- LJP headed by Union Minister Ram Vilas Paswan and RLSP headed by another Union Minister Upendra Kushwaha -- would be given "respectable number of seats", Shah told the media with Nitish Kumar by his side. The talks between the two leaders followed a separate meeting between Nitish Kumar and Prime Minister Narendra Modi. Both Shah and Nitish Kumar said the details of the number of seats and the constituencies from which the parties would contest would be made public in two-three days. Shah said discussions would be held with LJP and RLSP on the number of seats to be contested by them. In 2014, the JD-U contested the Lok Sabha polls alone. "Upendra Kushwaha and Ram Vilas Paswan will remain with us. When a new fried has joined, the number of seats for each will come down," Shah said. Of the 40 Lok Sabha seats, the BJP had won 22 out of 30 it contested while the LJP won 6 out of seven it contested and the RLSP all 3 it contested as part of the NDA alliance. The JD-U had bagged only two seats. Shah said there was agreement that the alliance would contest under the leadership of Modi and form the government at the Centre after the 2019 elections. Nitish Kumar, Paswan and Sushil Modi, the Deputy Chief Minister, will lead the campaign in Bihar. Shah expressed confidence that the NDA would win more seats in Bihar in 2019 than in 2014. However, the LJP and the RLSP indicated that they were not going to compromise even a single seat less than it contested in 2014. Meanwhile, Kushwaha's meeting with Leader of Opposition in Bihar Assembly, Tejasvi Yadav in Arwal triggered speculation that the RLSP may "walk" out of the NDA if not given adequate seats. However, RLSP General Secretary Madhaw Anand told IANS, "We fought on three seats in 2014 elections. And since 2014 we have been with the NDA and would also remain with it in 2019. Suggesting that the BJP should not neglect RLSP's rising popularity, he said: "The BJP needs to assess a party's popularity before coming up with a seat-sharing formula. And if they come up with the assessment, then we would get not less than three seats." LJP national spokesperson Sanjay Saraf told IANS: "We have not been conveyed anything about the seat-sharing formula." Cairo, Oct 26 : Israel's Prime Minister paid a historic visit to Oman, where he met the Sultan of the Gulf country which is yet to establish formal diplomatic ties with Israel, official sources said on Friday. The Omani state-run TV broadcast a video of Sultan Qaboos bin Said welcoming Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu at the royal palace of Bait al-Baraka, near Muscat, reports Efe news. "Prime Minister Netanyahu's visit to Oman is the first official meeting at this level since 1996," Netanyahu posted on his official Twitter account, accompanying the tweet with a photo of the meeting. During the meeting, Netanyahu and the Sultan discussed boosting the peace process in the Middle East and matters of mutual interest, including security and stability in the region, according to the sources. Israeli media reported that Netanyahu was accompanied during the visit by his wife Sara and a number of leading state officials, including the director of the Israeli intelligence agency Mossad, Yossi Cohen. Oman, like most Arab countries except Egypt and Jordan, does not recognize the state of Israel. New Delhi, Oct 26 : Vice President M. Venkaiah Naidu on Friday urged policy makers to accord highest priority to agriculture as it provided employment to more than 50 per cent of the population. He said there was need to accord the most favoured status for agriculture to give impetus to the farmers and provide infrastructure, irrigation, investment, insurance and credit. They should have positive bias towards agriculture and rural areas while allocating resources, he said after presenting the first World Agriculture Prize, instituted by the Indian Council of Food and Agriculture, to noted agronomist M.S. Swaminathan. Naidu called Swaminathan "a Vishwa Guru in agriculture". Stressing the need to re-think the development paradigm and see how to make agriculture more economically viable and attractive, Naidu called for regular and effective coordination between scientists, policy makers and farmers to make it sustainable. Concerned over the decrease in number of people engaged in agriculture, he asked for concerted, coordinated action to address a number of issues that impact the growth of agriculture sector and the quality of life of people who depend primarily on this sector. Talking on the ill-effects of climate Change, Naidu said it impacted every aspect of life, including agriculture, and asked scientists and policy makers to evolve strategies to cope with the changing climate, depleting resource base and increasing food demand. "This calls for policy changes in agriculture sector. We should focus on developing climate resilient crops. We need to develop crops that can withstand extreme weather conditions," he said. The Vice President also said that hidden hunger and nutritional deficiencies were major challenges before the world. Washington, Oct 26 : The FBI on Friday arrested a man suspected of sending packages containing suspected explosives in recent days to major Democratic Party figures and critics of President Donald Trump, the Justice Department said. The individual was arrested in Florida, Efe news quoted the federal government agency as saying. "We can confirm one person is in custody," Sarah Isgur Flores, a Justice Department spokeswoman, wrote on Twitter. The arrest comes after 12 people received suspicious packages containing suspected explosives in the last few days, including former President Barack Obama and former Secretary of State and Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton. The last two suspicious packages, intercepted on Friday in Florida and New York, were addressed to Democratic Senator Cory Booker and to the former director of National Intelligence, James Clapper. None of the packages exploded though they have elevated the level of alert of US authorities as they fear more packages will be found in the coming days. The FBI said Friday on Twitter that a similar package was found in Florida addressed to Senator Booker, who is considered a possible contender in the 2020 presidential election. The New York Police Department (NYPD), for its part, intercepted a suspicious package on Friday addressed to Clapper at a post office in Manhattan. The discovery of suspicious packages containing suspected explosives began on Monday when billionaire philanthropist George Soros, a known Democratic donor, received one at his home in the state of New York. On Tuesday and Wednesday, two packages were sent to Hillary Clinton and Obama, while other similar packages were sent to former Attorney General Eric Holder, Democratic Congresswoman Maxine Waters, former CIA Director John Brenan and CNN's New York offices. The fact that all of the packages were addressed to members of the Democratic Party or to Trump critics suggests a possible political motivation. This comes less than two weeks ahead of the November 6 mid-term elections taking place in the US. Trump acknowledged on Friday that the discovery of the suspicious packages could affect Republican candidates' momentum for the mid-term elections, in which a third of the seats in the House of Representatives and all of the seats in the Senate are up for grabs. New Delhi, Oct 26 : Defence Ministry spokesperson Swarnashree Rao Rajashekar was on Friday sent on leave after she posted a tweet attacking former Navy Chief Admiral Arun Prakash that triggered outrage among military personnel. Col Aman Anand immediately took over as the acting official spokesperson of the Ministry after Swarnashree Rajashekhar proceeded on leave, the Defence Ministry tweeted. The dramatic action came after Swarnashree Rajashekar gave a stinging response to a tweet by Admiral Prakash on the use of a flag on an official vehicle. Admiral Prakash had retweeted a photograph that showed the Internal Financial Advisor to the Western Command of the Army using the command's insignia flag on an official car. Civilian personnel in the Defence Ministry are not authorised to use such flags, a privilege meant for officers of the rank of Major General and above. In a tweet that stunned both serving and retired military personnel, the now ousted Defence Ministry spokesperson said: "What about misuse of jawans in your residence during an officer's tenure Sir? And how about children being picked up and dropped to school in Fauji gaadis? Not to forget Madam's shopping expedition on government vehicles. And endless parties... who pays for that?" Admiral Prakash was among the first to take offence. "Even if misuse of an Army Command's insignia by a civilian is not a cognizable offence, the person needs to be reprimanded by the GoC in C whose 'Financial Adviser' he is," he said, referring to the officer who used the flag on his vehicle. The spokesperson, after facing flak, deleted her tweet saying: "The tweet was inadvertently done and the same is deeply regretted please." But the Defence Ministry wasted no time in asking her to go on leave. Kolkata, Oct 27 : Former Leader of Opposition in West Bengal Assembly and a founding member of the Trinamool Congress, Pankaj Banerjee, passed away late on Friday. Banerjee, 71, a three-time legislator, is survived by his wife and daughter. A product of the student movement, Banerjee joined the Congress in the 1960s, and won his first election from the Tollygunge constituency in South Kolkata in 1972. A marine engineer by profession, he later won from the same constituency in 1996 on a Congress ticket, and in 2001 as a candidate of the Trinamool Congress. With the Trinamool emerging as the largest opposition party in 2001, Banerjee became the leader of the opposition, and served in that capacity till 2006. However, he surprisingly announced his retirement from politics in 2006, in the run up to the assembly polls, citing poor health. But many still believe that Banerjee had called it quits over some differences with party supremo Mamata Banerjee. The leader's death, however, saw a high drama. After a private hospital announced his death, and his 'body' was brought home, a family doctor examined him and claimed that his heart was beating. By then, the Chief Minister had twitted a condolence message expressing her shock over Banerjee's demise. The tweet was soon erased and Banerjee was rushed to another private hospital, where doctors declared him dead. Later, the AMRI Hospital, where Banerjee was first taken, claimed that its doctors "were under no confusion over his demise" as two ECG graphs - the first one conducted on him in the ambulance on way to the hospital - had shown flat line," indicating "that he expired even before he had reached the hospital". "Since protocol demanded that if admitted, Banerjee's body had to undergo a post-mortem examination, accompanying family and friends decided to take the body back to his residence," the hospital said in a statement. United Nation, Oct 27 : Syria's permanent representative to the UN Bashar Jaafari on Friday threatened that his country will retake Idlib province, the last major rebel stronghold and home to a demilitarized buffer zone agreed to by Russia and Turkey. "Idlib is a dearly held part of my country. We are determined to recover Idlib," Jaafari told the Security Council. "We allow for diplomatic and political work. But our right under the UN Charter and international law allows us to fully recover Idlib when we deem necessary," he said, Xinhua reported. Russian President Vladimir Putin and Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan agreed to establish a demilitarized zone within Idlib province on Sept. 17 in bid to avert a full-scale assault on the rebel stronghold, which humanitarians feared would have severe consequences for the 3 million civilians living here, many of them displaced people. The cease-fire in Idlib has so far been maintained. Attempts by the Syrian government to retake Idlib would represent a major change of situation on the ground and would compromise the United Nations' efforts to break the deadlock on the political process in Syria. UN Special Envoy for the Syria crisis Staffan de Mistura, who briefed the Security Council at the same meeting, is struggling to set up a constitutional committee, a key step in the political process. After Jafaari's statement to the Security Council, British ambassador to the United Natons Karen Pierce requested clarification on the Syrian government's stance and asked whether the retaking of Idlib would mean the end of the Russian-Turkish agreement on the buffer zone. Jafaari replied: "It's not surprising to say on behalf of my government that we will restore sovereignty over Idlib because it's part of our territory -- in a time we deem it appropriate." Russian ambassador to the United Nations Vassily Nebenzia said the retaking of Idlib does not contradict with the Russian-Turkish agreement on Idlib. "I would like to confirm what was said by the distinguished representative of the Syrian Arab Republic that we are talking about a territory which is part of sovereign Syria," he said after Jafaari, also in response to Pierce's request. "It goes without saying that we believe that ultimately the legitimate Syrian authorities will require control over all of their territory which makes up the territory of the Syrian Arab Republic. There is no contradiction with the Russian-Turkish agreement." Trei Real Estate GmbH (Trei) is expanding its Polish investment portfolio in the retail sector. The real estate company, part of the German Tengelmann Group, has opened its tenth Polish retail park under the Vendo Park brand in Lodz, its second investment in the city. The total cost of building Photos: 3D Format [] Di Jones general manager Kylie Walsh has been named as a finalist in the Most Influential Woman in Property category at the 2018 Annual REA Excellence Awards. The awards, at The Star in Sydney, are to be held next month. Walsh is up for the award alongside McGrath Caloundra principal Jodie Hedley-Ward (below), who has been recognized as one of the top 10 highest achieving women in McGrath for the first half of 2018. Among the other nominees for the award are Laing+Simmons Leanne Pilkington, Black Diamondz Property agent Monika Tu and Sadhana Smiles at Harcourts Victoria. Di Jones CEO Rob Ward said the calibre of the finalists featured in the category and is pleased to see Kylie's contribution to the industry acknowledged. "Kylie's dedication and commitment to the real estate profession is exceptional, and it is a true testament to her ability and character that she has been recognised as a finalist," Ward said. Walsh is responsible for increasing management's effectiveness by recruiting, selecting, orienting and training managers. She also spearheads Di Jones' strategic plans to ensure company profitability. Ward said Walsh has been instrumental in the agency's recent expansion success and works tirelessly to ensure Di Jones continues to thrive. I was humbled to be named the top Queensland female agent for the 2018 financial year recently and I believe that learning from others in our phenomenal McGrath network has been instrumental in my career up until this point," Hedley-Ward said. "I absolutely love learning new distinctions and strategies that can help take my team and everyone at our McGrath Caloundra office to the next level. McGrath Caloundra recently donated $100,000 to almost 100 not-for-profit organisations since the start of 2017 as part of its Community Giveback Program. The Community Giveback program involves a $500 donation at settlement to a not- for-profit, school or sporting organisation that the client nominates. Along with the monetary donations, the team also donates their time, going over and above for causes close to their heart. On the award nomination, Hedley-Ward said she is thrilled to be flying the flag for Queensland. I am honoured to be a finalist in this years AREAS and really want to acknowledge the incredible team I have at McGrath Caloundra who all share my intense passion for linking commerce with our Community Giveback program, which is at the heart of everything we do," she said. StoneGate Accel at Longmont Transitional Care & Rehabilitation Accel at Longmont's agreement with United Healthcare insurance gives the community of Colorado greater access to its transitional care & rehabilitation services. Accel at Longmont, a StoneGate Senior Living Facility, announces it has secured an agreement for Medicare Advantage and Commercial plans with United Healthcare, effective November 1, 2018. This agreement gives the community the opportunity to leverage their Commercial and Medicare Advantage benefits to access Accel at Longmonts premium skilled nursing and rehabilitative healthcare. Accel at Longmonts dedicated healthcare team is committed to providing comprehensive skilled nursing and rehabilitation care in a luxurious setting. says Carly Bader, administrator of Accel at Crystal Park. The agreement with United Healthcare for Medicare Advantage and Commercial coverage means additional ability to offer healthcare services to the community with another insurance payor at our premium facility. About Accel at Longmont Accel at Longmont opened in June 2018 as a 76-bed facility offering transitional postacute care, including physical, occupational and speech rehabilitation services. Accel at Longmont participates in the Central Intake Center, a regional service launched in September 2018 to assist acute-care providers in delivering fast, appropriate patient admission and bed placement. Learn more at: https://accelatlongmont.com/. About StoneGate Senior Living StoneGate Senior Living is an award-winning, full-spectrum senior care and housing company with 46 properties across Texas, Oklahoma and Colorado. Recently ranked as the nations 31st largest transitional and long-term care company by Provider magazine, StoneGate is a fully-integrated, post-acute health care company with service lines and business units that offer transitional care, long-term care, assisted living, memory care, rehabilitation, wellness, pharmacy, and care navigation services. Learn more at http://www.stonegatesl.com/. In 2011, Accent Food Services opened its first micro-market in Austin, Texas. Not only would this new platform open opportunities for Accent in how they engage their consumers, but it would pave the way for positive change in how the vending industry was viewed overall. The unattended retail concept is clearly a successful space for the operator, as they have celebrated their 1000th micro-market grand opening! As an early adopter, the micro-market concept proves to be of great significance. Accent has positioned itself as one of the premier providers in the industry, says Josh Rosenberg, President & CEO of Accent Food Services. The scale of our operation has enabled our ability to invest in resources and key relationships that push our approach beyond the norm. These key areas of scale include their own fresh food commissary, strategic partnerships, such as 7-Eleven, and in-house category management and insights. Were in this business to take care of our customers, and with rapidly changing needs and preferences, micro-markets allow us the ability to continually enhance our product offering and engage at a personal level. With 1000 micro-markets under its belt, Accent has seen the advancement of progress within the micro-market concept over the last seven years. A variety of fresh food options, category expansions (such as protein bars, functional candy, and better-for-you), and technology have all helped drive improved consumer engagement and usage occasions. Additionally, lower cost technology has allowed Accent to reach more points of distribution with this solution. Not only do they utilize their own micro-market data, but the companys strategic partnerships have allowed Accent access to an array of consumer insights. Through various data sources, case studies, and focus groups, Accent is able to hone in on the Voice of the Consumer. By listening to our consumers, it means we truly have crossed over from B2B product supply to a true B2C retail solution, while playing a leading role in the evolution of unattended retail solutions, states Rosenberg. Our future is strong as technology brings us closer to the point of purchase, affirms Rosenberg. We are very well positioned to be a preferred retail offering, due to our proximity, diverse portfolio, consumer understanding, and our direct route distribution capabilities. Accent is on the forefront of continually enhancing the consumer experience, and technology will undoubtedly play a role in doing so. The operator also lives by the mantra that its people and its customers are its most valued assets. Rosenberg explains, Every single day, theres a lot of moving parts, people, and touchpoints to get one product to a consumer, and its not always going to be perfect. As long as we know were giving our best and thinking the best of each other, well take care of our people, theyll take care of our customers, and thats the Accent Way! Accent Food Services is a Pflugerville, TX based food service provider specializing in full-service vending, micro-markets, and coffee/pantry services across Texas, Arizona, Nevada, Maryland, and Washington, D.C. At 28 years strong, Accent Food Services has grown to be one of the largest privately held operators in the nation. For more information, visit http://www.accentfoods.com ALMs Consulting magazine released its annual ranking of the consulting industrys Fastest Growing Firmsa celebration of the industrys top movers and shakers in terms of revenue growth. This recognition and awardConsultings Fastest Growing Firmsis aimed squarely at these up-and-coming firms that all too often fly below the radar because theyre not the biggest or the best-known firms, said Joseph Kornik, Publisher & Editor-in-Chief of Consulting magazine ALMs Consulting magazine released its annual ranking of the consulting industrys Fastest Growing Firmsa celebration of the industrys top movers and shakers in terms of revenue growth. Utah-based Simplus topped the list as the professions No. 1 ranked firm. Simplus achieved a stunning growth rate of 940 percent between December 31, 2014 and December 31, 2017 to lead Consulting magazines ranking of the professions Fastest Growing Firms. The second top firm was RedCloud Consulting, which grew at 856 percent while BluePrint Technologies with 675 percent growthfinished third. With a 570 percent growth rate, 1Rivet was fourth and the Savan Group placed fifth with 561 percent growth. Additional firms rounded out the Top 10 of the Fastest Growing Firms including: CoreCompete (504 percent), Barkawi Management Consultants (493 percent), DayBlink Consulting (449 percent), Press Ganey Associates (448 percent), and The Summus Group (432 percent). In all, 65 firms qualified for this years ranking and those firms compiled an average growth rate of 198 percent. With this type of growth, theres absolutely no doubt these 65 consulting firms are shaking up the industry from the bottom upwith growth comes opportunities and they are the professions Fastest Growing Firms for 2018, said Joseph Kornik, Publisher & Editor-in-Chief of Consulting magazine. This recognition and awardConsultings Fastest Growing Firmsis aimed squarely at these up-and-coming firms that all too often fly below the radar because theyre not the biggest or the best-known firms. We want to shine a light on these firms because they are the future of consulting. The Fastest Growing Firms will be featured on http://www.consultingmag.com/fastest-growing-firms/?year=2018, as well as in the November issue of Consulting magazine, which will be out November 9. 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. Keegan & Baker, LLP The case (No. 37-2014-00022411-CU-MT-CTL, filed in San Diego Superior Court) stems from the hospital (defendant) mailing approximately 14,121 patients a letter that stated in part On June 6, 2014, an employee of Rady Childrens Hospital San Diego inadvertently sent an electronic file containing information about your child in an email to four individuals. According to court documents, information included patients names, dates of birth, primary diagnoses, admit/discharge dates, medical record numbers, and other information including insurance carrier and claim information. Court documents further state that the defendants release of Class Members personal and confidential medical information was a violation of the Confidentiality of Medical Information Act, Civil Code 56 et seq., (CMIA). However, according to court documents, the defendant denies any violation of the CMIA, and any alleged damages. On November 6, 2017, the San Diego Superior Court entered an Order certifying this case as a class action, which includes all patients, or their parents or guardians of the defendant who were admitted in-patient to one of its hospital, satellite or urgent care locations between July 1, 2012 and June 30, 2013 as a class action. Keegan, an accomplished California employment law attorney, was appointed co-lead class counsel. About Patrick Keegan, Keegan & Baker, LLP Patrick Keegan represents employees in a wide range of employment matters. He also brings class action lawsuits on behalf of employees in instances where employer misconduct negatively impacts a large number of workers. For more information, please call 760-929-9329, or visit https://www.keeganbaker.com/. Keegan & Baker, LLP is located at 2292 Faraday Ave., Suite 100, Carlsbad CA 92008. For media inquiries, please call the NALA at 805.650.6121, ext. 361. EZ360 production Dallas, TX. For decades, Automotive dealers have been struggling with the increased demand for high quality pictures, interactive media and augmented reality, all while being able to publish them on as many websites as fast as possible within the constraints of tight budget and limited resources. EZ360 changed the landscape by creating the world first automated system that captures, produces such media and publishing it online instantly along with points of interest, branding and marketing incentives. Because the system uploads and processes the media automatically, it performs in less than half the time it takes to do it manually and eliminates the need for a dedicated photographer (or a 3rd party contractor). Dealers who are using EZ360 enjoy the benefits of better, faster AND cheaper operation. When EZ360 claimed that they can provide us an automated, enclosed photo studio with heavy duty turntable, high intensity LED lighting system, full sets of cameras and electronic equipment and apps that will also reduce the overall cost of the picture taking operation, we were skeptical says Mark Rinaldi the VP of Operation of Rogers automotive of Chicago. Today, after more than a year of operation, I must admit that EZ360 exceeded my expectations - not only the quality of pictures, but our online presentation also includes an attention grabbing exterior spin, mobile ready interior 360 view, points of interests and branding material. We stand way above the competition!. Since EZ360s automated process is so simple to use, we eliminated the photography process and combined it with the detailing operation. This reduced the time to market by three days, and saved me over $ 2,000 a month. From a pure ROI prospective, EZ360 is one of the best investments weve made! We have been serving the Automotive industry for over 15 years and for many years struggled with the complex, time consuming and error prone process of distributing pictures and rich media to multiple websites providers and lead providers. Those processes are not only time consuming, taking 24-48 hrs to complete, but significantly reduce the quality of the presentation because of the lower picture size, conversion and compressing methods that the providers are using says Israel (Izzy) Alpert the founder and CEO of EZ360 It took us several years of R&D to develop smart apps, cloud based processing software, a blazing fast non-SQL database, and a smart media layer that delivers the presentation to the consumers instantly. When we started providing a built-in-place photo studio with turntable, advanced lighting system and computerized control center, we become the only provider in the world of a fully integrated, wall-to-wall solution for capturing and publishing media for automotive dealers. Our clients are often surprised to learn that our automated photo studio costs significantly less that the manual version offered by our competitors! EZ360 totally revolutionized my operation says Jason Street, the Shop Manager of Rogers automotive. As soon as my guy finishes detailing the vehicle, he drives it into the photo studio, punches in the stock number and hits Go. The turntable than rotates the vehicle around while the cameras capture high definition pictures and video. A few more details shots and done! The entire process takes less than ten minutes and system publishes the pictures and media on all of our websites before my guy can even drive it out of the photo studio. At first, it felt like magic but Izzy keeps developing new features that simplify the operation and reduce the efforts on a regular basis. From my point of view, the real time, centralized publication and customized branding through Amazons cloud system and iContent is the most significant value EZ360 brings to the table says Ariana Rodriguez, the eCommerce and marketing director of Rogers Automotive. No more chasing data feeds, conflicting protocols and numerous website providers. EZ360 does the work for us and I manage a unified branding and superb digital presentation through iContent, EZ360s backend and reporting platform. One look at the screen tells me exactly where we stand because the entire system is running in real time. I also enjoy the quality of service and unmatched attention to details provided by EZ360 Ariana adds. But the impact on our business is the most important - since we started using EZ360, our picture coverage increased by over 40%. Thanks to the time our potential customers spent viewing the new rich media on our website, we saw an increased view time of 80% and it more than doubled by mobile users! Clients such as Rogers Automotive are the key to our success says Izzy. Their benefits to the adaption to our technology and process across the organization are not just a source of joy and satisfaction to my team, but also to the motivation and challenge to exceed their expectations in the future. Izzy also added Just as we did in 2006 - 2010 by inventing and patented the fully automated video production, we plan to do so again by introducing the industry first, fully automated, machine learning technology for digital marketing of new and pre-owned vehicles in the near future. About Rogers Automotive - Rogers Auto Group is the premier provider of several top brands in the Chicago area, including Chevy, Buick, GMC, and Hyundai. Founded in 1943 as Rogers Auto Sales Rogers was originally located at 2535 South Michigan Ave. Following the acquisition of the Pontiac franchise in 1956 the business relocated to 2720 South Michigan Avenue and kept expanding by adding the Hyundai brand in 1997, Buick in 1999, GMC in 2000, and Chevrolet in 2003. Rogers Automotive was founded by twin brothers Roger and Leonard Scher. The family owned and dedicated management tradition is currently led by Rogers son, Monty and his son John. About EZ360 - EZ360 is a wholly owned subsidiary of SiSTeR Technology, which was founded in 2003 in Dallas,TX by Israel (Izzy) Alpert and his son Tomer. SiSTeR revealed its patented pictures to video with voice technology in 2016. Pic-2-Video is now standard feature in practically every automotive website. EZ360, founded in 2010, is the worlds only provider of wall to wall, facilities and software for publication and syndication of media for the Automotive Industry. The Smart Media Layer, a cloud based instant publication technology was introduced by EZ360 in 2012 followed a Content Management and Merchandising system (iContent) in 2013, a fully automated app for capturing and real time publications of pictures (PixZero) in 2015, a fully integrated photo studio system in 2016 and the next generation app for pictures, video and augmented reality real time publication (iVana) in 2017. Contact EZ360 214.325.1665 Izzy@izzy360.tv BBB serving Central VA Issues Warning on Access Mobility Equipment, LLC. Richmond, VA- BBB serving Central Virginia is issuing a warning against Spotsylvania-based Access Mobility Equipment, LLC. During the past three years, BBB has received 31 complaints alleging advanced payment for work not performed or products not delivered. The business failed to respond to 16 of those complaints, and 6 others were not resolved through BBBs complaint process. Access Mobility Equipments BBB Business Profile reflects an F rating based on its complaint activity. Complaints received by BBB allege the business collected advance payments ranging from $150 to $4,800, with an average of $2,500. All complaints involve mobility-related products including stair lifts, wheelchair trailers, scooters, and specialty doors. BBB has strong concerns about Access Mobility Equipments business practices: specifically, its pattern of accepting advanced payment in full without performing work, the seriousness of complaints received, its failure to address the underlying causes of those complaints, and its lack of transparency. Additionally, BBB is unable to verify appropriate contractors or tradesmans licensing that may be required. For more BBB information please contact the name and number provided with this press release. About BBB serving Central Virginia: Provides service to Richmond, the Tri-Cities, Charlottesville, and Fredericksburg, as well as 42 surrounding counties from Fauquier to Mecklenburg and Northumberland to Amherst. The nonprofit organization was established in 1954 to advance responsible, honest, and ethical business practices and to promote customer confidence through self-regulation of business. Core services of BBB include business profiles, dispute resolution, truth-in advertising, consumer and business education, and charity review. As the bright sun and hectic pace of summer has given way to the long shadows of fall, theres been little evidence of an accompanying slowdown on the expansion front at Benzer Pharmacy. The most recent proof comes out of South Carolina where the company has just announced the opening of its 66th corporate-owned pharmacy in Indian Land, an unincorporated suburb of The Palmetto State, situated just east of Fort Mill, about a 45-minute drive from its big-city neighbor Charlotte. Specifically located about 20 miles south of its nearest Benzer Pharmacy affiliate, the Indian Lakes setting provides an ideal backdrop for expansion into South Carolina and beyonda plan thats been in place for many years, according to President Alpesh Patel. Every new store opening represents another milestone in achievement for our rapidly growing chain of independent retail pharmacies, Patel said. Progress is about always moving forward, always striving to make a difference. Thats what weve done and will continue to do as we look for partners who can help bring the Benzer mission to life. That mission, in the words of Patel, is to change the direction of the pharmacy business. Away from the proliferation of big-box stores on every corner, and back to the know-you-by-name approach to customer service that builds trust and loyalty on both sides of the counter. The address for the new corporate-owned Benzer Pharmacy location is 1028 Edgewater Parkway, Suite 103, Indian Land, SC 29707. Store hours are weekdays from 9 am to 7 pm, and on Saturdays from 10 am to 1 pm. Phone: 803-393-4611; Fax: 803-594-4258. To find the closest Benzer Pharmacy near you, visit http://www.benzerpharmacy.com/locations. About Benzer Pharmacy. Founded in 2009, Benzer Pharmacy is a chain of independent retail pharmacies specializing in compounding and specialty medication. Currently, there are 66 corporate-owned and 26 franchise locations situated throughout Florida, Michigan, Virginia, West Virginia, North Carolina, Tennessee, Texas, Georgia, Nevada, Louisiana, New York, Missouri, Mississippi, Maryland, Indiana, and Idaho. Projections call for continued rapid growth as the organization seeks to substantially increase its customer base while ensuring experiences match expectations at every touch-point. Benzer Pharmacy has made four straight appearances on Inc. 5,000 list of the fastest growing private companies in America from 2015-2018; correspondingly, the company earned the 39th place on the 2015 Florida Fast 100 list, while concurrently placing 67th on the 2015 TBBJ 200 list of Tampa Bays largest private companies. Benzer was also voted favorite pharmacy in 2015 Best of Fuquay Varina in North Carolina and achieved PCAB compounding accreditation with the Accreditation Commission for Health Care (ACHC). All Benzer Pharmacy medications require a doctor's prescription. Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/BenzerPharmacy LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/benzerpharmacy Instagram: https://instagram.com/benzer_pharmacy SOURCE: Benzer Pharmacy Willie Gaspard named Executive Chef of Cypress Bayou Casino Hotel. I love working at Cypress Bayou because of the diversity of our food products and the talented team members we have on property. Cypress Bayou Casino Hotel CEO and General Manager, Mike Howard, announced today that Willie Gaspard has been named as the casinos Executive Chef. Gaspard has served as Executive Sous Chef since 2012 at the property. A Louisiana native, Gaspard brings nearly 20 years in the restaurant industry with him into his new role. Gaspard was born in Abbeville, La. and was raised in nearby New Iberia, La., after graduating from Delcambre High School, he attended the Culinary Arts Institute of Louisiana. Since 2001, Gaspard has held various roles in the food outlets at Cypress Bayou Casino Hotel including Roundsman of Cafe Bayou, Banquet Chef, Restaurant Chef, and Executive Sous Chef. In his new position, Gaspard will oversee all food production on property, including the renowned Mr. Lesters Steakhouse and more. I love working at Cypress Bayou because of the diversity of our food products and the talented team members we have on property, said Willie Gaspard, Executive Chef at Cypress Bayou Casino Hotel. I look forward to keeping our restaurant product offerings both fresh and fun, continued Gaspard. Gaspard will assume his new role immediately. Dr. Husam Almunajed Our unique integrated approach of combining the functional as well as the cosmetic aspects of leading-edge dentistry will provide you a healthy, predictable and aesthetically pleasing smile. We promise that each visit will be personalized, clear, and inspiring. Every time. Dr. Husam Almunajed, a cosmetic dentist of New York has joined the esteemed Haute Beauty network. The Haute Beauty Network, well known for their exclusivity, and luxurious lifestyle publication is privileged to present Dr. Almunajed as a leading cosmetic dentist and our newest addition to the Haute Living partnership. Haute Beauty offers a prominent collective of leading doctors. The invitation-only exclusive publication maintains elite as ever, with only two doctors in every market. This partnership allows Haute Beauty to connect its prosperous readers with industry-leading cosmetic dentist located in their area. Dr. Almunajed believes Life is not only about dentistry. Our creativity, inspiration, and emotional temperament are at least as important as the technical aspects of our profession. Creating new smile designs is an art form that flows from everything else in our lives our experiences, relationships, pleasures, and travel. At the end of the day, what is important is to create restorations that depend not only on beauty, but reflect the personality features and affect the emotions, sense of identity, behavior, and character of my patients. Listening and understanding my patients desires helps us create a smile that suits the face and personality of each individual patient we see. If this were not the case, all smiles would only be impersonally constructed prototypes. About Dr. Almunajed: Dr. Almunajed received his undergraduate degree from Villanova University, afterward attending Georgetown University for his Masters. Dr. Almunajed continued his familys tradition of going to school on the east coast; he attended and graduated from the University of Connecticut School of Dental Medicine. Dr. Almunajed completed a 2-year residency at the University of Connecticut School of Dental Medicine where he focused on comprehensive dental care. Dr. Almunajed was raised in Southern Connecticut. In his earlier years, Dr. Almunajed was intrigued by New York City and all of its glory, where he opened his private practice Empire Dental Aesthetic. Their motto is Far beyond The Smile representing the traditional idea of offering exceptional service with integrity, and painstaking attention to detail. Dr. Almunajed and The Empire Dental Aesthetic team are re-imaging what the dental experience can be and setting a new standard for patient care. Our unique integrated approach of combining the functional as well as the cosmetic aspects of leading-edge dentistry will provide you a healthy, predictable and aesthetically pleasing smile. We promise that each visit will be personalized, clear, and inspiring. Every time. Rudy Rosas and Rolando Gonzales at Mall del Norte. We want our information center to provide a helpful experience to anyone who needs it. Texas-based insurance FMO, Empower Brokerage, Inc., encourages its agents to make a difference in their communities. People need information, especially during the current Medicare Annual Election Period, spanning from October 15th through December 7th. Licensed insurance agents Rudy Rosas and Rolando Gonzalez stepped up to the plate in their home city of Laredo, TX and installed a kiosk inside the Mall del Norte. This kiosk is equipped to share bi-lingual information with the public about Medicare. Here, they can speak to many people about health insurance in English or in Spanish. When asked what inspired this outreach, Rosas and Gonzalez said they were inspired by two agents who were doing something similar in the state of Florida. Most agents dont do things like this because of the effort and expense required, Rosas said. The agents said they chose Mall del Norte as the prime location because the Florida agents used their mall as the main enrollment place to sign up customers. This is important because in a high traffic area, such as a shopping mall, they can help many more people in a shorter period of time. The Laredo Mall del Norte is in a high-trafficked area that caters to most of the Webb county population. This made it an ideal spot for their message to reach a significant number of Medicare aged people. To get the kiosk ready for presentation, Rosas and Gonzales brainstormed ideas and spoke to William Bronson, the Marketing Director at Empower Brokerage. After carefully selecting the right pieces to convey their message, they placed the marketing materials order and began preparations. The kiosk was ready the week before the October 15th Medicare season kickoff. According to Rosas, they dont just want to help Medicare customers. They also want to help those under 65 years of age with ACA or other health insurance, and business owners with group coverage options. They state that the kiosk will be beneficial to the community, because, its an information center. People dont really know what the terms mean, such as ACA, AEP, Medigap, Marketplace, etc. Many people dont know ACA still exists and many seniors dont know what their benefits and choices are. They need to be well informed, so they can make the best decision for their families. We want to educate the community as well as people in other areas. Rosas and Gonzalez hope to establish the kiosk permanently, to become known as a place people can come for answers. Mr. Gonzalez said they hope the project is successful enough that they can recruit other agents to help them, which will allow them to serve more people. The Mall del Norte is located at 5300 San Dario Ave, Laredo, TX 78041 and is open from 10AM to 9PM Monday through Saturday, and 11AM to 7PM on Sunday. Empower Brokerage provides several online educational resources, including information for Medicare, Health Insurance, and Life Insurance. Kane Russell Coleman Logans Energy Practice Group will host a complimentary breakfast seminar on November 8, 2018, from 8:0010:30 a.m. at the Hess Club in Houston, Texas. Presenters from the firm will share knowledge and practice insights on contract negotiation, corporate taxation, and high-stakes litigation that will help attendees meet the days challenges at the office. AGENDA 7:308:15 a.m.: Registration 8:15: Opening Remarks (Thomas Ciarlone) 8:30: Drafting Contract Provisions That Dont Matter Until They Matter (Bruce Chip Morris) 9:00: Digital Signatures: Contract? What Contract? (Marcy Rothman) 9:30: Choice of Entity After the 2017 Tax Act in the Oilfield and Beyond (Arthur Nathan) 10:00: Lessons from the Trenches: A Litigation Panel Discussion (Moderator: Andrea AJ Johnson; Panelists: Christopher Pappas, Michael Ridulfo, David Thrasher, and Thomas Ciarlone) Two hours of CLE, SHRM, and CPE credit will be provided. Onsite parking is free. Please RSVP to Jennifer Bergman at 214.777.4292 or jbergman(at)krcl.com, or click the button below to register online: Click Here to Register Online Kane Russell Coleman Logan is a full-service law firm with offices in Dallas and Houston. Formed in 1992 with five lawyers, today KRCL employs more than 90 attorneys. The Firm provides professional services for clients ranging from Fortune 500 companies to medium-sized public and private companies to entrepreneurs. KRCL handles transactional, litigation and bankruptcy matters in Texas and throughout the country. Ross W. Albers, CEO - The Law Offices of Ross W. Albers Any day we can bring a well established, respected, and successful Law Practice into our Firm is a fantastic day. Were excited to have Michael as part of the team. He's been representing Maryland residents for over 40 years, is a wealth of knowledge, and a respected member of the legal community. The Law Firm of Ross W. Albers announced today the acquisition of The Law Offices of Michael O. Ramsey, P.A. located in Baltimore, Maryland. This move marks the fourth acquisition this year for Albers. Since 2017, RWA has been adding practice areas and staff to serve more clients across Maryland. The Law Office of Michael O. Ramsey will be consolidated with one of the existing RWA offices, located at 15 E Main St #102, Westminster, MD 21157. This is the sixth expansion in the prior eighteen months for Albers, who states Were excited to announce this long established Baltimore City Firm is joining our team. Michael has been practicing in Baltimore and the surrounding Counties for over 40 years. says CEO, Ross Albers. He continues, His (Mr. Ramsey's) practice areas fit nicely with all of our current practice areas. Through this move were able to serve more clients, create efficiencies, and add Michael as Of Counsel to our Firm. The website and phone numbers for Mr. Ramsey's Firm will redirect to RWA beginning in the coming weeks. About The Law Offices of Ross W. Albers The Law Offices of Ross W. Albers are located in both Carroll, Howard, Frederick, and Baltimore Counties. The four offices represent clients in Maryland DUI/DWI, personal injury, Estate Planning, and criminal matters throughout Maryland. The Law Offices of Ross W. Albers take a personal interest in each client. You need an attorney that will listen to you and understand your unique situation, whether it be a criminal arrest, complex divorce and custody case, drunk driving charges, or an injury caused by an automobile accident. For more information visit http://www.rossalbers.com/ About The Law Firm of Michael O. Ramsey, P.A. The law firm of Michael O. Ramsey, P.A. is a general practice firm with extensive experience in Civil Litigation, Criminal Defense, Estates & Trusts, and Bankruptcy. Mr. Ramsey brings with him more than 40 years of legal experience in personal injury, criminal law, estate law, and bankruptcy law. Our offices are located at 2122 Maryland Avenue, Baltimore, Maryland 21218. For more information, visit https://www.michaelramseypa.com/ About Growth Solutions Team The Growth Solutions Team is a leading provider of Business Consulting Services including, Strategic HR, CFO Advisory, Sales & Customer Service Training, and Small Business Advisory services. Our team assists companies with growth in sales, profitability, and improved cash flows. For more information visit the website at https://growthsolutionsteam.com Can Hawks Fly with Eagles: a solemn, joyous book of poems. Can Hawks Fly with Eagles is the creation of published author Lostpoet Blackhawk, a recovering drug addict and alcoholic from Cleveland, Ohio, who began writing poems at age twenty-two while serving a four-year sentence for armed robbery. Blackhawk writes, Can hawks fly with eagles? Is it possible for an ex-con, homeless man, or alcoholic/drug addict to become an upright citizen of society? Someone who gives and helps versus taking and destroying. Someone who is nice and kind instead of being mean and evil. The power of Christ and the rooms of Alcoholics Anonymous can transform any wretched soul into a bright, shining star. The purpose of my poems is to give strength when one is weak. To uplift spirits when one is down. To inspire and motivate when one is stuck. To help whomever to overcome whatever negativity they are facing through the power of Jesus Christ. May God be glorified! I believe the answer to the question is yes. What is your answer? Published by Christian Faith Publishing, Lostpoet Blackhawks new book is a striking read through a mans inner life as he blossoms from a miserable wretch locked away in a jail cell to a shining star basking in the saving light of grace. Blackhawk takes every opportunity to praise God in his writing even as he divulges the darker parts of himself that reveal a struggling human soul reaching for the light. View a synopsis of Can Hawks Fly with Eagles on YouTube. Consumers can purchase Can Hawks Fly with Eagles at traditional brick & mortar bookstores, or online at Amazon.com, Apple iTunes store, or Barnes and Noble. For additional information or inquiries about Can Hawks Fly with Eagles, contact the Christian Faith Publishing media department at 866-554-0919. P2 Science Inc., a venture-backed, biorenewable chemistry company made today the first ever commercial quantities of a breakthrough vegetable based linear fragrance aldehyde at its new plant opened in September. The product, BioNonanal is a 100% renewable linear C9 aldehyde, commonly used in fragrances to impart waxy, citrus and floral notes to consumer products in both household and personal care markets. To date, nonanal has been mainly produced from a petrochemical, Octene. The only option for a renewable nonanal has been via a costly extraction process from certain essential oils such as orange oil. The resulting cost of such a natural extract nonanal made it impractical to use in most fragrance applications. P2s patented green chemistry process enables the efficient conversion of many common vegetable oils into nonanal and other valuable specialty products for use in cosmetics and related applications. The BioNonanal made by P2 in this first commercial campaign used palm oil from Malaysia as the feedstock. The company recently attracted investment from Xeraya Capital, a Malaysian fund. Other vegetable oil feedstocks suitable for use at the plant include US soybean, rapeseed and castor. The process used to make the BioNonanal was the subject of recently granted US Patent 10,071,944. As described by P2s Chief Science Officer, Patrick Foley, the process mimics what occurs in nature when natural oils on the human skin are oxidized by air to produce aldehydes. Its simple, green, natural chemistry." Looking ahead P2 plans to produce a range of renewable flavor and fragrance ingredients at the Naugatuck plant. Some of these, like BioNonanal , will be renewable versions of existing petrochemical products. Others will be brand new to market products made possible by P2s unique process capability. One such novel ingredient, Hydrofleur was introduced in June by P2s marketing partner, Bedoukian Research at the World Perfumery Congress in Nice, France. Neil Burns, CEO, described the Naugatuck plant as running a process unlike any other. We do oxidation, inspired by nature, run under the mildest imaginable conditions, gently cooled to below 40 Degrees Fahrenheit, with no applied pressure or heat and a tiny environmental footprint. Its deceptively simple, but its never been done before. It opens up a whole new set of options for cost effective renewable products for many applications. And BioNonanal is just the start." About P2 Science P2 Science is renewable chemistry company. The scientific co-founders of P2, Professor Paul Anastas and Dr. Patrick Foley, worked together at the Yale Center for Green Chemistry and Green Engineering. Neil Burns, CEO, has spent much of his prior career in the surfactants and oleochemicals industries. The company is headquartered in Woodbridge, Connecticut, P2 has developed a set of green chemistry technologies for converting renewable feedstocks into high-value specialty products. Investors in P2 include BASF Venture Capital, Xeraya Capital, Elm Street Ventures, Connecticut Innovations and Ironwood Capital. The company is also a recipient of debt financing from the CT Department of Economic and Community Development. For more information, visit http://www.p2science.com "We welcome guests to our operation in Baja California Sur. in this first season opening to the public" says Rafael Campeseco, General Manager Located in the Sierra Cacachilas Mountains of the Baja Mexico Peninsula, Rancho Cacachilas is happy to announce their brand new 2018-2019 multiday tours. These have been specially tailored for those who are interested in experiencing everything Rancho Cacachilas and the Baja peninsula have to offer. These eco-adventure getaways brings visitors to the natural beauty of Bajas Cape region, within 45 driving minutes of La Paz, where they can truly disconnect from to-do lists, and reconnect with themselves, loved ones, and the incredible natural world surrounding them. These multi-day tours combine travelers favorite adventures with culinary delights, natural history and the soothing relaxation of off-the-grid, nature retreats and include lodging, meals, and activities. Examples of these unique eco-adventures include: The Desert Oasis Ranch Getaway This authentic Baja California Sur working ranch adventure getaway offers hiking, mule riding, mining ruins exploration, cheese and wine tasting, and Farm-to-Table meals. Be amazed at the abundant organic produce grown here in the rugged Baja mountains next to the Sea of Cortez. The Cardon Cactus Hiking & Nature Retreat Explore the rugged dryland forest of the Sierra Cacachilas on an outstanding network of hiking trails that overlooks the azure Sea of Cortez. Fall in love with the total immersion into nature and being off the grid with only solar powered energy and no WIFI for distraction. Dark nights, amazing stars, natural history, pictographs, 100-year-old Cardon cactus forests and culinary delights await! Add a Sea of Cortez Package to Your Baja Mountains Ranch Experience No visit to Baja is complete without experiencing the amazing Sea of Cortez! After a Baja California Sur mountain getaway, add on a Sea of Cortez adventure resort package. The best experience of Baja California Sur combines land and learning adventures in the rugged Baja mountains with marine adventures in the Sea of Cortez! Day Tour Options at Ranch Cacachilas At Ranch Cacachilas, their focus is on small groups and personal service. Guides will go the extra mile to ensure that each day is filled with adventure and insights in the wonders of this amazing Baja California Sur mountain eco-system. Options include hiking, mountain biking, mule riding, culinary and ranch experience. All day tour options include lunch, beverages and shuttle to/from the Rancho Cacachilas Mountain & Bike Hub in El Sargento to the Rancho Cacachilas ranch complex in the mountains. Additional information and reservations at adventures(at)ranchocacachilas.com or (+52) 612 114 0472. The email address for the Mountain Bike Hub in El Sargento is contact(at)ranchocacachilas.com. About Rancho Cacachilas As a responsible steward of its landholdings, Rancho Cacachilas carefully manages and quantifies diverse assets, and develops activities as long-term economic projects. Rancho Cacachilas' values are deeply rooted in our awareness that what we do potentially affects the lives of many people, as well as our surrounding environment. We intend to leave a legacy that honors and protects the earth while benefiting current and future generations. Our Values are: Successful Communities, Social and environmental responsibility, Value-Learning, Highest Ethical Standards and Collaboration. Rancho Cacachilas is part of the InnovacionesAlumbra Family which includes these independent companies that operate according to our values and vision for a flourishing Greater La Paz region in Baja California Sur, Mexico Rancho Cacachilas, Tenaja Holdings, Earth Ocean Farms and Sol Azul. Press Contact: Nancy Harrison nharrison(at)adventuremedianews.com 307.421.4473 http://www.ranchocacachilas.com We are proud to support US based manufacturing companies that provide an excellent product into major and independent retailers. When a New York based investment bank referred over a recently closed buy-side engagement, Republic Business Credit provided a non-recourse facility to help the company realize its quadrupling revenue growth strategy over the next 12 months. The client sought its first debt facility from a partner that knew the apparel industry, its current landscape and who would enable the business to lean into its likely success being a wholly Made-In-USA manufacturer. The client is a mens apparel manufacturer that provides wholesale and private labeling to both large and independent retailers throughout the US. The Non-Recourse credit protection was important to the client as the daily trends in the retail industry can cause additional concerns for manufacturers with long lead times. The client needed to leverage their outstanding purchase orders and inventory to help fulfill the backlog in 2018 and 2019. Republic met this need by providing a flexible seasonal overadvance on their confirmed orders to help keep pace with their demand. The client is a long-tenured brand that was recently acquired in the Mid-South region to compete with the traditional East & West Coast providers. Republic provided a $3.0 million Non-Recourse Factoring facility and alongside a $400,000 inventory facility to support their growth forecast. Republic will also provide a seasonal overadvance against their backlog and confirmed purchase orders in the late-winter to prepare for spring shipments. We are proud to support US based manufacturing companies that provide an excellent product into major and independent retailers, said Robert Meyers, President of Republic. As a commercial finance company, we are excited to assist companies that support jobs in the southern region. We have strong relationships in the manufacturing and apparel arena, and our partners trust us to provide the correct growth capital facility for their clients. Republic Business Credit partners with investment banks across the United States to create value, strengthen relationships and provide complementary services to successful growing businesses. ABOUT REPUBLIC BUSINESS CREDIT Republic Business Credit provides flexible working capital solutions to help rapidly growing businesses, start-ups, and companies in turnaround or recoverable distressed situations. Winner of the Emerging Growth Company of the Year award from the Louisiana Chapter of the Association of Corporate Growth, and the FactoringClubs Best Factoring Company Award for 2018, the Republic Business Credit team has the expertise necessary to meet the nuanced financial needs of companies across a wide variety of industries. It provides receivables finance, factoring and asset-based facilities, including ABL, receivables purchase lines of credit, inventory, equipment and purchase order lines. Since its founding in 2011, Republic Business Credit has provided over $3 billion in fast, flexible working capital. The numerous modes that can be used allow the operator to adjust the system based on the individual needs of the patient including the skin and hair type of the person. - Dr. Roberto Trivellini Dr. Roberto Trivellini, the inventor of the Mamba system and founder of Trivellini, recently travelled to Hollywood from his home base of Paraguay to debut the new Trivellini system. According to Dr. Trivellini, The next generation of the Trivellini System is based on our Mamba Nano system and is capable of harvesting long hair grafts. The newest version of the Trivellini system made its worldwide debut earlier this month at the 26th World Congress of the International Society of Hair Restoration Surgery held in Hollywood, California. When asked what makes the new version of Trivellini different from previous versions, Dr. Trivellini said that this version of Trivellini system has the same capabilities as the last generation of my system. It can also be programmed to extract hair using different modes or use a combination of modes that can be programmed to work at different speeds and times. The numerous modes that can be used allow the operator to adjust the system based on the individual needs of the patient including the skin and hair type of the person. As mentioned above, the new Trivellini Tech system is capable of harvesting long hair grafts. The system comes with a mode that is preprogrammed to harvest longer hair without the need to shave the head of the patient or individually cut the hair of the person. Dr. Trivellini says this is the first time that long hair transplant is offered through the use of a FUE technique. He added that the system has been tested in many centers for long hair and its efficiency has been approved be several leaders in the hair transplant community. Dr. Trivellini shared his happiness at the Trivellini system having its debut at the World Congress. Los Angeles is a hotbed of cosmetic surgery and patients travel from all over the world to have a procedure performed in the city. Trivellini Tech was able to shine in the heart of cosmetic surgery and the World Congress was the best possible place for its official debut. About Dr. Roberto Trivellini: Dr. Luis Roberto Trivellini has spent years researching, performing and developing new methods of FUE hair transplant. He is a member of the Paraguayan Society of Plastic Surgery, the Latin American Federation of Reconstructive and Aesthetic Plastic Surgery and the International Society of Hair Restoration Surgery. In addition, he is the President of the Paraguayan Society of Surgery and Capillary Restoration. Conference Series Congregating the best research concepts, connecting the best cancer researchers from 50+ countries, cancer conferences ensure to channelize the best cancer options to all. Cancer is the second foremost cause of death world over. It is essential to remember that nearly 200 different types of cancers exist, and each one of them requires a specific treatment strategy. Due to the complex nature of the disease, cancer research has grabbed the attention of scientists and researchers. However, due to the recent advancements in cancer research and the rise in general awareness levels, the cancer related death rates have been on the decline. The Cancer Diagnostics and Pharmaceutical market has accelerated globally in the past few years, displaying a continuous growth every year and it is estimated to reach USD 13.1 billion by the year 2020. Conferences, meetings, and scientific events have proven to be excellent platforms for sharing knowledge as they bring together researchers from across the globe. Oncology Conferences and cancer Meetings serve as an international dais for shedding light on various aspects of cancer such as: the underlying molecular pathways, screening, detection, diagnosis, prevention, management, and treatment. These conferences also serve as networking hubs with special initiatives like Young Researcher Forum, Best Presenter Competitions, Workshops on Trending Topics, Live Streaming, Business-to-Business (B2B) and Scientific Meetings. The Oncology and Cancer Conferences of the Conference Series Ltd, are held across Europe, USA, Middle East, and Asia Pacific regions. More than 10,000 cancer researchers, oncologists, academicians, scientists, industrial professionals, and students from different countries participate in these conferences, every year. The Oncology and Cancer Conference website attracts 25000+ unique visitors globally, majority of them are from USA, UK, Japan, Australia, Canada, Germany, Italy, and France, and has a web traffic of 18 lakh+ online visits which includes all our Cancer associated websites. Speakers of these Oncology and Cancer conferences are entitled with their individual speaker and abstract pages. It provides online visibility to the overall research profile of the speakers along with their research articles submitted towards these conferences. Online visibility of these profiles are further enhanced by robust digital media promotion through Google, Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Blog, etc. Dr. Srinunbabu Gedela, CEO, Pulsus and Omics International discussed the importance of Onclogy in the current scenario, and said that the conference series is going to host many oncology conferences in the future. Conference Series Ltd has now gone digital, with its new platform of online conferences. In this format, participants are provided with credentials, using which they can log-on to any conference from the comfort of their home/place-of-work. This virtual conferencing strategy ensures that no one is deprived of the opportunity to participate in the conference either due to time, cost, or lifestyle constraints. The initiative also encapsulates the E-Poster forum which allows interested participants to showcase their research work digitally. Co-Presidents Jenna Rzasa, PE (l) and Karen Gracey, PE (r), join WEF Fellow Award recipient Jim Courchaine (c) at WEFTEC in New Orleans. Jim has an unfailing passion for furthering the advancement of the water quality profession and has worked tirelessly to help numerous water quality professionals throughout his long and illustrious career. Tata & Howard is pleased to announce that James J. Courchaine, Vice President and National Director of Business Practices at Tata & Howard, Inc., has been recognized as a 2018 Water Environment Federation (WEF) Fellow for his distinguished accomplishments and professional achievements in the global water environment. The WEF Fellows Program recognizes the expertise and professional achievements of members who have practiced in WEF service areas including design, education, operations, regulation, research, utility management and leadership. Jim Courchaine has had a highly distinguished career with more than 47 years experience in the water quality environment and a long-term dedicated service for WEF and its member associations. Jim was nominated for this award by colleagues around the country and was chosen for his professional achievements by a selection committee with final approval by the WEF Board of Trustees. He exemplifies the ideals of a WEF Fellow and is exceptionally deserving of this recognition, stated Rajendra P. Bhattarai, P.E., DEE, WEF Fellow, in his letter of recommendation to the WEF selection committee. He has an unfailing passion for furthering the advancement of the water quality profession and has worked tirelessly to help numerous water quality professionals throughout his long and illustrious career. Jims vast knowledge and expertise is well-known in the water environment, said Karen L. Gracey, P.E., Co-President at Tata & Howard, Inc. He brings a unique perspective to the work we do and through his leadership, he has fostered enduring relationships with our clients. This recognition is well-deserved. T&H Co-Presidents Karen Gracey and Jenna Rzasa attended the WEF Awards and Presidential Celebration ceremony honoring Jim and all the 2018 WEF recognition recipients, which was held on October 2, 2018 at the WEFTEC 2018 in New Orleans, Louisiana. About WEF The Water Environment Federation (WEF) is a not-for-profit technical and educational organization of 34,000 individual members and 75 affiliate Member Associations representing water quality professionals around the world. Since 1928, WEF and its members have protected public health and the environment. As a global water sector leader, its mission is to connect water professionals; enrich the expertise of water professionals; increase the awareness of the impact and value of water; and provide a platform for water sector innovation. WEFTEC is the worlds largest annual water quality event, bringing together water professionals from around the world to learn, connect, and explore new ways to shape the future of water. About Tata & Howard, Inc. Founded in 1992, Tata & Howard, Inc. is a 100% employee-owned water, wastewater, stormwater, and environmental services consulting engineering firm dedicated to consistently delivering cost-effective, innovative solutions in the water environment. Tata & Howard has gained a solid reputation as an industry leader in the Northeast by bringing knowledge, integrity, and dedicated service to all-sized markets, both public and private. With offices in Massachusetts, Connecticut, Maine, New Hampshire, Vermont, and Arizona, Tata & Howards expansion has included projects in Louisiana, New Mexico, New York, Pennsylvania, and Brampton, Ontario. Have You Been to the Cross?: a fresh perspective of the cross as the central Christian symbol. Have You Been to the Cross? is the creation of published author Zearl Watson, an ordained elder born and raised in his aunt and uncles sharecropper fields in North Carolina before moving to New York, where he lives with his wife. He is retired after twenty-five years in the NYC Transit Authority. Watson shares the wondrous new birth offered to all mankind through Christ, When we were taken out of Adam and baptized into the body of Jesus, disconnecting us from Adam and that sinful nature, God justified us, declaring us not guilty. He holds nothing against us anymore. Since we were dead, buried, and raised up together with Jesus, we now live our life connected to him, like a branch is connected to the vine. When Christ was raised from the dead, his work of redemption was finished, and he cant die anymore. Death has no more authority over him. Therefore the believers are now connected to Jesus, from now throughout eternity. When the believers body dies that physical death and is buried, his spirit and soul goes and be with Jesus and continues to live on. At the resurrection, hes going to receive his new body, which is his same body in a glorified state. There will be no sin in it, no wrinkles, nothing missing from it. Published by Christian Faith Publishing, Zearl Watsons new book is a profound, scripturally supported discussion that goes beyond the common message about Christs sacrifice, delving into the notion of Jesus as the second Adam. Tackling central Christian concepts of spiritual rebirth, Watson reignites faith by diving deeper into the story, involving angels and demons and the roles they play in the cosmic separation and the epic restoration of Gods family, and culminating in the momentous event on the cross. View a synopsis of Have You Been to the Cross? on YouTube. Consumers can purchase Have You Been to the Cross? at traditional brick & mortar bookstores, or online at Amazon.com, Apple iTunes store, or Barnes and Noble. For additional information or inquiries about Have You Been to the Cross?, contact the Christian Faith Publishing media department at 866-554-0919. Bestselling YA author and YouTube star John Green has brought two of his passions together in the launch of a new book club called Lifes Library, which he recently announced on... YouTube. Lifes Library is a joint project Green devised with his longtime friend and producing partner Rosianna Halse Rojas. In his initial pitch last week, Green noted that Lifes Library would only see an official launch if enough readers signed up. He neednt have worried, as his devoted fan base of Nerdfightersthe community of followers that rose up to support the Vlogbrothers YouTube channel created by John and brother Hank Green in 2007stepped up in a big way. Two days after his announcement, Green confirmed via Twitter that Lifes Library would definitely move forward. Plans are for Lifes Library book club members to read a book that has been selected alternately by Green or Rojas every six weeks and discuss it on a Discord channel (a freeware chat application), touted by Green as akin to a chat room, except better in every way. Right now, Lifes Library is slated to run for one year. Readers can join in the fun in three different ways. Option one is a physical subscription which renews every six weeks for a cost of $25 and includes a paperback copy of the book and specially selected perks and swag: bookplates designed by artists, lapel pins, a letter from Green or Rojas about their book selection, and digital content like a reading guide and podcast discussion of the book with Green and Rojas. A digital subscription will cost $10 every six weeks and contain all the digital perkspodcast discussion, reading guide, other downloadable extrasexcept for the book itself. This plan is designed for those who want to purchase the book separately on their own or check it out from the library. And a third, totally free-of-charge way to participate is to check out the book from the library and join in the Discord discussion. Interested readers have until November 16 to subscribe via DFTBA.com where all the various subscriptions are detailed. According to Green, 100% of the profits from Lifes Library will go to Partners in Health, the Boston-based nonprofit whose mission is to help families in poverty around the world access healthcare. The Greens have long supported this cause through their Project for Awesome fundraisers. Green notes that book selections will span a wide range of genresYA novels to mysteries to memoirs. We want to read broadly and celebrate lots of different kinds of booksand the only real rule for making a pick is that the book must be at least a year old. According to discussion on the Lifes Library twitter page, only two of the nine book selections for the first years run are YA titles. The remainder consists of general fiction and nonfiction. In his video announcement of the Lifes Library idea, Green noted a couple of different inspirations for the venture, saying that hes recently been reminded of how fun it can be to read a book with people. Reading is usually a solitary and private experience. But when youre done with a book it can be so fulfilling to talk about it with people. Another spark for starting the club stems from Greens desire to feel more of a connection to people via the internet in a positive way. He said hes been missing the experience of a slightly less open, more community-oriented internet where we do and make stuff together. Not to be overly dramatic, but lately a lot of my time online feels like Im, you know, shouting my despair into an infinite void. With enrollment underway, Green has announced that the first book selection for the Lifes Library club is If You Come Softly (Penguin/Paulsen, 1998) by Jacqueline Woodson, which explores the relationship between a black teenage boy from Brooklyn and a white Jewish girl who fall for each other at the prep school they both attend in Manhattan. Lifes Library physical subscriptions will ship in early December and the reading/discussion period for the book officially begins December 24, lasting for six weeks. And for those who want to talk up the club before then, Lifes Library has its own Twitter (@lifes_library) and Instagram (lifeslibrarybookclub). Is this how the GSU e-reserves lawsuit finally ends? At first glance, publishers scored a legal victory this week when they won a second appeal in their decade-long lawsuit against Georgia State University over its online course readings, known as e-reserves. Which makes this a good time to declare victory, and settle the case. Despite the unanimous decision handed down on October 19, the muted response from the Association of American Publishers (which is supporting the case with the Copyright Clearance Center) suggests just how little there is for publishers to celebrate in the surprisingly slim 25-page ruling, which kicks the case back to Judge Orinda Evans for a third try at a decision. And perhaps the most significant part of the 11th Circuits decision last week actually went against the publishers: the appeals court affirmed Evans decision not to reopen the record in the case. That part of the ruling means that Evans will once again be ruling on the same evidence she has already twice found largely supports a finding of fair use. I think it's safe to infer this much from Evans' first two rulings: she believes GSUs copying in this case should be protected by fair use. Does anyone on the publisher side of the case think it advisable to give her another crack at this? Ever since GSU changed its e-reserves policies and won a protective order in the case, back in 2009, the litigation, to quote Cornell law professor James Grimmelmann, has been a barely mitigated disaster for the publishers. And after a decade of costly and contentious litigation, Fridays ruling suggests there isn't much left for the publishers to salvage in court. 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, I think gets it right: The big principles that the publishers were trying to gain are all lost. There will be no sweeping injunction, nor any broad assertion that e-reserves always require a license. The library community will still have learned that non-profit educational use is favored under the first fair use factor even when that use is not transformative. The best the publisher plaintiffs can hope for is a split decision, and maybe the chance to avoid paying GSUs costs... Further, Smith notes, a lot has changed over the last 10 years, making the case 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." Does an E-book Battle Loom for Libraries in 2019? As 2018 enters its final months, it looks like e-books will be a significant issue for libraries in 2019. After years of relative calm in the market, during which time the ALA's Digital Content Working Group was allowed to sunset out of existence, it appears some of the modest gains libraries made years ago are now in danger of being lost. This week we have two quick updates: First, Macmillan officials did get back to us regarding CEO John Sargent's recent comments at the Frankfurt Book Fair on the Tor embargo on new e-book titles in libraries. Per Sargent's comments citing "a three month testing period," a spokesperson said the CEO was referring to three more months of testing. "We should have data and analysis to evaluate our e-lending program by year end." The embargo began on July 1. As for Sargent's claim of "a correspondingalmost 1 for 1growth in library reads that goes along with the decrease in the sale of e-books," the spokesperson offered this: "We are seeing unit growth of e-book reads at libraries at the same time that we are seeing a like decline in the retail sales of e-books at Macmillan. The test is to try to determine what, if any, correlation there is between the two." Meanwhile, on another front, e-book prices for Penguin Random House titles continue to come down following the publisher's recent model switch, as information updates in vendor systems. Michael Blackwell offers an update at ReadersFirst. But it is also clear, Blackwell, notes, that librarians are not satisfied with the change. "PRH, we appreciate you engaging in a conversation with libraries. Please keep the door open," writes Blackwell. "What we need, again, is OPTIONS! Work with us. Pilot at least a perpetual one user/one copy and a metered 52 circ model on all titles. We can talk price options. If we can use PRH efficiently, libraries will buy more from you. Our collections, and your bottom line, will benefit." Reserve Reading This week was International Open Access Week. American Libraries looks at open access "by the numbers." And via Gary Price at InfoDocket, a look at the numbers from PubMed Central. In Publishers Weekly, a look at how publishers are approaching Plan S, the ambitious commitment by a group of European research funders to require open access by 2020. In the Pacific Standard, Information Scientist Alison Head, a co-author of a new report on the media habits of almost 6,000 college students, "explains why news consumption has become an arduous task for younger generations." The New York Times reports on the Library of Congress's National Screening Room, which offers a host of films available to stream for free. "The videos cover the period from 1890 through 1999, capturing a broad range of American life. Notable films include home movies by the songwriters George and Ira Gershwin; issues of the All-American News, a newsreel intended for black audiences in the mid-20th century; and a selection of instructional films about mental health from the 1950s." Gizmodo reports that the U.S. Copyright Office, with approval from the Librarian of Congress, issued new rules this week that make it legal to hack the DRM of any lawfully acquired device "as long as the intent is to the diagnose, maintain or repair the device, and is not accomplished for the purpose of gaining access to other copyrighted works. Over at The Atlantic, a report on a new lawsuit alleging that Facebook "egregiously overstated the success of videos posted to its social network for years," and how that "chaotic" push into video cost hundreds of writers their jobs. Also from The Atlantic, a photo essay of amazing libraries. I'm sorry, but these never get old... From The Verge, a report on Tim Cook's speech "denouncing the current state of data collection and targeted misinformation" and voicing support for tighter privacy laws in the U.S. not unlike Europes GDPR. The Association of American University Professors supports the "academic freedom" of librarians. "Faculty status entails for librarians the same rights and responsibilities as for other members of the faculty," the statement says. It comes as the University of California administrators are in a tough contract negotiation with librarians, in which the administration has reportedly rejected language that would acknowledge librarians' right to academic freedom. Librarians save lives, literally. And from Time, a sign of the times: Narcan, which combats opioid overdoses, is now being made freely available to libraries. Drag Queen Storytime has been a fun, growing program for libraries across the nation, and a way to teach tolerance and acceptance. But a group in Houston has filed suit against the library, saying the program is unconstitutional. One of the plaintiffs told local affiliate KHOU-11 the program is illegal because it "promotes secular humanism." OK, pretty sure there is copy of the Constitution in the library, someone might want to break it out... A stormy Wednesday night ended with both grief and joy in a close-knitted Massachusetts. The First Baptist Church in Wakefield lost all to give hope to many when lightning struck its steeple nearly burning it to the ground sake a portrait representing their faith. ece-auto-gen According to WCVB, the roof of the church including most of the items inside the church which housed various community meeting and a preschool, were damaged. Expect for a serene portrait of Jesus Christ painted on a cloudy blue background which was left intact. READ ALSO: Girl caught giving boyfriend oral in prison chapel The pastor likes the miraculous incidence to one a symbol for faith and spirituality. He said, Our faith is one of hope and resurrection. We believe you can rise from the ashes, and joy comes in the morning. ece-auto-gen It is dubbed the PPA Future Leaders Educational Fund and has been established to cater for the educational needs of children who are brilliant, but needy. The aim is to provide these children with the needed support to help them through basic education. At a short ceremony held at the companys office on the Spintex Road, over 20 students were announced as beneficiaries of the scholarship. READ ALSO: Applaud govt for reducing taxes on fuel TampuliApplaud govt for reducing taxes on fuel Tampuli This is the fourth successive year that The Automation Ghana Group is providing scholarships for pupils of the Batsonaa TMA Primary School, having started the initiative in 2015. All beneficiaries will enjoy full scholarship throughout their basic school education. Speaking at the event, CEO of The Automation Ghana Group, Engineer Kweku Asmah, said the company is excited to be contributing its quota to the development and education of the students. He commended teachers for the sacrifices they are making to teach pupils, while calling on parents to nurture their wards to grow into responsible and hardworking men and women. He added that the company will continue to financially support pupils in order to ensure that they are afforded the opportunity to be educated. ece-auto-gen We want to see that the children who will be sent to school are benefitting and are developing. So we are very happy and we will continue to support the school and the kids, Mr. Asmah said to a crescendo of applauds. This comes after the automation company also donated some chairs and tables to the school to help mitigate its infrastructural challenges. Mr. Asmah further revealed plans to get the Batsonaa MA Primary School a projector to facilitate the teaching and learning of ICT. According to him, everything is already in place and the projector will be presented to the school by the end of next week. We were approached to help with a projector. This projector will help with the teaching and learning of ICT. We presented it to the Board of Directors and they have approved, so next week we will be presenting the projector to the school, Mr. Asmah announced. READ ALSO: Here are the 31 licensed banks in GhanaHere are the 31 licensed banks in Ghana The CEO also disclosed that the company is planning on introducing a science and technology programme in order to nurture students who have an interest in science. We want to start with an ICT and science and technology programme. We, as a company, apply a lot of science in the the work that we do. And we want to introduce this to the students so that they will develop the interest in learning about science. So as we go along, possibly next year, we will introduce this programme and we will communicate the details to you, he added. On their part, the Head teachers of the Batsonaa MA Primary School thanked Mr. Asmah and the company for their continuous support towards the school and its pupils. The Automation Ghana Group is an electrical engineering and automation company which was established in 2003, with expertise in industrial and building automation. The indigenous company comprises of Process and Plans Automation Limited, Automation Solutions Limited, Electrical Switchgear Limited and SmartHome Solutions. He said the current situation is due to the fact the President and his party lied their way into power. "What we are witnessing is the direct opposite of what Akufo-Addo promised", he wrote. Check out his full post below Folks, Prez NADAA is responsible for the hardship in Ghana, no one else. The coming increase in talk tax as the Telecos have announced, like many other tax increases, didn't fall from the sky, its NADAA and his NPP policy! READ ALSO: I will stop Mahama from campaigning in schools - NPP Chairman ece-auto-gen The chairman and three non-executive directors of Diamond Bank Plc have resigned from their positions as the bank eyes recapitalisation and means to settle its huge bond maturing next year. Uzoma Uja, the company secretary made this known in a letter addressed to the Nigerian Stock Exchange on Wednesday. The letter reads, RESIGNATION OF CHAIRMAN AND NON-EXECUTIVE DIRECTORS, the bank notified the Nigerian Stock Exchange (NSE) and the public that the following Non-Executive Directors have resigned from the Board of Diamond Bank Plc with immediate effect. 1. Mr Oluseyi Bickersteth 2. Mr Rotimi Oyekanmi 3. Mrs Juliet Anammah 4. Mrs Aisha Oyebode The directors are resigning for varied personal reasons, which will include focusing on their priorities. Diamond Bank will update the market with any further developments in due course. Diamond Bank planning to re-capitalise The latest development, industry sources say it may not be unconnected to profitability and capital challenges currently facing the Nigerian lender. The bank is currently looking for new investors to recapitalise after it was hit by huge loan losses during the economic recession. The bank has capital challenges and a large bond maturity in 2019, hence, the need to welcome new investors. The investors bringing in the money want to have some control and they have no choice than to let them go, a top bank source tells Business Insider Sub-Saharan Africa. Diamond Bank denies talks with new investors In a follow-up release on Friday morning, the Bank denied media reports concerning new equity investment Diamond Bank is not in talks with any party, global or otherwise, for any capital injection. While previous communication from the bank has highlighted a need to shore up the Banks Capital Adequacy Ratio (CAR), the preferred option is an internal capital management programme that has been explained in detail to analysts and investors. While we recognize the need to expand our options in the short term, we have no concrete new development to report and will notify The Exchange once there is any, the statement reads. Business Insider Sub-Saharan Africa recalls that the Bank announced the sale of its international subsidiary, Diamond Bank (UK) Plc in April this year. Uzoma Dozie, Diamond Bank's CEO, while commenting on the transaction, had said the bank's strategic objective is to be the fastest growing, and most profitable technology-driven retail banking franchise in Nigeria. This strategic intent requires the Bank to optimise the use of its resources which means, where necessary, divesting from its non-core assets and focusing on the priority area, namely Nigerian retail banking, he had said during the signing of a Share Sale and Purchase Agreement with a member of GFG Alliance, for the disposal of its UK asset. Last year, the Bank also divested from its West African business, Diamond Bank S.A. Sources also told ThisDay that the Group Managing Director, Uzoma Dozie, is expected to tender his resignation sometime next year. Involvement in MTN forex repatriation Despite the profitability issue, it was among the four banks sanctioned by the Central Bank of Nigeria over the alleged improper forex repatriation for MTN. The bank had noted that it is co-operating with the banking regulator. CBN had since deducted the sum of N0.25 billion as fine for allegedly aiding MTN in the illegal capital repatriation. Ghanaian President, Nana Akufo-Addo, has called on African governments to stop begging for alms and ads from the international communities. The Ghanaian leader says for Africa to achieve economic freedom, it needs to promote the Small and Medium Scale Enterprises (SMEs). He stated this on Thursday, October 25, 2018, at the Tony Elumelu Foundation Entrepreneurship Forum 2018, held in Lagos, Nigeria. During an interactive session moderated by the Nigerian Billionaire, Tony Elumelu, Akufo-Addo said he was opposed to Africa begging for alms and aids from other countries. We should be giving aids to other countries, he said, stressing that Africa is endowed with rich natural and human resources to cater to for needs of its people. Nana Akuko-Addo harps on SMSEs advancement He said Small and Medium Scale Enterprises (SMEs) are those that drive the economy and African countries need to build it. When we put all of these things together, we are then creating an opportunity for growth, prosperity and well-being. You hear of the big corporations. Even in America, it is the SMEs that drive the economy. That is what we also have to build. He explained that Africa needs to change the mentality of the young ones that will compel them to go down the line of entrepreneur development. Every year, the foundation host about 5,000 young Africans in Lagos for Africas largest entrepreneurial convening. In a memo to the Vice-Chancellor, Prof. Olanrewaju Fagbohun, the union on Thursday, October 25, 2018, alleged that the admission process was being done in secrecy and arbitrariness. According to the News Agency of Nigeria, the memo with reference No. ASUU/LASU/GS/16/342, signed by the unions Secretary, Dr Tony Dansu and the Assistant Secretary, Dr Adeolu Oyekan, alleged that the admission process under the current vice-chancellor was becoming increasingly opaque. ALSO READ: 5 most underrated courses in Nigerian Universities The union got reliable information that when the first batch of the applicants was selected, Heads of Departments were invited to ratify a list of admitted students and permitted to add one qualified candidate of their choice. Since then, what qualified others that were admitted remained unknown to many in the university. There have been several reports of applicants, who scored below what was considered to be the cut-off points on the first list sent to the departments, showing up as having been admitted, How we admist is not ASUU's business- LASU However, the Lagos State University's spokesperson, Ademola Adekoya has reportedly said the Academic Staff Union of Universities (ASUU) has no business with how students are admitted in the school. That said, some people are just selfish and psychotic, and this looks the case with Jenna Folwell, a 19-year old mother from Maricopa County, Arizona According to Chandler Police, Folwell seemed to have drowned her own four-week-old baby, Rainer. The four-week-old was found dead, wrapped in a black duffel bag in Folwells apartment in Chandler, Arizona. Yesterday, October 25, 2018, she was charged with first-degree murder, as Chandler Police announced via their Twitter Page, @ChandlerPolice, The mother of the deceased baby from yesterday afternoons death investigation has been identified as 19yoa Jenna Folwell. Jenna was booked into the Maricopa County Jail overnight on one count of 1st Degree Murder. Her complaint But before then, the case had been a little complicated. Folwell had called Chandler Police on Wednesday that her baby had been snatched at the park on Wednesday. She claimed that she was trying to put Rainer in a car seat when someone put a bag over her head and kidnapped Rainer. This sent the police on a wild goose chase from which they found nothing. They then proceeded to search her house, where they found young Rainer, wrapped in a black duffel bag. Folwell was immediately arrested as the only suspect in the matter. The Police released the following statement, Today a 19yoa female called @ChandlerPolice to report her 4-week-old son had been abducted from Brooks Crossing Park. The child was found dead inside the mothers apartment. The mother is the only suspect & the abduction claim was not credible. ALSO READ: Babysitter accused of killing a baby smiles in her mugshot Folwells different accounts to the Police upon arrest When she was arrested, Jenna Folwell changed her story, admitting the kidnapping story was a lie. She claims she was taking a bath when and fainted, that when she woke up, she found her baby face down in the bathtub, not breathing. Folwell also admitted putting Rainer in a black duffel bag and then called the Police after she drove to the park. Upon getting search warrants for her properties, they took her phone and found Google searches like, how long it takes to drown a baby and why parents kill their babies. Upon questioning, Police say Folwell admitted to the google searches and how she brought her baby into the bathtub, letting go and drowning him for about a minute, before bringing him out to give him CPR. He had however died by then. She claims she drowned him so she wouldnt hear him cry while also admitting to putting him in a duffel bag and driving to the park because she felt bad. Rainers father the babys father 19-year old Eric Canku told ABC15, I will never get to have any firsts with my son I wont be able to watch him play catch or go fishing. I wont be able to even take him to school. She took away my life with Rainer the moment she took his life She could have reached out to me or my family and we would have taken sole custody. Cynthia Abila Eponymous label Cynthia Abila is an emerging womenswear brand that explores modern silhouettes whilst still being very much rooted in its African roots. Talking about the typical Cynthia Abila woman she says,"My muse has changed. She's enjoyed success and now has an appetite for it. The pieces were made for the Cynthia Abila woman who loves to explore the diverse culture of worlds beyond her walls but yet holds passionately to her roots and in every way seeks to tell her own local story." Last night's collection was a celebration of femininity. The flowing fabrics and vibrant colours gave the impression of the Cynthia Abila woman being a fearless and embracing to power of her sexuality. With a palette of sumptuous reds, stripes and use of traditional aso oke, with a mix of modern power suits and ladylike midi dresses, the collection had a little something for everyone and was overall, a cohesive and well put together collection for the eponymous label. Maxivive Fruche Russell Solomon DNA by Iconic Invanity Daughters of Iconic Invanity creative Director Nancy Nwadire, Destiny and Alanis debuted their latest collection and introduced upcoming collection Neka Youth. The colour collection which was a sea of purples and yellows with signature DNA stripes and embellishments was elegant yet playful. Ladunni Lambo A sea of blues and greys, Ladunni Lambo's collection was elegant and understatedly sexy. Aunty Betty, as she is affectionately known, is a pillar of the publishing community in Nigeria. As the founder of a popular women's lifestyle magazine, she has touched many with her work. Genevieve magazine provides a safe space for women to discuss all things and enjoy beauty, fashion and health stories too. Genevieve is one of the most enduring print magazines in Lagos, testament to Betty's stellar work. Speaking exclusively to Pulse about her mental health journey, Betty said: I think theres always something gratifying when a public figure steps out to say that Ive been there and done that and theres no shame. We can all live regardless of the stigma. I think one of the reasons people don't want to share such experiences in the way I have is fear of being judged, fear of being labelled mad because people do not understand mental health and as far as theyre concerned, we are all mad. I just hope more people will be required to seek therapy, understanding that it is a condition that requires help. When youre ill, what do you do? You go to a doctor. So when the mind is ill, you go and see a mind doctor. Im hoping people will feel more liberated and not bogged down by the judgement m of other people and afraid to seek help. Its alright to say Im going to see a therapist or a psychiatrist without any embarrassment. I hope that people can seek help without feeling judged and even if they do judge us, its OK, as long as we get the help that we need. 'Dust to Dew' came at such a pertinent time when mental health was at the forefront of people's minds after many high-profile suicides this year. To have somebody that many look up to, admit that they too were suffering and that there was no shame in it, undoubtedly inspired many to admit the same. Having catalysed the conversation around mental health in Nigeria, Betty is now using her platform to do even more good. This year, she teamed up with 12 designers to create 'The Dew Collection'. The collection is a celebration of life and coming out the otherside. It's a battle cry that we will not allow our demons to get the best of us and that we can use fashion, design and creativity as a form of healing. Designers including Toju Foyeh, DZYN, Style Temple and Mai Atafo. Speaking about the design collaboration, Betty wrote: It all started four months ago after the successful release of my book "Dust to Dew". In no time at all and inspite of all the victory dance of a successful book release I found my self hungry for something more and in my typical way of feeling a sense of trepidation before any new project I decided what do I have to lose anyways. Here we are with the Dew Collection for mental health awareness. Dreams Never Expire. What is that dream? Just Birth it! The collection was a beautiful reminder that life is for living and that whatever we are going through, we can overcome. There was fireworks romance, family and friends, radiance, good vibes and a colourful splash of every great thing that typifies a lovely Nigerian wedding. There was even a surprise, with Benny Hinn coming around to be the officiating minister who joined the couple. But the Brides mum was not there and regardless of how blissful and nice the big day must have been for her, it must have also felt some type of way. Reports claim that the brides mum could not have made it there for her daughter because she was banned from attending. To make up for her mums absence, Carissa and Phillip have reportedly taken the wedding party to UK so as to have the brides mum in their wedding story. Did you know that Pastor Chris daughter had a second wedding? The first was for her dad and the second for her mum, reads a statement on Pulse Ghana. The date of the ceremony is uncertain but on her Instagram page, Carissa shares some pictures on October 22, 2018 which look to be from a wedding reception. She disabled comments to those posts. The Commission Chairperson, Moussa Mahamat, disclosed this on Thursday when he led a delegation of the union to Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) office in Abuja. Mahamat commended INEC for adopting and implementing the recommendations by the AU given during previous elections. He said that in 2015 when Nigeria was to hold its general elections, African continent held its breath. But the seriousness with which Nigeria organised the elections and professionalism that Nigeria showed made the different as the elections have been hailed in the continent and beyond. This time, I will like to inform you that the AU will be sending both short term and long term election observer mission in other to support you. Nigeria means the engine room and economic power of the African continent, anything that happened in Nigeria has impact on the continent. I have seen in West Africa countries where Nigeria is supporting other countries in electoral processes and process of democracy in Togo, Guinea Bissau, Morocco and elsewhere. We are proud of you. INEC Chairman and National Commissioner during AU delegation visit to the commission on Thursday in Abuja. In his remarks, INEC Chairman, Prof. Mahmood Yakubu commended AU for the deployment of observation mission for the 2015 general elections and its positive recommendations. Yakubu said that the Commission had started the implementation of some of the recommendation by AU in the previous elections. We wish to assure you that INEC has and will continue to improve on the conduct of elections in Nigeria. For instance, we have taken into considerations some of your observations and recommendations directed to INEC in planning for the 2019 General Elections. Specifically, you recommended that INEC should improve on the overall planning and implementation of electoral operations with regard to voter registration and the issuance of the Permanent Voter Cards (PVCs). In response, and for the first time in the history of elections in Nigeria, INEC conducted the Continuous Voter Registration (CVR) from April 27, 2017 to March 31, 2018 during which some 14.5 million new voters were registered in addition to about 70 million. Yakubu said that the second observation raised by the AU was the review of the Election Day procedures to make them less cumbersome for voters by re-examining the system of separate accreditation and voting. I am happy to report that this has been implemented. Yakubu added that INEC had similarly responded to other recommendations that require amendment to the legal framework by working closely with the National Assembly. While speaking during a town hall meeting in Abeokuta, the state capital, on Thursday, October 25, 2018, the governor said state governments can only spend what they can afford with their resources. He said, "The situation now is like an old woman with load walking gently, if she now adds more loads, she won't walk at all. "With N18,000 minimum wage, as we speak in this country, only seven or eight governors are able to pay full salaries. "We are not magicians or miracle workers that will turn things around, we only make do with what we have, nobody has the money." FG proposes N24,000 as new national minimum wage President Muhammadu Buhari responsible for the negotiation of a new national minimum wage on November 27, 2017. However, failure to announce a new minimum wage by September 2018 led organised labour unions to embark on a warning strike across the nation, an action that was soon suspended after negotiations with the government. While addressing the media on October 10, the Minister of Labour and Employment, Chris Ngige, disclosed that the federal government has decided to peg the new wage at N24,000. According to him, organised labour union leaders in the country had proposed N30,000 as the new minimum wage after it called off its recent warning strike. However, state governors insisted they could only pay N20,000. The immediate past Chief of Administration, Army Headquarters, Abuja, was declared missing on the September 3, 2018, after he disappeared while travelling alone in his car from Abuja to Bauchi State. The Army had set up a joint task force to commence a search and rescue operation for the officer and his black Toyota Corolla car was recovered from a pond in Dura-Du District on September 29. During a media briefing of the operation on Friday, October 26, General Officer Commanding 3 Division, Major-General Benson Akinroluyo, disclosed that the senior officer has been confirmed to have been killed. Akinroluyo revealed that Alkali had been travelling through Dura-Du District on the same day residents were staging a protest over the killing of 11 people in Lafande Community by unknown gunmen. He said the crowd, made up of angry youths, assaulted and killed Alkali despite identifying himself as a retired officer of the Army who was merely passing through. ece-auto-gen Akinroluyosaid Alkali's belongings such as clothings, cash, phones and laptop were shared by those who killed him, and his corpse buried in a shallow grave, while his car was also disposed into the pond. He said, "You would recall that on 2 September 2018 at about 8:00pm, unknown gunmen attacked a shopping complex located at Lafande Community on the outskirt of Jos metropolis in Dura-Du District of Jos South Local Government Area of Plateau State. As a result of the attack, 11 people were killed while others sustained various degrees of injuries. "The attack triggered protest by the people of the area on the morning of 3 September 2018. Irate youths in their hundreds trooped out, blocked the Eastern Bypass with stones and other dangerous objects. "The immediate past Chief of Administration (Army), Major General Idris Alkali who recently disengaged from the Nigerian Army after 35 years meritorious service to the Nigerian Army and the country was travelling from Abuja to Bauchi via Jos same day. The senior officer was travelling alone in his black Toyota Corolla car with registration number, KWARA MUN 670 AA. "Credible intelligence revealed that his car was stopped and he introduced himself as a general to the hoodlums who had barricaded the road that he was just passing through to Bauchi. The senior officer was assaulted and killed. Thereafter, his belongings such as clothings, cash, phones and laptop were shared by those who killed him. His body was dragged before being moved to somewhere else and his car was driven and pushed into the abandoned mining pit filled with water. "The irate youths who followed his car to the abandoned mining pit filled with water on many tri-cycles popularly known as 'Keke NAPEP' jubilated for reason best known to them or for mission accomplished. He was later buried in a shallow grave in an area popularly known as, 'No man's land' within the community." Alkali's still corpse missing Akinroluyo said residents who witnessed or heard about the incident were arrested and interrogated during the course of the Army's investigation. He said the discovery of Alkali's car from the pond had triggered the perpetrators of the crime to hold a meeting and set up a team to move his body from the shallow grave to avoid trouble for the community. He said, "On 29 September 2018, when the general's black Toyota Corolla car was recovered from the abandoned mining pit, those involved and those not involved in the killing of the senior officer held a meeting to relocate his corpse away from the community. This is because of the inherent danger it would attract to the community. "Consequently, a 10 man team was constituted to relocate his corpse earlier buried in a shallow grave within the community to elsewhere. A specialist in preservation of corpse was contracted. The specialist assisted in exhuming his corpse from the shallow grave to elsewhere. Only few trusted members of the community knew where his corpse was relocated to. The specialist is currently in our custody. Again, this is an attempt to cover up the heinous crime committed by the community." He disclosed that the Army has evidence that proves that those invloved in the killing of the retired officer are being supported and backed by community leaders within the Dura-Du District. 8 suspects wanted for Alkali's death The Plateau State Police Command had previously declared eight people wanted in connection to Alkali's disappearance in a press statement released on Wednesday, October 24. Chief among the suspects is Yakubu Rap, the 52-year-old District Head of Dura-Du. He is believed to have co-chaired the meeting held to relocate Alkali's corpse from the shallow grave to a different location immediately his car was found in the pond. Other suspects are 28-year-old Da ChuwangSamuel (aka Morinho), a panel beater by occupation; 25-year-old Nyam Samuel (aka Soft Touch), also a panel beater; 27-year-old Matthew Wrang (aka Amesco); and 53-year-old Pam Gyang Dung (aka Boss), a farmer and miner by profession. Others are 46-year-old Chuwang Istifanus Pwajok Stephen (aka Tifa), a surveyor and businessman; 26-year-old Timothy Chuan, a tipper driver and sand vendor; and 25-year-old Moses Gyang (aka Boss). During the press briefing on Friday, Akinroluyo said Da Chuwang Samuel is suspected to be the mastermind of the assault and murder of the officer while his younger brother, Nyam, is believed to have been involved. Timothy Chuan was identified as the one who drove Alkali's car to Dura village and subsequently pushed it into the abandoned mining pit filled with water. Chuwang Istifanus Pwajok Stephen is wanted for participating in the meeting held to relocate the corpse. The shallow grave was identified by four different sources as well as sniffer dogs used by the Army during its investigation. Army begs public for information on perpetrators Akinroluyo assured the public that the cordon and search operation was intelligence driven and conducted in line with international best practices and respect for human rights. He said, "At this point, let me reiterate that all the actors involved in this dastardly act who are still at large are known to us. All efforts are being made to get them arrested and be brought to justice as their photographs and personal details are with the relevant security agencies. "The cordon and search operation conducted by own troops has really exposed the heinous crimes being committed by the few but fully supported and concealed by the entire community." He urged members of the public to provide credible information on where Alkali's body could be found, noting that it is the civic responsibility of the Dura-Du community to produce the corpse of the deceased senior officer and those who were involved in his murder. The event, which held at the Capitol Hill of the state in Atlanta, also featured the declaration of Oct. 25 as `Emmanuel Kachikwu Day by the State of South Carolina. Senatorial and Legislative hosts, the Black Caucus of the State Legislature, took turns to eulogise Kachikwus unimpeachable reputation for integrity, intelligence, fairness and kindness. The legislators Gloria Butler, Michael Rheft, Donzella James, Roger Bruce, Billy Mitchel, Howard Mosby, Erica Thomas, Sandra Scotts, Pam Stevenson, Jason Lary, and John King, also expressed pride at their African heritage. NAN reports that State of Georgia has the largest Black Caucus in the U.S. hosting 60 members, and is described as the heartbeat of African-Americans, with about 3.2 million black population. Ms Dawkins Haigler, Chair Emeritus of the Black Caucus, and most of the other legislators, said they had done their ancestry tests, which confirmed that they were between 65 per cent and 85 per cent Nigerians. The lawmakers said they always knew they were Africans and were proud to identify with their motherland, adding that they had sponsored several trips to Nigeria. Responding to the awards, Kachikwu, who was visibly elated at the honours, said he was extremely humbled and dedicated the honours to President Muhammadu Buhari. Usually I dont lack words but today, I think I do by the happenstance of today. I think the award is fantastic but what I think is more important is the symbolism of the awards. The fact that citizens of the United States, especially our Black brothers and sisters, decided today to recognise a very humble nation that has nearly half of the population of Africa and command the great economic heights of Africa and is bound to be the leader of tomorrow in the world. That country is Nigeria; and for those of you who havent been there, you should be there; you should be in a hurry to get there. You will attest to the fact that it is only a matter of time before Nigeria finds its feet and finds its own and become a power to recognise. I thank President Muhammadu Buhari who gave me the opportunity to serve in various capacities that are bringing some of these awards today. Not only for his self belief but his determination as the leader to go outside the political mainstream and pick somebody he believed could help in the arduous task of trying to change the oil environment. It is still work in progress; theres still a lot of work to be done but were very committed. The problem with Nigeria isnt the disagreement that we have, it isnt the things that we have not achieved, it isnt the sometimes black sheep name that pervades all over the world about Nigeria, that is not the problem with Nigeria. The problem of Nigeria is the unwillingness of the young and the old to forge collectively in a very transparent manner, to shake up what is vibrantly sleeping giant. According to him, Nigeria is primed for growth, success, generative leadership and to hopefully be the sitting home of most Black Americans. Kachikwu said he was always very humbled to be called a Nigerian because despite its challenges, it is the most wonderful place in the world to be in. The minister also said he was always proud to be called a minister in the sense in that it was not different from an ordained pastor there to serve his people with a lot of transparency. Quite frankly, Im nothing more than a humble servant. And if theres something this President has achieved, it is the fact that ministers have become commonplace people, no longer the ego-strapped people to be celebrated." Kachikwu recalled the challenges the administration was confronted with when it came on board, including the crash of oil price, the lowest crude production in decades, and recession. He, however, commended management and staff members of the ministry who worked assiduously with him. According to him, they set ambitious goals, and expressed pride that most of the targets are being met. So, today, the recognition that I get, I receive in honour of the President of the Federal Republic of Nigeria, President Muhammadu Buhari. Also, in honour of my colleagues who have worked very deeply with me and I think some of the things that weve achieved over the last three years, we didnt think were possible. Into the next five years, I see a Nigeria where there will be power available for all nationals, where our refineries will work so we do not have to import petroleum products, where young people can set up businesses and do not need to know anybody in the system to be able to make that business grow. A Nigeria where irrespective of where you come from North, South, East and West we will become brothers, he said. How true is this? she wrote. How true is what? You guys did not write about this /Israel thing? What did Lai Mohammed say again? I wrote back, wondering what I had missed on the drive to work. That Nigeria is going to invade Israel. He's trending at Number 2 on Twitter right now!, she added. She was right. News of Nigeria's Information Minister Lai Mohammed threatening that Nigeria was going to make Israel pay for taking in fugitive separatistNnamdi Kanu, complete with quotes and all, was among the top trending topics on Twitter Nigeria on a busy Monday morning. ece-auto-gen I would tell my colleague not to touch the story and made sure no one on the news desk touched the story until we got some kind of confirmation from Abuja. Two phone calls later to Mohammeds office in Abuja and we were proven right. He never made the remarks attributed to him. One mischievous individual with an internet connection and a weather beaten smartphone, who sat in a dingy apartment probably in suburban Lagos, had cooked up a story, unleashed it on the internet and watched as faux activists analyzed and pontificated a figment of his own imagination. It was pure madness. Welcome to the sad era of fake news! I was in London when I heard the story about Nnamdi Kanu surfacing in Israel. I was not in a position to make any statement. But before I knew it, within a few hours, I saw my picture with a story saying that I had actually given Israel ultimatum to return Nnamdi Kanu otherwise, we will send them missiles. I just laughed. It speaks to what we are talking about fake news because it is probably the biggest threat in the run-up to the elections, Mohammed said. For once, you just have to agree with Mohammed. The rate at which fake news is being churned out by Nigerians with some online following these days, is alarming. Two days after Mohammed was said to have said something he never said, the fake news industry in Nigeria declared former President Ernest Shonekan dead. It was a lie as well. BusinessInsider Go through your social media feeds daily and fake news stares you in the face. Its almost as though peddling and passing on lies as facts has become the new normal. The cold truth is that it will get even worse as Nigeria prepares to hold a general election in February 2019, with propagandists and partisans handed miserable amounts of money to churn out lies just to diminish an opponent. Fake news is a global phenomenon these days. The United States is still reeling from the effect of fake news and Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg was grilled by US lawmakers earlier in the year for allowing his platform to be seized by fake news merchants during the 2016 US elections that threw up Donald Trump as President. Speaking during a visit to the Government House in Asaba, Wabba commended Okowa for supporting the new minimum wage proposed by the NLC. You (Okowa) as a governor is labour friendly, your open door policy is unparalleled and unprecedented, Wabba began. I believe that this is the whole essence of governance because, governance is about the people. When we came into Delta State, we first tried to find out the conditions of the workers and pensioners and we have also put into account the development of the state and I must say that the news and the information we have gotten is very cheering. Here, in Delta State, salaries are being paid as at when due, pensioners receive their pensions as at when due as well. You [Okowa] have extended a lot of assistance to the local governments from the state coffers. This is really unprecedented and importantly I was informed about the warm relationship between the state government and organized labour. There has been regular interaction between government and labour where the challenges of workers are brought up and solutions offered; this kind of relationship is one that other state governments need to emulate, he added. Wabba lauded the administrations effort towards bringing the dividends of democracy to the people of Delta state. Today there is peace, stability and development in the state, all major events are brought to Delta State because of the fact that there is peace and stability in this state. We have realised that where there is leadership by excellence, the difference will be very clear. I want to thank you and encourage you to keep up the good work as those that are ready to support the minimum wage, we will support them as well, Wabba said. Okowa appealled to Labour to ensure that the interest of lower level workers is catered for while addressing the issues of minimum wage. Shehu said that 111 of the cases were criminal while 226 were civil. He said that the criminal cases theft, burglary, vandalism, fraud, misuse of controlled drugs, breach of trust, gross misconduct, indecency, resisting arrest, trespass, rape and related offences and larceny. The spokesman disclosed that out of the criminal cases, 87 had been fully prosecuted, with 19 awaiting trial, while five were transferred to relevant agencies for proper investigation and prosecution.According to him, the civil cases include family disputes, tenancy disputes, interpersonal disputes, farmers/herdsmen disputes, debt and breach of contractual agreement. With exception of two cases, all the civil cases were settled out of court by the command. NACAN has to work hard to improve the air transportation record and air-traffic communication in line with the provision of International Civil Aviation Organisation. Members of NACAN should avail themselves with regular training to come up with the best practices to be at par with what is happening in other parts of the world, he said. The governor said that the first phase of work for night landing at the Benin Airport had been completed. He commended the Nigeria Airspace Management Agency (NAMA) for collaborating with his administration to ensure that the phase of work was completed. In his remarks, the President of NACAN, Comrade George Nkambo, commended the Edo governor for the support, hospitality and his physical presence at the occasion. He said that over nine million primary pupils are benefitting in 26 states already. The vice president said that the programme has been, by all accounts, a remarkable success. He said that by the end of 2018, with more states in the country joining the National Homegrown School Feeding Programme, it was set to become the largest school-feeding programme in Africa. Osinbajo told the 353 delegates and experts from nine countries that the programme is strategic to human capital development. The delegates include experts in the nutrition industry, United Nations officials from World Food Programme, Global Child Nutrition Fund, the World Bank and stakeholders that Nigeria took the decision to embark on a school feeding programme as an important part of our human capital development agenda. By tackling the broader issues of eradication of poverty, food and nutrition security, and increasing school enrolment. It is becoming clearer that the 21st century will be defined by knowledge and skills. The nations that are best able to present the most knowledgeable and most skilful citizens will prevail in commerce, in science and technology and of course, will enjoy the greatest prosperity and the longevity to enjoy the prosperity. Nations that do not invest enough to produce the required level of talent and skills will be left behind; a farther distance than ever before in the history of mankind. By 2035, Africa will have 1.2billion people. Over 50 per cent of that number will be young persons under the age of 25. Today, 60 per cent of the unemployed in Africa are young people. Osinbajo said at a cost of 0.19 dollars per child per day, a balanced meal was provided for every one of the children as 9,300,892 million pupils in 49,837 public primary schools in 26 states across Nigeria benefitted daily. According to him, at current numbers, the programme costs $1,767,169.48 per day and over 183million dollars has been invested so far in the programme. The programme employs 95,422 cooks, and over 100,000 smallholder farmers linked to the programme, supplying locally sourced ingredients. This translates to 594 cattle, 138,000 chickens, 6.8 million eggs, 83 metric tons of fish that are procured, prepared, and distributed each week. As you can imagine, the quantity of starch and vegetables required for this program on a weekly basis is equally impressive. He told the audience that the success of the programme in a short time was due to factors such as unequivocal political will, transparency and accountability. Osinbajo also listed good value for all participants in the value chain, multi-sectoral coordination and strategic partnership with international donors such as Melinda and Bill Gates Foundation and Partnership For Child Development, Imperial College. He earlier commended the Global Child Nutrition Forum and World Food Programme, for providing such an excellent opportunity for the global school feeding community to come together to share ideas, learn from and inspire one another. Present at the occasion were Hatem Ben Salem, Minister of Education, Republic of Tunisia; Arlene Mitchell, Executive Director, Global Child Nutrition Fund; Don Burdy, Specialist at World Food Programme/World Bank. The Inspector-General of Police, Mr Ibrahim Idris, expressed the readiness on Friday at the inauguration of IVM Granite vehicle, 2019 edition manufactured by the indigenous company in Nnewi, Anambra. Idris commended Innoson for providing camouflaged vehicles for the Nigerian Army to tackle insecurity. Idris, who was represented by the Deputy Inspector-General in charge of Logistics and Supply, Mr Agboola Oshodi-Glover, also called on other organisations to support the locally made vehicles. Innoson is making history. This type is rare. I congratulate you and want to assure you that police will give you all the necessary supports you need. But you need to commence production of Armoured Personnel Carriers to enable the police tackle insurgents and other security challenges in the country, he added. Also, Gov. Willie Obiano of Anambra praised the ingenuity of the company amidst apparent challenges in the industry. I am happy this is happening in our state. Its only here that were manufacturing vehicles. Others travel to other countries and gather parts to assemble in Nigeria, he said. Obiano, however, expressed regret that the epileptic power supply in the state had hampered some production capacity of the company. The governor urged the Federal Government, as a matter of urgency, to provide adequate power supply and enabling environment for maximum productivity. He also appealed to state and Federal Governments to commence placing orders on the vehicles produced by IVM. With what Innoson is doing, he is contributing immensely to the nations GDP and should be encouraged to do more, Obiano, who was represented by his deputy, Dr Nkem Okeke, added. Earlier, the Chairman of Innoson Vehicle Manufacturing Company, Chief Innocent Chukwuma, said the companys major strength depended on its ability to produce according to clients specifications. The fact that the Nigerian Police vehicle operate in diverse and dangerous terrains as a result of its functions, Innoson vehicles can produce specific operational vehicles that will meet the operational requirements of the Nigerian Police. Ogah spoke with State House correspondents after he and former Senate President, Ken Nnamani, had a closed door meeting with President Muhammadu Buhari at the Presidential Villa. The governorship candidate said that executive members of All Progressives Grand Alliance (APGA) and Social Democratic Party (SDP) would soon `submit to APC in Abia State. He said that his chances in the governorship contest were very bright as he was the man to beat, adding that he was upbeat that President Muhammadu Buhari would also win the presidential election in 2019. Ogah said that if elected, he would harness the untapped potentials of Abia for the good of the citizens. According to him, he will improve security, facilitate industrialisation, ensure good welfare for the people and revolutionalise development in the state. Ogah, who is the President of Maters Energy Group, said if elected, he would ensure that infrastructure in Abia State would be second to none ever since the inception of Abia State. If you get to Abia State, everywhere is Uche Ogah; he is the only answer for the people of Abia State; I am the only person who has the capacity to take Abia State to the next level. My message is that of hope; the future is brighter; there is hope for every Nigerian come 2019 and Buhari is voted into power the second time. If you are on ground, you will know that people went to APGA because I refused to go to another party. There was apathy of the people; but by next week the entire executive of APGA are submitting themselves to APC in Abia State. The entire executive of SDP are submitting themselves to APC; if you go to Abia, you ask questions; there is only one candidate to beat and that is Uche Ogah. He said that Abia people earnestly yearned for him to tackle the persistent challenge of bad roads and infrastructure facing the state. On his part, Nnamani told State House correspondents that the party was still harmonising after its primaries and congresses. The APC chieftain said that there were quite a few conflicts which were common in a political arena. Right now, we are grappling with the outcome of the primaries, trying to bring everybody together. We are not asking anybody to go to hell; we are asking them to come together; if you do not do well, there is nothing to cheer; if you do well, everybody will be happy. We are still working on appeasing a number of people so that we can be happy, he said. Pesident Buhari stated this in an affidavit submitted to the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) following his failure to submit document supporting required by the body. I am the above named person and the deponent of this affidavit herein. All my academic qualification documents as filled in my Presidential form, APC/001/2015 are currently with the Secretary of the Military Board as of the time of this affidavit, read the affidavit sworn to by President Buhari. ece-auto-gen Meanwhile, Atiku Abubakar (PDP) and Donald Duke (SDP) had submitted their document to the electoral body. According to , Atiku also attached tax returns indicating that he had paid N10.8 million in tax from 2015 to 2017 while declaring his income within the period as N60.2 million. Replay of 2014? Recall that during the buildup to the 2015 general elections, Buhari, a presidential aspirant at the time, failed to present his credentials to INEC. He blamed the Secretary of the Military Board for holding on to release his credentials. ALSO READ: Vote for Buhari to return power to the South-West, says Fashola All my academic qualifications (documents) as filled in my presidential form, President APC/001/2015, are currently with the Secretary Military Boards as at the time of this affidavit. The affidavit is made in good faith and for record purpose, Buhari swore in an affidavit. Over 70 candidates for running for President So far, over seventy political parties have submitted names of their presidential candidates. A comprehensive list has been published by INEC on Friday, October 26, 2018. President Muhammadu Buhari has been affirmed as the candidate of the All Progressives' Congress (APC) at the party's national convention this weekend, former Vice President, Atiku Abubakar, was elected the candidate of the People's Democratic Party (PDP). While many believe that next year's election will be closely fought between the candidates of the two leading parties, there are a who will appear on the ballot on February 16, 2019. Fashola campaigns for Buhari The Minister of Power, Works and Housing, Babatunde Fashola, on Thursday, urged the people of South West to vote for President Muhammadu Buhari in the 2019 elections to guarantee a return of power to the region in 2023. The minister stated this at a special Town Hall Meeting on infrastructure organised by the Ministry of Information and Culture and the National Orientation Agency. The News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) reports the Minister of Information and Culture, Alhaji Lai Mohammed led three other ministers including Fashola, Ministers of Transportation, Rotimi Amaechi and Water Resources, Suleiman Adamu to the town hall meeting. Fashola said besides the massive investments by the Buhari administration on infrastructure across the country and in South-West in particular, the South west would benefit more politically by voting for Buhari. The minister, who spoke in Yoruba language and with a proverb said: Did you know that power is rotating to the South-West after the completion of Buharis tenure if you vote for him in 2019? Your child cannot surrender her waist for an edifying beads and you will use the bead to decorate another childs waist. A vote for Buhari in 2019, means a return of power to the South West in 2023. I am sure you will vote wisely. Recall that the Economist predicted that then candidate Buhari of the APC was going to win the 2015 presidential election. The Economist also endorsed Buhari ahead of the 2015 elections and famously referred to then President Goodluck Jonathan of the PDP as an ineffectual buffoon. Jonathan would go on to lose the vote to Buhari. "Buhari will lose power" In a report published by its research unit which is known as the Economist Intelligence Unit (EIU), the renowned magazine forecasts that President, Muhammadu Buhari will lose power at the February 2019 elections. The next government will be led by Atiku Abubakar of the PDP, although his administration will be fragile. Analyzing how the election will play out, the EIU forecasts that both candidates are from Northern Nigeria, where Mr. Buharis support base lies, presaging a fierce contest there. With the vote likely to be split in the north, Mr. Abubakar will find it easier to garner support from the countrys south, which has traditionally been a safe haven for the PDP. This gives Mr. Abubakar an edge, as does popular frustration over the rise in joblessness and poverty (two of the biggest voter concerns) on Mr. Buharis watch, as well as growing insecurity in central Nigeria. Nonetheless, strong incumbency advantages in Nigeria imply that it will be a very tight race. If Mr. Abubakar losesa distinct downside risk to our forecastthere may be a rejection of the result by the PDP, which is convinced the election will be rigged. In this scenario, a state of national paralysis could arise with severe national security implications. The Economist says Atiku will handle the economy better The EIU also praises Atikus free market and reformist agenda, while decrying Buharis poor management of the Nigerian economy. Mr. Buhari has been ideologically disposed towards state intervention in the economy, meaning there was little cause for him to overhaul the status quo. A more concerted effort to open up the economy to investment by Mr. Abubakar could produce positive results", EIU says. The EIU also says things wont necessarily get better in Nigeria with an Atiku presidency. Without a party system based on shared principles, it will be difficult to overcome Nigerias multi-layered security threats. Instability and legislative paralysis will affect many aspects of the economic forecast. After Buhari loses power, the EIU forecasts, instability will remain an insoluble challenge for President Atiku. Not all the ambitious politicians from the APC who have defected to the PDP, will be rewarded with places in the next government; or if they are, it will mean that pre-existing grandees within the PDP will have been sidelined. Whoever ends up feeling cheated will eventually turn on the new administration, as is happening to the APC now. The battle for Nigeria's number one job 71-year-old Atiku Abubakar settled for former Anambra Governor Peter Obi as his running mate ahead of the election, following a keenly contested primary vote in Port Harcourt. The former Nigeria vice president has promised to restructure the country and steer the nation toward economic growth and prosperity; touting his business credentialsas an advantage. ece-auto-gen 75-year-old Muhammadu Buhari whose 2015 election campaign was hinged on a promise to tackle widespread corruption, has told everyone who cares to listen that returning power to the PDPa political party which governed Nigeria for 16 years before it was unseated three years agowill mean rolling back the anti-corruption gains and infrastructure drive that his administration has embarked upon. According to the group, "the composition of gubernatorial candidates and their running mates has relegated adherents of the Christian religion to the background, even when they constitute a formidable number in the state". In a statement made public by its publicity secretary, Mr. J.A Gusadi, the CYF states that it is worried by the trend in Niger state "where same faith gubernatorial candidatures by dominant political parties in favour of Muslims is prevalent at the detriment of other religions". Gusadi asked political players in the state and elder statesmen to review the decisions by the major political parties in order to reflect inclusiveness, which he said, will bring to an end this worrisome trend of marginalization and inhuman treatment by our Muslim brothers to forestall any resentments that may lead to chaos in future. Fairness and justice According to him, in advanced democracies as practiced by civilised nations the world over, especially corporate entities, the diversity of such nations in terms of all forms of differences including ethnic and religion, constitutes the rallying point. If democracy is about representation of the people no matter their affiliations then let all players in Niger state be engaged in an all inclusive approach since the system is of the people, by the people and for the people. Recall that Christian Association of Nigeria CAN, Niger state chapter had on the 11th of October, through a press statement requested for a reflection of fairness and justice in the pairing of governorship candidates by ensuring that all parties field either a Christian/Muslim ticket or a Muslim/Christian ticket. The outright disregard to the request by CAN is not acceptable by us, as it does not portray the state in its right composition and the decision is viewed as a total disregard on the collective intelligence of hard working thousands of Christians in Nigeria state, he stated. Capable hands Gusadi further said, We have capable hands in various fields of endeavour who are willing to contribute immensely to the development of our dear state, hence we are requesting that both APC and PDP reconsider their decision of featuring same faith tickets and tap on the willingness and commitment of the Christian community to partner with every well meaning indigene of the state to build the Niger state of our dream. Muslim - Muslim candidature does not truly reflect the composition of Niger state, which by our own estimation is about 50/50% for the two major faiths. All manner of people in the state must be given a sense of belonging in the interest of justice and fair play. We are committed to teaming up with our Muslim brothers to work assiduously to deliver dividends of democracy to the good people of Niger state. We, by this statement call on the major actors to demonstrate their independence and executive powers to make immediate changes to reflect our request and grant us all the opportunity to build the state together. Breaking news: Lagos 2019 promises to be interesting. PDP offers Femi Otedola governorship ticket. He's accepted and personally confirmed to The Boss newspaper, Momodu informed thousands of his followers on Twitter. Everyone went to town with the story afterwards. The mainstream media ran editorials on it, blogs and online news sites curated for fun and this writer even chipped in with an opinion piece on what Otedolas entry into the Lagos governorship race will mean for this city of 20 million people. How ridiculous and foolish I feel now! Its interesting that Otedola didnt say a word in confirmation or denial of the story soon after Momodu fed the press and the general public with it. His silence immediately gave everyone the impression that he was indeed running and was waiting for a good time to make it all formal. Fast forward several weeks after and Otedola is yet to confirm or deny that he is running. In any case, Momodu told us that Otedola will be running on the PDP platform. But like everyone now knows, the PDP has concluded its governorship primary election, with Jimi Agbaje emerging as its flagbearer. Is Otedola mulling running on another platform? Has he purchased the governorship nomination form of another political party through a proxy? Why is Otedola keeping quiet if he is really serious about running for office? This week, Lagos PDP godfather, Bode George, tells us that Otedola actually told him he was running. Otedola told me himself on a flight in April that hed be running for Lagos Governor, George said. The one inference we can draw at the moment is that Otedola wasnt serious about running for governor ab initio. If he considered running, one has got to say he changed his mind just before the primarieswhich is totally fine. But why fly the kite when you werent serious? Why not tell us you are no longer running rather than keep us hanging? However, it may be time to question Momodu as well. Anyone who wants to run for the office of governor makes the pronouncement of his intent himself. Why did Momodu declare for Otedola? Who asks a journalist to make a formal declaration on his behalf and why would this journalist put the word out there like he is so certain, when he isnt? What does all of these say about Momodus methods? Recall that it was the same Momodu who arranged this very curious interview with former Petroleum Resources Minister, Diezani Alison-Madueke, in which she told us she is stricken with cancer. A Federal minister Babatunde Fashola thinks so in a report published today by the Premium Times News. ece-auto-gen Fashola reportedly mentioned this at a meeting "organised by the Minister for Information, Lai Mohammed". The Premium Times confirms this in the report. At the Emeritus Professor Theophilus Ogunlesi Hall in Ibadan, the minister blames the Jonathan administration for the debts inherited by his team. What was left behind were massive debts owed to contractors who had not been paid for three to five years and who had laid off thousands of workers and shut down equipment and plants. That was one of the reasons why the economy first went into, and, I suspect, one of the reasons they (Goodluck administration) quickly conceded defeat," says Fashola in a report by the Premium Times News. Will Buhari be getting a phone call? President Muhammadu Buhari who is also facing the danger of being sacked from office at next year's poll has commended his predecessor for his display of sportsmanship which is widely believed to have delivered Nigeria from potential violence. Before the election result announcing Buhari as the president was made public by INEC, Jonathan reportedly called the incumbent over the phone to congratulate him on his victory. ece-auto-gen ALSO READ: 78 candidates to contest against Buhari in 2019 presidential election For now, it is a tight contest between Buhari and the PDP's candidate Atiku Abubakar who has criticized the other for lacking a cutting edge in leadership. One of Atiku's experiences being the former Vice-President of Nigeria has made him to think himself a better option compared to Buhari who recently launched the new International Terminal of the Port Harcourt Airport. I can categorically tell you that no party in the Oyo State House of Assembly outnumbers APC. Even though we have other political parties such as ADC, ADP, and PDP, I can assure you that none of them has supersedes the APC in the House. It is a rumour. I am still in APC and I will remain in APC and I cannot defect from APC to any other political party. Although former governor Alao Akala remains my Oga, for now, our political affiliation is very different. Notwithstanding, I can tell you that I am still in APC and I will remain there. The speaker called on the generality of the people of the state to cooperate with the present administration to consolidate on the gains so far recorded in the governance of the state. Meanwhile, Ali also tendered proof of payment for the certification of all the electoral materials tendered so far by the petitioners. He had on Thursday last week promised to bring the proof of payment following the objection raised by the respondents lawyers on non payment for certification as required by law. The counsel tendered the original copy of a letter written by INEC to the PDP Legal Adviser, Sunday Olowolafe, stating the cost of certification, a copy of teller for the payment of N837,288 for the certification and a receipt issued by INEC for the payment. The News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) reports that permanent voters registers (PVR) used during the election from about 13 local government were tendered as exhibits. Permanent Voter Registers from Ekiti East(16), Ekiti West (6), Ekiti Southwest(11 ), Emure (33), Oye(16),Moba(26)and Gbonyin (12), were tendered and admitted as exhibits. Also tendered and admitted were the permanent voters registers for Ido Osi (4), Ijero (3), Ikere (2), Irepodun Ifeladun (18) and Ilejemeje (3) Ise-orun(8). The defence team, however, still objected to the admissibility of the documents, stating that they were not pleaded and that some of the wards mentioned were not in contention. Counsel to the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC), Mr Charles Uwensuyi (SAN), maintained that some of the documents tendered, were not certified true copies and should therefore, not be admitted. Justice Suleiman Belgore, Chairman of the three-member tribunal, who admitted the documents, said all objections should be reserved and incorporated in the final addresses of the various defendants. He further said that documents admitted as exhibits could still be expunged at the end if necessary. NAN further reports that the PDP and its candidate, Kolapo, had approached the tribunal, challenging the declaration of Fayemi of the All Progressives Congress (APC) as the winner of the July 14, governorship elections. The petitioners joined Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) as a nominal respondent. He described President Buhari as `a very good product, and his competencies were desperately needed for the progress of the nation, `but we need to go out there and sell him to the people. Public Relations professionals will tell you that at some point, having a good product without excellent advertising is like winking in the dark you know what you are doing, but no one else does. Perception is reality when it comes to politics and campaigning. Perception management is therefore critical in times like this, he said. The governor stated that all members of the All Progressives Congress (APC) must market the `incredible accomplishments of President Buhari and of his administration to every voter and in all the local languages in the country. He further warned that if the party failed to do so efficiently, the adverse narratives aggressively put out by the opposition PDP and other propaganda machines would dominate the land and shape perceptions. He said: If those of us in APC do not sell this winning product very well Economic recovery will be mistaken for slow-down due to poor management of the nations economy" Measures to protect local industries and stimulate domestic production will be mistaken for deliberate impoverishment of the populace via high prices of essential commodities. Borrowing for rapid infrastructural development will be mistaken for unwarranted or misapplied debt. A tough and progressive victory against a terrorist threat which continues to cost the nation the lives of her brave military and law enforcement personnel will be mistaken for inaction. A difficult fight against old and new forms of insecurity, which is designed to neutralize security threats across parts of the nation without criminalizing whole tribes or populations, will be mistaken for victimization of some and condonation of others. Trial of politically exposed offenders using long existent laws which previous leaders were not willing to deploy against cronies and accomplices will be mistaken for extrajudicial measures and disdain for the Rule of Law. Social safety nets for the poor under the various Social Investment Programmes and payment of long outstanding obligations to unjustly treated segments of our citizenry will be mistaken for bribery of the populace or vote buying tricks. If we fail to take charge of the narrative and persuade people till they see the true intents of this Administrations policies, we will have a much harder job mobilizing the votes we need to get Mr. President re-elected. If we do not put Mr. Presidents achievements before our people till they can recite it themselves, they may agree with the shameless PDP that the heartless corruption which it is offering again is somehow better than the alleged incompetence of the APC which has accomplished every good thing I listed above. In summary, all may be lost if we do not get the Nigerian people to see why they must allow Mr President continue his great work as they go to the polls in 2019. The governor, who was elected under the platform of the APC, however, warned that the party has a huge task before it in the 2019 general elections. According to the governor, 2015 is about Change while 2019 is about Progress. He, therefore, advised leadership and members of the APC not to relent in educating and sensitising the electorate on the danger of reversing the achievements of the Buhari administration. As members of the APC, we will not deny that our party has a huge task before us in the 2019 general elections. The elections will not be a walkover, the PDP will not be a pushover and we MUST take nothing and no one for granted, he warned. Bello, who narrated the achievements of the Buhari administration in the past three years, condemned the 16 years of PDP administration, which he said were generally characterised by low capital investment on infrastructure. He, however, noted that the Buhari administration had invested in excess of N3 trillion on infrastructural developments, which he described as, the highest ever in nations history, and at a time when revenues were generally poor and a recession was on. He noted that the APC was offering greater inclusiveness for all Nigerians irrespective of tribes and voting patterns. Bello added that the APC would pay better attention to affirmative action women, youth and special ability in appointive positions. The APC will respect the unspoken but gentlemanly rotationally presidential pattern between North and South which most Nigerians defended in 2015. The APC is promising to continue re-writing the age-long negatives which have plagued our nation to positives. This is the message we must all take to every nook and cranny of this nation, and from door to door. On the other hand, all the crooked PDP is offering Nigerians is Corruption is better than Incompetence and Anybody but Buhari. While addressing young political appointees and supporters of the current administration during a dinner at the Presidential Villa, Bello described the president as a good product who must be marketed effectively to win a second term in office. According to the governor, the ruling All Progressives Congress (APC) must take charge of the narrative and sell the president's first term achievements very well to the Nigerian people. He warned that the opposition must not be allowed to take control of the narrative and shape perceptions of the president because he expects the 2019 presidential election to be a tough contest between the APC and the People's Democratic Party (PDP). He said, "A good product sells itself and Mr President is a very good product. And his competence is definitely needed for the progress of this nation but we need to go out there and sell him to the people. "We must market the incredible accomplishment of Mr President and of his administration to every voter and in a language he or she understands. If we fail, God forbids, the adverse narrative being put out by the PDP and other propaganda machine will dominate the land and shape perception. "Public Relations professionals will tell you that at some point, having a good product without excellent advertising is like winking in the dark - you know what you are doing, but no one else does. "Perception is reality when it comes to politics and campaigning. Perception management is therefore critical in times like this. "If those of us in APC do not sell this winning product very well, economic recovery will be mistaken for slow-down due to poor management of the nation's economy; "Measures to protect local industries and stimulate domestic production will be mistaken for deliberate impoverishment of the populace via high prices of essential commodities; "Borrowing for rapid infrastructural development will be mistaken for unwarranted or misapplied debt; "A tough and progressive victory against a terrorist threat which continues to cost the nation the lives of her brave military and law enforcement personnel will be mistaken for inaction; "A difficult fight against old and new forms of insecurity, which is designed to neutralise security threats across parts of the nation without criminalising whole tribes or populations, will be mistaken for victimisation of some and condonation of others; "Trial of politically exposed offenders using long existent laws which previous leaders were not willing to deploy against cronies and accomplices will be mistaken for extrajudicial measures and disdain for the Rule of Law; "Social safety nets for the poor under the various Social Investment Programmes and payment of long outstanding obligations to unjustly treated segments of our citizenry will be mistaken for bribery of the populace or vote buying tricks. "If we fail to take charge of the narrative and persuade people till they see the true intents of this administration's policies, we will have a much harder job mobilising the votes we need to get Mr President re-elected. "If we do not put Mr. President's achievements before our people till they can recite it themselves, they may agree with the shameless PDP that the heartless corruption which it is offering again is somehow better than the alleged 'incompetence' of the APC which has accomplished every good thing I listed above. "In summary, all may be lost if we do not get the Nigerian people to see why they must allow Mr President continue his great work as they go to the polls in 2019. "As members of the APC, we will not deny that our party has a huge task before us in the 2019 general elections. The elections will not be a walkover, the PDP will not be a pushover and we must take nothing and no one for granted." APC will beat PDP in 2019 - Bello Governor Bello also expressed his confidence that the ruling APC will defeat the PDP because the party's three years in power has been better for the country than PDP's previous 16 years of democratic rule. He said the achievement of the Buhari-led administration has eclipsed the PDP's years of alleged mismanagement of the country. He said, "The APC is promising to continue re-writing the age-long negatives which have plagued our nation to positives. This is the message we must all take to every nook and cranny of this nation, and from door to door. "On the other hand, all the crooked PDP is offering Nigerians is 'Corruption is better than Incompetence' and 'Anybody but Buhari'. "I say they have made our job easy, assuming we are ready to work hard." The 2019 presidential election, scheduled for February 16, 2019, is expected to be keenly-contested between President Buhari and former Vice President, Atiku Abubakar, of the PDP. However, they both face competition from over 70 other candidates including Donald Duke of the Social Democratic Party (SDP), Kingsley Moghalu of the Young Progressive Party (YPP), Obiageli Ezekwesili of the Allied Congress Party of Nigeria (ACPN), Fela Durotoye of the Alliance for New Nigeria (ANN), and Omoyele Sowore of the African Action Congress (AAC). Marafa stated this while reacting to a protest against Oshiomhole allegedly organised by the state governor, Abdulaziz Yari. Governor Yari had fell out with the APC chairman after the party primary election in Zamfara state. But, Marafa, in a statement in Abuja on Friday, October 26, 2018, accused the governor of trying to bend rules of the APC and impose candidates who are his cronies on the party in the state. Yari should be the one to be sacked and not Oshiomhole who is a law abiding leader, Marafa declared. "There was a court order that says all parties should not take any step that will render useless the litigation before it. The party under the able leadership of Comrade Adams Oshiomhole respected the order and said all parties in the crisis should hands off. The party and it leadership should be commended for respecting the law, a foundation upon which APC was built. "When the committee of the NWC came to conduct the primary in Zamfara, violence orchestrated by Yari's people erupted, the committee was forced to cancel the election. "The crux of the matter is that there was no election and there was no consensus in Zamfara. So, we are commending Comrade Oshiomhole and INEC for respecting the court order. We in Zamfara are solidly behind Oshiomhole," the lawmaker who chairs the Senate Committee on Petroleum (Downstream) stated.. The governor, however, insisted that the primary election in the state was conclusive. INEC decision on Zamfara The Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) had banned the APC from fielding governorship candidate for Zamfara state. But, Oshiomhole believes INECs decision is unfair to the APC. The case shocked Spain, where it was uncovered at the height of the crisis that left many people struggling financially. Bankia later had to be nationalised. The 69-year-old had been free on bail pending an appeal but Spain's Supreme Court last month confirmed his sentence of four years and six months. "I ask for forgiveness to society and those people who may feel disappointed or affected," Rato told reporters before entering the Soto del Real prison north of Madrid. A spokeswoman for Spain's prison system confirmed Rato entered the jail just after one pm (1100 GMT). He was economy minister and deputy prime minister in the conservative government of Jose Maria Aznar from 1996 to 2004, before going on to head the International Monetary Fund until 2007. His subsequent career as a banker in Spain was short-lived -- from 2010 to 2012. But apart from the undeclared credit cards, it also led to another banking scandal considered the country's biggest. Thousands of small-scale investors lost their money after they were persuaded to buy shares ahead of the flotation of Bankia in 2011, with Rato at the reins. Less than a year later, he resigned as it became known that Bankia was in dire straits. The state injected billions of euros but faced with the scale of losses and trouble in other banks, it asked the European Union for a bailout for the entire banking sector and eventually received 41 billion euros. Rato is due to stand trial in November, accused of falsifying information about Bankia's finances. He is the third former IMF chief to fall foul of the law. His successor Dominique Strauss-Kahn was tried in 2015 on pimping charges in a lurid sex scandal, and was acquitted. His first public comments on the case were met with claps and whistles in a packed ballroom at Riyadh's Ritz-Carlton hotel, and one Saudi woman listening to the prince was overheard saying the speech brought "tears to my eyes". That stands in contrast to the outrage that has been building globally, with US President Donald Trump describing the killing as "one of the worst" cover-ups in history and appearing to indicate in a media interview that the prince himself may be culpable. But the prince's swaggering demeanour at a glittering investment conference -- just after a phone call with Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan who earlier vowed to reveal the "naked truth" about the killing -- fuelled speculation about a possible behind-the-scenes deal. "It does definitely suggest that," said Hussein Ibish, a scholar at the Arab Gulf States Institute in Washington. "You want to look very carefully at Turkish rhetoric in the coming days, but it's entirely possible that the Saudi government was successful in reaching an accommodation with Erdogan, particularly with the support of the United States." The Saudi information ministry did not respond to requests for comment. 'Cheque book diplomacy' Ankara's slow drip of salacious leaks about the Washington Post columnist's murder in Turkey - the world's biggest jailer of journalists - has kept the murder case in international headlines for weeks. But it is yet to produce a smoking gun despite claims by Turkish officials they have incriminating audio evidence. The growing international outcry may have allowed Erdogan to negotiate with the oil-rich Gulf kingdom "behind the scenes" as Turkey grapples with a looming economic crisis, said Bessma Momani, a professor at Canada's University of Waterloo. "Erdogan knows the Saudis -- and their Emirati allies -- are a potential source of sorely needed capital and investment opportunities," she said. The Saudis appear keen for "Turkish silence on who is really culpable in Khashoggi's murder", claimed Momani. The Turkish investigation appears to be ongoing, but Momani's view may chime with what analysts call Saudi Arabia's "cheque book diplomacy", which has helped Riyadh project strong support on the Khashoggi crisis from less wealthy Arab allies. Shift on Qatar In his speech, the prince projected strong relations with Turkey despite Ankara's leaks, saying those trying to drive a wedge between the two Muslim countries "will not succeed as long as there is a king named Salman and a crown prince named Mohammed bin Salman". Displaying their newfound cooperation, Saudi Arabia said Thursday that Khashoggi's murder was "premeditated" based on information supplied by Turkey, backing away from an earlier assertion that he was killed accidentally in a fist fight at the consulate. What further stoked speculation about a possible deal with Ankara was Prince Mohammed's surprisingly conciliatory tone on Qatar - allied with Turkey - after Saudi Arabia and its allies spent more than a year enforcing an embargo against the tiny gas-rich emirate. "Even Qatar, despite our differences with it, has a strong economy and it will be completely different in five years," the prince said in his speech on Wednesday. Analysts say that may well be the first step in acceding to Erdogan's wishes that Saudi Arabia end its crippling blockade on Qatar. "For Erdogan, restoring stability in the Gulf by patching up differences between Saudi Arabia and Qatar remains a key priority to his regional agenda," said Sigurd Neubauer, a Middle East analyst in Washington. Justice for Khashoggi Wednesday's speech by Prince Mohammed, widely known as MBS, triggered the social media hashtag "Saudis stand behind their leaders". Many Saudis have privately expressed concern over how the crisis has severely tarnished the prince's reform credentials. But many Saudis also feel the crown prince's speech on Khashoggi looks to have taken the sting out of the crisis. International pressure, however, may not easily subside even if both Washington and Ankara want to "move past this", said Ibish. "Other countries and, in the United States at least, Congress and the media, will have their say as well and are not irrelevant factors," he said. France on Wednesday said it was ready to back "international sanctions" against those responsible for Khashoggi's murder, after President Emmanuel Macron spoke by telephone to King Salman. Despite Trump's repeated assertions that he does not want to jeopardise multi-billion dollar arms deals with the kingdom, the US has threatened sanctions if the Saudi leadership is linked to the murder. But justice for Khashoggi may still be a pipe dream. "Geopolitical considerations are taking priority over finding out who exactly is culpable for Khashoggi's murder," said Momani. The operation broke up a trafficking ring made up of well-known Dutch criminals based on Spain's Costa del Sol, police said in a statement. They had specialised in smuggling cocaine into Spain and the Netherlands. "Some were considered priority targets by police in the Netherlands," the statement added. The cocaine was hidden in a banana shipment that arrived by boat in neighbouring Portugal and was then transported by truck to Malaga in southern Spain. Police said the gang used a company that imported fruit from Costa Rica as a cover for its operations. AFP Officers seized 300,000 euros ($343,000) as part of the operation along with four guns and several luxury vehicles. Fifteen people were arrested in Malaga and one in Badajoz in the eastern region of Extremadura on the border with Portugal. The operation was carried out in collaboration with the anti-drugs arm of Portugal's police and with the United States' Homeland Security Investigations unit, the statement added. Spain, with its historic and linguistic links to South America, is the main entry point to Europe for cocaine from the continent, mostly from Colombia. Smugglers often resort to creative methods to get drugs past Spanish customs. Published on: 25 October 2018 Corruption, not immigration, is the biggest issue in Brazils presidential election. Foreign residents make up less than one per cent of Brazils resident population, and immigration has appeared only sporadically in political debates. In northern border areas like Roraima, however, which has received around 40,000 displaced Venezuelans, the issue has been highly controversial, descending at times into xenophobic attacks on migrant camps. Bolsonaros reaction on this issue speaks to his broader plans for migration policy. Bolsonaros approach to migration Bolsonaro put forward two possible solutions to the recent displacement of Venezuelans: to revoke the existing migration law via parliament or to create refugee camps. In other words, Bolsonaro wants to revoke the Migration Act of May 2017, as well as Decree 9199, which regulates its implementation. Though some of the more progressive provisions of the new law were vetoed by Brazils current president, Michel Temer, the law was highly praised by specialists and international organisations. The law was elaborated with the participation of a wide range of state, civil-society, and academic actors, ultimately being approved with an overwhelming majority in parliament. It derogated the 1980 Act passed during the military dictatorship (1964-1985), which was not only highly restrictive but also violated international human rights treaties already ratified in Brazil. Migration is only specifically mentioned once in Bolsonaros manifesto, however, with a plan to liberate Cubans by allowing Cuban doctors and their families into Brazil. But Bolsonaros campaign rhetoric has tended to reinforce an anti-immigration discourse that depicts immigrants as a burden on Brazilian society. He has stated that Brazil cannot be a country of open borders and called Haitian, Senegalese, Bolivian, and Syrian migrants and refugees the scum of the world. Civil-society organisations and academics have already begun to highlight the threat to migrants rights if Bolosonaros extreme nationalist rhetoric is translated into action. The Bolsonaro wave has already resulted in the most conservative Congress since the end of the Brazilian dictatorship, with right-wing parties winning 301 of 513 seats. This shift imperils pending legislative initiatives on the political rights of foreign nationals in domestic elections and on the regularisation of undocumented migrants. More broadly, a Bolsonaro government is likely to reinforce the securitised approach to immigration that Brazil adopted during the Temer years. This has favoured the involvement of new actors from the police and military. Specifically, the Federal Police, the Ministry of Defence, the Cabinet of Institutional Security of the Presidency, and more recently the Army, which has been deployed to the northern border to manage the arrival of Venezuelans, have begun to take the lead in developing a more restrictive approach to migration management. Under Bolsonaro, a former army officer, their role is likely to be further strengthened. Effects on migration in the wider Latin American region A Bolsonaro win would also send shock waves across South America. Over the last 20 years, the Common Market of the South (MERCOSUR) in particular has developed one of the worlds most open mobility and residence regimes. Member-states adopted regional norms that called for the right to free movement, the right to migrate, the non-criminalisation of migrants, and equal treatment of foreigners and nationals. Despite some contradictions and tensions, this regime has allowed for the regularisation of almost three million South Americans residing in the region. South American countries also developed a progressive regional position on migration which they promoted in international forums. No such common position was achieved on virtually any other topic. This South American regime and common posture was the result of Argentinas leadership in proposing regional legislation and Brazils subsequent support for these proposals. In effect, Argentinas experience as Latin Americas main receiving country and the relatively uncontroversial nature of migration in Brazils domestic politics allowed for an agreement that limited the scope for regional clashes while also enabling regional influence and leadership. However, political changes have slowed momentum on domestic and regional policy change. Though Argentina continues to define itself as a country open to migration as recently demonstrated by its permissive approach to displaced Venezuelans the election in 2015 of the conservative Mauricio Macri has had a chilling effect on both the domestic reform agenda and regional migration-policy leadership. A lurch to the far right in Brazil under Bolsonaro would have much more dramatic effects than Macris election in Argentina, however, since security forces have already gained a much firmer foothold in Brazilian migration policymaking. One immediate casualty could be the existing regional consensus on migration issues and the related social agenda. If Brazil, which shares borders with most South American countries, closes and militarises borders, other South American countries could reciprocate, leading to a protectionist wave of migration policy across the region. The negative effects would be felt most keenly by the millions of migrants building their lives in the Southern Cone. This opinion piece was originally published on the blog of the London School of Economics and Political Science on 25 October 2018. Published on: 25 October 2018 The research, led by Dr Sarah Marzi from Queen Mary University of London, has uncovered a link between indicators of gene activity and the disease, which could unlock new avenues of research. Alzheimers disease is the leading cause of dementia, which effects 850,000 people in the UK alone. This is set to rise to over 1 million people by 2025. The research investigated changes to the activity of genes which are not caused by variation in the actual genetic code. Unlike the DNA sequence, these so-called epigenetic processes can potentially be altered by environmental factors, providing a possible future avenue to influence their activity. Giving clues on the genes involved Dr Marzi, genomics researcher at Queen Marys Blizard Institute, said the results of the study could help uncover mechanisms that cause the disease: Changes influencing the activity of many genes were found to be robustly associated with the pathological hallmarks of Alzheimers disease. Interestingly, our results suggest there are common mechanisms for both hereditary and isolated forms of this terrible illness. More research is needed to understand whether these changes are a cause or consequence of the disease. Our results may give us clues as to which genes and pathways are involved. 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 Alzheimers disease. First study of its kind Both increases and decreases in histone acetylation were found across regions of the genome, identifying genes involved in Alzheimers 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 Alzheimers disease. This research is the first genome-wide study to investigate histone acetylation in Alzheimers disease, and provides a framework for studying histone modification studies in other diseases affecting the brain. The study is published in the journal Nature Neuroscience and involved researchers from the University of Exeter and Kings College London, and was funded by the US National Institutes of Health, the European Union and the Medical Research Council. More information National leader Simon Bridges is defending his partys culture despite requesting an independent review to go ahead. I dont believe theres some culture problem, Mr Bridges told RadioLIVE. I havent seen evidence of that. The previously stable party was smacked with a whirlwind of accusations from the actions of rogue MP Jami-Lee Ross in previous weeks. Mr Ross accused Mr Bridges of electoral fraud, and released a phone call in which the leader criticised several MPs and made comments some have called racist. I think ultimately what we got here, in National, is one person who did a lot of things, said Mr Bridges, referring to former colleague Mr Ross. Nevertheless, the National Party leader told media on Tuesday that National was seeking independent advice on a review into the party's culture. During the weeks-long saga, it was revealed that Mr Ross had been accused of harassment and bullying by multiple women. Party president Peter Goodfellow knew about the alleged behaviour, yet Mr Ross was promoted to the front bench anyway. Mr Bridges told the media he wants to ensure the women feel safe at work. "A number of women have been affected here. I'm going to talk to Parliamentary Services this week to make sure women feel absolutely safe in the workplace," Mr Bridges said on Tuesday. Deputy leader Paula Bennett, Nicky Wagner and Maureen Pugh have all told the media that no culture investigation is necessary. Listen to the full interview with Simon Bridges above. The Long Lunch with Lynda Hallinan, 12pm - 3pm on RadioLIVE and streaming live to the rova app on Android and iPhone. RadioLIVE. Tim Grafton, Insurance Council of New Zealand chief executive, looks at the findings from a report which shows Aotearoa has risen up the ranks to number two on the risk of at-risk nations when it comes to natural disasters. He says you should be insured for the present day rebuild cost of your property. EUROPE: We need a quantum leap, suggested DG Moves Director of Land Transport Elisabeth Werner, speaking at a workshop in Brussels on October 25 to launch the European Rail Industry Freight Agenda. BELGIUM: The European Commission has approved a state aid scheme which is designed to encourage the modal shift from road to rail and inland waterway of freight traffic to and from Belgian seaports. MYANMAR: An agreement to undertake a feasibility study for a 431 km railway linking Mandalay with Muse on the Chinese border was signed by Myanma Railways and China Railway Eryuan Engineering Group on October 22. Much has been written about Russias ambitions in Syria and the Middle East, and there are numerous elements to Moscows strategy in the region. President Vladimir Putin has made clear his desire to restore Russia to great-power status and to build its profile as a global problem-solver. The Middle East offers him the opportunity to demonstrate Russias credentials. Moscows foreign policy clearly reflects realist assumptions about the role of hard power as the defining feature of international politics. But such a broad characterisation does little to help illuminate Putins long-term ambitions in Syria and across the Middle East, the details of which remain obscure. There are also contradictions and a lack of clarity in Russias pattern of engagement in the region that likewise make it difficult to discern Russias objectives with any confidence. Russias intervention in the Syrian civil war has been its most substantial recent foray into the Middle East. Moscows actions have been carefully calibrated and have tipped the balance in favour of Syrias President Bashar al-Assad, but its motives for getting involved in the first place are complicated. The original pretext was the targeting of Islamic State, but Moscows broader goal was to spoil Washingtons plans for regime change. Russia has also sought to present its actions in Syria as those of a mediator and peacebuilder, through its promotion of the 2017 Astana peace process. Russias actions in Syria are part of a broader regional strategy that is both complex and fragile. Under Putin, Russia has sought to build ties with every state in the region, but has arguably prioritised countries closely aligned with the USparticularly Israel and Turkeyin order to undermine US interests in the region. Moscows decision to back Assad in Syria potentially prejudices Russias ongoing relations with traditional partners Israel, Turkey and Saudi Arabia, which seek to overthrow Assad and counter growing Iranian influence in the region. The complex web of partnerships Russia has built in the Middle East equips it to play the role of mediator between regional adversaries. In mid-2018, Russia offered to broker an agreement between Israel and Iran that Iranian forces would remain a minimum of 100 kilometres from Israel. Russia has also negotiated multiple ceasefires in Syria, but has tended to adroitly use ceasefires to divide opposition groups and give the Assad regime breathing space to rebuild or refocus its forces. Russia is also promoting itself as a mediator in other Middle East theatres, including in the conflict in Yemen, and appears determined to supplant the US as the principle negotiator in regional conflicts. Looking beyond the facade of good global citizen that Putin is carefully crafting, its clear that Moscows primary motive is to advance its geopolitical ambitions. Following its Syrian intervention, Russia was awarded a 49-year deal for access to Syrias Tartus naval base, Russias only base on the Mediterranean, and secured indefinite access to Syrias Khmeimim air force base. Likewise, Russias mediation in the Yemen conflict occurred in the context of Moscows unfulfilled ambitions to secure rights to a naval base giving access to the Red Sea and the Horn of Africa. It is also pursuing access to military bases in Egypt, Libya and Sudan. However, the web of relationships that Moscow is managing could unravel rapidly, with potentially disastrous consequences. Russias relationship with Turkey turned frosty in 2015 following the downing of a Russian jet by Turkish forces. Moscow responded by deploying air defence missile systems into northern Syria. Russian warplanes also bombed a Turkish aid convoy, and there was a real risk that the tensions would spiral into war. Similarly, when a Russian military aircraft was recently shot down by Syrian forces targeting Israeli aircraft that were using the Russian aircraft as a shield, Moscow reacted by blaming Israel and supplying Syria with advanced air defence systems, dramatically increasing Syrias capacity to target Israeli aircraft. Such events test Russias capacity to sustain the competing bilateral relationships that underpin its Middle East strategy. Moscows posture has been helped by the fact that its intervention in Syria has to date been relatively low-cost in both manpower and munitions. But Putin and his inner circle likely remain mindful of the USs disastrous interventions in Afghanistan and Iraq and will be careful to avoid escalation. Russia has similarly been wary of committing to reconstruction plans, and has sought to diffuse responsibility for post-war planning and reconstruction to regional partners. Moscow unsuccessfully approached European countries to share the cost of reconstruction in Syria, estimated at US$250 billion, and the fact that it followed its requests with a veiled threat of continued refugee flows from Syria to Europe spoke volumes about its playbook. Its also not clear whether Russia is seeking a definitive end to the civil war. As demonstrated in Transnistria, South Ossetia, Abkhazia and eastern Ukraine, Russia prefers to freeze conflicts rather than resolve them, as this provides it with additional levers with which it can sustain its influence and interests. And herein lies the problem sitting at the heart of Russias Middle East strategyPutins posturing and efforts to portray Russia as a constructive actor in Middle East peace sit at odds with the hard realist core of Russias ambitions in the region. Russia also appears to be as much motivated by a desire to subvert US and European interests as it is interested in establishing a network of client states and military bases across the region. So far, Russias regional partners have played along with this charade, and Russia has also managed to deflect the true costs of the Syrian conflict. But over time, the risk of Russia being called out on its actions will increase, and as noted elsewhere, it will then learn that it is easier to get involved in a war than to get out of one. The Cold War spelled the end of numerous countries from 1947-91. Grenada, whose story was featured at the Historiat earlier this week , survived. Poland, Egypt, and Thailand survived, too. The country of South Vietnam, on the other hand, did not survive. On Oct. 26, 1955, South Vietnam declared its independence from Vietnam proper, kicking off a decades-long war that dragged in both Cold War superpowers and the longtime regional kingmaker in southeast Asia, China. We all know that things ended badly for the rebels. Here are 10 more countries that didnt survive, either: 10. Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (1922-91). Its best to start with the easiest one. The Soviet Union was one of the two superpowers responsible for the Cold War. The communist states story is a familiar one for most history buffs. There were many countries that lost their independence to the Soviets, from khanates in Central Asia to medieval kingdoms in the Caucasus, but by the start of the Cold War in 1947, all had been crushed and absorbed into the U.S.S.R. 9. Tibet (1912-51). Another easily recognizable name on the list, Tibet was governed by a feudal theocracy. After the Communists stamped their authority over the traditional territories of the Republic (1912-49) and the Qin Empire (1644-1912), Tibetan socialists urged China to invade and annex Tibet, in the belief that Beijing would topple the theocracy (which could be brutal) and usher Tibet into a new, more enlightened era. 8. Republic of Katanga (1960-63). Located in the southern part of what was then called Congo-Leopoldville (now the DR Congo, and before that Zaire), Katanga was once an independent kingdom that was eventually absorbed into the Belgian Congo after costly wars against both Belgium and the British. When Congo-Leopoldville gained its independence in 1960, the Katanga region tried to secede from the new country. Katanga was crushed for good in 1963, by a United Nations peacekeeping force. Congo-Leopoldville became a major area of focus by both superpowers throughout the Cold War, and the Republic of Katanga is one of the major reasons why. 7. Republic of Biafra (1967-70). To the north and west of Katanga, another restless would-be republic declared its independence from a former colony-turned-country. The Biafran War was a war within a war: it was fought between Christian and Muslim factions in the middle of the Cold War. Biafra lost, and Nigeria remained unified, but the problems stemming from Biafras secession remain today. 6. Federation of South Arabia (1962-67). Many of the Arab polities on the Arabian Peninsula had, by the end of World War II, clustered into a number of small federations that outsourced their foreign policies to the British Empire. The Federation of South Arabia was actually a successor to the Aden Protectorate, located in present-day Yemen, which was part of the British Raj in India. Cool, right? The Federation, which eventually grew to include 17 emirates, was short-lived. It merged with the Protectorate of South Arabia (which was composed of four emirates) to form South Yemen. In 1990, South Yemen merged with North Yemen to form, uh, Yemen. After four unhappy years together, South Yemen tried to divorce North Yemen, but things got messy. The conflict is one of the worst in the world today. 5. Protectorate of Sikkim (1947-75). For those of you who are map enthusiasts, Sikkim is that spot in India located between the tiny countries of Nepal and Bhutan. While Kathmandu and Thimphu opted for sovereignty, Sikkim, after India became independent of the British Empire, opted to transfer its protectorate status from London to New Delhi, and it remained a protectorate until 1975, when the monarchy was overthrown and a popular referendum opted to join India rather become a sovereign state. 4. Protectorate of Hyderabad (1947-48). Hyderabad, another protectorate of the British Empire, is located smack dab in the middle of India. When the British Empire left South Asia, it gave its princely states a few different options: join India, join Pakistan, or remain independent (princely states were technically autonomous, and simply outsourced their foreign affairs to the British Empire). Unlike most princely states, Hyderabad tried to assert its independence. India wasnt having any of it, though, especially since the would-be independent republic was located right in the middle of what was to be the worlds largest democracy. It was under the guise of democracy that India invaded and annexed Hyderabad in 1948, claiming that the people of Hyderabad wanted to join the Indian union but were prohibited from doing so by anti-democratic princes. 3. Khanate of Kalat (1666-1955). Located in what is now Pakistan, the former khanate is also the home to Balochistan, a cultural hearth for one of South Asias oldest ethnic groups. The khanates story echoes those of other South Asian (and South Arabian) countries: it became a British protectorate and, following the Empires exit from the region, merged with Pakistan. 2. Aceh (1953-59). The Sultanate of Aceh was a wealthy commercial state that was around in the 16th through early 20th centuries. Located on the large island of Sumatra in present-day Indonesia, the Dutch eventually conquered Aceh and incorporated it into its massive Asian colony. When the Dutch left, and Indonesia rose in their place, Aceh tried to reassert its independence, resulting in a brutal war that drew in the Cold War superpowers. 1. The Islamic State (1949-62). How about this? The Islamic State causing trouble way back in the Cold War? How is this even possible? Because this Islamic State existed in Indonesia rather than the Fertile Crescent, and it fought side-by-side with a number of allies against a common, easily dislikeable foe, the Dutch, after World War II. Darsul Islam, as it was known, was not quite as vicious as the Islamic State found in Mesopotamia, but its leaders definitely sought to reestablish an ulama based on Sharia law. The dictatorship of Sukarno crushed the Islamic State for good in 1962, thanks to generous funding by both Washington and Moscow. Further thoughts Aside from the Soviet Union, this list is loaded with countries from Asia and Africa, thanks to the process of decolonization that occurred after World War II. The French and British empires crumbled under the weight of the Nazi war machine, and Paris and London tried to oversee an orderly transition of their colonies from administrative units within an empire into sovereign states in an international order. This transition saw three different competing worldviews, two of which were much more successful than the third. Socialists and traditionalists (or conservatives) both argued that colonies should be independent, sovereign states to be placed on equal footing in the international arena with the likes of France and the U.K. The arguments of these two worldviews largely won out, and when it came time to actually govern as sovereign entities, the blood started to flow. The third worldview was liberal, but most liberals argued that colonies should be granted a more equal footing within the empires that they were already a part of. They were unionists, or federalists. Liberals not only lost the battle of ideas, but when the blood started to flow, most of them had to flee to the West. An example of the liberal thought experiment that lives on today can be found here at RealClearHistory is 10 Places That Should Join the U.S. The Latin American exception There are also no Latin American countries on this list. By and large, Latin Americas Cold War experience echoes that of Europe and North America. Political factions vied for power through the electoral process and via the press, but of course Latin America experienced many coups and counter-coups while Europe and North America did not. There is no time to delve into the theories about why this happened, but it is worth noting that Latin America, rather than being considered a part of the underdeveloped world alongside Asia and Africa, is culturally Western. Latin America is the red-headed stepchild of the West. Have a great weekend! In court filings last week the Department of Justice deployed what could be the nuclear option in its latest effort to prevent President Trump from declassifying information regarding FISA warrants used to spy on his campaign aide Carter Page: It is claiming that such a move would interfere with Special Counsel Robert Muellers investigation. This is the first time the DOJ has explicitly made this argument implying personal peril for the president, since interference could open Trump to charges of obstruction of justice. Until now, the department has argued that declassifying the documents threatened national security. Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein. In the 178-page court document, DOJ officials said they had determined that disclosure of redacted information in the Carter Page FISA documents could reasonably be expected to interfere with the pending investigation into Russian election interference." That rationale has heightened suspicions among congressional investigators that the special counsel is being used to prevent the disclosure of possible FBI abuses and crimes committed during the Russia probe. Opened by the FBI in July 2016, the Russia investigation was taken over by Mueller when Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein appointed him special counsel in 2017. By the DOJs logic, according to one source, the fact that the investigation is ongoing protects it from scrutiny, including the presidents. Neither the Department of Justice nor the Office of the Special Counsel would respond directly to this charge. "The obstruction trap was built into the special counsel," a congressional investigator told RCI, speaking, like the two other sources in this article, only on condition of anonymity. If Trump fires Mueller, or Rosenstein, or declassifies documents [embarrassing to the FBI] its likely to bring an obstruction charge. And that would mean double jeopardy for Trump. Obstruction is the instrument the Democrats are likely to use to impeach Trump if they win the House, said the congressional source. The upshot is that the president will likely hold off on declassification, at least until after the midterms in November, and congressional investigators are likely to be stymied, at least for now, in their quest to expose what they call Obama-era surveillance abuses. Special Counsel Robert Mueller. The DOJs latest decision to not declassify the documents came in response to a March 2017 Freedom of Information Act request from a nonprofit, the James Madison Project, seeking records related to Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act applications or warrants to monitor the Trump campaign and associates. In July, the Justice Department released heavily redacted versions of the four warrants taken out on Page. They confirmed the House Intelligence Committees February memo arguing that the warrant relied on Clinton-funded opposition research, the so-called Steele dossier. Now congressional oversight committees are requesting declassification of 20 pages from the final Page warrant. The response to the Madison Project further fed a suspicion that the special counsel was intended from the beginning to be a mechanism to protect senior officials, by circumventing lines of authority that might have proved more favorable to shedding light on the Russia investigation. Rosenstein knew there was no collusion case, said a second congressional source. But he still appointed Mueller as special counsel. That took the Russia investigation away from the FBI and gave Rosenstein ultimate control of it. Its not an investigation, its leverage. The sources told RCI that the president and the DOJ are at a standoff. Trump knows that whats in those documents clears him of all the collusion stuff, said a third congressional source, and it shows the FBI was doing some very bad things. But whats now keeping Trump from pulling the curtain back on the Russia investigation is the probe itself. Thats the leverage the DOJ has on Trump, explained this source. Nothing on Russia or collusion or anything like that its the actual investigation. If hes seen to be interfering, they move to obstruction. Supporters of this view note that by the time Rosenstein appointed Mueller in May 2017, the FBI had been monitoring Pages communications for more than half a year. It appears they had nothing on him, but the warrant was renewed one last time in June. If the FBI had evidence against Page for collusion, said the third source, youd think hed have been indicted. Rosensteins leverage may explain why Trump has resisted the calls of congressional Republicans and other allies who believe he can clear his name by unveiling evidence of abuses and possible crimes committed during the Russia probe. The release of the court documents makes it clear that any such move would potentially push the investigation into a different and even more dangerous phase. Attorney General Jeff Sessions and Rosenstein. Trumps ability to push back on the special counsel is limited. What may look to some like a series of well-plotted countermeasures are instead events that have worked to his fortune. For instance, Attorney General Jeff Sessions has announced that there are 27 open investigations of leaks. But the recent indictment of a Senate intelligence staffer for lying to the FBI regarding Russia investigation-related incidents and the arrest of a Treasury Department official for leaking Russia probe-related information appear to be unrelated to that announcement. The recent news that Rosenstein had considered recording the president for the purpose of removing him from office in 2017 was not unearthed by Trump allies. Rather, it emerged as the result of a public feud between the deputy attorney general and former Deputy FBI Director Andrew McCabe, now facing a grand jury. Rosenstein said he had been joking about the wiretap. Trump, according to one source, knows that Rosenstein is not on his side. If he were to fire him, however, that would provide a Democratic-controlled House with another possible case for obstruction. For at least the next two weeks until the midterms, Trumps hands are tied. If Republicans hold the House, congressional investigators will become even more aggressive especially if Trump replaces Sessions, who has recused himself from the Russia probe. If Democrats win the House, it is likely they will shut down many of the investigations into the DOJ and FBI. That outcome, sources say, helps explain why DOJ keeps raising roadblocks to transparency. DOJ is just playing to delay, said one of the sources. Theyre banking on Democrats taking the House back in November, at which time the [congressional] investigations go away. ven before Russia intervened in Ukraine, European arms control was in trouble. Russia and the West were accusing one another of violating the letter and the spirit of existing agreements. Moscow complained about NATOs ballistic missile defenses (BMD), conventional military deployments in former Soviet bloc states, and other measures Russians described as threatening. NATO governments hoped for, though probably never expected, Moscows cooperation in building joint missile defenses and reducing Russias large inventory of tactical nuclear weapons, and thought, too optimistically, that they could assuage Moscows irritation at having lost its superpower status. Despite sanctions, Russian businesses continue to eye the Western markets. The EU economy remains attractive and it offers Russian companies a familiar environment, one in which the devalued ruble could give them a competitive edge. Interest from Moscow and Russian companies, however, is viewed with growing skepticism in the West in light of never-ending diplomatic rifts and spy scandals. Deteriorating relations with the West have done considerable damage to Russias already struggling businesses. And as business falters, the state has expanded dramatically since 2014. It now controls more than 70 percent of the Russian economy. Russian authorities have created a system that no longer cares about the competitiveness of its individual businesses, while in the West, Russian companies are seen as serving the Kremlins interests - too toxic to deal with. Many such companies therefore have been pushed to rethink their development strategies. One of the solutions is to appear more international -- specifically, refitting corporate and public images to be Western-friendly. Uralchem, one of Russias major producers of chemical fertilizers, has built its own transhipment terminal in the Baltic Sea and opened a chain of subsidiaries in Latvia to boost outreach to the European Union and secure its presence in the region. PhosAgro, Russias top fertilizer-producing chemical holding, established a range of offices throughout the European Union and Switzerland in 2016 and has declared Europe among its top strategic markets. The company works to maintain its international image and its distance from the Kremlin. Finally, Metafrax Group, Russias largest producer of methanol, announced the launching of a new brand directed at Western markets in summer of 2019. The company likewise maintains a chain of subsidiaries oriented toward the EU market. It established Metadynea Trading SA in 2014, headquartered in Geneva and owned by Seyfeddin Rustamov, the main shareholder of PJSC Metafrax, to boost its trade exports westward. The strategy to remain and compete in Western markets has been somewhat effective, and Russian companies export portfolios are growing, but they still face challenges. Even before the annexation of Crimea and the diplomatic downturns that followed, the Russian economy already appeared as opaque and dominated by oligarchs. Now, it is nearly impossible to believe that any major business in Russia could operate independently from the state. The reality, however, is more complicated. Companies like Metafrax and PhosAgro represent one side of a divergence in the Russian sphere: While some companies are completely beholden to the state, others are more eager to chart their own path and participate in the market economy. The trends they are fighting against are stark. As Russias economic ecosystem dealt with collapsing oil incomes and the pressure of sanctions, some businessmen preferred to flee and acquire new passports. Those who stayed had to find different ways to adjust. With the government securing monopolies in almost every field and maintaining a tight grip on dissent, companies were called upon to further project the Kremlins influence domestically and abroad. They had social responsibilities as well: Firms were compelled to keep armies of workers employed, regardless of productivity levels and actual corporate needs, in order to curtail possible political protests. The first function was delegated primarily to major state-run companies. Gazprom or Rosatom famously support the Kremlins interest to undermine EU solidarity on the sanctions regime. Gazproms revenue on the European gas market rose by 34.7 percent last year to end up comprising 37 percent of Gazproms sales by total volume -- and the completion of the Nord Stream 2 pipeline still looms. Gazprom also announced the opening of an electronic trading platform with the goal to add an extra ten to fifteen billion cubic meters annually. Rosatom, the state-owned nuclear company, won a 12.5 billion investment in Hungarys Paks plant. In the Czech Republic, the company will likely benefit from plans to finance new nuclear projects in the coming months. The productivity of the Russian workforce is among the lowest in Europe, but the country maintains a record-low unemployment of 4.7 percent. Major Russian companies are often advised by officials to avoid drastic measures to improve their businesses and to maintain stagnant and ineffective organizational patterns for sake of political stability. State-run companies follow this model with ease. As Russias diplomatic ties broke down, most Russian firms saw fit to curtail Western corporate practices. They instead re-embraced an old approach, choosing cosmetically upgraded Soviet-style work models dazzled with redundancy and bogged down in never-ending and utterly ineffective bureaucratic procedures. Stable and currently growing global energy prices seem to make the situation comfortable for the state and most of local-market players. However, not all companies in Russia want to play this game. In August, Russian banks issued the highest-ever number of credit cards, and household income has been on the decline for four years. Little wonder that few anticipate anything good happening unless domestic policies start to change -- but change does not appear to be coming. Therefore a turn toward international markets seems to be the only solution for those companies that are still not affiliated with the state and want to earn and grow. Unlike the state sector, such companies follow strategies that are more pragmatic and driven by traditional for-profit interests. Although they seek to adhere to international practices and standards, link together chains of foreign subsidiaries, and ultimately relocate abroad, they likewise strive to maintain constant interactions with the state as a guarantee of survival. These companies try to avoid integration into Moscows strategies. In contrast, those companies that do represent the Kremlins interests will never bother to hide it. They wear their loyalties on their sleeves. Whereas it is hard to restore trust on the business level, and the diplomatic situation will likely get worse before it gets better, it is important not to treat all Russian companies in the same way. In particular, those that want to look increasingly to the West should be given a chance. Dmitriy Frolovskiy is a political analyst and independent journalist. He is a consultant on policy and strategy in the Middle East and Central Asia with private entities, and has written about Russias foreign policy toward the Gulf Cooperation Council states and former Soviet territories. The views expressed are the author's own. It is the evil that you do to achieve the good that haunts any nation I was in Washington this weekend and took the opportunity one night to visit the Lincoln Memorial. Given the way Washington is shaped, the memorial is not something you are likely to happen upon by accident; a visitor must decide to go there. The memorial should be visited at night, when the texture of the sculpture and the somberness of the moment embrace you. You see one hand clenched and another at rest, and wonder what the sculptor meant. The decision to visit the memorial is shaped by a need. I do not visit often, but I do when I feel despair for my country, and when I must remind myself of the vast moral power of the Republic. Abraham Lincoln allows me to leaven that power with his profound sense of humor, absent in the memorial but embodied in his life. That humor, that sense of irony, is essential for softening the harshness of the moral. The Abraham Lincoln of the memorial is a man who is exhausted and deeply troubled, brooding not only over the future of the nation, or the terrible past that he presided over. It seems to me also a sculpture of a man filled with doubts about himself, his decisions and his failures. To my mind, Lincoln was a good man, and a good man is one who is always more aware of his failures than his triumphs, aware that in spite of all the praise, he did less than he could have done. I imagine him sitting there brooding over the dead, but also brooding over his own decision to allow Grant to fight a war of attrition outside of Richmond. In war, the justification for such decisions is that there would have been more death and suffering from a gentler approach. Lincoln knew that, but he was graced by the ability to also doubt this and be anguished by it. To do what must be done, to believe completely in what you are doing yet harbor an element of doubt and even more, sorrow and regret at what was necessary, is the essential dimension of being moral. I think, or imagine, that I can see that in the face of the sculpture. It is not the evil that you do because you are wicked that is the worst thing; it is the evil that you do because you are good, and that you must do to achieve the good. That haunted Lincoln, and it haunts any nation, especially my own. That is odd because America was born in battle. As a percentage, more Americans died in the revolution than in any other war we fought, and we have gone to war constantly intending the good, frequently achieving it, yet tortured by our doubt that what we had to do actually had to be done. The Lincoln Memorial embodies this sentiment. Lincoln was a deeply principled man, but he understood that principles held so tightly that they cannot bend become a means for feeding your own sense of righteousness and superiority over others rather than a guide for improving the world. Lincoln hated slavery, as his debates with Stephen Douglas showed. But he did not run for president on an anti-slavery platform. He knew he could not win if he did, and he knew that if he did not win, none of his principles would have mattered. So he lied. He lied because if he admitted his intent, he would lose the election and the ability to pursue the good. Similarly, in what is my favorite saying of his, he said, I hope to have God on my side, but I must have Kentucky. Kentucky was a slave-holding state, and had it joined the Confederacy, the Confederacys chances of victory would have surged. Lincoln had to embrace a slave state to abolish slavery. I think this paradox of being moral amused him more than it embarrassed him. There is a story about his days in the Illinois legislature. A vote came that he wanted to avoid voting on or abstaining from, so he climbed out of the window of the legislative chamber. I cant imagine him not telling this story to his Cabinet without unabashed glee. For Lincoln, the rigidly moral, the proudly sanctimonious, represented a profound evil. Such people were narcissists rather than moralists. They cared less about succeeding than about sneering. But worse, these were tedious people, unable to laugh at the human condition, unable to laugh at themselves, and therefore not fully human. But Lincolns sensibility did far more than further his ambitions. At the moment of his victory in the Civil War, Lincoln ordered the band to begin the celebration by playing Dixie, the anthem of the Confederacy. There is no doubt that he saw the Confederacy as the enemy, but he also understood that no enemy was without virtue and beyond redemption. He understood that at a certain point, reconciliation requires the victor to make the gesture. It is hard for us to grasp the contempt in which he was held at the time. One Northern abolitionist of great standing called him an ape. Others said he was illiterate. He did not come from Boston, where abolition was a moral absolute, and which had failed for decades to make a dent in slavery but felt superior to the rest of the country. He was a man whose family came across the Appalachians, cleared the land and lived a hard life. Lincoln lived that life, admired it and decided to study law. Lincoln, by all accounts, preferred the law to physical labor. He praised the laborer but avoided hard labor at all cost. I think he was more amused than ashamed by the moral ambiguity of his behavior. For him, consistency was the hobgoblin of small minds. You should visit the memorial after reading a biography of the man. You will then recognize the reasons for his exhaustion and doubt. But you can also imagine how hilarious the thought would have been to him that anyone would visit a statue of him on a chilly Washington night. He thought well of himself, but he really didnt expect others to, dodging as he did hard work and its redemptive qualities. And that was his ultimate saving grace. He thought that he was worthy of the task he faced but would have found it hilarious that others would share that thought. He was moral, humorous, flexible, dishonest. He saved the Republic and tried to cleanse it of its worst sin: slavery. Had he been only moral, he would have done none of those things. At this moment, as at all moments, the Republic faces the need to be moral, humorous, flexible and dishonest, all with a sense of joyous irony and above all, to hold open the possibility that our enemies might also be good people. Maybe they are and maybe they arent, but if the Republic is to survive we must all pretend, as Lincoln did. If Lincoln could hate slavery, crush the South and yet honor his enemies by playing Dixie at his victory celebration, then it is likely that the Republic can manage such grace today. 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, 10/26/2018 ADVERTISEMENT Elizabeth Kwiatkowski is Associate Editor of Reality TV World and has been covering the reality TV genre for more than a decade. star Luis Mendez is in a war of words with his ex-wife and former co-star Molly Hopkins "You know something? [Molly] only took me here to get fame for her business," Luis, 27, told Us Weekly on Thursday. "She never wanted to give me the opportunity to get my papers. Never."Luis from the Dominican Republic was firing back at Molly, a 43-year-old from Georgia, after she gave the magazine a statement on Wednesday about Luis remarrying only five months after the former couple had finalized their divorce."I feel it clearly shows he was possibly using me and my finances to get here because our divorce was final in May," Molly told Us."So he either already knew her and had a plan all along and I'm a fool, or we are both fools if she doesn't know him, because I met Jekyll in the Dominican and got Hyde here, or vice versa. Either way, may it work out because I'm glad he's gone."Molly and Luis' tumultuous relationship was documented on Season 5 of , followed by Season 3 of the series' : Happily Ever After? spinoff.Luis confirmed to In Touch Weekly on Monday he tied the knot September 19; however, he is keeping his new wife's identity a secret."I love this girl so much. She's amazing. The most amazing part was meeting her because she changed all life to happiness," Luis told In Touch.Luis also insisted at the time he's had "no contact" with Molly ever since their divorce became official."I just want to be happy," he told the magazine earlier this week. "I don't want to know anything about it. But if she wants to congratulate me, it's okay."But Molly is very far from offering Luis a congratulatory message, as she first reacted to the wedding news in an Instagram Live video earlier this month."I totally got used. But it's all good. Luis got married to a Dominican lady in Jersey, best I can tell... He totally got married to someone who looks older than me from the Dominican," Molly said in the video."For all you people that thought I was crazy -- his situation was pretty lovely. I mean, we were together for two years, so it's all good... It doesn't hurt at all. I'm good. I'm so good."Molly fell for Luis while vacationing in his native country, and Luis proposed marriage after two months of a whirlwind romance.Luis then married Molly in July 2017 and permanently moved to the United States, but their relationship quickly fell apart.They appeared to fight constantly, and Molly accused Luis of changing as a person and being disinterested in her children.Molly therefore filed for divorce in January 2018, and the paperwork was reportedly finalized on May 4. By Elizabeth Kwiatkowski, 10/25/2018 ADVERTISEMENT Elizabeth Kwiatkowski is Associate Editor of Reality TV World and has been covering the reality TV genre for more than a decade. star Molly Hopkins is opening up about her ex-husband Luis Mendez 's new marriage.Molly and Luis' relationship was documented on Season 5 of , followed by Season 3 of the series' : Happily Ever After? spinoff.Viewers witnessed the former couple's tumultuous relationship, and now Molly, a 43-year-old from Georgia, is sharing her thoughts on Luis, a 27-year-old from the Dominican Republic, remarrying only five months after finalizing their divorce."I feel it clearly shows he was possibly using me and my finances to get here because our divorce was final in May," Molly told Us Weekly."So he either already knew her and had a plan all along and I'm a fool, or we are both fools if she doesn't know him, because I met Jekyll in the Dominican and got Hyde here, or vice versa. Either way, may it work out because I'm glad he's gone."Luis confirmed to In Touch Weekly on Monday he tied the knot September 19; however, he is keeping his new wife's identity under wraps."I love this girl so much. She's amazing. The most amazing part was meeting her because she changed all life to happiness," Luis told the magazine earlier this week.Luis also insisted he's had "no contact" with Molly since their divorce became official."I just want to be happy," he told In Touch. "I don't want to know anything about it. But if she wants to congratulate me, it's okay."But Molly is very far from offering Luis a congratulatory message, as she first reacted to the wedding news in an Instagram Live video earlier this month."I totally got used. But it's all good. Luis got married to a Dominican lady in Jersey, best I can tell... He totally got married to someone who looks older than me from the Dominican," Molly said in the video."For all you people that thought I was crazy -- his situation was pretty lovely. I mean, we were together for two years, so it's all good... It doesn't hurt at all. I'm good. I'm so good."Once Luis moved to the United States and married Molly in July 2017, their relationship quickly fell apart. Not only did they appear to fight constantly, but Luis even left her house one time and disappeared.Molly accused Luis of changing as a person and being disinterested in her children, so she filed for divorce in January 2018. The divorce paperwork was reportedly finalized on May 4. , We're sorry, this article is not currently available Meghan King Edmonds had nothing but praise for husband Jim Edmonds on their fourth wedding anniversary. ADVERTISEMENT The 34-year-old former "The Real Housewives of Orange County" star penned a sweet post to the retired MLB star while celebrating the occasion Wednesday. "Happy fourth anniversary to my husband who supports me in everything I do (especially now with my insane schedule of all my new projects), loves me so deeply, and provides for my family and me," Edmonds captioned a slideshow of photos. "We've been through more in four years of marriage than most do in 20 and it's only made us stronger. Here's to my better half, I love you," she wrote. Edmonds is parent to 23-month-old daughter Aspen and 4-month-old twin sons Hayes and Hart with Jim. She gave an update on her baby boys on their four-month birthday this month. "A few days late but my babies are 4 months old! Talking and smiling, sleeping through the night, rolling over on occasion!" the star captioned a slideshow of her sons. "Hart on left is wirey, loves to laugh, needs mommy wayyyy too often, active, and the exact same length as his brother. Hayes on right is very laid back, very happy, sucks his thumb, rarely needs mommy, proud of the noises he makes, and 2.5 lbs bigger than his twin brother!" she shared. Edmonds is known for starring in Seasons 10-12 of the Bravo series "The Real Housewives of Orange County." The news desk has compiled a list of events going on throughout the upcoming week that are open to Athenians and University of Georgia students. Books are a way to express ideas and influence the way people think about the world, or they can simply be used for enjoyment. Either way, boo / Two rising stars in the Democratic Party who are part of a national wave of minority candidates in the midterm elections will headline a student forum on Sunday. Jahana Hayes, the 2016 National Teacher of the Year running for Connecticuts 5th District, and Ayanna Pressley, who stunned Boston by beating a 10-term Congressman in the September primary for Massachusetts 7th District, will attend a late afternoon forum at New Britains Central Connecticut State University. TORRINGTON Democratic state Rep. Michelle Cook drew smatterings of laughter as she stood next to an unlit bingo board, answering questions and rattling off quips for an audience of seniors on a recent afternoon. I know somebody already asked me how old I was, um, yes, Im married, Cook remarked to the giggling locals as she urged them to ask questions. Cook, a Democrat, is battling to keep her 65th House District seat from being taken by Republican Molly Spino after holding onto her Torrington district on a split ticket in 2016. As Cook safeguarded a fifth term by just 213 votes that year, those same constituents voted for President Donald Trump by 57.4 percent. The lawmaker later closed the event by telling the seniors she brought Lombaris Bakery cookies, but not without advising that they were left bundled for the end of lunch. As I know that there are a few gentlemen here that used to say, You have dessert first in case you dont make it to the end of the meal I think thats cheating, so I kept them wrapped, Cook teased. Her stop at a local senior center, where she dispensed hugs, handshakes, and pamphlets, is common practice for most politicians trying to win an election. But the stakes are especially high for Cook this year, as many of those Torrington seniors will have the chance to cast critical votes in one of Connecticuts few key swing districts, meaning members of both parties are eyeing it hungrily to help secure the state House majority Nov. 6 For Republicans, taking control of the House would mean gaining five more seats, as Democrats currently hold 80 of the chambers 151 slots. City and Town Clerk Carol Anderson said interest in this midterm election has definitely surpassed previous municipal years. Absentee ballots are through the roof, Anderson said. It feels like a presidential year. Mayor Elinor Carbone, a Republican who is supporting Spino, described the race as a ground game for both candidates. This is really is one of those strongholds where its who you know and then how you serve them, Carbone said. House Speaker Joe Aresimowicz, D-Berlin, said the 65th District House race is among roughly eight races across Connecticut that will set the tone for the election. Cook and Spino are part of a wave of female candidates across the nation who are running for office in the upcoming midterms. The National Conference of State Legislatures states about 1,875 women currently serve in the 50 state legislatures making up 25.4 percent of all state legislators nationwide. In Connecticut, women currently hold 51 of the 187 seats in the state legislature, or about 27.3 percent. Cook is the only woman and Democrat in the pool of lawmakers who represent the states northwestern corner. But Spino, a 35-year-old real estate paralegal and U.S. Marine Corps veteran, hopes to break the Democrats 10-year hold on the seat. Spino, a fifth-generation Torrington resident, said she decided to run because she was unhappy with the downturn in the state economy, an issue she believes led her familys numerous small businesses to shrink to one. Spino joined the military in 2000 when she was 17 and worked as a motor vehicle operator transporting troops and supplies. Spino said she still deals with post-traumatic stress disorder from military sexual trauma she experienced six months into her service. On a recetn evening, Spino, with Carbone, knocked on doors in Cooks neighborhood as clouds gathered overhead. Spino greeted local residents and tucked laminated fliers into the door handles of unanswered homes. House Republicans are focusing a lot of effort on taking back the district, Spino said , adding that House Minority Leader Themis Klarides, R-Derby, Rep. Jay Case, R-Winsted, and Rep. Brian Ohler, R-Canaan, have all come to the district to campaign with her. Of all the seats, this is one of the main ones they really want to see turn, said Spino, who also serves on the Board of Education. J.R. Romano, chairman of the Connecticut Republican Party, said the 65th district offers the opportunity to elect a Republican who would bring major change to how Hartford does business. Irene Hricko, 87, excitedly told the candidate she knew her grandmother, which sold her on voting for Spino. Spino wasnt surprised the women knew her grandmother, later commenting that she and her husband cannot go to the grocery store in Torrington without bumping into someone who knows either them or their parents. Spino says she would bring a moderate Republican voice to the House. She is opposed to tolls, advocates for cutting back state spending, and supports maintaining municipal power. Im fiscally conservative, but socially Im very moderate to even liberal, Spino said. I think thats what Torrington wants ... why not get somebody that can represent both parties? The Republican said she supports legalizing marijuana, while Cook said shes not there yet, on that issue. Cook did vote to decriminalize small amounts of marijuana and to legalize medical cannabis. Spino has criticized her opponent for not collaborating enough with the rest of the local delegation, a charge Cook denies. We all get along very well, as far as our delegation is concerned, Cook said, adding that any piece of legislation she has worked on has had bipartisan support. Cook, 48, has not lost sight of what is at stake this year or forgotten previous races that have consistently kept her in office. I think its extremely important right now Im the sole standing female and the sole standing Democrat in the whole entire northwest corner, Cook said. Cook, who is originally from St. Louis, recognizes she has kept her seat because of the districts willingness to split tickets. But she believes that comes from people knowing I am an honest, hardworking individual I continue to give back to this community. Cook said her legislative focus is largely driven by concerns she hears when knocking on doors. The Democrat said those issues typically involve health care, prescription drug coverage, education and veteran services. On tolls, the Democrat said she doesnt fully favor them but would like to see a plan. She did not support Gov. Dannel P. Malloys $10 million toll analysis approved by the State Bond Commission earlier this summer. I dont believe $10 million was right at all for a plan. I know that there was a study thats sitting on the shelf from like 2009 or soI say we take that off the shelf, dust it off, and lets readdress the conversation and then bring it back, Cook said. Cook sits on the education, public health, human services, and legislative management committees. Aresimowicz, who called Cook a political powerhouse, said an incumbents knowledge and political capital is very hard to replace. Being a deputy speaker and being active in the screening committee, shes accumulated a lot of political capital on both sides of the aisle, Aresimowicz said. Alex Mont, 50, a Torrington resident who was visiting a local barbershop, said he will support Cook next month despite not voting for her in past elections. The Puerto Rican native said thats because she is endorsed by the unions and he likes that she sends regular updates about her work. However, resident Andy Smith, 69, who was at Sawyers Bar and Grill, said he will support Spino, despite not knowing a lot about her. Smith said he isnt happy with the way the state has been governed under Democratic leadership, and blames them for having screwed up our economy. I just cannot support Democrats in the state legislature or the governor cant do that, Smith said. Cook knows how unpredictable her district is, which has dictated her campaign strategy from the beginning. Cook said she and her husband, along with a few volunteers, have knocked on every single door in her district in the run-up to this election a tradition that started when she first ran for office in 2008. And we did (door knocking) every day, Cook said. I made phone calls every night until like 8 oclock, to the point where I had blisters behind my ears because I was on the phone so much. In 2014, Cook won re-election by 52 votes. Her predecessor, Republican Anne L. Ruwett, had won the seat by a single vote in 2002 and was re-elected by 62 votes in 2006, before losing decisively to Cook in 2008. Although Cook and Spino disagree about some significant issues, they do have one thing in common their shared belief that all women should exercise their right to vote. Women never had that right for many, many years, Cook said. We should exercise our right to do that. Spino said her grandmother taught her about the importance of voting when she was a teenager, which led her to always vote by absentee ballot while she was in the military. And [she] taught me about when women first got the right to vote, her mother went out and registered right away, Spino said. 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. Cambodian opposition leader Kem Sokha on Friday mourned the death this week of a party member in his first public statement after being moved from prison into house arrest in September. Writing on his official Facebook page, Kem Sokhaleader of the now-banned Cambodia National Rescue Partysent condolences to the family of CNRP lawmaker Cheam Channy, who died Oct. 25 of cancer at the age of 57 and is survived by his wife and three daughters. I admire and will never forget Cheam Channy, who sacrificed his time and efforts for the sake of democracy, freedom, and benefit for the Cambodian people, Kem Sokha wrote. Speaking to RFAs Khmer Service from his exile in Paris on Thursday, former CNRP president Sam Rainsy praised Cheam Channy, who had earlier served a year in prison on charges widely seen as politically motivated, as a patriot who loved his country. Cheam Channy was a brave and committed activist who fought tirelessly for democracy and human rights, Sam Rainsy said. We must follow in his footsteps, Sam Rainsy said in remarks addressed to fellow CNRP members, many of whom fled Cambodia ahead of national elections in the face of pressure to change sides by Prime Minister Hun Sen and the ruling Cambodian Peoples Party. He was firm and loyal to his party, Sam Rainsy said. Still faces charges Kem Sokha was released from prison into house arrest on Sept. 10, 2018, a year after he was arrested on treason charges also seen as politically motivated, but critics said he should never have been arrested and called for his banned party to be reinstated. The 65-year-old opposition chief had been held for a year in pretrial detention in Trapeang Phlong prison in remote Tboung Khmum province near the border with Vietnam. Kem Sokha, who had been denied bail six times despite fears that he was suffering from medical complications, was released due to health concerns, the Phnom Penh Municipal Court said. The release of the former president of the Cambodia National Rescue Party from pre-trial detention carried the conditions that he must stay within a block radius of his home, cannot meet with CNRP officials or foreigners, and cannot or host any rallies or political activities, the lawyer said. He still faces up to 30 years if convicted of treason. Reported by RFAs Khmer Service. Translated by Samean Yun. Written in English by Richard Finney. UPDATED at 2:06 P.M. ET on Three journalists from Eleven Media Group detained on incitement charges were each freed on 10 million kyats (U.S. $6,300) bail Friday at Tamwe Township Court in Myanmar's commercial hub Yangon. Chief reporter Phyo Wai Win and managing editors Kyaw Zaw Lin and Nari Min had been arrested after the media outlet published an article with a critical focus on Yangon government spending. Regional government director Aung Kyaw Khine filed a lawsuit on Oct. 9 against the journalists over an article published the day before in the Weekly Eleven News Journal about the governments business dealings and budget. Phyo Wai Win told RFAs Myanmar Service that he will not cave in and apologize to the Yangon regional government as had been requested of him, and will instead stand trial. The plaintiff, Aung Kyaw Khine, didnt show up for Fridays hearing for health reasons. RFA attempted to contact him for comment but was unable to reach him. Explaining her decision to grant bail, judge Tin War War Thein told the court that she decided to free the three journalists because they had a responsibility to return to their jobs and were therefore not a flight risk. The court freed us by following the rule of law, said Kyaw Zaw Lin. I will stand trial if the Yangon regional government wants to pursue this case further. Phyo Wai Win said he is innocent. I am a reporter, and I wrote my articles based on accurate information, he said. The journalists' lawyer Kyi Myint argued that the government has no case. The president has given a clear order to try to settle the dispute through negotiations with the Myanmar Press Council, he said. The Yangon government has to take responsibility for this failure. They should follow the instructions of the president, he said. Myanmar President Win Myint issued a directive on Oct. 17 calling on the Yangon government to cooperate with the Myanmar Press Council and to try to resolve the complaint under the Media Law before taking it to court. They were freed because the president ordered it, so we cant say it is a victory for the media and for people who want justice, Thien Than Oo, a Myanmar-based lawyer, told RFA. Theyve been freed on bail, so that means the government still wants them to stand trial. Political analyst Yan Myo said, It is great that they are free right now, but the government still needs to throw out the case. If they dont, the people will criticize them even more, because they are ignoring the direct orders of the countrys most powerful person. Sittwe resident jailed Meanwhile, Myanmars crackdown on those critical of the government continued elsewhere Friday as a resident in Rakhine state's capital Sittwe was sentenced to six months in prison for his comments on social media. Aung Than Wai wrote Facebook posts in May and June about a police crackdown that left seven people dead and injured 13 others during a demonstration in January in the ancient town of Mrauk-U. They were part of a larger group of about 4,000 ethnic Rakhines who tried to take over a local government building after a ceremony marking a nationalist Buddhist anniversary. The posts called out Tin Maung Swe, secretary of the Rakhine state government at the time, and raised questions as to who had ordered the crackdown and who should be held accountable. Aung Than Wai was taken into custody on June 21. My basic rights have been violated. The constitution grants citizens freedom of expression, Aung Than Wai told RFA. My Facebook posts just asked who the killers were. I was arrested and jailed, but nobody is taking any action against the killers, he said. More than two years after a transition to civilian rule under national leader Aung San Suu Kyi, Myanmar has drawn criticism from both domestic and international press freedom watchdogs for its heavy-handed treatment of journalists. In September, a Yangon court sentenced two Reuters journalists to seven years in prison for violating a state secrets law while investigating a massacre of Rohingya civilians in Rakhine state, despite sworn testimony that they had been set up, and the fact that their report was factual and led to the prosecution of soldiers for the killings. Reported by Htet Arkar, Kyaw Zaw Win, Khin Khin Ei, and Min Thein Aung for RFA's Myanmar Service. Translated by Khet Mar and Nandar Chann. Written in English by Eugene Whong. A burnt villages is seen from a Myanmar military helicopter providing a tour for British foreign minister Jeremy Hunt over Maungdaw, Rakhine state, Sept. 20, 2018. Myanmar has rejected statements by senior U.N. rights officials that Rohingya are enduring ongoing genocide a year after a brutal military campaign drove more than 700,000 members of the Muslim ethnic minority into Bangladesh. In remarks to reporters before a briefing to the U.N. Security Council that Myanmar had tried to block with the help of China, Marzuki Darusman, chair of the U.N. fact-finding mission on Myanmar, said thousands of Rohingya are still fleeing to Bangladesh and those that remained suffered severe repression. "It is an ongoing genocide that is taking place at the moment," he told a news conference Wednesday at the United Nations. "The Myanmar government's hardened positions are by far the greatest obstacle," Darusman told reporters. "Its continued denials, its attempts to shield itself under the cover of national sovereignty, and its dismissal of 444 pages of details about the facts and circumstances of recent human rights violations that point to the most serious crimes under international law" underscores the need for international action, he said. Myanmar has rejected the U.N. fact-finding report, issued in late August, and other well-documented accounts of the carnage and set up its own commission to look into the crisis, but Darusman said accountability cannot be expected from the national processes." Myanmars claim that it wants to repatriate Rohingya from Bangladesh are untenable, he said. "Remaining Rohingya in Rakhine state are at grave risk," Darusman said, and any repatriation under current conditions would be "tantamount to condemning them to life as subhumans and further mass killing." Yanghee Lee, the U.N. special investigator on human rights in Myanmar, said Aung San Suu Kyi, the Nobel Peace Prize laureate and de facto leader of the country, "is in total denial" about the brutal military campaign of rape, murder and torture of Rohingya. "Right now, it's like an apartheid situation where Rohingyas still living in Myanmar ... have no freedom of movement," Lee said. "The camps, the shelters, the model villages that are being built, it's more of a cementing of total segregation or separation from the Rakhine ethnic community." Darusman said the Security Council should refer Myanmar to the International Criminal Court (ICC) or another international tribunal and take other measures against the country and those responsible for atrocities against the Rohingya. Denial repeated Myanmar's U.N. ambassador, Hau Do Suan, repeated the same denials Myanmar has offered since the beginning of the crisis. This factfinding missions report is unconstructive and full of prejudice, he said. We dont accept and condemn the calls for referring Myanmar situation to ICC or an independent court. Hau Do Suans stance was largely echoed by key figures in Myanmar, including by a human rights lawyer. It is not good if the U.N. discusses Myanmar according to the factfinding missions report, because its report is based only on oral testimonies, said Min Lwin Oo, a lawyer at the Asian Human Rights Commission. If the U.N. keeps discussing Myanmar issues according to these two reports, it will be difficult for Myanmar to adhere what the U.N. decides, he told RFAs Myanmar Service. A spokesman for the military-affiliated main opposition party faulted Aung San Suu Kyis government not for the Rohingya crisis, but for listening to international opinions. We have suggested and urged the current government repeatedly both inside and outside of parliament not to accept interference from foreign countries, said Thein Tun Oo, spokesman for the Union Solidarity and Development Party (USDP). We know what could happen if the Myanmar government listens to this international interference and we have warned about it, he told RFA. A former student leader from Myanmars abortive 1988 democracy movement, however, urged the government to move beyond denial and actively deal with the issue, which he said makes Myanmar look ugly internationally. We need to create a situation that is proper by working based on real facts and information instead of constant denial, said Mya Aye, leader of the National Democratic Force, a political party formed by student leaders. Myanmar should resolve this issue together with international community to get fair result and justice, he told RFA. Reported by Thiri Min Zin and Khin Khin Ei for RFAs Myanmar Service. Translated by Khet Mar. Written in English by Paul Eckert. Two members of Vietnams ruling Communist Party have publicly resigned after the government announced a prominent publisher would be disciplined for printing books diverging from the partys political line. Chu Hao, editor- in-chief of the Tri Thuc (Knowledge) Publishing House, had committed grave errors in printing the books and had harmed the Partys prestige, state media said on Friday without describing the books content. All offending publications have already been seized and destroyed, state media said, adding that the works had caused negative impacts on social thought. Reacting to the move by authorities against Chu Hao, Vietnamese writer and party member for 62 years Nguyen Ngoc wrote on his Facebook page on Friday that he had already been planning to resign but wanted to do so quietly. "However, after the [Party] Inspection Commissions decision to discipline Chu Hao, I decided to announce my decision, officially quitting the party as of today, Nguyen wrote. Speaking to RFAs Vietnamese Service, another long-term party member, Mac Van Trang, also announced his decision to quit. I joined the party to fight for the independence and freedom of our people, but starting in the year 2000 I came to realize that the party has gone against its original cause, he said. They crack down on people who demand human rights, and they crack down on people who protest against environmental pollution and against encroachments by China. They dont listen to intellectuals, including me, who dare to express different views. Many have been imprisoned, he said. Masks come off Also speaking to RFA, Nguyen Quang Afounder of Vietnams long-closed Independent Development Studies Institutesaid that with the decision to punish writer and publisher Chu Hao, hard-line Communist Party members have now taken off their masks. When someone like Chu Hao, who has different views and expresses them in a peaceful way, can still be punished, it shows that this society has no respect for freedom, he said. No announcement has yet been made regarding the punishment Chu Hao will be given for what the Inspection Commission described as his degeneracy in political thought, according to an Oct. 26 report by Vietnams Tuoi Tre newspaper. Vietnams one-party communist government currently holds at least 130 political prisoners, including rights advocates and bloggers deemed threats to national security, Human Rights Watch says. It also controls all media, censors the internet, and restricts basic freedoms of expression. Reported by RFAs Vietnamese Service. Translated by Viet Ha. Written in English by Richard Finney. Journalist and independent scholar Leta Hong Fincher, author of the newly published "Betraying Big Brother: The Feminist Awakening in China," spoke to RFA's Mandarin Service about the outlook for women's rights activism since the 2015 detention of the five feministsWu Rongrong, Li Tingting, Wei Tingting, Wang Man, and Zheng Churanas they planned a public campaign against sexual harassment on public transport: When the Chinese government detained five feminists on the eve of International Women's day on March 8, 2015, a lot of women's rights activists had plans to celebrate International Women's Day in different cities. They were planning to hand out leaflets opposing sexual harassment on the subway and other forms of public transportation. But then police in a number of cities started detaining them, eventually focusing on the feminist five. They took them to Beijing and locked them up in a detention center, saying that they had committed breaches of so-called public order. I actually know one of the activists personally; Li Maizi; I got to know her when I was writing my book Leftover Women. Back then, I was very worried about the five feminists, and I went to Beijing, Hangzhou, Guangzhou, and Hong Kong to interview them. I realized that the feminist movement in China is far broader than just those five feminists, and that was the premise for writing this book. I think that one of the crucial factors in the maintenance of the Chinese Communist Party's system of authoritarian rule is its patriarchal power base, which is constructed on the subjugation and exclusion of women, and discrimination based on gender. Under the leadership of Xi Jinping, Chinese women have become more and more oppressed, with Xi Jinping calling openly on women to stay at home and be good wives and mothers. Many of these Confucian ideas that were abandoned by the early communists are now making a comeback, in order to maintain the stability of the regime. Let me give you an example. State newspapers and broadcasters, including the China Daily and the state news agency Xinhua, have been mentioning a new concept that has appeared under Xi Jinping's adminstration, which is that of a homeland where everyone is like a big family. One Xinhua report said that Xi Jinping's emphasis on family values stems from the fact that he is a father, and, more importantly, that he is also a son who takes care of his mother. A lot of Chinese Communist Party propaganda these days focuses on the Confucian idea of women's domestic role, and on the feminine virtues women are supposed to possess. This return to traditional Chinese values ... is very important to the stability of the Communist Party regime. Since 2016, there have been huge changes in China's family planning policies. The government has abolished the one-child policy of the past 30-something years, and brought in a two-child policy instead, targeting young, highly educated women. Government propaganda is now encouraging women to marry before the age of 30 and to have children sooner, and to have two, not just one. The government has realized that women's fertility can be used in the service of the regime, saying that it's best to get pregnant before the age of 30, and stepping up propaganda among female university students to encourage them to become mothers, even while they are still in college. The slogan used by propaganda departments for female university students is "live together in your first year, get pregnant in your second year, and have your baby in the third." They use a photo of a young woman happily pushing a baby buggy and pregnant with her second child, as she collects her degree. A lot of young Chinese women are unhappy, though. I carried out a lot of interviews for my first book, Leftover Women. These are highly educated, highly intelligent young women, but they don't like their spouses. Some of them say all of their savings and property have been transferred to their husband's sole name after marriage. A lot of women's rights activists have used performance art to protest sexual harassment, domestic violence, and discrimination against women, as well as inequalities in the way colleges and employers recruit men and women. The internet has played a huge role in that process in recent years. China didn't have a law banning domestic violence until 2016 ... but two years on, it has never been properly implemented. Personally, I think that when the Chinese government passed that law, it was really just in order to make an impression with the international community ... I don't think they care much at all about tackling violence against women. Reported by Han Qing for RFA's Mandarin Service. Translated and edited by Luisetta Mudie. U.S. national-security adviser John Bolton has told Russia that it should get out of Crimea and eastern Ukraine and stop interfering in U.S. elections, warning that Washington could impose further sanctions on Moscow. It will be helpful if they stop interfering in our election...get out of Crimea and the Donbas in Ukraine," Bolton told Reuters during a stop in the Georgian capital, Tbilisi, on October 26. He also urged Moscow to stop using illegal chemical weapons to conduct assassination attempts against Russian exiles in the West and...be less intrusive in the Middle East. Such actions had prompted Washington to impose sanctions on Moscow in the past, Bolton said, and he refused to rule out additional penalties in the future. Bolton, who held talks with Russian President Vladimir Putin in Moscow earlier this week, has said Washington is in the process of deciding whether it will impose additional sanctions on Russia over the poisoning of former Russian spy Sergei Skripal and his daughter in Britain. The United States and European Union also have sanctions in place to punish Moscow for its seizure and annexation of Ukraines Crimea Peninsula and for its support of separatists fighting the Kyiv government in eastern Ukraine. Talk has surfaced among some U.S. Republican lawmakers and in some European capitals about a possible easing of sanctions pressure against Russia, suggestions that Bolton played down. "It would certainly be inaccurate to say we are not going to impose any more sanctions on Russia, he told Reuters. We are going to do what we are required to do and what we think is necessary," he added. Moscow has repeatedly denied it interfered in the 2016 U.S. presidential election or that it had anything to do with the chemical attacks on the Skripals. The father and daughter survived after weeks in critical condition, but a woman who authorities said came in contact with the poison died in July. Boltons comments came during a trip to Russia and three South Caucasus countries -- Armenia, Azerbaijan, and Georgia. After his talks with Georgian leaders, Bolton told reporters that the United States supports Georgia's territorial integrity and independence. Georgia's bitter rival, Russia, backs separatist leadership in South Ossetia and Abkhazia, which broke from Georgian central government control in the early 1990s, and Moscow waged a five-day war with Tbilisi over the two regions in August 2008. Russias Interfax news agency quoted Georgian Prime Minister Mamuka Bakhtadze as saying that "relations between Georgia and the United States reached a new level in their development under the administration [of President Donald Trump]. Their level has never been so high," he added. Bolton also told RFE/RL on October 25 that the United States had invited Putin to Washington after the first of the year, although no date has been set. He also said Trump will briefly talk to the Russian leader on the sidelines of events in Paris on November 11 to commemorate the centenary of the end of World War I. With reporting by Reuters and RFE/RL's Georgian Service A Turkish prosecutor has requested the extradition of 18 Saudi suspects over the death of journalist Jamal Khashoggi. Turkey's state-run news agency Anadolu said on October 26 that Istanbul's chief prosecutor's office had submitted its request to Turkey's Justice Ministry. The news agency said Turkey's Foreign Ministry would formally request the extraditions. Saudi Arabia has said it arrested 18 people in connection with Khashoggi's killing at the Saudi Consulate in Istanbul on October 2. Turkey alleges a 15-member "hit squad" was sent to Istanbul to kill the journalist, a critic of the Saudi royal family who lived in self-imposed exile in the United States. Earlier on October 26, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan called on Saudi Arabia to disclose the location of Khashoggi's body. Speaking on October 26 to provincial members of his AK Party in parliament, Erdogan said that Turkey has other "information and evidence" about Khashoggi's killing in the Saudi Consulate. Erdogan said Saudi's public prosecutor was due to meet the Istanbul prosecutor in Istanbul on October 28. Khashoggi's Turkish fiancee on October 26 called for all those responsible for his murder to be brought to justice. "I demand that all those involved in this savagery from the highest to the lowest levels are punished and brought to justice," Hatice Cengiz told the Haber Turk television station. Cengiz also said she has declined an invitation to the White House by U.S. President Donald Trump because she thought the invitation was aimed at influencing public opinion in the United States. Meanwhile, Khashoggis eldest son arrived in the United States after the kingdom revoked a travel ban that prevented him from leaving the country. Based on reporting by Reuters, AP, and BBC Romanian authorities say a Wizz Air flight from Georgia to Poland was forced to make an emergency landing in Bucharest because of a bomb threat that turned out to be a false alarm. The Airbus A320 traveling from Kutaisi in Georgia to Warsaw, the Polish capital, landed safely after it was diverted to Romania on the afternoon of October 25. Henri Coanda International Airport spokesman Valentin Iordache said that the plane's 173 passengers immediately evacuated and the plane was taken to an isolated spot on the runway where authorities searched the plane and scanned the luggage. The plane took off for Warsaw five hours later, after Romanian authorities completed their search. Iordache said a woman made the bomb threat in a telephone call to Georgia's Kutaisi International Airport. Wizz Air is a Budapest-based low-cost airline which mainly operates in Europe. Based on reporting by AP and Reuters WASHINGTON -- The FBI has refused to release laboratory results into the suspected poisoning of anti-Kremlin activist Vladimir Kara-Murza last year, frustrating his congressional supporters and deepening the mystery behind his illness. Amid the official silence from the FBI, Kara-Murza, who has lobbied for U.S. sanctions against Russian officials, now says he is trying to use freedom-of-information laws to access his own test results. Two U.S. labs -- one affiliated with the FBI -- have tested blood, hair, and tissue samples taken from Kara-Murza after he was hospitalized in Moscow in February 2017, the second time in two years that he was placed on life support with poisoning symptoms in the Russian capital. Two other labs -- in France and Israel -- have also conducted tests, but they were inconclusive. Kara-Murza, a 37-year-old veteran of Russias liberal opposition, says he believes both incidents were deliberate, retaliatory poisonings for his political activism, including his lobbying for the U.S. Magnitsky Act, a 2012 law that introduced sanctions for Russians deemed by Washington to be rights abusers. His Russian doctors diagnosed his illness last year as "toxicity from an unspecified substance." Kara-Murza, a Russian citizen and legal U.S. resident, has built close ties with members of Congress. With the help of several U.S. senators and at least one U.S. representative who appealed to FBI Director Christopher Wray, samples were provided to the FBI lab following his hospitalization last year, according to people with direct knowledge of the effort. In discussions with U.S. lawmakers and congressional staff members earlier this year, FBI officials indicated they would consider releasing some of the results of the tests, according to the people directly familiar with the matter. They spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to discuss the situation publicly. But for unclear reasons, the FBI later notified members of Congress it would not, these people said -- frustrating those who felt it deserved more urgency. One senator even suggested in a letter to the FBI that the substance that triggered Kara-Murzas illness may be "classified" by the agency. 'Small, Imperfect Protection' Kara-Murza told RFE/RL that he filed a U.S. Freedom Of Information Act (FOIA) request with the FBI in July in an effort find out what the bureau has learned about his unexplained illness. He said the FBI also possessed samples from his first suspected poisoning in 2015 and that he had requested "all documents, test results, and internal communications related to me from May 2015." "Somebody has tried to kill me twice, in Russia, in the past 3 1/2 years," he told RFE/RL. "I just returned back to Russia. I know the risks there, and I think what we are doing is important. If there is anything to protect me, it is a clear and public determination of the causes of the [2015 and 2017] poisonings." "Not for curiosity's sake, but it could serve as a small, imperfect protection," he added. Kara-Murza provided RFE/RL with the tracking number of his FOIA request. The agency's website says "potential responsive information" for that case number had been identified and was awaiting assignment to a specialist "for further processing." Kara-Murza, who resides with his family outside Washington, recently returned to the United States after his first trip to Russia since his hospitalization with poisoning symptoms there in February 2017. He had previously split his time between the United States and Russia. Kara-Murza declined further comment on the laboratory tests or the involvement of the FBI in the matter, which the agency also declined to address. "In keeping with our usual policy, the FBI cannot comment on whether or not we are conducting a particular investigation," a bureau spokesperson told RFE/RL. Sophisticated Toxins The efforts to access the FBI's conclusions regarding Kara-Murza's illness come amid growing concern about suspected poisonings and deaths involving Russian activists, businessmen, and, most famously, Russian double agent Sergei Skripal. Skripal and his daughter Yulia were hospitalized after falling suddenly ill in March 2018 in Salisbury, England, and British authorities later determined they had been poisoned with a Soviet-era military grade nerve agent called Novichok. British authorities later accused two Russian military-intelligence officials of being behind responsible for the attack, which the Skripals survived. A British woman, Dawn Sturgess, died later after accidentally being exposed to a perfume bottle that contained Novichok, authorities say. In September, Russian opposition activist and publisher Peter Verzilov fell suddenly ill in Moscow. German doctors who treated him said it was "highly plausible" that he was poisoned. Both Verzilov and Kara-Murza say they believe they were poisoned with sophisticated toxins likely only accessible to Russian security services. Russia has repeatedly denied accusations of its involvement in poisonings of Kremlin opponents, including that of former Russian security-services officer Aleksandr Litvinenko, who died in London in 2006 after exposure to the radioactive isotope polonium-210. Kara-Murza's lawyer, Vadim Prokhorov, declined to comment on questions about the U.S. lab tests. Prokhorov told RFE/RL that Russian investigators questioned Kara-Murza and his wife, Yevgenia, in April as part of a preliminary probe into his suspected poisonings. Because the couple was in the United States at the time, the questioning was conducted by Skype, Prokhorov said. He added that authorities had yet to provide information on whether a criminal case had been opened. "We will continue to look into this," Prokhorov said. Prokhorov previously said he believes investigators renewed their probe as a formality due to the international reaction to the Skripal poisoning. Kara-Murza fell ill on February 2, 2017, in Moscow and was hospitalized in an intensive-care unit. His wife said later that her husband had suffered kidney failure and was on life support after being placed in a medically-induced coma. His family said his symptoms were almost identical to those of his near-fatal 2015 illness. An independent toxicology test by a French lab into that suspected poisoning was also inconclusive. Kara-Murza has worked with former tycoon Mikhail Khodorkovsky's nongovernmental organization, Open Russia, and was also a close associate of Boris Nemtsov, the former Russian deputy prime minister who later became an outspoken opponent of Russian President Vladimir Putin. Nemtsov was gunned down not far from the Kremlin walls in February 2015, three months before Kara-Murza suffered his first near-fatal illness. Immediately after his February 2017 illness, Yevgenia Kara-Murza said that samples of her husband's blood, hair, and fingernails had been sent to private laboratories in France and Israel. 'The Justice He Deserves' One of Kara-Murza's most vocal proponents in Congress was Republican Senator John McCain, who gave a speech on the Senate floor just days after Kara-Murza fell ill last year. Kara-Murza was a pall-bearer at the funeral for McCain, who died on August 25, 2018. In a September 22, 2017, letter to FBI Director Wray, inquiring about the status of the investigation, McCain complained about administrative delays, and he pressed Wray to make the investigation a priority. McCain also wrote that he believed both illnesses were deliberate poisonings -- and were politically motivated. "Vladimir...has clearly been the victim of Putin's brutal campaign to eliminate his opposition. Identifying who and how this was done will help Vladimir seek the justice he deserves and will provide a small form of protection against repeated attacks on his life and that of other dissidents," McCain wrote. A spokesperson for McCain could not be immediately reached for comment. In March 2018 letter to Wray, Republican Senator Roger Wicker wrote that Kara-Murza's wife had delivered "a sample of his hair, blood, and nails to your lab for further analysis on February 19, 2017." "I respectfully request your assistance in this matter with official correspondence stating the conclusion of this analysis and your agency's recommendation for Mr. Kara-Murza's future travel," Wicker wrote, according to a copy of the letter obtained by RFE/RL. "While the specific substance may remain classified, it is my hope you will be able to clearly articulate the nature of the poisoning and its genesis," he wrote. Wicker's office has yet to receive a response. Mike Eckel reported from Washington, Carl Schreck from Prague; edited by Michael Scollon Human Rights Watch has called on Iran to immediately release eight environmental activists whove been detained since January unless authorities can produce evidence to justify the charges against them and guarantee a fair trial. Four of the activists could face the death penalty after being recently charged with sowing corruption on Earth. The charge, one of the most serious in Iran, was announced earlier this week by Tehran prosecutor Abbas Jafari Dolatabadi, who claimed the activists were seeking proximity to military sites with the cover of the environmental projects and obtaining military information from them. Irans judiciary appears determined to pursue serious charges against these environmental activists no matter how ridiculous the allegations of wrongdoing are and despite the continuing denial of the defendants right to see a lawyer of their choice, Michael Page, deputy Middle East deputy director at Human Rights Watch, said in a statement released on October 26. With the judiciary serving as one of the main cornerstones in Irans apparatus of repression, there is a major risk that they wont get a fair trial, Page added. Iran has arrested more than a dozen environmental activists in past months on charges of spying for foreign intelligence agencies. Among those detained was Iranian-Canadian environmental activist and sociology professor Kavous Seyed Emami, who died in prison under disputed circumstances. The judiciary said the 63-year-old managing director of the Persian Wildlife Heritage Foundation, which works to protect endangered animals and raise public awareness about the environment, had committed suicide in prison. The claim has been questioned by his family and acquaintances. Isa Kalantari, head of Iran's Environmental Department, said in May that a government panel has concluded there is no evidence against environmental activists rounded up on spying charges. The panel included the ministers of justice, interior, and intelligence, as well as the president's legal deputy, Kalantari said. With reporting by AFP Imprisoned Ukrainian filmmaker Oleh Sentsov, who ended his nearly five-month hunger strike in a Russian prison earlier this month, has made his will public. Hromadske television channel in Ukraine published Sentsov's will on its website on October 26. In his will written on September 7 when he was still on a hunger strike, Sentsov, imprisoned in Russia after opposing Moscow's takeover of his native Crimea, asks his associate, film director Yevhenia Vradiy to make movies based on his five scripts -- Rhinoceros, Kai, Brilliant World, Crows, and Kristi, if he dies. The last three scripts Sentsov wrote while in Russian custody. According to the will, Sentsov wants his daughter and son to be the beneficiaries of the profits gained from the films. The television channel received Sentsov's will from his cousin, Natalya Kaplan. Sentsov's lawyer, Dmitry Dinze, confirmed to RFE/RL that the will is original. Kaplan said earlier that Sentsov may not survive after ending the hunger strike because of the damage to his health. Sentsov's will was published a day after the European Parliament awarded him with its prestigious 2018 Sakharov Prize for Freedom of Thought. Sentsov, a Crimean native who opposed Russia's 2014 takeover of the Ukrainian peninsula, is serving a 20-year prison term after being convicted of terrorism in a trial that he, human rights groups, and Western governments contend was politically motivated. He is currently imprisoned in the far northern Yamalo-Nenets region of Russia. With reporting by Hromadske TV French President Emmanuel Macron is due to meet the leaders of Slovakia and the Czech Republic on October 26. As he kicked off his trip, Macron warned eastern EU members not to fall out of step with the bloc's principles, singling out Hungary and Poland, whose nationalist governments have clashed with Brussels. In an interview published in Czech, Hungarian, Polish, and Slovak media, the French leader insisted that "Europe is not a supermarket," stressing a point he made previously that eastern states could not pick and choose among the bloc's fundamental values. "Europe isn't a one-way street: it is a reciprocal commitment," Macron said in the interview. He expressed concern about the refusal of some eastern EU members to accept migrants from the Middle East and North Africa under an EU quota program drafted in the wake of the 2015 migrant crisis. "We have a collective need for coherence and solidarity: we cannot benefit from the European budget without demonstrating solidarity on migration," Macron said. The French president is expected to hold talks in Bratislava with Slovak President Andrej Kiska and Prime Minister Peter Pellegrini. Macron is due later on October 26 in Prague as the Czech Republic celebrates the centenary of Czechoslovakia gaining independence from the Austro-Hungarian Empire at the end of World War I. Macron plans to meet Czech President Milos Zeman and Prime Minister Andrej Babis before leaving for a summit on Syria in Istanbul. Based on reporting by AFP, dpa, and Tyden.cz Hafizullah rocks on his hospital bed in pain, an oversized bandage covering the nub where his finger used to be. This is the price he paid for exercising his right to vote in Afghanistan's October 20 parliamentary elections. Shortly after electoral officials in Helmand Province marked his finger with indelible blue ink -- a simple way to help prevent multiple voting -- Taliban fighters abducted Hafizullah and cut off his finger. Hafizullah's experience illustrates the difficulties of employing even the most rudimentary methods to create a transparent voting environment, let alone the new methods attempted by the Afghan authorities for this election. In an attempt to prevent the widespread fraud that has marred previous votes, the authorities introduced computerized voter lists at each of the country's 4,900 polling stations. At the very last minute, they launched a biometric voter-verification system. But instead of helping transparency, the new systems added to the chaos and ultimately undermined the credibility of the vote. If this wasn't obvious on election day, it became crystal clear on October 23, when officials started tallying results and uncovered confusion over what votes would be counted or discarded as a result of widespread technical and organizational failures. 'It Was A Mess' "When I went to the polling center to vote, it was a mess," says Ejaz Malikzada, a political activist in the capital, Kabul. "The biometric devices didn't work. My name was also not on the voters list, even though I registered to vote." Malikzada, who left without voting, listed several other reported irregularities pertaining to the election: voters casting ballots multiple times, ineligible voters casting ballots, and a shortage of observers at polling stations. More than 5,000 complaints over irregularities were lodged by voters and candidates across the country. Dozens of people were also arrested and charged with interfering in the elections, or for fraud. Muhib Shadan, a voter living in the west of Kabul dominated by the Hazara community, said mismanagement was widespread there, too. "At some polling stations in west Kabul, the voter lists were from other provinces," Shadan claimed. "Biometric devices were not working in most of the polling stations. In some polling stations, the batteries of the devices were dead. The staff at the polling centers were not trained well." Mariam Solaimankhail, a candidate for the nomadic Kochi minority that is guaranteed 10 seats in parliament, said that, like many Kochis in Kabul, she was unable to vote because her name did not appear on the voter list. Voting was extended by a day at 401 polling stations, including 45 in Kabul, that failed to open on October 20 because of technical issues. But even that move appears to have harmed more than helped. The Transparent Election Foundation of Afghanistan (TEFA), a civic action body that has been monitoring the ballot, said the decision to extend the vote opened the way for fraud when half-filled ballot boxes were left open all night in some polling centers. Independent election observers said issues were even more widespread in the countryside, where the Taliban has clout and there is less government control and oversight of the elections. The Independent Election Commission of Afghanistan said around 4 million people voted, less than half of the nearly 9 million voters who registered -- and it is widely suspected that a significant number of the votes counted were fraudulent. Even before the vote, analysts had raised eyebrows over suspiciously high voter registration, particularly in restive southern and eastern provinces where registration exceeded the number of eligible voters. There was also improbably high registration of women in some central and northern provinces. Setbacks were also evident in the southern province of Kandahar, where voters went to the polls on October 27, almost a week after the nationwide vote. The delay was caused by an attack on October 18 that left nearly the entire provincial leadership dead or wounded. In the southeastern province of Ghazni, meanwhile, the elections were postponed indefinitely due to disagreements over the representation of different ethnic groups. Which Votes To Count? As the election commission began to tally the votes, confusion reigned. Before the vote, election officials had said they would only count votes that had been verified by biometric devices and voter lists. But observers said that at some polling stations only biometric verification or voter lists were used, while in other polling centers neither of the two systems were used. "We have concerns regarding the management of the process and which votes will be counted," said Muslim Shirzad, one of more than 2,500 candidates nationwide who competed for the 249 seats in the lower house of parliament. Ahmad Shuja Jamal, an Afghan analyst who researches security and human rights issues, said many people cast their votes without following the correct procedures because of issues with biometric devices and voter rolls. "The rule book has not been written on how to deal with these issues," he said. "[Election authorities] have only given vague assurances to the public that they would audit these failures in a fair way without explaining the technical procedures and standards." As Hafizullah lies in his hospital bed after surgery in Helmand, he says he hopes his sacrifice was worth it. "I went to vote because it was our duty and our right," he tells RFE/RL's Radio Free Afghanistan. "We risked our lives to vote. I hope it will count for something." Pakistani Prime Minister Imran Khan will visit China next week as he continues his search for help propping up the nation's shaky finances, Pakistani authorities said on October 25. Khan this week secured $6 billion in funding from Saudi Arabia to help stave off a widening balance of payment crisis. He said in a televised address on October 24 that his goal is to reduce the size of any potential loan from the International Monetary Fund, which attaches stringent conditions to its loans. The Foreign Affairs Ministry said Khan will meet with Chinese President Xi Jinping and Premier Li Keqiang on his November 2-5 trip to Beijing and the commercial hub of Shanghai. "The visit will provide an opportunity for the two countries to review the entire spectrum of bilateral relations," with a special focus on the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor, China's massive infrastructure project to connect its western Xinjiang region with the Arabian Sea via Pakistan, ministry spokesman Muhammad Faisal told AFP. Pakistan's deteriorating finances have raised concerns that portions of the ambitious project may have to be scaled back. Analysts said Khan will be pushing for financial assistance from Beijing during the visit. China has provided Pakistan with loans in the past and has pledged to spend about $60 billion on infrastructure in Pakistan under its Silk Belt and Road initiative. Since taking power in August, Khan has sought loans from what he has called "friendly" countries like China and Saudi Arabia, vowed to recover funds stolen by corrupt officials, and embarked on a populist austerity drive to raise cash. Pakistan has gone to the IMF repeatedly for bailouts since the late 1980s. The last time was in 2013, when Islamabad got a $6.6 billion loan to tackle a similar balance of payment crisis. Based on reporting by AFP and Reuters Popular Russian actor Nikolai Karachentsov has died at the age of 73. Russian media quote his son Andrei as saying that the actor died in a Moscow clinic on October 26, one day before his 74th birthday. Karachentsov was well-known across the former Soviet Union for his roles in dozens of popular movies. Karachentsov's popularity among the youth in Russia and former Soviet republics reached its peak in the late 1970s and early 1980s after he starred in two rock operas. Karachentsov also played in a number of plays and theater productions, including Optimistic Tragedy, Dictatorship Of Conscience, School For Emigrants, Sorry, Czech Photo and City Of Millionaires. Karachentsov had been severely disabled after sustaining a brain injury in a traffic accident in 2005. Based on reporting by TASS and Interfax The head of Russia's state-controlled oil giant Rosneft is warning that U.S. sanctions on Iran and Venezuela will trigger "major imbalances in the oil market." Rosneft Chief Executive Igor Sechin, a close ally of President Vladimir Putin, on October 25 predicted an increase in oil prices and a reduction in global oil production as a result of the sanctions. U.S. officials have said they want the sanctions on Iran's oil sector, which are scheduled to go into effect on November 5, to reduce Iran's oil exports to "zero," and have been pressuring countries around the world to stop buying oil from Iran. "We are going to squeeze Iran because we think their behavior in the Middle East and, really globally, is malign and needs to be changed," U.S. national-security adviser John Bolton told RFE/RL in an interview on October 25. But Sechin, speaking at the Eurasian Economic Forum in Verona, Italy, said the resulting rise in oil prices means that "those who are going to pay are also going to be U.S. and European consumers." Oil prices have soared into the $80 a barrel range since April, when U.S. President Donald Trump announced he was abandoning Iran's 2015 nuclear agreement with world powers and reimposing economic sanctions. Trump also has ordered a series of sanctions against Venezuela, which has some of the largest oil reserves in the Western Hemisphere and, like Iran, has been struggling to keep producing and exporting oil in the face of sanctions. Trump has sought to put the blame for rising prices on the OPEC oil cartel rather than the collapse in production seen in Iran and Venezuela. Official statistics show Iran's oil exports have fallen by about half from a peak of about 2.5 million barrels a day in April to about 1.2 million barrels a day in October. Meanwhile, Saudi Arabia, the biggest oil producer in OPEC, which has promised to make up for Iran's shortfall, has said it has spare capacity to produce about 1.5 million barrels more a day. "OPEC's free production capacity is not sufficient to compensate for the lost volumes of production" from Iran and Venezuela, Sechin said. The Rosneft chief denounced U.S. sanctions -- a slew of which have also targeted Russia in recent years -- as "arbitrary," and claimed they are designed to advance U.S. economic interests at the expense of others. "In a number of sectors -- shale mining, arms exports -- the U.S. economy has rather pragmatically won at the expense of sanctions imposed against other countries," Sechin said. He estimated that Germany, a major Russian trading partner, has borne "40 percent" of the economic damage caused by sanctions on Russia, whereas the share of economic damage borne by the United States is only 0.6 percent. The United States and European Union both imposed sanctions on Russia starting in 2014 over its annexation of Ukraine's Crimean Peninsula and backing of separatists fighting the government in eastern Ukraine. Sechin and Russia's oil sector were both targeted by the Western sanctions. However, Sechin boasted that Russia's oil production has been rising despite the sanctions and is expected to increase further by the end of the year. With reporting by dpa, Reuters, and Interfax Editor's Note: To receive Steve Gutterman's Week In Russia each week via e-mail, subscribe by clicking here. Vladimir Putin told Russians they will go to heaven as martyrs if the country is destroyed in a nuclear war, and warned of a new arms race if the United States abandons key treaties. The Russian president got bad news on the home front, with a trusted ally issuing a grim economic forecast and a poll putting his approval rating close to an all-time low. Meanwhile, a Crimean film director who is struggling to recover after a 145-day hunger strike in a Russian prison was awarded the Sakharov Prize, and a prominent Russian director faces trial. Here are some of the key developments in Russia over the past week and some of the takeaways going forward. #HeavenIsOurs In several days of diplomacy dominated by talk of weapons and war, the most striking words came from Vladimir Putin, who said that Russians will go to heaven as martyrs in the event of a catastrophic nuclear conflict with the West. Citizens of the aggressor country, he added, would just croak because they wouldnt even have time to repent. If Putins promise of heaven was meant to reassure Russians, a hail of comment on social media and in real life suggested that for some, the effect was the exact opposite. Hes not afraid -- but we are, blogger SerpomPo wrote, expressing particular concern about Putins claim that Russian citizens have a predispositionto give their lives for the fatherland. Everybody to heaven! was how one bitterly sarcastic meme summed it up, while commentator Viktor Shenderovich said on Ekho Mosvy radio: I dont want to go to heaven, I want to live. Standing before a backdrop of blue skies and cottony clouds on independent Dozhd TV, satirist and Kremlin critic Dmitry Bykov read out a short verse in which he said he would prefer to go to hell, not heaven, but on the condition that Putin wont be there. Likening Putins words to a jihadist formula, liberal opposition politician Grigory Yavlinsky suggested it was a highly irresponsible statement coming from a leader who, as president of a nuclear-armed nation, has every opportunity to send us all to heaven in an instant. The mocking memes and outraged responses fit in with long-standing suspicions among some Russians that Putin sees citizens of his country not as individuals he should serve but as subjects whose main purpose is to serve the state -- to the point of willingly dying in a nuclear war. Critics point to past statements as evidence of this upside-down relationship between the Russian public and Russias top public servant, including Putins suggestion in 2013 that gay couples are less than patriotic because they dont produce children and a remark in which he indicated that a fire that killed 60 people at a Siberian shopping mall many of them children trapped in a movie theater -- was bad for the countrys demographics. Several posts included the phrase Rai Nash! (Heaven is Ours!) -- a play on Krymnash (Crimea is ours), a sardonic term used to mock the jingoistic outburst that followed Russias takeover of the Ukrainian peninsula in March 2014. Approval Wanes Russias seizure of Crimea led to a surge in public support for Putin, whose approval rating stood at 64 percent in 2013 -- the lowest since 2000, his first year in office -- but shot up to 88 percent in 2014 and remained at that level in 2015, according to the independent Levada Center polling organization. This month, approval is down to 66 percent, according to the latest Levada poll -- the lowest since 2013. And the proportion of Russians voicing disapproval was 33 percent, the highest since 2013. While the Kremlin professes not to pay much attention to Putins ratings, the decline has led to speculation that he might do something drastic -- something comparable to the takeover of Crimea -- to push the numbers back up. Worse Than We Thought Theres certainly little evidence that the economy could give Putin a boost in the near future. The government has forecast that economic growth will contract to 1.3 percent in 2019, from an expected 1.8 percent this year. But Aleksei Kudrin, whose 11-year stint as finance minister included the boom times of oil-fueled annual double-digit growth during Putins first two terms, in 2000-2008, said this week that gross domestic product may expand considerably less than 1 percent. Unfortunately, the deceleration in growth will be sharper than expected by the government, Kudrin, a fiscal conservative who has been passed over repeatedly for the prime ministers post and now heads the Audit Chamber, told Bloomberg News in an interview. Putins comments on nuclear weapons and nuclear war may have been meant to seem explosive. After years of anti-Western propaganda, condemning a putative aggressor to nonexistence with no chance of redemption might play pretty well with a segment of his domestic audience. Six days later -- after U.S. President Donald Trump announced his intention to abandon the 1987 Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces (INF) Treaty and John Bolton delivered the message in person -- Putin followed up with a warning that if the United States deploys currently-banned missiles in Europe, Russia will be forced to target the host countries with its own warheads. Treaty Me Right In both cases, Putins rhetoric probably hid a softer message for the West than it might have seemed on the surface. Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov appeared eager to make that clear when he told reporters that that when Putin said Russia would use its nuclear weapons only in response to an incoming attack -- and not fire first -- he meant just that. Russia will never be the first to attack anyone but will respond with devastating force if attacked, Peskov told reporters who asked about Putins comments. This is the key idea, which is important to understand. All the rest is an allegory." And when Putin spoke of Trumps stated intention of abandoning the INF treaty, he seemed careful to indicate that a Russian mirror response would come not when Washington pulls out of the treaty but rather when -- and if -- it deploys new missiles in Europe in the wake of its withdrawal. Moscows fears on that score are well-founded, Russian analyst Aleksei Arbatov, a negotiator of the 1994 START I treaty, suggested in a commentary for the Carnegie Moscow Center. New U.S. deployments of intermediate-range missiles in Europe could force Moscow to commit significant resources to increasing the survivability of its nuclear forces and their control systemsat a time when Russias economic situation is necessitating defense cuts, he wrote. But while Putin and others in his ruling elite have warned against a U.S. pullout from the INF, several arms control experts have argued that at least at this point, the move may be far more advantageous for Russia than for the United States. End Of New START? They point out that it would free Moscow from the treatys constraints, which Western nations say Russia is flouting by deploying a missile in violation, while allowing it to blame Washington for the demise of a landmark pact that remains popular in Europe. In his comments at talks with Italian Prime Minister Giuseppe Conte on October 24, Putin suggested he may be more concerned with the future of the New START treaty -- which put caps on long-range nuclear arsenals and is due to expire in 2021 -- than the fate of the INF. Putin lamented the U.S. withdrawal from the Anti-Ballistic Missile (ABM) treaty in 2002 -- back in his first term, when George W. Bush was in office. Now the INF is under threat, he said, and added that the fate of New START is unclear. Sakharov, Sentsov, Serebrennikov In other news this week, one of Russias best-known prisoners won an award named after one of the Soviet Unions best-known dissidents -- the late physicist Andrei Sakharov. Oleh Sentsov, a Ukrainian film director condemned to 20 years in prison in Russia after opposing its takeover of the Crimean Peninsula, was awarded the Sakharov Prize for Freedom of Thought. Not all directors facing the prospect of years behind bars in Russia on criminal charges that Kremlin critics say are politically motivated are Ukrainian, however. Kirill Serebrennikov, a prominent Russian theater and film director who has been under house arrest in Moscow for over a year, could be sentenced to 10 years in prison if he is convicted of embezzlement by a court that postponed his trial until November 7 at a hearing this week. U.S. officials say a 56-year-old man suspected of sending explosive devices through the mail has been charged with five crimes, as President Donald Trump vowed swift and certain justice for anyone responsible for terrorizing acts. A criminal complaint filed against Cesar Altieri Sayoc on October 26 includes charges of threats against former presidents and certain other persons, interstate transportation of an explosive, and illegal mailing of explosives. News outlets cited law enforcement sources as saying Sayoc had been taken into custody in the southern state of Florida, in Plantation, a city 50 kilometers north of Miami. Media reports also indicated the man had a long criminal record. Sayoc's arrest came after several tense days following the discovery of at least 13 suspected mail bombs addressed to leading figures of the Democratic Party and vocal Trump critics, although officials have not yet publicly stated what they believe was the motive. The packages appear to have been sent through the U.S. postal system, but they did not reach their targets and none exploded. Attorney General Jeff Sessions told a news conference that he did not know why the mailer targeted Democrats. Among the targets were former President Barack Obama and ex-Secretary of State and former first lady Hillary Clinton. The first package was intercepted on October 22, addressed to billionaire philanthropist George Soros, a top contributor to the Democratic Party. FBI chief Christopher Wray said investigators used DNA and fingerprint evidence to identify the suspect. Before the suspect was officially charged, Trump praised law enforcements incredible job of quickly taking a suspect into custody and said that "these terrorizing acts are despicable and have no place in our country." The situation has raised tensions less than two weeks before important midterm elections. UN inspectors are examining more than 2,500 AK-47 rifles and other guns seized by the crew of a U.S. destroyer off the coast of Yemen to determine whether the weapons originated in Iran or Somalia. U.S. authorities said they invited the UN inspectors on board on October 25 to determine whether the weapons provide proof that Iran is smuggling arms to allied Shi'ite Huthi rebels that are battling the Yemeni government in a four-year civil war. Iran has denied providing weapons to the Huthis. The United States -- in debates at the United Nations -- has repeatedly charged Iran with illegally smuggling weapons to the Huthis, in violation of UN resolutions against arming the Huthis. Yet U.S. forces patrolling the waters around Yemen have managed to seize only a handful of weapons caches like the one seized by the USS Jason Dunham in late August. "It's one big traffic corridor," Vice Admiral Scott Stearney, commander of the U.S. 5th Fleet, told reporters on board the vessel on October 25, speaking of the Gulf of Aden and other waterways around Yemen. Stearney declined to say if he thought Iran was responsible for the weapons seized by the Dunham's crew, but he said the UN inspectors were experts on illicit weapons from Iran, Yemen, and Somalia. The U.S. destroyer's crew while on patrol in the region in August noticed large bags being transferred from a dhow about 70 miles off the coast of Yemen into a smaller skiff. A dhow is a traditional ship that commonly sails the waters of the Persian Gulf region. The Navy ship intercepted the skiff and, after talking to the crew on board, determined they were smuggling weapons. The rifles, in bundles of four or five, were wrapped in plastic, then wrapped in styrofoam and hidden in green burlap bags, according to Navy Commander John Hamilton, commander of the Dunham. A small number of reporters on board the ship were allowed to see the assault rifles, which were heavily rusted after nearly two months at sea. The weapons had been unpacked and piled up, and were ready to be inspected by the UN team. Hamilton said the crew on the dhow told them they were carrying flour and wheat, but he said none of the foodstuffs were found on board. Navy Captain Adan Cruz, commodore of U.S. Naval Forces Central Command, said the weapons could have been shipped from Somalia rather than Iran. The UN inspectors, he said, will determine the guns' origin and "see first-hand the weapons flowing into the region." UN Ambassador Nikki Haley, in calling for a crackdown on Iran at the UN, has repeatedly accused Iran of supplying the Huthis. Last year, she displayed the remnants of missiles that the Huthi rebels fired at Saudi Arabia, which is backing the Yemeni government in the civil war, saying they provided "undeniable evidence" that Iran was illegally supplying weapons to its Yemeni allies. With reporting by AP, CNN, Fox News, and Naval Today The United States is seeking to block a move by Russia to schedule a United Nations General Assembly vote on preserving a 1987 nuclear arms treaty that U.S. President Donald Trump vowed to abandon this week. Russian diplomats said they offered the assembly's disarmament committee a draft resolution calling for preservation of the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty (INF) on October 25, but the United States moved to block the proposal, arguing that Russia had missed an October 18 deadline for submitting such resolutions. A spokesman for the Russian Mission at the UN, Fedor Strzhizhovskiy, said the United States then called for a vote on whether the resolution could be submitted late and it lost that vote, so the committee chair is now seeking a consensus on how to proceed. "The international community has an obligation to react to this apocalyptic situation," a Russian diplomat said, referring to Trump's decision to walk away from the treaty, which he claims that Russia has violated since at least 2014. The Russian proposal "aims to reinforce the viability of the treaty," the diplomat said, calling the INF treaty a "cornerstone" of world peace and stability. Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Sergei Ryabkov said earlier this week that he expects a vote at the UN would show broad global support for the arms treaty, even among U.S. allies. Russia's draft resolution calls on Moscow and Washington to preserve the treaty and restart dialogue to address each nations' concerns about alleged violations. Russia has claimed that aspects of the U.S. missile-defense system in Europe also violate the treaty. "Preserving this agreement is the sine qua non condition to continuing to advance the cause of reducing nuclear weapons," the Russian diplomat said, and he called on all UN member states to approve the resolution. Trump announced on October 20 that he would pull out of the INF treaty, which prohibits nuclear missiles with a range of 500 to 5,000 kilometers, citing not only alleged violations by Russia but concern that China has been developing its nuclear missile capabilities and is not covered by the treaty. The treaty was signed in 1987 by former U.S. President Ronald Reagan and the last leader of the Soviet Union, Mikhail Gorbachev. Gorbachev warned this week that abandoning the agreement would be a "mistake." Russian President Vladimir Putin on October 24 warned of an "extremely dangerous" situation where the two nuclear powers would return to a nuclear "arms race" as a result of Trump's decision to abandon the nuclear pact. With reporting by AP, AFP, and TASS Charlie Graves with specialist nurse Tracy Maher HEART attack victim Charlie Graves this week said thank you to one of two nurses who saved his life. Retired Advertiser journalist Charlie (66) appealed for help to identify the two off-duty nurses who came to his aid in the street after he suddenly became ill. Life-saving duo Tracy Maher and Jenni Webb (below) were identified after the Advertiser article two weeks ago. Charlie visited Rotherham Hospital on Monday, when he hugged nurse specialist Tracy and presented her with a bunch of flowers. He also handed over one for Jenni who was unable to attend due to illness. Charlie said: They were a token of my appreciation, although nothing could adequately express my thanks for what they did. There is no doubt that without their efforts I wouldnt be here today. The modest duo had just finished their shifts when they came to Charlies aid. Clinical nurse specialist Jenni was first on the scene after he collapsed near his home in Mile Oak Road, Broom. She made him as comfortable as possible before phoning for an ambulance. Tracy - a nurse since 1985 - arrived later and put her coat around Charlie as they waited. She recalled: It was obvious he was in a serious condition and I just wanted to keep him warm until help came. But as the minutes ticked by and no ambulance arrived, we realised that he needed hospital attention quickly so I went for my car. I was thinking; Dont run too fast. You dont want to trip up. Tracy drove the three of them to A&E, before Charlie was transferred to Sheffields Northern General Hospital, where a stent was fitted to unblock an artery to his heart. He is now making a good recovery at home. Tracy added: I didnt know the outcome until I read the story in the Advertiser. Im so relieved everything has turned out okay and Charlie is looking so well. A WOMAN whose attempts to smuggle drugs into a jail were foiled by alert prison officers has been given a suspended prison sentence. Kerri Allott (35), of Queen Mary Street, Maltby, aroused the suspicion of prison officers at HMP Lindholme in Doncaster when they spotted her with an inmate she was not familiar with. She tried to supply a type of opioid called buprenorphine, cannabis, and drugs similar to spice to an inmate, Sheffield Crown Court was told last Friday (19). Allott was originally due to be sentenced in April but was told she would be spared an immediate prison sentence if she kept a clean record and made good progress. Last week, she was given an 18-month prison sentence suspended for two years. Allott pleaded guilty at an earlier hearing to nine counts of possession with intent of supplying class B drugs to an inmate and one count of possession with intent of supplying a class C drug to an inmate in relation to the incident in January last year. Judge Michael Slater said: It was quite apparent to prison officers that you were unacquainted with the inmate to whom you supplied the drugs and you aroused their suspicion from the outset. Judge Slater said he recognised that Allott was a vulnerable woman with various health problems. Taking drugs into prison is so serious that only a sentence of custody is justified, he said. But Judge Slater said Allott was an extremely reluctant participant and had only tried to smuggle the drugs because she was under threatening and controlling conditions. He added: You have kept out of court as I requested and you have not been before a court for in excess of 12 months. You have supported accommodation and you are doing well. Judge Slater also ordered Allott to complete 25 days of rehabilitation. He mentioned a promise of the UK government to Ecuador made in August, that affirmed Mr Assange will not be extradited and Assanges jail time in the UK for violating bail terms by seeking refuge in the embassy would not exceed six months. Ecuador informed Assanges lawyers. The UK Foreign & Commonwealth Office affirmed that Assange would be treated humanely and properly if he left the embassy. Assange fears he could be extradited to the United States if he leaves the embassy. WikiLeaks, which published U.S. diplomatic and military secrets, faces a U.S. grand jury investigation. Assange filed a lawsuit in an Ecuadorean court last week claiming the new asylum terms, which require him to pay for medical bills and telephone calls and to clean up after his pet cat, violate his rights. Ecuador denied the accusations. It does not plan to intervene with the British government on behalf of WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange in talks over his situation as an asylee in the South American countrys London embassy, Ecuadors foreign minister said on Tuesday. Ecuador has no responsibility to take any further steps, Valencia said. Ecuadorean President Lenin Moreno has said that asylum is not meant to be eternal. BJP, JD(U) will contest equal number of seats in Bihar LS polls PTI, New Delhi (26th Oct'18): The BJP and the JD(U) will contest an equal number of seats in the 2019 Lok Sabha elections in Bihar, BJP president Amit Shah said Friday. Other NDA allies, including the LJP and the RLSP, will get due representation in the seat sharing formula, Shah said. Bihar Chief Minister and JD(U) leader Nitish Kumar Advertisement Addressing reporters along with Bihar Chief Minister and JD(U) leader Nitish Kumar, he said the number of seats each ally will get will be announced in the next three-four days. Lok Janshakti Party chief Ram Vilas Paswan and Rashtriya Lok Samta Party (RLSP) leader Upendra Khushwaha are firmly with the NDA and their parties will get due representation in seat sharing, the BJP chief said. Prime Minister Narendra Modi PTI, New Delhi (26th Oct'18): Prime Minister Narendra Modi Friday described India and Japan a "winning combination" and said the island nation is New Delhi's most trusted partners in its economic and technological modernisation. In a statement before he leaves for Japan Saturday to attend the Annual Summit on October 28 and 29, Modi said India's partnership with Japan is of great substance and purpose. "We have a special strategic and global partnership. Our ties with Japan, both economic and strategic, stand completely transformed in recent years. It is today a partnership of great substance and purpose. It rests on the strong pillars of India's Act East Policy, and our shared vision and commitment to a free, open and inclusive Indo-Pacific," he said. Modi said it will be his 12th meeting with Prime Minister Shinzo Abe since he first toured Japan as prime minister in September 2014. Advertisement He said, as democracies, the two countries have shared values and they seek peace and prosperity for all. "Our complementarities make India and Japan a winning combination. Japan today is one of the most trusted partners in India's economic and technological modernisations and one of the top investors in India," he pointed out. The PM said that projects such as Mumbai-Ahmedabad High Speed Rail and Dedicated Freight Corridors reflect the high level and "strength of our economic engagement". Prime Minister Shinzo Abe "Japan is also at the forefront of engaging in our national initiatives, such as 'Make in India', 'Skill India', 'Digital India', 'Start Up India'...Japanese investors have faith in India's economic future, which is marked with myriad opportunities," Modi said. He said India values Japan's global leadership in innovation, technologies and best practices and during his visit, he will have a chance to see some of Japan's high-tech capabilities in robotics. Advertisement "I will have wide-ranging talks with Prime Minister Shinzo Abe and interact with business leaders and captains of industry from both countries. I will also address the Indian community. These interactions will help to further strengthen our trade and investment ties, and cooperation in new areas such as healthcare, digital technologies, agriculture and food processing, disaster risk reduction and disaster resilient infrastructure," he said. He recalled that last year, he had hosted Prime Minister Abe and his wife Akie Abe in his home state of Gujarat. In a special gesture, Modi will be hosted by his Japanese counterpart for a private dinner at his holiday home in the picturesque Yamanashi prefecture on October 28, which will be, perhaps, the first such reception to be extended to a foreign leader. Nine to 33 million visits to the emergency room (ER) for asthma worldwide may be triggered by breathing in air polluted by ozone or fine particulate matter -- pollutants that can enter the lung's deep airways, according to a study published today. Scientists have long known that breathing in air sullied by car emissions and other pollutants could trigger asthma attacks. However, the new study is the first to quantify air pollution's impact on asthma cases around the globe. "Millions of people worldwide have to go to emergency rooms for asthma attacks every year because they are breathing dirty air," said Susan C. Anenberg, PhD, MS, lead author of the study and an Associate Professor of Environmental and Occupational Health at the George Washington University Milken Institute School of Public Health (Milken Institute SPH). "Our findings suggest that policies aimed at cleaning up the air can reduce the global burden of asthma and improve respiratory health around the world." Asthma is the most prevalent chronic respiratory disease worldwide, affecting about 358 million people. The new findings, published in the journal Environmental Health Perspectives, suggests car emissions and other types of pollution may be a significant source of serious asthma attacks. Anenberg and her team first looked at emergency room visits for asthma in 54 countries and Hong Kong, and then combined that information with epidemiological exposure-response relationships and global pollution levels derived from satellites orbiting the earth. The new research suggests that: Nine to 23 million annual asthma emergency room visits globally (8 to 20 percent of total global asthma ER visits) may be triggered by ozone, a pollutant generated when car, power plant and other types of emissions interact with sunlight. Five to 10 million asthma emergency room visits every year (4 to 9 percent of total global asthma ER visits) were linked to fine particulate matter, small particles of pollution that can lodge deep in the lung's airway tubes. About half of the asthma emergency room visits attributed to dirty air were estimated to occur in South and East Asian countries, notably India and China. Although the air in the United States is relatively clean compared to South and East Asian countries, ozone and particulate matter were estimated to contribute 8 to 21 percent and 3 to 11 percent of asthma ER visits in the United States, respectively. To estimate the global levels of pollution for this study, the researchers turned to atmospheric models, ground monitors and satellites equipped with remote-sensing devices. advertisement "The value of using satellites is that we were able to obtain a consistent measure of air pollution concentrations throughout the world," said Daven Henze, who is the principal investigator on the project and an associate professor for the University of Colorado Boulder. "This information allowed us to link the asthma burden to air pollution even in parts of the world where ambient air quality measurements have not been available." Countries like India and China may be harder hit by the asthma burden because they have large populations and tend to have fewer restrictions on factories belching smoke and other sources of pollution, which can then trigger breathing difficulties, the authors said. Approximately 95 percent of the world's population lives in places with unsafe air. Previously, the Global Burden of Disease Study focused on quantifying the impacts of air pollution on heart disease, chronic respiratory disease, lung cancer, and lower respiratory infections -- finding that fine particulate matter and ozone were associated with 4.1 million and 230,000 premature deaths in 2016, respectively. "We know that air pollution is the leading environmental health risk factor globally," Anenberg said. "Our results show that the range of global public health impacts from breathing dirty air are even more far reaching -- and include millions of asthma attacks every year." To reduce the global burden caused by asthma, Anenberg suggests that policymakers aggressively target known sources of pollution such as ozone, fine particulate matter and nitrogen dioxide. She says policies that result in cleaner air might reduce not just the asthma burden but other health problems as well. One way to reduce pollutants quickly would be to target emissions from cars, especially in big cities. Such policies would not only help people with asthma and other respiratory diseases but it would help everyone breathe a little easier, she said. Support for the study was provided by the NASA Health and Air Quality Applied Science Team, NASA Aura ACMAP, the Stockholm Environment Institute Low Emissions Development Pathways Initiative, and the Global Environment Research Fund of the Japan Ministry of the Environment. Immersive journalism uses virtual reality (VR) to put the viewer directly into a news event. But how can you help someone to personally engage and interact with a story, when they cannot alter the narrative? A new study provides an elegant solution: researchers found that small changes suggestive of a possibility for interaction -- in this case, having a virtual character acknowledge your presence when you look towards them -- can have a significant positive impact on peoples' sense of presence in a VR news scenario. "We Wait" Published in Frontiers in Robotics and AI, the study used a VR experience based on BBC News reports of refugees migrating to the EU. The animated scenario, called "We Wait," gives viewers an immersive experience via VR goggles of the plight of refugees waiting to be taken illegally by boat to Europe, across a dangerous stretch of sea. "We were interested in the level of presence people felt watching the scenario, and the extent to which this might prompt them to seek further information about the refugee crisis," says study co-author Professor Mel Slater of the University of Barcelona. "By presence we refer to the illusions of place -- the feeling of being in the virtual space -- and plausibility, that the unfolding events were really happening." I was there, it was real advertisement Slater and colleagues assessed the illusions of place and plausibility experienced by participants shown one of four different versions of the "We Wait" scenario. In one version, the participant is given a virtual body which they can see when they look down, and when they look at virtual characters these occasionally look back at them. The other three versions lack one or both of these features, i.e. the participant receives no body and/or no acknowledgement. The most striking result was the effect of acknowledgement by the virtual characters. "The simple exchange of glances with the characters greatly enhanced participants' sense of presence in the scenario, by making it more plausibly real" says Slater. Embodiment in a virtual avatar also increased presence somewhat, by enhancing the illusion of place as well as plausibility. Most promising of all, the virtual body also led participants to seek further information about the refugee crisis -- by visiting a website provided during the study -- for longer after the VR experience. "It is as if there was the implicit inference by participants: These were real people, I was amongst them -- so I had better ?nd out more about what is going on," posits Slater. advertisement Director of Audiences for the BBC, Nick North, said: "We know how difficult it can be to drive audiences to online content; from all the BBC's research to date we might expect a small proportion of the audience to go online to a related website after watching a TV programme, for example. So, whilst this was a small study, a 25% conversion rate from the We Wait VR experience is very impressive, and potentially indicative of the significant impact VR could have at scale." The body of evidence These results demonstrate that minimal changes can be helpful in engendering follow-up and further interest in an immersive news story, without compromising faithful reporting. "Have characters respond to actions of the participants, in a way that does not change the narrative," recommends study co-author Professor Anthony Steed of UCL, UK. "Also, give the participant a body. Previous findings show that the illusion of embodiment is made much stronger by multisensory stimulation -- where a person observes their virtual body moving and being touched in synchrony with their own movements and sensations -- and it is likely that had we included this, the gain in presence and tendency to follow-up would have been greater," adds Steed. An outline of the scenario is available on the BBC Taster and readers can experience the version with embodiment and character responsiveness by downloading "We Wait" from the Oculus Store. Amongst the fauna thriving in the subterranean spaces below the surface of the earth's crust, the insect-like diplurans and, precisely, those in the campodeid family are one of the best-known groups, currently comprising almost 150 species. However, not a single subterranean member of the family had been known from Japan until very recently. As part of a project at the National Council of Technological and Scientific Development, the research team of Dr. Rodrigo Lopes Ferreira, Universidade Federal de Lavras, Brasil, and Dr. Kazunori Yoshizawa, Hokkaido University, Japan, conducted an expedition to a total of 11 carbonate caves in the southern Japanese islands of Kyushu and Shikoku. Out of these, they managed to collect dipluran specimens from three touristic sites and sent them to Dr. Alberto Sendra from the Research group in Soil Biology and Subterranean Ecosystems at Alcala University, Spain, for identification. To the amazement of the scientists, it turned out that they had collected specimens of two previously unrecognised species of well-adapted subterranean campodeid diplurans. Moreover, one of the new species (Pacificampa daidarabotchi), identified exclusively from the Mejiro-do cave located near an active quarry in Kyushu, proved to be the largest known dipluran in the family Campodeidae. Measuring about 10 mm in length, the creature looks gigantic next to any other campodeid, which, most often, are only half as big. Inspired by the peculiar size of the former, the researchers decided to name it after the giant yokai creature Daidarabotchi, known from Japanese mythology. According to one of the legends, Daidarabotchi once lifted up the mountains of Fuji and Tsukuba in order to weigh them. By accident, he split the peak of Tsukuba in the process. Another remarkable finding from the same study is that the genus, where both new species were assigned -- Pacificampa -- serves as yet another example of the former physical connection between Asia and America some millennia ago. In their paper, the scientists note that the genus demonstrates close affinities with a genus known from North America. "We hope that this discovery could stop the destruction of the land nearby and preserve for the future the subterranean habitat of these remarkable gigantic species," say the researchers in conclusion. When a coworker or employee is struggling, is it better to offer help on the job or just a shoulder to cry on? A new study led by San Francisco State University researchers shows that the two forms of support do roughly the same thing -- but that sometimes, it's best not to address the situation at all. "We found it's half and half. Sometimes offering support makes things worse, sometimes it makes it better," said Michael Mathieu, who led the study as a psychology graduate student at San Francisco State along with Associate Professor of Psychology Kevin Eschleman. Rather than conducting an experiment of their own, Mathieu and Eschleman pulled together information from the vast scientific literature on the topic. That meant tracking down 142 studies over the course of eight months and translating them all into the same scientific terms to be compared and statistically analyzed in one batch. The team ended up using a wide variety of measurements, from job satisfaction to job performance and even stressors like "role overload" (when an employee's workload is too large to handle). Offering job-related support -- such as new equipment or career counseling -- turned out to perform roughly the same role as providing emotional support, like listening to a coworker's problems, the researchers found. They also discovered that simply making support available is often better than overtly discussing it: Extending a helping hand was just as likely to make the situation worse as improve it, while simply making job resources available had a more consistently positive effect. "That finding might be because not all support is good support," Mathieu explained. For instance, reaching out to offer help to a coworker could end up insulting them. Other results came as less of a surprise. For example, support coming from a superior has a bigger impact than when it comes from a coworker. The researchers published their results on Oct. 18 in the Journal of Occupational Health Psychology. An important next step will be to figure out just when support ends up falling flat and when it can help a coworker succeed. For now, Mathieu's message for employers is to take the time to think about whether offering a hand would be helpful at all. "Before providing support, think about whether it's needed and whether it's wanted," he said. "If it's not, maybe step back and don't provide that." Baby birds learn to fly. Baby mammals switch from milk to solid food. Baby bats, as winged mammals, do both at the same time during their transition from infants to flying juveniles. According to a new report from researchers at the Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute (STRI) who studied Peters' tent-making bats (Uroderma bilobatum), mothers prod their young with their forearms, perhaps encouraging them to fledge and wean. Of the more than 1,300 bat species in the world, details of this critical transition period are only known for a few. "Our study highlights how little we still know about the secret lives of these amazing creatures, even something as significant as the relationship between a mother and her baby," said Jenna Kohles, masters student at the University of Konstanz and Max Planck Institute for Ornithology under the direction of professor Dina Dechmann. Kohles did her fieldwork for this study as an intern at STRI under the supervision of STRI postdoctoral fellow Teague O'Mara while she was an undergraduate at Clemson University. Tent-making bats snip and fold huge leaves of tropical plants to create tents as shelters for groups from two to 50 individuals. They also colonize the gently sloping eaves of the tropical bungalows humans build to keep out the rain. Their roosts not only protect breeding bats from the elements, but also serve as information centers where individuals learn the location of their favorite food -- ripe figs -- from other bats. "Jenna Kohles and her team closely observed colonies of tent-making bats in the wild and monitored roosts under the eaves of more than 30 houses in Gamboa, Panama for nearly a full year," said her STRI advisor, staff scientist Rachel Page. "Jenna caught bat births on camera, and subsequently monitored and quantified changes in mother-pup interactions." Kohles determined whether pups were alone or with their mother, and suckling or not suckling, shifting from one position to another, flapping or resting. She recorded aggressive and other social interactions and noted when mothers groomed their pups. With her colleagues, she also netted roosting bats to record their mass, forearm length, sex and roosting location to see if pups of this species grow as quickly as that reported for other tropical species and to compare the timings of size changes with behavioral changes. Other small mammals such as mice give birth to litters of more than half a dozen babies at a time, but bats usually give birth to only one pup at a time, because mothers have to support all of the baby's weight while flying both before and after it is born. "It's in the pups' best interest to continue nursing and being cared for by their mothers for as long as possible. But this is a big burden for mothers, so they push the pups to become independent," Kohles said. "For many mammals, this results in a period of mother-offspring conflict, often including aggression. But these bats appear to accomplish this transition without aggression, and these forearm nudges may play an important role here. That's why we were excited about observing this novel behavior. "As the only flying mammals, bats have numerous unique life history traits," Kohles continued. "Pups must grow up very quickly. Now we're learning about the specific behaviors both pups and mothers use to deal with this rapid transition. And they're as unique as the bats themselves." Bat pups' arms grew faster than the rest of their bodies. With these large forearms pups could learn to fly in just a few nights with help from their mothers. Although Kohles and her team could only directly observe behavior in the roost, they found evidence that pups were retrieved and carried back into the roost by mothers while learning to fly. "Very little is known about behavioral development in bats. Jenna's study is a step toward filling a critical gap in our understanding of bat development," Page said. Canadian and British researchers have discovered how the frontline Type 2 diabetes drug metformin may work to help cells better take up and use glucose. Their study, published today in the journal Cell, may also explain other potential beneficial effects of metformin for prevention of a variety of chronic diseases, including cancers. To show that metformin appeared to make the cells act as if they are starved for the essential mineral iron, biochemists at Universite de Montreal used a new method to simultaneously probe how all of a cell's biochemical processes respond to the presence of a drug. Collaborating with researchers at the Francis Crick Institute in London, the UdeM team showed that metformin has a global effect on iron distribution in cells, resulting in alteration of essential biochemical processes. The novel technology that made this discovery possible was developed in the lab of lead author Stephen Michnick, a biochemistry professor at UdeM and holder of a Canada Research Chair in cell architecture. "If you want to know what a drug or any other molecule is doing in the body, you need to survey everything going on in it's cells at once," said Dr. Michnick. "Today there are several ways to do this, but our method, called hdPCA, has the merit of being extremely simple to perform and interpret, non-invasive and inexpensive; it can be done in almost any lab." The method can be deployed to rapidly predict and confirm how a drug might affect cells and simultaneously identify any liabilities the drug might have if introduced into humans. "We'd chosen to use metformin, mostly because it was an interesting test case, having no clear mechanism of action,"added the study's first author, UdeM biochemist Bram Stynen. "The lead to effects of metformin on iron homeostasis was a bonus of this study. A connection between iron metabolism and diabetes was already suspected but no-one had ever showed a specific antidiabetic effect of metformin in living cells connected to iron homeostasis." Added collaborator Markus Ralser, a biochemist at Francis Crick, "this makes a lot of sense; glucose metabolism most likely emerged evolutionarily from iron-dependent chemical reactions; such chemical relationships don't disappear in evolution." Further cell and animal studies will have to be done to pin down how important iron-starvation mimicking effects of metformin are to glucose metabolism and how this mechanism might be better exploited to improve diabetes treatments. The study "Changes of cell biochemical states are revealed in protein homomeric complex dynamics " was published October 25, 2018 in Cell. It was financed by the Canadian Institutes of Health Research, the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada, the Human Frontiers Research Program, U.K. Medical Research Council, Cancer Research U.K., Wellcome Trust and the European Research Council. All life on earth ultimately relies on energy from the sun, and photosynthesis is the vital link. Photosynthesis generates adenosine triphosphate (ATP), which is the universal molecular fuel in living organisms. An international team of researchers developed an approach to visualize ATP in living plants and observed that mature plant chloroplasts manage their ATP largely in isolation from other cellular spaces. The results pinpoint a strategy of plants to use their energy efficiently that could inform future crop breeding. Their observations indicated that only chloroplasts of very young developing leaves of Arabidopsis thaliana could import ATP from the cytosol to support chloroplast development, whereas the rate of ATP import into mature chloroplasts to support CO 2 fixation was negligible. This developmental transition could be important in order to restrict futile ATP consumption at night when photosynthesis is not operating. "We saw a significantly lower concentration of ATP in the chloroplast than in the cytosol of mature photosynthetic cells," said study lead author Dr Boon Leong Lim from School of Biological Sciences of The University of Hong Kong. "Although the chloroplast is the key energy harvester and producer in a plant cell, its demand for ATP is also extremely high. Illumination increases chloroplast ATP concentration instantly, but it drops to a basal level very quickly after illumination stops. Our results suggest that there was a need to restrict ATP consumption in mature chloroplasts in the dark. A primary job of mature mesophyll chloroplasts is to harvest energy and export sugar to support plant growth in the light. Nevertheless, wasteful energy consumption must be avoided in the dark." Their findings were published recently in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. Co-authors Dr Wayne K. Versaw and Abira Sahu of Texas A&M University said "Live imaging of intact plants provided the spatial and temporal resolution to reveal important changes in how different cell compartments collaborate to manage photosynthesis and overall cellular energy." These results also have important implications for the understanding of energy flow in plant cells. Using energy harvested from sunlight, water molecules are split into protons, oxygen and electrons. The electrons pass through photosystems to reduce NADP+ to NADPH. Together with water splitting, this so called linear electron flow (LEF) also creates a pH gradient across the thylakoid membrane, which is the driving force for ATP synthesis. To fix one CO 2 molecule in a chloroplast, 3 ATP and 2 NADPH molecules are consumed. However, only 2.57 ATP molecules per 2 NADPH are generated by LEF. The shortfall of ATP must be met for photosynthesis to operate efficiently. A paper published in Nature in 2015 (524:366-369) showed that chloroplasts in unicellular diatoms can import cytosolic ATP to support carbon fixation. Chiapao Voon, who joined the lab as a PhD student, said: "Unlike unicellular diatoms, mature plant chloroplasts are unable to import ATP from the cytosol to supplement the demand for CO 2 fixation. Rather, the export of reducing equivalents is the key to maintaining the optimal ATP/NADPH ratio required for photosynthesis. Otherwise, the build-up of NADPH in chloroplasts will impede photosynthesis." "The ability to study metabolism in the living cell with a spatial resolution between the different cellular compartments is a big step forward and will significantly increase our understanding on how the cell is operating. I have in particular been interested in the implications for mitochondrial contributions to photosynthetic metabolism" said co-author Prof. Per Gardestrom of Umea University. Co-author Prof. Markus Schwarzlander of Munster University added "The study brings us a step closer to understanding how carefully cells optimize the operating conditions in their different organelles. I find it particularly intriguing how efficiency of plant energy metabolism can be maintained, and how this appears to be dynamically adjusted. A Chinese art exhibition started in Nepal's capital Kathmandu on Thursday as the first stop of the Jing-Chu Culture Tour of South Asia. The organizers said that the four-day exhibition is being held to promote the cultural and artistic exchanges between the people of Hubei province of China and Nepal as a part of Belt and Road Initiative. Although the first stop is in Nepal, the culture tour will also be organized in other countries in South Asia, according to organizers. The tour is aimed at integrating economic, trading, cultural and artistic exchanges. Britain's Information Commissioner's Office (ICO) Thursday announced that it has fined Facebook 500,000 pounds for "serious breaches of data protection law". "Facebook failed to sufficiently protect the privacy of its users before, during and after the unlawful processing of this data. A company of its size and expertise should have known better and it should have done better," said Elizabeth Denham, Information Commissioner, in a statement. The ICO's investigation found that between 2007 and 2014, Facebook processed the personal information of users unfairly by allowing application developers access to their information without sufficiently clear and informed consent, and allowing access even if users had not downloaded the app, but were simply "friends" with people who had. The social network also failed to keep the personal information secure because it failed to make suitable checks on apps and developers using its platform, according to the ICO. It has been revealed that one developer, Dr Aleksandr Kogan and his company GSR, harvested the Facebook data of up to 87 million people worldwide, without their knowledge. A subset of this data was later shared with other organizations, including SCL Group, the parent company of Cambridge Analytica, according to the ICO. The ICO also pointed out that even after the misuse of the data was discovered in December 2015, Facebook did not do enough to ensure those who continued to hold it had taken adequate and timely remedial action, including deletion. In the case of SCL Group, Facebook did not suspend the company from its platform until 2018. Britain's data protection watchdog found that the personal information of at least one million British users was among the harvested data and consequently put at risk of further misuse. (1 British pound = 1.28 U.S. dollars) You are here: Business Chinese commercial banks saw a significant drop in net foreign exchange (forex) sales in the first three quarters of the year. Banks bought 1.4163 trillion U.S. dollars worth of foreign currencies and sold 1.4444 trillion dollars worth from January to September, resulting in net sales of 28.1 billion dollars, the State Administration of Foreign Exchange (SAFE) said in a statement Thursday. Net forex sales decreased 75 percent from a year ago, SAFE data showed. "China's cross-border capital flows remained generally stable and the supply and demand of foreign currencies were basically balanced," SAFE spokesperson Wang Chunying said. Chinese mobile phone company Xiaomi launched their new MIX3 in Place Museum in Beijing today. The new smart phone features include a full screen, as well as dual front and rear cameras. But most importantly, the phone may be the world's first 5G-compliant phone. Xiaomi MIX3 5G is expected to come into the market at the first quarter of 2019. The edition released today is available in four storage options: 6GB RAM/128GB memory, 8GB RAM/128GB memory, 8GB RAM/256GB memory and 10GB RAM/256GB memory. They also introduced a special edition Mix 3 Palace that will be released later in November. It will offer 10GB RAM and 256GB internal storage and supports 5G connectivity, with a price of 4999 yuan(around $720). All the other editions are under 4,000 yuan. The new phone also comes with a new 10W wireless charging pad. On October 10, 2018, a U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of New York entered a final judgment on consent against Philip Kueber, who was charged with orchestrating a fraudulent investment scheme using microcap issuer Cynk Technology Corp. The SEC's complaint, filed July 31, 2015, alleged that Kueber concealed his control of Cynk and its purportedly non-restricted shares through nominees and straw shareholders. Although Cynk's stock surged on July 10, 2014 to a high of more than $21 per share (despite having no assets or operations), Kueber was thwarted from profiting from his scheme when the Commission's July 11, 2014 Order suspended trading in the securities of Cynk. Kueber was also charged criminally for related misconduct. In the criminal case, Kueber pleaded guilty, forfeited $1.2 million, and was sentenced to three years of supervised release. The final consent judgment against Kueber imposes permanent injunctions against violations 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, which are antifraud provisions of the federal securities laws. The judgment also imposes a permanent officer and director bar and a permanent bar from participating in an offering of penny stock. The SEC appreciates the assistance of the U.S. Attorney's Office for the Eastern District of New York, the Federal Bureau of Investigation, the Internal Revenue Service, the Department of Homeland Security, and Financial Industry Regulatory Authority. The Cincinnati Zoo is taking a Bay Area nonprofit to court to get its gorilla back. Ndume, a 37-year-old Western lowland gorilla, has been on loan to the Gorilla Foundation of Woodside since 1991 as a companion for Koko, the celebrated gorilla known for using sign language. Koko died in June at 46. Cincinnati zookeepers say Ndume is now all alone in Woodside and ought to have the companionship of Cincinnatis 10 other gorillas. The zoo also says the Gorilla Foundation has gone back on a gorilla-loan agreement. Unfortunately, the Gorilla Foundation has decided not to cooperate, zoo director Thane Maynard said. We have no choice but to take legal action. In a complaint filed Thursday, the zoo accused Gorilla Foundation president Penny Patterson of failing to live up to the deal and return Ndume to Cincinnati after Kokos death. The zoo said the Gorilla Foundation president told Maynard she did not intend to cooperate. Ndume a Cincinnati native who has always lived in Kokos shadow and was the last of the late apes three soul mates has been featured on the foundations website. In a video showing Ndumes birthday party and movie night last year, the Cincinnati-born gorilla seemed delighted to be with Koko, dine on gluten-free chocolate cake and watch his favorite films such as Scooby-Doo and Toy Story. But Ndume has a more problematic reputation than Koko. In Cincinnati, he was said to have a fondness for throwing poop and regurgitated food at zoo visitors. Koko apparently did not hold that against Ndume, according to the Gorilla Foundation, which said Koko selected him after being shown videos of several available male gorillas. Drought Map Track water shortages and restrictions across Bay Area Check the water shortage status of your area, plus see reservoir levels and a list of restrictions for the Bay Areas largest water districts. In defending the zoos lawsuit, Maynard said his facility has 10 gorillas, including relatives of (Ndumes), who can provide socialization opportunities, qualified vets, dedicated, highly experienced gorilla caregivers, and an excellent accredited facility that we recently renovated and expanded. Zoo primate curator Ron Evans called Ndume a healthy normal gorilla who deserves to be near other gorillas. He added that Ndume should be allowed to return home now that his service to the Gorilla Foundation is complete. Calls and emails to the Gorilla Foundation were not returned. The Cincinnati Zoo is no stranger to gorilla controversy. In 2016, a zoo staff member shot and killed Harambe, a 17-year-old male gorilla, after a 3-year-old boy entered an enclosure and was picked up by the primate. Steve Rubenstein is a San Francisco Chronicle staff writer. Email: srubenstein@sfchronicle.com In 1961, San Francisco came up with what was then the novel idea of funneling a portion of the money collected from taxing hotel stays to grants for artists and cultural programs. Fostering a dynamic and flourishing arts scene, the thinking went, would make the city more enticing to tourists and enrich life for residents. The link between hotels, tourism and the arts endured for over 50 years. But in 2013, out of concern that the tax could become the target of a legal challenge, city officials severed the connection. Now, Proposition E on San Franciscos November ballot asks voters whether that link should be reinstated. The tax, championed by then-Mayor George Christopher, was originally created legislatively and never put to a citywide vote. In the 1990s, changes to the state Constitution required that taxes levied for a specific purpose like funding for the arts pass with a two-thirds majority. Since then, grants for art and cultural activities have come from the citys general fund. Tom DeCaigny, director of cultural affairs for the San Francisco Arts Commission, said funding levels for the arts have remained stable, with some modest increases thanks to the growth of the citys economy in recent years. Liz Hafalia / The Chronicle But Jonathan Moscone, chief of civic engagement at Yerba Buena Center for the Arts, said the money from the general fund hasnt kept pace with the soaring cost of living in San Francisco. The cost of living didnt flat-line. People who are artists and people who represent specific cultures that define this city it makes it hard for them to stay here, he said. The amount of effort it takes to raise money becomes a significant diversion to the missions served by these (arts) organizations. And general fund dollars are spent largely at the discretion of the mayor and Board of Supervisors each year, leaving some arts advocates concerned that a shift in priorities or an economic downturn could undermine investments in the arts. Proponents of Prop. E, which include Mayor London Breed, arts advocacy organizations and the Hotel Council of San Francisco, say the measure can bring back a stable, dedicated funding source to the citys arts initiatives. Theres a strong connection between the hotel tax, paid by visitors, and the arts. We want to restore that connection, said Supervisor Katy Tang, who helped lead the effort to get Prop. E on the ballot. In July, the supervisors voted unanimously to put the measure before voters, and it requires a two-thirds majority to pass. The measure has little formal opposition. The Libertarian Party of San Francisco submitted an argument against Prop. E, saying government shouldnt be in the business of subsidizing art and culture projects. It also contends that keeping the hotel tax revenue for any purpose provides maximum flexibility, and that arts funding shouldnt be prioritized over other civic needs, like public transit, youth services and libraries. Prop. E doesnt create any new taxes, it just shifts existing tax money around. The city currently applies a 14 percent tax on hotel room rentals an 8 percent base tax and a 6 percent surcharge. 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. If it passes, Prop. E would allocate 1.5 percent of the money raised from the base tax to fund grants to arts and cultural programs and individual artists and would grow the amount of money available for arts grants by about $10.7 million in the 2019-2020 fiscal year. The vast majority of arts and culture grants are allocated by the San Francisco Arts Commission and by the San Francisco Grants for the Arts program. In the past fiscal year, the Arts Commission alone provided grants to 49 individual artists and 114 arts and culture organizations. Brad Erikson, executive director of Theater Bay Area, a regional theater service organization, said the funding it receives from Grants for the Arts has a ripple effect. What we receive from Grants for the Arts we divvy up into small grants that we give out to between 60 to 80 small-budget organizations and artists annually, he said. If that went away, not only would we not get the money, but all these small organizations wouldnt get the money to support the programs theyre doing. I think our city ... needs to have sustained funding for the arts and cultural services so that all the people and artists who are a part of this community have peace of mind and stability about how to plan for their futures in San Francisco as it gets increasingly difficult to rent space and to live here, Tang said. Dominic Fracassa is a San Francisco Chronicle staff writer. Email: dfracassa@sfchronicle.com Twitter: @dominicfracassa A slick campaign piece landed in my mailbox the other day, screaming in all capital letters: Prop. C would spend another $300 million a year on the same failed programs. You know, those failed programs that produced the scenes depicted in the mailers photographs. The ones of Third World-style tent shantytowns spread along sidewalks in the Mission, with bicycle parts and shopping carts strewn around. I know its shocking that you cant believe everything a campaign tells you, but the large tent camps in the Mission are gone. They were cleared by the citys Department of Homelessness and Supportive Housing outreach workers, many of their onetime residents moved into new Navigation Centers. Its an example of a successful effort not a failed one that can happen when a city commits major money to its biggest crisis. But do we commit enough money? Thats the real question behind Proposition C, by far the most interesting and controversial item on San Franciscos Nov. 6 ballot. It would raise $300 million a year in gross receipts taxes on the citys biggest businesses to pay for homeless services. That would be added to the $305 million the city already spends each year, though as Ive noted before, most of that is spent keeping formerly homeless people housed or paying rent subsidies to keep people on the verge of eviction from becoming homeless. Just $57 million goes directly to the 15,000 people who are homeless on the streets of San Francisco in any given year. Prop. C is a simple concept, and one thats getting big-name support. Sen. Dianne Feinstein, House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi, Salesforce CEO Marc Benioff, Rep. Jackie Speier, Assemblyman Phil Ting and seven supervisors support it. Matt Edge / New York Times Its mind-boggling that anyone cant see that this is about resources, said Bevan Dufty, the citys former point person on homelessness, who also backs Prop. C. If youve ever seen a homeless outreach worker talking to someone and then eventually walking away and that person being on the sidewalk, odds are it wasnt because that person didnt want housing or services. Its that the only offer is a waiting list. Mayor London Breed opposes Prop. C, but in June she acknowledged that the city needs more money for homeless services when she pushed Prop. D, which would have raised the commercial rent tax to do just that. She also acknowledged it in November 2016 when she supported Prop. K, which would have raised the sales tax to fund more homeless services. Breed says she opposes Prop. C because shes not confident the city is spending its money on homelessness effectively, though she didnt express that concern in backing the two previous revenue measures. Her spokesman, Jeff Cretan, said the mayors budget office is analyzing the citys homeless funding and how its being used. The mayor believes that businesses can and should pay more to address homelessness, but as we make long-lasting policy decisions she also wants to know that our programs and strategies are delivering the results of actually helping people off our streets permanently, he said. Unlike the two measures that failed, Prop. C wouldnt impact everyday people or small businesses. Instead, it would levy an average 0.5 percent tax on companies gross receipts above $50 million. It would impact an estimated 375 companies in the city, including Twitter, Salesforce, Visa, Pacific Gas and Electric, and Safeway. Campaign finance disclosures show contributions to the No on C campaign from Stripe ($419,999); Visa ($225,000); Paul Graham, an investor in Y-Combinator ($150,000); Twitter and Square CEO Jack Dorsey ($125,000); Lyft ($100,000); brokerage founder Charles Schwab ($100,000); venture capitalist Michael Moritz ($100,000); the Hotel Council ($50,000) and the Committee on Jobs ($30,000). Yes, in one of the cities with the biggest income inequality gap in the world where a household has to earn $300,000 a year to buy a median-priced home CEOs are donating hundreds of thousands of dollars to prevent their companies from paying a small amount to house homeless people. Eric Thayer / New York Times The most off-putting of them all has got to be Dorsey, who is estimated to be worth more than $5 billion and is the CEO of not one but two huge tech companies with headquarters in Mid-Market. Despite benefiting from the Twitter tax break for seven years, he doesnt think his companies should be compelled to help ease the misery on the sidewalks just outside their front doors. A couple of weeks ago, Dorsey tweeted his personal to-do list, which included working out, meditating, using an infrared sauna, reading Winners Take All and following up on Prop. C conversations. Something tells me passage of Prop. C isnt going to make much difference in his life. So what would Prop. C accomplish? Half the money would go to building 4,000 new units of permanent supportive housing. Of those, 1,000 are already planned by the city, but theres no money to get them built. An additional 3,000 would come from either new construction or by converting old single-room-occupancy hotels. The current stock is 7,700 permanent supportive housing units. And no, homeless people from elsewhere arent going to flock here to snatch up all those units. The city, through its new coordinated services entry system, tracks how long people have been homeless and what services they need. The people whove been homeless in San Francisco the longest or are the sickest are getting first dibs. New arrivals might qualify for an emergency shelter bed or a bus ticket home, but theyre not getting housing unless theyre, say, schizophrenic and have stage four cancer. And how many people that ill can travel across country on a bus? Id suggest Prop. C funds pay for a new Homeless Outreach Team stationed at the transbay center to give it to new arrivals straight theyre not going to get housing just because theyre here. An additional $75 million would pay for mental health care and drug addiction treatment. Vitka Eisen, CEO of Healthright 360, a network of health centers, said her organization has endorsed Prop. C because drug-addicted homeless people who go through a 90-day inpatient rehab program are often returned to the streets because theres nowhere else for them to go. 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. It essentially erases the benefits of treatment, she said. Asked what she thought of Prop. C detractors claims that the citys programs are failing, she replied, Its not failing at all. Its just underfunded. Prop. C would also eliminate the waiting list for shelter beds, keep more people in their homes with rent subsidies, and build hygiene centers with showers and toilets. Ted Egan, the citys economist, said the plan would reduce homelessness, make homeless people healthier, and lower the costs of emergency services. And, he said, it would increase the attractiveness of the city to tourists, residents and commuters. While Egan did predict the loss of 725 to 875 jobs annually because of the tax, the city is producing so many jobs every year that its hard to imagine anybody would be unemployed for long. Jim Lazarus, senior vice president of public policy for the Chamber of Commerce, which is leading the No on C fight, said companies might leave San Francisco altogether because of yet another tax in a city where running a business is already very expensive. He pointed out that not all of the companies affected are as big as Salesforce and Twitter some are car dealerships, hotels and architectural firms, he said. Fair enough. But when asked about those mailers from his team, Lazarus was hard to follow. The mailers are the ones that call the citys homeless programs failures and show tent camps the city has since cleared. He didnt sound surprised to learn the pictures are no longer accurate. Yes, the citys been making a lot of progress, he said, adding that a reporter from the Seattle Times even visited the city recently to see how San Franciscos successful tent resolution team works. I dont think the programs are failing, he continued, noting our citys homeless numbers have remained steady while other cities along the West Coast have seen big increases. You could argue thats a success. OK, so the programs are successful but theyre also failures. But, really, we dont know either way and have to audit them. We need more money, but not from the cities biggest businesses that can most easily afford it. Are you confused by the No on C side? I am. Maybe I just need some time to meditate in an infrared sauna. San Francisco Chronicle columnist Heather Knight appears Sundays and Tuesdays. Email: hknight@sfchronicle.com, Twitter: @hknightsf On October 26, China Fortune Land Development Co., Ltd (CFLD) (600340.SH) announced its financial results for the first three quarters of 2018. The company generated a strong operating income of 45.14 billion yuan, an increase of 46.14 percent year-on-year. Its net profit rate reached 17.45 percent and deposits received totaled 152.5 billion yuan. The first three quarters of the year saw the signing of a total of 17 new Public-Private-Partnership (PPP) cooperation projects. These included 14 New Industry Cities projects and three Industry Towns projects; 13 of these are located outside the Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei region. According to financial report, real estate sales outside the Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei region covered an area of 4.43 million cubic meters, accounting for 46 percent of the total, an increase of 90 percent year-on-year. The share of sales for the first three quarters in the regions surrounding the major cities of Nanjing, Zhengzhou and Hangzhou were 13 percent, 11 percent and 7 percent, respectively. Revenue of CFLD's industrial parks amounted to 5.6 billion yuan in Q3. The company also generated a positive net cash flow for the second straight quarter, with its sales return completion rate reaching 59 percent, compared to 46 percent in the first half of this year. On July 10, CFLD's controlling shareholder, China Fortune Land Holding Co. Ltd., signed a Share Transfer Agreement and a supplemental agreement to it with Ping An Asset Management and Ping An Insurance, through which Ping An Insurance planned to transfer 582,124,502 shares (19.7 percent of total equity). At present, corresponding shares have been transferred. Two weeks later, CFLD and Ping An Insurance signed the Ping An Insurance (Group) Company of China and China Fortune Land Development Co., Ltd Strategic Cooperation Framework Agreement. The comprehensive cooperation deal makes CFLD an important strategic synergy enterprise of Ping An Insurance. The two sides will strengthen cooperation in such areas as integrated financial services, New Industry Cities and coordinated development of emerging industries. CFLD has received an AAA credit rating from many of China's top-level agencies, such as China Cheng Xin International Credit Rating Co. Ltd, United Ratings and Golden Credit Rating International Co. Ltd. During the third quarter, CFLD received a BB+ rating from Fitch Ratings, with its outlook considered stable. The two candidates running for Californias top education job are both Democrats, but thats about where any civility and similarity ends. The race for state superintendent of public instruction has been the most contentious and expensive in recent memory, with $50 million in spending fueling a last-minute onslaught of radio and television ads promoting teacher-backed Tony Thurmond or billionaire-funded reformer Marshall Tuck. Both have spent about two years campaigning to be the next state superintendent, a position that one might describe as an administrative desk job overseeing the California Department of Education. But its also a statewide elected office that comes with a sizable soapbox, replacing termed-out Superintendent Tom Torlakson. Thurmond, a state assemblyman representing Richmond, opted to run for the statewide office rather than seek re-election to the Legislature, saying he is the product of a public education and that is where he wants to focus his efforts. If you look at everything Ive worked on, he said, its always about helping young people. As his campaign heads into the final weeks, hes been leading town halls and pitching ideas on the issues he feels are priorities: literacy, universal preschool and college affordability. Hes quick to cite statistics about state college costs how 42 percent of California State University students have experienced food insecurity or that 11 percent have been homeless. The state superintendent serves as a CSU trustee as well as a University of California regent. For me, this is more than the days as college students eating ramen noodles, he said, adding one solution would be to increase student housing. Thurmond also promises to resist the Trump administration, and specifically Education Secretary Betsy DeVos, on issues related to student debt and privatization of public schools. The assemblyman, for example, wrote a bill signed into law by Gov. Brown in September that bans for-profit charter schools in the state. He also supports a pause in the growth of charter schools in the state to assess the impact on local schools and the education system overall. He says his experience working in Sacramento will allow him to align with the next governor and the Legislature to get more education funding and address other problems within the system. Thurmond has the support of the state Democratic Party, the California Teachers Association and other labor unions, as well as a long list of state politicians including Sen. Kamala Harris and House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi. In years past, those endorsements and financial support from the state teachers union have been the ticket to winning the superintendent seat. But this year, Tuck has mounted a formidable campaign, with support from former President Barack Obamas education secretary, Arne Duncan, as well as a long list of state representatives, including state Sen. Scott Wiener, D-San Francisco. While he has never been elected to public office, he has raised $5 million to Thurmonds $3 million. But the real money in this race falls outside direct contributions to two campaigns, with Tuck supporters spending $32 million on their candidate compared with about $12 million outside committees have spent on Thurmond. Tuck is backed by the EdVoice for the Kids political action committee, for example, which fills its coffers with donations from several billionaires, including Gap co-founder Doris Fisher and philanthropist and education reformer Eli Broad. Most of Thurmonds outside support comes from the states largest teachers union, the CTA. COVID Resources Coronavirus Map Tracking COVID-19 cases across the Bay Area and California. Tuck sells himself as an educational insider and political outsider. The son of a teacher, Tuck says he has experience running and reforming traditional and charter schools. He was chief executive of the nonprofit Partnership for Los Angeles Schools, working with 18 struggling city public schools. Before that, he was president of Green Dot Public Schools, a nonprofit organization that manages a chain of charters. Tuck said the public school system needs real change. At the foundation of public schools you have to have quality teachers in front of children and strong leaders, he said. But thats not happening for every child, he added. To close the achievement gap, teachers and principals at struggling schools must be paid more, he said. The teachers union has long opposed such differential pay. Tuck also wants to push the state Board of Education, which the superintendent also sits on, to give traditional public schools the flexibility in scheduling and hiring that charter schools have. He doesnt want to restrict charter school growth, but does want increased accountability. Ill be more active in shutting down bad charters, he said. Theyve got to be outperforming the district, or theyve got to be performing a different function or they shouldnt be there. Tuck says being an outsider will allow him to challenge the status quo. This position has been held for the last quarter century by politicians, he said. You cant solve these problems with a bunch of bureaucrats in Sacramento. Jill Tucker is a San Francisco Chronicle staff writer. Email: jtucker@sfchronicle.com Twitter: @jilltucker 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. 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. 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. Chinese engineers are developing the nation's second generation of manned spacecraft which will be tasked with servicing the country's space station and participating in manned lunar missions, said a researcher involved with the program. The new-generation spacecraft, which has yet to be named, will have a new aerodynamic design that will be more streamlined than the Shenzhou series, China's first-generation manned spacecraft family, said Yang Lei, a senior designer at the China Academy of Space Technology, while speaking at the Fifth Manned Space Conference on Wednesday in Xi'an, Shaanxi province. It will consist of two sectionsa re-entry module that will house astronauts and control the entire craft during flight, and a service module that will contain power and propulsion systems, he said. By comparison, the current Shenzhou-series spacecraft has three modules tasked with re-entry, orbiting and propulsion. The new spacecraft will be reusable and will adopt a host of advanced technologies such as new heat-resistant materials, non-toxic propellants, human-computer interaction systems and high-performance solar batteries, Yang said, adding that its inner design and equipment layout will be more ergonomically friendly. Yang said the China Academy of Space Technology has been carrying out experiments and tests on major components of the new spacecraft, and plans to conduct test flights atop the Long March 5B carrier rocket, which is also under development and is scheduled to make its maiden flight in June. The new spacecraft will be used in China's future space programs including the space station, manned lunar missions and manned deep-space expeditions, he added. Currently, only China and Russia have manned spacecraft. The United States hasn't had any manned spaceship since 2011 when it retired all space shuttles. All three space powers are developing new manned spacecraftthe US is building the Orion Multi-Purpose Crew Vehicle, Dragon 2 and CST-100 Starliner, and Russia is working on its Federation spacecraft. Zhang Hongtai, president of the academy, previously told reporters that the overall capability of the next-generation manned spacecraft will be much broader than that of the Shenzhou series and will be as good as the US and Russian prototypes. The midterm elections have been marred by controversy over alleged voter suppression in Georgia, North Dakota and elsewhere. Once again, partisans want to make it harder for fellow citizens to cast their ballots. Its ugly. But amid the dispiriting bid to curb voting, something else is happening: For the first time in years, citizens have responded with a robust push to expand democratic rights. Breakthrough ballot measures across the country would expand voting rights and improve representation. If enacted, they could add up to a democracy wave, regardless of which party prevails. Start with Florida, where the presidential recount in 2000 launched the recent voting wars. The state has an extraordinarily harsh felony disenfranchisement law, one that dates to the Jim Crow era and bars citizens with any kind of felony conviction from voting for a lifetime. A drug-possession conviction at 18 means a 60-year-old cant cast a ballot. Today, 1.6 million otherwise eligible Floridians are disenfranchised, including 1 in 5 black people of voting age. A measure on the ballot in November would restore rights for most people with criminal convictions. The proposal must win 60 percent of the vote to pass, but recent polling shows nearly three-fourths of voters support it. Notably, the measure has united religious communities and skirted ideological splits. (The Koch-backed organization Freedom Partners gave a ringing endorsement.) Formerly incarcerated people have led the drive, going door to door to drum up support. Then theres partisan gerrymandering. Politicians have manipulated district lines since the countrys founding, but computers have transformed gerrymandering into a precision mechanism to blunt the voice of voters. This year, the Supreme Court declined to make a major constitutional ruling to restrict extreme partisan gerrymandering. With Justice Brett Kavanaugh replacing Anthony Kennedy, hopes have dimmed for a legal breakthrough at the court. Here, too, while courts dither, citizens have acted. The best reform would have district lines drawn by a nonpartisan, independent commission, as in Arizona and California. In Michigan, despite a rebuff at first from party leaders and labor unions, activists are on track to garner 400,000 signatures for a ballot measure to create a nonpartisan panel to draw future districts. Similar reforms are on the ballot in Utah and Colorado. Missouri voters will decide on a different but strong approach. Earlier this year, Ohio voters backed a measure to block the legislature from redistricting on a partisan basis. This is all quite extraordinary. Gerrymandering was an arcane topic beloved only by political science professors and tobacco-stained party bosses. Last decade, similar reform efforts failed in states including Ohio and California. It speaks volumes about our electoral breakdown that ordinary citizens now seem to understand how badly the system is tilted. Voters are also tackling one of the biggest barriers to effective elections: our ramshackle voter registration system. Today voters can fall off the rolls when they move or if theres a typo in their states records. Some people never manage to sign up to vote in the first place. We are alone among major democracies in running our system this way. At least 13 states, though, have approved a version of automatic voter registration that uses data supplied at their departments of motor vehicles or other agencies to securely and accurately update registration information. This paradigm shift would add tens of millions of people to the rolls, reduce costs and bolster election security. Next month, Nevada and Michigan voters will decide whether to adopt strong versions of the plan. Will elected officials heed this shout from the electorate? Some signs are positive. House Democrats announced they will make democracy reform the basis of their first piece of legislation the auspiciously named HR1 should they win. It would include national rules on automatic voter registration, redistricting reform and small-donor public financing of campaigns to curb the role of big money. Dozens of new members may form a reform caucus akin to the class of Watergate babies who won in 1974 and transformed Congress. But dont trust incumbents to act, regardless of what they say. In the weeks after the midterms, we need to press lawmakers to put their votes where their tweets are. We also need to keep an eye out for legal challenges against these measures from forces that stand to lose from a fairer system. Conservative activists could try to convince the Supreme Courts new conservative majority that ballot measures instituting electoral reform are unconstitutional. If the Supreme Court tries to choke off the voice of the voters, it would demolish public confidence and provoke a constitutional crisis. For now, all eyes are on election night. This is not just an important midterm cycle politically speaking; its also a chance for democracy itself to prevail at the ballot box. 2018 Special to the Washington Post Michael Waldman, author of The Fight to Vote, is president of the Brennan Center for Justice at New York University School of Law. The Brennan Center helped write ballot measures in Florida, Michigan and Utah. To comment, submit your letter to the editor at SFChronicle.com/letters. Beijing municipal government has attached equal importance to "bringing in" and "going global" in the past five years, with the outbound investment totaling US$39 billion. Of the sum, a total direct investment of US$1.66 billion were made by Beijing-based enterprises in 31 countries along the Belt and Road. The numbers were announced by Tan Xuxiang, director of the Beijing Municipal Commission of Development and Reform, on Oct. 24 as he was attending the two-day 22nd Beijing-Hong Kong Economic Cooperation Symposium held in Beijing. Tan said that in the past five years Beijing has vigorously promoted infrastructure interconnection, capacity cooperation and the construction of major overseas business parks in countries and regions along the Belt and Road. Beijing encourages enterprises to enter the whole industrial chain, including participating in planning and design, equipment procurement, construction and operation management, Tan said. The government promotes the joint development of overseas contract projects and import and export trade by encouraging major technical standards to go global. Beijing also supports enterprises to participate in constructing key projects such as the Mombasa-Nairobi Standard Gauge Railway in Kenya, the Ibrahim Nasir International Airport in Maldives, the 10,000 Villages Connection Project in Africa , the Airport City Manchester in the UK, and the Expressway Project in Indonesia. Additionally, Beijing is advancing the construction of overseas business parks. By cooperating with "Belt and Road" countries, the city has established a number of science parks and incubation bases in these countries, including the non-ferrous metal industrial park in northern Tajikistan, the TusPark complexes in Cambridge and Newcastle in the U.K., and the China-Italy Design Innovation Hub. As for the next step, Tan said that the government would establish a unified Belt and Road project database to coordinate relevant policies and funds. Beijing will work to improve the two-way investment promotional platform and establish the international capacity cooperation service center, providing comprehensive services for enterprises to "go global and bring in." He said the government will also promote the establishment of an international business settlement center, and explore a joint mechanism for resolving and mitigating commercial disputes involving foreign parties. The top psychiatrist in the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation has accused his prison bosses of misleading the federal court and opposing lawyers in a long-running inmate lawsuit about appropriate levels of psychiatric treatment. The judge is weighing whether she should make the psychiatrists whistle-blower report public. Meanwhile, the stakes for this surprising court fight include inmate health and safety, taxpayer dollars, and the publics trust in prison reforms that are already years in the making. Its a destabilizing twist in a case thats already dragged on for far too long. California has been on the hook to improve medical care (a category that includes mental health care) for prison inmates since a 1995 court judgment found the states system to be unconstitutionally inadequate. In 2009, the state agreed to maintain a level of staffing that would allow any prisoner with a life-threatening psychiatric crisis to receive help within 24 hours. Inmates who suffer from severe mental illness are supposed to receive help within 30 days. But for many reasons, the state has struggled to meet those goals. Californias prisons are geographically isolated and physically dangerous environments, and many psychiatrists would prefer to work with patients who have fewer restrictions. The inmate population has changed, too. About a third of inmates participate in a mental health program. As access to community-based mental health care has shrunk, prisons in California and across the nation have increasingly become repositories for mentally ill people. Theres also the not-so-small matter of cost. According to the state Legislative Analysts Office, every mental health crisis bed in prison costs Californians $345,000 a year. But California still has a constitutional duty to provide inmates with adequate treatment, and a moral duty as well. (Californias inmate suicide rate is much higher than the national average, and theres been a suicide spike among female inmates in particular. The state auditor blasted the department in an August 2017 report for failing to provide the leadership and oversight necessary for effective suicide prevention.) Dr. Michael Golding, the psychiatrist who leaked a 160-page report to the office of the federal receiver appointed by the courts to oversee Californias prison medical care, alleges that the department has fudged the data on the psychiatric care it provides. Though he is not the systems first whistle-blower, his report is the most comprehensive set of allegations that the Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation has not made good on its promises. We knew that some of this was happening, but the extent alleged (by Golding) is shocking, said Michael Bien, lead attorney for the tens of thousands of California inmates who need mental health care. The Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation does not comment on matters pending before a court. In a statement, department press secretary Vicky Waters said: Mental health care is a top priority to CDCR. We are committed to deliver appropriate mental health care treatment to our patients through our dedicated and well-trained staff. While the judge seeks more information on the Golding allegations, theyre already shaping the direction of prison services. Bien and his fellow attorneys had negotiated an agreement with the state to accept a lower number of psychiatrists in the prisons. That agreement is now off, Bien said. One of the big lessons for us in all of this is that maybe we were over-relying on the defendants for information, Bien said. Were going back to the old principle of trust but verify. We urge the judge to get to the bottom of the Golding allegations, and we urge state lawmakers to focus their attention on funding community-based mental health care. The most humane and least expensive way to reduce the prison budget is to prevent mentally ill people from entering state prisons in the first place. This commentary is from The Chronicles editorial board. We invite you to express your views in a letter to the editor. Please submit your letter via our online form: SFChronicle.com/letters. Paul Chinn / The Chronicle San Francisco needs to find a way to make one of its boldest promises a scaled down jail system work in the real world of crime and money. After three years of talk and planning, the population behind bars isnt any smaller. The main friction point is the citys aging, seismically unsafe, top-floor jail at 850 Bryant St. City leaders bucked a decision to rebuild the facility for $215 million, instead aiming to thin jail ranks through early releases and diversion programs. Added to that was a push to end the cash bail system and voter-approved changes that reduced some felonies to misdemeanors. In 2019, for the first time in more than 50 years, the incumbent San Francisco district attorney is not running for re-election. This election has even more importance because the office of district attorney has no term limits. San Francisco has a history of progressive district attorneys. In 1986, Arlo Smith was the only one out of the states 58 district attorneys who supported the retention of California Supreme Court Justice Rose Bird, who opposed the death penalty and protected consumer rights. Terence Hallinan, Kamala Harris and the current district attorney, George Gascon, each promoted restorative justice by supporting collaborative courts, re-entry programs and legislation designed to break the cycle of recidivism and lessen the residual disabilities of past criminality. San Franciscans are increasingly unhappy with the condition of our streets and place some of the blame, correctly, on our criminal justice system. If 30,000 auto burglaries were reported in 2017, we can assume there were actually many more. The problems with our criminal justice system do not lend themselves to simple solutions. Past efforts to use law enforcement to deal with drug abuse, homelessness and mental illness have failed. Our black and brown communities have little confidence in our justice system. The enduring antipathy between the police and minority communities and the continuing disparity in enforcement reinforce this view. Many are reluctant to cooperate with law enforcement, which means that crimes go unsolved and criminals remain on the street. If you want a recipe to promote lawlessness, this is it. If we value public safety, we need a criminal justice system that is fair and effective. We need thoughtful, innovative measures that are not likely to show the sort of short-term returns we want when we break from past practices. But if we want a safer, gentler San Francisco, we should focus on the long game. We should invest in criminal justice reform that will pay off, with fewer criminals in the future. They say we get the government we deserve. The criminal justice system impacts everyone: citizens, immigrants, victims, witnesses, jurors and defendants, 95 percent of whom will eventually be released back to our community. The election of the next San Francisco district attorney in 2019 will be our single most important opportunity for systemic change. Educate yourself about the candidates. Scrutinize their positions, plans and experience; question their promises. Appreciate the difference between good campaigning and good governing. Catchy slogans and hot-button issues are not new to politics but seem to have more currency than ever. We owe it to ourselves, to each other and to future generations to make an informed choice for the next district attorney. Randy Knox is a criminal defense attorney and former San Francisco assistant district attorney. The idea of banning new corporate cafeterias to bolster surrounding neighborhood businesses was unanimously shot down Thursday by the San Francisco Planning Commission after kitchen staff from several of the private dining operations said the office chow crackdown would hurt them. The commission voted 5-0 to recommend against the proposed ordinance, which would amend the San Francisco Planning Code to prohibit new employee cafeterias within office space. The legislation would exempt cafeterias already in operation or those that were approved by July 24. Supervisor Ahsha Safai introduced the legislation in July, with Supervisor Aaron Peskin signing on as a co-sponsor. It will next move to the Board of Supervisors Land Use and Transportation Committee, with a negative recommendation from the Planning Commission. The proposed cafeteria ban comes at a time when at least 44 San Francisco companies, including many high-profile tech firms such as Airbnb and Twitter, treat their employees to often-lavish lunchtime spreads. The free food is an effective recruiting tool and, some companies say, enhances productivity by keeping workers from wandering off at lunchtime. But critics say the cafeterias hurt local restaurants and exacerbate the gap between ordinary and well-paid tech workers, who can take advantage of office perks such as all-you-can-eat sushi, in-house laundry service and yoga. The cafeterias have been blamed for the high retail turnover on central Market Street, where multiple restaurants have failed in recent years, despite rapid growth of neighborhood companies such as Square, Uber and Twitter. City Planning Department staff had recommended approval of the proposed ordinance, but with major changes. They included allowing corporate cafeterias on the first floor of buildings, which would be open to the public who would have to pay and giving employees meal vouchers to use at local restaurants, something some firms already do. The Planning Department report also said some cafeteria workers earn 30 percent higher wages than restaurant workers and that the 9-to-5 corporate jobs often have more predictable hours and better benefits than those in restaurants. Multiple employees who work in the cafeteria at Airbnb, where the food service is outsourced to Bon Appetit Management Co., said that the ban would mean that a planned new cafeteria at the company could not open. Kitchen workers at Airbnb, who start at $19.50 an hour, recently organized a union. The cafeterias at Airbnb employ 135 unionized kitchen staff and 21 managers, who earn a starting salary of $55,000. A plan for a second Airbnb cafeteria with 110 kitchen workers is in the works, but would not go forward if the legislation were to pass. The company spends $7 million a year buying food from Bay Area businesses, Matt Middlebrook, Airbnbs chief of public policy, told the commissioners. Weve got some of the highest-paid kitchen workers in California, line cook Marcus Mack told the planning commissioners. The legislation would be harmful and detrimental to local San Franciscans people who grew up out here, like myself. Other speakers said the cafeterias support local businesses by ordering large amounts of food. Todd Rubin, owner of the Republic of Tea, said the legislation threatens the livelihood of vendors like my company that provides teas to people around the Bay Area. Supporting restaurants is important, but there are smarter ways to do it and it should not be done at the cost of small businesses like mine, he said. Jennifer Stojkovic, executive director of the tech industry group sf.citi, said the legislation would cost the industry 350 future jobs. Despite the Planning Commission vote, Safai said he would continue to work on the legislation and continue to meet with a working group that includes some of the big tech firms that have cafeterias. We have no intention to rush this. We want to get it right, Safai said after the vote. We are the epicenter for the type of business that houses these kinds of cafeterias. They are isolated and not paying sales tax and not open to the public. While Safai said that only a handful of corporate cafeterias are unionized, research director Ian Clark of SEIU Local 2, which represents hotel and some restaurant workers, said workers in company cafeterias are increasingly organizing. There are many corporate cafeterias where working conditions are terrible, but workers have a better shot of organizing into a union there than in restaurants or catering companies, he said. Planning Commissioner Millie Johnson said the legislation has sparked an important community conversation but that the legislation was too narrow and its impact not well enough understood. This whole thing needs more time to bake, she said. Commissioner Dennis Richards called the legislation well intentioned and said it is a sobering fact that there are empty storefronts and failed restaurants on Mid-Market blocks where thousands of well-paid tech employees go every day. Thought we would have a vibrant street scene, and that hasnt happened, he said of the area, where many tech firms moved to take advantage of a city benefit called the Twitter tax break several years ago. J.K. Dineen is a San Francisco Chronicle staff writer. Email: jdineen@sfchronicle.com Twitter: @sfjkdineen It was a lively crowd for a lively group of candidates. The seven contenders for the District 10 supervisor seat gathered at the Potrero Hill Neighborhood House on Thursday night to fight for a chance to represent the jagged southeastern edge of San Francisco, which includes Bayview-Hunters Point, Potrero Hill and the Dogpatch neighborhoods. The winner in November will succeed Supervisor Malia Cohen, who is being termed out of office. There are seven candidates in the race: Gloria Berry, Asale-Haquekyah Chandler, Theo Ellington, Uzuri Pease-Greene, Tony Kelly, Neo Veavea and Shamann Walton. In terms of money and endorsements, the three front-runners are Ellington, current board president of the Bayview Opera House; Kelly, president of the Potrero Hill Democratic Club; and Walton, a member and former president of the San Francisco Board of Education. We all agree that the people in charge today cannot be in charge of where we need to go, Kelly said. We need to stand up to the big developers, the big banks ... and kick open the doors of City Hall and get a neighborhood activist in there. During the two-hour debate at which some candidates broke out into impassioned speeches and the sparse crowd often responded with snapping, clapping and cheering the candidates all agreed on the importance of addressing major issues in the district, such as crime, gentrification and a shortage of affordable housing. But only some specific solutions were offered. Each candidate said they would oppose police programs intended to criminalize youth in District 10, and would instead prioritize educating, entertaining and employing the districts youth. Walton and Ellington specifically said the city should expand on the Community Ambassador Program, which hires and trains neighborhood residents to help patrol the communities. Anything in place to criminalize our youth is something we need to get rid of, said Walton, who is also executive director of Young Community Developers, a nonprofit that provides job training and develops affordable housing. Berry, a former member of the U.S. Navy, called on the city to hire more female police officers. She also said nonprofits, such as Young Community Developers, should be more diligent in tracking how successful their jobs placements have been in lifting people out of poverty. We need more monitoring on the success rates of jobs, and (track) how often they have allowed people to be able to afford rent and make a living wage in San Francisco, she said. Kelly said he would double down on street violence and prevention programs, and make a personal response to acts of violence such as meeting with families of shooting victims in the district. And Greene said she would create a subcommittee made up of community members who would be responsible for making sure whoever is elected follows through on their promises. District 10 is in the midst of a major transformation, with a number of development projects in the works that promise to turn underused waterfront land into thriving, mixed-use communities. Whoever wins in November will have to steer this district which encompasses the citys most industrial and poorest neighborhoods through a dramatic period of change. A number of candidates said they would push for more affordable housing in new development projects and would maximize neighborhood preference, in which the city prioritizes a portion of new affordable housing units for people who live near them. Its not about the money that you put into the development, but its about the services that are brought there that are actually wanted by the residents, Greene said. Walton said that, if elected, he would work to ensure that those living in affordable housing units are not spending more than a third of their income on housing. Meanwhile, in a passionate outburst, Chandler said that affordable housing in San Francisco is a farce. Affordable doesnt exist, she cried. Theyve been lying to you. Trisha Thadani is a San Francisco Chronicle staff writer. Email: tthadani@sfchronicle.com Twitter: @TrishaThadani Gina Ferazzi / TNS SACRAMENTO After sounding the alarm about existential threats like climate change, Gov. Jerry Brown was named Thursday as executive chairman of the group that manages the Doomsday Clock. Brown joined the Chicago-based Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, which promotes policies that reduce man-made existential threats such as nuclear war, climate change and disruptive technologies. SACRAMENTO With thousands of Central Americans headed for the U.S.-Mexico border and the Trump administration reportedly planning to send hundreds of troops to meet them, California gubernatorial candidates dug in Thursday on whether they would pull the states National Guard troops back to their barracks if elected. Democrat Gavin Newsom is sticking to the position he spelled out before the caravan of 7,000-plus Central Americans hit the road this month, aides said: He disagreed with Gov. Jerry Browns decision to deploy 400 California Guard troops at President Trumps request in April, and if elected, hed try to bring them back. Id like to see what contractual provisions exist there before we can determine whether or not we can pull away from it, Newsom said this month. I just think its a stunt on the presidents part. Trump has called the caravan a national emergency, and several outlets reported Thursday that the U.S. plans to send at least 800 troops to the border to help stop the migrants from entering the country and seeking asylum. Newsom spokesman Nathan Click said none of that changed the candidates views. Newsom said Trump should fill vacant Border Patrol jobs instead of using Californias Guard troops as a supporting force. Its among the many positions that set Newsom apart from his Republican rival, San Diego-area businessman John Cox. I believe Gov. Jerry Brown is right and Gavin Newsom is wrong on this issue, Cox said Thursday. As usual, Gavin promises to continue to do what he's done for the last eight years, which is nothing. Gov. Brown's response and action has been appropriate, and I'd continue that. Those contrasting opinions are in line with how both candidates have run their campaigns, said Louis DeSipio, professor of political science and Chicano studies at UC Irvine. For Newsom supporters, this is the state of resistance, so you dont want to use a state resource to advance policies the state is opposing in other venues, like the courts and the Legislature, DeSipio said. John Cox has been careful in recognizing that he is running in California, DeSipio said. He cant go full Trump mode. Affiliating with Brown demonstrates his moderation in contemporary California politics. But, DeSipio said, all the fuss is probably unwarranted when it comes to a need to strengthen border security. By the time the caravan gets to the U.S.-Mexico border, most will have dispersed, he said. That has happened with previous caravans, including one in spring that ended up in San Diego. However, the current caravan is substantially larger than the one earlier this year. The group, which has shrunk to 4,000-5,000, remains weeks or months away from reaching the U.S. border. To those in the Caravan, turnaround, we are not letting people into the United States illegally, Trump tweeted Thursday. Go back to your Country and if you want, apply for citizenship like millions of others are doing! Brown first answered Trumps call in April to increase border security, agreeing to deploy 400 Guard troops until September, with specific limits on what they could do. He then extended their stay until March. Brown limited the troops to missions involving transnational criminal gangs, human trafficking, and smuggling of firearms and drugs along the border and across the state. He specifically barred the Guard from detaining immigrants entering the country illegally or helping enforce federal immigration law. Cox said Thursday that he agrees with the limits Brown put on the Guard, calling them appropriate. At the time of their deployment in April, Trump had asked states to send a total of 2,000 to 4,000 National Guard troops to the border to stop the springtime migrant caravan from entering the U.S. Melody Gutierrez is The San Francisco Chronicles Sacramento bureau chief. Email: mgutierrez@sfchronicle.com; Twitter: @MelodyGutierrez WASHINGTON The Trump administration failed to recognize that 14 children in its care for months had been separated from their families at the Mexican border, officials conceded in a court filing. The disclosure raises fresh questions about whether the administration neglected to account for additional children after separating them from their parents under its zero tolerance immigration policy this spring. Two recent government reports faulted the administrations tracking efforts, and one said officials feel no obligation to find children who were released to other homes before a judge ordered an accounting of them, suggesting the total separated under the policy may never be known. Seven of the 14 childrens parents have criminal histories that disqualify them from reunification, officials with the Health and Human Services Department told a federal judge in San Diego. The judge demanded in June that the administration account for every child separated under the enforcement strategy ordered by Attorney General Jeff Sessions. All of the newly discovered children are 5 years old or older. The 14 children were part of the more than 2,600 separated from adults at the border before President Trump halted the practice in June in the face of international outrage. But the revelation calls into question the administrations months of assurances to the judge, lawmakers and the public that it had accounted for every child. The separations have become a rallying cry for California politicians fighting Trumps agenda, including Sens. Dianne Feinstein and Kamala Harris. And the issue of what to do with families trying to cross the border is likely to flare up again as a caravan of several thousand Central Americans makes its way north through Mexico. The 14 additional children were discovered after a review in light of new information, which the agency holding the children said it does regularly, according to a status report that Justice Department officials filed late Thursday with U.S. District Judge Dana Sabraw in San Diego. The news comes after an inspector generals investigation found discrepancies last month in the governments data on separated children. That investigation found that, contrary to public pronouncements, the Department of Homeland Security did not have a central database of separated families. It also found differences between Homeland Security numbers for separated children and information that other agencies were using. Homeland Security has struggled to provide accurate, complete, reliable data on family separations and reunifications, raising concerns about the accuracy of its reporting, the Homeland Security inspector general wrote. The Government Accountability Office issued a report with similar findings Wednesday, saying the administration did not know how many children had passed through its system and felt no obligation to find out. Administration officials told us that they do not know how many such children separated from parents at the border were released to sponsors prior to the order and that the court order does not require the department to know this information, the report said. The administration has completed 2,104 reunifications and otherwise released or deemed ineligible for reunification another 563 children, according to Thursdays court filing. Two hundred sixty-four children remain in government custody, the status report said. Asked about the possibility that the administration may have lost track of additional children, Health and Human Services spokesman Mark Weber said the agency is taking appropriate action to ensure compliance with the courts orders, and safe and speedy reunification of separated children with class members. The lead attorney for the American Civil Liberties Union, which filed suit over family separations even before the zero tolerance policy took effect, said Friday that the administration has bungled its handling of detained children from the start. Given the lack of a plan or system to keep track of families, its no surprise the original numbers were inaccurate, said ACLU attorney Lee Gelernt. All 14 children cited in Thursdays court filing are still in the custody of Health and Human Services, the administration said. The court filing did not specify what will happen to them. However, for the hundreds of children not on track to be reunified, the only legal alternatives are a relative or close friend in the U.S. who can take them in, long-term foster care or detention until they turn 18. Judge Sabraw had ordered the government to reunify all eligible separated families by July 26. Reunification has taken longer for hundreds of families, however, because parents were deported or otherwise difficult to track down. The ACLU says 60 separated children ended up in California shelters. The states lawmakers have been outspoken against the separations. Feinstein called the practice a deeply immoral and haphazard policy that fundamentally betrays American values. Harris said the practice amounted to the United States government committing a human rights violation and called for Homeland Security Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen to resign. Tal Kopan is The San Francisco Chronicles Washington correspondent. Email: tal.kopan@sfchronicle.com WASHINGTON The Trump administration is considering an executive action that could use travel-ban-like authority to block certain asylum seekers at the Mexican border, sources familiar with the discussions said Thursday. The proposal is not yet final and could be cast aside, said the sources, who spoke on condition of anonymity because the plan is in the formative stages. If President Trump approved such a plan, it would represent a dramatic escalation in border enforcement as a migrant caravan works its way north through Mexico. The administration is working rapidly to draft the possible executive action, which could effectively use the same legal authority that Trump invoked last year in imposing a ban against people from several mainly Muslim countries on traveling to the U.S., said a government source who has seen a working version of the plan and several sources who had it described to them. The administration is considering a wide range of administrative, legal and legislative options to address the Democrat-created crisis of mass illegal immigration, a White House official said on condition of anonymity. No decisions have been made at this time. Nor will we forecast to smugglers or caravans what precise strategies will or will not be deployed. On Friday, Homeland Security Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen confirmed that the administration was considering new policies at the border, and didnt rule out using the authority to target asylum seekers. Everything is on the table, she said during a visit to the Imperial County town of Calexico on the Mexican border. She added that the administration is looking at every possible way within the legal construct we have to deny entry or deport quickly anyone who does not have a legal right to be in the U.S. Nielsen said the administration would be announcing additional measures in the days to come as the caravan makes its thousand-mile trek north. The plan under discussion would take two steps, according to sources. First, Homeland Security and the Justice Department would issue a rule limiting immigrants ability to seek asylum if they are part of a population barred by the president. The rule would take effect immediately, unlike most, and be justified as an extraordinary situation. That would clear the way for Trump to issue a proclamation directed at a specific population, expected to target the Central Americans in the caravan heading toward the U.S. None of the sources had seen a draft of the proclamation, which would ultimately dictate how sweeping or targeted the rule would be, though they had seen or heard about the draft of the initial rule. Trump would be acting under a provision in the Immigration and Nationality Act, which provided the authority for his travel ban order. It allows the president to ban certain classes of immigrants from entering the country if they are deemed detrimental to the interests of the United States. The Supreme Court upheld the third version of Trumps travel ban in June, after lower courts blocked the first two. The government official familiar with the working version of the plan expressed opposition to it and said it would probably face legal challenges. This is the administration grasping at straws, pushing something through that is legally suspect, the official said. Weve seen this before. Weve seen this drives chaos ... and they dont care. Advocacy groups, hearing of the potential move, were already signaling a legal showdown. Any attempt to block from the United States the vulnerable men, women and children who come here seeking safety is a shameful new low for this administration, Eleanor Acer, refugee protection program director at the immigrant rights group Human Rights First, said in a statement. This Latino ban is flagrantly unconstitutional and will not hold up in court. Tal Kopan is the San Francisco Chronicle Washington correspondent. Email: tal.kopan@sfchronicle.com Twitter @talkopan What we call California cuisine, the local ingredients and seasonal menus that focus on sustainability and relationships with farmers and producers that whole fig on a plate thing was created mostly by women working in the Bay Area in the late 1970s through the mid-1990s. There was Alice Waters at Chez Panisse, of course, and others, too, including Cindy Pawlcyn and Cecilia Chiang. Then came the dot-com boom in the early 2000s and the spotlight moved on, mainly, it seemed, to the men in the industry. Today, were in the midst of another Bay Area restaurant renaissance, and once again women lead the way. This time were seeing far more women of color, many of them immigrants, who cook the food of their mothers and grandmothers. Beyond the plate, they are taking a stand on issues of sexual harassment, social justice and immigrant rights. Meet the women who changed, and continue to change, the way we think about food. THEN George McCalman / Special to The Chronicle Barbara Tropp A scholar first (she earned degrees in Chinese studies at Barnard and Princeton), Barbara Tropp became obsessed with food during a two-year stay in Taiwan. After returning to the states, James Beard tapped her to write The Art of Chinese Cooking, and in 1986 Tropp transformed an old Post Street coffee shop into China Moon, one of the first restaurants to interpret Chinese food through a local lens. Tropp died of ovarian cancer in 2001. George McCalman / Special to The Chronicle Judy Rodgers There is simply no restaurant that better expresses the soul of this city than Judy Rodgers Zuni Cafe. Rodgers immersed herself in cooking when she moved to France as an exchange student at the age of 16 and lived with the family of Jean Troisgros, widely regarded as one of the worlds greatest chefs. In 1987, Rodgers took over the kitchen at Zuni, where she borrowed from France and Italy to develop a style that is pure San Francisco. Her 2002 cookbook remains one of the countrys most influential works of food writing. Rodgers died of cancer in 2013. George McCalman / Special to The Chronicle Patricia Unterman Back in 1979, before the shoe stores and the tasting menus moved into Hayes Valley, Patricia Unterman was there, serving sustainably harvested seafood at her Hayes Street Grill. An early advocate of know-where-it-comes-from cooking, Unterman is a journalist by training who also spent years as a restaurant critic for The Chronicle (and later the Examiner), wrote The Food Lovers Guide to San Francisco, and co-founded the Ferry Plaza Farmers Market with Sibella Kraus. George McCalman / Special to The Chronicle Deborah Madison No one has done more to elevate the reputation of vegetarian food in America than Deborah Madison. When she helped open Greens in 1979, it was one of the first high-end vegetarian restaurants in the country, and the bright, bold food she prepared was revolutionary in changing the way Americans look at vegetables. The restaurant, which is still operated by the San Francisco Zen Center, was one of the first to align a kitchen directly with a single grower, bringing in produce from the centers Green Gulch Farm. George McCalman / Special to The Chronicle Joyce Goldstein A veteran of the cafe at Chez Panisse, Joyce Goldstein operated her restaurant, Square One, from 1984 until 1996. The food from that restaurants open kitchen (a novelty at the time) was, for many San Franciscans, a first taste of food from places like Turkey, the Middle East and North Africa. Goldstein was the founder of the California Street Cooking School and taught kitchen design at the University of California. Shes written 28 books and continues to work as a consultant. Now George McCalman / Special to The Chronicle Nite Yun Born in a Thai refugee camp after her parents fled Cambodia and the Khmer Rouge, Nite Yun was studying to be a nurse when she decided that the Bay Area needed a better understanding of Cambodian food. After graduating from local food incubator La Cocina, she opened Nyum Bai in a tiny spot next to the Fruitvale BART Station. In less than a year, it was named one of the 10 Best Restaurants in America by Bon Appetit. George McCalman / Special to The Chronicle Dominica Rice-Cisneros Food Guide Top 25 Restaurants Where to eat in the Bay Area. Find spots near you, create a dining wishlist, and more. With a career that spans 30 years in the kitchen, Dominica Rice-Cisneros has a resume that includes Restaurant Daniel in New York City and Chez Panisse in Berkeley. These days she makes tacos at her Oakland restaurant, Cosecha, with the same quality ingredients and attention to detail that youll find in the Michelin-starred kitchens where she trained. A committed activist, Rice-Cisneros prioritizes family-friendly schedules for her staff and supports the more vulnerable members of her community. George McCalman / Special to The Chronicle Sarah Kirnon Miss Ollies, Sarah Kirnons restaurant in Oaklands Uptown neighborhood, is named for her grandmother, who was a cook at a plantation in Barbados, where Kirnon spent much of her childhood. Her menu offers a refined, refreshing version of Caribbean food thats not dumbed down for the locals; there arent a lot of other Bay Area restaurants where youll find phoularie with shado beni sauce or salt fish ackee. George McCalman / Special to The Chronicle Pim Techamuanvivit Tech worker, food blogger, jam-maker, Michelin-starred chef Bangkok-born Pim Techamuanvivit, the chef-owner of Kin Khao, took an unconventional path to become one of the Bay Areas most influential restaurateurs. She credits the women in her life, from her grandmother to her staff, for sharing their secrets. In addition to Kin Khao, she also heads the restaurant Nahm in Bangkok and has two new projects in the works one at SFO, and another at the Hotel Kabuki, which she plans to call Nari. The name means women in Thai. George McCalman / Special to The Chronicle Gabriela Camara One of Mexicos most celebrated chefs, Gabriela Camara opened Cala in San Francisco in 2015. Her Fell Street restaurant gained immediate attention, not just for her glorious seafood-centric menu, but also Camaras compassionate response to the industry-wide hiring crisis. The chef makes a point of hiring former inmates to staff her kitchen and dining room. Follow George McCalman on Instagram and Twitter at @mccalmanco An international team led by Chinese researchers analyzed the complete genomes of 32 representative tiger specimens and confirmed that tigers indeed fall into six genetically distinct groups. These six subspecies include the Bengal tiger, Amur tiger, South China tiger, Sumatran tiger, Indochinese tiger, and Malayan tiger, according to the study published on Thursday in the journal Current Biology. Fewer than 4,000 free-ranging tigers remain in the wild. Efforts to protect these remaining tigers have also been stymied by uncertainty about whether they represent six, five or only two subspecies. "This study is the first to reveal the tiger's natural history from a whole-genomic perspective. It provides robust, genome-wide evidence for the origin and evolution of this charismatic megafauna species," said the paper's senior author Luo Shujin with Peking University. Luo's team and colleagues from Russia and the United States realized that genome-wide screening was also the only way to look for signals that distinct groups of tigers have undergone natural selection to adapt to the environments of the distinct geographic regions they inhabit. Fossil evidence showed that tigers go back two to three million years, but the genomic evidence revealed that all living tigers only traced back to a time about 110,000 years ago, when tigers suffered a historic population bottleneck, according to the study. The genomic evidence also showed that there was very little gene flow among tiger populations. Despite the tiger's low genetic diversity, the pattern across groups is highly structured, offering evidence that these subspecies each have a unique evolutionary history. The researchers said that's quite unique among the big cats since several other species, such as the jaguar, have shown much more evidence of intermixing across whole continents. Tiger subspecies have distinct features, according to the study. For example, Amur tigers are large with pale orange fur, while Sumatran tigers in the Sunda Islands tend to be smaller with darker, thickly striped fur. "In the end, we were quite amazed that, by performing a stepwise genome-wide scan, seven regions including 14 genes stood out as the potential regions subject for selection," said Luo. The strongest signal of selection they found was in the Sumatran tiger, across a genomic region that contains the body-size-related ADH7 gene. The researchers suggested that the Sumatran tiger might have been selected for smaller size to reduce its energy demands, allowing it to survive on the island's smaller prey animals, such as wild pigs and muntjac, a small deer. "Tigers are not all alike," said Luo. "Tigers from Russia are evolutionarily distinct from those from India. Even tigers from Malaysia and Indonesia are different." However, the origin of the South China tiger remained unresolved since only one specimen from captivity was used in this study since this subspecies has gone extinct in the wild. The researchers plan to study old specimens with known origin from all over China to fill in the missing pieces of living tigers' evolutionary history. They're also retrieving genomic information from historical specimens, including those representing the extinct Caspian, Javan, and Bali tigers. The Chronicle has launched a new weekly Travel newsletter! Sign up here. While scaring guests half to death might seem like an iffy marketing proposition most of the year, October is the month when more than a few California properties and attractions go out of their way to play up the possibility of being face to, um, ghostly apparition. In Gold Country, for instance, advertising that the property is haunted is practically essential (there seem to be about 20 old hotels that all claim a girl in white, either because young girls had a high mortality rate in 19th century hotels, or because one ghostly teenager just really gets around). But its not enough to hit the local haunted house; you have to spend the night. What follows is our list of the creepiest places in the state to get under the covers if only to worry about whats under the bed that are known for ghost sightings, unexplained activities or a history of grisly death. Sweet dreams. 1. Hotel Majestic, San Francisco Because it survived the 1906 earthquake and fire, the Hotel Majestic is the oldest operating hotel in the city. Before it became lodging in 1904, however, it was the home of Milton Schmitt, a state senator whose granddaughter, Lisa, lived in what is now Room 407. Its not clear from the history why she stuck around, but according to the owners theres a long history of unexplained phenomena (mostly playful) and sightings on the fourth floor that are attributed to the girl. For a more reliable sighting, Lisas portrait still hangs in the lobby. 1500 Sutter St., San Francisco; 415-441-1100; www.thehotelmajestic.com Stephanie Wright Hession / Special to The Chronicle 2. Cary House Hotel, Placerville While historically the majority of visitors at this 19th century hotel tend to survive the stay (including Mark Twain, Ulysses S. Grant and Bette Davis), apparently a few guests and locals did not. According to the Mountain Democrat newspaper, there are said to be four human ghosts who are regulars at this Gold Rush-era hotel (the current structure is from 1856), as well as a ghostly cat nicknamed Slimmy that tends to slink around Room 220. 300 Main St., Placerville; 530-622-4271; www.caryhouse.com 3. Union Hotel, Benicia As quiet as bucolic Benicia is today, it was once a rough and rowdy port town where miners and locomotives were ferried across the Carquinez Strait, and the (then) Bella Union Hotel was at the center of it on Main Street. As with any California boomtown establishment with gambling, booze and women, there has been drama, according to the hotels site online. Most accounts by former employees include random noises and sightings of Victorian-era couples, a chef and at least one woman who, supposedly, either hanged herself or died when she was thrown down the stairs. 401 First St., Benicia; 707-746-0110; www.unionhotelbenicia.com Don Bartletti / TNS 4. RMS Queen Mary, Long Beach This storied 1,019-foot-long ocean liner sailed for 31 years, both as luxury transportation for North Atlantic crossings and as a troop carrier during World War II. During that time, according to operators of the now permanently docked hotel, it accumulated a number of spirits, including an engineer who died in the ships engine room, a lady in white, and various children throughout the ship including the first-class pool. With or without the ghosts, spending the night on the massive vessel is eerie, and visitors dont have to book a room to take one of the haunted history or paranormal tours offered each night. 1126 Queens Highway, Long Beach; 562-499-1739; www.queenmary.com 5. The Imperial, Amador City For the most part, this is a standard hotel and restaurant built in 1879, with most of the requisite stories of bizarre happenings and sightings objects disappearing, lights turning on and off. The highlights here, however, are a ghost cowboy who frequents the property, as well as a waitress who, according to HauntedPlaces.org, is said to take orders and then disappear much to the guests surprise. 4202 Old Highway 49, Amador City; 209-267-9172; www.imperialamador.com 6. Donner Memorial State Park, Truckee You cant actually camp there after September (sorry, no staying on Halloween), but theres little reason to doubt Donner Memorial State Park is one of the more haunted spots in the state. Over the years, there have been reports of campers feeling the presence of a few of the 41 pioneers who died after becoming stranded (and eventually turning to cannibalism) while trying to cross the Sierra in November 1846. Supposedly, George and Tamsen Donner are still hanging around their original tent site. www.parks.ca.gov/?page_id=503 California ranks dead last in America for its spending on students versus spending on prisoners, according to a recently released report. Overall, California spends the most money on its public schools, but as America's most populous state, those expenditures only come out to $11,495 per student putting it 22nd place for per-pupil spending by state. It also spends the most of any state on its prison system $8.6 billion each year which boils down to an average cost of $64,642 per inmate. The difference of $53,147 was the largest of any state, according to the report. New York, which has the highest per-pupil spending but the highest cost of housing inmates, had the second-largest gap between inmate and student spending with $46,988. Connecticut came in third. ALSO READ: California agrees to pause net neutrality rules amid messy legal battle The report, released October 25, notes one factor in the spending gap between education and incarceration is that it takes more workers to run a prison than a school. More specifically, each American teacher supervises an average of 20.8 students, while prison guards oversee an average of 5.3 prisoners. In addition, it costs more to house and feed prisoners three times a day, compared to school children who do not require the same around-the-clock oversight. The study was conducted by GoBankingRates, a personal finance and consumer banking website that has been featured on U.S. News, Business Insider and MSN Money. In terms of methodology, GOBankingRates determined how much each state spends on education and prisons by calculating per-pupil spending and per-inmate spending, respectively. The difference in education and prison spending was used for the final ranking of states that spend more on inmates than students. Data was sourced from the U.S. Census Bureau and Vera Institute of Justice. The morning after Halloween is always ugly in my household. The kids are zombies after staying up too late jacked up on candy, and the kitchen is a disaster zone with craft supplies, scattered candy wrappers and empty pizza boxes from the pre-trick-or-treating dinner. The morning mayhem is compounded when the holiday falls on a school night and getting the kids their faces smeared with remnants of vampire paint to school on time is on par with convincing a child that last year's Elsa costume simply doesn't fit. It's always best when Halloween falls on Saturday night and Sunday becomes a day of cleanup and sugar detox. So would it make sense to permanently move the holiday to a weekend spot and drop its association with October 31? The Halloween & Costume Association, a non-profit industry group representing Halloween costume companies, has posted a petition on Change.org asking President Donald Trump to do just that. The group proposes moving the holiday to the last Saturday in October, and nearly 10,000 people have signed the petition. ALSO: Best places to trick-or-treat on Halloween with kids in San Francisco Bay Area The organization's reasons for the change are oddly varied. They cite safety, pointing out that if the holiday falls on a weekend, kids and families could trick-or-treat when it's still light out. The petition claims "3,800 Halloween-related injuries occur each year" and "63 percent of children don't carry a flashlight while they are tick-or-treating." The HCA also suggests buying glow sticks and light up accessories to make kids more visible, which makes you wonder if this petition is more about getting their organization some attention and encouraging more parents to buy products from their members. Other reasons? Many parents work and it's easier to pack in more family time when a holidays falls on a weekend rather than a weekday. And the HCA adds, "Millennials say Halloween is their favorite holiday, why cram it into two rushed evening weekday hours when it deserves a full day." While the petition has little chance of getting the president's attention, it has parents talking. Safety is certainly of concern and I can see how toddlers and preschoolers might benefit from daylight trick-or-treating. But let's face it for older kids, taking the spooky nighttime darkness out of Halloween is like taking the sugar out of candy. My vote to move the holiday is all about the benefits of sleeping in the next day and sending the kids off to school Monday, well-rested, with their teeth and faces clean, and their homework done. What do you think? Should Halloween be moved to the last Saturday in October? Enhancing military and security confidence-building measures (CBMs) plays a key role in maintaining regional security and development and safeguarding peace and stability, according to Admiral (Rtd.) Jayanath Colombage, former chief of the Sri Lankan Navy. Now a strategist, he made the remark in Beijing on Oct. 25 in a brief interview while attending the 8th Beijing Xiangshan Forum, an important forum for security issues and defense affairs. "It's necessary for countries that are very concerned about the security in this region to pay attention to CBMs," he said, adding that the forum was "a good opportunity for people from around the region to explain their concerns and to come up with new advices about how to strengthen security in the region." The retired admiral pointed to misunderstandings that existed in the Asian region that were compromising the common interests and future development of the countries involved. However, with the help of CBMs, he hoped the whole region could enjoy huge prospects to work together to clear up mistrust so that we can have a win-win situation. CBMs are actions designed to reduce the fear of attack between two or more parties in a situation of tension with or without physical conflict, and those being developed among countries in the Asia-Pacific region committed to the U.N. Charter, were aimed at achieving peace and security through dialogue and cooperation so that all states could co-exist and their peoples live in peace, freedom and prosperity, he said. "We should think of the whole region as a community with shared interests as Chinese President Xi Jinping has said. China, as it develops its economy, recognizes that regional stability is essential to accomplishment of this goal." He also mentioned that the Belt and Road Initiative played an important role in connecting the countries along the routes through trade, infrastructures building and economy, which would lead to their dependence on each other and a close security partnership in the future. NEW YORK President Trump on Thursday blamed the news media for the division and anger in the United States, as authorities discovered more pipe bombs intended for the presidents political rivals. Trump had called the night before for national unity in response to pipe bombs directed at some of his favorite targets, but soon after said the Mainstream Media, which he called Fake News, was at fault for the anger because of its false and inaccurate reporting. He wrote: A very big part of the Anger we see today in our society is caused by the purposely false and inaccurate reporting of the Mainstream Media that I refer to as Fake News. It has gotten so bad and hateful that it is beyond description. Mainstream Media must clean up its act, FAST! In his tweet on Thursday, Trump did not mention that CNN, the news network that he has long assailed and called fake news, was among the targets of a pipe bomb, along with former President Barack Obama, former Vice President Joe Biden and actor Robert De Niro. Three more devices were found in Delaware and New York, the FBI said Thursday. Two were addressed to Biden, a Delaware resident, and a third to De Niro, who lives and works in Lower Manhattan. Trumps posture as a leader working to bring the country together saying on Wednesday that any attempted terrorist act against any American is an attack on every American was brief. Sen. Chris Murphy, D-Conn., pointed to the presidents tweet on Thursday morning as motivation for Democrats to vote in the coming midterm elections. The President of the United States is now blaming the attempted murder of Democrats on press criticism of him, Murphy wrote in a tweet. I didnt think his narcissism could sink to this ugly of a place. But it has. And now we need to vote. The White House press secretary, Sarah Huckabee Sanders, defended her boss on Thursday in remarks to Fox News. The president, I think, could not have been more presidential yesterday when he spoke, she said. Meanwhile, federal authorities have turned their attention toward southern Florida, believing that a number of the explosive devices were mailed from the area, two people briefed on the matter said Thursday. All of the 10 packages that have been discovered since Monday bore return addresses from Debbie Wasserman Schultz, a Democratic congresswoman from Florida. Federal, state and local investigators in New York, Washington, Florida and Los Angeles have all joined forces in the rapidly widening case, which has not yet resulted in any injuries but has sent a shock through the nations political and news media establishments. One central question in the inquiry is whether the bombs were the work of one person or multiple people. Though investigators initially believed that some of the packages were delivered by hand or by courier, they have now concluded that all 10 were likely sent through the mail, a person briefed on the matter said. Investigators are now focusing on Florida because an analysis of information collected by the U.S. Postal Service indicated that many of the packages were mailed from the state. Eileen Sullivan, Katie Rogers, William K. Rashbaum, Alan Feuer and Adam Goldman are New York Times writers. Building a new type of security partnership of equality, mutual trust and win-win cooperation, as well as fighting against terrorism, topped the agenda at this year's Beijing Xiangshan Forum from Oct. 24-26. Speaking at the opening ceremony, Zhang Hanhui, China's assistant minister of foreign affairs, said that, over the past four decades, China had made remarkable achievements through opening-up and reform, and had always been committed "to the path of win-win cooperation" with the rest of the world. "We have contributed more than 70 percent of the work on alleviating global poverty, and provided about 160 countries and international organizations with almost 400 billion yuan (US$57.6 billion) in aid. The Belt and Road Initiative has created more than 250,000 jobs for the countries along the routes," he stressed. These efforts had helped develop the global economy, as well as maintaining world peace, meeting the common expectation of people from all countries. Therefore, China advocated dialogue and consultation on an equal footing to properly address international issues, based on the rules and consensus. "We hope this forum could provide a platform to discuss new ideas and approaches for international security governance that is based on win-win cooperation, instead of the unilateralism upheld by some countries, which disregards the interests of other countries and peoples," Zhang declared. Ng Eng Hen, Singapore's minister of defense, said in his keynote speech that to enhance the security partnership, military and defense leadership interactions were needed to build trust and confidence among different countries, leading to "a more significant institutional balance." Ng went on: "China needs the world as much as the world needs China. As a rising power, China's development will benefit the region and the world, [while] it is stepping up efforts in maintaining the world security partnership." During the forum, various other officials and scholars stressed the importance of enhancing the security partnership in fighting terrorist threats. There was agreement that the 9/11 terrorist attack in the United States had marked a new phase in growing international terrorism. Alexander Fomin, deputy minister of defense of Russia, shared his opinions on the trend of global terrorism. "Many terrorist groups are attempting to acquire chemical, biological and radiological weapons with grave effect on humanity, mostly now operating as non-state actors, increasingly taking advantages of porous borders and interconnected international systems of finance, communication and technology." This reinforced the necessity of collective efforts to combat the trend. He spoke highly of the efforts the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) had made in combating terrorism. "Within the framework of the SCO, intelligence cooperation is going well, which sets a good example for different countries to achieve a high degree of political mutual trust," he said. Ryamizard Ryacude, minister of defense of Indonesia, agreed that successful collaboration against terrorism called for "adherence to international norms and practices, engaging members as equals, and taking into account varied national interests." Santa Clara County sheriff's deputies made a fifth arrest Thursday for a homicide in unincorporated Soquel after announcing they were searching for the suspect earlier this week. Jose Leonardo Alfaro Juarez, 20, was arrested in connection with 41-year-old Bernardo Rodas' murder on Oct. 13. Rodas was found off of North Rodeo Gulch Road after being reported missing three days earlier. Milton Arias Molina, 22, of San Jose, a 17-year-old from Capitola and a 15-year-old from Santa Cruz were arrested on Oct. 16, and a 17-year-old from Santa Cruz was arrested on Oct. 19. Deputies said some of the suspects have connections with gangs but Rodas was not believed to be gang-affiliated. Sheriff's officials said the motive for the murder is unclear and the suspects have given conflicting accounts of what happened. Anyone with information about the case is asked to contact Sgt. Dee Baldwin at (831) 454-7635 or at dee.baldwin@santacruzcounty.us. 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 racial justice advocacy group announced this week that it is making available $265,000 in grants to support six racial justice organizations to mobilize voters to get to the polls in Alameda County. Akonadi Foundation President Lateefah Simon, who also serves on the BART board of directors, said in a statement, "Progressive philanthropy must play a key role in supporting electoral activism in communities of color this November and beyond." Simon said, "Our Movement Action Fund grantees are galvanizing the new majority across Alameda County to vote and hold elected officials accountable during this critical time in our democracy." The Akonadi Foundation, which is based in Oakland and was founded in 2000, said the six organizations receiving the grants have been working to mobilize voters for years and this year are aiming to reach 75,000 people of color and young people in districts with historically low turnouts, including districts in East and West Oakland. The foundation has awarded a total of $530,000 in grants through the Movement Action Fund this year. The new grants will support Oakland Rising, the Urban Peace Movement, the Fam1st Family Foundation, the Alliance of Californians for Community Empowerment Action, Filipino Advocates for Justice, and Faith in Action. Carroll Fife, director of the Alliance of Californians for Community Empowerment, or ACCE, said, "Our communities of color are under attack in every election." Fife said, "ACCE leaders believe that when we are engaged and organized, not only can we defeat their attacks but we can advance strong policies that materially benefit our communities." The Akonadi Foundation said mobilizing voters is important because mid-term elections historically have lower turnout than presidential elections and voter participation in communities of color is typically lower than in white communities. The Akonadi Foundation says its mission is to support the development of powerful social change movements to eliminate structural racism and create a racially just society. The foundation has given more than 1,600 grants totaling $35 million to nonprofit organizations across the country, but primarily in the Bay Area. 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. MENLO PARK (BCN) The Council on American-Islamic Relations has filed a complaint against Samsung on behalf of a Muslim man who alleges religious discrimination during a job interview at the company in 2017, CAIR said today. The man interviewed at the company in Menlo Park in October of last year and was allegedly asked inappropriate questions regarding his religion before being denied the job, according to CAIR's complaint to the state Department of Fair Employment & Housing. One interviewer allegedly described several activities that involved drinking alcohol and going out to drink, and said the man couldn't participate in company culture because Muslims don't drink. "The other director and I often go out to drink with the team until 2 a.m. and then pass out in the office and then get up at 7 and work again, and it's important to the team, so you might be a bad fit because we get 'silly' when we drink and you do not drink," the interviewer allegedly told the man, according to CAIR. The interviewee said he didn't mind their drinking when asked if it would be an issue, according to CAIR, but was told the next day he didn't receive the job. He was also asked about his national origin, according to CAIR, which claims Samsung denied him a job opportunity through discrimination of his "actual and perceived" religious beliefs. Samsung said it has not yet received a formal complaint or letter about the allegations and does not comment on pending litigation. "Samsung is committed to a diverse workplace that respects the rights of all individuals and we promote a professional and inclusive culture," the company added in a statement. 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. Federal and local authorities were investigating reports of suspicious packages in Burlingame and Sacramento this morning. Both packages were allegedly addressed to Democrats who have been outspoken about their opposition to U.S. President Donald Trump. The FBI put out a statement on Twitter at 11:23 a.m. PST on Friday stating that "explosives technicians are on scene" at a U.S. Postal Service location in on Rollins Road in Burlingame. The FBI said they received reports of a "suspicious package" but that there was no immediate threat to public safety. A spokesman for California billionaire and environmental activist Tom Steyer confirmed that the package was addressed to Steyer and intercepted at a mail facility in Burlingame. Steyer has been a vocal critic of President Trump and has spearheaded a campaign to impeach him. The second package was addressed to U.S. Senator Kamala Harris (D-California) and discovered at a mail facility located in Sacramento, the Sacramento Bee reported. Sacramento Sheriff's spokesman Sgt. Shaun Hampton told the Sacramento Bee that the sheriff's department is investigating reports of a suspicious package in South Sacramento that resembles the packages that were reported around the country this week. The suspicious packages come the same week that a dozen other suspicious packages containing explosives targeting outspoken Trump opponents, were discovered. Among those who the packages were addressed to were CNN, former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and former U.S. President Barack Obama, U.S. Senator Cory Booker (D-New Jersey), and actor Robert De Niro among others. On Friday, the FBI announced that they have arrested Cesar Sayoc in connection with their investigation into the suspicious packages. A 49-year-old bicyclist from Morgan Hill was fatally struck by a commuter bus Thursday evening in Santa Clara, according to police. The collision occurred around 5:20 p.m. in the vicinity of Bunker Hill Lane and Great America Parkway. Investigators said the victim was in the bike lane when the bus turned south from Bunker Hill Lane to Great America Parkway and hit him. The man died at the scene. His name is not yet being released, according to police. Anyone with additional information is asked to call traffic investigators Nick Cusimano at (408) 615-4764. Police in Petaluma are investigating an assault incident that occurred on Wednesday and left the victim missing a portion of his ear. Officers with the Petaluma Police Department responded Wednesday at 10:32 p.m. to the area of 4th and C streets on a report of an assault victim who was bleeding heavily from his ear. The victim reported a man had punched him in the face and had bitten off part of his ear. Police said the victim was acutely intoxicated at the time of the report and was not able to provide a significant description of the incident or the suspect. A 33-year-old man and a 29-year-old woman who both were on probation for previous theft convictions have been arrested for possessing an electronic device that was used to unlock vehicle doors and other charges, Fremont police said. Daniel Sanchez and Brittany Tollner were arrested after detectives conducted a probation search at a residence in the 3800 of Artist Walk Common in Fremont's Centerville area on Oct. 18 to follow up on a recent series of auto burglaries that had occurred in the city, according to police. In several of those burglaries there wasn't any forced entry into the victims' vehicles, police said. The items that were stolen included small electronics, backpacks and personal identifying information, police said. Detectives were specifically looking to conduct a probation search on Sanchez, who was on probation multiple times for theft-related crimes, police said. When detectives knocked on the door and made announcements to enter the residence there was no answer and they found that the door was barricaded with large items, including a tire, according to police. A short time later, detectives detained Tollner as she attempted to flee the residence through the back patio, police said. When detectives finally were able to enter the residence they were able to find and detain Sanchez without incident, according to police. Inside the residence, detectives found large amounts of stolen mail, personal identifying documents, a methamphetamine smoking pipe, fake currency, burglary tools and other items consistent with identity theft, police said. In addition, an electronic remote control device was found and detectives learned that it has the ability to detect a key fob's unique code, copy the code and re-transmit it to another device. Police said the device is believed to have been used in several of the auto burglary cases where there was no forced entry. They said stolen mail and several of the documents were later confirmed to have been taken during the recent spree of auto burglaries that detectives were investigating. Sanchez and Toller were both booked into jail for possession of personal identifying information for more than 10 people, possession of burglary tools, possession of fraudulent currency, possession of stolen property, possession of drug paraphernalia, resisting or delaying a police officer and probation violations. Fremont police said crimes involving new technology are on the rise and they strongly encourage community members not to leave any items in their cars. Police in Oakland have arrested three juvenile suspects in connection with an armed robbery that occurred earlier this month. The suspects arrested included a 17-year-old male from San Leandro, a 16-year-old male from Oakland and a 15-year-old male Hayward, according to the Oakland Police Department. The suspects were arrested on suspicion of crimes related to armed robbery and possession of firearms. On Oct. 10 at 8:40 p.m., officers responded to the 6800 block of Lion Way on a report of an armed robbery involving three suspects. Responding officers were able to identify the suspects and later arrest them at two separate locations. The first location was at a residence in the 600 block of 14th Street in Oakland, and the second location was a motel in Hayward. Three additional people were also arrested at the locations, but the details of those arrests were not immediately available. Police recovered three handguns, a rifle, a replica handgun and property from the robbery during the investigation. Police in Union City are looking for the public's help in identifying a suspect involved in a shooting incident earlier this month. On Oct. 7 around 11 p.m., a fight broke out at the In-N-Out Burger at the Union Landing Shopping Center, and during the fight, someone pulled out a gun and fired three or four shots in the air, according to the Union City Police Department. There were no reported injuries. Police are asking anyone with information about the shooting to call the Union City Police Tip Line at (510) 675-5207 or email tips@unioncity.org 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 Council on American-Islamic Relations has filed a complaint against Samsung on behalf of a Muslim man who alleges religious discrimination during a job interview at the company in 2017, CAIR said. CAIR announced the complaint Thursday. The man interviewed at the company in Menlo Park in October of last year and was allegedly asked inappropriate questions regarding his religion before being denied the job, according to CAIR's complaint to the state Department of Fair Employment & Housing. One interviewer allegedly described several activities that involved drinking alcohol and going out to drink, and said the man couldn't participate in company culture because Muslims don't drink. One person died and five more were injured in a vehicle collision possibly involving alcohol in Walnut Creek, police said. The collision occurred Thursday evening. Dispatchers started receiving 911 calls at 6:32 p.m. about a rollover collision on the South Broadway extension. Police said the collision involved four vehicles and injuries ranged from minor to life-threatening. Officers are still investigating and the road will be closed until possibly early this morning. San Jose has teamed up with the Downtown Streets Team and Goodwill to offer homeless people jobs cleaning up trash and debris at "hotspots" near freeways in the city. The city will be funding the jobs with a $200,000 grant, Mayor Sam Liccardo announced at a news conference Friday. The minimum-wage jobs will begin at $15 an hour and about two-dozen people will be selected for the first cohort in November. Approximately 40 garbage hotspots are mapped out near U.S. Highway 101 and Interstate Highways 880 and 680, in addition to major thoroughfares like Capitol Expressway and Story, Tully and Senter Roads. Liccardo said homeless encampments are too often blamed for garbage problems and debris buildup, even though trash comes from a variety of sources. Police said a victim of domestic violence shot and killed the suspect during a police pursuit in Fairfield. The pursuit and shooting occurred Thursday afternoon. At 2:34 p.m., an officer tried to stop a vehicle for a violation but the driver kept going with police pursuing until the vehicle crashed into some other vehicles at Dover Avenue and East Travis Boulevard. Police said the driver had been shot and has died. The driver, 22, and the 24-year-old victim, who was a passenger in the vehicle, are believed to have been in a relationship and lived together in Fairfield. Also in the vehicle was a 10-month-old child who was not injured, police said. Apparently, the victim shot the suspect after the victim called out to police for help. Officers found a gun in the vehicle. Supporters of San Francisco's Proposition C rallied outside of tech giant Twitter's headquarters less than a week after the company's CEO, Jack Dorsey, blasted the measure on the social site. The supporters rallied on Thursday. Carrying signs in support of Prop. C, Our City, Our Home, about 50 protesters stood outside 155 Market St., chanting "support Prop. C for people like me." "Tech is pushing people away and minimizing the voices of the city's most marginalized people and I'm here as a person working in tech to say that it's unacceptable," Sam Heft-Luthy, a 24-year-old product manager for a tech company, said. "When a company opposes a measure like Prop. C ... they don't speak for all tech workers. They don't speak for their employees when they do so, they speak for themselves as the billionaire class." According to Tracey Mixon, 47, a San Francisco native who said she's currently living in a family shelter with her daughter, Prop C. would help place people like her into permanent housing faster. 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) Supporters of San Francisco's Proposition C rallied today outside of tech giant Twitter's headquarters less than a week after the company's CEO, Jack Dorsey, blasted the measure on the social site. Carrying signs in support of Prop. C, Our City, Our Home, about 50 protesters stood outside 155 Market St., chanting "support Prop. C for people like me." "Tech is pushing people away and minimizing the voices of the city's most marginalized people and I'm here as a person working in tech to say that it's unacceptable," Sam Heft-Luthy, a 24-year-old product manager for a tech company, said. "When a company opposes a measure like Prop. C ... they don't speak for all tech workers. They don't speak for their employees when they do so, they speak for themselves as the billionaire class." According to Tracey Mixon, 47, a San Francisco native who said she's currently living in a family shelter with her daughter, Prop C. would help place people like her into permanent housing faster. "It's hard for me having an 8-year-old daughter and knowing that we're going through this, but there's no shame in it. It's not the ideal situation, but it beats being out here," she said. "What we need is affordable housing. We need more resources because it's obvious that the money that they have been spending has not worked. This holds someone accountable." The rally was organized by the Democratic Socialists of America San Francisco. Prop. C would tax companies in the city that gross more than $50 million, with half of the tax going toward housing and a fourth going toward mental health and substance abuse services. In tweets that no longer appear on Dorsey's Twitter profile, he reportedly wrote on Oct. 19, "We're happy to pay our taxes. We just want to be treated fairly with respect to our peer companies, many of whom are 2-10x larger than us. Otherwise, we don't know how to practically grow in the city. That's heartbreaking for us as we love SF and want to continue to help build it." Dorsey also said his other smaller companies, Square and Stripe, "would be taxed at a significantly larger total contribution than much larger companies like Salesforce." Salesforce CEO Marc Benioff earlier this month came out in support of the proposition, committing $1 million to the campaign. Earlier this month, Mayor London Breed announced her opposition to the ballot initiative, citing that it lacks fiscal oversight for the $250 to $300 million it seeks annually from businesses. State Sen. Scott Wiener, D-San Francisco, and Assemblymember David Chiu, D-San Francisco, have both also announced their opposition. Several other elected officials, however, have come out in support of the proposition, including U.S. House Minority leader Nancy Pelosi, Rep. Jackie Speier, D-San Mateo, Assemblymember Phil Ting, D-San Francisco, Public Defender Jeff Adachi and Supervisors Vallie Brown, Hillary Ronen, Aaron Peskin, Norman Yee, Rafael Mandelman, Sandra Lee Fewer and Jane Kim. 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. A Salinas man was sentenced Wednesday to 48 years in prison for sexually assaulting his stepdaughters when they were children, the Monterey County District Attorney's Office said. Joel Rodriguez, 40, will be registered as a lifetime sex offender and prohibited from contacting the victims. Prosecutors said the two child victims, now 19 and 22, were present at the hearing with their 21-year-old sister and thanked prosecutors for their support. Rodriguez was found guilty of substantial sexual contact with the women while they were seven and ten years old, as well as attempting to touch the 21-year-old woman three years ago when she was sleeping. The sisters said they reported the crime to move on with their lives and because it was the right thing to do, rather than to ruin their stepfather's life, according to prosecutors. Judge Julie Culver thanked the women for their bravery and told them they will have successful lives because of their supportive family, which included their maternal uncle who accompanied them to court. Prosecutors said the victims also received support from the district attorney's support canine, Odie, throughout the case. 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. BERKELEY (BCN) A person was robbed at gunpoint Wednesday morning in Berkeley, police said today. The victim was located at 9 a.m. on Shattuck Avenue and told officers that the suspect pointed a black handgun at him and took money from his pocket. Police said the victim also told them that the suspect shot the gun into the air while running away. Police said the victim was not injured and was not a University of California at Berkeley student. Anyone with information about the robbery is asked to call Berkeley police at (510) 981-5900. 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. When NAFTA members concluded the NAFTA 2.0 deal, which is now named the United States-Mexico-Canada Agreement (USMCA), among the most unexpected and striking clauses was the "non-market" clause. This was especially the case with Article 32.10, which was demanded by the United States. In reality, there are two clauses regarding the non-market economy: One is Article 32.10, the other is Article 1 of Annex 14-D. What is in Article 1 of Annex 14-D? This article defines the terms of the investment disputes between Mexico and the United States. It states, "Claimant means an investor of an Annex Party, excluding an investor that is owned or controlled by a person of a non-Annex Party that the other Annex Party considers to be a non-market economy, that is a party to a qualifying investment dispute." This means that an investor controlled or owned by persons from a market non-Annex Party is qualified as the claimant of the disputes, but it is not the case if it is controlled or owned by persons of a non-market non-Annex Party. What is in Article 32.10? This article severely limits the ability of USMCA members to enter into a free trade agreement with a non-market economy. The non-market economy is defined as "a country that on the date of signature of this agreement at least one Party has determined to be a non-market economy for purposes of its trade remedy laws and is a country with which no Party has a free trade agreement." By this article, to commence the negotiation of a free trade agreement (FTA) with a non-market economy, the member has to notify the other members at least 3 months before the negotiation, and provide requested information. In addition, no later than 30 days before the signing of the new agreement, the contracting Party shall provide the other Parties with its full text of the agreement and annexes for review. What is more, such an FTA with a non-market economy allows the other two Parties to terminate or update the USMCA. What does it mean for the China-Canada economic relations? Obviously, these articles were added and demanded by the United States and directed exclusively at China, which has already been labeled a non-market economy by the U.S. Department of Commerce in October 2017 and has no FTA with any of the USMCA members. Though it's not unusual for trade agreements to limit the sovereignty of the signatory nations slightly, Article 32.10 seems to take the step too far. Canada has shown great interest in free trade talks with China in recent years. However, Article 32.10 would make it much more challenging for Canada to do so. Is there a way out of this for China and Canada? The solution would be to negotiate a sectoral trade agreement rather than draw up a comprehensive free trade agreement between both parties. In reality, Canada and China complement each other in many sectors. For instance, China is interested in safely-sourced food and protein from natural resources from a wider variety of trading partners and this has been something Canada has always excelled in. FTA as defined by WTO is one that must cover substantially all trade and should also help trade flow more freely among the countries in the FTA without raising trade barriers with the outside world. Therefore, a free trade agreement in agriculture or clean energy would not be in opposition to Article 32.10. Moreover, while an agreement to cut tariffs between China and Canada would be blocked by the other parties, talks on non-tariff issues such as burdensome regulations, which are increasingly more of an issue to business people than the tariff itself, would escape Article 32.10. It will almost certainly not be the last trade agreement the U.S. requires such a clause to apply to its partners. As the U.S. starts trade talks with the EU and Japan, China has to find ways to deal with and avoid the clause with its trading partners. He Shuquan is a professor with the School of Economics of Shanghai University. Opinion articles reflect the views of their authors, not necessarily those of China.org.cn. Flash Nigerian President Muhammadu Buhari on Thursday commissioned the newly-built international terminal at the Port Harcourt International Airport, a China-assisted project to boost the country's economic prosperity. Construction of the new US$600 million airport terminal in Port Harcourt, the country's oil hub and capital of the southern state of Rivers, is expected to open more convenient air routes as well as contribute immensely to the economic and infrastructure development of Nigeria. Speaking at the well-attended commissioning of the new terminal, Buhari described the world-class facility as "a significant landmark" for international travelers in the most populous country in Africa. He also said the construction came at the right time for Nigeria. "The Federal Government responded to a global trend in which aviation became a catalyst for economic growth as a result of massive and speedy movement of persons, goods, and services in a safe and secure manner." The structure of the two-story terminal building includes the apron, a cargo terminal building, external works, and other ancillary works. Many local people trooped out to witness the commissioning and behold the beauty of the new terminal and the hi-tech facilities therein. The international airport terminal project was executed by the China Civil Engineering Construction Corporation (CCECC) which is involved in many ongoing infrastructural projects, including rail and road construction in Nigeria. The project was done in partnership with the Chinese government, involving a loan of 500 million U.S. dollars from the Export and Import Bank of China and 100-million-dollar counterpart funding from the Nigerian government. Michael Jiang, a managing director of CCECC in Nigeria, told Xinhua the new airport terminal would help Nigeria achieve the major objective of connecting people through air routes, land, sea routes and promoting economic prosperity across all borders and regions of the world. Nigeria's Minister of Aviation Hadi Sirika said that with the new facility set for use, Nigeria has achieved a milestone in the implementation of its aviation roadmap. The new airport terminal has the capacity to handle seven million passengers annually, according to Sirika. iStock/Thinkstock(NEW YORK) -- If you are a woman who feels like your male coworkers are getting raises more often than you do, you are not alone. The problem is not because women do not ask for raises as often as men they do but that they do not get raises as often, according to research published this year in Industrial Relations: A Journal of Economy and Society. Women who asked for a raise got one 15 percent of the time, while men who asked got a raise 20 percent of the time, the study found. As the researchers point out, that difference adds up over a lifetime. Women also go in asking for raises already behind men in pay. The gender pay gap in which a woman earns 80 cents for every dollar earned by a man remains a "stagnant" obstacle for women, data also shows. There are steps women can take to distinguish themselves in negotiations and help erase the raise gap. "One of the biggest things that stands in the way of young woman or an established woman is they wait to ask for the credit long after it's due," said "Shark Tank" judge, real estate entrepreneur and investor Barbara Corcoran. "You should be asking for the raise or the promotion before it's due." Here are six more tips for women from Corcoran and Rebecca Jarvis, ABC News' chief business, technology and economy correspondent. 1. Make your wins clear: Jarvis recommends using language with your boss like, "Im so happy you trust me with this responsibility." 2. Use meetings with your boss as performance reminders: "Make lists [of your accomplishments] and constantly use those lists as reminders inside of the meeting," advises Jarvis. 3. Set a timeline: "Set an outline, a timeline of when that raise or promotion will come in the future," recommends Jarvis. 4. Ask for frequent feedback: "You're not asking for a raise but you're reminding them what you're doing and you are making them accountable to acknowledge what you're doing," says Corcoran. 5. Avoid comparing yourself to coworkers: "This is a mistake people often make, they think too much in terms of what other people are doing. The only way you want to do that is if youre going above and beyond in any way," notes Jarvis. 6. Use an outside offer as leverage: "Make it known that this [raise or promotion] is important to you," advises Jarvis. Copyright 2018, ABC Radio. All rights reserved. Flash Chinese Vice President Wang Qishan wrapped up a fruitful visit to Israel on Thursday with a reaffirmed commitment from both sides to further boosting bilateral innovation cooperation for mutual benefits. During his four-day stay, Wang met with Israeli President Reuven Rivlin and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, and co-chaired with the latter the fourth meeting of China-Israel Joint Committee on Innovation Cooperation (JCIC). In his meeting with Netanyahu, Wang recalled that Israel was the first country in the Middle East to recognize the People's Republic of China, and the bilateral ties have enjoyed steady and healthy development since the two countries established diplomatic relations. The China-Israel innovative comprehensive partnership, set up during Netanyahu's visit to China in 2017, accurately reflects the prominent feature and future direction of bilateral cooperation in the new era, Wang said. China and Israel, he suggested, should implement the important consensus reached by their leaders, and make good use of the JCIC mechanism, so as to push forward bilateral innovation cooperation to achieve more win-win results. As a friend of both Israel and Palestine, China hopes for the two sides to coexist peacefully, and stands ready to play a constructive role in achieving peace between the two neighbors and maintaining stability in the region, Wang added. Netanyahu agreed with Wang's comments and proposals on the bilateral ties, saying that the two nations both boast long history and splendid culture, and they have always admired and respected each other. Over recent years, two-way trips between the two countries have been increasing, practical cooperation growing steadily, and bilateral relations advancing continuously, said the prime minister. Israel, he said, is willing to actively participate in the Belt and Road Initiative, and enhance the synergy between its strength in science and technology and China's advantages in market and production capacity, so as to translate their partnership into more benefits for both nations and the world. Israel welcomes Chinese companies in its infrastructure construction and hopes to further boost trade and investment cooperation with China, added Netanyahu. He also said that Israel is willing to work with the Palestinian side to achieve peace in the region, and values China's positive role in the Middle East peace process. When meeting with Rivlin, Wang said Israel's development in the past 70 years has shown that the core of modernization is the modernization of humanity. China, he said, has listed innovation as the first of its five major development concepts, and is speeding up its transformation into an innovative nation. Noting that the two countries have a strong will and robust foundation for innovation cooperation, which has been remarkably productive, Wang said China stands ready to join hands with Israel to further deepen their innovative comprehensive partnership. For his part, Rivlin said the Israeli people will never forget the helping hand the Chinese people extended during World War II, and is greatly impressed by China's tremendous development achievements. With the two countries having established an innovative comprehensive partnership, Israel is willing to build on the momentum and enhance bilateral exchanges and cooperation in such fields as science and technology, agriculture, education, health care and culture, the Israeli president added. At the JCIC meeting, Wang said the China-Israel innovation cooperation features similar concepts, complementary advantages, enormous potential and broad prospects, and has over recent years borne rich fruits in such fields as basic science, modern agriculture, health care and energy. He urged the two sides to take stock of their past cooperation and chart the course for the future, calling for joint efforts to further expand exchanges, create a favorable environment and improve the JCIC mechanism. Noting that both Israel and China are innovative nations, Netanyahu said the two sides should expand their innovation cooperation into new areas and carry out new projects. Also at the JCIC meeting, relevant ministries on both sides reported the progress of bilateral cooperation in such fields as science and technology, trade, agriculture, health care and transportation, and laid out their plans and proposals on future collaboration. The two leaders signed an action plan for bilateral innovation cooperation from 2018 to 2021 and witnessed the signing of seven other documents. During the visit, Wang also attended the opening ceremony of an Israeli innovation summit in Jerusalem and the inauguration ceremony of an Israeli innovation center in Tel Aviv. He also talked with scientists from Weizmann Institute of Science, an Israeli research university. The Chinese vice president, who traveled to the West Bank for a visit to Palestine on Tuesday, is on a four-country trip to the Middle East, which also includes Egypt and the United Arab Emirates. Flash The newly appointed Ethiopia's President Sahle-Work Zewde on Thursday stressed unity among Ethiopians and the need to sustain the ongoing reform in the country. Zewde, who was elected as the east African country's first female president following the official resignation of the former President Mulatu Teshome on Thursday, addressed the parliament's two houses - the Ethiopian House of People's Representatives (HoPR) and the Ethiopian House of Federation, the lower and upper houses respectively. Zewde, in her acceptance speech before the two houses, vowed to serve her country and its people with her utmost efforts. She also stressed the need to maintain the longstanding unity among Ethiopians as well as sustain the ongoing reform of the Ethiopian government and the governance structure. "The ongoing reform process, which embraces equal representation of women as well as people from different ethnic groups, will lead us to realize a prosperous, developed and united Ethiopia in the near future," she said. Zewde, who is a well-regarded diplomat representing Ethiopia at global, continental and regional organizations including the UN and the Intergovernmental Authority on Development, had also served as Ethiopia's ambassador to various countries. Zewde had also served as Ethiopia's envoy at the African Union (AU). UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres in June 2018 appointed Zewde as his Special Representative to the AU and Head of the UN Office to the African Union at the level of Under-Secretary-General. The appointment of Zewde, 68, came shortly after the approval of Teshome's resignation request by the two houses' joint extraordinary session. Teshome was unanimously appointed as Ethiopia's president on Oct. 7, 2013 while he was serving as Ethiopia's ambassador to Turkey. Teshome's resignation, and the eventual appointment of Zewde, followed the recent Ethiopian government's cabinet reshuffle. The HoPR last week approved the appointment of 16 new cabinet members upon the endorsement of Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed, in which only four of the previous cabinet members remained in their positions. Exercising a parliamentary political system, the Ethiopian president has a ceremonial power, which includes granting amnesty to prisoners, officially opening the annual proceedings of the parliament's two houses, receiving foreign ambassadors, as well as presenting the country's annual targets to members of the parliament. The prime minister is the head of government, in which a political party or coalition with the highest parliamentary seats, at least 51 percent of the active seats at the Ethiopian parliament's lower house, forms a government. Flash A group of people who called themselves friends of Jamal Khashoggi gathered Thursday in front of the Saudi Arabian consulate in Istanbul to demand justice for the killed Saudi journalist. The group called for punishment of those who were involved in Khashoggi's murder to the full extent, they said in a press statement read out in Arabic, Turkish and English. Several foreign and Turkish journalists and political figures from different countries joined the crowd in holding a candle vigil for Khashoggi. Khashoggi, a columnist for the U.S. newspaper The Washington Post, has not been seen since he entered the Saudi consulate on Oct. 2 to obtain documents for his upcoming marriage. Riyadh has confirmed Khashoggi's death in a "fistfight" inside its consulate. Turkey has described the killing as a planned political murder, while demanding Saudi government hold those responsible accountable. Turkish police and crime scene investigators have been searching for clues in the city about the whereabouts of the body of Khashoggi. Flash The Kremlin said Thursday it was "alarmed" by a report on possible manipulation of a drone attack against the Russian bases in Syria from a U.S. warplane. "This is very alarming data, of course, and no one here should have any doubt that an appropriate analysis will be carried out by our military and appropriate conclusions will be made," Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov was quoted by Russian media as saying. He suggested that the military may have carried out such work before producing the accusations, adding that "only the military can give all the details in this case." A U.S. Boeing P-8 Poseidon had assumed control of an attack carried out by 13 drones, said Russian Deputy Defense Minister Alexander Fomin earlier in the day. Fomin did not specify the date of the attack, but in January, the Russian Defense Ministry said its servicemen had destroyed seven combat drones and grounded another six which had attempted to attack Russia's Hmeymim and Tartus military bases in Syria. Peskov said he cannot rule out that the incident may be discussed at the forthcoming meeting between Russian President Vladimir Putin and U.S. President Donald Trump preliminarily scheduled to take place in Paris on Nov. 11. (Inside Science) -- On July 20, 1969, just before 11 p.m. Eastern time, Neil Armstrong planted the first human footprints on another world. It was a defining moment in a journey that had transfixed the planet. A few days earlier, Armstrong and his fellow astronauts Buzz Aldrin and Michael Collins had blasted skyward atop a 6.2 million-pound rocket, embarking on an epic eight-day trip to the moon and back that included a brief stay in the moon's Sea of Tranquility and ended with a splash into the Pacific Ocean. During the entire tense mission, NASA recorded thousands of hours of audio communications between the astronauts, mission control and backroom support staff. For decades, most of these tapes sat in storage. Only a fraction of the audio -- like Armstrongs famous first words from the moon -- were ever released to the public. But now a years-long project to digitize and process the audio from the tapes has given this historic record new life. The original impetus for the project was simply to find a large set of audio data to help develop tools for assessing how teams work together. But for NASA buffs, students, and the public, the audio also offers an opportunity to relive these historic moments from a new perspective. I think that Apollo 11 is one of the biggest engineering accomplishments in human history, said Greg Wiseman, an audio engineer at NASA Johnson Space Center in Houston involved in the project. Landing on the moon wasn't just Neil Armstrong. It was an entire team of people working together to make it happen, and all of this audio is their side of the story. Only one machine in the world to play the tapes After the Apollo missions ended, most of the audio tapes eventually made their way to the National Archives and Records Administration building in College Park, Maryland. The first step in the project was to find them. There were lots of emails from me to the NARA reps trying to figure out where these tapes are, Wiseman said. The process reminded him of the last scene in Indiana Jones and the Raiders of the Lost Ark, where the audience sees the ark being stored away in a gigantic warehouse. It could be difficult to locate a few boxes of tapes in that vast ocean of historical treasures, Wiseman wrote in a later email. The hunt began after John Hansen, an electrical engineering researcher at the University of Texas at Dallas, contacted NASA with a request for audio. Hansen was leading a project to develop speech technology to parse long audio recordings of groups solving problems and was looking for test data. The Apollo audio fit the bill, but the next challenge was presented by mid-20th-century analog technology. The existing tapes could be played only on a machine called a SoundScriber, a big beige and green contraption complete with vacuum tubes. NASA had two machines, but the first was cannibalized for parts to make the second one run. There is literally just one machine left on the planet that can decode [the audio] said Abhijeet Sangwan, a researcher at UT Dallas who also worked on the project. NASA tracked down a retired technician to help refurbish the machine and Hansen and his team designed and installed a custom read head. NASA had recorded the mission audio on 30-track tapes and the team needed to play all 30 tracks at once to minimize the time required to digitize them, as well as to avoid damaging the almost 50-year-old tapes by playing them over and over. Once everything was operational, an undergraduate student ran the machine five days a week for months in order to capture all the audio from the Apollo 11 tapes, as well as most of the tapes from Apollo 13, Apollo 1 and the earlier Gemini 8. (The audio from Apollos 1 and 13 and Gemini 8 has not yet been cleared for release, and the researchers are now trying to get support to digitize the remaining Apollo 13 data.) A resource for the speech processing community With 19,000 hours of newly digitized data in hand, Hansen and his team began the complex task of analyzing it. They built software programs to detect speech in the recordings, identify the speakers, group the audio by speaker turns, transcribe it, and detect positive and negative sentiments. Most state-of-the-art speech recognition algorithms are designed for short, transactional statements, like asking Siri for the weather forecast, so the sheer volume and complexity of the NASA tapes presented unique challenges. The recordings had long stretches of silence, and when people were talking, the channels were often noisy or had the air-to-ground communications -- the main mission broadcast -- playing in the background. Plus, the engineers spoke a space mission-specific dialect that contained words absent from the dictionary. Hansen and his team spent about six months researching and collecting all the acronyms used by NASA, specifically for improving automatic speech recognition performance, he said. After honing the algorithms, the researchers set up three large computing clusters on the UT Dallas campus and processed data continually for about seven months. The transcripts they produced range in accuracy from about 60 to 97 percent -- not good enough to get a true historical record of what was said, but valuable to help analyze sentiments, and when combined with speaker identity, understand the engagement and problem-solving processes of the team members. The team hopes the solutions they developed could also be applied to tasks such as monitoring the team dynamics of astronauts during a lengthy and stressful trip to Mars. Closer to home, the techniques could help analyze and improve the performance of large teams who rely on real-time audio communication, such as emergency response units or the military -- or even something more mundane, like a conference call. The data is an important resource for the speech processing community, Hansen said, because it is both long and naturalistic. He advertised the data at an international conference on the science and technology of spoken language processing this September and encouraged researchers to use it to develop better tools for key challenges in the field. But another important mission of the project is sharing the data with the public. The heroes behind the heroes In advance of next summer's 50th anniversary of the first moon landing, NASA has cleared the Apollo 11 audio for public release. Student design teams from UT Dallas built a website, Explore Apollo, where the public can listen to some key moments from the missions. NASA has also uploaded the audio to archive.org, a publicly accessible internet library of cultural artifacts, and it has been shared with filmmakers who are working on new ways to tell the moon landing story. Many retrospective projects on the Apollo 11 mission, such as the recently released movie First Man, focus on the heroics of the astronauts who risked their lives. But there were hundreds of others whose collective work was equally vital, including the more than 600 voices from the tapes. These are the heroes behind the heroes, Hansen said. Ben Feist, a software engineer currently based in Canada, is using the audio to build an interactive website where the public can explore the whole Apollo 11 mission timeline. It will be similar to Apollo17.org, a site he built to showcase a vast array of audio, video and photos from NASAs last mission to the moon. However, the backroom audio channels from the newly digitized Apollo 11 tapes offer a new type of behind-the-scenes perspective. For example, when Armstrong first stepped on the moon he was supposed to grab some surface material -- called the contingency sample -- right away, in case the mission had to be aborted. But as he began to explore and take pictures, he did not reach for any material. There was backroom discussion about whether he was going to pick up the sample, and the engineers seemed reluctant to remind him over a mission broadcast that was being streamed live to the media, Feist said. Finally, the CAPCOM -- the person designated to speak to the astronauts from mission control -- solved the problem by telling Armstrong that they see him retrieving the contingency sample, subtly signaling to the astronaut to do so, Feist explained. Feist has processed the audio to remove a flutter and other distortions, and plans to give the cleaned-up version to the National Archives when the project is finished. Because the tapes were recording continuously, they captured moments when NASA staff took breaks to chat with each other or call friends and family. They were people just like us, Feist said. They would sometimes phone home to say they would be late, or complain about overtime. But when the engineers were on duty, a cool professionalism came through, according to many of the researchers who have listened to sections of the audio. NASA engineers and scientists are just the utmost professional people, Hansen said. There are things that would rattle other people and they are just as calm as you can be. They are extremely focused and very calm, echoed Wiseman. It was left to the president of the United States, Richard Nixon, to gush. Upon greeting the Apollo 11 crew after they returned to Earth, he exclaimed, This is the greatest week in the history of the world since Creation. And now a much more complete record of that exhilarating and exhausting week will be preserved in digital format for generations to come. Reprinted with permission from Inside Science, an editorially independent news outlet of the American Institute of Physics, a nonprofit organization supporting the dissemination of science news and information to society. A runaway pup made a break for it in traffic near the Bay Bridge toll plaza Thursday evening but was saved by the quick teamwork of a highway patrol officer and a passing motorcyclist, according to the California Highway Patrol. ALSO: San Jose CHP save ducklings stuck on the freeway A highway patrol officer saw the dog, an Australian shepherd named Molly, running in traffic on eastbound Interstate 80 and stopped traffic before she could be hurt or cause an accident, according to CHP's Oakland office. WEIRD: Hundreds of gallons of tapioca spilled on I-880 in Oakland According to CHP spokesman Officer Herman Baza, an officer saw the dog in what Baza called a "very dangerous" situation, so he implemented a traffic break. "A traffic break is when you drive in kind of an erratic fashion to stop traffic behind you," he explained. "The dog was running away," said Baza. "A motorcyclist saw that, pulled over and also ran towards the dog." The officer ran after Molly on foot and soon had help from a Good Samaritan in the stopped traffic. A nearby motorcyclist got off his bike and chased after Molly, too. The pair eventually secured the dog. It was not immediately clear how she came to be loose on the road. Molly was later reunited with her owner Jason, according to CHP. WOOF: Small dog captured after CHP chase on Bay Bridge Sometimes stressful animal rescues are just part of the job for highway patrol officers. In June of last year, a CHP officer rescued a kitten trapped in the median barrier on the Golden Gate Bridge after noticing a "little furry head" popping out. The officer fostered the kitten and gave him the name Bridges. Filipa Ioannou is an SFGATE staff writer. 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The challenged ordinance would require employers in Austin to provide paid-sick-leave benefits to employees who work for that employer 80 or more hours in Austin in a calendar year. Workers would accrue one hour of sick leave for every 30 hours worked in the city, and employers could cap annual accruals at either 48 or 64 hours, depending on employer size. The law was to take effect Oct. 1, but a state appeals court temporarily halted it. The Society for Human Resource Management (SHRM) joined the state attorney general's office, the Texas Association of Business and several other business groups in the lawsuit against the city of Austin. The groups are seeking to leave in place a temporary injunction that will prevent the law from taking effect while the courts consider the merits of the challenge. "SHRM is optimistic that the court will ultimately reject Austin's one-size-fits-all sick-leave mandate, but because other state and local governments are likely to push more of these mandates, SHRM will continue to push for a national solution as outlined in the Workflex in the 21st Century Act," said Lisa Horn, SHRM's vice president of congressional affairs. The Society worked with Rep. Mimi Walters, R-Calif., to develop the Workflex in the 21st Century Act (H.R. 4219), which would simplify paid-leave options and offer employees generous paid leave and increased flexible work arrangements. State Law Pre-Emption The Texas Minimum Wage Act bars cities from setting or regulating private-sector employees' wages. The state attorney general's office and the business groups that oppose Austin's mandate contend that paid-leave benefits are wages. "The legislature told cities that local ordinances are pre-empted to the extent that they establish or govern wages," said Andrew Davis, a state assistant solicitor general, during oral argument on Oct. 17. "Nevertheless, the city enacted and plans to enforce an ordinance that effectively raises wages by requiring employers to pay employees more for the same amount of work." [SHRM members-only state coverage: Texas Employment Law] Paul Matula, an attorney with the city of Austin, argued that the Texas Minimum Wage Act's pre-emption clause applies only to wages and that paid-sick-leave benefits are not wages. Legislators know how to express their intent to pre-empt local laws, he said, and they must use "unmistakable clarity" when doing so. Davis disagreed. He noted that the Austin law would require employers to pay employees at their "ordinary rate" when they take accrued sick leave. By directing employers to pay workers a certain rate, the city has attempted to regulate wages, he argued. Lawsuit Timing Matula argued that the lawsuit challenging the ordinance was brought too soon, before it could be shown that the new law would cause any harm. He said that most employers would not face any enforcement penalties until June 2019, and that small employers would have until 2020 before the enforcement mechanism kicks in. "But is there any doubt that [the ordinance] was going to be implemented and that it would be enforced and that there would be consequences if businesses did not comply?" asked Justice David Puryear of the Texas Third District Court of Appeals. He noted that employers presented evidence that they may need to alter their business models, make arrangements with third-party administrators and take other steps to prepare for implementation. More City-Level Laws The San Antonio City Council passed a similar ordinance several months after Austin lawmakers approved theirs. However, advocates for paid sick leave in Dallas fell short of the signatures needed to put the issue on November's ballot. Some Republican lawmakers in Texas have said that local paid-sick-leave laws hurt small businesses, and they may introduce bills to block such ordinances, according to the Texas Tribune. More than 20 states have passed laws that prohibit local governments from imposing their own paid-leave mandates. Nonetheless, state and local paid-sick-leave laws continue to proliferate. In some states, such as California, Maryland and Washington, employers must comply with state and local sick-leave laws that have different accrual rates, caps and administrative rules. While worker advocates say that paid-sick-leave ordinances guarantee that employees will be able to care for themselves and their families, business groups argue that inconsistent paid-sick-leave rules at the state and local levels make compliance difficult for employers. STATEN ISLAND, N.Y. -- Staten Island ArtSpace in St. George wants you to know the shoreline is not just a pretty Instagram shot. The New York City waterfront is maintained by hundreds of people from all over the city. Staten Island Arts, City Lore in Manhattan and Long Island Traditions teamed up to curate a collection of profiles on these waterfront workers for an exhibition in St. George titled Waterfront Heroes. They say that not all heroes wear capes, said exhibition co-curator Steve Zeitlin of City Lore. Sometimes they wear waders, wool caps and rubber raincoats. This exhibit pays homage to the unsung champions of New York Harbor; the women and men who help to sustain our working waterfronts, restore historic vessels and other objects destined for the junk yards." The collection takes up the entire area of ArtSpace, Staten Island Arts' office in the Urby complex in St. George, lining the walls with objects from those who protected the New York City waterfront. WHO ARE THESE WATERFRONT HEROES'? Here are the names of those profiled for this exhibition. Samir Faraq , founder of Staten Islands Museum of Maritime Navigation & Communication and collector of forgotten maritime objects and paraphernalia. Ray Keenan , a fifth-generation member the Sandy Hook Pilots Association and other members of the group, which shepherds ships to shore in New York waters. David Sharps , founder of the Waterfront Museum on a barge he personally dredged from the Hudson River. Conrad Milster , a steam whistle collector from Brooklyn who started a New Years Eve steam whistle blowing tradition in Brooklyn. Adam Green , founder of Rocking the Boat, which works with underserved youth to build boats in the Bronx. Bay House families from the South Shore Bay House Owners Association, which works tirelessly to preserve houses in the town of Hempstead. Members of the North Oyster Bay Baymens Association. Duck hunters and decoy carvers from the South Shore Waterfowlers Association. Naima Rauam , an artist who has spent her life painting the Fulton Fish Market in Lower Manhattan. Seetha Wickramasuriya, a Staten Island nurse from Tangol, Sri Lanka, honored for saving a patient during Hurricane Sandy, and for the traditional kavi songs and poems she wrote about the hurricane. HOW TO SEE THE EXHIBIT ArtSpace is located inside Urby, 7 Navy Pier Court, St. George. The exhibit will be up until the end of 2018. There is no admission, but donations are accepted at the door. For more information, call 718-447-3329 or email NFO@STATENISLANDARTS.ORG. STATEN ISLAND, N.Y. -- Today's archive page is from Dec. 1, 1960. The second annual "International Fair" will be tomorrow at Our Lady Saviour Lutheran Church, West Brighton. A Bavarian Ski Lodge will serve Alpine foods and folk singing with members dressed in full costume. The Bard Fellowship will provide a full-course spaghetti dinner at a cafe depicting Italy -- along with Italian songs performed by an accordionist. An outerspace theme sponsored by Luther League will serve martian canary and lunar juice. STATEN ISLAND, N.Y. -- A statue of St. Michael stood before more than 100 officers Thursday night at Our Lady Star of the Sea R.C. Churchs annual Blue Mass. The two-foot statue of the patron saint of police officers looked on inside the Huguenot church, as Bishop John OHara celebrated the annual mass. There is nothing more inspiring than the men and woman who wear the blue of the New York City Police Department, OHara said. Flanked by two signs with the names of fallen NYPD officers from Staten Island, OHara reminded attendees of the importance of the work officers do, day in and day out, and the dangers they face. Jeannette Leahy, an attendee at Thursday nights mass, knows the danger all too well. She experienced a loss a little over 17 years ago, when her son, James Leahy, became the only NYPD officer from Staten Island to die on 9/11. (The mass) is very uplifting,'' Leahy said. "Its very encouraging, so people dont forget what happened on 9/11. A sea of NYPD blue filled the right side of the churchs middle pews, and included Staten Islands commanding officer, Asst. Chief Kenneth Corey; Chief of Department Terence Monahan, and First Deputy Commissioner Benjamin Tucker. The event was organized by Denise Enright of the 120th Precinct Community Council, Deputy Chief Thomas Burns of the NYPDs Employee Relations Section, Lt. Steven Jerome of the Chaplains Unit, Police Officer Charles Carroll of the Employee Assistance Unit, and Sal Sottile, of the 123rd Precinct Community Council and a retired police officer himself. Its important to let folks like this know how much the community cares about them and how much we appreciate what they do, Sottile said. They deal with all sorts of people, and every day they put their lives on the line to protect us. STATEN ISLAND, N.Y. -- A short ride through South Beach is all one needs to realize that some of the boroughs street signs are in dire need of replacement. In less than an hours time, over a stretch of less than two miles, more than a dozen badly faded street signs were spotted, as seen in the photos above. The faded signs make it increasingly difficult for motorists to determine their location, particularly during nighttime hours, resulting in potentially dangerous scenarios for both motorists and pedestrians. And with drivers straining to read them, their focus is diverted from the road to the signs. The issue was recently highlighted on Twitter by Councilman Steven Matteo (R-Mid-Island), who noted several faded street signs during his most recent #District50Walk. The Department of Transportation (DOT), the city agency responsible for street sign maintenance, advises residents to report all faded street signs to 311. DOT is aware of faded sign locations on Staten Island, and is in the process of surveying all 3 Community Boards. Work orders for these new signs are currently in progress as part of our most recent Street Name contract, according to a DOT spokesperson. Additionally, our contractor was recently given over 600 new street name signs, which will be installed throughout Staten Island next week as part of our continuous effort to upgrade street name signs citywide, the DOT spokesperson continued. Many of the faded signs are older models, likely to be replaced in the near future due to federal regulation. The Federal Highway Administration now requires that all street signs around the country use mixed-case lettering to improve legibility. Municipalities were given until 2018 to comply with the new law. New York City began implementing the mixed-case signage in 2010. Previously, signs were printed using all uppercase letters, in a font called Highway Gothic. Following the federal mandate, the DOT began installing signs printed with mixed-case letters, in a font called Clearview. Additionally, the new signs are created with a prismatic material that increases reflexivity and improves nighttime visibility. The DOT did not respond to a request for comment as to whether the old signs still in place on Staten Island would be replaced by the federal deadline. CITY HALL -- Mayor Bill de Blasio wont talk yet about the long-term future of the New York Wheel parking garage, but vowed to figure out how to create something great for Staten Island on the city-owned site that was set aside for the defunct 630-foot observation wheel. After the New York Wheel announced earlier this week that the project would not become a reality, sources at the citys Economic Development Corporation (NYCEDC) said it is working to transition the wheels $60 million parking garages operating responsibilities to the city to keep the lot open. I dont have a position yet [on the garage] for a very good reason," de Blasio said on The Brian Lehrer Show Friday, after Lehrer asked the mayor if he was pro-garage or anti-garage. De Blasio said it was still too early to have a position on what to do with the parking garage because news of the Wheels demise only broke earlier this week. He said the last thing he wanted to do was give Staten Islanders false hope. However, he said he would work with Borough President James Oddo, Island council members and community stakeholders to figure out what to do with the city-owned space the Wheel was set to be built on that could have the biggest impact on the Island. De Blasio noted that, first, he and borough elected officials would need to determine what the role of the garage should be in figuring out what would be the next best use for the Wheel site. We now have a really wonderful opportunity to create something great for the future of Staten Island and to recognize that theres a lot of things that can be done in this central, central location that could really spur on the economy of Staten Island and create jobs, create opportunity, de Blasio said. Hizzoner previously told Staten Islanders at a town hall over the summer that City Hall would get involved to help see a resolution for the embattled New York Wheel. In a last bid to save the project, officials from the Wheel had asked the city to provide tax exempt bonds to allow the project to move forward. But the mayor said he did not think the project was economically viable and refused to float the non-taxable bonds the company was seeking. If you look back on the history of the wheel, Brian, it was a pretty speculative concept from the beginning, obviously something that was done in the previous administration, the mayor continued Friday. This time, we have an opportunity to do something that will really help Staten Island, and something that will stick and something thats a really reliable option for the future of the borough and thats what we want to get, right? The $60 million garage, totaling 325,000 square feet with 950 parking spaces, was constructed on city land and serves as a vital part of hundreds of commuters' daily trips to and from the Staten Island Ferry. Due to the New York Wheels breach of contract by failing to complete the project on time, the garage will be transferred back to the city, NYCEDC sources said. While planning to remain operational for the time being, the long-term future of the property has yet to be determined, stated NYCEDC sources. FOLLOW SYDNEY KASHIWAGI ON TWITTER STATEN ISLAND, N.Y. -- Who has the edge in the race for New Yorks 11th Congressional District? A New York Times and Siena College initiative aims to find out: the district has been included in an innovative polling project that publishes results on the newspapers website in real-time. Rep. Daniel Donovan has edged Democratic challenger Max Rose since the poll crossed a minimum viability threshold on Thursday. (The two organizations set a minimum of 250 respondents before the poll could be considered reliable.) Given the polls current six-point margin of error -- which diminishes over time as more people respond -- Rose is within striking distance. On Thursday, the poll had Donovan leading 46-40 percent; that number held largely steady on Friday, with Donovans lead sometimes jumping to 47-40 and sometimes shrinking to 46-41. The remainder of respondents were undecided. More than 17,000 calls had been made as of Friday, but only a little more than 300 people had responded. Scheduled to continue until Nov. 4, the NY-11 poll is one of dozens featuring races identified by The New York Times and Siena College as particularly competitive. In addition to the unique real-time delivery, the poll uses other non-traditional methods. For example, most reliable political polls survey likely voters, but this poll does not. The organizations also said that theyre giving more weight to some respondents to compensate for underrepresentation in certain groups. The analysis also includes projected results in different turnout scenarios every active registered voter, the types of people who voted in 2014 -- all of which favor Donovan, though sometimes by the slimmest of margins. CAMPAIGNS RESPOND TO POLL In statements to the Advance, both campaigns dismissed the poll. Donovans campaign told the Advance that the poll isnt consistent with their own internal polling. We feel very confident with our internal polls that show Dan with a strong lead and voters rejecting Max Roses Pelosi-funded deceitful smear campaign, said Jessica Proud, Donovans campaign spokesperson. Voters recognize Dans record of delivering for Staten Island and he is looking forward to continuing that fight in the next Congress. Proud mentioned that a NY1/Sienna College poll conducted in May and June -- which overlapped with when President Trump had just endorsed Donovan -- had showed Donovans GOP primary challenger, former congressman Michael Grimm, up by 10 points. Donovan beat Grimm by nearly 30 points in June. Its no surprise that the NY Times, who had Hillary Clinton winning the White House and Siena who was off by 40 points in our primary has a phony poll that even they are forced to admit could be filled with errors," Proud told the Advance. A spokesperson for Roses campaign said that they werent paying any mind to the results. We never paid attention to the polls and we arent going to start now, said Jennifer Blatus. Staten Islanders and South Brooklynites are fed up and theyre ready for someone like Max Rose to shake things up and take on both parties. The race has ratcheted up in recent weeks with Donovans campaign releasing a televised ad that accused Rose of not being one of us" and linking him to policy ideas, such as impeaching President Donald Trump, that he has publicly opposed. Rose -- who last worked as chief of staff at a nonprofit health care provider with locations in every borough and 800 employees -- has hit Donovan repeatedly for taking donations from executives of Purdue Pharma, which manufactures the addictive opioid Oxycontin, including in a recent ad buy. Donovan has said that hell donate the campaign contributions to YMCA Counseling Services and Camelot drug-counseling center. Rose, an Army veteran, has continued his prolific fundraising and had $1.4 million available for the last weeks of the race as of Sept. 30, according to federal filings. Roses cash-on-hand dwarfs Donovans war chest, which currently has $277,000. Still, the Cook Political Report rates the race as Lean Republican. The Democratic challenger has campaigned on improving Staten Islands infrastructure and transportation, broadening health care options and making drugs more affordable. Donovan has defended his record in Congress during the campaign and has previously cited his relationship with President Trump as an asset. The general election is on Nov. 6 STATEN ISLAND, N.Y. -- Authorities are searching for two people who fled the scene after crashing into a telephone pole in New Brighton Friday morning, police said. A 20-year-old female passenger was injured after the driver careened into the pole at the corner of Richmond Terrace and Tysen Street at around 11 a.m., according to an NYPD spokesman. The woman suffered abdominal injuries and was transported to Richmond University Medical Center in West Brighton in stable condition, officials said. The driver and another passenger then exited the Nissan Sentra and fled on foot, police said. There have been no arrests. WASHINGTON The Latest on pipe bombs sent to prominent critics of President Donald Trump (all times local): 2:55 p.m. Attorney General Jeff Sessions says federal authorities are charging a 56-year-old Florida man with five federal crimes including the mailing of explosives. Sessions says the charges carry a maximum of 58 years in prison. Session announced the charges Friday just hours after federal authorities arrested Cesar Sayoc. Sayoc is accused of sending more than a dozen pipe bombs through the mail to prominent Democrats including former President Barack Obama and to CNN. Sayoc is an amateur bodybuilder and ardent supporter of President Donald Trump who pushed far-right conspiracy theories online. None of the devices exploded, and no one has been injured. ___ 2:40 p.m. Sen. Kamala Harris' office says authorities in Sacramento, California are investigating a suspicious package mailed to her. Harris' office says the package was similar to those that have been sent to other prominent Democrats. The senator's office says it was informed that the package was identified at a Sacramento mail facility. The FBI responded to the facility in a South Sacramento neighborhood that's been blocked off by caution tape. News of the package comes as authorities arrested a Florida man suspected of sending more than 10 mail bombs in recent days. Harris is a Democrat serving her first term in the U.S. Senate. __ 2:15 p.m. A law enforcement official says that the man detained in Florida in connection with the pipe bomb scare will be prosecuted in New York City. The official said Friday that Cesar Sayoc will face charges in federal court in Manhattan after an initial court appearance in Florida. Five of the 12 improvised devices involved in the case were recovered in the Southern District of New York. The official wasn't authorized to discuss the prosecution because a complaint was still being drafted and spoke on condition of anonymity. The mail bombs have been sent in recent days to political opponents of President Donald Trump. __ 1:35 p.m. A Twitter account that appears to belong to the suspect in the mail-bomb scare includes repeated attacks on billionaire George Soros and praise for President Donald Trump and other Republicans. The man was identified by law enforcement officials as Cesar Sayoc, 56, of Aventura, Florida. In linking him to the Twitter account, The Associated Press noted that it contains imagery that mirrored what appeared on the side of the van that authorities seized, in tweets that had been sent long before the explosive devices began to appear. Authorities have not said whether the van seized in Florida was linked to Sayoc. The tweets accuse Soros of paying off a victim from the Parkland mass shooting and accusing Florida gubernatorial candidate Andrew Gillum, a Democrat, of being a Soros puppet. The account also praises Trump and other Republicans. The account includes anti-Gillum memes, with one including the caption "$500,000 SOROS PUPPET." The Oct. 24 posting includes a photo of Soros doctored to look like he's holding a puppet meant to resemble Gillum. __ 12:55 p.m. According to court and other public records, Cesar Sayoc, 56, has a lengthy criminal and court record in Florida. He has been convicted on theft, stolen property and traffic charges and in 2002 on a threat to "throw, place, project or discharge any destructive device." Sayoc is in custody in Florida in the mail bombs sent to prominent Democrats. He was born in New York. Sayoc was sentenced in August 2002 for threatening to throw a bomb in a conversation with a Florida utility representative, according to Ronald Lowy, a Miami attorney who represented him. Dade County court records showed Sayoc served a year's probation after a judge signed a discharge certificate in November 2002. Lowy told The Associated Press that Sayoc "made a verbal threat when he was frustrated at a lack of service." Lowy said Sayoc showed no ability at the time to back up his threat with bomb-making expertise. The lawyer said Sayoc was a bodybuilder then, and displayed no political leanings except for plastering a vehicle he owned with Native American signs. Court records also show that Sayoc was convicted in the 1990s in Broward County on grand theft and stolen property charges and in 2004 on a felony charge of fraudulent refunds and misdemeanor of tampering with physical evidence. __ 12:44 p.m. President Donald Trump is confirming that a suspect in the mail bomb scare is in custody and says he will be prosecuted "to the fullest extent of the law." Trump, in his first remarks since Cesar Sayoc, 56, was apprehended in Florida, declared that "we must never allow political violence take root in America." More than 10 mail bombs have been sent in recent days to political opponents of the president. Trump declared that "these terrorizing acts are despicable" and said Americans "must unify." But his remarks came just hours after Trump tweeted a complaint that the media's focus on bombs was distracting from Republican efforts in the upcoming midterm elections. He also put the word "bomb" in quotes, a seeming nod to those who believed the scare was a hoax. __ 12:30 p.m. The name of the man detained in connection with the pipe bomb scare is Cesar Sayoc, 56, of Aventura, Florida, according to law enforcement officials. Four officials familiar with the investigation identified the man to The Associated Press. They spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to discuss the matter on the record. It was not clear whether Sayoc had been formally charged in the rash of devices addressed in recent days to Democratic figures including former President Barack Obama, former Vice President Joe Biden and Hillary Clinton. __ 11:59 a.m. Law enforcement officers were seen on television Friday examining a white van, its windows covered with an assortment of stickers, in the city of Plantation, Florida. The stickers included images of American flags, and what appeared to be logos of the Republican National Committee and CNN, though the writing surrounding those images was unclear. Officials covered the vehicle with a blue tarp before removing it from the Florida neighborhood where it was found. Law enforcement officials have not said whether the van in question was connected to the person taken into custody in Florida in connection with the mail bombs sent to prominent critics of President Donald Trump. __ 11:50 a.m. President Donald Trump says he will "address the investigation into the bomb packages" shortly. Trump is scheduled to speak Friday at the Young Black Leadership Summit at the White House. He tweeted that he will speak about the investigation at the event. Trump's tweet came after the Justice Department said federal authorities arrested a man in Florida on Friday in connection with the mail-bomb scare that widened to 12 suspicious packages. The development came amid a coast-to-coast manhunt for the person responsible for a series of explosive devices addressed to Democrats including former President Barack Obama, former Vice President Joe Biden and Hillary Clinton. Earlier in the day, Trump referenced "this "Bomb" stuff" on Twitter, saying the scare was distracting from Republican efforts in the midterm elections. __ 11:42 a.m. A law enforcement official says the person in custody in connection with package bombs sent to prominent Democrats is a man in his 50s. Two other law enforcement officials said the man was taken into custody in Florida. The person's name was not immediately released. The officials weren't authorized to discuss an ongoing investigation and spoke to The Associated Press on condition of anonymity. Authorities have located 12 devices addressed in recent days to Democratic figures including former President Barack Obama, former Vice President Joe Biden and Hillary Clinton. The targets have all been high-profile critics of the president. The Justice Department has scheduled a Friday afternoon news conference to discuss the investigation. STATEN ISLAND, N.Y. -- The woman leading the prosecution of Harvey Weinstein is a lifelong Staten Islander and former candidate for Richmond County district attorney. Joan Illuzzi was selected by Manhattan District Attorney Cyrus Vance Jr. to lead the prosecution against the Hollywood producer accused of sexual crimes against three women from 2004 to 2013. ADA Joan Illuzzi is one of the finest trial lawyers in the nation, with unparalleled expertise in high-profile cold cases, Danny Frost, a spokesman for the Manhattan district attorneys office, said in a statement. Illuzzi secured a conviction in the 2016 retrial of Pedro Hernandez for the 1979 kidnapping and murder of 6-year-old Etan Patz. A jury concluded Hernandez lured Etan into the basement of a Lower East Side bodega, where Hernandez worked as a clerk, and the boy had gone to buy soda on May 25, 1979 -- the first day his parents let him walk to his bus stop alone. This undated file image provided Friday, May 28, 2010 by Stanley K. Patz shows a flyer distributed by the New York Police Department of Patz's son Etan who vanished in New York on May 25, 1979. (AP Photo/Courtesy NYPD/file) The case that rocked the city went without a lead for more than three decades until a tip led authorities to Hernandez, who was living in New Jersey. He was sentenced to a maximum of 25 years to life in April 2017. The Grasmere resident has been with the Manhattan office for 30 years. (Illuzzi) is universally recognized by her peers for her fierce intelligence, strong ethics and meticulous approach. There is perhaps no better prosecutor in America to try this case, Frost said. However, the prosecution of Weinstein has had its difficulties. On Oct. 11, Judge James Burke granted a motion to dismiss a count related to 2004 charges, because of information allegedly withheld by an NYPD detective on the case. That same detective reportedly instructed one of the alleged victims to delete information from her cell phone before she turned it over to authorities. Weinstein is still facing six felony charges related to his alleged sexual improprieties. To continue, please log in, or sign up for a new account. We offer one free story view per month. If you register for an account, you will get two additional story views. After those three total views, we ask that you support us with a subscription. A subscription to our digital content is so much more than just access to our valuable content. It means youre helping to support a local community institution that has, from its very start, supported the betterment of our society. Thank you very much! More than two in five superannuation funds responsible for administering 4 million "MySuper" default accounts are "underperforming" - delivering lower returns to members than if the money was simply invested in passive benchmark indexes. As part of its major inquiry into Australia's $2.7 trillion superannuation system, the Productivity Commission released updated modelling on Friday which revealed 29 super funds are underperforming on their MySuper accounts, up from its previous estimate of 20 funds. More alarmingly, using a more stringent benchmark, the Commission has slashed its estimate of the number of funds delivering above benchmark returns from 47 funds to just 26. The number of member accounts enjoying above benchmark returns has also been slashed from 9.8 million to 7.2 million. A disappointingly large number of super funds are underperforming, the Commission has found. Credit:Karl Hilzinger The Commission has steadfastly refused to identify the names of individual underperforming funds for fear of prompting members to desert the bottom performers, which could harm returns for unwitting members who stay. Clive Cowdery, whose Resolution Life is buying AMP's life insurance arm for $3.3 billion, has insisted he "paid up" up for the business, as AMP shares dropped another 5 per cent to a new record low. In stark contrast to analyst claims that AMP is selling its 169-year-old life business at a "deep discount", Sir Clive on Friday described how he spent months haggling with AMP, which culminated in Resolution agreeing to pay the second highest multiple it had paid for a life insurer. Resolution Life chief executive Clive Cowdery says he was surprised at the sharemarket's "extreme" reaction to the sale. Credit:Louise Kennerley After AMP's share have now lost 28 per cent in two days, closing at $2.38 on Friday, Resolution's executive chairman also said he was surprised at the sharemarket's "extreme" reaction to the sale, which was announced alongside news of outflows from AMP's wealth management arm. AMP is not the only wealth business whose share price has been hit this week, with IOOF also losing 11 per cent in the last two days, closing at $6.97. Retail Food Group paid some of its top brass lavish pay packets over the past 12 months even as its market value decimated from a high of $897 million to just $77 million during that time. The revelations of hefty salaries and additional bonuses at RFG came as the embattled franchise chain which owns the Gloria Jeans and Donut King brands among other businesses announced on Friday it had appointed restructuring expert Peter George as its new chairman. Former long time chief executive Tony Alford pocketed more than $7,000 for the three days he was a non-executive director. Credit:Fairfax Media The massive loss of shareholder wealth during 2018 didn't stop the company from doling out some generous packages to exiting executives, including a handsome payment to controversial long time chief executive Tony Alford. The handsome payments came after an expose by Fairfax Media in December revealed RFG had a brutal business model that sent many of its franchisees to the wall financially, and that earnings of several of its brands had been going steadily backwards for years. The investigation also showed that underpayment of workers by struggling franchisees was rampant. RFG is the owner of franchise brands including Donut King, Brumby's Bakeries, Gloria Jean's Coffees, Crust Gourmet Pizzas, Di Bella Coffee and Pizza Capers. The property industry should be aware that the federal government is proposing tax changes that will jeopardise the international education sector Australias third largest export earner worth more than $30 billion. The Treasury Laws Amendment (Making Sure Foreign Investors Pay Their Fair Share of Tax in Australia and Other Measures) Bill 2018 will be the subject of a Senate Inquiry to commence next month. If passed, the bill will result in offshore capital providers to the education sector facing a 100 per cent rise in their withholding tax rate, as the meaning of the words "residential dwelling asset" will include tertiary off-campus student accommodation. The University Terraces, a new student accommodation complex at UNSW. This last-minute change differs from the exposure draft of the bill released this year, which featured a tax exemption for assets comprising "commercial residential premises", including student accommodation. The majority of gambling in Australia happens in relatively controlled social environments like clubs, pubs, casinos and race tracks, said Scott Morrison in 2015, when he was social services minister. Online or interactive gambling creates vulnerabilities because it doesnt share such limited controls and protections. Leading into Melbourne Cup week, with online bookmakers in fierce competition for market share, it is with these worries in mind that the rope is about to get tighter around the global online gambling giants here and the services they provide. Loading After three years and a series of delays, state and federal politicians are finalising a suite of new standards for the industry, aimed at tackling problem gambling risks online and beefing up protections for consumers. Sportsbet, BetEasy, Ladbrokes, Bet365, Betfair and Unibet dispute the notion that problem gambling risks are greater online, arguing their technology provides punters tools to limit spending in a way that physical betting terminals cannot. But they have been widely accepting of a series of concessions and, through their industry group Responsible Wagering Australia, have proactively helped government develop many of the incoming online gambling reforms, chief among them being a national self-exclusion scheme for people trying to quit gambling. The first of its kind in Australia, the scheme will allow gamblers to ban themselves across state lines and across all betting sites at once on smartphones, computers and tablets. Also among the soon-to-be-introduced measures are a voluntary, opt-out pre-commitment system for punters to set their own limits, and a nationwide ban on bookies offering inducements to encourage people to open accounts. Other figures on the frontline of the issue such as problem gamblers themselves and the financial counsellors who assist them are supportive of the new rules but argue the package doesnt go far enough, fearing it falls short of what is truly needed to protect the vulnerable. One of the biggest omissions, they say, is that there is lack of enforceable requirements like in the United Kingdom for companies to take steps such as making checks on big-spending customers, monitoring their deposits and making sure they are safe. There is no clear duty on the company to take concrete steps to ensure their services are provided responsibly, says Lauren Levin, the policy director of Financial Counselling Australia. We are about five years behind the UK. 'It was just manic' Just before his gambling spiralled out of control, Peter was in his 50s, recently divorced and had received a large payout following an accident. I probably want to dodge a few points here, he says, so as to not reveal his identity. But when I got my payout, I was bored and lonely and started punting. They were relentless, theyd do anything to keep you going to see the money keep flowing in, he says. The only VIP I was to them was a very important profit centre. Peter Drinking heavily and taking powerful pain medication, he opened accounts with multiple online bookmakers including two of the biggest, Ladbrokes and CrownBet. His bets ranged from $10 or $20 to many thousands. In several instances, he wagered as much as $20,000 per race. Most nights, his account records show, he was turning over massive amounts of money, like clockwork, every couple of minutes. It was just manic, he says. I actually dont remember most of it. After Peter began posting serious losses, some of the bookmakers software identified his erratic gambling patterns and cut him off. Others, however, did not, instead making him a VIP customer rewarding his big spending with free bets and offers of tickets to sporting events. They were relentless, theyd do anything to keep you going to see the money keep flowing in, he says. The only VIP I was to them was a very important profit centre. Every morning, he rolled out of his bed and reached for his mobile in fear, unable to remember what happened the night before. One morning, he saw $75,000 sitting in one of his betting accounts, down from $150,000. Although Peter has now stopped gambling, and self-excluded from the sites he once used, there is a familiar feeling of dread that still greets him daily. I literally wake up with heart palpitations every morning, he says. The most important change he believes is necessary in the current political push to stem gambling harm is a providing a pre-commitment scheme that is truly binding, not just for online wagering, but for all kinds of gambling. Very few people can afford to lose $50,000 to $100,000 a day, he says. The new house where Jack* lives is nothing like his old one. Small and drab, its sparsely furnished and situated on a busy main road, the blare of traffic audible from inside. He appears from his kitchen holding a cup of tea and a tray of biscuits and apologises for the lack of space. A large window looks out to his driveway, where there is a disused car sitting idle that he cant afford to repair. Its cold inside. Jack is wearing a woolen jumper and loose blue jeans. His hair is white and cropped, his eyebrows thick and dark. He is aged is in his early 50s, but looks older. A lot has changed in the past 12 months. Im not the same person I was, thats for sure, says Jack. If I had lived here in this house three years ago, Id have been terribly embarrassed. Jack was never a stranger to the punt. He would regularly stop at the TAB on the drive home from work, to put down $20 on whatever horse race was on. Loading When he lost his job of 21 years, and found himself with a large redundancy payout and hours to spare, things took a turn. His depression and anxiety worsened. Online gambling filled a void. When I sit here now with you, to me it just sounds totally insane, he says. I cant even begin to think what sort of frame of mind I was in when I was sitting there with antidepressants, sleeping tablets, you know, a couple of cans of beer and $170,000 sitting in an account that I could just keep pumping into an online bookmaker in blocks of $10,000 and $20,000 at 2 or 3 oclock in the morning, on races on the other side of the planet somewhere. Bottom of a pit Over seven days, betting records show, Jack lost $125,000. Much like Peters experience, each day began in the grip of anxiety. What the hell did I do last night? he would ask himself. That was the start of your day waking up feeling like youre at the bottom of a pit. Jack hates thinking about what hes done, and all the money hes lost the money he should have been using to re-establish himself post-redundancy. Although he unsuccessfully took his case to the regulator in the Northern Territory, the jurisdiction where most online bookmakers hold their licences, Jack blames himself mostly. It was, after all, his decision to gamble. I got online and gambled it away, he says, but I think these bigger companies, too, have got some blame. They, and the government, should have some sort of safeguards to stop people like me from gambling erratically. Two months ago, when Scott Morrison replaced Malcolm Turnbull as prime minister, he overhauled the front bench. His appointment to the social services ministry the role overseeing the new online wagering protections, the National Consumer Protection Framework was Paul Fletcher, a former senior executive at Optus. Fletcher is the third minister to hold the portfolio in the past 12 months, prompting concerns that the momentum behind the online gambling legislation may be waning. But, speaking publicly on the topic for the first time as minister, Fletcher has moved to assure stakeholders that the package is in the final stages of agreements by all governments, and anticipates it it will be announced shortly. 'Self-exclusion' push The frameworks 10 measures will deliver strong, nationally consistent minimum protections for Australian using interactive wagering services, he says. All governments have worked extensively with industry, community sector organisations, academia and individuals who have experienced gambling harm to design the frameworks measures to ensure that the online gambling standards are raised nationally. Gambling-reform campaigners are urging the government to prioritise the framework before the federal election, particularly the national self-exclusion scheme, which they say is a no-brainer. But some are already making the case for tougher reforms such as a national regulator as opposed to Australias patchwork state-based regulators, stricter rules around bonus bet offers, and greater onus on bookies to identify and act on potentially harmful betting behaviour. In the UK, they say, companies are legally required to gain a holistic picture of the source of wagering funds and critically assess a customers financial capacity, or face fines running into millions of pounds. The Brits are leaving us for dead on consumer protection for gamblers, with a decent national regulator, a raft of recent reform and more than $30 million worth of fines over the past two years, says Susan Rennie, of the Alliance for Gambling Reform. Financial Counselling Australia agrees, saying the global bookmakers are forced to comply with far tougher rules in the UK than in their Australian businesses. Australia's online bookmakers, through industry group Responsible Wagering Australia, led by former Labor heavyweight Stephen Conroy, have argued that the 15 per cent rate in other states is excessive and unsustainable. Credit:Andrew Meares Gambling companies already have software to identify changes in gambling patterns, says Levin. The problem is that the problem gambler is also their cash cow, so there is a reluctance to do what they should do intervene. The major online bookmakers reject this claim, stressing that they dont want to take a cent from problem gamblers. Aside from social responsibility obligations, industry insiders insist it is not in their commercial interests for someone to lose heavily in a short period then never bet with them again. They would rather customers bet moderately, within their means and on an ongoing basis. As one insider puts it: Smaller bets lead to more stable outcomes and more predictable margins. At the height of a public and political backlash in 2016, online wagering companies formed the lobby group Responsible Wagering Australia to lift standards in the industry and restore its social licence. The groups director, former Labor senator Stephen Conroy, says its members have been among the leading advocates for the new consumer-protection reforms. Ultimately, millions of Australians enjoy having a punt and do so responsibly, says Conroy. What is important is to ensure there are effective tools available to assist people to continue wagering in a responsible way as well as effective permanent self-exclusion for those that have serious gambling problems. Tabcorp, which runs retail and online wagering services, has also supported the incoming framework, and says it has "long argued for a consistent approach" to gambling regulation. "We believe these changes will bring about a more balanced and responsible way in which betting is promoted and offered," a spokesman said. A few years ago, Gary* sustained an injury. A bad one. He was put under the knife in eight separate surgeries. It was quickly decided he wouldnt return to his job full-time, but would eventually return part-time. I havent worked a day since, he says. I havent been able to go back. It was almost like Christmas had come there were so many options, so many betting agencies. Gary As a younger man, Gary worked at a racecourse, and even had his wedding there. He had long been surrounded by horse racing and gambling. But it had certainly never taken the toll or taken me to the places that I went to two years ago, he says. When I was home after those surgeries and it became available on my phone, it was almost like Christmas had come there were so many options, so many betting agencies. With two of his betting accounts, he decided to set limits on how much he could deposit, to make sure he didnt go overboard. But with the third Tabcorps now-defunct Luxbet he had no limit in place. Instead, he requested a $1000 overdraft facility. There were some periods there where I was on some very serious medication, and Id go 24 hours straight, I wouldnt stop, the money would just keep going in deposit, deposit deposit, he recalls. Over several months, he lost about $130,000 There was never any action, any intervention, to stop me. Im not blaming anybody, I know that was my responsibility, he says, but its the way they allowed me to do it without any oversight in anyway. But like Ramsay's proposed course, US liberal arts courses have faced controversy. In the late 1980s, protesters argued that Stanford's Western civilisation courses perpetuated European and male biases. Civil rights activist Reverend Jesse Jackson joined protesters chanting, 'Hey hey, ho ho, Western civ has got to go." Stanford cut the course, and an attempt by conservative students to reinstate it two years ago failed. More recently, students at Reed University protested in Humanities 101 lectures, arguing the course is too white, too male, too Euro-centric, and ignored how the texts might been used to perpetuate violence against people of colour. Great Books courses are not entirely new in Australia; Sydney University already has one. But it is open only to Dalyell Scholars, elite students who've achieved an ATAR of 98 or above. Students can study it for two semesters, reading 12 texts over the year. A Ramsay-funded course would be far more ambitious, says Professor Peter Anstey, a senior advisor to the university during negotiations with the Ramsay Centre. Loading Instead of 12 texts over one year, there would be 30 over three, with the option of an honours year. "What we are proposing is an undergraduate major that is six times the size of that [existing] course," he says. "If we did get funding, our course in Western tradition would not just be a Great Books course. We would also teach students the skills for analysis and interpretation and so on. It's a quantum leap from what we are currently doing." The university would use subject specialists, some of them inter-disciplinary, to run the courses' tutorials. "However, it might all fall over," Anstey says. "We don't know." When the Ramsay Centre first invited Australian universities to apply for two or three Western civilisation degrees late last year, funded from part of a $3 billion bequest from late healthcare magnate Paul Ramsay, it posted an example of a potential curriculum on its website. The University Sydney would draw up its own, but Ramsay's is indicative. Students would begin with Homer, Sappho and Euripides, then move through the classical historians to Chaucer, Augustine and Machiavelli. In later years they would study Marx, W.E. Du Bois, and Patrick White. They would study female writers, but only a handful including Virginia Woolf and Jane Austen. Some Sydney University academics don't think much of that curriculum. "It's largely about the conversation between modern English and German writers about the Graeco-Roman classics," says Bruce Gardiner, a senior lecturer in the Department of English. "However much the university may massage the syllabus, its version would still be measured by the centre against its own version, which is neither cogent nor disinterested." Details of a Sydney University-Ramsay partnership are yet to be nutted out and hang on the Ramsay board's decision, which could be weeks away. But an initial agreement with the Australian National University - before the negotiations broke down in May amid claims from ANU that Ramsay's demands would interfere with academic independence (a claim denied by the centre) - illustrates what it might look like. Loading Ramsay scholars would need ATARs of 97 or above and be selected by application and interview, the ANU agreement said. Some 12 academic staff would be paid for by Ramsay, and about 30 students would receive scholarships of about $30,000 a year so they could focus on their studies, a benefit some believe has been lost in the debate. "The opportunities for students in terms of scholarships are tremendous," says Professor Matthew Hindson, a composer at the university's Conservatorium of Music who supports Ramsay's proposal at Sydney. "Students do it really tough these days." Not everyone agrees. Gardiner believes the scholarships are iniquitous. "The fundamental educational principle of equal opportunity would be entirely undermined were some to be treated, in this way, as more equal than others," he says. Partly because of the ANU scandal, the proposed partnership between Sydney and Ramsay has become mired in a culture war. The left thinks members of the Ramsay board, such as former prime minister Tony Abbott, are using it as an ideological Trojan horse; the right considers their outrage more evidence that left-wing group think has overtaken campuses. But even without the controversy sparked by the Ramsay board's politics, there is still unease among some academics about creating a new course focusing on Western works while Australia's community becomes increasingly multicultural. Ahead of a speech on Australian education in China next week, Dr Nicholas Jose, professor of English at the University of Adelaide, has been thinking about the texts he would include in a Great Books course that reflects the ethnically diverse Australian community of 2018. He would begin with Aboriginal song poetry. "That raises the question of 'what is a book?'" he says. "This is literature that was oral literature for many centuries before being written down and translated". He would include texts from the Indian Sanskrit tradition, China's Confucius, and the world's first novel, the ancient Japanese Tale of Genji by Murasaki Shikibu. "Then there's the literature of the southern hemisphere more broadly, whether it's J.M. Coetzee's Waiting for the Barbarians or great writers of Latin America," he says. An Australian Great Books course should be more ambitious than those on offer in the US, but "also specific to the questions of Australian civilisation in the 21st century," says Jose. "Of course, the same themes apply in the thinking and literature of these other cultures - ambition, revenge, power, politics, greed, passion, love." Sydney's deal with the Ramsay Centre might never come to pass. Even if the board accepts the university's conditions - changing the name 'Western civilisation' to 'Western tradition', and giving Ramsay fewer rights on scholarship and academic appointment committees than other donors to reassure staff of the university's academic independence - there is no guarantee the arts faculty and academic boards would approve the university's proposed curriculum. Ramsay's millions might end up at the University of Queensland, which is also interested. Or nowhere. The putting-the-gang-together montage is an essential comic device in every superhero, heist and music movie ever made. You can trace the trope back through the Marvel and the Oceans franchises; The Commitments to The Muppets to The Blues Brothers. Some film buffs reckon the idea started with Kurosawa's The Seven Samurai. So Ryo Nakata recognised the drill, no doubt, when he set about assembling Japan's first heavy funk band in the country lanes of Nara, an hour east of Osaka and 10,000 air kilometres from Chicago. Osaka Monaurail at Town Hall. Credit:Edwina Pickles "I was visiting every person that I heard who was a musician," he recalls of his high school years around Japan's second city. "Somebody says, 'oh, I know a bass player', and I go to his house but I find out he can't play. Then somebody says 'I know a guitar player' and he can't play either." That montage met the cutting room floor, but Japan's soul brother number one was playing the long game. At uni he joined the jazz society and played trumpet in the big band. "So there I could find good musicians. After one year I said, 'OK, now I'm gonna do the thing that I've been dreaming of'." It was close enough to four-and-a-half years ago when Sticky was last front and centre for a live Arctic Monkeys show. Prior to that it was a new year's eve performance at the Falls Festival, when frontman Alex Turner hilariously stuffed up the all important countdown to midnight. Leaving the stage after a cracking show that year (marking the very final moments in fact of 2011) Turner and his bandmates returned around 12.01AM on January 1, 2012, apologised and said he thought "somebody else" was doing the countdown. It hardly mattered. Arctic Monkeys play rock 'n' roll; they're not here to perform rituals and it's unlikely they'll play nice when they come back around in 2019 for shows in Perth, Melbourne, Sydney and Brisbane in February and March. Arctic Monkeys Credit:Zackery Michael Arctic Monkey's 2014 tour was on the back of 2013's outstanding AM album, featuring R U Mine, Arabella and Do I Wanna Know and as we noted during that year's tour it was "not only the brightest stars of Brit rock, but rock 'n' roll's appeal" that shone so brightly the night of their Melbourne show. "Turner both croons and wails in between tearing riffs from his guitar - a mix of `50s Buddy Holly and modern day rock royalty," we wrote after the gig and a night on the tiles, including a chinwag with Turner himself at a Melbourne bar. The platform encourages new perspectives on the sculptures, too. You find yourself contemplating them collectively instead of individually, enjoying their context, noticing their juxtapositions. From the Mackenzies Bay Pixel 3 lookout, you can see Sandra Pitkins Wave Within, Rhiannon Wests Flight and Peter Lundbergs Scholars, Poets and Thieves. You notice the way they interact with the ocean and respond to the lines of the clifftop. Flight, an ethereal structure of stainless steel, glass and stone, looks as if it soared in from somewhere beyond the horizon to alight on the cliff edge like a giant dragonfly. While Sean tells us about the artists vision and background, I play with a feature on the Pixel 3 called Photobooth, which uses AI to recognise when youre smiling or making a funny expression, and snaps the selfie on its own, no hands and shutter button required. Its uncannily good at spotting my best side. Get everything (and everybody) in the frame for the ultimate group selfie. This being Tamarama, affectionately known as "Glamourama", we bump into Sydney male model and jewellery designer Tommy OConnor, and offer him a turn with the Pixel 3. Tommys a pro; he handles the smartphone deftly, like Federer with his favourite racquet, and rattles off multiple perfect selfies in a moment. I watch, keen to learn tricks from a veteran. I don't have Tommys biceps, but then again, the Pixel 3s super zoom-out has proved you don't need them to boss a selfie. We climb up to the third Pixel 3 platform at Tamarama Beach and go wild with scelfies (sculpture selfies), using that wide angle to take in the entire sweep of beach, six sculptures and all the action on the sands down to the surf. Im keen to take more group selfies, but at that moment everyones busy with their own arty interactions and there arent any frame-filling friends. Don't worry, says Sean. We can make some. He aims the Pixel 3 at us and a huge figure looms up behind in the frame. When we move, he moves. Hes bright green and looks furious. The Google Pixel 3 lets you incorporate animated stickers of weather, pets and other things into your selfies, photos or videos. Credit:Janie Barrett For a moment, I fear someones had a terrible reaction to the cafe food, but it is in fact the Incredible Hulk. Hes in our selfie, courtesy of the Pixel 3s Playground mode. This unapologetic piece of frivolity lets you add your favourite superheroes to photos and videos. They react to each other and you, and its such a crowd pleaser we make new friends while we play with the Hulk. By this time, Im so confident with my selfie skills that Im happy to pose solo against one of the benches decorated beautifully with Persian carpets as part of Hossein Valameshs Conversations, and snap myself and Sean peeping through the delicate steel structures of Houses Make Houses by Chinas Hu Quanchun. Until now, Ive always been slightly sniffy about selfies, muttering about narcissism and self-absorption, but today amid the happy, selfie-snapping art lovers at Sculpture by the Sea, I discover the medium encourages sociability. While we photograph ourselves and each other, we chat about the works, compare interpretations, smile and speak to strangers. They jump into our photos; we join in with theirs. Its a shared, immersive cultural experience - a giant outdoor art party with the worlds best view. Plus a spectacular set of souvenir photos. There's a photo that's always in my kitchen, faded by sun and decades. It's of my dad long gone now sitting on the chairlift that climbs to Arthur's Seat, a beauty spot with views over the Mornington Peninsula. In the '70s, the chairlift was a chain of open-air metal seats with a safety bar that you pulled down over your waist. On his lap, he's casually dandling my youngest brother, no more than 10 months old. My other brother, age five, is on the seat beside him, thongs dangling precariously. With no foot rests and no floor, the chairlift claimed many solo thongs. Rainbow-coloured bathing boxes at the Mornington Peninsula, which has changed dramatically in the past few decades. Credit:downunder / Alamy Stock Photo You can still catch a chairlift up Arthur's Seat, only now it's a far safer carrier in a more precarious world. The new Eagle gondolas still skim the top of the eucalypts. You can still spy kangaroos, and hear the birds calling to each other in the state forest below. I always wanted to live in one of the houses hidden among the trees, but I was never homeless on the peninsula. My young mum took me on my first holiday here, at our family's beach house on Safety Beach. Later, Mum reclaimed the area's old name for the beach house, and whenever I limped back to Australia broke, homeless, jobless and partnerless "Shark Bay" was always waiting. My grandfather built the house from old packing crates in what's now the Peninsula's fading shack style: tilt-edged roof and a footprint that let you add rooms as the family grew. Everyone had a flaking caravan in the backyard, wheels picked off and bogged in the sandy soil. The vans harboured waves of teenage boys, devising stealth attacks on the local drive-in. The ACT government is considering another expansion of Canberra's prison as it struggles to contain ballooning detainee numbers. But Justice Minister Shane Rattenbury said building new cells wouldnt alone fix the problem, forecasting wider reforms to the territorys criminal justice system as part of a new push to address the issue. A record 507 inmates were held at Alexander Maconochie Centre in June this year, as average daily prisoner number rose to 474, almost double the amount from 2010. Detainee numbers at the Alexander Maconochie Centre have reached record levels. Credit:Rohan Thomson The prisoner squeeze comes just two years after the completion of a $47-million expansion of the Hume jail, which created an extra 112 beds. Frustrated by a family's evidence during an inquest into the death of a Sydney teenager, Deputy NSW Coroner Dorelle Pinch has lamented the fact she could not force people to tell the truth. Brothers Mohamed and Rami El-Masri gave evidence on Wednesday at an inquest into the death of Khaldoun Abi-Mahmoud, who was killed in a motorbike accident hours after a schoolyard fight with Mohamed. But Ms Pinch was dissatisfied with their testimony regarding the March 9, 2004, death, calling it "not particularly helpful". "It is very frustrating because you cannot force people to tell the truth," she said after hearing evidence from the El-Masri brothers. Khaldoun died after his 125cc motorcycle left the road and ran into a power pole at Sefton, in Sydney's south-west, as he travelled home from school. The real boss On paper, the man in charge was Glen Ella, the former rugby union fullback who represented Australia in four Tests. Mr Ella said he had joined the charity as a board member and then as a paid chief executive in 2014 to give back to his Indigenous community. But much of his evidence in court this week concerned what he had failed to do. He did not read the national regulations that govern charities. He did not know how much the charity received in funding. He did not read the funding agreement with the government. He did not review the financial accounts he signed each year as he declared them to be accurate. "I trusted [people] to do the right thing," Mr Ella said. "Unfortunately they didnt." While he said he looked after day-to-day operations, the person who "basically ran the agency" according to Mr Ella was Roy Bijkerk a figure who occupied no board position and went by the title "development co-ordinator". The Herald has previously revealed that Mr Bijkerk served time in the early 2000s for conspiring to import three kilograms of cocaine. Loading Shortly after leaving prison, Mr Bijkerk began providing services to Guardian originally a for-profit venture through his subcontracting company, Alpha Support Services. Alpha would come to receive millions of dollars each year from the charity. Mr Ella agreed when asked that it was fair to say he "considered Roy to be, in effect, a boss". It was Mr Bijkerks company Alpha that lent Mr Ella $4482 to cover mortgage repayments after he told Mr Bijkerk he was struggling financially, the court heard. "By asking Roy for that loan, you weakened your ability to be able to challenge decisions he was making at the time," barrister Philip Santucci put to Mr Ella, who agreed. "Do you feel as if Roy Bijkerk may have been using you both your celebrity status and your Aboriginal heritage in order to gain advantage for his organisation?" "Yes," he said. Mr Ella said repayments of the loan were deducted from his salary and he remained at the charity because a lot of good work was being done by "hard workers". Mr Bijkerks criminal background had not bothered him "at the time", but it was a different matter with another figure seen around the office. Ned Bikic, a former standover man, was sentenced in 2001 to a minimum 11 years jail after an affray left a man dead. Ned Bikic was sentenced in 2001 to a minimum 11-year jail term for murder. Credit:Ken James Following his prison stint, Mr Bikic was a director or part-owner of two companies receiving money in subcontracts from the charity. A very dark fee Mr Bijkerk in 2015 wrote to his son Dylan, another powerful figure within Guardian, outlining a proposed management agreement that would ultimately give "complete control" of the charity to a company owned by their family and Mr Bikic. The email from Mr Bijkerk referred to the proposed arrangement as "an ingenious creation of my doing," one in which "the charity owns nothing not a pen, or even a pencil". Another email between father and son explored further subcontracting arrangements that might have yielded thousands of dollars each week from several childrens homes run by the charity. "That fee has to be kept very dark between our gang," Roy Bijkerk wrote. While the arrangement was "legal," he did not want the charity or the first subcontractor to appear profitable, the email suggested. The Office of the Childrens Guardian raised serious governance concerns about Guardian Youth Care including conflicts of interest and a lack of independent auditing as far back as 2014. But it was an independent report by Deloitte commissioned by the Department of Family and Community Services two years later that drew attention to unauthorised subcontracting, which the government eventually called a $20 million misappropriation. Directors of the charity have denied any misappropriation and maintained it was government funding problems that led to its demise. Loading Last year, Mr Bijkerk wrote to several associates saying he was "getting very worried" but that he could easily take legal action against the department for withholding proper payments. The email referred to finally gaining the support of "Ricco [sic] and Jones". Mr Ella, the chief executive, was not sent the email but told the court this may have been a reference to Graham Richardson and Alan Jones. Mr Ella said it was unclear what the support entailed but that Mr Bijkerk was "a lot more friendly with Richardson than Alan Jones". He said he met Mr Bijkerk and Mr Richardson twice, while Mr Bijkerk had visited Mr Jones "where he lives at Circular Quay". On his Sky News show last year, Mr Richardson interviewed Dylan Bijkerk, praising Guardian Youth Care and lashing the department and reporting by the Sun-Herald. Mr Ella agreed with a suggestion in court that those public figures, like himself, may not have had the full picture regarding Guardian. No conflict of interest While Mr Ella said he had not spent time looking into the charitys finances, the other main examinee at hearings this week came onto the board as a numbers man. Kevin Casey, a former partner at CBC accountants, the firm that did the charitys books, was an accountant for Roy Bijkerk and a director of the Guardian charity. He also personally received tens of thousands of dollars in the form of profits from the charitys main subcontractor, Alpha Support Services. Alpha had only one client Guardian Youth Care. A contract the charity signed delivered every dollar in government funding not spent on wages to Alpha to provide accommodation, food, training, transport virtually all of the charitys other work. Mr Casey, Mr Bijkerk and others associated with the charity had stakes in a trust that received regular distributions of profit from this subcontractor, Alpha. "[The charity] paid Alpha a management fee for service provided what Alpha did with that was their prerogative," said Mr Casey, who claimed to have stopped receiving profit distributions in 2012. He denied there was a conflict of interest in his being a pro bono director of a charity while also a beneficiary of contracts the charity signed. "You didnt think to yourself I would rather this money stay and help disadvantaged kids than come into my hands?" Mr Santucci, the barrister, asked. "The answer to that is no because the services we provided for these kids ... were always on the highest level," Mr Casey replied. He said reports from welfare agencies were "exemplary", he never suspected the charity may have been used as a vehicle for secret gain and that without the subcontractor Alpha it "couldnt have operated". He failed to read the charitys agreement with the government from 2012 onwards that said any subcontracting required departmental approval. Big profits In the year before the new agreement, Alpha received $4.4 million from the charity and earned an operating profit of $1.1 million, records read in court showed. This was then divvied up between Mr Bijkerk and his associates. Mr Bijkerks family trust also received consultancy fees for charity work more than $500,000 in one year. "That was cheap," Mr Casey said. He told the court the directors of Guardian had reviewed the remuneration of chief executives of other major charities. Except Mr Bijkerk was not the chief executive. The head of the organisation on paper at least was Glen Ella, who received about $70,000 a year the court heard. Meanwhile, Mr Bijkerks business partner Mr Bikic was invoicing for his services to Guardian shortly after leaving prison. Mr Bikics subcontracting company received $30,000 a month to provide some accommodation and transport, maintenance work on the childrens homes and advice on how Guardian could become a foster care agency. Then there was the loan to Edward Hayson, the former Stiletto brothel owner. Several of the charitys directors, including Mr Casey, were also directors and owners of Guardian Care Properties, which received rental income via a subcontractor to house up to six children in units in Sydneys west. It was Guardian Care Properties that found $500,000 for Mr Hayson, with $25,000 interest to be paid up front, Mr Casey said. Eddie Hayson received a $500,000 loan from a company closely linked to the charity. Credit:Louise Kennerley When the Herald first asked about this loan in 2016, Mr Casey and other directors issued a statement through their lawyer denying the charity and Guardian Care Properties had any connection beyond some common board members. In court on Thursday, Mr Casey said others arranged the loan, and as for Mr Hayson, "Ive never met the person". A genuine cause Apparently prolific as a writer of emails, Mr Bijkerk would often send ranting ones to Mr Casey, some of them complaining about others associated with Guardian. There were references to several figures, including Mr Bijkerks brother Paul, a former chief executive of the charity, having received millions of dollars (although it was unclear what for). Mr Bijkerk, in one email, wrote that his brother suspected he was still a "scheming, cunning criminal with no ethics". But in court Mr Casey said he was untroubled by the criminal backgrounds of Mr Bijkerk and Mr Bikic. "But the longer term trend is down. Over the last decade, in which no prime minister has served a full term from one election to the next, the majors' share has declined from a high of 86 per cent in 2007 to an average of 74 per cent in polls taken so far this year." Wentworth is the latest case study in how this is working. All the attention has been fixed on the story of the Liberal Party losing one of its safest seats in a self-inflicted debacle - itself a big story. The wider picture is that both the main parties suffered a loss of support. So did the Greens. The Liberals lost 19 percentage points of the primary vote compared to the previous election. Labor lost six percentage points. The Greens lost six too. In proportionate terms, they all lost about a third of their share of the vote. In that sense, the result was equally bad for all. Labor's Wentworth candidate, Tim Murray, did not fare well in the byelection either. Credit:Peter Rae So when the people of Wentworth abandoned the Liberals, they went not to the alternative governing party, Labor. The ALP didn't run very hard in the seat, content to see an independent win so long as they could see the Liberals lose. Yet it should be no comfort to Labor that it polled a dismal 11.5 per cent of the primary vote. But, if anything, it should be even more troubling for the Greens. The biggest policy concerns in Wentworth were climate change and asylum seekers. These are the Greens' signature issues. The election was apparently tailor-made for them. Why didn't people turn to the Greens either? The meta-trend in Australian politics is a revulsion with the political establishment and it may be that the voters are now including the Greens in that category. The reason for the Wentworth byelection was, of course, the resignation of the local member, Malcolm Turnbull. And the reason he resigned was, of course, that his party had just torn him down from the leadership prematurely and without any plausible explanation. He had long promised to quit Parliament if he lost the leadership; he kept his promise. Illustration: Jim Pavlidis Credit: So the people of Wentworth would be entirely justified in turning angrily away from the Liberals. But in disgust at the destruction of another prime minister in an internal coup, they turned away from all the major parties to embrace an independent, Kerryn Phelps. This effect would be called the "category killer" in retail parlance. The pointless removal of a prime minister at the hands of his own party didn't just kill his party's brand with the consumer. It killed all the brands in the category of established politics. At the national level - not just in Wentworth - Labor's share of the vote is not significantly better than it was before the Liberals dispatched Turnbull. Any movement in the polls is within their margins of error. How is it that the Liberals can behave badly and Labor not benefit? Because the voters judge them as being as bad as each other. Mainstream politics is a dying category, offering new opportunities to the rising category of independents. Wentworth voters flocked to Kerryn Phelps. Credit:Chris Pavlich Or, as the eagle expert Brinker describes the scene after he approaches a pair of crashed eagles on the ground, "All of a sudden, this human comes up and they say, 'Uh oh, I have to get out of here.'" The human in this political parallel, in contrast to the angry, squawking, combat-obsessed wildlife, is Kerryn Phelps. The former head of the Australian Medical Association and deputy lord mayor of Sydney is an unusually strong local candidate. But Phelps is not unique. Strikingly, she is now the third independent with small "l" liberal policies to take a once-safe seat from the Liberal Party. Cathy McGowan beat Sophie Mirabella to take the Victorian seat of Indi in 2013. Rebekha Sharkie beat Georgina Downer to take the South Australian seat of Mayo this year. Together the trio will now make up half the crossbench in the House of Representatives. Perhaps it's coincidence that all three are women. Perhaps not. The Phelps win will encourage more independents to enter the contest. The times will suit them. The people want problems solved. Not political parlour games. What do the main parties seem to specialise in? Ostentatious fighting and pointless partisan posturing. The political parties are acting like bald eagles locked in combat, falling towards earth. Credit:Alamy A research paper on bald eagles' fighting behaviour points out that "a feature of feeding eagles is a high rate of display" writes scientist Andrew Hansen of Oak Ridge National Laboratory. "The function of the stereotypic postures and calls is not known". And, increasingly, the main parties indulge themselves in frenzied contests for the leadership. This week was a dismal reminder. Kevin Rudd and Julia Gillard paraded through Parliament House in succession, even as Tony Abbott led angry recriminations against Turnbull. It was a reminder of the fact that neither of the two parties of government has allowed one of its own prime ministers to serve a full term since John Howard. An "intriguing aspect" of bald eagle behaviour is the "high frequency of turnover among food owners", says Hansen. "Even the most aggressive pirates, after winning food, are themselves soon displaced." Kerryn Phelps joins crossbench MPs Andrew Wilkie, Cathy McGowan, Adam Bandt, Rebekha Sharkie and Bob Katter at Parliament on Thursday. Credit:Alex Ellinghausen And, of course, it's all pointless bickering if it ends in a death spiral for all concerned. The Greens haven't had a comparable churn of leadership change, so why should they suffer from the same perception? Perhaps the voters have noticed that the Greens have often favoured parlour games over problem solving, too. The standout example is climate change. If the Greens had supported the Rudd government's emissions trading scheme, it could have been functioning to efficiently reduce carbon emissions for a decade by now, as Rudd likes to remind us. But the Greens demanded higher ambition or nothing, and ended up with nothing. Loading The other category that suffers is the broad category known as democracy. The Australian Values Study, conducted by the Australian National University's Centre for Social Research and Methods, last week reported: "Australians are increasingly attracted to the idea of having a strong leader who does not have to bother with Parliament and elections, as trust in political parties and national institutions continues to drop." Fully one-third of Australians surveyed for the study said that it would be good or very good to have an authoritarian style of leader. Australians aged 50 and older overwhelmingly think such a system is a bad idea, but young people are more supportive, reports the lead researcher, Jill Sheppard. A nondescript blue bag left in the home of a Queensland woman by someone she thought she could trust turned out to contain horrific evidence of the abuse of her little girl. In the early 2000s, Jason Daron Mizner became involved with a Gold Coast woman for the express purpose of gaining access to her two-year-old daughter, a Brisbane court was told. When he had gained the woman's trust, he raped her toddler several times over three months, filming the assaults, with the tape of the final assault lasting nearly an hour. The Brisbane District Court was told he was meticulous about ensuring the girl was not physically injured during the assault so he would not raise suspicions. Then he went to Thailand where he became involved with a local woman before raping her two-year-old daughter, was caught and jailed. Troy Cordingley made a discovery no parent should have to make. He was searching for his missing daughter on a remote beach in north Queensland when he came across her lifeless body in the dunes. Troy Cordingley told Nine News he found his daughter's body on Monday morning in the dunes at Wangetti Beach, close to 40 kilometres north of Cairns, after she did not come home on Sunday. Toyah Cordingley with her father Troy. Credit:Facebook Ms Cordingley's stepfather Darren Gardiner also revealed on Facebook his partner Vanessa, the victim's mother, found the dog Toyah had been walking with on the beach when she died. Mr Gardiner said he was in Papua New Guinea when Ms Cordingley disappeared and was found dead. A man has died after a suspected medical episode while arguing with a relative outside a Joondalup home in the early hours of Friday morning. The incident started when a woman living at the Manapouri Meander home called the man, understood to be in his 30s, and asked him to come over to collect his brother. Police are investigating the incident that may have lead to a man being wounded. The woman said he was acting erratically, and he was trying to break into the home. The man successfully jumped the woman's back fence, and his brother arrived soon after to intervene. The plumbing community have rallied to support the grieving family of a young Perth man tragically killed in a workplace accident last week, raising more than $26,000 in two days. Ryan Duffus, 26, drowned on October 17 when the trench he was working in at a Mosman Park construction site filled suddenly with water and mud. The plumbing community have rallied to support the family of Ryan Duffus Credit:GoFundMe In the wake of his sudden death, his employer, Vivian Plumbing, and the Master Plumbers and Gasfitters Association of WA has set up a fundraising page to help pay for his funeral expenses and other costs. In less than two days the page exceeded its fundraising goal of $20,000 with more than 185 people donating $26,000 by Friday morning. I've spent the week happily playing a game of my own invention. It's called Let's Shock a Millennial and it involves describing the Australia of my childhood. Sometimes it's hard to know where to start with the sexism, racism, homophobia or just the cars that always broke down. Sometimes, I start with the homophobia. I tell people about a 1974 Melbourne court case in which a homosexual couple, John and Lindsay, escaped jail, but only if they agreed to move to South Australia the only place in Australia where being gay was not a crime. The "smashed avo breakfast" a metaphor for modern Australia and its myriad pleasures. Credit:Chris Hopkins Or I tell them that women needed the signed permission of their husband before leaving the country, a law in place until the passing of the Sex Discrimination Act in 1984. Or I describe how drink-driving was commonplace. Well, more than commonplace, in a way, it was compulsory, with Sunday drinks only available to "bona fide travellers", those who'd driven from the town up the road and who, after a few hours drinking, would drive home, swerving to avoid those conducting the same operation in reverse. The Morrison government has started backtracking on a proposed defence industry agreement with Saudi Arabia following the shock killing of journalist Jamal Khashoggi, with the idea now firmly on the backburner. As Saudi authorities reportedly changed their tune again this time to concede Khashoggi's killing inside the Saudi consulate in Istanbul was likely premeditated Canberra has come under pressure to tangibly rebuke the kingdom. Defence Minister Christopher Pyne had pursued deeper industry ties with Riyadh, but on Friday a spokeswoman told Fairfax Media the talks were preliminary and of low priority. A spokeswoman for Defence Minister Christoper Pyne said any future export applications to Saudi Arabia would be assessed with regard to the "deplorable" events of this month. Credit:Alex Ellinghausen "Discussions regarding the defence industry memorandum of understanding are only in their early stages, and it is not a high priority at this time," Mr Pyne's spokeswoman said. A national system to simplify power bills will come into force after states agreed to a new regulated and more consistent pricing system. State energy ministers gathered in Sydney on Friday with government bodies at the Council of Australian Governments Energy Council to discuss the setting of new power price points, energy reform and potential industry emissions reduction targets. Energy Minister Angus Taylor pushed for a new reference point to compare both standing and market offers for power bills. Credit:Alex Ellinghausen One of the key components of the new system will be a default offer, launched by the government on Tuesday, which aims to set a standard regulated price, better allowing transparency on what consumers are being charged for electricity. This could potentially save households in NSW, Queensland and South Australia up to $800 a year off their power bills, although these benefits would not apply in other states and territories, where there is already a regulated price. During COAG, it was also agreed that energy companies would offer a reference or comparison price against which standing and discount offers could be measured against. The Prime Minister has put Labor in an invidious position. Before the Wentworth by-election he dangled the prospect of allowing refugees from Manus and Nauru to settle in New Zealand. Afterwards, he rejected a compromise that could have made this happen and reverted to an all or nothing demand: Labor must support the bill banning all offshore refugees from ever coming to Australia, no matter where they end up. This is bad legislation, but we also face an emergency. Too much time has already been wasted and too many lives lost or damaged. Labor must break the political deadlock to allow the New Zealand option to proceed. Even then, resettlement wont happen overnight. If work began tomorrow, perhaps some refugees might reach New Zealand by Christmas. There must be no more delays. Even if an agreement to send refugees from Manus and Nauru was struck soon, resettlement wont happen overnight. Credit:AAP But we shouldnt fool ourselves that this would end the emergency. New Zealands longstanding offer would only assist 150 refugees each year. All of the 1036 refugees on Manus and Nauru need a permanent resolution to their plight. A further 600 people from Manus and Nauru are in Australia on temporary transfers for medical reasons a third of them children. There is little prospect that they will be sent back to the Pacific, even though home affairs secretary Michael Pezzullo told Senate estimates that theyre expected to return when treatment ends. As Pezzullo also said, most who come to Australia temporarily are immediately joined to High Court proceedings, which prevent their removal. NSW Opposition Leader Luke Foley has claimed that recent Liberal byelection losses, including the loss last weekend in Wentworth, are behind a concerted campaign to "smear" him. As Mr Foley's leadership hangs in the balance amid harassment allegations, the Opposition leader said it was "no coincidence" that after the Wagga Wagga and Wentworth byelection losses, the state and federal governments "were working together" to smear a Labor leader. NSW Opposition Leader Luke Foley denies claims that he acted inappropriately toward an ABC journalist. Credit:Peter Rae His comments came in response to Tasmanian senator Eric Abetz tabling a series of questions to the federal Minister for Communications, Mitch Fifield, about an ABC investigation into the allegations. The public broadcaster has launched an investigation into claims that one of its female reporters was harassed at a CBD bar by Mr Foley in late 2016 after a NSW press gallery Christmas party. Istanbul: The fiancee of slain Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi said on Friday he assumed Saudi authorities would not give him problems or arrest him in Turkey, though he was concerned tensions would arise when he visited the consulate in Istanbul. In an interview with Turkish broadcaster Haberturk, Hatice Cengiz said Khashoggi had not wanted to go to the Saudi consulate, where he was killed shortly after entering it on October 2. The interview came as Khashoggi's son, Salah, left Saudi Arabia, bound for the US, after the kingdom revoked a travel ban. The murder of Khashoggi, a Washington Post columnist and US resident, has spiralled into a crisis for Saudi Arabia and its powerful young ruler, Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman. Washington: The eldest son of murdered Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi has arrived in Washington with his family from Saudi Arabia, according to two sources close to the family, after US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo pushed for his return. Salah Khashoggi, who holds dual US-Saudi citizenship and had thus far been under a travel ban, left Saudi Arabia on Wednesday. Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, right, shakes hands with Salah Khashoggi, son of Jamal Khashoggi. Credit:AP He and his family joined his mother and his three siblings in Washington, the sources said. Several hours after their arrival, the State Department said Pompeo had told Saudi leaders in Riyadh earlier this month "he wanted Salah Khashoggi returned to the United States". Washington/New York: Federal agents searched a US mail facility near Miami on Thursday night in the race to find who sent 10 pipe bombs to prominent Democrats and critics of US President Donald Trump as leads pointed to Florida as the packages' possible origin. Investigators treated the devices as "live" explosives, not a hoax, said James O'Neill, the police commissioner of New York City, where two of the packages have turned up since Wednesday. Police presence outside the US Post Office Royal Palm Processing and Distribution Centre in in Opa-Locka, Florida. Credit:AP A federal law enforcement source told Reuters the devices were thought to have been fashioned from bomb-making designs widely available on the internet. Investigators believe the packages, which were intercepted before reaching their intended recipients, went through the US Postal Service at some point, that source said. None detonated and no one has been hurt. Tbilisi: US National Security Advisor John Bolton said on Friday that the United States has invited Russian President Vladimir Putin to Washington. It was not immediately clear if Putin had accepted the invitation. US President Donald Trump meets with Russian President Vladimir Putin at the G20 Summit in Hamburg in July 2017. Credit:AP Putin and Trump have met several times on the sidelines of multilateral gatherings, but had only one bilateral summit, in the Finnish capital in July. After that encounter, Trump was accused by opponents, and even some members of his own Republican Party, of failing to stand up to the Russian leader. Great Bay:--- Minister of Justice, Cornelius De Weever recently met with the Director of the Coast Guard P.J. de Vin to discuss the detachment of the duration of the initial education of two years to the legal maximum of five years. This discussion point was placed on the agenda of the yearly Coast Guard Commission meeting of October 18, 2018. The Coast Guard Commission has a presidium where the Kingdom countries in the Caribbean are equally represented. The presidium takes care of policies, management, and resources. The presidium is also in charge of the general policy plans and the budget for the Coast Guard. Personnel policies as is the case here needs to be discussed within the presidium because the regulation of the legal position of the Coast Guard throughout the Dutch Caribbean has to be equal. The Coast Guard is responsible for the recruitment and training of the personnel and wants to get as much profit as possible from it, because the incoming staff is trained for two years, and therefore withstands a period of no more than three years of operational employability. The Coast Guard wishes to separate the duration of training from the duration of employment. Minister De Weever in the meantime has dispatched a letter to the Director of the Coastguard, Mr. Vin informing him that St. Maarten will have the incoming personnel not be made available to the Coast Guard for five years, but for a total of seven years which will include two years for vocational training and five years for operational employability. In addition, the minister has already created the possibility that after the seven years the officer can be transferred to the police, immigration, and customs to further their career On St. Maarten, Aruba and Curacao employees are made available to the Coast Guard with the maximum duration of their temporary employment contracts limited to five years, including the basic vocational training, based on the regulations of these countries. The Bottom:--- The Cft has praised Saba during its visit on October 23rd with the timely submission of the budget documents and on continuing good financial management. Discussions were held with the Executive Council and the Island Council about the reconstruction projects, the 2017 financial statements, the 2019 draft budget, and the financial management. The Board of financial supervision Bonaire, Sint Eustatius and Saba (Cft) has recently issued its advice on the 2019 draft budget. Although this draft budget complies with legal requirements, Saba is not entitled to reserve funds for the mandatory repayment of loans. The repayment will be made out of the available liquidity assets, which sufficiently allows for this purpose. Saba has submitted its financial statements for 2017 on time. The financial statements display a positive result of approximately USD 1.2 million and are for the fourth year in a row provided with an unqualified auditors statement. Cft chairman Raymond Gradus: Saba knows how to maintain its financial management at the right level. At the moment the execution of the 2018 budget does not show any particularities. During the visit of the Cft to Saba, the renovation of the airport was examined and the plans for the reconstruction and expansion of the seaport were discussed. The Dutch government has made substantial sums available for these projects as well as for other ones. This visit was also the first one of Mr. Henk Kamp. Mr. Kamp succeeded Ms. Sybilla Dekker on July 1st. As of July 1st, 2018 the Cft BES consists of chairman Raymond Gradus, member upon proposal of the BES Herbert Domacasse and member upon proposal the Netherlands Henk Kamp. Digital money transfer service Azimo expands its European operations with new Amsterdam office LONDON, October 24th 2018: Azimo, the leading European digital money transfer service, has announced the further expansion of its operations in Europe as part of its rapid growth. The company has opened a new office in Amsterdam, as a base to help it grow its share of the global cross-border payments market. From Europe, cross-border payments market is over EUR 1 trillion. Azimo joins a number of other UK financial technology, \fintechs\ that have established a presence in the Dutch capital. Commenting on the expansion, Michael Kent, CEO of Azimo, said: \The Netherlands has a thriving fintech sector with an ecosystem that makes it easier to grow our European business than anywhere else outside London. Amsterdam is a great capital that attracts talent from all over the world, while the Dutch Central bank is a strong regulator that is receptive to innovation and new business models and already supervises numerous payments institutions. It is an excellent place for us to continue our expansion in Europe.\ The firm has its headquarters in London and its research and development operations in Krakow in Poland. The Amsterdam office will grow as the business in Europe continues to scale. The company enables payments in more than 80 currencies to more than 200 countries and territories, reaching more than 5 billion potential customers. It offers a wide variety of pay-out methods, including cash pick-up, bank deposit and payment into a mobile wallet. Azimo\-\-s services have more than 1.5 million registered customers globally. UltraSoC and ResilTech partner to further functional safety in automotive systems CAMBRIDGE, UK 25 October 2018 UltraSoC and ResilTech today announced a collaboration that brings together their expertise and technologies to further the functional safety compliance of automotive systems, focusing particularly on the ISO26262 standard. UltraSoC\-\-s embedded analytics technology provides a powerful platform for developers who need to verify and validate the security and functional safety of their products, and to incorporate hardware-supported safety and security features such as anomaly detection and prevention of malicious intrusion. UltraSoC\-\-s approach is well matched with ResilTech\-\-s significant experience in the design and validation of high integrity critical systems and in supporting companies to deliver products compliant to the most challenging safety standards, particularly for automotive applications. By working together, the two companies will dramatically simplify and improve designers\-\- understanding, deployment, and compliance with ISO26262 and other automotive safety standards. The collaboration will also assist in defining and supporting implementation of security requirements in line with the SAE J3061 automotive cybersecurity standard, especially when it is necessary to evaluate and assess trade-offs between safety and security. J3061 assigns security levels to subsystems with different degrees of criticality. The standard calls for the monitoring and control of security though the entire product lifecycle from development and into usage in the field including the ability to monitor incidents and attempts to penetrate the system and to report such events. UltraSoC\-\-s embedded analytics improves verification and validation during automotive system development; and it can be used in deployed products to spot errors, both systemic and random, enabling a new level of safety and security functionality, and allowing in-field system health monitoring and advanced forensics. UltraSoC\-\-s analytics infrastructure works in real-time, is independent of the main system and is non-intrusive. Embedded analytics also provides information and analysis, allowing designers to more easily satisfy the functional safety, risk assessment, testing, reporting and traceability requirements of standards such as ISO26262, SAE J3061, IEC 61508, EN50126/8/9 and CE 402/2013. ResilTech SRL specializes in resilient computing for critical systems including automotive applications. It supports designers and companies developing hardware and/or software architectures and provides software components for safety relevant applications to be embedded at component or at system level. The company also holds a solid background in product and system verification and validation according to latest quality, safety and security standards. UltraSoC\-\-s architecture includes features specifically optimized for improving automotive safety and security, including a lock-step monitor which checks for consistency between redundant modules; and Bare Metal Security(R) (BMS), giving a hardware-based level of security \below the operating system\. BMS is extremely difficult for an attacker to detect or subvert, and supports the requirements of SAE J3061. Aileen Smith, UltraSoC\-\-s Chief Strategy Officer, commented: \We are very happy to be working with ResilTech, a company that lives and breathes functional safety. We are increasingly seeing how important UltraSoC\-\-s embedded insights can be in monitoring disparate elements of complex, safety-critical systems such as those in automotive designs. We see tremendous value in working alongside the team at ResilTech which itself collaborates closely with organizations around the world to help improve functional safety and standards compliance.\ Rosaria Esposito, CEO, ResilTech, added: \UltraSoC has a thorough understanding of the importance of functional safety and the complexities of compliance to standards such as ISO26262. Its embedded analytics infrastructure offers invaluable insights into the workings and interaction of the various elements of a safety-critical system. We look forward to working closely with the team at UltraSoC to bring our combined experience and tools to further industry understanding, and to support automotive system developers.\ As part of their collaboration, ResilTech and UltraSoC will be giving a joint demonstration and presentation at the RISC-V Summit taking place in Santa Clara from 3-6 December. Read more about UltraSoC\-\-s perspectives on ISO26262 in the recently updated white paper, available to download via this link: The Case for embedded analytics in ISO26262 and automotive. Learn more about ResilTech here http://www.resiltech.com/ Panasonic\-\-s Popular and Toughest Rugged Android Handheld Just Gets Better and Better BRACKNELL, UK. 25th October 2018 Panasonic today announced the latest version of its premium rugged handheld device with integrated angled barcode reader for mobile workers. With improved rugged capabilities, a powerful performance boost, world-leading communication capabilities and improved 4.7-inch screen visibility, this second-generation Panasonic TOUGHBOOK FZ-N1 Android device could become the new market leader. The latest Panasonic TOUGHBOOK FZ-N1 handheld builds on the success of the first-generation device launched in 2016, which has already become a firm favourite in the postal, logistics and food delivery markets across Europe. Additional markets include emergency services, utilities and the airline industry for scanning tickets and boarding passengers. With its integrated angled rear barcode reader to protect against repetitive strain and increase productivity, the device can be easily held and operated in one hand while seeing on the display what item has been scanned. The 2nd generation will be available in two models: a new WiFi only model for warehouse and location-based mobile workforces and a combined 4G + WiFi model for mobile workforces travelling from location to location. The slim (16.3mm) and lightweight (274g) device is easy to use for telephone calls and includes 3 mics with superior noise suppression technology and dual front speakers delivering in total up to 100 dBA for sound clarity in a noisy environment. Improved experience The 4.7\ HD capacitive multi-touch daylight readable display is designed for use by workers in bright sunlight or in the rain and those wearing gloves. The device can also be used with an optional Active Pen, for more accurate signature recording and recognition capabilities. More powerful The latest generation device is more flexible, futureproofed and more powerful than ever. It runs the Android 8.1 Oreo operating system with upgrade path to Android 9.0 (Pie). It is equipped with the latest Qualcomm Octa Core processor with an increased 3GB of RAM memory and 32GB of Flash storage, double the size of the first generation. Battery life has been extended from 8 to 12 hours to cater for longer working shifts. The ability to warm swap batteries has been maintained to prevent work disruption during longer operation. Its communication capabilities are unrivalled in the rugged handheld market being one of the first devices to offer Bluetooth 5.0 to deliver faster data exchange or communicate over longer distances. It also supports fast roaming WiFi standards to allow warehouse and office workers to move quickly from one area to another without losing connectivity. There is an 8MP rear and 5MP front camera for document capture and webcam use, as well as a micro USB port, micro SDXC card slot and dual nano SIM slots. Tougher than ever The fully rugged device is also tougher than ever, tested to a MIL-STD-810G certified drop height of 2.1m (up from 1.8m). For those working in cold temperatures, such as frozen and chilled food delivery drivers, the operational temperature range of the device has also been extended from -20? to +50?C.* Jan Kaempfer, General Manager of Marketing for Panasonic Computer Product Solutions, said: \In just a short time the Panasonic TOUGHBOOK FZ-N1 has had an impact on the premium rugged handheld market. It\-\-s ergonomic, yet rugged design, and wide-ranging functionality have made it a favourite of the outside mobile worker. This latest upgrade has made that device tougher, more powerful and even more user-friendly in a future-proofed product that buyers can be confident will still be in use for many years to come. Alongside our recently launched Panasonic TOUGHBOOK FZ-T1 Android handheld device, which is more suited to the indoor mobile worker, and our wider range of rugged notebook, tablet and handheld devices, we should be the first port of call for any mobile device buyers looking for versatile, long-lasting and business-ready workforce solutions.\ The Panasonic TOUGHBOOK FZ-N1 is available with a range of support accessories, including a hand strap, cradle, holster, extended battery and charging cradle stand. The Panasonic TOUGHBOOK FZ-N1 handheld also has its own vehicle docking solution, designed in-house by the Panasonic Global Docking Solutions team. The dock has been ergonomically designed using composite materials for the perfect combination of light weight and durability, and allows for single-handed docking and release. Management and Security For ease of management and security, the device is compliant with Panasonic COMPASS (Complete Android Security and Services) 2.0. Panasonic COMPASS offers everything businesses need to securely deploy and manage their Panasonic rugged Android devices. It is designed to take advantage of the flexibility offered by an Android operating system with the reassurance that Panasonic?s devices are business-ready for applications, management and security. Also, the FZ-N1 is optimized to run the MCL platform. MCL is an integrated low code mobility platform which can turn the device into an edge solution. Availability The WiFi only version of the Panasonic TOUGHBOOK FZ-N1 handheld will be available from November 2018, with pricing starting at GBP 1,696 plus tax. The combined WiFi and 4G model will be available from January 2019 priced at GBP 1,696 plus tax. Both devices will be available Europe-wide and come with a standard 3-year warranty. * Product or application booting can dependent upon the battery charge level. Terrax 2018 Summer Exploration program continues to expand Northbelt Target Posted by Publisher Internet TerraX Minerals Inc. (TSX-V: TXR; Frankfurt: TX0; OTC Pink: TRXXF http://www.commodity-tv.net/c/search_adv/?v=297763 ) is pleased to announce further assay results from the Company?s 2018 summer field program on the Yellowknife City Gold (YCG) project. A total of 262 samples were taken on the company?s Northbelt target which represents the possible extension of Con-Giant trend and constitutes the core focus area. David Suda, President and CEO stated: ?There is considerable high-grade gold endowment within several of our identified targets. The goal at YCG is to find the source of the high-grade on surface which we believe trends from the nearby Con and Giant mines and exists within other targets in the district. The work we did this summer is giving us considerable resolution in our targeting and will be summarized this fall prior to 2019 exploration plans.? Preliminary surface exploration in the northwestern extension of the geology recognized to contain the extension of the Con-Giant gold system has yielded positive results. This area contains multiple sub-parallel gold structures, including the Oro Shear, recognized from exploration dating back to the 1930s. TerraX carried out mapping and prospecting along these gold bearing structures, including grab rock samples. A map showing the location and results can be seen here. This work resulted in: TerraX has also acquired detailed geological maps, channel sampling results, and drill hole logs and assay results from an area southwest of the sampling at Oro, specifically on the high grade Shear 17/18 target (news release August 4, 2015). This work dates from the 1940s and is currently being integrated into our project database. TerraX believes the data accurately reflects past exploration and it will be used to direct further exploration in the area. ?? Assays reported today total 262 samples with gold grades ranging from nil to 63 g/t Au. It should be noted that, due to their selective nature, assay results from grab samples may not be indicative of the overall grade and extent of mineralization on the subject area. Sampling included insertion of certified standards and blanks into the stream of samples for chemical analysis. Samples were prepared at ALS Chemex\-\-s laboratory in Yellowknife and shipped to their Vancouver facility for gold analysis by fire assay and other elements by ICP analysis. ALS is a certified and accredited laboratory service.? The technical information contained in this news release has been approved by Joseph Campbell, Executive Chairman of TerraX, who is a Qualified Person as defined in \National Instrument 43-101, Standards of Disclosure for Mineral Projects. About the Yellowknife City Gold Project The Yellowknife City Gold (\YCG\) project encompasses 780 sq km of contiguous land immediately north, south and east of the City of Yellowknife in the Northwest Territories. Through a series of acquisitions, TerraX controls one of the six major high-grade gold camps in Canada. Being within 10 km of the City of Yellowknife, the YCG is close to vital infrastructure, including all-season roads, air transportation, service providers, hydro-electric power and skilled tradespeople. The YCG lies on the prolific Yellowknife greenstone belt, covering 70 km of strike length along the main mineralized break in the Yellowknife gold district, including the southern and northern extensions of the shear system that hosted the high-grade Con and Giant gold mines. The project area contains multiple shears that are the recognized hosts for gold deposits in the Yellowknife gold district, with innumerable gold showings and recent high-grade drill results that serve to indicate the project\-\-s potential as a world-class gold district.? For more information on the YCG project, please visit our web site at www.terraxminerals.com. This news release contains forward-looking information, which involves known and unknown risks, uncertainties and other factors that may cause actual events to differ materially from current expectation. Important factors including the availability of funds, the results of financing efforts, the completion of due diligence and the results of exploration activities that could cause actual results to differ materially from the Company\-\-s expectations are disclosed in the Company\-\-s documents filed from time to time on SEDAR (see www.sedar.com). Readers are cautioned not to place undue reliance on these forward-looking statements, which speak only as of the date of this press release. The company disclaims any intention or obligation, except to the extent required by law, to update or revise any forward-looking statements, whether as a result of new information, events or otherwise. Most Businesses Not Getting the Most Out of Online Presence Says Web Developer Ollie Brooke from Cloud Concepts, Port Macquarie, NSW. Most Businesses Not Getting the Most Out of Online Presence Says Web Developer Businesses are discovering that they need more than presence on the high street, but Australian SMEs have been slow to get started with building an online presence. People are changing the way they shop, says website designer Oliver (Ollie) Brooke, proprietor of Cloud Concepts, and in Australia, the realisation is only just beginning to dawn among small and medium-sized businesses. But, Ollie warns, just having a website isnt enough. He equates a businesss [website](https://cloudconcepts.com.au/our-work.html) to its shopfront: You maintain your shopfront, he says, you put new stock in the window for passers-by to see. You show which brands you can supply, and you keep it looking fresh because you want to attract attention. You need to do something like that with your website too. Ollies shopfront analogy may be nearer the mark than it may seem. Peoples shopping habits no longer include a leisurely stroll down the shopping street and the willingness to visit several stores before finding what they need. Instead, [up to 81 percent of people](https://www.adweek.com/digital/81-shoppers-conduct-online-research-making-purchase-infographic/) will do an online search before they head out on a shopping expedition. Clearly, it makes sense to have a website. But, says Ollie, it doesnt end there. Just because you have a website doesnt mean youve arrived. And if you thought your prospective customers were the only ones to win over, youre mistaken. Search engines are smart. Theyre programmed to give users what they want, and if you arent sending them the right signals, your business wont feature in search. A lot of people think there are a bunch of tricks they should be using, says Ollie, but there isnt a magic formula. Instead, it comes down to being [user-friendly](https://cloudconcepts.com.au/testimonials.html), relevant, local, and active. These are the three things that search engines are looking for, but a lot of businesses are missing the point. When it comes to making the most of an online presence, Ollie says that activity and user friendliness are among the biggest stumbling blocks. Search engines dont want to direct users to sites they cant navigate. Mobile browsing is huge, and mobile friendliness is a criterion if you dont want to end up with a website that is, to all intents and purposes, invisible. Search engines also dont want to direct users to businesses that have already closed their doors. A dead website where nothing is ever updated tells search engines your business might be dead too, explains Ollie. You do need to add fresh content from time to time, otherwise you arent going to feature when people plan their shopping trips. Ollie says that keeping a website current doesnt need to take a lot of time but small businesses are inclined to overlook basics like checking analytics and they rarely add fresh content. Just having a website is a good start, but you cant leave it at that and expect it to be an effective marketing vehicle. Theres no rule of thumb that works for everyone. Ollie recommends that businesses work with experts who will be able to advise them on how to make an impact and keep on doing so. People shop differently these days, and we need to move with the times. For a brick and mortar store, you talk to property agents. For your online presence, your web designer is the specialist you need in your corner. Ollie Brooke is director of a full-service website design company, Cloud Concepts. He applies his philosophy of putting customer convenience first to the websites he designs. If youd like to contact Ollie Brooke about website design or learn more about [Great Websites For Small Businesses](https://cloudconcepts.com.au/) visit his website or call +61432 362 637. Written & Syndicated by [Baxton Media](https://baxtonmedia.me). Charleston, SC (29403) Today Partly cloudy. Morning high of 62F with temps falling to near 50. Winds NNE at 10 to 20 mph.. Tonight Mainly clear skies. Low 41F. Winds NNE at 10 to 15 mph. Georgetown, SC (29440) Today Partly cloudy. Morning high of 60F with temps falling to near 50. Winds NNE at 10 to 20 mph.. Tonight Clear skies. Low 37F. Winds NE at 5 to 10 mph. The Borexino instrument is nestled deep beneath Italy's Appenine mountains. Flashes of light within its massive detector reveal when neutrinos bang into electrons. By painstakingly compiling data on these neutrino-electron collisions over 10 years, scientists have created one of the most detailed snapshots yet of the sun's fiery heart. Why does the sun shine? Our local star constantly smashes atoms together deep inside its fiery belly to produce its blazing light. But because this internal commotion lies hidden beneath the sun's thick outer layers, scientists have few ways to learn about what goes on at the star's core. But by collecting neutrinos tiny, ghostly particles that barely interact with other matter and so can fly directly out from the suns center researchers have produced one of the most detailed snapshots ever compiled of the sun's mysterious interior. "We're basically staring at the sun in the heart," study co-author Andrea Pocar, a physicist at the University of Massachusetts Amherst, told Live Science. The results, which appeared today (Oct. 24) in the journal Nature, will help solar physicists gain a better understanding of our parent star. [Sun Storms: Incredible Photos of Solar Flares] Gathering neutrinos Researchers created the snapshot using a colossal detector situated at the center of the international Borexino experiment, which sits inside a mountain range in Italy to help shield it from interfering radiation. Every second, 420 billion neutrinos from the sun hit any given postage-stamp-size area of the Earth's surface. However, most of these neutrinos pass through the planet like light rays through a clear window, according to a statement from the collaboration. Borexino takes advantage of the fact that every once in a while, a neutrino has some chance of interacting with an electron. The project's detector consists of 100 tons of an ultrapure substance that produces a tiny flash of light if a neutrino hits one of the instrument's electrons, Pocar said. Surrounding the detector are 2,000 supersensitive cameras that can record the intensity of the light flashes, revealing how much energy the neutrino carried when it smacked into the electron, he added. While most previous solar-neutrino experiments could detect only high-energy neutrinos, Borexino can detect neutrinos with a vast range of energies, providing a better look into the nuclear reactions in the sun's interior, the researchers said. The experiment collected data for 10 years to provide the new, highly precise picture of neutrinos emerging from the sun. Neutrinos serve as excellent probes of the sun's interior, because the nearly intangible particles stream directly out from the core at the speed of light, Pocar said. Photons, or light particles, by contrast, get quickly absorbed and then re-emitted by atoms in the dense solar center. This sends the particles on a zigzagging path out of sun's center that can take thousands of years, said Pocar. Borexino's results will provide valuable data for scientists making models of the sun. The snapshot could, for instance, help determine the precise amounts of relatively heavy elements such as carbon, nitrogen and oxygen in the sun's center, said Pocar, a problem that still leaves solar physicists scratching their heads. "Red Moon," Kim Stanley Robinson's newest novel, reveals the true perils of human habitation on the moon. Buzz Aldrin in front of the Apollo 11 lunar module. Kim Stanley Robinson drew some inspiration from the Apollo missions for his new book, "Red Moon." (Image credit: Neil Armstrong/NASA) Space.com: What do you hope readers take away from "Red Moon"? I think the main thing I want them to take away from my book "Red Moon" is that China is really interesting and important and nobody understands it and I mean not just Americans, who definitely don't understand it, but even the Chinese people themselves. It's a big, powerful society in rapid flux. It's unstable and dynamic and it's super interesting. That's the first thing. The moon itself I think people will come away with the same sort of feeling I did, that it's small, dangerous, interesting but not important in human affairs. This interview has been edited for length. You can buy "Red Moon" on Amazon.com. Follow Chelsea Gohd on Twitter @chelsea_gohd. Follow us @Spacedotcom, Facebook and Google+. Original article on Space.com. Canadian astronaut David Saint-Jacques gives a presentation about spaceflight to students in Ottawa on Oct. 24, 2018. The Canadian Space Agency said this would be his last visit in Canada before his spaceflight on Expedition 58. OTTAWA Canadian astronaut David Saint-Jacques who witnessed the aborted launch of Expedition 57 two weeks ago in Baikonur, Kazakhstan, and is next on the list to fly on a Soyuz says he is more confident than ever in the Russian technology that carries astronauts to the International Space Station. Saint-Jacques was initially scheduled to fly into space Dec. 20 on Expedition 58; since the abort, his next flight date hasn't been set. Yesterday (Oct. 23) in Washington, NASA Administrator Jim Bridenstine told the National Space Council that he is confident the next Soyuz flight will still be in December, as the Russians are close to finding the cause of the abort that derailed the last crewed launch Oct. 11. "This [abort] has made me feel even more confident about the way the Russians have designed the Soyuz spacecraft. It is very, very robust," Saint-Jacques said while talking with Canadian media at the University of Ottawa, following a science event Wednesday (Oct. 24) for children and teens. [In Photos: Space Station Crew's Harrowing Abort Landing After Soyuz Launch Failure] "Of course, space is hard and things will fail. But it was very, very reassuring to see that with such a badly timed problem at a bad spot, even then, the crew were completely safe, the search and rescue operations were swift, and they were reunited with their families within hours. So kudos to our Russian colleagues for a safe operation." Saint-Jacques added there are teams around the world looking at different launch scenarios to keep the space station crewed. One possibility is that his flight might be launched earlier than originally scheduled, he said, but the crew will be ready. Saint-Jacques said he wrapped up his last training at NASA yesterday (Oct. 24) and is scheduled to fly to Russia later this week to complete final training and qualification exams. The Expedition 58 crew already anticipates changes to the flight manifest, since there are two fewer crew members on board than expected. Since maintenance on the station cannot be skipped, the first thing to suffer will be science experiments; Saint-Jacques said that hours spent on science will decrease. Also, NASA will likely not run any spacewalks unless there are unforeseen circumstances or the agency has a high confidence that a spacewalk is not only necessary during Expedition 58 but will have a high probability of success. In Canada, this space station flight is quickly coming under national attention as the launch date approaches. In past months, larger and larger groups of reporters have shown up at routine astronaut presentations such as this one, to learn more about Saint-Jacques' work in space. The Canadian Space Agency said this will be Saint-Jacques' last visit to Canada before spaceflight. Flight opportunities are rare in this country because Canada's space station contribution (principally, in the form of robotics such as the Canadarm2 and Dextre) represents 2.3 percent of the international partnership. This means Canada gets only occasional flight slots; the last flight for a Canadian was in 2012-13, during which Chris Hadfield took command of Expedition 35. Canadian astronaut David Saint-Jacques (right) speaks with reporters in Ottawa on Oct. 24, 2018, along with Navdeep Bains, Canada's minister of innovation, science and economic development. (Image credit: Elizabeth Howell/Space.com) Let's talk science Saint-Jacques again discussed the abort publicly in two separate presentations to elementary and high school students in Ottawa. "I know the rocket ride will be exciting," he said to the younger students. "I hope,not too exciting," he added, as the adults in the audience roared with laughter. Later on, with the high school students, Saint-Jacques briefly explained that an abort happened two weeks ago due to a problem with the rocket boosters. "But for me, they're not going to do that. They're going to bring us to orbit," he quipped amid giggles from the students. Besides talking about space exploration with the student groups, Saint-Jacques was in Ottawa to launch a new science experiment that he will perform on the space station, along with youth on the ground. The national science nonprofit Let's Talk Science created a programmable chip that allows students to measure the temperature, humidity and carbon dioxide concentration in their classrooms. Saint-Jacques will take his own measurements in orbit; all will be shared on a Lets Talk Science-affiliated national database at http://explorecuriocity.org. This is one of several initiatives that Let's Talk Science will do in association with Saint-Jacques' flight. Last year, the organization launched Little Inventors, an initiative encouraging students to design fanciful experiments for space station use. While speaking with the high school students, Saint-Jacques explained his personal journey to space from elementary school student, to doctor, to his training as an astronaut. He advised the students to think of doing something bold with their lives, even if they don't end up where they expected. The observation was apt given the uncertainty surrounding his flight date. "If you have a dream, and set it in motion, something happens and your life unfolds," he said, adding, "just don't be obsessed with the end result." Follow us on Twitter @Spacedotcom and on Facebook. Original article on Space.com. The "Ghost of Cassiopeia," a slowly eroding cloud of gas and dust, forms a glimmering haze in this eerie image from the Hubble Space Telescope. The nebula, called IC 63, drifts 550 light-years from Earth in the constellation Cassiopeia. Its ethereal shape is influenced from afar by the fiercely shining variable star called Gamma Cassiopeiae. Though the star is several light-years from the nebula, it makes its powerful presence felt with blasts of radiation, according to a statement from the European Space Agency. This ghostly nebula IC 63, about 550 light-years from Earth, emits hydrogen-alpha radiation and also reflects the cool blue light of the powerful nearby star Gamma Cassiopeiae. The nebula is about 0.31 light-years tall and 0.23 light-years wide. (Image credit: ESA/Hubble/NASA) The blue-white subgiant star has 19 times the sun's mass and can reach 65,000 times the sun's brightness as it rotates at 1 million miles (1.6 million kilometers) per hour, which is more than 200 times the speed of the sun's rotation, according to the statement. It's surrounded by a disk of material that periodically blasts with material during its furious spin, making the star temporarily blaze brighter in the northern night sky. Gamma Cassiopeiae contributes in two different ways to the nebula's creepy color palette. First, ultraviolet radiation from the star makes its way to the nebula, energizing its hydrogen molecules and prompting them to release a deep-red glow of hydrogen-alpha light. And second, light from the star reflects off the nebula's dust, glowing a cool blue. The nebulous region near the bright star Gamma Cassiopeiae, including the "Ghost of Cassiopeia," IC 63. (Image credit: ESA/Hubble/NASA/Digitized Sky Survey 2/Acknowledgement: Davide de Martin) Looking from Earth, the entire region of nebulas under Gamma Cassiopeiae's influence can be seen in autumn and winter from the Northern Hemisphere, but the area is very dim, and IC 63 is just a small part of it. This view from Hubble, looking from above Earth's atmosphere, gives "possibly the most detailed image that has ever been taken of IC 63," ESA officials said in the statement. And the ultraviolet light that contributes to the nebula's ghostly glow will be its undoing, too the radiation is slowly dissipating the nebula from light-years away, according to the statement. Someday, there may be nothing left at all. Email Sarah Lewin at slewin@space.com or follow her @SarahExplains. Follow us on Twitter @Spacedotcom and on Facebook. Original article on Space.com. Directed by Stacey K. Black Written by Veronica West and Sarah Kucserka In what may be the most terrifying episode yet, Bull defends a doctor accused of murder, who claims hes never even met the victim. In and of itself, this is unremarkable in a crime show. After all, most people claim their innocence when accused of anything, much less murder. The problem lies in the twist. In most procedurals, there is an abundance of circumstantial evidence while the detectives look for something more concrete. However, here, there is zero circumstantial evidence against Dr. Harper. Hes a suburban dad and well-respected Midtown pediatrician. He has no police record and nothing ties him to the dead Bronx drug dealer. Nothing except his DNA. Its a 100% match to tissue found under the victims nails. Case closed? The team must find a viable alternative explanation for why their clients DNA was found on the victim or lose the trial because in a post-CSI world, a vast majority of people believe that DNA is the ultimate evidence.What follows is an interesting philosophical debate. Is science or instinct more reliable, more valuable? Can DNA ever be misinterpreted? Is it possible for science to send an innocent man to jail or is that man not as innocent as first impressions make him seem? Bull is looking for jurors who go with their gut when making decisions, and the show asks the same of its audience. It makes its case by citing examples of when DNA evidence got it wrong or at least was misinterpreted. In one case, DNA is linked to multiple crimes throughout Europe. Turns out that DNA belongs to a Latvian woman who works in a cotton swab factory. Her DNA gets mixed in with a batch of swabs that forensic investigators are using in their investigations. Instead of having a mass murderer on their hands, they have some questionable factory sanitary procedures. Ew. Danny also researches DNA migration, which simply says that our DNA is everywhere through the millions of skin cells we shed. Those cells are then transferred to others through the common things we touch. Neither situation is likely to sway a jury though.Things get even more muddled as new circumstantial evidence comes to light. Dr. Harper admits that he had an oxycodone addiction, although he still maintains his innocence. Then the ADA calls his friend and neighbor, Dr. Parsons, to the stand. Although he is reluctant to put his friend in a bad light, Parsons does admit to subscribing opiates to Harper 3 times before cutting him off. He is also forced to corroborate that oxycodone abuse is generally a gateway to heroin addiction. Theres the circumstantial evidence and tie to the victim that the prosecutor was missing. Things get even worse for Harper, when the drug dealers son testifies against him. Lets just say that the outcome looks bleak. So much so that Bull asks for a plea bargain and strongly urges Harper to take it. Its here where the audience is asked to weigh their own beliefs. The story has so far been sympathetic to Dr. Harper, but evidence is piling up. Are first instincts correct or is this a clever tale told by a master manipulator?Frankly, they could have heightened this part of the story more in the writing and acting as well as in the episode placement. You can see both Bull and the lead attorneys growing frustration with the case, but coming on the heels of the Excessive Force episode, it is hard to believe that they would go for a client twist like that again so soon. In the end, what could have been an intriguing unreliable narrator storyline turns more into a cautionary tale on the American justice systems overreliance on DNA and science. It also rushes to a soap opera-ish end that is highly unsatisfactory. An unknown murderous identical twin? Really? That and lab mix-up were the first things that came to mind. I would have liked a bit more ingenuity on the part of the writers. Plus, killing off said twin is over the top. I realize that they want to keep the TAC team the heroes and thus dont want them to be the reason a murderer is free, but I could have done without the wrap-up. Thats what fanfiction is for.The best part of the episode for me is the guest acting of Jeremiah Burkett, who plays Dr. Michael Harper. Its a challenging role because he needs to make the character charming but still come off as a genuine family man, to be competent and smart while still baffled about his circumstances. Like the show itself claims, hes instantly likeable and sells the characters innocence well. This is particularly true when hes confronted with all the evidence against him and realizes that his legacy will no longer be all the kids he helped or his family but the label of murderer . His speech about being a man of science but not being able to believe that science because he knows the truth is hard-hitting and poignant.The red herring in the middle of the episode was fantastic too. I really did expect the Grand Central Station explanation to pan out. I liked the idea that hard work could save the day, especially since it involved Danny and Taylor working together. Color me surprised when he turned out to be a she and to have no bearing on the case at all. I actually think I would have liked this explanation for the DNA transfer better than the identical twin ending.First off, I admit that everything I know about the law, I learned from Law & Order so please comment below if Im wrong, but there are a lot of things about the trial itself that seems off to me. Im not even talking about the magic of TV law where tests come back in an hour and someone can go from crime to indictment to trial in the course of a week. That I expect. Off the cuff lawyering I do not. Im not even sure why the prosecution would take this case to court before thoroughly investigating the situation. What is the rush? I get that DNA evidence is powerful (and the theme is that we shouldnt rely on just one factor), but there are enough significant factors to warrant slowing down. That brings me to the second issue - all the surprise witnesses. Why in the world were they surprises? Either the prosecutor jumped the gun and lucked into the whole prescription addiction thing right when he needed it most or the defense should have had prior notice of the neighbor testifying. Same with the kid. Its hard for me to believe that the defense has adequate time to prepare for a rebuttal when they dont even know about the witness until a few minutes before court is in session. Shouldnt someone have called out the prosecutor for this during the trial? I would have loved to see someone wipe that irritating smirk off his face.Call me an old-fashioned optimist, but Id like to believe that there are still some ethics in the legal system these days and not just a bunch of loopholes where one side out-sleazes the next. TV law, not so much. From Law and Orders winning at all cost prosecutors to How to Get Away with Murders outright illegal actions, its hard to root for any side. In this episode, the prosecution was particularly egregious. Pretending to be a customer of the genetic testing company, while genius, left a very bad taste in my mouth. I love genealogy and originally planned to do a family kit but my mother balked at it. She didnt want her medical information out there and available to be sold off to others. At first that sounded way too conspiracy theory for me, but this episode added a whole new level of sinister. Technology is increasing daily but laws are often years behind it so things like genetic testing do open up a plethora of ways to invade peoples privacy. Lets just say that I dont think Ancestry.com is sponsoring this episode.Best Scene / Best Speech - Dr. Harpers Im me speechBest Character Interaction - Dr. Harper and his wifeBiggest Save - Marissa looking for adoption recordsWorst Decision - Marissa puts the alcohol on the table in front of Bull instead of pouring a glass and removing it from the tableMost Troubling - the police could use those genealogy kits to accuse people of crimesMost Smug / Most Irritating - the ADA who plays fast and loose with the rules and is gleeful about itThe Say What? Award - the lawyer asks for alcohol at a work meeting instead of the drink offered. Who does that?The Facepalm Award - Bull is cyberstalking his newly married ex. Absolutely nothing good can come of this. Stop being creepy.1. Bull: Lets not forget about freewill. Our DNA is not our destiny. We can change it piece by piece, choice by choice, if were strong enough, which you were.2. Bull: You didnt lie to a suspect. You lied to a public corporation. ADA: It has no effect on the legitimacy of the evidence. Benny: It doesnt say a whole hell of a lot about the integrity of the DAs office. Bull: Kind of hard not to wonder what other rules youd be willing to break.3. Benny: She just told you that? Chunk: Im like a human can opener. People spend time with me and they cant help themselves.4. Bull: Words lie. Body language doesnt.5. Benny: You know, just because a person abused a prescription drug, that doesnt make him a killer. Bull: No, the DNA makes him a killer.6. Wife: Hes a pediatrician. He makes kids feel better when theyre sick. He comforts them when theyre scared. Thats who he is.7. Danny: I want you in my lifeboat, baby. WASHINGTON - CIA Director Gina Haspel briefed President Donald Trump on Thursday about her trip this week to Turkey, where she listened to audio purportedly capturing the killing of Jamal Khashoggi, as Saudi Arabia appeared to acknowledge that its agents had murdered the dissident Saudi journalist in a "premeditated" operation. A statement issued by the public prosecutor in Riyadh, citing shared Turkish evidence of premeditation, marked the latest reversal in the Saudi version of events and put the focus directly on the question of who ordered Khashoggi's death. U.S. intelligence officials and lawmakers have said that the killing, in a foreign country, of a critic of Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, was unlikely to have taken place without the knowledge of the kingdom's most senior leaders. Khashoggi was last seen entering the Saudi Consulate in Istanbul on Oct. 2. Saudi authorities, who insisted for weeks that he had left the building after a meeting and that they had no information on his whereabouts, said Saturday that their investigators had determined he was accidentally killed there during a brawl with Saudi agents. The authorities said the agents were there to discuss his desire to return to the kingdom but offered no indication of who had sent them. The Saturday statement said that 18 unnamed Saudis had been arrested, and five senior officials had been fired. It also said that a high-level committee to restructure Saudi intelligence agencies - headed by Mohammed - had been formed and that a joint Turkish-Saudi investigation into Khashoggi's death was underway. Mohammed and his father, King Salman, have both repeatedly assured Trump and Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, who traveled to Saudi Arabia last week, that they had no knowledge of a plot to kill Khashoggi. Trump initially described the Saudi explanation Saturday as credible. But in recent days he has expressed doubt, calling it "the worst coverup ever," although he has not directly pointed the finger at the Saudi leadership. Instead, Pompeo announced that visas held by the arrested Saudis were being revoked, and the White House on Monday dispatched Haspel to Turkey. On Tuesday, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan said publicly for the first time that there was evidence the killing had been "planned" - presumably including the audio reportedly recorded inside the consulate by Turkish intelligence. The recording is the central piece of evidence Turkey has used to assert that the killing was planned. After listening to it and talking with Turkish officials, Haspel returned to Washington. The White House declined to provide details of her Thursday briefing, saying only that she had informed the president on her "findings and discussions." The briefing, which the State Department said Pompeo attended, coincided with the new statement by the Saudi prosecutor, which appeared designed at least in part to jump ahead of any conclusions the administration might draw from the new information. The Saudi statement said that the preliminary results of the joint investigation with Turkey had yielded "information from the Turkish side . . . suggesting that suspects in the incident had committed their act with a premeditated intention." A translation of the statement, published in Arabic, was provided by the Saudi Embassy in Washington. "The public prosecution continues its investigations with the accused in light of the information it has received and the results of its investigations to clarify the facts and complete the course of justice," the translated statement said. It was not immediately clear how Haspel's report and the announcement from Riyadh would affect the administration's thinking amid bipartisan demands from Congress for severe punishment of Saudi Arabia - the nation at the center of Trump's Middle East policy. Trump has publicly resisted calls to end weapons sales to the Saudis, the world's largest purchaser of U.S. defense equipment, saying that it would cost U.S. jobs. But the succession of events this week have underscored the rapidly mounting pressures on Saudi Arabia to fully illuminate Khashoggi's killing, amid increasing global skepticism. U.S. and foreign officials and experts with knowledge of the kingdom have said that such an operation was virtually unthinkable without the knowledge and approval of the highest levels of the Saudi government, particularly the powerful and ambitious crown prince. But Salman's appointment of Mohammed to head the committee revamping the intelligence apparatus, and the prince's appearance this week to host global government and industry leaders at a Riyadh investment conference, have all but ended speculation that his position was threatened. Appearing at the conference Wednesday, Mohammed called the journalist's killing "a heinous crime." In another sign that the kingdom is seeking to contain the widespread fallout, Salah Khashoggi, the eldest son of Jamal Khashoggi, has left Saudi Arabia, two people close to the family said Thursday. The son, a dual U.S.-Saudi citizen who was photographed receiving condolences from Salman and Mohammed on Tuesday, had previously been restricted from leaving. Salah Khashoggi was headed to the United States to join his three siblings, who are already here, according to one of the people. The photos and video footage of him meeting with the king and crown prince were released by the Saudi government in an apparent effort to showcase their sympathy. Instead, the images elicited scorn on social media, with critics accusing the leaders of exploiting a grieving son. State Department deputy spokesman Robert Palladino told reporters that "we made it clear that we wanted him to be able to return [to the United States], and are pleased that he's been able to do what he so desires." Asked if the son had faced obstacles in leaving Saudi Arabia, Palladino said he was "not aware" of any. Jamal Khashoggi, 59, was a contributing columnist for The Washington Post who was living in Virginia after leaving Saudi Arabia because of fear about his safety. He had been planning to settle in Istanbul and marry his Turkish fiancee when he was detained and killed in the Saudi Consulate. Also Thursday, the European Union issued a fresh condemnation of Khashoggi's killing and reiterated its skepticism that it could have been carried out without Mohammed's knowledge. The European Parliament passed a nonbinding resolution urging a European Union-wide arms embargo on Saudi Arabia in response. The resolution came several days after Germany became the first Western government to suspend arms sales to Saudi Arabia, the world's largest arms importer. French President Emmanuel Macron and British Prime Minister Theresa May both spoke via telephone with Salman, the king, according to a statement issued by the Saudi Foreign Ministry late Thursday, hours after the European Parliament's resolution passed. According to an Elysee Palace readout of the conversation, Macron pressed his Saudi counterpart for more clarity on what happened to Khashoggi and told him France considers freedom of expression and freedom of the press an "essential priority." But Britain and France have both stopped short of suspending arms sales to the desert kingdom. Through a steady stream of leaks to Turkish and foreign media outlets, Turkish officials have mounted a compelling case that the Saudi agents planned all along to kill Khashoggi, dismember him and dispose of his remains. The Turks have identified a Saudi forensics specialist who is an expert in mobile autopsies and traveled to Istanbul the day Khashoggi was planning to visit the consulate. They also photographed Saudi diplomatic vehicles scouting wooded areas in the days before Khashoggi disappeared. In addition, the leaks have featured surveillance pictures of a Saudi agent wearing Khashoggi's clothes and a fake beard and leaving the consulate, in what appears to be an orchestrated bid to fool investigators into thinking the journalist had safely left the diplomatic mission, as the Saudis initially claimed. Although the Turks have mounted an extensive search of the consulate and other areas in Istanbul, they have released no information indicating his remains have been found. - - - El-Ghobashy and Fahim reported from Istanbul. The Washington Post's John Hudson and Josh Dawsey in Washington, James McAuley in Paris and Quentin Aries in Brussels contributed to this report. Welcome to Green Entrepreneur's video recap of the cannabis news you might have missed this week, hosted by our cannabis correspondent Conrad Martin. Thinking about taking your canna business to shark tank? In an interview with Yahoo finance shark tank, investor Kevin O Leary said he'd never invest in cannabis unless it was legal in the US. He stated, "When you invest in a Schedule I narcotic, you are at risk to breach the RICO statutes of aiding and abetting the transfer of a Schedule I narcotic across state lines. Related: 13 Million-Dollar Businesses That Turned Down 'Shark Tank' Deals Mexican officials head to Canada to talk Cannabis The office of newly elected Mexican President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador is set to meet with Canadian officials to discuss Cannabis legalization. Lopez Obrador who won the the election in a landslide has expressed interest in legalizing all drugs in Mexico. Related: Mexico Joins Canada In Making Cannabis Legal, Leaving the US Far Behind in Marijuana Policy. You might have assumed this, but... According to the latest Gallup poll - 66% of Americans are in support of legalizing marijuana. Duhhh. For some perspective, in 1969 the support was at just 12% - Yikes. Related: Latest Gallup Poll Finds a Big Majority of Americans Support Legal Marijuana Be sure to keep up with all things cannabiz by checking out the newly launched GreenEntrepreneur.com If you missed last week's episode, check it out here: Canada Legalizes Recreational Use! Related: This Week in Weed: Mr. Wonderful Passes on Grass! This Week in Weed: O, Cannabis! This Week in Weed: Cali Cannabis Cup Cancelled! Copyright 2018 Entrepreneur.com Inc., All rights reserved I ts October. Your skin is looking tired and dehydrated from the cold snap and, honestly, youre in dire need of a facial. In fact, you could do with a series of facials, because the best way to achieving lasting results is not a one off high intensity slathering of serums and creams. The problem is that facials, which generally cost 70-150 a pop, are expensive. And block booking a package of them, while somewhat cost effective, typically involves parting with hundreds, if not thousands of pounds. And, frankly, thats not always realistic. But what if you could have professional aestheticians tend to your skin on a regular basis, and pay for it in manageable monthly instalments, in the same way you would a gym membership? And what if you could see the same facialist every time, much like you would your doctor? Enter Skinsmiths, the UKs first ever facial membership service. Skinsmiths The company, founded in New Zealand back in 1994 (its called CACI over there), is on a mission to revolutionise the skin clinic industry, and with it our approach to skin maintenance. Theyve got 50 clinics in New Zealand and this year have chosen the UK as their first step to global expansion. The first Skinsmiths clinic opened in Hanwell in March, and they have since opened clinics in Belgravia, Clapham South, Esher, Liverpool Street, Putney, Tower Bridge and Wimbledon, with a ninth one opening in Bushey in Hertforshire on Saturday 27. Further London clinics and a UK-wide roll-out are in the pipeline for 2019. So how does it work? As a new client youre invited to book in for a complimentary skin consultation where one of the Skinsmiths experts will ask questions to better get to know you and your skin. Then they work with you to create a bespoke treatment schedule to make sure your skin is getting treated with the right tools at the right time. No more pre-treatment panicking about when you last had a peel, or whether this retinol is being applied too soon before your next holiday. Skinsmiths get to know your skin better than you do, taking the responsibility for looking after it into their own hands. There are plans for facials, cosmetic injectables and laser hair removal, which can be mixed and matched depending on your specific concerns and skin goals. They recognise that, like expecting a perfectly toned bod after one gym workout, one-off treatments just dont work. Great skin takes time. We want people from all backgrounds to have access to skin confidence and experience how it can empower them to live extraordinarily thats our goal, says Skinsmiths co-founder and director Jackie Smith. Skinsmiths How much does it cost? Its tricky to generalise on membership prices because they vary so much depending on how someones skin reacts to the treatment, explains Skinsmiths marketing brand strategist Charlotte Habin. We have regular skin and membership reviews to make sure your skin is on track and that youre monthly payments are in line with the treatments you need. Prices for laser hair removal packages vary according to which body parts you want to work on, and the thickness of your hair. The same goes for injectables, because some people metabolise the fillers faster than other people, and others like more regular top ups for a fuller look. When it comes to facial subscriptions, the base plan starts at 65 pm thats really just for conditioning treatments, skin maintenance and maintaining skin health, says Habin. For that you get 15 treatments a year plus product homework kits. For the first two months they suggest you come every two weeks and then monthly after that. This one involves lots of deep extraction, thermal heat and pumping the skin with lots of nutrients. The step up from that is the HIT plan, which starts at 139 per month, and is for those who have more serious skin concerns, such as pigmentation, fine lines and wrinkles, psoriasis. Membership is paid on a rolling monthly basis and, unlike that dreaded gym membership, can be cancelled at any time. Plus, the regular membership reviews, which you have with your Treatment Advisor rather than your Skin Technician (we like to keep the person you talk to about your skin separate to the person you discuss your payment plan with, explains Habin), mean that plans can be tweaked at any time. Sometimes we have hormonal changes or seasonal changes, and plans need changing, says Habin. We are really nimble in the way we can make sure your skin is given the right tools at the right time. Youve committed to that monthly phone bill, that gym membership, hell, you might even be paying for a members' club. So why not make a regular commitment to having your glowiest, shiniest best face? We think that by having monthly direct debit payments it removes that guilt from spending time and money on yourself, says Habin, it becomes part of the routine. Routine facials for less than 20 a week and with no long term commitment? Now thats the sort of workout routine we can get on board with. Evening Standard readers can receive a complimentary skin consultation and 30min conditioning treatment (Infusion or detox). Info on treatments below. Book by calling 0203 473 3829, emailing uk@skinsmiths.com or online at skinsmiths.com/vera and quoting promo code: STANDARD18. Skincare Infusion (worth 68) A gentle skin saviour for redness, uneven texture and tone. This infusion treatment allows powerful skin-boosting ingredients to penetrate deeper into the skin to increase cell turnover, strengthen surface capillaries and target redness, dehydration, tone and texture. After a detailed consultation to assess your skin and confirm your concerns, your Skin Technician will choose an infusion treatment best suited to your needs. Then, using sound wave technology and micro-currents, the ingredients are gently infused into the skin. Your skin will feel smoother and look more refreshed instantly. For best results, Skinsmiths recommend a course of skincare infusion treatments on our Skin Health Plan. Detox Treatment (worth 68) This is Skinsmiths signature skin conditioning treatment, designed to clean, clarify and brighten skin tone and texture for truly healthy skin. Microdermabrasion combined with thermal laser provides a safe and effective way of deeply cleansing, exfoliating and stimulating the skin. You'll leave feeling detoxed and rejuvenated - it's the ideal conditioning treatment for long-lasting results. H eathrow Airport and the owner of British Airways on Friday both tried to assure businesses and customers that they can cope with a no-deal Brexit. Europes busiest airport said it has raised nearly 1.6 billion from investors during 2018 for expansion, including a proposed third runway, and for building financial resilience ahead of Brexit. Heathrow currently raises finance in seven currencies and during the nine months to September 30 had its debut Australian issue. In the period revenues rose 2.3% to 2.2 billion and underlying profits rose 1.9% to 1.4 billion. The London airports finance chief Javier Echave stressed that money is in place to maintain 30-day payment terms for all suppliers, even in the event of disruption after Britain leaves the EU. It works with some 1500 partners, including companies that clean runways when there is snow, and construction firms like Balfour Beatty. Echave said: We remain encouraged we will reach a happy landing, but in the event of a no-deal we will still have a resilient balance sheet to support our partners. His comments came on the same day that British Airways parent International Airlines Group posted results for the third quarter. IAG chief executive Willie Walsh told the Standard we believe an agreement [linked to Brexit] will be reached that will protect consumers. The boss also apologised after it emerged that another 185,000 customers may have had personal details stolen in a cyber attack first reported in September, when it said 380,000 transactions were affected. Walsh added that IAG is working with a network of specialists on security: Cyber security is a threat for everybody. IAG, which also owns Aer Lingus and Iberia, saw pre-tax profits fall 0.4% to 1.42 billion (1.26bn) in the three months to September, hurt by currency headwinds and higher fuel costs. The firm added it had expected the issues hitting Rolls-Royces engines to be resolved by now but they are likely to continue into next year. The engine maker discovered problems with its Trent 1000 engines, used in Boeings 787 Dreamliner aircraft which British Airways uses, over the summer. Walsh was more upbeat as he reported 5.3% revenue growth to 16.3 billion in the first nine months. In the current quarter the aviation group has had some marginal benefits picking up work after a handful of smaller airlines, such as Cobalt Air collapsed. The firm forecast profit for 2018 would increase by 200 million, having previously said it would rise but not giving a figure. The shares rose 3.3%, or 19.4p, to 606.8p. A generation of journalists dine out on the verbal abuse theyve received from Sir Philip Green over the years. My favourite was the time he called me a f**king onion for suggesting Arcadia might not be doing so well. Hes sometimes threatened journalists with violence (a badge of honour Im ashamed to admit I dont wear). But he never meant it. It was always intended to be funny, and very often, it was. Take the time when he took exception to a piece in these pages about him. Rather than just phone up and complain, he sent into the office a squashed cuddly toy cat in a basket lined with a shredded copy of the article. Cat litter. You could portray that as a Godfather-like Sicilian message, or you could see it as what it was: a joke, and quite a good one at that. So be slightly sceptical when you read journalists writing with faux fear about their terror at the hands of the Monaco billionaire. But while its one thing to abuse the media, outsiders with the privileged job of holding the rich and powerful to account, its another altogether to behave that way towards your staff; the men and women who rely on you for their livelihoods. Tales are legion of Green bullying, belittling and shouting at his employees. That was bad enough. But allegations, which Green denies, of sexual harassment are in a different league. Such alleged behaviour in corporate life has always been despicable, obviously. But in the tinderbox post-Weinstein environment, it has the potential to be a business killer. Even before any of the claims have been tested in a court of law, consumer campaigns are under way to boycott Arcadias brands. This may start small, but it only takes criticisms from a celebrity or two (Greens former A-lister friends, perhaps?) for it to spread like wildfire. If a #Metoo firestorm really gets going, big companies such as banks with reputations to worry about could refuse to do business with him. When high street brands, including Arcadia, are struggling so badly, this is no time to be a pariah. It could, of course, all blow over just as the BHS pensions crisis seemed to. After all, British shoppers kept flocking to the cheap chains despite all the scandals over child labour and slavery in their factories. Hows PG taking it all? Hard to say. When I called him this morning expecting a flea in the ear, he wasnt answering. Thats unusual. L uxury clothing labels will have access to the London College of Fashions most innovative green champions as part of a new tie-up as the industry looks to become more sustainable. Common Objective is an online business network that allows brands to connect with ethical suppliers, buyers and experts. It said on Friday that it has agreed a partnership with the college, where the famous schools 6000 staff and students will create profiles. Representatives from firms such as Vivienne Westwood and Guccis parent Kering, which are signed up to Common Objective, will have direct access to new talent and innovative ideas. Likewise students can learn about what top designers are doing to be sustainable. Fashion veteran Harold Tillman CBE, an LCF alumnus and Common Objective co-founder, said: We are a strong believer in supporting all fashion businesses to adopt more sustainable principles. R oyal Bank of Scotland spooked markets today as it set aside 100 million to cover the potential damage Brexit could do to the business next year. The state-backed bank, led by chief executive Ross McEwan, put the cash aside as a precaution after rocky negotiations between the UK and EU increased the risk of a bad outcome from Brexit. The figure represents the risk that customers struggle to repay their loans as a result of an economic downturn. There is a lot more uncertainty in the marketplace at the moment until we get agreement. Thats what this (100 million charge) is reflecting, said McEwan. The shares fell 4.5%, or 10.5p, to 224p. RBS finance chief Katie Murray said the bank had to include more downside scenarios in its financial models due to the rising uncertainty from the talks, which have failed to come up with a solution. RBS is forced to predict the economic impact on its profits under new accounting rules known as IFRS 9 and put money aside to cover possible loan impairments. The 100 million could be returned to RBSs coffers if the economic picture is healthier than expected. RBS has a 320 billion loan book and an existing provision of 3.9 billion. Markets were spooked by the charge, which came on top of an extra 200 million top-up to pay PPI and a 60 million hit on Irish loans. Jefferies analyst Joe Dickerson said the charge had not been explained well and was at odds with the actions of other banks operating in the same market. The pessimism was at odds with McEwan, who praised the optimistic tone of Brexit negotiations following a conference call with Prime Minister Theresa May last Friday. We are not seeing stress coming through into the small business and the retail customer book, he said, adding that loan impairments were running below forecast. The banks capital buffers improved from 16.1% to 16.7%. Shareholders are expecting a bumper windfall from the bank after it restarted the dividend in August. Once a stress test from the Bank of England is complete in December, the bank is expected to start handing back its cash mountain to shareholders. McEwan said it was working through options, including assessing buybacks and special dividends, but he wanted to get through the stress test first. The net interest margin was hurt by the mountain of cash, falling to 1.93%, worse than analysts had expected. A Singaporean investor on Friday said London will remain a global financial hub, after paying 385 million for the former home of the London Stock Exchange. Singapore-listed City Developments has bought 125 Old Broad Street from private equity giant Blackstone, in one of the biggest single-building deals in the Square Mile this year. The 26-storey 329,000-square-foot office building, previously known as Stock Exchange Tower, overlooks the Bank of England and is let to businesses including law firm King & Spalding and China International Capital Corporation. The property was home to the LSE for more than 30 years until it relocated in 2004. Frank Khoo, chief investment officer at City Developments, which was advised by property agent Cushman & Wakefield, said: We have confidence in the long-term fundamentals of London as a global financial hub with a robust office market. P hilip Green categorically and wholly denies that he is guilty of any unlawful behaviour , racism, sexual harassment so forth. But there are a few things of which he is guilty. None are illegal, just an offence against society. Philip, or Sir Philip as sub-editors keep trying to write, is an arse. You havent really earned your stripes in journalism if you havent had the hairdryer treatment from him. While working on Londoners Diary, I had the temerity to place a call to his office about his daughter, Chloe, going to a party. My call was returned, in person by a windbag raging that I was violating her privacy, and how dare I ask questions about Chloe she was a private person. It was Phil himself. As I recall, and tried to point out, she had posed up for the photo. Alison Boshoff, in todays Daily Mail, reveals that her recent call to Green about his daughter resulted in him asking why nobody has had you killed yet. Charming. Phil also did the hairdryer on the Financial Times editor Lionel Barber, over his coverage of the BHS scandal. Realising that this might not get him what he wanted, he then tried a different tack and offered to go round to the FT offices with Barbers favourite cake. Barber says he asked for almond cake, but the tone of coverage didnt sweeten. It is unsurprising, then, that Phil has had trouble making his way in society. Top-end yacht designers Ive met have said theyd refuse to work for someone like him, A-list businessmen deny being friends with him, packed parties suddenly find space when he arrives. Ive since watched in delight as hed leveraged himself into a small Dionne Warwick gig and tried to ingratiate himself with the diva. She, in step with her famous song, decided to Walk on By. A knighthood is, as a rule, bestowed upon someone who has earned respect. The formal removal of a title is one for the Honours Forfeiture Committee, but the use of Sir is not a legal requirement, merely a convention, like politeness in society. So excuse me if I break the convention here and dishonour Green by calling him plain old Philip. He can call me what he likes. Hail an artist who shares the limelight A high five to Tania Bruguera, a Cuban artist, currently showing in the Turbine Hall. Most artists would hog A-list art territory for themselves and be hoity-toity about others. Not Bruguera. On Tuesday she showed pictures by another artist from the Crossfire series by Shahidul Alam, the Bangladeshi photojournalist who was jailed two months ago. Bruguera has been jailed in Cuba for being outspoken. Alam is famed for taking pictures the Bangladeshi government doesnt want you to see. Well done too to Tate director Maria Balshaw for allowing it. The hypocrisy of the DUP knows no bounds An actor (or author I forget) was asked by a journalist what he missed most about his native Ireland. Ah, the hypocrisy, he replied. MP Stella Creasy / Matt Writtle I remembered this when thinking about the Republic of Irelands immediate neighbour, Northern Ireland, and the amendment by Walthamstow MP Stella Creasy to have the difference of Northern Irelands abortion laws from the UKs explained. The ruling Democratic Unionist Party cannot countenance a difference in customs duty between Rich Teas eaten in England, Wales and Scotland, and those in Northern Ireland. No border down the Irish Sea, they cry over the Brexit negotiations. A different rate of corporation tax and VAT to help stimulate businesses? Yes please. But on matters of basic law and values, they seem to be perfectly happy to diverge from the mainland. You cant support the differentials of devolution when it suits you, and then remain hard bound to the UK when they dont. Creasys abortion amendments should pass on grounds of basic humanity, which are common to all. T he murder of Jamal Khashoggi has turned out not only to be one of the most shameful political assassinations of all time but one of the most embarrassing. First, the Saudi authorities announced that Khashoggi, a well-known journalist who had formerly been part of the tightly knit inner circle around the royal family, had left the consulate in Istanbul safe and sound some point after his visit on October 2 to get divorce papers signed. Then the story was changed, as it was declared that he had been killed following a fist-fight, where an argument with a team sent from Saudi Arabia got out of hand when Khashoggi refused polite requests to return to his home country. This convinced few, who noted that conversations rarely end well when one side brings a bone saw. Over recent days, more and more details have emerged, including footage of a BMW with Saudi diplomatic plates visiting the Belgrad forest in what appears to be a dummy run for disposing of evidence, and of a body double leaving the Saudi Consulate wearing Khashoggis clothes (but not his shoes) on the day of the murder. Finally, more than three weeks after the grisly events, the Saudi prosecutor general admits what some guessed immediately: Khashoggis murder was not just deliberate but pre-meditated. The brutal silencing of a man who had become a critic of the lack of progress in the loudly trumpeted reforms that were supposed to be modernising Saudi Arabia tells its own story about the pace and nature of those reforms. Hopes and expectations have been badly damaged by the incident and the aftermath that Donald Trump has called the worst cover-up in history . Peter Frankopan / Getty Images Khashoggis murder is painful to all Saudis, said the Crown Prince, Mohammad bin Salman, who also called it a heinous crime that cannot be justified despite the fact that those involved in the killing are so close to him that John Brennan, former director of the CIA, said that he was in no doubt that the Crown Prince would have been fully aware of what was ultimately going to happen to Khashoggi when he arrived at the consulate. The events have produced waves of indignation in Europe. If the appalling stories we are reading turn out to be true, said the Foreign Secretary, Jeremy Hunt, the UK will act accordingly. What that means is anybodys guess. Marietje Schaake, a leading Dutch MEP, called for some Saudi assets to be frozen and for visa restrictions that make it harder to go shopping in Paris. German Chancellor Angela Merkel says arms sales cant take place in the current circumstances without mentioning that German businesses have been excluded from government tenders in Saudi Arabia for several months following a series of criticisms by Berlin that resulted in the recall of the Saudi ambassador to Riyadh. Ironically, the leader best placed to gain from the situation is President Erdogan of Turkey, a master tactician who has played his hand carefully and, just as important in the context of what has happened, slowly. On one hand, the fact that the incident took place on Turkish soil is as insulting and troubling as the attempted assassination of Sergei Skripal in Salisbury a few months ago; on the other, it has given Erdogan the chance to turn the screws painfully on a regime in the Middle East that is in many ways Turkeys most important regional rival. The drip-feed of information in tiny but damaging droplets has led to speculation in recent days that Erdogans goal has been to sideline MBS (as he is known) or even to have him replaced partly because the Crown Prince has managed to build a formidable power base in Saudi Arabia that has given him powers to realise growing ambitions at home and abroad. Erdogan is keeping an eye on sanctions on Iran that may compromise a source of Turkish energy supplies But Erdogan is cannier than trying to take on a man who may well lead Saudi Arabia for decades, for he is also keeping an eye on the forthcoming sanctions on Iran that threaten to compromise a major source of Turkish energy supplies. He will no doubt have paid close attention to comments made this week by John Bolton, the US National Security Adviser, that we are going to squeeze Iran and force a change in the behaviour of a state he calls malign. Khashoggis murder and its circumstances give Erdogan a new set of options to be able to gain concessions from the US, with whom relations have been strained of late, or even with Saudi Arabia itself with reports of offers to invest in Turkeys ailing economy and to subsidise oil imports being both plausible and logical, despite being dismissed in public. Turkeys intelligence services look like they have done their job well, which may explain why Erdogan has the air of a man who holds the ace in his hand in this case, a recording of the horrors of torture and death that have now been heard by Gina Haspel, director of the CIA. The situation helps Russia too it is playing a wider game in the Middle East. President Putins response to the question of what steps Moscow would take as a result of the murder was revealing. Why should we take any steps that could harm our relations with Saudi Arabia? he said. In any event, he added, Khashoggi lived in the US, so the United States bears some responsibility for what happened to him. For most, it is business as usual. While MEPs, politicians and diplomats issued warnings and threats, deals worth $34 billion were agreed this week at the Davos in the Desert summit in Saudi Arabia, signed by Total, Halliburton, Baker Hughes and others. The murder was terrible, Trump says, but the US cannot afford to stop selling weapons to the Saudis otherwise the Russians and the Chinese will step in. The ball is in the Wests court. If history is anything to judge by, thats where it will stay. H alloween used to be a rather eccentric, small thing. A little curiosity before Bonfire Night. Now it is celebrated with the sort of community fervour that we used to reserve for the really important stuff. I dont begrudge consenting adults having a bit of fun but this has gone way over the top. First things first All Hallows Eve has become one of the high holy days in the gay calendar. Pride falls once a year but this is above New Year and leagues beyond Eurovision. Halloween is prepped for in gay spaces with the kind of reverence one might expect for something, er, relevant. I am aware that this fancy-dress bonanza has cultural roots dating more than 70 years to the brave gay pioneers of San Franciscos Castro District but it feels to me more recent and abrupt and not apt. Its not as if were celebrating the election of Harvey Milk, or decriminalisation legislation, or marriage equality here. This thing seems to be centred around the birth of Satan, the rise of witchcraft, or something. Somehow it doesnt seem like quite the message to be sending out to the LGBTQ+ detractors out there. Shouldnt you be celebrating one of your great victories? No thank you, sir, we prefer the march of the great undead. Then theres the true horror of the night; trick or treating. Although Im informed by reliable sources that its all darlingly sweet where they live, because all the neighbours do it, where I live it is more of a form of organised mugging. The miniature ghouls in my area have little interest in the traditional Halloween pile of chocolate oh no sirree. Some of these beasts want cold, hard cash. Last year I proffered a sizeable mound of miniature Snickers and they looked at me as if Id given them a clove-studded satsuma at Christmas like some Dickensian miser. The treats being so out of hand, the tricks become more of an imminent likelihood which is blackmail disguised as Gemma Collins or, apparently last year, me! Imagine door-knocking god-botherers trying the same stunt Commit to my sentiments about Armageddon, O heathen, or this patio gets egged! The state wouldnt stand for it. And if I shouldnt suffer serious damage to my home because of my beliefs about the apocalypse, I certainly shouldnt because I wont slip your six-year-old a fiver. Its all too much like The Purge. And finally, Im not one of these jingoistic grouches who thinks all things American are bad but there has been a transatlantic exchange here and it doesnt fit with the British calendar. I am often told that trick or treating is darlingly sweet, but where I live it is more of a form of organised mugging" Guy Fawkes Night, a mere five days later, has fallen victim to our devotion to Halloween. Rather than a good knees-up over a roaring fire and a spot of effigy burning, November 5 is now just a few people throwing bangers at each other. Its not wrong to have two parties close together but this is like those with birthdays too close to Christmas. One event commemorates the thwarting of an act of mass terrorism, a critical moment in shaping a national identity, the other has pumpkins. I dont mind if you want to do Halloween but dont knock at my door. I do have CCTV. I will prosecute. And, with that, see you at the fireworks. Craig is far more charming than the panto villain you see I feel a little bad ruining his butch bad- boy image but behind the scenes of Strictly, Craig Revel-Horwood is a quite charming man. Craig Revel-Horwood / Rex Features It may not always be easy to tell what Craig is thinking as he appears not to like interfering with the integrity of his face by moving it (which is why I suspect that he was so complimentary about the extraordinary range of my facial expressions on the show). I must confess that he was, without doubt, the most encouraging and generous of the judges backstage. I understand that he is a bit of a panto-villain on the television but in real life he is far more fairy-godmother than ugly sister. One of lifes true delights, in fact. Sorry to ruin it for you. Walkie-Talkie gets bad reception It was gloriously sunny the other day so I decided to walk across London Bridge (the best view of the city). My stroll was ruined by 20 Fenchurch Street, the Walkie-Talkie, which has to be in the top 10 most hideous buildings in major world cities. It looks like a comic version of a skyscraper drawn by infants. Im not a fuddy-duddy who expects buildings in cities to be uniform. Great capitals should never be museums. Like great languages, architecture must always strive to evolve and ask challenging questions. The Duchess of Sussex has donned an exquisite Oscar de la Renta cocktail dress for an awards ceremony in Sydney. Just hours after touching down in Australia, Meghan had changed into her stunning designer gown to attend the Australian Geographic Society Gala Awards at the Shanghai-La hotel. The dress, from the label's pre-fall 2018 collection featured, a delicate applique of bird silhouettes scattered across the layered mesh fabric. The main wow-factor, though, came from the billowing tulle skirt, which is by far Meghan's most princess-worthy moment to date. The price of the dress is only available on request and is described on the the fashion house's website as a "white tulle gown with black bonded looped ribbon tweed laser cut birds." Meghan and Harry arrive at the Australian Geographic Society Awards / EPA The monochrome gown was perfectly complemented by Meghan's dark locks, which had been released from the tight ponytail she had been sporting throughout the day and fashioned into glamorous loose waves. The gown is from Oscar de la Renta's pre-fall 2018 collection / Oscar de la Renta Meghan kept her makeup minimal, simply adding a swipe of bronzer to her cheeks. Meghan looked every inch a princess in the designer gown / Ian Vogler / Daily Mirror A t 11pm on March 29 next year the UK will have officially left the EU, and as departing rituals suggest, its only natural we have some leaving drinks. Facebook group LondonSwedes has organised a leaving bash in a bar in Bermondsey on March 29, kicking off at 7pm and running until 2am when Britain will no longer be part of the European Union. LondonSwedes, which is the largest website for the Swedish and Scandinavian community in London and the UK, will host the UK's Leaving Drinks at the London Calling Sweden bar on Enid St although organisers say the location is likely to change due to the amount of interest. Currently the event has more than 750 attending and just over 3500 interested. Founder of LondonSwedes Charlotte Agren told the Standard: "We have posted a lot of articles about Brexit since 2016 in our community that has over 50,000 members mostly Swedes in the UK." She added: "Every time we post something about Brexit there is a heated discussion about what will happen, what's wrong and what's right and opinions of all kinds. "We just feel we wanted to, for once, actually do something optimistic around it." However, its not the only social media group to create an event for the big day, as many other Facebook pages have popped up with spoof leaving events one in particular has racked up 7,000 people going and 33,000 interested. The LondonSwedes extravaganza is the largest one in London with a real location. For more information on the event: facebook.com/events/979128348947800/ TLC As well as releasing No Scrubs, one of the greatest songs of the 90s, TLC were far more culturally significant and influential than your average pop group. In fact, few best-selling songs are as impactful as TLCs huge hit Waterfalls and its accompanying video, which makes references to the AIDS crisis and the illegal drug trade in the US. It was pretty groundbreaking at the time and remains a huge moment in the career of a truly great act, who represent the top selling US girl group of all time. Sadly, the music world mourned the loss of founding member Lisa "Left Eye" Lopes in 2002, but her musical legacy with TLC will never be forgotten. " Pubic triangles, replies my guide, Guillermo Bernal, after Ive asked him to repeat himself. Guillermo speaks excellent English but I had to be sure I heard him correctly. If you look inside the cave youll see carved into the wall public triangles, he says again. I peer into the gloom at these downward-pointing triangles, a very rudimentary cave carving. The oddness of this only feels more profound when I remind myself: I am in Gran Canaria. Before British teenagers were running riot on the coast, before German tourists were reserving sun loungers with towels, before the Spanish waged a bloody war to conquer the islands, and before the Romans gave it a name, people lived on Gran Canaria. It was these Canarios who lived in caves such as this, worshipping the sun and their matriarchs. Walkers can enjoy stunning views of the Atlantic Ocean / Getty Images/iStockphoto From the air, the island looks uncannily like the Millennium Falcon but look at a relief map and you can immediately see that it was once dominated by a volcano. Guillermo is leading me along the rim of the Caldera Grande, more commonly known as Caldera de Tejeda. Inside the volcano the air feels noticeably different; the vegetation is obviously distinct too. We make our way through a pine forest if I didnt know better Id guess I was in Northern California. Prior to coming here, Id written off Gran Canaria as one of those sunny regions condemned to endure mass tourism. And parts of it do have that, but in two days of hiking, my guide and I meet fewer than a dozen other people on the trails, all of them local. Houses on a volcanic slope in Galdar, Gran Canaria / Alamy Stock Photo Towards the end of the first day I enquire about the name, Gran Canaria. So I guess the islands are named after the birds, then? I ask. No, no, no theyre named after the islands, not the other way around, replies Guillermo, before going into a long explanation of the real naming of the islands. No one can be sure but it likely had something to do with dogs theories range from the presence of a dog-worshipping cult to dog-eating natives to packs of indigenous hounds. In any case, there was some link important enough for the Romans to give the islands a name that relates to canis, the Latin word for dog. On our second day we start our trek to the north of the island, working our way down a gorge towards the mountain village of Firgas. As a densely populated area dominated by famously temperate, sunny days, reliable water supply has always been an issue for much of Gran Canaria. Not so here, where the slopes have channelled fresh water into a gorge. Near the lowest part theres grass taller than me, and the air feels denser. To follow the path out, Guillermo and I have to briefly abseil down some rocks then hop across stepping stones and over falling trees. Its more Jurassic Park than waterpark. When we emerge back into the sunshine we head to Finca La Laja in the Agaete Valley, in the north-west. At the bottom of a steep, volcanic ravine, the farm also benefits from fresh water and rich volcanic soil. It grows oranges and sustains a range of vines for an array of excellent red, rose and white wines; and another 18 vines for things including avocados, mangoes and bananas. Its the 21st crop that is probably the most remarkable, however. If you regard the Canaries as European and at just 52 nautical miles off the coast of Morocco, theres no geological reason you should then Gran Canaria is also home to the Continents only coffee growers. From here, its only a few miles as the canary flies to the islands ravaged coast: 15 years ago Id have been there pouring not enough Red Bull into too much vodka but now an americano seems kind of perfect. Details: A cruel killer who was deported to Britain after serving 38 years in jail for strangling his teenage girlfriend in the US has joined an online meeting site to date women in London, it can be revealed. Dempsey Hawkins, 58, who was refused parole nine times before his release in 2017, used an alias to contact a woman on social networking site Meetup.com In messages seen by the Standard, he tried to foster a relationship with her, suggesting they explore the capital together. He did not reveal his conviction for the murder of his 14-year-old ex-girlfriend Susan Jacobson in New York in 1976. Hawkins strangled her with a shirt and hid her body in an oil drum. Three years later he was jailed for a minimum of 22 years for murder. Dempsey Hawkins is back in the UK after been deported from the US The London-born killer was refused parole for years because he was considered too dangerous to release, despite good behaviour in jail. He was finally allowed out on condition he was deported to the UK, the country he left with his mother at the age of six. He was flown to Heathrow in January last year with letters of support from the British consulate in New York. He was helped in his return by Cambridge University criminology expert Dr Ruth Armstrong, who campaigned for his release. She found him a job in a Mexican restaurant run by her husband. Victim: Susan Jacobson The woman who was contacted by Hawkins only discovered his past when an online search threw up news articles about his murder conviction. She said: He sent me a message from a profile called Dempsey Louis. I responded and he was terribly forward. He gave me his number immediately. I thought it was an unusual name and he said he lived in Cambridge, so I googled him and there was a reference to the murderer Dempsey Hawkins. I compared their photographs and it was obviously the same man. I was horrified. Dempsey Hawkins under arrest in 1978 The woman, who asked to remain anonymous, added: I couldve gone on a date with him thats really scary. I have contacted the police because I think they need to know hes actively looking for women. I think other women ought to know this as well. You go to singles events and dont expect to run into someone like that. I hope hes a contributing member of society but I think its important other females and males in his dating network know his face, know he killed his original girlfriend and hes looking for another. I would not be able to live with myself if someone else got hurt and I didnt say anything. As soon as I found out who he was I blocked him. Its too frightening. Hawkins told the Standard that he wanted to focus on his future. He said: If someone goes to the newspapers or whatever, then what can I do? I can understand it. You cannot control what anyone does, but I understand it. I look at it like this I didnt harass anybody. I did not say anything bad. I just asked would they like to go on a date. No? OK then, bye. Thats it. Hawkins was 16 when he lured his girlfriend Susan Jacobson, 14, to a remote area of Staten Island in May 1976 and strangled her after their relationship ended. He finally won parole in 2016 after repeated appeals. The parole board said: Your actions exhibit a cruel deliberation and contempt that prompt us to find that your release in the United States would deprecate the seriousness of the crime as to undermine respect for the law. Hawkins, who had an exemplary record in jail, expressed regret for his actions at parole hearings and vowed to lead a crime-free life if released. He told one hearing: I am remorseful for the crime. I am deeply, Im terribly sorry. I will never harm another human being, and I mean that. No conditions are believed to have been attached to his release other than that he does not return to the US or contact the family of his victim. The father of his victim, William Jacobson, said women should stay away from Hawkins if contacted. All I can say is protect yourself. Hes a murderer, he should be in prison. Stay away, he told the Standard today. I would hope that whoever is involved would contact the police once they know what hes done in the past. Im glad hes out of the United States, but Im also sorry for the people in England who have to put up with him now. He never should have been let out. A high-profile councillor posed in fake Lord Mayors robes on a tour of schools in the US to drum up backing for Londons New Years Day parade. Robert Daviss trip was not sanctioned by Westminster council, and came at the same time that he was under investigation by the town hall for accepting gifts and hospitality 893 times over six years. These included tickets to West End shows, dinners in top restaurants, and trips to the south of France and were often provided by property developers seeking planning permission. Mr Davis, formerly deputy leader of the council and until last year the chairman of its planning committee, denies any wrongdoing but resigned with immediate effect on October 10, after the inquiry ruled that he had breached the authoritys code of conduct. A report said that while there was no evidence of inappropriate conduct or illegality the scale of the hospitality was extraordinary. But just weeks before he quit and while he was under investigation Mr Davis was flown to Atlanta, Georgia, to publicise the London parade. He spent a week touring schools to invite their marching bands to perform. The first his colleagues back home in Westminster knew about it was when news reports appeared on US websites. Despite Mr Davis insisting he was visiting as a patron of the parade and not as a representative of the council, a framed certificate presented to one US school confirming its invitation to perform was described as being from organisers in association with the Lord Mayoralty of the City of Westminster and signed by Mr Davis under the description: Senior Patron & International Goodwill Ambassador to the Parade and Festival, Deputy Lord Mayor of the City of Westminster, Deputy Lord Lieutenant of London. The week-long trip, including flights to and from the US, internal flights within the country, and hotel accommodation, was paid for by the parade organisers. The council had previously supported the US visits, but this year it decided they could no longer be sanctioned. The robes Mr Davis used in America were replicas from Chiswick-based company Destination Events. The annual parade features dancers, acrobats, cheerleaders, and marching bands from around the world. Prizes are given for the best acts or floats, and proceeds go to London charities. Parade organisers in the UK said they did not know the trip had not been approved by Westminster council. A spokesman said that the use of replica robes was instigated by the Lord Mayoralty about five years ago, when they were worried about the availability of robes and them being damaged in transit. T heresa Mays decision to combine the roles of top civil servant and National Security Adviser is to be temporary, the Standard has learnt. A well-placed insider has revealed that the appointment of senior mandarin Sir Mark Sedwill to both posts is not intended to be permanent. The clarification marks a climbdown from the official announcement from No 10, which kept open the option of making it permanent. That was criticised by experts who feared that Sir Mark would be overloaded and that the independent voice of the National Security Council in Whitehall might be compromised. Splitting the roles in future will fuel speculation that the NSA job is being kept warm for the Prime Ministers chief Brexit adviser, Olly Robbins. Downing Street declined to confirm or deny the change, referring questions to previous statements which pointed out that Sir Mark has managed both jobs since June. The impression that it was permanent caused consternation among experts.One former mandarin warned: The NSA is not a part-time role that can be managed by someone whos already doing an 18-hour day. Sir Bernard Jenkin, chairman of the public administration select committee, said Sir Mark had excellent deputies at the National Security Council who could be relied on to give good advice. But he said he was concerned that Sir Mark would be less able to challenge rival opinions in Whitehall if he represented both sides. Sir Bernard said he believed the dual role would be temporary. The NSA is there to give challenging and independent advice to Whitehall, he said. That is difficult if he is the Cabinet Secretary at the same time. Sir Mark has been National Security Adviser since April 2017, making him principal adviser to the Prime Minister on security strategy, policy and civil contingencies. He was made Cabinet Secretary when Sir Jeremy Heywood, 56, retired on health grounds. The Prime Ministers official spokesman said: Sir Mark has been successfully fulfilling both roles since June. A student died as a result of the "toxic effects" of excessive drinking following an "initiation-style" bar crawl, a coroner has ruled. Ed Farmer, a 20-year-old first-year economics student at Newcastle University, died following an Agricultural Society event in December 2016. Following Thursdays ruling, Mr Farmers father Jeremy said his family have been left "utterly underwhelmed" by the university's response to the tragedy. He also said they had made the "most difficult decision" to agree to the release of CCTV footage showing Mr Farmer on the ground at a Metro station on the night he died. Coroner Karen Dilks said he had been "nervous" about attending the event and had to be carried to the Metro station as he was "extremely drunk". The "drink-fuelled" event had seen participants drink vodka from a pig's head, bob apples in a bucket of urine and have their heads shaved, the inquest heard. Mr Farmer was one of around 20 first-years to attend, with witnesses telling how "older students" ordered a round of 100 triple vodkas during a bar crawl in Newcastle. He was found collapsed and unresponsive in the early hours of December 13. The student, from Leicester, was rushed to the Royal Victoria Infirmary, where he died at around 5.30am. During the four-day inquest, an expert witness told how excess alcohol had caused Mr Farmer to suffer a cardiac arrest, prompting brain damage and his eventual death. Speaking outside the inquest at Newcastle Civic Centre, Jeremy Farmer said the family had been left "utterly underwhelmed and frustrated by the apparent inactivity of Newcastle University and its student union to get to the heart of the problem of student initiations". He said: "Ed's is not the first utterly needless and wasteful death to come about through this potentially fatal practice." He added: "We have found it acutely painful to learn about the complete lack of understanding of all the students who organised and were there during that fateful event. "However, we want these students to know that we are thankful for their attendance at this inquest, which we recognise has been a difficult process for them also. "We wish them the very best for their respective futures." Dr John Hogan, the registrar for Newcastle University, said that Mr Farmer's death was a "great tragedy". He said: "Since Ed's death, we have already made a number of changes to the way we raise awareness among our students about the risks of alcohol and how they keep themselves and their fellow students safe. "However, having listened to the evidence, we will be reflecting carefully on all that we have learnt at the inquest and looking at whether there are areas where we can improve on what we do. "Following our disciplinary investigations, a number of students were found to be in breach of university rules and appropriate individual sanctions were imposed. "The students' union also took action against the society involved. F ormer cabinet minister Lord Hain has defended his decision to "out" retail tycoon Sir Philip Green as the businessman behind allegations of sexual harassment and racial abuse. The Labour peer told BBC Two's Newsnight he had received "overwhelming support, particularly from women". Sir Philip has "categorically and wholly" denied being guilty of any "unlawful sexual or racist behaviour", in a statement issued hours after the peer's dramatic intervention in the House of Lords. Speaking to Newsnight, Lord Hain explained his decision to speak out, saying: "What concerned me about this case was wealth, and power that comes with it, and abuse. And that was what led me to act in the way that I did. "It's for others to judge whether I've been right or wrong. "But there's no point in being in Westminster - which is the sovereign centre of the British constitution, has sovereignty and with it the parliamentary privilege that is a privilege... if you never discharge that; if you never deploy the precious rights of parliamentary privilege." Sir Philip Green - In pictures 1 /35 Sir Philip Green - In pictures Philip Green on the front row during the Topshop show at London Fashion Week PA Archive/PA Images Lord Hain speaking in the House of Lords in London naming Topshop owner Sir Philip Green PA Actress Kate Bosworth, proprietor Sir Phillip Green, and Chloe Green attend the Topshop Topman LA Grand Opening Getty Images Sir Philip Green poses outside Buckingham Palace, London, after receiving a Knighthood from Queen Elizabeth II. PA Archive/PA Images Model Cara Delevingne and Sir Philip Green attend the Topshop Topman New York City flagship Getty Images Jeremy Meeks and Chloe Green Rex Features Sir Philip Green's New Super Yacht Lionheart Arrives In Valletta Malta. Rex Features Holly Willoughby (L) poses with Sir Philip Green as she launches her bedding collection at BHS Oxford Street Samir Hussein/Getty Images Kate Moss (3rd left wearing a hat) and Sir Philip Green (2nd left) attend the Topshop Unique Catwalk show held at the Topshop Venue at the University of Westminster PA Archive/PA Images Arcadia Group owner Sir Philip Green and a group of Mrs Claus stop traffic on Oxford Street PA Archive/PA Images Lady Victoria Hervey (L) and Proprietor Sir Philip Green attend BAFTA Los Angeles Frazer Harrison/Getty Images Jourdan Dunn and Sir Philip Green attend the Topshop Topman New York City flagship opening Getty Images Anna Wintour, editor of US Vogue Magazine and retailer Philip Green at the Preen show during the 2006 London Fashion Week PA Archive/PA Images Philip Green relaxes in his London Office after he received a Knighthood PA Archive/PA Images Tony Blair (right) talks to Arcadia boss Sir Philip Green during a visit for the official opening of the Fashion Retail Academy in central London. PA Archive/PA Images Sir Philip Green and Elizabeth Hurley at the afterparty for the GQ Men of the Year Awards 2008 PA Archive/PA Images Sir Philip Green and Naomi Campbell attend the launch of Mario Testino's 'Obsessed By You' exhibition PA Archive/PA Images Sir Philip Green next to Mario Testino's portrait of Kate Moss PA Archive/PA Images Kate Moss with Sir Philip Green, owner of Arcadia Group, and his daughter Chloe PA Archive/PA Images Sir Philip Green and Daisy Lowe PA Archive/PA Images Alexandra Shulman, British Editor of Vogue talks to Sir Philip Green at the Erdem Spring/Summer Show as part of London Fashion Week. PA Archive/PA Images Demonstrators from the UK Uncut group outside Topshop, on Oxford Street, central London, during a demonstration against alleged tax avoidance by Arcadia group owner Sir Philip Green. PA Archive/PA Images Police outside Topshop in Oxford street, London as protesters blocked traffic in a demonstration against Topshop owner Sir Philip Green. PA Archive/PA Images Samantha Cameron reacts to owner of Top Shop Sir Philip Green showing off his Tom Ford designed tie to Tom Ford, (not pictured), during a reception for London Fashion Week at 10 Downing Street PA Archive/PA Images Yasmin Le Bon with Sir Philip Green as they arrive at the Harpers Bazaar Women of the Year Awards PA Archive/PA Images Sir Philip Green and Michelle Mone arriving at the Retail Trust London Ball PA Archive/PA Images Kate Moss with Sir Philip Green, owner of Arcadia Group, and his daughter Chloe PA Archive/PA Images Sir Philip Green and and daughter Chloe arrive at 10 Downing Street, in Westminster, London PA Archive/PA Images Sir Philip Green and Kate Moss PA Archive/PA Images Winner of Entrepreneur Kate Hudson with her award, alongside presenter Sir Philip Green, at the Glamour Women of the Year Awards 2015 PA Archive/PA Images Sir Philip Green (centre) with his son Brandon and daughter Chloe PA Archive/PA Images Sir Philip Green and Chloe Green attending the British Fashion Awards PA Archive/PA Images Sir Philip Green gives evidence to the Business, Innovation and Skills Committee and Work and Pensions Committee PA Archive/PA Images Sir Philip Green gives evidence to the Business, Innovation and Skills Committee and Work and Pensions Committee PA Archive/PA Images Philip Green on the front row during the TOPSHOP London Fashion Week PA Archive/PA Images He stressed that the cloak of privilege should be used "extremely carefully with integrity and very responsibly - never just loosely". Lord Hain used parliamentary privilege to name the Topshop owner after Court of Appeal judges temporarily barred The Daily Telegraph from publishing "confidential information" from five employees about a figure described only as a "leading businessman". Lord Hain speaking in the House of Lords on Thursday / PA The paper wants to reveal "alleged sexual harassment and racial abuse of staff" who have been prevented from discussing their claims by non-disclosure agreements (NDAs). Lord Hain told peers he had been contacted by someone "intimately involved" in the case and felt it was his duty to use parliamentary privilege to name Sir Philip. "Having been contacted by somebody intimately involved in the case of a powerful businessman using non-disclosure agreements and substantial payments to conceal the truth about serious and repeated sexual harassment, racist abuse and bullying, which is compulsively continuing, I feel it's my duty under parliamentary privilege to name Philip Green as the individual in question given that the media have been subject to an injunction preventing publication of the full details of a story which is clearly in the public interest," he said. Sir Philip, chairman of Arcadia Group, whose brands include Topshop, Topman, Wallis, Evans, Burton, Miss Selfridge, Dorothy Perkins and Outfit, responded in a statement. He said: "I am not commenting on anything that has happened in court or was said in Parliament today. "To the extent that it is suggested that I have been guilty of unlawful sexual or racist behaviour, I categorically and wholly deny these allegations. A pioneering BBC broadcaster who helped to create the groundbreaking radio programme Black Londoners in the Seventies has claimed he was exploited and bullied at the corporation for years due to racism. Alex Pascall, who was made an OBE in 1996 for services to community relations, was one of the first regular black voices on the radio in Britain through his weekly magazine show which featured guests such as Muhammad Ali. But despite its success, Mr Pascall today claimed bosses at the BBC never wanted it to work and exploited him for nearly 15 years by failing to pay him properly or provide him with a pension, which he is now demanding. Mr Pascall, 81, one of the founders of the Notting Hill Carnival and Britains first national black newspaper The Voice, told the Standard he faced institutional racism at the corporation throughout his making of the programme, which began in 1974. He said the recent Windrush scandal had prompted him to fight for equality, and he has formally written to the NUJ and Bectu unions informing them of his grievance. Mr Pascall said: I was exploited in regards to pay and lack of professional support. I was bullied at the BBC. My programme became the showcase, but I had no accreditation, I used my own contacts, my own money to build the programme. I never got a pension. I never had a contract except for one year. I was badly paid. To build a programme from zero and make it known about worldwide I should never have been treated like that. It was driven by racism. Mr Pascall said he received about twenty-something pounds a month, worked around 55 hours a week, never had a holiday, and had no training. But he said he could not turn down the opportunity at the time to make what he knew could be a seminal programme for the black community. The show began as a test series once a month in response to the 1968 Race Relations Act, Mr Pascall said, but its popularity grew, becoming something the establishment could not control. It was shut down in 1988 with many of his belongings thrown in a skip. Mr Pascall said: It was designed to fulfil a brief on paper. It was not really meant to do anything but to keep a lid on race relations. The BBC said managers at the time left the corporation a number of years ago, and that contracts of this kind used to be standard practice. A spokesman said: This programme began more than four decades ago and ran for 14 successful years. Since it ended 30 years ago, Alex has continued to appear on the station and our other networks. C alls grew for Sir Philip Green to be stripped of his knighthood today as at least one new alleged victim of bullying and sexual harassment came forward. Shadow home secretary Diane Abbott became the most senior figure to demand the withdrawal of the honour. She told the Standard: Getting a knighthood from the Queen is supposed to be an honour but he seems to have behaved, both in the case of the BHS pensioners and now with the use of NDAs [non-disclosure agreements] to silence accusers, in quite a disreputable way. I think he should lose his knighthood. Sir Philip categorically and wholly denied being guilty of any unlawful sexual or racist behaviour. His statement came after former Cabinet minister Lord Hain used parliamentary privilege to identify the Arcadia chairman as the individual behind a legal injunction stopping The Daily Telegraph publishing confidential information from five employees. Sir Philip Green was named as the businessman behind a privacy injunction preventing the media publishing allegations by former employees / AFP/Getty Images Labour MP Frank Field said a woman had subsequently contacted him to say she had been sexually harassed and bullied by Sir Philip. He said she had seen grotesque bullying at work and wanted to give evidence to the Commons. He said: "The charge sheet against the knighthood is growing. "Parliament and the country have made their views clear on this matter. Ultimately it's a decision for the Honours Forfeiture Committee." MPs called for the honours forfeiture committee to intervene. He deserves no knighthood, said Labour MP Neil Coyle. Liberal Democrat leader Sir Vince Cable said the Topshop mogul only narrowly escaped losing his honour following the BHS scandal two years ago. Sir Vince said Sir Philip "narrowly and luckily escaped losing his knighthood over the pensions scandal". And he added: "If these allegations are correct, he should certainly be stripped of his knighthood." Lord Hain's intervention came after Court of Appeal judges barred the Telegraph from publishing "confidential information" from five employees about a figure the newspaper described as a "leading businessman". The newspaper said it had been investigating claims about a wealthy businessman for eight months but could not name him because of an injunction against him. Today Labour peer Lord Hain said he had no regrets: Parliamentary privilege is something to be used very sparingly and very responsibly. But it is a vital part of parliamentary scrutiny and our liberties. People will make their own minds up whether I did right or wrong. I believe I acted in the public interest. Lord Evans, chair of the Committee on Standards in Public Life, cautiously backed his right to use parliamentary privilege. He told Radio 4s Today programme: I can understand why Lord Hain has done that ... Generally speaking the courts take decisions for good reason so I would be cautious at challenging them on that, particularly when we havent seen the full details. Sir Vince Cable joined calls by MPs for Sir Philip to lose his knighthood (Photo by Chris J Ratcliffe/Getty Images) / Getty Images But equally theres a balance of public goods here, and the ability to raise issues in Parliament without fear of being brought into the court is an important safeguard in our system. Sir Philip Green - In pictures 1 /35 Sir Philip Green - In pictures Philip Green on the front row during the Topshop show at London Fashion Week PA Archive/PA Images Lord Hain speaking in the House of Lords in London naming Topshop owner Sir Philip Green PA Actress Kate Bosworth, proprietor Sir Phillip Green, and Chloe Green attend the Topshop Topman LA Grand Opening Getty Images Sir Philip Green poses outside Buckingham Palace, London, after receiving a Knighthood from Queen Elizabeth II. PA Archive/PA Images Model Cara Delevingne and Sir Philip Green attend the Topshop Topman New York City flagship Getty Images Jeremy Meeks and Chloe Green Rex Features Sir Philip Green's New Super Yacht Lionheart Arrives In Valletta Malta. Rex Features Holly Willoughby (L) poses with Sir Philip Green as she launches her bedding collection at BHS Oxford Street Samir Hussein/Getty Images Kate Moss (3rd left wearing a hat) and Sir Philip Green (2nd left) attend the Topshop Unique Catwalk show held at the Topshop Venue at the University of Westminster PA Archive/PA Images Arcadia Group owner Sir Philip Green and a group of Mrs Claus stop traffic on Oxford Street PA Archive/PA Images Lady Victoria Hervey (L) and Proprietor Sir Philip Green attend BAFTA Los Angeles Frazer Harrison/Getty Images Jourdan Dunn and Sir Philip Green attend the Topshop Topman New York City flagship opening Getty Images Anna Wintour, editor of US Vogue Magazine and retailer Philip Green at the Preen show during the 2006 London Fashion Week PA Archive/PA Images Philip Green relaxes in his London Office after he received a Knighthood PA Archive/PA Images Tony Blair (right) talks to Arcadia boss Sir Philip Green during a visit for the official opening of the Fashion Retail Academy in central London. PA Archive/PA Images Sir Philip Green and Elizabeth Hurley at the afterparty for the GQ Men of the Year Awards 2008 PA Archive/PA Images Sir Philip Green and Naomi Campbell attend the launch of Mario Testino's 'Obsessed By You' exhibition PA Archive/PA Images Sir Philip Green next to Mario Testino's portrait of Kate Moss PA Archive/PA Images Kate Moss with Sir Philip Green, owner of Arcadia Group, and his daughter Chloe PA Archive/PA Images Sir Philip Green and Daisy Lowe PA Archive/PA Images Alexandra Shulman, British Editor of Vogue talks to Sir Philip Green at the Erdem Spring/Summer Show as part of London Fashion Week. PA Archive/PA Images Demonstrators from the UK Uncut group outside Topshop, on Oxford Street, central London, during a demonstration against alleged tax avoidance by Arcadia group owner Sir Philip Green. PA Archive/PA Images Police outside Topshop in Oxford street, London as protesters blocked traffic in a demonstration against Topshop owner Sir Philip Green. PA Archive/PA Images Samantha Cameron reacts to owner of Top Shop Sir Philip Green showing off his Tom Ford designed tie to Tom Ford, (not pictured), during a reception for London Fashion Week at 10 Downing Street PA Archive/PA Images Yasmin Le Bon with Sir Philip Green as they arrive at the Harpers Bazaar Women of the Year Awards PA Archive/PA Images Sir Philip Green and Michelle Mone arriving at the Retail Trust London Ball PA Archive/PA Images Kate Moss with Sir Philip Green, owner of Arcadia Group, and his daughter Chloe PA Archive/PA Images Sir Philip Green and and daughter Chloe arrive at 10 Downing Street, in Westminster, London PA Archive/PA Images Sir Philip Green and Kate Moss PA Archive/PA Images Winner of Entrepreneur Kate Hudson with her award, alongside presenter Sir Philip Green, at the Glamour Women of the Year Awards 2015 PA Archive/PA Images Sir Philip Green (centre) with his son Brandon and daughter Chloe PA Archive/PA Images Sir Philip Green and Chloe Green attending the British Fashion Awards PA Archive/PA Images Sir Philip Green gives evidence to the Business, Innovation and Skills Committee and Work and Pensions Committee PA Archive/PA Images Sir Philip Green gives evidence to the Business, Innovation and Skills Committee and Work and Pensions Committee PA Archive/PA Images Philip Green on the front row during the TOPSHOP London Fashion Week PA Archive/PA Images This is the second time calls have been made for Sir Philip to lose his knighthood. The first was two years ago during the BHS scandal, when shortfalls in the pension scheme were revealed after he had sold the business for 1. Under Cabinet Office rules, anyone with an honour who does something to bring the honours system into disrepute can have it taken away. In 2012, banker Fred Goodwin was stripped of a knighthood following the near-collapse of Royal Bank of Scotland. Romanian dictator Nicolae Ceausescu was stripped of his honorary knight grand cross the day before his execution in 1989. Sir Philip with Cara Delevigne / Getty Images Sir Philip responded in a statement, saying: "I am not commenting on anything that has happened in court or was said in Parliament today. "To the extent that it is suggested that I have been guilty of unlawful sexual or racist behaviour, I categorically and wholly deny these allegations. "Arcadia and I take accusations and grievances from employees very seriously and in the event that one is raised, it is thoroughly investigated. "Arcadia employs more than 20,000 people and in common with many large businesses sometimes receives formal complaints from employees. In some cases these are settled with the agreement of all parties and their legal advisers. These settlements are confidential so I cannot comment further on them." The principle of parliamentary privilege means that MPs and peers cannot be sued for libel for comments made in the Houses of Parliament, and offers protection to media outlets reporting those comments. Prime Minister Theresa May's spokesman declined to comment on Lord Hain's statement and said that the exercise of parliamentary privilege was "a matter for individual members." T wo takeaway bosses are facing jail after a teenage girl died from an allergic reaction. Mohammed Abdul Kuddus, 40, and Harun Rashid, 38, were found guilty of manslaughter by gross negligence over the death of 15-year-old Megan Lee, who had a nut allergy. Megans friend had ordered food from the Royal Spice takeaway in Oswaldtwistle, Lancashire, through Just Eat and wrote prawns, nuts in the comments section. The Manchester Crown Court jury had been asked to consider whether the notes on the order were sufficient to mean Megans allergy was declared and it came to a guilty verdict on Friday. Judge Mrs Justice Yip told Kuddus and Rashid: You need to prepare yourselves for a custodial sentence. Megan Lee died from acute asthma due to a nut allergy / PA Her family was in tears in the public gallery as the verdicts were read out. Speaking outside the court, her father, Adam, urged businesses not to "play Russian roulette" with lives. "We live in hope," he said, "that today's result is a warning to other food businesses operating in such a deplorable and ignorant manner to learn from this and improve their standards with immediate effect." The trial heard Megan suffered an allergic reaction to the food on December 30, 2016. She died two days later. The meal was found to have the "widespread presence" of peanut protein. Peter Wright, prosecuting, told the court her death was a "disaster waiting to happen". It was alleged there was a "litany of failings" in the kitchen, including poor hygiene and no records of ingredients kept. The jury also found Rashid guilty of failing to discharge a general duty of employers, contrary to the Health and Safety at Work Act, and another count of failing to put in place, implement and maintain a permanent procedure or procedures in contravention of European Union food safety regulations. Kuddus had already pleaded guilty to those two charges on behalf of himself and of behalf of the Royal Spice Takeaway Ltd. Judge Yip bailed both men until November 7, when they and the company will be sentenced. She added: "The fact that I am granting bail shouldn't be taken as any indication there should be a non-custodial sentence. F ourteen children were stabbed when a woman went on a knife rampage at a nursery school in China, police said. A 39-year-old woman is said to have launched her assault on the youngsters on Friday as they returned to classes at 9.30am local time. Footage on social media has shown hurt children loaded onto wheeled stretchers and into ambulances. Some video appeared to show furious onlookers kicking the attacker who was restrained by school staff and security, CNN reported. The culprit has been identified only by her surname, Liu, and there has been no motive ascertained for her assault. The stabbings took place at Xinshiji Kindergarten in the western city of Chongqing. All the young victims were receiving hospital treatment at Banan People's Hospital. Details of the attack were reported by police on their force blog and a representative of the hospital referred questions to the local government. China has suffered a number of similar incidents in recent years. They have been blamed largely on people who were mentally ill or bearing grudges. In June this year, a man used a kitchen knife to attack three boys and a mother near a school in Shanghai. He killed two of the children. Police said the assailant was unemployed and carried out the attack "to take revenge on society." E thiopian lawmakers have unanimously elected the country's first female president, days after approving one of the world's few "gender-balanced" Cabinets. Sahle-Work Zewde has become Africa's only current female head of state as she assumes the largely ceremonial post, and was congratulated by fellow world leaders. The news comes amid a swathe of policy shifts in Africa to be more inclusive to women in politics as some countries adopt rules to ensure woman hold half of all top level positions. The continent's first female president, Liberia's Ellen Johnson Sirleaf, left office this year. The President was sworn in at the Parliament building in Addis Ababa. / AFP/Getty Images The UN General Assembly's female president Maria Fernanda Espinosa Garces tweeted upon hearing the news: "Congratulations, Madam President! Women do make a difference. We are proud of you!" "In a patriarchal society such as ours, the appointment of a female head of state not only sets the standard for the future but also normalizes women as decision-makers in public life," the chief of staff for Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed said on Twitter. The East African country has long shown some of the lowest indicators of gender equality in sub-Saharan Africa, UN Women has said. "Women and girls in Ethiopia are strongly disadvantaged compared to boys and men in several areas, including literacy, health, livelihoods and basic human rights." Female genital mutilation continues in some areas despite the government declaring it illegal. Zewde succeeds former President Mulatu Teshome, who resigned from office on Wednesday after a Cabinet reshuffling by the country's new Prime Minister, Abiy Ahmed. Mr Ahmed has reportedly driven female inclusion in sweeping political and economic reforms since April, hoping to improve life in Africa's second most populous country. In six months he has already "overhauled" the intelligence agency, scrapped a controversial state of emergency, welcomed back opposition leaders and ended a decades-old conflict with Eritrea. Lawmakers last week approved a Cabinet with women making up a record 50 per cent of ministers including the country's first female defence minister. A woman also leads the new Ministry of Peace which oversees the powerful National Intelligence and Security Service and the Federal Police Commission. Ms Zewde has held a number of position with the UN before and takes on the largely symbolic role as head of state as Ethiopia sees a swathe of gender equality reforms under its new progressive leadership. / AFP/Getty Images Fifty-fifty splits in the highest levels of parliament have become a new threshold for other African country where woman take up half of all ministerial positions, according to the Inter-Parliamentary Union and UN Women. After Ethiopia adopted the policy, Rwanda followed suit and also announced its own Cabinet with 50 per cent women. The country has received international recognition for female representation in government. UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres said on Twitter: "The African continent is leading the way in showcasing that women's engagement and leadership are crucial to lasting peace." Ms Zewde position follows months of anti-government protests demanding wider freedoms and she called the move "exemplary". The ruling coalition has led the country since 1991 and along with allied parties holds every seat in parliament. The new president said she will focus on bringing together all sides to achieve peace in a country where multiple ethnic-based conflicts have simmered in recent months as political dialogue opens up. D ozens of FBI agents swooped on a post office in Florida as a nationwide hunt intensifies for the parcel bomber who targeted high-profile critics of Donald Trump. The bureau deployed additional resources to the state, including sniffer dogs, as the bomb squad homed in on a sprawling facility in Opa-locka, a poor suburb of Miami. Many of the 10 packages are thought to have been mailed from Florida, a key state in next months mid-term elect-ions. The devices, containing timers and batteries, were being examined at the FBIs lab in Quantico, Virginia. Investigators from dozens of federal, state and local agencies have joined the hunt. The targets of the mail bombs have included Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton, former vice-president Joe Biden, Robert De Niro and Congresswoman Maxine Waters. Nobody has been hurt so far and none of the devices has gone off. Investigators searched coast-to-coast Thursday for the culprit and motives behind the bizarre mail-bomb plot aimed at critics of the president / AP Homeland Security Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen told Fox News:Some of the packages went through the mail. They originated, some of them, from Florida. am confident that this person or people will be brought to justice. Investigators have been examining a US Postal Service database of images of mail, which gave clues pointing to Florida. All the parcels also had the fake return address of the office of Debbie Wasserman Schultz, the former Democratic National Committee chair, in the town of Sunrise in the same state. The mail facility in Opa-locka serves South Florida and sits on the corner of an executive airport. Miami-Dade police spokesman Argemis Colome said the force sent sniffer dogs there last night as a precautionary measure. Mail worker Sylvester McKenzie said: We dont know who sent the packages or if the person lives close by here in Opa-locka or far away. I dont feel like were safe. What if one of the packages could have exploded at the job and injured so many innocent people? Mr Trump has tried to claim the media is responsible for the anger infecting America, but others blame his own rhetoric. F rance is considering putting police officers in schools following a string of violent incidents in the country's classrooms. Interior minister Christophe Castaner said that the government expects to present its plans next week. He said: In the most difficult neighbourhoods, the possibility of having law enforcement officers in schools, with the agreement of principals is not included. It comes following the release of a video showing a student threatening his teacher with a plastic gun. The 15-year-old had reportedly been angry that he had been marked as absent when he arrived late for class at Edouard-Branly High School. He was later charged with aggravated violence. The incident was condemned by President Macron who took to Twitter to warn that threatening a teacher was unacceptable. He added that he had ordered his ministers to take all necessary measures to prevent a repeat of the incident. According to local media, four other high school students have been accused of threatening two teachers with fake guns earlier this month at a school in Le Havre. After the release of the video, teachers in the country took to social media to share their experiences using the hashtag PasDeVague (Dont Make Waves) in a bid to highlight the lack of support. A powerful 6.4 magnitude earthquake has hit south of the Greek island of Zakynthos otherwise known as Zante. The quake hit just before 2am on Thursday and was felt across Western Greece. Greek authorities say three people have been taken to hospital, two of whom are being treated for minor injuries. Damage to the local pier and the 13th-century monastery have also been reported. Civil protection agency press spokeperson Spyros Georgiou said: "We're checking out the villages on the island, where there are several other buildings. "The lack of electricity is a problem, but technicians are trying to restore the power." Zante - popularised as a party destination for young people - attracted around 200,000 visitors last year. Terrified tourists tweeted about the quake as they took cover in their hotels. One holidaymaker wrote: "@ThomasCookUK please do something!! We are stuck in Zante after an earthquake and everyone is outside the hotel in blankets." Here's everything you need to know about the earthquake, plus the latest travel advice for Zante: Where is the earthquake? The United States Geological Survey locates the epicentre of the earthquake in the Ionian Sea, 31 km south of Zakynthos. / EPA The epicentre of the earthquake was found in the Ionian Sea, 50 km (31 miles) south of the island of Zakynthos, Greece's Geodynamic Institute reported. The quake was also felt in the capital Athens and as far afield as Libya, Italy, Malta and Albania. Will there be another earthquake? Several aftershocks have been felt across the island, the most powerful measuring a magnitude of 6.8. When the earthquake struck, Greek authorities initially released a tsunami warning, which they then withdrew. It's not yet known whether another earthquake is likely, but Greece is particularly earthquake-prone, credited with having the most seismic activity in Europe. A 7.3 magnitude earthquake which struck Zakynthos in 1953 destroyed much of the island. Are flights still going to and from Zante? No damage to Zakynthos's International Airport has been reported and flights are said to be running as normal. Thomas Cook told concerned tourists it wouldn't be adding any additional flights from Zante. Is it safe to travel to Zante? A worker stands over the cracked and warped sidewalk after an earthquake at the main harbour of Zakynthos island, western Greece. / AP Despite the initial panic, Zakynthos Mayor Pavlos Kolokotas assured residents that "calm is being restored." He added: "We are not facing any particular problems." The Foreign Office is yet to release any official travel advice following the earthquake, but it has warned tourists of Greece's "extreme" weather conditions over their extended summer period. In July, vicious wildfires tore through Athens and surrounding areas, killing at least 70 people. A leading United Nations official stepped up the pressure on Saudi Arabia today by branding the murder of Washington Post journalist Jamal Khashoggi an extrajudicial execution. Agnes Callamard, the UN special rapporteur on extrajudicial, summary or arbitrary executions, said those who orchestrated the killing at the Saudi consulate in Istanbul were high enough to represent the state. It is the UNs first intervention on the matter. This week Donald Trump suggested Crown Prince Mohammad bin Salman could be responsible for ordering the death of Mr Khashoggi, a critic of the kingdoms de-facto ruler. Speaking at the UN headquarters in New York, Ms Callamard said: First, we know that the killing was in the consulate, which is representative of the state of Saudi Arabia. Donald Trump has suggested Crown Prince Mohammad bin Salman could be responsible for the killing / REUTERS "Second, the individuals present at the time of the disappearance and the alleged killing were representatives of the state. Subsequently, over the last few days at least, Saudi authorities have recognised individuals at the highest levels of the structures of authority of being involved in the disappearance and the killing. She added: All of these elements indicate that the ... killing of Jamal Khashoggi bear[s] the hallmark of an extrajudicial execution. Faisal Fahad, a Saudi representative at the UN, said in response: My delegation would like to denounce the statement by the special rapporteur. We call on her not to exceed her mandate. T he fiancee of Jamal Khashoggi has demanded the journalists murderers be punished for their savagery as Turkish prosecutors submitted extradition files for 18 suspects. Hatice Cengiz said in a tearful interview on Turkish TV: "I demand that all those involved in this savagery, from the highest to the lowest levels, are punished and brought to justice. Ms Cengiz said Mr Khashoggi had not wanted to go to the Saudi consulate in Istanbul, where he was murdered on October 2. Mr Khashoggi had visited the consulate to obtain a document that would allow him to remarry, but Ms Cengiz still thought he was going to be safe: His local network in Turkey was very good as you know, his political network as well. A demonstrator holds a poster of Jamal Khashoggi outside the Saudi Arabia consulate in Istanbul on Thursday / AFP/Getty Images "He thought Turkey is a safe country and if he would be held or interrogated, this issue would be swiftly solved. It came as Turkey's state-run news agency reported prosecutors had submitted an extradition request for the suspects to Turkey's justice ministry. Saudi Arabia has said it arrested 18 people in connection with Mr Khashoggi's killing. Turkey alleges a 15-member "hit squad" was sent to Istanbul to kill the Washington Post columnist, a critic of the Saudi royal family who lived in exile in the United States. T his is the Donald Trump fan who was arrested in an FBI swoop after allegedly sending bombs to high-profile opponents of the president. Cesar Sayoc, 56, from Aventura, Florida was arrested by federal authorities in connection with a spate of bombs and suspicious packages sent to high profile liberal targets including Barack Obama and the Clintons. According to his Facebook page, Sayoc is a Trump fan who posted pictures and videos of himself at one of the Presidents rallies in October 2016. A total of 12 suspicious packages have so far been discovered. They were sent to targets including Barack Obama, the Clintons and Robert De Niro. Sayoc posted a series of pictures on Facebook of his attendance at a 2016 Trump rally His arrest was confirmed by the Justice Department and the FBI. Cesar Sayoc was named as the man alleged to be behind the 'Make America Great Again' bombs / Facebook/EPA His arrest came as President Trump said: "I am pleased to inform you that law enforcement has apprehended the suspect and taken him into custody. "It's an incredible job by law enforcement who have carried out a far reaching federal state and local investigation to find the person or persons who are responsible for these events. Cesar Sayoc was identified as the man arrested over the bombs in the US / Florida police "These terrorising acts are despicable and terrorising acts have no place in our country. "Ive instructed authorities to spare no resource or expense to find those responsible and bring them to swift and certain justice. "We will prosecute, them, him, her, whoever it may be, to the fullest extent of the law. "We must never allow political violence to take root in America. We cannot let it happen. And I am committed to do everything in my power as president to stop it. "To stop it now. I have just concluded a briefing from the department of justice following the apprehension of the suspect. "I want to applaud the FBI, Secret Service, Department of Justice and the US attorney's office for the southern district of New York, the NYPD and all law enforcement throughout the entire country. "These people have worked so hard. The bottom line is that Americans must unify. We must show the world that we are united together in peace and love and harmony." Federal agents tweeted: "The FBI can confirm we have one person in custody." Congresswoman Debbie Wasserman Schultz answers questions from the press after voting in Hollywood, Florida, close to where a suspect was arrested. She was one of 12 victims to be addressed a pipe bomb "with destructive capacity". / AP CNN showed images of a van being towed from an Autozone store in Plantation, Florida - north of Miama. Mr Trump said today that news coverage of the suspicious packages targeting high-profile Democratic politicians and critics of the president had slowed momentum for Republican candidates ahead of congressional elections. "Republicans are doing so well in early voting, and at the polls, and now this 'Bomb' stuff happens and the momentum greatly slows - news not talking politics. A van parked in Plantation, Florida is being searched by police in connection with a spate of 'MAGA' pipe bombs sent to critics of Donald Trump. / AP "Very unfortunate, what is going on," he wrote on Twitter as he urged Republicans to get out and vote. Republicans are seeking to maintain control of the US House of Representatives and Senate during the Nov. 6 elections If Democrats take the majority in either or both chambers, it would likely increase congressional oversight of Trump, a Republican, and thwart parts of his policy agenda. A package addressed to former CIA head John Brennan that was sent to CNN's office in New York / AP Twelve packages containing bombs have been intercepted or received this week, including two on Friday. They were addressed to former US President Barack Obama, former presidential candidate Hillary Clinton and actor Robert De Niro among others, according to federal officials and media reports. The man was aid to be arrested in the vicinity of an Autozone car parts site, in Plantation, Florida, just north of Miami. / Google Maps No one has been injured or killed by the wave of parcel bombs so far. US media filmed the scene, purporting to show a van belonging to the suspect, covered in Donald Trump and Republican images. Two more suspicious packages were discovered by authorities - one was addressed to New Jersey Senator Cory Booker at a Florida postal service. Another was addressed to the former director of the US National intelligence, James Robert Clapper Jr., discovered at a post sorting office in New York. Police at the scene where a suspicious package was sent in the latest US bomb scare / AP Mr Clapper, a former general, was addressed one of the packages at CNN, where he is a contributor. He told CNN: "It appears at least in this case they got the correct spelling of my name and they got the right network. "I'm in some sense relieved, my wife and I are away from home right now and our neighbours have been retrieving our mail and I'm really concerned about them. "As I said last night, this is definitely domestic terrorism, no doubt in my mind." A member of the bomb squad is shown outside a postal facility near Miami / AP Investigators are analysing the devices to ascertain whether they were intended to actually detonate or simply sow fear two weeks before Election Day. The two new pipe bombs discovered take the total up to 12, after one was addressed to the New Jersey senator, and a second to the former director of the US National intelligence James Robert Clapper Jr. The suspicious packages were said to be similar to the crude pipe bombs sent to prominent critics of President Donald Trump. None of the devices have exploded, and although some on social media have described them as "fake", investigators said they are treating them as dangerous. The FBI agents undertook a nationwide manhunt for whoever is sending the pipe bomb packages, which they said was centred in Florida as a number of the packaged could be traced back there. The first "pipe bomb", sent in the mail to CNN, was seemingly labelled with a sticker that depicted an ISIS-inspired meme which is commonly circulated around far-right Internet forums. The FBI tweeted today earlier that it "has confirmed an 11th package has been recovered in Florida, similar in appearance to the others, addressed to Senator Cory Booker." Mr Booker is a potential 2020 presidential contender. At a press conference Thursday, officials in New York would not discuss possible motives or details on how the packages found their way into the U.S. postal system. Nor would they say why none of the packages had detonated, but they stressed they were still treating them as "live devices." "As far as a hoax device, we're not treating it that way," police Commissioner James O'Neill said. The packages stoked nationwide tensions and fears as voters prepare to vote on November 6 to determine partisan control of the US Congress - a campaign both major political parties have described in near-apocalyptic terms. Trump critics targeted by 12 suspicious packages Barack & Michelle Obama: Former Democrat President and First lady Former Democrat President and First lady Bill & Hillary Clinton: Former Democrat President and First Lady Former Democrat President and First Lady Joe Biden: Former Democrat Vice President Former Democrat Vice President Cory Booker: Democrat Senator and potential presidential candidate Democrat Senator and potential presidential candidate Eric Holder: Foirmer Attorney General under Barack Obama Foirmer Attorney General under Barack Obama John Brennan: Former CIA director under Barack Obama Former CIA director under Barack Obama James Clapper Jr : Former National Intelligence chief under : Former National Intelligence chief under Debbie Wasserman Schultz: Democrat Congresswoman Democrat Congresswoman Maxine Waters: California Representative California Representative George Soros: Hungarian Billionaire and philanthropist Hungarian Billionaire and philanthropist Robert De Niro: Actor and vocal critic of Donald Trump Actor and vocal critic of Donald Trump CNN: Centre-left leaning news network based in New York With the sender still unknown, politicians from both parties used the threats to decry a toxic political climate and lay blame. "A very big part of the Anger we see today in our society is caused by the purposely false and inaccurate reporting of the Mainstream Media that I refer to as Fake News," Trump said on Twitter. "It has gotten so bad and hateful that it is beyond description. Mainstream Media must clean up its act, FAST!" An FBI public appeal poster said: "The packages were mailed in manila envelopes with bubble wrap interior, and were affixed with computer-printed address labels and six Forever stamps. "They had a return address of Debbie Wasserman Shultz" (sic) in Florida. "The packages, which are all similar in appearance and contain potentially destructive devices, are being sent for analysis at the FBI Laboratory in Quantico, Virginia." Actor Robert De Niro, who was targeted by one of the packages, has called on people to vote in light of the wave of mail-scares. In a statement released by his publicist on Friday, he said: "There's something more powerful than bombs, and that's your vote. People must vote!" E xperts have warned that the entire Great Barrier Reef is at risk of bleaching and death over the next four months. The US National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration forecast that there is a 60 percent chance that the entire reef will be subject to coral bleaching. While there is a 90 percent chance of a lesser level coral bleaching. Marine biologist Ove Hoegh-Guldberg told the Guardian: To really have the full picture were going to have to wait for those projections that cover the main part of bleaching season. "Given sea temperatures usually increase as we get towards March, this is probably conservative. It comes after 50 percent of shallow-water coral was killed in 2016 and 2017 by back to back bleaching events. Staghorn corals killed by bleaching on Northern Great Barrier Reef, November 2016. / ARC Centre of Excellence for Coral Reef Studies Bleaching occurs when water is too warm causing corals to expel the algae living in their tissues, causing the coral to turn white. Although corals can survive a bleaching event, they are more vulnerable to destruction. Experts say that while it takes at least a decade for even the fastest growing corals to fully recover, repeated bleaching can cause irreversible damage. The past four bleaching events have occurred in 1998, 2009, 2016 and 2017. Should another bleaching event occur in 2019, it is thought that the reef would struggle to recover. Dead table corals killed by bleaching on the Northern Great Barrier Reef, November 2016 / ARC Centre of Excellence for Coral Reef Studies Professor Hoegh-Guldberg said that frequent bleachings make it less easy for the reef to recover. Killing coral has really reduced the ability of the reef to produce offspring. The idea that these large remaining stocks of coral also get whacked at the same time as were losing the ability for the reef to regenerate.its really serious. In April, the Australian government pledged 500 million Australian dollars to help preserve the reef. I t has been the perfect stage for a royal command performance by a polished and professional actress. Beautiful and poised Meghan Markle, now pregnant and a royal duchess, hasnt put a foot wrong on her gruelling Commonwealth tour of Australia, Fiji and Tonga before heading on to New Zealand next week. She clearly knows how to walk the walk and talk the talk. Her first major speech on womens empowerment at the University of the South Pacific in Fiji took royal speechmaking often a little stilted to another level. The royal couple meet a surfers team on Bondi Beach / AP Her message, in which she drew on her own experiences as a student and confessed shed relied on scholarships and financial aid programmes to earn her degree, was a powerful one. The duchess holds an umbrella for Harry as the heavens open in drought-stricken Dubbo / PA It was a virtuoso performance from a class act, clearly determined to embrace her new role alongside husband Prince Harry on a new stage. So powerful is Meghans draw that all the major US networks have sent correspondents and film crews to cover her every move on this, her first major trip. Oh baby: Meghan with Ruby the koala at Sydney zoo after her pregnancy was announced / REUTERS She is big news in the US, the ratings are going through the roof, one American correspondent told me. There has not been this much interest in our royal family from across the pond since the heady days of Princess Diana. Harry meets his old friend war widow Daphne Dunne in Sydney / Paul Edwards The Sun - Pool/Getty Images She is, after all, an American and their princess. Everything has gone to script so far. And there has been perfect dramatic timing for each scene. The couple receive garlands in Fiji / REUTERS The royal road show started rolling with the news that the duchess was expecting a baby. Then there was drama as she was involved in a security incident when her police bodyguard decided to escort her from an overcrowded market in Fiji, and again Meghan played her part perfectly. Meghan in a blue evening gown in Suva / AP She remained cool, the smile fixed on her face. The crowds have been huge wherever Harry and Meghan have gone. Meghan attending a state dinner with Harry in Tonga / AP When the heavens opened in drought-stricken Dubbo, in Australias outback, she held the brolly as her husband delivered his speech. In Tonga, children lined their route for 10 miles, waving flags. The duke and duchess meet lifeguards in Melbourne / Getty Images The couple have remained front-page news throughout the tour no mean feat. They have both done their job with alacrity, focusing on youth leadership and projects by young people to address the challenges of the region. Greeting: Harry meets an aboriginal man on Fraser Island / AFP/Getty Images Another major focus has been Harrys Invictus Games, held this year in Sydney. The couple will head back to Australia for the closing ceremony this weekend before going to New Zealand to complete the tour. This trip has also been about connecting with as many people as possible from the hug of little Luke Vincent to their embrace of war widow Daphne Dunne, 98; to meeting surfers at Sydneys famous Bondi Beach, to an audience with Tongas king and queen. With a few days to go both Harry and Meghan have impeccably shown they have an important role to play in a modern monarchy. Meghan has certainly given the royal family new verve, even a new dimension and, being an American, has widened the institutions global appeal. R yanair has been accused of "talking rubbish" over its claim it "immediately" reported racist abuse on one of its flights to police. Delsie Gayle, a 77-year-old widow, was the victim of a tirade and called an "ugly black b******" on one of the budget airline's planes. On Friday, a week after the incident, Ryanair issued a statement defending its handling of the matter after coming under criticism. Ryanair admitted cabin crew were shown the video after landing but claimed it "immediately" shared footage with police. David Lawrence, 56, from Kent, was the passenger who took the video on the flight before it took off from Barcelona. "They are talking rubbish," he said. "Their statement is making a lot of people confused - it doesn't make sense." Mr Lawrence said he showed the footage to flight attendants when the plane landed at Stansted on October 19, as well as to Ryanair staff at the front desk. The footage was recorded on Friday on Ryanair flight FR015 from Barcelona to London Stansted / David Lawrence/Facebook The airline issued the statement in an effort to dispel "false claims" that it did not respond quickly. It said Ryanair "only became aware of this video late on Saturday", before reporting it to Essex Police at 9am on Sunday. This came after the footage went viral on social media and they came under much criticism for failing to remove the passenger from flight FR9015 before take off. The airline has not responded to requests for comment on why staff did not raise the video with police after the flight. Ryanair criticised for failing to remove racist passenger from flight Ryanair's statement came as David Mesher, of Birmingham, publicly apologised for the first time over his treatment of Ms Gayle, while he denied being a racist. But Ms Gayle and daughter Carol Gayle rejected the apology over the language used. Asked if she accepts the apology, Ms Gayle said: "I don't think so. You must forget and forgive but it's going to take a long time for me to get over what he has done to me." Her daughter added: "He says he wasn't racist - he wouldn't be saying words like that if he wasn't racist." The airline's communications chief Robin Kiely apologised over the "regrettable and unacceptable remarks". "We believe that by reporting this matter immediately to Essex Police and by apologising in writing to this customer early on Sunday morning, Ryanair treated it with the urgency and seriousness it warranted," he added. Officers from West Midlands Police leaving a residence after speaking to David Mesher on Wednesday / PA Officers from West Midlands Police assisted Essex Police, who are leading the investigation, by speaking to Mr Mesher in his sheltered accommodation in Yardley Wood on Thursday. The incident took place on the tarmac of Barcelona Airport before the plane departed for Stansted, so UK police have said officers will pass the investigation to Spanish authorities. T he Ryanair passenger filmed launching a tirade of abuse at an elderly woman has apologised and denied he is a racist, saying it was "just a fit of temper at the time". David Mesher apologised publicly for the first time in an interview aired on Friday over his treatment of Delsie Gayle, saying he lost his temper "a bit". Ms Gayle rejected his apology as she said: "It's going to take a long time for me to get over what he has done to me". Shocking footage showed Mr Mesher calling the 77-year-old woman an "ugly black b******" and telling her "don't speak to me in a foreign language, you stupid ugly cow" while on the budget airline flight from Barcelona to London Stansted Airport. Ryanair has made a lengthy defence of its conduct, with the budget airline saying it "immediately" reported the video to police on Sunday after it became aware of the video late on Saturday, when it surfaced on social media. The footage was recorded on Friday on Ryanair flight FR015 from Barcelona to London Stansted / David Lawrence/Facebook The statement added that cabin crew were aware of an argument between two passengers, but were not aware of racist comments made towards Ms Gayle. It said the video was not shown to cabin crew until after landing in London Stansted, and added that Ryanair did not become aware of its contents until Saturday. Officers from West Midlands Police leaving a residence after speaking to David Mesher on Wednesday / PA Mr Mesher, who has been spoken to by police where he lives in Birmingham, apologised for the first time in the interview aired a week after the incident. He told ITV's Good Morning Britain that the dispute began after he asked Ms Gayle to move from her seat but "she didn't seem to want to get up". "I probably lost my temper a bit and ordered her to get up," he said, adding that he "absolutely" regrets his behaviour. "I'm not a racist person by any means and it's just a fit of temper at the time, I think," he continued. Passenger launches racist tirade at woman on Ryanair flight "I apologise for all the distress you've had there and since." But Ms Gayle and her daughter Carol Gayle rejected the apology over the language used on the plane from Barcelona to London on October 19. Asked if she accepts the apology, Delsie Gayle said: "I don't think so. You must forget and forgive but it's going to take a long time for me to get over what he has done to me." Her daughter added: "He says he wasn't racist, he wouldn't be saying words like that if he wasn't racist." They also renewed their criticism of Ryanair, saying they are still yet to hear from the budget airline, branding its statement saying staff had apologised "lies". Ryanair has said it immediately wrote to Ms Gayle on Sunday, apologising for what happened on board the aircraft. "We also invited the passenger to contact the airline if they wished to discuss the matter further," the statement on Friday said. Officers from West Midlands Police assisted Essex Police, who are leading the investigation, by speaking to Mr Mesher in his sheltered accommodation in Yardley Wood on Thursday. The incident took place on the tarmac of Barcelona Airport before the plane departed for Stansted, so UK police have said officers will pass the investigation to Spanish authorities. Essex Police said: "There are agreed national protocols to follow when incidents are reported to have happened in another country. As such, we will be conducting an investigation to submit to the Spanish authorities in due course." Delsie Gayle has spoken about how "depressed" she felt about the tirade, adding: "I haven't done anything to attack him, it's because of the colour of my skin I was abused like that." Ryanair on Friday said it became aware of the video circulating online late on Saturday night before sharing it with Essex Police at 9am the following day. The airline, saying it was issuing the statement to dispel "false claims" that it did not respond quickly, said the Spanish crew were not aware of the racist comments before take-off. "While these events were videoed by another passenger on a mobile phone, this video was not shown to cabin crew until after landing in London Stansted," the statement added. Ryanair communications chief Robin Kiely apologised again over the "regrettable and unacceptable remarks". "We believe that by reporting this matter immediately to Essex Police and by apologising in writing to this customer early on Sunday morning, Ryanair treated it with the urgency and seriousness it warranted," he added. S audi Arabia has admitted for the first time that the killing of journalist Jamal Khashoggi was planned, contradicting the kingdom's previous claims. Prosecutors cited Turkish evidence that the killing was "premeditated" just days after claims that rogue Saudi officials killed him by mistake in a brawl inside their Istanbul consulate. Saudi authorities had initially said they knew nothing about what happened to the columnist for The Washington Post, who vanished after entering the consulate on October 2. It comes amid reports Mr Khashoggi's son, Salah, and his family left Saudi Arabia for the US on Thursday after a travel ban on them was lifted. Salah Khashoggi shook the hand of Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman on Tuesday / EPA A statement by Saudi Attorney General Saud al-Mojeb attributed the latest findings of a joint Turkish-Saudi investigation to information from Turkish counterparts. The evidence "indicates that the suspects in the incident had committed their act with a premeditated intention", the Saudi government statement said. At a conference in Riyadh on Wednesday, Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman said the killing was a "heinous crime that cannot be justified" and warned against any efforts to "manipulate" the crisis and drive a wedge between Saudi Arabia and Turkey. Saudi Crown Prince calls Khashoggi killing 'a heinous crime' On Thursday, Prince Mohammed attended the first meeting of a committee aiming to restructure the kingdom's intelligence services after the killing of Mr Khashoggi, the state-run Saudi Press Agency said. Mr Khashoggi, who lived in self-imposed exile in the US for nearly a year before his death, had written critically of the crown prince's crackdown on dissent. What US president Donald Trump called "one of the worst cover-ups in the history of cover-ups" was revealed to the world by Turkish leaks of information, including references to purported audio recordings of the killing and security camera footage of the Saudi officials who were involved as they moved around Istanbul. As the revelations mount, Turkey is pushing Saudi Arabia for more detail. "Jamal Khashoggi's body still hasn't been found. Where is it?" Turkish foreign minister Mevlut Cavusoglu said at a news conference with his Palestinian counterpart. "There is a crime here, but there is also a humanitarian situation. The family wants to know and they want to perform their last duty," Mr Cavusoglu said, referring to hopes for a burial. T ommy Robinson has been invited give an address in Washington by members of US Congress The 35-year-old English Defence League founder has been asked to visit the US by American think tank the Middle East Forum (MEF) and the right-wing David Horowitz Freedom Center. The MEF said on its website that Republican Paul Gosar and six other members of Congress have invited Robinson to speak to the Conservative Opportunity Society in a closed-door event. However it is not clear if Robinson, whose real name is Stephen Yaxley-Lennon, will be allowed to enter the country. Tommy Robinson addresses supporters outside court appeal He is currently on bail after being charged with contempt of court and has a string of previous criminal convictions. Earlier this week he was expected to face a hearing on claims he broke a reporting restriction by broadcasting on social media from outside Leeds Crown Court during a child sex ring trial. However the judge said he was going to refer the case to the Attorney General. Judge Nicholas Hilliard QC said he would ask the Attorney General to give the case "his most urgent consideration" but the case was adjourned until a date not yet set. T wo more suspicious packages have been discovered by authorities in the US investigating the so-called 'Make America Great Again' bomber. One package - the 11th one found - was discovered in Florida addressed to Senator Cory Booker. Another addressed to the former director of the US National intelligence, James Robert Clapper Jr., was discovered at a post sorting office in New York. The bizarre mail bomb plot has targeted high-profile critics of President Donald Trump. A police officer and dog are shown outside a postal facility in Florida. Investigators are searching "coast-to-coast" for the culprit and motives behind the bizarre mail-bomb plot aimed at critics of the president. / AP Mr Clapper, a former general, was addressed one of the packages at CNN, where he is a contributor. He told CNN: "It appears at least in this case they got the correct spelling of my name and they got the right network. I'm in some sense relieved, my wife and I are away from home right now and our neighbours have been retrieving our mail and I'm really concerned about them. As I said last night, this is definitely domestic terrorism, no doubt in my mind." Investigators are analysing the devices to ascertain whether they were intended to actually detonate or simply sow fear two weeks before Election Day. The two new pipe bombs discovered take the total up to 12, after one was addressed to the New Jersey senator, and a second to the former director of the US National intelligence James Robert Clapper Jr. The suspicious packages were said to be similar to the crude pipe bombs sent to prominent critics of President Donald Trump. None of the devices have exploded, and although some on social media have described them as "fake", investigators said they are treating them as dangerous. The FBI is undertaking a nationwide manhunt for whoever is sending the pipe bomb packages, and officials are trying to determine if the sender or senders were trying to sow fear or actually cause physical destruction. The pipe-bomb discovered in the mail in CNN was seemingly labelled with a sticker, depicting an ISIS-inspired meme, and the words "get er done", which is known to circulate around far-right Internet forums. The devices contain timers and batteries, but were not rigged like booby-trapped package bombs that would explode upon opening. A search of a postal database suggested at least some may have been mailed from Florida. The FBI tweeted today that it "has confirmed an 11th package has been recovered in Florida, similar in appearance to the others, addressed to Sen. Cory Booker." A package addressed to former CIA head John Brennan that was sent to CNN's office in New York / AP Mr Booker is a potential 2020 presidential contender. Devices have also been sent to former President Barack Obama, former Vice President Joe Biden, Hillary Clinton and CNN. At a press conference Thursday, officials in New York would not discuss possible motives or details on how the packages found their way into the U.S. postal system. Nor would they say why none of the packages had detonated, but they stressed they were still treating them as "live devices." New Jersey Senator Cory Booker. / Getty Images for TIDAL "As far as a hoax device, we're not treating it that way," police Commissioner James O'Neill said. The packages stoked nationwide tensions and fears as voters prepare to vote on November 6 to determine partisan control of the US Congress - a campaign both major political parties have described in near-apocalyptic terms. With the sender still unknown, politicians from both parties used the threats to decry a toxic political climate and lay blame. President Donald Trump claims he's being blamed for the mail bombs addressed to some of his most prominent critics. "A very big part of the Anger we see today in our society is caused by the purposely false and inaccurate reporting of the Mainstream Media that I refer to as Fake News," Trump said on Twitter yesterday. "It has gotten so bad and hateful that it is beyond description. Mainstream Media must clean up its act, FAST!" He followed up with a tweet today: "Funny how lowly rated CNN, and others, can criticize me at will, even blaming me for the current spate of Bombs and ridiculously comparing this to September 11th and the Oklahoma City bombing, yet when I criticize them they go wild and scream, `it's just not Presidential!'" Investigators said the packages have so far all been similar. An FBI public appeal poster said: "The packages were mailed in manila envelopes with bubble wrap interior, and were affixed with computer-printed address labels and six Forever stamps. Trump critics targeted by 12 suspicious packages Barack & Michelle Obama: Former President and First Lady Former President and First Lady Bill & Hillary Clinton: Former President and First Lady Former President and First Lady Joe Biden: Former Democrat Vice President Former Democrat Vice President Cory Booker: Democrat Senator and potential presidential candidate Democrat Senator and potential presidential candidate Eric Holder: Former Attorney General under Barack Obama Former Attorney General under Barack Obama John Brennan: Former CIA director under Barack Obama Former CIA director under Barack Obama James Clapper Jr: Former National Intelligence chief under Barack Obama Former National Intelligence chief under Barack Obama Debbie Wasserman Schultz: Democrat Congresswoman Democrat Congresswoman Maxine Waters: California Representative California Representative George Soros: Hungarian Billionaire and philanthropist Hungarian Billionaire and philanthropist Robert De Niro: Actor and vocal critic of Donald Trump Actor and vocal critic of Donald Trump CNN: Centre-left leaning news network based in New York "They had a return address of Debbie Wasserman Shultz" (sic) in Florida. The packages, which are all similar in appearance and contain potentially destructive devices, are being sent for analysis at the FBI Laboratory in Quantico, Virginia." Actor Robert De Niro, who was targeted by one of the packages, has called on people to vote in light of the wave of mail-scares. In a statement released by his publicist on Friday, he said: "There's something more powerful than bombs, and that's your vote. People must vote!" De Niro said he is thankful no one was hurt. He also thanked "the brave and resourceful security and law enforcement people for protecting us. Law enforcement officials said a package "!closely resembling" parcels sent to critics of President Donald Trump has been found at a postal facility in New York City. Bomb squad units responding to a post office in Midtown Manhattan after it was discovered by postal workers, and an official said it was addressed to James Clapper. All the targets of the bombs have been prominent critics of the President. Pipe bombs were sent to Trump critics including Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton and to ex-CIA director John Brennan at CNN but didn't explode. Mr Brennan said in response to the President's comments that he should clean up his own act. He tweeted: "Stop blaming others. Look in the mirror. Your inflammatory rhetoric, insults, lies, and encouragement of physical violence are disgraceful. Clean up your act....try to act Presidential." Investigators have been searching coast-to-coast for the culprit and motives behind the bizarre mail-bomb plot aimed at critics of the president, analysing the innards of the crude devices to reveal whether they were intended to detonate or simply sow fear two weeks before Election Day. The key to solving the origin of the devices could be found in the tape used, officers have said. The bombs seized on Wednesday were about six inches long and packed with powder and broken glass, according X-ray images. They were made from PVC pipe and covered with black tape, which retired federal agent David Chipman said would be an "investigator's dream". The former Alcohol Tobacco and Firearms officer said: This is someone sitting down and spending time thinking about what theyre going to do to someone else. And some people like to relish that." F BI agents have been chasing leads in Florida amid a nationwide hunt for the person who sent pipe bombs to Democrats and critics of Donald Trump. A mail distribution centre near Miami, where authorities believe several of the packages were processed, was being searched on Thursday. A bomb squad and dog unit were sent to the facility in Opa-locka, Florida, to work alongside federal authorities. A member of the bomb squad is shown outside a postal facility near Miami / AP Homeland Security Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen, in an interview with Fox News Channel, confirmed that at least some of the packages were mailed in Florida. "Some of the packages went through the mail. They originated, some of them, from Florida," she said. "I am confident that this person or people will be brought to justice." Elsewhere on Thursday evening, Time Warner Center in New York, where news network CNN is based, was evacuated after two suspicious packages were found but this was later declared a false alarm. The first package surfaced on Monday at the New York home of billionaire philanthropist George Soros, before the FBI identified five more targets on Wednesday. Bomb scare at Robert De Niro's restaurant in New York These were former president Barack Obama, former secretary of state Hillary Clinton, former attorney general Eric Holder, former CIA director John Brennan, and California representative Maxine Waters. Two packages were found addressed to her. Mr Brennan's package was sent to the Manhattan bureau of CNN, where he has appeared as an on-air analyst. On Thursday, the investigation widened with the discovery of three additional packages - two intended for former Vice President Joe Biden in his home state of Delaware and one for Hollywood actor Robert De Niro in Manhattan. "It does remain possible that further packages have been or could be mailed," William Sweeney, assistant director of the FBI, told a press conference in New York. An x-ray of one of the pipe bombs / ABC NEWS He said the manhunt for perpetrators involved hundreds of investigators nationwide. Investigators are treating the devices as "live" explosives, not a hoax, James O'Neill, the police commissioner of New York City, said. A federal law enforcement source told Reuters the devices were thought to have been fashioned from bomb-making designs widely available on the internet. Authorities have branded the parcel bombs, coming less than two weeks before the crucial mid-term elections, as an act of terrorism. The parcels each consisted of a manila envelope with bubble-wrap containing "potentially destructive devices," the FBI said. Some of the packages sent to New York locations had envelopes of white powder in them but these are not believed to have biological threat. All of the devices have been sent to the FBI's crime lab in Quantico, Virginia, for analysis. The bombs have heightened what already was a contentious campaign season ahead of the November 6 mid-term elections in which Mr Trump's Republican Party will try to maintain majorities in the Senate and House of Representatives. US President Donald Trump attacks the media after pipe bomb threats Mr Trump condemned the bombs but later blamed the media for much of the angry tone in the nation's political discourse. "A very big part of the Anger we see today in our society is caused by the purposely false and inaccurate reporting of the Mainstream Media that I refer to as Fake News," he wrote on Twitter. A 56-year-old man suspected of sending bombs to high-profile opponents of Donald Trump has been charged with five offences, including illegal mailing of explosives. The US Attorney General said Cesar Sayoc, the suspect in a raft of suspicious packages sent to prominent Democrats and others, is in the custody of the FBI and has been charged. Sayoc faces up to 58 years in prison if found guilty, Attorney General Jeff Sessions said at a press conference announcing the charges on Friday. "We will not tolerate such lawlessness," he said, "especially political violence." US Attorney General Jeff Sessions speaks about arrest of mail bomb suspect Cesar Sayoc / EPA FBI Director Christopher Wray said a fingerprint found on a package sent to Congressman Maxine Waters has been confirmed to be Sayocs - and suggested there may be other packages. Sayod has been charged with interstate transport of explosives, illegal mailing of explosives, threats against former presidents and other persons, threatening interstate comms and assaulting current and former federal officers. The 56-year-old is said to have a history of arrests for theft, illegal steroids possession and a 2002 charge of making a bomb threat. Police say he pushed far-right conspiracy theories online. The development came amid a nationwide manhunt for the person responsible for at least 13 explosive devices addressed to prominent Democrats including former president Barack Obama and 2016 candidate Hillary Clinton. None of the devices exploded and no one has been injured. FBI Director Christopher Wray speaks at the press conference / EPA The case continued widening on Friday even as Sayoc was detained. Investigators in California scrutinised a similar package sent to Democratic Senator Kamala Harris, her office said. In Washington, the Attorney General cautioned that Sayoc had only been charged, not convicted. He said: "Let this be a lesson to anyone regardless of their political beliefs that we will bring the full force of law against anyone who attempts to use threats, intimidation and outright violence to further an agenda. "We will find you, we will prosecute you to the fullest extent of the law." In Florida, law enforcement officers were seen on television examining a white van, its windows covered with an assortment of stickers, outside the Plantation auto parts store. Authorities covered the vehicle with a blue tarp and took it away on the back of a flatbed truck. Federal authorities took Cesar Sayoc into custody on Friday and confiscated his van / AP Mr Trump, after Sayoc was apprehended, declared that "we must never allow political violence take root in America" and Americans "must unify." He did not mention that the package recipients were all Democrats or officials in Obama's administration, in addition to CNN, a news network he criticises almost daily. Earlier on Friday, he complained that "this bomb stuff" was taking attention away from the upcoming election and said critics were wrongly blaming him and his heated rhetoric. The Justice Department scheduled a Friday afternoon news conference in Washington that was to include New York Police Commissioner James O'Neill, whose department investigated the mailings with the FBI. Law enforcement officials said they had intercepted a dozen packages in states across the country. None had exploded, and it wasn't immediately clear if they were intended to cause physical harm or simply sow fear and anxiety. Online court records show that Sayoc in 2002 was arrested and served a year of probation for a felony charge of threatening to throw or place a bomb. No further details were available about the case. Sayoc was convicted in 2014 for grand theft and misdemeanour theft of less than $300, and in 2013 for battery. In 2004, he faced several felony charges for possession of a synthetic anabolic-androgenic steroid. He also had several arrests for theft in the 1990s. Law enforcement officials said the devices, containing timers and batteries, were not rigged to explode upon opening. But they were uncertain whether the devices were poorly designed or never intended to cause physical harm. Most of those targeted were past or present US officials, but one was sent to actor Robert De Niro and billionaire George Soros. The bombs have been sent across the country - from New York, Delaware and Washington, D.C. They bore the return address of Florida Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz, the former chairwoman of the Democratic National Committee. T he government has issued a warning over counterfeit poppies after hundreds were found on one of Chinas largest online shopping stores. The intellectual property office and Royal British Legion has urged consumers to beware of fake poppy merchandise and to purchase the goods through official channels. Aliexpress and Taobao, both owned by Chinese company Alibaba have been found to be selling imitation poppies with none of the money going to charity. Items for sale include the two petal and four petal poppy with some of the brooches containing the phrase lest we forget. Multiple poppies have been found on Aliexpress and Taobao / Aliexpress One of the sellers used royal names such as Kate to try and shift the items while others used the Royal British Legion's name. Most of the poppies found on sale were priced between $1 (78p) and $22 (17.16). Claire Rowcliffe, Director of Fundraising from the Royal British Legion said: It is a sad fact that there are people who actively defraud the public in order to take funds intended for the support of our Armed Forces community. One item used the name Princess Kate to try and shift the items / Taobao We would urge everyone wishing to purchase a Remembrance poppy brooch, to do so through official channels. For example, you can buy from one of our trusted volunteers, from The Royal British Legions online Poppy Shop, or from one of our corporate partners." How to avoid fake poppies be a 'responsible buyer' - buy from official channels and The Royal British Legion's corporate partners avoid cheaper priced products. If the price is too good to be true, it usually is Only buy from corporate partners authorised by the Royal British Legion Buy through the Royal British Legion or The Royal British Legion official eBay site It comes a year after border control seized thousands of fake poppy branded items that were shipped from China and destined for Manchester. The fake goods were seized at Tilbury docks and were said to be worth around 150,000. A spokesperson for Alibaba told the Standard: AliExpress and Taobao marketplace platforms prohibit illicit, illegal or fraudulent behaviour on our platforms. J ohnny Depp has reportedly been dropped from Pirates of the Caribbean following the news that Disney could reboot the film franchise. The company is thought to be looking into bringing back to Pirates films, originally a spin-off from a ride at the theme parks, but it is now rumoured that Captain Jack Sparrow will no longer be played by Depp. Speaking to DailyMailTV, original writer Stuart Beattie appeared to confirm Depps time was over, saying he had a great run. Although never naming Depp, Beattie said: Obviously he's made that character his own and it's become the thing that he's most famous for now. It's been great for him and it's been great for us. Dropped: Johnny Depp has been 'cut' from Pirates of the Caribbean's future plans / Getty Images There's that saying, 'Don't frown because it's over, smile because it happened.' The fact that they're rebooting something that you did means that you did something that was worth rebooting. It's an honour. PIRATES OF THE CARIBBEAN 5 - Official International Trailer 2 Standard Online has contacted representatives for Depp for comment. Depp has played the role of Sparrow for 14 years, making his debut in Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl back in 2003. The now-iconic franchise went on to spawn four more films with the most recent, Dead Men Tell No Tales, hitting screens in 2017. Depps next big screen role is as dark wizard Gellert Grindelwald, who gives his name to the title, and will see him persued by Eddie Redmaynes Newt Scamander and Jude Law as Albus Dumbledore. R ising star Florence Pugh is proving to be among cinema's hottest new talent as she gears up for one of her biggest roles to date. The 23-year-old will star in the Greta Gerwig adaptation of Louisa May Alcott's classic novel Little Women, which will arrive in UK cinemas later this month. Pugh, who has been cast as youngest sister Amy, has been cast as Amy breakthrough performances in The Falling and Lady Macbeth, before starring in Fighting With My Family and Midsommar earlier this year. With 2019 her breakthrough year, here's everything you need to know about Florence Pugh and why she's catching Hollywood's attention. Who is Florence Pugh and how old is she? Pugh was born in Oxfordshire in January 1996, the daughter of a restaurateur and a dance teacher. The 23-year-old has three siblings, including actor and musician Tony Sebastian and actress Arabella Gibbins. She lived in Andalusia, southern Spain, for part of her childhood before returning to the UK where she was educated at schools throughout Oxfordshire. Who does she play in Greta Gerwig's Little Women? Pugh as will play Amy in Little Women. Amy is the youngest sister and has a passion for art, although the character is often thought of as being vain, self-centered, spoiled and cantankerous. What other movies has the Midsommar star been in? Having starred in plays as a child, Florence bagged her first professional film role aged just 17 in mystery drama The Falling. Florence plays the promiscuous Abbie alongside Game of Thrones actress Maisie Williams. The film's director, Carol Morley, said her audition for the role went so well that it was "like a young Kate Winslet walking into the room." In 2017, she bagged her breakout role in indie flick Lady Macbeth - not based on the Shakespeare classic - as a young bride trapped in a loveless marriage with an older man. Florence Pugh discusses nude scenes in new film Lady Macbeth Building on her already impressive portfolio, Florence has also starred in action thriller The Commuter opposite Liam Neeson. As 2019 draws to a close, the actress has only added to her already impressive resume and this year is widely considered to be her breakthrough. Early in the year she worked with Dwayne Johnson on his wrestling film Fighting with My Family, before screaming her lungs out after getting caught up in a violent Swedish cult in Midsommar. Each performance has earned her more critical acclaim than the last, and anticipation is building over her appearance in the upcoming Black Widow. What character did she play in Little Drummer Girl? BBC / The Little Drummer Girl Distribution Limited. Set in the 1970s against a backdrop of sun, sex and spies, Florence plays Charlie, an actress who meets the mysterious Becker, played by Swede actor Alexander Skarsgard, whilst on holiday in Greece. She quickly finds herself in too deep and becomes enthralled in a complex plot masterminded by an Israeli spymaster. The show's director, Chan-wook Pak, reportedly told TV bosses that Florence had to have the part. Executive producer Simon Cornwell said: "He told us, 'But you won't have heard of her.' "And we were absolutely delighted to say that not only did we know Florence Pugh, we thought she was absolutely phenomenal and ideal to play Charlie." After the Night Manager saw heartthrob Tom Hiddleston bare his bum to the world, Florence revealed that bosses decided to tone down the nudity on The Little Drummer Girl to appease American audiences. She said: "America is quite scared of bums. And nipples. "We had to make sure there were no bums and nipples out. I don't know why. Such strange people. "My parents were very cool and made sure we watched lots of European films when we grew up, so nudity has never been a problem for me, as long as it's done beautifully." Who is her brother, Sebastian? Dave Benett Proving that acting clearly runs in the family, Florence's older brother Toby Sebastian played Trystane Martell in seasons five and six of Game of Thrones. He's also a talented musician, releasing his debut album in 2013. Is Florence Pugh famous on YouTube? Florence has built herself quite the following on YouTube by sharing her musical prowess. Her channel is packed full of beautiful covers and original songs. Has she won any awards? Florence Pugh at the London Evening Standard British Film Awards in 2016. / Dave Benett Yes - plenty. She bagged the Evening Standard award for Most Promising Newcomer and the Best Actress gong at the British Independent Film Awards and was also nominated for a BAFTA and a number of other awards for her role in Lady Macbeth. Nominated for a Best Actress gong at the Gotham Independent Film Awards for her role in Midsommar, her upcoming turn in Little Woman is sure to see her take home a few awards. How long has Florence Pugh been dating boyfriend Zach Braff? Pugh was first seen strolling hand-in-hand with ex-Scrubs star Zach Braff, 44, in New York in April this year. And while the two haven't commented publicly on their relationship, they spotted six months later buying groceries together at a Whole Foods in Hollywood. 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 Romania is a country where we want to stay and invest, Ignacio Jaquotot, head of Intesa Sanpaolo's International Subsidiary Banks Division said on Thursday, adding that he sees a promising future for Romania. If we look at the fundamentals of the Romanian economy, in the past year we see something unique, a 7 percent GDP growth in just one year. The public debt share of the GDP is about 35 percent, the unemployment rate is very low, four years ago the banking system's NPL ratio was about 22 percent, and it is now around 8 percent .When we analyze a country in Central and South-Eastern Europe, we do an exercise. Let us imagine that the GDP of these countries was 100 in 2000. Guess which had the best performance 17 years later? There were only two countries where this indicator was over 200. One is Slovakia with 204, but Romania's is the best performance with 205. So this is something unique. This is the reason why in 2005 Romania's GDP per capita was 23 percent of the EU average, and today it stands at 55 percent. In relative terms, I believe the greenest grass is in Romania, but you don't realize this because you are from Romania, Ignacio Jaquotot told a press conference. Jaquotot stressed that things look different from the outside, and this is why the group believes in the Romanian market and this is also the reason for its presence here.This explains why we have confirmed over the years our long-term commitment to your country. Ever since I took up this position in this division, I told every meeting with journalists, when asked if we were selling or leaving this country, that we have no such intention. On the contrary, we consider Romania a strategic market where we invest and we have good reasons to do so. Year after year we are increasingly convinced that this is the strategy to follow and we will be present for the long run in Romania. It's a country where we want to stay and invest. We have a long-term vision and commitment, and we see a promising future for Romania, said Jaquotot.Asked to comment on the future evolution of the Romanian economy, Ignacio Jaquotot said that the government should focus on reducing disparities between Bucharest plus another five other major cities on the one hand and the rest of the country on the other.Intesa Sanpolo Bank Romania recorded in H1 a net loss of one million euro, Romania being the only country in the region where the bank was in the red. The bank posted in H1 operating revenues of 21 million euro, deposits of 0.9 billion, loans of 0.8 bln euro and 1.3 bln worth of assets. The bank's non-performing loans amounted to 12 million euro, with a coverage ratio of 65 percent. The chairman of the PMP (People's Movement Party, opposition, ed. n.) Eugen Tomac says that the PSD (Social Democratic Party, major at rule, ed. n.) is leaving behind a "scorched country", pointing out that "Romania is battling in statistics with banana republics in infrastructure." "Romania is battling, in statistics, with banana republics, in infrastructure. Motorways have become a faraway dream for every citizen of this country. We sit in awe on how all of our neighbors (not to mention Western Europe) manage to develop full networks of modern roads, and we fall into potholes, throughout the entire teritory of Romania," Tomac wrote on Facebook. He mentioned that, "out of desperation, people have started to organize themselves and pressure the Government to do something.""We are sick and tired from all the frustrations that we have to live through. Even European Commissioner Corina Cretu, who also comes from the PSD, is exasperated from the carelessness Dancila Government," Eugen Tomac said.According to him, although generous funds from the European Union for the construction of highways exist, the people with the ministries decide to start infrastructure projects with a public-private partnership."See the case of the Ploiesti-Brasov motorway, or Moldova's motorway! We know very well that all public-private partnerships have utterly failed so far. Why is it that the ruling class is stubborn in following this path? There is no other explanation but bribery. European funds cannot be commissioned, there are too many rules that need to be observed, they are thoroughly controlled. So, it's better for the PSD to tinker with the money from their own budget, that they manage and can bleed dry. For the red plague, the country's infrastructure does not represent an interest other than the bribe that they can cash in. And this is how we are cursed with a clique of politicians with a fee, who will leave behind a scorching country," Tomac also said. President Klaus Iohannis was hospitalized on Thursday at the "Dr. Carol Davila" Central Military Emergency Teaching Hospital for surgery on his left shoulder, the intervention having been performed according to the medical protocol, with very good results, the Presidential Administration informs. "The president of Romania is medically able to fulfill the duties of his office, his state of health being optimal," reads a statement of the Presidential Administration. The "Dr. Carol Davila" Central Military Emergency Teaching University Hospital informs that the head of state suffered a minimally invasive arthroscopic surgery on his left shoulder."Today, 25 October, the President of Romania, Mr. Klaus Werner Iohannis, was admitted to the ?Dr. Carol Davila' Central Military Emergency Teaching Hospital for undergoing a minimally invasive arthroscopic intervention on his left shoulder. The patient is undergoing anti-pain, anti-inflammatory and wide-spectrum antibiotic therapy, starting this evening the post-surgery physical recovery procedures, according to the protocol applied in such surgical treatment," a release from the hospital informs.On 26 April, 2016, President Iohannis was hospitalized at the same hospital and operated on his right shoulder. The surgery took place with no problems.The next day, the head of state was released from hospital and resumed his activity. Secretary of state Maria Magdalena Grigore reiterated at a meeting with officials of four states Romania's interest for the forging of a freight corridor between the Black Sea and the Caspian Sea, showing the benefits, such as the narrow costs and the short time the goods would need to get to their destination, a release by the Foreign Affairs Ministry (MAE) sent to AGERPRES on Thursday informs. According to the source, the secretary of state Maria Magdalena Grigore participated 24 through 25 October as head of the Romanian delegation, in the 4-party reunion on the fathering of the Black Sea - Caspian Sea Freight Corridor in Ashgabat, Turkmenistan. The project is Romania's and Turkmenistan's joint initiative who have invited Georgia and Azerbaijan to join. The Corridor involves the creation in the future of an intermodal maritime/river and road/rail transport route, between Central and Northern Europe, South Caucasus and Central Asia, with a possibility to be extended towards Asia-Pacific region."On the sidelines of the 4-party reunion, the secretary of state Maria Magdalena Grigore had a meeting with the Deputy Prime minister, Foreign Affairs minister of the gov't of Turkmenistan, Rashid Meredov. On this occasion, the two officials reviewed the bilateral agenda's current stage, including the cooperation component between the EU and Turkmenistan. In context, the Romanian official brought to mind Romania's interest to boost relations with Turkmenistan, stressing on the transport, energy and education fields. During the talks, the schedule of the future events on the bilateral agenda was agreed upon, with priority on the organization in March 2019 of a reunion of the foreign affairs ministers of Romania, Turkmenistan, Georgia and Azerbaijan on the establishment of the Black Sea - Caspian Sea Freight Corridor and the 4-party format adoption of the Political Declaration on this project," the source informs.The reunion was opened by the Deputy Foreign Affairs Minister of the gov't of Turkmenistan, Vepa Hadjiev, and the Romanian Secretary of state Maria Magdalena Grigore. The Ashgabat meeting was attended by officials of the authorities with relevant responsibilities from Azerbaijan, Georgia, Romania and Turkmenistan.They talked with the purpose to review the relevant technical aspects for the making of the project. In the offing of the Corridor's finalization, the participants stressed the geographical contiguity of the four above-mentioned countries, alongside the facilities offered by the ports of Constanta (Romania), Batumi, Poti (Georgia), Baku (Azerbaijan) and Turkmenbasi (Turkmenistan) and the direct connection between the Constanta Port and the Danube River (via the Danube-Black Sea Canal) and subsequently the water courses and the interior canals on the European continent, with access to Central and Northern Europe."In her address, Maria Magdalena Grigore reiterated the interest of the Romanian party for the Corridor, given the advantages it could offer this transport variant, as well as the small costs and the reduced time for the goods to reach their destination. The Romanian dignitary emphasized the premises favourable to developing the freight Corridor's development, in context of adopting by the European Union on 15 October 2018 of the EU Strategy regarding the Europe-Asia connectivity, that is directly aiming at the four states, considering their geographical position, including their initiative to connect the Black Sea shores with the Caspian Sea's," the release adds.The reunion was also attended by the liaison chief officer of the EU Bureau in Turkmenistan, Lubomir Frebort, who conveyed a sustaining message on the EU's behalf. In context, the representatives of all of the participating states in the reunion have presented the invitation that the EU becomes part of this project.According to the source, another relevant aspect is given by the fact that the participants agreed that in March 2019 a ministerial reunion be organized with a view to ink a Political Declaration of the chief diplomats regarding the Black Sea - Caspian Sea freight corridor.The Romanian delegation comprised officials with the Foreign Affairs Ministry (MAE), the Transport Ministry, through the CFR Marfa National Freight Transport Society - CFR Marfa SA and the National Company of the Navigation Canals Administration (CNACN), the National Tax Administration Agency (ANAF). The European Parliament (EP) has adopted a resolution calling for tougher sanctions from the European Union (EU) against Russia, should the situation in the Azov Sea continue to deteriorate. The document states that the Kerch bridge was built illegally, therefore the EP welcomes the councils decision to impose restrictive measures against the companies involved in its construction. It suggests the creation of the position of special envoy on Crimea and the Donbass region in order to monitor the development of events there. And it warns about wider security implications that directly affect the EU. It demands that Russia immediately end the intensive and discriminatory inspections of vessels and to consider, if necessary, appropriate countermeasures. Previously, Adm. Igor Voronchenko, the commander of the Ukrainian navy, threatened to use force against Russia as his service brought more ships to the area. Ukraines government announced last month that it would build a naval base there. The EU has condemned Russia for launching a new inspection regime for cargo vessels coming from or heading toward Ukrainian ports in the Azov Sea. It is also accused of militarizing the sea by increasing the number of its ships deployed there. On Oct. 3, NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg expressed concern over the situation in the Azov Sea at a press conference in Brussels. Last month, US State Department Special Representative for Ukraine Kurt Volker stated that Washington is uneasy about the situation developing in the Sea of Azov, and is thus prepared to continue supplying Ukraine with weapons. NATO and Ukraine held a major NATO operation Oct.10-19, dubbed Clear Sky, with substantial US Air Force participation. Just a few days ago, it was reported that the US government was considering the transfer of Oliver Hazard Perry-type frigates to Ukraine. This move will really boost that countrys sea power. Ukraine has only one seagoing warship the frigate Hetman Sahaidachnyi. Since it is almost constantly out for repairs, it goes to sea rarely and only for very short deployments, such as NATO drills, never moving far from its home waters. The delivery of relatively contemporary frigates with sophisticated weapons systems and equipment is a huge leap forward for the Ukrainian navy. The vessels are too large for the Azov Sea but they could operate around the entrance to it. Of course, the ships will be a factor to reckon with in the Black Sea. Ten ships of that class are available for export. They can be transferred under the Defense Departments Excess Defense Articles program, which allows the release of surplus weaponry to friendly nations. In September, the US Coast Guard transferred two Island-class cutters, armed with .50-caliber machine guns and 25mm deck guns. The US is taking one step after another to push Kiev toward confrontation. Just as the election campaign in Ukraine is swinging into full gear, Kiev is being urged to challenge Russia militarily. NATO naval operations are restricted by the 1936 Montreux Convention. Black Sea members dont have many surface ships, and non-Black Sea allies are to rotate their ships every 21 days. This is a problem that can be solved with a little sleight of hand, such as by reflagging warships so that they fly Ukraines ensign. Thats how the American Oliver H. Perry frigates could be based in the Black Sea permanently. Any international agreement has a loophole. Russian military experts are old hands at this. They know perfectly well that the frigates will operate under US control. Thats not all. Another way to skirt the provisions of the Monteux Convention is to sign a port concession agreement with a Black Sea country. This will trigger legal procedures based in the law of the sea, giving the US the opportunity to have some clauses reviewed regarding its naval operations. Ukraine comes in handy. The US military has its eye on the Ukrainian seaports of Odessa, Ilyichevsk, Chernomorsk, and Yuzhny. It already uses the Ochakov facility in Ukraine. Now that the construction work is over, US ships could drop anchor there. The convention does not allow aircraft carriers to enter the Black Sea, but Ukraine could be transformed into an unsinkable flattop. The EU resolution sounds really tough. Why such a strong reaction and why now? Because Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov frustrated NATOs plans to hold a provocative military exercise in the Azov Sea. Because of a bilateral treaty signed by Kiev and Moscow, Ukraine wont be able to host the planned training event in the Sea of Azov without Russias consent. Ukraines government is whipping up tensions because President Petro Poroshenko is running for reelection in March 2019 on a national security platform. This is pushing him to take a tougher line on Azov. In late March, Ukrainian border guards stopped the Russian-flagged, Crimean-registered fishing vessel Nord and illegally detained its crew. Ukraine was violating a number of international agreements. The incident triggered a campaign of provocative actions. In August, the Russian tanker Mekhanik Pogodin was detained in the Ukrainian port of Kherson. At the time, the Russian government compared that move to the activities of the Somali pirates. The Russian government fully complies with its international commitments. The 2003 Agreement between the Russian Federation and Ukraine on cooperation in the use of the Sea of Azov and the Strait of Kerch does not specify a precise border. It states that the parties enjoy free use of this body of water and agree that the Sea of Azov and the Strait of Kerch are the internal waters of both Ukraine and Russia. No line of demarcation has even been drawn. Kiev believes it has the right to detain any ship traveling to or from Crimea without its permission. Whatever Russia does is done legally. If there is a problem, Russia and Ukraine can solve it through negotiations. But neither the EU nor NATO has the idea of acting as a mediator to promote that process on its agenda. They could easily press Kiev into talks with Moscow but have not. Instead the EU votes for this provocative resolution, NATO expresses its political support, and the US sends warships and weapons. They are doing everything to goad Kiev into taking a confrontational approach and turning the Azov Sea into a flashpoint with a showdown expected at any minute. In the last few days, two national leaders who have long been darlings of the West (with the West including not only the US, but also the EU and its many allies) have been revealed to be heads of states, where government officials could have ordered the murders of their political opponents. The Saudi crown prince Mohammed bin Salman suddenly remembered that the dissident journalist Jamal Khashoggi was actually murdered inside the Saudi consulate in Istanbul. And the former Georgian president, Mikheil Saakashvili, who has been evading Georgian justice for six years thanks to his personal connections in Europe, has been accused by his countrys Chief Prosecutors office of having ordered the assassination of his Georgian billionaire enemy and owner of several TV channels, Badri Patarkatsishvili, in 2008. The Georgian prosecutors, who also want to question Mr. Saakashvili on numerous charges of corruption and abuse of power, substantiated their accusations with audio recordings and information provided by several suspects, who are now detained. When Patarkatsishvili died in his British home for no apparent reason in February 2008, on the eve of a crucial election for Saakashvili, the British authorities did not raise hell and expel diplomats, as they had years before with Alexander Litvinenko and a decade later with Sergei Skripal, that man of miraculous resilience to the deadliest of chemical weapons. Instead, the British authorities just quietly accepted the idea that a sudden heart attack had struck down the Georgian billionaire at a very opportune moment for then-president Mikheil Saakashvili. It was a bad week for both bin Salman and Mikheil Saakashvili. In fact, it should have been a bad week for the political leaders and journalists of the West, who have been calling Saakashvili the beacon of liberty in the former Soviet Union for both that region as well as the world and bin Salman the leader of Saudi Arabias own Arab spring who is on a mission to make his country more democratic. The scandal is that this first tidbit of sickening flattery was authored by none other than the longtime president of the United States, George W. Bush. And the second by the New York Times most prominent columnist, Thomas Friedman, in his article titled Saudi Arabias Arab Spring, At Last. As the Saudi authorities have now admitted that Jamal Khashoggi was actually murdered inside the Saudi consulate in Istanbul, the question is no longer who killed Mr. Khashoggi or why. The answer to that question is becoming increasingly clear. In the same way, there is progressively less and less reason to wonder why Mikheil Saakashvilis biggest political competitor, Zurab Zhvania, the second-most powerful man in Georgia at the time, suffocated himself by mishandling an Iranian-made gas oven in 2005. The real question is a different one. How could George Bush and Thomas Friedman, along with dozens of other Western leaders and tens of thousands of journalists, have so completely misunderstood bin Salman and Saakashvili? How could they have bought bin Salmans story about Syrian president Assad as an embodiment of evil and Irans puppet, who was threatening poor Saudi Arabia, with its lavishly equipped military the beneficiary of a national defense budget that is second only to Americas? And how could they buy Saakashvilis never-ending narrative about Russia as an aggressive crocodile who wants to swallow his native Georgia? In short, how could the West believe these killers for so long? Was this just an example of naivete, due to the fact that bin Salman and Saakashvili had not always being been what they are today, but had suddenly changed for the worse over the course of their careers? Nope. Even before welcoming George W. Bush to Tbilisi in his sickeningly flattering way in 2005, Saakashvili had already detained the people who had been connected to the previous regime and extorted money from them. He had launched military attacks against Georgias disobedient provinces, much in the same way that Prince bin Salman detained his own relatives and in 2015 attacked the rebellious country of Yemen, treating that nation as some sort of rebellious province of Saudi Arabia. And George W. Bush, along with his successor Obama, continued to lionize Saakashvili, not only during Bushs visit to Tbilisi, during which a street was renamed in honor of the American president in the Georgian capital, but even after Saakashvilis disastrous attack against South Ossetia in 2008 and his short and dismal tenure as the governor of Ukraines Odessa region in 2015-2016. The parallels between bin Salman and Saakashvili, as well as the Wests blind support for them, are so obvious, you dont need to investigate or search through archives all that information has been willingly broadcast and even somewhat propagandized by the mainstream media in the US and the EU. Both men prided themselves on acting outside the law, and the Western media swallowed their stories hook, line, and sinker, as long as it all fit the Western medias beloved narrative of young reformers vs. corrupt conservatives in a country undergoing the process of transition. When Saakashvili arrested his predecessors son-in-law Gia Jokhtaberidze and said that Jokhtaberidze would not be set free until he coughed up money to the tune of millions of dollars for the Georgian treasury, the Western media accepted this as a legitimate bending of the rules, given the corruption that Georgia was facing at the time. Saakashvilis somewhat peculiar attitude to justice was excused, as long as this former New York City lawyer promised to move Jokhtaberidzes money into Georgias state coffers, and not into his own pocket. At the time, the BBC affectionately quoted Saakashvilis warning: Dont take bribes and dont give jobs to your relatives. He claimed that this was his first advice to his team (later many of this teams members were found guilty on corruption charges for having made off with the biggest sums in Georgias history, but the BBC ignored that story). When Prince bin Salman did the same thing as Saakashvili, keeping the rich magnates of the previous regime in the Ritz-Carlton hotel in Riyadh until they coughed up money to the tune of billions of dollars, the NYTs Thomas Friedman was only too happy to oblige bin Salman by not only justifying this action, but seeing in it the long-awaited reform that would change the tone and tenor of Islam across the globe. Now that this new tone and tenor has revealed itself in the audio recordings of Mr. Khashoggis interrogation, which the media is still awaiting from the Saudi and Turkish authorities, the question about the roots of Thomas Friedmans blind trust is taking on not just an urgent, but almost a sinister tinge. Mr. Friedman should explain to himself and to the world why bin Salman found it so easy to wear him out with a fire hose of ideas about transforming his country. Could something more than just ideas have been inside that fire hose? And when will the Western media stop pushing the reform agenda on other sovereign countries, instead of looking at their own countries aggressions, oppressions, and (as in the case of bin Salman and Saakashvili) disastrous delusions? These are the questions that the public needs to know, as the NYTs authors love to put it when writing about Russiagate the paper that employs the same writers who have just recently been selling us Mr. Mohammed bin Salman and Mr. Saakashvili as squeaky-clean, young reformers. This years Eastern Economic Forum in Vladivostok was as usual the subject of dismissive coverage if any in the mainstream US and UK media. Viewed through the feverish and unregulated speculative bubbles that have defined what passes for 21st century global finance in New York and London, the slow but steady and enormous moves towards industrial and resource consolidation and cooperation between Beijing and Moscow are occurring at too slow a rate to grab Western imaginations shaped by Attention Deficit Disorders. This failure to grasp the scale of what is going on is like Aesops Fable of the Tortoise and the Hare. Western leaders, strategists and financiers think in 24 hour news cycles and soundbites. Presidents Vladimir Putin of Russia and Xi Jinping of China are thinking in terms of decades and generations. Western leaders and commentators believe Russian-Chinese economic cooperation has already failed and can never succeed be because it is moving slowly. They fail to grasp that it is moving consistently and steadily in the same direction. What Russia and China are doing, as perceptive contributors to the Strategic Culture Foundation such as Federico Pieraccini have pointed out is to integrate the strategic security dimension of the highly successful and now well-established Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) with the economic investment dimension of Chinas Road and Belt Initiative. A comparison could be with the much touted success of the combined Marshall Plan and NATO Alliance initiatives produced by the United States in the late 1940s to integrate all of Western Europe under US leadership and control. However, the joint SCO and China-Russia economic cooperation initiatives are on a far vaster scale and do not demand the tight integration of the nations of the Eurasian Heartland in a lockstep, micromanaged structure. That is a major part of their appeal. What the SCO has succeeded in doing over the past 17 years is to guarantee peace and security for all of its member states stretching across Eurasia. The contrast with the unending wars that the United States is waging and has even provoked across South Asia, the Middle East and North Africa on the periphery of the Eurasian World Island, could not be more striking. The SCO took another gigantic step towards maintaining peace across Asia this year when India and Pakistan both became members of the body at the same time. This move is going to have enormous and highly positive investment and economic ramifications as well as security ones. Even Global Climate Change is now playing a rapidly growing role in propelling the enormous communications and industrial consolidation of the main nations of Eurasia. For Climate Change is unlocking the resources of Siberia and the Arctic Basin in ways inconceivable even a decade ago. Moscow and Beijing are the obvious partners to develop the new opportunities on offer. As I wrote in the China Daily on September 11, To focus on economic development in Central Asia and Kazakhstan, as so many studies do, is to miss the point of the long-term focus, or schwerpunkt of specific Sino-Russian economic cooperation. That lies further east and far to the north, across Siberia and the Arctic and along the longest common borders in the world. I then noted that China has a growing appetite for Russian oil that is not subject to international price fluctuations and most of all, to disruptions by wars and destabilization generated by unpredictable US policies. For Russia too, locking in expanded long term energy deals with Beijing would be a most welcome buffer against further wild fluctuations in global energy prices though it looks increasing likely that instability in the global oil prices will be fostered by the two nations most likely to suffer disastrously from it the United States and Saudi Arabia. The enormous distances, lack of existing infrastructure and harsh climatic conditions across norther eastern Eurasia for much of the year have always been the main factors militating against more rapid economic development between Russia and China. Nevertheless, bilateral trade has steadily and substantially risen from a relatively paltry $15.8 billion in 2003 to $95.3 billion in 2014. This was still vastly less than Chinas $500 billion per year total trade volume with the European Union in 2014. But an increasingly unstable EU once again as a result of reckless US and UK policies is likely to require considerably less imports from China in the next few years. By contrast, Russia has pursued a cautious and responsible fiscal policy through this century under President Putin and it is now seeking to expand and diversify its own manufacturing and industrial base. As a result, the Russian market looks likely to generate unexpectedly high positive elasticity of demand for Chinese companies and investment in the coming decade. The economies of Russia and China are far more complementary than is assumed in the West. A great deal more investment on both sides would be required to take proper advantage of that potential, but the resources and political will to apply them clearly exist. The process of climate change is already opening up the prospect of unprecedented commerce and communication along a secure and safe rate across Russias vast Arctic coastline. Environmental changes are making the development of the almost limitless resources of Siberia far more practical and imminent than was ever imagined possible. This is the true Big Picture behind the slow but steady efforts to expand Russian-Chinese bilateral trade and investment. US policymakers and Wall Street analysts remain blind to it. But there is no reason anyone else should. Sami MOUBAYED The aging king of Saudi Arabia issued a stunning royal decree on Wednesday, stripping his nephew the Crown Prince Mohammad Bin Nayef from office and appointing his own son, Mohammad Bin Salman, as heir to the Saudi throne. The decision builds on a 1994 law allowing a sitting monarch to choose his successor, regardless of seniority or age. Significantly, all of the kings brothers are way beyond retirement age, meaning that if they took their turns on the Saudi throne, a vacuum would emerge every few years, hampering stability and progress something that King Salman wants to avoid at all costs. On the surface this seems to end a looming power struggle in the oil-rich kingdom between two powerful cousins, Bin Nayef, aged 57, and Bin Salman, aged 31. Behind closed doors this is what everybody in Saudi has been taking about since the ailing Salman took office in early 2015. The 81-year old king had long wanted his son to succeed him; however, by line of hereditary succession, the throne was meant to pass to Bin Nayef, the powerful Interior Minister who is rumored to be a favorite of the United States. Neither the Americans nor Bin Nayef objected to the royal decree on June 21; however it is unclear how long the ex-Crown Prince will remain quiet. So far he has responded gracefully, immediately pledging his allegiance to Bin Salman. The decree was signed off by the powerful Allegiance Council, established 11 years ago with a mandate to decide on any incoming heir apparent. It is composed of the surviving sons of the kingdoms founder, who are all brothers or half-brothers of King Salman, and 15 of his grandchildren who all see themselves as more worthy of the throne than Mohammad Bin Salman. The new heirs uncles are unhappy and so are his cousins and 11 brothers, who were all stunned at being passed over in such a manner. All of them were dying to be king and unless rewarded with other senior posts some might rebel against the decree perhaps not now but after he parts from the scene. In a tribal country riddled with internal problems and competing ambitions, anything can happen including, of course, nothing at all. Bin Salman has full control both of the state coffers and the entire military apparatus, which is under his command in his capacity as Minister of Defense. Deprived of these his rivals can never seize power. If Bin Salman takes over, he would be the youngest king in Saudi Arabias history. Young Saudis like that, given that 50% are below the age of 18 and eager for a king-in-waiting who is closer to their age and speaks a language they can relate to; one that recognizes entrepreneurship, jobs, and cyber technology. Bin Salman failed to listen when they advised against sending more arms to Syria, warning about terrorists returning to strike within the kingdom and arguing that these arms were reaching al-Qaeda affiliates in the Syrian battlefield The older generation, however, are stunned. They see Bin Salman as young, inexperienced, and haughty, blaming him, for example, for the ill-fated war in Yemen, which was supposed to end within weeks of its start in March 2015. Two years down the road there is no end in sight for that military adventure, which has cost billions while destroying the kingdoms reputation in the Arab and Islamic worlds due to the amount of destruction it has inflicted on Yemeni civilians. When Bin Salman became minister of defense in 2015, they say, he had no military experience to handle such a sensitive campaign. He had previously only been assistant to his father when Salman was governor of the Riyadh Province and chief of the royal court, from 2009-2015. Born in the port city of Jeddah in August 1985, Bin Salman was often described as a king in training when studying law at King Saud University. A pampered child, he was taught to take decisions at will without consulting anybody which is exactly what he did when launching his war on Yemen, snubbing family elders and members of the security services, all of whom who were far more experienced than him. He also failed to listen when they advised against sending more arms to Syria, warning about terrorists returning to strike within the kingdom and arguing that these arms were reaching al-Qaeda affiliates in the Syrian battlefield. Bin Salman did not seem to mind so long as he managed to clip the wings of Iran, crush Hezbollah on the battlefield and topple the regime of Bashar al-Assad. Three years down the road, none of that has happened, and Iran is as powerful as ever, helping to overrun major cities like Aleppo, with Russian help, just last December. He is still out to destroy it, seeing it as more dangerous to Saudi Arabia than Israel. Under Bin Salmans tenure, the armed opposition in Syria has lost every single city that was once under its control, tipping the war balance in favor or Tehran, Moscow, and Damascus. More recently he sparked a major confrontation with Qatar, trying to muscle his tiny gas-rich neighbor into political submission. Reportedly, its young emir, Tamim Bin Hamad who is of Bin Salmans age has complained about the Saudi Crown Princes erratic and ill-planned policies, saying that Saudi Arabia will crumble if he ever assumes the throne. One German security agency portrayed Bin Salman, according to The Independent, as a political gambler who is destabilizing the Arab World. atimes.com In the West (Anbar province) Iran has apparently ordered some of its most loyal PMF (Peoples Mobilization Forces) militias to use violence (bomb attacks, assassination)) against Iraqi army units that interfere with the movement of Iranian military supplies through Anbar into Syria. Iran controlled PMFs are also expected to prevent economic reconstruction in Anbar, which puts these PMFs at odds with most Anbar residents (who tend to be Sunni). Pro-Iran PMF commanders have moved slowly and as covertly as possible with this because most of the armed men in Anbar are hostile to these Iranian orders. Iranian efforts to dominate Iraq have fallen way short of expectations. For the moment Iran is still trying to halt Iraqi political or military decisions that weaken Iranian power in Iraq. This slowed down the formation of a new government and effort to defeat the remaining Islamic terror groups in the country. Iran has political and military goals that clash with what most Iraqis want. Pro-Iran Iraqi politicians want to provide Iran with more access and influence over Iraqi government decisions. For the Iraqi security forces, Iran wants its PMF units to maintain their independence from Iraqi army control. That enables Iran to use Iraq for operations in Syria and against the Sunni states of Arabia (especially Saudi Arabia). Most Iraqis dont want to be involved with the Iranian military goals in Syria (attacking Israel) or Arabia (fighting Saudi Arabia over oil and control of Islamic holy places.) Most young Iraqis see no future in Islamic radicalism and terrorism, which has, for most of their young lives been more of a threat than a source of salvation. Down in Basra the ongoing riots and demonstrations are about basics, like clean water and regular electricity supplies. The Basra unrest has been going on since July and at least 40 protestors have been killed and many more wounded or arrested. Dozens have disappeared and feared dead. The protestors note that Iran backed militias are also involved in attacking the demonstrators. This, for many young Iraqis, confirms suspicions that Iran is not their friend. The government has promised to improve living conditions in Basra but that slow in coming. Iraqi anti-government demonstrators were always angry at Iran. In part, this was because of Iran backed PMF militias, whose leaders often speak of imposing a religious dictatorship in Iraq and generally ignored all the corruption. Protestors in Shia majority Basra are also criticizing Iran for halting electricity exports in early July. Iran cut the electricity because corrupt Iraqi officials had not paid for much of it. Moreover, there was an electricity shortage developing in Iran. It was necessary for Iraq to import electricity because for a long time (the Saddam era) there were not many electric power plants in Basra because it was a Shia majority area and Shia were starved for resources before 2003 (when the Sunni Arab minority ruled). But after Saddam was overthrown in 2003 and Shia politicians gained power, corruption prevented the construction of power plants. Iran thought cutting the power, especially since they had a good reason, would increase the anger against the Iraqi government. But the protestors saw through the Iranian intentions and added that to the long list of reasons why Iraqi Shia do not like Iran. After a few weeks, Iran restored the electricity exports. The current Iraqi enthusiasm for battling corruption is hurting Iranian efforts to expand its influence inside Iraq. Thats because pro-Iran groups in Iraq have long justified outlaw behavior in order to serve their mentor Iran. This has led to Iraqi army commanders being more aggressive in dealing with Iran backed PMF units. Most of the PMF units were formed in late 2014 to fight ISIL. Since then the PMF has been put on the government payroll, despite the fact that nearly half of them are also supported by Iranian cash and equipment. Since the government began paying PMF militiamen the PMF became part of the defense forces. Technically the army can order PMF units around but until recently the Iran-backed PMF would often ignore those orders. In some cases, PMF commanders would threaten army officers. Given the results of the recent elections (pro-Iran parties did poorly) and the growing popular unrest in Iran attitudes have changed. Iraqi army officers are not just ordering pro-Iran PMF units to back off but using force to make the PMF comply. So far this has not gone much beyond armed confrontations (which often work) and arresting (kidnapping according to pro-Iran Iraqis) PMF men who disobey army orders. Apparently, the anti-Iran election results have led to pro-Iran PMF commanders being advised (by Iran) to play nice with the army and back off. This is seen as temporary as there is no sign that pro-Iran PMF groups will cease to take orders from Iran. Iraqis believe the pro-Iran PMF units are backing off as part of an Iranian effort to persuade Iraq to oppose the renewed American economic sanctions on Iran. Iraqi leaders were under a lot of political pressure from Iran to ignore the American sanctions, if only because complying would hurt the Iraqi economy. That pressure caused some hesitation by Iraqi leaders until they realized that most Iraqis preferred the Americans to the Iranians. After all, when Iraq asked the Americans to leave in 2011 they did. Iraq is seeking an exemption to some of the Iran sanctions because otherwise, the Iraqi economy would suffer. Not American response to that yet. The Mess Out West Although Russia, Turkey and Iraq are technically allies with Iran in Syria the historical record shows Iran is usually the enemy of these nations and that has been the case for centuries, long before Israel came along in 1948. One thing everyone can agree on is the need to get rid of the remaining Islamic terrorist rebel groups in Syria. Most of these are currently surrounded in the northwest Syrian province of Idlib. There are some ISIL (Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant) groups hiding out in eastern Syria but these are seen as much less of a threat than the tens of thousands of Islamic terrorists in Idlib. Despite the remaining Islamic terrorist threat in Syria everyone in and bordering Syria would like to see the Iranians go back to Iran and stay there. The few hundred Iranian troops and over 50,000 Iranian mercenaries in Syria are seen as a constant source of trouble. Iran realizes that their allies in Syria have, and will probably continue, to collaborate with Israel if an opportunity presents itself. Yet Iranian leaders fail to see the absurdity of this situation and despite widespread popular protest against the Syrian operations continues to operate like its forces in Syria are on the verge of destroying Israel. ISIL forces in Syria and Iraq have been reduced to what could best be described as a violent criminal gang. ISIL still attracts new recruits because for those into defending Islam with extreme violence, ISIL is the gang to be in. If you dont make a good impression right away you might not last long because new members are always needed as suicide bombers. Refusing such an honor is not an option. While ISIL current fundraising activities (extortion, kidnapping, robbery) can be handled like the ordinary criminal activities they are there is another aspect of ISIL operations that is quite different. Ever since 2016 there has been growing evidence that ISIL has moved several hundred million dollars worths of cash and portable valuables (gold, gems and art treasures) out of Iraq and Syria and the Americans are leading an increasingly effective effort to find and seize it, or at least freeze the assets so ISIL cannot use it. Kurdish police in northern Iraq recently carried out raids against branches of foreign (Persian Gulf Arabs) banks that were moving a lot of ISIL cash around. Meanwhile, the U.S. financial investigators have become quite good a keeping up or getting ahead of the latest schemes for money laundering and asset concealment. Finding most of that offshore cash is crucial if ISIL is to be prevented from planning and carrying out large-scale operations in Moslem countries or the West. As long as ISIL has some cash they will remain a threat and the more cash they have the more of a threat they can be. October 24, 2018: The new parliament finally agreed on Adel Abdul Mahdi as prime minister but rejected 8 of his 22 ministers. Reasons given for rejections ranged from being tainted by working for Saddam (before 2003) or having some connection with corrupt behavior. Mahdi has worked with Iran in the past but is now considered wary of Iranian influence and intentions. In an effort to gain more public support he is moving government offices outside the Green Zone and directly addressing corruption issues. Overall Iran considers the elevation of Mahdi as a defeat. October 23, 2018: In the west (Anbar), ISILs most expert bomb builder in Iraq was arrested, and three rifles and other weapons seized. The bomb builder had long been sought. October 20, 2018: In the northeast (Diyala province), police arrested the ISIL second-in-command for the province. October 19, 2018: In the north (Kirkuk province), police encountered three ISIL suicide bombers on a road and fired on their vehicles. One ISIL man managed to set off his bomb vest while the other two were shot dead before they could do so. Several days earlier in the same area, a policeman was killed and two wounded in a clash with ISIL. October 18, 2018: In the west (Anbar province), ISIL attacked the headquarters of a special operations regiment based in Ramadi. Four soldiers were wounded and the attackers escaped. October 17, 2018: In the northeast (Diyala province) a pro-Iran PMF militia patrol encountered a group of ISIL gunmen and killed five of them. One of the dead was Abu Zahi, a known ISIL leader that Iran believed organized the September 22 attack just across the border in Irans largely Arab Ahvaz province. The attack killed 25 people including several soldiers in the parade. ISIL took credit for the attack as did a local Arab separatist group. Iran made some arrests and apparently identified Abu Zahi as possibly the one who organized the attack. In the far north (Duhok Province) Turkish F-16s bombed a PKK target just across the border in Kurdish Iraq. Turkey claimed that twelve PKK members were killed. Yesterday Turkish troops briefly crossed the border and then returned to Turkey. Troop incursions are not as frequent as air or artillery strikes but they are a regular occurrence along this border. In the last few months, there has been about one of these air strikes a week. October 16, 2018: In the west (Anbar province), ISIL attacked a home in the border town of al Qaim killing one civilian and wounding another. Elsewhere in the area an ISIL roadside bomb killed one soldier and wounded two others. Qaim is also a major border crossing into Syria. Iraqi troops drove ISIL out of the Qaim in late 2017. ISIL held onto Qaim as long as it could because it was a key link in the main road from Mosul to Raqqa. This area was the scene of increasingly frequent and effective air strikes in 2017 using accurate information supplied by locals who had been occupied by ISIL since 2014. The continued ISIL violence comes from groups of ISIL Islamic terrorists hiding out in eastern Syria. While Iraq is largely united and has large and effective security forces Syria is still in the midst of a civil war and much of the country is still unruly, especially the east. This is largely the Euphrates River Valley (where most of the locals live) and the border areas (where Islamic terrorists with cash, guns and attitude can survive). ISIL had already prepared some rural areas along the border with tunnels and hidden bunkers stocked with supplies. These are now bases for remaining ISIL gunmen. October 12, 2018: In the west (Anbar province) an Iman preached a sermon urging Moslems to fight ISIL. Several days later ISIL gunmen attacked the Inman in his home outside Rutba and murdered him. This was not unusual and is how ISIL discourages public criticism, especially from Islamic clergy. Despite that more Moslem clergy are openly criticizing ISIL, even in areas where ISIL is active. October 9, 2018: In Baghdad and the Kurdish north police raided several banks and financial operations over the last four days. Also involved in the raids were officials from the American OFAC (Office of Foreign Assets Control). The raids uncovered evidence of activity by the al Rawi financial network and the Iraqi Afaq Dubai bank illegally moving large sums of money for ISIL. Within a week the U.S. imposed sanctions on the Afaq Dubai bank. October 5, 2018: The new government finally came together. Iran failed to get its preferred politicians into key positions. In effect, the Iranians have some influence but are far from controlling Iraq. Now the new parliament has to agree on who shall have the senior political jobs. October 2, 2018: In September 75 civilians died due to Islamic terrorist violence. Thats down from 90 in August. Some 40 percent of the deaths occurred in Baghdad while 20 percent were in Anbar province. The rest of the civilian casualties were in Nineveh province (including Mosul) and other areas north of Baghdad. In July 79 died compared to 76 in June and 95 in May which was an increase from the 68 April deaths. March, when 104 died had been the deadliest month so far in 2018. That was up a bit from the 91 killed during February. The government has still not resumed reporting casualties among the security forces (military and militias). Based on local reports the Islamic terrorists, mainly ISIL, are suffering much higher death tolls each month, in addition to nearly as many lost to arrest or capture. October 1, 2018: For the second time Iran has fired Zulfiqar ballistic missiles from Western Iran at ISIL targets in Syria. This time six missiles were fired and the press release noted that three had names like; Death to Israel, Death to America and Death to the Saud Family. The point of these names was to remind everyone that from western Iran Zulfiqar missiles can hit American bases in Syria (most of which are near the Iraqi border). Not all these missiles made it to the targets 570 kilometers away, which is normal for Iranian ballistic missiles. These missiles can also hit the Saudi capital, although Iran has been trying, without success, to do that since 2016 by firing over a hundred ballistic missiles (with varying ranges) from Yemen into Saudi Arabia. All have been intercepted by Patriot air defense systems. If Iran could operate Zulfiqar from Iraq (dubious considering the current anti-Iran riots) the missiles could reach Israel and be intercepted by Israeli Patriot systems (plus several other air defense systems). The Iranian press release did not mention the failure or interception rates of Zulfiqar and similar Iranian ballistic missiles. September 29, 2018: The United States announced that it is temporarily shutting down its consulate in Basra (southern Iraq) because of growing threats from local pro-Iran groups to launch a major attack on the consulate. The consulate has been subject to some recent rocket attacks and American intel indicates some pro-Iranian Shia militias in the area are being encouraged by Iran to be more aggressive. Updated 4.30pm - Two people have been taken to hospital following a crash involving a van and a bus. A police mediaspokesperson says the crash happened at the intersection of Cameron Road and 20th Ave. "This was reported at about 2.50pm. "The bus had no passengers and no cars were blocking the road at the time of the crash. "Two patients have been transported to hospital by ambulance." Earlier: Reports are emerging of a crash involving a van and a bus on Cameron Road this afternoon. A caller to the 0800 SUNLIVE news hotline says the crash appears to have happened near 19th Ave. "The van is blocking a lane," says the caller. "Police and ambulance are at the scene." SunLive has contacted police and will update this story when more information becomes available. Bay of Plenty Our client has plenty of work in the pipeline and as such they are in need of hammerhands for an immediate start.The successful... View or Apply on GoodWork.co.nz Theyre the future of this country, and theyre making sure their voices are heard loud and clear. Meet this years Bay of Plenty Youth MPs for Todd Muller, Jan Tinetti, Simon Bridges and Angie Warren-Clark. Changing the status quo - Samuel Taylor, Todd Mullers Youth MP Hes not afraid to door knock his way up the voting system, and by a very close call, Samuel Taylor has been elected, by public vote, as MP Todd Mullers Bay of Plenty Youth MP for 2019. The 16-year-old from Mount Maunganui College has always been eager to take up the position, having sent an application to the Youth MP Election when he was only 13-years-old. However, this year his application wasnt rejected. I sent in an application when the last Youth MP Elections were running three years ago, says Sam, and I so wanted to be a part of it all. But I was only 13-years-old, so unfortunately the conditions said I couldnt apply. This year, Sam submitted a cover letter about himself - an 800 word essay on Do you think 120 MPs for New Zealand is too many?, and also worked his way up the voting system by getting the public to vote for him on Facebook. I enjoy door knocking, says Sam. I went out with Todd during the election last year and it was good to get back out there again and see a few familiar faces. He says he first became interested in politics when he went down to Wellington on a school trip to visit parliament five years ago. They had a couple of MPs come and talk to them, but it was Winston Peters in particular who inspired Sam to get involved. He talked about how he was a lawyer, and that he just got tired of not really being able to do anything as a lawyer. I always wanted to get into law, so it kind of spoke to me as an opportunity to change society for the better. Its not just one mans job, but while he is Youth MP, Sam says he would like to encourage young people to get more involved in politics. Theres a huge lack of interest, he admits, and even if theyre interested in politics, I think its got a lot to do with people who dont think they can change anything. He says he thinks one of the biggest things that may shift their interest is the Mental Health inquiry. I know a lot of people have summited to that because its obviously a relevant and topical issue for young people, he says. I think if they see that changes are going to be made, then that will really show people that we can make a difference if we try. People who say youre not entitled to a view because youre not old enough or because you dont have any experience or pay rates, are the people who I think are preventing people from getting engaged in politics. Right, left and back again - Ben Sokimi, Simon Bridges Youth MP He can often be found watching the proceedings of the house on TV rather than doing his homework. But its all in good spirit, because Ben Sokimi is paving his future with the power of knowledge. The 17-year-old from Aquinas College has recently been selected to represent Simon Bridges as Youth MP for 2019. And this isnt the first time he has been in close quarters to an MP for the National Party. At six-years-old, Ben remembers wandering around former Bay of Plenty MP Tony Ryalls house. I made friends with Tony Ryalls son, says Ben, and slowly I was exposed to the world that Tony operated in. Eventually I got involved in campaigning for the 2008 election and 2011 election, and it sort of just escalated from there. For this years Youth MP Elections, Ben was required to submit an 800-word which asked: Do you think 120 MPs for New Zealand is too many? He was then interviewed by Simons team, where he made it onto the shortlist along with three others. Ben says he sees the role as a great opportunity to work with the National Party leader and gain further experience in political matters. Im really pleased and extremely honoured to be Simons Youth MP, he says, because I understand that there was a lot of applicants. To get that position - such a sought after position is really humbling. Despite learning about the National Party at such a young age, Ben has only just decided which party fits him best. Ive had a National government all of my politically conscious life, so I wondered what the other people were like and thought I ought to campaign for Labour just to give them a chance, says Ben. But in all honesty, I dont like the results that weve had so Ive switched back. You could say Ive gone from right to left and back again. Ben is currently campaigning for an upgrade to State Highway 2, better transport within the city and nationally and improving the lack of housing in New Zealand. Although he has a passion for politics, Ben says when he finishes school he wants to do a degree in public relations. I have an interest in media as well, he says, so Im looking at doing a degree in public relations and then hopefully getting on the team of an MP, perhaps working a communications or policy advisor and then eventually standing for government when Ive got more life experience. Ive kind of always known where Id be heading. Making their voices heard - Noelene Tewhakaara, Jan Tinettis Youth MP Communities are a familiar thread that bring people together and support one another through tough times. Noelene Tewhakaara has always been tightly connected to her whenua, and believes their voices arent always being heard. The 17-year-old from Katikati was selected to represent Jan Tinetti as Youth MP for 2019, after submitting an application with information about her personal interests, what she has done for the community and where she sees herself in the future. I believe being part of Youth Parliament is a huge opportunity that will help me to get where I am going, says Noelene. It wasnt the politics that interested me, it was more the youth side. Ive always wanted to help out youth and the people in my community. She says her interests are in social justice, youth work, law, and mental health and addictions, which stem around Maori development. At a young age I witnessed the rights and the treatment of Maori people being challenged in my community, says Noelene. The majority of Maori that I went to school with have either been expelled or have dropped out, and I used to feel like I was going down the same path. While at school, Noelene put together presentations and solutions around challenges facing Maori in education and presented them to a mental health and addiction panel. She also presented these findings to the Western Bay Council and Katikati community committee. She says after this experience, she was even more motivated to raise awareness of the challenges Maori face. I think more voices should be heard, says Noelene. Thats not really a popular thing, but theres a difference between being heard and being listened to. Noelene is currently doing a NZ certificate in Foundation skills level 2 at Toi Ohomai, which is an alternative to NCEA level 2. My dream since I was younger was always to become a lawyer, but since Ive started attending the Windermere Toi Ohomai campus its opened up more doors and opportunities. I know my Youth MP position will as well. Debating the debated - Makayla Wadsworth, Angie Warren-Clarks Youth MP She never thought shed want to get into politics, but with an enthusiasm to have her opinions heard and a natural talent for speaking, Makayla Wadsworth is the perfect pick. The 17-year-old from Otumoetai College was interviewed by Angie Warren-Clark via telephone on October 12. A week later she was told she had the position as Angies Youth MP for 2019. As a kid, I thought Im never going to do that because youd always hear bad things about politicians, says Makayla. But it was once I heard that you could create positive change for young people that I decided to get involved. Im really grateful for the opportunity, and this is something not a lot of people get to experience. She says all of the candidates also met at Tauranga City Council, where they were required to give a speech around their concerns facing the youth of New Zealand. Makayla was asked who her favourite MP was and why, as well as how she feels about abortion and whether or not it should be in the crimes act. Ive done debating for the Bay of Plenty, so I kind of knew a lot about the issue discussed, she says. But I had never done it in that setting, where youre by yourself and you have to explain your own personal views. Makayla believes mental health needs to be represented better in New Zealand - not because there needs to be more services, but because there needs to be more research conducted into the causes of mental health. From a young persons perspective, my peers and I feel a lot of pressure regarding our future especially when you hear about housing prices and pollution and always being under constant assessment, she says. I feel like that pressure induces a lot of anxiety and depression. She says she also believes people should be more connected to their community. Makayla was a mentor this year for the Graeme Dingle Foundation, which allowed her to meet different kinds of young people as well as helping with Arms of Angels. It wasnt until I started doing charity work that I was even aware of the poverty in Tauranga, she says. I feel like volunteering should somehow be added into the education system. Wellington Are you wanting consistent work as Traffic Controller? We are busy and have the work! Whether you are qualified or not, we... View or Apply on GoodWork.co.nz The Cheyenne County Chamber of Commerce remains busy promoting the community and businesses, Chamber President and CEO Hope Feeney said Tuesday. The Chamber continues to work on the Hickory Street Project, seeking funding for the Hickory Street Project. The Chamber was awarded a $1,000 ASKARBEN grant, and applied for a $250,000 Thomas D. Buckley Grant. The Chamber is also in the process of contacting businesses for corporate sponsorships. In addition, the Chamber is looking to partner with a 501c3 nonprofit to apply for grants. The Chamber is looking into working with the Nebraska Community Foundation. Feeney said three Rental Assistance applications were reviewed and approved. Applications were received from IWARNDU, LLC., The Growcery and Faheys Public House. She said five businesses were added to the membership since Sept. 1; Vitalix, Inc., House of Flowers, Aflac Jennifer Powell, Laughing Lamb Fibers and Beyer Solutions, LLC. Ribbon Cuttings were held for the grand opening of Triple Os Building Supply and Laughing Lamb Fibers. Feeney said the Chamber is collaborating with the Nebraska Department of Labor. She spoke at a NDOL board meeting in September, and job listings are posted on the Chambers Facebook page through the NDOL. Internet-based sales is one of the avenues for building business. It is about reaching customers who may not be geographically nearby, while still staying in contact with walk-in customers. The Cheyenne County Chamber of Commerce is working with a company that offers one site for multiple companies or organizations to use. ShopWhereILive.com is a virtual Main Street where vendors can promote their goods at a low cost. Leads are only $15 per month, and the E-Commerce Shop $20 per month. She said new board members will be announced at the end of October. Board meetings will be restructured to include four initiatives with break-out sessions at each meeting. Upcoming events include Small Business Saturday on Nov. 24, Holidays in Hickory with an elf theme is scheduled for Dec. 1 and the annual banquet will be Jan. 18. Its time to get the spook out in the Sidney area, with a host of activities available Saturday. The 15th Annual Hay Day Festival is scheduled for 5 p.m. to 7 p.m. at the Cheyenne County 4-H Building. Kids Plus, Cool Kids Club and Cheyenne County Community Center is hosting the festival. The night will include free games, cookie decorating, inflatable bounce house, a costume contest, cake walk, face painting and free refreshments. Cake donations are being accepted for the cake walk. Donations can be taken to the Cheyenne County Community Center today (Friday) and Saturday until 5 p.m. There will also be prizes for the costume contest to Grand Prize family costume winner: an annual Community Center membership; adult winner: an adult punch pass to the Community Center; and youth winner will receive a youth punch pass. There will also be awards for costumed children ages nine to 12, five to eight and birth to four. Admission cost is a donation at the door. The Boot Hill Committee will also be hosting Ghost Tours, leading the curious through unmarked graves at historic Boot Hill Cemetery. The tours start at dusk. Tickets are available at the gate. Saturday evening will also be the Night of Tomfoolery at the Sidney Elks Lodge, 1040 Jackson St. The event is scheduled for 7:30 p.m. with proceeds going to Shop with a Cop. Reservations can be obtained by calling the Sidney Police Department at 254-7846. The city-sponsored Trunk or Treat is scheduled for 4 p.m. to 6 p.m. Wednesday, Oct. 31, at Hickory Street Square in downtown Sidney. An estimated 40 people and businesses will be handing out candy at Trunk or Treat. For those going into neighborhoods for annual trick-or-treating, Police Chief Joe Aiken encourages trick-or-treaters to go with adults and keep track of where and when you get candy. He also encourages trick-or-treaters to unwrap the candy at home where it can be examined. Costumes should be light-colored or have reflective elements on them for safety. Be careful that masks do no obstruct the view when crossing streets. The Centers for Disease Control to think safely when dressing up for Halloween. The CDC recommends costume accessories be kept short, soft and flexible. Children are also encouraged to avoid trick-or-treating alone and walk in groups or with a trusted adult. Trick-or-treaters are also encouraged to fasten reflective tape to costumes and bags to be visible to motorists. The CDC also urges parents and guardians to examine all treats for choking hazards and tampering before eating them. Have your taste of sweets, then trade them for something a little more satisfying: a little cash and a chance for prizes. Operation Candy Buy Back will take place at LifeSmiles of Sidney, 1040 Old Post Road, from 8 a.m. to 6 p.m. All children with a parent or guardian are welcome. LifeSmiles will buy back your candy at $1 per pound up to $5. The candy will then be sent to deployed service men and women. CDE Liaison Jacquelin Medina is at the podium while Peetz Schools teacher Leslie Raffelson, left, waits to be recognized as Educator of the Year. The Colorado Association for Gifted and Talented recently named Peetz teacher Leslie Raffelson as Educator of the Year. She was presented the award during the annual conference in Loveland, Co., Monday, Oct. 22. The George T. Betts Award requires two to three nominations from different people. In his nomination, Peetz School District Superintendent Mark Collard commended Raffelson for the many duties she is involved in. "As is the case in most small schools, Leslie wears multiple hats. In addition to her normal classroom duties, she is also our director of technology, our art teacher, a class sponsor and our gifted and talented coordinator," Collard said in his nomination. Collard says Raffelson is an advocate for exceptional students, and has designed and coordinated the gifted program. He says her initiative and innovation has been fundamental to the success of our exceptional students. Additionally, she supports classroom teachers with instructional advice and material resources. She has also coordinated the Peetz school's participation in regional robotics competition where two of the school's three teams placed in the top five at the state level. She teaches a high school technology technology class that helps with skills including coding, three dimensional printing, mechanical assemblies' fabrication, and real world communication skills. Collard calls Raffelson a "humble educator deserving of this recognition." BUFFALO, N.Y. -- Before Canada legalized marijuana, the U.S. Customs and Border Patrol and the Buffalo Police Department warned: Don't try to bring weed across the border. On Thursday, a New York man tried just that, the Department of Justice said. It didn't work out so well. David Dratch, 23, of Montgomery in Orange County, was arrested and charged with possession of a controlled substance, importation of a controlled substance and smuggling goods into the United States for trying to bring marijuana into the U.S., according to the U.S. Attorney's Office for the Western District of New York. After an initial inspection at the Peace Bridge Port of Entry, Dratch told border patrol officers he didn't have drugs, weapons or prohibited items, the attorney's office said. Border patrol officers used a canine to search the car, federal authorities said. The canine alerted officers to something in the glove compartment of Dratch's car, the attorney's office said. Officers found six envelopes of marijuana, two jars of marijuana resin and four packages with THC-infused gummy worms, the attorney's office said. Along with the stash, officers found a piece of paper with "118 George St." and "289-396-8078" written on it, the attorney's office said. The address and phone number are linked to MMJ Canada -- Hamilton, a marijuana clinic, the attorney's office said. A text on Dratch's phone to another person on the same day read, "lol bro I just had 100mg edible and I got stopped by customs and now they're asking me so much (expletive)," the attorney's office said. If convicted, Dratch faces a maximum penalty of five years in prison and a $250,000 fine. Dratch made an appearance before a federal judge and has been released, the attorney's office said. SYRACUSE, N.Y. -- Eduardo R. Vazquez was still a teenager in 1997 when he was acquitted of shooting another teen to death in Syracuse. Vazquez bowed his head and cried when an Onondaga County jury found him not guilty of murdering Elvin Gonzales, his 15-year-old friend, according to Syracuse.com | The Post-Standard's archives. At the time of his acquittal, Vazquez was 19 years old. And 21 years later, Vazquez has again been charged with murder. Vazquez, now 40, was arrested this week by the Syracuse Police Department in connection with a 2016 homicide. He has been charged with fatally shooting Gerald J. Solomon Jr., 26. The first homicide Vazquez was charged with committing happened in 1996. Elvin Gonzalez died after he was shot in the chest Dec. 28, 1996, in the 200 block of Merriman Avenue. Police looked for Vazquez after the deadly shooting, according to Syracuse.com | The Post-Standard's archives, but Vazquez had traveled to Puerto Rico. A teenage Vazquez later proclaimed his innocence during an interview. "I have faith in God that he's going to take me out of here because I'm innocent," he said. Gerald J. Solomon Jr. was shot to death in 2016. A few weeks later, a jury found Vazquez not guilty of second-degree murder. His defense attorney said the jury didn't find the prosecution's eyewitness credible, according to Syracuse.com | The Post-Standard's archives. Almost two decades later, Gerald J. Solomon Jr. was shot in the back on Aug. 5, 2016, in Syracuse. The shooting in the 300 block of Coolidge Avenue left Solomon critically injured. He died eight days later at Upstate University Hospital. Detectives investigated Solomon's death and eventually determined Vazquez -- the suspect -- had left Syracuse, police said. Vazquez was found and arrested Oct. close to 700 miles away in Fayetteville, North Carolina. Vazquez was transported back to Syracuse on Thursday and charged with second-degree murder and third-degree criminal possession of a weapon, both felonies. He remains in the Onondaga County Justice Center without bail. On Saturday, October 27, the Everson Museum of Art officially turns fifty! The Museum celebrated its grand opening in October 1968, after two and a half years of construction, with three back-to-back days of special events. Mayor William Walsh speaking at the Everson Museum Dedication Dinner. The Everson kicked off opening weekend celebrations on October 25 with a building dedication dinner and celebration of its inaugural exhibitions. Guests explored the exhibitions Selections from the Collection of Governor Nelson A. Rockefeller, Artists of New York State, and Traditional American Painting, before sitting down to dinner in the lower level gallery that today is dedicated to the display of ceramics. For the dedication dinner, Governor Rockefeller wrote, "The creativity of a great architect, the painstaking labors of skilled workmen, and the spirit of a wonderful community have combined to produce the new building of the Everson Museum of Art... It is one of the few museums in this country built by the efforts of an entire community. The fundraising campaign, from the pennies of school children to the late Helen Everson's one million dollar bequest, was a triumphant expression of community interest." Everson Museum of Art ribbon cutting ceremony. On October 26, the Everson hosted a dedication luncheon at the Hotel Syracuse (today the Marriott Syracuse Downtown), followed by a ribbon cutting ceremony at the Museum and an open house for members, donors, and special invited guests. The ribbon cutting took place at the foot of the spiral staircase in the Rosamond Gifford Sculpture Court, with Board Presidents from each of the previous five years cutting one strand of ribbon, concluding with Museum's then-President John D. Williams. Museum Director Max Sullivan ended the ceremony by announcing, "It is now my privilege to declare that the Everson Museum of Art is officially open and you are all welcome to enjoy it." Finally, on October 27, the Everson Museum of Art officially opened to the public at noon. Admission to the Museum was free, and newspaper articles reported that roughly 15,000 people of all ages packed into the Everson's galleries, eager to see I.M. Pei's grand, innovative design. In celebration of the Everson's fiftieth birthday, the Museum will host a Free Family Day on Saturday, October 27 from noon to 3:00pm. Admission to the Museum is free for the entire day, and families can participate in art-making activities, watch a ceramic wheel throwing demonstration, and enjoy dance performances by the Syracuse Chinese Dancing Group and the Cornell Lion Dance Club. Artist Sookie Kayne demonstrates wheel throwing Beginning this fall, the Everson kicked off a year of celebrations revolving around the fiftieth anniversary of its Pei-designed building. Current exhibitions Art Within Art: The Everson at 50, Time Capsule, and The Very Mirror of Life: Ceramics at the Everson 1968-2018 celebrate the history of the building and Pei's lasting influence on the Museum's collection, exhibitions, and public programs. Family Days are funded in part through the generosity of PathFinder Bank and the Judith E. Meighan Art Education Fund. ABOUT THE EVERSON The Everson Museum of Art, whose roots extend to 1897, is internationally recognized for its extensive and significant collection of ceramics, its pioneering art video collection and its distinctive structural design by the noted architect I.M. Pei. The operation of the Everson Museum of Art is made possible with funding from the Dorothy and Marshall M. Reisman Foundation, the County of Onondaga administered by CNY Arts, The Trust for Cultural Resources of Onondaga County, the New York State Council on the Arts, a state agency, the Everson Board of Trustees and Everson Members' Council. LOCATION 401 Harrison Street, Syracuse, NY 13202 315-474-6064 | www.everson.org MUSEUM HOURS Monday: Closed Tuesday: Closed Wednesday: 12:00-5:00pm Thursday: 12:00-8:00pm Friday: 12:00-5:00pm First Friday: 12:00-8:00pm Saturday: 10:00am-5:00pm Sunday: 12:00-5:00pm ADMISSION FREE: Everson Members, Children 12 & Under, Military (with ID) $8 Adults $6 Seniors (65+) $6 Students (with ID) Pay-What-You-Wish Admission: Every Wednesday FREE Admission: Every Third Thursday from 5:00-8:00pm Taxi driver Dr. Andres G. Lopez is a Bronte scholar and professor at SUNY who has spent the past 28 years there teaching Composition, Literature, and Creative Writing courses. But before he started his teaching career, and in between his academic pursuits, Lopez spent time engaging in work that would later serve as the inspiration for a novel. Lopez came to the United States from Cuba with his parents in 1966 and grew up in Queens, New York, going on to attend Stony Brook University. "After receiving my Bachelor's degree in English and Psychology in 1981, I spent a year working as a cab driver in Manhattan before returning to Stony Brook to complete a Master's Degree in 1983 and then a Doctorate in 1991," Lopez explains, sharing that his time driving the cab had a tremendous impact on his life. "It was a tumultuous period in my life when I struggled with my faith, among other things. While driving, many of the strange/bizarre experiences I had made me question whether our lives are full of or devoid of meaning (I'd been reading existentialist works at the time). In essence, the novel is a Bildungsroman. It was a transformative year for me, which, interestingly enough, changed the direction I traveled career-wise. I can say definitively that had I not driven a cab, I may never have pursued a doctorate in literature." "Paint It Yellow" is a fictional account of Lopez's cab-driving year, focusing on NYC cab driver Gabriel Brosa as he must face a mystery from his past in the form of a crush from his childhood. Reflecting on paths not taken and getting caught up with another driver intent on trying to unravel what has happened to a missing woman, Gabriel learns "how the past can both consume and liberate us." "Paint it Yellow is available from Amazon. Bittersweet memories Earlier this month Excelsior Editions, an imprint of State University of New York Press, published "Angry Rain," a memoir by Maurice Kenny, edited and introduced by Derek C. Maus. Back in June readers were introduced to "Wild Daisies by the Side of the Road: A Collective Tribute to Maurice Kenny" and learned about the work that Kenny's friends had done in order to bring the poet's work to print after his passing. Now readers can learn more about some of Kenny's life, what he called the "first half...plus a bit." The New York State Writers' Hall of Fame inductee details the various early eras of his life with a bittersweet recollection according to the publisher who describes the content saying, "Kenny begins with his early years spent among his family in the small northern New York city of Watertown and continues through an adolescence marked by both significant awakenings and grievous traumas. Determined, Kenny sets out to seek his fortunes and find his poetic voice, landing in the Jim Crow-era South, in St. Louis, in Indiana, and finally in New York City, where he becomes part of a motley creative group of performers and poets that offers both fascinating inspiration and disheartening rejection. These recollections end with Kenny's maturation into a poet whose reaffirmed indigenous heritage unified an artistic vision that remained in conversation with a wide range of other themes and traditions until his death in 2016." Derek C. Maus concludes his introduction of the book with "...this book is the living, perhaps imperfect memory of an indomitable--and yet also profoundly wounded--artist whose absence I have mourned every day since his passing." "Angry Rain" is available from SUNY Press and through most online book retailers. Author event The Liverpool Public Library is hosting their annual fall Author and Musician event in the Carman Community room on Sunday November 4 from noon to 2 pm. Authors include Rick Allen, Stan Wilczek, LeaAnn Fuller, Sue Rubin, Milt Franson, Ron Bagliere, Regina Drumm, TE Bradford, Nicki Greenwood, Shari Pratt, Eric Norton, and Kassandra Kelsey. Attendees can purchase books and get them signed. Musician Missy Sieling will also be selling and signing her CDs. The event is free and open to the public. Have a book to share? Are you a local author or have you come across a book set in Central New York? Tell us about it. Send a brief description of the book and the author and we'll add it as a candidate for coverage. Write us at features@syracuse.com. Tula Goenka was diagnosed with breast cancer in 2006. She went through two lumpectomies, chemotherapy and a bilateral mastectomy. Twelve years later, she decided to open up about her journey and tell the stories of 44 others. "It's a traumatic experience," said Goenka, a Syracuse University professor. "The first question you ask the doctor is, 'Am I going to live?' and then you start thinking, 'What am I going to look like?'" Goenka said she couldn't find the online resources that tell you what happens to a person once they're diagnosed and go through with surgery. She wanted to know the raw, real life stories, which is why she created the "Look Now: Facing Breast Cancer" exhibition at Point of Contact Gallery in downtown Syracuse. The multimedia installation opened early October and will be open until Oct. 31. The gallery features 25 portrait photos of women and a few men, along with a bare-chest closeup. Next to these portraits are the survivors' names, occupation, diagnosis, treatment and family history. One in eight women in the United States are at risk of developing breast cancer, according to BreastCancer.org. Through this exhibition, Goenka wanted to not only raise awareness, but honor the survivors of Central New York. The gallery features 25 portrait photos of women and a few men, along with a bare-chest closeup. Next to these portraits are the survivors' names, occupation, diagnosis, treatment and family history. The installation also features 19 anonymous bare-chest photos, two full walls of quotes from survivors, and a seven-minute silent film showing behind the scenes footage of the photoshoots. The exhibition has only been up for a few short weeks, but Goenka has had this idea in mind for years. In 2009, she saw an event poster for former Playboy Enterprises Chairman Christie Hefner's appearance at the university. "I started to think about how society is fascinated with women's breasts and the sexualization of them and then I thought, 'Would Playboy ever put someone who's had implants after breast cancer in the centerfold of their magazine?'" - "Look Now: Facing Breast Cancer" is a multimedia exhibition at Point of Contact Gallery in downtown Syracuse. The installation honors local breast cancer survivors and will be open until Oct. 31. A year later, she made a prototype with two other friends who were survivors. The university then presented her with a research award, which gave her money toward a project. That's when the current "Look Now" installation started to take form. During the spring of 2017, Goenka began recruiting participants for the project, along with Cindy Bell, a Syracuse photographer and breast cancer survivor. Goenka wanted the exhibition to showcase each survivor's personal battle scars, which highlights the journey from their mastectomies to breast implants and 3-D nipple tattoos. Over the last month, visitors' responses have been positive and enlightening, but the gallery also shows the worst parts of breast cancer. Next to the wall of anonymous photos is Crystal Smith, a participant in her late 30s who was re-diagnosed shortly after being photographed. She passed away six weeks later. "This makes you realize that you may be walking down the street and see a stranger or you might be in a room with your professor and you don't know what their journey is like," Goenka said. "It's not just about the color pink and ribbons, I'm just trying to put a face on breast cancer." Forty-nine years after the publication of Margaret Atwood's first novel, "The Edible Woman," the social commentary in her writing is as resonant as ever. At the 2017 Emmy Awards, the Hulu adaptation of Atwood's 1985 novel "The Handmaid's Tale" took home eight Emmys, including the coveted award for Outstanding Drama Series. In recent months, the red costumes worn by the handmaids have become a symbol of protest, perhaps most notably during the senate hearings for Supreme Court Judge Brett Kavanaugh. The famous Canadian author, now 78, continues to add to her literary canon which includes 16 novels, 17 poetry collections, 10 non-fiction works, eight children's books, numerous short stories, a play, TV scripts and a graphic novel. On Thursday evening, Atwood spoke in Hendricks Chapel at Syracuse University as a part of the University Lectures series and the Syracuse Symposium. Author and associate professor in the English department, Dana Spiotta, led the on-stage conversation with Atwood which concluded with questions from the audience and a standing ovation. Much of the conversation focused on Atwood's childhood and how it ultimately shaped her writing career. She grew up playing in the forests of northern Quebec where her father studied entomology. Constantly outside, Atwood and her brother searched for salamanders and conducted experiments with mold. "I was an honorary boy," Atwood said. The writer's love of biology never left her. Even now, Atwood said she's just as likely to pick up "Scientific American" as any other magazine. She "trolls" the internet like everyone else and is fascinated by new inventions that could impact the environment like the Ooho edible water pods. Science is ever-present in Atwood's works. For example, her novel "Oryx and Crake" tells about a future in which genetic engineering has gone horribly wrong. According to Atwood, "Oryx and Crake" is a work of speculative fiction as opposed to pure science fiction. Atwood's speculative fiction deals only with concepts like genetic engineering that are already happening or are scientifically possible. Similarly, Atwood explained that everything she wrote about in "The Handmaid's Tale" has already happened somewhere in the world. "I made nothing up," Atwood said. "Everything that went in, every detail was from different countries, some of them from America." Sumptuary laws have restricted what certain people can and cannot wear since Hammurabi's Code, said Atwood, explaining the red Handmaid capes and blue outfits worn only by the wives in "The Handmaid's Tale." The oppression of women by other women in the novel is an "old motif from the age of imperialism," explained Atwood. "Power is power," said Atwood. "If you give some people more than others, they'll take it." Despite the novel's basis in real possibilities, Atwood doesn't think the U.S. will never become like the oppressive theocracy of Gilead because the country is too large, too diverse and has a history of civil rights activism which inspires inaction. Atwood spoke further on the topic of gender when a member in the audience asked about her article, "Am I a Bad Feminist?" There are 75 different types of feminists, the author said. She described herself as the same type of feminist as Anita Hill- one who believes in improving process and laws. She's an advocate of the Canadian "After Me Too" platform which believes in safe reporting, immediate counseling and third-party investigations when it comes to sexual assault accusations. "The more gender equality there is in a society, the less abuse there is," Atwood later added. The author elicited claps and laughter from the audience when she criticized President Donald Trump on his views of gender. Atwood believes that like many things, gender follows a bell curve as opposed to being a binary. Trump's stance on there being only two genders is just scientifically untrue, Atwood explained. He clearly knows nothing about gay penguins or how slugs have sex, she said. On the topic of Trump, Atwood also threw in a few jabs at the audience encouraging them to "vote this time." Don't let the bastards grind you down. from THE HANDMAID'S TALE (1985) Posted by Margaret Atwood on Thursday, October 25, 2018 Though Atwood spoke about economic inequality, totalitarianism and the perils of climate change, the conversation wasn't all doom and gloom. The author's frank sense of humor kept the audience laughing, and interspersed throughout the talk were pieces of advice and inspiration. While Atwood's writing often depicts the horrors that could be and the corruption that humans are capable of, she reminded the audience that in the U.S., things aren't as bad as they seems. "If things were really bad, we wouldn't be in this room at all," Atwood said. "We wouldn't be talking about these things at all." Upstate New York waterfowl hunters will see a decrease next year in the migratory Canada geese and mallard duck they can shoot - and in the case of Canada geese, in the number of days they can be hunted. The revised regulations - the result of an overall estimated drop in the birds' numbers - were approved by the Atlantic Flyway Council in September. They were formalized by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service Regulations Committee Oct. 16-17, according to deltawaterfowl.org. A male mallard duck comes in for a landing. The state Department of Environmental Conservation this week confirmed that nothing will change for this year's waterfowl hunting season, but that next year things will be different. The following statement was released Thursday: "For the 2019-2020 (next year) seasons, the mallard bag limit is being reduced from 4 birds per day to 2 birds per day. Canada goose bag limits in Atlantic Population zones (west central, east central, northeast, Hudson Valley, and Lake Champlain) will be reduced from 50 days and a three-bird bag limit to 30 days and a two-bird bag limit," DEC said. The bag limit (15) and seasons for the early goose season in September, though, will remain the same. There are still too many resident or non-migratory birds in this state and the DEC wants to bring their numbers down. Read more on the handling of "nuisance geese" in this state on the DEC website. The reason for the changes for Canada goose hunting? "The move was largely spurred by poor Canada goose production in spring 2018, plus a 30 percent decline among Atlantic population Canadas in the most recent breeding survey," reported deltawaterfowl.com. According to Atlantic Flyway biologist estimates, it was the worst breeding year in the past 22 years. And the mallards? "The reduced mallard limit is in response to a longer-term issue. Population surveys indicate breeding mallards in the northeast United States have declined about 20 percent since 1998," said deltawaterfowl.com. WASHINGTON -- Dana Balter raised three times more money than Rep. John Katko at the start of October, giving the Syracuse Democrat a spending advantage heading into the finals days of the 24th Congressional District election, new records show. Balter had $621,383 in cash left in her campaign account as of Oct. 17, compared to Katko who had $522,610, according to Federal Election Commission records. Balter continued to see a surge in donations in the first two weeks of the month, taking in $350,450 in contributions, while Katko, R-Camillus, raised $122,474, the records show. It's unusual for challengers to raise more money than incumbent candidates for Congress, but Democrats who are trying to unseat Republicans this year have capitalized on enthusiasm within their party to accomplish that feat in districts across the nation. Balter raised more than $1.5 million in the third quarter ending Sept. 30, a record for a Syracuse area congressional seat. Balter disclosed raising $521,866 in the last quarter through ActBlue, an online fundraising tool used by Democrats to reach small-dollar donors across the nation. In the new report, Balter disclosed raising $272,357 through ActBlue, with many of the itemized donations coming from people who live outside Central New York. The FEC reports cover the period through Oct. 17. After that deadline, Katko reported raising about $93,000, most of it taken in during a $1,000-per-person fundraiser with House Speaker Paul Ryan last week in Syracuse. All told, Katko raised about $2.5 million in donations since the start of his campaign through Oct. 17. Balter has raised about $2.3 million during the same period. Contact Mark Weiner: Email | Twitter | Facebook | 571-970-3751 WASHINGTON - Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Charles E. Grassley, R-Iowa, on Thursday referred lawyer Michael Avenatti and Julie Swetnick - one of the women who accused now-Supreme Court Justice Brett M. Kavanaugh of misconduct during his confirmation proceedings - to the Department of Justice for a criminal probe, alleging that they made "materially false" statements to Grassley's committee as it investigated the allegations. Swetnick said in a September affidavit that Kavanaugh attended a 1982 house party during which she says she was gang raped - an accusation Kavanaugh vehemently denied and said was from the "Twilight Zone." Grassley said he is asking the Justice Department to look into whether Swetnick and Avenatti potentially conspired to give materially false statements to Congress and obstruct a congressional investigation. "The committee's investigation has involved communicating with numerous individuals claiming to have relevant information," Grassley wrote in a letter to Attorney General Jeff Sessions and FBI director Christopher A. Wray. "While many of those individuals have provided the committee information in good faith, it unfortunately appears some have not." The committee, in a news release, said the "obvious, subsequent contradictions" from Avenatti, as well as the "suspicious timing of the allegations," warrants a federal investigation. In a separate statement, Grassley also said knowingly misleading congressional investigators is "unfair to my colleagues, the nominees" and other witnesses as a waste of resources for "destructive reasons." Avenatti responded to the news of the criminal referral on Twitter, calling it "ironic" that Grassley is "now interested in investigations." He appeared to be speaking on behalf of himself and Swetnick. "He didn't care when it came to putting a man on the SCOTUS for life," he tweeted, referring to the Supreme Court. "We welcome the investigation as now we can finally get to the bottom of Judge Kavanaugh's lies and conduct. Let the truth be known." The attorney rose to national fame while representing the adult-film actress Stormy Daniels, who has sued to nullify a 2016 nondisclosure agreement that prevents her from talking about her alleged affair with President Donald Trump a dozen years ago. Syracuse, NY -- Ann Magnarelli won a razor-thin victory in the Democratic primary against challenger Shadia Tadros. Now, the two women are battling again in November's general election. And a third contender, Republican Jason Zeigler, has joined the mix. Magnarelli, will be on the Democratic, Independence, Women's Equality and Reform Party lines. Tadros will be on the Working Families line, while Zeigler picked up the GOP and the Conservative Party lines. He also has the backing of the Libertarian Party. In the city of Syracuse, Democrats have an advantage in voter enrollment. There are 36,166 voters enrolled as Democrats vs. 9,415 as Republicans, according to the Onondaga County Board of Elections. Another 14,661 are not enrolled in any party. There are 64,375 registered voters in the city. Magnarellia has more money for her campaign than her opponents: Magnarelli has raised $78,808; Tadros, $22,764 and Zeigler, $11,881, according to the state Board of Elections. Magnarelli, 39, who comes from a well-known Democratic family, has touted her experience as a judicial clerk against Tadros, 37, who comes from humble roots and has vowed to disrupt the status quo. Magnarelli, who lives in Sedgwick, is currently an assistant Onondaga County attorney, while Tadros is in private defense practice, including criminal and immigration work. Both women attracted almost equal support in the primary, with Magnarelli winning by 124 votes -- 3,334 to 3,210. A third Democrat, Felicia Pitts-Davis, also attracted 2,886, but will not appear on November's ballot. Zeigler, 41, the Republican, urged voters to look beyond party affiliation in the heavily Democratic city. The Columbus, Ohio native came to Upstate New York with the Army and settled in Syracuse, graduating SU's law school. Zeigler, an Eastwood resident, said his track record of a dozen years practicing as a defense lawyer in City Court makes him the best choice. He also pointed to his years-long fight with the county's assigned counsel program for adequate pay and resources as proof he's willing to fight for justice. A landmark court decision in 2014 largely addressed Zeigler's concerns, pumping millions and adding oversight into the system that pays to defend poor people charged with crimes. "It took a lot to stay and fight," Zeigler said. "There's pressure on judges to move cases along. If a case required more attention or (a judge) putting his foot down, I don't think I'd shy away from that." Magnarelli and Tadros, who shared their contrasting stories during the primaries, have continued campaigning. Magnarelli said she was gratified by the number of people registering to vote and said she was grateful to participate in the Democratic process. "I ask all our citizens to vote for me on Nov. 6," she said. Tadros, who lives the outer Strathmore neighborhood, asked voters to look beyond party lines and look at the individual candidates. "Who has served the city best? Who would serve the city best?" she urged voters to consider. NEW YORK (AP) -- U.S. Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand, considered a potential Democratic candidate for the White House in 2020, said during a debate Thursday with her Republican challenger that she will serve out her six-year Senate term if she's re-elected next month. Gillibrand, whose star has risen quickly since she succeeded Hillary Clinton in 2009, also fielded questions about immigration, health care and other issues during a half-hour televised debate held in WABC-TV's studio in Manhattan. When asked about her plans in two years, Gillibrand responded: "I will serve my six-year term." Opponent Chele Farley, who works in the financial services industry, scoffed at the answer. "Honestly, I don't believe that, considering this is the third day that she has been in New York during the month of October when she has been in five other states including New Hampshire this month," Farley said. Asked about the Central American migrant caravan making its way toward the U.S.-Mexico border, Farley called it "an invasion." "The real issue here is we have to get comprehensive immigration reform," Farley said. "There was an offer on the table, and Sen. Gillibrand wouldn't vote for it." "You have people in this caravan to seek asylum in this country," Gillibrand responded. "Immigration has always been a strength in this country. We are a country founded by immigrants. So we need to fix our broken immigration system." On health care, Gillibrand said she supports Medicare for all, while Farley opposes it as being too costly to taxpayers. "What she is proposing means that no one will be allowed to have employer health care," Farley said. "If you like your health care, will you be able to keep it? The answer is no." A Siena College poll released this month showed Gillibrand with a big lead over Farley, 61 percent to 29 percent. Farley, who has never held elected office, served as New York City finance chairwoman for the state Republican Party. Gillibrand was a congresswoman representing an eastern New York district when she was appointed to the Senate seat vacated when Clinton was nominated secretary of state by President Barack Obama. NZ Legislates For New Research And Development Tax Incentive by Mary Swire, Tax-News.com, Hong Kong 26 October 2018 The New Zealand Government has introduced legislation to implement a new research and development tax incentive. The Taxation (Research and Development Tax Credits) Bill will introduce an R&D tax credit from the 2019-20 income year. The Coalition Agreement between Labour and New Zealand First sets a goal of increasing R&D spending to two percent of GDP by 2028. The tax credit will be equal to 15 percent of eligible R&D expenditure. There will be a NZD120m (USD78.2m) cap on eligible expenditure and a minimum R&D spending threshold of NZD50,000 per year. To be eligible for the tax credit, a person must perform a core research and development activity in New Zealand, carry on a business through a fixed establishment in the country, and have R&D controlling rights over their R&D activities. In addition, they must satisfy at least one of the following conditions: they must own the results of their R&D activities; be able to use the results of their R&D activities for no further consideration; or a company in the person's corporate group owns the results of their R&D activities and that company is resident in a jurisdiction with which New Zealand has a double taxation agreement. A core R&D activity is an activity that: is conducted using a systematic approach; has the purpose of creating something new; and has the purpose of resolving scientific or technological uncertainty. Research, Science, and Innovation Minister Megan Woods said: "The R&D tax incentive is a key lever for addressing the critical issues New Zealand is facing. We need new solutions to combat issues like climate change, child poverty, and homelessness. Research and development will help us find the solutions to these problems." "The tax credit will also incentivize businesses to do more R&D, creating more high value jobs and lifting household incomes." Revenue Minister Stuart Nash said: "We have learned from international best practice how to incentivize R&D expenditure and retain trust and confidence in the tax system. The new policy meets the rigour of international schemes, and will grow innovation by supporting businesses to undertake genuine R&D." Rumor mill: Samsungs last few handsets havent been hugely different from their predecessors, with most offering just incremental upgrades, but that could change with the Galaxy S10. In addition to all the rumored new technology, Samsungs next flagship may come in four variants, one of which is rumored to support 5G and pack a massive 12GB of RAM. The rumor's source is an alleged memo from GF Securities brokerage that leaked on Chinese social media site Weibo. It includes a table showing four versions of the Galaxy S10: a base version with 4GB of RAM and a 5.8-inch screen, which could be an budget option similar to Apples iPhone XR; a larger 6.3-inch S10 Plus model with 6GB; whats presumed to be a more advanced Galaxy S10 X model with 8GB; and finally the Galaxy S10 X 5G, which comes with 12GB of RAM. Note that the X name could just be a placeholder. Like all leaks and rumors, this one should be taken with a pinch of salt. However, Xiaomis Mi Mix 3 and Black Shark 2 both feature 10GB of RAM, as does an in-development version of Oppos Find X, so 12GB doesnt seem too far-fetched. According to the table, Huawei is reportedly set to include the same amount of memory in its P30 Pro. The 5G support is interesting, especially as Samsung said the S10 wouldnt be the first of its devices to come with 5G. Perhaps another phone, possibly the foldable Galaxy X, will have that honor. Samsung mobile head DJ Koh has said the Galaxy S10 would feature very significant changes to the phones design. An in-display fingerprint reader is expected, and other rumors say it may even pack graphene batteries. While 12GB of RAM might not have many practical applications on a smartphone, Samsung will likely be happy to claim the worlds first title. Bottom line: I strongly feel that self-driving vehicles will be remembered as one of the greatest technological achievements of the modern era. Im an even firmer believer that were about to open Pandoras Box without fully considering (or even realizing) the impact that itll have on seemingly unrelated segments of society. Personal transportation in a world void of human drivers will presumably be much safer, right? Thats great, but it also means that a lot of people are going to be without jobs. Insurance companies wont need nearly as many claims adjusters, the DMV wont need to be nearly as large as it is today, police forces could be greatly reduced and as morbid as it sounds, hospitals wont need as many doctors (in 2012, motor vehicle collisions sent nearly 7,000 Americans to the ER each day). With fewer people dying in auto accidents, there wont be nearly as many organ donations, meaning that some sick people who might have survived thanks to a transplant wont live as long. Its a seemingly endless chain reaction of cause and effect. In some instances, however, there will be casualties. Take the Trolley problem, for example. In this common thought experiment, you see a runaway trolley racing down the tracks towards five people. You have access to a lever that, if pulled, will divert the trolley to another track where it kills just one person instead of five. Do you pull the level and spare the lives of five people by sacrificing one? How do you justify that decision? Its inevitable that self-driving cars will have to make similar decisions at some point. To gauge public perception on global moral preferences, researchers at the MIT Media Lab in 2014 launched an experiment called the Moral Machine. Its a game-like platform that gathers feedback on how people believe self-driving cars should handle variations of the trolley problem. Four years later, the project has logged more than 40 million decisions from people in 233 countries and territories around the globe, highlighting how different cultures prioritize ethics. The test focused on nine different comparisons including how a self-driving car should prioritize humans over pets, more lives over fewer, passengers over pedestrians, young over old, women over men, healthy over sickly, law breakers over lawful citizens, higher social status over lower and whether the car should swerve (take action) or stick to its course (take no action). The results are fascinating, if not a bit stereotypical. In countries with more individualistic cultures, a stronger emphasis was put on sparing more lives, perhaps due to people seeing the value in each individual. In regions like Japan and China where there is a greater respect for the elderly, participants were less likely to spare young over old. Interestingly enough, Japan and China were on opposite ends of the spectrum with regard to sparing pedestrians versus passengers. Those in Japan would rather ride in a car with a greater emphasis on sparing pedestrians while those in China were more concerned about the safety of a vehicles passengers. Edmond Awad, an author of the paper, said they used the trolley problem because its a very good way to collect data but they hope the discussion of ethics doesnt stay within that theme. Instead, Awad believes it should move to risk analysis weighing who is at more risk or less risk versus who should or shouldnt die. The big question: Now that Microsoft owns GitHub, what will it do with the platform? Nat Friedman says he does not plan to change anything, but developers are not so sure. $7.5 billion is a lot of money to throw into something and then not try to optimize the investment. Last week we reported that the EU gave Microsoft the green light to buyout GitHub. Today the Redmond tech giant announced the closing of that deal. Microsoft will pay $7.5 billion in stock for the code sharing company and continue running it as a separate business. TechCrunch reports the firm has recently been working on building a network of external developers. It is looking to expand its Azure platform to become more competitive with Amazons AWS and Google Cloud. Microsofts Nat Friedman will be taking over as CEO of GitHub. Friedman reiterated in his blog post on Friday that it will be business as usual at GitHub. When we announced the acquisition in June, I shared two principles for GitHub that are worth repeating: GitHub will operate independently as a community, platform, and business. This means that GitHub will retain its developer-first values, distinctive spirit, and open extensibility. We will always support developers in their choice of any language, license, tool, platform, or cloud. GitHub will retain its product philosophy. We love GitHub because of the deep care and thoughtfulness that goes into every facet of the developers experience. I understand and respect this, and know that we will continue to build tasteful, snappy, polished tools that developers love. Developers on the platform are not sure what to think of the acquisition just yet. Microsoft does not carry a reputation for embracing open-source software, so many developers are taking a wait-and-see attitude regarding the takeover. The Verge notes that others did not want to hang around and have already switched over to rival service GitLab. This attitude is not surprising considering Redmonds past outward hostility toward Linux in particular and the open-source community in general. Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer even went as far as saying Linux is a cancer back in 2001. Such attitudes are not easily forgotten. Resentments aside, multibillion-dollar purchases are expected to have multibillion-dollar returns. Some developers worry that Microsoft is going to try to find ways to monetize the platform that will not jive with the core philosophy of the community. While I trust that Microsoft plans to take good care of the GitHub product itself, I am worried about what ways they may try to monetize all the data they now have about how developers work and relate to each other, how software projects are built and maintained, said JavaScript author and trainer Kyle Simpson. Github was a very good steward of this important data, and we trusted them. Maybe too much. But Im not sure I trust Microsoft on that front. It is too early to tell if Simpsons fears are founded. Perhaps Microsoft only purchased GitHub to prevent Google, Amazon, or another competitor from picking it up and doesnt care about ROI in this case, but I wouldnt hold my breath on that. A breast cancer patients surgery was performed live at a hospital in Texas in honor of Breast Cancer Awareness Month. The hope was to spread awareness about the disease and to inspire more people to get screened. Live Breast Cancer Surgery It was last December during a routine visit to her doctor that 50-year-old Sonia Johnson found out about the tumor in her breast. Despite the unfortunate diagnosis, Johnson remained positive and was determined to fight the disease, especially with the support of many other breast cancer survivors. This month, Johnson had the surgery to remove the tumor at the Methodist Charlton Medical Center in Texas and allowed it to be shown to the public via Facebook Live. Specifically, doctors performed a lumpectomy wherein the tumor was removed while leaving as much of the healthy breast tissue as possible. This way, Johnson had the tumor removed but still kept her breasts. In contrast, mastectomies also remove breast tissue, whether partially and completely or on one or both breasts. 'I Had Cancer' This morning I was saying I have cancer. Now I can say I had cancer, Johnson said at a press conference after the procedure. She also shared her hopes that by sharing her own experience, she could raise more awareness about one of the procedures available for the treatment of breast cancer. The surgeon who performed the procedure, breast surgical oncologist Allison Dipasquale, M.D., also praised Johnson for her courageousness in allowing the surgery to be shown in public so as to encourage others to get tested. 50,000 Viewers In total, it is said that about 50,000 people watched the live video of her successful surgery, and Johnson states that she hopes that she was able to reach out and encourage even just one of them to go and tell others to get tested. All the while, breast surgeons and radiation oncologists were on standby to answer any questions posed by the viewers in real time. Apart from the questions about the procedure, however, many also shared their own stories of breast cancer battle and survival. Breast Cancer Awareness Month Every October is Breast Cancer Awareness Month, a yearly campaign to spread more awareness about breast cancer, especially when it comes to early detection and support services. Apart from this, its mission also includes honoring those who are on the breast cancer journey by sharing their stories all throughout the month. To participate in the campaign, one may donate, share educational resources on social media, make a donation, volunteer to help those affected, host a fund-raiser, or share a personal story of how they or a loved one battled or is battling breast cancer. 2021 TECHTIMES.com All rights reserved. Do not reproduce without permission. What did happen on the 15N and previous days was that civil society came to public spaces and reaffirmed their support for the Revolution, to celebrate the reopening of schools after the... | Read More WASHINGTON (AP) Federal authorities on Friday captured a Florida man with a criminal history and a fervor for President Donald Trump and accused him of sending at least 13 mail bombs to prominent Democrats, capping a nationwide search in a case that spread fear of election-season violence with little precedent in the U.S. Justice Department officials announced five federal charges against Cesar Sayoc Jr., 56, of Aventura, Florida, and revealed that DNA and a fingerprint found on an envelope package helped them identify the suspect after a five-day, coast-to-coast investigation. Even as he was arrested and charged, investigators scrutinized new suspicious packages believed to be tied to his plot. FBI officials did not disclose a motive, although Attorney General Jeff Sessions suggested politics may have played a role, noting Sayoc appeared to be a "partisan." Those who saw him in the neighborhood, unmistakable in a white van plastered with Trump's image and political stickers, described him as unsettling and troubled. +10 Crude pipe bombs sent to Obama, Clintons, CNN; no injuries WASHINGTON (AP) Crude pipe bombs targeting Hillary Clinton, former President Barack Obama, CNN and others were intercepted Tuesday night and Sayoc's social media profiles portray a deeply disaffected conservative who trafficked in online conspiracy theories, parody accounts and name-calling. He called a Florida school shooting survivor a "fake phony," peddled theories about George Soros, the billionaire political donor targeted this week by a package bomb and denigrated other Democrats who were later the intended recipients of explosive packages. An amateur body builder and former stripper who once spent time on probation for a bomb threat charge, Sayoc first registered as a Republican voter just ahead of the March 2016 Republican primary and quickly identified himself as a proud Trump supporter, tweeting and posting on Facebook videos that appear to show him at Trump rallies. He appeared to be to living in his van, showering on the beach or at a local fitness center. Can't see video below? Click here. Sayoc's arrest Friday was a major breakthrough in the nationwide manhunt following the discovery of explosive devices none of which detonated addressed to prominent Democrats and other frequent targets of conservative ire, including former President Barack Obama, former Vice President Joe Biden, Hillary Clinton and the cable network CNN. On Friday, new packages addressed to New Jersey Sen. Cory Booker and former National Intelligence Director James Clapper were intercepted both similar to those containing pipe bombs discovered earlier in the week. Investigators in California scrutinized a package sent to Democratic Sen. Kamala Harris, her office said, and one sent to Tom Steyer, a billionaire businessman who has campaigned for months for Trump's impeachment. The mail bombs, coming barely a week before major midterm elections, sparked a heated national conversation about the hard-edged political climate and Trump's role in fanning the flames. The president as branded the media the "enemy of the people" and hurled harsh, personal insults at others targeted in the plot. Shortly after Sayoc was detained, Trump declared that "we must never allow political violence to take root in America" and that Americans "must unify." Speaking later to reporters Friday evening before leaving for a political rally in North Carolina, said he knows Sayoc supported him but that he himself "bears no blame." Hours earlier Trump had complained via tweet that "this 'bomb' stuff" was taking attention away from the upcoming election and that critics were wrongly blaming him. FBI and police officials worked swiftly to untangle clues this week as the packages mounted, sometimes several in the same day. The big break came when a fingerprint found on one of the packages, intended for California Rep. Maxine Waters, matched a fingerprint of Sayoc's on file with Florida authorities. A DNA sample from a device intended for Obama similarly matched the suspect's DNA, the FBI said. An additional clue: Misspellings from his online posts matched mistakes found on the packages, according to an 11-page criminal complaint that included the formal charges of threatening former presidents and transporting explosives across state lines. Some packages included photographs of the intended recipients marked with a red "x," the FBI said. The packages contained timers and batteries, but were not rigged to explode upon opening. Officials were uncertain whether the devices were poorly designed or never intended to cause physical harm. Authorities noted that they included "energetic material." A footnote to the charging document said such explosive material "gives off heat and energy through a rapid exothermic reaction when initiated by heat, shock or friction." Top stories in Baton Rouge in your inbox Twice daily we'll send you the day's biggest headlines. Sign up today. e-mail address * Sign Up "These are not hoax devices," FBI Director Chris Wray said. Sayoc was arrested near an auto parts store in Plantation, Florida, north of Miami. Across the street, Thomas Fiori, a former federal law enforcement officer, said he saw about 50 armed officers swarm a man standing outside a white van. They ordered him to the ground, Fiori said, and he did not resist. "He had that look of, 'I'm done, I surrender,'" Fiori said. Sayoc appears to have been living on the margins, regularly running into trouble with the law and struggling to make ends meet. He was repeatedly arrested for theft in the 1990s, faced felony charges of possession of anabolic steroids in 2004 and was convicted of grand theft in 2014. In 2002, he served a year of probation for a felony charge of threatening to throw or place a bomb. His lawyer in that case said the charge stemmed from a heated conversation with a Florida utility representative. Ronald Lowy, a Miami attorney, said Sayoc showed no ability at the time to back up his threat with any bomb-making expertise. Sayoc had $4,175 in personal property and more than $21,000 in debts when filed for bankruptcy in 2012. "Debtor lives with mother, owns no furniture," his lawyer indicated in a property list. He had been an amateur body builder. More recently he was seen at an LA Fitness in Aventura, regularly showering at the gym but not working out, said Edgar Lopez, 48, a therapist who works out at the gym. Marc Weiss saw Sayoc nearly every morning at 6 a.m. for the last four or five months "I've seen the guy maybe 80 times and I never said a word to him because I had a feeling he was a little off," said Weiss, a 56-year-old building superintendent who has lived in the neighborhood for eight years. "This guy had an air about him that was unsettling." Sayoc's political awakening appears to have coincided with Trump's rise. He registered to vote in Florida in March 2016 and has voted early since, records show. Documents released Friday by the Broward County Sheriff's Office show Sayoc reported in May 2015 that more than $40,000 in goods were stolen from his van and an attached trailer, including 11 pieces of Donald Trump-brand clothing valued at $7,150. Specifics are not included, but Trump has a line of suits, shirts, ties and accessories. The report shows detectives were never able to confirm whether the theft actually happened, and no arrests were made. Most of those targeted this week were past or present U.S. officials, but packages also were sent to actor Robert De Niro and billionaire George Soros. The bombs have been sent across the country from New York, Delaware and Washington, D.C., to Florida and California, where Waters was targeted. They bore the return address of Florida Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz, the former chairwoman of the Democratic National Committee. ___ Associated Press writers Laurie Kellman, Ken Thomas, Jill Colvin, Michael Biesecker, Stephen Braun and Chad Day in Washington; Terry Spencer, Kelli Kennedy and Curt Anderson in Florida; Jim Mustian, Deepti Hajela, Tom Hays and Michael R. Sisak in New York and Raphael Satter in Paris contributed to this report. The late African-American soul and jazz musician Gil Scott-Heron released "Gun" back in 1981, but longtime Baton Rouge state District Judge Bonnie Jackson says the song speaks to what is happening now in this community. The chorus goes as follows: "Everybody got a pistol, everybody got a 45, and the philosophy seem to be, at least as near as I can see, when other folks give up theirs, I'll give up mine." Jackson, who has served on the 19th Judicial District Court bench for a quarter-century, brought up Scott-Heron's song Thursday during an interview about youth gun violence that has become so deeply ingrained in the community. "It's so reflective of the culture today," she said of the song's lyrics. "He could have written it last week." When Jackson sentenced a 21-year-old Ponchatoula man to 12 years in prison earlier this month for accidentally shooting and killing a 19-year-old Hammond woman in Baton Rouge in August 2017, the judge decried what she called a "culture of young black males" who feel the need to carry guns. She said from the bench that "nothing good comes of this love affair with firearms." In the interview Thursday in her office, Jackson who is black acknowledged that youth gun violence is not limited to the African-American community but said it is certainly more prevalent in that community. Top stories in Baton Rouge in your inbox Twice daily we'll send you the day's biggest headlines. Sign up today. e-mail address * Sign Up "I tend to see that more in the African-American community because there's this heightened sense of dangerousness. It creates this perception, `I gotta have a gun,'" she said. Some of those fears are legitimate, the judge noted, "but a lot of it is perceived fear." "There's this culture that's so pervasive that every young man feels they have to have a firearm. There's just this mentality that it's necessary for them to have a weapon." "I'm not sure how to change that perception," Jackson conceded. "Something has to happen to change the culture and the thought process." Perhaps, the judge said, a panel of mothers who've lost sons to gun violence similar to the Mothers Against Drunk Driving victim impact panels would help get the message across that more guns do not translate into more safety. Jackson said many young males today have become desensitized to violence and don't see the emotional carnage left behind when a family loses a loved one to gun violence. "You'd be safer if fewer people were carrying guns," she stressed. "I wish, I wish I could get through to some of these young men." WASHINGTON Much of U.S. Rep. Garret Graves congressional district has taken a battering over recent years from floods, hurricanes and coastal erosion. As the Baton Rouge Republican campaigns for a third term, Graves points to a long list of altered regulations and federal funding hes steered toward those problems and toward the perennial complaint of traffic. Real people, real solutions, Graves, 46, said repeatedly during an hour-long interview about his pitch to voters ahead of midterm elections, which pit Graves against three challengers two Democrats and a conservative independent on the Nov. 6 ballot. Graves pointed toward hundreds of millions of dollars in Army Corps of Engineers funding for flood control projects including the long-stalled Comite River Diversion Canal and the long-discussed new levee system along the west shore of Lake Pontchartrain as a major accomplishment from the past term. Fixing stupid, the slogan of a recent Graves television ad, is also a phrase Graves used several times to describe federal laws and regulations hes worked to change since arriving on Capitol Hill as a congressman. Congressman Garret Graves standing on I-10? DOTD chief among those surprised 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 The commercial, which features Graves standing on Interstate 10 in Baton Rouge at the Washington Street exit, highlights his work on eliminating the much-maligned interchange, which engineers have blamed for bottlenecking traffic. Graves wrote much of a new law undoing a federal duplication-of-benefits regulation that had prevented owners of homes damaged in the 2016 floods whod applied for Small Business Administration loans from getting Restore Louisiana rebuilding grants. The law also shifted a raft of other federal disaster rules, including easing a penalty imposed on uninsured flood-hit schools and giving more nonprofits access to federal disaster relief cash. These are things that matter on the ground. Real solutions for real people. I think thats what our job is, Graves said. Wed put our record up against virtually anyone in terms of successes in getting things done. Louisianas 6th Congressional District is centered on Baton Rouge and its suburbs, including much of the Florida Parishes, but also reaches down into Lafourche and Terrebonne parishes on the coast and up into Pointe Coupee Parish. Graves first won his seat in a crowded race to replace Sen. Bill Cassidy, a Republican whod held the seat before running for the U.S. Senate. Graves beat a crowded field of Republicans before dispatching Democrat Edwin Edwards, the colorful former four-term governor and convicted federal felon, in a runoff. Graves had previously led the states Coastal Protection and Restoration Authority under former Gov. Bobby Jindal and served for a number of years as a congressional staffer, including for U.S. Rep. Billy Tauzin and U.S. Sens. David Vitter and John Breaux. Graves is widely considered among elections forecasters and pundits to be the heavy favorite to win re-election in a district that usually tilts heavily in favor of Republicans. Republican President Donald Trump carried the districts voters handily in 2016. Graves coasted to victory with 62 percent of the vote against a crowded field of opponents that year. The next-closest competitor Democrat Richard Lieberman gathered just under 15 percent of the vote. Louisiana has dollars at stake as Congress wrangles over oil and gas revenue A pair of Congressional bills are in the works that could dramatically change the way Louisiana receives coastal protection funding from the o No public polls have been conducted in the district this year itself an indication that few outside groups view the race as competitive but Graves holds a commanding fundraising advantage. His nearly $2.25 million campaign chest holds more than 40 times as much as his three opponents combined have raised, according to Federal Election Commission filings. Graves challengers said theyve been buoyed by positive responses from voters while campaigning door-to-door and view Graves accomplishments in Congress as overstated. Democrat Justin DeWitt and independent Devin Lance Graham described Graves as out of touch with some of his constituents and beholden to the some of the corporate donors whove supported his campaigns. 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 DeWitt, whos raised the most of Graves challengers with nearly $37,000, said hes not taking corporate donations and charged that the only thing he (Graves) has done is stand up for his donors. DeWitt called the Comite project a drop in the bucket in terms of the flood protection work the area needs and criticized Graves for the wider stalemate in Congress over the future of the National Flood Insurance Program. DeWitt also took a shot at Graves prolific fundraising. You only have to raise $2.2 million if youre a sellout and you have to lie to people and pay for that lie to get out there enough, DeWitt charged. Graves fired back at that criticism, arguing theres no well-heeled beneficiaries for many of the key initiatives hes fought for in Congress. Duplication of benefits whos my big donor there? These are people who cant afford to get back into their freakin houses, Graves said. Washington Street exit did I do that for a construction company? Come on. It is a baseless accusation. Dewitt, a party chief for a land surveying company, said he first began considering a run for Congress after being hit by the 2016 floods. It was very stressful and one of the hardest times in my life and the only offer I got from my congressman to solve that issue was his thoughts and prayers through a mailer instead of working like he shouldve been since he got elected. Fellow Democratic candidate Andie Saizan, a 38-year-old software engineer from Holden whos also making her first run for office, said she decided to run because like many I'm tired of the dysfunction and being misrepresented in Washington. Shes raised just over $17,000 for the race, according to federal campaign filings. On her website, Saizan says the tearful reaction of one of her daughters to the February school shooting in Parkland, Florida, inspired her campaign. Saizan wrote that her family owns guns and her husband is a part-time policeman but that more needs to be done to protect kids from gun violence. Our current political climate is full of representatives in it for financial and power privilege gains that are out of touch with what average women and men experience, Saizan said. I love my career, I've worked hard to be successful at it and I have my dream job, but we need better options and there are none. We need equality, our wages, our health care and our children's education to be made a priority. We deserve better. Graham, a 31-year-old independent from Prairieville who owns a small electrical company, also challenged Graves in 2016 and gathered just over 3,000 votes or roughly 1 percent in the six-way race that year. Graham said hed focus heavily on infrastructure roads, waterways, airports, trains, levees if elected and serve as an independent voice for the district in a Congress he argued is plagued by partisan bickering between the two main parties. We dont have to have politicians who are controlled and run by these two parties, said Graham. I own a company, I know what its like to work every day, Ive never been 100 percent involved in politics as my job. Graham, who described his views as very conservative, said hes a backer of term limits and a believer that Congress is filled with too many career politicians. Graham said thats not a knock on Graves alone Im not here to beat up on Garret Im talking about all the members but he noted that Graves has spent much of his adult life working in Washington. But Graves said its precisely that lengthy prior experience as a congressional aide and head of CPRA that gives him a leg up in Congress. Graves said hes remained firmly focused on his district but brings inside-the-beltway expertise thats let him deliver results on problems back home. Those very experiences that those people are criticizing are the things that allowed me to get here on day one and run, not crawl, Graves said. Graves said he still feels like theres more he can accomplish in Congress if voters send him back for another term. Graves said hes not done pushing reforms on the Corps of Engineers and wants to fight to fund a new bridge over the Mississippi River in the Baton Rouge area and do more to reduce prescription drug prices. Look, Im not going to do this for the rest of my life but I do think weve got more stuff to do, Graves said of his service in Congress. I think at some point Ill recognize when I hit my plateau and I hope that I recognize it before voters do. Were not there right now. The National Center for Transgender Equality, NCTE, and the Human Rights Campaign gather on Pennsylvania Avenue in front of the White House in Washington, Monday, Oct. 22, 2018, for a #WontBeErased rally. Anatomy at birth may prompt a check in the "male" or "female" box on the birth certificate but to doctors and scientists, sex and gender aren't always the same thing. The Trump administration purportedly is considering defining gender as determined by sex organs at birth, which if adopted could deny certain civil rights protections to an estimated 1.4 million transgender Americans. (AP Photo/Carolyn Kaster) A New Orleans woman has been sentenced to 20 years in prison after pleading guilty to posing as an attorney to loot an autistic man's $2 million trust fund, using the stolen cash to fund a lavish lifestyle that included travel and luxury goods, according to Jefferson Parish court records. Read the full story Metairie construction worker Wilmer Toro has kept close watch on reports of thousands of migrants traveling by caravan from Central America toward the U.S. border in recent days. Upset with President Donald Trumps statements that some of those migrants are "criminals" or "unknown Middle Easterners," Toro, a Honduran native, decided it was time to organize his community here in New Orleans. If the migrants make it to the U.S., he says, some may seek refuge within the large Honduran community in the New Orleans area. And they will need help. He is now working to raise awareness in hopes of providing legal services for asylum seekers, arranging for temporary housing, and finding people willing to donate funds. "We are thinking about how to raise the consciousness of people in our own community," Toro said in his native Spanish. Were trying to think of ways to support people once they do get there, if they are able to get here. Toro's push into activism reflects the deep but relatively unnoticed ties between Central America and New Orleans that first developed nearly a century ago through the banana trade but have strengthened following Hurricane Katrina. With a population of more than 25,000, Hondurans are the largest Hispanic group in the New Orleans area. Their ties to the region stretch back into the early 1900s, when United Fruit Co. and Standard Fruit Co., now Chiquita and Dole, set up their headquarters in New Orleans and grew bananas in Honduras and other nearby countries for export to the U.S. Many more migrants flocked to the area to help rebuild homes and businesses devastated by Hurricane Katrina in 2005. Others, often unaccompanied children, came to the region in more recent years for the same relief from drug cartels and political turmoil now sought by those traveling in the caravan. More than 7,000 travelers are fleeing Central America's so-called northern triangle of El Salvador, Honduras and Guatemala in one of the largest groups to do so in years. Other caravans have formed in recent years, just without the same media attention. Organizers say forming a mass caravan is safer than trying to exit countries in smaller groups. The group began with 160 people in San Pedro Sula, one of Honduras most violent cities, on Oct. 12. By the time it reached the border at Guatemala, it was more than 1,600 people strong. The caravan, mostly composed of Hondurans, still has more than 1,000 miles to go before it reaches the southern U.S. border, and it has inspired another smaller caravan to follow its footsteps. It has also been turned into a congressional campaign issue by Trump, who has claimed the national Democratic Party is to blame for the migrants because it refuses to change weak immigration policy. Top stories in New Orleans in your inbox Twice daily we'll send you the day's biggest headlines. Sign up today. e-mail address * Sign Up At a Montana rally last week, Trump claimed, without evidence, that Democrats purposely organized the caravan to sway public opinion ahead of the Nov. 6 midterm elections. Santos Canales, a Honduran native who has lived in the U.S. since 1999, said the fact that immigrants are undeterred by the possibility of deportation or the exhausting journey north proves just how bad things have gotten in his native country. "Many of us have a neighbor on that caravan, or a friend on that caravan," he said, using Chloe Sigal of the local immigrant advocacy organization Congress of Day Laborers as his translator. "The thousands of people who are on that caravan, they are not making a choice to come on vacation. They are fleeing for their lives, and they have no other choice," said Canales. "It's very hard to do that sort of thing, and that's why we want to support them." Toro has lived in the U.S. for more than a decade but still has family in Honduras. He said that many travelers in the caravan can reasonably be expected to reunite with their local relatives, children or friends. But seeking asylum in the U.S. could be much more difficult now than under previous administrations, according to attorney Kathleen Gasparian of Gasparian Spivey Immigration, a Baronne Street firm that deals exclusively with immigration rights cases. Under federal and international law, migrants from another country may request asylum within another country's borders if they can prove they are being persecuted at home because of their race or ethnicity, religion, political opinion, or membership in a particular social group. But Attorney General Jeff Sessions said in June that people who cite fears of gang violence or domestic abuse may no longer receive such protection, a policy that will affect tens of thousands of immigrants from Central America seeking to live here legally over the next few years. As a result, kids and women who have suffered abuse, who have been trafficked, are going to be the ones who have a harder climb through the system, Gasparian said. It will take years for the judicial challenges to those decisions to flow through the courts. Political violence and threats from the drug cartels are behind many of the decisions by migrants to make their journey north. Toro said his countrymen are trying to escape the cartels who want to use their children as drug mules or prostitutes. They also want to earn more than the $1.90 a day that is the norm for many families, and that is subsequently taxed by drug lords who have free reign over major Honduran cities, he said. The American public doesnt understand the source, the root cause, of why people are coming here, Toro said. Citing the 17 homicides reported last year in St. Tammany Parish half of them classified as domestic violence 22nd Judicial District Attorney Warren Montgomery announced Thursday that a dozen state and local agencies are forming a partnership to standardize the way law enforcement handles domestic violence cases. The agencies are forming a Coordinated Community Response Team modeled after one that Ouachita Parish launched in 2005, which Montgomery said has brought about large decreases there in domestic violence incidents and domestic violence homicides. That parish saw domestic and dating violence drop by nearly 48 percent and had a 70 percent decrease in domestic violence homicides, according to a news release from the DA's Office. Assistant District Attorney Collin Sims, chief of the Criminal Division in Montgomery's office, began efforts to replicate the Ouachita program in St. Tammany seven months ago. Sims said the team will meet quarterly, with agencies bringing all their policies to the table for consideration. Members will form a committee to agree on one set way to respond to reports of domestic assaults, he said, including what questions to ask and what to assess. The agreement also calls for services to be provided to victims within 48 hours to ensure their safety and build their confidence in the system. "With confidence, people are brave enough to say, 'What happened to me is not OK. I trust you guys and this entire system to put this offender behind bars,' " Sims said, adding that the agencies will be there to hold the hands of victims. A key part of the agreement is the development of a team to review high-risk offenders for prosecution. That team will meet regularly to determine charges and conditions of supervised release, assess safety measures for the victims and review resources available for victim assistance. Significant changes in the law mean that more domestic violence crimes will be classified as felonies, which should mean 150 more felony domestic violence cases in St. Tammany a year, Sims said. St. Tammany top stories in your inbox A weekly guide to the biggest news in St. Tammany. Sign up today. e-mail address * Sign Up A news conference, held in front of Montgomery's office in the St. Tammany Justice Center, concluded with reading the names of 10 people who were killed in domestic violence incidents last year and this year, followed by a moment of silence. Montgomery pointed to changes that he has already made in how his agency handles the prosecution of domestic violence. When he took office in 2015, there was only one full-time prosecutor and a part-time investigator handling domestic violence cases. That resulted in a large backlog, with 224 cases dismissed in 2014, many because too much time had elapsed. Montgomery said he added a second domestic violence prosecutor, a full-time investigator, a full-time victim assistance coordinator and a secretary. The increased staffing and operational changes, including reaching out to victims within hours after an attack, have brought about a 75 percent decrease in the number of dismissed cases, with only 54 being dismissed in 2017, he said. His office has also seen an increase in the number of defendants pleading guilty as charged, up from 75 in 2014 to 139 last year. A memorandum of understanding to create the new team was signed by Sheriff Randy Smith; the police chiefs of Covington, Folsom, Madisonville, Mandeville, Pearl River and Slidell; Clerk of Court Melissa Henry; and representatives of the Louisiana Department of Children and Family Services, Louisiana Probation and Parole, and Safe Harbor. If you've never seen New Orleans police's mounted unit in action, here's your chance. Police video released by the NOPD Friday shows Sgt. Daniel Scanlan and horse JJ chasing, and eventually arresting, a suspect in the French Quarter on Oct. 19. The suspect, 30-year-old Terrell Spears, was arrested and booked on a count of possession of a firearm by a felon and flight from an officer. Scanlan was in the French Quarter to film a promotional video when he got the call to respond to the incident. Can't see video below? Click here. The footage was shot on a GoPro camera mounted to Scanlan. He starts out on Dauphine Street before turning onto Toulouse Street where he spots Spears near the intersection of Toulouse and Bourbon. The chase then travels down Bourbon's 600 block, turns right onto St. Peter Street, then right on Royal Street before ending when another officer on foot detains Spears in the 600 block of Royal in a construction area. During the chase, Scanlan is heard yelling out for French Quarter revelers to "move" and "look out" as he speeds through the area. The Financially Independent, Retire Early (FIRE) movement, strong among millennials in the US, has reached Australia. The goal of an early retirement is becoming popular among younger people who dont like what they see in the future with healthcare and state-funded pensions crumbling, and arent that keen on the idea of a career for life. The retiring early movement is gaining traction in Australia, survey finds. Credit:Shutterstock Many say that becoming financially independent is more about time, which becomes more valuable as we age because we have less of it, than money itself. However, some experts say retiring early is unrealistic and most people dont effectively plan for rising costs in retirement. "And while you don't want to make the same film over and over, you do come back to the same themes. Family dynamics, the passage of time, looking back on a shared past. And this idea of control or illusion of control, or of losing yourself, that does attract me." Steve Carell as David Scheff goes searching for his drug-addicted son in Beautiful Boy. Credit:FRANCOIS DUHAMEL Beautiful Boy is raw and tender but sometimes so matter-of-fact that it knocks the breath out of you. "I really believe in the process of filmmaking as a journey, that I learn from it and that things can somehow come together magically," Van Groeningen says. "It was like a punch in my gut at the point when I realised David really has to be OK with his son dying. Because maybe it's his choice or because it's maybe for the better. It was at some point in the edit, where it sort of clicked and became a very emotional experience and I thought 'I really hope this is what this movie does to other people'." Oakley Bull, Christian Convery, Timothee Chalamet, Steve Carell behind the scenes on the set of Beautiful Boy. Credit:FRANCOIS DUHAMEL The perennially enthusiastic Spanish audiences in San Sebastian were certainly vociferous in their appreciation; one Spanish journalist spoke for everyone when he told Chalamet that an Oscar wasn't far off. So it came as a surprise not that this is so unusual when the reviews in the American press turned out to be decidedly mixed. Variety admired the performances, but wished the film had the power of shock. The zig-zag between rehab and relapse was repetitive to one, formulaic to another, tedious to a third. It was all too beautiful for the New York Times, which said "it skates on a surface of sentiment and gauzy visual beauty". It was either too grim or too afraid of being grim, depending on your standpoint; many snarked about its public service mission, suggestive of an after-school special on TV, which was emphasised by the advice about addiction services in the end credits and an attendant whiff of earnestness. Hollywood Reporter remarked cattily that actors loved movies about addiction "because they provide excellent opportunities to go deep and intense". That professional vanity had provided the grist for a long list of excellent films "but Beautiful Boy does not belong on that list", it suggested. The filmmakers were aware of the potential pitfalls. Chalamet, who was in San Sebastian with Van Groeningen, was intent on avoiding the kind of grand guignol performance that might be tagged "deep and intense". "I felt that was the trap for me as an actor: playing the addict on screen. I never wanted anyone to feel this was an actor savouring an opportunity," he says. "I thought it would be more moving for people to be watching it and think 'oh my God, that could be anybody. That could be my sister or my son.' To find the humanity of the character felt like it would be the most effective thing for the story." Van Groeningen chose Steve Carell for his similarly everyman quality. "We wanted somebody very relatable for a lot of people," he says. For many viewers, Carell will forever be the ineffectual boss of The Office, but Van Groeningen was taken with his furious, self-loathing investor in The Big Short. "The fact that he plays such a loud guy who is yelling all the time and yet he makes him relatable, I thought that was incredible," he says. "At the same time, when I was doing research and watching interviews with him, he felt like this very kind person and super-earnest; I saw a big overlap with what I thought David needed to be. Then I was re-reading my script and imagining Steve playing it and I just started crying. That's when I knew OK, that's what needs to happen." And if there is a sense of civic responsibility behind Beautiful Boy, there is no shame in that. For Chalamet, it was a reason to make the film. "In the United States where I'm from, a large part of the population is addicted to opioids; more people die from overdoses than from car accidents, more than (from) gun violence, it is the biggest killer right now and even more tragically it's young people," he says. Fresh from snagging a Young Conservationist of the Year award from Meghan, the Duchess of Sussex, student Sophia Skarparis has a message for politicians like those in NSW who hold out against banning single-use plastic bags. Meghan, the Duchess of Sussex presents Sophia Skarparis with her award on Friday night. Credit:AAP "We are the generation that will be active," Miss Skarparis said. "This youth and this generation are so serious about caring for our common home ... I am not going to stop." The Year 10 student from Sydney's Monte Sant'Angelo Mercy College secured the Australian Geographic Society award - presented on Friday night - for her bag-the-ban petition that topped 12,000 signatures. That tally was enough to force a debate on Thursday in State Parliament. The apartment market has been very strong. I think what's happened in the ACT is we're at a new normal level of apartment construction, and that's occurred in the last, say, five years or so. But while many agree that buying a Canberra apartment is a good punt for a first home buyer or investor, the market is facing a variety of different pressures. David Shearer, director of project planning at Independent, says the percentage of investors buying in the Canberra apartment market has been heading south for some time. It's really accelerated that downward trend in the last 12-18 months, since the ACT government decided to basically hammer investors with massive increases in land tax and rates on apartments, he says. I'd suggest that the increases that the ACT government have effected upon the unit market will be as significant or a larger contributor to rental increases for tenants. Basically, it's already happening - rents over the last 12 months have gone up considerably so that investors can recoup the additional costs in land tax. That's the number one thing that's happened. "The second thing that's happened is that the motivation for people to buy an investment property has gone backwards in Canberra, significantly. If I go back 15 years ago, we would sell 70 per cent of a development to investors. Now we're selling roughly 25 per cent. That's the difference. The rest are to owner-occupiers, many of them first-home buyers; apartments in Canberra are affordable, with median prices below $500,000. NewActon Nishi in Canberra. Credit:John Gollings But beyond the ACT, theres also the current credit squeeze thats currently troubling buyers in Sydney and Melbourne, which, according to real estate guru Peter OMalley, is set to hit Canberra in the near future. The Sydney-based author of Inside Real Estate has been keeping a close eye on Canberra - and other capital cities - and says that while Canberras economy is healthy and vacancy rates are tight, the availability of credit as banks tighten their lending criteria is set to become an issue. We're seeing right across the marketplace is that the availability of credit is very quickly now the major dominant issue in all markets, he says. And in doing some research, what I've noticed is what I call the absorption rate of what I call the amount stock on market, versus what's selling each month in Canberra, is really falling away. So there seems to be, all of sudden, after travelling quite well, five or six apartments on the market for every one transaction at the moment in desirable apartments in Canberra. He says while Canberra and Hobart are currently the best performing cities in terms of real estate, the ACTs market has peaked. Loading In my view, you're probably looking at or just passed the peak in the ACT market now, he says. Hobart's now slowing, as is Canberra, and you may see a negative reading for calendar year 2019 for the Canberra market, would be my guess, in terms of price performance. You may see a subtle drop in the Canberra market as the availability of credit tightens up. Because frighteningly for everyone, the tightening has not finished. His advice to prospective buyers is to wait 12 months before purchasing an apartment, especially if youre an owner-occupier. I can see no upward pressure on apartment prices in Canberra from this point on, none, he says. If someone was to buy a Canberra apartment at the moment as an investment, what I would say to them is that's fine, as long as you know you're buying that apartment for yield and not capital growth in the short term. According to Shearer, who has spent 30 years working in the property market, Canberrans are fairly conservative when it comes to investments anyway, and dont tend to speculate on prices going up after they buy. Canberra is a very educated, accommodating but very conservative city, so Canberrans pick security over experiment pretty well all the time, he says. Loading People are not buying an apartment to speculate on a price increase during construction, they're buying an apartment because they intend to own the property for a length of time, to run it as an investment property and basically to eventually pay it off and have the property as retirement income or for whatever other purpose they might want to use it for. Hes also more sanguine about the vagaries of the credit squeeze, and the so-called real estate bubbles we hear about in bigger cities, where prices skyrocket in markets that are basically uncontrolled, he says. Canberra is such a controlled environment, we haven't had these big booms in prices, but we also have never had any big downward pressure on prices. Mark Edlund, managing director of Clarity Home Loans, also points out that Canberra apartment developments have so far stayed off the exclusions lists of banks wanting to avoid financing investment in non-profitable projects. Canberra hasnt had that bubble effect that warrants close scrutiny - its a nice, stable market, he says. Theres also the fact that Canberras apartment market is in its relative infancy, and is still designed to appeal mainly to singles and couples. Beyond Braddon and the inner city, the market has a long way to go before it begins to explicitly cater to families with children, or older people looking to retire in their own homes. Shearer reiterates that the apartment market is still juvenile compared to other cities. The market hasn't matured yet, people are not prepared to pay enough money for an apartment of the size that you're talking about for it to be a feasible option, Shearer says. Canberra hasnt had that bubble effect that warrants close scrutiny - its a nice, stable market. Mark Edlund, Clarity Home Loans He says he himself is looking to downsize now that his children have moved out, but that he and his wife had yet to find something that appealed to their demographic. You don't want to buy an apartment in a building full of 19-year-olds. You want to be in a building where there's a level of social engagement about your environment, he says. People try to build something that's going to be more appealing to a demographic who's going to really appreciate it, but there's only very small patches of that type of product being built in Canberra. But as the market matures, there might be the demand in the market where people are prepared to pay the money that you'd need to get to justify building nice big apartments with nice big balconies that are going to be suitable for families to grow up in, that have got family friendly communal areas. Rather than having communal areas full of gyms and swimming pools, maybe they'll be full of playgrounds and sandpits. It's something that's not yet there. A Coroner will probe the death of a Canberra man Tasered by officers. Police said Anthony Caristo had a severed finger, was covered in blood, and holding a knife when he confronted officers at his Waramanga home in October last year. He struck his leg with the knife and - to prevent him harming himself further - officers Tasered him, police said. Mr Caristo then fell unconscious and could not be revived. He was the first Taser-related death in the ACT and it is being formally examined in a coronial inquest. A HIV-positive man allegedly paid vulnerable Canberra children for unprotected sex, a court has heard. Police allegedly discovered Robert Glen Sirl, 47, having sex with a 15-year-old girl when they raided his Gilmore home on Thursday. An ACT Policing constable told an ACT Magistrates Court bail hearing on Friday that officers had received information that Sirl had also given other children drugs, money, or gifts in exchange for sex. Constable Christine Walters said Sirl - who police databases indicated had HIV - never wore a condom when he had sex with the 15-year-old girl. Constable Walters said the other children had not yet made statements and police believed they feared the defendant. Finally. It has taken decades for the Sydney Anglican synod to acknowledge the presence of perpetrators of domestic violence in the church and to act decisively to protect victims. The debate has been dogged by controversy, denial and defensiveness. But first steps have been taken. The clergy wives who have survived abuse did not speak at synod, which finished this week, but they were watching carefully, hearts in mouths, some in tears, as they were spoken about. Some were in the public gallery in the Wesley Centre in Pitt Street, some hunched over phones waiting for updates. Sydney Anglicans voted to allow bishops to consider allowing abused women to remarry. Credit:Edwina Pickles But it was clear their stories had been heard and many in synod were determined to act, to start to repent and to repair. In what is believed to be a world first, the several hundred-strong group of Sydney Anglicans, made up of bishops, clergy and laity, voted to provide financial compensation of as much as $50,000 to women abused by clergy or church-leader husbands, to help them rebuild their lives. Three people were rushed to hospital after crash involving a Ferrari, which had flipped multiple times in Brisbane's south. Police said the Ferrari was travelling southbound on Logan Road when it collided with a station wagon on Bardsley Avenue at Greenslopes before it rolled and came to rest in the middle of the road. The Ferrari had rolled a number of times during the crash at Greenslopes. Credit:Brisbane Alert The driver of the station wagon, a 37-year-old woman was taken to Princess Alexandra Hospital in a stable condition with head, neck and leg injures. The driver of the Ferrari, a 41-year-old man, and his 40-year-old male passenger sustained cuts and bruising and were transported to hospital for further treatment. World Expo '88 is still wowing Queensland 30 years on, with a book documenting Brisbane's 184-day "coming of age" taking out the state's top literary award this week. Author Jackie Ryan spent a decade refining the idea and putting together the book, which examined Expo '88's significance as well as the underlying social and political issues such as the key role the Bjelke-Petersen government played in the event's success in the midst of the Fitzgerald Inquiry. World Expo 88 in South Bank, Brisbane. Credit:Flickr - Queensland State Archives Ryan described the event as signifying Brisbane "coming of age" and the result of the Fitzgerald Inquiry as Brisbane's "second coming of age". "What Expo '88 did was speed things up because there wasnt a lot going on in mainstream Brisbane," she said. A Melbourne man was shot five times from behind after a row erupted over borrowing a car, a court has heard. Ali Chaouk, 38, allegedly murdered Mohammed Haddara with a .44-calibre firearm on Fifth Avenue in Altona North on June 20, 2009. Mohammed Haddara was shot dead at the front of his parents' home in Altona North. Credit:Ten News Mark Malkoun told a Supreme Court jury on Friday that Chaouk was angry to learn he had lent a Mercedes to the victim. He told the jury he got to know Mr Haddara in prison and later agreed he could borrow his car for his sister's wedding in October 2008. Devika Tutakne and her family were all set for the holiday of a lifetime. Instead, Ms Tutakne's husband died at her feet. Devika Tutakne's husband Girish was run over and killed while he was legally crossing the road. Credit:Jason South They were crossing a busy Brighton East intersection on a green pedestrian signal when a car turning right ran into them. Ms Tutakne was rushed to hospital with a severely fractured pelvis and skull, while her husband Girish died at the scene. A four-year-old boy has been taken to hospital after being hit by a car in Spearwood. Police and St John Ambulance were called to the incident on Rockingham Road about 5.30pm on Friday on reports the child had been hit by a car outside a childcare centre. It is understood the child had just left the centre with his carer when the incident happened. A witness at the Little Peoples Place centre, who asked not to be named, told WAtoday she heard screaming and a bang before running out to the scene near the bus stop on the other side of Rockingham Road. A police spokesman said the boy went back to the centre before being taken to hospital as a precaution. The seemingly constant stream of high-profile restaurant closures and nearly half a decade of "boom-time hangover" rhetoric mean starting a small business isn't a very appealing prospect. Authentic Bite Dumpling House owner Yang Song and staff member Yawen. Credit:Hamish Hastie But most small business owners know if they have a dream they have to pursue it, and in the case of Yang Song and his wife, leave their well-paid jobs to make it happen. Mr Song and his wife were studying mechanical engineering at the University of WA when inspiration struck. When they couldn't find authentic-style dumplings from Mrs Song's home town near Shanghai they decided to make their own. EDITOR'S NOTE: We are conscious people are sharing this story in the context of the 2020 bushfire crisis. Please be aware the story is from 2018. Disability advocates have slammed Prime Minister Scott Morrison's decision to "repurpose" $3.9 billion originally set aside for the NDIS to pay for drought relief, but the plan has been cautiously welcomed by farmers. Mr Morrison unveiled his $5 billion Drought Future Fund at a summit attended by farmers, economists, industry bodies and state and federal ministers in Canberra on Friday, promising measures to drought-proof the nation's agriculture sector. Prime Minister Scott Morrison and Deputy Prime Minister Michael McCormack on Friday. Credit:Alex Ellinghausen The first $3.9 billion of the scheme, which would operate similarly to the Medical Future Fund, is to be paid for out of a pool of money originally intended for the National Disability Insurance Scheme. Melbourne Cup races will go ahead in Queensland, after the racing industry brokered a deal with the state government. It comes amid a stoush with the industry about the state government's 15 per cent point of consumption betting tax, and calls for increased prize money. Melbourne Cup Day at Doomben in 2015. Credit:Glenn Hunt Saturday's Cox Plate race meetings at Brisbane's Doomben, Gold Coast, Townsville and Toowoomba will remain cancelled as a result of the strike. But following a marathon almost five-hour meeting on Friday between jockey, trainer, owner and breeder representatives of the Thoroughbread Alliance, Racing Minister Stirling Hinchliffe and Deputy Premier Jackie Trad - and promises of $26 million extra in prize money - Queensland punters will be able to enjoy the races trackside on November 6. Quito: The first hearing in Julian Assange's lawsuit against Ecuador's Foreign Affairs Ministry was suspended as the WikiLeaks founder was unable to understand his translator, and the judge called for a replacement fluent in "Australian." Speaking from Ecuador's Embassy in London via Skype, Assange said the court-appointed translation service was "not good enough." Judge Karina Martinez said that it was indispensable that Assange testify, and said the court had erred by appointing a translator who only spoke English, apparently under the impression that Australian dialect is unintelligible to other anglophones. Julian Assange, founder of Wikileaks. Credit:AP Assange filed the suit against Foreign Minister Jose Valencia last week, saying that new rules being imposed on him at the London embassy violate his constitutional rights. Assange, an Ecuadorian citizen since December, could be expelled from the embassy should he fail to comply with the new rules, which say he must refrain from commenting on politics, and clear any visitors with the embassy three working days in advance. Assange sought the protection of Ecuador in 2012 to avoid extradition to Sweden, where he faced allegations of rape, or the US, where he could face trial for publishing secret government documents. Moscow: NATO has begun its largest military exercises since the Cold War as the West tries to keep up with Russia's growing military presence. About 50,000 soldiers, 250 aircraft, 65 ships and 10,000 tanks will take part in the Trident Juncture war games, which have began at various locations across northern Europe. A Norwegian CV9030 tank involved in Trident Juncture exercises this week. Credit:NAF With 31 countries involved they are designed to test NATO's response to an attack on Norway, where most of the drills are taking place. Footage showed military vehicles barrelling down muddy forest tracks, soldiers marching through barren landscapes and fighter jets taking off from remote runways. The official opening of the annual poppy campaign in Canada commences today. Hey there, time traveller! This article was published 26/10/2018 (1119 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current. The official opening of the annual poppy campaign in Canada commences today. As a result of donations to this campaign, the Steinbach Legion provided $10,000 to Bethesda Hospitals cancer care program, $2,500 to Stony Brook Air Cadets, along with other donations to various causes in 2017. This year marks the 100th anniversary of the end of the First World War, in which 55,000 Canadians sacrificed their lives for freedom which ended on the 11th hour of the 11th day of the 11th month 1918. This years Remembrance Day service in Steinbach will be held at the Pat Porter Active Living Centre on Nov. 11 at 10:45 a.m. Pastor Marc Moir of the Covenant Reform Church will officiate. A light lunch at the Steinbach Legion will follow the service. Organizations and citizens wishing to lay a wreath during this service are asked to contact any Legion member, call 204-326-5335 or through www.steinbachlegion.ca. The van reportedly owned by suspect Caesar Sayoc Jr. Photo: Uncredited/AP/REX/Shutterstock On Friday, authorities announced that they had arrested a man in Plantation, Florida, in connection with the slew of bombs sent to prominent figures including former secretary of State Hillary Clinton and former president Barack Obama as well as to CNNs New York headquarters. NBC reports that the man in custody is Cesar Sayoc Jr., a 56-year-old Florida resident. NBC News reports that DNA evidence played a role in the arrest of Sayoc, and that his white van, which had pictures of President Donald Trump and the presidential seal on its window, has been seized. According to the New York Times, Sayoc is a registered Republican with an extensive criminal history including one instance where he was arrested and accused of threatening to use a bomb. He was reportedly born in New York. A spokesperson for the Department of Justice tweeted on Friday morning that a suspect was in custody; on Friday afternoon, Attorney General Jeff Sessions said that Sayoc would be charged with five crimes, including illegally mailing explosives, the AP reports. Heres what we know so far. The suspect is Cesar Sayoc, a registered Republican with an extensive criminal history. On Friday, Cesar Sayoc Jr. was arrested in connection with the mail bombs sent to prominent politicians and CNN. He is a 56-year-old resident of Aventura, Florida, and is a registered Republican. Sayoc also has an extensive criminal record that dates back to 1991. Photo of suspect Cesar Sayoc Jr. pic.twitter.com/dvjEApfhAL Spectrum News NY1 (@NY1) October 26, 2018 He has been arrested in the past on drug and felony theft charges, as well as making a previous bomb threat, the Times reports. He was sentenced to one year of probation in 2004 over the bomb threat. He was last arrested in 2015. As has been the case with other terrorism suspects, a domestic-violence complaint was filed against Sayoc by a woman named Viola Altieri in 1994, though the Miami Herald reports that she later asked that the complaint be dismissed. Altieri appeared to be his grandmother, according to the Herald. Three years after bailing him out, Viola accused Sayoc of domestic violence in Broward County. pic.twitter.com/yogh8UZi3R Trevor Aaronson (@trevoraaronson) October 26, 2018 Per the Times, Sayoc filed for bankruptcy in 2012 in Miami. The Herald also notes that a two-bedroom home he owned in Fort Lauderdale went into foreclosure in 2009. His social-media accounts reportedly posted pro-Trump news, anti-liberal memes, and conspiracy theories. Following Sayocs address, several social-media accounts appearing to belong to him have come to light. According to HuffPost, one Twitter account created in 2016 under the handle @hardrock2016 that appears to belong to him has over 1,000 images, with many relating to baseless conspiracy theories. For instance, the account includes a post claiming Parkland, Florida, shooting survivor David Hogg was paid by George Soros, while others touted theories about Democratic congresswomen Maxine Waters and Debbie Wasserman Schultz, both of whom were targeted by the pipe bombs. BuzzFeed News notes that a Facebook account appearing to belong to Sayoc include pictures of him at pro-Trump events, wearing a MAGA hat, posting MAGA memes, and otherwise showing his support for Trump. A van believed to belong to the suspect was seized by authorities. It was covered in stickers, including ones with President Donald Trumps face. CNN, MSNBC, and other networks shared live video on Friday morning of the white van allegedly owned by the suspect, which was later covered by a blue tarp by authorities. The van had pro-Donald Trump and other right-wing stickers on it. A complaint filed by federal prosecutors stated, The windows of Sayocs van were covered with images including images critical of CNN. A closer look at the stickers that are on the van at the scene in Plantation, Florida. pic.twitter.com/Qml9tmEKMy MSNBC (@MSNBC) October 26, 2018 DNA evidence reportedly contributed to Sayocs arrest for sending the pipe bombs. The Washington Post reports that authorities were able to trace the suspect from a fingerprint found on an envelope that contained a bomb mailed to Rep. Maxine Waters. Authorities also found DNA matching a sample taken during one of Sayocs other previous arrests on two of the other bombs. Sayoc was arrested outside of an AutoZone store in Plantation, Florida. According to CBS News, Sayocs arrest took place near an AutoZone store. A witness told CBS News that, while across the street from the AutoZone, he heard a flash bang device, saw smoke, then saw a man on the ground surrounded by police officers. The Herald reports the arrest was made at the AutoZone instead of Sayocs home to avoid a dangerous confrontation. The arrest came after at least 12 pipe bombs were discovered over the past week. The arrest follows the discovery of several bombs this week that were sent to high-profile politicians, public figures, and CNN. The first pipe bomb was discovered on Monday in the suburban New York mailbox of billionaire philanthropist and liberal donor George Soros; by early Wednesday, similar bombs were found in mail sent to Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama. Shortly after, a bomb addressed to former CIA director John Brennan was discovered in the mailroom of CNN in New York City. Additional bombs were also discovered in mail sent to former vice-president Joe Biden, Congresswoman Maxine Waters, former attorney general Eric Holder (but the mail was rerouted to its return address, the office of congresswoman Debbie Wasserman Schultz), actor Robert De Niro, Senator Cory Booker, former director of national intelligence James R. Clapper (also addressed to CNN). Another suspicious package addressed to Senator Kamala Harris is also being investigated, per CNN. The Washington Post reports that a complaint filed by federal prosecutors in the Southern District of New York shows that inside at least three packages sent to the targets, including Obama, Brennan, and Waters, were pictures of each individual with red X marks over their faces. Attorney General Jeff Sessions said Sayoc would be charged with five crimes. During a Friday afternoon press conference, Sessions announced that Sayoc would be charged with five federal crimes, and that he faces up to 58 years in prison. He was charged with illegally mailing explosives, transporting explosives across state lines, assaulting federal officials, threatening former presidents and others, and threatening interstate communications. The Post notes that FBI director Christopher Wray referred to the 13 bombs recovered as IEDs, which is an acronym for improvised explosive devices. Wray also said during he press conference that the agency is trying to determine whether the devices were functional, but he stressed that they did contain materials that could potentially explode. These are not hoax devices. When asked why Sayoc was targeting Democrats, Sessions said during the press conference that Sayoc appeared to be partisan. REPORTER: Attorney General Sessions, can you tell us plainly why Sayoc was targeting Democrats? SESSIONS: "I don't know. Other than what you might normally expect. He appears to be a partisan." pic.twitter.com/dKbKyTJZcv Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) October 26, 2018 This post has been updated, and will continually be updated as more information becomes available. We love GnTs like the next person (read: everyone), but they aren't exactly the most pretty of drinks are they? Well Bombay Sapphire are here to change that with their new range of edible paint. It's only available at 5 London bars at the moment, but it's set to be released more widely soon. The current paint only comes in blue, with more colours in production at the moment. We can't wait to make a rainbow gin! 5 Things to Know About Rigoletto (Watch the Full Opera) When a sharp-tongued court jester is cursed for his spiteful words, he is forced to hide his unworldly daughter from his own licentious master Who Is This Really About? The history of operaand of the plays on which theyre often basedis inextricably tied to the history of censorship. For most of the last 400 years, composers, librettists, and playwrights who have tested the boundaries of morality and taste have had to rewrite their works to get them past official censors. The main characters in Victor Hugos Le Roi samuse are the 16th century King Francis I and his jester Triboulet. Despite the three centuries between the action of the play and its first performance in Paris in 1832, the French government banned it after one evening, believing that the insults directed towards Francis I were in fact references to the reigning king, Louis-Philippe I. Hugo brought a lawsuit to permit further performances of the play. This propelled him into celebrity as a defender of freedom of speech in France, though he lost the suit and the play was banned for another 50 years. It was to Le Roi samuse that Verdi turned when he received a commission from Venices Teatro La Fenice in 1850, as in his words it had a character that is one of the greatest creations in theater, in any country and in all history. Negotiating With the Censors The composer had faced censorship throughout his career and knew that getting his new opera past the Austrians, who controlled Venice at the time, would be his biggest challenge yet. Use four legs, he told his librettist Francesco Maria Piave, run through the town and find me an influential person who can obtain the permission for making Le Roi samuse! The Secretary of the Teatro La Fenice, Guglielmo Brenna, promised Verdi and Piave that everything would go smoothly. He encouraged the pair to keep working on the opera for the rest of the year but in December the Austrian censor De Gorzkowski vehemently denied consent to the production, calling it a repugnant example of immorality and obscene triviality. Piave reworked the libretto, turning the king into a duke and removing the hunchback and the curse from the story altogether. Verdi was against such a radical change and proposed negotiating directly with the censors over each and every one of their complaints. Brenna offered to mediate between the creators and the censors, and by January the parties had reached a compromise: the action would move from France to the defunct Duchy of Mantua; the king would become a duke; a scene in Gildas bedroom would be removed; Gilda herself would be killed instead of the duke; and, along with other changes to the names of characters, Triboulet would be called Rigoletto. Dont Even Whistle It Act III of Rigoletto sees the Duke of Mantua sing one of the most famous tenor arias in all of opera, La donna e mobile. Cant live with them, cant live without them, is the Dukes cynical message, who warns that womans fickle nature makes her untrustworthy before conceding that no man feels fully happy without a womans love. Verdi knew that he had written a very catchy melody and was desperate for it not to leak onto the streets and canals of Venice before the opening night at the Teatro La Fenice in March 1851. The celebrated Italian tenor Raffaele Mirate was playing the Duke, and Verdi made him swear not to sing or even whistle the tune of La donna e mobile except during rehearsals. Not that he had much time to do soto keep the music secret, Verdi handed the score to Mirate only a few evenings before the premiere. As for the rest of the cast and the orchestra, the Dukes aria was revealed to them a few hours before the curtain was due to rise. The first performance was a triumph and, as Verdi predicted, La donna e mobile became an instant hit. It was sung in the streets the next morning, and quickly became a showcase for the tenor voice as well as a barrel organ staple. In more recent times it has taken on a life of its own, appearing as a soundtrack in everything from adverts for tomato paste to the video game Grand Theft Auto. A New Production I love music, says the Italian-American actor, writer and filmmaker John Turturro. A Cannes Film Festival Award winner and frequent Coen brothers collaborator, he directs his first opera with this production. I grew up in a house full of music, listening to Verdi, Puccini, and also popular Italian music. Coincidentally, when I was approached for Rigoletto, I was working on a screenplay for a project where Verdis music is very present. Turturro wants to pay homage to his Apulian father with the opera and has taken his duties as director seriously. I want to do justice to Rigoletto, he says, to the material, in a complex and detailed way and not try to bring a conscious modern take on it, but plumb the depths of the piece. This has meant working closely with scene designer Francesco Frigeri to create a sense of civilization in decline, ruined by the bankrupt behavior of its rulers and citizens. Weve worked very, very hard on the design to strip it down and avoid anything baroque in our interpretation and our realization of it. Thats what we hope to do. An Italian Musical Adventure Opera may be Turturros present preoccupation, but over the past two decades he has developed a passion for one of Italys other great musical legacies. In 1997, I worked with Francesco Rosi on the adaptation of Primo Levis The Truce. Through Francesco I discovered the work of the dramatist Eduardo de Filippo, and I acted in one of his plays, Questi Fantasmi (These Ghosts), which featured a lot of Neapolitan music. This gave me the idea to direct Passione, a film about Neapolitan music and the city of Naples. A year before Passione was released, Turturro took audiences on a haunting, intimate journey around Sicily in the film Rehearsal for a Sicilian Tragedy. Working at the Teatro Massimo in Palermo has allowed the Brooklyn-born star of Barton Fink to return to the island of his maternal grandparents, saying that directing Rigoletto felt like a very natural next step in my Italian musical adventure. From OperaVision After No Pipe Bomb Explosions, Experts Say Packages Likely Meant to Scare Not Kill The devices sent to former presidents and other top former and current officials appear designed to scare rather than kill, according to some experts. The analysis comes after none of the 11 suspicious packages containing what appeared to be pipe bombs exploded and investigators said that at least some could not have exploded due to flaws in the designs. What they wanted to do was scare people, cause disruption, but not necessarily hurt anybody, because if theyd wanted to hurt people the bombs would have gone off, Matthew Bradley, a former CIA agent and current regional security director of International SOS and Control Risks, told Reuters. Rep. Rick Crawford (R-Ark.), a former explosive ordnance disposal technician with the U.S. Army, told Fox News that he also believes the packages werent designed to go off. I think it was probably designed to get attention. It was designed to be caught. And while it may be a device that could function I think it was designed more than anything to strike fear in the hearts of those people who they were intended to target, not necessarily to kill them, he said during an appearance on Laura Ingrahams show. Some Devices Couldnt Explode All of the devices appear connected, with similar designs, investigators said. But at least some of them could not have exploded because they contained substantial flaws. Others had subtle defects that prevented explosions. Investigators told NBC that theyre still working to figure out if the flaws were intentional or unintentional. Were they ever intended to actually function, and if so, how, in terms of how were they supposed to be detonated? said NBC analyst Bill Bratton, who formerly led the police departments in New York City and Los Angeles. If not, well, then, that changes the focus from trying to cause bodily harm to effectively creating fear. Ryan Morris, founder of Tripwire Operations Group, a company that provides explosives training to law enforcement and military officials, told CNN after examining images of the packages and pipe bombs: There are a multitude of more sophisticated methodologies that would have worked if they really wanted this to work. The intercepted would-be pipe bombs were sent inside small envelopes, which further confused experts who said they presented a contrast to successful bombers of the past such as the Unabomber. The small size restricts what materials might actually function in it, University of Rhode Island chemistry professor and explosives expert Jimmie Oxley, who has built 130 pipe bombs herself for federal investigators to study. The design, which reportedly includes PVC, led her to believe whoever built the bombs mistakenly thought it wouldnt be detected by X-rays. My personal feeling is that this is some kind of a wacko, rather than an organization trying to accomplish something. Evil, mad, has a grudge. A little mix of all of these, she said. Most Packages Intercepted Most of the suspicious packages were intercepted in screening facilities, a system set up post-911 to more thoroughly vet mail sent through the U.S. postal system. Several packages were sent by courier directly to places, including the Time Warner Center in New York City, headquarters of CNN; the package found in the mailbox of a home owned by billionaire George Soros was also dropped there directly. The screening facilities mean that few of the packages arrived at the places they were addressed to. The terrorist attacks on Sept. 11, 2001, and Anthrax attacks that same year prompted a redesign of the mail screening system. Mail for Congress and the Senate is now processed offsite in two facilities in Maryland, reported Roll Call. The mail can take anywhere from 10 to 14 days to reach its destination due to the screenings. Couriers cant make deliveries directly to many of the buildings in Washington and must take the envelopes or packages to a mail screening facility where its x-rayed and screened for hazardous materials and substances. All mail sent to government offices in zip codes 20200 through 20599 is irradiated to prevent biological hazards. A remote delivery site for mail addressed to the White House was opened in 1996 but security was beefed up after the Anthrax attacks, reported CNBC. The Secret Service began screening all mail items destined for the White House. The exact location of that screening location isnt known. After the Secret Service screening, the mail heads to a sorting facility in the Eisenhower Executive Office Building next to, but separate, from the White House. From NTD.tv An undated photo showing 19-year-old Jenna Folwell, who has been accused of first-degree murder in the drowning death of her infant son (R). (Chandler Police Department) Arizona Mom Allegedly Drowned Baby Before Calling 911 to Report Him Kidnapped An Arizona mother has been charged with murder after she allegedly killed her 4-week-old son and called 911 to report that he had been abducted. Jenna Folwell, 19, was booked into Maricopa County Jail on Thursday, Oct. 25, according to PEOPLE, and charged with one count of first-degree murder. The teen mom stands accused of drowning her month-old son in a bathtub before calling the police to report that a stranger had kidnapped the baby. Detective Seth Tyler with the Chandler Police Department told Fox10 Phoenix said she made the 911 call on Wednesday from Brooks Crossing Park, a suburb of Phoenix, Arizona. She told the dispatcher that her newborn baby had been snatched from her arms as she was putting him in his car seat. She added that the kidnapper placed a bag over her head and threatened to kill her. When investigators searched Folwells apartment, however, they found the baby wrapped in a blanket and in a duffel bag. Folwell reportedly changed her story, claiming that she had fainted while holding the infant in the bathtub, and the baby had accidentally drowned. Police then searched her phone and discovered more than 100 web searches for ways to kill an infant. The search history started with ways to die instantly and ended with missing babies cases,' police told Fox32. Other searched items included how long it takes babies to drown, five types of parents who kill, reasons parents kill their babies, and sudden infant death syndrome. There were over 100 different searches on these types of topics, the police said, according to the report. Confronted about the searches, Folwell admitted to doing them and getting in the bathtub with her son and then letting him go, according to a police statement cited by Fox32. Jenna said she settled on this way because she did not want to hear her son cry. She also said that she felt bad after about a minute of the baby drowning and tried to resuscitate him. When CPR efforts proved futile, she placed his body in a duffel bag. Evidence gathered on the scene revealed Jenna [Folwell] was the person that drowned the baby earlier that day, said Sgt. Daniel Mejia with Chandler Police. Folwell made a court appearance on Thursday, where she heard charges of first-degree murder. The babys father reportedly attended court proceedings. and became emotional as he watched the proceedings. I will never she took away my life with Rainer the moment she took his life, he said, according to Fox32. A judge set Folwells bail at $1 million. No attorney for the defendant has been listed in court records, according to PEOPLE. She has not yet entered a plea, according to the report. Senator Tony Avella gestures as he speaks to an Epoch Times reporter in his office in Queens, New York City, on June 24, 2014. (Benjamin Chasteen/Epoch Times) Avella Continues Senate Run Against Liu Last month Sen. Tony Avella (D-Bayside) lost his seat in the Democratic primary to John Liu, the former city comptroller and 2013 mayoral contenderby just around 1,500 votes. But Avella appears unwilling to let go of the reins just yet. Avella, in a turn of events on Oct. 8 announced he would be running in the primaries now just 11 days away, on two third partiesthe Independence and Womens Equality ballot lines. The Big Apples fusion voting system enables candidates to run on numerous party lines at the same time. In an interview with The Epoch Times, Avella said he was disappointed with the primary results, but said he changed his mind when voters urged him to run again. After the primary night people reached out to me to say how they were disappointed with the results and they wanted me to continue since I was already on the ballot for the general election. So based upon how many people reached out to me, I said yes, he said. Weeks ago in a lengthy twitter thread declaring his renewed candidateship, Avella, who was born and raised in Queens, described how Families for Tony Avella, a grassroots group, was formed to promote his candidacy. Avella described his re-election bid so far as very positive. We are going door to door, people are saying how they are going to vote for me in the general election. We are spending a lot of time on the campaign now. The senator said that based on Lius scandal-ridden history, he does not think Liu should be able to run in the first place. He added that many voters agree with him. I think its a disgrace for somebody who has violated campaign finance laws to be able to run for office, Avella said. And the fact that he owes over half a million dollars in fines for his mayoral campaign, in my opinion, should make him illegible to run. A lot of people are very upset that he [Liu] won the primary. A lot of people are not voting for him in the general election. Liu has an extensive history of breaking campaign finance laws. In June, Avellas campaign asked officials to investigate Liu after financial records revealed a political committee dubbed No IDC NY, spent a total of $11,693 to provide petition services on Lius behalf, even though they exceeded the maximum contribution by thousands of dollars. Previously during Lius 2013 mayoral campaign, two of his top aides were sent to prison after they were found guilty of using straw donors to illegally funnel contributions. Liu himself was fined $26,000 last year by the Board of Elections over the scheme, and was also fined an additional $500,000 by the Environmental Control Board for poster violations. Lius aides were also found to have ties to organized crime and Chinas communist regime. His fundraiser, Xing Wu Oliver Pan, was executive vice chairman of the Fukien American Association that organizes events for visiting officials of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) in Chinatown. It is also associated with the Fuk Ching gang. In addition, his mayoral campaign had purchased print advertisements in Chinese newspapers for companies that donated to them, as a way of saying thank you. This is the second time Liu has attempted to unseat Avella after he failed his 2014 bid. At the time Avella had joined a breakaway group of Democrats in Albany known as the Independent Democratic Conference (IDC) who allied with Senate Republicans. The IDC formally disbanded this year after progressive Democrats vowed to unseat the groupeven after the IDC pledged to end their alliance. Avella had been the only IDC senator to escape a progressive challenger this year until activist group True Blue NY recruited Liu at the last minute. Liu was under federal investigation in 2013 but was not charged for fraud himself after the undercover operation was shut down prematurely following a New York Times article that had blown the lid. The special agent involved in the operation said that everything in the investigation points to the next level. Lius campaign did not respond to a request for comment on Avellas continued run. Far-left Ties Liu had worked with the hard-left and Islamic socialist Democrats in order to unseat Avella, according to Epoch Times contributor Trevor Loudon. One mainstay of True Blue NY is the activist group Rise and Resist, which also endorsed Liu. Rise and Resist made headlines at a July 4 protest against Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) when one of its members, Congolese immigrant Patricia Okoumou, climbed the Statue of Liberty. Okoumou and fellow Rise and Resist protester Jay W. Walker have ties to Refuse Fascism, a front group for the Maoist-extremist organization known as the Revolutionary Communist Party. Liu also has been endorsed by the Muslim Democratic Club of New York. Founded in a Midtown lounge in March 2013, Democratic Socialists of America member Linda Sarsours Muslim Democratic Club of New York has been more leftist than Islamic in outlook. At the founding, which was attended by then-mayoral candidate Liu, co-founders Ali Najmi (later a prominent Bernie Sanders supporter) and Sarsour gave a PowerPoint presentation on the untapped voting strength of Muslim Democrats in the city, especially in Queens and Brooklyn, where Muslims live in comparatively high numbers. While the ultimate goal of the club was to build a field operation powerful enough to influence elections throughout New York City, the Muslim Democratic Club of New York also focused on ending NYPD surveillance of Muslim communities, a goal that was accomplished in April this year. Sarsours organization additionally pushed for the inclusion of Muslim holidays on the public-school calendar, which occurred in March 2015. In March 2013, the Observer reported that Liu was a vociferous critic of the NYPD. Bodies Found After Couple Falls Thousand Feet Off Yosemite Cliff A couple has reportedly fallen to their deaths from a popular viewing spot in Yosemite National Park in Northern California. On Oct. 25, park rangers announced they were taking steps to retrieve the bodies of the hikers at the bottom of a 1,000-foot cliff overlooking Yosemite Valley and El Capitan in the Sierra Nevada mountains. The National Park Service issued a statement about the incident on its website. A male and female visitor died in an apparent fall from Taft Point in Yosemite National Park. Yosemite National Park Rangers are recovering the bodies this morning, read the statement. This incident is under investigation and no further details are available. No photos or videos are available. The identification of the deceased has not yet been determined. Taft Point has only a small railing at the peak of the overlook, and visitors are allowed to walk right up to the cliffs edge on either side. Another couple was photographed during a marriage proposal near the same spot on Oct. 17. Twitter help, idk who these two are but I hope this finds them. I took this at Taft Point at Yosemite National Park, on October 6th, 2018. pic.twitter.com/Rdzy0QqFbY Matthew Dippel (@DippelMatt) October 17, 2018 Park spokesperson Scott Gediman told The Tribune that the bodies of the couple had been spotted by another hiker on Oct. 24. Authorities are looking into exactly what happened, and where and when the two visitors fell off the cliff. More Heartbreaking Incidents There have been eight reported deaths at Yosemite in the last six months, according to the Fresno Bee. Tomer Frankfurter, an 18-year-old from Israel, fell from the top of Nevada Falls in the park in September while trying to take a selfie. The teenager had been on a two-month trip to the United States. Frankfurter fell hundreds of feet to his death. His body was sent back to his family in Jerusalem. A stunning shot of Nevada Fall, Liberty Cap and the back of Half Dome @YosemiteNPS by Isachkin #California pic.twitter.com/4hvXnVb74X US Department of the Interior (@Interior) August 7, 2017 Two missing hikers were found dead in August: 48-year-old Scott Tenczar, an experienced hiker, and John Cogdellhas, a National Parks Service employee. In June, rock climbers 42-year-old Tim Klien from Palmdale, California, and 46-year-old Jason Wells from Boulder, Colorado, fell and died while scaling the vertical granite cliffs of the rock formation known as El Capitan. Ashish Penugonda also died in May while climbing the 400-ft cable section of Half Dome. The 29-year-old hiker from New Jersey reportedly slipped on the smooth granite rock during a thunderstorm. The park service offers tips on the website on how to stay safe. Over 800 miles of trails traverse Yosemite National Park, states the National Park Service on its website. Each year, park rangers, and search and rescue personnel respond to approximately 250 emergency incidents in the park. California Faces Fiscal Free-for-All If Gavin Newsom Wins Are you a Democrat running for office, or already in office, like Californias Gavin Newsom? Then you better be ready to outbid your Democrat competition for attention. As for the rest of us, there will be no fiscal sanctuary. California alone is one of the largest economies in the world. At the state level, it is also a one-party state. Democrats have run the legislature for decades and hold all of the state-wide offices, both U.S. Senate seats, and 39 of the 53 House seats. Such dominance frees all of those Democrats from fiscal rationality. As I have written elsewhere, California is fiscally unsustainable. According to a recent analysis, California has an infrastructure deficit of over $750 billion. The Hoover Institute says there is a trillion-dollar unfunded pension liability, and total debt is more than $1 trillion, according to CaliforniaPolicyCenter.org, and likely is growing. You would think that would cause a Democrat politician to consider being cautious about increased spendingbut you would be wrong. Dead wrong. That is so Jerry Brown-like. Yes, Brown is shortly to be considered cautious by modern-day California Democrat standards. You see, to get ahead in todays Democrat Party, you have to speak the loudest and offer the most. For instance, take poor California Sen. Kamala Harris who is running for president. She offered a Senate bill that would provide a monthly tax credit of $500 for families. That equates to $6,000 a year. A pittance really. A Christmas scrooge in comparison to New Jersey Sen. Corey Booker. He wants to offer up $50,000 per child. He, too, is running for president. Newsoms Ambitions All of which brings us to Newsom. He is running for president. Oh sure, he is running for California governor firstbut that is just a transfer station on his high-speed political train the presidency. If Newsom wins his race for governor, it is doubtful he will run for president in 2020. He will wait until 2024assuming President Donald Trump vanquishes the gigantic field of Democrats looking to run against him in 2020. Indeed, Newsom would be happy if Trump won in 2020 because that would mean Harris, Booker, Hillary Clinton, and the rest had lost. In todays fast-moving political world, that would make them yesterdays story. Newsom wants to be todays and tomorrows story. So, how can he do that? First, by attacking Trump daily. That is a rite of passage among Democrats and considered an accomplishment among Democrats in California. Second, he must outbid his potential Democrat opponents today and tomorrow. That more than implies fiscal danger for Californians. As for the bidding, recall that Newsom went big on gay marriage by pushing it as mayor of San Francisco in defiance of state law. Now its the law of the country. Score a major victory for Newsom in the eyes of the left. Next, California has a boondoggle of a high-speed rail project moving along at a snails pace due to government incompetence and lack of funding. Newsom was against it before he was for it. Running for California governor has a way of making you an even bigger spender though. That train represents a potential $100 billion bill to come. Newsom is also big on government health care. He imposed a large government health care program on San Francisco and now wants it for all of Californiaincluding those there illegally. How much will that cost? Estimates range up to $400 billion! That is twice the size of the existing state budget. This is Newsoms largest goalhe wants to be the democrat that instituted single-payer health care, i.e. socialized medicine. Paying the Bill How would Newsom arrange for government to pay that? The end of Californias legendary Prop 13thats how. Prop 13 limited property taxes increases each year by no more than 2 percent a year and served as a model for many states. On the 2020 ballot, however, there will be an initiative to strip commercial property of Prop 13 protection. Newsom will fight for that. If he is successful in cutting Prop 13 in half in 2020, then it will be on to eliminating Prop 13 protection for residential homes. The left is already branding Prop 13 as racist by saying it is protecting older whites at the expense of the less-white poor. In the short run, that could yield a lot of tax money as well a new service tax, an increased income tax, an increased sales tax and eventually an asset tax that will be implemented by the Democrats at some point. Beyond that, existing state bondholders will take a haircut when those bonds are eventually renegotiated to help the states coming cash flow problems. As for the existing more that $1 trillion debt? Ask yourself, how will it ever be paid? In the long run, it will mean the already over-taxed California will have killed its golden goose. Indeed, some on the left are okay with that because they say it will reduce property values and make them more affordable to the poor (Oh, dont bother telling them it will mean incomes will have dropped toothey are immune from such bothersome things as economics). All of that is unimportant to Newsom as well. Hes on a mission. He has to outbid the other Democrats running for president. If he wins the governorship of California, he will be in a position to do just thatand the fiscal sanity of California will be damned. Thomas Del Beccaro is the author of The Divided Era and former chairman of the California Republican Party. Views expressed in this article are the opinions of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of The Epoch Times. Prime Minister of the Netherlands Mark Rutte (L) and Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau hold a joint press conference on Parliament Hill in Ottawa on Oct. 25, 2018. (The Canadian Press/Sean Kilpatrick) Canada Ratifies Pacific Rim Trade Deal After Final Senate Vote First-mover advantages sought OTTAWAA bill to enact a new trade pact with Pacific Rim countries has passed the legislative finish line, making Canada one of the first countries to ratify the 11country deal. Approving the agreement, known as the Comprehensive and Progressive Agreement for TransPacific Partnership, or CPTPP, was the first order of business last month when parliamentarians returned to Ottawa from their summer recess. Ratification of the deal happened in the shadow of a meeting the Liberals called on the future of the World Trade Organization, and a visit of Dutch Prime Minister Mark Rutte where he and Prime Minister Justin Trudeau touted the virtues of free trade. The massive trade pact comes into force once six of the members ratify the deal. Observers say that being in the first six should give Canada an economic head start on carving out market share ahead of the remaining five countries who were in the agreement. The deal was salvaged after President Donald Trump pulled the United States out after he was sworn into the Oval Office last January. Canada was able to win exemptions on digital content, but the government has faced heavy criticism from Canadian auto workers and manufacturers for signing side deals with Japan, Australia, and Malaysia on automobiles. A Senate committee that studied the legislation said in its report released Oct. 25 that the government needed to ensure domestic companies maximize the benefits of the agreement. The Liberals must also lay out ways to offset the potentially adverse impacts of the trade deal, including helping workers and companies hit hard by the new competition from around and across the Pacific, the committee said. And the committee had a key point for the government that may serve as a warning for parliamentary review of the new North American free trade deal, known as the U.S.MexicoCanada Agreement. The committee understands the importance for Canada to be one of the first six ratifying countries of the CPTPP. Nevertheless, it reiterates that parliamentarians require sufficient time to study comprehensive, complex and technical [free trade agreements] implementing legislation. Cesar Sayoc IDd as Suspect Who Sent Suspicious Packages to Obama, Soros Cesar Sayoc was identified as the suspect who allegedly mailed suspicious packages to a dozen prominent figures, including George Soros, former President Obama, Hillary Clinton, and Robert de Niro. DNA evidence played a role in his arrest, said officials, NBC News reported. The man was taken into custody in the parking lot of an AutoZone store in Plantation, near Fort Lauderdale, where two witnesses told Reuters they heard a loud blast at the time of the arrest. Local television stations showed investigators using a large blue tarp to cover a white van that was plastered with decals and stickers, before removing it on a truck. FLASH: Cesar Sayoc, 56, pictured in this booking photo from an arrest, via @browardsheriff pic.twitter.com/zUSXxPlOyZ Myles Miller (@MylesMill) October 26, 2018 Police closed roads around the AutoZone parking lot, and helicopters flew overhead. A man named Dre, a manager at a used car dealership next door to the AutoZone, said he heard a loud noise that sounded like an explosion shortly after 11 a.m. I heard like a bomb, Dre, who declined to give his full name, said in a telephone interview. I opened the door and saw the FBI there. Dre said they were told by FBI agents to stay inside as the area was on lockdown. A White House official told the Wall Street Journal that President Donald Trump has been briefed on the matter. The Department of Justice is planning to hold a briefing on Oct. 25. The #FBI can confirm we have one person in custody. There will be a press conference in Washington, D.C. at the Department of Justice at 2:30 p.m. ET, the FBI tweeted. Two more packages were reportedly sent to New Jersey Sen. Cory Booker and former Director of National Intelligence James Clapper on Oct. 25. Of the 12 packages that were sent, none have exploded. No injuries have been reported, and expert analysis suggests that there were designed to create fear. Officials have said the suspicious packages contained PVC pipes stuffed with what appeared to be fireworks powder and glass. Some had electrical wires and a timer. The FBI also warned people that there might be more packages yet to be delivered, and they urged people not to touch any suspicious parcels. This investigation is of the highest priority for the FBI. We have committed the full strength of the FBIs resources and, together with our partners on our Joint Terrorism Task Forces, we will continue to work to identify and arrest whoever is responsible for sending these packages, said FBI Director Christopher Wray in a statement on Oct. 24. We ask anyone who may have information to contact the FBI. Do not hesitate to call; no piece of information is too small to help us in this investigation. Attorney General Jeff Sessions stated on Oct. 25 that local, state, federal officials are working tirelessly to follow every lead in the case, the Washington Post reported. I can tell you this, we will find the person or persons responsible and were going to bring them to justice, Sessions said. Reuters contributed to this report. Security personnel stand guard at the headquarters of the CCP's Central Commission for Discipline Inspection in Beijing, China, on Feb. 10, 2018. (Jason Lee/Reuters) China Will Prosecute Graft, Terror Suspects Even if They Flee BEIJINGChina changed its law on Oct. 26 to allow judgments to be delivered in corruption and terror cases even when the suspects do not appear in court, as Beijing ramps up pressure on dozens of suspected criminals hiding overseas. Chinese leader Xi Jinping has presided over a sweeping corruption crackdown since coming to power in 2012, mainly targeting officials who have ties to former Chinese Communist Party (CCP) leader Jiang Zemin. Xi has waged war on graft at all levels of the ruling Communist Party and has pledged that the fight must continue until corruption is impossible and unimaginable for officials. Xi has also been cleaning house within the military (Peoples Liberation Army or PLA) to purge any remaining influences of Jiang and his faction. 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 campaign has spread beyond Chinas borders to graft suspects who have fled abroad, though efforts have been hampered by suspicion among Western nations uneasy about handing over suspects to a system they believe might not provide a fair trial. Now an amendment to the criminal procedure law by Chinas largely rubber-stamp parliament will strengthen the overseas graft and terror fight by allowing judgments to be delivered in cases involving absentee suspects, a senior lawmaker said. Wang Aili, director of the Criminal Law Office with parliaments Legal Affairs Commission, told a news briefing that those who could be tried in absentia would include corruption suspects and those wanted for harming national security or for involvement in terror cases. To qualify for a trial in absentia, there should be a time-sensitive urgency in handling the case and the top prosecutor would need to approve it, Wang said. A copy of the subpoena would also need to be sent to the defendant to guarantee their right to know, he said. A suspect can be defended in court in such default judgment cases, even if they are not there, by a lawyer, who can be chosen by the defendants close relatives or have one assigned by the state, the official Xinhua news agency said. Once the judgment is issued, the defendant and their close relatives can appeal to a higher court, Xinhua said. In April 2015, authorities published a list of 100 most-wanted graft suspects believed to be hiding overseas, many in the United States, Canada and Australia. More than half have come back to China, some voluntarily. China has turned up the pressure on graft suspects overseas by asking their family members to contact them and encourage their return, as well as by releasing personal details about the individuals, including their addresses. The change comes after China passed a new supervision law in March and set up a powerful anti-graft commission to extend the graft fight to all state employees, whether party officials or not. The new system and law weaken rights protections for suspects by entrenching the use of controversial detention and questioning techniques that can allow abuse or torture, rights groups and legal experts have said. China is also in the midst of tightening its security laws having passed a tough counter-terrorism law in late 2015, mostly to combat what it says is a serious threat from radical Islamic terrorists in its far western region of Xinjiang. However, the ruling Communist Party has used the excuse of potential Islamic threats, extremism, and ethnic riots to crack down on the Uyghurs and other Muslim minority groups in Xinjiang. Over the years, hundreds, possibly thousands, of ethnic Uyghur Muslims have escaped the unrest by traveling clandestinely via Southeast Asia to Turkey. In February, Reuters reported that Malaysia was under great pressure from China to deport a group of Uyghurs that were detained and charged for illegally entering the country. Some Western missions sought to dissuade Malaysia on the transfer to China, which has been accused of persecuting Uyghurs. Earlier this month, Malaysia has freed from detention 11 ethnic Uyghurs who fled to the southeast Asian nation after a Thai jailbreak last year, and sent them to Turkey, disregarding Chinas request to hand them to Beijing. The Uyghurs in Malaysia were part of a group of more than 200 detained in Thailand in 2014. Although they identified themselves as Turkish citizens and asked to be sent to Turkey, more than 100 were forcibly returned to China in July 2015, sparking international condemnation. China is believed to be holding up to one million ethnic Uyghurs, the United Nations human rights panel said in August. Uyghurs and other Muslims are held in concentration camp-like facilities, known as re-education centers. U.S. lawmakers proposed legislation on Oct. 10 that urged President Donald Trump to condemn gross violations of human rights and to press for closure of the re-education camps in Xinjiang. By Ben Blanchard. The Epoch Times contributed to this report. Job hunters flock to an employment fair at the International Exhibition Center March 3, 2007 in Nanjing of Jiangsu Province, China. (China Photos/Getty Images) Chinas Biggest IT Companies Are Cutting Recruitments to Save Costs A number of mainland Chinese reports that major companies are hiring fewer new employees, including Huawei, Alibaba, JD.com, and Baidu, due to concerns about rising costs. The Chinese Communist Party (CCP) has reduced its employment targets by nearly a half compared with the plan for 2017. Beijing Youth Daily reported on Oct. 24 that Huawei, the largest telecommunications equipment manufacturer in the world, stopped its social recruitment program to save costs. The report revealed a classified document from the Huawei board, laying out clearly that in principle, Huawei has stopped normal social recruitment. The document proposes filling vacant positions from a smaller pool of candidates, or via internal reassignments. Huawei denied the news immediately after the report was published. The the quantity of its total campus recruitment will fall by one third and annual salaries will be 210,000 to 240,000 yuan ($30,000 to $34,540), an average decrease of 10 percent compared with the previous year. Other multinational Chinese information tech conglomerates are decreasing their staff recruitment as well. In China, the biggest IT companies are listed with the abbreviation BAT-TMD, that is, Baidu, Alibaba, Tencent, Toutiao, Meituan, and Didi Chuxing. Sina, a major mainland Chinese news portal, reported that Baidu will decrease the volume of campus recruitment this year. Alibaba has stopped all social recruitment since Oct. 22 and will close all currently open positions if the interviewed candidates do not meet standards. Didi Chuxing will reportedly lay off 3,000 employees after the scandal caused when a driver raped and killed a female passenger in August. Tencent denied rumors that it will lay off 6,000 employees, but on Sept. 30 announced that the implementation of a new structural adjustment may result in layoffs. Other Chinese tech companies also were reported to decrease hiring rates, including e-commerce giant JD.com, image editing software developer Meitu, recruiting website Lagou, and high-end smart phone supplier Smartisan Digital. The Chinese IT business faces challenges. Meanwhile, the situation among real estate and financial businesses is even more dire. No securities dealers held public recruitment drives this year, and real estate companies are following this trend, among them Vanke, a large residential real estate developer in China with property projects in more than 60 cities. Vanke has 42,300 employees, but has plans to recruit just 88 throughout China. 10 of which positions are located in Beijing. On Oct. 21, Chinas Central Organization Department, the Ministry of Human Resources and Social Security, and the National Civil Service Bureau jointly issued a state employment plan for 2019. New hires will be 14,537, 45.9 percent less than the figure for 2018. In 2018, the Chinese authorities hired 28,533 employees. While recruitments are falling, China expects 8.6 million new college graduates in summer 2019, a 5 percent increase from this year. Patriotic Chinese expatriates are monitored and recruited in the Chinese community to help expand Communist Chinas influence around the world. (Johannes Eisele/Getty Images) Chinese Infiltration in US Reaches Extreme Levels, Says Security Expert Tens of thousands of foreign operatives have already infiltrated the United States to extreme levels, an intelligence and cybersecurity think tank has warned. BlackOps Partners, which enhances intelligence and protective cyber, organizational, and legal practices around the world, estimates there could be at least 50,000 Chinese spies operating in the United States, with significantly more in the education sector. There are a minimum of 50,000 Chinese Communist Party (CCP) spies at U.S. companies, government agencies, and U.S. military. This particular nation-state insider threat does not include those employees who have been blackmailed and turned. It is to the level of extreme infiltration, BlackOps CEO Casey Fleming said. That is separate to the academic world, where there are over 350,000 Chinese students attending U.S. universities under U.S. educational visas, who the CCP considers intelligence assets and whose education is paid for by the CCP, so they and their families are indebted to the CCP for the rest of their lives. Its important to understand that as much as we want to believe China is a democratic country, it is still Red China, a true communist regime at the top with their nefarious agenda to permanently rule the world at any cost. And, that cost comes with a price paid by every American. 50 Times More Spies Than First Thought The revelation comes more than a decade after Chen Yonglin, a former first secretary at Sydneys Chinese Consulate in Australia, claimed in 2005 there were at least 1,000 Chinese spies in the United States monitoring Tibetans, Uighurs, Falun Dafa practitioners, and other dissidents. The latest figure suggests the number of Chinese spies is at least 50 times higher than previously thought. According to Fleming, many Chinese operatives are recruited through CCP-funded United Front organizations that target patriotic members of the Chinese expat community to help expand the CCPs global influence. In addition to the United Front, Overseas Chinese Affairs Offices based in the United States and around the world use the premise of Chinese cultural identity to infiltrate and influence the private sector, government, military, education, and think tanks, he said. The CCP considers all Chinese citizens, as well as first, second, and third generation Americans, to be assets in supporting the grand strategy. Cultural identity is the easiest method to gain control over an asset, Fleming said. Sympathy Sold for Bonuses and Under-the-table Checks Fleming said in addition to recruiting spies, United Front organizations use business opportunities, bonuses, and under-the-table checks to encourage influential groups or individuals to be more sympathetic to the CCP. We have seen instances reported where the CCP has paid for services [and] set-up lucrative business deals, he said. The United Fronts primary objective is to expand their influence around the world [and] promote the false narrative of the CCP. Education Used to Infiltrate and Spy Fleming also suggests infiltration and espionage are the primary goals of some 105 CCP-funded Confucius Institutes, and over 500 Confucius Classrooms spread across U.S. middle schools. These pseudo schools operate directly under Chinas Ministry of Education. They present free educational curriculum to the U.S. education system, such as Chinese language and culture classes. However, Blackops agrees with the U.S.-China Economic and Security Review Commissions latest report that these classes are actually just another CCP-front for infiltrating and spying. We are talking about American children from sixth to eighth grade who are being influenced at very critical ages, he said, likening it to brainwashing. [The Confucius Institutes] goal is to obtain strong influence, and infiltration, espionage, and ultimately control it is happening in the U.S., Canada, UK, and Australia. Congressional Bill Targets CCP Political Influence To help address growing concerns about foreign political interference on U.S. soil, Republican congressman for New Jerseys 4th District Rep. Chris Smith joined several Congress members in June 2018 to co-sponsor a Bill called Countering the Chinese Government and Communist Partys Political Influence Operations Act. If passed, the legislation would make it mandatory for U.S. intelligence agencies to report in detail on all CCP political influence, censorship, propaganda, and disinformation that targets the United States. Confucius Institutes based at American universities and colleges would also have to register as foreign agents. My hope is that there will be some pressure to get this Bill up, Rep. Smith told NTD, The Epoch Times sister television broadcaster. He added: This underscores how deep, and a downward spiral toward human rights under [CCP dictator] Xi Jinping. It is bad, and getting worse by the day. It is time for the world to mobilize against these human rights abuses. China Targets Education Funding Loophole When The Epoch Times asked New York Citys Department of Education what it had done to address concerns about foreign influence through 10 Confucius Institutes, and at least dozens of Confucius Classrooms in New York state, a spokesperson said the department does not comment on pending legislation. However, an anonymous source who closely observes the U.S. education system said the department had neglected crucial government funding of public schools, forcing schools to make-up for the shortfall in other ways. Clarification: The Epoch Times wishes to clarify the estimated number of Chinese spies operating in the United States. According to BlackOps there are at least 50,000 Chinese spies in U.S. government, business and military, with potentially more in the education sector where the Chinese regime considers the 350,000 Chinese national students to be intelligence assets. The European Court of Human Rights in Strasbourg, France, in this file photo. (Frederick Florin/AFP/Getty Images) European Human-Rights Court Rejects Claim in Muhammad Insult Case A woman who was fined by authorities in Austria for linking the Islamic Prophet Muhammad with pedophilia has had her appeal quashed by the European Court of Human Rights. The woman, known only as Mrs. S, was convicted after holding two seminars in Vienna in 2009, at which she spoke about Muhammad marrying a 6-year-old girl named Aisha. Islamic scriptures say that the marriage was consummated when Muhammad would have been in his 50s, but Aisha was just 9 or 10 years old. Mrs. S reportedly told her seminars that this showed that Muhammad liked to do it with children, and added, what do we call it, if it is not pedophilia? She was convicted in February 2011 by the Vienna Regional Criminal Court for disparaging religious doctrines. She was ordered to pay a fine of 480 euros ($547) and legal fees. Mrs. S appealed twice to Austrias Supreme Court but lost both times. She subsequently decided to take her grievances to the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR). The ECHR is not part of the European Union, but it does rule on human-rights issues for the 47 countries under the Council of Europe. Freedom of Expression In this case, Mrs. S said that the Austrian courts judgment had violated her right to freedom of expressionArticle 10 of the European Convention on Human Rights. She said that her criticism of Islam had contributed to a public debate and she hadnt intended to defame Muhammad. She also said that religious groups had to be able to tolerate even severe criticism. But on Oct. 25, the ECHR said that her rights hadnt been violated. The Court noted that the domestic courts comprehensively explained why they considered that the applicants statements had been capable of arousing justified indignation, the ECHR said in a statement. Specifically, they had not been made in an objective manner contributing to a debate of public interest (e.g. on child marriage), but could only be understood as having been aimed at demonstrating that Muhammad was not worthy of worship. They added: Mrs. S. must have been aware that her statements were partly based on untrue facts and apt to arouse indignation in others. The national courts found that Mrs. S. had subjectively labeled Muhammad with pedophilia as his general sexual preference, and that she failed to neutrally inform her audience of the historical background, which consequently did not allow for a serious debate on that issue. The court also ruled that the fine levied against Mrs. S was on the lower end of punishment. Controversial Issue Aishas age is frequently mentioned in traditional Islamic texts, as is the age she consummated her marriage to Muhammad. In modern times it has become a controversial issue and source of debate. However, some Islamic scholars have said her age at marriage would not have been unheard of at that time in history, and some of Muhammads companions also married children of a similar age. Others say that Aisha may have entered puberty early, because in seventh-century Arabia, adulthood was defined as the onset of puberty. Blasphemy laws have been used in European countries to prevent speech that may be offensive to religions. So-called hate speech laws have also been enacted in countries like Germany, forcing social networks to be responsible for their users posts or face large fines if they fail to remove them. Wenzel Michalski, Germany director at Human Rights Watch said that the German NetzDG law, which came into force in Jan. 2018, turns private companies into overzealous censors to avoid steep fines, leaving users with no judicial oversight or right to appeal. Correction: A previous version of this article incorrectly stated that blasphemy laws in Denmark and Norway can still lead to jail time for offenders. The Epoch Times regrets the error. FBI Warns of Potential for More Suspicious Parcels Unidentified people have apparently been sending suspicious packages to prominent Democrats and Democratic Supporters, and according to the FBI, there may be more such packages already in the mail. A number of suspicious packages were mailed to addresses in New York, Washington, D.C., California, Delaware, and Florida. All of them were mailed to prominent members of Democratic administrations or supporters of Democratic Party causes. The packages were delivered by the Post Office between Oct. 22 and Oct. 25. In an Oct. 24 press release, the FBI has warned people that there may be more packages yet to be delivered, and not to touch any suspicious parcels. This investigation is of the highest priority for the FBI. We have committed the full strength of the FBIs resources and, together with our partners on our Joint Terrorism Task Forces, we will continue to work to identify and arrest whoever is responsible for sending these packages, said FBI Director Christopher Wray in the statement. We ask anyone who may have information to contact the FBI. Do not hesitate to call; no piece of information is too small to help us in this investigation. More Could Be on the Way The FBI statement concludes with this warning: It is possible that additional packages were mailed to other locations. The FBI advises the public to remain vigilant and not touch, move or handle any suspicious or unknown packages. If you have information about these packages, please contact the FBI at 1-800-CALL-FBI or tips.fbi.gov. If you observe any suspicious activity that requires an immediate response, please call 911 or contact your local law enforcement. BREAKING: Secret Service intercepts suspicious packages addressed to the residences of former President Obama and former First Lady Hillary Clinton. Working with our law enforcement partners on the investigation. Our Statement: https://t.co/lJdTn04KmI U.S. Secret Service (@SecretService) October 24, 2018 Pipe Bombs? While the FBI has not specified the contents of the packages, several news agencies have reported that the parcels contained pipe bombs. The FBI reports that packages have been mailed to President Barack Obama, ex-Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, Obama-administration Attorney general Eric Holder, Obama-administration CIA Director John Brennan, and political financier George Soros. Secret Service details intercepted the packages sent to Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton. Numerous #NYPD offices, detectives converge on restaurant and property owned by #RobertDeniro Many streets closed. Sources: Suspicious package, containing explosive device similar to others sent to Clintons, Obamas, others sent to Deniro #BREAKING #NBC4NY pic.twitter.com/cp6QeJ7Wwz Katherine Creag (@katcreag4NY) October 25, 2018 A package was sent to the home of Bill and Hillary Clinton in Chappaqua, New York. The package addressed to John Brennan was mailed to CNN in the Time Warner building in New York City. The package sent to George Soros was returned by the post office to its return address, former Democratic National Committee Chairwoman and Florida Congresswoman Debbie Wasserman Schultz (the name was spelled wrong on the package.) Employees leaving the facility tell me all they know is the bomb squad is on scene after a package with Maxine Waters name on it was discovered and flagged. No sense of panic, employees standing out in parking lot as authorities investigate. @FOXLA pic.twitter.com/jezL6CuIrH Bill Melugin (@BillFOXLA) October 25, 2018 Numerous Packages Two packages addressed to former Vice President Joe Biden have also been intercepted, one at a postal facility in Newcastle Delaware, and another at a postal distribution center in Wilmington, Delaware, NBC News reported. Two packages similar to the others were sent to California Representative Maxine Waters. One was intercepted at a congressional mail facility in Maryland. The other was reported to the police by workers at the Los Angeles Central Mail facility. Numerous #NYPD offices, detectives converge on restaurant and property owned by #RobertDeniro Many streets closed. Sources: Suspicious package, containing explosive device similar to others sent to Clintons, Obamas, others sent to Deniro #BREAKING #NBC4NY pic.twitter.com/cp6QeJ7Wwz Katherine Creag (@katcreag4NY) October 25, 2018 From NTD.tv Watch Next: Why Banks Love War & the War Economy The global banking system has historically played both sides of major conflicts through war financing, and drawing out the battles by providing funds beyond what each country could have otherwise spent. Former NYPD Commissioner Walks Off CNN Set Over Bomb-Scare Coverage Former New York Police Commissioner Bernard Kerik said he walked off a CNN set on Oct. 24, just before he was supposed to talk about the incidents of pipe bombs addressed to several well-known figures of, or tied to, the Democratic party. Kerik said he was appalled by the networks coverage of the incidents and decided to leave before he was put on the air. We were supposed to talk about the investigation and seizure of these devices, and right in the beginning of the set, they suspended us and they went to John Brennan, who was somewhere speaking and then he went on a 10-minute rant about the president, Kerik told Breitbart radio later that night. A total of 10 devices were discovered, fashioned in the appearance of pipe bombs, from Oct. 22-25 in the New York and Washington areas as well as Florida. Though the FBI stated they were potentially destructive devices, none of them exploded and multiple explosives experts said the devices appeared amateurish, if at all functional, upon inspecting images of at least one of the devices posted online. Brennan, the CIA head during the Obama administration to whom one of the devices was addressed, was asked about the incident at a University of Texas event in Austin. He gave credit to President Donald Trump for a call to unity upon the bomb scare, but then attempted to link Trump to the incident. The presidents rhetoric too frequently fuels incidents that are now bleeding over into acts of violence, he said. That didnt sit well with Kerik, who headed the NYPD during the 9/11 terror attacks. As somebody that led through the worst terror attack in our countrys history, and knows how important unity is, especially on a day like today, in the aftermath of this, I just found it appalling that CNN would use this time to let this guy go on this political rant about the president, and I walked off, he said. I took off the earpiece and the mic and I left. I cant stand it. It just turns my stomach what these people are doing, and its wrong. Kerik seemed under the impression that CNN was more interested in creating a political narrative than in serving the public. They should be focused on the investigation, focused on getting the information the FBI has to the public in case somebody knows something. Get the visuals out to the public if theyve seen something, he said. I just think its wrong. The package addressed to Brennan was sent to the CNN headquarters in Manhattan and forced an evacuation of the Time Warner building. CNN published at least two images of the device, which made some online commenters question who it was that approached what appeared to be a bomb to take pictures of it from multiple angles. CNN didnt respond to a request for comment. The pictures, however, did allow the public to examine the devices features. Silly Timer Navy Explosive Ordnance Disposal veteran Tom Sauer noticed the device had wires attached to both ends, which is not how pipe bombs are normally constructed. He also noted the rather large timer taped to the device. A proper timer would best be stored inside the pipe, making it fully encapsulated, he said on an Oct. 24 tweet. That thing is just silly looking. The timer actually appears to be an LCD clock that goes for $4.58 on Amazon. The product doesnt have an alarm function, according to questions on the website, rendering it an unlikely set-off mechanism for a bomb. Other packages were addressed to progressive billionaire financier George Soros, former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, former President Barack Obama, former Obama Attorney General Eric Holder, former Vice President Joe Biden, actor Robert De Niro, Rep. Maxine Waters (D-Calif.), and Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz (D-Fla.) Each package appears to have contained a similar device placed in a Manila envelope with bubble wrap interior. The packages were affixed with computer-printed address labels and six Forever stamps. All packages had a return address of DEBBIE WASSERMAN SHULTZ [sic] in Florida, the FBI said. Trump has condemned the bomb scare and said a major federal investigation was underway to bring those responsible to justice with the full weight of our government. Kerik previously spent four years in federal prison for tax fraud and false statements. Kenyas Akasha Brothers Plead Guilty to US Drug Charges: Court Records Two brothers, accused by U.S. prosecutors of playing key roles in a major Kenyan crime family called the Akasha organization, pleaded guilty on Oct. 25 to U.S. drug trafficking charges in New York. Baktash Akasha, 41, and his brother Ibrahim Akasha, 29, each pleaded guilty before U.S. District Judge Victor Marrero in Manhattan to seven criminal charges, including distribution of heroin and methamphetamine, and conspiracy to import the drugs into the United States, according to court records. The charges carry a minimum sentence of 10 years in prison and a maximum sentence of life. George Goltzer, Baktash Akashas lawyer, declined to comment. A lawyer for Ibrahim Akasha could not immediately be reached. The case stemmed from a U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration probe into the Akasha organization, which U.S. authorities described as a major smuggling operation connecting the poppy fields of Afghanistan to European and U.S. cities. The brothers were extradited to the United States from Kenya in January 2017 along with Gulam Hussein, a Pakistani national charged with heading a drug transportation network, and Vijaygiri Goswami, an Indian businessman accused of managing the Akasha organizations drug business. The four defendants were arrested in Mombasa, Kenya, in November 2014 in a U.S.-led sting operation, in which authorities said the Akasha organization provided 99 kilograms of heroin and two kilograms of methamphetamine to DEA informants posing as drug traffickers. Hussein and Goswami pleaded not guilty to related charges after they were extradited. They have not appeared at recent court hearings or filed pre-trial motions, court records show. Lawyers representing them could not immediately be reached, and Dawn Dearden, a spokeswoman for the prosecutors, declined to comment on the status of their cases. A fifth defendant accused of working with the Akasha organization, Muhammad Asif Hafeez, was arrested in London in August 2017. The United States has requested his extradition. The Akasha family has been involved in the drug trade for years, according to U.S. diplomatic cables published by WikiLeaks. The Satao Project, a private company focused on fighting poaching, has said the Akasha network was also linked to around 30 tons of ivory seizures. U.S. prosecutors have said Baktash Akasha was the leader of the organization. By Brendan Pierson Foreign policy advisor to US President Donald Trump's election campaign, George Papadopoulos leaves the US District Courts after his sentencing in Washington, DC on Sept. 7, 2018. (Photo by Mandel Ngan/AFP) Lawmakers Doubt Basis of Russia-Collusion Probe After Papadopoulos Testimony Republican lawmakers who questioned former Trump-campaign associate George Papadopoulos on Oct. 25, cast more suspicion on the premise of the FBIs investigation of the Trump campaign in 2016. My questioning with Papadopoulos confirmed that he was a 28-year-old policy adviser whod been on the job a month at the time the Trump-Russia investigation was launched, and to this day hes never been to Russia nor met anyone associated with the Russian government, Rep. John Ratcliffe (R-Texas) said on Twitter. This makes it very hard to understand why the FBI used him as the basis to launch the highest profile investigation in recent times into the potential collusion by a presidential campaign with the Russian government. The FBI opened a counterintelligence investigation of the Trump campaign in late July 2016. Papadopoulos is said to be the genesis of that investigation. The FBI reportedly began probing the campaign because Papadopoulos told an Australian diplomat about Russians having dirt on Hillary Clinton well before emails hacked from the DNC were released to the public. Representatives Ratcliffe and Meadows questioned Papadopoulos as part of an investigation by the House Judiciary and Government Oversight committees which are looking into actions taken by the FBI and DOJ in relation to the probe of the Trump campaign and related issues. Rep. Mark Meadows (R-N.C.) suggested that the government may have violated Papadopouloss civil rights, adding that he would refer several law enforcement officials to the Justice Departments Office of Professional Responsibility. I am very troubled that his fourth amendment rights may have been violated and the way that this was conducted was inappropriate, Meadows told The Washington Post. Not only was there no collusion but there was not even the opportunity for collusion based on his contacts. Papadopoulos was sentenced to two weeks in prison for lying to the FBI. He was indicted by special counsel Robert Mueller as part of the investigation into alleged ties between the Trump campaign and Russia. Mueller took over the FBIs counterintelligence probe in May 2017. The special counsel has not charged anyone for colluding with Russia. Papadopoulos specifically admitted to lying about his contacts with Joseph Mifsud, a Maltese professor. Mueller alleged that Mifsud had extensive ties to Russia, but voluminous public evidence shows that Mifsud instead had extensive ties to Western intelligence. Papadopoulos has suggested that Mifsud was working for western intelligence and that he was either a British agent or working for the FBI. For any journalist or news channel continuing to propagate the fantasy that the professor, Joseph Mifsud, was a Russian agentyou really are committing a grave disservice to the American public. They deserve the true story to come out. Let the truth see light. Report facts, Papadopoulos said on Twitter on Oct. 26. Papadopoulos was contacted by at least one FBI spy, Stefan Halper. The spy also met with Trump-campaign volunteer Carter Page in early July of 2016. The Halper-Page meeting is significant because the FBI went on to secure a Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) warrant in October 2016 to spy on Page. The Page FISA warrant application relied heavily on unsubstantiated claims from the so-called Steele dossier. The dossier was compiled by a former British spy and ultimately funded by the Hillary Clinton campaign and the DNC. Among a host of other issues, the FBI failed to disclose who paid for the dossier. Man Tries to Steal the Magna Carta The Wiltshire Police in Salisbury, England, reported that a 45-year-old man tried to steal the Magna Carta, the UKs first attempt at setting the foundations for constitutional government and freedom under the law. The police reported that alarms in Salisbury Cathedral sounded shortly before 5 p.m. on Oct. 25, after a man armed with a hammer tried to smash the glass display case housing the precious document. The unnamed attacker managed to punch three holes in the glass box housing the artifact. If you witnessed this incident in Salisbury Cathedral yesterday afternoon, and haven't yet spoken to police, officers are keen to hear from you. Call 101. #MagnaCarter #Salisbury https://t.co/cof2dXk4sv pic.twitter.com/RReAyqELES Wiltshire Police (@wiltshirepolice) October 26, 2018 Cathedral staff wrestled the man to the ground, Time reported, and police officers placed the man under arrest when they arrived. The man was arrested on suspicion of attempted theft, possession of an offensive weapon and criminal damage. The suspect was taken to Melksham Police Station for interrogation. According to police, the document was not damaged and no one was injured. Wiltshire Police are asking anyone who witnessed the attack to contact them by dialing 101 and mentioning crime reference number 541800101438. Ancient and Important Document The Magna Carta Libertatum, Medieval Latin for the Great Charter of the Liberties and commonly called the Magna Carta, was a pact between King John of England and his noblemen that outlined the rights and responsibilities of the various members of English society. Signed in 1215, the document lays out the basic tenets of rule of law as recognized in Western society. As such, it formed the most basic foundation for many nations founding documents, and influenced the United States Constitution. The Magna Carta recognized that all citizens had rights, including the right to a fair trial. Only four copies of Magna Carta dating from 1215 have survived the ravages of time and Salisbury Cathedral is proud to be home to the best preserved original manuscript, the cathedral stated, according to NPR. The document attacked the divine right of kings, the idea that all kings were chosen by God and everything they did was therefore correct and properno matter how unfair or brutal. The pope annulled the agreement after about two and a half monthsas soon as King Johns letter arrived. I declare the charter to be null and void of all validity forever, NPR reported him as saying in his nullification decree. After the Magna Carta was nullified, the English barons resumed their war with King John. After Johns death in 1216, the regents running the country for young King Henry reinstated parts of the document. Another version was issued in 1217, and yet another in 1225. King Edward I, son of King Henry, issued the final version in 1297. From NTD.tv Army National Guard soldiers provide airborne support to the U.S. Department of Homeland Security (DHS) during Operation Guardian Support in proximity of the southwest border in McAllen, Rio Grande valley, Tex., in July 2018. (U.S. Army National Guard/Staff Sgt. Roberto Di Giovine) Military Requested to Send up to 1,000 Troops to Border, Officials Say The U.S. military has received a request from the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) for troops to be deployed to the U.S.Mexico border, two U.S. officials said Oct. 25. President Donald Trump said in an Oct. 25 tweet he was bringing out the military to prevent illegal entry of a thousands-strong caravan traveling from Central America north through Mexico. The military was examining the request that could require deploying between 800 and 1,000 active-duty troops to the border to assist with logistics and infrastructure, two officials told Reuters on condition of anonymity. One official said that any troops deployed to the border would not be involved in law enforcement activities. A federal law dating back to the 1870s restricts the use of the Army and other main branches of the military for civilian law enforcement on U.S. soil unless specifically authorized by Congress. But the military can provide support services to law enforcement and has done so on occasion since the 1980s. Some specific statutes authorize the president to deploy troops within the United States for riot control or relief efforts after natural disasters. The Pentagon said in a statement it was working with DHS to determine the specifics of our support to the Customs and Border Protection agency, part of DHS, but did not elaborate on any potential deployment of active-duty troops. Caravan Emergency On Oct. 22, Trump said he had alerted Border Patrol and the U.S. military that the migrant caravan was a national emergency. Trump has strongly opposed the illegal entry of migrants, both from the perspective of national security as well as national sovereignty. To those in the Caravan, turnaround, we are not letting people into the United States illegally, Trump said in an Oct. 25 tweet. Go back to your Country and if you want, apply for citizenship like millions of others are doing! To those in the Caravan, turnaround, we are not letting people into the United States illegally. Go back to your Country and if you want, apply for citizenship like millions of others are doing! Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) October 25, 2018 The caravan includes gang members or people with significant criminal histories, according to DHS. Some 5,300 migrants gathered in the southern Mexican town of Mapastepec on the night of Oct. 24, a town official said, though one of the activist speakers for the caravan said 11,000 gathered the day before in Huixtla, a town further south. As the caravan makes its way north, citizens of countries outside Central America, including countries in the Middle East, Africa, South Asia, and elsewhere are currently traveling through Mexico toward the U.S., DHS spokesman Tyler Houlton said in an Oct. 23 tweet. Organized The caravan set off from Honduran city of San Pedro Sula on Oct. 13. The main crowd appeared organized, with people in identical green reflective vests leading and corralling the group as it walked or was transported by vehicles along the way. While some locals appeared to have given rides to the migrants on small trucks, at least some of the migrants were transported part of the way in semi trucks. A video showed one of the organizers inviting the migrants into a semi truck in southern Mexico. According to U.S. Vice President Mike Pence, Honduran President Juan Hernandez said that the caravan was organized by leftist organizations and financed by Venezuela when they met for talks on Oct. 23. One of the caravan organizers is Bartolo Fuentes, a former lawmaker for the Liberty and Refoundation (Libre) party, which controls almost a quarter of the Honduran legislature and advocates socialism. Fuentes was detained in Guatemala and returned back to Honduras. A second group of more than a thousand people has started a similar trek from Guatemala. Stemming the Flow In April, Trump ordered the National Guard to help secure the border in four southwestern states. There are about 2,000 National Guard troops along the borders of Texas, New Mexico, Arizona, and California. About a million citizens of Guatemala, Honduras, and El Salvador had been apprehended by Border Patrol trying to enter the United States illegally in fiscal years 2013 to 2017 (pdf). The influx appears on the rise this year, based on incomplete 2018 data. Trump said on Oct. 22 he had started to stop or substantially reduce aid to the three countries because they failed to do enough to stop the flow of illegal immigrants from their countries. Senators Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa) and Mike Lee (R-Utah) asked the Trump administration to set up a safe third country agreement with Mexico. That would require those seeking refugee status to make their claim in the first country of arrival, meaning Central Americans would need to seek asylum in Mexico, instead of just traversing the country. Due to the likelihood that national security threats could mask themselves within this large caravan population, at a minimum, our federal government must prioritize the security of American citizens over anything else, the Senators said in an Oct. 23 letter. The safe third country agreement, the Senators argue, would also help alleviate the overburdened refugee system in the United States, where about 850,000 remain waiting for their asylum cases to be resolved. Central American migrants commonly apply for asylum in the United States, but most arent eligible because they are simply seeking better living conditions rather than fleeing state persecution. El Salvador, Honduras, and Guatemala all suffer from widespread poverty and high rates of violent crime; their murder rates are some of the highest in the world. Reuters contributed to this report. Mount St. Helens, Mount Rainier Classified by USGS as Very High Threat for Eruption Mount St. Helens and Mount Rainier, both in Washington state, have both been classified by a federal agency as a very high threat for an eruption. The updated classification was announced in a new volcanic threat assessment report (pdf) by the United States Geological Survey (USGS), the first update to the list of the nations most dangerous volcanoes since 2005. The rating system combines the threat of an eruption with the proximity to high populations and potential impact. Both Mount St. Helens and Mount Rainier are in the top five, along with Redoubt Volcano in Alaska and Mount Shasta in California; at the top is the Kilauea Volcano in Hawaii, which erupted earlier this year. The United States has more than 10 percent of the worlds known active and potentially active volcanoes within its territory, the researchers noted. Explosive While the lava flowing from Kilauea caused serious damage, an expert noted that the volcanoes in the Pacific Northwest explode. In the Pacific Northwest, we dont have much development on our flanks. But our volcanoes are both explosive and covered with a lot of snow and ice and can project those hazards pretty far downstream, John Ewert of the Cascades Volcano Observatory in Vancouver, Washington, told KING 5. The report notes that eleven of the 18 very high threat volcanoes are located in Washington, Oregon, or California, where explosive and often snow- and ice-covered edifices can project hazards long distances to densely populated and highly developed areas. Besides killing people, volcanoes inflict severe damage in the surrounding environment, killing trees, animals, and plants; choking major riverways; and destroying roads, bridges, and other infrastructure. The danger has gotten higher in recent years as populations near a number of volcanoes have risen. 1980 Eruption Mount St. Helens erupted on May 18, 1980, shaken by a 5.1 magnitude earthquake. A mushroom-shaped column of ash rose thousands of feet skyward and drifted downwind, turning day into night as dark, gray ash fell over eastern Washington and beyond. Wet, cement-like slurries of rock and mud scoured all sides of the volcano. Searing flows of pumice poured from the crater. The eruption lasted 9 hours, but Mount St. Helens and the surrounding landscape were dramatically changed within moments, said the U.S. Department of Agricultures Forest Service, describing the scene that day. Fifty-seven people died that day, killed by asphyxiation, thermal injuries, and trauma, among other causes, according to Oregon State University. Some 200 homes were destroyed or damaged and eight bridges were destroyed. From NTD.tv Left: University of Utah student-athlete Lauren McCluskey runs in Salt Lake City, on Aug. 30, 2017. (Steve C. Wilson/University of Utah via AP) Right: Convicted repeat sex offender Melvin Rowland is pictured in this undated photo provided by the Utah Department of Corrections. Rowland is suspected of killing McCluskey and then committing suicide, Salt Lake City, Utah, on Oct. 23, 2018. (Utah Department of Corrections via AP) Murder Suspect Blackmailed University of Utah Student Before Killing Her, Police Say A University of Utah student allegedly murdered by her ex-boyfriend told police she was being blackmailed by the man over compromising pictures of the pair. Investigators said on Thursday, Oct. 25, that 21-year-old Lauren McCluskey had wired $1,000 to an account earlier this month to prevent the release of the embarrassing photographs, according to Fox. McCluskey, a student-athlete at the university, contacted the police on Oct. 13, about the alleged extortion, according to University Police Chief Dale Brophy. She was shot to death nine days later outside an on-campus dormitory. Police believe the man who shot her was 37-year-old Melvin Rowland, a convicted sex offender. They said Rowland had stalked her for days and spent the hours before the fatal shooting inside McCluskeys dorm building, socializing with some of her friends. He later confronted her in the parking lot, dragged her into a car and shot her multiple times in the back seat, Brophy said at a news conference. Rowland was found dead that same evening of a self-inflicted gunshot wound inside a Salt Lake City church. The murder victim had earlier been in a relationship with Rowland, but broke it off on Oct. 9, after finding out he had deceived her about his age and that he was a registered sex offender. Police offered to assist McCluskey in dealing with Rowland, but she declined. Brophy said that there were no indications from McCluskey that Rowland was threatening physical violence. Besides being blackmailed, McCluskey told police she had received numerous emails and messages from different names in an attempt to lure her to various locations. Detectives believe all the messages came from Rowland, and were investigating the case as sexual extortion. Brophy said he considered Rowland to be compulsively deceptive. If his lips were moving, he was lying, Brophy said of Rowland. I dont think he told the truth to anybody based on our investigation. Brophy called Rowland a master manipulator. He was very, very good at getting people to trust him, Brophy said. Lauren was no different. Rowland, a native of New York, was on parole when he allegedly shot McCluskey. He was twice sent back to prison for parole violations that included possessing pornography and failure to complete therapy. He blamed his thinking errors for the actions that kept sending him back in prison, according to recordings of parole hearings from 2010 to 2018 released this week by the Utah Board of Parole and Pardons. Rowland said at a hearing in 2012 that he was a womanizer who manipulated women to get what he wanted. Kaitlin Felsted, a spokeswoman for the Utah Department of Corrections, said police didnt make parole officers aware of the complaint filed by McCluskey. University of Utah president Ruth Watkins said outside investigations are being launched to assess campus security and police protocols to determine if improvements can be made to prevent future shootings. Watkins said so far she has found no mistakes in how police handled the case. The Associated Press contributed to this report. NBC Officially Cancels Megyn Kelly Show, Will Replace With Today Co-anchors NBC has officially canceled Megyn Kelly Today amid rampant speculation about the future of her show, after her show aired reruns on Thursday and Friday. Megyn Kelly Today is not returning, an NBC News spokesperson said on Oct. 26. Next week, the 9 a.m. hour will be hosted by other TODAY co-anchors. The cancellation was ostensibly over comments Kelly made earlier in the week questioning whether blackface or whiteface is racist, but a number of other reasons have emerged or been known for a while, such as the shows mediocre ratings and Kellys clashes with network executives. A number of reports have said Kelly will definitely leave NBC entirely but wants the remainder of her three-year contract, which owes her approximately $50 million. In the latest report by NBC itself, sources said Kelly was still in discussions with executives about her future at the network. A report earlier Friday on the Today show cited a source familiar with the situation as saying NBC News and Kelly were in talks about the anchor leaving the network and another source said it was extremely unlikely that shell stay. Kellys lawyer Bryan Freedman was scheduled to meet with executives to negotiate an exit, though it wasnt clear when the meeting was scheduled for. This morning, NBC News host Megyn Kelly is in talks with the network about her imminent departure, according to a source familiar with the situation. pic.twitter.com/4Ter7kP0LT TODAY (@TODAYshow) October 26, 2018 Background Kelly has also not commented on her contract or possible break with NBC publicly. She last appeared on her show on the network on Oct. 24, apologizing at the top of the segment for her comments the previous day about blackface and whiteface. She said she wasnt clear on why some consider the practices racist. In her apology, she said she listened to the criticism and has decided that the practices are racist. I defended the idea saying as long as it was respectful and part of a Halloween costume it seemed okay. Well, I was wrong and I am sorry, she said. I learned that given the history of blackface being used in awful ways by racists in this country, it is not OK for that to be part of any costume, Halloween or otherwise. The show aired repeats on Thursday and Friday. Kelly has reportedly expressed interest in returning to Fox News, but the network indicated to Deadline it might not welcome her back. We are extremely happy with our entire lineup, Fox said in a statement. The network is doing well, continually besting rivals CNN and MSNBC during the Donald Trump presidency. From NTD.tv Gavin Newsom attends 'Families Belong Together - Freedom for Immigrants March Los Angeles' at Los Angeles City Hall on June 30, 2018 in Los Angeles, California. (Photo by Emma McIntyre/Getty Images for Families Belong Together LA) Newsoms Comments on Reconsidering Drug Injection Sites Draw Criticism SAN FRANCISCOCalifornia Democratic gubernatorial candidate Gavin Newsoms comments about being very, very open to a pilot safe injection site (SIS) for illegal drugs in San Francisco has drawn sharp criticism from local community members who oppose such an idea. We condemn Newsom for making such a promise hastily and are very concerned about his candidacy for Governor! says a joint press release issued on Oct. 19 by five organizations: California Coalition against Drugs, California for Liberty, International Faith Based Coalition, Organization for Justice and Equality, and Take Back America. On Sept. 30, Gov. Jerry Brown vetoed AB 186, the legislation that would have given the city of San Francisco legal status to operate an SIS. Brown offered his reasons for vetoing AB 186: I repeat, enabling illegal and destructive drug use will never work.I conclude that the disadvantages of this bill far outweigh the possible benefits. According to a report by San Francisco Chronicle, Newsom on several occasions during his visit early this month to San Francisco, commented that he was open to the idea of a pilot SIS. Newsom also mentioned that hed already had multiple discussions with San Francisco Mayor London Breed about the idea. AB 186 was initiated by Assemblywoman Susan Eggman on Jan. 19, 2017; Breed has been one of the biggest proponents of the pilot program of an SIS in San Francisco. Before Brown vetoed AB 186, U.S. Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein published an opinion piece in The New York Times, stating, Cities and counties should expect the Department of Justice to meet the opening of any injection site with swift and aggressive action. Frank Lee, president of Organization for Justice and Equality, a San Francisco Bay Area-based organization, said: How could Newsom ignore Governor Browns strong statement, DOJs explicit warning, and all the key facts, and hastily promise to consider signing a bill for [an] illegal drug injection center? This is unacceptable and irresponsible! The practice of providing government-operated SISs has been controversial not just in the United States, but also in Canada. Toronto started providing SIS services in 2017. According to the Public Health Agency of Canada, 1,265 Ontarians died of apparent opioid-related causes in 2017, with Toronto accounting for 303 of them; that represents a 63 percent increase from 2016. In the first three months of 2018, there were 317 such deaths in the province, the Public Health Agency of Canada reported. Newsoms comments on reconsidering an SIS came within five weeks of the 2018 midterm elections. How could Newsom hurriedly promise to consider signing a bill for illegal drug injection centers?! How can we have confidence in such a candidate for governor? the press release reads. In California, AB 186 was met with strong resistance early on. A coalition of eight law-enforcement officers organizations sent a letter opposing the bill to Susan Talamantes Eggman, a member of the California State Assembly. Rather than a robust effort to get addicts into treatment, AB 186 alarmingly concedes the inevitable and immutable nature of drug addiction and abuse. AB 186 has the unintended consequence of enabling continued and unabated addiction, resulting in public health, public safety and quality of life damage to the most vulnerable communities in California, according to the letter, which was dated July 2, 2017. The eight organizations involved were the Association for Los Angeles Deputy Sheriffs; the Association of Deputy District Attorneys; the Los Angeles County Probation Officers Union AFSCME Local 685; the Los Angeles Police Protective League; the California Association of Code Enforcement Officers; the California College and University Police Chiefs Association; the California Narcotic Officers Association; and the Los Angeles County Professional Peace Officers Association. Painting of Jesus Survives Burning Church Unscathed Lightning sparked a seven-alarm fire that totally gutted an historic church in the small town of Wakefield, Massachusetts, on Wednesday, Oct. 24. Nothing was left of the First Baptist Church of Wakefield, a town landmark for almost 150 years, save some remnants of scorched walls and a few ribs of the once 180-foot-tall steeple. According to eyewitnesses, lightning struck the steeple shortly after 7 p.m. It appears to have struck the front of the church somewhere in the steeple area, Wakefield Fire Chief Michael Sullivan told the Boston Globe. It really wasnt showing a lot of fire [initially], but it broke out very shortly after we arrived. Interim Pastor Norm Bendroth told Fox News he had just settle down to watch the second game of the World Seriesthe Boston Red Sox were hosting the Los Angeles Dodgers at Fenway. Just as he got settled Bendroth saw a fireball in the sky, he told Boston 25. It just went up like a tinderbox. Its a building built in 1870 and its balloon-style so once the fire starts you know the whole building just went up quickly. WATCH LIVE Sky25 surveying damage at Wakefield church destroyed by massive fire Tuesday evening Boston 25 News Painting Survives Undamaged One of the very few artifacts to survive the fire was a painting of Jesus that hung by the front door of the church. Despite the intense heat, the smoke, and all the water from the firemens hoses, the painting suffered no damage at all. A painting that shows Jesus Christ wearing a white robe, holding out his hands that show the holes where nails were driven through his palms, had a few drops of water on it, Fox News reported. Its a beautiful sign of hope and a reminder that Jesus is with us, church member Maria Kakolowski told Boston 25. I am personally just taking it as a sign and a reminder that the Jesus, the Christ that we serve is still alive and even though our church building is gone, our church is here. The God that we serve is still here. Susan Auld, a parishioner who was married in the church and had her four sons baptized there, told the Boston Globe that the rescued painting was going to be given to a former pastor for safekeeping. The Church Will Carry On The First Baptist Church congregation will continue to meet even though its beautiful home is gone. Interim Pastor Norm Bendroth told the Boston Globe that local clergy from other places of worship had already offered space for the congregation of about 100. This was not the first time this particular iteration of the First Baptist Church of Wakefield burned down. The church has been meeting on the same site since 1800. The recently burned building was finished in 1872. Unfortunately, it caught fire in 1912, and had to be rebuilt Fox news reported. And the church is already planning to do it again. The church started a GoFundMe page to raise money for the rebuilding the day after the fire. On the church website, the church elders posted, We know that we serve a God who specializes in restoring brokenness and who can bring beauty even from ashes. So we move into the future with trust, hope, and gratitude. From NTD.tv Passenger Opens Aircraft Door on St. Louis-Bound Frontier Flight A passenger on a St.Louis-bound flight from Mexico was detained after opening a door on an aircraft taxiing to the runway. The man struggled with flight attendants and passengers before opening the airplane door, automatically deploying an emergency slide. The incident took place at Cancun International Airport in Mexico on Tuesday, Oct. 23, and involved a Frontier Airlines flight that was headed to St. Louis, Missouri. Video captured by passenger Kathleen Ingham shows the commotion in the aircraft cabin. On the Frontier flight home from Cancun, leaving from the gate to take off when a man gets to the front of the plane and starts kicking the cockpit door telling them to let him off, Ingham wrote in a Facebook post. We were in [the] front row and a gentleman behind us started throwing up, Andy Karandzieff, another passenger on the flight, told Fox 2. Karandzieff then said the man left his seat in a panic and began banging on the cockpit door. Footage shows the visibly distressed man being escorted to his seat and crewmembers trying to calm him down. Ingham wrote that moments later the man sprang up out of his seat and then pushes the flight attendant into the door and opens it. He kind of jumped up like he was heading to the bathroom again but all of a sudden he made a left turn and went for the exit door, Karandzieff recounted. He did manage to get the door open after a little scuffle and within seconds, four or five guys came out of nowhere and subdued him. Thank God for the brave men and women that held him in the plane or he for sure would have been sucked into the engine, Ingham wrote. Law enforcement officials then escorted the distressed passenger off the flight, which had to be canceled because the emergency chute had been triggered. If he would have opened door in-air, who knows what would have happened, Karandzieff said. Police questioned the man, who has not been identified by name, on the tarmac. An elderly man, presumed to be the mans father, then comforted him. The man was then reportedly taken to a hospital. His mother spoke to Fox News and offered a possible explanation for her sons erratic behavior. She said that her son had been involved in an altercation the previous night and had been struck in the head. She said he was accompanied on the flight by his father. The two were returning from a vacation in Cancun. The remaining passengers were rebooked on other flights due to the cancellation. Karandzieff praised the actions of the airline. Ingham called for a re-evaluation of airline protocols around securing doors. Time to check how easy it is to unlock your doors while moving Frontiernot ok, she wrote. President Donald Trump at a Make America Great Again rally in Mosinee, Wis., on Oct. 24, 2018. (Charlotte Cuthbertson/The Epoch Times) Posters Calling Christian Trump Supporters Trash Appear in New York City Posters calling white, Christian supporters of President Donald Trump trash appeared in New York City on Oct. 25. However, the slick branding was not approved by the city, the Department of Sanitation said late Thursday. These were not created or issued by the Department of Sanitation, and we do not condone the unlawful defacement of City litter baskets. We are looking into this matter, the department said in a statement. Vito Turo, a spokesman for the citys Department of Sanitation, told Boston 25 that the posters werent sanctioned. A street artist has designed them and illegally placed them on our official litter baskets, Turo said. We have told him to cease and desist and if he does not, we will fine him $75 for each poster we find and remove. Posters Show White Christians One poster shows a white man wearing a tank top with a Confederate flag tattoo on his arm, a Make America Great Again hat on his head, and a Chick-fil-A cup in his hand. A large circle with a slash through it is imposed over the mans head, below the text: Keep NYC Trash Free. A second version of the poster shows a white woman wearing a black shirt and a MAGA hat and holding a Bible. The so-called street artist behind the posters said that man and women are meant to represent Christian Evangelicals from the south. The statistics are there that a lot of Trump supporters who wear the MAGA hats come from red states, from the south, and are Christian Evangelicals. Those are the concepts that I included on these posters, Winston Tseng told the Brooklyn Street Art blog. Tseng claimed that Trump is reflecting a lot of hate from white Christians. The source of the issue is the segment of America who supports him and authorizes him to make the decisions that he makes, he said. Most Posters Taken Down A third poster in the series shows a man wearing a New England Patriots jersey and a Boston Red Sox hat, drinking a Samuel Adams beer, with the same Keep NYC Trash Free text. Many of the posters had been removed by Oct. 26, but a still few remained, reported Pix 11. Tseng denied to the broadcaster that he was behind the posters but took credit for them in his interview with the street art blog and in a statement to the Gothamist blog. From NTD.tv Powerful Magnitude 6.8 Quake Shakes Western Greece ATHENSA powerful earthquake shook western Greece early on Friday, Oct. 26, damaging a port and a 15th century monastery, but causing no major injuries, officials and local media said. The quake sent out tremors felt as far afield as Libya, Italy, Malta, and Albania. Greek authorities initially issued a tsunami warning then withdrew the alert. The quake struck in the Ionian Sea, 31 miles south of the island of Zakynthos, also known as Zante, Greeces Geodynamic Institute reported. The U.S. Geological Survey rated the magnitude at 6.8. Three people were taken to hospital on the island, two of them slightly injured, a spokesman for Greeces civil protection agency said. A series of aftershocks, the highest at 5.6, rattled the island and power was briefly disrupted. Tremors damaged a 15th-century monastery on the nearby islands of Strofades, local media in Zakynthos reported. They also left large cracks in the port of Zakynthos, though authorities there said operations would continue as usual. Calm is Being Restored We are not facing any particular problems, Zakynthos Mayor Pavlos Kolokotsas told Greek state broadcaster ERT. Calm is being restored. Extensive damage was avoided because quake-prone Zakynthos had adopted seismic protection codes in construction, said Efthymios Lekkas, head of Greeces Earthquake Planning and Protection Organization said . The energy unleashed, based on the angle of the faultline, fanned out towards Italy, he added. Italys Il Messaggero online news site said the quake was felt hundreds of miles away in southern Italy. Firefighters in Calabria, Puglia, and Sicily received thousands of telephone calls from worried locals. Zakynthos was all but destroyed in a 6.8 tremor in 1953. More than 140 people were killed in an earthquake north of Athens in 1999. The quake was fairly shallow, according to the USGS, just 8.7 miles below the seabed, which would have amplified shaking. It struck at 1:54 a.m. local time. Greece straddles two tectonic plates and often suffers earthquakes. The EMSC European quake agency said sea levels had risen slightly, by about 7.87 inches, but the increase could be higher locally. It later tweeted sea level changes were also observed in Italy. By Angeliki Koutantou and Michele Kambas Russian President Vladimir Putin (R) and US President Donald Trump shake hands before a meeting in Helsinki, on July 16, 2018. (Brendan Smialowski/AFP/Getty Images) Putin Invited to White House in Early 2019 The White House has formally invited Russian President Vladimir Putin to Washington, National Security Advisor John Bolton said on Oct. 26. President Donald Trump and Putin are also expected to meet briefly in Paris on the sidelines of events commemorating the centenary of the end of World War I. Trump last met with Putin in Helsinki, the Finnish capital, and then issued Putin an invitation to visit Washington in the autumn. The meeting was postponed. Bolton made the announcement in ex-Soviet Georgia days after meeting Putin and senior security officials in Moscow. Bolton said he gave Putin an invitation to visit next year during his trip to Moscow. It was not immediately clear if Putin had accepted the invitation. Putin last held a meeting with a U.S. president on American soil in 2015 when he met Barack Obama on the sidelines of a U.N. General Assembly. Trump has said it is in U.S. interests to establish a solid working relationship with Putin. Arms Treaty Shortly before Bolton met with officials Moscow, Trump announced that the United States would exit the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces (INF) treaty with Russia. Washington has said for years that Moscow violated the treaty by deploying a banned missile launch system. Bolton remained firm on quitting the INF treaty after a 90-minute meeting with Putin. Only Russia and the United States are bound by the Cold-War era treaty, which banned the possession, production, and testing of short- and mid-range missiles and related equipment. Meanwhile, China, Iran, and North Korea have built up alarming arsenals of the weapons prohibited by the treaty. Trump said he would be open to a treaty that includes China and other nations. Well have to develop those weapons, unless Russia comes to us, and China comes to us, and they all come to us and they say, Lets really get smart and lets none of us develop those weapons. Trump said. But if Russia is doing it and if China is doing it, and were adhering to the agreement, thats unacceptable. Bolton told reporters in Russia that Washington has tried to have other nations join the INF treaty for years with no success. Election Interference Days before Boltons trip to Moscow, the United State indicted a Russian national for managing the finances of a sophisticated operation aimed at interfering with foreign affairs, including the 2018 midterm elections in the United States. The operation, codenamed Project Lakhta, was funded with tens of millions of dollars. In February, special counsel Robert Mueller, who is investigating Russias meddling in the 2016 election, indicted 13 Russian nationals who worked for and financed Project Lakhta, accusing them of interfering with the 2016 presidential election. The 13 were among 19 Russians sanctioned by the United States in March for their roles in election interference and cyberattacks. In July, Mueller indicted 12 Russian nationals, charging them with hacking the Clinton campaign and the Democratic National Committee. Russians disseminated the emails obtained through the hacks with the intent of interfering in the 2016 election, the indictment alleges. Russia denies all of the accusations. None of the indictments against the Russian nationals include any allegation that any American knowingly colluded with Russia. Bolton told Russian officials that the interference attempts achieved little, but have instead served to undermine the relationship between the United States and Russia. Reuters contributed to this report. A man fills walks past voting signs displayed outside a polling station during the mid-term elections in Hamtramck, Michigan, on Nov. 4, 2014. (Joshua Lott/Getty Images) Republican Voters Outpace Democrats With 2 Million Ballots Cast in Florida At least 2 million voters have cast their ballots in the Florida mid-term elections, and according to the Division of Elections, Republicans have the edge. The Associated Press reported that nearly 560,000 people have voted early this week, and about 1.48 million people voted via mail. Around 870,000 Republican voters cast their ballots, compared to 808,000 Democrats. There are about 13 million registered voters in Florida. Floridians are voting between the hotly contested race between Tallahassee Mayor Andrew Gillum or former U.S. Rep. Ron DeSantis for governor. Outgoing Gov. Rick Scott, a Republican, is challenging U.S. Sen. Bill Nelson for the U.S. Senate seat. NBC News reported earlier this week that Republican-affiliated voters have voted more than Democratic-affiliated voters in early voting across several battleground states. Republican-affiliated voters surpassed Democratic-affiliated voters in Arizona, Florida, Georgia, Indiana, Montana, Tennessee, and Texas, according to the report, citing TargetSmart. In Tennessee, 63 percent of early voters are affiliated with the Republican Party, and only 30 percent are aligned with Democrats, NBC noted. NBC also reported that more than 8 million people have voted early, outpacing 2016. Republican-affiliated voters make up 44 percent of the early voting electorate and Democratic-affiliated voters make up 40 percent, said the report. The Cook Political Report also said that 11 days from Nov. 6, it seems that the overall Senate playing field wont change much, although it appears that some of the races in Toss Up are getting even tighter, if thats possible. That said, it is getting more difficult to see a path to the majority for Democrats. With Democratic U.S. Sen. Heidi Heitkamp heading for defeat in North Dakota, Democrats now need a net gain of three seats to win the majority, according to the report. Ryanair Passenger Caught in Racially Charged Tirade Says Sorry and Insists Im Not Racist A Ryanair passenger who verbally abused a fellow passenger has apologized for his actions on and denied being a racist. David Mesher, 70, was filmed aboard a plane in Barcelona calling 77-year-old Delsie Gayle an ugly black [expletive]. Dont talk to me in a foreign language, you stupid ugly cow, the man can be heard saying in the video. He also says: I dont care whether shes [expletive] disabled or not; if I tell her to get out, she gets out. I tell you this: If you dont go to another seat, Ill put you to another seat, he said at one point. Video footage of the incident went viral after it was uploaded to social media. The Ryanair plane was heading from Barcelona to London on Oct. 15. Apology Mesher, who is from the British city of Birmingham, told Good Morning Britain on Oct. 26 expressed regret for his outburst. Im not a racist person by any means and it was just a fit of bad temper at the time, he said, according to the Daily Mail. I apologize for all the distress youve had there and since, Mesher said, addressing Gayle, who was also on the show. He said he had lost his temper when Gayle appeared not to respond to his request to reach his window seat. I said Ive got to get to the window seat and there didnt seem to be any response, he said, according to the report. And then I asked her again, I said I have to get to the window seat and she didnt seem to want to get up..or she didnt seem to then I probably lost my temper a bit and I ordered her to get up. Forget and Forgive Gayle responded to Meshers apology by saying, You must forget and forgive but its going to take a long time, she said. I was so depressed all Ive been doing just crying. I cant sleep. Carol Gayle, the womans daughter, complained about what she said was the airlines lack of intervention during Meshers tirade. More people could have intervened and especially the gentlemanthe flight attendant, she said. He (Mesher) should have been taken off the plane, or moved, something should have been done. She accused Ryanair of downplaying the incident and said that she and her mother were pursuing legal action against the airline. Ryanair Responds According to earlier reports, Mesher was allowed to stay in his seat, and Gayle was moved elsewhere. In a statement, Ryanair responded to the BBC, We operate strict guidelines for disruptive passengers and we will not tolerate unruly behavior like this. We will be taking this matter further and disruptive or abusive behavior like this will result in passengers being banned from travel, the airliner added. Ryanair told the Daily Mail that the company has issued a written apology to Gayle. Robin Kiely, Ryanairs head of communications, told the Daily Mail: We again extend our very sincere apologies to this passenger for the regrettable, and unacceptable remarks that were made to her by an adjacent passenger, and we believe that by reporting this matter immediately to the Essex Police and by apologizing in writing to this customer early on Sunday morning, Ryanair treated it with the urgency and seriousness it warranted. Essex Police also told the BBC on Oct. 21: 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. Seminole Tribe of Florida Says Accused Bomber Wasnt a Member The Seminole Tribe of Florida said that the suspect linked to the suspicious packages sent to various locations nationwide is not a member. Theres no record of him being a member of the tribe. Hes not a member of the Seminole Tribe, has never been a member of the Seminole Tribe, tribe spokesman Gary Bitner told Politico after Cesar Sayoc was arrested on Oct. 26. Some of Sayocs online postings indicated that he believed he was a member of the tribe. Bitner said that he didnt think Sayoc ever worked for the tribe either. He has used so many names and has so many businesses that its complicated to check his employment record with the tribe, but so far we havent found any, he said. According to its website, the Seminole Tribe of Florida is a federally recognized Indian tribe and claims to be the only tribe in America that never signed a peace treaty. The tribe dates back hundreds of years, with its first recorded contact with Europeans being in 1510. It gained federal status in 1957 and currently lives in part on a reservation in Hollywood. Sayocs former lawyer Ronald Lowy said that his father had told him he was Native American. Sayoc is accused of being involved in the mailing of devices that authorities believe were designed to explode or at least appear to be capable of exploding. Some experts said, noting how none actually exploded, that they were likely meant to strike fear in their recipients as opposed to killing people. Former President Barack Obama, former presidential contender Hillary Clinton, and actor Robert De Niro are among the people who were sent packages. As of Friday afternoon, authorities said 13 were intercepted or found. Sayocs History Sayoc, 56, of Aventura is an amateur bodybuilder and businessman whose online resume describes him as a promoter and booking agent for male stripper and burlesque shows. He was born in New York City and attended college in North Carolina before moving to the Miami suburbs in the late 1980s. At the auto parts store in Plantation, Florida, where Sayoc was taken into custody, authorities towed away a white van covered with stickers supporting President Donald Trump and criticizing media outlets and high-profile political figures that included some who received the pipe bombs this week. Court records in Florida show that Sayoc was arrested in 2002 and served a year of probation for a felony charge of threatening to throw or place a bomb. Court records available online did not immediately provide further details about the case, but his lawyer at the time said the case involved a heated conversation with a Florida utility representative. Lowy, a Miami attorney, said Sayoc became frustrated about a lack of service and told a Florida Power and Light employee something to the effect that youre not taking care of my problem and I bet you would if I threw a bomb at you. Lowy said Sayoc showed no ability at the time to back up his threat with any bomb-making expertise. The lawyer went on to describe Sayoc as a confused man who had trouble controlling his emotions. Sayoc was also convicted in 2014 of grand theft and misdemeanor theft of less than $300, and in 2013 for battery. In 2004, he faced several felony charges for unlawful possession of a synthetic anabolic steroid often used to help build muscles. He also had several arrests for theft in the 1990s and faced a felony charge for obtaining fraudulent refunds and a misdemeanor count of tampering with physical evidence. Lowy said he recalled that Sayoc also had a run-in with authorities over possession of steroids and another case in Broward County where he was charged with possessing a fake drivers license after altering his birthdate to make him appear younger. The Associated Press contributed to this report. From NTD.tv Lauren McCluskey, a member of the University of Utah cross country and track and field team. McCluskey, a University of Utah student was shot and killed on campus by a former boyfriend Melvin Rowland, who was found dead hours later inside a church, Oct. 23, 2018, authorities said. (Steve C. Wilson/University of Utah via AP) Sex Offender Lurked for Days Before Killing Utah Student SALT LAKE CITYA sex offender parolee who killed a University of Utah student and track athlete had been lurking on campus for days trying to confront the woman who had broken up with him weeks earlier when she discovered his criminal background, authorities said on Oct. 25. Melvin Rowland, 37, spent the hours before the fatal shooting on Oct. 22 in victim Lauren McCluskeys dorm building socializing with her friends, university police chief Dale Brophy said. He later confronted the 21-year-old McCluskey in the parking lot, dragged her into a car and shot her multiple times in the back seat, Brophy said at a news conference. Rowland killed himself hours later in a church as police closed in. The killing of McCluskey came weeks after she broke off her month-long relationship with Rowland and filed a complaint with campus police alleging he had demanded money in exchange for not posting compromising pictures of the couple online. She had sent $1,000 to an account in hopes of preserving her reputation, Brophy said. Police were investigating the case as sexual extortion and knew Rowland was a sex offender but not that he was on parole, Brophy said. McCluskey reported receiving numerous emails and messages using different names trying to lure her to locations. Investigators now believe they all came from Rowland, who Brophy called a master manipulator. After shooting McCluskey, Rowland was picked up on campus by a woman he met online. They went to dinner, visited the state Capitol and went to her apartment where Rowland took a shower. Later that night, after the woman dropped Rowland at a coffee shop, police tracked him to the church where he killed himself. The woman had called police when she saw photos of the man being sought for the campus shooting. Rowland got the gun by telling an acquaintance that his girlfriend wanted to learn to shoot. Brophy said it appears the woman who picked up Rowland on campus and the person who loaned him the gun had been duped and are not expected to face charges. Rowland was a manipulator. If his lips were moving, he was lying, Brophy said. I dont think he told the truth to anybody based on our investigation. Kaitlin Felsted, a spokeswoman for the Utah Department of Corrections, said police didnt make parole officers aware of the complaint filed by McCluskey. Brophy said police didnt start the formal extortion investigation until six days after her Oct. 13 report due to workload issues. In the early stages of the investigation, they didnt have enough information to pass on to any other law enforcement, Brophy said, adding that there were no indications from McCluskey that Rowland was threatening physical violence. University of Utah president Ruth Watkins said outside investigations are being launched to assess campus security and police protocols to determine if improvements can be made to prevent future shootings. Watkins said so far she has found no mistakes in how police handled the case. Brophy said he welcomes the reviews. Gov. Gary Herbert said corrections and parole officials had approved independent investigations into the handling of Rowlands parole. Clearly in hindsight, were going to say, You should have done this, you should have done that,' Herbert said during his monthly televised news conference at KUED-TV He noted, however, You never know when these things are going to occur. Rowland was paroled in April when he told the parole board that he was a changed man after being a peer leader in prison had helped him tap into his empathy and learn to follow the rules. He spent nearly a decade in prison after pleading guilty in 2004 to trying to lure an underage girl online and attempted sex abuse charges, according to court records. After he was charged, a woman came forward to report he had sexually assaulted her after a separate online meeting a few days earlier. Rowland, a native of New York, was twice sent back to prison for parole violations that included possessing pornography and failure to complete therapy. He blamed his thinking errors for the actions that kept sending him back in prison, according to recordings of parole hearings from 2010 to 2018 released this week by the Utah Board of Parole and Pardons. Rowland said at a hearing in 2012 that he was a womanizer who manipulated women to get what he wanted. Brophy offered the same assessment. He said McCluskey met Rowland at a bar where he was working security and started dating him. He visited her often in her dorm and made friends with other students in the building. He was very, very good at getting people to trust him, Brophy said. Lauren was no different. Watkins said she gave McCluskeys parents a posthumous degree for their daughter, a senior from Pullman, Washington, who was majoring in communication. By Brayd McCombs Soros-Backed University Says Its Being Forced Out of Hungary BUDAPESTHungarys Central European University, a graduate school founded by U.S. financier George Soros, said its being forced out of the country by the nationalist government and will switch to enrolling new students in Vienna if it doesnt get guarantees of academic freedom by Dec. 1. The U.S. billionaire, who promotes liberal causes through his charities, has been the subject of a campaign by the right-wing government of Prime Minister Viktor Orban. Earlier this year, Soross charitable Open Society Foundations was forced to leave Hungary. The move by CEU, which was quickly dismissed as a political ploy by the government, could deepen a rift between Orban and the European Commission, which has challenged his reforms to higher education in the European Court of Justice. A change last year to the national law on education, which withdrew the right to operate from foreign-registered universities that didnt also offer courses in their home country, was widely seen as explicitly targeting CEU. The CEU, which offers graduate-level courses taught in English, is frequently ranked as the top university in Hungary. The prospect that it might be driven from Hungary drew street protests and international criticism last year. Forced Out After 26 Years The universitys statement on Oct. 25 said the Orban government had kept it in legal limbo for more than a year by failing to reach a formal agreement on its status. We cannot operate legally in Hungary as a free, U.S.-accredited institution. We are being forced out of a country that has been our home for 26 years, CEU president and rector Michael Ignatieff told a news conference. Orban regularly accuses the Hungarian-born Soros of plotting to destroy European civilization by flooding the continent with immigrants. Soros says his support for refugees is one part of a wider humanitarian mission to back open societies around the world. The government said the announcement by the CEU to relocate operations in Vienna is a Soros-style political ploy and it doesnt concern itself with such matters. The CEU remains a priority for the U.S. government and has overwhelming bipartisan support in the United States, U.S. Ambassador to Budapest David B. Cornstein said in a statement. There is a small window to resolve this, but it needs to happen fast, he said. The government accuses the CEU of operating without full legal compliance. CEU says it has taken all required steps to comply. The statement by the university said it would enroll new students in U.S. degrees at its Vienna campus in 2019, if its legal status in Hungary isnt resolved by Dec. 1, though it would try to maintain as much research and educational activity in Budapest as possible. Ignatieff said CEUs board of trustees set the December deadline to give a chance for Cornstein to try to work out a compromise. By Gergely Szakacs, Krisztina Than, and David Ljunggren Former Trump campaign adviser George Papadopoulos (C) arrives at a closed door hearing before the House Judiciary and Oversight Committee Oct. 25, 2018 in Washington, DC. (Alex Wong/Getty Images) TrumpRussia Collusion Narrative Continues to Collapse Commentary You can almost smell how desperate the left is getting about trying to save the dying narrative that former Trump campaign advisers Carter Page and George Papadopoulos are going to be handcuffed and shipped off to prison by special counsel Robert Mueller for colluding with the Russians. As evidence mounts that partisan operatives inside a politically weaponized Department of Justice/FBI sought to entrap the Trump campaign in a counterintelligence operationby sending confidential intel assets posing as Russian agents to meet with low-level advisersthe desperation is growing palpable. The newest development occurred on Oct. 23, when The Hill published a story by reporter John Solomon titled A Convenient Omission? Trump Campaign Adviser Denied Collusion to FBI Source Early On. That report contained the bombshell that Papadopoulos had strongly denied to the FBI informant seeking to entrap him that the campaign was colluding with any Russians. In addition, the FBI hid this exculpatory evidence from the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court (FISC) when it later applied for a warrant to spy on the Trump campaign team. That night, Solomon appeared with Papadopoulos and his wife, Simona Mangiante, on the Sean Hannity show on the Fox News Network to discuss the development. Not only is Papadopoulos going increasingly public with his story, Page is also stepping up his campaign to tell his. Two weeks ago, Page filed a lawsuit in an Oklahoma federal court against both the Democratic National Committee (DNC) and the law firm of Perkins Coie for their roles in funding, creating, and spreading the allegations against him contained in the Steele dossier. As I discussed in an earlier column, they dont have anything on Page and they never did. All of the supposedly verified evidence the FBI claimed to have that proved Page was a foreign agent of the Russiansin order to get that warrant from the FISC to spy on the Trump campaign/transition teamsturned out to be the Steele dossier and media clippings based on the Steele dossier. And what is the Steele dossier? Its second- and third-hand stories told to former British intelligence officer Christopher Steele by anonymous Russians who supposedly live in Russia; even at this late date, nobody seems to know who these people are or what efforts were made to verify the stories they related. (Although I have written about who I suspect one of the sources for the Steele dossier isand he doesnt live in Russia!) Russian Agents I suspect that FISA warrant on Page does contain something in addition to the Steele dossier information and news stories that also came from Steele. My hunch is that the heavily redacted sections of the warrant contain claims that Russian agents were found to be reaching out to Page and Papadopoulos, offering to help fix or influence the 2016 presidential election on behalf of Trump. But those Russian agents werent really Russian agentsthey were the FBIs own intelligence assets being sent by their handlers to Page and Papadopoulos to entrap them by lying to them. Joseph Mifsud, Stefan Halper, and Alexander Downer were approaching their targets and attempting to entrap them by July 2016, long before the plotters approached the FISC in October for the warrant they wanted. The DOJ/FBI agents running the Crossfire Hurricane probe not only tried to fool Page and Papadopoulos into believing they were being contacted by Russian agents, but I also suspect they presented at least one of their own confidential FBI informants to the FISC that way, as well. My hunch is that Andrew McCabe, Peter Strzok, and others who were involved deliberately neglected to tell the court that Mifsud was their own guy. In other words, they lied to the FISC and told the judge their own intelligence asset was a real, honest-to-God Russian spy so they could get the warrant they wanted. Thats why Mifsud has been in hiding for almost a year. Hes likely the guy that was passed off to Papadopoulos and the FISC as being the real, live Russian spy in this affair. Recall that when Mifsud introduced himself to Papadopoulos, the Maltese academic then introduced the former Trump campaign adviser to Olga Vinogradova, telling Papadopoulos that the woman was Putins niece, which was a lie. Politico posted a story about this last year, titled Mysterious Putin Niece Has A Name. Mifsud and the-woman-who-really-wasnt-Putins-niece then attempted to persuade Papadopoulos they could get him access to key Russian government officialsincluding Putin himself. This was followed by Halper making his own contact with Papadopoulos and attempting to get him to own up to the Trump campaign, having been approached by Russians who offered their help with the election. This is the classic push/pull intelligence sting, where you send one person to the target to push or plant information with them, then send another person to pull the planted information from the target so you can prove it. Radio personality Dan Bongino, who has a new book out titled Spygate, has been advancing this theory for some time; I now think hes right. Halper, Mifsud, and Downer were working with the CIA/FBI as intel assets sent to entrap the Trump campaign by pretending to offer Russian information to low-level Trump campaign staff members such as Page. And, right now, it looks as if to make that operation work, the FBI might very well have presented one of its own agents to the court as being a Russian spy. Whichever is the case, its all going to be coming out soon. When that happens, the fake narrative that any of these men were real Russian foreign agents working for Putins government, reaching out to collude with the Trump campaign to steal the 2016 election, is going to be ended at last. Enjoy watching the last few days that the True Believers have left, as they watch their TrumpRussia election-collusion narrative take its last struggling breaths. Brian Cates is a political pundit and writer based in South Texas and the author of Nobody Asked for My Opinion But Here It Is Anyway! Views expressed in this article are the opinions of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of The Epoch Times. Two People Found Dead in Indiana Are Identified as Married Teachers A male and female found dead in Indiana after a report of shots fired late Wednesday, Oct. 24, were identified as married teachers. The pair was found deceased at a home on Dorster Street in Fishers, a town outside Indianapolis after someone called 911 saying theyd heard gunshots. Police officials indicated that it was a murder-suicide. Based on the information weve gathered so far, we do not believe that there is anybody else involved in this incident, Fishers Police Sgt. Tom Weger told WTTV. The cause of death was not released pending autopsies. The pair was initially not identified but it later emerged they were both teachers and were married to each other. Frank Sergi, 52, was an art teacher at Fall Creek Intermediate, according to the districts website, and an author, according to his Twitter profile. His wife, Kristal Sergi, 44, was a preschool teacher at Hoosier Road Elementary, according to her Twitter page, where she regularly posted pictures of her students. The couple had a 10-year-old son together but he was not at home when police officers arrived at the scene, Fishers Police spokesman Sgt. Tom Weger told the Indianapolis Star. Court records indicated that the pair filed for a divorce in August but still needed to complete paperwork to finalize it. They had also recently put their home up for sale. Neighbors said they were shocked by what happened. Theyre going through a divorce and I know that can be really rough, Michael Jensen told Fox 2. But to see this its like wow. How and why would it drive someone to do something so sad and tragic. Unbelievable. The Hamilton Southeastern School District released a statement saying that classes were canceled on Oct. 25 at Hoosier Road Elementary School and Fall Creek Intermediate Schools due to the deaths so students could get grief counseling. It is with great sadness that we have learned of the sudden passing of two longtime staff members during an incident Wednesday evening. Fishers Police Department is leading the investigation, and we will be supporting them in their efforts, the district said in a statement. We are currently working through our districts crisis response team, which includes mental health professionals, to provide much-needed support during this difficult time, the statement concluded. Last night was a difficult night for our community. See below for my statement. https://t.co/IAOVKHSLpA Scott Fadness (@ScottFadness) October 25, 2018 Scott Fadness, mayor of Fishers, said in a statement that the deaths were a tragic incident. Fishers Police Department continues to conduct a thorough investigation and details will be released as they become available and when appropriate, he said. On behalf of the entire Fishers community, our sincere thoughts and prayers go out to the family and their loved ones. At a vigil held on Thursday night, Fadness told the crowd: Im not certain any of us are equipped to comprehend how these things happen. I encourage you to pursue solace in your faith, family, friends, and community. From NTD.tv A damaged plane sits at the airport after Super Typhoon Yutu hit the U.S. Commonwealth of the Northern Mariana Islands, Oct. 26, 2018, in Garapan, Saipan. (AP Photo/Dean Sensui) US Pacific Territory Will Need Help With Typhoon Recovery Residents of a U.S. territory in the Pacific ravaged by Super Typhoon Yutu are hopeful for help from the federal government as they dig out from damage including crumbled concrete houses, smashed cars, and fallen utility poles. Used to riding out monster homes, about 50,000 people living in the U.S. Commonwealth of the Northern Mariana Islands expect to be without electricity and running water for months after getting slammed by the strongest storm to hit the U.S. this year. Officials toured villages in Saipan and saw cars crushed under a collapsed garage, the ground ripped clean of vegetation and people injured by spraying glass, and other debris. As of Oct. 26 local time, there was one storm-related death confirmed. A military plane was bringing food, water, tarps, and other supplies, U.S. Federal Emergency Management Agency spokesman David Gervino said. The agency had already significant water and food in place because it had stored more than 220,000 liters of water and 260,000 shelf-stable meals at a distribution center on nearby Guam to prepare for Typhoon Mangkhut, which struck last month. Mangkhuts effects turned out to be not as bad as expected, so those supplies are still available. The agency is focused on helping restore power, opening sea and air ports, and ensuring cell towers can operate on emergency power until utility power returns, Gervino said. One change the agency adopted because of Hurricane Maria, a Category 5 storm that struck Puerto Rico last year, is it has created task forces to tackle different areas such as transportation, communications, food and water, and energy and fuel. Federal and territory officials are in constant communication to address each of these areas, he said. Gregorio Kilili Camacho Sablan, the territorys delegate to Congress, said residents will need significant help to recover. Colleagues in Congress have offered aid. Sablan expects a presidential disaster declaration to free up resources for storm relief. We want people to remember we are Americans and we exist, local lawmaker Edwin Propst said. Maximum sustained winds of 180 mph (290 kph) were recorded around the eye of the storm, which passed over the islands of Tinian and Saipan early Oct. 25, the National Weather Service said. A 44-year-old woman taking shelter in an abandoned building died when it collapsed in the storm, the governors office Facebook page said. Officials couldnt immediately be reached for additional details. The territorys only hospital in Saipan, the most populated island, said it received 133 people in the emergency room on Oct. 25, and three patients had severe injuries that needed surgery. Residents were stoic and still smiling and they were just thankful to be alive, said Propst, a member of the territorys House of Representatives. Sablan said most of the structures in the southern part of Saipan lost their roofs and many, including a high school, were completely destroyed. This damage is just horrendous, its going to take months and months for us to recover, he said by phone. Even the plants were torn up, he said: There are no shrubs, theyre all gone. There are no leaves. On the smaller island of Tinian, which took a direct hit, most of the houses were destroyed, and even some concrete ones were reduced to rubble, resident Juanita Mendiola said. We had to hide inside the bathroom because the house felt like it was going to blow apart, she said. It was literally shaking a concrete house shaking. The storm ripped a door of its hinges and flung it more than 100 feet away into a pigsty, she said. More than 800 people were in shelters across the territory, and space was running out, officials said. Electricity and running water shut down on Oct. 24, residents said. Cellphone coverage was spotty. Nadine Deleon Guerrero, a spokeswoman for the territorys emergency management department, said all of Saipan (population 50,000) and Tinian (population 3,000) islands were without utility power. Crews were still assessing how long it will take to restore electricity, she said. Commercial flights wont be operable for some time, she said. Terminals, the tarmac, runway, and equipment all suffered damage. The Saipan hospital was running on backup generators but otherwise operating normally, said Esther Lizama Muna, CEO of the Commonwealth Healthcare Corp. She said she expects more patients to seek medical help on Oct. 26 and worried they could run out of medical supplies. From my experience with previous typhoons, people tend to wait to care for their health as they focus on their homes and others, Muna said. So we do expect more injuries trickling in. A health center on Tinian sustained damage but was operating normally. The islands emergency management agency said it was trying to clear roadways so first responders could help residents who lost their homes, get people medical care, and head to shelters. At its peak, it felt like many trains running constant, Saipan resident Glen Hunter wrote in a Facebook message. At its peak, the wind was constant and the sound horrifying. Hunter said he doesnt expect to get power back for months, recalling how it took four months to restore electricity after Typhoon Soudelor in 2015. Recovery efforts on Saipan and Tinian will be slow, said Brandon Aydlett, a meteorologist with the National Weather Service. This is the worst-case scenario. This is why the building codes in the Marianas are so tough, he said. This is going to be the storm which sets the scale for which future storms are compared to. Propst, the lawmaker, said he has lived through dozens of typhoons, but this is the first time I feared for my life. He, his wife and their four children huddled in a bedroom as the storm ripped storm shutters from the windows of his concrete home, shattered a glass sliding door, and flooded the floors. Some poor families cant afford homes that conform to building codes, Propst said. Some build houses with concrete foundations and walls but that have wooden and tin roofs. Amber Alberts said she was feeling like one of the lucky ones after safely riding out the storm in the kitchen of her apartment. My place is fine, my car is fine, she said on Oct. 26 as she set out to find ways to help. By Caleb Jones and Jennifer Sinco Kelleher Volunteers Rush to Aid Survivors After Hurricane Michael FOUNTAIN, Fla.After a fitful night of throbbing abdominal pain, curled up in a ball inside her hurricane-battered home trying to wish away the agony, 21-year-old Angelena Sawyer could barely function, let alone tend to her infant daughter. Writhing in misery, Sawyer had no idea she was suffering from acute appendicitis. Neither did her parents nor her husband, Jacob Sibilia, fully realize the gravity of the situation as they coped with the larger crisis of surviving the aftermath of a natural disaster. A week already had passed since Hurricane Michael laid waste to rural Bay County, Fla., leaving Sawyers family, like many others, essentially stranded without electricity, phone service or running water. They had little if any gasoline, a 3-month-old to care for, and Sawyers stepmother, Jessica Melvin, was suffering from an infected foot injury. The turning point was a random visit that day by three disaster volunteersZach Smith, John Basehore, and Robert Pepperchecking on residents door to door in the sparsely populated Florida Panhandle community of Fountain, northeast of Panama City. Assessing Sawyers condition, they realized she needed immediate medical attention. While Smith cleaned and bandaged Melvins foot, his colleagues called the local fire department and arranged for an ambulance to transport Sawyer to the nearest hospital some 30 miles away. Doctors who treated her later told Sawyer her appendix had nearly ruptured. The intervention of Smith, Basehore, and Pepper had likely saved her life. At least 29 deaths in Florida have been attributed to Michael, which slammed ashore on Oct. 10 as a Category 4 hurricane and the most powerful on record ever to hit the Panhandle region. If it wasnt for this crew and these men, I wouldnt have made it to the hospital, Sawyer told Reuters in a text message following her ordeal. The three men, all U.S. military veterans, were part of the volunteer group 50 Star Search and Rescue, one of dozens of such outfits formed during previous flood disasters in Texas and Louisiana and reactivated in Florida when Michael struck. Many, including 50 Star, operated under the banner of CrowdSource Rescue, a larger Houston-based network that coordinated and supported teams on the ground with thousands of volunteers working remotely around the country. Specialized technology was a key to their work. Their search teams relied on a digital application that enables cell phones to operate as walkie-talkie radios, as well as an Uber-like app with global positioning satellite (GPS) map to pinpoint those in distress. Much of their effort was devoted to searching for people whom loved ones reported missing in the hardest hit shorefront communities of Mexico Beach, Panama City, and Panama City Beach. Teams also fanned out to isolated areas farther inland to deliver meals, water, and medical assistance. Their mission, said Smith, 30, was to make sure that medically everyone is safe and sound and that people have supplies and that theres no medical emergencies. After 11 days, CrowdSource teams succeeded in locating more than 2,800 people initially unaccounted forall found aliveand turned over about 30 unresolved cases to local authorities, the groups co-founder, Matthew Marchetti, told Reuters. The groups served some 4,500 meals to survivors during the past weekend alone, he said. While reinforcing the strained resources of official search-and-rescue teams, the volunteers worked largely independently of them, Marchetti said. Valerie Sale, a Bay County emergency management spokeswoman, said an almost total lack of cell phone and internet service that lasted nearly a week prevented coordination with outside volunteers, but were grateful for their efforts, for sure. By Brian Snyder Woman Dies After Suffering Broken Neck, Puncture Wounds in Suspected Cougar Attack An Oregon woman who died from a suspected cougar attack had a broken neck and more than a dozen puncture wounds to the nape of her neck, according to a police report released on Oct. 24. Diana Bober, 55, was last seen on Aug. 29. Her body was discovered on Sept. 10 along the Hunchback Trail in Oregons Mt. Hood National Forest. State wildlife officials said Bobers death marks the first deadly wild cougar attack in the state. Medical staff who performed the autopsy said the injuries appeared to be consistent with an animal attack, the report said, according to Oregon Live. Bober also had wounds on her hands. But there was no official cause of death listed in the report. Read More Missing Oregon Hiker Found Dead Likely Killed by Cougar: Officials The Oregon Department of Fish and Wildlife (ODFW) said they believe they have since shot and killed the female cougar responsible for Bobers death, according to a news release. All Available Evidence Points to Cougar The 5-page police report detailing Bobers injuries obtained by Oregon Live said that Bobers body was found on Sept. 10 about 300 feet off the Hunchback Trail down a steep incline. The location is about a mile from the Zigzag Ranger Station where her car was found. ODFW officials said a cougar was detected on video on Sept. 14 by a trail camera that had been set at the site of the attack. They killed the animal on the same day about six hours later, according to Oregon Live. Officials believe it was the one that had attacked Bober, but they could not rule out the possibility that another cougar was responsible because DNA testing was inconclusive. While DNA from the cougar was able to be extracted, the lab did not find matching DNA from the evidence collected at the scene where Bober died. The ODFW said it is likely because the evidence had been contaminated as several days had likely passed before Bobers body was found. During that time, there was also heavy rainfall that could have further contaminated the evidence, they said. The evidence is too contaminated for us to ever be able to tie it to an individual cougar, Director of the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service Forensics Lab Ken Goddard said. However, all available evidence points to this one cougar alone, according to the press release. Over the past week, no other cougar has been detected in the area, ODFW said. The news release announced that ODFW officers were ending their efforts to capture cougars in the area on Sept. 21, adding that they were confident they had captured the right animal. It is impossible to determine why the cougar attacked Diana. There is no sign that it was sick or unhealthy and a rabies test was negative, Broman said. Wildlife behavior is unpredictable but cougar attacks are extremely rare throughout the Western U.S. where cougars are found. Zack Stieber of NTD contributed to this report. From NTD.tv NORWALK State Sen. Bob Duff and Republican challenger Marc DAmelio staked their ground on education funding, the Walk Bridge and redevelopment during a candidates forum Thursday evening. Both candidates for the 25th District seat were asked at the City Hall event what theyd consider a good outcome for Wall Street Place, the stalled redevelopment project that received state funding. DAmelio opposed using taxpayer money on that project and the restoration of the nearby Wall Street Theater. We have to prioritize our progress, DAmelio said. Id much rather see our bridges and infrastructure fixed than politicians getting involved in places that they have no business being involved in. Duff said Wall Street never recovered from the 1955 flood. He lent his support to Wall Street Place, as planned, but noted that the developer died and Citibank since took ownership of the property. Weve been working very hard with the mayors office and others to try and get that project back on track, said Duff, the State Senates majority leader. One thing I wont apologize for is fighting to get Wall Street back working again and developed again the way it needs to be. I wont apologize for helping support funding for the Wall Street Theater. About 150 people attended the candidates forum hosted by the Norwalk League of Women Voters. Voters will decide Nov. 6 wholl represent the 25th District, which includes Norwalk and part of Darien. DAmelio presented himself as a self-made person who founded a clothing apparel company. Duff described himself as a passionate public servant whos helped constituents and brought dollars to the district. Ive worked very hard to bring back funding for this city so that we can grow and expand our tax base, Duff said. Theres not one redevelopment project here in the city of Norwalk that hasnt had state support. The two candidates agreed that Hartford shortchanges Norwalk in education funding, but they diverged on how to change that. DAmelio said Norwalk should go after more Education Cost Sharing dollars, but added that the Republican budget would have given Norwalk $5 million more this year and $6 million more last year. Duff said hes worked hard to bring more education funding to Norwalk. He cited his introduction of Senate Bill 2, which lowered the weight of property values - a detriment to Norwalk in the ECS formula. That formula actually brings down the property values from 90 percent to 70 percent, and included English-language learners in funding, Duff said. It includes poverty and concentrated poverty amongst the reforms as well. On the Connecticut Department of Transportations upcoming replacement of the Walk (Rail) Bridge over the Norwalk River, Duff said its unrealistic to believe the existing bridge can be welded shut or replaced with a fixed bridge. He said hes worked to minimize disruptions, saving two businesses from eminent domain and securing $34 million for the Maritime Aquarium to replace the IMAX Theater and other impacted space. DAmelio vowed to get the state to rethink the bridge replacement project if Republican Bob Stefanowski is elected governor. You have my word that if Bob Stefanowski gets elected, my first call to him is to have him take a second look at this bridge and work with the DOT and make sure its right for Norwalk, DAmelio said. The two candidates also diverged on the states economy and job growth. DAmelio cited Connecticuts poor ranking in taxation, the cost of doing business and other areas referenced in a Connecticut Commission on Fiscal Stability report as evidence that the state is doing poorly compared to others. Im all about on-the-job training but 14 years and you cant get it right? said DAmelio, referring to Duffs years in office. Weve got to make some changes here. What are we going to be, (ranked) 50 on everything? Duff painted a rosier picture of the states economy, saying Pratt & Whitney, Electric Boat and Sikorsky companies have decided to stay in Connecticut rather than relocate elsewhere. He counted growing the tax base and investing in transportation, education and affordable housing as among his legislative priorities. During a 137th State House District candidates forum earlier in the evening, Democratic incumbent Chris Perone and Republican challenger Frank Page found some common ground on addressing the states pension liability, boosting education funding to Norwalk and increasing voter turnout. They were miles apart on whether Connecticut should consider bringing back tolls on its highways. To me, its another tax and you can call it a user fee, Page said. What people call a user fee, thats a fancy word for tax. He objected to spending money to study tolls. Perone said the study is needed to better understand how to pay for infrastructure repairs. The longer we wait on transportation infrastructure spending and this is what we are getting into, Perone said. We have 332 roads that have to be brought up to a state of good repair in Connecticut. By Prime Sarmiento, China Daily | Oct. 26, 2018 The use of big data and mobile payments has helped shore up Chinese tourist arrivals in Europe, industry executives told the seventh Global Tourism Economy Forum in Macao on Tuesday. Jane Sun Jie, chief executive officer of Chinese mainland online travel services provider Ctrip.com International, said on the opening day of the two-day assembly her company invests in artificial intelligence, big data, cloud computing, deep learning and data analysis to "help our partners better understand our customers". Ctrip, based in Shanghai, is China's biggest online travel agency. Its partners include airlines and hotels, allowing Chinese travelers to book everything they need on one website. Sun said the company has more than 300 million users, and by diving deep into the data it gathers from online bookings, it's able to help customers "make a seamless, satisfying and safe trip to Europe". She noted that Europe has been attracting more Chinese tourists amid increased flights and visa facilitation. While most of these travelers would go to Europe on package tours in the past, a growing number now prefer to travel on their own. Ctrip enables these travelers to customize their trips by helping them book not only airplane tickets and hotel rooms, but also rent cars, hire tour guides and reserve seats in upscale restaurants. Travel safety is a priority and, as such, Ctrip offers travel insurance and 24-hour emergency relief SOS services, said Sun. "We want to ensure that, no matter where our customers are, they're well protected and served," she said. Desiree Bollier, chairperson and global chief merchant of United Kingdom-based Bicester Village Shopping Collection, said her company's partnership with Chinese financial services corporation UnionPay has helped in tailoring products and services for Chinese clients. Bicester Village, based in Oxfordshire county, is a renowned shopping destination. Its boutiques offer discounted high-end fashion brands that have attracted many Chinese tourists in the past few years. Bollier said data gathered through the partnership with UnionPay has "accelerated our understanding of what the Chinese guests like to eat, what they like to shop, what (kind of services) they're expecting". By securing the "local knowledge" of Chinese customers, she said Bicester shops and restaurants have been able to serve Chinese clients better by hiring bilingual staff and offering personal shopping services. Ge Huayong, chairman of China UnionPay, said they plan to promote mobile payments in Bicester with more Chinese customers now opting for mobile payments. Bollier said while most of Bicester Village's stores have yet to accept mobile payments, the company is moving toward that direction as a result of its teaming up with UnionPay. "The electronic wallet is here to stay," she said, noting that Bicester has to reinvent and adapt itself to technology "because without it, we're completely non-relevant". China is now among the world's largest sources of international tourists, according to the latest report by the United Nations World Tourism Organization. The organization's International Tourism Trends 2017 report said China has continued to lead global outbound travel in terms of expenditure. Chinese travelers spent nearly $260 billion last year, nearly twice that of US travelers - the second-biggest group of spenders - with $135 billion. The report also noted that Europe is a popular destination for Chinese tourists, with about 54 percent of them classified as free independent travelers. Most of them are in the 30-49 age group who prefer mobile payments to eliminate the risk of carrying cash and currency exchange fluctuations. Following the murder of Jamal Khashoggi, there have been many calls for re-examining 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 long-standing 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. Tyler Cowen is a Bloomberg Opinion columnist. He is a professor of economics at George Mason University. Dean Phillips, the Democrat trying to oust Republican Erik Paulsen from his Minneapolis-area House seat, blasts the incumbent for having "voted 98 percent of the time with Donald Trump." Jennifer Wexton makes an identical charge against Barbara Comstock in their northern Virginia race - she calls her "Barbara Trumpstock." California Republican congressmen Mimi Walters, from Orange County, and David Valadao, from the San Joaquin Valley, have taken the same hit from their opponents. Ads against Peter Roskam have zinged him over his pro-Trump votes twice. The data on how much each congressman has voted with Trump comes from the website FiveThirtyEight. What follows isn't a criticism of the site's employees for collecting and disseminating this data. Instead I offer four related reasons that voters should not read too much importance into the percentages. First: Republicans don't get high scores because they are slavish followers of Trump; he's the one following them. They're mostly voting according to the party's longstanding preferences, and he, partly under their influence, has gone along. That's why most Republicans have percentages in the 90s. Second: Votes on fairly uncontroversial legislation boost the percentages for nearly everyone. The House vote on the Stop School Violence Act, a priority for the group Sandy Hook Promise, was 407-10. The scores went up for everyone in that majority, since Trump backed the bill. Third: The scorecard has the potential to make bipartisanship on the part of Democrats look like weakness toward Trump. Forty-one House Democrats crossed the aisle to vote to let Obamacare's tax credits be used to defray premium costs for Cobra coverage, and 50 voted to expand Medicaid funding for the treatment of cocaine- and opioid-use disorders. Probably none of them (or the Republicans) voted that way because of pressure from Trump, or to signal their friendliness toward him. The policies at issue in those votes have nothing to do with the reasons Trump inspires strong emotions, pro and con. If either vote had gone the other way, it would have inflicted very little political damage on the administration. Yet the scorecard could leave the impression that the Democrats who voted no are better members of the "resistance" than the ones who voted yes. Fourth: The vote percentages are an extremely imperfect proxy for which congressmen are most and least helpful to Trump. Kyrsten Sinema is a House Democrat who is running for Senate from Arizona. Walter Jones is a conservative Republican from North Carolina. According to the scorecard, she is significantly Trumpier than he is. I'd say their respective scores tell you something about those two people, but more about the limits of this measure. Among Republicans, the relative moderates are more likely to have high Trump scores than harder-right conservatives. (Which helps explain why so many of the moderates have been hit by the scorecard ads: They have high scores, and they're in swing districts where being seen as too tight with Trump hurts.) The harder-right congressmen were more likely to vote against budget compromises and bipartisan initiatives. The 69 Republicans who voted against disaster relief for Puerto Rico all lowered their scores by doing so. In no important sense did their vote undermine their alliance with the president. Rep. Thomas Massie, a conservative Republican from northeastern Kentucky, has been much less critical of Trump than Barbara Comstock has. But his pro-Trump score is much lower than hers - in part because he voted against the Puerto Rico bill and budget agreements, opposed a bipartisan bill to combat opioid abuse, and was one of the 10 votes against the school-safety bill. Trump himself does not seem to be too upset about many of the votes "against him." Former GOP Rep. Ron DeSantis has fulsomely praised Trump and, in return, won the president's endorsement in his race to be governor of Florida. But dozens of Republicans in the House had more "pro-Trump" records than he did. Likewise, Rep. Matt Gaetz, another Floridian, regularly carries Trump's water on television, but he has one of the lowest pro-Trump scores of Republicans (although it's still 81.5 percent). If you oppose Trump, you may reasonably wish to punish congressmen for being close allies of his. Put too much stock in these percentages, though, and you may punish the wrong things. - Ponnuru is a Bloomberg Opinion columnist. He is a senior editor at National Review, visiting fellow at the American Enterprise Institute and contributor to CBS News. Any horror movie fans worth their blood-drenched carving knives know that the brooding houses where villains stalk victims are often central to the most memorable moments in these gruesome flicks. Remember when Michael Myers falls off the balcony in "Halloween"? Or the haunted cookie-cutter suburban home in "Poltergeist"? How about the ending of "The Exorcist," when a possessed Father Damien Karras hurls himself out the bedroom window and tumbles down the stairs to his death? These homes were integral to the horror. So as the ultimate Halloween treat, we decided to do a bit of real estate stalking of our own to locate the actual abodes used in five classic horror movies to see how they've held up, and how much they're worth today. To our delight, some of themsuch as the "Poltergeist" housestill look like they did in the films, just with taller trees or a new paint job. While none of these iconic places is currently for sale, it's worth noting that all of them have an estimated value higher than the neighborhood median listing price. Could it be their spooky cinematic cachet? Or maybe it's just that they're all rather nice places (at least, by the light of day). Dying to learn more about these infamous properties? Take a look belowif you dare. The home featured in the movie "Poltergeist" Google Maps Location: Simi Valley, CA Estimated value: $767,400 Median listing price in 93063 ZIP: $615,100 Unlike earlier horror movies that took place in creepy Gothic mansions, the home of the Freeling family in "Poltergeist" is an average four-bed, three-bath tract house in the suburbs. And that's just how producer Steven Spielberg wanted it. The property in Simi Valley, a bedroom community 40 minutes from downtown Los Angeles, was chosen because of how commonplace it looks. Steven liked that house because it was the end of the road. It was a two-story, valley-type mock Tudor, and it just fit everything. ... He always wanted to be in normal residential areas, Jim Spencer, the production designer on the 1982 horror film, told Yahoo. Today, the house looks nearly identical to its celluloid self, save for the full-grown trees in the front yard that were just saplings during filming in the '80s. The home may be valued just about $150,000 more than the median listing price in Simi Valley, but we wouldn't be surprised to see this iconic abode fetch top dollar from a horror movie buff, if it ever were to go on sale. The house where Laurie baby-sits Tommy in the movie "Halloween" Google Maps Location: West Hollywood, CA Estimated value: $2,694,400 Median listing price in 90046: $1,800,100 Although this famous flick is set in the fictional town of Haddonfield, IL, the unassuming Cape Codstyle home that's the site of the final showdown between baby sitter Laurie Strode (Jamie Lee Curtis) and murderous bro Michael Myers is actually located in Los Angeles. Of the five houses we looked at, this was the only one whose exterior and interior were used. The ultralow-budget film was shot in spring 1978, so the production team painted dozens of bags of fake leaves and sprinkled them around the house and streets to make it look like fall. Today, the four-bedroom, two-bathroom house is valued at just a smidge under $2.7 millionnot too shabby for a place that will give every visitor nightmares. The house used in the film "The Exorcist," as it stands today, in Washington, DC. Peter Paulsen Location: Georgetown, Washington DC Estimated value: $3,690,700 Median listing price in 20007: $1,099,500 "The Exorcist" is considered one of the most disturbing films of all time, and most of the horrific happenings take place in the well-appointed home of Chris MacNeil and her daughter, Regan. While the action inside the home was filmed in a studio in New York City, production chose a traditional brick house in the Georgetown neighborhood of Washington, DC, the city where the film takes place. Fun fact: The staircase where Father Damien Karras dies is located close to the MacNeil house, although not as close as the film makes it look. The film crew had to build an extension of the front of the house in order to stage the scene of Karras falling from Regan's bedroom window onto the stairs. The stairs were also padded with rubber so the stuntman wouldn't get seriously injured rolling down them, according to USA Today. The infamous stairs in "The Exorcist" SDC The first three "Amityville Horror" movies were filmed at this house. realtor.com Location: Toms River, NJ Estimated value: $1,075,163 Median listing price in 08753: $315,100 Anyone who has read the original "Amityville Horror" book or seen any of the movies knows that the real murders that inspired this (um, fictional) story happened at 108 Ocean Ave. in the town of Amityville on Long Island, NY. But since the town was unwilling to allow filming to take place there, the production team chose this four-bed, two-bath home in Toms River, NJ, to be immortalized in the 1979 film. Exterior shots were filmed at the Toms River property, while the interior scenes were captured on a sound stage at MGM Studios in Los Angeles. Although the home is currently valued at a little more than $1 million, the recent real estate history of this home is a sad tale. Listed in 2011 for $1.45 million, it languished on the market and endured steady price cuts for two years until, in July 2013, it sold for a measly $350,000. The house where Nancy Thompson is stalked by Freddy Krueger in "A Nightmare on Elm Street" realtor.com Location: West Hollywood, CA Estimated value: $2,660,600 Median listing price in 90046: $1,800,100 Just a few blocks from the "Halloween" house is another iconic piece of real estate: the house where Freddy Krueger stalks Nancy Thompson in Wes Craven's 1984 film, "A Nightmare on Elm Street." The movie took place in the suburban town of Springwood, OH, but the real house is on a tree-lined street in Los Angeles. The three-bed, four-bath house sold in 2013 for $2.1 million, and its estimated value has crept up to $2.6 millionmuch higher than the neighborhood median listing price. Interior shots were filmed on a set in Los Angeles where the crew could facilitate such famous scenes as a bed spewing a geyser of blood, a special effect that took 80 gallons of water and red paint that was then poured through an upside-down set, according to IFC. The post From 'Halloween' to 'The Amityville Horror,' What Classic Horror-Film Houses Really Cost appeared first on Real Estate News & Insights | realtor.com. GODFREY Eight businesses and organizations were honored as Captains of the RiverBend at the RiverBend Growth Associations annual State of the RiverBend luncheon. Approximately 325 people attended the 25th annual event, which also highlighted other highlights in the area. It was held in The Commons at Lewis and Clark Community College. We honor folks for economic enhancement, community involvement and government and public involvement, said Growth Association President John Keller. We have a fine group. Theyre all well-deserved. They have all invested in our community, either in time or money, or in volunteerism through their employees, we appreciate that and want to recognize that. Three businesses were honored for community involvement: 1st MidAmerica Credit Union, Advantage and WBGZ. Three were honored for economic enhancement: Alton Memorial Hospital, Imperial Manufacturing Group and OSF Saint Anthonys Health Center. Lewis and Clark Community College and the Alton School District were honored for Government & Public Enhancement. The awards were handed out by RBGA Chairman John Roberts and Chairman-elect Rob Schwartz. Keller said both before the event and in his closing remarks that area residents should be positive, and there is a lot to celebrate. He cited a number of improvements, ranging from a new Dollar Tree and Eastgate Plaza renovations in East Alton, to bike trails in Wood River. He said people need to be positive. I think were our own worst critics, he said before the event. The people from outside our area have a positive to neutral view of us, while inside here we take a negative to neutral view of ourselves. Its unwarranted. We have a lot of money being spent in this area. Keller noted that in 2017 Alton issued $17.9 million in building permits, up from $8.5 in 2014. Somewhere along the way that number was skewed by the intermodal center on Homer Adams, he said. However, thats still indicative of a lot happening in our area. Theres a more positive attitude, theres an entrepreneurial attitude that was bolstered by the Small Business Revolution. He also took note of the $500 million MidAmerica Gateway International Business Park. It will greatly impact our region because there are going to be people who have to live, eat and work, and theyre not all going to live up there, he said in his closing remarks. Its going to be a big boon to our area as well, and were going to support that. What is good for one part of the area is good for all of the area. The program listed a large amount of demographic and economic information. The top employer in the region is Olin Corporation, with 1,424 workers; followed by Olin Brass at 920; Alton Memorial Hospital, 897 employees; Phillips 66 Wood River Refinery, with 825 employees, and Alton School District, with 795 employees. Retail sales in the Riverbend region increased to $1.195 billion in 2017 from 1.147 in 2013. At the same time the labor force had a slight increase, while unemployment dropped from 8.5 percent to 4.7 percent (the most recent figures show the local unemployment rate at 4 percent). There has also been an increase in median home sale prices and new housing starts. Reach reporter Scott Cousins at 618-208-6447. Erik S. Lesser | Getty Images Illinois is on track to reduce carbon emissions with its plan to increase renewable power throughout the state, according to a report by the Union of Concerned Scientists. The group said carbon emissions expected from electricity are expected to decrease by 22 percent by 2030. EDWARDSVILLE Madison County became one of 27 Illinois companies and organizations recognized this week for protecting the environment, helping sustain the future and improving the economy. The Planning and Development Department received recognition Tuesday from the Illinois Sustainable Technology Center (ISTC) at the Union League Club in Chicago for sustainability in its solarization program. Kim Petzing, the countys resource management coordinator, said the Planning and Development Department worked with the Midwest Renewable Energy Association and a number of local partners to offer the Solarize Madison County/Glen Carbon program to all Madison County residents, businesses and farmers in 2017. The program was a voluntary solar group-buy program that helped home and business owners invest in lower-cost solar installations through the power of volume purchasing, Petzing said. Petzing said the Solarize Madison County/Glen Carbon program was a joint effort that included partnerships between the county, Midwest Renewable Energy Association, Lewis & Clark Community College, the Village of Glen Carbon, Glen Carbon Cool Cities Committee and StraightUp Solar. Similar programs have successfully taken place in other Illinois communities, such as Urbana-Champaign and Chicago. This was the first time a program of this magnitude was offered in southern Illinois or the St. Louis metro region, she said. The program included free, educational one hour Power Hour workshops. During the sessions, participants were informed of the basics of solar energy and logistics for the program and received a free evaluation and proposal for a solar installation on their property. Twenty Power Hours were scheduled between March and August 2017, with 406 residents in attendance, resulting in 519 leads and 293 kW contracted for installation on 38 properties throughout the county. All installations were completed by December 2017. The 38 installations are projected to produce 357,904 kWh and save participants $35,503 in the first year alone. These installations are expected to offset 565,488 pounds of CO2 and the use of 6,800,176 gallons of water in the first year as well. The program proved to be successful enough that it has expanded for 2018 and is now being offered in both Madison and St. Clair Counties, with the title Solarize Metro East, and is on track to double the 2017 results, Petzing said. Chairman Kurt Prenzler said the county is part of an elite group, by which it is committed to using its natural resources. The county is on a path to success with this program, Prenzler said. Using clean energy will assist in saving taxpayers money. Every year, a group of champions represents the highest models of sustainable commerce, resource use, and governance the winners of the Illinois Sustainability Awards. Illinois success as an economic and cultural leader depends upon our responsible management of natural resources, as well as sustainable development, Kevin OBrien, director of the Illinois Sustainable Technology Center (ISTC,) which administers the awards program, said. Since 1987, ISTC has presented Sustainability Awards to organizations in Illinois that have demonstrated a commitment to environmental excellence through outstanding and innovative sustainability practices. Lewis and Clark Community College and Menasha Packaging 21G of Edwardsville were also honored during the ISTC event. The Illinois Sustainable Technology Center is a division of the Prairie Research Institute at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. Any Illinois public or private organization is eligible to apply for the award and winners are selected through a rigorous process of review and examination by ISTC technical assistance experts. 11 jailed for gang rape of 14-year-old Phang Nga girl PHUKET: The Phang Nga Provincial Court yesterday (Oct 25) handed down jail sentences to 11 men in connection with the gang rape of a 14-year-old girl that took place in Baan Koh Raet of Takua Thung District, just north of Phuket, in 2016. crimesexviolencepolice By Bangkok Post Friday 26 October 2018, 09:34AM Police inspect a shack in Koh Raet Village of Phang Ngas Takua Thung District, just north of Phuket, where a 14-year-old girl said she was sexually abused. Photo: Achadtaya Chuenniran / Bangkok Post file Seven defendants were sentenced to life while two were sentenced to 15 years, another to 45 years, and another to 20 years and four months. The court found them guilty of gang-raping the girl. The court ruled the allegations against the defendants were substantiated by solid evidence, including a physical examination of the girl that showed she was raped and statements given by a team of psychiatrists at Takuapa Hospital that the girl suffered from depression and psychological trauma. The attackers filmed the girl being raped and used the footage to blackmail her into further coerced sex, the girls mother said. Each man was ordered to give the victim B6 million in compensation. However, the court did not find the men guilty of forcing the girl to take drugs. Sanphet Thipmonthian, a lawyer representing the defendants, said he will appeal against the ruling. The case entered the spotlight after the girls mother lodged a complaint with local police last September, asking them to reopen her daughter's case after finding out there could be at least 40 people involved in the rape. The girls mother revealed that the rapes began in May of 2016, when her daughter was 14 years old. The woman said earlier that she was forced to leave her daughter alone with her younger brother when she went out at night. She then began noticing unusual behaviour from her daughter, who eventually told her she had been repeatedly raped. The villagers in Baan Koh Raet were upset by coverage of the case, with many becoming distressed as they believed in the innocence of the suspects. Police said earlier they had sought warrants for as many as 17 suspects, but the court rejected them and told the police to gather more information to substantiate the allegations. In a separate development, the Crime Suppression Division (CSD) yesterday arrested in Ayutthaya Somkid Sawasit, 31, suspected of attempted murder, to find that he was also wanted for the alleged rape of a 14-year-old in Phichit in 2009. Enquiries are ongoing. Read original story here. https://www.bangkokpost.com/news/general/1564558/11-jailed-for-gang-rape-of-14-year-old Canadian charged with selling bogus apprenticeships BANGKOK: A Canadian man has been arrested in Bangkok for allegedly selling bogus job apprenticeships abroad to Thai students at B150,000 each. crimepolice By Bangkok Post Thursday 25 October 2018, 05:23PM Crime Suppression Division police arrest Michael Roberge, 37, (centre) at the Amarin Plaza building in Pathumwan district, Bangkok, yesterday. Photo: Supplied Col Arun Wachirasrisukanya, a superintendent at the Crime Suppression Division, said Michael Roberge, 37, was detained on the 18th floor of the Amarin Plaza building in Pathumwan district, Bangkok, yesterday (Oct 24). His apprehension followed complaints from university students. One of them told police Roberge, through his company, offered him an apprenticeship at the Pittsburgh Marriott hotel in Pennsylvania at a wage of US$14 (B461) per hour, on payment of a B150,000 fee. He did not see him again after paying the money. Another student complained he paid the same amount for an apprenticeship at a Thai restaurant in Miami, and a wage of $8 (B263) per hour. A month after paying the money he was unable to contact Roberge's company. Col Arun said Roberge had set up Work West (Thailand) Co in Chiang Mai province. A Thai national worked as the manager. The company had since shut its doors. The Chiang Mai court issued a warrant for his arrest on July 4, 2017. Roberge told police that had he opened the company, but his Thai manager had defrauded the students. See original story here. Low-pressure system brings weather warning for Phuket, Andaman PHUKET: The Thai Meteorological Department today issued a heavy weather warning for Phuket and the Andaman coast with heavy rain and strong waves brought on by a low-pressure system approaching from the southwest. tourismmarinetransportSafety By Tanyaluk Sakoot Friday 26 October 2018, 12:43PM The forecast is for heavy rain and strong wind. Image: TMD The forecast is for heavy rain and strong wind. Image: TMD The low-pressure system is hovering just southwest of Phuket. Image: TMD The low-pressure system is hovering just southwest of Phuket. Image: TMD The low-pressure system is moving across the Andaman Sea and will even reach the Gulf of Thailand, creating waves of up to two meters high in the Andaman Sea, the warning said. Some torrential rains will be forecast for the provinces: Ranong, Phang Nga, Phuket, Krabi, Trang and Satun People in the above areas should beware of a possible flash flood and the overflow of river, the warning stated. (Click here.) Please be careful of flooding and hard rain. The weather warning also forecasts winds gusting up to 20-35km/h over the weekend, Phuwieng Prakhammintara, TMD Deputy Director General for Operations, reported. Wiwat Chitchertwong, who is currently the Acting Director of the Phuket Marine Office, also issued a notice today warning all boat owners, captains and crews of the impending weather and advising small boats to stay ashore. All ships should proceed with caution, and small boats keep ashore. Residents along the coast beware of the inshore surge, he said. Stay tuned for the weather updates and beware of the severe conditions due to a possible high wave two meters, he added in his advisory. Marine rescue officials must ready at all times, Mr Wiwat added Also, tour operators must urge their clients to be safe and wear life jackets, he said. Police nab one suspect for Phuket checkpoint run, shooting at officers PHUKET: Police have apprehended one suspect who was in the car that ran a police checkpoint in Rassada, north of Phuket Town, early Monday morning (Oct 22), with of its occupants opening fire at police officers. crimepolice By Tanyaluk Sakoot Friday 26 October 2018, 05:40PM The car, a Nissan Teana registered in Lopburi, near Bangkok, was later found abandoned in Chalong along with a shotgun and ammunition dumped in the grass nearby. (See story here.) Lt Col Somsak Sophagan of the Chalong Police, who is the lead investigator in the case, told The Phuket News today that he travelled to Takuapa District in Phang Nga, north of Phuket, yesterday (Oct 25) to question the suspect. Col Somsak explained that Takuapa Police had called him to question the suspect at Takuapa Police Station after they arrested the man for selling drugs and possession of a firearm. Officers at Takuapa Police Station said that the man had admitted that he was involved in a crime at a checkpoint in Phuket on Monday, he explained. The man admitted that he was in the car when it was driven through the checkpoint, but would not admit to anything else, Col Somsak told The Phuket News. I asked if he were the driver or a passenger, which he declined to answer, and so we still do not know how many people were in the car at the time, Col Somsak added. Col Somsak declined to name the suspect, but said that the suspect was about 30 years old and that the suspect was registered as a Phuket resident. Col Somsak also noted he was still unsure of how many people were in the car when it ran the checkpoint. The Phuket City Police officers who were at the checkpoint said that they believe there were three suspects in the car, including the driver. However, I have still yet to question the officers who were involved in the incident, he said. Other aspects of the investigation are also making slow progress, Col Somsak admitted. At this stage we are still trying to track down how the suspect or suspects fled the area after abandoning the car. We are checking CCTV in the area, he said. We have still yet to confirm whether the car was stolen or even in whose name it is registered, he added. Col Somsak also explained that although the shooting incident, in which police also returned fire, took place within the jurisdiction of the Phuket City Police, he had been assigned to lead the investigation. The car was found in my area, which makes it is our responsibility, he said. US Embassy in Thailand to cease providing income affidavit BANGKOK: Effective Jan 1, 2019, the United States Embassy in Bangkok and the US Consulate General in Chiang Mai will no longer provide an income affidavit and will not notarise previous versions of the income affidavit, the embassy announced in a statement today (Oct 26). immigration By The Phuket News Friday 26 October 2018, 04:04PM The Royal Thai Government requires applicants to meet a minimum income threshold to obtain a non-immigrant long-term stay visa. While the Thai government has previously relied on income affidavits to demonstrate this fact, the US government has no mechanism to confirm individual incomes and cannot legally claim to do so, the statement read. (Click here.) Because the US government has no means of confirming a US citizens income, a notarised affidavit from the US Embassy has never met the requirement to prove a minimum income level for a non- immigrant O, O-A, or O-X long-term stay visa, the statement continued. However, the embassy noted, There are other methods for US citizens to demonstrate they are eligible for this Thai visa category. US citizens residing in Thailand should refer to the Thai government for information about verifying their income moving forward. For the most current information, US citizens should check with the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, the Thai Embassy in Washington, D.C., or their local immigration office. the embassy advised. The move for the US Embassy to cease issuing income affidavits follows the British Embassy in Bangkok announcing on Oct 8 that it will no longer provide British nationals with letters confirming their income, also effective from Jan 1 next year. (See story here.) For more information on US Embassy services to US citizens, click here. Development company works to increase allure of Watertown At the heart of Watertown's growth and development is a company that continues to play a significant role in making change happen. The legendary Bob Seger has been honoured in his hometown of Detroit by having a street named after him. A campaign led by Jim O'Brien, a local radio host, was what made the street a reality. "It was our idea to do a Bob Seger Boulevard here in Detroit. A couple of years ago we put together Glenn Frey drive in his hometown of Royal Oak, Michigan, and it occurred to us: why do we wait till these folks are gone to say thank you?" O'Brien said. Stores are so 20th century. At least thats what many online brands believed. Companies like Warby Parker, Bonobos and Casper didnt 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 North 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 offline in a big way. In their push to become retails next household names theyre venturing beyond the coasts and major cities into suburban America. Its also an acknowledgement that 90 cents of every retail dollar in the U.S. is still spent at a physical location, and industry watchers dont expect it to fall below 75 cents until the middle of next decade. The clicks-to-bricks phenomenon encompasses big names like Amazon Books and Casper as well as less-known startups such as mens shorts purveyor Chubbies and hair colour 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, an ad 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, theyre now core to long-term growth. Retail startups 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 hed 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 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 popping up in places youd least expect. Last month, Warby Parker opened a store in a former GameStop next to a Chick-fil-A in Raleigh, North Carolina. In April, the eyewear brand debuted in Alabama. Bonobos, acquired last year by Walmart Inc., recently opened in Lexington, Kentucky, 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, UntuckIts founder. Well, all of our stores are performing well. Heres 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 clamouring for attention. Much the same thing is happening offline 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 by the woes at department-store chain Sears, mall vacancy rates hit 9.1 per cent 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 dont carry inventory. But that hasnt 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 like Apple Inc. or Barnes & Noble Inc. Its 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. To land them, landlords arent 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, theyre offering to help pay for store remodelling and taking a small percentage of sales instead of monthly rent. Some shopping centres are becoming venture capitalists, investing in promising retail startups 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 startup that opened its first store last month. The downtown Manhattan location doesnt have any staff, and shoppers pay via text message. Now that theyve gotten brick-and-mortar religion, the brands are starting to understand why Macys 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 co-founded womens 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 months 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 offline 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 offline shoppers spent more (today the spread is 13 per cent) and returned less. In July, Margaux opened a permanent store in Manhattans Greenwich Village. Shes planning more. It is a customer acquisition necessity for us, Buckley says. Were finding that continually in city after city. Going offline 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, offline customers bought more and after the stores debut, there was a noticeable lift in the surrounding areas 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 didnt want to buy a $98 shirt because they werent sure if were just another fly-by-night e-comm company started taking us very seriously. Bonoboss guide shops are set up for customers to try on and order clothes (theres no inventory) and have become as important to the marketing mix as glossy catalogues 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 per cent more than they would if starting their experience online. Bonobos CEO Onvural likens each store to a ginormous billboard. In embracing the offline 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 theyre smarter. That they have better data about their customers. That they wont make the same mistakes. Of course, they also said physical stores were a relic of the past. Read more about: Interest from alcohol giants such as Constellation Brands Inc. and Molson Coors Brewing Co. has made cannabis-infused beverages the most talked-about product in the pot industry, but theres one widely acknowledged problem: they taste awful. A tiny Canadian company thinks its found a solution. Instead of infusing a drink with cannabinoids such as THC or CBD, then masking the oily, bitter concoction with sugar as many beverage makers do in the U.S., Province Brands of Canada is developing beer brewed directly from the cannabis plant. The offerings that are currently available are so suboptimal that its hard to see a bright future for cannabis beverages, but like anything else it has to start somewhere, Dooma Wendschuh, chief executive officer and co-founder of Toronto-based Province Brands, said in an interview. Beer probably tasted like mouldy bread at the beginning too, Wendschuh pointed out. Provinces patent-pending idea is to replace the barley typically used in the brewing process with the stalks, stems and roots of the cannabis plant. Adding hops and water, Wendschuh is convinced he can create a line of non-alcoholic beverages that taste just as good as any beer on the market. It might not get you drunk but it may get you high as it will contain 6.5 milligrams of THC, the psychoactive ingredient in cannabis. The market has big potential a September report from Canaccord Genuity Group Inc. estimated that sales of drinks infused with THC or CBD will reach $600 million (U.S.) in the U.S. by 2022. In Canada, edible forms of cannabis wont be legal until next year. Wendschuh grew up in Miami and worked in the video-game industry, helping to develop the Assassins Creed franchise, but began to rethink his career when some states began to legalize cannabis. He liked the idea of developing a safer, healthier alternative to alcohol and headed north. He began developing his beer in a small lab at Loyalist College in Belleville, Ont., which offers a cannabis applied science program. In early September, before cannabis was legalized, Province researchers were using hemp to perfect the brewing process. The first batch had room for improvement, the team admitted, but they were optimistic theyd find ways to refine the flavour. For a guy who goes out there and trashes the alcohol industry every chance he gets, Wendschuhs idea is attracting a lot of interest from beer makers. Province has signed three letters of intent with Canadian brewers who are looking for help producing cannabis versions of their beer and one with a licensed marijuana producer, Wendschuh said. An announcement will likely come soon, he said. Share your thoughts: The company plans to list on the TSX Venture Exchange via a reverse takeover and is in the midst of raising C$30 million through a private placement. And to meet anticipated demand, the company is moving into a 123,000-square-foot space in Grimsby, Ont., that will have the capacity to brew up to 51 million bottles a year at full capacity. Wendschuh said he had a hard time convincing potential investors to give him the time of day a year ago, but thats changed since Constellations investment in Canopy Growth Corp. We have become a subject of a lot of interest for some of the larger and better situated companies in this industry, he said, declining to name them. Ronan Levy, chief strategic officer of Trait Biosciences Inc. and a former executive at Aurora Cannabis Inc., was an early investor in Province. He was attracted by Wendschuhs energy and persistence. At the beginning I was betting on the jockey, not the horse, Levy said. But as the brand as evolved I saw the opportunity and the interest in the beverage space. There are many other companies out there that are brewing beers and then adding marijuana after the fact, but Wendschuh likens those to a blended whisky, while Provinces product will be more like a single malt scotch. Theyre both going to get you drunk, but consumers are willing to pay so much more for that single malt scotch, he said. Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, implicated in the brutal assassination of esteemed Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi, is a proxy for the worlds strongman leaders. And he might be the first among them to be brought down. Mohammed bin Salman was appointed to his current position by his father, King Salman. Otherwise, though, MBS, as he is known, is akin to the demagogues who have risen to power on a global wave of populist discontent. Like them, MBS offers false hopes of a new era of prosperity while ruling by fear and fear-mongering. MBS clones have taken power in the Philippines, Turkey, Hungary, Poland and Austria, and another will assume the Brazilian presidency Oct. 28. And the U.S. chief executive is a cheerleader for those strongmen. But within that confederacy of thugs, Mohammed bin Salmans grip on power is uncertain. MBS is a 33-year-old neophyte in domestic economic policy and geopolitics. He could be swiftly replaced by his father, King Salman bin Abdulaziz Al Saud. Veteran Saudi observers believe that can be avoided if the king succeeds in his post-Khashoggi effort to house-break his son. Then again, the king has already ousted two previous heirs apparent before elevating MBS only last year. MBS over-stepped with the assassination of Khashoggi, age 59 when he died on or about Oct. 2. The principal subject of Khashoggis criticism was MBS, whom Khashoggi regarded as a dangerously impulsive leader undermining his countrys interests. Khashoggi was no dissident. He was an intensely patriotic Saudi who for several years worked loyally for the ruling House of Saud. Khashoggis high regard among diplomats and intelligence agencies and not just his martyrdom as an investigative journalist accounts for the shock in world capitals over his death. That global outrage has jeopardized MBSs master plan for reinventing a Saudi petro-economy before demand for Saudi oil eventually goes into irreversible decline. Khashoggis death highlights Saudi Arabias status as a rogue state too risky for most global investors to deal with. Mohammed bin Salman has overseen the continuing Saudi-led genocide in Yemen, the worlds greatest humanitarian disaster, with an estimated eight million people at risk of famine in coming months. MBS abducted the Lebanese prime minister, Saad Hariri. And he spearheaded a quixotic blockade of Qatar, location of Americas key air-force base in fighting Islamic State (ISIS). Some may argue that such recklessness simply manifests the growing pains of a new Saudi Arabia, regional expert Daniel Benjamin writes in the current Foreign Affairs. But the evidence including the brief and stunning hostage taking of the Lebanese prime minister and the quarrel with Canada over human rights suggests there is no growth going on here. There is only [MBSs] heedlessness and overweening ambition. The Saudi violations of international law coincide with MBSs ruthless internal consolidation of power. Mohammed bin Salman has silenced the Saudi clerical establishment and neutralized the National Guard, accumulating more power than any Saudi leader in history. The fragile hold on power of the ruling House of Saud has always relied on the collegiality of its members. MBS has smashed that, trying to turn the country into an autocracy. How long his fellow members of the Saudi royal family, many living abroad in self-imposed exile, will tolerate that is anyones guess. That, of course, increases global investor uncertainty about the countrys stability. MBSs lengthy, high-profile detention of fellow royals last year was meant to discredit any coalition within the House of Saud that might rise against him. In humiliating those Saudi tycoons, MBS took a page from the playbook of Vladimir Putin, who has succeeded in reducing Russias oligarchs to obsequious functionaries of the Russian president. Canada was ahead of the curve in recognizing the monstrosity of MBSs rule. But the silence among world leaders was deafening when Chrystia Freeland, the Canadian foreign affairs minister, in August called out Riyadh for attacking womens rights advocates. Just two months later, those same world leaders have been voluble in condemning the murder of Khashoggi. On Capitol Hill in Washington, there have been calls for MBSs removal. Saudi Arabia is acutely vulnerable to the worlds opprobrium. Saudi Arabia is no longer the worlds biggest oil producer. It has been eclipsed by U.S. frackers. It was Saudi Arabias 2016 market-share war with the frackers that drove down the world oil price to as low as $29 (U.S.), throwing Alberta into recession. But the gambit failed. Depletion of the Saudi treasury forced the country to restore its normal, lower levels of production to boost the world price. And yet, a heavily indebted Saudi Arabia is still running budget deficits, due to continued weak oil prices and soaring government expenses. The Saudi war machine runs on materiel imported from the U.S. and Germany, and to a lesser extent Canada. German Chancellor Angela Merkel has frozen arms exports to Saudi Arabia pending the outcome of investigations into Khashoggis death. Canada and the U.S. could further undercut MBSs power by doing the same. As noted, MBSs audacious bid to reinvent Saudi Arabia as a diversified powerhouse in electric vehicles, life sciences, financial services and defence technologies is now close to a dead letter. Dubbed Vision 2030, the transformation was to have cost more than $1 trillion (U.S.). But weak oil prices rule out an under-financed Public Investment Fund (PIF), Saudis sovereign wealth fund, as an expected source of Vision 2030 funding. Another $100 billion (U.S.) was to have come from the initial public offering (IPO) of the state-owned Saudi Aramco, worlds biggest oil company. But uncertainly about volatile oil prices scared investors away, and the IPO has been indefinitely shelved. The aftershocks of Khashoggis assassination appear to be the death blow for MBSs Vision 2030. Guilt by association with a pariah state is easily avoided by offshore institutional investors, who were counted on to provide additional hundreds of billions of dollars in Vision 2030 funding. They have an abundance of politically safer investments to choose from. Yet Vision 2030 could still happen with someone other than MBS as crown prince. His successor would have to end Saudi Arabias armed aggression in Yemen and elsewhere in the region, and better align the countrys internal human-rights practices with the UNs International Bill of Human Rights. Its difficult to see an alternative to that admittedly radical course correction. Absent drastic change, Saudi Arabias relevance will fade in a world shifting away from the oil that is the countrys sole economic sustenance. After all, less than a century ago, Saudi Arabia was among the least strategically important places on Earth. To paraphrase the Scriptures, from sand to sand appears to be the kingdoms future if it remains on its current disastrous path. Read more about: CALGARYAs the opioid crisis persists across the province, prisons are among the institutions wrestling with how to respond to the problem and ground zero, according to one correctional officer, is a large, grey prison in central Alberta. Last week, correctional officers at the Drumheller Institution, a medium-security federal prison, caught an inmate who tried to get $65,000 of contraband drugs into the prison, according to Correctional Service Canada. This case is the latest in a problematic trend for the federal correctional facility thats experienced the majority of inmate overdoses in the Prairie region, according to James Bloomfield, the Prairies regional president of the Union of Canadian Correctional Officers. Bloomfield also pointed to a story in September, where he said officers intercepted an inmate trying to bring nearly 40 grams of carfentanil into the institution, a drug that tests show to be much more potent than normal fentanyl. Bloomfield said that as the opioid crisis has worsened in Canada, the effects have been felt inside Albertas prisons. In 2017, the Canadian government reported 714 apparent accidental opioid-related deaths in Alberta, up from 548 in 2016. As the fentanyl crisis on the streets grows, we notice an immediate trend in the institution that mirrors this crisis, Bloomfield said. Correctional Service Canada was unavailable to provide an interview for this story but reinforced its zero-tolerance policy on illegal drugs in its institutions. Spokesperson Jeff Campbell pointed out a variety of tools used to prevent the flow of drugs into prisons, including intelligence investigations, searching offenders, visitors, buildings and cells, as well as ion scanners and detector dogs. Preventing and reducing the number of contraband items and illicit drugs in correctional institutions is an ongoing priority for us, Campbell said in an email statement. We acknowledge the prevalence of substance abuse problems among offenders and are addressing those problems through programs and other interventions. Most overdoses at the institution are noticed by correctional officers on their regular security rounds, but Bloomfield said there needs to be a swifter response to introducing more body scanners and health-care workers to facilities like the one in Drumheller to provide better aid to inmates. Above all else though, Bloomfield said more health-care professionals in federal institutions are needed to help inmates struggling with addiction. Were in need of 24-hour health care, as well, Bloomfield said. These officers are the front line for that as well. Ensuring their training is up to date is extremely important when we dont have health-care staff on site for the majority of these overdoses. To Tom Engel, an Edmonton-based defence lawyer and prisoner rights lawyer, the opioid crisis in prisons persists mainly because inmates dont get the same access to medical attention, drug addiction treatment and medication as they do outside these facilities. When you go to prison, you dont sacrifice all your human rights, Engel said. If youre on the outside, you get medical attention, you get drug addiction attention and you can also resort to safe injection sites. Engel also said mental illness and drug addiction requiring treatment are more prevalent in the prison population, necessitating service that is as good as it is on the outside. It happens all the time that a prisoner is on an opioid medication, a painkiller, some kind of effective pain management medicine and as soon as they get into a jail, theyre cut off. That creates the demand for opioid medications, Engel said. By virtue of not providing proper health care to prisoners, they create the demand for this medication thats sometime lethal. At the provincial level, Alberta Health Services is working to meet this need with a pilot opioid dependency therapy program rolled out this year at correctional centres in Calgary, Lethbridge and Edmonton. Spokesperson Bruce Conway said 278 patients per month have been offered the opioid dependency treatment since July, when the treatment began being used in Edmonton and Lethbridge. Upon re-entering the community, inmates who could be at risk of overdosing are prescribed a take-home naloxone kit. And in the prisons, Conway said provincial correctional institutions provide methadone treatment to inmates who enter with a community prescription from a practising physician. But at Drumheller Institution, a federal prison without the AHS policies, Bloomfield maintained stronger health care is still needed. When we dont have 24-hour health care. Its a burden on the rest of the community, because now were pulling ambulances away from there on a daily basis to come into our institutions and take inmates out who could normally be dealt with by a health-care institution in the facility, Bloomfield said. Read more about: CALGARYMayor Naheed Nenshi is in Vancouver this week as part of a bid to promote Calgary as a growing hub for technology businesses and poach tech talent. Nenshi was in the city Thursday with representatives from Calgary Economic Development and business leaders for a technology hiring fair and an event to help connect Vancouver and Calgary firms. Part of his mission, the mayor said, was to make sure people know Calgary should be on their radar when it comes to technology. The people in the tech sector really get it ... But the more general conversations Ive had, people are like, Theres a tech sector in Calgary? Its not just beef and oil? Nenshi said he also travelled west to give a soft sell for Vancouver companies to think about expanding to Calgary in the future if theyre finding the higher cost of living is a barrier to attracting employees. As with every conversation in Vancouver, you cant speak for three or four minutes before someone brings up real estate prices, Nenshi said. Read more: Boom or bust, immigrants are choosing Alberta and theyre thriving Alberta funds over 400 new spots in post-secondary tech programs Calgary ranked most livable city in North America Calgary housing remains in a persistent buyers market, according to the Calgary Real Estate Board. Statistics released this month by the Canadian Real Estate Association list the benchmark price for a home in Calgary at $424,600 less than half the roughly $1.07 million benchmark price in Greater Vancouver. Terry Rock, the president and CEO of business accelerator Calgary Technologies Inc., said he sees reaching out to Vancouver and making those comparisons as a good way to promote opportunities in Alberta. The salary that you make, which will be about the same, youre going to be able to do so much more in Calgary, he said. The city doesnt currently have enough people with the right training to fill software development and technology jobs, he said, and ensuring Calgary can grow and attract those people is crucial. Theres a clear gap that I think is holding us back from really growing as fast as we can, he said. I see a provincewide recognition that this is a serious challenge and that we need to make the shift. So that means investing in training which we are doing and in the right kinds of training. Nenshi said he isnt interested in portraying Calgary as a Silicon Valley North hes pushing for technology jobs that take more of a supporting role for sectors like energy and finance. Were trying to build a more basic tech economy, he said. But if we get the next Hootsuite or Shopify, thats awesome were happy to do it. David Wolfe, the co-director of the Innovation Policy Lab at the University of Torontos Munk School of Global Affairs, said cities efforts to promote themselves as innovation and technology leaders have to be supported by education and business strategies at the provincial and federal levels. Its at best a short-term solution, he said. The longer-term solution is definitely to expand the supply of education and training. Many studies on Canadas brain drain of technology talent to other countries conclude that more and better incentives from the provinces and feds are needed to encourage people trained in the country to take Canadian jobs. Nenshi has made trips out of the city in the past to woo tech business, and he celebrated a 2017 announcement that San Francisco-based business accelerator RocketSpace would open a Calgary office. The firm has yet to open its downtown space, but Nenshi said as far as he knows, the company is still very committed to setting up shop in Calgary. Read more about: CALGARYThe federal Opposition leader is suggesting the Liberals have no intention of beginning the Trans Mountain pipeline expansion before next years election. Andrew Scheer likens it to Monty Pythons dead parrot sketch because Prime Minister Justin Trudeau wants everyone to believe the Alberta-to-B.C. oil pipeline is still alive. Scheer made his remarks at the Energy Relaunch conference in Calgary. The Liberal government purchased the existing Trans Mountain pipeline from Kinder Morgan earlier this year for $4.5 billion after the U.S. firm became frustrated by political roadblocks. An expansion to nearly triple the lines capacity is in limbo following a Federal Court of Appeal ruling in August that requires more Indigenous consultation and research into increased tanker traffic. In his speech, Scheer accused Trudeau of being hostile to the energy sector and said a Conservative prime minister would get private companies to build market-opening pipelines. Read more: Jason Kenney defends Albertas energy industry during address to Canadian Club of Calgary Premier proposes more pipelines, Bill C-69 changes, as solutions to oil-price differential Alberta governments tools for expediting oil-and-gas project approvals get mixed reviews from experts I believe it is Justin Trudeaus strategy to not have this pipeline even started to be built by the next election. He just cant admit that it will be dead by the next election, Scheer said Thursday. Its a little bit like the Monty Python dead parrot sketch. He just wants everyone to believe that its not quite gone yet. Earlier in the day, Albertas United Conservative Leader Jason Kenney told the crowd that if he becomes premier after next springs election, he will set up a war room to take on critics of the provinces energy industry in real time. Kenney said his fight-back strategy would also include paying legal bills for Indigenous communities in favour of resource development and targeting charitable groups that want to shut down Albertas energy industry. He said Alberta would not do business with banks that have boycotted the oilsands. Its time for us to identify our greatest points of leverage on these issues, he said. Read more about: CALGARYAlberta Health Services says letters are being sent to 178 people notifying them that their health information was inappropriately accessed by an employee at a Calgary clinic. The provincial health authority says in a release that the breach by an administrative employee occurred at the Richmond Road Diagnostic and Treatment Centre between February and July of this year. It says it was first alerted to the problem through an audit supplied by Alberta Health. A review of the audit confirmed multiple accesses to diagnostic, treatment and care data. AHS says patient care and the accuracy of patient records were not affected. It also says the worker is no longer employed by the organization and the matter has been reported to Alberta Health and the provinces information and privacy commissioner. The authority said it will work with the commissioner in any potential investigation. The breaches occurred in Alberta Netcare the provincial electronic health record system and AHSs Calgary Zone Clinibase system. Clinibase manages everything from referrals and waitlists to the admission, transferring and discharging of patients. This privacy breach is unacceptable and disappointing, AHS vice-president Todd Gilchrist said in the statement Friday. We will be further enhancing our efforts to reinforce the importance of appropriate access and safeguarding patient information. Read more about: EDMONTONFor 20 years, Fred Andersons family has been dealing with bursts of putrid odours in their home once or twice a year. A homeowner in West Edmonton, near 87 Ave. and 153 St., Anderson says the smell is so bad, it makes his children sick. The fumes are noxious, he said. Its this awful, rancid smell. It will give you a headache as soon as you start to smell it. His complaints to EPCOR, the utility company that manages the citys water and waste treatment facilities, has led to the company running tests in the area, but nothing concrete has been done to fix the issue. However on Thursday, EPCOR said all that could change soon because it is working on an odour mitigation plan to deal with 157 neighbourhoods with smelly issues that would cost the city $469 million. EPCOR presented two options to the citys utility committee. The first is a primary hot spot option where EPCOR will focus on the smelliest areas that get reported the most such as Bonnie Doon and 87 Ave., where Anderson lives. This plan promises to reduce odours in these areas in the next five to 11 years. Read more: A fairytale ending to a nightmare: Source of Dairy Queen mystery smell discovered Whats that smell? EPCOR to report on plans for Edmontons smelliest areas Monday More sewage dumped into Edmontons North Saskatchewan but things are looking up The second option, called the systematic plan, allocates resources across the city and coincides with current construction projects. It doesnt consider how often odours are detected and predicts odour reduction in the next nine to 25 years. EPCOR officials recommend going with the hot spot option first and then moving on to the systemic plan. Given that we dont have much other analytical data to go on, (the hot spot option) would be the preferred approach. That gives us the time to hit the biggest areas of concern and (have) the biggest impact right now, said Richard Brown, director of drainage planning and engineering. How about you? He said dealing with the hot spots will give the company information on how to handle the issue everywhere else in the city. Councillor Andrew Knack agreed, saying the city does need to look at both options but should tackle the stinkiest places first. These are areas in communities that have been dealing with this for far too long, so we need to make sure we expedite that work and then we can, over time, develop a longer-term plan as we look at the rest of the communities, he said. I dont think you ignore the systematic piece, but you have to deal with your hot spots quickly. Anderson said he had been told by plumbers that a sewer line in front of his house has a structural problem. He was at the committee meeting to let the city know how the smell has been affecting family. They said there would be followup, so Im holding them to that. And thats what I look forward to, he said. EPCOR was at the committee to ask for recommendations on what plan to work on first, however some councillors felt they needed more information on exactly how long will it take to implement the two options. Councillor Ben Henderson said he does not feel comfortable asking his constituents to wait another decade for things to improve without having concrete answers. It would be very helpful to understand what kind of work would be different in a 25-year systematic (plan) and how is that different in a 10-year hot spot, he said. Thats why Im a little bit lost. Understanding what would be different would be very helpful. The committee has given EPCOR until the spring to come back with a report to answer those concerns. Read more about: ROWLEY, ALTA.The keepers of Rowley march across its gravel main street in an early October snowstorm to unlock an Old West-style saloon. Stepping in from the storm, Doug Hampton flicks on a dim light to reveal a bar that can hold 225 people many times Rowleys entire population. This group of six represents most of the tiny community, and theyre fighting to keep their home alive. Tonight theyve come to the saloon to unwind after their monthly review of the hamlets meagre finances. The floors are brushed with sawdust, and the walls and ceilings are hidden by crude posters collected over decades. A toilet seat hangs on the wall with A-hole of the Month Club written in felt. Its still cold, and the group of six keep their jackets on as they distribute cans of beer from a fridge behind the bar. One lights up a smoke at the table. Anything goes in Rowley, a rural Southern Alberta community with no water or sewer service that swings between bustling tourism hot spot and near ghost town. Tourists seem to find the place no matter where theyre from, said Hampton, a 67-year-old retired oilfield worker who holds a key to open all eight public buildings in town. They read about it on the internet or something: tourist attraction or ghost town. (They say), People live here? Once an agricultural boom town of 500, Rowleys population has shrunk to nine. Theres Doug, his older brother Terry who lives on main street with his wife, a family with two kids and a new couple in a tucked-away home thats now up for sale. This is a community that, for all the practical reasons that towns usually exist, should no longer be. The industry is long gone, and there are no civil services. But because the keepers of Rowley see value in these buildings and the history they represent, the place has a chance to keep on living. Their best shot for fighting the ravages of time: parties. The community association, made up of residents and people from nearby communities, runs pizza and beer fundraisers on the last Saturday of every month to maintain the hamlets most prominent aging buildings. In July, a record-setting 700 people packed into Rowley, including tourists from across North America and Europe. The main street was roped off so visitors could carry their drinks outside between the community hall, saloon and pool hall while a live band performed. We do have a lot of fun. Otherwise it would just be a job and wed probably all lose interest, Hampton said. Have your say As critical as the parties are, they arent the municipalitys only source of income. Rowley falls under the jurisdiction of Starland County. In 2017, the Rowley Community Hall Association received just over $6,000 toward utility costs and another $4,500 to help with maintenance and hiring summer students. Meanwhile, the province has provided close to $600,000 through nine grants since 2007 for tourism products, according to municipal affairs spokesperson Lauren Arscott. Today the hamlet of Rowley is known for its kitschy storefronts, abandoned houses and barns that have fallen to ruin and two tall grain elevators that house flocks of pigeons. The first sign of life upon entering is a gang of about 15 feral cats occupying a wooden cat condo built by Dougs brother Terry. The old train station, school house and store are populated by haunting white mannequins dressed in period clothing, positioned to emulate scenes that might have occurred in the 1920s when Rowley was booming. People would bring in their produce and their milk and their cream and their eggs and ship it on the train, and grain was being hauled out of the elevators. In Rowley then there was two or three lumber yards and a couple of garages and pool halls and barber shops, the hotel, a couple of stores, Hampton said. When the Great Depression hit, food stopped growing and the boom turned to bust. We never got the rain, just wind all the time. So people started moving away, and the odd fire would sweep up main street there and take away a few of the buildings, and then nobody would rebuild it. Story Behind the Story delivers insights into how the Star investigates, reports, and produces stories. Rowley once had a daily connection to Edmonton via the Dayliner passenger car, but it stopped running in the 1970s. The nearest place with any real amenities is Drumheller, a 38 km drive away. When the train disappeared, Hamptons parents helped form the Rowley Community Association and started restoring the few buildings left on main street. They re-shingled the United church and turned the train station into a museum with artifacts dating back to the 1800s, just to keep the buildings alive. A former grocery store and meat market owned by Chinese immigrant Sam Leung, who passed away in 1972, was renovated as Sams Saloon in 1980. Hamptons sister Shirley Bremer said the hard work has been worthwhile for the simple joy of sharing the towns history. It is kind of wild, because some of (the buildings) are pretty bad. But I guess its the pleasure you get, Bremer said. Were all proud of where we grew up. Its just kind of a unique little thing and we like it. Rowleys early rebuild caught the attention of Hollywood film producers, who spent several months there in 1988 shooting the film Bye Bye Blues. The crew constructed storefronts for a bank and a funeral home that residents turned into a pool hall. Film crews occasionally still come around to shoot movie scenes or commercials. Bill Reimer, director of Rural Policy Learning Commons and professor emeritus at Montreals Concordia University, said towns often try chasing smokestacks by bringing in new industries, but thats rarely successful. The ones that get by, Reimer said, are places like Rowley that find ways to leverage the things that make them unique. In very general terms, the towns that are managing are the ones that look around and say, What have we got here that were particularly good at, and who might be interested in it, Reimer said. In warmer months, visitors can camp in town by donation, and the association hires students in July and August to give guided tours, touch up paint jobs and mow the lawns. Rowleys community hall, church and saloon are already booked through next summer with weddings, family reunions and other events. But money from bookings is not enough to cover ongoing maintenance and power costs, and the labour of rebuilding gets tiring for the aging population. Sitting in his kitchen the afternoon after the snowstorm in one of Rowleys four inhabited houses, Hampton contemplates the hamlets future. He likes the peace and quiet that comes with living in isolation but has recently become painfully aware that it can also be dangerous. Life is good until you get sick, he said. One night in October, his wife Brenda, in bed at home battling bone and lung cancer, was in pain and needed an ambulance. When he dialed 911, the dispatcher said it was not on their map. They didnt know where the hell Rowley was at, Hampton said. It took probably 15-20 minutes on the phone trying to explain we need an ambulance out of Drumheller, not Red Deer. The wife was dead by then. Now another couple that moved to Rowley a year-and-a-half ago is planning to move away, which would bring the population down to seven. Lars Hallstrom, University of Alberta political studies professor and director of the Alberta Centre for Sustainable Rural Communities, said the trend of people leaving is almost impossible to reverse. He said rural populations in Canada have been on a pattern of decline for more than a century. Eleven Alberta municipalities have dissolved over the past decade, and about 30 have reviewed whether they should continue to be autonomous, stand-alone municipalities. Grande Cache in Western Alberta, with a population just over 1,000, voted to dissolve as a town in September after a loss of population and tax revenue made it unsustainable. Its tough. Theyve been paddling upstream for years. And you have to admire the people who are willing to stay (in Rowley) and try to say, This is our home, we do want his place to exist, Hallstrom said. But its very difficult to be optimistic in even the medium term about the likelihood of that community returning to a population of 50, let alone 500. Hampton said its getting harder to live in a place that lacks so many basic services. I dont know whats going to happen, he said. Once I croak and my brother croaks, hopefully some young people come into town and take interest in it and learn to be proud of the town, too. Winter is about to settle in, and a heavy snowfall can render the community inescapable until a snow plow comes from outside. When asked if he plans to stay put, Hampton takes a moment to pause before answering. Yeah. I dont know where in the hell else Id move. Read more about: Its hard to imagine how remote Pond Inlet is until you land in its Starbucks-sized airport. A three-hour flight north of Iqaluit (which is already three hours from Ottawa), the tiny Nunavut community of 1,600 people sits on the northern tip of Baffin Island amongst vast nothingness; the next settlement is 250 undrivable kilometres away. The tundras otherworldly green is visible in all directions, baby icebergs idle in the milky-blue waters, and primary-hued dwellings emerge between a blink-and-you-miss-it gap in the mountain ranges. And then theres the cold: During the winter, and its 24 hours of total darkness, the wind chills often dip to -50 C for weeks on end. And so, on the backs of four-wheelers and along the muddied, late-summer streets that wind toward the shores of Eclipse Sound, the primarily Inuit locals sport hand-fashioned coats designed to endure the conditions. These coats are the reason Toronto-based outerwear purveyor Canada Goose is in town for the day. The brands Resource Centre Program, a project in partnership with northern airline First Air, works alongside community leaders to donate discontinued materials, surplus fabrics, buttons and zippers to residents of northern communities. The initiative began back in 2007 when Meeka Atagootak and Rebecca Kiliktee, two sewers from Pond Inlet, were invited by the brand to Toronto to create a commemorative coat. While the pair were touring the Canada Goose facilities, they spotted post-production scrap material and asked if they could bring fabric home to create their own coats. The request evolved into this project, the aim of which is not to outfit the locals in retail-ready parkas (the climate here demands something beyond what Canada Goose produces), but rather offer traditional sewers and craftspeople the opportunity to assemble their own iterations befitting of the environment. When the more than 10,000 metres of fabric arrive at the local community centre, theres already a snaking line out the door. The excitement is palpable as some 200 women eagerly eye the material that is normally unavailable to them. According to Stats Canada, nearly 50 per cent of the populations total income is less than $20,000, and in a place where a small box of cereal costs more than $13, that doesnt leave much for the parka-appropriate fabric that sells for $17 a yard in the co-op. Story Behind the Story delivers insights into how the Star investigates, reports, and produces stories. The scene spans multiple generations: Grandmothers squeal Yes! when they spot a particular pattern, while young mothers, carrying little ones in traditional amauti a parka with a pouch built in the back shepherd their eldest children around the abounding fold-out tables. For Canada Gooses CEO, Dani Reiss, the nearly 10-year old program thats served seven hamlets is about establishing meaningful alliances with the locals. Its important for us to stay connected with these communities, he says on the ground in Pond Inlet following the donation event. I think this is a really great way of doing that: Giving them materials they wouldnt otherwise have access to, to create their own products for their own drive and culture. Talented, resourceful women such as Killiktee are common in Pond Inlet. Jessica, a shy 23-year-old who learned to sew under her mothers guidance, as is the case with many of the women here, tells me that shes scooped up some fabric to create a coat for her 5-year-old daughter. Another woman carries her share of a reflective, snowflake-printed fabric and notes that in just two days shell be able to produce outerwear for her own young daughters. While it only takes 15 minutes for the textiles to be completely cleaned out, the material is not taken lightly. Nothing is thrown away here; leftover scraps are fashioned into tents and thin, summer-appropriate jackets. If ones haul yields some extra material, says one local, shell share it with her neighbours, or maybe sew something for her at no charge. Its the kind of community-minded outlook that allows this tiny hamlet to thrive in one of natures most beautiful and rugged locations. Pond Inlet native Apphia Killiktee, who has handmade seven coats for friends and family this year alone, says being able to customize her handiwork from top to bottom is key. She shows me a zipper-less, pull-over-style parka that she crafted for her 39-year-old son, Kane. The minimalist black piece extends past the knee and gains its windproof quality from a double layer of an insulating fibre called Hollofil (down doesnt provide enough warmth in these parts, Killiktee explains). Its outfitted with reflectors for visibility and a big pocket across the belly that holds a radio and flashlight all necessities required by the many dark months of winter. Its made out of love, I guess, she says with a smile. Travel and accommodations for Jillian Vieira were provided by Canada Goose. Canada Goose did not review or approve this article. CALGARYThe federal Opposition leader is likening the stalled Trans Mountain pipeline expansion to a famous Monty Python sketch in which two men argue over whether a parrot is actually dead. (Prime Minister) Justin Trudeau has bought a pipeline with no plan to actually build it. Conservatives will build pipelines without having to buy them, Conservative Leader Andrew Scheer told the Energy Relaunch conference in Calgary on Thursday. I believe it is Justin Trudeaus strategy to not have this pipeline even started to be built by the next election. He just cant admit that it will be dead by the next election. Its a little bit like the Monty Python dead parrot sketch. He just wants everyone to believe that its not quite gone yet. The Liberal government purchased the existing Trans Mountain pipeline from Kinder Morgan earlier this year for $4.5 billion after the U.S. firm became frustrated by political roadblocks, mainly put up by the British Columbia government. An expansion to nearly triple capacity on the line stretching from Alberta to the B.C. coast is in limbo following a Federal Court of Appeal ruling in August that requires more Indigenous consultation and research into increased tanker traffic. Read more: Conservative leader suggests Trans Mountain pipeline project is dead under federal Liberals National Energy Board agrees to consider LNG Canada pipeline jurisdictional challenge Trans Mountain pipeline ruling leaves workers, companies in limbo Scheer said if he were to become prime minister, he would repeal the carbon tax and Bill C-69 to overhaul energy project reviews. He called the proposed legislation the worst thing to happen to the industry since Pierre Trudeaus national energy program of the 1980s. Both Scheer and his provincial counterpart United Conservative Leader Jason Kenney highlighted what they see as the need to go on the offensive against foes of Alberta energy development. Scheer said nothing frustrates him more than protesters from elsewhere trying to block exports of Canadas safe and responsible and secure energy. And yet I dont see them lining up and down the St. Lawrence (River) trying to block tanker after tanker of foreign oil coming into our markets from countries with terrible human rights records, without anywhere near the same level of environmental standards that we have in this country. Earlier in the day, Kenney reiterated his multi-pronged plan to fight back against Alberta energy critics if he becomes premier after the spring election. It would include setting up a war room within the Alberta Energy Department to counter anti-oilsands claims quickly, paying the legal bills of pro-development Indigenous communities and targeting charitable groups that want to shut down the industry. It is time that we used all of the political and economic levers at our disposal, Kenney said. Canada should stick up for its industry and cant cede the global energy market to the likes of Saudi Arabia, Iran and Venezuela, he said. Either we allow them to dominate global energy markets or ... we move forward on the offensive unapologetically to do everything possible to get our Canadian energy to global markets. Deron Bilous, economic development minister in Albertas NDP government, said its one thing on which he and the Opposition agree. From the Alberta point of view, its quite frustrating when other provinces across this country are importing their resources from either petro-dictatorships or countries that have low to no standards whatsoever, when we have real opportunities to supply our own country with our energy. Read more about: OTTAWA Vancouver and Niagara Falls, Ont., were added to the list of cities hit by postal disruptions this week as more Canadian Union of Postal Workers members walked off the job as part of rotating strikes. About 3,400 CUPW members in Vancouver walked off the job early Friday, joining Canada Post employees in the Niagara and Sudbury regions of Ontario, and Saint John, N.B., who launched job action to back contract demands. The job action followed walkouts Thursday in Sherbrooke, Que., Calgary, Red Deer, Alta., and Kelowna, B.C., that were all to end after one day. Nearly 9,000 members of the Canadian Union of Postal Workers walked out earlier this week in the Greater Toronto Area as part of rotating strikes to back contract demands. The job action at the giant gateway parcel facility in Mississauga, Ont., which processes roughly two-thirds of all parcels mailed in Canada and the south central mail plant in the Torontos east end, forced delays in shipments of tens of thousands of letters and parcels across the country. Toronto area postal workers were back at work as of midnight Thursday after two days off the job, CUPW said. Read more: Ontario is prepping Plan B for cannabis deliveries as Canada Post labour dispute continues Canada Post workers hit the picket line in Calgary in latest in rolling strikes Highly respected mediator called in as Canada Post workers keep Toronto plants shut Our members would rather be doing their jobs than walking the picket line, but Canada Post has left us no choice, Mike Palecek, the unions national president, said in a statement. Canada Post needs to come to the bargaining table ready to talk about the issues that matter - health and safety, equality for (rural and suburban mail carriers) and an end to precarious work. CUPW and the postal service have been unable to reach new collective agreements for the two bargaining units in 10 months of negotiations. Labour Minister Patty Hajdu has appointed special mediator Morton Mitchnick, a former chair of the Ontario Labour Relations Board, to help the two parties resolve their contract differences. In a statement Wednesday evening, Canada Post spokesman Jon Hamilton said the Crown corporation has made significant offers to CUPW which include increased wages, job security and improved benefits and has not asked for any concessions in return. He said Canada Post is working to restore service and eliminate any mail and parcel backlogs. Canada Post continues to operate across the rest of Canada and is accepting and delivering mail and parcels in all other locations, Hamilton said. Read more about: The family of an Ontario First Nation chief who was a vocal advocate for a community plagued by a mercury-contaminated river called Friday for an inquest into his death, saying it was needed to shed light on the illness he grappled with for years. Those close to Steve Fobister Sr., the former chief of the Grassy Narrows First Nation, said the probe could prove what they believe is true that the community leaders death at 66 earlier this month was the result of long-term mercury poisoning. The family is looking for the truth and we dont see any other avenue to find out the truth, said Robert Williamson, a friend of Fobister. An inquest would be something that finds out whats really happening. Fobisters family also called on the prime minister and Ontarios health minister to acknowledge that the former chief was poisoned by mercury. Our beloved Steve died without ever getting the closure of having a government minister look into his eye and admit that he was poisoned by mercury, said Fobisters niece, Sylvia Wapioke. Instead, he was forced to fight for four decades for mercury justice in the face of denial, delay and discrimination. Mercury contamination has plagued the English-Wabigoon River system near Grassy Narrows ever since a paper mill in Dryden, Ont., dumped 9,000 kilograms of the substance into the river systems in the 1960s. The contamination closed a thriving commercial fishery and devastated Grassy Narrows economy. Read more: We are more than mercury: The youth from a place known for poisoned land and water are sending a message Supreme Court to hear case on cleanup of mercury at northern Ontario mill site Grassy Narrows leader Steve Fobister dead at 66 Fobisters family said he suffered from a degenerative neurological disorder that was the result of mercury poisoning. Consequently, Fobister had trouble walking and chewing, they said. An inquest into his death, they said, would help others in his community who are also dealing with similar ailments. A spokeswoman for Ontarios chief coroner said his office had learned of Fobisters Oct. 11 death on Friday and would begin an investigation. A decision about holding an inquest will be made after the investigation is complete, said Cheryl Maher. The coroners office investigates approximately 17,000 deaths in the province a year and holds 40 to 45 inquests on average. Sol Mamakwa, the NDP legislator who represents the riding that is home to Grassy Narrows, said the provincial government needs to fully acknowledge the damage that has been done to the community by mercury poisoning. I asked the government to admit publicly that Mr. Fobister had died as a result of mercury poisoning, he said. Again, they did not answer. When asked about Fobisters death on Thursday, Ontario Government House Leader Todd Smith said both Energy Minister Greg Rickford and Environment Minister Rod Phillips have met with the chief and elders of Grassy Narrows. What happened in Grassy Narrows is a historic tragedy, he said. I know that our government is committed to working extremely closely with the members of Grassy Narrows ... to come to a proper conclusion in this case. Earlier this week, federal Indigenous Services Minister Jane Philpott called Fobister a strong and passionate voice for Grassy Narrows. It is clear that community members have suffered for generations suffering that continues to this day, she said. Steves work was focused on ensuring a better and brighter future for his community, and the federal government will continue to be a partner in this critical work. Ontarios former Liberal government committed $85 million to remediate the river system, while the federal government has committed to funding a treatment centre for those affected by mercury contamination. The private investigation team assembled by the four children of Barry and Honey Sherman announced a $10-million reward and something unprecedented in Canadian history: a public-private partnership in which the Sherman familys detectives will obtain tips and information and pass them on to the Toronto Police homicide squad. Catch the killer based on one of those tips and the tipster receives up to $10 million, Sherman family lawyer Brian Greenspan told media Friday. We want to light a fire under the Toronto Police, Greenspan said. The announcement was made just around the corner from where the Sherman childrens murdered father started his multi-billion dollar generic drug enterprise. Toronto Police Chief Mark Saunders said later he welcomed the offering of the reward, but did not wholeheartedly endorse the Sherman familys plan. Saunders said he has concerns with how the integrity of any evidence or information obtained by investigators not with the police would be handled. Read more: Opinion | Rosie DiManno: A two-tier policing system is unveiled in the Sherman case Sherman murder probe obtains seven more search warrants How the investigation into the deaths of Barry and Honey Sherman turned from murder-suicide to double homicide In launching what he called a new initiative in the case, Greenspan is taking direction from Sherman children Jonathon, Alex, Lauren and Kaelen. They are the heirs to a fortune of about $5 billion. The bodies of Barry and Honey Sherman were discovered in their basement pool room the morning of Friday, Dec. 15, 2017 by the Shermans real estate agent, who was leading another agent and two clients on a tour of the house on Old Colony Rd. The Shermans had put the house up for sale two weeks earlier, at an asking price of $6.7 million. Barry Sherman founded the Apotex generic drug firm in 1974 in a small building in northwest Toronto near factories. Its the site of a growing complex of Apotex offices. The Greenspan press conference was held in one of those buildings. Long time Apotex employees, who say they they have been devastated by the loss of their founder, refer to the intersection the buildings radiate from as the corner of Barry and Sherman. Last December, when the Shermans agent came upon the bodies in the pool room, she froze, then turned and hurried the clients and the other agent back upstairs. The Shermans agent asked a woman who was in the house watering orchids to go downstairs and confirm what she had seen. She did. The agent then alerted a family member who was in Florida, and, after some discussion, police were called to the scene. Greenspan said the police, when they arrived, completely misinterpreted the crime scene. They failed to recognize the suspicious and staged manner in which their bodies were situated. He described how Barry Shermans legs were outstretched with one crossed over the other in a passive manner, wearing his undisturbed eyeglasses and his jacket pulled slightly behind his back which would have prevented use of his arms. The Sherman couple had their backs against a low railing that surrounds the pool, with leather belts around their neck and the free end wrapped around a railing forcing them into an upright position, Greenspan said. In what Greenspan said was an early attempt to cooperate with police, he said he and his private team passed on information they discovered when they examined the Sherman home, following the police teams own six-week examination. Among that information, Greenspan said, were a series of 25 palm or fingerprint impressions private detectives found on surfaces of the house. Greenspan said the police missed those during their examination. The meeting to pass on the palm print evidence was May 17 and according to Greenspan the police were receptive to the delivery of them. But the force has since retained a lawyer to figure out a way to handle future deliveries of information and there has been no further communication from the police on that issue, Greenspan said. As to what, if anything, came from police analysis of the palm prints, Greenspan says he does not know. Greenspan was highly critical of the work of the Toronto police. He said when his private team was granted access to the Sherman crime scene, his team discovered that the locks had not been checked for tampering and the carpets in the home had not been vacuumed by forensic experts. Typically, vacuuming is done to find fibres and other evidence that would escape the naked eye. Greenspan said he does not believe police have yet completed an analysis of fingerprints found at the scene. People who were known to have been in the Sherman home, for innocent reasons, have yet to be fingerprinted, he said. Greenspan also took issue with how, in the early stages of the case, Toronto officers made comments that left the wrong impression that this was a self-inflicted crime, either a suicide or a murder-suicide. He said the conduct of the police in the early days of the probe fell well below the standard of how a reasonable officer in similar circumstances should have acted. Toronto Police Chief Saunders responded to these criticisms, saying that police never reached a premature conclusion that it was a case of murder suicide. The reason police initially said that there was no sign of forced entry was because the north Toronto neighbourhood where the Shermans lived had seen a spate of break-ins and the officer was trying to reassure the public. That community was incredibly alarmed, Saunders told the media. On Greenspans criticism of the police probe, Chief Saunders said we conclude that the investigation was done well. Everyone is entitled to their opinion, the chief told reporters gathered at police headquarters. But we dont deal in opinions; we deal in facts. The Toronto Police Services board issued a statement late Friday saying Saunders has their complete confidence in regards to the Sherman murder probe. Saunders said he supports the Sherman family decision to offer a reward. Hopefully, there are people out there that have an understanding of information that can help with this investigation . Anything that helps lead to a successful conclusion, I think, is a good thing. Departing from protocol around rewards offered by police or CrimeStoppers, lawyer Greenspan did not provide a police number to the public. He provided two dedicated numbers set up by the Sherman family. The tip line was up and running at 2 p.m. Friday. Greenspan has set up a panel of experts to review the tips, and said he has invited Chief Saunders to provide an officer to join that review panel an unusual partnership between police and private investigators. Greenspan said he knows of no other instance in Canada where there has been a similar partnership. He said his notion is that by providing Sherman-paid resources it will free the public purse from the burden of the investigation at a time when due to other cases the Toronto homicide squad is overtaxed Asked if he would accept Greenspans invitation, Chief Saunders said he wants to see the terms of reference, and added police are open to being involved if the process would withstand the scrutiny of the court of law. If it meets the test than definitely well be involved, he said. As previously reported by the Star, the police did not rule the case a double murder until after a Star story revealed that the Sherman familys pathologist had made that determination. The familys pathologist determined it was a double murder after taking note that the Shermans wrists had been bound, but no ropes or other ties were found near the bodies. The information from the second pathologist would not be considered by police for almost five weeks, until a story in the Star revealed those details. The Shermans were last spotted leaving Apotex headquarters two days earlier on Wednesday, Dec. 13 Honey at about 6:30 p.m. and Barry at about 8:30 p.m. They had a late-afternoon meeting with architects for a new home in Forest Hill. Police theorize they both died that evening. Read more: How the investigation into the deaths of Barry and Honey Sherman turned from murder-suicide to double homicide Sherman cousins lose appeal for piece of drug companys billions Sherman murder probe obtains seven more search warrants Police have conflicting thoughts on whether a reward helps in a criminal case, and what the right time is to offer a reward. Some officers, whom the Star spoke to on background because they were not authorized to speak for the force, said there is always a concern a reward will bring the crazies out of the woodwork. Assessing the veracity of tips from people who may not have real information takes valuable police resources, they said. Other officers and groups are in favour of rewards. The CrimeStoppers program invites people to submit information anonymously and offers modest rewards of up to $2,000 if a tip leads to an arrest. A 2011 Star story revealed that often the rewards for providing legitimate information to CrimeStoppers go unclaimed. One of the few examples in Toronto of a reward being paid out in a murder case was the 1986 murder of 11-year-old Alison Parrott. Several people gave tips to police at the time of the killing, but the killer was not arrested until a decade later. A $50,000 reward was paid out in that case. The Toronto Stars continuing investigation has revealed shortcomings with the way the police investigation has progressed. The Star has learned that police were slow to take DNA samples and fingerprints from the many people who passed through the Sherman home in the hours before the Shermans died. Police typically do this to eliminate suspects and focus on DNA and fingerprints that are foreign to a place where a crime was committed. In one case, a friend who was at the Sherman home with the Shermans that Wednesday was not asked for fingerprints and DNA until September, nine months after the murders. The Star has also interviewed numerous people regarding their own interviews with police. These people have said that detectives told them they were perplexed at who did the crime. In one case, a woman interviewed by police in the last two months said an investigator said, we are at loose ends. Read more about: Energy companies are likely to face more lawsuits similar to one filed this week that alleges ExxonMobil dramatically underestimated the risks carbon regulations pose to its oilsands assets, a legal scholar says. There are actual cases being developed in Canada, said Cynthia Williams, a law professor at York Universitys Osgoode Hall who has written about climate liability. I would not be surprised if you see something within the next six months. On Wednesday, New Yorks attorney general filed a fraud lawsuit against ExxonMobil alleging the company deliberately misled investors about the risks posed by carbon taxes and other measures designed to reduce oil use. The lawsuit, which has not been tested in court, alleges the company told investors it made plans assuming carbon prices as high as $80 a tonne. In fact, says the lawsuit, Exxon was evaluating projects internally with a much lower price. After a three-year investigation, the attorney general charges that Exxon lowballed the carbon costs of 14 Alberta oilsands operations it partly owns through subsidiary Imperial Oil by $30 billion. Court documents say carbon costs at the Kearl oilsands project were understated by 94 per cent. Using low carbon costs also falsely extended the economic life of some assets, the lawsuit claims, adding the lifespan of Imperials Cold Lake facility would be shortened by 28 years if evaluated with a true carbon price. Exxon has said it will seek to have the lawsuit thrown out of court as baseless. It has said in its court filings that it uses several methods to price carbon risk into its decisions and that the lawsuit ignores most of them. Industry experts have also said carbon risks are likely to fall in the oilsands as better technology reduces industry emissions. Williams said CEOs will have to be increasingly careful to disclose how the fight against climate change may affect their businesses. Climate change litigation is definitely an emerging area of law, she said. Most such cases so far have sought compensation from fossil fuel companies for climate change adaptation costs building a seawall, for example. The Exxon case is something new. It directly targets what the officers and directors are responsible for, which is the accuracy of disclosure, Williams said. Corporate officers may also have a legal responsibility to be aware of the risks posed by climate changes, she said. Trustees of pension funds and other investment vehicles may have the same duty. Williams said it would be entirely possible under Canadian law to file a similar lawsuit to the one faced by Exxon. There are major Canadian companies that have this exact risk of stranded assets and we dont know yet how they are evaluating those risks. Greenpeace spokesman Keith Stewart said Canadian regulators should take a lesson from New York. New York has really taken a leadership role here, he said. Stewart said if the allegations in the lawsuit are true, it reveals what Exxon officials really think about the fight against climate change. They dont honestly believe there is going to be action on climate change, he said. None of this would ever come to pass. The lawsuit quotes extensively from internal Exxon documents. It quotes a planning supervisor, who noted in 2013 that the company based its decisions for Albertas Aspen mine on a carbon cost of $40 a tonne. The lawsuit alleges the company publicly said it was using a cost that reached $80 by 2040. The lawsuit does not seek specific damages. It says Exxon should be forced to return money invested based on false representations. Read more about: Cool your jets, Toronto! The beloved, free shortbread cookies at Billy Bishop Airport arent going anywhere. Patrons of the airport took to social media, outraged at reports that the complimentary goods usually available in the airports lounge werent there anymore. But Rebecca Thompson, a spokesperson with Nieuport Aviation, the company responsible for overseeing the airport lounges, said the cookie is here to stay Whats not available anymore is the complimentary coffee and snack mix, Thompson said. However, reports that the popular shortbread cookies may have been axed caused a frenzy on social media, with frequent flyers tweeting their disappointment at Porter Airlines, the company most associated with the free goods. In the process, some admitted to being guilty of taking more cookies than necessary, while others discussed their disappointment with the changes. Read more: Recipe: A Toronto bakerys take on the original Porter shortbread New Billy Bishop-to-Muskoka air service revives a nearly 100-year-old idea from Billy Bishop himself Theres now a book vending machine at Billy Bishop airport Nieuport Aviation, which is responsible for the lounges at the airport, made the decision to do away with some of the popular snacks given to flyers at the terminal as it updates the lounges with more for-purchase food options. The terminal was built for passengers around 1.5 million a year, but were now up to over 2.8 million so the terminal needed to be upgraded, said Thompson. In a press release dated Oct. 12, Nieuport announced the terminal upgrades, saying it was opening Balzacs, a coffee store, and Market@416, which will serve local Toronto food and craft beers, as well as OBISPO, a restaurant and bar offering Mediterranean food. With some, you know, pretty delicious flavours, Thompson said. Sarah Sahagian, a former teacher, said she used to go through the airport frequently while travelling with students. They would beg her to take them through the lounge area for a chance to munch on the complimentary cookies. It just was one of those things where it was a treat that you rarely kind of get in a busy hectic world where you feel like everyone is nickel and diming you to make as much profit as they can, she said. It just felt very egalitarian, it felt very democratic to me they were creating an environment where all their customers were treated equal, and thats what I really appreciated about it. Porter confirmed in an email that along with the cookie, they will continue to offer free beer and wine on flights. For Sahagian, the complimentary offerings were a nostalgic reminder of a more comfortable time. I remember my mother telling me stories of how air travel in the 70s used to be really luxurious and glamorous and fun and it kind of felt like a throwback to that, she said. Sahagian and other Billy Bishop patrons will be glad to hear that the cookie will stay, there just wont be unlimited coffee to dip it in. With files from Premila DSa. As world leaders debate the fine print of a global deal on refugees at the United Nations, a group of Canadian researchers is already laying the groundwork for one of the most ambitious initiatives to explore local solutions to the escalating crisis. The team, led by Carleton University professor James Milner, has worked quietly behind the scenes since 2015 to build a network of partners in Jordan, Kenya, Lebanon and Tanzania home to many of the worlds displaced people seeking ways to help these host communities cope with the influx of migrants. Responding to the needs of refugees is a global challenge, said Milner, who is overseeing the seven-year research project to study global refugee policies. Eighty-six per cent of the worlds refugees settle in the global south, sometimes for years. These countries are not tooled to respond to the challenge. How can civil society better respond to the needs of refugees? There has been much political bickering between developing countries, who host the majority of refugees, and their developed counterparts, who are trying to guard their borders against the influx. Much of it focuses on the language of the Global Compact on Refugees, which will be finalized at the UN in New York on Oct. 31 and Nov. 1, before all 193 member states vote on it by the end of the year. Meanwhile, the $3.7 million global refugee study a collaboration between Carleton, York, Ottawa and McGill universities has brought together international aid organizations, academics from the four refugee-hosting countries as well as their colleagues from the United Kingdom, Australia and the United States to seek practical, sustainable, grassroots solutions to the crisis on the ground. Some $2.5 million of the project funding is coming from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada and the rest will come from the Canadian universities and aid groups in services and grants. While only political will can address the source of war and violence, Milner said researchers will focus on initiatives that support refugees in diverse places and finding ways to improve their lives. Milner said the project aims to identify priorities for aid groups and refugees in each of the four countries by next May before 96 Canadian graduate students are trained to work with local academics, students, NGOs and refugees to launch individual research studies locally next summer. So far, preliminary consultations have identified unique concerns faced by refugees in each country: the humanitarian and development approaches in Kenya and Tanzania; access to education and gender equality in Lebanon; and access to public services and water in Jordan. We need to examine what policy works, what doesnt work, and answer the question why we keep facing the same challenges over and over again despite spending millions and millions of dollars in programming, said Milner. Professor Maha Shuayb of the Lebanese American University said research dollars on refugees are limited even though her country is overwhelmed by the one million Syrians and 270,000 Iraqis who have sought refuge there and are awaiting resettlement to another country. Dulo Nyaoro, a professor with Moi University in Nairobi, said Kenya has been the host of some 500,000 Somali and South Sudanese refugees for decades and solutions must come locally to settle and integrate these migrants, though the world must address the universal issue of discrimination and xenophobia. The reality is the global north and global south both face the same problems, but we see (them) from different perspectives and each country has its own interests, said Nyaoro. This affects all of us and we really need to synergize and synchronize to find solutions. Read more about: My heart broke on election night. Not for who won and lost but for who didnt vote. Watching the election results roll in and seeing how low the numbers were was a deflation after months of election tension. Despite the herculean effort by the City of Torontos election services and the 17,000 people working the election on Monday, a virtual army of democracy, all of whom pulled off an election where the rules were unclear until little over a month ago, only 41 per cent of Torontonians bothered to vote. Contrast that low turnout with the efforts of volunteers who worked to get the vote out for their particular candidate, most of whom didnt have the faintest chance of winning. So much effort on one side and so much apathy on the other. Hope and void. Read more: Torontos 2018 voter turnout falls sharply from last election Mayor Tory open to having more citizens involved in city government Opinion | Edward Keenan: Torontos new council has as many Michaels as visible minorities Then there were all those columns, some written by yours truly, making the case for municipal elections and governance and why it all matters. Closest to your day-to-day lives, so many of us wrote, to little result. It all feels like a civics failure, but its a regular failure as voter turnout is a perennial phenomenon and most acutely felt at the municipal level, with the lowest participation of all three levels of government. Theres low turnout even when the stakes are incredibly high as they are now and when one or more of the crises facing the city, such as transit or housing, touches everyone. In 2014, Toronto saw a spike in turnout with a record-setting 60 per cent. For that we can thank the unprecedented drama of the Rob Ford era, when Toronto city hall was, briefly, world famous. In a way, Rob Ford was a great civics motivator. Its likely Doug Fords chaos-inducing attack on local democracy drove participation back down, perhaps by design. The low turn out is also confounding considering how easy it is to vote here. Voting in Canada, municipal elections and up, is painless and easy. That isnt universal; just look at the conditions south of the border with a variety of complicated voting mechanisms and other, more scandalous, barriers to voting. Here we rarely have to give the process a thought, and for that we should be grateful. Some jurisdictions in Ontario have made it even easier to vote by allowing people to do so electronically, either online or over the phone. In Sarnia, where polls were open from Oct. 11, allowing 12 days to vote, the result was nearly 50 per cent, the highest voter turnout since 1994 despite worry new systems might disenfranchise older voters. The ranked ballot initiative is meant to make election results reflect more accurately the votes cast; under it, voters choose their first, second and third choices. The wining candidate must get 50 per cent plus one vote to win. Across Toronto, just seven of 25 winning councillors received more than 50 per cent of the vote in their ward. Some of the lowest percentages for victory were Frances Nunziata in York South-Weston with 32, John Filion in Willowdale with 31, Gary Crawford in Scarborough Southwest with 36, and Cynthia Lai in Scarborough North with 27. On Monday, London became the first city in Canada to undertake an election by ranked ballot and voter turnout was 39 per cent, consistent with the last 20 years in that city, give or take three or four per cent points either way. As low as Londons turnout was, its still higher than Mississauga, which saw only 27 per cent of voters coming out. Torontos 41-per-cent turnout means more people did not vote (than voted). Perhaps we should require a quorum or else the election is deemed illegitimate, but then forcing people to vote doesnt seem like a good idea either. Does turnout matter though? After every election youll hear people say, if you didnt vote, I dont want to hear you complain the next four years. Although its easy to see where the sentiment comes from, it probably does little to convince people who dont vote to turn out and exercise their franchise. What about all the people who arent allowed to vote, such as teenagers and new Canadians? The latter pay taxes and contribute to the city but cant yet vote because municipal voting rights are based on citizenship. Do they no longer have the right to complain? For dedicated voters, not voting seems hard to fathom. But there are many reasons why people dont vote; life is busy and fraught, and voting and its consequences may pale in comparison to other clear and present worries. Finding ways to make personal connections to the act of voting is a continuing challenge. The task is to figure out why people have, in effect, allowed themselves to become disenfranchised. Its likely due to reasons connected to some of those bigger problems facing the city. Sidewalk Labs controversial plan to build a data-driven neighbourhood on Torontos waterfront is probably one of the most heavily scrutinized development proposals in the citys recent memory. The dizzying list of groups looking into the smart city project include the tech and privacy experts on the digital strategy advisory panel providing advice to Waterfront Toronto, Sidewalk Labs data governance advisory working group, and an advisory council of urban thinkers and executives in Canada that is providing input to Sidewalk Labs. Sidewalk also has a residents reference panel, made up of randomly selected Torontonians, and Waterfront Toronto hosts public roundtables on the Sidewalk proposal and is planning special civic labs where interested people can discuss concerns about the project that will feed into the roundtables. Now another group has come together to jump into the mix. Formed in mid-October, the Toronto Open Smart Cities Forum has no ties to either Waterfront Toronto or Sidewalk Labs. The forum is a self-directed group comprised of experts specializing in areas such as the law, technology, real estate, data, and housing. While the forum is primarily focused on providing input to Sidewalk Torontos community engagement process, their long-term goal is providing support to the public in Canadian cities dealing with other smart city projects. Read more: Opinion | Sidewalk Toronto subject to strong existing privacy laws, principles Privacy expert steps down from advisory role with Sidewalk Labs Sidewalk Labs promises not to control data collected in Quaysides public spaces What were trying to start is a dialogue that tries to establish what a more open and public kind of smart city infrastructure and policy would look like, says the co-chair of the forums steering committee, David Murakami Wood, Canada research chair in surveillance studies, and associate professor in the department of sociology at Queens University. Is the forum opposed to the Sidewalk project? It would be inaccurate to describe this as an anti-Sidewalk group, Murakami Wood says. He says the group is about establishing a vision for how this might work in Toronto and elsewhere, Murakami Wood adds. I dont think there is anybody in the group who is a massive cheerleader of Sidewalk. Thats certainly true. We dont need any more of that. Theres plenty of that going on, he adds. Waterfront Toronto, a body representing the federal, provincial and municipal governments, is overseeing the Sidewalk proposal. Sidewalk is expected to complete a master plan for the project, likely sometime next year. The plan must be approved by Waterfront Toronto. Sidewalk wants to build a high-tech community on a track of land called Quayside, located near Parliament and Queens Quay. The neighbourhood would feature sensors to measure temperature and weather conditions and utilize so-called urban data information collected from people in Quaysides physical environment but controversy has been raised about who will own the data, control it and make money from it. Sidewalk, a Manhattan-based sister firm of Google, recently came out with digital governance proposals, saying no one should own the data. Sidewalk is also calling for the establishment of an independent civic data trust that would oversee and control the data. Murakami Wood says he is skeptical of the Sidewalk proposal. They are private, for-profit companies looking to make money from individual and collective data, and that fundamentally cant be forgotten, he says. We want any development to be done in ways that are for the public good, and in ways where residents have a say and degree of control over what happens, particularly when it comes to the streets we walk on and the data collected about us, says Brenda McPhail, a member of the forum steering committee and director of the Canadian Civil Liberties Associations privacy, technology and surveillance project. The forum is receiving administrative support from the Centre For Free Expression, in Toronto. Shauna Brail, an associate professor at the University of Toronto, and a senior associate in the innovation policy lab at the Munk School of global affairs, says the forum and the criticisms surrounding the Sidewalk project are symptomatic of a larger trend. In many ways, this is part of what has been referred to as a techlash (a backlash against powerful technology firms) an increasingly global phenomena, Brail says. The forum has members who recently stepped back from direct involvement in the Sidewalk review process, including Saadia Muzaffar, a tech expert who resigned recently from Waterfront Torontos digital strategy advisory group, in part over concerns about the control of data. Last weekend, Ann Cavoukian, former Information and Privacy commissioner of Ontario, resigned from Sidewalks data governance advisory group, concerned that the proposed protection of personal data in the project is not acceptable. However, she is not a member of the new forum. Sidewalk says its moving ahead with the proposal. No one is proposing to hand over public space to Sidewalk Labs. In fact, it is quite the opposite. A cornerstone of our proposal is that no private group, including Sidewalk Labs, will own urban data and any information gathered should be freely and publicly accessible through an independent civic data trust, which will set clear rules around privacy and how data is collected, stored, and used, said Sidewalk spokesperson Dan Levitan. Read more about: LONDONThe Scottish government said it was reviewing its animal culling laws after a photograph of an American hunter posing with the carcass of a black-faced goat with magnificent horns during a hunting trip to Scotland set off a furor on social media this week. The hunter, Larysa Switlyk, whose Twitter account says shes from Florida and is the host of a show called Larysa Unleashed on the Canadian channel Wild TV, posted the image of the dead goat on her Instagram account. Beautiful wild goat here on the Island of Islay in Scotland, Switlyk, who describes herself on Twitter as not your typical CPA, professional huntress and angler, wrote Such a fun hunt!! Switlyk also wrote: Made a perfect 200 yard shot and dropped him with the gunwerks and nightforce-optics ! (Good thing too because he could have ran off the cliff into the water). She also posted on Twitter images of other dead animals shot during the hunt: including a ram and a red stag. She appeared to have enjoyed eating the stag, publishing an image of cuts of meat with vegetables and writing: Nothing Better than enjoying what you hunt !! Fresh Red Stag from our hunt in the highlands of Scotland !! Hunting, or rather the display of animal trophies, has become a reviled activity in some corners of social media, as well-heeled individuals, including the older sons of U.S. President Donald Trump, proudly display their trophies for the world to see on Instagram, Facebook and Twitter. The killing of Cecil the lion by a U.S. dentist, Dr. Walter J. Palmer, in Zimbabwe in 2015 sparked an international outcry and drew new scrutiny to the practice of paying to kill big game. Two years later, the lions son Xanda was killed in a trophy hunt near the same park. Since then, photograph after photograph of white hunters posing triumphantly with the bodies of animals such as giraffes and a family of baboons has stirred global condemnation. In the latter case, the Idaho fish and game commissioner seen grinning with an array of carcasses from an African hunting trip resigned. While many defenders of hunting see it as an honourable, skilled and bonding experience, others denounce it as unnecessary waste in the modern age and detrimental to the environment and to the animals who roam in the wild. But the issue is more complex than a clash of cultures. Some countries like Zimbabwe encourage big-game hunting as a source of income and others allow the activity to keep down herd populations through managed hunting trips and as a way to pay for the upkeep of game reserves. Researchers warned Monday in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences that 90 per cent of nearly 300 protected areas on the African continent faced funding shortfalls and that some could vanish. Some studies have shown that hunting can be devastating to endangered populations. A study published in 2010 by Craig Packer, director of the Lion Center at the University of Minnesota, found that sport hunting directly contributed to the decline of lions in most of Tanzanias hunting areas. He found that over a 12-year period, 40 per cent of the areas had been abandoned because of declines in trophy species. This year, the United States moved to allow hunters to import big-game trophies, including elephant tusks and lion hides, acquired in certain African countries, overturning an Obama-era ban. But to conservationists and animal lovers, there is simply no excuse for hunting. Sarah Moyes, a spokeswoman for OneKind, an organization dedicated to ending cruelty to Scotlands animals, said in an email: Its utterly shocking to see these images of Larysa Switlyk and other hunters posing for photos with the wild animals they killed on a recent trip to Scotland. She added, This is not the kind of tourism we should be encouraging in Scotland, let alone allowing to happen in the 21st century. Among those who recoiled at the images that Switlyk posted was Judy Murray, the mother of Scottish tennis star Andy Murray. Writing on Twitter, she branded the hunt disgraceful: A unique hunt? Disgraceful. Its a goat. And its in Scotland. On a beautiful island. Stop this pls @scotgov. Michael Russell, a member of the Scottish Parliament, said Wednesday that he would raise the issue as a matter of urgency with the environment secretary, Roseanna Cunningham. If this is actually happening on #Isla, and laid on by some sort of tour company, I would want to see it stopped immediately, he wrote on Twitter. In response to the concerns, Cunningham vowed to look into clarifying or changing the law, writing on Twitter, We fully understand why so many people find these images of hunted animals being held up as trophies so upsetting. She also noted that responsible culling of animals for land management is a necessary part of sustainable land management and is not illegal. Scotlands first minister, Nicola Sturgeon, also wrote on Twitter that the government would review the current situation and consider whether changes to the law are required. It seemed likely that Switlyk, who wrote that she had been in Scotland more than a month ago, was well aware of the outrage unfolding because of her photographs. In posts on social media Wednesday, Switlyk wrote: Im headed out on a bush plane for my next hunting adventure and will be out of service for 2 weeks. Nothing better than disconnecting from this social media driven world and connecting back with nature. Hopefully that will give enough time for all the ignorant people out there sending me death threats to get educated on hunting and conservation. Read more about: OTTAWA The decade-long ordeal of Ottawa academic Hassan Diab, suspected by French authorities of being involved in a deadly bombing in Paris, showed no signs of ending on Friday after an appeal court ordered a fresh review of evidence in the case. The French Court of Appeals decision sparked immediate rebukes from Diab, his lawyer and human-rights groups, as well as fresh calls for Ottawa to launch a public inquiry into Diabs case and to review the Extradition Act to ensure other Canadians arent caught in the same situation. Its long overdue for the Canadian government to seriously reform Canadas extradition law, Diab said during a news conference on Parliament Hill. The law as it stands is an affront to basic rights, due process and justice and it puts all Canadians at risk of potential, wrongful extradition. French authorities have said they suspect Diab, a Canadian of Lebanese descent, was involved in the 1980 bombing of a Paris synagogue that killed four people and injured dozens of others an accusation he has always denied. The RCMP arrested Diab in November 2008 in response to a request by France. In June 2011, Ontario Superior Court Justice Robert Maranger committed Diab for extradition despite acknowledging the case against him was weak. Read more: Supporters of newly freed Canadian professor Hassan Diab want inquiry into his extradition to France The following year, then-justice minister Rob Nicholson signed an extradition order surrendering Diab to France. In November 2014, Diab was sent to France, where he was held in solitary confinement for up to 22 hours a day. He spent three years in a French jail, only to be suddenly released earlier this year. In January, French judges dismissed the allegations against Diab and ordered his immediate release. Diab is back in Canada with his wife and children. However, French prosecuting authorities appealed his release. While a decision on the appeal was expected on Friday, Diabs lawyer, Donald Bayne, said the appeal court instead ordered the appointment of a new investigating judge. It also called for a new analysis of handwriting on a hotel registration card that was allegedly penned by Diab and put off any ruling until next year. Diabs supporters have long argued he was in Beirut not Paris when the attack took place and that his fingerprints, palm prints, physical description and age did not match those of the suspect identified in 1980. Bayne questioned the appeals courts decision during the news conference with Diab and Amnesty International Canada secretary general Alex Neve, saying: This is bizarre and it speaks to something fishy going on behind the scenes something political about this case. The sociology professor and his supporters have been urging the federal government to hold a full public inquiry into the case and to reform the Extradition Act to ensure individual rights are respected. Justice Minister Jody Wilson-Raybould has asked for an independent review of the extradition, but Bayne said its terms of reference are far too narrow and that his client wont participate in a sham review behind closed doors. What is needed ... is a public inquiry with full powers to examine all actions and decisions of Canadian officials in relation to Hassan Diabs extradition from Canada, said Neve. And also with a clear mandate and explicit instructions to consider the Extradition Act itself and the reforms that are needed to guard against an injustice of this nature ever happening again. With files from Jim Bronskill. Read more about: PARIS The French government said Friday it is considering plans to place police officers in schools in an effort to tackle violence following a string of incidents that prompted a debate over school security. Interior minister Christophe Castaner said after a meeting with the justice and education ministers that the government expects to present plans to officials next week. In the most difficult neighbourhoods, the possibility of having law enforcement officers in schools, with the agreement of principals, is not excluded, Castaner said. The meeting was called after a video showing a student threatening his teacher with a fake gun went viral in France last week. The teenager was charged with aggravated violence. French media reported that four other high school students have also been accused of threatening two teachers with fake guns earlier this month in a school in the port city of Le Havre. Hundreds of teachers have since told their stories of bullying by students using the hashtag #PasDeVague (Dont Make Waves) to highlight their lack of support. Speaking alongside Castaner, education minister Jean-Michel Blanquer said it is essential French schools teach students to respect others. He floated the idea of creating special schools for students with a violent track record, saying they could be supervised by staff with a military or police background in a strict environment. Read more about: WASHINGTONA Florida man with a criminal history and a fervour for U.S. President Donald Trump sent at least 13 mail bombs to prominent Democrats, Justice Department officials said, crediting DNA, a fingerprint match and misspellings for the key break in a case that spread fear of election-season violence with little precedent in the U.S. Cesar Sayoc, 56, of Aventura, Florida, faces five federal charges in connection with a mail bomb plot that spurred a weeklong, coast-to-coast investigation that continued even after he was taken into custody Friday as investigators scrutinized additional suspicious packages intended for Democrats. Sayoc will make his first court appearance next week, where additional details may be revealed about a motive. In the meantime, Attorney General Jeff Sessions suggested that politics may have played a role and noted that Sayoc appeared to be a partisan. Those who saw him in the Florida neighbourhood, unmistakable in a white van plastered with Trumps image and political stickers, described him as unsettling and troubled. Sayocs social media profiles portray a deeply disaffected conservative who trafficked in online conspiracy theories, parody accounts and name-calling. He called a Florida school shooting survivor a fake phoney, peddled theories about George Soros, the billionaire political donor targeted this week by a package bomb, and denigrated other Democrats who were later the intended recipients of explosive packages. An amateur body builder and former stripper who once spent time on probation for a bomb threat charge, Sayoc first registered as a Republican voter just ahead of the March 2016 Republican primary and quickly identified himself as a proud Trump supporter, tweeting and posting on Facebook videos that appear to show him at Trump rallies. He appeared to be living in his van, showering on the beach or at a local fitness centre. Sayocs arrest Friday was a major breakthrough in the nationwide manhunt following the discovery of the explosive devices none of which detonated addressed to prominent Democrats and other frequent targets of conservative ire, including former U.S. President Barack Obama, former Vice-President Joe Biden, Hillary Clinton and the cable network CNN. On Friday, new packages addressed to New Jersey Sen. Cory Booker and former National Intelligence Director James Clapper were intercepted both similar to those containing pipe bombs discovered earlier in the week. Investigators in California scrutinized a package sent to Democratic Sen. Kamala Harris, her office said, and one sent to Tom Steyer, a billionaire businessman who has campaigned for months for Trumps impeachment. The mail bombs, coming shortly before major midterm elections, sparked a heated national conversation about the hard-edged political climate and Trumps role in fanning the flames. The president has branded the media the enemy of the people and hurled harsh, personal insults at others targeted in the plot. Shortly after Sayoc was detained, Trump declared that we must never allow political violence to take root in America and that Americans must unify. Speaking later to reporters Friday evening before leaving for a political rally in North Carolina, Trump said he knows Sayoc supported him but that he himself bears no blame. Hours earlier Trump had complained via tweet that this bomb stuff was taking attention away from the upcoming election and that critics were wrongly blaming him. FBI and police officials worked swiftly to untangle clues this week as the packages mounted, sometimes several in the same day. The big break came when a fingerprint found on one of the packages, intended for California Rep. Maxine Waters, matched a fingerprint of Sayocs on file with Florida authorities. A DNA sample from a device intended for Obama similarly matched the suspects DNA, the FBI said. An additional clue: Misspellings from his online posts matched mistakes found on the packages, according to an 11-page criminal complaint that included the formal charges of threatening former presidents and transporting explosives across state lines. Some packages included photographs of the intended recipients marked with a red x, the FBI said. The packages contained timers and batteries, but were not rigged to explode upon opening. Officials were uncertain whether the devices were poorly designed or never intended to cause physical harm. Authorities noted that they included energetic material. A footnote to the charging document said such explosive material gives off heat and energy through a rapid exothermic reaction when initiated by heat, shock or friction. These are not hoax devices, FBI Director Chris Wray said. Sayoc was arrested near an auto-parts store in Plantation, Florida, north of Miami. Across the street, Thomas Fiori, a former federal law enforcement officer, said he saw about 50 armed officers swarm a man standing outside a white van. They ordered him to the ground, Fiori said, and he did not resist. He had that look of, Im done, I surrender, Fiori said. Sayoc appears to have been living on the margins, regularly running into trouble with the law and struggling to make ends meet. He was repeatedly arrested for theft in the 1990s, faced felony charges of possession of anabolic steroids in 2004 and was convicted of grand theft in 2014. In 2002, he served a year of probation for a felony charge of threatening to throw or place a bomb. His lawyer in that case said the charge stemmed from a heated conversation with a Florida utility representative. Ronald Lowy, a Miami attorney, said Sayoc showed no ability at the time to back up his threat with any bomb-making expertise. Sayoc had $4,175 in personal property and more than $21,000 in debts when filed for bankruptcy in 2012. Debtor lives with mother, owns no furniture, his lawyer indicated in a property list. He had been an amateur body builder. More recently he was seen at an LA Fitness in Aventura, regularly showering at the gym but not working out, said Edgar Lopez, 48, a therapist who works out at the gym. Marc Weiss saw Sayoc nearly every morning at 6 a.m. for the last four or five months. Ive seen the guy maybe 80 times and I never said a word to him because I had a feeling he was a little off, said Weiss, a 56-year-old building superintendent who has lived in the neighbourhood for eight years. This guy had an air about him that was unsettling. Sayocs political awakening appears to have coincided with Trumps rise. He registered to vote in Florida in March 2016 and has voted early since, records show. Documents released Friday by the Broward County Sheriffs Office show Sayoc reported in May 2015 that more than $40,000 in goods were stolen from his van and an attached trailer, including 11 pieces of Donald Trump-brand clothing valued at $7,150. Specifics are not included, but Trump has a line of suits, shirts, ties and accessories. The report shows detectives were never able to confirm whether the theft actually happened, and no arrests were made. Most of those targeted this week were past or present U.S. officials, but packages also were sent to actor Robert De Niro and Soros. The bombs have been sent across the country from New York, Delaware and Washington, D.C., to Florida and California, where Waters was targeted. They bore the return address of Florida Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz, the former chairwoman of the Democratic National Committee. Associated Press writers Laurie Kellman, Ken Thomas, Jill Colvin, Michael Biesecker, Stephen Braun and Chad Day in Washington; Terry Spencer, Kelli Kennedy and Curt Anderson in Florida; Jim Mustian, Deepti Hajela, Tom Hays and Michael R. Sisak in New York and Raphael Satter in Paris contributed to this report. Read more about: WASHINGTONThe ashes of Matthew Shepard, whose brutal murder in the 1990s became a rallying cry for the gay rights movement, will be laid to rest in Washington National Cathedral. Shepards remains have for 20 years been kept by his family in Wyoming, where the 21-year-old college student was killed in 1998. His ashes will be interred at the cathedral Friday morning. Shepards murder at the hands of two roofing workers who, authorities said, targeted him because he was gay, grabbed national headlines. The gruesome nature of the crime threw a spotlight on the hatred, violence and discrimination endured by LGBTQ individuals and communities in towns and cities across America. Also this week, personal items including fair ribbons, notebooks and homework assignments were donated to the Smithsonian Museum. Read more: After 20 years, Wyoming still struggles with Matthew Shepard murder PIJIJIAPAN, MEXICO Everything Pedro Osmin Ulloa was wearing, from the black felt shoes with the gold buckles to the shimmery blue button-down, was as new to him as he was to Mexico. The 30-year-old Honduran corn farmer and dogged sojourner in the migrant caravan was dressed head-to-toe in donated clothes. His 3-year-old son, Alexander, played with donated toys. And the rest of the family his wife, his two brothers and a cousin sat on the sidewalk eating beef stew and tortillas ladled out for them by residents of this bustling market town in southern Mexico. These people have been beautiful, he said. Everyones helping us out. Who is financing the caravan? There is no sign here of George Soros or the Russians. Instead, the responsibility of feeding, clothing and sheltering several thousand migrants has been embraced by the small Mexican towns along the route, with residents jumping into charity mode as if they are responding to a natural disaster. It was hard to walk a block in this town without seeing crates of free bottled water, tables packed with ham and cheese tortas or relief stations filled with medical supplies donated by the community to help the people on this gruelling march. Were supporting them 100 per cent, said Rafael Trinidad, a municipal employee, as he passed out sandwiches to migrants arriving along the main road. At least here, they can feel good. While U.S. President Donald Trump is looking for ways to block the caravan at the U.S. border, Mexicans are pitching in to ease the travellers journey. Residents along the route say they are motivated by the Catholic tradition of charity, a shared familiarity with migration to the United States and a sense of solidarity in the face of Trumps anti-migrant rhetoric. While they acknowledge the caravan could be a problem if it lingered, many do not seem to mind a brief stopover. Read more: Migrants set out on arduous 100 kilometre journey to next stop Arriaga Trump considering closing southern border to migrants, asylum-seekers How the migrant caravan became so big and why its continuing to grow Outside her familys hardware store, Coqui Cortez, 57, had set up a table to feed migrants lemon tea and stew, using meat from her sons butcher shop, while her daughter donated fruit down the street. My family has been very blessed, Cortez said. And we know that we are all brothers. What God gives us, we should share. But we do it with a lot of love, she added. For towns such as Pijijiapan, not far from Mexicos border with Guatemala, migration is second nature. For decades, people have hiked the back roads and ridden trains heading north. Many here say they have relatives in the United States or have migrated themselves. Central American migration to southern Mexico has caused tensions in recent years, as numbers have grown, but people here understand the poverty and violence that migrants are fleeing. Today its them. Tomorrow it could be us, said Lesbia Cinco Ley, 70, who was volunteering with the Catholic church in town to distribute food. Town officials in Pijijiapan said they began readying for the caravans arrival on Monday, holding meetings to strategize how to attend to the migrants. Before dawn on Thursday, Cinco Ley and several others began cooking, on a mission to prepare giant vats of ham and eggs, along with 14,000 sandwiches. Between the municipality, churches and private citizens, town officials estimated Pijijiapan had spent nearly $8,000 (U.S.) for one days worth of food. This is a poor town, but we still did all this, said Guadalupe Rodriguez, 48, a city councilwoman. When the caravan comes to town, it brings much more than just migrants. It has become a travelling road show of humanitarian workers, U.N. refugee staff, religious volunteers, government bureaucrats, police and immigration officials, as well as a good chunk of Mexicos foreign media corps. It is catching no one by surprise. On the radio in Tonala, a city 50 miles north of Pijijiapan, public service announcements went out on the radio Thursday ahead of the caravans arrival, instructing people where to donate and how to help. Mexican nuns who have volunteered during earthquakes, tsunamis and floods flew down from Guadalajara to join the caravan. They have been treating migrants for severe sunburns and swollen, blistered feet. Mexican people always unite in these types of situations, said Virginia Hernandez, 32, one of the sisters. Our Honduran brothers are in great need. President Enrique Pena Nietos government has vacillated on the caravan. There was an initial violent clash with federal police in riot gear at Mexicos southern border, but the group was eventually allowed to pass. Local governments in the state of Chiapas have so far been more welcoming. The newly elected mayor of Pijijiapan, Hector Meneses Marcelino, is from the Morena party, the same as Mexicos incoming president, Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador, who campaigned on treating migrants less as criminals and more as human beings with rights that need defending. Meneses said he spent one morning this week defusing a situation in which federal immigration officials wanted to arrest Mexicans who were picking up migrant hitchhikers. As hundreds of migrants filled the town square on Thursday, crowded under donated tarps for shade from the afternoon sun, municipal staffers and police bustled around attending to them and U.N. officials handed out pamphlets on Mexican asylum laws. On the town hall balcony, a man with a microphone called out names of migrants who had become separated from their relatives in the crush of people. It has been difficult to get a reliable estimate of the number of people in the caravan, for a several reasons: It is now dispersed among towns along the highway in Chiapas; more than 1,000 migrants have dropped out to apply for asylum in Mexico; and new people have joined in. Meneses, the mayor, said 7,500 migrants had been in town, while the U.N. staff travelling with the caravan put their estimate at 3,000. Still, for small Mexican towns, the arrival of even a few thousand people is a major event. As migrants entered town on foot and by hitching rides in cars and trucks, town official Gabriel Gonzalez, 43, greeted them in the main street, directing them to various gathering points and aid stations. Weve seen migrants here before, but never this many, he said. It looks like all of Honduras is coming. Read more about: WASHINGTONSuspicious packages addressed to New Jersey Sen. Cory Booker and former National Intelligence Director James Clapper and similar in appearance to pipe bomb devices sent to other prominent Democrats have been intercepted, the FBI said Friday, as investigators scrambled from coast to coast to locate the culprit and motives behind a bizarre plot aimed at critics of President Donald Trump. The discoveries brought to 12 the total number of devices addressed in recent days to Democratic figures including former President Barack Obama, former Vice-President Joe Biden and Hillary Clinton. Read more: Pipe bombs target top Democrats as political tensions mount Search for mail-bomb culprit turns to Florida as more Trump critics receive devices The FBI said the package to Booker was intercepted in Florida. The one discovered at a Manhattan postal facility was addressed to Clapper c/o CNN. An earlier package had been sent to former Obama CIA Director John Brennan in care of CNN in New York. Investigators were analyzing the innards of the crude devices to reveal whether they were intended to detonate or simply sow fear just before Election Day. Law enforcement officials told The Associated Press that the devices, containing timers and batteries, were not rigged like booby-trapped package bombs that would explode upon opening. But they were uncertain whether the devices were poorly designed or never intended to cause physical harm. A search of a postal database suggested at least some may have been mailed from Florida, one official said. Investigators are homing in on a postal facility in Opa-locka, Florida, where they believe some of the packages originated, another official said. The officials spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to discuss the ongoing investigation by name. Homeland Security Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen, in an interview Thursday night with Fox News Channel, acknowledged that some of packages originated in Florida. New details about the devices came as the four-day mail bomb scare spread nationwide, drawing investigators from dozens of federal, state and local agencies in the effort to identify one or more perpetrators. The targets have included Obama, Hillary Clinton, CNN and Rep. Maxine Waters of California. The common thread among them was obvious: their critical words for Trump and his frequent, harsher criticism in return. Trump claimed on Friday he was being blamed for the mail bombs addressed to his critics, complaining in a tweet sent before dawn: Funny how lowly rated CNN, and others, can criticize me at will, even blaming me for the current spate of Bombs and ridiculously comparing this to September 11th and the Oklahoma City bombing, yet when I criticize them they go wild and scream, its just not Presidential! At a press conference Thursday, officials in New York would not discuss possible motives or details on how the packages found their way into the U.S. postal system. Nor would they say why none of the packages had detonated, but they stressed they were still treating them as live devices. As far as a hoax device, were not treating it that way, police Commissioner James ONeill said. Details suggested a pattern that the items were packaged in manila envelopes, addressed to prominent Trump critics and carried U.S. postage stamps. The devices were being examined by technicians at the FBIs forensic lab in Quantico, Virginia. The packages stoked nationwide tensions and fears as voters prepared to vote Nov. 6 to determine partisan control of Congress a campaign both major political parties have described in near-apocalyptic terms. Even with the sender still unknown, politicians from both parties used the threats to decry a toxic political climate and lay blame. A very big part of the Anger we see today in our society is caused by the purposely false and inaccurate reporting of the Mainstream Media that I refer to as Fake News, Trump said on Twitter. It has gotten so bad and hateful that it is beyond description. Mainstream Media must clean up its act, FAST! Former CIA Director Brennan, the target of a package sent to CNN, fired back. Stop blaming others. Look in the mirror, Brennan tweeted. Your inflammatory rhetoric, insults, lies, & encouragement of physical violence are disgraceful. Clean up your act....try to act Presidential. CNN didnt immediately respond to messages seeking comment before business hours Friday. The list of bombing targets spread from New York, Delaware and Washington, D.C., to Florida and California. The explosive devices were packed in envelopes with bubble-wrap interiors bearing six American flag stamps and the return address of Florida Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz, the former chairwoman of the Democratic National Committee. The bombs seized Wednesday were about 15 centimetres long and packed with powder and broken glass, according to a law enforcement official who viewed X-ray images. The official said the devices were made from PVC pipe and covered with black tape. At the New York briefing, authorities confirmed that at least some of the packages were distributed through the U.S. mail, and cautioned that there could be additional devices in the postal system. They said investigators searching for more suspicious parcels had not found any during the previous eight hours. David Chipman, a retired federal ATF agent and now senior policy adviser for the Giffords Center, said the details revealed telltale signs that could help guide investigators. The tape on the pipe is an investigators dream, he said, recalling a case in Texas that was solved because the fibers on the tape were traced to the bombers dog. He said bombers tend to plot methodically. This is someone sitting down and spending time thinking about what theyre going to do to someone else. And some people like to relish that, he said. The new packages discovered Thursday set off a new wave of alarm. A retired New York police detective working in security in De Niros Manhattan office called police after seeing images of a package bomb sent to CNN and recalling a similar package addressed to the actor, officials said. The packages addressed to Biden were intercepted at Delaware mail facilities in New Castle and Wilmington, according to a law enforcement official who, like others, wasnt authorized to discuss the investigation and spoke on condition of anonymity. Like earlier targets, both Biden and De Niro have been sharply critical of Trump. The actor dropped an expletive insult at Trump at this years Tony Awards and apologized to Canadians for the idiotic behaviour of my president. Biden said last week that the president may not know what hes doing and coddles dictators. Trump has called Biden Crazy Joe and mentally weak. On Thursday, during a campaign trip to suburban Buffalo, Biden said: Weve got to get off this hate machine. Weve got to come together. The packages were clearly an effort to terrorize people politically, to choose people for political purposes and attack them because of their beliefs, New York Mayor Bill de Blasio said. The first crude bomb to be discovered was delivered Monday to the suburban New York compound of George Soros, a liberal billionaire and major contributor to Democratic causes. Soros has called Trumps presidency dangerous. Similar packages addressed to Clinton and Obama were intercepted on their way to Clintons New York home, where she lives with former President Bill Clinton, and to Washington, where Obama lives with his wife, Michelle Obama. The Secret Service said neither package reached its intended recipient. Other packages were sent to frequent Trump critics Waters, D-Calif., and former Obama Attorney General Eric Holder. His ended up at the Sunrise, Florida, office of Wasserman Schultz, who was listed as the return address. A police bomb squad removed the package addressed to Brennan on Wednesday from CNNs New York office, which was evacuated. In response to the events, Trump decried political violence but also joked about moving to more polite speeches. Lets get along, he said at a Wisconsin rally Wednesday night. By the way, do you see how nice Im behaving tonight? Have you ever seen this? Associated Press writers Laurie Kellman, Ken Thomas, Jill Colvin and Chad Day in Washington and Jim Mustian, Deepti Hajela and Tom Hays in New York contributed to this report. Read more about: WASHINGTONPresident Donald Trump is considering taking executive action to bar migrants, including asylum-seekers, from entering the country at the southern border, according to people familiar with the plan. The effort would be the starkest indication yet of Trumps election-season push to play to his anti-immigrant base as his party fights to keep control of Congress. The proposal amounts to a sweeping use of presidential power to fortify the border and impose the kind of aggressive immigration restrictions and enforcement measures that Trump has made his signature pursuit. The plan is expected to prompt a swift challenge in federal courts. The move would be the most drastic in a series of steps that Trump has taken or threatened to take in recent days including preparations Thursday to send as many as 1,000 active-duty Army troops to help secure the southern border as he works to stop what he has called an onslaught of immigrants only days before the midterm elections. As part of that effort, the president has capitalized this month on the thousands of Central American migrants trekking north through Mexico. Many in the group are women and children believed to be seeking refuge from violence and economic hardship. He said without evidence this week that criminals and unknown Middle Easterners were mixed in among the people in the migrant caravan and has blamed its formation on Democrats, falsely charging that they support allowing immigrants to stream, unchecked, into the country. The caravan is still more than 1,000 miles south of the border, and it is unclear when or whether the migrants will arrive, or how many will seek to cross into the United States. The White House did not respond to requests for comment on the plan for executive action on the border and referred questions about the troop deployment to the Defense Department and the Department of Homeland Security. Details of the plan were still being completed Thursday, according to the people who described it, all of whom insisted on anonymity to discuss a proposal that is still under development. The president, who is prone to changing his mind, could still decide not to take action, they stressed. But three people briefed on the plan said it envisioned Trump issuing a proclamation Tuesday. It would invoke broad presidential powers to bar foreigners from entering the country for national security reasons under the same section of immigration law that underpinned the travel ban to block Central American migrants from crossing the southern border, they said. At the same time, the administration would put in place new rules that would disqualify migrants who cross the border in between ports of entry from claiming asylum, according to those briefed. Exceptions would be made for people facing torture at home. Taken together, the actions would effectively prevent hundreds of people in the caravan from gaining entry into the United States and making an asylum claim. But the longer-term implications could be more profound, potentially shutting down altogether an avenue permitted under both U.S. and international law that many people fleeing violence and persecution use to take refuge here. According to American immigration law, people arriving at ports of entry on the U.S. border have the right to seek asylum, and, if they demonstrate a credible fear of returning home, to have their claims processed with the possibility of eventually being granted legal status to stay. Those who do not go to a checkpoint but are apprehended crossing the border without authorization can also make such a claim and must, under the law, be afforded a chance to have their case heard. Trump and his advisers have complained bitterly about that system, arguing that it can reward fabricated or unfounded claims of vulnerability. He has made no distinction between people flouting immigration laws and those fleeing violence and persecution, portraying the entire caravan group as lawbreakers. To those in the Caravan, turnaround, we are not letting people into the United States illegally, the president wrote Thursday on Twitter. Go back to your Country and if you want, apply for citizenship like millions of others are doing! Trump is weighing the new measures as he prepares to order 800 to 1,000 U.S. Army troops to help secure the southern border, Defense Department officials said Thursday. Jim Mattis, the defense secretary, was expected to sign papers in the coming days to send the troops. They will include engineers to help with the construction of tents and fencing, doctors for medical support, and potentially some personnel to operate drones along the border, the officials said, speaking on the condition of anonymity because the deployment had not yet been finished. Trump has made it clear in recent days that he is angry and frustrated about his administrations inability to gain firmer control of the U.S. border with Mexico. I am bringing out the military for this National Emergency, the president tweeted. They will be stopped! It is not the first time that Trump has demanded that the military secure the southern border. In April, when another such caravan of migrants began making its way north through Mexico, he called for U.S. troops to step in, suggesting that he wanted active-duty armed troops to do what immigration authorities could not. Instead, after discussions with Mattis and others, Trump requested that hundreds of National Guard personnel be mobilized to serve in support roles. This time, according to officials briefed on the discussions, Trumps aides had been looking at sending many more troops up to 10,000 to aid in addressing the migrant flow, as they scrambled to satisfy a president demanding a muscular response. Mattis has been resistant to calls to involve the military in such endeavors. The active-duty military is generally barred by law from carrying out domestic law enforcement functions, such as apprehending people at the border. Officials said the deployment that Mattis is expected to approve would be legal, however, because the troops would be serving in a support role, rather than performing policing or law enforcement duties themselves. A senior Defense Department official who has been briefed on the planning said the precise legal authorities under which Mattis would order the deployment were still being ironed out by administration lawyers. Trumps reference to the term national emergency was significant, the official added, because that allows wider latitude to send active-duty troops under existing legal authorities. Human rights and immigrant advocacy groups condemned the decision to use the military, calling Trumps response to the caravan a callous and politically motivated attempt to instill fear in American voters by fabricating a sense of crisis in the run-up to the midterm elections. The approach of a caravan of migrants that includes refugees fleeing persecution and violence is not a crisis, but President Trump is yet again spreading hatred and fear, hoping to score political points by making Americans fear refugees, said Mike Breen, the chief executive of Human Rights First, an advocacy group. The president should not be using the military to further a partisan agenda. The military deployment is one element of a multifaceted effort that senior administration officials have been discussing privately for weeks to try to satisfy the presidents demand to do more to secure the border. Kirstjen Nielsen, the Homeland Security secretary, who has briefed Trump about the caravan as well as data showing a large uptick in the number of apprehensions at the border over the past year, has been leading the effort. Read more about: U.S. National Security Adviser John Bolton said Friday that Russian President Vladimir Putin has been invited to visit Washington next year. Bolton said we have invited President Putin to Washington after the first of the year for, basically, a full day of consultations. He said no date has been set yet. Bolton spoke on a trip to the ex-Soviet nation of Georgia, which fully lost control over its two separatist provinces after losing a brief war with Russia in 2008. Bolton noted that Putin and U.S. President Donald Trump are set to meet in Paris when they attend Nov. 11 events marking 100 years since Armistice Day. Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov had a call with U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo to discuss acute issues on the international agenda and bilateral ties in the context of preparations for planned contacts between the presidents, the ministry said in a statement. Putin and Trump held a summit in Helsinki in July amid sharp differences over the Ukrainian crisis, the war in Syria and the allegations of Russian meddling in the U.S. 2016 presidential election. Read more: Putin says Russia will target nations hosting U.S. missiles Kremlin concerned over Trumps decision to leave nuclear arms treaty No olives? Putin pokes fun at U.S. seal amid arms pact dispute In the wake of the summit, Trump was widely criticized for failing to publicly denounce Russias interference in the 2016 U.S. election and appearing to accept Putins denials of such activity. Days after the Helsinki meeting, Trump asked Bolton to invite Putin to Washington in the fall but the invitation further fuelled controversy and the invitation was quickly pushed back until next year. Putin has repeatedly said that improvements in U.S.-Russian ties have been thwarted by U.S. political infighting, but voiced hope that Trump could eventually move to repair the fractured relations. Earlier this month, the Russian leader said playing the Russian card was a convenient instrument in U.S. politics ahead of the midterm election in November. Read more about: OTTAWAThe air force considered putting air marshals on military VIP flights to deter bad behaviour by passengers in the wake of a troubled trip where drunk travellers posed a safety risk, documents reveal. The suggestion for onboard air marshals to address inappropriate passenger behaviour immediately was one of five recommendations developed by the Royal Canadian Air Force after a flight last December resulted in charges against retired NHL star Dave Tiger Williams. In the end, the RCAF backed away from that recommendation but implemented other changes to avoid a repeat of the significant events on the now infamous Team Canada flight that was carrying athletes, musicians and business people to visit and entertain troops deployed overseas. The trip to visit troops in Greece and Latvia became a big black eye for the military after reports that some passengers were drunk even before the flight departed and questionable behaviour in the air two passengers urinated themselves while on the plane. Some passengers were disrespectful and the environment on the aircraft was not free of harassment, Col. Mark Goulden wrote in a Feb. 19, 2018 briefing note that reviewed air force policies in the aftermath of the flight. The safety of the flight was compromised due to the inebriated state of some of the passengers, wrote Goulden, commander of 8 Wing in Trenton, which includes 437 Squadron, operators of the CC-150 Polaris aircraft used for the trip. Read more: Two members of Canadas military allege they were sexually harassed by passengers during a troubled VIP trip Canadas top general orders new investigation into boozy VIP flight Booze-fuelled military flights spark calls for change Some passengers were so drunk that air force personnel feared they would be a safety hazard in the event of an emergency, according to documents obtained by the Star under access to information. The documents obtained by the Star provide some additional details around the Team Canada trips described as Mardi Gras at 35,000 feet by many squadron members, according to one memo. Other unsafe and inappropriate behaviour cited in the documents included passengers who helped themselves to drinks, boarded the plane with open alcoholic beverages, even their own bottles of alcohol, and refused to sit for landing. Williams was charged with sexual assault and assault. Through his lawyer, he has denied any wrongdoing. His trial is scheduled for next June. As previously reported by the Star, two members of the crew said they had been sexually harassed and touched by passengers during the flight. The behaviour of some passengers would likely have had significant consequences if they had been flying on a commercial airline, Goulden said. Military insiders complained to the Star earlier this year that with VIP passengers and senior military brass onboard, they felt powerless to curb drinking or rowdy behaviour, a concern later confirmed by investigations into the incident. Those investigations were released earlier this month and Gen. Jonathan Vance, the chief of defence staff, said it was a situation we were not equipped to handle and werent prepared for. Vance said the problems on the December flight were limited to a very small number of the passengers onboard. Still, he placed a permanent ban on serving alcohol on all similar flights in the future. And he said the military would replace the Team Canada visits with a new model. Goulden said the mission commander was left in the difficult position of denying boarding or intervening to halt the bad behaviour of travellers perceived as guests of senior military brass. While Lt.-Gen. Alain Parent, the vice-chief of defence staff, and Chief Warrant Officer Kevin West, the most senior non-commissioned member, were on the trip, the roles and responsibilities of senior personnel is not clear in that setting, Goulden said. Goulden laid out five recommendations to provide a safe environment for future VIP flights. For starters, the air force says it needs to regulate alcohol consumption by civilian passengers. That includes the authority to deny board to those who appear impaired by drugs or booze. And he said alcohol should be served by crew members rather than letting passengers help themselves. He recommended naming a VIP representative on future flights responsible for the conduct of the passengers and better in-flight risk management to identify inappropriate behaviour and report it to senior officials. He urged better training for military personnel, including the Smart Serve program to serve alcohol. Goulden noted that alcohol-related incidents happen on commercial flights. But he said that military personnel lacked training in serving alcohol or dealing with inappropriate passenger behaviour. Maj.-Gen. Christian Drouin, commander of 1 Canadian Air Division, accepted four of the recommendations. But he rejected the call for air marshals, saying the other changes should be enough to mitigate the chances of inappropriate passenger behaviour. MONTREALTo follow the Canadian electoral reform debate is akin to keeping track of a game of whack-a-mole. No sooner is the issue put down in one political venue that it pops up somewhere else. And so it is that proposals to do away with the first-past-the-post voting system are currently live in two provinces British Columbia and Quebec with a third Prince Edward Island scheduled to ask its voters when they go to the polls in the fall whether they want to move to a mixed-member proportional system. Canada has seen this movie before. Had Prime Minister Justin Trudeau honored his pledge to ensure the 2015 election was the last to be held under the current system we would be mere months away from using a new voting method to elect the members of the next Parliament. Over the past two decades, at least half the provinces have dabbled with electoral reform. In none did the implementation of a new voting system reach the finish line. Read more: Opinion | Rick Salutin: Look to past for electoral reforms Will Ontarios vote results open the door to electoral reform? Opinion | Messy campaign proves need for political reforms So why should the ending be different this time? For one, common sense suggests that if pressure to change the system has not abated despite the best efforts of supporters of the status quo the dam will eventually break. It might take just one province particularly if that province were one of the more populous ones to have a successful trial run at using a more proportional voting method to trigger a domino effect. The latest string of provincial elections has seen a rise in the support for smaller parties. Earlier this month, Quebec Solidaire more than tripled its seat count in the Quebec national assembly. The presence of the Green party has increased in a number of provincial legislatures. Those parties share an interest in advancing the cause of proportional representation. And they draw a good chunk of their support from millennials, the voting cohort that is about to dominate the electorate. It is not a coincidence that proportional representation is nowhere more on the radar than in some of the provinces where the influence of smaller parties has been on the rise. Here is an abbreviated look at the state of play. P.E.I. actually polled its voters on a variety of options and 52 per cent supported a mixed-members proportional system. But participation was low less than 40 per cent and the ruling provincial Liberals set aside the result until the question could be put to voters in next falls provincial election. Support for the Greens is nowhere higher than in Canadas smallest provinces with polls putting the party in contention for power in Charlottetown. There could be history in the making in P.E.I. As of this week, B.C. where the Green party has the balance of power in the provincial legislature is holding a mail-in referendum. Unless Canada Post labour disruptions force a delay, voting is set to end on Nov. 30. This is B.C.s third kick at the can. The young British Columbians who are eligible to vote for the first time in this plebiscite were entering kindergarten the first time the province asked the question. There is not one specific alternative on the ballot. Instead voters are asked to pronounce on whether they want to abandon the first-past-the-poll system and then to pick one of three substitute options. Should change win the day, the calendar could still play tricks with the plan. The move to a different system would not happen until after July 1, 2021. B.C.s current minority NDP government may not last that long. Prior to this months Quebec election, three of the four parties in the National Assembly including the victorious Coalition Avenir Quebec pledged to replace the first-past-the-post system in time for the provinces 2022 campaign. The promise is not contingent on the results of a referendum and all parties to the pledge have agreed on a mixed-member proportional representation. The devil may be in the many details that have yet to be discussed. Still Quebec could be on a faster track to electoral reform than any other province. On the day of the swearing-in of his government earlier this month, Premier Francois Legault reiterated his intention to bring in the relevant electoral reform legislation within the year. The only way for Legault to wiggle out of the promise would be to renege on his word to voters and to his opposition partners. The latter could not force a CAQ majority government to honour its commitment. But Trudeaus broken promise is still fresh in many minds and it is an example the incoming Quebec premier has said he would not follow. Chantal Hebert is a columnist based in Ottawa covering politics. Follow her on Twitter: @ChantalHbert Read more about: Silent as a birds wing, mute as tarmac, shy as a baby gerbil, Premier Doug Fords cabinet is doing a Greta Garbo. They want to be alone. Of all the emerging social inadequacies of the Ford government, the shunning of the voting public by avoiding reporters is the strangest. Garbo was always banging on about being alone, but most famously in Grand Hotel, a 1932 movie very much like Queens Park right now, a genre drama about a big place where people seek to be known and not known, where paths cross or deliberately dont. Transportation Minister John Yakabuski, in Garbos role, plays the Russian ballerina Grusinskaya who wishes not to be questioned about her declining career, just as Yakabuski made clear Thursday he would not agree to an interview request from Star transportation reporter Ben Spurr, a meticulous and fair-minded reporter. Minister Garbo was announcing a new public-private GO station deal in Mimico although his statement was drowned out by a huge diesel engine right behind him, always a problem with romantic trains as a backdrop. (Grand Hotel climaxes in a train station too, but in Berlin, not Mimico.) When Spurr tried to introduce himself to the transportation minister/artiste on the train platform stranger danger! it was time for Garbos big line. Yakabuski told Spurr he didnt talk to people who insult me on the internet. Read more: Premier Doug Ford urges businesses to rally behind him in fight against $15 minimum wage Metrolinx plans to partner with private developer for Mimico Go station revamp How rampant development and poor planning left residents of this Etobicoke neighbourhood stuck in traffic But all Spurr could find was his comment online about Yakabuski not talking to journalists. The minister is a powerful person, whose government controls billions of dollars of infrastructure and is proposing major changes to your transit system, Spurr wrote. He and his communications staff are paid by the public. I think they should answer basic questions from the public. Thats not an insult, that is a call for basic information in a democracy. The minister also blocks the Globe and Mails urban transportation reporter, Oliver Moore. Normal politicians would be thrilled to talk regularly to two reporters with specialized knowledge. And reporters dont insult, they simply report. Columnists do though, and thats where I come in. At this point Yakabuski has abandoned Garbo and is doing The Fugitive or that bit in Gravity where George Clooney detaches himself from Sandra Bullock and floats away. Social Services Minister Lisa MacLeods staffers applauding to drown out reporters questions? Thats Julia Louis-Dreyfus as shameless Vice-President Selina Meyer in Veep. In real life, Yakabuski sounds like Sarah Huckabee Sanders who blamed CNN for always having been so negative. CNN had been sent a pipe bomb amid President Trump labelling journalists enemies of the people. Fords government so dislikes reporters that it sends out its own version of news on a Conservative platform called Ontario News Now, with an actor (Seneca-trained former journalist Lyndsey Vanstone) playing a TV news reporter. She cheerfully offers no context, no quotes from Opposition critics or community groups, just Ford cabinet ministers congratulating each other and taking her candyfloss questions. This is news as Ford would like it. No minister will have to defend the tax money being spent though Ford Nation voters actually care about that or be asked awkward questions. Government is a private matter. Ford, slayer of elections, will do as he pleases. This is sinister. But Yakabuskis stance is ludicrous, a teenage-level dating strategy to pursue voters, win, and then ghost them. One can only speculate. Is this payback for some ancient grudge he has coddled like an egg? What will my payback be for calling Yakabuski a ballerina? Heres another way Ford veers from the norm. To succeed in politics, its best to be a certain kind of person: energetic, unflappable, data-minded, thick-skinned, and above all, comfortable with people. Bill Clinton had these qualities, as did Jean Chretien, as does Justin Trudeau. The prime minister walks into crowds, does town halls; hell talk to anyone. Yakabuski, son of a longtime Renfrew MPP, is a hardware-store owner from Barrys Bay, the kind of Corner Gas job where you have to be a people person to run the business well. He grew up in a family of 14 children, which youd think would make him sociable. Instead, he has the same spiky resentment that radiates from Ford. Its like saying to a customer, I will not sell you that snowblower. If that plays okay in Renfrew-Nipissing-Pembroke, it will not in a ministry that spent $5.3 billion in public money last year. Fords government for the people, only 5 months old, has already blocked a path to still-unconvinced voters. One senses that ministers have a Harper-like list of what they dislike: journalists, cities, the federal government, young people, women, post-secondary education, low-paid workers, pesky government regulations, pesky government and possibly themselves for being governmental. New governments, like new bosses, are given a certain number of yes cards, in this case because the previous Liberal government had taken on an air of seedy corruption. When the electorate gets restless, those yes cards run out. Ford and his cabinet will indeed be alone, as they so ardently wish. Read more about: Ontario is throwing Michigan moose to the wolves. Premier Doug Ford announced Thursday that four to six wolves will be exported to neighbouring Michigan to cope with the exploding moose population on the states Isle Royale National Park. Ontario and Michigan have a long history of friendship, an abundance of natural beauty and a proud tradition of working together to conserve our natural ecosystems, Ford said during a northern Ontario tour. We all have an important role to play in protecting the environment and were happy to do our part to help Michigans wildlife thrive, he said. Michigan Gov. Rick Snyder said this project will help the National Park Service restore ecological balance to the island park and preserve this wild and special place for generations to come. Michigan is proud to be part of this international effort to return a viable wolf population to Isle Royale, Until last month, there were only two wolves left on the remote Lake Superior island park that is home to 1,475 moose. Four wolves were recently brought from Minnesota one male and three females so the addition of up to six from Ontario will help boost the pack. Wolves are Isle Royales top predator and are critical to the islands ecosystem. Officials hope to have 20 to 30 wolves within three years. In addition to individual wolves from Minnesota and Michigan, bringing Ontario wolves to the park provides the best mix of genetic sources for the reintroduced wolf population, said Phyllis Green, the Isle Royale park superintendent This collaborative effort will help ensure the start of a robust population of wolves on Isle Royale. Scientists have been doing annual studies of the wolf and moose population in the park for 60 years in 2009, there were 500 moose there. The wolf population peaked at 50 in 1980. Robert Benzie is the Star's Queen's Park bureau chief and a reporter covering Ontario politics. Follow him on Twitter: @robertbenzie VANCOUVERAs British Columbians get their ballots for the provinces third referendum on how we elect our governments, a top U.K. electoral expert hopes voters here think hard about what kind of democracy we want. Proportional representations opponents and supporters have tossed around names of countries where they say alternative voting systems have wrought either chaos or balance. So StarMetro asked political experts in those countries how things really turned out. First, we turned to the origin of Canadas current Westminster system of government: the United Kingdom. But even there its not so simple, said University of Strathclyde politics professor John Curtice. We actually have a Heinz 57 of electoral systems across the U.K., he said from his home in Glasgow, Scotland. God almighty some voters have used three or four electoral systems on the same day. As in B.C., the U.K. Parliament uses first-past-the-post, but the Scottish Parliament uses a form of proportional representation. Northern Ireland, like Ireland to its south, uses another one: single transferable vote (STV). And direct mayoral elections, including London, use another voting system still. While critics of B.C.s latest referendum exercise which includes four variants call it confusing and complicated, in fact the crucial choice is much more simple, Curtice said. Its actually about competing visions of democracy. Its an argument between, on one hand, a majoritarian vision of democracy that encourages accountability a direct mechanism between the government and electorate, he said in a phone interview, and on the other hand, a vision where the purpose of elections is to come up with an assembly that represents the interests and views of the electorate. Those are very different objectives. On Monday, Elections B.C. mailed out 3.3 million mail-in voting packages, which must be received by Elections B.C. by mail or in-person at Service B.C. centres before 4:30 p.m. on Nov. 30. B.C.s ballot asks two questions: First, Which system should B.C. use for provincial elections? The current first-past-the-post voting system, or a proportional representation voting system. And second, which of three different proportional representation systems is preferred, regardless of your first questions vote: mixed member proportional, rural-urban proportional or dual member proportional? Curtice thinks its helpful to decide each answer on its own, and dont get distracted by scare stories about what might or might not happen. You need to first decide if you want elections to be about choosing your local representative, or choosing a Parliament that represents the electorate as a whole, he said. Only when youve answered that question should you decide which system before you best meets that objective. Having a two-part ballot question with four alternatives may be confusing to some B.C. voters, but its nothing New Zealanders couldnt handle when they voted for proportional representation in three referenda. Voters there actually had five choices between two questions. Multiple-option ballots are challenging for ordinary people, admitted Jack Vowles, professor of history, philosophy and political science at the Victoria University of Wellington, New Zealand. To cast an informed vote, people are being expected to achieve a level of knowledge of electoral systems arguably beyond the expertise of political scientists who dont specialize in the field. Just because the option choices are demanding is not a very good argument to vote first-past-the-post. Campaigners should be seeking to inform voters, not telling them they are too stupid to make a choice. Although B.C.s independent Chief Electoral Officer vetted the ballot questions, the referendums sparked allegations from opponents that its rigged in favour of NDP and Green electoral success particularly since details of how to implement the alternative systems or riding boundaries will be decided by a committee of their government. But as they get their ballots, many voters have expressed confusion about its two-part question and four alternative voting systems on offer. Its not as simple as just saying, If you get 20 per cent of the vote, you get 20 per cent of the seats, explains Campbell Sharman, an adjunct professor in UBCs political science department. Each system has its own strengths and weaknesses. So what do experts say in countries practicing each of the systems on the ballot? 1. First Past the Post (FPTP) The first question on the B.C. ballot is between the status quo or ditching it. So it only seems fair to examine the existing system for its pros and cons, experts say. From the U.K., flag-bearer of the Westminster style of government, Curtice laments the fact that countrys centuries-old electoral system is known as first past the post at all. After all, a party with as little as 20 per cent of the popular vote, he noted, could technically win the largest number or plurality of seats and form a government. There is no post, he said. Thats a great misnomer. There is no share of the vote you have to achieve in order to get elected, just a plurality of the votes. Its not even a majority rule. More accurate is single member plurality, he said, where voters choose their local representative by whoever gets the most votes locally compared to other candidates, and whichever party can gain the most of those MPs support in Parliament becomes the government. The major strength of that Westminster voting model lies in its mechanism tying each member of Parliament to their local constituents, he explained. Voters choose between alternative governments, he said, and at the end of their term its easy for voters to lay credit or blame and know whos responsible. Theres a direct mechanism to change government. As former B.C. Premier Ujjal Dosanjh argued, when he came out swinging against changing electoral systems in June, Our current first-past-the-post electoral system is not only simple, stable and successful, but it keeps extremist parties out of our legislature. Thats a recurring talking point for the No B.C. Proportional Representation Society, which released a video on social media this week depicting marching soldiers after the text Germany right now and an ominous warning: Weve all seen what happens when extremists with power start throwing their weight around. For Dosanjh, whos had his life threatened for opposing religious extremism, the current system preserves stability because it generally requires successful parties to have broader appeal than in a single region. He cited the U.K.s 2015 elections, where the far-right nationalist U.K. Independence Party (UKIP) won 13 per cent of the popular vote but only got a single seat. Had the U.K. used proportional representation, UKIP would have elected 82 MPs and played a huge role in that country, Dosanjh told reporters. But they could not convince voters in more than one geographic riding to elect them over other candidates. But the director of the Centre for the Study of Democratic Institutions, at the University of B.C., says hes not persuaded at all by that argument. I dont think there is more extremism in a proportional representation system, Max Cameron countered. In fact, first-past-the-post tends to polarize politics, whereas under proportional systems you usually get centrist coalitions under enormous pressure to reach agreements, compromise and find middle ground. Honestly, if you have 10 per cent of your electorate voting for extremists, you have an extremist problem, not a pro-rep problem. Dont think by engineering elections to misrepresent the public youve solved that problem. I think Trump is an extremist; I dont see how first-past-the-post has protected us against him. That points echoed by an expert in another country thats seen sweeping reforms to its own electoral system. Arguably, first-past-the-post systems make it more likely extremists will gain control of major parties that may form governments, said Vowles in New Zealand, alluding to the current U.S. President. You have an example pretty close to you. Another argument for the current B.C. system is its simplicity. Ballots are counted in each riding, and the candidate with the most local votes even if not a popular majority wins that district. As much as people like to disagree about it, Cameron notes, the reality is we all actually agree on what first past the post does: it creates majority governments. But we disagree on whether thats a good thing. It tends to give us stable, two-party majority rule but critics point out that the majority of the popular vote may not have the majority of seats, so you get things like strategic voting, swing ridings, and governments significantly out of whack with the electorate that only have their base behind them. 2. Mixed member proportional This option is by far the most widely used of the proportional voting systems, and the most commonly used in former Westminster-system countries. New Zealand, which has been using it since 1996, is a prime example one that has been touted by cheerleaders and cynics alike. Mixed member proportional is distinguished by its two different types of MLAs in the Legislature: At the riding level, District MLAs are elected using the current first past the post system. The second type of seats are held by Regional MLAs, who are assigned from a list of candidates chosen by political parties; its these Regional MLAs that help even out the proportion of the popular vote. Some important details need to be ironed out in B.C., however. In one version of MMP, voters choose a single candidate, and that vote decides both the winning District MLA, and which party gets to be represented with the Regional MLA. In another version, voters have two separate boxes to mark on their ballot: one for a local candidate, and one for their preferred party at the regional level. Its the system used for the Scottish Parliament for years, where voters get two votes on their ballot. As a result, the Scots elect 73 constituency representatives, and 56 seats allocated proportionally from partys showing in eight regions. The system is roughly proportional, basically once you are around 45 per cent of the vote you have a good chance of getting a majority, which happened in 2011, Glasgows Curtice explained. We had eight years of coalitions, since then weve have minority governments again and again. One coalition governed quite happily for eight years with only the occasional row. The question is, is the system unstable or allow a small party undue influence over the government, as critics allege? Curtice said although parties are forced under MMP to negotiate, duck and weave when they dont have a majority, that also happens under Westminster first-past-the-post systems as is currently the case in B.C. where three Green Party MLAs are propping up the NDP minority government. In first past the post, Curtice said the bargaining all happens within the party, behind closed doors it doesnt happen in the public domain. But the fear of a series of minority coalitions hammering out deals or risk going back to the polls isnt something to dismiss lightly, he admitted. Such negotiations have been Scotlands norm, as well as New Zealands, since adopting MMP. And critics rightly say that if parties, not voters, get to select their regional party lists, they will gain a significant amount of power in such a system. Its a fair comment if you have a closed party list, Curtice said. But you could have an open list its perfectly possible to allow voters to rank the party list provided. Parties tend to dislike that open-list system. And the thing is, in (first past the post) the objection applies just as much where parties run a single candidate they select. One benefit, UBCs Cameron notes, is its long-standing use in Germany, New Zealand and many other countries similar to Canada. The bugs have already been worked out, he said. We have models we can turn to. 3. Rural-urban proportional One option on the ballot thats not been used, at least not exactly as proposed for B.C., is actually a hybrid between two systems: MMP, and another one familiar to many British Columbians who lived through the provinces two previous referenda single transferable vote. The STV, which involves a ranked ballot where voters mark multiple candidates in order of preference, is used to elect the Australian upper house of its Parliament, and the upper houses of most states. A different type of ranked ballot is used to elect the larger, lower house federally. I think as much by accident as by design, the Australian parliamentary system is more representative and more effective than the Canadian one, said UBCs Campbell Sharman, who grew up in Adelaide before spending most of his life in Perth. But in Australia, the electoral system has one big problem: its not actually proportional. However, people do feel theres somewhere in the system they can get their voice heard. I dont think thats true for most Canadians. In the proposed B.C. variant that involves a mix of STV and MMP the so-called rural-urban proportional model only densely populated urban and semi-urban regions would use a ranked ballot to elect their MLAs, and those urban ridings would be merged into larger regional districts. If an urban candidate gets a majority under RUP, theyre elected. But if no one passes the threshold required, then voters second choice votes are redistributed to ultimately pick the winner, leading ostensibly to the more broadly favoured candidate becoming MLA. Rural areas, however, would remain roughly the same size and use a mixed member proportional system to elect MLAs. Having two entirely different types of ballot and counting in a single province might seem unwieldy, but its actually the case in other places. Its STV in the cities basically, and MMP in rural areas, Cameron said. It acknowledges we want local representation, especially in less-populated large ridings, so if were going to go to bigger ridings wed do it only in the cities. But the downside is wed have different electoral systems within a single province, and different ballots cast by voters depending on where they live. 4. Dual-member proportional The remaining option for voters is one that Elections B.C. notes was recently developed in Canada and is not currently in use. That disclaimer might raise alarms for voters cautious about changing the way we choose our government based on an untested idea as ex-Premier Dosanjh put it, voting in absolute darkness. But in fact, the referendums dual member proportional option is a simple system meant to address concerns raised by rural and remote B.C. voters who fear they would lose their local representation. Thats because dual member proportional voting was invented by a 26-year-old physics, math and politics graduate who understands those concerns personally. Sean Graham grew up in Fort McMurray in northern Alberta, and now lives in Edmonton. One thing that struck me is existing proposals didnt do a good enough job incorporating rural communities, the now-civil servant told StarMetro. I felt we could make something that would be a better fit for Canada, with its massive geography and population concentrated in very small areas. Under DMP, urban and rural voters are in the same voting system but see a different ballot. In densely populated urban areas, parties can run up to two candidates in enlarged ridings. But like todays system, voters choose just one of them, or an independent if they wish. Whichever candidate gets the most votes in that riding becomes an MLA; the second riding seat is allocated to the party-nominated local candidate who won the most votes, based on the partys overall performance in the province. Meanwhile, in big rural ridings, voting happens the same as under FPTP, with one candidate winning with the most votes. There need not be an increase in overall MLAs, however, because the urban ridings can simply become larger to accommodate two MLAs each. Dual member proportional has been very transparent in addressing the primary concern of rural residents around the size of the district and keeping their local representation, Graham explained. In DMP, every MLA is a local MLA; for a candidate to be elected, just like under first past the post, you have to be on the ballot in that local community and receive support in that local community. The idea captured the imagination of UBCs Max Cameron during a symposium at the school, where Graham explained it. And far from being complex, he feels its among the simplest of all four options. OK, it hasnt been tried, but that doesnt change the fact its a brilliant system, Cameron said. This guy came up with this brilliant idea theres something a little like it in Bavaria, Germany thats essentially a clever way of maximizing proportionality but retaining local representation, and keeping districts as small as possible. The idea obviously also captured the attention of the B.C. government, but Graham insisted its not strange to him to be the subject of such public debate. Prince Edward Island already included DMP in its referendum on electoral reform. Its one of the rare cases where you actually can have your cake and eat it too, jokes Graham. Although Im a bit biased. As Cameron quipped, One thing electoral reform does is it attracts people who like puzzles. Read more about: VANCOUVERThe federal Minister of Innovation, Science and Economic Development called on Canadas health sciences industry to invest in innovation in order for the country to be a global competitor. Minister Navdeep Bains appeared in Vancouver as part of the LifeScience BCs 2018 Investor Summit, to discuss the recommendations of a new report on Canadas health and biosciences industry. Authored by Canadas Economic Strategy tables, a group of government and industry experts convened to examine a national innovation strategy, the report identified how Canadas health science industry is lagging behind and needs investment and better nationwide adoption of technologies. Bains said Canadas health sciences industry has a lot to offer but needs to be supported. When it comes to genomics, or regenerative medicine, or oncology and clinical trials, weve got incredible strength here in Canada in the life sciences, he said. So how do we build that up? He said that in order to innovate and grow this type of research, government needed to work more closely with the health sciences industry. Its not about finger-pointing Government will do its fair share but we need industry to step up, he said. Its a partnership model, if we are to succeed its a collective success. The report identified that while Canada was once an international leader in the development of new health science and technology, growth in industry has been stifled by slow adoption of technologies, lack of investment and interconnectedness, and a shortage of skilled workers. Karimah Es Sabar, chair of the Health and Biosciences Economic Strategy Table, said in an interview before the event that Canada has fallen behind globally. We started out having the best health care in the world, but we have to continually adapt and modernize to meet the needs of the time So we are treating patients with the best evidence based medicines in a timely way, and getting the best patient outcomes, she said In order to address these issues, the report recommends improvements in five key areas: adopting innovations, designing regulations that are more adaptive, creating a national digital health strategy, attracting skilled talent and creating anchor firms that would establish Canada has an industry leader. Bains said that the next step is to move forward with these recommendations, as early as the fall. Now its about making sure we focusing on accepting the recommendations and implementation Youll see measures in the fall economic update, in the budget, he said. Es Sabar also said that with representatives from the ministries of health and innovation being part of the discussion, she hopes they can move forward implementing these recommendations in order for Canada to move forward on addressing global health issues. So many things are needed we need a cure for cancer, to prevent the spread of infectious disease, and we need a new generation of antibiotics. Read more about: VANCOUVEREarly on Friday morning, Vancouver police received reports of shots being fired behind the No. 5 Orange strip club, near Main and Powell Sts. A statement from the Vancouver Police Department confirms that there was gun shots, but that they have not yet located any victims or suspects. The statement said that the incident does not appear to be a random event, based on the information they have. The VPD Major Crime Section, which investigates most gun shots in Vancouver, has taken over the case. The VPD is encouraging anyone with information about the incident to report it to 604-717-2541 or Crime Stoppers at 1-800-222-8477. Read more about: EDWARDSVILLE A new lawsuit against a driver and others as a result of a major traffic crash on Interstate 55 last November claims the driver was working longer hours than the law allows. The suit names Mohamed Yussuf Jama, who has been charged with reckless homicide in the case, but the most recent suit is the first suggestion that he and his employer were violating a federal law that limits the number of hours truck drivers are allowed to work. Previous suits have claimed that Jama was on a cell phone when the big truck collided with another vehicle at a work site, touching off a chain reaction. The suit filed Oct. 18 is by two survivors of the crash, who are claiming damages for injuries. The suit claims the driver violated federal motor carrier safety regulations preventing drivers from operating a commercial vehicle while the drivers ability or alertness is impaired, through fatigue, illness or any other cause. According to the suit, the law prohibits drivers from driving more than 11 hours following 10 consecutive hours off duty. The suit claims that other limits on number of hours on duty that truck drivers should be allowed to work. The suit was filed on behalf of two women injured in the crash. They are Lexa J. Curtis of Lamar, Barton County, Mo., and Brianna Allen of Oswego, Labette County, Kan. Also named in the suit are Forward Air Corp. Central States Trucking Co., TQI Royalty and Keller Construction. Jama was an employee of the other defendants, except for Keller, which is accused of causing an unsafe construction site. Jama is accused of striking the rear of a Kia Forte, driven by Madison Bertels, running over it and pushing it off the road. The truck then allegedly struck a GMC Denali, driven by Melissa Grabner, pushing it off the road. The Denali then hit the rear of a Ford pickup truck, driven by Philip Matney, which was pushed into a Toyota Camry being operated by Michael McGarity and the rear of a Suzuki SL-7, operated by Andrew Lawson. The Camry ran into the rear of a Chevrolet Express, in which Curtis and Allen were passengers. The Express was pushed into the rear of a trailer being pulled by a Volvo truck tractor. The defendants were already facing wrongful death suits filed by the estates of Hailey JoAnn Bertels and Madisen Nicole Bertels, both of Staunton. Vivian Vu of Joplin, Mo., and Tori Carroll of Alhambra were also killed in the crash. The most recent eight-count suit is seeking at least $50,000 in each count. Curtis and Allen are represented by Gregory L. Shevlin of Belleville, and Edward J. Hershewe and Michelle B. ONeal of Joplin, Mo. Voters from around central Illinois are sounding off on the issues most important to them as they head to the polls in less than two weeks. While hes not on the ballot for the midterm, President Donald Trump has been out on the stump for Republicans. This Saturday in Murphysboro, hell be rallying supporters behind U.S. Rep. Mike Bost, who faces Democratic challenger Brendan Kelly. At previous rallies for other Republicans around the country, Trump said the midterm election is about Kavanaugh and caravans, in reference to the contentious yet successful bid to get U.S. Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh approved and the growing migrant caravan headed to the U.S. border. Joann Fenton from Springfield said she is concerned about immigration. I have no problem with controlling those entering, I just dont like whats being done there with the separating of the families, automatically saying no one can come in, thats not what our laws say, Fenton said. Benson resident Donald Rients, who challenged U.S. Rep. Darin LaHood in the Republican primary, said hes focused on the economy, trade and health care. I think we need to have affordable coverage, affordable premiums, and to do that youve got to have competition, Rients said. Rients said he opposes a government takeover of health care. Dan Barham of Chatham, just south of Springfield, said there needs to be better political decorum in general. He also criticized the recent federal tax cuts that he says have increased the national debt. And now theyre talking about a second [tax cut], thats ballooned up the deficit and now theyre talking about cutting Social Security, Medicare to pay for it? Thats absolutely ridiculous, Barham said. Betty Houston from Jacksonville didnt have taxes or debt as her top issues. She said as a farmer there are two main things shes keeping in mind when headed to the polls. Im concerned about everything thats connected with the farm and everything like that, thats my income, and the economy, Houston said. Houston also said shes worried about Social Security and health care. The midterm election will determine whether Republicans maintain control of Congress, or Democrats take either chamber in governing with the Republican president. The Catholic Foundation Archdiocese of New Orleans Announces 4th Annual #iGiveCatholic on #GivingTuesday, November 27th Contact: Gretchen Hirt Gendron, APR, 504-338-8460 (c), 504-324-4242 (o), gretchen@gambelpr.com NEW ORLEANS, Oct. 26, 2018 /Christian Newswire/ -- Kick off the charitable season on #GivingTuesday, November 27, 2018, with #iGiveCatholic a community-wide online giving event created to bring the Catholic community together to give thanks and give back. Created and launched by the Catholic Foundation of the Archdiocese of New Orleans, the fourth annual #iGiveCatholic will be held in conjunction with #GivingTuesday, a global day of giving fueled by the power of social media and collaboration. "This is an exciting opportunity for everyone to celebrate philanthropy on what is considered the most successful Catholic crowdfunding event to date," said Cory Howat, executive director for the Catholic Foundation. "We truly believe that every donation, no matter the amount, makes a difference in our community and we look forward to collectively raising millions for our participating parishes, schools, and ministries." What started as a New Orleans-based giving day has grown to yield great national impact. In 2015, #iGiveCatholic's first year, $1.36 million was raised for 112 parishes, schools and nonprofit ministries in New Orleans. Last year, $3.6 million was raised within 17 archdioceses and dioceses. Now in its fourth year, there are 29 participating dioceses, representing more than 2,500 organizations spanning from Alaska to New Jersey. "Our community will be able to support nearly 300 organizations in the Archdiocese of New Orleans that shape our souls and celebrate our Catholic heritage," said Howat. Participating organizations are encouraged to activate and customize their profile pages on www.iGiveCatholic.org by Wednesday, October 31 which is the cut-off for online registration. To see participating organizations in New Orleans, visit www.neworleans.igivecatholic.org. Those interested in donating can search the website by name or cause (arts & culture, community advocacy, education, health & wellness, etc.) This year's nationwide initiative will include 29 dioceses and archdioceses. #iGiveCatholic: The goal of #iGiveCatholic is to inspire the Catholic community to come together as faithful stewards and to "Give Catholic" on #GivingTuesday, a global day of giving back. For more information visit www.iGiveCatholic.org. The Catholic Foundation of the Archdiocese of New Orleans: Since 1976, the Catholic Foundation has been assisting the various ministries within the Archdiocese of New Orleans to ensure the financial future of parishes, schools and social and charitable programs. For more information, visit cf.arch-no.org. Share Tweet FHI 360 is a leadingglobal development organization dedicated to improving lives around the world.Our professional staff includes experts in education, health, nutrition,economic development, civil society and environment as well as cross-cuttingexperts in gender issues, research, applied science, behavior change andTechnology giving us the unique mix of capabilities to address todays diverseand interrelated development challenges. FHI 360 operates from 60 offices with4,400 staff in the U.S. and around the world. With the RHITES-NAcholi Project (Regional Health Integration to Enhance Services in NorthernUganda Acholi), USAID will continue its support of the Government of Ugandas(GOU) efforts to improve access to and use of health services in the countryspost-conflict northern region. RHITES-N Acholi Project activities will build onUSAID investments and national advances to increase access to and use ofhigh-quality integrated services that accelerate the ability and capacity torespond to the specific health needs of residents in the Acholi sub-region,leveraging the URC-ASSIST project successes. The adage that failures can teach many lessons seems quite... The BJP's ambitious poll campaign in Madhya Pradesh is being trolled mercilessly. After its launch on October 21 with much fanfare, including full-page advertisements, the campaign 'Samruddh Madhya PradeshIdea Mein Hai Dum' soon became a subject of jokes. The advertisement, with the tagline Idea mein hai dum, pura karenge hum (suggest a good idea, we will implement it'), had invited voters to send to the BJP their suggestions on how to make the state better via a WhatsApp number. Though launched to negate the feeling of anti-incumbency, the 'prosperous Madhya Pradesh' campaign soon became fodder for jokes as people started posting absurd suggestions. One voter asked the chief minister to step down and make way for the opposition Congress to rule in the state. Another asked the chief minister to conduct an enquiry into the way 'BJP leaders became rich overnight'. One suggestion even asked the chief minister to make one of his IAS secretaries as the chief minister. All the suggestions made over WhatsApp received the standard reply, We are thankful to you for giving suggestion to the BJP for a prosperous Madhya Pradesh. Soon the screenshots of the suggestion and the standard reply started doing the rounds on social media as people poked fun at the BJP's campaign. One voter, Virendra Sharma, posted a comment, along with the screenshot of suggestion and reply, and observed how the BJP was making the whole campaign a routine exercise and all the suggestions were actually being dumped. Congress spokesman Narendra Saluja took this chance and accused the BJP of emotionally blackmailing the ordinary people of Madhya Pradesh. He said that the automated reply suggests that none of the ideas was being read by the BJP leaders and that it was a mere publicity gimmick. Congress leader J.P. Dhanopia, in-charge of the legal cell of PCC, even complained to the Election Commission saying that the numbers being collected by the BJP is a threat to the privacy of people who are being cheated through this advertisement. He said the government must ensure that the BJP does not misuse these numbers. The BJP refused to comment on the issue and, instead, went ahead with a fresh set of advertisements in local dailies. Congress President Rahul Gandhi on Friday arrived at the CBI headquarters in New Delhi as the Congress launched nationwide protests against CBI chief Alok Verma's benching. Demanding the reinstatement of Verma, the Congress also sought an apology from Prime Minister Narendra Modi for "destroying" the image of the premier investigating agency. Delhi: Congress President Rahul Gandhi leads protest march from Dyal Singh College to CBI HQ against the removal of CBI Chief Alok Verma. pic.twitter.com/3SnUO8XpaT ANI (@ANI) October 26, 2018 The Congress is protesting outside all CBI offices across the country on Friday challenging the Centre's decision to sent Verma on forced leave, divesting him of his responsibilities. Leaders of other parties also joined the protest as a mark of solidarity. Loktantrik Janata Dal leader Sharad Yadav, CPI leader D. Raja and TMC's Nadimul Haque joined the Congress protest that started from outside Dayal Singh College on Lodhi Road. Gandhi got on to a truck in front of the police barricades put up outside the CBI headquarters to prevent the protesters from reaching the building. In Chandigarh, the police resorted to using water cannons at protesting Congress workers. Chandigarh: Police use water cannon at Congress workers who are protesting against the removal of CBI Director Alok Verma pic.twitter.com/SXwR3AgGRq ANI (@ANI) October 26, 2018 The Congress, which is trying to cash in on the ongoing allegations and counter-allegations in the CBI, has claimed that the PMO was trying to prevent an investigation into the Rafale scam by sending CBI Director Verma on leave. On Thursday, Congress leader in the Lok Sabha Mallikarjun Kharge had written to Modi to protest CBI chief's ouster saying it was in grave violation of the law, the Supreme Court's clear directions on the subject and the Indian Constitution. The Left parties and the Trinamool Congress have also joined the Congress-led protest outside the CBI office on Friday. "Trinamool to stand by Congress in Delhi today on the CBI issue", the party sources had said earlier. After the CBI chief was asked to go on leave, TMC supremo Mamata Banerjee had slammed the BJP-led government at Centre. "CBI has now become so called BBI (BJP Bureau of Investigation)", Banerjee had charged. Earlier, in a letter to all Congress general secretaries, state unit chiefs and legislature party leaders, AICC General Secretary Ashok Gehlot had on Thursday asked them to hold demonstrations against the BJP government outside all CBI offices across the country. "An illegal, unconstitutional and illegitimate removal of the CBI director by the Modi-Shah duo has shamed India and its premier investigative agency," Gehlot said in his letter. "Our demand should be to reinstate the CBI Director. As per the law, he could be transferred only with the consent of the appointing authority (comprising Chief Justice of India, the prime minister and the leader of opposition). The prime minister should tender an apology to the nation for destroying the image of the premier investigating agency," Gehlot said. (With inputs from PTI) The social media went into tizzy on Friday following a tweet by an official in the ministry of defence. Swaranashree Rao Rajashekar, the principal spokesperson for the MoD, sparked off a row after she responded to a tweet by former Navy chief Admiral (retd) Arun Prakash questioning the protocol. As the controversy raged on, she was sent on leave by the ministry. Earlier, Admiral Prakash had retweeted a photograph that showed the Internal Financial Advisor to the Western Command of the Army using the commands insignia flag on an official car. As per rules, civilian defence personnel are not authorised to use such flags and only military officers above the rank of Major General are authorised. "Even if misuse of an Army Command's insignia by a civilian is not a cognizable offence, the person needs to be reprimanded by the GoC in C whose 'Financial Adviser' he is."(sic) Admiral Prakash had said in his tweet. Even if misuse of an Army Command's insignia by a civilian is not a cognizable offence, the person needs to be reprimanded by the GOCinC whose "Financial Adviser" he is. https://t.co/sxyM13miOH Adm. Arun Prakash (@arunp2810) October 24, 2018 As his tweet was doing the rounds in multiple social media platforms, Rajashekhar came out with a response on Friday morning. "What about misuse of jawans in your residence during an officer's tenure sir? And how about children being picked up and dropped to school in Fauji (military) gaadis (vehicles)? Not to forget Madam's shopping expedition on government vehicles. And endless parties...who pays for that?," Rajashekhar asked in her tweet. Rajshekhar later deleted her tweet and expressed regret, saying she did it inadvertently. However, her tweet has ignited a fire on the social media, as several veterans including top retired military officials came out strongly against it and started criticising her for the remarks. "This is indeed shameful for @SpokespersonMoD to tweet this to a former Service Chief," retired Air Vice Marshall Manmohan Bahadur wrote on Twitter. "Is it allowed to be done under official handle. It is dangerous to have such people to project us & our relationship with others" tweeted former Western Army commander Lt General K.J. Singh. Addressing Defence Minister Nirmala Sitharaman, Major General Harsha Kakar (retd) tweeted, "Is this inadvertent. It shows the true colours of your MoD Madam. You are meant to protect the military, not insult it. Keeping this spokesperson is an insult to India, its armed forces and their sacrifices. It shows no respect for senior veterans. Your spokesperson is a disaster." Rajeev Chadrashekhar, a Rajya Sabha MP, tweeted "U need to be more thn worst insensitive bureacrat to tweet like this - u need to be a world class IDIOT who shd be sent back to paperpushing or whtever his/her lifes achievement is so far n NOT destry goodwill n respect for PM n govt whch hs done so much for our Armed frces." Later on, Admiral Prakash came out with another tweet saying: "Rather than getting excited over indiscreet tweet of @SpokespersonMoD I would suggest sober reflection; (a) by MoD on state of civil-mil relations & (b) by Military Leadership on the aspersions cast by MoD (IDAS?) civil-servant on personal conduct of Service officers." In a damage control mode, Rajashekar was sent on leave by the ministry while Col. Aman Anand took over as the acting official spokesperson of the ministry. Col. Aman Anand, took over as the acting Official Spokesperson of MOD as the Spokesperson proceeds on leave. Defence Spokesperson (@SpokespersonMoD) October 26, 2018 When contacted, Rajashekhar said her tweet was by mistake. She said her message was meant for a private group chat on mobile messaging app. Rajashekhar, an officer from the Defence Accounts Service cadre, was appointed by Sitharaman as the principal spokesperson for her ministry last year. Traditionally, the Additional Director General, Media and Communication, an officer from the Indian Information Service, works as the spokesperson for the MoD. The BJP has now decided to woo Muslims in West Bengal and would like to give them tickets in the 2019 Lok Sabha and 2021 assembly elections. A meeting in this regard was convened by Arvind Menon, a close aide of National President Amit Shah and joint convener of the campaign committee of Bengal, in Kolkata on Thursday. Menon asked party leaders and members attending the meeting to woo Muslims and find candidates among them. "Go door to door, befriend them and try to win their hearts," Menon reportedly told the members of the West Bengal BJP. West Bengal has around 3.14 crore Muslims, constituting around 30 per cent of the total population. The BJP has understood that if it has to defeat the Trinamool Congress it would have to win a portion of the Muslim votes, predominantly Sunni Muslims. Though the party has a minority cell in the state, it is not strong enough and does not meet regularly or hold meetings, unlike other morchas. Prime Minister Narendra Modi, who in the past has successfully established contacts with Shias Muslims in India, failed to make much inroads among the Sunni community in West Bengal. The BJP's strategy is to use the Triple Talaq Bill and win hearts of the Muslim women first. There are also considerable number of Muslim population along the rural belt who are not politically concerned. "So we need to tap them and bring them into our fold," said a BJP leader who attended the close-door meeting. The BJP is trying hard to create an opinion in favour of the Triple Talaq Bill. It is trying its best to build a perception that Muslim women are not getting justice owing to the "faulty and harassing divorce" law because of the opposition parties. "It will be a weapon for us. We will have to take this matter to Muslim women. We need to tell poor women that they have not received justice because of the TMC, the Congress and the Left who are trying to block the smooth passage of the bills," said a BJP vice-president. The BJP would also raise the issue of polygamy ahead of the Lok Sabha elections to create political wave in favour of it in Bengal's rural battle. "Even if Muslim votes are divided between two or three parties, that would also help us," said the BJP leader. CIA Director Gina Haspel on Thursday briefed President Donald Trump on the investigations related to US-based journalist Jamal Khashoggi, who was brutally killed inside Saudi Arabia's Istanbul Consulate, the White House said. "The president received a briefing from director Haspel this morning following her return from Turkey. She briefed the president on their findings and her discussions," White House Press Secretary Sarah Sanders said. The White House did not provide any other details of the meeting. Haspel returned from Turkey last night. In Turkey, she met with officials involved in the investigations of the murder of the Saudi journalist Khashoggi. Turkish officials say they have audio of the proof of the murder. In a news report, The Washington Post said that Haspel listened to the audio tape. A person familiar with the audio said it was "compelling" and could put more pressure on the US to hold the kingdom accountable for the death of Khashoggi, the daily reported. Khashoggi was a contributing columnist for The Washington Post. "This puts the ball firmly in Washington's court," Bruce Riedel, a former CIA official and scholar at the Brookings Institution, told The Washington Post. "Not only will there be more pressure now from the media but Congress will say, 'Gina, we would love to have you come visit and you can tell us exactly what you heard'," he told the daily. Haspel's briefing to Trump comes amidst latest change in Saudi stance in which it acknowledge that Khashoggi was murdered by its officials in a "premeditated" operation. Meanwhile, Senator Jack Reed, Ranking Member of the Senate Armed Services Committee, alleged that the Saudis are still engaged in cover up. "In the face of mounting evidence, the Saudis now admit Khashoggi's torture and murder was premeditated. But they are still engaged in a cover up," Reed said. "The Saudi Crown Prince must direct those responsible to produce Khashoggi's body immediately so that an autopsy may be conducted and his family can have a proper burial. If the Crown Prince is unable or unwilling to do so, then it will become clear that he is complicit in the cover up," he said. Reed alleged that Trump's feeble response to the brutal torture, murder, and apparent dismemberment of a journalist who was legally living in the United States shows a stunning lack of leadership. "The Saudis ever-changing story underscores the need for an independent and credible international investigation of what happened to Mr. Khashoggi," he said. "If President Trump abdicates his responsibility to hold the Saudis accountable then Congress must go it alone. Congress must follow the facts and act in a responsible, bipartisan manner to hold the killers, and those who ordered the killing, accountable," Reed said. Senator Bernie Sanders said the brutal murder of Khashoggi demands that the US make clear that its support for Saudi Arabia is not unconditional. -PTI Mumbai, Oct 26 (PTI) Pitching for "effective independence", RBI Deputy Governor Viral Acharya Friday said governments that do not respect central bank's independence would sooner or later incur the wrath of financial markets. Amid instances of apparent differences between the government and the RBI, Acharya emphasised that undermining a central bank's independence is akin to committing a "self goal" for any government. Wiser politicians will give a central bank necessary autonomy so that they reap electoral benefits of stable macroeconomic conditions which such independence will bring, Acharya said here. Delivering the A D Shroff Memorial Lecture, he said, "What matters is the effective independence with which these powers (vested in the Acts governing the RBI or any central bank) can be exercised in practice." "Governments that do not respect central bank's independence will sooner or later incur the wrath of financial markets, ignite economic fire and come to rue the day they undermined an important regulatory institution," Acharya said. Noting that markets have a keen eye on this aspect, he said that if uncertainty grows and confidence in central bank's independence and credibility erodes, "then markets rap bond yields and exchange rate on the knuckles!" "Wiser governments which accord the necessary leeway will benefit through lower costs of borrowing, the love of international investors and longer life spans," he said. PTI AA KRK MKJ New Delhi, Oct 26 (PTI) Deputy Chief Minister Manish Sisodia Friday asked traders to click and send him photos of officials seeking money from them during the festive season for proper action. He also said written orders have been issued to the Department of Trade and Taxes that no raids should be conducted at the offices and business establishments of traders till Diwali. Sisodia said he had received complaints from some traders that a few officials sought money from them in the name of the ruling AAP in Delhi. "We do not need money for elections through raids on traders. Just click photos of such officials asking money from you and send them to me," the Deputy CM said addressing traders during a programme. Asserting that the government will not allow "exploitation" of traders in the name of Trade and Taxes surveys, Sisodia said 110 such surveys have been conducted in the current financial year and only one tax evasion of Rs 72 lakh was detected while there were minor amounts involved in other cases. "We have to collect taxes and stop tax evasion also but we do not want it at the cost of exploitation of traders." Directions have been issued to the department concerned not to conduct raids during the festive season as traders are busy, he said. PTI VIT VIT AQS AQS Washington, Oct 26 (PTI) Asserting that the current situation at the World Trade Organization is no longer sustainable, the Ottawa Ministerial on WTO reform Thursday vowed to fight against protectionism. Among other things, the group comprising top trade officials of 12 countries and the European Union sought for urgent action to develop 21st century trade rules at the WTO. "The current situation at the WTO is no longer sustainable. Our resolve for change must be matched with action: we will continue to fight protectionism; and we are committed politically to moving forward urgently on transparency, dispute settlement and developing 21st century trade rules at the WTO," said a joint communique issued by Ottawa Ministerial on WTO Reform. Ministers and Heads of Delegation representing a dozen "like-minded" WTO members and the European Union met in Ottawa on October 24 and 25 to discuss ways to strengthen and modernise the world body, which of late has been at the receiving end of President Trump. The meeting was chaired by Jim Carr, Canada's Minister of International Trade Diversification. Other countries represented in the group were Australia, Brazil, Chile, Japan, Kenya, Korea, Mexico, New Zealand, Norway, Singapore and Switzerland. The group is scheduled to meet next in January 2019. India, China, and the US are not part of the meeting. Acknowledging that concerns that have been raised about the functioning of the dispute settlement system, the group said it is ready to work on solutions, while preserving the essential features of the system and of its Appellate Body. Asserting that WTO must reinvigorate its negotiating function, the group underscored the need to conclude negotiations on fisheries subsidies in 2019 consistent with instructions from WTO Ministers at the 11th ministerial conference (MC11) held last year in Buenos Aires. "Its rules must also be updated to reflect 21st century realities, such as the Sustainable Development Goals. Addressing modern economic and trade issues, and tackling pending and unfinished business is key to ensuring the relevance of the WTO," it said. Observing that development must remain an integral part of the WTO, the Ottawa Ministerial said the members need to explore how the development dimension, including special and differential treatment, can be best pursued in rule-making efforts. "We should strengthen the monitoring and transparency of members' trade policies which play a central role in ensuring WTO members understand the policy actions taken by their partners in a timely manner," the ministerial said. Expressing their concern with the overall record of compliance by WTO members with their notification obligations, the group agreed that improvements are required to ensure effective transparency and functioning of the relevant agreements. Reacting to the joint communique, House Ways and Means Committee Chairman Kevin Brady said the international body must take seriously President Donald Trump's longstanding call for reform. "The WTO urgently needs reform to keep the organisation well-functioning and viable, including with respect to negotiations toward new agreements as well as improving dispute resolution. Now that many of our key trading partners are focused, it is important that we address the full range of topics and confront longstanding issues," Brady said. One of the key enforcement reform, that the US would like to see is to establish meaningful consequences if WTO members continue to ignore their commitments to submit timely notifications as to their compliance with their obligations, he said. The top US lawmaker said the appellate body must be reformed so that it functions as designed and is accountable to WTO members. According to him, such reforms include procedural fixes to make sure the appellate body does not diverge from the timelines and procedures established by WTO members, as well as structural reforms to avoid troubling appellate body overreach and "gap-filling" that go beyond its mandate. PTI LKJ CK Mumbai, Oct 26 (PTI) A city court is likely to pass its orders on October 30 on a plea filed by businessman Vijay Mallya, seeking a stay on the proceedings initiated by the ED to declare him a Fugitive Economic Offender (FEO). The special court heard extensive arguments on Friday from Mallya's lawyer as well as the Enforcement Directorate (ED) counsel before reserving its order for October 30. The ED has sought that Mallya, who is currently in the UK, be declared an FEO and his properties be confiscated and brought under the control of the Union government as per provisions of the new FEO Act. Mallya's counsel Amit Desai, however, urged the court, set up under the Prevention of Money Laundering Act (PMLA), to refrain from hearing the ED's plea at least till November 26. Desai told the court that earlier this month, the appellate tribunal against money laundering had directed the ED to maintain status quo with regard to properties of the beleaguered businessman till November 26, the next date of hearing before the tribunal. "Passing any orders declaring Mallya an FEO under the new central legislation will automatically bring his properties under the Centre's control," Desai said. "Irrespective of whether or not, this court then orders for the attachment of such properties, merely declaring Mallya as an FEO will mean that this court's order will be in conflict with that of the tribunal's," he added. He also argued that attaching Mallya's properties under the new Act would deprive his creditors of any chance to ensure that his assets are sold and their proceeds used to recover the money they had lost. Desai said Mallya was keen on ensuring that the creditors were paid off and that his former employees, too, received their pending salaries and dues. The ED, represented by advocate D P Singh, however, told the court that Desai's arguments were aimed only at ensuring that Mallya did not have to face any proceedings before any court in India. "He has no intention of repaying anyone, or, of ever coming back to India. He is using the pending extradition proceedings and his bail conditions imposed by an English court as mere excuses to avoid coming back to India," Singh said. "Declaring him an FEO is the only way to bring him back," he said. The ED counsel argued the court could first declare Mallya an FEO and then wait for the tribunal's proceedings before acting upon the agency's plea for confiscation of the embattled liquor tycoon's properties and assets. Mallya, accused of defaulting on loan repayments and money laundering, left India in March 2016. The 62-year-old former Kingfisher Airline boss is fighting extradition to India on charges of fraud and money laundering. PTI AYA RSY RHL (Eds: Disclaimer: The following press release comes to you under an arrangement with AsiaNet. PTI takes no editorial responsibility for the same.) LONDON, October 24, 2018 /PRNewswire-AsiaNet/ -- QS Quacquarelli Symondshas released therankings of Asia's 500 best universities. National University of Singapore takes back the leadership of the Asia ranking from Nanyang Technological University, and the University of Hong Kong moves three places to second. However, it is Mainland China's universities that have made the biggest impact with five in the top 20 - two more than last year - all improving their position. Japan is the second most represented country, followed by India and South Korea. QS University Rankings: Asia 2019 (Top 20) 2019 2018 Location 1 2 National University of Singapore SG 2 5 University of Hong Kong HK 3= 1 Nanyang Technological University SG 3= 6 Tsinghua University CN 5 9 Peking University CN 6 7 Fudan University CN 7 3 Hong Kong University of Science and Technology HK 8 4 Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology KR 9 10 The Chinese University of Hong Kong HK 10 11 Seoul National University KR 11 13 The University of Tokyo JP 12 16 Korea University KR 13 21 Zhejiang University CN 14 17 Kyoto University JP 15 18 Sungkyunkwan University KR 16 15 Osaka University JP 17 19 Yonsei University KR 18 14 Tokyo Institute of Technology JP 19= 24 Universiti Malaya MY 19= 22 Shanghai Jiao Tong University CN QS uses eleven indicators to compile the ranking, a global survey of 83,877 academics and 42,862 recruiters. INDICATOR Most represented No of top-100 universities Next most represented No of top-100 universities All in top-100 Academic Reputation CN 25 JP 14 Employer Reputation JP 15 KR 13 SG Faculty/Student Ratio JP 31 KR 20 Brunei, Staff with PhD IN 20 KR 17 Citations per Paper CN 42 KR 18 HK, SG Papers per Faculty CN 35 IN 26 International Research Network CN 35 JP 16 International Faculty Ratio CN 25 MY 18 Brunei, HK, Macau, SG International Student Ratio CN 17 MY 16 Brunei, HK, Macau, SG Inbound Exchange Students TW 22 KR 21 Outbound Exchange Students CN 33 KR 22 Brunei, HK, SG All ranked universities in these locations feature in the top-100 in some indicators Ben Sowter, Research Director at QS says: "Mainland China's impressive investment in education and research is paying off, Japan's strength is confirmed and India's regional ambitions come across, The rankings also celebrates the competitive edge of education hubs with smaller populations and resources: Singapore, Hong Kong, South Korea and Malaysia, shine this analysis." To view the complete rankings: https://www.topuniversities.com/university-rankings/asian-university-rankings/2019 PWR PWR Moscow, Oct 26 (AFP) The Kremlin said Friday that Russia believes Saudi royals were not involved in the murder of journalist Jamal Khashoggi after Russian President Vladimir Putin discussed it with Saudi King Salman. Asked by a journalist whether the Kremlin fully believes that the Saudi royal family played no part in the murder in Istanbul, Putin's spokesman Dmitry Peskov said that the question was "inappropriate." "There's an official statement from the king, there's an official statement from the Crown Prince (Mohammed bin Salman) and no one should have any grounds not to believe them," Peskov said. Putin spoke to the 82-year-old Saudi king by telephone on Thursday evening and they discussed "the situation around the case of Khashoggi," the Kremlin said in a statement. Khashoggi, a Washington Post contributing columnist who had criticised policies of powerful Prince Mohammed, had been self-exiled in the United States for about a year. He was killed on October 2 in the Saudi consulate in Istanbul, but his body has not been found. Turkish media have published details of his alleged torture and decapitation. Prince Mohammed, the kingdom's de facto ruler, this week denounced what he called the "repulsive murder" in his first public comments on the case. Asked about the prince's possible involvement in the killing, US President Donald Trump told the Wall Street Journal on Tuesday: "Well, the prince is running things over there... so if anybody were going to be, it would be him." (AFP) RUP RUP Ankara, Oct 26 (AFP) Saudi Arabia's chief prosecutor will visit Istanbul on Sunday to speak with Turkish authorities as part of the investigation into the murder of journalist Jamal Khashoggi, Turkey's president said Friday. "They (the Saudis) are sending the chief prosecutor on Sunday to Turkey," President Recep Tayyip Erdogan said, adding that Ankara had more evidence on the killing. The 59-year-old Khashoggi, a Washington Post contributor and a critic of Riyadh, was killed on October 2 while visiting the Saudi consulate in Istanbul to obtain paperwork for his marriage to a Turkish woman. Riyadh acknowledged on Thursday that the murder appeared to have been premeditated, on the basis of evidence supplied by Turkey. Turkish media have published a series of grisly revelations about the murder. Erdogan, who has so far stopped short of directly blaming the Saudi government, said Turkey had already shared evidence with countries including Saudi Arabia and added it had even more. "It is not that we don't have any other information or documents. We do. Tomorrow is another day," he said. The Turkish leader had mocked Saudi Arabia's initial explanation of Khashoggi's disappearance -- that he left the consulate alive -- as "childish" and "far from state seriousness". He pressed Riyadh to reveal who ordered the killing and the whereabouts of the body. "You need to show this body," he said. He also said that the 18 Saudis detained over the murder knew who killed Khashoggi. "The culprit is among them. If that is the case, then who is the local conspirator? You have to tell," said Erdogan. "Unless you tell, Saudi Arabia will not be free from this suspicion." Erdogan on Wednesday spoke on the phone with Saudi Arabia's Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman for the first time since the murder.(AFP) AMS AMS New Delhi, Oct 26 (PTI) Following are the top foreign stories at 1700 hours: FGN25 CHINA-PAK-IMRAN Ahead of Imran's visit, China sounds positive about providing loans to Pak to avoid IMF bailout Beijing: Ahead of Pakistan Prime Minister Imran Khan's maiden visit, China on Friday sounded positive about extending new loans to Islamabad to avoid another IMF bailout package which may carry stringent conditions. By K J M Varma FGN24 PAK-SAEED-LD JUD Saeed-led JuD, FIF no more on list of banned outfits in Pakistan: Report Islamabad: Mumbai attack mastermind Hafiz Saeed-led Jamaat-ud-Dawa (JuD) and Falah-i-Insaniyat Foundation (FIF) are no longer on the list of banned outfits in Pakistan as the ordinance that proscribed them under a UN resolution has lapsed and the new Imran Khan-led government did not extend it, a media report said on Friday. By Sajjad Hussain FGN20 GOOGLE-SEXUALHARASSMENT-LD PICHAI Google fired 48 employees for sexual misconduct: CEO Pichai New York: Google fired 48 employees, including 13 senior managers, over sexual harassment claims since 2016, CEO Sundar Pichai has revealed, asserting that the tech giant was taking an "increasingly hard line" on "inappropriate conduct" by people in positions of authority. FGN17 CHINA-KNIFE-2NDLD ATTACK Knife-wielding woman injures 14 children at China kindergarten Beijing: A woman armed with kitchen knife on Friday attacked children at a kindergarten in China's southwestern city of Chongqing, injuring at least 14 of them before she was stopped by teachers and guards, in the latest such incident on children in the country. By K J M Varma FGN16 US-HEZBOLLAH-LD SANCTIONS Trump imposes sanctions on Hezbollah Washington: US President Donald Trump has imposed new sanctions targeting Lebanese militant group Hezbollah to isolate it from the international financial system, as his administration continues its all-out economic squeeze on the Iranian regime that allegedly backs it. By Lalit K Jha FGN14 US-TRUMP-IRAN US will not allow Iran to develop world's deadliest weapons: Trump Washington: US President Donald Trump has said all sanctions against Iran lifted by the 2015 nuclear deal will be back in "full force" from November 5 and promised more in the future to prevent Tehran from developing the world's deadliest weapons. By Lalit K Jha FGN6 WH-TRUMP-NYT Trump has only one official iPhone: White House Washington: The White House Thursday dismissed The New York Times report that US President Donald Trump has three cellphones, saying he has only one official government iPhone, the security of which follows industry best practices. FGN5 WTO-MINISTERIAL-PROTECTIONISM WTO ministerial calls for reform, vows to fight protectionism Washington: Asserting that the current situation at the World Trade Organization is no longer sustainable, the Ottawa Ministerial on WTO reform Thursday vowed to fight against protectionism. PTI AMS AMS Islamabad, Oct 26 (PTI) Pakistan's deposed prime minister Nawaz Sharif's lawyers on Friday urged an accountability court to take notice of Information Minister Fawad Chaudhry's statement claiming the PML-N party supremo will "definitely go to prison again". A top Pakistani court last month suspended the jail sentences of Sharif, his daughter Maryam and son-in-law Captain (retd) Mohammad Safdar in the Avenfield corruption case, one of the three corruption cases faced by the three-time prime minister. The trio were released from a jail following the court order. Sharif's lawyers Khawaja Haris and Zubair Khalid asked Accountability Judge Arshad Malik to take cognizance of Chaudhry's remarks on the Hill Metal Establishment case, in which the minister had stated that the former premier would go to prison again, Dawn newspaper reported. Haris said that the court should take action against "the minister giving statements about you [the court] and Nawaz Sharif's arrest. This falls in your jurisdiction and you should take action against it." "If action is not taken against this, it would create problems for the court," he said. To this, Judge Malik said: "Was Chaudhry's statement general or was it a statement specifically targeting the court?" He also told Haris and Khalid to file a written petition in court and attach a clipping of the news report that contains the reported statement of Chaudhry. Speaking on Geo News on Thursday, Chaudhry had said that everyone knows the facts of the Hill Metal Establishment case and that Sharif, chief of the Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz party, will "definitely go to prison again". After Haris and Khalid's remarks in court were reported, Chaudhry tweeted from his official account and said: "Had Khawaja Haris is a senior lawyer, and had he not taken millions in fees [from Nawaz Sharif's family] even he would have admitted that Nawaz Sharif should be punished. It is unfortunate that such fool-proof cases take years to be completed," the minister said. He added: "The Opposition neither has any leadership nor any vision, they are only playing politics to save their money and more than fifty of them will go to jail." On the orders of the Supreme Court, the National Accountability Bureau (NAB) filed three corruption cases against the 68-year-old Sharif. Apart from the Avenfield case, the Sharifs face jail terms if they are convicted in two more corruption cases related to the Al-Azizia and the Flagship Investment cases. The cases against the family stemmed from the Panama Papers case in April 2016. PTI AKJ AKJ 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. Colombo, Oct 26 (PTI) An Indian national arrested for possible links to an alleged plot to assassinate Sri Lankan President Maithripala Sirisena has been sent to a mental hospital, police said here on Friday. Marceli Thomas has been put under the care of doctors at a hospital of mental care near Colombo, police spokesman Ruwan Gunasekera said. "On court orders he was seen by the judicial medical officer. He in turn asked Thomas be seen by a psychiatrist. After the psychiatrist's examination he was sent to the Mulleriyawa hospital," Gunasekera said. Thomas was arrested late last month following a complaint by Namal Kumara, who claimed to be representing the "Anti-Corruption Force", and who had alleged there was a plot to assassinate Sirisena and Gotabhaya Rajapaksa, the former top defence ministry bureaucrat and brother of ex-president Mahinda Rajapaksa. Thomas told a court on Wednesday that he is innocent alleging that the police are trying to frame him in the case. Kumara also claimed that the senior officer in charge of the police's counter terrorism division Nalaka Silva had masterminded the plot. Silva, the former DIG of the Terrorist Investigation Division (TID), was arrested by the CID yesterday under the Prevention of Terrorism Act and remanded till November 7. He was also implicated in the alleged plot to kill Sirisena and Gotabhaya Rajapaksa. Gunasekera however said the tapes of conversations between Silva and Kumara did not reveal anything on the alleged assassination plot. "We have now sent the tapes overseas for further checking as Namal Kumara said some of the conversations had been deleted," he said. "So far the investigations have not revealed anything on the alleged plot," Gunasekera said, adding that Silva is also accused of plotting the murder of another police officer. Last week, it was reported that Sirisena had accused his senior coalition partner, the United National Party (UNP), of not taking seriously an alleged conspiracy to kill him and Gotabhaya Rajapaksa. A Sri Lankan minister, who declined to be named, had claimed that the president had said India's external intelligence agency Research and Analysis Wing (RAW) was behind the plot. The Sri Lankan foreign ministry later termed the reports as "baseless and false". Sirisena also called up Prime Minister Narendra Modi and categorically rejected the media reports that he had accused the RAW of plotting his assassination as "utterly baseless and false". PTI CORR KUN AKJ KUN KUN Prague, Oct 26 (AFP) German Chancellor Angela Merkel vowed on Friday that Berlin would not export arms to Saudi Arabia until the murder of dissident journalist Jamal Khashoggi is clarified, a stance French President Emmanuel Macron dubbed "pure demagoguery". "The case of journalist Khashoggi is, of course, something incredible, I told the Saudi king yesterday in our telephone conversation," Merkel said at a press conference with Czech prime minister Andrej Babis. "We need to clarify the background of this horrible crime and until that, we will not supply weapons to Saudi Arabia," she added, reiterating comments made earlier this week. The stance led to a clash with France's Macron who told reporters in the Slovak capital Bratislava on Friday that stopping arms sales to Saudi Arabia would be "pure demagoguery". The sale of weapons "has nothing to do with Mr. Khashoggi. One shouldn't mix everything up," he said. Merkel also insisted on Friday that "Saudi Arabia must do everything to solve the urgent humanitarian situation in Yemen, there are currently millions of hungry people, we are witnesses of one of the greatest humanitarian catastrophes." 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. 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 jointly calling for Riyadh to clarify how Khashoggi died inside its Istanbul consulate, and for its account to "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 location of his body.(AFP) AMS AMS (Eds: Updating with fresh inputs, quotes) Colombo, Oct 26 (PTI) Mahinda Rajapaksa staged a dramatic political comeback on Friday, becoming Sri Lanka's new Prime Minister after President Maithripala Sirisena sacked premier Ranil Wickremesinghe, triggering angry reactions from the finance minister who termed the former strongman's return as an "anti-democratic coup". Visuals of the former president Rajapaksa taking oath as the premier were released to media and was shown on TV channels. Rajapaksa, 72, tweeted a photo of him and Sirisena after the swearing in ceremony. "Former #SriLanka President Mahinda Rajapaksa sworn in as new Prime Minister," he said in the tweet. The sudden development came after Sirisena's broader political front United People's Freedom Alliance (UPFA) announced that it has decided to quit the current unity government with prime minister Wickremesinghe's United National Party (UNP). Mahinda Amaraweera, agriculture minister and the general secretary of the UPFA, told reporters that the UPFA decision has been conveyed to Parliament. Reacting sharply to the development, Minister of Finance and Media Mangala Samaraweera said that the appointment of Rajapaksa as the prime minister is "unconstitutional and illegal". "This is an anti democratic coup," he said in a tweet. The unity government was formed in 2015 when Sirisena was elected President with Wickremesinghe's support, ending a nearly decade-long rule by Rajapaksa. The sudden political development ends an over three-year-old coalition government that was formed by Sirisena and Wickremesinghe on a promise to combat corruption and financial irregularities. Sirisena, who was Rajapaksa's minister of health, broke away from him to contest the presidential elections. Political analysts said Sirisena's move to install Rajapaksa as the prime minister could lead to a constitutional crisis as the 19th amendment to the Constitution would not allow the sacking of Wickremesinghe as the premier without a majority. Rajapaksa and Sirisena combine has only 95 seats and is short of a simple majority. Wickremesinghe's UNP has 106 seats on its own with just seven short of the majority. There was no immediate comment from Wickremesinghe or the UNP. President Sirisena's party withdrew from the ruling coalition after simmering tensions between him and Wickremesinghe. The unity government was thrown into a crisis after Rajapaksa's new party pulled off a stunning victory in local elections in February seen as a referendum on the ruling alliance. Last week, it was reported that Sirisena accused his senior coalition partner the UNP of not taking seriously an alleged conspiracy to assassinate him and Gotabhaya Rajapaksa, the former top defence ministry bureaucrat and brother of ex-president Mahinda Rajapaksa. PTI CORR CPS AKJ CPS Colombo, Oct 26 (PTI) The swearing in of former president Mahinda Rajapaksa as Sri Lanka's new Prime Minister is "illegal and unconstitutional", sacked premier Ranil Wickremesinghe asserted Friday. In a dramatic turn of events, President Maithripala Sirisena's Sri Lanka Freedom Party withdrew from the ruling coalition and then sacked Wickremesinghe. In a telephonic conversation with a TV station, Wickremesinghe said "I will continue to be the Prime Minister. Mahinda Rajapaksa's appointment is unconstitutional". Similarly, Finance Minister Mangala Samaraweera tweeted that "the appointment of Mahinda Rajapaksa as the Prime Minister is unconstitutional and illegal. This is an anti-democratic coup". Mahinda Amaraweera, agriculture minister and the general secretary of the United People's Freedom Alliance (UPFA), told reporters that the UPFA decision has been conveyed to Parliament. Within minutes of the statement, Rajapaksa was invited by Sirisena to take oath as the Prime Minister. The unity government was formed in 2015 when Sirisena was elected President with Wickremesinghe's support. Sirisena, who was Rajapaksa's minister of health, broke away from him to contest the presidential elections. Political analysts said Sirisena's move to install Rajapaksa as the prime minister could lead to a constitutional crisis as the 19th amendment to the Constitution would not allow the sacking of Wickremesinghe as the premier without a majority. Rajapaksa and Sirisena combine has only 95 seats and is short of a simple majority. Wickremesinghe's UNP has 106 seats on its own with just seven short of the majority. PTI CORR CPS AKJ CPS Gaza City (Gaza Strip), Oct 27 (AP) Israeli forces shot dead five Palestinians Friday, four in Gaza protests and one in the West Bank, and Palestinian militants later fired several rockets into southern Israel. In Gaza, the deadly escalation followed two weekly protests along the perimeter fence with Israel that saw no fatalities. The bloodshed is likely to complicate the mission of Egyptian mediators, who intensified their shuttle diplomacy to achieve calm and prevent a full-blown conflict between Gaza's Hamas rulers and Israel. Late Friday, Israeli army said 10 to 12 rockets were fired from Gaza into southern Israel communities. Israel's Iron Dome defense system intercepted several missiles, it added. Earlier, thousands of Palestinians gathered at five locations along the boundary, burning tires and throwing rocks, grenades and firebombs at Israeli troops who respond with tear gas and occasional live fire. The Israeli army said some suspects briefly crossed the fence. In a separate incident, the military said its aircrafts struck three Hamas military posts in northern Strip. Three of the dead were reported in Khan Younis, in southern Gaza, according to the ministry. Witnesses said that dozens of protesters approached the fence there. In northern Gaza, a 27-year-old man died after being shot in the head, the ministry said. It added that 170 other protesters sustained various injuries. The militant Hamas group has scaled down the deadly protests over the past two weeks as Egypt stepped up its efforts to secure calm. On Wednesday, Egyptian intelligence officials met representatives of Palestinian factions in Gaza. Loay Qarouti of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine General Command said the mediators asked them "to protect the lives of protesters and minimize losses among them." Egypt wants calm restored to achieve national Palestinian reconciliation between Hamas, which seized Gaza in 2007, and the West Bank-based administration of President Mahmoud Abbas. But Hamas maintains it wants a full lifting of a crippling blockade Israel and Egypt imposed on Gaza to isolate the Islamic movement. The blockade has made it increasingly difficult for Hamas to govern. Widespread desperation among Gaza's 2 million residents - who get only a few hours of electricity a day and undrinkable tap water, in addition to suffering from soaring joblessness and limited freedom of travel - fuels their participation in the Hamas-orchestrated protests. Since the marches began six months ago, at least 160 Palestinians present or taking part in the protests have been killed. A Gaza militant fatally shot an Israeli soldier in July. Israel accuses Hamas of using the large protests as cover to stage border infiltrations and attacks. It says it is defending its border and accuses Hamas of exploiting young protesters and encouraging them to risk their lives in order to increase pressure to ease the blockade. Israel has come under heavy international criticism for what many see as excessive use of force and the large number of unarmed people who have been shot. In the West Bank, a 33-year-old Palestinian man was killed and nine others wounded by live rounds, one in critical conditions, as the Israeli forces confronted stone throwers in a village near Ramallah city, doctors said. (AP) CK Tribal girl gang-raped in Chhattisgarh's Raigarh district Raigarh, Oct 26 (PTI) A tribal girl was allegedly raped by five men in Chhattisgarh's Raigarh district, police said Friday. Four of the accused have been arrested. The incident took place in Lailunga area of the district on Wednesday night when the victim, a Class 11 student, had gone to visit a fair on the occasion of Sharad Purnima with her family, a local police official said. A group of seven men allegedly abducted her in a car and took her to an isolated spot, he said. Five of them allegedly raped her. The accused later abandoned her at the spot and fled, the official said. The girl reached home Thursday morning, after which a police complaint was lodged. A case was registered under IPC sections 376 (d) (gang rape), 363 (kidnapping) and the Protection of Children from Sexual Offences Act (POCSO). Of the seven accused, four were arrested Friday while the search was on for others, the police official said. PTI CORR TKP KRK KRK Jalpaiguri (WB), Oct 26 (PTI) The West Bengal Police has filed a charge sheet against three persons in connection with the brutal gangrape of a woman in Jalpaiguri district on October 20, a police officer said on Friday. The 35-year-old woman was raped and an iron rod inserted in her private parts. The police filed a charge sheet against the three accused on Thursday, five days after the incident took place, a police officer said. The accused have been charge-sheeted under relevant sections of the IPC for gangrape, causing grievous injury and attempt to murder. While we have arrested two persons, one is still absconding, the Superintendent of Police (SP) of Jalpaiguri, Amitava Maity, said. The incident had taken place near the victim's home at Niranjan Pat locality of Jalpaiguri district. The prime accused, a relative of the woman, had called her out of her home on the pretext of resolving a land dispute, the SP had earlier said. He then allegedly raped her and tortured her by inserting an iron rod in her private parts, the SP had said. Two other persons accompanied the accused but they did not rape or torture her, the SP had said after he had spoken to the woman, after her operation, at the hospital. The accused relative and another person who allegedly helped him in the crime were arrested but the third accused has been absconding. The tribal woman's husband, a labourer, was away from home during the incident. The woman has three children. A rickshaw-puller had found her and took her home.She was taken to Dhupguri hospital on October 21 morning and shifted to Jalpaiguri Sadar Hospital. Doctors operated on her at the Sadar Hospital here on that night and the woman was kept in the intensive care unit. She was administered blood as she had been bleeding profusely. "She is a serious condition but is stable," doctors treating her had said Wednesday. She was shifted to the critical care unit (CCU) from the ICU on Thursday and doctors at the hospital said that her condition was stable, they said on Friday. The incident brought back memories of the ghastly Nirbhaya rape case of 2012 in which a woman was gang-raped inside a moving bus in New Delhi and one of the accused inserted a rod in her private parts. PTI CORR SBN DV DV Patna, Oct 26 (PTI) The meeting between Union minister and RLSP president Upendra Kushwaha and Tejashwi Yadav on Friday was "coincidental", the RJD leader said, adding that people were "free to draw their own conclusions". A picture of the meeting between the two leaders in Bihar's Arwal district earlier in the day was shared by the Rashtriya Janata Dal (RJD) on its WhatsApp group triggering speculation of discontent within the National Democratic Alliance (NDA) grouping in the state. It specifically assumed significance as it came just hours after Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) chief Amit Shah announced a seat-sharing formula in the state for Lok Sabha elections. "People are free to draw their own conclusions. I can only say that the meeting was not pre-planned. It was a coincidence that he and I were at the Circuit House at the same time and hence it was natural for us to exchange pleasantries," Yadav, the former deputy chief minister, said. "It is probably the first time that I have met Kushwaha in person. As far as prospects of his joining our grand alliance is concerned, we have invited him to do so long ago and the invitation stands. It is for him to accept it or ignore it," the leader of opposition in Bihar assembly said. Speculations have been rife for quite some time that the Rashtriya Lok Samata Party (RLSP) chief might gravitate towards the grand alliance which at present comprises the RJD, the Congress and former Chief Minister Jitan Ram Manjhi's Hindustani Awam Morcha. Yadav also accused the BJP of neglecting "trusted allies" like Ram Vilas Paswan and Kushwaha in order to woo an "undependable" Nitish Kumar. "The BJP had won 22 out of 40 seats in Bihar in the 2014 Lok Sabha polls. Its willingness to treat Kumar as an equal partner, whose JD(U) had won only two seats and lost its deposit in most, shows the desperation on the part of Amit Shah and Prime Minister Narendra Modi," the leader of the opposition in the state assembly told reporters here. "Moreover, the meeting between Shah and Kumar gives the impression that the BJP has made up its mind to go with the JD(U) chief, who is undependable having cheated both, them and us, and give a short shrift to Paswan and Kushwaha, who have been firmly with the NDA," he said. Amit Shah told reporters in New Delhi that an announcement on the number of seats of NDA allies in Bihar, including Kushwaha's RLSP and Ram Vilas Paswan's Lok Janshakti Party (LJP), will be declared in two-three days. To a question about whether Kushwaha, whose equation with Kumar is far from cordial, will remain a part of the NDA, Shah answered in affirmative and asserted the alliance will do better than the last polls when it had won 31 seats. "All four parties will remain part of the NDA," he said. The RJD has been claiming that Kushwaha will leave the NDA and join the Grand Alliance following in the footsteps of Manjhi, who had quit the BJP-led coalition in February this year. Kushwaha, however, maintained that he is with the NDA. Like Manjhi, Kushwaha is a former JD(U) leader, who had formed his own party after falling out with Nitish Kumar and joined the NDA when the Bihar chief minister was out of the BJP-led coalition. Kumar's return to the NDA last year was understood to have caused a lot of consternation among the likes of Kushwaha and Manjhi. PTI NAC NN RHL New Delhi, Oct 26 (PTI) Prime Minister Narendra Modi Friday inaugurated the 'Krishi Kumbh' in Lucknow as he expressed hope that the event will pave the way for new technology to be imbibed in the agriculture sector. Addressing the event via video conference, he appreciated the Uttar Pradesh government for its efforts in augmenting the procurement of foodgrains. Amid concerns over rising level of air pollution in the national capital, Modi emphasised on the need to evolve new technologies and ways that will help eliminate the need for farmers to burn crop stubble. Modi asserted the farmers take the country forward and reiterated his governments commitment to double their income by 2022. He said, a series of steps have been taken to reduce farm input costs and raise profits and noted that a large number of solar pumps will be installed in farms across the country in the near future. The PM said the government is working to deliver the benefits of science to agriculture and the Rice Research Centre being set up in Varanasi is a step in this direction. Modi also spoke of the importance of value addition in farming and said steps are being taken in the food processing sector. After Green Revolution, he said, the focus is now on improving milk and honey production. Addressing the gathering, the PM called for discussion on matters such as judicious use of water resources, better technology for storage and use of latest technology in farming during the event. PTI NAB RCJ (Eds: Adding Rahul courting arrest, quotes) New Delhi, Oct 26 (PTI) Congress chief Rahul Gandhi courted arrest on Friday after leading hundreds of his party's workers in a march to the CBI headquarters against CBI Director Alok Verma being divested of his powers and to demand an apology from Prime Minister Narendra Modi. "Every institution in India being ruined by the prime minister," Gandhi said as the Congress took to the streets and marched from Dayal Singh College on Lodhi Road to the Central Bureau of Investigation headquarters about a kilometre away. The Congress president courted arrest along with senior leaders such as Ashok Gehlot and Bhupinder Singh Hooda. The Congress will not allow the "chowkidaar" (watchman) to do "chori" (theft), Gandhi said, reiterating his charges of corruption against the prime minister and saying he had "deposited Rs 30,000 crore in Anil Ambani's pocket". "He has stolen money from the Indian Air Force and the youth, and the entire country understands this. The prime minister can run but he cannot hide from the truth," Gandhi told reporters after courting arrest at the Lodhi Colony police station. There were no immediate reactions from the Prime Minister's Office on Gandhi's allegations. While Ambani has been consistently denying the allegations, the BJP has accused Gandhi of manufacturing lies everyday on the Rafale deal. "The truth will come out," Gandhi said, adding that removing the CBI director will not impact the truth. Addressing the gathering of Congress protesters earlier in the day, Gandhi accused Modi of destroying institutions such as the CBI, the Election Commission and the Enforcement Directorate. Senior Congress leaders, including Gehlot, Ahmed Patel, Motilal Vora, Veerappa Moily and Anand Sharma, took part in the march that culminated in a demonstration ahead of the CBI headquarters. Loktantrik Janata Dal leader Sharad Yadav, CPI leader D Raja and TMC's Nadimul Haque joined the protest. Carrying placards against the prime minister, the protesters walked the distance with scores of police personnel maintaining vigil and camera crews jostling with each other to capture the moment. One protester carried a placard depicting the CBI in a cage. Gandhi got on to a truck in front of the police barricades put up ahead of the CBI headquarters in the CGO complex to prevent the marchers from reaching the building. Gehlot said the decision to remove the CBI director was "illegal". "The chief justice of India, the leader of the opposition and the prime minister can together take a decision to remove him, but not the prime minister alone," he told reporters. "Our demand is to reinstate the CBI director...The prime minister should tender an apology to the nation for destroying the image of the premier investigating agency," Gehlot added. The government has strongly defended its decision, saying it was "absolutely essential" to maintain the CBI's institutional integrity and the move was based on recommendations by the Central Vigilance Commission. The Congress' protests in the national capital were replicated in other parts of the country. State Congress leaders led demonstrations in their regions against what the Congress described as the "illegal, unconstitutional and illegitimate removal of the CBI director by the Modi-Shah duo that has shamed India and its premier investigative agency". In Patna, for instance, Congress workers, including scores of women, sat on a dharna outside the gate of the CBI office at Bailey Road, carrying placards, reading 'Save CBI Save Democracy'. Alleging that the prime minister is experiencing 'Rafale-o-Phobia', the opposition party said the "demolition of the CBI" was prompted by fears that the director was going to conduct a probe into the fighter jet deal. Finance Minister Arun Jaitley has dismissed as "rubbish" the allegations by the Opposition that Verma was removed because he was collecting documents on the Rafale fighter jet deal. The government sent Verma and Special Director Rakesh Asthana, who have accused each other of corruption, on leave on Tuesday. It also transferred several CBI officials and appointed M Nageswar Rao as the interim chief of the agency. The Congress protest was held soon after the matter came up in the Supreme Court. The apex court said former Supreme Court judge A K Patnaik will oversee a CVC inquiry into the allegations and counter allegations and the report has to be placed before it within two weeks. It directed that interim CBI chief M Nageswar Rao shall not take any major policy decisions. Decisions taken by him since October 23 till date shall not be implemented, it said. All decisions taken by Rao shall be placed before the apex court in a sealed cover. The court sought a response from the CBI, the CVC and the Centre on Verma's plea challenging the government's decision to divest him of his duties. A bench headed by Chief Justice Ranjan Gogoi posted the next date of hearing on November 12. PTI VIT/SKC PR SLB AMP TDS MIN MIN New Delhi, Oct 26 (PTI) Amrapali Group Chief Financial Officer Chander Wadhwa, who had earlier claimed to have a "memory fail", Friday answered searching questions from the Supreme Court prompting the bench to observe "his memory was intact" Wadhwa had earlier chosen to remain silent when he was quizzed by forensic auditors appointed by the court, saying he has lost his memory. A bench of justices Arun Mishra and U U Lalit said "it seems now his memory is intact" after Wadhwa apologised for his conduct before the forensic auditors. Justice Lalit asked several questions to Wadhwa about his date of joining the company and in what capacity he was taken on board. He was also asked about his role in the company and how he used to work. "I apologise for my conduct before the forensic auditors," Wadhwa told the bench. "Now you don't seem to have any memory fail. Your memory seems to be intact now," the bench observed. At the outset, the bench warned Wadhwa during questioning and said, "This is a court of record. You have to reply very carefully. If your answer is found to be wrong you will face consequences". It asked Wadhwa to submit whatever document he has with him with regard to the company to the forensic auditors and render all possible assistance they needed. During questioning with the forensic auditors on October 12, Wadhwa had chosen to remain silent, saying he does not remember anything and has suffered a memory loss. He had, however, answered personal questions such as the date of marriage, name of college and school passing year. The court is seized of a batch of petitions filed by home buyers who are seeking possession of around 42,000 flats booked in projects of the Amrapali group. PTI MNL ABA SJK RKS MNL TIR TIR New Delhi, Oct 26 (PTI) The Supreme Court on Friday stayed an Uttarakhand High Court order which directed the Rishikesh AIIMS to hand over the body of environmentalist G D Agarwal to an ashram in Haridwar. Earlier in the day, the high court had directed the hospital to hand over Agarwal's body to Matri Sadan, the ashram he was associated with, after embalming it to enable his followers to pay their last respects and perform religious ceremonies. Agarwal, also known as Swami Gyanswaroop Sanand, died at the All India Institute of Medical Sciences (AIIMS) in Rishikesh on October 11 after fasting for 111 days, demanding measures from the Centre to keep the Ganga clean and free-flowing. Agarwal's "spiritual guru" Swami Avimukteshwaranand has laid claim on his body while the government hospital says the activist had pledged his organs for medical research at the institute. A Supreme Court bench comprising Chief Justice Ranjan Gogoi and Justice M B Lokur said the high court order, if implemented, will make the organs of the deceased unfit for transplantation. "In view of the above, we deem it proper to stay the order of the High Court dated October 26, 2018...until further orders," the bench said. The high court's order came on a PIL that Swami Sanand's body had not been handed over to his followers for last rites. The court had also ordered that the body shall be handed back to the Rishikesh AIIMS after 72 hours. "The Senior Superintendents of Police, Dehradun and Haridwar are directed to make all arrangements for handing over the body of Swami Sanand to Matri Sadan and for returning the same to AIIMS Rishikesh, Dehradun, by deploying sufficient police force," the high court had said. "We make it clear by way of abundant precaution that no political party shall derive political mileage on the basis of this order," it said. The hospital moved the Supreme Court against the order. PTI PKS RKS PKS DIV DIV New Delhi, Oct 26 (PTI) A special edition of "Raag Darbaari" was launched here Friday as part of the golden jubilee year celebrations of Shrilal Shukla's cult Hindi novel. A panel discussion was held to discuss the social, cultural and political impact of the 50-year-old novel vis-a-vis contemporary India followed by a 'dastangoi' performance set in Shukla's fictional 'Shivapalganj'. Delhi Deputy Chief Minister Manish Sisodia, former Union minister Kapil Sibal and Nationalist Congress Party (NCP) leader D P Tripathi, and Shukla's family attended the event, organised by publisher Rajkamal Prakashan Samuh in the national capital. First published in 1968 and considered among all-time Hindi classics, Shukla's satirical take on Indian society had bagged the Sahitya Akademi and the Jnanpith Awards, two of highest literary honours in the country. Participating in the panel discussion, author Jillian Wright spoke on the herculean task of translating into English the book, which is replete with Awadhi words and phrases, while development economist Jean Dreze reflected on the socio-economic changes that have come since 1968, with reference to the situation as described in the book. "People dub 'Raag Darbaari' as a satire, and very rightly so but I think it was more of a literature written out of frustration (towards the ills of the society) with satire being only its form. It was a very sensitive novel," said novelist Purushottam Agrawal. Academic and historian Pushpesh Pant felt that the novel, though a classic, may not find easy readers among the new generation because "a lot has changed in India" over the years. "A lot of socio-political changes have taken place in the country and significant events like the Emergency, the Mandal Commission, the Babri Mosque demolition have occurred that have made the country quite unlike what it used to be in the 1960s and how it was in Shukla's fictional Shivpalganj," he said. Another highlight of the event was the 'Dastangoi' by Urdu oral storytellers Mahmood Farrooqui and Darain Shahidi. The publishers also announced a special deluxe edition -- a collector's edition with illustrations -- of the novel that would be launched next month. "'Raag Darbaari' holds an important place among all timeless classics in Hindi," remarked Ashok Maheshwari of Rajkamal Prakashan. "In the history of modern Hindi, it is an extraordinary feat for a book to achieve such fame, cult status and remain popular with readers even after 50 years," he said. He said the novel, which has had 32 hard-bound editions and 40 paperback editions, has sold over five million copies. Shukla was born on December 31, 1925, in Lucknow. He completed his degree from Allahabad University and then served in the provincial service before retiring as an IAS officer. Shukla, who wrote more than 25 books which have been translated to English and 15 native languages, was awarded the Padma Bhushan in 2008 for his contribution to literature. He passed away in October 2011 in Lucknow. PTI KIS ZMN Muzaffarnagar, Oct 26 (PTI) Nearly 25 armed men stormed a dairy in a village in Muzaffarnagar district and took away 18 buffaloes worth Rs 20 lakh after taking the owner hostage, a police official said Friday. The incident happened in Ratanpuri village Thursday, the police official said. The men entered the dairy forcibly and pointed a gun on its owner Naresh Kumar and his son Mohit. They took away the buffaloes in two vehicles, the official said. He said a bike and two mobiles phones were also snatched. Villagers angry over the incident blocked the road outside the area police station. They ended their protest after senior police officers visited the area and pacified the protesters. A case has been registered against unidentified people and a search has been launched, the police official said. PTI CORR ABH ABH Muzaffarnagar, Oct 26 (PTI) A 17-year-old girl committed suicide by jumping before a train near Yarpur village in Shamli district, a police official said Friday. The Class 11 student, daughter of Yashpal Singh, jumped before the train on Delhi-Sharanpur route Thursday. She was apparently worried over some issue, the police official said. He said the case was under investigation. Meanwhile, police said they have recovered two more bodies in the district. A young man was found dead on railway tracks near Kandhla railway station. Another body was found in a field in Titarwada village under Kairana police station. Both the bodies were yet to be identified. PTI CORR ABH ABH ABH Shimla, Oct 26 (PTI) A Russian man was arrested with over one kg of charas in Bhuntar area of Himachal Pradesh's Kullu district, police said Friday. The accused was identified as Konstantin, Kullu Superintendent of Police Shalini Agnihotri said. A case was registered against him under Section 20 of the Narcotic Drugs and Psychotropic Substances (NDPS) Act, the SP said, adding that a probe into the matter was underway. PTI DJI SNE SNE New Delhi, Oct 26 (PTI) A JNU professor, who was affected by polio at the age of three, has written a book critically examining the progress made in promoting teaching and research on disability studies. He said the UGC has not yet taken the initiative to constitute a model curriculum development committee on disability studies for its advancement. Gajendra Narayan Karna, a disability right activist, has penned the book titled Curriculum Development on Disability Studies. For the past 18 months, he has been struggling with cancer. The discipline of disability studies was granted recognition as an academic discipline by the Ministry of Human Resource Development in September 2005, he said. The University Grants Commission was directed to extend support to universities and colleges in setting up special department or centre on disability studies as also instituting Rajiv Gandhi Chair in Disability Studies in central universities, Karna added. It was further reinforced by the 11th five-year plan in Working Group on Disability. "Notwithstanding all these developments, the UGC has not taken as yet even the basic initiative of constituting a model curriculum development committee on disability studies (as has been done in the case of Gandhian studies, human rights, Dalit studies and other academic disciplines)," he claimed. Meanwhile, more than 17 universities/academic institutions (including TISS, IGNOU, JNU and DU) have moved towards launching disability studies programmes, though in a haphazard manner because of a lack of model curriculum, he claimed. He said his book is intended to examine critically the progress made with regard to promotion of teaching and research on disability studies, and thereby attempting to develop a model curriculum on disability studies for various programmes of studies being offered by Indian universities and academic institutions. PTI SLB ABH ABH ABH New Delhi, Oct 26 (PTI) A man, accused of firing at three different offices of property dealers in the Shalimar Bagh area here to terrorise and extort money from them, has been arrested, police said Friday. Ashish, 35, who was a member of the Harsimran gang, was nabbed on Thursday from the Shalimar Bagh area, police said. "He (Ashish) disclosed that he is a drug addict and came in contact with Harsimran alias Badal about a year ago. Harsimran had been externed out of Delhi by the police. To earn some quick money through extortion, Harsimran and Ashish had planned to terrorise the local property dealers," Additional Commissioner of Police (Crime) A K Singla said. Ashish and his associate Ahman fired at three different locations at the offices of local property dealers in Shalimar Bagh and they were promised one lakh each per successful extortion bid by Harsimran, he said. Ashish has a past criminal record and was found to be involved in three criminal cases, including that of a rape and a robbery, police said. On October 20, some unidentified men had fired at the office of Grover properties in Shalimar Bagh and it was learnt that the accused was riding a scooty and had fired at two other offices of property dealers in the same locality, they said. Police said that efforts were being made to nab Harsimran and Ahman. PTI ABA ABA AQS AQS Lucknow, Oct 26 (PTI) Six members of a gang involved in leaking a question paper of a constable recruitment examination were arrested by the UP Special Task Force in Agra. In a statement issued here Friday, the STF said the members of the gang were trying to leak the examination paper to the aspirants in lieu of financial gains from them. The examination was scheduled on October 25 and October 26, and the arrests were made Thursday. "Acting on a tip-off that some people have gathered at Khandauli area of Agra to leak the question paper to aspirants in lieu of financial gains, a team of UP STF stationed in Agra arrested six people. The arrested are Arun, Monu, Chandraveer Singh, Raju, Ajit and Kuldeep," the STF said. Two cars, six mobile phones and Rs 2 lakh were recovered from them. When interrogated, the arrested persons said they used to impersonate aspirants in various examinations and charge Rs 2 lakh from each aspirant," the STF said. A case has been registered against the arrested persons under the IPC and the IT Act, the STF statement said, adding the arrests were made before the examination which was scheduled for October 26. PTI NAV DPB New Delhi, Oct 26 (PTI) A 46-year-old plumber and his three accomplishes were arrested Friday for allegedly robbing and killing two septuagenarian women in outer Delhi's Paschim Vihar, police said. Police identified the four accused as plumber Akhilesh, a resident of Nangloi; Deepak (22), a resident of Shakarpur; Salman Shah (19), a resident of Pratapgarh district in Uttar Pradesh; and Raju Yadav (34), a resident of Bhalswa Dairy. On Thursday, police received information regarding killings of the two women. When police reached the spot, Usha Pathak (78) and Asha Pathak (75) were found dead at their residence in Paschim Vihars Anand Van society, said Seju Kuruvilla, Deputy Commissioner of Police (Outer). Police said there were no signs of forcible entry into the house and it was ransacked, suggesting someone was looking for money or other valuable items. While police were analysing the CCTV cameras, they found three suspicious persons had entered the society, Kuruvilla said. Later, it was revealed that Akhilesh had come to the victims house on Wednesday. He was arrested and interrogated and he led the police to his accomplices, three of whom were arrested while two are absconding. Akhilesh said that he, along with his other associates, had planned and committed this robbery-cum-killing, the DCP added. During interrogation, Akhilesh said that he works as plumber and on Tuesday, he was called for some work at the victims flat. On Tuesday, he inspected the flat and found that the two old women were residing and he felt they might be having ample cash and jewellery, he said. On that day, he had purchased all the required items from the market but on the pretext of some urgent work, he left the house and did not do the work. He promised that he will complete his work on Wednesday, Kuruvilla added. On Wednesday, Akhilesh called his associates at district park Paschim Vihar and shared the information. They finalised the plan of looting the house and killing the women. As per the plan, Akhilesh asked his associates to enter the flat once he left the house posing as electricians as the victims were also looking for an electrician and Akhilesh had promised them to send an electrician known to him, he said. As Akhilesh left the house after completing his work, his associates entered the flat. They strangled Usha. As Asha was trying to get out of their grip, they first tied her hands and then strangled her. After killing the women, they looted the house and fled from the spot. The incident took place at around 2 pm, he added. Akhilesh said that they got Rs 15,000, silver anklets and some gold items along with antique silver utensils from the flat. The looted items were recovered from their possession, said Kuruvilla, adding his two other associates are absconding and police are conducting raids to nab them. The deceased sisters were retired and unmarried. They used to live together at Paschim Vihar. Usha was a librarian at Krishi Bhawan, New Delhi and Asha was a music teacher in a college in Hapur, Uttar Pradesh, police said. PTI NIT SLB TIR TIR The Government's proposed reforms to the way car accident compensation is paid took one step closer to being enshrined in law this week after the Civil Liability Bill passed through its final reading unscathed. This means that in April 2020, new rules should come in setting out how much you can claim when you are injured in a car crash. In a nutshell, the reforms will mean you'll get a smaller payout for road traffic accidents, and your accident will have to be more serious than it would be now for you to be able to recover any legal costs. Government argues that curbing whiplash payouts will help fight fraud and lower premiums As an example of what this will look like, currently a claimant with whiplash lasting up to three months can expect damages of around 1,800 on average. When the Bill passes, this would drop to around 225 around 1,575 less than you would get now. And injuries sustained in traffic accidents will need to be serious enough to claim for damages worth over 5,000 for your legal costs to be recoverable. Under this limit, and you'll either have to pay for your own legal representation or you'll be on your own, and have to make your claim yourself through a new online portal. The Government and insurers argue that this will help make car insurance cheaper by stamping out fraudulent activity and discouraging what it sees as 'ambulance-chasing' lawyers from the sector. The UK's biggest insurers, including Admiral, Direct Line and Aviva, have all signed a letter pledging to pass the savings onto customers - which they predict will be around 35 per year. Personal injury lawyers take a different view. Brett Dixon, president of the Association of Personal Injury Lawyers, said: 'The Government has made it clear that it doesn't care about injured people. Insurance companies' profit margins are obviously more important to the Government. 'It has been utterly determined to make these reforms happen since being seduced by insurance industry rhetoric. 'Hard-working, genuine motorists whom ministers and insurers claim to represent will find their compulsory insurance cover will not be sufficient when they need it.' Will the changes really help customers? The main argument employed by insurers and Government while pushing for reform is that the UK is gripped by a 'compensation culture'. For years, insurers have argued that fraudulent whiplash claims have been the main factor in rising car insurance premiums. But a recent Freedom of Information request by campaign group Access to Justice revealed that the number of road traffic accident claims has actually dropped eight per cent since last year. The Association of British Insurers says this is a result of claimant lawyers leaving the sector ahead of the reforms. Meanwhile, although car insurance premiums have dropped from their peak at the beginning of the year, the average amount paid by motorists is still higher than in most previous years on record, with the average fully comprehensive premium now costing 760 a year. 'Pre-medical offers' to be banned as part of the reforms The Government's Bill will also put an end to insurance companies settling claims directly with accident victims without medical evidence - known as pre-medical offers. This means you won't get a payout unless your injuries have been confirmed by a doctor. Insurance fraud also dropped by eight per cent last year, but it remains a real problem for the industry. Last year there were 113,000 fraudulent insurance claims made in the UK, worth an overall 1.3billion, according to the Association of British Insurers. And the value of detected fraudulent motor insurance claims, at 775million, rose by 4 per cent on 2016. The number of these frauds, at 67,000, also showed a small rise. Overall, it is likely that in 2020 insurers will pass on their savings onto customers, as they will be under considerable scrutiny and pressure from Government to do so. This doesn't necessarily mean your insurance will be cheaper, however. Rising repair costs, among other factors, mean that car insurance premiums can go up regardless of whether insurers are saving money on personal injury payouts. What about seriously injured people? The Government's new rules will also alter how compensation is calculated for people with life-long care needs from injuries such as severe brain or spinal damage, with a view to cutting the size of payments by insurance companies. When someone suffers a life changing injury, compensation is calculated using multiple factors, including the claimant's future loss of earnings, as well as the costs of future care. New rules will also alter how compensation is calculated for people with life-long care needs However, as the claimant is usually given the money as a lump sum, they can expect to earn interest on it over the course of a lifetime. Because of this, the amount awarded is adjusted to account for the interest that will be accrued on the payout. The calculation used to determine this is what's known as the Ogden discount rate, and it's been a point of contention for over a decade. The issue came to a head early last year when the then Lord Chancellor Liz Truss slashed the rate from 2.5 per cent to minus 0.75 per cent. This sent insurers into a panic, with a group of 15 top bosses converging on Number 11 that same week for an emergency meeting with Chancellor Philip Hammond. Fairly soon after the meeting, the Government launched a consultation on how the rate should be set in future. It's estimated by accounting firm EY that as of June last year insurers paid out an extra 3.5billion in compensation as a result of the change. The Bill that has just passed through Parliament is the result of that consultation, and will change how the rate is calculated going forward. The rate will soon be set assuming that claimants will invest their compensation in a low risk investment portfolio rather than a very low risk portfolio. This will probably result in a rate of between 0 to 1 percent, meaning claimants will receive less than they do now, but more than they did prior to February 2017. If the European Union bans Britain from changing the clocks in autumn and spring road safety would improve, according to data. Brussels is currently proposing to end the practice of 'daylight saving' across the EU following claims it is unpopular. But while the Government looks to challenge the decision, some motoring groups have said it could help reduce the number of crashes on Britain's roads. Data from one insurer suggests that accident rates in the evening increase by 34 per cent once the clocks go back. Daylight saving changes could reduce winter accidents: Motoring groups have said there is plenty of supporting data that shows road accidents could be reduced if the clocks don't go back in October Under the suggested rule change, the UK would be obliged to implement a permanent summer time from next year despite Britain's divorce from the EU. That's because draft withdrawal agreement would require the UK to adopt the change during the two-year Brexit transition period. It comes about after the EU Commission found 84 per cent wanted to abolish the system of putting the clocks back at the end of October. If passed, from April 2019, all EU clocks moved to summer time will remain and not be changed back at the end of the tenth month. While the House of Lords is challenging the decision, a recent survey by the AA found that that the move would garner the support of many Britons. Poll Are you for or against changing the clocks twice a year? For Against Are you for or against changing the clocks twice a year? For 356 votes Against 749 votes Now share your opinion Some 42 per cent of 22,666 UK drivers polled by the motoring organisation said the UK should no longer put their clocks back and stick with British Summer Time permanently. However, 45 per cent of drivers in Scotland are against such a move, aligning with the thoughts of some Scottish dairy farmers as the sun wouldn't rise until 10am in some areas. One of the main road safety arguments for implementing a permanent summer time are having lighter evenings. According to the latest road casualty statistics released by the Department of Transport, 53,417 casualties occurred during the 2016 evening rush hour (16:00 19:59) compared to 32,036 during the morning rush hour (06:00 09:59). While some in the EU consultation argued for change based on road safety issues, two fifths referred to their evening leisure activities. The AA said more road casualties occur during the evening rush hour than the morning rush hour British Summertime was first introduced in 1916 following a campaign by builder William Willett Jack Cousens, head of roads policy for the AA said that opinion is split across the UK about the permanent adoption of summer time. 'Having lighter evenings could provide some road safety benefits, as more road casualties occurred during the evening rush hour when compared to the morning rush hour,' he commented. British Summertime was first introduced in 1916 following a campaign by builder William Willett. However, attempts have been made as recent as 2012 to have the rule changed. British road safety charities Royal Society for the Prevention of Accidents and Brake have both lobbied for the UK to change to single-double British Summertime, adjusting the clocks to Greenwich Mean Time+1 in the winter, and GMT+2 in the summer. Both said this would result in darker mornings but an extra hour of evening daylight throughout the year. It is estimated this could prevent 80 deaths and more than 200 serious injuries on UK roads every year. Insurethebox said it had historically tracked a 34% increase in accident rates during the evening hours when the clocks go back Telematics insurer, Insurethebox, revealed that it has historically seen a 34 per cent increase in accident rates among motorists driving between 17:00 and 20:00 during the week once the clocks go back at the end of October. Its data shows that male drivers are most at risk of an accident with a 37 per cent increase in accidents during these time periods after the clocks go back, while crash rates involving female drivers rises by 30 per cent. Sarah Vaughan, head of pricing at the insurer said: 'For many young drivers, the evenings after the clock change will be their first experience of driving in the dark, coping with different conditions like reduced visibility. 'Insurethebox holds over four billion miles of driving data accumulated over nearly 10 years, and this extensive dataset means we can spot trends and help our customers before they need to make a claim. 'As the clocks change this weekend, we are highlighting our findings to encourage all motorists to be mindful of the lower visibility and watch out for wet weather.' Insurethebox reveals change in accident rates by region when the clocks go back UK East Lancs/ York London Midlands North Scotland South Wales West Overall change in Accidents 12% 10% 19% 8% 10% 33% 22% 12% 7% 1% Change in Accidents 5pm-8pm 34% 30% 49% 33% 25% 46% 50% 34% 35% 26% Change in Accidents 6am-9am 8% -17% 14% 12% 34% 19% 11% -8% 52% -28% This isn't the only research that suggests there is a rise in road accidents as a direct result of the clocks going back. Dashcam manufacturer Nextbase also referenced the Road Safety Observatory's research that found a 10 per cent increase in the number of accidents in the four weeks following the clocks going back. Richard Browning, Director at the firm, said: 'We know from a huge pool of research that driving in darkness can have significant ramifications for road safety, which is why it is vital that drivers are extra vigilant during the dark winter months.' Those familiar with the TV series White Gold will know it chronicles the rise and demise of a bunch of 1980s Essex double-glazing salesmen with a little drug taking, a lot of womanising and the odd Ford XR3 thrown in there for good measure. The machinations at Safestyle (UK), which ended up in court, could easily have provided grist for a new series minus the bed-hopping, hot hatches and white powder references, of course. The plot of this real-life drama tells the story of two former partners, who are now rivals, that culminates in expensive legal action. Real-life drama: Those familiar with the TV series White Gold will know it chronicles the rise and demise of a bunch of 1980s Essex double-glazing salesmen. The machinations at Safestyle (UK) , which ended up in court, could easily have provided grist for a new series This week the court battle came to a head in rather less outlandish fashion than might have been the case had the episode been written for televisual consumption. It saw Safestyle and its co-founder Mitu Misra, who set up Safeglaze in competition to the incumbent, agree a five-year non-compete deal. Misra will receive four million shares and a cash payment of up to 2m in the final quarter of 2020. Safestyle began life in 1992 with 2,000 of seed capital and was floated at 1 a share, at which point Misra exited after pocketing an estimated 70m. He used some of that money to write and produce his debut film, Lies We Tell, a northern noir set in Bradford and starring Gabriel Byrne. For Safestyle, this weeks legal settlement provided a tonic for the shares, which rose 56 per cent. However, at 79p they are still some way below the listing price. It wasnt such a good week for Yu Group, the energy provider, that sounded the mother of all profits warning, leading to an 80 per cent fall in the value of the business. Investors were told the business would be loss-making after it found several areas of 'significant concern' that will hit its bottom line. These included problems in how it recognises historic accrued income, higher levels of trade debt that cannot be paid back to Yu Group, and a squeeze in market conditions. Profit warning: It wasnt such a good week for Yu Group , the energy provider, that sounded the mother of all profits warning, leading to an 80% fall in the value of the business Yu doesnt expect to book a profit until the end of next year. Turning to the wider market, the AIM All Share index fell 3.4 per cent with investors going into risk-off mode as the sell-off on Wall Street, Asia and on the Footsie filtered down to impact small-cap stocks. A roller coaster week left the benchmark FTSE 100 index in slightly better shape as it only shed 2.2 per cent over the last five trading days. Faron Pharma provided a little more detail as to why its phase III trial didnt pass muster, which could potentially breathe new life into its drug for acute respiratory distress. Unfortunately, investors werent on the same page as the stock slipped almost 30 per cent. It has tanked more than 90 per cent in the year to date. In the natural resources sector, the latest fundraising, which brought in 1m, decimated the share price of MX Oil, which lost 74 per cent of its value. Drug boost: Faron Pharma provided a little more detail as to why its phase III trial didnt pass muster, which could potentially breathe new life into its drug for acute respiratory distress Hummingbird, a gold miner with assets in Mali and Liberia, saw 31 per cent wiped from its value after it told the market it would cease mining on an area of its Yanfolila operation until safety work can be completed. It has been a rough transition in to production for the company and its investors, including management and 'connected parties', who own almost 16 per cent, with the stock down 50 per cent over the last year. Sticking with the miners, Premier African Minerals enjoyed a decent week with the shares vaulting up 29 per cent. One suspects some sort of overhang had been flushed through as there was no real news of note to titillate the market makers. Either that, or behind the scenes wrangling over the ownership of the RHA tungsten asset in Zimbabwe is close to a fruitful conclusion. Long-suffering investors will be hoping that a resolution is in the offing. Housebuilders have been making their names known for all the wrong reasons this year. Jeff Fairburn, chief executive of FTSE 100 business Persimmon, has been criticised by his peers for bringing the industry into disrepute over his 75m bonus. The 52-year-old then walked out of a BBC Look North interview when asked about the payout, telling the reporter it was 'unfortunate' he had brought it up. Meanwhile Persimmon's share price is languishing 20.5 per cent lower than it was a year ago. Despite announcing record profits in September and a positive update a month later, rival Barratt Developments has suffered much the same fortunes in terms of its shares. A warning over slight uncertainty in London knocked Berkeley Group in September, while chairman Tony Pidgley's statement in June that his company had waved goodbye to its days of peak profits wiped millions off its market value. With Britain's biggest housebuilders down in the doldrums, should investors be steering clear of the sector? Sam Cullen, an analyst at broker Berenberg, says: 'If you look across the sector, on average, earnings upgrades have been 5 per cent to 6 per cent this year. But the shares are off around 20 per cent to 25 per cent.' This is largely down to fears about Brexit, he says. Investors have no idea what the outcome of negotiations to leave the EU will look like, or how that will affect the economy or consumer confidence. A negative reaction could hit the housing market, squeezing builders' revenues and profits. He suggests that the sinking share prices could in fact be more of a behavioural economics issue, where investors are deterred by emotional reasoning rather than having any concerns about the fundamentals of the companies. Cullen says: 'The greatest amount of fear about Brexit is in London and the South East, which is where most finance professionals live and work. 'They sometimes forget that the main reason we're leaving the EU is because more voted for it rather than against it, so logic would say that most are going to be happy with the decision and their consumer confidence shouldn't be impacted,' he said. There have undoubtedly been wobbles more recently in the London housing market. Earlier this month, Crest Nicholson which has a larger exposure to the area warned its profits may be hit by slowing sales in London and the South East. Regardless of Brexit, Peel Hunt analyst Clyde Lewis notes that the UK population will still need houses and someone will still have to build them. Lewis says: 'The younger generation in particular are the ones that are housing-poor, and it's a big issue for the economy.' Housebuilders outside of the London area may be a safer bet for now. Cullen picks out Bellway. It has no London exposure, is growing fast and its shares are currently valued much lower than some of its competitors. Lewis adds that Taylor Wimpey also looks like a strong choice it's forecast to yield 35 per cent in dividends over the next three years, meaning an investor should get a third of the money they paid for the shares back over that short horizon. Persimmon also has no London exposure and very affordable homes, though there's no doubt that normal investors may be reluctant to buy into a company where the boss's bonus exceeds any normally conceivable sum. 'Persimmon is a well-run business, so the management deserved a bonus,' says Lewis. However, he calls the lack of a cap to limit the size of the payout a 'monumental' mistake, which won't be repeated. Still, shareholders have benefited from the company's strong financial performance and could continue to do so. Cullen expects housebuilders to start to pick up soon after the UK leaves the EU, when investors feel more sure that the housing market isn't headed for a slump. Lewis believes a rebound could even come before this point. The housebuilders certainly aren't short of work, as mainstream political parties on both sides of the fence are keen to beef up the UK's housing stock. Their balance sheets are largely in better shape than they have been in years and for savers, it could be worth taking a punt while the shares are depressed. British Airways owner IAG's profits have stalled as the airline group struggles to stay on top of soaring fuel costs and a fallout from cyber attacks. Fuel costs were up 14.3 per cent, the company said, as its operating profit remained steady at 1.3 billion for the third quarter of the year. On the upside, IAG's businesses which also include Vueling, Iberia and Aer Lingus were adding more routes and managing to fill more seats on their planes. George Salmon, an analyst at Hargreaves Lansdown, said: 'The fly in the ointment is solid progress on revenues is being undone by a sharp jump in operating costs. 'However, that's really just a product of rising fuel costs, which are of course well out of IAG's control. Take out the impact of higher fuel prices and unfavourable currency moves, and it becomes clear IAG is doing some pretty impressive work on underlying operating improvements.' The price of a barrel of Brent crude oil has risen from less than $60 a year ago to more than $77 today. IAG's shares rose as the markets opened, but by the end of the day were down 0.3 per cent, or 1.8p, at 585.6p. The results came just a day after IAG admitted the payment card details of another 185,000 customers had been stolen in a second hack on the BA website. It made the alarming discovery after investigating an original hack in September, which affected 380,000 transactions. While IAG's shares edged down, the firm's chief executive Willie Walsh took the chance to praise Norwegian just months after having his own takeover approaches for the low-cost airline rebuffed. The budget flyer is reported to be in talks with a third party to try to raise more money, by selling or leasing its own aircraft. Walsh said this was a 'good move', causing Norwegian's shares to rise 4.5 per cent, or 9.5p, to 220.45p. Handily for Walsh, IAG owns 1.8m shares in Norwegian. The rise in its shares increased the value of IAG's stake by 1.7m. After a jittery week, the FTSE 100 ended the day down 0.9 per cent, or 64.54 points, to 6,939.56 points. Russian steel and mining company Evraz was the biggest loser, as investors became more negative following a mixed output report on Thursday. Shares fell 6.3 per cent, or 34p, to 503p. Cyber security company Avast dragged the FTSE 250 lower, sliding 7.2 per cent or 20.25p to 261.75p. It has been on a downwards slide since Tuesday, when its private equity backer sold a 52.5m chunk of shares. Traders were reluctant to pay too highly for the stock, pushing its price lower. New EU emissions tests took their toll on car retailer Pendragon. Shares dipped 0.9pc, or 0.25p, to 26.25p, as revenue dropped 6.4 per cent. Part of the 9.7 per cent revenue drop in its new car division was due to the new EU tests, which aim to check pollution in more realistic conditions following the Volkswagen diesel scandal. Overall, underlying profit climbed by 3m in the third quarter of the year to 1.1m. Profits in the used-car arm were a bright spot for the company, rising 20 per cent year-on-year. Pendragon has mostly recovered from its profit warning last week, which saw shares plummet by 8 per cent to 24.3p after the company warned that the new emissions tests had caused 'significant disruption'. On the junior market AIM, VR Education, which develops educational software for use with virtual reality headsets like the Oculus Rift, sank 17.4 per cent, or 2p, to 9.5p. Its Titanic VR programme, which allows users to virtually explore the sunken ship, was supposed to launch on Playstation soon after the company released its half-year results in September. But making it work with Playstation was taking longer than anticipated. The FBI has launched a criminal probe into Tesla over whether it misled investors regarding the production of its Model 3 sedan cars. The fraud investigation is examining whether Tesla misstated information about the company's business as far back as early 2017, the Wall Street Journal reported. Tesla has been under intense pressure to ramp up production of its electric Model 3, which is its first vehicle aimed at the mass market. Probe: Tesla's boss Elon Musk initially claimed the company would be able to make 10,000 Model 3s per week by this year - it only just managed to hit 5,000 in July However it suffered from persistent 'bottleneck' issues, which stopped the company hitting its targets for months. Tesla's boss Elon Musk initially claimed the company would be able to make 10,000 Model 3s per week by this year. It only just managed to hit 5,000 in July. The US financial watchdog, the Securities and Exchange Commission, has recently settled a separate civil case with Tesla and Musk. It accused Musk of securities fraud, after he tweeted that he was considering taking the company private. The settlement allowed Musk to remain as chief executive of Tesla, as long as he resigned as chairman and paid a 16m fine. Tesla refuted that it was the subject of a deepening FBI probe, saying it was co-operating but had not received a subpoena from the Department of Justice. British Airways owner International Airlines Group's (IAG) said today that profits dipped 0.4 per cent in the last three months as it had to pay considerably more for fuel. The group's pre-tax earnings nudged down to 1.26billion as fuel costs soared by 15 per cent. This has put pressure on all airlines this year; the price of a barrel of Brent crude has risen from around $67 to more than $76 today. Drop off: BA owner IAG's pre-tax profits dipped 0.4% after being hit by higher fuel costs IAG lost a further 98.3million in foreign currency exchange. None-the-less, it secured a healthy 8.5 per cent sales rise to 6.32billion and marginally stronger operating profits, helping its shares rally in early trading. Its latest results come just a day after IAG came clean about an additional 185,000 customers having payment card details stolen in a second hack on the BA website. The victims were ensnared by a website compromise that went undetected for months. BA only discovered the breach while investigating a hack of its website in September, which affected 380,000 transactions. Commenting on today's results, IAG boss Willie Walsh said: 'These were strong results despite significant fuel cost and foreign exchange headwinds.' IAG boss said the company's results were good in the face of rising fuel costs He unveiled an interim dividend of 12.8p per share and said the firm has, this week, completed its second 443million share buy-back programme. The firm, which also owns Aer Lingus, Vueling and Iberia, expects underlying operating profit for the full year to increase by 177.1million. Russ Mould, investment director at AJ Bell said that, given the numerous headwinds facing the firm, its results have to be considered 'a minor triumph'. He said: 'Profit was strong and just ahead of consensus forecasts as the company kept tight control on non-fuel costs and was able to push through higher fares. 'The company has also hedged its exposure to fuel prices and this combination of factors should enable it to join a select grouping of airlines which will grow profit in 2018. 'And there may also be some relief among shareholders that an investigation into the recent cyber security attack on British Airways customer data has not yet turned up any evidence of fraud.' IAG's shares were up 2.55p at 602.40p in early trading. The Chancellor Phillip Hammond has to fulfil a lot of spending commitments in his Budget on Monday with the Tories having made pledges on the NHS a so-called end to austerity in general. So - apart from the welcome many young people would give to higher spending on public services - he might not have the room to do much of substance specifically for the younger end of the population. It could be more a case of what millennials hope won't happen - like raised insurance premium tax hiking car cover premiums again. Budget day: It's hoped Monday's speech will deliver some welcome news for millennials But the Budget might end up addressing what has been called intergenerational financial inequality. Rising living costs, depressed salaries, inflated property prices and eye-watering rents are making it increasingly hard for young people to climb onto the property ladder. In contrast, the baby-boomer and Generation X cohorts have benefited from bumper property profits, higher salaries and generous pensions. With an expected raid on pension tax relief in the Budget to fund spending, Philip Hammond might - even if it's not his primary intention - go some way to reducing the financial divide between the generations. Vicki Owen, editor of MoneyLens, a website from investing giant Schroders aimed at educating young people about managing their finances, says: 'The millennials I have talked to are hopeful about Mondays Budget, but they tell me many of their friends are disgruntled, or worse - disengaged. 'Last years Budget was considered the most millennial-friendly yet by some, but I personally felt it only scratched the surface. Mondays Budget is a huge opportunity for the Government to show support for a generation struggling with high living costs, stagnant wages and for many, daunting student debt.' We take a look at a few predictions for what that the Budget could hold for young people, good and bad. My friends all say the Budget doesn't affect them Flora Munro, 23, says she wants more help for first-time buyers Flora Munro, 23, a graduate trainee, says all of her friends ignore the Budget: When I mentioned the Budget to my friends, they replied with either I dont know anything about it or it doesnt affect me. Many arent interested in the budget as they dont feel that the politicians will actually implement any of the changes or schemes they discuss either in the Budget or throughout the year, such as the 26-30 railcard fiasco last year or the extra money promised for the NHS. Similar to most of our peers, our main concerns are the challenge of getting on the property ladder coupled with the huge cost of renting and astronomical transport costs. Anything that would help us in those areas would be greatly appreciated! A leg-up for first-time buyers? As many as four in ten young adults can't afford to buy even the cheapest homes in their area. According to research by challenger bank, Aldermore, first-time buyers are holding out for a handout in this year's Budget. Damian Thompson, director of mortgages at Aldermore, said: 'There is no doubt first-time buyers are facing an uphill battle to get on the housing ladder and they believe more needs to be done by the Government to improve their chances of getting the keys to their first home. 'Abolishing stamp duty for first time buyers in last years Budget was a promising move, but underlying challenges, such as affordability and supply shortages, remain.' A third (34 per cent) want Hammond to announce polices to reduce the number of empty homes across the UK, according to Aldermore's research. Changes to Help to Buy The Help to Buy Scheme, launched just over five years ago offered borrowers an interest-free amount for five years worth up to 20 per cent of the property's value to put towards buying a new-build home, in return for a 5 per cent deposit. According to Aldermore, 33 per cent of young adults would like the scheme extended beyond just new-build homes. Daniel Hegarty, founder of digital mortgage broker, Habito says: 'As mooted at the Conservative Party conference in September, theres a good chance that the Help To Buy equity loan scheme will be extended from 2021 to 2023. 'Although the scheme has helped many would-be homeowners and contributed to the building of more new homes, it hasnt been the magic bullet for the countrys housing crisis. 'As well as extending the end date of scheme, the Government may look to make it only useable to purchase properties up to a lower price cap than the current 600,000 limit. Or they could make it only applicable for first time buyers, not home-movers. 'Either way, it is clear the current format isnt fit for purpose and we can expect changes here.' Any relief for first time buyers: Hammond could waive capital gains for landlords who sell to long-term tennents Helping hand to turn renters into owners? On the Budget wish list for many, is also help for long-term renters to buy their current homes from their landlords. The suggestion is that landlords could be encouraged with lower or no capital gains tax. Daniel Hegarty adds: 'Rumours are rife about what will be in next week's Budget and we fully expect to see the property market and affordable housing high up on the Chancellors agenda once again. 'Capital Gains Tax could be scrapped, or at least lessened, for landlords who are selling to a long-term tenant who has been occupying the property for a minimum of three years. 'Generally speaking, the Governments plan to reduce the number of buy-to-let landlords and attract more first time buyers into the market has been working, and for landlords wanting to exit the market and tenants looking to buy, this could be a well-timed new policy.' Any flashy giveaways like the Millennial Railcard? Last Autumn Phillip Hammond announced plans to offer a new discount railcard for 26-30 year olds which he claimed would give 4.5million young people a third off their rail fares. The headline-grabbing giveaway however has come under fire, so far only offering a small percentage the discount cards under a limited trial and the website has crashed on occasion. It has just been announced the perk it will be rolled out with no cap on the number available after a sell-out trial in March. The cards costing 30 per year save an average 125 a year according to Industry body the Rail Delivery Group. Ahead of next Mondays speech the RDG have announced that cards will be on sale before the end of the year. Our only other option is Uber Sofia Mumtaz, 18, wants lower motoring costs for young people Sofia Mumtaz, an 18-year old trainee is hoping car insurance won't continue to rocket. She say: Car insurance premiums are very expensive already. I am hoping that they wont go up after the Budget on Monday. Its my first year of driving so it is a big cost as it is. Young people are using alternative forms of travel like Uber and car rental services more and more. I am lucky that living in London I am mostly using public transport. I think increasingly young people will not need to have a car, but for those who have no other option it would be great if these costs could come down.' A helping hand for young drivers? Insurance Premium Tax has doubled since 2015 and now costs households 200 per year. Young drivers are some of the worst hit, with 17 to 24-year-old driver will now paying 1,308 a year for motor insurance. Thats 593 more than the national average according to Compare the Market figures. This has prompted calls to scrap the tax for younger drivers completely. Simon McCulloch, director at comparethemarket.com commented: Ahead of next weeks Budget, we are calling for the Chancellor to scrap or cap insurance premium tax for young drivers. IPT already adds an average of 156 to young peoples motor insurance premiums every year and another hike could make driving completely unaffordable for many. Exempting this age group from this stealth tax, or at the very least capping the cost for younger drivers, will help to increase young peoples social and professional mobility, not to mention provide much needed relief from what are already very high prices. The 'Tampon Tax' and Mental Health There are some changes predicted for the Budget that while not strictly limited to younger generations, would make ways to appeasing them. MoneyLens predicts that young people would be keen for the 5 per cent 'tampon tax' to get the axe in Monday's speech if we are to be released by the EU rules that prevented it's removal. Finance Expert, Claire Walsh, writing for MoneyLens said: 'The European Commission said it would try to bring in a zero rate for sanitary products this year but so far no such change has materialised. But Brexit could mean the UK can go its own way.' Better understanding and treatment of mental health has been a mantel largely taken up by the young. Younger voters would be likely to respond well to announcements from the Government on an increase in investment in mental health services in the future. Walsh said: 'Preventative measures would, in time, reduce the cost to tax payers (and companies) by billions of pounds a year. The Tories are traditionally seen as out of touch and not very empathetic so this would improve their image.' Savings pot: There are arguments that the Lifetime Isas is too complex Could the Lifetime Isa get the chop? There has been rumblings that the Lifetime Isa, should be scrapped. The savings vehicles, revealed in 2016's Budget, offer those under 40 a 25 per cent boost from the Government when buying their first property or saving for retirement. Providers have had little interest for them with only three cash versions on offer after Newcastle BS launched this week with a rate of 1.1 per cent. In terms of investment Lifetime Isas there is slightly more choice, with options from OneFamily, The Share Centre, Nutmeg, Hargreaves Lansdown, Moneybox, AJ Bell and Foresters Friendly Society. In July the Treasury Committee called for them to be scrapped completely however. The committee said: 'This inquiry has received strong criticism of the Lifetime Isa over its complexity, its perverse incentives, its lack of complementarity with the pensions saving landscape and its apparent lack of popularity with the industry and pension savers. 'The Government should abolish it.' But while they are complicated, the 25 per cent bonus is worth up to 1,000 per year to first-time buyers, and comes with a higher cap on the value of homes bought with the money at 450,000 for those outside of the capital, compared to the alternative Help to Buy Isa. Will there be anything for young entrepreneurs? More and more young people are turning away from traditional careers to start their own businesses. This means any changes for the self-employed or entrepreneurs could have a big impact on young people's finances. Unfortunately, there have been rumours that Hammond will take aim at Entrepreneurs Relief. This allows the first 10million gains on selling a business to be taxed at only 10 per cent. The Budget could also see some self-employed people stripped of some national insurance contribution exemptions. The BBC says the Treasury believes that as many as a third of those claiming to be self-employed who and set themselves up as a private company, should be paying more NI as full-time employees. It claims this will cost HM Revenue and Customs as much as 1.2bn a year by 2023. Reports also say the Chancellor is examining controversial proposals to drag hundreds of thousands of sole traders and small firms into the VAT system. On the positive side, reports today reckon that Hammond will announce plans to examine opening up defined contribution pensions to patient capital investments in Mondays Autumn Budget. According to a Sky News report, Hammond will announce a feasibility study into how DC pension savers can invest in high-growth patient capital investments, which are typically start-up companies often in the technology sector. The study would look at how DC schemes could be pooled for patient capital and whether this would be mandatory or a default for savers. Jenny Tooth, CEO of the UK Business Angels Association, says: 'While the UK Business Angels Association appreciates that this a challenging period for the Government, it is of the upmost importance to ensure that Budget amendments do not come at the expense of a thriving entrepreneurial community. 'There is much speculation over how the Entrepreneurs Relief will fair succeeding the Autumn Budget, with young entrepreneurs, and citizens who are considering starting their own businesses, placing significant importance on the longevity of the scheme. 'This relief is an incentive for entrepreneurs to set up, grow, sell and re-invest into UK businesses and contribute to the UKs thriving economic environment. If this relief is reduced, there are concerns that with it, so will entrepreneurial spirit.' 'Additionally, as this is the last Budget before the UKs departure from the EU, entrepreneurs will be looking to the statement to clarify what they should expect post-Brexit and the role that independent enterprise will play after March 2019.' Britain's third biggest supermarket chain is to start consulting with staff over potential job losses next year which could total up to 2,500, it has been claimed. Asda, which has been owned by US retail giant Walmart since 1999, has agreed to be taken over by larger rival Sainsbury's. The proposed merger is the subject of an inquiry by the Competition and Markets Authority (CMA). Asda, Britain's third biggest supermarket chain is to start consulting with staff over potential job losses next year which could total up to 2,500, it has been claimed Jobs in the George areas of Asda stores could also be affected, it is understood. Areas of work affected by any changes include petrol, bakery, back office and so-called hosting. The company declined to comment on any potential job cuts. A statement said: 'In a competitive retail market, where customers rightly expect great value and ease of service, we must always look at how we can work more quickly and efficiently for them - and, inevitably, that means we need to consider changing the roles we need our colleagues to do or the hours needed in particular parts of our stores. 'We believe the proposed changes we are consulting on would allow us to do a better job for our customers. 'We also recognise that discussions about potential change aren't easy. If the decision is taken to implement the proposed changes, we would work with our colleagues to look at the potential impact of these proposals on them.' Asda is planning to merge with Sainsbury's although the deal is to be subjected to investigation after the Competition and Markets Authority said it raised sufficient concerns to be referred for an in-depth review. It is understood that consultations with individuals will not start until the new year and any redundancies will take place in February at the earliest. The plans include changes to workers' hours, it is understood. The proposals are believed to include combining back office functions such as administration, removing some George desks, changing the format of some petrol stations from kiosk or shop to automated, and reducing the hours of bakery staff and those employed as 'front-end hosts'. Gary Carter, national officer of the GMB union, said: 'These proposed redundancies are a hammer blow to Asda workers. The timing of this announcement, in the run-up to Christmas, is doubly appalling. 'Asda is performing well and is highly profitable because of the hard work of our members, who are the backbone of the company. GMB will fight tooth and nail for every single job. 'These cuts make no sense whatsoever. Slashing our members' jobs would hurt the service Asda customers receive. 'With all the speculation surrounding the proposed Sainsbury's merger and potential sell-off of stores, this news will not put anyone's mind at rest.' Asda stressed that it was a consultation process and any job figure was a reflection of the potential number of workers affected, with nothing yet final. The company was not speculating on the outcome of the consultation. The axing of up to 2,500 jobs at Asda comes amid wider retail woes hitting UK retailers. This week shoppers and former staff were left mourning the decline of Debenhams after the chain said it could shut up to 50 stores in a battle to survive. The shortfall is the biggest in its 240-year history and adds to the concerning figures Chancellor Philip Hammond will have address in the Budget next Monday as high street stores struggle to compete against their online rivals. Domtar Corporation designs, manufactures, markets, and distributes communication papers, specialty and packaging papers, and absorbent hygiene products in the United States, Canada, Europe, Asia, and internationally. It operates through two segments, Pulp and Paper, and Personal Care. The company provides business papers, including copy and electronic imaging papers used in inkjet and laser printers, photocopiers, and plain-paper fax machines, as well as computer papers, preprinted forms, and digital papers for office and home use. It also offers commercial printing and publishing papers, such as offset papers and opaques used in sheet and roll fed offset presses; publishing papers, which include tradebook and lightweight uncoated papers for publishing textbooks, dictionaries, catalogs, magazines, hard cover novels, and financial documents; and converting papers for envelopes, tablets, business forms, and data processing/computer forms. In addition, the company provides papers for thermal printing, flexible packaging, food packaging, medical packaging, medical gowns and drapes, sandpaper backing, carbonless printing, labels and other coating, and laminating applications; and papers for industrial and specialty applications, such as carrier papers, treated papers, security papers, and specialized printing and converting applications. Further, it offers absorbent hygiene products, including absorbent briefs, protective underwear, underpads, pads, washcloths, and body patches under the Attends, Indasec, IndasSlip, and Reassure brands; and baby diapers, training and youth pants, and bed mats under the Comfees, Chelino, Nene, and Bambino brand names. The company serves merchants, retail outlets, stationers, printers, publishers, converters, and end-users. Domtar Corporation was founded in 1848 and is based in Fort Mill, South Carolina. Read More Bethlehem Chris Stroud, a former General Electric Co. executive, has taken over as CEO of troubled Monolith Solar. Monolith suddenly laid off more than 50 employees in what was called a furlough and halted construction on its new $4.8 million headquarters in Slingerlands last month after falling into severe financial difficulties. On Friday morning, Stroud went before the Bethlehem Industrial Development Agency to explain that the solar installation firm was working on a "restructuring transaction" that would land it back on its feet by the end of the year. "We are looking forward to a transaction that will bring us to the next level," Stroud said. Stroud, who worked in GE's renewable energy division and its solar programs, wouldn't say which company was involved in the deal or if it would be an outright acquisition. However, IDA board member Joe Richardson said he heard that Monolith was trying to land a $6 million private placement. Stroud wouldn't comment. Monolith does residential solar panel installation and also builds large solar farms. The company at one point had more than 100 employees. It has offices in Albany and Rensselaer and was planning to build a new headquarters in Slingerlands at the Vista Technology Campus. Stroud takes the helm of Monolith after serving for several months as the company's vice president of business and program development. The company is facing several lawsuits from vendors it did business with. Mike Hickey, the company's previous CEO, left the company at the end of the summer after a year on the job. Hickey had taken over the daily operations of the company from founders Steve Erby and Mark Fobare. Fobare and Erby, who have been silent about the company's troubles until now, said Stroud's experience in the solar industry will be a major asset. Stroud developed $100 million in solar projects while with GE for a decade. Sign up for The Knick Get the latest news and some area history with our afternoon newsletter. "Chris has proven experience in the solar industry, including overseeing the types of large, complicated projects that Monolith Solar excels at," Erby and Fobare said in a joint statement. "We know that Chris understands our business, the pace of growth in the solar energy arena, as well as the commitment we have to our customers." It's unclear what happened to Monolith and why it had to lay off staff and stop projects such as the Slingerlands headquarters. Stroud said at the IDA meeting it was a cash flow problem, although he declined to be more specific. The Bethlehem IDA had offered Monolith more than $600,000 in state and local tax breaks, including property tax relief, to relocate to Slingerlands. The company's contractor, BBL Construction, stopped work on the new building last month. The project had financing through Pioneer Bank. It's unclear when the project might be restarted. "We are in open discussions with the bank and the contractor," Stroud said. He later added, "It won't be in 2018." Customers in Halloween costumes who visit Stewart's Shops on Wednesday, Oct. 31, can get a single scoop ice cream cone for 50 cents. (Stewart's says you can get a 50-cent cone even if you're not in costume.) Looking ahead, eggnog ice cream will be on sale for a limited time beginning Nov. 19. Companies around the Capital Region say they are feeling the impact of tariffs imposed by the Trump administration. But opinions differ widely over the implementation and success of the tariffs, which were imposed by President Donald Trump on trading partners ranging from Canada and Mexico to the European Union, South Korea and China. Trump placed 25 percent tariffs on steel and 10 percent on aluminum for all trade partners earlier this year, and slapped $200 billion of tariffs on a broad range of Chinese goods exported to the United States. The 10 percent duties on those goods will rise to 25 percent at the start of 2019. Tony Hynes is the CEO of Precision Valve and Automation, a Colonie-based company that manufactures and ships a wide range of machines that dispense coatings, adhesives, and fluids in the production of medical devices, semiconductors and consumer electronics. Hynes said his company has taken a significant hit as a result of the tariffs. After the U.S. tariffs went into place, China imposed reciprocal duties on American companies exporting to China. "Unfortunately, we get hit on both ends. Our biggest input in here is steel and aluminum, so since the tariffs, we've seen aluminum go up as much as 20 percent, and steel up 8 to 10 percent. Just being able to get material has been a problem," Hynes said. Hynes added that on the export side, the retaliatory Chinese tariffs mean PVA's machines will cost about 25 percent more for Chinese customers. "My sales in China are going to tank if this doesn't change," Hynes said, before noting the general uncertainty the trade war has brought for businesses. "I have no idea next year what steel, aluminum is going to cost." The Federal Reserve issued an October report summarizing economic activity in its 12 U.S. districts. The Fed's New York state district also includes the northern tip of New Jersey and a small part of Connecticut. "Businesses reported increasingly widespread escalation in both input prices and selling prices, while prices of final goods and services have been steady or up modestly," the Fed's Beige Book report said. Hardest hit have been the manufacturing and shipping industries, where the duties on aluminum and steel have caused producers that use those raw materials to raise prices. That means costs for things like new cars will likely rise for consumers in coming months. But the wide range of foreign goods being taxed has triggered retaliatory tariffs that have spread to the agriculture sector. New York state corn growers were expected to lose out on $35 million in sales this year, while soybean farmers are expecting a $24 million hit, according to Steve Ammerman, manager of public affairs for the New York Farm Bureau. They've also led to pessimistic forecasts for farmers next year. And the side effects carry over to industries not directly targeted by tariffs. The steel and aluminum tariffs have caused industrial equipment costs to rise, directly affecting things like the maple syrup and wine industries, Ammerman said. Regional Impact For the New York City district (which does not include other New York ports like Buffalo and Ogdensburg) a total of $19 billion of goods will be subject to tariffs, which is about $1 billion less than had been initially proposed. The $19 billion represents 8.5 percent of all goods flowing through the district's ports. See More Collapse "We have seen negotiation can work and were hopeful the administration continues down that path and get these tariffs removed," Ammerman said. "It's been pretty clear to us that the tariffs remain a problem for our partners." The Trump administration has set the different waves of tariffs in place in an effort to close the trade deficits the U.S. is running with several countries but primarily China, where the U.S. had a $335 billion trade deficit in 2017. The tariffs are also designed to level the playing field for U.S. firms competing against international companies, as well as limit Chinese theft of intellectual property from U.S. companies in exchange for market access. Hynes dismissed the need to combat Chinese IP theft, saying firms around the world regularly steal trade secrets. For many industry members affected directly by the trade war, though, the argument holds little weight in practice. "I understand the intent. I do. The intent is hard to argue with, its the implementation that's absolutely, in my mind, out of line and not at all useful," Hynes said. "The thing (the U.S. government) can do to help all of us out is get out of the way, get rid of these ridiculous tariffs." The U.S. labor market also is experiencing a workforce shortage as the nation's unemployment has reached historic lows likely making it more difficult to fill the very jobs the tariffs are intended to create. And with China blocked off, the largest market for U.S. companies is virtually unavailable. Sign up for The Knick Get the latest news and some area history with our afternoon newsletter. "I think it's going to be tough times for a lot of companies. We kind of pretty much relied on China as our manufacturing source, and now we have this 25 percent curve ball," said Robert Boss, Albany general manager for Mohawk Global Logistics, an international shipping firm. The solutions, Boss said, are for importers to either pay the prohibitive 25 percent tax, import from another country or move manufacturing back to the U.S., though all three options would almost surely raise end-product costs. Harley-Davidson, the iconic Wisconsin-based motorcycle company, announced in June that it would be moving some manufacturing operations out of the U.S.. The company said it sought to avoid retaliatory tariffs on U.S. exports the European Union put into place in response to the Trump-imposed steel and aluminum tariffs. The EU tariffs on the motorcycles would have resulted in a price increase of about $2,200 on each motorcycle sold in Europe. "Increasing international production to alleviate the EU tariff burden is not the company's preference, but represents the only sustainable option to make its motorcycles accessible to customers in the EU and maintain a viable business in Europe," Harley-Davidson said in a statement. American consumers likely will pay more as a result of the tariffs, said Hynes. "Your government puts tariffs on products, (and) all you're doing is taxing your own citizenry," Hynes said. "(China is) hunkering down over there for a long, drawn-out affair." However, the tariffs have aided some local industries, particularly those that compete against Canadian firms. Albany Steel Inc. serves as a middleman, buying steel products from large steel mills and selling smaller orders to local contractors and manufacturers. Before the tariffs were enacted, Canadian steel mills were able to out-compete U.S. steel producers with lower prices. But, since the tariffs went into effect, U.S. and Canadian steel prices are now about even, according to Peter Hess, president of Albany Steel. "Since we're so close to Canada, we're very much impacted by the Canadian mills," Hess said. "We think that it's benefiting the domestic mills and it's also helping our sales because when we have to bid against Canadian service centers, now we're more competitive. And the domestic manufacturers, they've been more competitive." Hess acknowledged that some businesses may have to pay more for raw materials, but added that's it's the trade-off for patronizing domestic businesses. Yet, for Hynes, who says he's lost between $300,000 and $400,000 in orders since the tariffs went into effect, the duties hit close to home, and could lead to contentious foreign relations for years to come. "It basically is just an enormous headache at a time when we don't need it," he said. "It's creating a lot of hard feelings out there in Europe, Canada and also in China." Los Angeles A political committee backed by billionaire Michael Bloomberg is spending nearly $9 million on TV ads to help two Democrats trying to topple Republican incumbents in Southern California. Bloomberg disclosed earlier this year that he intended to spend tens of millions of dollars to support Democratic congressional candidates across the country as the party attempts to seize control of the House. Federal records Thursday showed Independence USA is investing more than $4 million on TV ads opposing Rep. Dana Rohrabacher in Orange County's 48th Congressional District, one of the most closely watched races in the nation. The 15-term congressman is in a toss-up contest with Democrat Harley Rouda. The super PAC also invested more than $4.5 million on ads supporting Democrat Katie Hill, who is trying to oust Rep. Steve Knight in the 25th District north of Los Angeles. The districts have been targeted by national Democrats trying to pick up 23 seats nationwide to win control of the House. They are among a string of Republican-held districts in California carried by Hillary Clinton in the 2016 presidential election. Sign up for The Knick Get the latest news and some area history with our afternoon newsletter. Rouda has been critical of Rohrabacher's skepticism about the cause of climate change. He said he believed Bloomberg's involvement in the race reflected the former mayor's concern with the congressman's "extreme" positions, including on global warming. Rouda said he's never met Bloomberg "but I do thank him." Rohrabacher spokesman Dale Neugebauer said in an email that "billionaires from San Francisco and New York City are pouring millions of dollars into this district to buy the election for (House Democratic leader) Nancy Pelosi and advance their own personal agendas." ALBANY - Ominous graphics, an unflattering photo, incendiary messages, grave-tone voiceover. These are all the hallmarks of "attack ads" flooding mailboxes, television screens and social-media platforms as candidates, political parties and special interests do their best to shape campaign narratives with less than two weeks before voters head to the polls. Despite the public's professed antipathy for them, these negative messages dominate political advertising and have influenced other aspects of campaigns, including the tone of debates and rallies. The advertisements often start with a kernel of truth and stretch it to the limit of credulity. They're regularly used by underdogs trying to change the trajectory of a race or to wage battle in toss-up elections where just a few undecided voters could swing the outcome. Attack ads have gradually become more and more provocative, as voters become desensitized to the type of attacks that would have scandalized past generations. The line between an advertisement that highlights a candidate's record and one that attacks an opponent can be blurred. A recent 30-second video on social media from Democratic state Senate hopeful Michelle Ostrelich talking about Republican incumbent Sen. James Tedisco appears to straddle that line. Ostrelich says in the paid-for post that she won't "air false attacks," but the serious music, gray backdrop and out-of-context news clip make the sponsored content appear like an attack, even though she is mostly just citing Tedisco's voting record. Even if advertisements are factually accurate, Rensselaer County Republican operative Rich Crist, who runs a campaign consulting business, said they can still have a "corrosive effect" on the political dialogue. Candidates with a comfortable lead in a race don't usually go negative and rarely mention their opponents. Their advertisements will highlight their campaign narrative, focusing on their biography, accomplishments and goals. For example, Tedisco's social media ads don't mention Ostrelich, and his television commercial revolve around work for his constituents. One of the exceptions to this rule would be Gov. Andrew Cuomo, the prohibitive favorite in November, who hasn't let up on his attacks against his GOP challenger, Marc Molinaro. Cuomo began targeting Molinaro before the Democratic primary was over last month, and his debate performance on Tuesday night embodied the tone of an attack advertisement. On the federal level, Crist blamed spending by outside organizations not connected to the campaigns for promoting the growth of attack ads. He pointed to the 19th Congressional District where Republican John Faso is trying to fend off a challenge from Democrat Antonio Delgado as a hotbed for the advertisements from these groups. "They both started early and they haven't let up," Crist said. Sign up for The Knick Get the latest news and some area history with our afternoon newsletter. Before Democrats had nominated their candidate, outside spending was already targeting Faso for his vote to replace Obamacare. After the Democratic primary, the Congressional Leadership Fund began running television spots picking apart his rap lyrics from more than a decade ago. (The rap lyrics were initially highlighted during Delgado's primary campaign by operatives associated with his Democratic opponents.) Both efforts appear to be successful, as the campaign's narrative has largely revolved around health care and the rap lyrics. Across the state, the recurring bogeymen of this year's campaign are Cuomo, New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio and President Donald Trump. Republicans tie Democratic candidates running in the New York City suburbs to de Blasio, where he is a controversial figure, and an association with Cuomo is used against Democrats in upstate races. Trump is linked to Republican candidates in left-leaning and moderate parts of New York. Hillary Clinton, an anchor used to bring down Democratic candidates two years ago, is still featured in some advertisements this election cycle. A black-and-white Facebook ad from the Republican Assembly Campaign Committee alleging Assemblywoman Carrie Woerner, a Round Lake Democrat, is "delivering for New York City, includes head shots of Clinton and Cuomo. Woerner's print and digital advertising, on the other hand, doesn't mention her Republican opponent, Morgan Zegers, and instead highlight Woerner's legislative accomplishments and endorsements. There are limits to the effectiveness of attack ads, and many voters may grow numb to them as the campaign season winds down and political messaging is everywhere. They eventually become "white noise," Crist said. David.Lombardo@timesunion.com - 518.454.5427 - @poozer87 Washington George Papadopoulos made his first appearance Thursday before congressional investigators, part of an effort to clear his name after pleading guilty in special counsel Robert Mueller's Russia probe. Papadopoulos, who admitted lying to the FBI and was sentenced in September to two weeks in prison, met behind closed doors with two GOP-led House committees for roughly seven hours. Republicans leaving the meeting said it raised more questions about the start of the FBI's Russia investigation in 2016, further fueling their suspicions that there was bias against then-candidate Donald Trump at former President Barack Obama's Justice Department. Papadopoulos spoke briefly to reporters as he left. "I answered as truthfully as I possibly could," he said. The interview is one of several the GOP-led House Judiciary and Oversight and Government Reform panels are conducting as part of their investigation into the Justice Department. Democrats say the investigation is an attempt to undermine Mueller, who was appointed to take over the FBI probe into Russian interference in the 2016 election. "I see this whole thing as a footnote to a sideshow of a wild goose chase," said Democratic Rep. Jamie Raskin of Maryland, who attended the interview. Papadopoulos pleaded guilty to lying to the FBI about his contacts with Russian intermediaries during the 2016 campaign. Since he was sentenced, he has been eager to talk publicly. He has spent many nights on Twitter, along with his wife, venting anger with the FBI and implying that he was set up in the investigation. He tweeted before the interview that he would like to talk to Congress about his "suspicious encounters" with an Australian diplomat and a professor who were links to his case. His lawyer sent a letter to the committees this week in which he listed nine people related to his case that he wanted to discuss, including both of those men. Neither Papadopoulos nor lawmakers leaving Thursday's interview would say what was discussed, citing rules on confidentiality. Sign up for The Knick Get the latest news and some area history with our afternoon newsletter. Republicans said they learned new facts from Papadopoulos but wouldn't detail what they learned. They repeated their claims, echoed by Trump, that the Justice Department made mistakes in 2016 as it cleared Democrat Hillary Clinton in an investigation of her emails and started a probe of Trump's Russia ties. "These facts continue to lend themselves to the narrative that there were folks in the Obama FBI and Justice Department that prejudged Hillary Clinton's innocence, and prejudged Donald Trump's guilt or involvement with the Russian government and potential collusion," said Texas Rep. John Ratcliffe. Papadopoulos, who served as a foreign policy adviser to Trump's campaign, has been a central figure in the probe dating back before Mueller's May 2017 appointment. He was the first person to plead guilty in Mueller's probe and the first Trump campaign adviser to be sentenced. His case was also the first to detail a member of the Trump campaign having knowledge of Russian efforts to interfere in the 2016 presidential election while it was ongoing. Berne One person was injured Thursday in a head-on crash after a driver failed to stop at a stop sign in the Hilltowns, the Albany County Sheriff's Office said. At 6:36 p.m., deputies said, Laura Woods Miller of Oneonta was driving southeast on Helderberg Trail when she didn't stop at a stop sign at Delaware Turnpike and struck another vehicle head on. One person was taken to Albany Medical Center via Helderberg Ambulance for a leg injury. Sign up for The Knick Get the latest news and some area history with our afternoon newsletter. Albany County Sheriff's EMS, Helderberg Ambulance, Berne Fire Department, and Onesquethaw Fire Department also assisted. Woods Miller was cited for failure to stop at a stop sign. She is to appear in the Town of Berne court at a later date. EAST GREENBUSH An 11-year-old girl learned Friday that her wish to go to Disney World is being granted by Make-A-Wish. The good news was delivered by an Eurasian Eagle Owl named Wyatt during a school assembly. 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. Sign up for The Knick Get the latest news and some area history with our afternoon newsletter. 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. TROY In a double loss for the district attorney's office, two weeklong Rensselaer County Court jury trials ended Friday with acquittals one for attempted murder and the other for rape. The defendants each faced up to 25 years in prison. A jury acquitted Sherman M. Stewart of attempted second-degree murder and six other charges. In the other unrelated case, another jury acquitted Anthony Rogers of first-degree and third-degree rape. The jury in Stewarts trial before Judge Jennifer Sober deliberated for about three hours, attorneys said. In Rogers trial before Judge Debra Young the jury returned after less than an hour of deliberations, attorneys said. While we are disappointed in the outcome of these cases, we respect the juries verdicts. These were difficult cases, and our thoughts are with the victims and their families, District Attorney Joel E. Abelove said. Stewart took the stand to testify in his own defense, which played a role in the jury returning a not guilty verdict in the case in which he was accused of attacking a woman in 2016 in a North Central drug house, said defense lawyer Matthew Swedick of Albany. Juries watch too much Law and Order. Juries have said we want to hear both sides of the story, Swedick said about the decision for Stewart to testify. Stewarts testimony was bolstered by a long list of text messages about coming over to see the victim for breakfast; the fact that the 3235 Sixth Ave. residence was a known center for marijuana sales with a steady stream of customers; his admission that he bought pot there; and a three-hour gap between his departure and Mackey regaining consciousness after being beaten, Swedick said. Plus, Swedick said, Stewart stands 6-foot 8-inches tall and he told the jury in his closing statement, If Sherman Stewart wanted to kill (her), she would be dead today. It didnt look good that Stewart left than morning to move to Virginia, Swedick said. Stewart spent eight months in the Rensselaer County Jail. After Stewart was released, Swedick took him to the bus station in Albany, bought his client a ticket and sent him home to Virginia to reunite with his wife and children. Sign up for The Knick Get the latest news and some area history with our afternoon newsletter. In addition to the attempted second-degree murder count, Stewart was indicted for first-degree robbery, second-degree robbery, third-degree robbery, two counts of second-degree assault and fifth-degree criminal possession of stolen property. Rogers trial arose from charges that he sexually assaulted a woman after they met in a bar and returned to her home in Brunswick in February 2018. Rogers had maintained that the sexual relations were consensual. Assistant Public Defender William Roberts declined to comment on the trial and the verdict that saw his client acquitted. Abelove, a Republican, is being challenged in the Nov. 6 election by Democrat Mary Pat Donnelly, a former East Greenbush town justice. IFA president Joe Healy has warned of the danger of a dogs dinner outcome to Brexit that would cause confusion and trade disruption. There is always a concern in the endgame of the withdrawal agreement negotiations, that we will end up with a last-minute fudge that has unintended consequences., he told a dinner in Whitehall, London, on Beyond Brexit: Farming for our Future . Mr Healy told the gathering that this must be guarded against. The best way to do this is to have an extendable transition phase, or whole-of-UK backstop to allow time to negotiate the closest possible future trade arrangements, he said. The two sides must avoid a dogs dinner of an agreement which means different things to different people and results in disputes and running repairs which disrupt trade, said Mr Healy. The event was organised by the National Farmers Union (NFU) in the UK and the presence of farm leaders from Ireland (IFA), France (FNSEA), Germany (DVB), the Netherlands (LTO) and Denmark (Danish Agriculture) was significant in terms of highlighting the potential impacts for the agrifood sector across Europe. IFA was very clear that farmers interests in the EU and the UK lie in keeping full access between the EU and the UK, while maintaining the value of the UK food market, he said. We want to see no hard border on the island of Ireland and frictionless trade across the Irish Sea, and, for that matter, between Dover and Calais., said the IFA president. However, he warned that for that to happen, the UK must abandon its ambition of a cheap food policy which undercuts European food standards or offers increased imports that would destabilise our food markets and damage all European farmers. Mr Healy said it simply didn't add up for the EU to allow the UK to have privileged access to the European market if it was going to undermine it. I believe EU and UK farm leaders have a shared interest in ensuring that the UK, which is an important market for all European farmers, does not pursue policies which will further drive down food prices, he said. Golden village is in desperate need of a waste-water treatment plant, after nearly 35 years of pleading, heard the Cashel Tipperary Municipal District meeting. Cathaoirleach Michael Fitzgerald said there had been a huge submission from fishermen in Golden concerning the River Suir. This Council is quite happy to have a pipe disposing sewerage into the Suir, but to me its completely unacceptable, said Cllr Fitzgerald. There is quite a lot of activity there, with canoe competitions, and other water sports, so its not acceptable any longer. If there was a treatment facility, the creamery industry might have located there, and while its a prime location, not having a wastewater facility is certainly working against us. Cllr Fitzgerald said the issue is hindering the progress of the village. There had been promises for 35 years from different Ministers, and there is a site bought that is suitable to put in this bit of vital infrastructure, added Cllr Fitzgerald. We are dealing with old septic tanks there which had not been operating properly and the sewerage is going straight into the Suir. That should not be happening and its not getting the priority it should have been, said Cllr Fitzgerald. Meanwhile, the reservoir in Cashel needs to be done, and the residents side of the reservoir should be lowered, said Cllr Roger Kennedy. Hard water in Dundrum/Knockavilla remains a problem. A number of lead pipes had been discovered in Tipperary town and further investigation works are to be done. This means postponing resurfacing works in the Main Street of Tipperary, which is disconcerting and disheartening. Cllr Kennedy said, we have enough delays in town, in Davitt Street, without further ones in Main Street. Denis Hayes of Irish Water said the hard water issue is causing huge discomfort and they will see how it can be minimised. Senior Engineer Mr Aidan Finn said the works in Davitt Street are all done. I just hope we do not start these works coming into the Christmas period, said Cllr Kennedy. Its been a busy week for Ryans Cleaning, the Thurles based events cleaning specialist firm has won two prestigious awards nationally and regionally and sponsored a significant environmental event hosted by the Tipperary Green Business Network at The Horse and Jockey Hotel also. The first honour came in the form of an ICCA Award at national level when Ryans Cleaning employee Cristina Ardelean won Best Supervisor in the Hospitality/Leisure/ Residential Buildings Category at the Irish Contract Cleaning Association Awards 2018. Cristina is the Ryans Cleaning Supervisor based at the Bord Gais Energy Theatre, Dublin where Ryans Cleaning has been in situ for many years now. This win was swiftly followed by success at another awards ceremony that evening, the County Tipperary Business Awards at The Clonmel Park Hotel, where Ryans Cleaning won the Best Small to Medium Enterprise Category. Speaking of their national and regional business awards success Pat Ryan said I am extremely proud of the team at Ryans Cleaning and these awards are a reflection of everyones efforts. Cristina does a great job at Bord Gais Energy Theatre however, as any good supervisor would tell you, its all about the team and we are very lucky to have a great core staff at Ryans Cleaning in Thurles who help us to fulfil our national and international events and regular cleaning contracts to the highest possible standards week in, week out. Ryans Cleaning also sponsored a significant event hosted by the Tipperary Green Business Network based on the Circular Economy. Ryans Cleaning were the main sponsors for this event which was held in The Horse and Jockey Hotel, Thurles. The event was part of National Reuse Month www.reusemonth.ie which is running throughout October. Pat Ryan, owner and CEO of Ryans Cleaning spoke at the event describing the changes he has witnessed over the last 30 years in business, within the cleaning industry. Ryans Cleaning constantly endeavours to innovate and improve standards of cleaning with a view to a greener approach in all aspects of their work and is very happy to support the Tipperary Green Business Network. Pat also described how the team at Ryans Cleaning has worked hard with their clients to successfully complete many Zero Waste to Landfill events and venue cleans in recent years and how with the right planning, know-how and procedures in place, it is very doable for most events and venues nowadays. The interesting segment gave SMEs real food for thought as attendees considered suggestions put forward by Ryans Cleaning on how some of these practices on a smaller scale in their workplace environments could make a real difference to the environment. Attendees also heard from other experts and practitioners working in the Circular Economy including Jean Clarke from Dept. of Communication Climate Action and Environment, James Hogan of Green Business Programme, Clean Technology Centre, Claire Downey, Community Reuse Network Ireland, Sean O Grady, Premier Green Energy, Thurles, Dr. Fionnuala Murphy, UCD, Ian Kilgallon, Gas Networks Ireland, and Caitriona Rogerson, Irish Environmental Network and an interesting presentation by Stephen Wheston on Repurposing the Lisheen Mine Site to develop Irelands National Bioeconomy Campus. The Nenagh Players present John B Keanes The Field which is being directed by Nenagh Players stalwart Irene OMeara from 14 - 18 November at 8pm each night in Nenagh Arts Centre. On Wednesday November 14 there will be a Gala night to raise money for the Nenagh Special Summer Camp which is a very worthy cause, and provides a wonderful service in our community every summer. There will be a cheese and wine reception in Rockys Bar on Kickham Street Nenagh prior to the play. John B. Keanes play The Field is a very well known play, this is the groups third time to do it, the last time they did the play was 1987. The play debuted in the Olympia Theatre in Dublin in 1965. The play tells the story of the Bull McCabe and the land he loves which he rents from a neighbour. The owner of the land decides to sell it. Bull McCabe considers the land his own and has no intention of paying the value of the land. This seems to be going his way until an Englishman arrives in the village who is willing to pay more. Tickets for the Gala Night can be purchased from any Nenagh Players Committee members or Nenagh Special Summer Camp committees members. Tickets for other nights can be purchased at the Nenagh Arts Centre. [October 25, 2018] IO-Link market is expected to grow at CAGR of 33.56% from 2018 to 2023 LONDON, Oct. 25, 2018 /PRNewswire/ -- IO-Link market is expected to grow at CAGR of 33.56% from 2018 to 2023. The IO-Link market is expected to reach USD 12.20 billion by 2023 from USD 2.87 billion in 2018, at a CAGR of 33.56%. The ability of IO-Link to support several higher level Fieldbus and Ethernet communication protocols and high focus on increasing energy efficiency, optimizing resources, and reducing production costs are a few major factors driving the growth of IO-Link market. However, the limitation of IO-Link in high-speed or motion control applications and lack of standardization are restraining the market growth. Download the full report: https://www.reportbuyer.com/product/5601833 IO-Link devices expected to hold significant share of IO-Link market during the forecast period. In an industrial setup, IO-Link technology enables various sensors, modules, RFID read heads, and actuators to connect. IO-Link makes it possible to drive industrial communication from the lowest level of automation, i.e., the sensor level. With the IO-Link communication protocol, which is an easier diagnostic solution in which wiring is simple and standardized and standstill downtimes are reduced through simple configuration, industrial automation can be designed more efficiently. IO-Link market in APAC is expected to grow at highest CAGR during forecast period. Japan and China are the major contributors to the IO-Link market in APAC.The adoption of industrial automation in China is increasing at a rapid pace due to the growing industrial sector and rising per capita income in the country. This is leading to the increasing adoption of advanced manufacturing technologies. Furthermore, rapid technological advancements and a high degree of R&D in the counry are expected to create several opportunities for the players in the IO-Link market in this country. Breakdown of profile of primary participants: By Company Type: Tier 1 = 27%, Tier 2 = 41%, and Tier 3 = 32% By Designation: C-Level Executives = 26%, Directors = 40%, and Others = 34% By Region: North America = 47%, Europe = 28%, APAC = 19%, and RoW = 6% Siemens (Germany), Balluff (Germany), ifm electronic (Germany), SICK (Germany), Rockwell Automation (US), Festo (Germany) Omron ( Japan ), Banner Engineering (US), Hans Turck (Germany), Pepperl & Fuchs (Germany), and Datalogic ( Italy ) are a few key players in the IO-Link market. Research Coverage: The market by application covers machine tool, handling and assembly automation, packaging, and intralogistics The market by component covers IO-Link masters and IO-Link devices. The market by industry type covers discrete, process and hybrid industry. The geographic analysis is done for 4 major regionsNorth America, Europe , APAC, and RoW. (RoW comprises South America , and the Middle East and Africa ). Reasons to Buy the Report: From an insight perspective, this research report is focused on various levels of analysis, such as market ranking analysis of top players. This report also studies company profiles, which present basic views on the competitive landscape; emerging and high-growth segments of the studied market; high-growth regions; and market dynamics such as drivers, restraints, challenges, and opportunities. The report provides insights on: Market penetration: Comprehensive information on various types of applications and technology nodes offered by the top players in the overall IO-Link market Product development/innovation: Detailed insights regarding research and development (R&D) activities, emerging technologies, and product launches in the IO-Link market Market development: Comprehensive information about lucrative emerging markets, along with the analysis of the IO-Link markets across regions Market diversification: Exhaustive information about new products, untapped geographic regions, recent developments, and investments in the overall IO-Link market Competitive assessment: In-depth assessment of ranking analysis, strategies, products, and manufacturing capabilities of the leading players in the IO-Link market Download the full report: https://www.reportbuyer.com/product/5601833 About Reportbuyer Reportbuyer is a leading industry intelligence solution that provides all market research reports from top publishers For more information: Sarah Smith Research Advisor at Reportbuyer.com Email: sarah@reportbuyer.com Tel: +1 (718) 213 4904 Website: www.reportbuyer.com View original content:http://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/io-link-market-is-expected-to-grow-at-cagr-of-33-56-from-2018-to-2023--300738195.html SOURCE ReportBuyer [ Back To TMCnet.com's Homepage ] [October 25, 2018] GIFA Obtains New Stock Trading Symbol SAN DIEGO, Oct. 25, 2018 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Gifa, Inc., a Nevada corporation ("GIFA," the Company, we, and our) is pleased to announce that effective at the opening today, our trading symbol on the US OTC has changed from FRFS to GIFX. We are very pleased with the corporate development of GIFA during the past one year. With the edgarization of its financials, FINRAs approval of the name change and now ticker symbol change, we are well on our way. No action is required to be taken by current shareholders in connection with the change, and no change has been made to GIFAs share capital. There is no change in its CUSIP number. said CEO Ilksen Yesilada. About Gifa, Inc. We are a small company and we were originally incorporated in the State of Nevada on April 29, 2008 under the name Firefish, Inc. Since April 2008 and through our wholly-owned subsidiary domiciled in India (the Subsidiary), we have offered mobile and internet marketing services to retailers and educational services to young learners and young adults. We also host an annual English, Math and Science competency competition referred to as the Primary Olympiad. All of our services are currently offered only in India. In India our offices are located in Mumbai, India. We built a robust social networking platform with wide ranging features. We also developed two ancillary lines of businesses that leveraged our user base and developed expertise within our target market (1) text message advertising services to retailers wishing to market their services to our social networking community and (2) educational services to current and potential members of our social networking community such as English language training/certification and English competency competitions. Under our existing business, our current revenues are chiefly derived from text message advertising services to retailers, competition entry fees for English, Math and Science competency competitions and consulting fees for Englsh language training/certification services. On September 26, 2017 we completed certain changes that resulted in the election of Mr. Ilksen Yesilada and Mr. Yusuf Kisa as Directors of the Company. As a result, an aggregate of 66,550,660 shares of our Common Stock that were originally issued to our founder were returned to the Company as treasury stock. We also issued an aggregate 100,000,000 shares of common stock to persons associated with Mr. Yesilada and later filed an Amendment to our Articles of Incorporation to change the Companys name to GIFA, Inc. and to reduce the number of authorized Common Stock to 500,000,000 shares and to authorize 10,000,000 shares of Preferred Stock. In recent months we also filed our 2016 Annual Report on Form 10-K and certain Quarterly Reports on Form 10-Q with the Securities and Exchange Commission. As reported in the Annual Report, we anticipate that we will undertake contemporaneous negotiations with the Companys founder that if successful will allow the Company to divest the Subsidiary (the Divestiture) and to allow the Company to acquire GIFA Holding Limited (the Acquisition). The terms and conditions of the planned Divestiture and the planned Acquisition have not been finalized but we anticipate that if we are successful in completing these negotiations, we will likely focus our resources solely upon the business currently conducted by GIFA Holding Limited. We cannot assure you that we will be successful in any of our negotiations relating to either or both of these contemplated transactions. THIS PRESS RELEASE CONTAINS "FORWARD-LOOKING STATEMENTS". FORWARD-LOOKING STATEMENTS ARE STATEMENTS CONCERNING ESTIMATES, PLANS, OBJECTIVES, GOALS, STRATEGIES, EXPECTATIONS, INTENTIONS, PROJECTIONS, DEVELOPMENTS, FUTURE EVENTS, PERFORMANCE OR PRODUCTS, UNDERLYING (EXPRESSED OR IMPLIED) ASSUMPTIONS AND OTHER STATEMENTS THAT ARE OTHER THAN HISTORICAL FACTS. IN SOME CASES FORWARD-LOOKING STATEMENTS CAN BE IDENTIFIED BY THE USE OF FORWARD-LOOKING WORDS SUCH AS ESTIMATED, "BELIEVES," "EXPECTS," "MAY," "WILL," "SHOULD," OR "ANTICIPATES," OR THE NEGATIVE OF THESE WORDS OR OTHER VARIATIONS OF THESE WORDS OR COMPARABLE WORDS, OR BY DISCUSSIONS OF PLANS OR STRATEGY THAT INVOLVE RISKS AND UNCERTAINTIES. MANAGEMENT WISHES TO CAUTION THE READER THAT THESE FORWARD-LOOKING STATEMENTS, INCLUDING, BUT NOT LIMITED TO, STATEMENTS REGARDING THE COMPANY AND ITS PLANS OR INTENTIONS, ESTIMATES, GOALS, COMPETITIVE TRENDS AND OTHER MATTERS THAT ARE NOT HISTORICAL FACTS ARE ONLY PREDICTIONS. NO ASSURANCES CAN BE GIVEN THAT SUCH PREDICTIONS WILL PROVE CORRECT OR THAT THE ANTICIPATED FUTURE RESULTS WILL BE ACHIEVED. ACTUAL EVENTS OR RESULTS MAY DIFFER MATERIALLY EITHER BECAUSE ONE OR MORE PREDICTIONS PROVE TO BE ERRONEOUS OR AS A RESULT OF OTHER RISKS FACING THE COMPANY. FORWARD-LOOKING STATEMENTS SHOULD BE READ IN LIGHT OF THE CAUTIONARY STATEMENTS SET FORTH HEREIN AND THOSE SET FORTH IN OUR MOST RECENT FORM 10-K, INCLUDING, BUT NOT LIMITED TO "THE FACTORS THAT MAY AFFECT FUTURE RESULTS" SHOWN AS ITEM 1A IN OUR FORM 10-K AND THE RISKS ASSOCIATED WITH AN EARLY-STAGE COMPANY THAT HAS LIMITED ASSETS AND OPERATIONS, THE COMPARATIVELY LIMITED FINANCIAL RESOURCES OF THE COMPANY, THE INTENSE COMPETITION THE COMPANY FACES FROM OTHER ESTABLISHED COMPETITORS, AND THE LEGAL UNCERTAINTIES THAT DIRECTLY AND INDIRECTLY IMPACT DEVELOPMENT-STAGE COMPANIES. ANY ONE OR MORE OF THESE OR OTHER RISKS COULD CAUSE ACTUAL RESULTS TO DIFFER MATERIALLY FROM THE FUTURE RESULTS INDICATED, EXPRESSED, OR IMPLIED IN SUCH FORWARD-LOOKING STATEMENTS. WE UNDERTAKE NO OBLIGATION TO UPDATE OR REVISE ANY FORWARD-LOOKING STATEMENT TO REFLECT EVENTS, CIRCUMSTANCES, OR NEW INFORMATION AFTER THE DATE OF THIS PRESS RELEASE OR TO REFLECT THE OCCURRENCE OF UNANTICIPATED OR OTHER SUBSEQUENT EVENTS. For further information contact: William M. Aul Gifa, Inc. Bill@Aullaw.net [ Back To TMCnet.com's Homepage ] [October 25, 2018] Chef Julien Royer Signs Agreement with Sarment's Keyyes Luxury Digital Platform SINGAPORE and TORONTO, Oct. 25, 2018 /CNW/ -- Odette's two-starred Michelin chef has entered Sarment's luxury digital ecosystem Chef Julien Royer is the first to be featured on the Keyyes' Gourmet platform is the first to be featured on the Keyyes' Gourmet platform The partnership is the first-of-its-kind consumer experience in the world of fine food Sarment Holding Limited (TSXV SAIS) announced today that it has entered into an agreement with Julien Royer, a world renowned chef, in a collaboration with its digital platform Keyyes. Julien Royer, a two-starred Michelin chef and owner of one of world's top fine dining restaurants, Odette, is now working together with Keyyes' Gourmet marketplace to offer its community a chance to purchase the exact ingredients that he uses in his restaurant's kitchen. Odette is Chef Royer's first personal project, which earned two Michelin stars within nine months of its opening in 2015. He previously headlined award-winning restaurants like Jaan in Singapore and worked with Michel Bras in France as well as Antonin Bonnet in London. Earlier this year, Odette was awarded number 28 in the World's 50 Best Restaurants listing, becoming one of the most highly-regarded tables in the world. It also won 5th spot in this year's Asia's 50 Best Restaurants -- a stunning progresson following its entry the year before as number 9, making Chef Royer the highest new entry since the list was started in 2013. As a result of this partnership, users will now be able to purchase Chef Royer's personal selections and ingredients, including Kaviari Kristal Caviar labelled specially for Odette and the Eva Aguilera olive oil that he uses in his dishes, among many small-batched artisanal products. This is a first-of-its-kind collaboration between a top chef and a luxury marketplace to allow consumers a chance to stock their kitchen larders direct from the shopping basket of a highly-rated professional chef. Said Chef Royer: "I am very excited to be part of Keyyes' digital ecosystem. It allows me to do something never done before in the industry. Instead of interacting with guests only when they come to the restaurant, I am now connected to a much broader audience and I can become an integral part of their daily lives. I spend a lot of time researching and curating the finest products for Odette's cuisine and this joint effort with Keyyes allows consumers to have all of that knowledge and quality in their own kitchen at home." Keyyes just unveiled the Gourmet category of its marketplace during the third quarter of 2018 with Chef Julien Royer as one of its major brand ambassadors to curate its products. Keyyes was launched during the second quarter of 2018 as the first digital platform to offer its high-net-worth users an aggregated application that covers three elements: premium content, top-drawer products and high-level personal services. In addition to Gourmet, other available categories include Dining, Home, Wine, Spirits, Sake, Art, Automotive, Wellness and By-appointment only Boutiques. With luxury names such as Burberry, Ferragamo, Harlan Estate, Boucheron, Ferrari and Lamborghini. Other categories such as Fashion, Hotels and more will soon follow. Keyyes platform currently covers Asian consumer markets in Singapore, Tokyo, Hong Kong, Macau, Bangkok and Bali. CEO Quentin Chiarugi explained: "As Keyyes continues to migrate Sarment's existing luxury network online, we will continue to feature high-profile brand ambassadors across our lifestyle categories. We are honoured to collaborate with Chef Royer. He is extremely talented and represents the new generation of global artists we want to work with." About Sarment Sarment was established in 2012 providing "art de la table" products and services to both private individuals and enterprises active in the luxury community. It evolved into a broader lifestyle service provider offering premium experiences to its expanding base of affluent clients, establishing its position as a trusted authority in all things luxury. Sarment is now one of Asia's major luxury service providers with hundreds of global partners spanning a growing network of luxury businesses. Buy Julien Royer's specially curated products and book a coveted table at Odette on Keyyes available at the Apple App Store and the Google Play Store. View original content:http://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/chef-julien-royer-signs-agreement-with-sarments-keyyes-luxury-digital-platform-300737935.html SOURCE Sarment [ Back To TMCnet.com's Homepage ] Mitsubishi Electric to Support Earthquake Relief in Sulawesi, Indonesia Mitsubishi Electric Corporation (TOKYO: 6503) announced today that the Mitsubishi Electric (News - Alert) Group will donate a total of 1.1 billion Indonesian rupiah (approximately 9.46 million yen) to aid victims and support recovery efforts following a series of earthquakes that struck Sulawesi, Indonesia in September. The donation will include contributions from the company's three affiliates and their employees located in Indonesia: PT. Mitsubishi Electric Indonesia, PT. Mitsubishi Jaya Elevator and Escalator, and PT. Mitsubishi Electric Automotive Indonesia. The Mitsubishi Electric Group expresses its deepest sympathies to all those affected by the disaster and extends its very sincerest wishes for a speedy recovery. About PT. Mitsubishi Electric Indonesia Location Gedung Jaya 8th Floor, Jl. M.H. Thamrin No.12, Jakarta Pusat 10340, Indonesia Business Sales of air conditioning system, household appliances, FA products, and industrial mechanical products About PT. Mitsubishi Jaya Elevator and Escalator Location Gedung Jaya 11th Floor, Jl. M.H. Thamrin No.12, Jakarta Pusat, PO Box (News - Alert) 2765 JKP10027, Indonesia Business Manufacture, sales, installation and maintenance of elevators About PT. Mitsubishi Electric Automotive Indonesia Location Bekasi International Industrial Estate, Block C-11, No. 1-5, Desa Cibatu, Kecamatan Cikarang Selatan, Kabupaten Bekasi, Indonesia Business Manufacture and sales of automotive equipment For the full text, please visit: www.MitsubishiElectric.com/news/ View source version on businesswire.com: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20181025005323/en/ [October 25, 2018] 'Rising Star' Realme Confirmed to Enter Malaysian Market in November KUALA LUMPUR, Malaysia, Oct. 26, 2018 /PRNewswire/ -- After much anticipation, Realme, an emerging smartphone brand that specialises in providing high quality smartphones, has teased its launch date in Malaysia. As posted on its Facebook and Instagram pages on Oct 23, the Realme 2 Series will be landing within the next few weeks. Confirming the speculation, Josef Wang, Marketing Director of Realme Southeast Asia said, "Realme aims to be top of mind for the younger generation of Malaysians who are looking for smartphones that are fast, stylih, and affordable. With exceptional success in India and Indonesia, it was only natural that we moved to Malaysia next, a country with a smartphone penetration of 70%. With such impressive figures, we're confident that Malaysia will continue Realme's success in the region." Realme's success in India was massive, with the Realme 1 Series selling out just 2 minutes after being officially launched. This followed with the Realme 2 Series, where a total of 200,000 units were sold in under 5 minutes. The brand's launch in Indonesia followed suit when it sold more than 15,000 units in only 10 minutes creating a new record for the brand in the region and demonstrating its relevance to the youth of today. Such impressive sales performances have proven that Realme is indeed a 'rising star' in the smartphone industry. The brand's product line-up has also achieved rave reviews from international media, like Forbes, GSMArena, Android Authority and other media. Across the board, it is known to hold its own in terms of design, software, cameras, and price range. Carrying the 'Proud to be Young' tagline, Realme is focused on becoming a ground-breaking smartphone brand for the younger generation, bringing together best-in-class performance coupled with contemporary style. Realme combines youthful designs with competitive specifications and will have more exciting news about the launch coming soon. Photo - https://photos.prnasia.com/prnh/20181025/2279498-1 SOURCE Realme [ Back To TMCnet.com's Homepage ] [October 26, 2018] Galecto Biotech Raises 79 Million in Series C Financing Co-Led by Ysios Capital and OrbiMed to Advance Galectin Inhibitor to Late-Stage Clinical Development Galecto Biotech AB, the leading developer of galectin modulators for the treatment of severe diseases, including fibrosis and cancer, today announced the successful closing of a 79 million series C financing co-led by Ysios Capital and OrbiMed. New investors Ysios Capital, OrbiMed, HBM Healthcare Investments, OrbiMed Israel, Bristol Myers-Squibb, Maverick Ventures and Seventure Partners joined existing investors Novo Seeds, M Ventures, and Sunstone Capital in the financing round. Concurrent with the financing, Karen Wagner (Ysios Capital), Chau Khuong (OrbiMed), Chandra Leo (HBM) and Erez Chimovits (OrbiMed Israel) were appointed to the Galecto Board of Directors. Galecto will use the proceeds to conduct a phase 2/3 clinical study of inhaled TD139, a potent and selective inhibitor of galectin-3, in idiopathic pulmonary fibrosis (IPF), a chronic and severe disease characterized by progressive decline in lung function. This international, multi-center phase 2/3 study will be conducted by Galecto in Europe and North America following positive data obtained from the phase 1/2a clinical studies. The financing proceeds will also be used to conduct clinical studies with additional oral and ocular Gal-3 inhibitor drug candidates. "The closing of this 79 million financing is a significant milestone for Galecto as it allows us to quickly take TD139 into the phase 2/3 study, the design for which has been agreed with the FDA and MHRA. The financing will also enable clinical studies for two additional programs, which are based on galectin modulators optimised for dosing in fibrotic diseases of other organs, such as the liver and eye," said Hans Schambye, CEO of Galecto Biotech. "We welcome and hank our new and existing investors for their commitment to advancing our galectin modulator products to late-stage clinical development." "Galecto is the clear leader in the field of galectin inhibitor development. The data generated to date suggests that Galecto's TD139 has a highly competitive profile in IPF due to its good safety profile and inhaled dosing, providing a clear path to market," said Karen Wagner, General Partner of Ysios Capital. "We were attracted to Galecto by the excellent science, great promise for its lead inhaled product in IPF as well as the galectin inhibitor technology platform, which is generating multiple drug candidates," added Chau Khuong, a partner at OrbiMed. About TD139 TD139, a highly potent, specific inhibitor of the galactoside binding pocket of galectin-3, has been formulated for inhalation to enable direct targeting the fibrotic tissue in the lungs, while minimizing systemic exposure. In a phase 1/2 proof of concept study in IPF patients, TD139 was found to be safe, well tolerated, and exhibited direct target engagement with macrophages, the key cellular target in fibrotic disease. TD139 was initially developed by a team of scientists from Lund University (Sweden) and Edinburgh University (UK). About Galectin-3 Galectin-3 is a member of the galectin family of galactoside-binding lectins. Galectin-3 exists both intra- and extra-cellularly, and binds to glycosylated proteins. Galectin-3 has been shown to play a central role in fibrosis development and progression. The activation of macrophages, and recruitment and activation of myofibroblasts, the two central cell types in organ fibrosis, is dependent on galectin-3. Abolition of galectin-3 expression in knockout animals or pharmacological blockade using Galecto Biotech's inhibitors leads to a dramatic reduction or even prevention of fibrosis. About Galecto Biotech Galecto is focused on developing novel drugs for the treatment of fibrosis, inflammation, and other serious human diseases. The company's products target galectins or galactoside binding lectins, which are a group of proteins shown to be involved in many disease processes. Since its founding in 2011, Galecto's team of scientists and experts has proven that galectin-3 is an attractive drug target and that galectin-3 inhibitors are effective in reducing fibrosis in several different organs in preclinical models. Based on this research and recently completed clinical studies, Galecto's high potency galectin modulators may open new treatment possibilities for many patients. The company is located in Copenhagen, Denmark. Further information can be found at www.galecto.com. View source version on businesswire.com: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20181025005551/en/ [ Back To TMCnet.com's Homepage ] [October 26, 2018] Apollo Hospitals Selects Medvarsity Online Ltd. for Simulation Training for Resident Doctors HYDERABAD, India, October 26, 2018 /PRNewswire/ -- - Medvarsity course to help in improving skills while reducing attrition - Medvarsity, a pioneer in online medical training has been chosen by Apollo Hospitals to support the online simulation training for resident doctors. The training aims to augment medical education for healthcare professionals through the utilization of state-of-art technology with the goal of improving overall clinical outcomes. This simulation environment would allow doctors to learn, practice and repeat procedures as often as necessary in order to correct mistakes, fine-tune their skills, and optimize clinical outcomes. (Photo: https://mma.prnewswire.com/media/775328/Medvarsity_For_Resident_Doctors.jpg ) "With passing time, we are observing critical challenges in healthcare, a dearth in skilled junior doctors and lack of access to simulation tools for training. With Medvarsity's simulation training program for resident doctors, we are looking at bridging the gap in skills and also use the training program as a capacity builder. This will be a great program for young doctors to acquire good clinical skills that will help them in managing their patients better," said Dr. K Hari Prasad, President Apollo Hospitals Division. India, along with the rest of the world, is seeing a scarcity of skilled doctors; according to a study by PwC, there are 1.7 doctors to 1,000 population. The state of Indian healthcare is worrisome on the whole and more so because of number of less skilled professionals. Owing to the situation, there is a great demand for upskilled healthcare practitioners who can understand the dynamics of growing challenges that the industry is facing, on the whole. With the outlook to provide better patient care and career opportunities for the doctors, a strategic approach is necessary. Medvarsity, with its varied range of clinical and non-clinical courses, have been specially designed by doctors, for the doctors. "We are proud to support ApolloHospitals in the key area of upskilling their residents on critical clinical skills. Apollo's need to have the best talent is critical to their success and our simulation training tools are best suited to bridge the skill gap," said Mr. Gerald Jaideep, CEO, Medvarsity Online Ltd. Even with information overload of today's times, a busy doctor still struggles to be well-versed with the latest developments in the industry and that is where Medvarsity aims to bridge the gap. About Medvarsity Online Ltd. Medvarsity is India's first & largest e-learning and training platform for healthcare professionals that was established in 2000. It has over 35000+ certified graduates. It offers a wide range of clinical and non-clinical courses that are responsible for upgrading clinical, management & leadership skills of doctors and nurses. The courses are exclusively designed by doctors and industry experts in association with leading universities. Our courses consist of 20,000 hours of content with over 8,000 active learners and course accreditation by global partners like University of New South Wales, Royal Liverpool Academy, ATI(USA), Amity University etc. We have over 40 clinical training partners across the country with top hospitals like Apollo, Columbia Asia, MaxCure, MyCure Hospitals. Medvarsity is working at impacting the healthcare ecosystem in a substantial way by providing cutting-edge knowledge gamut for about 20 counties across the world through its disruptive online education technology platform. For further details, log onto: http://www.medvarsity.com Follow us on facebook: https://www.facebook.com/medvarsity/ About Apollo Hospitals It was in 1983, that Dr. Prathap Reddy made a pioneering endeavour by launching India's first corporate hospital - Apollo Hospitals in Chennai. Over the years Apollo Hospitals has established itself as home to the largest cardiac practice in India with over 160,000 cardiac surgeries. Apollo Hospitals is also the world's largest private cancer care provider and runs the world's leading solid organ transplant program. As Asia's largest and most trusted healthcare group, its presence includes over 10,000 beds across 71 Hospitals, 3,000 Pharmacies, over 90 Primary Care and Diagnostic Clinics, 110 plus Telemedicine Centres and 80 plus Apollo Munich Insurance branches spanning the length and breadth of the Country. As an integrated healthcare service provider with Health Insurance services, Global Projects Consultancy capability, over 15 medical education centres and a Research Foundation with a focus on global Clinical Trials, epidemiological studies, stem cell & genetic research Apollo Hospitals has been at the forefront of new medical breakthroughs with the most recent investment being that of commissioning the first Proton Therapy Center across Asia, Africa and Australia in Chennai, India. Every four days, the Apollo Hospitals Group touches a million lives, in its mission to bring healthcare of International standards within the reach of every individual. In a rare honour, the Government of India issued a commemorative stamp in recognition of Apollo's contribution, the first for a healthcare organization. Apollo Hospitals Chairman, Dr. Prathap C Reddy, was conferred with the prestigious Padma Vibhushan in 2010. For more than 30 years, the Apollo Hospitals Group has continuously excelled and maintained leadership in medical innovation, world-class clinical services and cutting-edge technology. Our hospitals are consistently ranked amongst the best hospitals globally for advanced medical services and research. For further details, log onto: http://www.apollohospitals.com Follow us on Twitter: @HospitalsApollo Media Contact: Sri Kalyani Nippani kalyani.nipppani@medvarsity.com Public Relations Specialist Medvarsity Online Ltd. [ Back To TMCnet.com's Homepage ] [October 26, 2018] INEOS Styrolution Presents Innovative Solutions for the Healthcare Industry at IMDI 2018 Broad range of styrenic solutions for the healthcare industry Visit INEOS Styrolution at IMDI in Ahmedabad, booth 6, from October 26-27, 2018 VADODARA, India, Oct. 23, 2018 /PRNewswire/ -- INEOS Styrolution, the global leader in styrenics, will present new innovative styrenic solutions for the healthcare industry at IMDI 2018 in Ahmedabad, booth 6 at J.B. Auditorium, Ahmedabad Management Association from October 26-27, 2018. INEOS Styrolution shows continued commitment to the healthcare industry by further increasing the already broad portfolio of styrenic solutions specifically designed for use in medical and laboratory environments. A selection of most recent applications highlighting new materials will be shown at IMDI 2018. This selection covers a wide range of healthcare segments including IV systems and fluid management, respiratory and drug delivery, surgical equipment and labware. The focus at the INEOS Styrolution booth is on the following solutions: New SBC based medical drip chamber material Styrolux 4G60. The new material offers excellent transparency and bonding properties. The very good flowability properties enable easy processability. 4G60. The new material offers excellent transparency and bonding properties. The very good flowability properties enable easy processability. ABS material Novodur HD M203FC G3 This is a glass fiber filled ABS material suited for medical applications which is certified against the relevant parts of the biocompatibility standard ISO 10993 and USP Class VI. The new grade delivers a significantly increased stiffness in combination with a high flowability making it the material of choice for demanding applications like medical spikes and applications requiring structural stability. HD M203FC G3 This is a glass fiber filled ABS material suited for medical applications which is certified against the relevant parts of the biocompatibility standard ISO 10993 and USP Class VI. The new grade delivers a significantly increased stiffness in combination with a high flowability making it the material of choice for demanding applications like medical spikes and applications requiring structural stability. ABS material Novodur HD M203FC Owing to its unique combinaion of high surface quality, dimensional stability, chemical resistance and robustness, this material is the number one choice for dry powder inhaler (DPI) marketed by leading global pharmaceutical companies, as well as the insulin pen. HD M203FC Owing to its unique combinaion of high surface quality, dimensional stability, chemical resistance and robustness, this material is the number one choice for dry powder inhaler (DPI) marketed by leading global pharmaceutical companies, as well as the insulin pen. SBC materials K-Resin KR01 and KR05 These K-Resin grades, that became part of the INEOS Styrolution solutions portfolio with the acquisition of the K-Resin SBC business in 2017, are well suited for various medical applications, including suction yankauers, medical drip chamber, face mask and IV parts. "This is the first time INEOS Styrolution is participating in this event with a booth. We are looking forward to welcoming medical manufacturers and designers at our booth at IMDI and to discuss collaborations and help them differentiate themselves from their competition with our innovative solutions and regulatory compliant materials," says Partha Mohapatra, India Healthcare Lead, INEOS Styrolution. The entire INEOS Styrolution portfolio for the healthcare industry includes: Transparent polymers: Terlux HD, Zylar , Clearblend , Styrolux , Styroflex , K-Resin , Luran HD, NAS . HD, Zylar , Clearblend , Styrolux , Styroflex , K-Resin , Luran HD, NAS . Opaque polymers: Novodur HD, Lustran (ABS). HD, Lustran (ABS). Essential and full service HD packages (bio-compatibility certifications, long term notification of change). Standard food contact packages: Styrolution PS, Terluran . PS, Terluran . Research and development support for medical device designers. Healthcare Conference: During the exhibition, Masayuki Sakai, Asia Pacific Lead, Healthcare, INEOS Styrolution, will be delivering a paper on the topic "Technological Innovation in styrenics for infusion set and drug delivery housing applications". All visitors and media are welcome to attend. When: October 26, 2018 ; 02:00 to 02:30 pm ; Where: IMDI Conference Area, AMA Auditorium About INEOS Styrolution INEOS Styrolution is the leading, global styrenics supplier with a focus on styrene monomer, polystyrene, ABS Standard and styrenic specialties. With world-class production facilities and more than 85 years of experience, INEOS Styrolution helps its customers succeed by offering the best possible solution, designed to give them a competitive edge in their markets. The company provides styrenic applications for many everyday products across a broad range of industries, including Automotive, Electronics, Household, Construction, Healthcare, Packaging and Toys/ Sports/ Leisure. In 2017, sales were at 5.3 billion euros. INEOS Styrolution employs approximately 3,300 people and operates 18 production sites in nine countries. More information: www.ineos-styrolution.com Contact Adil Marawala Communications Manager, India INEOS Styrolution India Ltd 5th Floor, Om House-II, Om Business Park Subhanpura, Vadodara India 390023 Phone: +91-265-2303230 Email: adil.marawala@ineos.com Internet: www.ineos-styrolution.com [ Back To TMCnet.com's Homepage ] [October 26, 2018] Procter & Gamble to invest an additional US$30 million through partnership with Singapore's Economic Development Board to drive Singapore's digital transformation SINGAPORE, Oct. 26, 2018 /PRNewswire/ -- Procter & Gamble (NYSE: PG), in partnership with the Singapore Economic Development Board (EDB), today announced an additional investment of US$30 million or S$45 million into its digital innovation center in Singapore, just over one year after its launch. Inaugurated by guest-of-honor Mr. Chan Chun Sing, Minister for Trade and Industry (MTI), the E-Center 2.0 is an expansion of the existing digital innovation program, focused on placing Singapore at the forefront of digital transformation in consumer goods and the retail industry in the Asia Pacific region. With this investment, P&G expands its E-Center and celebrates a new milestone in e-Business with the opening of the i-Singapore Digital Omni-channel Center (i-SIDOC), the first digital omni-channel retail center that enables P&G to work with retailers from across the region to create actionable knowledge and retail solutions to better serve, add value and drive disruption in today's consumer market. This innovative collaboration platform is fully dedicated to Asia and is uniquely co-located with the state-of-the-art P&G Singapore Innovation Center and the omni-channel store. The E-Center 2.0 will also feature new projects in supply chain management, i-Supply, such as the development of automation and digitization technologies for manufacturing processes and the use of machine learning and advanced analytics to automate decision making and enhance the planning system inside the supply chain. These advances must be made alongside upskilling of employees, which P&G is also doing through training on digital and analytics skills to build a future ready talent pipeline. In terms of e-Analytics, P&G is setting up a new team of data scientists to develop best-in-class digital capabilities and solutions to strengthen APAC operations by offering customized brand solutions and better reach through optimized media plans. Advanced analytics are also leveraged as a vital component to accelerate the development of superior products and packaging out of the Singapore Innovation Center. Through the E-Center, P&G is also committed to support partners and employees by equipping them with the relevant skills to leverage digital technology and solve business problems. In the week leading up to the E-Center 2.0 opening, P&G Asia Pacific hosted its inaugural digital technology event, ONward, which included a digital university where 1,000+ employees went through 5,000 hours of training in only 5 days. Meanwhile, 500+ digital tech companies including start-ups, SMEs and other companies applied to develop solutions for 9 business challenges pitched to them by P&G in an effort to co-innovate with external experts. P&G takes this commitment to co-innovation further with the partnership between P&G and Wavefront, a Singapore-based incubator. In partnership with EDB, P&G and Wavefront will focus on personalizing skin care for Asian consumers through technology. "P&G is a strategic partner in our efforts to place Singapore at the forefront of digital innovation for consumer businesses. The E-Center 2.0 will further build digital capabilities in retail, supply chain management and business analytics, and offer exciting opportunities for both Singaporeans and our local enterprises," said Dr. Beh Swan Gin, Chairman of the Singapore Economic Development Board (EDB). "We are also delighted to support the efforts of bellwether corporates like P&G to co-innovate with and catalyze the formation of new ventures in Singapore and the region." "Since the successful launch of the E-Center last year, we have been able to uniquely sharpen our core strengths and accelerate our digital transformation and growth in the region. We are proud of our success and it's given us the confidence to do more. Today with E-Center 2.0, we continue to dedicate our efforts to further strengthen Singapore's leadership in the digital economy and build world-class capabilities, and also collaborate with key local partners and develop local and international talents," said Mr. Magesvaran Suranjan, the President of P&G Asia Pacific and of P&G Indian Subcontinent, Middle East and Africa at the launch. The country has also hosted P&G's Asia Pacific headquarters over the last 30 years, and is home to two manufacturing sites in Tuas as well as the state-of-the-art Singapore Innovation Center and the E-Center. About Procter & Gamble P&G serves consumers around the world with one of the strongest portfolios of trusted, quality, leadership brands, including Always, Ambi Pur, Ariel, Bounty, Charmin, Crest, Dawn, Downy, Fairy, Febreze, Gain, Gillette, Head & Shoulders, Lenor, Olay, Oral-B, Pampers, Pantene, SK-II, Tide, Vicks, and Whisper. The P&G community includes operations in approximately 70 countries worldwide. Please visit http://www.pg.com for the latest news and information about P&G and its brands. For more information, please contact: Belen Carazo Debapriya Bhattacharya Procter & Gamble Asia Pacific. MSL Singapore Tel: (65) 9725 7762 Tel: (65) 86612952 Email: carazo.b@pg.com Email: debapriya.bhattacharya@mslgroup.com Photo - https://photos.prnasia.com/prnh/20181026/2280678-1-a Photo - https://photos.prnasia.com/prnh/20181026/2280678-1-b SOURCE Procter & Gamble [ Back To TMCnet.com's Homepage ] [October 26, 2018] Fang to Hold 2018 Annual General Meeting on December 7, 2018 BEIJING, Oct. 26, 2018 /PRNewswire/ -- Fang Holdings Limited (NYSE: SFUN) ("Fang" or the "Company"), the leading real estate Internet portal in China, today announced that it would hold its 2018 annual general meeting of shareholders at Block A, No. 20 Guogongzhuang Middle Street, Fengtai District, Beijing, 100070, the People's Republic of China on December 7, 2018 at 10:30 a.m. (local time). The proposals to be submitted for shareholders' approval at the annual general meeting are the re-election of Mr. Shaohua Zhang as an independent director of the board of directors of the Company (the "Board") and a member of the audit committee of the Board and the ratification of the appointment of KPMG Huazhen LLP as the independent registered public accounting firm of the Company for the fiscal year ending December 31, 2018. The Board has fixed November 7, 2018 as the record date (the "Record Date") for determining the shareholders entitled to receive notice f the annual general meeting or any adjournment or postponement thereof. Holders of record of the Company's ordinary shares at the close of business on the Record Date are entitled to attend the annual general meeting and any adjournment or postponement thereof in person. About Fang Fang operates the leading real estate Internet portal in China in terms of the number of page views and visitors to its websites. Through our websites, we provide e-commerce, marketing, listing, financial and other value-added services for China's fast-growing real estate and home furnishing and improvement sectors. Our user-friendly websites support active online communities and networks of users seeking information on, and other value-added services for, the real estate and home furnishing and improvement sectors in China. Fang currently maintains about 100 offices to focus on local market needs and its website and database contains real estate related content covering more than 651 cities in China. For more information about Fang, please visit http://ir.fang.com. For investor and media inquiries, please contact: Dr. Hua Lei CFO Phone: +86-10-5631-8661 Email: leihua@fang.com Ms. Jessie Yang Director, Investor Relations Phone: +86-10-5631-8805 Email: jessieyang@fang.com View original content:http://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/fang-to-hold-2018-annual-general-meeting-on-december-7-2018-300738567.html SOURCE Fang Holdings Limited [ Back To TMCnet.com's Homepage ] Hot Topics Recap: Black Friday/Cyber Monday Following are the latest Black Friday/ Cyber Monday (News - Alert) 2018 news releases and story ideas for reporters, bloggers and media outlets. These recaps, curated by Business Wire, provide reporters and bloggers around the globe instant access to the latest news releases, providing relevant and trending content to share with their audiences. Discover more news via Business Wire's Hot Topic recaps or create a custom news feed specific to your needs here. This service is provided at no charge to members of the media and financial communities. LIVONIA, Mich.--Valassis Research: Consumers Leverage Three Phases to Get the Most From Their Holiday Shopping Source (News - Alert) : Valassis AUSTIN, Texas--ShippingEasy Releases Its Popular Annual Holiday Guide Source: ShippingEasy BOSTON--Consumer Walk Share Roomba Black Friday 2018 Deals Predictions Source: Consumer Walk NEW YORK--Online Retailers Gear Up to Deliver Fast, Reliable Holiday Shopping Experiences Source: Catchpoint BOSTON--Innovation and Entrepreneurship Highlighted at Innovate Celebrate Source: Consumer Technology Association (CTA) ARLINGTON, Va.--Holiday Tech Spending to Reach a Record $96.1 Billion in Revenue - TVs Top Wish Lists Again, Says CTA Source: Consumer Technology Association BOSTON--Retailers to Spend More on Black Friday Digital Ads than Cyber Monday in 2018 Holiday Shopping Season, Nanigans Research Finds Source: Nanigans, Inc. About Business Wire: Business Wire, a Berkshire Hathaway company, is the global leader in press release distribution and regulatory disclosure. Investor relations, public relations, public policy and marketing professionals rely on Business Wire to accurately distribute market-moving news and multimedia, host online newsrooms and IR websites, build content marketing platforms, generate social engagements and provide audience analysis that improves interaction with specified target markets. Founded in 1961, Business Wire is a trusted source for news organizations, journalists, investment professionals and regulatory authorities, delivering news directly into editorial systems and leading online news sources via its multi-patented NX Network. Business Wire has 28 offices worldwide to securely meet the varying needs of communications professionals and news consumers. Learn more at services.BusinessWire.com and Tempo, the Business Wire resource for industry trends; follow updates on Twitter (News - Alert) : @businesswire or on Facebook. Click here to subscribe to Mobile Alerts for Business Wire. View source version on businesswire.com: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20181026005018/en/ [October 26, 2018] Bank of America Announces Passing of Vice Chairman Terrence Laughlin Bank of America today announced the death of Terrence P. Laughlin, vice chairman and head of Global Wealth and Investment Management. He was 63 years old. This press release features multimedia. View the full release here: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20181026005292/en/ Terrence Laughlin (Photo: Business Wire) "Terry was a builder and a problem solver, and one of the finest individuals I've had the privilege to know and work alongside," said Chief Executive Officer Brian Moynihan. "His leadership on Global Wealth and Investment Management, helping to build a consolidated banking and wealth management business, is without a peer in our industry. Recently, he helped expand our company's presence in Pittsburgh, his beloved city where he is so well-admired and respected." Laughlin previously served as Bank of America's chief risk officer. He also led the company's Legacy Asset Servicing group. "Terry was instrumental in helping our company recover from the crisis and get us to where we are today, the world's best bank," Moynihan added. "Terry was a gifted leader who cared deeply about the world in which we live," said Jack Bovender, Bank of America's lead independent dirctor. "Just this month, he convened a blue-ribbon panel of experts in New York to consider ways that the private sector can address the impacts of climate change on urban communities. That is just one example of how Terry committed himself to solving our toughest issues." Before joining Bank of America, Laughlin was a member of the investor group that acquired IndyMac Savings Bank from the FDIC. Subsequent to the acquisition of IndyMac, it was renamed OneWest Bank, and he served as chief executive officer. Laughlin was a member of the board of the Urban Institute and the Brooklyn Museum. Bank of America Bank of America is one of the world's leading financial institutions, serving individual consumers, small and middle-market businesses and large corporations with a full range of banking, investing, asset management and other financial and risk management products and services. The company provides unmatched convenience in the United States, serving approximately 67 million consumer and small business clients with approximately 4,400 retail financial centers, approximately 16,100 ATMs, and award-winning digital banking with more than 36 million active users, including nearly 26 million mobile users. Bank of America is a global leader in wealth management, corporate and investment banking and trading across a broad range of asset classes, serving corporations, governments, institutions and individuals around the world. Bank of America offers industry-leading support to approximately 3 million small business owners through a suite of innovative, easy-to-use online products and services. The company serves clients through operations across the United States, its territories and more than 35 countries. Bank of America Corporation stock (NYSE: BAC) is listed on the New York Stock Exchange. For more Bank of America news, including dividend announcements and other important information, visit the Bank of America newsroom. Click here to register for news email alerts. www.bankofamerica.com View source version on businesswire.com: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20181026005292/en/ [ Back To TMCnet.com's Homepage ] [October 26, 2018] Insight Demonstrates IoT Solution Accelerator for Public Safety Open-source technology for improving responses in an emergency is now easier to develop, customize and deploy TEMPE, Ariz., Oct. 26, 2018 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- At Microsofts IoT in Action event in Santa Clara, California, on Thursday, Insight Enterprises conducted a live demonstration of Project Edison, a solution accelerator developed by Insights Digital Innovation division that will help clients bring IoT-enabled public safety solutions to market faster. Microsoft has encouraged partners to design Azure-powered solution accelerators, which are a collection of products and projects developed independently by various providers to decrease the complexity of producing an IoT solution, shorten time to market, and to help clients address specific industry and societal needs. The solution accelerators are meant to kick-start an IoT project to the point of 80 percent completion, with the remaining 20 percent being customizable for each unique use case. Using Insights solution accelerator, clients and customers have the potential to provide innovative solutions that address communication challenges in situations in which there are threats to the public, by running safety mechanisms through an IoT-enabled response system. When incidents occur in public places, communication of whats going on needs to happen as quickly and accurately as possible, said Amol Ajgaonkar, chief architect, Digital Innovation, Insight. Project Edison is a powerful building block for public safety that shows whats possible when first responders can break through the noise of a chaotic situation, using critical, real-time information from ground zero to intelligently assess how best to respond. Were creating a framework that helps emergency workers react swiftly while more effectively letting the public know what to do to stay out of harms way. Project Edison integrates on-site human reporting with IoT-based data sharing through these technologies: An application that acts as the central hub for capturing data being transmitted from sensor-based technology and provides individuals the ability to share real-time information. For example, when sound sensors detect abnormal noises, an alert can be automatically sent to security personnel to monitor the occurrence Buttons that can be pressed to send an alert to the application if someone feels threatened Color-coded smart lghts that can automatically illuminate to warn of an emergency based on proximity to the possible danger and help people identify safe zones Real-time communications to on-site security and emergency services with different alerts or action plans based on the information being shared with the central system Direct lines of communication for people involved in the crisis via a navigation-based mobile app to provide updates and safety instructions in real time As the 2018 Microsoft Worldwide Artificial Intelligence Partner of the Year, Insights deep expertise in the Internet of Things and data analytics puts people at the heart of creating relevant, connected experiences. For more information on the Project Edison solution accelerator, contact Insight at InsightDI@insight.com . About Insight Today, every business is a technology business. Insight Enterprises Inc. empowers organizations of all sizes with Insight Intelligent Technology Solutions and services to maximize the business value of IT. As a Fortune 500-ranked global provider of Digital Innovation, Cloud + Data Center Transformation, Connected Workforce, and Supply Chain Optimization solutions and services, we help clients successfully manage their IT today while transforming for tomorrow. From IT strategy and design to implementation and management, our 6,600+ employees help clients innovate and optimize their operations to run business smarter. Discover more at www.insight.com . NSIT-M CONTACTS: SCOTT WALTERS Insight Enterprises TEL. (480) 889-9798 EMAIL: SCOTT.WALTERS@INSIGHT.COM ARIEL KOUVARAS Sloane & Company TEL. (212) 446-1884 EMAIL: AKOUVARAS@SLOANEPR.COM [ Back To TMCnet.com's Homepage ] [October 26, 2018] Systemax Inc. To Report Third Quarter 2018 Results On October 30, 2018 PORT WASHINGTON, N.Y., Oct. 26, 2018 /PRNewswire/ -- Systemax Inc. (NYSE: SYX) today announced that it will release financial results for the third quarter ended September 30, 2018 on Tuesday, October 30, 2018 after U.S. market hours. Management will provide pre-recorded remarks on the Company's third quarter 2018 results at 5:00 p.m. Eastern Time on October 30th. To access the remarks please dial (412-717-9224) five minutes prior to the start time. The pre-recorded remarks will also be available via webcast on the Company's website at www.systemax.com in the investor relations section. If you cannot listen to the call at its cheduled time, the webcast will be archived on www.systemax.com for approximately 90 days. About Systemax Inc. Systemax Inc. (www.systemax.com), through its operating subsidiaries, is a provider of industrial products in North America, going to market through a system of branded e-Commerce websites and relationship marketers. The Company's primary brand is Global Industrial (www.globalindustrial.com). Investor/Media Contact: Mike Smargiassi The Plunkett Group 212-739-6729 mike@theplunkettgroup.com View original content:http://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/systemax-inc-to-report-third-quarter-2018-results-on-october-30-2018-300738469.html SOURCE Systemax Inc. [October 26, 2018] Map Business Online Includes a Comprehensive Library of Census Bureau Demographic Data CORNISH, Maine, Oct. 26, 2018 /PRNewswire/ -- SpatialTEQ Inc., publisher of North America's fastest growing business mapping software, announces the release of its final 2018 update to its growing library of Demographic Data. Www.MapBusinessOnline.com is a cloud-based affordable business mapping software used by a wide variety of large and small businesses to visualize customers, conduct sales territory mapping, and build advanced market analysis. Map Business Online Demographic Data has been updated to include USA Economic Census Data (ECD) for the year 2016. This additional demographic data category lists industry type with the corresponding number of establishments, payroll estimates, and employee counts per geographic area of interest. ECD data is searchable by county while other demographic data layers are searchable by all administrative jurisdictions. The 2016 USA Economic Census Data is another powerful demographic data enhancement to the Map Business Online library of demographic data, perfect for sales and marketing analysis. More economic data will be added in 2019. Map Business Online demographic data is available for the U.S.A., Canada, and U.K. coverage areas (the ECD release is USA only.) The U.S.A. Census Bureau data categories include detailed layers searchable by Census tract, city, congressional district, county, MSA, state, and ZIP code (3 and 5 digits). Demographic data is listed for years 2010 through 2018. General demographic categories include: Population by age, education, ethnicity, gender, income, marital status Economic data by business type, annual payroll, employees, and number of establishments Households & family data by gender, income, marital status Housing units by owned or rented Consumer expenditure estimates Occupation & employment status Travel times Third party projected demographic data estimates are included in the USA library for years 2017 and 2018 of the demographic category options. Total years provided are 2010 to 2018. Map Business Online supports demographic data layers for the USA, Canada, and the UK. About Map Business Online From the creators of BusinessMAP, www.MapBusinessOnline.com has been providing sales & marketing professionals with affordable and intuitive web-based business mapping software, for Mac and PC users, since 2010. Design, edit, and share maps that reflect your business . Create and manage sales territories that drive accountability into your sales force. Replace discontinued Microsoft MapPoint with Map Business Online. Access optimized multi-stop routes to drive down travel costs. No other mapping software solves so many problems for such a limited investment. Contact: Geoffrey Ives, 203883@email4pr.com, (800) 425-9035, (207) 939-6866 View original content to download multimedia:http://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/map-business-online-includes-a-comprehensive-library-of-census-bureau-demographic-data-300738239.html SOURCE SpatialTEQ Inc. [ Back To TMCnet.com's Homepage ] [October 26, 2018] JM Family Enterprises Celebrates 50 Years of Family On October 26, 1968, automotive legend Jim Moran signed an agreement in Japan establishing Southeast Toyota Distributors, LLC as the exclusive Toyota distributor in five southeastern states. This press release features multimedia. View the full release here: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20181026005333/en/ That milestone moment led to the creation of what is now parent company JM Family Enterprises, Inc., a $15.1 billion diversified automotive company with more than 4,200 associates across North America that was built on Jim Moran's guiding philosophy of the 3Cs - consideration, cooperation and communication. These principles, along with innovation and accountability, comprise JM Family's core values today. JM Family regularly ranks as one of the largest private companies in the U.S. and has been named on FORTUNE Magazine's "Best Companies to Work For" 20 years in a row. In addition to Southeast Toyota Distributors, the family of companies also includes JM&A Group, World Omni Financial Corp., Southeast Toyota Finance and JM Lexus. "As we reflect on the past 50 years, we know our success continues to be driven by our dedicated associates and the core values instilled in our company by Jim Moran," said Brent Burns, president and CEO, JM Family. "Looking forward, we will remain committed to our associate-first culture, strive to demonstrate leadership in our businesses, continuously find new ways to innovate and positively impact the communities where our associates live and work." In addition to taking care of one another, emphasizing hard work and always preparing for the future, when founding the company Jim Moran believed strongly in the importance of giving back. In this spirit of giving, and in recognition of its 50th anniversary, JM Family: Has made $50,000 in contributions to charitable organizations in all of its major business locations, for a total of $300,000. Donations were announced to coincide with anniversary celebrations throughout the year. Beneficiaries align with JM Family's corporate philanthropy, which is focused on four areas of giving - empowering families and nurturing children, providing for essential needs, promoting education and preserving the environment. Make a charitable contribution to and work with Arbor Day Foundation and other local conservation groups across its footprint to facilitate the planting of more than 1,000 trees, shrubs and other vegetation. These efforts will not only beautify the surroundings, but also provide benefits such as cleaner air, shade and lower energy costs. JM Family is currently: No. 20 on Forbes list of largest private companies in the U.S. list of largest private companies in the U.S. No. 51 by FORTUNE magazine as one of the 100 Best Companies to Work For in the U.S., its 20 th consecutive year on the list. consecutive year on the list. Frequently recognized by Great Place to Work, the global authority on high-trust, high-performance workplace culture, on several lists including Best Workplaces for Millennials and Best Workplaces for Diversity. Headquarterd in Deerfield Beach, Fla., with major U.S. operations in Jacksonville and Margate, Fla.; Commerce and Alpharetta, Ga.; Mobile, Ala.; and St. Louis, Mo. North American field force of 800 strong. Southeast Toyota Distributors (Established 1968), the world's largest independent distributor of Toyota vehicles: Began with 42 Toyota dealerships in Florida, Georgia, Alabama and North and South Carolina, it now has 177 dealers in the five-state region. Accounts for nearly 20 percent of all Toyota vehicles sold in the U.S. Sold more than 10.5 million vehicles and in excess of $13 billion in parts. Retains its position as the No. 1 Toyota private distributor in the world and the No. 1 selling nameplate in the Southeast. JM&A Group (Established 1978), celebrating 40 years in the finance and insurance (F&I) industry and serving more than 3,700 automotive dealerships nationwide: Additionally, the company has nearly 750 associates, including a dedicated sales force of 300+ associates who support process implementation for dealer operations and digital sales strategies. Sold over 44 million vehicle-related service and maintenance contracts. $432 million in total claims paid and $2.1 billion in invested reserves. Answered 80 percent of claims called within 20 seconds. 12.3 million active contracts nationwide. Southeast Toyota Finance (Established 1981), private captive offering automotive financial products to Toyota dealerships supplied by Southeast Toyota Distributors: Originated nearly 4 million consumer loans and leases totaling approximately $89 billion. Assigned a long-term rating of BBB+ and a short-term rating of A-2 by Standard & Poor's. Parent company World Omni Financial Corp. also has subsidiary DataScan, a global industry leader, providing clarity to wholesale loan accounting and managing risk with a holistic auditing solution. JM Lexus (Established 1989), Lexus Plus Dealership: As a sales process innovator, JM Lexus is the first Lexus Plus dealership in the southeastern U.S. and one of only 13 in the nation. Lexus Plus is a revolutionary new experience with a single point of contact from start to finish, and the best price up front with no dealer fees. Sold more than 190,000 new and pre-owned vehicles. Its world-class service facility has serviced 2.2 million vehicles. For more information on JM Family's 50th anniversary and its history, visit 50YearsofFamily.com. About JM Family Enterprises, Inc. JM Family Enterprises, Inc., founded by Jim Moran in 1968, is marking its milestone anniversary during 2018 with a 50 Years of Family celebration. Over the course of its 50-year history, JM Family has grown from 11 associates into a $15.1 billion diversified automotive corporation with more than 4,200 associates and is currently ranked No. 20 on Forbes' list of America's Largest Private Companies. It is also ranked No. 55 by FORTUNE as one of the 100 Best Companies to Work For, its 20th consecutive year on the list. Its primary subsidiaries include: Southeast Toyota Distributors, the world's largest independent distributor of Toyota vehicles; JM&A Group, one of the leading independent providers of finance and insurance (F&I) products in the automotive industry; World Omni Financial Corp., a diversified financial services company with subsidiaries Southeast Toyota Finance and DataScan; and JM Lexus. Headquartered in Deerfield Beach, Fla., JM Family has major U.S. operations in Jacksonville and Margate, Fla.; Commerce and Alpharetta, Ga.; Mobile, Ala.; and St. Louis, Mo. Interact with JM Family at Facebook.com/JMFamilyEnterprises. View source version on businesswire.com: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20181026005333/en/ [ Back To TMCnet.com's Homepage ] [October 26, 2018] International privacy guardians call for stronger protection of student privacy as e-learning expands GATINEAU, QC, Oct. 26, 2018 /CNW/ - Privacy commissioners from around the world are urging educational authorities and developers of e-learning platforms to better protect the privacy of students, who increasingly use e-learning platforms in the classroom. Privacy Commissioner of Canada Daniel Therrien and his international counterparts have adopted a resolution on e-learning platforms in Brussels, Belgium at the 40th International Conference of Data Protection and Privacy Commissioners. "E-learning platforms are powerful tools that help teachers teach and students learn, but they come with the inherent risk that personal information could potentially be used inappropriately," Commissioner Therrien says. "We are recommending practical ways for everyone who uses e-learning platforms to ensure that personal information is used to teach children and not to market to them or for other commercial purposes." The use of e-learning platforms a package of online services that educators, students and parents can use to support what goes on in the classroom has opened the door to new, innovative ways of teaching, learning and evaluating students' progress. But privacy authorities say e-learning platforms may also pose threats to privacy arising from the collection, use, reuse, disclosure nd storage of the personal data of these individuals. The personal information that might be collected while using an e-learning platform could include a student's name, identification number, location data, biographical, health and contact details, behaviour patterns, disciplinary records, special needs, and other information. When the personal information of young people is misused, it can have significant and long-term social, economic and professional consequences. In 2017, the Office of the Privacy Commissioner of Canada worked alongside the Ontario Information and Privacy Commissioner's Office to examine privacy issues related to educational applications. That sweep of popular online applications used in Canadian classrooms found that many service providers were carefully considering the needs of younger users when it comes to privacy, but others were falling short. The new resolution, which was co-written by the Office of the Privacy Commissioner of Canada and its provincial counterparts in Alberta and Ontario, along with other international data protection authorities, is aimed at both educational authorities and e-learning platform manufacturers and providers. It calls on educational authorities, such as education ministries and school boards, to respect the rights of students, parents and educators to protect their personal data and privacy and to guarantee that data collected is used only for education purposes. The resolution calls upon data protection and privacy commissioners to raise awareness to the privacy risks and responsibilities of using e-learning platforms and to develop guidelines to assist educational authorities and platform providers in meeting their data protection and privacy obligations. The federal Privacy Commissioner's office also co-sponsored two other resolutions at the international conference on ethics and artificial intelligence as well as on digital citizens and consumer protection. About the Privacy Commissioner of Canada The Privacy Commissioner of Canada is mandated by Parliament to act as a guardian of privacy in Canada. The Commissioner enforces two laws for the protection of personal information: the Privacy Act, which applies to the federal public sector; and the Personal Information Protection and Electronic Documents Act, Canada's federal private sector privacy law. SOURCE Office of the Privacy Commissioner of Canada [ Back To TMCnet.com's Homepage ] [October 26, 2018] National Bank honoured with five distinctions at the latest Ipsos Financial Service Excellence Awards MONTREAL, Oct. 26, 2018 /CNW Telbec/ - National Bank was recently honoured for the excellence of its client experience in five categories of the latest Ipsos Financial Service Excellence Awards. Over the past few years, National Bank has been investing continuously in talent, information technology and its physical environments to offer its clients a simple, fast and efficient experience. The Bank is also renowned for the quality of its financial advice and digital solutions. With an ongoing digital transformation, the Bank has rolled out numerous innovations over the past months. Highlights In 2018, National Bank rolled out a new transaction site for Personal Banking clients, an updated version of nbc.ca, a contactless debit card, digital wallet services such as Apple Pay and Android Play, as well as new ABMs. With 95% of fund transfers and bill payments made via its digital platforms and ABMs, National Bank is an industry leader in terms of key transaction migration. Canadian SMEs can use National Bank Easy Pay, a mobile point-of-sale solution to accept payments in person using a compatible smartphone, with no external peripherals required. The Bank is the first Canadian financial institution to offer this innovative solution to its clients. Introduced in 1987, the Ipsos Customer Service Index (CSI) quarterly surveygenerates the winners of the annual Financial Service Excellence Awards. This year's Awards were based on the combined results of 49,732 completed surveys for the 2018 CSI program year ending with the September 2018 survey wave and based on a demographically and regionally representative sample of Canadians. The Awards are presented across 11 categories. List of National Bank's distinctions Financial Planning & Advice ATM Banking Excellence Mobile Banking Excellence Automated Telephone Banking Excellence Live Agent Telephone Banking Excellence Quote "National Bank's strong performance at this year's Awards recognizes our focus on customer experience," said Lucie Blanchet, Executive Vice-President, Personal Banking and Marketing at National Bank. "We thank our clients for placing their trust and confidence in our institution and congratulate our dedicated employees for their relentless commitment to offering our clients the best banking experience possible." About the National Bank of Canada With $258 billion in assets as at July 31, 2018, National Bank of Canada, together with its subsidiaries, forms one of Canada's leading integrated financial groups. It has more than 23,000 employees in knowledge-intensive positions and has been recognized numerous times as a top employer and for its commitment to diversity. Its securities are listed on the Toronto Stock Exchange (TSX: NA). Follow the Bank's activities at nbc.ca or via social media such as Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter. About Ipsos Ipsos is an independent market research company controlled and managed by research professionals. Founded in France in 1975, Ipsos has grown into a worldwide research group with a strong presence in all key markets. Ipsos ranks fourth in the global research industry. With offices in 89 countries, Ipsos delivers insightful expertise across five research specializations: brand, advertising and media; customer loyalty; marketing; public affairs research; and survey management. Ipsos researchers assess market potential and interpret market trends. They develop and build brands. They help clients build long-term relationships with their customers. They test advertising and study audience responses to various media and they measure public opinion around the globe. Ipsos has been listed on the Paris Stock Exchange since 1999 and generated global revenues of 1,780.5 million in 2017. SOURCE National Bank of Canada [ Back To TMCnet.com's Homepage ] [October 26, 2018] Entravision to Broadcast and Live Stream Florida's 9th District U.S. Congressional Debate on its Media Platforms Serving the Orlando and Tampa Bay Markets SANTA MONICA, Calif., Oct. 26, 2018 /PRNewswire/ -- WHAT: Entravision Communications Corporation (NYSE: EVC), a diversified global media and advertising technology company serving Latino consumers, will broadcast the U.S. Congressional debate between Democrat incumbent Darren Soto and Republican opponent Wayne Liebnitzky on Friday, October 26th at 6pm EST on its Univision Orlando and UniMas Orlando television affiliates serving the Orlando market. The debate will also be simulcast on NoticiasYa Orlando Facebook page, NoticiasYa Tampa Bay Facebook page, and NoticiasYa.com where the public will have the opportunity to pose their own questions. Entravision has partnered with Mi Familia Vota for the 2018 Florida District 9 debate. The two candidates are familiar with each other after Darren Soto (D-Fla) defeated Wayne Liebnitzky (R-Fla) in the 2016 election. Mr. Soto was elected to the Florida Legislature in 2007 where he served for almost 10 years before being elected to the U.S. House in 2016. As the incumbent, he wants to incentivize higher-paying jobs in Central Florida and expand low-income housing projects in the region. His opponent, Mr. Liebnitzky is a Navy veteran and runs a Mac Tools franchise in St. Cloud, FL. He wishes to prioritize health care and other social resources for disabled veterans and invest more money into the military. "It's exciting to have the opportunity to broadcast this district 9 debate, especially between two candidates who had met in the prior election. We have a strong local news presence in the Orlando and Tampa markets and this debate highlights our commitment to the local communities and the election process. The live television broadcast and streaming on our NoticiasYa platform allows us to connect with our audience across traditional and digital media, while directly engaging viewers through a live questions and answer process," said Luisa Collins, Entravision's Vice President of News Social Affairs and Wellness. The debate will be moderated by Univision Orlando news anchor, Paul Gamache. Mr. Gamache began his career in Orlando as a production assistant on Channel 6, WKMG in 1982. He later joined Univision Orlando, where for the past 20 years he has served in various roles and is currently a co-presenter of Univision Central Florida news at 6pm and host of the 11pm edition. Mr. Gamache is a recipient of many established awards including Emmy Awards, and also possesses extensive experience in the fields of sales, marketing, management, and promotions. WHEN: Friday, October 26, 2018, from 6:00-7:00pm EST WHERE: Univision Orlando Channel 43, UniMas Orlando Channel 26, NoticiasYa Orlando Facebook page, NoticiasYa Tampa Bay Facebook page, and NoticiasYa.com View original content:http://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/entravision-to-broadcast-and-live-stream-floridas-9th-district-us-congressional-debate-on-its-media-platforms-serving-the-orlando-and-tampa-bay-markets-300738749.html SOURCE Entravision [ Back To TMCnet.com's Homepage ] [October 26, 2018] Ledyard Financial Group Declares Quarterly Dividend Ledyard Financial Group (Ticker Symbol: LFGP) announced today a regular quarterly dividend of $0.18 payable November 30, 2018 to shareholders of record as of November 9, 2018. 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. 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 bank's Chief Financial Officer, Gregory D. Steverson. 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/20181026005507/en/ [ Back To TMCnet.com's Homepage ] [October 26, 2018] Xebec Announces Pricing and Filing of Final Prospectus for Previously Announced Public Offering of Units /NOT FOR DISTRIBUTION TO UNITED STATES NEWS WIRE SERVICES OR FOR DISSEMINATION TO THE UNITED STATES/ MONTREAL, Oct. 26, 2018 /CNW/ - Xebec Adsorption Inc. ("Xebec" or the "Company") (TSX.V:XBC) is pleased to announce that it has priced its previously announced public offering (the "Offering") of units of the Company (the "Units"). Pursuant to the Offering, the Company will issue a minimum of 6,666,666 Units and a maximum of 10,000,000 Units at a price of $0.75 per Unit for minimum gross proceeds to the Company of $5,000,000 and maximum gross proceeds to the Company of $7,500,000. Each Unit will consist of one common share of the Company (a "Common Share") and one-half of one common share purchase warrant (each whole common share purchase warrant, a "Warrant"). Each Warrant will entitle the holder thereof to purchase one Common Share, at a price of $1.05 per Common Share, for a period of 18 months from the Closing Date (as hereinafter defined) of the Offering. In addition, the Company is pleased to announce that it has filed its final short form prospectus with, and obtained receipts in respect thereof from, the securities regulatory authorities in each of the Provinces of Canada (the "Offering Jurisdictions") in connection with the Offering. The Offering is scheduled to close on or about November 7, 2018 (the "Closing Date"). The Company has entered into an agency agreement with a syndicate of agents led by Beacon Securities Limited and including Paradigm Capital Inc. (collectively, the "Agents"), pursuant to which the Agents will offer the Units for sale in the Offering Jurisdictions on a commercially reasonable best efforts basis. The Company has granted the Agents an over-allotment option to offer for sale up to an additional 15% of the aggregate number of Units, Common Shares, Warrants or any combination thereof sold under, and on the same terms as, the Offering, exercisable, in whole or in part, at any time up to 30 days following the Closing Date of the Offering to cover over-allotments, if any, and for maret stabilization purposes. The Company intends to use the net proceeds of the Offering to fund new project development initiatives in the renewable gas generation sector, potential merger and acquisition opportunities involving potential targets in industrial business segments, research and development, capital equipment and general corporate purposes. The Offering is subject to certain conditions, including, but not limited to, the receipt of all necessary regulatory approvals, including the approval of the TSX Venture Exchange. This press release shall not constitute an offer to sell or the solicitation of an offer to buy nor shall there be any sale of the securities in the United States or in any other jurisdiction in which such offer, solicitation or sale would be unlawful. The securities have not been registered under the U.S. Securities Act of 1933, as amended, and applicable U.S. state securities laws and may not be offered or sold in the United States absent registration or an applicable exemption from the registration requirements thereunder. About Xebec Xebec Adsorption Inc. is a global provider of gas generation, purification and filtration solutions for the industrial, energy and renewables marketplace. Its customers range from small to multinational corporations and governments looking to reduce their carbon footprints. Headquartered in Montreal (QC), Xebec designs, engineers and manufactures innovative and transformative products, and has more than 1,500 customers worldwide. With two manufacturing facilities in Montreal and Shanghai, as well as a sales and distribution network in North America, Europe, and Asia, Xebec trades on the TSX Venture Exchange under the symbol XBC. For additional information on the company, its products and services, visit Xebec at xebecinc.com. Cautionary Statement on Forward-Looking Information This news release contains forward-looking statements and forward-looking information (together, "forward-looking statements") within the meaning of applicable Canadian securities laws, respectively. Statements, other than statements of historical facts, may be forward-looking statements. Generally, forward-looking statements can be identified by the use of terminology such as "plans", "expects", "estimates", "intends", "anticipates", "believes" or variations of such words, or statements that certain actions, events or results "may", "could", "would", "might", "will be taken", "occur" or "be achieved", the negative of these terms and similar terminology although not all forward-looking statements contain these terms and phrases. Forward-looking statements involve risks, uncertainties and other factors that could cause actual results, performance, prospects and opportunities to differ materially from those expressed or implied by such forward-looking statements. These risks and uncertainties include, but are not limited to, the Company meeting all conditions for a timely closing of the Offering, including obtaining all required approvals, and the risk factors set out in Xebec's annual and/or quarterly management discussion and analysis and in its other public disclosure documents filed on SEDAR at www.sedar.com, as well as all assumptions regarding the foregoing. Although Xebec believes that the assumptions and factors used in preparing the forward-looking statements are reasonable, undue reliance should not be placed on these statements, which only apply as of the date of this news release, and no assurance can be given that such events will occur in the disclosed time frame or at all. Except where required by applicable law, Xebec disclaims any intention or obligation to update or revise any forward-looking statement, whether as a result of new information, future events or otherwise. 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 press release. SOURCE Xebec Adsorption Inc. [ Back To TMCnet.com's Homepage ] [October 26, 2018] A.M. Best Affirms Credit Ratings of Trisura Guarantee Insurance Company and Trisura Specialty Insurance Company A.M. Best has affirmed the Financial Strength Rating of A- (Excellent) and the Long-Term Issuer Credit Rating of "a-" of Trisura Guarantee Insurance Company (Trisura Guarantee) (Toronto, Ontario, Canada), and its sister company, Trisura Specialty Insurance Company (Trisura Specialty) (Oklahoma City, OK). The outlook of these Credit Ratings (ratings) remains stable. The ratings reflect Trisura Guarantee's balance sheet strength, which A.M. Best categorizes as very strong, as well as its adequate operating performance, neutral business profile and appropriate enterprise risk management (ERM). Trisura's balance sheet strength is supported by consistent growth in surplus and conservative reserving practices, but is offset partially by underwriting and investment leverage metrics. Operating performance remains favorable with solid operating performance further supported by consistent net investment income over the prior five-year period. Positive rating pressures may materialize if the company were to successfully expand its geographic and market presence while maintaining a trend of favorable underwriting performance in excess of peer averages. Negative rating pressures may materialize if the company were to incur significant losses in its capitalization, or experience a substantial reduction in the profitability of its core book of business, or encounter substantial adverse reserve development relative to peers and the industry averages. The ratings of Trisura Specialty reflect its balance sheet strength, which A.M. Best categorizes as strong, as well as its adequate operating performance, limited business profile and appropriate ERM. Trisura Specialty continues to expand its operations through 2018, meeting management's projections to date. Underwriting performance is appropriate at this tie, and A.M. Best expects it to improve as the company continues to scale operations. Positive rating pressures could occur if the company is able to demonstrate the implementation of its strategy through a trend of consistent and favorable operating results in excess of peer performance. Negative rating pressures could occur if the company is unable to leverage existing relationships to obtain favorable business, or is unable to maintain quality reinsurance partners, or the company demonstrates an inability to properly manage the degree of risk on its books resulting in adverse performance. Both ratings also consider the benefits received from the publicly traded ultimate parent, Trisura Group Ltd. [TSX: TSU]. Trisura Group was formed in June 2017 after spinning off from its prior parent, Brookfield Asset Management Inc., and is now a pure insurance operation. Trisura Specialty receives rating enhancement from the parent's explicit support for the smaller operating entity. This press release relates to Credit Ratings that have been published on A.M. Best's website. For all rating information relating to the release and pertinent disclosures, including details of the office responsible for issuing each of the individual ratings referenced in this release, please see A.M. Best's Recent Rating Activity web page. For additional information regarding the use and limitations of Credit Rating opinions, please view Understanding Best's Credit Ratings. For information on the proper media use of Best's Credit Ratings and A.M. Best press releases, please view Guide for Media - Proper Use of Best's Credit Ratings and A.M. Best Rating Action Press Releases. A.M. Best is a global rating agency and information provider with a unique focus on the insurance industry. Visit www.ambest.com for more information. Copyright 2018 by A.M. Best Rating Services, Inc. and/or its affiliates. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED. View source version on businesswire.com: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20181026005527/en/ [ Back To TMCnet.com's Homepage ] [October 26, 2018] Katipult Announces Grant of Restricted Share Units to Independent Directors VANCOUVER, Oct. 26, 2018 /CNW/ - Katipult Technology Corp. (TSXV:FUND - Frankfurt: K10) ("Katipult" or the "Company") announces that it has granted restricted share units (the "RSUs") under the Company's Restricted Share Unit Plan (the "Plan") to each of its five independent directors (the "RSU Recipients"). In aggregate, 443,557 RSUs have been granted. These grants represent compensation to the RSU Recipients for their service on the board of directors of the Company and as an incentive mechanism to foster the interest of such persons in the success of the Company. None of the RSU Recipients currently receive any other form of compensation from the Company for their service as independent directors, wheher in cash or by way of equity stock options. Each RSU will represent the right to receive one common share of the Company upon vesting. All of the RSUs will vest upon the date the Company holds its 2019 annual general meeting of shareholders, subject to the terms and conditions set forth in the Plan. About Katipult Katipult ( www.katipult.com ) is a financial technology company offering proprietary, cloud-based software infrastructure on a white label basis that allows client firms to design, set up, and operate their own branded investment platform across multiple distribution channels - including web, mobile, and social media. Businesses deploying the Katipult platform are operating in over 20 regulatory environments to grow investor networks, efficiently manage investors, and streamline deal-flow administration in the areas of equities, debt and real estate. ON BEHALF OF THE BOARD OF DIRECTORS Marcus Shapiro, Chairman Neither the TSX Venture Exchange nor its Regulation Services Provider (as that term is defined in the policies of the TSX Venture Exchange) accepts responsibility for the adequacy or accuracy of this release. SOURCE Katipult Technology Corp. [ Back To TMCnet.com's Homepage ] [October 26, 2018] Williams-Sonoma, Inc. Announces Appointment of Anne Mulcahy to Board of Directors Williams-Sonoma, Inc. (NYSE: WSM) announced today that Anne Mulcahy has been appointed to its Board of Directors. "We are delighted that Anne has joined our Board," said Adrian Bellamy, Chairman of the Board of Directors of Williams-Sonoma, Inc. "We look forward to adding Anne's perspective as a widely respected executive and director to our Board discussions." Laura Alber, President and Chief Executive Officer, joined Bellamy in welcoming Mulcahy to the Board. "We are thrilled to announce the addition of Anne to our Board," she said. "We believe her wealth of executive experience in technology and services, coupled with her retail and consumer product experience, will add great value to our Board." Mulcahy is a 30-year veteran of Xerox Corporation, where she served as CEO from 2001 to 2009 and as Chairman from 2002 to 2010. She began her Xerox career as a field representative and assumed increasingly responsible sales and senior management positions, eventually becomng Chief Staff Officer in 1997 and corporate Senior Vice President in 1998. As Chairman and CEO, Mulcahy led Xerox through a massive transformation, reinventing it into an innovative technology and services company. Mulcahy has served as a director of Johnson & Johnson since 2009, and as its lead independent director since 2012. She also currently serves as a director of Graham Holdings Company and of LPL Financial Holdings Inc., and serves on the Board of Trustees for Save the Children. Previously, Mulcahy served as a director of Target (News - Alert) Corporation from 1997 through 2017. ABOUT WILLIAMS-SONOMA, INC. Williams-Sonoma, Inc. is a specialty retailer of high-quality products for the home. These products, representing distinct merchandise strategies - Williams Sonoma, Pottery Barn, Pottery Barn Kids, West Elm, PBteen, Williams Sonoma Home, Rejuvenation, and Mark and Graham - are marketed through e-commerce websites, direct-mail catalogs and retail stores. These brands are also part of The Key Rewards, our free-to-join loyalty program that offers members exclusive benefits across the Williams-Sonoma family of brands. We operate in the U.S., Puerto Rico, Canada, Australia and the United Kingdom, offer international shipping to customers worldwide, and have unaffiliated franchisees that operate stores in the Middle East, the Philippines, Mexico and South Korea, as well as e-commerce websites in certain locations. In 2017, we acquired Outward, Inc., a 3-D imaging and augmented reality platform for the home furnishings and decor industry. View source version on businesswire.com: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20181026005010/en/ [ Back To TMCnet.com's Homepage ] CURRENT SHAREHOLDERS: Zamansky LLC Investigates AmerisourceBergen (ABC) for Potential Breaches of Fiduciary Duties Zamansky LLC announces that it is investigating AmerisourceBergen Corporation (NYSE:ABC) ("AmerisourceBergen" or the "Company") for potential breaches of fiduciary duties by its senior officers and board of directors. If you are a shareholder of AmerisourceBergen who still holds your shares, please contact our firm for information. On October 1, 2018, the Company announced that it will pay $625 million to resolve civil fraud charges over its sales of refilled syringes to cancer patients, double-billing and providing kick-backs to doctors. The Company previously settled criminal charges, paying $260 million in fines. The Company's former Chief Operating Officer stands to receive a portion of a whistleblower payment, according to public reports. According to Jake Zamansky, investment fraud attorney, these settlements and whistleblower allegations raise concerns that th Company's officers and directors breached their fiduciary duties owed to the Company and its shareholders. The law firm is investigating a potential shareholder derivative action. What AmerisourceBergen Shareholders Can Do If you are a current long-term shareholder of AmerisourceBergen who still holds your stock, please contact us to review or discuss your legal rights. You may, without obligation or cost to you, email jake@zamansky.com or call the law firm at (212) 742-1414. About Zamansky LLC Zamansky LLC is a leading investment fraud law firm with experience handling securities, hedge fund, ERISA and other shareholder class action and derivative litigation. We are investment fraud attorneys who represent both individual and institutional investors. Our practice is nationally recognized for our ability to aggressively prosecute cases and recover investment losses. To learn more about Zamansky LLC, please visit our website, http://www.zamansky.com. View source version on businesswire.com: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20181026005528/en/ [October 26, 2018] DiDi Supports Transportation Research Board's 2019 Transportation Forecasting Competition with Ride-Hailing Datasets Didi Chuxing, the world's leading mobile transportation platform, is sponsoring the 2019 Transportation Forecasting Competition (TRANSFOR 2019) organized by ABJ70 Artificial Intelligence and Advanced Computing Applications, the Transportation Research Board (TRB) under the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine of the United States. This press release features multimedia. View the full release here: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20181026005541/en/ DiDi GAIA Open Data Initiative (Graphic: Business Wire) TRANSFOR 2019, supporte by the IEEE (News - Alert) ITSS Technical Activities Sub-Committee "Smart Cities and Smart Mobility", invites participants to submit predictions for short term traffic, utilizing the wealth of ride-hailing datasets from select Chinese cities made available through DiDi's Gaia Open Data Initiative and identify possible solutions to deepen the current understanding of advanced computing, data preprocessing and traffic dynamics. Three finalist teams will present and compete for the grand prize at the 2019 TRB Annual Meeting, which will be held in New York in January 2019. Launched in October 2017, DiDi's GAIA Open Data Initiative currently offers a 50GB aggregated and desensitized dataset containing start points, end points and routing information from trips on DiDi Express and DiDi Premier, two of the company's core personal mobility services. Researchers from Asia, North America, Australia, New Zealand and Latin America have been applying AI tools to the dataset to discover patterns of urban traffic dynamics, predict traffic, and explore smart transportation solutions. About Didi Chuxing DiDi is the world's leading mobile transportation platform. The company offers a full range of app-based transportation options for 550 million users, including Taxi, Express, Premier, Luxe, Bus, Designated Driving, Enterprise Solutions, Bike Sharing, E-bike Sharing, Car Sharing and food delivery. Daily rides have reached 30 million, allowing over 31 million drivers on the DiDi platform to find flexible work and income opportunities. DiDi is committed to collaborating with cities, the taxi industry and communities to solve the world's transportation, environmental, and employment challenges with smart transportation innovations. The company is working with a growing alliance of car industry players to build out an auto-solution and operation platform. Globally, DiDi is in a partnership network with Grab, Lyft, Ola, Uber, 99, Taxify, and Careem, reaching over 80% of the world's population and covering more than 1,000 cities. In 2018, DiDi launched its own-branded mobility services in Mexico and Australia, and a joint venture with Soft Bank Corp. to offer taxi-hailing service in Japan. By continuously improving the user experience and creating social value, DiDi strives to build an open, efficient, and sustainable transportation ecosystem. For more information, please visit: www.didiglobal.com. View source version on businesswire.com: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20181026005541/en/ [ Back To TMCnet.com's Homepage ] [October 26, 2018] Federal, provincial, territorial ministers agree to the principles of a Canadian broadband strategy that will improve access to high speed internet for all Canadians. Better access to high speed internet will improve competitiveness and address digital divide VANCOUVER, Oct. 26, 2018 /CNW/ - Today, federal, provincial and territorial ministers for innovation and economic development agreed to making broadband a priority and to develop a long-term strategy to improve access to high-speed Internet services for all Canadians. The commitment to a strategy is the latest outcome of this intergovernmental table focused on driving growth and job creation through innovation. Ministers recognize that access to high-speed Internet service is critical for businesses to grow and compete and for all Canadians to fully access the goods and services available in a digital economy. As outlined in a statement released today, Ministers agreed to work towards universal access to high-speed Internet and improve access to the latest mobile wireless services along major roads and where Canadians live and work. High speed connectivity is critical to the prosperity and wellbeing of Canadians particularly with the next-generation of high-quality networks that will especially enable smart cities, connected cars and e-health for Canadians. At the meeting, ministers were also briefed on the report from Canada's Economic Strategy Tables. This report identifies opportunities to create the conditions for strong, long-term competitiveness that will secure Canadians' quality of life. Ministers agreed to consider the advice of the tables in advancing their two-year work plan in ways that will help companies to scale up and to adopt new technologies. Ministers also discussed the promotion of Indigenous economic development through partnerships among Indigenous businesses, non-Indigenous businesses and communities. Quotes "Access to reliable and quality high-speed Internet is no longer a luxury. As a country, we have made incredible advances, building mobile networks that are among the fastest in the world and bringing broadband Internet to rural and remote communities across Canada. Yet there is more to do. The commitment to a strategy we made today reflects the ambition we all share to get all Canadians online and participating in the digital economy." -- The Honourable Navdeep Bains, Minister of Innovation, Science and Economic Development, Government of Canada "We want to establish Canada and British Columbia as a preferred lcation for new and emerging technologies and ensure the benefits of tech and innovation are felt across the province. Many tech companies are small businesses and a reliable Internet connection keeps them at the leading edge of global technological advances. We look forward to collaborating with jurisdictions across Canada to foster job creation and economic development through innovation so Canada stays competitive, and continues to be a place where people want to live and do business." British Columbia Quick facts Ministers committed to work towards universal access to benchmark Internet speeds of 50 Megabits per second download and 10 Megabits per second upload. In 2016, these speeds were available to 41% of Canadians in rural and remote areas. Mobile wireless services based on 4G Long Term Evolution technology were available to 98.5% of homes, but there are more substantial gaps along unpopulated areas of major roads. The number of connected devices per Canadian is expected to increase from 6 in 2016 to 11 by 2021. 70% of teachers assign homework requiring Internet access; students with home Internet access have a 7% higher rate of graduation compared to those without. In December 2016 , CRTC declared broadband a basic telecom service for all Canadians. , CRTC declared broadband a basic telecom service for all Canadians. The ministers agreed to two-year work plan when they last met, on October 13, 2017 , in Vancouver . The work plan was developed to strengthen Canada's competitive advantages and accelerate economic growth, create jobs and increase shared prosperity. Statement by Ministers for Innovation and Economic Development on Connectivity Ensuring universal access to high-speed Internet and mobile wireless networks is essential for long-term economic growth, innovation, and social progress for all Canadians across the country, and fundamental to success in the modern digital world. Whether its finding information online, selling goods and services to domestic and international markets, or providing e-health or online education services, Canadian consumers, businesses, and public institutions require broadband Internet connectivity to participate fully in the digital economy. To that end, we agree to build on existing collaboration and work together to enhance connectivity for all Canadians, along with private sector partners, municipalities, public institutions, Indigenous communities, and non-profit organizations to maximize the impact of our actions. As we move forward and engage in this work, we will be guided by the following connectivity principles: Access Access to reliable, high quality and affordable services are necessary for Canada's success in a digital world, to allow all Canadian businesses, households, and public institutions to realize the economic and social benefits of connectivity through the use of advanced technologies and applications success in a digital world, to allow all Canadian businesses, households, and public institutions to realize the economic and social benefits of connectivity through the use of advanced technologies and applications Work towards establishing universal access of at least 50 Mbps download / 10 Mbps upload taking into context scalability and longer-term growth. Businesses should have access to networks that support their ability to utilize technology, compete, and contribute to the economy. Mobile connectivity on major highways and roads is an important need, including for safety. Collaboration Collaboration is essential to address the scope of the challenge and maximize the effect of our actions. Shared objectives and priorities will lead to better outcomes. Gathering, having access to, and sharing reliable data can significantly improve analysis and deployment strategies, as well as enable public reporting on progress. Recognize the unique circumstances of Indigenous communities, especially in remote and isolated locations. Effective Investments Targeting market failures allows governments to direct support to where it is needed most. Coordination of regulatory and spending levers helps ensure effective implementation. Open access requirements can promote competition, affordability, and greater choice and should therefore be considered. Addressing deployment barriers can significantly reduce constructions costs of digital infrastructure. SOURCE Innovation, Science and Economic Development Canada [ Back To TMCnet.com's Homepage ] Apple does not take kindly to law-enforcement agencies circumventing its device protections. And now the company may have shut down at least one workaround. (Image credit: Tom's Guide) Apple's latest mobile operating system, iOS 12, reportedly blocks the GrayKey iPhone-unlocking boxes used by many police departments, Forbes is reporting, citing "sources familiar" with GrayKey technology. If this is true, the defeat of GrayKey removes a useful tool from ordinary police agencies' digital-forensics arsenal, and may slow down or kill many ongoing investigations. (The National Security Agencies and other intelligence agencies presumably have other ways of getting into iPhones.) MORE: iOS 12's Security Features: The Good and the Bad In March, Forbes discovered that an American company named Grayshift had devised a way to brute-force iOS lockscreen passcodes with a relatively inexpensive device called GrayKey, which is a small box with two Lightning cable poking out. Grayshift sells GrayKey boxes to law-enforcement agencies in North America and the U.K. to aid them in their investigations. A $15,000 GrayKey is good for up to 300 iPhone unlocks; for $30,000, you get unlimited unlocks. That may seem expensive, but it's a lot cheaper and easier than competing technology offered by Israeli firm Cellebrite, which charges $5,000 for a single iPhone unlock and generally requires cops to send the iPhone to a Cellebrite facility. With GrayKey, police can run the unlocking procedure themselves. (Image credit: A GrayKey iPhone-unlocking device. Credit: Malwarebytes) According to the Forbes report, GrayKey can still extract "partial" information, such unencrypted information and metadata, from iPhones and iPads running iOS 12. Previously, GrayKey was able to extract both unencrypted and encrypted data from the devices by somehow overcoming Apple's rate limitations on brute-force screen-passcode guesses. A four-digit PIN might take a couple of hours to "brute force"; a six-digit PIN, which Apple now makes mandatory, could take up to three days. Long alphanumeric passcodes would take much longer. Ordinarily, typing in an iPhone lockscreen passcode incorrectly more than three or four times in succession requires a brief "cooling off" period before you can try again. The more incorrect guesses you make, the longer the "time out" becomes. It's not clear how Grayshift figured out how to bypass Apple's incorrect-guess rate limitations, or whether Cellebrite uses similar methods. Nor is it clear, despite some attempts by Grayshift and others, to figure out how Apple defeated GrayKey. Security expert Vladimir Katalov, who heads up Russian forensic security company Elcomsoft, told Forbes that he has "no idea" what Apple did to overcome the GrayKey workaround. He suggested Apple might have improved the operating system's kernel or strengthened its configuration profiles, which give users the ability to create customized app experiences. Katalov's professed ignorance is significant because Elcomsoft discovered back in May that Apple was experimenting with something called "USB Restricted Mode." That feature, which first showed up in a beta version of iOS 11.4.1 and now is part of iOS 12, disables the data-transfer capabilities of an iPhone's Lightning connector if the phone stays locked for more than an hour. Somehow, Katalov doesn't think USB Restricted Mode is what's stymied GrayKey, even though that's exactly what the new feature seems to have been designed to do. Apple has been one of the most vocal supporters of device encryption and privacy in the technology industry. Despite the insistence from law-enforcement officials and politicians that access to digital devices -- with a search warrant -- is essential to letting police and other investigators do their jobs, Apple continues to improve device security. Intel posted the best quarter in its 50-year history even as it grapples with an ongoing shortage of 14nm manufacturing capacity that has led to rising prices and shortages on some low-end processors. Intel's interim CEO Bob Swan also said during the company's earnings call that the shortage had been limited in scope during the third quarter, which is surprising given the existing challenges, but the company expects the shortage to become more severe during the tail end of the year. That means we could see more widespread shortages and higher pricing during the holiday season. The company also reiterated that its 10nm process is on track for release by the 2019 holiday season. Intel currently has an open CEO position after the departure of Brian Krzanich. Intel's interim CEO Bob Swan helmed the call. Intel's Dr. Murthy Renduchintala, a clear front-runner for the position, was also present. Navin Shenoy, the other clear candidate that has been on prior earnings calls, did not attend this call due to the birth of his child. Intel did not announce a new CEO during the briefing. In either case, Intel is selling all the silicon it can spin out of its fabs. That led to a record $19.2B in revenue, a 19% year-over-year improvement, and an improved forecast of $71.2 billion for full-year revenue, a $6.2B increase compared to the forecast at the beginning of the year. Intel also posted a stellar 65.9% gross margin figure for Q318. Image 1 of 4 Image 2 of 4 Image 3 of 4 Image 4 of 4 Intel is firing on all cylinders: every one of its business units posted record revenue. The Client Computing Group (CCG), the arm that produces desktop processors, experienced a particularly impressive uptick, especially considering the recent debut of AMD's second-gen Ryzen processors. That group posted a 16% year-over-year increase in revenue to $10.2B, setting yet another record. That explosive growth comes against the backdrop of the first growth in the PC market it seven years, but the market only expanded by one to two percent. That makes the 16% growth even more impressive. We usually expect this type of uptick after a wave of new processors come to market, but Intel's 9th Gen processors, which it released last week, aren't included in the figures. 14nm Production Constraints Intel is enjoying unusually strong demand that it claims has catalyzed the worsening shortages of 14nm processors, but the worst of the shortage is yet to come. Swan underlined the forthcoming challenges, stating (via Seeking Alpha), I would say in Q3, largely a function of customer collaboration in our fabs, I don't think we were too terribly constrained on the PC side, to be honest with you. I think as we're going into Q4 is where I think the constraints are impacting us a little bit more. The increased demand caught the company off guard: [...]we were caught off guard a little bit this year by explosive growth well ahead of what our expectations were back in the beginning of the year, and that growth came from all different segments of the business. It put us in the unfortunate situation of constraining some of the demand signals that we were seeing from the market and our customer base. Intel's answer? Intel has boosted its CapEx to a record $15.5B this year, a $1.5B increase than expected at the beginning of the year. Intel also says that it has begun to migrate 10nm equipment over to the 14nm production lines to boost production. That's a wise move, as some industry analysts contend that roughly 95% of fab tooling is interchangeable between the 14nm and 10nm nodes. Renduchintala stated the company is on track for 10nm deployment in 2019, citing improving yields on-par with the company's learning curve with the 14nm process, saying "[...]I feel more confident about that at this call than I did on the call a quarter ago." The company did not set an expected delivery date for the 7nm process but assured analysts the node is under development. Data Center Intel's DCG (Data Center Group) posted impressive growth of $6.1B on the quarter, a 26% improvement sequentially. That helps brush off some of the lingering concerns that led to a stock price slump earlier this year. It also implies that AMD's EPYC isn't having a profound impact, though the second-gen EPYC 7nm chips, which debut later this year, may have more of an impact. Intel is also preparing for its Cascade Lake refresh. Micron made waves last week when it announced that it planned to buy out Intel's stake in their joint IMFT (Intel Micron Flash Technologies) venture. Micron will exercise the option on January 1, 2019, then close the deal within the year. This could have a profound impact on Intel, which has integrated the speedy new memory into its client and enterprise storage, and now processor (via Optane DIMMs), product stacks. Swan said that Intel's contract with Micron guarantees it access to ample supply until 2020, thus providing the company enough time to bring up its own production lines. Intel also owns the IP for Optane, making this is the logical long-term solution. Image 1 of 8 Image 2 of 8 Image 3 of 8 Image 4 of 8 Image 5 of 8 Image 6 of 8 Image 7 of 8 Image 8 of 8 Intel's storage-fabbing NSG (Non-Volatile Solutions Group) business unit also turned a profit for the first time this year, but margins aren't as impressive as Intel reaps on the logic side of its business. Intel is also preparing its "world-class supply chain" for the impact of heightened trade tensions and tariffs with China. Swan conceded that China is both a big customer and an integral part of the company's supply chain, but indicated the company is adjusting its supply chain to circumvent the challenges. Slice Of Life Across The Bridge Police: 1 injured in overnight stabbing in the Northland KANSAS CITY (KCTV) -- Police say one person was stabbed at a Northland apartment complex overnight. The incident happened at the Englewood Apartments in 5400 block of Northwest Waukomis Drive. Police said the victim was taken to an area hospital with non-life-threatening injuries. Officers were focusing their investigation inside a single building at the complex. Rock Chalk Medical Drmaa KU Health System staff talk about the impact treating victims of gun violence can have KANSAS CITY, Mo. - The University of Kansas Health System has the only nationally-verified level one trauma unit in the Kansas City area. That comes with a staff well-trained to handle anything that comes through their doors, including gunshot wounds. Suffer The Children Amid Crime Spree Police take 3 kids in 'deplorable conditions' from KCK home KANSAS CITY, KS (KCTV) -- Police took three children into protective custody overnight after finding them in a Kansas City, Kansas, home that was in "deplorable conditions." The department reports that officers responded to a welfare call after a 4-year-old boy went to a neighbor's home looking for his mother. Fear Local Highway Gunmen Man attempts to rob Phillips 66 in Clay County | The Kansas City Star A man attempted to rob a Phillips 66 gas station at 3600 N Randolph Rd near the intersection of I-435 and Missouri Hwy 210 in Randolph, Mo. Kansas City Survivor Story Shon Pernice speaks out from prison about unspeakable crime that tore his family apart KANSAS CITY, MO (KCTV) -- It's been nearly 10 years since Renee Pernice went missing. For years, the Northland woman's family suffered not knowing where she was or what had happened to her. Her husband, Shon Pernice, lied about it for the better part of three years before finally admitting he killed her during an argument. In this second Spring we remind our blog community thatmight be best movie in the history of modern cinema which might offer some insights into the current crime spree Kansas City endures. Checkit:Developing . . . KANSAS CITY, Mo. - A Riverside, Missouri business was evacuated Thursday after a former employee claimed he had an explosive device in his car. Riverside police arrested a former employee of Velociti, a technology supply company. Officials said something was found in the subject's vehicle that led them to call Kansas City, Missouri police, the ATF and the FBI. Show-Me Contentious Exchange McCaskill, Hawley trade harsh shots in final Missouri debate KANSAS CITY, Mo. - Democratic Sen. Claire McCaskill and Republican Josh Hawley clashed on nearly every issue in their final debate Thursday, a mostly negative affair which saw both candidates hammer on their favored attack lines again and again. Black Vote To The Rescue Black leaders endorse McCaskill Black voters in St. Louis who listen to urban radio are being subjected to a barrage of misinformation about the U.S. Senate race on November 6, but black leaders are clear in their support of incumbent U.S. Senator Claire McCaskill (D-Missouri). Democratic Party Shade Claire McCaskill is too clever by half Good news, folks. Sen. Claire McCaskill (D-Mo.) would like you to know that she is "not one of those crazy Democrats." You know the ones she means. The flanneled avocado-huffing Chapo Traphouse-listening pajama boys who are only two or three Senate seats away from storming the Bastille and lopping off the heads of Wall Street bankers on Madison Avenue, commie lunatics like Tim Kaine and Chuck Schumer. Something to consider . . .AG Josh Hawley is either very smart or incredibly lazy during the closing days of this campaign . . .Today's headline sampling reveals this contest is really Prez Trump Vs. Sen. McCaskill with the "golden boy" taking a backseat in the discussion. While Sen. Claire fans outnumber her detractors . . . This contest hinges on Prez Trump's ability to win a proxy war by way of a few tweets . . . We'll see.For tonight, the incumbent is the focus of most media attention.Developing . . . The SEMA Show will be the stage where well witness the unveiling of a new high-performance crate engine from Mopar. But we dont really know all that much about the new unit, although the video posted by Mopar to build the hype is metaphorically referring to an engine of biblical proportions. Mopar will release something big on October 30th, at least thats what they say. We think theyre talking about the return of the famed 7.0-liter Hemi 426 a model that was nicknamed The Elephant due to its size and power output. Is There a Hellcat-Smashing Hemi Engine Incoming? Mopar Performance is teasing us these days with an intriguing 32-second video thats meant to preview their next crate engine that will be shown off at the SEMA Show in just five days. The video doesnt spare a word about the engines figures but fans and journalists alike are thinking Mopar wants to bring back the 7.0-liter Elephant engine from the 60s and the 70s. The video itself shows a road surface with two flaming paw marks left behind. Then you can hear some loud banging noises and, out of nowhere, the two paw marks are crushed by huge round-shaped footprints which resemble those of an elephant. Everything is then covered by a white muscle car, which could be a Charger or even a Road Runner, which fills much of the screen and proceeds to do a loud and smoky burnout. The video ends with the message Something Big Is Coming. The video and the fact that Mopar will reveal it all on October 30th at 4:26 PM local time makes it fairly reasonable for us to think that whats cooking is a new 7.0-liter crate engine like the famous, 426 cubic-inch Elephant. We already know that FCA gave the green light to the Dodge Ram Rebel TRX and that it will be powered by a 7.0-liter V-8. It aims to hunt down Fords F-150 Raptor but it wont be around until 2022. That 7.0-liter engine could be this elephantine one. To put it into a bit of a historical context, the original 426 Hemi was known for its size, its weight and, last but not least, its power. Think about it, this new engine will be heftier than the 6.2-liter supercharged unit that fits under the hood of the Hellcat, and that engine will also be available in the Ram Rebel TRX. The original Hemi 426 was created with racing in mind. In 1964, at the Daytona 500 when this engine had its racing debut, Mopar dominated, finishing 1st, 2nd, 3rd and 4th. Nascar was spiked and promptly introduced a rule that imposed manufacturers to produce several thousand of the engines used on their stock cars and sell them to customers. The 426 Hemi featured the raised engine block design of the updated B-series engines and obviously came with Hemi heads. In 1994, talking to Mopar Magazine, Tom Hoover, who co-engineered the 426 alongside Don Moore, said that "We knew with the power level we could expect, we could provide performance and win races for minimum expenditure. You could continue to hone and evolve the Wedge forward, but the results would be limited. The cost-effective way to make a real impression at Daytona was to take advantage of the A311 Indy program background, and adapt it to the race B engine." While it continued to be used in Nascar, and other forms of motorsport throughout the 60s, Chrysler made the engine available for B-body, road-going models from 1966 onwards. It developed 425-horsepower at 5,000 rpm and 490 pound-feet of torque at 4,000 rpm with a pair of four-barrel Carter AFB carburetors. It had hemispherical combustion chambers because "with this, we can bring the spark plug into the center of the chamber, which is an excellent position for the spark plug [and allows] excellent breathing of the air past the valve seat. This combination of the excellent breathing, of the inlet and the exhaust makes for a very high volumetric efficiency of the engine," according to Willem Weertman, Chrysler Chief Engineer at the time. The engine received some updates during its lifetime but, due to high costs, stringent emission laws, and insurance-related issues, it was no longer available by 1972. However, the popularity of the 832-pound engine has kept on growing over the years and it is now very sought after. Indeed, only 155 Cudas and Darts were equipped with the 7.0-liter engine in 1968. In total, less than 11,000 Elephant engines were ever made. Until October 30th, all we can do is wait to see what cars will be able to fit the new super-size engine - and whether or not it will be able to fill the elephant-sized shoes of the original. Further reading Read our full review on the 1970-1971 Plymouth Hemi Cuda. Read our full review on the 1970 Plymouth Superbird. Read our full review on the 1969 Dodge Charger Daytona Hemi. Source: The Drive Opening the inaugural South Africa Investment Conference, President Cyril Ramaphosa has called on potential investors to invest in the country for more bang for their buck. We invite you to invest in our mines and factories, farms and game parks, call centres and technology hubs, refineries and solar farms. We invite you to invest in our people, to harness their energy and unleash their latent capabilities, Ramaphosa said on Friday. The President was addressing the 1 050 delegates made up of heavyweights from government, business leaders and captains of industry. The three-day conference forms part of governments plan to raise at least $100 billion in investment over the next five years in a bid to boost the countrys economy. The President said the country has worked to attain an environment favourable to investment. We have implemented policies to promote black economic empowerment to provide black people, women and people with disabilities with assets and opportunities they need to participate more meaningfully in economic activity. It is a good thing because by so doing, [we] are getting all South Africans to participate in ensuring that this vehicle that is SA Inc. operates on all eight cylinders. The Investment Conference builds on the recent Presidential Job Summit, where labour, business, government and the community constituency adopted a ground breaking pdf Framework Agreement (946 KB) to prevent further job losses, create jobs and support companies in distress. The conference takes place under the theme Accelerating Growth by Building Partnerships. In line with the theme, President Ramaphosa stressed that the bold target of $100 billion can only be achieved if everyone puts their shoulder to the wheel. We have emphasised the need for more South African companies to lead the investment charge, demonstrating that they have confidence in this economy and in its ability to deliver decent and reliable returns, said the President. To ensure ease of investment, Ramaphosa outlined governments work in addressing stumbling blocks that impede investment. Among them is Invest SA, a one-stop shop that provides information, facilitation and aftercare for businesses and investors. Through this initiative, government aims to fast track investment projects and reduce red tape. Rallying the potential investors, President Ramaphosa noted the R1 billion Gibela passenger train manufacturing factory which was opened on Thursday. The investment is a collaboration between Alstom from France and a local consortium made up of black businesses and the community. The President hailed the investment as a clear demonstration of the plethora of opportunities available to the investors. Cementing the efforts of government to boost the economy, President Ramaphosa reminded delegates of the recently-launched stimulus package. The package announced in September includes initiatives around growth-enhancing economic reforms, the reprioritisation of public spending to stimulate and support job creation, the establishment of an infrastructure fund, key interventions in education and health, and investment in social infrastructure in municipalities. We are here to declare that we are determined to build a country that is driven by enterprise and innovation, to develop an economy that is diverse and resilient and prosperous, and to create companies that achieve sustained returns not only for their shareholders, but also for the workers that drive them and the communities that support them, said President Ramaphosa. In closing his welcome address, President Ramaphosa urged delegates to use the conference to engage, network and source out opportunities to invest in South Africa. Opening Address by President Cyril Ramaphosa at the South Africa Investment Conference I am pleased to welcome you all to this inaugural investment conference. We are pleased and humbled that you have responded to the call by the government and the people of South Africa to participate in this conference and thus be part of a new dawn in our country. As representatives of the domestic and international investment community, as representatives of business organisations and international financial institutions, by your presence here, you have chosen to walk with us along the path of growth, employment and shared prosperity. Like us, you believe that South Africa is a land of opportunity a land where the soil is rich and the oceans teem with life, where the beautiful vistas of our country are spectacular and its diverse people are vibrant and resilient. For you know that its people are its great wealth. Like us, you believe that there is vast potential in South Africa; and that it has enormous potential that has been constrained for decades by narrow prejudice and debilitating human neglect. Together with us, you celebrated the miracle of our peaceful transition to democracy. You were there when we began to rebuild our economy and fundamentally change the fortunes of our people. You witnessed both our achievements and our missteps. You supported us and wanted us to succeed as you wished us well. And when we stumbled, you looked on with concern and disillusionment when it seemed that we may squander the remarkable inheritance of Nelson Rolihlahla Mandela. Yet, throughout these difficulties, you have retained an abiding interest as both domestic and international business in the fortunes of this country. We know that, like the people of South Africa, you have harboured a profound hope that we will prevail. This inaugural South Africa Investment Conference is therefore an expression of a shared hope and a renewed confidence. It is a bold and unequivocal statement that we are determined to put behind us the period of uncertainty and discord and embrace a future of cooperation and partnership. We are here to declare that we are determined to build a country that is driven by enterprise and innovation, to develop an economy that is diverse and resilient and prosperous, and to create companies that achieve sustained returns not only for their shareholders, but also for the workers that drive them and the communities that support them. We are country that is rich in ways that we often do not appreciate. There are few places in the world that have the abundance of minerals that lie beneath the ground on which we now stand, that have the soil to sustain such a diversity of plants, crops, livestock and game, where the sun shines nearly all year around and where the golden beaches stretch on forever. We have an incredible natural inheritance, whose economic and social value we have not yet even begun to effectively explore. Our political and social inheritance, by contrast, is deeply contradictory. Through decades of deliberate underdevelopment, the majority of South Africans were dispossessed of their land, assets and livelihoods, and denied the education and the skills that make meaningful participation in the economic life of the country possible. The devastating effects of this manifest injustice still define our society and severely constrain our economic development. The continued exclusion of millions of South Africans particularly as it relates to skills and to ownership of assets is the single greatest impediment to the growth of our economy and the development of our society. It explains the persistence of poverty, unemployment and inequality nearly 25 years into our democracy. It is for this reason that we have placed economic growth and job creation at the centre of our national agenda. It is for this reason too that we have prioritised the education of our children and the skilling of our workforce, and it is for this reason that we are accelerating the provision of land and other assets to the poor and marginalised. And it is for this reason that in April this year we launched an ambitious and, in the history of our country, unprecedented, drive to raise at least $100 billion in new investment over five years. We did so understanding that no meaningful growth and no significant job creation would be possible without a massive surge in productive investment in the economy. Over the last half year, as we have prepared for this Investment Conference, our four Presidential investment envoys Phumzile Langeni, Jacko Maree, Mcebisi Jonas and Trevor Manuel have travelled across the country and around the globe to meet potential investors. Invest SA, our award-winning investment promotion and facilitation agency, has compiled an investment book of projects that represent great potential. Today, a number of local and international companies will make announcements on investments to expand existing operations in the country or establish new ones. In addition to the announcements that will be made at this conference we have received investment pledges from a number of countries. We have appointed task teams to work with these countries to convert these pledges into investments. We have emphasised the need for more South African companies to lead the investment charge, demonstrating that they have confidence in this economy and in its ability to deliver decent and reliable returns. In furtherance of this, I call upon South African companies to engage with our investment envoys on their investment plans, including capital expenditure programmes, so that we can have a better idea as a nation what the future portends for our country on the economic growth landscape. This conference takes place in the wake of a number of decisive measures we have embarked upon in the last few months to improve the investment environment. Following thoroughgoing consultations with various role players in our economy, we have been addressing issues of policy uncertainty and regulatory obstacles that have impeded investments in a number of industries. We have been working with the World Bank to improve the ease of doing business in South Africa and crafting a new FDI strategy for the country. Invest SA is intensifying its facilitation and aftercare service in terms of international best practice. Together we are working to fast track investment projects and reduce red tape. As part of the decisive measures that we have had to take, we have had to confront challenges in some of our largest and most strategic state owned enterprises, which have experienced years of poor governance, a decline in financial and operational performance and corruption. Given the crucial role of these state owned enterprises in the economy, as providers of critical infrastructure and bulk services, it is essential that they be restored as engines of growth and development. We have replaced the leadership in several state owned enterprises, ensuring that we have people with experience, integrity and the relevant skills who are now leading the development and implementation of sustainable business models. As a country, we have also had to confront the bitter reality that several public entities have been severely affected by corruption and the phenomenon of state capture. One of the urgent measures we have had to take is to end such corruption and hold those responsible to account. We have established a commission of inquiry into state capture that has begun a thorough and far reaching investigation into these practices. We have also established commission of inquiry into the South African Revenue Service and the Public Investment Corporation, institutions that are both vital to the effective functioning of our economy. We are certain that these commissions will not only unearth all instances of malfeasance and governance failures, but will help to restore the integrity, credibility and effectiveness of these entities. As we put in place the pillars of sustained growth into the future, we are working to address immediate concerns, specifically the effects of two quarters of negative economic growth. Last month, government announced an economic stimulus and recovery plan that aims to restore growth, save existing jobs and create new ones. As part of this plan, we are taking immediate steps to finalise reforms in key sectors like mining, oil and gas, tourism and telecommunications all of which are sectors that have great potential for growth, but which have been constrained by policy uncertainty. The revised Mining Charter has been finalised. This is the outcome of extensive and meaningful consultation between government, community, labour and business and represents evidence of our commitment to solving the challenges in the sector collaboratively. Government has decided to draft separate legislation for the oil and gas industry, settling a long-standing dispute that will provide direction and certainty to an industry with great potential. Through the publication of a new Integrated Resource Plan for public comment, we have provided detail on the countrys future energy requirements. Government also signed off a number of outstanding renewal energy supply agreements, bringing significant further investment into a growing sector of our economy. We have finalised consultations with the telecommunications industry and other stakeholders to ensure allocation of spectrum reduces barriers to entry, promotes competition and reduces costs to consumers. Our independent communications regulator is now preparing to licence available high demand spectrum. We have initiated a review of our visa regime to facilitate greater arrivals of tourists, highly skilled individuals, business people and investors. We are reprioritising our budget within the existing fiscal framework to invest more in those activities that will boost growth, including agriculture, township and rural businesses, and infrastructure. We do so in a severely restricted fiscal environment. As the Minister of Finance indicated when presenting his medium-term budget policy statement earlier in the week, we are determined to ensure public spending remains within sustainable levels and that we generate greater revenue by pursuing growth with a single-minded determination. We see infrastructure investment as a critical enabler of growth and job creation, and are therefore consolidating government infrastructure spending into a single Infrastructure Fund. We intend to use that Fund to leverage investments from development finance institutions, multilateral development banks, asset managers and commercial banks. A dedicated team will oversee the implementation of an extensive infrastructure programme covering areas like water, transport, energy, telecommunications and social infrastructure. Despite the challenges of the present, our economy has several fundamental strengths that makes it a suitable destination for investment. South Africa has established a diversified manufacturing base that has shown its resilience and potential to compete in the global economy. Yesterday I had occasion to open the R1 billion Gibela passenger train manufacturing factory in this province. The investment is a collaboration between Alstom from France and a local consortium made up of black businesses and the community. The factory employs 800 workers, of which half are women. We applaud this investment as it confirms South Africas manufacturing capability. Multinationals with a presence in South Africa cite numerous advantages, from excellent financial systems to world-class infrastructure. South Africa is a regional manufacturing and services hub on the African continent, and, for many companies, serves as a base to export products globally. We have done much work in recent years to improve investment incentives, establishing, for example, several special economic zones across the country, each having unique offerings for investors. These include ready infrastructure for business development, reduced costs for key inputs such as land, water and electricity, and reduced corporate tax rates. We are determined that our economic policy must facilitate inclusive growth. Given our countrys history of dispossession, and the continued economic exclusion of millions of our people, we have a responsibility to bring all our people into the economic mainstream. Earlier this month, we convened a Presidential Jobs Summit, which brought together government, business, labour and the community sector to determine a set of practical, achievable interventions that would increase the pace of job creation. The Jobs Summit agreed on more than 70 focused interventions that will, among other things, boost domestic demand, increase and broaden exports, create pathways for young people into work and develop sectors such as agriculture, manufacturing, mining and the waste economy. In addition, we are intensifying work to build a robust and effective education and skills development system that equips our youth for the workplace of tomorrow. It is important to note that seven of South Africas universities are in top 500 in the world. There are nearly a million students in higher education, and there has been a marked increase in science, technology, engineering and mathematics graduates. We have implemented policies to promote black economic empowerment, to provide black people, women and people with disability with the assets and opportunities they need to participate more meaningfully in economic activity. Another area that is critical to economic transformation is land reform, which is currently a focus of intense debate across South African society. There is general agreement among most South Africans that we need to accelerate land reform not only to redress a historical injustice, but also to effectively unlock the economic potential of the countrys land. We have appointed an Advisory Panel on Land Reform, which comprises people with extensive experience in farming, policy development, academia and law. The panel will advise government on the implementation of a fair and equitable land reform process that redresses the injustices of the past, increases agricultural output, promotes economic growth and protects food security. We are committed, as government to pursue a comprehensive approach to land and agrarian reform that ensures transformation, development and stability, while providing certainty to those who own land, to those who need land and to those who are considering investing in the economy. Our approach reaffirms the constitutional protection of property rights, which, among other things, prohibits the arbitrary deprivation of property. Together with robust legislation to protect foreign investments, an independent judiciary and the firm rule of law, our Constitution should allay any fears that investors may have of factories being expropriated. South Africas strategic position at the tip of Africa, makes it a key investment location, both for opportunities that lie within its borders and as a gateway to the rest of the region. Earlier this year, African heads of state agreed to the establishment of an African Continental Free Trade Area that will provide access to a market of more than 1.2 billion people and a combined GDP of more than $3.4 trillion. This will fundamentally transform the economies of many African countries and will further enhance the attractiveness of South Africa with its diverse manufacturing base, advanced infrastructure and sophisticated financial sector as a compelling investment destination. As South Africa emerges from a period of great difficulty and uncertainty, as it confronts challenges that are immense but not insurmountable we can declare with confidence that South Africa is a land of untold opportunity. It is a land that has known the pain of division and conflict and deprivation. But, equally, it has experienced the exhilaration of liberation and knows very well the value of partnership and collaboration. It is therefore our great pleasure to invite you to become our partners in realising the great possibilities that this country has to offer. We invite you to invest in our mines and factories, farms and game parks, call centres and technology hubs, refineries and solar farms. We invite you to invest in our people, to harness their energy and unleash their latent capabilities. We invite you to become valued partners in realising the vision and sharing the benefits of a new era of renewal, an era of discovery, an era of prosperity and progress and promise. I thank you. DG Azevedo welcomes commitment to strengthen the WTO Speaking at a gathering of ministers to discuss WTO reform, which was convened by the Canadian government in Ottawa on 25 October, World Trade Organisation Director-General Roberto Azevedo welcomed the commitment of ministers to strengthen the trading system and pointed to the imperative for all members of addressing the significant challenges facing global trade. The meeting was chaired by Canadas Minister of International Trade Diversification, Jim Carr. DG Azevedo joined the meeting at the invitation of the organizers. The Director-General said: It is very positive to see the high levels of engagement in this debate about the WTO and its key role in global trade. The discussion focused on ideas and initiatives that aim to improve and strengthen the work of the WTO. This should be helpful in addressing the significant issues and challenges that we face today. I was pleased that there was a strong recognition from all those participating in this meeting that it was essential that all WTO members views be taken into account as this discussion moves forward. Whatever precise path the debate takes and whatever specific issues members want to take forward, we all have a responsibility to do everything we can to diffuse tensions, mitigate the risks and strengthen the system for the future. I welcome Canadas initiative to hold this meeting and to shine a light on some of the key challenges before the trading system today. The ministers participating in the meeting issued the following Joint Communique: Statement We, Ministers and Heads of Delegation representing a group of like-minded World Trade Organization (WTO) members[1] met in Ottawa, October 24-25, chaired by the Honourable Jim Carr, Canadas Minister of International Trade Diversification, to discuss ways to strengthen and modernize the WTO. We reaffirm our clear and strong support for the rules-based multilateral trading system and stress the indispensable role that the WTO plays in facilitating and safeguarding trade. That system marked the beginning of an unparalleled chapter in global prosperity, growth, and job creation around the world, though the benefits from trade have not always been evenly distributed. We are deeply concerned by recent developments in international trade, particularly the rise in protectionism, which negatively affect the WTO and put the entire multilateral trading system at risk. We note growing trade tensions are linked to major shifts in the global trading landscape. We also note the difficulties to achieve outcomes under the negotiating pillar. We share a common resolve for rapid and concerted action to address these unprecedented challenges and to restore confidence. In this regard, we have identified three areas requiring urgent consideration. First, we underscore the dispute settlement system as a central pillar of the WTO. An effective dispute settlement system preserves the rights and obligations of WTO members, and ensures that the rules are enforceable. Such a system is also essential in building confidence amongst members in the negotiating pillar. We are deeply concerned that continued vacancies in the Appellate Body present a risk to the WTO system as a whole. We therefore emphasize the urgent need to unblock the appointment of Appellate Body members. We acknowledge that concerns have been raised about the functioning of the dispute settlement system and are ready to work on solutions, while preserving the essential features of the system and of its Appellate Body. For this purpose, our officials will continue to engage in discussions to advance ideas to safeguard and strengthen the dispute settlement system. Second, we must reinvigorate the negotiating function of the WTO. We need to conclude negotiations on fisheries subsidies in 2019 consistent with instructions from WTO Ministers at MC11. Its rules must also be updated to reflect 21st century realities, such as the Sustainable Development Goals. Addressing modern economic and trade issues, and tackling pending and unfinished business is key to ensuring the relevance of the WTO. This may require flexible and open negotiating approaches toward multilateral outcomes. We welcome in this regard the work that is being undertaken through the Joint Statement Initiatives from MC11. We recognize the need to address market distortions caused by subsidies and other instruments. Development must remain an integral part of our work. We need to explore how the development dimension, including special and differential treatment, can be best pursued in rule-making efforts. Our officials will examine and develop concrete options for engagement to reinvigorate the negotiating function. Third, we should strengthen the monitoring and transparency of members trade policies which play a central role in ensuring WTO members understand the policy actions taken by their partners in a timely manner. We are concerned with the overall record of compliance by WTO members with their notification obligations and we agree that improvements are required to ensure effective transparency and functioning of the relevant agreements. Specific improvements in this area can be achieved in the near term. Our officials will engage on concrete ideas put forward in this area. We seek a fully operational WTO that benefits all. Our objectives outlined above will only be reached through sustained and meaningful political engagement and through dialogue with all WTO members. In this regard, we note with appreciation other ongoing efforts by WTO members or groups of WTO members, in particular recent proposals by participants in this group on dispute settlement, as well as transparency and notifications. We affirm our intention to work constructively and collaboratively on these and other proposals. The current situation at the WTO is no longer sustainable. Our resolve for change must be matched with action: we will continue to fight protectionism; and we are committed politically to moving forward urgently on transparency, dispute settlement and developing 21st century trade rules at the WTO. We look forward to reviewing our progress when we meet again in January 2019. [1] Australia, Brazil, Canada, Chile, European Union, Japan, Kenya, Korea, Mexico, New Zealand, Norway, Singapore and Switzerland The inaugural South Africa Investment Conference has secured nearly R290 billion worth of investment announcements for the country This R290 billion is what we have now in our hands and these are in addition to the R400 billion which were received during the investment drive by the special envoys and from various countries during state visits which we still need to button down, said President Cyril Ramaphosa as he thanked investors. The President was speaking at the Investment Conference held at the Sandton Convention Centre on Friday. The R290 billion investment brings South Africa one step closer to achieving its target of securing $100 billion in the next five years. President Ramaphosa thanked the 1050 delegates in attendance for putting their weight and money behind the countrys vision to grow the economy and create jobs. Among the investments were Sanral which pledged R9.5 billion, R40 billion was committed by NAAMSA, Aspen with R3.4 billion, Vodacom R50 billion, Acwa power R9.6 billion and R29 billion from the New Development Bank. But the proof is in the pudding, said President Ramaphosa, who told the conference that government would track the impact of the investments and their ability to maximise on job creation. Thanking investors at the closing of day two of the conference, he said gatherings such as this have changed the tide in the country. Through these various conferences, the gulf and the distance that has been there between business and government, and business and labour is reducing. It is through these engagements that we have been able to talk frankly and discuss solutions openly, he said. Clearing the path for more investment In a bid to further draw investments, delegates at the conference entered into breakaway sessions where a total of R10 billion was raised collectively. During the breakaway session on energy, R1 billion worth of investment in LPG gas pledged by Bidvest. Delegates not only pledged more money at the sessions but also looked for possible solutions to bureaucratic challenges that might stifle investors. During the plenary session on agriculture, funding for emerging farmers was noted as critical to ensure growth in the sector. The session also engaged on the need for transformation in the agriculture and fisheries sectors. With regards to land reform, Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheries Minister Senzeni Zokwana said that the plenary session had stressed that land reform must be undertaken in a manner that does not affect food production. The need for collaboration between the Agriculture and Water and Sanitation Departments in an effort to assist farmers with access to water was also raised. Delegates lamented the time it takes to secure water use authorisation. Giving feedback on the plenary session on tourism and film, Minister Derek Hanekom said while delegates agreed that tourism and the film industry have massive investment potential, the challenge of how to translate this potential into numbers remains. The plenary session gave the thumbs up to the introduction of an online application system and announcement of visa waivers with countries like Egypt, Morocco, Tunisia, Ghana, Cuba and Iran, as they will boost tourism. The revision of the unabridged birth certificate policy by Home Affairs that now exempts foreign nationals from presenting documentation was also welcomed as a step in the right direction. In concluding day two of the three-day Investment Conference, President Ramaphosa told delegates that government is in talks to make the conference an annual event. Statement on the outcomes of the inaugural South Africa Investment Conference President Cyril Ramaphosa has hailed the success of the inaugural South Africa Investment Conference which has generated announcements of investment of R290 billion as the beginning of a new narrative on investment in South Africa. In his closing statement to the conference in Sandton, Johannesburg, President Ramaphosa said the breadth of case studies presented on the performance of current investments and the range of announcements relating to new and expanded investments affirmed that South Africa was a diversified economy that presented great opportunities. The conference heard investment announcements from companies in mining, forestry, manufacturing, telecommunications, transport, energy, agro-processing, consumer goods, pharmaceuticals, infrastructure, financial services, energy, ICT and water. Prominent among these were the themes of value addition, beneficiation, innovation and entrepreneurship. President Ramaphosa has also expressed his satisfaction that most of the investments announced during the conference have originated from South African enterprises and entities or multinationals based in the country. This reflected renewed investor confidence in and commitment to South Africa after a period of uncertainty and a slowdown in investment. The Inter-Ministerial Committee which hosted the South Africa Investment Conference also commended the conference for setting South Africa on a path of economic renewal and inclusive growth. The conference was an opportunity for both domestic and international investors to identify opportunities in the country. The South Africa Investment Conference was convened under the theme: Accelerating Economic Growth by Building Partnerships, and was attended by leaders in government and business, members of the diplomatic corps, fund managers and entrepreneurs. The IMC has expressed governments deep appreciation for the spirit and focus with which investors responded to governments invitation to the private sector to help the country achieve investment of $100 billion over the next five years. We are humbled and inspired by the significant investment pledges that have been made by South African and international investors who consider themselves as partners in our economic renewal and in the development of our society. Government will work with all sectors of society to ensure that we repay the confidence expressed in our economy by supporting these investments with our talents, energy and productivity. We are poised for exciting new possibilities in our economy that will unlock opportunities for citizens, communities and businesses, and which will raise the living standards of large numbers of South Africans who have historically been marginalised from meaningful economic participation. The announced total of R290 billion in new investments complements the more than US$28 billion in investment pledges that have resulted from engagements between the President and the Presidents Investment Envoys in recent months. The South African Investment Conference is part of governments broad and targeted strategy of stimulating economic growth and creating jobs. The three catalysts driving the broader strategy in the immediate term are the Economic Stimulus and Recovery Plan, the Jobs Summit and the Investment Conference. President Ramaphosa will tomorrow, Saturday 27 October 2018, lead conference delegates on a walk in Soweto to showcase the diversity and vibrancy of township economies and enable interaction between investors and the communities who will support and benefit from the anticipated investments. Cunard salutes the British aircraft carrier's first-ever U.S. visit Cunard's ocean liner Queen Mary 2 had a rare meeting in New York Harbor yesterday and paid tribute to British Royal Navy aircraft carrier HMS Queen Elizabeth during the carrier's first visit to the U.S. The rendezvous between these renowned vessels celebrates the special relationship between the United States and the United Kingdom and their committed alliance. Luxury cruise line Cunard is a company known for its rich history and significant role in both World Wars. Having deep roots in both England and the U.S., it's an honor for the brand to welcome the Royal Navy carrier to its U.S. homeport of Brooklyn, New York. "Cunard launched the first royal mail service route across the Atlantic in 1840, connecting people between North America and the United Kingdom," said Josh Leibowitz, SVP Cunard North America. "We continue to sail regularly-scheduled Crossings between the two countries, which makes meeting the Royal Navy on this side of the pond a particularly significant occasion." After saluting the aircraft carrier, Queen Mary 2 sailed out to sea to begin a seven-night Transatlantic Crossing to England, the line's signature voyage. HMS Queen Elizabeth spent the preceding weeks conducting its first trials with the F-35B Lightning II fighter jets onboard and when she departs New York, the 65,000-ton ship will head down the East Coast and conduct the second phase of developmental trials. Daily News Delivery Join your colleagues and stay up to date on the latest Travel industry news and trends. Subscribe 2021 Travel Industry Wire B2B Hospitality introduces exciting best priced Fairs and Festival Tours to let the travellers explore the culturally rich India in all its festive colours. (TRAVPR.COM) INDIA - October 26th, 2018 - B2B Hospitality introduces exciting best priced Fairs and Festival Tours to let the travellers explore the culturally rich India in all its festive colours. One of the bestselling packages among all is Ardh kumbh mela 2019 which will held at Prayagraj (previously known as Allahabad) starting from 10th January to 14th March, 2019. A holy festival that occurs once in every 6 years in Prayagraj, India draws a great number of pilgrims from different parts of the world. During the festival, Sadhus and Hindu pilgrims gather to bathe in the holy waters of the Ganges to wash away their sins and achieve salvation, and to celebrate the triumph of good over evil. In camps one can enjoy exclusive activities specially curated to enhance the Ardh Kumbh Mela experience. Witness the sea of passionate devotees doing their rituals and offering prayers or visit the various Akharas to get full view on the ideology and philosophy of different groups of Hinduism. Participate in morning Yoga and Meditation classes held for guests staying at Camps, or enjoy the celebration of mela on an early morning boat and watch devotees offering prayers to their divine deities with hymns and mantras being chanted in union. Travellers will have the opportunity to meet with spiritual gurus who are usually secluded and hidden away in religious caves, as well as one can gain the inner peace by taking part in meditation and yoga classes. B2B Hospitality offers great deals on package which will cost you Rs 7499/- per Night which will include accommodation in tent, welcome drinks, one bottle mineral bottle per person provided daily, morning & evening aarti at the camp temple, use of umbrellas & cycles, morning and evening tea with cookies, buffet breakfast, lunch and dinner included, airport pick up and drop and complimentary Wi-Fi. For more information please check the following link https://www.b2bhospitalityindia.com/ardh-kumbh-mela ### It is difficult for a new traveler to know what to eat, what to drink and how to stay healthy with the local food and drink during holidays in Vietnam. Obviously, nothing is worse than getting sick while you are traveling in a foreign country. (TRAVPR.COM) VIETNAM - October 26th, 2018 - Besides travel scams, food and drink safety is another common concern when people planning their trips to Vietnam. It can be one of the fastest ways to ruin your Vietnam private tour. Lets take a look at some useful tips of food and drink safety to stay healthy while travel to Vietnam: Water safety Water safety can be the most concerned issue for travelers as we couldnt survive without drinking water. In a tropical climate country like Vietnam with hot and humid weather, it is even more important to pay attention to the water you drink as contaminated water could cause serious illness. Like many Asian countries, Vietnam doesnt have the advanced technology of water treatment so the tap water is not good enough to drink. Therefore, only drink bottled water and avoid drinking tap water. In case you have to use the tap water, at least try get it boiled (if possible) before drinking. Even the local people in Vietnam avoid tap water as they only drink bottled, boiled or filtered water at home. It is easy to buy bottled water as it is available at every hotels, restaurants and local convenience stores. However, many tourists would have the same question regarding tap water: Is it safe to use tap water for brushing teeth? The answer depends on where you travel to during your customized tour in Vietnam. If you just visit the popular urban areas, it is fine to use tap water for this everyday task and still stay safe. On the other hand, tap water is not recommended for brushing teeth when you are traveling to the rural or remote areas in Vietnam. It is not worth getting sick while traveling in such places so we would suggest using bottle water to brush. Moreover, for travelers that are sensitive to bacteria and can get sick easily, it is strongly recommended to use bottle water for brushing every day. How about the ice? We also recommend to avoid ice as much as possible. It is better to order a cold bottle/can of water, beer or soft-drink than using ice, especially when you are eating outside on the street. The ice on the street can be made with tap water. However, it can be quite safe to enjoy drinks with ice in them in the decent bars, restaurants or hotels as they buy ice from companies where it is made with filtered water. Food safety Food poisoning can be quite awful and totally ruin your vacation. So, make sure that the meal you eat is hot and cooked completely. Though Vietnam food is wonderful and so yummy, it is not necessary to try everything. Choosing the food and places to eat wisely and carefully will help you stay healthy and enjoy your Vietnam customized holidays thoroughly. - Stay away from any raw dishes and only eat cooked food. Even eating salads or raw vegetables is not a good idea. It is recommended to ask the restaurant to flash boil the raw herb or vegetables if you want to add them to your bowl of noodle for better flavor. - Street food in Vietnam is amazing and worth trying. But hang on, let your stomach be familiar with the local food by eating at restaurants for few days when you start your vacation before you sample the tasty dishes at local street food stalls. - While eating at street food stalls, you can observe your plate are prepared and served in front of you in most cases. If it is not up to your personal hygiene standards, it is not worth to risk your safety. - Use your own judgment while picking-up a street stall to eat. Normally, the stalls with more local people eating, the tastier the food will be. Additionally, the street food sellers have to prepare the ingredients in advance, so the stalls with higher volume of customers could have the fresher food as they always finish the prepared food for the day. It doesnt mean the food stall is totally safe to eat, but your own risk is less. - Pay attention to fruits too! For safety, wash and peel apples or pears before eating. Try eating fruits that have inedible skin like banana, watermelon, pineapple, dragon fruit, etc. can be a good idea. - Research for restaurants or food stalls with good reviews from other travelers. If many people have eaten at those places and none of them got illness, you may be as lucky as they are. ### It's not only Tyson that's looking to hedge its bets with vegetarian meat and dairy analogs. When Tyson Foods invested in a "bloody veggie burger" company, some readers suggested they were trying to shut down competition. Yet if my experience with their plant-based bratwurst is anything to go by, Beyond Meat continues to go from strength-to-strength. Now we might have another test case of Big Meat investing in Big Processed Pea Protein. (Or something like that...) Canada's Maple Leaf Foodsone of the largest packaged meat companies in the countryhas just launched a subsidiary called Greenleaf Foods. (Website coming soon.) According to FoodBev Media, the new company will function as a wholly-owned, independently operated entity headquartered in Chicago. It will build on a series of recent acquisitions by Maple Leaf Foods which has included the Field Roast Grain Meat Companymakers of a vegan 'cheese' that I didn't hateand Lightlife Foods, which focuses on vegan ready meals. I'm sure there will be those who decry the launch as nothing but an attempt to subvert and corrupt the movement for plant-based eating, but I think that's a little reductive. Given other signs of a societal shift toward flexitarian ways, companies who specialize in animal-based products would do well to diversify their portfolio. It's worth noting, too, that Maple Leaf Foods talks a good game about reducing its overall environmental footprint 50% by 2025. Most research I've read suggests that, while there are opportunities for improvement, there are limits to how far animal agriculture can really clean up. Meanwhile the new breed of plant-based alternatives are reporting impressive environmental credentials. For Big Meat to meet its goals, it might need to meet vegetarians halfway. (Sorry!) Last Saturday at the YMCA of Trenton, the inaugural Youth Chess Fest event took place. This years event was sponsored by Mercer Council on Alcoholism and Drug Addiction, the Prevention Coalition of Mercer County, the Mercer County Prosecutors Office, the New Jersey Chess State Chess Federation, Thrivent Financial, and the Bank of Princeton. The primary goal of this event is for children to develop an interest in an activity that engages their minds and lowers the chances that they will engage in unhealthy behaviors such as substance abuse and violence. Chess helps children learn valuable life lessons including strategic thinking, delayed gratification and conflict resolution skills. More than just an enjoyable game, chess is a healthy activity that aids in the development of logic, reasoning and problem-solving abilities, memory and concentration, visualization skills, critical thinking, patience, and determination. We are so excited to be bringing this wonderful event to Trenton, and thank the YMCA of Trenton for hosting it, said Barbara Sprechman, Assistant Executive Director of Mercer Council. The New Jersey Chess State Federation generously donated chess sets, bags, and boards to every child who participated so they can play at home with friends and family. Tee shirts were sponsored by the County Prosecutors Office and food and giveaways were sponsored by the rest of the sponsors. editorial@tribune.com Neeraj Bagga Tribune News Service Amritsar, October 24 The horrendous scene of the train tragedy has inflicted Acute Traumatic Disorder (ATD) on survivors and onlookers. Dr BL Goyal, eminent psychiatrist, said two onlookers visited him with the ATD symptoms. They are scared and have been experiencing frequent bouts of that bone chilling scene. The first patient is a 30-year-old labourer and another 45-year-old homemaker. This is called re-experiencing and re-living of the traumatic experience all day and night, he said. They saw people being crushed and dying. Cops and other professionals, who were at the accident site to carry out rescue operation, may also be victims of the ATD syndrome. These scenes caused distress among them. Survivors and relatives of the victims of the ghastly incident on the Dasehra evening are undergoing traumatic experience. Experts are of the view that they require post trauma psychological assistance to overcome the aftershocks of the tragedy. However, experts believe that many people must be suffering from the ATD but they may not be aware of it. They may carry on with this for the rest of their lives. Apart from onlookers, even driver of the train may be suffering from the ATD syndrome, he said. People who lost their dear ones are grief stricken and they may suffer from the trauma in the later stage. Dr Goyal said symptoms of these afflictions were that patients experience insomnia, recurrence of similar dreams, frighten, depression and anxiety. Effects of such tragedy are visible on these people in the long run as most of them are currently grief-stricken. This is called post traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). Retired Principal Kulwant Singh Ankhi said the government must constitute a team of psychiatrists to diagnose the patients suffering from trauma. He added that medicines and therapies were available in the market to heal the people from these disorders. He said lack of awareness may not bring out most of the victims to the fore so these experts must visit them to heal trauma. editorial@tribune.com New Delhi, October 25 Telecom operator Bharti Airtel on Thursday reported a 65.4 per cent drop in consolidated net profit at Rs 119 crore for the second quarter ended September 2018. Its net profit stood at Rs 343 crore in the same period of the previous year, according to a company statement. Total revenue came in at Rs 20,422 crore for the September quarter, which was 6.2 per cent lower than Rs 21,777 crore notched in the year-ago period. Its India revenues fell 3.6 per cent year-on-year while the Africa revenues rose 10.8 per cent. India revenues for Q219 at Rs 14,920 crore have declined by 3.6 per cent year-on-year (declined 10.9 per cent on reported basis) on an underlying basis. Mobile revenues have witnessed a year-on-year de-growth of 7.2 per cent on an underlying basis led by the continued average revenue per user down-trading impacted by competitive pricing pressures," the statement said. Gopal Vittal, MD and CEO (India & South Asia), Bharti Airtel, said the average revenue per user decline has "moderated" this quarter driven by focus on quality customers through simplified pricing and content partnerships. We remain focused on driving quality base growth with value adding propositions for our customers. We also remain committed to investing in enhanced capacities and have deployed 27000+ broadband sites during the quarter, enabling a 239 per cent YoY growth in mobile data volumes," Vittal added. PTI Maruti logs fall in quarterly profit in 4 yrs New Delhi: The countrys largest carmaker, Maruti Suzuki India, on Thursday reported its first decline in quarterly profit in over four years as a dip in rupee value, rise in commodity prices and higher sales promotion expenses hit its margins. The auto major, which has over 50 per cent market share in the domestic passenger vehicle segment, reported a 9.8 per cent fall in net profit at Rs 2,240.4 crore for the second quarter ended September 30. The company had reported a net profit of Rs 2,484.3 crore for the same period of previous fiscal. agencies vermaajay1968@gmail.com New Delhi, October 26 The Supreme Court on Friday grilled the Chief Financial Officer (CFO) and internal auditors of Amrapali Group over the diversion of homebuyers money and ordered that the company CMD and its two directors would remain under police surveillance at a hotel in Noida. It zeroed in on 23 dummy companies, which the realtor claimed to be created as special purpose vehicles, and sought their details of incorporation and bank statements. It asked Amrapali Group to handover all laptops, computers and hard-drives used by the company since 2008 to the forensic auditors appointed by the court to audit the affairs of the embattled realty firm. A Bench of Justices Arun Mishra and UU Lalit grilled CFO Chander Wadhwa, who earlier claimed to have had memory failure during questioning by the forensic auditors. It also asked the companys internal auditors, Anil Mittal and Ravi Kapoor, to handover all Group documents, warning them of jail term for non-compliance. The court directed the banks which have accounts of the Group to release the statements of the 2008-2018 period, to be handed over to the forensic auditors in three days by the company. It directed the police to seize the group documents in three days and submit these to the forensic auditors. PTI editorial@tribune.com New Delhi, October 26 NRI billionaire Lakshmi Mittal-led ArcelorMittal on Friday said it has won a bid to acquire debt-laden Essar Steel for over Rs42,000 crore, a deal that will help fulfil the worlds largest steelmakers long-time ambition of having an India mill. A committee of Essar Steel creditors picked ArcelorMittal on October 25, a day when the Ruia family offered to pay lenders Rs 54,389 crore, including Rs 47,507 crore in upfront cash, to clear all their dues in a last-ditch effort to avert losing their flagship company. In a statement, ArcelorMittal said its resolution plan for Essar Steel, which the lenders auctioned to recover over Rs 49,000 crore of unpaid loans, includes an upfront payment of over Rs42,000 crore to settle debt and a further Rs 8,000 crore of capital injection into the company to support operational improvement, increase production levels and deliver enhanced levels of profitability. Subsequent to being declared the highest bidder on October 19, the Committee of Creditors has issued ArcelorMittal a Letter of Intent declaring them as successful applicant. Essar Steel promoters, however, wanted the CoC to consider their offer as it offered the maximum value to all stakeholders and cannot be ignored citing some process lacunae. A company spokesperson said the offer is superior to ArcelorMittals bid as it provides 100 per cent repayment to lenders and meets the objectives of maximisation of value and protection of the interest of all stakeholders. It cannot be ignored just because the offer to pull out the company out of bankruptcy was not made before the CoC called bids. He said Section 12A of the Insolvency and Bankruptcy Code that allows withdrawal of insolvency proceedings subject to approval by 90 per cent of the creditors and the National Company Law Tribunal, was introduced in June 2018, much after the EoI in case of Essar Steel was floated on October 20, 2017. It wasnt immediately clear if lenders even considered the offer of Essar Steel promoters. PTI editorial@tribune.com M Aamir Khan Tribune News Service Srinagar, October 26 The technology has bridged the communication gap between Indian and Pakistani traders, infrastructure bottlenecks and deteriorating political relations between the two countries have left the traders high and dry. Traders of Jammu & Kashmir said banking, communication and other issues continued to remain major stumbling blocks for cross-border trade. Initially, we were not even able to communicate with traders across the border. However, now we know each other, thanks to Skype and other Internet-based apps, said Salamabad Cross LoC Traders Union President Hilal Turkie. Banking continues to remain a major problem. Now, even GST is being levied and that has added to our woes, he added. Launched with much fanfare in October 2008, the cross-border trade between India and Pakistan in J&K is still struggling with traders grappling with host of issues. With no signs of improvement in the Indo-Pak ties, the traders feel business along the LoC is unlikely to flourish in the near future. The trade was introduced with a hope that it would act as a major confidence-building measure (CBM) between the two countries. Even after a decade, the modern system of trade is elusive as mode of the trade is still the age-old barter system. Strain in Indo-Pak relations, Infrastructure, banking and a long negative list is the main issues the traders of the region have been confronting from several years, businessmen of the region said. Yes, trade is still taking place but not in a manner as visualised a decade ago. When situation is stable, trading between the two countries happens only four days a week. Even the optimum infrastructure is not utilised, as only 35 vehicles are allowed for exports despite having capacity to handle 50 trucks, Turkie said. Due to the under-utilisation of infrastructure, only 140 traders are able to trade on a given day out of total 220 traders, he added. For long we have been demanding an increase in number of tradable items, which is only 21 at the moment. Sometimes we are not even able to trade the given items. Presently, potatoes and dry fruits are in big demand these days here as winter is coming. We can export and import much more items if allowed, he added. Besides Salamabad that is located at Uri in Baramulla district of the Kashmir valley, LoC trade is also done through Chakan-da-Bagh in Jammu regions Poonch district. As per official estimates, cross-LoC trade till last financial year had recorded imports worth about Rs. 3,200 crore and exports worth over Rs 3,500 crore since 2008. Commerce bonhomie Cross-border trade started in October, 2008 Was touted as CBM between India and Pakistan Barter system, restrictions on items are dampeners editorial@tribune.com New Delhi, October 25 The Enforcement Directorate (ED) on Thursday said it had attached valuables and jewellery worth Rs 255 crore of diamond jeweller Nirav Modi in Hong Kong in connection with the alleged $2- billion PNB fraud. The agency said it had issued a provisional order under the Prevention of Money Laundering Act (PMLA) for the attachment of assets. These valuables were exported through 26 shipments by Dubai-based companies of Nirav Modi to the Hong Kong-based firms controlled by him after the registration of the case (PNB) in India, it said. These valuables, diamonds and jewellery, were lying in a logistics company vault in Hong Kong, the agency said. Details such as value, consignee, shipper, ownership among others of these shipments were obtained during investigation and after gathering the evidence of ownership and value of the goods, the same have been attached, it said. A court-issued order will soon be sent to Hong Kong to formalise the attachment order, it said. Nirav Modi has been absconding since the alleged bank fraud, by far the highest in the country in terms of value, came to light early this year and an Interpol arrest warrant has been notified against him even as India is working to get him extradited from the UK. The ED has also filed a chargesheet against him alleging that he laundered and diverted over Rs 6,400 crore of bank funds abroad to dummy companies that were under his and his families control. Nirav Modi, his uncle Mehul Choksi and others are being probed under various criminal laws after the fraud came to light this year following a complaint by PNB that they allegedly cheated the bank to the tune of over Rs 13,000 crore, with the purported involvement of a few bank employees. PTI uttara@tribuneindia.com Tribune News Service Chandigarh, October 26 Biometric details of a missing 5-year-old helped reunite her with her family three months after she seemingly disappeared, police said on Friday. The child identified only as Khushi was found alone at Ambala Railway Station on July 25, and was eventually sent to Panckhulas Bal Sadan. The anti-human trafficking unit of Haryana Police, which was investigating her case, enlisted the help of Aadhaar office in Chandigarhs Sector 17 to help them with their investigations. The team traced her address back to Patiala, and, upon sharing Khushis photo with Patiala Police, found there was a missing persons report for her Anaj Mandi Police Station, a police spokesperson said. Police contacted the childs family and shes now reunited with her family, the officer said. editorial@tribune.com Naina Mishra Tribune News Service Chandigarh, October 26 Days after Sanjay Austa, an alumnus of St Stephens School, Sector 45, Chandigarh, took to the social media to share his #MeToo experience against Founder Director Harold Carver, another alumnus of the school, Manraj Singh, has shared his story, briefing about the 35-year-old licentious encounter with Carver on the social media. Singh (46), who is a software professional in California, made the revelation about Carver today. This is a personal story in support of the #MeToo movement in India, and especially Chandigarh, and towards one person who in my mind is the classic definition of an abuser, wrote Singh, while opening up in a write-up. Singh recounted that he was a day scholar and was cognisant of the horrific tales from hostellers about child sexual abuse. Singh wrote that he was in the seventh grade when Carver one day called him to his office out of the blue. As I walked in, he asked me to shut the door. I have a transfer certificate right here (he pointed to his desk), and unless you tell me the complete truth, you are out of here. Singh reminisced that when Carver threatened him, tears welled up his eyes as he was unaware of his fault at that point in time. Singh then started ruminating his slip-ups before realising a major blunder. I know what youve done, said Carver. I started thinking of little things like lying to the teacher as Carver kept shaking his head. It then occurred to me that worst things I had ever done in my life was to have dirty talks and sometimes talk about masturbation and stuff with my cousin, who was the same age as me, wrote Singh. Singh made himself believe that it was the worst thing to do and Carver knew about it. I said that I had seen my male cousins private parts and this is all he needed. According to the post, Carver then posed a series of questions to Singh after the revelation of something sexual. What all did you do with him, What do you call it in Punjabi?, Did you put it in your mouth? Did he? asked Carver. Singh wrote that Carver asked him How do you know about all this? Do you have dirty magazines and books at home? I referred to a romantic novel, which was deemed dirty at my age. He met me on the terrace and asked me if I got all the dirty books. I said yes, and he asked me to show some of those to him, on the terrace itself. He added, Then he invited me in and asked me to sit on the couch. He took control of the backpack and starting digging through it. Singh even regrets lying to a journalist who was involved in the coverage when Carver was accused of sexual abuse. He wrote: I still remember the scene where Errol Rodrigues and a Tribune reporter showed up at my home when the story broke out in the late 80s, and I remember sitting in the car with them. They were asking me to go public with this and I was shit scared, so I said no. Talking to The Tribune, Singh said, I dont know how involved he is in this, but all I want is that he should not get away with this. This is not an indictment of him as a human being. This is an indictment of the culture and society that we grow up in. The point is for people to realise that he wasnt a saint. He is a serial paedophile who would profile his targets for months before he would move in. And he did it for years. Harold Carver, Founder Director of St Stephens School, said, We would like to proceed against the allegations and it is under consideration. editorial@tribune.com Bhartesh Singh Thakur Tribune News Service Chandigarh, October 25 Students have been left in the lurch as the affiliation committee of Panjab University (PU) today declined affiliation to a number of courses at Post Graduate Government College (PGGC), Sector 11, and the PGGC, Sector 46, for infrastructure deficiency and shortage of faculty. The DAV Institute of Management, Sector 10, which had admitted students despite refusal by the PU, was given one more chance. PGGC, Sector 11 The PGGC, Sector 11, has been denied affiliation for the BCA-I, II and III; BSc (Biotechnology) I, II and III; BSc (Microbiology) I, II and III; MCom-I and II; MSc (Information Technology) I and II; and MA (English) I and II. However, affiliation has been granted for MA (History). For MSc (Information Technology) and BCA, there was an objection that computer labs required renovation. The then Principal had replied, vide a letter dated June 13, that the Engineering Department of the UT Administration had been informed about it. For BSc (Biotechnology), the college was required to appoint adequate permanent faculty. The then Principal had replied, vide a letter dated July 30, that regular appointment would be made as soon as the recruitment rules are reviewed by the UPSC and the case is under progress. For BSc (Microbiology), there was an objection that the course was being run since 2009 without permanent staff. The inspection committee said, It is highly recommended that permanent faculty positions be filled. It is a matter of grave concern that the Director, Higher Education (DHE), Chandigarh Administration, has directed to run this course without sanctioned additional posts. It seems he/she is happy with the makeshift arrangement of faculty. The DHE is a senior and serious position and should be promoting quality education in colleges. For MCom, they were required to recruit three faculty members. For MA (English), the college was required to buy books worth Rs 20,000, but it did not submit any compliance report. I am not aware of any affiliation committee meeting today. The computer labs are being renovated. We cant recruit regular faculty as it is under the purview of the UPSC. The purchase of books is not such a big issue that affiliation is denied. I will take up the issue with the PU, said Prof Rama Rao, Principal, PGGC-11. She joined as Principal on August 3. PGGC-46 forgets to seek affiliation for BBA, BCA The affiliation committee has denied affiliation to the PGGC, Sector 46, for BBA (1st unit) first and third semesters and BCA (2nd unit) first and third semesters. The Principal of the PGGC, Sector 46, Prof JK Sehgal, wrote to the PU, vide a letter dated October 1, that in an earlier letter dated January 15 where permission for BSc (Non-Medical) was sought, the college inadvertently has not mentioned BBA and BCA course. However, the PU said the affiliation could not be granted at this late stage as the last date of submission of students return in the university was September 30. I am yet to be intimated about the outcome of the meeting. We will respond once we get a letter from the PU, said Professor Sehgal. DAV Institute of Management, Sector 10 The DAV Institute of Management, which is located inside the campus of DAV College, Sector 10, has been granted one more chance. The same inspection committee, which had earlier pointed out a number of lapses, would go again to ascertain whether the management institute has complied with the conditions imposed. The inspection committee has to visit the institute before October 31. The institute does not have a Director. Though the DAV management had appointed one, the selected person did not join. The inspection committee had called for more recruitment too. Though classrooms have been furnished, these still need to be converted into smart classrooms, the inspection report had added. The institute, as per a Syndicate decision, must have a separate master plan of the land allotted to DAV College, Sector 10, Chandigarh, which it does not have. DD Jain College of Education, Ludhiana, has been denied affiliation. Students will have to be shifted The Dean, College Development Council, Prof Parvinder Singh, said, The students of the disaffiliated courses will have to be shifted to other colleges. Their return will not be accepted. During the discussions, Senator Amit Joshi raised the issue of non-availability of previous years reports on compliances by the colleges whose matter was taken up on Thursday. Colleges given time to meet deficiencies The GMT College of Education Jalandhar; AS College of Education, Khanna; and colleges of Ludhiana, including Sri Guru Rama Ras College of Education; Nightingale College of Education; Sadbhavna College of Education for Women; Guru Hargobind College of Education; Mata Ganga Khalsa College for Girls, Bajaj College; GTB National College and Guru Gobind Singh Khalsa College of Education for Women, have been granted time to meet their deficiencies. editorial@tribune.com Chandigarh, October 26 A local court denied bail to a Romanian national who was accused of installing card skimmers and cameras in ATMs in the city. The accused was identified as Miclea Lucian Lonut (37). The police had arrested three Romanian nationals for installing skimming devices and cameras in ATM machines of Canara Bank across the city. Lonut had come to the city in August and committed the crime. It was stated that he, along with another accused, had brought the devices and had planned to collect data from all over India and sell it abroad. Thus, transactions would have been done later from other countries and by then, they would have also fled from India. Both were stated to be residents of Brasav in Romania. During their search, the police had claimed to have recovered a wig, caps and clothes, which were used in the crime. The UT police had registered three FIRs against unknown persons at the Sector 17, 36 and Mani Majra for installing skimmer devices in ATMs. TNS editorial@tribune.com Tribune News Service Chandigarh, October 25 The son of a retired IAS officer has taken to a social networking site to vent out his anger over an incident involving a woman HCS officer that took place at Elante Mall while watching a movie around two weeks ago. He had objected to the HCS officer using a mobile phone in the hall, who, in return, called the police to the spot. The entire incident was posted on Facebook by the retired IAS officers son. He had gone to watch a movie at Elante Mall along with his father on October 10. Around 20 minutes before the interval, the HCS officer, who was sitting in one of the front rows, started composing an email on her mobile phone the glare of which the man could not escape. During the interval, the man walked up to the HCS officer and confronted her for using the mobile phone in the hall following which a man accompanying the officer asked him why he was not being polite to her. After this, the retired IAS officers son went back to his seat. However, a few minutes later, the man came to him and allegedly started exhorting him to come out. The man was then taken out of the hall by the PVR staff after which the HCS officer also left. Sometime later, a policeman arrived at the spot and asked the retired IAS officers son to come out. However, he refused and stated that he would come out after the movie ends. The policeman then returned after which another policeman came saying that a government servant had complained against him, following which his father revealed that he was a retired IAS officer. The second policeman also left. However, later another policeman came to the hall to enquire about the retired IAS officer. After getting a satisfactory reply, he left the hall and preferred to wait for the movie to end. Soon after the movie ended, the police asked both father and son to accompany them to the PVR office where the police showed them a complaint written by the HCS officer accusing him of bad behaviour. The retired IAS officers son also gave in writing what had transpired with him and his father. Both parties then left the spot and the police too, who had to spend almost two hours there. Colonels wife had alleged harassment Five days ago, the wife of a Colonel, who had gone to PVR at Elante Mall to watch a movie along with her daughter, had complained against a man for harassing her. The woman had alleged that the man sitting on the seat behind her kept hitting her chair following which she told him to mend his ways. However, the man behaved rudely with her. During the interval, the woman informed the PVR authorities and asked them to change his seat. However, they failed to do so. After the movie, the woman called the police to report the matter. A police complaint was also made at the Industrial Area police station, which is under investigation. gspannu7@gmail.com Saurabh Malik Tribune News Service Chandigarh, October 26 More than six months after the names of judicial officers Lalit Batra and Arun Kumar Tyagi were recommended by the Punjab and Haryana High Court Collegium for elevation as its judges, the Supreme Court Collegium too has given its nod to the proposal. The Supreme Court Collegium, comprising Chief Justice of India Ranjan Gogoi, Justice Madan B Lokur and Justice Kurian Joseph, also recommended that the proposal for elevation of another judicial officer, Neena Chaudhary, be remitted to the Punjab and Haryana High Court Chief Justice. The collegium has already resolved to recommend the names of four advocates, Manjari Nehru Kaul, Harsimran Singh, Arun Kumar Monga and Manoj Bajaj, as judges of the Punjab and Haryana High Court. Once appointed, the strength of the judges in the high court will go up to 53. As of now, the high court with just 47 judges, against the sanctioned strength of 85, is among the top three courts in the country in terms of vacancies. The other two courts facing acute shortage are Allahabad and Madras. The recommendations, made by the then Chief Justice of the Punjab and Haryana High Court earlier this year in consultation with his two senior-most colleagues, received concurrence of Punjab and Haryana governments. In order to ascertain their suitability for elevation, the Supreme Court Collegium also consulted colleagues conversant with the affairs of the Punjab and Haryana High Court before carefully scrutinising the material placed on record, including the observations made by the Department of Justice. Besides this, the judges invited both the recommendees for interaction with them. On the basis of interaction and having regard to all relevant factors, the collegium is of the considered view that Lalit Batra and Arun Kumar Tyagi, judicial officers, are suitable for being appointed as judges of the Punjab and Haryana High Court Referring to Judge Chaudharys case, the collegium added it had carefully scrutinised the material on the file, including observations made by the Department of Justice. Judge Chaudhary, too, was invited for interaction. The collegium added it was of the view that the proposal deserved to be remitted to the chief justice on the basis of interaction and having regard to all relevant factors. editorial@tribune.com Tribune News Service Panchkula, October 26 The striking employees of the Haryana Roadways got a shot in the arm when about 1,100 government teachers went on mass leave today. The strike by the Haryana Roadways employees entered its 11th day today. The teachers union had recently announced to go on mass leave in support of the Haryana Roadways employees. The teachers also raised slogans in support of the striking employees. Leaders from various political parties such as Pradeep Chaudhary, district president, Indian National Lok Dal; Tarun Bhandari, cashier, Haryana Congress; and Kulbhushan Goel, president, INLD Beopar Mandal; also reached the dharna site to express solidarity with the striking employees and raised slogans against the state government. They claimed that the decision taken by the Haryana Government was arbitrary. They urged the government to give immediate relief to the striking employees. Meanwhile, long-route and local buses left for various destinations at 7 am today. The authorities are continuously monitoring the movement of the buses to ensure the safety of passengers and their staff members. Manoj Kumar, member of the Roadways Employees Coordination Committee; Shravan Kumar Jhangra, district president of the Haryana Karamchari Mahasangh; Bhagirath Kathaith, president, Haryana Electricity Board Union; and Jai Bhagwan, general secretary of the union; were among those who addressed the striking employees. MK Bhadrakumar MK Bhadrakumar Former ambassador Seventeen years is a long time for a war. Watching the 17-year-old Afghan war and having witnessed the 18-year-old war that preceded it nerves have become numb. Reports of violent incidents are an almost daily occurrence and they have ceased to catch the mind's eye. But the incident in Kandahar city, the throbbing heart of southern Afghanistan, in the afternoon of October 18 was truly stunning. An attack on a gathering of Afghan and US officials inside the Kandahar Governor's compound left dead the province's intelligence chief and police commander, General Abdul Razeq. The NATO-led mission said three of its personnel were wounded, including a US brigadier-general, but that the top US commander in the country, General Austin Miller, who was in the meeting with Razeq, escaped unharmed, thanks to his body armour. The Taliban claimed the strike. The death of Razeq will have great consequences. He was in reality the unrivalled regional warlord of the entire Afghan south who was admired and courted by the US military and the CIA for his ruthlessness and anti-Taliban prowess. Razeq was an extremely brutal man and in May last year, the United Nations Committee Against Torture released a report describing credible allegations of Razeq's "complicity, if not of personal implication, in severe human rights abuses, including extrajudicial killings and secret detention centres." But he was an indispensable ally for the US, being their most effective warlord and the "kingpin" in the fight against the Taliban in its homeland of southern Afghanistan bordering Pakistan. There is high probability that with the departure of this charismatic warlord, southern Afghanistan will spin out of control Afghan forces fragmenting and local commanders vying for power and the security situation dramatically deteriorating. Clearly, Taliban's intention in eliminating Razeq is to reduce the entire southern region of Afghanistan to turmoil. And with that, Americans will have irretrievably lost the war. Coincidence or not, in the week after Razeq's killing, Pakistan released from prison three senior Taliban members, including Mullah Baradar, Mullah Abdul Samad Sani and Mullah Mohammad Rasul. Out of the three, it is Mullah Baradar who makes the headlines. He is a co-founder of the Taliban movement and was the deputy of Mullah Mohammed Omar, the legendary emir of the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan who died in 2016. Pakistan has been holding Baradar in custody since 2010 on grounds of his perceived inclination to hold peace talks directly with then President Hamid Karzai to end the insurgency. Baradar's release has been apparently at the request of the newly appointed US special representative on Afghanistan Zalmay Khalilzad (an ethnic Pashtun himself) who is pursuing a mandated mission by the Trump administration to engage Taliban in talks. Meanwhile, this is all playing out against the backdrop of a growing realisation in Washington that a face-saving deal with the Taliban can still enable the US to head for the exit door and leave the Hindukush without the appearance of having lost the war. President Trump has not yet announced a timetable for withdrawal, but the growing impression is that a drawdown is on cards and time is running out. It is patently obvious that Trump himself stands disconnected from the war effort he's never once visited Afghanistan and has outsourced to Vice-President Pence any conversations needed periodically with Afghan President Ghani. The Taliban, who control more than half of Afghanistan, and Pakistan, who mentors its leadership, know that the US is desperate to leave. They have begun pushing the envelope in a calibrated way, as the attack in Kandahar city shows, to keep the Americans on the razor's edge. On the other hand, there is much dismay within Afghanistan, especially among non-Pashtun ethnic groups, that Khalilzad, who is an ambitious careerist and a go-getter, will be in a hurry to report to Trump about Mission Accomplished. Plainly put, Afghans fear that Khalilzad may cut a secret deal with Pakistan. The release of Mullah Baradar, therefore, will set alarm bells ringing in Kabul. The big question is what is it that the Taliban may be willing to settle for at the negotiating table with Khalilzad? Make no mistake. The Taliban are unlikely to settle for anything short of the restoration of the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan. Any assumption that the Taliban leadership will reconcile with Ghani government is misplaced. The Taliban have always insisted that only an Islamic system is legitimate. Succinctly put, in the emergent circumstances, the possibility of the Taliban reconciling with Afghan government and participating in a political process is virtually nil since they are already ruling over much of the country. Perhaps, they may agree for tactical reasons to joining an interim government as a provisional step toward the resurrection of the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan, which was liquidated by the US through force in 2001. And, of course, Pakistan has no good reason to rein in the Taliban. A situation as traumatic as the Afghan transition from communist rule in 1991-92 could be staring at India in the face in the near future. Alas, there has been a catastrophic misjudgement by our foreign and security policy establishment. The right thing to do should have been to welcome the overture by Pakistan's army chief for dialogue alongside making discreet efforts to have a conversation with the Taliban. Neither happened. Hardliners prevailed. Our capacity now to leverage US approach is zero. Trump's Afghan strategy was formulated by then US National Security Adviser HR McMaster with Indian inputs and now that the strategy has failed spectacularly, Indian credibility also takes a hit. The wheel may come full circle if a Taliban regime reopens training camps for Indian militants. Therefore, hasty steps must be avoided. Shiv Vishwanathan Shiv Vishwanathan Academic Associated with Compost Heap Years ago, during the Cold War, where many of us spent our childhood, a famous comic strip kept us company. It gave us a sense of corruption, power and also the anxiety and insanity of power. The strip was in MAD magazine, and it was called Spy vs Spy. Originated by Antonio Prohia, a Cuban emigre, it sought to explain the Cold War through the subtle and surreal comic strip. While Americans in the sixties could at least laugh at power, Indians take power too seriously. It seems it is the only real aphrodisiac for the Indian Male. As a result, the newspapers miss out the slapstick but lethal nature of power struggles in India. One was thinking of Spy vs Spy as one read about the Asthana vs Kumar battle in the CBI. The irony begins just there. The CBI, an autonomous organisation, is supposed to be neutral, objective and truthful. But no organisation in recent times has been a dance of puppets as the CBI. The case of Ranjeet Sinha comes immediately to mind. The sad fact is the agency for all its legendary autonomy has been an immaculate puppet. As Lord Acton said, ``Power corrupts while absolute power corrupts absolutely'. A study of India would tell him, a sidekick to power gets corrupted absolutely and sordidly as well. Reading the recent scandals, one realises two things. First, the battle in the CBI between Asthana and Verma is real but it is also a shadow play. It is really a battle between politicians like Amit Shah, the corporations and other forces. Amit Shah looks immaculate and untouched while the officers absorb the pollution. What is more intriguing is that the one man at the pinnacle of power and responsibility, Narendra Modi, remains untouched, a Tussad's like distance, which makes one wonder what his role in all this is. The CBI is directly under the PM and to grant him ritual distance from all this is both polite and surreal. Secondly, it is very clear that the CBI has lost all sense of autonomy. It has become a favourite hunting ground of politicians to fight their proxy wars. So the surrogate war between Asthana and Verma has power players hidden in the background. In terms of governance, the CBI is a warped agency which validates every suspicion against it. Sadly, one also realises that power is like musical chairs and with the change in power, hunter and hunted reverse directions. All it requires is a transfer of roles. Even that may not be necessarily given the sycophancy of the bureaucracy. Classic watchers of the CBI will always tell you, "Corruption always has a genealogy, a creation of myth." Each act of corruption has its own special source. Corruption today in the CBI goes back to what has been dubbed amicably as 'the Gujarat connection'. When Narendra Modi, Amit Shah and his team entered Lutyen's Delhi, they realised power needed backups. They brought with them a team of loyal officers who played out 'the master's voice'. Heading the team was PK Mishra but accompanying them were pliant yes men who could clean up after their masters. Among them was YC Modi who cleaned up the memory of the Gujarat riots and Rakesh Asthana, a Gujarat cadre officer, who investigated the burning of the Sabarmati Express at Godhra. These men were the Swacch Andolan of the men in power letting them behave with a holier than thou attitude. By absorbing pollution and by polluting others, they made sure that the Modi Government looked immaculate in power. The Swacch Andolan should have begun with the CBI which is more polluted than the Yamuna. Yet what is interestingly as an exercise in understanding governance and its corruptibility is the way Asthana came to power. A favourite of the regime, he would have been head of CBI if his activities had not come under the scrutiny of Prashant Bhushan whose role in unmasking corruption is classic. Yet one must say something for the rules, because it is rules of seniority, the arrogance of the appointment committee in ignoring rules that put Asthana at the centre of the controversy. To have Asthana as head of CBI would have been convenient for BJP before the 2019 elections. If Congress had not caused a ritual objection, he would have been head. As a result of protests a fresh list had to be framed which allowed Verma to become numero uno. However, power games do not end so easily. Bureaucrats in power retire and Verma's term was scheduled to end in January 2019. Asthana was the obvious favorite till he got implicated in corruption. As the story goes, he has been serving his masters and what was revealing was the CBIs ruthlessness in hunting down the opposition. Its cost was obvious - institutional decline -exaggerated by the refusal to appoint a Lokpal. The Modi regime for all its institutional piety was caught on the wrong foot on the CBI. The stench of Gujarat now extends to the CBI. To describe this battle as media tends to do as a turf war is not accurate. The turf is not an official bureaucracy but the whole of India and the future of democracy. Consider a prima facie case, if the organisation to investigate corruption is corrupt, what does one say about the institutional integrity of India? Listing out the directory of corruption stories only indicates the extent of corruption and voyeuristic sense of power. What one has to look at is the hypocrisy of power and how this hypocrisy is intensified by the breakdown of institutions like the CBI. Overplaying the Asthana vs Verma struggle as one of personalities alone tells us little. The simple fact is that the rule of law does not exist in agencies responsible for the law. The ordinary citizen watches helplessly as the story is played out, wondering whether even a temporary relief from the redundancy of corruption is available. editorial@tribune.com Tribune News Service Karnal, October 25 Hundreds of disabled persons took out a protest march in the city on Thursday and overpowered police barricades to stage a dharna outside CMs camp office. The protesters were demanding the implementation of Right for Disabled Law, 2016, pension and pass of train and bus facility for people with 40 per cent disability, Rs 5,000 monthly pension, an increase in the reservation quota for disabled in government jobs from 3 to 4 per cent and filling of all vacant posts in the quota in all departments. The protesters were pacified with the assurance of a meeting with Krishan Bedi, Minister of State for Social Justice and Empowerment, on October 27 in Shahbad, and they lifted the dharna. They even threatened to go on a strike if their demands were not met. Rishkesh Rajli, state president of Viklang Adhkiar Manch, Haryana, said they even had to fight for a medical certificate, which was mandatory to prove disability. He alleged that they had to face the apathy of the doctors while renewing their certificate as the doctors reduced their disability percentage. He alleged that only 60 per cent of the disabled across the country had managed to get their disability certificate, while 40 per cent were running from pillar to post for the same. He said they had approached Chief Minister Manohar Lal Khattar and apprised him about their demands but nothing had been done so far. Naresh Kumar, another protester, said the government should identify vacant posts for the disabled and should fill them at the earliest. The disabled persons should be issued BPL ration card and schools for people with special needs should be opened, he demanded. The protesters also handed over a memorandum to Satyawan, District Social Welfare Officer, who assured them of a meeting with the minister. editorial@tribune.com Tribune News Service Chandigarh, October 26 As the Haryana Roadways (HR) strike entered the 11th day on Friday, thousands of employees of the state government went on one-day casual leave to express solidarity with the striking employees, affecting work in certain departments. The employees affiliated to Sarv Karamchari Sangh (SKS) and other trade unions took mass casual leave and joined the transport workers for dharna at various places across the state. The Power Department, School Education Department, the PWD (B&R), municipalities, Health Department (anganwadi workers and National Health Mission workers), Rural Development and Panchayats were the departments affected. However, emergency and urgent works were attended to by the employees. Subhash Lamba, general secretary of the SKS, said the trade unions would not allow privatisation in any of the departments of the state government. The state government should roll back the kilometer scheme under which 700 buses from private parties are to be inducted in the Haryana Roadways, besides taking back cases registered against the striking transport workers under the Essential Services Maintenance Act. The HR employees, who have been on strike since October 16 defying ESMA, announced on Thursday that they would extend the strike till October 29, after of failure of fresh round of talks with Transport Minister Krishan Lal Panwar on October 24. On a normal day, the 19,000-employee strong HR, with a fleet of 4,100 buses, catered to only 12 lakh out of the 33 lakh daily passengers. Rest of them had to rely to unsafe and unreliable maxi cabs and three-wheelers for commuting. Since the start of the strike on October 16, the situation has become worse with lakhs of commuters being inconvenienced. Meanwhile, an official spokesman claimed that the mass casual leave of the transport department at the headquarters here proved be a failure. Despite the leave, 2,165 buses plied on different routes. The state government has issued directions for the recruitment of 905 conductors under the outsourcing policy, the spokesman added. 1,600 employees marked absent in Ynagar Defying the state government order, around 1,600 employees of various departments proceeded on mass casual leave on Friday in support of the warring Haryana Roadways staff. However, in compliance to the government directive, the heads of the departments had not sanctioned any casual leave and marked the employees as absent. The government issued directions on Thursday that no employee would be allowed to proceed on leave. About 1,600 employees of various departments applied for leave for Friday but we did not grant them leave and marked them absent, said Deputy Commissioner Girish Arora. He said a report of the absentee employees had been prepared and sent to higher authorities. According to information, 128 buses of Yamunanagar depot plied on various routes on Friday. The employees of various departments reached out to the striking employees, who have been sitting outside the gate of Roadways workshop in Yamunanagar. Work hit in Karnal Joining hands with protesting roadways workers, hundreds of employees of various departments on Friday took mass casual leave, causing inconvenience to the public. They took out a march under the banner of the Sarv Karamchari Sangh, Sanyukt Karamchari Manch and Shikshak Talmel Committee. Five members of the sangh observed protest fast. Employees led by Om Parkash Sinhmar, district president of the sangh, raised slogans against the government for promoting privatisation. Minister of State Nayab Singh Saini said the government was always ready for dialogue, but employees should not interfere in policy matters. Parking slips issued as tickets to conductors Sonepat: Roadways authorities at Gohana sub depot were put in an embarrassing situation when the temporarily enrolled conductors were issued parking slips due to non-availability of authorised passenger tickets. As there is no numbering on these parking slips, the Haryana Roadways conductors on strike alleged that it was going to become a big fraud. However, the arrangement was withdrawn after protests from the conductors on strike. Meanwhile, Deepak Kundu, Senior Transport Officer, said the sub depot's conductors were issued passenger tickets valued around Rs 30 lakh before commencing of the strike. But they had not returned the ticket boxes yet. OC Mass leave applied but not granted vermaajay1968@gmail.com Pradeep Sharma Tribune News Service Chandigarh, October 25 Haryana Roadways employees today extended their 10-day-old strike till October 29, leaving lakhs of commuters at the receiving end. The employees, who have been on strike since October 16 defying the Essential Services Maintenance Act (ESMA), announced to extend the strike following failure of a fresh round of talks with Transport Minister Krishan Lal Panwar last night. Balwan Singh, a member of the coordination committee of the employees union, said the government had rejected their demand to withdraw its decision of hiring 700 private buses under the kilometre scheme. With both sides hardening their stand, there seems to be no end in sight to the longest public transport strike in the state. In 1993, a similar strike lasted a week. Even today, Chief Minister Manohar Lal Khattar reiterated that introduction of the private buses did not amount to privatisation of Haryana Roadways. The unions should not interfere in the policy matter, but focus on redressal of grievances of their members, he asserted. Complete transparency was adopted in the award of tenders. In a way, this is addition to the fleet as new buses would work under the overall control of the roadways, Khattar stated. On a normal day, Haryana Roadways, with a fleet of 4,100 buses, caters to 12 lakh of the 33 lakh passengers daily. The rest have to rely on unsafe and unreliable maxi cabs and three-wheelers for commuting. Since the start of the strike on October 16, the situation has become worse with lakhs of commuters being inconvenienced. However, official source claimed that 3,385 buses, including 2,226 Haryana Roadways buses, plied on various routes today. Meanwhile, Subhash Lamba, general secretary of Sarv Karamchari Sangh, apex body of the Haryana Government employees, said to express solidarity with the roadways employees and to protest the autocratic behaviour of the state government, the government employees from several other departments would proceed on mass casual leave tomorrow. Unions Main demands Scrap kilometre scheme under which the Haryana govt wants private parties to run 700 buses. Unions say the move would open roadways to privatisation Sticking point Unions want immediate scrapping of scheme, govt says policy decision to stay Government stand Ready to put on hold decision to run 190 private buses tenders for which are yet to finalised, but firm on running remaining 510 buses as agreement already signed. Ready for inquiry by Vigilance Department into allotment of tenders editorial@tribune.com Tribune News Service Karnal, October 26 Girl students will soon be able to get admission in Sainik Schools across the country. The decision was taken by the principals of all 28 Sainik Schools on the concluding day of the 48th All-India Sainik Schools Principals Conference at Sainik School, Kunjpura, in the district on Friday. The admission would be given only after the completion of necessary infrastructure. Besides, they also decided the inclusion of cadets joining the Naval Academy as criteria for awarding Raksha Mantri Trophy, while earlier the NDA entry cadets were considered for the trophy. The principals also gave approval to decrease the tuition fee up to Rs 50,000 per year from the existing Rs 1 lakh, appointment of counsellor for cadets, revision of upper age limit for PGT from 35 to 40 and implementation of the General Financial Rules, 2017, for giving more financial powers to the principals. Group Captain P Ravi Kumar, inspecting officer, Sainik Schools Society, chaired the conference and exhorted the principals to work on the decisions taken in the meeting. The conference was inaugurated by Union Minister of State for Defence Dr Subhash Bhamre on Thursday vinaymishra188@gmail.com Parveen Arora Tribune News Service Karnal, October 26 Procurement agencies in Karnal have already purchased more than double the total paddy produced in the district and the harvesting season is not yet over. The Tribune has learnt that due to a nexus between procurement agencies, marketing board officials, millers and traders, PDS rice from Uttar Pradesh and Bihar is being pushed into the procurement stream by showing it as rice delivered against custom milling of paddy. Since no paddy against this rice is needed by millers, its procurement is shown only on paper by procuring fake gate passes, etc. Paddy from UP is being brought to the state much to the detriment of local farmers, who allege that their crop is being rejected on one pretext or the other. I brought paddy to this grain market on Wednesday and have been asked to wait as the moisture content is high. I have been informed that it will be sold for anything between Rs 1,500 and Rs 1,550 per quintal, alleged a farmer in the Karnal grain market. According to the data available with the state Agriculture Department, paddy is grown on 1.72 lakh hectare in the district. With 40 per cent of it under basmati cultivation, grade A paddy was grown on around 1.03 lakh hectare. With average yield in the district being 6 tonne per hectare, the total paddy production in the district should be around 6.19 lakh tonne. However, the procurement agencies have already procured 13.53 lakh tonne of paddy and the procurement is not yet over. Karnal Arhtiyas Association president Rajnish Chaudhary admitted that paddy was being brought from UP and other states to Karnal district. The administration should increase vigil at inter-state nakas to check the arrival of paddy from other states. He, however, evaded a reply on allegations of PDS or other cheaper quality rice being pushed into the procurement stream. Haryana Rice Millers and Dealers Association vice-president Vinod Goel said farmers from Haryana, who owned land in UP, could bring paddy to the Karnal grain market. There was no ban on trade of paddy from other states, he said. How it happens? editorial@tribune.com Tribune News Service Panipat, October 25 Trade unions and employees organisations, including the Sarva Karamchari Sangh (SKS), Centre of Indian Trade Unions (CITU), Haryana State Electricity Board Engineers Association and Saksham Yuva Sangh, on Thursday supported Haryana Roadways employees, who are on strike for the past 10 days. Sources said more than 80 buses of the local depot had been plying for the past four days. The daily sales from tickets have dropped from Rs12 lakh to only Rs2.5 lakh, they said. The depot had suffered a loss of more than Rs 70 lakh in 10 days, the sources said. INSO supports strike Balraj Deswal, a spokesperson for the INSO, said: Students from rural areas depend on roadways buses for commuting. Only roadways buses pick students from their villages and drop them at colleges and universities. Students travel on concessional rates in roadways buses, while girls feel safe. If needed, students would gather in support of roadways employees because they were fighting for the common people, he added. Karnal: Employees from various departments under the banner of Sarv Karamchari Sangh on Thursday staged a protest march in the city in support of the ongoing strike of the Haryana Roadways employees. They announced to go on mass leave on October 26. They have even started a relay fast at the dharna site of the roadways employees near Karan Park. As many as 11 employees went on hunger strike for a day, while another 11 employees will start fasting on Friday. They demanded that the state government take back the decision of privatisation and sort out the issue after talking with the roadways employees. Om Parkash Sinhmar, district president, criticised the government for not accepting the genuine demands of the roadways employees. He said instead of fulfilling their demands, the government was promoting privatisation. Counting losses editorial@tribune.com New Delhi, October 25 The state government on Thursday told the Supreme Court that departmental action has been initiated against erring public servants who were posted in Kasauli when unauthorised constructions happened there. The state government told a Bench headed by Justice Madan B Lokur that preliminary inquiry had been initiated against public servants, who were found to be negligent in performing their duties, and show-cause notices were also issued to them. The counsel appearing for the state said the demolition of unauthorised constructions at several hotels and resorts in Kasauli had been done and the state was proceeding in accordance with the law for curbing such instances in the future. We expect the state of Himachal to conclude the inquiry at the earliest, said the Bench, also comprising Justices SA Nazeer and Deepak Gupta. The state also told the court that illegal constructions would be sealed for one year and if requisite permissions and regularisation were not taken within this period, the unauthorised structures would be demolished. The Bench made it clear that unauthorised floor of a building could not be regularised. The states counsel apologised to the Bench about the last hearing, wherein a lawyer representing Himachal had drawn the attention of the court to the fact that the wife of an apex court judge, who is hearing the matter, had filed a plea in the states high court on encroachment on forestland. Senior advocate P S Patwalia, assisting the court as an amicus curiae in the matter, referred to a recent order passed by the NGT in Kasauli matter. Referring to one of the directions passed by the NGT regarding the regularisation of unauthorised structures, Patwalia said this could not be done since a report filed before the tribunal had said that holding capacity of Kasauli had already crossed the limit. The amicus said the NGTs direction virtually nullifies the earlier directions given by the apex court as well as the orders passed by the Himachal Pradesh High Court in the matter related to Kasauli. However, the states counsel told the Bench that Patwalia had appeared as an advocate for one of the parties in the Kasauli matter pending before the NGT and he could not be an amicus in the case. We are aware of it, the Bench said. PTI gspannu7@gmail.com Our Correspondent Kullu, October 26 A Russian woman, 33, was allegedly raped by two men on Thursday night while she was on her way to Hadimba temple and a case has been registered by the Manali police. Kullu SP Shalini Agnihotri said the victim had arrived about a week ago in Manali with a study group carrying out local research. She said the victim was going towards Hadimba temple from Old Manali after having dinner when the alleged accused waylaid her. The exact location of scene of the crime had not been identified yet, the SP said. Agnihotri said the victim had no clue about the location or about the accused. She added that there were no CCTV cameras in the route and police was so far clueless in the case. She said the medical examination of the victim was carried out today and various other evidences and DNA samples had been collected. The SP added that the concerned Embassy had been informed. This is not the first case of heinous crime with a tourist in Manali. Earlier this year, a Japanese girl was raped in Manali on May 30 and police was able to solve the case within two days and the alleged accused was arrested. The SP said that police helpline numbers were available on all taxis and tourist centres for any kind of emergency and effective measures would be taken to ensure safety of the tourists. editorial@tribune.com Tribune News Service Srinagar, October 26 As part of the biannual Durbar move, the civil secretariat and other state government offices closed in Srinagar on Friday and will open in Jammu on November 5. The offices of the Chief Justice of the Jammu and Kashmir High Court and the Director General of Police also closed operations from Srinagar. Other offices of various departments having six-day will close on Saturday. This is for the first time in 10 years that the Durbar move from Srinagar to Jammu is taking place under the Governors rule. While the seat of the government shifts to Jammu for the next six months, it has established the winter secretariat here to address the problems faced by the people of the Kashmir division during harsh winter months. This is in addition to the Governors grievance cell, where the Advisers address the public issues on a weekly basis. The winter secretariat, which was started in the early 1990s, was not being established for the past three years. editorial@tribune.com Tribune News Service Srinagar, October 25 Asserting that his job was to make situation conducive for talks, Governor Satya Pal Malik on Thursday ruled out dialogue with the Hurriyat till the separatist leaders disassociated themselves from Pakistan. As long as the Hurriyat does not keep away Pakistan, we will not talk to them. Talks are the prerogative of the government. My role is to make the situation conducive for talks and I am trying to make that happen, Malik told reporters on the sidelines of a function held here. Even as the Governor maintained that violence had come down, he admitted to carelessness in the Kulgam incident where seven persons were killed in a blast at an encounter site on Sunday. What happened in Kulgam is very unfortunate. There was carelessness on our part also as well as on peoples part, he said while adding that security forces were directed not to leave the encounter site without clearing the area. There should also be advertisements in the newspapers appealing to people not to go near the sites of encounters. People should also understand this, political parties should also come forward and stop people from going to encounter sites for a few days till the sites are cleared, he added. Earlier in his speech, he blamed the previous Central governments for the Kashmir problem. The problem has not been created by the Kashmiris... what the erstwhile rulers in Delhi did, it increased uncertainty, separatism and all problems here. But today, I can safely say as a representative of the government that Delhi is a friend of Kashmiris. Delhi does not want to govern you but wants you to govern the whole country, he said. Malik said he was pained by the recent killing of an AMU research scholar-turned-militant. A terrorist Mannan Wani was killed here. He was well-educated and I felt pained. He could have done so much for the country, he said while adding that he had intervened to prevent the suspension of students from the AMU after they gathered to offer funeral prayers for Mannan. Carelessness over Kulgam: Malik What happened in Kulgam is very unfortunate. The security forces were directed not to leave the encounter site without clearing the area. There was carelessness on our part also as well as on peoples part. There should be advertisements in the newspapers appealing to people not to go near the sites of encounters. Satya Pal Malik, Governor rchopra@tribunemail.com Tribune News Service Srinagar, October 26 Two militants and an Army jawan were killed during an encounter between ultras and security forces in Sopore area of Baramulla district on Friday, officials said. Two terrorists have been killed in the Sopore operation, Srinagar-based Defence Spokesman Col Rajesh Kalia said. He said the identity and group affiliation of the slain ultras is being ascertained. The defence spokesman said a soldier also lost his life in the gun battle. Security forces launched a cordon and search operation at Pazalpora village of Dangiwacha Sopore in the north Kashmir district in the morning after receiving specific information about the presence of militants in the area. The search operation turned into an encounter after the militants fired upon the search party of the forces, who retaliated. The operation is in progress, Col Kalia said, adding that further details were awaited. With PTI vinaymishra188@gmail.com Srinagar, October 26 Two soldiers lost their lives during operations in Jammu and Kashmir on Friday. While Sepoy Rajendra Singh, 22, who was injured in stone-pelting in Kashmirs Anantnag district on Thursday, succumbed to a head injury, Lance Naik Brajesh Kumar, 32, died in an encounter on the outskirts of Sopore in north Kashmir in which two militants were killed too. The Lance Naik belonged to Nanawin in Una district of Himachal Pradesh. He leaves behind his wife and daughter. Joint teams of the state police, the Armys 22 Rashtriya Rifles and 172 and 92 Battalions of the CRPF launched a cordon and search operation in Pazalpora Dangiwacha, 70 km from Srinagar, around 2 am following a tip-off. During the operation, hiding militants opened fire. An encounter ensued in which two militants were neutralised, Sopore SP Javid Iqbal said. Lance Naik Brajesh Kumar sustained splinter injuries and was evacuated to a hospital, where he died. Announcing the death of Sepoy Rajendra Singh, spokesman Col Rajesh Kalia said he was part of the Quick Reaction Team providing security to a BRO convoy. Around 6 pm, as the convoy was passing through the Anantnag bypass tri-junction near NH-44, a few youths hurled stones at the vehicle. Sepoy Rajendra Singh was hit in the head. He was evacuated to 92 Base Hospital in Srinagar, where he died. The deceased, who hailed from a village in Pithoragarh, Uttarakhand, is survived by his parents. Many soldiers have been injured in stone-pelting incidents, but it is the first time that a soldier has died, said an Army officer. A senior police officer in south Kashmir, however, claimed no such incident yesterday. Meanwhile, militants targeted an Army camp in Shopian. Nobody was injured, said sources. TNS editorial@tribune.com Srinagar/Anantnag, October 25 A soldier was killed and another injured in a militant attack in south Kashmirs Tral area of Pulwama district on Thursday evening, even as six militants were gunned down in two separate operations in the Valley. The militants opened fire at an Army camp at Nadar Tral, resulting in injuries to two soldiers, one of whom succumbed. His identity could not be established. Meanwhile, two Lashkar-e-Toiba militants were killed in a gunfight in Baramulla district, while four Hizbul Mujahideen operatives were gunned down in the Arwini area of Anantnag district. In Baramulla, the gunfight took place at Athoora Kreeri village, 45 km from Srinagar. An assault and an Insas rifle were recovered from the site. Clashes erupted when youngsters tried to march towards the village. TNS editorial@tribune.com Tribune News Service Srinagar, October 26 The police on Friday again locked Kashmirs largest mosque, Jamia Masjid, and sealed off volatile areas in the city to foil protests called by separatist leaders. This is for the third consecutive Friday that the masjid was closed as part of preventive measures to check protests. The weekly congregational prayers were barred by the authorities at Jamia Masjid in the old city and a large number of security personnel were deployed in the area to prevent protests. Mirwaiz Umar Farooq, one of the three key separatist leaders in the region who had called for the protest, delivers a weekly sermon at Jamia Masjid. He condemned the lockdown and described it as an attack on religious rights. Separatist leaders Mirwaiz, Syed Ali Geelani and Yasin Malik had called for peaceful protests after Friday prayers against the recent increase in the killing of militants and civilians during gunfights. In the wake of the call for protests, members of the Jammu Kashmir Liberation Front, headed by Malik, held a demonstration at Sarai Bala in the city. In counter-insurgency operations, over a dozen militants have been killed in the past week. Seven civilians also died earlier this week in an accidental explosion at the site of a gunfight in south Kashmirs Kulgam district. The separatist leaders have also called for shutdown on Saturday to mark the anniversary of arrival of soldiers in the Valley in 1947. shriaya.dutta@tribuneindia.com Mumbai, October 26 Actor Govinda says "Rangeela Raja" is typically his brand of film, complete with dances and songs. Govinda was interacting with the media at the music launch of "Rangeela Raja" along with his co-actors Shakti Kapoor, producer Pahlaj Nihalani and director Sikander Bharti here on Thursday. Nihalani and Govinda have together given Bollywood films like "Ilzaam", "Shola Aur Shabnam" and "Aankhen". The duo is joining forces again after over 25 years for "Rangeela Raja". Govinda, who plays a double role in the movie, said: "I started working with Pahlaj sir in 'Ilzaam' and after that, we both delivered number of hit films like 'Shola Aur Shabnam' and 'Aankhen'. I am feeling like a newcomer who has started his career. There are lots of surprises in the film. "I would like to say that it's a typical Govinda film in which the audience will be able to see dance and songs throughout the film. I feel that this film will touch the heart of the audience because in every household, there are people like Rangeela Raja. We have also tried to give a really nice message through the film." Govinda hasn't been able to deliver a hit film as a solo lead from very long time. Talking about his struggling period in the Hindi film industry, he said: "I am thankful to Pahlaj sir for giving me the opportunity to work in his film. I hope we would continue our past record of hit films with this one as well. "Since past 9 years, I wasn't getting an opportunity to do substantial roles of my choice. I did comedy in 'Happy Ending' and in 'Kill Dil', I played a negative character. I haven't got an opportunity to appear as a hero in a film from a very long time. Therefore, I produced 'Aa Gaya Hero' but it didn't do well because of demonetisation at that time. "My last released film 'FryDay' did well. So, I hope that I keep getting success with my upcoming films." IANS shalender@tribune.com Games of Thrones star Emilia Clarke has seemingly confirmed her romance with American director Charlie McDowell. The Me Before You actress recently turned 32 and celebrated her special day with McDowell. The two also posted pictures on their official Instagram accounts. The photo shows two shadows on the sand seemingly sharing a kiss. Clarke captioned the picture as, Well that was a birthday I wont be forgetting in a while. While McDowell captioned the same picture as, Happy birthday, E. McDowell was previously linked to American actor Rooney Mara back in 2012. The 35-year-old filmmaker is the son of the legendary British actor Malcolm McDowell. The famous series Games of Thrones is coming to an end. In September, Clarke had discussed the shows final season and its impact on the whole team. Its bittersweet, weve all done a lot of crying. Theres been a lot of crying on set, she had said. Emilia Clarke will soon treat her fans with her upcoming films Above Suspicion and Last Christmas. ANI monicakchauhan@gmail.com Mumbai, October 26 A 26-year-old junior artist has alleged that she was molested near the sets of Housefull 4 film here, police said on Friday. The alleged incident occurred on Thursday night at Chitrakoot Studio at Amboli in western suburbs, where shooting of the Hindi film is going on, an official said. Two persons came to the spot and allegedly started manhandling the victims male friend over some previous enmity, he said, quoting the complaint filed by the artist. The duo, according to the woman, pushed and touched her inappropriately when she tried to intervene, the official said. She approached the Amboli police station and lodged a complaint, he said, adding that an offence of molestation has been registered against the accused, who have been identified. The alleged incident took place near the sets and it had nothing to do with the films shooting, the official said. We are investigating the case and nobody has been arrested so far, he said. Executive producer of Housefull 4 Manoj Mitra said the incident took place off the sets when the lead actors had already packed up for the day. In a statement, he said, It is disheartening to hear about this incident. As an executive producer, I would like to clarify the recent incident that showed up in the news related to the sets of Housefull 4 is something that evidently didnt happen on the sets or during the shoot. It took place off the sets and hence I have to state that it is beyond our capabilities, he said. I would also like to clarify that Akshay Kumar and Ritiesh Deshmukh (who feature in the film) had packed up way before this incident occurred. It was their personal matter and nothing related to our film shoot, Mitra said. Raman Dave, the head of dancers for the film, said, There was some argument between the boys which happened post pack up outside the set. The woman tried to save one of the males who was her friend, she tried to stop the fight, but unfortunately it was a heated argument and during this fight the boys happen to push her away to stay out of the fight. Dave said the argument was between the dancers and an outsider and it had nothing to do with the film. We have learned that the argument was between the dancers and Pawan Shetty (who is an outsider) and nothing to do with our film. I had left from shoot but my set attendant Sandra was there on the set and even she has mentioned that nothing happened on the set, he said. PTI vinaymishra188@gmail.com Mumbai, October 26 Maharashtra continues to record the largest number of swine flu deaths in the country for the second consecutive year despite the state Health Department setting up a protocol for both private and public health practitioners. According to information put out by the Health Department, 268 persons have died in Maharashtra due to H1N1 or swine flu between January and October this year. During the same period, 542 persons died of swine flu across the country. Health Minister Deepak Sawant told reporters earlier this week that 32 persons were currently on ventilator support. On Thursday, the department advised doctors not to wait for patients to test positive for swine flu before being put on oseltamivirthe drug used to treat virus. Patients considered high-risk include those suffering from heart, kidney, lung, liver diseases, diabetes, cancer and AIDS. Health officials said the number of swine flu deaths was 532 in Maharashtra in 2017. TNS editorial@tribune.com New Delhi, October 25 Four men of the Intelligence Bureau were on Thursday caught outside the official residence of CBI Director Alok Verma who has been asked to go on leave prompting the Ministry of Home Affairs to claim they were on routine, covert duties in the high-security area. Sources said the four were held near Vermas residence at 2 Janpath by Delhi Police sleuths for questioning, but the contention was reportedly denied by DCP (New Delhi) Madhur Verma. The incident apparently didnt go down well with the IB top brass, prompting MHA officials to clarify the position, said the sources. A senior MHA official said the IB was entrusted with the responsibility of collecting intelligence on situations that might affect public order and internal security. Among other things, its units are routinely deployed in sensitive areas, he added. Noting that the intelligence gathering exercise was usually done in association with local law enforcement agencies, the MHA official said at times, there was a need for element of surprise. This also enables law enforcement agencies to respond quickly to developing situations. The officials carry their IDs since they are on routine duties, he explained. Denying possible surveillance, which is done without any visible appurtenances, the official said: One unit, in the early hours of today, halted at Janpath where there was an unusual collection of people and this was only to do with checking why people had collected at the location. Another MHA official said: This is a high-security zone where several protectees reside. Unfortunately, their presence was projected otherwise. Former PM Manmohan Singh and NCP chief Sharad Pawar live near the CBI Directors official residence. gspannu7@gmail.com Tribune News Service Lucknow, October 26 At least eight people died and three critically injured in Rasurpur village in Badaun district on Friday in an explosion in a firecracker warehouse. Speaking to The Tribune, Badaun Superintendent of Police Ashok Kumar, who is at the spot supervising the relief and rescue operation, said the cause of the sudden blast in the authorised warehouse is a subject of inquiry. The accident occurred in Rasurpur which falls under Civil Lines police station at around 4 pm. The loud blast brought down the building where fire crackers had been stored with the permission and knowledge of the local administration, said the SP. The impact of the blast was such that the whole area felt the reverberation. Badaun SP said that it was too early to ascertain the details of the dead or if there are any more people buried under the debris. The injured have been rushed to the district hospital where their condition is said to be critical. Taking cognisance of the explosion in Badaun, Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath has directed the Badaun district magistrate to take all necessary action and provide relief to the injured, said a state government spokesperson. rchopra@tribunemail.com Muzaffarnagar, October 26 Nearly 25 armed men stormed a dairy in a village in Muzaffarnagar district and took away 18 buffaloes worth Rs 20 lakh after taking the owner hostage, a police official said on Friday. The incident happened in Ratanpuri village on Thursday, the police official said. The men entered the dairy forcibly and pointed a gun at its owner Naresh Kumar and his son Mohit. They took away the buffaloes in two vehicles, the official said. He said a bike and two mobiles phones were also snatched. Angry over the incident, villagers blocked the road outside the area police station. They ended their protest after senior police officers visited the area and pacified the protesters. A case had been registered against unidentified people and a search had been launched, the police official said. PTI rchopra@tribunemail.com Tribune News Service New Delhi, October 26 The Central government on Friday welcomed the Supreme Court order in the CBI case as a positive step saying the court had acknowledged the need for a time-bound and monitored probe into the matter. There was a dispute. This was that the CBI chief had one view and his deputy had another view about corruption allegations against each other. When an anti-corruption agency has such a situation we need a thorough inquiry to establish the truth which is in national interest. The CVC has the right of supervision in corruption matters of the CBI and said the officers should go on leave pending its probe, Union Finance Minister Arun Jaitley said. He said the Supreme Court on Friday further strengthened this thought of the CVC that an independent probe was necessary to reach the truth. The Supreme Court has accepted that the CVC inquiry should be concluded in two weeks and monitored by a retired judge for the truth to be revealed. This is in national interest. India cant afford its graft probe agency to be under suspicion, Jaitley said. Caesars wife should be above suspicion, he said, welcoming the apex court judgment in the petitions by CBI chief Alok Verma and deputy Rakesh Asthana. Union Home Minister Rajnath Singh had earlier said that the Congress had abandoned peoples issues and wanted to make political capital out of non-issues. The matter is before the top court and we should all wait for the outcome, Singh had said. editorial@tribune.com New Delhi, October 25 A day before the crucial hearing on CBI Director Alok Vermas petition challenging the governments order sending him on leave, NGO Common Cause on Thursday moved the Supreme Court demanding a court-monitored probe by a Special Investigation Team (SIT) into allegations of corruption against CBI officials, including Special Director Rakesh Asthana, who too has been divested of powers and sent on leave. Verma has also challenged the governments order asking Joint Director M Nageswar Rao to take charge as acting CBI chief. A Bench of Chief Justice of India Ranjan Gogoi, Justice Sanjay Kishan Kaul and Justice KM Joseph will take up both the petitions for hearing on Friday. At the root of the controversy is the intense infighting between Verma and his number two, Asthana. After Asthana wrote to the Central Vigilance Commissioner against Verma, the CBI registered a corruption case against its Special Director, who had to rush to the Delhi High Court for protection. The CBI on Thursday clarified that Verma continues to remain the CBI Director, Asthana the Special Director and Rao is looking after duties of the Director in the interim period till the time CVC looks into allegations and counter-allegations. He termed as false reports that seven files had been removed. TNS vinaymishra188@gmail.com Tribune News Service Lucknow, October 26 At least eight persons died and three critically injured in an explosion in a firecracker warehouse at Rasurpur village of Badaun district on Friday. Badaun Superintendent of Police Ashok Kumar, who was at the spot supervising the relief and rescue operation, said the cause of the sudden blast in the authorised warehouse was a subject of inquiry. The accident occurred in Rasurpur which falls under the Civil Lines police station at around 4 pm. The loud blast brought down the building where firecracker had been stored with the permission and knowledge of the local administration, said the SP. The impact of the blast was such that the whole area felt the reverberation. Badaun SP said it was too early to say if there are any more people buried under the debris. The intensity of the blast was so strong that people sitting in an adjacent cycle shop and some passersby were injured in the incident, Badaun SSP Ashok Kumar said. Two passersby were among those killed, he said. The injured have been rushed to the district hospital where their condition is described to be critical. Taking cognisance of the explosion, Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath has directed the Badaun district magistrate to take all necessary action and provide relief to the injured, said a state government spokesperson. The district administration had pressed excavators and fire brigades into service for rescue work. editorial@tribune.com London, October 25 The UKs Information Commissioners Office (ICO) today fined Facebook 500,000 for serious breaches of data protection law, the maximum amount it is authorised to issue. The fine by the countrys independent data watchdog related to the American social media giants role in the Cambridge Analytica data scandal, which hit the headlines earlier this year. The ICO said between 2007 and 2014, Facebook processed the personal information of users unfairly by allowing application developers access to their information without sufficiently clear and informed consent, and allowing access even if users had not downloaded the app, but were simply friends with people who had. The fine has been served under the UKs Data Protection Act, which provides a range of enforcement tools, including maximum fines of 17 million pounds or 4 per cent of global turnover. The ICO concluded that Facebook failed to keep the personal information secure in absence of suitable checks on apps and developers using its platform. These failings meant one developer, Aleksandr Kogan and his company GSR, harvested the Facebook data of up to 87 million people worldwide, without their knowledge. A subset of this data was later shared with other organisations, including SCL Group, the parent company of Cambridge Analytica who were involved in political campaigning in the US. Even after the misuse of the data was discovered in 2015, Facebook did not do enough to ensure remedial action. SCL Group, a British behavioural research and strategic communication company, had announced its closure in May in the wake of the scandal. Its activities were spread worldwide, including India, where it reportedly did data analysis during election campaigns. The ICO is still investigating how data analytics is used for political purposes. AP editorial@tribune.com Chennai, October 25 In a huge relief to the AIADMK government, the Madras High Court today upheld the June 14 order of the then Chief Justice Indira Banerjee disqualifying its 18 rebel MLAs loyal to sidelined leader TTV Dhinakaran. An adverse judgment could have triggered a political realignment in Tamil Nadu and brought the ruling party perilously close to losing majority in the state Assembly whose effective strength is 232. Two seats are vacant. The 18 AIADMK MLAs were disqualified on September 18 last year under the anti-defection law after they met the Governor and expressed loss of confidence in Chief Minister K Palaniswami. A Division Bench comprising Banerjee and Justice M Sundar had delivered a split verdict on June 14. Banerjee had upheld Speaker P Dhanapals order disqualifying them, while Sundar had passed a dissenting judgment. The Supreme Court had then appointed Justice M Sathyanarayanan to hear the matter. Justice Sathyanarayanan today said there was no infirmity in Dhanapals order which was upheld by Banerjee. All material that were available at the time of passing of the order by the Speaker alone have been taken into consideration and this court cannot go into the subsequent events, the judge observed, upholding the disqualification. The judge said he had delivered his independent view on the matter and not gone by those expressed by the two judges who heard it earlier. The verdict came as a massive relief for the Palaniswami government as the restoration of the membership of the rebel MLAs could have set off a realignment in the states politics with the Dhinakaran camp likely joining hands with the Opposition DMK and bringing it dangerously close to losing majority. The DMK and its allies the Congress and IUML together have 97 MLAs, and with the 18 rebel AIADMK forging an alliance with them besides Independent legislator Dhinakaran himself, their strength would have risen to 116, which is equal to that of the ruling party. Two Assembly seats are vacant, including Thiruvarur, which was represented by DMK patriarch the late M Karunanidhi. PTI rchopra@tribunemail.com New Delhi, October 26 An A320 neo aircraft, operated by GoAir, returned to the national capital on Friday due to a suspected technical glitch, according to the airline. While the carrier did not mention the exact reasons, A320 neos powered by Pratt & Whitney engines have been facing engine problems. The Hyderabad-bound flight--G8 423--returned to Delhi and made a normal landing. It had 90 passengers on board. In a statement, the airline said there was a suspected technical glitch. After normal landing, the passengers were accommodated in another aircraft through ramp-to-ramp transfer. Post inspection and investigation, the aircraft has been declared serviceable and operational, it added. PTI editorial@tribune.com Tribune News Service New Delhi, October 25 Underscoring that India needs a strong and stable government for the next 10 years, and not unstable arrangements, to emerge as a leading power, National Security Adviser Ajit Doval on Thursday advocated taking tough decisions in the interest of the country, shunning populist measures and countering false narratives being peddled in the country. India needs a strong, stable and decisive government for the next 10 years, let there be no doubt about it... to achieve its political, economic and strategic objectives, Doval said here, delivering the annual Sardar Patel Memorial Lecture organised by All India Radio on the theme Dream India 2030- avoiding the pitfalls. Doval, not known for making speeches in public, articulated the strategic thinking and decisions taken by the Modi government in pursuance of the objective of building a strong India. Extending a strategic community thinking that the strongest point also becomes the most vulnerable, the NSA argued that for India, democracy is its strength and there is a need to preserve it. However, weakened democracies tend to make the country opt for soft power, which India could not afford, as the country would be asked to take hard decisions in the days to come. Unstable or coalition regimes, he said, were susceptible to take decision under pressure. Citing Brazil, he said, change of power affected the growth story just as Greece, once a prosperous nation, fell behind the curve on economy. He argued a divided polity would make it difficult for the country to take decisions that are good for both the country and its future generations but are not populist in the short run. Referring to the need to have a vision, as Sardar Patel had when the country earned freedom from the British, Doval said India was way ahead of China in the 1970s but it was Deng Xiaoping who visualised where the country would be by 2050 and put it on the path of becoming a global superpower. On administrative front, he said the country is not governed by the peoples representatives but by laws made by them. The rule of law, therefore, is extremely important and must be adhered to with religious commitment, if the country was to progress. uttara@tribuneindia.com Vibha Sharma Tribune News Service New Delhi, October 26 After weeks of tense discussions to work out an acceptable seat-sharing arrangement, the Bharatiya Janata Party and the Janata Dal (United) finally announced they would have equal share of Bihars 40 Lok Sabha seats. The breakthrough came after a meeting between BJP chief Amit Shah and Bihar Chief Minister Nitish Kumar, JD-Us national president. Their smaller allies Ram Vilas Paswans Lok Janshakti Party and Upendra Kushwahas Rashtriya Lok Samta Partywill get a "respectable share the two leaders announced on Friday. How the seats are going to be divided up, how many seats the two parties get and how many the allies get are details that would announced later. "When a new ally JD (U)) has joined, all of us will have to make a sacrifice. Who will fight and from where will be decided in consultation with other partners, Amit Shah said. The alliance will poll more seats than 2014, when Kumar wasnt part of the NDA, Shah said. Kumar had broken away from the NDA alliance in the last Lok Sabha elections in 2014, after it objected to the Narendra Modi being projected as NDAs prime ministerial candidate. Although its still unconfirmed how many seats BJP and JD-U will contest, theres speculation that the two parties will contest 32 seats in all, leaving eight to be divided up between the smaller allies. Shah also indicated that the parties will all fight together, apparently precluding RLSPs withdrawal from the alliance. There were rumours Kushwahas RSLP could walk away from the alliance because it was unhappy with its share of seats. The JD-U, having won only two seats in the 2014 Lok Sabha elections, appears to have been the biggest winner in this new deal. On the other hand, the BJP, which currently holds 22 of the states Lok Sabha seats, has taken a substantial hit. The BJPs previous offer was to take 20 seats, leaving the JD-U, the LJP and RSLP to divide up the remaining 20. rchopra@tribunemail.com Pune, October 26 A court in Pune on Friday rejected the bail applications of activists Sudha Bharadwaj, Vernon Gonsalves and Arun Ferreira, who were arrested for their alleged Maoist links. The Pune police had arrested the three activists along with two others--poet P Varavara Rao and Gautam Navlakha--on August 28 in connection with the Elgar Parishad conclave held in Pune on December 31, which allegedly triggered violence at Koregaon Bhima the next day. Police alleged that some of the backers of the conclave had Maoist links. District and Sessions Judge (Special Judge) KD Vadane rejected the bail applications of Bharadwaj, Gonsalves and Ferreira. The prosecution, while opposing the bail applications, had argued that they had corrborative evidence against the accused to prove their involvement in Maoist activities, such as mobilising cadres, recruiting students from eminent institutes and sending them to the interior to become professional revolutionaries, raise funds and procure weapons. PTI editorial@tribune.com Alappuzha, October 25 Sister Anupama, who was at the forefront of protests demanding the arrest of Bishop Franco Mulakkal, accused of raping a nun, was on Thursday heckled and asked by some people to leave the cemetery where the funeral of a key witness in the rape case was going on. Kuriakose Kattuthara, a priest who had also testified against Mulakkal, had been found dead under mysterious circumstances in Dasuya near Jalandhar three days ago. The post-mortem was held at Jalandhar and body brought to Kerala on Wednesday. At the funeral on Thursday evening, a section of the faithful protested Anupamas presence and asked her to leave the cemetery at St Marys church in Pallipuram near here. Anupama, who was accompanied by other nuns, broke down and said she was deeply hurt. I am from this place. I know Father Kattuthara for many years. He has seen me as his own daughter... we have only stood for truth, she said. Kattutharas mysterious death comes days after Mulakkal, who was arrested and is presently out on bail, reached Jalandhar from Kerala. PTI monicakchauhan@gmail.com Jalpaiguri (WB), October 26 The West Bengal Police have filed a charge sheet against three persons in connection with the brutal gangrape of a woman in Jalpaiguri district on October 20, a police officer said on Friday. The 35-year-old woman was raped and an iron rod inserted in her private parts. The police filed a charge sheet against the three accused on Thursday, five days after the incident took place, a police officer said. The accused have been charge-sheeted under relevant sections of the IPC for gangrape, causing grievous injury and attempt to murder. While we have arrested two persons, one is still absconding, the Superintendent of Police (SP) of Jalpaiguri, Amitava Maity, said. The incident had taken place near the victim's home at Niranjan Pat locality of Jalpaiguri district. The prime accused, a relative of the woman, had called her out of her home on the pretext of resolving a land dispute, the SP had earlier said. He then allegedly raped her and tortured her by inserting an iron rod in her private parts, the SP had said. Two other persons accompanied the accused but they did not rape or torture her, the SP had said after he had spoken to the woman, after her operation, at the hospital. The accused relative and another person who allegedly helped him in the crime were arrested but the third accused has been absconding. The tribal woman's husband, a labourer, was away from home during the incident. The woman has three children. A rickshaw-puller had found her and took her home. She was taken to Dhupguri hospital on October 21 morning and shifted to Jalpaiguri Sadar Hospital. Doctors operated on her at the Sadar Hospital here on that night and the woman was kept in the intensive care unit. She was administered blood as she had been bleeding profusely. "She is a serious condition but is stable," doctors treating her had said Wednesday. She was shifted to the critical care unit (CCU) from the ICU on Thursday and doctors at the hospital said that her condition was stable, they said on Friday. The incident brought back memories of the ghastly Nirbhaya rape case of 2012 in which a woman was gang-raped inside a moving bus in New Delhi and one of the accused inserted a rod in her private parts. PTI rchopra@tribunemail.com Aditi Tandon Tribune News Service New Delhi, October 26 Congress-led opposition assembled outside the CBI headquarters on Friday to protest against the October 24 CBI shake-up even as the Supreme Court heard pleas of agency top bosses against their recent removal by the Government. Later, the leaders, including Rahul Gandhi, courted arrest and were taken to the police station. "Eight leaders and 150 workers were detained for 20 minutes and then released," DCP South Vijay Kumar said. Top Congress brass marched from Dyal Singh College to the CBI headquarters here to agitate against the decision of the PMO to send CBI chief Alok Verma on leave pending an inquiry by the CVC. The Government acted on the CVC recommendation in the matter. The CPI also joined the protests with Congress chief Rahul Gandhi leading it. The Congress has accused the PM of removing the CBI chief to scuttle a potential Rafale scam probe by the agency and says the Government has no legal powers to send the CBI boss on leave. The opposition is basing its argument on the Delhi Special Police Establishments Act, 1946, which was amended in 2014 and which says that the CBI chief shall be appointed by the selection committee consisting of the PM, leader of opposition and the CJI. Gandhi said only the selection committee could touch the director and the Government could not remove or send the CBI chief on an indefinite leave on its own. The opposition is also asking the PM what the urgency of packing up Verma at 2 am on October 24 was. This has never happened in India. You send a CBI chief on leave in the early hours and then seal his office. Why? asked Congress leader Anand Sharma. Congress leader in the selection panel of CBI chief Mallikarjun Kharge said the Government had violated not just the statute but also the SC judgment of 1997 in the Vineet Narain case where the top court had ruled that the CBI chief must get a fixed two-year tenure to preserve the institutions integrity. The judgment says notwithstanding the age of superannuation of the CBI chief he will remain in the job for two years. The judgment also says that the selection committee will be kept in the loop even in matters of transfer of the CBI chief. The Congress is holding a protest across India in the state capitals against the CBI changes and alleging that the PM is corrupt and acted in order to stop a probe into the Rafale scam. Present at the Delhi protest on Friday were CPI leader D Raja, senior opposition leader Sharad Yadav and Congress veterans Ashwani Kumar, Kumari Selja and Pramod Tewari. Former law minister Kumar had to resign from the post after reports that he had vetted a CBI affidavit in the coal scam matter the SC was hearing. Later, the TMC also joined the protest march. Wont let watchman steal: Rahul As Rahul Gandhi led the protests on the CBI shake-up and was stopped from going near the CBI headquarters, he said the Congress and the entire opposition would ensure that the PM didnt get away with corruption. We wont let the watchman steal, Gandhi said as party workers hailed his speech and chanted the Chowkidar chor hai slogans. With ANI vinaymishra188@gmail.com Aditi Tandon Tribune News Service New Delhi, October 26 Determined to make Rafale a major election issue, Congress president Rahul Gandhi on Friday hit the streets with party workers and managed to get the larger Opposition on board as he again accused Prime Minister Narendra Modi of removing CBI chief Alok Verma to scuttle a potential probe into the multi-crore jet deal with France. The watchman stole money from the Air Force and the youth and filled the pockets of industrialist Anil Ambani. The country can see that. Removing the CBI chief wont make any difference. Eventually everyone will know the truth that he benefitted Ambani to the extent of Rs 30,000 crore, said Gandhi, who courted arrest after leading a protest outside the CBI headquarters against the removal of Verma. CPIs D Raja, Loktantrik Janata Dal chief Sharad Yadav and representatives of the TMC and the TDP joined the agitation and were seen flanking Gandhi who spoke to supporters from a truck after the Delhi Police barricaded the area preventing protestors from marching towards the CBI headquarters. Congress leaders Ahmed Patel, Ashok Gehlot, Kumari Selja, Anand Sharma, Ashwani Kumar and Deepender Hooda were among others flanking their leader. Rahul was, however, evasive when asked to comment on todays outcome of Vermas plea in the SC which ordered a time-bound CVC probe in the matter. While most Congress leaders projected the development as a victory of sorts, Gandhi was muted in his response. Its a SC judgment. That is a procedure thats carrying on. I do not want to comment on that, he said, skirting a query on the CBI denying that Alok Verma ever had a Rafale related case file on his table. Irrespective of whether the CBI was going to probe Rafale, Congress chief Gandhi is convinced that the 36 jet deal with France is the only issue that can break the perception of Modis incorruptibility, a crucial mission in the poll season. On the eve of five state polls, the Congress feels linking the removal of CBI chief with his possible inclination to probe Rafale will yield political dividends. Todays protests are part of Gandhis long-term plan to destroy PMs image of honesty. Cong to meet Prez The Congress is plannig to meet President Ram Nath Kovind to protest the removal of CBI chief Alok Verma, besides continuing with street agitations to hammer the point that Alok Verma was packed up because he was about to launch a Rafale scam probe. shriaya.dutta@tribuneindia.com Thane, October 26 A gang of robbers allegedly hijacked a truck carrying cigarettes worth over Rs 1 crore in Palghar district of Maharashtra, police said on Friday. The incident took place on Wednesday evening near Waghoba Khind on Mumbai-Ahmedabad highway when the truck was going towards Jaipur from Mumbai, Palghar district police said. According to police, the vehicle with its consignment of cigarettes intact, was later found abandoned in Burhanpur district of Madhya Pradesh. "The truck transporting cigarrets worth over Rs 1 crore was on its way to Jaipur when it was waylaid by a gang of around seven robbers on the Mumbai-Ahmedabad highway," assistant inspector of Manor police station Sidhava Jaybhaye said. "The driver was threatened at knife point. The robbers pulled him out of the vehicle, dragged him to a forest area along the road, where he was beaten up and tied. They later fled with the truck," she said. The driver of the truck, Chanchal Singh, filed a complaint with Manor police station, following which a probe was launched. "Later, we received a message from MP police that the truck has been found abandoned under Lalbagh police station limits," Jaybhaye said. A team of Palghar police has left for MP for further probe into the case, she said adding that nobody has been arrested in this connection so far. PTI gspannu7@gmail.com New Delhi, October 26 The Defence Ministry was on Friday left red faced after its spokesperson inadvertently posted a tweet, criticising misuse of privileges by military officials, while responding to a comment by former Navy Chief Admiral (retd) Arun Prakash. As the tweet by Principal Spokesperson Swaranashree Rao Rajashekar drew angry reactions from military veterans, she deleted it saying, The tweet was inadvertently done and the same is deeply regretted please. Earlier, Admiral Prakash retweeted a photograph showing a military flag on the bonnet of an official car of the Internal Financial Adviser to the Western Command of the Army. Even if misuse of an Army Commands insignia by a civilian is not a cognisable offence, the person needs to be reprimanded by the GOC in C whose Financial Adviser he is, Prakash tweeted. Responding to the former Navy chiefs comments, Rajashekar, tweeted, What about misuse of jawans in your residence during an officers tenure sir? And how about children being picked up and dropped to school in Fauji (military) gaadis (vehicles)? Not to forget Madams shopping expedition on government vehicles. And endless parties...who pays for that?. Later, Rajashekar, an official from the Defence Accounts Service, deleted the tweet. Her response to 72-year-old Admiral Prakash, a war hero who was chief of Navy Staff between July 2004 and October 2006, drew sharp reactions from military veterans. Some of them even said the principal spokespersons comments reflected the approach of the bureaucracy towards the armed forces. In a tweet, retired Major General Harsha Kakar told Defence Minister Nirmala Sitharaman that the spokespersons comments mirrored true colours of the ministry towards the three services. Is this inadvertent. It shows the true colours of your MoD Madam. You are meant to protect the military, not insult it. Keeping this spokesperson is an insult to India, its armed forces and their sacrifices. It shows no respect for senior veterans. Your spokesperson is a disaster, he said. Retired Air Vice Marshal Manmohan Bahadur called the tweet to the former Navy chief by Rajashekar as shameful. BJP MP Rajeev Chandrasekhar also took strong exception to the spokespersons comments and demanded an inquiry into the matter. Dear @DefenceMinIndia @DrSubhashMoS - who is this Defence spokesperson who reprsnts MoD ie govt n talks like this. This is unacceptable conduct n I wud rqst an enquiry into this. This is unconscionable, disrespectful n arrogance tht behooves a response. @PMOIndia (sic) he tweeted. Amid angry reactions by veterans, Admiral Prakash said there should be sober reflection on state of civil military relationship. Rather than getting excited over indiscreet tweet of @SpokespersonMoD I would suggest sober reflection; (a) by MoD on state of civil-mil relations & (b) by Military Leadership on the aspersions cast by MoD (IDAS?) civil-servant on personal conduct of Service officers, he said. PTI editorial@tribune.com Jupinderjit Singh Tribune News Service Chandigarh, October 26 The AAP rebel group of MLAs, led by Sukhpal Khaira, has give the deadline of November 1 to the state unit for showing positive intent towards striking unity in the party. Meanwhile, the state unit of the AAP on Friday said it would not withdraw fresh appointments made by them and invited the Khaira group to send names for several remaining vacant posts. Kanwar Sandhu, head of the coordination committee of the rebel group, said the state unit of the AAP was violating the norms set for peace, We had already decided that we will give time till November 1 for peace efforts, after which we will go ahead with the expansion of our own state unit, he said. Sandhu added that no new date for talks between the coordination committees of both factions had been set. It is up to them to set the date but they should cancel the appointments made recently in violation of the peace talks, he said. Harpal Cheema, AAP Leader of Opposition stated that he was open to peace. He has even asked Khaira to contest Lok Sabha elections from a place of his choice, We are open to the selection of candidates for the Lok Sabha polls and for various posts in the state unit. The Khaira group can send names and join the discussions. If he wants to contest parliamentary polls, it will be good as he can raise issues of Punjab at the national level, Cheema said. The peace move between the two factions had hit a roadblock after the Khaira group objected to recent appointments made by the AAP for the state unit. Sukhpal Khaira had stated that this amounted to double standards as one side the state AAP was claiming peace and unity and on the other hand they were making appointments on their own instead of waiting for the result of meeting of the coordination committees of the two factions. editorial@tribune.com Tribune News Service Chandigarh, October 26 Coming to the rescue of Technical Education Minister Charanjit Singh Channi, who is caught in the MeToo storm, Congress Punjab affairs incharge Asha Kumari on Friday said the party was not aware of any such complaint against the minister. Nothing has happened. Neither there is any complaint, nor anyone approached us, she said, adding that no such complaint has reached the party president Rahul Gandhi. In Chandigarh to attend the partys state-level protest outside the regional office of the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) here, the Punjab Affairs incharge said the Chief Minister and the minister concerned had given their statements and the matter was reported to be resolved. On the statement given by the Chief Minister, she said he being of the state had given the statement, but the party was not aware of it. She said. The issue had been unnecessarily brought under the MeToo movement as it had nothing to do with sexual harassment. Since the MeToo movement is trending. The issue has been tagged with the movement. Punjab Pradesh Congress Committee (PPCC) president Sunil Jakhar said the dignity and honour of women was the topmost priority of the party and it was taken very seriously. But there has to be some complaint in the given case, he said. He said the matter could be discussed once the Chief Minister and the minister returned from their foreign visit. Even as the party leadership is waiting for the Chief Minister to return from his private visit to Turkey, a senior party functionary said the selective leak of the two-month issue had resulted in media trial, despite the woman IAS officer not coming forward to file a written complaint. Following media reports on the name of the minister figuring in the case, the party leadership is doing a discreet inquiry into the whole issue. The allegations levelled by the woman officer and other related facts are being probed before briefing the top leadership on the issue. Without doubting the contents of the complaint, one thing is sure that the selective leakage has been timed to politically finish the minister as he does not owe allegiance to the Chief Ministers camp, said the leader. editorial@tribune.com Tribune News Service Moga, October 25 A 36-year-old man allegedly died of drug overdose at Daulewala village in Dharamkot subdivision of Moga district on Wednesday, police officials said here on Thursday. A case of culpable homicide amounting to murder under Section 304 of the IPC has been registered against unknown drug smugglers at the Kot-ise-Khan police station. The deceased has been identified as Sukhjit Singh who was found dead on his bed. His wife Jasvir Kaur in her police statement claimed that he had died of drug overdose when she was not at home. Saying that he used to take drugs, she said someone might have administered him an overdose of drugs, which could have led to his death. The local police took the body into custody and sent it for a post-mortem examination at the district hospital here. Doctors have also collected samples of viscera to chemically examine the exact cause of death. Notorious hamlet editorial@tribune.com Tribune News Service Chandigarh, October 25 Hitting back at AAP rebel leader Sukhpal Khaira for derailing the peace efforts, partys Jagraon MLA and head of AAP coordination committee Sarvjit Kaur Manuke on Thursday alleged that the rebel group had violated the party discipline. Manuke, who had earlier declined to reveal the conditions laid down by the Khaira group, shot off a letter to the latters coordination head and Kharar MLA Kanwar Sandhu, saying her team did not reveal the condition laid down by the rebels, who had demanded state chiefs post for Khaira. Responding to statement by Khaira that AAP breached peace efforts by making appointments in the state unit, Manuke said Khaira violated the promise made in Wednesdays meeting that they would not issue statements against each other in the media. I am reminding you that we had agreed that the matters had worsen due to controversies in the media, but I am shocked that just a day later your leader has gone public against AAP and questioned the peace efforts, said Manuke. editorial@tribune.com Karam Prakash Tribune News Service Patiala, October 25 After an hour-long meeting of different teachers organisations under the Sanjha Adhyapak Morcha on Thursday, protesting teachers decided to end 19-day-long fast. As many as 16 teachers, including five women, had been sitting on fast unto death since October 7. The teachers ended their indefinite fast by sipping juice given to them by their parents on Thursday evening. However, teachers said they had ended the fast, but their indefinite strike would continue. As per the sources, the decision to end the fast was taken on the insistence of two teachers unions Adarsh Model School Karamchari Association, Punjab, and SSA/RMSA Teacher Union. Other unions were, reportedly, against the decision of ending the fast. In fact, other unions had to fall in the line as all the 16 teachers, who were on hunger strike, were associated with the unions who were in favour of ending the fast. vinaymishra188@gmail.com THE urgency of making an adequate provision of pure, unadulterated milk for the daily growing needs of an afflicted community, particularly the sick and the suffering, has been brought home to those who have the destinies of Lahore in their hands. At Saturday's meeting of the Municipal Committee Shahabudin-Din, Duni Chand and Ganpat Rai moved that six or more milk shops be opened for the sale of pure milk till the epidemic of influenza abates or till the milk is sold at normal rates. Such is the need that the Health Officer was authorised to open milk shops up to a maximum of 20 to meet the needs of all classes of the community including the women for whom it was suggested by Mr. K.L. Rallia Ram, a number of shops should be reserved. The same gentleman referred to the complaints of adulterated milk generally sold in the bazaar, which has found expression in the Tribune from day to day and urged that the Health Officer be requested to take action in the matter. laxmi@tribune.com Washington/New York, October 25 Two more suspected bombs were found in New York City and Delaware on Thursday morning as a manhunt intensified for a serial bomber who targeted high-profile Democrats and CNN, less than two weeks ahead of elections that could alter the US political landscape. The police said a device in New York City was similar to the other bombs and was addressed to actor Robert De Niro, who hurled an obscenity at President Donald Trump at the Tony Awards last June. The police found a ninth suspicious package that was addressed to former Vice-President Joe Biden at a mail facility in New Castle County, Delaware, CBS News reported, citing federal authorities. None of the nine devices went off and no injuries were reported, but some top Democrats called the threats a symptom of a coarsening brand of political rhetoric promoted by Trump, who also condemned the acts. At a Wisconsin rally on Wednesday night, Trump called attention to How nice Im behaving tonight but on Thursday morning he attacked the media. A very big part of the anger we see today in our society is caused by the purposely false and inaccurate reporting of the Mainstream Media that I refer to as fake news, Trump wrote. It has gotten so bad and hateful that it is beyond description. Mainstream Media must clean up its act, FAST! All people who were targeted are frequently maligned by right-wing critics, including former US President Barack Obama, former Secretary of State and presidential candidate Hillary Clinton and Obamas Attorney General Eric Holder. Former CIA Director John Brennan, prominent Democratic Party donor George Soros and California Representative Maxine Waters, an outspoken critic of Trump, were also targets. The bomb packages were sent as the nation prepared for November 6 elections that will decide whether Democrats take control of one or both houses of the Congress from Republicans and deny Trump the majority his party now holds in both chambers. Several politicians, including US Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell and New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio, described it as an act of terrorism. Someone is trying to intimidate. Someone is trying to quash voices in this country using violence, De Blasio said. The CNN bureau in New York received a package addressed to Brennan, who has appeared as a CNN analyst, leading police to evacuate the Time Warner building. Reuters The package sent to Robert De Niro contained similar markings and contents as recent pipe bomb packages that have been mailed to high-profile Democrats. He had hurled an obscenity at President Donald Trump at the Tony Awards last June. A ninth suspicious package was addressed to former Vice-President Joe Biden at a mail facility in New Castle County, Delaware. No injuries reported shalender@tribune.com Miss Paraguay Clara Sosa lies on the stage after she fainted, perhaps overcome by emotions, following the announcement that she won as Miss Grand International 2018, during the pageant coronation ceremony held in Yangon, Myanmar, on Thursday night. The new Miss Grand International, however, was able to get up in a minute afterwards, and was able to properly do her first walk as the winner. She won after saying that she will visit US President Trump and ask him to be an example of peace, love, and tolerance. rchopra@tribunemail.com Tokyo, October 26 During 40 months of captivity at the hands of Syrian militants, Japanese journalist Jumpei Yasuda was forbidden from moving or making any noise, even while sleeping. Guards told him daily hed be released, or gave him canned food but no opener. Yasuda, who arrived home in Japan on Thursday from more than three years of what he called physical and psychological hell, told the Asahi Shimbun daily that his captors accused him of being a spy. Confined for eight months to a space just 1.5 metres high and 1 metre wide, he was not allowed to bathe, wash his clothes, or make any kind of noise or movement. Because I couldnt wash my hair, my head itched--but when I scratched, that made noise, he told the Asahi during his flight back to Japan. Breathing through my nose, cracking my knuckles, moving while I slept--everything was forbidden. The rigid control of his daily life got even tighter after he was accused of eavesdropping while making a noise as he relieved himself. At one point, he didnt eat for 20 days in an effort to avoid any movement. I was skin and bones, horribly nauseated. If it had gone on much longer, I would probably have died, but I was finally moved to a different place, he said. They would not bring me food, or if they did give me canned food, they would not bring a can opener, he said. A week before his release, he was moved back to the narrow space of his worst days, then to a cell in what appeared to be an ordinary house. The following day, he was put in a car and driven to the Turkish border. Gaunt and bearded, wearing a black T-shirt and dark trousers, Yasuda gave reporters a strained smile upon his arrival in Japan but said nothing. His wife told a news conference that any further comments would have to wait until he had rested and undergone medical checks. Im happy that I can return to Japan. At the same time, I dont know what will happen from here or what I should do, Yasuda told Reuters on a Turkish domestic flight, before he flew home from Istanbul. The Japanese government has thanked Qatar and Turkey for their cooperation in freeing Yasuda, but has denied paying a ransom for his release. Reuters vinaymishra188@gmail.com Islamabad, October 26 Mumbai attack mastermind Hafiz Saeed-led Jamaat-ud-Dawa (JuD) and Falah-i-Insaniyat Foundation (FIF) are no longer on the list of banned outfits in Pakistan as the ordinance that proscribed them under a UN resolution has lapsed and the new Imran Khan-led government did not extend it, a media report said on Friday. In February this year, former President Mamnoon Hussain promulgated an ordinance amending the Anti-Terrorism Act, 1997, to declare JuD and FIF as proscribed groups. Saeed contended that he established JuD in 2002 and cut off all ties with the banned Lashkar-e-Toiba, but India continued to malign the JuD for its past association with the banned outfit. India has been pushing Pakistan to bring to justice the planners of the November 2008 Mumbai attacks. Saeed is the co-founder of Lashkar-e-Toiba, responsible for the attack in which 166 persons were killed. PTI shalender@tribune.com Amman, October 26 At least 20 persons, most of them school pupils, have been killed in flash floods in Jordan, the emergency services said on Friday in an updated toll. A further 35 persons were injured following heavy rains on Thursday, including members of the security forces involved in rescue operations, said an official from the civil defence-Jordans fire service-who asked not to be named. He said rescuers were still searching for people missing in the area, a popular tourist attraction around 50 km west of Amman. Most of the dead were schoolchildren aged 11 to 14 who were taking part in a school trip to the Dead Sea region when their bus was swept away by floodwaters. Also among the dead were passers-by who had been picnicking in the area, he said. Security force personnel who were taking part in the rescue operations were among the injured, he added. The Dead Sea, the lowest point on earth, is surrounded by steep valleys and gullies that frequently see flash floods and landslides. Education Minister Azmi Mahafzah promised a full inquiry into the schoolchildrens deaths. He said the bus took a route not agreed upon by the ministry and the organiser of the trip bore full responsibility. Roads leading to the area were closed on Friday morning to allow the continuation of search and rescue operations, the Directorate of General Security said. The Israeli military said on Thursday it was helping with the operation, sending helicopters and forces specialised in search and rescue. Jordans King Abdullah II had cancelled a planned visit to Bahrain to monitor developments. AFP laxmi@tribune.com Dubai, October 25 Saudi Arabias public prosecutor said on Thursday the killing of journalist Jamal Khashoggi was premeditated, citing a joint Saudi-Turkish investigation, the state media reported. Saudi officials had earlier said an internal investigation suggested Khashoggi was killed in a botched operation to negotiate his return to the kingdom. Initially, Riyadh denied having anything to do with Khashoggis disappearance after he entered the Saudi consulate in Istanbul on October 2. Turkey and Western allies of Riyadh have voiced deep doubt towards Saudi explanations of the killing. Turkey has dismissed Saudi efforts to blame rogue operatives and urged the kingdom to search top to bottom for those responsible for the killing. CIA director Gina Haspel heard an audio recording of the killing of Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi during her visit to Turkey this week, two sources said on Thursday. Reuters pardeepdhull@gmail.com Colombo, October 26 Controversial Sri Lankan strongman Mahinda Rajapaksa staged a dramatic political comeback on Friday, becoming the new Prime Minister after President Maithripala Sirisena sacked Premier Ranil Wickremesinghe who termed the move unconstitutional and vowed to prove his majority in Parliament. The sudden development came amid growing tensions between Sirisena and Wickremesinghe on several policy matters and the President has been critical of the Prime Minister and his policies, especially on economy and security. Rajapaksa, 72, tweeted a photo of him and Sirisena after the swearing-in ceremony at the Presidential Secretariat here. Former #SriLanka President Mahinda Rajapaksa sworn in as new Prime Minister, he said in the tweet. Reacting sharply to his sacking, Wickremesinghe asserted that the swearing in of Rajapaksa in his place is illegal and unconstitutional and he will prove his majority in Parliament. I will continue to be the Prime Minister. Mahinda Rajapaksas appointment is unconstitutional, he said. Similarly, Finance Minister Mangala Samaraweera tweeted that the appointment of Mahinda Rajapaksa as the Prime Minister is unconstitutional and illegal. This is an anti-democratic coup. The political developments unfolded after Sirisenas broader political front United Peoples Freedom Alliance (UPFA) announced that it has decided to quit the current unity government with Wickremesinghes United National Party (UNP). Mahinda Amaraweera, Agriculture Minister and the General Secretary of the UPFA, told reporters that the UPFA decision has been conveyed to Parliament Speaker Karu Jayasuriya. The unity government was formed in 2015 when Sirisena was elected President with Wickremesinghes support, ending a nearly decade-long rule by Rajapaksa. Rajapaksas return to power ends a more than three-year-old coalition government that was formed by Sirisena and Wickremesinghe on a promise to combat corruption and financial irregularities. Sirisena, who was Rajapaksas Minister of Health, broke away from him to contest the presidential elections. Political analysts said Sirisenas move to instal Rajapaksa as the Prime Minister could lead to a constitutional crisis as the 19th Amendment to the Constitution would not allow the sacking of Wickremesinghe as the Premier without a majority. Rajapaksa and Sirisena combine has only 95 seats and is short of a simple majority. Wickremesinghes UNP has 106 seats on its own with just seven short of the majority. The unity government was thrown into a crisis after Rajapaksas new party pulled off a stunning victory in local elections in February seen as a referendum on the ruling alliance. Last week, it was reported that Sirisena accused his senior coalition partner the UNP of not taking seriously an alleged conspiracy to assassinate him and Gotabhaya Rajapaksa, the former top Defence Ministry bureaucrat and brother of ex-President Mahinda Rajapaksa. Sri Lanka nearly faced economic sanctions from the West over Rajapakses brutal military crackdown on the banned Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE). The LTTE sought a separate Tamil homeland in the northern and eastern provinces of the island nation for nearly 30 years before its collapse in 2009 after the Sri Lankan Army killed its supreme leader Velupillai Prabhakaran. Rajapaksa and his family were facing several cases of corruption and financial irregularities. PTI uttara@tribuneindia.com Plantation, Fl., October 26 FBI agents arrested a man in Florida on Friday suspected of sending at least a dozen parcel bombs to high-profile critics of US President Donald Trump days ahead of congressional elections, authorities said. Two federal law enforcement officials named the suspect as Cesar Sayoc, 56. Two witnesses told Reuters they heard a loud blast as he was taken into custody in the parking lot of an AutoZone store in Plantation, near Fort Lauderdale. Announcing the arrest to a cheering audience at the White House, Trump said such terrorizing acts were despicable and had no place in the United States. We must never allow political violence to take root in America - cannot let it happen, Trump said. And Im committed to doing everything in my power as president to stop it and to stop it now. According to public records, Sayoc is a registered Republican and has been arrested numerous times over the years including one case in which he was accused of making a bomb threat. Television images from Plantation showed investigators using a blue tarp to cover a white van, which was plastered with political decals and stickers including several of Trump, before removing it on a truck. A law enforcement source said the van belongs to Sayoc. The US Justice Department was due to hold a news conference at 2:30 p.m. EDT. (1830 GMT). A federal law enforcement source said charges would likely be brought by federal prosecutors in Manhattan. No one had claimed responsibility for parcel bombs, which were denounced by authorities as terrorism, and came less than two weeks ahead of US congressional elections that could alter the balance of power in Washington. Police found two of the suspicious packages on Friday addressed to US Senator Cory Booker and James Clapper, the former US director of national intelligence, officials said. The 11th package was addressed to Booker, a Democratic senator from New Jersey, and was discovered at a mail sorting facility in Florida, the FBI said. A 12th package was addressed to Clapper at cable network CNN and was intercepted at a New York City post office, a federal law enforcement official said. A thirteenth suspicious parcel was discovered addressed to Democratic US Senator Kamala Harris of California, CNN said. A federal law enforcement official said earlier on Friday that the focus had intensified on Florida as a key location for the investigation and possible point of origin of the packages. Police closed roads around the AutoZone parking lot where Sayoc was arrested, and helicopters flew overhead. A man named Dre, a manager at a used car dealership next door to the AutoZone, said he heard a loud noise that sounded like an explosion shortly after 11 a.m. I heard like a bomb, Dre, who declined to give his full name, said in a telephone interview. I opened the door and saw the FBI there. A woman who lives nearby and declined to give her name said she was in her yard weeding on Friday morning when she heard a loud bang, saw smoke and heard a lot of shouting. Swift justice Florida Governor Rick Scott said he had been briefed on developments in the investigation. I appreciate the hard work of law enforcement to bring swift justice to whoever is responsible for these cowardly acts, Scott wrote on Twitter. All the people targeted by the suspicious packages have often been maligned by right-wing critics. They included former President Barack Obama, former Vice President Joe Biden, former Secretary of State and presidential candidate Hillary Clinton and billionaire Democratic Party donor George Soros. There has been an outcry from Trumps critics, who charged that his inflammatory rhetoric against Democrats and the press has created a climate for politically motivated violence. Trumps supporters accused Democrats of unfairly suggesting the president was to blame for the bomb scare. None of the devices detonated and no one has been hurt. They were believed to have been fashioned from bomb-making designs widely available on the internet, according to a federal law enforcement source. Still, investigators said they were treating the devices as live explosives, not a hoax. Investigators have declined to say whether they were built to be functional. Bomb experts and security analysts say that based on their rudimentary construction it appeared the devices were more likely designed to sow fear rather than to kill. But two federal officials involved in the investigation cautioned that it was too early to say whether the devices were incapable of firing or were deliberately designed to frighten rather than explode. Two packages were sent both to US Representative Maxine Waters and to former US Vice President Joe Biden. Others targeted for parcel bombs included former Attorney General Eric Holder, former CIA director John Brennan and actor Robert De Niro. I thank God no ones been hurt, and I thank the brave and resourceful security and law enforcement people for protecting us, De Niro said in a statement. Theres something more powerful than bombs, and thats your vote. People MUST vote! Reuters pardeepdhull@gmail.com Islamabad, October 26 Pakistans iconic human rights activist and lawyer Asma Jahangir was posthumously awarded the 2018 UN Human Rights Prize. She was one of the four winners of the award which was announced by the United Nations on Thursday. The announcement was made through the Twitter account of the President of the UN General Assembly Maria Fernanda Espinosa Garces, Dawn news reported. Today I announced the 2018 winners of the UN Human Rights Prize, Garces said, before naming Jahangir and three other recipientsTanzanian activist Rebeca Gyumi, Brazils first indigenous lawyer Joenia Wapichana and Irelands human rights organisation Front Line Defendersas winners. Your work is an inspiration to us, she said. Jahangir got the prize posthumously, the report added. The United Nations Prize in the Field of Human Rights is an honorary award given for outstanding achievement in human rights, the world body said. The award ceremony will take place in New York on December 10 on World Human Rights Day. Jahangir became the fourth Pakistani woman to be awarded the UN Human Rights Prize. Before her, Begum Raana Liaquat Ali Khan (1978), Benazir Bhutto (2008) and Malala Yousufzai (2013) were accorded the honour. Sixty-six year-old Jahangir, who passed away on February 11 due to cardiac arrest, was known for her outspoken nature and unrelenting pursuit of human rights as well as for remaining undaunted in the face of extreme pressure and opposition. She was the first woman to serve as the president of Pakistans Supreme Court Bar Association. She fought her battles on the streets and in the courts, opposed military strongmen and steadfastly championed the rights of women, minorities and LGBTs. From 1998-2000 Jahangir served as the Special Rapporteur of the UN Commission on Extrajudicial, Summary and Arbitrary Executions and was the Special Rapporteur on Freedom of Religion or Belief of the UN Commission on Human Rights since 2004. PTI vinaymishra188@gmail.com Colombo, October 26 Mahinda Rajapaksa staged a dramatic political comeback on Friday, becoming Sri Lankas new Prime Minister after President Maithripala Sirisena sacked premier Ranil Wickremesinghe, triggering angry reactions from the Finance Minister, who termed the former strongmans return an anti-democratic coup. Rajapaksa, 72, tweeted a photo of himself and Sirisena after the swearing-in ceremony. The sudden development came after Sirisenas broader political front United Peoples Freedom Alliance (UPFA) announced that it has decided to quit the unity government with Wickremesinghes United National Party (UNP). Mahinda Amaraweera, Agriculture Minister and UPFA general secretary, said the decision had been conveyed to Parliament. Reacting sharply, Minister of Finance and Media Mangala Samaraweera said the appointment of Rajapaksa is unconstitutional and illegal, an anti-democratic coup. The unity government was formed in 2015 when Sirisena was elected President with Wickremesinghes support, ending a nearly decade-long rule by Rajapaksa. The sudden political development ends an over three-year-old coalition government that was formed by Sirisena and Wickremesinghe on a promise to combat corruption and financial irregularities. Sirisena, who was Rajapaksas Minister of Health, broke away from him to contest the presidential elections. Political analysts said Sirisenas move to install Rajapaksa as the PM could lead to a constitutional crisis as the 19th Amendment to the Constitution would not allow the sacking of Wickremesinghe as the premier without a majority. The Rajapaksa-Sirisena combine has only 95 seats and is short of a simple majority. Wickremesinghes UNP has 106 seats on its own, just seven short of the majority. President Sirisenas party withdrew from the ruling coalition after simmering tensions between him and Wickremesinghe. The unity government was thrown into a crisis after Rajapaksas new party pulled off a stunning victory in local elections in February, seen as a referendum on the ruling alliance. PTI shalender@tribune.com Beijing, October 26 A woman armed with kitchen knife on Friday attacked children at a kindergarten in Chinas southwestern city of Chongqing, injuring at least 14 of them before she was stopped by teachers and guards, in the latest such incident on children in the country. Police in the Chongqing city said, the children were slashed by the 39-year-old woman as they were returning to class after their morning exercises at the Yudong New Century Kindergarten in the Banan district, police said. The injured children were all sent to hospitals for treatment. There was no immediate word on their condition. The woman, identified only by her surname Liu, has been arrested, Hong Kong-based South China Morning Post quoted a local state-run Chongqing Broadcasting Group as saying. The motive behind the attack is unclear, though some reports on social media say the woman had a grievance against the government. A mobile recording shared by the broadcaster showed the alleged suspect being dragged away by police, as well as an injured child on a hospital stretcher. Videos circulating on Chinese social media showed small children bleeding from severe cuts to their faces at the entrance of the kindergarten as stunned adults looked on. A screenshot of a WeChat group said a woman and her husband were arguing, and to take revenge against society she stabbed the children at the kindergarten with a knife, the report said. School security guards and staff managed to restrain the attacker. Video from the scene appeared to show angry onlookers attempting to hit and kick the woman after she was detained. PTI Jerrod Johnson is the point of the spear of a new wave of soca parang music. Aptly, Johnson is known in music circles as Bongo Spear. The Palo Seco-born musician catapulted into the national consciousness last year with his parang soca hit Ah Not Eating. His comical refrain of ah not eating nothing dat smelling so after being offered food by a neighbours wife became the unofficial anthem of Christmas 2020. Mother of four, Rehana Jaggernauth, was beaten, stabbed and strangled before being thrown into the Guayamare River, where she drowned, an autopsy has found. And her relatives are convinced that Jaggernauth was lured to her death by someone she knew. Roatan - for off-shore and other snorkeling (not diving for us) was great, we went there twice for that. I can snorkel for hrs. If you are good in the water and underwater world is smth that you are interested in, certainly go to Roatan. I have not been to the Great Barrier Reef to compare, so Roatan is the best I know out of the many world destinations where I snorkeled. CR beaches are not the best for snorkeling or diving, many are surfing beaches, I.e. have waves. Some have riptides. Water visibility in CR might be an issue, it is connected with the results of prior rainfall. I know the above factors were an issue for us during our trips to CR. Our snorkeling equipment could not be used once, so we stopped packing it for CR, incl. for the areas where there were near by coral reefs, due to waves and bad visibility (e.g., inside Cahuita National Park on the East coast of CR). Go to CR if you are interested in wildlife. (I did not get that impression from your post.) Shopping - ...none of your choices, not really what I would call shopping, other than coffee, possibly a few souvenirs, that is all. Check out the best season for visiting Belize. Are July-Aug. good months to go there? I am under the impression that June to Nov. the rainfall there is the highest. Edited: 3 years ago Hi I and my partner are planning our first trip to Japan in April next year.. We still Have not booked our flights but after reading some previous posts, I am more worried about booking the accommodation. So I would like to do it as soon as possible once I finalise dates. We are planning to come in April for around 15 days, can add one or two days depending if some place requires more time. Also we have Easter holidays from 19th to 22nd April in UK . So plan is to include those during Japan break. Rough Itinerary is 5 Days in Tokyo, 5 in Kyoto, 3 in Japanese Alps, 2 near Mt. Fuji. I have read previous year Bloom forecasts and it looks to me the Best time to see them in Tokyo and Kyoto is late March or Early April. This year there was a full bloom in Nagano around 14th April too. My confusion is Should we come around 6th April to 22nd April or a week early or a week later? Even if I miss Cherry bloom in Tokyo and Kyoto . Will I be able to see some in Japanese Alps? Also if we stay there till 22rd April will I also be able to see wisteria and blue flowers in Hitachi and other beautiful flowers near Mt. Fuji. Can I see them all in my time frame? If you have to plan how would you plan it? I just want my dates to be finalised so I can book my places as soon as possible.. Thank you all. If you only visit Central Cities in Kansai Region, no rail pass including Kansai Three Pass pays off. In adition, it's not god since it does not cover any JR lines, which are often the fastest. I personally do not recommend to use Busses in Kyoto, especially if you only have 1 day for Kyoto, because of heavy traffic jam, especially in the City Center. Just use an ICOCA card for all local transportations (JR and non-JR trains, subways, busses). Hello, A number of weeks ago I asked about a schedule i had for our visit to New York, we're going there next week and I had a couple of last minute questions We're staying @ The Belnord Hotel, 209 West 87th Street Monday 3pm onwards..... We're looking to visit ESB at approx 6pm and to walk through Times Square afterwards so the plan is to make our way from the hotel down to ESB between 3 & 6 to try and get our bearings and also a bit to eat whilst on the way. My only question here is, is there anything between our hotel and ESB that would be of particular interest? Tuesday Due to a mix up we were only able to book our SOL tickets late and we've landed with the 12pm slot, the original plan was SOL early followed by WTC memorial/Museum. With doing SOL at 12, would we have enough time to visit WTC before if we aimed to get there for 9am, appreciate the museum may be a push so perhaps just the memorial? With the SOL/Ellis Island being at 12 i'm expecting it to take us through to 5pm'ish - after this we're not planning much, maybe book in somewhere for food - with being out all day i expect we'll try to get back to the hotel and eat somewhere near to us. Wednesday We're hoping to take a walk around central park and see some areas around midtown with a view to getting to see the Halloween parade that evening. Bit of a blank day really so i'm looking still to try and fill this in a little early on particularly Thursday TOTR early, 9am ish as my understanding is TOTR is better done early and ESB late? Brooklyn Bridge and a general stroll during the rest of the late morning/afternoon followed by dinner somewhere So that's the general plan, we're essentially just looking to pad days out around Empire State, WTC, SOL, TOTR & Brooklyn Bridge over the time we're there. - The DP was very critical of the fact that universities were producing more and more under-qualified graduates - Ruto analysed the growing number of graduates resorting to informal means of employment - He sounded a warning to institutions of higher learning against producing 'half-baked' students Deputy President William Ruto has urged the government to cease funding universities which are producing below-par graduates. Ruto was speaking during the launch of Embu University Endowment Fund where he urged institutions of higher learning to engage research and innovation to give their students a greater chance at personal development. Send 'NEWS' to 40227 to receive all the important breaking news as it happens Ruto was speaking during the launch of Embu University Endowment Fund where he urged institutions of higher learning to engage research and innovation Source: Twitter READ ALSO: Ruto defends his PhD thesis on effects of land grabbing and human activities on riparian land According to the DP, it was only through research that more programmes could be offered in university which were more directly helping solve the countrys challenges. No country can be developed without research and innovation. We must therefore focus more on science and technology, he said. READ ALSO: CNN's Richard Quest embarrasses ex-TV girl Julie Gichuru and Kenyans are unforgiving A recent study by the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) ranked Kenya as having the highest unemployment rate in East Africa region - statistics which can be attributed to the lack of innovation in the Kenyan education system. READ ALSO: Wakwe za Rais Uhuru walikuwa wapinzani wakuu wa babake Raila Odinga According to the study, one out of every five youth in Kenya is unemployed even as thousands of graduates flock the job market every year. Interestingly, the informal (jua kali) sector in Kenya has, however, helped in providing job opportunities as it employs at least 86% of the workforce thus controlling 80% of the economy. "Universities should now up their game. If you are going to spend public money, then the students should be entitled to receive value for their money," according to the DP Source: Facebook READ ALSO: Government resurrects forgotten Michuki rules, gives PSVs two weeks to comply The DP who is well aware of this fact, reiterated on the need to quit the practice of making education exam-oriented. We must not apply undue pressure on our children to take courses to merely pass examinations and instead cultivate the culture of acquisition of knowledge, skills and competence that can enable them to effectively compete in the job market, he went on. Ruto at the same time said state funding to universities would be allocated based on students population and courses offered. "Universities should now up their game. If you are going to spend public money, then the students should be entitled to receive value for their money," he 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 Kenya News Today: Celebs and Dignitaries at Maribe's Bail Hearing | Tuko TV: Source: Tuko.co.ke - Dennis Araka is reported to have died after falling into a drainage system - The family had raised KSh 250,000 for him to fly to the Middle East nation to begin a new job - Kenyans living in Qatar have began raising money to help the family bring back his body for burial A family in Rigoma, Nyamira County is in pain after their son died in the Middle East where he had gone to eke a living. The family received the news of his death from a woman living in neighbouring Kisii County on Monday, October 22. Send 'NEWS' to 40227 to receive all the important breaking news as it happens READ ALSO: Controversial 83-year-old Eldoret farmer on spot for snatching another man's 30-year-old wife The family received the news of his death from a woman living in neighbouring Kisii County on Monday, October 22. Photo: Kenyans in Doha, Qatar group. Source: Facebook READ ALSO: Government should not fund universities producing unemployable graduates - William Ruto According to a report by the Standard, the family was informed that their 23-year-old Dennis Araka died after falling into a drainage system. To this date, we do not know anything about the death we were only told he fell into a drainage system and died before he could be rescued,'' his mother, Mary Moraa, said. Araka's father, Jones Mokua, and the deceased's brother, David Onduso, appealed to well wishers and the government to help them bring back his body as it was still held in Doha, Qatar. Onduso said the deceased was their only hope to escape poverty as he had promised to send them upkeep money as soon as he settled in the Arabian nation. READ ALSO: Governor Okoth Obado finally walks free after 34 days in remand The family members said they had raised KSh 250,000 with the help of well wishers to fly Araka to Qatar for the job they had dreamed would change their fortune. He last spoke to his family before his tragic demise on Friday, October 19. TUKO.co.ke learnt Kenyans living in Qatar were raising money to fly Araka's body back to Kenya for burial. ''Contributions for the brother we lost here in Qatar the other day due to heavy rains (Dennis) are being sent to Jones Michuki Mokua (father). M-pesa number +254729509167. Any amount and prayers will be appreciated,'' a post in one of the Facebook pages for Kenyans in Qatar read. Do you have a hot story or scandal you would like us to publish, please reach us through news@tuko.co.ke or WhatsApp: 0732482690 and Telegram: Tuko news. Kenya News Today: Okoth Obado Supporters Celebrate His Release | Tuko TV Source: Tuko - Jane Kiano passed on at the Nairobi Hospital on the night of Thursday, October 25 - Her family confirmed the gender activist had been battling lung cancer - She is the widow of ex-minister and nationalist Julius Kiano One of the country's most distinguished women who pioneered the rights of women in post-independence Kenya has died. Jane Kiano, widow of ex-Cabinet minister and nationalist, Julius Gikonyo Kiano, passed on at the Nairobi Hospital on the night of Thursday, October 25, after a long battle with cancer according to her family. Send 'NEWS' to 40227 to receive all the important breaking news as it happens READ ALSO: Controversial 83-year-old Eldoret farmer on spot for snatching another man's 30-year-old wife READ ALSO: Sharon Otieno's distraught family seeks God's intervention following Okoth Obado's release Jane aged 74 served in various high ranking capacities culminating into her appointment as the chairperson of Maendeleo ya Wanawake Organisation (MYWO) from 1971-1984 and later chaired Council of Women of Kenya from 1999-2003. "She battled bravely against lung cancer and we are proud of her. This is the darkest moment in our lives. We have lost the matriarch of our family,. May her legacy continue to inspire young girls," said family representative Irungu Houghton. Aside from women affairs, most recently, Jane was a founding commissioner of the National Cohesion and Integrity Commission in 2009 to unify the country after the 2007/2008 post-election skirmishes. President Uhuru Kenyatta and his Deputy William Ruto described her as a proponent of gender equality and a strong voice for girls' education. Her husband was the first Kenyan to earn a PhD. 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. Governor Okoth Obado Release Terms and Conditions - On Tuko TV Source: Tuko.co.ke - The report had claimed al-Shabaab militants were targeting Times Tower and the Treasury building in the CBD - It said the attacks are being led by wanted terrorist Ahmed Harith Mahmoud - Harith and his five associates had been monitoring the two buildings ahead of their evil scheme - His five associates were said to be residing in Nairobi's Kariobangi and Umoja estates Inspector-General of Police Joseph Boinnet has denied reports of an impending attack on two buildings in Nairobi's CBD. The report which quoted the Directorate of Criminal Investigations (DCI) had warned of an impending attack by terror group al-Shabaab on Times Tower and the Treasury building. Send 'NEWS' to 40227 to receive all the important breaking news as it happens READ ALSO: Wakwe za Rais Uhuru walikuwa wapinzani wakuu wa babake Raila Odinga DCI said the buildings targeted by the militants are Times Tower and treasury building in Nairobi's CBD. Photo: Daily Nation. Source: UGC READ ALSO: CNN's Richard Quest embarrasses ex-TV girl Julie Gichuru and Kenyans are unforgiving According to the alert, which has now been termed as completely misleading and not factual, the attack was to be masterminded and headed by Ahmed Harith Mahmoud and five other operatives. The attack was planned to be carried between Sunday, October 28 and Sunday, November 4. Police said Harith is an associate and logistician of Ahmed Iman Ali alias Engineer and leader of al-Shabaab cell in Majengo, Nairobi. Iman is currently based in Somalia. READ ALSO: Detectives cast dragnet to Uganda, Tanzania to hunt down Sharon Otieno killers According to the alert, the attack is to be masterminded and headed by Ahmed Harith Mahmoud and five other operatives. Photo: Standard. Source: UGC The intelligence report said Harith has been conducting reconnaissance of the two buildings in the last few months. The intelligence report further revealed his five associates include four men and a lady all residing in Nairobi's Kariobangi and Umoja estates. In the last few months, terror attacks by al-Shabaab have increased, with the group carrying several attacks in Lamu and North Eastern Kenya. On Wednesday, October 10, two teachers from Arabia Boys Secondary School were killed after the militants raided the institution. The attackers are reported to have thrown an explosive device in a house where the teachers were which set it on fire. 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. Governor Okoth Obado Release Terms and Conditions - On Tuko TV Source: Tuko Kenya President Uhuru Kenyatta turned 57-years-old on October 26, 2018 His birthday marks a year since the 2017 repeat presidential election held on October 26, 2017 which he won. Send 'NEWS' to 40227 to receive all the important breaking news as it happens Several Kenyans led by his deputy William Ruto sent their messages of goodwill to celebrate with the president. He was among top leaders to wish Uhuru a happy Birthday, a move which disputed the rumoured frosty relationship between the two. READ ALSO: Police deny impending terror attack targeting two buildings in Nairobi Recent reports indicated the two leaders have a strained relationship following the handshake and the 2022 politics. Taking to his Twitter page, the deputy president said "Happy birthday to Uhuru Kenyatta, an able leader. Your astute stewardship and focus to ensure good for man and country has won you recognition. Gods wisdom as you unite Kenya and build a formidable legacy. My friend, confidant and boss many happy returns of the day" READ ALSO: Raila Odinga will become president before William Ruto - Mutahi Ngunyi Nairobi Governor Mike Sonko also excited Kenyans after sharing a TBT photo of the president in his birthday message. Several other leaders and Kenyans joined in on the celebrations online, some congratulationg him while others questioned his legacy. READ ALSO: Migori Governor Okoth Obado promises to stay away from his slain ex-lover's home county as ordered READ ALSO: Journalists behind obscene photos of Senator Malala off the hook due to suspended cyber crime laws 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. Governor Okoth Obado Release Terms and Conditions - On Tuko TV Source: Tuko - The employees will be laid off as from end of November 2018 - The company said the move is aimed at helping restrategise business - In 2016, the company rebranded with a KSh 14 billion investment Over 500 people will lose their jobs after Telkom Kenya issued a 30-days notice to relevant authorities and the Ministry of Labour informing them of their plan to lay off employees in a new business strategy. The company said the move is aimed at achieving efficiency in its operations by matching its cost needs with its workforce. Send 'NEWS' to 40227 to receive all the important breaking news as it happens READ ALSO: Police deny impending terror attack targeting two buildings in Nairobi The company said the move could help them in adapting to the changes in the market and consumer behaviour. Photo: UGC Source: UGC READ ALSO: Raila Odinga will become president before William Ruto - Mutahi Ngunyi This requires Telkom to restructure its business, and as a result, this will impact the current and long-term needs of its workforce. This restructuring will enable Telkom to not only invest in its business but more importantly in its people, read a statement sent to newsrooms and seen by TUKO.co.ke on Friday, October, 26. The statement further said Telkom was adapting to the changing markets and dynamic consumer demands to help it deliver competitive products and services to its clients. Two weeks ago during an interview with a local TV station, the company CEO Aldo Mareuse denied plans of retrenchment saying they were only focusing on how to improve their business. READ ALSO: Court stops KQ staff strike ahead of maiden direct flight to US It was reported the company had consulted McKinsey Kenya which recommended for retrenchment for effectiveness of the company. In 2016, the company rebranded changing its name from Orange to Telkom with a KSh 14 billion investment to expand its network coverage, provision of 4 G network and money transfer platform T-Kash. 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 News Today: Celebs and Dignitaries at Maribe's Bail Hearing | Tuko TV Source: Tuko Dar Es Salaam's Regional Commissioner RC Paul Makonda has asked controversial video vixen and socialite Amber Rutty to present herself to the nearest police station as she waits for Tanzania Communications Regulatory Authority (TCRA) to take action against her. As reported by a cross section of the East African media earlier, Rutty found herself in trouble following the leak of her sextape. Send 'NEWS' to 40227 to receive all the important breaking news as it happens READ ALSO: Tanzania government to punish actress Wema Sepetu over viral photo of her and lover in bed READ ALSO: Wakwe za Rais Uhuru walikuwa wapinzani wakuu wa babake Raila Odinga In the video, Amber is seen having relations with two men whose identities are still a mystery. The x-rated video angered thousands of Tanzanians who called on their government to take action against her since she had embarrassed the whole nation owing to her celebrity status. Well, their plea was heard and dealt with by RC Makonda who urged the socialite to present herself to police within 12 hours. READ ALSO: Bootylicious Tanzania socialite Sanchoka introduces her mum who is equally blessed ''As TCRA prepares itself to take action, I want the owner of this photo to present herself to any police station before 12 hours elapses. Tell them RC Makonda has sent you and they will give you your message.'' Makonda wrote on Instagram. Rutty's tribulation came barely hours after Tanzanian government banned actress Wema Sepetu from acting after a video of her kissing with new lover leaked online. READ ALSO: Wema Sepetu apologises to TZ government, fans after video of her in bed with new lover leaks The government cracked the whip on her despite her efforts to apologise to everyone including her fans in a press conference held on Thursday, October 25. It should be noted the government had also promised to take action against yet another socialite known as Sanchoka following complaints from the public over her raunchy photos on Instagram. 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. Shosh Cecilia Story Continues: Shosh Cecilia Gets New Teeth | Tuko TV Source: Kenya Breaking News Today - Tanzania's assistant minister termed an apology from Wema Sepetu as hypocritical - Wema had called a press conference and apologised to everyone after the raunchy video leaked - The video of the lass kissing her man while in bed leaked just days after she introduced her new man Tanzanias film board banned Wema Sepetu from acting and arts industry for an unknown period of time. Earlier on Tanzania's Assistant Minister for Communication, Juliana Shonza, had vowed to take action against the actress over the video. Send 'NEWS' to 40227 to receive all the important breaking news as it happens Shonza said the country's film board and communications authority will interrogate the actress and other celebrities who posted sexual content on social media. Joyce Fissoo, a representative from the film board, said the actress had disgraced the nation by making viewers imitate to behaviours, habits and culture, which are inappropriate. You have gone against the countrys national values and brought shame to it. The film board, as mandated by law, has decided to take the following action against Wema Sepetu: to lock her out of the acting and arts industry for an unknown period of time until the day the film board will be satisfied that she has corrected her behaviour. The film board will closely monitor her, she said. As TUKO.co.ke reported, Wema posted a video showing her and her new lover kissing in bed. READ ALSO: Comedian David The Student silently returns to Churchill show after debt-ridden life in US READ ALSO: Wema Sepetu apologises to TZ government, fans after video of her in bed with new lover leaks The video triggered mixed reactions online forcing the Bongo actress to call a press conference to issue an apology. ''I apologise for what happened, first I apologise to the government through TCRA and the films board. I apologise to my family and fans who have been with me even during this time.'' she said. READ ALSO: CNN's Richard Quest embarrasses ex-TV girl Julie Gichuru and Kenyans are unforgiving Shonza had termed Wema's apology as hypocritical saying she will punished and serve as an example to others. "This is hypocrisy, because this is not the first time for this artist, nor is it the second time.....and since there are other rules broken, the actors must take action, this is not enough, she must serve an example," he added. READ ALSO: 13 reasons why baby shower WhatsApp groups are dreaded more than wedding committees 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. Shosh Cecilia Story Continues: Shosh Cecilia Gets New Teeth | Tuko TV Source: Tuko - Don Bosco was arrested and detained in Tanzania from 2013 - The politician and his lawyer friend were tried for conspiracy and money laundering - He pleaded guilty and was sentenced to five yeas which he had served by the time of the ruling Controversial businessman Don Bosco Gichana has lauded efforts of Deputy President William Ruto in securing his release from a Tanzanian jail after five years. Though the showy tycoon did not divulge more information on how exactly Ruto helped him, he revealed he was in constant communication with the DP who advised him throughout his jail term. Send 'NEWS' to 40227 to receive all the important breaking news as it happens READ ALSO: Raila Odinga announces plan to construct 6,000 kilometres road linking Mombasa to Lagos The 41-year-old businessman paid Ruto a courtesy call ahead of his homecoming ceremony in Kisii. Photo: Don Bosco Gichana/Facebook. Source: Facebook READ ALSO: Raila Odinga is a dangerous character, we don't trust him - Jubilee governor Since he was granted his freedom by the Tanzanian authorities, the 41-year-old has been holed up in a series of meetings with key government figures among them Ruto. "Thanks for your efforts towards my release. My God bless you William Ruto and your timely advice on the way forward," he said when he paid the DP a courtesy call on Thursday, October 25. The politician who hit headlines in 2007 when he gifted Opposition leader Raila Odinga with a Hummer SUV, had been in custody since 2013. He was arrested at the Namanga border point while on his way back to Kenya after visiting lawyer Median Mwale who was detained at Arusha Central police station. The duo was tried for conspiracy and money laundering. Gichana pleaded guilty to the charges and was sentenced to five years which he had already served, technically rendering the sentence null and void. On Friday, October 26, thousands of family and friends turned up for his home coming mass in Kisii county. 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 News Today: Okoth Obado Supporters Celebrate His Release | Tuko TV Source: Tuko News Kenya's Chief Justice David Maraga has given an inspiring story of his struggles in life advising the youths to find their purpose in life as he was addressing graduands during the 37th Graduation Ceremony of the Catholic University of Eastern Africa (CUEA) on Friday, October 19. Below is the speech of the country's top judge. Let me first tell you a little about my lifes story, and from it you will no doubt see how amazing Gods grace will always be. Having been born into a rather poor family in Nyamira, I got to wear my first pair of shoes when I was admitted to Secondary School, and that was only because it was compulsory. Send 'NEWS' to 40227 to receive all the important breaking news as it happens READ ALSO: Raila Odinga will become president before William Ruto - Mutahi Ngunyi Chief Justice David Maraga during interview for the country's top judge said he cannot work on the Sabbath day, Saturday. Photo: UGC Source: Twitter READ ALSO: Wakwe za Rais Uhuru walikuwa wapinzani wakuu wa babake Raila Odinga Worse still, I got to wear my first pair of shorts only after circumcision, at the age of 10. It is perhaps a good thing that those were not the days of todays pervasive selfies and paparazzi. Otherwise I wonder what pictures of the Chief Justice as a young man would be circulating in the social media today. There is one I took with my first car, a Volkswagen beetle which looks interesting. Perhaps I should have it tweeted and I see the reaction. Although my parents were not Christians, I was baptized and joined the Seventh Day Adventist Church in 1965 while in primary school, thanks mainly to the great influence of SDA in the area. READ ALSO: Tekom Kenya to fire 500 employees as businesses in the country struggle to remain afloat However, I got into bad company in Secondary School and slipped in the spiritual sense. While in that bad company, I drunk hard and, except for providing for the bare necessities. I ignored my family and literally mark-timed for about 20 years. I did not bother to further my professional career. But all that time the spirit of God kept prodding me to return to Church. When I eventually returned, God pointed me to a path of unwavering purpose that has brought me to where I am today. It is after I discovered my purpose in life that I realised I needed to do a masters degree and I went to class after 34 years. Maraga became the first Chief Justice in Kenya to cancel a presidential election in the 2017 General Election. Photo: UGC Source: Facebook READ ALSO: Court stops KQ staff strike ahead of maiden direct flight to US With this new path, some of my friends started mockingly calling me pastor because I refused to buy them alcohol. In the Seventh-day faith, drinking or giving others alcohol is a sin. I found that I could not continue keeping their company and still be a Christian. I started organizing my life. Other than a small piece of land I had bought in Nakuru which is my rural home, and changing cars, I made little investment. After I crossed the floor as parliamentarians say, I realised that I could make some minor investments with the same amount of income instead of drinking. After the change, as a private legal practitioner, I got more and better clients. God blessed the work of my hands and as my involvement with communities increased, so did my growth professionally and materially. READ ALSO: Police deny impending terror attack targeting two buildings in Nairobi When I joined the Judiciary in 2003, I in no time earned respect from my colleagues because of my Christian principles. Let me not bore you with the story of my life. But allow me to say this. I am sure I would not have been appointed Judge, leave alone being the Chief Justice of the Republic of Kenya today, had I not eventually found my purpose in life and pursued it relentlessly. And in pursuing this purpose, the principle ingredient was ensuring that I was in the service of God, my family and my community in equal measure. In a nutshell, my brothers and sisters, I dont know about you but as for me, I say this: it is great to be a Christian. 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 News Today: Celebs and Dignitaries at Maribe's Bail Hearing | Tuko TV Source: Tuko.co.ke - A 14-passenger vehicle rammed on a fish-transporting truck and a Kenya Power lorry - Some of the passengers were school children heading back home for end of third term - The injured are currently receiving treatment at a Narok hospital though in critical conditions At least six people perished and scores seriously injured in a grisly road crash involving three vehicles on Narok-Mai Mahiu road on the afternoon of Friday, October 26. The accident happened when a lorry lost control and rammed into a Nairobi-bound 14-seater passenger service vehicle which in turn hit a truck carrying fish at Duka Moja area near Suswa, Narok county. Send 'NEWS' to 40227 to receive all the important breaking news as it happens. READ ALSO: Driver of ill-fated bus that claimed 55 lives in Kericho was hired 3 weeks ago Accident scene after a PSV vehicle rammed into a fish-transporting truck in Suswa, Narok couty. Photo: Wuod Ruoth/Facebook. Source: Facebook READ ALSO: 50 people feared dead in fatal road accident along Kisumu- Muhoroni highway The matatu belongs to Transline Classic Company Multiple reports indicated some of the passengers were school children heading back home for end of third term. Narok police boss Joseph Kisompe confirmed four passangers including one school girl died on the spot while the matatu driver passed on upon arrival at Narok Sub-county hospital. READ ALSO: Kakamega family link death of five members who died in Kericho accident to witchcraft The injured are currently receiving treatment at the hospital though in critical conditions while bodies of the deceased were taken to morgue awaiting postmortem. The accident came hot on the heels of a bus crash which left 58 passengers dead at Fort Ternan, Kericho county. The ill-fated Western Express Sacco bus is reported to have been overloaded and speeding at the time of the accident. READ ALSO: 5 members of one family killed in Fort Ternan accident which claimed 56 lives The bus overturned at around 4am along the Londiani stretch towards Muhoroni. According to the latest statistics survey by the National Transport and Safety Authority, 2,495 people had been killed by October 21, 2018 compared to 2,225 who died the same period in 2017. Pedestrians lead the group with 948 having lost their lives while pedal cyclists were the least affected with 42 of them having succumbed as a result of road crashes. 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 News Today: Okoth Obado Supporters Celebrate His Release | Tuko TV Source: Tuko They say behind every successful man is a strong woman. Well, Nairobi governor Mike Sonko and his wife Primrose Mbuvi just proved that after sharing an old photo of themselves looking all poor and struggling. Send 'NEWS' to 40227 to receive all the important breaking news as it happens READ ALSO: All the photos from Mike Sonko's granddaughter's birthday which prove the family is filthy rich READ ALSO: Wakwe za Rais Uhuru walikuwa wapinzani wakuu wa babake Raila Odinga Taking to social media on Thursday, October 25, Sonko shared photos of himmself with his wife drinking at a dingy bar and pulled a prank on his followers with a caption that read; ''Kanjo officers are looking for this tout and his girlfriend. Anyone with information of their details please share with me or text to 0722886600. 10k to any person with correct info." READ ALSO: Mike Sonko distances himself from MRC Sonko's post confused some people who could not recognise him from the same. However, others noticed him and thanked God on his behalf with many holding that miracles and blessings cannot be blocked. READ ALSO: Mike Sonko needs serious lessons from Kisumu governor, Anyang Nyongo - Moses Kuria Judging with the photo, Sonko and Primrose were not doing well then. Today, the governor is a testimony, having written his name in the book of Kenya's richest people. His lifestyle is one to be envied and as he has revealed previously, nothing came easy but only through hard work, perseverance and God. 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. Shosh Cecilia Story Continues: Shosh Cecilia Gets New Teeth | Tuko TV Source: Tuko A couple of months ago, Kenya's richest heiress Anerlisa Muigai was said to be deep in a romantic relationship with a fellow woman identified as Natasha Johnson. Then, the two triggered suspicion they were a couple by the way they addressed each other online. Send 'NEWS' to 40227 to receive all the important breaking news as it happens READ ALSO: Is Kenya's richest heiress Anerlisa Muigai pregnant? READ ALSO: Wakwe za Rais Uhuru walikuwa wapinzani wakuu wa babake Raila Odinga Countless photos of the pair in what can only be described as compromising situation also fueled the rumour. Johnson, who hails from Senegal and studies in one of Kenya's universities was even said to have been the reason why Anerlisa broke up with her ex-lover Don. But the claims were recently slammed by the Liberian lass who confirmed she is not bi-sexual as alleged by a cross section of Kenyans earlier. Johnson revealed she is happily married with two children, a clear indication she could not mess around with the Keroche Breweries heiress. READ ALSO: Kenya's richest heiress flaunts pricey Range Rover days after being accused of evading KSh 20 million loan Johnson held they have been good friends and she never thought of losing the friendship. This, the Liberian mama revealed in a Q&A session with her fans on Instagram. Johnson had taken to the platform to request her fans to ask her about anything and she would answer. Are you single? a fan asked Natasha hit back with a "very married with two kids answer. READ ALSO: Kenya's richest daughter Anerlisa Muigai explains how she was conned into a KSh 20 million debt The session did not end there as more fans kept sending pressing questions to which Natasha responded with ease. Wheres Anerlisa? You broke up or something? another fans posed. Real friends dont break up. Natasha responded. Asked whether she has ever kissed Anerlisa before, the Liberian claimed she has but not in real life but in her "dreams". 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. Shosh Cecilia Story Continues: Shosh Cecilia Gets New Teeth | Tuko TV Source: Tuko.co.ke As part of City Week celebrations in San Fernando, the Nalis West Indian Reference Library was launched at Harris Promenade today. It signals the library's partial move back to Library Corner since its relocation six years ago. The Library will open to the public in less than a month. The National Guard of Ukraine will expand cooperation with Italy's carabinieri and the gendarmerie of Turkey and Romania in the field of training of troops. Commander of the National Guard of Ukraine, Colonel-General Yurii Allerov, stated this in his speech at the Summit of Directors and Commanders of the International Association of Gendarmeries and Police forces with military status (FIEP), which took place in Antalya (Turkey), the press service of the Interior Ministry reports. "In particular, he [Allerov] agreed with the Commanders of Turkish Gendarmerie, Italian Carabinieri and Romanian Gendarmerie on expanding cooperation in the field of training of special forces, public order protection and mountain patrol units, as well as cooperation between educational institutions and centers, reads the report. Also, during the summit, negotiations were held regarding possible cooperation between the National Guard of Ukraine and the Royal Netherlands Marechaussee, the National Guard of Portugal and the National Guard of Kuwait. FIEP is an international association of national gendarmeries or affiliated corps and police forces with military status. Today, FIEP includes Gendarmerie and Police forces institutions of France, Italy, Spain, Portugal, Turkey, the Netherlands, Morocco, Romania, Jordan, Tunisia, Palestine and Ukraine. Also, law enforcement institution of Argentina, Chile, Qatar and Brazil that do not meet the geographical requirements are associate members. The National Gendarmerie of Djibouti has a temporary observer status. The National Guard of Ukraine became a full member of the Association FIEP in October 2017. Russia sells coal from the territory of Donbas not controlled by the Ukrainian authorities to Turkey and possibly to Poland, Ukrainian Foreign Minister Pavlo Klimkin has said. According to Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, Klimkin said that Russia blends Ukrainian coal with its own coal so that it could not be identified. "Then the coal goes to Turkey. Now the investigation is underway too, and by the way, we have well-founded suspicions that such coal also went to Poland. I spoke about with Mr. Czaputowicz [Polish Foreign Minister Jacek Czaputowicz] the day before yesterday," Klimkin said in Lviv on Thursday, October 25. As was reported earlier, anthracite from the occupied part of Donbas comes semi-legally to Poland, and profit is received, in particular, by the so-called leader of the "LPR" terrorist organization, Igor Plotnitsky. op Localization of the General Electric locomotive building in Ukraine will allow developing regions, modernizing infrastructure and expanding the digital services market. Localization is real. It will help develop regions, as it was in Kazakhstan, India and South Africa. We want to share high-quality technologies with Ukrainians locally. People will be needed to service the locomotives, the functions should be delegated to local engineers. We hope that locomotive building will actively develop during the implementation of the cooperation contract. It is a matter of capacities and time. Localization will allow accumulating the potential of contractors, and more orders will appear in the regions, as it was in Pennsylvania, the USA, Justin Downs, the Executive Director of the Supply Chain International Operations Department at the General Electric Transportation, said during a visit to Kyiv, the press service of PJSC Ukrzaliznytsya (Ukrainian Railways) reports. According to him, the next 2-3 months will be crucial and will demonstrate how cooperation on localization develops in Ukraine. As reported, on June 5, 2018, GE Transportation and JSC Kryukov Railway Car Building Works signed the agreement the localization of production of 30 Evolution Series TE33A locomotives. ol Six documents on cooperation between regions of Belarus and Ukraine were signed in the scope of the joint regional forum in Gomel. Six documents on cooperation between the regions of Belarus and Ukraine were signed today at the plenary session of the First Forum of the Regions of Belarus and Ukraine in Gomel, BELTA reports. Thus, the Brest Regional Executive Committee signed an agreement on interregional cooperation with the Rivne Regional State Administration and an agreement on trade, economic, scientific, technical and cultural cooperation with the Zaporizhzhia Regional State Administration. Also, the Mogilev Regional Executive Committee will cooperate with Zaporizhzhia region. Two documents with the Ukrainian regions were signed by the Minsk Regional Executive Committee: an agreement with the Zaporizhzhia Regional State Administration and a memorandum with the Kyiv Regional State Administration. In addition, the heads of Gomel and Dnipro signed an agreement on friendship and cooperation. iy Ukrainian ports have sustained more than a billion hryvnias in losses due to Russias actions in the Sea of Azov. The Mariupol port was forced to switch to a four-day working week. We see permanent halts of Ukrainian and foreign ships in the Sea of Azov, the Kerch Strait up to the point that shipowners suffer losses due to ships downtime: about $15,000-50,000 per day. The average halt time [of ships] reaches more than 30 hours. Not only Ukraine, but also European taxpayers sustain losses since the products from these ports went to the European markets, Ukrainian Infrastructure Minister Volodymyr Omelyan said, the Radio Liberty reports. Earlier, the European Parliament expressed serious concern about the very volatile security situation in the Sea of Azov, which could easily escalate to an open conflict. As reported, Russia has been blocking ships heading towards the ports of Berdiansk and Mariupol over the past months. Ukrainian Infrastructure Minister Volodymyr Omelyan stated that Ukraine was negotiating with the EU countries and the United States on imposition of sanctions on Russia in response to the blockade of the Sea of Azov. The U.S. Department of State called Russia's actions in the Sea of Azov an attempt to destabilize Ukraine. Meanwhile, the National Security and Defense Council of Ukraine made a decision to strengthen the naval presence in the Sea of Azov by creating a naval group there. ol Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko and his Belarusian counterpart Alexander Lukashenko have held a face-to-face meeting in Gomel, the press service of the Ukrainian president has reported. "A face-to-face meeting between President of Ukraine Petro Poroshenko and President of Belarus Alexander Lukashenko was held in Gomel," the statement reads. According to the press service, at the beginning of the talks, Poroshenko thanked Lukashenko for the initiative to hold the First Forum of the Regions of Ukraine and Belarus and noted its effectiveness. In particular, according to Poroshenko, a number of agreements have already been signed between the regions and several more documents are to be concluded. He also noted that cooperation between Ukraine and Belarus is based on friendship. "We are absolutely sure that the relations have reached a serious growth. The economy of our countries emphasizes that the growth exceeds 23% every year in foreign currency," Poroshenko said. According to him, there is an increase in the supply of Ukrainian products to Belarus. "It is very important for us to keep these trends," Poroshenko added. The heads of both states will take part in the work of the First Forum of the Regions of Ukraine and Belarus. Poroshenko is on a working visit to Belarus on October 26. op Moscow is looking for a new reason for another "protection," this time of Orthodox believers in Ukraine. Head of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church of the Kyiv Patriarchate, His Holiness Patriarch Filaret said this at a press conference at Ukrinform on Friday. "They say not so much about the issuing of the tomos, but about the seizure of temples. Where does it come from, and why? It comes from Moscow. Moscow is preparing the ground for intervention by military force [...] The same was in Donbas, where they had an excuse - 'protection' of the Russian-speaking population [...] When they intervened, they forgot why they intervened. Now they want to invent a new reason - protection of the Russian Church of the Moscow Patriarchate, 'protection' of Orthodox believers. That is why, knowing this, we will not tolerate any violence and we will not give grounds for Moscow to interfere in our Ukrainian affairs, in our Ukrainian ecclesiastical life," Filaret said. op 39,904 Ukrainian tourists visited Georgian Adjara, while 141,180 travelers visited other regions of Georgia in the first nine months of 2018. Ukraine traditionally remains one of the countries from where most tourists come to Georgia. Ukraine ranks 7th in terms of international visitors, and number of Ukrainian tourists has grown by 3.2% this year, Jemal Gogitadze, the senior adviser to the Georgian ambassador to Ukraine, told Ukrainian journalists. When asked what Ukraine could learn from Georgian experience in development of tourism industry, Georgian Ambassador to Ukraine Gela Dumbadze replied: "Over the past few years I have been lucky to get acquainted with almost entire Ukraine. You have a huge unused potential for tourism. You only need to present the strengths of Ukraine through modern promotion methods to attract more tourists from other countries. I wish more videos, promos and films were filmed about Ukraine filmed and more international festivals were held here the way Georgia has been doing in recent years. We are always ready to share our experience with Ukraine." ol The Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the Czech Republic has congratulated Ukrainian film director Oleg Sentsov on being awarded the Sakharov Prize 2018 and reminds about dozens of Ukrainian political prisoners currently jailed in Russia. We welcome the decision of the European Parliament to award this years Sakharov Prize for Freedom of Thought to Ukrainian film director Oleg Sentsov. Since 2014, the Czech Republic has been following closely the case of Oleg Sentsov, illegally held in a Russian prison along with dozens of other Ukrainian citizens, the Ministrys statement reads. The Foreign Ministry of the Czech Republic emphasizes that they have repeatedly drawn the attention of the international community to an increasingly aggravated situation with human rights and fundamental freedoms on the Crimean peninsula, which the Czech Republic considers to be an integral part of Ukraine. As reported, the European Parliament awarded the Sakharov Prize for Freedom of Thought to Ukrainian film director Oleg Sentsov, who is currently illegally imprisoned in the Russian Federation. The decision was approved in Strasbourg on October 25. ol The Ukrainian Foreign Ministry knows a prison to which Roman Sushchenko, an Ukrinform correspondent unlawfully convicted in Russia, could be taken. Ukrainian Foreign Minister Pavlo Klimkin said this in an interview with Ukrinform. "Unfortunately, we have a message where Roman could be taken, but first we will talk with his wife Anzhela, with his relatives, and then we'll talk in public," Klimkin said. According to him, the Ukrainian Foreign Ministry is monitoring the fate of all Ukrainian political prisoners in Russia and is working on their liberation. In particular, he noted that the ministry has a special platform where information on political prisoners is constantly updated. Klimkin said that during his visit to Warsaw, much talk was devoted to what could be done to free Ukrainian political prisoners from Russian prisons. "We must say honestly. This wave, through hunger strikes of both Oleg (Sentsov) and Volodymyr (Balukh), gave us and our European friends a great emotional impulse. But now Russia says: 'Everything is good, they ended their hunger strikes. What else are you worried about?' Therefore, we need to keep this emotional wave," he said. Klimkin added that "appropriate mechanisms" are used for this purpose but he does not want to speak about them publicly, because "Russia will turn on its propaganda again." About 70 Ukrainian political prisoners are currently held in Russia and Russian-annexed Crimea. Among them is Ukrinform journalist Roman Sushchenko, who was sentenced to 12 years in prison by the Russian regime for supposed espionage. On September 12, the Supreme Court of Russia recognized this decision as "lawful." On October 8, it became known that Roman Sushchenko had been taken to the place where he will serve his sentence. op The UOC-KP hopes the council will be convened in the near future. Head of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church of the Kyiv Patriarchate (UOC-KP) Filaret says the convocation of the Unification Council of the Ukrainian Orthodox churches depends on the Ecumenical Patriarch. Read alsoPatriarch Filaret announces criteria for independent Orthodox Church's head "The holding of the council depends on the Ecumenical Patriarch," he said at a press conference in Kyiv, adding that the UOC-KP hopes this council will be convened in the near future, an UNIAN correspondent has reported. "We cannot announce the date of this council's convocation as it depends on the Ecumenical Patriarch," Filaret said. As UNIAN reported earlier, on October 11, following a meeting of the Synod, a decision was announced, stating that the Ecumenical Patriarchate proceeds to granting autocephaly to the Church of Ukraine. In addition, the legal binding of the Synod's letter of 1686 was abolished, thus taking the Kyiv Metropolis from under Moscow's canonical jurisdiction. Also, head of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church of the Kyiv Patriarchate (UOC-KP) Filaret and head of the Ukrainian Autocephalous Orthodox Church (UAOC) Makariy were reinstated in their canonical status. On October 12, the UOC-KP urged the hierarchs of the Ukrainian Autocephalous Orthodox Church and the Ukrainian Orthodox Church of the Moscow Patriarchate (UOC-MP) to prepare for a special unification council. Merkel and Poroshenko will focus on bilateral relations between Germany and Ukraine. German Chancellor Angela Merkel will visit Ukraine on November 1. The chancellor will be met by Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko with military honors, according to the Federal Government's official website. Read alsoMerkel to visit Ukraine early November The joint meeting will focus on bilateral relations between Germany and Ukraine, it said. Other important topics will include hostilities in the east of Ukraine and the implementation of the Minsk agreements. Merkel will also meet with Ukrainian Prime Minister Volodymyr Groysman. They will discuss bilateral, economic, and international issues. In addition, she will hold meetings with chairmen of parliamentary factions and students. The Donbas developments are a sore point both for Ukraine and its neighbors since it is a matter of war and peace. President of Belarus Alexander Lukashenko said that for the sake of peace, Belarus is ready to engage in the settlement of the conflict between Ukraine and Russia. Speaking at the Forum of the Regions of Ukraine and Belarus in Gomel, Lukashenko said: People are dying. The conflict seems to have no end. There is a single goal here, which is to stop this war, keep Ukraine united and integral. This problem cannot be left for our children to resolve. No way. This would be a crime of our generation before those who come after us, the Belarus leader said. Let's be frank - trust in each other has been lost. There is no such trust. In this regard, to be unambiguous... We are ready to engage in this conflict where it is complicated and where there is no trust that is supposed to be there. We are ready to do it, but only for the sake of one thing for the sake of peace, Lukashenko stressed. Read alsoRussia losing long-term ally - Stratfor In his opinion, the Donbas conflict should be resolved by three Slavic nations. This is our trouble and problem. It's neither Europeans, nor Americans it's we who must solve this problem so that it doesn't freeze following the example of other once hot spots in the post-Soviet space, the Belarus president believes. According to him, Belarus is ready to work within the framework of an agreement between the two presidents of Ukraine and Russia. We are not asking anyone to assign us a role of a peacemaker or a mediator, said Lukashenko. Russia's behavior was what had prompted Washington to impose sanctions on this country in the past, according to Bolton. U.S. National Security Advisor John Bolton said on Friday it would be helpful if Russia got out of Ukraines Crimea and eastern Ukraine, stopped meddling in U.S. elections, and was less intrusive in the Middle East. Bolton made the comments in an interview with Reuters in Tbilisi, the capital of ex-Soviet Georgia, where he was holding talks with senior government officials. It will be helpful if they (the Russians) stop interfering in our election ... get out of Crimea and the Donbass in Ukraine ... stop using illegal chemical weapons to conduct assassination attempts against Russian exiles in the West, and if they would be less intrusive in the Middle East, said Bolton. Read alsoUkraine mulling over purchase of U.S. air defense systems envoy Such behavior was what had prompted Washington to impose sanctions on Russia in the past, he said, saying U.S. officials were in the process of deciding whether to impose more sanctions on Moscow. As UNIAN reported earlier, U.S. President Donald Trump has formally invited his Russian counterpart, Vladimir Putin, to visit Washington DC next year. At the European Parliament's plenary session in Strasbourg, a resolution was recently adopted on the situation in the Sea of Azov, which contains a few provisions important for Ukraine. First of all, it should be noted that any document of such a level adopted by such a high profile body as the European Parliament, is independently significant. Therefore, the resolution itself is really important for Ukraine as it reflects the position of an authoritative international organization, which, moreover, is entirely on Ukraine's side. Read alsoEuropean Parliament calls on EU to toughen Russia sanctions if situation in Azov Sea escalates In this resolution, the European Parliament called on EU member states to be prepared to strengthen sanctions against Russia in the event of an escalation in the Sea of Azov. We all wish that no aggravation takes place in the Azov region and gradual de-escalation ensues. However, to my great regret, anything can happen, and the crisis may at any moment jump into its acute phase. Firstly, the European parliamentarians say they are concerned, and secondly, they show that they don't yet believe that the process will move into a constructive dialogue aimed at reaching a compromise. But I'd like to remain a restrained optimist. I think that as early as in the first half of November, there may be signs that the process is moving toward de-escalation, at least of from the level of tensions we are seeing today. The point of view has already matured in Europe, gaining more and more supporters, that Russia sanctions need to be loosened The resolution also acknowledged that the Kerch Strait Bridge had been constructed illegally, and it was noted that sanctions could be imposed against the six companies involved in the construction. Will those sanctions ever be introduced? There may be different options. The point of view has already matured in Europe, gaining more and more supporters, that Russia sanctions need to be loosened, not intensified... However, there are other grounds for strengthening sanctions against Russia, and it is not necessary to cling to the Kerch Strait Bridge issue. But now it will be difficult for Europeans to agree on the introduction of new sanctions. In particular, the Italian prime minister has already explicitly stated that they would not benefit from prolonging sanctions against Russia and that they would raise the issue of relaxing these sanctions. Therefore, I don't think we should expect from Europe any additional sanctions on Russia. The already existing ones might not be reviewed, but new ones are unlikely to appear. In addition, the European Parliament has called for the appointment of an EU Special Representative for Crimea and Donbas, who, inter alia, is also to monitor the situation in the Sea of Azov. This move has long been on the table. After all, there is Kurt Volker representing the U.S. State Department while there is no envoy from the EU However, at the same time, Europe, in the person of France and Germany, is involved in the Donbas settlement process, that is, in the Normandy Four talks. So there is no doubt that such a special representative will actually appear. And he, in my opinion, such envoy could move from a dead end a whole range of issues. Of course, no special representative is able to be a substitute for state leaders (of Germany, Russia, and France), but such an official could set up all preparatory work, develop and offer certain solutions that would be a step forward in the peaceful settlement. In my opinion, this is a promising move, which, under certain circumstances, could have positive practical consequences. I have doubts that this resolution will have any practical consequences because all the resolutions are advisory and don't foresee any practical steps to be taken right away. So far, the resolution has been approved full stop. The document does not provide for any specific steps. Read alsoPoroshenko: EU, Ukraine to join efforts in countering Russia's creeping annexation of Azov Sea However, Russia's actions in the Sea of Azov are in fact concerning Europe, since more than a third of the ships inspected by the Russian side in this sea were EU-flagged. This is important for Europe, this is a real sore point. But what exactly will the action be? Perhaps, negotiations will start at the level of legal entities, perhaps at the level of certain statesmen, leaders of a certain European state, who maintain contact with President Putin. That is, an Italian or an Austrian, an Hungarian or a German can take on an intermediary function. But this will be an independent process. Meanwhile, Russia has its own perspective on the Sea of Azov. Its approaches are diametrically opposed to European ones. Moscow can only repeat its position that it sees the Resolution as wrong. Perhaps early next week, the Russian side will comment on the issue of the European special representative post. I don't rule out that Moscow, after a thorough elaboration, might as well welcome the idea, acting "nice" before the EP and showing that it is seemingly ready for some constructive work. Pavlo Rudiakov is a head of the Perspektiva information and political center The local council has also called on other agencies of local self-government to support such a move. A ban on the use of cultural products, namely movies, books, songs, etc., in the Russian language in the public has been introduced in Zhytomyr region. The relevant decision was backed by the majority of members of Zhytomyr Regional Council at a meeting on October 25, an UNIAN correspondent reported. Read alsoUkrainian language quotas likely to be extended to print media According to the decision, the ban on the use of Russian-language songs, movies and other Russian-language cultural products will be in effect in Zhytomyr region until the end of the Russian occupation of Ukraine. The local council has also called on other agencies of local self-government to support such a move. The authors of the document asked Zhytomyr Regional State Administration to set up an interdepartmental ad hoc group to raise public awareness to prevent the violation of the ban. The group will include law enforcement officers, officials of district administrations and the public. "This is a ban on broadcasts of Russian movies, performances of Russian actors, etc. in the region, since we should have a Ukrainian product, and we don't have to promote the Russian language, because we have our language and we should have our power," the deputies said. Previously, a similar ban was introduced in Lviv region. The award ceremony will take place in Strasbourg on December 12. The lawyer of illegally convicted Ukrainian film director Oleh Sentsov, Dmitry Dinze, as well as Sentsov's cousin Natalya Kaplan, are invited to accept the 2018 Sakharov Prize. "So far, the plans are that only we will go," Kaplan said, as reported by the Ukrainian news outlet Hromadske. Read alsoSentsov should be able to accept Sakharov Prize in person U.S. Embassy in Ukraine According to Kaplan, a cash prize of EUR 50,000 is likely to be deposited in a bank account, where it will wait for Sentsov, or, if necessary, it will be given to his children. "Of course, it would be ideally if Oleh accepted this award in person and managed this money," she added. The award ceremony will take place in Strasbourg on December 12. As UNIAN reported earlier, Ukrainian film director Oleh Sentsov, who is imprisoned in Russia, was awarded the 2018 Sakharov Prize on October 25. The Ukrainian Orthodox Church and the Ukrainian people deserve their independent church, Filaret said. Head of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church of the Kyiv Patriarchate (UOC-KP) Filaret says the process of granting autocephaly to the Ukrainian Orthodox Church is irreversible. "We've reached a milestone when an autocephalous [independent] Ukrainian church has become an irreversible process, because the Ecumenical Patriarch firmly stated that the Ukrainian Orthodox Church, the Ukrainian people deserve their independent church," he said at a press conference in Kyiv, an UNIAN correspondent has reported. Read alsoChurch Unification Council's convocation depends on Ecumenical Patriarch Patriarch Filaret He also mentioned the decision of the Holy Synod of the Ecumenical Patriarchate to grant autocephaly to the Ukrainian Orthodox Church and reinstate him in canonical status. "The Ecumenical Patriarch together with the Synod have restored justice they nullified and lifted the anathema imposed on me by the Moscow Patriarch and the Bishops' Council in 1992," he said. As UNIAN reported earlier, on October 11, following a meeting of the Synod, a decision was announced, stating that the Ecumenical Patriarchate proceeds to granting autocephaly to the Church of Ukraine. In addition, the legal binding of the Synod's letter of 1686 was abolished, thus taking the Kyiv Metropolis from under Moscow's canonical jurisdiction. Also, head of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church of the Kyiv Patriarchate (UOC-KP) Filaret and head of the Ukrainian Autocephalous Orthodox Church (UAOC) Makariy were reinstated in their canonical status. On October 12, the UOC-KP urged the hierarchs of the Ukrainian Autocephalous Orthodox Church and the Ukrainian Orthodox Church of the Moscow Patriarchate (UOC-MP) to prepare for a special unification council. The spokesman for the Prosecutor General's Office reiterates the fact that Crimea is part of Ukraine and that the perpetrators will be punished. Ukraine Prosecutor's Office for the Autonomous Republic of Crimea has launched criminal proceedings into a "terrorist act that led to casualties," while the investigation is being conducted by the SBU Security Service of Ukraine's office for Crimea, according to the PGO spokesman Andriy Lysenko. The case is under special control of the authorities, Lysenko wrote on Facebook Friday, adding that "the tragedy occurred in the territory of Ukraine, with the apparent intervention of Russian special services." "Those guilty will definitely be punished," wrote Lysenko. There is already some evidence of the crime, and not only that provided by government agencies. The coordinator of the "Information Resistance" [OSINT] project, MP Dmytro Tymchuk published on Facebook information from his own sources, which partially coincides, and somewhat complements with new facts the official version of the investigation. "According to the operational data of the Information Resistance-Crimea group, on October 17, at the very beginning of the tragic events in the Russian-occupied Crimea, with the involvement of an 18-year-old 4th year college student Vladislav Roslyakov, a special forces group arrived at the site of the tragedy (presumably, the Russian Guard or a GRU military intelligence unit deployed in Crimea)," reads Tymchuk's report. Read alsoOSINT group suggests Russian security forces behind mass murder in Kerch At the same time, a group of operatives from the Kerch FSB Department also arrived and took special forces troops for terrorists and opened fire at them. During a brief fire exchange between FSB operatives and special forces (GRU or Russian Guard), the latter retreated into the college building, where they barricaded themselves in the nearest room. At the same time, the FSB officers continued to "shoot to kill" in the direction of the college, the report says. Also, the IS-Crimea group's sources claim that it was two explosions of different magnitude rocked the college building, while most of the dead and injured were hit from rifled firearms, not a shotgun which Roslyakov carried and fired. At a certain stage, "the organizers of the terrorist act realized that the developments did not go according to the scenario, the executor got out of control, so he had to be physically eliminated at the facility, rather than after taking him to the earlier appointed location, not to let him be killed or wounded by the FSB or police. That is why the liquidation team was deployed into the college." "This explains the initial stupor of Russian propaganda, which at the outset received no clear instructions on how to cover the incident. This also explains the confusion of the versions that were voiced and changed on the fly, of which the experts have already taken note," the report reads. According to the official version of Russian investigation, 21 were killed and 50 injured as a result of the explosion and mass shooting organized by Vladislav Roslyakov, who allegedly committed suicide at the scene. One enemy troop was killed and another five were wounded, intelligence reports say. Russia's hybrid military forces mounted 17 attacks on Ukrainian army positions in Donbas in the past 24 hours, with one Ukrainian soldier reported as wounded in action (WIA). "One Ukrainian soldier was wounded in the past day. According to intelligence reports, one occupier was killed and another five were wounded," the press center of Ukraine's Joint Forces Operation said in an update published on Facebook as of 07:00 Kyiv time on October 26, 2018. Read alsoUkraine's deputy minister for occupied areas reveals Russia's plans for "LPR/DPR" Russian occupation forces opened aimed fire from grenade launchers of various systems, heavy machine guns and small arms to attack the defenders of the towns of Zolote, Svitlodarsk, Avdiyivka, Maryinka, and Krasnohorivka. The villages of Luhanske, Pavlopil, Hnutove, Vodiane, Lebedynske, and Shyrokyne were also under attack. "The enemy resorted to cannons of infantry fighting vehicles and 120mm mortars to shell the Ukrainian positions near the town of Svitlodarsk, while the Ukrainian fortified positions near Luhanske and Avdiyivka were attacked with the use of 82mm mortars. The Ukrainian positions near Avdiyivka came under enemy fire four times, the invaders used grenade launchers and small arms, and later 82mm mortars there. The Ukrainian troops are holding their positions, keeping the situation under control and are ready to respond to drastic changes in the situation. In addition, the Russian occupiers have cynically fired several times on our fortified positions not far from Pavlopil and Shyrokyne. In all cases, adequate measures, including preventive ones, are being taken," the update said. "Since Friday midnight, Russian-led forces haven't attacked the Ukrainian positions yet," the report said. OSCE SMM over the past 4 years has recorded multiple facts that could testify to Russia's involvement in the war in Ukraine. First Deputy Chief Monitor of the OSCE Special Monitoring Mission to Ukraine, Alexander Hug, in a statement voiced via Skype from the Russia-occupied Donetsk, clarified his statements earlier published by Foreign Policy ezine on the alleged lack of direct evidence of Russian invasion in Donbas. "I find it important to clarify statements with regard to my interview with Foreign Policy. The text published yesterday was misleading and did not reflect my opinion. An amended version has been issued," Hug said, according to the Ukraine Crisis Media Center. "Meanwhile, as you know, we do not conclude on the facts we establish and we do not provide evidence. "SMM's facts speak for themselves," the official stressed. He added that over the past four years, he has been "very clear all along, over the past four and a half years, that the SMM is not speculating, it is not concluding on the facts it does establish." Read alsoOSCE monitor: Political will could end eastern Ukraine conflict quickly media The SMM, Hug said, will continue to implement its mandate and it will continue to document facts and establish facts. "We are in Ukraine [] and we will continue to support Ukraine," the official said. Asked by a reporter, what is his real opinion on the matter given that Foreign Policy's text was misleading, Hug said: "The OSCE's Special Monitoring Mission has been documenting over the past four and a half years specific types of weapons that include electronic warfare equipment which we have described in great detail, including for instance the 'Zhitel' jamming system. We have been seeing at least in six instances convoys leaving and entering Ukraine, which we have been documenting, which have been driving towards the unsecure border with the Russian Federation in the middle of the night, on dirt roads, and have been seen at the unsecure border at areas where there is no official border crossing." Read alsoOSCE spots surface-to-air missile system in Russian-occupied Donbas "The Special Monitoring Mission has also seen tracks that are in close proximity of the unsecure border with the Russian Federation. We have also described in multiple times [] specific types of weapons that we have seen in the areas not controlled by the government, and we have seen and spoken to prisoners taken by the Ukrainian Armed Forces who claimed to have been members of a Russian unit fighting on rotation in Ukraine. All of these facts have been made available and I have been referring to them, including in that interview. These facts speak for themselves," Hug concluded. Earlier, the U.S.-based Foreign Policy ezine published an interview with First Deputy Chief Monitor of the OSCE Special Monitoring Mission to Ukraine Alexander Hug, claiming that the OSCE SMM had not seen direct evidence of Russia's interference in eastern Ukraine. The DHS request could require deploying between 800 and 1,000 active-duty troops, two U.S. officials said, speaking on condition of anonymity. U.S. President Donald Trump's administration may send up to 1,000 active-duty troops to the U.S.-Mexico border, officials said on Thursday, as Trump hammered away at the issue of illegal immigration two weeks ahead of congressional elections. Trump's threat was sparked by the advance of a caravan of Central American migrants trekking through Mexico, headed toward the United States, as reported by Reuters. "I am bringing out the military for this National Emergency. They will be stopped!" Trump wrote on Twitter. Read alsoU.S. pulls out of UN migrant and refugee pact VOA But the migrants appeared undeterred on Thursday night as several thousand of them bedded down more than 1,000 miles (1,610 km) from the U.S. border, in the town of Pijijiapan in Mexico's southern Chiapas state, after hiking hours from their last stop. "Whatever Trump may say, he's not going to hold us back," said Denis Omar Contreras, a caravan organizer from Honduras, who plans to help lead the group to northern Mexico. Many said the fear of returning to a violent homeland loomed larger than the president's threats. "We've come fleeing our country. If we return to Honduras, the gangs will probably kill us," he said. Trump and his fellow Republicans have sought to make the caravan and immigration into major issues before the Nov. 6 elections, in which Republicans are battling to keep control of Congress. Trump, who has maintained a hard line on immigration since taking office last year, is considering a plan to ban entry of migrants at the southern border and deny them asylum, according to media reports. The reports offered few details. A White House official said "a wide range of administrative, legal and legislative options" were being considered, but that no decisions had been made. The possibility of executive action to lock out any migrants in the caravan and the likely positioning of more soldiers at the U.S. border with Mexico could energize Trump supporters at the ballot box. Any ban would face likely legal challenges. U.S. Homeland Security Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen said in an interview with Fox News Channel that her department had asked the Pentagon for help to bolster its capabilities as it polices the border, including asking for "some air support ... some logistics, planning, vehicle barriers, engineering." The DHS request could require deploying between 800 and 1,000 active-duty troops, two U.S. officials said, speaking on condition of anonymity. The U.S. military is prohibited from carrying out civilian law enforcement on American soil unless specifically authorized by Congress. There are currently 2,100 National Guardsmen along the border, but the DHS request could lead to the first large-scale deployment of active-duty U.S. military forces to support the border protection mission under Trump. "To those in the Caravan, turnaround, we are not letting people into the United States illegally. Go back to your Country and if you want, apply for citizenship like millions of others are doing!" Trump tweeted on Thursday. More than 1,000 people arrived in Guatemala on Monday, part of a second caravan, but have since divided into smaller groups to push on northward. The larger caravan is now in southern Mexico and left Honduras nearly two weeks ago. It numbered more than 5,000 when it settled in the town of Mapastepec on Wednesday night, a local official said. Many are fleeing violence, poverty and government corruption in their home countries. It is not clear if Russian leader has accepted offer the extended during John Bolton visit. Donald Trump has formally invited Vladimir Putin to visit Washington DC next year, the U.S. national security adviser, John Bolton, has confirmed. "We have invited President Putin to Washington," Bolton said during a visit to Tbilisi, Georgia, according to The Guardian. It is not clear whether Putin has accepted the White Houses invitation, which came when Bolton visited the Kremlin earlier this week. The meeting would be a highly anticipated sequel to the pairs controversial summit in Helsinki in July, igniting a firestorm of criticism against Trump, who has ignored Republican hawks to seek a close personal relationship with Putin. The U.S. president was widely criticized for appearing deferential to Putin in the Finnish capital and suggesting that he trusted the Russian leaders denials about meddling in U.S. elections more than reports from his own intelligence agencies. Read alsoRussian trolls get DM from U.S. Cyber Command: We know who you are. Stop it Bolton made headlines earlier this week when he confronted officials about the alleged interference, claiming it did not affect Trumps election. Putin and Trump are due to meet briefly in Paris next month, when they attend a centennial memorial service for Armistice Day, which marked the end of WW1. Bolton said during a news conference in Tbilisi that those talks would be brief. A Washington visit would be far more controversial, with relations between Russia and the west at their worst since the cold war. The U.S. is to impose new sanctions on Russia next month over the use of a novichok nerve agent in the attempted murder of the former spy Sergei Skripal in Salisbury, England. Meanwhile, Moscow has accused Washington of sparking a new arms race by pulling out of a nuclear arms treaty that has been credited with keeping nuclear missiles out of Europe. The U.S. has accused Russia of violating the treaty first, by developing a new cruise missile. Boltons visit to Moscow was largely prompted by Trumps decision to withdraw from the treaty. Bolton met Putin, as well as senior Russian defense and diplomatic officials, before beginning a tour through ex-Soviet countries in the Caucasus, including Armenia, Georgia and Azerbaijan. A fingerprint was uncovered from a package bomb sent to Democratic Rep. Maxine Waters. The print was then connected to the suspect. A suspect was arrested in the investigation of bombs sent to prominent Democrats and critics of President Trump, Attorney General Jeff Sessions announced Friday. FBI Director Chris Wray identified the suspect as Cesar Sayoc. Sayoc was charged with five federal crimes, Sessions said during a nationally televised press conference. He faces up to 58 years in prison, according to CBS News. Several law enforcement sources say that Sayoc was born in 1962. Records show that his full name is Cesar Altieri Sayoc and that he appears to have a criminal history in Broward County, Florida. A fingerprint was uncovered from a package bomb sent to Democratic Rep. Maxine Waters, Wray said. The print was then connected to Sayoc. Wray also said there was a possible DNA connection relating to one of Sayoc's past arrests. A law enforcement source had said that DNA evidence on one of the devices played a part in leading investigators to the suspect, CBS News reported. Read alsoExplosive devices found in mail sent to Hillary Clinton, Obama At the arrest scene Friday morning, a van in Plantation was towed away to Miramar, Florida, where an FBI field office is located, a law enforcement official said. The van's exterior features images of President Donald Trump and Vice President Mike Pence as well as a "CNN Sucks" sticker, video footage shows, according to CNN. President Trump congratulated multiple law enforcement agencies for arresting a suspect in the package bomb investigation. "We have the best in the world, and we just showed it," the president said while addressing a group of young black leaders in the East Room of the White House. The president didn't identify the suspect, which several law enforcement sources told CBS News is Cesar Altieri Sayoc, but he said the suspect would be prosecuted "to the fullest extent of the law." He said that the "terrorizing acts" were "despicable and have no place in our country." "We must never allow political violence to take root in America," Mr. Trump said. The Belarusian automobile engineering company BelAZ signed an agreement on additional vehicle deliveries in 2019-2021 with the Ukrainian mining company OOO Metinvest Holding during the 1st Forum of Regions of Belarus and Ukraine, BelTA learned from BelAZ representatives. MINSK, (UrduPoint / Pakistan Point News - 26th Oct, 2018 ) :The Belarusian automobile engineering company BelAZ signed an agreement on additional vehicle deliveries in 2019-2021 with the Ukrainian mining company OOO Metinvest Holding during the 1st Forum of Regions of Belarus and Ukraine, BelTA learned from BelAZ representatives. The Ukrainian company will get an extra shipment of about 20 haul trucks with the carrying capacity of 130 tonnes and 15 wheeled bulldozers BelAZ 78231. The additional shipment agreement was signed on top of the strategic cooperation agreement BelAZ and Metinvest Holding signed back in 2017. That agreement provided for shipping 45 haul trucks with the carrying capacity of 130 tonnes and seven haul trucks with the carrying capacity of 30-50 tonnes. Some of the vehicles have been shipped, the deliveries continue. During the 1st Forum of Regions of Belarus and Ukraine in Gomel BelAZ representatives arranged a presentation of the company's latest R&D accomplishments in the area of mining vehicles. Ukraine is one of BelAZ's top three buyers. In Ukraine BelAZ vehicles are primarily used by the largest mining companies OOO Metinvest Holding and ArcelorMittal Kryvyi Rih. Metinvest is an international mining and metallurgical group. The group includes mining and metallurgical enterprises in Ukraine, the USA, and the European Union. It is Ukraine's largest and one of the CIS' largest producers of iron ore raw materials and steel. Metinvest Holding manages coal industry, mining industry, coke-chemical industry, metallurgical industry, and pipe industry enterprises. The public joint-stock company (OAO) BelAZ is the world's leading manufacturer of haul trucks with a large carryingcapacity and an extremely large carrying capacity. The company also makes other kinds of heavy transport vehiclesfor the mining industry and the civil engineering industry. (@rukhshanmir) Minister for Planning, Development and Reform Makhdum Khusro Bakhtyar has underscored the need for carrying out quality and policy-focused research for effective development and economic policy making to enable the policymakers to devise sound strategies for achieving desired development results. ISLAMABAD, (UrduPoint / Pakistan Point News - 26th Oct, 2018 ) :Minister for Planning, Development and Reform Makhdum Khusro Bakhtyar has underscored the need for carrying out quality and policy-focused research for effective development and economic policy making to enable the policymakers to devise sound strategies for achieving desired development results. The Federal Minister expressed these views while chairing the 12th Senate Meeting of Pakistan Institute of Development Economics (PIDE) here at Islamabad on Friday. It may be noted that the Minister in his capacity as Deputy Chairman Planning Commission is the Chancellor of PIDE. MNA Shandana Gulzar, Vice Chancellor PIDE Dr. Asad Zaman, members PIDE Senate and senior officials of the Ministry were also present in the meeting. The Minister said that PIDE is an important research institution which should be further strengthened and equipped to make it a state of the art centre of excellence for research and academic purposes. The Minister underlined the importance of establishing educational linkages with leading world research institutions to benefit from latest research and expertise in relevant fields. 'This will also provide greater opportunities to our students to enhance their skills and research techniques to enable them to effectively contribute in the development of the country', stated the Minister. During the meeting, various agenda items came under discussion. Regarding the approval of budget for PIDE for financial year 2018-19, the Minister directed to constitute a sub-committee to be headed by MNA Shandana Gulzar to examine and review the expenditure and budget. The meeting deferred the approval of budget till the completion of this exercise. Noting that PIDE Senate Meeting is normally held once every year, the Minister called for holding these meetings on quarterly basis for smooth and efficient functioning of organization. The meeting also gave approval of Search Committee for appointment of vice Chancellor, PIDE. (@ChaudhryMAli88) KP Government has planned to setup higher education reforms unit to harmonize higher education with emerging markets demands aimed at to provide quick job opportunities to students after completion of their studies in line with policy of Prime Minister Imran Khan. PESHAWAR, (UrduPoint / Pakistan Point News - 26th Oct, 2018 ) :KP Government has planned to setup higher education reforms unit to harmonize higher education with emerging markets demands aimed at to provide quick job opportunities to students after completion of their studies in line with policy of Prime Minister Imran Khan. "The main objective of the unit is to prepare an inclusive and workable policy for next five years with main focus on strengthening of different sectors of higher education and link it with markets requirements," said Chief Planning Officer, Higher Education Department, Hamid Naveed while talking to APP. He said, "the unit is included in ADP 2018-19 and is one of top program of the department under 100-days plan that is in advance stage. Top educational experts would be included in the unit for preparation of the new higher education policy for 2018-23 period with main focus on projects and financial requirements of public sector universities and libraries, market based research and strengthening of BS program at colleges and commerce educational institutes, he said. He said Rs 100 million were earmarked for establishment of the unit against which Rs10million would be spent in current fiscal year, saying proposals in this regard were submitted to Planning and Development Department. Under 100 days plan of KP Govt, he said the Department will organize a exhibition at Islamabad for students of home economic colleges of KP to showcase their products at national level. Three million would be spent on the exhibition and the event would be held soon after approval of the Finance Department. The department has planned to establish new degree colleges and construct new hostels besides provision of computer equipments to various colleges. The KP Govt has allocated Rs4125 million for 65 projects including 45 ongoing with Rs3734.997million and 20 new with allocation of Rs390 million in financial year 2018-19 for higher education department. Public libraries, repair of govt colleges, provision of furniture and equipment at Govt College Management Science Manshera and will establish Economic Policy Research Institute at Abdul Wali Khan Univerrsity Mardan are the new projects to be completed in current fiscal. Efforts would be made to upgrade UET Peshawar sub-campus Mardan to University. Naveed informed that University of Engineering and Technology Peshawar has completed a quality research work under which solar panels with 0.5megawatt capacity can be locally prepared to provide affordable energy to consumers and industries. "We will encourage such positive activities and UET Peshawar's engineers would be asked to install a small solar plant at civil secretariat Peshawar on trial basis and later this model would be extended to other offices." BS program at colleges level is being strengthened in 114 colleges in KP and 200 IT labs were setup. Libraries at public sector universities are being digitalized and so far around 70 libraries in different colleges were digitalized in the province, he explained. The department has embarked upon an inclusive plan to capitalize on the good work of previous PTI Govt and bring further improvement in higher education sector. As many as 10 new public sector universities including Chitral University, Women University Swabi, Abbottabad University, Lakki Marwat University, Women University Mardan, UET Mardan, Buner University, UoT Nowshera, Agriculture University Di Khan and Pak-Austria University of Applied Sciences at Haripur were established by the former PTI Govt during last five years where teaching processes in nine universities were started. The universities budget, which was only Rs 7.398billion in 2013, had jumped to record RsRs13.277billion in 2018, showing 98pc increase. 47 new colleges including nine for boys and 32 girls besides six commerce colleges including two boys and four female were completed. Till June 2018, 47 new colleges were constructed, which has raised number of colleges to 222 against 175 in 2013. Two home economic colleges at degree level at Abbottabad and Nowshera were setup while age condition for admission of women in educational institutes was abolished. The number of girls colleges, which was only 42 in 2013, has risen to 47 in 2018. Rs8.6 billion was approved for Pak-Austria of Applied Sciences University Haripur under which selected teachers are being provided training at Austria. As result of these positive measures, students enrollment at public universities, which was only 70422 in 2013, has jumped to record 100682 in 2018. Likewise, the enrollment of students at colleges that was only 70422 in 2013, had mounted to 156014 in 2018. Four years BS program in public sector colleges were extended to 99 colleges in 2018 with 36607 students against 24000 students in 37 BS colleges in 2013. The KP Govt increased 760 million rupees grant for 28 public universities and distributed Rs50m prize money in 36 colleges in 2016 including 18 girls and 18 boys besides approved Rs40million for financial year 2017-18. Three libraries were established while work on four new was in completion stage including one each in Charsadda, Buner, Manshera and Haripur. To monitor performance of teachers and other staff, biometric machines in 185 general colleges and 31 commerce colleges were installed while higher education management system was fully activated. Under PSDP Program, financial support was provided to 285 MS and MPhil and 113 PhD scholars during financial year 2015-16 besides allocation of Rs50m for outgoing fiscal year. Likewise, scholarship was provided to 5193 students costing Rs124.61m under Scholarship for Youth Program. To take full advantage of CPEC opportunities, Chinese language centres were setup at Abbottabad, Peshawar and Haripur whereas two centres are being established at DI Khan and Swat. Around 221 Pakistani students were sent to China for six months language courses that would cost Rs100 million. Under CM Education Foundation Fund, scholarship to 23 PhD scholars, 21 MS and M Phil and 37 under graduated were provided for studying in top national universities and three MS scholarship to scholars for studying in foreign universities with allocation of Rs1742 million. Under higher education endowment fund, 7753 scholarship to students of BS program in Govt colleges costing Rs70.2m and training to around 1500 lecturers at KP Higher Education academy. (@rukhshanmir) Sindh Chief Minister Syed Murad Ali Shah has claimed that all efforts were being made to save the lives of children in Tharparkar however he said the children mortality rate in the district was lower than other parts of the country. HYDERABAD, (UrduPoint / Pakistan Point News - 26th Oct, 2018 ) :Sindh Chief Minister Syed Murad Ali Shah has claimed that all efforts were being made to save the lives of children in Tharparkar however he said the children mortality rate in the district was lower than other parts of the country. He said this while talking to media persons at the mausoleum of great mystic poet Hazrat Shah Abdul Latif Bhitai at Bhit Shah town of Matiari district where he arrived on Friday to attend the concluding ceremony of 275th three-day annual urs celebrations. Accompanied by Sindh ministers Makhdoom Mehboob-uz-Zaman, Faraz Dero, Syed Sardar Ali Shah and Abdul Bari Pitafi, the Chief Minister said the child mortality rate in other parts of the country was about 70 to 100 children among each one thousand whereas the number of children death in Thar desert was 50 to 60 among one thousand. However, he said while realizing the fact, the provincial government was making all out efforts to control the increasing incidents of the children deaths in the desert district of the province. To a question, he said that the provincial government was also making efforts to reactivate the non-functional Reverse Osmosis (RO) plants in Tharparkar. The Pakistan Peoples Party (PPP) government had established maximum numbers of RO plants in the desert district, he said and added the present situation in Thar was better as compared to past. Responding to a question about the JIT set up on the directives of the Chief Justice of Pakistan regarding money laundering, the Chief Minister said that the provincial government had extended maximum cooperation to JIT and provided all such information sought by it. The Chief Justice of Pakistan also expressed satisfaction over timely submission of information to JIT and ordered to submit further information to JIT in time if demanded, he said and added that he was called by the Chief Justice today but due to scheduled visit of Bhit Shah, he requested through Advocate General Sindh that he will appear tomorrow before the Chief Justice. "We have always given due respect to judiciary and whenever required we will appear before the Supreme Court", he said. To another question about the accountability of NAB, the Chief Minister said that there was no objection on accountability, but it should be carried out across the board. Though the accountability came under jurisdiction of the provincial government and the Anti-Corruption Establishment was disposing its responsibility well, however there is no objection on the working of NAB, Syed Murad Ali Shah said and added that the NAB should carry out accountability instead of political victimisation. Replying to another question about any move of making crack in the ranks of PPP, Syed Murad Ali Shah said since childhood he was hearing such type of news but the fact is that all are united in the party. Responding to a question about Sufi University in Bhit Shah town, the CM said that delay has occurred as there was no state land available in the town for establishment of the varsity, however, the issue would be resolved soon by the government. About shortage of water in the town, Syed Murad Ali Shah said the entire province was in grip of the issue, however, the government was making all out efforts to resolve it at the earliest. The provincial government had made huge allocation in the Annual Development Programme to address the issue of water shortage, he informed. Earlier, the Chief Minister along with the provincial ministers laid wreaths and offered fateha at the Mazar of HazratShah Abdul Latif Bhitai. He also distributed clothes among widows and deserving women and listened to the Raag of Hazrat Shah Abdul Latif Bhitai. A delegation of Asian Development Bank (ADB) led by Country Director for Pakistan, Ms. Xiaohong Yang Thursday called on the Chief Minister Khyber Pakhtunkhwa Mahmood Khan in Islamabad. PESHAWAR, (UrduPoint / Pakistan Point News - 25th Oct, 2018 ) :A delegation of Asian Development Bank (ADB) led by Country Director for Pakistan, Ms. Xiaohong Yang Thursday called on the Chief Minister Khyber Pakhtunkhwa Mahmood Khan in Islamabad. KP Finance Minister Taimur Khan Jhagra and Secretary Agriculture Mohammad Israr Khan were also present. The delegation discussed issues related to the sustainable development of the province and the welfare of its people. The issues were discussed including to provision of both physical and soft infrastructure like agriculture, finance, roads network, communication, energy, tourism, drinking water, job creation, ICT, irrigation, mineral development, horticulture, strengthening the Province' own revenue generation and good governance. Talking to the delegation, the Chief Minister stressed for ADB's technical and financial assistance in the timely completion of BRT project in Peshawar. It was agreed that the provincial government and ADB will continue to work for the timely and up to standard execution of this gigantic project of historic importance to the Province. It transpired on the occasion that besides other the provincial government had already completed the construction of over 250 mini-hydal power stations while they were jointly working over the construction of such 1000 dams for provision of cheap electricity to the people of remote and under develop areas of the province. During the meeting it was decided that all these over 250 completed mini-hydel power stations will be handed over to the local communities soon and physical work over the construction of more 350 is to be taken up immediately. It was also that learnt with the construction of hydel power station at Dassu Kohistan over 75,000 jobs will be created in that far-flung area. The Chief Minister on this occasion directed the revenue authorities of the province to complete the payment of compensation and resettlement of the affectees of Pehur High Level Canal. The uplift of the newly merged districts of FATA was specially discussed on this occasion and the ADB delegation assured the CM that they will fully support the provincial government in this regard. The Chief Minister said that his government was working on a comprehensive package of development schemes, provision of basic amenities of life to the people, resource generation and good governance for the Province to which the ADB delegation assured all out support and cooperation. Regarding the provision of clean drinking water to the urban areas of the Province the delegationassured their support to such program for Peshawar, Mardan, Nowshera, and Mingora. ISLAMABAD, (UrduPoint / Pakistan Point News - 26th Oct, 2018 ) :Chairman Pakistan Peoples Party (PPP) Bilawal Bhutto Zardari has said that international community cannot maintain continuous silence over the occupation of held Kashmir by 500,000 Indian armed forces since 71 years and urged it to rein in Modi to stop perpetual atrocities against the innocent Kashmiris. In a message on the eve of the Black Day being observed by Kashmiris in Pakistan and the world over to mark the day Indian forces occupied the held Kashmir seventy-one years ago, the PPP Chairman said that more than 70,000 Kashmiris had been killed brutally by occupying Indian forces during their struggle for right to self-determination. Bilawal Bhutto Zardari said that people of Pakistan had an emotional, spiritual and historic bond with Kashmir and its people. "Our moral and diplomatic support for Kashmiris in IHK shall continue till achieving their right to self-determination," he added. PPP Chairman expressed complete solidarity with the Kashmiri people of IHK adding that PPP would always be at the forefronts at every available forum to raise voice for them. Foreign Secretary Tehmina Janjua called the Ambassador of the Netherlands to the Foreign Office on Thursday and lodged a strong protest on the blasphemous tweets by Dutch Parliamentarian Geert Wilders. ISLAMABAD, (UrduPoint / Pakistan Point News - 25th Oct, 2018 ) :Foreign Secretary Tehmina Janjua called the Ambassador of the Netherlands to the Foreign Office on Thursday and lodged a strong protest on the blasphemous tweets by Dutch Parliamentarian Geert Wilders. The Foreign Secretary conveyed deep concern and disappointment of the government and the people of Pakistan on continued and deliberate malicious attempts of the Dutch Parliamentarian to hurt the sentiments of hundreds of millions across the world, a statement issued by Foreign Office said. The Foreign Secretary underscored that such acts cannot be allowed with impunity under the pretext of freedom of expression. These discriminatory incidents spread hate and intolerance and provoke extremism and violence, which were prohibited under human rights laws and standards. She called upon the Dutch government to condemn and take suitable measures to counter and prevent such actions from taking place.[The Dutch Ambassador assured that concerns of the government and the people of Pakistan would be conveyed to the concerned authorities in the Netherlands. (@FahadShabbir) Punjab Chief Minister Sardar Usman Buzdar Friday said that India could not suppress the spirit of freedom of the Kashmiri people through killings and their struggle of Kashmiris could not be suppressed through the bayonet of the gun. LAHORE, (UrduPoint / Pakistan Point News - 26th Oct, 2018 ) :Punjab Chief Minister Sardar Usman Buzdar Friday said that India could not suppress the spirit of freedom of the Kashmiri people through killings and their struggle of Kashmiris could not be suppressed through the bayonet of the gun. In a message issued here, the chief minister said that Indian policy of brute torture and cruelty has failed in the occupied Kashmir. "Depriving Kashmiri people of their right to self-determination through illegal occupation is a blatant violation of human rights. Therefore, the international community should pressurize India to immediately stop the play of fire and blood in occupied Kashmir," he added. The CM said that Kashmiris were facing cruelties for the sake of self-determination and in spite of state-sponsored Indian terrorism, Kashmiris' passion for freedom had not been weakened. "The right of self-determination is a non-controversial part of international law but regrettably, the unarmed Kashmiris are deprived of this basic right." He reiterated that the PTI government would continue to support the view point of Kashmiris. "I salute the brave struggle of Kashmiris for the sake of self-determination and today is an occasion to remind Kashmiris that they are not alone and Pakistanination is standing shoulder to shoulder with them," chief minister concluded. (@ChaudhryMAli88) Islamabad High Court (IHC) Friday served notices to three members national assembly (MNAs) and Election Commission of Pakistan (ECP) in a case challenging the their eligibility. ISLAMABAD, (UrduPoint / Pakistan Point News - 26th Oct, 2018 ) :Islamabad High Court (IHC) Friday served notices to three members national assembly (MNAs) and Election Commission of Pakistan (ECP) in a case challenging the their eligibility. Justice Aamer Farooq resumed hearing on a petition filed by a citizen Abdullah Khan challenging the qualification of three MNAs belonging to ruling party Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) - Malaika Bukhari, Tashfeen Safdar and Kanwal Shahzeb. The petitioner's counsel Ahmad Raza Qasuri contended before the court that the two members were holding dual nationalities while the third one had given false information to the high court. He said Malaika Bukhari was holding dual nationality till the day of submission of her nomination papers, he said. He further said Tashfeen Safdar had also hide the information regarding his dual nationality. On query of bench, Qasuri said Kanwal Shahzeb had given false reply to IHC regarding shifting of vote and following this she didn't meet the criteria under Article 62, 63 of the Constitution. After hearing the arguments, the court served notices to three MNAs and ECP to seek reply from the respondents. Khyber Pakhtunkhwa Assembly with Deputy Speaker Mahmood Jan in the Chair on Friday passed supplementary budget for the year 2017-18 amounting to Rs 23.176 billion as the Opposition members withdrew their cut motions paving the way for approval of demand for grants. PESHAWAR, (UrduPoint / Pakistan Point News - 26th Oct, 2018 ) :Khyber Pakhtunkhwa Assembly with Deputy Speaker Mahmood Jan in the Chair on Friday passed supplementary budget for the year 2017-18 amounting to Rs 23.176 billion as the Opposition members withdrew their cut motions paving the way for approval of demand for grants. At the outset of proceedings, the Chair urged movers to withdraw their cut motions due to paucity of time. Talking on the floor of the House, Local Bodies Minister, Shahram Khan Tarakai supported the suggestion of the Chair afterwards movers briefly expressed point of view on their cut motions and withdraw the same after expressing their point of view. After passage of demands for grants, the finance minister presented authenticated schedule of expenditure for outgoing fiscal year. Expressing reservation on cut motions, parliamentary leader of ANP, Sardar Husain Babak suggested the House to form a parliamentary committee to probe into what he called the unfair and unjust distribution of provincial resources in certain selected districts and made a comprehensive report to this effect. He contended that setting up of schools in rented buildings were not feasible. He supported the establishment of schools in community owned madrassas, hujras and mosques. He called for accommodating the outstanding students of 'Stoori da Pakhtunkhwa' projects initiated in ANP government. The former Local Bodies Minister, Inayt ullah Khan of JI told the House that billions of rupees have been doled out to 22000 schools as a conditional grant. He also expressed concerns over the transparency and utilization of public money on these schools as their accounts are impossible to audut. Sobia Shahid of PML-N said that 90 percent tube wells in Dir are non-functional and women often travels long distances to fetch water for consumption. She said that water resources should be developed in water-scarce areas of the province. She maintained that conditions of road in both of Dir districts are in shambles and need to be repaired. Shagufta Malik of ANP told the house that killer of Zainab has been hanged whereas the accused involved in molestation of minor girls in KP were still at large and needed similar punishment. She called for enactment of special legislation for women protection. Taking the floor, finance minister Taimur Salim Jhagra assured the House that government would bring transparency in expenditure projected in budget document. From next year we are making an economic plan for judicious utilization of funding, he said adding FATA allocations would be utilized in merged tribal areas. He disclosed that budget books would be published in urdu and English and even Pashtu to facilitate people. Concluding, he urged the members to withdraw their cut motion on demands of grants. Sahibzada Sana Ullah, Shagufta Malik, Sardar Hussain Babak, Sobia Shahid, Bahadur Khan, Inayat Ullah Khan, Munawar Khan, Ahmad Kundi, Shakil Umerzai, Rehana Ismail withdrew their cut motions after highlighting concerns. Ambassador of Tajikistan in Pakistan Sher Ali S.Janonov Friday said over the past twenty five years Tajik-Pak friendship has emerged as one of the best examples of good neighbourliness in the international political arena. PESHAWAR, (UrduPoint / Pakistan Point News - 26th Oct, 2018 ) :Ambassador of Tajikistan in Pakistan Sher Ali S.Janonov Friday said over the past twenty five years Tajik-Pak friendship has emerged as one of the best examples of good neighbourliness in the international political arena. He expressed these views while addressing a seminar on Pakistan-Central Asia Political and Economic Relations here at Area Study Center of the University of Peshawar. He added that the trade and economic opportunities, geo- strategic position and influence of Pakistan in South Asia and in the Islamic world were of great importance for Tajikistan. Therefore, he said they would continue to focus their efforts on strengthening relations between the two countries. The Tajik side support Pakistani entrepreneurs for investment in the free economic zone of Tajikistan including Sughd, Ishkashim and Danghara. The establishment of Industrial enterprises in these zones offering cheap transportation, particularly railway connection to other countries of Central Asia and Europe has become much easier. He said that Pakistan was facing energy shortage and the Republic of Tajikistan was keen in the participation of Pakistan in the implementation of energy projects including the construction of hydroelectric power stations and power transmission lines. The completion of CASA-1000 project would therefore, enable Pakistan to import 1000-1300 MW electricity in summer, he underlined. Replying to a question, the ambassador said that the Shanghai Cooperation Organization region now roughly represents 40% of world`s population, 20% of its GDP and has accordingly emerged as a major player in regional and global affairs. He added the organization has indeed a great potential in every area to transform the whole region into a prosperous community of the nations. He invited the Director, Area Study Center and scholars of the center for an exchange visit to Dushanbe. Prof. Dr. Shabbir, Director, Area Study Center said that Central Asia has a great geographical and economic significance and connects three continents. He added that the trade and economic relations between Pakistan and central Asia was around 58.7 million Dollars while Pak-Tajik bilateral trade was around 12 million dollars. He added the Area Study Center was established in 1978 and since then it has produced 85 PhDs specialist of this region. He added that the Center has several MoUs with institutes and think tanks of the Central Asian Republics. Dr. Shabbir urged that the center was ready to start joint research projects with institutes and offer exchange of scholars and faculty with the republics. Prof. Dr. Azmat Hayat Khan, a former Director Area Study Center said probably we have not realizedhow much Central Asia and specifically Tajikistan is in our history, culture and education. He added that our revenue, language and our national anthem and daily interaction are all full of Tajiki words. Federal Minister for Kashmir Affairs and Gilgit Baltistan Ali Amin Gandapur on Friday said that the Black Day would be commemorated with spirit to reiterate our firm and continued moral, diplomatic and political support to the people of Indian Held Kashmir (IOK) in their sacred struggle and will not give it up until they achieve their legitimate right of self determination. ISLAMABAD, (UrduPoint / Pakistan Point News - 26th Oct, 2018 ) :Federal Minister for Kashmir Affairs and Gilgit Baltistan Ali Amin Gandapur on Friday said that the Black Day would be commemorated with spirit to reiterate our firm and continued moral, diplomatic and political support to the people of Indian Held Kashmir (IOK) in their sacred struggle and will not give it up until they achieve their legitimate right of self determination. In his message, the minister said that on 27th October, Indian forces landed in Srinagar to occupy and oppress the innocent people of Indian Occupied Kashmir (IOK) in a clear violation of international law. "Since then, India has continued to deny the people of Jammu and Kashmir their right to self determination and subjected them to the worst kind of human rights violations and oppression," he said. Gandapur said that the United Nations Security Council through several of its resolutions has validated the Kashmiris' right to decide their future through a fair and impartial plebiscite. "The plight of the Kashmiris has been further reaffirmed by the first ever report of the office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR) on the situation in Jammu and Kashmir" the Minister added. He said that despite of barbaric Indian atrocities and apathy on behalf of a large part of the international community, the brave people of Indian occupied Jammu and Kashmir have demonstrated exemplary resilience and grit in the face of perverse Indian aggression. Ambassador of China in Pakistan, Yao Jang here on Friday said the government and the people of China were eagerly waiting for the historic visit of Pakistan Prime Minister Imran Khan in first week of November as China was pinning high hopes on the new government in term of bringing peace and development not only in Pakistan but the whole region. ISLAMABAD, (UrduPoint / Pakistan Point News - 26th Oct, 2018 ) :Ambassador of China in Pakistan, Yao Jang here on Friday said the government and the people of China were eagerly waiting for the historic visit of Pakistan Prime Minister Imran Khan in first week of November as China was pinning high hopes on the new government in term of bringing peace and development not only in Pakistan but the whole region. Addressing a press briefing, Jang said China wanted to see Pakistan economically strong and independent country to promote regional peace, prosperity and stability. He said during the visit, the prime ministers of the two countries would witness signing of a number of bilateral agreements in areas of mutual interests besides participating as a guest of honour in business Conference to be held in Shanghai on November 5. He said China was willing to extend maximum possible support to Pakistan and a good news is expected at the conclusion of the visit. He said Pakistan was a longstanding trade and strategic partner of China and "we have plans to invest more under Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC) and buy more from the Pakistan to make it economically stronger and independent country". He said during the visit of Imran Khan a major breakthrough in a number of projects under CPEC was expected specially in Rashakai Special Economic Zone where the agreement is likely to be finalized and it is also expected that ground breaking of this SEZ would be held by the end of current year. He also appreciated the new government's efforts to bring peace in the region by offering peace talks to its neighborly countries. With regard to CPEC, the Chines envoy rejected the notion of some elements that the project would only benefit China and Pakistan would get nothing out of it. "We are building this mega project based on mutual sharing and mutual interests," he added. Mr. Yao Jang said China has trust over Pakistan that was why it was investing such a huge amount for the economic development of the country. He said the investment money was a hard earned money of people of China, therefore it should be recognized. "Elements who do not want to see China and Pakistan to prosper and develop and the elements who do not want good relationship between the two countries are spreading such propaganda," he added. Deputy Chief of Chinese Mission in Pakistan Lijian Zhao said Pakistan owes debt to China worth of only USD 6 billion which was only around 6.3 percent of Pakistan's total foreign debt and repayment of this payment would start on 2021with payment of $300-400 million per year. "All the CPEC projects are funded b commercial loan which are borrowed and repaid by the Chinese companies," he said adding that this is no debt on Pakistan government. Zhao said the average interest on the loan under CPEC was around 5.3 percent including insurance payment. He said Rashakai, Hatar and Dhabeji SEZs were the front line projects among all SEZs and work on them would be started soon. Replying to a question, he said a good package was expected during the ongoing visit of Prime Minister Imran Khan to China. (@FahadShabbir) Punjab Minister for Industries and Trade Mian Aslam Iqbal on Friday said that serving masses was a mission of Pakistan Tehreek-i-Insaf (PTI) government which would be continued without any discrimination. LAHORE, (UrduPoint / Pakistan Point News - 26th Oct, 2018 ) :Punjab Minister for Industries and Trade Mian Aslam Iqbal on Friday said that serving masses was a mission of Pakistan Tehreek-i-Insaf (PTI) government which would be continued without any discrimination. He held an open court at his camp office and listened to problems of people for almost four hours. He issued on-the-spot orders for solving some of the problems, and forwarded some applications to the departments concerned. While talking to complainants and the media, he said that the purpose of holding open court was to solve people's problems swiftly. He said that the government officers should implement an open door policy in their offices and solve people's problems on priority basis. The minister said that merit was the only way out for progress and the Punjab government was implementing the merit policy at every level. He said that the PTI government would come up to the expectations of people and such a system would be introduced which would help solving people's problems at their doorsteps. Reforms in the government departments were being introduced to increase the capabilities of the government offices, he added. Most complaints lodged by people were related to police, local government, education, health, WASA and other departments. The instructions were issued for their solution. Speaker National Assembly Assad Qaiser Khan on Friday urged that inner reform in all political parties must be for the strengthen of democracy as country cannot progress without a strong democracy. ISLAMABAD, (UrduPoint / Pakistan Point News - 26th Oct, 2018 ) :Speaker National Assembly Assad Qaiser Khan on Friday urged that inner reform in all political parties must be for the strengthen of democracy as country cannot progress without a strong democracy. Talking to a private news channel, Assad Khan said that " i will perform my duties in the domain of law, rules and constitution of the country and trying to run the house with consensuses". To a question about the general election of 2018 he said that Election Commission of Pakistan (ECP ) was hold free, fair and transparent election across the country adding that it was a historic free and fair election of Pakistan. Parliament should debate over charter of economy, no compromise on accountability, govt will discourage on discrimination or political trial on any political figure. The Chairman of Public Account Committee would be selected from government not from opponent. National Accountability Bureau (NAB) in an independent institution and government have no influence on it. I will use all of my capability for the strengthen of Parliament House and government has believed on without discriminatory accountability, as without free and fair accountability no county of the world could progress. Some amendment are necessary in the rules and laws of NAB and it is the responsibility of Parliament should debate on them. He rejected the impression about that government behind all political trials in NAB, he said that all NAB cases were registered before the PTI government. To a question, he said that production order of Shahbaz Sharif would be issued according to the law. He criticism the role of opposition in Punjab Assembly and said that opposition should present the political maturity where they should protest according to the law and maintain the decorum of the house. Government have no plan to registered any political case against any political parties and have zero tolerance policy on corruption. Assad lamented every work would be done according to the law of the house, and no body above the law. Govt will mange the conducive environment of the Parliament House as legislation of the house should be betterment of the citizen of the county. He called for the Parliamentarians should debate on charter of Economy, water crisis, open discussion on foreign policy, extremism, show the unity as nationalist on these issue. Politicians should be role model of the society, if any political party have any allegation should present their allegation in the committee. Equal member would be selected for parliamentary committee and chairman wold be from government chapter. Assad also urged on the collective efforts of all political parties for the development and prosperity of the state. Government will address the reservation of Akhtar Mengal as soon as possible, Government taking practical steps for the welfare of the citizen and Ministers are performing their duties with full commitment. Prime Minster Imran Khan ready to reply all the question of the house. (@FahadShabbir) Julian Assange, the founder of WikiLeaks whistleblowing organization, is ready to turn himself in to the UK justice if he receives a written guarantee that he will not be extradited to the United States or to any other third country, Assange's lawyer told Sputnik on Friday. QUITO (UrduPoint News / Sputnik - 26th October, 2018) Julian Assange, the founder of WikiLeaks whistleblowing organization, is ready to turn himself in to the UK justice if he receives a written guarantee that he will not be extradited to the United States or to any other third country, Assange's lawyer told Sputnik on Friday. "That commitment must be in writing, as a compromise between the states [Ecuador and the United Kingdom], affirming that there will be no extradition to the United States or third countries ... If there is such a commitment, then Mr. Assange will surrender to the UK justice," Carlos Poveda said. Assange was questioned by the UK police over his alleged involvement in a sexual assault case in Sweden and released on bail, but breached its conditions by taking refuge in the Ecuadorian Embassy in London in 2012. Sweden dropped the investigation in 2017, but the UK arrest warrant for Assange, over bail breach, remained in place. Assange is fearing potential extradition to the United States, where he might face espionage charges as WikiLeaks has released a great number of what it said were US government documents. (@ChaudhryMAli88) Julian Assange, the founder of WikiLeaks whistleblowing organization, is ready to turn himself in to the UK justice if he receives a written guarantee that he will not be extradited to the United States or to any other third country, Assange's lawyer told Sputnik on Friday. QUITO (UrduPoint News / Sputnik - 26th October, 2018) Julian Assange, the founder of WikiLeaks whistleblowing organization, is ready to turn himself in to the UK justice if he receives a written guarantee that he will not be extradited to the United States or to any other third country, Assange's lawyer told Sputnik on Friday. "That commitment must be in writing, as a compromise between the states [Ecuador and the United Kingdom], affirming that there will be no extradition to the United States or third countries ... If there is such a commitment, then Mr. Assange will surrender to the UK justice," Carlos Poveda said. (@ChaudhryMAli88) Ecuadorian Attorney General Inigo Salvador Crespo said that two options were offered to Julian Assange, the founder of the WikiLeaks whistleblowing website, MEXICO CITY (UrduPoint News / Sputnik - 26th October, 2018) Ecuadorian Attorney General Inigo Salvador Crespo said that two options were offered to Julian Assange, the founder of the WikiLeaks whistleblowing website, regarding his stay in the Ecuadorian Embassy in London, which had been allegedly rejected by the whistleblower. Assange has been residing in the embassy since June 2012 after the United Kingdom granted his extradition to Sweden, where he was accused of sexual offenses. While the Swedish police dropped the charges in 2017, Assange is still wary of being extradited to the United States, where he is wanted for leaking classified documents of the US State Department. "He might have surrendered to the UK authorities under the guarantees obtained by the Ecuadorian state for a period not exceeding six months and on the condition that he would not be extradited to any other country. He was also able to stay in the Ecuadorian Embassy in London provided he complied with certain rules since he has been granted asylum for six years already and there are no signs suggesting that the issue can be resolved immediately," the attorney general indicated on Thursday. Starting from October 13, the Ecuadorian Embassy in London introduced new rules regulating Assange's stay there. The protocol, in particular, barred Assange from making political statements and set various other restrictions, including visiting, communications and medical attention regulations. Last week, Assange's lawyers sued Ecuador over the conditions of his stay in the embassy, which, according to them, violate the WikiLeaks founder's rights. The hearings at court were due to be held on Thursday, however, they were postponed due to technical problems In July, Ecuador's President Lenin Moreno said that Assange might leave the Ecuadorian embassy in London at any moment if his rights and international norms were guaranteed. Moreno stressed that he wanted to find a way out of the situation with Assange without problems for his country, adding that in that regard consultations with the UK authorities and Assange's representatives were being held. Bahrain's sovereign wealth fund in interested in purchasing a large block of stocks in Russia's ALROSA diamond mining company, ALROSA CEO Sergey Ivanov told Sputnik RIYADH (UrduPoint News / Sputnik - 26th October, 2018) Bahrain's sovereign wealth fund in interested in purchasing a large block of stocks in Russia's ALROSA diamond mining company, ALROSA CEO Sergey Ivanov told Sputnik. The company's head said that he met with fund's representatives on the sidelines of the Future Investment Initiative (FII) conference, which he attended as part of the Russian delegation led by Russian Direct Investment Fund (RDIF) CEO Kirill Dmitriev. "Bahrain has a serious sovereign fund, controls about $15 billion of assets. Bahrain is interested in acquiring large block of stock in Russian companies, they are not interested in collecting 1-2 percent of the market. So far there is no such possibility on the market today, but the fund announced that he likes what is happening in ALROSA [privatization], he likes the management, likes the potential for further growth of the company capitalization, it would be interesting for them to have, according to their words, a fairly large block of stock in ALROSA," Ivanov said. (@FahadShabbir) MOSCOW (UrduPoint News / Sputnik - 26th October, 2018) Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko will hold a meeting with his Ukrainian counterpart Petro Poroshenko on Friday in the southeastern Belarusian city of Gomel. The bilateral meeting will be held within the framework of the first Forum of the Regions of Belarus and Ukraine, currently held in Gomel. Their meeting will be devoted to promotion of bilateral trade, economic and investment cooperation. A number of documents and agreements on expanding mutual cooperation are set to be signed by the end of the forum. Lukashenko is set to participate in the plenary session of the forum, while the Ukrainian president will also attend the event. Belgium has opted for US F-35 Lightning II to re-equip its Air Force rather than Europe-made jets, provoking dissatisfaction of European partners and leaving experts split in their assessments of the choice. BRUSSELS (UrduPoint News / Sputnik - 27th October, 2018) Belgium has opted for US F-35 Lightning II to re-equip its Air Force rather than Europe-made jets, provoking dissatisfaction of European partners and leaving experts split in their assessments of the choice. On Thursday, Belgian Prime Minister Charles Michel officially announced that Brussels would buy 34 US fighter jets. He later said that the offer of US manufacturer Lockheed Martin Aeronautics was more beneficial than that of its competitors. The US fifth-generation fighter was chosen over the Typhoon Eurofighter built by a UK-German-Spanish-Italian consortium, the second participant of the tender. France's Dassault Aviation SA also sought to promote its Rafale, by making a counteroffer outside the tendering procedure. According to the Belgian Defense Ministry, one F-35, including its equipment and pilots' training, costs 76.3 million Euros ($86.8 million). Thus, the total cost of the rearmament will amount to 2.5 billion euros, while the government planned to allocate 3.6 billion euros for the implementation of the program. Because the F-35 is cheaper than budgeted, the government put parts of the surplus aside for an investment in a future European fighter. US PLEDGES RETURN IN ECONOMIC ACTIVITY The Belgian government believes that the purchase costs of the F-35 would return to Belgium in the form of economic compensation worth some 3.7 billion euros ($4.2 billion), which is as much as the jets cost. "The offer from the United States provides an economic activity with an estimated turnover of 3.7 billion euros," Belgian Deputy Prime Minister Kris Peeters said. Belgian Defense Minister Steven Vandeput similarly stressed that the estimates were even "conservative," adding that "we have very concrete commitments for 30 export projects. " Some representatives of the industry, however, voice certain doubts. Belgium's technology industry federation, Agoria, warned that the government's assessments could be overoptimistic, noting that potential economic compensation was still uncertain. "The sum of economic compensations that the minister announces is still highly uncertain. Just about all Belgian companies in the aviation industry have been contacted by Lockheed Martin in recent years with vague agreements and promises ... But they will soon have to be converted into a real contract. And that is by no means evident. Control is needed, so that all the nice talk does not become empty promises," Agoria CEO Marc Lambotte told Sputnik. Economist Geert Noels doubted that the orders for the US company with a branch in Belgium constituted an economic compensation for the country. "The minister speaks about rising sales. But that is not the same as added value. You have to look: are new jobs and investments coming in thanks to the F-35 for Belgian companies? If an American company with a branch in our country increases its turnover thanks to this purchase, it is not yet economic compensation for Belgium. It is true that the technological sector in Belgium would benefit from investments in new technologies such as cyberdefense and drones. Our companies can then take the lead internationally and capitalize on their knowledge to get markets abroad," Noels said. Retired Col. Luc Gennart, a former F-16 pilot, who he ended his military career as commander of Belgium's Florennes Air Base, however, believed that the F-35 had deservingly won the tender. "The government had published an official Request for Government Proposals (RFGP). Two nations responded, the British with the Eurofighter and the Americans .... [with the F-35s]. The RFGP had 164 questions. We can always regret that France has not bowed to this great exercise in transparency by making an offer with the Rafale. The latter country has preferred to make a general industrial counter-offer but without wanting to disclose the price," he specified. According to Gennart, both offers have been very interesting and can meet the defense needs of the country, while the US offer has the best price-quality ratio. "The choice of the government focused on the best military offer, offering the best export market and social return, the F35. Belgium is part of Europe and its defense strategy is defined through its alliances. Thanks to this aircraft, its contribution to NATO is guaranteed at a high level and in the long term. A fifth-generation fighter bomber justifies itself entirely. The economic compensation obtained is important in view of the size of the market," he said. Gennart also recalled that some EU nations had similarly opted for the F-35 to replace the aging F-16. "Several European countries have already decided to equip themselves with the F35, including the Dutch, Danish and Norwegian with whom we already share the same F16. But also the British and the Italians and probably others soon," he pointed out. BIDS TO SWEETEN THE PILL FOR EUROPE It is noteworthy that the Belgian government's concurrently announced both its decision to buy the F-35 fighters and the choice to purchase 442 French armored vehicles. This timing seems to be a signal that Belgium wants to preserve its relations with France, whose offer of Dassault, voluntarily placed outside the official procedure of selection of the new plane, remained a dead letter. It can also be regarded as a message that Belgium, despite the choice of the F-35, is no more Atlanticist than pro-European and remains committed to the development of European defense. Yet, the step has already faced certain criticism. Jean-Dominique Giuliani, the chairman of the Robert Schuman Foundation think tank, for instance, said that "It's not a European choice, it's worse than a slap, it's hopeless for Europe of defence." Moreover, French President Emmanuel Macron on Friday expressed his regret over Brussels' decision, arguing that this move "strategically goes against European interests." The statement came after Paris unsuccessfully sought to influence Brussels' decision, urging it to take into account the development of a Franco-German project for new fighter jets and the prospect that it could be extended to Belgium. Nevertheless, Belgium is not the first EU country to choose the F-35 to replace the F-16 inventory. The list also includes the Netherlands, Denmark, Italy and Norway. According to Brussels, the manufacturer of the F-35 just made a more beneficial offer, so business is business. Belgium after all has historical ties with Lockheed Martin. The Air Force has flown for a long time with the F-16. For that plane, the compensation arrived as promised. But the difference is that Belgium was involved in the development of the F-16 from the beginning, which is not the case with the F-35. MOSCOW (UrduPoint News / Sputnik - 26th October, 2018) The Canadian parliament passed the bill ratifying the Comprehensive and Progressive Agreement for Trans-Pacific Partnership (CPTTP). "Bill #C79 has been adopted at third reading in the Senate," the upper house wrote on Twitter late on Thursday. The Senate subsequently added that the bill, also known as TPP11, has received Royal Assent which is required for it to become a law. The Canadian lower house passed the bill in mid-October. The original Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) deal was signed in 2016, bringing together 12 Pacific Rim nations. In 2017, US President Donald Trump, who has repeatedly criticized the TPP, withdrew the United States from it. Following the US withdrawal, the 11 remaining nations continued their efforts to create a free trade zone. On March 8, the foreign ministers of Australia, Brunei, Canada, Chile, Japan, Malaysia, Mexico, New Zealand, Peru, Singapore and Vietnam signed the revised version of the TPP. Apart from Canada, the deal has been ratified by Japan, Mexico, New Zealand and Singapore. The accord is to come into effect 60 days after at least six out of 11 signatories ratify it. (@rukhshanmir) Russia believes UN Special Envoy for Syria Staffan de Mistura's visit to Damascus to discuss the Syrian Constitutional Committee was helpful and productive, Russian Ambassador to the United Nations Vassily Nebenzia said on Friday. WASHINGTON (UrduPoint News / Sputnik - 26th October, 2018) Russia believes UN Special Envoy for Syria Staffan de Mistura's visit to Damascus to discuss the Syrian Constitutional Committee was helpful and productive, Russian Ambassador to the United Nations Vassily Nebenzia said on Friday. "Staffan's visit to Damascus upon the invitation of the Syrian government was a useful one on the path toward achieving the goals laid out in Sochi," Nebenzia told the UN Security Council. "Staffan's visit to Damascus was extremely useful and constructive." Nebenzia said the United Nations should not underestimate the significance of de Mistura's trip to Syria and the momentum it has given to the peace process. The Russian ambassador urged keeping working tirelessly on this issue in order to end the crisis in Syria. On Wednesday, de Mistura met with Syrian Foreign Minister Walid Moualem in Damascus. After the talks, de Mistura said that he held intensive negotiations with Moualem on the composition of the Syrian Constitutional Committee and pledged to brief UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres on the outcome of the meeting. De Mistura had announced earlier that he would resign from his position during the last week of November because of personal reasons. Nebenzia said Russia is confident that in the time left until the end of his term, De Mistura will "leave no stone unturned" in restoring peace in Syria and Moscow is willing to help him achieve the common goals. (@rukhshanmir) Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov discussed with head of the opposition Syrian Negotiation Commission (SNC) Nasr Hariri on Friday the situation in Syria with an emphasis on a political settlement of the crisis, the Russian Foreign Ministry said in a statement. MOSCOW (UrduPoint News / Sputnik - 26th October, 2018) Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov discussed with head of the opposition Syrian Negotiation Commission (SNC) Nasr Hariri on Friday the situation in Syria with an emphasis on a political settlement of the crisis, the Russian Foreign Ministry said in a statement. "Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov received a delegation of the opposition Syrian Negotiation Commission (SNC) led by its chairman Nasr Hariri. During the conversation, the sides frankly exchanged views on the current situation in Syria and around it with an emphasis on the need for an early political settlement of the Syrian crisis," the statement said. (@ChaudhryMAli88) The gold rush is only four months old in Nathenje, Malawi, but already there are thousands of prospectors digging, shovelling and sifting soil in the age-old search for a nugget that will transform their lives. Nathenje, Malawi, (APP - UrduPoint / Pakistan Point News - 26th Oct, 2018 ) :The gold rush is only four months old in Nathenje, Malawi, but already there are thousands of prospectors digging, shovelling and sifting soil in the age-old search for a nugget that will transform their lives. "Iyi, iyi," ("Here, Here!") is the cry when an excited miner spots any speck of the precious metal and others eagerly gather round at the site, 20 kilometres (12 miles) south of the capital Lilongwe. Traders from neighbouring countries have been paying up to $34 a gram for the gold, according to one local official. But first you have to find it. And much of the hard work done here, in scorching temperatures, brings only disappointment. The miners -- many of them women -- head back down the deep holes dug on the riverbanks of Nathenje river. They emerge with buckets on their heads and, after the silt has been trucked a short distance to drier ground, carefully pour the wet dirt onto a sieve to wash away sediment and examine the remains for signs of gold. Tandizeni Natani barely knew what gold was when she and her fellow villagers left their fields to join in the sudden mining boom. "All I knew was that it was a precious stone," the mother of five children, the youngest of whom is three, told AFP. "On the first day, I made 25,000 kwacha ($34) and I have made about 100,000 kwacha so far, which has enabled me to buy school items for my children." Another villager, Fatima Chikalipo, said she bought a plot of land measuring about five by 10 metres for $7. So far, she had experienced mixed fortunes. "The first days were good but now sometimes we dig on days and we don't find anything. So, I have not seen any tangible benefits yet," she said. "And the price of the gold has gone down. We used to sell for 25,000 kwacha per gram. Now the buyers are offering 20,000 kwacha." (@rukhshanmir) Mass deportation of Congolese migrants from Angola has put thousands of people at risks in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DR Congo), UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Michelle Bachelet said on Friday. MOSCOW (UrduPoint News / Sputnik - 26th October, 2018) Mass deportation of Congolese migrants from Angola has put thousands of people at risks in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DR Congo), UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Michelle Bachelet said on Friday. According to the UN figures, around 330,000 people have left Angola mostly for the DR Congo's provinces of Kasai, Kasai Central and Kwango as a result of the expulsion by the Angolan government. At least six people died and at least 100 others were injured as a result of violence caused by the deportations. "International law and African Charter of Human and Peoples' Rights forbid the mass expulsion of non-nationals without individual assessment or other due process guarantees. In expelling such a massive number of people in such a short time, Angola has placed tens of thousands of families at severe risk," Bachelet said. The commissioner has also called on the government of Angola to stop the practice of forced deportations of the Congolese nationals. "I call on the Government of Angola to halt any ongoing deportations until it can be assured that any returns will be carried out in full respect of the rule of law and the human rights of all affected migrants. I also urge the Government to ensure that security forces and others responsible for violations in the course of these expulsions are held accountable," Bachelet noted. She also called on the DR Congo and the international community to intensify efforts to address the urgent humanitarian needs of the arriving refugees. The clashes between the government forces and militiamen in the Kasai region have intensified in 2016, resulting in the displacement of almost 1.5 million people, while at least 750,000 children in the region are malnourished, according to the UN figures. (@rukhshanmir) Belarus is prepared to engage in settlement efforts with regard to the conflict in eastern Ukraine but will not join the process until the relevant agreement is reached by both Russia and Ukraine, Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko said on Friday. GOMEL (UrduPoint News / Sputnik - 26th October, 2018) Belarus is prepared to engage in settlement efforts with regard to the conflict in eastern Ukraine but will not join the process until the relevant agreement is reached by both Russia and Ukraine, Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko said on Friday. "We are ready to engage in [the settlement of] this conflict in those areas where there are difficulties and where there is no trust, which should be there. We are ready to do this, but only for the sake of peace. This problem ... should be resolved by us three Slavic peoples [Ukraine, Russia, Belarus]. This is our misfortune, our problem, [it is] not [the problem of] Europeans, US citizens or someone else," the Belarusian president said at a plenary session of the first Forum of the Regions of Belarus and Ukraine, currently being held in the Belarusian city of Gomel. Lukashenko stressed that Minsk did not want to become a peacemaker or an intermediary in talks on Donbas without the approval of both Kiev and Moscow, adding that the country would act solely within the framework of an agreement between its two neighbors. "There can be and there will be no 'peacemaking' on the part of Belarus against the two presidents' [of Ukraine and Russia] will. If Belarus needs to be included in this [conflict settlement] process, we will be acting exclusively within the framework of agreements between the two states," the president said. The conflict in Donbas broke out in 2014 when Ukrainian authorities launched a military operation against the self-proclaimed Donetsk and Luhansk people's republics that refused to recognize the new government in Kiev, which came to power after then-Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovych had been overthrown. According to UN estimates, at least 3,035 civilians have been killed as a result of the conflict so far. In February 2015, the two sides signed the Minsk peace accords, brokered by Russia, France and Germany, to end the hostilities in the region. Despite this, however, the situation has remained tense, with both parties accusing each other of ceasefire violations. CHISINAU (UrduPoint News / Sputnik - 26th October, 2018) Moldovan lawmakers might not be able to form a majority after the 2019 parliamentary elections which will require holding a snap vote, President Igor Dodon said. "Either the Socialists and independent lawmakers form the parliamentary majority after the election or we face snap election. The likelihood of such an outcome is more than 50 percent which means big problems for today's authorities," Dodon said in an interview with the TV8 broadcaster, released late on Thursday. The president suggested that only the Party of Socialists, the Democratic Party and the coalition of the Dignity and Truth Platform Party and the Party of Action and Solidarity had a chance to receive parliament mandates at the upcoming elections. The ruling Democrats might use the administrative resource to meddle with the election results, however, such actions might cause mass protests and lack of recognition of the vote outcome by the public, Dodon added. The Moldovan parliamentary elections were initially scheduled for November. However, in July, lawmakers voted to postpone them until February 24, 2019. The elections will be for the first time held with the new procedure under which half of the parliament members will be elected under party lists while the second half will be elected from single-member Constituencies. In early October, Dodon called on his supporters to prepare for protests if the parliamentary majority took steps to strip his powers. Dodon has for years been in a confrontation with the parliamentary majority led by speaker Andrian Candu. New UN special envoy for Syria must be neutral, well aware of the situation in the region and supported by the international community, head of the opposition Syrian Negotiation Commission (SNC) Nasr Hariri said Frida MOSCOW (UrduPoint News / Sputnik - 26th October, 2018) New UN special envoy for Syria must be neutral, well aware of the situation in the region and supported by the international community, head of the opposition Syrian Negotiation Commission (SNC) Nasr Hariri said Friday. "I think it's very important for any new envoy to be supported and backed by the international community. Because we have seen before that two envoys resigned without getting any progress in the political process," Hariri told journalists, when asked to comment on the reports that Norway's Ambassador to China Geir Pedersen might replace outgoing envoy Staffan de Mistura. The SNC head said that de Mistura, had made "a lot of sincere efforts to reach a political solution without any advancement in the negotiations." "The new envoy must be neutral, active, and I think it's also very important that he knows well the details of the region and of Syria in particular," Hariri said, ahead of his meeting with Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov. De Mistura said earlier in October that he would step down at the end of November for personal reasons. (@rukhshanmir) BEIRUT (UrduPoint News / Sputnik - 27th October, 2018) A woman was injured as terrorists opened mortar fire at a quarter in the Syrian northwestern city of Aleppo on Friday, local media reported. The attack had also caused material damage in the area, the SANA news agency reported. Terrorists operating in Aleppo's neighborhoods often shell Syria's once most populous city. This week, the attacks continue for three days in a row. On Thursday, 10 civilians were injured in the shelling. Polish Foreign Minister Jacek Czaputowicz told Sputnik on Friday that Poland would strengthen military cooperation with the United States, stressing that Warsaw sought permanent presence of US servicemen in the country. WARSAW (UrduPoint News / Sputnik - 26th October, 2018) Polish Foreign Minister Jacek Czaputowicz told Sputnik on Friday that Poland would strengthen military cooperation with the United States, stressing that Warsaw sought permanent presence of US servicemen in the country. "Since 2008, we have been cooperating with the United States [in the military sphere]. We made a decision to build an anti-missile base in Redzikowo. There are already US units there ... US military presence in Poland is already significant. Due to the fact that Russia is a threat, we want this presence to be increased and to be permanent," Czaputowicz said. He noted that 3,000 US soldiers were deployed to Poland on the rotational principle. "Poland is acting in a transparent manner in its cooperation with NATO. We believe that these actions boost the security not only of Poland and Europe, but also of NATO as a whole," Czaputowicz stressed. Speaking about the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces (INF) Treaty and US intention to withdraw from the agreement, the Polish official said that the treaties should be adhered to by each side. "And if we are talking about these missiles, Russia is carrying out actions that violate the treaty ... [Poland] expresses understanding of the US position on this issue," the minister said. At the same time, he said that Poland would like to have friendly relations with Russia. "Poland would like to have very good relations with Russia, cooperation at the level of societies and states, but the international community must be united and demonstrate that there can be no consent to the violation of international law," Czaputowicz said. On Saturday, US President Donald Trump announced his country's intention to withdraw from the INF Treaty over Russia's alleged violations of the accord. On Monday, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov said that Russia would wait for the United States' official clarification on its possible withdrawal from the INF Treaty and only then determine its own position on the matter. He added that any action in this area would be met with counteraction, stressing that parity would be maintained under any circumstances. The INF Treaty was signed by then leader of the Soviet Union Mikhail Gorbachev and then US President Ronald Reagan in 1987 amid the Cold War. 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. (@rukhshanmir) The equatorial sun has been up for about an hour as a gaggle of children set off from the Ivorian village of Allepilla on their hour-long trek to school. Allepilla, Ivory Coast, (APP - UrduPoint / Pakistan Point News - 26th Oct, 2018 ) :The equatorial sun has been up for about an hour as a gaggle of children set off from the Ivorian village of Allepilla on their hour-long trek to school. Back home in the evening, eight-year-old Marie-France Amoandji Ngbessoo does her homework by the light of her backpack's LED -- captured by solar panels on her way to and from school. The light can run for three hours. With insects flitting overhead, Marie-France points to the pictures in her textbook, identifying them: "Orange, plane..." Allepilla, some 100 kilometres (60 miles) north of the West African country's economic capital Abidjan, is a rural community centred on cocoa and coffee production. A single pump supplies water to the village of around 400 inhabitants including 150 children, and, as is the case for thousands of villages and hamlets across the country -- there is no electricity. Instead, oil-burning storm lanterns and battery-powered torches are the only sources of light. An Ivorian charity that promotes education for rural girls, Yiwo Zone, has raised funds to provide the backpacks -- which cost 13,000 CFA francs (20 Euros, $23) apiece -- to schoolchildren across Africa. Computer salesman Evariste Akoumian had the idea for the solar backpack in 2015 when his car broke down as night was falling near Soubre, in the southwest of the country. "At the same time, children were returning home from school," he recalls. "I said to myself, 'We must give them light so they can study. It's not normal for rural children to be unable to do so." The Ivorian government has set a target of ensuring electricity to 80 percent of the country. "These rural children are poor. They use rice sacks or plastic bags to take their things to school," Akoumian said. "The idea was to kill two birds with one stone: give them a backpack with a light to go with it." The entrepreneur stressed that the solar backpacks belong to the children: "So Dad or Mum can't come and take the light from them... to use while they are cooking or doing housework." Sales are brisk and have reached 55,000. Akoumian's company Solarpak already sells the backpacks in Gabon, Madagascar and Burkina Faso, as well as to charities in France and Germany. Striving to keep up with demand, Akoumian seeking aid or loans so that he can set up an assembly plant in Abidjan and boost production. - 'Better marks' - "It may seem cheap, but these are large sums that the villagers don't have," said Anna Corinne Menet Ezinlin, head of Ywo Zone. "Here in this village some people can't afford the school fees or even notebooks. Usually school is free, but there are always registration fees or (other) payments." Last year, Marie-France's 13-year-old sister Lucienne could not attend school at all because their mother was off work with an illness. "It's hard for the children," said village chief Jean-Baptiste Kotchi Okoma, whose seven-year-old daughter Nethania received a solar backpack. "There's not enough money here."He added: "I hope their marks will be better. Children are disadvantaged here. With the backpack, I hope they will all progress."Lucienne, flipping through a book, said: "I am happy. Before it was more difficult. It's easier now, with the backpack." (@ChaudhryMAli88) The equatorial sun has been up for about an hour as a gaggle of children set off from the Ivorian village of Allepilla on their hour-long trek to school. Allepilla, Ivory Coast, (APP - UrduPoint / Pakistan Point News - 26th Oct, 2018 ) :The equatorial sun has been up for about an hour as a gaggle of children set off from the Ivorian village of Allepilla on their hour-long trek to school. Back home in the evening, eight-year-old Marie-France Amoandji Ngbessoo does her homework by the light of her backpack's LED -- captured by solar panels on her way to and from school. The light can run for three hours. With insects flitting overhead, Marie-France points to the pictures in her textbook, identifying them: "Orange, plane... " Allepilla, some 100 kilometres (60 miles) north of the West African country's economic capital Abidjan, is a rural community centred on cocoa and coffee production. A single pump supplies water to the village of around 400 inhabitants including 150 children, and, as is the case for thousands of villages and hamlets across the country -- there is no electricity. Instead, oil-burning storm lanterns and battery-powered torches are the only sources of light. An Ivorian charity that promotes education for rural girls, Yiwo Zone, has raised funds to provide the backpacks -- which cost 13,000 CFA francs (20 Euros, $23) apiece -- to schoolchildren across Africa. Computer salesman Evariste Akoumian had the idea for the solar backpack in 2015 when his car broke down as night was falling near Soubre, in the southwest of the country. "At the same time, children were returning home from school," he recalls. "I said to myself, 'We must give them light so they can study. It's not normal for rural children to be unable to do so." The Ivorian government has set a target of ensuring electricity to 80 percent of the country. "These rural children are poor. They use rice sacks or plastic bags to take their things to school," Akoumian said. "The idea was to kill two birds with one stone: give them a backpack with a light to go with it." The entrepreneur stressed that the solar backpacks belong to the children: "So Dad or Mum can't come and take the light from them... to use while they are cooking or doing housework."Sales are brisk and have reached 55,000. Akoumian's company Solarpak already sells the backpacks in Gabon, Madagascar and Burkina Faso, as well as to charities in France and Germany. Striving to keep up with demand, Akoumian is seeking aid or loans so that he can set up an assembly plant in Abidjan and boost production. MOSCOW (UrduPoint News / Sputnik - 26th October, 2018) Zambia and Russia will most likely sign an agreement on the construction of a nuclear power plant in the African state during the 11th ATOMEXPO international forum, due to be organized by Russia's Rosatom state corporation next April, Shadreck Luwita, Zambia's ambassador to Russia, told Sputnik. The ATOMEXPO international forum is a major event in the world's nuclear field, which has been held on an annual basis since 2009. The forum provides an occasion for the discussion of the current state of the nuclear field and sets the trends for the nuclear sphere further development. The ATOMEXPO-2019 is expected to be held in April. "[The agreement] is something in the very, very near future. The first thing is to commence the construction of the center for nuclear science and technology ... Most likely ... these agreements are signed when Rosatom is hosting the [ATOMEXPO] international nuclear forum ... We are most likely to see the signing of the agreement for the construction of a nuclear power plant [at the next forum]," Luwita said following the Southern African Development Community (SADC) Investment Forum in Moscow. According to the ambassador, the implementation of the project to construct a nuclear research reactor and a center for nuclear science on the reactor's base, valued at over $100 million, will pave the way for the document's signing. "First of all, you start with the reactor, on whose basis you are able to develop capacity and have the necessary trained manpower, which can be able to implement a nuclear power plant," Luwita stated. Luwita added that the construction of the nuclear science and technology center should remain on track. "All things being equal, I think everything will be on course. They should be able to meet the time frames, which have been set up," Luwita believed. In February 2017, Russia and Zambia signed an intergovernmental agreement on cooperation in building of a nuclear science and technology center on the Zambian territory. The agreement provides for the center's construction based on a multipurpose nuclear research water-cooled reactor with a capacity of 10MW. The center is expected to include a laboratory complex, multipurpose irradiation center and a cyclotron-based nuclear medicine center. MOSCOW (UrduPoint News / Sputnik - 26th October, 2018) The construction of a nuclear research reactor in Zambia with Russia's assistance is expected to begin in 2019, Shadreck Luwita, Zambia's ambassador to Russia, told Sputnik following the Southern African Development Community (SADC) Investment Forum in Moscow. "To construct a research reactor, there are a lot of processes which are involved, including the international atomic energy approvals as well as a legal framework, which is being considered in this sitting of the Zambian parliament. So once a legislation is put in place by parliament, that will pave way for actual works to commence in 2019 in earnest," Luwita said. He added that a great deal of work had already been done, in particular, an engineering, procurement and construction (EPC) agreement had been signed and the site for the construction of the reactor had been chosen. The diplomat revealed that the Zambian government had set up a special steering committee which would spearhead the construction of the research reactor. Luwita explained that the research reactor, which would be producing isotopes, would enable the country to abandon isotopes imports from India and South Africa and will even permit the exports of Zambian isotopes to neighboring countries. "In addition to that, one of the laboratories will be used for the irradiation of crops and this will give us an opportunity for various types of crops which are grown in Zambia to be exported to the Russian market, to the European Union, and indeed to the United States," Luwita said. In February 2017, Russia and Zambia signed an intergovernmental agreement on cooperation in building of a nuclear science and technology center on the Zambian territory. The agreement provides for the center's construction based on a multipurpose nuclear research reactor with a capacity of 10MW. (@FahadShabbir) MOSCOW (UrduPoint News / Sputnik - 26th October, 2018) Zambian leader Edgar Lungu is expected to make an official state visit to Russia at the invitation of Russian President Vladimir Putin in 2019, as soon as all the details of his trip are harmonized, Shadreck Luwita, the ambassador of the African country to Russia, told Sputnik. In July, Putin invited Lungu to visit Russia during a bilateral meeting that was held on the sidelines of the BRICS Summit in South Africa. "[The visit's organization] is now incumbent upon the technocrats in the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the Russian Federation as well as the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Zambia, [they] started working on the modalities to concretize when President Lungu can undertake the state visit to Russia. We are working flat out to ensure that this is realized as quickly as possible. The year is already almost ending so definitely we anticipate that in the course of next year, as early as possible, this state visit should be realized," Luwita following the Southern African Development Community (SADC) Investment Forum in Moscow. The diplomat added that Russia was a great friend of Africa, adding that the countries of the continent were interested in developing relations for the benefit of their economies. "There is enormous potential in this country in terms of technology, there are enormous resources, which, once partnered with the African continent in various economic sectors, will transform into the development of the African continent so that Africa is no longer dependent on aid," Luwita indicated. In this regard, the ambassador welcomed the signing of the memorandum of understanding between the SADC and Russia that took place within the forum's framework on Tuesday. "This has come at an optimal time ... It is a panacea to opening up investment opportunities in the SADC countries. As you are aware, it has been the considered view of the heads of state of the African continent on the need of the Russian government, on one hand, and indeed of Russian investors ... to transform these excellent political relations into economic benefits, which are going to benefit both the African people as well as the Russian people," Luwita said. The organization was established in 1980 as the Southern African Development Coordination Conference, and transformed into SADC in 1992. It currently comprises 16 states and aims to promote socio-economic, political and security cooperation in the region. AL QUNAITRA (Syria) (UrduPoint news / Sputnik - 26th October, 2018) Russian military police have for the first time carried out a joint patrol with UN peacekeepers in the southern part of the demilitarized buffer zone in the Syrian-Israeli border area. "Russia has been patrolling the demilitarized zone for a long time but the joint patrol to the south of the Qunaitra border crossing is held for the first time today ... Today, the Russian military police are ensuring the safety of the UN mission," Lt. Gen. Sergei Kuralenko, the deputy commander of the Russian forces in Syria, told reporters. During the joint patrol operation, the UN mission members examined the patrol route and checked a number of UN checkpoints located to the south of the border crossing, the official noted. Kuralenko added that the successful opening of the Qunaitra border crossing allowed the UN mission to continue increasing the patrol route in the southern part of the demilitarized zone. The official also revealed the plans to patrol in the southernmost point of the demilitarized zone. "The task was set by the Command of the Russian Armed Forces to organize the cooperation and joint patrolling together with the UN mission in the demilitarized zone in the Golan Heights area . .. The main role of our unit is to ensure the safety of the UN mission in the Golan Heights area. The patrol routes will cover the entire demilitarized zone where the UN checkpoints had been located," the Russian military police battalion chief told reporters. The Golan, located in the Syria-Israel border area, was captured by Israel in 1967. However, the United Nations subsequently said that the annexation was illegal and ruled to return the territory to Syria with a UN mission being deployed in a demilitarized buffer zone between the two countries. The fighting in the area resumed in 2013 as part of the Syrian war as a result of which the area was captured by militants, who operated in the Golan Heights for several years before being purged from the area by the government forces. In August, Russia said its troops in Syria would assist UN peacekeepers in patrolling the Syrian side of the demilitarized Golan Heights buffer zone with Israel. Kuralenko then said that Russian military police had set up a hotline with the United Nations Disengagement Observer Force (UNDOF) and held regular meetings to coordinate their actions. (@ChaudhryMAli88) The Syrian Negotiation Commission (SNC) may accept that Damascus would keep its agreements with foreign states on military presence in Syria, if no harm was brought to the Syrian people, head of the SNC Nasr Hariri told Sputnik on Friday. MOSCOW (UrduPoint News / Sputnik - 26th October, 2018) The Syrian Negotiation Commission (SNC) may accept that Damascus would keep its agreements with foreign states on military presence in Syria, if no harm was brought to the Syrian people, head of the SNC Nasr Hariri told Sputnik on Friday. "We spoke about the need to return to what there was before 2011. Any foreign forces that have entered lately should not be in Syria. However, if there are states that have agreements with the state of Syria that do not harm the Syrian people, we respect all international agreements and documents," Hariri said, when asked about Russia's military presence in Syria. Hariri is set to meet with Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov later in the day. (@rukhshanmir) Poland, not France or any other European country, should provide an answer to the question of whether the establishment of a permanent US military base on Polish soil will increase European security, French President Emmanuel Macron said. WARSAW (UrduPoint News / Sputnik - 26th October, 2018) Poland, not France or any other European country, should provide an answer to the question of whether the establishment of a permanent US military base on Polish soil will increase European security, French President Emmanuel Macron said. In an interview with the Polish Rzeczpospolita newspaper, published on Thursday, Macron recalled that at the 2016 NATO summit in Warsaw, its members agreed to enhance the alliance's presence in Poland and the three Baltic countries by deploying four multinational battle groups on their territories. France is one of the participating countries in the German-led battle group in Lithuania. "The following questions arise: does this project to create a [US] permanent base correspond to the position adopted by NATO in Warsaw? Will our collective [European] defense increase? . .. These questions should be answered in Poland, not in France," Macron said. The president stressed his support for the alliance between Europe and the United States since they shared "the same vision and ideals." US President Donald Trump said in September after talks with his Polish counterpart, Andrzej Duda, that Washington was considering Warsaw's request to have a permanent US military presence in Poland. Polish Defense Minister Mariusz Blaszczak said on October 4 that a Polish-US working group had begun studying the possibility of setting up a US military base in Poland. MOSCOW (UrduPoint News / Sputnik - 26th October, 2018) Julian Assange, the founder of the WikiLeaks whistleblowing website, refused to comply with the new rules imposed on him in the Ecuadorian embassy in London where he has been holed up since 2012, the EFE news agency reported, citing an informed source in Quito. A memo with the new rules circulated in various media outlets earlier in October. The protocol barres Assange from making political statements and sets various other restrictions, including visiting, communications and medical attention regulations. "Assange has not agreed to this protocol," the source said, adding that the WikiLeaks founder refused to use internet access passwords in protest against his living conditions in the embassy. Last week, Assange's lawyers sued Ecuador over the conditions of his stay in the embassy, which, according to them, violate the WikiLeaks founder's rights. Assange has been residing in the embassy after the United Kingdom granted his extradition to Sweden, where he was accused of sexual offenses. While the Swedish authorities dropped the charges in 2017, Assange is still wary of being extradited to the United States, where he is wanted for leaking classified documents. SHARE ACS 2018: Evaluating the Impact of African-American Ancestry Among Men with Localized Prostate Cancer Treated with Radical Prostatectomy Boston, Massachusetts (UroToday.com) Daniel J. Canter, MD examined the effects of ancestry on clinical and molecular measures of disease aggressiveness as well as pathologic outcomes in men treated with radical prostatectomy (RP) for localized prostate cancer. Data was collected from patients undergoing RP at the Ochsner Clinic. Biopsy tissue was analyzed for the RNA expression of 31 cell cycle progression (CCP) genes and 15 housekeeping genes in order to obtain a CCP score. Cancer of the Prostate Risk Assessment (CAPRA) scores were also determined based on clinicopathologic features at the time of diagnosis. Clinical and molecular measures of disease aggressiveness were compared based on ancestry. A total of 384 patients were treated with RP, including 133 (34. 8%) men of AA ancestry. The median age at diagnosis was 62 years (interquartile range (IQR) 56, 66) and PSA was 5. 4 ng/mL (IQR 4. 2, 7. 6). Stratified by ancestry, there were no significant differences in biopsy Gleason score (p=0. 26), clinical stage (p=0. 27), CAPRA score (p=0. 58), or CCP score (p=0. 87). In addition, there was no significant difference in the risk of biochemical recurrence between ancestries (p=0. 55). In conclusion, these data suggested men of AA ancestry do not necessarily present with or develop a more biologically aggressive form of prostate cancer. Although these data represent only one institutions experience, it contains a highly robust African American population, indicating the need for further research to understand these disparities. Presented By: Daniel J. Canter, MD, Ochsner Clinic, New Orleans, Louisiana Written by: Stephen B. Williams, MD., Associate Professor, Division of Urology, The University of Texas Medical Branch, Galveston, TX. and Ashish M. Kamat, MD. Professor, Department of Urology, Division of Surgery, The University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center, Houston, TX at the 2018 American College of Surgeons Clinical Congress, October 21-25, 2018 in Boston, Massachusetts October 26, 2018 18-212 VSU Hosts International Conference Celebrating Centennial of Polands Rebirth Nov. 9 VALDOSTA Valdosta State Universitys Department of History will present 100 Lat Conference: Celebrating the Centennial of Polands Rebirth as a Sovereign Nation and American-Polish Diplomatic Relations on Friday, Nov. 9. The conference will feature a full day of events lectures, a movie screening, an international lunch hour, and more related to Polands reemergence as a country in 1918 and Americas close relationship with the country throughout the past century. All events are free and open to the public. Americans remember Nov. 11, 1918, as Armistice Day, the end of fighting during World War I, said Dr. John Dunn, head of VSUs Department of History. Poles also celebrate this day, not only for a successful conclusion to the Great War but also to honor the restoration of Polish independence. After more than a century of subjugation, Polish patriots took back control of their lands. America strongly supported these efforts, starting with President Woodrow Wilsons powerful endorsement of Polish independence. Less than two months after Armistice Day, America and Poland established diplomatic relations. From that point onward, even during the height of the Cold War, the two nations maintained cordial relations. Today Poland and America have excellent ties, and our conference hopes to illuminate the historical antecedents of these connections. The conference will begin with a series of lectures from 9 a.m. to noon in the rotunda of Ashley Hall. The keynote address will be given by Dr. Neal Pease, professor of history at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee and editor-in-chief of The Polish Review. He will discuss the significance of Polish independence in modern history. Other lectures on unique aspects of Polish-American relations will be given by Dunn; Dr. Matthew Adams, assistant professor of history at Savannah State University; and Dr. Anna Mazurkiewicz, president of the Polish American Historical Association, faculty of history at the University of Gdansk, Poland, and a visiting professor at VSU for the Fall 2018 semester. A lunch hour featuring East Central European cuisine will take place from noon to 1 p.m. at the VSU Honors House. The meeting will also include a Polish trivia game as well as information on VSUs Study Abroad Program. The celebration will conclude in the Odum Library Auditorium with an awards ceremony and film screenings from 2 p.m. to 3:45 p.m. First, organizers will announce the winners of a short essay competition that challenged VSU students to find, photograph, and write about traces of Polish history in the American South. The ceremony will be followed by a screening of The Fourth Partition, an award-winning documentary that recounts the story of four million Polish immigrants who came to America circa 1870-1920 and how they played a part in building a community in Chicago. A poster collection featuring images of Poland and information about the country, provided by the Polish Embassy in Washington, D.C., will be featured from Nov. 5-9 in the second-floor rotunda of Ashley Hall. People should attend this conference to learn about why America and Poland are on such friendly terms and to hear from experts who are not normally in our area, Dunn said. Southerners may even note some commonalities between the history and culture of Poland and our region. The 100 Lat Conference: Celebrating the Centennial of Polands Rebirth as a Sovereign Nation and American-Polish Diplomatic Relations is presented in partnership with VSUs College of Humanities and Social Sciences, VSU Foundation Inc., the Polish American Historical Association, The Kosciuszko Foundation, and the Polish Embassy in Washington, D.C. Contact Dr. John Dunn at jdunn@valdosta.edu; Dr. Anna Mazurkiewicz at amazurkiewicz@valdosta.edu; or the Department of History at (229) 333-5947 to learn more. Over a thousand Catholic young people living on the Arabian Peninsula respond to the invitation to Stand up, reignite your faith, hope and love and experience Jesus deeper at the Arab Catholic Youth Congress. (Contains photo gallery.) By Sr Bernadette Mary Reis, fsp As the Synod of Bishops on Young People draws to a close on Sunday, 1,500 Catholic young people living on the Arabian Peninsula are attending the Arab Catholic Youth Congress (ACYC) in Ras Al Khaimah, United Arab Emirates (UAE), from 25-27 October. They have responded to the invitation to Stand up, reignite your faith, hope and love and experience Jesus deeper. Youth initiative from A-Z Bishop Paul Hinder, Vicar Apostolic for Southern Arabia and Yemen, said in an interview with Vatican News that the ACYC is an initiative proposed by young people. Their original idea was to organize something to bring together the youth not only of one country, but of several countries in our region. The bishops happily embraced their proposal, and the ACYC was born. History of the ACYC The ACYC is the largest Catholic youth event on the Arabian Peninsula. Young people are participating from the UAE, Oman, Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Bahrain, and Kuwait. The first ACYC was held in 2009 in Dubai with the theme Put out into the deep. All things are possible for the one who believes, was the theme of the follow up Congress in 2012 in Abu Dhabi in the UAE. This years theme is Do not be afraid, Mary. You have found favor with God. Listen to our report International cast An international cast has been assembled to animate the attendees in various ways. It includes Archbishop Prowse from Canberra, Australia; Sr Anne Flanagan from the USA; Fr Wissam Mansour, a youth chaplain from Jordan; John Pridmore an ex-London gangster; Mark Nimo, originally from Ghana; and JC Libiran, Founder of Project Courage Zone in the Philippines. Strengthening faith and hope Bishop Hinder hopes that the faith and hope of both the young people who attend and the bishops will be strengthened. The youth in our region dont have such an easy life because of the whole situation, economically and with whats going on in the world. So, I hope it will strengthen the faith of the youth. And, lets say also for us the Bishops. We are also people of belief, and to be together with the youth is always something that gives us hope and new dynamic. Demonstators take to the streets in Paris calling for action against climate change (AFP or licensors) A document signed by 6 continental Bishops Conferences calls for immediate and urgent action to tackle climate change. By Linda Bordoni The Presidents of six continental Bishops Conferences have signed a document appealing to government leaders to take immediate action to tackle climate change in an effort to avert catastrophic effects of the climate crisis. As Martina Liebsch, Policy Director of Caritas Internationalis explained after the presentation of the document on Friday, October 26, the appeal calls on politicians to work towards the implementation of the Paris Agreement to safeguard the planet and all of its people: Listen to Martina Liebsch, Policy Director at Caritas Internationalis One Common Home She explained that the document has been drawn up also in view of the next United Nations Climate Change Conference the COP 24 which is scheduled to take place in Poland in December, to make sure it will be a success and to highlight that we need to move forward because we see we have one earth, one common home, and we need to take care of it. Liebsh said it was also to issue a broader call to the public to ensure that the faithful understand the urgency, understand the responsibility that we have for future generations as well, to care for our common home and try to make it possible that we keep the global warming temperature to 1.5 Degrees Celsius. Report by International Panel on Climate Change She pointed to the recent, very alarming, report by the International Panel on Climate Change: It warns that if we dont make these efforts some parts of the world may be inhabitable in a very near future. Its not something which is far away: it is something that is now she said. Liebsch said that at the document was presented in the presence of Cardinal Oswald Gracias, Archbishop of Bombay in India, Archbishop Jean-Claude Hollerich, President of COMECE and a youth representative from Oceania. The face of climate change What touched me most, she said, was that he said climate change is not about statistics, about degrees, its about people. He described himself, she concluded, as a face of climate change pointing out that in the future we could all be the faces of climate change. Year of Youth 2019 is a part of a 9-year preparation for the celebration of the 5th centenary of the arrival of Christianity in 2021. By Robin Gomes The Philippine Catholic Church will be celebrating its Year of Youth 2019 in the wake of the world Synod of Bishops on young people that is concluding in the Vatican on Sunday. The October 3-28 Synod of Bishops has as its theme, Young People, the Faith, and Vocational Discernment. Speaking to Vaticans Fides news agency, the Episcopal Commission on Youth of the Catholic Bishops Conference of the Philippines (CBCP), said that the "Year of Youth 2019" will officially kick off with the feast of Christ the King, November 25, 2018, but the solemn opening ceremony will be held on December 2 in Manila. Preparations The Commission has invited its network of 86 diocesan youth ministry leaders and leaders of national youth organizations to "take part in the general organization and to give their contribution, including the creation of the official logo and theme song", Eva Mae Famillaran Palmero, a young Catholic told Fides. "The celebration of the Year of Youth will be an occasion for experience, sharing, prayer, proclamation of God's love for others. It will be an opportunity to become more firm in faith ", said Jovanie Bacolcol, a youth leader and animator. 500 years of evangelization The Year of Youth is part of a 9-year preparation for 2021 when the Philippine Church will celebrate 5th centenary of the arrival of the Gospel in the archipelago. The preparation kicked off in 2013, with each year dedicated to a specific theme related to the faith and new evangelization. 2018 was dedicated to the clergy and the religious. We look forward with gratitude and joy to March 16, 2021, the fifth centenary of the coming of Christianity to our beloved land, the Philippine bishops had written in a 2012 pastoral letter, ahead of the 9-year preparation. First Christians According to the bishops, the first Mass on Filipino soil was celebrated in Limasawa Island on Easter Sunday on March 31, 1521, and the first Filipino Christians were Humabon and Hara Amihan, who were baptized Carlos and Juana respectively. The Spanish missionaries brought the Christian faith to the Philippines 500 years ago and today the nation is home to Asias largest Catholic population. Out of 110 million inhabitants, 80% are Catholics. US President Donald Trump says he`s deploying troops to the Border with Mexico, in order to prevent a Central American migrant caravan from reaching the United States. By James Blears In a tweet, President Donald Trump said: "I`m bringing out the Military for this national emergency." Referring to the caravan of migrants from Guatemala, Honduras and El Salvador on their 3,500 kms trek, he stressed: "They will be stopped." US Defence Secretary James Mattis is now ready to deploy 800 troops to bolster the US Border Patrol. It`s expected they will be National Guard. So far President Trump has not carried out his threat to seal the US/Mexican Border. The caravan is still in the Southern Mexican State of Chiapas, a very long way from that US Border. The United Nations estimates its number has now swelled to seven thousand. Many of the migrants have badly blistered feet, sunburn, dehydration and are suffering from exhaustion. President Trump is urging them: "Turn around. We are not letting people into the United States illegally. Go back to your country and apply for US Citizenship, like millions of others are doing." Serious traffic congestion is common in Hanoi during peak hours. - VNA/VNS Photo Speaking at a seminar on reducing traffic congestion and air pollution in Hanoi on Wednesday, director of the institutes Urban and Rural Traffic Centre Pham Hoai Chung said in addition to the economic loss, the citys air pollution index has risen five times higher than allowed levels. Traffic congestion has caused the loss of more than one million working hours per year, he said. According to Chung, the congestion is caused by the excessive population density of the inner city, and by the gap between the growth rate of vehicles and work on traffic infrastructure. Hanoi has about 5.5 million motorbikes and nearly 500,000 cars. From 2010 to 2017, the number of cars and motorbikes increased by 10 per cent and 8 per cent per year respectively while new roads only increased infrastructure by 0.39 per cent per year. Lieutenant Colonel Nguyen Manh Hung, deputy head of the Traffic Police Department of the Hanoi Police Department, said the citys infrastructure has not been good enough to meet transport needs. Many roads carry up to seven times the number of cars and motorbikes they were designed to accommodate. Vietnam has used only 8.65 per cent of its land fund for infrastructure projects, but the law stipulates that the portion of land fund used for urban traffic should be between 16 and 26 per cent. In many developed countries, the percentage was between 20 and 25. Hung said this means overloading is unavoidable. He said the high density of apartment buildings worsens overcrowding on roadways. To reduce traffic jams, deputy director of the citys Department of Transport Ngo Manh Tuan said the city had a specific plan for traffic infrastructure development from 2010 to 2020. The city has implemented projects on ring roads one, two and three, and has invested in the construction of radial roads in order to gradually improve traffic infrastructure. To ensure traffic safety, the Department of Transport was asked to improve infrastructure enough so that the city has no traffic jams by 2030. In the first phase from 2017 to 2018, the city is focusing on tightening transportation management. From 2017 to 2030, the city will restrict the number of vehicles in some inner areas and ban motorbikes in some central districts starting in 2030, he said. The New York Times cited anonymous officials who said China and Russia had listened in to President Donald Trump's frequent calls with friends and allies made over his iPhone. (Photo: AFP/NICHOLAS KAMM) The newspaper cited anonymous officials who said China and Russia had listened in to Trump's frequent phone calls with friends and allies made over his iPhone, using the information gleaned to shape interactions with the US. When asked about the report at a regular news briefing, Chinese foreign ministry spokeswoman Hua Chunying said "certain people in the US are sparing no efforts to win the best screenplay award at the Oscars". Hua offered three recommendations to the US daily and the Trump administration. "First The New York Times should know if they publish this type of report it provides another piece of evidence of The New York Times making fake news," she said, using one of Trump's favourite tactics to disparage unflattering articles. "Second if they are worried about Apple phones being listened in on, they should swap them with Huawei phones," Hua said, referring to one of China's largest telecommunications firms, which has been largely blocked from the US market over national security concerns. Lastly, Hua recommended "they should stop using any modern communication equipment and cut off contact with the outside" if they want to ensure absolute security. Russia, too, dismissed the eavesdropping allegations. "We already treat these sort of stories with a certain humour," said presidential spokesman Dmitry Peskov. "We regret this newspaper unthinkingly publishes information which most likely indicates a decline in journalistic standards." The Times' report on Wednesday provided few details on how China and Russia were monitoring Trump's communications aside from noting the calls were intercepted as they travel through the US cellphone network. Two boys, aged three and four, have been taken into care in France after their father fed them almost exclusively Coca-Cola. (Photo: AFP/Daniel LEAL-OLIVAS) The father, who can "neither read, nor write, nor count, doesn't realise the seriousness of the situation and spent all his welfare money on alcohol," Carole Papon, a representative of the association French Victims 87, said Wednesday (Oct 24). Within a few days of welfare payments being made "the family had nothing to eat. They only had Coca-Cola to drink," she said. The father, who was described as violent towards his wife and children, was jailed for three months Wednesday in Limoges, central France. The elder boy had to have seven sugar-rotten teeth removed, and the second does not speak. Both have been taken into care where they have been introduced to meat and vegetables. "There was nothing in their flat," Bruno Robinet, the deputy public prosecutor, told AFP. "There was no fridge, the children slept on a mattress without covers and there were no toys ... Their father fed them on cakes and coke," he added. People at the Hanoi Tax Department.-VNA/VNS Photo Hoang Hung The move is part of the Party and Government efforts to downsize the number of public employees in recent years. The city plans to make some 11,200 State employees redundant from 2018-20. The information was released under a report of the citys Home Affairs Department at a recent press conference held by the Hanoi Party Committee. The number of State employees made redundant in the first nine months of this year was about seven times higher than the total number of State employees made redundant in 2017. Data from the department showed the city only downsized 1,300 State employees last year. The report also said the city already allowed 106 non-business units to become self-funding so far this year. Additionally, the city administration approved 196 non-business units being operated with self-funding from 2018-20. Hanoi is one of pioneering localities nationwide in implementing the Party and Governments downsizing policy that was issued in 2015. Statistics from the Ministry of Finance showed that more than 7 million people receive their wage from the State budget in Vietnam. The payment of salaries, pension and other allowances from the State budget are estimated to account for up to half of the annual recurrent expenditure of the Government, VND400 trillion (US$17.2 billion) each year. Also at the press conference, Nguyen Dinh Hoa, director of the Home Affairs Department said the Public Administrative Reform (PAR) Index of Hanoi ranked second across 63 provinces and cities last year, one spot up from 2016. In the meantime, the Provincial Competitiveness Index (PCI) of Hanoi ranked 13th nationwide, the highest level the city has reached so far. Hoa said the city had simplified administrative procedures to create favourable conditions for individuals, organisations and businesses. It had implemented one-stop-shop policies that allowed local residents and enterprises to submit and receive their administrative records in one place instead of many places like before and registration and return of administrative records was carried out through post, he said. The policy helped to save time and energy of individuals, organisations and business, he said. The city hopes to continue simplifying administrative procedures by using more information technology in the future. Teacher Giang A Ly teaches children how to dance. - Photo thanhnien.vn Giang A Ly is a 42-year-old man of the HMong ethnic group who grew up in his hometown of Xa Ho Commune in Tram Tau District. It is one of the most remote districts in Yen Bai Province, up to three-and-a-half hours drive from the provincial capital Yen Bai City. The tall, dark-haired man dressed in a white T-shirt and old pants could be easily mistaken for a middle-aged white collar employee, except for the fact that two pieces of baby washcloth were hanging partly out of his pants pockets. The washcloths were used to clean up the childrens faces every morning after they arrived at the Hoa Hong kindergarten, Ly explained. The kids have to walk a long way to get to the kindergarten and their faces all get dirty afterwards, the teacher told Thanh Nien(Young People) newspaper. And even after the cleaning up, they can suddenly cry and then I will have to wipe up their runny noses. It takes the teacher half an hour every morning just to make sure his 31 students were cleaned up and ready for the lesson. Taking care of the young childrens toilet problem is always the biggest problem for any kindergarten teachers, including Ly. There were the old times when a student asked him to go to the toilet, and then simply responded to natures call in front of the classroom door, Ly remembered. He had to rush the kid to the toilet and mop up the mess later. It happened so many times, the teacher said, that he had to prepare a dozen potties outside the classroom and watch over the children to see if they actually used them. Ly would clean up the potties twice a day, during the childrens afternoon napping time and after school was over. Starting his teaching career at the age of 19 when he finished a primary vocational course in education and training, Ly moved from one school after another across the mountain range in Tram Tau to teach ethnic minority children how to read and write their first words. He got a degree in kindergarten education in 2016 and that changed his life as a teacher. I just followed the trend of studying the kindergarten education major at the time and never seriously thought of becoming a kindergarten teacher, Ly laughed. Who could have expected that I would really become a kindergarten teacher? But I sincerely love my job now. Life in the De Cho Village seemed like a different world to the young teacher Vu Cong Hau. There was no electricity, no lights and mobile phones were useless most of the time. The villagers still had to bring back water from mountain streams for daily use while the kindergarten school built with now-rotten wood panels was close to collapse any time. The sorry sight of the school struck hard into the mind of the 23-year-old kindergarten teacher. I never imagined it would be this hard! Hau told the school principal Tran Khanh Van when he first arrived at the kindergarten. Hau was one of a few male students of the kindergarten secondary vocational school in Hai Duong Province. He was assigned to work in his hometown Tram Tau right after graduation. But he was willing to take the hard job. If I teach out there [in comfortable places] while female teachers come to work here, I dont deserve to be a man, he said. Hau left his small family in Nghia Lo Township for De Cho Village every Monday. The trip is 25km and can only be completed by motorbike on a sunny day when the dirt road is dry. He spent the whole week taking care of 13 young children from 7am to 5pm every day. Hau taught them Vietnamese, songs and dances, while at the same time cooked their lunches and washed their dirty clothes. The young teacher would go down the mountain on Friday evening to spend some precious time with his three-year-old daughter before hopping on a sleeping bus bound for Ha Noi. Hau is taking a weekend course for a university degree in education. Thats what youth is. I have to try doing things that others cant do to overcome all kinds of obstacles later in life, he said. The "Voices of Autumn" concert by the Sun Symphony Orchestra in September In particular, the concert will feature the performance of Russian violinist Sergei Dogadin. Returning to the stage of the Hanoi Opera House one month after the "Voices of Autumn" concert, music Director Olivier Fabier Chanine, violinist Sergei Dogadin and the orchestra will give the audience wonderful melodies by talented composers Mozart and Tchaikovsky. The concert will open with the opera Don Giovanni by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, which was performed for the first time in Prague on October 29, 1787. Russian violinist Sergei Dogadin has won accolades in ten international competitions, including second prize (with no first prize awarded) at the Tchaikovsky International Competition in 2011, first prize at the Joseph Joachim International Violin Competition in Hanover in 2015, second prize at the first Shanghai Isaac Stern Violin Competition in 2016, and first prize at the Singapore International Violin Competition in 2018. The Sun Symphony Orchestra, Vietnams first private orchestra, expects to bring international musical talents to Vietnam and scholarly music closer to the public. Delegates gathers for the World Trade Organisation reform talks in Ottawa, Ontario. (AFP/Lars Hagberg) The group made a veiled appeal to the United States to stop blocking appointments to WTO dispute resolution panels, warning the system will otherwise collapse soon. Leaders also said a rethink is needed on the differential treatment of developing nations, in an apparent nod to US complaints that China is considered a developing nation, despite its economic might. Canada hosted officials from Australia, Brazil, Chile, the European Union, Japan, South Korea, Kenya, Mexico, New Zealand, Norway, Singapore, and Switzerland for the talks. The United States and China, however, were not at the table. "The current situation at the WTO is no longer sustainable and action must be taken," Canada's Trade Minister Jim Carr told a closing press conference. "We share (the US) appetite for reform," he added. "It is in need of renewal ... It's time for this reform and this is a good place to start." The failure to adjust global trade rules in the last two decades, particularly in agriculture and services, has undermined the potential to boost growth and reduce poverty, according to a joint report by the International Monetary Fund, World Trade Organisation and World Bank released Sep 30. The organisations are urging redoubled efforts to accelerate reforms, especially in the WTO, to salvage the economic benefits of trade, which have stalled, and ensure that prosperity is shared more widely. US President Donald Trump's relentless attacks on the WTO and threats to pull his country out of the global trade body have added urgency to the discussions. His "America First" policy and use of punitive tariffs have unsettled trade relations. WTO Director General Roberto Azevedo, who joined the talks, has said he agrees that the WTO needs reforms, and soon. Carr, meanwhile, acknowledged that there can be no meaningful reforms without the US or China. "We are a relatively small country and our major trading partners are big," Carr said as the meetings began. "Rules matter because we each merit the protections they afford and the opportunity they create for even the smallest first-time exporter in the most far-flung corner of the world to compete and to succeed," he said. "To make that kind of relationship work, we have to believe the rules of trade work for all of us and our people have to see that, too." Among the reforms being discussed at the Ottawa ministerial are ways to safeguard the WTO dispute settlement system, improve its "monitoring and transparency functions," and adjust rules to reflect the dominance in trade of services, including ecommerce. In a joint communique, the delegates said they are "deeply concerned by recent developments in international trade, particularly the rise in protectionism, which negatively affect the WTO and put the entire multilateral trading system at risk." They said "continued vacancies in the Appellate Body present a risk to the WTO system as a whole" and "emphasized an urgent need to unblock the appointment of Appellate Body members." At the same time, the delegates acknowledged concerns about its functioning and vowed to "work on solutions." The Appellate Body normally has seven members, but is now down to three. If one more is lost, the dispute resolution system will stop functioning, putting trade disputes in limbo. The Ottawa group also said trading rules must be updated "to reflect 21st century realities" and the WTO must "explore how the development dimension, including special and differential treatment, can be best pursued in rule-making efforts." They refused to cast it aside, however, saying "development must remain an integral part of our work." Another meeting of the Canadian-led group is scheduled for January. Prime Minister Hun Sen has renewed his long-running political row with exiled opposition leader Sam Rainsy, this time insinuating the former Cambodia National Rescue Party president is the son of a traitor to the monarchy. The comments, made via Hun Sens Facebook page, while not naming Rainsy, referred to the child of one who betrayed the king, an apparent reference to Rainsys father, Sam Sary, the former Cambodian ambassador to the United Kingdom during the rule of King Sihanouk. Sary was accused of conspiring with the United States to overthrow King Sihanouk. They are the ones who dismissed our king but I am the one who brought him back, Hun Sen said. He added that he also supported the incumbent monarch, King Norodom Sihamoni. I have fulfilled my obligation as a Cambodian child not like the children of the ones who betrayed the king. You know already who is the child of the one who betrayed the king, he said. Rainsy hit back at Hun Sen shortly after the post was published, claiming that in an argument between the four leading Cambodian factions in 1991 King Sihanouk had responded to a journalist asking why he did not support Hun Sen over Khmer Rouge leader Khieu Samphan by saying while Samphan was a murderer, Hun Sen was both a murderer and a traitor, referring to his backing of the Vietnamese invasion of Cambodia in 1979. Sok Eysan, ruling Cambodian Peoples Party spokesman, said Rainsy would likely not be allowed to return to Cambodia. Now firstly, he cannot enter the country. So, how old is he now? Hes 70 years old already. So the question is, how long can Sam Rainsy survive? Palestinian health authorities say at least four people were killed and dozens were wounded by Israeli forces Friday in protests along the border. The Israeli army said it aimed airstrikes at three positions belonging to Hamas, the militant group that has political control of the Palestinian territory. Israel said thousands of Palestinians gathered along the Gaza border Friday to throw firebombs and rocks at Israeli troops. Such protests have been taking place since March 30 as Palestinians demand an end to the Israeli blockade of the territory. On Thursday, the U.N. special rapporteur on human rights in the Palestinian territories told a committee of the General Assembly that Gaza had become unlivable as a result of the blockade. The rapporteur, Michael Lynk, said the youth unemployment rate was 70 percent, the heath care system had collapsed and much of the drinking water supply was contaminated. In addition, he said, about 200 Palestinians, including 40 children, have been killed by Israels security forces during the Friday protests. Lynk said it was time for the international community to take action to stop Israels annexation of territory in the West Bank. During five decades of the occupation, Lynk said, Israel has steadily entrenched its sovereign footprint throughout the West Bank through settlement and expansion. The strict prohibition against annexation in international law applies not only to a formal declaration, but also to those acts of territorial appropriation by Israel that have been a cumulative part of its efforts to stake a future claim of formal sovereignty over the occupied Palestinian territory, he added. Lynk urged the international community to take meaningful steps ... to insist upon accountability. Israel has held a blockade against Gaza for more than a decade. It says the blockade is necessary to isolate Hamas. Fernando Haddad is making a last-ditch effort ahead of Sunday's runoff election to win over Brazilians who in previous elections cast ballots for former President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva. The left-leaning Haddad announced Thursday he will visit three states in Brazil's impoverished northeast, which is a stronghold for his Workers' Party, and finish Saturday with a rally in a Sao Paulo slum. Polls say far-right congressman Jair Bolsonaro leads Haddad by more than 10 percentage points aided by some voters who once were supporters of da Silva. The northeast might be Haddad's best bet for making up lost ground. The region is home to almost 40 million of Brazil's 147 million voters, and is the only place where Haddad leads Bolsonaro. Sao Paulo slums also backed da Silva in previous elections. "It is important to have a connection with the poor," Haddad said at a news conference. Haddad, hand-picked by the jailed da Silva as the Workers' Party candidate, will visit three northeastern states governed by allies. Campaign manager Emidio de Souza said Haddad will also try to lure moderate and evangelical voters in the final days before the election. "Many voters decide in the last few days, and they see the risks of a violent, authoritarian Bolsonaro administration. There is still time," de Souza said. Earlier, Haddad met with members of a mission from the Organization of American States that is observing Brazil's elections. Former Costa Rican President Laura Chinchilla, who heads the mission, said the spread of false news via the WhatsApp messaging service during Brazil's campaign is unprecedented. "It is the first time in a democracy that we are observing the use of WhatsApp for massive sharing of fake news," she said. Haddad has repeatedly accused Bolsonaro of bankrolling a fake news campaign against him. Chinchilla said the front-runner has yet to accept an invitation to discuss Brazil's election with the OAS mission. "We want to stress the importance that the vote in the runoff be rational, informed and not moved by many of the feelings coming from false news," Chinchilla said. On Thursday, a Datafolha poll said Haddad had gained a little ground against Bolsonaro, though he still trailed by double digits. Haddad's support rose to 44 percent from 41 percent last week. Support for Bolsonaro declined to 56 percent from 59 percent. Datafolha interviewed 9,173 voters Wednesday and Thursday. The margin of error was two percentage points. At a Thursday news conference, Bolsonaro backed off his pledge to take Brazil out of the Paris climate accord if he wins the presidency. He said he could discuss terms if Brazil's sovereignty is assured. Asked which terms of the agreement could hurt Brazil's sovereignty, Bolsonaro said: "This is information that I have and that are real. Obviously, for how big they are, they are not revealed." A TV debate that had been scheduled for Friday was canceled after Bolsonaro declined to take part, as he has done since he was stabbed at a campaign rally Sept.6. General Augusto Heleno, an ally of Bolsonaro, said in a video that the decision was due to a "terrorist plot" against the candidate, though he gave no evidence. Voters in Brazil went to the polls Sunday to elect a new president. Observers say the country may be set to elect a far-right candidate. His opponents say his victory would threaten one of the world's largest democracies. Brazilian Congressman Jair Bolsonaro, the leading presidential candidate heading into Sunday's election, has been called "Tropical Trump" for his combative demeanor, divisive views and anti-establishment stance. A former army captain, Bolsonaro has also been criticized for his praise of Brazil's 1964-1985 military dictatorship, and for offensive comments about gays, blacks and women. Recent polls show Bolsonaro and his once-tiny Social Liberal Party with voter support of 57 percent, and Fernando Haddad, the head of the left wing Workers' Party (PT), which governed Brazil from 2003 until early 2016, with 43 percent. Sunday's election is the second and final round of voting in the Brazilian presidential selection process. In the first round of voting on Oct. 7, which narrowed the field of candidates to the top two, Bolsonaro led the field with 46 percent of the votes. Dysfunctional state Public anger in Brazil has grown, as Latin Americas largest economy has been stuck in recession since 2014, as the political establishment has been rocked by a high-level corruption scandal, and as crime and murder rates have spiked. Haddad, a former Sao Paulo mayor and onetime education minister, took over the PT candidacy after party founder and former President Luiz Inacio Lula de Silva was sent to prison on charges of graft and bribery related to the state-owned oil firm Petrobras, which was uncovered by a criminal investigation known as Operation Car Wash. Bolsonaros message is that Brazil has become a dysfunctional state and that strong leadership from outside the established political system is needed to restore order. During the campaign, he drew protests after claiming a former dictatorships main mistake was not killing more people and that, if elected, he would shut down Brazils National Congress. Many of Bolsonaros right-wing supporters have called for a return of military rule to end the growing violence and corruption. Such an idea, however, remains highly controversial and is opposed by many Brazilian military leaders. In terms of the military coming back, I think this is a very remote possibility, if it is a possibility. I think that constitutional Brazil, although imperfect (and) in need of improvement (and) adjustment, will likely prove resilient, said political analyst Paulo Sotero, the director of the Brazil Institute at the Wilson Center in Washington. Brazils government was a military dictatorship from 1964 until the establishment of democracy in 1985. During that period, the military was accused of torturing and executing opponents, and stifling dissent in the name of preventing the spread of communism. Bolsonaro has been denounced for his offensive comments, such as saying to a female member of Congress that she was not pretty enough to be raped. In September, he was stabbed at a campaign event by an assailant police described as mentally disturbed. He suffered intestinal damage and underwent surgery from the attack. His poll numbers rose following the attack. Free market Many business people support Bolsonaros free market economic positions, which would stimulate growth by privatizing state-owned enterprises, reducing regulations and making it easier for foreign investors to enter the Brazilian market. He will be judged by his capacity to make the Brazilian economy grow again, sustainably, and create jobs, analyst Sotero said. Christian evangelicals also support Bolsonaros promise to end sex education in the schools, keep abortion illegal, and end same-sex marriage. Many who voted for Bolsonaro in the first round said they are voting more against the Workers Party, which has been embroiled in corruption charges and has been held responsible for mismanagement of the economy. In 2016, Dilma Rousseff, who was handpicked by Lula to follow him as president, was impeached for budgetary violations. Haddad is still hoping to pull out an election upset but has been unable to close the gap in public opinion polls. However, his Workers Party will likely remain a force in Congress after a solid showing in Brazils poor northeast region that benefited from past social policies under Lula. The United Kingdom told Ecuador in August that WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange would not be extradited if he left the country's London embassy, where he has lived under asylum since 2012, Ecuador's top government attorney said Thursday. In a written response to queries from Ecuador, the UK explained that it had not received any extradition request, and said Assange's jail time in the UK for violating bail terms by seeking refuge in the embassy would not exceed six months, Inigo Salvador, who represents the Ecuadorian government in court proceedings, told reporters. Salvador said Ecuador passed on the UK's response to Assange's lawyers, but noted that if Assange stayed in the embassy, Ecuador would put new conditions on his stay. "Mr. Assange had a choice between turning himself in to British authorities with those assurances, or staying in the embassy of Ecuador, but given that the asylum had lasted six years with no signs of immediate resolution, we were going to place certain rules," Salvador said at a news conference. It was unclear if the UK's assurances were still valid. Assange's legal team did not immediately respond to a request for comment. The UK Foreign & Commonwealth Office referred to Foreign Office Minister Alan Duncan's June statement that Assange would be treated "humanely and properly" if he left the embassy. Assange took refuge in the embassy after British courts ordered his extradition to Sweden to face questioning in a sexual molestation case. That case has been dropped, but supporters have said that Assange fears he could be extradited to the United States if he leaves the embassy. WikiLeaks, which published U.S. diplomatic and military secrets when Assange ran the operation, faces a U.S. grand jury investigation. The relationship between Assange and Ecuador has grown increasingly tense in the past year. Assange filed a lawsuit in an Ecuadorian court last week claiming the new asylum terms, which require him to pay for medical bills and telephone calls and to clean up after his pet cat, violate his rights. Ecuador says the rules are consistent with international asylum standards. Ecuador's foreign minister, Jose Valencia, told Reuters earlier this week that he was "frustrated" by Assange's decision to sue, and said the South American country would no longer intervene on his behalf in talks with Britain over his situation, a break from previous practice. On Thursday, Salvador refuted Assange's claims in the suit that Ecuador prevented him from receiving visitors, denied him counsel and cut off access to communications, noting that he received 62 visits between July and October, including some from his lawyers. An initial hearing in the case had been scheduled for Thursday, but the presiding judge suspended it after the videoconference that was supposed to beam Assange into the courtroom faltered. Eight rebels and two Indian soldiers were killed in gunbattles in disputed Kashmir that sparked violent anti-India protests by residents seeking an end to Indian rule in the region, officials said Friday. Indian troops laid siege to a village in northwestern Sopore area on Friday, leading to an exchange of gunfire in which two militants and a soldier were killed, police said. Government forces engaged militants at two places in the contested region on Thursday after troops launched counterinsurgency operations resulting in the death of six militants, the Indian military said. One soldier was wounded in the fighting. The gunbattles triggered large anti-India protests and clashes as thousands of people marched near the sites of the fighting in solidarity with rebels for a second day Friday amid funerals of the rebels attended by tens of thousands of people. Government forces fired warning shots, shotgun pellets and tear gas at the stone-throwing protesters, injuring at least a dozen people. Militants also attacked an army camp in southern Tral area, killing a soldier and wounding another late Thursday. Violence has escalated in the region since last week, with daily fighting between Kashmiri rebels and Indian troops that triggered protests and clashes against Indian rule. Anger exploded in the region after the killing on Sunday of seven civilians in an explosion after three rebels died in a gunfight in the southern Kulgam area. 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. A U.S. news report says Salah bin Jamal Khashoggi, son of the Saudi journalist slain in Saudi Arabia's consulate in Istanbul, has arrived in the United States. The dual U.S.-Saudi citizen had been banned from traveling by the Saudi government until earlier this week. The restriction on his passport was lifted following a photographed handshake with the Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman and King Salman on Tuesday. News network CNN reported Friday that he has arrived, although his location was not clear. The State Department said Secretary of State Mike Pompeo was "pleased" at the lifting of the travel restriction. Pompeo had urged the Saudis to allow Salah Khashoggi to leave the country. Meanwhile, Turkish state-run news says Turkey has asked for extradition of the 18 men arrested in Saudi Arabia in connection with the killing. Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan urged Saudi Arabia on Friday to disclose the location of Khashoggi's body and the identity of the "local cooperator" who allegedly disposed of his body after he was killed in the Saudi consulate. Speaking to provincial members of his AK Party in parliament, Erdogan said Ankara has more evidence related to the journalist's murder, but he did not give any details. He also said Saudi Arabia's chief prosecutor will visit Istanbul Sunday and will meet with Turkish officials as part of the investigation into Khashoggi's death. Khashoggi's Turkish fiancee, Hatice Cengiz, told Turkish broadcaster Haberturk that although her fiance had been worried about visiting the consulate in Istanbul, he did not think he would be arrested or harmed in Turkey. "He thought Turkey is a safe country and if he would be held or interrogated, this issue would be swiftly solved," Cengiz said. She called on those responsible for his death to be brought to justice. Saudi Arabia acknowledged in a statement Thursday that Khashoggi's killing appeared to have been premeditated, on the basis of evidence supplied by Turkey. What was left unclear was who premeditated the killing. The Saudi statement said, "The public prosecution continues its investigation with suspects ... to complete the course of justice." The Saudis fired five officials linked to the killing and have arrested 18 suspects. International critics, including U.S. President Donald Trump, have said that the country's de facto ruler, Crown Prince Mohammed, bears ultimate responsibility for the killing. The Kremlin said Friday that Russia believes the Saudi royals were not involved in the journalist's death. Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said, "There's an official statement from the king, there's an official statement from the crown prince and no one should have any grounds not to believe them." Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan is set to host the French, German and Russian leaders at a summit Saturday on the Syrian civil war. The inclusion of Europe's top leaders with their deep financial pockets is seen as giving new impetus to efforts to end the conflict. But already all sides are warning against any breakthrough. Dorian Jones reports from Istanbul. Despite the lack of progress on denuclearization, Washington should not grant unilateral concessions and sanctions relief to North Korea as a way to induce denuclearization until Pyongyang takes substantial steps to dismantle its nuclear weapons program, experts said. Steve Biegun, the U.S. special representative for North Korea, was supposed to meet with his North Korean counterpart following Secretary of State Mike Pompeos fourth trip to North Korea on Oct. 7. But Bieguns hoped-for discussion on denuclearization with North Korean Vice Foreign Minister Choe Son Hui did not take place. Ever since North Korean leader Kim Jong Un agreed to completely denuclearize North Korea at the June 12 Singapore summit with the U.S. President Donald Trump, Pyongyang has been demanding sanctions relief and implementation of confidence-building measures (CBMs) that it says will guarantee North Koreas security. North Korea objects Several days after the Pompeos most recent trip to Pyongyang, a North Korean diplomat told the U.N. General Assemblys Sixth Committee, the primary forum for the consideration of legal questions, to adjust sanctions placed on North Korea. It is abnormal that the U.N. Security Council, which was so eager to express concerns about the tense situation in the Korean Peninsula, keeps silence on the current positive trend of peace occurring on the Korean Peninsula up to now, said In Chol Kim, first secretary of the North Korean mission to the United Nations in New York. Even over one year after [North Korea] discontinued nuclear tests and rocket test launches, the U.N. Security Council has yet to lift or relax its sanctions resolutions by turning a blind eye to requirements, said the diplomat, calling attention to a U.N. resolution that stipulates a periodic review of sanctions as situations change. South Korea support South Korean President Moon Jae-in, in an effort to improve ties with North Korea, has supported Pyongyangs bid to secure sanctions relief and security assurances, and attempted to rally international support for those goals while in Europe last week. I believe the international community needs to provide assurances that North Korea has made the right choice to denuclearize, said Moon at a recent press conference in Paris. We must further encourage North Koreas denuclearization process by easing U.N. sanctions. Although experts view confidence-building measures as an essential aspect of maintaining a delicate relationship between Washington and Pyongyang, they warn against granting unilateral concessions unless the North takes verifiably reciprocal steps. Confidence-building measures could range from means to reduce military tensions to economic concessions such as sanctions relief. Scott Snyder, director of the Program on U.S. Korea Policy at the Council on Foreign Relations, said, CBMs are necessary and should primarily include jointly agreed measures followed by verifiable actions. According to Evans Revere, a former State Department official who negotiated with North Korea, the U.S. has already taken important unilateral measures toward easing tensions and building trust with the North. The U.S.-[South Korean] suspension of major military exercises, for example, was a unilateral measure that reduced U.S.-[South Korean] military preparedness, while North Korea took no similar steps to reduce its own military exercises, said Revere, who is currently a nonresident senior fellow at the Brookings Institute. The U.S. suspended three high-profile joint drills with South Korea following the Singapore summit, and the Pentagon announced last Friday it will halt a joint air defense drill with South Korea that was scheduled for December. Ken Gause, director of the International Affairs Group, believes the denuclearization process should be embedded in a larger framework of confidence building measures, and sanctions relief should be granted after Pyongyang makes progress toward denuclearization. The U.S. should back away from denuclearization as the focus of the North Korean policy and replace it with a peace regime whereby denuclearization becomes a part of a reciprocal process of CBMs, said Gause, who has written three books on North Korean leadership. In return for substantive concessions on the nuclear program, the U.S. and [South Korea] would provide security guarantees and economic incentives. Examples of this would be a declaration of the end of the Korean War and sanctions relief. A peace declaration Pyongyang and Seoul have been pushing for a peace declaration that would eventually lead to a peace treaty.The Korean War ended in 1953 with an armistice rather than a peace treaty. Robert Manning, a senior fellow at the Atlantic Council, said the U.S. should consider granting Pyongyang a peace declaration as a confidence-building measure after North Korea discloses the full inventory of its nuclear arsenal and agrees to allow the International Atomic Energy Agency, the U.N. nuclear watchdog, to enter the country to inspect and monitor its nuclear sites. To reciprocate, the U.S. and [South Korea] should make an end-of-war declaration and also issue a joint-U.S.-[South Korean] vision statement defining what they see as the elements of a peace treaty, what conditions are needed to finalize it, and the relation of a peace treaty to denuclearization, Manning said. Inducements failed before Revere said that confidence-building measures should be reciprocal, not unilateral and cautioned against giving sanctions relief to North Korea as a way to induce denuclearization because the tactic failed in the past. The Clinton administration removed economic and trade sanctions on North Korea, and the Bush administration took North Korea off the state sponsor of terrorism list to show good faith, but Revere said, The North Korean response to this was to intensify its efforts to develop its nuclear weapons program. He instead urged Washington continue to increase pressure on the North. We have learned over the years that the one thing that has the potential to succeed in convincing North Korea to denuclearize is pressure, in forms of sanctions and related measures, Revere said. If North Korea is convinced that its future is in danger, I believe that the North Korean leader will be compelled to make the right decision. On Thursday, North Korea and South Korea finished removing all weapons from the Joint Security Area, known as the Panmunjom truce village in the demilitarized zone (DMZ) that divides the two Koreas. They had agreed to take this step at the third inter-Korean summit held in September. The United Nations Command, which oversees the DMZ, met with North and South Korea on Monday and supported their agreement to withdraw firearms and ammunitions from the area. Also on Thursday, the State Department announced that Biegun will be traveling to Seoul from Oct. 29 to 30 to discuss with South Korea the final, fully verified denuclearization of North Korea. Editor's note: We want you to know what's happening, why and how it could impact your life, family or business, so we created a weekly digest of the top original immigration, migration and refugee reporting from across VOA. Questions? Tips? Comments? Email the VOA immigration team: ImmigrationUnit@voanews.com. Border-bound and (maybe) blocked The travelers walking north from Honduras are still on the move through Mexico, headed for the U.S., where President Donald Trump wants members of the military on the border to block them. But U.S. and international law allows for asylum-seekers which many of the migrants say they are to actually reach the border and claim asylum. With an administration that showed it's willing to act first and face questions about legality later (as it did with the travel bans), this could turn into a showdown, either on the border or in court. It's heated enough that the U.N. is on the ground in Mexico, helping process paperwork for caravan members. Wrist wraps for refugees A U.S. college student saw potential in the life vests migrants discarded on Greek beaches. Now he sells bracelets made from the jackets and donates half the proceeds to a refugee charity. 'Yeah, we happen to be Indian' In a diverse Illinois district, on the ballot is a rare though increasingly less so find: two Indian-Americans, facing off for a seat in Congress. 'Wild West' in a swing state You just never know which way Nevada might swing when election time approaches. And the candidates are fighting scrappily to eke out a lead. Japan and China took an important step Friday to elevate their relationship, marking what Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe called a historic turning point in ties between the two Asian neighbors. During meetings, the two countries signed a $30 billion currency swap aimed at facilitating money exchanges for businesses. They also agreed on a range of security, economic and diplomatic agreements, while private businesses sealed dozens of deals. Tensions over territorial disputes in the East China Sea have long been a key source of friction between the two countries. Relations took a nosedive in 2012 when Tokyo nationalized the uninhabited Senkaku islands. China claims the Japanese controlled islets are part of its territory and the move sparked a wave of protests across the country and anti-Japanese sentiment. Japanese investment in the country shrank as political relations chilled for a period and only started to truly recover until last year. During meetings with Chinese Premier Li Keqiang, Prime Minister Abe stressed that without stability in the East China Sea there would not be a true improvement in the relationship. Port calls To get to that point, the two have agreed to push forward with visits and exchanges between their defense ministers and to host reciprocal port calls. They also agreed to strengthen cooperation to work towards joint gas development in the East China Sea, but failed to reach a deal as some had expected. China is unlikely to change its position on territorial claims, but during Friday's meetings, Li expressed Beijing's willingness to work together with Tokyo to address regional security issues and support efforts toward dialogue and improving relations with North Korea. "China would like to meet Japan halfway, and work with the Japanese side to return it to its normal track, and maintain the stable, sustained and healthy development of bilateral relations and achieve new improvements," Li said. Big deals One key step forward was an agreement between Japan and China to work together in third countries on infrastructure, transport, health care and finance projects and to avoid what Li called "cut-throat competition." Japan has stressed that such cooperation can only happen when projects meet international standards. In other words, projects need to be open, transparent, make good business sense and not burden third countries with unreasonable amounts of debt. On Friday, the two announced more than 50 deals between private businesses. Premier Li said the deals totaled $18 billion and were a reflection of the "bright prospects" for cooperation between the two countries, according to Reuters. However, when asked for more specifics on the deals, Abe's spokesman Takeshi Osuga said he had "no idea how that number was calculated." Perhaps one of the most important shifts in the ties was Japan's announcement that it was officially ending 40 years of development aid to China, and that from this point forward Tokyo and Beijing would look to work together on development aid and pursue a new type of relationship. "With the development of China, the time has come for China and Japan to contribute to the world. I am very happy that today I am able to be here with Premier Li and everyone for this historic turning point," Abe said. Human rights raised Prime Minister Abe also raised the issue of human rights during meetings with Premier Li on Friday, and stressed to Chinese officials that the international community is carefully watching the situation in China. It was unclear, what specific rights issues Abe raised. When asked whether that included China's crackdown on rights lawyers or its arbitrary detention of perhaps as many as one million ethnic Uighurs and other Muslim ethnic minorities in western Xinjiang, Abe's spokesman Osuga declined to comment. The United Nations will carry out its Universal Periodic Review of China's human rights situation early next month. Osuga did note that universal values and maritime security were important principles of Japan's engagement with China. "Important universal issues including for example human rights and freedom of the press, those important principles and our position on those issues will not be compromised," Osuga said. He added that Japan sees its bilateral cooperation with China as an opportunity to forward progress in those areas and engage in constructive frank discussions. After a full day of meetings with business leaders and Li, Prime Minister Abe met with Chinese President Xi Jinping later on Friday. The two also dined together. Abe's visit to China is hoped to pave the way for a reciprocal visit by Xi to Japan in the near future. Abe returns to Tokyo on Saturday. Just one day later, on Sunday, he will begin a two-day summit with Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi. A woman armed with a knife launched an attack on kindergarten students in western China Friday morning, injuring 14 children. The assailant, identified only by her surname Liu, attacked the youngsters as they were returning to the school in the city of Chongqing after their morning exercises. All the students were taken to a hospital. The 39-year-old woman was taken into police custody. China has had a number of similar attacks in recent years. They are usually blamed on an assailant's mental illness or on someone who is holding a grudge. China has restrictive laws on the sale and possession of firearms.Mass attacks are usually carried out with knives or homemade explosives. North and South Korea continued joint military talks Friday in the truce-village of Panmunjom. The talks took place as the Joint Security Area (JSA) began implementing new protocols designed to reduce tension, while North Korea continued criticizing the United States push for continued sanctions. Military officials with the rank of general met in Tongilgak, a North Korean building located within the JSA, inside the Demilitarized Zone (DMZ) separating the Koreas. The talks began at 10 a.m. local time and were headed by South Korean Major Gen. Kim Do-gyun and his northern counterpart, Lt. Gen. An Ik San. Before departing for the talks, Kim told reporters, Through todays military talks, we will conduct an interim review of what we have so far implemented and discuss what we will enforce in the future. He added, We will make our utmost efforts to play a core role in ensuring that we can facilitate the efforts for the denuclearization of the peninsula and the establishment of peace by enforcing the Sept. 19 military agreement normally. De-escalation measures During the third inter-Korean summit held in Pyongyang, Sept. 18-20, the two Korean militaries signed a comprehensive military agreement, independent of their respective leaders joint declaration. Seoul and Pyongyang vowed to begin a number of de-escalation measures that included removing 11 guard posts within a one kilometer radius of the Military Demarcation Line (MDL) by the end of this year, the establishment of no-fly and no-sail zones, and more. According to Seouls defense ministry, Fridays focus is on the formation and operational mechanism of an inter-Korean military committee entrusted with the enforcement of the comprehensive military agreement. Furthermore, its expected the two sides will discuss how best to form a joint research team for an area of the Han River thats been closed off to civilians because of escalating tensions. An arms-free JSA Meanwhile, the two Koreas and the United Nations Command moved ahead with plans to de-escalate tension in the truce village of Panmunjom on Friday. The Joint Security Area is the only portion of the 250 kilometer fortified border separating the two countries where soldiers from North and South Korea, along with members of the United Nations Command (UNC), face one another. Beginning Friday, there will be no armed personnel inside the JSA of the Korean Demilitarized Zone. Just until recently, the militaries of the two Koreas had pointed guns against each other at the frontlines of confrontation and conflict, said South Korean Major Gen. Kim Do-gyun during his opening remarks at Fridays talks. But I feel great as the militaries are at the forefront of the efforts to realize our Koreans ideology by upholding the wishes of our leaders. North Korea, South Korea, and the UNC agreed last week to implement a wide range of tension-reducing measures outlined in the comprehensive military agreement. In addition to the elimination of firearms, both sides will also reduce the number of personnel stationed in Panmunjom to 35, to bring the number of personnel in the JSA in line with the 1953 armistice agreement. Once disarmament has been mutually verified, its expected tourists from the North and South will be able to freely move about the area, something thats not happened since 1976, when two American soldiers were killed by ax-wielding North Korean troops. Pyongyang calls for an end to sanctions A North Korean official once more called for the immediate lifting of sanctions against Pyongyang by the United States on Thursday. Washington has repeatedly said sanctions on North Korea will remain in place until North Korea abandons its nuclear weapons and ballistic missile programs. The United Nations sanctions in place on Pyongyang are designed to sever the resources necessary for Pyongyang to develop the Norths weapons programs and deplete its cash reserves. At a defense forum in Beijing, Song Il Hyok, deputy director general of the North Korean foreign ministrys Institute for Disarmament and Peace, said, We think that sanctions and pressure do more harm than good. He continued saying that the sanctions are not at all confidence-building measures but confidence-destroying measures and called for immediate relief. Speaking in Seoul earlier this month, former U.S. National Security Adviser General H.R. McMaster said that while we all hope that Chairman Kim Jong Un is undergoing a radical change of heart, we must remain alert. Meghan, the Duchess of Sussex, has described how she worked with designer Clare Waight Keller of Givenchy to create a timeless wedding gown for her wedding to Prince Harry earlier this year. Harry and the former Meghan Markle recorded their memories of the wedding for an audio commentary that is part of the new Relive the Royal Wedding exhibition at Windsor Castle that opens Friday. The gown is set to be the prime attraction at the 10-week display. In the audio recording, the former actress said she worked with Keller to create a timeless gown with a classic feeling. The dress also needed to be suitably modest for the May 19 wedding held in a chapel on the grounds of Windsor Castle, she said. There was a great level of detail that went into the planning of our wedding day, the duchess said. I think for us, we knew how large the scale of the event would be, so in making choices that were really personal and meaningful, it could make the whole experience feel intimate, even though it was a very big wedding, she said. Meghan described the incredibly surreal day when she and her fiance visited Queen Elizabeth II, Harrys grandmother, to choose a tiara for her to wear during the wedding ceremony. She picked Queen Marys diamond and platinum bandeau tiara from the queens collection. It is featured in the new exhibit. For his part, Harry said it was very sweet of his grandmother to lend his bride-to-be the priceless headpiece. Harrys wedding outfit, including the frockcoat uniform made by master tailors on Savile Row, is also display, though likely to be overshadowed by Meghans gown and the tiara. Federal agents have arrested an Ohio man on suspicion of plotting to join Islamic State and carry out "terrorist projects" in the United States. Agents arrested Naser Almadaoji, 19, an Iraqi-born naturalized U.S. citizen, on Wednesday at the international airport in Columbus, Ohio. They alleged Almadaoji intended to fly to Kazakhstan and sneak into Afghanistan for IS military training. U.S. attorneys said Almadaoji appeared in an online video dressed in an Islamic headscarf, pledging allegiance to the leader of IS and saying he wanted to spark fighting in the U.S. between the government and anti-government militias. According to the complaint against him, Almadaoji told someone he believed had ties to IS that he wanted expert training in weapons use, instruction on planning and executing attacks, and guidance on how to capture high-value targets, break into homes and avoid security guards. Prosecutors also alleged Almadaoji traveled to Egypt and Jordan in February with the apparent intention to join terrorist groups. Almadaoji faces up to 20 years in federal prison if he is convicted. From Ceutas highest peak, Europe seems within touching distance. In the foreground, the city itself: The gateway between the Atlantic and the Mediterranean, between Africa and Europe. A mixture of cultures, architecture and people cultivated through centuries of trade and conflict. Beyond lies the 13-kilometer Strait of Gibraltar dividing the two continents, one of the busiest shipping lanes in the world. And on the horizon, the Spanish mainland. WATCH: Spain's Enclaves Feel the Pressure on Europe's Frontiers Frontline in EU migrant battles The tiny Spanish enclaves of Ceuta and Melilla on the northern tip of Morocco have attracted migrants for centuries. They remain at the frontline of the pressures on the European Unions external frontiers. This year, there has been a sharp uptick in the numbers trying to breach the border fences. Several thousand migrants sleep in the forests on the Moroccan side of the border waiting for their chance to cross. On the morning of July 26 of this year, more than 600 migrants stormed the fence, cutting through the wire and breaking through into Ceuta, one of several mass breaches of the border in recent months. The Spanish Civil Guard is tasked with securing the frontier. Spokesperson Alfonso Cruzado said the July assault was the latest example of increasing violence. They used tools like angle grinders, shears, mallets. They burst through, and then they threw caustic soda, acid and homemade flamethrowers to prevent us from getting near, Cruzado said as he took VOA on a recent tour of the border fence. Despite the pressures on the frontier, Spains government wants to remove the razor wire, as it often causes horrific injuries to migrants. It will be replaced with smart sensors that alert border guards to any breaches of the fence. Sen. Fatima Mohamed Dos Santos represents Ceuta for the opposition Peoples Party in Madrid. She wants to keep the razor wire in place. Its like making an advertisement that the fence will be permeable. Most of the immigrants come here for economic reasons. The (people-smuggling) criminal gangs exploit the message that they can find a better life, Santos told VOA. Long journey to Ceuta Its a message that has driven Mamadou Camara thousands of miles from his home in the Guinean capital of Conakry to reach Ceuta. It has taken him two years, including a year living in the forest in Morocco. He was among the 600 migrants who broke through in July. To make it into Ceuta, its only God who can decide that. Because with the rush (at the fence), it is only Gods spirit that can control what happens, you understand? That was how it happened. I made it over and arrived here, Camara said. Camara spends much of the day at the San Antonio day center for migrants, run by the Catholic charity, Cardijn. It offers Spanish lessons, games and computers, a chance to chat online with family back home. Many of the migrants here are teenagers who traveled alone. Stress of waiting Coordinator Maite Perez said she hopes the center offers a chance for the young migrants to decompress after the journey to Ceuta, which often involves sleeping rough and trying to evade brutal treatment at the hands of smugglers and police. In the moment that they stay here, they come to sleep in a normal bed. Its a different situation. For them, its like this is not a moment for relaxing, (but instead) for waiting for the moment they pass to the mainland. Usually, they have a problem for this reason, for stress, for depression. Spain has built separate accommodation blocks to house adults and minors. It is undoubtedly a big improvement on the makeshift migrant camps that used to scar the hillsides in Ceuta. But the shelters are often at double capacity, with 10 people to a room. The migrants must wait in turn to be taken to the Spanish mainland, and this can take a year or more. Many migrants voice frustration at the delay, as they are unable to work or to move on deeper into Europe. So for thousands of Africans, Ceuta has become a temporary home, the final stepping stone on the long journey to a new, unknown future. The fractured opposition in the Democratic Republic of Congo announced Friday that opposition leaders will participate in a contentious December election, and said the opposition bloc will name a unified candidate by Nov. 15 just six weeks before this pivotal poll. It's another sign of the volatility and the fragility of the situation as the massive and conflict-ridden DRC hurtles toward a long-postponed poll scheduled for Dec. 23. The divided opposition is hoping to defeat ruling coalition candidate Emmanuel Ramazani Shadary, who enjoys the support of longtime President Joseph Kabila. Kabila plans to leave office after refusing to step down at the end of his term in December 2016. After two days of discussions in South Africa's capital, Pretoria, the nation's seven top opposition leaders agreed on two critical issues, according to a document sent electronically to VOA by one of the leaders on Friday. First, they agreed to participate in the poll, despite reiterating concerns over a lack of political space and their mistrust in an electronic voting system that they believe is flawed or may be misused. Second, they agreed they will name a unified opposition candidate. But, says longtime Congo analyst Stephanie Wolters, the situation remains complicated. "I'm not convinced that ... these positions will remain common in the next two months," she told VOA in Johannesburg. "I think there's very high potential for these guys to fall out again. But for the moment, there is consensus, that the opposition is going ahead with these elections, and will just continue to try to push for greater credibility." The main issue, she says, is over who will be the presidential candidate. The electoral commission has declared three opposition leaders two of whom enjoy immense popularity ineligible for various, and contested, reasons. Wolters says the opposition field is effectively narrowed to two men: longtime politician Vital Kamerhe and relative newcomer Felix Tshisekedi, whose late father led the nation's main opposition party for decades. Government spokesman Lambert Mende dismissed opposition allegations that the political playing field is uneven, and that the poll may not be transparent. "But why say that it will not be transparent?" he told VOA. "Are they God or what to know what will happen? Let it happen and then let them go to court to challenge." Mende said he's confident about the poll, which for the first time will be entirely locally funded after the government rejected foreign funding, accusing the international community of trying to influence the poll. "We are giving our people a chance to choose their leaders," he told VOA. "And we know that a lot of people are abroad are fond of deciding on behalf of Congolese, and this time we said no. We stopped with this habit of people from outside deciding on who will lead Congo. We decided to fund ourselves, to budget ourselves." But Wolters says she's watching closely how things will play out if the poll happens at all. "If this election takes place, there will be incidents, and if the ruling party candidate wins, there will certainly be incidents," she said. "Because people already don't believe in the credibility of this process, they're not comfortable with the situation. They're still as opposed to the Kabila elite being in charge as they were when Kabila was indicating that he might stay on." Less than two weeks before crucial midterm congressional elections, a new element of fear and uncertainty has been injected into the campaign in the wake of pipe bombs that were sent to several prominent Democrats. Federal authorities announced Friday morning that a suspect in the bomb investigation was arrested. News media, quoting law enforcement sources, said the man was arrested in Plantation, Fla., which is near Miami. Local television stations broadcast footage of police examining a white van with political stickers covering its windows. The vehicle was covered with a tarp and hauled away on a truck. The mail bombs sparked a renewed focus on the sharp political rhetoric that has long defined the current divisive atmosphere, with calls from both parties to temper the partisanship ahead of congressional elections. WATCH: Trump Calls for Unity, Blames Media Amid Bomb Threats A softer Trump? While announcing the arrest during a White House event, President Donald Trump called on Americans to show unity. "We must never allow political violence to take root in America," Trump said. On the campaign trail in Wisconsin late Wednesday, President Donald Trump made a similar appeal for calm. We want all sides to come together in peace and harmony. We can do it. We can do it. We can do it. It will happen, he said. But Trump later blasted the news media in a tweet. During his remarks in Wisconsin, Trump also made a plea to moderate the heated political rhetoric on both sides. Those engaged in the political arena must stop treating political opponents as being morally defective. We have to do that. Democrats respond Democrats pounced on that, countering that Trump has been a key instigator of political tension with his partisan attacks. Senate Democratic leader Sen. Chuck Schumer and House Democratic leader Rep. Nancy Pelosi issued a joint statement criticizing the president for condoning violence and dividing Americans. New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio said any effort to temper rhetoric should start at the top. This is a very painful time in our nation. It is a time when people are feeling a lot of hatred in the air, and incidents like this exacerbate that pain and exacerbate that fear, de Blasio said. Trump has aggressively gone after Democrats in the midterm campaign, including at a recent rally in Montana. The Democrat Party has become too extreme to be trusted with power. Their radical policies are a danger to your family and to your country, Trump said to cheers from the crowd in Missoula. Trump also emphasized issues that he believes will appeal to his base. This will be an election of (Supreme Court Justice Brett) Kavanaugh, the caravan, law and order, and common sense. That is what it is going to be. It is going to be an election of those things, he said. WATCH: Bomb Scares Inject Fear and Uncertainty into Midterms Republicans believe their voters have become energized in the wake of the bitter confirmation battle over Kavanaugh. And in recent days the president has stoked immigration fears by highlighting the caravan of Central American migrants moving through Mexico. Immigration remains a core motivator for Trumps base, former Trump campaign manager Corey Lewandowski said. We cant be a country without borders. No country in the world allows anybody they want to come in without recourse, and we should not be any different than that, Lewandowski said. Obamas role For their part, Democrats are countering with a furious get-out-the-vote effort in the final days of the campaign with help from former President Barack Obama. The stakes are high. The consequences of anybody here not turning out and doing everything you can to get your friends, neighbors and family to turn out, Obama told Democrats at a recent rally in Nevada. The consequences of you staying home would be profoundly dangerous to this country, to our democracy. Former Vice President Joe Biden has also been active on the campaign trail. Folks, we know who Donald Trump is. We know. But heres the deal, guys. The public has to know who we are as Democrats. Biden campaigned in Indiana on behalf of Democratic Sen. Joe Donnelly. Get the voters to the polls American University political science expert David Barker told VOA that both parties are now focused on mobilizing their voters. What both sides need, though, is for their people to turn out on Election Day. And traditionally, that is more critical for Democrats, because Republicans are just more inclined to do it no matter what. Democrats remain confident of gains Nov. 6, said Jim Kessler of Third Way, a center-left policy group. There is a blue wave coming. The question is, how big? I believe that Democrats will take back the House. I dont think they will take back the Senate at this point, Kessler said. Recent polls suggest Republicans may be rallying to keep some of the Senate seats in states Trump won easily in 2016. And some of what has happened in recent days with the Kavanaugh hearing and Republicans kind of coming home as a party are helping in that area, said John Fortier of the Bipartisan Policy Center. So, it will be mostly a win for Democrats, with probably a bright spot in the Senate for Republicans. It remains to be seen how the late focus on security and immigration will impact the final days of the midterm campaign, a classic October surprise that could determine which party controls Congress for the next two years. Gunmen have killed a linguistics professor in francophone Cameroon's volatile English-speaking Northwest Region, hit by a bloody separatist campaign and a brutal security crackdown, a university official said Friday. Paul Kuban Mbufong was shot dead Thursday while going to work in the University of Bamenda, the institution's rector, Emmanuel Suh Cheo, said in a statement. "He was killed by unidentified attackers who followed him to the place where he tried to hide" behind a nearby town hall, Cheo said, calling it a "macabre act." University staff said the murder of the academic, who was also in charge of administration, bore the hallmarks of the "Amba boys," or separatists fighting for an independent English-speaking state called Ambazonia. The two anglophone regions in western Cameroon are the site of an uprising by armed separatists, who have also called for a boycott of local schools. They argue the French-language education system penalizes English-speaking students. Since the start of the new term in September, insurgents have killed one principal, mutilated a teacher and attacked several high schools. The violence, which erupted last year, has claimed the lives of at least 420 civilians, 175 members of the security forces and an unknown number of separatists, according to the International Crisis Group (ICG) think-tank. Hundreds outside the main Catholic church in Madrid Thursday protested against the possibility that Spanish dictator Francisco Franco may be laid to rest there. Demonstrators carried signs denouncing Franco as a criminal and waved photos of him standing next to his ally, Nazi dictator Adolf Hitler. One protester said he would rather see Francos remains tossed into a ditch than placed in the crypt inside the Almudena Roman Catholic Cathedral. Spains government wants to exhume Francos body from a mausoleum that glorifies the dictators memory. Many dead from the Spanish Civil War, including those who fought against Francos forces, are also buried there, many in unmarked graves. Spanish officials have not said where they want to place Francos remains. His family wants to re-inter the body in the Franco family crypt in the cathedral, a proposition many of descendants and victims of the Spanish Civil War find unacceptable. Franco-led military forces, backed by Hitlers Nazis and Mussolinis Fascists, defeated leftist Republicans in the Spanish civil war, from 1936 to 1939. Franco spent the next 36 years ruling Spain as a military dictatorship, stifling free speech and brutally suppressing the opposition until his death in 1975. Historians say hundreds of thousands were killed by the regime. Francos supporters credit him with saving the country from communism and an alliance with the Soviet Union. Syrian government forces shelled rebel-held villages in the country's northwest on Friday, killing seven people in violation of a truce reached by Russia and Turkey last month, opposition activists said. The Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said seven people, including three women and three children, were killed in the shelling of Umm Jalal and Rafa villages in Idlib province, the last major rebel stronghold in the country. The villages are part of a demilitarization zone that was agreed upon between Russia and Turkey. The Smart News, an opposition activist collective, also reported casualties in Rafa without giving a breakdown. The violence comes a day before the leaders of Turkey, France, Germany and Russia are scheduled to hold a meeting on Syria in Turkey. The Sept. 17 agreement to set up a demilitarized zone 15-20 kilometers (9-12 miles) deep and stretching along the front lines around Idlib, including parts of the provinces of Latakia, Hama and Aleppo, aimed to avert a government offensive on the area. It also called on jihadi fighters to evacuate the demilitarized zone, but activists say many of them did not pull out. On Thursday night rebels hit with heavy machine gun fire the Jamiat al-Zahraa neighborhood in the northern city of Aleppo, Syria's largest city and former commercial center, state news agency SANA said. It said the fire caused material damage. Rebels shelled three neighborhoods in Aleppo the night before wounding 10 people, SANA said. Both sides have been accusing each other of violating the truce. Spain has overtaken Italy as the No. 1 destination for migrants heading to Europe. The Spanish enclaves of Ceuta and Melilla sit on the northern tip of Morocco and have attracted migrants for centuries. There has been a sharp uptick in those trying to breach the border fences, while several thousand migrants sleep on the Moroccan side of the border waiting to cross. Henry Ridgwell reports from Ceuta on the dilemma facing Spanish authorities as pressure builds on the furthest frontiers of Europe. Less than two weeks before the midterm elections, President Donald Trump on Thursday announced a plan to lower prices for some prescription drugs, saying it would stop unfair practices that force Americans to pay much more than people in other countries for the same medications. "We are taking aim at the global freeloading that forces American consumers to subsidize lower prices in foreign countries through higher prices in our country," Trump said in a speech at the Department of Health and Human Services. "Same company. Same box. Same pill. Made in the exact same location, and you would go to some countries and it would be 20 percent of the cost of what we pay," said Trump, who predicted the plan would save Americans billions. "We're fixing it." But consumers take note: The plan would not apply to medicines people buy at the pharmacy, just ones administered in a doctor's office, as are many cancer medications and drugs for immune system problems. Physician-administered drugs can be very expensive, but pharmacy drugs account for the vast majority of what consumers buy. Don't expect immediate rollbacks. Officials said the complex proposal could take more than a year to be put into effect. In another twist, the plan is structured as an experiment through a Medicare innovation center empowered to seek savings by the Affordable Care Act. That's the law also known as "Obamacare," which Trump is committed to repealing. Trump has long promised sweeping action to attack drug prices, both as president and when he was running for the White House. He made his latest announcement just ahead of the Nov. 6 elections, with health care high among voters' concerns. Under the plan, Medicare payment for drugs administered in doctors' offices would gradually shift to a level based on international prices. Prices in other countries are lower because governments directly negotiate with manufacturers. Drugmakers immediately pushed back, arguing the plan amounts to government price-setting. "The administration is imposing foreign price controls from countries with socialized health care systems that deny their citizens access and discourage innovation," Stephen Ubl, president of the Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America, said in a statement. "These proposals are to the detriment of American patients." Trump is linking the prices Americans complain about to one of his long-standing grievances: foreign countries the president says are taking advantage of U.S. research breakthroughs. Drug pricing expert Peter Bach of Memorial Sloan Kettering's Center for Health Policy and Outcomes called the plan "a pretty substantive proposal" but one that faces "serious political challenges." "The rhetoric about finally dealing with foreign freeloading suggests that we are going to take steps to get other countries to pay their fair share for innovation," Bach added. But that's "quite literally the opposite of what is being proposed. What is being proposed is that we freeload off of other countries' ability to negotiate more effectively." Democratic leaders on Capitol Hill were dismissive. House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi of California said if Trump wants to save seniors money, he should seek congressional approval for Medicare to negotiate prices for its main prescription drug program, Part D. Senate Democratic leader Chuck Schumer of New York said, "It's hard to take the Trump administration and Republicans seriously about reducing health care costs for seniors two weeks before the election." The health insurance industry, at odds with drugmakers over prices, commended the administration's action. As an experiment, the proposal would apply to half the country. Officials said they're seeking input on how to select the areas that will take part in the new pricing system. Health and Human Services Secretary Alex Azar said politics would have nothing to do with it. In advance of Trump's speech, HHS released a report that found U.S. prices for the top drugs administered in doctors' offices are nearly twice as high as those in foreign countries. The list includes many cancer drugs. Medicare pays directly for them under its Part B coverage for outpatient care. Physician-administered drugs cost Medicare $27 billion in 2016. HHS says the plan would save Medicare $17.2 billion over five years. Beneficiaries would save an estimated $3.4 billion through lower cost-sharing. The plan could meet resistance not only from drugmakers but also from doctors, now paid a percentage of the cost of the medications they administer. However, HHS officials said the plan was designed so it would not cut into doctors' reimbursements. Azar said more plans were being developed on drug costs. "This is not the end of the road, the end of the journey," he said. "There is more coming." Trump has harshly criticized the pharmaceutical industry, once asserting that the companies were "getting away with murder." But it's largely been business as usual for drugmakers even as Trump has predicted "massive" voluntary price cuts. A recent Associated Press analysis of prices for brand-name drugs found far more increases than cuts in the first seven months of this year. The analysis found 96 price hikes for every price cut. The number of increases slowed somewhat, and they were not quite as steep as in past years, the AP found. The Trump administration proposal is open for public comment for 60 days. The U.N. special envoy for Syria urged the international community on Friday to seize on the political momentum offered by several upcoming meetings to move toward ending that country's seven-year war and begin the transition to peace. "There is, in my opinion, still a clear window of opportunity that needs to be urgently seized," Staffan de Mistura told members of the U.N. Security Council. The envoy briefed the council via a video link from Beirut, following a meeting Wednesday in neighboring Damascus with Syrian Foreign Minister Walid Mouallem. De Mistura's comments came ahead of his briefing to a summit Saturday in Istanbul of the leaders of Turkey, France, Germany and Russia, and as the government of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad signals a desire to see the United Nations less involved in his country's transition. The envoy reiterated that Damascus objects to the U.N. having a role in identifying or selecting members of one of three lists of candidates for a proposed constitutional committee. The committee is seen as a crucial step toward a credible and inclusive political process for ending the civil war. It is to be made up of representatives of three groups: the Assad government; a broad opposition delegation; and a third group comprising Syrian experts, civil society, independents, tribal leaders and women. While the first two lists were accepted, Damascus has objected to the participants in the third group. "The U.N. is not opposed to constructive and moderate suggestions, so long as we maintain the same spirit of credibility I repeat: credibility balance [and] international legitimacy" of the third list, de Mistura said. The 71-year-old veteran diplomat, who will step down from his post at the end of November, is making a final push to generate a credible peace process. He noted the Istanbul summit, as well as an expected meeting between U.S. President Donald Trump and Russian President Vladimir Putin in Paris next month, along with a meeting Monday in London of Britain, France, the United States, Egypt, Germany, Jordan and Saudi Arabia on Syria, could be a catalyst for reinvigorating the political process. Russia's U.N. Ambassador Vassily Nebenzia cautioned against forcing the constitutional committee process ahead too quickly. "There are no grounds for establishing artificial deadlines for the establishment of the constitutional committee," Nebenzia argued. "Conditions cannot be imposed that contradict the will of the Syrian parties themselves." But the French ambassador underscored that the idea for the constitutional committee originated from a Russian initiative and there is no reason to delay it further. He warned that the risk of military escalation still exists around the flashpoint province of Idlib if there is no progress on the political front. "The creation of the constitutional committee can and must be the turning point we are looking for," Ambassador Francois Delattre told the council. "The first step is a genuine political movement." "Either Russia has given the U.N. and this council assurances it has proved too weak to deliver on, or it was all a cynical smokescreen designed to divert attention and energy while Russia, Syria and Iran prosecuted the military campaign," said British envoy Karen Pierce. No successor has been named yet for U.N. envoy de Mistura, who has been at his post since July 2014. He was the third envoy to take up the role after both the late Kofi Annan and Algerian diplomat Lakhdar Brahimi quit in frustration. While de Mistura has won small concessions and negotiated short-term cease-fires during his tenure, a permanent end to the conflict has eluded his efforts. The continued mass expulsion of Congolese migrants from Angola could trigger a renewal of inter-ethnic violence in Democratic Republic of Congo's Kasai province, U.N. Human Rights Chief Michele Bachelet warned. Since the beginning of October, Angola has forced an estimated 330,000 Congolese migrants across the border into Kasai, Kasai Central and Kwango provinces of the DRC. The U.N. human rights office says the mass expulsions have involved excessive force and serious violations of human rights by both Angolan and DRC security forces. The U.N. confirms six deaths and says it has unverified reports of other killings, as well as at least 100 people injured. Ravina Shamdasani, the U.N. human rights spokeswoman, says DRC security forces allegedly have subjected migrants to extortion and illegal taxation upon arrival in the town of Kamako. She said Bachelet called on the Angolan government to halt the expulsions and said DRC authorities must protect the returning migrants from exploitation and violence. "Given the continued presence of armed groups that are split along ethnic lines in the Kasais, we are warning of the risk of inter-communal violence if the situation is not handled carefully by the authorities. Failing this, we fear we could see a repeat of the cycles of terrible violence that erupted in the Kasais in 2016," Shamdasani said. In addition, she told VOA, there has been no accountability for grave human rights violations that took place in Kasai in 2016 and 2017. "You know there were mass killings, massive sexual violence, burning of peoples' homes, a lot of people displaced, a lot of refugees who fled to neighboring countries as a result of that violence," Shamdasani said. The Congolese migrants had been working as informal diamond miners in northeast Angola, but the government cracked down on the miners to reduce diamond smuggling and raise more money for its state coffers. Angolan authorities have previously denied allegations of mass expulsions and brutality, insisting the migrants have returned home voluntarily. High Commissioner Bachelet is urging an investigation, and justice for the victims. Giant posters on the streets of Beirut's southern Shi'ite suburbs display an armed Hezbollah fighter in uniform, holding the group's yellow banner and Lebanon's national flag, along with phone numbers where supporters can make donations to the Shi'ite guerrilla force. "He who equips a warrior is part of the battle," the posters declare, quoting a saying from Islam's Prophet Muhammad. Hezbollah's calls for donations have intensified in past months as the group and its main backer Iran come under increasing financial pressure under sanctions from the Trump administration. Washington has imposed sanctions on the militant group for decades. But a new wave this year appears to be more serious about targeting Hezbollah's top leadership as well as businessmen and companies that Washington says are funding the group. On Thursday, President Donald Trump signed legislation imposing new sanctions against Hezbollah at a White House event marking the 35th anniversary of the Beirut barracks bombing that killed 241 Marines. The bill expands the list of those who can be sanctioned for doing business with Hezbollah. On October 15, U.S. Attorney General Jeff Sessions designated Hezbollah as one of five groups considered top transnational organized crime threats. Iran, facing its own financial crises, has also reportedly cut back on funding for Hezbollah and Shiite militias it supports in Iraq. Iran touts itself as the leader of the so-called "Axis of Resistance," grouping the Syrian government of President Bashar al-Assad, Shi'ite militias in Iraq, Hezbollah in Lebanon and Shiite gunmen in Yemen known as the Houthis. The U.S. State Department said in July that Iran has spent over $16 billion since 2012 supporting Assad and its proxies in Iraq and in Yemen, and it also gives $700 million a year to Hezbollah. It has also given the Syrian government $4 billion in lines of credit, it says. Hezbollah's budget has already been hurt ever since it became heavily involved in Syria's civil war in 2013, sending fighters to back Assad's forces and helping turn the conflict in his favor. An estimated 2,000 of its fighters have been killed and thousands more wounded, some with permanent disabilities. That only adds to the costs, since the group pays stipends to families of "martyrs" and provides health care for fighters. Recently, its leadership started to publicly acknowledge the strain. "I won't say that the sanctions will not have an effect ... They will have an effect for sure," Hezbollah leader Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah said in a speech in August. He vowed the sanctions won't diminish the group's power. "We have the strength, infrastructure and human resources to get through these difficulties, God willing," he said. In a closed meeting around the same time, he told Hezbollah cadres, "We have to tighten belts a bit," according to Ibrahim Bayram, an expert on Shiite affairs who writes about Hezbollah for Lebanon's An-Nahar newspaper and was informed about the meeting. The group is taking measures to reduce expenses, such as bringing down the number of fighters in Syria, especially now that Assad's military has taken back greater territory from his opponents, Bayram told The Associated Press. But he said it was not cutting back on stipends for families, medical care and retirement payments. A Lebanese citizen who has relatives in the group said it has pulled back some fighters in Syria, though it maintains its presence in eastern Deir el-Zour province and in the south, where fighting continues with the Islamic State group, and in Quseir, a town near the border with Lebanon that has been a Hezbollah stronghold for five years. It has also asked some full-time fighters to spend more time at home when there is no need for them and has reduced movements of vehicles to cut transportation costs, he said. He spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss the group's internal activities. Despite the tightening, the group hardly seems to be diminished from its status as the strongest fighting force in Lebanon and one of the strongest in Syria boasting an arsenal of rockets and a powerful political structure. Even if other funding streams are under strain, Hezbollah can still count on public contributions, which stream in through tens of thousands of metal donation boxes placed in shops, streets, mosques and schools in predominantly Shiite areas of Lebanon. Its patron Iran, meanwhile, is facing deep economic woes. Trump withdrew the United States from the nuclear accord with Iran, although the United Nations has repeatedly acknowledged Tehran was living up to the terms of the deal. Trump said he wanted stricter terms to limit Iran's ballistic missile program, curtail its regional influence and forever limit its nuclear activities. Crushing U.S. oil sanctions on Iran will resume in early November and already, American allies in Asia are cutting back on their purchases of Iranian crude. While European nations say they want the deal to continue, U.S. clout in global financial markets led oil companies and airplane manufacturers to withdraw from working in Iran. Iran's currency, the rial, has plummeted in value, and the downturn has sparked protests. Another ally of Iran, the Yemeni rebels known as the Houthis, are also preparing for difficult times, especially as their opponents, a Saudi-led coalition, besieges the port of Hodeida, a major source of income for the group. The rebels have sharply increased taxes on merchants and businesses. Iranian-backed militias in Iraq are buffered to an extent from any financial crunch because they also get funding from the Baghdad government, which is nominally a U.S. ally. The militias are part of the government-sanctioned paramilitary group known as the Popular Mobilization Forces, with some 100,000 fighters, who get salaries and equipment from the state. Many of the militias also profit from businesses they run on the side. An official with Iraq's Kataib Hezbollah, one of the main groups backed by Tehran, even said his group could help Hezbollah financially if need be. He spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss the internal workings. "We can last this way for three years," he said. Vietnams Communist Party head will have unprecedented power to keep relations stable with old foe China while pursuing stronger trade and security ties with the United States as he exercises his duties as the nations new president. The legislature in Hanoi confirmed Communist Party General Secretary Nguyen Phu Trong as president Tuesday. He replaced Tran Dai Quang, a low-key leader with a police background, after Quang died last month from a long illness. Trong is scheduled to serve as president at least until 2021. Trongs double role as president and party head will let him mold a wealth of political experience into foreign and economic policy, Vietnam specialists say. In particular, Trong will get more access to foreign heads of state, who often do not see party heads as key political figures. As general secretary, its hard to know how internationally how to treat them, but as president, youre acknowledged, they understand what presidents are, said Adam McCarty, chief economist with Mekong Economics in Hanoi. As president-general secretary, hell be expected to have a lot more power and therefore be treated as a more serious player than just a president visiting other countries, McCarty said. Communist Party veteran Trong, now 74, came from a poor peasant background and graduated from a linguistics program at Hanoi General University, his partys website says. He joined the party 51 years ago and has held five tenures in its Political Bureau. In 42 years of rule by the Communist Party of Vietnam, only its founder Ho Chi Minh ever served as both party head and president, but Vietnam lacked then todays level of foreign relations or world economic clout. Normally, the party chief and president effectively share power. Trongs role resembles that of Chinese President Xi Jinping, also chief of the Communist Party of China. Trong all but naturally became president because he was first among equals in the party and faced no challengers in the top ranks, said Murray Hiebert, deputy director of the Southeast Asia Program at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington. Trong can more easily actualize his policies in government, he said. Stronger economic, foreign policy action Trongs appointment this week is unlikely to change long-term government ambitions such as fostering an export-driven economy or striking a foreign policy balance between China and Western allies, analysts say. One business person in the financial hub, Ho Chi Minh City, who did not want to be named for fear of angering the government, told VOA this week that common Vietnamese had little reaction to the leadership changes because it brought no tangible change such as health care reform or lower consumer prices. But the presidents dual role will give him easier access to U.S. leaders. He is expected to push the United States for a bilateral trade deal as President Donald Trump shows interest in two-way pacts. Last year Trump pulled out of a 12-member Trans Pacific Partnership that included Vietnam. Vietnam counts the United States as its No. 1 export market, worth $33 billion per year, or 20 percent of all goods shipped. But Trong may need to overcome a U.S. view that communist Vietnam lacks a market economy, said Carl Thayer, professor emeritus with the University of New South Wales in Australia. Washington might get a request as well to offer Vietnam more military aid, a growing option since the U.S. government lifted an arms sales ban in 2016, scholars say. Tackling China The Vietnamese president will use existing party-to-party as well as state-to-state channels to work with China, yet without coming off as pro-Beijing, scholars believe. In the past, party and government talks were held by different people. No one in Vietnam is pro-China, Thayer said, but some are more willing than others to work with it. The policies on China to me are set and they provide a special conduit for relations that Vietnam can use, he said. China is Vietnams second biggest export destination and a top supplier of raw materials to factories that drive a fast-growing Vietnamese economy. But the two countries fought a border war in the 1970s and now contest sovereignty over parts of the South China Sea. China took control of the disputed Paracel Islands in the 1970s and the two sides now compete for undersea oil drilling rights. He can be expected to continue to try to balance Vietnams relations between China and the United States, Hiebert said. He will look to China for trade and investment and to Washington for security support as China becomes more aggressive in the South China Sea. Tough on graft Vietnams anti-corruption campaign that became visible to the public in 2016 is likely to intensify under Trong, according to the domestic news website VnExpress International says. It cites numerous crackdowns on top business people and government leaders to date. Trong frowns on overtly lavish lifestyles, a hallmark of corruption, Thayer said. Here's what is known about the bombs sent to high-profile Democrats and critics of President Donald Trump, as well as the man suspected of mailing them: Federal authorities announced Friday that one suspect, Cesar Sayoc, 56, of Aventura, Fla., had been arrested in connection with mailing 13 explosive devices. Sayoc has been charged with five federal crimes including illegally mailing explosives and making threats against former presidents. He faces up to 48 years in prison if found guilty, U.S. Attorney General Jeff Sessions said. Authorities are still investigating whether other people were involved in mailing the crude pipe bombs and did not rule out the possibility of further arrests. FBI Director Christopher Wray told a news conference Friday that fingerprints found on one of the packages had led investigators to Sayoc. He said possible DNA evidence was found on another package. Sayoc has a lengthy criminal past, including once making a bomb threat. His social media accounts show posts that denigrate Democrats and praise Trump. The packages, each containing PCV pipe, a small clock and potentially explosive material, were addressed to prominent Democrats including former President Barack Obama, former Vice President Joe Biden and former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton. None of the packages have exploded and no one has been hurt by the mailings, which have stoked nationwide tensions ahead of November elections. Trump vowed Friday that those responsible for mailing suspicious packages would be prosecuted to the "fullest extent of the law." The first bomb was delivered Monday to the New York suburban home of billionaire George Soros, a major donor to the Democratic Party. The 7-member Commission of Inquiry set up by Zimbabwe President Emmerson Mnangagwa, faced a huge crowd at their Bulawayo hearing Friday, with many questioning the investigation into the death of six-people in Harare, instead of Gukurahundi where an estimated 20K people from the region were killed. MONTGOMERY, Ala. (AP) - Two Montgomery lawyers are asking the local district attorney to review $735,000 in contributions Alabama Attorney General Steve Marshall received from a national Republican group as a possible campaign finance violation. Jullian McPhillips, who has spoken as a campaign surrogate for Marshall's opponent, Joe Siegelman, and conservative attorney Melissa Isaak, sent the letter Thursday to the district attorney. They contend Marshall violated campaign finance law by accepting "illegal" donations since the group connected to the Republican Attorneys General Association had accepted money from other PACs. Alabama bans transfers between political action committees. Marshall's campaign called the letter a "political stunt." Siegelman has repeatedly criticized Marshall over the donations as he seeks to unseat the Republican incumbent. (CNN) -- Cesar Sayoc was charged Friday with five federal crimes and faces up to 48 years in prison in connection to improvised explosive devices sent to prominent Democratic politicians, donors and CNN offices in New York. Sayoc was arrested in a south Florida auto parts store Friday morning as additional explosive devices or suspicious packages were identified in New York and California. 2015 mug shot of Cesar Sayoc provided by the Broward County Sheriff's Office 2015 mug shot of Cesar Sayoc provided by the Broward County Sheriff's Office A total of 13 bombs were mailed around the country, FBI Director Christopher Wray said in a new conferences, adding that there could be more packages not yet discovered. "These are not hoax devices," Wray said. Sayoc was charged with illegal mailing of explosives, threats against former presidents and others, and assaulting current and former federal officers, Attorney General Jeff Sessions said, adding that charges could change or expand as the investigation continues. He initially said Sayoc faced up to 58 years in prison, but the Justice Department later revised that figure to 48. "This is a law-and-order administration," Sessions said at the Justice Department. "We will not tolerate such lawlessness, especially not political violence." Speaking at the White House Friday afternoon, President Donald Trump congratulated law enforcement on the arrest and denounced what he called "terrorizing acts." He also called for unity: "peace and love and harmony as fellow Americans." His remarks came after he has blamed the media this week for rising "anger" in the country while refusing to acknowledge his own role in contributing to divisive rhetoric in the public discourse. "We must never allow political violence to take root in America," Trump said at one point. "I'm committed to doing everything in my power as President to stop it." As the situation initially unfolded mid-morning -- before the arrest was announced -- the President complained on Twitter that the news media was busy reporting on "'Bomb' stuff" and not politics. "Republicans are doing so well in early voting, and at the polls, and now this 'Bomb' stuff happens and the momentum greatly slows - news not talking politics. Very unfortunate, what is going on. Republicans, go out and vote!" Trump tweeted. Sessions said a political motive was not immediately known. Asked why the targets were Democrats or Trump critics, Sessions said, "I don't know. Other than what you might normally expect. He may have been -- appears to be partisan but that will be determined by the facts as the case goes forward." Sayoc's social media accounts showed he was a fervent supporter of Trump and had posted criticism of CNN and other media outlets. Among the posts were threats to individual political figures and media outlets, including CNN and CNN employees. Trump told reporters Friday on the South Lawn he had heard Sayoc was a supporter of his, but that didn't mean much to the President. "I heard he was a person who prefers me over others, but I did not see that," Trump said when asked about images of Trump on Sayoc's van. The President added, "There's no blame, there's no anything." Read the complaint against Cesar Sayoc Sayoc initially cooperative after arrest FBI agents used flash bangs to arrest Sayoc and took him into custody near an AutoZone store in Plantation, a law enforcement official said. He was initially cooperative and told investigators that the pipe bombs wouldn't have hurt anyone and that he didn't want to harm anyone, the official added. A white van -- adorned with images of Trump and Vice President Mike Pence, as well as a "CNN Sucks" sticker -- in Plantation was towed away Friday to Miramar, Florida, where an FBI field office is located. The official said Sayoc had been kicked out by his parents and was living in the van. He later retained an attorney so police questioning has ceased, the official added. DNA found on at least one of the packages, as well as Sayoc's cell phone, helped investigators identify him, multiple law enforcement officials said. Previous arrests Sayoc was not previously known to the Secret Service, law enforcement sources said, but Florida records show a string of arrests dating back to the early 1990s. Notable among them is a 2002 arrest by Miami police for an offense described in online records as a "threat to bomb" and "threaten to discharge destructive device." A police report at the time shows that he threatened to blow up a power company and that "it would be worse than September 11th." Sayoc pleaded guilty and was sentenced to one year of probation, records show. The records show a total of eight arrests for offenses, including grand theft, battery, fraud and drug possession, as well as multiple probation violations. In 2014, he was arrested after stealing copper pipes at a Home Depot, to which he plead guilty. The adjudication of each of the arrests could not immediately be determined from the summary of offenses provided by the Florida Department of Law Enforcement. Sayoc appears to have pleaded no contest to some offenses. Prosecutors appear to have dropped charges in other matters. Sayoc also was arrested in North Carolina in 1999 on a stolen vehicle charge, which was later dismissed. Florida voting records show Sayoc is a registered Republican. He filed for bankruptcy in 2012. New packages Friday Earlier Friday, authorities intercepted suspicious packages intended for Sen. Cory Booker, D-New Jersey; former Director of National Intelligence James Clapper; Sen. Kamala Harris, D-California; and major Democratic donor Tom Steyer, the latest to be sent to prominent Democrats and critics of Trump that were discovered earlier this week. Authorities believe the package addressed to Steyer is from Sayoc, according to multiple law enforcement officials. This brings the total number of known packages sent by Sayoc to 14. However, he's been charged with sending only 13 packages. One of the officials says the package has been rendered safe and will be transported to the FBI laboratory in Quantico, Virginia, for analysis. The FBI said Friday that the package addressed to Booker was discovered in Florida and is "similar in appearance to the others." Sources told CNN the package was addressed to the senator's Camden, New Jersey, office. Booker confirmed the package was intended for him but declined to comment further to CNN. The packages intended for Harris and Steyer were discovered in California, law enforcement sources said. The package intended for Clapper also was addressed to CNN, a law enforcement official said. It was found at a New York City postal facility and was similar to the other packages, the official added. The Clapper package arrived in a manila envelope with six US flag stamps, just like others discovered this week. The return address is that of Florida Democratic Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz's Florida office, which was the address on packages intended for former President Barack Obama, former Vice President Joe Biden, billionaire and Democratic donor George Soros, actor Robert De Niro, former Attorney General Eric Holder, 2016 Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton and former CIA Director John Brennan. There is no information that suggests Wasserman Schultz sent them. Clapper, who has frequently criticized Trump, vowed to CNN Friday morning that he wouldn't be intimidated in light of the discovery. "I do want to just echo one thing that John Brennan said and that this is not going to silence the administration's critics," Clapper said. This story is breaking and will be updated.